Chapter Text
Fugo pants desperately as he runs through the rough thicket, his feet bare and his skin taut from the cold, pushing to race him as far away from his home, tears beginning to freeze tracks on his cheeks. Sharp twigs pierce his every move, slicing across his arms and feet as he breaks through the forest line, the wind whipping through his dirtied white hair, with the whisper of a yell floating across the freezing air as his father yells behind him, screaming and shaking his lantern in one hand and his shotgun in the other.
He preaches nonsense as Fugo escapes his wooden abode, in its rotting and putrid state, the walls desolate and damp—he yells of matters most personal straight across his scraggly fields to anyone who will hear his cries.
“Shame!” his father wails. “Shame on you who tarnish our family name! Who sully our future! Who bares no wife or child!”
His voice raises goosebumps on his skin, irrelevant to the cold night air.
Fugo can still feel tonight's welts, the dip in his back raw and painful, skin splitting sharply as his back contorts. The subzero air does little in the way of soothing him. His father had grabbed his prize possession– a leather belt with a heavy silver buckle– and walloped him again and again, grunting and huffing at every movement.
“Those bloody books,” he’d sneered, “you’ll be a farmer like yer dad and me dad. You think you’re better than me, hah?” He had hit harder, riling himself up. Fugo did his best to hold in every gasp and cry, the corners of his eyes wet with tears, kicking against the floor as his hips dug into the table he was bent over. “Think you can go off and write ‘n read ? Think you can make money and leave me here alone ?”
Fugo had tried not to sob, for the tears would egg his father on, and he’d walked to his room on shaking feet and allowed himself to wail only once his face was buried in his pillow, filled with down from his own ducks.
With that memory in mind as fuel, he sprints on, making it to a small clearing where an unkempt dirt road meandered through, and he collapses and groans, picking the thorns and seeds out from his soles, shivering. He sits for a moment, attempting to collect his thoughts, panting and choking on hiccups and sobs, frozen like a fearful mouse, watching the twirling of his breath on the now stagnant air. He admires the way the frost claims all it touches, the way his nose was closing as mucus grew solid, the way anything soft now crunches underfoot, the way his goosebumps were so raised and prominent he could use them to sand wood.
And, like a fearful mouse, he clenches up when he hears the clattering of a carriage in the distance.
At once, he scampers for the bushes, his eyes wide with fear. Should he be caught here, he’ll be taken for a prize, surely; he’d had offers presented to his parents before– everybody knew about the curious boy with white hair and red shimmering eyes, pale skin and slender fingers, with a dusting of freckles and long blonde lashes. He’d go for a lot, a rare commodity, but his father refused to let his son become a nobleman’s fodder, instead insisting he’s to work on the farm and marry once he turned 16. Girls had approached him many a time of their volition, but Fugo always felt as though he was destined for more, as though he could climb the ranks.
Voicing these thoughts to Father turned out to be a horrendous mistake, however, truly, for the magnitude of his rage was much greater than Fugo thought possible. His workload grew tenfold in response, his father determined to familiarise him with working life, to make sure he knew precisely just where he belonged. He raked the barn, sowed seeds, and drew pail after pail from the well which rested half a kilometre away. He’d been forced to cook with his mother, which he found incredibly emasculating regardless of how much he loved her, and went to bed at six, no later. Tonight's argument had truly been the last straw.
So, Fugo sits in a quivering silence, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the blood in his veins, his back against a tree, listening to the thumping of hoofs growing ever near. He could hear clanking– thick, low, mechanical. The horses sound heavy, and heavy metals meant high quality– Fugo is no simpleton; a nobleman's horse shall pass through any moment now, and his pant-sodden and pitiful self can do nought but hide.
He prays the footman won’t notice him.
The carriage draws closer, closer, and Fugo’s heart beats faster, faster, until he can hear nothing but the swell of his chest. His fingers shake, nay, his whole body trembles , and he hopes the shuddering of loose bark beneath his back shall not alert them.
He hears displaced snow and dirt squelching as the carriage tracks past, and breathes a short sigh of relief, slumping forward.
Then, a shout from the horses as they shake and whinny in protest, the footman yanking on the reigns and halting the carriage. Fugo feels his heart skip a sickening beat, his body growing ever colder and acid rising in his throat.
There’s a creak of the carriage door, and a soft wet sound indicates a small foot resting in the snow, then the other, until the person is fully out of the carriage and onto the path. Fugo clasps his hands tight as he sits as still as he can, listening as he would listen for his father’s footsteps, trying to ignore the whipping wind and the moaning of trees bending in protest.
There’s a long inhale from the person. Then, a voice so mellow and young, Fugo thought it to be impossible, speaks quietly from behind him.
“Come. Please, present yourself before me.”
Fugo nearly sobs in fear. He sits perfectly still, frozen, and holds his choked cries in just like he’d practised most days.
The voice beckons again. “Please, I don’t bite. However, I do hate repeating myself.”
Slowly, Fugo pushes himself up from the floor and steps on shaking legs out from the cover of the forest shrubbery. He stares at the ground, unwilling to meet eyes with his enemy, his body screaming to run, to flee, to put his hands around his ribs and curl up where he stood.
Eyes growing glossy, he collapses to his knees, sniffling, adrenaline like ice in his skin.
“Please,” Fugo cries, touching his forehead to the ground. “Please! I mean you no harm!” Possibilities run through his mind. He could be captured, killed. Or worse, he could be returned home.
There’s a step, then another, until the figure is just in front of him. The first thing he sees are gold-tipped black shoes, more expensive than anything Fugo had ever seen in his life. Perhaps four times the cost of his house. His eyes dare not to trail up, but there’s the feeling of cold fingertips beneath his chin, and Fugo allows his head to be lifted ever so gently to meet the nobleman’s eyes.
Fugo goes colder at the sight.
A boy, no older than himself, holds his gaze, his eyes piercing his own with such an intensity it frightens him right to his core, leaving his body weak and his jaw slack. Though a thick coat of animal fur lays across his shoulders and cloaks his head, he can see locks of gold hair spindling down his neck and face, the same colour as the wheat he’d collect, with eyes as green as sour spring grapes. His skin is pale, blending with the fallen snow, and he can feel long, sharp fingernails poking the joining of his neck and jaw, where his head is anchored up from. The boy reviews him, breaking his gaze, leaning closer and assessing either side of his head.
“How did you know…?” Fugo whispers, shivering, looking straight ahead. His fingertips felt cold, dangerous, like the muzzle of a shotgun, nestled sweetly above his Adam’s apple. The boy makes no change in his posture, still leaning close, almost parallel with his cheek, bringing his lips to his ear.
“I could smell you. Sweet, delicious, like summer fruit and lemonade,” he mutters, finally breaking his rigidity and stepping back, realigning his gaze with Fugo’s, tilting his head and darting from eye to eye. Fugo’s heart thumps again.
A queer reason, he decides, for he knows he smells unwashed and of blood and dirt.
“I’m filthy. How could you possibly–”
“Right you are. Come,” he commands once more, silencing him and turning sharply on his heel, taking a step toward his carriage. Fugo, stunned, stays kneeled on the slushy ground, his mouth agape. Surely, he could not be asking to come with. Him , of all people, muddied and wet, an irritating cold spike in his evening plans, no matter how fruity or sweet he’s told he is.
“Pardon?”
The boy pauses mid-step-up into the carriage, turning around with an irritated raise of the brow, as though what he was asking of him was as simple as asking the time. “Come, please. You shall catch a cold.”
Unsure, but more terrified of denying this nobleman, he rises unsteadily to his feet, his bare feet slipping in the icy marsh. “I shall ruin your seats, surely,” Fugo tries to convince the boy otherwise, slowly straightening up, his gait poorly and waivering. “It would be… undignified to be caught in my presence.”
“Then undignified I shall be,” he replies quickly, his word undoubtedly final. He speaks it with such confidence it seems to manifest as law; he has no choice but to comply. So, gingerly, Fugo climbs into the carriage and winces as he sits upon leather pillows. There’s another man sitting in wait, with curly hair and his arms folded, who doesn’t look too surprised at the situation. He stares at the wet marks of his bare feet on the wood with a curl of his lip.
The boy clambers into the seat next to the man and stares expectantly at him, tapping his feet. Fugo looks at the floor mournfully, and jerks forward as the footman realigns the horses and sends them cantering.
“Why? Why rescue me?” Fugo queries softly.
“Precisely!” The boy points at him accusingly, accessorised with a stony stare. Fugo is momentarily dumbfounded at his energy, the audaciousness of his response. “You use the word ‘rescue’. I had no clue whether you were in strife or simply nocturnal, scurrying around like some fiend. Honestly, I could only assume you had been in trouble, yes?” The boy leans back. Fugo stares.
“Yes, I was…”
“Well?”
Fugo swallows. He doesn’t feel ready to discuss the events just gone so soon. He deflects, instead moving to learn more about this curious gentleman. “May I be so rude as to ask your name, sir?”
“Marquess Giorno Giovanna.” He smiles placidly.
He considered a baron or a viscount perhaps, but marquess? Fugo stammers over several words before blurting out: “I’m jeopardising your reputation here, your grace. You– you cannot be seen with the likes of me, why, a dirtied and rebellious farm boy, it’s–!”
“Nonsense!” Giorno waves his hand dismissively. “Not at all. Don’t make me repeat myself. Your presence is plenty welcome,” he folds his hands in his lap and traces over his knuckles, looking out through the sheer curtains.
The wind is loud, whistling through the gaps in the wood of the carriage. He thinks about the footmen again, how frigid they must be.
“But I don’t…” Fugo starts, attempting to recenter his thoughts. “I don’t understand. Why?”
Giorno turns back and looks up at him through twirling blonde strands of hair. “Because I could save you. Is that not enough?”
“No! I mean–” Fugo panics, waving his hands, “–this is plenty enough! More than, even, sir!” Giorno smiles at his blunder, unclasping his hands and gripping the bench, leaning forward.
“You shall bathe and change, and you shall sleep in the servant's quarters for tonight. We can discuss your arrangements tomorrow. Is that understood? Do you object to this?”
Fugo panics at the sudden instruction. The carriage felt stifling, much too warm now, a combination of the heated gaze of what Fugo assumes to be his butler, and the closeness of the marquess, and though the carriage is hugely spacious, felt as though he were in a pot, set to be boiled and served.
He thinks of returning to home, however; returning to malnourished livestock and mould in his walls; returning to dry bread and grey water; returning to the rancid stink of his father's mouth, shoved right in his face, bellowing for hours. He weighs his options.
This boy was off-putting and strange, and much too forward. Should he not be afraid of a rogue in the woods? Doesn’t he risk assassination and kidnapping on the regular? Why should a Lord such as he put his trust in some lowly runaway?
But, Fugo allowed himself this foolish moment.
“Yes, your grace.”