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Varian considers himself a smart person, but there are a few ways he is also very, very unendowed in the head. One of these ways, according to history, is in the love department.
There was his whole crushing-on-Cassandra phase– which Varian prefers to do everything in his power not to think about anymore– and also the time that a visiting noble brought his teenage son to Corona who’d followed him around due to a keen interest in Varian’s projects. At least, Varian thought it was due to interest in his projects; it took teasing from Eugene and Rapunzel both for him to realize that there’s other reasons at play for someone his age to want to be alone with him.
He’d been red in the face with embarrassment for at least a week after that conversation, and certainly couldn’t make eye contact with the poor guy. He laid awake at night wondering: if a boy could crush on me, could I crush on a boy?
It wasn’t something he thought about much, until about one week ago when he came to a few understandings of himself, all at once: 1. Yes, yes he can like a boy, and 2. That boy is Hugo.
(Sun, why does it have to be Hugo ?)
Hugo is the most annoying person Varian has ever met, and that’s saying something because there is quite a collection between people at home and those they’ve met along the way of this journey that’ll hit a year mark pretty soon.
Although, he’s never noticed before if any of those people have gold specks in their eyes that seem to glitter when they laugh, not to mention the lovely eyelashes…or, or the long, slender fingers that are so surprisingly careful when they ghost over Varian’s in the lab tent…
Oh, look at that, he’s making himself turn red again.
He keeps doing that, ever since last Tuesday around 3PM when their company hit a bakery on their way through a town and Hugo was making fun of his infamous sweet tooth then reached out and thumbed a bit of frosting off Varian’s cheek and Varian went from all-I-can-see-is-treats mode to all-I-can-see-is-HIM mode. And every thought Varian’s had since then has been a panicked stream of self-reflection.
“-ggles? V, are you even listening to me?” a voice says and Varian snaps out of his self-inflicted misery to look up.
Hugo’s looking at him with an eyebrow raised, and gosh dangit, now Varian’s breath is catching in his chest and–
“I’m fine!” he squeaks. “I mean, wait– that’s not what you asked. Yes, totally, I…” he resists throwing himself into the fire crackling before them. “...No, sorry. What was that?”
Hugo cracks a stupidly perfect half grin at him. “I asked if you want onions in this.”
Varian looks blankly at the pot of stew they’re supposed to be putting together while Nuru and Yong are getting supplies. “Uh, sure. I’m not kissing anyone tonight. Ha ha.” He can feel the red rash creeping all the way down his neck.
“...Oookay,” Hugo says after a pause, giving him a vaguely concerned look before pushing to his feet. He leaves Varian at the cutting board and heads for the food supplies presumably to look for said vegetable.
It gives Varian a reprieve from his presence to bang his head with one fist. Why, why did Nuru insist he and Hugo stay behind together? It’s a move she’s been making a lot lately. Did she know something he didn’t?
He’s shaken out of his thoughts when a throaty cough beats the air; a familiar sound. Varian winces, standing up when the hacking doubles in on itself and becomes near-gagging. He quickly grabs a metal cup of water and rounds the corner to where Hugo is bent over to his knees with a hand covering his mouth.
“Here,” Varian says, accidentally startling Hugo into looking up at him with wide, watering eyes. He tentatively offers the water, and Hugo reaches for it with one shaky hand.
“Th-thanks,” the blond says, pulling the fisted hand away from his mouth in order to drink.
Varian wrings his hands, making an aborted gesture before going for it and resting a hand on Hugo’s back. “That cough is really getting bad,” he says, tone anxious. “I wish I’d told the others to pick up some honey; lemon and honey is what works when I’m sick.”
“Not sick,” Hugo says, wiping his mouth as he pounds his chest a few times. He meets Varian’s skeptical gaze and rolls his eyes. “Seriously, this is just– I appreciate the concern but I’ll be fine. Let’s get dinner done.”
Varian watches unsurely as Hugo strides back to the fire without leaving room for another word. “Whatever you say…” Varian mutters.
Hugo’s cough has been going on for at least a couple months, to the point Varian knows if it were him his father would’ve already carted him to a doctor to get it checked out by now. People don’t just develop a cough for no reason . Their transient lifestyle makes it logistically harder to get to a physician but definitely not impossible– If only Hugo weren’t so frustratingly flighty about it, that is.
Sighing, Varian makes to follow Hugo but then his gaze falls on a bright spot of color in the dirt.
Kneeling, he peers closer and sees a bright blue flower petal that he’s pretty sure wasn't there before. He looks around, confused, and doesn't see any flowers nearby that could have shed it.
Weird.
The rest of the evening goes as smoothly as it can after that. They work together companionably on dinner and finish just as Nuru and Yong return and it turns out the onions were a good call, agreed by everyone as they eat.
Afterwards Varian spends some time in his mom’s journal and routine follows that he gets some late night experiment idea and loses track of time in the lab tent til the stars begin twinkling out overhead. Something in the math disagrees with him though because he ends up hissing and wiping chemical splatter out of his hair and goggles before long.
A second pair of eyes would probably find the mistake, he thinks, eyes trailing toward Hugo’s tent when he steps out for some air.
Yong is already snoring in his sleeping bag by the fire, but Nuru isn’t anywhere to be seen. Presumably Hugo is in his tent since that’s where they all insist he sleep ever since his cough started getting bad and, no matter how he resists proper treatment, it’s a known fact that cold air makes lung conditions worse. He’s not strong enough to win against all three of them.
Varian starts over, stops, turns around and paces back. Stops again. Turns again.
Ruddiger trills at his feet questioningly, loud in the white noise of night time sounds and Varian jumps out of his skin with a yelp, glaring down at his friend who seems to laugh at the reaction. “Shh!” he hisses, even though he’s the one now stomping toward Hugo’s tent with caution thrown to the wind.
Before he can knock on the tent pole to announce his presence, however, he hears the muffled sounds of conversation from within, and pauses curiously.
“--clearly in a lot of pain. You can’t keep pretending nothing is wrong like this!” Nuru’s voice hisses. She sounds agitated, and not in the way she normally would be when arguing with Hugo. More like– worried. Worried for him .
And Hugo, presumably due to being Hugo, replies nonchalantly to her worry, “Watch me.”
Varian presses closer to the tent flap, pulse quickening. Is Hugo more sick than he’s letting on?
Nuru groans. “You know as well as I do that there are only two ways this can end, Hugo.”
“Wrong again, Starlight. There’s also the procedure.”
A rustling of skirts that must be Nuru pacing stops in its tracks. “Procedure?” she breathes.
Hugo shifts, and Varian can imagine him avoiding her gaze, picking at a loose thread. “It’s not something I’d trust just anyone to do, you know,” he says. “My mentor in Ingvar, though, she’s skilled enough. I just need to muscle through until–”
“Procedure!” Nuru erupts. “You mean the procedure that removes it entirely? The one that, of those who have it done and survive , very few are left the way they were before? You know the risk, right? Removing the flowers removes the feelings, the memories, the– the ability to love ever again! Is that really easier than just telling him–”
“Yes!” Hugo snaps. “Yes, okay? I know, and yes, it is better. It's the best option for both of us.”
Varian feels cold, horrified for some reason he can’t quite place, since he really doesn’t know what they’re talking about exactly and yet the smothered grief in Hugo’s voice is enough to stun him as Hugo adds quietly, hoarsely, “I’m not enough. He-he’ll never be mine.”
Nuru’s voice is as sad as a mourner at a funeral. “Hugo…”
“Come on, Princess,” Hugo says tiredly, tone becoming more like its normal self with noticeable effort. “It’s late. Go get some beauty sleep, would you?”
There’s a sigh and the yelp of Hugo getting bopped upside the head before Nuru’s footsteps approach the tent door and Varian is suddenly scrambling to position himself more casually, which means turning around 180 degrees and looking up at the sky with hands on his hips.
Yep. Totally casual.
Nuru stumbles as she nearly runs into him. “Wha- Varian?”
He turns and gives her a surprised, overly wide smile. “Oh, hi Nuru!”
Her eyes dart to the tent then back at him. “Did–”
Varian thrusts forward the beaker in his hands like a cross before a vampire, hoping to ward off any investigation into his blatant faux pas. “I was just going to ask Hugo something about my experiment,” he says. “If–if he’s feeling up for it.”
Nuru looks at it and slowly answers, “...Yeah. Yeah, go for it,” with a small, knowing kind of smile spreading across her face. She squeezes his shoulder as she passes, and then Varian is alone, deflating with nervous energy.
He knocks on a tent post.
“Hugo?” he asks softly, parting the flap enough to poke his head in tentatively. There’s a single candle lit on the bed stand table, next to where Hugo is sitting slumped on the bed’s edge, head in his hands. At Varian’s throat clearing, though, his gaze snaps up, and Varian feels his heart sink.
There’s a fine sheen of sweat on Hugo’s forehead that tells of a low-grade fever, face pale and flushed in all the wrong places. So, if anything can be concluded from the overheard conversation, it’s that Hugo is in fact not doing as well as he lets on.
Varian swallows, once again holding out the beaker in his hands to quickly explain his intrusion.
“Uh, sorry to bother you,” he fumbles. “I was working with this compound and it’s giving me trouble, so…I thought, a second pair of eyes never hurts. Sometimes math gives me trouble when I’ve been staring at it for too long.”
Hugo blinks, uncomprehending. “You… need help?”
Varian deflates a bit. “Okay, don’t get ahead of yourself–”
But the corner of Hugo’s mouth is already twisting up. “The mighty teen prodigy royal engineer of Corona–”
“--You don’t have to–”
“--Wants my help?” And now he’s downright smug, all traces of sickliness seemingly vanishing as he draws up and places a hand on his chest in mock disbelief. His posture shifts to one of thought, tapping his chin and humming in the back of his throat. “What’s today’s date again? I want to write it in my journal as the day I peaked. It’s all downhill for me from here.”
Varian’s face is red, and yeah, maybe it’s no wonder it took him so long to realize his feelings for the person in front of him when they’re such an inseparable mix of I want to punch that look off his face and I want to kiss that look off his face.
He refrains from doing either, taking a deep breath that only makes Hugo laugh softly and consequently makes Varian’s heart beat faster. “You’re clearly delirious,” he says, tone measured, opening his eyes. “Maybe I better–”
“No take-backsies,” Hugo says, already shifting up onto his feet and wrapping a blanket around his shoulders like a cape. He breezes past Varian out the tent door with his head held high.
Three hours later finds Hugo and Varian both still wide awake and pouring over several messy beakers with crystal compounds forming inside of them, arguing at a volume only meagerly curtailed by Yong poking his head in earlier, hair wilder than usual and eyes half open, to send them a sleepy glare before retreating in such a way that it left them doubled over in desperately quieted fits of laughter afterward.
“Whichever one is bigger ?” Hugo asks.
“Not bigger, just like, the most crystal formed ,” Varian emphasizes, staring at the reflection of his goggle-clad face in the lenses of Hugo’s own goggles. “Why, how do you want to establish winner criteria?”
“I wouldn’t have thought to make one the winner, Stripes, I’m gonna be honest. Do you do this often?”
Varian turns away. “No.”
Ruddiger, curled up and peacefully napping in the clearest corner of the tent, cracks an eye open to shoot him a disbelieving look.
“So you don’t mind if I just…”
Hugo’s sly tone has Varian spinning back to see the other alchemist reaching for his personal research journal open on the table to keep track of trials. Varian’s ears burn when Hugo scoops it up and flips backwards. He shifts his goggles to their usual perch on the top of his head. “Hang on–”
Hugo dodges Varian’s swipe, holding the book up in the air as he flips. “No way,” he laughs, sending butterflies dancing in Varian’s gut. “Iron versus steel– tsk, no brainer there– wait, is this just a hot chocolate recipe? That is way too much sugar...”
“You’re stupidly tall!” Varian bites out, attempting to scramble up Hugo’s frame. He manages to grasp at the idiot’s glasses hooked onto his collar and withdraws them triumphantly. “Ha!”
Hugo pauses, tucking the book under his armpit and pulling his goggles down with a sigh. “And you’re feral,” he says, holding out a hand.
Varian ignores him, instead placing the frames on his nose and blinking owlishly before squinting. “Sun and moon,” he exclaims. “You can see through these?”
Long, slender fingers snatch the glasses away and Varian doesn’t protest, already ready for relief from the distorted view. He does, however, reach out and close his fingers over that retreating hand as an unexplained urge overcomes him.
Maybe it’s the competitiveness that lingers in the air, Varian’s need to make the last move; maybe it’s the sudden curiosity at what it feels like to lace those fingers through his own. Whatever the reason, the result startles both of them: suddenly they’re eye-to-eye, closer than they’ve ever been, and Varian is overwhelmed by emerald green unhidden behind thick frames for once.
Hugo seems similarly hypnotized by whatever he sees (and they are close enough that even someone as far-sided as him must see clearly) and time seems to freeze in that moment, all else ceasing to exist besides their gaze and the hand contact that burns Varian’s skin.
Until, that is, Hugo blinks and goes abruptly gray in the face. Blood seems to drain from him as he pulls back, glasses slipping from both their grips and clattering in the dirt.
Before Varian can even form words to ask what’s wrong, Hugo is overtaken by the worst coughing fit he’s ever had . It sounds like he’s choking, gasping for air around a heavy weight as he falls to his knees, hand splayed on his chest.
In a panic, Varian drops alongside him, not knowing what else to do. He looks around for– he doesn’t know what, a drink to offer, maybe? But before he sees anything to help, there’s an inhuman gag and something is expelled from Hugo’s lungs into the space between them in a wet mess, entirely too innocent-looking for all the horror it elicits.
A flower. A rose, with petals as blue as the sky in summer.
Blue is not a natural color for roses. Red, yes, pink, yellow, white– all these have places in loving relationships. Varian knows some botanical-focused alchemists can manipulate flowers to grow this color, though not in high demand, given what they symbolize.
All of this goes through Varian’s mind almost distantly as Hugo continues to hack remnants of leaf and stem in an unappealing pile of waste around the offending flower, shakily wiping his mouth and pounding his chest as his breath returns in gasps.
Varian snaps out of it when he notes Hugo feeling out blindly for his fallen glasses, quickly collecting them and handing them over.
“Are you– are you–,” Varian says, hardly able to find breath in his own chest all of a sudden. Not even he knows what he’s trying to ask. But he knows one thing, more than any other:
This is that Disease.
The realization makes his blood chill in his veins.
As soon as his glasses sit crooked upon his nose, Hugo catches sight of the flower and blanches of what little color is coming back to his cheeks. “I– I can explain,” he rasps.
“Hugo.”
“It’s–it’s not, what it looks like!”
Varian finally looks up from the evidence and makes eye contact with Hugo, the two of them mirroring expressions very different from what they shared moments ago. Varian feels his heart stutter with anxiety. Anxiety for the realization, anxiety for what it could mean...
“What do they call it in Ingvar?” he asks, mouth dry. “In Corona, we call it Heart’s Blume. I mean, I’ve never met anyone with it before so I wasn’t sure it was real, but this is pretty hard to deny, right? Unless you’ve been on a strange diet lately, Hugo–”
“It’s someone you don’t know,” Hugo blurts.
Something crashes over Varian.
Hugo nods, and keeps nodding as it comes out of him in a rush, words tumbling over themselves in an overeager way so different from how he usually speaks:
“Yeah, there’s someone– Someone I met before I ever came and st-stole the Fire Totem from you and Yong. I thought my feelings for them were gone by now, but– I, I’ve been thinking of them and– you know this magic stuff doesn’t make any sense! It’s not scientific, and it’s more than a little gross. You understand why I didn’t say anything sooner, don’t you, Goggles?”
Varian should feel– well, what is he supposed to feel? It’s not any worse than the news that Hugo is dying of one-sided love, to find out he’s dying because of one-sided love with a stranger.
Right?
So why is Varian’s heart cracking in two?
Suddenly neither of them seem to want to meet eyes.
His tongue is too thick to manipulate into speech, so he can only listen dumbly as Hugo carries on, “But I’m going to get the operation to fix it! There are doctors there who can get me up and flower-free in no time. So don’t worry too much about it.”
Varian nods wordlessly. Say something, idiot. “O-oh. Okay. I’m sorry you’re– going through that.”
Hugo bats the air and grins breezily, pushing to his feet and wobbling a bit. Varian reaches out quickly, but Hugo grabs onto the table instead and smoothly turns the movement into brushing dirt from his knees like he meant to do it.
“It’s no big deal, seriously,” he says. “Embarrassing more than anything. Can you imagine what would happen to my reputation if the people I robbed knew I had the broken-heart disease ?” Hugo wrinkles his nose in a disgusted snort.
Varian offers a laugh in return that feels like pushing out a stone lodged in his windpipe.
“It’s not that bad…” he says weakly. “Being in love is pretty common, I hear. Some of the best people I know are in love.”
Hugo coughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m glad it’s working out for them,” he says awkwardly. “Sorry I ruined the crystal experiments.”
“It’s okay. It’s probably time to stop anyway.”
“Right.”
They lapse into silence. Varian gets up and turns his back, gathering up his things and beginning the errand of cleaning up for the night. “Good night,” he mumbles.
He hears nothing from behind him for a long moment, only the clinking of beakers with slow-growing crystals forming inside of them being lined up and shelved. Then a soft, “Night,” and a shuffling of steps.
Then Varian is alone.
His hands falter and fall still in their work. Instead, they wrap around his midsection and stay wound there tightly for a long time.
Hugo remembers the first time he coughed up a flower.
He’d flirted with Varian since about five minutes after meeting him due to… a curiosity, one might say. Varian was an actually interesting opponent for once, and it was a familiar source of fun for Hugo to press people’s buttons and find out what they were made of.
He learned that it was fairly easy to bug Varian; put something in the wrong place and he’d go on a “don’t touch that!” rant. He also learned that Varian, unlike most people he conned, could keep up with him on an intellectual level. The only other person in Hugo’s life like that was Donnie, and she already knew everything Hugo did. Every time he showed Varian something new, or alternatively learned something new from the foreign alchemist, being around him became that much more fun.
At some point he realized he was getting dangerously attached and recommitted to convincing himself Varian wasn’t as good the person he pretended to be. Perhaps Hugo could feel better about the whole double-crossing, if he knew those acts of kindness and bubbly smiles were all backed up by a dark past of some kind. But every time he tried to catch the other off guard and see beneath the act, Varian consistently proved to be… even better of a person.
A dark past he indeed had, but hearing him confess his wrongs with tortured eyes and a voice full of determination to grow past what were the worst times of his life… rather than feel vindicated, Hugo felt something else.
A realization: Varian is a better person than he could ever be.
After that it was a slippery slope.
Around six months ago, the group of them came across some wild apple trees and went about picking the free bounty for their food supply. Loosely spread out, Hugo had come upon Varian humming and chatting cheerfully with his raccoon as they went about collecting fruit, and the sun was scattered just so across Varian’s features, and something in Hugo’s chest lept. Two truths settled simply against his heart.
He’s actually kind of beautiful.
And,
I think I’m in love with him.
But Hugo had learned long ago that nice things were not for him to keep.
Seconds later the bubbliness in his sternum turned into physical pain and he coughed, alerting Varian to his presence. The boy turned and asked Hugo if he was okay, and Hugo brushed it off, already stalking away in embarrassment.
When he removed his hand from his mouth, the first blue petal was cupped in his palm.
He knows they're the color of unrequited love, but even now, every time Hugo coughs one up, all he can think is how perfectly they match the color of Varian’s eyes.
At first he was concerned, yeah, but not aware of the gravity of the situation. Ingvar isn’t as whimsical as other kingdoms, go figure, and with his mostly self-taught education, this disease wasn’t ever something he came across. When the flower spitting became too frequent to ignore, he spent a day in the library reading everything he could and the situation went from bad in a bizarre way to… bad in many other kinds of ways.
He kept the condition hidden despite privately flipping his shit. He went through all the stages of grief, particularly denial that something as far-removed from his life as magic thought it could come along and end him.
Nuru wised up after a while; and now of course, since the universe proves again and again to be a dark, cruel place, the object of his affections, the cause of his destruction, Varian himself, knows.
The morning after their crystal experiments comes cold and clear and accompanied by Yong’s chipper chattering as usual. He’s the ‘bright eyed bushy-tailed’ one among them, to be sure. Nuru, a proper night owl as any astronomer must be, is muted and slow-to-rise, but even she’s not as baggy-eyed and miserable as either Hugo or Varian when they emerge.
They avoid each other all day.
Nuru throws him looks that he avoids interpreting, but Hugo knows she’s caught on to the change in atmosphere. Great. Hugo can’t wait for her to corner him and call him an idiot again. At least they’ll be in Ingvar by the end of the week.
The thought both turns his stomach and provides his only relief.
Procedure?! You mean the procedure that removes it entirely? Removing the flowers removes the feelings, the memories, the– the ability to love ever again!
Yep , he thinks again to the ghost of Nuru’s lecturing, as well as to the yearning, crying part of himself that wishes it weren’t so.
As they're running from Ingvar with Donella’s men on their tail, Hugo realizes he is, in scientific terms, officially screwed.
How was he supposed to know Don wanted the con to end so soon– that she intended to throw his new friends in jail and take the library all for herself? In retrospect he should have expected something similar, but he’s been a little occupied with dying and being in love. Which coincidentally are the same thing for him.
He didn’t even get the chance to be belittled by Don for it, let alone ask her medical advice, because the instant she’d laid out plans threatening his new family he’d made the decision to betray her without putting nearly enough thought into it. It’s not clear to him how it happened exactly, but he knows he confessed his role in her plot to the others, that he helped them get the iron kingdom totem and avoid her traps, and that now her goons are chasing them back to Corona to try and steal the Library for themselves.
He’ll chalk his mental absences up to the fever.
After finding out his role in her plot, the others weren't as mad at him as he expected. They actually said nothing at all, which was almost worse.
He hadn't made eye contact with Varian in particular once since coming clean… too irrationally afraid of what he’d see there. But seeing as he now had as much a bounty on his head as them to Donella, and he was literally shaking on his legs from cursed flower sickness, it seemed Varian, Nuru and Yong as a whole had too much pity between them to throw Hugo to the wolves.
And so they stuck together. It’s more than he would have hoped, but it’s not like it mattered too much at this point; going by the ever-climbing pain and the frequency of his fits, this week will likely be his last on earth.
He wonders if they know it too.
They’re going off road on unpaved trails because they don't want to be easily caught on main highways, but unfortunately they don’t quite make it to the small town of Amilan before Lady Misfortune strikes again.
It starts with Hugo being snapped out of miserably trudging through both mud and hazy thoughts by a shout of his name, as abrupt in the stillness of the forest air as a strike of thunder on a quiet night.
“Hugo!”
Hugo’s gaze shoots up from his boots and blearily connects with Varian.
Varian's eyes are wide and filled with fear, but not looking at Hugo– they’re pinpointed on something beyond his shoulder. Hugo turns and locks onto the form of a bandit hidden among the undergrowth, an arrow notched in his bow and pointed right at him, the one of their group who lags behind.
All he has is a split second to think, Well, what’s a few days sooner, in the grand scheme of things? just before a weight slams into him and his face makes quick friends with the dirt.
Except, it’s not an arrow that hit him.
He oofs, abused lungs protesting with a wheeze that brings up a petal or two, which he spits irritatedly as he twists up and around. Bewilderment quickly turns to horror.
Standing in his place, with a bolt sticking out of his shoulder, is Varian.
He sways like a leaf in the wind. Blue eyes blink, beholding the protrusion with a blank stare as chaos erupts around them. Nuru is screeching and bandits are yelling as they close in. One of Yong's bombs goes off. Hugo’s breath can’t keep track of it all through the static filling his ears.
He sees the miniscule wobble in Varian’s knees before they give way and the alchemist sinks to the earth. And then Hugo is lunging forward with more energy than he’s had all day.
His entire body pulses at every heartbeat. As he takes Varian into his arms, the most precious and fragile weight he’s ever held, he becomes aware of a stream of words pouring out of him. “No, no, nonono, not you, please, not you,” he’s begging breathlessly. “Idiot, why did you do that?!”
Blood is welling from the wound and he presses his palms there. Varian’s jaw clacks together in a whimper of pain at the jostling, eyes going glossy as they stare off at nothing, skin white as snow. Pain lances in Hugo’s own chest and stuttering apologies find their way into the incoherent mix.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “Sorry sorry sorry. I'm sorry. You have to be okay. No, Goggles, please. Goggles. Varian.”
Varian startles, drooped eyelids fluttering and gaze momentarily swinging around to lock onto Hugo’s, a tenuous connection that feels more important than anything in the universe.
Hugo sobs, “Varian, please be okay. I love you. ”
Varian’s chest stutters.
Distantly, Yong yells profanities that Hugo didn’t know he knew and then another explosion goes off, followed by unmanly screams as the bandits head for the hills. Nuru appears at Hugo's shoulder and shoves him out of the way, procuring bandages and a tourniquet and an urgent, level-headed attitude that jolts him out of his state of shock. When Varian passes out, she punches Hugo hard to keep him from losing it. He follows her directions, gets Varian into the caravan and keeps him steady as Prometheus flies them down the road at a pace he’s scarcely achieved once in the past year.
When they come bursting though the medic’s clinic as a group composed of one bleeding kid and three more screaming kids, it’s easy to guess they’re the biggest excitement the sleepy little village of Amilan has had all week. Varian is rushed off to be treated and as soon as he disappears from sight, Hugo is ashamed to admit he immediately collapses in much the same fashion as a fainting damsel.
Some indeterminable amount of time later, he wakes up in a hospital bed, chest tight and heavy like an invisible elephant is sitting on top of him. Quiet murmurs around him become pitched in concern when he rolls onto his side and has a coughing fit so severe that two full roses are expelled before he’s passing out again.
The next time he wakes up, he’s alone. The voices are gone, at least.
His breaths rattle loud in the stillness and the only word his mind can produce is Varian.
He manages to grasp around for the glasses someone removed from him while he slept, and with clarity returning to the world comes the welcome view of a hospital room. Welcome in this case because it’s a shared room, and on the bed across from his own lies a familiar head of teal-striped black hair. As he watches through the dimness, he can make out swaths of bandages and the relaxed, slow snores of sleep.
Relief washes over Hugo, and then comes the anxious, childish need to make sure.
He gives up after one tug on the metal bed frame, and instead shoves his mattress onto the floor. He manages to drag it up against the side of Varian’s bed just before collapsing back onto it. Labored air scrapes through his chest and light-headedness overtakes him.
But the last thing he sees before he passes out is the lax face of the boy he loves, and that’s enough.
“Mother?”
The woman towering over him sighs, face pinched in annoyance. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not–”
“Mother, I love you!” A 5-year-old Hugo proclaims, holding out the hand-picked and rather sad-looking bouquet of weeds and wildflowers of a child let loose in nature.
The orphanage caretaker’s eyes scan the offering with lackluster enthusiasm. “Great,” she says sarcastically, and at Hugo’s continued stare, takes the offering from him. When she says nothing else, Hugo wilts.
“I know you’re not Mommy,” he says, scuffing one too-tight shoe in the dirt. “I know she’s gone. But you’re so nice to take care of us kids who have no mommys and daddys left, you must love us! So I wanted to show you, I love you, too!”
Her eyes soften minutely and she pats his head. “That’s sweet, Hugo,” she says, and he beams as she walks around him with a rustle of skirts.
Later that day, Hugo goes about his evening chores like every other lost child at his one of many orphanages instituted to take rats off the streets of Ingvar, and in taking out the garbage, he sees the wilted remains of his bouquet amid rotten food and dirty diapers.
The dream shifts, and suddenly he is not the Hugo of a past life, but 19 years old and sitting at a library table across from Varian of Old Corona, the same who caused flowers to grow in his heart.
“Come on, Mom! Why does she change up the code now ?” Varian bemoans, grasping onto the roots of his hair and tugging frustratedly.
Hugo laughs at his antics, and around the nearest shelf, a librarian as old and dusty-looking as this podunk library itself sends them a withering look. Hugo smiles at her innocently and she retreats, then turns to the boy splayed over his journal, cheek pressed grumpily (adorably) into old scribbles.
“You’ll get it, Freckles. Just like you always do,” Hugo says, patting him on the shoulder. This, at least, is true to memory. In the memory, Hugo then turned a spat a flower under the table. But the urge doesn’t overtake him in the dreamscape. Instead, in the silence that follows, he bites his lip and continues.
“You’ll get it because you never give up, do you, V? That’s something I… I love about you.”
Varian goes rigid and the dust motes in the air seem to freeze in place. Suddenly uneasy, Hugo withdraws his hand and watches as Varian slowly sits up and looks at him with an unfamiliar expression on his face. It’s emotionless but gradually morphing into disgust.
“You love me?” he repeats, eyes narrowing.
Hugo laughs nervously, heart sinking into his shoes. He wishes he could vanish into nothing but myth and memory much like the magic library they’re after. “Well, that’s not– I mean, I–”
“Oh my gods ,” Varian says, abruptly on his feet and towering over him like the orphanage caretaker of his memory. The light bends harshly over his frame, color seeming to drain from the scene. “You do, you love me. Did you think I’d say I love you back or something?” His mouth turns into a cruel smile. “Hugo, that’s pathetic.”
Hugo can’t take it; he looks away, eyes stinging. His mouth is too dry to speak and even if it weren’t, suddenly every word of human language is lost to him. “I– I–”
The voice changes, and when he looks up, it’s no longer Varian but Donella casting her shadow over him. “You should've learned by now,” she says, voice layered in three– the caretaker, Varian, and his mentor all at once. “You’re not made to be loved.”
Hugo doesn’t so much as wake up as he gets smacked with consciousness. One second he’s in his worst nightmare and the next a hospital room with his brain screaming at him, air, we need air, we need air right now.
He gasps uselessly, chest as tight and painful as if clamped in a bear trap that he’s helpless to release. Hands are on him then– they scramble to turn him onto his side so that an opening appears at the back of his throat and he greedily takes in the lungful it provides. Each breath is like knives in his chest.
When the fit finally passes and he blinks up with tears of pain budding in his eyes, it’s Varian who he sees watching over him from the bed above, concern in every feature. He's in a hospital gown, and Hugo realizes he is too. They're in the same odd bedding position he set them in during the night, but now morning light spills in through the hospital window, warm and yellow.
“There’s water,” Varian says, pointing with his eyes to the bedside table. Hugo looks up and sure enough sees a pitcher set there. He pushes up on one trembling elbow and pours it eagerly.
Varian watches him guzzle the water quietly, and Hugo realizes after a moment that he should probably not drink all the water himself. After all…
“How are you feeling?” he rasps, plopping back to the mattress and appraising Varian’s shoulder critically.
Varian snorts, amusement lighting up his eyes. “You’re the one who almost coughed to death,” he points out. Despite his levity, the humor in his tone reminds Hugo sharply of the dream Varian’s laughter and his stomach turns sickly. He looks away wordlessly and drinks his water again.
“...But I’m fine, I guess,” Varian offers eventually. He gestures with his good hand to the arm bound tightly in a sling at his side. “Just gotta… not get shot anymore. What about you?”
“Fine. I guess.”
Hugo replaces the cup and slouches tiredly against the pillows at his back, letting his eyes fall shut and focusing on breathing. Silence reigns.
Until Varian says, “It’s me.”
Without opening his eyes, Hugo murmurs, “What’s you, Stripes.”
“It’s not somebody you used to know,” he continues, and Hugo’s mind is much too slow for this. The realization only sets in when Varian bluntly clarifies, “The one you’re heartsick for. It’s me.”
A thrill of panic shoots through Hugo and he feels his heart stumble over a beat. He obstinately sets his gaze upon the corner of the ceiling and thinks.
Honestly? He has no energy left to deny it. He has no energy left to be scared of rejection. So after letting out a great exhale to calm his nerves (it doesn’t work), he says tiredly, “Yeah. It is.”
Varian inhales sharply.
He's a much nicer person than Hugo’s subconscious made him out to be; most likely, he’ll let Hugo down easy. It’s not like they don’t both know how Heart’s Blume disease comes about, after all. One of them has feelings and the other doesn’t. That's how it goes.
“Hugo,” Varian says. “Hugo, I’m such an idiot.”
Hugo closes his eyes tight. “No, you’re not. It’s okay.”
“It’s not! And I am!” Varian sounds really distressed, now, and at a dull thud Hugo risks peeking over to see him smacking himself in the forehead with the fist of his good hand. “You’re suffering because of me! All this time you’ve been sick… of course. If I realized my own stupid feelings sooner! And now you’re–” He pauses mid-rant to look down at Hugo, agonized. “This is my fault!” He pounds his head again.
“Woah, hey, chill out, Goggles,” Hugo says hurriedly, trying to intercept Varian’s hand. He’s in disbelief that the guy is trying to assume responsibility and apologize for this crappy situation the universe threw at him, and yet it’s somehow so Varian .
But one thing amid the rant catches his attention, and with forced casualness he asks, “What do you mean by that? ‘Realized your feelings sooner’?”
Varian stops, looking at him and quickly snatching up the hand Hugo had batted out with. He holds it to his chest.
“Hugo,” he says. “Hugo, I love you too.”
Hugo’s mind goes blank.
On the one hand, maybe he didn’t actually wake up. And that’s not so bad an option because at least his brain is being nicer to him than it was before. But on the other hand… if this is real, actual life… Varian is a really, really good person. And he probably knows how this disease is cured, or at least thinks he does.
After a handful of seconds spent fighting for his life to process this turn of events, Hugo manipulates his tongue enough to respond. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Varian blinks and tilts his head, death grip on Hugo’s hand releasing marginally. “Huh?”
Hugo feels pink blotching across his face and hopes it blends in with the fever. He tugs his hand back and Varian releases it. “The– the disease. It’s magic nonsense, Freckles. It won’t go away just because you say the words.”
“Are you… are you accusing me of lying, right now?”
“If this is our current timeline, then yes.”
“Are you an idiot? I’m not lying, Hugo, I love you.”
“Literally, no you don’t.”
“I do! Even if I can’t believe I’m having this argument right now!”
“V–Varian,” Hugo says, unable to bear it. He closes his eyes again, suddenly feeling worse than if Varian had just reacted poorly. “Please.”
There’s a painfully quiet pause as neither of them move. Then, warm against his skin, a hand cups Hugo’s face and turns his chin.
“Tell me how to prove it,” Varian whispers.
Hugo bravely opens his eyes and searches the beautiful gaze boring into him. Varian is looking between his eyes seriously, analyzing him like an experiment in the lab that isn’t working out the way he wants. Hugo has no idea what to tell him, and Varian, intelligent as he is, must see that.
“Hang on,” he says, turning suddenly and nearly launching himself off the other side of the bed. The hand disappearing from his cheek leaves Hugo feeling cold inside, but he smothers it and waits curiously and (a bit alarmed) as Varian fishes his pack up from the wood floor and onto his lap.
Digging inside, he finds what he’s looking for with an “ah-hah!” and turns triumphantly with a curious set of items in his grasp– his personal journal, a chemical vial, and a small dish.
“Uh,” Hugo says nervously when Varian uncaps the vial with a quick pop and pours a small amount of green substance into the dish, followed by striking a match he’d also collected that Hugo hadn’t noticed. “Are these activities you should be conducting in a hospital–”
“Shut up,” Varian tells him, not looking up as he drops the match onto the plate. Flames the same neon shade as the chemical quickly light, and Varian sets this onto the table behind Hugo’s head. Hugo jolts away from it but Varian continues looking unconcerned as he flips open his journal and leafs one-handed through it until he finds a specific page he’s looking for. A manic-looking grin overtakes his face.
“Here!” Varian says triumphantly, shoving the book into Hugo’s hands. “Right there, see that?”
“Cool… a blank page,” Hugo says.
“It’s invisible ink. Hold it up to the exothermic reaction.”
Hugo frowns at him, untrusting. Varian levels a look right back, immovable in his resolve. Finally Hugo sighs and does as he’s told.
Just as Varian said, the moment the page is within proximity of the candle light, words whisper across the page like buried treasures come to light. Hugo is at first taken aback by this subtly genius method of revealing invisible ink, and then… then he starts to make out what the words themselves are saying.
May 9th. Today Hugo MAY have proven he’s on our side after all… Yong and I almost didn’t make it through the water trial and Hugo got us out of there. Doesn’t mean I trust him, though.
May 10th. Also his mouse is annoying.
June 13th. Hugo’s expertise came in handy again today… I’m actually learning a lot from him. But I’d never let him know that, which is why I have to use means like these to keep him from snooping. He’s annoying enough as it is without ammo.
And on they go… entries dating back over the past year of their lives as they got to know one another regarding Varian’s perspective on Hugo’s place in their company, his character, the moments they shared. The entries start short, but increase in length as time goes by. Before he knows it Hugo is flipping page after page to reveal more hidden text, getting closer and closer to the current date. Eventually, reading them, he can’t help but smile despite himself.
And then,
February 17th. Well, I realized something. I did it again. I went completely oblivious to my own emotions. It turns out, I like Hugo more than I might be in love with Hugo. He’s not what he pretends to be. I’m seeing that now. I’m seeing that underneath the charming attractive funny obnoxious exterior, he’s actually a good person. A really good person, more than I think he even knows. He’s sweet to Yong, and he’s protective of Nuru, and I think. I thought. There might be a chance he likes me back.
Except tonight I found out he has the HB Disease, which means he’s in love with someone else. What am I supposed to do with that? I guess I better ask for tips, because knowing me and the way my emotions go, it won’t be long before I catch it, too.
There are no more entries. Hugo stares at the last one until long after he’s read it twice, then numbly allows the book to fall shut.
“Hugo?” Varian says softly, and Hugo dares to look up. The other boy is staring at his lap, suddenly much more withdrawn and uncertain than he was moments ago. “Would you… you’d really rather get the- the operation than tell me what you felt?”
And Hugo– it’s like he can see into Varian’s thoughts all of a sudden, perhaps because he’s just spent several minutes pouring over a catalog of those thoughts unfiltered at his fingertips (and jeez, how is Varian able to be so vulnerable? When here Hugo was literally ready to die rather than confess to having emotions??). And what he sees is Varian wondering suddenly if what he’s doing right now is the right thing after all.
“No!” Hugo blurts, then reddens, casting around for the right words. His head pounds dully with the gravity of it all. “It’s just that– you deserve so much . You deserve so much better than me.”
Varian looks up at him. “But you’re the one I want.”
“Loving me is rotten work.”
“Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
And something in Hugo– a dam of some kind, perhaps– gives way.
All at once a familiar pressure builds in Hugo’s chest and he grasps at his sternum. He quickly covers his mouth and slumps forward before the coughing fit takes over, painful but somehow different.
Something falls into his cupped palm and, when he can peel himself up to look, he sees the petal of a bright, red rose.
“Oh,” Varian breathes, suddenly a shade paler than before as he also stares. “Did I make it worse?”
Hugo lets out a laugh. “It’s– The petal color just changed. Blue stands for unrequited love. And red is…”
“...Not unrequited?” Varian guesses.
Hugo nods, swallowing past the traitorous hope in his heart. “That’s what the books say.”
“So you believe me? You’re… you’re going to get better, now? Like, you have to clear out the roots and all, but none will grow back?”
He looks up. Varian looks so hopeful, so excited, practically bouncing, and Hugo is helpless in the face of it; he has to smile back. He places the first red petal carefully onto the nightstand. He still can’t quite keep up with what’s happening, feels like they have so much more between them they need to deal with ( Maker, they still have to hunt a library after this ), feels like he could sleep for two more days, and…
He still doesn’t know for sure if he believes in love for real. He’s sure he’ll have to wait and see how it goes, but for now he wants to believe. Like the promise of a rainbow after a storm, he wants to believe.
Apparently, that’s enough for magic to happen.
So he says, in the most un-smooth way he’s ever flirted with anyone, he wipes his face and says, “Wanna, like, make out or something?”
Varian laughs, nose crinkling. “Yeah!” he says, in the matter-of-fact way a child might respond to being asked, do you like cookies.
And so is shared the first kiss of true love.