thank you to the darling @kotabear--24 for tagging me, salivating at the mouth for your vampire AU 😍
thought I'd share my new big project hat I'm working on: a jerejean hockey AU!
here's a working version of the summary and a sneak peak at the first scene!
Jean is a college freshman on track to becoming one of the best defensemen of his generation - until he gives it all up to take full custody of his nine year old sister Elodie after their parents are sent to prison. Two years later, he gets a second chance to return to his team for his junior year, but he quickly finds the team very different from the one he'd left behind.
Two of his closest friends are now in a relationship, his estranged best friend Kevin seems determined to make amends, and Jeremy Knox - the withdrawn, self-destructive loner Jean barely noticed before is unrecognizable: the team's brilliant, magnetic captain, whose presence Jean finds impossible to ignore.
Jean Moreau wasn't someone destined to be great from birth. He had clawed his way to the top of the youth hockey charts on a debilitating cocktail of fear, determination, and desperation alone.
Maybe if he got better, they would let him go home.
Maybe if he became the best, he could see his little sister again.
In the end, a single night shattered everything he had worked for.
In the end, none of it had mattered at all.
He had never expected anything better from his parents. Selfish and greedy to their core, they sent him to the States at fourteen to stay close to their employer’s son, then erased him from their lives the moment their business with the Moriyamas fell apart.
Jean had only just managed to drag himself out of Riko’s clutches with the help of his best friends. That freedom had been new—fragile, fleeting, ephemeral.
What Jean hadn’t expected—what he hadn’t been prepared for at all—was Kevin’s reaction to it all.
“Just go back for the hearing and come home afterwards,” Kevin had argued when Jean told them he’d be leaving in the locker room after his final practice. “That can’t possibly take more than a few weeks.”
“I’m not going back for the trial. I’m going back for my sister,” Jean snapped back, before softening almost immediately, as he always did when it came to Kevin.
“They’ll put her into the foster care system if I don’t go get her in time, and the process to become her guardian is complicated."
He couldn’t stand the thought of Elodie disappearing into a stranger’s house, no matter that it may be the best option for her. She was his little duckling. He would abandon everything else in his life before he abandoned her.
“You can’t be serious,” Kevin shot back. “Jean, you’re eighteen. You’re a full-time college athlete. You can’t take care of a kid, that’s insane.”
“She’s only nine, Kev,” Jean pleaded with him to understand. “What choice do I have?”
Kevin waved a hand dismissively. “Aren’t you rich? Get her a nanny or something.”
But they weren’t rich. Maybe they had been, once. Now his family was drowning in debt—debts his parents would be paying back from prison. Jean and Elodie had a trust forcibly set aside for them, but it was barely enough to survive on, let alone build two lives on.
It seemed Kevin was far from finished. He barreled on.
“Or just let her get adopted by some family in France. You haven’t even seen her in four years, and she was a baby when you left. She’s probably forgotten about you by now.”
Whether Kevin had meant for them to or not, his words slid neatly between Jean’s ribs and twisted in the place where it hurt the most, making it difficult for him to breathe.
“You want me to just leave her?” Jean asked, his voice thin.
“You didn’t seem to have a problem doing that for the past four years.”
“Kevin,” Andrew, who had been content to let them go at each other's throats till that moment, began in warning, but it was already too late.
What was left of Jean’s heart shattered, the pieces scattering uselessly at his feet. Kevin startled at the look of devastation that had, no doubt, overtaken Jean’s face.
“I didn’t mean…” Kevin began awkwardly, but Jean was too numb to respond. He had only ever done what his parents asked of him; he had never believed there were other options.
Maybe there had been. Maybe he could have tried harder.
Maybe he had left his sister behind once, but he would never repeat that mistake. Jean turned his back on Kevin and began packing his things in silence.
His thoughts dissolved into a blur of static. Somewhere beyond it, he dimly registered Kevin's words trying to reach him, but Jean knew he couldn’t make Kevin happy this time. Not at what it would cost him.
When he looked back up, calculating ice-blue eyes were already studying him.
“I’ll drive you,” Neil said, his voice brooking no argument.
Jean didn't know if he meant to their dorm, or eventually to the airport, but he didn’t have the energy to argue either way.He nodded, slung his duffel over his shoulder, and tipped his head toward the door in a sign for Neil to proceed him out of the room.
The last thing he saw, from the corner of his eye, was Andrew bodily holding Kevin back from following them.
Jean left, not knowing it would be almost two years before they spoke again.
anyhow, I know it's Monday, however there are a lot of wips I'm greedy for, so tagging some lovely friends to share if they'd like!
@crushed-oranged-angered @anxiouslyandmessily @j--moreau @zombiecowboy65
also tagging @flayedcrank because I promised 😘
