#set before d1 when they're still on the isle if it wasn't clear

[belladxne]

words are knives and often leave scars | chapter 1

[see notes for Ao3 & ff.net links] pairing: Jay/Mal words: 3.4k description: The problem is, Jay has no idea what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. The problem is, Mal doesn’t ever want to push him away but she can’t disappoint her mother either and she’s never been any good at compromise. The problem is, in a fairytale the prince would kiss the princess and they’d live happily ever after, but on this island of sinners and thrown away things, a prince of thieves kisses a princess of darkness and all it gets him is spiteful words and all it gets her is heartache

    Jay’s stomach rumbles as he traces his way through the familiar shadows of all the forgotten alleys and and unwatched side streets that make up his well-worn path to the Bargain Castle, but he’s too busy mentally cataloguing his haul for the day to pay it much mind. The whole point of going to see Mal is to filch some of her food, anyways, so his hunger isn’t more pressing than making sure he has a decent enough score to dodge another shouting match with his dad.

    He counts his acquisitions by the sounds of their clinks in his pockets, by the weight and feel of them where they press against his skin in any place he’d found to tuck them, trying to gauge if they’re enough.

    A charm bracelet he’d snagged off of one of the step-granddaughters from school—with enough polishing and a gullible enough customer, they can probably pass the cheap metal off for real silver. A somewhat grimy tricorn hat he’d triumphantly snagged off of Harry Hook’s head before he even saw Jay coming, with a real, if somewhat battered, feather sticking to the brim—and Jafar can still be scary when he wants, so Harry will have no choice but to pay a decent price for it. (Unless someone else buys it before Harry can reclaim it, a concept Jay finds equally hilarious.) A chipped and battered teacup gilded with real gold leaf, the only gold Jay’s ever seen in his life, even if it’s almost entirely worn away—it’d be worth more in a set, or with at least half the gilding not rubbed and chipped off, but the only gold he knows of on the island has to be worth something, however little of it there is. About a dozen other almost-worthless trinkets and baubles.

    So, is that going to be enough for his dad? A vaguely shiny teacup isn’t exactly the nonexistent big score that his dad’s still looking for, but it’s his best find in a long, long time, so he guesses it’ll have to be enough.

    He’s so wrapped up in his appraisal of his day’s work that he doesn’t notice the shouting at first, not until he’s close enough to recognize the infuriated, venomous voice leaking through Mal’s cracked window on the balcony above as Maleficent’s. He stops in his tracks, a healthy dose of fear trickling through his veins before he slinks a little further into the shadows, even knowing that he’s already well out of the sight and awareness of the pissed off, malevolent fairy who rules the island. Anyone with even the smallest amount of self preservation skills would be eager to remain out of Maleficent’s focus when she’s fired up, and he’s been pretty damn good at keeping himself alive and unscathed for a pretty damn long time by now.

    Even straining his ears as hard as he can, he can’t make out any of what the tyrannical woman’s shouting, but he finds that he can just barely pick up on Mal’s voice as she tries to protest. Whatever’s going down between the mother and daughter just then, it sounds bad, and he’s always been more cautious than curious—this isn’t any of his business, and he doesn’t want any part in it. He can come back tomorrow morning to try to get her mind off of it, but before then? Count him out.

    Of course, no sooner does he decide that than the sound of Mal’s bedroom door slamming booms through the slightly opened window, and it’s not a moment later that Mal is suddenly shoving her window open and climbing out in a flurry of forceful, rough movements. Jay watches as her backlit silhouette half-stumbles to the parapet of her balcony in an apparent rush to put as much distance between herself and the argument as possible, slamming her hands down onto the stone and hanging her head.

    Jay worries his bottom lip between his teeth, weighing the odds that he’s missed his chance to bounce, and avoid this whole situation.

    But it’s not like Mal knows that he’s here, and he knows his skillset well enough to know that he can get just about anywhere without being spotted—anywhere including away from this highly awkward, messy scene. He edges a foot back the way he came, then starts another step away as he turns—

    The problem with his plan is, Jay wasn’t counting on how distracted seeing Mal like this—so completely opposite from cool and collected in a way that she doesn’t even get when she’s well and truly furious—would make him, and while he was counting on not being spotted, he wasn’t thinking hard enough about not being heard.

    All it takes is one movement that’s slightly too quick, and he finds himself wincing as the teacup in his pocket clinks against a tiny mint tin which clinks against a plastic brooch which clinks against the step-granddaughter’s charm bracelet—and when he freezes in place, they all take the opportunity to jangle together merrily.

    It’s a precise little chain reaction of fuck you, Jay, and he watches as Mal’s head snaps up and swivels to look towards the shadows in his direction. Well, shit. He’s officially in the awkward, messy scene now.

        “Jay?” she practically demands into the dark, and the choked, unsteady sound of her voice sends ice spiking into his veins—because Mal doesn’t sound like that, Mal never sounds like whatever the hell that is, so whatever just went down with her mom must have been bad. Really bad, and now she knows he’s here, so there’s no creeping back into the shadows to pretend he’d never seen or heard any of this. Unless she decides she was just hearing things—

    An impatient huff pierces the silence above him and cuts off his thought, and Mal’s voice is still uneven when she snaps, “Are you coming up or not?”

    Honestly, at this point, he doesn’t know why he ever expects to get away with anything when it comes to Mal; she knows him, and his habits, way too well. He reconsiders his option to slink back into the night and act like none of this ever happened—it’s not like she’d hold it against him; they’re rotten kids, the both of them, and she wouldn’t expect him to be invested in her situation right now any more than he’d expect her to be invested in a similar one of his.

    But he can’t keep the strain in her voice from echoing through his head, and an uncomfortable feeling tightens in his chest, and something about that feeling has him moving towards the Bargain Castle and, invested or not, reaching to scale the wall the same way he’s done at least a couple hundred times before, hunger completely forgotten. He’s already here and he’s already caught, he justifies, so this may as well happen.

    He’s swinging himself up over the parapet of her balcony with practiced ease in no time, and he tries his absolute hardest to not look as uncomfortable as he feels when he proceeds to lean back against the cool stone of the low wall. It’s quickly beginning to occur to him now that he’s up here that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing here or what he thought he was going to do once he made his climb, and that he probably should have split when he had the chance.

    Mal’s facing away from him, her arms crossed as she looks out towards Auradon, and he can’t make out her expression in the dark as she takes noticeably unsteady breaths. Still though, he can tell she doesn’t have much intention of speaking first, which leaves this on him. He’s regretting a lot right now.

        “Sooo...” he tries lamely, hoping with some amount of desperation that he’ll find the rest of his sentence along the way. But as he opens his mouth to say who in the hell knows what, Mal turns to look at him, and the words die in his throat as the light from her window hits half of her face.

    She’s not exactly crying—he’s pretty sure if he caught Mal of all people actually crying it would be, like, The End Times or something—but her face is slightly blotchy and red, all the more noticeable for how pale she is, and her eyes are red-rimmed and so full it looks like it’s taking every single ounce of her willpower to keep tears from spilling over. Which, honestly, is, like, world-shakingly, pants-shittingly terrifying once it sinks in, because Mal is possibly the most infuriatingly, obstinately willful person he’s ever met, and if even her unending determination is barely enough to hold the tears back then he doesn’t even know what the world’s coming to.

    Forgetting in his shock that he’s supposed to be indifferent and detached right now, Jay gapes as he pushes off from the parapet and takes a step towards her. “Jeez, Mal, what the hell was all that with your mom about?” If it’s bad enough to turn the Mal he knows into this, he’s not sure he really even wants to know, but apparently the rest of him isn’t on the same page as his mind on this, because he can’t stop himself from asking.

        “The usual,” she tries to scoff as she turns away from the light again, but the sound is… off. Not right. And Jay can’t help the skeptical quirk to his eyebrow, because the usual absolutely does not result in this.

        “Yeah, so, I guess that’s why you’re—”

        “I mean,” Mal cuts him off, not even letting him finish expressing his doubt, “she’s always said I’m not evil enough to live up to her name, that’s not new, so, whatever.” (Her tone really doesn’t sound very convincing on the ‘whatever’ front.) “And it’s not like this is the first time she’s told me she thinks I’m turning out weak and soft, so, you know, I’m used to that.” (Except it’s never affected her like this before.) “And, I mean, I’ve always known she finds me a huge disappointment, because it’s not like she’s above reminding me at every turn that at my age she was out raging hell and the worst I’ve managed is graffiti and to fuck up the one right thing I ever did with an act of kindness, so I know that, I have known that, it’s fine.” (It absolutely does not sound fine.)

    Jay keeps his eyes trained on her face even though he can’t make it out in the darkness, working his jaw as he tries to piece together what exactly has Mal in this state and—well, why he even cares. Not that he does care. It’s not like villains do that sort of thing.

    Even villains who couldn’t bring themselves to steal from their friends when it mattered. Even villains whose friends did selfless things to save each other. Those were just flukes, or whatever.

    Mal uncrosses her arms and lays her palms against the parapet again, Jay watching her every movement as she does. “It’s just time to grow the fuck up, I guess. I thought—I told myself, I mean, despite everything she said, her curse couldn’t hurt me. So that meant—I’d proven myself, even if I didn’t bring the scepter back. I just had to wait for her to see that I had.”

    He hears her catch a sharp breath that shouldn’t feel like it makes something clamp around his heart but it does, before she leans her head back and turns her gaze skyward. Her voice gets quiet and it shakes and the whole thing makes him uneasy. “Fuck, I was so stupid. Mom’s never going to see past my dad and she’s never going to see past what I did to get the scepter and she’s never going to see me and it shouldn’t matter because I know what touching the scepter proved but I just—I just thought—if I didn’t give up and I gave it some time—”

    Her voice catches suddenly as she whirls on him—he doesn’t remember closing this much distance, when the hell did he get so close to her?—and when the light catches her face he sees her eyes are wide both in alarm and accusation. Like she’d forgotten he was here, almost, and she’s blaming him for the fact that she told him so much. And he’s… completely at a loss.

        “Mal,” he starts, because… because he can’t just say nothing. He doesn’t know what he can tell her, because Jay’s never been like Mal—he’s always been a realist and maybe a bit of a pessimist and he’s always known that they were never going to be enough for their delusional parents and he’s made his peace with it. He can’t tell her she just needs more time for her mom to come around, because, sure, villain kids lie through their teeth about a lot of things, but not to make someone feel better.

    He shakes his head. If lying will make her feel better right now, then he’ll just… have to tell the truth. “Whatever she said, it’s crap, and you know it.”

        “Yeah,” Mal scoffs doubtfully, her gaze tracking upwards and away from his face, and her eyes are less watery, if only barely. “Sure.”

        “I’m serious, Mal,” he insists, and if his tone is colored with annoyance, it’s only because he doesn’t think she’s above this, he knows it. Mal’s never given a shit what anyone else thinks. “You’re the scummiest person I know. And not by a little bit.”

    She opens her mouth like she’s going to argue, and he interrupts her with a pointed look. “You literally locked Evie in a closet full of live bear traps because of a grudge from when you were six. You would have beat the shit out of our principal if Evie hadn’t stopped you. You have people running scared at school and groveling at your feet on the streets, and if you told someone to jump off a cliff, they’d be too scared of you not to do it.” He barely feels like he’s exaggerating there. “You’re mean, Mal. You’re awful. You’re bad news, and everyone knows it. If your mom doesn’t think you’re every bit as vicious and evil as she is, it’s only because she’s never seen you in action. So fuck her, and fuck whatever she said to you.”

    And… that’s it. That’s his big speech. That’s all he’s got to say, it’s all he’s going to say, and now it’s up to Mal to take it or leave it.

    He watches as her brow furrows and her mouth falls open like she’s going to say something, but then she falters, and her mouth snaps shut again. She works her jaw for a moment, staring at him with her eyebrows drawn low, before she finally seems to find any words at all. “Why…” Her voice fails her, and it’s another couple moments of her averting her gaze before she seems to be able to meet his eyes and try again.

        “Why are you being so...” She gestures vaguely as she trails off, because she can’t exactly finish the sentence with ‘nice.’ That’d be about the worst thing to say to someone on this island, and aside from that, describing to someone in detail all the ways that they’re a shitty person isn’t exactly something you can describe as nice. Just another reason he never wants to live in Auradon, where the goal is to be nice to everyone.

    Her hand falls back down to her side after her gesture, and she looks away, towards her room, her mouth drawing into a frown, and Jay finds himself coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that he probably has to answer. Why is he doing any of this? Saying any of this?

        “Because...” His brow slowly furrows and he’s not sure where he’s going with this. He can’t say he cares, because he shouldn’t. Doesn’t, not really. Isle kids don’t care about each other. And she wouldn’t want to hear it if he did. But… he has to say something, and even if he’s not sure of the whole truth, he may as well not start lying now.

        “I mean, Mal, we’re still basically kids, and you’ve already got everyone our age and half the people older than us wrapped around your finger and scrambling to stay out of your way and doing whatever it takes to avoid having you pissed at them. It’s obvious you’re gonna be running this joint some day, just as ruthlessly as your mom does.” She’s still looking away from him, so he lifts a hand to her shoulder—just to make her look at him, that’s all—and a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips as he continues, “And I’m smart enough to know I should be on your good side when that happens.”

    Mal stares at him, her expression hard and her lips pressed together tightly, and he meets her gaze because he doesn’t really have that much choice; he’s already gotten himself into this mess. Her eyes trace over his face like she’s searching for something, but he has no idea what it is, and he has no idea why some part of him is actually kind of terrified she might find it, whatever it might be. It’s all he can do to hold onto his flippant, self-satisfied expression instead of squirming under her gaze.

    Finally, though, Mal’s shoulders slump and her expression softens before it crumples into something that just looks resigned and tired. She crosses her arms and lets her head drop forwards until her forehead hits his chest with a muffled thump, and Jay blinks, honestly thrown as his smirk finally fades and something more confused takes over his expression.

    It becomes apparent after a moment or two that Mal’s… not moving any time soon, and his hand is still resting on her shoulder, and he’s not really sure why he does it, but after a brief internal debate he decidedly feels like he lost, he hesitantly slides his hand around to her back.

    And when she doesn’t pull away or try to shrug him off, he wraps his other arm around her, too, trying to figure out why doing that feels more like wrapping his arms around a trenchcoat stuffed with venomous snakes than around his partner in crime. But vague terror or not, Mal barely moves, and she doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered by this, so… he tightens his arms around her with a fair amount of uncertainty, because this entire night has already been weird as hell, so this might as well happen, right?

    And he tries not to focus on the fact that them standing here like this with her forehead pressed to his chest and his hands resting on her back feels a lot like comforting her, because villain kids don’t comfort each other. Or on the fact that the uncomfortable tugging feeling in his chest as her hair tickles his chin feels a lot like empathizing, because villain kids don’t empathize with each other.

    The problem is, when he does force his focus away from those thoughts, there’s not a lot left to distract himself with. Just the fact that he can’t stop thinking about what it’d feel like if he pulled her even closer, and moved his hand up to thread through her hair, and tucked the side of his face against the top of her head, and—and he’s gotta stop.

    But that’s just his inner flirt thinking these things, right? It’s not like he actually wants to do any of that with Mal. He’s always gotten his kicks from stealing hearts, it’s practically a hobby, so really, he’d be thinking this kind of garbage with any girl if they were standing this close. It’s not because it’s Mal, and it’s not because he really wants to.

    Right?