Chapter Text
Sometimes, Jean kisses like the wet well of Jeremy’s mouth will satiate his soul-hunger.
Now it’s a bruise-purple delusion, Jeremy knows, to think he could ever be enough for Jean, but—
It’s addictive, as it always is – the slide of Jean's tongue against his; the cracker dust buzz he gets when Jean tilts his head so he can sip from his bottom lip again.
Nips.
Sucks.
Pulls.
Moves on to the top. Does the same.
Nudges Jeremy’s head again with a gentle thumb held under his chin. He’s putty - Jeremy - moulding and stretching when Jean tugs at his hoodie strings in a futile attempt to get him closer.
Putty, when Jean sags, huffing against his cheek in a move Jeremy’s come to read as frustration. For the insatiable nature of his - as in, Jean’s - desire. The knowledge that he won’t get enough no matter how deep they go.
Can’t—even though Jeremy wishes he could—clamber through thickets of soft tissue to curl, foetal, overgrown, in Jeremy’s thoracic cavity.
Become his lungs. Fill with air. Touch his heart. Hold it still. Between his palms. Red-hot. Red-hot. His heart would beat, so lovely and gentle for Jean.
And Jean— Jean could stay there… yeah, just there, be Jeremy’s curled lungs, for the duration of a desperate gasp. Two, if Jeremy were lucky.
He’d keep Jean safe. He’d hold him safe.
Too much, Jeremy knows of himself. Unnatural, his desire to consume. Absorb. Protect.
He catches his own responding whimper before it finds his voice, and follows after Jean’s lips blindly.
Can only allow himself to have this, Jean’s apology held in a ‘sometimes’ moment, for as long as Jean can bear him.
Safe this way, he thinks. Won’t scare Jean off again.
There’s a distant part of Jeremy that realises he should, at the very least, feel embarrassed by how his body betrays — begging for more even as Jean gives it to him.
But he can’t think, there’s no space left to do so, when there’s Jean Jean Jean and the detonating pulse in his wrist under Jeremy’s fingertips.
Jean Jean Jean and the firm press of his palm against Jeremy’s lower back again, pulling him flush, close—closer.
Jean right here, with Jeremy – okay and crumpling into Jeremy’s chest now; okay and mouthing at the bob of Jeremy’s Adam’s apple; okay and circling a careful thumb around the bruised skin of Jeremy’s left eye as he does so.
Jeremy doesn’t miss the tremble in Jean’s petal-soft strokes, nor the wounded sound Jean smothers against his collarbone.
It’s okay. We’re okay, he wants to say.
He wants to tell Jean, for the millionth time, that he shouldn’t worry about it anymore; that it looks much worse than it feels; that he knows it was an accident, knows Jean would never… not on— not on purpose, no.
He can’t unstick the half-truths from the roof of his mouth.
Can still hear the blare of Jean’s voice from that night, his words strangling themselves in his throat as he choked: “I don’t want to hurt you any more; Je—I can’t—what did I—your eye, your eye.”
The red-hot pulse in Jeremy’s jaw. The red-hot throb of his closing eye.
Jeremy sucks in a quick, burning breath. He can’t— can’t afford to think about it right now.
Gives Jean what he can instead: a breathy “We’re okay,” and he believes it desperately enough for the both of them.
He can’t be sure his voice won’t break after that, so he says nothing more.
Just breathes and breathes, swallows hard and gently squeezes Jean’s wrist to let him know, again, that he’s… he’s fine. As close to it as he can be—great even, as Jean kisses up his neck again.
Jeremy keeps his eyes screwed shut, and tries to resist the ache of budding tears when Jean, oh Jean, rubs the tips of their noses together. A habit, of sorts.
One he knows Jean sometimes prefers to kissing, and inevitably, one Jeremy indulges every time, even though it unravels him completely.
He caresses the underside of Jean’s jaw as he nudges back—slow, sweet—has nowhere to hide his stupid watery grin when Jean mumbles, as he always does, “si froid.” So cold.
Jeremy catches the airy words against his teeth.
So. Cold.
He doesn’t know why Jean’s bunny kisses always leave him so… he hasn’t got the words. Just that his heart, gooey yolk between his ribs, sighs, and he has to bite his bottom lip to keep from crying every time.
He thinks it’s probably got something to do with the deluge of vulnerability contained in Jean’s initiation of it.
How the tips of their noses meeting, unhurriedly, grade-school innocent, feels more intimate than kissing and sex, and he’s never allowed himself to be this ripe-peach tender with anyone, not for years and years, not after—God—not after Leo.
He allows himself to be this tender for Jean, though. Or rather, because of Jean. He, who his heart eases for. Beats for.
Because it’s… it’s always been different with Jean. Safe. To be known like this.
Safe. For Jeremy’s heart to cleanse itself of the convulsions betrayal had left behind.
Jeremy thinks, as Jean holds, breathes him in, of the first time he - Jeremy - had breathed into this putty-soft state.
How months before he and Jean were ever—anything, he’d stumbled bleary-eyed into the Lofts, a deteriorating mass of panic, seeking Laila’s comforting embrace, forgetting she was out with Cat — of course, how could he have forgotten? Stupid, stupid— had found Jean instead.
Or, rather, had been found by Jean.
He’d seen Jean’s socks first - the cartoon vegetables on them - while curled under the dining table. Had been grinding his teeth, drawing tight circles over his chest as Spader had taught him. Why isn’t it working— why am I— Unable to stop the shaking.
Jean’s scarred knees then as he’d kneeled. The beckoning call of his upturned palms. No words, just that, and Jeremy’s shallow breaths.
How Jean’s presence, as it is now, had given him permission to loosen, let go.
Jeremy had cried so hard, starved himself of breath for so long, that he’d forgotten the taste of it - forgotten how to hold it in his lungs.
Hadn’t been able to tell whether it were the chair, or his chest creaking like that, unable to bear the ache of backed up grief. Imagined it rushing up - the grief, his guilt - shattering against the back of his teeth after all those years of swallowing it down.
Chest, lungs, throat, red-hot, imploding. Red-hot. The sorry death of him.
They hadn’t – imploded. Because Jean— Jean had been there.
Warm. An unmoving center Jeremy collapsed against as he’d let his weight pour forward, let himself go slack, oobleck-softening against Jean’s solid chest, whirlpool over his heart and all, trusting that Jean would take it.
Knowing Jean would take it - him, Jeremy. Would hold his convulsing matter, his baggage. His mess. Red-hot.
Because Jean had said he’d wanted to— wanted to see, to anchor, absorb, just as Jeremy had always done for him.
And he’d just— Jeremy just hadn’t been able to stop crying.
He’d cried, the sound grating, unpleasant, dry heaves more than anything.
And cried — his face pressed into Jean’s shoulder, breath breaking and reforming there, held in place by Jean’s words, his arms, fingers in the tangled mat of hair at his nape, scratching, soothing.
Jean had held him the whole way through. Easily. As if letting Jeremy go was something his body wasn’t made for; as if every part of him—arms, chest, steady breath humming a light melody into that late spring afternoon—had been fashioned to keep Jeremy from falling apart.
Still to this day, Jeremy isn’t sure how long it was before he’d walked himself back into coherence, keeping pace with the fingers Jean had then trailed along his shuddering spine.
All he knows is that while tucked in that pocket of safety, with Jean swiping away his snot and tears with a gentle hand, watching sympathy swim in Jean’s pupils, swallow his irises, he’d thought about how Jean hadn’t left.
It was something Jeremy had bullied himself into believing he couldn’t have—was something he’d never deserve.
Someone who’d walk the entire shameful length of his ruin by his side.
Wade through the muck, see Jeremy, blue, and still choose him, even there.
Someone who’d hold his hand.
Someone who’d … Stay.
Jean.
Jean exhales, pleased, and Jeremy buries the taste of it in his lungs.
He swallows with it the foolish part of him that almost asks Jean whether it’s still true— whether Jean’s still— still wanting this, him, as he did before.
Jean hums, and Jeremy feels himself teeter into the yawning maw of his own fear — of asking, of hearing no.
He’d beg.
It’s sad. Pitiful. But he’d honest to God, beg Jean. He’d—
Heck.
Lay himself at Jean’s feet. An undesirable, unworthy heap of rubble; an unwanted thing his own mother couldn’t even bring herself to lo—
No.
Yes.
Jeremy seizes, suddenly staggering inward. His chest tightens. Lungs cling to the dregs of his last breath.
No.
He doesn’t register the gentle brush of Jean’s fingertips against his stubble.
No.
Can’t taste the blood in his own mouth.
No.
Only blinks back when Jean tugs his bottom lip free, and meanders up to swipe away a stray tear he hadn’t felt fall. The touch reminds him to fill his lungs.
Jeremy yields, his hand falling over Jean’s wrist, pressing not pulling as he softly shatters into it. He lets the soft press of their foreheads, and their shared shaky breath carry him back into the moment.
Where his mother is not.
And Jean’s bunny kisses continue. Slow, solacious, heeding Jeremy’s unspoken desire for comfort, distraction.
Just as Jeremy heeds Jean’s unspoken relief at his willingness to do just this, for however long.
He nudges back. Appreciates how much Jean enjoys his eager reciprocity. Savours it, endeared by how it renders the both of them useless with want.
Love, even.
Jeremy hasn’t said it yet. God, no.
– Not to Jean's face at least.
It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to— he wants and wants so many things with Jean, but. He’s scared. Four months is too soon, he thinks.
Even though it’s there — always has been. Naturally. In the unconscious way his body cants towards Jean’s — all the time, everywhere.
While out, with others, his body somehow always facing Jean’s, a part of them always touching, really — locked pinkies, a hand in the other’s back pocket, ankles hooked under tables, soles of their feet even.
Their eyes. Also locked. Always looking, following the other. No need for physical touch sometimes, not when caressing each other with a shared, unwavering gaze is enough. Both soft. Shy.
Sad again these days.
Still, there’s Jeremy, always looking to Jean first after a joke, just to see his close approximation of a smile. Eye rolls usually.
And there’s Jean, already looking at him too. Obviously.
Then, the quick quirk of a brow from him, a waggle or two from Jeremy.
Love.
Love.
Love.
The slow pulse of it in Jeremy’s heart, bursting behind his teeth, a riot on his tongue.
Especially now, as he sits on Jean’s desk, Jean’s chair pushed across the room somewhere, Jeremy doesn’t know, doesn’t care.
Cares only for the meeting of their lips again, and their lungs filling with each other’s scents – carnal, something caramel from Jeremy most days; cocoa butter and jasmine from Jean.
Jeremy taught him. How to kiss like this.
They started slow, small, with pecks, the brief pressing of their lips again and again — one not enough, always three, as the weeks matured into months.
Broke out of their casing, those timid days did.
Tumbled into the new flipping of a calendar. Two flips. Various celebrations. Milestones.
Tragedies.
Another flip. Late October now. Jean’s birthday soon, and Jeremy wonders what else to get him as he hooks his fingers into Jean’s empty belt loops to pull him closer, into the home his thighs make for him.
He crosses his legs around Jean’s waist. Familiar cradle. Hums, happy, content, into Jean’s lovely open mouth.
His desire whittles his uncertainty from before into nonsense.
He’s surprised by how well Jean picked it up — kissing.
“I’ll teach you,” is what he’d said when Jean told him, embarrassed, shy, into the crook of his neck one evening, that he wanted to try but didn't know what to do, how to… show affection in such a gentle, heady way. Unlearn that clashing teeth could only be born from one’s desire to harm.
Could also be proof of his and Jeremy’s enthusiasm. Child clumsy in their keenness.
He didn’t know where to put his hands—lets go of Jeremy’s face and splays them over Jeremy’s back now, rumples his hoodie some more, pulls him impossibly closer again. Greedy. Jeremy loves it, him, Jean—or, or, what pace to keep.
Confessed into the sable night that he didn’t want to come across as a starved dog if he went too fast, ‘course not, mon Dieu, how embarrassing.
Did in the end. Naturally.
Jeremy thought it endearing. Because, to him, everything Jean does is.
Jean’s eagerness to please him had left them both heaving for breath the first time. The first time being two months ago, if Jeremy casts his thoughts wide enough to remember.
Yeah, he thinks, as he responds to Jean’s low groan with one of his own.
It’s been two months since Jean grew out of their pecking stage, needing, wanting more, saying as much with a whispered, “Plus. Je veux—more, teach me more,” his thumb and forefinger held steadfast under Jeremy’s chin, keeping him close before he could pull away.
Jeremy had trailed a thumb against Jean’s cheek a third time, a signal to slow down, just a fraction, savour the moment — them. Together, like that. Soft. Slow. Unravelling but doing so while connected.
Neither of them going anywhere, not without the other.
Jeremy, at the time, believing so with a blustering surety he felt flowering in his chest.
He… isn’t so certain now.
But promptly deadheads the thought again when Jean licks into his mouth, just as he did that morning many mornings ago, when he’d slowed, heeded Jeremy’s cheek stroke, unsure then, but confident and experienced now.
Jean licks again and Jeremy’s brain short circuits, shuts down, near flatlines, and just like then and all the times after, Jeremy’s body buzzes, pulses, forgets he now knows that kissing can be like this.
Because of course it would be like this with Jean. He’s Jeremy’s— partner.
And it’s silly and stupid that he’s even thinking this considering what they’ve spent the past hour doing, but he still craves Jean even when he’s right here, with Jeremy now, skin warm and cocoa butter soft under his hands, his ragged breaths fanning over Jeremy’s burning face.
But — It’s been so long. It’s been so long since he’s held me.
And Jeremy knows, God, he knows it’s what they needed, what Jean needed. Time apart, space away, from this, Jeremy — no, not like that, not like he was avoiding Jeremy because he’s too much, or, not enough or, wait, maybe exactly like that he guesses, but—
He’s airborne.
Jean’s hoisting him up, into the air, into his arms.
His spiralling thoughts are severed when his legs involuntarily tighten around Jean’s waist. A strangled cry punches through his closing throat. The pressure— Jean grinds against him, buries a low moan into the indent of Jeremy’s collarbone, his joggers doing nothing to hide the chubbed up weight of him.
Jeremy can barely think. His heart stutters, trills, as he feels Jean’s hands kneading his ass, keeping him close, steady as he adjusts to the new height.
Fudge fudge fu—
Jean ghosts another moan over his Adam’s apple.
Jeremy’s missed this, so much he reeks of devastation from having lost it. Being close to Jean like this, remembering the taste of him, savouring it like wine.
“Jean,” Jeremy breathes, “Jean,” drunk on him. His best friend. His partner. His… For how much longer?
He twirls a strand of Jean’s hair around his finger, loves the view from up here as he peers down at him. Sunset slices through the blinds, warms the debauched look on Jean’s face.
Jeremy commits it all to memory, blinking snapshots of Jean, like this: lidded eyes. Slick, pouting mouth. Fierce blush humming in his cheeks.
Gold flits across his skin as he blindly moves with the light, searching for Jeremy.
His long lashes flutter as he’s addressed. Beautiful. He’s so beautiful.
“Okay?” Jeremy asks. Because he has to check. Always.
They haven’t done this in a while, not after the way Jean grew barbed wire and struck, pricking Jeremy in the eye with his fist, twisting and tearing both their hearts open with his words.
An accident, it was an accident.
“Yes,” Jean says, equally breathy, but the conviction threading through the pleasure in his voice is grounding. Jeremy holds onto it.
He shouldn’t be here.
They haven’t seen or spoken to each other in over a week.
And Jeremy shouldn’t be here.
It’s not Jean’s fault, his distance, just… too sad to be touched sometimes. By hands, eyes.
Jeremy knows. Understands.
It gets too much, being wanted. Wanting in return.
Allowing the one you love to see you. All of you. For all that you are and aren’t — the bad, the ugly, the unpleasant.
Easy to give, than to receive.
Harder to believe them when they tell you they want you. Still.
Want the windstorm of ruin and shame caught in your eyes, too.
But sometimes their words aren’t enough. Not when you know you don’t deserve them.
Again, Jeremy understands, feels it too.
So he should’ve seen the signs that night— shouldn’t have reached to pull Jean out of his head so soon.
He usually knows better.
Knows Jean’s mind often reroutes him back down familiar rocky roads. Knows Jean has no say in it — neither of them can anticipate it. It just happens.
And Jean’s mind deserts him there for days, two weeks now, kicks the backs of his knees until he collapses into submission, cutting his shins on memory’s jagged rocks. He’s bullied and beaten weak with flashbacks that seep through his bludgeoned skull, a filter, flickering over the sight of his blood soaking into the ground he’s left for dead on.
When it happens, all Jeremy can, and has done, is hold Jean in his thoughts, even though he’d much rather have him in his arms.
Like now.
But, more than anything, since the day they met, he’s always wanted to respect Jean—respect his space.
Which Jean had asked for.
Hours after he’d detonated, and pleaded, brokenly, for Jeremy to leave, to please leave get out get out get out get out get out get out get out—
And Jeremy had—
Jeremy had left.
Doesn’t remember how, but had blinked and there he was, trying to keep himself from imploding at his mother’s dining table.
He’d reread Jean’s texts so many times, could recite the words.
étoile <3:
[6:49 pm] Jeremy
[6:52 pm] I’m sorry. im so so sorry
[7:00 pm] I am sick. in the head. it is not an excuse, i shouldn’t have lashed out like that
[7:04 pm] I shouldn’t have hurt you
Five minutes later:
[7:09 pm] it’s not safe.
[7:09 pm] to be near me.
[7:09 pm] i want to be alone for a while if that is okay.
Ten:
[7:19 pm] i want to, and i should after what i did to you, but i will not harm myself.
Fifteen:
[7:34 pm] i promise.
‘If that is okay’.
After everything, it was Jean asking for permission that pulverised Jeremy.
Then, his promise to war against his urges, to not harm himself, the final deathblow to Jeremy’s gut.
Still, through gritted teeth, he’d forced himself to sit perfectly still, a string puppet before his mother and Warren.
They all pretended not to notice the savage wreck his round the clock sobs had made of his face. Nevermind his black eye which he’d dismissed with a terse – “Exy.”
And there was a time—before all this—when his mother’s feigned ignorance of his unraveling, was the last fistful of soil thrown over the coffin he wished he’d been in instead of— instead of… Noah.
A time when the thing that snatched all the breath from his lungs, quicker than the look of contempt on Joshua’s face, was his mother’s refusal to acknowledge when he, Jeremy, her other son, alive and cursing himself for it, would enter the dining room in fragments, grief having whittled him down to morsels.
Not anymore. Not after Jean’s words had beaten her to it—earlier that night, and again, there, at that table thick with condescending chatter, his phone buzzing mutely in his lap.
That evening he’d chewed on his steak and inner cheeks, wondering where Jean was—probably at home, in the Lofts, making himself small again in their bed, curled up, foetal.
Jeremy had imagined Jean trembling, like the plucked strings of an off-key violin.
He saw it all, Jean like that, the image so clear it blotted out his mother and Warren from view, and all he tasted was blood and bile more than beef and spices.
He still tastes blood.
Tangy, pooling in the divot beneath his tongue, from where he’s biting down hard on the fabric of his inner cheek to keep from sobbing. Again. Again. What’s wrong with me.
Jean’s mattress is soft, dipping as Jean eases him down, and Jeremy finds himself looking into Jean’s wide, red-rimmed eyes—ah, seeing himself there, engulfed, shaking in choppy waters. Thinking please, please don’t leave me.
“Jean,” Jeremy whispers, voice glass crunching under one’s bare feet.
He winces. Stays a vine around Jean as the mattress groans, readily accepting the familiar weight of their entanglement.
“Jean,” a voiceless plea, insistent, mouthed into Jean’s shoulder.
He’s— he’s trying to be okay. He is.
“We should— we should talk first, yeah?”
But he’s scared, so scared—his heart is drowning in that same metallic pool—and he’s wondering whether this is the last time he’ll ever get to have Jean.
Like this. At all.