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The house always felt bigger when no one wanted to be in it.
Jack’s parents had left that morning with two suitcases, a rushed goodbye from his mother, and a thinly veiled lecture about “maturity” and “holding the fort.” Simon’s mother had already gone the night before, kissing his forehead and promising she’d be back before New Year’s, apologizing the way adults do when they know they won’t mean it. So it was just the two of them again, stuck in the cavernous darkness of school, the radiators ticking like something alive inside the walls.
Outside, frost made the hedges silver. The sky had already gone purple though it was barely four in the afternoon. Christmas lights blinked half-heartedly around the windows, reflected faintly in the glass like ghosts.
Simon sat cross-legged on the rug in front of the fire, a book open in his lap, though he hadn’t turned the page in ten minutes. The firelight painted his skin gold, deepened the tan he carried even in winter, and caught in his dark hair where it curled over his forehead. He looked, Jack thought irritably, too peaceful.
Jack paced.
He had been pacing for the better part of twenty minutes, socked feet thudding softly over the carpet. He didn’t know why he felt restless. It wasn’t as if he had anywhere to be. It wasn’t as if he had anyone to impress.
Simon glanced up finally. “You’re wearing a groove in the floor.”
Jack stopped. “Shut up.”
Simon’s mouth twitched into a soft smile.
The silence stretched again, thick but not uncomfortable. They’d known each other long enough that silence wasn’t an enemy. It just… held things. Things neither of them ever quite said.
Jack flopped onto the armchair opposite the fire, one leg hanging over the side. He watched Simon instead of the flames. Watched the way the light caught in his eyes, blue, but not soft blue. Not the pale washed-out kind. They were sharp. Clear. Almost unsettling if you looked too long.
Jack looked too long.
“Oi,” he said suddenly.
Simon hummed in response.
“Who d’you reckon you’ll marry when you’re older?”
Simon blinked, dragged back from wherever he’d been. “What?”
“When you’re older,” Jack repeated, shrugging like it didn’t matter, like it hadn’t been sitting under his tongue. “Who’re you going to marry?”
Simon tilted his head slightly. “I don’t know.”
Jack scoffed. “You must have an idea.”
Simon’s gaze dropped back to the page, but he wasn’t reading. He was thinking. Jack could tell by the way his fingers stilled against the paper.
“Someone…” Simon began slowly. “Outgoing, I suppose.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “That’s boring.”
Simon ignored him. “Someone who isn’t ashamed.”’
The room shifted.
It was subtle. A tightening. Like the air had thinned.
Jack’s grin faltered for half a second before he forced it back into place. “Ashamed of what?”
Simon shrugged, but it wasn’t careless. “Just… themselves, I guess. Someone who doesn’t hide.”
Jack’s throat felt dry.
He laughed too loudly. “How deep.”
Simon finally looked up again, studying him in that quiet, unnerving way he had. Not accusing. Just seeing.
Jack hated being seen.
“Fine,” Simon said, as if to ease the tension he hadn’t created. “What about you? What do you want your wife to look like?”
Wife.
The word felt solid. Safe. Prescribed.
Jack leaned back, stretching his arms behind his head. “Well,” he said lightly, “she’d have to be fit, obviously.”
Simon’s mouth curved faintly. “Obviously.”
“Long hair,” Jack continued, staring up at the ceiling like the answer might be written there. “Probably black.”
Simon stilled.
Jack didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.
“Bit of a tan,” he went on. “Not pale. Proper colour. And—” He closed his eyes, because it was easier to describe something you couldn’t see.
And there it was.
Not a girl. Not some vague future wife.
Simon.
Simon in the firelight. Simon laughing in the cold. Simon’s hair falling into his eyes. Simon’s blue gaze steady and unflinching and terrible and kind all at once.
Jack’s stomach flipped violently.
“—blue eyes,” he finished, voice rougher than he intended. “Really blue. Like… proper bright.”
Silence.
When he opened his eyes, Simon was staring at him.
They both knew.
They didn’t say it. But they both knew.
The description hung between them like something fragile and dangerous.
Jack’s heart thudded so loudly he was certain Simon could hear it.
He grinned suddenly, sharp and performative. “Hey,” he said, pitching his voice into a sing-song lilt, “maybe if you were a girl, I’d fancy you.”
There it was. The safety net. The joke. The out.
He expected Simon to wrinkle his nose. To shove him. To say something like “gross” or “shut up, you weirdo.”
Instead, Simon smiled.
Not embarrassed. Not flustered.
Just… soft.
“I think it’d be the same for me,” Simon said.
Jack’s smile faltered.
For a split second, something naked flashed across his face—fear? hope?—before he smothered it with laughter.
“Yeah?” he barked. “You’d fancy me if I was a girl?”
Simon’s gaze didn’t waver. “I think so.”
Jack’s lungs felt too tight.
“He laughed again, louder, sharper. ‘Her eyes would have to be wicked blue though,’ he said quickly, words tumbling over themselves. ‘Like—like your beady eyes. Stare right through me. Makes me feel like I’m being judged by God or something.’”
Simon stared at him for half a beat.
“Beady?” he repeated slowly, incredulously.
“Yeah,” Jack pressed on, because stopping would mean thinking. “Creepy little prophet eyes. Like you’re about to start preaching at me. Proper unnerving.”
There was a flicker in Simon’s expression—offense, maybe, but softened by something warmer. He held Jack’s gaze for a long second, and that look alone made Jack’s pulse trip over itself. Those eyes. Clear and sharp and impossibly blue in the glow of the Christmas lights. Not beady. Never beady.
“You’re unbelievable,” Simon said.
“Oh, don’t act wounded. You know it’s true.”
Simon’s mouth twitched. Then, without breaking eye contact, he reached blindly to his side, grabbed one of the decorative throw pillows from the sofa behind them, and hurled it straight at Jack’s face.
Jack didn’t see it coming.
The pillow smacked him squarely across the nose, muffling the rest of whatever sarcastic retort he’d been about to launch. He flailed backward, almost knocking his glass sideways.
“Oi!” Jack sputtered, clawing the pillow off his head. “You little!”
Simon was already laughing. Not the polite, restrained laugh he used at school. Not the soft huff from earlier. This was bright and open and unguarded, shoulders shaking, head tipped back slightly so his hair fell away from his forehead.
Jack stared at him for a second too long.
Something in his chest tightened painfully.
“Take it back,” Simon said through his laughter. “Beady.”
“You assaulted me!” Jack shot back, but he was grinning now despite himself.
“Deserved.”
Jack lunged forward in retaliation, grabbing the pillow and swinging it back at Simon. Simon yelped, trying to scramble away, but Jack caught him across the shoulder. Feathers puffed faintly inside the fabric with the impact.
“Prophet eyes, do I?” Simon said, scrambling to his knees and grabbing another pillow. “Judging you?”
“You do!” Jack insisted, even as he raised his arms defensively. “Every time I say something remotely clever you look at me like I’ve committed a sin.”
“That’s because you usually have.”
Simon threw his pillow.
Jack ducked this time, the cushion flying past him and knocking into the side of the Christmas tree. The ornaments rattled dangerously.
They both froze.
The tree wobbled, lights blinking steadily as if unimpressed by their chaos.
“Careful,” Simon muttered, eyes wide.
“You threw it!”
“You started it!”
Jack snorted and tackled him anyway.
It wasn’t violent. It was clumsy, all limbs and laughter as they collapsed sideways onto the rug. The fire crackled louder at the sudden movement, shadows jumping across the walls. Jack managed to wrestle the pillow back and press it into Simon’s face.
“Say it,” Jack demanded, breathless. “Say your eyes are beady.”
Simon’s laughter came out muffled beneath the cushion. He shoved back, surprising Jack with his strength. They rolled, knocking into the coffee table with a dull thud.
“Your eyes,” Simon managed between laughs, finally managing to push the pillow away, “are the ridiculous ones.”
“Ridiculous how?”
“Like a startled fox.”
Jack barked a laugh, genuinely startled. “A fox?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not even insulting!”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
They stilled then, still half tangled on the rug.
Simon’s hair had fallen into his eyes, dark strands brushing against lashes that were unfairly long. His cheeks were flushed from the scuffle, warmth blooming across his tan skin. The blue of his eyes looked brighter somehow, almost electric in the firelight.
Jack became acutely aware of how close they were.
One of his hands was still braced on Simon’s shoulder. Simon’s knee was pressed against his hip. Their breathing hadn’t quite settled, coming in uneven bursts that fogged faintly in the cool air away from the fire.
The laughter faded slowly, like a tide receding.
Jack could still feel the echo of his own words hanging there. If you were a girl, I’d fancy you.
Simon’s smile softened, but it didn’t disappear. He didn’t look embarrassed. He didn’t look like he regretted saying it’d be the same for him.
That terrified Jack more than any teasing ever could.
“You do stare, though,” Jack muttered, because he couldn’t stand the silence stretching into something meaningful. “It’s weird.”
Simon’s thumb brushed absently against the edge of the pillow between them. “Only when you’re saying something worth listening to.”
Jack huffed. “That’s rare.”
Simon’s eyes flicked over his face in that same steady way. “Not as rare as you think.”
The honesty in it made Jack’s stomach flip again.
He shoved himself upright abruptly, breaking the contact. “You’re still batty.”
“And you’re still loud,” Simon shot back lightly, pushing himself up too.
Jack picked up the fallen pillow and tossed it lazily back onto the sofa. “Next time you throw something at me, I’m not going easy.”
“You didn’t go easy.”
“I absolutely did.”
Simon laughed again, softer now. “Sure.”
They settled back against the sofa, shoulders brushing in a way that felt less accidental than before. The adrenaline of the scuffle left a strange buzzing under Jack’s skin. He told himself it was just the play-fighting. Just the warmth of the fire. Just the fact that the house felt too big and too quiet and Simon’s laughter filled it up in a way that made the emptiness easier to ignore.
But when Jack glanced sideways, catching Simon watching the lights flicker on the tree, he felt that same sharp jolt of fear and recognition.
Those eyes weren’t beady.
They weren’t judging.
They were simply there, clear and present and unbearably attentive.
“Prophet eyes,” Jack muttered under his breath, almost fondly.
Simon nudged him with his shoulder. “Startled fox.”
Jack snorted, and the sound dissolved into another round of easy laughter, real this time, less frantic, more grounded. The kind that made the air feel warmer.
Outside, snow continued to fall, quiet and relentless.
Inside, the house no longer felt quite so empty.