You Say Jump

Chapter 7: Varian, part 2

"There you are!" Nuru greets when Varian finally pads into the inn's dining room for breakfast. "I hope you slept; you look like your raccoon with those eye bags."

Hugo's head snaps up when he enters, then quickly averts his gaze to the table. Varian slowly takes the seat perpendicular to Hugo's.

"Varian, pass me the honey?" Yong asks, stirring sadly at what looks like a very plain bowl of porridge.

Varian reaches forward but at the same time Hugo says, "No problem, I got it–"

Their hands halt, overlapping one another around the ceramic honey jar. They look up to find one another's faces inches apart and stare in fright like cornered deers and the moment goes on uncomfortably long. Hugo yanks back first, stuffing his hands under his thighs as though to restrain them, and Varian bustles with getting his own bowl of porridge like he's suddenly remembered he's starving.

Nuru clears her throat and reaches bodily across the table to grab the honey for Yong, looking between them with a raised eyebrow. "Anyway," she says. "Here's what we've been talking about, V..."

Varian seems to do his best to pay attention while she catches him up on the plans for the day, but his gaze keeps flicking over to Hugo's knee bouncing under the table, and she notes the deep, slightly-shaky breath the blond boy takes when he finally looks up from his lap and stares determinately at Nuru and Nuru only.

So, Nuru has older sisters. She knows what it looks like when they're acting confident but feeling anything but; when they're holding onto their smile with their last shred of willpower; when they're barely holding back a rant that they will be spilling as soon as they're behind closed doors.

She knows what it looks like then they're crushing hard.

She likes to think she clocked the thing going on between Varian and Hugo while the two of them were still oblivious, but if the feeling in the air this morning is anything to go by, that obliviousness has come to an end. Time for the little sister shenanigans to begin.

"Hey, remember when Hugo called Varian 'sweet cheeks' that one time, and we had to save him from getting strangled?" she asks Yong loudly once they're on the road, loud enough that she knows the boys in question can hear her from the way they both tense up hilariously. "Yeah... I miss those days."

"Wait, didn't that happen when Hugo drank the last of the hot chocolate?" Yong wonders, oblivious.

She smirks and leans in to whisper in his ear.

"No!" he gasps, covering his mouth as he looks at the two older boys with new eyes. "Really?"

"Hey, can you two shut up over there?" Hugo barks, shoving the map into Varian's hands and folding his arms. "I can hardly hear myself think."

"Wouldn't want you to stop thinking about whatever...you're thinking about," Nuru says, eyeing Varian and smiling innocently. The dark-haired boy blinks like he's not really following her point and shrugs before going back to his map, but Hugo goes the color of a ripe beet.

"Princess, I'm not above regicide," he hisses, stomping closer.

Yong gasps again, seemingly before he can stop himself. "They're such a good match!"

Nuru laughs so long that she has to drop to her knees and beg the goddess for mercy.

The weather starts to get colder as they near and cross into Ingvarr's borders. The city is huge and intimidating in its differences from what they've experienced before, but Hugo seems to know how it like the back of his hand. He shoos off a pickpocketer that Nuru didn't even notice, stops Yong from walking into the path of a nobleman's oncoming horseless 'automobile' (something designed by the royal engineer of Ingvarr but only for the rich, he explains sourly), and navigates the group to an inn owned by someone he apparently knew in childhood. The lady waxes nostalgic about what a bright, cheerful little boy Hugo was before he disappeared one day.