Work Text:
i
New high schools were always scary places. Race had moved around enough to be intimately familiar with that fact. This school, though, - his fourth in as many years - was at least starting positively. That was more than he could honestly have said for any other place he had been to.
In all honesty, it was looking like an all-around good start; he was comfortable around the new foster family he had been placed with, his classes were going well and although it had only been a week since he started at the school, the few people he had been hanging around with had invited him to join one of the school clubs.
Race leant back against the wall, waiting for Specs and Romeo to show up. They had said they would show him to the room because quite aside from still getting lost when finding his lessons, the drama room that the meetings were held in was apparently almost impossible to find. Passing the time, he mused on what the club was for. No one had thought to mention it before and at this point, he was hesitant to ask.
“Race!” Romeo waved at him from the other end of the hall and then ran to get to him as quickly as possible. “Specs’ll be a minute, he got stuck behind in politics, so he said we should go and he’ll meet us there.”
Romeo did not wait for an answer, grabbing Race by the forearm and tugging him up a stairwell. “So, how was calc?” he asked. The hallway was crowded and difficult to push through when everyone else was trying to get to the cafeteria in the opposite direction. “And… What other subjects did you have?”
“Italian and physics.” Race paused to let a tall girl push past him.
Romeo pulled a face. “Sounds gross.”
Race shrugged and gave a half-hearted grin. “Not so bad. Physics is pretty easy, and my parents were Italian.” He declined to mention that his parents had both died when he was eleven and he had not been around a conversational Italian speaker regularly since then.
“So, you’re, like, fluent?” Romeo rounded the corner into the drama wing. “That’s awesome!”
“What’s this meeting about, anyway?” Race followed Romeo down another corridor. The whole school felt like a giant maze that was out to make him as late to class as possible.
Romeo turned to look at him, surprised. “Didn’t anyone tell you? It’s the LGBT+ club.”
Race stopped in his tracks and could not stop the irrational burst of fear that flashed through him. He had thought he was passing just fine. No one had said anything; he had thought no one knew. Memories of his last school streaked across his mind. “Whoa, what?”
“Don’t say you’re homophobic or something,” Romeo said with a sigh.
Shaking his head quickly, Race paused for a second to consider what he was trying to say. “How’d you know about me?”
“Know what?” Romeo looked confused enough that Race was almost inclined to believe that he genuinely had no clue. Romeo shrugged and grinned at him. “The whole group goes to the meeting, so we didn’t want you to feel left out. Besides, you seem like a cool person, so we thought you’d be chill with it.”
Race let out a breath he did not know he had been holding. “Oh, right.” The tingling in his stomach died down to nothing. “No, yeah, I’m cool with it. Sounds good!” He grinned and although he feared that it might have looked more like a grimace, Romeo beamed back at him.
“Yeah, it’s really cool!” Romeo enthused, “There are a few seniors there, and some from lower year levels as well. Jack and Davey run it. You met them yet?”
Race pulled up short, almost knocking into Romeo as he stopped abruptly outside a classroom.
Romeo pushed the door open. “They’re all cool; you’ll see.”
‘Chaos’ was the word that came to mind when Race walked into the classroom. There must have been almost twenty people running around the room and yelling. Piggybacks were commonplace, and Race could not help himself from biting back a grin. This was the type of atmosphere he had been missing for so long.
Race scanned the room. It was predominantly boys who filled it, he now realised, but there were a few girls and androgynous people scattered amongst them, too. Romeo pushed him a little further into the room and just a few seconds later, Specs tumbled through the entrance, too.
“Romeo, Specs!” Race’s gaze snapped in the direction of the voice. The boy who said it was on the opposite side of the room, sitting much closer than necessary to another boy who was typing on a laptop. His arm was thrown carelessly over the typing boy’s shoulders and occasionally he peered at the screen. “You bought a newbie!”
Suddenly, all eyes were upon Race. Even the typing boy looked up. He looked strikingly similar to one of the girls in the room with dark hair, freckled skin and a crooked nose.
“I’m Race.” He waved overenthusiastically at the others and grinned. First impressions were important.
The guy who had called him out walked over. Obviously, he was one of the leaders.
“I’m Jack,” he said with an exceptionally strong Manhattan accent. “He/him, bi, all that good stuff. Anyway, nice to have ya here.” He pointed over at the typing boy, who was pushing himself away from the laptop and walking over to join them. “And that’s Davey.”
“David or Davey works,” David said, taking his place next to Jack, and smiling shyly. It seemed an almost reflexive reaction that he put his arm around Jack’s waist and stood as close as possible. No one else in the room blinked at the display and Race had to wonder if they were dating. “He/him and very, very gay.”
That seemed to set off the tidal wave. People surrounded him, introducing themselves left, right and centre. It was pleasantly surprising how open and friendly everyone seemed to be. Race could not stop himself from beaming the entire time. Seeing a group of people who were so comfortable with themselves was a million miles removed from any other place he had been.
Without noticing it, Race’s eye lingered on Jack and David. They dropped back a few steps when everyone approached him, but they had linked their hands together now. It was so casually affectionate that Race almost felt like he could not be seeing them correctly. He had never known a gay couple to be so unguarded.
The meeting was largely unproductive. By the time Race had been introduced to everyone at least twice and learnt a good artillery of fun facts about them all, lunch had already ended.
Davey packed up his laptop – Romeo had learnt that he was finishing an AP history essay due next period that he had forgotten about – and Jack dismissed them all talking about catching up over the weekend and a group chat that Specs promised he would add Race to.
As they walked towards their lockers again, Race could not stop himself from turning to Romeo. “Davey and Jack,” he murmured to him, “They’re dating, right?”
Romeo shrugged at him. “Who knows?” He grinned cheekily. “If you want, though, you can join the betting pool on when they’re going to announce it.”
Race laughed. Yeah, this seemed like the type of thing Race could get used to.
ii
The worst days were the ones where no one could convince Jack to leave his room. Not Spot. Not Medda. Not even Crutchie, who had been his closest confidant though everything - since he had entered the fostering system, during their adoption by Medda, and every moment since then.
The worst days were the ones where Crutchie had ended up firing a text off to David. There was no fixing depression, but David could usually get into Jack’s room and coax him into eating and drinking something. Even if that was all he could do, sometimes it was still more than anyone else could.
Crutchie tried not to feel put out by it. Jack had explained before: depression did not give rhyme or reason. It just was. David simply connected with him better when he was in a slump. It was nothing to do with who he liked or did not like. It was something he could not control. He had met David in the first year of high school, and since the really bad days started when he was sixteen, David had always been the person who could handle them the best.
Restlessly checking his phone, Crutchie shifted slightly on the couch. Medda was out and Spot was supervising their younger adoptive sibling, Boots. From the sitting room, he could hear a piece of paper being torn up in Jack’s room. He winced and hoped that it was not a drawing he would regret losing in the future.
A knock on the door was Crutchie’s saviour. He grabbed his crutch and limped towards the hall to open the door for him.
“Thanks for coming,” Crutchie said quietly as he let David into the flat. “He won’t talk to anyone else. I figured you might have a chance, though…”
David gave him a small, weary smile. There were deep bags beneath his eyes, and he had clearly thrown on yesterday’s clothes in a rush to get out of the house. “I’m happy to come anytime, you know that. Is he in his bedroom?”
Crutchie nodded. “Can you make sure he takes his meds if he hasn’t already?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I’ll put a glass of water outside the door.” Crutchie moved into the kitchen, leaving David by Jack’s bedroom door.
Even though he tried not to overanalyse Jack’s words and trusted him without a doubt, sometimes he did wonder if there was something different about David. The soft words he used to coax Jack’s door open were not so different from the ones anyone else used, after all.
Through the kitchen door, he could see David with his back against Jack’s door as he spoke in dulcet tones. There was a look of concern on his face, but something softer and more vulnerable lay beneath that. It was an expression that Crutchie used to see on his parents' face before the bills started piling up and his father resorted to alcohol and violent fits.
On the worst days, it seemed more apparent than ever that David and Jack had something that no one else knew about. That was special to them. He always pushed the questions back, though. Jack was fiercely defensive, and David acted like an animal backed into a corner whenever they were asked. Crutchie knew better than to push it.
He saw the door crack open to let David inside and sighed quietly in relief to himself. If he could not get through to Jack, at least someone could. David could not fix Jack’s depression any more than the anti-depressants could but having someone to talk to on his darkest days was tenfold better than dealing with it alone.
Crutchie limped back into the sitting room and set the glass of water down outside of Jack’s bedroom. They would figure things out in their own time.
iii
College was stressful. That was what everyone said, anyway. Katherine, however, was seriously starting to doubt that there was anything more stressful than college applications. There were new deadlines every time she turned her head, copious amounts of pressure from her father, and an underlying dread of finding herself halfway across the country from any of her friends.
On some level, she felt terrible for worrying so much. She alone in her group of friends – most of whom she was unashamed to say were from the LGBT+ club – had the funds to go anywhere she wanted. Her father was wealthy and as long as she went to a good university, he would insist on paying. Nearly everyone else was relying on equity scholarships or any other type of bursary they could get their hands on in order to afford it.
The more careers sessions they had during homeroom, the more Katherine dreaded the choices she would have to make. At the front of the classroom, the teacher sat at his desk while the students in the classroom discussed what they were thinking about doing quietly.
She glanced at her laptop screen and sighed. Journalism. Strikingly uncreative, but nonetheless the only major she was really interested in following. Resting her head on her hands, she looked to Jack. The rest of their friends in the year level were in different classes. All things considered, Katherine felt lucky to have both David and Jack in the class. It would have been very lonely to be by herself.
“Have you decided where you’re applying to yet?” she asked.
Jack bit his lip. “A fine art place?” He did not sound entirely sure.
“Dave?”
David shrugged and managed a weak laugh. “Who knows?”
Katherine nodded and returned to scrolling through the journalism courses reviews for a few seconds. “Do you know what you want to do at all?”
Sighing, David shook his head again. “I considered medicine… But, I’m not sure. Linguistics or history would be cool, but what the hell do you do with a degree in one of those two subjects? Paramedicine or chemistry might be interesting, too…” He pushed his reading glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. “At the rate we’re going, the workload will’ve killed me by the time I finish high school, so I won’t have to worry about college, anyway.”
Sometimes Katherine forgot how broad David was. He could have gone into almost any course and exceeded in it, even if he hated it the entire time.
“You could double major?” Katherine suggested half-heartedly.
Jack swung his arm around David’s shoulders and pulled him close. “It’ll be fine, you know. You’ll do great at whatever you choose.”
David gave a small nod and another heavy exhale.
“You’ve literally got a perfect GPA and you’re involved in fifty-million clubs. A college would be crazy not to offer you a really fancy scholarship,” Jack continued. He shifted his chair a few inches closer to David’s.
David let his glasses slip onto his nose again and gently elbowed Jack. “Don’t say that kind of stuff. You’ll be the one to get a scholarship to whatever arts place you want to go to. Have you seen his artwork?” He looked to Katherine for backup. “It’s insane, right? No arts course wouldn’t want you.”
Katherine nodded with a simple smile. Her eyes dragged over them both, sitting much too close for comfort, and the way their hands lingered on each other’s arms a little longer than necessary. Their bond often confused her. They were closer – both literally and figuratively – than she and Jack had ever been during the brief month they went out. Sometimes, they seemed to know each other better than she and Sarah knew each other, and they had been dating for almost half a year.
And yet, she never saw anything between them that could not technically be classed as platonic. A very touchy platonic relationship, but platonic nonetheless. It astounded her that they managed to be on the exact same wavelength and still miss the looks of longing that they threw each other.
Sometimes, she wished that she and Sarah could be so in tune with each other. She had quickly scrapped that idea when she realised how uselessly oblivious they could be, though.
“I keep telling him that he should go for Harvard or something. I mean, go big or go home, right?” Jack said. Katherine jerked out of her reverie and nodded with a laugh.
David pushed Jack away with fondness in his eyes. “Don’t kid about that stuff, Jack!” He returned to browsing through university websites on his laptop and completely missed the look utter adoration that Jack gave him in return.
Katherine sighed and shook her head. One day, she was sure they would figure it out.
iv
The summer holidays were a relief to get to. Specs was exhausted. Even during the transition weeks, the teachers had laid the homework on so thickly that he could feel his legs buckling underneath himself. Jack had laughed when he had complained – relaxing in the school library having finished all of his exams and waiting for David to finish his final chemistry paper – and told him that senior year only got worse.
In the honour of the graduated seniors, a sleepover had been organised at Specs’s house for the LGBT+ club. Complete with films, junk food and mountains of blankets, the place had gradually descended into disarray until people had started passing out all over the sitting room.
Sarah and Katherine were curled up on the couch. There was a pile of the freshman boys on the rug. Race and Spot were murmuring quietly to each other, one hand linked, where they thought no one could see them. And, of course, David and Jack had fallen asleep all over each other in an armchair.
Specs gazed blearily around the room. His glasses were greasy, but he could not be bothered to clean them. He would worry about that in the morning. Romeo had his head in Specs’s lap, so he was not about to move, anyway. Absently, his eyes around the people again.
His eyes lingered on Jack and David. They never talked about their relationship, but it was clear to everyone that what they had was special. Not a mutual dependency, but enough trust and affection to sustain them for a lifetime.
David’s head was resting on Jack’s shoulder and their legs were tangled together in a blurry mess. It looked extremely uncomfortable. Specs struggled to understand how they could sleep in such an uncomfortable position. By the time they woke up, he was certain that their joints would be stiff and painful.
Since joining the LGBT+ club in freshman year, Specs had seen it grow hugely. It had been Jack who had started it before David had become their unofficial second leader. In those early days, the club had been something of a refuge to him and the few others who were in it. No matter what, they were a network of support for each other.
That network had only grown as the number of people who came increased. It was nicer with more people, he thought. With such a broad array of people represented, they had been able to broaden their horizons. Specs, for one, had more friends from that club than he did through any other co-curricular.
Specs could also remember the days when Jack had dated Sarah and then, just under six months later, Katherine. Often, the tension in the room had been horrific and David had struggled to sit next to Jack. (Honestly, Specs had a lot of sympathy for him. He shuddered to think about how he would feel if his best friend was dating his twin. That being said, he often wondered if there was something else going on that had catalysed the failures in communication). Outwardly, their relationship dynamic was completely thrown off and it had shown.
He preferred to think of the months after that, though. The period of healing that had followed was much more special.
It was something that Specs thought of fondly. In his experience, it was rare to see a relationship destruct and then grow back again healthily. David and Jack had been a rare case, and, although he was younger than both of them, it made Specs proud to see how far they had come. No complete reliance on each other, no fight since the dark days, and an impeccable ability to compromise.
If they ever did date, Specs was certain they would make a dream couple. They had everything already going for them.
He pulled his eyes away from them and looked down to Romeo and silently ran his hand through his hair. One day, maybe.
v
Being a twin had benefits. Being a twin also had severe drawbacks. Sarah was convinced that the biggest problem of being a twin was how completely helpless she felt when she could not help David. They were meant to get each other in a way that other people could not. Often, they did
Sometimes, though, they did not.
Sarah knelt in front of David as she spoke in a messy combination of Hebrew, Polish and English. Watching her twin have a panic attack always made her feel horrible. It had been years since David had started having them, and she still felt as terrified and useless as when he had his first.
David's back was pressed against the wall, his hands knotted in his hair and his breathing pattern was uncontrolled. There were tears squeezing themselves out of his screwed-shut eyes.
Gently, Sarah pulled his hands away and held them in front of him. “C’mon, Davey. It’s alright. It’ll be over in a minute. Breathe with me, yeah?”
Sarah knew the drill. She had been the first one to demand to know what to do when David was first diagnosed. Do not let him hurt himself. Let him know that it will be alright. Regulate his breathing. Sarah took a deep breath, and slowly, she counted up to seven, then to eleven and repeated the pattern.
David whimpered quietly, but the fight in his hands disappeared. He was going limp just like he always did after an attack. His head hung forwards as he listened to Sarah and struggled to count through his breaths.
Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat and finally let David’s hands go. They flopped to his side. Crawling to sit next to him, Sarah took one of his hands in his own and started gently tracing shapes into his palm.
“It’s alright, Davey,” she whispered. “I’m here. I’m not leaving. And, Jack-” she cut herself off for a moment “-Jack’ll be back in a minute.” It was meant to be a casual get together. It was the first weekend that she had been free to take the two-hour train trip to David’s university in months and Jack had finished his major project, which allowed him to come up, too.
David whimpered again and Sarah squeezed his hand. It was just a matter of passing the minutes. After the initial panic attack, David usually took a bit to come out of his stupor. Until then, she just talked to him quietly and tried to wait until he was ready to ask about what had set him off.
This time, she imagined it was probably university stress. He had told her already about how difficult some of his classes were this semester, and she knew that in order to maintain his scholarship he had to maintain a 3.75 GPA.
Soon enough, the door to the dorm opened and Jack walked in baring take out and a carton of milk.
Sarah made eye contact with him and begged him to understand. It was a silly wish. Of course he understood. He had probably seen David have almost as many panic attacks as she had, particularly during that horrific first half of tenth grade.
Jack set the food and milk down on the table and sat down on David’s other side. Without so much as a word between them, David let his head rest on Jack’s shoulder and exhaled shakily.
Sarah bit her lip. She hated it. The panic attacks, how helpless she felt, that even medication could not fully stop them. In their nineteen years together, she and David had shared a womb for eight months, lived seven years in Poland, immigrated to America together, gone through nearly all of their schooling together. And yet, here she was, unable to stop this for her brother.
A part of her wished that she could be in Jack’s position, able to wordlessly communicate about anything and everything. The more rational part of her knew that it was something special that David and Jack had with each other.
She and David were twins, but they were close in a different way to how he and Jack were. The individuality of people’s relationships with each other were all precious in their own right. Her relationship with Katherine was closer to what David and Jack had. Occasionally, she wished that they could see that before one of they got hurt.
Neither of them had dated since the disaster that was tenth grade. Since then, she had been counting down the days until they finally clicked. They were not perfect, but no one was. Their relationship with each other and mutual ability to help each other through the worst days, though, was something that was irreplaceable.
It would happen eventually. She did not have to be David’s twin to know that. But, for now, Sarah would bide her time.
i
Winter break was debatably David’s favourite time of year. There was snow, Hanukah, and plenty of time to be spent with his friends and family. This year, David was going back to New York via Jack’s university – which was en route anyway – and spending a few days at Jack’s dorm.
The snow was already thick on the ground and as much as David loved the snow, having to walk long distances in it without appropriate snow gear was rarely any fun. Jack walked next to him and they spoke loudly to be heard over the wind.
“Museum is this way!” Jack said, grabbing David’s hand and pulling him down a side street. It was slightly more sheltered from the wind, but still unbelievably cold. David had lived in Białstok when they were in Poland, but even though it was colder there than it was here, he was no better at handling the chill.
Jack drew his muffler down with one hand, the other one still holding David’s, and grinned at him. “Cold, huh?”
“You don’t say,” David replied dryly. He brushed off some of the snow that had collected on his coat with his free hand. “How much further?”
Jack shrugged. “Like, ten minutes, maybe? If we’re quick.”
“Ten minutes?” David groaned and curled his toes in his boots, checking that they still had feeling. “Are you sure that you don’t want to go back to your dorm and wait for it to stop snowing before we go any further?” They had already gone to a coffee house and David was not sure he could last much longer without a proper snow jacket in the weather.
Jack beamed. “Sounds perfect.” He began to pull his muffler back up and grabbed David’s hand again, pulling him back into the main street. “It’s about a block up!”
“Okay, sure.” David took a few long steps to catch up with Jack and then fell back into stride with him.
Jack looked at him. “The town’s pretty, don’t you think?”
“Very,” David agreed through the scarf he had pulled up over his nose and mouth. “Must be nice to live here.”
David could see Jack’s eyes crinkle into a familiar smirk. “It’d be nicer if you lived here, too.”
David stopped short on the street and stared at Jack. “You’re choosing now to get sappy?” He laughed and shuffled a few steps closer. “Really?” He grinned back and squeezed Jack’s hand, wondering in the back of his mind if he could even feel it through his thick gloves.
“I mean, yes?” Jack had stopped now, too, and sounded like he was questioning the words that were coming out of his mouth. “Like, you’ve applied and got a conditional offer – which you’re totally going to smash – to do a masters at a close university next year and I’ve got a local placement lined up, so yes? We should move in together.”
David stared at him in silence. Nothing could quite quantify the millions of things that were running through his head. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously!” Jack insisted.
Too many things were running in through David’s head for him to pull together a coherent sentence.
Jack backtracked quickly. “Or, I mean, maybe not. You’ve already got something else planned, I guess, and I mean-.”
David cut him off with a kiss. “I’d love that,” he said breathily. “But, maybe, not just as flatmates?”
Gazing at him dozily, Jack grinned. “So, that’s a yes?” He pulled David closer and pressed their lips together again.
David wished he could say it was nice, but their lips were freezing, there was snow and wind cutting at their faces and he was relatively sure that his fingers might fall off if they stayed outside for too much longer. He could not stop smiling, though, and the warmth that was growing in his chest felt like it was almost enough to thaw the rest of his body.
Jack pulled away, breathless. “Let’s get inside,” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he practically ran up the street with David in tow until they reached his dorm room.
“So, yes?” Jack asked again, tugging his jacket off as quickly as possible.
David laughed and nodded, doing the same. “Yes, a thousand times over.” He sank into Jack’s embrace and kissed him hard. It was like the final puzzle piece was falling into place. This was what he had been missing. Jack’s lips were cold from outside, but it felt incredibly right.
“I can’t believe we haven’t done this before,” Jack said as they pulled apart. His eyes were blown wide and he breathing deeply. “We’ve been missing out for so many years.”
“Tell me about it,” David agreed. He rested his forehead against Jack’s.
Jack hummed in contentment and took David’s hands tightly. “So, we’ll move in, but as boyfriends.” He grinned at the word and pulled away to look properly into David’s eyes.
“Sounds perfect.” David could not stop himself from grinning as he pulled Jack in for another kiss.