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The Djinn can fucking suck it, as far as Nandor is concerned. Suck it and fuck it.
What does he know? He just wants to mess with him. That’s what they do, djinns, and genies, so it only makes sense. Plus, he’d been tricking Nandor into wishing for the silliest of things since the moment he appeared, so he has the track record.
He has gone too far now. Said too much.
Nandor walks along the marina and replays it in his head again. And again, and again.
When Guillermo had come to Nandor about a week after the wedding, his face pinched but smile genuine when he greeted him, he’d told Nandor that Marwa had been acting very affectionate with him as of late. Nandor waved it off as her being a recent bride and all, thankful and full of love, but Guillermo had seemed genuinely concerned. Not just concerned but upset.
Nandor knew he had to ask Marwa what was going on so he could set Guillermo straight. So he did. The following night as the household prepared for a last-minute outing at a local playground, as Laszlo and Nadja helped fix Colin Robinson’s twisted scarf, and Guillermo tapped on his phone screen near the front door, Nandor pulled Marwa aside, dipping low and asking her whether she knew how she had been acting with Guillermo. Whether or not she thought it appropriate. Why.
Her eyes had been wide and confused, childlike almost in their innocence. She’d said, “I like him, my dove. I want to be affectionate. I like him.”
Colin Robinson was rapidly vomiting up facts on something called Mind Crafts, and Laszlo was humming along like he understood while Nadja had gone on to poke at Guillermo as he pulled on his gloves and laughed at something she said. Marwa’s eyes had darted back and forth, from Nandor to Guillermo, and again, and again. It was like her eyes kept falling back to Guillermo without permission.
“He is uncomfortable with it,” Nandor pressed, hushed, and with a slight grimace. “You have never been so touchy with him before… I hope you do not love him more than me.”
He’d said it as a joke, strained a smile to try and ease the tension, but Marwa only looked into Nandor’s eyes with something raw and open shining bright in them, something recognisable, and he couldn’t help the noise he made in the back of his throat - a strangled and confused thing, which quickly alerted the others that there was a serious conversation going on only a foot from them.
“Is everything OK?” Guillermo, of course, had asked. His eyebrows were furrowed in a way that Nandor recognised as worry.
He glanced between Guillermo and Marwa, gaze settling on her after a moment, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t even open her mouth, and she still had that wide-eyed, love-laden, heartbroken look that made something heavy as lead sink low in Nandor’s stomach. He hadn’t yet registered the Djinn to his left or even the Guide as she trailed down from upstairs.
“Everything…” Nandor began, his voice sounding foreign to his own ears, “Everything is…”
“Not fine.” Marwa had a determined look on her face, her mouth set. “No! Not fine at all! I am feeling very confused. Until just last week, I had been… I had been having doubts about our engagement, my Nandor,” She’d revealed carefully, eyes soft when they met his, apologetic, then her gaze had become divided around the room. “About the wedding. About it all. I loved you once, but it was so long ago now. You are not the man I knew, and I do not feel the same as I once did either.
Though I am well taken care of, I feel trapped here. I have grown to appreciate you all, I really have, but still, I feel caged. I always loved freedom and movement in Al Quolnidar. I dread to think this is all there is to life when so much exists beyond these walls. And you, Nandor,” Marwa continued, voice growing tighter the longer she spoke. “You are lonely even when you are with me. You - You are lonely.”
“Marwa…” Nandor blinked harshly.
“No, no,” She didn’t let him deny it even though a few tears finally fell, spilling over her cheeks. “You are. And so am I, perhaps. I did not want to marry you because of the doubts I was having. I thought I’d be able to - to marry you and eventually be happy, but they kept me awake when I should have been sleeping. I worried about it all day long. I didn’t want to regret my decision. But then… those doubts were gone. All of a sudden, before the wedding. Like magic.”
Nandor registered in his peripheral vision how Nadja’s head turned in his direction, as if she was watching him. Nandor ignored the feeling of it on his skin. If he looked at her now, it’d be written all over his face.
“From then on, I knew I wanted to become wed. But I did not want it with you.” Marwa’s lips became pinched like she’d been unhappy about having to say it. Somewhere to his side, Nandor registered the Guide and Colin Robinson leaving the foyer and making their way to the fancy room, heads bowed as they conversed quietly. “I… I wanted it to be…” And her eyes flutter over to Guillermo.
“You,” She said with conviction.
Guillermo’s mouth fell open, eyebrows rising quickly above the rim of his glasses. Nandor watched, helpless, the memory of a long-dead heart beating heavy and rapid behind his ribs. He remembered the wish he’d made to the Djinn, but he couldn’t see how it could have done this.
Guillermo opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. He raised his hands in front of him almost in an attempt to ease a high-tension situation, body responding before his brain.
“Why-? Why would you want-? Why me?” Guillermo stuttered out. “I don’t understand. Is this why you’ve been-?”
“Affectionate? Yes.” Marwa looked down at her feet, her hands clasped in front of her stomach. “I didn’t feel like this about you until that evening.” She looked back up at Guillermo like she’d been trying to get her point across, trying to get her words to sink in. Nandor stared. “I promise you, Guillermo. You have been a good friend for the short time I have known you. But now… Since the wedding especially, I wish to be near you at all times, to touch your skin or to kiss you. To hold you and make you smile. I am so confused. And I know you don’t like it. It makes you uncomfortable. I just cannot help myself. I do not know what has come over me.”
“Wait.” It was Nadja, inquisitive and with her hand clasped in Laszlo’s. She looked at Nandor. “That night, when we asked about the Baron’s human form, I thought you’d also wished for her to-?”
“Nadja.”
Nadja raised her eyebrows, challenging and all too knowing. “But you did. I was there! She even confirmed it at the wedding!”
“What did she confirm?” Guillermo asked with a growing sense of exasperation.
Marwa folded her arms across her chest. She looked unhappy with the news. “Did you do this? What kind of wish did you make? What did you make me do?”
Nandor shook his head, suddenly feeling like he’d been stood in the middle of an intervention. “Nothing, nothing! I did not wish for you to do anything. No. I simply wished for… Well, you see… It was only…”
It was the Djinn who eventually told the truth, creeping nearer as if he’d been holding out, biding his time, and waiting for the right moment to strike. He cleared his throat and said, “The wish was made so that Marwa would like what Nandor likes. To want what Nandor wants.”
“And something went wrong! You are a terrible djinn, Djinn!” Nandor retorted, quickly growing frantic with the realisation that it was all coming out now; everything was falling apart at his feet. “You have failed in fulfilling my wish and now my own wife is no longer interested in me. You are fired. I will leave you a bad Kelp review.”
“It’s Yelp,” Guillermo corrected him on automatic.
The Djinn had raised an eyebrow and peered through the glasses perched low on his nose. “I do not get the wishes wrong. I made her like what you like. It isn’t my fault that that includes Guillermo.”
“I do not like Guillermo!” Nandor had erupted with a shout, lying through his teeth but desperate to get away from that line of questioning, that topic of conversation all together.
“No, you don’t,” Marwa agreed, shaking her head softly. When she met Nandor’s eyes, she had fresh tears along her waterline. “You love him.”
The worst thing about it is that she was right. She knew it with such conviction because she was living as he did, liking and loving what he did. Nandor adored Guillermo, was so, so in love with him, in fact, and she knew because she had felt it: how he could barely look at Guillermo without wanting to touch or be touched; to kiss him and to hold him, tell him all the nice things he thinks but keeps to himself. He’d been in love for so long that he can’t remember what it had been like when Guillermo was just another familiar. Just a warm body drifting through the house, cleaning up after his messes.
The thought of living without him had slowly become one of Nandor’s greatest fears.
Now that the truth was out there, the entire rotten and ugly truth, Nandor couldn’t help how he reacted - defensive, aggressive, with a flash of his fangs and a fierce hiss. A pang of hurt almost as strong as his anger bloomed in his chest. Marwa stepped back and Nadja reached out to him, but Nandor had already made his mind up and stalked from the foyer, through the front door, and out into the front garden with haste, before transforming into a bat and flying, flying, flying away. He flew until his wings hurt and then walked until he began to worry about the looming sunrise.
As Nandor walked around the roads and paths of Staten Island, he didn’t think about anything - not the looks of pity on Laszlo and Nadja’s faces nor the fear in Marwa’s. He didn’t think about Guillermo at all.
Nandor has loved him for years. He has known this for a mere handful of days. And now it was all out, and everything was in jeopardy.
When he returns to the house, everything is quiet. The vampires will be slumbering while the rest of them could be anywhere. Nandor marches straight to his room and slams the door shut behind him. He feels like he ought to break something, but the anger faded hours ago. He runs a hand down his face and catches sight of the little Djinn lamp he was given on his wedding. He could use one of the wishes to fix things. To erase the last day from their memories and let it all be forgotten.
So distracted by the thought, Nandor doesn’t register the movement by the coffin until Guillermo is standing in front of him, outdoor coat replaced by a woollen cardigan and his face so unreadable it worries Nandor to his core. He doesn’t want to have to listen to Guillermo let him down gently. Tell him Nandor is his friend and all, but he just doesn’t feel the same. He’d much rather they just pretend it didn’t happen.
“What? Come to point and laugh, hm?” Nandor snaps. “Get on with it because I want to fucking slumber.”
“Why would I want to-?” Guillermo shakes his head and the curls on his forehead knock back and forth. “No, of course I didn’t come to do that. I wanted to talk to you. About earlier.”
Nandor, frustrated and embarrassed, starts fiddling with his cape to pull it off. He’s sharp with his movements. He almost hopes he rips the material, ruins the fabric. “Uh-huh, well get on with it, because time is running out.”
“You wished for Marwa to like what you liked and that included me, right?”
Nandor throws his cape across the room, and it crumples into a pile on the couch. He makes quick work of the buttons on his shirt blouse. “I think we established that, yes.”
“But she didn’t just like me, she said she loved me, and she has been kissing me and cuddling me for a week now, and she tells me that everything she feels is because of the wish. That she feels what you feel.” Guillermo looks bothered, his cheeks pink, and running out of breath. Nandor finally pulls his blouse from his shoulders and chucks it in roughly the same direction as the cape. “Marwa doesn’t love me, you do. You love me. You’re in love with me. You want to hug me like she had, k - kiss me and tell me how important I am to you.”
There are tears in Guillermo’s eyes and Nandor feels awful. He pulls on his cream nightshirt and pushes his hair back, feeling so incredibly out of his depth and afraid. He used to lead men into battle, the threat of a violent and painful death at every corner, and he has never been as afraid as he is right now.
Nandor reaches forward, rests his hand on Guillermo’s hair, caressing him and flattening the curls there. Guillermo just stares up at him. “Yes. It is true.” He takes a deep, deep breath, and though he doesn’t need it, it helps to push the words out past his lips. “I do love you. Much more than I think I even knew myself.” Nandor allows himself to indulge for now. He traces across the bridge of Guillermo’s nose, the space under his eyes, and to his cheekbone. His skin is just as soft as he’d imagined. “In truth, I did not know until… Not until recently. But it has been quite some time.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why would I?” Nandor scoffs, hand carding through Guillermo’s hair again. “I know what awaits me, my dear Guillermo, and I do not wish to hear you reject me just so I could get it out of my system. I would have rather let it go unsaid. I thought I would get over it.”
Guillermo swallows and his throat clicks. The tears at the corners of his eyes drip onto Nandor’s thumbs, both of his hands framing Guillermo’s face, tilting it up. “But you didn’t?”
Nandor shakes his head once. His voice is wrecked, like he has been gargling razor blades or nails. “No. I am still hopelessly in love with you. I think I may be forever. I’m sorry. I - I never meant for you to know. You’re my best friend above all else. I didn’t want to lose that.”
A funny look passes over Guillermo’s face, mouth tightening like he’s in pain or about to scream, but he pulls Nandor down to his level and kisses him.
Nandor responds immediately, feeling dizzy, their lips touching gently and so sweet, kissing once and then separating, kissing again and repeat, repeat, repeat. Guillermo seems to be desperate to say something, but instead of talking he presses the words to Nandor’s lips. There’s something so very innocent and reverent about it all, at least until Guillermo’s warm tongue touches Nandor’s lower lip, startling a gasp from him and subsequently parting his lips. Guillermo licks into him, so fucking careful and sweet, and Nandor melts. He cups the back of Guillermo’s head with one hand and grips the collar of his cardigan with the other. Guillermo’s hands flutter around him, like he can’t decide whether he wants to run his fingers through Nandor’s hair or press them against his beard, his jaw, and chin. He does it all, and alternates as they continue to kiss and kiss and kiss.
When Guillermo pulls back, it’s to take a huge, shaking breath and yank Nandor into a tight embrace. The hug is almost a bigger surprise than the kiss, to Nandor, though he doesn’t know why.
Guillermo is a comfortable weight pressed against him, the height not an obstacle at all, and Nandor can’t work out just what this is, whether Guillermo is in his right mind, hypnotised, or an illusion entirely. Whether it’s all real. Nandor hopes and pleads in his head, a silent mantra of please let him want me repeating over and over. Please let him want me like I want him.
“I love you, you crazy, frustrating man,” Guillermo murmurs ferociously into Nandor’s hair. It’s like a floodgate opens. “I - adore you. I have for years! And to hear that you - that you love me too? Just like that?” His arms tighten around Nandor’s neck and back. Grappling like he’s a lifeline. “I love you. I love you. Sometimes I thought, I wondered. The way you look at me, I used to think… God.”
Nandor feels the pain throb all over for just a moment. Guillermo is already apologising before he hears the accompanying hiss, but Nandor just pulls back a little before he kisses him again, once, very gently. Then he rests his head against Guillermo’s, eyes falling shut. Guillermo hums and it vibrates through both of them.
The tension sinks away. There’s warmth bubbling inside of him, making him feel lightweight. He feels ridiculous, but Nandor can’t help but press himself closer, drop his forehead to Guillermo’s shoulder and let the laugh out, the sound of it muffled by the material of Guillermo’s cardigan. Guillermo snorts and then they’re both giggling at the absurdity of it all, leaning on each other in the middle of Nandor’s room, orbiting one another as though stuck in a slow waltz, rocking side to side.
When their laughter fades away, Nandor pulls back to return to his full height and stares down at Guillermo. His warm eyes and his kiss-reddened lips. Nandor loves him, wants to love him for as long as he can. He presses this thumb to the middle of his mouth and watches as Guillermo observes him through his eyelashes. Somehow, they’ve gotten to this point right here. In each other’s arms.
“Marwa was, uh.” Guillermo says unexpectedly. “The Djinn removed the effects of the wish while you were out, so she, you know. No longer wants to kiss me or anything.”
“That’s - good.”
“Yeah.” Guillermo clears his throat. “The Guide is kind of helping her with the divorce.” Nandor doesn’t quite smile. Guillermo continues, “But she also said that if I… felt the same… I should go after you and not look back. So here I am.”
Nandor can’t do much else but kiss him again.
And again, and again.