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“Guillermo and I have had another talk,” Nandor explains, lounging on the loveseat in his crypt. He looks comfortable and smug. One hand hovers by his face, fingers curled into a loose fist. He leans his chin against his knuckles. “It went very well.”
“Yeah, I’m just, uh,” Guillermo gathers a few things from the top of his dresser: silver cross, pair of rosaries, and a spray bottle labeled Holy water, handle with care in handwritten Sharpie, “getting ready to spend the evening with Nandor. He has some ideas.”
He holds up the bottle and jokingly spritzes it once. “Watch out,” he laughs.
The camera zooms in and lingers on the assortment of anti-vampire items on the dresser. If there is a system of categorization to separate the killing tools from the sexy ones, it isn’t immediately obvious. Guillermo’s voice overlays the footage.
“We had a long talk the other night. And Nandor’s been… Googling. I taught him how to do that,” he adds proudly.
“And I have some ideas too.” The camera returns to Guillermo’s face as he smiles a private, eager smile.
“We’re going to be here, in my room, because it is a safe and familiar space for both of us,” Nandor explains. “We have a safe word also, of course. And I have been reading about the importance of aftercare.” He pronounces the word carefully with a deadly serious look on his face.
The look shifts minorly to one of annoyance.
“I’ve had to be very discreet.” Nandor’s lip curls. “The last time Colin Robinson caught me researching, Guillermo had to drag my unconscious body to my room before the sun came up. And that was just the time I wanted to read about alpacas.”
He stares wistfully into the middle distance for a moment.
“I would like to meet an alpaca,” he says.
There is a cut in the footage, as if the documentary editors removed a long chunk of time that Nandor spent discussing the various cute and fuzzy beasts of burden he has yet to meet in his centuries of existence.
“I have found the protocols for aftercare questions on Women’s Health Mag Dot Com.” He unfolds a sheet of printer paper with a black-and-white screenshot of a webpage and clears his throat. “Question one: How did that go for you? Question two: Did we need to use a safe word? If so, why? Question three—”
“He’s taking this really seriously,” Guillermo says. “Which is a lot better than if he wasn’t taking it seriously at all.”
“The first thing he said when we, uh, started talking about doing… all this was, um,” he hides an awkward laugh behind a cough, “he asked me to stab him. When we—” Guillermo raises his hands and gets halfway to making a crude gesture, then drops them and bluntly finishes the sentence with, “have sex.”
“But then I explained that there’s, there are ways to do it right and protocols to keep everybody safe and his eyes just,” he spreads his fingers in front of his face, palms out, “lit up. He loves protocols.”
“—Question six: What was really exciting? Question seven: What was safe? Question eight: What do we want to keep as part of our repertoire? Question nine: What do we want to ditch? Question—”
“Cross, rosaries, holy water,” Guillermo mutters to himself. “Pretty sure that’s everything I need to bring. And myself.” He gestures down his body wryly. “Wish me luck.”
The door closes behind Guillermo.
Two seconds later, it opens again. The camera follows as he crosses the room hurriedly.
“Forgot the most important thing. There we go.” He grabs two empty mason jars off a shelf.
“—This is the last question, but of course we are encouraged to add our own if necessary—Guillermo!” Nandor looks up with a massive smile as the door opens. Guillermo smiles back, then looks into the camera with surprise.
“Oh,” he says. “Are you not done with—? I can come back.”
“It’s fine. It’s fine, right?” Nandor nods at the camera. “Come sit with me.” He pats the space next to him. Guillermo awkwardly shuffles around the front of the sofa, scooting sideways through the space between Nandor’s knees and the camera. He plops down, glances at the assortment of holy marital aids in his arms, and dumps them into a pile of furs to his right.
Nandor settles an arm around Guillermo’s shoulders. He looks down at the space where their hips press together and wedges his hand in between them.
“Nandor!” Guillermo yelps. “We—The crew is still here—”
“No, no, sorry. Budge over.” There is the sound of crinkling paper. “You’re sitting on my BDSM list.”
Guillermo stares flatly into the camera. He budges.
“Ah, there we are!” Nandor smiles again as he retrieves his paper. “Do you have what you need for the evening?” he asks the documentary crew with an imperiously raised eyebrow. “Then shoo.”
“Bye,” Guillermo mouths with a little wave.
The only visual filling the camera is an old oak door opening and closing, but as the crew leaves, the mic picks up a quiet, delighted gasp.
“Hnng,” Guillermo says intelligently. Nandor’s mouth is cool and wet on his jaw, and the hand not clutching at his shoulder runs soothingly up and down his side. His beard is soft against Guillermo’s skin—Guillermo still oils and trims it for him, same as he still brushes his hair. It’s one of the freely-given acts of service he enjoys now that they’re removed from the context of indentured servitude.
“What did you bring?” Nandor murmurs against his throat. Guillermo shudders, biting down on the request rattling around in his head. Save that, for now. Not yet.
“I got,” Guillermo leans over the side of the sofa and holds up the rosaries. Nandor flinches and hisses reflexively at the tiny crucifixes suddenly dangling a few inches from his face. His eyes light up. “I thought we could use these for your wrists,” Guillermo mimes looping them around the arm of the sofa, “since they’ll hurt less and be easier to get out of than silver. And I had no idea where to get silver rope. That’s expensive.”
“Good thinking,” Nandor praises. Guillermo smiles bashfully. A thrill runs down his spine at the now-familiar eagerness in Nandor’s eyes.
“Also, if you, um. Don’t listen to me.” Guillermo holds up the spray bottle, warning plainly visible.
“Heeeh,” Nandor lets out a long hiss of delight, fangs out.
“And I thought I could,” Guillermo holds up the silver cross and gestures at Nandor, facing it toward him as if about to press it into his chest.
Nandor’s eyes go briefly wide as his torso slams backwards. The sofa rocks onto its hind legs and then settles again.
“Careful with that shit,” Nandor gasps. He clutches his chest and rolls his neck. “At least let me get my pants off before you throw me through the fucking wall.”
“Sorry,” Guillermo stows the cross away hastily. He puts his hands in his lap and looks up at Nandor. Their difference in height is less pronounced when sitting, but still there, especially when they sit this close. “Where do you want to start?”
Nandor looks him over. The corner of his soft mouth crooks up and his eyes fill with the vulnerable softness he lets show a hell of a lot more often than he’d ever admit.
“Kiss me?”
Guillermo smiles.
“I can do that.”
Kissing a vampire presents unique, logistical challenges. Because of the fangs. As much as Guillermo—still, despite everything including his better judgement—covets the idea of having a pair in his mouth, he’d rather they be attached to him than spear through his tongue when he’s trying to press as close to Nandor as he can get.
Guillermo is a cautious person, more or less, and Nandor has practice not biting people’s lips off. They make it work.
He’s on top of Nandor when he comes up for air. His hands press against the breadth of his chest, which rises and falls inexorably out of a handful of centuries of habit. Strong hands hang onto the neutral territory of Guillermo’s hips. Nandor’s not particularly handsy, still awkward and deliberate about touch. He usually needs encouragement.
Guillermo leans his weight harder against the span of Nandor’s chest, fingers splayed out in the soft material of the nightshirt between the warm skin of his palms and the cool skin beneath. Nandor releases a satisfied breath like a balloon deflating.
Nandor lets go of his hip and trails fingers delicately up to his own chest. He lays his hand against Guillermo’s, tugs gently, and pulls soft human knuckles to his lips.
“Your hands smell like silver,” he murmurs. Guillermo’s free hand bunches in the material of Nandor’s shirt. It pulls up at his waist, revealing a strip of skin at his belly.
“Is that a good thing?” Guillermo slips his hands free and pushes them both up under Nandor’s shirt.
He nods and tips his head back with a happy sigh.
Guillermo takes the nonverbal cue. Nandor is easy to read, in general and for Guillermo specifically. He starts the familiar—no pun intended—work of undressing him. Unlike the first decade and change they knew each other, Nandor helps. A little. At least, he obediently lifts his hips so Guillermo can get his pants down.
The act has always been intimate, but there’s a crackling tension to it in this context that was never really present when it was a duty. Guillermo was too used to the habitual action, and too frustrated by the times he had to wrestle a drunk-blood-drunk, six-foot-something vampire with the coordination and patience of a toddler out of a filthy cape and into a coffin at five in the morning, to find any particular novelty in dressing and undressing his master.
Undressing his six-foot-something vampire boyfriend, on the other hand, is a ghostly horse of a different color.
Guillermo grins when he pulls the shirt over Nandor’s head and reveals a cloud of staticky black hair waving like an anemone and sticking all over his face. He blows some out of his mouth with a petulant pout that Guillermo kisses off his face.
Nandor is eager to help Guillermo undress in return. He’s eager about everything, now that he has the inclination to touch Guillermo and permission to do so pretty much however he wants. That doesn’t make him suave about it, though.
As soon as Guillermo’s briefs are off, Nandor wraps his arms around his waist with a trajectory aimed directly toward grabbing handfuls of his ass. He jerks and stops like a shoddy mechanism, and ultimately makes contact with one hand, gently patting Guillermo’s left buttcheek.
It startles a laugh out of Guillermo. Nandor looks sheepish.
“You don’t have to use your hands anyway,” Guillermo says reassuringly. He reaches behind himself to take hold of Nandor’s wrists, then guides them to the padded wooden arm of the loveseat. “Is that okay?”
“Yes.” Nandor wiggles against the cushion to get comfortable. His body is longer than the sofa, so he has one foot propped up on the opposite arm and the other flat against the floor. Guillermo shifts in his lap to accommodate the movement. Nandor grunts softly at the gentle friction against his cock.
Guillermo does it again and smirks.
“Yes, yes, you’re a sexy cool guy with a great butt,” Nandor taunts, sarcasm turned thin by his minor breathlessness. “Fucking tie me up already.”
“Uh huh.” Guillermo purses his lips. He twists around to grab the vital tools of his role for the evening. With a sudden turn back, the spray bottle is aimed in Nandor’s face. Guillermo squeezes the trigger and a weak stream of water hits his chest.
“Ah,” Nandor gasps as steam rises in a thin cloud from his skin with a quiet sizzle. His hands come up protectively and hips jump under Guillermo.
“You don’t get to be bossy,” Guillermo chides. He holds the spray bottle in two hands, Charlie’s Angels-style, as Nandor glares up at him with wounded pride and undisguised lust. He lowers the bottle and adjusts his glasses nervously. “Was that alright?”
Nandor huffs.
“Yes, it was really hot,” he whines. “We have a safe word for a reason, so stop being nice to me! Ow!” He hisses as another spritz of holy water hits him, this time in the cheek. “See? Now you’re getting it.”
“Thanks.” Guillermo blushes. “Okay, put your wrists back.” He sets down the bottle and picks up the rosaries. Painted beads click together gently. The sound reminds him of his abuelita, her soft voice as she prayed—
Guillermo shakes his head. No thinking about dead grandmothers or God during kinky vampire sex.
He loops the rosaries through the arm of the sofa, one around the top and one around the post. Nandor slips his hands through the double loops and lets out an indecent moan at the pressure of holy items against the sensitive skin of his wrists. The beads immediately leave round, red welts wherever they make contact.
“Good,” he groans.
"Yeah?" Guillermo breathes, partially to check in but mostly because wringing praise out of Nandor sends blood rushing to his head like standing at the edge of a high rooftop, wind in his hair and on his face.
He rubs his hands into Nandor's chest again, a long rhythm he mimics with his hips. The weight of Nandor’s cock is a pleasant presence against Guillermo’s thigh, the crease where his leg meets his ass, the space behind his scrotum. He takes himself in hand and watches Nandor enjoy a little helplessness.
"Yes, ah, Guillermo." Nandor bares his fangs as his face scrunches up. It's unbearably cute.
He keeps grinding, keeps his eyes locked onto the reel of silent-film expressiveness that shudders over Nandor’s face every time he presses into the repellant sting of the rosaries or the welcoming weight of Guillermo on top of him. He pushes harder with every cycle of their hips together, until Guillermo decides he should probably put his foot down about something or his special tools for the evening will go to waste.
“Stay still.” He startles himself with the surety in his voice, and definitely seems to startle Nandor, who twitches under him so violently Guillermo nearly topples off the sofa.
“What are you going to do if I don’t?” Nandor probably means it to come across as a challenge. He sounds more like a kid before Christmas, pleading to know what they’re going to get.
“Well…” Guillermo pushes his glasses up the sweaty bridge of his nose, aiming for coy just to give himself time to think. He scratches the nails of his other hand through Nandor’s chest hair and feels more than hears a rumble in response, a sound not unlike the deep purring of a big cat. Guillermo throbs with fondness and the brainstem terror he’s learned to take in stride at the reminder that Nandor isn’t human.
He’s not human, he’s something else, a predator designed to devour Guillermo. And Guillermo has him naked, bound, and gagging for anything and everything he could do to him.
The urge to overpower, to overcome, to make Nandor howl in submission rushes over Guillermo like having his head dunked in cold water—clarifying exhilaration. Whether it’s that Guillermo himself was born to rip things like Nandor limb from limb or that he’s finally settling into this role they’ve negotiated is unclear.
He’d put money on a little of column A, a little of column B.
The bottle of holy water is in his hand again before he’s conscious of the decision to pick it up. Nandor’s eyes track every twitch of his fingers.
Guillermo smirks, though Nandor looks too distracted to notice. He holds one hand out to the side and sprays his own palm until it drips into the carpet, inches from Nandor’s side. Nandor flinches at the mere proximity.
His eyes widen as Guillermo lowers the hand toward his face. Guillermo turns his wet palm inward and hovers over Nandor’s cheek.
“Well?” Nandor taunts breathlessly, eyes soft and bright. “Go ahead, vampire killer.”
Guillermo drops his hand to Nandor’s face like a caress with a guillotine blade. He strokes over his beard. Little curling tongues of steam rise up from between his fingers.
Nandor’s mouth drops open on a gasp that trips backwards down his throat before his teeth snap together and lock into a grimace. He hisses, eyes squeezed shut.
Guillermo shifts back in his lap until he can get a hand properly around Nandor’s cock. He strokes him firmly and runs the nails of his other hand through the short hair of his beard, leaving hissing lines of red just barely visible. Nandor whines. The leg he has braced against the floor starts jiggling in impatience, discomfort, or delight, likely a mix of all three. The back of the loveseat smacks, thud-thud-thud, against the wall.
“I told you,” Guillermo says darkly, “to stay still.” It’s all the warning he gives Nandor before he slaps him cleanly across the face.
“Fuck,” Nandor shouts. Wetness beads at the head of his cock as Guillermo twists his hand around it. A steaming, red mark in the shape of his fingers and the side of his palm stands out sharply above Nandor’s beard, against his ashen skin. His leg stops moving.
“Better,” Guillermo says. He hasn’t quite earned good yet.
“Thank you, Guillermo,” Nandor pants. He seems determined to be exceedingly polite as Guillermo drags him up and down hills and valleys of pain. As much as he appreciates it, Guillermo wants to take that coherence and grind it into the dirt.
He tightens his grip on Nandor’s cock, squeezing harder than he normally would. Discreetly, he dries his holy water hand on the edge of a fur hanging over the back of the sofa.
Nandor pulls at the rosaries and lifts his head and torso, curling in on himself. His shoulders wrench back awkwardly but he muscles through and strains for Guillermo’s face. His eyes and mouth are open, both pleading.
Guillermo smiles, kisses him once on his burned cheek, and puts a hand in the center of his chest to shove him back down.
“You never listen,” Guillermo sighs. He grinds hard into Nandor’s thigh and lets go of the man’s cock.
“Fair,” Nandor acknowledges. He tries to sit up again as if this time he can beg off a kiss.
To Nandor’s obvious surprise, Guillermo acquiesces. He slips his tongue into Nandor’s open mouth with a groan and feels around behind himself until he finds just the tool for the job.
Guillermo wraps his fingers around the knuckle bar of the silver cross. He pulls back, smiles again, and holds it out. Nandor snaps backwards like a spring-loaded mousetrap.
He whines, pinned to the cushions, as Guillermo lowers the cross closer. The sofa creaks alarmingly, Nandor’s weight testing its limits, a repellant magnet to the object in Guillermo’s hand. The muscles in his upper arms quiver under the strain.
“Please, please, I’ll be good,” he pants thickly. His tongue looks bloated like a drowned corpse. “Please, Guillermo.”
And Guillermo feels the rush—the second after a pause at the peak of a roller coaster, the first time he saw Nandor fly, the moment he started falling toward the roof of an abandoned food truck. It’s sickening and delightful. He knows what Nandor is really begging for.
Guillermo gives it to him. The cross burns a brand into his chest.
It takes him a moment to realize that Nandor isn’t screaming only because he can’t find the air. The cross—no—Guillermo has him so thoroughly helpless against the onslaught of power that his lungs don’t inflate, his chest won’t rise. He looks into Nandor’s wide, dark eyes. The intimacy of closeness and silence steals Guillermo’s breath too.
A second realization smacks him upside the head: like this, Nandor can’t stop him if he needs to. Guillermo yanks his hand away as if he’s the one being burned, gulping down air. A breathless moan leaves Nandor now he’s got his voice back.
“Sorry,” Guillermo gasps, at the same time Nandor wheezes another, “Thank you.”
Guillermo pauses in the middle of working the silver cross knuckles off his hand.
“What?”
“Perfect,” Nandor continues dazedly. “Will you fuck me now, please?”
“Oh.” Guillermo traces fingers wonderingly over the already-healing mark over Nandor’s unbeating heart. His own beating one gallops in his chest. “Of course.”
He’s loath to pull away entirely. Guillermo’s body feels electric, more alive than life, and somehow he knows if he stops touching Nandor the current will break and leave whatever is thrumming through him with nowhere to go.
Luckily, the chest of drawers across from Nandor’s dunk zone is nearby. Guillermo keeps the hand on his chest as long as he can, then trails it up his neck and finally curls his fingers into Nandor’s hair when he’s too far for skin-to-skin contact. Nandor sags forward, seeking tension as the hair in Guillermo’s grip goes taut.
Guillermo makes a gentle, chiding sound and gives him a warning tug. He hisses happily.
For all the dramatics, the trip is a quick one before Guillermo is back in his lap. Nandor doesn’t need much to take it up the ass beyond lube and a few seconds to spread his legs. It’s not like he uses it for anything else beyond, these days, Guillermo’s fingers or cock and, historically, a wide array of sex toys and a wider array of objects that should not under any circumstances have ever been used as sex toys—including the ornate pommel of one of his swords, once, which Nandor insists was a choice he regrets, but he brings it up often enough that Guillermo is starting to get suspicious.
Thankfully, he hasn’t brought it up tonight. This part is familiar territory, if you don’t count the fact that Nandor’s arms are bound by holy relics and the silver mark on his chest is still sizzling like a fresh pork chop.
Guillermo scoots off his lap until he’s kneeling on the cushions. Nandor heaves one leg up onto the back of the sofa to give Guillermo more room. Guillermo slicks himself and kisses the pale slope of Nandor’s leg as he pushes in.
On a whim, he adds a quick pinch of his teeth. A breathy laugh bursts from Nandor.
“Oh, yes, Guillermo,” he sighs. There is a rattle of wood-against-wood and a little tremor thrums through Nandor. Guillermo looks up to see him tugging at the rosaries.
“Hang on.” Guillermo pulls back slightly.
“But I’m—” Nandor starts to whine. Guillermo silences him with a stern glare and a pointed twitch of his hand toward the holy water. He swallows his protest.
“I’m just taking off my glasses. They’re getting foggy.”
“You couldn’t have done that before putting your dick up my—Ouch!”
This time, the spray of holy water hits Nandor just above the belly button. He’s a lot of things, but Guillermo knows Nandor is not a man known for responding to subtlety. He drops the bottle of holy water, folds the stems of his glasses, and sets them primly on the floor just under the loveseat.
Then, he grabs Nandor by the hips and fucks him for all he’s worth.
“Okay, yes, there we go,” Nandor chants happily. He throws his head back and accidentally slams it into the arm of the sofa with a thunk.
“Are you okay?” Guillermo laughs. Nandor grumbles wordlessly and shoves his hips up to meet him. The rosaries rattle. The legs of the loveseat groan.
Guillermo trails his hands up Nandor’s sides, over the heaving edge where his rib cage meets the soft middle of him. This is a comfortable space, Nandor’s thigh over his hip and Nandor’s ass against the tops of his legs and Nandor’s mouth, open and letting loose a broad repertoire of noises. Nandor isn’t very verbal in bed but he is loud.
The incoherent sounds flutter in Guillermo’s head like tropical birds, gaudy and beautiful. As for himself, he’s quieter than usual. He can tell as if watching from the outside. Everything is blurry since he took his glasses off, but the splash of redness in the pale-and-black expanse of Nandor’s chest isn’t easy to miss.
Guillermo reaches a hand toward it and touches.
“You haven’t healed,” he hears himself say. The skin feels raw and slightly sticky against the pads of his fingers. Nandor groans, hips shuddering.
“Takes longer,” he manages to say, “with silver. Ouch.” The ouch is an explanation, not a cry of pain.
The cry comes a second later when Guillermo scratches a fingernail over the mark on his chest in the sign of the cross.
Nandor wails. Guilermo lays into him harder. He presses his lips to the burn and presses his cock in deep. There’s more than one way to stake a vampire, he thinks distantly, even through the heart.
“Guillermoooo,” Nandor whines. Now that, that’s a familiar sound. Guillermo works a hand between them, still kissing Nandor’s chest, and strokes him against his own stomach.
He lets it ride that way for a while, too deep in the physical bliss of being inside Nandor and feeling him shudder underneath him to think of new ways to sprinkle pain into the mix. He lays his cheek against Nandor’s chest and looks up at his face.
“Are you getting close?” he asks.
“Yeeh—Yes,” Nandor whines, tilting his head back. He yanks the rosaries again with a grunt.
“Let me know, okay? When you’re about to—”
“Yes, yes, please.”
“Okay. Oh. Hah.” Guillermo huffs a breathy series of syllables when Nandor wraps his other leg around him. His calf bounces against Guillermo’s ass, demanding.
With his free hand, Guillermo reaches up and grabs a lock of Nandor’s hair that spills over his collarbone. He gives it a sharp enough tug to tilt his head sideways at an uncomfortable angle. Guillermo shuffles up and kisses him on his open, bossy mouth.
“Guillermo,” Nandor mumbles against his lips. “You are going to want to, to do your—” He flaps one of the hands trapped against the sofa’s arm. “Whenever. Preferably in the next few seconds. Ah,” Nandor hiccups an unhappy little sound as Guillermo pulls away.
“Got it.”
Guillermo slows the rhythm of his hand and hips as he nabs the last, extremely important element of his preparation for the evening. He cups the empty mason jar under the head of Nandor’s cock.
“I can—?” Nandor checks.
“You’re good.”
“Good,” he says with relief. He bites his lip as Guillermo picks up the pace again.
Watching a vampire ejaculate is not unlike those nozzles for soda they have behind bars. It’s less fizzy, but about the same in terms of cubic volume output.
Guillermo doesn’t usually watch, now that he’s over the morbid fascination of the first few times.
Instead, he focuses on Nandor’s face. He always looks strangely relaxed when he comes, as if the million little things that worry him nightly have suddenly vanished like smoke. If he’s tense in the lead-up, he’s practically supine in release. Guillermo loves it.
“Shit,” he mutters, and swaps out the nearly-full jar for the empty one.
“Aah.” Nandor sighs contentedly as he finishes.
With his hands still tied to the arm as they are, he strokes Guillermo’s back fondly with his calf instead. The slow rub of skin sends Guillermo’s brain spiraling back down to earth like the whirlibird seeds that fall in the park in late summer. Guillermo pulls out and breathes shakily.
“Do you want your hands back?” he asks after he’s screwed lids onto both jars and set them aside.
“Yes, thank you.” Nandor stays obediently still as Guillermo unloops the rosaries and puts them aside. The room is quiet. His heartbeat slows and he feels an abrupt, empty certainty that it’s about to stop entirely. “Guillermo?”
“Hm?”
Nandor wraps his hands gently around Guillermo’s biceps. He kisses him on the cheek, then the forehead. His beard tickles, the ends of his hair tickle, and Guillermo giggles a touch more hysterically than the sensation merits.
“How are you feeling?” This close, Guillermo can see him better. His teeth are bared in an uncertain smile. Guillermo’s heart squeezes with fondness at the thoroughly-Nandor expression.
“Weird,” he admits. “A little cold.”
“Here we go,” Nandor tugs the fur over the back of the loveseat over Guillermo’s shoulders. “Nice and cozy. That’s it.” He snuggles under it too, though they both know his body won’t be much help in warming anybody up.
“Thanks.”
Guillermo feels an inexplicable yearning from the proximity of Nandor’s body, despite the dizzy distance he feels from his own.
“Do you still want—?” Nandor points awkwardly at Guillermo’s lap. He realizes he’s still hard. “Or are we done now?”
“I—” Guillermo’s eye catches on Nandor’s wrist. The skin is a ring of red, swollen all the way around. He’s still healing from the rosaries. He struggled against them so much he gave himself blisters like a pair of red-hot shackles.
Guillermo leans into him. He inhales the smell of Nandor’s shampoo and beard oil. The pilot light of his heart flicks back on. He braces a hand on Nandor’s shoulder and hauls himself into his lap. Nandor looks up at him with an expression of surprise and delight.
“Touch me,” Guillermo says—orders.
“Yes,” Nandor agrees.
His hand is cool and sure. The blistering around his wrist bumps against Guillermo’s cock and punches an identical gasp out of them both. Guillermo fists one hand in the fur draped around his shoulders and the other in Nandor’s hair.
The dark, warm space between them is its own country. Guillermo closes his eyes. He feels protected here, cared for. He’s done a lot of the caring in the history of his relationship with Nandor. There’s a lot to make up for.
“Nandor,” he breathes. “I—I had another idea.”
“You are having a serious thought? Now?”
“Yes,” Guillermo stammers. “Can you—I want—”
“It’s just me, Guillermo. Tell me.”
Guillermo nods. He presses his forehead against Nandor’s, his cool, dry skin a shock to the system in contrast to his own. He feels heat creeping up his neck. Nandor’s hand on his cock speeds up and a hiss of anticipation leaks from his mouth.
“Bite me,” Guillermo says.
The hand slows to a stop. Nandor goes rigid, then shifts a little. Guillermo opens his eyes to see hesitation written across his face.
“Well, we didn’t talk about that…”
“I’m not asking you to turn me—”
“Oh, I didn’t think so. No, it’s,” Nandor wrinkles his nose and shrugs. “I’m not really into food play, Guillermo.”
“I… see.”
Nandor squints.
“Are you into food play? I don’t really want to be around human food at all, definitely not in a sexy way, but we can try it out if you—”
“I’m not into food play either,” Guillermo interrupts before Nandor can spiral into the logistics of what kind of human food he’d willingly put on his dick. “I want you to fucking bite me. So I bleed. So it hurts. Bite me on the neck. You don’t have to drink from me, but I—” he swallows, “I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.”
“Ah.”
“And I bet I taste good. Vampires are always saying shit like that, how I look delicious. Remember that time you told Simon it used to be hard not to eat me?”
“I have already apologized for the donut comment—” Nandor bristles.
“I want you to. Don’t—Don’t actually eat me. But maybe just,” he tilts his head and offers more of his neck, “a nibble?”
Nandor’s eyes trace over his neck. Guillermo imagines he’s thinking about the heady rush of blood beneath the skin, how easily that skin would break, how thoroughly that blood might slake his thirst.
Cool fingers slide slowly up Guillermo’s throat. Guillermo swallows, breathes through the rush of joy and terror, and cups a hand around the back of Nandor’s head. He takes the other and wraps it around Nandor’s wrist, slowly guiding him to where his pulse beats fast and wanting.
“Dut dut dut, stop that.” Nandor swats Guillermo’s hands away and presses his thumbs back to the skin of his throat. He tilts Guillermo’s chin tenderly. “I’m making sure I don’t hit one of those important arteries humans are full of, alright?”
“Oh.”
Nandor presses a kiss to the tip of Guillermo’s nose. He pulls back and looks at him seriously, looks away, looks back again. His pupils are wide and liquid black.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. Then adds, “Any more than you want me to, that is. I want to hurt you… well. Not cause any lasting damage.”
“That’s so thoughtful—”
“Also, what would Nadja and Laszlo think if I accidentally killed you? Like I’m a big toddler with no self-control. Oh, where is Guillermo? Well, Nandor got peckish and ate him. So sad. Do you see humans biting each other’s arms off when they’ve missed dinner? No.”
Guillermo laughs quietly. Nandor sighs, perfectly aware by now of what it sounds like when Guillermo is laughing at him.
“Hold still,” Nandor says, a less commanding echo of Guillermo’s own refrain for the evening. He shudders pleasantly. Nandor gives him a flat look. “What the fuck did I just say?”
“Sorry.”
“Alright. Here we go… biting you now…” Nandor leans in, not breaking eye contact with Guillermo, searching his face. He opens his mouth wide.
Guillermo’s eyes fall shut. This is what he’s wanted for over a decade—not how he’d imagined it, certainly, and without the promise he’d always assumed would come with, but a desire he can finally grab with both hands.
Being bitten by a vampire feels like getting punched in the neck, an ache heavier than it is sharp. Unfortunately, Guillermo doesn’t have time to savor much else about the sensation.
There is a hiss like oil hitting a red-hot skillet. Nandor’s teeth are gone from his neck before Guillermo can open his eyes. He blinks them open in time to be bucked from Nandor’s lap as the vampire throws the fur off of himself and leans bodily over the side of the loveseat, spitting viciously. A trail of smoke follows his head.
“Imp—” Nandor gags out their unnecessarily long safe word. “Impenetrable fortress.”
“Puta madre,” Guillermo swears. “Are you okay? What’s—What the fuck happened?” He reaches out a hand to rub over Nandor’s shaking back.
Nandor lifts his head. His mouth is a steaming mess of blood, leaking from the corner of his lips and matting his beard. He tries to speak, but a thick, red bubble pops instead and he turns back to the floor, retching.
Guillermo presses a hand frantically to his neck. It only stings. He pulls it away to look and finds barely a streak of blood across his fingers, nowhere near enough to explain the horror show in front of him.
“Your fucking blood,” Nandor says at last. “Was like taking a swig of holy water, shit.”
“Oh.” Guillermo covers the pair of puncture wounds on his throat with a hand again. “Oh my God.”
Nandor flinches. Another trickle of blood dribbles out of his mouth.
“Sorry. Sorry, fuck.” He can’t stop the laugh that bursts from his throat. The whole situation is just… so goddamn stupid.
“Van Helsing, fucking guy,” Nandor continues bitching.
“I don’t think he personally did this,” Guillermo half-heartedly defends his 3.12% Slayer-By-Volume bloodline.
“Fucking,” Nandor repeats emphatically, “guy.”
“Okay.” Guillermo lets it go and runs a soothing hand through Nandor’s hair.
The smoke around his head dissipates soon enough, and the mouthfuls of blood he spits into the carpet get thinner and further apart. Guillermo fishes his glasses out from under the sofa and puts them back on.
Nandor sits back up, turns to Guillermo, and says, “I’m ready to keep going.”
“What?” Guillermo laughs. “Are you serious?”
Nandor grins and gives him a double thumbs up.
“Yep.”
“Nandor,” Guillermo says slowly, “your gums are bleeding.”
Nandor frowns and presses a hand to his mouth.
“That doesn’t have to get in the way,” he says, muffled. “You didn’t finish, I want to—”
“Tell you what.” Guillermo strokes a hand over his hair and kisses him on the cheek. “Let’s get you cleaned up and make sure you’re not, not dying or something, and if we both still feel like it in an hour, we can keep going. Sound good?”
Nandor looks thoughtful.
“You could come on my face,” he suggests. Guillermo’s breath catches for half a second. He does love doing that.
“Clean up first,” he says decisively. “Or am I not in charge tonight?”
Simultaneously, Nandor looks chastened and his eyes light up with a conspicuously horny gleam.
“You’re in charge,” he purrs. Or tries to, but a thin spray of blood hits the right lens of Guillermo’s glasses. Guillermo takes them off again with a sigh.
The door to the upstairs bathroom opens for the camera crew. Guillermo stands behind it in a loose t-shirt that probably once bore the name of a New York City high school but now is both too faded to read and spattered with blood. Two purple Band-Aids sit side-by-side on his neck.
“We had kind of a mishap,” he explains, beckoning the crew inside. Nandor is leaning over the sink and methodically running a water pick between his teeth. “We’re both fine.”
“Don’t worry, the blood is all mine,” Nandor says, almost incomprehensible around the neck of the flosser.
Guillermo sits down and nods in confirmation.
“It turns out, um, having vampire killer blood is a lot more literal than I thought.” Guillermo forces a laugh. “Go figure.”
“Yes, he is like one of those brightly-colored jungle frogs. Very pretty to look at, but if you eat him you will die. See, this is why we have a safe word and protocols and—” Nandor yanks the water pick out of his mouth and slams it onto the counter. “Fuck!”
Guillermo looks up from his seat at the side of the tub in alarm. Nandor whirls around and rushes out of the bathroom. The camera turns to see him disappear past the side of the doorframe, leaving the door open. The shot returns to Guillermo, who makes an “I dunno” sound.
Back in Nandor’s crypt, Nandor tosses a fur aside, picks up another and hisses as a rosary falls out, and shoves his hands in the gaps between the cushions of the sofa.
“Ha!” he crows triumphantly. “Here it is! Just a little wrinkly.”
“Like I said, I don’t kiss and tell. But what I can tell you—”
“Guillermo!” Nandor stands in the doorway of the bathroom with his chest puffed out. Clutched in one hand is his sheet of paper with the sage advice of Women’s Health Mag Dot Com. “It is time,” he announces dramatically, “for the aftercare protocols.”
“Isn’t that sort of what we were…?” He gestures to the blood-speckled sink.
“We can probably skip question two, because we both know I had to use the safe word on account of I was bleeding very profusely from the mouth. And now that I think about it, question five is a little redundant, don’t you think? I already know the answer to question nine, because I am not biting you again no matter how horny it makes you, okay? I’m sorry, Guillermo, but I don’t think these carpets can take all that again. Now, let’s take it from the top. Question one—”