Chapter Text
Jack knew no one was coming to get him.
He didn’t need a letter of confirmation to be sure of this, and he knew that that was not coming either. He didn’t need Christmas wishes, and he certainly didn’t need to go back to the place that could only scrape by as something resembling a home.
His eyes snapped open and he sighed, tossing to his side.
He really, really, wanted to sleep more. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep through Christmas Eve, the birth of Christ, and the beginning of the new year. Ideally, he would have wanted to sleep forever. At least then he wouldn’t have to listen to Roger and Maurice boast about the affections and precious gifts they had received from their families once Lent term began.
“After dinner, we played charades. Father and I won so many times. We make a fantastic team!” Maurice would laugh while the three of them ate the chocolate cake he had brought to share.
Jack would only nod. He had tried—once or twice—to imagine his family sharing a joyful evening of games, but he soon gave up on the picture before it could completely form. Imagining impossible things served little purpose.
After some more restless tossing beneath the soft cotton sheets, Jack finally admitted defeat and woke up for good. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and hissed when his bare feet touched the cold tile floor.
Simon’s head shot up, his morning prayer had been rudely interrupted.
His hands remained clasped tightly, elbows slightly sunken into the rather stiff mattress. He didn’t bother getting up from the ground, jumpy green eyes landed on a restless sea; bright blue eyes stared right back at him for the first time since last Christmas vacation.
“Everyone has left.” Jack announced as if it was not obvious.
Usually, the halls of the boarding school were rarely silent, plagued by laughter and shouts and loud arguments, classmates running to where they were not supposed to. The absence of their mates was unmistakable in the peaceful silence.
The boy moved swiftly across the dorm as if it were his own, dropping himself onto Simon’s bed.
“Who even prays in the morning?” Jack asked, puzzled. He didn’t really like praying, even though he knew he was supposed to. It was just boring. His mind always wandered to other things. What he would have for dinner. A joke he had heard yesterday. Schoolwork. Sometimes he would simply drift off halfway through and jerk awake seconds later, having completely lost his place.
Because of this, he only prayed as much as strictly necessary: before bed and before supper on the rare occasions he dined with his family.
“A good Christian.” Simon replied, though he immediately regretted the rather snappy attitude.
He wasn’t insinuating that Jack was a “bad Christian” or anything of the sort.
“I mean…” Simon looked down at his hands. “I do. I like it. I can be quiet and listen to the birds chirp.” He said sheepishly.
“Right…” Jack rubbed his hands over his face and glanced toward the window. The morning light was pale and cold. “Won’t you get up from the floor so that we can go have breakfast?”
Simon could barely remember the last time he and Jack had had breakfast together. No, actually, he remembered it as if it was yesterday.
It had been the first day of Lent term, before the others returned. He’d been kind then, even sharing his blueberry scone with Simon, breaking it in half and pushing the larger piece towards him.
But soon it hadn’t been just Jack and Simon in the empty school by themselves. And, along with the snow and the changing of the seasons, the Jack that only Simon had the privilege of knowing disappeared too.
Gone was the boy who had held out his hand to help Simon climb the trees just outside the school, gripping so tightly that it hurt—but so tightly that Simon knew it would be impossible for him to fall without taking Jack down with him. Gone was the laughter in the morning and the closest thing Simon had to friendship.
Throughout the school year Jack mostly outright ignored him, though he would not pass up on a chance to make fun of him when he was with others. They would call Simon names and Jack would laugh, especially during choir. Simon had no friends, at least not ones that endured the change of the seasons.
And yet here Jack was again, sitting on his bed as though no time had passed at all.
As though he had simply walked back into the room and picked up where they had left off.
Jack looked at him expectantly.
Simon pushed himself up from his knees.
“I am hungry,” he said simply.
Breakfast was rather awkward, at least for Simon it was.
It always took him a second to warm up, though he was certain he eventually would, as always. Jack seemed perfectly comfortable, of course, eating as though the empty dining hall was no different from any other morning.
He’d received a letter from his mother, delivered by the housemaster. Only a few adults stayed behind at school during winter break.
His mother was as she always was. She asked about his wellbeing and promised that his Christmas gifts would be arriving in the mail very soon. Simon read the letter twice, smiling faintly at the familiar handwriting. The words were gentle, and Simon was grateful.
“PS: Your father sends his affections, he misses you.” The extent of that lie was almost humorous. His father was incapable of feeling any affection towards him, and the idea of him missing Simon was utterly ridiculous. His mother was a saint for trying to make him believe otherwise.
He smiled and carefully folded the letter, placing it inside the breast pocket of his uniform. Jack was still gulping down his breakfast. There had been no mail for him.
He didn't seem particularly bothered. Or, at least, he didn't seem like he wanted Simon to notice that he was bothered.
Simon observed him for a moment before drawing his attention to the great glass windows. Snow fell steadily outside, covering the grounds in a soft white layer. He had always liked watching it. There was something comforting about the way it erased everything underneath it, making the world look clean and untouched.
He worried about his mother, alone in the house with his father.
Although, if he was being honest, he supposed his presence wouldn't change much.
“Are you not gonna eat that?” Jack asked, pointing to the black pudding left untouched on Simon’s plate.
“I don’t really like it—” He didn’t have to finish his sentence for Jack to grab the blood sausage and scarf it down without hesitation. Then, as if to compensate, he reached over to his own plate and placed a handful of strawberries onto Simon's, bright red against the porcelain.
“You don't like strawberries?”
Jack nodded, cleaning up the rest of the scrambled eggs left on his plate. The knife made a screeching sound as it scraped against the plate. “I like them.”
Simon frowned.
“Then why did you give them to me?”
Jack looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious. “You don't like the other thing.”
Simon looked at the strawberries, then at Jack. “Thank you.”
Jack shrugged, already returning his attention to his own breakfast.
Simon picked up one of the strawberries. It was sweet.
It was such a small thing that it hardly seemed worth remembering, but Simon knew he would. He remembered everything.
Perhaps that was a problem.
He remembered the way people spoke when they were lying. He remembered which teachers smiled at him because they felt sorry for him. He remembered the sound of Jack's laugh when it wasn't meant for a mean-spirited audience.
Simon looked at Jack again.
He wondered if Jack remembered.
Jack drummed his fingers against the table. “It’s like the place is dead.”
Simon looked at the window again. “I don’t think it’s dead.” He liked the silence, it was different from the silence at home.
At home, silence meant something had happened. It meant his father's footsteps had stopped. It meant his mother was in the kitchen, washing the same cup over and over. It meant Simon ought to keep his bedroom door closed. Here, silence was just that, and he liked that.
He finished another one of the strawberries. It was cold and sour.
“You know what I mean.”
A chair scraped against the floor and Jack stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m bored.”
“That’s not a place.”
Jack shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking towards the doors.
“Where are you going?” Again.
“Come on.” Jack was already walking away, and Simon hurried after him.
The corridors were colder than the dining hall, and Simon pulled his sleeves over his hands as he walked. His footsteps echoed strangely against the stone, and for a moment he felt as if they were the only people left in this world.
Jack walked several paces ahead of him, hands still buried in his pockets.
“Where are we going?”
“Outside.”
Simon glanced again towards the tall, stained glass windows.
“It’s snowing.”
“I can see that.”
They continued down the hallway. Outside, the snow had covered almost everything. The courtyard looked different without the other boys running through it. It meant that the clean snow would take much longer to convert into dirty slush.
Jack stepped into the snow first and it came halfway up his shoes. “Bloody hell!”
Simon stepped outside then, the cold immediately finding its way into his uniform. He shivered, but followed Jack anyways.
They walked towards the edge of the school grounds, where the line of trees began. They were old and crooked and much taller than anything around them. Last winter, Jack had taught him how to climb some of them. Or, rather, Jack climbed them and insisted for Simon to follow.
Simon remembered being afraid. He remembered Jack’s hand around his wrist. “I’ve got you.”
He remembered believing him.
Snow collected on the branches of the trees, weighing them down. A few flakes drifted lazily through the air. All the flowers were gone. Simon had never understood how something could be beautiful and sad at the same time.
He supposed he understood now.
He thought about the letter in his pocket. About his mother. About his father.
About Jack, sitting across from him at breakfast with no letter at all.
He thought about all the things people said.
God loves you.
Your father sends his affections.
I've got you.
Sometimes the words were true, sometimes they weren’t. And sometimes, Simon thought, you couldn't tell the difference at all.
By the time they returned to the dormitory, Jack’s shoes were soaked through and Simon’s hands had turned red from the cold. They had not spoken much on the way back, though Jack hadn’t minded. Usually silence made him uncomfortable. There was too much room for thinking in it.
The dorm felt strange without the others. Their beds were made, their belongings were gone, and the room seemed larger without the clutter.
Jack kicked off his shoes and sat down on his bed. Simon sat down on the floor, taking the letter out from his breast pocket and unfolding it again.
“How many times are you going to read that?”
Simon shrugged, eyes centered on his mother’s elegant handwriting. He wasn’t really reading anymore. Instead, he observed the swirls and swoops of the ink. He liked the way she looped her lowercase es like little curls.
“Are you not going to answer me?”
“I shrugged, which means I don’t know.”
Jack wanted to tell him to put the letter down, but he promptly decided against that. He reminded himself again of the fact that he didn’t need any letters, and that calmed him down. Why would he be upset? It’s not like he wanted to hear from his family anyways. They obviously didn’t even appreciate him, and the feeling was mutual. He was fine.
Jack leaned back against the wall, Simon was still looking at the letter. Something about that irritated him. He looked away. He told himself he was only annoyed because Simon wasn’t paying attention to him, that was all. He had brought him outside. He had shown him the trees. He had even given him his strawberries at breakfast. The least Simon could do for Jack is look at him when he spoke.
Still, he found himself looking at Simon from the corner of his eye. His hair was still damp from the snow, a few strands had fallen across his forehead and his cheeks were red from the cold. Jack looked away again and he suddenly felt sick.
He tried to remember everything he had learned throughout the winters they had spent together. He knew that Simon liked nature—flowers and insects and such. He knew that blood made him afraid, that’s what he’d gathered from the time Jack had fallen and scraped his knee two winters ago. It had been just a minor injury, but the blood that oozed from the wound could have convinced anyone otherwise. Simon couldn’t even bear to look at it.
He knew that Simon had an outstanding memory. Jack remembered things too, he just preferred forgetting.
Simon suddenly folded the letter along its creases, tucking it back into his pocket and standing up. There was something familiar in the way Simon moved around the room, as though he were always worried about disturbing something. Jack thought perhaps that was why people picked on him, himself included. The world tended to like soft things until they became boring. Then it became interested in finding out how far they could stretch before they broke. That thought bothered him now, though he knew it wouldn’t bother him anymore once the snow melted, which was comforting.
“Where are you going?”
Simon looked at him.
“Back to my dorm.”
“Oh.” Jack hated how disappointed that had sounded.
“Do you want me to stay?”
“No.”
Simon nodded.
“Okay.” He walked towards the door. Jack stared at his back.
“Wait.” Wait for what?
Simon stopped.
“It’s boring.”
“What is?”
“Here.” Jack gestured vaguely towards the room. “The whole place.”
“I thought you liked it here.”
“I do.”
“Then why are you bored?”
Jack didn’t answer, he just shrugged. “Stay for a bit.”
Simon smiled. “Okay.” He sat back down on the floor.
Jack looked at him and felt relief. Ridiculous, there was nothing to be relieved about. He looked at the window. Outside, the snow continued to fall. Everything was white again.
Jack wondered if that was what people meant when they talked about forgiveness. You did something, and then someone covered it with enough white until no one could see it anymore. He wondered if that meant it had disappeared. Actually, he knew it didn’t. He wondered if forgiveness and forgetness were equivalents. He hoped they were, because there were things he already wanted to forget.
He glanced at Simon again, he was humming a tune Jack didn’t recognize. He wanted to ask what it was, but he didn’t really care. Instead, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
He remembered the tree, the mud, Simon laughing. His hand wrapped around his wrist, the warmth of his palm. The certainty that he wouldn’t let him fall.
Jack opened his eyes and Simon was still there. Simon smiled at him and Jack looked away.
Simon sat on the floor with his back against the side of Maurice’s bed, knees pulled loosely towards his chest. Jack remained on his mattress, eyes closed. Simon could hear the faint ticking of the clock on the wall and the occasional shifting of the pipes within the walls of the old building. He liked listening to things most people ignored.
He glanced at Jack again, he was either asleep or pretending to be. Simon had never been particularly good at telling with Jack, compared to the rest of people he interacted with. He considered himself quite insightful. He could tell when someone was lying to him, and when his mother was trying not to cry.
Jack was different. Jack could make himself into whatever people expected him to be. Wondering which Jack was real made his head hurt.
There had always been something comforting about watching Jack sleep. He looked younger that way.
He had known Jack for years now, although sometimes it felt like he had known several different boys who shared a face. There was the Jack who could be cruel without seeming to notice he was being cruel. The Jack who liked being listened to and hated being ignored. The Jack who seemed to need everyone around him to agree that he was important.
And then there was the other one.
Simon did not know which Jack was real. Perhaps they both were, which made things all the more difficult.
Simon had tried—sometimes—to pray for him. Not because Jack was bad, at least he didn’t think he was. He prayed because Jack seemed unhappy in a way he didn’t know how to explain.
Simon had always thought that prayer was always partly about admitting that there were things you couldn’t fix yourself. But what did he know? He was just a kid.
He folded his hands loosely on his lap. “Please let him be happy.”
The thought came naturally, then he paused. It felt incomplete, so he added. “Please let him be kind.”
He wasn’t sure which one he wanted more.
Outside, a branch bent painfully beneath the weight of the snow. Simon watched it carefully until the snow fell and it straightened again, untarnished.
“Are you praying?” Jack’s voice startled him. Simon looked over and he had opened one bright blue eye. It really looked almost fluorescent in the dark room.
“No.”
“Yes, you were. You were doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The prayer face.”
Simon almost laughed. “I don’t have a prayer face.”
“You do.”
“What does it look like?”
Jack sat up and tried to imitate him, pressing his hands together and closing his eyes dramatically.
Simon laughed and Jack grinned.
He had experienced happiness before. He knew what it felt like. He knew what friendship felt like—to an extent. He knew what companionship felt like, what gratitude felt like. And this was none of those things exactly. He felt it in his chest, and then, strangely, in his face.
He lowered his eyes, pretending to be interested in the hem of his sleeve. There was a loose thread sticking out of the seam.
Simon had always thought of innocence as something simple.
A child was innocent because he didn’t know any better. A child did not understand the things he wasn’t supposed to understand, and because of that, he could not be blamed for them. Same thing went for the insane, they did not know right from wrong, so the consequences of their actions rest not on their conscience. Simon knew that he was not insane, even if the other kids had taken a liking to calling him batty. He was fifteen, not a grown up, but old enough to understand. He was beginning to think he could be blamed for this.
He looked at Jack again and noticed that he’d been watching him. There was something almost shameful about being seen looking at someone for too long, though he could not explain why. He had done nothing wrong. Still, he felt as though he had been caught doing something.
He remembered something the priest had once said. Temptation—the priest had explained—often came disguised as something beautiful. Simon had disliked that sermon, he thought it was unfair. Why would He create something beautiful and expect him to be afraid of it?
Now, sitting in the quiet dormitory, he wondered if he had perhaps misunderstood.
Jack suddenly threw a pillow at him, it landed on Simon’s chest.
“What was that for?” he received a shrug instead of an answer.
He wanted to remember this moment, and he already knew he would. Simon collected these things. Like little insects stuck beneath glass. Beautiful because they could not move. Safe because they could not change.
Simon looked at the clock, it was eleven in the night. He normally stayed up reading much later than this, or writing in his journal, but for some reason he felt unusually tired. He yawned.
“Just sleep on Maurice’s bed.” Jack said. It’s not like Maurice would ever find out anyways.
“I don’t know…” He began, he had many things to write in his journal tonight, and it was under his pillow, on his bed, in his own dorm. Jack rolled his eyes dramatically and tossed himself back on the bed. “Fine, I’ll sleep on Maurice’s bed.” Jack grinned under the covers.