Work Text:
Jeremy was laughing, and Jean tried not to be transfixed. Jeremy laughed all the time; it shouldn’t be that special. And yet, it was. Infectious, too. The two people Jeremy was talking to at the moment clearly felt that.
As Jean watched from across the parking lot, Jeremy gave his small audience an exaggerated shrug and ran a hand through his hair. It had gotten longer lately, and had taken to falling over Jeremy’s forehead and around his ears. Jean privately suspected that Jeremy had let it grow just so Jean would have to brush it back from his face. Jean was not complaining about this, per se.
The dashboard clock showed Jean the time, and he looked back towards Jeremy, whose bright smile and relaxed posture said he wasn’t planning on moving anytime soon. He had gotten caught up, as he often did, in the company of people — any people, really. Jeremy, unlike Jean, could start a conversation about anything with anyone at any time. The only problem here was this specific time.
Jean reached over the gear shift and tapped the horn. “You can’t be late to your own practice!” he called out the open window.
Jeremy slid into the driver’s seat a few moments later, having made a swift, but genuine apology to his newest acquaintances, who had no practice to make in a half hour.
“Sorry,” Jeremy said. “Thanks for keeping me on track.” He pressed an iced coffee into Jean’s hand and placed his own in the cup holder so he could strap in and start the car. The coffee run was an indulgence, for sure. There was a Starbucks on USC’s campus, so there was no need to go fifteen minutes out of their way in both directions just to sample this particular iced coffee. But Jeremy insisted that this coffee was better, and Jean was happy to spend some time alone with him before being bombarded by all of the Trojans at once. Even now, their energy was sometimes a lot. Jean was grateful for the coffee. He was also grateful for the pleasant hum of the car under him, for the wind in his hair that took the edge off the heat, for the bright California sun that warmed his skin as he let one arm dangle lazily out the window. It never got old. With Jeremy’s fingers tangled around his other hand, Jean thought he might be able to stay here forever and be content, watching palm trees and pedestrians as they passed them, never really arriving anywhere, but always headed towards something. After so long being trapped, even this mundane kind of motion was liberating.
The pressure of Jeremy’s hand disappeared in favor of taking hold of the iced coffee, and Jean took the opportunity to drink his own. There was definitely more ice than coffee in the plastic cup, something Jean understood on an economic level but never approved of in regards to coffee shops. Laila always purposely asked for her coffee “cold, but without ice”, which was an option, he supposed, but it sounded too pretentious to say out loud when he was faced with a barista.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Jeremy asked, turning down the radio. Jean was impressed he had kept silent for that long. Maybe something was on his mind.
“Sure,” Jean said. The iced coffee really was good.
“Can I ask you a question about the Nest?”
Oh. That would explain the silence. Jean took another sip and briefly considered how this conversation might ruin the so-far very enjoyable trip. Probably better to just rip off the Band-Aid.
“Yes.”
“Were you allowed junk food?”
Jean nearly spit out his coffee from his sudden, uncontrollable laughter. Of all the questions…
“No!” he replied, letting the “o” drag out. “Definitely not.”
”So did you just, like, not eat a potato chip for ten years?” Jeremy sounded genuinely distressed by the prospect. Only Capitaine Soleil would have this particular kind of concern about Jean’s past.
”No, no,” Jean assured him. “I’ve eaten potato chips.”
”Well now that I’ve fed them to you, you have,” Jeremy said, practically pouting.
“I ate potato chips at Evermore. After I officially became a Raven, something like...four or five times?”
Jeremy put on his turn signal harder than was probably necessary. “Are you kidding me?”
”Not at all.”
Jeremy shook his head, a frown line creeping its way between his eyebrows. “I will never understand,” he decided.
Jean wanted to remind the left side of the car that nutrition freak Kevin Day had probably eaten potato chips exactly once since leaving Edgar Allen, and living with hyper-focused athletes made for very little junk food anyway, but Jeremy’s passionate disapproval was just too funny.
“It’s not that complicated,” Jean told him. “You know how in prison, cigarettes are like currency?”
“Sure.” Jeremy pulled the sun visor down to block the afternoon glare.
“That’s what junk food was like in the Nest.”
“Seriously?” Jeremy was still squinting.
“Oh, yeah.” Jean put his coffee in the other cupholder and reached above them to take Jeremy’s sunglasses out of the container that popped out of the ceiling. “If you could smuggle that stuff in from a dining hall or a classmate, you had power.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Understandable, though. Supply and demand.”
“True,” Jeremy allowed. He muttered a quick thanks as Jean placed the sunglasses over Jeremy’s freckled nose. “What would you trade them for? Wouldn’t you just eat them?”
“Sometimes.” Jean had never thought it worth the risk to try and take part in as obvious and traceable a rebellion as smuggling in forbidden snacks himself. Better and more satisfying to teach Kevin French behind Riko’s back. More secret. More personal. More meaningful. Not to mention a more plausible deniability. “People traded them for chores mostly, privacy, homework.”
“Like, you do my problem set and I’ll get you chocolate covered pretzels?”
“Chocolate covered?” Jeremy really didn’t understand the depth of the shortage, did he? “That’s worth two problem sets at least!”
Jeremy laughed into the wind, raising his eyebrows in an exaggerated expression. “Oh my!”
“But yes,” Jean continued, “that’s basically how it worked. You had to be careful, though, in case anyone hanging around decided to rat you out.”
“Why would anyone rat you out?” Jeremy wanted to know.
“There were rewards for ratting, too.”
“Of course.” There was a moment of tenser silence. Then the song changed on the radio, and with it, Jeremy’s good mood returned. They were getting better at not letting Evermore ruin everything it touched, diminishing its power to bring things screeching to a halt. “So what’s the one snack you’d do anything for?”
“Warm chocolate chip cookies.”
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “That was fast.”
“Thea managed to get them once.” Jean pushed his palm against the wind out the window. “I have no idea how. She wouldn’t tell me. Merde, they were amazing.”
“What’d you have to do for them?”
“Keep Riko out of his and Kevin’s room for three hours. One for each cookie.”
Jeremy looked confused for a moment, before he remembered how rare both privacy and monogamy were in the Nest. “How’d you manage it?”
Jean shrugged. “Did drills till my arms fell off. Didn’t kill enough time, though, so I picked a fight with him, too.”
Jeremy’s frown returned. Jean was not having it.
“They were warm, Jeremy. The chocolate was melty.”
Jeremy allowed his smile to peek through the clouds in his expression. “Ok, ok. Who am I to judge?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m going to get you warm chocolate chip cookies for your birthday,” Jeremy declared proudly.
“Fuck my birthday,” Jean protested, “how about tomorrow?”
“What will you give me for them?” Jeremy asked. His smile had morphed into a wicked grin while Jean wasn’t paying attention.
Jean matched the expression and looked over at Jeremy, who was staring hard through the windshield, grin even wider. “What do you want?”
“Well now that I know you’ll do anything…”
“Yeah, get creative, Knox. I’ll be disappointed if you let my cookies go for anything less than they’re worth.”
“Not your cookies yet,” Jeremy reminded him.
Jean crossed his arms across his chest. “As good as.”
“Cocky bastard.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
Practice was going to be endless today.
“Eyes on the road, Jeremy.”