Work Text:
Prologue, from @UneTasseDeTae on Twitter:
*Jack and Rayane are in the school bathroom*
Rayane: “Jack? Are you seriously going to sulk because I’m going to go drink some coffee with Diego?
Jack: “It's not just going to go drink some coffee, it's a date.”
Rayane: “Ah, so...if it's a date then it means I won the bet. It means that he's gay.”
Jack: “No, it's a date in your head, because you think that he's gay.”
Rayane: “He's gay! Come on, I’m only seeing him so I can prove you wrong...just come with us.”
Jack: “No, I wouldn't like to ruin your moment.”
Rayane: “You don't want to know if he's gay or not?”
Jack: “No, it's not fun anymore. I don't care, actually.”
Rayane: “You know you're being annoying right now? Why are you being like this?”
Jack: “Why do you think? Do you think it's funny to me to see you drool over him? I should have known, actually. After the blind guy, it's the amnesiac guy; you've got a thing for disabled people, don't you?”
Rayane: “That's nonsense, come on, give me your hand, stop.”
*Rayane reaches for Jack's hand, but Jack moves away*
Jack: “No, yeah, that's it. You like disabled people; seems like an inferiority complex to me.”
Rayane: “Quit it, because I don't find this funny.”
Jack: “Sorry, I forgot you were the only one allowed to joke.”
Rayane: “You really want us to fight because of that guy?”
Jack: “No; but everything you're doing is forcing it to go this way.”
*Jack leaves the bathroom, leaving Rayane alone*
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His own eyes staring back at him familiarly and accusatorily had done nothing to untie the knot of aggravation in Rayane’s chest as it slowly rose and fell, his breath driven out through his nose. All at once, the sounds of the courtyard came back to him and before he knew what he was doing, he’s chasing Jack out the door of the bathroom. In a moment, he’d caught up with his offensively bright shirt in the corridor, taking him by the once-familiar elbow and driving them both into the nearest empty classroom.
“What are you doing?” Jack’s voice was still flexed, laced with protest, now undercut with new frustration. As the bell started to sound outside, he pulled his arm back once more, turning to the corridor, only to find Rayane blocking his way as he pushed the door shut.
“No, we’re doing this now.” They stood, square to each other, a metre’s gap aching between them. “Seriously? Inferiority complex? You know…” Rayane’s eyes darted back to the closed door as his nostrils flared. He hisses out the rest of his words. “You…and only you…know how fucked up it is to joke about that with me.”
“Why should I know that?” Jack was in no mood for papering over cracks. If Rayane wanted to know how he felt, he was going to tell him. “Because you told me I couldn’t love you? Because you jump like someone’s about to hit you any time we’re interrupted alone?” He watched each statement hit its mark, undermining the vault of bravado. “Because you’ve told me barely half-a-dozen half-finished sentences over six months about your relationship with your dad?”
If Rayane’s jaw was tense before, Jack could now see it clenched right beneath the skin as he looked to the side, his lips curling viciously in a way Jack had only seen directed at others before.
“How I deal with the shit of my life is none of your business.”
It felt like the most painful statement so far. Jack fought back.
“I don’t even know where to start to disagree with that. What a fucked up thing to say.”
Rayane’s eyes flashed at him, deep, dark, wounded. His voice got louder.
“No, what’s fucked up is that we’re here because you can’t cope with even the idea of me having coffee with another man. Without making it my problem. Without pinning it on me.” His hand jabbed into his chest.
“Right.” Jack hoped his eyes were burning with all the exasperation he felt inside in this moment, letting loud irony fill his voice. He hoped it hid the shame he felt in the truth of Rayane’s words. “My insecurities are the problem here.”
“The first person other than you that I pay any attention to at this school and you’re as angry as you were about the fucking dating app? Am I only allowed to come out if it’s as interested in you?” Jack swallowed, uncomfortable at the call-back. Rayane took a step closer, devoid of intimacy, so he could confront Jack’s gaze with his own brown eyes. “Maybe I should check if he’s even telling the truth about his amnesia? Been there, done that.”
Jack wrenched his eyes away as they began stinging, his mouth open but without words. Rayane held his ground for a long moment, breathing roughly. When Jack said nothing, he withdrew two steps to lean against the teacher’s desk, his hands balled.
Jack’s blood was racing with core emotions. He stared at the carpet, trying to pick a single sentence from the hundreds racing through his head, clamouring to be shouted, spat or sobbed. He folded his arms, choosing smallness.
“Why do you want me jealous?”
Rayane shifted his weight at the charge, shaking his head bitterly. “I chose you. Everyday, I choose you. Why is that not enough?” Jack glanced involuntarily at his face, his cheeks burning. “Why are you still so scared?”
“I’m not you.” Jack’s voice was no longer accusatory. Rayane swallowed the sudden lump in his throat as Jack’s face reverted to that distant, distracted look and Rayane knew he was fully inside his head, not looking out. “I know its hypocritical; to ask you to be out and then to be scared of you living your life. But yeah…fuck it. That’s what everything that’s happened to me in the past has made me scared of, that I’ll end up looking like the fool. So I hate it.” He let out a shuddering breath.
The tide of anger in the room had stalled but Rayane still felt rocked by the ripples of the words that had been thrown. He stayed against the desk, watching Jack’s outline.
“Listen. I get it. You were in a horrendous place, you’d gone through a horrible experience, and you came out of it wanting good things for yourself. And you went for it. I mean…it didn’t feel to me like you were going to take no for an answer…” The ghost of a tiny smile crept across Jack’s lips. “And now you don’t want that threatened. But it’s not. I’m literally telling you that it’s not. So why are you letting this take you backwards?”
Jack shifted his weight from one foot to the other, keeping himself half turned away from the other boy. “All my confidence in this comes from what you’ve let us be, Rayane…I would understand any other person in the world wanting you. I know just how good it feels to have your attention…” He stumbled into silence, realising he was saying nothing that was contradicting Rayane’s point.
Rayane swallowed, self-conscious, Jack’s confession of dependence weighing uncomfortably on him.
“So I’m responsible for all your feelings, now? You’re going to put me in a position where I can’t help but let you down? Disappoint you? Fail you?”
Jack turned to look at him again now. “You’re responsible when you know they’re what I’m feeling because of what you’re doing.” Rayane opened his mouth to protest but Jack kept going. “I don’t really care about what your intent is, I’m just telling you how this feels right now.” He shook his head and let out a small let out a sigh, fumbling a hand through his hair. “I want the world to be envious of us; I don’t want to be jealous of you. Right now, what you’re doing is making me needy and you obviously don’t like it just as much as I don’t so why are we even here?”
Rayane nodded slowly, but his voice stayed low, primed for more. “And what if really what you’re saying is you don’t trust me?” He left a beat of silence, watching the words pass a veil of sadness over Jack’s large, defensive eyes. “We come this far together and you’re choosing to be scared of hypothetical situations? Or telling me that I only care about people because they have to depend on me – as if everything I’ve ever done for you was just selfishness?” The words were running away from him again now, his volume rising. “Fuck it, Jack, did you ever think how much it hurt to know you didn’t trust me to stay once you could see…Do you get how much that tells me about how you think of yourself..?”
“I thought how we deal with the shit of our lives is no-one’s business.” Jack’s voice was deadpan, challenging, almost bitter.
“I thought it was our responsibility once feelings were the result of things we’d done.” Touché, Rayane signalled with his eyes.
They stayed facing each other, unyielding, tensed for the other’s next choice of trigger. At his side, Rayane’s hand ached at the memory of Jack pulling his own away from it, just minutes ago. He closed his eyes.
“Do you know why I never got angry with you for lying about that before? About you not telling me anything sooner about your sight. I was so fucked off about it. But you weren’t right there to shout at or ignore, so I had to sit with it. And then do you know what I realised?” Uncertainty had come back into Jack’s face, not knowing what point Rayane was aiming towards. “Where your head was at. How much you were begging for us to stay close. How you were mainlining to me what you thought, what you felt about us, without being able to say a thing about it.” They both took a breath, but Rayane carried on before Jack could speak. “Jack, I’m not going to just care about you because you need me. Not ever. Dependency, no autonomy, that’s…that’s a prison.” Jack saw the entrenched subconscious shadow cross his face. “But I’ll fucking love you to death for who you are despite everything that’s happened to you. Despite me.”
He broke off, looking up at Jack through dark lashes defiantly, his shoulders loosening fractionally as his hands unballed. Jack caught his gaze, rolling his words through his mind, lips twitching as the new information settled in his memories, whilst his gut pushed instinctively back against Rayane’s own deprecation. Rayane had stood, moving marginally away from the desk. Although he didn’t reach out his hand yet, his eyes now asked ‘Are we done?’
Jack took a breath, taking him all in, the boy stood in front of him. His heart ached at the scars they’d opened, the salt rubbed in. But there was also a feeling of opened doors within himself. Light reaching corners it needed to reach.
He looked at Rayane again, his fingers running nervously across each other. They’d run the gamut so far: yes, Jack had trauma. Yes, Rayane suppressed his emotions and past. Yes, Jack was insecure. Yes, Rayane suppressed his emotions. Yes, Jack had been hypocritical and distrustful. And Rayane suppressed.
Jack swallowed. His mouth was bitter with the cruelty he’d already allowed himself to inflict. Could he stoke Rayane’s pain more? What would be behind those doors if he continued to push? He looked into his eyes.
“Do you know how hard it is for me to think of a version of you that is weaker than me, Rayane?” Rayane stopped, searching Jack’s face. “You’re never allowed to be the project, to be the one laid bare with any feelings out on the table for everyone to comment.” Jack closed the distance between them by half a step, willing Rayane not to run. “I have never felt closer to you than that night on the beach, because you let me in. But only, I think, because I asked the wrong question. Because I said your ex and the answer was actually your dad.”
Rayane looked at his shoes, teeth clenched. “I don’t like how it feels. I don’t like that it still has any power over me.” Rayane said, to the floor.
“I know.”
“Amnesia sounds pretty good actually.” Rayane let out a hollow laugh. Jack almost smiled at the half-hearted attempt at deflection.
“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I adore how you know what you want to be and who you don’t want to be.” Rayane looked up at him, cautious of the compliment. “But at the same time, it breaks my heart that you had to learn that from the opposite of a place of love and safety.” Jack took another step forward, finding putting his thoughts into words making him ache to be physically there for Rayane. He put his hand on his sleeve. “I’m here. But you’ve got this complex set of walls that we’ll keep running into unless I know what they are.”
Rayane blinked slowly, looking at the point where their arms were touching. When he opened his mouth to speak his throat had dried.
“Sometimes…sometimes I don’t even know what the problem is. And sometimes it’s nothing to do with…with my dad or my past. When no-one knew me, I thought I could just have a fresh start, be a blank slate…”
Rayane reached out to wrap a hand behind Jack’s back and he let him. Their heads tucked in against each other’s shoulders.
“Just talk to me.” Jack tried to measure out the exasperation. “And I promise to talk to you. Not to let things boil up like today.” His hand came up and settled into Rayane’s soft curls.
Rayane spoke softly into the crook of Jack’s neck. “You knew I needed you just as much as you needed me all along, didn’t you?” Jack smiled, feeling his emotions settle incrementally. “What was it you said that time? That you were the blind one, but I was the one that couldn’t see?”
Jack blushed and closed his eyes, breathing in the wonder of Rayane so close to him as he remembered those first so tentative moments. “I think I was trying to make some sort of grand gesture, but I just sound like a fortune cookie.”
Rayane giggled, breathing out tension. He pulled back from Jack’s shoulder, face to face. “I like fortune cookies.” His eyes sparkled and his hand came up to brush Jack’s curls from his face. He tapped his nose playfully, his voice growing more steady. “When did you get so wise?”
Jack smiled too, almost unreservedly now, lacing his hands behind Rayane’s neck. “It comes with experience." He paused. "You should try getting hit by a plane.”
Rayane’s face creased with delight as they both laughed. As the sound dropped away, he bit his lip and edged forwards. Jack closed his eyes, letting his lips lead the way across the small space but instead Rayane brought them forehead to forehead, making Jack’s eyes open again, centimetres apart, something serious still between them. He felt Rayane’s strong thumb caress his jawline. “I think…I think mainly I forget myself when I’m with you.”
“I’ll remind you,” said Jack, reaching behind Rayane’s neck and pulling them into a deep kiss. “I promise.”
Out in the hallway, the bell began to ring once more, and the sound of doors and voices began to intrude upon the room. They drew back slightly, hands slipping into hands.
“Are we ok?” asked Rayane, not taking his eyes from Jack’s face.
Jack gave a small nod. “But…” He paused, watching fear still flicker as tension across Rayane’s face at a single word. “We are going to talk more. You’ll tell me more.”
Rayane swallowed, but nodded back, wordlessly at first but then with a small smile. “Ok.”
Jack kissed him again, quickly but devotedly. They let one pair of hands part as they turned towards the door, but not the other two.
“Just maybe not about Diego…or not so much…” Jack joked, giving the hand in his a squeeze, lacing their fingers together.
“Do you think he’d be upset that he caused our first big fight and we literally didn’t talk about him once during it?” said Rayane, squeezing back as he opened the door.
“I don’t know,” said Jack, spinning his boyfriend out into the corridor. “Is his ego as big as yours?”