Fantasy-Horror short. Archie had idolised Casper Hugo almost his entire life.
11.6k. Rated M. M/M. Deeply fucked up fantasy-horror, wherein a man finds that his dream of taking over his hero’s restaurant is not to proceed as smoothly as he hoped. Adapted from a TweetFic.
Content warnings for: horror themes, gender dysphoria, transphobia, classism, substance reliance and addiction, anti-addict sentiments, dehumanisation, implied sexual assault, consent issues, body horror.
Before coming to work at Lace, Archie had idolised Casper Hugo almost his entire life.
One of his first memories was lying on the sofa, the television turned up to drown out the sounds of his parents arguing in the other room as much as possible, watching him give an interview.
He couldn’t have been older than five or six, certainly didn’t truly comprehend a lot of what he was saying at the time: Casper Hugo had been a handsome young man who’d taken over the already award-winning restaurant from its previous executive chef and earned it its first Michelin star.
He remembered not the words themselves, but the sound of them, of Chef Hugo’s smooth, comforting voice, like hot caramel, and it had soothed him, made him feel… better. Even with the sound of his parents shouting and snapping at each other, Hugo’s voice had cut through it all.
Until one of them — his mother, he thought — had called him odd for watching the news, said he wasn’t normal. She’d flicked it off and snapped at him go outside like a proper child his age, and he had.
He could never understand what he was meant to do, thus exiled, and had settled for wandering aimlessly until he thought she’d let him back inside.
At the time, he hadn’t even understood that Hugo was a chef, he didn’t think. He’d just liked his voice, his warm smile, the way he held himself and gestured with his hands, slightly clumsily, as though they were too big for him, and he’d sit for an hour flicking through channels until he got lucky and stumbled over an interview or a documentary or a morning breakfast segment.
It was later that he’d realised.
Later that he’d become a bit obsessed.
Later that he’d studied Chemistry and History and French at A-Level and applied all of what he learned to cooking, later that he’d gone to culinary school, which his mother had been furious about.
His father had paid for it out of spite.
It seemed like a dream when he first applied for a line position, certain he’d get tossed aside, but they’d brought him in and watched him in the kitchen. It had mostly been his sous chef, but Hugo had done one round of the kitchen.
“Good knife skills,” he’d said over his shoulder, and it had made Archie feel light-headed.
“You’re my hero,” he said after the demo was over. “I mean, I’d never — I’d never have started cooking if it wasn’t for you, I don’t know if I’d even be alive if it wasn’t you, I’m so grateful, I can’t even… So whatever, um, I know I’m young, but even if you don’t take me, sir, I just want to thank you for the opportunity, to, to meet you, and to try.”
Hugo stared down at him, wrinkled his nose.
The sinking feeling in his chest was so strong Archie thought it would bowl him over, feeling it ripple down his throat, settle hard in his stomach, made him feel like he’d vomit.
“I don’t know what other kitchens you’ve been in,” said Hugo, “but I won’t have you calling me sir.”
Archie blinked.
“You alright to start Monday?” Hugo went on.
Archie burst into laughter, was so overwhelmed he threw his arms around the older man, and he’d been terrified because that was too far for certain, but Hugo hugged him back and clapped him hard on the shoulder.
“You thought I’d say no!” he said, patting the back of his hair. “No, no, my friend, I’ve been waiting for someone like you.”
That was six years ago, now, and Archie wasn’t just doing prep on the line.
He was sous chef, of Lace.
And every day (every long, fourteen-hour day) was a dream.
* * *
Archie didn’t think it was wrong to say that Hugo had been like a father to him since he started.
He taught him new techniques in the kitchen all the time, bounced new ideas and recipes off him, always worked with Archie as his second when he needed him, when he could, but it wasn’t just the kitchen, it was everything, Archie’s whole life.
Hugo had paid for him to go on courses, something he did for all his new staff — not just chefs, but waiters too — but he asked Archie about what he’d learned after he came back. They went out for dinners, they talked, they discussed things, and Hugo always challenged him, made him work to keep up.
He hadn’t realised Hugo was gay himself when he first started, because he kept it tightly under wraps, wasn’t interested in newspapers marketing him as the gay gourmet or some similar nonsense.
Hugo was the first man Archie had come out as bi to.
And Archie had taught him — Archie had taught Casper Hugo, Michelin-starred chef, forager, internationally renowned gourmet — how to drive.
“How have you never learned?” he’d asked, and Hugo had laughed.
“Look,” he’d said. “I’ve lived a very long and complicated life. I never got around to it!”
It had been nice, to teach Hugo something, to give back to him. Hugo always said how proud he was of him, cupped his cheeks, patted his shoulders or his hair, praised his work, introduced him to women.
Introduced him to men, too.
“You never date,” Hugo chided him. “You should! A young man like you, with all that life inside you, all that soul. You should use it a bit.”
“I never have time.” Archie said.
“I’ll give you some,” was the answering threat.
“Don’t you date?” Archie asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I’ll have you know I take handsome young men out to dinner all the time.”
“Shagging starry-eyed twinks does not constitute a romantic life, old man.”
“Well, nor does refusing to shag anybody at all.”
“I shag!”
“Well, after shagging, try a nice breakfast the morning after.”
Archie always said he would, and never actually did. It just felt like he’d never met the right person, seen the right person, never connected with anyone, truly, really connected with them.
And then Otto started as kitchen porter.
Otto was a big man — he was taller than Archie, though not as tall as Hugo, at 5’11”, fat, round-shouldered, and strong. Very strong.
He had wispy facial hair around his mouth and neck, like he couldn’t grow a proper beard, and sometimes his voice cracked a little.
Archie wouldn’t have described him as his type, at a glance, but the first time Georges, their maître d’, had asked for his help moving a table and Otto had just picked up the whole thing on his own with nary a ripple in his shoulders, Archie had been —
Interested.
He and Georges had stood there, blinking, as Otto had held the table slightly aloft — and the tables they used in Lace were big, hundred-year-old things of solid, heavy wood — and said, “Well, where’d you want it then?”
Otto was not a chef, and had barely any interest in cooking at all — frankly, Archie wasn’t sure why he’d even been hired as KP.
“Do you, ah, do you want to get dinner?” he asked two weeks after Otto started. “There’s this wonderful Japane — ”
“No,” said Otto.
Archie took this in, and then said, “Oh.”
“I eat here,” said Otto, shrugging. “Free. Wouldn’t say no to pints, though.”
“Pints,” Archie had repeated. “Fine, alright.”
That night had ended with Archie bent over his own hall table, Otto’s fingers inside him as Archie tried to muffle his desperate cries of pleasure into his own elbow to keep from getting complaints from the neighbours, and he’d managed it at first.
Only Otto had decided once getting him onto the top landing that he couldn’t wait to get to the bedroom and had fingerfucked his brains out there too, swallowing Archie’s cock down his throat like it was nothing.
And it was —
It was a thing, after that. They went out for drinks, to a matinee before work. Otto liked bugs, had pet insects; he loved classic cars and dad rock, but said seriously to Archie that he could only afford to indulge the second one; he liked to go to this one cat café every month.
“Why don’t you just have a cat?” asked Archie.
“They’d eat my stick insects,” says Otto.
“But you can just close the door to the bedroom.”
“That’s no guarantee.”
He was a funny man. He made fun of Archie because he went jogging each morning, and made fun of him even more when he found out that Archie owned a treadmill for bad weather days. He suggested Archie try to jog while Otto “motivated him”.
This went well until he actually came, and then his knees went weak and the treadmill sent him flying backwards, his cock flying out of Otto’s hands.
Hugo laughed until he wheezed when Archie had mumblingly explained the new stitches in the back of his head, unsuccessfully hidden by his chef’s cap, and clapped them both on the shoulders.
Hugo liked Otto.
Archie was pleased at first, assumed naturally that it was because Archie was finally dating someone, except that it wasn’t like that, exactly. Hugo normally had no patience when it came to people who didn’t want to cook and who didn’t love food, and Otto kept saying that food was food, that so long as it tasted good and gave you energy, nothing else mattered.
Hugo would normally be pissed at that, but not this time.
Archie came in one morning to find Hugo was teaching Otto knife skills, which wasn’t unusual in itself for new KPs, but Hugo wouldn’t normally offer personal tutelage, not in something so basic.
“… train your palate,” Hugo was saying.
“I can relax my gag reflex,” said Otto.
Hugo chuckled at that. It wasn’t the laugh Archie was used to, not Hugo’s loud, booming laugh — it was a soft, salted caramel chuckle.
It was the laugh he usually reserved for starry-eyed twinks, not KPs that Archie himself was involved with.
“That’s not quite what I mean,” purred Hugo.
It wasn’t even that Otto was flirting, because Archie knew what he looked like when he was flirting, knew the smile he made, knew he liked to control things and be the one in charge. This was just him joking, and he didn’t seem to notice that Hugo… liked it.
“Morning, Archibald,” said Hugo warmly. “Would you start the spatchcocks off?”
“Can do,” said Archie, and tried to keep the tension out of his voice.
By the time the kitchen was full of people working, Otto was sent back to washing dishes.
* * *
“Did you ask him to teach you?” Archie asked when they were walking in the zoo. They’d spent ages in the bug section, Otto fascinated and delighted by the huge cockroaches as big as Archie’s fist.
“Nah,” said Otto, shrugging his big shoulders. “Old man says I gotta learn, though.”
“He likes you,” said Archie, and Otto glanced at him.
“He’s like your dad, right?” asked Otto, and Archie frowned. “Not trying to muscle in on your inheritance, Arch. Just doing what the bossman tells me.”
“He’s not my father,” muttered Archie, putting his hands in his pockets, and Otto sighed.
“Yeah, but he’s an old queen, he’s not having any kids, and he knows it. He says you’re like a son to him, that the restaurant’ll go to you.”
Hugo has said that before — when tipsy, and when drunk, and when high.
“I don’t know if he’s serious about that,” said Archie, feeling a little uncertain, uncomfortable. “But anyway, he’s not even sixty yet. He’s not that old.”
“I don’t talk to my dad either,” said Otto. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna steal your surrogate.”
“Jesus, why would you — ” Archie laughed, shaking his head, and Otto grinned at him. “I don’t think you’re trying to steal my paternal stand-in, alright? He just doesn’t normally teach new guys himself.”
“I can top two guys at once,” said Otto, and Archie let out a disgusted sound. “What? He’s pretty hot, for an old man. You telling me you wouldn’t?”
“Gross.”
They stopped to watch a video of a huge tarantula wriggling and vibrating its way out of its skin next to the tarantula tank. Archie turned his head away, feeling sick, but Otto watched in fascination, his mouth open.
“You really don’t talk to your dad?”
“Nah,” said Otto, not tearing his gaze away from the spider’s fitting, jerking movements as it kicked its old body off. “He got nasty when I came out the first time, but I still saw the family and shit. He was fine with it when I was using, you know, didn’t have a fucking problem — that didn’t bother him. The T did, though.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” said Otto. “He’d rather have a drugged-up daughter getting passed around than a sober son, I guess. Twat.”
“Twat,” Archie agreed. “Cunt, I’d even say.”
Otto laughed, and reached for his hand, interlinking their fingers.
“Don’t you find it creepy?” asked Archie as he came closer, leaning into Otto’s big shoulder, his cheek against the plush cushion of his outer arm. “The way it… it moves?”
“Not really, it’s part of life,” said Otto mildly, squeezing his hand. “We have dandruff, they have this.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Archie, and Otto laughed lowly, wrapping one possessive hand around his waist, fingers splaying over the side of his torso.
“Well,” said Otto. “T-shots aren’t great for everything.”
Archie watched the way the spider moved in the tank. She moved slowly, delicately, and although she had too many legs, there was still something beautiful about her.
“You ever keep these?” asked Archie. “People do, right?”
“Yeah,” said Otto. “Not me, though — I like Roosevelt and Kennedy. I like how they move, like dancers. Spiders don’t move like that. Graceful, yeah, but it’s not the same — I used to watch documentaries about them while I was in the rehab centre. Chilled me out, stuck with me.”
They kept walking through the insect rooms, watched the ants, the other bugs, before they go to the other animals, the birds.
“I need to get some errands done,” said Otto. “See you tomorrow?”
“Errands?”
“Just some paperwork shit at my bank, but I have to go home and find the right stuff first — birth cert, deed poll, GRC, blah blah blah. You still want to get sushi after work?”
“Sure,” said Archie, and walked to get the bus home.
* * *
When he went into the kitchen the next morning, early in the morning, Otto and Hugo were already working. Sarah and Yiota were prepping too, so it wasn’t as though they were alone, but Hugo was standing back with his arms loosely crossed over his chest as Otto kneaded bread dough.
He was made for this. He was a big man with strong, heavy arms, and he slammed the dough down, worked it hard with flour up to his elbows, like it was nothing, like it was easy.
Archie was keenly aware he wasn’t the only one admiring the work of his arms, and he could see Hugo looking at the fat curve of Otto’s arse, too.
“Archibald,” said Hugo when he saw him. “Would you come sit down with me for a few minutes? I have some paperwork to go over with you.”
He wasn’t expecting it when Hugo showed him a scan of his will on his computer.
“Casper — ”
“Archibald,” said Hugo softly. “We’ve discussed this.”
“You don’t have to,” said Archie, stepping back. “Casper — ”
“Son,” said Hugo, and reached for him, touched his fingers against Archie’s cheek because Archie’s skin was wet. His fingertips were warm against Archie’s face, and Archie leaned into the touch despite himself, because no one had ever touched him in all his life the way Casper Hugo touched him, like he was something precious and valuable and worth holding delicately. “I’m not dying. It’s just paperwork.”
“You must be worried about it,” said Archie. “If you want it finalised now.”
“If it’s finalised, it’s arranged,” said Hugo simply. “If there’s an accident, if anything goes wrong, legally, all will be well. Don’t you worry, young man. I’ve no plans to die whatsoever.”
“Do I need to sign anything?” asked Archie quietly.
Hugo shook his head. “No,” he murmured. “I’m just letting you know. I think you’re a very skilled young man, tremendously adept at your craft. When you own Lace, I’ve no doubt you shall manage it tremendously well — and so far into the future as I expect this will be, you shall no doubt have a host of head chefs to choose from.”
Archie felt like some invisible thread had tugged around his gut.
“I’ll be head chef,” he said. “I wouldn’t… Casper, I wouldn’t hand it off.”
There was an ever so slight catch in Hugo’s face before he smiled, patting Archie’s shoulder. “More than enough time to sort all that out,” he said.
“You don’t think I can be head chef?” asked Archie.
“Son, I didn’t say that,” said Hugo placatingly. “Merely that innovation as a chef isn’t just about impeccable technique or following instructions — you’re an incredible sous chef, and you have a tremendous understanding of marketing, but — ”
“But you don’t think I can innovate,” Archie said. “What, you think I’m not a fucking artist like you are? All these years I’ve been studying under you — ”
“Archibald,” said Hugo softly. “You ought know by now that not everything can be taught.”
Archie didn’t reply to that, couldn’t reply to that, felt so sick to his stomach he couldn’t stand it, and he threw himself into his work for the day.
* * *
“You’re in a mood,” said Otto that evening.
“Hugo showed me his will.”
“You’re gonna kill the old man?” asked Otto, raising his eyebrows, and Archie, with a low, irritated noise, shook his head.
“Don’t,” he muttered.
“Ain’t it good? That’s official, right? Officially you’re the fucking prince of the kingdom?”
“It wasn’t all he said, that’s all,” Archie murmured, and Otto reached for him, sliding his hands down Archie’s chest, loosely gripping him by the hips.
“Would my strap make you feel better?” he asked, voice husky.
Archie laughed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, Otto, it would.”
Otto doesn’t stay all night. He left after they showered, and Archie was left alone in the flat.
He texted Hugo.
10:12PM, ARCHIE: Sorry about today. Thanks. For everything.
10:13PM, HUGO: I’m sorry I upset you today. I love you too.
* * *
He was irritable in the coming weeks, and he knew he was. Every little thing pissed him off whether it should or not, and Hugo —
Hugo was still looking at Otto.
Archie was beginning to wonder if he should say something.
One morning, Otto was kneading bread dough as Archie did the stock take with Georges; Hugo was working on pastries, trying out a few new designs.
Archie hadn’t heard much while they were in the walk-in, but once they were in the pantry proper, he could.
“… historical fact. Arguments can be made as to the commonality, but it was undeniably an occurrence. Doctor James Barry is a notable example — he was a doctor of medicine. He did incredible work in the field of midwifery, which had been rather negatively impacted by the encroachment of men into the field, certain that they knew better than the women who had been successfully delivering babies through non-scientific means for centuries. Barry was known to be a womaniser, a boxer, but most of all he was a compassionate and skilled doctor, and his patients always sang his praises — he asked to be buried in the clothes he was wearing after his death, but of course, that instruction was resoundingly ignored. Thus, we know his secret.”
Archie wasn’t sure what Hugo was talking about, but Otto looked thoughtful about it, pensive.
“Huh. Yeah, I guess. I never thought much about it,” he said.
“Of course, the men that came before you hardly had the options you have today. You take testosterone, don’t you?”
“That’s right, yeah. I used to have this gel stuff I rubbed into my shoulders, but now my doc gives me a shot every month. It made my dick bigger.”
“Your — Really? I didn’t know it did that,” said Hugo, and Archie had to count the cocoa bags again.
“Oh, yeah. It’s a whole fucking mouthful now, old man. Talk about gourmet.”
Hugo laughed his salt-sweet laugh. “You enjoy that? I thought men like you might not… enjoy — ”
“Oh, I like having my dick sucked,” Otto said casually. Archie heard the loud thump of dough on the metal table. “Who doesn’t? But I’m not comforting having anything, uh, you know. In me. Or in my front hole, anyway — I like anal.”
“One must wonder how much that sort of thing applied, in times past.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dysphoria — particularly about the parts of the body, I mean, one way or another. In times past, a gentleman of means like myself might have worn a corset on his day to day, for example.”
“Fuck off,” said Otto, and Hugo laughed.
“It’s true!” he said. “Fashion has changed much in a few centuries — heeled shoes were intended for men, as well, at their outset. Corsets were quite commonly worn by men in the Victorian period. We think of skirts, particularly, as being for women, but that’s quite the modern idea — skirts were sensible fare for everyone, once upon a time, allowed for free movement, to keep cool. The things we consider to be gender markers apart from clothes, like a narrow waist against wide hips, or plump lips, or large eyes, they’re not objective considerations. They vary wildly from place to place, culture to culture, epoch to epoch.”
“Epoch,” repeated Otto.
“Epoch. An era, an age — a time period.”
“So, what,” said Otto, “you think a trans guy born two hundred years ago, who would’ve worn a corset, he would be glad to have wide hips and a narrow waist? That would have been masculine?”
“Could be,” said Hugo.
“Don’t know if that applies to not having a dick.”
“One never knows,” said Hugo. “In today’s world, one is exposed to far more — the internet alone is replete with photographs of other people’s genitals to compare to, but I expect at school, young man, you might even have learned about the so-called male and female anatomy, of one sort of genitals and another. A hundred years ago, on the other hand, one typically learned that sort of thing only once one was intimate with one’s partner, or someone else, at least. I hardly say that as a formal rule, of course, and again, culture plays a large part — a boy growing up in a whorehouse would like as not have a very different breadth of knowledge than one raised by a nanny in a country house.
“I just wonder if a young man in your position, two centuries or so to the day of your birth might not have so concerned himself with the shape of his genitals — it might not have occurred to him quite as hard-hittingly as it does to you, lacking so many points of comparison.”
Archie only heard the sound of dough hitting the table.
Quietly, apologetically, Hugo said, “I’ve upset you. I do apologise, young man. I was only musing out loud.”
“I’m not upset,” said Otto. “I’m thinking is all. Never thought about that before.”
“Not used to thinking, are you?” asked Hugo sympathetically.
They were both laughing when Archie stepped out of the pantry, because Otto had thrown flour at the old man, and the white powder was spattered over his cheek and his neck.
That night, as Archie sat and idly played a videogame, not really concentrating on it, listening to Otto putter about his kitchen, he realised that Otto was combing through the fresh herb and spice packets below the rack.
“The ones on the balcony are fresher,” said Archie.
“You can taste the difference?” asked Otto. His nose was buried in an open packet of fresh oregano, and he was holding a cannister of dried oregano in the other hand.
“For some of them,” said Archie. “Mostly it’s convenience. It’s texture as well as the rest — I can put dry basil into a sauce, but if I wanted basil leaves now, I’d want them fresh, so you could bite into them, taste them.”
Otto nodded. “It all smells so different, tastes so different. I just don’t know how you remember it all. What it’s called, what pairs together, what the fuck the difference is between varieties of thyme.”
Archie shrugged, chuckling. “You intuit, you experiment. Thought you weren’t interested in cooking?”
“I’m not,” said Otto.
Otto came to sit with him, picked Archie up and put him down again in his lap. He did it so easily that Archie felt a hot flush run up the back of his neck, and he leaned back against Otto’s huge, barrel chest, felt the heat of his belly.
“He didn’t make you uncomfortable, did he?”
“Chef Hugo? No. I like how he talks about it, actually. A lot of cis dudes get weird, especially old people — he talks like he gets it. Like he gets me.”
“What about me?”
“You don’t talk about it,” said Otto, putting his big chin on Archie’s shoulder, his chin sliding into the crook of his neck. “S’not like I mind. Not everything has to be talked about.”
“Do you think he wants to fuck you?”
“Hugo?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe,” said Otto, and shrugged. “But I’m fucking you.”
* * *
Archie went into work on a Thursday, the one night a week they were closed, because he’d left his bank card in his locker, to find the restaurant only mostly dimmed, some of the lights still on.
Otto was sitting at a table, a blindfold over his eyes, and Hugo was standing up beside him.
“Tastes oily, I guess,” Otto said. “It’s a nut, but it’s… greasier. Oilier. Not because it’s not dry, but the, um, the taste. Macadamia?”
“Good,” said Hugo.
Archie remembered the night that Hugo tried his palate like this, quizzed him. He remembered it being hard. A lot of the same ingredients were on the table in front of Otto now — different herbs and leaves, vegetables and meats, fruits, nuts, pastes.
As Archie stood there, shoulders leaned back in the corridor, he heard Hugo test him again, and again, and again, each time his voice getting richer, brighter with praise, because Otto got every single one right.
Because Otto, Otto, had a perfect fucking palate.
* * *
“You’re teaching the KP main recipes now,” Archie said a few weeks later, after Hugo had been doing the starfruit duck tutorial for Yiota, Sarah, Ralph… and Otto.
“The boy likes to learn,” said Hugo casually. “He’s in a kitchen now.”
“He’s here to wash dishes and clean equipment.”
“Now, now,” says Hugo quietly, frowning at him. “This is your boyfriend we’re talking about, hm? And he has skills, has potential — ”
“Is he who you have in mind for head chef when you’re dead?” demanded Archie. “Because I don’t fit the bill?”
“We’re not born with everything we might have,” said Hugo after a moment’s pause, his voice delicate and easy and soft. His conflict resolution voice. “Archibald — ”
“No,” snapped Archie. “Six years I’ve worked for you, devoted my life to this place, and you don’t tell me you think my palate’s shit?”
“I don’t think it’s shit,” said Hugo, his voice just as sharp, his eyes cold. “I think it’s adequate, and adequate is not enough. You need to be a little more realistic about your situation, I think.”
“If you think my palate is shit, train me — like you’re training him!”
“I could no more teach you to taste than I could teach a fingerless man to play piano,” said Hugo damningly. “I can only train what’s already there.”
“What’s already there is a fucking ex-junkie who spent a year in prison while I was in fucking culinary school!” He couldn’t believe how angry he was. The fury burned under his skin like it was going to set him alight. “And he has more potential?”
“It isn’t just potential. It’s his imagination, his palate, his lack of fear — ”
“Fuck off.”
“I told you to stop smoking, which helped,” said Hugo mildly. “But you’d need a new tongue to taste what you cannot taste now — and even had a cigarette never touched your lips, Otto was born with what he has. Not all tongues taste the same, and not all brains process that capacity in the same way either. You might as well be jealous of another man’s fingerprints, young man, because it will be just as productive.”
“I want to be like you,” said Archie. “I’ve always fucking dreamed of being like you, have worked all my life for it, and you want to pass all of that onto him when he’s never — ”
“What? Earned it?” demanded Hugo.
“Well, I’m an ex-junkie prison whore, aren’t I, boss?” asked Otto from the door to the office, arms crossed over his chest, and Archie felt his blood run cold as he turned to look at him. Otto was looking at Archie in utter disgust before looking back to the old man. “We good for four-thirty?”
“Yes, Otto,” said Hugo softly. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” started Archie, but Otto shook his head.
“No, I got what you meant,” he said bluntly. “I don’t deserve it. This place is all yours, blah fucking blah. It’s not hard to fucking grasp. G’night.”
When he left, Hugo sighed.
“I expect he’ll soften with an apology,” he murmured. “He knew it wasn’t personal.”
“It is personal,” said Archie.
“Oh?” asked Hugo, and for the first time in a long while, he looked at Archie with real, genuine disappointment on his features. “For his sake, then, break up.”
* * *
Archie did apologise.
He apologised in the first instance on his knees for about two hours.
After, lying against Otto’s chest with an ice pack against his jaw, he said, “I didn’t mean it.”
“Yeah, you did,” said Otto. “Posh little fuck like you, you think you deserve everything.”
“I’ve worked hard to be where I am,” said Archie.
“So have I,” said otto. “You think it was easy spending a year locked up in a women’s prison? Getting clean, not getting in fights? I’ve worked hard too.”
“But you never dreamed of this,” said Archie.
Otto sighed and put his face into Archie’s hair, rubbed his nose into it. “Nah,” he agreed. “That fucking sucks for you. It’s not my fault that I have what you want any more than the other way around.”
“Want to swap tongues?” asked Archie.
“Only if we can swap everything else,” said Otto, and grabbed at Archie through his trousers, making him arch and groan. “I’d use this better than you do.”
“He teaches you?” asked Archie.
“Yeah. He tests me a lot. Teaches me about techniques, gets me to taste stuff. Has me reading books about meditation, shit like that.”
Archie frowned, glancing up at his face. “Meditation?”
“Has something to do with studying, memory retention,” said Otto, waving a hand. “He wants me to be able to reach a meditative state so I can, uh, delve inside myself for rich memories, or some faggy shit like that.”
“Is it working?”
“No,” said Otto, and Archie laughed. “I sleep better, though. Sleep deeper. And I feel, uh, I don’t know. Calmer… More in-tune with shit. The old man is a witch, right? He’s into that stuff?”
“I wouldn’t call him that,” said Archie. “He’s just superstitious. Believes in crystals and powers and things like that.”
“Seems like bullshit,” said Otto.
“Men like it,” said Archie. “He uses it as an opening gambit when he meets men in pubs, does a magic trick or tells them facts about what people used to believe.”
“Huh,” murmured Otto. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“He did that with me, that’s all. Told me that some people would leave beer and alcohol out to appease local spirits and fae and shit, and all about contracts people have with faeries and shit in their areas. Started musing about what they’d think of craft beers.”
Archie twisted in his lap, and grunted as he moved the icepack, pushing it back up against his jaw as he looked at him. “What? When?”
“When I met him,” said Otto. “I was in a bar, tried to swipe his cocktail when he wasn’t looking — it looked expensive, had a load of different liqueurs in it. He said if I could tell him what I tasted in it he’d not tell security and buy me one of my own. We talked.”
“What could you possibly have to talk about?” asked Archie.
Otto raised an eyebrow at him, and Archie let out an irritable sound. “I don’t mean it like — You don’t need to have such a chip on your shoulder about being poor, you know.”
“We talked about food,” said Otto, a little coldly. “Cocktails. How he likes to cook. I had a badge on, a trans pride flag, he asked about it. He was flirting with some guys ’til I came over, but then he turned all business. Offered me the porter job.”
“Because you stole his drink,” muttered Archie.
“He saw something in me, I guess,” said Otto. “Same as he saw something in you. That’s a bad thing?”
“No.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Of course I’m fucking jealous.”
“Strap make you feel better?”
“Would it kill you to let me top once in a while?” Archie retorted, and Otto laughed.
“No,” he said. “But given what a bottom bitch you are, I thought I was doing you a favour. You want my ass, have at it.”
“Sorry,” said Archie lowly. “I’m just — Moody.”
“Yeah,” said Otto. “I got that. How’s the jaw?”
“Hurts.”
“Good.”
“Bed?”
“Yeah.”
Otto did sleep more deeply than he used to, it seemed to Archie. It was almost hard to wake him up again in the morning.
* * *
It wasn’t that they were keeping it secret before, but Archie was fairly sure that Hugo was keeping it subtle. It’s that that he was being obvious now — he was just not not being obvious.
He started by being less gentle with Otto rather than more — corrected his posture, his technique, told him to stop when he was doing something wrong sharply, and expected him to know how to set it right.
Otto bristled at first, didn’t understand why Hugo was being such a bitch all of a sudden, but Archie saw it for what it was — a commitment to Otto’s value. Respect.
Hugo had high expectations, and once he knew you were capable of meeting them, he kept you at that level and higher. Archie knew this, had always been grateful for it.
It grated to see it aimed at Otto, and see Otto rise to the occasion.
When Otto went away for a weekend with an old friend, to help him through some crisis or other, Hugo said on their night off, “Let’s go somewhere, you and I, Archibald. Just you and I.”
They ended up, after dinner, in a very quiet little speakeasy with an exclusive clientele — the sort of place Archie was only permitted entry to as an extension of Hugo.
They sipped at different cocktails, and Hugo said, “You know I love you, don’t you? More than anything.”
The old man was a little tipsy, was gesticulating a little more with his strong fingers, which were decorated with rings — he never wore them in the kitchen, but he had a few of them, many of them old, family heirlooms. It occurred to Archie that Hugo had probably willed these to him too, and he felt a desperate dread burn in his belly.
“I love you too,” said Archie. “Promise me you won’t die, Casper.”
“Never,” promised Hugo, tapping Archie’s knee with the tip of his fancy shoe.
He was a funny man, Casper Hugo. Archie’d never known a man with a wardrobe like this — he actually wore waistcoats and jackets, kept garters around his ankles so that his socks stayed up, sometimes wore spats. He had his nipples pierced, Archie knew, and they’d laughed about it before.
“I always dreamed of becoming like you,” said Archie. “My whole life, since I was a child, but now I know you, Casper, you’re not just a vague hero to me, you’re — ”
“I know,” said Hugo quietly, and he exhaled slowly, spreading out one hand. He had a slightly cloudy look in his eyes, and Archie wondered if he was drunker than he’d thought. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said at length, quietly enough that Archie wasn’t sure he was even meant to hear it, “to be limited by the realities of the body one was born with. I do believe you’ve a creative mind, Archibald, I really do. Merely… Ah.”
“I’m just not creative enough.”
“It’s the physical aspect that holds you back more, I think,” said Hugo. “I adored you already before I ever tested your palate — and when I did, and found you wanting… How could I tell you you weren’t tasting the subtleties you ought?”
“It’s not fair,” muttered Archie.
“No,” Hugo agreed. “So many things, dearest boy, are not. But look at what you do have — intelligence, grace, a handsome face, a dangerous wit, impeccable culinary skills… And let’s not pretend you haven’t made fine recipes, haven’t added to Lace’s menu.”
“But it’s never been something amazing,” muttered Archie. “Something — Something sublime. Something that makes the reviewers rave. It’s always just been… something nice. An amuse-bouche or a side dish that pairs well.”
“Without the milder aspects to a plate, the more intense of them hardly stand out,” said Hugo delicately. “I do hate to see you unhappy. I hate that I’m the cause of it.”
“Are you training Otto to be a chef?”
“Yes.”
“For me?” asked Archie.
“For me,” said Hugo. “But for you, by extension. Perhaps you’ll marry him.”
Archie scoffed. “You never got married. Why should I?”
“Well, I’m hardly an excuse,” said Hugo chidingly. “I’ve never met the right man. Or been the right one, for that matter.”
Archie sipped at his cocktail, tasting the cream liqueur in it, the cocoa thickness to it, the hint of raspberry sharpness, the coffee bean. It was perfectly balanced, sweetness and cream and bitterness, tasted wonderful.
He wondered how differently it would taste in someone else’s mouth — like Hugo’s mouth.
Like Otto’s.
“All my life, and I’ve never met a man like you, you know,” said Hugo. “You’re driven, focused. You learn anything put before you like… That.” He snapped his fingers.
“But some things can’t be taught,” said Archie bitterly.
Hugo sighed. “No, son. Some things simply cannot.”
“Do you want to fuck him?” Archie asked.
Hugo blinked at him. “Fuck whom?”
“Otto.”
“Oh,” said Hugo, and frowned, considering the question. Archie was impatient, but the fact that Hugo was actually thinking about it was something. “Is curiosity the same as want?”
“I guess not.”
“What if you fuck someone not because you want to fuck them, but because you wish for the outcome it will bring about? Do you think that counts as wanting to fuck them, or is it just…” Hugo trailed off.
He did this, sometimes, got into the semantics or the specifics of a question, tore it to pieces like a little dog with a piece of cloth, and forgot what the question was asking in the first place.
It made Archie smile.
“You’ve gone off topic, old man,” he said, and Hugo blinked at him, smiled with affection.
“Have I?” he asked. His tone was one of mild irony, because even drunk, he carried a certain self-awareness.
“I like him a lot,” said Archie. “Otto. I just wish he came from something… better. It wouldn’t grate as much, if he did.”
“Sometimes, young man, it’s not about where we come from so much as where we’re going,” said Hugo. “For example, I might be going over there, to those two handsome young men in tight t-shirts. I expect they have to butter their thighs to slide into those jeans.”
“How predictable.”
Suddenly serious, Hugo leaned forward, and said, “Everything that is within my power, Archibald, I am prepared to give to you readily. You understand that, don’t you?” He was looking at Archie very intently, if not fervently, so intensely Archie can’t stand it.
“Yeah,” Archie whispered. “Thank you.”
The night ended with Archie driving Hugo back to his old — several-hundred-year-old — townhouse and pouring him up the stairs. Hugo had a distinctive walk — he always was just slightly bow-legged, but very precise, like a cowboy trained in dance.
Archie helped him take his shoes and waistcoat off, and the old man dropped into his bed mostly clothed.
As Archie undid his cufflinks, Hugo said, “Have I told you I love you recently, young man?”
“No,” lied Archie, smiling. “You never mention it.”
Eyes closed, lips smiling, Hugo murmured, “Well, I do.”
Life went on.
* * *
Some days, as ever, Archie spent time one-on-one with Hugo, talking about Lace, about the menu, their direction. And some days, Hugo taught the rest of the brigade, and Otto was included.
And sometimes, he tutored Otto alone.
It did seem to Archie that Otto was taking it more seriously, cooking as a whole, and he expected it to make him feel more jealous, but he was pleased, actually. Some evenings, he’d come home and find Otto buried in a recipe book, or some massive tome about culinary history, studying.
It was nice.
It was nice to feel like Otto was interested in actually being worth something, not just being a KP or picking up some other shitty manual labour job, and Otto asked him more questions, too, engaged more.
He cooked more, too.
But he was —
Some nights, he was distracted.
It was like he zoned out in a way he never used to, staring into some point in the middle distance and suddenly not seeming to hear or be aware of anything, so buried in his thoughts that Archie had to physically touch him to snap him out of it.
He almost asked if he was using again, but he didn’t know enough about drugs to know which ones made you do that, and it wasn’t just that, anyway.
He got a little clumsier when he was tired, tripped more, knocked himself more.
“You know it’s not like normal, right?” Archie asked one evening.
“Yeah,” muttered Otto. “I don’t know, it’s like I just… I don’t know. I’m just clumsier now, when I’m tired. Maybe it’s because I’m working longer hours.”
“You should see your GP,” Archie said worriedly.
He didn’t do that. At Hugo’s insistence, after Archie went to him and begged him to do something, Otto was ushered off to Hugo’s own doctor, who did a battery of tests on him, even an MRI, to say… Yes, you’re a bit overtired, and you need to boost your iron intake somewhat, but there’s no other problems.
Archie didn’t understand how he could possibly be tired.
When Otto slept these days, he slept like the dead.
* * *
“You’d tell me if you thought you were dying, wouldn’t you?” Archie asked one morning, when he and Hugo were alone in Hugo’s kitchen, experimenting with macarons.
Archie’s had all come out technically perfect, but even the best-tasting ones didn’t make Hugo beam.
“Archibald,” said Hugo quietly. “We all die someday.”
“I saw how quick your private GP answered the phone for you. Not even two rings.”
“I’m a rich man — money buys these things.”
Archie looked at the old man flatly over the counter, and Hugo sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “Try this, would you?”
It was a lemon macaron delicately balanced with something spiced, and it was delicious.
“Do you know what’s in it?” asked Hugo richly — not pointedly, but because he was in a good mood.
When Archie hesitated, Hugo rushed to say. He felt like he was carrying weights in his gut.
* * *
Otto spent more time with the old man, lately. He studied more, practised more. When one of the line chefs took a week’s holiday, Otto stepped into the brigade — he was quick, had good reflexes, and while his techniques weren’t perfect, he nailed the taste every time.
He spent all night with Hugo, sometimes.
Archie began to worry again.
That same day, before Archie had asked the question, Hugo had toured him about the house, showed him pictures of his ancestors, photographs of the old owners of Lace, even a painting of the restaurant when it opened in the late 1800s, so different to what it was now.
He’d told Archie all this before, but he was more detailed now, more passionate.
Maybe that was why he asked.
Into Archie, it seemed like Hugo was trying to pour his whole personality, his history, his life; into Otto, his skills, his body of work, his palate.
He wondered what it would look like, if he did marry Otto. He wasn’t like Hugo, wasn’t worried about people marketing him as a gay chef even if it wasn’t true — it was popular these days, transgressive in a way that was marketable, and there’d be extra points with Otto being trans.
Otto wasn’t the sort of person he’d ever imagined himself marrying — who could he even bring to the wedding party? — but he was nice, attractive, good in bed, funny, and he would be a good chef.
He was on his way there already.
It wasn’t the same as what he wanted, not the same as having a spouse — probably a wife, when he was thinking of it vaguely — to just support him while he took centre stage, but it was… close. As close as he could realistically get.
And as much as Archie hated it, if Hugo thought it was the best he could do, he believed him.
It was a night Archie wasn’t supposed to be working, after closing — he’d come to pick Otto up and drive him home, because Otto had never learned to drive. The kitchen was clean and tidy, but the lights were still on, and Archie heard a stifled groan.
He knew what he’d see as soon as he looked through the kitchen window and into the darkened dining room — except that he was wrong.
He expected to see Otto on top of Hugo, or something. Instead, he saw Otto on a dining chair, thighs apart, Hugo between his legs. Hugo wasn’t just using his mouth — he was using his fingers, and Archie could see at a glance that it wasn’t just anal.
The first thing he felt was jealousy, indignation, because Otto had always told him he didn’t like that, to be touched there, that he didn’t want it, and yet here —
Otto was enjoying himself.
Archie could see that, could see how one of his hands was gripping tightly in Hugo’s thinning hair — it would probably be streaked with white, if the old man wasn’t shallow, and always had it professionally dyed.
Otto’s moans came from low in his throat. He’d never moaned like that for Archie.
He wondered if Otto let Hugo do everything, if he let Hugo fuck him, and fuck him from the front, not just the back. He wondered why he was too cowardly to ask, and shuffled to sit in the car, wait for Otto to say he was done and ready to get picked up.
* * *
Hugo texted them both, one night, asked if one of them would help him put up some flatpack furniture at the house.
Archie was midway through experiments with bread, up to his elbow.
Otto said, “I’ll go,” and he couldn’t argue.
What he could do, though, was hurriedly clean his hands off, toss all his bread in the bin, and follow Otto to Hugo’s townhouse.
He let himself in.
He had his own key, had for years, and Hugo didn’t believe in having a security system — he always liked to say, however vaguely, that he had his own systems in place.
Superstitious old man.
Archie had told him before that hanging crystals and symbols painted under the wallpaper were not sufficient to protect him from burglaries or home invasion, and Hugo always waved him off — right now, Archie supposed he was glad he never listened.
He could hear them in the next room, hear the sound of flesh slapping against flesh, hear Otto moaning, as Archie stood in the corridor. He didn’t peer around the open door to look — he didn’t need to.
Hugo believed in the “protective power” of mirrors — whatever the fuck that meant — and you could see around every corner in the big old house via the mirrors on the walls.
At a strange angle, he saw Otto fallen back into an armchair, Hugo driving into him.
There were tattoos under Hugo’s neck, between his shoulders, that Archie had never seen before, and he focused on those because Otto is wailing out a sound Archie had never heard before, arms wrapped tight around Hugo’s neck, pulling him close to him.
Archie couldn’t help but wonder what it felt like, fucking into him like that, and his fingers twitched at his sides because he wanted —
Otto howled, and Hugo moaned at the same time, his hips starting to slow.
“Fuck,” said Otto as Hugo pulled away, falling back in the tall chair, and Hugo laughed quietly.
Otto looked guilty, seconds after. His mouth twisted, his eyes downcast.
“Oh, darling,” purred Hugo, stroking his cheek. “What is there to be guilty about?”
“He’s baking bread right now. Nice bread. For me. And I’m here — ”
“Tomorrow we may die, young man,” said Hugo. “A little hedonism may be all you get.”
Otto looked —
“Tired?” asked Hugo. “I had heard orgasms could be tremendously soporific, but…”
“Just a little nap,” said Otto exhaustedly, in the way he’d been getting recently, where he suddenly got so tired he needed to sit down. “I’ll do your shelf after.”
“There’s no shelf, Otto,” said Hugo dryly, but Otto’s head had already fallen back against the armchair’s head.
Hugo was almost fully clothed, and as he fell back onto the sofa beside them, ankles crossing over one another, he zipped his trousers back up.
Otto was naked. Sweat glistened on his skin, soaking through his binder. Archie was aware in a distant, even more desperately humiliated, jealous stroke of understanding that Hugo hadn’t even been wearing a condom.
He needed to go.
He knew he needed to go, Archie knew he needed to go, needed to —
Otto’s eyes were open. Archie felt himself stop, his lips parting in surprise, at the way Otto leaned forward, not seeming tired at all. He rolled his neck, blinking a few times, but in the mirror, Otto looked wide awake. Had he been faking it?
Why would he?
He watched silently as Otto got to his feet and began picking up his clothes.
He didn’t pull them back on, just folded them neatly and put them on top of the coffee table in a little pile, picked his shoes up and put them down together, straightened things on the coffee table that had been knocked around.
It surprised Archie, because Otto wasn’t a neat guy by nature — he left everything thrown around, and Hugo was always telling him off for not having a neat workspace in the kitchen; Archie was always telling him off for leaving clothes on the floor.
Was he seriously respecting Hugo’s space, but not his?
Otto picked up the phone on the table and sent off a text: when Archie’s phone vibrated, he was terrified Otto had heard it in the next room, but he didn’t seem to have.
HUGO, 8:17PM: Your young man is working assiduously. I shall have him back to you before 10, I expect.
Archie stared down at the text, and then slowly looked to Otto in the mirror as he moved to pick up a book.
He had a bow-legged, dancer’s walk.
Otto opened the book to a bookmark and opened it up as though he’d been reading it a while. He poured himself wine — Otto hated wine — and sipped at it as he paged through, still naked.
On the sofa, Hugo looked deeply asleep, still on the cushioned surface, but he was breathing.
Archie was being ridiculous. He knew he was, that he was just confused, that it had to be a coincidence, all of it.
He went home.
Instead of bread, he worked on short pastry.
When Otto came back, a little after quarter past ten, he was being clumsy again — he stumbled twice on the step, and knocked into one of the doorways by the shoulder. He looked exhausted.
“How was the shelf?” asked Archie.
“Oh,” said Otto, and looked confused for a second. Archie would have assumed, if he hadn’t gone, that it was because he’d been fucking Hugo instead of doing it, but it wasn’t that — he was a better liar than that.
Otto looked blank because he didn’t remember.
How much did he remember? Did he remember anything at all?
“Yeah,” he said after a second. “Sorry. It went up fine, just another bookshelf, I guess. You know what the old man is like. No bread?”
“I tossed it,” said Archie. “Thought I’d put myself into something else.”
He felt sick once he’d said it, but Otto didn’t seem to notice, didn’t respond, didn’t flinch.
He just looked disappointed, and said, “I like your bread.”
A few hours later, when they were in bed together, Archie asked, “Do you ever have dreams, Otto?”
“Not really. Never used to remember them often, and now I don’t at all.”
“You never dream of anything?” he asked.
Otto frowned, thinking about it carefully. “Some days, I guess I dream I’m not anything,” he said thoughtfully, brow furrowed. “Like I’m… I don’t know how to describe it. Like I’m suspended in space, or air, or something. Weightless, like gas. But it’s not anything more than that — just a feeling, really.”
Archie said, “Right.”
Otto’s head hit the pillow heavily, and he was out like a light. Archie convinced himself, somehow, that if he fell asleep Hugo would pilot Otto’s body around the flat, and the thought kept him up for half an hour before he succumbed to sleep.
He remembered when he’d first met Hugo, how quickly Hugo had taken him in, started training with him, working with him. They’d been fast friends, and he’d been a little nervous at first that the old men had ulterior motives, but that had never factored into it.
Even when the both of them were drunk, Hugo had never tried to touch him anywhere below the belt, didn’t touch him at all for years unless Archie initiated it.
Not that Archie was entirely shallow, but he’d never really let himself take after a man more than ten years older than him — he’d hesitate at five.
It was just gauche, really, and looked terrible even if you weren’t pretending to lust after an older guy to get a leg up, and if you weren’t doing it to get a leg up, why do it at all?
But Hugo never expected that from him, never seemed even to dream of it.
“You remind me of myself, at your age,” he remembered Hugo saying to him once. “Young, hungry, clever and eager to learn, not about to be held back by anyone else’s rules or expectations. They don’t often make young men like you are, like I was, anymore, Archibald.”
Hugo had given him a few books about the magic he was interested in, about meditation, but none of them seemed to deal with anything like this. He’d given him mirrors, but Archie already knew there were symbols painted on their backs, and even more painted on the hidden inside of the glass, because Hugo had showed him.
He’d said they were protective, that they were intended to make sure nothing happened to Archie, that they were the same sort of mirrors he had in his own house, and please, Archibald, just keep one in each room, please? For me? You needn’t believe in it, but I do, and it brings me comfort to think of you as safe.
He searched it online.
Nothing useful came up, just page after page of horror stories, stuff that seemed superstitious the way Hugo always talked about when he was prompted to, but not based in the reality Hugo seemed to live in. It was all fiction, and if it wasn’t that, it was bollocks.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked Otto one day, as Otto was lying on his side, staring into space.
“Okay?” said Otto.
“About — about you. About being trans.”
“Oh,” said Otto, and met his gaze. “You’ve noticed.”
Archie hesitated. “Maybe.”
Otto sat up on his elbows, looking at him for a moment, and then said quietly, “Yeah, I just… I don’t know. I just feel a bit better recently. More at home in my own skin — or maybe just less attached to it? Less worried. I don’t feel as anxious as I used to.”
Archie didn’t let himself react. “That’s good,” he said. “Right?”
Otto smiled at him. “Yeah, he murmured. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You’ve been spending a lot more time at mine,” said Archie. “If you want. Bring Roosevelt and Kennedy, I don’t mind.”
Otto tilted his head, blinking at him. “Who?” he asked.
Archie wondered in the moment if he was even talking to Otto at all.
“Oh, right,” said Otto, laughing, running a hand through his hair. “Um, no, I gave them away. I’m working much longer hours now, didn’t have time to look after them.”
“But you love stick insects,” said Archie.
“I love cooking,” Otto replied, and he sounded like he meant it, and Archie wondered if it was true, and if it was, when it had become true. If it would be true, if it wasn’t for… All this.
“Can you, um, can you help me take the big mirror off the wall? The one in the kitchen?”
Otto blinked again. “Okay,” he said. “Why?”
“Oh, I want to ask Hugo about it,” Archie said.
Otto was on his feet, but he was still confused — he was feigning confusion, Archie thought. Otto’s gait was bow-legged and graceful at once.
“He paints symbols on the backs of his mirrors — on the backs of all mine, too. He’s teaching me so much, recently. I guess I’d like for him to teach me about this, too.”
“Aw. That’s cute,” said Otto.
Not Otto.
He was aware of Otto the rest of the evening, Otto reading, Otto dozing, Otto tasting herbs on the balcony. It was nothing unusual. It was what he’d been doing in the evenings now for months — he didn’t play videogames as much anymore, didn’t have his stick insects, didn’t go to AA meetings.
They didn’t go to the zoo anymore, and come to think if it, it had been months since they’d watched a creepy bug documentary.
Archie couldn’t stand it.
“I’m going to take a walk,” said Archie. “You want anything from the shop?”
“No thanks,” said Otto, not looking up from his book. Sitting next to him was a glass of dry white wine, the sort of stuff Otto would have spat out if he’d been given it a year ago.
Archie drove straight to Lace.
* * *
Hugo was in his office chair in front of his computer, and Otto walked right up to him, lolled back in his seat, “asleep”, and put his hand on his shoulder to wake him up.
The shoulder was cold and stiff under his hand, and he saw his horrified expression in the mirror on the wall, the same way he saw Hugo’s corpse, slack-jawed and empty, right in front of him.
Otto, behind him, with a new accent, said, “Too late, Archibald,” and Archie turned to look at him.
“The mirrors have always been a sort of insurance,” said the man who was no longer Otto, closing the door and locking it with a neat click. He moved slowly, deliberately, but he wasn’t hiding his strange dancing cowboy’s walk — he hadn’t been hiding it before, tonight. He’d known that Archie had known — for how long?
Archie’s heart was beating rabbit-fast in his chest, and he couldn’t breathe.
Otto always slouched as much as his binder would let him, but Hugo wearing his body didn’t, walked very tall so that Otto’s body seemed even larger than it ever had been.
“You know those little myths and stories about ghosts being trapped in mirrors? There’s a common understanding one ought cover the mirrors after a death in the house, else a spirit can become trapped whilst trying to leave out of a window, and this concept is not dissimilar. One can organise that sort of spirit-trap to prevent oneself from dying in one’s entirety, if one doesn’t like to be caught short.”
“Casper — ”
“You’re frightened of me,” said Hugo softly. Otto’s face looked sad in a dignified way that didn’t quite match his features. “That hurts.”
“This is sick,” said Archie. “This is, this is sick, this can’t possibly be fucking real. Casper, it’s not fucking right, that’s… You… Where’s Otto?”
“Right here.”
“Trapped,” said Archie, feeling sick. “That’s what you said, right? A spirit trap?”
Hugo shook Otto’s head.
“Weightless,” he said pleasantly, and Archie never knew that Otto’s voice could carry such caramel-salted sweetness. “Weightless, bodiless, painless, thoughtless. No more suffering for young Otto, no more difficulties, dysphoria, cravings, none of it. No more… stress.”
“You can’t do this.”
“I think you’ll find I can, my dearest boy,” said Hugo. “I did, after all.”
He was getting closer. Archie felt light-headed.
“When I was born,” said Hugo softly, deliberately, “there were so many things I couldn’t do, wasn’t permitted to do. A young lady of means, of class — I was expected to marry, be a broodmare for some ugly man with half my brains and none of my ambition.”
Archie stared at him.
“And when I began pursuing magic, I realised that my spouse, as stupid as he was, so lacking in everything of value… could be useful. He had a gentleman’s title, a gentleman’s name. The penis was by the by, but I found once I had it that I liked that too.”
Hugo was standing very close now, leaning into Archie’s space and all but pinning him against the wall, his belly, his chest, pressed hot against Archie’s own. Archie was searingly aware of Otto’s body, its strength, in a way he never had been before, and his cock was half-hard. He told himself it was just terror.
“I did miss it, sometimes, though,” murmured Hugo. “I was a man on my terms, in my own body, long before I took somebody else’s… And then somebody else’s.”
Hugo’s — Otto’s! Otto’s! — hands were cupping Archie’s face, and he was leaning in close. He smelt like Hugo’s cologne and Otto’s deodorant, and Archie couldn’t breathe.
“And then somebody else’s,” Hugo went on. “Because I’m like you, Archibald. I want what I want, and I’m patient about wanting it, but what I want, I take.”
Hugo kissed him, and Archie felt hot and cold all over, head almost bursting, but then Hugo lifted him hard by the hips and Archie, giddy and dizzy and so terrified he couldn’t think straight, kissed him back.
“No,” he whimpered against Hugo’s mouth. “No, no, no, you can’t, you can’t do this, I don’t want it — ”
“Want me to show you how to put it right?” he asked lowly, deliberately. He squeezed Archie’s arse, and Archie moaned. “I can teach you, you know. How to drive me out of Otto’s body, how to kill me, and bring Otto back.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” said Archie. “I just — But you can’t do this, you can’t steal his body, you can’t.”
“You wouldn’t have known, you know,” said Hugo quietly, stroking his knuckles over Archie’s cheek. “I would have kept it from you until you were ready. I would have slipped into Otto like a hot bath, and I would have invited you into me for years on years before I made this little revelation, but you impressed me, Archibald. You looked. You paid attention. You connected the dots despite your ignorance, and I thought perhaps you might be ready now.”
“Ready? How the fuck could I ever be ready? When you’ve been — when you’ve been planning this from the start when…” Archie’s stomach flipped, and he stared at Hugo’s face that wasn’t his. “Since the start,” he repeated.
“I loved you the very moment I saw you,” said Hugo.
“No,” Archie moaned, and then moaned louder at Hugo’s squeezing hands on his arse. “No, no — ”
“If you hate me so much, dear boy, I’ll show you how to drive me out,” Hugo offered again. “Into a mirror, into that old corpse, where I’ll surely wither away and die again — ”
“Someone else,” gasped out Archie. “Not Otto.”
“Why not Otto? Like you said, he’s almost nothing. Not without me in him, anyway.”
“You can’t just steal someone’s body, someone’s life.”
“Make up your mind, young man. Can I steal no one’s body, or can I just not steal Otto’s?”
Archie powerlessly shook his head. “You can’t steal anyone’s,” he said.
“What about you?”
“What the fuck about me? You want my body too?”
“You’ll never be anything with a tongue like yours,” said Hugo. “No palate to speak of, barely any sense of subtlety. Enough to know what tastes good, but not quite to intuit why. Imagine, dearest boy, if you could have somebody else’s.”
For a moment, it was like the world stopped spinning — it was like the universe stopped spinning, and he and Hugo were the only people in it.
Otto’s voice came, laughing Hugo’s caramel chuckle. “There,” he said. “That’s why I love you.”
Archie was still for a long few seconds.
“You could be taller, if you wanted,” said Hugo quietly, in a low, quiet purr. “Stronger. You could have different hair, different eyes — and a good, strong tongue.”
Hugo. Otto.
His hand was sliding over Archie’s chest, and every inch of Archie’s skin felt alive and sensitive.
“My plan was to get you used to the idea,” he murmured. “Let you suffer in the shade of Otto’s spotlight before you realised you could share it. But you know now — we can prepare you now. And you can have everything you ever wanted.”
Archie opened his mouth to retort, but Otto’s hand, Hugo’s hand, gripped him by the wrist and pulled it to cup him through his trousers, so that Archie could feel where he was wet and wanting.
Archie swallowed.
“Yes,” purred Hugo. “You can have at that, too. I can barely remember what it feels like — but I remember I miss it.”
“You picked him for me,” whispered Archie. “Otto.”
“Yes,” Hugo murmured. “And for me, by extension. Honestly, I had no idea how lucky we’d be with him — no family, barely any friends. It was rather like Christmas.”
“It’s my dream,” said Archie. “It’s always been my… And I’ve worked hard. I don’t want to be held back by something I couldn’t even choose.”
“Exactly,” said Hugo, and shoved his own corpse onto the floor, pulling out the office chair and pushing Archie into it.
“I’ve worked hard. For years, for my whole life — ”
“And you’re ready to work hard for years more, for the rest of your life,” agreed Hugo. “You deserve this. You’ve earned it.”
“And… And Otto…”
“Doesn’t even know,” said Hugo. “Doesn’t even know to know. And really, who’s worth more to you? You’ve known me for years, know I’ve got so much more to teach you. What can Otto offer?”
He was sliding his trousers down, and Archie, mouth dry, stared.
“I love you,” said Hugo softly. “Unconditionally — for all you are, for all that sweet ambition. I won’t hold you back, won’t cry that you’re overstepping your boundaries. Boundaries aren’t for the likes of us, my dear.”
Archie could argue.
He could. He knew he could. But — but all that jealousy, all his nerves about Otto, and the whole time, Hugo was doing it for him?
He felt breathless, overwhelmed. Scared, but not… bad.
“I’ll never die so long as you want me here,” Hugo promised, climbing into Archie’s lap, and Archie put his hands on his hips, slid them between his thighs.
Otto didn’t slap his hands away: Hugo sighed and spread them wider, inviting Archie to touch.
Hugo leaned in and whispered in his ear, “And you won’t die either.”
Archie unbuckled his jeans.
“I love you, you know,” murmured Hugo, his eyes agleam. “Have I told you that lately?”
Archie kissed him as Hugo dropped further into his lap, and that sufficed for his answer.
FIN.
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