Work Text:
Jean Moreau, as a general rule, doesn't like to be touched. To shoulder through crowds and campus is one thing, and on court it's impossible not to check someone with a hip or elbow, but across the white lines, he becomes an island. It's strange at first, then a small relief. The last thing he expects it to become is a problem.
"Nice job!" Jeremy says to the team as they trudge through the tunnel one day. "Everyone showered and changed in twenty, we've got a three hour drive!"
"It didn't take three hours to get here," Jean points out, and pushes his hair out of his eyes, then grimaces when sweat traces the side of his face.
Jeremy grins and thumps Messa's back when he passes, but leans in and lowers his voice. "We may or may not be taking a detour to a certain furniture store, just don't tell them-- and hey, good job today," he says, then goes to pat Jean's shoulder too, but catches himself at the last second and reaches around him to Sam instead. It isn't the first time it's happened; the rest of the team usually laughs it off or apologizes or acts like they've accidentally taken the wrong pair of shoes. What's odd isn't even that it's coming from Jeremy.
It's that, when his fingers squeeze Sam's shoulder, a pang of longing snaps at Jean like a rubber band around his wrist.
He tries to write it off; hunger, annoyance even, exasperation, but the counseling he's endured for a year stripped open his moods and laid them out, named them. This isn't one.
"What's wrong with you?" Laila asks at lunch, homework untouched on the table between their plastic trays.
"Nothing," Jean says.
Laila follows his gaze to the gaggle of boys by the window who are roughhousing, and she lifts an eyebrow. "Coach will kill you if you get into a fight before we play State."
"I'm not going to get into a fight."
"Oh," she says. One of the guys hooks his arm around another and musses his hair, and they laugh. Her brows lift again. "Oh."
"What?"
"Nothing!" She opens her textbook, suddenly absorbed. Jean glances between her and the boys and blows out a breath, then opens his own books, and it doesn't come up again.
At the end of the week and at a loss, Jean throws himself on the couch in the common room and pulls out his phone, tapping a quick can you talk? to Renee, whose grainy icon is a smudge of rainbow hair dye on the screen. In two minutes, she texts back.
6:43 PM
What’s up?
He pauses. I don’t know and I think something’s wrong with me aren’t exactly stellar conversation openers, so he runs his index finger over the edge of the keypad and studies the popcorn ceiling.
6:44 PM
How do you ask someone to touch you without it being weird?
As soon as he hits send, he slings his arm over his eyes and groans --not because he thinks Renee will interpret it wrong, but because it’s just so honest-- and the AC box hums in agreement from the window, despite its general neutrality when it comes to things like producing hot or cold air. Renee takes three minutes to respond, so Jean wiggles his ankles over the couch arm and anticipates a paragraph.
6:47 PM
Lmk when you find out lol
6:47 PM
Very helpful
6:47 PM
Who is someone? Start there?
6:48 PM
Anyone
6:48 PM
Mostly I just know what NOT to do when that feeling comes up
6:48 PM
Pray?
6:48 PM
Haha
no
But like unironically that could help
I know that’s not what you wanna hear
Jean tried. Running is more meditative, but that makes him think of Neil, of the nights he snuck onto the end of Jean’s bunk and needed a hand held over his mouth while he swabbed peroxide over some new cut or bruise. Once, he almost passed out. Jean pulled his head against his shoulder and he hyperventilated, fingers curled in Jean’s shirt.
And then he left.
6:50 PM
No praying. Or adjacent.
6:51 PM
Counselor?
6:51 PM
Not if I can help it
6:52 PM
I guess just make sure it’s something you want first
Like, you’re not being pressured into it. Then communicate that to ur team
Remember the worst that can happen is, they misunderstand, but that just means you try again until they do :)
Jean wouldn’t consider miscommunication the worst that could happen, but he doesn’t say that.
His first opportunity comes at practice. It’s Tuesday, which means it’s outside and strength-training, and toward the end, Jeremy sinks onto the bleachers to guzzle water beside Jean. He squints against the sun and tugs the collar of his shirt, sweat stained. Beside them, Sam gets up and offers Gottlieb a hand; Gottlieb grabs it and pulls himself up, just like that.
Jean puts down his water bottle and stretches one arm over his torso. Renee would be in hysterics. Warming yourself up to it, Moreau? Without thinking, he goes to stretch the other arm, and smacks Jeremy square in the nose.
“Shit!” Jeremy spits water, slaps his hand over his face, and turns to Jean, wide-eyed.
“S-sorry,” Jean chokes, frozen.
Jeremy laughs, but scoots to the left a foot, to give him space. Jean continues, too mortified to do anything else. In a minute, Laila comes to the bleachers and pulls Jeremy up, and they cross the field again, Jeremy with a backward glance that Jean pointedly doesn’t meet. His face burns.
8:59PM
Day 1
FAIL
The second opportunity seems smoother, more promising. Jeremy has been under his truck’s hood for the better half of the afternoon, which they have free, for once, and Gottlieb announces that someone has to go fetch him for dinner, which smells like tomato sauce and second chances. Jean volunteers quietly, but receives some raised brows on the way out anyway.
The parking lot smells distinctly worse; a carton of rotten Cook-Out is strewn over the sidewalk and someone’s Celica must’ve been egged last night, because there’s bits of cooked yolk and ants crawling over the sun roof. Jeremy reeks of exhaust.
“Hey,” Jean calls, so as to avoid another startled reaction. Jeremy pops his head around the hood and grins.
“Hey,” he says. “Came to join me?”
Jean gestures. “Dinner.”
“Eugh. Five more minutes.”
Only Jeremy Knox could make digging through the guts of a V8 comparable to literally being asleep. Jean braces his hands on the engine wall and a smile tugs at his mouth. “Any longer and you’ll get dish duty.”
“Jokes on you, I bought paper plates. Get that red solo cup aesthetic, just for the weekend.”
“That’s an interesting way to say ‘I was bribed into letting the team play beer pong before a game’.”
Jeremy laughs, pulls the hood half-down, then reaches back in to fuss with some valve.
Jean says, “you have oil on your face,” because he does.
“Yeah? Wanna get that for me?” he mutters, squinting as steam hisses out of the engine. Jean’s pulse jumps, suddenly seen, but it’s as close to an invitation as he’ll get. He lifts one hand and cups Jeremy’s face, rubs the smudge on his jaw, and shrugs when it seems gone. Jeremy’s mouth falls open.
He drops the hood. It slams shut on Jean’s other hand, and they both yelp in horror.
5:26 PM (Three bloody tissues later)
Day 2
FAIL
“This isn’t working,” Jean says to Renee, on Day 5. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Her voice is tinny through his speaker, but loud enough to startle a pigeon hopping across the picnic table. “Don’t say that. Trying and failing is better than doing nothing, right?”
“Is it?” He paces and rakes a (thoroughly bandaged) hand through his hair. “Is it really?”
“Hang on-- Allison’s telling me to tell you that you should make him change your bandages. No, she’s shaking her head. Okay, she changed her mind-- just lord it over him so he does nice things for you? Matt’s telling me that’s not a good strategy--”
“How many people did you tell about this?” Jean forces out.
“Relax, they don’t know it’s you. Just a friend. Speaking of, did you think about just, I mean, asking him?”
Jean waves, and a bee dances angrily away from his hand. “Out of the question.”
“Why?”
Because the last kind touch he had was from her, and Neil, and they’re on the opposite coast. Because both times, even a hand on his shoulder was enough to set off a deep, innate disgust with himself, with wanting it. Self-hatred is one of the things he’s gotten better at over the year, but some changes come harder than others. Beside his head, boughs of leaves rustle. He pretends it’s static over the phone line.
“Hello?”
“It just is,” he says, finally, and hangs up.
The third opportunity is the one he doesn’t take. They’re on the court, five minutes to the refs calling game, and Jean gets his feet swiped out by one of the mid-fielders. His shoulder slams into the floor with enough force that he slides several feet, and the guard on his helmet snaps against his cheek. The crowd shrieks and pounds the stands harder than the thrush of blood in his ears.
“Jesus, sorry,” pants the midfielder, whose shoelace trails when they get to their feet. They grab Jean’s arm, meaning to pull him up.
Jean sees white.
A hard impact shakes up his arm, so he must punch them-- then it’s over. The refs push between them, the buzzers blare, blood drips down the midfielder’s chestplate. Jean staggers back and fumbles to open the gate at his back, then shoves past the crowd and into the exit tunnel.
He tugs his helmet off and hurls it against the sack of laundry in the locker room. Footfalls pound down the hall. Jeremy throws open the door, helmet in hand, dangling like a landline left on hold.
“Get out,” Jean says, voice thick.
Jeremy catches his breath and seems to choose his words. “What-- was that about?”
“I don’t want to be touched!” Jean explodes. “Okay?!”
Jeremy stares at him. Jean tucks his hands under his arms, and takes a shaky breath. When he sinks onto the bench, the silence distills, undercut by the vibration of the stands through the wall, and it’s an odd comfort-- like he’s on the inside of an answering machine looking out, but there’s no Renee to pull him from this one. Jeremy shifts his weight to one foot, and the captain in him leaves the room.
“Sorry,” Jean whispers, and covers his mouth. “It’s-- I’m sorry.”
Jeremy leaves the door and comes to the bench, and crouches, the smell of sweat and nylon mingling with that horrible eucalyptus soap someone had spilled into the drains. His brows are low, but Jean’s learned to spot a threat a mile away, and this isn’t one; if it was, maybe it’d be easier to send him out. Something warm trickles down Jean’s cheek when he lifts his hand and he realizes his guard had cut his face. Jeremy glances at it.
“I fucked up,” Jean says, before Jeremy can speak.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “No, really?”
“I’m serious, I-- really, I’m really not good at this.” The last year has proven that much, and they both know. “I’m trying. I am. But I’ve never known a team that didn’t hurt me,” his voice cracks, “or that-- that I didn’t want to fuck up. I don’t want to fuck this up,” he finishes, quieter.
A pause.
“We’re not going to let them hurt you again. Jean,” Jeremy says, “the only way you fuck up with us is if you stop trying.”
He holds out his hand, palm up.
Jean lets the words settle, blinks quickly, and slides his hand into Jeremy’s. Softer than Neil’s. Not as strong as Renee’s, but somehow surer. The knot in his chest begins to unravel.
Jeremy smiles and, after a minute, Jean returns it.