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Jean Moreau hits the pavement at thirty miles per hour.
The world rushes past in a roaring wave. He can feel his body skid and roll, the burn of the pavement raking down his right shoulder, the pain of the initial impact lancing through his wrist and up his arm. Tires lock up and squeal, but nothing compares to the ear-shattering grinding sound of his motorcycle narrowly missing his head as it crashes past him.
It’s only when he finally stops that he hears a voice screaming his name, over and over, panic lilting her voice into a high-pitched bird’s cry. Not a Raven, but a Trojan. A friend, calling for her own.
“Jean!”
He has to close his eyes to ward off the nausea that threatens to overtake him. It’s easier to breathe when he isn’t staring at the cracked glass of his helmet. So he breathes, in and out, ragged and pained, and he thinks about damage control. He thinks about Riko’s hands on him, dismantling him piece by jagged piece. He thinks about the way the Ravens kicked his ribs in, and how it feels almost like it does now, his chest burning and his lungs unable to fill with air.
“Jean!”
Hands frantically brush at his shoulders, his chest, the edge of his helmet at his throat. It is Cat’s voice above him, and she sounds so close to tears that he wrenches his eyes open and forces himself to concentrate.
“Hurt?” He asks. Or tries to. It’s still hard to breathe, and his arm is screaming in agony, but all he can make out is the spider-webbed cracks in the tinted glass of his helmet and the vague shadow of Cat’s figure above him.
Above him. He’s on the ground, and Cat sounds like she’s crying, so he tunes back into her words despite his shallow breathing.
“— want to move you and break your neck or something. Jesus, Jean, it’s okay, I’m right here, you’ll be okay and when you get better I’m definitely going to — ”
She’s interrupted by the wail of an ambulance siren, and even through the obscured glass he can see the way she jerks to attention and turns to look. At least until Jean jolts upright and half-falls back onto the pavement, swearing breathlessly in a language he won’t remember switching to. She firmly braces his shoulders to pin him down, and the pain dulls to a familiar roar as he fights back the urge to smack her, hurt her, anything to escape being pinned down again.
He doesn’t want to hurt Cat. He doesn’t want those hands to dig in and rend him apart into nothingness.
I am Jean Moreau. My place is with the Trojans. I will endure.
“Don’t move,” Cat pleads with him. “You’re bleeding.”
I will endure.
She lets him go, a blessing to his fraying patience, and just as quickly it sinks into dread when she stands, leaving him there on the pavement, his world narrowed into nothing except a screen of fractured glass and pain.
He tries to ask her to stay. He shudders and nearly vomits in his helmet instead, choking back the rise of bile in his throat. His ribs hurt, and his right arm flares brightly in agony with every twitch of his shoulder. Cat quickly crouches down to his side once again, soothing his panic wordlessly, her gentle gloved hand sweeping gravel and glass off his chest. He narrows his world in on her presence and tries to escape the terrifying thought that he might have finally broken himself beyond repair.
They — by ‘they’ it’s really just Cat, who holds Jean’s free hand in a death grip as she uses the other to fish out her phone with shaking hands — call Jeremy in the ambulance, and in the haze of white walls and blinding fluorescent lights, a flash of red finally catches Jean’s scattered attention.
“Jean?” Jeremy’s face swims into precise focus, and Jean takes a moment to study his appearance. His roots are growing out, the blond locks dark-tipped at his crown, and Jean thinks it’s about time he wrangles Jeremy back to the bathroom for a re-dye. It makes the fear in his face more disheveled, its mere shadows uncharacteristically dark for such a bright presence.
“Yes,” Jean manages to say. They gave him some medication that Jean only took upon the insistence of Cat, so his fingers feel clumsy when he reaches up to catch Jeremy’s chin in a gentle hold. “Jeremy. You need to dye.”
Jeremy startles a little at the turn in conversation, blinking back some emotion Jean doesn’t care to fully unravel. His head feels stuffed with cotton, but Jeremy is warm and real beneath his touch. He doesn’t pull away, but he does frown back at Jean.
“Die?” He repeats. He reaches up and gently brushes back a lock of Jean’s hair from his eyes, his fingertips barely brushing against his temple. The touch is far too delicate to agitate the bruise forming there, so Jean lets him touch without complaint.
“Blond,” Jean agrees. His fingers trace a shaky line from Jeremy’s chin to his cheek to his hairline, and his fingers slide through the soft locks, tugging just enough to emphasize his meaning.
Jeremy looks nearly stricken with relief. “Oh. My hair.”
“I will dye it,” Jean tells him. Jeremy still seems unsure what to make of this conversation, but he leans in to rest his forehead against Jean’s. With his fingers still entangled in his hair, Jean takes the opportunity to softly scratch at Jeremy’s crown, almost as if they’re entwined in bed and not in a public hospital.
“Do you know how scared I was?” Jeremy says quietly. “Cat told me the car hit you head on.”
Jean remembers well. The sounds still echo in his head; the screams from Cat, the grinding roar of his bike narrowly missing his head, the panicked rasp of his own breathing in his ears. Arguing with the EMTs that tried to touch him only to end up sedated into a quiet stupor when Cat begged him to trust her and let the doctor treat his pain.
There is no treatment for pain, and Jean believes it more than ever now that he has Jeremy Knox in his hands, and the look on his face is enough to flay his heart into fractured pieces.
“Hit my bike,” Jean corrects without heat. He leans closer to bump their noses together, and gently taps Jeremy’s chin with his free, albeit bandaged, hand. “I will move out of the way next time.”
Jeremy makes a soft, indignant noise. “There will not be a next time.”
“Oh, good, you’re alive,” Laila says, coming up to them. She looks at Cat first, her gaze speaking enough of her worry and love that Jean feels like she’s practically shouting at the top of her lungs. Just as quickly, she slides her gaze to Jean and nudges Jeremy’s shoulder to move him aside. Jean still has his fingers in his hair, but Laila merely ducks in to kiss his cheek and wrap an arm around his shoulders in a fierce embrace. The road-rash flares at the touch, and Jean wrangles it into submission in favor of that possessive touch. Laila didn’t touch him to hurt him. He would not give her the guilt of knowing it.
“Of course I am alive,” Jean says, indignant. “I was wearing the helmet you insisted upon.”
“Good thing, then,” Laila replies. Jeremy goes tense underneath his touch.
“That helmet saved your life,” Jeremy snaps. Jean blinks, his fingers slowly sliding loose to land at his side, and Jeremy takes his fingers with a gentleness that is far at odds with the fierceness in his expression. “I’m serious, Jean. It’s a miracle you’re still in one piece.”
It’s a sobering reminder. “Not my wrist.”
It’s the same one Grayson had bitten all those months ago. It’s been a lifetime and he still feels those teeth breaking skin, seeking vulnerable sinew. Those marks are fledgling shadows compared to the rest of his body, but they are the ones he loathes the most. It is nearly a mercy that his wrist splint hides the evidence of that particular betrayal from one of the Trojans. A memory of complacent trust that was well-rewarded with a harrowing encounter that still made Jean nauseous to think about.
“It’ll heal,” Jeremy says. His fingers lightly trace the bandages, and there’s that boundless optimism, peering out past the melancholy on his kind face. You will heal , seems to be his silent declaration. Jean has given up on wondering how Jeremy always knows what he’s thinking of, so he shrugs instead, ignoring the lingering sting in his abused shoulder.
“I suppose I should trust your diagnosis, Doctor Knox?”
Jeremy rewards his dry response with a shining smile. “I haven’t treated you yet.”
It’s a cheeky remark, and yet Jean’s head is still cloudy with the drugs and he’s caught off guard by the warm kiss that Jeremy presses to the corner of his mouth, quick and consuming as a passing ray of sunlight. When he pulls back, just enough to huff a breathless ‘you’re welcome’, Jean thinks he might be smiling, too.
“Gay,” Cat announces cheerfully. Laila nods her assent and prods Jeremy in the side with her elbow.
“Move, I need a turn.” Jeremy does not go so willingly, but Laila has never let him have so much leeway when it comes to treating Jean with strange kindness.
She kisses his temple, gestures with a swirling finger, and Jean obediently turns his head so she can kiss the other side in equal kind. Cat hangs back a moment, but Jean meets her eyes past Laila and she takes the silent invitation in stride. She wiggles past the other two and cups Jean’s head in her hands, gazing down at him with a searching look.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she warns him. She punctuates that with a quick kiss to the tip of his nose. “You’re lucky you’re cute, Jean Moreau.”
“Seconded,” Jeremy agrees solemnly, but he’s smiling.
“Thirded!” Laila adds.
“You are all insufferable,” Jean says.