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raineadey · 10 months

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Summary:

Due to some changes in his routines, Gus' first weekend in the Human Realm doesn't start as well as he had hoped.

wrote this for gus appreciation week 2023 organized by @sapphic--kiwi :) prompt was human realm/memories so i included both

Word count: 3,767

Gus can’t sleep anymore. He’s been staring up at the ceiling, alone with only his thoughts. It’s been nearly a week since they’ve escaped to the Human Realm and adapted to the ways of human life. Despite what happened, his mind fortunately has been easily distracted with all the human stuff stored in Camila’s basement. He always knew that, much like witches, humans like to have at least one room to store their treasures in. It brings him a sense of comfort, being surrounded by human treasures where he sleeps, since it’s not unlike the state of his own bedroom.

He glances at the blue clock hung on the wall across from him; it’s nearly seven in the morning. He sighs. He could use some company right now, but he knows it'll be a while before everyone else wakes up. He turns to see Hunter sleeping, curled into himself with his hands tucked under his chin. Gus frowns, seeing how his friend has the need to constantly protect himself even in his sleep. Hunter usually wakes up early, but he’s been slowly trying to allow himself more sleep under Camila’s roof, which Gus is grateful for. He certainly needs to catch up with his lack of rest, and Gus certainly can handle going another fifteen minutes without anyone to talk to or anything to do.

He certainly can not.

He throws his blanket away and sits up, grabbing his socks at the end of the couch and slips them on. He learned that wearing socks helps muffle the sounds of one’s footsteps — as he’s been using this technique every time he sneaks out of his room in the middle of the night, careful not to wake up his sleeping dad.

He hears the faint pitter-patter of Emmiline’s footsteps, who makes her way up his back and settles on his shoulder. He smiles at her and scratches her head with a finger, mouthing ‘good morning’ as she chirps. He grabs his blue jacket and quietly leaves the basement.

A delicious smell almost immediately hits him as he closes the door. He walks over to the kitchen to see Camila up and about, as expected. She’s always up much earlier to prepare breakfast for the kids while getting ready for work, making sure everyone can sustain themselves while she’s away. Much like Dad, he thinks.

Camila must have sensed his presence, as she had turned around to greet him. “Oh, Gus! Good morning, mijo.”

Gus still doesn’t know much Spanish, but he has been around the Nocedas long enough to know that she’s calling him a term of endearment. “Good morning, Camila.”

“Come, sit.” She says, almost as if she knew he was heading out and stopped him for a chat. Again, just like Dad. “How come you’re up so early on a Saturday morning?”

Gus knows how to cut a talk short with his dad, who seems to enjoy dragging out a conversation long enough when he’s in a hurry; but Camila is not his dad, so he obliges and sits on one of the kitchen chairs.

“Oh, I just couldn’t sleep anymore, so I thought I’d get out. Y’know, find something better to do than stare holes into the ceiling.” He says. He’s not completely lying; he needs something better to do than lying on the couch and doing nothing. He leans over a little to peek at what’s in the frying pan. “What are you making?”

“I’m preparing my special los tres golpes today, it’s one of Luz’s favorites. The mangú ’s almost ready.” She turns to him with a challenging grin. “I hope you can handle some spice.”

“Don’t worry, I handle spicy food all the time.” Gus declares proudly with a hand on his chest.

“Then what say you take the honor of being the first among your friends to taste it?” Camila has been encouraging him and his friends to eat more spicy food, but she always has something non-spicy prepared for the ones who can’t handle it at all. Gus, for one, likes to test his own limits and eat more than he can take, and it got concerning one time.

He throws a glance at the clock: 7 A.M.. His stomach churns in anticipation. Normally, he’d be having breakfast with his dad, and then he’d wait for Mattholomule, but the thought of food right now only makes him sick. “I’d usually be up for such a challenge, but I think I’ll save this one for when the others are here.” He says, giving himself as much grace as he can for someone who just passed on a challenge. He spots a notebook on the table and reaches out to grab it. Flipping through it, he sees that the pages are empty.

“Alright, I can appreciate that.” Camila says in a playful manner. She then grabs a plate of food on the counter and places it on the dining table in front of Gus. “Would you like some tostones then? Careful, they’re still hot.”

Gus is cornered; he can tell her ‘No, sorry, I’m feeling sick right now,’ and save himself from a stomach ache, but he ends up taking one out of politeness. He hums at the taste — crispy with a distinct savory flavor. If he weren’t feeling sick, maybe he would enjoy it to its full potential. “Mmm, this is good! It’s like none of your dishes ever come out bad.” He praises.

Camila chuckles at his words. “Oh, you flatterer. Go, have some more if you like it. There’s still a lot left for your friends.” Gus decides he should cut in.

“Thanks, Camila, but, I think I’m gonna go for a walk.” He swiftly takes the notebook under one arm and gets up from the chair.

“Oh, well, be careful! It just stopped raining a while ago.”

“I will, thanks.”

—

It’s nearly nine in the morning. The household has properly woken up; the smell of fried breakfast and the sound of Camila’s favorite tunes fill the air. They gather around the kitchen and help set the table for breakfast.

“So, since it’s your first weekend in the human realm, why don’t we go somewhere today?” Camila suggests. “I think it would be good for you kids to properly know the area if you’re staying here for a while.”

“Where would we go?” Willow asks.

“There’s the park.” Vee suggests, yawning as she takes a seat with them. “I think there’s a fair being held right now, though I can’t remember if it was today or tomorrow.” She fishes out her phone and scrolls aggressively.

“A fair at the park! Ooh, sounds wonderful! I’m not sure what events you kids have in the Demon Realm, but you must attend a human fair at least once.” Camila claps her hands enthusiastically. “I bet you’d love the ri—”

“No, we can’t be wasting time like this.” Luz cuts in. “We have to figure out how to get to the Demon Realm again. I’ve spent the weekdays going back to school and catching up on homework, and now that I have the time to be here, I have to start trying again.” Camila frowns.

“You mean, we have to try, Luz.” Amity corrects her, a firm hand on Luz’s shoulder.

The sound of the basement door is faintly heard, followed by footsteps to the kitchen. Soon enough, Hunter emerges from the hallway, looking dazed with his hair messily tousled about.

“Hunter! You’re finally awake. How was your sleep?” Camila greets him.

His eyes barely meet hers. “It’s—” He scans the table and furrows his brows in confusion. “Where’s Gus?”

Willow blinks. “He’s not with you?”

“No. He wasn’t on the couch when I woke up.”

“He said he was going for a walk, but..” Camila looks at the clock. “That was two hours ago.”

“Do you think he got lost?” Amity asks.

“He’s actually kind of prone to it.” Willow says, already getting up from her chair.

“He.. actually seemed jittery earlier this morning. I thought he was just tired and a little sick, but it’s like he’s aching to get out immediately.” Camila eyes Luz. “Perhaps this is a significant, hard day for him?”

“Well, we don’t know, but we have to find him before he gets into trouble.” Hunter urges, following Willow out the door.

“Or before he accidentally eats something he shouldn’t.” Vee mutters under her breath as she gets up, thinking back to when Gus ate one of their DVDs.

Luz gets up with Amity until Camila stops her; Amity gives her a look that tells her ‘I’ll be outside’ and leaves the Nocedas alone.

“Luz,” Camila starts. Luz watches as her mom opens her mouth a couple times, waiting with bated breath for what she’s about to say, but no words come out. At last, she simply says, “We’ll find him, okay? Gus will be alright.”

Luz smiles and puts a hand over Camila’s. “I know, Mamá. Gus may be the youngest out of all of us, but he’s a real crafty witch.” She throws in a wink. Reassured, Camila smiles at her and lets her daughter go.

They agree to split up and meet back in thirty minutes at most. Willow says she’ll search the graveyard nearby with Hunter accompanying her, while Amity suggests a library. Vee ends up going with her, having known the area and human culture a lot better; she can make sure Amity doesn't get in trouble. Normally, Luz would have gone with her girlfriend, but she has an inkling as to where Gus might be — and she thought it’d be better for him if she came alone.

If Luz were him, she’d want to be as close to her home as possible.

—

The door of the old, abandoned house, the same one that was once a portal between two realms, is slightly ajar. The interiors are a work in progress; while Luz and Vee have been away at school, the Hexsquad worked together in making the house less abandoned and more habitable for their planning. It still needs some polishing, but the area is mostly comfortable for now.

Gus Porter is sitting up against the wall with his knees pulled in, holding a pencil and drawing on the notebook in his lap. A couple of illusions are propped up and presented in front of him for reference: a diorama of the illusionist graveyard, a couple of animated witches, and visualizations of his new idea for a defense strategy. Usually, he’d have Mattholomule to talk to about his ideas, throwing suggestions (and often playful banters) back and forth like hot stone. But, this time, Gus is planning all by himself — not at the graveyard, not with Mattholomule.

Unless..

He twirls his finger and, with ease, creates a perfect illusion of Mattholomule. Gus has always prided himself on getting the details of his models correctly. Mattholomule, however, is one of his best models; He remembers the rogue strand of hair on the left side of his bangs, the way his eyes squint when he’s smiling, the few faint freckles on his face — it’s not hard to notice the small things about Mattholomule.

Gus has a record of annoying him with illusions of the shorter witch, but Gus can tell he’s impressed at the attention to detail. “Bah, you probably forgot to include my fangs.” He had denied, only to be proven wrong by Gus making the illusion open his mouth, showing a row of teeth; there, hung a pair of fangs, one of them positioned at a slightly weird angle. A perfect replica of the original. “Wow.” Mattholomule had breathed out, unable to mask his obvious fascination. Gus had been proud.

He has practiced making illusions of Mattholomule; he doesn’t know why or how Mattholomule becomes his go-to for idle illusion creating, but he likes to conclude it’s purely because Mattholomule’s such an interesting model to practice with. Now, an illusion of the sane witch is currently sitting next to him, not unlike the ones he’s created in the past. He’s wearing the same yellow shirt (along with the stupid belt, Gus thinks) he had donned when they first went to the graveyard. Gus smiles fondly at the memory. It was awkward, but it led to something better — whatever it is they have got going on right now.

Illusion Mattholomule turns to him and blinks. Gus grins — he likes to think of him as cat-like at times, with how entitled and bossy he can be, yet also sweet and caring when he needs to be. Gus knows just what to do. He twirls his finger again and laughs at the sight: Mattholomule with cat ears and whiskers.

“The real Matty would never let me do this.” He muses as Mattholomule violently swipes at his fuzzy ears.

“Get this shit off of me, Porter, I swear—” He hisses.

Yeah, he so would kill me for this , Gus thinks fondly.

“Why? I think you look adorable.”

“I am anything but adorable, and you know it.”

“Do you prefer Cat-tholomule or Mattholomew?”

“I’m going to bite your face off,”

“Yeah, right, it’s not like—” Gus trails off. It’s not like you can actually touch me. His smile falters. You’re just an illusion of my friend. My friend who’s not here, and is probably trying to stay alive back in the Demon Realm while you’re wasting time in the beloved Human Realm. He might be d—

“Okay, Matty, enough playing around. We have new designs to go over.” Gus declares, picking up his notebook and scooting closer to the illusion of his friend. He props the notebook up on his lap and reveals the sketches he just did, flipping through the pages and randomly deciding on one design to go over. “Where were we.. Alright. So, last time you—”

Creak. Gus looks up in alert. A silhouette stands at the door, which is wide open. His voice is stuck in his throat, and the creak remains loud echoing in his ears. The tension immediately leaves his shoulders, however, as the silhouette steps forward, relaxing once he realizes who it is. “Oh, hey, Luz.” He smiles faintly. “You’re up already.”

“Hey, buddy.” She says, taking a seat on the ground next to him. He scoots over to give her room, realizing the illusions have disappeared as soon as he panicked. It has its perks; he’s not sure how Luz would feel if she saw Cat-tholomule either. Luz crosses her legs and looks at him. “Everyone’s looking for you.”

A sense of reality strikes his mind. He glances at the bright scenery behind the door; the sky had been a shade of gray earlier when he entered the house, but the yard is now properly basked in bright yellow sunlight.

Oh. Has he been gone for that long?

“I told Camila I was going for a walk.” He says, resting the notebook down against his lap.

“Yeah, well, a two hour walk means you're either super sporty—” She lifts an arm and taps on her bicep — an attempt to lighten the mood up, he thinks, because as soon as she puts it down, she gives him a look he recognises; she’s going into Talk To Me mode. “Or, something’s bothering you.”

There it is. Gus remains quiet and looks back at his drawing, hand gripping his pencil a little harder. He’s not sure how he’s feeling, but he can recognize when he’s not feeling his best. Luz must have noticed, because she’s scooting closer and leaning slightly to see the drawing on his lap. “What’cha drawing?”

“Just some trap designs!” Gus cringes slightly at how much louder his voice came out than expected, and lifts the notepad from his lap to give her a better look at the drawings. It looks like pieces of a blueprint sketched on a small notebook — complete with the calculations, maps, and scalings. “Here, this one’s new.” He flips through a few pages forward and points at one of the bigger drawings on the corner of the page. “It’s supposed to be an area of the forest covered in a big illusion that leads scouts and unwanted witches astray from the graveyard, chasing their own tails. It’s psychological horror! It’d take a lot out of me, but we haven’t got to actually apply the design, because..” He makes a vague gesture with his hand that implies where they currently are.

“Who’s.. we?” Luz asks.

“Mattholomule!”

“Mattholomule?!” Luz exclaims in disbelief, an incredulous look on her face.

Gus scratches his head, smiling sheepishly. “Right, I haven’t told you about it since you’ve been away.” He pulls his knees in closer. “Remember that day you sent me off with Bria and the other Glandus kids?” He says.

“Oh! The pretty girl with purple hair, right?'' He lightly cringes at the memory of his brief crush on her.

“Right. Well, turns out she's not that great.” He says regretfully. “She’s been awful to Mattholomule for years, and as soon as I tried to stop her from stealing the Galdorstones from the graveyard, she and her friends turned on me. She didn’t even hesitate to sell me out to face the warden alone!”

Luz furrows her brows and squares up her shoulders, pulling up the sleeves of her jacket menacingly. “Oh if I ever see that witch again—” She makes a punching gesture with her fist, causing Gus to chuckle at her antics.

“But, thanks to her, Mattholomule and I found a common ground. And we became.. Kind-of-friends?” He raises an eyebrow, confused by his own relationship with the other witch. “It’s just— we dedicated the weekends to go to the illusionist graveyard together, clean up what mess had been made and also improve its defenses. We’d spend hours there, planning and exhausting ourselves with our magic, but it’s fun!”

He flips through the notebook again, revealing a couple other trap designs that they’ve tried out in the past. “It was Mattholomule’s idea to come back.” He remembers fondly. “He’s actually surprisingly good company when he's not making a total jerk out of himself, and it's really cool to see him in his element when he's doing construction magic.” His eyes twinkle as he rambles. “Oh, man. Luz, you should have seen the things he did in the graveyard. It’s fascinating.”

He smooths out the page of the notebook. There’s a small doodle of Mattholomule in the corner, the word ‘jerkface’ scribbled above his head. On another corner, there’s a couple of better looking sketches of the same witch’s face. One of them looks realistic enough that he might climb out of the page and start tackling Gus himself, both laughing as they topple over each other. His hand trembles. “It’s.. a shame not many people see him that way — and, that includes himself, unfortunately.”

Luz smirks, eyeing the little details Gus had nailed in the sketches. “Wow, you two really bonded that day in that graveyard, huh?” She muses. They did. His chest rumbles. He turns his head away from Luz — attempting to casually wipe something off his face. They did bond and Gus saw something fascinating behind the asshole he first met. They bonded and for once, he doesn’t feel like a loser.

They bonded and for once, he felt understood.

A choked sob escapes his throat.

“Oh, no, Gus—”

Gus tries to hold his breath in an attempt to shove more sobs down his throat, only to continue sobbing and failing embarrassingly. “I— he—”

Luz quietly puts an arm around him, who immediately turns and curls into the hug. His whole body jolts along with each sob that escapes his throat. She rubs his arm and pulls him in closer, suddenly reminded of how small he is. He tries to wipe off his face, heavily aware of how gross he’s being right now.

“I’m suh– supposed to see him. I— I’ve never been uh-away.” He says between his sobs. “We always— we always went. But I can’t— go today. I don’t know if I ever will again. I don't even know if he's okay.” If he's alive . He curls further in Luz’s arms at the thought; he had stored the idea on the highest and farthest shelf at the back of his mind; yet, he can’t escape the idea of his friend possibly dying and Gus isn’t around to do anything to prevent it.

Luz tries using the sleeve of her jacket to wipe his tear streaked face. “Hey, we’ll find a way back, okay?” She says with a sure smile. Gus isn’t ultimately convinced, but he can sense that she’s trying to be her usual uplifting self. He forces a weak smile at his friend, not wanting to burden her more.

“I know, Luz.” He sniffles, messily rubbing his face with his sleeve before nodding at her. “You’re right.”

She smiles at him and squeezes him in the hug a little too hard, pulling him over to her side and nearly toppling over her. “Luz!” He yelps, both laughing as Luz gives him a light noogie on the head — well, as light as a Noceda Noogie can go.

“Alright, Gusteban. We should head back before my mom starts putting up missing posters.” She pulls away, letting Gus clean his own face up. “We’re also going to the park today. Vee said there’s a fair being held,” She leans in, voice dropping to a whisper, “that’s where we get the cotton candies.”

Gus’ whole face lights up. He didn’t believe it when Luz explained to him the concept of cotton candy; there’s no way sugar can take the form of a cloud and just dissipate when water hits it. He has never heard of such alchemy. How does that even work? He has no idea, but he’s about to find out.

“Well let’s go! What are we waiting for?” He declares; Luz chuckles as she gets up on her feet. Gus picks up the notebook and the pencil, giving his drawing of Mattholomule one last look. “I’ll see you soon, jerkface.” He whispers, before closing the book and joining Luz outside. He closes the door and notices the grin on Luz’s face. “What?” He chuckles nervously.

“Nothing.” She says in a sing-song voice; Gus joins her side, a suspicious look on his face. He takes one last glance back at the abandoned house before they walk back to Luz’s house, where Camila is waiting.

Luz throws him a grin more suspicious than the last.

“So.. You and Mattholomule, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

#i have never written a proper fic plss be nice im a bit sensitive ab my writing 😭 just to preface this #gus porter #mattholomule #matt tholomule #luz noceda #camila noceda #hunter deamonne #amity blight #willow park #vee noceda #these last couple characters were only briefly there btw #gustholomule #if you squint a bit #toh #the owl house #fanfic #gusweek2023 #my post

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