Chapter Text
Looking at the box’s contents felt like some sort of crime. Jean knew every law in Revachol - he had to, all things considered, though he knew colleagues who seemed to disagree - and so he knew that it wasn’t, but he still caught himself glancing over his shoulder at the window near his bed and clearing his throat in an uncommon display of genuine bashfulness.
Kim sat across from him on the same bed, cross-legged and completely still. He was uncertain what reaction he’d expected, and he was even more uncertain if he should start worrying that he’d overstepped a boundary. Jean didn’t seem upset, but he didn’t seem particularly happy either. It was hard to tell if his blush was one of embarrassment, or some kind of anger, or if he was even blushing at all. It was warm in the room, and warmth always seemed to wake up the rosacea that coloured his normally pale cheeks. It was unlikely he didn’t care; nobody stayed this pointedly, uncomfortably silent if they didn't care, so that was definitely just Kim making up reasons to not start begging for forgiveness.
He wouldn’t normally, but this was something delicate. This wouldn’t be fixed with a simple ‘I’m sorry’.
They both managed to pick the exact same time to speak.
“Sorry, I just don’t–”
“--I’m starting to worry that–”
They both shut up at the same time too, with Kim being the one to gesture for Jean to go ahead first. There was silence again, then another uncommon display of bashfulness in Jean’s quiet voice – if Kim’s ears weren’t giving up slowly as he grew older, he might have been able to pick up the slight waver to it.
“... I just don’t know what to say. Or do. It’s…” Jean inhaled sharply, then exhaled slowly, and looked back at the open box. He just stared for a moment, and a small laugh snuck up on him and had him ducking his head to pretend it wasn’t him. “It’s- great. Are you–” Another laugh, less choked back this time, “is this your extremely on-the-nose way of telling me to go fuck myself? What’s the fucking situation here?”
Kim resisted rolling his eyes, even affectionately. Everything was an act of hostility when you were Vicquemare. “I much prefer to use my words when it comes to that sort of thing.” He half-smiled, but he had to look away from Jean’s gaze as he continued, “It’s… supposed to be a gift- a genuine one, ah…” he forced himself to look back, glad to see that Jean had softened slightly, “based on our conversation a few months back.”
He watched all the pieces slide into place with a satisfying click, all displayed on Jean’s minute expression changes, and now he was certain it was an actual blush colouring the marred skin on his cheeks.
“Oh.”
//
A few months back, not exactly the moment Kim had referred to but very crucial to the context of it all, had involved another awkward sexual encounter for the two. It was one they’d both wanted- of course, they always wanted it, but Kim was more than extremely aware of Jean’s reservations when it came to sex. He was all too happy to push every one of Kim’s buttons to get the desired result, often multiple times if the time and place allowed it, but when it came to letting Kim return the favour, he found ways to make it as efficient and unpleasant for himself as possible, if he even let it happen at all. Kim wasn’t so naive that he didn’t know Jean would wait until he was alone to rut against his pillow through his underwear to get off in those cases. When he did let Kim tend to him, it was similar; he'd straddle the older man’s thigh and rock against it until he came with a small shuddering sigh, or he’d let Kim place his hand between his legs to do the same if he was feeling too lazy to bother with straddling.
Always with something covering his bottom half, mind you. Kim had managed to get him down to his underwear, and that was considered a breakthrough.
The situation that had been a cause for conversation, though, was the first time Jean had removed every article of clothing, and he’d let Kim see him in his entirety, but the reason it had been filed away under awkward sexual encounter, was that Jean had avoided eye contact the entire time, and hardly seemed like he wanted to be doing this at all outside of keeping someone else happy, which was so deeply unsexy that Kim had called it quits. He’d been halfway through letting Jean rut against him - skin to overwhelmingly slick skin, but arranged in a way that he was only pressed against the outside, only making contact with the soaked inner folds on particular hip rolls - when he’d taken note of just how tense Jean had been, how tight his thighs were around his wrist in a way that was noticeably different from how they’d squeeze around his wrist normally when Jean was about to cum, how silent he’d been, how he’d kept his eyes squeezed shut and his head turned away so he couldn’t accidentally make eye contact even if he’d wanted to-
He’d said one thing, and it was a strained growl of come on that had been ground out through gritted teeth and was so impatient that Kim had begun to feel a little self conscious, like it was him that was making this terrible and unenjoyable. He knew Jean was prone to frequent bouts of anorgasmia, if he wasn’t already struggling to get hard at all. He’d seen the frustration of not being able to get off when he was nearly delirious from arousal, he’d watched Jean rut against his thigh and growl out an impatient come on, but they were so vastly different from what Kim had seen this time around. There had been plenty of times where Jean had admitted defeat, collapsed in a bit of a huff, sweating and breathing heavily, but too exhausted to continue. He’d apologised at first, genuinely, unable to stop apologising and explaining what his problem was (it’s the pills, it’s not- they don’t do anything, they just don’t- it’s better than none, you know? If I didn’t need them, I wouldn’t- it’s not you, it’s really not you, I swear it’s just the pills-) until about the third time it happened, when he’d just shrugged and said fuck it, you wouldn’t be here again if you were pressed about this.
This wasn’t frustration with not being able to cum, this was frustration bordering on disgust from being expected to cum at all, even when he knew Kim didn’t expect shit, based on their track record.
No, Kim didn’t feel guilty for leaving Jean blue-balled that time. He wanted to let the younger man know that he was only interested in this if it was enjoyable for both of them, and Jean hadn’t even protested that it was fun actually – not that Kim wanted him to, of course, but that just cemented how little Jean had wanted to do it to begin with.
“Please don’t make me touch you like that until you’re entirely certain it’s what you want.”
Jean had just nodded at first and chewed on his lip, and Kim hadn’t prompted anything further because he could see some gears turning and decisions being made in Jean’s small frown. Then Jean had softened, nodded again, and said, “Yeah. You got it,” and looked right at Kim when he added, “I’m sorry,” in a way that let Kim know that the only thing preventing Jean from crying right then was more of a chemical imbalance than a lack of giving a shit that he’d hurt him in some way.
/
It took a further three and a half weeks for Jean to let Kim see him fully naked during sex, and there had been similar behaviours, but there was an obvious desire to be there that made them feel less like a warning sign. The eye contact was avoided out of embarrassment and self-consciousness, and he’d been tense the second he’d hooked his thumbs under his waistband, but there had been a moment that made Kim’s heart skip enough beats for him to start worrying for his own health, where Jean had covered his face and laughed to cover a trembling moan as Kim’s fingers stroked over his bare cock- not just the outside, but his actual, rock-hard cock and everything surrounding it- and then he’d spread his thighs further and pushed against his hand and gasped, and then he’d arched his back and cried out while he squeezed his thighs around the hand that really hadn’t touched him in any special or interesting way at all but somehow managed to make him cum faster than any of his rutting ever did. He’d moaned Kim’s name repeatedly through his orgasm, while pushing against the soft but strong hand kneading him until he grew too sensitive and parted his legs again to release that hand he’d taken hostage and left embarrassingly slick. It had been Kim’s turn that time to hump against Jean, just to relieve the arousal that had come with feeling the other man’s cunt squeeze and twitch and throb under his hand for the first time, and he’d managed to cum just as quick.
He’d been a little too curious - though some might call it nosy, and he wouldn’t correct them - and asked Jean how far Harry had ever gone with him. “No further than you, so don’t get cocky,” was what he’d been told, but he chose to ignore the second half of the answer.
It took a bit of detective work, sort of like a Thought Project that Harry might take on, though Kim would deny thinking so deeply about this sort of thing enough to call it anything at all, but he eventually did manage to come to a conclusion: Jean Vicquemare was in dire need of some kind of sexual aid. Please, hold the applause, he did this job for the love and not the ego inflation.
Jean was a very closed-off person. Almost as closed off as Kim himself. It took one to know one, and all that. He’d only just recently begun to let Harry back in on his very, very small inner-circle- again, almost as small as Kim’s- and they’d been involved once before. Harry had been the only one there at one point, for better or for worse. There was also Judit, who had quickly elbowed her way in with her willingness to tell him to fuck off alongside her desire and ability to actually do her fucking job, and, oddly, to a much lesser degree than the rest while still remaining notable, Chester. From what Kim understood, they’d been school friends, then Jean had slowly pulled out of school and life as a whole and hidden away to rot, and he thought he’d managed, but then Chester found him again. They were by no means close, but they’d been close, and Chester had managed to worm his way under Jean’s skin and had remained there rather comfortably ever since.
(Jean told Kim about the conversation that had come up back then regarding his status as a member of The Underground, and how Chester had clearly not understood a damn thing about it, but liked Jean too much to argue or deny him the luxury of using the right name and pronouns -- at least when it was safe to do so, because he might not get it, but he wasn't completely clueless as to why it might end badly for Jean. Somehow, “think of it this way: you already got no tits, so you’re doing great so far!” became one of the most heartfelt things Kim had ever heard a fellow officer say second-hand. It was a shamefully low bar, here in the RCM.)
(Chester had liked Jean because he’d been “hot in an anorexic, psycho ex-girlfriend sort of way” and “knew how to roll a blunt better than any chick he’d ever known”. Jean had liked Chester because he was, believe it or not, as far left as he could be while still finding homosexuality to be a really good butt of any joke. )
Because of his status as One Of Those Fucking Queers, Jean was understandably far more hesitant to open his circle to anyone, and because of his specific breed of Fucking Queer, and the fact he’d chosen to make his bed amongst those who deemed any Fucking Queer a target for hostility regardless of what breed, he found himself in the exact same boat that Kim had found himself in and become so accustomed to that he hadn’t even realised he’d been so alone until he was suddenly very much not alone at all. The difference had been, as Kim had noted, that Jean was much more self-conscious in ways Kim had long since learned to accept about himself. Jean was what Kim considered extremely fucking masculine, to the point where it was almost unfair the sort of killing he’d make if he skulked around enough haunts for the other Fucking Queers of Revachol; he would be notching the bedposts so frequently that a four-poster bed would be reduced to woodchips in no time. Kim wasn’t going to pretend he wouldn’t be a repeat offender on that front. Yet, because of that self-consciousness, Jean had rejected the idea of existing as a sexual being so vehemently for so long that his current body count stood at… two people.
Kim didn’t know every single person Jean had ever slept with, and he wasn’t one to ask unless, like in Harry’s case, it was something he might need to know for more than a handful of reasons. He just applied a very simple criteria to those he’d consider part of said body count: a genuine attempt at mutually beneficial sex for everyone involved. Jean was clearly no stranger to giving head to both men and women, but given the fact that Harry Du Bois, Jean’s heterosexual life partner (and that’s all Kim would be saying on that matter, for the sake of brevity), was so far sharing a sexual milestone with Kim Kitsuragi, Jean’s new coworker that he probably felt far more comfortable around because they were both transgender, and that was safe…
It was fair to say Jean was a complete stranger to receiving head. He’d allowed people – two of them! To get as far as groping him through clothing, while offering up his mouth and hands for anyone who stoked his fire on the right day.
It was fucking maddening. This was no matter of second-hand embarrassment for someone in their thirties being so sexually inexperienced, it was a matter of seeing something so minor to Kim be something so major for Jean and feeling so overwhelmingly saddened by the impact it managed to have. It wasn’t news to Kim that being transgender came with a difficult relationship with sex, because some days he himself folded under the weight of disconnect between himself and his mirror image — hell, he’d had to turn Jean away a small handful of times for the same reason, leaving both of them to settle for some heavy petting to scratch that itch.
Ironically - at least Kim found it ironic - Jean was far more likely to initiate than he was, to the point where he was fairly certain that the only thing holding Jean back from exhausting him to an early grave was the antidepressants. Perhaps they did do some good, in that sense. Kim Kitsuragi’s plate still had a little too much on it for him to pack it in just yet.
Ah- and all of this thinking wasn’t entirely altruistic, he should admit sooner rather than later. You see, he and Jean were far from exclusive - which is why there was a lack of concern in discussing ribald ghosts of Du Bois past - but they found comfort in their lack of desire for exclusivity, and their shared breed of Fucking Queer. Not to mention the mutual attraction, which Kim didn’t understand Jean’s point of view on, but appreciated and respected nonetheless. All of this resulted in the no-brainer of the two of them frequently getting together to blow off steam. That meant fucking, in case it wasn’t obvious.
There was more emphasis on the attraction part, in Kim’s case (really, he wasn’t one for low self esteem, but Jean must be being polite when he insists it’s mutual), that made the inability to just fuck him for this long deeply frustrating. He respected Jean, professionally and personally, and he would never push him to do something unless both of them wanted it — he’d been over that, had he not? Well, every man had his limits, and while Kim was more patient than most, he considered himself a starving man in this context, and what Jean had given him was table scraps and crumbs with no promise for a substantial meal in the near future. Kim knew that it wasn’t intentional, Jean wasn’t being cruel on purpose, and would probably much rather be comfortable with himself like Kim was, but…
Kim could only take so much. He was growing desperate. The more Jean pushed him away, hid himself from view, denied him the ability to touch— god, he’d seen just enough of that man’s cock to know it was a mouthful—
Kim prided himself on his ability to hide things as they bothered him, this much was obvious to anyone, but on the topic of limits, he’d reached one of patience. He’d read the same fucking line of this report at least eight times in the last ten minutes, retained none of it, and it looked like the sun was beginning to consider setting. It must be close to seven in the evening, in that case.
Harry twirled a pen between his fingers and, surprisingly, seemed to be well enough engrossed in the folder he perused to keep reading as he asked, “That bad, huh?”
“Hm?” Kim inquired, a momentary lapse in that composure letting a small crease form in his brow show his genuine confusion.
Harry did glance over then, his own genuine show of emotion - less rare than Kim’s own - being one of surprise, then concern. “Just one hell of a sigh you let out. I thought you were going to actually deflate.”
Kim smiled just slightly. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“So you can imagine how worried I was when it seemed like you would!”
Oddly enough, that could be considered reasonable. “I’ll try to avoid sighing hard enough to make any scientific breakthroughs, then.”
“Thanks.” Harry stretched his arms over his head and his back cracked loudly. Good for him. “Seriously, though, you’re good?”
Kim wanted to say, no, actually, I’m horny to the point of becoming undomesticated because of my own thought patterns, but all that came out in its stead was, “Doing the same thing for, I believe, almost twelve hours has the tendency to…” he sighed less aggressively than before as he tapped his own pen to his lips in a display of thought, “… bring out the curmudgeon in me.”
Harry stopped twirling his pen, fluidly moving on to use it to point at Kim in one motion, “Incredible word, that. Curmudgeon.” He swivelled his chair and looked at the clock, then the sunset-adjacent colour of the sky, then back to Kim, “Well, that clock’s a fucking liar. Looks late enough. What do you want to do?”
Without missing an entire beat, Kim stood up and stretched himself. “Cigarette, I think,” and when Harry raised both his eyebrows, Kim repeated, “Twelve hours. I deserve to be a little early.”
Exhaustion was always a good excuse for being so easily distracted, but it didn’t fix the underlying problem. The cigarette barely took any of the edge off either.
Kim Kitsuragi was, as the kids might say, down bad.