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The day had been a whirlwind of chaos. Now, finally, Rayane hoped he was going to be able to cling to something normal, as the group of them stepped out of the lift into the corridor outside the Roussells’ apartment. Audrey led the way, chattering nervously, keys in hand, guiding Lizzie along with her other. Jack followed his sister, his arms hanging heavily at his sides. Both of them were still covered in the dust and blood of the day; Lizzie keeping the one hand that was almost entirely red still consciously away from her body. Rayane followed, one hand gently touching the small of Jack’s back, just trying to keep a connection to him. Damian brought up the rear, chewing subconsciously at a fingernail.
“Jordan said he had dropped Leo at his friend’s.” She put the key in the door and turned. “But I think he should have got back before us…”
Before Audrey could finish speaking, the door was pulled straight inwards and Jordan threw himself around Lizzie, the first in his path. She let out a small yell of shock before rapping an arm around his back, as he released one arm to scrabble at the front of Jack’s shirt, pulling him into the hug as well.
“Fuck, you guys,” he spluttered, his eyes quickly filling with tears as ever.
Audrey put a hand on his shoulder and did her best to move the set of them through the door and into the hallway. Rayane watched Jack lean his head tiredly into his sister’s hair. Since Audrey had begged the twins to repeat to her over and over that the paramedics had said they could go home, and Damian had managed to convince a colleague to give them a lift back to the apartment block, no one had managed many more words. Rayane had sat squeezed in the back of one car, alongside Damian, against Jack, who seemed simultaneously rigid and half-collapsed, starring out through the windshield as he held tight to Rayane’s hand.
Jordan backed into the space inside the apartment and the door closed behind them all. He slowly squeezed then released his siblings, keeping a hand on each of them as he stepped back and looked at them fully for the first time.
“Don’t ever do that to me again, I swear…”
He stopped short. Rayane could see the same shock he’d felt playing out across Jordan’s face, taking in the dust, the blood.
“Oh my god…” he spluttered, looking at their mother then back at the twins. “You…Are you sure they don’t need to go to hospital right now?”
Audrey put a hand on Lizzie’s back. “They’ve said they’re ok.”
“We just wanted to be home,” said Lizzie quietly but steadily, looking at Jack. Jack coughed, painfully, through his whole body, but nodded.
“And we are,” said Audrey, gently, still trying to steer everyone further into the apartment. She looked back at Damian and Rayane behind her. “Right…next steps…” Rayane could see her working against the remains of all the anxiety she’d felt over the course of the day, words spilling over each other as she tried to reassure herself through action. Rayane too was trying to process how close they’d clung to each other all day; how it had seemed like Audrey was holding on to him like a talisman, like their two-fold care for her children had to be enough to get them out of this situation unscathed. “Go…Jack…if you…Rayane, if you help him get changed, I’ll help Lizzie shower first and then…then, food, rest, sleep.”
“Leave everything in here to me,” said Damian, moving round the group and pulling Jordan after him into the kitchen. Jack looked back at Rayane as Lizzie let herself be led off by her mother, but halfway to their bedroom, Audrey stopped and turned back, also looking at the two boys. “Rayane, Lizzie will stay in Leo’s room tonight. You’ll stay with Jack.”
Rayane wasn’t sure it was a question or even an invitation, but he nodded. Jack took his hand back up as they followed the two women. Audrey busied herself in bundling up bedding, while Lizzie found a fresh set of clothes, and then they left, leaving Jack and Rayane in silence. Jack moved to push the door closed.
Rayane had sat on the edge of Jack’s bed. Jack’s quietness was starting to tighten his throat and fill his stomach with lead.
“Hey,” Rayane said, towards Jack’s turned back. “I know none of this is something that gets processed straightaway, but you’re here, you’re ok. You’re going to be ok.”
Jack looked over his shoulder towards him wearily but then relaxed, a breath of tension leaving him. He closed his eyes.
“I know; you’re right.”
Rayane patted the bed beside him. “Come here.” Jack let a small smile raise the corner of his mouth.
“I…” he looked down at the grime and spots of blood that clung to one of his favourite white t-shirts. “I need to change. I’ll get dust on everything.” His hands went to the hem of his shirt, and he gingerly made to pull it over his head.
“Wait, let me help,” said Rayane, pushing himself off the bed and carefully lifting the collar round the painful graze on Jack’s chin, the cut on his nose, his eyebrow. Jack coughed again and exhaled as Rayane threw the shirt into a corner.
“Thanks.” They were close again now, Rayane taking in the contrast of the cleaner skin of Jack’s chest alongside patchy bruising that was starting to appear. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out, brushing his fingers over one mark, just above Jack’s heart. How close had he come to losing everything under the rubble of the school? He slipped his arm around Jack’s bare waist and pulled him to him, needing to feel him warm and real and there. He felt Jack carefully tuck his head into his shoulder again, just as they had outside the school.
“I’m so glad you’re ok.”
“I’m so glad you weren’t there. I’m sorry you were worried.”
Jack tried to stifle a cough against Rayane’s neck, but pulled back as it wracked through his chest. Rayane put a hand on his back and waited.
“Do you want to talk about any of it now?”
Jack looked at him with big eyes. “I…I honestly barely knew what was happening…or what happened. It was all just reactions. Lizzie…she did everything. I just panicked.”
Jack placed the flat of his hand against his chest, rubbing it backwards and forwards, his breath making it rise and fall. Rayane added his on top, feeling the quick rhythm of his heartbeat beneath.
“Hey,” said Rayane again, he hoped steadily. “It’s just the adrenaline. You’re ok now.”
“Mm,” muttered Jack distractedly, pushing a hand through his hair but stopping with a grimace.
“You got out. You all got out and you got Mme Delcourt out.”
Jack let out a shaky breath but nodded. Rayane pulled him close again.
“I was the same after the thing with the guy with the gun at the vineyard, but you’ll see. It’ll pass.”
Jack tightened the hug at his words, but not without a quiet moan of pain escaping his lips as his shoulder contracted. Rayane went still.
“Are you ok?”
“It’s just bruises,” Jack muttered, trying to untense the pain. “I got off lightly.” Rayane wasn’t sure he could look at Jack’s face and say the same thing, but he let it slide. Jack breathed in, steadying himself. “It’s not…” His voice dried up in his mouth. He took another breath. “It’s not like last time. With the plane crash…”
“Oh, mon coeur.” Rayane didn’t know what else to do but hold his boyfriend. They rocked slowly together.
Finally Jack, with a small cough, began to relax his arms. “I should…I should shower and…” Suddenly, his muscles went tight. Rayane pulled back to look at him.
“Jack?”
He had stopped, finding himself facing the mirror on the wall behind them. His hand came up to his temple, shivering as it mapped the thick ribbon of blood that had dried down his cheek from his hairline to his neck. “Oh…” A small noise escaped him, and he winced as the fingers crossed cuts and bruises, his face growing even whiter beneath the dust. He turned his head slowly, seeing the second dried stream from his ear, the cut to his eyebrow, to his nose, turning his arms to see the blood on his hands and elbows, shock threatening to overwhelm his face at the state of his own reflection. “I…”
Rayane put his hand against his side, staying close to him, worried that he looked about to faint. “Hey…” He stroked what he hoped were soothing circles into the small of Jack’s back and tried to turn him away from the mirror. “Look at me. We’re going get you cleaned up. I’ll do it; it’ll be ok.”
Jack made another small noise, whimpering as he touched the raw skin on his chin, as though all the pain of the visible injuries was just reaching him for the first time. Ignoring the discarded shirt, instead grabbing a towel from behind the door and wrapping it around Jack’s tight shoulders, Rayane physically moved him now, leading him back into the corridor, pulling out a chair from the dining table and lowering him into it. Jack stopped resisting, sinking down heavily into the seat, dust still dropping from his clothes and hair with movement.
Rayane looked up at Damian and Jordan, both still trying to look busy and useful in the kitchen. The sound of the shower drifted through from the bathroom.
“Can you give me whatever first aid kit you have? And a bowl of cooled boiled water.”
Jordan nodded at the instruction, looking worriedly at his brother as Rayane turned around, gathering up three tissue boxes from various surfaces, laying them on the table and pulling round a chair to sit in front of Jack, rubbing their knees together. He placed a hand gently back on top of Jack’s arm as Damian placed a large metal tin on the table alongside a bottle of antiseptic. Soon Jordan followed with a slowly steaming bowl of water.
“Merci,” mumbled Rayane, sifting through the tin with one hand until he’d laid out what he thought he could use. He turned back to Jack, adjusting the towel around his shoulders like they were at a barbershop.
“Mon coeur,” he said gently, watching Jack’s wide eyes following his hands everywhere, “you need to tell me if any of this hurts at all, ok?”
Jack looked into his face and nodded silently, and Rayane pulled open a packet of cotton wool, dipping the first pad into the warm water before lifting his hand to Jack’s forehead. Jack’s eyes followed him until, as the wet cotton met his skin, he pressed them closed.
Rayane stroked at the corrupting, defiling blood that stood for all his fear, terror and horror from the entire day as gently as possible. Slowly, he tried to blot and soak away the dust that had somehow fixed itself to Jack’s soft skin, lifting more and more away until the piece of cotton was dark with it.
“See. It’s all coming off.”
Jack kept his eyes closed whenever the swab touched his skin, but opened them as Rayane lifted it away to start again with a fresh piece, watching the small pile grow on the table, feeling rivulets of the warm water run away from the cloth, down his face, down his neck to reach the towel, just like the blood had trickled its way down during the first panicked minutes after the explosion.
“Could you do around my eyes?” he asked softly, looking downwards, at the same time as picking up a tissue, dabbing it in the water and nervously starting to wipe at his own hands.
“Of course,” said Rayane, picking up fresh cotton and cupping his hand under the uninjured side of Jack’s chin to steady himself. Slowly, in long strokes, he cleaned away the dirt below Jack’s eyebrows, noticing the faint white scars that still lingered there. Rayane tried to be as gentle as possible, aware of Jack’s every breath, working round the new cuts, trying to clean away the dried blood without opening any of the wounds again.
“There you are,” he said, as he lifted the last of the dirt from under Jack’s long eyelashes.
Jack coughed again, but looked up at him with brighter eyes. “Thank you.”
“De rein.”
Jordan silently replaced the bowl of water. Damian set down a cup of hot tea by Jack’s side and he took a long sip. Rayane absentmindedly brushed off some of the accumulated dust from his own arms. It was his turn to cough lightly, and Jack’s turn to smile.
“It’s catching,” he joked.
“I think I always knew you were allergic to school,” said Jack, recovering himself slightly. “I feel like I’ve swallowed half of it.”
Rayane smiled and went back to work, until, just above Jack’s hairline, he found a deep gash a least two inches long, a concerned noise slipping out from his lips as he tried to ignore the way his stomach flipped.
“Jack, that looks really painful.”
Jack nodded, his fingers coming up to feel along it with another grimace. Jordan came back to the table with a glass and a packet of painkillers, which Jack swallowed. Rayane began sticking small steri-strips along the length of the cut as best he could. He didn’t know what he was doing in any real sense, he just hoped it was helping. As he gently held his curls out of the way and dabbed at it with the antiseptic, Jack let out a hiss of pain and gripped his leg. Rayane’s hand jumped back.
“Désolé, désolé.”
“C'est bon. C'est juste…”
Jack swallowed thickly, pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes watering.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
“Oui. Just…leave it for now?” He looked over at Damian, who was finishing up work on a large bowl of pasta. The sound of the shower had stopped. “I don’t want Maman to worry.”
“Ok,” said Rayane, nervously. Instead he took up Jack’s hand and carefully turned his arm over, starting at the bad grazes to his elbows and the cuts along his wrists and knuckles.
After a few minutes, Lizzie appeared from Leo’s room with her mother, in fresh clothes. Her hair was wet, and Rayane could see that where she had had blood on her face before, there were now three red but clean scrapes. Audrey made a noise of approval seeing the first aid kit on the table and led Lizzie over to sit next to Jack.
“Mon chou,” she said, squeezing Jack’s shoulder and kissing his cheek as she leaned over to take the antiseptic. Rayane watched Jack tip his head slightly so that she wouldn’t see the worst of the wound, before he gave Lizzie’s hand a squeeze as she winced through the same treatment as him.
“You look better, Lizzie,” he ventured, as Audrey let her finish looking after the cuts to her arms herself.
“So do you,” said Lizzie, looking at his mostly cleaned face, her eyes drifting to Rayane and the bloodied cotton that remained on the table. At the sound of Jordan gathering together plates and cutlery, Rayane quickly got up and swept the mess into his arms and into the bin.
“Everyone’s picked up some medical work experience today,” Audrey joked, unconvincingly, as she moved the first aid kid and wiped down the table. “Jack, have some food now while it’s hot, then you can have a proper shower and rest.”
Jack nodded, slipping the towel from round his shoulders stiffly so that it hung over the back of the chair, his bare skin still smarting from where Rayane had cleaned it. When Rayane came back to the table and sat down, as Jordan passed out plates and Damian served the dinner, Jack slipped his hand into Rayane’s under the table.
---
After dinner, where Jack had managed half a plate of food before coughing so hard Rayane was sure he was choking, Rayane had helped his boyfriend shower properly, washing away the rest of the day. He’d watched Jack reexamine his face in the mirror, seeing the remaining cuts and bruises, but freed from the blood and debris. He wondered if someone might have made a comment, but he realised, as Jack lent on him and let him carefully, gently, rinse his hair away from the worst of his injuries, that this was a different kind of intimacy.
By the end, Rayane wished he’d taken off his own clothes; his shirt was wet through, his shorts half soaked, but he didn’t care as he rewrapped a towel around Jack’s body, breathing in the new but familiar clean smell. They made it back to the twin’s room where Rayane found Jack his comfiest, easiest clothes, and then borrowed an extra set for himself to change into. He was shocked when he finally looked at his phone and saw that it was only just after 7pm. It felt like he’d been awake for days.
“A little more food and cuddle on the sofa?” offered Rayane once Jack had got dressed, with a little affectionate help. “Or do you want to go to bed?”
“Sofa sounds good,” said Jack, looking exhausted but like closing his eyes was going to be a whole new battle.
Rayane watched Jack rearrange the pillows while he microwaved another bowl of pasta to try and get a little more nutrition into him. Everyone else seemed to have retreated to their rooms, leaving the house strangely quiet.
“Come here,” he said again as he handed Jack the bowl and settled into the pillows, opening his arm out to the side. Jack sat, leaning gingerly back against Rayane’s chest, until the angle made him pull his legs up onto the couch as well and fully lie back. He balanced the food on his chest and took a few small bites.
“How do you think everyone else is?” said Jack, chewing slowly.
“Your family?” asked Rayane. “Or the other kids from school?”
“Everyone…” said Jack after a pause.
Rayane considered. “I think your mom went through something a bit like her worst nightmare, but then the reality has turned out better than she at one point thought it would...” He left unsaid what parts of that he’d shared with her. “And for Damian, I think he had to be there for her at the same time as realising what you both mean to him.” Jack shifted against his chest, glancing up with a complicated look. “And then Lizzie, I don’t know…I think you’ll understand her better than I can in all of this. I think she will have been just as worried about you as she always is though.” He smoothed his hand through Jack’s hair as he’d done a thousand times before. “Do you think we’ll go back there? I can’t believe the whole school might be gone.”
Jack thought of the shell of the classroom as they’d left it, the piles and piles of rubble, the missing windows. “I think it’s gone.”
Rayane felt a wave of grief for all the memories they’d made there. He placed a kiss into Jack’s damp curls.
“When did you get there?” Jack asked simply, putting the bowl of half-eaten pasta back onto the coffee table and starting to play with Rayane’s fingers, burrowing inwards onto the sofa.
Rayane couldn’t believe what they were talking about had only happened that morning. It felt like a lifetime ago now. “I…” He cast his mind back to the first hour of the day. “I think the noise of the blast from the explosion actually woke me up. Then I saw how late it was, and I had that voicemail from you…” He tangled his fingers in between Jack’s. “I didn’t actually listen to it at first; I knew you’d just be telling me I was late. But then…then I also had a message from Diego asking if I was at the school, and then each of the group chats started getting these links to breaking news, with pictures…” He took a breath. “That’s when I listened to your message…and I knew you were there…and then I tried to call you back, but it just kept going to voicemail.” Rayane heard his voice break. Jack curled round to face him, and Rayane kissed him, quickly, urgently, anchoring himself in his lips. “Then I just ran there. I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast.”
“Did you see everyone get out?” asked Jack, pressing Rayane’s hand to his lips.
“Mm,” murmured Rayane, closing his eyes now as more memories from the day raised their heads. He chose one curl to run between his fingers, stretching it out to its full length. “There was one point, when the last people were walking out, before the second explosion, before it seemed like everyone being rescued was really hurt…where I was so angry with you.”
Jack looked up at him. Rayane sighed and tried to explain himself.
“All these kids were running out, running away from all the danger and trouble. Straight to their parents. But not you.” He swallowed. “And I knew it could be because of something really bad, like you were trapped or worse or something…but I also knew that there was no way Jack Roussel was only thinking about staying out of danger and getting himself to safety. Especially when you were with Lizzie. There was no way you weren’t helping someone or doing something to save other people.” Jack was looking at him with big eyes, pressing his hand to his lips again as Rayane continued to thread the one curl through his fingers. “And you definitely weren’t thinking of everyone who was going mad waiting for you outside.”
Jack let out a half-laugh that turned into a cough. Rayane cupped the back of his head as he laid back down. A door opened down the corridor and Audrey crossed the room, heading for Leo’s door. “I’m just going to check on your sister,” she said, quietly, before disappearing again.
Jack breathed in. The room had grown dark now and the expression on his face was harder to read. “Rayane, I was just panicking. I had no idea what to do and I was terrified you’d have just got to the building before everything fell apart.” Rayane was still; he’d not thought about that scenario. “We could hear the sirens, but we had no idea if anyone was coming for us. It felt like forever. And then…then everything collapsed again, and it felt like it was only a question of time until we just got buried…”
Jack lapsed into silence. Rayane gripped his hand insistently. “I would have kicked through walls to get to you if they’d let us.”
“I know.”
They kissed again but Jack pulled back, biting his lip and hugging his arms to himself.
“Rayane, when…when the second explosion happened, I came round on the floor and…” The pause was long and heavy. Rayane ran his hand up and down his arm, his heart beating with concern. “I…” Jack looked into his boyfriend’s eyes but then away again, back into himself. “Rayane, I couldn’t see.” Rayane felt cold, flooded with the fear of hours earlier. “I thought it was all happening again.”
“Oh no, Jack.” Rayane gathered him into his arms, wrapping them together, holding him as close as he could. Jack released his arms and hung them around Rayane’s shoulders, letting the weight of the fear shudder out of his chest.
“It…it was just the dust…but…”
Rayane smoothed the hair back from his forehead, brushing his warm palm across his boyfriend’s eyes, watching them focus on his face in a way that still seemed new, still seemed unfamiliar from their earliest days.
“I’m so sorry.”
Jack winced slightly as the cut on his eyebrow shifted. “I just had no idea what to do with all those feelings without you there.”
“Je suis là.”
Jack ran his hand over Rayane’s cheek and smiled tiredly.
“Oui, tu es.”
---
Audrey closed the door to Leo’s room as quietly as possible, backing quietly away as she spoke in a soft voice.
“She’s just gone off. I think you should…” She turned, but stopped at a muffled noise, seeing Rayane looking towards her with a finger pressed to his lips. She swallowed the rest of her words.
Jack’s still-damp curls were splayed across Rayane’s chest, the back of his head nestled into the crook of one elbow while his face rested inwards, half nuzzled into the fabric of his boyfriend’s shirt. He lay, his long legs stretched out along the sofa, his arms wrapped around himself, except for one hand that still held drowsily onto a few fingers of Rayane’s left hand. His chest rose and fell steadily, regularly, more calmly than it had for hours. Rayane took his finger back away from his lips and laid his hand into Jack’s hair, combing through the curls gently, carefully avoiding the deep cut to the front.
Audrey walked quietly forwards, watching the two of them, blinking away new tears. She slid silently to sit on the remaining section of sofa as Jack snuffled gently in his sleep and shifted further into Rayane’s arms. Both of them watched him for a long moment.
“Thank you,” Audrey whispered finally, squeezing Rayane’s knee. He smiled, emptied of emotion but overwhelmed with the strength of their love for the same boy.
“Can you sleep now?” he mouthed back. He saw Damian had emerged from their room, and as he put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, she gave a tired smile and a small nod that said, ‘I’ll try’. Not breaking her husband’s touch, she stood up, but bent down to the side of the couch rather than leaving. Then, carefully, slowly, she spread a blanket over Jack’s legs and chest, bending to leave the gentlest of kisses on his forehead. She passed a second blanket over Rayane’s knees, helping him bring his legs up onto the couch as well without waking Jack. Damian noiselessly drew the curtains.
“Bon nuit, mes enfants,” whispered Audrey.