#carlos-tk

He barely has his kickstand out by the time he’s climbing off of his bike and tugging off his helmet. Cat pulls up behind him as he stalks towards the house. 

The front door is unlocked but they run into William in the entry. 

“Jean, Cat,” he greets warmly. “Jeremy is asleep, is there anything I can help you with?” 

Cat smiles and walks over to William and starts talking to him, “Oh, y’know, a captain’s job is never done. We just really need to talk to him right now.” 

Taking his cue, Jean takes the stairs two at a time until he gets up to Jeremy’s door. It’s shut but not locked so he opens it easily. The room is dark and for a brief second Jean thinks William was right and Jeremy is just sleeping but he flicks on the light anyways, needing confirmation, and his heart hits the floor. 

There’s blood everywhere. 

Jeremy is sitting in his bed, his back to the wall with his arms in his lap. There’s massive gashes on his arms from wrist to elbow and they’ve clearly been steadily bleeding for a while. Jeremy’s gold shorts and white USC shirt are soaked with red as well as his beige bedsheets and blue comforter. His head is tilted down like he’s fallen asleep. 

Leaping across the room, Jean bolsters his way up onto the bed and takes Jeremy’s face in his hands. “What did you do?!” 

He taps his fingers on Jeremy’s cheek until he stirs with a moan, blinking. 

“What did you do?” Jean repeats. 

Jeremy just groans softly, sapped of strength, before looking up at Jean through his eyelashes. He’s so pale. “Jean?” he asks, confused. 

“What have you done?” Jean’s voice is tight and strained, betraying how small he feels right now. 

“Go away,” Jeremy mutters, pushing at him weakly with mangled arms. Jean doesn’t budge.

Jean hears when Cat catches up with him by the startled and breathless “Jeremy!” that comes from behind him. 

“Call an ambulance,” Jean says, his eyes never leaving Jeremy’s face. 

“No hospital,” Jeremy mumbles. 

“You’ll die if we don’t.” 

“Let me.” 

Jean’s voice comes out hollow like he’s just been punched in the sternum, he feels like it. “Never.”

Cat is muttering behind him and Jean catches a few “bleeding” and “self-inflicted” and she prattles off the address so he knows she’s on the phone with 911. The situation is too dire for Jean to feel any sort of relief by it. If he were to take his eyes off Jeremy he would see her pacing back and forth with a pinched expression. 

She pauses. “911 says we should use towels. I’ll go get some.” 

She isn’t gone long and returns with an armful of fluffy white towels and joins Jean on Jeremy’s bed, handing off one towel to Jean. They wrap them around Jeremy’s bleeding arms and try to maintain as much pressure as possible. 

Jean feels sick, he feels like he’s losing his partner and that he should have been there to prevent it. Jeremy has stood between him and himself so many times, Jean should’ve been able to return the favour but he failed. He will always fail. 

“I wanted to force her to clean it up but she would just make William do it,” Jeremy says quietly. Jean freezes, his grip tightening on Jeremy’s wrist as he does deathly still. 

“Jeremy,” Cat says softly, voice dripping in empathy. 

Jean just cuts her off with a “you’re an idiot.” 

“I know,” Jeremy says, something unfathomable in his tone. 

Jean wraps another towel around the rapidly soaking one he’s already used on Jeremy’s right arm. He’s bleeding too much, too quickly. 

“You’re so stupid.” 

“Jean,” Cat cuts in, probably thinking he’s being too mean. But Jean needs Jeremy to know that this is the stupidest thing he’s done by far. Dumber than taking the LSAT, dumber than conceding to his mother time and time again, dumber than the cocaine of the past. This is the worst thing he could have possibly done and Jean will never forgive him for it. 

Jean ignores her. “Why did you do this?” 

Jeremy pauses for a moment, his bleary eyes trailing over Jean’s firm expression. “I miss my brother.” 

“Jeremy,” Jean gasps, appalled. 

Jeremy doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are closed now. A thin sheen of sweat over his face. 

“Jeremy.” 

He’s fading.

“You have to stay awake, captain. You have to,” Jean says, choking on his own emotions. 

Jeremy mutters something Jean can’t make out. 

“Come on, you have to stay awake.” 

Jean looks up from the bloodied towels to Jeremy’s face and sees that his head is tilted down again, eyes closed. 

Jean lifts a hand to grab his chin in a bruising grip. “Jeremy.” 

Nothing. 

He’s unconscious. Jean swears in vicious French and lets go. 

He and Cat move Jeremy so that he is lying down on his bed, with Jean straddling his waist to hold pressure on his further arm and Cat kneeling on the edge of the bed with the other. 

The paramedics don’t take much longer to arrive, their sirens heralding their arrival. William lets them in and guides them upstairs, not having seen the carnage yet. Jean doesn’t notice his reaction amongst the chaos but when he finally gets a glance at William’s face where he hangs back at the door, he looks like he’s going to be sick. 

One of the paramedics, the one with a blonde braid down her back ushers Jean and Cat off of the bed and out of her way as she goes to fasten tourniquets above Jeremy’s elbows to staunch the bloodflow. She starts an IV in his neck because he’s torn up his arms. 

The other paramedic, a taller man with tan skin and long dark hair tied into a ponytail at his nape fastens an oxygen mask over Jeremy’s nose and mouth. He’s breathing so shallowly that Jean can barely see the movement. His stomach roils. 

They get him on a stretcher and painstakingly carried downstairs and loaded into the ambulance. Jean knows Cat wants to stay with Jeremy but there’s only room for one of them to ride with him and she folds to Jean who she knows would tear under the pressure of being separated from him right now. 

So Jean uses the rail on the inside of the ambulance doors to pull himself up and into the vehicle, the paramedic with the braid pulling them shut behind him. 

Through it all, Jeremy doesn’t stir. The paramedic cuts away his shirt and hooks him up to a machine via stickers on his chest and wires attached to those. His breath fogs the mask intermittently but it’s too slow for anyone’s liking. 

Jean can’t help but feel like he’s losing Jeremy and all he can do is watch it happen.

The paramedic wraps Jeremy’s arms tight with thick white bandages. It covers the massacre of his flesh and the bloody mess but it won’t scrape it from Jean’s mind. Every time he blinks he sees what Jeremy did to himself. 

Sirens wail the entire way to the hospital, which feels even longer when Jean is staring at Jeremy’s slack face like this. The ambulance jostles with every dip and curve in the road but still Jeremy doesn’t open his eyes. 

The paramedic takes Jeremy’s vitals on a steady loop the entire trip even though it must not have been longer than ten minutes to get from Jeremy’s house to the hospital. There’s a permanent frown on her face that gets deeper and deeper with every new number. 

As soon as they pull up to the hospital the sirens are cut and the paramedics are moving. They take the brakes off of the gurney and wheel Jeremy into the waiting team of doctors and nurses that whisk him away and direct Jean to the waiting room. The distance feels like a whole world and that tearing sensation definitely sets in. As well as the nausea. 

A thick heat in his gut that climbs up his throat and burns the backs of his teeth. 

Jean makes it to the waiting room before he’s stumbling for the sign that points to the bathroom and he makes it to the single toilet just in time to noisily throw up everything that could possibly be left inside of him when he feels so hollow. 

Gasping around heaves he grips the toilet with white knuckles as he sweats and shakes all over. He’s covered in Jeremy’s drying blood because Jeremy just tried to kill himself and he might yet succeed. That thought alone is enough to make him gag again and dump a stream of bile into the dirtied water. 

There’s hot tears running down his face.

He kneels there until he’s convinced he won’t throw up anymore and that his knees will bruise before getting up on shaky legs and heading over to the sink. He rises out his mouth and tries to scrub the blood from his hands and arms and even some on his face that he sees now in the mirror. To be covered in Jeremy’s blood might be the most horrific thing to ever happen to him. 

He pools water in his cupped palms until it overflows and then releases it into the drain. He scrubs at his face with wet hands until he’s sure the skin is raw. 

Drying off his hands and face with paper towels, Jean makes a few streaks in the blood stuck to his forearms but he needs a better scrub that he can’t get leaning over a tiny sink in a hospital bathroom. 

He’ll have to live with the mess; he’s not sure if he can.

When he leaves the bathroom it is to Cat standing at the receptionist desk, desperately trying to get an update or back to see him. She’s also covered in Jeremy’s blood, Jean feels sick again just looking at it. How can someone lose that much blood and live? 

After another refusal from the receptionist, Cat finally takes a step back and turns to see Jean where he hovers in her peripheral vision. “Oh, Jean,” she says before crossing the few metres between them and wrapping him in a hug he doesn’t return, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

“There’s no news yet but you should sit, okay?” she says, guiding Jean over to an open seat. “William is outside calling Mrs Wilshire.” She winces. “I’m glad it’s not me.” 

“Will she even care?” Jean asks no one in particular. 

Cat just squeezes him. “I hope so.”

—

Mathilda Wilshire is a bitch.

This is a well-known fact amongst those who love Jeremy, but it bears repeating. Once Jeremy survives the night she loses interest and pulls every string she has to get him sent to a psychiatric facility just outside of LA. No visitors for the first three weeks, they’re told, and they just have to take it because she’s his mother and she gets final say. 

Because isolating your suicidal son from everything he loves works so well to improve his mental health. 

So Jean, Cat and Laila and the rest of the Trojans don’t get to see Jeremy until three weeks later when Laila drives the three of them the two hours out to the facility for visiting day. 

When they get signed in and sat in a small room with a coffee table and a security guard in the corner they finally get to see Jeremy. He is in a matching set of grey sweats and crewneck and he looks downright dreary. Hollowed out and strung up to dry, isolation doesn’t suit him. His hair is lacking the usual volume and curl, flopped bonelessly over his forehead, but he smiles as radiantly as ever when he sees his friends. 

“Jeremy!” Cat cheers as she stands to throw her arms around her friend. Jeremy lets out a soft “oof” as her body collides with his but he wraps his arms around her in turn, leaning down to breathe in her scent, to relish in the relief of her presence. 

“I missed you,” he says carefully, holding her tight. 

“We missed you!” Cat bites back. “Your mother is a real piece of work for sending you away like this.” 

“She’s just trying to help,” Jeremy says. 

Cat reaches up to flick his forehead where his bangs part. “No, she isn’t.”

“She’s punishing you for struggling, and that’s not okay,” Laila chips in. 

Jeremy just shrugs and untangles himself from Cat’s hold and sits down at the other side of the table. Jean takes this moment to study him. His deep dark circles and sad eyes, the way he sits guarded even with his closest friends. This place is hurting him, not helping him. He fiddles with the wrists of his sweatshirt and Jean catches a flash of red, angry, scarring. 

With a frustrated huff, Cat turns and takes up her seat next to Laila, sinking her hand into her girlfriend’s upturned palm on the table. 

Jean crosses his legs at the ankle and tries his best to lean back and appear nonchalant despite the anxiety singing in his veins. Three weeks of needing to see that Jeremy is alive are not remedied by seeing him as a shell of his former self. Some part of him is broken and Jean doesn’t know if it can be fixed. 

“Can you still play?” Jean asks, rather abruptly. 

Jeremy looks ashamed as he works up a response. “I don’t know if I can play anymore.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“The nerves in my hands are all screwed up, especially my left one.” Jeremy’s eyes don’t leave the surface of the table. 

“You will play,” Jean says with certainty. There is no world in which Jeremy doesn’t play, he won’t allow it. 

“I don’t know, Jean. Making a fist hurts,” to demonstrate, Jeremy holds his right hand out over the table and slowly curls his fingers in until he’s breathing ragged just trying to hold it there in a half-fist because his fingers won’t go any further. He lets go of the fist but the tension doesn’t leave his face. “I think I’m done.” 

“Kevin was told he’d never play again and he still plays,” Jean says. “You can do the same.” 

“I don’t have even a whole season left to recuperate. No professional team will sign me without knowing if I can even hold a racquet.” Jeremy tucks his hands into his lap, hiding them from Jean’s watchful gaze. 

“You can.” 

“Let it go, Jean.” 

“I won’t give up just because you have,” Jean argues. “I’m your partner and I swore to do right by you.” 

Jeremy doesn’t reply to that but he shrinks in on himself, which is the opposite of what Jean was trying to do. He’s trying to help but it seems he’s just shoving his own foot in his mouth and biting down on it. He doesn’t want everything Jeremy has worked for for fourteen years to be gone because of one night; one precipice. 

So Jean bites his tongue. 

The girls update Jeremy on Trojan drama and give him the oversized ‘get well soon’ card that every player, assistant and member of faculty signed. Jeremy runs his fingers over every name with a soft smile but an unreadable look in his eyes. Jean thinks he might be trying not to cry. 

Jean doesn’t want him to cry but it would be nice to see something real from him, something aside from this apathy that he’s cloaked in. Jeremy is sitting in front of him but something about him is so un-Jeremy-like and it makes something in Jean twist. 

Jean wants to ask him why he did it. A slurred “I miss my brother” in the throes of blood loss will not cut it. But Jean knows now is not the time, nor the place, it needs to be somewhere else, somewhere where it is just the two of them. Then he can ask. He’s not sure if he wants the answer. 

The visit ends after half an hour when their time is up but also Jeremy looks like he is about to fall asleep. He’s slow-blinking like a happy cat but his mouth is downturned, in misery or pain, Jean isn’t sure. 

“We have to love you and leave you, I’m afraid,” Laila says, standing up from her chair and pulling Cat up by her hand. Jean quietly gets to his feet and watches Jeremy carefully as he does the same. Laila pulls her best friend in for a hug and he is pliable in her arms, propping his head on her shoulder. 

“Goodbye,” he murmurs. “Thank you for coming all this way.” 

“Anything for you,” she says. “I mean it.” 

Cat leans over and ruffles his hair. “Three more weeks,” she says. 

“Three more weeks,” he amends and is escorted out by the security guard. 

Jean watches him go and aches in all the places that would have touched Jeremy if only he had been brave enough to hug him. 

—

Jeremy is discharged on the Monday six weeks after he tried to kill himself.  Jean, Cat and Laila are given permission to skip afternoon practice that day to go and pick him up. 

On the Wednesday, at 5:30am, Jeremy has surgery to mitigate the damage done to the nerves in his wrists. 

On the Monday seven weeks after he tried to kill himself, Jeremy is allowed to return to classes. Laila picks him up from his house before morning practice and brings him along for the support of the team. And his absence has been felt like a crushing blow. 

Jean and Cat are already in their workout uniforms for practice at the fitness centre by the time their better halves catch up with them. The rest of the team has yet to start filtering into the locker room but Laila presents her best friend like a prized fish she caught. Jeremy is in a hoodie when Jean sees him, enough to cover his wounds but not to smother the presence of a black brace on each wrist.

Cat all but launches herself at Jeremy when she catches sight of him, wrapping her arms around him so tightly that Jean fears she’s going to put him back in the hospital. 

“Jer!” she croons, tucking her cheek into his chest. “I missed you, how are you?” 

“You saw me on Friday,” he says, not moving his arms to pat her on the back. Still too sore, Jean assumes. 

“The weekend was too long,” she says, tightening her hold on him. 

“Cat, darling, you’re crushing him,” Laila chides.

“It’s okay, I like it,” Jeremy replies. The curve of his smile is bright and Jean wonders how long it’ll be until he believes in it again. 

Cat and Laila trade off and then, upon release from Laila’s hold, Jeremy is awkwardly standing by the defense line’s bench while waiting for Laila to get changed. The other Trojans start coming in and more than a few of them give Jeremy a clap on the back or shoulder and a “welcome back” or a “we missed you”. Jeremy smiles and makes small talk with everyone, asking how they’re doing and what they’ve been up to in the past seven weeks. But mostly he appears to just be relishing in their presence. He must have felt the separation from the Trojans like a broken bone after being with them for so long. 

No one is mad at him but he looks like he’s waiting for someone to start yelling. But they’re Trojans, they don’t care that he missed seven games and the weeks of practice to go along with them, they just care that he’s okay. 

Jean steps over and places a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Do you need to leave?” he asks. 

A puzzled look crosses Jeremy’s face before he vehemently shakes his head. “No. I’m good.” 

The team walk over to Lyon together but as soon as they touch base there, Rhemann is sweeping Jeremy away with a hand on his back and a hushed voice. He’s been particularly worried over the past weeks and Jean knows that he just really needed to see Jeremy with his own two eyes to make sure that he is alright. 

Jean doesn’t pretend to understand Rhemann’s obvious affection for his team, the master has warped his perception of how a coach should be. But Rhemann is the man’s antithesis and cares for the Trojans like they are his kids, Jean included. He took news of Jeremy’s attempt on his life particularly hard and Jean can’t help but wonder if that’s what Cody meant when they said they were scared that they were going to lose Jeremy in his freshman year after Noah’s passing. 

The thought makes Jean’s stomach flip. 

He tries his hardest to get lost in his workout, making amicable chatter with Xavier and the freshmen while going through the motions, but his brain is entirely with Jeremy and whatever he and Rhemann have been talking about for so long. 

Jeremy rejoins them with fifteen minutes left of morning practice looking both better and worse for wear. His eyes are red-rimmed but he recovers with an easy smile as his Trojans react to his return with whoops and cheers. 

—

It is Friday when Jean is tying Jeremy’s shoelaces for him and Jeremy finally decides to open up. His hands stop, lace looped around his index finger when Jeremy says “can I talk to you?” 

“Of course,” Jean replies, continuing with his knot. He pulls it tight and pats Jeremy’s ankle. “All done.” 

“Thank you,” Jeremy says, pulling his foot back. “I just,” he sighs, “I don’t know what to do about my mother.” 

Jean sits back on his haunches before looking up at Jeremy’s face. “What do you mean?” 

“She’s mad at me and I don’t know how to make her understand me.” 

Jean blinks slowly and tilts his head; he thinks he looks a little like Jabberwocky. “Does she have to understand you for you to live with her?” 

“No,” Jeremy says with a shrug. “I don’t know. I’d like her to try. I’m sick of fighting with her.”

Jean stands up so that he’s closer to eye level with Jeremy and says, “I think she is committed to misunderstanding you at every point.” 

This is not the answer Jeremy was anticipating judging by the way he sighs. “How do I even begin to explain to her that I’m not acting out and that the things she says really hurt me? Like how can she not understand that it is unacceptable to tell me that the wrong son died because I failed the LSAT?” 

Jean’s blood runs cold. It was no secret that Mathilda said horrific things to Jeremy on the regular but such a thing should have seemed unspeakable, even to her. She had whittled away at Jeremy until he was content to give up on life altogether. “She said what?” 

Jeremy ignores him and continues ranting. “I’ve spent my entire life trying to please her and I always fall short. So what's the point in trying?” 

“I think the lesson there is to stop trying to please her and just try to please yourself.”Jean pauses. “You don’t have to die because she does not love you, Jeremy.” 

Jeremy cringes and refuses to meet Jean’s eye. “I feel like I have to,” he says in a small voice. “She’s supposed to love me because she’s my mom and I ruined it.” 

“You didn’t ruin anything. She did,” Jean says, grabbing Jeremy’s chin. He thinks of Coach Rhemann and ‘I don’t deserve what they did to me’ and he knows what he has to say. “Repeat after me: I don’t deserve what she said to me.” 

Jeremy flinches. “Jean…” 

“Jeremy,” he pleads, hoping the name alone is enough to pull Jeremy back from whatever ledge he’s been on for weeks now. 

A tear slips loose from Jeremy’s eye and rolls down his cheek until it pools where Jean’s finger holds onto Jeremy’s mandible. “I don’t deserve what she said to me,” he utters in an impossibly small voice.

Jean pulls him closer, wrapping his arms around his partner and holding him dearly. He can’t tell if that’s him or Jeremy shaking. Maybe both. “Again.” 

“I don’t deserve what she said to me.” 

“No,” Jean says. “You deserve so much better.” 

Jeremy is crying now, grasping onto Jean as best he can with his injured arms. 

“Stay here tonight,” Jean says. 

Jeremy doesn’t say anything but Jean feels him nod and take a stuttered breath with his heaving chest.

—

Predawn light filters in through the gap in Jean’s curtains. It’s not enough to have been what woke him but it makes it so that it’s too bright to get back to sleep. Everything is masked in a blue glow, the new postcards on his wall, the printout of the article that called Jean “the golden raven”, his shelf with one of his first pottery pieces that survived the kiln—a small slightly lopsided bowl. 

He rolls onto his back and stretches his arms above his head until a vertebrae in his upper back pops and the stiffness eases. Closing his eyes, he adjusts his position until he’s facing the wall and tries to go back to sleep. 

Sleep does not find him. He lies there for what has to be at least twenty minutes before he’s more awake than not and decides to give up on rest and get coffee brewing. He pads out to the kitchen only to find Jeremy sitting up on the couch with his face scrunched up, looking like he’s trying to breathe through pain. 

“Are you okay?” 

Jeremy jumps a little at the sudden break in silence, clearly not having heard Jean coming. He stares over at Jean and offers a sheepish “yeah.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m just,” his breath hitches, “sore.” 

Jean walks over to the couch and stares down at his friend, working up a crease between his eyebrows. “When are you due for your medication?” 

Jeremy cringes. “Two hours ago.” 

“What?” Jean asks, incredulous. 

“I couldn’t open the pill bottle on my own,” he says, gesturing with one braced wrist to the little orange bottle on the coffee table. 

“Then you should have woken me up.” 

Jeremy shakes his head. “I was okay.” 

“Until you weren’t,” Jean says, scooping up the pill bottle in one hand and stalking back to the kitchen. He fills a glass halfway with water from the tap before pulling a tray out of the freezer and popping some ice cubes in it. They clink against the walls of the cup. “This says to take with food.” 

“I can take it without,” Jeremy says. 

“What happens if you take it without?” 

Jeremy refuses to meet his eye as he answers, “I get really nauseous, and maybe throw up.” 

“Then you will take it with food,” Jean says, already heading to the fridge to find the ingredients he wants. “I will make you a sandwich.” 

“You don’t have to, Jean, really.”

“Nonsense.”

Jean pulls everything he needs out and sets to work assembling a sandwich for Jeremy. It’s not much but it’s also far too early to be cooking so it’ll have to do. It doesn’t take too long and soon he’s cutting it on the diagonal and setting the bottle of pills on the plate and scooping it up in one hand, the glass of water in the other. He crosses the short space between the kitchen and the couch easily and sets everything on the coffee table. 

He hands Jeremy half of the sandwich and only pulls his hand back once he sees how much pain it causes Jeremy to try and grasp it. His grip is still not anywhere close to where it needs to be but for now Jean is happy to help. 

“Hands in your lap,” he says and doesn’t move the sandwich until Jeremy obeys. He sits on the couch next to him and holds the corner of the sandwich up to Jeremy’s mouth watching him take a bite and chew thoughtfully before swallowing. 

“It’s good,” he says. “Thank you.” He takes another bite. 

They sit like that for a while, until half of the sandwich is gone. Only then does Jean grab the pill bottle. He shakes out the two that the label instructs and holds them out. “Open.” 

Jeremy opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out a little. Jean places the pills on his tongue, then leans over to grab the glass of water. 

“Hurry up, they taste really gross,” Jeremy mumbles quickly, tongue still out, waving his arm. 

Jean presses the cup up to Jeremy’s lips and watches him take a mouthful of water to swallow the pills. He sets the glass back down without looking and with his other hand, brings his thumb up to wipe water from Jeremy’s bottom lip. 

Jeremy freezes.

Jean leans in closer to Jeremy and watches as the striker’s eyelids flutter closed and his mouth parts so subtly. “Can I kiss you?” he asks. 

“Please, don’t,” Jeremy breathes, their faces only an inch or so apart. 

Freezing, Jean sees Jeremy’s eyes open and he immediately leans back, fighting his way out of his captain’s space. He clenches his fists, forces himself to relax, then finds himself clenching them again. hes crossed the line, stepped over the ledge and now he's dangling. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” 

“That’s okay, I’m sorry too,” Jeremy says.

“I just really thought this is what you wanted,” Jean admits, a little selfishly. He had assumed his attraction was reciprocated but now, in the early dawn light, he sees he was wrong. 

Jeremy closes his eyes again before uttering a soft, “more than anything.” 

Jean pauses, unsure of what is expected of him. Jeremy said no and Jean is happy to respect that refusal no matter what, he will not force anything on Jeremy that the older man does not want, but he fears he’s getting his wires crossed. 

“I’ve wanted this since the moment I met you,” Jeremy says. 

And Jean thinks about an airport, and tousled caramel hair, and failed yoyo tricks, and his heart stutters in his chest. He lifts a hand to press against his sternum and hopefully quell the rapid beating under his breastbone. “Then why?” he asks, voice barely a whisper in the quiet morning. 

"I’m so sorry, Jean. I don't want you to feel like you have to because I nearly died. I know I scared you but I don't want to coerce you into something like that."

“You wouldn’t be,” Jean says. “Coercing me, I mean.” 

Jeremy sighs at that. “You know, you don’t have to say that.” 

“I mean it.” 

“Jean—” 

Jean holds up a hand, interrupting whatever Jeremy was going to say. “If you say no I will never ever ask you again but I’m confused. Do you want me to kiss you?” 

“Yes.” Jeremy nods. “Please, yes.” 

Leaning back into Jeremy’s space, Jean takes in a breath of the warm air between them, heated by Jeremy’s own lungs. “For the record,” he says, “this is not me being coerced.” 

He watches as Jeremy’s eyes flutter shut once more and he leans in slowly, his eyes closing too, giving Jeremy enough time to back away. But he doesn’t and their lips connect. 

It’s soft at first, the barest touching of skin but Jeremy gasps into his mouth and invites Jean to deepen it. His hand comes up to cup the back of Jeremy’s head, fingers tangling in his hair and pulling him closer. Jeremy snakes an arm around Jean’s waist and reciprocates his touch, guiding the kiss as his lips work against Jean’s. It’s slow, meditative and it bleeds all of the tension out of Jean’s posture. He’s wanted this for months but had convinced himself he could never have it, and yet somehow, now he has it. 

It’s like a rush as it comes over Jean, setting every nerve ending alight and making his fingers and toes tingle. Now he finally understands what it means when someone talks about fireworks because there’s tiny bursts in Jean’s chest and they’re setting him ablaze. 

He pulls back to catch his break and Jeremy blinks up at him. “Are you okay?” he asks. 

Jean nods and lets Jeremy surge forward and bring them together again. His hold on Jean isn’t very tight but Jean is more than happy to grab onto Jeremy, a hand on the back of his neck, the other on his shoulder, pulling them close. 

They stay there in a tangle for a bit before Jeremy retreats with a gasp not of surprise but pain. “Jean—ah, my arms.” 

Jean pulls back immediately, probably too fast judging by the way Jeremy winces and tucks his arms to his chest, cradling them there. “What do you need?” 

Shaking his head, Jeremy says, “nothing. The meds will kick in soon. Heat maybe? Does Laila still have the wheat pack in the cupboard from when she sprained her ankle?” 

“I’ll have a look,” Jean says as he untangles himself from Jeremy and stalks off to the kitchen with a purpose. He rifles through the cupboards under the sink until he finds two wheatpacks in a drawer. One is a tie-dye rainbow and the other is purple. “Found them, how long do I microwave them for?” 

Jeremy hums. “Two minutes?” he guesses. 

“Okay.” Jean plops both of them onto the turnplate in the microwave and punches in the numbers. The microwave hums to life and the light turns on as it begins to spin. 

When it beeps, Jean fishes out the wheat packs and walks over to where Jeremy is sitting with his arms still in his lap. He places one on each wrist, over Jeremy’s braces and hopes the heat sinks through and into his aching nerves. 

Jean helps him eat the rest of the sandwich he prepared and once that’s done he starts up one of the Trojan games that Jeremy had missed while hospitalised and lets him see how his team held up in his absence. Jeremy makes a few comments here and there but by the time the first half has ended, he’s leaning heavily on Jean, his head on Jean’s shoulder, eyes barely open. 

“Go to sleep, captain,” Jean murmurs. 

Jeremy mumbles something in the affirmative before fully giving in to his exhaustion and medication and Jean counts his breaths until they even out and he’s sure his partner is asleep. He slings an arm around Jeremy’s shoulders to hold him steady and watches the rest of the game.