Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Then:

Rapunzel’s face is a shade of grey that matches the stormy, evening sky when Varian barrels into the hospital. She’s sitting on one of those stupid, hard plastic chairs that leaves everyone’s ass cold and fucked after about five minutes, but stands when she catches sight of him. 

Her eyes are red rimmed.

“I—what—is he—” 

“Whoa, maybe you should sit down kiddo.”

Eugene. Coming around the corner with a paper cup of coffee that he hands to Rapunzel. The two of them exchange a look over Varian’s head that he doesn’t appreciate.

“He’s okay, right?” His voice is shrill in the quiet hospital. “You said over the phone that he—that he was stable, which means—he’s going to be okay—”

“Varian,” Rapunzel says, very very softly.

She has the same face that Cass had that day, five years ago, when she sat Rapunzel down at told her that—that—

I’m so sorry. None of them made it.

“Rapunzel,” Varian’s voice cracks painfully. He thinks she’s kneeling down in front of him, but his vision is blurred. 

There’s a cracked thumbdrive in her palm when he scrubs the tears away from his face. She presses it into his hand. “He wanted me to give you this.” 

Now: 

Varian buries his face in the pillow, trying to ignore the alarm clock blaring loudly in the early morning. 

His apartment isn’t far enough in the city for there to be that much noise at six am. but his roommate by far made up for that deficit. Even now, he can hear Nuru in their kitchenette—a small space made up of, like, three cabinets, a stove and what they were generously a “mini fridge”—humming to herself while she ran fruit through the blender.  

The air is cold on his toes as they hit the thin carpet. He pads around the room gangly for a moment, before finding a sweatshirt to throw over his shivering shoulders. His jeans are still probably in the laundry, so he ducks out of his tiny, box shaped bedroom and into the shared common space of the apartment. 

Nuru waves at him, looking far too awake for someone who had been awake all night. “MORNING,” she shouts over blender sounds.

Varian winced. Three more noise complaints and their landlord was going to do something awful, like send a disappointed emoji or throw them out. 

“What’s a disappointed emoji,” Nuru asks, when Varian mutters this into his overnight oats. “Are we talking like the crying emoji or the one where it scrunches its face like it’s constipated.” She does something with her face that Varian assumes is supposed to imitate that last description and promptly decides he didn’t like it.

“Aren’t you just getting in?” he yelps as she accidentally elbows him reaching across the counter to grab a spoon for her smoothie. “How are you so…active?”

“Caffeine, baby.” Nuru takes drag of her drink like a 1940s detective taking a slug of hard liquor. When she grins it’s bright pink like the strawberries she’d mashed into tiny pieces with their meat grinder before throwing it into the blender they’d gotten off Facebook Market Place. “You don’t want to know how many red bulls I’ve consumed in the past six hours.” 

Varian really doesn’t. He salutes her with the mason jar filled with left over overnight oats as she passes by. “See you on the flip side.” 

“Don’t let the jaws of capitalism consume you,” she waves him off before disappearing into her bedroom. 

As if her words were an omen of things to come—and considering what Varian knew about the woman, they probably were—his phone begins ringing. 

Savannah Work with no contact photo glasses up the lockscreen of the shifty eyed raccoon he’d made his background after catching the critter fucking up his neighbors bins. It was funny because he hates his neighbors. 

Varian takes a bite of his breakfast, waiting for the tiny ping notif that he had missed a call. It’s soon followed by the ping of a voicemail being delivered, which is when he decides to unlock his phone. 

“Hey dumbass,” the familiar voice of his least favorite coworker, but one of his best friends drones from the shitty phone speaker. “Astrid quit this morning with no notice so we need someone to come cover—”

Varian deletes the voicemail. 
___

The Hugo situation is going to be a problem. 

November goes something like this: 

“So, I hear you got penetrated last week,” Hugo says unprompted as they're shutting down the register. 

They’ve been working in what’s been almost amiable silence for the past few hours, despite Varian’s adverse reaction upon seeing Hugo here that morning. To be fair, there hadn’t been much opportunity for Varian to interrogate that guy.

And honestly he’d just been kinda hoping they could get off on the right foot of a new normal. AKA, one where they don’t acknowledge their connection outside of the four wall confines of overpriced capitalist coffee.

Varian almost drops the till. “WHAT,” he shouts loud enough to be heard three blocks down, probably. 

“You know,” Hugo makes a hand gesture that he probably thinks imitates stabbing toward Varian’s almost healed wound. In reality it looks like he’s jerking off. “The stabbing,” he whispers. Except it's not a whisper and Lydia- one of the other new hires- is squinting at them across the room from where she's sweeping. 

Varian gapes at him. “ Why would- just say stabbing- what the fuck-”

“Everything okay, kids?” Xavier asks, head poking out of his office. 

Varian puts on his best customer service face. “Yep! Just showing Hugo how to count the till. Actually, now that you mention it, I should show Hugo how to clean the bathrooms.” 

Savannah glances up from where she's putting chairs up. Varian dreads to think that she’s been listening. “Good idea, Varian,” she says, eyes bright. “I'll take it from here.”

She snatches the till out of his hands, grin pasted on her face. Xavier gives them one last suspicious look before disappearing again. 

“Go get 'im, tiger,” Savannah says, eyebrows bouncing. 

Varian doesn't have time to unpack that, so he ignores it, grabbing Hugo harshly by the wrist and dragging him off to the gender neutral bathroom. His blonde tormentor doesn’t even protest. 

He stays silent, infuriating grin slapped across his stupid pointy face, all the way to the bathroom. Varian shoves Hugo into the small room, slams the door shut, clicks the lock. 

“What is your problem?” he hisses the moment he turns to the blonde.

Hugo, to his credit, doesn’t falter. “You, mostly.” His eyebrows bounce suggestively. Arms folded, black polo unbuttoned, he looks entirely at ease in the yellow, flickering light of the bathroom. 

Varian resists the urge to bang his head against the concrete wall, if only because he’s known Hugo for far to long to give into his violent desires.

Most of the time anyway.

“I need you to stop.” Varian rubs his forehead. “You can’t pretend not to know me for one minute and-”

“Whaaaa, we know each other?” Hugo bats his eyelashes obnoxiously like a coked up hummingbird. 

“W-Hugo-”

“Sorry I remember everyone I’ve slept with.”

“Oh, because you can count that on one hand?”

Hugo visibly catches himself mid snort, face smoothing out just a second too late. “Projection is never a mature choice, Stripes.” 

“I—listen. If we’re gonna do this you need to cooperate.” 

Raised eyebrows. “Do what?” Hugo leans in, one hand bracing on the wall next to Varian’s head. He only gets away with the move because of those fricking two inches he has him, Varian thinks resentfully. 

It takes all of Varian’s willpower not to kick Hugo in the shin. “Make a deal.” His voice is even.

This gets Hugo’s attention. He withdraws (slightly) from Varian’s space, considering. “A deal? What kind of deal?” 

“The kind where we keep our night and day jobs separate.” 

“And you seriously think we can do that?” Hugo’s face scrunches skeptically. His glasses reflect the yellow, flickering bathroom light and Varian squints against it. “We just clock in every day and pretend that we don’t know each other?”

Its not like Varian can turn Hugo in.

“You have a better idea?” he bites out. 

“Nooo,” Hugo says slowly. His eyes are sweeping over Varian considering. “I don’t.” 

“We have a deal then?”

“Depends. Are we gonna kiss on it?” 

Varian yanks the bathroom door open. Predictably, Savannah and Yong are on the other side, both leaning on the door enough that there’s a frantic scramble for balance. “How much of that did you both hear?”

“Nothing—!”

“Are you exes?”

“Okay, not gonna lie, I’m pretty sure you’re both rival drug dealers—”

“Or secret boyfriends—”

Varian shoulders past them. “Clean the bathroom,” he says over his shoulder. 

Chapter Text

Caine sends him a text saying that she’ll be out of town for another week. Varian is starting to suspect that there might be more to this “business trip” than meets the eye, but decides that he can table questions for another time.

A time when he isn’t trying to avoid going to the hospital for a possibly infected stab wound.

Shit.

Varian wakes up a week after the initial attack to a pain pulsing in his side. He barely drags himself out of bed and into the bathroom without passing out or vomiting.

He lifts the side of his shirt, wincing when the motion pulls at his stitches. And groans when he sees the skin around the scabbed over wound a swollen red.

“Goddammit,” he hisses, trying to remember if he’s still on Rapunzel’s health insurance. Probably not. Fuck. Fuck. Being part time at Starbucks means he doesn’t apply for employee benefits and he’s pretty definitely sure that there’s no health insurance deal with his community college.

Caine, he thinks, blindly stumbling back into his bedroom. He grabs his phone off the nightstand and taps out a message to her with one hand. The other hand, he presses to his side, hoping the body heat will decrease the pain. It works for cramps, right?

Message undelivered.

She must be in a deadzone. Or turned her phone off, which proves Varian’s theory that she’s off doing something vigilante related rather than Lily Caine related.

Which leaves Varian with limited options.

He could go to the hospital with some exaggerate story about a mugging—not entirely implausible given Corona’s sky rocketing crime rates over the past decade—and pray to god Caine agrees to foot the bill.

Or he can call out of work and crawl back into bed.

Nuru would tell him to go to the hospital. Ever since the night she’d learned the truth behind his “nighttime shenanigan” (her words, not his), she’d been incredibly vocal about her position on what constituted as an emergency.

This wasn’t an emergency emergency, though. It was just, like, an almost emergency.

After all, Varian wasn’t dying yet.

He stumbles back into the bathroom. There’s some advil in the medicine cabinet and some antibiotic cream. Varian pops two pills and slathers the cream on his side. It stings a little, which Varian expected.

Good enough, he decides.

Xavier was a pretty okay manager.

He was generally understanding of Varian calling out and didn’t even write him up whenever Varian flipped out on a customer. He’d get annoyed, calling Varian back to his office to ream him out over “misconduct” and stupid details like “did you really have to call her a PTA stereotype?” but still let Varian get away with it in the end.

Varian liked to think that maybe it was Xavier liked him.

Or maybe just didn’t give a single fuck about this job.

(“Stay in school, kid,” Xavier had said once. They had both been on the closing shift together, much to Xavier’s annoyance. “You don’t want to be doing this shit in your forties.”

“You look a little old for forty.”

Xavier wrote him up for that.)

But the point was, Xavier was cool. Most of the time.

He is very decidedly not cool when Varian calls out of work for the third time in a week.

“Sorry kid,” he sighs across the scratchy line. “But you need a doctor’s note for another call out this week.”

Varian blanches.

His infected wound isn’t getting worse per say. The pain has dulled down to a distant throb. And that’s with Varian lying in bed for the past couple of days; alone, because Nuru is staying with her family over Christmas break.

A five hour shift doesn’t sound great right now.

The pain in Varian’s side sends hot flashes through his abdomen as he bends over to pull his shoes on. It’s Sunday, which isn’t, like, ideal because the Sunday crowd is generally the worst of the worst (baring the Monday morning PTA mom crowd), but Varian can probably bribe whoever else is on shift to take the front counter while he pudders in the back.

Varian pops some advil with a silent prayer to six different gods he doesn’t believe in that it will actually work today and then gets his skinny ass on the bus to work.

“Weeeeelcome to Starbu-oh.” Hugo blinks at him from across the counter, glasses flashing in the florescent light. His smile doesn’t dim, but it smooths it into a realer one.

Or, something more of a smirk, at least.

“Don’t you look like a fresh catch of salmon,” Hugo says, leaning on his elbows over the counter. The one customer, over in the corner, taking notes on her tablet, gives Hugo a weird look.

Varian gives Hugo a weird look. “That’s not a saying.”

“To you.” Hugo takes down his ponytail and then begins the process of repulling it back in the band. “What’s got you looking like a sickly Victorian child?”

Figures blondie doesn’t remember Varian getting stabbed in front of him. Resentment burns in his gut almost as badly as the scabbed over wound. “Like you care,” he mutters, clocking in behind the register. “Who’s closing tonight?”

“Aiden is here, but only for another hour.” He stretches, catlike across the counter. “And then it’s just you and me.” A pause. “Oh, and Xavier, I guess.”

“Thanks, kid,” Xavier’s voice shouts from the back.

Hugo offers a thumbs up to the security camera. “Anyway, seriously, you look like you just did three rounds with-oh.” Comprehension dawns across Hugo’s face. His eyes dart down to Varian’s side and then back up to his face.

He takes a step closer to Varian. “Are you okay?”

The front door makes a noise, but Hugo doesn’t turn away.

Feeling twitchy under the sudden scrutiny, Varian scowls. “I’m fine.”

“You saw a doctor after, right?”

What kind of a question is that? Varian wants to spit back out. Hugo knew what kind of work they were in, knew the risks they took at getting caught. CPD did not get along well with most vigilantes, the exception—obviously—being Sunflower and White Knight (and Varian doesn’t feel bitter at the blatant nepotism, he doesn’t).

Frequent hospital visits were too suspicions. Even if Varian could afford them.

And why did Hugo care anyway? Sure, the guy might have felt initially responsible for Varian’s injury because, like, he saw it, but why was he all messed up about it now?

Hugo didn’t make sense.

A throat clears across the counter. “Excuse me?”

With what appears to be great effort, Hugo pulls his gaze away from Varian. “Hi,” he says, but it lacks his usual maniac enthusiasm. “What can I get you?”

While the customer rattles off his order, Varian scrubs his face, turning his back to the front counter. Trying to look busy and not at all in pain or unsettled, Varian quickly pulls out a plastic cup and gets started on the order. The sound of card machine beeping and Hugo chit-chatting in the background kinda calms his anxiety a bit.

Aiden comes out from the back, sweetly smelling of vape, and gives Varian a snide once over. “Geez, kid, you look like hell.”

He hands the stupid frappacino off to the customer. “Yeah, no shit.”

The customer glares at both of them and stomps off.

Varian feels the urge to bury his face in his palms and scream or cry or something.

“Are you, like, contagious?” Aiden leans away and Varian gets the urge to cough on him on purpose.

He shrugs instead. Aiden takes a step back.

“Maybe Varian should work in the back.”

Hugo glances at them over his shoulder. “It’s Sunday. We don’t have anything in the back to do.”

Fuck, shipments were on Tuesday. Varian wants to bang his head against the wall.

Xavier pokes his head out of the office, still seated in his rolling, swivel chair. His eyes zero on Varian’s, widening with sympathy when he looks at him.

“Aiden, go wipe the tables. Hugo, you’re on cashier.” He hesitates. “If you need to take five in the back, let me know, kid.”

Aiden stomps off to the floor in a huff, leaving Hugo and Varian alone.

Well, mostly alone. Xavier gives them another look before disappearing back into his office and Hugo turns to the line of customers who are waiting impatiently.

Varian leans against the counter and waits for the orders to start popping up on the screen.

“So,” Hugo says, about twenty minutes later when there’s a bit of a lull. “I haven’t see you at your night job recently.”

Varian glares down at the stupid espresso machine. “I thought we agreed not to talk about our other—” he pauses, grappling with the concept of language. Fuck, the advil isn’t working. “—interests.”

“Interests,” Hugo drawls. “So it’s a hobby for you.”

“I’m trying to be subtle here.”

Hugo grins and crosses his arms. His stupid apron is tied twice around his waist. And now Varian is looking at his waist which is skinny and long and totally not perfect for putting your hands on.

What.

“Subtly isn’t your strong suit, Sweetcheeks.”

Varian’s cheeks burn. SWEETCHEEKS? he thinks, with no small amount of outrage. That was new. Usually it was “oh, blue eyes!” and “heeeeey, Stripes,” or “what’s cookin’, THE DARK.” All of them annoyed him to various degrees, but not enough for Varian to ask him to stop.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Varian throws a plastic lid in the trash. “I can be pretty stealthy.”

Hugo’s grin widens. “Not what I meant, but yeah. Okay. Stealthy.”

“You’re one to talk,” Varian mutters. “C’mon,” he goes on, when Hugo tilts his head questioningly. “That—” he looks around, lowers his voice, “—outfit you wear? Totally screams subtly.”

“Jeans are easily replaced.”

“And ripped. Also the jacket is a bit much.”

“You literally show up in black body armor and eyeshadow.”

“…I don’t wear eyeshadow?”

Hugo stares at him a moment. “Do you, like, sleep?”

Varian gives him a withering look in response. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His stupid nemesis huffs. “You’re a little concerning. I hope you know that. How’s your side doing?”

The sudden shift in subject leaves Varian offkilter. What?

“What?”

“Your side.” Hugo makes a motion that—yeah, still kinda looks like he’s jerking-off and Varian wants to bang his head against the counter until he blacks out. “Y’know, the penetra—”

“Would you stop calling it that?”

Hugo sighs again.

“…It’s fine,” Varian says, reluctantly. “Nothing to write home about.”

He gets a hum in response, doubtful.

Varian twists his hands in his apron, staring unseeingly out the glass doors. “Uh, advil isn’t like. Really helping.”

In his peripheral, Hugo stiffens.

“And it burns,” Varian admits, surprised to feel relieved as he says it. “I think there’s something wrong with the stitches. Not to disparage your medical skills.”

Even looking at Hugo out of the corner of his eye, he can see the guy’s face drop. Guilt replaces relief.

“I mean,” Varian goes on, “you’re right, I should have gone to the doctor the next day or at least gotten in touch with one of Ca—uh, one of my contacts with actual. Like. Medical training or whatever. So it’s definitely on me. Especially since I’ve known it’s been infected for a while and kept not doing anything about it and—”

Hugo straightens. “It’s infected?” he interrupts, voice sharp.

“I think so.” Varian swallows reflexively.

The pain he’s been ignoring for the past hour burns beneath his skin and behind his eyes.

Shit. Shit. Varian had promised himself that he wouldn’t cry at work. He’s pretty sure that Hugo feels bad enough for him right now that he would let him go to the bathroom. Probably. Right?

He glances at Hugo, who’s lips are pressed tightly together. Brow furrowed. Behind him, a customer impatiently huffs, trying to get his attention.

Varian makes a motion that has Hugo turning to them.

“I’m taking a bathroom break,” Varian says, brushing past him. “Back in a minute.”

He can feel Hugo’s eyes all the way to the bathroom.

The air conditioning is obnoxiously loud inside the bathroom, which is great actually, because Varian can sit on the stupid sink counter and cry for a moment.

Why me, Varian thinks with no small amount of self-pity. It was always Varian who took the hit, who had to roll with the punches. And now here he was, at his part time job where he was making less than the drinks he was selling per hour, with a possible semi-fatal wound that he didn’t have the insurance to cover.

That voice in his head—the annoying one that was perfectly reasonable and said things Varian didn’t like—reminded him that he still has Rapunzel’s contact information burned to the back of his eyelids.

One phone call and she would be there.

Maybe.

Varian glares up at the ceiling, fighting back tears.

A knock on the door jolts him out of his indulgent thoughts. “I’ll be out in a minute!” he shouts, scrubbing his face clean of tears. He takes a deep breath and hops of the counter.

He purposefully avoids looking in the mirror. Hopefully he doesn’t look like he had just been crying his eyes out in the bathroom.

When he yanks the door open, Hugo is standing on the other side with a box in his hands. “Oh cool, you didn’t fall in.” He shoves past Varian and shuts the door. “Alright, shirt off.”

Varian’s mouth drops open. He makes a garbled sound. “What?”

Hugo dumps the box—which Varian now realizes is a first aid kit—on the counter. “Look, I promise not to be weird about it. Let me just take a look.”

“Who’s watching the—”

“Aiden has it covered, don’t worry.”

Varian privately thinks that the only thing Aiden covers his own ass. “How’d you swing that.”

“I have my ways,” Hugo says, loftily. “And you’re changing the subject on purpose. Shirt. Off.”

Face burning, Varian crosses his arms. “Whatever’s in the mandatory Starbucks first aid kit isn’t going to help what’s going on.”

Hugo rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Will you at least give me a chance?” When Varian doesn’t say anything, he scowls. “At least let me look. I was the one who screwed up in the first place. The least I can do is give you my professional opinion.”

“Professional?”

“I’m pre-med,” Hugo admits, back of his neck burning for some reason. And ears. Fuck, he looks embarrassed, if Varian is reading him right. “Which is why you should be fine right now, but clearly I fucked up.”

“It’s not your-”

“Kinda is, if you’re in that much pain.”

Varian stares at him. He’s not exactly sure why, but Hugo admitting this much about himself is a big deal. For Hugo.

He wordlessly unties his apron and lifts the side of his shirt.

Whatever Hugo sees has the tall blonde hissing. “Yeah, okay, shit.” He snaps the plastic locks on the first aid kit open and begins rummaging for something inside. “Have you been changing the bandages?”

Varian nods. “Yeah.”

“And you haven’t gotten them wet?”

“I don’t think so.” He sighs at Hugo’s flat look. “I haven’t been completely lucid the past couple of days,” he admits, through gritted teeth, as Hugo begins pulling the bandages down.

Hugo’s lips purse.

“I don’t need to see a doctor though, right?” Varian asks, hopefully. “I can fix this at home.”

Hugo pulls out some antibiotic ointment and rubs it liberally over the inflamed skin. Usually having a boy’s hands on Varian like this would embarrass the fuck out of him, but the pain of someone’s cold skin against his throbbing skin takes up all of his bandwidth.

Thank god. Maybe.

“A doctor is definitely recommended,” Hugo says, dryly, and it takes Varian a minute to remember what they were talking about.

“But not technically needed,” he presses.

Hugo sighs. Again. “I have some heavy duty painkillers in my bag that I can give you. Take one twice a day, with food. It should take some of the swelling down. Besides that, all you can really do is keep these clean and change the bandages twice a day.” He pauses. “I still think you should see a licensed somebody. But I’m not your mom, so whatever.”

He finishes up whatever he’s doing and pulls the bandages back up.

“Thanks,” Varian says. It doesn’t feel that much better, but it feels…cleaner? At the very least he feels relieved. And tired.

“How much advil did you take?”

“I don’t know. Two or three.”

Hugo nods. “Cool. In about an hour I can give you something for the pain.” He tugs Varian’s shirt back down. “You need a minute?” he asks, strangely considerate for a guy who’s doing this out of guilt.

In response, Varian just shrugs. Probably, but he’s already looked like a baby in front of Hugo for the past couple of minutes.

Tall, blonde, and ambiguously motivated picks up the first aid kid. “I need to get back out there before Aiden blows a gasket. Or Xavier thinks we’re fucking in the bathroom.”

Varian rolls his eyes. It looks like things are going back to normal. “I’m sure that’s exactly what he’s thinking.”

“I hate to break it to you, but it’s what everyone is thinking.”

All of the blood rushes to Varian’s head, which probably totally heals his stab wound problem. “Okay, get out.”

Hugo salutes him jauntily with two fingers and gets out.

Varian takes a couple of minutes, literally gripping the side of the sink and breathing. He feels better—much better. And the promise of painkillers that might actually work has drained all of the tension he didn’t notice he was holding in his shoulders.

In his back pocket, his phone buzzes.

He jumps, reflexes on edge.

Hey you okay kid?

Varian blinks at it for a moment before remembering the text he’d sent to Caine earlier. She must have finally turned on her phone.

With a wince, Varian shoots a message back.

Doing better.

The three bubbles indicating that she’s texting back appear and disappear. There’s a minute lag before:

Ok. If you need anything let me know.

Yeah right. Varian was grateful that after everything, Caine had agreed to take him under her wing. That did not give him a free pass to waste her time and prove that he was a bad investment.

He sends back a thumbs up emoji and tucks his phone back in his pocket.

Time to face the music, he thinks, putting his apron back on.

Hugo and Aiden are having a weird, passive aggressive stare off behind the counter when Varian gets back out there. It makes him uneasy enough that he ignores both of them, heading straight for the register.

It was weirdly dead in the cafe. Varian glances at the clock and—oh. It’s eight. Had he really been in the bathroom that long?

“Aren’t you supposed to be off the clock?” he asks Aiden.

Aiden gives him a half hearted glare. “Why, looking to get rid of me?”

Yes. “Of course not.”

“Here,” Hugo says, reaching into his apron pocket and pulling out one of those orange pill bottles. “Eat something first.”

Aiden’s glare transfers to Hugo. “So what, you’re his drug dealer or something?”

“Say it louder, thanks.” Varian picks out a chocolate pastry and lets Hugo ring him up. “Seriously, go home, Aiden.”

With another glare at both of them, Aiden stomps back to the breakroom.

“What crawled up his ass?” Varian asks, taking a bite.

Hugo shrugs, not meeting his eye. “Couldn’t say.” He hands Varian his receipt. “Wanna take your break now?”

Embarrassment settles in Varian’s stomach. Now Hugo thinks Varian can’t handle anything, which was precisely the opposite impression he wants to have on this guy.

“I’m fine,” he says, shortly. He pops the pill bottle open and dry swallows the chalky pill. “But, uh. Thanks. For—” he gestures vaguely, with the pill bottle in his hand. “—you know.”

Hugo’s face softens. The lines in his forehead smooth and his stupid smarmy smirk quirks into an actual smile. Still dumb and ferret looking, but realer and less annoying. It’s a nice smile. “Don’t mention it.”

“What do I owe you?” Varian blurts out, finally getting it out there. “For the pills,” he adds, at Hugo’s confused look.

“Oh. Oh! No, you don’t owe me. It’s the least I can do. For screwing up your stitches in the first place.”

“Which wasn’t your fault,” Varian counters.

“Kinda was.” Hugo meets his glare evenly. “Definitely was. So, no charge.”

That didn’t make sense. There was always a catch. Or at least, always a catch with people who weren’t blonde older sister figures who thought they were atlas, carrying the world on their human, fallible shoulders. 

Hugo would probably hold this in the back of his mind until he needed something from Varian. But at least for now Varian didn’t owe him anything.

“Thanks,” he says again, pocketing the bottle.

“Can’t have people thinking I’m dealing you drugs.”

If Varian rolls his eyes one more time, he’s going to get brain damage. “You’re the worst.”

Hugo grins widely at him again, before turning back to the register just as the front doors open. He greets them brightly.

Varian stares at the back of his neck, where his undercut is shaved closely. Stupid haircut, he thinks, staring at the choppy ponytail that looked like was cut at home with crafting scissors.

There’s a mole on the knob of his spine, Varian realizes, as Hugo angles his head down to look at info on the screen.

Huh, Varian thinks, staring at it.

Hugo glances at him, eyebrow raised. “Are you gonna—” he nods to the order. Some god-awful peppermint concoction. Who the fuck came up with these drinks anyway? And how did they pass whatever “will the customer like this” testing? “—Varian?” Hugo says, breaking him out of his thoughts.

The blonde’s eyes narrowed again with concern. They really were a lovely shade of green, Varian thinks. And then stiffens with horror.

The painkillers must be getting to him. That had to be it.

“Stripes?”

“What?”

“Are you sure you don’t need a break?”

Varian shakes his head, trying to dislodge the cobwebs that had him thinking about Hugo’s eyes. “No, no I’m fine. Just—” he grabs a plastic cup. Peppermint mocha. Right. “Tired. Yeah.”

Hugo glances at the customer, who’s standing off to the side on her phone. “Okay. Let me know if—”

“I’m fine,” Varian interrupts. “See?” He glances at the screen for a second and than writes the customer’s name on the cup. Sarah. Slides it across the counter and— “Sarah?”

She looks up with a polite smile. “Thanks.”

Varian says something, “No worries,” or “Have a great day” or whatever “go away now” script is ingrained in his brain, but nicely.

“I’m fine,” he says again when Hugo keeps looking at him like that. “Seriously, Hugo.”

Hugo stills. And then lights up, face beaming.

“What?” Varian snaps, finally fed up. Hugo had been nice earlier, but now he’s being naggy and weird. So Varian was allowed to be mad at him again.

“Nothing,” Hugo chirps. “You just’ve never called me Hugo before, that’s all.”

What.

“Well, I can’t exactly call you—” Varian glances around, “—you know.”

Hugo nods, head bobbing. “Sure, sure.”

“And it’s your name. Stop smiling like that.” Varian lightly whacks his side and grimaces when it pulls at his stitches. “You’re not as cute as you think you are.”

“Yeah, okay,” he laughs. “Whatever you say, Sweetcheeks.”

The pills work. By the time Varian clocks out that night—a few minutes earlier than Xavier and Hugo because Xavier had decided to take pity on him—the pain in his side had considerably dulled to a bearable ache.

“Get some rest,” Hugo shouts after him. “If your pasty white ass is anymore pasty the next time I see you, I’m dragging you to the ER myself.”

Varian flips him off.

The bus ride home feels shorter than usual, but that might be because Varian falls into a light doze. Sue him, he hasn’t slept in the past couple of days.

The apartment is still empty when Varian gets back. Nuru won’t be back for another day and Varian misses her. Something about her sarcastic presence brightening up a room or whatever.

At the very least, she would have hit him over the head and dragged him to a doctor.

Be a fucking adult, Varian thinks, unlocking the door. He didn’t need Nuru to parent him. Especially since she was barely an adult herself.

He drops his backpack on the floor and barely has his shoes off before he crawls into bed. Sleeping in his work clothes was going to be something he deeply regretted tomorrow. But right now all he can think about is how incredible his cold pillow face feels against his cheek.

As his eyes slip closed, he takes a second to think about Hugo and how unexpected his behavior had been today. How fucking concerned he’d been about the whole thing. And how gentle his hands had been when touching Varian.

Weird, he thinks, yawning.

Chapter Text

The swelling has gone down by the next morning. Varian is hesitant to attribute it to Hugo’s check up in the Starbucks bathroom, but whatever he’d done is helping.

“Pre-med, huh,” he mutters, changing out the bandages. He’d managed to find an adhesive bandage wrap in Nuru’s bathroom that took the pressure off his ribs. Bending over was now an obtainable goal.

Bending over, accompanied by a pair of blonde eyebrows bouncing flashes through Varian’s brain before he can quell the thought. He scowls at himself in the mirror, pulling a sweatshirt over his cut-up torso.

Apparently he was spending far too much time around Hugo.

Time that likely was going to expand when he started going out again.

“When are you going out again?” Nuru asks. She’s leaning on the counter, frowning at a recipe book.

Her week off seems to have done her a world of good. Instead of the tired bags resting under her dark eyes, there’s a spring in her step and a grin teased at the corner of her mouth. Varian is half envying, half in terror of her. A fully awake Nuru was a force to be reckoned with.

“Soon hopefully.” He takes inventory of their fridge. “My boss knows I’m out of commission at the moment, so she has someone taking over my patrol, but—” he shrugs one shoulder—the one that doesn’t pull the torn muscles on his side.

“You’re bored,” Nuru finishes, dryly, as she disappears into the pantry. She comes out a moment later, with a box of brown sugar. “Jesus, can’t you just take a break for once? You have a week until school starts.”

The dull ache behind Varian’s eyes is very aware that he only has a week until school starts. He’s been aware of the deadline ever since he sat in his academic advisor’s office last semester, planning out his registration.

“I don’t like not having things to do,” he mutters, instead of dreading the next couple of months.

Nuru glances up from her baking, giving him a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, I know. Just don’t work yourself too hard, ‘kay? I can’t be here every time you decide to get stabbed in an alley.”

Varian makes a face. “That wasn’t on purpose.”

“I dread to think what you do do on purpose.”

He flips her the bird and shuts the fridge. “I think I’ll go out tonight.”

“You literally just told me you cried in the bathroom for an hour yesterday.”

“Yeah, but—”

“At Starbucks.”

“Nuru,” he whines, aware that his voice is pitched annoyingly, but doesn’t care.

“Whatever drugs you stole from your coworker—”

“He gave them.”

“—fixed the pain. Not the actual injury. Which you should have gone to the ER about,” she adds, narrowing her eyes. “Why do I let you talk me out of that shit?”

“Hey, I was unconscious for most of it, don’t pin this on me.”

“Hmmm.” She squints at him, assessingly. “I hope you thanked your partner for dragging your dumb fuck ass home. He deserves a raise or something.”

Varian’s face heats up. “He’s not my partner. I don’t have a partner.”

She looks at him for a moment. “You don’t have to lie to me, you know.”

“I’m not lying!”

A dubious raised eyebrow. “Yeah, okay, then why was he petting your hair when you were crying in bed.”

Crying in bed—embarrassing, humiliating, and highly likely—immediately gets over ridden by petting your hair. Varian wracks his memory, trying to recall if White Crow had been in his room that night. Surely he had; Varian was slightly on the the side of too tall and heavy for Nuru to wrangle him into his bed herself.

But petting his hair? Varian can’t see it.

“This is White Crow we’re talking about, right?”

Nuru cocks her head. “Is that who that was? Huh, I’ve never seen him on the news.”

Varian’s stomach sours. “You wouldn’t have.” White Crow predominately engaged in heist work and he loved leaving a calling card, but in more recent years he’d stepped back into the shadows. Varian wasn’t sure if it had something to do with whoever he was working for, or not.

Their conversations—on the occasion Varian humored them—didn’t usually stray into the personal life category of vigilante talk. So he’d never asked.

Now, with the few tiny nuggets of knowledge Varian had procured over the past two weeks of working with Hugo, he wondered if the blonde was creeping toward retirement.

“Do you know of any vigilantes who retire in their twenties?” Varian asks, out loud.

“Most vigilante’s start in their twenties,” Nuru snorts. She’s back to staring daggers at her recipe book. “And wouldn’t you know? You’re the one in the business.”

Business. Yeah, right. Varian worked contract cases for Caine only and ran a patrol down near Corona’s coastline. She was clever enough to keep him in her pocket without directly having him her roaster.

And Varian was smart enough to let her. Caine was a powerful player among both Corona’s masked demographic and the high society embassies. He would a fool to turn her down when she came calling.

Varian was, at best, an unpaid intern.

“You’re the one on the Reddit groups,” Varian mutters back. “What was it, r slash caped sightings or something dumb like that?”

He gets a scowl back in response. “Don’t be so judgmental. It’s cool keeping track of who’s new and—”

“Who’s making out on the courthouse roof?” Varian smirks, because yeah, he saw that post.

The part of him that doesn’t squirm with guilt and revulsion thinks, get it, Eugene. About damn time.

(The part of him that does squirm with guilt and revulsion, well. Squirms.)

Nuru grins. “I’m always down for a little vigilante on vigilante action. Do we have any vanilla extract?”

He checks the cupboard. “It’s voyeuristic is what it is.”

“If they didn’t want people to see them, they shouldn’t have been eating face on the courthouse roof. Thanks,” she takes the tiny bottle of vanilla extract from him.

“The only reason people saw them was because the paparazzi is on their asses.”

“Yeah, well maybe they wouldn’t have paparazzi following them all the time if they didn’t monetize superhero work.”

Privately, Varian agrees. It never sat well with him, the way vigilante and superhero team ups ended up turning into brands. It was cool to see the occasional lightning bolt or sunflower on a t-shirt or a pin, but the commercials? And press conferences?

Varian scowls at the counter.

It had been a while since he’d thought about all of this—the culture around vigilantes and superheroes. Honestly, he had been sure he was over the whole thing.

Maybe White Crow being de-masked had brought everything up all over again. The questions that came with knowing the person behind the mask. Personally, this was why Varian didn’t like knowing anyone’s identity, because as far as he was concerned, the mask was who you were. You were your truest self.

But what about Hugo? Was he the sweet, if not annoying, coworker who brought Varian pain meds and free advice, or was he the slippery, untrustworthy White Crow who dodged Pyrite at every step?

Who had been Rapunzel? The kind, compassionate sister always there to lend an ear, or the pragmatic, leader, putting Corona over the wellbeing of her family?

Varian groans, pressing his palms into his eyes.

“Does it ever bug you, like, knowing who I am?”

Nuru doesn’t even bother giving him a weird look. She’s thrown all of her ingredients in a massive bowl and is aggressively mixing them together. “That sounds like the set up to a loaded question.”

“I mean, it doesn’t freak you out knowing that I.” He pauses, trying to parse out exactly how to say what he means. “Knowing who Pyrite is, that doesn’t upset you?”

“Why would it?” Nuru sets her bowl of ingredients down.

He sighs. “Nevermind.” It wasn’t as if Nuru had enough context for what Varian was getting at anyway. Knowing he was Pyrite was all good and fine. Knowing that he had connections to Sunflower was probably another story.

One that he’d prefer not to tell.

“You should consider it, though,” Nuru says, bringing Varian out of his brooding.

“What?”

She shrugs. “Taking on a partner. Vigilante duos are more successful than single acts.”

Against his better judgment, his mind drifts to Sunflower and White Knight. “Yeah, I guess. It also leaves you open to vulnerability.”

“I’m telling that to my boss the next time he tells me to get along with my coworkers.”

Varian rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waves him off. “My point still stands. That guy had your back the other night. It would be cool if someone like him had it the rest of the time.”

Unbidden, the image of White Crow patrolling on Pyrite’s heels hits him like a steel chair. Or a train-wreck in slow motion. Or something.

It would be terrible: the tall, stupid blonde lobbing every pun and innuendo in the book at Varian as they traipsed around the city.

“Yeah,” Varian sighs. “Like that’s ever gonna happen.”

___

Varian lies in bed over the weekend, relieved that he has some time off, but itching to be productive. He orders his textbooks for the spring semester, organizes the toxic hazard that became his desk last year, and is in the middle of deep cleaning the kitchen sink when Nuru shoos him back to bed.

“Take a nap. Watch some TV,” she says, taking the toilet brush out of his hand. “I hope this is new.”

“It’s clean,” he offers.

After he’s been banished back to his room, after some truly impressive yelling from Nuru, he realizes he’s out of tasks to distract him.

He lies down in bed and glares up at the ceiling for a truly impressive amount of time before he cracks and gets on his phone. No notifications.

Until…

Unknown Number: hey sweetcheeks

Unknown Number: hot are the drugs  

Unknown Number: *how  

Varian squints at the screen for a moment before realization dawns. How did you get this number, he shoots off, before thinking better of it. Going with a wrong number, sorry or straight up blocking might have been in his best interests.

The three bubbles indicating that the person on the other end—blonde, stupid and named Hugo—was texting pops up.

Unknown Number: I hacked your phone  

Unknown Number: while you were being all limp wristed in the bathroom  

Unknown Number: and sneaky stole your number  

Unknown Number: srry  

Unknown Number: excpt not rlly bcuz i feel like if u start bleeding to death on a guy in the starbucks bathroom that guy is entitled to compensation

Unknown Number: compensation being ur number btw  

Unknown Number: anyway. hows ur hole  

Varian turns his phone off and throws it with more force than necessary at the foot of his bed. It bounces lightly, vibrating loudly with new text notifications.

He stares at the ceiling for a few minutes, feeling sour in the stomach and hot in the face.

The phone buzzes again, once last time before going silent. The quiet sits with Varian for a few long minutes. He can hear the air conditioning buzzing through the shitty vents. Someone in the street outside yells. A car horn drones. Nuru laughs oh the phone, voice loud through their thin walls.

Rolling over onto his side—the one without a scabbing over hole—he picks at a thread on the comforter.

The last time he had been incapacitated to this degree was ages ago. Way before he moved to the East Side with Nuru and made a firm boundary between Sundrop’s territory and Pyrite’s. Back when he was living out of Eugene’s guest room and pretending like he didn’t know that he and Rapunzel were canoodling every night in the master bedroom.

That had been a time of uncertainty for Varian. Or—at least, more uncertainty than now. Just barely fourteen and grappling with a reality that featured neither of his parents, Varian drifted between moments of extreme anger and moments of extreme sadness. These episodes were usually punctuated by some kind of meltdown—which neither Eugene nor Rapunzel seemed to know how to handle.

With their relationship so new, it must have been difficult to deal with looking after Varian constantly.

That was how Varian saw it now, anyway. How stressed out Rapunzel must have been. How frustrated Eugene must have felt after each meltdown.

The sneaking out hadn’t been helping.

But it wasn’t as if Varian had even been doing anything. He’d just been keeping an eye on Sundrop, just in case. He wasn’t sure where Eugene patrolled—wasn’t even sure which identity matched up to the tired, young adult living in a two bedroom apartment with a broody teenager.

Varian knew Rapunzel though. Had known ever since they’d met. And the idea of her out there, alone in Corona without backup, made his heart twist painfully.

So he had followed her and one night he’d been on the unlucky end of a mugging. Varian hadn’t even had a wallet, and still walked away with a black eye, no jacket, and a shallow puncture wound from the guy’s switchblade.

Eugene had thrown a fit. Dragged him to the hospital—which he couldn’t afford—made him get stitches and grounded him for the rest of forever.

Until Varian had convinced Rapunzel to let him shadow her…

Lying in bed, in the present moment, Varian couldn’t help but feel a sense of melancholy. The memories were warm, but tinted in red. Like everything in Varian’s stupid past. And likely just like everything in his foreseeable future.

Not for the first time, Varian feels stuck. Trapped in East Corona, stamping down petty crime and throwing every rule Rapunzel had ever lay down in her face every time he went out.

Fuck her, he thinks, viciously, not for the first time. Fuck Rapunzel and her stupid, self righteous bullshit.

He sits up and grabs his phone.

Hugo picks up on the first ring. “Hey, butternut.”  

“Literally what the fuck is your problem?” Varian blurts. “You can’t just steal people’s phones and—and—” his brain felt like melted taffy on a sidewalk, “—how did you even snag it without me noticing?”

That is the part that really peeves him out. Varian spent the majority of his time around Caine’s lackeys. No way White Crow just happens to be that good. Better than everyone on Caine’s personal staff.

If so, Caine was right about White Crow’s boss being their competition.

“To be fair,” Hugo replied, voice cheerful, “you were very much bleeding out in a Starbucks bathroom.” A pause. There’s a squeaking on the other end of the line, faint. It makes Varian imagine Hugo in a swivel chair, turning in circles. “Speaking of which—”

“The hole is fine,” Varian snaps. He can feel his face turning red. “Whatever you gave me is helping. So like—thanks or whatever.”

“What was that last part? Speak up, I don’t think I heard y—” 

Through gritted teeth, Varian gets out, “Thank you.”

A hum from the other side. Pleased.

On Varian’s end, he can feel the silence slowly turning awkward. Phone calls already were the worst kind of anxiety, but with Hugo? This had been a mistake.

But it was keeping Varian’s mind off other things…

“What are you doing?” he asks, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling.

The pause makes his stomach twist. Then, “Paperwork,” Hugo says, sounding a tad surprised.

“What kind of paperwork? New job?”

“Oh, you wish.” Hugo’s laugh, scratchy through the shitty phone speaker, made Varian’s chest tighten. Probably with rage. “I’m transfering my credits from my shitty online school to a less shitty in-person school. If you must know.”

“Oh.” Well, Hugo had said he was pre-med. “Corona State?”

“Nah, community. I may have exaggerated my skills a tiny bit the other day. I’m still taking my gen-eds.”

Varian prays to god Hugo isn’t about to end up at Corona Community College. He’s already fished for so much information, though. It feels weird to keep pressing.

“Yeah, the financial aid at community college is better than the state schools,” Varian says instead. “You’re probably better off starting there than going straight to a four year university.”  

“Stripes.” Hugo’s voice is strained. Like he’s laughing. “You didn’t call me to talk about my career path.”

The blonde idiot isn’t even here and Varian face has gone from pink to bright red. “I was being polite!”

“You’re shit at smalltalk. Why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind?”

Fat chance. Like White Crow needed any more ammunition.

“I called to tell you to stop texting me.” Varian is aware his voice is snotty. Whatever. “It’s annoying and I was trying to take a nap.”

“You are so bad at lying. Look,” more sounds on Hugo’s end. Varian vaguely wonders what he’s doing. He’s too annoyed to ask. “I get we have…history.”

 That was putting it generously.  

“But we called truce outside the masks, right? I’m not talking to Pyrite, this is all Varian.”

And, god.

God.

Varian never understood the way other capes could just. Separate themselves from their night jobs like that. Varian and Pyrite were so entangled in one another he wasn’t sure which was which anymore. When Quirin had gotten sick and all of his secrets spilled into Varian’s life like a broken vial on the carpet, the bit of Varian that doodled support gear and himself in varying costumes he’d only ever seen on TV had awakened. When Eugene had taken him in a year later, that flame inside of him had urged him to follow Rapunzel out into the streets each night.

He’d thought it was a good thing. Cass and Rapunzel and Eugene had all compartmentalize themselves to hell and back in ways that Varian promised he never would. Pyrite was Varian and Varian was Pyrite and yeah, Pyrite had to be a secret which meant Varian had to keep most people at arms length, but it was a good thing because he was coping.

Varian walked into a warehouse that one night and came out with scars on his back and something snapped in his chest. Pyrite walked into Eugene’s apartment and packed a bag.

On the other end of the line—hundreds of miles or maybe only under twenty or ten away—Hugo asks Varian to split the two apart. Asking Varian to rip his own heart from his chest may have been an easier request.

“Is it ever hard for you?” Varian asks, eyes stinging. “To not be White Crow when you’re alone?”

Eugene would have barked field names, kid at the lack of caution, throwing another cape’s name out like that on an unsecured line.

At Hugo’s silence, Varian panics. “Nevermind, forget I asked. It was a stupid—”

“Sometimes, I find it easier to be White Crow,” Hugo interrupts. “I guess it’s hard to switch off being the version of me who doesn’t have to care.”

And then suddenly, they aren’t having a conversation anymore, they're talking past each other. A confessional of sorts.

“I don’t change. When I’m in the mask. It’s just me.”

“Sometimes I wish White Crow was the only version of me.”

“I’ve been jealous of you for years because of how easy you make it look.”

Hugo laughs, but it’s not mean. It’s commiserating. Solidarity that Varian hasn’t felt since Nuru found out about his caped adventures warms in his chest. This one is different, though. Hugo has been doing this as long as Varian—if not longer. He gets it.

He’s on the other side. He’s annoying, and inappropriate, and definitely Varian’s enemy.

But right now, he gets it.

“So much for separating Varian and Pyrite. We’re literally talking about that.”

“Well, apparently Varian’s problems are Pyrite’s.”

A smile tugs at the corner of Varian’s mouth. “You’re wrong about White Crow being different from you.”

“Oh?”

“It was him, after all, who got me home. After the whole—”

“Hole!” 

“Shut up. Stabbing incident.” A pause. “Did I thank you for that?”

“Your sassy roommate did. After threatening me with a lawsuit.”

Varian blinks.

“She what?”

“It was a whole thing. Don’t worry about it. Go back to complimenting me, I was enjoying it.” 

Varian rolls his eyes. “It wasn’t a compliment. I’m just—stating facts. It wasn’t White Crow who gave me pain meds.” He stares at a barely noticeable stain on the ceiling. “So. Thank you. For everything.”

There is silence on the other end for so long that Varian thinks that the call dropped for a moment. “Hugo?”

“Yeah, sorry—I gotta run. Something came up.” Hugo’s voice sounds distracted.

Varian glances out the window. It’s barely past 4pm, judging by the sun slowly melting into a dark blue sky. White Crow and Pyrite would both be getting ready to patrol, on a regular night.

Looks like it’s just White Crow tonight.

“Okay,” Varian replies, feeling uncertain. Wrong-footed by Hugo’s sudden aloofness. “I’ll see you at work.”

Hugo snorts and then hangs up.

Leaving Varian in a suddenly very empty bedroom.