I choose you everytime

"I didn't know blue was your favourite colour"

"It's Jeremy's"

"What about you?"

"Brown"

And Jeremy only shakes his head, and tells Jean that he’s sorry, that he has to go. And he gets in his car and cries all the way home, and he walks through that empty, silent, stiff house, to his empty, silent, stiff bedroom, and he tugs the covers over his head and cries some more, until he falls asleep.

And then days go by, weeks pass. Jeremy’s LSAT scores come in and he passes, and Bryson makes good on his threat, and Jeremy decides that he can’t take it anymore. That he needs to get out. That nothing he does will ever change the way his family sees him, no matter how he tries, but that he already has a family who knows him for him. Who trusts him. Who believes in him. Who loves him.

And he remembers that phrase Jean taught him, and out of desperation, texts it. And it won’t work, not after Jeremy rejected him, not after things have been so weird between them since, but in half an hour, Jean is there, and outside, and Jeremy is barreling into his arms.

And Jean doesn’t push or press. He just holds him, and takes him home, and then crawls into bed beside him to hold him together when Jeremy can’t manage to do it himself.

And then in the morning, when the dust settles, and Jeremy feels exhausted, but like a weight was lifted, he wakes up to Jean beside him, arms still around him, and marvels at the surrealness of it. Of this man he’d turned down, but who still showed up. Who he wanted more than anything else.

And when Jean wakes up, and the first words out of his mouth are to ask if Jeremy is ok, Jeremy knows that he can’t let this man go ever again.

So he tells Jean that “I’m alright,” and “thank you, for coming to get me,” and, a little shyly, “if you’ll still have me, if you still want me, I’d really like to try again.”

And Jean sits up faster than he ever has in his entire life, and says, “of course I want you, of course I’ll have you, but you have to be sure you want and want to have me too.”

And I think it’s the first time we, as a readers, see Jeremy: he does it without a second thought, like it’s something he had done multiple times. Jeremy gives whatever he can, however he can (groceries for Cat and Laila, his time for the team), and he does it without expecting anything, without being thanked.

Every single time Jean pulls this trick, Jeremy puts his phone back down and gives him a smile. It doesn’t matter if Jean is talking about Exy or their pottery class; Jabberwocky or the weather- Jeremy will immediately detour from his texts and return all of his focus on Jean. A little like religion; a little more like instinct. And it lights Jean up inside: so warm, so electric.

He likes knowing that he can pull his partner’s attention back so easily. Jean likes knowing it takes just a couple of words from him for Jeremy to forget about those bastards that don’t deserve his time anyway. He stews in the attention; in the triumph.