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In hindsight, it was perhaps not Guillermo’s brightest idea. But he was lonely, and with loneliness comes the foul, clinging stench of desperation. He could tell they were beginning to smell it on him. Pity him, almost. It made him feel small, like less than nothing. Like shit on your shoe; like the newborn who keeps you up at night, wailing and wailing and demanding constant care and attention. So he put a stop to it. Really more for their sake than his. (This is how he’s justified it, somewhat.)
It’s a violation of something, he’s sure. Trust, maybe. Privacy. But the only thing that fits him better than the Cloak is Nandor’s frame. How he can look down at his hands and find them large and uncalloused, or when he towers over what he sometimes has to stand on his toes to reach. So it starts small and simple, as all good bad things do. Trying on his body like a sweater at a department store, staring in the mirror and making kind faces. Saying sweet words, gentle and private, in a voice that does not belong to him. It feels nice, sometimes. Others, it feels like the cocktail of guilt and shame will claw its way out of his stomach and swallow him whole. When he sheds the Cloak, puts it back up like it was never moved at all, it feels like peeling off a layer of his skin. Afterward, he sweats like he’s run a marathon, then shakes and shivers his way into sleep. It’s some sort of sickness, almost, this indulgence.
It doesn’t really get to him until the week of Gail’s appearance. His addiction becomes a constant, then, in any moment he can safely spare. Stealing Nandor’s shape just to look at some version of it and call it his. It is, somehow, more pathetic than when he hesitantly rests his head against the shoulder of a corpse, almost Nandor in the same way that he is. That night, he pricks his finger on the point of Nandor’s fangs (which are really his own) and concludes that when the time comes, the sharpness of them won’t be so bad against his neck.
It’s the night that Gail leaves in which he makes possibly his worst decision yet.
Slipping on the Cloak is as habitual as tying his shoe, now, and he is equal parts horrified and numb to this realization. He slips out not long after the sun has risen, and his feet carry him to the subway, which carries him to the gym, nearly without him realizing he’d done it. He takes a deep breath upon arrival, makes a pitiful attempt at composing himself, and strides in with all the confidence Nandor’s body can lend him.
He knows at once that Meg had been hypnotized. She seems both confused and terrified at the sight of him, and he’s rushing up to stop her as soon as she looks aside and opens her mouth to, presumably, call for security. “Hey! Hey, hi! Sorry about- uh- what...happened, I just. Came to apologize, is all. About...that?”
She looks away from him still, making firm eye contact with a deep, cracked dent in the adjacent wall. He doesn’t want to think too hard about what had likely happened, but he draws his own, awful conclusions. “It’s...fine. You’re not supposed to come back here.”
He cringes inwardly. Nandor had dug himself into a very deep hole and, as always, it is up to Guillermo to drag him back out of it. “I know.” He says, quietly, and then he lies. It makes his tongue feel rotten. “I’ll pay the damages. I’m uh- I’m on steroids. Which is why...that. There’s side effects and they just, uh- mess with me sometimes. I didn’t mean to.”
When he pries his gaze from the floor, she’s meeting his eyes hesitantly, with some kind of guarded sympathy. “Oh,” she says, and shuffles around a stress ball by her computer, “that makes sense.”
“Can I buy you a smoothie?”
***
It’s the worst case of deja vu he’s ever had. They stumble, awkwardly, through the first few notes of conversation they’d had before, this time accompanied by profuse apologies and weak explanations. The you used to come here all the time, and the I’ve been really busy, and the my name is Meg, and the uh- my name is. Nandor.
“So...steroids, huh? How’d that happen?” She asks, taking another bite out of the apple she’s cradling in one hand. She pauses after a moment to chew, suddenly wide eyed. “Sorry- is that, like, super personal?”
“No! No, it’s fine!” He purses his lips (pricking his bottom one in the process) and gives himself a moment to gather a story. “Um...I’m a wrestler. I used to be, I mean. But I got caught up in...other stuff, and I sort of just...fell out of it. Once I decided I wanted back in, everyone was so buff and- and huge, and I guess I just needed to...compensate? I’m trying to get off them, now. I don’t know, they just, um. They turn me into someone else.”
She hums around a sip of her smoothie, and rests her head against her palm. “Yeah, I get that. I was on meds for a while, which, y’know. Obviously isn’t the same thing, but some of them really fucked me up for a while. I was totally out of it, like, all the time. And I was mean. I’m on something better now, but it was a bad few months.”
Guillermo idly nods along, playing with the straw of his drink (which looks admittedly ridiculous in Nandor’s big hands.) Beyond the lie he’d mustered, it really had taken him a long time to settle into a prescription that suited him. “Me too. I hated Paxil.”
Meg barks out a laugh. “That’s what I’m on!” She shrugs, smiling at him in a way he doesn’t get much of anymore. “Oh well, different for everyone. My ex-girlfriend said she hated it, too.”
“Oh. Girlfriend?”
There’s a flicker of concern in Meg’s face, in the way her smile falters, the eye contact she’d made immediately wavering. “Yeah. That’s fine, right?”
“Yeah! Yeah, of course! Just- um.” He lets out a mournful little sigh. “I don’t really know anyone else who’s…”
She lights up like a Christmas tree. “Oh!”
“I mean, my roommates, but they’re not really the people to talk to about it.”
“That sucks.” Her smile returns, then, as she reaches across the table to pat his hand reassuringly. “Well, you’ve got me.”
“...Thanks.”
“Really. If you ever need to talk about it, you can drop by! I liked this, a lot. You’re a good guy to have a smoothie with, Nandor.” And just like that, the illusion of companionship is shattered. He could come to Meg to confide in, for someone who knows and understands and would maybe even care about him, but never in the shape of his own body. Never as Guillermo. Really, nothing has changed. “My break’s almost up, so I should go, but it was really nice talking to you. Maybe you can apologize to Chris next time.”
He nods, as if that suggestion means anything to him, and then he leaves, thoroughly humiliated.
***
It’s not the cure to loneliness he thought it would be, making a friend. But he keeps coming back despite himself, like a fed cat. Meg had eventually handed over her number, so he has the small relief of talking to her through text, in a body and voice that are undeniably his own. But they do, on occasion, go for brunch, or more often take advantage of the twenty-four hour aspect of the gym for a midnight snack at the same table they’d had their first meeting. They’re quite close now, really, even if she calls him the wrong name. He’s used to that anyway.
“So, um. I need your advice.” He stammers out, eventually, as she pokes at the pancakes she’d ordered at their biweekly out-of-the-gym outing. “I have this work friend...Guillermo.”
“Mhm?” She says, preoccupied with pouring the syrup. “What, is he giving you grief or something?”
“...Or something.” He coughs, and her eyebrows quirk in interest. “I think I might- well, I do- for...a while now, but-”
“Oh my god, do you like him?”
He nearly chokes on his coffee. “Well- yes, but-”
“Nandor! That’s great! Okay, okay, tell me about him.” She looks at him expectantly, all interest in her pancakes abandoned as she rests her chin on her hands and nods at him to continue.
“I guess I’ve felt this way for a long time? I only really realized it recently, though. I didn’t really want to believe it. There’s not a lot of ways it could...work. And I don’t think he’d ever look at me like that, so. There’s that.”
“Don’t say that! You never know, he could-”
“I walked in on him having sex with his ex-girlfriend.” After a long, silent pause, he quietly adds: “And then I watched him propose to her.”
“...Oh, Nandor.” She looks almost as heartbroken as he was, reaching across the table once again to squeeze his hand. He melts into it, a little, which might speak terrible volumes for how little he’s been touched in the past decade or so. “I’m...so sorry, oh my god.”
“I mean- she said no. When he proposed. And then she left to, like, Buffalo or something, but he’s...recovering and stuff. So I probably shouldn't say anything.”
“But that means you have a chance!”
“Barely!” He snaps, and immediately regrets it. He squeezes her hand back as a means of apology. “I just don’t want him to hate me.”
“He won’t. He’s your friend, Nandor. He won’t.”
“Sometimes it feels like he already does.” He thumbs over the handle of his mug. “I don’t know what more I can do. I don’t... need that from him. I just want him to be happy. But I keep trying so hard, and he gives me- I don’t know- scraps.”
“What an asshole.” Meg looks at him like he’s a kicked puppy, and she picks him back up like one, too. “You’re amazing, Nandor. If he can’t see that, that’s on him.”
“No,” he says, glancing down at his stolen body, “I’m not so great either.”
***
He hasn’t had a best friend since he was thirteen.
There’s Nandor, sure, but not dissimilarly to a child’s imaginary friend. And it was movies before that, and his Nintendo games. But Meg sits with him and listens, honest to god listens to him, and he’d forgotten how wonderful it was.
He considers, every now and then, cutting it off. Suddenly, brutally rejecting her friendship, or faking his (or Nandor’s, really) tragic death, then reappearing as his true self. Bumping into her at a grocery store or concert and finding, spontaneously, that they have so much in common. But there was the added complication of a version of a “Guillermo” predating him by his own fault, so instead he sucks it up and continues to be halfway himself. It’s a slow, miserable torture. Even worse, she is endlessly entertained by anecdotes of his hardly existent love life. He laughed at my joke today, he’ll tell her, and feel just as pathetic as he is enamored, and it felt like everything clicked into place. Like, I don’t know...like it’s just meant to be that way all the time.
“Alright, alright...what’s the word on Guillermo?” She waggles her brows impatiently, sat across from him on the couch on one of the rare occasions she’s free enough to have him over to her apartment. They watch a movie, usually. One time, she painted his nails, and it stayed when he shed the Cloak. He found he really liked the look of it, they hadn’t been painted since his sort-of-scene phase in high school, but he had no idea how to get his hand steady enough to recreate it and it wasn’t a conversation he wanted to broach with Laszlo (perfect as his may be.)
“It’s actually pretty good right now.” He smiles fondly, picking at the bowl of microwave popcorn between them. “I get annoyed with him a lot, honestly. He kinda takes me for granted sometimes. But it feels like something has...changed, I guess? He’s been really good to me, lately. Maybe he’s less stressed after the promotion hype has died down? I don’t know, it’s just...nice. It’s nice.”
Meg nudges at him, beaming. “There you go! Headed in the right direction! Y’know, I really think you should say something.”
“Not this soon!”
“You always think it’s too soon!” She pops a piece of popcorn into her mouth. “You can’t keep putting it off. It’ll be too late, eventually.”
“Yeah.” He swallows thick and sharp. “Yeah, maybe.”
***
Nadja quirks a brow when his phone buzzes insistently. “Who’s that?”
“No one! No one-” He fumbles it, nearly letting it fall to the ground as it continues vibrating. “It’s just- probably a spam call or something.”
She hums. Then, she shouts. “Nandor! Your familiar is galavanting around with someone on his little box!”
“Bodyguard!” Nandor corrects, stepping into the room moments later. He lets bemused disappointment lace his tone. “Guillermo. Who are you...galavanting around with?”
He wants to open a gaping chasm in the floor and jump into it, never to be heard from again. He wants to grovel, come clean on everything and beg for forgiveness. He wants to grab Nandor by the collar and kiss him senseless. Instead, he panics. Instead: “My boyfriend.”
“Your what?” Nadja cackles.
***
“Meg.” He’s barely thrown on the Cloak when he calls her back, running his hands anxiously through his (Nandor’s) hair. “Meg, I did something bad. Really bad.”
“How bad are we talking? Hide the body bad?”
“My body, yeah.”
“Yikes. What happened?”
“Um. Well, a lot happened.” He sighs, and shakes with it. “Long story short. I told...Guillermo- that I, ah. That I…”
“Nandor. Nandor, what did you do?”
“I told him I have a boyfriend?”
“What’d you do that for!”
“I don’t know! I don’t know, I’m sorry, it just- it slipped out! I panicked!”
“How do you panic that bad?”
“Remember who you’re talking to!” He flops onto his small, creaky bed and runs a hand over his face. “I’m an idiot.”
A brief silence.
“...You aren’t-”
“You hesitated.”
“You’re not an idiot, you just...did something stupid.”
“Same difference.” When he opens his eyes, he’s staring at the endless sea of tally marks that have hiked their way up onto the ceiling. “What am I gonna do?”
“I’ll be honest. I don’t know. There’s not a lot of ways to come out of this clean.”
“I mean- tell him I lied? That’s worse than this. So...what, wait a week, fake a breakup?”
“Solid plan. For what it is.”
“I’m an idiot.” He repeats.
“...Little bit.”
***
It’s a week of insurmountable sorrow.
Colin Robinson is extremely entertained, and very well fed. Nadja prods him with too many questions to count, and Laszlo is undoubtedly the worst of the bunch, his brand of “helpful” being gratuitous sex advice. Nandor is, more often than not, nowhere to be found.
Guillermo suspects he’s sulking. Nandor had spent the better part of three months searching for love, Meg, followed shortly by his rekindlement with Gail, and a series of sad, short attempts afterward, which ultimately amounted to nothing. It seemed about right that he would be too angry at Guillermo to look at him, to know that someone he clearly views as unfathomably undesirable had entered a stable relationship before him. Some part of Guillermo almost wants to keep the ruse up, just to be self satisfied in the feeling of showing his master that See? I can be wanted. The thing is though, that he can’t. There is no real point to rubbing it in or proving a point, when there is nothing real or tangible to rub or prove. It would be salt in the wound for both of them. That Guillermo could be wanted before him, and that Guillermo cannot be wanted after all. That he has to invent relationships, invent some man with big hands and kind smiles that tells him that he’s perfect, and who never makes him press the laundry or dust the furniture. Someone who it isn’t in his blood to end.
The man’s name is Matias. He does not exist, but Guillermo starts to like him by the end of the week, what with the personality he’s crafted for him. Matias and I met in a coffee shop, he tells them, fiddling with his thumbs, he bought me a coffee and said I was handsome. Matias is an artist, and he draws Guillermo sometimes. Calls him his muse. Matias has long hair that he ties up, but he lets Guillermo mess with it sometimes, braid it or put it in a frankly awful ponytail. Matias is a big spoon, Matias calls him darling, Matias holds his hand in public. It almost actually breaks Guillermo’s heart when he has to stage the breakup. Leave it to him to fall in love with someone who was never real in the first place. It’s easier that way, he supposes.
He changes her contact name, and then he asks Meg to call him at precisely 10 o’clock, at which point he furrows his brow, makes a show of asking the vampires why Matias would call so late, and then slinks off. He locks the door to the bathroom, wherein he has hidden the Cloak, and slips it on to pick up. Then he shoots the shit with Meg for twenty minutes, puts the Cloak back between the sink cupboard and the wall, pinches his leg until his eyes water, and comes downstairs looking distraught.
“...Matias broke up with me.” He croaks, and Colin Robinson looks thrilled by the full course meal presented to him.
“Oh. Sorry, chap.” Laszlo says, awkwardly, and looks to Nadja like she’ll throw him a life raft.
“Yes, that’s...no good.” Nadja offers, debatably worse.
Nandor is, noticeably, not present.
***
He sees Nandor in the only place he’s guaranteed to see him nowadays, when he creeps into his room to help him off to bed. “Guillermo.” He says, more of bored acknowledgement than anything else.
“Hi, Master.” He says, eyes low, and slipping a hoarse crack into his voice. “I’m here to. You know.”
He watches Nandor nod from within his coffin, then slowly sit up. “You sound like shit, Guillermo.”
He laughs, weak, and feels his eyes brim as he starts to tightly pinch his thigh again. “Sorry- um. Matias and I-”
“Again with the Matthew!”
“...Matias.”
“Whatever.” Nandor huffs, and promptly slumps back into his coffin. “Let me guess, he has bought you flowers. He has painted you again- Oh, big deal! Oh he painted you! He’s an art-eest , Guillermo, he just likes painting.”
Guillermo blinks. “We broke up.”
“...Oh.” Nandor freezes, and it’s a solid thirty seconds of awkward, shuffling silence.
“Or- well.” He pinches the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. “Okay. Alright. God damn- Okay. So. Matias doesn’t...exist.”
“...What?”
“I made him up.”
“You made him up?”
“I made him up.”
“...Oh.” Another silence that seems to consume the both of them, drown them in it. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs, and strides over until he’s nervously toying with his sleeve just beside Nandor’s coffin, hands perpendicular to Nandor’s head. “I don’t know, I just...Listen, don’t say anything to them, okay?”
“...Yes.” His brows tighten at Nandor’s growing, barely stifled grin. “Goodnight, Guillermo.”
“Goodnight, Master.”
He flicks off the light behind him, firmly shutting the door after firmly shutting Nandor’s coffin. He thunks his head back against it. Meg is going to fucking kill him.
***
When he does, eventually, pry the Cloak out from its hiding place, it’s with a sudden and unexplainable sense of finality. He knows, somehow, that this is the end of it. Like even if he tried to put it on, it would repel. There is no limited amount of uses, no definite side effects that would prevent him pulling it on again, should he so choose. But it’s like something has snapped, or shifted, maybe. He’s just...moved on. He smiles a little.
The hope bubbling within his chest at Nandor’s hardly contained excitement toward Matias’ unreality is not unfounded. He knows this, because he had texted Meg about it approximately 14 times.
He looks in the mirror. He makes kind faces. He says sweet words, gentle and private. It’s his own face staring back at him, for once. It is resoundingly, achingly perfect.