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Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.
---
Carlos de Vil learns to read out of necessity. Cruella never wanted a child - not from the moment of his conception. But, being too proud for a back-alley abortion, and lacking any doctor more accomplished than Francois Facilier, she had one. Her general attitude is that, if she simply must keep it, she might as well make it useful. So, around the age of four, little Carlos de Vil is sat in front of a slate and chalk, so Cruella can teach him the alphabet. Impatient and quick to anger, her idea of “teaching” relies heavily on the use of her cane. Carlos picks up quickly. The moment he can successfully sound out words, she sets him loose with a paper list of things to do, and warns him to be back by sundown, or else .
Soon, he’s taking trips to the Barges that deliver rations nearly every time they come in. The piles on the Barges are organized, but only barely - with clothing residing in one heap, books or kitchen utensils or sundry broken toys in another, and food in crates tucked off to the side. The whole boat is left for the denizens of the Isle to pillage from sunrise to sunset every third day. Auradon always has first pick of any food, so fruits and vegetables are few and far between, always overripe or bruised, bordering on rotten. Despite the slim pickings, Cruella tells him he’s only to find her only certain types of lotions and creams, bring her only the best products, with only certain ingredients. Beatings are a powerful motivator.
The Barges get picked over quickly, the food gone by noon, and the clothing soon after. Carlos has managed to secure himself one or two T-shirts and shorts that are the right size, but he’s resigned himself to clothes that hang off of his small frame. The food he snags, he brings to his mother, who takes most of it for herself.
Carlos becomes intimately familiar with the cavernous feeling of an empty stomach, and the outline of ribs against skin.
One thing he never has trouble putting his hands on is books. They lie woefully neglected in a small pile near the door, and Carlos never quite has the willpower to walk past without stopping to look at the covers, or flip through the pages. He starts a small collection of books - dictionaries and children’s fables and instruction manuals alike, tucked into the waistband of his basketball shorts and hidden away as carefully and preciously as Cruella treats her furs.
--
Cruella smokes so often that the long black rod of her cigarette holder seems, to Carlos, like an extension of her left hand. She brandishes it like one, accentuating her words with a flourish, or ensuring she’s understood by pressing the burning orange ember of it into the flesh of Carlos’s arm. When she sends him out to find her packages of cigarettes, he runs his thumb over the smooth, shiny marks of old burns and feels like he’s signing his own death warrant.
He goes to Jafar’s bazaar to get them, because he sees that they have whole cartons for sale on their counters. He steals two packs and buys another, trading the long-haired boy at the counter a dented metal teapot from home for the impressively clean-looking cardboard box.
The next time he comes in, the boy with the long hair has a fading bruise on his cheek, and is standing stiffly. When he catches sight of Carlos, his jaw clenches. Carlos approaches the counter with trepidation. When the boy makes no move to attack him, like Carlos was expecting him to, Carlos places a pack of cigarettes on the counter. The boy names a price through gritted teeth. Carlos triples the number in his head, then digs into the pockets of his dirty white shorts, spilling coins onto the table.
Villains never apologize. It’s a hard and fast rule here on the isle. Never say “please”, never say “thank you”, and never, ever say “sorry”.
The boy’s eyes widen, and he looks back at Carlos with a startled expression. Carlos holds his eyes for a long moment, then turns on his heel and walks away.
Villains never say sorry, but Carlos hopes that his apology comes across anyways. He’s never liked seeing people get hurt.
--
The next time he meets the boy with the long hair is on the Barges. Carlos woke up early (was woken up early, with a kick to the ribs and a shout to get a move on) to get his hands on some food. Most of the people there are bigger and tougher than he is, and are more than willing to shove him out of the way to get what they want. A man twice his size lunges for a crate of bruised apples, and the elbow Carlos takes to the groin sends him toppling to the ground.
When he stands, brushing himself off and collecting what he can of the things he dropped, he catches sight of the boy.
His face is no longer marred, and his features look more boyish now, even though his posture is tense and menacing. He looks larger now, outside the context of the Bazaar. Larger still he seems as he strides toward Carlos, the line of his mouth giving nothing away. At the last moment, he seems to abort, and starts to elbow his way to the food crates instead. Carlos feels a little twist of relief, and an even smaller twist of disappointment as he finishes depositing his fallen goods into his satchel, making for the door.
He stops beside the books, as he always does, kneeling down to examine the cover of a paperback field-guide. As he flips to the first page, curiosity getting the better of him, someone clears a throat behind him.
Carlos jumps up, brandishing the book like a weapon. The boy is standing there with his beanie in one hand, a bag on his shoulder, and an apple in the other. He tosses the apple gently, underhand, to Carlos. Carlos snatches it out of the air with raised eyebrows. He looks down at it, shiny and red in his hands, then back at the boy.
Very deliberately, the boy nods at him. Villains never say thank you, but Carlos thinks that this is probably the same thing.
--
When Carlos next needs to find cigarettes for his mother, he picks the pocket of the woman walking out Jafar’s door as he walks into it, so that he'll have something to pay with. It’s a skill he’s been learning out of necessity, recently, being too small to fight his way through the crowds at the Barges. Snagging trinkets and coins out of people’s pockets to pay for things at the marketplace. The idea of walking home empty-handed is… unappealing, to say the least.
He doesn't break stride until he reaches the counter, where the boy is standing, as usual, with his boyish features and his stupid red hat.
“I'm Carlos.” He says, before anything else. This boy won't leave his mind and it has been driving him to distraction.
The boy blinks at him, taken aback but covering it well. He lets the air hang silently between them for long enough that Carlos begins to contemplate walking out and never coming back. He lets his eyes wander around the shop, and feels something hot climb its way up his cheeks.
“Jay.”
Carlos almost startles when he breaks the silence, snapping to attention. “Jay,” he repeats, letting it roll off his tongue before he can think better of it. He looks at the boy again, at Jay, and quirks his lips into a little smile.
“How many packs of cigarettes can I get with this?” He asks, revealing today’s lift and setting it on the counter in front of him. His hand rests on the counter, so he can snatch it back if Jay makes a grab for it. It’s a brooch, and it sparkles even in the dim light that filters into the shop through grimy windows. Jay looks down at it, then squints. His eyes swing up to the door, then land back on Carlos, sweeping over him. Then, one hand reaches under the counter, out of sight.
Carlos tenses, ready to bolt, but Jay just throws a sack of coins on the table. Carlos frowns at it, bewildered.
“Well, here’s how much I sold it for, five minutes ago.” Jay raises an eyebrow. He isn’t judging, or accusing with his words. In fact, there may be the slightest hint of admiration in the purse of his lips. Carlos looks back at the bag and the brooch next to each other.
“She overpaid,” he notes. It’s pretty, but dented, and the clasp on the back isn’t long for this world.
“She took my first offer,” Jay replies with a judgmental scoff. He retrieves a carton, before Carlos can finish weighing the benefits of just taking the money and going on his way.
He needs the smokes for his mother, he reluctantly decides, thumb sliding over yesterday’s burns. They suck, sure, but it beats the whip he’ll get if she runs out.
He’s ready to take this uneven exchange rate of one carton for the brooch as the price of betting against the house when Jay puts a hand into the bag, coming back out with a fistful of coins and holding them out for Carlos to take.
He does, after a moment of being frozen in surprise, pocketing them clumsily. He takes his earnings and the carton, turning to go, then stops and looks back.
“You didn’t have to do that.” He tells Jay, holding back so much confusion and surprise that it comes out almost flat. A little accusing.
“Yeah,” Jay agrees easily.
Carlos has the brief, ridiculous thought that maybe this is what friendship is like.
“Do -” He starts, and then hesitates. Jay flicks his eyebrows up, looking back at him.
“Do you ever not work here?” He asks, swinging the rest of his body around to face the counter again.
Jay blinks.
Carlos waits a beat, shrugging it off when Jay doesn’t say anything and shoving down the little stab of something that hits his chest. He turns back to the door. His hand is pushing it open when -
“Tonight,” Jay says, a little forceful. “After seven.”
Carlos, despite himself, grins.
-
When Jay kisses Carlos for the first time, it’s out of bone-crushing relief. He’s seen the way Carlos’s arms and legs are never clean of burns and bruises, and he knows what Cruella must be doing to him. He’s been sleeping on the streets a few nights out of each week since he was eight, has always had to find his own food and water and clothes, but Jafar knows better than to lay hands on him by now - at least past a few slaps or punches. Carlos, though? The thought turns his stomach in a way that he tries very hard not to think about for too long.
Two nights before, Jay and Carlos had run a heist on another shop - a big haul, and they’d gotten away nearly clean, but the owner woke up and ran them down the street. They’d holed up in the old tenement behind the marketplace to wait him out.
He’d fallen asleep as they’d waited, on the floor with his back against the cold concrete. Jay had listened to his out-of-breath panting return to normal, then even out, without even thinking of waking him. He’d looked young in his sleep - peaceful and innocent in a way that this life had beaten out of him. Jay had hardly ever seen Carlos stand still, let alone close his eyes, and he’d sat there for a long time, just looking at the line of his throat and his freckles and his mouth.
It had meant something - something Jay decided he was going to shove down deep and not touch. But when he’d fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning, and woken up to Carlos gone, that something started to feel a little more important.
Tension crept up his spine through work, as he waited for Carlos to come in the front door. He turned on the charm for customers, and stayed alert to any wandering hands, but it stuck in the back of his mind. Worry, maybe? He’d hardly ever had to worry for anyone but himself before. It was a bad feeling.
After work, he’d sulked around the shop, made the rounds in the marketplace, but there was no sign of him.
Sundown on the third day, he’s locking up the shop - setting the tripwire, the false tripwire, the padlock, two alarms. The street’s deserted, and it’ll stay that way for another few hours til the dusk truly falls and gives enough cover for the more dastardly things. Someone coughs lightly, making his presence known, and Jay whips around braced for a fight, to see Carlos standing behind him.
They’re in the middle of the street, and Jay has just enough time to think “I’m going to regret this,” even as he launches himself at Carlos. He’s never been much for self control.
Carlos’s whole body flinches when they connect. One of Jay’s hands is on the side of Carlos’s neck, and the other is wrapped around his too-thin waist to pull him in, and Carlos isn’t kissing back. In fact, his whole body is just a tense coil under Jay’s hands.
Shit.
God, Jay doesn’t want to face what must be coming next. It’s an easy sort of allyship they have, trading barbs and shoving each other around. Jay’s always sort of known that he’s liked putting his hands on Carlos just a little too much, in any capacity, but that hardly means it goes both ways.
He uncurls himself from around Carlos’s frame, pulls away completely until there’s a few feet of space between them. Carlos is staring at him wide-eyed.
“Uh,” he says on a laugh, one hand messing with his hair, “I can honestly say I did not see that coming.” His other hand is hanging stiffly at his side, a bandage wrapped around it. There’s a bruise on his cheek, and another one on his forearm in the shape of a hand. Jay doesn’t even want to know what’s hiding under his clothes. He looks wrecked.
Jay sets his jaw, steps into a wider stance. If Carlos punches him, he won’t fight back, but it wouldn’t look good to go sprawling to the ground about it.
Carlos’s lips quirk up into a smile, and he closes the distance between them with a couple quick steps. Jay closes his eyes tight, bracing himself. He feels a hand on his chest, and then he’s being kissed back, quick and light.
Jay’s eyes flutter open.
“You…” he starts, but he doesn’t know what to say. He really didn’t think he’d get this far. He has absolutely no idea how to proceed. Carlos shrugs a shoulder, easy as anything, and asks, “So, we going out tonight or what?”
-
Carlos is terrified.
It’s a feeling he’s intimately familiar with, so he chokes it down to something manageable and tucks it away for later, when he’s curled up in his mother’s closet and she’s passed out drunk on bathtub gin.
Hanging around Jay was already a little bit dangerous - he knew even as it was happening that starting to care about Jay, to care about anyone other than himself, was only going to end in one of them getting hurt. This though? This is a whole other level of something.
It takes a few days of Jay shooting sultry eyes at girls, ducking them into shaded, out-of-the-way corners and talking around them with lines pulled straight from porn that he grows more comfortable with the fact that nothing is really going to change . The first time Jay does it after - well, after - he casts a sidelong glance at Carlos, and Carlos just grins and asks what he scored, and Jay’s shoulders relax as he wiggles his brows and shows it all off.
He asks, teasingly, if Jay used tongue, and Jay snorts, says she’d still be picking herself up off the sidewalk if he had, and Carlos shoves him, laughing. Jay shoves back, and it escalates, like it always does, until they’re on the ground in a scuffle.
The ground settles back underneath his feet, and it’s easy - far, far too easy. Just like before.
He lets himself get pinned, lick his lips and stare at Jay’s mouth. Jay’s eyes get a little dark, and when he’s sure he’s got him distracted, Carlos twists, flipping them. He grins and bolts off, leaving Jay to pick himself off the ground.
“You bitch!” Jay yells breathlessly, booking to catch up. They’re both laughing.
It’s almost exactly like it was before, and Carlos thinks that maybe he would’ve been fucked anyways.
-
They know better than to touch each other in public. Showing you care about someone is just as bad as showing you’re injured - it’s exploitable. A weak spot, begging to be poked at. It’s not hard to find the dark corners and hidden away spaces, and they’re experts at slipping into the shadows - Cruella has loosened her chokehold on him rather against her own will, but she still has informants. She hardly leaves her house, but he’s seen the men that come and go. He’s sure that’s exactly why he’s here in the first place. Jafar would hardly approve, and Jay doesn’t have a dime to his name without his father, despite his best efforts.
It’s one of those hidden away spaces that they find themselves in tonight, smog-softened moonlight streaking into holes in the walls. There’s nothing in this room, just Jay and Carlos standing in the middle of it, too close together to be anything innocent. Nothing innocent about the pair of them anyways.
Jay runs his thumb across Carlos’s cheek. Neither of them are exactly familiar with the kind of touch that isn’t to wound, but at least Carlos has stopped freezing or flinching at his touch. His eyes flutter at the contact, enjoying the sensation.
Jay’s never kissed anyone just because he wanted to, before Carlos. It didn’t feel like something big in the moment, mostly because he hadn’t known he was going to do it until he was already halfway committed, but he thinks about it sometimes since then.
He leans down and presses their lips together, just because he wants to, because they’re alone and he likes the way Carlos’s body relaxes into him, how he pushes in close and leans his head back, how Jay has to dip his head to reach. He doesn’t have to worry about what his hands are doing, or getting caught, or whether or not Carlos thinks he’s good, because that’s not why they’re doing it.
Carlos’s hands slide over his arms, slip under his shirt to run fingers over the skin of his belly. Jay’s hand slides down Carlos’s waist until his fingertips slide into his waistband. They’re alone, and they’re alive, and it’s selfish - dangerous - but Jay lets himself touch, kiss, for no reason other than that he wants to.
They stay there, silent but for the noises outside and their mingling breaths, for a long, long time.