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At some point each evening, everyone - including Ralph - would realize the day was ending, and that no more work or play would be done. Following this point boys would quietly, one by one, retire to bed as the island descended into quiet dark punctuated only by the faint clicks and calls and cries of creatures in the forest.
This was the time during which a meeting took place, if necessary. It was also the time in which quiet conversations could be had, permitted by the reds and oranges and pinks blending together and spreading out and filling the sky, reflecting on the water. There was something about the scene, surreal yet vivid in its gradient colors and angled light, that lended itself to forgetting worries and troubling thoughts and fears of…and childish fears.
(For a time. The way the sky changed rapidly, sun sinking further below the horizon with each moment reminded them subtly, if insidiously, that it was temporary.)
Ralph was almost always last to sleep. Jack knew this because he was almost always second-to-last. And that made sense, didn’t it? Ralph was chief, in charge of all of them, and Jack was - well, he was second in command. Sort of. In charge of some of the boys.
He pushed down the discontented anger that rose up as it always did when he thought about that. A vote had been held, he told himself. The majority had chosen Ralph.
He had to wonder, though - wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t. Would they be better or worse off? He huffed. Did it matter? After a moment of deliberation, he decided he didn’t care how good of a job he would do, because he would be in charge. Everyone would listen to and obey him . Even the idea alone made him smile.
But then he remembered he wasn’t in charge, and found himself scowling.
He looked out on the water, taking in the waves pushing onto the beach. Again and again, over and over, making a constant rhythm of water crashing then receding. Sometimes - most of the time - it was soothing. A calming white noise that could lull you to sleep, even when the sounds of the forest seemed a bit more menacing than usual. At the moment, it was just inexplicably irritating.
Some bitter impulse drove Jack to look further up - directly into the sun. It seemed like a perfect act of defiance against…something. Everything.
But it didn’t take long for the bright, burning, blinding light to drive his eyes shut and a hand up to cover them. He muttered a curse under his breath as he blinked the spots out of his vision. What the hell had he done that for? He hoped no one had seen that.
Once he could see properly again, he took a moment to relocate Ralph. He’d been making his way towards him, before his thoughts had distracted and subsequently angered him.
Ralph sat down by the water, still a distance away from where Jack stood, further down the beach. He was shaded against the sunset, hardly more than a silhouette from that distance. It was odd for him to sit off on his own like that. It made Jack - well, not worried. But something pulled Jack to go talk to him.
Jack found his frustration fading at the sight. Everything was quiet and calm; he ought to be quiet and calm. Or something close to it. The sunset-painted sky above a sea reflecting its light before a boy sitting with knees brought up to his chest helped. He smiled, even, when he could tell from a shifting of the figure that Ralph had just sighed dramatically.
Ralph didn’t acknowledge Jack as he approached, not properly, but he did turn his head slightly, so there was that. He’d noticed him. Ralph sighed again.
Jack dropped to the ground beside him. He sighed too, in the same way Ralph had. Perhaps to express understanding. Or perhaps just to make a sound.
Silence stretched out between them. Jack idly tapped his fingers on the sand, rocked an outstretched foot back and forth. He changed positions to stick his other leg out instead and lean back on his arms. Ralph did not move.
“What?” Ralph asked, eventually. He sounded…subdued. Was he tired?
“What are you doing over here?” Jack asked. “Everyone else - ” he pointed over his shoulder - “is back there.”
And they were. Moving about and playing simple games or sitting around and chatting, the others were all gathered in the greater area surrounding the shelters. They could be wondering what Ralph - and Jack, now - were doing by the water, but they probably weren’t. Too distracted by their own fun, their own worries, too busy distracting themselves, to care - that, or already asleep.
“What are you doing over here?” Ralph retorted, not answering Jack’s question. Alright then. They were going to play that game.
Well, what could he say to that? “Maybe I just want to watch the sunset.”
Ralph snorted.
Even though he’d pretty much made his excuse up, that reaction still made Jack bristle. “What’s so funny about that? I’ve been hunting all day. I want to sit and watch the sunset.”
“But you’re here,” Ralph said, as if he was making a point.
Deadpan: “I am.”
“There’s lots of places you can watch the sunset on this island.”
“So?”
“ So , Jack, why are you here ?”
He realized he was losing the game. He shrugged.
“Jack.”
He said nothing.
Ralph sighed again. That was three times now. “You ought to go back with the others.”
“What? No.” The word “no” came out sharper and more certain than he intended. After a second’s pause to reflect on that, he added: “Why would I?”
Ralph was silent as he contemplated the answer to that question. When he quit, he did so visibly: his concentrated expression faded, he shook his head with sudden despair. “I don’t know.” He curled in on himself, slightly but noticeably, and it made something in Jack’s chest twist. “I don’t think I know much of anything, really.”
Jack hummed, thoughtful. “You know how to blow the conch,” he supplied.
Ralph smiled. It faltered, but it was there. “Anyone could.”
“And how to build shelters.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Hardly.” But he was still smiling.
And Jack really liked it when he smiled, so next he said, “And you know how to make everyone listen to you.”
And yet Ralph’s smile didn’t last long after that. Somehow, that had been the exact thing to say to make Ralph sigh a fourth time, go solemn again, and look out on the water and up at the rapidly dimming sky once more. “I know.”
The sound of talking and laughing behind them was quieting by the moment. It made the silence between them much louder and far more awkward than it should have been.
“I…I don’t need to hunt tomorrow,” Jack blurted. It felt wrong to say - of course he needed to hunt tomorrow, he always needed to hunt, he couldn’t stop hunting, not until he killed. But it was the only thing he could think to say. “I’ll stay with you.”
It worked, sort of. “Really?” Ralph turned to study Jack. “Why?”
“Well - ” it came out rough; he cleared his throat, started again - “Well, wouldn’t you like help? With, I don’t know, putting things in order, or building shelters, or - or whatever you do all day.”
With a quizzical tilt of his head: “Are you sure you want that?”
“...Yes. I want to help you! What of it?”
Ralph exhaled, amused. “Alright then.”
What kind of answer was that? Jack was giving up a whole day. It didn’t matter how nice the idea of spending it with Ralph did sound. He held his head high. “You,” he declared, “should say thank you.”
“What?” A look. A sigh. “Fine. Thank you.”
At that, Jack smirked in self-satisfaction, and Ralph rolled his eyes, and gave him a shove - Jack shoved him right back. Again: shove, counter-shove. Then Ralph reached up to pinch Jack’s cheek, and a game of dexterity - Ralph working to attack various targets on Jack’s body and Jack trying to evade him, along with retaliating whenever he could - began.
“Hey! Hey!”
“Just stay - still - ”
“Hell no!”
The struggle continued until Jack managed to grab Ralph by the wrists, one after the other. Gripping him tightly - although, he was careful, not enough to hurt more than the bit he wanted it to - he held a surprised, then offended, Ralph in place.
Ralph fought against him - but not really. “Not fair!”
Jack grinned. “Got you.”
He intended to let Ralph go shortly after that - he really did. But then he realized how close Ralph was, and how his eyes were reflecting light in so many colors from the setting sun, and how a smile he was trying to keep a scowl was breaking out on his face, and how close he was , and…he didn’t. He held him tighter, if anything.
“...Jack?”
In a way, it was painful to look at him. All that light, all those colors, that smile…could a person be radiant? Too bright, too brilliant. It was like looking at the sun, but - the sun forced his eyes away. Ralph just made him want to look longer.
What was he wanting, right then? He wanted something so, so bad. He could feel it inside, pulling at him. What was it?
“Jack, you can let me go now.”
Jack started, snapped back to reality. “Oh.” He let go immediately, as if Ralph had burned him. He did feel warm, was almost certain he was blushing. He grinned again. It was unsteady this time. “Ha.”
“Ha,” Ralph echoed.
Jack took a moment, for the worry worming its way through him, to take in Ralph’s expression. For some reason, he didn’t look suspicious, or confused, or even concerned - he just looked flustered. Which was - that was -
They were still close, too close for Jack to ignore how strange and strongly he was feeling something , so he took it upon himself to drag himself away, turn to the water again. The water was a safe thing to face. Just as long as it took to get the odd and dizzying and just a little bit bubbly - yet hardly unpleasant - feeling in his chest under control.
He only noticed his heart had been racing once it began to slow.
“The sunset is pretty,” Ralph said, eventually. “I came down here to get away from everyone, but…it’s pretty.”
“Oh.” Jack processed his words. Get away from everyone. A bit uncomfortable, he shifted in place. “Oh. Well - ”
“You’re fine,” Ralph interrupted. “Not sure why, but you’re fine.”
Jack liked that - that Ralph was willing to talk to him, only wanted to talk to him, that Ralph liked him that much. Unfortunately, that thought didn’t help with managing the still-present vertigo-like sensation unsettling him. “Well.” He looked over to Ralph. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“I suppose we are.” His smile as he said that was small and slight, a quiet thing, but it made Jack’s breath catch regardless.
Jack decided, then and there, that getting stranded on a deserted island wasn’t really such a bad thing after all.
To think he might never have met Ralph.
“It’s strange to think,” Ralph said, “that we really haven’t been here that long. I’d swear it’s been a year already.” He frowned. “I feel a lot older.”
“More like a day,” Jack muttered. “We crashed, made that fire, and then - ” His days had melted together into a blur, nothing but hunting and watching fires and meetings and hunting . They all seemed moments long in his memory. Ralph wouldn’t understand that, though.
Ralph shrugged. “We’re different.”
Which was true. Both of them knew that. They’d known that since the first day, since they’d first laid eyes on each other. Ralph was the boy with the shell who won votes and smiled and built shelters. Jack was the choir boy who lost votes and sneered and led hunts. That was just the way things were.
Abruptly, Jack was struck by a dismal thought. This - the tense, ever-shifting friendship-like thing that held the two of them close together - would only last as long as the island did. As soon as they went back to England, they would return to their homes forevermore and, likely, never see each other again. There’d be nothing left for them except to forget each other as the island receded into a strange childhood memory.
He hated that. He hated that far too much for his own good.
“Why do you want to go home so much, anyway?” He’d asked the question before he even knew he was opening his mouth. Too late to take it back, he waited for an answer.
Ralph seemed unable to believe he’d asked such a thing. “What? It’s home. Don’t you miss home?”
Jack found himself unable to respond. He was sure some part of him did. Some part of him had to miss even his dull family and stuffy house and dreary school, along with the bustling, clamorous streets overlaid with grime and smoke that surrounded those things. But another part of him, a part that he felt was gaining more influence by the day, saw all that as nothing but a prison - a prison of rules and laws and cold hard lines that would keep him chained for the rest of his life if he let it. The island, even with its wildness and terrors and temperamental nature, was a paradise in comparison. He could be in charge here. Or - he remembered Ralph was chief - close to it.
“Don’t you want to be rescued?” Ralph pressed when he did not answer.
“Yes, I do!” That question he answered without thought. “I just - I mean more - what good is there at home?”
“Huh? Lots of things. Electricity, for one. Food that isn’t fruit or any other forest thing or…or pigs if you get one. And clothes, and trains, and plumbing, and - ”
“For you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have friends at home?”
Ralph’s eyebrows drew together. Apparently, it took effort to remember the answer. “I’ve got a few,” he said. “Though I’m not too close with any of them. I don’t really know how to get close. Never learned. I’ve always moved around a lot.”
Jack meant to continue the discussion. Say something along the lines of, So do you really care about them? And Ralph would say something like, Maybe not, but they’re not why I want to go home. And Jack would ask, Then why do you want to? and Ralph would say, It’s home! like he had before, and maybe eventually they would get somewhere.
But instead, for a reason he didn’t quite understand, he asked: “What about a girlfriend?”
Ralph stared. “A girlfriend?”
Jack blushed but persisted. “Did you have a girlfriend back home?”
“Why would I have a girlfriend?”
“Uh - ” Jack faltered; he’d never quite understood the concept himself, only known that other boys he’d always sat far across the room from had been increasingly invested in the subject - “because you’d want one.”
“But what would I want one for?”
Another question he struggled to answer. “To…kiss.” He studied Ralph’s face, glanced at his lips. “Have you ever kissed a girl?”
“No,” was Ralph’s immediate response. “Certainly not.” A narrowing of his eyes, a tilt of his head. “...Have you ?”
The answer was no. Jack almost admitted that, just as quickly as Ralph had. But then he remembered: the boys who’d talked of girls and girlfriends had been the ones on the far side of the room. The side where it was crowded. They’d had friends, lots of them, and plenty of admirers besides; they were loved. And when talking to someone like Ralph, for whom all had voted and cheered and had followed with trust and respect since the first day, but most importantly had shining blue eyes and a smile that entranced, it seemed best to say…“Of course I have.”
“Really?” Ralph asked with disbelief. Not like he was pressing Jack to confess his lie, not with suspicion. Just disbelief.
So Jack doubled down. He nodded. “Plenty of ‘em.”
“Huh.” Now Ralph was unreadable. He seemed lost in thought, eyes somewhere on the ground.
Jack wasn’t sure if he was supposed to ask him what he was thinking, or even if he was supposed to say anything at all. He stayed silent.
Ralph looked up, suddenly. “What’s it like?”
Jack paused. He could make something up, easily. It’s nice, it’s fun, it’s warm, any of those would work. But some urge inside him was shoving an alternative to the forefront of his mind, holding it before him, saying, Wouldn’t you like to, wouldn’t you like to, wouldn’t you like to? and not explaining why - because it didn’t need to. He was already lunging for it. “It’s hard to explain…”
“Oh.”
“...But I could show you.”
Ralph tensed. “What do you mean?”
Jack forced a confident grin; there was no going back now. “Come here.”
Ralph complied with an uncertain expression on his face. Jack moved, too, and they faced each other parallel to the shore, kneeling, knees almost touching. That strange and undoing, somehow buoyant, almost overpowering feeling from before returned in full force. He couldn’t ignore it now. He wanted Ralph closer. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted…
He wanted to kiss Ralph.
He brought his hands up to either side of Ralph’s face, holding him there. It took all his effort to keep his voice steady as he said, “I’ll show you.”
“You really want to…?” Ralph’s eyes went wide and a blush crept onto his face. But then he went through some internal preparation - closing his eyes then exhaling slowly and shakily then opening them again - and he nodded. “Alright. Show me.”
Jack could not let himself hesitate. And he didn’t. He closed the distance, leaning forward and pulling Ralph to him, allowing himself no second thoughts, propelled by instinct alone.
At first, it was nothing but surreal. Lips were on his; he was kissing someone. He was kissing Ralph . It was an entirely brand new sensation that his brain sparked and stuttered to understand.
But then he had overcome that shock, understood the contact, and he began to understand other things. Like how warm everything was, all of sudden - his entire body and the air around it, but especially the points of contact, their lips and where Jack’s hands rested against Ralph’s skin. And how hard his heart was pounding, heavy and loud and - it seemed - threatening to break out of his chest. And how he kept leaning further in, kept pulling Ralph closer. And how he wanted it all to last forever.
It couldn’t.
Before too long, at a mutual realization that the kiss had lasted more than long enough, they both pulled away. In the moments afterwards, they took time to stare at each other - both flushed, both breathless, both a bit scared of what had just happened - and say nothing.
It seemed like an eternity before Ralph, averting his eyes, stammered out: “So that’s - that’s what it’s like.”
“Y - Yeah,” Jack managed. He bit his lip. “What…did you think?”
Ralph gave him a crooked, shaky smile. “It was nice.”
He wanted to kiss him again. And again, and again, and again. But he couldn’t. He’d had his moment; now it was over. Things would go back to what they were supposed to be.
(Later, he’d wonder if things might have gone differently if he had kissed him again. He’d wonder if maybe, maybe - But then he’d stop wondering.)
There wasn’t much talking after that. Neither of them could bring themselves to do it. They each returned to their previous positions, a distance away from each other, and watched as the sun continued to make its way down. Both were lost in their own thoughts. It was pleasant in its own way, if only because they got to have it together.
“It’s getting dark,” Ralph said at one point, eyes on the fading glow on the horizon. “Not long until night.”
“Oh.” He was right, but - Jack didn’t want to go to sleep. He didn’t want to leave Ralph yet. “We can stay out here a little longer, can’t we?”
A long pause.
“Alright. We can stay out here a little longer.”