Work Text:
“You are always ticking inside of me and I dream of you more often than I don’t.
My body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly.”
— Sierra DeMulder, excerpt from “Unrequited Love Poem”
.
.
It should be easy enough, Nandor thinks, to ignore her feelings.
Her heart does not beat. She does not get the butterflies in her tummy feeling that Guillermo has tried to explain to her. There is very little that stirs her undead body to life. Even when she was human, she rarely felt such emotions anyway. What room did she have for such fragile, fleeting things? There were villages to raid, fires to set, land to conquer and make her own. The shadow of her banner eclipsed many countries, sent villagers begging on their hands and knees in the ashen remains of their homes for her mercy.
Their tears had never moved her. Had never stilled her blade. But now…
Guillermo sniffles again, pitifully attempting to hide her tears behind her palms. It takes more effort than Nandor would ever admit to simply keep her arms folded at her chest. To not cross the threshold of the library and press her hands to the warm, soft flesh of Guillermo’s face and wipe her tears away. To not then wrap her arms around the other woman’s waist until her sobs subsided, cradled in her embrace. It is a thought that rattles Nandor to her very core.
Perhaps that is why her tone goes acerbic as she watches Guillermo, silently cursing the longing that threatened to overthrow centuries worth of walls and battlements that protected her brittle heart.
“If you are going to be crying, do not do it on the chaise lounge. Your tears will stain the upholstery,” the words slip crassly from her tongue before Nandor can temper them. She knew she had a harsh way with words, that what she said was often misconstrued--especially when it came to Guillermo.
She hadn’t cared much before what people thought of her way of speaking. If they misinterpreted what she meant, then that was a clear sign they were not listening. It was only recently that she attempted to explain herself, to put forth the effort to communicate in a way that would ease her familiar’s naturally anxious mind.
“Do you need… a tissue? A handkerchief?” Nandor pantomimes blowing her nose which somehow makes Guillermo laugh even though she was not trying to be funny. “I am being serious, Guillermo! We just had that chaise steamy cleaned! Do not cry upon it!”
Nandor can’t hide the growing smile that just barely reveals the points of her teeth.
“I just really need...” Guillermo trails with a sniffle, playing with the hem of her sweater in a way that Nandor now recognized as nervousness. She does not make eye contact as she speaks, seemingly staring at one of Nadja’s many taxidermy knick knacks that lined the shelf just behind Nandor’s shoulder. “A hug? Please, I...” she makes a vague motion with her hands, neither her tongue nor her body able to convey what exactly was going on in her strange human brain.
It’s just one hug, Nandor tells herself, lips parting, ready to acquiesce to her human’s demands. And Guillermo had asked so sweetly. What was the harm of indulging just this once?
She steps forward, boots thudding hollowly against the wooden floors. Guillermo’s heart beats faster with every step she takes towards her. Briefly, Nandor wonders if Guillermo could still be frightened by her after all this time. Surely not? Not when Guillermo had already seen her at her most grotesque, yielding to her endless hunger, blood coating her hands, face, and chest.
But there was no denying physiology; if Guillermo was scared, then she was scared. How inconveniencing, Nandor thinks, wrestling with her options. Perhaps a better vampire, one who did not fall for their little human familiars, would have simply left the room. But Nandor is not a good vampire--has not been a good one since Guillermo had darkened her doorstep and refused to leave all those years ago--and so temptation tugs her forward, arms reaching out to embrace her lovely human, her Guillermo. It is only at the last moment that Nandor redirects, using her vampiric speed to dart out of the way just before Guillermo could encircle her.
“Get some rest,” she murmurs softly, heart breaking in her own chest as she lets her hand trail harmlessly over the crown of Guillermo’s head. The dark curls feel soft underneath her palm, the scent of her shampoo--something rosey and sweet--assailing her senses. With a final, unnecessary breath, Nandor steps away, not meeting Guillermo’s gaze.
She leaves before Guillermo can say anything, unable to reconcile the thought of her tears having anything to do with her. It was one thing to see Guillermo cry; it was another to be the direct cause of her tears.
**
Nandor dreams.
It is one of the few things that was not taken from her when she became a vampire. Her dreams had always felt prophetic, had always stirred a sense of urgency when she woke in the dead of night as a human. She had redrafted war plans, sent soldiers on different sides of a mountain simply from a gut feeling she felt upon waking from a particularly vivid dream. To her credit, this had worked well in her favor for decades as she rode into battle. And as a vampire, not much had changed.
Except now instead of battlefields strewn with blood, she was dreaming of Guillermo. A Guillermo that was so like the Guillermo she knew in her waking life that they were practically identical--save for one simple detail. This Guillermo, the one in her dreams, was in love. With her.
It stung to wake to an empty coffin, Guillermo’s heartbeat thudding softly in her sad little bedroom underneath the stairs.
Nandor doesn’t often traipse about the house during the day--and though Guillermo has done a good job of boarding up all the windows, there is still a natural sort of anxiety that comes with skirting around something that could kill her in the blink of an eye. It was not a normal feeling for her, this fear of death, and so her body protests with every careful step she takes down the narrow hallway. Fortunately, Guillermo’s room is not far.
Quietly, Nandor shuffles into the small room, leaning forward somewhat to keep from hitting her head on what used to be a doorframe. Now, only a pair of drapes acted as a barrier between Guillermo and a house full of hungry vampires as she slept.
Was it blind trust? Even Benjy, Nandor’s familiar before Guillermo, had questioned the lack of a door. Had even taken to sleeping with a stake underneath his pillow in the beginning of his service--something Nandor had unfortunately experienced firsthand when she merely wanted to poke about the human’s room to sate her curiosity.
But Guillermo didn’t have any of that. No weapons. Nothing but a crucifix she wore around her neck--a gift given to her by her mother that Nandor, even in her selfishness, could not request her familiar to remove. Nandor knew what it was like to have familial keepsakes, things she kept stored in her chest of memories. Sometimes she reread the notes her parents had written simply to remember that she was not born a vampire, that at one point she too had been a flesh-and-blood human who conquered village after village for her country’s glory, a proud warrior that came from humble beginnings. The scent of her mother’s perfume, one of the few trinkets she had managed to send as a gift at the start of her campaigns, smelled of lavender and vanilla, and even now, Nandor sometimes caught a whiff of it as she read over the letters.
Perhaps that was love, Nandor thought, the desire to have someone linger. To have them with you in every room, a reminder of their scent or their touch or their gentle smile.
Standing in the cramped space of Guillermo’s room, her familiar scent tickles her nose, something that Nandor could identify even if she were in a room with thousands of humans. It was so uniquely Guillermo, as unique as her heartbeat, that Nandor feels almost enthralled as she steps closer, her usual cloak and ornate garments replaced with the simple white blouse that she often wore to coffin, the top few buttons opened to expose the dip of her clavicle and the valley between her breasts.
Though she thinks she is being quiet enough, Guillermo still stirs, flipping onto her side to face her. Even as her eyes are still closed, Guillermo seemingly reaches towards her, hand drifting out into the dark. When Nandor lets her cold hand find Guillermo’s warm palm, something like a relaxed sigh spills from the human’s mouth, head tilting further to expose her throat.
“How dangerous…” Nandor murmurs to herself, eyes flashing gold in the dark. “To be this trusting in a house full of monsters.”
How long had it been since she last fed? Ever since the moment in the library, Nandor’s mind had been preoccupied elsewhere. She could easily forget about her hunger even when she wasn't wading through a decade’s worth of messy feelings--and she knew she had made more excuses than usual whenever Guillermo had asked if she needed help finding a meal. Still, it couldn’t have been more than two weeks, Nandor thinks, but then there she is, standing in the dark of her familiar’s room, tracing the veins of her throat with obvious hunger. She doesn’t realize she is squeezing Guillermo’s hand until the human stirs with a yawn, soft brown eyes slowly blinking away the final dregs of sleep.
“...Nandor?” Guillermo asks, voice heartbreakingly sweet. In the space between wakefulness and sleep, she had slipped and called Nandor by her name, but she wasn’t in the mood to correct her. “Are you okay? Did you have a nightmare?”
“Something like that,” she admits, moving to sit on her familiar’s bed.
Guillermo reaches for her glasses with her free hand before turning on the dim reading lamp. Nandor hisses reflexively at the light, but does not let go of Guillermo’s hand.
A serious expression flickers over Guillermo’s face. “What was it about?”
When Nandor looks away, jaw clenched, Guillermo sighs. “You know you can just tell me the truth.”
“The truth?” Nandor echoes.
“You’re hungry.”
Well, Nandor reasons, she isn’t wrong. But that wasn’t the entire truth. It wasn’t hunger that drove her to seek her own familiar out. It wasn’t hunger that had her relishing the warmth of the human’s smaller hand in her own. It wasn’t hunger that made her want to kiss away the worry lines forming between her brows, to leave her breathless and smiling and looking at Nandor in a way that made her feel as if she were basking in the sunlight like a content house cat.
At her continued silence, Guillermo shakes her head. A small smile forms on her lips. “I’m too tired to find you someone right now, so my blood will have to do. Just enough until nightfall when you can go hunt.”
As Guillermo sweeps her hair to one side of her neck, Nandor springs forward with a viper’s precision, encircling both of Guillermo’s wrists.
“Wait,” she begins, hesitating. “Let me braid your hair. So it does not get in the way.”
What a thinly veiled excuse, Nandor thinks, already grimacing to herself as she pulls away. So caught up in her own inner theatre--imagining what Guillermo must think of her to be so desperate for an excuse to touch her own familiar--she is only brought back to the present when the bed dips further. Guillermo scoots closer to her until she leans back far enough that her head falls on Nandor’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Guillermo sighs, seemingly melting into Nandor’s hold.
Carefully, Nandor swings her entire body up onto the bed to sit criss-cross on top of the sheets, shins pressed uncomfortably against Guillermo’s back. With a hiss, she finds purchase at Guillermo’s hips, secretly savoring the surprised squeak she makes as Nandor lifts her familiar to sit snugly in her lap.
“Much better,” she purrs low into Guillermo’s ear, hands roaming briefly up her arms and shoulders to then card into her curls. Her human’s little heart beats faster, but Nandor understands; it was scary giving up one’s lifeblood. The least she could do now was soothe those fears.
Nandor had not braided someone’s hair for a long time. The last person to her knowledge had been Nadja, but rarely did the vampire ask this of her. Not when she had Laszlo who already helped her with her makeup and nail varnish.
So if she takes a little longer than necessary to braid Guillermo’s hair, Nandor reasons, it is because she is out of practice. She was not showing her hand, not proving that the rumors that swelled around her--such as the leering taunts that came from Simon the Devious--were built upon a grain of truth. Plausible deniability, a colloquial phase Colin Robinson had taught her amidst a particularly draining feed. That was what this was.
Though Nandor lacks a brush, she spends a great deal of time combing through the tangles already present in Guillermo’s hair. Bed-head, exacerbated by the natural curliness of her human’s hair, had left her with plenty of silky brown locks to gently untangle, careful to not tug too hard as she set to work.
If any other vampire saw this--saw this act of devotion, the way Nandor meticulously combed through her familiar’s hair with her fingers--they would likely hiss their disapproval. That was not the way vampiric masters treated their human familiars. There was no room for emotions in what should have been a purely transactional relationship. But their relationship had never been transactional, had it?
(Or, Nandor’s fear: that this feeling was grossly one-sided. That Guillermo would become a vampire, and having taken what she wanted from Nandor, would merely slip away into the dark.)
“This is nice,” Guillermo murmurs, her heart rate slowing to a gentle, soothing rhythm. Voice still thick with sleep, the woman turns her head to stare at Nandor’s face. “Thank you again. For this. And…” she pauses, cheeks flushing a lovely shade of pink. “For everything. There’s no other vampire I’d rather be working for.”
“Not even Nancy the Relentless?” Nandor questions. She wasn’t completely oblivious to the gossip that circled the familiar community. There were vampires that humans preferred to work for, whether due to the nature of the job--Simon the Devious, for instance, had eaten some of his familiars, but was a great choice for networking if you happened to survive working for him--or because the vampire was, well, attractive.
Guillermo laughs, leaning further into Nandor’s touch. “Definitely not. She’s beautiful and deadly but she doesn’t care about her familiars. Not like you--” the human stops abruptly, averting her gaze.
Nandor continues her ministrations, briefly letting her hand trail up her familiar’s neck. Gooseflesh rises in the wake of her fingers, the human shivering involuntarily.
“You say I care,” Nandor begins, dividing Guillermo’s hair into three equal sections. “But here I am, asking for your blood just like any other vampiric master.”
“I offered,” Guillermo quips back, clearly unbothered. “You didn’t force me to. I know there are vampires who do that--who feed on their familiars all the time.”
Nandor stills, eyes lidding with thinly veiled desire. Her tongue darts out, licking the seam of her ruby lips. “And if I asked? To feed from you as much as your weak human body could take--what would you say?”
“...It’s always been yours,” Guillermo admits. “Only yours. From the beginning.”
Nandor bites her lip hard enough to draw blood, her eyes glowing like twin embers in the dark of the room. When she speaks, it is with a rasp, voice husky. “Saying things like that… it’s almost as if you want to be eaten. You’ve noticed it, haven’t you? How the other vampires look at you. Their covetous expressions. They want you. All of you.”
Guillermo sucks in a breath, chest heaving. For the first time, Nandor realizes that the scent--hidden beneath layers of cortisol and adrenaline--Guillermo is giving off is one of arousal. Not fear. The images that play in her mind’s eye, Guillermo beneath her, breathless, a sheen of sweat covering her naked frame… the growl that reverberates in her chest is no doubt felt by Guillermo, her back pressed against the vampire, separated only by a thin layer of fabric.
“I would never let them touch you,” Nandor rumbles, effortlessly twisting Guillermo’s hair into a thick braid. The once unruly locks, now pinned into place with a hair tie, are easily swept to the side. Nandor watches Guillermo’s pulse thrum wildly at her now exposed throat, her simple nightwear, a long blue sleeping shirt, somehow even more tempting to Nandor than it has any right to be. “They are not even worthy to gaze upon you. I would pluck their eyes from their very sockets if they dared to look at you for a moment too long. You are my familiar, my human, and I do not like to share.”
The honesty of her words and the ease at which they leave her lips shock her. How had she fallen so low? To brazenly admit her adoration of a human--a human familiar--and expect nothing in return. If Guillermo turned away now, if she untangled herself from Nandor’s hold, if she so much as voiced a hint of uncertainty, Nandor would step away. She could pretend that none of this had happened. They could go back to their well-worn pattern of domesticity and that would be enough for her. So long as she had Guillermo in her life in any fashion, she would be content. Perhaps a bit stung at the rejection, but content all the same.
Guillermo tilts her head further, letting it fall back against Nandor’s shoulder. Her eyes shutter closed, the smooth skin of her throat dangerously close to the vampire’s mouth. “Yours,” she murmurs, boldly twining the fingers of her right hand with Nandor’s. “But you’re mine too, aren’t you?”
As a human warlord, Nandor loathed the idea of belonging to any one person. Even her wives--thirty-five of which she truly loved--did not hold equal parts of her heart. But with Guillermo, all of her desires echoed her name in an unending chorus. Be it lust or hunger or love, they all fell obediently at the feet of a human who had reawakened feelings she long thought had been extinguished the moment she became a vampire.
“Yes,” Nandor replies with a drawn out hiss, wrapping her arms snugly around Guillermo’s waist before pressing her lips to the warm skin of her throat. “I would burn villages in your name. I would brave all manners of holy objects for you. Whatever you ask, it is yours. I am yours.”
And that was the truth of it. She would be whatever Guillermo needed--a sword, a shield, a monster. Each press of her lips to Guillermo’s skin, trailing up the length of her throat, are as close to worship as Nandor can manage without the taste of brimstone on her tongue. Where words failed, there was always action.
I love you, she thinks, pressing a kiss at her human’s jaw. I love you, she thinks, meeting Guillermo’s lips with her own. I love you, she thinks, pressing a kiss to the spot just above the roar of Guillermo’s pulse. I love you , she thinks, letting her fangs breach Guillermo’s skin with more measured control than she ever exercised when feeding from her victims.
Guillermo lets out a startled yelp, squeezing Nandor’s hand at the brief sting of pain. Nandor squeezes back, rubbing her thumb comfortingly over the back of Guillermo’s palm.
Shh… she says through the ether, letting Guillermo’s warm blood tether her more intimately within her human's mind. You are being so good for me, Guillermo. Look at you, so trusting, so sweet for your vampire. So beautiful and lovely. Yes, that’s it. Let go. You know I could never hurt you.
At her ministrations and words, Guillermo relaxes, the pain slowly giving way to a drifting, formless sort of pleasure--as if a fog had descended upon her, clouding all feelings except for what Nandor wanted her to feel. Adoration. Warmth. Safety.
There are no words that could ever truly describe the taste of Guillermo’s blood. It brings forth visions of sunlight, of roaring hearths in the dead of winter, of torches and the gallop of hooves--as if her blood was unearthing centuries-old memories that had been otherwise lost to the endless desert of time. Memories of home, homecoming, belonging. It was sweet, heady, intoxicating, all-consuming, and warmed Nandor’s body in a way that no human’s blood had done before.
It’s love, she realizes, the blood soothing some long forgotten ache within her. If she had to describe the taste in one word, it would be love. The realization is almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. When was the last time that someone truly loved her?
All too soon, Nandor finds herself pulling her fangs away. She trails her tongue against the twin pinpricks, waiting until the blood coagulates underneath her gentle ministrations. When she settles her back against the wall, Guillermo follows, collapsing into the cold embrace with more trust than any human suffering from blood loss should give a vampire. Nandor does her best to lay her carefully beneath the covers of her little cot, not wanting to aggravate the recently closed wound.
“Stay? Please?” Guillermo manages to ask despite her tiredness. Within a few moments, the human is asleep, likely physically exhausted from her share of blood.
Nandor knows she should say no. That it was dangerous to be sleeping out in the open. That anyone in the house could stumble upon them like this. But, for once, Nandor found herself not quite caring about those things.
Not when she now knew that her feelings were reciprocated. She had only tasted love in someone’s blood once before in her long unlife--but that had been one of her siblings, someone she had tried to turn to no avail. Not everyone was compatible with vampirism--though vampires did not actively advertise this.
With a resigned growl, Nandor kicks her boots off before clambering into the tiny cot, pressing a cold kiss to Guillermo’s forehead. She then eventually manages to get them into some semblance of a sleeping position, Nandor’s chest pressed against Guillermo’s back, arms instinctively reaching to encircle the human’s waist. The rickety bed frame groans at their shared weight, but the vampire pays it no mind.
“Goodnight, Guillermo…” she whispers into the shell of her human’s ear, placing one feather-light kiss to the nape of her neck before wading into the same gentle waves of sleep.
**
This time, when she dreams, she dreams of a Guillermo that smiles at her adoringly with sharp fangs.