Chapter Text
"And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away,
And I wept both day and night,
And hid him from my heart's delight."
-The Angel, William Blake
Simon curled in closer to where jack lay on his bed; sick and shivery, and far too cold than he should be. His skin was hot, but Simon knew he was cold so he pulled the blankets a little higher over the both of them until Jack's shivering became infrequent. The Matron and nurse had instructed that Jack was to be kept cool throughout the duration of his sickness, but Jack couldn't have been more uncomfortable in his life with a cold press on his forehead.
'Take the press off, please,' Jack had complained, his face all scrunched up as his tired arms failed to do it themselves.
'But the Matron said-' Simon started, promptly cut off: 'I don't care what the Matron said, take it off. I'm cold, and it's uncomfortable.'
Of course, Simon hesitated but he would never say no, and he had obeyed the request as he had obeyed the one which said to stay and read to him, or the last one which had recently asked him to curl up under the duvet beside him to get warmer.
Which brought Simon back to his current thoughts; Jack was so warm. Everybody was warm when they were sick, but Simon never really thought about it until this point. And Simon had been so cold before he slipped underneath too. It was, to some strange guilt within himself, splendid, every idle minute that passed as he tried to soothe the sick boy to sleep.
Jack would murmur something incomprehensible, something that one might attribute to the delirium caused by such illness, but Simon always tried to listen if he might say something, though he never really did; but when, on the rare occasion tha he would murmur something dangerously close to the start of Simon's name, Simons heart would beat some childish, plain rhythm that so contrasted the stillness of it before Jack had said anything.
Then Jack brought his arm up around Simon, drawing him closer until the latter had his cheek pressed low on the chest of the former. It was an awkward position, but Jack was on the cusp of sleep now, and Simon would have hated to wake him. He got a tender urge as he felt Jack's breath go steady (as it had been fanning on his forehead), and he lowered his face a little to press his ear to where Jack's beating heart lay beneath, just to listen to it thump so gently...
Beyond the dorm, and the creaky stairs that lead up to it, and the pallid chapel that lay in the court , snow fell quietly, trembling down to earth in little flakes that painted everything in white. In the morning, men would come down to salt the roads, and the Matron might grab any of the few boys remaining at picton to help shovel the snow, and Simon would have to bundle up in the scratchy, unmoisturized wool sweater just to do his bit of labour and watch his nose and cheeks turn crimson, but for now he was warm, and Jack wasn't alone; the shared heat made between the two coaxing Simon to a sleep of his own, lulled by heartbeats and breaths in perfect harmony.