Chapter Text
The week of the regular season matchup between the Edgar Allen Ravens and the USC Trojans has cast a dark shadow over the sunshine court. The team hates traveling to West Virginia, and they hate Evermore Stadium, and they most importantly hate losing.
But this year is different.
This year, they have the added challenge of a timebomb whose fuse has to be nearing the end in their new starting backliner, Jean Moreau.
Jeremy Knox has no doubt that the Ravens have some nasty tricks up their sleeve for them, but he is just trying to relax during their weekly conditioning session in the pool before he lets the stress of the matchup take back over as they move to the court.
It’s not helpful that he’s in a lane with Jean, Lucas, and Xavier.
Jean refuses to wear anything but a wetsuit in the pool, and he is often unresponsive, his face a blank mask as he seemingly doesn’t listen to a single instruction but does his best to follow along. It’s similar to his face on the court during scrimmages, but there’s something off about it that Jeremy can’t quite figure out.
Honestly, that’s been the theme this season with the former Raven.
From what Kevin had said before Jean arrived, Jeremy had been expecting the worst—an argumentative, traumatized, bullish Raven who had been plucked from the Nest. But Jean had arrived with a cool demeanor and a playing style perfectly aligned with the Trojan philosophy and worlds different from any previous tape of his game. Jeremy still doesn't know what injuries caused the transfer in the first place, but he can tell that whatever person Jean has decided to be at USC is fraying at the edges.
Honestly, they have all been able to tell the whole time, but no one has been brave enough to shatter the mirage.
But when Jeremy checks his phone as he grabs his backpack to head to the court with the rest of the team, there are more notifications than he can read. But it’s clear what the reason is: videos have been released from Evermore that show the extent of the violence and hazing that occurred there under Riko’s rule.
Jeremy doesn’t have to watch to know who they are going to feature.
— — — — —
Jean Moreau wonders, not for the first time, why the fuck he’s bothering.
His skin is dry, now, but for hours after the mandatory pool sessions he can feel the cloth over his face and hands pressing into his body to hold him down and he can hear the King’s voice in his ear and—
He is a Moreau. He gets what he deserves. He will endure. He will endure. He must endure.
The imminent return to Evermore has him jumping at shadows, and he is already at the end of his rope. Every ounce of energy every single day goes to pretending to be what is required of him—he has to override years of training (away, not towards) to perform adequately on the court, to uphold the Trojan standard, and he has to pretend that while he does it he is a functioning human and not simply a discarded toy too broken to be played with anymore.
Jean knows what Kevin had told Jeremy. It’s why he spent his time in Palmetto when he could walk watching every single Trojans interview and game he could, so he could memorize their speeches and their strategies and their game play so that he would not be a burden. Jean knows what he owes his new masters. And he will not fail.
The chained box in his brain rattles, as it so often does. Because Jean Moreau is a lie, and he cannot close his eyes without reliving the truth of his existence, which is nothing but pain and torture and humiliation. The Trojans would not keep him on their line, if they knew the truth.
“Moreau, my office,” Rhemann says, as soon as he enters the locker room, and the tenuous hold Jean has had on himself slips even more. Jean looks around at the other Trojans, searching for any giveaways or signs as to what he has done wrong, but they all just quickly file into their respective locker rooms to change out for practice.
“I apologize for my poor performance,” Jean says, because that is usually how these meetings begin with the Master. “I will do better on the court.”
“Sit down,” Rhemann says, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk, as he turns his monitor towards Jean. “I don’t know what that was about, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Someone has leaked videos from Edgar Allen—”
Jean is not sitting in a chair at USC. He is in the Nest, and Grayson is laughing. Riko is laughing, and there is a camera in his face. He can barely see from the water dripping down his hair into his eyes, and he can’t feel his fingers because his arms have been tied back too tightly with racquet laces, but he can’t breathe. He is dying, he is drowning, and the last thing he is going to hear is their laughter.
Smile for the camera.
“Which ones,” Jean croaks out. He is sixteen and a hand is on his neck forcing his head down onto the mattress and he can’t see the camera but by god are they making sure he knows that it is there. He is disgusting and weak and worthless and all it takes is one push of a button and the entire world is going to know it.
There is a silence in the room as Coach Rhemann tries to process the nonquestion and the implications of the words. “You’re not surprised.”
“I told you that I was a bad investment,” Jean says, as his head bows the way it always seems to in front of Rhemann. Even after months, Moreau is unable to meet his eyes unless he is explicitly ordered to, his gaze always somewhere near Rhemann’s knees instead. “I apologize for failing to uphold the conduct rules in my contract.”
“I don’t give a damn about that,” Rhemann says, trying his best to keep his anger out of his voice. “You are not at fault for any of this. My concern right now is that we’re supposed to be getting on a plane to Edgar Allen in two days and your safety. You don’t have to face them, Jean. You don’t have to ever be in the same room as them again if you don’t want to.”
“The press will not see it the same way,” Jean says, his voice hollow. “I know what rumors were started when I… departed from the Ravens. This will just prove them true.”
Jean digs his fingers into his forearm, and he can feel the telltale wetness of blood as he tries to ground himself. He needs to know what is in those videos, but he cannot bear to watch them, but he cannot know what he is up against if he does not endure it.
“We can handle the press,” Rhemann says. “And we can survive the match up without you.”
“You do not stand a chance of winning if I’m not on the court,” Jean scoffs. “I am going, and I am playing.”
“I haven’t watched the videos, and I have told the team that they should not either. I also told them if anyone is caught discussing the contents of them without your permission that they’re benched until spring championships,” Rhemann says. “I can give you some privacy if you want to know what you’re up against.”
Jean doesn’t think he will ever understand this new master. He looks at Jean like he is a puppy that is going to run into the road if left unattended, or like a toddler that needs to be coddled because they scraped their knee. There is no reason for him to protect Jean’s privacy, and yet he is threatening the worst possible punishment to his own players if they are caught.
Jean Moreau does not deserve such kindness, such luxury.
It’s why he watches the videos alone in the Coach’s office, and then he quietly throws up anything he’s eaten in the last day, and then he changes into his armor and scrimmage gear like nothing had happened at all. His skin is crawling and he can still feel the burn of ropes around his wrist and the bruising grips on his waist and a cloth over his head.
He is Jean Moreau. He always gets what he deserves.
Silence follows him at practice. No one can say anything to him, and so they just look at him with their pitying or judgemental eyes and say nothing at all. He fears the locker room after, now that they all know what an easy target he is, and there is nothing that will be able to save him once Coach blows the final whistle.
It is why, when it happens, Jean simply sheds his armor on the court and begins running suicides. He will run until he is confident that there is no one in the locker room, and he will run until he can remember who he is supposed to be again. He will be a Trojan. He will endure. He will perform perfectly.
— — — — —
“How much longer do you think he’ll be?” Cat asks, braiding Laila’s wet hair on one of the couches in the Trojan’s locker room lounge. “I’m hungry and there’s nothing prepared in the fridge.”
“He’s waiting for the locker room to clear out,” Laila says. “I don’t blame him.”
“Why on earth is he practicing today?” Cat asks, the full might of her fury directed at her captain. “Why on earth did we just let him do that?”
“Would you rather we had sent him home? Left him to his own devices?” Jeremy shoots back. “He wanted to practice. He said he was fine.”
“He has said he’s fine every single day since he got here, and I have yet to believe him.” Cat will not let this go. She has lived with Jean Moreau for the last several months, and she’s about at her tolerance point for pretending that everything is fine and that he is a well-adjusted individual. He has yet to eat anything that isn’t plain chicken breast, egg whites, or vegetables, and Cat can’t help but keep track of the macros and know that for a man the size that he is, doing the physical activity that he’s doing, that there is no way that it is enough.
She also had to watch him fumble around in the kitchen figuring out how to do the most simple preparations. Like he had never been in a kitchen before.
Something tells her that that’s not far from the truth.
It’s not like he’s a bad roommate. He is neat and always cleans up after Cat’s disasters in the kitchen without complaint, and he helps on house cleaning days with similar acceptance and silence. It’s more of the fact that he acts like a feral cat, like he is expecting the whole house to blow up and he’ll need to run for cover at the slightest of unexpected noises.
Her one complaint is she can hear him pacing at night.
“He’ll open up when he trusts us,” Jeremy says, for what feels like the fiftieth time. “You’ve seen what they say about him online. I wouldn’t trust a team full of strangers, either.”
“I’m going to ask him about the videos,” Cat says, jutting her chin out defiantly. “There is no fucking way that he’s dealing with that being all over the news in any kind of healthy way.”
“Don’t,” Laila says. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to have to do press about it before the game, and it’s clear that he doesn’t want to talk about it. We should give him space.”
“Someone needs to talk to him about it before Lucas does,” Jeremy says darkly. “I don’t think Coach’s gag order is going to be effective in the locker room, and I think Lucas is going to do more damage than help.”
Their conversation is stalled, however, when Jean Moreau walks into the lounge, sweat dripping from his black curls. His maroon practice jersey is saturated with sweat, and he just discards it into the laundry, but it’s clear the underarmour shell underneath is equally wet, and that remains firmly on. “You didn’t have to wait.”
“You’re not allowed to blow out your legs before the Ravens game,” Cat says, nodding at his trembling knees. “I’ll have one of the waterkids make you an ice bath.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Jean says quickly, and his tone is harsh enough that Cat knows she has touched a nerve. She just writes it down in her mental notebook of things that set off Jean, and she will transfer it to her physical notebook when he’s not staring her down. “I will change and stretch quickly, and I will be fine.”
He is true to his word, and he emerges from the men’s locker room in less than ten minutes. Cat notices that he’s not wearing what he wore to class that day, opting instead for a Trojans hoodie that dwarfs even his tall frame, the cuffs pulled over his hands, and his favorite black pair of soccer pants. The hood is pulled up over his head, like he is trying to cover as much of himself as possible in the fabric.
“I want to use that sweatshirt as a blanket someday,” she remarks, and it gets a dry smile out of the frenchman, at least. “How are you holding up?”
“I will not let the press affect my game,” Jean says robotically. Cat decides to add that phrase to the ever growing list of pre-programmed phrases of his, which means that it’s probably being said in place of what he actually wants to say, which she usually presumes is “fuck off”. “I apologize for the embarrassment I have brought on this team.”
“The only embarrassment is the Ravens,” Laila says seriously. “And what they have done to you.”
Jean just looks at her like she’s a puzzle that he can’t quite figure out, and after a few seconds she can see that he clenches his jaw so hard that she can see it pop beneath his hollow cheeks, and he just offers her a terse nod.
“Let’s go home, gang,” Jeremy says, and the tension is diffused enough for now. “We all are going to need as much rest as we can get before the game this week.”
— — — — —
It’s only when Jean is confident that he is alone, and only after triple-checking the lock on his bedroom door that he is brave enough to look at his phone.
There are texts from Renee, and Neil Josten, and Coach Wymack, and even Dobson, but he skips straight to Kevin’s messages.
Call me.
Of course he couldn’t do Jean the decency of telling him how fucked he is over text, instead using it as leverage to force Jean to talk to him. It’s so classically Kevin that Jean has to swallow a hysterical laugh from bubbling up in his throat.
He calls Kevin, and he isn’t at all surprised when he picks up in two rings.
“Jean,” Kevin says. “Have you seen? I’m assuming you’ve seen.”
“I’ve seen,” Jean confirms. “I’m not talking to you about them, so if that’s why you called, you can fuck off.”
“What’s the plan? How are the Trojans handling this with the press?” Kevin asks, and Jean gets it now. It’s not about him, or what has been done to him. It is about Kevin Day and his safety from Ichirou Moriyama. Kevin will never care about him beyond the unbreakable string of their tithe to the yakuza keeping their fates intertwined.
“I received an email from Ichirou’s people,” Jean says in Japanese, in a rare showing of his anger. “I am to give a press conference tomorrow with their prepared statement. You don’t need to concern yourself, Two.” The honorific tastes like acid on his tongue, and he hopes Kevin hears the venom clearly.
“How have your practices gone? Are you prepared for the game?” Kevin asks, apparently satisfied with Jean’s answer. “You never responded to the notes I sent you about last game. If you really want to play like a Trojan you need to stop tripping your mark whenever you get tired, and—”
“Kevin, I don’t want to talk to you,” Jean says, this time in French, a small peace offering given with the dismissal. “I am tired, and we have early practice tomorrow. I am blending in fine with the Trojans.”
“I know Wymack put Betsy’s number in your phone,” Kevin says instead. “You should talk to her, you know, about the videos.”
And then, because Kevin is a coward, he hangs up the phone.
Jean scrubs a hand over his face, and he stares out the window in his room. He knows that he will not be sleeping tonight, not when the Ravens game looms closer. He is tired, and his hips haven’t stopped hurting since he first stepped back onto the court in July, but he can’t do anything about it. He will let his demons chase his brain around the room in the dark and then, tomorrow, he will have to pretend that he is like the others, that he is normal college student playing exy at USC.
Maybe, if he keeps up the ruse long enough, he’ll start to believe it himself. Maybe it will even start being true.