Tender is the Night
Rating: R to be safe
Disclaimer: I don't own the show, the characters, yadda yadda yadda
Summary: Two unlikely people meet on a warm New Rawley night. Things get said, and deeds get done.
Special Thanks: To Nicole, who once told me that Jake had been paired off with everyone, except Sean, thereby planting the seeds of this fic in my mind. She is the one to be thanked (or blamed) for this. She then gallantly proceeded to read & reread this until it started to resemble a coherent story. Go tell her she's awesome. Now!
Author's Notes: The title is from the Blur song Tender, which actually has nothing to do with the story. This started out mainly as a writing exercise and weird YA fandom experiment, but I find myself starting to grow attached to this pairing. Huh.
***
Jake walked along the bookshelf of the common room, trailing her fingers lightly over the leather-bound spines. It was a tellingly girlish thing to do, and she ought to have been more careful. But she had grown tired of being careful and weary of the restrictions placed upon on her. She played a dangerous game with her classmates these days, seeing how feminine she could act and sound before someone cocked an eyebrow or furrowed their brow and started looking confused. She always covered her tracks and said something disgustingly vulgar about a random Rawley Girl to curtail any further investigation. She knew she was playing with fire, pushing the limits of her carefully constructed charade, but it gave her a thrill that she had not felt in too long. She used to play with fire on a regular basis and now she tried to ignite sparks wherever she went.
She had done things, poor little rich girl things. The revealing clothing had been her first real attempt to get noticed; Monica had been more than happy to have another closet to raid and finally a daughter to go shopping with. She had faked a problem with bulimia and when a school guidance counsellor had contacted her mother and urged her to seek professional help for her daughter, Monica had hired a dietician instead of a therapist. The cigarettes elicited what would have been a frown on a face Botoxed beyond expression, but all that came from that exchange was a request to keep the windows open while she smoked.
It became almost impressive how oblivious her mother was to her unhappiness. The summer she turned 15 she began dating. She never slept with them, and one by one they balked at the situation they were in: dating a young girl who played grown-up in every way except the one that counted. She paraded them in front of her mother, who was always gracious and polite despite the fact that they were years older than her daughter. And then once Monica bestowed on them the privacy she assumed they were after, Jake threw them out of her little girl's bed. It was a dangerous game she played with them, being the cute little tease but she was so sure of herself and her plan that she soldiered on. It was only when she found her mother in bed with a previous castoff that she realized this was just another dead end.
Jake wasn't enough of a fan of dramatic irony to appreciate her current situation. She had fled the emotional void of her home in New York to find something that she could at least pretend was what she needed. Attention, devotion, love... it was useless to put a name to it when she wasn't even sure it existed. But now that she had found it, now that she was drowning in it, she realized that little girls should know better than to go looking for things they didn't understand. Hamilton gave her all the attention she needed, along with more attention than she wanted, or could even handle.
***
From the front step of Friendly's, Sean watched Bella clamber down from the black SUV as ungracefully as she could, short of falling on her face. She turned towards the car, blushing at the driver and looking like the bashful princess of New Rawley, completely unaware of her domain. She blew a childish goodbye kiss and slammed the car door closed, skipping to the door of the family gas station and stopping only to run her hand over the top of Pump #4, grinning at the streak of grease that accumulated on her finger. She looked happy, uncomplicatedly so, and he hated her for it.
It had been two weeks since she had finally bridged the last gap with her estranged mother and demanded to know the details of her paternity. It had been just over a week ago when she had informed him that Scout was not in fact her brother and that in light of this revelation, she couldn't deny her feelings for him anymore. This had nothing to do with him, she said. Sean thought that was an unnecessary lie. She would always be his friend, she promised, and would never forget the time they had spent together. He walked away without a word and hadn't spoken to her since. He didn't know of he should blame her or not. Given the choice between lifelong Townie and Greenwich Golden Boy, he was pretty sure she had made the socially acceptable decision. Knowing this didn't make it hurt any less.
Will had come to visit him at home after finding out about Bella and Scout's grand reunion. He said all the right things and waxed philosophical on the changing nature of love and growth and spun his tale of high school heartbreak into one of life-defining grandeur. It would have worked if not for that fact that Will was as happy for the Perfect Couple as Scout himself was. They were the embodiments of the Townie-Rawley divide that he was desperately trying to cross daily. Scout and Bella brought together the best of the worlds Will lived in and all the sympathetic words he threw at Sean could not change the fact that he thought Bella made the right choice. If he thought being dumped by the love of his young life stung, knowing his best friend supported the decision, however discreetly, made him burn in anger.
But the anger eventually turned to dejection, andSean ran his spoon through his sundae, ruining the tower of ice cream and fudge and creating a sludgy mess in his glass. He had wandered into the diner five minutes before closing and Will had put together the frozen treat despite having washed down all the equipment already. There were some advantages to being the heartbroken friend, apparently. But Will couldn't keep the place open for him, so he had locked up and Sean had been relegated to the front step with a pat on the shoulder and a promise that the sundae was on the house. What consideration. It was only once Sean lost sight of Will pedaling off towards the campus that he heard the distant rumbling of the motorcycle. He knew immediately who was going to appear any minute now and was upset at having his night ruined by a confrontation with one of Bella's friends. The free sundae couldn't make up for that.
***
Jake sped her bike across the gravel road toward town in the dark. Hamilton hated it when she took this path, and always urged her to take the safer, paved street that wound around the woods. But Jake was in no mood to play it safe and revelled in disobeying Hamilton in some way, even if he would never know. She reached New Rawley, and guided the bike toward Bella's gas station. Jake slowed down before even reaching it, stopping her bike in the street when she noticed all the lights were turned off. She wondered how late it was and how much trouble she would get in for being off campus at this time. Hamilton was probably frantic looking for her and the thought gave her such a violent reaction that she threw off her jacket in disgust and stretched her arms up in the air to dispel the oppressive feeling weighing down on her. She looked towards the diner and saw that it too was closed for the night. About to turn her bike back to school, she saw a slumped figure sitting on the front step, staring dejectedly into a half-eaten sundae. Sean. She planned to turn her bike around and avoid any sort of awkward conversation, so she was as surprised as anybody when she opened her mouth and called out to him.
"I heard about Scout and Bella." It was a terrible way to start conversation, she realized belatedly. But it had been said and she wasn't going to apologize. Leaving her bike in the middle of the street she walked up towards him and sat at his feet, waiting for a reply.
"Yeah, I heard about it too," he muttered. "Hope those crazy kids make it."
His sarcastic response was so unexpected that she snorted in laughter and clasped a hand over her mouth. She tried to think of comforting words and realized that despite being coddled and protected by Hamilton constantly, she had no idea how to re-enact the actions for someone else. So she chose to speak the truth.
"It's going to end badly. Even if it ends well, it'll end badly." She punctuated her statement by picking up the abandoned spoon and putting a healthy portion of melting ice-cream into her mouth.
He cocked his eyebrow and stared at her, silently asking her to explain her premonition. She continued, speaking around the spoon in her mouth, her lips moving easily around the obstacle: "They'll probably get married and have a family and Scout will become a Senator like his father." She pulled the spoon out of her closed, pink lips and the sound it made caused Sean to realize why Hamilton was so possessive of his girlfriend.
"You're painting a pretty awful picture there, Jake."
"You've obviously never met a politician's wife. Take everything you hate about Rawley and imagine it contained within a household. These are not happy people."
"Not like us simple Townie folk, right?"
"Everyone's unhappy, Sean. You're just unhappy in your simple Townie way," she said with a smirk to offset the offensive statement.
"So tell me princess," he said, grabbing the spoon from her hand, "how unhappy are you?"
Jake ran her hands through her messy black hair, sighing in contemplation. She hadn't gotten it cut since January and it was getting long, long enough to potentially ruin her disguise. She was past the point of caring, though, and she revelled in the ability to look female when the mood struck her, without having to flash her chest.
She turned to Sean with a smile and raised her arms wide and proclaimed, "This much!"
It was a ridiculous thing to say and neither fully grasped the implications but they laughed anyway, fully appreciating the surreal conversation. Laughing at the lame joke caused a familiar pinch on her side, where the corset dug into her flesh. Irritably, she reached her hands up her shirt and ripped the Velcro apart, pulling the corset down her torso and flinging it towards the direction of her bike. After a moment's relief she impulsively grabbed the hem of the baggy sweater and pulled it over her head, leaving her in a thin, cotton tank-top. Sean knew her secret and the balmy weather was doing nothing for her prickly mood so she felt no need to keep the offensive shirt on.
"So what are you doing on the wrong side of the tracks this late on a school night?" Sean asked in a tight voice, his face trained on his ice cream.
"Slumming," she deadpanned. She paused a moment to roll her jeans up over her knees in the heat. "I stopped by to see if Bella was up. I needed some girl talk."
It was such an innocuous thing and yet it completely shook her world.
They had all been sitting in the Rawley cafeteria, discussing weekend plans when Scout asked who was interested in taking his car down to the cape for a camp out. Jake was busy chewing, but Will and Hamilton gave their grunts of approval so Scout added them to the list: Will, Jake&Hamilton... Jake&Hamilton, said in one breath, as one word, as though each name didn't merit being called on its own. She swallowed her food and stood up abruptly, upending her tray and running out of the room towards the school's front entrance. She distantly heard Hamilton calling after her but she kept on running until she found herself in a cluster of trees, gasping for air. Without thought or reason, she grabbed a pen from her pocket, turned toward the closest tree and carved JACQUELINE in the trunk, going over and over the letters until they stood out against the rough bark.
She heard Hamilton calling her name just over her shoulder so she threw the pen to the ground and backed up against the trunk, hiding her name from him. He caressed her face and assured her they didn't need to go camping, he would stay behind and they could lock themselves up in her room and wouldn't that be a million times more romantic, anyway? There was always a youthful eagerness about Hamilton's reasoning, as though he truly believed their happiness was a shared entity. She had lost track of the times her resolve had failed under the bright shine of his blue eyes. It was impossible to refuse him anything. Her time, her body, her carefully guarded personal world; they had all been given away to him, because she could not bring herself to make him unhappy.
She swallowed her answer and kissed him quickly, dragging him hastily away. She brought him to her room and led him to the bed. When she woke up hours later, it was dark and they had clearly missed supper. She dressed herself in the dark, and threw one last look at Hamilton's sleeping form before sneaking out of her room and heading toward town.
***
Sean scooped up some of the ice-cream and put it in his mouth. It tasted differently, now that he had shared the spoon with Jake and the thought made him blush, although it went unnoticed in the dark. He kept shovelling the sundae into his mouth, glad to have something for his hands to do as he watched Jake strip down in his peripheral vision. When there was nothing left of her disguise except for the baggy jeans, he wondered how hot it would have to get that night to get her out of them and with that thought came another mouthful of ice cream.
"Is that some weird Townie survival skill? Eat it all up before someone else can?" Jake laughed.
"I can eat it as slowly as I want to; I've got the spoon." And with that, Jake dipped her finger into his ice-cream and made a big production of licking it off with an impish grin on her face.
"Look at the big man and his spoon now," she laughed haughtily. He stared at her finger and knew he should have made some wisecrack about her manners or told her she was disgusting, anything to show that he was unaffected by her display instead of gaping at her then turning back to his frozen treat.
"Problems over in the vipers' den?" he asked a few minutes later.
They had been sitting in quiet contemplation, the sundae finished off between the two of them. Jake had forgone any sense of decorum and continued using her finger until she wiped the glass down and left it almost completely clean.
"Melodramatic much?" she threw back.
"I'm sorry; you've got the market cornered on melodrama. I shouldn't have tried to move in on your turf."
"Bella told me you were nice. Aren't you supposed to be nice?" she inquired as she scuffed her sneakers on the ground below. She didn't look particularly offended or upset, just amused at the whole situation.
"I guess I'm just tired of being nice. It hasn't gotten me very far." He looked over at Jake and watched her shake her head in understanding.
"Do you hate Scout?"
The question came without warning but he felt no need to lie. "Yeah, I do."
"Because he stole your girlfriend or because he's, you know..."
"Rich? I think I'd hate Scout if he was living in a cardboard box."
Jake sent a look his way that clearly told him she didn't believe a word of that.
The first time that Sean realized Rawley Academy was a world apart from his own, he was just seven years old. His father had taken him to the lake to watch crew practice, and he had looked on in fascination as the oars sliced through the water and the boat glided as though flying. He thought of his prized baseball mitt at home and realized that rowing was so much better, so much more dignified. Rowing reminded him of the young men who came into the diner with shined loafers and perfect teeth, who the waitresses would always flirt with. He took his father hand and grinned up at him, promising him that when he was on crew at Rawley, he would win his first meet for him. And then his father sat him down, and explained to him the difference between Rawley and their town. Some people belong in one, while others belong in the other. And he had told Sean that just because he didn't belong in Rawley, it didn't matter because those boys didn't belong in his town, so he could have that all to himself. While Sean put on a brave face and said he understood, his father placed a hand on his shoulder and explained that the high-school he'd be going to would be full of pretty girls and his best friend, and that made him the luckiest boy he knew, anyway.
"How are things with Will?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, from what I gather you're not too fond of Rawley, and your best friend has spent his freshman year there, while you were wiling away at public school. And besides, he's roommates with your mortal enemy. That's bound to cause friction. Has there been friction?" She punctuated her question by placing her elbow on her knee and propping her face up on her hand. It looked like a standard therapist pose and Sean laughed while wondering how many therapists Jake had been carted off to see in her young life.
"You could say there was some 'friction'. But every friendship has friction."
"Hmm, I see. And how did it make you feel?" She pretended to jot something down in her lap with an imaginary pen, pushing an invisible pair of glasses up her nose.
"You gonna blame this on my mother?"
"That depends on how fucked up I find you. Now, carry on. You, Will, friction... sounds hot."
"Stop that right there."
Jake rolled her eyes and scoffed. "So typical. Why can't boys take a joke?"
"I'm sorry we're all not as comfortable with our sexuality like your boyfriend is."
Jake stared down at her lap, looking troubled. "I guess I'm just lucky."
Having brought up Hamilton, he realized this was the longest he had seen Jake without the boy present. Surprised, he looked down at her. "Where's the boyfriend, anyway, hiding in the bushes?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I wouldn't put it past him."
Her angry tone surprised him. Bella had always held Jake and Hamilton up as a paragon of true love. In retrospect, he wondered how the fact that she openly envied another couple's love for each other didn't clue him in that they would end in heartbreak. He wanted to ask her what had chased her out of her room tonight, but she was the first person in days to speak to him without unwanted pity or false optimism and so he let his curiosity go unsatisfied and bit his tongue.
***
It had started with the hand-holding. Finn's class had just been dismissed at the beginning of Fall Semester and Hamilton had grabbed her hand impulsively as they filed out of the class and held it to his side. Scout and Will had dropped their jaws and looked at Hamilton as though he had gone crazy and the rest of the boys in the class erupted in snickers. Finn, who had only seen enough in the showers to assume she and Hamilton were dabbling in the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, looked on proudly. Hamilton strode out of the classroom, dragging Jake along, throwing defiant looks at anyone who stopped to stare. It was only once the group reached the safety of Jake's room that his actions caught with him as he hyperventilated on her bed, with she and Will trying to calm him down and Scout doubled up in laughter in the corner.
It had caused a burst of joy and affection in her to know that Hamilton would risk his reputation to touch her in public. He faced abuse from his classmates and awkward conversations with his parents and yet always told her that being able to hold her whenever he wanted was all worth it. She marvelled at the sincerity in his eyes when he made those declarations and considered herself the luckiest girl she knew. But it was when the hand-holding failed to stop that she realized the situation had leapt from sweet to bitter. He maintained physical contact with her at all times, as though she was a satellite that he needed to keep gravitating around him. He seemed to work under the impression that the moment he let go she would spin out of orbit and he'd be banished back to the life of a solitary planet in a galaxy of bright stars.
It was the touching, and the way he carried her books without asking and the extra care he took to make sure she was never wanting for attention or protection. Ryder had cornered her in the library one day to deliver some harmless and repetitive insults when Hamilton found them and sent the Brit to the school nurse with a bloody nose. The jealousy was worse. Dressed as Jake, she had kissed Scout once quickly on the lips in front of a girl he had been trying to woo in the hopes of getting over Bella. It was payback for a prank she couldn't even recall and the gang had laughed at her ingenious revenge. Hamilton hadn't spoken to either of them for a week.
He existed in a world of extremes. Things were either right or they were wrong. Black or white. And Jake had learned quickly enough to keep quiet about the spectrum of greys she lived in. For Hamilton, Jake either loved him completely or she didn't love him at all, and she forgot when she stopped trying to convince him of either.
***
He watched her drag her foot from side to side along the ground, gathering up dust. She had moved from the ground at his feet to sitting next to him on the step, her thin, bare shoulder inches from his. He wondered if it was as awkward for her as it was for him, to sit there in silence as they brooded over their respective problems with a relative stranger. He tossed the empty sundae glass from hand to hand, a nervous habit he had developed as a child while trying to perfect his coordination.
It all suddenly seemed so pointless and frustrating and without warning, he leapt up from the stair and strode into the middle of the street, hurling the glass down the empty road with all his might. The glass hurtled through the air, glinting as it caught the moonlight and for a split-second floating through space. Then the ground came up to meet it and the glass shattered against the asphalt with an explosion of tinkling shards. He walked back to the porch and retook his seated position, still wired but satisfied with the knowledge that he too had the capacity to destroy beautiful things.
"Impressive." He had almost forgotten about Jake's presence, but her voice brought him back to her and the oppressive silence they had been sharing.
"What?"
"You threw the glass and it went pretty fucking far. I'm impressed. What are you going to do next? Find the school bully and challenge him to a game of chicken?"
He accepted the criticism silently. Obviously she wouldn't swoon at his bad-boy theatrics like the girls he knew at Edmund High, but she stared at him with a raised eyebrow that told him she thought he was acting like a child.
And as humiliating as it was to be cut down to size with that patronizing look of hers, he felt a healthy respect for her. It was going to take more than a few minor acts of teenage rebellion to impress Jacqueline Pratt.
She looked at him sideways and allowed herself a small smile. "It did go pretty far, though."
And he found himself blushing again, curious to know how he had missed a girl like this under a few a layers of men's clothing. Had he always brushed her off because she was Hamilton's? Had he been wary of her odd circumstances? Had he been so completely focused on keeping Bella that other girls simply didn't register?
He knew, however, that those excuses couldn't mask the real reason. He had simply done to Jake what he had done to other Rawley students: placed her under a special label that one could rarely shed in his eyes. He had never seen as her more than Bella's friend from Rawley, and it galled him to think that he may have been wrong about the others he had judged too.
"So what else is it that you hate about us?" she asked. She got up and placed herself back on the ground in front of him, her legs crossed and her face looking up with curiosity.
"Girls? Where do I start?"
"You know that's not what I mean."
And he did.
"I'm talking about us Rawley kids," she continued, "or is the chip on your soldier supposed to be a secret?"
"Funny. And I don't hate Rawley kids."
"I wouldn't blame you if you did. We're not the wholesome Smalltown, USA types. Curse of the rich I suppose."
"Seems like you don't hold much of Rawley in high esteem either."
"Well, we're far from perfect. Finn, our English teacher?"
"Will's idol, yeah?"
"He's carrying on an affair with the Dean's wife. Hamilton's mom." She looked down after she said it, as though she was ashamed to have let the information slip.
This is what he needed to hear. He needed to know that Rawley was the epitome of elitist posturing, where people got away with whatever they wanted because they had enough money to throw at their problems. He needed to know that Bella was a lamb being sent into the lion's den.
"Tell me more."
***
Jake looked up at the softly spoken words. Being forced to be quiet and unassuming had afforded her the privilege of witnessing her share of sins at Rawley. She kept most of them to herself, not even telling Hamilton, because they were never her stories to tell. To be honest, after life with her mother many of them didn't shock her anymore. But she wanted to share them with Sean. She wanted to see the innocent Townie blush and squirm while she told him about the things she had seen, things she couldn't even tell Hamilton.
"Ryder."
"The British asshole?"
"Yeah. He gives Hamilton and me a hard time about being you know, gay. But he's hit on me a few times. While I was dressed as Jake. I've never said anything..."
"What else?"
She started to laugh. She had thought that would shock him. It was a complete truth and yet she had assumed it would have been too much for the naive Townie. It surprised her to realize that Sean may not be as inexperienced as she expected; that he may not need the protection of her silence like Hamilton did. She wanted to test the boundaries, see how much she could reveal of her life at Rawley before Sean drew back.
"There's a kid on my floor, Thomas. His father made his fortune making deals with the mob in Boston. One of the girls across the lake took a semester off to go study in Switzerland, but it was really an abortion. You can't throw a rock at Rawley Girls without hitting a bulimic, and it takes only a short skirt and an open mind to pass Mr. Bartley's chemistry class. Even our friends aren't so clean. Hell, Scout's basically fucking his sist..." And she stopped abruptly, realizing too late what she had said.
Sean stared at her, with his jaw clenched.
***
He remembered how easy it was to look Bella in the eyes and tell her he respected her decision to wait. He took her hand, and pushed her corn-yellow hair behind her ear and whispered that he would wait right along with her, as long as it took. They were sitting in the dugout of the baseball field, at dusk waiting for the sunset. She had asked him to take her somewhere special and so he brought her to the place that had seen his greatest triumphs and failures. He knew from the disappointed look in her eyes when they reached their destination that she had been expecting something new, something exciting.
These days it felt like everyone was trying to break out of New Rawley but him. Will moved to the other side of the lake and it felt like Bella's spirit left right along with him. He caught her staring at the school's direction every once in awhile, a wistful expression on her face. Sean couldn't bring himself to figure out if she was envious of Will's ticket out or if she was yearning for her former love. Either scenario disgusted him. Too many people in his life were upset with the cards they got dealt and it made him wonder if there was something wrong with him for not wanting to leave. He had a beautiful home, he was in love with a beautiful girl and when the time came, he would make love to her and he was almost completely sure she'd be thinking of him the whole time
***
They both stared at the night sky for a while, hoping the other one would speak first. Jake couldn't believe how tactless she had been. It was one thing to tease Sean with his disfavour for her classmates; it was another to rub Scout and Bella in his face.
"I'm sorry I said that," she said tentatively. "Hamilton always says I say the wrong things in awkward situations and I guess he's right."
"What would Hamilton say if he saw you now, in your girl clothes talking to me in the middle of the night?" He had his hands in the pocket of his jeans, with his head thrown back and his gaze still directed at the stars.
"I... I don't think he'd do a lot of talking if he saw us right now."
"Hmm," he commented. After a few minutes, he abandoned his stargazing and looked her square in the face. "Do you think I'm a naive little Townie?"
She stared him in the eyes, expecting him to look away first but he held her gaze. She thought of telling him that she had thought that exact thing about him, that he was an innocent, traditional young man who loved things so easily and fully that he wanted nothing more to make them a part of himself. But then she realized she had been projecting her thoughts of another boy onto him, and so she looked down at her lap and shook her head.
"Whatever you are, naive isn't it. No one as angry as you are can be called naive."
The sombre tone was affecting her oddly, so she reached up with her right hand and ruffled his hair, hoping to dispel the mood.
***
"How do you deal with it every day? Pretending to be one of them?" he asked in wonder.
"It's not that hard. I pretend to grab my crotch a lot. It always gives Will a funny little aneurysm when I do it, too..."
"I didn't mean a guy. How do you pretend to be one of those snobby Rawley rich kids without driving yourself insane?"
He thought she was hanging her head down in contemplation, but when her shoulders started shaking, he assumed the pressure had finally cracked her and she was going to start bawling in front of him. But she raised her head, and Sean saw Jake choking on laughter with her eyes tearing up. Just as quickly as she started, she sobered up and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands.
"Who's pretending? I am one of them, McGrail." With that she hopped up from her seat and starting to make her way to the bike.
Sean watched her walk off, reluctant to see her go. He had been so ready to hate her, so ready to lump her into the growing pile of people who ruined his life from across the lake. And now here she was, telling him not to make any assumptions about her. It was as though she had walked out of Hamilton's shadow and he was seeing her for the first time, but still unable to classify her. He wanted to call out to her, to say that she was better than them but before he could get the words out, she stopped in front of her bike and turned to face him over her shoulder.
"Are you coming?"