Archive of Our Own ^beta

Guillermo felt like there should have been some big, meaningful moment the day everything changed. A flash, or a bang, or some personal revelation that made everything make sense. But his life never seemed to work like that. Things just changed on a dime without warning or provocation, and he was always left scrambling to pick up the pieces.

He'd become a familiar the day that he'd hung up his apron and walked out of Panera Bread. He'd become a slayer the day he, on a whim, had decided to take a DNA test. And with this new change, he'd had about as much preparation as he'd had then — which was to say, almost none.

It had only been the difference of a day. One day there had been nothing. The next, there had been wings.

“Guillermo? Is that you?”

“Yes, Master,” Guillermo said. He was preparing the room for his master’s awakening: double-checking the curtains, lighting the lights, nudging the steps back in place beside Nandor’s coffin.

“Is it a nice night outside?”

Guillermo glanced at the weather app on his phone. “It's a beautiful night tonight, Master. Maybe later you can go out and—“ His voice died in his throat as Nandor raised himself out of his coffin. “Wh—what are those?” he asked, stumbling a little over his words as soon as they came back to him.

“What are what?” Nandor glanced over his shoulder toward where Guillermo was looking, but he didn’t seem to be particularly surprised by whatever he saw. “Guillermo? What are you seeing?”

“I—“ Don’t you see them? he almost asked, but the question stuck in his throat. Because no, Nandor clearly couldn’t see them, the black, glossy wings that protruded from his own back. They had unfurled from behind him as he’d stood, and now they stretched out toward the corners of the room.

They looked almost like bat’s wings at first glance, dark and webbed and sleek, but the fragility of a true bat wing was absent in the appendages sticking out of Nandor’s back. Guillermo could see where they connected, sort of, the joints disappearing like smoke beneath Nandor’s clothing, and the lines were strong and powerful.

Not a dragon. Not a bat. But Guillermo could tell without even a thought that they were the wings of something very dangerous.

And, well, Guillermo knew that he didn’t have to hide everything from his master anymore. The slayings. The unnerving surety he felt around a wooden stake. The strength, the agility, the power that a human like him probably had no right to. But something kept him from being truthful now, a bone-deep knowledge that this was something different, something new.

Something totally unknown.

It was a split-second decision, really. Guillermo just shook his head and pretended to rub at his eyes. “It’s nothing, Master. Maybe I’m just tired.”

Nandor frowned at him. “Is it all those breaks? Maybe we’re giving you too many breaks,” he said, and his stance was unmoving, but his wings—

Guillermo tried not to stare at them too blatantly, instead just observing them from the corner of his eye. They didn’t mirror Nandor’s stiff body language at all. They were fluttering, batlike, in something almost like nervous motion. One webbed wing beat once toward Guillermo, like a dog twitching its ear toward a faraway sound, and honestly, Guillermo didn’t know what to make of that at all.

“Guillermo?”

Shit. He hadn’t said anything for a moment too long, too wrapped up in watching the odd web of bones and flesh that was very difficult to ignore. “Um. No, Master, I don’t think it’s all the breaks. I just didn’t sleep well last night,” he lied. He’d slept very well, in fact, but Nandor didn’t need to know that.

The excuse didn’t seem to work, though, or perhaps it worked too well. Nandor gave him a wary look even as he stretched out his hand for Guillermo to take. “You’re not having nightmares, are you? About…” His gaze went distinctly shifty. “You know.”

“What?” Guillermo asked, staring at the way that Nandor’s wings had gone very still behind him. Tense. Waiting. “Oh! No. No nightmares about… that.”

The two of them didn’t often discuss the whole vampire-slaying thing, and this was partially the reason why. It was too awkward, and Guillermo didn’t like the way it made Nandor watch him when he thought he wasn’t looking. Considering. Wary. Like he was a puzzle box that had something unknown and potentially dangerous buried deep within.

It didn’t help that there was nothing potentially dangerous about it.

“Clear conscience, huh?” Nandor asked, and though he didn’t pull his hand back, Guillermo could see the way that his wings were starting to fold back against his back.

They were startlingly effusive, those wings. Nandor wasn’t exactly a repressed man, always happy to air out his grievances in front of a waiting camera, but he did put up shields that Guillermo wasn’t always able to get through. Sometimes he wondered if even Nandor knew how to traverse them.

His wings, though. Guillermo watched the shiver that pulsed through them even as he raised his own hand, and he wished he knew what exactly they were telling him. “I never regret killing vampires, Master.”

Nandor’s eyes snapped to his.

“Not when it means protecting you,” Guillermo hastily added. “And the others.”

But mostly you.

Nandor’s face did something complicated then, an odd sort of brow furrowing that made him look — well, a little bit like he needed some Pepto-Bismol or something, actually. Guillermo had seen the expression before a few times over the years, and it always mystified him.

Today, though, today he had a little bit of help. An almost violent shudder had gone through Nandor’s wings at Guillermo’s words, and then one of them had bowed forward, almost as if unconsciously seeking, and had stretched out to—

Guillermo snatched his hand back just before Nandor’s wing ghosted against his fingers, and Nandor simply blinked at him. “Guillermo?” he asked.

He bit at his lower lip. “It’s nothing, Master,” he said again, but it was too late. Nandor’s fingers were curling back on themselves and his wings were following suit. “I just — um, I just remembered that I have to go make a delivery to the witches. Of — well, you know.”

Nandor’s forehead creased, clearly stuck on their last you know, before it cleared again. “Oh! The semen!”

Guillermo winced. “Yeah. Yeah, the — the semen.”

Nandor seemed relieved to have the distraction. “You have enough, yes?” he asked, and Guillermo forced himself not to picture the way Nandor made his, well, donation.

Neither Nandor nor Laszlo had put up much of a fuss about Memo’s Man Milk, the two of them just as grateful for their rescue from the witches’ grasp as they were for an excuse to, well, make a donation. Regularly, and with gusto.

Guillermo tried not to think about it. “Yes, Master. More than enough.”

The witches’ shop had been very well stocked lately.

“Good, good,” Nandor said, and levitated himself out of his coffin without Guillermo’s help. “Just let me know when you need more.”

Guillermo fought a pang of something that felt an awful lot like loss even as he brought his own hand back down to his side. “Um. Yes. Thank you, Master.”

“Yes, yes,” Nandor said, waving him off. “It is good for familiars to have hobbies, after all. It keeps them healthy and well-adjusted.”

“Bodyguard, Master,” Guillermo said. And despite the way that he doubted very much indeed that semen collecting was keeping him healthy and well-adjusted, he didn’t argue. He did have enough for a delivery, after all, and maybe a walk would help clear his head.

“Yes, of course, bodyguard,” Nandor said. “What did I say?”

Guillermo watched the way one of Nandor’s wings dipped toward him again in something that felt a bit like distracted acknowledgement, and he swallowed.

Yes. Maybe he needed a nice, long walk.

Guillermo usually did his absolute damnedest to avoid looking Laszlo in the eye on semen days, but today he couldn’t help but peek into the sitting room on his way to the door.

He wasn’t sure what made him do it, exactly. Part of it was the almost innate instinct in him now to look in on all of them, to make sure that they were doing all right. But part of it was that he wanted — no, needed — to get a glimpse of Laszlo and Nadja today.

Or, to be more precise, at the backs of them.

Did he want to see wings on them, too, or the comforting lack thereof? Was it more unnerving to see wings on everyone all the sudden, or just Nandor? He wasn’t sure about that, either. If the other vampires had wings as well, then Guillermo had a Guillermo problem. If only Nandor had them, well. Then he just had a Nandor problem.

And Guillermo was very used to having a Nandor problem.

He swallowed hard even as he paused outside the sitting room door. One, two…

He peered around the corner and nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw two more pairs of jet-black wings. Nadja and Laszlo were putting in camera time, were talking about — god, he wasn’t even sure what they were talking about. Something to do with chimeras and a lovers’ quarrel they’d had a long, long time ago.

Laszlo’s was making some kind of wild gesticulation that Guillermo really didn’t want to examine too closely (had he jacked the thing off?), but his wings were still and quiet behind him. They were broad and dark and silky-soft, just like Nandor’s had been. Supple skin stretched taut over strong bones and Guillermo could see something like sharp claws at the junctures between them.

It was like something out of some kind of dark fairy tale, and Nadja’s batlike wings, while slightly smaller, looked no less intimidating. But despite the look of them, the cruel lines and biting claws and overwhelming size of it all, both her wings and Laszlo’s were oddly still.

Guillermo crept closer to the door, just slightly, so he could take a closer look. There was a sort of calm air to them both, a languidness that felt like Laszlo sprawled out across his favorite couch. Then, all at once, Guillermo understood.

Behind them both, their wings were hooked together, tip to tip, like the hands of lovers loosely intertwined. There was something heartbreakingly intimate about it, the way the two of them calmed each other just by virtue of existing, and Guillermo backed away from the doorway.

Not smoothly enough, though.

“Guillermo! Where are you going?” the interviewer asked him, and it was almost a relief to see the complete absence of anything big, black, and wicked behind his back.

None of the human crew had any wings at all, and that at least was normal. Guillermo wasn’t sure what he would have done if even the crew had sprouted wings overnight.

Nadja, not particularly pleased at being interrupted, raised her eyebrows. “Who cares? It’s just Gizmo.”

Laszlo, however, brightened at her side. “I say! Is that semen, old boy?”

“It’s—“ Guillermo sighed. “Yes, it’s semen.”

“You didn’t tell me that it’s collection day already!” Laszlo said, sitting up a little straighter in his seat. “Do you have enough? I can top you off if you like.”

Ugh. Him and Nandor were just the same. “Yeah, um. More than enough. Don’t worry about it, Laszlo,” he said, trying very hard not to picture Laszlo, either.

It was bad enough to picture his master in a compromising position. That felt… weird. Laszlo, though, that was enough to make him want to wash his eyes out with bleach.

He’d eyed bleach a lot since he’d started working here, honestly.

“Should I send a camera?” the interviewer asked, and it sounded more like he was talking to himself than Guillermo.

“No,” Guillermo said. “No, I’m not going to be doing anything interesting at all after this.”

He hoped.

They’d decided to send cameras out anyway, to Guillermo’s annoyance.

Thankfully, though, Guillermo’s trip out to Brooklyn was uneventful. As usual, no one batted an eye at a man carrying a giant box of semen on the subway, and not a single person who passed him on the street was sporting wings.

And it felt nice to get out. Since his promotion from familiar to bodyguard, he’d had even less time to himself. It was a little nerve-wracking to leave, knowing that his master would be wholly unprotected. But there was no way around the occasional errand, and a small, guilty part of Guillermo always felt like a load was lifted from his mind when he didn’t have to constantly look over his shoulder for some new supernatural assassin.

One of the only chances he got to have some time to himself these days was during his biweekly trips out to see the witches. It wasn’t that Guillermo looked forward to delivery days, exactly, but they were a lot better than collection days, and it was nice to feel that little burst of satisfaction he got whenever he finished a job. He so rarely felt that these days at his usual nine to five.

Well. More like nine to nine. It wasn’t like he ever stopped.

The witches always thanked him for his service, though, disgusting as it was, and while he wouldn’t exactly use the word “respect”… well, at least they treated him like he was a professional. So there was that, at least.

“Oh hey, Guillermo!” Quinn greeted as he entered the shop with his usual load of samples. “Got a good batch for us this week?”

“Yeah, Nadja was busy this week, so Laszlo’s been… uh… Let’s just say he’s been making a lot of samples,” he said, looking up at her as he started to set the box on the counter. And then promptly lost his grip.

Thankfully, it had already been mostly on the counter so Quinn managed to catch it just in time to avoid a very, very disgusting disaster. “Guillermo! Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he stammered out, looking at the wings that stretched out behind her as well. They weren’t like the vampires’. These wings stretched out, resplendent and healthy, dappled-gray feathers brushing against the shelves at her back.

They weren’t angel wings, exactly. At least not the kind of angel his mother prayed to. There was a mottled effect to these wings, like shadows on the forest floor, and it struck Guillermo all the sudden what it reminded him of. Camouflage.

These were the wings of a bird of prey.

So witches had wings as well. He glanced back at the camera crew again, checking once more to make sure that the air behind them was empty.

Thank goodness. No wings. So maybe wings weren’t a vampire thing. Maybe a lack of wings was just a human thing. Guillermo bit at his bottom lip as he made himself think. He hadn’t seen any other wings on the way here, but the supernatural population of this town didn’t usually take public transportation.

Here in the brightly-lit shop, Guillermo could see the wings a little better. It was dim in their house, all candles and boarded-over windows, and the vampires’ wings had flickered like shadows behind them. But Quinn’s wings shimmered in the industrial lighting and he could finally tell for sure that while fully visible, they were not quite corporeal. They cast no shadow where the light hit them, and he could see the shelves behind her through them, if only slightly.

She was turning to inspect him now, a little more closely than he really felt comfortable with, and he saw the way that her wings fluttered right through the cash register as she closed it and came around the desk. “You’re not okay, are you?” she asked, in that peculiar, canny way that the witches had about them, and he swallowed. It was a lot easier to hide things from vampires than witches. At least the ones he lived with.

“I’m okay, really,” he insisted. “It’s just been a weird day.”

The feathers in her wings ruffled all at once, then neatened. Was that irritation? Curiosity? He wasn’t entirely sure. There wasn’t exactly a guide for things like this.

Unfortunately, though, she caught his gaze, and her own eyes sharpened. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

He forced his eyes back to her face. “Nothing. Really. There’s nothing there,” he said, and that wasn’t a lie. Vision or hallucination or what, he was pretty sure that the wings he was seeing weren’t really there. No one else seemed to be able to see or feel them, not even their owners.

God. Guillermo really hoped that he hadn’t finally cracked.

“Okay,” she said, accepting that easily enough. Then she tilted her head to the side. “But what do you see?”

“Um,” he said, refusing to look at the way that her wings were slowly creeping forward, toward him.

She smiled at him, and the expression did nothing to soothe his nerves. “Come sit with us, Guillermo,” she said. “Tell us all about your ‘weird day’.”

And he could tell that though it had been an invitation, it was not a request. “Um. Okay.”

This was the second time that Guillermo had found himself in a room full of witches, and he really did not care for the experience. There had always been an element of playing with fire in the life he’d chosen; he lived with creatures that could kill him at any moment, only affection (he liked to believe) or perhaps just pragmatism staying their hands. And even besides his housemates, he found himself in danger almost every day just dealing with all the other bullshit that came with it.

Up until this point, despite the ghosts and the necromancers and the badabooks, he had never quite been burned. But today he was feeling very, very nervous indeed.

“So,” Lilith said, leaning forward in her chair. “Quinn tells me that you’ve experienced a change.”

Guillermo glanced toward Quinn, who didn’t look in the slightest bit repentant, then back toward Lilith. Her wings were the dark honeyed brown of a golden eagle and her gaze was sharp enough to match. “Um. I guess? Maybe?” he said, and he didn’t love the way that his voice went up at the end.

The corner of her mouth went up in a way that Guillermo didn’t trust, not one little bit, and she nodded. “Let me guess. People look… different to you,” she said.

A shiver dripped its way down his spine and his answer was drawn out of him like yarn from wool. “Some people,” he admitted.

“Which people, Guillermo?” she pressed.

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Vampires. Witches. Supernatural people, I guess.”

Her eyebrows went up at that, and a barely-restrained glee was set back in her eyes. “Interesting. You can sense our true nature, then?” she asked.

Guillermo gazed around the room at a dozen pairs of eyes and feathered wings, all still. Waiting. Fierce. “I think so,” he whispered. It was just a little bit terrifying.

“And what does it look like to you, Guillermo?”

He finally allowed his eyes to rest on her wings. No looking politely away. No pretending that this wasn’t happening. No pretending that he was — that he was normal.

Guillermo hadn’t been normal for a long, long time.

“Wings.”

A ripple went through the crowd at that, feathers ruffling as the witches murmured to each other.

“Wings,” Lilith repeated, and this time her smile felt a little truer. “Fascinating.”

Guillermo bit at his bottom lip, uncomfortable under her heavy gaze. “Do you see them, too?” he asked. Was this a witch thing, then?

“Me? Oh no,” Lilith said, finally leaning back in her chair and shaking her head. “Like all witches, I’ve studied auras. We can sense… exceptionality. Power. And with no little training, I’ve learned to understand what I sense quite well. But no, I do not have the Sight.”

“The Sight?” Guillermo asked, leaning forward just a bit in his chair.

Lilith smiled at him, then, and he realized that he was mimicking the exact same body language that she’d been exhibiting only minutes before. He almost leaned right back, but then he thought better of it.

Guillermo didn’t move.

“Yes,” Lilith said. “It’s an exceptionally rare gift. I’ve met very few who had it in all my years.”

Guillermo stared. That couldn’t be right. A gift that rare, and he — he — had it? Sure, he was a vampire slayer, was descended from a bloodline simmering with raw power, but… He swallowed back his trepidation and breathed out slow. “And those people, they could see wings too?”

She nodded. “Or tails. Or magical birthmarks. It’s different for everyone, I’m given to understand.”

“But what is it?” he pressed. “What exactly am I seeing, then?”

She paused for a moment, and he could tell that she was turning her words over in her mind. Finally, she tilted her head to the side just so and said, “The innermost part of a person made flesh. An invisible extension of their soul, perhaps, if you believe in that sort of thing. You can see that which is hidden, Guillermo.”

Guillermo thought about the way that Nadja’s and Laszlo’s wings had been calm, centered, as long as they were close to one another. The way that Nandor’s had flapped uselessly at him even as he’d pretended at aloofness. He thought about the way that Quinn’s wings had reminded him of an owl patiently waiting for its prey.

“But why?” he asked.

Lilith shrugged, and the movement seemed a little alien in her smart dress. “That I don’t know, Guillermo. Maybe you could tell me.”

Her wings, which had up until this point hung somewhat ominously at her back, fluttered, and Guillermo watched the movement. Was this her game, then? Was she scoping him out?

“I don’t know, either,” he said honestly.

This time, there was a full beat of her wings. She was getting irritated, he could tell. “Surely that’s not so, Guillermo. Weren’t you telling us just a few weeks ago that you were promoted? What was it, Quinn?” she asked.

Quinn nodded at her side. “Bodyguard.”

God. He’d thought she was just asking him how he was doing to be polite.

“Right,” Lilith said, nodding, “a vampiric bodyguard. That seems like quite the step up from familiar.”

“And he found his way out of the maze,” Tessa offered.

“So he did,” Lilith agreed.

Guillermo shook his head. “Oh, no, that was just — that was just Spanish. Like, maybe you guys shouldn’t label the exit if you don’t want—“ The witches all stared at him, and he decided to change tack. “Y’know what, never mind. But I’m not… I don’t know. I’m not a witch or a vampire or anything cool like that. I may be a slayer, but—“

“A slayer?” Lilith asked, and there was another susurration throughout her ranks.

Guillermo ducked his head a little and looked at her over the top of his glasses. Something about the way she was looking at him now made him feel very much like he might be on the menu. “Yes?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, yes. My name is Guillermo de la Cruz, and I am a vampire slayer by blood.”

“Interesting,” Lilith said, and god help him, she really did sound interested. “And uh,” she continued, moving her hand in a vague sort of motion, “how long has all this been going on?”

Guillermo shrugged. “A couple years, I guess? I was still figuring it out when…” He did a little mirror of her gesture. “All that stuff happened. With the—“

“The semen,” she supplied.

He winced. “Yeah.”

Lilith exchanged a glance with Quinn, then smiled like a cat that had gotten into the cream. And boy, was that a weird thing to think with wings on her back. “You’ve been keeping secrets from us, Guillermo,” she said.

“Well, to be fair,” he answered, “you never exactly asked.”

“No,” she said, and the look she was giving him now was purely appraising. “But you’ve ripened beautifully, haven’t you?”

“Um.”

She smiled at him again, all teeth. “Maybe we should be renegotiating our deal.”

Guillermo blinked at her. “What?” Then the penny dropped. “Oh! No! Jesus. I’m not — look, I’m not selling you my—“ He shook his head. “Besides, it’s not like I’m a vampire or anything. Not yet.”

“Not a vampire, no,” she said. “And we’ll discuss the rest later.”

No, we won’t, Guillermo thought, shuddering a little at the very idea. “No, like — not to burst your bubble or anything, Lili— Um, ma’am, but I’m not… Like, I’m not exactly the type to have wings, y’know?”

He was babbling, he knew, but she couldn’t actually want… ugh. Memo’s actual Man Milk was not for sale. And besides, slayer or not, he was still just a human. Not a vampire. Not a witch. Just a human with a couple extra skills.

But Lilith was just looking at him oddly now, was gesturing to one of the witches off to the side. The witch approached her, somehow instinctively knowing what it was her leader wanted. Lilith took it, then opened it up and handed it to Guillermo.

It was a compact, he realized, with a little mirror inside.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Take a look, Guillermo.”

No. This was absurd. Witches had wings. Vampires had wings. Guillermo just… Guillermo just sold the semen.

But Lilith’s hand remained outstretched, and something about the tilt of her wings brooked no argument. So he reached out and took the mirror from her hand, peering into it as he did.

There was a beat. Silence.

“What do you see, Guillermo?” Lilith asked. Her voice, like her wings, waited.

Guillermo stared, breathing quick as he tried to force back the heartbeat in his throat. He opened his mouth to speak, wet his lips, then tried again. “I see wings,” he whispered.

And the feathers rising up behind him were a deep, dark, blood red.

Guillermo felt numb as he sat on the subway on the way home. It had taken a while to get out of the witches’ den once they’d realized that he had something that they wanted. Still, by this point he had gotten very good at talking down supernatural creatures.

They’d discuss things again next time. Maybe by then he’d have some idea what the fuck he was doing.

Guillermo glanced down one side of the subway car, then the other. No wings in sight. Across him, the crewman that had been assigned to him, Camera Four, was just watching him levelly. There were no feathers between him and the wall behind him.

“I just…” he started.

The cameraman lifted his camera up and waited. No one else in the car paid them any mind at all.

Guillermo cleared his throat, feeling exhausted all the sudden. “I just always thought… For years, I thought I was so normal. So boring. Just normal, average Guillermo. Running around after vampires, cleaning up their messes, made me feel like… I don’t know. Like maybe I could be special one day. Like I was earning it. Every time I carried a body out to the trash or cleaned up one of their messes, I was earning it. I was working hard, and one day they would make me special, too.”

He paused, sorting through his own thoughts, and fought the urge to stare out the window like someone in a sad music video. “I wasn’t supposed to be some crazy vampire slayer. Or a guy who has… I don’t know, some kind of crazy ‘gift’. It kind of makes me feel like…” He sighed. “Like what was all this for, y’know? It felt so hard, the whole time I was doing it. But maybe I was taking the easy way out, waiting for someone else to make me special. Maybe I should have been working on me all along.”

It was shit work, and he’d done it gladly for all these years. But it hadn’t gotten him anywhere, had it? Doing Nadja’s laundry hadn’t given him powers. Cleaning up Laszlo’s disgusting leavings hadn’t given him powers.

And Nandor… Following him around, tending to his every need, his every whim, protecting him and caring for him and—

Guillermo pushed back that thought as he always did, locking it away in a box that he did not touch. He’d given Nandor everything, every single part of him, and Nandor hadn’t given him powers, either.

No. Those had been his to take all along, apparently. And he hadn’t done it.

“Has all this been for nothing?” he whispered.

No one answered him, but then, Guillermo rarely expected anyone to answer him when he spoke. He just leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

He’d had wings all along, it seemed. They just weren’t the right ones.

“—and not a lot of people know this, but tomatoes are actually berries. Weird, huh? And strawberries are crowd-pleasers, but they sure aren’t berries. They're actually something called a pseudocarp, and—“

Nadja’s eyes lit up as soon as Guillermo walked through the front door, and the telltale signs of an energy drain were obvious. “Guillermo! You’re just in time. You can help me with my… thing!” she said.

Colin Robinson paused mid-spiel. “Oh? What thing would that be, Gizmo?”

His wings sort of — sort of buzzed at his back, insectile, and Guillermo squinted at them. These weren’t the terrifying batlike wings of a vampire, nor were they the birdlike wings of the witches. These were slick, gossamer, and they hummed like that of a mosquito.

That tracked, Guillermo supposed. Colin Robinson was more like a mosquito than even the true bloodsuckers were. He looked from Nadja to Colin Robinson, a bat and fly both, and felt his shoulders slump. He could just leave her to Colin Robinson’s feeding, but… He sighed. “I promised Nadja I’d help her rearrange things in her boudoir today,” he lied.

Colin Robinson squinted at him, but Nadja swanned right past him, her great, black wings all a-flutter as she moved toward the door. “Yes! Yes, that’s right, Guillermo. And I’ve — I’ve so been looking forward to it, too!” she said, as awful a liar as she always was.

Colin Robinson frowned. “You guys never let me have any fun,” he muttered, but he allowed Guillermo to follow Nadja back to her room.

Camera Four was less lucky, getting intercepted by the energy vampire even as Guillermo made his quick escape. He felt a little bad about leaving the guy there, but not so bad that he went back.

When they reached the boudoir, Nadja’s eyebrows went up. “I really commend your devotion to the bit, Gizmo,” she said, “but you may go now.”

It was a clear dismissal, and one that might be accompanied soon with hissing if he wasn’t careful, but something felt… off. Guillermo searched her face for what it was that was twinging at him for a moment, then switched his attention to her wings.

There was a nervous energy to them, like they were trying to scoop up the energy that had just been lost, and a peculiar sort of dullness that Guillermo didn’t like. “He really did a number on you this time, huh?” he asked.

Nadja stopped and peered at him a little suspiciously. “Yes, but how did you—“

The dullness was due to a light dusting of something, well, dust-like, he realized. Without thinking, he reached forward and brushed at the tip of one dust-capped wing, then froze.

What was he doing?

He could feel her wing beneath his fingers, sort of. It wasn’t fully tangible, he could tell, but he could still feel it. It was like surface tension, he thought. It held its shape, but if you pushed just so—

His hand went right through the bony part of her wing, and she stared at him with wide eyes. “What did you do?” she asked, and there was the barest hint of trepidation in her voice. It wasn’t an emotion that ever boded well for anyone in the household, not in Nadja.

“I—“ He looked at where his hand had brushed against her wing. The dust was gone.

“No, you did something,” she insisted, and Guillermo fought not to cringe backward. “It feels better now. Why does it feel better?”

Wait, what?

“Better?” he asked. “Really?” That hadn’t been what he was expecting.

“Yes, really,” she snapped. “Now, you had better tell me what you were doing, Guillermo. I won’t be fooled like some silly little donkey.” She paused. “Or like Nandor.”

That was… well, that was fair. “Um…” He wracked his brain for something he could use, anything. “Just something the witches taught me today?” he said, and it sounded more like a question than an answer.

“The witches?!” Nadja hissed under her breath, her wings instantly flaring outward, and Guillermo knew exactly who it was directed toward. “No, Guillermo! No! I may let you sell my husband’s semen to that little — that little hussy! But you will not use her witchcraft in this house!”

“No, no,” he said, holding his hands up soothingly. “Not Lilith. It was, um, Quinn. You know, the one who works at the counter? She’s into all this New Age healing stuff. Like pressure point massage, and acupuncture, and uh. Reiki?” That was a thing, right?

Her eyes were still narrowed at him suspiciously, but her wings were slowly starting to lower. “Reiki?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, wishing he’d listened a little more to the conversations he’d heard before in the witches’ shop. “It’s when you move around someone’s, um, aura? I guess? Or their chi or something?”

She stared at him like now he was the silly little donkey. “And that helps?” she asked.

“Well,” Guillermo said, and he could feel his heartbeat speed up. He really was making this shit up by the seat of his pants. “Colin Robinson is an energy vampire, right? So to fix those problems, you have to fix someone’s energy, right? That’s what reiki is.”

Maybe.

She glared at him for one more long second, her wings quivering behind her back, before whirling around and opening up the door to her room. “Well, come in, then,” she said.

“What?”

She glanced back at him irritably. “Are you deaf as well as very stupid?” she snapped. “I told you to come in, Guillermo. You will do more of this… reiki.”

“Oh,” he said. “I don’t think that’s really in my job descrip—“

“Guillermo!”

“Okay!”

So he followed her in. Really, what else could he do?

Once inside, Nadja went straight to the little couch that she and Laszlo used — far too often, honestly, and with far too much vigor. She collapsed onto it in a whirl of skirts, then raised her eyebrows at Guillermo. “Well?”

“Okay,” he repeated, approaching her a little tentatively. He really had no idea what he was doing here. No idea whatsoever. “Just — sit up a little, okay?”

She sat up a little straighter on the couch, which let her wings hang over the low back. “Like this?” she asked.

Guillermo nodded. “Perfect.” He made his way behind the couch and positioned himself behind her wings. “Um… Is it okay if I…”

Her wings twitched irritably. “Yes, Guillermo, just do it.”

His fingers, when they finally settled on Nadja’s wings, were hesitant. He wasn’t sure if he could hurt her like this. Nadja was not a breakable woman, he knew, and her wings were vast and brutal. But… ”The innermost part of a person made flesh.” That was what Lilith had said, right? And Nadja, for all her strength and ferocity, had a tenderness in her core that she guarded with all the protectiveness of a mother lion.

Guillermo didn’t want to hurt her.

He slid his fingers down the ridge of one bone gently, watching as the pale dust was wiped away from her wings and dissipated into nothing right before his eyes. It was like some kind of spore or something, he mused. Maybe it was how Colin Robinson fed. Who knew with that guy.

Nadja sighed, and her head drooped forward just a little. “That feels nice,” she said, and that… that wasn’t a tone that she usually took with Guillermo. It was bizarrely honest. A little vulnerable.

He paused, his fingers still against her leathery skin. Would she be this way if he weren’t touching her wings? He forced himself to continue on, more gently still, if that was even possible. Some of the tension seemed to seep out of her wings as he stroked them, and he hummed under his breath. “You’ve been working too hard lately,” he said quietly.

“That’s what I keep telling her.”

The noise that Guillermo made as he jumped was absolutely not a shriek. He would insist on that until his dying day.

“Oh, do be quiet, Guillermo. It’s only my dolly.”

He glanced behind him to see her seated on a table, waving stiffly. “Hello!”

“Um. Hi,” he said.

“What are you doing?” the Nadja doll asked him, and he shrugged.

“Reiki.”

“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?” she asked, and he ignored her.

Nadja didn’t say anything for a few moments, but then she shifted on the couch and sighed. “I know, you know.”

“Know what?” he asked.

“That I’m working too hard,” she admitted. “There’s just so much to do, and Nandor is no help at all.”

Guillermo made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. Objectively, he knew that his master was not necessarily cut out for Council duties, but he couldn’t bring himself to criticize him for it. “Nandor’s been going through a lot, too,” was all he said.

She gave an annoyed little huff and sat forward a bit so Guillermo could have better access to her “energy”. “I know that, too,” she said, and sounded as if that fact existed solely to spite her plans. “He’s been looking for love in all the wrong places.” She said a curse then that sounded sort of angry and sort of wistful and sort of affectionate all at once, and Guillermo wished that he could understand what she’d said.

He didn’t, though, so he just kept stroking down her wings, slow and steady, as he removed pale powder from each bone and joint. The movements were almost meditative in a way, and they helped him get his thoughts in order before he said something that he might have regretted. The wrong places? Guillermo wasn’t even sure if there was a right place for him to look.

Nandor keeps choosing the wrong women, he wanted to say, but he didn’t.

None of them love him for who he is, he wanted to say, but he didn’t.

None of them deserve him, not one of them, he wanted to say.

But he didn’t.

There was something else he wanted to say, too, but that one he buried so deep inside that even he couldn’t hear it. He breathed out, just a little bit unsteadily. “He’s lonely,” was what he finally ended up settling upon.

“I know that,” she said, her wings drooping in Guillermo’s hands. “Of course I know that. But Nandor’s always been like this, for as long as I have known him. He’s a warrior with no war, isn’t he? Never knows where to go. Foolish man.”

Guillermo’s hands stilled. It was a little shocking to hear her be so blunt about it, but she was right, wasn’t she? Slowly, shakily, he began again. He didn’t want Nandor to go anywhere. He wanted him to stay right there with him.

With them. He meant them.

“I could tell him where to go, though,” Nadja muttered, her voice more languid than heated, and Guillermo had to stifle a laugh. She didn’t joke with him like this often, and while he didn’t love that it was at his master’s expense… It still felt kind of nice to be here with her. No yelling. No screaming.

Just that which was hidden.

There wasn’t much dust left on Nadja’s wings now, and Guillermo felt a little twinge in his gut at the thought of stopping. Maybe they could do this again sometime.

His thoughts were interrupted, though, when there was a knock at the door. Just one, brief, before the door opened — and that was fairly brave, considering what Nadja and Laszlo got up to in this room. Guillermo had learned the hard way to knock more than once and then wait several seconds before going in.

This was Nandor poking his head in, though, and Nandor never seemed to learn much of anything. “Nadja, have you seen— Oh! Guillermo! What are you doing in here?” he asked.

“Talking shit about you,” the doll said, no remorse in her little voice.

“What?” Nandor asked.

“No, we weren’t, Master,” Guillermo said quickly.

“Yes, you were.”

“Shut up,” he hissed at the doll, who just smiled at him in that infuriating way of hers.

Nadja seemed unmoved, though, and that was more of a testament to the sedative effect of the wing massage than anything else so far. “Guillermo was just rearranging my chi, Nandor.”

Nandor frowned. “He… what?”

“Colin Robinson was feeding, Master,” Guillermo said. “And the witches taught me how to — um, I guess it’s kind of like a massage, but with energy?”

It was a lot harder to lie about a concept he had no handle on whatsoever. He was going to have to google what the hell reiki actually was after all this was over.

Nandor looked between the two of them, looking a little unsure now. “Nadja is allowing you to do witchcraft?” he asked. “Nadja hates witchcraft.”

“It’s not witchcraft, Nandor,” Nadja said, and she slouched back against the sofa. Guillermo pulled his hands away as her wings slipped down out of his reach. “It’s… New Age.”

Nandor blinked. “Is that not witchcraft?” he asked.

“It’s complicated,” Guillermo said.

Nandor looked at the two of them for another moment, still seeming a bit wrong-footed, before he gave himself a little shake, his wings fluttering with a little rush of anxiety. “Either way, he is not your familiar, Nadja. You can’t just take him for — for weird energy massages!” he said, and his wings flapped in a way that looked very displeased indeed.

Guillermo watched them out of the corner of his eye even as Nadja sat up to glare at Nandor. “I can bloody well do whatever I please, Nandor!” she said. “And he’s not your familiar, either, anymore! Remember?”

Guillermo stared at her. Nadja had never said anything like that before. “That’s true,” he said, and he wondered if his own wings were shaking with the weirdness of it all.

“He is so,” Nandor said, sounding petulant, all but stomping his foot even as his wings quivered.

“He’s not,” Nadja said. “You gave him a promotion, remember? Now he’s our bodyguard. And Guillermo is guarding my body. Right, Guillermo?”

“Um.”

“He’s my bodyguard, Nadja! You didn’t even want to save his life! I stuck up for him, now he is mine. Come, Guillermo.”

Guillermo choked on the air he was breathing. “I—“

Nadja just lifted her eyebrows and muttered something Greek under her breath, and her doll snickered behind her. “Go on, Guillermo. Maybe you can massage Nandor’s energy next and make him less of a whiny little shit baby.”

Guillermo still wasn’t quite over Nandor calling him “his”, as ill-advised as those feelings were, and he just nodded numbly.

“Guillermo!”

“Yes, Master.”

Nandor scoffed as the two of them walked down the hallway. “The nerve of that woman! She wants to do none of the sowing and all of the reaping. But she cannot! I was the one who did the sowing! Me!”

“Yes, Master,” Guillermo murmured. “Was there something you wanted me for?”

Nandor, if he remembered at all what he’d wanted Guillermo to do, ignored the question. “And so I will be doing the reaping. Not her!” His wings shook so violently at that that Guillermo had to take a step back to avoid being hit in the face with them.

“Yes, Master.”

Nandor gave him a cross look that Guillermo couldn’t quite decipher, and his wings shook like a wet umbrella being turned out. “Stop with that look of yours and come with me.”

“Where are we going, Master?” Guillermo asked.

“To my room, Guillermo. You will show me this… reiki.”

“Oh—“ Guillermo was pretty sure that wasn’t a good idea at all. He still wasn’t really sure how this whole wing thing worked, and sure, Nadja had kind of bullied him into it, but at least there had been a reason to clean her wings. This was different. He wasn’t sure how. But he knew this was different. “I don’t think—“

“Now, Guillermo.”

Something in his tone did not leave room for argument, and Guillermo felt an odd shiver along his back that might have been feathers. “Okay.” But if that was the case… Guillermo tried to reach out to tug on Nandor’s cloak, but he just missed. Instead, his fingers just barely grazed the outside of one dark wing, and Nandor froze. “Um. This room would be better, I think, Master. The chairs in your room aren’t the right shape.”

“Yes,” Nandor said slowly. “Of course.”

He allowed Guillermo to guide him into the closest room and shut the door. Here was another one of those long, low couches that the vampires seemed to favor in this house. All of the chairs in Nandor’s room were high-backed, and he’d never get at his wings that way.

Once he had Nandor seated in front of him, though, Guillermo’s nerve began to slip. “Um. You’re sure about this, right, Master?” he asked, looking down at the tense lines of Nandor’s wings. He didn’t look sure.

Nandor gave him an irritated glance over his shoulder. “What is this? Are you saying now that Nadja can handle this ‘energy massage’,” he asked, wiggling his fingers in something like scare quotes, “and your master, Nandor the Relentless, cannot?”

“No, Master. Of course not,” Guillermo said. It was just… It had felt strange to stand there in Nadja’s boudoir and groom her wings. But this… this had a sort-of intimacy that made the hairs on the back of Guillermo’s neck stand on end. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something told him that there would be no coming back from this.

Call it a sixth sense. Or a seventh, he supposed.

“Well? Get to it, then.”

Slowly, carefully, Guillermo reached out to trail his fingertips along the joint of one huge wing. And while Nadja had instantly begun to relax under his ministrations, Nandor only seemed to tense up further. “Relax, Master.”

“I’m trying,” Nandor snapped. “This is very strange for me, Guillermo.”

Guillermo’s fingers stilled. “We don’t have to do it.”

Last chance, he thought.

Guillermo could tell what Nandor’s answer was going to be before he even opened his mouth, though. He could see it in the squaring of his shoulders, the slight straightening of his spine. The way his wings stretched out wide at his back. “Continue, Guillermo.”

They were on the brink of a precipice here, Guillermo knew, and he was sure that somehow, intrinsically, Nandor knew as well.

But, well. Guillermo obeyed. That was kind of his thing.

Guillermo gently pressed his thumbs into the joints where the wings disappeared like smoke beneath Nandor’s cloak, then made his way up the strong bones that made up the frame of his wings. He hadn’t had time to fully go over Nadja’s wings before Nandor had interrupted, only going along the frames of them and dusting his hands lightly over the webbing between.

This time, though, Guillermo took his time. No one else would come to get him here. This place, as strange and uncomfortable as it had come to feel in recent years, was where he belonged. For better or for worse.

He ran his fingers along harsh points and let the backs of his hands trail down skin that was glossy and smooth and so, so soft. These wings weren’t furry, like a bat’s. Instead, they were almost leathery, if leather slipped through his fingers like fine silk. There was a sort of grace there that he’d seen in Nandor’s movements in battle only, and it was hard not to let his hands linger for too long.

Nandor was still wound tight, maybe even tighter by the moment. Guillermo just hummed softly. “Is this helping, Master?”

“No, it’s not,” Nandor snapped. “Maybe it’s because my energy is already just fine. Nadja was just careless.”

Guillermo wisely didn’t bring up how often Colin Robinson managed to corner Nandor in this house. If this odd sort of wing massage did help combat the effects of an energy vampire, though, that might not be such a terrible thing in the future. For now, though… “Your energy doesn’t feel fine, Master.”

Nandor paused. “What? What do you mean, Guillermo?” he asked, and Guillermo could detect the note of slight unease that slid underneath his voice and shook along his wings.

Guillermo didn’t say anything for a moment, weighing his words carefully. “You’ve seemed stressed lately, Master,” he finally said.

Nandor was quiet, but Guillermo could feel the way his wings quivered in his hands. “Yes. I suppose things have been quite difficult lately.”

Guillermo couldn’t suppress the mirthless little snort of laughter. “You can say that again.”

Nandor relaxed just a little at the sound of the laugh. “All right, all right. Things have really gone to shit, haven’t they?” he said, and there was a wryness to it that Guillermo hadn’t heard in a while.

From the minute the baron had been burned to ash, Guillermo’s life had been turned utterly upside-down. It was when the slayings had begun. The assassins. It was when he had fallen head-first into this strange new existence that the two of them no longer knew how to navigate.

It was when distance had begun to come between them. There had always been some distance, of course. They were master and familiar, not friends, exactly. But that distance had been comfortable. Familiar. The secrets had changed things.

They still were, Guillermo acknowledged even as he massaged wings that hadn’t even been there the day before. The secrets were still changing everything.

Nandor had never looked at him the way he had been lately. There was a certain cagey wariness to his movements now, a sense of waiting that Guillermo wasn’t quite sure what to do with.

Was it fear? Or was Nandor just waiting to see what Guillermo would decide to do with these newfound powers of his?

“Is it hard for you?” Guillermo murmured. “To show me your back like this?”

For a split second, Nandor’s wings were motionless below his hands. But then a subtle sort of relaxation started to ease the sharp lines of them and he sat back a little in his seat. “No, Guillermo. You’ve always protected it, haven’t you?”

Guillermo nodded, even though Nandor couldn’t see it. “And I always will, Master.” In a sea of uncertainty, that was the one thing he did know. As long as he had breath, he would protect his master. He’d tried to walk away so many times, but he’d always ended up right back here, right behind Nandor.

But there were parts of him that Guillermo couldn’t protect. Parts of him that Guillermo wasn’t allowed access to. That no one was. There was a wound there, and it had been growing steadily infected for a long, long time.

Since Nandor’s most recent romantic aspirations had gone up in smoke. Since he’d come to question the nature of the world and his place in it. Since he’d come face-to-face with his past self and had been unable to recognize who he had once been.

Maybe even since before all that.

Nadja was right. Nandor had lost his sense of direction. Purpose. He didn’t know who he was anymore.

Guillermo knew what that was like.

“What is it you are thinking back there, Guillermo? My little vampire killer.”

It was a joke and it wasn’t. They both knew that. Nandor may have trusted him, but he didn’t know him anymore. He’d certainly never used to care what was on Guillermo’s mind.

“I’m thinking…” Guillermo thought about his answer even as he eased his hands down a particularly sensitive part of the wing. “That we never play chess anymore.”

Nandor’s wings fluttered, and Guillermo’s hands went with them. “Chess?”

“Yeah. We used to just… sit together sometimes, y’know? And play chess. And talk. We never talk anymore, do we?”

“We’re talking right now, aren’t we?” Nandor said, and he wasn’t wrong.

“It’s not the same, though,” Guillermo answered, and he wasn’t wrong, either. “We’re always running these days. Because of the Council, or because of assassins, or because of…” Well, because he was always chasing after Nandor and trying not to let him get himself killed before Guillermo could put him back together again. But he couldn’t say that. “Because of lots of things.”

Nandor sighed heavily. “It has been busy.”

“Yeah,” Guillermo said, even though they both knew that wasn’t the only thing putting this strange distance between them. He just gently rubbed at the tips of Nandor’s wings, small little circles, letting the movement calm his own mind as well as Nandor’s. “I miss it, y’know?

I miss you.

Nandor nodded, the tips of his hair brushing against Guillermo’s fingers as he did. He really did have such pretty hair. “…yes. I do know.”

“Do you miss anything, Master?” Guillermo wasn’t sure what made him ask that. It wasn’t usually the kind of question he’d have the temerity to ask, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of question that Nandor would ever answer.

But Nandor’s wings, dangerous and thunderous and terrifyingly fragile as they were, were in Guillermo’s hands. The things he hid. The things he cherished.

His soul, if you believe in things like that.

And so Guillermo wasn’t even surprised when Nandor did answer. Slowly. Haltingly. Like he was exercising muscles that had grown stiff with disuse.

“I miss the battlefield. I miss the fire and the blood and the way my body would sing with a sword in its hands. I miss leading an army that listened to me. Respected me. I miss the power. The sense of purpose that I had as long as there were new worlds to conquer for my people. I miss being... relentless.”

There was a meditative quality to Nandor’s voice, like he wasn’t even really talking to Guillermo at all. Like he was describing a dream that was playing out right in front of him, one that Guillermo couldn’t see.

It was a memory, Guillermo supposed. Bright and shiny with nostalgia, all the rough edges rubbed off by years of remembrance. All the good times he’d once had and none of the bad.

“I miss going home once I was done to wine and song and celebration. I miss my wives,” he said, and he looked down. His voice was rough. “And believing that I was loved.”

Guillermo’s hands stilled. “Master…” He stopped. Began again. “Nandor. I want you to have that.”

Nandor looked up at him. “You do?”

Guillermo ducked his head to the side. “Well… maybe not the pillaging and stuff. I don’t think we should do that.”

A small smile crept at the corner of Nandor’s mouth. “No, I don’t suppose you would.”

“But the rest,” Guillermo continued, and his hands started to move again, almost without any conscious thought. “You deserve that. You deserve more. You keep — Nandor, you keep trying to find home in the wrong places. You think you have to have a country, or an army, or a…” He swallowed. “Or a wife. You keep looking and looking, but you already have what you need right here. You have a house and a community and friends who — who love you, Nandor. You have a family right here.”

“It’s not the same.”

Guillermo knew what he was talking about, and Nandor knew that he knew. “I know. I know that, Nandor. But you’re looking for that kind of love in the wrong place, too. You keep going after women who don’t want you. They don’t understand what you are, or what you need, or what you deserve. They don’t see you.”

“Guillermo—“

“And I see you! I see that you’re strong, and you’re courageous, and you always do your best. You take responsibility, sometimes too much responsibility, when someone has to, and when you want something, you launch everything you have into it. Like, with no safety net whatsoever. It’s insane, but it’s you. You can be so — so damn frustrating, too. So stubborn and ignorant and — you never listen! You never listen when people are trying to help you, or tell you anything important. You just go into leader mode, and that can be great, it can be spectacular, but we don’t always need that, y’know? Sometimes we just need you. You’re resourceful and you’re ferocious and you’re the person I always want on my side. You always act so tough, but we all know that you just want someone to praise you. To tell you you’re enough.”

Guillermo breathed hard, red tinging the edges of his vision. “And you’ve always been enough. Anyone who doesn’t see that is an idiot who doesn’t understand what you’re giving them. They don’t see you, all of you, like I do.”

The red was crowding in and Guillermo realized with a start that it wasn’t anger, it wasn’t the blood pounding in his ears. It was his wings, creeping forward around him, reaching out for the man in front of him.

Guillermo looked at them, at feathers dipped in scarlet, dipped in blood, and he understood. He finally fucking understood. Nandor’s wings had been restless the whole day, and that, to some degree that was just his personality. Loud, flighty, bombastic, untethered. But some of that…

He remembered the way that Laszlo and Nadja’s wings had reached out for each other instinctively. He remembered the way that Nandor’s wings had been beating towards him halfheartedly all day long.

He saw his own wings easing forward without any input from himself, saw the way they stopped just a heartbeat from making contact.

“I see you,” Guillermo whispered, and he leaned forward to press his lips to the edge of one beautiful wing. All around him, there was red.

Guillermo heard a gasp, but he wasn’t sure if it had been him or Nandor who made the sound. Wings crashed into wings and it was — god, it was everything.

Touching wings with his hands had been one thing. It had been strange, unusual, uncomfortably intimate, holding his friends’ hearts in his hands. But this was different. This was something else altogether.

This was like — was like flight, like dreams, like every good thing. It was a thousand emotions at once, his own, Nandor’s, all cobbled together into one huge thing. Loneliness and heartache and fear, but hope also, and love, and safety.

It was taking all of the secrets and throwing them away into the wind, their most intimate selves laid bare to one another for the very first time. Those parts of them that had been hidden coming into the light.

“Guillermo,” Nandor said, and his voice was like smoke over smoldering ashes.

Guillermo hadn't even realized that while one of his hands was still buried in Nandor’s wings, the other had come forward to grip Nandor’s shoulder — not until Nandor’s hand came up to cover his own. He'd needed to hold onto something solid. To ground himself. Maybe Nandor did, too.

Or maybe not. Nandor grasped his hand and yanked, pulling Guillermo around to the front of the couch, and Guillermo did not go gracefully.

He fell half onto the couch and half onto Nandor, the movement awkward and just a little painful, but he hadn’t even had a chance to right himself before Nandor was pulling him up, was pulling him onto his lap.

“Guillermo,” Nandor said again, and Guillermo had never seen his eyes so dark, so full of heat. “Please tell me that this did not happen with Nadja.”

Guillermo might have laughed if his blood had not been singing in his veins, if red feathers weren’t reaching out to touch the one thing he’d always, always wanted. “No. Only you.”

“Good,” Nandor growled, and then he pulled Guillermo into a bruising kiss.

It was hot, so hot, far hotter than any vampire had any right to be, and Guillermo just leaned up, leaned into it, and took everything Nandor was willing to give him.

It was a warrior’s kiss, savage and conquering, at odds with the silly, sweet Nandor that Guillermo had come to know and love throughout the years. But Guillermo understood it. He understood everything. He understood the hurricane of emotions that Nandor had to be feeling right now, because he was feeling them, too. They were everything, they were all-consuming. They were fire and blood and everything that had devoured Nandor on the battlefield.

They were burning Guillermo alive.

He pushed Nandor back against the couch and shifted so he could straddle Nandor’s lap, sliding his tongue slick into Nandor’s mouth even as he pressed forward. He could take, too. He had the blood of a slayer running through his veins, and it called for him to take exactly what he wanted from the vampire pinned beneath him. He would accept no quarter.

The sound that made Nandor pour into his mouth was needy and desperate, everything Guillermo had ever wanted to hear, and Guillermo pulled back just enough that he could look down at Nandor from where he sat above him. “You like that, don’t you?” he murmured, letting his lips ghost against Nandor’s as he said it.

Nandor just growled, the sound a hum deep in his chest that Guillermo could feel where they were pressed together, then pushed his hands into Guillermo’s hair and brought him back down to kiss him once more.

That was good, it was so good, but Guillermo wanted even more. His hips rocked against Nandor’s once, twice, and he moved one hand from where they were braced against the back of the couch so he could get a handful of wing. He’d been gentle before, but there was nothing gentle about this now. He gripped at the sloping joint where Nandor’s wings met his body, then raked his nails down the sensitive skin he found there.

Nandor gasped into his mouth, desperate, pleased, lost. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

And what was Guillermo doing? He was pushing this new power, this new advantage, as far as he could take it — and so far it had taken him right into Nandor’s arms. He pressed another kiss to Nandor’s open, gasping mouth, then another. “Do you want me to stop?” he breathed.

He would. He’d stop right now if Nandor asked him to.

God, he hoped Nandor wouldn’t ask him to.

“Fuck no,” Nandor hissed, and Guillermo grinned against his lips.

“Then I’ll tell you later,” he promised, then captured Nandor’s mouth with his own yet again.

He would, too. He would tell him everything. He would tell him about the wings, the power, his hopes and dreams and fears and everything that made him him.

There would be no more secrets. Not anymore.

Starting with: “I want you.” Guillermo murmured it into Nandor’s mouth, the last big secret between them, the one that he’d been holding deep in the recesses of his heart for longer than he could remember. It was the real reason why he had followed Nandor for all these years through the heartbreak and the indignities and every hurt feeling.

He wanted to be a vampire, and he would be. He was determined of that. But, as the years had gone on, there was only one pair of fangs that he’d come to fantasize about having deep in his neck.

He knew so many vampires now, Guillermo realized, and had so many chances for transformation. But he’d been singly focused on the attentions of just one man. “I want you so bad.”

Nandor groaned deep in his chest and he nodded. “Yes.”

And for the first time in a very long time, Guillermo was grateful to have dressed and undressed Nandor every day for the past twelve years. It made it a lot easier to get his ridiculous pants open and his cock in hand.

It was hot in his hand, and heavy, and Guillermo was very pleased to find that Nandor really was a grower and a shower. He muffled his moan in Nandor’s mouth, sucked on his tongue even as he started stroking his cock.

Nandor might have said something as Guillermo kissed him, or tried to, but Guillermo ignored him as he slid his hand up and down, catching at the tip, just like he’d imagined so many times before.

So many lonely nights clinging to guilty fantasies that he denied in the morning.

No more.

Guillermo’s breath left him on a gasp, though, as he finally realized what Nandor had been trying to tell him. He could feel Nandor’s clever fingers at his fly, pressing up against the bulge in his pants and stroking just so and—

Fuck, Nandor couldn't undo his pants, did he?

Guillermo groaned as he forced himself to pull away, to let go of Nandor’s very nice, very ready cock, but it was worth it a few minutes later when he was released as well and Nandor touched him for the very first time.

“Ah!” Guillermo gasped and his hips bucked as Nandor took him in hand, and Nandor had no business looking so smug when his mouth was so slick and so, so red.

Nandor moved his hand just so, and Guillermo was very abruptly aware that his master had several hundred years of experience at this.

“Fuck!” he hissed, “yes.”

“Yes?” Nandor asked, and god, that tone would make Guillermo want to hit him if it weren’t so goddamn hot.

“Yeah,” Guillermo repeated, letting his head tip back just a little, lost as he was in the sensation. “Just like that. Just—“ He swallowed. “Mas—“

“No,” Nandor cut in. “Not here.”

It took a second for what Nandor was saying to cut through Guillermo’s lust-hazed mind, for anything to mean more to him than what Nandor was doing with his hands right the fuck now. But then it sank in.

Guillermo nodded a little too fast, a little too hard. He’d do anything Nandor liked when they were like this. When they were anywhere. “Nandor,” he said instead, and the familiar sounds of it felt rough in his throat.

Nandor groaned. “Again.”

“Nandor,” Guillermo repeated, and he could play this game. He could play any game Nandor wanted as long as he kept touching him just like that. He wrapped his fist around Nandor’s cock again, enjoying the girth of it, the slick that was leaking all over now, as he stroked. “Fuck, Nandor, that’s so good.”

Nandor’s eyes were closed now, pressed tight in bliss even as his mouth hung open, and he let go of Guillermo for just a second, one devastating fucking second, so he could bat Guillermo’s hand away and take both of them in hand together.

“Fuck!” The curse was torn out of him as Nandor rubbed them both together, and his hips took up a wild rocking as he tried to find the right rhythm.

Guillermo’s hands, free now, went up to bury themselves in Nandor’s hair as he leaned forward, devoured Nandor’s mouth, and he could hear rather than see the desperate flap of wings.

It was good, so good, the slick movements of them together. The fire, the energy, the heartrending intimacy of it all, and Guillermo could hardly stand it. It was a year and it was a minute, eternity and no time at all, before his hips were stuttering forward with a desperate cry and he came into Nandor’s hand.

A few seconds later, Nandor followed him, grunting his completion against Guillermo’s slack lips even as his hand slowed against them.

The two of them sat there for long minutes, panting as sweat slowly cooled, and Guillermo ducked his head forward so he could press a kiss to one leathery wing. “Holy shit.”

Nandor’s laugh was a little hysterical. “Holy shit,” he agreed.

And there would be questions soon, there had to be, but Guillermo wasn’t done with this. Not yet. Not by a long shot. He had so much he wanted to do, and the world suddenly seemed to be a place full of endless possibility.

“Guillermo,” Nandor started, but Guillermo just shook his head, pressed a kiss to Nandor’s mouth as he sat back in his lap.

“You know,” he said instead, giving his hips a deliberate roll. “There’s a bed in the big room upstairs. No one ever uses it.”

Nandor’s eyebrows went up, but there was a delight in those dark eyes that Guillermo hadn’t seen in a long time. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Guillermo said, and he felt an easy smile settle onto his face as his wings finally, finally quieted against his back. “I was thinking that maybe you would want to put me through it?”

And Guillermo couldn’t help but laugh as Nandor pushed him back, clambered to his feet. It was all so awkward and so perfect.

They were going to have so much fun together.

Later, much later, the two of them lay together on sheets that Guillermo was very glad that he’d remembered to change a few days ago.

“And everyone’s wings are different?” Nandor was asking him, his brow scrunched up as he tried to get his head around the strangeness of Guillermo’s day.

He believed him, though, as crazy as it all sounded. Guillermo supposed he kind of had to believe him after what had just happened to them.

“Sort of,” Guillermo said. “Your wings look a lot like Nadja’s and Laszlo’s, but the witches and Colin Robinson have totally different ones. I think it might be a species thing.”

“And what happened with us,” Nandor said, moving his eyebrows in a way that Guillermo was pretty sure was supposed to be meaningful. “That hasn’t happened with anyone else?”

Guillermo shook his head. “That doesn’t happen when I just touch someone’s wings normally. That was… I think that’s what happens when two people’s wings touch. At least if they want it to.”

Guillermo didn’t think that would happen if he brushed by anyone else with his wings. It had been more like a brief melding of the minds and hearts of two people. These two people in particular had just had some very sublimated feelings that had come out in the joining.

“Our wings were touching?” Nandor asked, sounding intrigued.

Guillermo nodded, feeling his cheeks burning and hoping that his blush wasn’t too visible. With that pleased look on Nandor’s face, though, Guillermo didn’t have much hope. “I’ve noticed that some people’s wings sort of… reach for each other, I guess. I didn’t have a lot of control over it. My wings just…” Guillermo trailed off as he saw one his wings dip towards Nandor from the corner of his eyes. “I guess my wings just like you.”

And ugh, now that smile on Nandor wasn’t even endearing anymore, it was more like a shit-eating grin. (And Guillermo was lying — it was still far too endearing.) “Oh? They do, do they?”

“Oh, shut up,” Guillermo said without much heat. “Besides, your wings like me, too.”

At that, Nandor’s smile went soft and private and sweet again, and Guillermo felt an unfamiliar swooping sensation in his stomach. “I suppose they would,” he murmured.

Guillermo cleared his throat, knowing that his blush was only growing deeper. “Most people don’t seem to have a lot of control over their wings. They can’t hide what they’re thinking.”

Not from him. Not anymore.

Nandor nodded, and Guillermo could see the cogs slowing clanking to a start in his mind. “So. These wings tell you what a person is. What they’re feeling. Perhaps even what their relationships are,” he said, his tone going contemplative.

“Yes? I mean, I’ve only been able to see them for one day, but…”

Nandor propped his head up on one fist and nodded again, slowly. “We can use this, Guillermo. This could be very beneficial in Council duties,” he said.

“We?” Guillermo asked, and he’d meant it to come out like a joke, because as per usual, he was doing all of the work and Nandor would be reaping all of the rewards. But there had been an embarrassing note of vulnerability in it, a question that he hadn’t meant to ask for fear of what the answer might be.

But Nandor’s gaze was just soft, soft. “Yes, Guillermo. We.” He reached forward so he could brush his fingers over Guillermo’s cheek, lips, in a caress that was so gentle that it made Guillermo’s breath come a little quicker in his throat. “I see you, too,” he said quietly.

And maybe that, that had been the source of all this distance all along. Nandor had had the scales forcibly swept from his eyes and he’d had no choice but to see Guillermo for what he really was. A killer. A slayer. A threat. A creature of infinite possibility. And it had been strange and awkward and awful the way their relationship had had to stretch to accommodate that.

But maybe it had been beautiful, too. Guillermo’s breath caught in his chest as the enormity of it all hit him. Twelve years. Twelve long years, and for most of them, Nandor had never truly known what he had in front of him. Neither of them had. Guillermo hadn’t allowed them to.

The last few years, though, they had been learning, Nandor and Guillermo both. They had been learning the depths of his powers. The depths of his loyalty and just how far he could be pushed before he would break. They had been pawing at the edges of their relationship, neither of them quite willing to admit to themselves what it had become. But they had gotten there. Eventually, they had gotten there.

Guillermo felt Nandor’s eyes on him, heavy and knowing, and for the first time, he felt like he was laid totally bare. Nandor saw him now. All of him. The desire and the hope and the fear and the rage. His hidden strengths and the fire that lit him from the inside out. Nandor had been averting his eyes for all this time, but no more. He finally, finally saw him. All of him.

And how beautiful it was, to be truly seen, and to be wanted all the same.

Guillermo reached out then, just a few inches above where Nandor’s side was, and one of Nandor’s wings came up to brush against his fingers, unbidden, as if it had known exactly what he wanted.

Nandor closed his eyes for a moment, feeling a sensation that Guillermo probably never would, and then his wing dipped forward further, enveloping Guillermo and drawing him close.

Guillermo went willingly, tucking himself against Nandor’s chest and sighing when he felt Nandor press a kiss to the top of his hair.

“Sleep, Guillermo,” he heard Nandor murmur above him. “Morning is coming.”

It was, at that, and Guillermo was suddenly, sleepily glad that he’d sunproofed every room in the house. Nandor would be safe while he slept, and forevermore after that. Guillermo would see to that.

The morning was coming, and with it, every day after. Twelve long years he’d been here, and this, this was what he’d been working toward all along. What he’d been earning. Not a day had been wasted as he'd taken baby steps closer to this exact moment.

And his reward had been sweeter than even he had expected.

Guillermo sighed, seeing a glimpse of red feathers crowding close even as he shut his eyes.

He was home.