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It isn’t the first thing Mal notices when she enters the dorm. It really should be, but the curtains are open, and the room is so unbearably bright that she has to squint for a few seconds before her eyes adjust. Evie must’ve opened them. Mal never bothers.
Jay is sitting at the table Evie claimed for her sewing machine, reading a book that’s been nestled between fabrics and her workbox. He looks up as she enters and offers her a smile in acknowledgement before returning to his page.
The sun lingers around Jay, almost making it seem like he is the one emitting light. And, Mal realises, he is relaxed. Properly relaxed. None of his tight-lipped grins or hands slewn in his pockets. No forced laughter or feigned indifference. He is relaxed.
Mal feels like she’s walked in on a time bomb.
She’s never been one for being sensitive, or considerate. She says what she thinks and does what she says. Jay is always the one reining her back in. But this, she knows, she cannot ruin.
So she goes through the motions: flops onto her bed like she normally would and stares up at the ceiling, trying to construct what to say next. Jay does not need to think anything’s wrong. Nothing is wrong. But Jay might think something is if she goes about this too carelessly.
“Watcha reading?” She asks, still focusing on the ceiling.
“This book about the Borderlands.”
“Didn’t know you were such a nerd.”
Reading was never much of a thing on the Isle — the few books they did have were waterlogged, mouldy, torn, or used as kindling. Carlos had around five, one of which he left at the hideout once and Mal caught Jay reading one night. Jay long accepted he was more useful being street smart, so he, like Mal, left Evie and Carlos to all the booksmart stuff. That sort of learning never worked for either of them.
There’s a lapse of silence. This silence is familiar; the warm, comforting glow of just being in each other’s presence. Back when there was nothing they could say, or when the words were too much. Bodies pressed together for warmth, or after the frenzied panic of injury when they were both too exhausted to tease and all they needed was just to hear the other breathing. Before the world was big and it was just the two of them and the dingey market streets and whatever was laid before them in the morning; those monochromatic, bleak sunrises they watched after sleepless nights and were just grateful to make it to that dawn.
Mal turns so she’s facing Jay, propping her chin up on a hand. Either he’s absorbed in the book or he’s ignoring her. Both are viable options. His brow is drawn only slightly in concentration. His shoulders are relaxed — nearly slumped , for Jay. He’s simply existing in this space they’ve learned to grow into, nothing like the alertness she knows so well. Jay is synonymous with caution. He’s always the one tugging them out of fights and scouting ahead and shadowing them. He is their safety net and anchor, strong and gentle all the same.
And he’s sitting quietly, calmly. Simply. As if all the horror of the six years she’s known him and even before that never happened. He, Mal realises, is allowing himself to rest.
A scab that’s picked at will never heal right but Mal doesn’t think Jay has ever even let his open wounds meld themselves closed. He pushes on relentlessly, never stopping to assess the damage. Mal’s the same, but Jay bears the suffering of the four of them like some divine glory; like his hands alone were made to hold up the sky; like he is lamb and offers his neck to the knife willingly, complacently. He exists to remember every nick and maim to the skin, the keeper of the darkest blood spilled. He’s the old yew tree dangling above the cemetery. Drags bodies around like he’s repenting. Like tragedy is chained to him but he shoulders the weight with a shrug. Mal can imagine his little half-smile; that smirk that throttles his fear into indifference. The ongoing pantomime he lives, fooling everyone into believing he’s so charming and unfazed and collected.
It fooled Mal for a while. She had been seething like venom ever since she gained consciousness, always bristling with an untamable fury. Jay was relaxed, always grinning and folding his arms and speaking with a drawl that irritated her, probably on purpose. And she could never understand how he wasn’t as restless as lightning, how everything seemed to flutter past him like a breeze when it swept Mal up and dangled her over a ledge. But then they’d sealed to each other; mould to a ceiling. She began to learn that his shoulders were always tensed and his hands were curled into fists under his crossed arms. His infuriating grin was strained and never quite met his eyes and his real smile was electric; the most alive thing on that stupid Isle. He was always on guard, no matter where they were. And his indifference was fake.
What Mal learned was that Jay was terrified, all the time. He never let himself relax, not fully. He enjoyed being look-out and he would stay up all night if he had to, without hesitation. Mal always got the sense he was convinced that if he ever let himself breathe, even just for a second, the skin he’d built up would shed immediately and expose every broken bone he has.
“What is it?” Jay asks, putting the book down. His frown has deepened.
Mal shrugs. “Nothing.”
“You were staring.”
“Just can’t believe how ridiculously lame you are now. Reading. You’re gonna end up like Ben if you don’t stop.”
“You know, that’s the most insulting thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Mal laughs, and shifts so she now sits upright, feet dangling off the edge of the bed. Jay’s still looking at her, that faint nervousness starting to resurface.
“Seriously, Mal, what?” He asks.
“Genuinely nothing.” Mal snaps back.
He’s trying to get a read on her. It might work. She’s never been as good at disguising her feelings as he is. She’s brash, all fangs and claws, and Jay can rise to that too, but his snakeskin wraps round his hands and his shoulders and his neck like a cautionary fist around a dagger. Mal was born onto broken glass, her screams matching the shattering.
It’s quiet again. It’s starting to itch. There is an olive branch lodged in her throat, scratching against the larynx. Jay is as steady as ever. Waiting. Mal wants to make him laugh. It’s not an unfamiliar urge.
Instead, she tries to place this delicate asphyxiation into something more tangible. She presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth, wildly conscious of Jay’s gentle gaze that’s warming her face like a spit.
“Seeing you relaxed makes me happy.”
Before her eyes, Jay convulses into a bouquet of marigolds; a storm; a knife; a star; a bleeding heart; a desert; an ocean; a canyon aching with a fear of its own dark corners. She has dislodged the olive branch, drawn it like she used to offer him bread. And Jay sits, and stares, expressionless, motionless, chest heaving like a nebula.
“Oh.” He’s terrifyingly still, like if he so much as breathes too quickly he’ll rupture this tranquil delirium they’re suspended in.
Gone is the snake and its sly, wily tricks. Mal has arrived at the pantomime to see it reduced to ash: the set is charred and the costumes are ragged and the actors have fled, leaving behind a decrepit stage, barely lit. And Mal is searching for one spot light. One intact plastic-diamond necklace. A poster still lively with saturated colours. The fire burns low. Mal is grasping at anything she can lay her hands on.
“I haven’t seen you like this before.” She steps onto a floorboard, stretching over a fallen beam. “I like it.”
Jay’s gaze doesn’t leave her face. It’s a different sort of wariness. Heavy, sinking, plunging, gaping. Waiting for the act to drop and being ready for when it does.
“Like this,” Jay echoes. No wiggling eyebrows or flirtatious smirk. It’s almost like he’s been defeated, all his tricks exposed.
“Yeah.” Mal says, and she unfurls her lips into a smile. Part of Jay’s tension melts away. “It’s good.”
Good. The word that’s haunted them for lifetimes. Good, Mal’s learned, is entirely objective, but there is a kind of good that the four of them chase. Better could be another word for it. Progress. A word for the persistent fear of will I end up like them? Will I ever escape it? How do I free myself of my own flesh?.
“Okay.”
“You don’t need my permission, Jay—”
“I know that. It’s just—” Jay inhales deeply, as if he’s spurring his body into action. “I want you to be happy.” He’s searching her face, trying to decode this convoluted conversation of smiles and stares and quiet confessions. “All of you guys.”
There’s a hardness to his words. This is the burden he’s consigned himself to carry. This elusive, unreachable happiness that’s escaped them for so long. Jay is cupping his hands to heaven, waiting for the peace no god has ever granted them. Even when his hands shake and his arms ache. Even when it is futile. He bears his neck to the knife if it means the others will remain unscathed.
“We want the same for you.” Mal hopes Jay can see the twist to her words.
This conversation is not made for the light. The afternoon glare is repugnant, bending the walls into brightness. This is a conversation for sleepless nights and fingers stained with an ally’s blood, heartbeat working double time to take it all in. This sort of talk is not meant to see daylight. Its secrets are to be covered over with shadows and hidden even from the stars. But it is leaking into the sun. Mal half expects to look down to see her hands covered in melted wax and feathers in her lap; a grand finale for a ritual she barely even knew she had. But Jay is not flinching from the sun. Even unsteady, even plummeting, he refuses to let her fall, too.
Happy wasn’t a word they used until they got to Auradon. It was something they’d experienced, sure, like when they used to race each other through the markets or those long winter nights that would’ve been miserable if they all hadn’t been huddled together around a meagre fire Carlos had managed to coax from book pages, speaking of anything to distract themselves from the gnawing frost bleeding through the air.
It wasn’t a word the adults ever told them, or used, for that fleeting warmth. The tentative smiles. The urge to be close. Mal dismissed it as some kind of selfishness; they’re an ally so I have to be around them, but it’s more gentle than that. It’s happiness. Wanting to spend time with someone for no other reason than wanting to be in that person’s presence. Wanting to be as close to them as their own shadow.
It’s rare to catch Jay like this. Off-script. Even more so now that their rickety balcony has grown to be sturdier and wider, and the stars stud every crevice of infinity. He is so careful here, with all of Auradon’s plastic brilliance he doesn’t want to tarnish.
When he looks at her, she is looking into the windows of a haunted house, wracked with too many ghosts to tame and too many candle stubs to light. Part of her wants to join him at the table; brush fingers so he doesn’t have to speak. It’s so much harder to admit things out loud. Words, they learned, are rocks, and what she and Jay have are perfectly positioned mirrors.
She understands the silence. She can translate these heaving graveyards into offerings and devotions. Words are trickier. They are too solid. Too hard to take back. Easy to bludgeon a skull in with.
There is this wall between them, Mal knows. After a lifetime of stolen glances and careful touches; after bloodied fingertips and melding their bones into something inseparable, there is an underlying edge of terror. It first cut her at Jay’s tourney match, when he was grinning in a way she didn’t recognise. In a way he’d never grinned at her. The act of unknowing. The ribs unravelling. The cliffside doesn’t know it’s fractured until it tumbles into the sea. Mal didn’t know how much of Jay she knew until she doesn’t know him much anymore.
Did she ever make him happy?
After an eternity, Jay speaks.
He lifts his head, looks at her, but doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “D’you remember when Ben said we’re safe here?” After Mal nods affirmative, he continues, “I still don’t know if it’s true.”
Mal doesn’t either. Every time she thinks she understands the excessive politeness and formality of Auradon, there’s another gala or festivity or social cue that mauls her down to the raw flesh. Sometimes she thinks she will never crawl out from the Isle’s clutches. Auradon may be pretty, and clean, with no concealed knives or split knuckles, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe . The people here don’t speak plainly. They embellish their threats with flowery language and passive-aggression and perfected smiles. Every conversation is a minefield. Every conversation is a reminder that Isle rats do not belong amongst the affluence of people whose goodness is innate.
But right now, they are not at a function. They are not surrounded by swathes of pastels and jewels and porcelain faces. It’s just the two of them. And they are safe with each other. All the times Jay went without food or sleep for her. All the times Mal stitched him together again or snuck him trinkets for his father. They wrap around each other like a bandage; like the curve of the earth stretching out across the stars. Jay who put his hand in the middle. Jay who distracted the beast of her mother to give her more time.
“We are right now,” Mal says.
The tongue is fickle, clumsy; a muscle that is unused to being quite so loose. There is so much uncertainty. The sea is a cruel, unwieldy thing to navigate. But Jay will not let her drown. Jay will drag her to the surf and they will cough up saltwater together.
And she thinks to when she first met him, wily and mischievous and quicker than she could keep up with for a while. That nonchalance that was incomprehensible to the wailing heights of her fury. The first time she saw him hurt, and how he gathered that indifference around him like a cloak but Mal could see that small slit in his disguise and she realised that this composure of his was fallible; a front. And how the first time she sees him properly, truly, unburdened was when they are alone. Jay trusts her with his weaknesses. Mal wants to dig her fingers into the crust of the earth and fashion it into a table for them to rest at. They deserve that much. They deserve to rest.
“Okay,” says Jay, with that grin he always gives her: something that’s always been more trusting than she’s worth, and Mal wants to sob with all the things she doesn’t know.
She wishes she could keep them all safe forever. Carry the three of them to somewhere unmarred by pasts and legacies and heirs and expectations and destinies and fate. They find some desperate haven in the arms of the night, far away from any guise of hope or sorrow, where they can all just exist. Be now. Never mind the rotten breath of history and never mind the pearly gates of purgatory that threaten to bar them at any time.
This is a constant act of becoming. Just as seeds germinate and blossom and wither and decay only to emerge the next season as if nothing happened. The fury of a heartbeat. The thundering of blood. Constantly shifting. Never still. Never resting.
And Mal doesn’t know what to do. She is rendered defenceless, the enormity of life stretched out in front of her like the sea scraping against the sky.
“Jay.” Her lips fold so well around his name, well-worn like boots moulding to the imprint of feet.
He’s still looking at her. Still red and raised flesh, allowing itself to be cradled between shaking hands.
“What?”
Mal wants the world to blister around her. She wants the sun to fall from the sky and engulf everything she knows. She wants the canary bird’s song to sputter out. She wants splinters in her hands. She wants to sink her teeth into something unforgiving and prove just how volatile she can be.
“You make me happy.”
Dawns here are bright, spectacular things, glowing gold and pink and orange with a radiance that nature never would’ve dared on the Isle. Even nights are full of theatrics, of shooting stars and pictures hung in the sky, to be revealed only by a tracing hand.
Here, ever cradled in devotion’s palms. Here, amongst the unnavigable thorns and brambles. Here, where the entire world is swathed in colours she could never have even dreamed of. Mal’s starting to run out of prepositions. Around, beside, under, between. There is light, and darkness, and fear, and thrill. That doesn’t ever change.
Jay is staring, his attempt at neutrality utterly disarmed. All new territory, once again. The curtains are open, almost buoyant. The room is so bright.
“You make me happy, too.” His voice is rough around the sides, as if from disuse; none of the lulling weaponry he usually points at everyone else.
It’s a diaphanous echo of all the schemes they’d crafted: how they’d escape the Isle and take over Auradon, or how they’d escape Auradon and take to the forest. Even when they both knew they were merely pawns in Maleficent’s last-ditch attempt at glory, there was an exhilaration to it. And here they are, after the fire-fall, rebuilding from charred planks and mottled concrete.
Jay’s smiling, in that gentle way he does when there are too many emotions cramming themselves into his heart. Lips drawn up so slightly, but it’s the eyes that are upturned; focused entirely on her.
And Mal wouldn’t mind eternity if this was it. Glazed in light like this was something worth preserving. All this fear, all this weakness, all this uncertainty, laid bare for all to see. But Jay has not looked away since he first saw her. And Mal has not looked away since she first saw him. Any guise of indifference stripped down to its very core—
A heart that still beats. A heart that has seen light and chooses not to flinch back into its dark cage. A heart that has been whispering the same shameful truth for years, now clear in its adamance. Mal is not quite ready for the truth. But here, bathed in light, they have begun to unravel it.
But for now, they will settle into silence.