#bucketsfullofdrabble

…

I totally didn’t make a 20 panel comic for this chapter. Definitely. And there sure aren’t closeups and without the text versions under the cut.

Tfw your toxic yuri’s death leaves you with a broken ankle and an existential crisis.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65284138/chapters/174218563

“Sure they both look like they’ve worked outside, but Varian could just as easily be the son of— that guy!” His arm flew outward toward the first person he saw from the window: an old, scraggly bearded man barely a meter tall and leaning heavily on a goat. Yong gave him a flat look. “Okay bad example, but still!”

Hugo had yet to make it past the mental hurdle of Quirin fathering Varian, which in all fairness, Yong and Nuru were very perplexed by too, but they weren’t the ones having a tantrum over it. Nuru had begun to tune their friend out around ten minutes ago to start scribbling out long, complex equations only to solve them a moment later. Yong, Hugo, and Nuru were brought into Varian’s childhood home to spend the night before completing the final trial and opening the Eternal Library. Quirin had been delighted to welcome Varian’s friends, ushering them in without even a brief assessment of their characters. Varian had looked deeply embarrassed when Hugo asked, admitting that he wasn’t known for making friends, let alone ones his age. Not long after they were settled in the guest bedroom, Quirin had called his son down to help prepare a meal with him, leaving the three friends to muse on the genetic gymnastics that occurred to bring about Varian.

“Maybe he gets it from his mom?” Yong pondered aloud. He withdrew a comb that Hugo didn’t know Yong owned and started to rake it through the burned ends of his hair. They were all a mess. A year on the road had not been kind on their appearances. Hugo was ashamed to say that he hadn’t kept up with his usually close shave along the sides and back of his scalp, allowing the hair there to grow and give him a fluffier look. Most of his clothes had holes in them or stained with some chemical or other. Being Yong’s assistant certainly didn’t help with the smell of gunpowder or the charred nature of his sleeves.

But Nuru was probably the messiest of them all. Her title as Princess was as reflective as her shoes. That is to say, not at all. She had taken up the mantle of navigator with an enthusiasm Hugo hadn’t expected, and she trudged through muck and high water to get them to each trial. A flashback to her waving her sword at a sneezeweazel and the subsequent chase through thorny bramble to get away left their sleeves torn and skin razed made Hugo cringe. The only things Nuru ever managed to keep tidy were her star maps—rest in peace to her skirt of constellations—and her sword. Although she used it frequently to cut through foliage on their journey, Nuru kept her whetstone close and sharpened her blade every night. Even her poor telescope wasn’t kept in as good a condition as her weapon, once using it as a makeshift club to bludgeon a bandit on the road.

Yong, ironically, had most of his things intact. Although that probably wasn’t a testament to how well Yong managed his stuff and more how much Varian kept Yong’s belongings safe for him. Far too often, Varian would be launching forward from his place around the campfire to sweep Yong’s backpack of explosives away from the flames. In fact, Hugo was confident that all of the bags hitched to Prometheus belonged to the pyromaniac. That isn’t to say that Yong made it through their adventures scott-free. When the bounty hunters hired by Yong’s parents caught up to them, Yong had gone a bit off the deep end, tying all of his available fireworks together and nearly blowing the men’s’ heads off. Standing behind an explosion like that turned nearly off of Yong into a pile of ash. He was covered in burns and his eardrums didn’t stop ringing for several hours after. And yet at the end of it all, Varian had pulled the teenager aside with a fresh set of clothes and a pair of flame retardant gloves for Yong to wear.

And speaking of Varian. Easily the clumsiest of the group, Varian was coated head to toe in grime. Even as he fussed over the safety of his friends, or maybe because he worried over them, Varian would fall into the most trouble. Be it from Hugo purposely antagonizing some stranger on the road, Nuru not looking away from the stars long enough to see the sudden dip of the hill she was walking towards, or Yong tampering with one of Hugo’s stink bombs to make them spark, Varian did his best to take the blow. It was annoying. Hugo definitely deserved to be the one with a bucket of muddy water thrown at his face, and it would have been really funny to watch Nuru trip and tumble over the slope, and god did Hugo wish he saw Yong receive his comeuppance when a stray bomb tumbled from his mischievous grip, but Varian had already thrown himself over Yong and stank to high heaven for three days.

While the guy had objectively gotten worse in terms of appearances, Hugo couldn’t seem to choke down the butterflies that emerged when Varian’s dirt covered face appeared and twisted into a grin from the doorway. A pair of cooking mitts the only non-road trodden thing about him now.

@simple-study-of-story @prettywordsonpaper @imanalbertross the prompt is write your OTP on a rainy afternoon, but also no pressure <3

——

This was the first time Larney had seen rain come down since leaving home.

It’s also the first time I’m seeing it behind a window, Larney thought, touching the glass and tracing a droplet down until it reached the bottom.

They jumped when large warm arms wrapped around their waist and a shorter figure pressed into them from behind. They looked back to see thick black curls nestled into their shoulder blades, and smiled.

“Hey,” they said softly.

Jiayi hummed, grip tightening a minuscule amount before she let go. She stepped around Larney, fingers tracing their arm, then reaching up to run a hand down one of their braids. Her eyes flicked up to Larney, a question in them.

“Just… thinking of home, is all. Rita always hated the rain. Mother hated it too. Said the beasts liked the cover our trees provided,” Larney pulled on their sleeve where the stitching left a sliver of skin visible.

“Do you like the rain?” Jiayi asked.

Larney didn’t know, if they were honest. When Mother wasn’t nearby, Larney would huddle in the lowest branches of the redwoods and watch the beasts cower from the elements. Small, feathered ones with sharp teeth made piles of warmth close to the trunks, while the larger, herbivorous ones collapsed against each other in uncomfortable lines. Larney’s favorite was always the paired dinosaurs. Their steps were remarkably silent despite their size, and they rested their massive heads on each other far away from the other species.

A squawk and a giggle from outside interrupted their conversation. Jiayi and Larney looked out the window and watched a redheaded girl and an unbalanced velociraptor prance in the rain. Jones giggled and chased Buckshot, making the dinosaur squeal and chirp happily, running away only to stop and let the amputee catch up before running off again.

Larney dropped a hand down and grasped Jiayi’s.

“I think I do,” they said.

Jiayi squeezed their hand.

——

“I hate the rain,” Hugo groused.

Varian grinned, even as he was being actively pelted by devil water from the sky.

“It’s not that bad!” Varian replied.

Hugo looked at him like he was crazy and tucked himself further beneath the pub’s overhang.

The storm had caught everyone unawares, and Hugo and their group had rushed to find a safe haven. But once they did, Nuru and Varian seemed to get the horrible idea that the rain was ‘beautiful’ and ‘cathartic’. The Princess stood out in the storm with all her fine clothes becoming irreversibly tarnished, but she had the widest grin on her face. Varian lifted a beaker up in the air to catch the rainwater like he wasn’t gathering plenty of samples in his hair, or his goggles, or his stupid vest. Yong seemed the closest to sensible. The boy was crouched, close to the edge where the rain poured down, and stared, entranced, at the way the rain hit the muddied ground. Hugo scowled and pressed his back to the cold stone building.

“You couldn’t make me go out there if you tried.” Hugo knew he said the wrong thing when all three of his friends turned to grin wolfishly at him.

“Oh really?” Yong asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

He tensed as they started to move closer to him.

“H-hold on, no, that wasn’t a challeNGE—!” Hugo was roughly pulled into the rain with the traitors he was supposed to call his friends.

Hugo shrieked and pushed Nuru roughly, but she only laughed. Varian laughed too as he wrapped his arms around one of Hugo’s like a wealthy woman hanging off of her partner. Yong’s usually unmanageable head of hair flattened the moment he joined them in the rain and leapt into a nearby puddle, sending disgusting street water at Hugo’s pants.

“You guys are the worst!” Hugo yelled. He slapped the top of Varian’s soaked head and cringed when black hair stuck to his hand. They all laughed harder.

Yong turned and raced for a puddle near Nuru, jumping and muddying her already ruined dress. She gasped, looking down at her clothes and back up at Yong. For a second, Yong looked worried that he’d gone too far. But then Nuru jumped forward, splashing an even bigger puddle and drenching Yong with unclean water. The pair laughed and chased each other between puddles, and for a moment, Hugo forgot about how much he hated the rain.

Something wet and warm leaned on him, and he looked down at Varian, who looked up at him. Even though the rain and clouds blotted out the sun, Varian’s eyes still reflected a beautiful light. With both arms looped around one of his own, it was easy for Varian to lightly tug on Hugo and bring him down to his level. He barely felt the brush of lips, soft and tingly, and he tried to reciprocate but-

Splash.

The water that Varian had been collecting in that beaker greeted Hugo, blinding him. He yelped and stumbled backwards, tripping and falling on his butt. He scrubbed beneath his glasses and squinted up at a cackling Varian.

Oh that twerp was going to pay.

Hugo scooped mud water up from beside him, pushing up and splashing Varian in the face with the disgusting mixture. The alchemist’s laugh twisted into a gasp and a look of horror. Hugo laughed.

“Doesn’t feel too good, does it?” Hugo leered.

Varian’s head snapped to Hugo. He slowly reached down, grabbing an alchemy ball, and lifted it up.

“This is filled with Butyl lithium. I’m curious how it will interact with the rainwater on your clothes.”

Hugo paled, spun around, and started running, certain that the mad scientist would be right behind him.

Hey so, uh, the rent is due and my payment is a Yong-centric chapter fic.