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⊱ 1 ⊰
A drop of water hits him in the nose.
Hugo winces, opening his eyes to a blur of dingy grey. He’s laying on his back on the ground. Dampness is sinking through his clothes, skin cold and stiff and the bad kind of wet that smells like ugly winters.
His sweater and jacket are gone, leaving him in a thin tee shirt and jeans that don’t do a damn thing to ward off the cold. He sits upright and grits his teeth against a hiss of pain as his limbs try to lock up in refusal.
Everything is blurry when he tries to get a good look at the room he’s in. His glasses are gone with the rest of his clothes. He can’t see shit, other than a mass of colors and the bars right in front of his face.
Bars, like a cage. Like a cell. They’re almost painfully cold to the touch and don’t so much as creak when he puts his full weight into pushing at them. He’s in a cage like a dog, in a blurry grey room with no light other than a rectangle of orange coming from somewhere near the ceiling.
“What the hell?” he mutters to no one, because he’s alone. He doesn’t remember how he got here or what he was doing before. There’s a dull ache at the back of his head, blending in nicely with the frozen-stiffness of his bare arms and fingers. That’s what he gets for wearing fingerless gloves in January .
Another waterdrop slips from the ceiling and lands between his bent legs. He scoots away from it, rubbing his icy nose with an offended sniffle.
As if summoned, there’s a creak of hinges somewhere in the room. The darkness is flooded by a bright, yellowish light, and footsteps come down what Hugo can only assume are a set of wooden stairs, if the whine they make under weight is any indication.
A man comes up to the bars of Hugo’s cage. He’s tall, burly and broad-shouldered with a truly severe set of eyebrows that Hugo can see when he comes close enough. The man kneels and sets a plate just outside of Hugo’s cage.
He doesn’t say anything to Hugo. He straightens and immediately turns to leave. Hugo stiffens in belated alarm.
“Hey, wait!” The man doesn’t glance back, even when Hugo pushes off the floor to grip the bars of the cell. “Hello? Can you just wait a second–”
He’s ignored. The man disappears through the doorway, leaving in a swoop of yellow light and then Hugo is sitting in darkness again.
He sighs, letting his forehead fall against the bars.
He looks down at the plate by his feet. There’s a sandwich on it. Hugo can see lettuce and tomato from where he’s standing, and a neat line of sliced cucumbers next to it. He turns away from the plate, even if his stomach protests with a sharp stab of hunger.
They’re probably trying to poison him. Who keeps a person in a cage and then feeds them good food? If they’re sticking him in here like a kennel, they may as well give him a dog bowl to eat out of.
He paces the width of the cell and settles against the back wall, sliding down uncomfortably until he’s sitting with his hands resting on his bent knees. He isn’t afraid yet. This isn’t the worst situation he’s been in, or the worst place he’s ever slept.
He watches where the man had disappeared, and waits.
⊱ 2 ⊰
The next time the door opens, Hugo has been fighting sleep. He’s already fallen asleep—or more likely, been knocked out—once in this hellhole and he isn’t keen to repeat the mistake.
He blinks against the sudden burst of light. The same man from before comes down the steps, holding a fuzzy mass that Hugo assumes through vision that’s worth half a damn is another plate.
The man sets it down beside the one Hugo hasn’t touched and wordlessly gathers the first.
Again, he turns to leave immediately. Hugo quickly jumps to his feet and sends the plate skidding across the floor with a shove. The glass scrapes across the floor with an unpleasant screech.
The man stops on the steps.
He doesn’t turn around, but his head angles to the side, listening.
“I want my glasses,” Hugo demands. “And my clothes. It’s freezing down here.”
The man does turn then. He regards Hugo with a raised eyebrow, as if wondering at his audacity.
Hugo has been in a handful of life-or-death situations before. He refuses to die blind and freezing his ass off of all things after everything else he’s survived.
After a heavy beat of silence, the man stops staring at Hugo to look pointedly at the plate by Hugo’s cell. “Eat,” he says gruffly. Then, he’s gone again.
Hugo sighs.
“What does it matter if I eat?” he grumbles, leaning down to inspect what the man brought. It’s another sandwich, the exact same as yesterday. “Keeping me alive to kill me slowly in this meat locker?”
His arms are numb down to the fingertips with cold. He runs his hands up and down the length of them, trying to coax warmth back into his skin. A sandwich would be an impractical way to poison someone, he muses, staring with narrowed eyes at the bricks in the wall.
He doesn’t move the sandwich or the neat little cucumber slices from their plate.
⊱ 3 ⊰
Most of his time spent in the cell is done pacing.
He’s already scoped out as much of the room as he can from behind bars and without his glasses. There’s a blur of shapes along the wall on the other side of the room that might be a stack of crates, the kind they keep on farms, and a radiator.
The more he looks at his cage, the more he notices it’s like a prison cell. There’s a small cot with a plain blanket on it, thin and worn but soft, and his feet hang over the edges of the frame if he stretches out on it; a meager little bathroom set-up in the corner that has a bar of soap on the sink, like he’s going to be worried about keeping his hands clean down here; and a platform built into the wall that looks like it might be a desk.
He’s already tried standing on it to see through the window near the ceiling, but it’s pointless when he doesn’t have his glasses.
Hugo has no idea how much time has passed, other than he noticed the sun set and rise at least once since he’s been here. He paces the length of it, back and forth and back and forth like an escape will jump out at him if he treads a deep enough footpath into the ground. He’s mumbling under his breath; whatever he can think of, mostly to hear something other than the drip of water from ceiling to floor.
“Do you always talk this much?” comes from behind him, nearly startling him out of his skin.
He can make out a figure standing by the stairs. It isn’t the man from before, between the softer voice and the fact that their silhouette isn’t that of a grizzly bear. “You here to keep me company?”
A quiet snort. “You were s’posed to eat.”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
His stomach turns sharply, as if to punish him for lying his ass off. Hugo hears the quiet shuffle of shoes against the floor and then they examine the untouched plate at the front of his cell. “Well,” they say, slowly and deliberately, “I’m not meant to give you these if you don’t eat. But if you’re not hungry –”
Something catches in the light from the window. Hugo’s spine stiffens as he recognizes the vague shape of his glasses held in their hand.
He stalks over to the front of the cell, pressing against the bars. “Those are mine –”
They don’t move away, even as Hugo comes dangerously close to someone who could have very well been the one to knock him out and kidnap him. This close, Hugo can make out his face. Almost half of it is covered by unruly black bangs, enough that Hugo briefly wonders how the hell he can see, but blue eyes are squinted in a glare. Despite this, the first thing that catches Hugo’s attention is the thick brush of freckles over his nose.
His hand tightens around the glasses, pulling them back in case Hugo gets any stupid ideas. “I’m not meant to give you these if you don’t eat,” he repeats, and it’s now that Hugo registers the thick Southern accent, more noticeable through the layer of irritation Hugo can hear in his voice. “I’ll come back when you’re hungry.”
“I’ll eat,” Hugo snaps. Freckles isn’t the only one that’s annoyed. “Stay. I won’t take long.”
He ends up sitting on the cot, plate balanced on his lap as he quickly eats the sandwich in a way that Donella would smack him upside the head for. The bread is tough and dry around the edges from being left out for hours, but otherwise it’s pretty damn good and tastes faintly of pumpkin. If all poisoned food tasted like this, he wouldn’t mind, he thinks.
Freckles watches him with a distinct air of boredom. He’s sitting on the bottom step, knees pulled up to rest his elbows on as he plays with Hugo’s glasses. Hugo has been side-eyeing him to make sure he doesn’t break them.
He sets the plate back on the floor with a clatter and turns expectantly to the stairs. “Well?”
Freckles pushes to his feet and holds a bottle of water through the bars of the cage. When Hugo doesn’t take it, it crinkles as Freckles’s fingers tighten, eyebrows raised expectantly.
“You said eat.”
“Most people would be grateful for it.”
“You bring a lot of people down here?” Freckles doesn’t answer. “How do I know you didn’t put something in it?”
“Cap ain’t broken.”
“It’s easy to reseal.”
Hugo hears an exasperated whisper of oh my god before Freckles jerkily twists open the water bottle, takes an annoyed, pointed sip, and then thrusts it out for Hugo to take. “ There . There’s nothing in that bottle but water, so drink .”
“What’s it to you if I do or not?” Hugo says, but he listens. He drains the damned bottle under Freckles’s watchful eye. It’s aggravating and a little demeaning, like being instructed to finish his dinner before he can leave the table. Just to be a dick, he crunches the water bottle into a ball and tosses it at Freckles’s feet.
Freckles ignores it. He turns back to grab Hugo’s glasses from the stairs. He’s barely held them through the bars before Hugo snatches them with an indignant glare.
His hand immediately retracts, like the thought of touching Hugo displeases him just as much. He grabs the plate from the floor and starts back up the stairs.
Now that Hugo can actually see , it becomes apparent that where he’s being kept isn’t as horrible as he’s expecting. It’s clearly a basement or cellar of some kind but it’s been kept clean, clear of dirt buildup and spiderwebs and dead leaves, no rust in the sink of his cell or dust on the cot. There are a few framed posters on the wall and a mounted deer head in the corner. Its empty eyes are staring right at Hugo as he glances around the room.
He turns away with a grimace.
Light floods the room as Freckles opens the door to leave. Hugo realizes something. “Hey! What about my clothes?”
Freckles pauses halfway through the door. He turns to look at Hugo, and the light from the doorway illuminates the stripe of blue cutting through the black of his bangs. “One day at a time,” he says, whatever the hell that means, and the door closes, taking the light with it.
Hugo groans and it echoes in the silence.
⊱ 4 ⊰
They’re trying to kill him. Slowly and painfully.
Hugo’s teeth are chattering so hard his jaw is starting to ache. He’s huddled up on the cot, sitting with the pillow bunched in his lap and the blanket pulled around him, desperately trying to keep a little bubble of warmth. His breaths come out in clouds of white.
It was raining overnight. The cellar is well kept but the storm has made the leak in the roof even worse, water dripping through like a leaky faucet instead of the occasional drop. The steady plip, plip, plip has been driving Hugo insane when he isn’t too preoccupied trying not to shiver so violently his teeth crack.
Eventually, the door opens again, and again it’s Freckles. He doesn’t pay Hugo any mind as he comes down the steps, moving quickly and with the carefulness of someone who knows exactly which steps creak, this time holding a plate with a bowl on it. Steam is rising from the bowl, and Hugo has to stamp down the urge to sit up in interest.
Freckles is staring at the leak in the ceiling with eyebrows furrowed as he sets the plate down by Hugo’s cell. He doesn’t say a word to Hugo, briefly peering into the cell to get a good look at the leak before going back to the stairs. He’s thinking so loudly Hugo can practically hear it.
Maybe that’s why when Hugo interrupts the silence with a quick, “Wait–” he visibly startles, foot slipping on the bottom step. It comes out sharp and a little too loud for the small, mostly empty cellar, and Hugo winces in something that feels a little like guilt when Freckles turns to give him a wide-eyed look, hand gripping the rail next to the stairs.
His other hand is somewhere behind him, body tensed, before he seems to realize Hugo isn’t about to attack him and his shoulders relax a fraction. The other hand reappears, coming up to hold the rail. Hugo wonders where it went.
“...Sorry,” Hugo says awkwardly, because what else does he say? Apologies for scaring you, since I am obviously so threatening on the wrong side of these bars and frozen half to death? “Sorry. You guys have my jacket, right?”
Freckles nods silently. Now that he’s not on the defense, his face is impassive. Despite his unreadable expression, Hugo notices how sharp his eyes are.
“Am I gonna be allowed that back anytime soon? Kinda trying not to contract frostbite, here.”
Freckles is quiet for a moment. Then, “Are you that cold?”
Hugo huffs a laugh, somewhere between amused and a little incredulous. “Aren’t you ? It’s about twenty degrees below fuck-this-shit, freckles, I’m honestly surprised you willingly come down here.”
He doesn’t mean to call him the nickname, but he’s been using it in his head so often it’s an easy slip of the tongue. Freckles’s nose scrunches in a way that reminds him vaguely of a peeved rabbit before he’s coming up to the bars. “Come here.”
“I’d really rather not.”
“Come here .”
Hugo huffs and reluctantly sets the blanket aside to stand in front of Freckles. Hugo isn’t sure what he’s expecting, but the back of a hand quickly pressing against his forehead isn’t anywhere on his list of guesses. Freckles’s hand is freezing , maybe even worse than Hugo’s, but he’s gentle as he moves it to Hugo’s cheek. Hugo can’t help but wince at the touch of icy fingers.
“Baby,” Freckles says with no small amount of insult. Hugo laughs despite himself.
“You’re touching me with your cold ass hands when I’m already almost a popsicle. Have a little mercy, will you?”
Freckles takes his hand away and steps away from the bars. He looks Hugo up and down appraisingly, searching for something, before pulling off his own jacket. Hugo stares as he holds it through the bars for Hugo to take. It’s oversized on him, which means there’s a good chance it’ll fit Hugo, but that doesn’t help Hugo understand why .
He shakes it impatiently when Hugo doesn’t move. “What, now you want to be cold?”
That gets Hugo to move. He grabs it, holding it to his chest. Despite the cold of Freckles’s hands, Hugo can feel the remnants of body heat left in the jacket. “No,” he says slowly, knows his face is just as confused as his tone, “but aren’t you ?”
Freckles shrugs. He turns away from the cell again, making his way up the stairs on the tips of his toes. Hugo wonders why he always walks like he doesn’t want to be heard.
When he’s at the top he pauses to lean over the rail, tilting so Hugo can see him properly under where the ceiling slopes. The rail doesn’t look that stable, definitely not enough to hold as much weight as Freckles is putting on it, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“I can’t feel it much,” he says. Hugo blinks. His own head tilts subconsciously to match the way Freckles is looking at him.
“Feel what?”
“The cold. I can’t feel it much.” He lifts up a hand, wiggling his fingers. “Numb. So keep the jacket, for now. So you don’t become a popsicle .”
The last bit is said in a mocking imitation of his voice. A laugh startles out of Hugo, but before he can say anything else Freckles is gone. Hugo looks down at the jacket in his hands, feels the material in his fingers.
It’s better than nothing, all things considered.
⊱ 5 ⊰
Hugo gets sick.
Of course he does, because what were they expecting to happen? He knew from the first sniffle that he was doomed to a cold at best , possible death by pneumonia at worst. The night Freckles gives him the jacket he feels a tiny bit better, falling asleep on the too-small cot with another layer of warmth, but by morning his head feels like cotton and he can’t breathe through his nose at all.
The next few days pass by in a sickness-warped blur.
He has occasional bouts of clarity; once with a flashlight shining in his face, calloused fingers holding his eyelid open as he weakly tries to turn his face away, a stern set of eyebrows frowning down at him as a familiar voice filters in from somewhere further in the room; a pinching sensation in his arm, followed by the blanket being pulled over it; curling into a ball underneath the jacket and realizing he can’t feel the biting cold against his arms and legs anymore.
He wakes, fully, completely, for the first time to the sound of voices. One is low and deep, even but hesitant, while the other is sharp and annoyed despite how quietly they’re speaking.
“I told you I needed the coats. What’s the point if he just dies?”
“ I told you to only get as close as you needed to leave the plates. How did you know the catch is sick? You told me before he was even sniffling.”
Hugo blinks blearily up at the ceiling. The catch? Are they talking about him?
An angry huff. “I checked, because he was shivering something fierce, and he was . Mama said–”
“ Checked ? Varian, what did you do?”
There’s a pause. The silence is heavy. “I checked his head and his cheeks, like mama does.”
“You aren’t meant to be touching him–”
“I’m not meant to be giving him the coats, either, but clearly he needs them.”
“Now I know–”
“Mama said if they die of natural causes we can’t use them.”
“I wasn't going to let him die.”
“He could’ve. He might’ve.”
“He didn’t.”
“Because I helped,” the softer voice says stubbornly. Hugo hears a gruff laugh, then a shuffle of movement. He finally turns his head to see the man from before and Freckles—Varian, then?—standing on the other side of the room. The man is ruffling Varian’s hair, affectionately combing it back from his face as Varian huffs and pushes at his arm.
“Go on, get back to your chores. Do them properly. You’ve been overfeeding Ruddiger and he’s getting fat.”
“He’s getting fat because he gets into the trash,” Varian grumbles. He starts back up the steps anyway, carrying a bag over his shoulder that looks like a medical kit.
The sound of footsteps comes closer to Hugo’s cell. He quickly shuts his eyes and relaxes his body, feigning sleep now that it’s just him and the man left in the room.
There’s a creak of metal and the sound of a lock turning. Hugo stays still, keeps his breathing deep and even, listening for any sign of movement. Finally, there’s a heavy sigh from outside of his cell.
“You are a lot more trouble than you’re worth, boy,” that low voice says. Then footsteps line the staircase, and the man is gone.
⊱ 6 ⊰
“Y’know, you guys never asked if I’m allergic to anything.”
Varian looks up from the textbook in his lap. It’s one on organic chemistry, the spine and edges worn from years of use. Varian said he borrowed it from a library years ago and never returned it, so now it’s his. He’s not enrolled in any classes—the nearest community college is too far to be worth the trip, he’d said, but Hugo noticed the note of disappointment in his voice—but he likes reading about it anyway.
Ever since Hugo got sick, Varian has taken to coming down to the cellar more often. It took him a bit to actually talk to Hugo instead of just holing up in the corner with a book or a notepad, keeping an eye on him but otherwise pretending he didn’t exist.
He’s easily lured with questions about chemistry, Hugo learns, when the first time Varian acknowledges him beyond a sparse sentence or two is when Hugo asks him why he keeps bringing textbooks down to read.
It’s interesting , Varian said, almost defensively, like he’s used to that question being asked with an undertone of judgment. There’s so much about the world you’ll never find out if you don’t go looking for it. You’ve never wanted to look?
Now, Varian is looking at him with an eyebrow arched. “Are you?”
“Peanuts.”
“No you’re not.”
Hugo can’t help the amused smile that tugs at his lips. “How are you gonna tell me what I’m allergic to, freckles?”
“Because there’s peanuts in the bread you’ve been eating, and if you were allergic you would’ve puffed up like a chipmunk by now.”
“What would you do if I did?” Varian looks at him questioningly. “Had an allergic reaction, I mean. I don’t suppose you guys have an epipen on standby.”
Varian holds his gaze and doesn’t answer, but Hugo can read what he isn’t saying from the look on his face. You don’t want the answer to that .
He still doesn’t know what he’s down here for. He has a feeling Varian probably wouldn’t tell him if he asked, but like his question before, he isn’t sure if that’s an answer he really wants.
They treat him well for the most part. According to Varian they hooked up a space heater to the radiator while Hugo was sick, which is why he’s no longer freezing to death, and the ceiling hasn’t leaked since he woke up. Three meals a day, his sweater and jacket back, aspirin set beside a plate when he offhandedly complained about his head pounding.
They’re hospitable for kidnappers , but it puts Hugo ill at ease. He can’t think of a good reason they would keep him alive this long. There’s not a lot of movies that have a happy ending when someone is being treated like a glorified pet.
He figured by now they would have done something —threaten him, try to send someone he knows a letter for ransom, maybe put him to work on the damn farm if he’s just going to sit here and stare at the wall for hours on end. The lack of danger almost makes him feel worse than if they had a gun to his head.
Varian is still watching him. He can practically feel sharp eyes cataloguing everything that passes over his face.
Hugo shifts uncomfortably and changes the subject. “Is that guy your dad?”
Varian’s attention shifts back to the textbook in his lap. He doesn’t answer for a moment; the silence stretches on long enough that Hugo assumes he’s being ignored. “He is, yeah.”
“Where’s your mom?”
He remembers (even though it’s foggy and all mashed together from the fever clouding his head) Varian mentioning his mom, the night they were arguing outside Hugo’s cell while they thought he was asleep. He’s been careful not to say anything that would give away that he’d been awake, making sure to still call Varian freckles even though he knows his name now.
Varian doesn’t seem to care about the nickname, but he also doesn’t seem to care about half the things that Hugo says to him.
Varian gives him a look. “Where’s your mom?”
Probably passed out on the couch with a bottle in her hand, no idea that he’s even been gone, Hugo thinks bitterly.
He doesn’t say that. He leans his back against the bars of the cell. “Does she know that you come down here?”
“I’m not s’posed to get too close.”
Hugo turns his head enough to look at Varian, sitting across from the cell on a cushion he must have brought from the house and not even ten feet away from where Hugo is sprawled out. “How close is too close?”
Varian shuts the textbook with a sigh. “Close enough for you to ask me stupid questions,” he says, pushing to his feet with the textbook under his arm. Him leaving early just means Hugo is going to be left with nothing but silence and his own thoughts for a few hours more than usual, but it’s worth it for the way Varian’s nose scrunches in annoyance when he sees Hugo smirking at him.
He still comes over to take the empty plate from the ground. At least he’s generous enough not to starve Hugo for being annoying.
“Would you mind leaving the book?” he asks when Varian kneels to grab the plate. “There’s not a whole lot to do down here, you know.”
“You wanna read about organic chemistry?” Varian asks dubiously.
“I’m willing to read about anything at this point, freckles.”
Varian stares at him for a moment, lip pursed while he visibly weighs the pros and cons of lending Hugo a textbook he clearly loves, before gingerly slipping it through the bars. He waits until Hugo takes it to wrap a hand in the collar of his jacket and tug him forward. “You do anything to that book, I’ll gut you.”
Something tells Hugo the threat isn’t empty. “Yep, got it.”
Varian gets about halfway back up the stairs before he stops again. Hugo looks at him curiously, idly feeling the rough edges of the pages between his fingertips. Varian meets his gaze for all of half a second before swiftly turning back around and stomping up the rest of the stairs, disappearing through the door. Hugo blinks.
The sound of the door opening again less than an hour later pulls Hugo out of his thoughts. He’s moved from the floor back to his cot with the textbook open over his lap, flipping through Benzene and Aromaticity .
Varian comes back down the steps, quick and quiet as a mouse. There’s a small stack of books in his hands that he sets down carefully in front of Hugo’s cell.
“You came out here on a bike, right?” Varian asks
The textbook snaps shut with a thump as Hugo jumps to his feet. “My motorcycle? How do you know about that?”
Varian makes an impatient noise. “My dad found it. You didn’t hide it any way worth a damn. Do you like that kinda stuff?”
“What did you guys do with her?”
“ Do you like that kinda stuff? ”
Hugo huffs angrily. “Like– what? Motorcycles? Cars ? What does that question even mean?”
Varian picks up one of the books and presses it, cover first, against the bars so Hugo can see it. Hugo reluctantly looks down to read the cover; it’s an old engineering book, thick and worn just like Varian’s chemistry textbook.
“This another stolen library book?”
“Do you want it, or not?”
“...Yeah.”
He does —he doesn’t mind chemistry, but he’s always been more of a biological chemistry type of person, and engineering is kind of his thing —but that’s not the real reason why he’s agreeing. He waits until Varian goes to hand him the book through the bars and grabs his wrist, abruptly pulling him forward and against the cell door before he can get his bearings. The book hits the floor at Hugo’s feet.
“Where is my motorcycle?”
If Hugo thought Varian’s gaze was sharp before, now it’s cutting . He tugs fruitlessly on his wrist, fixing Hugo with a look like he wants nothing more than to see him six feet in the ground. “Let go.”
“Answer my question.”
In the corner of his eye, Hugo notices Varian’s free hand disappear behind him, just like it had when Hugo startled him before.
Something glints in the light from the window; metal gleaming under dying sunlight.
A hunter’s knife, Hugo sees now, curled in Varian’s hand where it has likely been tucked into his pocket or maybe his belt.
Right. Farmer boy, someone whose dad or maybe both of his parents is clearly a hunter if the deer mounted on the wall is of any indication, someone whose family kidnapped Hugo and has been keeping him in a cellar for god knows how long. Of course he has something to protect himself.
Varian yanks his wrist out of Hugo’s grip.
Neither of them say anything. Varian is still glaring daggers at him even as he folds the knife closed. He’s still tense like stabbing Hugo isn’t completely off the table.
Finally, he nudges the stack of books close enough for Hugo to reach them with the toe of his boot. Hugo has a feeling the only reason he didn't kick them at him is because he cares about hurting the books . “We didn’t do nothing to your bike. Other than move it, ‘cause you left it out in the rain like a dumbass.”
“I wasn’t expecting to be gone this long,” Hugo says dryly.
Varian ignores him. He’s already leaving back up the stairs. When Hugo glances curiously at the books he left, he realizes it’s a small assortment of different genres. He recognizes the title of a cheesy romance book on one of the spines.
Hugo sighs and lets his forehead fall against the bars.
“Your mom won’t mind you bringing these down to me?” he calls. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering, or why he feels a twinge of guilt for his reaction, like he’s not the one still behind bars in somebody’s basement. The urge to lighten the tension in the room is about as ridiculous as his kidnapper’s son bringing him textbooks to read because he’s bored.
“She doesn’t care what I bring you,” Varian says casually, still walking up the steps, “you’ll die anyway.”
Light bursts into the room and then fades just as quickly as Varian leaves. Hugo stares blankly into the darkness.
Well. There’s his answer.
⊱ 7 ⊰
Varian doesn’t come down to the cellar for the rest of the night, or the next day. Hugo isn’t surprised—being threatened doesn’t exactly do wonders for gaining someone’s trust—but it does give him time to think without being under watch.
His father is the one to bring Hugo meals in his absence. The man looks at Hugo a little longer than usual as he sets the plates down but otherwise doesn’t pay him any mind. Hugo wonders if Varian told him what happened.
During the afternoon on the next day, Hugo waits until his lunch is brought in so he knows no one will be back down to the cellar for a while and decides to give the window another try.
He steps onto the makeshift desk and uses an uneven brick in the wall to hoist himself up. He has to grip a pipe sticking out from the corner to make sure he doesn’t fall sideways, barely remembering to bite down on a yelp when his fingers slip on the damp metal, and peers over the windowsill.
The window is overlooking a field. Hugo can see the beginning of the rows of corn he saw before, far off to the side and nearly out of view, but the field is entirely new to him. The cellar must be far from the house. He doesn’t recognize the patches of dandelions and dying grass spread out from the window to the treeline he can see in the distance.
Those might be the woods he came through, where he left his motorcycle under a cluster of fallen branches.
It doesn’t give him much, other than a possible escape route if he can get out of here . Varian said they moved his motorcycle anyway; he’ll have to figure out where they’re keeping it. Maybe in the barn he remembers seeing before everything went black, or by the old green pick-up that was parked in a dirt lot near the house.
Wind whistles against the windowpane, and then Hugo hears the sound of a dog barking and sprinting through the grass. He ducks down, keeping his head low in case he’s easily visible from the window.
A deer bolts into view from the left, running like hell for the treeline in the distance.
Hugo only has eyes on it for a few seconds before it stumbles with a jerk and collapses sideways into the grass. There’s an arrow sticking out from its body.
The dog he heard immediately trots up to it, running in a circle around the deer’s limp body, turning to bark excitedly at something Hugo can’t see. Varian comes into sight from the same way the deer had. He’s holding a bow, a quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder, but the bowstring is empty. Hugo is guessing that’s what happened to the deer.
His father follows after, bending down to free the arrow and throw the deer over his shoulder like it’s a sack of potatoes. Hugo makes a face at the sight of blood immediately seeping into the fabric of his shirt.
He says something that Varian nods at and tosses him the arrow, then continues across the field and disappears from Hugo’s field of vision with the deer. Hugo watches Varian lift two fingers to his mouth in a whistle. The dog trailing after him spins, knocking into his hip in its excitement, and then the trees in the distance shake violently as a white blur shoves past them and sprints into the field.
It’s another dog, followed by another and then what looks like– a racoon? Hugo squints, leaning as close to the window as he can without falling off his perch, but his vision isn’t betraying him. The pair of dogs are closely tailed by a round raccoon with a bushed, fluffy tail, and Hugo watches in faint amusement as it overtakes them and barrels into Varian to climb up his legs and perch on his shoulder.
Varian quickly steps to the side before the dogs can follow suit and tackle him down. The raccoon stays securely in place even as Varian dances away from the dogs trying to jump on him.
“Rowe!” Varian scolds the white dog. “Drop that! No squirrels in the house!”
Rowe obediently opens his jaws and lets the thing he’s holding—which Hugo had mistakenly assumed was some kind of toy —fall to the grass.
The other two take off in a chase in the direction Varian’s father left, and Rowe glances back at Varian before planting his feet and barking. Varian is still standing in the field, seemingly scanning the area in search of something with the bow still held in his hands. He waves a dismissive hand at Rowe when he barks again. “Go on, get in the house.”
Rowe shakes out his fur and disappears after them. Hugo forgets where he is, balancing precariously on a protruding brick and a pipe to look through a tiny window, until Varian turns to glance at the area surrounding the cellar and Hugo nearly falls on his ass ducking away from it.
He stays there, hunched down awkwardly with one foot on the platform and the other on the brick, and waits. He counts two minutes under his breath, not moving a muscle instead of just jumping down like someone with common sense would, and slowly pulls himself back up.
When he peeks over the windowsill, Varian is looking at him.
Hugo winces in surprise, body tensing on reflex to duck back down, but there’s no way he could play it off. Not with Varian staring directly at him with an unimpressed look on his face.
He grins and gives as much of a wave as he can without losing his grip. Varian rolls his eyes and turns back to whatever it is he was looking for.
Not long after, he leaves in the same direction the dogs and his father had gone. To the house, if Hugo had to take a guess. He files that information away for later and jumps down from the window, stretching his back when it aches at how long he spent in that ridiculous position.
⊱ 8 ⊰
“How do you live here? It’s like a horror movie house.”
Varian snorts. “This is a cellar. Of course it’s bland.”
“Is the actual house any better?”
“Mm. No, it’s haunted.” He’s clearly joking, said on a lilt between humor and insult like it’s an inside joke with the house. Hugo makes a show of considering this.
“Is it?”
“Do you believe in that?”
“What, ghosts?”
Varian doesn’t answer him, looking off to the side as he thinks. “It is,” he decides. Hugo raises an eyebrow. “The house is a ghost.”
Hugo laughs under his breath. “How do you figure?”
“That’s what happens when people die in them,” Varian says, like it’s obvious.
“Have a lot of people died here?”
It felt stupid, at first, to ask Varian questions like that. Like bringing it up would remind Varian of the position he’s in, remind him that he could kill Hugo if he wanted to. There was a false sense of security in pretending that Varian coming down to switch out the plates and talk about the books he’s reading are the only thing Hugo has to worry about.
He hasn’t been sleeping much lately. Every day that passes feels like it’s one closer to wherever this ends. He still has no idea what they’re planning on doing with him.
He tried asking that once, but Varian just looked at him in the way Hugo has come to learn means it’s a question he’s not supposed to answer.
Varian’s voice brings him out of his thoughts. “Not too many to count.”
Hugo hums like that information doesn’t make his stomach turn. “You’ve counted them, then?”
Varian shifts to bring his boot closer to the bars of the cell, twisting his foot to show scratches in the side of the leather by the heel. Hugo counts twelve tallies carved into the boot in a messy line. The tally on the far right looks newer.
He shouldn’t ask, but he does anyway. “Is that one for me?”
Varian nods.
“You’re pretty sold that I’m gonna die here, huh?”
“That’s what happens.” Varian sits back on his feet, pulling the chemistry textbook into his lap. He flips through the pages mindlessly, running his thumb over the cover. “People die here. In the house.”
“People die in the house,” Hugo repeats. “Will you?”
“Will I?”
“Die in the house.”
Varian shakes his head. He looks past Hugo, to the little window by the ceiling. He nods in its direction. “The woods out there. Not the ones where your bike was but farther. It’s quiet, other than the animals and the trees. Birds and things.”
“Raccoons?” Hugo offers. Varian doesn’t smile, but it’s a close thing.
“Yeah, raccoons.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be open to showing me those woods.”
Varian’s lip quirks with faint amusement, in a morbid sort of way. “I could,” he says softly, knowingly. “I could take you and you can run. You’re not the first to try and run– but my dad will catch you. He does every time. I’ll probably be the one to shoot you down, though. I have better aim than he does. Right” —he leans forward, tapping a fingertip between Hugo’s eyebrows— “here. Or maybe you’re fast, you look like a good runner. Maybe in the back of your neck instead.”
He moves his hand down to flick Hugo in the nose, making him flinch in surprise. “Is that why you insist on talking t’me? You want an arrow in your neck?”
Varian grumbles a quiet hey! when Hugo flicks him right back before he can move away. “Is it really so hard to believe I just enjoy your darling company?” A small cloud of dust kicks up when Varian slumps back against the floor. Hugo snickers when it makes him sneeze. He’s rubbing his nose where Hugo flicked him, glaring like he isn’t the one that started it. “Why do you use a bow, anyway? Why not a rifle?”
“Rifle’s loud,” Varian says to the ceiling instead of Hugo. Hugo can’t imagine it’s comfortable, laying on the cold, hard cellar floor, but Varian doesn’t seem to mind. “Also the recoil is annoying.”
“But isn’t a bow a lot harder to aim accurately?”
Varian shrugs, the movement odd against the floor. “I don’t miss.”
He doesn’t sound cocky about it despite his words. He says it like it’s a fact; the sky is blue, grass is green, he doesn’t miss. Hugo responds with a thoughtful hum.
They settle into a comfortable silence. Hugo fidgets with a loose thread in his shirt. He isn’t used to not having anything to do with his hands. If he were home, he would be doing something right now—tuning up Olivia, working on the satellite discs Cyrus brought home a few weeks ago, seeing how many parts he could snag off the neighbor’s broken down RV before she noticed. The imminent danger he’s in doesn’t hold a candle to how stir-crazy he’s starting to feel doing nothing but reading and pacing.
His fingers itch for something to work on. His teeth itch in a different way. He’s already bitten all his nails down to the quick.
Varian is staring unseeingly at the ceiling, clearly lost in thought. Hugo nudges him with a foot through the bars.
“Someone in your family smokes, right?”
Varian blinks, coming back to reality. He turns to look at Hugo with his eyebrows furrowed. “How’d you know?”
“I can smell it when you come down sometimes. Cigarette smoke is strong.”
“You smoke?”
Sometimes, rarely. Sometimes on his worst days and sometimes on his best. “Yeah. Think you could bring me one?”
Varian hesitates, chewing on his lip. “Those things’ll kill you,” he says in a way that sounds like he’s parroting someone else’s words.
Hugo stands up and goes to stretch out on the cot, nearly sending one of the books to the floor where he has it precariously set on the edge of the mattress. Varian gives him a dirty look as Hugo quickly grabs it before it can fall. “Seems like a lot of things are raring to kill me out here,” Hugo says offhandedly, putting the book safely in the stack against the wall. There’s more now, because Hugo reads fast (especially when he has literally nothing else to do) and Varian seems to have taken enough of a liking to him to let him read his books.
Surprisingly, the comment gets a smile out of Varian. It’s small and gone almost as quickly as it came, but Hugo notices it anyway.
⊱ 9 ⊰
Varian brings a cigarette the next time Hugo sees him. Just one, tucked into his coat pocket when he tiptoes down the steps like he always does, like something is listening even when they’re alone, and comes to sit cross-legged in front of the bars.
It’s too dark for Hugo to read this time of evening, so he was doing his second favorite pastime: trying to find a way out of this cage. When the door creaks open Hugo all but throws himself away from the window. His skin is still dirty and bloodied from trying to pry it open with his fingers.
He doesn’t have enough time to look natural; Varian eyes him when he sees Hugo standing awkwardly in the middle of the cell, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket, but doesn’t comment on it. He holds the cigarette out for Hugo to take like he can’t wait to get his hands off it. “Here’s your cancer stick. We only have Marlboros.”
Hugo sits on the floor across from Varian, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs. His knees brush Varian’s through the bars when he moves to take the cigarette. “I like Marlboros.”
“You got a favorite?”
“Ever had Camels?”
“I’ve never had any ,” Varian says, giving him a look. “There are better ways to rot from the inside out.”
Hugo huffs a laugh. “They ain’t too bad. You wanna know my favorite? The Turkish royals. They taste kinda like vanilla.”
The look on Varian’s face tells Hugo he doesn’t believe him even a little. Hugo watches in amusement as he looks down at the cigarette in Hugo’s hand, nose wrinkling like he’s trying to imagine something so visibly unappealing tasting like vanilla.
“That’s just a red,” he says once he’s finished glaring at Hugo’s cigarette. “Nothing special. The flavored ones are for city folk like you.” He fishes an Altoids container from the depths of his coat. There’s a handful of matches in it, alongside a ring and what looks like a miniature lockpick. He strikes the match and holds it out, cupping his free hand around it so the breeze whistling through the gaps in the wood doesn’t blow it out. “Hurry up before I change my mind, city boy.”
Hugo has to fight a grin around the cigarette in his mouth, holding it carefully between his teeth as Varian lights it. “How’d you know I’m from the city?”
“You don’t talk like people ‘round here.” Hugo grimaces as Varian puts out the match by popping it into his mouth the way most people would eat a lollipop.
“Didn’t that burn?”
Varian shrugs, putting the match back in his Altoids container. “A little.” He sticks his tongue out at Hugo, showing the red mark where he put out the match. “It’ll heal up in a couple days. You gonna smoke the cigarette I risked my neck to bring you?”
A thin cloud of smoke fills the cell. Hugo makes sure to point it away from Varian, because Donella raised him somewhat right. Varian’s nose scrunches in distaste at the smell, but he watches Hugo blow clouds toward the ceiling with an air of interest.
Hugo blows his next breath through the corner of his mouth so he can offer the cigarette to Varian. “You want to try?”
Varian immediately shakes his head, looking at it like it’s going to bite him. “Those things’ll kill you,” he says again, like a broken record, “and ma will smell it on me. She’d have my head if she knew.”
“You’re gonna smell like smoke anyway, because you’re sitting here with me,” Hugo points out. “Unless you somehow take a shower before coming anywhere near her.”
Varian squints at the cigarette Hugo is still holding out. Hugo takes another drag and, to illustrate his point, lets the next exhale of smoke flow through his nose instead. It curls in faint wisps around the bars and settles at Varian’s feet. Varian squints harder.
“Fine,” he says finally, holding out his hand, “give me the damn thing.”
Hugo smiles crookedly at him and turns the cigarette to offer it to Varian. Instead of taking it from his hand, Varian reaches up to pull his hand closer and takes a quick, light drag without moving the cigarette from Hugo’s fingers. His hand is cold where it brushes the skin of Hugo’s fingers not covered by his gloves.
Immediately, he makes a disgusted face and turns to practically spit out the puff of smoke, coughing into the crook of his elbow. “ Eugh ,” he says, somewhere between revulsion and offense, “that’s nasty . How the hell do y’all do that on purpose?”
The almost affronted way Varian is glaring at the cigarette makes Hugo snort. He brings it back to take another drag, and this time, despite how Donella may have raised him, blows it directly into Varian’s face. Varian makes a choking noise that sounds similar to a cat spitting and kicks Hugo through the bars of the cell.
“ Asshole ,” he hisses. Hugo doesn’t have time to pull the cigarette out of Varian’s reach before he’s snagging it from Hugo’s hand and moving away from the cell, glaring balefully at him. He looks down at it for a moment, still glaring, and then takes another drag.
It goes about as well as the first. “ Hey ,” Hugo says, laughing, “can I have that back now? Thieving wasn’t part of our deal.”
“We didn’t have a deal,” Varian says in a very pissed off tone. He comes over to crouch in front of Hugo, looking at him like he’s debating choking Hugo out instead. He’s close enough that Hugo could take the cigarette if he wanted to, but getting on his nerves is more entertaining. “This is gross . You’re gross for liking it. You probably reeked all the time before we found you.”
Found is an interesting term to use. He grins up at Varian, delighting in the way it seems to irritate him even more. “Most people don’t smoke ‘em for the taste, freckles.”
Varian grumbles something under his breath and takes another quick drag from the cigarette. He seems to enjoy it about as much as the last two; Hugo isn’t sure what he’s trying to prove by tormenting himself, but the way he’s clearly trying to act unaffected is amusing. Hugo swears he sees Varian’s eye twitch as he holds the smoke in and leans forward to irritably put the cigarette back in Hugo’s mouth instead of his hand.
It nearly falls because Hugo is still laughing. He quickly catches it between his teeth and moves it to the corner of his mouth so he can speak. “You alright there?”
“Fuck off,” Varian says in a choked hiss of smoke. He blows what he can into Hugo’s face, but unfortunately for him Hugo is immune to it from Donella.
Hugo finishes the cigarette halfway and then stubs it out against the floor between his knees. By the time he’s done Varian has gone to sit on the bottom step of the cellar, stubbornly staying out of the clouds of smoke. He watches Hugo put out the cigarette but doesn’t come back to his seat on the floor.
The room gets quiet.
There’s a tension in the air, something Varian isn’t saying as he looks at him. Maybe something along the lines of the questions Hugo asks that Varian can’t answer. Hugo watches him right back, searching his face for any clue of what he might be thinking.
But there’s nothing. Varian has one hell of a poker face, aside from the way he tends to look at Hugo like he’s seeing right through him.
Hugo rolls the half of the cigarette in his fingers, and asks, “What are your parents going to do with me?”
It isn’t the first time he’s asked Varian that question. All the times before have been met with that quiet, unwavering look, giving him nothing but somehow saying everything at the same time. It’s like Varian has stitches on the inside of his mouth only when Hugo asks a question that’s actually important .
This time, Varian looks away. He pushes to his feet and turns toward the stairs, and this is somehow worse than the silent looks.
“Freckles,” Hugo tries again, climbing to his feet and wrapping his hands around the bars. Varian turns to look at him warily over his shoulder. “Please, tell me.”
Hugo can see Varian think about it. Sees his hand tighten around the railing of the stairs, sees the way he chews on his lower lip like he does when he’s on edge. He can see the way he tenses, turning the slightest bit toward Hugo like he’s going to say something–
And then his shoulders sag. He turns away from Hugo again, and Hugo resists the urge to shake the bars in front of him out of frustration.
“You should sleep,” Varian says quietly; once again impassive. “Sleep for a while. You need it.”
He’s gone after that, taking both the tension and the ease Hugo felt with him. The cellar still smells like cigarette smoke.
Hugo sighs heavily and lets go of the bars.
⊱ 10 ⊰
Hugo wakes to the rustle of movement. He blinks blearily at the grey mass of the ceiling as he fumbles for his glasses with a hand, looking in the direction the noise is coming from even though he can’t quite see shit.
A tall shadow is standing across the room from his cell. When Hugo finally manages to snag his glasses from the makeshift desk and put them on, he sees it’s Varian’s father.
The man isn’t looking at him; he has his back turned, doing something that Hugo can’t see from where he’s sitting, but he hears the clink of metal against glass. Hugo stares at him warily as the man finally turns to face him. There’s a teacup settled in his cupped hands.
He doesn’t say anything when he notices Hugo watching him. Instead, he shifts the cup to one hand and pulls a set of keys out from his pocket. Hugo does nothing but blink dumbly as he unlocks the cell.
“Sit up,” he instructs. When Hugo doesn’t move, he repeats it, voice thinning with impatience, “ Sit up .”
Hugo obeys, if for lack of any better options, and the man comes forward to hold the teacup out to Hugo. It’s sitting on a tiny matching plate, white and engraved with blue flowers identical to the plates Hugo has been eating off of.
There’s tea in it—black, if Hugo had to guess from the steam wafting into his face—but he has a sneaking suspicion that tea isn’t the only thing in this cup. He just doesn’t know exactly what Varian’s father is giving him.
Poison, like he feared when he first woke up in the cellar? Or maybe something that will knock him out but not kill him, make him sleep for a while. Maybe it’s something numbing, something that will reduce the pain of whatever the man plans on doing to him.
Briefly, Hugo weighs his options. He could try to escape here and now; the cell door is still open behind Varian’s father, wide enough that if Hugo timed it well, if he ran like hell and didn’t look back, maybe he would be fast enough to make it out. He could try to overpower the man, but considering he has at least a head’s worth of height on Hugo and is easily twice his width, he has a feeling that wouldn’t go over well.
Hugo, for all his stealth and his skill, is a runner. A born thief, not a fighter. Not unless it’s his only option other than dying .
Hell, it might be, depending on what’s in the cup.
He could pretend to drink it, but there’s too much in the cup for Hugo to pass off hiding it in his cheek without the man finding out. He could stick a finger down his throat and bring it back up as soon as the man leaves. But if he doesn’t leave fast enough, whatever it is might take effect before Hugo can hack it up.
Hugo hesitates, and Varian’s father seems to sense his train of thought because he takes a pointed step in front of the cell door.
“I wouldn’t,” he says warningly, the low threat in his voice is more than clear. “You won’t get far, boy, I promise you that.”
For a split second, Hugo wishes Varian were here.
He doubts it would change anything; Varian has made it obvious that no matter what he thinks, he’ll do what he’s been told. The only purpose he would serve is to be a familiar face as Hugo is subjected to whatever it is that he’s about to drink.
Because he is about to drink it, isn’t he. He looks down at the teacup in his hand and takes a shuddering breath.
Varian’s father lets out a shout of surprise when the cup collides with his face. Hugo doesn’t waste a second; he bolts from the cot, darting past the man bent over to clutch at his face and pushing through the cell door like the hounds of hell are nipping at his heels.
He takes the steps two at a time and crashes into the cellar door more than he opens it. It opens out into a small room where storage shelves line the walls, packed with labelled jars and boxes and things Hugo doesn’t stop to look at as he searches for the way out.
There’s a set of stairs, much tinier than the ones he’s used to seeing, leading up to a two-set of wooden doors left open to reveal the night sky. Hugo skids on his heel and climbs through them, distantly wondering why the hell anyone needs a cellar so deep into the ground.
The area around him is unfamiliar. All he can see at first are rows of corn taller than his head and the field he saw through the window. It takes him a moment to register the glow of lights in the distance, somewhere behind the seemingly endless cornfield taking up the majority of his vision.
He needs to find his motorcycle. He needs to get away from the cellar before Varian’s father gets his bearings.
Despite the voice in the back of his head screaming not to, Hugo takes off toward the house. He has a better chance of guessing where his bike is with even a shred of light than in the middle of a dark field. The rough, dry leaves of corn stalks smack into him unforgivingly as he runs, leaving scratches on the skin of his face and fingers where he’s blindly shoving them away. He pushes his feet harder, feeling his boots thud against the dirt, feeling his heart thud in his chest.
The house comes into view when Hugo breaks through the last thicket of corn. It’s almost quaint up close, sitting innocently in the middle of the property, surrounded on all sides by flower bushes and fruit trees and windchimes that look homemade rattling in the breeze. The light bathing patches of grass through the windows is soft and welcoming.
Several feet behind him, Hugo hears the crunch of leaves underfoot. He curses and keeps running.
He runs without direction, past the house and all its deceiving charm, past the dirt lot with the old truck, past a row of dog houses that are thankfully empty of their inhabitants. His lungs ache from lack of oxygen and his legs protest the sudden strain after– what, a week? Longer, less? Of doing nothing but sitting around or pacing a ten by ten cage.
The cold bites at his face, there’s a feeling that’s distinctly not good somewhere between his ribs where the pain had been strongest when he was sick, but Hugo keeps running.
As his head is on a swivel in a desperate attempt to find some hint where to go, a large shape catches his attention. He pauses long enough to squint against the heavy dark and see it clearly; it looks like the barn.
Hugo hadn’t seen his motorcycle anywhere he ran past. If it’s somewhere, it’s got to be in there.
Just as he takes a step toward the barn, pain explodes in his shoulder. He teeters sideways with a yelp, other hand immediately coming to clutch at where he can feel something jutting out of the layers of his clothes and his skin. Blood is already soaking through the fabric of his shirt.
Varian is standing on the back porch when he turns around.
He looks wide awake, even though if Hugo had to guess it’s late into the night. His bow is in his hands. Hugo looks at the arrow embedded in his skin almost incredulously, struggling to wrap his brain around the fact that Varian shot him .
His leg wobbles underneath him, finally beginning to lose to the pain and fatigue, and Hugo instinctively stumbles in the direction of the barn, but Varian quickly notches another arrow and points it in warning at Hugo’s leg.
“I’ll shoot,” he says, and Hugo believes him. “I will. Don’t you move.”
For once in his life, Hugo listens. He stands there in the edges of the light from Varian’s porch, blood dripping through his fingers, feeling pain radiate outward from where the arrow is still buried in his skin. In the corner of his eye he sees Varian’s father walking up to them, no longer in a rush now that he’s seen his son is dutifully finishing the job. There’s a gash over his eyebrow that’s bleeding steadily.
“I told you I would,” Varian says, drawing Hugo’s attention back to him. He almost sounds upset as he says it; a touch too weak to just be anger. “I told you I’d have to shoot you down if you tried to run.”
“Was I supposed to stay there and die?” Hugo says with a laugh that’s borderline hysterical. “I’d rather try to make it out and get shot for it than be put down like a bad dog. For some reason I thought you would get that.”
Varian shakes his head. He’s worrying his lip again, but the arrow is still pointed firmly at Hugo. “You’re going to die anyway,” he says, soft and resigned as his father finally catches up to them, “now it’s just gonna hurt .”
Hugo resolutely doesn’t flinch when Varian’s father grabs his uninjured shoulder and jerks him toward the house, and Varian doesn’t flinch when Hugo maintains eye contact as his father drags him forward. Whatever remorse that had been there is gone, replaced with the empty expression that Hugo has come to know so well.
The door swings open and Hugo is all but carried by his collar to a brightly-lit kitchen. Like the rest of the house there’s a warmth to it that it doesn’t deserve. He stares blankly at red-and-white checkered wallpaper and a family of glass bunny figurines over the sink as he’s shoved into a chair.
Varian’s father finally breaks the silence as he comes up behind Hugo. “I wasn’t giving you poison,” he says, and then Hugo bites down viciously on a whimper of pain as he yanks the arrow free from his shoulder. “It was painkiller, and somethin’ to help you sleep . But if you want to be awake so badly…”
Footsteps come from somewhere behind him and patter into the kitchen. A woman with curly red hair almost as big as her head rounds the table. She looks surprised to see Hugo.
“Why’s the catch at my table?” She leans into his space to squint at him. “Wide awake, too. You can’t do the one job I leave to you?”
“He threw the damn cup,” Varian’s father grumbles. The woman turns to look at him then, and she rolls her eyes with a fond sort of exasperation when she sees the cut on his forehead.
“Oh, that’s nothing but a scratch. Your son has a better pain tolerance than you.”
As if summoned, Varian steps into the kitchen. His bow is no longer with him, but Hugo figures that’s because of the hunting rifle he can see propped in the corner behind Varian’s father. The woman smiles when she sees him.
“There you are. Help me with this while I fix up your daddy?”
“Yes’m,” Varian says immediately, voice quiet. He goes to one of the kitchen cabinets and pulls a small brown bottle from it. Hugo watches with building apprehension as he grabs another teacup, this one with a grey kitten on it, and fills it with tea from the kettle at the stove.
He can’t see what Varian does next through the woman’s torso, but he has a feeling he isn’t just adding sugar cubes.
When Varian comes over with the teacup, his father turns to give Hugo a heavy glare over his shoulder. The woman is standing in front of him, dabbing at the cut with a wad of cotton. “You try anything stupid, boy, and you will wish you sat down and drank your tea.”
“It’s fine, daddy,” Varian mutters when he passes by his father. He sets the cup in front of Hugo. His hands are steady unlike where Hugo’s are trembling against the underside of the table with adrenaline. “Does he have to have it now?”
Varian’s father hesitates, but the woman is immediately nodding her head, unruly red curls bouncing with the movement. “It’s late, and I’ve already gotten everything out. I don’t want this going on ‘til morning.”
Hugo isn’t given the chance to throw any more fragile dishware. Varian leans against the table and carefully holds up the cup for Hugo to drink. Hugo can feel his father’s watchful gaze burning holes into the side of his skull.
Hugo bites down harshly on the inside of his lip in a last ditch attempt of defiance. The taste of blood spreads in his mouth. He’s not looking at Varian, knowing that that unsettling sharpness of blue eyes on his otherwise blank face will only get under Hugo’s skin, test his nerves.
Something clatters to the floor. The woman mutters a curse and kneels to pick up the pieces of a first aid kid she knocked over. Varian’s father stops staring lasers at him to help the woman gather it from the floor.
Hugo winces as Varian pinches the shit out of his cheek.
“What the f–” Hugo hisses, before Varian interrupts him by clamping a hand over his mouth.
“ Shh, ” he says quietly, nearly inaudible. “You need to drink this. Quickly.”
Hugo snorts derisively. Varian snatches his hand away so when his father glances up, it just looks like Hugo is still being difficult about drinking the tea. Varian glares at Hugo when his father looks away again. “I’m not drinking that any sooner than you forcing the whole damn cup down my throat,” Hugo says, keeping his voice hushed if only because he doesn’t want the attention of Varian’s father. “You can pour it over my dead body, freckles, because I won’t .”
That seems to get Varian to snap. He sets the cup on its tiny plate down against the table with enough force to send a splash of tea over the edge and leans forward to grip Hugo’s jaw in his hand, making the cuts on his face sting. It isn’t hard enough to bruise, but it’s a near thing. Victory sparks somewhere in Hugo’s chest seeing irritation flicker back into Varian’s face.
“I will be pouring it over your wide awake, completely conscious, very much alive body if you don’t quit being an idiot,” he hisses. “You think mama cares any about working with a catch that’s alive? ‘Cause she don’t. All this fussing’s just gonna get you a world of pain that you’re gonna wish you were dead for, city boy.”
“Varian?”
Varian stiffens as the woman calls his name. He drops Hugo’s face and takes a step back, turning to look at her with the impassive mask back in place. “Sorry, mama. Lost my temper.”
He shoots an annoyed look at Hugo as he says it. Varian’s mother laughs. “You’re like me in that way,” she says good-naturedly, smiling at him. Like the house, there’s something about her that’s… wrong , despite the kindness in her face. Her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles and freckles dust over her nose just like Varian’s. Hugo feels an odd sense of dread looking at her. “Do you want me to do it?”
Varian immediately shakes his head. Maybe a bit too quickly. “I can do it.”
She tilts her head, smile slipping into something more muted at the corners. Her brow furrows the tiniest fraction like she can tell Varian is hiding something.
Still, she drops it. “Alright, then. Hurry now.”
Varian’s father is nowhere to be seen. His mother follows suit, tying an apron around her waist that’s embroidered with tiny flowers before disappearing into a hallway attached to the kitchen. Varian picks the teacup up again, mouth pressed into a thin line as he looks at Hugo. After a moment of deliberation, he uses a gentle hand under Hugo’s chin to tilt his face up and brings the cup forward with the other.
“Worried I’m gonna throw a cup at you, too?” They’re alone now, and Hugo doesn’t see Varian’s bow anywhere. His left arm is still aching like hell but his right hand is free. Varian could probably get his hands on one of the kitchen knives sitting in a block by the sink, but not fast enough. A shard of broken glass to the throat would be enough.
He could leave him in those woods he likes.
Varian doesn’t respond, instead pressing the rim of the teacup insistently to Hugo’s mouth. He hasn’t looked away from Hugo once, steadily meeting his eyes with no trace of nervousness or fear anywhere in his face. He’s looking at him like he knows what he’s thinking; like he’s waiting for Hugo to decide if it’s worth a try.
There’s a silent will you? in between them. Will you kill me right here, right now, for the chance to save your life? Will you put a little too much “medicine” in the tea you made so I won’t be awake to feel what’s coming next?
Hugo opens his mouth. The tea isn’t even sweetened—bitter, lukewarm from sitting for so long, with a strong undertaste of something metallic. He knocks back most of it like a shot, free hand coming up under Varian’s to tilt the cup until it’s drained. He makes a disgusted face once he finishes it.
Varian visibly relaxes when he does. He leans back against the table and, inexplicably, holds out a napkin to Hugo for the tea that dripped down his lip. Hugo almost wants to laugh.
“Oh, I get to hold this by myself?”
Varian gives him a flat look. “You threw a glass cup at his face,” he says, “you’re lucky I got t’you first, or else he’d probably have your head up on the wall with the deer. Not a lot of the catches ever get a lick in, I’ll tell you that.”
He shouldn’t, but Hugo can’t help but feel a twinge of pride. Then, his mind sticks on a word in that sentence; one he’s heard several times now, but he still doesn’t know what it means. “What is that? A ‘catch’?”
Varian looks down at his hands. They’re playing with the napkin in his lap as he gnaws at his lower lip. Hugo ducks his head to meet Varian’s eyes. “You said I’m gonna die anyway, right? You can’t tell me before that happens?”
“I’m not s’posed to talk about it at all ,” Varian mutters, aggressively tearing a piece off the napkin, but he shrugs. “A catch.You were trespassing—this is private property, y’know—and so, we… Or, my dad, caught you. I wasn’t there this time. But that’s what we call ‘em. The people we find on the property.”
Hugo blinks, confused. “You mean, you kidnap trespassers?”
Varian jerkily shrugs again. “It didn’t start that way. It… it had a good reason at first. I don’t know how you ended up out here, but you know it’s real far from anything else, right? There’s nothing out here. That’s why we hunt, and we grow things on the farm. No use traveling all the way out there just for some groceries when we can do it ourselves.”
Hugo is listening, but he still doesn’t understand. Varian sighs and shifts up to sit on the table instead of leaning against it, bracing his feet on the chair next to Hugo. The napkin is shredded in little pieces in his lap. “But the winters get bad out here, bad bad, and the crops don’t do well. Not enough for one person, let alone three, and when the winters get bad game gets bad, too. So a couple years back, during one of those bad winters, we weren’t doing good. Couldn’t make the drive to the nearest down either, ‘cause the roads were snowed in.”
He meets Hugo’s eyes now. “There was a man out in the field. Can’t imagine why, maybe his car broke down or something and he was looking for help, but. He didn’t make it too far, ‘cause there’s no trespassing signs all ‘round the property, so my dad doesn’t take kindly to strangers coming up. He was just gonna burn the body, but…”
Slowly, Hugo begins to understand what Varian is implying. From calling him a ‘ catch ’, to telling him that the redheaded woman has no qualms against working with him while he’s still alive. Harsh winters, running low on food, the implications of the ‘but’.
But what? Hugo wants to ask, but doesn’t. Not when he’s sitting where he is.
“Was it–?” Hugo clears his throat when his voice comes out hoarse. “Was… was your dad the one that started it? It was his idea?”
Varian shakes his head. “No, he wanted to burn the body, but mama stopped him. Said there was no use in wasting good meat when we might starve.”
Hugo’s stomach churns violently. He can’t tell if it’s from what Varian just said, whatever the hell was in that tea, or both. He swallows down the nausea rising in his throat. “Do you…?”
At that, Varian huffs a laugh. It’s dry and humorless. “No, I don’t eat the meat. I can’t eat meat at all. Haven’t been able to since I was a kid, it makes me sick.”
Hugo doesn’t know why that makes him feel a little better. What does it matter? He just found out after all his time in that cell that Varian’s parents eat people , and he’s currently next on the menu. That he just willingly drank drugged tea so Varian’s mother can presumably carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
His breath comes out shaky and uneven as he sighs. His arm still hurts like a bitch, but adrenaline has numbed it into a dull ache rather than a burning shock of pain. His jacket sleeve is tacky with dried blood.
His eyelids are beginning to droop. Fear pulses through his chest at the realization, knowing what him falling asleep means, but the tea is doing its job. His body feels heavy like lead. Hugo looks up at Varian who is watching him quietly, lip still caught between his teeth. He has an overbite, Hugo notices, and a little gap between his front teeth.
“It won’t hurt,” he reassures softly. “I put in more of the stuff than my dad did. In the tea. You’re just gonna go to sleep, you won’t feel a thing.”
It takes more effort than it should for Hugo to pull a laugh from his throat. “Yeah, no, that’s great. I’m so glad being killed and cannibalized won’t hurt. Thanks, freckles.”
“Varian.”
“Hm?”
“That’s my name,” Varian elaborates. “Varian. Not freckles.”
Hugo hums sleepily. His head slumps back against the chair. It’s too much effort to lift it again. “I know,” he says after a few moments.
Varian’s eyebrows furrow. “Since when?”
“Since I got sick.” Every blink gets slower. He feels like he’s sinking through the chair and into the floor below. “I heard… I heard you and your dad talking. When you thought I was asleep.”
“I knew I saw you move,” Varian huffs. A smile tugs at the corner of Hugo’s lips.
“I like freckles better.”
“Why do you call me that?”
Hugo opens his eyes—he doesn’t remember when he closed them—to give Varian a look. Varian rolls his eyes at him. “Yeah, I have freckles, so what? There’s spots on my face, so that’s what you call me?”
Hugo hums noncommittally. “It’s the first thing I noticed about you.” Varian doesn’t respond. Hugo watches him through heavy eyelids, watches the room slowly get smaller as everything blurs around the edges. The only thing that’s clear is Varian looking back at him. “Not gonna ask me my name?”
“It’s stitched in the tag of your jacket, city boy.”
“And yet, you still call me that.”
“ You still call me freckles.”
Hugo breathes a laugh that’s more of a weak exhale than anything. “Fair enough, freckles.”
The click of heels comes down the hall. Varian’s mother comes back into the kitchen. Her hair is pulled into a thick ponytail now and she’s wearing elbow-length work gloves. She smiles at Varian when she sees Hugo all but melting into the floor.
“All done?”
Varian nods and jumps down from the table. When his mother turns her back toward them, he reaches down and brushes Hugo’s bangs back from his face, so quickly that Hugo barely registers the touch before it’s already gone.
“Go to sleep, Hugo,” he says, too soft for his mother to hear.
The last thing Hugo thinks, before everything fades to black, is how nice his name sounded in Varian’s voice.