Chapter Text
07:31
Are you back from Palmetto? Can we meet?
Kevin, 09:03
I am back, in Phoenix, yes.
Kevin, 09:19
I am sorry. I am very busy. Let’s talk at the book club next week.
Kevin, 09:32
Is that okay?
09:51
Sure. Take care until then.
Kevin, 12:13
You too.
After their call, the messages between Jean and Kevin hadn’t stopped despite Jean’s worries about whether Kevin would start pretending that nothing had happened at all. Luckily, instead of driving them further apart, their shared truths had settled into something worth calling a solid base for a friendship. Suddenly, they talked about sleepless nights, how Kevin looked for a new therapist because he hated his current one, and how Jean had decided to participate in the book club because he had felt lost in life. And then, just like so often before, the messages from Kevin had started to ebb away. Jean had tried his best to keep it going, but after the last message a week ago, he had waited for Kevin to restart the conversation. And Kevin, being Kevin, hadn’t done it.
Therefore, Jean was somewhat surprised to see Kevin waiting outside the library. He was not as surprised to see him being visibly anxious. To an outsider, Kevin looked great, dressed in dark slacks and a deep green jumper under an open dark woollen coat which seemed to be new—a fancy Christmas present, Jean assumed—but his energy was off. He kept checking his phone, and when he finally saw Jean, he tried to give him an entirely unconvincing, way too big smile.
“Jean! Hi. How are you?”
“Kevin, cut that act,” Jean said, a bit crudely, but it got the job done. Kevin’s fake smile fell from his face, and Jean was left with a nervous young man, not a media persona.
Upon seeing Jean, Kevin had put away his phone. Now that his hands were empty, he restlessly started to massage his left hand again. This time, Jean didn’t resist the urge to take the formerly broken hand into his and just gently hold it. Kevin’s skin was a bit cold, slightly clammy.
“Are we back to this old game? Ignoring me, acting like everything is fine, pretending we are just acquaintances?”
A flicker of pain crossed Kevin’s face, which made Jean feel regret instantly. Now that he was closer, he could see the telltale signs of Kevin being in a worse place than the last time they saw each other: dark bags under his eyes, a slight tremor in his left hand, and a paleness that Jean had once considered Kevin’s normal complexion before seeing him getting regular exposure to the sun in South Carolina.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jean quickly corrected, but Kevin just waved his free hand.
“I understand. You did mean it like that. It’s fine. My fault. I was just really busy and…” Kevin put his head into his neck, staring at the sky for a moment, before looking back at Jean. “I often go through an… adjustment period after having spent time in Palmetto.”
Kevin didn’t need to explain; Jean understood the implication. Life often got more difficult when things changed, when reliable support networks were suddenly far away again. Still, Kevin’s distance had hurt. For a moment, Jean considered simply turning away, but he decided to be brave and meet Kevin’s eyes. They were carefully blank, but Jean could see the sorrow behind that mask. Kevin was an expert at hiding his grief, but Jean was an expert at reading Kevin. The air around them reeked of the wounds that had never properly healed but instead festered into something that may have allowed the two of them to function, but not to thrive.
“Are you lonely in Phoenix?” Jean carefully asked after a moment. Loneliness was a dangerous feeling for someone like Kevin, who lived off the validation of the people around him.
Kevin carefully removed his hand from Jean’s grip and shrugged. “It is fine. It is like it is at most places.”
“Are most places lonely?”
“In most places, I do not care for the people there.” It was such a Kevin-sentiment to voice that Jean couldn’t help but roll his eyes, feeling a certain fondness, despite the sadness clinging to Kevin.
“You know, you could try to meet people.”
“I know people—” Kevin started, but Jean stopped him with a gentle hand on the chest:
“Apart from your teammates and maybe a neighbour.”
Kevin mumbled something incomprehensible in response, yet did not shake Jean’s hand away. They just stood there, a bit closer than friends should, and Jean wished he could feel Kevin’s heartbeat through the thick fabric. He wondered if it had sped up upon the two of them touching.
“Kevin? Moreau!” They quickly stepped away from each other when someone called out their name. It was Sébastien, looking even more constipated than usual. He stood by the library door, holding it open: “We were waiting for you!”
Sébastien mumbled something about making people wait when they entered the room, but no one seemed to have minded, really. Jean thought Sébastien especially had no ground to stand on, considering he spent most of the meeting on his phone after admitting that he did not read a single sentence of the book. It seemed more and more like he truly just attended the meetings to awkwardly pine after Kevin. A sentiment that Jean theoretically could sympathise with, but not when it came to the pale Canadian and his disgust for Jean.
Considering the—in Jean’s opinion, frankly insane—length of the assigned reading divided over seven parts, they actually had been supposed to read parts before this meeting, allowing them to start with a proper discussion of the content right away. As was often the case, they kicked off the discussion with an analysis of the beginning of the book, which focuses on a lengthy discussion of anxiety, especially separation anxiety, following the statement of the narrator that he used to go to bed early because he was scared of leaving his mother behind or something. Jean couldn’t help but keep looking at Kevin, who met Jean’s gaze but then scrunched up his whole face in irritation before performatively not looking in Jean’s direction. It may have seemed impolite, but coming from Kevin, it had been a gentle gesture of acknowledging Jean and the story’s topics. Kevin dove into a passionate speech about how the narrator’s anxiety led to manipulation and how he enjoyed the morally grey aspect of that.
It was Meg, as always, who stopped Kevin to move the conversation to another topic: how the book could be an allegorical search for truth. But what was truth? What is relative truth, and what is absolute truth? It could have made for an interesting discussion, but for some reason, the conversation kept coming to a standstill, probably because not enough people had actually read anything.
“I have another topic I would like to discuss.” The Quebecois accent, which usually wasn’t a part of the discussion, surprised Jean, and he raised his brow when Meg gestured at Sébastien to continue talking. “I think an interesting topic that was brought up was the narrator’s homosexuality—although it is never named, it is quite evident.“
“You haven’t even read the book,” Jean interrupted Sébastien, not caring if he seemed rude. “Why are you bringing this up?”
“Don’t you want to share something with the group?” Sébastien countered. A younger Jean would have been terrified by this indirect attack, but Jean had spent entirely too much money on therapy to still be freaked out by someone implying that he wasn’t straight. It hadn’t even been a secret for years at this point.
So instead, Jean shared a cold smile and a response close to a growl: “Don’t you?”
He would have had more to say, but was stopped when Meg gently held her hand out to him. “Jean, please. I believe everyone has interesting ideas to share, despite their reading progress.”
For a moment, Jean continued to stare Sébastien down; then, when Désirée picked up a conversation, talking about the implications of the narrator’s sexuality in the wider concept of the book, Jean found the courage to look at Kevin. He was surprised to see Kevin staring back at him already. There was an undercurrent of anxiety in the way Kevin held himself, but when he realised that he’d been caught staring, he offered a shy smile.
Désirée kept going very passionately, but as soon as there was a lull in the conversation, Kevin paged through his book until he found what he had been looking for. Without any hesitation, he read out loud:
“On trouve innocent de désirer et atroce que l’autre désire.”[1]
After a short pause, Kevin continued: “I felt like this was an interesting part when talking about love and desire, but also the fear experienced by the narrator. And I guess… same-sex attraction. How something can seem normal to you in a certain context but disgusting outside of it.”
Jean looked at Kevin, wondering how much Kevin would be disgusted if he knew the depths of Jean’s desire; if he knew how much deeper than just an innocent kiss Jean’s need to be close to Kevin ran. He wondered how Kevin experienced desire and how much shame and aversion the broad shoulders still had to carry. To Jean’s surprise, it seemed like there was a hesitant confidence in Kevin, and it made him look even more alluring than usual.
Kevin’s beauty made Jean feel brave, and he decided to speak up: “I believe this quote skips over an important part: when we ourselves desire someone, we usually understand why. There may be feelings other than desire involved. However, if ‘the other’ desires us, we cannot always understand the reasoning, thus being disgusted by the more animalistic act of lust that we see displayed.”
Kevin slightly tilted his head and nodded, then said, “I suppose you are right.”
“I usually am,” Jean retorted quickly, and it made Kevin’s lip twitch as if there was a real grin hiding. Seeing it filled Jean with pride.
Zoulikha laughed and then moved the conversation to the overlap of homosexuality, shame, and anxiety, which was an outstanding analysis. It was also, unfortunately, a topic Jean would rather abstain from. Interestingly enough, Kevin, too, stayed mostly quiet for that part of the conversation, although he was listening carefully, with no blank stare of dissociation in his eyes.
When the meeting wrapped up, Sébastien went directly up to Kevin, who in turn went directly to Jean. It was rare that they met inside the library. In here, they usually tried to keep up a facade of two young men who had never met before, never bled together before, and never knew how it felt to scream the other’s name in agony. All the same, this time, Kevin addressed Jean even with everyone else still around: “I think we should talk.”
Jean turned to Kevin with a neutral expression. “You know, usually people say this before breaking up—“
The way Kevin’s face slipped into a worried expression made Jean laugh, but also feel a wave of gentle guilt.
“I was just teasing, Kevin. Yes. We should. Are you coming to my place again?”
Jean couldn’t help but feel victorious when Kevin followed him outside while Sébastien awkwardly stayed behind.
~~
As it seemed to become routine, Jean was by far the first to arrive at his place, which allowed him to clean up the aftermath of cooking a chicken during the afternoon. He had felt insane, preparing a dish just in case Kevin would come home with him. As he started heating the chicken in the oven again, he knew it wouldn’t be as great as a freshly cooked one, but it would do. Jean assumed Kevin wouldn’t know any better, anyway.
When the doorbell finally rang, Jean cleaned his hands on his jeans and walked up. As expected, an awkward Kevin was waiting for him.
“Come in, I made Poulet à la Moutarde—“
Just as Jean opened his mouth, Kevin began talking as well: “I need you to know, I am sorry—“
They both stopped, staring at each other with a general sense of confusion and helplessness. Finally, Jean sighed and stepped aside. “T’es chiant comme la pluie.[2] At least come in and take off your shoes before you start to beg for forgiveness.”
“That is a new expression,” Kevin mumbled, but stepped in and started untying his laces. Jean closed the door and walked back to the kitchen.
“Every night I look up new ways to express how much you annoy me,” he stated, and he could have sworn that it made Kevin chuckle.
Kevin followed Jean to the dining table, but he was extremely restless. Jean managed to at least force him to sit down and eat some food before Kevin went back to his guilt-ridden behaviour. Still, after a few minutes of quiet eating, Kevin started to shove around the food on his plate until he finally took a deep breath and looked directly at Jean.
“I am sorry I was so absent last week. I panicked. And I am sorry that I was even worse before that. I never wanted to shut you out. I just didn’t want to push myself into your life. I wanted you to heal first.”
Jean looked into his water before forcing the words out of his mouth: “I might have healed faster if I had known you cared.”
It was uncomfortable to hear Kevin talk like that. Jean understood what Kevin was trying to do here; Kevin needed to split himself open in order for them to move forward. It was the right thing to do (maybe he shouldn’t change therapists after all), but it was painful nevertheless. Like breaking a bone to reset it properly. So here they sat, over a heated-up chicken in mustard sauce, delicately breaking each other’s bones.
Jean’s sentence had set off a tidal wave of guilt and regret on Kevin’s beautiful face, tearing apart his carefully arranged expression, before he managed to force it back into neutrality. Seeing how Kevin tried to swallow his pain made Jean feel like his own emotions were stabbing him from the inside out. He wanted Kevin to feel his emotions, to break down and build himself up again. He wanted to see Kevin unleashed. However, this time, Jean couldn’t transform his thoughts into anger towards Kevin; instead, they turned to sympathy.
Still, all the sympathy in the world didn’t stop Jean from pressing on: “Kevin, it was horrendous. It felt like you never cared. I thought you didn’t feel anything for me… beyond maybe some misplaced pity.”
Kevin softly cursed and pressed his face into his hands. He remained like this for a moment before he spoke again, without raising his head: “They taught me to be more of a robot than a human being, Jean. It was never about what I felt and only about what I had to do. I had to focus on exy and on how I may appear to the public and nothing else, because that was how life worked. I don’t know how to be a… friend beyond that.” Kevin had kept speaking more and more quickly, his words still growing increasingly shaky. At the end of the sentence, he couldn’t hide the way his voice broke. “Fuck,” he mumbled, pressing his face deeper into his arms.
“Kevin—“ Jean stood in an instant. He wanted to rush to Kevin’s side, but instead, he awkwardly shuffled closer, slow enough for Kevin to move away. Still, Kevin did not move away, and soon, Jean was able to pull him against his chest. Only then did Kevin let go of his face and pressed it against Jean’s chest.
“You were always a master at lying, hm?” Jean tried to go for a light-hearted tone, but whatever Kevin had picked up in this message, it made a sob shatter through his body. Clumsily, Jean pressed a hand against the back of Kevin’s head.
“I had to do it. I don’t regret protecting us,” Kevin finally mumbled. “I just regret that I had managed to convince you that I never loved you.”
The word cut through Jean sharper than any of Riko’s knives had ever managed to.
“Kevin? Wait. Kevin, please look at me.” Jean gently reached for Kevin’s face, held it between his hands and softly forced him to raise his head.
Finally, Kevin looked up at Jean, and Jean had never seen a picture as beautiful. Tears hung in the long eyelashes and glimmered in the green eyes, but it somehow made Kevin look even more angelic, like a painting of a suffering yet gorgeous saint. The deep green shone with that strange emotion that Jean could maybe name now: love, devotion, adoration.
“I’ve always loved you,” Jean whispered, and how blessed he was to see his words affecting Kevin: the way his breath hitched, how his mouth fell open in surprise and how his pupil visibly dilated. How the glimmer of hopeful love broke into an inferno of passion.
Kevin said nothing, just stared at Jean as if he were his saviour, so Jean chose the next words: “Kevin, can I kiss you now?”
The eagerness with which Kevin nodded would have made him look silly under any other circumstances, but right now it was endearing. Jean breached the distance between them and kissed Kevin again.
It was perfect. This time, Jean’s body allowed itself to relax into the kiss. There was no need to push Kevin away; there was no need to keep a carefully constructed distance. Instead, Jean could kiss Kevin like he had dreamed of kissing him for over a decade: with devotion and no fear.
Kevin was easy to kiss; he reacted perfectly pliant yet never passive, following Jean’s movements like he knew what Jean would do before Jean even knew it himself, not unlike how he behaved on an exy court. Jean kept gently holding Kevin’s face, but when Kevin reached out to hold onto his waist, a wave of desire to devour Kevin washed over Jean.
“Is this okay?” he mumbled against Kevin’s lips when he moved his hands to Kevin’s chest. Kevin answered with another uncoordinated nod and threw himself back into the kiss, pressing his body into Jean’s hands.
Jean couldn’t tell who made the first move, but he suddenly found himself being pulled into Kevin’s lap. It allowed them to kiss more deeply, now closer in height, and with every taste of Kevin’s mouth, Jean felt the heat in his stomach rise. He would have been ashamed by how quickly the kiss moved into a sloppy make-out session, complete with him immodestly licking into Kevin’s mouth and rutting against the body beneath him, if not for the desperation with which Kevin met every single one of his movements. It felt as if Kevin had waited for this moment just as long and severely as Jean had.
With a very punctuated roll of his hips, Jean pressed himself against Kevin, feeling the hardness in Kevin’s pants and the way they rocked against each other. It made Kevin moan loudly, and Jean would do anything to hear this again, but he also knew that he had only got the permission for a kiss. So instead of repeating the movement, he used his hands on Kevin’s chest to gently press him back.
It took Jean a moment to arrive back in his body. It felt like he had been split open, and the only thing that would complete him would be merging with Kevin’s body. He felt himself shake, as if his body was going through acute withdrawal. At least it looked like Kevin wasn’t doing a lot better. Kevin’s chest was heaving as if he had finished playing a full game, his lips were kiss-swollen and shimmering with spit, and there was a beautiful dark blush painting his face.
Kevin didn’t say anything, but his heavy-lidded eyes were dark and fixated on Jean like he wanted to eat him alive. It made Jean shiver. He had not always been good with being an object of desire, but with Kevin, the clench in his stomach couldn’t be attributed to fear.
“Sorry—“, Jean said, his voice rough. Just the sound of it made the blush on Kevin’s face deepen.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Kevin mumbled. Interestingly enough, his words sounded slightly different, with an Irish tilt to them. Jean had thought that Kevin had completely lost his accent years ago, but here it was. Hearing it felt like coming home.
“Do you… I can quickly put the food away, and then we can meet in the bedroom.”
Jean wanted to take the words back as soon as he saw Kevin freeze. Jean regretted his bravery fuelled by arousal, he should have understood that whatever they were doing, it was a delicate and breakable thing.
“That was a suggestion!” He quickly rectified it. “Kevin, just a proposal.”
“Sorry. No, we can. I can see—“, Kevin gestured to their laps, where Jean especially was still visibly hard.
“Kevin.” Jean leaned forward, gently cupping Kevin’s face again. He waited for a few moments until Kevin found the strength to look into Jean’s eyes. Jean stayed quiet for a moment and took his time reading Kevin’s face. The blush was still there, and the soft emotion as well, but he was able to point out the tell-tale signs of Kevin’s anxiety building up. He could all but see the way Kevin’s thoughts were racing.
“Do you want me to leave?” he finally asked but he didn’t even manage to finish the sentence before Kevin shook his head, his breath hitching with desperation.
“Then I will stay. Are you okay?” Jean made sure that his words were soft, gentle.
Kevin gave a slow nod as if trying to convince himself. Bit by bit, the tension melted out of his body until it felt to Jean as if he was holding the weight of Kevin’s head all alone.
“I just thought…”, Kevin mumbled, “that you may have wanted… it.”
“I may have wanted that, yes,” Jean admitted. His own desire was come-and-go sometimes, a fickle thing influenced by anything from a certain perfume to the feeling of sheets, but he really had wanted to take Kevin to his bed. “But this here is not only about me. It is about us. We can do whatever you want, whenever you want.”
Kevin gave a big sigh as if these words were the worst thing that Jean could have said. “Here is the thing,” Kevin continued. He was speaking very properly and calmly, as if he were reading off an announcement. No Irish melody to any of his words; another appearance of The Kevin Day. “I don’t know if I ever truly want… To have sex. I think I may want it. I see the appeal. With you. Especially with you. And I don’t want to disappoint you. But before, I never really… enjoyed much of it.“
Now it was Jean’s turn to freeze, and Kevin quickly moved to hold onto Jean’s wrist, pulling him in until they were forehead to forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t want to worry you. It wasn’t bad before. It wasn’t like that. It just also wasn’t as great as most people say it should be. It always felt… performative.”
“I understand,” Jean gently said, although his understanding felt somewhat limited. It didn’t matter; he understood the main ideas. “You don’t have to pretend with me, remember?”
The sentence made Kevin smile, and Jean could not care about anything else.
They ended up cleaning up the food and the rest of the kitchen together, although it was mostly Jean doing the cleaning and Kevin complaining that the organisation of Jean’s kitchen made no sense, as if he had ever cooked something more complex than a simple rice dish. At last, Jean asked Kevin not to go back to the hotel, which made Kevin nearly grin with joy. So, Kevin stayed the night, lamenting about the taste of Jean’s toothpaste and how there was no satin pillow on the bed to protect his hair. At some point during the tirade of complaints, Jean had to tackle Kevin and kiss him until he stopped talking. It was an extremely enjoyable way to shut Kevin up, and Jean hoped he would get the chance to do so many more times. Nothing had ever tasted as sweet as kissing the smile off of Kevin’s face. Kevin actually giggled when Jean pressed him into the pillows. After some more kisses and another waiting period until Jean’s erection finally went down, they turned off the lights and just held each other while staring at the faint gleam of the glow-in-the-dark stars over Jean’s bed.
Kevin, of course, complained that the stars were not arranged correctly until Jean threatened to kick him out. Eventually, Kevin stopped bitching about everything, and Jean got ready to sleep by pressing his face into Kevin’s naked chest, finally breathing in Kevin’s skin unrestricted.
“We need to discuss how to keep going,” Kevin mumbled into the darkness. Jean could have sworn that he was able to hear the racing of Kevin’s anxious thoughts and simply pulled Kevin closer.
“Some day, we should. But we don’t have to worry right now. We are free. We are safe. We have time.” Jean answered in French.
“We have time…” Kevin repeated as if this was a surprise to him. Maybe it was.
~~
In the morning, Jean had to fight Kevin to make him get up, a challenge that was still new to him, considering the Nest hadn’t allowed them to laze around. These days, however, Kevin seemed extremely fond of idling around. On an ordinary day, Jean would have done anything to encourage Kevin’s newfound laziness, but unfortunately, Kevin was still Kevin Day. And Kevin Day had responsibilities beyond Jean. Thus, he still had to pick up his things at the hotel and drive to Phoenix to get to his 2 pm exy training on time. After a quick shower, Kevin left with a to-go cup of Jean’s favourite tea and wearing Jean’s old USC hoodie. The warm red looked good on him.
Only after Kevin was gone, Jean found a note in his cursive handwriting pinned to the fridge: “Pourquoi ne pas simplement vivre?”[3]
~~
They had tried their best, but they hadn’t been able to meet each other in the two weeks between the book club meetings. Kevin had an extremely strict schedule of training, press work, and weekly calls with Neil, which were apparently so holy that not even Jean was allowed to get between the two of them. At the same time, Jean had been busy for a whole week helping Cat and Laila move—he had been shocked by the amount of stuff two people could own—so he hadn’t found time to drive to Phoenix either. These days, Jean hoped that his relationship with Kevin was stable enough to survive him not running after Kevin. The security felt foreign, yet comforting. Still, they had called every night—except when it was ‘Kevin and Neil’ night, of course. Jean had spent most evenings cooking meals he hoped Kevin would enjoy while talking about books and exy, about nightmares and dreams, and about meeting friends and maybe travelling to Europe. They were still careful, did not dare to call whatever they had a relationship and none of them spoke of ‘dating’, but they know that there was a shared understanding of their feelings. So, instead of discussing their relationship, they spent a lot of time catching up, finding their shared footing again. It wasn’t always easy; sometimes the phone calls ended with helplessness or angry silence, but it was better than not trying at all. And every night, despite their discussions and minor fights, Jean managed to fall asleep easily, knowing that Kevin was safe.
On the Tuesday of the book club, Kevin had skipped his training to be in LA earlier, surprising Jean (and by extension Jeremy, who had come over for lunch). Luckily, Jeremy had been delighted to see Kevin. After a single but long and painful conversation, Jeremy had let go of most of his inhibitions concerning Kevin and Jean. Instead, he had exhibited quite impressive levels of trust in Jean and his ability to figure out what would be right for him. And now, surprised by Kevin’s sudden appearance, it seemed as if Jeremy had been even happier than Jean to meet Kevin again. Whatever tense relationship Jean and Kevin had shared, it had spilled over onto Jeremy. He, too, was glad to have Kevin properly back in his life it seemed. Over lunch, Jean barely got a word in between the two of them discussing the exy season, professional as well as on the college level, but it didn’t even bother him. It was a small sacrifice for his friends’ happiness.
Before going to the book club, the three had decided to visit the coffee shop down the street from the library. This time, the conversation had moved from exy to their general plans for the upcoming year. With blushed cheeks, Kevin announced that he considered letting the contract with his team in Phoenix run out this summer. ‘Not to retire, just to find something else,’ he quickly added. It wasn’t a risky move in theory: for The Kevin Day, even these days, it was more of a question of which teams could afford him rather than which teams wanted him. For just Kevin, it was also a break from routine, though. It also sounded like an admission of his loneliness back in Phoenix, there was no exy-related reason to leave this team, no matter how hard he tried to rationalise it.
“Originally, I wanted to move closer to the East Coast. Maybe closer to my father, or Andrew and Neil—“
“Originally?” Jeremy leaned forward with a smile brighter than the sun.
“Well, yes. When I still thought that I had missed every possible chance with Jean ever.”
The sentence made Jean, who was still not used to be more than a throw-away thought in Kevin’s mind, blush. Jeremy laughed out loud: “Kevin Day, you are crazy if you think that you ever missed a single chance with Jean.”
“I let you know that there were many missed chances; thank you very much!” Jean interrupted, but to no avail. It just made Jeremy laugh again. Kevin however sent him a soft look of genuine regret, although this was very short-lived when Jeremy continued to talk.
“Of course. Which is why you always brought up Kevin and kept all his postcards and why you sometimes stared at pictures of him, and may I remind you of the one time we had sex and—“ Jean all but leapt across the table to put a hand over Jeremy’s mouth.
He really did not want to make a scene, especially in public, but he felt the need to stop Jeremy: “And thank you again. I think the point you made was very clear—did you just lick my hand?”
Jeremy laughed unabashedly behind Jean’s hand, and now, even Kevin grinned a bit too cheekily for Jean’s taste. However, luckily, Kevin did not ask any questions, and Jeremy provided no further insight into his and Jean’s hits and misses of their past sex journey. Jean softly shook his head in mock disbelief and then carefully let go of Jeremy. After a moment of consideration, he moved the conversation back to the book club and regretted it when he let a comment drop about how he wondered whether or not Sébastien was actually illiterate.
“I was wondering that. Not the illiteracy. Why do you always antagonise Sébastien that much?” Kevin interrupted him.
Jean gave a long-suffering sigh. “Kevin Day, to be as insensible as you are. He wants to date you so badly.”
“Ah.” Kevin grinned. “I know that.”
Jean stared at Kevin, taken completely off guard. In Jean’s head, Kevin was completely incapable of understanding that people, especially men, could want him. Jean hoped he at least managed to cover his emotions, but based on Jeremy’s giggles, he was unsuccessful. It should have been uncomfortable; the simple art of joking around, especially with Kevin, was still new to Jean and he was easily embarrassed when he felt left out of a joke, but he could see the kindness in Jeremy’s eyes. This wasn’t humiliation; it was Jeremy overflowing with happiness for his friends, in a way that made him look silly.
Then, Jeremy spoke with the smugness of someone who had achieved everything they ever wanted in life: “It is time you learn that Jean has always been a very possessive and protective boyfriend.”
“And this is my sign to go—“ Jean stood up, but he did not try to hide the amusement on his face. He loved these men, both of them, so much. And by God, if they didn’t know it based on the mix of self-satisfaction and delight on both of their faces.
~~
“And while I think Proust was… bitterly aware of all the horrendous experiences that can come with being human, like betrayal and death, the novel highlights that art can come out on top at the end of the day. There is jealousy and desire, self-doubt and mourning, but we can find solace in the arts,” Jean summarised his takeaway from the book. “And I liked it. It was a long collection, but it felt… like a real book. The length felt appropriate, like the painful wait was worth the hopeful ending. It felt like a valuable message.”
Kevin looked at him, his green eyes overflowing with pride and love. For a moment, it seemed like he would allow Jean to have the final words of the meeting, but then he spoke up again: “I still like Camus better.”
“Of course, you would say that, you depressed bastard,” Jean teased him, overexaggerating his annoyance, and the show made Kevin laugh before he picked up his edition of the Proust book. He opened it on a page marked with a blue note.
“Glad you said that, because this reminded me of us,” Kevin said and read, “Il y a dans notre âme des choses auxquelles nous ne savons pas combien nous tenons. Ou bien, si nous vivons sans elles, c’est parce que nous remettons de jour en jour, par peur d’échouer ou de souffrir, d’entrer en leur possession.”[4]
“Us?” Zoulikha asked in a fake scandalised voice before Jean had any chance to respond. For a quick moment, the familiar panic threatened to flare up, and Jean wondered if he should just get up and leave. Being presented like this in front of a group of people who, in the end were more strangers than friends, still felt uncomfortable. Admitting to the years of yearning and pain wasn’t an easy feat, even after he had shared many of his memories with Kevin. But Jean decided to be brave and lifted his head, looked towards Kevin. Kevin, who seemed slighty nervous, but even more so, uncomplicatedly happy. Jean could never not love him for that. This was Kevin being happy, yet this was also Kevin being painfully vulnerable, and it would be easy to run. But Jean had decided to stay with Kevin, so he stayed, despite Henri’s poorly phrased questions nagging him.
1. "Trans. 1: “We find it innocent to desire and atrocious for others to desire.”". [↺ go back]
2. "Trans. 2: You are as annoying as the rain.". [↺ go back]
3. "Trans. 3: “Why not just live?”". [↺ go back]
4. "Trans. 4: “There are things in our souls that we do not realise how much we value. Or, if we live without them, it is because we put off acquiring them day after day, for fear of failure or suffering.”". [↺ go back]
Book: A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust (1927)