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It's been seven months since Jean came to California.
Seven whole months.
It’s a new record for Jeremy – a horrible, terrible, awful record that he has no wish of ever repeating, and frankly, would’ve loved to end five months ago if possible.
Because seven months is how long Jean’s stayed with them without smiling.
Ever. Not once.
Jeremy’s both astounded and morbidly fascinated by it. He loves smiling – everyone tells him how he always has a smile on his face. Sara’s even told him how he has different trademark smiles – that she’s identified at least five so far. Jeremy doesn’t really notice the difference, but Sara always squeals when she sees one of them.
Regardless of his cheerful disposition, though, Jeremy takes his role as Captain of the Trojans very seriously. His teammates are officially under his care. So, if one of them is hurt or unhappy, he’ll do everything in his power to try and cheer them up.
Ergo it’s no mystery that when someone finally brought up the fact that Jean never seemed to smile, the observation stuck to him like glue. He watched and watched and watched and saw they were right – for all the Trojans’ frivolity and general cheerfulness, Jean never once cracked a smile around them.
Upon discovering this, Jeremy vowed right then and there to right this terrible wrong in the world. He would do absolutely everything in his power to make Jean smile – and so far, he’s failing miserably at it.
At first, he’d tried physical humor, which he figured would be easy enough. Because, unfortunately, Jeremy has a knack for being a rather clumsy human being off the Exy court. He runs into walls, trips over things on the floor, and bangs knees into desks. His mother has always said it’s because he doesn’t pay enough attention to himself – he’s always so focused on others.
His lack of grace is a good-natured source of humor for the rest of the team, who are now familiar enough with their captain’s antics to always keep bandages and ice packs and things of that sort on hand. So, he fully expected Jean to join in on their chuckling the first couple of times he went down around him.
Instead, Jean floored him with the way he furrowed his brow. How he’d knelt close to Jeremy and offered a hand, asking if he was all right. How he told Jeremy he should treasure his body more and be kind to it – to focus on better ways of taking care of himself.
(Of course, he’d ended the caring speech by telling Jeremy how he’d be useless on the court otherwise, but Jeremy always likes to block that part out in his memory.)
Jeremy, of course, had laughed it all off and chalked the experience down to a one-time thing. And yet, weirdly, it wasn’t. From that moment on, whenever Jeremy happened to be clumsy around Jean, he would find himself facing a heartily displeased Frenchman. The somber backliner would wrap his bloody knees or ice his wounds while chiding him in a quiet but foreboding tone that had Jeremy listening solemnly.
It happened so often that Jean started taking pre-emptive measures. He’d halt Jeremy before he could run into something or catch him before he could take a tumble, his strong arms wrapping around Jeremy’s smaller waist and hauling him against him. It would take Jeremy’s breath away each time. (From the surprise, of course, not from…anything else). In fact, to Jeremy’s disbelief, since Jean joined the team, he’s has had less bruises on him than he’s ever had in his entire life.
So, needless to say, he scratched physical humor off the list.
Next, he tried wordplay. For a couple of weeks, he inundated Jean with knock-knock jokes, dumb playground jokes, and puns. Bombarded him with rhymes and stories and classic one-liners. Even his teammates joined in on the fun, reading him kid jokes printed on popsicle sticks or memes they found online.
Jean ignored the entire team for three weeks straight.
He thinks it may have been the closest he’s ever come to being kicked out by a roommate. Well, technically, Jean did kick him out after that one joke – Have you heard about the French cheese factory that exploded lately? There was nothing left but de brie! – but only for one night. Jeremy kind of got the message that it wasn’t working after that.
So, he tried self-deprecating humor next. Again, this was relatively easy for him – Jeremy has no problems putting himself down if it will cheer others up. He’ll make fun of his surfer boy accent, his frosted tips, the way he wears socks with sandals, or is so short that people sometimes mistake him for a middle-schooler. He’ll tell people about how he was so dumb that he made it halfway through an entire psychology class before realizing they weren’t talking about the history course he signed up for.
But when he tried this with Jean, the man just frowned. He told him he liked Jeremy’s accent and that his hair looked nice. That being small can be handy sometimes and that his fashion choices are no one’s business but his own. That Jeremy’s an incredibly smart person, and one tiny mistake doesn’t change that fact.
Safe to say, it was a stage that didn’t last very long, mainly because Jeremy didn’t know what to do with all the honest, straightforward compliments Jean kept giving him. After all, Jeremy was the one who usually said them – he didn’t know how to handle someone saying it back.
He thought about doing bodily humor next – something immature and stupid like farting or burping or pointing out his love handles, stretch marks, or stinky feet. But something in him cringed whenever he considered showing these to Jean. He had the feeling he might actually die if he was to do something as embarrassing as let out an enormous fart in front of his sophisticated and handsome roommate.
To have Jean look at him with utter disgust or disdain…well…
Jeremy swallows. He just can’t do it.
So here he is, running out of ideas after seven months of experimentation. Wondering what in the world it will take to see his somber backliner’s full mouth turn up its corners in the semblance of a smile.
Faced with such a daunting task, he does what any other typical college student would do in the situation – he procrastinates.
He decides to completely ignore his quest in favor of taking Jean to his favorite candy store instead. It’s only open seasonally but has been around since the 1920s, and everything inside of it is handmade – especially its saltwater taffy. The long, stretchy confection rolls round and round in the machinery in the shop window, bright colors twisting and folding in on itself before it’s cut. Jeremy could spend hours watching them make it, the process is so mesmerizing.
And the flavors – there’s so many! Jeremy’s made it his life mission to try all 200 of them before he dies. But in the meantime, he definitely has a few favorites – like Amaretto, Butter Rum, Chocolate Cherry, Orange Cream, S’mores, Pancakes n’ Maple, and Key Lime Pie.
(Okay, so maybe he has more than a few).
That’s why when Jean told him he’d never tried saltwater taffy before, Jeremy nearly fell out of his seat. From everything Kevin’s told him, he knows the Ravens had a rigorous diet and that sugar was most certainly not on the list. But it still destroys him sometimes how Jean’s missed out on some of the simplest little pleasures in life.
So as soon as the weekend hit, Jeremy dragged them both out of the dorms and headed to his best-kept secret on the pier. He only winces a little when they walk through the shop door, and Jean’s nose immediately turns up with disdain. He eyes the many treats around them warily – as if Jeremy had just taken him to a poisoner’s shop instead of a magical place full of wonder and delight.
Jeremy sighs to himself a little as the shop owner rounds the corner.
“Jeremy!” he grins as soon as he sees him.
“Mr. Hernandez!” Jeremy grins back and shakes the man’s hand.
“I’ll bet I can guess what you’re here for,” Mr. Hernandez winks at them.
“So you have it?” Jeremy asks him, brimming with excitement.
Mr. Hernandez smiles sadly. “I did,” he begins, “but I’m sorry to say I just sold my last batch to a couple kids who came in before you.”
“Nooooo,” Jeremy groans, his face a picture of mock grief.
See, there’s one little secret about this shop that he didn’t tell Jean about. They’re the only old-fashioned candy store he knows to have perfected a recipe for BBQ Chip saltwater taffy – the perfect balance of sweet, salt, and spice that he just knows Jean will love.
But because it’s so popular and the recipe so secret, Mr. Hernandez only makes a certain amount each day – and once it’s gone, it’s gone.
“Can I get you boys something else?” Mr. Hernandez asks him instead, eyes on Jeremy’s crestfallen face.
It seems Jeremy is doomed to fail Jean again – just as he’s failed him in so many other areas of his life right now. But he tries to buck up and mask his disappointment from Mr. Hernandez as he goes about picking some other flavors for the two of them to try.
Jean offers no opinions on his selections either way.
When they exit the shop, Jeremy feels utterly defeated. He pops a piece of Buttered Popcorn taffy in his mouth and groans both from the delicious flavor and the bittersweet mockery of knowing it’s not what he came here for.
“So,” Jean speaks up for the first time today with his slight accent. “This is what you wanted me to try, right?”
Jeremy nods miserably.
Jean tilts his head. “Then why do you seem so upset about it?”
Jeremy sighs. “Well, because it is…but it also isn’t.”
Jean furrows his brow. “Explain?”
Jeremy huffs out another breath before launching into it. “Okay, so, I really wanted you to try this one flavor of saltwater taffy they have because it’s this perfect blend of salt and sweet, and I know you don’t like sweets that much, so I thought it’d be the perfect flavor for you to try, but they ran out of it before we got here. And it’s not like we can wait for them to make some more because they only make so much of it each day. And I don’t want to drag you all the way back down here tomorrow to try again, so I got some other taffy for you to try but…” he shrugs, shoving another piece of Buttered Popcorn in his mouth and pouting, “…it won’t be the same.”
“Ah,” Jean says in response, his answer short and succinct in comparison to Jeremy’s hot mess of an explanation before he falls oddly silent.
Well, okay, it’s not really that odd. Jean is quiet most of the time – Jeremy’s the one who usually talks nonstop.
But it’s a little hard to talk when you have salt water taffy in your mouth, so Jeremy chews on the delicious piece morosely in that awkward silence, just waiting for Jean to say something else – even if it’s how Jeremy’s an idiot, or a child, or he can’t believe he’d take him to something dumb as a candy shop, or-
“May I have a taste?”
Jeremy blinks.
Okay, that definitely wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
“Yes, of course!” he shoves the box forward, wondering if it somehow seemed like he’d bought the taffy only for himself.
But Jean ignores his outstretched hand, reaching long, graceful fingers over until he can clasp onto Jeremy’s chin and tip his head up.
Jeremy’s eyes open wide. His heart starts beating wildly in his chest.
Then Jean swoops down and neatly captures Jeremy’s lips with his own.
It takes everything Jeremy has not to drop the saltwater taffy box on the ground.
Jean claims his mouth with practiced elegance, Jeremy opening to him without a second thought. Jean dips his tongue inside, and Jeremy moans, long and loud as he sucks on his tongue. The two of them duel playfully, ducking and weaving their heads together in a practiced dance before Jeremy feels Jean pull back.
It takes him a moment or two to open his eyes, the pleasure of the kiss still singing through his veins. When he finally does open them, he really does drop the box this time.
Because on Jean’s face, right in front of him, is the tiniest hint of a smile. Just a slight upturn of his lips in one corner as he licks his lips and tells Jeremy, “You’re right. It is very sweet.”
Dumbfounded, Jeremy stares at him a moment. Then, awkwardly, he stoops down to the ground and snags another piece, chewing on it rapidly before swallowing the candy painfully down his throat.
Jean watches him with one eyebrow raised.
Though he knows his face probably looks like it's sunburnt, it’s so red, Jeremy somehow manages to maintain eye contact as he offers, “Would you like to try another?”
And feels butterflies erupt in his stomach when that smile spreads all the way across Jean’s perfect lips. He steps closer to Jeremy, cupping his face between both of his hands and whispering “Oui” over his lips before he crushes their mouths together once more.
Mission accomplished, Jeremy thinks dazedly as he pulls Jean in even closer, multi-colored pieces of candy encircling them.
He thinks it just might be his favorite record ever broken.