Work Text:
It is Jean’s third Olympics, his last exy game ever, and he is finally wearing the correct jersey.
He has two gold medals with the United States, two medals that he won with Jeremy, Cat, Laila, Neil, and Kevin. But Jeremy’s ACL had given up on him right after the Tokyo Olympics, and Cat and Laila had retired shortly after. Jean’s body has ached since he was nineteen years old, but he needed to play through 2024 to finally settle the debt that has hung over his head just as long.
In Tokyo, his true countrymen had put together a miracle performance to win a surprise bronze medal. They had been good, but not great. The French had lots of promising young strikers, faster than even Josten at current age, but their defense had let them down in the semifinals. Jean’s EU passport had sat heavy in his suitcase, and with Jeremy retired, he had made a choice.
He wants his third gold medal to be with his home country, with his true national team, at the Paris Olympics. He wants to prove that the sport is not just for America and Japan, that he is enough without Kevin or Neil or Jeremy.
His tithe finally ended, at the end of the professional season. Kevin and Neil are going to play a few more years, earn some more money.
Jean has always known that Paris is the end of the line for him.
The end of the line looks different now than it did at nineteen. The end of the line means finally moving back to LA, because Jeremy is an assistant coach at USC and is quickly going to become the head coach. The end of the line means finally getting the surgeries his knee and his shoulder desperately need. The end of the line means a quiet life with his husband and their three golden retrievers.
But he’s not there yet.
He sings along to La Marseillaise with the rest of this team, who had welcomed him with open arms when he initiated the switch. They have played in Lyon, and Marseille, but they are in Paris for the final and the stadium roars as thousands of his people sing along. French was the one thing Riko could never take away. Jean had clung to the language with bloodied and bruised fingertips and refused to let go. He hopes Riko rolls over in his grave at Jean proudly singing in the language on international television
Jean can see Jeremy in the very front row of the stands, behind the USA bench on the outer court. Laila and Cat are unashamedly wearing USA gear, but Jeremy is wearing Jean’s jersey from the semifinal.
Even from across the court, Jean can see him mouth the words “I love you”.
Jean allows himself one smile, and then he is pulling on his gloves and his helmet and he is listening to the French manager give rapidfire final instructions and strategy. As a teenager, Jean had thought that exy had always sounded so harsh and violent in English and Japanese. In French, it sounds elegant, strategic.
“We cannot use French on the court,” Jean says to his fellow defensive line, as they take their starting positions. “Josten and Day are both fluent.”
His fellow backliner, a young woman who reminds him so much of Thea, curses Neil Josten eight ways from Thursday as she pulls on her helmet. She is his mark.
Jean had claimed Kevin.
It is a frustrating first half. The French strikers are fast and young, but they lack experience in high-pressure situations, and the seasoned backline that Jean had begrudgingly helped train capitalize on their hesitations and fumbles to keep the ball out of the USA goal. However, the two greatest strikers in exy have no success on their side of the court.
Jean knows Kevin’s play style like the back of his own hand. He learned exy by trying to keep him out of his goal, and even if more than a decade has passed since those years in the Nest, instinct cannot be retrained. And Jean’s instinct is intrinsically tied to Kevin.
He derives more joy than he thought possible tripping up Kevin at every opportunity.
“Come on, Moreau,” Kevin grumbles, clearly frustrated, as Jean snatches the ball out of thin air before his goalie can raise her racket.
“Be better,” Jean shoots back in French, already sending the ball off the court wall to their offensive dealer.
It is a frustrating second half. Neither team can gain traction, and Jean watches his younger teammates become frustrated, and he watches as, impossibly, Kevin and Neil begin to flag.
They’re all not as young as they used to be.
They’re tied at the end. They go to extra time. Jean’s coach wants to sub him off, because Jean all but limps to the sideline for the brief timeout that precedes the extra period. But this is Jean’s last ever match, and he knows that only he can hold the line.
“You have younger legs. Use them,” he says in the huddle, pushing his sweaty and limp curls off of his own forehead as he accepts a water bottle from a trainer. “They are getting tired. You just need to find an opening. Don’t let them wear you out.”
“What about you, old man?” A striker asks. “You’re barely moving. You think you can hold it down for another thirty minutes?”
“I’ve held the line under worse conditions,” Jean assures them. “I can bear thirty more minutes. I can keep Day out of the goal.”
It is not an easy task. Both teams are getting desperate, and while the French score twice early, Josten gets around his backliner the same number of times and evens the score.
Jean is tired. His lungs burn with the added time, because he has to be as fast as he was at Evermore in order to keep Kevin in check. His knee is pulsing with every step, and he cannot throw the ball without his shoulder screaming in agony.
Kevin is getting desperate. He tries tripping Jean, and he tries checking Jean as hard as he can, and he tries whipping the ball back and forth with Josten so fast that it’s tough to keep track of where the ball is, but Jean just studies the flick of his wrist and then the ball is safely in his net and already heading back up the court.
It is still tied with thirty seconds left on the clock.
Kevin Day has the ball. Jean can hear the crowd screaming so loudly that he cannot hear anything at all, and the world fades away.
Kevin only has eight steps left with the ball, and he’s too far out to have a good shot if he simply takes them and then shoots.
Suddenly, Jean is fourteen years old and he doesn’t understand anything that the beautiful boy across from him is saying but he knows that his job is to stop him. Kevin had bounced the ball off of Jean’s own armor, caught the rebound, and scored before Jean could blink.
It’s an old trick, one that Kevin rarely uses now that he’s considered the most strategic and sophisticated player to ever grace a court.
Jean is twenty-nine years old now, and he knows what Kevin is going to try to do before even he does. He gets his racquet up, and the ball lands in his net instead of bouncing across his chest. He sends it hurling straight into the net of a sprinting striker.
There are ten seconds left. He could score and end this once and for all.
He misses.
Jean thinks that it’s a terrible trick of the universe that his final exy game goes all the way to penalty shots. All he wants is to be done, and to bring France pride in the process, so of course it goes to penalties.
While their coach is discussing strategy, Jean looks to the stands. He’s not going to have to shoot in the first round. He needs to see Jeremy.
It is clear that Jeremy is clutching a hand of each Laila and Cat, and squeezing them as tightly as they can. There’s a camera on them, but Jean knows Jeremy doesn’t even see it. The US exy media had thrown as much of a temper tantrum as they could, when it was revealed Jean was switching his nationality, but even they have come around with the fucking drama that is another Perfect Court showdown coupled with an excuse to shove a camera into Jeremy’s face. Kevin and Neil might be some of the biggest stars, but America loves Jeremy. They always have, ever since his Sunshine Captain days. He spearheaded reforms to the sport to make checking safer, to make play cleaner, to make it more equitable so that anyone can dream of being an Olympic player, regardless of gender or height or stature.
Jean is looking to Jeremy for strength, now. He always has, ever since that horrible first summer. He is so close. He does not want it to end with a loss to Kevin Day.
He thinks a silver medal would be perfect for Number Two.
Neil makes his penalty shot, and then he comes to stand next to Jean. June misses hers. Kevin, uncharacteristically, misses his.
It drags on and on, and Jean feels himself edge closer and closer to a panic attack. What if it’s not enough, and if the prize money isn’t enough and Jean has to keep playing? What if it’s not over? What if Ichirou decides to shoot him in the head anyways?
Before preparing for this tournament, it had been years since Jean truly cared about the result of an exy match. Playing was survivable, and it was even tolerable when he was on a team with Neil and Jeremy.
But Jean wants this.
The universe has always hated him, and that’s why he ends up on the line to shoot with an Olympic gold medal hanging in the balance. If he misses, it’s over. If he scores, they win.
Jean Moreau has given his life ten times over to this sport. It has killed him eleven times more. As a teenager, exy was hatred and violence and torture and a prison that he couldn’t escape. Most days, he wished he wouldn’t wake up so that he wouldn’t have to drag his broken and bleeding body to the court. It was something that Riko loved, and so it was something that Jean loathed. Other days, it was the only thing that connected him to Kevin, and he would practice until his legs gave out just to spend more time in his presence.
At USC, exy was a means to an end. He could only heal and live and have Cat, Jeremy, and Laila if he played, and so he played. He did his best while trying to find a way to keep breathing. After he finally kissed Jeremy, several years after he had first wanted to, exy found a backburner. His life is more than this sport, now.
It is a life. It is a life that Jean cannot wait to live without the shadow of this sport hanging over him.
As Jean scoops up the ball into his net, he takes a moment to gently touch the cross necklace he still wears around his neck. He would be dead if it weren’t for one beautiful girl’s kindness.
Jean takes a breath.
A cool evening breeze. Rainbows. Open roads. Friendship.. Jeremy.
Jean exhales, and begins his ten step approach to the goal.
He feints left. The goalie twitches, and Jean knows that he has won. He turns around as the ball sails cleanly into the upper right hand corner, and the goal lights up red.
He has done it.
It is so rare that a backliner gets any glory in exy. He has always been easy to blame for failures and loses, but he has never been responsible for a win.
Jean’s knees finally give out from underneath him, but he doesn’t hit the court floor. He can’t, because he is being swarmed by his countrymen, and they are holding him and jumping up and down and screaming.
Eight years ago, the French exy team hadn’t even made it out of pool play. Three years ago, they had barely scrapped their way to a bronze medal. Today, in front of thousands of screaming fans, they are Olympic champions.
Jean finds his strength, and there is only one thing that he wants. He’ll celebrate with his team later, and he’ll probably even find Kevin and Neil. If he’s right, they’ll hang on another four years just to end with a final gold medal.
But right now, all he wants is Jeremy.
Jeremy, who has spent the last two years bringing him ice packs and taking him to physical therapy to try and hold his crumbling body together. Jeremy, who was supportive of Jean switching to play for France before Jean could even voice what he wanted. Jeremy, who facetimed him every night when he spent months away at trainings in France and had to reckon with demons from his childhood he thought he had long since buried. Jeremy, who showed him the sun and the stars and that exy could be good. Jeremy, who has loved Jean even when he was as unlovable as he could have been.
Jean breaks free from the huddle, and his helmet, gloves, and armor have already been torn off in the celebration. He is in his blue underarmour, saturated with sweat, and every movement hurts but he has more energy than he’s had since the second quarter.
He is sprinting to the door of the inner court, straight at the USA bench. Kevin Day is looking at him like he’s a madman, and goes to step him front of him, but Neil Josten just pulls him back and whispers in his ear.
No one stops Jean as he vaults over the USA bench, and throws his body up as high as it will go so that he can be caught by a smiling and crying Jeremy Knox in the front row of the stands.
Jeremy looks so beautiful in the Paris sunset. All of the golds and honeys and warm browns in his shaggy hair are radiant in the warm sunlight, and his grin could move mountains and cure all illnesses. His plain gold wedding band reflects the light, and he is catching Jean in his arms and hauling him up.
Jeremy’s hands find the sides of Jean’s face, and they’re brushing away sweat and holding on as Jean just collapses into his arms. When he was nineteen, he thought home was Marseilles, a place that he could never return and a place that had failed him ten times over.
Home, now, is Jeremy’s arms. It’s the feeling of Jeremy’s heartbeat and his hands around Jean’s back, holding him close and whispering in Jean’s hair I love you I love you I love you.
“I love you,” Jean forces out, and then his lips are on Jeremy’s and his arms are clinging as tightly to his husband as he can. “I’m so fucking tired, Jeremy. I can’t believe it’s over.”
“I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you,” Jeremy says, and he’s crying and hugging Jean tighter. He pulls back slightly after a minute, and his beautiful blue eyes are asking Jean a silent question. Jean nods, and then Jeremy’s lips are on his own.
“Mon coeur, mon soleil,” Jean says, still breathless. “It is because of you.”
Jean does not care that there is celebrating to be done, that he needs to be back on the court, that he needs to change out of his sweaty uniform so that he can receive an Olympic gold medal.
Everything can wait.
Jean never wants to leave Jeremy’s arms ever again. He is home. He is free.
There was a time that Jean never thought that he would be allowed to want. He wants, now. He wants an ice bath, he wants to find Kevin and Neil and rub salt in the wound, and he wants to finally leave the Olympic Village to spend a night sleeping in Jeremy’s arms.
He has time to want, now.
Jean kisses Jeremy again, cameras be damned.
The end of the line is a beautiful evening in Paris in the arms of his lover. It is not a black and red prison, or a spare bedroom in LA, or a quiet house in Marseille. The end of the line is a crowd cheering his name, and it is being held so tightly that Jean’s bones might break from the tightness of the embrace.
Jean hopes the rest of it all is just like this moment: warm and happy and free.