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All of this mess started with Jeremy. And Jean is not going to blame his captain. People are allowed to… relax. Or whatever. But he can’t even bring himself to imagine consenting to something like that.
Jean still feels sick at the mere thought of the bruises around his captain’s neck. The way he waved it off saying things got intense, but that he wanted it. The way Cat and Laila looked at Jean like he was a traumatized child. Like he’s the odd one for seeing marking like that and assuming it was not consensual. For assuming Jeremy could be a victim.
Idiots. All the three of them.
Jean tried his best to let it go, but before he could realize, he was already curled in bed the following night, Kevin on the phone (even though Jean barely recalls pressing the button) and sounding more and more worried as Jean’s name rolled off his tongue with no response.
As if he still has the right to sound worried after setting Jean up as an accomplice winters ago.
It doesn’t matter, because Jean had never been able to deny Kevin anything.
“Jean, what the fuck is happening?! Jean?!”
a sharp breath. “Jean, please talk to me…”
The french did bring him to his senses, in a way. And the please worked well enough to prompt him to talk. But unfortunately none of it was enough to make him realize how bad this decision was.
God, he wish he could say he had trouble finding the words, but speaking to Kevin right then was the easiest thing he had done ever since he moved to California.
“I don’t wanna be here.” His voice wasn’t clear at all, his mind a mess. His french mere mumbles. But Kevin still understood. How could he not, after so many years of careful conversations in that same tone.
“We’ve talked about this. The Trojans are good for you-”
Of course stupid Kevin Day won’t get it.
“I don’t want to be there either.” He tried again. This is not about Evermore. Well, it is in a way. Just like everything is… but not like that.
Kevin was silent for minutes. Not at all expecting such an affirmation. After god knows how long, he spoke again. And then Jean finally realized the mess he was in.
“Something happened.” Not a question, but clearly waiting for an answer. He knows Jean can’t say no to him to save his life. That he hadn’t said no to him even when he should, to save his life.
Fuck Kevin Day.
Jean still told him, though. Because he knows no better than to do it. Old habits die hard, and patching each other up in the few rest hours between the Crows’ days is something they have yet to unlearn.
Talking to Kevin is not enough to settle the terrible emotional nausea, but he understands. And having someone that for once agrees with him without approaching it as something that should get him in a doctor’s office it’s enough to make Jean fall asleep.
The nightmares keep him company, as usual. But they do disappear as he wakes up. Mostly.
Because the next day, at 8 am, he sees Kevin Day in his living room.
Cat handed Jean a coffee as Laila talked to Kevin on the couch. Jean dropped the mug right away. Hot coffee and ceramic shards all over the kitchen floor and Kevin, green eyes, queen and all, on the couch, looking straight at him. Cat immediately ran for a tow, reassuring Jean, but he couldn’t hear any of it. “Fuck! It’s okay, we’ll clean up. At least you didn’t burn yourself. Be careful with your steps-”
“You shouldn’t be here.” is all he could manage.
“Jean!” Laila scolded, like she could even understand.
Kevin got up and shortened the distance between them. “I need to talk to him.” He explains himself, as if he has any right to do so.
“I don’t need you to step up for me.” Horror on his face. Kevin shouldn’t be here.
Day changed to a stressed french, “Why did you call me then, Jean? We both know I can’t comfort you like that!” He doesn’t know how. Neither of them does.
And Jean is so angry. Not at Kevin. But at himself. Because he knows it’s true. And because he shouldn’t have called.
Then, the front door clicks, and Jeremy comes in with that stupid smile of his, which shifts to full surprise just as fast. “Kevin? I didn’t know you were in Cali.”
The queen didn’t even wait for him to finish. As soon as his gaze lowered to Jeremy’s throat, he took the heaviest breath and dragged Jeremy outside.
It wasn’t really a fight, since Kevin was the only one loud enough to be heard from inside the house. But the aggressiveness of it was enough for the girls to understand something was going on.
“Jean?” Cat turned to him with a confused frown, seeking context. But as much as he tried to tell them it was not something they could understand, it was like he forgot how to speak, because if Jeremy’s bruises were apparent last night, today they were undoubtedly there.
He was not in South California anymore, and Zane turned around as he told Grayson to keep it down.
Teeth. Hands. The sweat all over him. The taste of blood. The dripping down his…
He didn’t even realize how hard his hands were around his own throat until Laila and Catalina finally managed to ground him back.
He immediately shoved them off, and they knew better than to take it personal.
He looks down at himself and focused on the tiny droplets of coffee staining his shirt.
“I need to change.” And if the girls realized that was the lamest excuse he could think of, they decided to let it go.
Kevin Day came into his room so shortly after Jean managed to calm down that he almost wondered if the older one was waiting for him against the door. A silly thought.
Kevin’s self control didn’t go that far.
“Jeeremy will be more mindful. Look, you don’t have to tell them everything, but they are nice people. If you just told him your triggers he’d def-”
Great. Now his captain will start hiding from him because Jean is too weak to handle bruises in his view.
“No.” Grey eyes full of anger before Kevin could even say anything. “I don’t want to hear your voice. You shouldn’t have come.”
“Jean.” He sighs.
“Shut. Up.”
He did stay silent for a long time, gaze lost anywhere but Jean, until he spotted it. The same postcard that rotted on Kevin’s desk for days before he was done with being a coward. Hung up on top of his desk. He walked up to it, his chest lighter for once.
“I hate you.” Jean’s words came out like daggers, burning all the way from his throat to Kevin’s heart.
He means it, Kevin knows that. Jean hates him just as much as he loves him. “Sometimes you do.” He repeated calmly, just like when he was last here, trying to convince Jean to get off his back about his drinking habits.
He looked at Jean, then down at his hands, watching the way his gaze made Jean clench his fists until the knuckles became even paler and nails dug into the flesh.
“I hate you.” Again.
“Jean.”
“I hate hearing my name in your voice.”
“I did it for you.”
And Jean’s world stopped. He felt sick. As much as he hates Kevin, as much as Kevin abandoned him in the nest without looking back, he knows Kevin would never do this. To say he escaped for Jean. So he has to mean something else entirely.
The hurt, offended look on his face was enough to make Kevin understand. “Not that. You know it’s not that.” Just as scandalized.
“Do I?” Because Kevin did ran away and he did break contact and he did avoid Jean at all costs, up until now. Going to fucking Jeremy to ask about him instead of manning up and texting Jean himself.
It doesn’t matter if Jean always goes to Renee instead. It’s not the same.
“The tattoo.”
If Jean was already angry, now he was feral. “How do you dare?! I have nothing to do with what you put over your number. It was your decision to challenge Riko”
Kevin was starting to get impatient too. “I only challenged him because of you! Don’t you see it?” He hesitates as he’s close enough to reach out, but does it anyway, his palms fitting around Jean’s face as if they were sculpted just for that. “I would never go back to the ravens, Jean. I couldn’t go back. I never once thought that begging Riko for pardon would be better than dying as a fox.”
And still all Jean could hear was ‘I don’t regret leaving you behind.’ and although expected, the bluntness still hurt.
He shook his head, hands settling on Kevin’s forearms with nails that cut through the skin. This time Kevin didn’t let him slip away. His hands became firmer, fully cupping Jean’s cheeks to force his gaze back into Kevin’s. “No. Listen to me.”
“I hate you!” He spit right at his face. It’s not Kevin’s fault. He knows it. He doesn’t hate Kevin for leaving, he hates him for forcing Jean to live throughout it.
“I needed you out!” And that desperation, the shakiness in his voice, the pure adrenaline in his veins doing nothing to help the fear… it is as familiar as it is unnatural. Something he has seen on Kevin only in two situations: when Riko did not bother at all to push Jean to near death after catching him looking at “the trojans”, and the night Riko broke Kevin’s hand and he begged Jean for help in french, exposing their secret and almost signing Jean’s death sentence once again.
This time, none of them were dying. And yet he sounded just as panicked.
“You wouldn’t come with me and we both know that… but as long as Riko had you, he had me.”
Jean is horrified. He doesn’t want to hear any of this bullshit. “Stop it right now.” Nails digging harder into Kevin’s skin, although Jean will never have what it takes to fully hurt Kevin. He doesn’t even know how.
“You really think I went crazy the day of the final match? That I simply woke up and decided that was the perfect time to piss Riko off and risk everything?”
This whole conversation is completely crazy. Kevin shouldn’t be here. He really shouldn’t be here.
He forces himself into Jean’s gaze, not giving up even as the backliner closes his eyes so hard he starts frowning. “All I ever had was exy and you. And for the first time ever, he couldn’t use either to get to me.” This can’t be real. “You’re the one that had to get to the other side of the board so I could win. That’s why it took me so long to step out of his shadow.”
Exy and Jean. As if.
“Like I give a fuck about your chess analogies.” A sour laugh, and Jean really had to pass his tongue over his gums, expecting the metallic taste that never appeared. This time the only thing bleeding was his heart. “You have no right to come in here and tell me that after ignoring me as much as you can all this time. You found your courage because I was out of Evermore??? Well, congratulations. What the fuck am I supposed to say to that, Kevin?”
“I… don’t know. I just can’t let you think that I don’t care. That I didn’t think of you every day.” Kevin’s thumbs started to move across his cheeks and the sting in Jean’s cheeks was louder than any comfort the touch should have brought. “That I don’t think of you every day.” He dares to correct.
“You shouldn’t be here.” And at the sob he let out at the end, Jean finally realized Kevin’s strange caress was him wiping the tears that escaped the grey eyes.
“I know.” He finally admitted, smaller. A faint smile on his face that Jean was used to seeing when he was fourteen and being patched up after confronting Riko yet again. “But I’ve always been selfish, haven’t I?”
And Jean hates how his heart tugged at that. He hates how Kevin can’t even bring himself to say it in french and he hates how his fingers finally relaxed and how Kevin’s gaze didn’t soften or harden at all.
“Don’t do this to me…” he finally pleaded, as Kevin hesitated once again. “I can’t do this.”
“Why?” Soft, but not careful. Because they have no reason to be that careful anymore.
“Because you were everything.” And maybe he is pathetic for breaking before he could even get the first word out, for saying it in english to try to put as much distance between himself and that affirmation as he can. But Kevin had no right to dump his stupid reasons on Jean, now, of all times.
But Kevin’s left hand travels up to his hair, gentle through the uneven strands. “And now?”
The hope so unsubtle that Jean might actually throw up on him if Kevin keeps this up.
“You can’t ask me that.” Finally finding enough strength to step away.
Kevin doesn’t reach for him, but he does call out. “Because you won’t know how to say no?”
And Jean is on the verge of jumping at this man and killing him himself so he can finally die in peace, because Kevin is stupid, but he can’t be that dumb, right???
“Jean?” He tries again, looking at the pale cheeks that felt so warm just now under his touch. “Forget it, I shouldn’t have ask-
“Because I don’t want to say no.” He scoffs, and the room goes silent. He can hear Kevin’s slow steps. He can feel his presence behind him. And still he does nothing to move away. And Kevin doesn’t lean in any further. Because he’s a coward.
“You really don’t understand how yours I am, do you?” And Riko is dead. Riko died months ago. But Jean can’t help the shiver that runs through him. The nausea that almost takes him over. And the worst part is that he knows Kevin feels it too. How Kevin, who’s been out of the nest for much longer and who claimed to fear Riko anymore, lowered his tone, even in french, in fear of being overheard.
It’s as pathetic as they have always been. To still rely on the secrecy of it all. Like they are still nothing but Riko’s slaves at the end of the day. But old habits die hard. Although their mouths finding each other is a good way to start planning the grave.
Jean knows he shouldn’t be here. Not in his hands. Not in his kisses. Not when even the thought of kissing Kevin, of looking at him for a second too long, would have him beaten to near death once again, were it to happen a year and a half ago. And so he jerks away.
Riko would kill Jean and make Kevin watch. He would make sure to ruin Kevin’s life entirely. Including the foxes. The press would brush it off as a tragic accident. The fans would grieve the loss for months. Maybe a few years for the most loyal.Before moving forward eventually.
But Riko is dead. The master is now a nobody. They are not Crows. And don’t belong to those Moriyama anymore. So Jean focuses on the present, for once, and leans in again just as quickly.
Kevin doesn’t hesitate anymore either.