Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In summer, tall grass swayed gently with the wind. So did Jack Vessalius. He twirled near the lake, his feet dangerously close to the slippery rocks at its bank, but he balanced sunlight on his fingertips, puppeteering strings that kept him golden and upright, invulnerable to the call of the depths that he taunted to swallow him whole as he pirouetted, humming along the tune of cicadas—or crickets, perhaps. Oswald hardly knew how to tell the two apart. 

He straightened his back against the bark of the oak he had been napping under, observing Jack in silence. Not quite lurking—he had fallen asleep here before Jack had appeared, Sirocco's ghost dancing, alone and unexpected—a sight to behold. 

Wayward summer-light made him look incandescent, a single ear of wheat reigning over the meadow, long braid bending like a cornucopia’s arch, his peaceful visage a more delightful sight than the year’s harvest. Achelous incarnate. 

Oswald knew better than to approach such fickle, dangerous visions. He also knew better than to insult them with a stare—but that, he could not help. Ever since he had first laid his eyes on Jack, he had been imparadised. The man was a hazard, quicksand in disguise, and Oswald had been trapped long ago. What was there to do now but lean back and let it claim him without struggle? 

Jack had been charming the first time he had witnessed him, adorned in candlelight and suavities amongst the nobility of Sablier, but the spell never faded, because even months later, barren of artifice, he was ravishing. Perhaps even more so. Had Oswald resisted him then, he knew he wouldn’t have stood a chance now—drunk on sunshine, smiling warmly, arms fluttering like a bird unable to take its flight. Jack had never looked so unreal. The melancholy in his sillage led Oswald to wonder if he was there at all—and it was disheartening, because he knew it couldn’t have been a performance. Because this was not how Jack looked when he pretended, feigning freedom in ballrooms—no, this seemed tangible—but even then, alone in nature, he moved like his wings were clipped. 

It was disturbing. Almost pitiful. Unpleasant to look at. But Oswald was entranced, watching him like a sunrise, wondering what the man sought to be liberated from when he threw his head back with such abandon that it seemed Jack hoped for it to detach. 

Oswald hadn’t even noticed that his sister had joined his side before her rich, smoky voice reached his ears. “So, disgust…?” She hummed with a knowing smile, leaning against the tree.

And he wouldn’t be her brother, the head to her tail and the grief to her funeral, if he couldn’t pick upon the light tease in her tone. He looked at her then, his beloved sister, an omen of decay in summer heat, wearing a light, brown gown that clashed with her jet-black hair—a fabric he wouldn’t have chosen himself—he had opinions on fabrics. It irritated him more than it should have, and he blamed it on Jack’s uncanny presence. 

“I don’t see what you’re talking about,” he pouted. It wasn’t a lie.

Yet Lacie laughed as if it had been. “I’m talking about what you feel about him—” she looked in the direction of the sun and her eyes landed on Jack. “You've said he disgusts you. I don’t believe it for a second.”

Oswald blinked slowly. He did not remember saying such a thing to Lacie. “... When?”

“Last month, brother. When you two met,” she scoffed with amusement. “To his face, too. Don’t tell me you cannot recall?”

Barren green river flowing through his veins and consuming his inhibitions, words spilling from his mouth and water splashing on his face—of course, he remembered—and the prey-like violence in Jack’s reaction, the naked horror of his red flush, mouth agape, lips quivering—beautiful, simply. Sickeningly so. He had felt nauseous for the rest of the day. 

“I can,” he answered, not understanding why his voice had dropped to a hushed whisper. “But that word—disgust… I don’t know.”

With a quiet hum, almost grave, Lacie sat next to him. “You wouldn’t use it, now?”

Pondering Lacie's words, Oswald looked in Jack’s direction. He was skipping over stones now, each second threatening to slip, to offer the gruesome spectacle of his bones crashing on rocks, but his spine was straight. He wouldn’t fall. He'd drink the entire river before he’d let himself be swallowed up.

Oswald shook his head. “I still would.”

Lacie snorted, surprised yet ominous. As if she knew something Oswald did not. It was unpleasant, but common. “Why?” She asked, very simply. 

Tilting his head, Oswald slumped against the dry bark. He knew what his sister meant—how do you feel? He wanted to provide her with the answer she sought, but it wasn’t so easy with Jack, with the way he clawed at his rationality and left it torn to shreds.

He couldn’t trust his mind. Not with Jack. 

So Oswald closed his eyes, tried to focus on how his body felt—heavy, warm. There was a weight in his stomach, a knot in his throat, and unpleasant dirt under his nails. There was the silent, yearnful pull towards Jack's voice, and he wasn’t even a good singer, but each mindless hum was magnetic, trying to pull him towards the river. There were birds, too. But there was Jack, mostly. It made his breath pick up—irritation. He opened his eyes—fascination. Because he was still here, still dancing with inappropriate desperation.

“Jack… is like a fruit,” he sounded half-awake.

Lacie hummed, curious more than perplexed, “You don’t hate fruits.”

Oswald shook his head. “That's not the issue.”

“What is it, then? I'm encouraging you to speak, brother,” Lacie sighed with no hint of boredom.

A long silence. Oswald was looking for his words. “Do you remember the orchard…? When we were younger?”

Lacie nodded. “You'd carry me on your shoulders so I could pick the brightest apples,” she smiled.

Oswald smiled back at the memory. “There were oranges, too—tarocco ones.”

“There were, yes. What about them?” 

They ate up the sun. Bled it all out. Oswald breathed in shakily. He couldn’t say that. “The ones at the top of the tree were too high for me to reach.”

Ill-omened eyes bore into him. “You could have asked me to help you.”

“No, Lacie,” his hand had started to tremble slightly. He couldn't tell her it had been too… personal. Something he had selfishly wanted all for himself. “These oranges—I looked forward to seeing them. Each year I hoped to have grown tall enough to… to grab the highest one.”

Lacie laughed. “You’ve never told me. You don’t ever eat the oranges they store in the kitchens.”

Oswald loved the sound of his sister’s laugh too much to scold its mocking edge. “It’s not the same.”

“Whatever,” she looked away, towards her tower. “Continue, brother.”

To fight down the shame that rose in his chest, Oswald looked towards Jack. “I wanted this orange, Lacie. And one winter, I climbed up the tree and finally managed to touch it.” 

She snickered. “Was it not good when you tasted it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t dare to pick it,” he confessed.

A silence. “That's it? That's your story?”

Oswald almost lied. “No,” he winced instead. “I ate it the following year. After I contracted the Gryffon.”

“You speak of it like a crime,” Lacie rolled her eyes. She didn’t understand.

“I waited for it to be ripe,” he continued, “and it was well past our birthday—”

“ My birthday,” Lacie corrected. She had arbitrarily decided on another date for his own, one day, not too long after they had been adopted by Master Glen. Around the time she had taken back a plushie she had offered him, one he had been neatly keeping on his nightstand. She had argued that their mother probably had lied when she said they were born together—he hadn't objected.

“Right—sorry,” he didn't either now, and he couldn't see why agreeing with Lacie's will made her frown bitterly. He looked away, towards the sun to avoid shriveling—but his eyes only met Jack and he melted regardless. “But it had fallen from the tree, one morning. Gone from in-between the leaves I had used to hide it,” he shivered at the memory, at the citrus-like sight of Jack, and fell silent.

“... And?” Lacie was growing frustrated.

“And I could tell it had gone bad when I picked it up from the dirt, when I felt it all softened up in my hands,” he sighed with melancholy, wincing. “But I couldn’t help wanting to taste it. I… broke its skin, and it looked bruised, and the juice was coating my wrists and it felt very horrible— so sticky—but I still… I still…”

Each segment, too soft, religiously taken apart to reveal the moldy core—cloud of green—and the fruit didn’t disgust him half as much as he disgusted himself, because in all its foulness Oswald had kept on licking up his palms, each bead of rotten juice devoured with delight, coating his mouth with bloody sugar. 

“You ate it,” Lacie declared matter-of-factly.

“Yes,” Oswald finally answered. There was no need to say more—to confess Jack awoke in him the same irreverent hunger.

“... I see.” Lacie finally answered after a long silence. She sounded upset.

“Sorry,” Oswald apologised. He didn’t quite know why.

Silence settled, Jack’s messy lullaby coming to an end. He had all but stilled, a sculpture of wax in the sun, his expression closed off in resigned sorrow. One Oswald wanted to pry open. 

And then Jack let himself fall in tall grass, its waltz washing down his form with only the soft thud of his back, hitting dry soil, as proof he had been here at all. Something in Oswald wanted to get up and be his witness. But Lacie dropped her head on his shoulder, startling and grounding. He didn’t move, welcoming his sister's cold embrace with a smile.

“You can’t tell Jack such a thing—under no circumstance,” she murmured.

Even though he didn’t understand the weight of Lacie’s words, Oswald leaned his head against hers like an unspoken oath, and closed his eyes.

Chapter Text

As if the world had felt Oswald would rip Lacie away from it before the season would end, Autumn had been harsh, punitive. When there was no rain there was drizzle, and when there was drizzle there was no birdsong. Not a single storm had broken the low oppressive layers of clouds since leaves had started to fall, and there had not been a single glimpse of sun in a week. 

None of Jack either. At least not until Oswald ventured near the lake, early in a rainy afternoon, and saw the man laying down in muddy grass, limbs spread apart, as if he had been a bright little star the skies had forwent. 

He had thought him dead at first, really—skin pale and lips purple, eyes closed as cascades of rain ran down his face, droplets stammering on his skin without earning but a twitch of his brow. Not even the pretense of a reaction when Oswald had stumbled upon his braid either, as if he had already started to become one with the ground, and when the Baskerville bent down in hurry to search for a pulse, a breath—any sign of life, please, any—he had feared to see worms festering upon his faultless skin.

But there were none, because Jack was alive, and he gasped a little when Oswald’s hand pressed on the veins of his left wrist. Pushing the raven-haired head away from the rise and fall of his chest, Jack was straightening himself back up to a sitting position, passing a hand through his hair in an attempt to correct the dampened mess, then on his face, drying it a bit but leaving a streak of mud on his cheekbone. 

“O-Oswald…! Hallo,” he smiled, no differently than usual—unsettling. Dazzling. “What bad weather, right…! Did you forget your umbrella?”

Oswald stared, then. To converse with Jack was to be drawn to nuzzle his face against the sludge of a pond, but the blond always forbade it, holding his head up the surface and forcing him to acknowledge some flock of ducks or whatnot waddling by the grass instead. When he sighed, Oswald could feel the imaginary water ripple. 

“No,” was all he said. If Jack looked around, he'd see how the protection had been discarded, not far behind them, when Oswald had run up to what he had feared was his friend's corpse.

Jack smiled idiotically. He did that when he had no clue what to say, Oswald had noticed.

“Why are you here…?” He attempted to question. It sounded a little breathless.

“To see Lacie,” Jack beamed with no light. 

It made Oswald's eyebrow tick. He already knew that much. “Lacie isn’t here. She’s in her tower.”

A shade of storm in Jack's eyes—despair, anger. He must already have been aware of that. Had he already seen Lacie, had it been unpleasant, or perhaps had she refused to meet him altogether? But the spark died down quickly, and the green gaze only appeared worried, and something else—a simple reflection of Oswald's stare. 

“Is she? Silly me,” the blond man chuckled.

Oswald understood Jack wouldn't allow him to breach his surface today. He yielded with another sigh, letting his eyes wander on Jack’s face. His complexion was paler than what summer had led Oswald to be familiar with, and he couldn’t notice some of the freckles he had cartographied—almost completely faded, the lighter ones that kissed the delicate bridge of his nose, the ones that sprinkled across the tip of his ears too, and Oswald wondered if the arch motif that adorned his wrist was still visible. When he first noticed it, Oswald had been captivated by this little shape that looked so much like one of the constellations from his books, one Lacie always had to point out to him in the sky—Corona Borealis, a bracelet far prettier than any of the ornaments Jack wore in mundane soirées. Oswald didn’t like those so much. Or perhaps it was just the way they seemed to draw people’s eyes to Jack, lapping his form in lamplight as if he too was an item to be obtained. 

And Jack wasn’t. No one could hope to claim for themselves the man who moved like he was taunting the sun—because Oswald remembered, often, that one afternoon he had seen Jack dance near the lake. He remembered, too, the unpleasant warmth that had made his stomach twist, his hands itchy with the need to touch, to reach—but less often. Much less often. When he did, he selfishly reveled in knowing that only he had witnessed Jack so absolute—Lacie aside, but Lacie hadn’t noticed the constellation that cuffed his wrist. He had.

“You’re staring,” Jack scoffed, whipping his head away. “Do I have something on my face…?”

Because he sounded embarrassed, Oswald brushed the mud off his friend’s cheek, and it could have seemed an accident had he not needed to stretch his arm. “No,” he spoke apologetically once his hand was on his own knees again. 

He didn’t tell Jack that he had not been staring, nor that he hadn’t been looking at the stain at all. The way his skin buzzed under the now-dirty spot of his glove left him tight-lipped.

Silence settled and it was almost comfortable despite the rain soaking up his clothes and chilling him to the bone, until Jack shrugged. “Why are you here, Oswald?”

“You usually are in this area of the forest when you visit,” Oswald spoke clear and low.

Jack frowned. “Were you looking for me…?”

“Yes,” he affirmed because there was no need to lie around Jack, who only ever asked him so few questions and never believed his answers.

And indeed Jack raised his eyebrows before drawing them together again, as if Oswald had said something particularly outlandish. “You wanted to see me,” he spoke, dumbfounded, but it wasn’t a question.

“The absence of sunlight was growing dreadful,” Oswald answered as if it made sense, as if it could have any link with Jack’s statement. Jack's mouth fell agape as if it did.

“You shouldn’t stay out in the rain then,” the blond shook his head, little droplets of water hitting Oswald’s cheeks, making them burn with no pain. 

Collecting them with his glove, because Oswald had forgotten about the mud stain at his fingertips, he tilted his head before wincing at the texture of wet fabric on his skin. “But you're here…?”

A shaky sigh, almost frustrated. “I’ll leave, then.”

“Baskervilles don’t catch colds,” Oswald murmured, taking off the soaked fabric from his clammy hands and inspecting how dirty it had gotten, before hiding his shamefully bare skin in the pockets of his coat. He couldn’t admit that he didn’t quite want Jack to leave, yet.

“Lucky you,” Jack laughed, getting up anyway. “Unfortunately I do. And my clothes are drenched. And dirty—Barbara will haul me over the coals for it, ugh,” he wailed, as if he had not expected such a result by laying down in the rain earlier.

“You can borrow clean clothes from me, if you wish.” Oswald was following Jack's steps, forgetting the umbrella behind.

He didn’t understand why his own words made warmth rise to his cheeks, and if Jack did, he let none of it show, as he started walking up to the exit of the estate he always used. “There will be no need,” Jack smiled. 

“Let me offer you a towel—at least.” 

“You're sweet,” Jack said in an exhale. It sounded honest—sweet, Oswald turned the word in his head. Jack had already used lovely, but sweet was a first. He failed to see how the blond could possibly call him such inappropriate things with a straight face, things that didn't fit Oswald at all, who was awkward, graceless and coarse. “But I've come here by foot. I'm afraid your efforts to dry me up would all end up pointless…!”

He shrugged. “I don’t mind that.”

If he could relieve Jack of the discomfort of dampened clothes even just for a minute, then Oswald thought his effort would not have been wasted. He could hardly imagine a situation in which his efforts on Jack would be wasted at all, really—because Jack was a man who jumped off towers and fell from trees like a smiling ragdoll, so someone had to make sure he was conceding to even the smallest acts of comfort when they involved no one's but his own. 

And Jack’s gaze crossed his—a little scared, a little dolent—before it fled towards the entrance of the tunnel. They had reached the exit. “I don't think I will be scolded any less if I bring in double the amount of laundry,” he chuckled lightly, before his voice dropped to a whisper. “Thank you Oswald, still.”

The taller man dropped his head towards the floor, his wet bangs curtaining over his eyes and dripping onto his empty hands. He feared anything he'd say now would sound like a plea to let him take care of his friend, so he remained silent, waiting to oversee Jack’s departure.

“Is there a problem?” The blond man curiously inquired instead of leaving. 

Like a siren-song his voice called Oswald's eyes up, and he was staring at Jack again, feeling the hairs raise on his arms and a shiver course through his back—disgust, yes. That was it. He knew that feeling well now, his only companion when Jack's eyes left him breathless and words were impossible to find.

There rose hunger, too, when he stared into them for too long. Hunger that paralysed Oswald and left him weak. He did not know what he hungered for, only that Jack alone could help satiate him; perhaps if he were to open up—and he saw it, the sudden gruesome image of Jack laid bisected on the dinner table, divine spoils of a profane hunt. Oswald was unable to portray what the adonis’ insides would harvest, but the violent consumption and the crushing of bones under his teeth were all too easy to imagine. This was not how he wanted Jack. But it was the only way he could picture it—sick, it was sick and so was Oswald. Because he was fated to be Glen, the most simple synonym of a misery that nibbles all hopes away.

“Oswald,” Jack called, calmer than a river in summertime. And just like that he had washed out the macabre simulacrum. 

Oswald exhaled shakily. Relieved to see Jack unharmed, he took a step back—it wasn’t too late for him yet—but his friend was taking a step forward, then a second one and almost a third. Enough to stand in the Baskerville’s space, the tip of their shoes touching and their faces a breath away from each others’. It was impossible not to stare even when Jack’s beauty was so blinding. 

“There’s something you want to say,” Jack inquired, wide-eyed and serious. “Tell me.”

Oswald’s diaphragm fluttered—disgust, hunger. Or fear, perhaps. A bit of it all, inauspicious. “I don’t know what that’d be,” he whispered. It was true.

And yet it seemed Jack found his answer unbelievable, because he was frowning again. “Do you really not…?”

Oswald shook his head. He did not. Really. He was sure of it, even if something in his body was screaming in a tongue he had never learned, knotting up his throat and warming up his face. 

Perhaps it left a visible feverish flush on his cheeks, because Jack held out a hand, a trembling one—and Oswald wondered if his friend was shivering from the cold or something else entirely. It grazed his cheek before cupping it, slowly. Upon contact, Oswald felt his lungs contract, as if Jack had pushed his head down the pond. But he hadn’t—the touch was gentle, tempting Oswald to let his head fall into it. Luring him in.

“Interesting,” Jack murmured, his thumb brushing Oswald’s jaw, nearly overwhelming. His voice was so faint it could have passed for a hum of the rain. “And you are sure you don't know…?”

He nodded. Oswald couldn’t have spoken even if he had wanted to. It was as if something was trapped in his throat. And Jack's hand sought to set it free. Leaving Oswald's cheek to caress his neck, delicate fingers circled over his Adam's apple, soothing presses, as if they were trying to disentangle thread from a bird's legs, scared and small, making it squirm up his mouth. 

When it teased his palate, Oswald swallowed it down. It burnt like bile.

Jack winced, perhaps because Oswald had too. Then, he smiled—melancholic, beautiful. “May I ask you to think about it, then…?”

“If you wish,” Oswald answered, his breath short.

“You can take your time. But, promise me you'll be certain when you tell me.” 

When Oswald nodded, he didn’t know whether it was in hopes to preserve the open expression Jack wore—so tangible yet almost aghast, a quivering glow in the green of his eyes, the only touch of spring in miles—or to chase the humid warmth of Jack's gloved hand as it withdrew from his skin. 

But Jack tilted his head. He scowled, as if he was about to object to something Oswald hadn’t said. 

“Swear it,” he blurted out—demanded—reaching to intertwine his fingers with the Baskerville’s long boney ones. 

And Oswald's body knew something his mind didn’t, because he grasped onto Jack's hand until their palms were flushed against each other, until Jack's nails dug into his skin and his own drew blood in between freckled knuckles, specks of red shyly seeping through the white cloth of gloves. It felt no different than touching that tarocco orange he had compared Jack to, last summer—neither the unbearable softness of Jack’s skin, so pliant under moist fabric, nor the way he was so easily tearing into it without meaning to, and the damage was done already, and he could do nothing but press his hands further into supple sun-filled warmth. Greedily basking in it, pillaging it, overlooking what it contained at its core.

“I will. I swear it,” Oswald choked up, and the ugly thing in his throat almost clawed its way out. 

Heavy rain, heavier words. Heavy breaths, too—Jack’s one, especially. Jack, who was never winded when he ran up a grassy hill with open-throated laughter, he was breathless now, short inhales and shorter exhales that looked like they hurt, fogging up the air between them. Oswald wanted to capture that mist, to feel it on his lips and see it clot, swallow it down and let it rest freely in his gut. 

He almost leaned in. He didn’t. Jack's lips were too close, in the way.

Jack's lips—moving in a soft-spoken thank you, and Oswald was staring at them, now—purple and undoubtedly cold. Then he thought to insufflate warmth in them, or perhaps to kiss them, yes, to kiss Jack's lips, in reverence or death—

Immobile, Oswald gasped, and the noise was swallowed by the rain's stammer. 

With an airy chuckle, Jack slipped his hand away, playfully grazing against Oswald’s chest before he let it fall limp at his side. He took a step away. “You've just promised, Oswald.”

“Sorry,” he instinctively apologised. 

He didn’t know what led Jack to believe he was about to break their oath—he still wouldn’t have known what it was Jack expected him to say—but the blasphemy of his own thought was enough to make Oswald want to genuflect. Kissing Jack. His best friend. When he was a Baskerville, for whom relationships were forbidden, when he was Glen…! 

But that wasn’t it—he would have kissed his lips no differently than he did Glen's hand: with devotion, complete and all-consumming. Yet that was far worse than a simple flutter of heart, because Oswald's deference should only belong to Glen, to his Clan. An absolute impiety forbade him from allowing even a feather of this monstrous desire to reach Jack's hands. Jack’s handsome, rapacious, empty hands. Hands that would tear him apart from within if he leaned into them, because Jack was hollow, broken from the start, a wounded prey that only knew to desperately claw at arms that dared to reach out. And even then he was Oswald’s dearest friend, and even then he would welcome his freckled hand and kiss it, if only Jack offered. 

So Oswald dropped his head and took a step away, drawing a reasonable distance between Jack and him, letting the rain draw a thick curtain between them.

“How somber you look,” Jack giggled lightly. “You'd make it seem like I demanded you submit your life to me.”

Oswald wondered if Jack knew how much truth his words contained.

“Sorry,” he repeated, not needing to understand why he said that to know that he meant it.

Jack stared blankly, his shoulders raising with a small shiver, as if he had not expected the apology. Or perhaps it was just the rain. “You can still change your mind, you know...” He turned his head away, forbidding Oswald from seeking his eyes. Jack faced the exit, now. “The way you feel—it’s alright, if it does not last. It’d be better this way, actually,” he whispered.

“But I don’t want to stop being your friend,” Oswald rapidly retorted. It perhaps wasn’t the answer Jack looked for. It was true.

“... Me neither,” Jack looked back after a long silence, beaming sadly. 

Oswald wanted to hold him—he did not try to. 

He let Jack walk away instead, wordless and wan. They had never been ones for goodbyes. 

And Oswald stood still as Jack's silhouette got swallowed up by the rain, watching the man fade into nature, long braid trailing behind him like an aubade coming to life. Only when Jack was fully gone did Oswald notice the sun still hadn’t peaked out, that day.