Chapter Text
The day had started off as usual. Jeremy, in his typical golden boy, hyper puppy crossover moods, had spent all morning rearranging the apartment. The complex organizing system he’d painstakingly put in place was presently being indexed.
Jean, being Jean, had spent the duration of this process with his face buried in a Camus novel he’d devoured in under 3 hours. Now, finding himself unoccupied and decidedly bored —a state he hadn’t yet learned not to feel discomfited by— he had resorted to following Jeremy around the room with his eyes, a recently developed habit that never failed to have a sizable effect on the other man.
Trying to anchor himself to the present, Jean runs his fingers through his hair in a way that seems careless yet is anything but. His eyes stay fixated on Jeremy.
He is aware of the effect his physicality has on other people, of course, but he has never been particularly interested in exploiting it unless the situation implied imminent danger, or the suggestion of power play. Jean knows he possesses the ability to make use of both, and that, indeed, both these forces have also been ruthlessly used against him. Consequently, he remains extremely wary of it.
This awareness, however, feels different when it comes to Jeremy. There is never any demand or reproach in his eyes, never really anything but kindness, or fierceness, or —and Jean smiles at this softly, an insidious warmth spreading through his ribcage— passion. Jeremy was different from every other person Jean had ever known, which posed many challenges but was accompanied by undoubtedly great rewards.
He sighs. Everything feels like new, unexplored territory when it comes to Jeremy. Now, Jean likes a challenge, but he despises uncertainty.
Jean can never map out Jeremy’s thought process the way he does so effortlessly with other people. Call it a survival skill, or a habit forged in desperation, but Jean considers himself acutely perceptive, a man of few words simply because he doesn't see much of a need for more. He'd always been very skilled at finding a way to strip things down to their very bones, the world unraveling for him quickly and effortlessly, its architecture simple and clear at every stage.
But again, Jeremy was different. The way his brows furrow together at the strangest of times, thoughts a whirlwind of color, a smile so contagious it makes Jean feel dizzy, ill, euphoric even. The former captain of the USC Trojans was unpredictable, and yet his unrelenting honesty and sincerity made it so that this particular quality didn’t strike Jean as threatening. On the contrary, he gave himself to it fully, finding inexplicable joy in the act of surrendering to the blonde’s magnetic pull.
“Jean?” Jeremy’s voice echoes now, bouncing around inside Jean’s very bones. “What are you thinking about? You have that look”
Ah, the look. Jeremy tried describing it to him once, but he’d gotten frustrated by his inability to translate feelings into words, or so he'd claimed. It had struck Jean as beautifully on point.
“It’s like, when you look at me like that, you see me completely.” he’d said, tentatively. “Nothing else registers. You’re here with me, centered. There’s an intensity…” he’d begun blushing at this point, his freckles bunched up on his cute little nose. “It feels as if you were with me, in my head” Jean had smiled at this, a rare occurrence back then.
“But I am with you, Jeremy.” he'd replied, matter of factly. “Je ne connais que toi.” Jeremy’s eyes had fallen closed, resting his face in the crook of Jean’s neck, not asking what he meant. It was clear to both of them that some things didn't need translation. Emotion, after all, was universal. This interaction had taken place years ago but Jean replayed it in his head so often it felt like yesterday.
He forces himself back to the present, not without difficulty.
“Come here, will you?” He says, beckoning Jeremy over, hands outstretched. Jeremy comes to settle down next to him in the couch, their bodies fitting in like two pieces of a puzzle, two halves of a whole.
“I was just thinking about how you don’t make any sense” Jean says, burying his nose in Jeremy’s golden hair, breathing the familiar scent of home in. “I can never guess what you’re going to do, or say next. You always surprise me, in the best possible way” the blonde hums, pensively, his hands finding Jean’s bare skin under his green sweater, the one that makes his emerald eyes seem impossibly intense.
“Does that trouble you?” He asks, after a moment of tracing patterns over Jean’s abdomen. Wait, was that a heart?
“It used to” Jean answers, honestly. He’s always honest with Jeremy. “When we first met, I didn’t know what to make of you. On principle, I don’t trust anybody. But part of that is because it often seems so evident that their intentions are self-serving. With you I couldn’t figure it out, but you and your ways…” Jeremy smiles at this. “You sought me out deliberately, you showed yourself to me so clearly…” Jean places a soft kiss on Jeremy’s forehead “you came to me as a question, but as it turns out, you’re actually the answer.”
Jeremy closes his eyes again and stays silent for a long while. As always, he seems to have a sixth sense for understanding Jean's wants and needs.
The sunlight slowly recedes around them, painting the room in soft shades of orange and yellow, of pink and white. The room contains the whole world in this moment, with its many plants swaying softly by the open window, the neatly arranged cabinets, the walls full of pictures depicting triumphant, bright-eyed smiles, of reminders that the past never fades but if you’re lucky (and Jean, sunshine-in-human-form Jeremy by his side, was the luckiest), the future will one day shine bright and proud in contrast.
Wholeness, starting in Jeremy’s body and ending and beginning again inside his own, takes over. Jean is no longer scattered in pieces, he realizes. He feels complete and effortlessly present right in this room, his home, Jeremy's warmth under his fingertips. And with this startling realization, running his hands up and down Jeremy’s back, he begins singing softly to him,
“Vous pouvez détruire
Tout ce qu'il vous plaira
Il n'aura qu'à ouvrir
L'espace de ses bras
Pour tout reconstruire
Pour tout reconstruire
Je l'aime à mourir”
