Chapter Text
When Kiara sees a blonde boy in her mirror she does what any self respecting seven year old would do - she smiles and knocks on the glass. He has blue eyes and shoulders hunched up high and distinctly doesn't smile back - just frowns a lot. One blink, and he's gone.
There’s been a pain in her head for weeks now, like her brain has been shuffling or splitting. It’s made her wince and scowl at bright lights and complain incessantly - her parents have begun to exchange worried looks.
But then she sees the boy and the pain eases and she can breathe.
Then he disappears.
The pain stays away, just like he does.
She thinks she sees flashes of him every now and then. Kneeling on flagstones she doesn’t recognise in a street where all the houses are crammed together, each wall shared with its neighbour’s and doors straight onto the sidewalk. She can hear dogs barking, children shrieking, but then she blinks and she’s back in her third grade class.
There’s a flash of white blonde hair, at the playground - a ghost of a boy hanging upside down on the monkey bars, arms trailing towards the ground. Blink. She’s in a house that’s not hers, one whose door opens straight into the living room and the kitchen is forgotten at the back. The TV blares and so does some woman, shouting over it. The room is too small for all the occupants. Blink.
Her teachers praise her overactive imagination as she starts recording the stories. Her parents joke that she shouldn’t be allowed to stray unobserved on Netflix.
It’s unpredictable. It can be months before she sees him again, it can be weeks. It can be twice in the same day - watch him kicking a soccer ball around a muddy field, breath billowing in the sharply cold air. Sees a flash of him hunched over an exercise book, sat on a bed in a too-small, too-dark room before he kicks the door shut without looking up, cutting himself off from the raised voices down the stairs.
She's nine when she tries to go to sleep in her lilac painted room, the dusky light painting the room with a soft, warm haze. She blinks and she's in deep blue darkness, moonlight and perhaps the faintest trace of a streetlight shining through the slit between the two doors.
She says, "um," and something in the darkness shifts. Two eyelids open, turn on her.
She knows it's him just like she knows her mom's footsteps. His pale hair is illuminated in the darkness where he sits, crammed into the corner of his closet. He's sitting on a pair of his muddy cleats and it smells sour when she breathes in.
He says, "leave me alone," and his words are different to hers, blunter. Me sounds like meh .
"I didn't ask to be here," she hisses.
"Shut up," he hisses back. "Don't-"
His whole body tightens, clenches, as there's the sound of footsteps up the stairs.
"I know it was you, you little fucker," it's a snarl. "You think you can get away with this shit in my house-"
She doesn't realise she hasn't taken a breath until he breathes out, the boy, his eyes snapping to her. "Go," he hisses, and she wants to retort that she doesn't know how, that she really wants to go but how -
The moonlight floods in and a voice, lower now, deliberate, says, "hiding, are we?" And a hand reaches in.
She's back in lilac tinted darkness, trying to determine whose fear is whose.
*
Sarah thinks that ten is perhaps too young to have a make up artist as she wriggles to get comfortable in the seat. It's a high bar stool, by virtue of her lack of height, and her legs dangle over the sides, unsupported. Weight runs down the back of her thighs and each leg alternates over which one falls asleep.
"Sit still, honey," Malin encourages with a thin smile. Sarah is of the opinion that they both don't want to be here - Malin's dreams are likely much larger than dabbing concealer onto a wriggling child's face, Sarah's much smaller.
Finally, Malin whisks the cape from around her shoulders, helps her down off the stool and leaves her alone in her room with instructions to sit on her bed and not get her dress dirty.
Malin has just shut the door when the girl steps out of the bathroom. She's dark skinned and scowling, her hair in short braids with multicoloured beads threaded onto the ends. Sarah likes the colour, so at odds with the dark navy dress she has to wear.
The girl says, "you look dumb."
Sarah's hair is in ringlets, there's blush on her cheeks. Sarah thinks privately that she looks pretty, like one of her porcelain faced dolls who she's now too old to play with and instead sits on a shelf above her bedroom door, surveying her kingdom.
"Your hair looks like what I used to have," Sarah shoots back. Then pauses, to relish the moment before the other foot drops. "When I was five ."
The girl is walking slowly around her room, trailing her fingers across the dark wood of her dressing table, pushing her fingertips into the mantelpiece across the fireplace. With one withering look at Sarah, she bends down to examine the iron grate.
"We don't use that," Sarah explains, because she can't have this girl in her room controlling everything. "That's from the olden times."
The girl straightens up, tilts her head to look at the expansive mouldings and cornices framing the room and covering the ceiling.
Her gaze comes back to Sarah and flicks over her navy dress, over the ribbon pulling back the front strands of her curled hair. "You look like you're from the olden times," the girl tells her. "Like a Victorian ghost."
"Well," Sarah grips the top sheet in her hands. "I'm not. I'm real. We even have electricity." The girl walks another few strides, but her footsteps don't make much noise on the worn wooden floorboards. Even Sarah, who moved into this wing when she was five, can't move so soundlessly in her own room. "You're not really here, are you?" She muses. The idea is not strange to her, by now. Since her brain ached and then shifted and something was lost, or maybe gained. There's a boy with sandy beaches and a weird voice, a small, dark house somewhere where it always rains.
The girl shakes her head. "I think I'm still at home."
"Where?"
The girl looks wary, for a moment, like she's not going to tell Sarah her secrets. Whilst she's stood in Sarah's bedroom. It isn't fair, the way everyone is allowed to know everything about her but she's never allowed to know anything.
"Bahamas," the girl says eventually. "Where is this?"
"Norway." And then, because the girl looks confused, "in Europe?"
Something closes in the girl's face, she looks to the side to something Sarah can't see, going very still and quiet. Whatever it is must pass, because she looks back at Sarah. "And you're dressed stupidly because…"
"I'm going to a party," Sarah explains airily. "I'm going to dance with a prince." The crown prince, specifically, but Sarah hasn't quite worked out the nuances.
Cleo grins at that. "A prince? Does that make you a princess?"
Sarah sniffs disdainfully. "Not until we get married," she says primly. "And then, it depends."
"You? Married to a prince?" Cleo's grinning and shaking her head like it's too much to deal with. "Sure."
"Really," Sarah's voice raises because she will be, one day. Hundreds of hours of dance practice can't be for nothing. "I promise I will be."
Cleo is still shaking her head, kicking at the raised edge of the hearth tiles.
"Come back later," Sarah challenges. "You'll see."
Then there's a familiar set of footsteps in the corridor, coming closer. Running full tilt, bouncing off the wall.
"You gotta go," Sarah tells the girl urgently, as she slides from the bed, patent shoes loud on the floor.
The girl looks at her like she has three heads. "They can't see me," she says slowly. Like she's used to doing this.
"You gotta go," Sarah repeats.
The girl rolls her eyes at the dramatics. "Okay." But before she disappears, she says, "I'm Cleo."
"Sarah." She thinks it's to an empty room.
Or not quite empty, as her brother bursts through the door and looks around elaborately. "Who you talking to?" He demands with a wide grin. "You talking to yourself again? I've told dad, you're crazy."
Rafe likes to twist his hands into her ribboned hair and pull.
She thinks of golden beaches.
Later on, she swears she sees a flash of beaded hair under a waiter's arm as she waltzes around the dancefloor.
*
Jean's favourite subject is science because it makes everything make sense. Maths is also good, because he can put the numbers in order and add or subtract or divide but they're still reliable and real and easily explained.
It's less easily explained how he can be at home or in the classroom or one time, sitting on the toilet, and then he's somewhere else entirely - halfway across the world, despite never having been on a plane in his whole entire life.
The brown haired boy smiles widely as Jean appears next to him on the sand. It's cold and wet in Paris so he's wearing waterlogged sneakers, the hems of his too big jeans dripping water down his ankles. The beach is hot, he thinks, expansive and empty enough that he surmises it's early or late in the day.
They're alone, which is unusual. Usually the boy appears next to Jean in class, or Jean appears on the couch next to him and who he presumes is his dad.
The brown haired boy had whispered to Jean once that Jean can't be heard, but whoever's life it is speaks out loud.
"Oh," says the boy. "You heard."
Jean tries to figure it out. "Heard?"
"Yeah," the boy is still grinning. "I just - yelled for you. And you came."
Jean frowns. "I am not a dog."
The boy is unperturbed. "Hi," he says. "I'm John B." He holds out his hand and Jean thinks they're too young to shake hands, but he does it anyway. "Figured we could talk, out here. What timezone are you in?"
Jean blinks. "I am-"
"Jean," John B nods knowingly.
" Jean ," Jean corrects sharply. John B grins at him again. Then, "the French timezone."
John B's eyes bug. "France? Wow. Are you - are you speaking French?"
Jean frowns at the buffoon. "Of course."
"Well - I'm not. That's cool, isn't it?" Then, as Jean looks around at the beach and the sun and the clear blue sea, John B bumps his shoulder against Jean's. Jean hunches away from it. "I'm in Australia. So I'm awake while you're asleep and you're asleep when I'm awake. So you'll only see me in the morning or evening or something. I think I'm a flipped version of British time. I don't know, actually. Maybe you're a few more hours out of it." He frowns pensively. "I'll ask dad."
Jean blinks rapidly. "See you?"
"Yeah," he says cheerfully. "Y'know. Visit, like this," he indicates Jean's body with a lax hand. "Have you met the others?"
"Others?" Jean is still stuck on the fact that this boy is speaking English but he's hearing French. He can see John B's mouth forming the English words but he can hear them in perfect French. It makes his head hurt. He's not very good at English.
"Yeah, there's JJ - he's from England. And Kiara, from America. Cleo, from the Bahamas. And Sarah from Norway, but I haven't met her yet. Cleo says she's some sort of princess or something, but Cleo also told me that I wouldn't get in trouble for drinking rum, so." John B frowns at the historic slight, then brightens again. "And you! They've all been seeing you, too, but you're not very good at seeing us. Maybe you need glasses?"
John B stares as Jean cycles through the seven cycles of grief repeatedly.
"Um," John B breaks the silence. "Am I the first one you've met?"
"What," Jean starts, stops. Licks his lips and frowns and tries to form a coherent sentence. "What is happening?"
A surfer ambles past. "Oh," John B says nonchalantly. "We're all like, linked. Since we were born, or something. Like, here," he presses two fingers to his own temple, forms a gun and mimes pulling the trigger. Laughs as Jean reaches down and yanks his hand away, perturbed even though he can't understand why.
"Why?"
John B's whole body shrugs. His hands spread out in front of him. "'Cause we're Sensates."
Jean plucks at his damp laces and tries to mull it over. "What is that?"
"What we are," John B explains patiently in a manner which makes Jean doubt that John B is top of the class in science. There is no point, evidence or explanation. The explanation cannot be the point. There is no evidence. "Hey," he says, with realisation. "You seem like, super smart. Can you help me with my maths homework?"
"Why?"
"Because that's what we do. We help each other out. Cleo is like, way good at running. JJ helps me with sports stuff and I help him with-" John B cuts himself off shortly, sits on his hand. "I can help you make friends, if you want."
"Why?"
"Well," John B's gaze is unbearably gentle. "I've- I've seen you. I've seen them."
Jean stares at this knobbly kneed boy and decides that the only thing worse than having full body hallucinations and making up imaginary friends is having the friends insult you in return.
"No," he says shortly. "I do not need help. I just - I just want to be left alone. I do not need you."
The kind look hasn't faded, but John B does dim a little. Like Jean has found his kill switch and rammed it over and over. "Oh," he says. "We - I don't know if we can stop. I can't really control the jumps, or anything." Then, at Jean's look, he adds, "I can ask the others to leave you alone."
Jean nods jerkily in agreement. Sand sticks to his damp shoes.
"Well," John B says mutedly. "It was nice to speak to you, Jean."
" Jean, " he corrects automatically. But he's already back under the awning three streets from home, the rain hammering the material above his head.
*
Visiting Sarah is a reprieve from the drudgery of too many siblings and not enough money.
Sarah is even more of a princess at twelve, adorned with a white training skirt in a class with ten other girls. She's recently been bumped up by virtue of the private lessons her father pays for, and she's the smallest in the group. Is also victim to vicious glances, to being knocked off balance when holding onto the bar.
Cleo is a blot on the perfect scene, slumped in the corner. Sarah is too busy studying her form in the mirrored wall to notice her, at first. The other girls have taken a break for water but Sarah rises to her toes, brings her hand elegantly above her head, a look of studious concentration on her face.
Then, eventually, she does see Cleo, who pulls a face at her. Sarah pulls one back, unembarrassed by the pink ribboned shoes, the tight dancer's bun.
They have to practise pirouettes and focus on a mark on the wall. Cleo stands right in Sarah's eyeline and watches as she whips around again and again, eyes catching hers every time.
Cleo leaves before Sarah can trap her in a conversation.
*
JJ's upgraded from the closet by twelve, at least. They've held hands more than a few times in the dark but now it's a battered dining room chair tucked under the door handle and music playing on a radio that is different each visit.
Instead she sits with her back to the wall and watches him, trying not to draw attention to herself in a way that she's learnt from him. If she moves he might notice and then he might banish her again.
He's lying on his back on the bed, the light above flickering. There's no shade, just the cord and the bulb. The closet they used to sit in is half open, clothes spilling out. There's a pair of cleats abandoned at the end of the bed, waiting to be tripped over.
JJ sighs and rolls over, fingers grazing the volume button so the music is no longer an undertone but instead a steady beat. There's a groan as he rolls back onto his spine.
He says, "I know you're there."
She's learnt the nuances of his tone, so Kiara unfolds from her nook behind the half open closet door and stands up.
The surveying gaze is a habit, now. Flicks all over for signs of injury and eventually settles on his face. His chin is set, his posture unnaturally still for a perpetually moving boy.
He's always been thin. Not in an Anna Carrera approved way - not waiting to grow into his height. She's always seen ribs and hip bones and clavicles. He's usually such a big presence that she doesn't notice it.
Now she does. He is quiet and still.
He doesn't like stupid questions. Doesn't like her. But still she says, "who?" Because they used to hold hands in the dark in the closet and she can feel his fear as sharply as her own.
"Some lads, year 10's," he explains shortly, but it means nothing to her. "Said I stole their ball." His eyes roll elaborately.
She looks at the half deflated muddy soccer ball across the room, and then slides back to him. He grins crookedly and she can't help but follow, her whole body flushing with relief.
It's still a dangerous game, approaching him. It's high risk, potentially high reward. He'll just as soon ask her to leave as to acquiesce to her staying.
Slowly, she steps over the cleats and settles on the end of the bed. His feet are a yard away, his ankles sharp angles.
He says, "your mom," and she shrugs, looks at the closet.
Her problems are inconsequential, anyway. She doesn't have a chair tucked under her door handle.
JJ huffs out his nose. "Fuck." It's short and wrecked and she agrees wholeheartedly.
It's late, where she is. Or maybe it's early. She should be asleep. Her body lists, despite her mind shouting at her to wake up. He allows her here so infrequently, now. A boy who no longer needs his hand holding.
There's the noise of springs as he shifts and she slumps to the bed, into the space he's made. She thinks a hand touches her hair or her shoulder, but maybe it doesn't.
"Sorry," she breathes, muffled by the bedspread.
"Sh," he says, quietly. "Sh."
*
John B must have gotten the word out, somehow. No one approaches him in a year. Life chugs from one day to another with mere flashes. He becomes a passenger to them, becomes subject to the whims of whatever connects them - if anything at all.
He goes to the Bahamas, to America, to Norway. To a rainy England and then back to sunny Australia. He sees them, too. Only puts together names and faces due to that one conversation on a beach.
He walks into the kitchen and says "maman, I see people and I can see where they live. I can speak to them."
Yvonne Heyward, ever the pragmatist, considers this at length. "Are they friendly? Are they nice to you?"
Jean confirms they are.
"Well," Yvonne says practically. "Maybe you should be friends. Sit down. I've made soup."
He sits and eats the soup, then escapes to his room. They have a small apartment on the fifth floor with no elevator but tall ceilings, an old townhouse split into separate residencies. It's raining, again, the droplets streaking across his window.
He's spent so long ignoring it that he doesn't know what to do. So he sits and thinks about everyone he's seen - the blonde girl he assumes is Sarah, who holds her head high and chin tipped in challenge. The blonde boy - JJ - who holds himself small to fade into the shadows.
He thinks of John B and his brown ringlets and the beach, sand stuck to his damp shoes.
He can hear the sea and he can feel the sand and the sun beaming above. His bed shifts.
There’s no John B smile, this time. His arms are curled around his knees. Dutifully, he doesn't speak to Jean and instead returns to looking at the sea.
They sit quietly for a long while.
"I am sorry," Jean says eventually. "I am- I am going to do some research, see if I can understand what this is."
John B looks at him. His eyes ask why bother?
Jean scrubs his hands over his eyes and mirrors John B's pose, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his chin on them. "You are… hard to ignore."
It results in the ghost of a smile, the faintest trace of one. The silence stretches.
"I can help you, with your schoolwork," Jean coaxes. He thinks it's a little broken.
John B doesn't even look at him - he looks directly to his right, to the empty spot. And then without Jean even being able to pinpoint how, there's someone else, filling the space there.
JJ is bleeding from his nose and maybe his mouth, but that could be the blood running generally downward. Despite the blood and the evident pain, he's alive. His eyes are bright, the back of his hand wiping across his nose and smearing blood up his forearm.
John B whistles lowly in a way Jean admires. "Damn, JJ."
JJ smiles. It's the smile Jean imagines a lion may give after a successful kill.
"What happened?" Jean demands.
The effect is instantaneous. JJ, who had been focussed from the moment of his appearance on John B, shifts to look at Jean. The smile disappears. His eyes flicker all over Jean, and then dismiss him.
"Yeah," he says. "Nah."
"Jay-" John B starts.
But he's already gone.
John B's jaw grinds, he looks at the horizon.
"John B."
He doesn't respond. Not immediately, but he looks like he might do. Jean's grandad takes a while to respond to things - can often smoke a whole cigarette whilst considering - so Jean waits hopefully.
"You might not need us," John B says slowly. "But we need us."
It feels like a reprimand, or a telling off. Jean flushes hot.
John B still doesn't look at him.
"I'm gonna go - go see if he's okay."
The getting up and walking away to put distance between them seems unnecessary, but Jean doesn't stop him. The beach fades along with John B's retreating back and Jean lets it all go.
*
Anger hums under his skin. He wears it like a cloak. He doesn’t know how to say my dad beats the shit out of me in between the ridicule for his too small trainers, for the way his clothes smell like mildew by virtue of no adult telling him he needs to hang his laundry outside and not put it away still-damp.
His dad buys him a refurbished phone, sells it a month later. JJ orders a new SIM card and snatches it from the letterbox before it’s hit the mat.
He doesn’t know how to show weakness, admit defeat. How to look for help.
An older boy shows him a video where he thinks someone gets beheaded and he watches, assuming it’s fake, realising it’s not, not letting his expression flicker because if he’s cool, if he’s sound enough, he can sit in the back of the souped up Corsa and the bass of their over-loud music can drown out every thought in his head.
His cousin Ricky is in the passenger seat more often than not, battered trainers resting on the dash. They are two peas in a pod, Ricky’s mum always says. JJ three years younger but just as feisty, clinging to Ricky’s coattails at every turn.
Ricky says, “we should get into an accident, for money. Claim whiplash and shit. You got insurance right, mate?” aimed at the driver, Joel.
Joel nods jerkily, hands curved around the wheel protectively. He says, “nah, lad, nah. That’s fucked. ‘Sides, I got easier ways to make money, if you need it.”
JJ tries to catch Ricky’s eye, tries to tell him no. Not for the first time, he wishes there was a link between them - that JJ could speak to him without being seen.
“Yeah,” Ricky says pensively. “Maybe, yeah.”
They watch an ambulance blare past, sirens cutting through the bass. The four boys watch it go, motionless.
“They’re fucking cool, man,” Ricky enthuses. JJ can see the blue lights reflected in his cousin’s eyes, can see the longing. “Can just call an ambulance and boom - they’re there. To sort your shit out.”
“Man,” the boy slash man next to JJ unfolds his head from his chin, finally looking up from his phone. JJ has seen glimpses of the video - a flash of tit, a close up of a dick. “Do you ever shut the fuck up? Joel, man - this is why we don’t fuck around with kids.”
JJ sees Ricky tense, sees the nirvana and reprieve being taken from them. JJ doesn’t want to go back to Luke, Ricky doesn’t want to go home to someone who’s even worse.
“I can keep my mouth shut,” Ricky protests. JJ wants to tell him to shut the fuck up, tell him that JJ can see the look Joel and the porn man next to him exchange in the wing mirror.
“Ricky,” Joel says, voice flat. “Get the fuck out.”
“What - no,” Ricky protests. “No - I got you those fucking ciggies, man. I got you that booze. Hey - no. Don’t.”
But Joel is looking through the windscreen and rat-man reaches forwards and shoves, fingers digging in. If there’s one language the Maybanks understand, it’s violence - Ricky is pliant, drags his feet from the dash and unfolds from the car and into the rain.
He says, “JJ,” and JJ looks at his cousin, who’s always looked out for him. “JJ, c’mon. Let’s go.”
Joel looks at rat-man again, who shrugs.
“Little guy can stay,” Joel assesses. “He knows how to shut the fuck up.”
Ricky ignores him. “JJ,” he says, again. “Let’s leave these pricks. C’mon.”
Rat-man sneers at JJ and he doesn’t want to be there, not really. Not with the shitty videos and the shitty music and the banter that makes him feel even shittier.
“What ya say?” rat-man sneers.
Last week, Luke pinned him up by his throat and his vision spotted and faded.
He says nothing.
They leave Ricky on the pavement, fading into the dark.
*
"Kiara," her mom says, covering the speaker on her phone. "Darling. We don't need that butter."
"Kiara, sweet. The bread is optional, not compulsory."
"Kiara, honey. Did you know soda causes weight gain, acne?" A pause, to let it sink in. "Oh, do you need more of that facial scrub?"
"Oh, love. Fruit is full of sugar. Just - watch it."
"Who ate all the Halloween candy?" Mike Carrera asks in puzzlement. "We got barely any kids this year, I swear there was loads left."
JJ is leaning against the wall with a devil's smile. Kiara ignores him.
It was them, in her room, an album of some British indie pop playing to hide the crinkle of wrappers. He'd tried Jolly Ranchers and Sour Patch Kids and fruit wind ups and given an elaborate rating of each one. Kiara had to eat the same flavour at the same time for him to properly taste them. They waded through the depleting pile, two by two.
His dad was out at the pub, apparently.
He'd gone by the time she reached the bathroom and emptied her over full stomach, sugar coating her teeth.
"Kiara," her mom reprimands. "Have you eaten the entire packet of Oreos? In a week?"
Her dad, on a rare evening off, bats the criticism away. "Hey, now," he reprimands cheerfully. "She's a growing girl."
"She sure is," Anna agrees, crumpling the empty Oreo packet in her hand. Kiara mentally checks off her bathroom waste bin as a safe method of disposal - somewhere she thought was reasonably safe, given the nature of the products traditionally thrown in there. "The other day we had to basically replace her whole wardrobe. And it's not because she's gotten taller."
Mike rolls his eyes. "Hey," he whispers conspiratorially, smiling at his daughter. "Don't you listen to her. She's just got a burr in her britches about how big and tall you're getting, is all."
But Kiara listens and she remembers and she listens again, to her mom's voice in her head when she's in the cafeteria or on the rare occasion she goes to get ice cream with her friends or when they go to Starbucks and she orders a black iced Americano with a sugar free caramel shot and her mom looks at her proudly.
The Oreos don't taste as sweet on the way back up.
*
Jean gives up after the disastrous meeting with John B, the blatant rejection from JJ. It doesn’t mean it stops. He reads about it vicariously - Sensates. There’s scarcely anything on the first page of Google - gets scarcer as he goes. Bing. Ask Jeeves. Reddit. Then there’s Discord servers, links to the dark web. Down goes the spiral.
His dad signs up for a VPN upon Jean’s presentation of the ten reasons why he should. Jean’s laptop becomes the gateway into another world - one that he should be a part of but one he chafes against, by his own doing.
He sees Cleo, leaning against the wall outside the entrance to the school and he waves once, twice - enough to gain attention, for someone to shove into his back and demand who he’s waving at.
He knows it’s John B behind him when he takes a test, squinting at his page.
Sarah smirks across a cafe when Yvonne and Jean stop for coffee.
Kiara and JJ don’t make themselves known. He Visits them, occasionally, always scrambles for a way out but he doesn’t know how. Hears JJ’s bitter laugh as the link fades, hears Kiara’s sigh.
The Visits when there’s someone else already there - they’re worse. Cleo and Sarah, legs dangling out of Sarah’s window, sharing a cigarette. John B and Kiara on the top of a hill. JJ and Kiara having an argument in a bedroom far too small for the three of them.
Kiara turns on him, then, snarls, “leave,” and Jean wills it to happen.
It’s incredible how alone it can feel when you share your mind with five other people.
*
Sarah picks up smoking just before she turns fourteen. She’s not the first of them to do it - she tells JJ he’s corrupted her, that she’s smelt it and tasted it via him, so it’s all his fault.
He takes it coolly, unflinchingly. “Your death,” he drawls before showing her how to blow smoke rings. She lives in a Swiss dormitory, now, with single beds which collapse with a well timed kick to the folding legs. Her dad pays an extortionate amount for her to be here, rubbing shoulders with the elite.
She has a picture of her kissing the Norwegian crown prince as her phone background and a near limitless canteen token card, so she gets along okay.
It’s away from Rafe, which is good. But also away from Louise, which is bad. Facetime is a poor replacement for her baby sister, but a clipped warning to her dad’s latest fling, Rose, appears to have drawn them to separate wings. Her dad mutters about sending Rafe to a military supported school when he turns sixteen. Maybe to Britain, if he can pass the exams.
She flies back home for the ballet recitals. Emilia gets the best variation, but then her bike brakes fail and she breaks her arm and Sarah gets it instead.
Her dad does not attend the recital. Rose does, and her sister, and Cleo - at the back. Sarah keeps her eyes on her as she pirouettes. As the audience applauds. As she looks at Cleo and tries to share the joy with her, the elation at being the best, the coveted - but finds that there’s nothing there.
*
John B doesn’t Visit Sarah as much as some of the others, but there is only a limited window of opportunity per day when the others are awake. Kiara is easy to get along with, humour dry and deadpan, but encouraging and emotionally astute. Cleo is funny, disarming, unwaveringly honest. JJ is… John B waits for JJ to Visit, most of the time. Has dropped in on too many wayward scenarios and been on the receiving end of a weeks long sulk to turn up uninvited. But he always comes back.
But Sarah is - she’s different than the rest. Buoyed by money he can only dream of, she’s been flirting with royalty her whole life. Yeah, he knows that theoretically they were all born at the exact same moment. But she feels years ahead, poised and elegant and put together.
And fucking beautiful, too. Something in his chest aches when he looks at her for too long. And she fluctuates between ignoring his Visits or relentlessly ridiculing them, the taunts cruel and disdainful.
The others welcome his input, or the reprieve he can offer. He adds nothing to Sarah’s life.
So he sits where she can’t see him, melding into the crowd. And she spins and she spins and she spins on the stage above them, untouchable.
*
It hurts a lot to get punched in the head.
It’s probably why the ground rushes up to meet him, quickly and efficiently. Jean trips over his legs trying to twist away, falls to his knees and then his side as momentum drags him down.
It takes a couple of seconds for him to realise he should probably cover his head, given that once the boy recovers from the shock that Jean can be downed from a single punch he starts kicking his ribs. His head is the most important thing. He should curl up, protect his organs. His kidneys are at the back though - maybe he should roll onto his back. He doesn’t know.
The smoking teenager looks extremely Parisian, which is why he’s unremarkable to Jean. Just another associate of the fine one kicking the shit out of him. But he takes a step closer and Jean realises with mild surprise that it’s JJ, in a battered leather jacket he instinctively knows that Sarah picked out for him. And he is happy that he is not alone in this moment.
He is not so happy when JJ crouches next to him and says, “so it is true. The French are cheese eating surrender monkeys.”
Jean gasps, breathes in, huffs, “what?”
JJ looks disinterestedly at the boy who is taking a breather from kicking Jean solidly. Perhaps Jean’s too soft a target even for him.
JJ blows out smoke and Jean thinks it looks pretty cool. It’s unfair how Jean lives in the land of smokers and still can’t figure it out. “You just gonna let him do that? Just - lie and take it?”
“Well,” Jean mutters. “Yes, probably.” A beat of consideration. “What else can I do - fight back?”
His voice has drawn the attention of his assailant. Laurence is two years older. Jean thinks he’s got a cracked tooth.
“Why are they beating the shit out of you?” JJ asks conversationally. He’s still crouched, but it’s more like he’s poised, one hand on the ground for balance.
It hurts to breathe. Jean worries about his kidneys.
“I kissed his brother.”
JJ’s eyes pin on Jean’s then, darkening. “Did his brother want to kiss you?”
Jean coughs. “Yes. Yes. His brother - he kissed me first. In gym…”
The cigarette is stubbed out on the floor, which is once again, impossibly cool. Laurence looms over them, demanding, “qu'avez-vous dit? Saloperie.”
JJ glances up at Laurence, squints a little. “I'm guessing that wasn’t something nice.”
“No,” Jean agrees wheezily. JJ is rubbing his hands in a patch of dirt, which, again, is very cool. Jean makes a mental note to try and emulate JJ more often.
“Do you mind if I…” JJ makes a fist and then a slow arc towards Laurence.
“Be my guest.”
If asked to describe what happened, Jean couldn’t accurately say. One minute Laurence’s foot is raised to kick Jean again, the next JJ has hold of the foot and pulls. Only it’s not JJ, it’s Jean. Or really, it’s JJ. It’s both of them, somehow. Jean can feel the bite of the gravel on his bare arm as he rolls, holding on to Laurence’s foot, using the momentum to pull the man to the ground and in the same movement, get Jean’s knees under him. It’s JJ who makes him get up, it’s JJ who stands still, unwavering, shaking out his arms.
It’s Jean who says, “I do not want to hurt you,” to Laurence.
JJ apparently understands the words, or the soft tone. “Man,” he complains balefully. “You’re no fun.”
Fun isn’t in short supply for long - Laurence comes up, enraged and swinging. JJ-Jean dodge them both and then the heel of JJ’s palm comes up, abruptly, hits the bottom of Laurence’s nose and keeps going until the cartilage crunches and the blood gushes and Laurence falls to his knees.
There are two more that come nobly to Laurence’s aid. JJ-Jean assesses them quickly. One is dealt with by one singular punch to the chin, and one a blow to the stomach. The fourth approaches from behind. JJ kicks him in the balls.
“Not fair,” the third gasps, clutching a split lip and glaring through watery eyes. “You fought dirty.”
JJ-Jean shrugs. “It was four on one. That’s fucking filthy.” Only it sounds like filf-ee , in JJ’s accent.
Jean can kind of pinpoint when they’re definitely not one being anymore. He looks at JJ. “What now?”
JJ looks around, deliberating. “Yeah. You should probably run.”
Calling the movement a run is gracious - Jean clutches his stomach and staggers from the alcove between the streets they’d been tucked in.
Jacques, the object of Jean mis-placed affection, has long since fled. Jean mourns his loss as he collapses onto a bench in the middle of an open square a few streets over. It’s busy enough that he doesn’t fear an immediate counter attack, covered by enough cameras that he thinks at least his death (if it comes) will be immortalised in digital form.
JJ sits next to him on the bench - Jean can’t recall if JJ followed him here, or whether he disappeared and Visited again. But he pulls a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, clamps it between his teeth, then pats himself all over for the plastic lighter. Jean cradles his head in his hands.
“You gotta learn how to fight,” JJ says eventually. “You can’t be a soft gay kid and be French.”
“They were French too,” Jean points out bitterly.
“Yeah,” JJ agrees. “Probably why they couldn’t fight. Or - maybe that’s why they’re so angry.” He smokes in silence for a minute. “So, did you French kiss this guy? Or do a John B and kiss him down under?”
Jean groans, pressing a hand to his stomach. “You are impossible.”
“Oui,” he agrees easily. “So I’ve been told.”
There’s nothing but the faintest crackle of the filter of JJ’s cigarette as he inhales.
“I am not a soft gay kid,” Jean says eventually. JJ looks at him squarely. “I am a - sometimes gay kid. Half gay. Half not.”
“Ah,” JJ says. And then, like an asshole, “oui, oui.” Another crackle, another exhale. “You should still learn how to - defend yourself.”
“And where do you learn that? Where did you learn that?”
The leather jacket shifts as JJ lifts a shoulder. “Got in a lot of fights. Got sick of losing. Now I know how to fight, there aren’t as many.” A cigarette, between his lips. A thoughtful look on his face. “I could teach you. But - it will hurt.”
Jean has observed enough of JJ Maybank to realise the significance of the offer. That JJ has scuffed his boots and leapt over the picket line that is interacting with Jean Heyward, despite the party line whip compelling him not to do so.
“What is the benefit for you?”
JJ shrugs again. “Maybe you can stop being a little bitch and speak to the others. They can get off my arse about how I ignored you one time, and you haven’t stopped being a dickhead about it.” His voice changes into what Jean graciously assumes is an Australian accent. “I dunno, mate, you were pretty fucking rude to him. Didn’t give him the time of day or nothing.”
It seems to go beyond the bounds of reason, that the peace offering comes in the form of JJ. But Jean isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and grabs hold of it eagerly.
“Yes,” he says, the words tripping out. “Yes, yes, of course.”
It earns him an amused glance. “Alright, man, no need to fucking cry on me. As far as I can tell, I get to lamp you one, and everyone gets off my back. No skin off my teeth.”
There’s a casualness in the way he says everyone. Like they’re a union, a united front. One single unit. A committee. Perhaps the anti-Jean committee.
“Oh,” JJ says, as if he’s been reminded of something. He is looking across the square at the cross indicating a church. “They call you Pope, by the way.”
“Pope?”
“Jean Paul? C’mon, man.” Another inhale. “And you’ve got a stick up your arse and think you’re better than us. It fits.”
Jean says, “fuck you,” but it’s already to thin air.