Title: The Forgotten
Author: Nicky
Rating: R, for a bit of sex and language.
Summary: Hamilton recalls a boy that he once knew.
Author's Note: This is a study of the Jake/Hamilton relationship. It is, incidentally, not how I think the relationship goes at all, so don't kill me. Nevertheless it was an interesting angle to explore.
Spoilers:Twelfth Night is mentioned but all you need are bare-bone details. Orsino claims to be in love with Olivia, Olivia falls in love instead with Orsino's manservant, Cesario. However, Cesario is actually a girl Viola in disguise, who is secretly in love with Orsino, who doesn't know she's a girl. At the end of the play Olivia finds out Cesario/Viola is a girl, and falls in love with Viola's identical twin brother, Sebastian, instead. Viola's identity is revealed, and Orsino realises he'd loved Viola all along.
Have I seen you before
In some kind of a dream?
In a place you've forgotten
A place I've forgotten
Calling� Where is my boy?
I have seen you so often
I cry� Where is my boy?
Or have you all forgotten?
Faultline - Where Is My Boy?
1. Viola
She's standing on the bank as the crew team pulls in for the day. Hamilton sees her before they had quite reached shore, her willowy form indistinct in the morning mist, but he turns his head and pretends he doesn't see anything at all.
Rawley Girls' Academy uniform, standard issue. Grey wool pleated skirt, monogrammed sweater-vest in a lighter grey beneath the tailored blazer. Her legs look skinny even under the thick black leggings and as usual her school tie is undone, her dark hair bed-head sexy, her eyes smudged with kohl. She is half punk rock and half careless schoolgirl, the outcome usually dependent on whether she's wearing Doc Martins or Mary Janes. She knows the power in it. She knows the coveting looks that the Rawley guys give her as they brush past in the halls. Usually she doesn't react; but sometimes, if he turns his head fast enough, he catches a satisfied upward tilt of the lips, a secret smile. Maybe she's simply relieved that she still functions as a girl, with a girl's hidden messages, subtle power in the pout of the lips, in the sway of the hips.
"Dude," Scout laughs as they jump out of the boat and haul it onto the bank. "Check out your girlfriend."
"What were the chances that you got to bag such a hot babe, eh?" Chris Hansen winks. "I swear, you wouldn't have stood a chance against all the guys if we'd only, you know�"
"Known she was a girl?" supplies Will, chuckling.
She looks at Hamilton, smiles and waves. Not an eager wave; she'd grown out of such displays. Despite everything she holds on to vestiges of her time spent as a boy: the words, the gestures, or lack thereof. She retains the inattentiveness, the cool exterior. She nods casually, her chin lifting as though tilted upward by an unseen finger.
"Gentlemen," Hamilton says wearily as he walks up the bank, toward the nod and the smile. "Not everyone has the courage of their convictions to throw caution to the wind. And that's what makes me better than you."
He could hear Finn's hearty laughter behind him, but does not turn around. Instead he heads straight for her, dragging his feet and sending up a shower of fine pebbles.
"Good practice?" she asks, inclining her head as he approaches.
"Yeah," he says, and she leans toward him. He is aware of the catcalls coming from behind as their lips touch. It is a brief kiss, rather chaste; her mouth is cold, and she tastes like strawberry lipgloss. She smiles before she draws away, rolling her eyes at the boys with a good-natured laugh.
"Morning, Jacqueline," smiles Scout as he walks past, heading toward the dorms with Will in tow.
"Hey man," she replies. "Looking good out there."
"The new coxwain sucks," Will says confidentially as he passes. "You could kick his ass."
She laughs at the comment. "Glad you think so, Krudski."
He salutes before he walks off, and she turns back to Hamilton, beaming. "Will's being nice," she says, her eyes glittering as though expecting confirmation or praise.
"Yeah," he says shortly, starting toward the dorms. After a moment's hesitation she follows, linking her arm through his. He glances at her, sees the crystalline morning sunlight skimming over her eyes, turning them an opaque gold. He turns away.
***
"She pined in thought," Finn reads, picking his way through the co-ed English students. They are sprawled across the lawns, a boy here, a girl there, a furtive glance here, a touch of the hand there. Finn doesn't notice these things. Or, if he does, he doesn't let on. "And with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?"
He closes his copy of Twelfth Night and peers around. "Thoughts? Comments?"
Hamilton looks down. He stifles a yawn. But he is also mindful of the group of guys not far away, Will and Scout among them, chuckling to themselves with conspicuous glances in his direction. He rolls his eyes skyward and watches her out of his peripheral vision, sitting by his side, her skirt tucked beneath her in some semblance of demureness. She looks back with a small smile.
Finn notices. "Miss Pratt," he says, smirking. "Care to shed some light on the situation from your rather� unique and fitting personal experience?"
She shrugs and pops her gum loudly. "Uh, she's in love."
Scout sniggers. Hamilton glances at him and rolls his eyes again.
"Viola's love is a different kind of love, though," says Will thoughtfully. "From the others. From Orsino's love. Or Olivia's."
"Expand," says Finn.
"Viola seems� pure," says Will. "She's different from the other characters. She sees Orsino and she falls in love with Orsino and that's it, she stays in love. She sees him as he is and she loves him as he is."
She smiles at Hamilton again and takes his hand. He lets her, though his fingers are numb with cold. There is a swirl of chill wind over the grounds, the late-October air laced with an unanticipated sting.
"Orsino, on the other hand," Will says, "doesn't seem to know what he wants. If I may be so bold�"
"You may," chuckles Finn.
Will grins up at the teacher. There is a gleam in his pale blue eyes. "He seems like the kind of guy who's more into the idea of love than love itself. He claims to love Olivia but he hadn't even spoken to her once in the course of the play. And at the end he just conveniently finds out that he loved Viola all along. He seems out of touch with what real love is. His love � for Olivia or for Viola � never went as far as the lovesickness that Viola felt for him."
"Hence the passage," Finn says, beginning to pace again. "Very good, Krudski."
Hamilton leans back and looks up at the sky. It is a blue-tinged white today, the colour of skimmed milk, strewn with wisps of clouds like flimsy lacework. The sunlight is a million shards of glass, bright fragments in his eyes. Caught in its awkward angle, his arm begins to fall asleep and he tries to draw it back, but she has hold of his hand, her long pale fingers linked through his. She smiles at him again and he lets her stay there like that, noticing the stab of pins and needles beginning below his elbow. He closes his eyes and ignores the sensation. It feels a little like burning.
"Mr Fleming?" asks Finn. "Sorry to put you on the spot. But all things considered, I'm curious to hear your take on the Orsino�Viola situation."
Hamilton blinks and sits up with a degree of difficulty. He glances at her, and she grins back. The class waits silently, their gazes mildly curious but indulgent, like parents at a fourth grade dance recital.
"I kinda agree with Will's analysis," he says slowly. "About Orsino's love not being sincere and all that. If he was in love with Viola all along, I don't understand why he didn't act on it. You know, throw caution to the wind. He only realises after he finds out she's a girl. Is that real love for you? Something that stops at barriers such as gender?"
"Maybe at that time it wasn't even a possibility," Lena pipes up. "You know, to be gay. If you have feelings for this guy, you don't necessarily realise it for what it is because it's just so outside of society's norms that it doesn't even occur to you that you might be falling in love."
"Interesting," Finn scratches his chin and looks up into the sun, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. "And I think this is a good place to conclude today's class. We'll talk about Shakespeare's own sexual orientation and a mysterious Mr. W.H. next lesson. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen."
She smiles at him again, and leans over for a quick kiss among the bustle of everyone getting to their feet. He closes his eyes for a moment, tastes the familiar ersatz strawberry flavour on his tongue. For a moment he sees a grey swirl imprinted on the backs of his eyelids, like eternal twilight.
"You okay?" she asks, and when he opens his eyes he sees the gilded hazel of her irises, like two amber spheres. Amber is formed from fossilised pinesap, and sometimes there are insects trapped inside, relics from eras long past. He wonders if there are things trapped behind her eyes, too, things he can't figure out now, inside that clear gaze. He studies the lashes tinted by mascara, the mouth still shining with red gloss, and imagines doing things to that mouth, violent and lustful things, stripping them of the shine, perhaps coating them with gloss of a different kind. The lips he remembers are paler than this; and they didn't taste of strawberries.
"Yeah," he says as he stands up, pulling her to her feet. "I'm fine, Jake."
She throws him a strange glance. He looks back, nonplussed. "What?"
She opens her mouth, then seems to think better of it and closes it again. There is a hint of something in her gaze though, a flicker of discontent, like a dying gas flame.
He blinks slowly against the sunlight, trying to make out her face against the glare. "What is it, Jake?"
"Why�" she murmurs and looks away, a pale blush tinting her cheeks, such a faint pink that it mightn't be there at all. "Why don't you call me by my real name?"
He blinks again. "What? Jacqueline?"
The blush grows deeper and more pronounced. She looks toward the lake in the distance and lowers her head. "Yeah� you know what, never mind."
He smiles a little, and his smile is clean and bright like the glassy sun overhead. "Jake, you're the same person no matter what I call you. You know that, right?"
She shrugs, her hair settling about her shoulders, like molasses in the slow chill. "Sometimes I like to hear my real name out loud, that's all."
***
After school he finds himself at the diner, without any memory of having walked there from Rawley. She is not with him, her punishment is still being met out: three months of after-school detention, every weekday from three to six. Such is the price one pays to stay at Rawley Academy if one had pulled a real-life Twelfth Night. Sometimes he thinks Finn had chosen that class topic just to mock them. Perhaps that isn't fair, to Finn; perhaps he just doesn't care.
He looks to the street outside, the trees with their gold and vermilion leaves, the dead ones, too, scattered across the sidewalks like crackled tissue paper stained with old blood. He watches them and not Bella, who comes in and sits down next to him. "Can I ask you something?" she asks nervously.
"Depends."
She looks taken aback for a moment. Then she sets her jaw. "I wanna talk to you about Jacqueline."
"What about her?"
"She's kinda worried," she says, carefully, and he can hear the deliberation in her voice, the arrangement, the contrived kindness. He appreciates and despises it in equal measures. "She's worried about your relationship. Where it's heading."
He cocks an eyebrow. "Is she? I didn't know."
She shrugs, blushes a little. "She thinks it's kinda silly to bring up. But I thought you should know. You just seem� well, distant. Ever since she came back from New York."
He doesn't respond for a moment, turning away from her and looking toward the interior of the diner. There are a couple of guys in the back booth, smoking. The good-looking one, the Briton with the messy blond hair, notices and gives him the finger with a smirk. Hamilton's eyes glaze over for a second before he turns back.
Bella watches him. Taking a deep breath, she adds, "You've been distant ever since she enrolled at Rawley Girls'."
He notices the curl of smoke trailing from the blond boy's fingertips, like mysteries unfurling. "I kinda miss Jake," he says slowly, keeping his eyes on the red-glowing tip of the cigarette.
"What are you talking about?" she interjects. "You two are like, joined at the hip. You're always together."
"Not in the same way," he says, and for a moment his eyes meet hers and he is almost surprised by the understanding he sees in them. She blinks, and there's a little pucker in her forehead, then the look of comprehension is gone and he thinks he has imagined it all. "I miss Jake," he repeats.
She stares at him. Her eyes are multi-coloured, like those of a Persian cat, and he avoids the disconcerting scrutiny by gazing into the depths of his chocolate milkshake. The contents are a flat, sludgy brown, the colour and consistency akin to mud.
"Jacqueline is right here, Hamilton," she says. "You don't need to miss her. You have her."
He doesn't answer at all. Instead he looks down the street, into the fading light and the bloodied sun peeking over the treetops, waiting for the moment when white and red dots explode across his retinas and it will feel like he is going blind. But before his vision goes out altogether he spies a tall, slender boy with short dark hair striding down the street, and the mere sight of him feels like burning. There is a tightening in his chest, a sudden pounding in his head. His mouth is dry as he stares at the figure, turned away from him, the black leather jacket, the worn jeans. He feels a pull in his stomach, an effervescent jolt, a tug like electricity. His breath hitches in his throat.
"That's not her," Bella says, and her voice has gone taut and cold. It is a piece of silver razorwire, a jagged sheet of lead.
He doesn't register, at first. He stares at the boy and his body has turned to fire. "What," he says, blankly.
"Her hair, it's longer now," she says. "She doesn't wear boy clothes anymore. That's Carter Jackson, from my math class."
He takes another moment, drowning in the sensation of the sheer flicker down his spine, like ice-cold lips. Then he understands what she is saying and it feels like his blood is congealing. He turns to her, opens his mouth, but falls silent and looks away.
She is gazing at him with a mixture of rue and doubt in her eyes. She doesn't say anything, either.
2: Cesario
Days go by. There are kisses, always tasting like strawberry lipgloss. There are English classes, where Will and Scout won't stop sniggering when her hand finds his, furtively, as they sit on the lawns still damp with late-fall dew. Finally it becomes too cold to hold classes outside and they relocate to Finn's classroom, but she finds other ways to communicate. A furtive poke on the back of the neck; a small kick in the calf, just hard enough to be meaningful. She is playful, and thinks he is playful also. There are kisses out in the open now, in the hallways of Rawley Academy, on the docks in plain daylight, within sight of anyone who might or might not care. There are perpetual roses in her cheeks. She is beautiful.
She is a beautiful girl. She knows it, too.
Ostensibly he is the shining other half, his alternative boy to her cyber-punk girl. They are golden; they are the future. They are individuals and they are two halves fitting together like a simple jigsaw. So. Fucking. Enviable.
Inside, though, is a different landscape. Sometimes when he's at the diner, or sitting on Bella's front step, he seeks out Carter, the Edmund High boy, and stares at his back, the hard geometric lines of his body, the angular planes of the chest and stomach, the narrow hips, the short dark hair that sticks up a bit in front, made spiky with gel. He doesn't look when the boy turns around though. The image of him doesn't bear turning around. It's always not the face he expected, somehow.
He doesn't think about what this means. Or what it could mean. He simply turns back to her, to his beautiful girlfriend with the smudged eyeliner and strawberry lipgloss, and he kisses her on the mouth, sometimes softly, sometimes not so soft. Sometimes there is tongue, and it is hot and slick and he wants to do more to her, push her up against a wall and kiss her until all that red gloss wears away and her knees give out. Sometimes he dreams about it. Sometimes in the dreams he can't see her face at all, just the back of the head, the slim back, the dark hair. In his dreams the hair is always short, and sticks up at the front, just a little spiky.
***
Tonight the gang is catching up over dinner at Friendly's; Sean still in his baseball uniform, Bella in grubby overalls, Scout and Will in their blue diner shirts. Hamilton checks the clock: it's 6:10pm, she should be on her way. He leans over to the window and tries to look down the road, but his attention is captured instead by the slender boy entering the diner among a group of chattering Edmund teens. He is wearing a light blue T-shirt over a grey shirt, and a strand of dark hair is hanging in his eyes like some secret enticement, or else torture.
"Keith, Carter, hey man," Sean exchanges perfunctory greetings as the kids pass. Bella smiles and nods. Hamilton remains quiet, and he tries to look away but does not quite succeed. Carter glances at him as he slips by the booth, the way that people look when they don't really see you at all. Nevertheless Hamilton feels a spark ignite in his abdomen, a violent jerk, perhaps of pleasure. Reflexively he leans over the counter and crosses his arms and legs, and then he sees her walking up the road as if on cue and he gets the sudden and inexplicable urge to curse under his breath, but he doesn't.
"You know," Scout says meditatively, staring at Carter's retreating back. "He kinda looks like how Jacqueline looked in the summer."
"You noticed that too, huh?" chuckles Will. "We should point him out to Jacqueline sometime."
"Who are we looking at?" she asks as she comes in the door, sliding into the seat next to Hamilton, planting a kiss on his cheek. Her hair is longer now, and she has gotten dark-blonde streaks running through it, like molten lightning.
"Good timing," Sean grins. "Take a look at that guy. Notice anything?"
She looks. She laughs. "Hey, that's kinda freaky."
"What do you think, Hamilton?" asks Bella, and when he glances up he sees the careful weight in her eyes, like condensed light, but heavier somehow.
"What?" he says, averting his gaze. He tries to stare down into his plate instead; his throat is dry, as though scattered with a handful of acidic sand.
"Carter, man," Sean says, oblivious to the unspoken exchanges around him. "Doesn't that guy look like how Jacqueline used to look?"
"Like Jake, you mean," says Hamilton, and he twists around surreptitiously to look at the boy. But not surreptitious enough, apparently, because Carter looks up, then, his brows furrowed. His gaze meets Hamilton's and those eyes seem to burn straight into his mind, like lines of fire. Hamilton's stomach dissolves.
"Yeah," he says weakly, smiling a little as he turns back to his friends. "Huh. Cool."
She looks at him thoughtfully, a grin playing about her lips as she glances back at Carter, and there is a glint in her eye, mischievous, like a kitten at play. There is a painful clenching in his chest, as though an icy fist has closed upon his vital organs. He keeps his head down.
***
"Another question on love," says Finn, pacing between the rows of desks, Twelfth Night in his hand. He is backlit by the sun, an outline in pale gold. "Who did Olivia love, exactly?"
The class is quiet. Will looks ready to speak, then he furrows his brows and flicks through the text, chewing on his lip. The Brit in the corner has fallen asleep over his desk, and Hamilton is preoccupied with blowing spitballs at him when Finn isn't looking. She, sitting next to him, gives him grossed-out disapproving glances, as do most of the other girls in the class, but he pretends not to see.
"Let me elaborate," says Finn after a long, expectant pause. "How could Olivia have loved Viola so much when Viola was dressed like a man, yet fall out of love as soon as Viola becomes a woman? Her affections shifted so easily to Sebastian, Viola's twin brother. Did she really love Sebastian, then? She hardly knew him. Did she really love Viola? How could she, given the events?"
"She's in love with Cesario," Will says hesitantly.
Finn nods. "And?"
"Well, that's it," says Will. "Viola wasn't the person she fell in love with. It was Cesario, Viola's alter ego. It doesn't matter that Cesario never actually existed; he was real for Olivia."
"And what about Sebastian, the man she ended up with?"
"Sebastian is just a stand-in for Cesario," Will says, the words coming out a little quicker now, laden with the weight of his convictions. "When it became clear that Cesario was no longer a reality. Olivia didn't love Viola, and she definitely didn't love Sebastian. The person she loved was somewhere between the two, existing in both of them and, at the same time, nowhere at all. Cesario was a figment, a contrived image, and that was what � or who � Olivia fell in love with. I think that's the heart of the matter."
"I don't agree," she pipes up. Hamilton glances at her, sees the red-tinted lips moving, and it is as though these words are being released into the air with a sultry weight to them, as though they are written in blood.
Will looks taken aback; Finn merely amused. "Let's hear it from our resident Viola, then," he says. "You have the floor, Jacqueline."
"I don't think there is a difference between Viola and Cesario," she says. "Not in the way Will's painting it. Sure, you do feel different when you're dressed up like that, but it's not like it's a complete split personality. You are who you are, no matter what you look like or what you're wearing. Whether you're pretending to be a guy doesn't change that."
"Interesting," says Finn. She nods, looking somewhat vindicated.
Hamilton glances up. It feels like there's a bubble in his brain, an effervescent sphere of emptiness, rising and expanding behind his eyeballs, building up pressure until thoughts blank out altogether. The others' voices echo in the hollow of his mind, and he lets the sounds resonate there, the syllables washing over him like waves crashing upon shore, minus all discernable meaning.
"But this is about Olivia," Will says.
"And?" Finn says, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, it's not about Viola at all, is it?" Will says. "The love issue is about Olivia seeing what she saw, which was this man called Cesario. Even though Viola was Cesario, it doesn't connect in Olivia's mind like that. To her, Cesario was someone completely different. It's not about alter egos; it's about the image you project and the situation you are in. It's about the person you have created out of nothing, who nevertheless occupies a place in someone's mind. The person Olivia loved was never real; he had gone away and she could never get him back. It doesn't matter that Viola was there and Sebastian was there; neither of them are, or ever will be, Cesario again."
For a moment there is silence in the room, a dense, pressing feeling, very much tangible, taking on a solid shape. Hamilton can feel Finn's thoughtful gaze on his back, like warm needles. Without quite meaning to he sneaks a glance at her, the red lips, the eyeliner, the hair shot through with streaks the colour of warm honey.
"But you fall in love with a person," Finn says. "Not their gender."
"Precisely," says Will. "Perhaps Olivia had loved Cesario all along, not because 'he' was a man, but because he was Cesario, and that meant something to her."
"But who is Cesario, if he's not Viola?" Finn asks. "I feel like we're going in circles here."
"Cesario exists in Olivia's mind alone," Will says slowly, chewing his lip. "The encounters she had with him, the mystery of him, all these memories of how things were before everything came to light. Sebastian is a poor imitation of Cesario, as is Viola. I think that's a secret tragedy � the person Olivia loves has been forgotten by everyone else, but she remembers. She will always remember how it was."
"This is supposed to be a comedy," she says, her brow lifting.
"I know," Will looks vaguely embarrassed. "And I'm not saying that's how Shakespeare intended it, either. It's just kinda interesting, you know, speculating."
"So maybe Olivia's love is a weird kind of love, something that's not love at all," she says. "She never loved Viola as the person she was; she only loved the image that Viola projected, the feeling she got when she was with 'Cesario'. That's not real love. That kind of love doesn't stand the test. You can't throw caution to the wind with it. Maybe it isn't love. You can't be in love with someone who doesn't exist."
The bell rings, cutting off any interjection that the others may have thrown out. She looks at Hamilton, then, and smiles. There is satisfaction in her gaze, like the foam gushing forth from a champagne bottle, popped open in victory.
But he doesn't smile back.
***
He waits for her by the French doors. The night is heady and cool and it flows past the panes like water at the bottom of the sea, liquid shadows, laden with a lonesome pressure one cannot feel unless one is on the outside, looking in.
He is not outside, however; he is here, with all the people at the Halloween dance, pressing his forehead to the glass, and as he looks out he can see his own reflection, and others too, but not anything beyond that. Nothing beyond this goldfish bowl, decked out in pretty lights and prettier girls, costumes and glittering masks.
Behind him Bella dons a curly blonde wig and white sundress, but looks disappointingly unlike Marilyn despite her efforts. Perhaps it's the lack of voluptuousness, or perhaps the dissemblance is elsewhere, deeper and more visceral, a lack of the same voluptuousness inside the skin. Scout is Zorro. Will, to nobody's surprise, has come as the man himself, Shakespeare, in breeches, a velvet frock coat and a hat stuck with a jaunty ostrich feather. Finn, somewhat perversely, is dressed as a vicar. Or does the perversion exist only in Hamilton's mind? He doesn't get around to asking the others.
He himself is Bogey, from Casablanca. No point leaving the Cotillion suit mildewing in the closet for another year.
She hadn't told him about her costume. There had been a flicker of mischief about her lips when he'd asked, and as he watches his own reflection, he brushes past the idle thought that he really does not care.
But there is a sudden hush over the room, a collective intake of breath. As he turns toward the crowd it parts like a wave, and he feels the air rush out of him like his heart is a balloon deflating. His knees give out and he has to lean back, bracing himself against the French doors, his fingers digging into the cold glass panes, just so that he doesn't slip bonelessly to the floor. His mouth opens but all that comes out is a strangled Oh, a moan of both pain and desire.
"Hey boy," she says as she approaches. Her hair is short again, and very dark. Here is that blue shirt and those khaki pants, the same ones she'd worn the day she'd kissed him on the rooftop. As he stares into her smiling eyes he can feel himself dissolve into the air around him, and it feels like a kind of salvation. "Jake," he says, and his throat is dry like bone.
"I thought it'd be funny," she says. "For Halloween, you know�"
He doesn't get a chance to reply before the gang swoops in, chortling with delight. "Dude, that is cool," says Scout, laughing.
"Are you wearing a wig?" asks Will, and she nods. Hamilton tilts his head; he hadn't noticed. Still the honey-blonde streaks, then, beneath the short dark hair. The knowledge leaves a strangely bitter taste in his mouth and he decides to forget about that part.
Later, when he has tugged her into a secluded hallway, the sound of the music still transmitting from the main hall, the bass notes still vibrating beneath their feet, he kisses her, shoving her up against the wall. He hears the brusque crack as her spine makes contact with the polished oak panelling, and the wind knocked out of her in a pained gasp, but he is already drowning in that kiss and does not notice. He pushes himself against her until there is no space left between them, until it feels like he is melting into her, his hands roaming over the lines and angles of her body, his tongue in her mouth. All he knows is that her lips are no longer red and shiny and they no longer taste like strawberries.
They taste like how he remembered them.
"Hamilton," she whispers, her eyes screwed shut as though in concentration, or perhaps she doesn't bear opening them. "I�"
He shushes her by kissing her again, deeply, messily, his teeth tugging on her lower lip. She draws in a sharp breath, and his mouth floods with the brief taste of salt and copper. Blood is red, too, like strawberries, but he knows which one he prefers.
***
Their first time isn't tender or romantic. It is him, fucking her up against the wall, under the dim light of the flickering sconces. It is her long leg wrapped around his waist. It is his jagged breathing and her soft little moans that sound almost like sobs in hindsight. It is his hands grabbing the sharp outlines of her hipbones as he comes quickly, in a series of shallow shudders as he thrusts into her, his face buried in her neck as he imagines himself floating in the cold deep blackness of space, watching stars explode around him like a sea of glittering flame. "Jake," he gasps, as the tension mounts and fades and he slumps forward into her. "Jake�"
Her wig has been knocked askew. Longer strands escape at the hairline, and she looks like a cross between the boy he used to know and the girl who stands in his place. But he doesn't look. His eyes are closed as he kisses her, one more time. "I love you, Jake," he murmurs, "I love you so much."
There is a pause. "I love you too," she says, and as he opens his eyes she turns away. They zip themselves up awkwardly and for a moment he just stands there. Then he embraces her.
She relaxes, ever so slowly, into his arms. "God, Hamilton," she says, "I�"
"I love you, Jake," he says again. "You believe that, right?"
She tenses all over, like a flower folding into itself. "Of course," she says, and her voice sounds like the beginning of a morning frost. She takes his hand but does not look at him as they go back into the hall. His head is still filled with images of explosions in the sky, and his steps are unsteady, as though he's walking through clouds, and so he does not notice these things.
***
Hours after going to bed he hears persistent little clicks on his bedroom window. When he finally drags himself over to investigate, he sees her throwing small pebbles at the glass panes. "What are you doing?" he hisses as he opens the window. "You'll wake the parentals."
She is still in her boy clothes, though not the wig. Under the moon her hair is tipped with silver, her eyes too, dense white cataracts of light, a mask of blindness. She looks up at him, and even from the distance he can see the daub of red on her lips, the shine simultaneously enticing and dismal in all the wrong ways.
"I can't sleep," her voice is quiet. "Can I come up?"
He nods, yawns, and stumbles to his bedroom door.
After she'd navigated her way through the creaky stairs and the unreliable floorboard outside his parents' room, she slips into bed with him. "Hold me," she says, shivering.
He holds her, closes his eyes and breathes in the familiar scent of her hair. She is quiet for a few moments. When she speaks again, she jolts him out of the fuzzy territory between wakefulness and dreams, and he hears her words as though through water.
"I'm afraid," she says. "Hamilton, I'm afraid of so many things and I don't even know how to begin�"
"Shh," he whispers into her hair, and he doesn't open his eyes because they are leaden weights, and he can barely force himself to speak through the velvet darkness pulling him down, down, down into oblivion. "You don't need to be afraid. Now get some sleep."
"I love you, Hamilton," she says, and the sound of her voice is childish, a plea in tone. She suddenly seems very small in his arms.
"I love you too, Jake," he murmurs sleepily, and his hold on her tightens.
She half-turns and her eyes search over his face. They are large and luminous in the darkness, rueful with a new sort of understanding, and she exhales. It is a drawn-out sigh, one that speaks of revelations and burdens. Slowly, she shifts his arm and turns away from him, curling into herself like a newborn. A narrow shaft of moonlight falls across her face and catches a shining track on her cheek.
He doesn't know any of this. He is already sinking into the void, the blackness, skimming the surface of his mind's eye, which is a placid lake of glistening stars. Across the hidden landscape of his dreams a tall, slender boy strides, and they walk toward each other, slowly but surely, smiles playing across their faces. His heart expands, and out here, in this bed where he and Jacqueline sleep, he murmurs another name.
