Chapter Text
Nandor left the room and they all breathed a sigh of relief. He wouldn't be killing Gizmo, at least not tonight.
Nadja had had a whirlwind shit of a day; running errands for Nandor, rescuing Guillermo, finding out his filthy secret, having to deal with his feelings (and also her own).
And then to discover Laszlo had known about his disgusting half-turned blood and not told her?
Irate was an understatement.
She was sat in the chair, grumbling and massaging her tender jaw. The swelling from the needle had gone down, but the excess adrenalin swirling through her body was making her cranky and overstimulated. The deep breathing seemed to helping a little - that was until Laszlo ruined it.
"And you destroyed the test results, didn't you, my darling?" he asked.
Nadja had waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. "What are you talking about?"
"The blood work, documenting the freak of nature sitting across from me."
Nadja narrowed her eyes. "And when exactly, would I have had a chance to do that, Laszlo? When I was busy fighting off a horde of vet malakas or when I had to physically carry this lump out of Familiar Urgent Care while he was off his tits?"
"Well I don't know, my darling, but if there is a record of it, then they may call and want to investigate further. How are we meant to hide that from Nandor?"
Nadja bristled. "I don't bloody care how you hide it. Apparently you were doing a perfectly fine job before this! Now I've been called into your disgusting, dramatic little mess and I have to be the one to do the cleaning?"
Nadja leaned back into her seat, crossing her arms. Her bloody ungrateful husband.
"You see what problems you've caused?" she asked Guillermo.
"My darling, he understands the gravity of the situation," said Laszlo diplomatically. They both watched Guillermo as he slumped down in his chair, looking sorry for himself. "He's been a bit of a stupid prick but it'd be a shame to lose him. He does do your laundry so well,"
Nadja huffed. Guillermo did do her laundry well, and he was very good at mending rips and tears in her fragile garments.
Guillermo nodded, his eyes glistening. "I'm sorry for getting you into this mess, Nadja,"
"Yes, fine, don't bloody cry on me, Guillermo. Ergh. I've had enough of your feelings today." She rolled her eyes at his comically grateful expression. "Plus, I don't think I could stand Nandor's mood for the next century if he found out his own familiar got turned by Derek."
"Thank you, Nadja," he had said, and she rolled her eyes again, disgusted by his earnestness.
"I don't know how you think I'm supposed to get these records though," she told Laszlo. "There's no fucking way they're going to let me inside the building again, let alone to go rifling through their cabinets and tip tapping on their computers."
"Well I can't do it my darling, I've never been there, I wouldn't know where to start."
Nadja threw up her hands. "Well what am I supposed to do? Everyone there will recognise me, unless I…"
She trailed off and Laszlo waited. "Unless you…?"
"Shut up, I have an idea," Nadja announced, standing suddenly, and swishing from the room. "And both of you boys better be bloody grateful when I get home!" she called back.
She flew to the council chambers and landed on the doorstep, straightening her dress. Bloody useless housemates. She raised her hand to knock, but found herself uncharacteristically hesitant. She supposed it was a little confronting dealing with her very own former nightclub, her personal playground, that was now just a large, empty building housing her burnt-to-a-crisp dreams.
And hopefully also housed one very irritating, earnest, useful former co-worker.
She rapped on the door, and heard it echo down the corridor. She waited but didn't hear anything, and growing immediately impatient, knocked again, harder.
"Bloody pointless- never should have agreed to help…" Nadja muttered under her breath. She felt awkward and out-of-place, standing here on the doorstep when the Guide was obviously still at the Familiar Urgent Care. She still had a couple of hours before dawn, but she couldn't wait here forever.
She had already half-crouched, ready to launch herself into the sky when the door suddenly opened, and the Guide greeted her through the gap, slightly out of breath.
"Mistress Nadja?" she said, not even trying to hide her surprised pleasure. "What are you doing here? You look nice."
She glanced around, looking for the others, and subtly eyed her outfit up and down.The Guide was so clearly excited to see her that it diffused Nadja's frustration.
"I was knocking for a very long time, I thought you must have gone deaf," Nadja said, trying to maintain her annoyance.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I only just got home a few minutes ago," said the Guide, looking genuinely apologetic. She was so earnest it was infuriating to Nadja, but also a little endearing. "My volunteer shift ran over, there was a huge mess to clean up, you wouldn't believe-"
"I think I would believe, actually," interrupted Nadja. "And I wanted to talk to you about that. Can I please come in?"
"Oh, sorry, of course!" said the Guide, opening the door wide and welcoming her with a waved arm.
She must have literally just gotten home, because she was still wearing her nurse uniform. The whiteness of it stood out against the dark corridor behind her, making her blonde hair seem even lighter. It was so crisp and clean, she was almost unrecognisable out of the context of the hospital.
Nadja blinked, distracted by the brightness of it, and strode past her, trying to regain her composure. But she got halfway down the hall before realising she wasn't sure where exactly the Guide had indicated for her to go. She paused, and the Guide caught up to her before gesturing her through a door further down on the right. It was utterly humiliating, being directed around a place that was your former dominion.
But curiosity took over when she entered - she had never noticed this room before, and certainly never been inside. As soon as she was inside though, it became immediately obvious that this is where the Guide slumbered.
Her coffin was propped upright in the corner, and there was a writing desk with a crystal decanter of blood, a small sofa bed, a wardrobe, a wall of hats, what looked like a packed-down easel, and a chest of drawers. It also had a pleasant smell that seemed familiar, which Nadja realised must be the Guide's perfume.
"It's a little disorganised, I'm sorry," said the Guide. "I don't usually… have anyone in here…"
It was, in fact, spotless, and the mess she was hurriedly trying to tidy appeared to just be the bag that she had brought home with her from Urgent Care.
She swept it off the sofa and indicated for Nadja to have a seat. "Make yourself at home."
The Guide clearly felt pleased to host her, but Nadja felt off-kilter for some reason, as though she was intruding. Her body was still buzzing with adrenaline and she found herself shifting her weight continuously, fidgeting. She dismissed the sofa with a wave.
"No, this won't take long, hopefully."
The Guide nodded. "So did you find Guillermo?" she asked, picking up a half-drunk glass of blood and taking a sip. "I had a quick look through the cages afterwards, and the morgue, but I couldn't see anything."
"Yes…" Nadja said, eyes drawn to the red stain the blood had left on the Guide's upper lip. "I found him, and-"
But the Guide cut her off. "Oh, I'm sorry, Nadja, I'm being so rude."
She pulled another glass from somewhere and poured blood into it, handing it to Nadja.
"AB+. Your favourite, right?"
Nadja took it without intending to, distracted as the Guide licked her lips, the red stain disappearing. "It... is."
The Guide didn't react if she had noticed Nadja's strange tone, and set her glass down on the chest of drawers. She began pulling at the fingertips of her gloves, loosening the black latex.
"So he was discharged then?"
She had loosened her left glove enough now and began sliding it down from her elbow. It caught on her skin a few times and after a second of resistance, she pulled it free with a dull thwacking sound and started on the next one.
"Uh," said Nadja. "Yes, now he… mostly he was fine..."
She kept losing her train of thought, oddly transfixed by the Guide's movements, and flinched at the sound of the Guide removing her other glove. She looked away, trying to refocus.
Nadja had very erotic associations with the sound of latex snapping and was feeling very uncomfortable having these feelings in this context.
She was in the Guide's room, and the Guide was a pedantic, needy, earnest bureaucrat - the furthest thing from an erotic thought.
"Yes," Nadja said to the wall. "I got to him, and in the nicks of time too, you know there is a serious personnel problem at the…at the…"
Nadja lost the rest of her sentence as the Guide pulled open a bottom drawer to pack away the gloves into the overflowing compartment. Because while the Guide was crouched down, her pinafore rode up above her knee, and Nadja could see her thigh.
The Guide never wore outfits like this, they were always long, loose-fitting and dark. And while she was still wearing stockings, Nadja wasn't sure she had ever actually seen the shape of the Guide's legs before. Now, she couldn't stop staring at them.
She glanced away, coughing slightly to cover the hitch in her breath. This was weird, what exactly was going on? Probably all of her excess stress and adrenalin, still lingering and making her a bit frazzled.
The Guide stood and was looking at her expectantly again, and Nadja realised that she had trailed off in the middle of a thought.
"…Yes, some personnel issues regarding some of the vets."
"Urgh, tell me about it," said the Guide, rolling her eyes. "I'm not even getting paid to be there, and the amount of extra shit-work they try to assign me…"
She reached up and unclipped her earrings, placing them in a brass dish on the chest of drawers. Nadja was trying to remember if she'd ever seen her bare fingers before. They were longer and more dainty than she imagined, so maybe this was the first time.
"And all I want to do is give back, you know? And they have me hosing out the cages, sweeping the examination rooms…"
She began pulling pins out of her hair, and dropping them into the dish too.
"Sorry, you don't mind if I get out of my work uniform do you? Otherwise I just can't switch off."
Nadja gestured at her vaguely, nodding, and the Guide continued, loose curls falling from her head as they were unpinned. She lifted the nurse cap and shook her head, the hair trapped beneath it unfurling. Had her hair always been this silky and shiny?
Nadja tried to remember ever paying attention to her hair before. Why was she suddenly noticing things? It was unsettling her, she needed to get out of this room.
"Listen, the reason I came here to see you," Nadja started, focusing on each word, "is because I need access to Guillermo's test results."
The Guide hung her cap on its designated hook, and turned, frowning to Nadja.
"Did they not give you a copy of them at reception? They should have."
"No, no, I didn't go through reception…"
"Legally, they have to, even if they put down your Familiar."
Nadja closed her eyes, trying not to let the Guide derail her.
"No, shut up please and listen to me. It was me who destroyed all that shit, getting Gizmo out of there. I didn't realise you'd have to clean it up - and I guess I am sorry about that, but frankly even if I did know, I still would have done it."
The Guide frowned at her, and Nadja made the mistake of meeting her eyes. The Guide never had her hair down loose like this, without some sort of hideous accessory on her head, and Nadja couldn't help but feel like she was seeing something too intimate, too honest. Their regular dynamic didn't apply, because she was no longer her boss and she was a guest in the Guide's space.
The Guide seemed at ease here, without her usual defences up. It was all very human.
"… and so you trashed one of the examination rooms because you didn't get your test results?" asked the Guide. "I mean, that particular vet is such a dick but-"
"That's not the point," Nadja said, becoming genuinely irritated again at her own inability to focus. "Listen; I need to get the blood test results that he filed, and destroy them."
Now the Guide really looked as though she was not following, but she nodded slowly, her mouth dropped slightly open in confusion.
"Ok... and, uh… you need my help finding them then?"
"Yes," said Nadja, relieved. "I do."
The Guide sat on the sofa and pulled open her bag, shifting it to her lap. "Can I ask why you need to destroy it?"
"No you cannot," said Nadja, and to her immense relief, the Guide stared at her for a beat, and then shrugged.
"Above my pay grade," she muttered, and then begin rifling through her bag.
Nadja rolled her neck as she waited, trying to loosen the tension that had been creeping into her shoulders this entire visit. She knew her behaviour was bizarre, but she couldn't stop herself noticing things about the room, the Guide, her belongings. It was making her very uneasy, this strange admiration and pull she was feeling towards the Guide.
"You know you don't work for me," she said, her voice breaking weirdly in the middle, and she wasn't even sure why she said it. The silence was making her jittery, although the Guide seemed perfectly comfortable. She was distracted, pulling an assortment of items out of her bag.
"I'm sorry, Mistress Nadja, I didn't catch that?" she said looking up at her, untangling a stethoscope.
"That's what I mean - you don’t have to call me that, you know, you don't work for me anymore."
Nadja reminded herself that she didn't care how the Guide addressed her, or what the Guide thought, or anything about the Guide for that matter.
So the way words and opinions kept coming out her mouth was very mysterious.
"I'm not your boss."
The Guide blinked at her as she placed the stethoscope next to her on the lounge. "I'm sorry, Nadja, it's force of habit. I'll stop it though if you don't like it."
"I don't not like it," said Nadja, and the Guide's brow furrowed. "It… well, no, I don't care, I was just telling you- ergh, panagia mou…" Nadja shifted her weight uncomfortably and crossed her arms. "Have you found whatever you're looking for yet?"
The Guide shook the bag as though to confirm it was empty, and then stood up. "No, I must have plugged it in when I got back. It's in the study, I'll be right back."
And then she swept past Nadja out the door, leaving her alone in the Guide's chambers.