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After working for Edelgard (in an official capacity) for three years, Hubert would’ve thought that he couldn’t be surprised anymore. Occult fuckery, politicians, Edelgard’s choice in friends─ all of these things piled into an unflappable, unimpressed demeanor.
That changed approximately five seconds ago.
That was when a beaming face popped out of the swampy mud, colored brown and green, and cheerfully exclaimed, “Hey!”
Hubert drops the body he was hauling into the bog. “Excuse me?”
“Hey! My name is Ferdinand Von Aegir!” The name kind of rings a bell.
“I─”
“What’s wrong?” Ferdinand Von Aegir pokes his head out of the mud some more. His hair is long and orange, seemingly untouched by the murky waters. His eyes narrow at the corpse. “Oh. Please don’t dump dead bodies in my swamp.”
Hubert takes a step back, cautiously. “Why not?”
“‘Cause I have to put them in the Dead Body Corner. Like, it’s such a pain. Could people just stop dumping bodies here already?”
“Look. Mr. Aegir. I have no clue what’s going on here, but I will kill you if this is some sort of prank.”
Ferdinand pokes his cheek. His finger sinks all the way into his face. He makes a face and pulls it back out. “This isn’t a prank,” he says around the finger in his mouth, “I live here.”
“Whatever.” Hubert is, officially, seventeen seconds off schedule. He needs to get rid of the bodies right now, in case Edelgard needs him again. He tosses the first foreign politician into the bog.
“Woah! I just asked you not to,” Ferdinand whines. He pushes the body into the mud, away from the both of them.
“And I don’t care.” Hubert has half a mind to kill this fool, too. But he needs to speed things along. He throws the second body right on top of Ferdinand, earning a yelp. Ferdinand chucks the body further into the marsh as well.
When Hubert turns around to grab the final body, though, something grabs his ankle. He instinctively turns sharply and kicks, but the grip is strong.
“Look. I don’t know your name, but you literally tossed a dead body on my head. That’s mean.” Ferdinand glares at him. In the dying sunlight, his eyes gleam with anger.
Beneath Hubert’s feet, the ground turns softer, and he starts to sink. When he grabs for a tree to steady himself, the tree twists out of reach. Trees aren't supposed to do that, he thinks dumbly.
“You’re awful, you know that? You go into my swamp, be rude, and then you expect the bogman to not drag your body into the mud with me?” Hubert sinks past his ankles. In more metaphorical terms, he's up past his head in shit.
Ferdinand’s other hand latches onto his leg, streaking mud all over the expensive insert brand name here black pants. The scorn on Ferdinand's face, for some reason, cuts deep into Hubert's black pit of a heart. For the first time since he last minorly inconvenienced Edelgard, he feels the need to apologise. “Mr. Von Aegir─”
“I’m about to kill you, just call me Ferdinand─”
“Alright. Ferdinand. I… I don’t do this often.” Hubert steels his nerves and gazes down at the bogman.
“Dump bodies?”
“No, I do that all the time. It’s, uh… I’m…”
“You’re…?”
“I apologize. For being a dick.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re about to suffocate in a bunch of mud. Which really is a lousy way to die. But you deserve it.”
“Eh. I suppose you have a point. May I make a phone call first, before my untimely and gruesome death?”
Ferdinand shrugs. “I mean, uh, sure. Who are you calling?”
“My boss.”
“Why?”
“To tell her not to give my job to a select list of people. I want to make sure she hears the desperation in my voice.”
“But you don’t sound desperate.”
“My boss and I are practically childhood friends. Except I’d never allow her to be friends with someone as disgusting as me. My point is, she’ll know.”
Ferdinand shrugs. “Alright. Go for it. I’ve got all night.”
Hubert slides his burner phone out of his pocket and dials Edelgard’s number.
“Hello?” She asks from the other end.
Hubert doesn’t respond.
“Hubert?”
That snaps him out of it. “Hello, Ms. Edelgard.” He looks up at the moon just beginning to rise.
“What’s wrong?”
“I am about to die.”
“Look, if this is about Linhardt─ or, God forbid, Caspar─”
Ferdinand interjects. “Hey! I’m gonna drag you down here real quick. I’ll be right up in a moment.”
“Oh, sure, take your time,” Hubert mutters under his breath.
“Hubert?” Edelgard asks.
Hubert’s body is jerked underneath the marsh, till about waist length. Ferdinand comes back up, as promised, and leans in. “Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when Hubert shoots him a look.
“Hubert, who’s that.”
“Oh, your name’s Hubert?” Ferdinand chuckles to himself, but, strangely, sobers up quickly.
Hubert sighs. “Yes, my name is Hubert Von Vestra. Yes, I look like a scene kid.”
Ferdinand seems interested, but his face turns to one of confusion. “What’s a scene kid?”
“You know what a phone is, but not a scene kid?”
“I don’t know─”
“Hubert, who is that!” Edelgard demands.
“─all I know is a flip phone,” Ferdinand finishes lamely.
“One at a time! Er, my apologies, Ms. Edelgard. That is Ferdinand Von Aegir. He’s─ actually, what are you?”
“I’m a bogman!”
“...Who is, in fact, a bogman.”
“Like a lunatic who lives in the bog?” Edelgard asks. Hubert can already imagine the crease on her forehead as she tries to figure this one out.
“No. Half man, half bog. He’s made of mud," Ferdinand nods, "but he’s still breathing." Ferdinand looks annoyed at that and shakes his head. "And shaped like a person.” Ferdinand nods again.
“ACTUALLY,” Ferdinand says, snatching the phone, “I DON’T BREATHE.” He ends his message by huffing a long, raspy breath into the receiver.
Hubert snatches it back. “Anyway, Ms.─”
“Give the phone to Ferdinand.”
“Yes, Ms. Edelgard.” He hands the phone over.
Ferdinand’s quite the expressive man, Hubert finds. His face is still filled with boyish charm─ “Oh, I think I’ve been a bogman for six years now?”─ that’s startlingly familiar─ “Yeah, I wandered the swamps for, like, four years before that, ‘cause I went in on a dare─”─ no, seriously, his face is really familiar, and so is his hair, and─
“Oh my God, you’re Ferdinand Von Aegir.”
“Sorry, Edelgard. Yeah? That’s my name?”
Hubert begins laughing. “This─ this must be some sort of karma─”
“Huh?”
“You don’t remember me?” Hubert asks.
“I mean, your name is kinda there, but─”
“I’m the asshole who dared you to enter the bog in the first place because I found you obnoxious,” Hubert says, all in one breath.
Edelgard starts laughing, too. “OH! Is that the Ferdie that you had the biggest crush on?”
“N─no─”
“Oh, Hubert!” Ferdinand laughs. “Now it makes sense. Wait, you liked me back?”
“Yes?”
“Then why did you dare me to enter the bog?”
“Because I didn’t like the fact that I liked you.” That was ten years ago, regardless.
Ferdinand starts laughing, too, really hard. He has this bellowy laugh that almost sounds fake, and then he starts snorting. Mud flies out of his nose and mouth, but Hubert's already covered in swamp. He's past caring. “Ah─ oh, God, Hubert.”
“So it sounds like you aren’t dying anymore,” Edelgard says.
“I mean, if I were Ferdinand, I’d kill me,” Hubert mutters.
Ferdinand looks down at him. In reality, Hubert is probably taller, but Ferdinand definitely sank him down an extra few inches just for the height difference. God, Hubert's down to his chest and he didn't even realize it. Ferdinand smiles and exclaims, “Really? No hard feelings?”
“No hard feelings,” Hubert confirms. He feels a little flutter of butterflies in his stomach. Is he crushing again on the guy he accidentally turned into a bogman? On the guy who's still about to kill him?
“Hmm… I wish I could see you better.”
“How come?”
“I’m going to hang up now," Edelgard says. Hubert doesn’t quite notice the phone going dark.
“‘Cause I wouldn’t want to kill a cute boy.”
Oh, fuck, not again. “Just kill me now.”
“Wow. You’re, like, exactly the same! Except taller.”
Hubert sighs.
“I’m not gonna kill you," Ferdinand sighs. A little pause ensues, but then he continues. “Actually, I did forgive you. A long time ago.”
“Oh.” Hubert’s shocked.
“So…”
“So you can’t see much of anything at all?”
“Not above the mud, no. I usually sense things through the marsh, but I can kinda make you out, since you're so close─"
Hubert prays he isn’t misreading the situation and places a hand on Ferdinand’s shoulder.
“Oh. You wanna leave already?”
Thank God Ferdinand can’t see his pasty skin blush. Hubert trails his fingertips up Ferdinand’s muddy face and brushes through his long locks before settling at the back of his hair. It kind of feels like the marsh reeds, but dried out.
“No? Ohhh..."
Hubert leans in to kiss, and Ferdinand meets him halfway.