Chapter Text
Varian had a shitty day. Full of annoying, ungrateful people yelling at 8:30 in the damn morning. Then his fuck ass French teacher didn’t make his day any better. Now it was the last period of the day, Agriculture. He hated this class, especially since his dad was the teacher.
He sat down in the back of the class. He was always the first one in the class because he had spare keys to the room. He was struck as weird by other kids, but he didn’t mind.
That wasn’t the only reason he was seen as weird. He had canker sores in his mouth from his braces, buck teeth, big baby blues, he was too short, too skinny, and he was always in his own little world. He was used to being ignored and ignoring others. So when a blonde guy, tall and lean, beautiful, with cute freckles came over to him and sat down next to him in the empty room, he was surprised. It was also surprising because this guy looked like, well…a bad boy. He had a nose piercing, a small heart tattoo on his wrist, an undercut and a leather jacket.
“Hey, Blue.” Somebody said. The class started to fill up a little more. “Seemed a bit lonely.”
Varian rolled his eyes. “Maybe I like it better that way.”
“Well, nobody likes being alone.”
“I do.”
He looked away and shrugged. Varian was almost relieved that he wouldn’t be talking to him. He hoped he’d move.
That hope was short lived when the boy suddenly smiled and turned back to Varian. Varian saw that he had a slight over bite, like little rat teeth.
“Hope you can keep up with me.” He said and stuck out his hand. “I’m Hugo.”
Varian hesitantly shook his hand. “Varian.”
“I think I’ll keep calling you Blue. More easy.”
Varian pouted. “I’d prefer you not.”
“I don’t care what you prefer.”
Varian was going to say something but was interrupted when his dad walked in and started the class. The whole time, he couldn’t help but think about why Hugo came to him. There were all these other seats he could sit at but he sat next to Varian.
He sighed while looking around the room. Again thinking hard about all kinds of things. What he’ll do when he gets home, once he can finally lay in bed, at least until he makes dinner.
The class seemed to go on forever. He loved his dad, but he could never explain anything to where it was easy to understand. Varian zoned out, looking at the clock. Finally, his father stopped droning on and looked at the time. His father handed out a packet as homework. He explained it a little and the bell rang. Hugo was the first one out.
🐾🐾🐾
He was on his way home, his father in the car. His father and him had a little bit of a rocky relationship. He never got along with him that well, especially after his mom died. His father never understood him, and the first few months he didn’t even look at him. When she died, he locked up everything that reminded him of her. That included Varian. Now Varian only had a locket with a small picture of her when she was his age.
He stared at the trees passing by, music blasting in his ears to drown out the cheugy pop music. He hated pop music.
His music was so loud that he didn’t hear his father talking to him. He jumped when he felt a hand in his shoulder and quickly took out his ear buds. The car was stopped at a red light.
“Sorry dad.” He said looking down. “What were you saying?”
“The new boy sat by you.”
“Yeah.” He tried to keep the sass out of his voice. He didn’t know if it worked or not.
“I don’t think you should be talking to him. His last name’s Rottewange.”
Varian rolled his eyes. He hated when his dad did things like this. “So?”
“Your mother’s doctor had that last name. She didn’t help at all.”
Varian remembered his mother. She had some bad mental issues and was sent to a hospital shortly after his 5th birthday. While she was there, she rejected the help of everyone. In other words, it wasn’t the doctor’s fault she killed herself, it was hers. Well not actually, her mental illness made her paranoid of anything, so it was more like her illness.
Varian argued with his father enough times about this. He decided to keep quiet. Their fights never ended very well.
Quirin sighed. “I know I said to make more friends but not that kid.”
“I already have friends, dad.”
Varian had few friends. Rapunzel Sonne, her friend, Cassandra Solomon and his cousin, Eugene. The only thing was they had all gone to college. He was fine with being alone for the next year.
“They’re just in college.” He said after. His father looked worried.
“I mean friends your age.”
They had long talks about these kind of things.
“It’s not important, I just need good grades.” Varian said, shrugging a little. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Yes it is. It would be nice to see you hang out with others.” He looked worriedly at him. “People think you’re scary.”
Varian rolled his eyes. He wasn’t going to change, no matter how much his father wanted him to. He sighed and replied.
“I don’t care if they do. It’s really not a big deal.”
Him and his father argue a little and finally come to an agreement.
🐾🐾🐾
Thats how, the next day, Varian found himself sitting with his other cousin that he didn’t know even existed. His father said that he needed to stop talking to Hugo and make new friends. His father said if he did he could keep the stray cat down the street. So that’s what he’s doing. The cousin he was sitting with was on his mom’s side, so that meant he probably didn’t know her that well on purpose.
He didn’t like to associate himself with his mom too much. In fact, the words he hated hearing most was ‘you look just like your mom.’ Despite that, he kept a locket of her in his room. He always contradicted himself.
His cousin’s name was Amber. She had auburn hair, brown eyes, and freckles. He wished that he could say that she was short like him but she wasn’t. She was taller by two inches. He was a little embarrassed about that, he couldn’t think of anyone that was shorter than him.
Next to her was her girlfriend. A girl with dark skin and hazel eyes, Nuru was her name. He didn’t know her all that well but she seemed nice enough.
He sighed looked at the food the school gave out. The meat was squishy and it smelled weird. It didn’t help that he didn’t like meat all that much. Ever since he little he didn’t like it. He didn’t mind sitting with them, but he preferred to be in the library. He knew he couldn’t do that though.
He snaps out of his thoughts when he heard a familiar voice.
“Hi, Nuru.” Nuru rolled her eyes.
“How delightful it is to see you again, Hugo.” Nuru replied with a pound of sarcasm. She knew Hugo since forever. They met when they were in 5th grade and have been friends since. In middle schools though, his mom homeschooled him for…personal reasons. But now he was back.
Hugo smirked a little, probably used to being talked to like that. “As you too. But I just wanted to know if I could sit here?”
Varian glared at him. He didn’t hate the guy, but he really didn’t want to be around him. Something about Hugo…deeply annoyed Varian.
What annoyed Varian even more was Hugo had other friends to sit with. He just wanted to sit here, with two people who were glaring at him. But Nuru’s glare lightened a little, like she was considering it. She spoke up.
“Why?”
“Because of your darling company. Why else?” As he said that, he glanced at Varian and smiled again. Varian knew the reason he wanted to sit here now.
“You really think I’d let you sit here after what happened in Welding?”
“Oh come on, it was a joke!”
Amber looked at them both with a raised eyebrow and said, “What happened in welding?”
“This asshole scared me and I dropped the metal on my foot! He’s just lucky it wasn’t hot metal.” She said pointing at him and pouting.
“But that’s the past,” He said it like it happened a year ago, when in fact it was last hour. “Think you can forgive me?”
Nuru was kinda considering it, there was many reasons he would want to sit here. She saw Hugo looking at Varian and smiled. She didn’t know Varian at all, but she knew that she needed some friends. All while Nuru was thinking this, Varian was silently praying that he wouldn’t sit here.
Of course,—because why not—his prayers go unanswered. The lanky boy sits down next to Varian, almost uncomfortably close.
Hugo looks at Varian and speaks. “How’re your classes without me, Blue?” Hugo was looking at him with puppy dog eyes. Varian glanced but then looked away.
Hugo pouted. “Oh come on, won’t answer me?”
Varian rolled his eyes. “Why are you sitting here?”
“I can’t sit with my friends?”
“Are you really friends with us?”
“Yeah, well I’m friends with Nuru. I’ve known her forever.”
Varian looked skeptical, even though that could be true. “Really? I thought you just moved here?”
“I just moved to this school. Not this town.”
Varian looked away when he realized he was wrong. Just as he was opening his mouth to apologize for making assumptions, the lunch bell rang. He was the first one up from the table and was throwing the gross mystery meat away.
🐾🐾🐾
Upon realizing that he had to sit with Hugo at lunch and Agriculture, Varian noticed that he also had the tall blonde in two other classes. English and History. Two of the classes he hated.
He didn’t think English was bad, he just didn’t like the teacher. But History he hated because it’s History. All it was was just sad stories of stupid white men destroying the world. He knew it wad important to know these things but that doesn’t mean he had to like it.
World War 2 was just some nosy women haters trying to take over the world. And it ended up killing millions—or was it billions?— of people. It was sad, yes, which is why he didn’t want to learn about it. He was angsty enough.
What he especially didn’t get about it was why nobody listened to it. History is a warning to future generations, but people are still doing all the shitty things the Europeans were doing in the 1600s. Like mass genocide. Or something smaller, like racism.
Now he was sitting in class, watching the teacher talk about World history, specifically focusing on China. Hugo, thank god, wasn’t sitting close to him due to assigned seating. He was sitting more near the front.
Varian noticed how Hugo was paying attention, even participating.
Hugo didn’t look like he’d like History. He was 17 with a tattoo, piercings, and more than enough studded jewelry. He doesn’t even look like he’d have good grades. It was a little funny to think about it like that.
Hugo raised his hand for each answer and Varian could imagine a tail wagging. Varian could imagine him being a Borzoi if he was a dog. The long shaggy blonde hair, the long nose and face, and the tall lanky body.
Varian shook his head as he heard his name called. “Varian?”
It was the teacher. This teacher wasn’t bad, he was just a little forgettable. He just teaches, which is what a teacher is supposed to do but the other teachers at least try to make their class fun. Varian replied. “Yeah?”
“Are you paying attention?”
He blushed slightly and quietly said, “Yeah.”
“Then can you answer the question I just asked?”
Varian thought about it, he didn’t hear the question but thought it’d be best to just answer. “Uhm…gunpowder?”
The teacher nodded like he knew he’d say that. “Nice try, Mr. Ruddiger. But not anywhere close.”
He turned to the rest of the class. “Anyone wanna answer?”
Hugo was the first to raise his hand. The teacher looked around and rolled his eyes when no one else did.
“Anyone besides Hugo.” Still no hands went up so he pointed at Hugo.
“Fine. Go ahead.”
Hugo got it right and Varian stared at the clock, waiting for the class to be over. It would be the last class of the day.
🐾🐾🐾
After the bell rang, Varian started walking back home. Since it was Thursday, his father had a meeting to go to. He didn’t have a meeting every Thursday, but it might as well have been every Thursday. So he walks on the sidewalk by the school through the fog.
It rained some time before school let out, so there were still lots of rain puddles and fog in the air. He liked days like these. He felt some type of serenity in them.
He mentally sorted things he needed to do. Now that his teachers (finally) hadn’t assigned any homework, he had enough time to do other things. Like cleaning his room, maybe do the thousands of missing assignments he had (he was surprised he didn’t have straight F’s), and catch up on sleeping.
October was coming up too. Which meant the fair was coming to town. Considering there was almost nothing to do in town, the fair coming was really fun to him. He loved going, but he didn’t have anyone to go with this year.
He thought about skipping it, since he doubted Amber wanted him to join her with Nuru. And he was definitely not going with Hugo.
Since he didn’t like to do Halloween stuff anymore, the fair was the only thing to look forward to.
Usually when he says he doesn’t do Halloween, people say he’s a grouch. It’s not that he doesn’t like it, it’s just so boring. He stopped dressing up because he didn’t feel like putting in the effort for it, and he hated parties because it was just an excuse for teenagers to get drunk.
Most of the time. If it wasn’t it was even more boring.
He turned the corner of the street and heard a loud scream. He stopped walking and looked around. He called out, maybe it was someone who needed help. But it seemed like the scream was coming from all sides.
He couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. He decided to keep going in house’s direction. His parents always encouraged him to help people, but this seemed impossible. he didn’t want go walking around aimlessly.
Just as he took a step forward, a woman walked closer. Varian stopped quickly, observing her. She looked like she was in her late 20’s and red hair and blue eyes, and looked just like his mom. That wasn’t the most alarming thing about her though, she was soaked in blood, and her jaw looked terrifyingly dislocated. The smell of iron was coming off of her in waves.
He almost threw up.
His eyes widened and he spoke. “M-Ma’am?” He took a step closer. “Are you ok?”
The woman smiled, her mouth still wide open, and tilted her head. Then she dissipated into the fog. Varian looked around confusedly. Where the hell did she go ?
He had to be going crazy, imagining his mother and a scream is not normal. He really hoped not, he didn’t want to prove people right. He thought more, what other explanation could there be? And it definitely wasn’t something supernatural because that doesn’t exist.
His mom thought so though. But she was….well crazy. Varian ran back home as fast he could. He ran so fast his feet hurt from smacking on the ground. When he got home, he slammed the door and locked it sliding down to the floor. He really didn’t want to think about his mom.