Chapter Text
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Familiars come and go. Nandor knows this, has shuffled through hundreds of the same starry-eyed, naive humans for centuries now. He knows how this is supposed to go—the human either leaves or dies. Nandor does not chase after them.
But when Guillermo leaves, it’s different. There is a marrow-deep ache, as if the human were a phantom limb, a part of Nandor that had been ruthlessly amputated in his sleep. For the first few days after Guillermo’s departure, Nandor finds himself looking to his right, to the corner of his periphery that the human had occupied for over a decade. Every joke seemingly falls flat without Guillermo there to laugh with him. His crypt seems emptier, somehow, even though Guillermo rarely slept there with him—but just looking at the chaise lounge now riddled with blood-covered vestments reminds him of how alone and unhappy he truly is. The house quickly falls into disarray and Nandor hardly notices, too focused on the human-shaped absence in his life.
He clenches his hands into fists and wishes the ache would transform into anger. Anger is easy. It spreads like a wildfire, uncontrollable, aching to burn everything it can touch. Grief, however, was not a feeling Nandor was comfortable with. It was the direct antithesis to anger. Instead of consuming others, it only ever consumed you. Grief gnawed at his bones like a ravenous animal, desperate for one more scrap of flesh, one more mouthful of viscera. It could consume him whole if he let it.
He almost wanted it to. (In hindsight, it probably would have.)
One night, Nandor carries the forgotten glitter portrait into his crypt. He briefly thinks of destroying it, letting the portrait catch fire and burn until only ash remained. Rid himself of the only physical reminder of Guillermo left in the house. Instead, he tucks it carefully into the corner of the room, obscured slightly by an overhanging set of drapes, so that his housemates don’t stumble upon it on the rare chance that they darken his door.
He tries not to think about how the portrait may be the last and final keepsake he will ever have of Guillermo.
**
Familiars come and go. Guillermo, however, seemingly has a monopoly on coming and going out of Nandor’s life.
Nandor rarely chased anything—even potential meals. So it is with a frustrated hiss that he tackles Guillermo to the ground when he tries to leave again in the aftermath of the theatre, mini-fridge tucked laboriously in his arms.
The mini-fridge tumbles out of his grasp and careens through the grassy front lawn as Guillermo yelps out, obviously unprepared for an attack.
Good, Nandor thinks, uncaring of the fact that any of the human neighbors could potentially see them tussling out in the yard, vampire blood still covering Guillermo from head to toe. For as vicious and deadly as Guillermo had been in the theatre, Nandor could still see flickers of the nineteen year old who had come to their door and refused to leave even at the threat of a slow, painful death. Nandor hears the uptick in Guillermo’s heart rate, the blood rushing in a familiarly sweet song as he rolls onto his back and pushes himself up on his elbows, brown eyes narrowed in a tired glare.
“What the fuck was that for?” he near hisses, a crude imitation of how the vampires glowered, teeth gnashing together. Vampire hunter bloodline or not, Guillermo had taken some of their more vampiric behaviors to heart. It’s a realization that stirs a confusing mix of emotions in his gut. Mostly, though, Nandor feels the slimy, insidious hand of guilt squeezing his dead heart.
There was no way that Guillermo could ever return to a normal human life. Even if he didn’t have the blood of Abraham Van Helsing in his veins, he was utterly changed by his time as a familiar. Nandor could wipe his mind, drop him off at a random gas station in Delaware like he did to Benjy, but the vampiric traits would remain like a set of vestigial organs, useless aside from the history they told.
“Stop that!” Nandor chides in lieu of voicing any of his actual feelings or concerns, still towering over the human. He tries to ignore the amalgamation of vampire hunting equipment that had spilled out of the fridge and onto the lawn. “Only vampires hiss, Guillermo. And you are certainly not a vampire.”
He sees Guillermo’s gaze dart to one of the stakes for a brief moment and knows that he has, once again, stuck his entire foot in his mouth.
“You’re right. I’m not a vampire. I’m something that kills vampires.”
The chill that settles at the base of his spine is so unfamiliar that it nearly makes him want to dissolve into the safety of an incorporeal fog. Every alarm bell in his mind is telling him to run, to get as much distance between himself and the monster covered in vampire viscera, but he stamps the feeling out with a frustrated growl.
“Do you really think I give a shit about that? I just want you to come home!”
“Why?” Guillermo asks, voice still unnaturally cold. “I could kill you, Nandor. Sometimes, I think I even want to.”
Nandor gestures vaguely to the yard, to the crosses and the garlic and the stakes. “You had plenty of chances to do so before tonight, but you didn’t. Instead, you killed other vampires to save us. That is why, hunter or not, you have proven your loyalty to us. To me. So come back. Please.”
Guillermo is silent for a long time. Nandor is sure that he will say no, that this will be the final time he sees Guillermo without a stake held between them. He prepares himself for the worst.
“…I’ll come back. On one condition.”
Nandor sighs, defeated. He knows that at this point he’d give Guillermo almost anything his heart desired. Limitless breaks, multiple bedrooms in the house, fancy dinners delivered to their door—they were all minor inconveniences if it meant that Guillermo would be back at his side, that he would have a heart beat that he could fall asleep to and a warm hand to hold when he disembarked from his coffin every night.
“Fine. What is it?”
A slow, familiar smile spreads across Guillermo’s lips, the sort of smile that makes Nandor think that maybe, just maybe, they would be alright after all. “I need you to buy me a fridge.”
It is at that exact moment that Shaun decides to make his presence known, waving excitedly at the pair from over the fence. “Hey, Nandor! And, uh, Guillermo, right? You two having a lover’s spat or something? I mean why else would you be throwing out a perfectly good mini-fridge?” His face twists in confusion. “Wait, is that blood on your clothes?”