Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jack doesn’t know the intricacies of the English language. He isn’t eloquent or wise with words. He doesn’t have snappy quips or clever rhymes like Davey does; Davey is a typical student, with a knowledge of literature and a thorough grasp of the nature of words. And they are a being of their own in a way, these words, they have a personality. Davey talks with the easy flow of someone comfortable with them, someone who has become an ally - a friend, even - of these words.

Jack isn’t like that. But it doesn’t take a genius to notice these coincidences, these messy little imperfections that keep him awake at night, asking question after question and replaying days like they’re rolls of tape. Davey would call them oxymorons, but to Jack they’re just confusions. They pop up often, too often. Scarily often.

The midnight sun. It’s impossible, he knows that. He knows it’s a foolish thing to even think, that he’s just putting together words clumsily - words, these foreign, strange things that people laugh at him for, that people mock his way of forming, that sound all wrong when they come from his mouth. But the sun that Jack sees is no sun; he spends the days in a bundle, wrapped away from the world, heavy but limp at the same time. Yet another contradiction.

When he does emerge, it’s night. The moon becomes for Jack what the sun is for others. He finds that it is easier to face a world that is empty, that he is less drained walking through deserted streets than bustling ones, that the hubbub of company he once thrived in has become his worst enemy. So, his sun is the one that he sees at midnight, when he breathes again and tries to find a way to stop the racing heartbeat and the flurries of tears that leave him falling.

He hates to feel weak. He hates to let others down, especially those who depend on him, who love him. So, he keeps his pain a silent one. He supposes that could be an oxymoron too; pain is a loud, crippling beast, that draws screams from nightmares and leaves you sobbing. But his isn’t like that - Jack makes sure that it isn’t, that no one ever hears a sound of suffering and that his pain remains oxymoronic, so that it never reaches the light of day (or the sun at midnight) and therefore remains caged. Maybe, if he holds it in, it will cease to exist and he will be free.

He knows that Davey would call him dramatic, that he’d be sympathetic, that he’d try to find words for all of this. Words: second nature to him, an endless supply he can summon from whenever he needs, the things he respects most in the world. Davey says that words have power. Jack is yet to understand this. He wonders sometimes if it would help; if he could understand words fully, if he could find the right ones to describe how he feels, would it help him to heal?

But there’s that darkness, always. A warm kind of darkness - yet another goddamn oxymoron, common as dirt and creeping through every crack like a disease. Darkness is normally that cold shadow that unsettles you, the chill of the night. But Jack’s darkness is sticky and it clings to him like sweaty hair. It feels alive, like it owns him, like it controls what he does and leads him to locking himself away and becoming nocturnal and closing his mouth - what’s the point in opening it, when the words are always missing, just out of reach?

During the hours spent alone, the silence fills his ears, like the lapping of waves, like the sound of distant tears hitting the ground - the ground that feels so soft and insubstantial, like it will cave any moment and collapse beneath him. The silence seems far from quiet; it seems to swallow him, wrapping him in this stifling cover of nothing. He worries that this nothing will go on forever, and that there will never be anything again.

The pain keeps him company during the long days of exiling himself from the world. It’s reliable and consistent and he knows what to expect, so he finds a weird comfort in it. But then the oxymorons return and he is haunted by something more than pain, something he doesn’t have a word for, something he believes that even Davey wouldn’t have a word for.

A boy’s breasts. This should not be a thing. This should not be something that Jack is faced with in the mirror. But the discomfort that stems from those things is overwhelming, and he scratches and scratches as if that would help him be free of them. As long as they’re there, he fears that he’ll never breathe, that his chest will be crushed and compressed and he will never feel at home in his own body - a body should be what carries you through life, what makes you you. But Jack’s body is a nightmare. One that he wants to wake up from and leave behind for good.

He hides and he hurts and he wonders: what if he’s not a real boy? What if he’s just a girl playing pretend? What if this has all just been some game of dressing up and no one else sees him as what he feels inside? Because he’s so sure; being a boy fits him perfectly, like ointment over a nasty burn, soothing and gentle and safe. But to everyone else, he’s worried that they just see a confused girl, a tomboy, or a liar.

After all, a boy with breasts is an oxymoron. It should not exist. Jack feels that he has no place in this world, so he hides. It’s easier that way.