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“If we make it” is a phrase Jean and Mohammed begin to share a lot.
“I’ll never take another toilet for granted.”
“I’ll sleep for weeks.”
“I’ll shower everyday.”
“I’ll drink so much water my piss will be clear.”
“Jean, that’s gross-”
“You’re the one who wanted to piss together as ‘male bonding!’”
Mohammed snorts and leans against Jean’s chest.
“Yeah, okay. If we make it, I’ve gotta come up with a better pickup line,”
“For who?” Jean pinches him in the side and Mohammed squirms. “You already have me!”
They wrestle in the half light of their clammy hotel room until they’ve kicked the covers off and are panting, staring at the ceiling and wrapped around each other again.
“If we make it, I’ll bake you a cake,” Jean says softly.
“If we make it, I’m getting my own chickens,”
“I like chickens,”
“I can go either way on cake,”
“Asshole,” Jean laughs, retrieving the sheets from the floor.
“If we make it… where do we go?”
“I planned to go to France…”
“I planned to stay in Cairo.”
They don’t speak as they rearrange the sheets. Mohammed doesn’t know what to say next.
“We can figure it out,” Jean finally says, pressing his face into Mohammed’s neck.
“If we make it,” Mohammed agrees, kissing his forehead.
*
Jean stares at the ugly cake, slanted to one side like it’s been improperly mixed with lumpy, off-color frosting.
Cherie would never have stood for this monstrosity. She also wouldn’t have accepted a box mix, but Jean can hardly put the effort in otherwise. The fact that he’s managed to cook anything is more than he’s done in weeks.
He places a candle in the center of his creation. He does not light it. He threw away all his lighters and matches when he got home, some obscene grief he won’t confront surrounding flame. He would rather freeze.
He stares at the cake, stomach gnawing with emptiness and rolling with nausea all at once.
He tosses it outside for his new chickens to peck at, and petulantly dials the only number he ever calls anymore.
“Calm down, Jean, I told you we got stuck at-”
“I c-can’t cook,” Jean interrupts, twisting his fingers into the phone line. “Every time I try it… I ruin it. I ruin everything. And the oven never gets hot enough anymore and I don’t like the gas range and and and-”
“Alright, alright,” the voice on the other end is exhausted. Jean is choking, unable to cry anymore but so frayed that even the simple task of a meal sends him into tears. “Look, we’ll… we’ll just go to town and get something to eat, alright?”
Jean chews his lip, blurts out a hasty affirmative, and slams the phone down.
God, would Mohammed have been such a mess if he made it?
*
“What about Cairo do you like so much?” Jean asks, stupid and in love while he sits on the sidewalk in the city center. Mohammed laughs, the clearest fullest sound in the world.
“I assume it’s probably close to what you love about France. It’s familiar, a climate my body knows and streets I don’t have to look at a map to understand,”
But that isn’t true. Jean loves France because that’s where his sister was. He might be able to love Cairo just because Mohammed is here. Things make sense by his side. In his shadow. Lives twined together so intimately that they’ve skipped all the awkward parts and fallen right into guarding each other’s lives. How could he ever be whole without him?
“Well, you don’t know all the streets,” Jean says, staring off in the direction the man took off in over an hour ago to find Dio’s compound.
“No, almost as if Cairo is not a small city,” Mohammed teases. He squats beside Jean and pushes a stray, poorly gelled piece of hair back into place. “You’ve never lived in a big city, have you?”
Jean blushes, glancing back to where the Joestar’s are. He’s unaware that this romance is stupidly obvious to everyone else and that there’s no reason to be so secretive about it. A fact even Mohammed knows by now, after a particularly uncomfortable conversation with Mr. Joestar that ended in an exchange of condoms. A fact that Joseph Joestar himself will tell Jean in a hospital room in less than twenty-four hours from now, shaky with anemia and unshed tears.
“I… no,” Jean swallows and looks into Mohammed’s eyes, brown and warm. Slightly squinted in a smile. “I’d like to, though,”
“Yeah?”
Mohammed’s smile is so beautiful like this. Full of hope and light.
“If we make it out,” Jean says, rolling his eyes. “But you have to teach me the streets, and the rules! I’d hate to get in trouble with the unions,”
*
The lane Jean grew up on is exactly as it always was. Nothing new to learn. He can navigate it with his eyes closed, from the dip along the bike path that gets worse every winter to the broken asphalt where he skinned his knee after his mother had yelled at him for playing in the road.
The too tight turn cars used to have accidents on, where he’d stand and watch for Cherie if she was late coming home.
The road is empty most days, and the sky is clear. It is not as hot or as bright as it was in Egypt. Jean’s sunburn has healed, day by day, and left his skin its original shade of pasty white in only a few months.
He looks exactly the same as he did when he left, aside from a few faded scars.
There is no hint of sixty days. No hint of Mohammed Avdol.
If Mohammed had made it, he would have carried some sign of all that had happened to them. He wouldn’t be an empty stranger when the Joestar’s car turns and bounces along the poorly maintained road. He might even offer to let them into his house.
*
Mohammed has lied to him. He has lied to him so convincingly that Jean is almost sure it’s the truth.
They won’t save each other.
They’ve promised.
Jean squares his shoulders and shakes Mohammed’s hand. He wants to kiss him one last time, but in the harsh light of day, with fear crawling under his skin and the fresh reminder of death, he settles for bravado.
“If we make it out of this alive, you’re treating me to one hell of a meal,” Jean says with a strange note of contention. Mohammed grips his hand tighter. He has that determination in him that makes Jean foolishly believe that maybe he really will survive. Maybe they both will. Maybe all three of them will make it to see another day.
“I’ll treat you both,” Mohammed says, winking at Iggy.
He is so strong.
So brave.
So selfless.
And then. He is none of those things.
He is nothing at all.
*
Jean does not want to have dinner with Mr. Joestar at a nice restaurant. He does not want to pick an item off the menu, or select a wine. He does not want to white knuckle through conversation with Jotaro, so clumsy in his French that he gave up speaking it the moment Jean offered him a single word in Japanese.
He stares at the table between courses, imagining they are both gone. Imagining Mohammed is sitting in Mr. Joestar’s seat, and Iggy has his paws on the table where Jotaro is. He imagines that Mohammed is speaking in his beautifully accented French, and that the dog is happily ignoring them both, and that they will hold hands. Share their meal. Lean their heads close when they walk home, Iggy alongside them.
That they will share a front door. A bed. A home. A life.
“Polnareff?” Mr. Joestar says, like he’s said it several times. Jean lifts his head to stare dispassionately at the man across from him. He is all wrong. Too brash and too pale. Not him. Never him. Never again will anyone ever be him.
Jean wipes at his eyes and lifts his wine.
“Thank you for taking me to dinner,” he says in English. His throat hurts, like it did when he screamed for Mohammed and Iggy. Like he’s swallowed that gritty pain of loss all over again. Like it will never leave him. “I am sorry I was not able to make you a meal on my own,”
Mr. Joestar looks unbearably uncomfortable, and Jotaro is slouched low, his hat pulled hard over his face, only barely hiding the shine of a tear on his cheek.
If Mohammed had made it out, the world would have been better. And all Jean needed to do was take his place.