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Guillermo lifts a lazy hand and grazes his knuckles against the cold curve of Nandor’s cheekbone. He blinks softly in return, like a cat whose trust has been earned, a moment away from head-butting into the palm of Guillermo’s hand. Guillermo turns his hand, runs the pad of his thumb across the skin, down the flat of his cheek, dragging across the pink arc of his bottom lip, the plush skin, pulling it down to expose the wet line of his inner lip, the ivory points of his teeth.
It’s like a tidal wave of emotion crashing over him, something warm and liquid tingling through his upper arms and shoulders, welling up in his throat. Guillermo looks at Nandor, looks at the dark lashes framing those bottomless eyes, the shape of his wet mouth around Guillermo’s thumb, the bronze of his skin in the candlelight, and something indescribable and hot bubbles up in his chest. He feels nineteen again, watching the dark shadow of a monster pin his coworker against a wall, looking at his blood-soaked mouth and his heart feeling scorched raw with heat.
Nandor is looking at him now, warm and resplendent, coloured gold in soft light, the layers of armor of thirteen years flaked away like the calcified face of a cliff, washed nude by waves.
“You’re so…” Guillermo whispers.
He loses himself halfway through, furrowing his eyebrows, unsure of what he wants to say. His voice is hoarse from the disuse of the last twenty-four hours. The last forty-eight; Nandor, stake in his side, teeth in Guillermo’s throat, the healing, the waiting, the turning. A mess of emotions as nothing turned out as expected, and now: the stillness, the quiet, Nandor’s dusk-dark eyes peering into Guillermo’s, his body close enough to exude warmth if he could. He takes his hand away from Nandor’s face, and rests it on his chest instead.
“What?” Nandor says, voice low. It comes deep from inside his cold chest, a quiet rumble, like a purr.
What is the word that Guillermo’s searching for? How does he say, in a word, a sentence, how does he describe the feeling mounting his chest? He thinks of feeling safe in his mother’s arms, of days in front of the fireplace, of late winter mornings with the watery light coming through the curtains, the vampires asleep in the big, empty house. He thinks of how in love he feels: the words he’s said to Nandor over the last ten, twelve hours, how many years they’ve been waiting to come out. You’re it, he almost wants to say, you’re everything. You’re mine. You and your bloodied mouth.
“You’re so pretty,” Guillermo breathes, instead, the words hardly loud enough to hear.
Nandor looks taken aback for a moment, the dark slant of his eyebrows dipping down.
“Pretty,” he repeats, as if it’s the first time he’s hearing the word, “Really?”
The harsh lines of his exterior seem softer, in this hazy, amber light. Guillermo wets his lips and says, “Yes,” because he means it. “Of course,” he says, because it is the most obvious thing in the world.
Nandor blinks fast, then, and turns away to look up at the ceiling. Guillermo’s hand slides off his chest, carding through his chest hair as it does.
Nandor says, “No-one has ever called me pretty before.”
Guillermo has known it. Has known it in the meticulous hair-brushing routines, the delicate embroidery on his robes and tunics, the blood dripping off his chin thirteen years ago that made Guillermo give up his family to follow him into the shadows. All the things that hurt his heart, that made his skin prickle with terror, he swaddled them in a blanket in his mind’s eye and curled them up safely deep inside him, protected them. Pretty, yes, it’s the word Guillermo needs, maybe, to encompass what he feels when he looks at the vampire opposite him.
“They should’ve,” Guillermo says.
Candlelight flickers, and catches the gray strands at the crown of Nandor’s head. His eyes are pools of onyx. Guillermo wants to cement himself in them.
Nandor is still looking up at the ceiling. Guillermo curls a hand around his bicep, and looks up at him. “What are you thinking about?” He asks, gently.
Nandor doesn’t respond, for a moment. He squints his eyes a little, as if the faint patterns of the ceiling could give him answers. Then, he tilts his head slightly, looks down at Guillermo. He presses his lips to Guillermo’s forehead, so soft to be hardly there, and then he speaks.
“I have never been called pretty. Men were never called pretty, or beautiful, or anything like that in Al-Quolnidar. I was handsome, I was a good soldier, I was a good leader. Never anything else.”
Guillermo traces his bottom teeth with his tongue, then says, “Do you want to be anything else?”
Nandor turns again to face him. His eyes are rimmed with red. He whispers, as if they’ll be caught: “When I was a young child I put on my mother’s dresses and make-ups. That was the last time I was feeling…”
He trails off, and Guillermo finishes, “Pretty?”
Nandor looks at him tentatively, then nods. Guillermo can feel his chest swelling with fondness, with love, with adoration. His eyes ache, and he bites down hard on his bottom lip to stop tears from falling. Of course the centuries old warlord he fell in love with wouldn’t be used to being called pretty, but something in him aches at the realization.
“I think that was the first word I thought of, actually,” Guillermo says. He clears the hoarseness from his throat, and lifts his hand to place it at the nape of Nandor’s neck. He scratches his fingernails through the short hairs there as he speaks, “When I saw you outside Panera, that night. You were all… silver and shadows and blood.”
Nandor furrows his eyebrows, and Guillermo watches his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. “You are the beautiful one,” he says, “Vampire slayer with your fancy clothes and smiley teeth… whatever.”
Guillermo smiles softly, and presses a kiss to Nandor’s collarbone. “Thank you.”
Nandor reaches and wraps his arms around Guillermo, pulling him to his chest again. They quieten to sleep again, the air still and warm, candlelight burning low, wind whipping against the panes of the windows outside.
Guillermo whispers, “If you… if you ever want to wear make-up, or dresses again…”
“Ssh, Guillermo, I am slumbering,” Nandor says. Guillermo smiles into his skin.
A few moments pass, and then Nandor presses his mouth into Guillermo’s hair and whispers, “Thank you.”
**
Nadja takes a step back from Nandor and shakes her wrist out, sending her metal jewelry clinking. Nandor opens his eyes, big and brown, lined with black kohl, emphasizing their depths and the dark line of his eyebrows. His eyes are covered in something shimmery, and his hair is braided neatly down his spine, all Nadja’s doing. His lips are covered in a red smear, and when they part it exposes the neat white line of his teeth. He reminds Guillermo of a tigress, all menace and danger, those dark lined eyes serving as a warning, as battle stripes – yet ready to roll over and bare her stomach at the first sign of safety.
Strands of his hair are falling into his face, taking hold of the orange light, and they look almost maroon in its glow. His eyes are flecked with shivering gold as the candle burns down to the root, and he’s beautiful.
“You’re beautiful,” Guillermo says.
Nandor’s face softens, then, as if he’s a child who's just been handed a gift, and he’s unsure of when or if it will be taken away. Guillermo wants to take his face into his hands, wants to kiss him until his eyeliner is running and his lipstick is smudged across both their faces. He pulls out his phone and flips to the camera, showing Nandor his reflection.
Nandor’s jaw tightens and he blinks a few times, lips curving down into a frown. Nadja watches him too, silently, anxiously, wringing her hands together and sparing Guillermo only a glance. The moment of tension, precarious as a tightrope walker, reminds Guillermo of standing at the National Gallery and looking at Velázquez’s Venus in all her glory, pale skin and fire-red hair, staring herself down in the mirror. He remembers the pale curves of fat at her waist and her hips, and watches as Nandor lifts a bronze hand to his painted face, slim fingers dancing across the harsh slants of his cheeks and eyes. He’s beautiful not in a lovely, fleshy way like the God of love staring herself down in the mirror, but as he takes the phone from Guillermo and presses the pad of his finger to his red mouth, Guillermo thinks he looks the part of Les Demoiselles, with their dark hair and black, all-seeing eyes, orange skin set aflame on canvas, all their features hard lines and slick, uneven colors.
“Do you like it?” Nadja asks. Her voice is quiet, gentle, a tone she takes with Nandor infrequently.
“Yes,” he says, breathless. He turns his head side to side, and then sets down his phone in his lap. He looks up at Guillermo, his expression steeled.
Nadja packs up her things and leaves, shutting the door behind her. On the bed, sprawled out across the sheets, is a dress. Nandor stands up to his full height and peels off his tunic. Guillermo watches in abstract fascination as he steps into the dark fabric of the skirts, as he pulls them up and they hug the slope of his ass, the slouch of his belly. He breathes in as he slides his arms through the straps, and Guillermo wordlessly takes a step forward to help him with the zip at the back.
Guillermo’s withered heterosexual high school fantasies were woven from this same fabric. He never imagined the dress he would be zipping would be worn by a centuries old vampire, a man: a man who he loves. To commemorate the occasion, the love blossoming in the center of his chest, he pulls the zipper up and slides his hands down, feeling the soft rolls of fat beneath his touch, the hard hip bones, the ribs wrapped up in a layer of flesh. He stands on his tip-toes and presses a kiss to the skin just above Nandor’s zipper, listening to the vampire’s soft sigh of relief.
Nandor turns to face him. It feels like the breath is knocked out of Guillermo. He’s standing differently, too, not the proud rolling back of shoulders and the baring of chest, but the delicate slant of shoulder, the soft line of his clavicle, his pendant dipping down beneath the bosom of the dress, where his chest hair pokes out sparsely.
Guillermo sits down, dazed, smiling up at Nandor. He says, voice quiet, “You’re so pretty.”
“Guillermo,” Nandor whispers, and takes a step closer. He extends a hand out, and Guillermo reaches for it – his very own Creazione di Adamo. “Guillermo,” he repeats.
“Nandor,” Guillermo says, gripping Nandor’s long, slim fingers in his own hand. “My pretty girl.”
Nandor makes a sound like a wounded animal, as if the breath has left his lungs. His face pinches together, his eyebrows curve down, and Guillermo sees a small black streak run down his face, translucent and murky. It reminds him of the rainwater running off the banks of the river near his abuela's house, mud falling into the unrelenting wash of the water. Guillermo pulls him closer, looking up into those eyes, until Nandor comes to stand in front of his thighs.
Guillermo tugs him gently down and Nandor sits sideways across his lap, the weight welcoming, the satin of his dress soft where it brushes Guillermo’s tricep. Nandor’s entire arms are bare, something Guillermo rarely sees unless he removes all his clothes. He wraps his arms around Guillermo’s shoulders, back stiff, eyes still unsure and wanting as he looks down at Guillermo, away from his eyes, some place insignificant on his face. From this close, Guillermo can see his makeup up close, can see the bristles of facial hair beneath the paint, can see the smudge of kohl down his cheek – the translucent membrane of black as it curves over his chin.
He’s suddenly overcome with the urge to devour. Nandor’s braid is sitting across the exposed upper plane of his back, and Guillermo wants to touch. He wants to touch, wants to plant a wet kiss into the skin of Nandor’s neck, nose his way into the soft scratch of his beard. He wants to kiss him on that red mouth, wind that braid around his hand and pull. He settles for wrapping one arm loosely around Nandor’s waist, and reaching the other arm up to grope at the flesh of his chest through his dress.
Nandor bucks then, eyes widening, the smoky makeup only accentuating the dilation of his pupils. Guillermo hears him inhale softly, sharply.
“Talk to me,” Guillermo prompts.
Nandor presses his red lips together and shakes his head minutely. Guillermo asks, “Why?”
“I am feeling…” he whispers, slowly, “like everything in my life is inside this moment.”
Guillermo slides his hand down Nandor’s ribcage, feeling that fragile shell beneath his grip. Nandor says, softly, again, “Guillermo...” He moves his hand to cup the back of Guillermo’s skull, tilt it up so they can look straight at each other, and then shifts his right hand to palm at Guillermo’s erection.
Guillermo lets out a shaky breath and leans into Nandor, capturing his lips against his own, pulling him closer against him. Nandor opens his mouth, hot and wet, letting Guillermo in, letting their tongues slide together languidly, Nandor's hand absently kneading at the front of Guillermo's trousers. Guillermo reaches up to Nandor’s shoulder and slides the thin strap of his dress off, the bust of the dress drooping as he does so, and Guillermo pulls back to admire how wanton and disheveled Nandor looks. His pendant necklace has drooped to one breast, and his nipples have become hard peaks, the other showing underneath the thin silk of his dress.
“God,” Guillermo breathes, and Nandor hisses – but not before Guillermo takes the flesh of Nandor’s breast into his mouth, teeth teasing at his nipple, mouth tearing away only to plant kisses across the skin, uncaring of the hair there. Nandor moans, sweet and tangled, and fumbles with the buttons of Guillermo’s trousers. Guillermo pulls his mouth away and helps, letting Nandor wrap his large, cool hand around Guillermo’s erection.
“Oh,” Nandor breathes, jutting his head up, his mouth parting.
Guillermo places his hand over Nandor’s where it rests on his erection, trying his best to stay still, at the mercy of the other man. “Do you see?” He says. “Do you see how pretty you are?”
Nandor nods vigorously, placatingly, and thumbs over the head of Guillermo’s cock, damp with precum. He drags his hand down, moaning breathily, arching his back towards Guillermo, his dress pulling tighter around his waist, his belly, the navy strap falling across his bicep. Guillermo leans forward, buries his head in Nandor’s neck, brushes his lips against his throat – breathes in his familiar spicy, woody scent. Nandor keeps moving his hand steadily, letting out soft shuddering groans that Guillermo feels vibrating from under his skin. As he moves, Guillermo can feel the brush of the silk against his dick, and it makes him feel dizzy with arousal.
“You don’t know,” Guillermo moans against Nandor’s skin, as he tightens his grip around Guillermo’s shaft, “I can never show you.”
“Show me,” Nandor says, in response, his voice airy, breathless. “Show me, Guillermo.”
Guillermo grits his teeth, feeling his orgasm build in his shoulders, in his hips, in Nandor’s hand. He grasps Nandor’s waist, pulls him closer into his neck, feeling the soft flesh beneath the dress, beneath his fingers, the vampire surprisingly pliant, only hissing softly as Guillermo hangs onto him. Guillermo chokes out a moan as he comes, as Nandor constantly moves his hand, driving Guillermo through his orgasm. He comes sharply, his whole body shuddering. When he pulls away from Nandor he sees the long stripes of white dripping down the bodice of his dress.
Nandor kisses Guillermo quickly, all tongue and teeth, and then looks down at the mess.
“My dress,” he whispers mournfully.
“It’s fine,” Guillermo says, “I’ll get you another one. However many you want.”
Nandor smiles then, his fangs out on display. Guillermo kisses him again, feeling the warm familiarity of fondness bubble thick and gooey in his chest. “Do you need to...?” He asks.
“Yes, Guillermo. I would be appreciating that,” Nandor says, shuffling a bit. Guillermo glances down, and he can see the bulge of his cock showing through the dress.
He looks back at Nandor’s face – the running makeup, the pink of the blush high on his cheeks, the red faded away. Guillermo wants to be here forever, intertwined, wants to see Nandor lewd and ruined forever, wants Nandor to know that he could be Guillermo’s undoing, if he wanted to be.
They adjust, and move from the chair in front of the hair-brushing table back to the bed. Nandor hasn’t slept in a coffin ever since Guillermo started joining him. He kisses Nandor as soon as they stand up from the chair, Nandor leaning down, big hands engulfing his jaw, thumbs at the corners of his mouth. Guillermo pushes him back with a hand on his chest, until he’s leaning across the bed, the navy folds of his dress cascading around his long legs, falling in the divot between his thighs, riding up with the bulge of his erection.
“Move up,” Guillermo instructs, and Nandor listens.
He pulls the skirt of Nandor’s dress up, exposing his calves, his thighs. He kneels on the bed and kisses his way along the vulnerable skin of his inner thigh, scratches his teeth lightly at his inseam. Nandor twitches his leg slightly, muscles tensing under Guillermo’s mouth. He pulls Nandor’s skirts up around his waist, letting the back of the dress sit across the bed untouched, like a blanket. His own cum is drying along Nandor's bodice, and Guillermo inhales sharply, the air thick with arousal.
Guillermo pulls Nandor’s boxers down, exposing his dick, long and hard, darker at the tip, white strands of precum dribbling over the head. Guillermo draws closer, and moving his hand up one-two-three times, he wraps his mouth around the head and the top of Nandor’s shaft. Nandor’s legs come up around Guillermo as he moans, wrapping around Guillermo’s waist, his heel dragging up Guillermo’s spine.
“Guillermo,” he says, “Please, that’s good, that’s good–”
Guillermo removes his mouth and licks the slit of the head, feeling Nandor shiver underneath him at the stimulation. He moves away from his cock, kisses the tops of his thighs, licks up his shaft. He takes Nandor back into his mouth, as far as he can go, using his hands to make up the rest, and he’s suddenly overcome with the desire to consume Nandor whole, to swallow him up to the root and never let go; to live in service on his knees, breathing through his nose, lips wrapped around his teeth, hearing Nandor’s choked moans and whines. He closes his eyes and runs his hands up the sides of Nandor’s thighs, letting the flesh ground him – stop him from floating away. He can feel the goosebumps rising, the heat building in his heart: the sensation his slayer instincts so rarely give way to nowadays.
Nandor whines softly, lowering his hand to bury it in Guillermo’s curls. His fingers tighten, the muscles of his thighs around Guillermo’s torso tense, and he begins to stutter, “Please, please, please--”
Guillermo moves his mouth away from Nandor’s dick and opens his eyes. His mouth feels swollen and his wrist is tired, but Nandor’s back is arched against the bed, his legs are wrapped around Guillermo’s waist, and his cock is hard in Guillermo’s hand.
“Pretty baby,” Guillermo whispers, continuing to stroke up and down, “Come for me.”
Nandor comes with a cry, over the inside of his dress. “Good girl,” Guillermo praises, and Nandor whines then, tilting his head away from Guillermo as Guillermo drives the last dredges of his orgasm from him. Guillermo wipes the remnants of cum on the inside of Nandor's dress, and presses one final kiss into the soft swell of his thigh before pulling his skirts down.
The exhaustion begins to reach Guillermo’s head. He lays down beside Nandor, and buries his face into his shoulder, the strap of Nandor's dress digging into his cheek. He doesn’t care. He feels warm and full and spent, and Nandor’s chest is silently moving up and down beside him, ribs arcing into a semi-circle as he…
Guillermo looks up to see Nandor’s face from the side. His eyeliner is dripping down across his temples now, and Guillermo sits up suddenly at the realization. He aches as he reaches over and presses a gentle kiss to that cool mouth, as Nandor curls into Guillermo’s chest and grips his shirt between his fists. Guillermo leans back into the bed, holding Nandor close.
“What’s wrong?” Guillermo asks, running a hand over Nandor’s back, pressing his lips to his hairline.
“I don’t know!” Nandor exclaims, muffled into Guillermo’s shirt.
He strokes Nandor’s back for a few more moments as his sniffling eases into silence. When he’s done, he moves his head from Guillermo’s head to the pillow beside him. He sniffles a couple more times as they look at each other.
“Thank you,” Nandor says, finally. He closes the distance between them briefly for a kiss, chaste and warm.
Guillermo chuckles as they break apart. “For what?” He asks.
Nandor closes his eyes. The shine of sweat and tears on his face catches the light. His dress rides down to expose the flesh of his breast, twinkling pendant glowing gold.
“If I say it,” Nandor says, “I think it will stop being as true.”
Guillermo doesn’t respond. He watches as Nandor drifts into slumber, his features turning even and still. He rests his hand on Nandor’s cheek, their skin tones so closely matched they could blend into one. He thinks he understands, either way.