Work Text:
Just when Jean thought he'd finally heard all of Jeremy's ridiculous alerts, his phone goes off with a new, annoying, downright offensive whistle.
Jean scowls at it. Cat hoots, and plants herself at Jeremy's side. "Bishop?"
"Sheldon," Jeremy returns.
He sounds distracted. He smells…interested. Jean's alpha squirms inside of him, and Jean wonders what this Sheldon's deal is. What he looks like, what he sounds like. Why he's texting Jeremy at all.
Unfortunately, he does not have to wonder for long.
"Last I heard, he told you to lose his number," Laila says, and pokes her sunglasses up on her face in obvious disapproval. "Why didn't you?"
Jeremy smiles at her. Slow, and satisfied. Jean can only stand looking at it for a second, and then has to cut his gaze elsewhere. Laila huffs, and puts her sunglasses back into place. "Nevermind," she says. "I don't actually want the answer to that."
Jean does. Terribly. Horribly. Just to confirm that his English isn't failing him, just to hope that it might be.
But then Cat slams her fist into her palm, and says, "Oh! Isn't he the one with the huge—"
And Jean knows he understood perfectly well.
Suddenly, he is so nauseous he can barely breathe. He pushes away his lunch, and clenches his hands into fists, trying and failing to get the world to stop spinning, his chest to stop feeling like it caved in.
It should not matter if Jeremy goes with other alphas. It could not. Jeremy is his partner, not his omega. And it is against the rules, regardless.
Jean knows that. His alpha needs to remember that, too.
The next time Jeremy gets together with an alpha caller, Jean is spared the notification.
But Jean doesn't need to hear Jeremy's phone to know what's going on. As soon as Jeremy walks through the door of Laila's house, Jean can smell it all over him.
And he reeks.
Gone is his sweet scent of peaches and cream, and in its place is the overbearing combination of bergamot and pepper. Jean chokes on it, and feels his nausea from the other day come doubling back.
His chest feels like Riko kicked it in, the world spins and spins and spins around him. Jean closes his eyes as he waits for it to stop, and then forces them open again as he hears Jeremy's footsteps draw nearer.
He grips the edges of Cat's cookbook tighter in his hands, and wills his shoulders to relax. Wills his scent to go back to normal instead of distressed.
It's a good call—Jeremy looks for him first, the way he always does when he enters a room. Jean can feel the weight of his gaze as Jeremy checks him over, and only breathes again when Jeremy turns his back, satisfied, to get a glass for the rose in his hand.
But the breath is painful, and jagged, like the air is suddenly full of Riko's knives, and Jean casts about hopelessly, desperately, for a distraction.
It almost works, too—at least until the conversation segues to more sour topics, and then Jean needs a distraction for his distraction. This time, though, he makes it all the way to the door before his progress gets destroyed again.
"Jeremy," Laila asks, "why is there a Foster rose on my windowsill?"
Foster. Jean commits the name to memory, even as Jeremy tries to usher him out into the hall, and away from whatever secret Laila is about to divulge. "You've always said you liked them!"
"I've also always said not to fuck the guy who gave you rejection sickness!" Laila calls after him, and Jean isn't quite far enough to miss it.
He commits these new words to memory alongside the first, and wonders about them for the entire run around campus
"What is rejection sickness?" Jean asks the next time he and Laila are alone.
She's sat in her Papasan chair, curled into a ball around a book and her boba tea. Jean scowls at it. Laila glances up at him, immediately on edge. "Why?" she asks. "Is Jeremy—?"
"Jeremy is fine," Jean tells her, and takes a seat on the couch. "I heard you say it, when he brought home the rose."
"Oh," Laila says. She purses her lips, drums her fingers on her thighs as she decides what to say.
Finally, she settles on: "Rejection sickness is something that sometimes happens to omegas. Could be due to a mating bond being broken, could be due to the loss of a compatible alpha, either in death, or to some other reason. But the symptoms vary depending on how hard the omega took it, how deep the bond was, etcetera. And cases range from a couple days under the weather to life threatening."
Jean blinks at her, startled, and then presses, "And was it life threatening, for Jeremy?"
Laila shoots him a look that's too prying to be knowing, but Jean flushes under it regardless. At once, he remembers his claim that who Jeremy was outside of the Trojans did not matter, and how hypocritical this line of questioning seems. But Jeremy is also his partner, and if someone is threatening his wellbeing, it is Jean's job to handle it.
Therefore—therefore, it is not against the rules.
Laila sighs; drums her fingers on the side of her cup. "Honestly," she says, "I shouldn't have said that."
"But you did," Jean says.
"But I did," she agrees. "And I know he won't want to talk about Leo, just as I know I don't want him to go through what Leo put him through ever again. So I'll tell you, on strict promise that you'll watch out for him, and won't tell him that I told you."
Jean nods, seriously, solemnly. "He is my partner. I will protect him."
Laila cocks her head. Her gaze goes sharp again.
Jean wonders what she knows, or at least what she thinks she does, but before he can figure it out, Laila starts talking instead.
"It was years ago," she tells him. "Highschool. Jeremy and this alpha—"
"Foster," Jean supplies. "Leo."
"—Leo," Laila confirms. "They were together, for a while. But then the wilshires caught wind, and offered Leo a car to climb out of bed with him."
She pauses, mouth twisting into that same furious frown from the other day. Jean fills in the blanks, and feels his own anger boil. "He picked the car."
"I don't know all the details, but I know Jeremy was devastated. Still is, sometimes." Her frown deepens, and she stabs her straw angrily around in her drink, destroying the plastic cover. "I just—don't want to see him get hurt like that again. He deserves to have someone to stand by him. To have someone choose him over everything, each and every time.”
"He does," Jean says, and resists the urge to go find this Leo Foster and throttle him; ignores the way Laila glances up at him again, with a new expression. "What do I look for?"
"A white rose, for starters," Laila tells him. "But in terms of symptoms—chest pain, dizziness, and nausea are the usually the first signs. After that, he might…smell different? He won't be able to get warm, or sleep; he'll lose his appetite. And if that happens, he'll get weaker, more exhausted than normal."
She pauses, worrying at her lip, and Jean's panic spikes. Life threatening, she'd said. "And after that?"
"After that, it's a little more…dependent on the omega. He could stop having heats, he could have painful heats; he could become hyper sensitive to touch. He could nest obsessively. He could isolate. He could do all of the above. But it's important that it's caught, by the time he does. Because once he surpasses those stages, he'll go feral. And at that point…"
Laila shakes her head, as if trying to shake away the thought, the possibility. "Just—keep an eye out for him, okay? And if you see anything like what I described, let me know."
Jean stares at her, heart pounding. He tries to remember the list of symptoms, but the order gets jumbled in his head, and already, he's starting to worry he’ll forget one or two. Already, he's wondering if he should ask her to write this down.
Instead, he asks, "And you'll tell me, as well?"
"Yeah, Jean," Laila says, and this time, her gaze is far more sure of itself. "I'll tell you."
For the next couple weeks, Jean watches Jeremy closely.
He checks his scent constantly, and makes sure he sleeps when he stays the night; he packs Jeremy's lunch each morning and watches him eat it, and on one terror inducing day, when Jeremy says he isn't hungry, nearly starts feeding Jeremy himself. He brings an extra hoodie everywhere they go in case Jeremy gets cold, despite it being the middle of California summer, and checks in with him after each and every check at practice.
The Trojans stare at him like he's lost his mind. Jeremy stares at him like he's lost his mind. But Jean meant what he told Laila—he would keep Jeremy safe, would protect him, regardless of the cost. His reputation was already in the gutter, and he did not care what people said about him. And besides—Jeremy is his partner. Jeremy is the first person to allow him boundaries, the person who took a chance on him, the person sticking by him despite what the rest of the world is saying.
And for that reason, Jean cannot understand it. How anyone could have Jeremy and let him go so easily. How they could toss him aside like he's worth nothing. How Jeremy could let them.
But again and again, Jeremy's phone goes off. And again and again, Jeremy goes, like a dog being called to its master.
At least, if his game was suffering, or if he was showing signs of being unwell, Jean could take him to task. But not once is there a symptom Laila mentioned. Not once is there a white rose. There is just Jeremy, with the same shadows in his eyes and the same too tight smile on his mouth, and a new alpha's scent for Jean to be sick over every night.
By the time August rolls around, the nausea has become an almost constant thing.
It is beyond annoying, and ruining almost every aspect of Jean's life. Because he is nauseous, he cannot eat. Because he cannot eat, his performance is…struggling. He is more tired than usual, and benching less, in the weight room; running slower and playing poorer, on the court.
But he cannot bring it up to Jeremy, because bringing it up to Jeremy means acknowledging that Jean's alpha cannot get a grip over an omega that isn't his. And he cannot bring it up to anyone else, because he's starting to suspect that he's investigating the wrong person for signs of rejection sickness.
And then Kevin shows up, and Jean knows.
He watches Jeremy and Kevin fawn over exy, and each other; hears Kevin tell Jeremy "he is close enough to perfect to count", and sees Jeremy go pleased at the compliment, and feels his chest start up again, so much that he cannot breathe.
For a moment, he is so dizzy he has to hold onto the counter to stay upright, and the next, he is fleeing the room with an underhanded "Jeremy is studying for law school" and announcing that he is heading for the bathroom.
But he does not head for the bathroom.
He heads for his room, and locks the door; pulls out his laptop, and up a new tab, and hovers over the search bar, hesitating.
Because this is ridiculous. And this is not—it cannot be rejection sickness. It makes no sense. For starters, Jean is an alpha, and as far as Laila had told him, rejection sickness is something only omegas came down with. And second, even if alphas could get rejection sickness, surely he would've gotten it back in the nest from the man currently standing in the kitchen.
But all that is besides the point—alpha or not, Kevin or not, there is nothing to get rejected over, here. He is not being tossed away as second choice. He is not even in the running to be a choice. Jeremy is not his omega, and will never be his omega, and therefore, this can not be what Laila described.
And yet.
And yet, Jean has most of the symptoms. The nausea, the dizziness, the chest pain. He cannot eat, he cannot sleep. He’s tired, all the time, and—weaker.
He doesn’t think his scent has changed, but maybe he’d missed it, in everything else? He lifts the collar of his shirt, and sniffs it, and still cannot tell.
And that’s concerning, but more concerning is the reminder of what comes next—the painful or missed ruts, the isolation, the obsessive nesting, the sensitivity to touch, going feral, and then—death.
Jean doesn't know why that last stage bothers him so much. He has begged to die. He has always begged to die. But, recently…well, recently, he kind of wanted to live.
The revelation is as jarring as this entire situation. Jean feels himself go pale with it, and then swallows down his protests, types his question into the search bar, and laughs to himself, short and sharp, at the results.
For a second, he is so fed up and angry he cannot breathe, and the next, he is pressing his fingers to his eyes and trying to gather the courage to gouge them out once and for all, to be rational.
Because this isn’t Jeremy's fault. It isn't—it is not Jeremy's problem that Jean is constantly wanting after things he cannot have. It is not Jeremy's problem that he is attractive, that he is kind.
And if Jeremy knew what was happening, he would do anything in his power to fix it, even if that meant putting his own issues on hold.
The thought makes Jean’s chest ache. Makes the world spin. And Jean decides, here and now, that Jeremy can never find out.
Despite Jean’s years of experience in hiding the fact that he’s dying, and even with all the anti-nausea medications and scent blockers in the house, there is nothing he can do once the next wave of symptoms start.
There is no disguising the way he pulls away from the team, the girls. No disguising the way he recoils from touch more than usual, or the way he spends the three days of his rut pacing anxiously around the house, and scenting the perimeter, and—howling, like a wounded dog.
And the night of the banquet, there is no disguising the way his legs give out from under him as Jeremy leaves to meet up with yet another alpha the moment Jean walks into the room.
He tries to cover it up, sitting down on the edge of the bed as quickly as he can, but judging by the way Laila rounds on him, he knows he failed.
Her gaze is sharp. Her words are sharper. “How long have you been sick?" She asks.
Jean ignores her. Cat whips her head toward him, eyes wide.
Laila presses, "Jean."
Jean opens his mouth to lie, but Laila beats him to this, too. "We made a deal."
"We made a deal to tell each other about Jeremy," Jean corrects her, but when he goes to move—stumble—past her and over to the bathroom instead, to shut himself away from them and this conversation, she stops him with a gentle hand to his chest. Jean recoils like he’s been burned.
Laila’s expression goes even sharper. Her scent goes tangy with panic. "You’re Jeremy’s partner, too," she says. "Don't you think he wants to protect you the way you protect him?"
Of course Jean thinks that. Of course he knows that. Jeremy has done nothing but protect him since he arrived here. From the girls and their questions, from the press and theirs. And that is exactly the problem.
Jean tries again to stand up, to make a run for it, and this time cannot even get his legs to support him.
Something animal stirs in his chest, frustrated and angry, and he grits his teeth against it, clenches the comforter in his hands to keep it down. "He has other things to worry about."
"He worries about you," Laila insists. "He has been nothing but worried about you since you got here. And if he knew you were suffering now, of rejection sickness no less, he'd try to help in any way he could. He—“
“He is not here,” Jean roars, and knows it is selfish. Knows it is unfair. This night is not about him, and Jeremy does not owe him his presence, his attention. But Jean cannot stop it, this pain in his chest. The keening of his alpha. The way he suddenly feels hot all over, and—wrong, like he needs to claw his way out of his skin. “He does not want me. And he cannot fix this. And I will not ask him to.”
“Okay,” Cat says, and steps between him and Laila when Laila opens her mouth again. To Jean, she holds up her hands, soothingly, infuriatingly.
“Okay,” she repeats, “it’s okay. We don’t have to call Jeremy. There are other treatments for rejection sickness. Pack care is one of them. And Laila and I—we’re your pack, Jean. We want to help you. Please let us help you.”
She says it so earnestly, so desperately, that Jean cannot dismiss her. Even this close to the brink, he cannot bring himself to ignore an omega in distress, or his friend, asking—pleading—to help.
“It will not work,” he warns her, but Cat is already climbing onto the bed, and peeling back the covers, and ushering him up and under them.
“You underestimate the power of our cuddles, Mr. Moreau,” she says, and when he allows her to tentatively fold him into her arms, feels her purr, soft and calmingly.
And he has to admit, that it is nice. The sound, the soft vibration. And it is even nicer when Laila comes to sit on his other side, and presses herself against him to do the same.
Between the two of them, then, he lets himself relax. Slowly, surely. His alpha settles, and before he knows it, he is drifting off, and to sleep.
Jean wakes to whispering.
At first, he’s content to ignore it. He can hear all the members of his pack, and the sound of them here, and with him, keeps his alpha pleased, and settled.
But then he breathes, and counts their scents—and finds an intruder. Leather and diesel. Suffocating. Disgusting. Wrong.
Immediately, Jean is on edge. All of Cat and Laila’s progress evaporates; his alpha tenses. Jean sits up, and swings his feet onto the floor. Makes his way carefully, quietly, over to the door, where Cat and Laila are standing with their back to him, and scans the sight.
But there are no intruders, and no extra bodies. No, instead, there is just his omega, bruised around the neck, and reeking of the alpha responsible.
Jean’s stomach falls through the floor. His vision goes red. His legs move without permission, stalking toward the group, and as Jeremy turns to hide away in the bathroom, the same way Jean had done just hours before, his hand slaps against the molding of the doorframe; his arm bars Jeremy from entering.
Distantly, he is aware of the reaction that gets—the way Jeremy jumps and freezes; the way his eyes go wide, and his face goes white. But all Jean can think about is his omega being hurt. All Jean can think about is how it’s his fault.
It is his job to protect Jeremy, his, and yet—
“Give me a name,” Jean says. “I will kill him.”
He means it. And not in the way that Stuart’s associate handled Grayson. He means it personally—can picture it, tearing into the asshole alpha with his hands and teeth, making sure that he can never hurt his omega, or any other omega, ever again.
But Jeremy will not give him an answer, and Jeremy does not approve. And Jeremy does not seem nearly as horrified as Jean, by the ring of bruises around his throat.
“He didn't mean to hurt me,” Jeremy tells him, like Jean is the one overreacting here. “He just had a bit too much to drink, so he got a bit heavy-handed. That's all it was. I would tell you if it was something to be worried about, I promise."
The way he had told him about any of the threats against him before. “You promise,” Jean echoes.
Maybe Jeremy hears the accusation in that, because he grimaces, and adds, “If you won’t trust me, trust Laila. She hates all my partners, she wouldn’t protect them from you.”
It’s supposed to help, Jean thinks. To comfort him. But instead, it’s like Jeremy delivered a blow. Like he drove his fist straight into the middle of Jean’s chest, and cracked it open wide. Jean feels that crack reverberate around every inch of his body—through his heart and his head, his lungs. His alpha.
It is one thing, to have Jeremy choose others over him; it is another to have him tell Jean this to his face.
Somewhere to his left, Laila opens her mouth, but Jean cannot hear her over the static in his mind, the sound of his pulse in his ears. He opens his own mouth, manages a fierce, ”They are not your partners!”
And then everything goes black.
When Jean wakes again, it's to lights.
Bright, blinding white lights that make the already debilitating pounding in his head ten times worse.
He lifts a hand to block them out, and groans. Somewhere to his left, there’s a click.
Jean tenses, suddenly alert. He moves his hand again, and finds the brightness gone, and the room significantly darker. He blinks around at it, and finds plain white walls, chairs lined up against the one to his right, and—an omega.
His omega.
"You scared the shit out of us," his omega says, and he looks—angry. He smells terrified. And that hurts Jean as much as the lights had. “Laila said you’ve been sick for weeks, and that you’ve been hiding it. And Davis said—that we’re running out of time to fix it.”
The last part makes his voice crack. Makes him look devastated, his scent go sour to match. He wraps his arms around his middle, and looks away. Jean reaches out to him.
His omega bows away from the touch.
Jean flinches. A pained noise comes out of him, small and weak, and his omega turns back at the sound, frantic.
“I didn’t—I’m sorry,” his omega says. His arms unwrap from around his middle, and reach out toward Jean, but he doesn’t touch. His hand hovers a hair’s breadth away from Jean’s shoulder. “I’m sorry—I—“
He bites his lip. Shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, and drops his hands back to his sides. “The girls and Davis were right. I shouldn’t have come. I’m only making this worse.”
Jean keens again. He tries to push himself up, and out of bed, as his omega moves to stand, to leave, and finds that he’s too weak to do so. His body collapses out from under him, his alpha whines; his omega shrieks.
“Jean!” He shouts, and just barely manages to catch him before he can hit the ground. They both crumble to it anyway, Jean’s weight too much for his omega to support like this, but it’s a much slower descent than it would’ve been. “Hey, hey. It’s— It’s okay. I’m —“ he laughs a little as Jean grabs him by the chin to get a better look at his expression, as Jean tries to nuzzle against him, and away his sadness. “I’m okay.”
He laughs again when Jean huffs, and pouts. “I’m sorry, it’s not funny. It’s just—you’re the one dying, and you’re worried about me?”
Jean blinks at him, because, of course he’s worried. But just as fast as his omega’s laughter came, his tears follow, and Jean is too busy trying to brush and lick them away to focus on anything else.
“I’m really sorry, Jean,” his omega says, a fourth time. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like this. I want you. Of course I want you. I’ve wanted you since you landed in California. But I didn’t want to add that on top of everything else you were dealing with. And I didn’t want to overstep. I wanted you to feel safe with us, with me. And I tried to stop, but then I started to know you, and I wanted you even more.
“I didn’t think—I didn’t know why you would ever want me back. You could have anyone you wanted. And I’m—literally the worst option on campus. In all of California, probably. I’m the reason the Ravens could destroy your reputation like they did, the reason they could spread those rumors. Don’t you see? I’m no good, Jean, I—“
Jean doesn’t see anything but his perfect, beautiful omega in front of him, telling Jean that he wants him. His alpha perks up. That crack inside him mends.
“You want me?” Jean interrupts, and his omega blinks at him.
It takes a moment, for his omega to answer, and when he does, he looks like he might protest again. Jean covers his mouth. Repeats, “You want me: yes or no?”
His omega nods, slowly, earnestly; says, muffled by Jean’s hand, “More than anything.”
Jean’s heart pounds. He pulls his hand back, away, and uses it to brush a stray hair out of his omega’s face, to see his eyes better. He bites his lip, and drops his gaze to his omega’s.
Asks, “May I?”
His omega nods again. Once, twice. On the third, Jean swallows his fears, and leans in, presses their lips flush together.
It is a mistake. It is the best thing Jean has ever done in his life. He feels something settle over and within him, like sunlight shot straight through his veins. He feels his strength come back bit by bit, feels warmth wash over him; feels Jeremy’s scent wrap around him. He breathes it in in heaving gulps, until he has to pull away, gasping, drunk off the sweetness.
“Easy,” Jeremy tells him, and when Jean glances up at him, he’s almost smiling. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Good, Jean thinks. And then says, out loud, “No more others. Please. I want you to be mine.”
“I’m yours,” Jeremy tells him, and takes Jean’s head in his hands, strokes his thumbs over Jean’s cheekbones. “All yours.”