Chapter Text
Somewhere in Marseille, there was a beach.
Well. This much was obvious. There were many beaches in Marseille, but in this memory, only one mattered. It was quiet, secluded, a secret gathering of crystal pools in the hollows of the rocks. On every side the cliffs rose up, steep and golden; there were old formations littered throughout the stone, craters and dents that, if you squinted hard enough, could become a nose or an eye or a mouth. It was in this way that everything felt alive. Maybe it was too alive, too oversaturated, the hue of the evergreens and the enormity of the cliff-faces and the brilliance of the cobalt streaking through the water, but there was no real way to know. Memory was such a fickle thing.
On this beach there was a girl. Or, he thought there was, at least. He’d dissected this so many times in his head that he wasn’t sure how much he could trust anymore— which parts of her he had played back, rewritten, romanticised. How could he know the structure of her face wasn’t just reconstruction atop reconstruction atop reconstruction?
Her name was Lucie. He remembered that much.
Lucie was stood on the rocks, her little feet planted wide against the gold, a towel around her shoulders. She knew the cliffs were dangerous, but she couldn’t be stopped; she was always like this. Defiant. Wind in her hair. A twist to her lips. She couldn’t have been more than four in this memory, and the frailty that age brought had terrified him. She could fall so easily. She could hit her head, her elbows, her chest. She was still too soft and too curious and too full of innocent wonder. That was no age to climb the cliffs. It was no age to lose your brother, either, but he hadn’t been around to see the aftermath of that.
This memory was no good.
Jean had been too young. He couldn’t retain all the details now, the exact blue of the towels, the exact silver of Lucie’s eyes. Besides, he wasn’t here to talk about this.
He tried again.
The rest of his life unspooled before him in a dark, jagged tangle of ebony and red. There were no cliffs awaiting him there and there was definitely no Lucie. Still, he recalled the sensation of falling, that terrible awareness of something waiting for you at the end, a hard, flat surface or a shiny row of teeth.
Remembering it was nearly as painful as experiencing it. Sometimes, it was worse. In California people didn’t cut him open for entertainment. It was almost worse that way, the realisation that there was nothing about him that deserved to be hurt. It was just him in a room with all the wrong people.
But he didn’t like to linger. This bit was all bruises, shallow cuts and deeper gashes, things he would address only to the one person who had seen every raw side of him: himself. There was no longer a Kevin around to lean on.
“And have you talked to Kevin yet?”
The blackness fell away. Lauren sat opposite him, her hair scrubbed neatly back, pen hovering over her notebook as she monitored Jean for reactions. She was wearing a sweater, perfectly ironed and pale lilac, as all her clothes were. Although she sat back far enough to give the illusion of comfort, her shoulders were secured rigidly in place. The clock above her head ticked.
She knew exactly how long it had been since he’d last talked to Kevin.
She also knew how long it would be until he talked to her about it.
“We will have to discuss that next week,” Jean said calmly, unpicking himself from his chair as a frown started to weigh down Lauren’s face. “Thank you very much, Lauren. You know how to contact me if there are any issues with the payment.”
Her frown had become fully-fledged now, digging deep ridges into her cheeks. She set her notebook on the desk with a dull clang. Her shoulders didn’t twist once. “We still have ten minutes, Jean.”
For a woman educated in psychology, she truly did not like to read between the lines. Jean forced a smile. “Our session is over,” he informed her as he slung his bag over his shoulder, already halfway to the door.
Behind him, Lauren was starting to rise out of her seat, her concern a palpable thing rising with her. “Jean—”
He let the door fall shut behind him.
Outside, the corridor was glaring and packed tight with people. One of Lauren’s many disadvantages was that she was a school counsellor, available to all the Trojans and mandatory for Jean, so their sessions required him to manoeuvre through hallways bustling with students. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he had to sit there for an hour as she tried to get him to talk about Kevin.
A more rational part of Jean’s brain attempted to remind him that that was her job, but he decisively ignored it. She knew that he and Kevin had not talked. She knew that they would not do so for a while, maybe ever. Was there nothing else for her to discuss with him?
Neither did he understand the university’s hurry to therapise him. He was here to play exy, and every free hour they packed with counselling was a practice wasted. He wouldn’t talk about Kevin and couldn’t talk about the Moriyamas— couldn’t even think about them, for fear that Ichirou would merely appear here in the middle of Los Angeles the second he considered it— which left him with nothing to tell Lauren except playbacks of the most interesting passes Knox had made in practice.
“You know, the saying is that a problem shared is a problem halved, but you always come out of your sessions looking like yours have been doubled. What’s up with that?”
Speak of the devil, and he doth appear.
Jean turned to find Jeremy leaning against the wall, arms crossed and pushing up against the shoulders of a white tee, all taut lines and light tan. He held a weathered copy of his psychology textbook, but his eyes were on Jean.
“You’re early,” Jean said in lieu of an answer, and kept walking.
LA was a city that lived on cars and Jean was a man without a drivers’ licence. As such, Jeremy usually picked him up from therapy. Jean also usually finished therapy on time, which called to mind a number of questions, most pressingly whether this was just a stroke of luck or whether Jeremy spent the full hour of Jean’s sessions propped against a wall, calculating the perfect line to ambush him with.
The sound of Jeremy’s shoes against linoleum echoed through the hall as he raced to catch up. “Was Lauren sick, or did you just walk out again?”
The again did not go unnoticed. “I thought she was paid to ask questions, not you.”
“I’m the team captain. It’s kind of in my job description.”
Jean fought not to roll his eyes. “No, your job is to get us to the top of the league in one piece. My psychological state does not interfere with this.”
Jeremy had finally matched his pace, and something sparked deep in the blue of his eyes at Jean’s words. Frustration? Pity? Excitement at the challenge? Jean did not know and in all truth did not care. “It does if it’s affecting your gameplay.”
“Which it is not.”
“Which it is,” Jeremy countered, as if they were toddlers playing back-and-forth. Does not! said Jean. Does too! said Jeremy. By now they were rounding out of the corridor and into the courtyard, the bricks sun-bleached under their feet as Jeremy squinted at him.
“Maybe you are right. In fact— yes, it does affect my gameplay,” he began, watching Jeremy’s face light up in a mixture of satisfaction and uncertainty, “because I am in there staring at her horrible clock for hours on end when I could be doing drills.”
A muscle in Jeremy’s jaw twitched. Good, Jean thought. He wanted, even once, to watch him crack. “Which would be the wrong drills anyway. Come on, Jean, you know all I want here is to help you adjust. How long have you been here that you’re still trying Raven tactics on us? It's like you don’t even realise we’re a different team.”
“Why, yes,” Jean said drily, gesturing to the world around him. “How is it that I am here, in California? The sky is so blue. And those palm trees, mon dieu, look at the size! We do not have those in West Virginia, where I thought I was until two seconds ago.”
They had finally reached the car park. Jeremy stared at him, still and silent, rudely sharing no praise for Jean’s monumental performance. Then someone shoved past, and the image shattered. He ran a hand down his face, shoulders tight with the strain of all the complaints he was too nice to make. “Okay. I—”
Am only doing this because Kevin asked me to.
He did not say this, had never said it, and perhaps had not even thought it, but Jean could see it in his face and hear it in his voice every time their conversations turned out this way. He believed that it was only a matter of time.
“Let’s just get in the car,” Jeremy said instead. “We can talk about this on the way, if you want.”
“I do not want,” Jean confirmed as Jeremy’s car beeped, his hands elegant and golden against the keys. The Knox family’s wealth was no secret, and the car was sleek and pale, old-fashioned in appearance but thrumming with power, kitted out in brown leather seats and a convertible roof. Jean took up his usual spot in the passenger seat, watching as Jeremy calmly opened his door and slid in. He looked perfectly at ease, comfortable, commanding, shoulders lax and hands loose around the wheel, sunglasses tangled in his golden hair.
He looked like he fit in. Perhaps that was the problem.
Jeremy cast Jean a sidelong look as he fit the key into the ignition, as if he could read his thoughts. “Where to? Lulu’s?”
Jean shrugged and cast his gaze out to the wide, steaming streets of Los Angeles, knowing that Jeremy would take it as a yes. Lulu’s was a Trojan haunt, a cafe downtown run by an old friend of their dealer, Meghan. He liked it well enough; it was surprisingly quiet for the city, and he knew the people in there, they knew him. His order would be on the table before he could even ask, though the familiarity was sometimes startling. The team went there most days to rifle through player packets or merely get coffees after practice, the latter of which Jean tended to avoid. It was only Jeremy that made it impossible to say no.
Their next game was against the University of Oregon, upcoast in Eugene. It was still weeks away, and Jean could not even be certain that Rhemann would clear him to play, but analysis was best begun early. This year’s freshmen had a skillset even he was forced to appreciate. He wanted a headstart on matching strengths and weaknesses.
They were no Ravens, but they were something. Could be something. The aforementioned Meghan Mayen, sharp and analytical. Thomas Hill, the frenetic striker breaking down backliners without ever being provoked himself, and Meabh Kennedy, who struck sparsely but never missed. Alina Rusu, of course, a PR wildcard but a formidable force on the court. Alex Moreno, the monolith of a backliner who was so unmovable even Jeremy almost struggled to move past him.
Almost.
But, of course, that didn’t make them a team. The Trojans who had been there longer knew each other’s weak spots, each other’s habits, each other’s talents. They were a well-oiled machine. This year had yet to integrate, and, though she was no Fox, Jean knew that at least one of them had a penchant for violence.
“Jean? We’re here.”
Jean blinked, turning at the sound of Jeremy’s voice to find they had pulled to the curb outside Lulu’s. From the outside the cafe was an inviting front of spring-green siding and airy glass, though on the inside, Jean knew, it was even warmer, low gold lighting and exposed brick. He shouldered open the car door and came around to where Jeremy was already standing, an odd look on his face as he studied Jean.
Irritation sprung up in Jean’s chest. What had he done this time? Was getting out of the car a crime? “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I spoke to you twice in the car and you didn’t even look at me,” Jeremy said. The words on their own felt like a slap, the kind of thing that was meant to make him retreat back into himself.
But the way Jeremy said them was slow and patient, not flagging at Jean’s razor-edged tone or narrowed eyes.
Something hot flared up under Jean’s cheeks— confusion? Shame? Surely not. That had been beaten out of them— out of him long ago. Jean tried to move past Jeremy into the building, but Jeremy stopped him with a light touch to the small of Jean’s back, the action seemingly instinctive. “Hey,” he murmured. “You with me?”
Jean flinched away. “Of course. I was thinking about the game.” Jeremy pulled his hand back, frowning like he hadn’t realised it was there until Jean moved away. It had left a sparking feeling under the fabric of Jean’s shirt that he rarely felt and could never stand. Sudden and jolting, like static.
Jeremy opened his mouth to say something else, but Jean hurried through into the café, waving for the waiter before Jeremy could think up any more questions.