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London, 1848
Adjusting the shiny black top hat on her head, laying atop her meticulously pinned up hair, Nadja entered the room where Laszlo was sat in front of the piano. She proudly puffed out her chest and ran her hands across her waistcoat to smooth it out, presenting herself in her whole new ensemble.
Going out together in search of victims that would make a satisfying dinner was a regular practice for Nadja and Laszlo for years now, therefore it wasn’t surprising that it would get terribly monotonous every now and then. Additionally, they both got bored very easily, so they always did what they could to spice their hunt up a bit. This resulted in many unnecessarily intricate plans, lots of opium blood and sometimes, atrocious human orgies.
That night, they plotted a visit to one of the many gentlemen’s clubs of central London. Laszlo didn’t have a membership there, yet, what he did have were some connections, the gift of hypnosis and his usual flame of motivation, the one that sparked mostly only when he had been the one to come up with the original idea. It wasn’t the first time they went out to such a club to feast, but this time, instead of inflicting hypnosis on every present member from the moment they entered, they decided to take it slow and have a little more fun with it.
It was also Laszlo’s idea for Nadja to put on one of his suits, cravats and hats and strut into the club under the guise of a distinguished gentleman. It just so happened that Nadja absolutely loved it.
As he turned his gaze from the keyboard toward his wife, his expression curved into a wide, appreciative grin, revealing his teeth, tips of his fangs curled against his bottom lip. Nadja posed nonchalantly, leaning on the piano with her arm with a smirk on her face.
“Hm, handsome chap,” Laszlo mused, intertwining their fingers together, eyes sparkling and focused on her.
Without breaking eye contact, she bent down to place a quick kiss on his lips, her palm moving to stroke his scalp with her nails. When they pulled back, Nadja took his hand in hers to press a kiss to his knuckles, pulled her hat lower and strolled towards the settee. The sheer confidence she exuded was electrifying and Laszlo watched her in awe from behind his piano. She lazily perched on the plush seat, knees spread wide and head thrown back.
Obviously, as all ideas and plans Laszlo Cravensworth made, it was supposed to fulfill the two most important criteria: fun and turning him on. Though the second one wasn’t hard to fulfill, especially whenever Nadja was involved, the concept wasn’t nearly half as good as the image of her playing out in front of him at the moment.
Nadja stared at the candle on the nearby table with a gleam in her eyes that almost seemed fleeting, wistful. Laszlo wished he could understand that look, but primarily, wished for her to turn her eyes back to him and swallow him with that gaze of hers.
“You know what, darling,” she spoke in a bold tone, but her eyes were still away from him, “I think I like this quite a lot.”
“So do I, my cherry pie. You look truly disarming.”
“Thank you, obviously I do, but that’s not what I mean,” the slightest hint of a smile crept up her face when she leaned forward and placing both palms on her knees, looked at him once again.
Laszlo only raised his eyebrows and nodded, as a signal for her to continue.
“I like this kind of masculinity. It just feels right, that I can be a pretty lad if I want to. And I think that… every once in a while, I would like to be one.”
Her stare was a ghostly one, flying around from his eyes, to the floor, around the room, back to the candle and back to him. As she awaited a response, her fingers played with the ornate ring with an onyx stone on her thumb, an old gift from her Laszlo.
His Laszlo , Nadja considered.
The reaction his Laszlo produced was mildly predictable. He carefully took every word in with a delicate smile on his lips and then stood up from the stool behind the piano to take his place on the settee next to Nadja. Placing his hand atop Nadja’s, he interweaved their thumbs and answered:
“Of course, my dearest. In fact, I will be glad to see more of my clothing on you, if you want to.”
“And glad to take them off, I suppose.”
“Obviously.”
They shared a look that could only be shared by people who had spent this many years together and knew each other inside and out.
“Get dressed, my dark baby,” Nadja gave Laszlo a pat on his shoulder, “I’m getting a bit hungry.”
It was pleasant, both the meal and the time spent poking fun at the uptight and boring gentlemen. The pair walked back home in a drunken haze, both from the amounts of whiskey the fellows drank and the satisfaction of such an abundant dinner. Climbing up the three flights of stairs, they held onto each other, so as not to let their spinning heads make them fall over, stealing kisses along the way.
“It would have been even more entertaining,” Nadja affectionately chided Laszlo as he turned the doorknob in his hand, ”If you didn’t start threatening these trash-talking donkeys so early.”
“And what was I supposed to do? Sit there and listen?”
Nadja didn’t give him any answer, only peered at him with a content smirk.
“Nobody can poor-mouth my Nadja,” he proudly announced, “Because firstly, he is my sweet darling and secondly, because he will fuck up anyone who does.”
Instantaneously, Nadja perked up at the change of pronoun. She let out an excited shriek, held up his fists and shook them, just like he always did whenever he had something to be joyful about. The sight of him like this left Laszlo with a toothy, adoring grin that didn’t leave his face for even a moment, as they made their way into the boudoir.
—
New York, 1948
The couple strolled through the streets of New York on a cool autumn night, with Laszlo’s arm hooked around Nadja’s and chilly air hitting their faces. They were on their way back home from the movie theater, walking mostly in silence, with an occasional comment about the movie they had just watched. Laszlo hadn’t been particularly interested in it, but he was aware of how enamored his wife was with the actress playing the main role of an aspiring ballerina, so naturally, he wanted to indulge her.
Leaves were crunching under their steps as they reached the fence of their residence. As sudden as a swoop of the wind, Nadja swept Laszlo into a hungry kiss that made him so giddy he almost fell onto one of his topiaries. She giggled as Laszlo chased them into the house and upon reaching the door of their crypt, she reached out her hand to him, an inviting smile on her face.
Per usual, it was only a matter of minutes until they were on each other, mouths connected and hands pulling at clothing, running across skin.
Still, this time something was different.
Nadja promptly noticed how distant Laszlo seemed while unbuttoning the front of her dress. After being married to him for ages, reading his husband’s true emotions came natural to her. Also, after countless instances of lovemaking it was certain that if Laszlo wasn’t immersed in the passion, something was definitely wrong.
She put her index finger under his chin and lifted it up, looking down at him from under her half-lidded eyes.
“Darling, what’s going on?” Nadja asked in that caring tone of hers that made him feel a little bad for being so unusually nervous.
Waiting for an answer, she brushed her lips against his neck, over that scar she left so many years ago, his collarbones. He let out a deep sigh.
“Nadja, my dear,” she looked up at the mention of her name, instead of a regular my darling , “Could we try something… a little different?”
Nadja flashed him a crooked eyebrow and a pout in contemplation, then suddenly her eyebrows raised, as if in understanding.
“Sure, my love,” they brushed a hand against their lover’s arm, “Do you want me to fetch the strapped dildo?”
Laszlo chuckled at the misunderstanding. To be frank, if he didn’t have something else on his mind, he would have asked her to do exactly that.
“No, but I appreciate you asking,” Nadja’s smile spread from one cheek to the other, “See, I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while and…” he wondered how the hell was he stumbling around his words so badly, specifically in front of his spouse, to whom he’d been married for more than two centuries now, “Sometimes, I feel that I want to be your good lady wife.”
Nadja looked at him as if he had just said the most obvious fact, such as Laszlo is madly in love with Nadja or Nandor is a terrible dancer or the Earth is held up by four mighty elephants, who stand on the shell of a large turtle . In this moment, Laszlo had no idea why he got so nervous about this, of course her Nadja would welcome her with open arms.
“You are,” Nadja spoke in such a way that Laszlo heard the smile in her voice as she put her hands in her shoulder-length hair and brushed, twirled the waves with her fingers slowly, “My sweet lady.”
Laszlo buried her hands in Nadja’s own long, dark hair and pulled him closer until their noses were touching and their lips couldn’t resist the pull towards each other. Nadja ran her slender hands against her wife’s chest and pulled back from the kiss with a wicked smile.
“Now, my good lady wife,” she tried to follow the intonation Laszlo always used, “May I please ride you? I am excruciatingly horny.”
A chuckle filled the air of their room and they got lost in each other’s smiling faces before attending to their business.
When they woke up the next evening, their usual routine proceeded. After getting out of their coffins, they strolled hand in hand to their roomy wardrobe and began the complicated process of dressing up, with the intention of wearing matching patterns or colors, as they did on most days. Then, Nadja sat at the vanity table and Laszlo helped her brush out and style her hair, which was wrapped in many hair rollers for the time she was sleeping. She grabbed a stool and started to help her wife with her makeup. They had been doing this every night for years and years now and even though trends changed, Laszlo knew how to make his darling look just the way she liked it.
He finished off with a flick of the wrist, applying mascara to her lashes with a tiny brush and pulled her head back to admire her work. She was just about to stand up, but what stopped her was Nadja’s hand on her knee.
“What about you, my love?” Nadja brushed his hair out of his face and pointed to the cosmetics on top of the vanity table with her head, “Would you like some?”
Laszlo considered for a little while, then spoke enthusiastically, “Actually, I would love that, yes.”
Nadja instructed her to keep her eyes half-open while putting pearly silver eyeshadow on her eyelids and topping it off with some eyeliner. She held out her collection of lipstick for Laszlo to choose one, he obviously picked the same one he put on Nadja’s lips moments earlier. Nadja had to apply the lipstick twice, as it got all ruined after they shared a few kisses.
“And… done.”
“Ah, I wish I could see myself,” when she looked deep into her wife’s eyes, she almost could. Nadja hummed, running a finger across her cheek.
“You’re so, so stunning, just perfect. My scrumptious-looking bombshell. My dolly.”
Laszlo beamed at her before wrapping a pair of arms around her in a tight embrace.
—
New York, 2020
Guillermo had been dusting off some tchotchkes set on one of the dressers when he caught sight of Laszlo, sighing wearily and stumbling around the house with over-the-top dramatism. He tried to pay it no mind, but after a series of grunts and whines, he was hard to ignore. Guillermo looked out from behind the door frame.
Laszlo seemed like he didn’t notice him, throwing his hands up and exclaiming, “Oh, wherever is my darling husband?”
Now, after all these years with these eccentric vampires, Guillermo learned nothing could truly be surprising. He was aware of Laszlo’s numerous partners, but a husband? It threw him off-guard, “Your… huh?”
“My husband.”
“Since when do you have a husband?” he twisted his face into a frown.
“Since the dawn of time, almost,” Guillermo was really not getting something, “Now, Gizmo, stop fucking around. Where is Nadja?”
Oh. So Nadja was the husband all along. He never noticed Laszlo calling her that, at least from what he could remember. Maybe it was something new, maybe Nadja had some kind of gender realization lately. Or maybe, and that was also possible, the couple was trying out some new roleplay thing. If that was the case, he wasn’t really interested.
“Uh, upstairs, maybe?”
Laszlo sprinted to the stairs and Guillermo found himself following him. They found Nadja in one of the rooms, browsing through bottles of perfume placed on top of the dresser. His doll sat next to them, twitching her nose as if she was smelling them.
“There he is!” Laszlo shouted, embracing her from behind.
Nadja chuckled, turning his head around and peppering Laszlo’s face with smooches.
Guillermo felt as if he shouldn’t be there, but he felt the dire need to ask one question, “So, Nadja, you’re a husband now?”
“Well, yes, sometimes I am a wife, sometimes a husband and sometimes simply a spouse.” Nadja turned to him with a disinterested expression, as if it was a clear and apparent thing.
Laszlo looked at him too, pointing to himself, saying, “Similar thing.”
“So, that means that you are… genderfluid?” he hesitated, wondering if they even knew that term.
“Is that what they call it now?” Laszlo frowned, taking his good gentleman husband’s hand into his own.
“Sounds like a terrible euphemism for ejaculation,” Nadja added with an appalled grimace.
“Speaking of ejaculation, my darling,” the couple smiled at each other, already having the same thing in mind. Laszlo pierced Guillermo with an annoyed gaze, “Gizmo, get the fuck out of here.”
Guillermo left with a tired sigh, but also, a trace of a smile on his face.