Chapter Text
“It’s been… a little weird.” Guillermo shrugs a little weakly. “But I mean, it was always gonna be a little weird, right? Four vampires and a bodyguard, it was gonna be weird. But we’re establishing ground rules. Um, Colin Robinson is not allowed to feed on her, which he learned the hard way. Nandor got to him before I did, which is probably good, cause, well, we’d no longer have Colin Robinson. Everyone wants to spend time with her and go shopping for everything together but that’s difficult considering the… sleeping schedules. But, um. We’re making it work.”
“The fuck is a Sundvik?” Laszlo demands. “And why the fuck are we putting it together?”
“You’re not putting it together,” Guillermo points out irritably. “I’m putting it together.”
“Well, why the fuck have I got to look at you do it, then?”
“You don’t have to-“
“I do not understand why she simply cannot sleep in my coffin on my chest,” Nandor interrupts, Luna in his arms. “It is very comfortable in there.”
“Master, she can’t sleep in a sealed space, she needs to breathe.”
“So poke some holes in it.”
“This is a good crib. It’s good for kids to have cribs.”
“Where are we gonna put it?” Colin Robinson asks.
“Um.” Guillermo looks at the fancy room, where Nadja and Laszlo are lounging on the couch, Colin Robinson is sitting on a chair. “Oh. Uh.”
“How can you order something and not know where to put it?” Nadja asks.
“You bring home people to kill all the time and you don’t know what to do with them!”
“Of course we do, you stupid shit, we give them to you!”
“A nursery,” Colin Robinson muses. “That’s what human babies have. Do we have any spare rooms?”
“No,” Laszlo says at the same time Guillermo says “yes”.
“Hang on, what?” Laszlo asks.
“Yes, we have several- did you not know this?”
“I thought you and Nadja claimed to have had sex in every one of these rooms?” Nandor asks.
“Well, truth of the matter is that as deeply talented and proficient as my wife and I are at the passionate and deeply sensual art of lovemaking, we are also deeply lazy people, so while we have fucked in every room we know about-“
“Please don’t say including-“ Guillermo mumbles.
“Including Gizmo’s,” Laszlo continues. Guillermo scrunches his face up. “We have not actually gone in quest of any other rooms.”
“There’s one upstairs that could be good.” Guillermo looks thoughtful. “We’d have to repaint. Maybe get a rug. But yeah. I think that could work.”
“Carpentry skills! ” Nandor looks delighted. “I will be a real handy man!”
“No, I know nothing of building or painting,” Nandor says confidently. “I had people to do that for me. My twelfth wife was very handy with a saw, a fact that almost became tragic when she caught me in bed with my thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth wives. But it cannot be hard! You pick up the paintbrush, you splatter the paint like you would a victim’s blood out of their still warm cuh-cass, you call it a day! No, I am not concerned.”
“I will be serving in an overseeing capacity,” Nadja tells them, hands folded in her lap. “It seems like mostly grunt work and I do not care to be grunted at, even in the bedroom.”
“That’s true, she favors a growl, but never a grunt. Hm? Oh, Gizmo forbade me from painting any tits or cocks on the walls, so I really couldn’t give any less of a shit, I’m just going to stand there and tell everybody what they’re doing wrong.”
“Five course fucking dinner,” Colin Robinson says.
Guillermo smiles tightly. “Yeah. It’ll be fun. We’ll see how it goes.”
“Do you have one of your guys up there getting this?” Colin Robinson asks as the muffled sounds of shouting travel down to the fancy room. “Good. Nadja and Laszlo want me down here so I don’t grow hair again.” He looks at Laszlo, absorbed in what appears to be a book of thirteenth century pornographic woodcuts, and Nadja, who is staring apprehensively at the sleeping Luna in the crook of her arm and sitting stiffly. “Do you think this’ll be the thing to do it?”
Laszlo turns a page without looking up. “The familiar thinks he’s too principled to bang it out in his daughter’s future nursery. Pussy.”
“I dunno. They’re really going at it. They’re practically shrieking at each other. Maybe one of them will kill the other.”
“Thank fuck.” Laszlo turns another page. “Then we can get rid of the sprog. Nadja, my love, relax.”
“I do not wish to drop it,” she hisses.
“Just hold it as you would the doll.”
“Dolly will survive a little drop to the floor! This thing is fragile. I could break it.”
“So? If you break it we’ll just buy them another one.”
“I don’t think that’s how they work,” Colin Robinson says.
“Well, since when are we cowering before Gizmo and Nandor? Gizmo’s a human and Nandor once knocked himself out trying to tie his shoelaces. This is our house, too, and if we wanna drop the baby, then I say we damn well better drop the baby!”
“WHAT did you say?” Guillermo shouts down the stairs.
“Nothing!” Nadja yelps. Colin Robinson and Laszlo look at her. “Well. Well.” She cranes her neck to look down at Luna, hesitantly adjusting her. “She is very delicate, isn’t she? Much like a doll?”
“Bloody fuck,” Laszlo says. “I’m going to jump off the roof, turn into a bat and never come back.”
Guillermo turns to Nandor in the dilapidated but fairly well sized room. “We can’t leave her with them, just-“
“Don’t you just me, all I’m saying is we weld the windows shut and we hang creepy paper-“
“CREPE paper-“
“CREEPY PAPER in the shape of brass knuckles from the ceiling-“
“You see one movie from the Eighties and it’s all about the brass knuckles with you-“
“It will be fetching-“
“Master, when you walk into spiderwebs you start shouting and sometimes you punch holes in the wall, you will have the exact same reaction to crepe paper hanging from the ceiling-“
Nandor plows on like he didn’t hear him. “And we can’t have any sunlight, obviously-“
“Human babies need sunlight!”
“She will be fine, look at me, I don’t need sunlight and I’m fine!“
“Of course you’re fine, Nandor, you’re fucking dead, she-“
“Do not take that tone with me .” Nandor appears to loom large, towering over Guillermo, who doesn’t budge, tilting his face up, face stormy. “You forget your place, Guillermo-“
“I know my place,” Guillermo snaps as Nandor presses up against him, chest to chest. “And I’m fucking standing in it.”
Nandor bares his teeth and snarls, and Guillermo, in a surprisingly mirrored display, snarls right back.
The two of them get very still, looking down at each other, Guillermo breathing heavy, face tilted up, and Nandor pressed up against him, gazing down. Nandor’s lips twitch. Then he seems to notice the crew out of the corner of his eye. He hesitates, then takes a slow, small step back. Slowly, Guillermo’s shoulders unclench.
“I just want her to be safe, master,” he tells Nandor, voice lacking the previous animosity. “But. We could stick some crepe paper on the walls, so it doesn’t hang.”
“And,” Nandor answers slowly. “I understand that you do not wish her to become translucent like the ghost. It is good for her not to be a sickly child and not get the strep measles. I suppose I could allow curtains. Thick curtains. I… should like to visit her, if I awaken in the middle of the day.”
Guillermo nods slowly. “Okay. I’ll, um. I’ll figure out how to fix it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” They stare at each other. Guillermo swallows. “Um. Okay.”
“Yes.” Nandor sweeps out of the room.
Nadja and Colin Robinson crane their necks in the silence.
“Do you think that’s it?” Colin Robinson asks.
“They’ve been repressed for however many fucking years it’s been.” Laszlo turns a page. “When it happens, it’ll be loud.” There’s the sound of lumbering footsteps followed by a slammed door. “I'm the one who backed off and I liked it wank.” There’s a set of light footsteps going down the stairs followed by a door being shut. “I’m the one who got him to back off and I liked it wank.”
“How do you know-“ Colin Robinson starts.
“No, no,” Nadja cuts in. “We must defer to Laszlo, he is the expert in such matters.” She peers down at Luna. “We must get her a little hat, don’t you think? Perhaps with a little veil?”