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“To be honest, I’m uh…” a mirthless chuckle, the telltale awkward shift of a body grown weary, suddenly bone tired from reminiscing, from having to reach into a pool of his own blood to rouse his sorrow.

      Jeremy sniffed. There wasn’t anything to it, not really. He was stalling. Jean knew this drill, had performed it himself many times before when he too felt as though he didn’t want—couldn’t bring himself to—realised he desperately needed more time to—

      “You shouldn’t force yourself to explain,” Jean started, leaning in closer, as close as he could get while still feeling okay about it, the contact, the unravelling of it all.

      “I’m a little,” Jeremy tried again, turning his partner’s white flag on its head. He cleared his throat, found new faces in the dimpled ceiling, avoided Jean’s heavy gaze—what was that look in his eyes? Intrigue? No, there was something else, something breaking through his usual feigned impassivity, something softening him—tenderness? Jeremy didn’t think he was getting enough air into his lungs. Had those specks on the ceiling always resembled Pacman?

      “I’m a little bit messy,” he finally said through an urgent breath. He placed a careless tap to his temple, “up here. It can get a little messy sometimes.”

      He chanced a glance at Jean. How long had they been sitting this close? Surely Jean understood better than most? His gaze latched onto a fallen eyelash sitting under the hollowed curve of Jean’s right eye. He wondered, only briefly, what Jean would wish for.

      “It’s taken a long time to tidy it up,” he continued, for lack of anything better to say when Jean didn’t take to disturbing the silence. “A lot of therapists until I found the right one—and obviously a God-awful lot of breakdowns.” He hoped his voice was casual enough for his observations to have no weight to them at all, hoped his smile was convincing enough, less absent and more here, rooted in this moment, in the relief of no longer having to navigate through that pocket of darkness alone.

      Jean blinked, and Jeremy watched the eyelash fall into the dip of his cupid’s bow. He looked away. Found Pacman again. Fidgeted, uncomfortable in the marinating pause, in the potential ruining of it all.

      “Anyway!” Jeremy said brightly. He supposed he would have clapped his hands together were he an enthused primary school teacher. Instead, he pulled distractedly at the ratty end of his hoodie drawstring and tried another smile on for size—more present, more convincing, bigger. “I guess I’m trying to say there is hope out there. And like, people who want to help. Whenever you’re ready.”

Jean didn’t think Jeremy was aware of just how small his voice had become. A shadow had fallen over him, dimming the usual warmth of his cheeks. He seemed on edge, as though he would jump out of his ill-fitting skin any moment now at the slightest of touches. Jean made sure to keep his itching hands to himself.

    Together they sat in their own contemplations, Jean unsure of what to say in the face of Jeremy’s confession, and Jeremy unsure of what to make of Jean’s silence.

      Jean wasn’t ignorant enough to believe that even the smiliest of people didn’t have their own problems, but… Jeremy, he. He hid it so awfully well. And Jean wanted to know more; he wanted to know everything about Jeremy—all the versions of him that came before the present, the things Jeremy wouldn’t, couldn’t, talk about.

      Jean thought back to earlier, recalling the tense look on Jeremy’s face when he’d read the message from his mother.

      “Speak of the devil,” he had said, and it was a common phrase, substituted for a wolf in French—Quand on parle du loup—and yet something about the way Jeremy had said it, the tenseness of his jaw, the see-through smile. Devil. Jean wanted to believe it didn’t mean anything, wished he could unlearn his habit of reading too much into the things people—Jeremy—said or did. After all, it was Jeremy who was the English major with his heart pulsing on his sleeve, not him. And yet.

      “Sorry…that was…” a hopeless sigh, the sting of a near-chapped bitten lip. “Too much wasn’t it?” Jeremy looked at Jean with tender worry knitted in the crease between his brows. Jean wished he could reach out, however slow, to knead out Jeremy’s unease. He had never wanted to touch anyone as desperately as he wanted to touch Jeremy. Again, his hands stayed firmly in his lap.

      “The contrary,” he said; it wasn’t enough. He bit his tongue, cautious of potentially coming across as feeding off of Jeremy’s reminiscent misery. Although he wanted to say so much more, wanted Jeremy to say so much more, wanted to find a thread, however frayed, that connected them in their unspoken sorrows, he couldn’t bring himself to press too hard on a healing bruise.

      Instead, he tasted the metal in his mouth and looked over Jeremy’s fine pinched features, the worried downturn of his lips, the walnut of his wide searching eyes. He had always wondered what Jeremy was looking for when he’d look at him like that—as if he was still figuring him out. Jean knew there wasn’t much to him. If anything, he was a carcass rotting from the inside out, and on the worst of days he lingered, exhausted in a perpetual limbo, waiting and waiting until the day he inevitably…

      There wasn’t anything he could offer Jeremy of all people. And because of this tired fact, they would realistically never work out. Jeremy deserved more, and Jean wasn’t enough. He wasn’t allowed this—Jeremy. He couldn’t have him, couldn’t…

                                          Hold him.

                              Be held.

      “Sometimes…” Jeremy started, ruining his drawstring some more. He was unsure of whether he truly wanted to unearth what he’d been considering saying next, but it was very hard to resist the deep well of Jean’s eyes, and he felt somewhat safe, here, crisscross applesauce on Jean’s bed, warm and smothered by Jean’s unwavering attention.

      He’d lost Pacman, and wondered if he’d ever really seen him in the first place.

      “It gets like, too loud, you know?” Jean knew, of course he did. “Things just don’t really… I don’t really know how to—my um, my older sister, before she…um… She was the only one I could turn to when things got really bad, but then she um, she—”

      It was Cat’s voice calling them for dinner that shattered Jeremy’s fumblings. Something like relief clung to the erratic thuds of his heart, but he still startled as though he’d been caught, his mouth suddenly too dry to form any more words, let alone the ones he very nearly shared.

      “Jeremy—” With his name came the aborted reach of Jean’s fingers around his arm. Jeremy’s “no” was all but choked out as he nearly tripped on a hardback he’d carelessly left by the door. He couldn’t—wouldn’t have survived being touched by Jean. Not right now, when his heart throbbed painfully against his closing throat, not right now when he felt like an exposed nerve ending, a live wire, hurtling back through the years—11, 12, 13, 14, 15—crashing into it, the taste of the boy’s cries hidden under his tongue. He wasn’t ready.

      “I’ll—um—bed. I’ll see what I can do about a bed,” he finally rasped, already slipping out of the room.

Jean looked down at his trembling fingers, and wished he had the strength to break them all over again.

Chapter Text

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The soup seared the roof of his mouth.

      Jean restrained from cursing. After all, he was used to this—burning, being burnt, breaking ice against molars to self soothe, to relieve.

      He set the tasting spoon beside the pot bubbling over the stove and sighed, in search of more smoked paprika amongst the mess of seasonings already congesting the space. He thought briefly of Cat, of how she even managed to navigate her way around the clutter; of how there would soon come a time where he, perhaps—certainly, would too.

      They had opened up their home for him. Had gently placed him, like a serrated lost piece, in the mosaic of their lives. He belonged here, breathing quietly in their dimly lit kitchen. The salt lamp Laila impulsively bought a week ago bathed him in a mellow orange warmth, and somehow, he felt safe. He tried not to let the quaint reminder of his safety break his heart. He had bled for it. Had, in all shades of the word, died a thousand times over for it.

      So he guessed it was an easy thing, the repeated moving of spoon to parted lips, the blowing this time—careful, now that he could hear, so close, as though she were beside him, Cat’s affectionate teasings in his ear, imploring him to not sip too soon, to “wait, babe, allow it to cool first, it’s not going to run away.”

      He’d followed her recipe so carefully, so earnestly, and yet

      “There’s something missing…” he muttered, to no one at first, and then, at the anticipated sound of the front door’s lock turning, at the devastating sight of Jeremy’s tousled hair, his eyes, wide, peering over at Jean, his peony lips pulled in a small spurious smile, to Jeremy.

      “I don’t know what is missing,” Jean said in lieu of a hello.

      It’d been almost a month since… and he still felt a little awkward around Jeremy. Despite the unnecessary apologies Jeremy had placed in his palms the day after, Jean wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself around him. He had dutifully offered his own back of course—he knew his overstepping had been careless, yet he’d still acted on his foolish curiosity. The entire week he’d left himself half crescent moons on his neck, aching reminders that the very same curiosity had eventually killed the cat.

      “Oooh, it smells heavenly in here,” Jeremy crooned, setting down the badly wrapped gifts he’d been clutching to his chest. He washed his hands before wandering over to the stove, the very faint smell of his laundry detergent wafted above the soup’s spices. “What’re we making?” His voice was light, but there was something stretching it thin.

      “I am making sweet potato soup.”

      Jean noticed that Jeremy had a habit of doing that—of saying ‘we’ rather than ‘you’, of including himself in equations. They were teammates. Partners. So in a sense they were a ‘we’. They did things together, as a pair. On court and outside of it. Wherever Jean went, Jeremy naturally followed unless told otherwise.

      Jean blinked down at Jeremy and barely managed to fight back an eye roll when he noticed his dog-eared socks. He blinked, again, this time surprised at the spoon he’d reflexively extended in front of Jeremy’s mouth. Teammates, partners—friends. Jeremy leaned in, pressed the spoon against his lips, sipped, small, slow. Hummed with his eyes closed, looked beautiful to Jean, though his vision blurred around the edges, from the steam. They were friends.

      “Cumin,” Jeremy hummed again while he turned away, looking for the missing spice. “That should do it. Here, taste,” the spoon was in Jean’s mouth before he could register it. “It’s better, right?”

      Jean almost hated Jeremy for the gleeful glint in his tired eyes after his reluctant nod. It was better.

“How did you—?”

      Jeremy shrugged, an easy thing he indulged in often, “What can I say? I’m a foodie who knows his stuff!” He touched Jean’s arm on his way to get their bowls, squeezing gently in a well meaning manner. “Thank you for dinner Jean, seriously, it’s perfect—just what this terrible weather called for.”

      The sky had been tearing itself open for the past couple of hours, only easing slightly in the last half hour. The pit of Jean’s stomach tried not to do the same at Jeremy’s easy lingering touch.

      “Shall we watch something?” Jeremy set four mismatched bowls on the dining table. “What’re we in the mood for? I’ve kinda… had a day, so how about something light? A RomCom, maybe?” He reached over to the pool of clean cutlery Jean had forgotten to put away earlier. As he leaned over the table, his hoodie rode up slightly, revealing a sliver of tanned skin. Jean turned off the stove for something to do.

      “They are not home,” he said, breathing patience into his tight lungs before turning back to catch Jeremy’s brows knit in confusion.

      “Hm?” Jeremy stopped rummaging to look over at him, his head tilting slightly.

      Jean nodded towards the extra bowls, “Cat and Laila. They have already left. It is…just us.”

      He watched the careful understanding smooth over Jeremy’s face, and wondered if the tint in Jeremy’s cheeks had always been there, or whether he was perhaps imagining it. Must be the weather, he reasoned.

      “No wonder it’s so quiet,” Jeremy chuckled through a disappointed groan, he looked down at his wrist, checking the time on his watch. “I forgot they’d leave early for their anniversary week away.” He sighed out something tired, a little saddened. “It’s a shame I couldn’t give them their presents in time.” His fingertips rested on the parcels he’d brought in with him, tapping out a contemplative rhythm before he put the extra bowls away.

      “Therapy overran, and there was so much traffic on the way here,” Jeremy babbled absentmindedly, manoeuvring Jean out of the way so he could start serving up their portions. Jean allowed himself to be moved, his mind half caught on the word ‘therapy’. Was that why Jeremy’s eyes were red-rimmed? Would he be overstepping again by asking? His molars bit down on the sides of his tongue. Friends.

      “Tiger bread?” Jeremy’s soft gaze was expectant, hopeful Jean would indulge in unnecessary buttered carbs. Jean waved him off with an eye roll, before relenting at Jeremy’s stupid pout, reaching for the loaf along with a butter knife. Evidently, it didn’t take much to get him to buckle—not when it came to Jeremy.

      “Buttered tiger bread with soup is to me what ambrosia is for the Gods, my friend.” The dimpled smile Jeremy gave him almost reached his eyes. Jean looked away.

      “So knowingly clogging your arteries is the Trojan way then?”

      Jeremy humoured him despite the low disapproval in Jean’s tone, “You’re catching on fast. Indulging in what makes us happy is the Trojan way.” He laughed at how quickly Jean arched his brow at him, the noise an endearing whisper, contagious for some. Jean wanted to swallow it. Jeremy was his captain, his partner, someone he wasn’t allowed to indulge in, someone he… didn’t want to lose—not yet. They were friends. Instead, Jean swallowed down the little fondness caught in his throat, and forced his attention back to buttering the bread. He cut off the crusts knowing that Jeremy, for some strange reason, preferred eating them separately.

      Jeremy set their heaping bowls back on the table, the steam curled around his frame, rising to tickle at his hair. He quickly swiped his thumb at a glob of soup dripping down the side of one of the bowls, sucking on it quickly. “So, RomCom?” he asked around his thumb.

      The knife almost slipped out of Jean’s grasp—he couldn’t catch a fucking break, nor a breath for that matter. Surely Jeremy knew what he was doing? Had by now deciphered the heaviness in Jean’s often averted gazes? Understood?

      It was insulting, Jeremy’s cluelessness like pouring gasoline on an already burning corpse. But Jean couldn’t fully… hate him for it. Was in fact endeared by it, as self-destructive as his thoughts about his captain, partner, friend, were.

      “Choose whatever you want,” Jean set the knife down, wondering briefly, dangerously, how much damage it could really do, cold clots of butter swimming in his veins, before blinking the thought away. He picked up the plate of bread and helped Jeremy carry the other bowl over to the living room. “They are all the same to me—tedious drivel with predictable, unrealistic plots.”

      “That’s the whole point!” Jeremy huffed, carefully placing his bowl atop one of the crocheted coasters on the coffee table, before sitting comfortably on the coach with a heavy sigh. He patted the space next to him, fluffed the cushion and hummed, pleased, when Jean placed the rest of their meal on the table before joining him. Jean could feel the little heat from Jeremy’s foot pressed against his thigh. He allowed himself the contact.

      “We know they're obviously going to end up together in the end, but the angst of them potentially not is what keeps us hooked, and,” he gestured for Jean to hand him the remote, “They’re not all unrealistic. Just sometimes… a little embellished.”

      “It is what keeps you hooked, you mean,” Jean corrected dryly, slotting the remote into the palm of Jeremy’s waiting hand.

      “Yeah, yeah, you’re like the Grinch of Romance, I swear.”

      Before Jean could think of a rebuttal, the Netflix logo washed them in a deep cherry light for a handful of seconds, which he used as an opportunity to peruse Jeremy’s wanness up close—the deep furrow of his brows that couldn’t be blinked away nor relaxed into, the way he’d almost chewed his bottom lip raw, and kept catching it between his teeth to soothe its redness.

      It was stupid and futile in the grand scheme of things really, but Jean imperceptibly leaned his thigh against Jeremy’s foot some more, hoping the assurance of the little contact would be just enough to offer Jeremy whatever solace he needed but couldn’t voice aloud. If anyone were to ask Jean if it were a conscious thing, this pressing, he’d deny it so firmly, his denial would be a bullet in their mouth.

      He was so caught up in the gradual rise of his own heart thudding in his ear canals, that he barely registered Jeremy’s question until Jeremy was right in his face. They were too close, tired eye to tired eye, almost—practically nose to nose, and Jean jerked his head back in surprise.

      “What?” It was sharp, harsher than necessary really, but he couldn’t help it, all his focus was on attempting to tame the fluttering in his chest at Jeremy’s sudden proximity.

      “Sorry,” Jeremy sounded sheepish, “I asked if this film was okay but you were kinda just… staring.” He smiled something small, something reassuring. “Do you… wanna talk about where you went?”

      Jean cleared his throat, fighting to tamper down his mortification at being caught.

      “Nothing. I mean—nowhere,” I was right here, with you… wanting you, Jean would rather shatter his own teeth against his exy racquet than admit.

      He averted his attention from Jeremy to the TV and pretended to read the synopsis of the RomCom Jeremy had chosen. He would have branded it generic were it not for the fact that the couple on the film poster were men, making it a Gay RomCom. From his peripheral, Jean could see Jeremy awkwardly fidgeting with the string of his hoodie, so he nodded his head mechanically, sliding his gaze from the TV, to Jeremy, and back again.

      “Yes. Whatever. Choose whatever you want.” Jean reiterated, swallowing around the nothing in his throat. Did Jeremy know then?

      “Are you… sure?” Meek, pressed into the palm of a clammy hand. “It doesn’t bother you?”

      “Why would it bother me?” Jean eyed Jeremy wearily. He knew he knew he knew—

      “I don’t know… nevermind, it’s nothing, let’s just—”

      Jeremy’s phone trilled delightfully, interrupting him mid backtrack. He fished it out from his back pocket, leaning slightly into Jean’s side for a second as he did so. Jean, by virtue of how jarringly bright Jeremy’s phone screen was despite the low lighting of the room, could make out the slow softening of Jeremy’s eyes. His gradual toothy grin bit into his cheeks, only growing bigger when another trill sounded.

      “Look, it’s from the lovebirds,” he shoved his phone in Jean’s face, offering a small embarrassed “oops” when he nearly took Jean’s eye out with his suddenness.

      In their house group chat, which someone had named ‘F is for friends who do stuff togethuurrr’, a reference Jean found incomprehensible, Cat and Laila had sent over a picture of themselves snuggled close. They were conjoined at their furiously blushed cheeks, and their uncontainable grins mirrored the spark smouldering in their wide eyes. Behind them, Jean could make out the faint silhouette of the Statue of Liberty against a backdrop of city lights dreamily blurred into bokeh. He noted with a fondness how the statue’s grandeur faded in the glow of Cat and Laila’s radiant faces. Though his housemates–teammates—friends seemed oblivious to the monumental skyline, as their shared warmth and paused laughter created a monument of their own.

      An unexpected tenderness smoothed over Jean’s heart, cradling it in a warmth he almost couldn’t breathe around. The pair made so much sense together, looked as carefree as ever, and so desperately in love—complete. He allowed himself the upturn of the corner of his own lips. It would be psychotic to not feel anything in the face of their happiness.

      One of them—Cat, he assumed—had captioned the selfie: “Concrete jungle wet dream tomatoooooooooo”, another reference Jean didn’t understand, but had sent Jeremy laughing loudly, supple against his side.

      “They’re so hecking cute, it makes me sick,” Jeremy beamed. Jean noticed how his smile finally reached his eyes, bringing out the honey in them.

      He watched, part curious, wholly confused, as Jeremy typed out an unintelligible excited “YOUGUYSAR E EVEYRHING EEEKKK HAVE HAVEFUNNNN IM NOT EVN JEALOUS” before snapping a picture of their untouched bowls cooling on the coffee table with “sweet potato soup for the soul!! cat just a forewarning i think jean /might/ be stealing your thunder IT TATSTES INCREDIBLE. in the words of our lord and saviour adam driver: GOOD SOUP!!!!”

      From the flurry of texts that spammed Jeremy’s screen after, Jean thought about how unsurprised he’d be if, in a couple of hours, he were to find his phone had vibrated itself off his bed where he’d left it.

      Jeremy wedged his phone between the coach cushions while chuckling through a happy sigh. He turned to look over at Jean, his eyes the softest Jean had ever seen them.

      “What they have…” there was a rawness in Jeremy’s tone that startled Jean, as though his throat were the gravel-scraped knees of a child. “It’s something really special.”

      To Jean, nothing would matter more than the caramel in Jeremy’s eyes, crinkled at the corners with mirth or sadness, he wasn’t entirely sure. Jeremy had looked away and reached for their soup, settling Jean’s bowl in the cradle of his hands before Jean could pin the emotion.

      The bowl warmed his open palms, but he couldn’t move to eat. Jeremy’s words crashed into him, dousing him in something he didn’t yet have the words for.

                                      Something really special.

      Jean thought briefly of Neil and Andrew. Of the way they moved, simultaneously, in a tight interminable circle, seemingly caught, by the scruff of their necks, in each other’s orbit. He thought of the ever present smoke and searing looks when one fell out of it for too long. Thought of how they’d transmuted each other's hurt, fashioned their suffering anew, turned it into what—he assumed neither of them would admit to—was, essentially, love at its very core. Or at the very least, battered affection of some kind.

      The cross of Renee’s necklace burned into his chest, branded him, seared bravery into his flesh as he tentatively asked, “Have you ever…?”

      Jeremy, utterly unaware of the spiral he’d sent Jean into, hummed around a gulp of soup, “Hm?”

      Jean blinked, his eyes suddenly very sore. He spoke into his bowl, “Had what they have? Loved someone—like that.”

      Beneath another long blink, there was the damning flash of moss green meshed with ivy, beheld in eyes he’d watched flicker with every emotion back to him. There was the careful opening and closing of a rosebud mouth quietly muttering stilted French. The crumpled, panicked face of the man he once loved, calling out to him in his mother tongue. Jean’s mouth filled with metal. He swallowed. Finally mustered the courage to look up, and there was—

      A beat. The formation of something on the tip of an honest tongue, the internal undoing of unwavering eye contact, the meaningfulness behind it despite the pulse of damnation congealing beneath. Clotting under this looking, this seeing, this asking and wanting to be seen. The fragility in it, this connection, this spark of understanding.

      The look Jeremy gave Jean may have ruined him.

“...Oh,” Jeremy coughed to hide his surprise. “Oh,” he repeated, for lack of anything better to say.

      Oh.

      He blinked. Coughed again with hope to clear the chilli suddenly caught in his throat, tried once more, could only manage another pathetically whispered: “Oh.”

      Through burning eyes, Jeremy watched Jean shift awkwardly, his spoon limp in his hand despite how tightly he held the bowl in his other.

      “You do not have to answer. It was intrusive of me to have aske–”

      Despite the loudness of his heart bruising his ribcage, despite the ache in his chest, despite the fact that he could barely hear himself speak, his “Yes, once,” came out immediately, said only to dispel Jean’s self-berating thoughts.

      He breathed in, “It was, um.” Out. “A long time ago. Years… years ago. But um, he’s no longer...”

      The rain thrashed against the windows. An opening. A release. A warning. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure, his mind was already propelling him back, recalling stilted images of a toothy-grinned boy with skin as rich as caramelised honey, and the saddest eyes he’d ever seen on an eleven year old. “He’s no longer with us.” With me.

Meanwhile, Jean blinked, rigid, facial features not giving away the slightest hint of his slow moving thoughts. His heart, much like his spoon, sank at Jeremy’s admittance.

      Yes, once.

      Who? He wanted to ask. But curiosity had killed the cat, and Jean knew his place, knew he’d already asked too much, gone too far.

      He only registered the rest of Jeremy’s words a couple seconds later, and almost sprained his neck with how quickly he turned to Jeremy then.

      “He is…?” Jean started, unsure, disbelieving.

      He tracked Jeremy’s movements, traced, even through his baggy hoodie, the sorrow carved in the slumped curve of Jeremy’s spine as he looked away, to the window, where the world drowned.

      “Dead. Yes.” Jeremy sniffed, and his bluntness almost made Jean flinch.

      Jean could only feel the harsh thudding of his heart. To think Jeremy had experienced the death of a loved one so closely, had seemingly survived it, and could still smile as easily as he did was just…

      He couldn’t find the right word in English. Nor could he in French for that matter.

      “Seven years on Sunday,” Jeremy’s voice was flatter than Jean’d ever heard it. Careful, restrained, so as not to shake. “I… finally spoke about him today. With my therapist. He was… he was…”

      Only then did Jeremy finally turn to him, and–

It was the doleful look on Jean’s usually impassive face that finally broke Jeremy.

      As much as he tried to tamp it down, his grief bubbled over with such gusto, he was sure it had eaten his heart and left only its pip.

      “He was um, someone I grew up with and,” he gasped through quivering lips, "It's cliché to say, but he was, at the time... everything." His hot tears were as consistent as they were embarrassing.

      He didn’t even want to think about how pitiful he must look in Jean’s eyes. Jean, who had seen and endured so much worse, who often seemed as elusive as smoke from an abruptly blown-out candle, who the world had tried time and time again to snuff out.

      Jean, who perhaps knew grief all too well, like the back of his scarred hand. And here Jeremy was, sobbing uncontrollably like an abandoned child, into the soup Jean had kindly made him.

      It was pathetic—he was pathetic—and half aware he was already undoing all the progress he’d made with his therapist to stop invalidating his feelings. But no amount of self-regulating breaths could stop his downpour now that the dam had broken.

      He was crying too hard to notice when Jean pried his bowl out of his shaking grasp. At first, he couldn’t make sense of Jean’s calloused palms pressed against his cheeks. Barely registered the softness of Jean’s thumbs clumsily catching every tear as they fell.

      It was so gentle, this wordless swiping and disposing of his grief, each tear bursting with memories of him—Christian, the boy who had taught Jeremy how to love something—someone so fiercely, despite himself.

      “I… learned a lot from him." Like how to smile in the face of his own misery. To bear it. Suck it up and pour it into something else—the ruining of his own flesh, substances, addictions.

      Because it was okay as long as it was directed at himself and not anyone else—better to be harmed than to harm.

     "And he left me. Just like that. Two years after my sister..." He shook his head, couldn't bring himself to even go there. "Right when I needed him the most."

      Christian had ruined him, and then abandoned him. Heady on their shared self-destruction. He’d hungered for more. Had gone too far after Jeremy had realised he’d come to love him too much, and had begged him to stop. He’d left without a goodbye. Left without Jeremy.

      “It wasn’t healthy, the way I was. We weren’t healthy for each other but still, I,” he babbled, all disgusting and snotty and God why was he still talking, why was he saying this to Jean who he wanted, who he liked a little more than a captain, partner, friend should. “I loved him.”

It shouldn’t have felt like a sucker punch. Jean knew he’d received physical blows that had surely bruised and winded him more than the three words Jeremy had just spoken, but still, he found himself crushing his tongue between his teeth, so as not to focus on the selfish sting settling under his skin as he nursed Jeremy’s hurt.

      Given the context, he knew he had no right to feel the way he did right now, as though he were standing in the shadow of someone he would never be.

      He should be holding Jeremy’s crushed face between his gentle palms, and thinking of ways to get him to breathe properly now that he’d stopped crying. What could he do to get him to smile again?

      Since Elodie, Jean hadn’t touched anyone this tenderly.

      He was scared he was doing it all wrong. He recalled how often he’d nursed Elodie’s injuries, plastered and kissed every scraped elbow, knee, taken the brunt of broken limbs and bruised skin inflicted by their parents, all to protect her, to shield her from that pain—the pain of realising that the very people meant to protect you against the world’s cruelty were, in fact, the cruel ones.

      He wiped Jeremy’s nose with the sleeve of his sweater.

      “You cannot always help who you come to love,” he found himself saying. His voice sounded strange, so unlike him. In fact the very thing he was doing, soothing Jeremy, holding him this close, this intimately, for longer than was appropriate, was so unlike the him he’d shown others. But his words were true, sore and whispered through numb lips which spoke from experience.

      Moss green, fragmented French in dark corners, a tightly wound secret unfurled in the violent drop of a heartbeat—two.

      The skin beneath his necklace felt raw.

      In his mind’s eye, he caught the flash of a rainbow. How mesmerising those pastels were, colours he associated with warmth, with patience and consideration. Renee. Who didn’t deserve to be reduced to Cat’s label of ‘friend who happened to be a girl’.

      As deplorable as it was to admit, were it not the wrong time, he knew what he’d felt for her would have grown into love eventually.

      The soft clasp of Jeremy’s hand around his, still on his cheek, startled him out of his thoughts.

      “Is she the one who gave you the necklace?”

      He wasn't brave enough to look Jeremy in his watery eyes as he replied, “Yes.”

      How Jeremy knew that memories of Renee tracked footprints in his mind, Jean wasn’t entirely sure. Had he been that obvious?

      Prompted by Jeremy’s gentle squeeze, Jean spoke regardless of everything in him warning his mouth to stay shut.

      “Right people, wrong time,” he said, regurgitating Renee’s words.

      For a time, he’d tried not to let them keep him up at night, but how could they not? He stopped himself from thumbing around his neck for the cold sliver of metal, realising he favoured the warmth of Jeremy’s drying cheeks still beneath his fingers instead.

      It was bittersweet. The wretched feeling of finally finding someone willing to accept him in all his woundedness. Someone he’d disregarded all the warnings he’d been conditioned to follow for, and had become someone he’d consciously wanted to be soft with. He’d opened up to Renee, had become a lotus flower torn from its bitter roots for her… only for it to be the wrong time.

      He knew it was not a rejection, knew she was right, knew

      “It would not have worked out,” he said now to Jeremy, finally searching the light oak of his wide eyes for something that would tether him.

      But still, Jean believed he wasn’t enough.

      Not for Renee. Or… Kevin.

      And certainly not for Jeremy.

      “But do you wish it had… worked out?” Jeremy’s quiet question slit Jean’s throat.

      At one point he’d craved the permanence of a partner so desperately, he’d endured so much for it: every brutal bite mark, fractured bone, bust lip. Had gone on despite the stench of his blood soaked into the padding of his armour, the loss of breath, the water, the drowning, the mental death of him.

      A chasm of loneliness tore into him, only yawning wider with each unfulfilled promise of a forever partner. Until he’d forced himself to stop believing in them. In people who would just stay.

      “I am not sure,” it wasn’t exactly a lie. “Do you wish things could have worked out with…”

      “Christian,” a small smile ghosted Jeremy’s lips. “No… If he’d left me after it had… I don’t think I would have survived it.” His thumb traced a pattern into Jean’s wrist, “We were too young. And I... I feel I've spoken about him too much today. ”

      Jean nodded, unsure how to respond. The million and one questions he wanted to ask Jeremy, questions about Christian, about what it had been like, exactly how he’d survived loving and losing with a bright smile always at the ready, sat heavily in his throat. He was sure Jeremy would tell him more in due time.

As guilty as Jeremy felt to admit it, whenever Jean looked at him like this—contemplative, curious—Christian became a distant memory.

      “I’m sorry,” he shifted, closer, pilfering Jean’s warmth. The rain continued, a metronome for his heartbeat. “For crying. I’m kind of embarrassed about it,” he gave a small tired laugh that rang hollow in the little space between them.

      Had he ever been this close to Jean before? Ever been able to count the individual hairs on his usually clean shaven upper lip? Ever noticed the tiny freckle in the crease of his chin? Or the one beneath the tail of his right brow?

      He’d never noticed how Jean’s storm-grey eyes seemed to hold nebulas within their depths.

      “There is nothing to apologise for,” came Jean’s response, filled with conviction.

      And Jeremy imagined what it would feel like to kiss him. It was an entirely inappropriate yearning, given what was unfurling between them—and the more to come. But the two had danced around each other for weeks now, so his want wasn’t completely unfounded. He imagined the plush of Jean’s lips against his would feel a little rough, albeit heartbreakingly tentative. He would probably lead, and Jean would slowly follow. And he would most likely shake under the weight of it all—of having Jean’s permission to touch him like this, with tender affection.

      Jeremy watched Jean as he bit his lower lip. He couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel if it were his teeth instead of Jean’s.

      He turned his face slowly, slow enough to give Jean the choice of pulling away if he wanted, and pressed a lingering kiss against his palm.

      “Is this okay?” he whispered, watching Jean’s surprised blink and careful nod. He pulled away a little, nudged his nose against the calloused skin, knowing he wouldn’t go in for another without Jean’s verbal consent. “Can you say it out loud for me?”

      “Yes, Jeremy,” Jean breathed—waiting, wanting—his face so awfully close, his hooded eyes already latched onto Jeremy’s lips, tasting them before his mouth could.

      And Jeremy almost crumbled right there and then. He could hardly breathe around his own longing. His own desire to be openly looked at like this, only by Jean; to be the only exhibition he’d buy tickets to attend, suffocated him. His barely coherent thoughts harshly collided into one another, and the subsequent closing of his eyes was such an easy thing, was something that came naturally and—

      Jean’s lips felt unlike anything Jeremy could have imagined. Softer than he expected, they glided against his own with a gentle ease, as though they were meant to be there, pressed against his, featherlight.

      Of the few people he’d kissed in his life, he had never felt anything like this before. With Jean, his heart pounded erratically in his ears, as if it wanted to leap straight into Jean’s hands. Something burned in the cushioned pit of his stomach, something that was instantly put out when Jean’s body complied, pushing at Jeremy’s pull, caging him in against the arm of the coach. His tongue found Jean’s as he caught hold of his sweater’s neckline to tug him impossibly closer. The fingers of his other hand trembled as they brushed through Jean’s silky hair, still patchy in some areas but long enough now in others that he could tie it up. Their heaving chests moved in tandem but Jeremy felt as though he was starving, knew as he caught Jean’s low groan from the back of his throat, and returned it with his own, that he’d never tire of this, would probably crave this—Jean—for the rest of his life.

      Everything about Jean was barbed—his steely gaze, his responses, his every move. He was blunt, direct, and often harsh. But his kisses were nothing like that. Subdued, warm, and careful, as though he was afraid to break something. To break Jeremy. The irony wasn’t lost on Jeremy who, as Jean trembled a little against him, feared he would break Jean more than he already was.

“Merde,” Jean choked out, his breathing ragged and intermingling with Jeremy’s. His eyes were still closed, and though he was desperate to see Jeremy’s face after their kiss, he feared the revulsion he might find there.

      “I know,” Jeremy chuckled, before pressing another quick kiss to Jean’s cupid’s bow, the freckle on his chin, his eyelids which were still screwed impossibly shut. “Will you open your eyes for me?” He asked, and his voice was gravelly but still so kind, Jean thought he might cry. He’d scarcely been afforded such tenderness before.

      Jeremy was beautiful. His rosewood lips were stretched into the widest smile Jean had ever seen on him, and there was a wonderful glint in his doe eyes. Merde, he cursed again in his head. Merde, merde, merde.

      “That was... my first,” he whispered. “I never allowed—” He quickly shook his head, didn’t want to ruin the moment by thinking of those who had eaten his flesh raw. Not when Jeremy was right in front of him, with the loveliest fiery hue on his cheeks, tasting of salt and spices, and the creamy coconut milk from his long abandoned soup.

      “You’re the first person who’s ever really mattered,” Jeremy whispered back. His confession almost made Jean want to hurt himself. He didn’t deserve to feel the warmth obliterating his chest, didn’t deserve to have Jeremy in this way. It felt like a cruel dream, one he was hoping he’d never have to wake up from.

      Jean didn’t know how to leave his marks on the people he loved—not in a way that would make sense to them. He didn’t think he was allowed to, felt he didn’t have the right. The wrong people had left their marks on him, and he’d vowed never to do the same to others. But for Jeremy… He’d do anything. He wanted to leave a piece of himself with Jeremy, wanted Jeremy to claim a part of him, but he also wanted Jeremy to leave something of himself in return—as proof that he, too, despite the ugliness he had endured, was allowed to belong somewhere, to someone, not because he had to, but because he wanted to, because he finally chose it.

      Jean wasn’t sure how to say all of this out loud, so he let his face slump into the crook of Jeremy’s neck instead. He breathed in the spicy vanilla there, pressed a kiss to the hollow of Jeremy’s pulse point, before closing his eyes at the weight of Jeremy’s fingers tangling in the back of his head.

Their silence was easy, comfortable. Jean’s thoughts lingered on how much they’d shared in such a short time. He briefly thought of Kevin, of how he’d once loved Kevin so desperately, in spite of the open palmed slap of his betrayal. Of Renee’s consideration, how he teetered the fine line between wanting her and wanting to be her—wishing he possessed her generosity, her calm. He thought of Neil and Andrew's tight rotation, how he’d embarrassingly envied their fierce protection of one another. Cat and Laila too, their bond so effortless it almost hurt to watch. Jean had spent so long longing for that kind of togetherness, the sense of being someone’s person, the way they all seemed to have found it.

      And now, here with Jeremy… it was different. Despite his uncertainty regarding where they actually stood with one another, whether Jeremy wanted more, wanted him, Jean felt whole in a way he hadn’t known was possible for himself.

      He exhaled slowly, as if letting go of all that longing and uneasiness, feeling a calm settle into his chest. Then, absently, he asked, “What did you get them?”

      Jeremy’s questioning hum vibrated against his chest. “Hm?”

      “Cat and Laila. What is under the wrapping paper?”

      “Oh!” he could hear the grin in Jeremy’s voice.

      Jean allowed himself to be lulled by Jeremy’s recounting of how many tutorials he’d watched on gift wrapping and still failed at.

      Their pulses beat as one, and he felt the safest he’d ever felt curved to fit into Jeremy’s arms. He desperately hoped Jeremy felt as comforted by his closeness as he felt by his.