Work Text:
Jack woke up sore, again.
While his waist and back were by no means giving him an easy time, it was his neck that felt the stiffest. He turned his head to the right experimentally, where the sight of Simon, body flush against the wall and still asleep, awaited him. The arrangement had been agreed upon a long time ago: Jack would sleep on the outer side of the bed, and Simon would sleep on the inner. Both preferred it that way: Simon claimed being on the outer side made him feel as if he was about to fall off at any time, while Jack found the state of being trapped between Simon and the wall oppressive and suffocating.
The main thing Jack enjoyed was that, like this, he could get up first without Simon taking notice. He was then free to stop by the lavatory, where he could wash his face and comb his hair properly, before making his way to the dining hall. He had a foul tendency to neglect his appearance when he and Simon were alone—they both did, which was somewhat to be expected, he assumed, seeing as there was no one else around to observe them (other than the Headmaster, who occasionally joined them for dinner; only in those instances would they bother with parting their hair, tucking their shirts in and smoothing any wrinkles out of their socks.)
Likewise, he also appreciated that, like this, Simon could not get himself out of bed without waking him up in the process. The last time he’d been able to do that, Jack had walked up to where he was sitting in the dining hall, only to find a tray of his favourite breakfast foods (a raspberry scone, a green apple and a glass of milk) waiting for him on the spot opposite Simon’s. That had unnerved him; is he obsessed with me or something? he had thought—albeit somewhat half-heartedly; he’d known Simon long enough to know that, odd as he was, he never intended to mock or offend people, least of all him. Jack liked that, too.
He treaded through the dormitory hallways quietly; the frosty, morning air was fogging up the windows and he felt chillier than usual. Must be the coldest day of the year, he thought, and fastened his robe tighter. He splashed his face with a handful of tap water and, just as the final drops subsided beneath his skin, he knew: he was sick. Well, no matter; he would go on with his day as usual. He was a man, he could take it. He could not seriously be expected to plough into bed at the first sign of malaise—were he not to join the war effort soon? What would he do, should he fall sick at the front? Surely not spend his days lazing away as his comrades braved through the conflict without him. He returned to his room, where he found Simon still asleep, changed into his uniform and made his way to the dining hall.
When Simon joined him, some fifteen minutes later, he found no tray of his favourite foods waiting for him—although, Jack had pilfered a cup of coffee from the Cook’s pot; the luxury was rare to come by and, knowing how fond Simon was of the beverage, he could not resist the temptation. Τhat was becoming somewhat of a habit for him lately. “‘Mornin,” muttered Simon, yawning. He took notice of the cup and immediately brought it to his lips, eagerly but wordlessly. Good—the last thing Jack needed was to have the fact that he was doing Simon favours (seemingly without return, too) acknowledged. Right now, he was more concerned with navigating through the day in spite of the confusion fogging up his every thought. He realised was drifting off. Cmon, focus: hand, scone, mouth, he guided himself through biting the pastry with little appetite.
“Are you okay?” Oh, great, Simon noticed already—how lovely. Jack had been looking forward to being scolded for running around without a coat the previous week.
“Just fine, thanks,” he deadpanned. With a little luck, Simon would think that he had simply woken up in a sour mood—as he was sometimes prone to do in the holidays—and, God willing, would leave him alone for the remainder of the day, where Jack would deal with the matter at hand in peace.
“You don’t look fine,” Simon kept going, perfect. “Is it… your neck?” he guessed reluctantly. Jack could feel his cheeks firing up, with fever-heat or embarrassment, he did not know. Luckily, Simon had picked up on the fact that their sleeping arrangement was not to be discussed, whether that be privately or—God forbid—with other people, without needing to be told. This, Jack assumed, was his way of asking the question he felt obliged to ask without addressing the real elephant in the room.
Worst thing of all was that it had been Jack’s idea, all those years ago. Granted, things were different back then, when they were nothing more than a pair of snotty eight-year-olds spending their first holidays away from home, in a freezing, empty dormitory. Jack had crept into Simon’s bed wordlessly and, together, they had braved through the terrors of the night. But then, they—he—had kept on with the habit, in turn letting it turn from endearing (if it was ever endearing in the first place) to odd and, any day now, to filthy and inappropriate. Oh yes, Jack was very well aware of what people would say, if only they knew. Sometimes, after Simon was asleep, he would terrorise himself with images of people—the choir, the Headmaster, the Precentor, his father—finding out. The thought made him sick.
“Yes, it’s my neck.” Back off now, Simon, please and thank you. Of course, no such luck. Simon knew him too well, he’d realised, to be deceived. Before Jack could react, he was extending his palm over to Jack’s forehead, softly grazing it with the backside of his fingers. He did not make a sound, only raised his eyebrows with a self-satisfied nod. Jack glared at him.
“Did I, or did I not tell you so?”
“Yes Simon, you did, how great this must be for you,” he replied with an eye-roll, swatting the other boy’s palm away.
“Finish your breakfast—then straight to bed. I’m getting the nurse,” he declared, and Jack thought of protesting but, for all his earlier might, realised that he didn’t have the energy even for that. He took a final, listless bite off the scone he had been worrying, then set off for the dormitory.
Half an hour later, Jack was back in bed—the inner side, this time, which annoyed him—tucked under four layers of covers. In truth, the nurse had suggested he remain cool, and only used two blankets; but thankfully Simon had indulged him, throwing his own set of covers on top. Simon himself was laid on top of the covers, one leg hanging out of the bed, reading a book he had received as an early Christmas gift from his parents (unlike Jack, he was still lucky enough to get those) aloud. But Jack was too fever-drunk to pay attention to the plot unfolding in any substantial manner; instead, he tried to focus on Simon’s voice, the way he intonated certain words, the way the right side of his body grazed Jack’s left—albeit with several layers of fabric separating him (that was for the best: he tried to avoid direct skin-to-skin contact with Simon as much as possible—and thank God it was Christmas rather than Easter, when the two boys would often spend their days with their sleeves raised up to the elbows.)
An odd thought spawned in Jack’s head unannounced: he wondered whether Maurice or Roger would be equally attentive to him, should they be the ones here instead of Simon. After mulling the question over, he concluded that—with the exception of laying by his side on the bed—they might. They were both good friends after all, honest friends, and Jack could tell that they really did care for him. As did he for them, of course. Because—and this was the murky part, the bit that truly made Jack’s stomach cramp and that he could not, in his fevered and distracted state, resist ruminating over—he had realised, relatively recently, that what he and Simon shared was not simply a different type of friendship, as he had thought all these years. What Jack felt for Simon (and what Simon felt for him; he could tell the feeling was reciprocal, which oddly made it all the worse) was something new altogether. And Jack had been avoiding looking it in the eye but he knew, he couldn’t not know by now.
If it wasn’t his disinterest in the opposite sex that betrayed him (and that, by itself, had been hard to come to terms with, especially when his parents were clearly expecting him to ask for his father’s best friend’s daughter’s hand the moment they were of age. But that was still some time away and, with a little luck, he might have bravely sacrificed his life for the good of the country by then—kidding, kidding.) it was definitely the pit that formed in his stomach when he was around Simon—and no one but Simon. In fact, it was the exclusivity that Simon enjoyed that had kept Jack oblivious to his feelings for so long. Spastic, paranoid, pushover Simon. The notion that the feelings Jack entertained for him, of all people, could be of anything but a platonic nature was utterly laughable and the farthest thing from reality imaginable, surely. But it was true, and Jack could not pretend otherwise any longer, no matter how hard he tried—and he did.
Simon slammed the book shut, in turn pulling him away from his string of thoughts. “I think one chapter should be enough for now. You need rest,” he said, and got up from the bed. Good. Jack neither needed, nor wanted him here. He would let him go, since it was clearly the best approach for everyone involved. But then, as Simon tied his shoes, Jack started getting scared. What would he do, if he suddenly got worse, with no one around to notice?
“Are you not staying?” he whined—good God, he was becoming insufferable. He really had to cut it out one of these days. Returning to his earlier thoughts about the war front, he imagined how mortified he would be, were he to ask one of his comrades to lay by his side there.
Simon looked at him with big, round eyes, pretending to mull the question over, as if he didn’t enjoy every bit of their escapades as much as Jack did, as if the secrecy of it all did not appeal to him as much as it did to Jack—for, make no mistake, Simon was every bit as terrified of humiliation as he was; he just did a poorer job at avoiding it. At last, he kicked his shoes off once more, and laid back down, all the while puffing and huffing in pretend irritation. He grabbed the book from the nightstand and Jack removed his hands from beneath the covers, helping Simon keep it balanced between them. Simon’s unoccupied hand crept on top of Jack’s and laced their fingers together and Jack—disgustingly—did not pull away.
“I just hope I don’t catch it—whatever it is you have” Simon muttered.
How stupid. They both had it, didn’t he know by now?