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The bus ride starts off as insignificant as most of them do. Jean tunes everyone out in favor of counting the trees that pass by. Jeremy tries to talk to him, but the fatigue of the day weighs too heavily on his shoulders to indulge in mindless chatter. Jeremy takes the hint and studies French in his workbook next to him, asking short questions when he can’t stand the silence. Jean obliges because that type of conversation has structure, and giving out objectively correct answers takes little energy.
Everyone else’s chatter is an ignorable buzz. No one on the team understands the word quiet, and the middle of the bus behind the floozies sounds like a party with how loud everyone keeps talking to one another. None of the coaches mind the racket—they never do—so he can only tune everyone out and try to relax.
Jean leans his head against the window and closes his eyes. His morning had already been off to a wobbly start when he found out new rumors about Riko were circulating. Then Shane was late to accompany him to one of his morning classes, and he forgot the lunch he and Cat had prepped together yesterday. One minor inconvenience after another pales in comparison to how he grew up, but his time in California has diminished his capacity to withstand mental exhaustion.
Driving to Santa Cruz takes about six hours with traffic. While still long, it isn’t their longest, so Jean braces for a stretched-out period of boredom and daydreaming. About halfway through, Jeremy gives up on studying and falls asleep with his neck bent down at an awkward angle. Jean has half a mind to direct that head to lean against his shoulder in the name of making sure his captain and partner doesn’t injure himself, but a deeper part of him rescinds.
Toward the last hour of the trip, dark clouds gradually started dropping light pellets of rain. The sound is as soothing as it is intimidating; rain was barely heard through the walls of Castle Evermore and the Nest, but he isn’t a total stranger to that sort of weather. He assumes the fall season has something to do with the sudden lack of dryness and clear skies, and turns away from the window so he doesn’t have to witness the sudden showers.
The weather becomes increasingly harder to ignore the more intense the rainfall becomes. A light drizzle quickly transforms into a steady rhythm, teeming against the bus with no time for silence. Jean sneaks a glance to his left and counts the seconds it takes a stream of water to reach the bottom of the window.
One of the bus drivers orders everyone to stay in their seats. Jean turns his attention to the coaches up front. He can’t hear what they’re discussing exactly, but he catches words “slow” and “hazard” through their serious expressions.
Jean looks out the window again. His gaze latches onto the fogged glass, desperate to view a horizon on the other side. The heaviness of the rainfall births thick streams that plaster onto the windows, covering the bus in a misty sheet. Anxiety swells in Jean’s throat at the prospect of not knowing where he is—of not knowing the dangers that lie beyond the dangerous waters.
He knows an episode is coming. Months of sunny days and white doctor’s rooms and emotional connections wrung out his ability to bury his own demons. Jean’s mind forces him to face them, now that he has a healthy baseline to compare his past transgressions to. USC Trojans are his new normal; getting smothered by drenched cloth is not.
His fingers cup his own face in a desperate self-plea to cling to reality. Rough skin slides across his fingertips, but the sensation of drowning under a wet blanket still suffocates.
no. not here. please.
Jean closes his eyes and counts until he loses track, and the cacophony of a storm is the only thing he can hear. He’s too aware of his now ragged breaths, of the hands on his neck, of his teammates’ naive and ignorant laughter.
Riko laughs at him as he pours another bucket, wet cloth snug against his flushed skin, drowning drowning drowning.
Rain belts against the bus windows in thunderous bursts. What was a fixed, albeit heavy downfall, transforms into a monstrous hurricane threatening to swallow him whole. If he leans too close, his nose will be consumed by damp fabric, but if he leans too far back, Riko’s hand in his hair will push him forward.
A whine escapes without permission. Jeremy’s weight shifts to his side, and Jean refuses to open his eyes to view what sort of expression he’ll bear. He should, he needs to see he’s on a bus next to Jeremy, and not shoved over a sink, but his eyes are glued shut, trapped under wet fabric, drowning drowning drowning.
Jean opens his eyes. The shade of safe brown that searches for him in every room, searches for a solution Jean cannot give. Jeremy shouldn’t see him like this. Can’t. Can’t. drowning drowning drowning.
“Jean?” Jeremy says so tenderly, Jean snaps in half.
Oxygen fights to sink in his stomach. His lungs ache through the struggle to breathe, triggering a surge of hot tension coiling in his chest and through the cracks of his ribcage. Jeremy’s words are as incomprehensible as the scenery outside, muffled by a layer of thick smog.
A few seconds pass, and Jean is no longer sitting on the bumpy bus. He’s stationary on a bathroom floor, neck strained over a tub as water pours from the detachable shower head and clogs his airways. He sucks in a sharp inhale of water and blood, choking, drowning drowning drowning.
The panic flees to the present, holding Jean hostage in a world that contradicts his body. His blood itches, burning as his nerves buzz through every inch of his pale skin. He watches his life through a lens, every sensation and concerned voice and clap of thunder all magnified straight to his mind.
Jean is trapped in a body he can’t control. He’s aware, too aware, of the chaos sprouting upon him. Jeremy’s voice is a muffled mess, but his face is a nice distraction from the monsters outside the bus, pouring down without care for his internal plight; the world spins without him, always has and always will. Jeremy tries to pull his hands from his neck, so Jean yanks his wrists away to put his hands to his ears to drown the chaos out. drowning. i’m drowning i—
Jeremy puts a hand over his right wrist and gently pulls. Jean is too weak to refuse, but Jeremy only moves it slightly away, just enough so Jean can hear his next words.
“Hey. It’s me, Jeremy. What can I do?”
nothing. riko is right there, you can’t, you can’t, he’ll get you too, water water water water water—
“Jean, please. Talk to me.”
Jean opens his mouth, but the wire wrapped around his tongue has him choking on words. The first crack in his wall is the catalyst for his crumbling composure.
His mind briefly flickers back to his therapy sessions. He’d listed triggers and carefully pushed his limits before, but that was in a safe and controlled environment. This is nothing like the stark-white doctor’s office or the comfort of his bedroom; he’s in the middle of a monsoon with nowhere to go. His panic, his sense of failure, his inability to ever achieve perfection—it breaks him.
With no words and too much fear to experience shame, Jean tilts his head so slightly the gesture almost doesn’t feel real.
But it is, because Jeremy gets the hint immediately, pulling Jean’s wrist fully away so he can lean his head on Jeremy’s shoulder; the opposite of what he envisioned earlier, but not an unwelcome feeling. Jean’s fingers tremble as he rides out the climax of the panic, clinging to Jeremy’s knees like his life depends on it.
His blood is a hot, wet blanket under his skin, humming and burning and itching and drowning drowning—
“You’re not drowning. You’re sitting on a bus. We’re about to go beat UCSC’s ass, yeah? At Exy, I mean,” Jeremy whispers, awkward in his attempt at comfort, but there, as a lifeboat Jean can confidently climb on to.
Pains still linger through his chest and across his back—phantom slices where past fresh wounds are now dead skin. Old scars don’t hurt, but that’s something his mind hasn’t caught up to yet.
Instead, his brain latches on to what he can discern outside of himself. Cat’s voice is nearby, indiscernible but there. Jeremy continues to spout nonsense about Exy and UCSC. His words half-register, but the familiar tone and cadence of his voice are enough to help counteract the overflowing terror.
And through it all, the downpour doesn’t stop. Rain pounds against the bus, coats the cement in deep pools, creating a layer Jean can drown in.
Jeremy tightens his grip on Jean’s wrist. “Want some air? I think Lisinski and Rhemann are willing to make room up near the front so you’re not so enclosed.”
Jean can only manage a weak nod. Somewhere, Derek yells, “Everyone out of the way!” which allows Jeremy to drag him across the middle aisle through the sea of nosy stares. Cody says something Jean can’t discern, and Lisinski moves to sit next to Rhemann, leaving the seat next to them empty for them to slide into. Jeremy drags him into the spot, and although breaths still escape in sharp bursts, the open space is another anchor back to reality.
“Do I need to pull over?” The bus driver asks.
Rhemann walks over and crouches in front of Jean. “Tell us what to do to help.”
Pulling over and risking missing their game would be detrimental to the fall season, and just thinking about being such a burden to risk a Trojan victory makes his chest burn. “No,” Jean forces out, voice rough from choking on lack of air. “I need—”
to breathe, to breathe, to breathe—
“Try to count your breathing, son. Aim for five in, five out,” Rhemann says calmly.
Jean tries. It doesn’t work, because why would it? Air doesn’t stop its rapid staccato, but trying to count puts his focus away from the invisible noose on his neck. A hand reaches out to offer a fresh bottle of water—Cat, perhaps. He takes it and grips the plastic until his sweaty palms cool from the condensed exterior of the cold bottle.
When his vision isn’t tainted by a sheet of fog, and his breath mellows out into a steadier pace, Jean lifts his head where he’d been hunched over and looks guilty at Rhemann, who holds onto the rail to keep from falling. “Sorry, Coach.”
Rhemann shakes his head, standing and moving to sit on the seat adjacent in the front row. “Don’t apologize. Making sure you’re okay is our priority. And that goes for everyone, so do not try to argue with me on that.”
Jean nods through unshed tears, because years at the Nest welded his ducts dry. Lisinski reaches over to offer a protein bar, which he hesitantly accepts. He doesn’t tear the wrapper on it just yet, instead clinging to it to remind himself that his reality on a USC bus to Santa Cruz is real.
“Do you know what caused this?” Jeremy quietly asks. “Was it the rain?”
Of course, he’d connect the dots. “Yes.”
Lisinski shoots him a knowing look. Rhemann offers no more words, but keeps an eye on Jean, who continues to force air back into his lungs. The rest of the bus is eerily quiet, so silent that the sound of the rain is amplified tenfold. He hates it. He grips Jeremy’s hand on instinct, thankful that Jeremy doesn’t comment on it, but instead holds Jean’s palm even tighter.
“Want to borrow my earbuds?” Jeremy asks.
Jean shakes his head. “You use them to study.”
“Okay, but I think everyone can agree that your well-being is more important. Plus, we only got like, what, thirty minutes left?” Jeremy looks to the coaches for confirmation. “We’re almost there, yeah?”
thirty minutes. i can do it.
Jean sucks in a large breath, holds it, and releases it in a gradual motion. “Okay.”
“Everything okay up there?” Cat yells across the bus, which causes an eruption of similar questions from nearly every damn Trojan member. Jean sinks into himself, overwhelmed with mortification at breaking down where everyone can see.
Jeremy taps idly on the tops of Jean’s knuckles as he says, “It’s okay, Jean. That just means they’re worried. Trust me, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”
Jean remembers Jeremy’s freshman year and how he also had to be put back together again. “We’re a team. Teams look out for each other,” Jeremy adds on with a smile in his voice that Jean can imagine without looking.
As the tide pulls back into a smooth sailing calm and the rain outside transforms back into a stable rhythm, Jean can finally breathe. He sips at the water and takes a small bite out of the protein bar. He accepts the noise-cancelling headphones from Lucas Johnson of all people, because of course he’s the one to walk up to the front of the bus when it stops at a red light.
With only the noise in his head to combat the memories of swift shower heads and ignored cries, Jean turns to look at Jeremy as a distraction. He studies the freckles, how sun-kissed Jeremy’s face looks even in the dim lighting of a cloudy afternoon, how the toothy grin he gives Jean when he notices him staring spurs a flock of butterflies to fly across his stomach. It’s better than the bottomless pit of anxiety, but it gives him a whole new problem to worry about.
Jean ignores the implications. He’s content on soaking in the moment of support from both Jeremy and everyone else on the bus for now. The monsters of the past will probably stick with him forever, but at least he has help that refuses to let him combat them alone.