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Nandor didn’t so much walk into the council library as stagger in, supported by Nadja on one side and the Guide on the other, his lifted arms sending the shoulderpads of his council robes akimbo. His eyes swung around the room, unfocused and befuddled like he had stepped in from outer space instead of the hallway. He looked like he’d been whacked over the head with a shovel.

Guillermo was on his feet immediately, of course. Something was wrong with his master, and it was his responsibility, as a familiar-turned-bodyguard and also maybe, hopefully, a friend, to make sure Nandor was alright.

“What is this?” Nandor said to the Guide. His voice sounded unusually small and soft.

“The library,” she said. “It has books in it. The things you read,” she added in response to his blank look.

“What’s the meaning of all this? Why is Nandor falling all over you lot?” Laszlo asked.

“He’s been brain scramblied. We were trying Edgar the Hypnotist for reckless misuse of hypnosis, and then he went-” Nadja waved her free hand in a manner meant to recall hypnosis “and scramblied Nandor. And then he turned into a bat and left. Can you fucking believe it?”

“So, you brought someone in who’s known for using the ol’ bloodsucker’s goodbye, and you’re surprised that he used it to get out of trouble? That sounds like a serious oversight,” Colin Robinson said with barely disguised delight at the thought of administrative error. The Guide flashed her fangs at him and muttered something at him about keeping his opinions to himself.

“It might wear off. Seanie seems to be doing well,” Laszlo added from where he’d hidden back behind his stacks of hardback, softcore pornography.

“What is a ‘Seanie’?” the Guide asked.

“A nobody. Just some human. No-thing to worry about at all,” Nadja said forcefully, glaring at Laszlo to cut his reflexive objection short.

“Who is this?” Nandor muttered, squinting at Laszlo.

“That is Laszlo. He is Nadja’s husband. That man-” the Guide pointed to Colin Robinson, “-is Colin Robinson. He is your roommate and lives in your basement for some reason I don’t understand. And that is-” but before she could begin to mangle Guillermo’s name, Nandor shrugged off the arms supporting him and wandered over to him.

He grabbed Guillermo’s hands. “My husband.”

Now Guillermo was the one who felt like he’d been hit over the head with a shovel.

They had to take Nandor home in his council robes, his regular clothes tucked under Guillermo’s arm, because no one wanted to be the one to undress him. He had de-discombobulated enough that he no longer needed to be hauled around, but not enough that he didn’t need someone to guide him.

As his bodyguard, Guillermo decided to grab Nandor’s arm and steer him out of the council headquarters on their way to the bus stop. Holding his arm also meant Nandor would stop trying to hold Guillermo’s hand, which was the last thing Guillermo needed.

It was kind of funny, because the brain scramblies actually made it easier to keep Nandor on course than usual. Instead of meandering off to peer at street signs and raccoons in the gutter, he was content to cling to Guillermo and sneak glances at him that Guillermo caught out of the corner of his eye. By the time they got to the bus stop, Guillermo was starting to sweat despite the cool air.

Guillermo pawed through the pockets of Nandor’s spare clothes to find his metrocard and swipe it for him, and Nandor looked at him with such naked gratitude that Guillermo had to carefully study the advertisements on the interior all the way to their stop. It also helped distract from how Nandor kept massaging his hand, leaning his head against his shoulder no matter how he readjusted.

They decided to leave Nandor to his own devices once they got back to the house. It was still night, so it wasn’t like he could wander out into sunlight.

Guillermo sat down tentatively in one of the uncomfortable armchairs in the fancy room. He didn’t like standing when Nandor wasn’t there for him to be standing with.

“I’ll take over duties as supreme council leader, of course,” Nadja said, breaking the awkward silence that had settled over the room.

“Of course, my darling, but what are we going to do about him?” Laszlo pointed his thumb over towards the doorway to wherever Nandor was ambling about.

“Make sure he doesn’t die, I suppose. Keep him out of sunlight and away from crosses and stakes and all that. You’ll have to throw all of your slaying paraphernalia out, of course,” Nadja said, the last part pointedly directed at Guillermo.

“I’m not doing that.” A thought occurred to Guillermo. “Does he know he’s a vampire?”

The awkward silence settled back over the room, like a cat that had gotten up merely to readjust itself.

“Do we tell him?” the Guide asked, raising her eyebrows.

“We could just put some blood in a dog bowl, if he gets thirsty. He’s been weeks without eating before and seemed fine enough,” Nadja suggested.

“Now my darling, let's at least give him a wine glass. Otherwise he’s going to splatter blood absolutely everywhere,” Laszlo said.

“Do we tell him that he’s not actually married, is the question. Seeing as he’s gotten himself convinced that he’s shacked up with Guillermo here,” Colin Robinson said.

“It’s probably best just to play along. It’s like waking a sleepwalker, right? You’re not supposed to do that,” Guillermo said. He didn’t like the way Colin Robinson’s eyes glowed faintly like dying coals as he stared at Guillermo.

“But we know sleeping humans wake up eventually. I don’t know if there’s anything on the books about vampires getting brain scramblies,” the Guide said.

Guillermo didn’t enjoy being the one person in the house in the dark about what to expect on that front. Nandor had been frustratingly vague about what had happened the night of the Super Bowl party and he’d only received vague hints of the horrifying results of over-hypnosis in passing mention through his years as a familiar. He didn’t know how badly this would all affect Nandor, or even if he could take care of himself.

Not that Nandor ever really took care of himself, but it was the theoretical “could” that mattered here.

“Let’s just table this for now. We can reconvene in the morning, see how he’s doing, and then go from there. Okay?” Guillermo said, and to his relief, everyone agreed with minimal groaning.

The Guide left with one last suggestive pat of his arm, and the rest of the house retired to their respective rooms to get ready for bed. Or whatever Colin Robinson did during the day, in his case.

Standing alone in the fancy room, the house felt too quiet, and to Guillermo, that meant impending disaster. He realized with a chill that he’d left Nandor unsupervised. The camera crew followed at a safe distance as he hustled down the hallway into the foyer.

Nandor stood in the center of the library, his white robes almost glowing in the dim light from the lamps. His hair spilled down, curling into soft, dark waves when it hit his shoulders, made even broader by the structure and embroidery on his clothes. He was humming cheerfully to himself, his mouth curled into a small smile.

He was also pouring a jug of water methodically all over the rug.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought I would do some housetidying before bed. I am washing the carpets, so their furs will be clean,” Nandor replied, his cheerful tone betraying no trace of forethought or logic.

It was a well-earned fear of mildew that set Guillermo’s body in motion, sending him across the room to snatch the jug from Nandor’s hands. Nandor looked crestfallen and genuinely surprised.

“It’s not a carpet, it’s a rug,” Guillermo said reflexively, even though that wasn’t remotely the problem. “And don’t pour water all over it. It won’t dry properly, and then we’ll have mold.”

“Am I not helping?” Nandor looked so much like a kicked puppy that Guillermo immediately felt guilty, even though he could feel the rug squishing disgustingly beneath his feet even through the thick soles of his boots. He decided to save the rest of his lecture for the next night.

“Let’s get you to bed, okay? It’s time for slumber.” Guilermo set the jug on the nearest table and gently took Nandor’s hand, pulling him along as he headed towards Nandor’s crypt, before Nandor stopped dead in the foyer with the same faint horror as though he just realized that he left the oven on.

“I haven’t drawn you a bath yet! It’s not right to go to bed before my husband has had a bath.” Nandor wiggled his fingers in Guillermo’s grip. “Perhaps… we could bathe together this evening?”

Guillermo’s face grew flushed faster than his mind could catch up with Nandor’s words. He’d filled the tub and laid out soaps and scrubs and even glasses of blood for Nandor through the years, but the idea of being the one stripping down was more than he could handle at the moment. He also didn’t want to learn what sort of disaster Nandor drawing a bath would entail in his current mental state. “I’ll take one tomorrow, okay? C’mon.” He managed to tug Nandor into his crypt, only letting go of his hand to open the coffin lid, just in case Nandor decided to do any more “housetidying”.

For once, he was grateful for the presence of the camera crew. Nandor usually refused to let them see him in his night clothes, so it gave Guillermo an excuse not to have to wrangle them onto him. He tried to squash down the thought that it might give Nandor ideas about their current relationship, much more explicit than what he’d already assumed.

He noticed that Nandor’s topknot had gotten loose and gone askew at some point on the way home. Nandor leaned forward easily when Guillermo gently pressed against the back of his head, igniting a flicker of relief that at least Nandor remembered this. But just as quickly, Guillermo chastised himself, because it was unlikely Nandor would remember any of the familiar gestures they’d built up over the years and it was a motion that probably anyone would respond to the same way. His own thoughts aside, he couldn’t stand it when Nandor looked disheveled.

Nandor gazed up at him beneath his stern brow, his eyes as warm and entrapping as hot tar, and Guillermo was terrified of getting stuck. His hands shook. It was like he’d picked up a wallet off the ground and kept the money inside.

At least Nandor went into his coffin easily enough, settling down while Guillermo tucked in his robes around him so they wouldn’t get caught in the hinges.

“Alright, nighty-night. Sweet dreams, master,” Guillermo said, the title slipping out before he could stop himself.

Nandor didn’t seem to notice. He seemed preoccupied with something else, his pointer finger grazing Guillermo’s knuckle. “Are you not joining me? But we are married,” he asked.

“Nope. Separate beds.” If Guillermo didn’t put his foot down, he would lose his metaphorical balance and fall right over.

Nandor stopped the lid with his hand.

“Do I get a good-night kiss for sweet dreams?”

Guillermo hesitated. He could feel the cold black eye of the camera trained on him.

Nandor’s eyes grew wide with hurt. “Have I done something to displease you?” The look on his face was like a dagger through Guillermo’s heart.

Guillermo gave in and leaned down to kiss Nandor on the forehead. Just a quick peck, nothing that could incriminate him now or later. He didn’t expect Nandor cradling his jaw and tilting his own head back to meet Guillermo’s, sealing their mouths together.

Nandor leaned back so his lips were barely brushing Guillermo’s. “Beloved,” he whispered, so faint the boom mic might not have picked up on it. It still consumed Guillermo like a tidal wave, or like a rip current dragging him under, until its echo was the only thing in the air, as concrete as if it had been carved into stone instead of spoken.

Guillermo let the coffin lid fall shut and mindlessly pivoted to walk out of the crypt, heedless of the cameras clustered in the doorway. It was only the water from the sodden rug seeping into his socks while he lay it out on the front steps to dry that broke through the fog that had settled over his mind.

It was a long time before Guillermo finally fell asleep.

He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, turning over the events of the night in his mind. He couldn’t forget the way Nandor’s mouth had formed around his name, around that other word, the same familiar consonants and vowels melting like butter around this new affectionate tone.

Guillermo.

Beloved.

He couldn’t even say it out loud, could only mouth the word to himself like a broken Ave Maria. Fuck, he should get out his rosary and run through a few, for the way he’d acted earlier.

He was sick for wanting to savor it, when Nandor’s mind had been curdled like a hand mixer whirring at top speed through egg whites.

He turned over onto his side. The darkness of the room left him alone, with nothing to distract him from the thoughts frothing up in his mind.

It wasn’t the first time Nandor had kissed him. He’d snuck a nap on the couch in the library one night, only to wake up to find the vampires of the house had come home fucked up on drug blood and decided to take turns licking his mouth while he was sleeping, like a weird version of Jenga where the point was not to wake him. This was obviously different. It didn’t leave his mouth tasting like blood and Clorox wipes, for one.

This was some sort of punishment, probably, his Catholic guilt conspiring with the universe to lay out a perfectly poisoned morsel as bait. His crush on Nandor- the awful kind of crush that led him to scrub floors and bury bodies- crafted into a performance of a relationship. A stage play, with the corresponding paper-thin props and ominously creaking stage set.

He must have turned over in his sleep- well, he must have fallen asleep in the first place, because something had wedged itself under his arms and against his chest. Something that smelled like expensive hair oil. Hair was tickling the parts of his neck above his pajama collar.

“Master?” Guillermo blinked hard. “Why are you in my bed?”

“I don’t want to sleep in the wife box. It’s so lonely in there,” Nandor said, his voice slightly muffled from burrowing his face into Guillermo’s chest.

“The wife box.”

“Yes. The box for me, your wife.” To Guillermo’s sleep-blurry eyes, Nandor appeared mostly as a solid mass of wrinkled white fabric, almost glowing in the darkness. He was pressing himself more firmly against Guillermo, bringing them into uncomfortably intimate familiarity on Guillermo’s bed. His tiny cot of a bed, which barely fit one person alone.

“No, no, no, you have to sleep in your coff- bed. Come on, get up, you’re going back to your room. You can’t sleep here.” He crawled out from his spot against the wall, pulling his arm out from beneath Nandor’s chest. Nandor reluctantly got to his feet and padded after Guillermo back to his crypt like a scolded dog.

Guillermo was surprised at how amenable Nandor was being, though it came with a generous serving of sulking that he could sense without even looking over his shoulder to see his expression.

He tried not to think about the bed in the blue room, and how it would be big enough to hold both of them.

Helping Nandor into his coffin gave him a brief flash of deja vu. “I’ll come and wake you up in the morning, okay?” He meant it as both reassurance and a demand.

“You will?” Nandor’s memory must have been completely blank.

“I always do.” Guillermo found his voice wasn’t exasperated as he’d meant it to be. He said it like a promise, like he was making the vow for the first time instead of as a reminder.

It couldn’t hurt to let things play out. It wasn’t like he was making Nandor do anything he didn’t want to do. He’d talk it over with everyone else the next day, and they’d figure out why the brain scramblies were making Nandor act like this.

When Guillermo had finally fallen back to sleep after hours of tossing and turning, he’d slept horribly. He’d found Nandor already out of his coffin when he went to wake him, staring blankly into the wardrobe. Nandor had been delighted when Guillermo had mercy on him and picked out his clothes. Guillermo usually picked out his clothes and always dressed him, but that evening the process had a new, charged air.

“What fine embellishment, what fine things to adorn myself with this evening…” Nandor murmured as he picked through his jewelry box. He seemed completely befuddled by the tangle of metal and stone.

Guillermo finally took pity on him and picked out his personal favorite, a large garnet cabochon, as dark and smooth as a drop of blood, set in a thick gold band and dotted in the center with a single diamond. It always reminded him of Nandor’s eyes in the darkness.

Nandor’s face lit up when Guillermo put it on for him. Guillermo tried not to blush at the association his mind was making between the act of sliding the ring onto his finger and the change in how Nandor had been referring to him. Husband.

“My darling, it’s perfect. You must have plundered the deepest crypts in our Staten Island to get this for me,” Nandor said, stroking the inset stone with the pad of his thumb.

Before Guillermo could correct him, he heard the telltale shrieks of the Guide dusting down the chimney. Or rather, Laszlo and Nadja shrieking and the Guide greeting them. He hustled Nandor to the library, where he gave him an iron, not plugged in, and laid one of his least favorite capes over an ironing board in the library to keep him occupied. Nandor had set to running the cold metal over the velvet surface with empty-minded contentment.

He’d blown Guillermo a kiss as he’d turned to leave, and Guillermo could feel the soppy expression directed at his back as he left. He could brace himself against this. He had been doing it for years, even if what used to be confusing, occasional wisps of affection had recently turned into category 5 hurricane-force gales.

“Last night he poured water all over the rug because he wanted to clean it. And he doesn’t seem any better tonight,” Guillermo said. It hurt to admit, but Nandor’s lovey-dovey demeanor hadn’t changed at all.

“Is that not how you clean a rug? That’s how I keep my rug clean,” Laszlo said, raising an eyebrow at Colin Robinson.

“Do you need help washing your rug? I could help you with that, if you just asked,” the Guide said to Guillermo, a little smirk on her lips.

“No, you need to vacuum them- wait, no, I mean the actual rugs in the library. C’mon, this isn’t the time,” Guillermo said, rubbing his temple.

“I think you are all missing the point of this, and that is, it is very funny to watch Nandor stumble around the house like a lovesick goose. Someone should be filming this,” Nadja said.

“I’m worried about the carpets. And everything else in the house,” Guillermo said.

“Horseshit. You are enjoying being the other goose.”

Guillermo ignored her. “I noticed something else. He’s calling me his husband, but… he’s referring to himself as… not a husband, but a wife. I don’t know if that means anything, if it’s a mistranslation from Al Quolanudarese or what, but…” He trailed off.

“Well, it looks to me like Nandor’s got a case of cleaver fever,” Colin Robinson chuckled.

“I hope that’s not the case. Last time Nadja came down with that, we had to be smuggled out of Budapest in the dead of day,” Laszlo said.

“No, I’m talking about June Cleaver. You know, like Leave it to Beaver? Back in the fifties, Nandor and I used to watch those shows when he had insomnia. There was this one infotainment show on the local channel about how to be a proper housewife that came on every day. We must’ve seen every episode three times over. All the classics- sewing buttonholes, planting flowers, cooking nutritious homemade meals- the pinnacle of bland white suburban femininity. It was delightfully monotonous.”

Colin Robinson sat back, ready to monologue. “She was a very big proponent of treating the man of the house like the sun the wife rotated around. A lot of sublimated submissive desire there. You know, one culture’s kinky roleplay can be another’s normal relationship. I think it actually turned out to be a sex thing for her, though. Saw some article about it in the Huffington Post.”

Guillermo chewed on Colin Robinson’s words and tuned out the Guide murmuring a question about whether he had happened to tape any of the episodes.

“So his brain- his scramblied brain- has settled on ‘wife’ as his role in the household, with all the attendant cultural baggage,” Laszlo said, slathering an unnecessary French accent on “baggage”.

“Any new ideas for fixing this?” Guillermo asked. “Couldn’t we try and recapture the vampire who did this and make him, I don’t know, undo it?”

“I was informed this evening by the gargoyles that he fell asleep on the city bus and overslept into morning, so it looks like he was burned to death by the sun. I thought you would go and kill him yourself, which would be very sexy of you, but no,” the Guide sighed, obviously disappointed.

“How does a vampire forget what time the sun comes up?” Guillermo asked.

“Just because he was a good hypnotist does not mean he was very bright,” the Guide said.

Guillermo was saved from having to respond to that by the flare of Nandor’s coat as he walked past the doorway, the Nadja doll propped against his shoulder like a baby, her hair unevenly woven into a multitude of braids.

“Nandor! Where are you going with my dolly?” Nadja hollered, rising in her seat to crane her neck down the hall.

“It’s her naptime, Nadja! She will be cranky if she does not get a nap,” Nandor hollered back.

“Don’t worry, darling,” the tinny, unnervingly throaty voice of the Nadja doll called, “I’m having a ball. These braids are going to be waves!”

“I should probably go-” Guillermo said.

“If that two bit hypnotist is not dead, I will track him down and turn his esophagus into a condom myself,” Nadja hollered, furiously stomping out of the room after Nandor.

Guillermo had finally relented and allowed Nandor to draw him a bath. It meant leaving Nandor alone and relatively unsupervised, but he also hoped it meant putting the bath issue to rest for a bit.

He was aware he was banking on Nandor’s memory, which had turned from a colander to a basketball net, to retain information, but he really needed the time to relax, his own nerves having turned from piano wire to a garrote threatening to strangle himself. He’d hidden the motley assortment of hair products and soaps that had collected next to the bathtub and reassured Nandor that just water would be fine, really.

Guillermo heard quiet clanking coming from down the hall as he left the bathroom, the tinny ringing reminding him of miners’ pickaxes striking rock in a documentary he’d watched in high school. The black wires snaking through the open doorway of the fancy room, reaching all the way to the end of the hallway where he stood, combined with the harsh illumination of lights told him that something was happening within.

He crept closer, until the hallway wall opened to frame Nandor’s back, his face turned towards a camera lens hovering just out of Guillermo’s sight. He was standing over the low table, holding something hidden from Guillermo.

“Now that I have forgotten everything, I must relearn everything about my husband, but that is alright,” Nandor said. He leaned forward and whispered almost conspiratorially to the camera. “He is my husband, and I love him.”

“Even if he does not seem to return my affections right now.” His voice took on a tone that sounded forlorn to Guillermo. “I want to make him happy.”

Guillermo hated hearing Nandor sound like that. It wasn’t far off from the way he’d sounded when Guillermo dressed him for Madeline’s funeral, or when a bird ran into one of the upstairs windows.

“I am preparing a special surprise for him.” The clanking started up again. “I am packing him his business suitcase for his long days on the battlefield.”

“What are you putting in it?” The quiet question reached Guillermo’s ears from whichever cameraperson was currently on duty.

“Oh, rocks. Hammers, knives. A sword will not fit, so more knives. This talisman-” Nandor held up a rubber ducky, its origin entirely unknown to Guillermo, “and bandages, for when he is to bravely bandage his comrades who have been injured protecting him, the arms holding them strong but the touch very gentle on their weary flesh.”

Those weren’t bandages, those were some of Laszlo’s uglier puffy-sleeved shirts, currently being torn into strips by Nandor’s hands. He must have pulled them from the clothesline in the laundry room. No great loss, in Guillermo’s opinion. A button popped off in Nandor’s hand, and he threw it over his shoulder, catching sight of Guillermo as he glanced back.

“Darling!” Nandor said, his eyes glittering like a freshly lit sparkler. He dropped the shredded shirt and swept towards Guillermo.

“Hiya,” Guillermo muttered. He hoped Nandor couldn’t hear how his heart had been fluttering since the word “love” had passed Nandor’s lips. Especially not now that Nandor had gathered him into his arms and begun to press kisses into his hair.

It couldn’t hurt to let this go on, could it? It couldn’t get any worse.

On the third day, Nandor learned to vacuum. Rather, he learned to push the unplugged handle of the vacuum around along the library floor while Guillermo sat nearby, scraping resolidified candle wax off the candle trivets and keeping a close eye on him.

Like methane rising from the depths of a tar pit, some more memories from that public programming housekeeping show must have bubbled to the surface of his brain, because that evening Nandor had forcefully forgone the clothes Guillermo had picked out and dressed himself in a short tie-waisted coat and boots with the highest heel on his shoe rack, with the apron Guillermo wore while dismembering bodies thrown on top. He’d tied his hair back with a leftover scrap from one of Laszlo’s destroyed shirts, leaving a few locks down to sway around his ears. He looked like a bizarre distortion of the mom from Bewitched, or I Dream of Jeannie, the kinds of old TV shows that Guillermo sometimes caught as a kid when he was home sick from school. It was just as surreal- Guillermo didn’t think he’d ever seen someone dressed like that in real life.

Nandor hummed a formless tune as he dragged the head of the silent vacuum around the carpet. Guillermo watched him carefully. And because he was the worst person alive, apparently, that meant watching the flex of his bare calves as he walked, the occasional peek at his muscular thighs when he leaned over, and the bones beneath the skin of his wrist slide as he twisted the tube of the vacuum around the furniture.

And in turn, Colin Robinson was watching Guillermo watching Nandor over the top of his newspaper. Guillermo was unnerved, because Colin Robinson was trying to be unnerving, his eyes gently glowing blue like the light generator on an x-ray machine to prove it. Guillermo knew Colin Robinson was enjoying feeding on the many awkward moments that had arisen from Nandor’s current predicament, and he wasn’t enjoying the conclusions that he must have been drawing.

Nandor came around to Guillermo’s part of the room, vacuum rod leading the way, and bent over Guillermo. “I’m wearing the jewelry you got me!” Nandor shook his wrist at Guillermo and placed a finger behind his ear to show off the earrings he had jabbed through the flesh. He was correct, in the sense that he had raided the box Guillermo called in his mind “the loot crate”, full of accessories and personal items gathered from his housemates’ meals that Guillermo intended to resell. He wondered what Nandor thought of the blank black screens of the smart watches stacked up one arm.

“Very nice,” Guillermo said, and turned his head so the kiss Nandor was attempting to plant on him would land on his cheek instead. Nandor pouted and petted Guillermo’s hair, mussing it.

“You don’t want a kiss, dearest?” This close, a loose strand of hair was tickling Guillermo’s cheek. He could smell the air freshener Nandor had sprayed on as perfume.

“Not right now, master,” Guillermo said quietly, placing a gentle hand on Nandor’s shoulder to keep him at bay. He could feel the muscle flex beneath his hand as Nandor tried to lean in to lick his ear.

“You are so distant, pumpkin. How have I displeased you? I have been trying so much to be good for you. Have I not tried everything? I have been cooking and cleaning and you did not want me to rub your feet…” Nandor trailed off into a dispirited silence.

Nandor had, indeed, attempted to cook the night before by placing the taxidermied pheasant that usually resided next to the staircase in the oven. Fortunately, he didn’t know how to turn the oven on. He’d also attempted to fondle Guillermo’s feet through his shoes several times, a situation from which Guillermo rapidly extracted himself before he could learn whether Nandor was able to regulate his vampiric strength properly.

“It might not be your fault, Nandor. Sometimes, in a marriage, someone’s attention… wanders,” Colin Robinson said, idly thumbing at a newspaper page.

“Well, you know, every relationship has its ebbs and flows, and these things just happen. It’s been… a lot lately…” Guilermo muttered, his mind spinning as he tried to figure out a way to extricate himself and Nandor from this conversation.

“Why aren’t you interested, Guillermo? Something wrong? Someone else caught your attention?” Colin Robinson’s eyes flashed a bright blue, and Guillermo’s stomach turned to ice. He tried to stammer out a denial as Nandor snapped his gaze to Guillermo’s face.

“Well, that’s too bad. I’d hate to see this household fall apart because Nandor doesn’t know how to please his man,” Colin Robinson said. He folded his newspaper perfectly, but loudly enough that Guillermo could hear the sheets of rough newsprint rubbing together from his seat. “I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but I got online certified as a couple’s counselor. I was hoping to go on reality TV, but maybe I can put that energy back into the community.” With that, he heaved himself out of his chair and left, throwing a casual “you know where to find me” over his shoulder as he did so, pushing his glasses unnecessarily up the bridge of his nose.

Nandor’s hand dropped to Guillermo’s arm. Guillermo couldn’t look at him. He wanted nothing more in the entire world than to please Nandor, but pleasing him now meant upsetting him later.

It was on the fourth day, when Guillermo felt like he was finally getting a hang of the situation, that his problems kicked into high gear.

Nandor’s housewife act had changed slightly, like the same song being played in a new key. A much hornier, much more suggestively submissive key.

Touching, gazing, bending over, doing everything possible to discreetly indicate that he would like to fulfill the conjugal duties of their play-acted domestic arrangement. Guillermo had found him that evening, already up and dressed with no help from Guillermo, outfitted in that one short, silky robe he owned with nothing on underneath. Nandor had then decided that the most pressing matter in his universe was dusting every highly-placed and low-lying piece of furniture in the house, requiring constant stretching onto his tiptoes and even worse, lots of bending over in Guillermo’s line of sight.

And the crawling. Crawling around on the floor, like he had to earn the right to stand, his ass up in the air. Guillermo had resorted to removing his glasses to avoid seeing him properly, which unfortunately trapped him in his spot in the armchair to avoid banging his shin on anything.

“You look so handsome without your glasses, darling,” Nandor had said, tracing a finger down the bridge of Guillermo’s nose. He’d draped himself over Guillermo’s lap, placing his bare ass in direct contact with his khaki-enclosed thighs. Guillermo had tried to gently dislodge him, but moving Nandor was like lifting a sandbag full of lead bars. He was subsumed by the sweet floral scent of Nandor’s perfume, intoxicated as if he had pressed his face into a patch of flowers.

Guillermo could see Colin Robinson idling in the doorway, sucking down his discomfort like a smoothie. “Glad to see you two have worked it out,” he said, entirely insincere. “Nothing like a little postcoital love nesting before midnight.”

Nandor sank further into Guillermo’s lap, thereby pinning Guillermo’s arms beneath his solid thighs. His gooey good mood evaporated off his demeanor like fog off of a cold pond, leaving wet sulking behind.

“It wouldn’t be right to take advantage of him while his brain is like this…” Guillermo muttered, shrinking back under the force of Colin Robinson’s unforgiving gaze. He didn’t have much of a moral high ground with Nandor lying across his lap.

“But I’m being so take-advantage-of-able, preferably by my strong slayer husband,” Nandor said sulkily, right in Guillermo’s ear, shifting so his robe rode up a little higher on his thighs.

“So that’s a no on the hanky-panky? Man, I’m glad I didn’t try for a certification in clairvoyance. My office is always open,” Colin Robinson said.

“You mean your room?” Guillermo said.

“No, I mean the fancy room. My bedroom’s where the magic happens. And by ‘magic’, I mean-”

“I know what you mean,” Guillermo said, before he had to hear another horrible euphemism emerge from Colin Robinson’s mouth.

Nandor turned to him, his pleading written all over his face. His eyes were like drowning in the middle of the night, the glimmer of light in the pupil like the moon shining through the surface far above him. “Please? I just want to be making you feel good, darling,” he said, running a hand over Guillermo’s chest.

Had Nandor ever asked him for anything politely?

“Fine. You have to get up first, though,” Guillermo sighed.

There were few things more unnerving to Guillermo than Colin Robinson in his element. Any situation where he held authority left a discomforting veneer over the whole interaction, like he was personally depositing a layer of mucus all over it. Unfortunately, his new role as questionably-certified couple’s sex therapist for Nandor and Guillermo was perfectly calibrated for his particular skillset.

The man himself, swaddled in a pill-ridden beige cardigan like a baby dressed as Mr. Rogers for Halloween, sucked on his teeth as he crossed his legs, his clipboard balanced against one thigh. “Well, well, well, looks like we’re here to work on you two’s sex life. Or rather, the lack of it.”

“Why are you wearing so much cologne?” Guillermo asked. From where he was sitting, the scent made him feel like his face was being humped by a dog.

“I figured I would model some behaviors for getting in the mood. Some ‘show, don’t tell’ behavior. I got a few samples from a biorhythm entrepreneurs conference, if you’d like to take a swing at it.”

“No, I’m good.”

Colin Robinson shifted in his chair, causing the paperbacks wedged in around him to rustle and groan as their spines bent and pages rubbed together. From his point of view, Guillermo could see raised titles in metallic lettering and women in loosely-attached shirts in the arms of men wearing none at all. He dreaded the idea of listening to passages from bodice-ripper romance novels as romantic inspiration, or worse, recognizing the passages from his teenage stockpile.

“Now, it looks like the current impasse in your regularly scheduled marital bump-n-grind started around the time of Nandor’s little memory-dropping incident.” Nandor twitched, and Guillermo had to stop himself from putting his hand over Nandor’s to comfort him. He’d already had to awkwardly shove Nandor off of his chosen seat in Guillermo’s lap, and was currently trapped between the arm of the couch and Nandor’s enthusiastically-placed thigh.

“Do we have to film this?” The boom mic creeping overhead was keeping Guillermo from focusing on the most important thing: not freezing like a possum and falling over in a dead faint.

“I’m adding this to my audition reel for Sex Therapy: Tri-state Area. Now, tell me what’s up with the downswing in your conjugal conjugation. Don’t be shy, now.”

“We do not touch anymore,” Nandor said.

“We’re touching right now. See? My leg is against your leg,” Guillermo said, pointing out to Nandor the way that their close contact was squishing his thigh.

“Yes, but I did that,” Nandor whined. “You do not touch me. You are making me feel like your masturbation sock, that you have thrown away as soon as it has gotten crusty with dried semens. Do I not allure you anymore?” he asked, his voice morose.

“You-you-” Guillermo couldn’t tell Nandor the he was alluring him just fine, and in fact he was worried that he had spent part of that morning figuring out whether it was possible to chafe his dick off by masturbating too much and too frantically, because if Guillermo telling Nandor he was attracted to him was caught on tape and later seen by Nandor, Guillermo would have to flee back to the Bronx and never return. Or worse, move to Delaware.

“Have I not been doting enough for you? I do not want you to seek succor in the arms of someone else. Someone… flirty. Flittery, like a butterfly.”

“So it seems, Nandor, like you’re down for hitting it baby-making style, but Guillermo’s not feeling the spark. What’s holding you back, G? Can’t get it up?”

“I’m not-I’m- it’s complicated, okay? You know it’s complicated. You know,” Guillermo said. Colin Robinson knew exactly what was going on. Guillermo could feel his heart beating, fight or flight. He’d waded into this ethical swamp and now his boots were stuck in the mud. He couldn’t say yes to Nandor, but he couldn’t say no to him either. Schrodinger’s morally fucked cat in the box.

“Well, it sounds like you’re the problem, Guillermo,” Colin Robinson said. “You’re not supposed to stay frigid after the wedding, you know.”

Guillermo wasn’t frigid, he was Catholic.

“Why don’t we go back to when things were good? Let’s start with the classic ‘how’d you two meet?’” Colin Robinson leaned back in his chair and put his pen to his notepad.

Guillermo realized that Colin Robinson was, intentionally or not, helping him fill in some of Nandor’s current thought process. He had no idea how Nandor had come to the conclusion that they were a couple, or what organza and silk fantasy he’d constructed to bring them to their current supposed domestic bliss.

Nandor cleared his throat. “Well, I was a feared and respected ruler in command of a large and powerful army, and he was a feared and respected ruler in command of a large and powerful army, so of course we were enemies and we got into battle and tried to conquer each other and et cetera et cetera.”

“Of course,” Colin Robinson agreed, as if that made perfect sense.

“One day he and his army routed my forces and captured them completely and put us all in chains. I believed he was going to have me executed, but instead his men took me to the baths at his palace and washed me down and put perfume on my naked body.”

“I should mention that when you get chains wet, they drip everywhere if you do not dry them carefully. So there I was, dripping water down the sheer robes his men had wrapped me in on account of the chains, with my eyes lined in kohl and my mouth painted red like a common prostitute, when they dragged me into his throne room where all my men had been lined up in front of all of his men. Lots of men around, and I was dressed as the woman.”

Colin Robinson gestured for him to continue.

“When they dropped me at his feet, I tried to glare at him, but he was glaring at me very imperiously from his seat on his throne, and anyway I was in a little scrap of fabric and he was in his full armor. Incredibly rude and superior of him. Oh, and they had stuck hoops through my ears and bangles on my wrists to further make me humiliated. And a veil of another cloth over my eyes, like a bride.”

“From there it was the classic ‘prove to me why you deserve to live, and maybe I will spare your men as well’, so I had to force myself to crawl- remember that my wrists had been chained together behind my back, very important- up to his lap and watch him pull his cock out of his armor.”

“And how did he do that?” Colin Robinson asked. “I always thought armor was for making sure Johnson and friends stayed firmly behind metal.”

“It was special occasion armor,” Nandor said, not missing a beat. “Then he lifted the veil, like I was a bride on my wedding night, which made me feel very humiliated, I’ll have you know, to be brought low in front of the men I used to lead and treated like a toy.”

“So then he had his penis out and I could feel everyone in the room watching me and witnessing my debasement, and I knew as I looked at his thick, steady erection that I was to submit, or face painful death and probably dismemberment.”

“You-” he gestured towards Guillermo “wrapped a bunch of my hair around your hand and pulled me down to impale my throat on your cock. Even though I was gagging and crying a little bit, you just rolled your hips and smudged your thumb at the tears that were gathering at the corner of my eyes.”

Colin Robinson squinted judgmentally at Guillermo. Guillermo looked at the floor. It wasn’t like he had actually done this, so why did he still feel so–

“I was getting off very lucky. You could have invited your other generals to use my body.”

Guillermo was not entirely sure, by the excited tone of Nandor’s voice, whether he considered that to be a good or a bad thing.

“I knew I was condemned to be your toy and pet, living only to give you pleasure. And that thought and the feeling of being held in place by your big strong hand and your iron force of will was very degrading, and my penis was becoming erect- against my will, even though deep down I was enjoying it in a way I never had with my wives or my fellow soldiers.”

“You came down my throat and tucked yourself away and gestured to your men to lead me to my new quarters, where I was to live out the rest of my life reduced to your concubine and war prize.”

They sat in silence for a second.

“And we’ve been together ever since!” Nandor concluded, spreading his fingers and waving his hands gleefully.

“It’s a waste he didn’t come on your face,” Laszlo said from the doorway. Guillermo shrieked.

Colin Robinson didn’t seem phased as he clicked his pen with an air of completely unearned authority. “Well, sounds like you two need to recapture the magic.”

If anyone looked directly at Guillermo’s boner, Guillermo was going to die. “How am I supposed to do that?” He could definitely not cover it with his hands without drawing attention.

“Roleplay, obviously. I printed out some worksheets to get you started.” The rustling of crushed paper as Colin Robinson dug through the paperwork adorning his seat was like nails on a chalkboard.

“Well, if that’s the solution, then I guess this session is over,” Guillermo declared. He extricated himself from his position wedged between Nandor and the arm of the couch.

“We are going to do roleplay?” Nandor asked, looking up at Guillermo, his expression one of raw hope.

“Nope! We’re not! We’re going to forget that all of this happened.” Guillermo elbowed his way past Laszlo and ran as fast as he could towards the downstairs bathroom, which, unlike his room, had a door and a lock.

Guillermo woke to a second set of breaths above him. As he drifted out of one of the classic anxiety dreams in his mental file- he’d forgotten to bury a body, and now it was rotting in the music room- he realized he’d been woken by a weight shifting on his mattress.

Darkness never really fully overtook his room during the day. The efforts of the boards over the front windows and the curtain over his doorway were interrupted by the tiny, sharp glows that dotted his various electronics and the antiquated luminescence of his alarm clock. The combined light allowed Guillermo’s sleep-fresh eyes to see the dark silhouette kneeling over his prone body.

It could only be Nandor. The height and the breadth of his shoulders, sure, were unmatched by anyone else in the household, but Guillermo also just knew. Call it overfamiliarity.

“Master?” he groaned. Nandor had gone to bed that morning so easily, Guillermo had thought that expunging his strange concocted backstory for their relationship had ironed out his neediness for the time being. Why was he in Guillermo’s bed now, and why so close?

The details of Nandor’s body filled themselves in in the darkness, like watching a timelapse of a hand drawing. He was dressed strangely, or rather, barely dressed at all, clad only in a long piece of silken cloth, tied around his waist and embroidered along the border. His chest was bare, except for the multitude of layered necklaces that had settled into the thick hair, where they glistened like the bracelets adorning his wrists and the rings stacked along his fingers. Guillermo recognized some of the jewelry from Nandor’s collection and the rest from the similarity of the style as sourced from the same jewelry box. The diamond inset into the garnet cabochon, winked at him from his ring finger.

The greater shock was his face.

Guillermo was no stranger to eyeliner. He had been a staunch devotee throughout high school to the art of the black pencil from the drugstore makeup aisle, and he’d gone to pick out Nadja’s makeup on more than one occasion. He liked the way it looked in general. He’d always harbored a secret hope that Nandor would use it when dressing up for a special occasion. He knew he’d probably used it at some point in his human life, but Nandor had seemingly avoided it during Guillermo’s time with him.

Now, though, his eyes were gracefully rimmed in kohl, emphasizing the darkness of their depths and the length of his lashes. The sight took Guillermo’s breath away, and that was before he could even register his lips, painted in their full shape a dark red that made them bruised and full and obscene, like a rose that had reached the point of blossom where it was on the cusp of decay.

Nandor was deliberately decorated and completely adorned and straddling Guillermo’s hips, posture straight like a statue come to life. Guillermo was as struck dumb as if Nandor really were a carved idol to whatever god this theoretical Guillermo worshipped.

“Master? What are you doing?” Guillermo whispered.

“I have come to seduce you,” Nandor said, his voice slow and deliberate. “We are getting this marital sex caravan back on track.”

With that, he folded himself down to drape his body over Guillermo’s, pressing them together chest-to-chest. He had pulled his hair out of its topknot so it fell free over his shoulders. It swung over Guillermo’s face, bringing with it the smell of hair oil and that same familiar perfume. It tickled his cheek and caught on his lip, from which Nandor peeled it away gently.

He started to kiss his way from beneath Guillermo’s jaw to the crook of his shoulder, feather-light, and Guillermo couldn’t move, or he didn’t want to move, or he was experiencing late-breaking sleep-paralysis. He was trapped by an expanse of cool skin and subsumed by the scent of his body, as if he were pinned beneath a well-annointed statue. His cock had started to fill when he saw Nandor and was making its aching interest known.

Guillermo could feel Nandor’s strong thighs pressing against his hips and then the outside of his own thighs as Nandor slid down to lie completely on top of Guillermo, pinning him in place with his entire weight. There was an erection pressing against his hip, too, and the kissing on his neck had turned to sucking and licking.

He was going to hell. He was in hell. Taking advantage of this, while Nandor wasn’t in his right mind, would be an unforgivable breach of trust and an act of violation. Even if Nandor was running one hand along the other side of his neck while the other unbuttoned his pajama top and wandered over the skin underneath, down, down, down towards the waistband of his pants. Even if the solid weight of his body and the soft curtain of his hair and the momentary flutter of his eyelashes against Guillermo’s jaw made him feel like he was dreaming, how far removed he was from anything he thought could ever be real life.

Guillermo might be rotten, deep down. Selfish and self-denying and self-excusing, in love with a man who thought of him as a fun distraction or a particularly useful tool at the best of times, helpless against the beloved, beloved, my beautiful beloved taking shape right against his skin. He had already let it go too far.

He grunted as he sat up and pushed Nandor back. “We can’t do this. Not while you’re like this.” He hoped the darkness hid the glance he stole at Nandor’s erection.

Nandor looked down at himself. “Is it the jewelry? I have more jewelry.”

Guillermo sighed. “It’s not the jewelry. Go back to bed.”

He couldn’t bring himself to watch Nandor leave.

Guillermo had learned to work around the documentary crew, for the most part. He only tripped over camera cords about once a week now, instead of every night. And he’d learned to approach rooms carefully, in case he interrupted a talking head interview. (Especially that time Nadja and Laszlo decided to give a new meaning to the term “talking head”.)

He could hear Nadja setting up from down the hall, going through the routine of getting micced up and positioning herself at just the right angle to catch the angles of her face on the candlelight. He’d done something similar a while back, propping up a mirror on a chair just outside his bedroom to see whether the lamps in his room were reflecting off the lens of his glasses or not.

“It’s gone on long enough. I don’t mind having him out of the way while I’m working, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what he’s thinking,” she sighed once the director had given her a thumb’s up, smoothing her skirts and tilting her head in a way Guillermo knew meant she was rolling her eyes, even from behind. “If he needed a vacation, he could have just told me he needed a vacation. It’s not like he’s the one doing the important work on the council.”

Was he missing something? It sounded like she was talking about Nandor, but he wouldn’t expect even Nadja to be so blase about her housemate getting his brain turned to wood shavings. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Nandor, of course. He’s been faking brain scramblies. No, not this entire time, just the past couple of days,” she said, cutting off Guillermo’s alarmed questioning.

Guillermo reeled. “That can’t be true. Why would he do something like that?”

Nadja threw up her hands. “Do you think I enjoy trying to scry into that hunk of rotted marsh mud that man calls a brain? He unscramblied himself but decided to keep stumbling around like a Frankenstein made of sex doll, and who cares why? Think of how much time he has wasted for the council.”

Guillermo retreated, stumbling backwards out of the room as Nadja settled back into the couch. He needed to think, he needed to try and scrape this revelation into some form that made sense. The sun would be creeping over the horizon soon, breaking the romantic illusion that darkness cast over his life and shutting the rest of the household safely out of his sight.

The pale blue glow of early dawn light rose on their quiet street, breaking through the black and white rendering cast by the darkness, and Guillermo stopped beneath the weakening glow of a streetlamp to adjust his gloves.

Walking would help. All of the self-help websites Guillermo had scrolled through during his years as a familiar mentioned taking a walk as a great way to think. He could walk, and chew on Nadja’s words like a piece of bubblegum, except he actually hoped to swallow this and be done with it at some point, instead of sticking it beneath his desk absentmindedly and getting a nasty reminder when he laid upside-down to dangle off of his bed.

He didn’t understand why Nandor would do this. What could he possibly get out of pretending that he was still brain scramblied? Why would he maintain the fiction of marriage between them? Nadja’s words had illuminated the past few nights like a strand of lightning sustained in the night sky, but it left Nandor himself like a tree standing before the flash: only outlined in black, its details unreadable. It seemed to Guillermo like acting like a wife-slash-housewife-slash-concubine would be incredibly embarrassing for Nandor, based on what he knew of him. It would be most convenient for Nandor to reveal that he’d snapped out of it as soon as he could, rather than take the effort to conceal it.

And that was what was so frustrating. Guillermo was angry with himself for not understanding when he knew Nandor so well. He hated being reminded of how their years together stacked up against their comparative lifetimes, how Nandor had lived centuries before him, without him. He knew he could never satisfy the greedy depths to which he wanted to know Nandor. His homeland was long gone, his brothers in arms long underground, the clipped tree branch of his language reappearing only in little blossoms of the living limbs. And yet he still clung with a vice grip to that self-inflicted rigidity, that masculine ideal of the warrior and leader that he’d wielded as he ascended to power in the scarcity of Al Quolanudar.

He wondered if Nandor ever felt trapped in it.

Guillermo turned over the last few nights in his mind, envisioning Nandor playing wife and concubine in an uncanny amalgamation of cultures, of domesticity and submissiveness. Maybe for Nandor, femininity and weakness were a third rail, just as dangerous and just as electrifying.

Lights slowly clicked on along the street as its inhabitants roused themselves and headed out in the early dawn light, off to wherever they spent their days. Guillermo watched as the young couple in the house down the block kissed goodbye on the front steps, before the man got in his sedan and his wife clutched her coffee cup and headed back inside. She ran her brokerage firm from home, if he remembered Charmaine’s hurried introduction at last summer’s neighborhood barbecue correctly. He was a pediatric nurse, or a social worker, if he was remembering correctly. Something that meant cartoon characters on his work lanyard.

Guillermo thought about what he knew about those suburban housewife and breadwinner relationships like the ones Nandor would have watched with Colin Robinson. He himself had been locked out of the possibility at an early age by virtue of a lot of things about him. He wasn’t manly in the right way, and the idea of marrying a nice, ordinary woman and living a nice, upright life where he went to church every Sunday and watched sports in the evening and only read books about World War II suffocated him even in concept. He’d never thought of himself as the benevolent patriarch, taking care of his partner.

Nandor was different. Guillermo took care of Nandor, like, all the time. He took his clothes to the dry cleaner’s and washed his hair and wiped blood from his beard. But maybe it mattered if Nandor were being doted on by someone with more power, like some sort of bauble, something precious. Beloved but powerless. Like picking the delicate blossoms off the tree at the end of the street and pressing them in a book to keep them preserved and tucked away.

He’d never actually seen that tree before. He’d walked a lot further than he’d thought. The sun had come up completely and lit the park he was walking past in full ordinary daylight. Cars were crammed together in the road on his other side, zipping down the street on their way to work.

At some point he would talk to Nandor about this. Maybe by the time he got home and slept, he would have sorted through the mess.

Guillermo woke up no less confused, but out of time.

He’d slept restlessly, plagued by half-formed dreams of senseless visuals that did nothing to bring clarity to his muddled mind. The peals of his alarm shocked him fully awake. Night had fallen and it was time to wake Nandor up.

It made sense to him, suddenly. Go to the source and pry the truth out of him with whatever rhetorical crowbar Guillermo could conjure. Or, if not the full truth, at least a reasonable explanation.

The camera crew padded after him, black wires twisting and dragging behind them like a colony of snakes as they approached the door to Nandor’s crypt. Guillermo tried to maintain a good relationship with the crew, so he limited himself to a stern look as he shut the door firmly behind him.

Guillermo paused, leaning against the door. He had always wanted to be known as charming, dazzlingly seductive in a way that acted like bewitchment. A quiet power underneath the surface like a rip current, one that outsmarted rather than overpowered, like Odysseus tricking the Trojans with the horse. It had seemed especially vampiric, to be the smart one.

He had asked Nandor once, while brushing his hair in the aftermath of his semi-disastrous attempt at sparing Derek from execution, how he had learned to wield power as grand viceroy of Al Quolanudar. He had continued to pull the boars-hair bristles through strands that had already been rendered as silky-smooth as they were going to get as Nandor sat silent for a long moment.

“It is not something you can learn,” he had finally said.

“So you’re saying you were just fumbling through the dark every time you had negotiations or meetings when you were ruler?”

“No, we did those during the day, so there was plenty of light. Besides, there were rituals and rules and protocols that had to be obeyed most of the time,” Nandor had explained.

Guillermo had looked down at the lock of Nandor’s hair twirled around his finger. “What about the times that weren’t most of the time?”

“You were lucky, until you weren’t, and then you were dead.”

Guillermo thought about those words as he stood there, looking at the bare traces of light glinting off the armor in the corner. Had Nandor been fumbling in the dark for the past week, hoping his farce remained beneath the household’s notice? Or at least- Guillermo didn’t want to flatter himself here, but it seemed warranted- beneath Guillermo’s notice?

Soon, he supposed he would know for sure. He picked up the box of matches off the end table and set himself to lighting all the candles in the room.

Nandor was sulking in his coffin, a pout adorning his face as he gazed up at Guillermo when the lid opened. The lipstick had worn off and most of the jewelry had been shed, but the eyeliner still rimmed his eyes. He opened his mouth, probably to whine at Guillermo about avoiding him the night before, but his expression shifted when he saw the look on Guillermo’s face. They’d known each other long enough that Guillermo was certain Nandor could see that Guillermo had him pinned. The jig was up.

He was about to say that he’d overheard Nadja talking to the camera crew, casually, but he stopped himself before he admitted that he hadn’t actually noticed Nandor’s charade on his own.

Casual. He could pull something from Nandor. He could model the sort of confidence Nandor was seeking from him. His hand hovered over Nandor’s, crossed protectively over his chest. The fingers twitched as Guillermo ran his own over them.

“You want to play house with me?” he asked.

Nandor grunted and looked at the lid of his coffin, pointedly away from Guillermo. His fingers tightened against his tunic. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

Guillermo slid a finger between Nandor’s hands and the fabric, then another and another, until he was cradling Nandor’s palm in his. “I want to do this for you.” He tried to convey everything he could in those few words, the eleven years of subservience, the things Nandor had told him that he knew had been dredged up from the depths of centuries of silence, the way just the thought of Nandor subserviently trying to please him with his body sent his heart spinning out like car wheels on ice, his mind crashing into the concrete traffic barrier.

Guillermo would be willing to admit he didn’t always think things through, but he’d be much less likely to admit he had actually thought about the best place to have sex in the house. With Nandor, if he was truly baring his soul. He wanted to have sex with Nandor in a room with a door. And on a bed, unless it was truly a moment of wild unrestrained passion. So neither of their rooms would do.

Fortunately, the blue room had a bed, a door, and saw enough use that Guillermo changed the sheets regularly. He shut the door behind them decisively, not letting go of Nandor’s hand. Nandor was still looking at him suspiciously, slouched with one arm crossed across his chest.

The bulk of the blue room was dominated by a four-poster bed with menacing eagles’ claws carved into the dark wood at either end of the posts, wrapped in robin’s egg blue curtains and edged in gold trim. Between the thick stack of pillows piled against the comforter and the patterns etched in the dark blue wallpaper in shiny segments up to the ornate crown molding, the room felt like the inside of a jewelry box. Like they were tucked away, kept safe from the outside world. He wanted to do that for Nandor, to wrap this tender part of him in tissue paper and place it somewhere safe.

He sat on the bed. His heart was racing, because this was more terrifying than the theater, or Topher, or following the tall long-haired man in a cape he’d seen behind the dumpsters at Panera Bread one night. This was responsibility. This was power. This was like being tipsy on champagne at his cousin’s wedding again, the popping of bubbles beneath his tongue.

If he told Nandor to come and kneel between his knees, would he do it? He was still lurking near the doorframe, the small gold hoops punctured through his earlobes glinting beneath his hair. Guillermo wanted to pull on them, tug on them with his teeth specifically, a sudden screaming, whirling tornado of desire that he had shut away as tightly as he could for so long. “Come here,” he said.

“No,” Nandor replied.

Guillermo… hadn’t been expecting that. He should have expected that, actually. He had the entire framework of Nandor’s fantasy imprinted onto his mind from that horrifically awkward stretch of sitting across from Colin Robinson’s leering face. He knew he couldn’t confront Nandor with the fact that he wanted it, for something Nandor had only ever been able to look at out of the corner of his eye.

“You don’t have a choice here. You belong to me,” Guillermo said, knowing it was a lie. Nandor could walk out at any moment. But in the carefully constructed narrative of the moment, it was the truth. Guillermo was, was- the conquering warlord, taking his rival by force? The husband, holding his wife in hand? The benevolent ruler, claiming an unexpected gift? He was the center of power, and his word was law. “Come here.”

Nandor stood over him, peering down at him, all broad shoulders and dark eyes, practically a silhouette. He’d had a lot of fantasies about being ravished by a bloodthirsty creature of the night, but he put them away for later, easily buried beneath the expectant thrill of bringing that same creature to his knees.

“Take off my shoes first. You’re going to undress me,” Guillermo commanded.

Nandor sank down to his knees to kneel between Guillermo’s, and oh, that was a new perspective. His eyes traveled down the bridge of Nandor’s nose as he looked down at Guillermo’s boots, fingers scrabbling over the laces and yanking them off to toss over his shoulder, causing Guillermo to wince as they banged across the floor. He slid a finger down the inside of his socks, and Guillermo shivered at the scratch of a nail along the arch of his foot as Nandor pulled them off.

Guillermo was getting hard in his khakis, right at Nandor’s eye level. Guillermo watched his lips part slightly, just enough for him to see the wet inner edge of his lip. He pulled, gently, at the hair tie holding Nandor’s topknot in place, watching the locks of hair fall in a dark wave, running his fingers through it.

“Now unzip me,” Guillermo said.

Nandor kept his hands on Guillermo’s ankles, pinning them in place. Guillermo could feel his fingers twitching, though.

“Can you not undress yourself all of the sudden? Some familiar you are,” Nandor complained. Guillermo twined a few locks of hair around his fingers and yanked. Nandor yelped.

“Ow! That hurt, Guillermo,” Nandor whined. Guillermo bit back the reflexive sorry and traced the ball of his foot deliberately up the inside of Nandor’s thigh as a consolation, careful not to give Nandor anything to rub against.

Nandor opened the zipper and yanked Guillermo’s underwear down over his crotch, freeing his cock. Guillermo spread his legs a little wider. He was already leaking, precum beading at the tip just from the edges of Nandor’s fingers.

This was fine. Nandor had given a blowjob before. Guillermo hadn’t, but Nandor didn’t need to know that, assuming he couldn't already smell the virginity all over him. Oh god, Nandor was going to blow him. He could probably smell Guillermo’s nervousness too, like a bear or something.

He should say something. He knew what Nandor wanted him to say. He knew Nandor wanted him to put him in his place.

“Well?” He took a breath. The sex part. The vastly immense and terrifying weight of his Catholic upbringing sticking his jaw. “Prove yourself to me.”

Nandor stilled, pupils dilating like a drop of blood staining a stretch of satin. He seemed to be on the right track.

“Show-show me why I should keep you. This is what your mouth should be used for, right? Show me what you can do with it.” He may have been reading from a script, but he was still creating a character for himself.

And Nandor set about showing him exactly why Guillermo should keep him, taking his cock in hand and covering the tip with his mouth, sending sparks all the way down to Guillermo’s toes when he started to suck.

“So pretty. O-oh, you look nice like this. So much better than talking. You’ll make such a nice concubine.” And God have mercy on his soul, Guillermo was telling the truth. Watching Nandor’s full lips stretch around his cock, mouth curled to control his fangs, throat bobbing as he swallowed Guillermo to the root, was making heat pulse through his body as much as the sensation of the cool, wet mouth on his cock.

Guillermo was smiling, grinning, giddiness twisted with the sharp delight of the cruelty he was injecting into his voice. “What would your men think of you now? Do you think they ever wondered if you just wanted to be someone else’s toy?” He was towering, a thousand feet tall, striding over the world like a goliath, about to crumble like the Tower of Babel. It was the same vertigo as stretching on his tiptoes on a wobbling ladder, with the same adrenaline running through his veins. “Isn’t this better than being in charge all the time?”

Nandor moaned, his fingernails digging hard enough into Guillermo’s thighs to make him worry for his skin. He bobbed his head, pulling back to run the flat of his tongue over the glans and then flicking the edge over his slit before repeating again, a new angle, many new angles, all of it done so slowly and in a manner Guillermo would almost call worshipful.

One finger wandered its way up Guillermo’s inner thigh, leaving a trail of nerves alight so clearly Guillermo could map it in his mind. The filthy sounds Nandor was making were like an electric shock straight to Guillermo’s spine, like a circuit between Nandor’s moans and his own goading, twisting his tongue and sending yes, fuck, yes, tumbling from his lips again and again.

He kept a hand in Nandor’s hair, as much to ground himself as it was a reminder to Nandor. The world was going staticky around the edges by the time he pulled Nandor reluctantly off of him.

“You should know that’s not enough. You’re mine now, entirely,” he cooed, condescending and coddling, the voice his but its tone unfamiliar. He lifted his hips off the bed to pull his pants down as a reminder of his earlier request, sitting back to let Nandor work his way up the buttons of his shirt.

Guillermo realized he actually wanted to be laying back against the pillows at the head of the bed, instead of spread across it like he’d passed out on it. He propped himself up. Judging by the look in Nandor’s eyes, Guillermo thought that he might look the part of the conquering king.

Nandor stared for a moment before practically tearing his clothes with the speed he yanked them off. From his position on the bed, the rich fabric of the curtains tied to the posts called to mind stage curtains, as if they were both performer and audience.

Guillermo stopped Nandor with a hand as he clambered onto the bed. He coaxed him to kneel over Guillermo’s thighs, and Guillermo took the time to look at him, to admire him like a possession, to leer at him like he was a statue in his courtyard.

Nandor looked at him in turn, adrift like the warlord centuries after his time that he really was. It was so perfect, somehow, like he needed Guillermo to sweep him up in his grand cape and tell him what his real purpose was.

Guillermo’s upbringing had made the idea of being worshiped both horrifying and intriguing. He wanted for himself the grasping, clenching embrace of the vampire upon its victim, to be the one holding a man helpless in his thrall. He’d been afraid of the strength and irrepressibility of his desire, so he had shut it in a box and trimmed its tenacious vines to keep them from winding their way to his mouth and possessing his tongue, only to find that by trimming its branches, he had caused the roots to grow deep down within his body, until he was even more afraid to pull them out.

He could blame the roots spread through his hands, the fibrous ends of his desire wending their way around bone and muscle for his nails scratching through the hair on Nandor’s chest, down to his leaking erection. Nandor’s strangled gasp was like the stroke of a whetstone against a blade, sharpening Guillermo’s vicious desire and his grin.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” Guillermo said, a compliment replete with kindness and cruelty, staring into Nandor’s helpless eyes, utterly in his thrall as Guillermo trailed his fingers over the soft skin of Nandor’s erection. He leaned over to pull the lube out of its place in the nightstand drawer. “I want you to get yourself ready for me. No,” he paused, holding the bottle to his shoulder as Nandor reached for it, bracing himself to give the next command, “turn around and show me everything.”

Nandor scowled and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t see why I should do as you say.”

Guillermo returned Nandor’s look with steel in his gaze as he flicked the base of Nandor’s cock, then again, higher up. He expected Nandor’s yelp, but he thought he might still ignore his order, or scold him for his impudence. Instead, Nandor squirmed and turned around until he was bent on his hands and knees over Guillermo’s legs, face towards his feet. He didn’t even grumble in complaint.

Guillermo slid him the bottle of lube and watched as Nandor coated a few fingers and reached back to slide them between his asscheeks. He started with two fingers, slowly fucking them into himself. He was so exposed. For Guillermo. Guillermo wanted to reach up and stroke a finger over his perineum, just to see if he could make Nandor squirm. And it was, gloriously, within his power, so he did. And Nandor did squirm, and he let out a soft gasp of surprise, too.

He tapped Nandor’s knuckles as he added a third finger and started to slowly thrust them in and out of himself, just to remind Nandor that he was there and watching him spread himself open at his command.

“That’s enough. I’m sure you could come from just this, but you need to service me first.” Guillermo didn’t think he imagined the way Nandor’s cock let out another thin stream of precum at his words.

Nandor positioned himself over Guillermo on shaking knees and sank down slowly, his eyes on Guillermo, staring into him like he could dissolve himself into his depths, like he desired a complete immolation of himself at Guillermo’s hands.

Guillermo knew the appeal.

Nandor was unnervingly cool around him from his vampiric ambient temperature, but Guillermo had to count backward from twenty so he could last longer than a few seconds. He was so tight, and he had lifted himself off Guillermo and sank back down on him excruciatingly slowly, making pleasure bead up at the base of Guillermo’s spine like sugar syrup dropped in cold water.

“You said something-” Guillermo had to concentrate, had to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head with pleasure, “about enjoying this more than any of your wives or soldiers. Is that what you want me to do?” His fingernails dug into Nandor’s thighs. It was a more honest question than he wanted to admit. “Do you want me to make you into my concubine? You would be at my beck and call, always available for me. You’d do whatever I wanted you to, because you wouldn't have a choice. I would take care of you, if you did,” Guillermo said, commanding him and begging him.

Nandor had leaned forward, as if his chest were drawn to Guillermo by a magnet in his heart. He panted as he ground back on Guillermo’s cock, lower lip caught on the edge of a fang. He nodded; a small, helpless motion.

He wanted to pull Nandor’s hair back, diametrically opposed to the way his fingers had itched to pull it down before. He wanted access to the vulnerable skin of Nandor’s neck, to leave him exposed down to the turning scar right below his jaw. He settled for tucking his hair behind an ear and pulling on an earring for good measure.

“I can’t wait to show you off. My finest concubine,” he said.

Nandor groaned something, so quiet that Guillermo was straining to understand him.

“I can’t hear you,” Guillermo said.

“I… I want… I want I want I want…” Nandor whined, his voice curling in on itself with pleasure.

“What do you want? Tell me what you want.”

“I want to be your, your most beloved,” he sobbed. He sped up, fucking himself harder, his thighs shaking.

“You are,” Guillermo said breathlessly. He wanted to say how every stroke of the brush through his thick hair, every adjustment of a cape collar, every late-night coaxing of some poor soul back to their home, had been a token of his affection and a loan he’d expected to collect on, with interest.

Nandor came with a silent cry, as if the air had been punched out of his chest, coating Guillermo’s chest and stomach with cum up to his chin. He continued to rock back on Guillermo’s cock, watching Guillermo’s face to ascertain he was still giving him pleasure.

“Nandor,” he said. His mouth was dry. He kept repeating his name like an incantation. Guillermo was turned around in his own body like a drowning man, floating without direction and twisted in gasping contortions. He had made Nandor into a shuddering mess, still pushing himself past orgasm to bring Guillermo pleasure, as much proof of Guillermo’s power as if he had melted his armor into the jewelry which adorned him.

“Say it. Say it, please,” Nandor said, his need plain.

“Beloved,” Guillermo said, more final, more sacred than an amen. He gave himself over to the sensation of Nandor around him, the feeling of his hands resting on Guillermo’s chest, the reckless sordid exhilaration of the entire night coming to a climax as he came.

Guillermo stopped Nandor from collapsing on top of him and smearing his cum all over their chests and extended his arm to rifle through the drawer of the nightstand until he felt the thin cardboard of the tissue box. He handed a few to Nandor and started wiping up the mess while Nandor groggily dabbed at himself. He was spinning back down to earth like a maple seed, dizzy and exhausted.

Nandor tucked his head beneath Guillermo’s chin, nuzzling into his chest. Guillermo ran his fingers through his hair, unencumbered by the need to maintain it for the moment and free to enjoy the soft hmm coming from Nandor.

“We’ll have to change the sheets later. You’re going to help me with that,” Guillermo said. Nandor grumbled and pressed his face more firmly into Guillermo.

He felt like he had settled into his skin, instead of wearing himself like a coat. He swept Nandor’s hair out of his face and curled down to kiss his forehead. Nandor caught his jaw with one hand and tilted his face up. Their lips met.

“Beloved,” Nandor whispered against his mouth.

“Beloved,” Guillermo replied, kissing him back.