Chapter Text
Jeremy doesn't realize it yet, but he's going to move out of this house someday soon.
There's a part of him that longs for it, even if it's just subconsciously. It's in the way he's set aside a couple of his favorite shirts every time he receives a clean load of laundry, the envelope of cash he put under his mattress instead of giving to Cat and Laila—they don't need it now that the FBI is paying for their apartment anyway, they insisted. It's in the way he finds himself walking slower and lingering in every hall, as if he's trying to soak in the place that made him—for better and for worse. Like he knows that he's not long for this place, that he can't stay here.
Warren and Mathilda Wilshire's home is full of photographs, the first floor anyway. Family and school portraits, all with the same level of formality, all on display to give the impression of a perfect, happy, all-American family. But the Wilshires haven't been happy in years, if they ever really were. Even if Jeremy can't remember a time when things were truly good, he can remember when things had been better at least. Before Noah's death, before the drugs, before the accident, before Warren, back when at least the siblings got along. Now the family was broken, even more than when their father left for good, and nothing will ever fix it. The family is a puzzle with one piece missing, while the other pieces all have torn, jagged edges. They'll never fit together, no matter how much they try to force it.
Jeremy is trying to force it. He wants to be the perfect son that his parents wanted, the perfect brother for his siblings, the one Noah deserved. He doesn't know if he can, if he even has it in him. He probably doesn't, but the effort has to count for something. It has to.
There are things he's supposed to be doing, Jeremy knows this, but he can't focus. Even more than usual. He's tired, but he can't sleep, his mind is racing, and he can't calm it. He wanders the halls of the house, searching for direction or simply trying to blow off some steam, and he finds himself outside of Noah's room. The door is a clean white, technically a contrast to all of the beige in the house, and devoid of any personal touches. It's uniform, as it should be, as everything is. Jeremy steps inside.
The room looks the same as it did before that fateful banquet. The bed is made neatly, courtesy of William that morning, Jeremy's sure. Noah's few posters line the wall, and a shelf beside his desk holds a small collection of baseball trophies.
Jeremy doesn't know why he's doing this. He doesn't stray far from the door. A part of him feels that his presence in the room is tainting it, like the more he stays, the farther he goes, anything he touches takes away the Noah of the room. So he stands, very still, in the corner and passively observes his own grief.
Warren had wanted to box everything up after Noah died, Jeremy had heard him and his mom fighting about it. Mathilda refused to budge, she threatened to fire William if he touched anything. So here it remains, a testament to loss and grief.
"What are you doing in here?" Comes the voice of his mother from the now open doorway.
"I was just…" Jeremy starts, "I was just looking." It's not the first time he's done this, but it's the first time he's been caught. He feels the guilt he often feels in this place magnified tenfold now that he's been seen.
"You have no right," his mother snaps. "You didn't touch anything, did you?" It's so rare for his mother's mask to crack, but for a second he sees it. The deep, aching grief that lives in him is reflected back in his mother's eyes for a split second. It's hard to see behind that anger, and it's quickly gone.
"I'm sorry Mom." He's sorry for being in here. He's sorry Noah's gone. He's sorry she's hurting so badly and there's nothing he can do to fix it.
She pinches the bridge of her nose in an expression Jeremy has seen far too many times. "Just go back to your room Jeremy." So he does.
For as much as his house looks like something from the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, there's very little in this room that makes it feel like a home. It's beige and barren, save for his navy blue bedspread and the occasional photograph on his wall. They're all older photos, no sign of Jean or Jabberwocky anywhere. It brings his mind to the photos slowly accumulating in the apartment. They'd lost them all in the fire, but new ones were being taken. He contemplates stealing one as he peels a picture of the floozy line at the beach off of the wall, though he has no idea when the next time he'll be there is. If there would even be a next time. Thinking about it too much puts a hollow ache in his chest. How can he live here when home feels like somewhere else?
He should be studying, he knows. He has papers due, he has the LSATs, he has finals. But when Jeremy goes to his desk, he doesn't pull out any of that. He pulls out his French book. His lessons are going well, his tutor says he's picking up the language surprisingly quickly. It feels good to know that he's doing something right, even if it's not what he's supposed to be doing.
The LSAT books stare at him from the back corner of his desk, clearly an attempt on their end to make him feel guilty. Maybe he does, just a little, that he's chasing this instead of the career his mother wants for him. But he pushes it aside. He shouldn't feel bad for this, he refuses to. He's doing this for Jean, because there's no one else he knows that can speak French—-except for Kevin, but they don't talk—and Jeremy has to imagine that it's lonely. He's far from home, whatever that means to him now, far from anyone that he knew before. And yes, Jeremy specifically wants to get closer to Jean, and maybe that's part of it, but he'd like to think that he'd do this for anyone. He'd tried to get Jean to teach him on the first day they met after all.
Right now, he's practicing conjugating some new verbs he learned. Even this makes him feel connected to Jean, even as they're apart. He says the forms quietly to himself, practicing his pronunciation and accent, but he imagines saying them to Jean. It's much more compliacted to do this in French than it is in English, and he wonders how it felt for Jean to make the adjustment he's learning in reverse.
He wonders how they're all doing back at the loft. He wishes more than anything he could be there with them. The lonliness here is suffocating. But he just has to push through. He'll see them at the next practice. That will have to be enough.