Chapter Text
Guillermo remembers walking into the bakery for the first time. It had been barely a week after getting out of the coffin that Laszlo had shoved him in. Nadja had been furious if her ranting and raving was anything to go by. It . . . wasn’t what Guillermo needed then.
After spending so long in that fucking coffin, the first thing Guillermo did was get new clothes and eat something that wasn’t Oreos and Pedialyte. And wait for the sun to rise, just so that he could feel something other than the dull panic that had settled within their very soul while stuck in total darkness.
They didn’t care how much Nadja complained in those hours before dawn. He didn’t care about anything, actually. They just wanted, needed, ached for the sun. Proof that he was alive.
The moment the sun touched their freezing fingers, Guillermo cried. God, they’re going to miss the sun when- when . . .
He started to spend more time outside during the day after that.
They tried to stop thinking about him . It hurts too much.
A week after that morning, Guillermo walked into Doves’ Nook, a small little bakery squeezed between the coffee shop that he started to visit every morning and evening and a bookstore that he has yet to walk into.
“Give me a moment!” A voice had called out from somewhere deeper inside the shop once they had entered. The curtain that blocked off an entryway behind the counter moved, revealing a fairly tall woman with light brown skin and long brown hair tied up in a high ponytail. Her dark blue apron had the remnants of what is probably flour all over it, including the small she/her button pinned on. “Hi, welcome to the nook. I’m Calypso, how may I help you?”
Guillermo started to open their mouth to ask what their specialty was when a loud crash rang out from where Calypso just exited. There’s some muffled talking, and a significantly shorter person came out, their eyes a golden brown and their hair neon blue. Their apron had a they/them pin.
The person’s eyes found Guillermo, and they started to walk towards him, but were dragged back by a third person who grabbed them faster than Guillermo could see.
“Sorry about that, Tilian gets excited when they think someone new walked in.” Calypso apologized. “What would you like?”
Guillermo recomposed themselves. “Uh, what would you recommend?”
Calypso practically lit up at that. “Oh, well, I make our tsoureki, so I’m partial to that. Our blueberry lemon muffins are a hit, we usually run out of those pretty fast, but I think we have a few left. Our pomegranate cheesecake is Wit’s favorite, and any chocolate thing we have is Tilian’s.” She listed off on her fingers, looking wistful for a few moments before she refocused on Guillermo. “So, any of those pique your interest?”
“Those muffins sounded good.”
“You got it, uh, name and pronouns?”
Guillermo was taken back for a second. “Um, Guillermo and he/they.”
Calypso beamed. “Nice to meet you, Guillermo! I’ll be right back with that muffin. You want that heated up, and is that for here or to go?”
Ever since then, Guillermo became a regular at the Doves’ Nook. Every morning after Nadja goes to sleep, Guillermo walks down the street to get his coffee from the small coffee shop (it’s called Rejuvenation Process, by the way), something from the Nook, and back to the townhouse the Worldwide Vampiric Council gifted Nadja. Most of the time, Leto is the one manning the counter. Sometimes it’s the short neon-headed Tilian, who has more energy than their small body should be able to hold. Only once has it been Wit, a normal sized person with dark eyes, dark hair, and dark skin. Tilian and Calypso have told Guillermo it’s because Wit doesn’t like to talk, so it only mans the counter in desperate times. Such as if Tilian is sick and Calypso almost forgot her tsoureki in the oven.
It’s almost a month into Guillermo living in England that he’s offered a job at Doves’ Nook.