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slow like honey

Chapter 4: stand there waiting, trying to attain

Notes:

so. hi, and i'm sorry, lol. as i'm sure you guys have figured out by now, i'm not great at updating. i'm not kidding when i say i've been working on this chapter for a literal year. originally i wasn't entirely sure where to go with it, and that sort of vibe just continued for...awhile. but i managed to bang all of it out today, and i'm desperately hoping i'll be able to find the drive to continue. thank you so much for all the sweet comments on the last chapter, they were amazing encouragement. this chapter is a bit shorter, but we have freddie's first appearance here! and after this, we'll have some laszlo pov coming up and some nandermo. i hope everyone enjoys and it was worth the wait.

lastly, some recommended listening; headfirst slide into cooperstown on a bad bet by fall out boy. it's a modern epic of a song, and very apt for laszlo's entire character in this chapter, as well as the rest of the story.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“And what did you say this game is called, Gigi?”

“Oh, uh, this is Apex Legends,” Guillermo says, as he glances briefly away from his laptop and over at his phone, lit up with the upper half of Freddie’s body. He’s currently in the process of his morning skincare routine, getting ready for the day; he’ll often call Guillermo in the mornings. They try to FaceTime at least once every day, even if their calls don’t end up lasting too long. Sometimes Guillermo will end up randomly busy during one of their scheduled sessions, or Freddie will want to video chat with no warning. Guillermo does try not to be busy around 7 a.m. London time, though, and so they usually end up getting at least half an hour of conversation in before Freddie goes to work.

It’s nice. Freddie’s normality is what keeps Guillermo sane, he thinks.

“Oh! That sounds interesting, doesn’t it? What do you do in this one? Is it the fighting sort?”

“Kind of.” Guillermo is currently on a fast-tracked path to dying a messy, embarrassing death, and he knows if he tries to clarify he’s going to have to explain in detail the definitions of at least ten different terms to his overly curious and pedantic boyfriend. “This is more weapons based than hand-to-hand, like, arcade games, which is what you’re probably thinking of when you say ‘fighting’.”

Freddie hums. “And is this like that other game you showed me? What is it called…Overwatch?

“No, babe, it’s—oh, well, yeah, actually,” Guillermo agrees, a little surprised that Freddie remembers Overwatch; Guillermo had gotten him to play a single match, which he proceeded to lose spectacularly, and after that decided to pretend like the game didn’t exist. It’s kind of sweet that he retained at least some of what Guillermo taught him. “I mean, the similarities are a little more complicated than that, but you’ve got the basics of it right. Good job!”

“Well, I do try,” Freddie says, sounding rather pleased with himself. The splash of water filters through the tinny speakers of Guillermo’s phone, which means Freddie must be washing his face; this affords Guillermo a bit of quiet, just enough to regain his focus so he isn’t on the constant verge of dying.

The quiet doesn’t last long, though. “Now, Gigi, did I mention the Monet I assisted in the appraisal of a fortnight or so past? Well, it went to auction yesterday, and you won’t believe how much it sold for!”

“Oh, really? How much?” Guillermo thinks maybe they just might be able to pull this off. He’s still probably going to die before all is said and done, which he’s sure Jeremy and the others will give him shit for, but not being the reason they lose is enough for Guillermo.

“Over a hundred million pounds, which—well, it’s not record setting, is it, but nearly there! And quite a feat for a junior associate, you know.”

“Wow, babe, that’s great! Really–fuck–really impressive.”

“It is a bit, isn’t it,” Freddie preens, rather proud of himself. He has more self-confidence than anyone else Guillermo has ever met, which is fairly significant, considering who he lives with.

“Memo!” The sudden shout of his name and the sound of stomping makes Guillermo nearly jump out of his skin; he loses his grip on his controller, and watches helplessly as his character dies on screen.

He sighs, and hurriedly reaches for his phone, about to apologize and tell Freddie that he needs to go, but before he can do that there’s the weight of a hand on his shoulder, grip firm. “What the fuck is going on in here? You’re not entertaining a tourist, are you?” Laszlo’s head bops wildly back and forth, looking for the source of the other voice. “They have a distinctly awful aftertaste, and if I remember, I’ve told you before, certainly dozens upon dozens of times, not to bring them into the house—”

“Gigi?” Freddie asks, worriedly, “who’s that?”

Guillermo’s chest constricts, and his fight or flight engages. That instinct tends to trend towards fight, these days, but instead of reaching out and snapping Laszlo’s neck, he pushes him away and grabs his phone off the coffee table, away from prying eyes.

“Just my co-worker, babe,” he says, nervously, “the one with the kid I told you about, remember? I babysit him sometimes?”

“Oh, yes, it’s just…why is he at your home so late? It’s going on 1 a.m. in New York, isn’t it?”

“Babe, I’ll explain later, I promise, we’re just—we’re working on a project! I’ll tell you all about it, and—” Guillermo doesn’t get to finish that half-baked thought, because Laszlo has ripped his phone out of his hand, and is peering at the screen with a shrewd, curious gaze.

“Who the fuck are you?” Laszlo asks the screen. He’s holding the phone at an angle, tilted so that the front camera is looking up his nostrils.

“Freddie,” he says, hesitantly. “And you’re Laszlo, aren’t you? Gigi’s colleague who has the, er, little boy?”

“Who the fuck is Gigi?” Laszlo’s head whips up to stare at Guillermo. “Does he mean you?”

While Laszlo is distracted, looking like he’s about to burst into laughter, Guillermo snatches the phone back from him. He clutches it to his chest, his face blazing and his ears ringing.

Guillermo forces himself to take a quick, measured breath.

Freddie is saying his name, frantically. He needs to deal with this.

“Hey! Hey, babe, sorry, he has sort of, uh, a short temper—”

Laszlo bristles. “Fucking excuse me? You’ve some nerve—”

“Ah,” Freddie says, with a small nod. “Yes, well, that’s—that’s not good, is it? Is he safe to be around children?”

“Yeah, I’m taking care of it,” Guillermo assures him, “but I really should go—”

While his guard is down, Laszlo takes the phone right back out of his hands. “Who is he, really, that cad from Kensington?”

Guillermo grits his teeth. He doesn’t want to tell Laszlo about Freddie. It’s not that he isn’t proud of him. He wants to tell the whole world about Freddie, his perfect, wonderful boyfriend. But he isn’t even—

He’s not out. He isn’t out, and he can admit to himself that he doesn’t want to share Freddie with the vampires. With—

Guillermo wants to keep Freddie to himself.

He thinks about telling Laszlo to fuck off. The words are on the tip of his tongue, but…

They had come to some sort of understanding yesterday. The logistics of it, Guillermo still isn’t entirely sure of, but he doesn’t want to shatter that fragile peace before it’s even really begun.

“My boyfriend,” Guillermo says, “so I’d appreciate it if you don’t call him a ‘cad’. Whatever it is you mean by that.”

Laszlo’s eyes widen comically. His jaw drops open. He looks like a cat who’s been given a shot of straight cocaine.

“Your what? Boyfriend? Him?”

Guillermo tries to ignore the way his stomach sinks when Laszlo says that. It hurts far more than he wants to admit, even to himself. He’s not sure what sort of reaction he expected, sharing this part of himself with someone else for the first time, but it wasn’t…that. Especially not from Laszlo.

Regardless, he steels himself, and swallows around the lump in his throat. “Yeah. So what?”

“So what?” Laszlo waves the phone around haphazardly. “You can do better than that jumped up, self-important dandy.”

“He’s not…any of those things,” Guillermo mumbles, for lack of anything else to say, because all of the neatly organized little cogs that power his brain have come to a screeching halt.

Laszlo scoffs. “You may keep lying to yourself, if you’d like, but I won’t. He’s not right for you. I doubt he would even be much of a meal. Probably wouldn’t taste like anything.” He shudders. “Ugh. Inbred blood is always disgustingly bland.”

You’re inbred!” Guillermo snaps back at him. “Your family tree is a fucking circle, Laszlo! Pot, kettle!”

“No one’s eating me.” Laszlo hums. “Well, not like that.”

“No one is eating Freddie either! Fuck!” Guillermo rubs at his eyes, all the exhaustion of the last…however many years suddenly catching up with him. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell any of you about him!”

Laszlo arches an eyebrow at him. “Because you knew we would judge you for your horrendous taste in human men?”

Guillermo wants to snap his neck. “No, because you can never let me have anything! Especially Nandor, but, ugh, all of you! I just want one thing that’s mine, that I don’t have to share. Is that too much to ask?”

Laszlo doesn’t respond, not right away. In fact, he’s uncharacteristically quiet. His eyes look Guillermo up and down, calculating, careful. In the light of the fire, they appear whiskey colored. Calculating, but not cold. Warm.

Guillermo rolls his shoulders, trying to calm down, to shake some sense back into himself. “Laszlo—”

“Where did he go to school, then?” Laszlo asks, finally. “Eton? Or Harrow?”

“Laszlo, what? Neither. He went to…I think it’s called Radley?”

“What the fuck is that?”

Guillermo shrugs. “I don’t know, a boarding school?” His eyes flit wistfully over to the screen of his laptop, to the game he’s long since lost. “He said it was really old, like, 19th century old. I guess his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather went there too.”

Laszlo scoffs. “The 19th century? Really old? It’s barely been two hundred years since. See, a cad and a fraud, your boy is.”

“So which is it, Laszlo? Is he stuck up, or is he common?” Guillermo is well and truly tired of hearing this. It’s different from the spiel he thought he was going to get, but it’s unwelcome just the same. He closes his laptop and slides it into his messenger bag with a bleak acceptance that his cozy and quiet evening is officially over and done with.

“I never said any of that, thank you. I simply said that I do not think he’s right for you. Because he isn’t.”

“I know he’s a little…out of touch,” Guillermo says, as he slips his messenger bag over his shoulder, “but so are you, okay, all of you are. It’s not, you know, a sin. And I like him. He’s sweet, and funny, and he’s nice to me.”

Laszlo does something odd with his face. Guillermo thinks it might be a grimace, but he can’t quite tell. “Is that really all it takes?”

“You probably couldn’t tell, since the connection was kind of bad, but he’s handsome too.”

“Right.” Laszlo exhales. “Fine. He makes you happy? Alright. Let us move on from all of this…unpleasantness.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “The boy. I came to find you for the boy. We decided we would speak with him tonight.”

“You remembered?” Guillermo is surprised, but…maybe he shouldn’t be. It seems kind of mean, in retrospect, but he had been waiting to see if Laszlo would come find him on his own, or if Guillermo would have to remind him.

Laszlo glares at him. “Of course I did. I said I would, didn’t I? A gentleman’s promise. So let’s get on, shall we? Before he has a chance to get himself invested in another of those theory videos about his internet games.”

“Shut up, Laszlo. I’m pleasantly surprised.” He fiddles with one of the buckles on his messenger bag. “Okay. Yeah, let’s go. I’m ready if you are.”

“I wouldn’t have come to find you if I hadn’t been. Obviously.” Laszlo holds his arm out, and looks over at him expectantly.

Guillermo frowns. “What?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Laszlo reaches out, lightning fast, and clutches Guillermo’s wrist tight in his hand; he maneuvers their arms until they’re linked together, and proceeds to drag Guillermo bodily out of the living room and into the hallway.

Guillermo is too confused to be mad. “What?” he asks again, quieter this time.

“What do you mean, what? The boy is in his room, and we’ve kept him waiting long enough.”

“No, I just—I mean—”

“Stop fidgeting. Shall I remind you that you were the one who wanted to have this discussion with him?”

Guillermo is going to respond with something more substantial than jumbled, muttered half-sentences, really, but before he gets the chance, Laszlo is pulling him across the threshold into Colin’s room, knocking his door back and against the wall.

Colin is laid across the door on his stomach, face buried in his iPad. The slam of the door against the wall barely gets him to glance up from the screen. “Hi, Memo. Have you watched the new MrBeast video?”

“Can’t say I have, buddy.”

“Oh. Okay, well, we can watch it together,” Colin says, as his fingers move about the screen, tapping away. “Me and Lazzo have seen it twice already, but it’s, like, really cool and funny.”

“I bet it is,” Guillermo says, trying his best to sound enthused, and not like he’s dying inside at the thought of watching more overly bright, mind numbing clickbait that’s made of nothing but eye-strain and strife. He loves this kid, he really does, and he loves being able to share in Colin’s interests, but Guillermo is starting to have a visceral reaction to anything YouTube related. “But, um, before we do that, your dad and I have something we need to speak with you about.”

Guillermo extracts his arm from Laszlo’s hold. He slides his messenger bag off, leaving it in a pile by the door, and walks over to Colin. He sinks down to the floor beside him, and crosses his legs. He looks over at Laszlo, expectantly, and waits for him to join them.

Laszlo shakes his head. “These trousers are silk, and his floor is covered in biscuit crumbs.”

“Laszlo.”

“Ugh, yes, alright.” Laszlo sulks over to them. He lowers himself gracefully onto the rug, on Colin’s other side.

Colin looks between the two of them. His eyes have gone big, wide with something like nervousness alight in them. “I didn’t put those new holes in the basement, that was the raccoons,” he says, quickly.

“So, ignoring the fact that I’m not sure that’s the truth,” Guillermo says, as he makes a mental note to go down to the basement later and make sure that room is still somewhat structurally sound, “that isn’t what we want to talk to you about.”

“Oh.” Colin locks his iPad and lays it down on the rug. “Okay, um, what is it?”

“You aren’t in trouble,” Guillermo promises him, “it’s just—”

“You don’t like your little sporting activities,” Laszlo interrupts, “and you didn’t tell us. Why?”

Colin’s face goes pale. “Um.”

“Laszlo, what the fuck,” Guillermo hisses. This isn’t how they planned to do this at all, and he should have known Laszlo would mess everything up in the first five minutes, but he can’t help but be disappointed.

“No, you said he isn’t in trouble, so he knows that, doesn’t he? And we have our theories as to why he didn’t say anything, but we should hear it from him, shouldn’t we? So, go on, boy. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Colin looks down and begins to study the floor intently. He shrugs his little shoulders. “Dunno. Didn’t want to upset you, I guess, because you want me to be all interesting and stuff. Oh, and, um, you want me to work out my energy so I don’t keep ‘terrorizing everyone in the house’.”

Laszlo nods somberly, like he truly is taking Colin’s words to heart. “Well…there’s no point if we invest in your education only for you to grow up miserable. It could have the opposite effect, you see, and turn you into something truly dreadful, like a…a hedge fund manager, or some such nonsense.”

“How does he know what that is?” Guillermo mumbles, to himself, under his breath.

“Okay,” Colin says, shyly. “But how did you know I don’t like the sports?”

“You were miserable.” Laszlo motions between himself and Guillermo. “Memo and I noticed, of course, as we are both extremely perceptive. Even Nandor did, on account of you not being good at basketball.”

“Oh.”

Guillermo pinches the bridge of his nose. “Colin, you’re a perfectly fine basketball player. But Laszlo is right, it seems to us like you haven’t been enjoying yourself.” This is a dirty lie on both of their parts, Guillermo knows, but he thinks he understands where Laszlo is coming from, and it…makes sense, sort of, loathe though he is to admit it.

“Yes,” Laszlo agrees, “but you were right about one thing, we can’t have you wreaking havoc on the house and turning it into even more of a hazard than it already is. So, what extracurricular activity that is not based in competitive sporting would you like to be enrolled in?”

Colin’s eyes light up. “I can pick anything I want? Really?”

“Within reason,” Guillermo says, because he can only guess what sort of wild ideas might be floating around in their kid’s head right now.

“I want dancing lessons! For all the different kinds, not just tap. Have you seen Dancing with the Stars?”

“Yes,” Guillermo says, cautiously.

Laszlo squints at Colin. “Stop speaking in code, boy.”

“I wanna be that good one day,” Colin says, enthusiastically, “so can I take dance lessons in the city? Please, Memo?”

Guillermo imagines the cost of dance lessons in Manhattan, the people he would have to interact with, and the drive he would have to make multiple times a week. He shudders and promptly shakes his head. “I don’t think that’ll work, buddy, but there is a really cool studio I know that’s just a few blocks from here. How about we go check it out, huh?”

Colin tilts his head. “Hm, okay!” he agrees, after a moment of consideration. “Can we go tomorrow? Please, please, please?”

“Sure, that’s fi—oh, man, Colin! Easy!” Guillermo laughs, as four and a half feet of kid comes barreling towards him for a death grip of a hug. He attempts to wrap his arms around Colin in return, but he only sort of manages it, because Colin reaches over to Laszlo and pulls him into the hug as well.

“You guys are the best! I promise I’ll never try to lure Nandor into the basement water to electrocute him ever again.”

Laszlo freezes up, at first. Guillermo watches him out of the corner of his eye, wondering how he’s going to react, and just what kind of damage control Guillermo is going to have to run here. They were so close, damn it, and—

“It was funny, that time you succeeded,” Laszlo mumbles, as he wraps his arms around both Colin and Guillermo. He holds them tight and presses a kiss to the top of Colin’s head.

Guillermo blinks a few stray tears out of his eyes.

He’s not crying, not technically.

“It wasn’t funny, please don’t try to electrocute Nandor again,” Guillermo says, because someone needs to.

“Okay.” Colin buries his face against Guillermo’s chest. “Can we watch the MrBeast video now?”

Guillermo nods. “Sure, buddy. But after that you have to go to bed, okay? It’s already pretty late.”

“I’ll brush my teeth and shower and everything,” Colin agrees. He’s out of their arms a second later, eagerly grabbing for his iPad. “So MrBeast has this awesome new thing, um, they’re like, candy bars, and I want to get some really bad…”

As Colin babbles on and starts up the video, Guillermo flickers his eyes in Laszlo’s direction. His brow is furrowed, the corners of his lips downturned just slightly.

His eyes are shining.

“You okay?” Guillermo whispers.

“What? Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” Laszlo sniffs. “Perfectly fine.” He gestures in Colin’s direction. “The boy is about to start his little video. You’ll want to pay attention, I should think.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Guillermo agrees, softer than he’s maybe ever been with Laszlo before. He wonders to himself what he’s doing, what his end goal is here, and finds himself worrying, suddenly, if it might put a hitch in his carefully laid plans.

He reaches for Laszlo’s hand. His flesh is cool against Guillermo’s fingers, the metal of his rings even colder. He almost expects to be pushed away.

Laszlo grips his hand tight, like a vise.

No. This won’t change anything.

“You said this is about candy bars, buddy?”

Notes:

a few notes;

i'm only familiar enough with english accents to tell that freddie is supposed to be southern and overtly posh, not where exactly he's from; but i don't think laszlo really is, either, since he hasn't been to england in almost 200 years. he makes a guess in claiming freddie is from kensington because it's a borough he associates with royalty and pompousness.

likewise, radley college is a boy's only public boarding school in england. very posh, very expensive, but not quite as old as eton and harrow; it was founded in 1847, a few years before laszlo and nadja left for new york, and as his mind is made of swiss cheese, just a little bit, i doubt he would've considered it important enough to remember.