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Of course, Laszlo couldn’t sleep. Whatever was gnawing at his chest wouldn’t let go. “A tempest in a skull,” he muttered to himself. He hadn’t read Les Misérables in years, but the expression felt most appropriate, and he couldn’t help but feel some kinship with Victor Hugo, whose sexual escapades interested Laszlo more than his actual writing.
Laszlo slipped out of his coffin, careful not to wake Nadja, whom the events of the night had left rather unfazed, and headed straight to Guillermo’s room. They had made their way back from the necromancer’s separately; the poor boy looked like he needed some time alone; moreover, Laszlo wasn’t too excited about riding shotgun in the bike trailer in which they had carried Derek’s body.
But now, Laszlo couldn’t leave the human alone. Guillermo was still awake, the vampire could hear him puttering about; it was actually all he could hear in the otherwise dead-silent house. Although Laszlo could feel the sun just about to rise, he shrouded his own need for company in the excuse of a sense of duty toward Guillermo. He probably needed to talk as much as Laszlo did.
He didn’t announce himself, instead he slowly and gently lifted the curtain that served as a door to Guillermo’s room. The boy was sitting on his bed and got up as Laszlo came in. How ridiculously polite. He looked puzzled, and the devastating sadness in his eyes seemed to run deeper than ever, but if he wanted Laszlo to leave, his expression didn’t betray it.
“Hey Laszlo,” he said.
Laszlo didn’t respond. It was the first time that he had actually entered Guillermo’s room. He couldn’t believe he had never noticed how small that closet of a room was, how suddenly unfitting it was of the man that had spent the past however many years in it.
After scanning the room–its dark walls, the few meager trinkets scattered on battered furniture, the ugly bed–for longer than was necessary, Laszlo eventually spoke.
“Why do you stay under the stairs?”
Why, indeed, did Guillermo never take another one of the rooms in the house? Why did the vampires, and Nandor especially, never suggest he pick one of the many empty rooms that Laszlo was pretty sure were available? The vampire felt his shoulders sag in consternation as he waited for Guillermo to answer.
“I guess I never really thought about it,” Guillermo said, his hesitation betraying his lie.
Laszlo stood just in front of the curtain, unsure what to do. He hadn’t given any thought as to what exactly he was hoping to accomplish coming in here, and he had suddenly lost all confidence in his improvisation skills. Guillermo didn’t wait for him to shuffle through his rolodex of witticisms.
“I really fucked up, huh,” the human man said as his voice started to break. Without thinking Laszlo stepped forward, and before he could say anything, Guillermo was burying his face in the vampire’s shirt.
Laszlo froze in his boots. He stared above the human’s head, dead still, and Guillermo’s shoulders started shaking. Fuck me, now he’s crying the vampire thought, not as disgruntled as he was startled by this sudden turn of events. He hadn’t planned on anything more than a cursory cheer-up that would in turn make him feel a little better before finally getting the sleep he deserved, and now he was stuck in a rather awkward position, weighing his options.
Laszlo held up his hands, and if Guillermo had looked up he would have believed that the vampire was trying to hypnotize him. But it was not what Laszlo intended. No, he was powerless, he realized, exasperated. Surrendering to the outpour of grief, sobs and sniffling of which he was now the recipient. He thought about putting his hands on Guillermo’s shoulders but they were shaking so hard it felt grotesque to do so. Instead he chose to simply rest his hands on the human’s waist, and his chin on his head, hoping that Guillermo wouldn’t mind, or that it would even help a little. The only way Laszlo ever knew how to comfort anyone was through mindblowing sex, but he had a hunch it would probably do more bad than good in this situation. For fuck’s sake, he wasn’t sure the poor bastard had ever had an orgasm. He just hoped that as simple a gesture as that would be interpreted as what it was, a genuine yet clumsy attempt at easing Guillermo’s pain.
“You sure did, fucknut. You royally fucked up,” he finally let out. Guillermo chuckled, as if the violence of the words was somehow softening the blow of Laszlo’s agreeing. “We all did,” the vampire continued, surprising himself. “Well, maybe not Nadja. My darling wife never did anything wrong. And neither did Colin, really. At least not that I’m aware.”
Guillermo looked up at him, but Laszlo refused to let their eyes meet. He couldn’t bring himself to admit out loud, especially not to Guillermo, the true extent of his own guilt. If he hadn’t turned that baby a hundred years ago, maybe he wouldn’t have felt so guilty at the thought of leaving Colin alone crawling about helplessly in the basement. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to send Guillermo overseas with Nadja, thus taking his turning away from him, and maybe then Guillermo wouldn’t have gone to this miserable Derek, and none of this crap would have happened. Maybe that’s why he was feeling like he had to comfort the human: the remorse had been stewing for a while, and as much as he hated it, he felt some sort of responsibility in the affair.
Now Guillermo’s face was back against Laszlo’s chest, and his hands were gripping the vampire’s jacket lapels with all their strength. Laszlo could feel the warmth of the tears bleeding through the fabric onto his skin. He suddenly realized how cold he had been feeling, and he found himself taking in as much of the heat as he could. The impulse to hold Guillermo closer and to wrap his arms around him crossed his mind, but he brushed it off.
Reluctantly, he took his right hand off Guillermo’s waist to shuffle through his pockets looking for his handkerchief. When he handed it to Guillermo, the human looked at him with disgust and escaped the embrace to go grab a tissue from a box on his night stand. The ungrateful little rat. There were barely any cum stains visible on the perfectly fine handkerchief, but Laszlo lets the offense slide just this once.
After blowing his nose with the piteous gesticulation of a sad clown, Guillermo went back to sit on his bed, leaving a distance between him and Laszlo that the vampire didn’t dare cross.
“What was I thinking?” Guillermo said, more to himself than to Laszlo, really, who merely stood there.
Laszlo eventually worked up the courage to sit next to him, mirroring his position, leaving an excruciating few inches between their legs. “You had a choice,” the vampire tried.
“I know I did, and I know it was wrong to go to Derek, and that…”
“That’s not what I meant, you absolute buffoon.” Laszlo hated how affectionate that insult had sounded. “You had a choice where none of us ever did.” Guillermo turned his face towards him, and for the first time that night, Laszlo looked back. The confusion on the human’s face was evident and Laszlo wondered for a second if he had come back from vampirism more stupid than he was before. The boy was quick with his fists but not so with his head, and he would need all the little brain power he has left to fully comprehend what Laszlo was about to pour out of him.
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this,” Laszlo whispered, exasperated. But it was too late, it had been too late for a very long time. “Nadja turning me was the most beautiful thing that could have ever happened to me. I spent the past centuries honoring her choice to turn me and I have been living the most exquisite, debauched and thrilling eternity a man could dream of living.” He couldn’t help but the smirk at the sheer thought of it. “And, had I known that there was a possibility for me to be human again, at the cost of Nadja’s life, I would never even have considered going back.” Guillermo was now listening attentively, or at least he looked like he was. Good. They were getting somewhere. “But take Nandor. He didn’t even know what vampires were, he simply died in the middle of the desert and woke up with a splitting headache, a sun allergy and an unquenchable thirst for human blood. No one asked him if he wanted it. He doesn’t even know who did it and he never will. He just had to get along with it, or fuck off and die.” He paused to let his words hit their target. “You, my boy, on the other hand, knew exactly what you were getting into, and when you realized that maybe the eternal night and its horrors weren’t as sexy as you imagined them, Nandor found you a way out. What do you think would have happened if Nandor had been the one to turn you when he realized you weren’t up for it?”
Guillermo opened his mouth, more out of shock than to answer the question. Laszlo let his tone become slightly more scolding. “Looks to me like this was the best possible outcome, don’t you agree?”
The human didn’t respond. He would need some time. As Laszlo was about to stand up, satisfied with his exposé, Guillermo spoke, to the vampire’s surprise.
“What did you want tell me? When we were at the motel? Before you got distracted by the porn you put on the TV?”
Why did he have to bring this up now? Laszlo suddenly felt too vulnerable for comfort.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
Playing dumb wasn’t going to get Laszlo anywhere, the human decidedly wasn’t as stupid as he let on.
“What were you going to tell me?” he repeated.
“Nothing you don’t already know, lad.” He tried to smile. After a pause, he started again. “I’m sorry Guillermo. I failed to figure out a way to turn you back that wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“So it was never about sorting books, right? You spent those weeks refusing to talk to us because of me?” Laszlo regretted his words immediately.
“No, it was all my fault. I should have figured out a way to fix this”—he almost said ‘to fix you,’ but thankfully thought better. “We shouldn't have had to kill your Derek.”
“He wasn’t my-”
“Shut up Guillermo. This is serious. I failed you, as a man of science, and I'm partially responsible for the mess you're in now.”
Guillermo was stunned into silence. As he should. Apologies from Laszlo were rare enough that they should appreciated. The vampire stopped talking, out of fear of losing his composure. He didn’t want to think about how failing to unturn Guillermo meant a much greater failure that the human couldn’t fathom: Laszlo had failed to find a way to ever unturn other vampires. To unturn himself.
He was so scared that, if he didn’t shut up, he would talk about Sean, so human and warm and beautiful, who lived a life Laszlo didn't know he missed until he met him. He would talk about how he couldn’t stop thinking of that one time he went to the beach in broad daylight, and how it hurt more than it did him good, because he had remembered. For a few hours, centuries into the night, he had remembered what it meant to feel the sun, though his skin paid the price for days afterwards.
He would talk about how unspeakably jealous he was that Guillermo had been able to toss away his humanity and get it back so easily, with the help of those who loved him, despite the betrayal.
And maybe he would even talk about how the radical change in the human’s appearance after his unturning had completely took Laszlo by surprise, not the least because long hair and a beard looked absolutely stunning on him–he would have to talk it out with Nadja, though he didn’t know if he wanted her to agree with him or to shame him into changing his mind. But also because Laszlo suddenly saw himself, his human self, that he thought he had lost so long ago, in Guillermo. For brief moments he saw glimpses of what he thought Nadja had seen in him before turning him: a yearning man-child with enough love to give for millennia and no one to give it to yet.
“What’s next?” Guillermo asked. “What am I gonna do now? I can’t stay here.” The words hit Laszlo like an F-150–he’d run a couple people over ‘by accident’ with his truck back in Clairton, and he suspected that that was how it felt.
He had seen the Colin he raised change overnight and forget all about him, and it dawned on him that Guillermo could very well decide to do the same. He barely entertained the thought for he didn't know that he could handle such an ordeal repeating.
“Guillermo-”
“I spent the last 13 years of my life preparing for something that, surprise, turned out not to be for me. In the process I destroyed my relationship with Nandor and now I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be, much less what I’m supposed to do. All I know is I have to leave. There’s so much time I can spend here before it’s too late.”
How dared he. After all Nandor had done for him he still didn’t understand. Nandor was the one who made up an entire ceremony just for him. Nandor was the one who killed Derek when Buffy de la Cruz the Vampire Slayer didn’t even have the balls to do it. He was not really stupid, he was just incredibly self-centered. Laszlo wanted to rip Guillermo’s head off, but instead he grabbed the human’s hand in his. It was soft and slightly clammy. How disgustingly adorable, Laszlo couldn’t help thinking.
“Look,” Laszlo eventually spoke. “You’ve been a lot of things around here. You’ve been a familiar, bodyguard, and best man to Nandor, you’ve been an accountant to Nadja, a father to Colin and a failed scientific experiment to me.” Guillermo frowned at the last title, but Laszlo didn’t let him interject. Instead he squeezed his hand, and asked. Or maybe he begged. “Would you stay here…“ he paused, more to gather his strength than to choose his words, “for me?”
For a few seconds he thought he'd gone too far, and he was getting ready to turn into a bat and leave the room in shame. Then he felt Guillermo’s hand squeeze back.
“Maybe. I could try. I can’t promise you anything.”
That was as close as Laszlo was going to get to him saying yes, but it was a start. He couldn’t blame him, they’d all treated him so poorly he should have left long ago. And yet he’d stayed.
“Also I don’t want to have to deal with a Guillermo-deprived Nandor. You have no idea how excruciatingly annoying he gets when you leave, I’m afraid I just might have to murder him if you dump him again.” Laszlo desperately wanted to say how much he suffered from Guillermo’s absences, maybe not as much as Nandor, but enough for Nadja to make fun of him for it. But that could wait. Everything could wait.
Guillermo laughed, as though he saw right through Laszlo.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good lad.” Laszlo stood up, keeping Guillermo’s hand in his, unsure whether to let go.
“The sun is up, you should go get some sleep. I need to sleep too.”
“You’re right.” He let go first, to protect whatever pride he had left. He lifted the curtain and left without a word. It took all he had to not look back, but he knew Guillermo was staring. He hoped at his ass.
On his way back to his room, Laszlo walked past the library. A sliver of sunlight was peering through the paper stuck on the window panes. Guillermo really ought to get his shit together and start fixing the house. The few days he’d been away at that motel had been a disaster, not just emotionally, but also logistically.
The slim sunray was reaching all the way into the hallway, and Laszlo purposefully walked toward the blade of light and held his hand to it. The split second that the light hit the skin on the back of his hand was enough to burn him badly, but Laszlo kept his hand up, waiting a couple seconds before pulling away to assess the damage. If Nadja or Nandor were awake they’d probably smell his burnt flesh. Let them smell. He stopped before entering his room, staring at the wound that was healing so, so fast. Before long, and just like all the horrors he’d seen and committed in the past centuries, the wound would fade, leaving no trace on his body. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror in so long, and pictures and videos didn’t really do justice, but he knew, deep down, that his eyes were the only place that bore the mark of all the bloodshed. He hoped Guillermo had seen it. He probably understood by now.
He didn’t change into sleeping clothes before slipping back into his coffin. Nadja would probably smell Guillermo on his shirt. He hoped she would.