Chapter Text
The long, trailing flash of gold is a distraction. Not one he should be entertaining while a curved, deadly sharp blade is coming at him with a swiftness unmatched by any he’s met on the battlefield before or after this very person crashed into his life. He cannot afford to hesitate or let his attention wander for a moment, not when his opponent is often quicker than he; not when his opponent is unflinching in every strike. His one eye follows after, keeping a mental track of the other’s hands and feet to predict where they will be in the next moment. The only way he can gain any upper hand is to know where he will be in a moment, not where he is now. But try as he might, he finds his vision full of flowing gold. An aureate reminder of the passage of time, really.
The last time he saw this man, he was thinner, not as tall, with a softer face…and much, much shorter hair. That many years moved away from them. He could once only barely make a fistful of those flaxen locks, especially given his much larger hands. But now in the midst of combat, it flows behind him—following his elegant motion in a way that reads like poetry. Fitting, considering this person; inconvenient, considering himself.
“Don’t tell me you’re…distracted,” the taunt comes through a laugh. A snarky comment, very reminiscent of the person he used to know. His voice is deeper now, but not by much, so it needles in his brain like a nail being hammered with each word. Angers him, but the anger is mostly inward, if he’s honest. “All these years, and you still can’t shake your bad habit of forgetting where you are? Tsk tsk, Lycaon.”
The instinct to throw this man against the nearest wall is double edged. In part, to silence him; in part because his presence breaks something in his sanity. Their fallout came like a meteor from the sky, swift and with an impact that damaged them both—possibly irreparably. He himself has never been the same since and despite a taunting, haughty tone, neither has his former partner.
His only response is to block the edge of a blade and reach back out to grab him. Despite their comparative combat skills, this sassy little blond bastard never once overpowered him once he got his hands on him. And clearly he knows this, because he all but vaults himself out of his reach, using his greater flexibility to slide out of the way and recollect himself.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you move, brute,” he chuckles, instigating. Needling. Digging down beneath his rational exterior to try and wake up the less refined, more violent version of himself that he left behind.
“As such, I have not forgotten how you never shut up.” The snarl miraculously stays repressed, nearly slipping out from under the neater, more refined person he’s made of himself.
Mismatched eyes meet his one with a mirth that makes his fingers twitch. Once upon a time, he liked to listen to him talk. Spouting all the nonsense in the world, if only to hear his own voice. Hugo is and was always the most dramatic person in the room, in that regard, he hasn’t changed a bit. He’s just bigger now. Prettier.
Exceptionally annoying for it.
Before this mess of a person appeared in his life, he never considered a regular human as attractive—he never considered anything about that at all, in general. Humans were humans, and he was not quite like them. It changed nothing about his daily life. Until this beautiful disaster happened.
But even so, he held that under his collar for quite a long time before he let it get the better of him. Watching his posturing silhouette in the window, standing on a chair as he did from time to time. Lycaon had always suspected it made him feel larger, more dominating and dangerous. Which isn't to say he wasn’t dangerous. He very much was and very much still is. But back then, Lycaon saw none of that—none of the possibly sinister nature underneath. He saw a lithe body, unguarded. Not fragile, but not sturdy like his. Waist thin enough he could easily wrap his hands around it.
He had none of the restraint then, that does now. So he did, and did so without a first thought, let alone a second one. His large hands just about touched from thumb to thumb, finger to finger and something about that fascinated him in the moment. A moment where he forgot himself until his victim forcibly brought him back with a laugh that shook his body in his hands.
“Now what is this about, my dear friend?” He tilted his head back to peek one blue eye at him over his shoulder. The smile followed his gaze, reaching back until it revealed that one sharp tooth that made him always come off as just a little devilish. “One might think you weren’t even listening to me.”
“I wasn’t,” back then, he didn’t have the same polite inclinations and never hesitated or bit his tongue before giving sharp responses—especially to this man’s nonsense.
Rather than shake him off, Hugo simply twisted in his hands. Thin enough to turn himself around, without breaking Lycaon’s grip. While standing on a chair, he just barely had height on him for once and Lycaon had to look up to meet his eyes. One blue, one a glittering red that shined with mischief. “You’ve captured me, now what, Lycaon?”
“You should stop standing on our chairs,” he offered, giving him nothing for tone, nothing for intent, and nothing that made a lot of sense to Lycaon himself because he didn’t know what to do with him. What endgame did he have? Nothing at all. He had a nagging voice in the back of his brain telling him to grab him, beyond that was a void.
“Oh really now? Then perhaps I should stand on the window sill?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate long enough to allow his cheeky retort, choosing instead to lift him off that chair. Slender, fair hands reached out to brace against his shoulders when he teetered forward a bit in Lycaon’s grip, but he didn’t struggle and lifting him off his feet felt like lifting a thin pillow. Effortless.
This apparently amused Hugo, because he bent his knees and locked his ankles, allowing himself to be held off the ground with no other support. “Now why are you looking at me like that?” He brushed his fingers through his fur and Lycaon withheld the instinct to growl in response.
“Just imagining how much cuter you’d be if you shut up once in a while.”
“Oh? That implies you think I’m cute already,” A smarmy expression, an impish grin that should have sent warning bells through his head to proceed with caution. “Cute enough to eat, Lycaon?” He murmured by his face, coming close enough that his low breathy whisper resonated in his head like he’d shouted it across the room. The instinctive response to being so mercilessly teased was to toss him, or at least he deeply considered it. Tossing Hugo, with his strength, could actually cause some damage, then he’d have to listen to him go on about it—the kind of annoyance he’d rather pass on.
Ignoring him probably solved the problem the best. He’d watched Hugo in the act of seducing people. After all, professional thieves needed to be able to blend in with the filthy rich and while Lycaon didn’t really have the qualifications to be in the thick of it, Hugo very much did. So he knew quite well of his ability to play with people. He knew how easily this cunning little man could needle himself under someone’s skin. So instead of tossing him or dropping him, he carried his bratty ass to the worn out old sofa they’d shoved against an empty wall as soon as they could afford it.
He didn’t expect Hugo to wrap his arms around his neck and hold on to him like a sticky little leech. “What do you think you’re doing?” His voice rumbled.
“You started it, and now you won’t finish it? What terrible mixed messages you’re sending, my friend.”
“Mixed messages? What are you going on about now? Everything that comes out of your mouth is theatrics.”
Thin fingers tugged at the fur behind his ear, forcing his head back just enough to meet mismatched eyes. “You can’t be remotely serious, right now, Lycaon. Jesting aside, you have either backtracked yourself into oblivion or you’re suggesting that I am reading this incorrectly. Which we both know, that isn’t very likely.” His usual grin shifted into one of slight annoyance, or maybe something else. Embarrassment would be too extreme for someone like Hugo, as someone who never expressed an ounce of shame—but it could be the closest he’d come.
“I made a poor lapse in judgment to touch you unprovoked, and I apologize for that,” he offered, expecting to deflate him a little, but that only backfired.
“Well, you touched me for a reason, you knucklehead—,” a flash of tooth reminded Lycaon how—despite his pretty and sometimes soft features—he could be a little bit feral himself. One of those weird things they actually had in common at times.
“We are not compatible like tha—,” his words were severed by a sharp tug of his fur.
“Based on what metrics, Lycaon? Society’s standards? According to them I’m just as much a monster as you, so what’s the problem?”
“My thigh is thicker than your waist.”
A brief moment followed and then loud, resounding laughter. Blond locks bounced around his face, turning his head back to howl like the words were the funniest he ever heard. Those sorts of laughs always meant he was up to no good. Lycaon’s safest recourse should have been to drop him on the cushion and leave the room, but Hugo had his claws sunk into him before he ever even reached out to wrap his hands around him. His grasp on him started from the moment they met and deep down he knew he was a lost cause.
“My dearest friend? You have the most perfect opportunity to silence me, and you’re worried about…” he had to pause to chuckle, “a size difference?”
“We are two completely different phenotypes.”
“Are you…talking me or yourself out of what you started?” A delicate brow raised in response, “you never cease to prove yourself as ridiculous.” His arms loosened and he slipped out of Lycaon’s hands—landing back on his feet like the catlike creature he could be. He barely reached his shoulders, but his ego towered quite higher than Lycaon’s. He brushed him off with a wave of dismissal, clearly annoyed by what Lycaon accidentally placed there in the open—the evidence of mutual attraction. Which, quite honestly, took him by surprise, given Hugo’s dramatics never gave him that impression. Or maybe he just didn’t notice…
Why would someone so beautiful look at a beast and see a companion? Regular humans and Thirens nearly never intermingled in that way, for a reason. Lycaon thought he was the weird one for looking down and seeing soft exposed skin at the lip of his collar and wanting to bury his face there against his neck. But Hugo’s invitation couldn’t be more blatant. The same weakness that reached out to hold him that first time, returned more fiercely to pull him right back to him—before Hugo could even leave the border of his arm span. He’d absolutely fallen for Hugo’s gambit, because Hugo knew him well enough to anticipate he would never let him leave his reach.
He couldn’t resist putting his hands on that beautiful person then, just like he can’t now, when that same person comes at him with that intimate violence they always shared. So when he holds his ground for a moment and swipes a hand out to circle him, there really is no real surprise between them. He pins that thin body to his, driven against the wall of an abandoned storage container. He’s bigger now, but Lycaon’s arm still snakes around him with room to spare—drawing him flush against his body.
The faraway expression that meets him at a glance over his shoulder, suggests to Lycaon that he is far from the only person lost in whispers of the past.
“You’ve captured me, now what, Lycaon?” He asks, missing the sassiness of his youth, only replaced with a dulcet tone of amusement.
He says nothing in response to his goading, and what he does instead is likely so much worse in reality. He keeps him there, pinned between himself and the aluminum panel, Hugo’s back pressed to his chest—where he struggles to ignore how he fits against him a little too perfectly. He’s not too gentle, not here anyway, when he wraps a large hand around his neck and traces sharp nails along his skin. The other hand threads through fine golden hair, fingers moving down to his scalp to gather all the loose hair back in his grip.
When they were younger, this grip pulled Hugo’s head back until he hissed at him—indignant by his rough handling. He fooled no one, because he relished in it, judging by the way his body quivered at the nails against his scalp, arching his back and squirming in his lap because his shorter legs often struggled to reach beyond Lycaon’s thighs.
“You’re going to thin my hair out if you keep pulling this way—,” he complained, even after he tilted back with his eyes closed. “Your hand is too large to take a whole handful. I’m just a little guy, dear Lycaon.”
“Then how are you the largest menace I’ve ever seen?” He ignored his theatrical whining.
“I am fragile, don’t you understand?” He kept right on playing pretend, as though Lycaon didn’t know he could be absolutely so dangerous when prompted. “I only have my good looks, and charm to protect me.”
“You’re insufferable... Why don’t you grow it out?” He pulled again, disregarding his complaints—noting the shiver that once again snaked through the smaller body when his nails tracked along his scalp. “Then I’ll have a handle to keep you in check.”
“Grow it out? Ah, don’t tell me, you have an attraction to long hair,” he lifted his hands to take hold of Lycaon’s face, stroking his fingers along his nose and jaw.
“That is not what I said. And you claim I’m the one who doesn’t listen.”
He poked down the long bridge of his snout, “you don’t listen. But if I did grow it long, the risk to you pulling my hair out would become greater, not less. Maybe, I should cut it shorter instead,” he hummed and Lycaon’s response was an involuntarily low growl.
“No.”
“Oho? No, you say?”
The obnoxious laugh he had when he proved his point always needled Lycaon, but he adamantly ignored humoring him with a verbal response to it. Instead he pulled back just enough to push this bratty little bastard over so he could pin him there and shut him up—just like he wanted, probably. Hugo always enticed results out of him and he always fell for his bait. Even so, at least the action gave him satisfaction in seeing Hugo unable to speak for a little while.
He can’t do that here. He can’t just push him over and resolve a little spat that means nothing. The rift between them now isn’t a small one and the softness Is gone. Even so, he wraps his fingers through the long silky strands—the very first thing he noticed upon seeing him again. He’s almost surprised he didn’t cut it all short, like the spite filled creature he could be when he believed he was wronged. Had he shown up with it that way, Lycaon might have been able to ignore the reminder— a flowing scar that antagonized him with each movement this man made.
It stings, burns in ways that aren’t solely his burden to bear.
“You could have had it all, Lycaon,” Hugo’s voice breaks his lost thought process. His tone is unusually lacking his typical haughtiness. “We could have been everything. I could have given you everything.”
He says nothing for some time after and they’re left standing too deeply in each other’s orbit for it to be normal at all. Reconciliation feels impossible, but the heart yearns—trapping them both in a moment where memories make it hard to proceed. They’re both angry. Lycaon’s instinct to throw him around is equally as strong as his instinct to wrap his arms around him and crush him against his body.
Maybe they could have had it all. If Hugo didn’t have an edge of insanity hiding just under his pretty, disarming smile. No amount of talking it out brought him off the ledge, however. No matter how he begged. His ideals hold him like chains—ones Lycaon isn’t strong enough to break. His master once said he believed Hugo had the potential for evil at his core, but Lycaon doesn’t believe that. Evil, by nature, is unrepentant and without any moral compass. Hugo has a moral compass, it’s simply….
…spinning. Too rapidly for him to slow it back down or to find his real directions anymore. He wants to fix a terribly broken system and no single person could ever hope to accomplish that feat with clean hands by himself. Lycaon knows this. Back then, he liked the idea of making a modest impact in an honorable way, so he could return home to take care of the only person that truly mattered. How many thugs had he thrown around a hollow to protect him? Yet, when it mattered most, he let him slip through his fingers.
“I already had everything.” He pulls the trail of hair to drag his head back, nose pressing against the soft spot where his jaw and neck meet. Hugo used to get so angry at him for leaving visible marks there. Something about how difficult it is to find the right color makeup to cover it. None of that matters now. When he bites, he hopes it leaves a mark, he hopes he has to look in the mirror and be reminded of what he himself also could have had. It’s been many years since he let the canine instincts get the better of him, but if anyone has the power to draw them out, this person does.
“You—absolute dog—,” Hugo hisses, fist smashing the panel before fingers splay out as if to brace himself. Despite being bigger now, taller by a considerable amount, he’s still small to Lycaon. He’s still trapped in his grasp, though by a moment of accepted insanity. He can remove himself from this situation, Lycaon knows. That he hasn’t is a testament to this mutual struggle.
I can hate you when we’re done here.
Muscles in Hugo’s neck tense with the force his teeth are sunk into pale skin. He can taste that he’s broken skin, but he isn’t concerned, not when he knows he may have to do more than leave his teeth imprints in his body. This standoff is the last shared moment of peace they may have, he realizes. It hurts from a deeper place than he wants to acknowledge. He wonders how mutual this feeling is… Were it not at all, then Hugo would have certainly not allowed himself to remain in this pressed position; he certainly would not have his head tilted, like a man accepting his punishment without remorse. They’re torturing themselves.
And like any self flagellation, it has to come to an end. When he finally removes his teeth, the moment unravels. He knows every muscle of Hugo’s body and how to react to them, so when the weapon clicks into activation, he steps backwards swiftly. In the low distortion of the hollow, he almost misses the wet light that reflects from Hugo’s eyes when he whips around to face him. It’s so brief, so fleeting, that he could easily wonder if it’s his imagination.
But he knows it’s not.
“You could have had me, traitor—,” anger returns, and they have to go back to the way it must be.
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have broken the oath,” he growls sharply, loudly, sufficiently angry again for all that was lost to things that didn’t have to happen.
I will not be distracted by you again.