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Hunter woke up on the floor of the Nocedas’ basement at the sound of a muffled cry. He shifted uncomfortably in his sleeping bag. The room reached his bleary eyes as a wash of deep shadows and silhouettes. He could hardly make out the shape of Gus sleeping on the couch beside him. The younger witch was little more than a blob of movement in the night; tossing, turning, muttering. Faint sparks of illusion magic danced over his head like a show of phosphenes, those bright pulses of color brought on by eyes squeezed too tight.
Hunter rose up onto his elbows. He rubbed at the corner of his eye. “Gus?” he whispered into the dark.
Gus continued to dream. Hazy humanoid shapes flitted over the couch. He whimpered as they dissolved into ribbons of color. He must be having a nightmare, Hunter figured. Obviously the best course of action would be to wake him up. Hunter reached out, hesitated. Or, on second thought, what if Gus got mad? What if it wasn’t a nightmare? What if being shaken awake was the straw that broke their tenuous friendship?
Or, or, what if Gus woke up and got mad that Hunter didn’t try to break him free of the nightmare’s grip? What then? Hunter hung there, one arm outstretched, frozen.
The illusions burst in an explosion of sparks. Gus sat up with a gasp.
Hunter quickly retreated into his sleeping bag. He waited for the appropriate amount of silence before whispering, “…Are you okay?”
“Hm?” Gus ran his hands over his face. “Oh, um. Sorry. Just a nightmare. Did I wake you up?”
“No!” Hunter lied. “I… was… already up. Thinking about Chief Inspector O’Bailey. Aaand the rest of Cosmic Frontiers.”
Gus’ hazy silhouette shook in an approximation of laughter. “Haha, yeah.” His mirth died as quickly as it had come, shoulders stooped in the darkness. Hunter wracked his brain for some way to help. None of his training for life as the Golden Guard had prepared him for comfort; he was flying blind into a storm. What would Luz say?
“Do you… want to talk about it?”
Gus shrugged. “I don’t remember most of it. I was stuck in some kind of endless twisting dungeon. Something bad was down there, too, and I could hear people—” he let out a sharp breath. “I think they were being hurt.”
Hunter knotted his fingers together. That sounded like a normal Tuesday at the Castle to him. But he was starting to get the idea that maybe that wasn’t normal for most witches, and even more so a dawning concern that if he said anything, Gus might react in ways he didn’t expect. “That… sounds… scary?” he tried, hesitantly.
“It really was,” Gus said in the most serious of voices. He scrunched the blankets in his lap. “Hey, um, can I… sleep down there, with you? Normally I ask my dad, but he’s—” Gus’ voice broke. He hiccuped a breath. “And Camilla is so nice, but I— I don’t know if I could explain—”
“Of course!” Hunter exclaimed; maybe a bit too quick, a bit too eager. He shuffled over so Gus would have space on the sleeping bag.
“Thanks.” Gus clicked on the lamp behind his head, bathing the basement in a warm golden glow. He gathered up his blankets in his arms and slid to the floor. “Sometimes my magic makes my dreams seem more than real. When I wake up, I can’t always tell what’s an illusion and what’s not. Having someone I can reach out and touch really helps.”
Hunter didn’t know how to respond. Instead he helped Gus arrange his blankets into a makeshift bed— that much he knew; that little bit aligned with his coven training. Gus flopped down on his back. Hunter laid down beside him, stiff as a board. He felt awkward, like his very breathing would disturb Gus. Belos sometimes got touchy about that.
Oh, he did not want to think about Belos right now. This was about Gus. He was helping Gus. Hunter opened his mouth and said the first thing that came to mind: “Don’t they teach you how to deal with that kind of stuff at Hexside?”
“Nah, they’re too busy prepping us to join a coven.” Gus snorted. “What do you think they teach us at school?”
“I don’t know! Magic… things! I’ve never been to a class!”
“Dude, you spent a week hiding in our theater!”
“Yeah, well, I was— dealing with something! Look, all I know is they’d never let that fly in the Emperor’s Coven. You had to keep a strong hand on your magic at all times. Actually, one time Belos—” Hunter swallowed the rest of that sentence. “Nevermind. This isn’t helping, is it?”
Gus shot him a skeptical look. “We had very different childhoods, my guy.”
Hunter grimaced. The sharp knife of embarrassment twisted in his chest. Gus stared at the ceiling and mercifully changed the subject.
“Why did you help me, back at Hexside?”
Hunter shrugged. “You gave me your sandwich.”
“That sandwich was not worth fighting for. My dad’s good in the kitchen, but he’s not that good.” Gus rolled onto his side. He propped his head on his hand. “Seriously, why’d you do it?”
Hunter’s gaze followed a crack in the wall, hands fiddling with the hem of his pajama shirt. He wouldn’t look at Gus directly. “Back in the Castle—” he started uneasily, then frowned. “I grew up watching the coven heads, okay? Everything was an exchange to them. Every little favor was some kind of political scheme; a way to make people owe you favors in return. When you gave me your sandwich, I thought… it would be the same.”
“And you still took it?”
“I was hungry!” Hunter snapped. “And if I had to owe anybody anything, it might as well be you. You didn’t turn me in. You gave me food. That’s more than most people have ever done for me.” Hunter’s gaze slid over to Gus. “…Why did you give me your sandwich?”
“Because you looked like you needed it.”
“That’s it?”
Gus shrugged in return. “That’s the only reason I need.”
“But—!” Hunter blustered. “I tried to draft you into the Emperor’s Coven! And— and— take away your palismen!”
“And you literally faced down a coven head to help us escape!” Gus countered. “Look, I definitely had my suspicions when I found you. If anything funky had been going on, you would have been prime suspect numero uno.” He jabbed Hunter in the shoulder for emphasis. Hunter let out a snorting laugh. He curled away from Gus, swatting at his finger. Gus poked him a few times in the back for good measure. “But I guess, if I’m being honest, it was nice to have someone who wasn’t trying to use me.”
Hunter rolled back towards Gus, his brows pinched in concern. “Wait, what?”
Gus slowly sat up. He pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them. “I jumped ahead a couple grades. That’s how Luz and Willow met me. I was smart, but I wasn’t people-smart, you know? I ended up with a lot of ‘friends’ who hung out with me… so long as I did their homework.”
“I’ll punch them,” Hunter offered, because that was the mildest threat he could offer at the moment. Mild threats were friendlier, right?
Gus chuckled. “You’ll have to beat Willow to them, when… if… we make it back.” His face fell. His head sunk between his knees. Hunter wracked his brain for some gesture of comfort.
“…Hug?” he offered. He held one arm out stiffly.
Gus tilted his head so one eye peeked out over his knee. “I thought you didn’t do hugs.”
“Pfft, no, I— I do hugs! I’m great at them!” He gestured with his outstretched arm. “Bring it in, or whatever!”
Gus chuckled despite himself. He laid back down next to Hunter and cuddled in for a hug. Hunter, meanwhile, took to hugging like someone assembling furniture. He put his arms around Gus and applied (what he assumed) to be the right amount of comforting pressure. He shifted his head so Gus’ hair wouldn’t tickle the underside of his chin so much. Gus, in return, wrapped his arms around Hunter’s back. He’s so small, Hunter thought. A pang of protectiveness flashed through him. Gus was the youngest and tiniest of all of them, and obviously none of the others deserved to be in this situation, but by the Titan, Gus deserved it the least. Hunter pulled Gus closer. He understood hugs better now, he thought. It was a way to hold yourself around the people you loved and keep them safe.
Gus shifted minutely so he could talk without being muffled by Hunter’s shirt. “Hey, can I tell you something?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“I never had siblings. Growing up, it was just me and my dad. I always wondered what it would be like.” Gus shrugged sheepishly. “I know we’ve only known each other for a few months, but… you’re like a big brother to me.”
Hunter’s breath caught in his throat. Tears stung his eyes. A tidal wave of emotion rose up within him, catching him by surprise, drowning him in a sea of feelings he didn’t know he had. The word brother pierced all his armor and went straight to his heart. That’s what he was— a brother. It felt right in a way he couldn’t describe. But Caleb was the older brother— and suddenly there was the ghost of a different child in his arms, with a mop of brown hair and a wooden sword in his hand—
It was all too much. Hunter choked down a series of sobs. His chest heaved in staggered breaths as he tried to silence himself. Gus’ worried face grew blurry behind a curtain of mist.
“Hunter? Hunter, hey, no, it’s okay—”
Hunter pushed his face into the pillow as he felt the first tears break containment. He shook his head. He held his breath to keep the sobs at bay. He wanted to speak, to tell Gus everything was fine, but even the slightest word might shake his facade to pieces.
“Hey, hey, talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Hunter shivered. He burrowed into the pillow, gritting his teeth.
“Hunter, please, come on. You’re scaring me.”
That did it. Hunter broke open with a shuddering sob. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cried, his words slick with tears. He rolled away from Gus and curled in on himself, pulling a blanket over his head. Gus laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Hunter resisted the urge to shake him off. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I-I’m okay. I promise.”
“Do you want me to give you some space?”
Hunter shook his head. He could taste salt seeping through his lips. Somewhere deep in his chest a knot formed, like a fist, like an abyss, that seemed to suck all the air out of his lungs. Everything the Emperor had ever taught him made him feel wretched; made him wish he could disappear. His tears were a disgrace to the line of the Golden Guard. But everything Luz had shown him in the last few weeks made him desperate to not be alone.
He heard Gus shift uneasily beside him. “Look, I don’t know what you’re going through, but… my dad always told me it’s important to feel what you’re feeling. It’s okay to cry.”
“Belos—” Hunter croaked, before his throat closed around the rest of that sentence. Somehow being told it’s okay to cry made him want to cry more.
“I bet he cries like a big weepy baby.”
Hunter hiccuped a laugh through his tears. “Shut up.”
“Nah, man. I know the type. I bet he writes angsty poetry, too.”
Laughter bubbled in Hunter’s chest, unexpected and giddy, and it burned away a little of the tightness around his lungs. He took a deep breath. Wiped the tears from his face; gulped down the ones in his throat. “You’d be thrown in the Conformitorium for saying that.”
“Oh? And who’s going to arrest me?” A tiny illusion-Gus poked Hunter on the nose. Hunter swatted at it with a weary grin. He sat up.
“Nobody, I guess. Thanks. Sorry for— that. I was supposed to be helping you.”
Gus shrugged. “Help goes both ways.” Then, a bit more reluctantly, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Hunter grabbed a fistful of blanket, then let his hand fall open. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. I liked being called a brother. It just… snuck up on me, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting—” he grimaced. “I never had a brother, either. Belos told me our family was killed by wild magic. But… he was lying.”
“Do you think they’re still alive?”
“No,” Hunter hissed, sharp and bitter. “I don’t think I ever had a family to begin with.”
“Oh,” Gus said. “Heavy.”
“Yeah,” Hunter muttered.
The basement door creaked open. “You guys okay down there?” Luz called softly from the top of the stairs. Hunter gasped. Panic flared in his chest. He hastily swiped at the tear streaks on his face.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Gus whispered. He subtly began an illusion spell, one finger tracing circles beneath the covers. Luz poked her head over the railing. Her eyes flashed wide.
“Oh my gosh, Gus!”
Gus smiled through the illusion-tears on his face. He made a very convincing sniffle. “I had a nightmare. Hunter’s helping me.”
Hunter, still not steady enough to risk words, put an arm around Gus’ shoulders.
“Aww!” Luz clapped her hands to her face. She beamed down at Hunter. He offered her a grimaced smile in return. “It looks like our Golden Guard has a heart of gold!”
The dumb joke shook Hunter back to himself. He swallowed the last of his tears. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
Luz’s face squashed into the expression of someone who very much did not want to talk about their own nighttime issues at the moment. “I… couldn’t sleep! But then Vee said she felt magic, and Willow heard someone crying… so we decided to check in on you guys!”
“We?”
Amity, Willow, and Vee shuffled onto the stairs. Amity waved sheepishly before retreating into the blanket draped over her shoulders. Vee squinted at Hunter’s face. Willow took one look at Gus’ illusory tears and swung off the stairs, bouncing from the couch to pull him into a hug. Gus laughed in surprise.
“Luz said we should have a sleepover,” Willow announced. “The six of us could all sleep down here tonight! Is that okay with you?”
Gus brightened. “Yeah, yeah, that sounds great!” He paused in his excitement, though, and turned to Hunter. “What do you think? Think you’re up for the company? This is your room, too.”
Hunter shrugged, arms crossed over his chest. “Sure. Whatever.” He abandoned his sleeping bag to stand by the stairs. Luz’s excitement washed around him like a stormfront as she charged past— metaphorically and literally, considering the armfuls of extra quilts she dragged in her wake. The rest of the Hexsquad set to work building a nest of fluff on the floor.
“I’m gonna make popcorn!” Luz announced. She slung an arm around Hunter’s shoulders with a grip that said whatever came next was mandatory. “And Hunter’s going to help me!”
“I’m what?” he protested, already being dragged up the stairs. Luz shushed him. She pushed Hunter out into the hall. He whirled on her, a demand for some explanation on his lips, but Luz clapped a hand over his mouth preemptively. She pointed down the hall to her mom’s room.
“We can talk in the kitchen,” she whispered.
Hunter followed Luz through the dark hallways of her house. He paused at the threshold of the kitchen, the sensation of cold linoleum strange beneath his bare feet, but he crept in anyway. A distant streetlight’s hazy square of yellow illuminated the floor. Luz’s face glowed green beside the microwave’s clock display. The familiar shapes of cabinets and chairs loomed like dark monoliths around them. Hunter hugged himself. He wished Flapjack had snuck along with him.
“Shouldn’t we turn on a light?” he hissed.
“I don’t want to wake my mom,” Luz hissed back. She stood on tiptoe to rummage through a cabinet above the microwave. “Besides, I’ve done this enough times that— whoops!” Hunter dove forward to catch a metal mixing bowl before it hit the floor. Luz cringed. She chuckled nervously. “Nice reflexes!”
Hunter frowned. “You didn’t bring me here for my reflexes, did you?”
“Sneaking around at night is a rite of passage!” Luz said definitively. She took the bowl from Hunter with a put-on air of dignity and grace. “Every teen has to do it at least once. I bet you never made midnight popcorn at that stuffy old Castle!”
Hunter didn’t answer. Darkness shrouded him like a mask, and he could feel the habitual coldness of the Golden Guard creeping over him again. Luz’s cheer faded. She stepped away from the microwave’s feeble glow.
“Okay, fine. I wanted to ask how you’re doing. Willow didn’t hear someone crying. I mean, she did! But… I heard you first. I couldn’t sleep, and was walking around and… overheard some stuff. Not a lot! And I didn’t mean to listen in, but— you sounded upset. So. I wanted to give you a chance to say something. Away from everyone else. Are you doing alright?”
“Are you?” Hunter countered.
Luz clutched the bowl in her hands. Her head dipped in the dark. “No.” She admitted. “But this isn’t about me right now.”
Hunter turned his face away. He rubbed the heel of his palm across the dried tear streaks at the corner of his eye. “I’m fine. Just having trouble adjusting to life outside the Castle, is all. And… this is stupid, but Gus said I was like a brother and that… surprised me, I guess.” He shrugged. “I’ve never had someone look up to me like that. I’ve never cared about someone like that. I was so busy trying to learn how to be friends that I— I didn’t think I’d feel so responsible for him.”
“I know what you mean,” Luz said. “I know you guys are my friends, but I can’t help but feel responsible for you, too. I’m the reason you’re trapped here.”
“Belos is the reason we’re all trapped here. Him and the Collector.”
“But I—”
“I don’t care!” Hunter hissed, throwing his hands up. “I don’t care that you helped him meet the Collector! Luz, you are the nicest, kindest, most understanding, most naive, and possibly the most annoying person I’ve ever known, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to you hate yourself. You could never be as bad as Belos. Trust me.”
The corner of Luz’s mouth curved into a smile. “Wow. You are not that great at pep talks.”
Hunter bristled. He stuck out his tongue as if so many compliments had left a bad taste in his mouth. “Whatever. Look, did you just drag me up here to talk about feelings, or are we actually going to make popped-kraken-whatsit?”
“It’s called popcorn, you dingus. Here.” Luz foisted the bowl on Hunter. She pulled a packet from the cabinet, shucked its plastic wrapping, and placed it in the microwave. “You have to give it a little extra time,” she whispered, as if passing on trade secrets. “That way you can pop all the corn and still stop the timer before it goes off and wakes up the whole house. We don’t want to do that.”
Hunter glanced at the metal bowl in his hands. “You aren’t speaking from experience, are you?”
“Certainly not!” Luz chirped. “I most definitely have not done that accidentally many, many, many, many times.”
That fit perfectly with everything else Hunter knew about Luz. He set down the bowl on the counter and crouched in front of the humming microwave with her. The bag began to crack and pop in sporadic intervals. He still wasn’t sure what kind of magic operated the box’s heating-spell, or why it had to rotate, but it never ceased to intrigue him.
“Hey,” Luz said, her smile aglow in the light of the microwave. Hunter briefly turned his attention from the rotating bag of miniature explosions to her. “Did you ever think we’d do something like this when we first met?”
“I dunno, dropping you in a bag and leaving you somewhere hot was pretty high on my list of options.”
Luz snickered. She elbowed Hunter in the ribs. He gave her a slight slap to the back of the head. They scuffled in front of the microwave before Hunter hissed, “Luz! The time!” and Luz dove to stop the timer before it beeped.
She pulled the bag out by its corners, half tossing it to herself to keep from being burned. “The bowl! The bowl!” she hissed frantically. Hunter swung the bowl in her direction. By sheer luck they managed to transfer the contents without slopping half of it on the floor. Luz kicked several stray kernels under the counter. “That’s tomorrow’s problem,” she whispered.
The two of them padded from the kitchen on silent feet. The smell of artificial butter wafted through Hunter’s hair; the metal bowl pressed warmly against his hands. The shadows covered him like the deep woods. Like a wolf bringing home a kill, he thought. He smiled to himself in dumb nerdy glee.
Luz paused by the basement door. Her hand rested on the knob. “Hey. About what you said earlier— thanks. I… think I needed to hear that.”
Hunter didn’t respond right away. He stared at the sliver of gold light beneath the door, listened to the muffled sounds of their friends echo from below. “Same,” he said huskily, before he could think better of it. “Thanks.”
Then Luz opened the door, and led him into a room full of laughter and light.
The two of them clomped down the stairs into the midst of the mirth. Luz announced loudly— perhaps a bit too loudly— that they’d made popcorn. Four hungry faces whirled on Hunter. He offered up his bowl to their ravenous hands. It felt good, in a way he’d never expected, to have his friends delight in something he’d brought. He felt connected. Wanted. Maybe even loved.
“Did they scream when you cooked them?” Gus asked, stuffing a handful into his mouth.
“Only a little,” Hunter lied.
Luz smacked him. “Amity! Try to throw one in my mouth!” she called. In a remarkable display of prowess, she managed to catch one, miss two others, and nearly knock over the popcorn bowl diving for a fourth.
In the resulting chaos, Willow caught Hunter up in a hug.
“Wh—”
“I know what Gus sounds like when he cries,” she whispered in his ear. Hunter felt his face grow hot.
“He really did have a nightmare.”
“I know. But a captain’s got to look out for everyone on her team, right?”
Hunter choked back a new wave of tears. “Okay,” he squeaked.
“Good.” Willow let him go. She pushed the bowl of popcorn towards him. “Now try to throw one in my mouth!”
Half an hour later, the bowl sat empty and forgotten on the floor. The six friends curled up in a puddle-bundle of blankets and pillows and awkward limbs. Gus sidled up next to Hunter; Amity curled up in Luz’s arms. Vee stretched into full basilisk form. Willow flopped down in the dead center, which, incidentally, also happened to be next to Hunter. His brain shot straight past “act natural” into a keen awareness of every muscle in his body.
Was he being weird and awkward? Maybe he was being weird and awkward. Hunter opened his mouth to fix that. “You know, last time I did this, I—” he stumbled over the back half of his sentence. Right. Weird stories from the Castle. But he had already started talking, so he quickly slapped together some more words to finish things off. “Uh, we had a totally normal time! And nothing bad happened. Ever.”
“Belos left you on a mountain, didn’t he?” Vee corrected, smacking Hunter’s ankle with her tail. He let out a breath of defeat.
“Yeah, he left us on a mountain. We had to huddle together for warmth.”
“Too warm for that tonight,” Willow yawned. She stretched, flopping spread-eagled over everyone. Hunter’s face went pink.
“Goodnight, everyone,” Amity announced forcefully. She turned off the light with a gesture. Everybody else mumbled their goodnights in return. They settled down into sleep. Hunter remained awake a little longer. He listened to their breathing slow into dreaming murmurs, a soft tidal rush of noise around him. He puzzled over their kindness, undeniable and overwhelming, so foreign to the life he’d known before. Most days he thought himself an accessory to the Hexsquad. Maybe he wished he was an accessory, because belonging felt too difficult. But this, crushed in a sea of people who cared about him—
Gus was right. It was easier when you had someone you could reach out and touch.
Hunter let the back of his fingers just barely brush Gus’ hand. Gus roused. He shifted sleepily. “…Are you still awake?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Relax,” Gus muttered, curling into his blankets. “We’re your wolf pack.”
Oh, Hunter thought, and let his body ease into sleep.