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ravenvsfox · 7 years

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okay i have probably an annoyingly specific prompt but god it would be amazing: no. 98 with jerejean but with JEREMY saying it. bc i feel like jean saying it is too obvious (and too sad, poor french bean)

Sometimes it takes Jean two extra minutes to leave the change room, because he’s so lost in the red and gold in the mirror. The helmet obscures his 3, and he almost looks like a real Trojan. You can’t even see his old puppet strings.

Every time he leaves for the court two minutes late, he braces himself for the consequences of his tardiness. He’s been trapped in his own reflection for long enough that Riko came to find him. He’s gone months after without looking at himself at all.

He’s never watched the mirror through his helmet like this and felt like he was holding onto someone’s blood-slippery hand, petrified of letting go.

He wakes up every day and Jeremy has tossed the curtains open so that he won’t forget what time it is. If he wanders out of time anyway, and practices so hard that his fingers want to break, Jeremy steals his racquet and locks it away. Sometimes when he craves the nest like he used to crave death, for the sensory deprivation of it, Jeremy holds his face in both hands and doesn’t let him look away.

Every day that he steps onto the court and it’s raucous with laughter is another day that he has to relearn what’s right and wrong. Every day with the Trojans knits a wound closed. Every night tears them open again, but that reprieve is more than he could’ve ever imagined.

They practice just as hard as the Ravens, is the surprising thing. They end every practice absolutely soaked with sweat, bone-tired, and Jean’s the only one who isn’t smiling. He can’t fathom working yourself to the brink and just… walking away happy. Fighting as hard as they are without death being the scream in their ears. Losing and winning like they’re both viable options.

He’s so used to the sneer programmed into him at the mention of USC that he feels like a spy half the time.

“Alright, drills people, you’re not here to have fun,” Jeremy shouts over the din of running feet.

“Maybe you’re not,” someone shouts and Jeremy grins as the team all clambers over to meet him like some sort of pack of trained dogs.

“Oh I definitely am. I like the burn in my thighs.”

“It gets him hot,” Dermott stage whispers and Jean looks sharply at her. She doesn’t crumple to the ground. Nothing snaps and breaks. Talk back and you get hit is slowly being worked from his vocabulary like removing a splinter.

“You bet it does,” he laughs. “Someone toss me drill suggestions, my creativity’s just about dry.”

“Long day, Knox?” Alvarez teases.

“Yeah, I’ve got this rag-tag team to whip into shape.”

They all groan and Jeremy laughs.

“Can we switch positions? Play some three on three?” Laila asks, hopping from foot to foot like she’s trying to keep her heart rate up.

“You’re joking,” Jean says without meaning to. He rolls his shoulders in immediately. Jeremy catches his eye and smiles, reassuring.

“We’ve gotta keep up with those Palmetto hooligans. Day’s working with those numbers and I hate to be in second,” he jokes, and Jean flinches. Jeremy’s eyes flicker to his cheek, and his expression falls like rocks sliding.

“Switching positions,” Jean says, mouth dry, “isn’t done. At Edgar Allen.”

Alvarez throws an arm around Jean’s shoulder and he flinches so hard that he ducks all the way out of her grip. Her smile burns away around the edges. “This isn’t Edgar Allen.”

“Amen,” Dermott says under her breath.

“We shake things up,” Jeremy says carefully. “We adapt. That’s part of the fun.”

“Fun,” Jean echoes. His stomach is rebelling, and he swallows the acidic beginnings of nausea.

“You heard of it?” someone mutters.

“Yeah,” Jeremy says softly, and he walks in so it’s clear he’s talking only to Jean. “That’s why we’re playing, right?”

“I am playing for my life. As always,” Jean whispers.

Jeremy puts a hot hand on his shoulder, slowly and deliberately. “You’re good enough,” he says, “to have a little fun.” Jean shrugs his hand away.

“That is foolish.” He’s speaking with his chin tucked into his chest. He never knows quite if he’s supposed to treat Jeremy like the challenge he’s always been to the Ravens, or like a captain. The dissonance is jarring.

“It’s mandatory,” Jeremy says, and his smile sweetens his face slowly, a sugar canister upended into coffee. “Pick your teams,” he says, louder, for the trojans to hear. “Let’s rumble.”

“What is this, West Side Story?” Dermott snarks.

“You’d make a hot Maria, babe,” Alvarez says, kissing her on the cheek as she passes.

The team organizes into three on three, and Jean is thankfully passed over. His legs twitch with the muscle memory of pushing himself, but Jeremy walks him all the way back to the bench.

“You think I don’t see your legs shaking?” He sits Jean down and leans down in front of him, following the spasm in Jean’s calves with his fingers. “You’re not moving anymore tonight, okay? I’ll carry you back to the dorm if I have to.”

Jean’s face flushes. He’s a serial blusher, his fair skin lights up like flash paper.

“Cute,” Jeremy comments, head cocked. “Hey listen—” He scoots onto the bench next to Jean, close enough that he would hold all of Jean’s weight, if he let him. “I want to thank you for putting up with me. I know that I’m not the easiest person to get along with.”

Jean looks at him incredulously. “You remember my last captain, do you not?”

He expects Jeremy to laugh, but his whole face goes stormy. “Believe me, I remember him. It’s impossible now, but I would’ve liked to see that arrogant face punched.”

“Wes—Josten did, once,” Jean says. If it hadn’t been absolutely appalling it would’ve been thrilling.

“Good for him,” Jeremy laughs. “That one still needs a bit of house training, I think.”

“Or a muzzle,” Jean spits. He has an agreement with Neil now, but he wants his mouth duct taped shut more often than not.

“Anyway, this isn’t about Riko, or Neil, or Kevin. It’s not about captain and team. Get all those numbers out of your head. No pun intended.” He gestures to the three branding his cheekbone and Jean fervently wishes Jeremy couldn’t even see it. “I’m talking about me and you, you know. I’m really trying here. I want this to be a safe space for you.”

Jean watches Jeremy steadily. “Anywhere that isn’t the nest is a safe space.”

Jeremy’s mouth quirks. “Okay, let me rephrase. I want to be a safe space for you. I don’t want to push you out of your comfort zone too fast, or try to take this whole… work hard play hard attitude too far. I know that’s not really your scene.”

“It could be,” Jean says quickly. His accent stumbles and he looks down. “I want it to be.”

Jeremy’s eyes flicker back and forth between Jean’s, so sweetly earnest that Jean feels his steadying post-practice heartbeat skip ahead again.

“Natasha, can we pick it up please,” Jeremy calls out, distracted, and he gets a ‘you got it boss’ in return. Jean wants everything to be that easy for him. “Anyway. Where were we?”

“You were offering to be my safe space,” Jean supplies, and Jeremy goes a satisfying peachy pink through a smile.

“Well,” he starts, leaning in to squeeze Jean’s fingers with that same deliberate from-the-front motion. “That particular offer stands. Just as soon as I’m done captaining.”

“Oh, is this an outside court hours kind of thing?”

“Absolutely,” Jeremy says, winking, and then he jogs off to the court again. Jean realizes suddenly that he’s smiling, and he reaches up for his own face.

He watches the by now familiar exchange of constant warnings and laughter over brutal plays. Dermott is such hell in the net that his arms sympathetically twinge. He’s still learning pacing, patience, limits that weren’t given to him by another person.

His eyes follow Jeremy across the court, where he’s alternatively joyfully praising his team and making digs at their footwork.

He used to think he couldn’t possibly go anywhere else, that the Moreau’s belonged to the Moriyama’s, period.

He never anticipated wanting to belong somewhere, to someone. He never expected that safety might be people.

Someone scores on Laila and Jeremy’s whole body twists around to bring Jean in on his excitement, fists pumping. Jean gives him a thumbs up, Laila shouts something nasty, and laughter shakes the court walls so hard it feels like they want to come down. (But they never, ever do.)

#not andreil is everyone scandalized #aftg #the foxhole court #jerejean #tfc fanfic #suicidal ideation #prompt #mine #Anonymous #ask

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