Archive of Our Own ^beta

There is extremely little, at this point in his life, that would surprise Jean Moreau. 

Case in fucking point.

“We need a squirrel,” says Riko Moriyama, and Kevin Day has the decency to wince.

“Okay,” says Jean. There really is no other way to respond. 

“A live one,” Riko specifies, with fervor that Jean honestly does not want to scrutinize.

“…okay.” 

Kevin’s eye might be twitching. 

It’s a power trip thing, probably. It always is. 

“A mouse is probably fine too,” Kevin concedes.

“Well, no.”

“Why not?”

“You clearly weren’t paying attention.”

“ I wasn’t paying attention in class.” A very tense pause. “Squirrel, then. Sorry.”

Riko probably thinks Kevin is apologizing to him, judging by the way he sort of smirks, but Kevin’s eyes are locked on Jean. 

Sorry. A ridiculous, ill-proportioned gesture that the two of them are both aware will never be enough. It’s not about the squirrel (are they really discussing a squirrel right now?). Jean will take it anyway. 

So Jean, naturally, is supposed to go out into the suburbs of West Virginia and capture a live squirrel. Sure. Of course. Never a dull moment in the Nest.

Where is he supposed to find the time to do this, he wonders? Riko says something about excusing him from practice for it, which is such an obvious, shameless, baldfaced lie that Jean very nearly rolls his eyes. Kevin later suggests that he could probably skip class for this—“especially because you’re a business major,” which is a tiny bit backhanded except Jean doesn’t really care—, and Jean thinks that’s probably true, especially if it’s only for a day. He hopes it’s only for a day. 

And so, instead of attending his introductory writing course, he simply walks out of the academic building and into the athletes’ parking lot. The other Ravens in the class will probably notice this, he realizes, and that’s quite annoying, but the feasible alternatives are just as bad. He spends about a minute in the parking lot inspecting the Audi. He’s mildly apprehensive. It’s technically his—well, not technically, but allegedly. Numerically speaking. There’s a number three on the license plate, or whatever. It’s… probably fine.

Actually, not really. But he thinks through his options and once again finds that they are all equally unpleasant. 

It briefly occurs to Jean that he doesn't know how to drive. Well. No time like the present. He has a vague understanding that there is a gas pedal, a brake, and a steering wheel, and that’s probably all he needs to know. For another minute, Jean sits experimentally in the parking lot, figuring out which pedal is which. 

There’s a lever next to him, with letters demarcating sections. P, R, N, D, S. Hm. Park… he’s lost on the middle two. Drive? Stop? That somehow doesn’t sound right. He glances at the clock. The minutes are ticking by and he knows he is wasting time. He opens his phone and looks hopelessly through his contacts for someone to ask about this. Kevin probably doesn’t know shit either, and anyway, he’s never on his phone during class. That… is about the extent of his reachable social network. He’s not about to ask fucking Riko (who, upon further reflection, is probably also clueless anyway). He supposes that there’s also Zane… hm. What the hell, sure. He takes a picture of the lever and sends it to his partner with a few question marks, and waits.

None of this is to say, by the way, that Jean is doing anything technically illegal, at least not directly. The Moriyamas have connections in the DMV, which is a little baffling but not entirely surprising, so he does have a driver’s license. They all do. The Ravens are famously well-rounded and well-adjusted.

Zane is taking too long to respond, so he takes matters into his own hands. He puts his phone down. Trial by fire it is. 

Jean nearly pisses himself when he finally gets the car to start. Whoever last used this car was blasting country music—again, something that Jean doesn’t want to examine—, and he frantically whacks the buttons on the dashboard until he gets it to shut up. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck— he has to keep it together. Jesus. He moves the lever on his right around until the car starts going backwards, after which he promptly slams on the brake. Shit. A series of expletives, merging between French and English, are playing on an obnoxious loop in his head. He then realizes that he is alone in a car, and so he starts saying them out loud. Okay, so the R is for backwards. He searches his mind for what that could possibly stand for. Return? Maybe. Probably not important right now. Someone driving past him leans on their horn when he tries backing out of the parking space, and he hits the brake again, narrowly avoiding a crash. Definitely not important right now. Holy fucking shit. 

There are little mirrors hanging off the sides of the Audi, and another one in front of him, and he’s going to assume they are there to make sure he doesn’t do what he just did. Great. Good to know. His eyes dart around the car, and then around the parking lot, in a mild panic. The car’s motor hums. He finds that he’s beginning to hate that sound. 

Jean’s phone vibrates. 

Predictably, it’s Zane: WTF

Still trembling, Jean forces the car into park again. Running an errand for Riko.

Zane starts typing. Stops typing. Starts typing again. 

Can u even drive, is the eventual reply.

Wow! Such concern for Jean’s wellbeing — is what you would think, if you were an idiot! Jean is not an idiot. 

Why would he ask you

I can literally drive

Like I took driver’s ed. I took my driver’s test and passed on literally the first try 

Like Jean I can fucking parallel park

Jean doesn’t know what that means.

He knows that, Zane contends. Why would he not ask me

Jean looks at the clock again. Fuck. Does he?

Zane starts typing again, then stops, then starts again, then stops, then — Jean doesn’t have time for this. Can you tell me how to drive it?

The screen stays empty for a minute. 

Ohhhhhh, Zane says. OK OMW thanks Jean

Well. Jean didn’t actually mean it like that. He was hoping to do this over text. He tries to speed this up by asking, What do the letters stand for?

???? is the only response he gets, so he tries again.

In the picture? PRNDS??

Zane dismisses him. Be patient I’m on my way

Jean doesn’t really have time to be patient. But it is what it is. Ultimately, he can probably skip accounting tomorrow if he can’t find the squirrel today. Weighing his options, he probably won’t get much further than the parking lot on his own without getting into some sort of accident. Then he wouldn’t be able to get the squirrel anyway, and if he damages the car… he shudders involuntarily. It’s probably better to be sans squirrel and sans mortal injuries (from the car, anyway), so he waits for Zane.

Five perfectly good minutes pass before Zane finds him in the parking lot, and Jean is still shaking from his almost-crash. 

In lieu of hello: “Park, reverse, neutral, drive, and I actually don’t know what the S means.”

“Thank you.”

Zane studies him briefly. “I’ve never been a driving instructor before. Why do you look like you’re going to shit yourself? It’s not even that hard.”

Jean, grinding his teeth, doesn’t respond to that.

Zane clears his throat, surveying the interior of the Audi. “Do you think he’ll be happy I taught you how to drive?”

Jean stares pointedly out the front window, because he will never be the one to break it to Zane that he’s not going to be Perfect Court. That’s Kevin’s job. One he fulfills daily, actually. Yes, Zane has the number for now, but it’s not permanent, not really, and Zane is aware of this. “Not if I don’t get the squirrel.” 

Zane blinks. “The what?”

“Riko wants a squirrel.”

Zane blinks again. “Like… as a pet?”

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” Zane says, measuredly. Then, “um. You can, like, put it in reverse. And go backwards.” 

He gingerly touches the gas pedal and slowly—extremely slowly—backs out of the spot and into the middle of the parking lot. The steering wheel is more sensitive than he thought it would be. 

“Pretend the steering wheel is, like, moving the back of the car.”

“The back of the—?”

“The back tires, Jean?”

Jean freezes and brakes in the middle of the parking lot.

“The back wheels, Jean?” 

“And do what with them?”

“Nothing, I’m just—here, look, if you turn left—Jean, turn it left. No, stop braking, then turn it left. See? The back of the car moves left?”

“Right.”

“Now put it in drive. The lever, Jean, don’t just slam on the—? The letter D!? Jean!? ” 

A few more minutes of this go by, and now both of them are hyperventilating, but as Jean keeps trying to tell him, they don’t have time for this.

Somehow, whether or not Zane’s yelling actually helps, Jean manages to maneuver the Audi, at a snail’s pace, out of the parking lot and into the street. So… okay. Sure. Good. Jean knows how to drive now… more or less. Heart palpitations notwithstanding. Now, to find a squirrel… he has no idea. He has no idea at all.

Jean has never had a fondness for squirrels. He doesn’t hate them either. Back in France he really never had an opinion on them, and in the Nest, they obviously don’t make many appearances. He does feel slightly bad for this one, wherever it is. Whatever he wants it for, Riko probably isn’t going to be very nice to it. But if it’s between Jean and the squirrel, Jean would rather it be the squirrel. Sorry. 

Zane catches sight of it first. “Jean! Squirrel! Pull over!”

When Jean sees the squirrel dart across the road toward the Edgar Allan Nature Center (he’s never been here), he swerves to the side of the road (Zane yells, “FUCK!” and then, as an addendum, “the lever, Jean!”) and quickly parks. People honk at him again. Assholes should mind their own business. He scrambles to unbuckle his seatbelt. 

The squirrel pauses, peering at him, like it’s an adrenaline junkie or has no sense of self-preservation or both. Jean steels himself. He is a Division I student athlete, and probably more importantly, a member of the Perfect Court. The squirrel doesn’t stand a chance. 

“Um, Jean?” Zane starts, but Jean doesn’t have time for him at this moment.

He sprints out of the car at full speed.

This squirrel hates him. It’s faster than him, and it runs up a tree. Jean looks stupid. A woman walking the trails pauses briefly at the sight of him scowling at the base of the tree. He makes furious eye contact with her, and she mumbles something like “sorry” before hastily turning around. 

Jean gives this strategy two more tries before rethinking the core mechanics behind it. Even if he were to outpace the squirrel, it occurs to him that he’d have no idea what to do with it. Riko wants it alive, so it’s not like he can—what, strangle it? He doesn’t know if he could do that even if it was an option. Time is ticking by, and Jean is wasting it by running around the Nature Center like an imbecile. A yellow sign nailed to a tree warns him not to “harass the wildlife” because of recent rabies cases, apparently, which is really just a great addition to this entire situation. 

Right. Okay. Sure. So this requires more finesse. Um…

Jean returns shakily to the Audi. 

“What the fuck, Jean?” Of course Zane instantly bombards him, although he notably hasn’t even left the passenger seat.

“I was trying to catch—”

“By chasing it?”

Breathless, he shakes his head. “I’ve never done this before.” Clearly. 

Zane gawks at him. “Why did Riko ask you to do this?”

Convenience? Humor? Cruelty? The list of options is endless, but none of the items on it are what Zane is looking for. 

“Perfect Court.” Technically true. 

Zane’s expression sours. “Fuck you. And for what it’s worth, you’re a terrible driver.”

“I’ve never done that before, either.” 

Zane laughs coldly, and Jean glances at the clock, which displays no numbers. He furrows his brow. Zane stares at him, then groans. “You have to turn the car back on to see the clock.”

Jean swallows and turns the key. This much—that the car turns on and off with the key—he was able to figure out with inductive reasoning. He still flinches at the motor turning on, though. 

“Have you really never been in a car before? What’s the matter with you?”

Jean has been in a car before, except that was years ago and also in Europe, so the driver’s seat is on the wrong side.  “Perfect Court,” he says again, in response to the latter question, and once again, it’s technically true.

“That doesn’t even make sense. You’re just saying it to piss me off.”

It makes perfect sense. But Jean is more interested in the clock, which lights up as the engine hums.

Thirty-five minutes have passed since his class started. Forty to go, and then he’s expected to be in Castle Evermore again. The Ravens are not allowed to be anywhere else between classes and practice, and he’s already pushing the envelope by skipping class. He isn’t going to be able to do this in time, he realizes with a bit of a sinking feeling. 

Zane glares at him until something seems to click. “Do you think if I help you catch the squirrel, I’ll be closer to making Perfect Court? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

That’s not at all what Jean is trying to say. He’s not about to say no, though, so he sits in silence.

“Hm.” Zane taps his chin.

Hm, indeed. The two of them, Jean is starting to realize, are what Kevin would call absolutely fucking useless (at least if this were Exy. In the realm of squirrel-catching, Kevin probably doesn’t care. In fact, based on his body language, which isn’t hard to read at all, he hates this idea altogether). Anyway, enough about Kevin. If Jean allowed himself to think about Kevin all the time, he’d never get anything done. 

But then again, when he stops thinking about Kevin, the only looming thought is Riko, and now this fucking squirrel. 

Jean clenches his jaw and thinks.  It’s an animal; as good as they are at running away from Jean, squirrels can’t be that smart… right? 

“We could probably trap it,” he says aloud into the silence. 

Zane shrugs. “Anything to be Perfect Court.”

***

Have you ever had to take a class you had no interest in whatsoever? Or had a professor you could not stand? Or had a little bitch in your ear telling you that the class you can’t stand is more important than all of your other, doubly more interesting courses, even though it’s clearly not applicable to any sort of real life situation? Worse, was that bitch in your ear named Riko Moriyama?

Consider the absolutely catastrophic situation that Kevin Day finds himself in. 

First of all, Kevin doesn’t even like anthropology.

Secondly, his professor is a fucking idiot—and more on that in a moment.  

Third, and he feels that this is crucial to mention, the reason he’s even in this class is extremely fucked. He should clarify that it’s for Riko, because Kevin wants nothing to do with murder or how bodies rot or skeletons or any of the various weird shit they cover in this class. 

Forensic anthropology. Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:00-1:15. Prerequisites waived, because the professor is supposedly affiliated with the Moriyamas, and according to the Master, we clean up after ourselves. Um… gross. Yeah. This is what he’s working with right now. More annoyingly, it happens to be in the exact time slot of the history elective he wanted to take, so Kevin is more than a little pissed. 

 Even Riko has to feign academic interest for this one, which is new, and not really a welcome addition to their dynamic. He has this annoying habit of glaring at Kevin when he stops paying attention during their teacher’s—frankly disturbing—unrelated ramblings. The hypocrisy is obnoxious. Don’t get Kevin started. 

Also, although he hasn’t dared to speak this theory into existence, Kevin is beginning to doubt their professor’s mafia qualifications. He smiles too much. And he started the semester with a unit on the dubious ethical history of forensic anthropology—and medicine in general, apparently. Kevin grudgingly found this quite interesting, but Riko clearly felt very lost. Fork found in kitchen, he supposes. But if the professor is a Moriyama puppet, like Tetsuji (and by extension, Riko) is so convinced he must be, then this particular fork was found on an Exy court—that is to say, why the fuck would it be there? Ethics. Really. 

Anyway. Their apparently Moriyama-adjacent professor, Dr. John Gaius, is sort of a moron. “Just call me John,” he said on the first day of class, which in itself was enough to make Kevin a bit suspicious.  

Also, some of the things Gaius does border on a straight-up lack of professionalism. He linked his streaming channel on the syllabus, for one thing, which Kevin wouldn’t even want to get into except that no one else around him seems weirded out by this. Riko, obviously taken in by the alleged mafia ties (“finally something actually important,” were his words, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean), looked at Kevin like he was an idiot for even suggesting that this was abnormal. This is not surprising, since Kevin doesn’t think Riko has ever actually read a syllabus in his life. 

Jean doesn’t care at all. When Kevin probed and asked how he would feel if one of his professors linked a video gaming stream on the syllabus, he looked him dead in the eyes and said he would not care. Kevin does not believe this, at least not fully. 

Jeremy Knox responds amicably to Kevin’s intentionally vague gripes over text, but it’s not quite the same. Jeremy would say “wow, that’s so weird!” to practically anything Kevin complains about. 

Back to Jean—it always seems to come back to Jean—, now Riko has sent him on this ridiculous wild goose chase (wild squirrel chase, maybe, although now Kevin feels like Dr. Gaius’ love for puns is damaging his brain) for a squirrel. 

Why, you may ask? To be completely transparent, you might be better off not knowing, but the short answer is extra credit. 

And yes, he knows—for God’s sake, of all people, Kevin would know—it sounds ridiculous. Riko? Wanting extra credit? When he hasn’t done a single assignment for himself in his entire time at this school? If this weren’t such an implicitly awful thing to wish for, Kevin would almost wish every professor was a mafia puppet. Whatever. Whatever! 

This is, of course, not to be misconstrued. Generally speaking, Kevin doesn’t completely mind doing twice the work to be able to pursue a history degree. It’s nice, to an extent, to have at least one thing for himself, even if he has to deal with the aforementioned bitch in his ear complaining about having to do the absolute bare minimum that is showing up to lectures. But now you see the problem. If his academic career is the one thing Kevin has for himself—and Kevin loves history, he really does—, John Gaius and his fuckass forensic anthropology class have been a massive slap in the face: hello, yes, actually the Nest is everywhere! And now we’re teaching Riko how to get away with murder, apparently! Ha ha ha. Go fuck yourself, Kevin Day!

He knew that the history degree was a false reprieve. He really did. It still pisses him off. 

Anyway, the extra credit project.

Dr. Gaius calls this project his “taphonomy lab.” In short, they’re supposed to bury organic matter and write a series of reports on it. The first report, due midway through September, should detail the thing’s condition pre-burial and include a writeup of the burial process. The look of genuine mirth on their professor’s face when he announced that extra points would be given for burying roadkill was the closest he has ever come to convincing Kevin of his Moriyama ties. 

And here is where things get dicey, if you can believe it gets worse from here.  

Kevin isn’t so terrified of Riko that he won’t tell him when something is stupid (although, let’s be honest, he’s getting there). This sentiment is what drove him to say, after the project was assigned, “This is stupid. We don’t have time to do all of this for extra credit. We have practice.”

Riko, to his credit, seemed to take this into consideration.

Then Riko, not to his credit at all, said, “We’ll make Jean get it.”

First of all, Kevin wanted to point out, Jean also has practice. Secondly, who the fuck is we? None of these things made it out of Kevin’s mouth, first because of the helpless feeling that has started to well up in his gut and constrict his throat more and more often recently. Also, though, and more practically, it was because Riko gave it maybe five seconds before he turned to Jean with his demand. 

“We need a squirrel.”

Absolute fucking bullshit. 

“A live one” caught Kevin even further off guard, because that has nothing to do with the project and everything to do with the increasingly cruel twist of Riko’s smile. There’s something wrong with him. Obviously. This is becoming increasingly apparent, and the murder class is not helping. At all.

And so now all they can do is wait. 

Riko, it seems, is waiting for his victim, but Kevin is just waiting for this whole debacle to pass. There’s no way Jean is going to catch a squirrel. How does one even go about catching a squirrel? You don’t. You can’t. Not unless you’re, like, a professional squirrel catcher, which Jean is not. Jean is a backliner (an excellent backliner, Kevin must say!), not a squirrel catcher. Riko knows this. He has to. He hasn't completely lost touch with reality, at least not yet, and anyway, he’ll find something else to entertain himself with within a few days. For now it’s just a matter of gritting teeth and letting this particular bout of cruelty (and frankly, idiocy) run its course.  

This is what he tells himself to sleep at night. 

Jean is not going to catch a fucking squirrel. Jean is going to be fine. And Riko will lose interest in the extra credit once he has to do even an ounce of actual work. It’s all going to be fine.

***

Kevin is leaving one of his history courses when he receives a very cryptic text message from Jean.

Got it, it reads. 

Kevin frowns and texts back, ?

Ten long minutes pass as he and Riko commute in silence back to Evermore, with nothing else from Jean.

Front door, Jean texts eventually.

Kevin can’t help it: ????

Someone slams the front door shut and rushes down the stairs at Castle Evermore. Kevin tenses at the sound. No one is ever that eager to get down here, and anyway, most of the Ravens understandably prefer to avoid drawing excess attention to themselves. A little anxiously, he waits outside the door to the bathroom in the common area.

“Kevin.” The voice is low, urgent, and accented, which puts Kevin at ease only for a second before the anxiety comes right back. Jean Moreau walks hastily into the room, holding a cardboard box at arm’s length, held out as far away from him as possible, like he’s afraid something in it might bite him. “Kevin,” he says again. 

“Jean,” Kevin says in greeting, a little quizzically. He stares at the thing in Jean’s hands and jumps when it makes a noise. The pieces start to come together. “ Jean, ” he repeats gravely. “That’s not—?“

“It is.”

Kevin recoils, feeling some level of guilt but also, frankly, a healthy dose of what the actual fuck. Jean Moreau has managed, against all odds, to get Riko’s stupid squirrel. "Why would you actually do that?“

Jean stares at him like he’s an idiot. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Kevin might actually lose his mind. This is ridiculous. This is insane. “You didn’t have to do that. He doesn’t have to do this project. At all.”

Jean narrows his eyes at him.  “I didn’t have a choice,” he repeats.

Kevin relents just a little, if only for curiosity’s sake. “How did you—"

“Does it matter? Where is Riko?”

That’s not a question Kevin gets a lot, mostly because they’re never more than a few yards apart, and also because, as the years go on, Riko is becoming less and less of a person you would want to willingly seek out. The live fucking squirrel, though, seems to trump other concerns right now. “Um. Just using the bathroom.”

Jean nods curtly, a vein beginning to protrude from his forehead. 

“Did you—”

Jean shakes his head. Not interested in conversation right now, apparently. Kevin really can’t blame him. He takes an involuntary step backward, right into the wall. When Riko swings the door open, it nearly hits him in the face.

Kevin really can’t tell if it’s a relief or not that none of the other Ravens are in the room right now. Riko’s gaze flicks to the increasingly noisy box, and even he looks a little perturbed.

“Got it,” Jean says thickly.

“Oh,” says Riko.

Jean clenches his teeth. 

“The squirrel,” Kevin adds, probably a little rudely. This whole thing is sort of pissing him off, if you couldn’t tell. “For your project.” 

“Right.”

Jean very nearly throws it at Riko when he finally extends his hands to take it. “Zane helped.” 

Kevin thinks that’s quite irrelevant.

Riko takes the box, and for the first time in a while, now, he genuinely flinches. This is probably because the squirrel inside is clamoring with unrestrained fury. He accidentally drops it on the floor. Jean’s eyes bulge, and he takes several steps backward. Kevin can’t walk backward any further, so he sort of grabs at the wall behind him in some helpless attempt at escape. Riko says, “Oh,” again, this time a little more alarmed. 

The squirrel gets out of the makeshift trap and makes a run for it, up the walls, around the room a few times, making sort of snarling noises, and eventually disappears into one of the vents… right into Evermore’s ventilation system. For the first time, perhaps ever, the entirety of the Perfect Court stands in complete and utter silence, gaping at each other in horror. 

Oh. So now they’re all fucked. Congratulations, Riko! 

Kevin would like to mention, for the record, that he had nothing to do with this. He didn’t even want to do this project. “We have practice,” he says helpfully. “In, like, fifteen minutes.”

***

Red lights and heels clacking on linoleum flooring, and voices sort of echoing down hallways. Someone else is probably getting a tour.

Only fragments of conversations make it through all the background noise, not that you’re paying particular attention. 

“Forgive—darkness—adds to the ambience—“

“—very… spirited—"

“Ah, yes, you get it!”

Not super interesting. 

It’s a bit of a maze. Dark and stuffy and lots of lefts and rights and narrow corridors. Not too many crumbs either, or even the scent of them. 

“Can’t tell—we’re all fucked—understand?”

Someone raps nervously against the wall with their fist. It makes vibrations. Not exactly pleasant.

Weird people live here, probably.

***

Jean blocks the process of trapping the squirrel from his memory. It’s really not something he’d ever like to recount to anyone. From finding the smelly cardboard box on the side of the road to Zane’s actual screaming to the peanut-butter jar they found in someone’s fucking trash can for bait to, again, Zane screaming, and then the most terrifying car ride of his life, it’s not a worthwhile story.

Jean endures. It’s what he’s good at. And endurance will get you anywhere, if you’re willing to discard absurdity. No situation is too ridiculous to endure. Cars can be driven, squirrels can be caught, and Zane Reacher’s nervous breakdowns can be tolerated.

Zane, courteously (well, probably because he was “about to have a heart attack and did that squirrel just take a piss in the box, Jean? I’m not touching that”), drove him back to Evermore and dropped him off at the front doors, where Jean hoped to hand the squirrel off to Riko with minimal incidents.

Of course, that didn’t happen. This is Jean’s luck we’re talking about, here, and also Riko, not to mention an extremely angry squirrel. Not exactly a setup for success. Jean can’t blame the squirrel, honestly. He’d be pissed, too. Unfortunately, its pseudo-escape does nothing but prolong the inevitable. There is no leaving the Nest, at least not alive. 

Anyway, Jean doesn’t want to dwell on it, because it’s frankly not his problem anymore. Zane is making this endeavor difficult. It’s been less than a day since the squirrel got into Evermore’s ventilation system, and already, he is losing his shit. Jean is kind of done with it. Regardless of their complete and total exhaustion from four hours of sleep per night, Zane manages to hyperventilate well past their curfew. 

“Do you think,” he says under his breath when they hear the scratching sounds echo through the vents for the third time in the last ten minutes, “this is, like, a punishment?”

Jean glances at him. “What are you even talking about?”

“It’s just—" he cuts himself off. “Nothing.”

The silence, punctuated only by Zane’s shallow breathing, is almost oppressive. “What,” Jean repeats, “are you talking about?”

“I just think—the squirrel—"

The sounds reverberate again.

“Do you think it maybe has it out for us?”

Jean could genuinely almost laugh, but he holds it together. Out of all of the individuals that have it out for him, the rodent is not at the top of his list of concerns. Of course, expressing as much to Zane is a no-go. He opts for silence instead. 

“It’s stupid,” Zane admits after a moment.

“A little.”

“Right.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Zane echoes half-heartedly, but it’s a good while before either of them falls into meaningful sleep.

***

Apparently, and much to Jean’s chagrin, Zane wasn’t alone in his insomnia last night. The first thing that spills out of his teammates’ mouths in the locker room is along the lines of, “Did anyone hear weird noises in the walls last night?” 

“I mean, yeah, a little.”

“Sounds like something’s moving around.”

“Maybe we’ve got a mouse?”

“I remember one time at home we had a mouse in the attic and we couldn’t hear it, so—“

“You told me the mouse you had was dead.”

“Well, yeah, but obviously the mouse would’ve had to be alive before it was dead?”

“You think our mouse is going to die?”

“I mean, logistically—“

“I don’t think we have a mouse.”

“Then what do you think it is?”

“Bigger than a mouse. Raccoon, maybe? Or a possum?”

“You mean an opossum.”

“Does it really fucking matter?”

“Either way we need an exterminator, probably—“

“We can’t just free it?”

“How do you think—“

A louder voice cuts clearly through the chatter. Riko. “There is nothing in the walls. No one heard a noise last night.” He says it smoothly, with an air of condescension, like it’s a simple fact, like it isn’t an objective lie, and like the truth of the matter isn’t completely his fault. So… true to form.

This is met with a brief silence. The Ravens exchange quick glances and shrugs down the line. “That makes sense,” someone offers, wholly convinced, and everyone moves on. 

Well, everyone tries to move on. 

***

In one of the rooms, they chase each other around with sticks. Rudimentary stuff, really. Not all day, but most of it. Sometimes there’s blood and screaming. It seems to be quite serious. Or probably they just get bored of chasing each other with sticks. Fair enough. 

Time passes, and you know this not because of shifts in light and dark, since it’s always very dark—ambience?—, but because you’re getting quite hungry. 

Into the maze again. It isn’t getting any easier to navigate. You can still sometimes make out fragments of conversations, not that you speak English or any of the other languages that come garbled through the vents, but you get the overall gist. It’d be hard not to.

“Kill yourself” seems to be a crowd favorite. 

Following what few light sources exist is not usually very helpful, because most of the time that just takes you back to the big chasing-with-sticks room, or sometimes to that secluded area where you think people might be getting tours (they don’t say “kill yourself” there), which are quite stupid, you think, if they don’t cover the whole complex. But you’re not looking for a tour or to chase anybody with a stick. You’re really just looking for food, which is oddly scarce here. It’s strange because you’ve heard through the grapevine that supposedly mice raise whole families off of humans being sloppy with their food, which is kind of weird to you, but… well, cultural relativism. The point is, you’ve had a hard time finding anything to eat, and it’s getting rather frustrating. 

Hours of countless lefts and rights and going straight and following the hints of red lighting to stay close to the hallways later, you think you’ve found it. Two of the people are in there, but so is what looks like a measuring cup with some kind of nuts in it. You’ve literally encountered the jackpot. They’re murmuring things to each other, probably about how they’re tired of chasing each other with sticks, or you’re not sure, but it really doesn’t matter because you’re going for it. 

You leap out of the vents and cautiously snipe the nuts from the cup, and you’re pleased with yourself because you can hold a lot of nuts in your mouth at once, it’s quite literally what you were born for, and you’re halfway back up the wall when—

Oh. One of the people in the room is staring at you, open-mouthed. You stare back, as best you can, then when they don’t bother moving, you give up and scurry back into the vents. Maybe they’ve never seen a squirrel before. Maybe they really wanted those nuts. Well, that’s too bad for them. 

***

It starts with nothing. Riko quashed the murmurs about noises in the walls quite effectively, and even Kevin has to admit that as the days pass, the noises are getting less conspicuous.

But other problems are starting to emerge, and not just Riko being weirdly on edge (well, more than usual) and muttering about catching the squirrel. Kevin is the first to notice something off about their teammates—at practice, of course, since there is no other context in which he would pay them any attention. It begins with just one or two people, unusually sloppy with their passes, but as the days go by, it gets worse and starts to spread like a disease.

Maybe it is a disease. All of the Ravens are catching it.

Now, to be frank, the Ravens are always sloppy with their passes, by Kevin’s standards. But this is different. When Kevin berates them, they jump and blink rapidly at him as if mildly stupefied, nodding along. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” He asks, more than once, but there’s never a satisfying answer. 

“Nothing,” is the general consensus, although sometimes he gets a muddled “I thought I—," which never gets to the end of the sentence before they shake their heads as if to clear them.

Kevin is not a pre-med student (although sometimes imagining dragging Riko to all of the required labs makes him laugh with spite). But even he can distinguish the dark circles stamped under his teammates' eyes from their usual dark circles. They’re… well, for lack of a better word, darker. What? Again, not a pre-med student. And Kevin honestly doesn’t care that much, except, as he mentioned, it’s fucking with their game. Severely. 

It’s pissing him off.

What’s pissing him off even more is the fact that he has an inkling of why everyone is looking so haggard, and why the only ones unaffected are Jean, Riko, and himself (and maybe Zane, he supposes). 

It has something to do with that fucking squirrel. It’s the only common denominator. But why would a squirrel—one that most of the Ravens are not even convinced is real—be causing so much of an issue? It makes no sense. What is wrong with these people?

***

The atmosphere in this place hasn’t changed much, except maybe people are crying more openly now. You’ve stayed relatively close to the room where you found your first food and carefully watched people come in and out, swooping in to eat when the time feels right. Unfortunately, like lunatics, they’ve locked up most of the cabinets in the kitchen next door, and they only come in here to eat in pairs at regularly scheduled intervals. You never come out when you recognize the people who caught you or their collaborators—you don’t want to get stuck in a cardboard box again, and they seem crazier than most of these creeps anyway—, but everyone else is fair game. You’re not even sorry to be stealing their food. Their friends kidnapped you, after all, and a squirrel has to eat. 

The conversations are getting a bit more fraught, and you can hear them slightly better when they’re in this room. 

“There’s nothing in the walls. He said there’s nothing in the walls.” They’re tapping the table rapidly with their fingertips.

“So there’s nothing in the walls,” comes the reply, thin and frustrated.

“I haven’t slept.”

“Well, me neither.”

There’s a moment of quiet, and even you can tell it’s quite uncomfortable. 

“I think I might be losing my mind.”

“Pull your shit together.”

“I know, it’s just—”

“I’m serious. If you lose your mind, we’re both—“

Then comes something that almost sounds like weeping.

“Oh, god, what’s wrong with you?”

You decide that this is a good time to grab something to eat. You’ve gotten a little cocky over the past few days, since no one seems to do anything when they see you, so you casually crawl out of the vent and down the wall, making quiet progress toward the plate to steal their food.

A very sharp yelp occurs before the source claps their hand over their mouth. The teary-eyed person stares directly at you, shaking. You slowly bite into the food, and they sink to their knees.

“You see it, right? Please tell me you see it.” They speak with great emotion, and you wonder if maybe this is their favorite food that you’re stealing. Hm. Is it that serious?

Their companion stands beside them, and they’re looking at you too, and they utter, tremulously, “See what? Riko said there’s nothing in the walls.”

The one on their knees begins to cry in earnest, and the other one looks disgusted and confused and terrified all at once, and wow! When did you get so good at reading human facial expressions? Because you feel slightly bad for making them cry, you do leave half of the food on the plate before heading back into the vent. 

***

For the first time in quite a while, no one in the Nest (except maybe Kevin… he can dream) is paying attention to Jean. You must understand: Jean is, more often than not, the target of various forms of negative attention. Yes, from Riko, but also from the other Ravens. It is what it is, and there isn’t much to do about it. But ever since that squirrel got into the ventilation system, hardly anyone has even looked at him. It’s actually quite unnerving.

The Ravens practically look through him when they see him, like there’s something else they are preoccupied with. They’re all looking rather washed out, come to think of it. And Zane, to his credit, is more concerned about the situation overall than he is about finding a way to blame it on Jean. 

Jean told him (and he thought he put this quite elegantly) that Riko put the squirrel in the vents. The implication was that it was on purpose, but he didn’t say that out loud. Zane couldn’t argue with that, because you can’t argue with Riko. Small victories. 

He can’t lie: Riko’s newfound interest in obsessively studying Evermore’s ventilation system instead of doing… well, what he usually does with Jean, is a very welcome reprieve. When Jean is in proximity, Riko now waves him off. Strange, but fortunate. A few times, he has told Jean to stand vigil next to specific vents for about an hour at a time. That’s basically nothing. And Jean is honestly impressed that the squirrel has lasted this long. A small part of him wonders if perhaps it has died, but that’s unlikely, given that the noises from the vents still sometimes occur. 

What’s more, Jean and Zane are hardly even being disciplined at practice, since nearly everyone else’s performance has been in a very steep decline. This isn’t to say he isn’t still living a nightmare, but with all things considered, it’s been oddly… uneventful, at least for Jean personally.

This, of course, comes at the apparent cost of the sanity of all of the other Ravens. Which is… probably fine, until it isn’t. 

In the Ravens’ first away game since the whole squirrel incident, they’re losing badly. It’s not even a close game, nor are they even losing to a particularly good team. Actually, as Kevin puts it, they’re “absolute trash. What the fuck!?”

The problem is that the vast majority of the team is only half-present mentally. They watch the ball roll past them, blinking without comprehension, and they flinch at nothing. Everyone is bruised from practice and hysterical from God knows what (probably from being gaslit about a squirrel infestation, but what does Jean know?). People trip over themselves and bump into each other and stammer and profusely apologize to the opposing team over accidental fouls, and not even the Perfect Court (and Zane) can cover for all of that. 

“And Edgar Allan is—wow! That’s—well, that’s something you don’t see every day. They’re probably just—oh, that’s got to hurt…” The announcer really doesn’t help. Kevin looks like he might actually kill someone. Riko gets more desperate and aggressive with every bit of unnecessary commentary, and he actually ends up getting a red card, which means he has to be replaced with yet another overwrought Raven. 

“What is wrong with all of you?” The Master hisses at halftime, but no amount of threats of violence is going to save this game.

It’s really a horrible situation that Jean can do nothing about. The second half of the game is even worse, because people are being subbed in practically every five minutes, and someone actually faints mid-game, and their opponents are becoming fairly amused at this point (which, to be fair, can you blame them?). Kevin scores an impressive number of goals for not having any assistance at all, and Jean and Zane do fine on defense. But this is the Ravens we’re talking about, so the score is still bad for their standards, and they don’t even have a functioning goalkeeper. 

They lose. Quite horrifically. They endure a humiliating sportsmanship exchange, saying “good game” to the team whose players they never even bothered to learn the names of because, again, they’re the Ravens, and this is a middle-of-nowhere team that hasn’t scored a win all season. Until today, apparently.

The aftermath of the game will be bad. Jean knows this. It’s going to be especially bad for Riko, which means it will be worse for Jean. But before they get on the bus back home, where the air is heavy with silence, Kevin won’t let anyone else get a word in. He pulls Jean and Riko to the side, and while he glares menacingly at Zane when he follows them, he does nothing to stop him. 

“The squirrel,” he snaps, “has to go.” 

***

You’re not sure how many days have passed since you got here. Again, time here is funny thanks to the lack of light sources. You’ve settled into a rather boring routine of stealing food right off of people’s plates, and no one says or does anything except for the occasional bouts of tears, which are starting to become more frequent. You’re almost starting to feel bad for these people. They’re hardly even telling each other “kill yourself” anymore. 

You think they’re possibly starting to starve, given how horrible they all look, which makes no sense because they could literally get more food from the cabinets in the room next door. And now you feel even worse, because they’re really quite stupid, and you’ve been taking advantage of that. You think that perhaps it’s time for you to leave. 

You move rather quickly, and you roam around for a bit. As you’ve said before, nearly all routes lead back to the big room where people chase each other around with sticks. Today, when you get there, something different occurs. The big doors at the end of the room open from the outside. All of the people you’ve been observing start entering the room, and you see your chance, so you make a run for it.

They see you. Of course they do. This elicits a range of responses. 

A guy in a suit, who you’ve only ever seen from a distance and who probably gives the tours, takes one look at you and lets out a blood-curdling scream, which triggers flinches (and then stares) all around. He clears his throat, perhaps embarrassed, but you’re not sticking around to find out. 

In your haste, you run within grabbing distance of your captor, which is a terrible miscalculation that you think you will probably pay for, but the strangest thing occurs: he makes no move to reach for you or trap you in a box again. He simply stares at you instead, and you could swear that you make eye contact.

The idiot who dropped your box and set you loose in this hellhole looks peeved, but you don’t really care. You run as fast as you can, and you make it into the sunlight again, which hurts your eyes after so many days underground, but you’re pleased to be back.

Well. If there’s one lesson that can be imparted from this, it’s that stale peanut butter in suspicious cardboard boxes is never worth pursuing. So long, goodbye, et cetera. 

***

The squirrel is really gone. 

Jean tries to reconcile this with the indisputable fact that no one ever leaves the Nest alive, and finds that he can’t. Still, there’s a knot in his stomach that loosens ever so slightly when he sees it run out the front door. 

He’s also going to pretend he never heard Tetsuji Moriyama screeching in horror at the sight of a squirrel. It’s better for his sanity.

He will spare you the details on the awful repercussions of what Kevin will later dub “the game we do not speak of,” and for which Riko will unfairly blame the announcer and the referee. More days pass, and the Nest slowly goes back to its horrible norm. His teammates start to incrementally catch up on sleep and, it seems, meals, though he has no idea why they wouldn’t be eating in the first place, and they return to their nasty selves in time.

The only real loose end is that Riko no longer has the means to do his extra credit project, a turn of events which Kevin actually seems quite pleased with. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Riko does not tell Jean to catch another squirrel. 

Eventually, he gives in and puts in a request for a rotisserie chicken from the coaches instead, which Jean would expect to be denied since it’s food and the Ravens are famously quite touchy about food, but for some reason, it gets approved without comment. 

It’s after he and Kevin set out with the rotisserie chicken, apparently to bury it at the Nature Center, that Jean receives a series of frantic texts.

Jean HELP

RIKO CAN’T DRIVE.

JEAN PLEASE HELP

Sorry. Didn’t mean to put all-caps on

Kevin. Naturally. Bizarrely, Jean feels a sense of deja vu, and he slowly turns to Zane with his phone.

Zane reads the text and brightens a little. “Perfect Court?”

Jean blinks and thinks it over. He doesn’t really want Kevin to die, at the moment, and Riko probably doesn’t have the prudence to give up the wheel. Lying isn’t the worst thing right now, and it’s not even really an answerable question, just a phrase. He nods, to Zane’s apparent delight. “Perfect Court.”

***

Kevin Day is about to die. Scratch that; the entirety of the Perfect Court, plus Zane, not that he fucking matters, is about to die in a fucking car crash. This is a stupid way to die. They’re in the middle of Exy season, even with that absolutely humiliating game on their record. He tells Riko as much, but that only adds fuel to the gasoline fire and HOLY SHIT THEY’RE ALL GOING TO DIE. 

“Riko, pull over. Riko, pull the fuck over!" Kevin snaps, clinging to the passenger side door for dear life as they hurtle down the road and fully move into oncoming traffic, which, granted, only lasts a second or two, which is a second or two too long and for God’s sake they’re going to be in the news. They’re going to be on national news. The headline: Riko Moriyama and Kevin Day Found Dead With Teammates in Freak Car Accident. Subheading: Did Riko Moriyama Have A Valid Driver’s License? Sub-subheading: No! 

He wonders vaguely if the press already thinks half the Ravens are dying from mold or something after that horrible game, and if they’ll chalk this up to the same problem. Not a lot of time to worry about that right now. 

“Stop backseat driving!” Riko snarls. He’s clutching the steering wheel with such force that his knuckles are going white, and someone reasonably honks their horn at them, and Kevin can’t help but moan because he’s going to be genuinely—genuinely sick. 

Jean has his eyes closed in the back, silently moving his lips in what might be a curse or a prayer, and Zane’s mouth uselessly hangs open. 

Kevin is beginning to suspect that this might be an intentional murder-suicide out of spite after losing the squirrel. They hit the curb and then speed over several potholes and what the fuck what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK. “Pull over!” 

“Kevin, if you utter one more word to me—"

“Red light!” Zane sputters from the back. 

“What?”

“You have to hit the brake!” 

“Are you fucking kidding me, Zane?”

“It’s on the left side of the gas pedal!” Then, belatedly: “Sorry!”

There is indeed a red light. This is it. It’s over. They’re all going to die, and worse, never play Exy again. In a bizarre moment of clarity, Kevin does not see his life flash before his eyes. What he sees is much pettier: a montage of every single error Riko has ever made on the court, muddled together with his half-finished history essay outline, and then, concerningly, Jean’s bizarrely calm expression before death superimposed over the whole thing. He looks over his shoulder, and they make eye contact. Deliriously, he almost says something in French. 

Well. Thank God that doesn’t happen. 

Riko slams the brake so hard that the tires screech, and Kevin can feel Zane’s forehead bumping into the back of the passenger seat, thrown forward with momentum. Kevin braces himself to die. But, rather humiliatingly, nothing happens. They stop, just barely, in front of the light. 

An elderly lady in the car right next to them flips them off, and when Riko does the same to her, she looks vaguely stricken. Welcome to Kevin’s world. 

“That,” Zane says weakly, “was actually pretty good, for your first time driving.”

Is he joking? At a time like this? Or just kissing ass? At a time like this? “Zane, we almost died.” 

“Shut up, Kevin,” Riko says, but even he has the sense to be shaking right now. 

“When it turns green—“

“I fucking know, Zane.”

When Kevin, out of fear for his life, reflexively sent texts begging Jean for help, he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. What actually happened was that Jean and Zane practically jumped in front of the Audi and begged—well, Zane begged; Jean just sort of stood there grimly—to help bury the chicken, which weirded Riko out so much that he actually let them into the backseat. 

It’s not exactly helpful, and it actually makes Kevin even more stressed out because now Jean might die, too. The only upside is that Zane apparently knows how to drive, but he won’t fucking say anything until it’s too late because it’s Riko, which Kevin should have expected, but still. 

Kevin is also pissed out of his mind about the rotisserie chicken, which is a step above the squirrel, but still fucking disgusting. They don’t have time for this, especially given the abysmal game they just played (what the fuck was Riko thinking on the court?). He’s not doing this, sorry to say. Every time he looks at the fucking chicken he wants to throw up because it’s slimy and it’s a raw chicken and now he can’t stop associating it with what the squirrel could’ve been and ohhh, God, he’s driving again.

***

Riko swerves toward the curb outside the entrance to the Nature Center, and everyone holds their breath for a variety of reasons. He steps off of the brake, then immediately slams it again when the car moves forward. This happens two more times. 

He swears, and Zane, looking very pale, ventures, “uh, I’m not trying to—”

Riko rounds on him. 

“Sorry. Um, I just mean, the lever… thing.”

“Oh.”

“You… already knew that, though, I’m sure.”

“Yes.”

Kevin exhales heavily while Riko maneuvers the lever toward P. The Audi stops moving for good, this time. 

“You… can turn the key, if you want to turn it off. Which I’m sure you already knew, too.” Zane says hoarsely.

“...correct.”

Riko turns the key, the car’s motor finally quits its incessant humming, and Jean starts to fear slightly less for his life. 

“This is ridiculous,” Kevin says after a moment. “You all realize this is fucking ridiculous, don’t you?”

“It literally,” Riko contends, with emphasis, “is not.”

Kevin clenches his jaw. “I’m not doing it.” 

The atmosphere in the car becomes tense and quiet. Zane scratches at the back of his neck, and Jean looks out the window. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you.”

“It’s stupid, not to mention gross, and Riko, it’s a raw fucking chicken—" Kevin gestures helplessly. 

“It’s not raw, Kevin; it’s called a rotisserie chicken.”

At that, Kevin seems to pivot to another line of reasoning. “It smells.”

Jean really shouldn’t be involved in this conversation at all. Between the obnoxious cars on the highway—is it a highway? He’s not sure he knows the difference—to his left, the argument in front of him, Zane’s rapid blinking to his right, and the concept of a whole rotisserie chicken rolling around in the trunk behind him, he’s a bit overstimulated. He takes a sudden interest in the floorboard of the Audi.

“It smells,” Riko repeats slowly. “You’re pathetic, and also a massive fucking liar. Putrefaction hasn’t even started yet.”

Huh. Not a word one hears every day. 

“Does it matter? Riko, does it matter? Why do we even have to bury it? It’s for extra credit and you’ve never cared about extra credit before—“

“Bullshit.”

“Name one time—"

“Okay, well, this is a little different from your fuckass history projects.“

“In what capacity?” Kevin is starting to sound a little hysterical. Even Riko generally knows not to say fuckass history projects to him, so Jean has a bit of an impending sense of doom in his stomach. 

“Riko. I won’t. I really won’t do it. This is stupid. You have to know this is stupid.”

“Get out of the car.”

Kevin slowly shakes his head. “No. I’ll throw up. It’s going to ruin the—um—"

“The soil acidity. You’re going to fuck up the decomposition process.”

A beat of silence passes. Jean keeps his eyes on the floor, but he can imagine Kevin’s expression easily enough. That was probably the first time Riko has ever given the impression that he pays attention in class. 

Kevin eventually settles for, “yeah. That.”

More silence. 

“You would ruin the project.”

“It’s only extra credit. You don’t have to do it. You really don’t have to do it.”

For a minute, Jean thinks Riko might just give up. He risks a glance upward, still holding his breath. Riko scowls, but Kevin isn’t moving. He’s gripping the side of the door for dear life, and it occurs to Jean that he may not have been bluffing about feeling sick. 

“You know what?” Riko eventually says, yanking the keys out of the ignition. Having apparently never done that before, he uses too much force, and the key goes flying backward. All of them are perturbed into momentary silence. Riko clears his throat. “I don’t have time for this.”

Zane might think he’s talking to him, because he scrambles to grab the key from the floor and give it back to him.

“No. No, I don’t have time for this." He gestures, with no small degree of frustration, to Kevin.

Kevin freezes. “Excuse me?”

“Just stay in the car.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m burying it. Just stay in the fucking car.”

“You’re—?” Kevin gapes a little. Jean blinks. Riko gets out of the car and slams the front door shut. 

Zane, apparently finding his voice again, stumbles out of the car and offers, all too pleased: “I can help!” Anything to be Perfect Court, Jean now remembers him saying. Well. Jean cringes, but Riko gives Zane nothing but a stare of thinly veiled disgust. He eventually nods, quite imperiously, in assent. 

Kevin and Jean both sit in silence for a good half a minute, watching the two of them carry the shovel and the trash bag to whatever circle of hell Riko plans on burying the chicken in.

“He’s not… serious,” Kevin says after a moment. Jean would have to agree. Kevin and Riko have never been more than maybe twenty yards apart. Ever. Since before Jean even got to Evermore. It’s been a genuine obstacle for Kevin’s discreet French lessons. 

Another moment passes. Riko’s figure disappears into the trails of the Nature Center, and Zane’s not long after. Oh. Huh. He’s serious. 

Perhaps the whole squirrel situation affected Riko more than Jean thought it did. 

Kevin does not seem to fully know what to do with himself. “Um.”

Jean looks around.

Kevin clears his throat. He sounds like he’s testing the waters, like he’s waiting for Riko to turn around and bash both of their heads in with the shovel, or for the Master or one of their teammates to pop out from behind the backseat—caught you, time to die, et cetera. Honestly, all fair concerns. 

Jean blinks a few times, waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it becomes clear that no one else is here, he puts forth a relatively low-risk question. “What did he mean about the soil acidity?”

Kevin turns and looks him dead in the eyes. With gravitas, he says, “I have no fucking clue.”

They’re both quiet for another moment.

“Okay, well, I sort of have a clue,” Kevin amends. “The acidity is, like, a factor in how fast a body rots.”

Jean frowns.

Hastily: “This is what we study in the class.”

“Right.”

In extremely poor form, Kevin asks, “Um, so… what’s the French word for ‘squirrel’?”

“Kevin.”

“Sorry.” 

The two of them stare at each other for a bit longer.

“How long do you think—?”

“How long,” Jean turns the question around, “does it take to bury a rotisserie chicken?”

“I don’t know.”

Jean blinks.

Vaguely defensive, Kevin adds, “We didn’t learn about that in class.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” He swallows, and he’s thinking about it—he’s seriously thinking about this very critically; his eyes narrow and he taps his foot against the floor. “Well, anyway, it’ll take longer if he actually does it correctly and takes note of the vegetation. He’s supposed to—“

“Maybe,” Jean suggests, “we could stop talking about him.” Something else. Anything else. Jean and Kevin have never been alone together, at least not without having to whisper over Riko’s fucking snoring, and Kevin is not seriously about to spend it contemplating how he would hypothetically bury a rotisserie chicken.

Well. Maybe he is. Jean doesn’t claim to know what goes on in Kevin’s head, and frankly, at least when it comes to this, he doesn’t want to. Maybe it’s best to let him ponder Riko’s (in)ability to follow academic instructions; that’s all he ever seems to talk about anymore. 

But Kevin pauses. “Well, yes, that’s probably—yeah.”

Ah. Shit. Now Jean has nothing to say. 

“Écureuil,” he finally concedes.

“What?”

“The French word for squirrel.”

“Oh.” Kevin considers that. “Thanks.”

A further uncomfortable pause. 

Kevin wipes sweat from his brow. “I really thought,” he says with a shaky laugh, “we were going to die. Before. With Riko driving.”

“Oh.” Jean didn’t allow himself to hope for that. “Yes. That was bad.”

“That was horrible.”

Jean nods. It was a little sickening. 

“And Zane—"

“Zane was trying to be… helpful.”

“Did a shit job at it.”

“Yes.” 

Kevin stares at Jean for a moment, then laughs again. He sounds a bit delirious, and after the last several days, Jean can’t really blame him. “We played really badly this weekend.”

Jean, admittedly to his own disgust, is drawn in by this strangely hysterical version of Kevin, or maybe it doesn’t really matter what state he’s in, just that it’s Kevin, and that’s possibly more disturbing than the first option. 

“Well,” Kevin amends. “Except you. You were pretty good.”

Jean swallows. “Thank you.”

Kevin clears his throat self-consciously, and before either of them knows what they’re doing, he steps out of the car and gets into the backseat with Jean. “Um.”

What the fuck. 

Perhaps it’s best to get ahead of the curve. “Um, the French word for rotisserie chicken is—"

“Jean,” Kevin interrupts. 

“Sorry.” 

They blink at each other, and for once, it’s uninterrupted, and Jean’s heart is racing faster than it ever did over the stupid squirrel. It’s embarrassing, frankly, and why is Kevin looking at him like that and—

Oh.

Well.

That’s… not entirely unwelcome. 

After they kiss, because they did just kiss, and Jean is ninety—well, maybe eighty—percent sure he didn’t hallucinate it, they just stare at each other again. Because what else are they supposed to do? This doesn’t just fucking happen, it just doesn’t, and Kevin clears his throat again, sort of red in the face now. “Um. He’s going to have to do this again in December.”

“Sorry?”

“To—" Kevin laughs. “To dig up the rotisserie chicken.”

“Oh.” 

“So, you know, maybe we can—"

“Right. Um, sure. I mean, yes.”

Jean blinks rapidly, and they see Zane coming out of the woods. All too soon. Kevin hisses, “shit,” and awkwardly climbs over the center console back into the passenger seat, and Jean, despite everything, has to laugh a little. 

What the fuck just happened? 

***

So, perhaps Riko’s project produced at least one good outcome after all. 

Time passes quite uneventfully after that—well, as uneventfully as it can at Castle Evermore. Riko, to Kevin’s sincere shock, writes the entirety of the extra credit report himself. 

He tries to put Kevin’s name on it, out of sheer force of habit, probably, but Kevin tells him to take it off. “I don’t want anything to do with this project. If you want to give anyone credit, put Jean in the acknowledgements. And Zane, I guess.”

That earns him a very blank stare, and ultimately, it’s only Riko’s name that goes on the paper. When he turns it in, Dr. John Gaius beams at them, which makes Kevin and probably also Riko deeply uncomfortable. 

Weeks later, around the beginning of October, John returns the reports, and the paper that ends up on Riko’s desk has 100%, see me after class! written in red pen on it, next to a big smiley face. 

Riko blinks at it, then at Kevin, who, suppressing yet another fit of irritation, sighs and shakes his head. After class, the two of them wait awkwardly by Dr. Gaius’ desk while the rest of the class filters out. 

John Gaius, as per usual, sports a wide grin and waves at them. “Well, hi, Kevin. I really only needed to see—"

“You can talk to both of us,” Riko says immediately.

John blinks. “Um, okay.” He quickly regains his footing. “Anyway, that chicken! Really excellent report you wrote. Great attention to detail. I feel like a lot of students are too squeamish to get that, ah… up close and personal with this project. Plus, I don’t think anyone even tried to do roadkill this year. Can you believe that?”

Well, yes, Kevin wants to say. He holds his tongue. 

“We tried,” Riko offers bitterly, and John blinks at him again, his mouth screwing itself up into a genuine smile.

“Did you really?”

“I really wish you’d stop saying, ‘we,’” Kevin says quite snippily, even though he knows he probably shouldn’t, but he really just doesn’t want to be associated with this.

John blinks again. “Well, anyway, I was just wondering, because I saw that you’re a history major, what made you want to take this class?” John smiles brightly. The two of them stutter for a moment, but the professor continues anyway. “Oh, and Kevin, you’re a wonderful student, too, so this is open to you as well. Is there any way I can convince you to jump ship? The anthropology department is always looking for new majors, and I really must emphasize how impressed I am with—"

“No,” Kevin and Riko chorus. 

Perhaps in another life, Riko would have dragged Kevin further into the depths of hell by making him do an anthropology major with him, but not in this one. After he completed that report, Kevin made sure to let him know, in no uncertain terms, that most of anthropology is ethnographies and cultural nuances and has nothing to do with makeshift graves or blunt force trauma. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the Moriyamas sponsor more anthropology courses? This was very thankfully enough to scare him off. 

John frowns. 

“Um, we play Exy,” Kevin offers by way of explanation. 

“That’s—ah, that’s the sport with the… sticks, right?”

Fuck this guy. 

“When’s your next game? I’ll come watch.”

Oh. “Saturday.”

“Home game?”

“...yes.”

“I’m always so interested in what my students like to do outside of the classroom! I’ll try to be there.”

“That’s… really not necessary.”

Their professor waves them off again. “Don’t be ridiculous. I love college sports.”

Judging by the fact that he hasn’t recognized them by now, Kevin seriously doubts that. And frankly, this whole conversation has cemented his impression that John has nothing to do with the yakuza. The sport with the sticks. Jesus Christ. 

“But if you don’t mind me asking, I don’t really understand what that has to do with your major,” he eventually presses. Completely oblivious. “I mean, surely a history major is rather demanding in and of itself—"

“Well, Kevin likes history.”

He furrows his brow, glancing back and forth between them. “Right. And you…?”

Riko blinks at him, clearly not comprehending. “I allow it.”

“Um... okay?”

The classroom is very quiet for a minute. Kevin eventually says, “Uh, we have practice soon. So.”

John frowns. “You always seem to say that.”

“We’re Division I—"

“Student athletes, yes, yes. Give it some thought, though, will you?“

“Goodbye!”