#aftgexchange

here's my gift for @humlase as part of the AFTG fall exchange 2025 @aftgexchange !! prompt was andreil and I combined "cuddles" with "insecurity and comfort"

We're under new mod-ship and excited to restart the AFTG gift exchange this year!

Sign ups open: Aug 4th

Sign ups close: Aug 18th

Assignments out: Aug 21st

Posting: Sept 29th -October 6th

Eternal gratitude to Leah for this event <3

for @heartfullkings !

what if, paranormal acivity

Jean had never celebrated Christmas before. Hypothetically he had before, but Jean’s memories of before were mostly blurry at best. The good ones had faded away, tucked away at first for safe keeping, and then forgotten as a sense of self-preservation. He was sure he might be able to find them again, pull away the curtain and rediscover something long forgotten, but he didn’t want to. Things were going, somehow, well. His first semester at USC hadn’t been a complete nightmare. It had been touch and go, at times it had been down right disastrous, but he had made it all the way to December without breaking any new bones, though there had been a few new breakdowns. 

But the Trojans hadn’t abandoned him, no matter how much he might have deserved it at times. They endured his shouting, his vitriol, his Raven standards, and his impossible critiques. They curbed the worst of his sharp tongue and every day he was learning to better bite it back, to evaluate, to rephrase at an attempt at being kind. He was trying hard to be kind. Some days it was worth it. Some days it wasn’t. 

With everyone buzzing about the holiday break, it was getting hard to stop himself from seething. He knew the Ravens’ standards were… absurd. He had always known that– Jean wasn’t stupid. But he had lived with those standards for so long that he felt himself chafing under Coach’s restrictions. Practices were over, his training schedule had been cut, and his therapist wanted him to take it easy. And Jean was trying. Jeremy helped make it bearable. When Jean started itching to throw himself onto the court, to throw himself against the offensive line until he’d worn them and himself to the ground, when he wanted to keep pushing– Jeremy could see it coming sometimes even before Jean was able to identify the mounting frustration, the innate terror. Jeremy was looking at him that way now, kindly concerned and like he was already formulating a plan to do something about it. 

“Hey,” Jeremy said. He didn’t say it gently. Jeremy had stopped being overly gentle after the long summer of anger and misunderstanding between the two of them. Now he was just straight forward, but still kind. Jeremy was kind to everyone, but especially to Jean. “Got anything planned for the rest of the afternoon?”

Jeremy knew he didn’t, but Jean still shook his head. Classes were over, practice was done, and Jean was… restless. He didn’t know what to do. Most of the team had already left and very few students were even remaining on campus. It would probably just be Jean and some of the international students for the week and a half long break. 

“Want to head down to the student kitchens? I had some holiday baking I wanted to get done before I drove home tomorrow.” 

Holiday baking was not in their diet plan, but Jean bit his tongue. “Yes,” he agrees. “Let’s go.” 

It was a quick walk down from the dorms to the kitchens. It was three flights of stairs down to the basements. They passed barely anyone in the halls, so it was easy for Jean to listen to Jeremy’s easy chatter about his last history paper and his calc exam. Jean felt pretty confident about his own end of term exams. Classes weren’t easy, but it was easier at USC than at Evermore, that was for sure. 

“Can you help me pull out the stuff?” Jeremy asked, handing Jean a notecard. Jean took it carefully. The paper was thin and worn, the edges frayed from years of use and the odd stain. It looked old. Older than Jeremy for sure. “It’s my grandmother’s,” he explained without needing to be asked. “Her recipe, I mean. We’ve used it in my family for years.” 

“That’s nice,” Jean said and he meant it. He started reaching into the cabinets to try and find what they needed. Jeremy was taking care of the flour and everything else, leaving Jean to pull out the mixing bowls and measuring cups. He wasn’t very familiar with baking, but Laila and Bryant and been bullied into helping. It was easy, doing what he was told with little to no consequences. 

“I know store bought cookie dough is still good,” he said as he began to measure things out. Jean read the recipe over Jeremy’s shoulder, reaching for the ingredients he’d need next. “But, you know, we’ve always used this recipe. It’s got just the right amount of orange in it.” Jeremy is working the sugar cookie dough with a wooden spoon he pulled out of one of the drawers, biting his lip in concentration as he evaluated his creation.

“Orange?” Jean responded, “In sugar cookies?” Jean’s brow furrows, confused. 

“Yes,” Jeremy said, voice light with laughter. “Just a little bit of orange zest goes a long way. That’s what my grandmother always says.”

Jean can’t exactly argue, so instead he just keeps following directions for the icing. It’s so much sugar that Jean can’t help but wrinkle his nose in disgust. He scooped the icing into individual bowls and added the food coloring. 

“What are you decorating them as?”

“We are decorating them as whatever we want. I think the snowmen are the most fun though because you can get really creative with their scarves and hats and stuff. Too bad we don’t have access to my ma’s sprinkle collection. She gets really intense about this sort of stuff.”

“Ah,” Jean said dryly, “nothing like you then.”

Jeremy laughed, light and airy and Jean relished in the sound. It was such a comforting sound– it was so unlike anything Jean was used to hearing. 

Once the cookies were out of the oven, they let them cool. Jean wasn’t sure how successful he was going to be at this whole decorating thing. The cookies were in all different shapes– snowmen, stocking, and snowflakes. 

“Hey,” Jeremy said softly. “This is going to be fun, okay?”

“I have…” Jean said haltingly. Jeremy already knew about his unconventional childhood. This wouldn’t be shocking– possibly the least shocking thing Jean had ever said to him, but it was still hard to put into words. “I have never done this before,” he confessed. Jeremy just smiled.

“Well, we can do it together then.” Jeremy smiled and Jean tried to smile back, letting go of his unsurity and picking up an icing bag. He lost himself in the focus of carefully putting pressure on the piping bag to get the icing to come out. It wasn’t coming out quite right and Jean felt himself getting more and more frustrated. 

“Want me to help?” Jeremy asked and Jean shook his head. Jeremy backed off, but Jean could still feel him watching. Just as he was about to snap, he felt something squirt across his face. Jean looked up, startled, to see Jeremy grinning with a blue piping bag in hand. Jean wiped the icing off his cheek and looked at it thoughtfully. 

Without a second thought, Jean took the icing and wiped it across Jeremy’s brow. Jeremy began to laugh, a bright and shining thing, as he squirted more icing. Jean tried to duck, before realizing the only real solution was to retaliate. He squirted green icing from his own piping bag which sprayed over Jeremy’s shirt. His face lit up delighted and they both forgot about the cookies entirely as they darted around the kitchen.

By the end, Jean was laughing and Jeremy looked like he won the fight, despite the splotches of green icing smeared across his forehead and the entire mess of his shirt. Jean wiped the icing off his own face, still laughing. 

“The dietitian isn’t watching us 24/7, you know?” Jeremy said. “You can try one. You should! We worked hard on these.”

“We only finished half of them,” Jean said. Jeremy shrugged. 

“I’ll box up the rest and finish them when I get home. My mom will be thrilled.”

Jean swallowed his shame and smiled. Jeremy was right and the cookies did look good. He carefully picked up one of the uglier snowmen and bit its head off. “Hmmm,” he hummed after a moment. “That is good.”

Jeremy grinned and Jean felt well rewarded. 

“You know,” Jeremy said after a quiet moment. He was shifting nervously, running his hands through his long hair, “my house is only a few hours away if you wanted to hand deliver these. I know you don’t have any plans for the holidays, but if you wanted some place to spend sometime…” he trailed off, no longer meeting Jean’s eyes. 

“I…” Jean replied, trying to parse through the storm of emotions that was forming in his chest, “...I would love that, Jeremy.” 

Enjoy! Also posted on A03

--

Jean stuck his staff through a pumpkin, watching as it split apart, spreading seeds and strings of pumpkin guts across the ground. To a passerby, it could look like a mere casualty of some stray feet, children excited as they ran through the patch in search of the perfect jack o’ lantern, but Jean just wanted to see how it would look. HIs season was a season of decay, of enjoying the elusive moment before life burnt out. To others that may seem morbid, but there was beauty in the display at his feet, even if Jean was the only one to see it. With a flick of his hand, some of the seeds traveled in a line across the field, scattering away from him. A tap of his staff ensured they would take root in the soil, feeding it for the season to come.

“That was a perfect pumpkin, you know,” said a voice behind him, a familiar playful lilt to it.

“Jeremy,” he answered calmly, not turning to greet his companion.

support/love & vacation

Here’s my piece for @lufwoodemilius for the Summer @aftgexchange.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard Characters: Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten, Nicky Hemmick Additional Tags: Nightmares, Introspection, Healing, Ice Cream, Angst, overdrinking, slice of life in a day, small mentions of knives/alludes to past self harm, brief description of an injured dream!neil Summary: