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It starts out as a joke.
“I know, you love me.”, Jeremy grins when he brings Jean chicken noodle soup from the store when he’s ill.
Jean chokes on the soup and gives his best effort to glare at Jeremy, but Jeremy just laughs and put another pack of tissues onto Jean’s nightstand.
-
“I hate you.”, Jean growls when he’s on the court on all fours, panting heavily after running through all the drills without a pause because he complained about Trojan drills being too easy one too many times. “Nah, you love me.”, Jeremy teases and sticks out his hand to help him up. “Come on, Hulk. Let’s get you some water.”
-
“He loves me.”, Jeremy slurrs and giggles, “…looooooooves me, Alvarez, I tell you.” He hooks his arm around Jean’s shoulder and Jean holds him up, patting his chest. Alvarez chuckles and looks at Jean with a mix of amusement and concern. “Maybe you should bring him to bed.” Jean agrees and ends up carrying a very excited and happy-drunk Jeremy back to their dorm, fireman style.
-
It goes on like that for months. The jokes stop weirding Jean out. He also doesn’t flinch anymore when someone comes close to him and doesn’t startle when someone laughs. He learns that it’s alright to eat candy from time to time, or have hobbies and things for himself.
He learns about softness again. Soft shirts, soft pillows, soft touches, soft words.
He gets a therapy dog. His name is Teddy, he’s a golden lab and he sleeps in bed with him. Jeremy and Teddy get along perfectly and Jeremy feeds Teddy chicken when he thinks Jean doesn’t see.
Jeremy is so present, and he’s like a warm whirlwind in Jean’s life, all smiles and friendly words and encouragements.
He helps Jean with his english assignment. He lends Jean his Harry Potter-books and makes him watch the Lord of the Rings movies (Jean loves them). He sometimes brings Jean stuff from the store, with “I thought you might like it” as a reason. He lets Jean sleep with his head on his shoulder when they’re waiting for their flight. He runs his fingers through Jean’s hair to help him fall asleep after a nightmare.
-
“Did you walk Teddy already?”, Jean asks one evening when he comes home from a particularly long class and the lab is fast asleep in his bed while Jeremy is brooding over an assignment at his desk.
Jeremy looks up and flashes him a lopsided smile. “Yeah.”
“…thank you.”, Jean says after a moment of quiet, a bit taken aback by Jeremy’s never-ending kindness.
“Don’t worry, I know you love me.” Jeremy flashes him another smile an turns back to his assignment.
Jean stands in the doorway, looking from Teddy to Jeremy and back, and then, before he can lose his courage, says: “What if I do love you?”
Jeremy turns around so quickly in his chair that he almost falls over, and looks at him with wide eyes.
A stupid, nervous laughter makes its way up Jean’s throat, and that makes Jeremy’s expression go from surprised to a big, happy smile.
“You idiot! I’ve been trying to flirt with you for ages!” The smile turns into laughter and Jean can’t help but laugh, too.
“Really? I never noticed! I just thought you were being nice!”
Jeremy facepalms and laughs so hard that his shoulders start shaking. “I told you I liked your abs once!”
“I thought that was just… I don’t know, sportsmanship!” Jean drops his bag and is bold enough to take two steps towards Jeremy and reach out to take his hand a little insecurely. Jeremy meets him halfway.
Jeremy is still laughing but now he looks up at Jean, fingers curling into his. “Well… I’m glad we talked about it, then.”
“Yeah, me too.”, Jean says, and then they just stand there for a moment, still chuckling and holding hands.