Chapter 1: worlds apart
Chapter Text
chapter one: worlds apart
1976
“You know you’re never catching any waves out there right?” the grommet shouts over.
“Yes, I’m aware,” Jeremy calls back to him, exasperation colouring his tone. This is the third kid who has felt the need to point this out to Jeremy. He’s been surfing his whole life though - he knows that where he is sitting on his board, gently bobbing up and down with the roll of the ocean, is beyond the lineup, but that’s the point. He’s trying to have some goddamn peace and quiet, but these groms keep ruining it, like squawking seagulls.
“Wait…” the kid says, and Jeremy groans, because he knows what’s coming next. “You’re Jeremy Knox!”
Jeremy pastes on a sunshiney smile that he definitely does not mean and nods, throwing the kid a shaka, then lays down onto his belly and paddles a bit further away from the lineup, trying to be obvious about it. When he’s hopefully out of range of any more commentary, he sits back up, dangling his legs in the water. The Californian sun is warm on his bare chest, and water drips from the wet ends of his hair, landing on the backs of his shoulders, salty droplets trickling over his pecs and down his spine. An osprey circles overhead, its yellow gaze constantly searching the ocean surface for its lunch.
The position of the sun tells him it’s nearly time to get going, and dread pulses in his gut at the thought. He’s due at Evermore Records soon to rehearse - his band, Odysseys, are heading out on a massive North American tour leg in support of their debut album in a little over a week, and they’ve got a warm-up show tomorrow night at The Whisky a Go-Go. But their rehearsals have been hit and miss, to put it lightly. Jeremy exhales heavily. God he hopes Jason is sober - or at least, close to it.
The album, Worlds Apart, is doing great, and that is still extremely surreal to Jeremy - his music, his words are out there in the world, on a vinyl, for just anyone to pick up and listen to. They can just walk into a record store, hand over seven dollars, and walk away with Jeremy Knox’s bleeding heart. It’s also so surreal to be recognised often when he’s out and about now. For the most part, Jeremy loves meeting people and talking with them about his art, but every now and then - like today - he just has nothing left to give the general public and needs a bit of recharge time.
Even a good session in the waves this morning hasn’t been enough to wash away the stress and exhaustion Jeremy feels down to his bones though. Evermore has been pushing Odysseys hard - first with the deadline to get the album recorded, mixed and produced, and then with all that came with an album launch - press, promotional shows, photoshoots - and then with a rehearsal schedule for a tour that makes Jeremy tired just thinking about it. When Tetsuji had first shown him the dates and cities booked, he’d laughed, thinking it was a joke. But Tetsuji’s expression hadn’t changed and Jeremy had slowly realised that yes, he was expected to do that many cities and that many dates by the end of ‘76. And after Christmas, there was talk about Europe - though nothing confirmed yet.
He knows it would probably be like this with any major music label. But it still makes him think of a conversation he had once, with a person who is always on his mind, no matter how much he tries not to think of him.
The gentle swell beyond the lineup rises and falls beneath Jeremy’s board, and he can faintly hear the surfers nearby laughing and joking as they jostle for waves. The ache in his chest that’s been there for a bit over twelve months intensifies; familiar, and filling up all the space in between his ribs, making it hard to breathe.
He misses Jean, still so acutely, all this time later.
Jeremy tries to shove the feeling back down into the lockbox inside himself, where he pushes everything so he doesn’t have to feel it. He’s normally pretty good at compartmentalising - he’s been doing it his whole life, just about - but lately, it’s been harder and harder to keep that lid closed and the box locked. Especially with Jean’s voice on the radio and his solo album at the top of the charts and the what if echoing in Jeremy’s heart. But he mashes the feelings down anyway, because Jean Moreau exists worlds apart from Jeremy these days, and he just has to accept that.
He keeps repeating this to himself as he paddles back towards shore, towards his endless responsibilities.
It had started like this; the same studio at Evermore, except Jeremy had been over there where Odysseys’ lead guitarist, Jason Cromwell, is supposed to be standing right now. Laila is standing roughly where Jean Moreau had been that first day, bent over his cherry-red Fender Jazz Bass and lost in his own world. He’d lifted his head as Jeremy had been led into the room by Tetsuji, fixing Jeremy with that intense, inquiring gaze of his as Jeremy had been introduced as Kevin Day’s temporary replacement. For Jeremy, it had felt like the rotation of the Earth had come to a complete halt; The Kings’ Men’s bassist was the kind of beautiful that ripped your heart out on the spot, because you knew it wasn’t for you; it was too other-worldly, too impossible. Jean hadn’t smiled, hadn’t acknowledged Jeremy’s existence at all really beyond a terse nod and a tightening at the corners of his mouth, but Jeremy’s life had been inexorably altered.
It had ended in a hospital room at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Centre. Jeremy could still remember walking through his front door, in shock from the news about The Kings’ Men breaking up, and heading for the phone with the intention of trying to call Jean again, only to find a message on the answering machine from a kindly nurse.
“Hi, I’m hoping this is the right Jeremy Knox - my name is Lucinda and I’m a nurse at LA County. I’ve got a patient here named Jean, who is asking for you.”
“Has anyone seen or heard from Jason?” Cat asks, from behind her drum kit, her tone heavy with exasperation.
Crom is unreliable; this is an undeniable fact. At first, it was just a beer or two too many to get through live shows. To kill off a few of the nerves. He was Evermore’s choice, when Jeremy couldn’t settle on a lead guitarist. Cat on drums and Laila on bass had been easy, and Tetsuji had agreed - they were perfect. But lead guitar was harder, and Crom had been in a pretty good local band that had dissolved when the singer had gotten married and decided the family life was for him. Then it was liquor and a recreational substance or two to get through shows, because Odysseys were quickly becoming bigger than his first band had ever been. Then it was hard liquor and substances upon waking in the morning, all throughout the day, and on double speed and overdrive at night. It was a spiral you saw sometimes in the scene. Take an addictive personality with an insecurity, mask it with substance abuse - only it doesn’t mask for long. After only a short time, it starts amplifying.
“Tetsuji was going to go to his place,” Laila says, plucking at a G chord, listening to the tuning. “He’s probably just sleeping it off.”
Jeremy huffs in frustration and hangs up his mic. When he’d filled in for The Kings’ Men, he’d been surprised by the dysfunction in the band, but now that he’s living it for himself, he’s starting to understand this is just how it is. Some people just will not get out of their own way. He lifts the strap of his ‘61 Stratocaster, the one with the custom sunburst design on the body over his head, and gently rests the beautiful axe in its stand. Sunburst is a daily reminder of all he’s lost, but like a true masochist, Jeremy refuses to give it up. It’s his most beloved guitar, not only for the sound it produces, but for the story behind it.
Although, when he’s been asked about it in interviews, he always refuses to give any details on its origins.
He can hear the phone ringing on the other side of the glass, in the control room where the sound engineers sit amongst their tape machines and mixing consoles. There’s no one in there right now, because they were just supposed to be doing a set list run through, not recording anything, so Laila, who is closest to the door, goes to answer it.
Cat slides off her stool and comes around the drums to where Jeremy is pacing, running his hands through his hair to try and sooth the pent up tension under his skin. Normally a morning in the surf quiets his mind like nothing else, but today it hasn’t made any difference. Something in the air feels off. Cat puts her hands on Jeremy’s shoulders and squeezes gently.
“Breathe properly,” she instructs, and he takes a proper breath in, down to his diaphragm. “Good. Wanna talk?”
Jeremy worries his teeth into his bottom lip for a moment, relishing the sting. “I’m just tired,” he says eventually. He doesn’t want to worry Cat or Laila, and he doesn’t want them to become exasperated by him, or to wonder why he can’t just get over things that happened over a year ago. “You know I get overthink-y when I’m tired.”
Cat nods, her expression more pensive than usual. “Do you want solutions, or just validation?”
Jeremy’s heart swells. God, he loves her. “Just validation,” he says. He’s not in a headspace for solutions. He’s pretty sure there are no solutions to what he feels, anyway.
Cat throws her arms around him and squeezes tight; a patented Catalina Alvarez hug, where you might come away with a fractured rib, but some unnamed part inside of you feels inexplicably soothed. “You recorded and released an album. You’re rehearsing day and night. You’re about to go on tour. You’re allowed to be tired,” Cat says. She pulls back just a little, in order to fix him with a knowing, brown-eyed stare. “You suffered a hurt-”
“Okay, that’s enough, we’re not getting into that,” Jeremy cuts her off, extricating himself from her embrace and busying his hands with the cables for an amp that have escaped the tape holding them down onto the floor. He’s almost certain Cat is fixing the back of his head with a worried frown, but he can’t deal with that right now. It’s one of the few things he’s never been able to sit down and just talk through with Cat and Laila, the way he does everything else in his life - it has always felt too raw, like a fresh burn. Even now, a little more than twelve months later, he feels like he can’t touch the wound. It’s too agonising.
He’s saved from Cat’s scrutiny by the studio door swinging open, and Laila returning. She’s wide-eyed and deathly pale, and it immediately pulls Jeremy out of his mood and into crisis-management mode.
“What’s wrong?” he demands, straightening, as Cat reaches her girlfriend first and puts a steadying arm out for her to hold on to.
“That was Tetsuji,” Laila says, an uncharacteristic tremble in her voice. “Crom’s in hospital - he overdosed.”
It had ended like this; in the white, clinical hospital rooms of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Centre, and Jeremy can’t stop thinking about it as they wait. This is where everything had gone wrong, where the vision he’d had for his future had imploded, and where warm grey had turned to ash and ice, and a shard of that ice had lodged itself between the chambers of Jeremy’s heart and stayed ever since. Cat and Laila sit on either side of him, shifting every few minutes on the uncomfortable olive green waiting room chairs, and Tetsuji is off at the public phone bay down the hall, trying to do damage control - though at least one journalist already had a whiff of the story, he’d said grimly.
It was a very bad batch of LSD, the doctor had said - an impure, garbage batch cut with God knows what that had resulted in a horrific acid trip that had left Crom in a disastrous state. Tetsuji had found him in his apartment, with all the windows blacked out, sweating and shaking, scratching at his forearms as whatever terrifying hallucination he was having crawled over his skin.
The doctor had said he’d need to be admitted under psych when they had him medically stable. He’d said Crom would probably never be the same again, mentally, and though he’s been an unreliable thorn in Jeremy’s side almost since the inception of Odysseys, he is a nice guy and Jeremy never wanted this for him. He just has never handled the pressure of success well.
“The fucking idiot,” Jeremy murmurs, but his voice comes out so sad that the girls don’t tell him off. They just nod, and exchange worried glances that Jeremy sees out of the corner of his eye, but they’re looking at him with that worry. I’m not the one who is a drug-addled mess, he wants to shout at them. Not any more. He keeps his eyes on his knees and his mouth shut though.
Time stretches on; minutes feel like hours, every tick of the waiting room clock is ominous, and the three of them remain deafeningly silent. A middle aged lady comes into the waiting room, cries for exactly ninety seconds - Jeremy knows because he watches the clock on the wall opposite him the whole time - then takes a deep breath, wipes her face of both tears and her devastated expression, and then marches back into one of the rooms down the hall. A code alarm starts going off, and footsteps start running, until someone shouts all clear - just a cord out. And Jeremy, Cat and Laila wait, in silence.
Finally, Tetsuji comes back, and Jeremy takes comfort in the fact that in all the time he’s known him, he’s always been consistent. He doesn’t look stressed, or sad, he just looks mildly exasperated by the world around him, as always. His suit today is a deep plum colour, with not a wrinkle or crease, and Jeremy takes strange comfort in that too. The world might be insane, but some things never change, and that’s nice.
“There’s nothing more we can do here today, and you have a show tomorrow night,” Tetsuji says gruffly, waggling fingers at them to indicate they should all get up. “Let's get back to Evermore.”
Jeremy jolts, coming unstuck like a character in a cartoon that’s just defrosted. “Are you kidding? We can’t do the show tomorrow!”
Cat and Laila murmur their assent, but Tetsuji just blinks impassively and repeats, “Let’s go,” and takes off at a stride, his cane clicking on the linoleum, all business as usual. They half-jog after him.
“Tetsuji, seriously - we won’t be able to play tomorrow and - and fuck -” Jeremy breaks off, as the realisation hits him like a freight train. “And we’ll probably have to cancel the tour, at least the first few weeks-”
“We’re not cancelling the tour, or any of the dates,” Tetsuji says, with a derisive scoff.
Jeremy can’t believe what he’s hearing. He looks to the girls for back up, but they’re still new to this, and they’ve never been on tour before - they don’t know what it’s like. They don’t know how hard it is - he’d filled in for The Kings’ Men when they had three albums out, so he’d just had to learn their discography, and they’d been at the height of their fame, so he’d already known a lot of their songs. Anyone who replaced Jason in Odysseys would need to be good enough to not only learn their album as soon as possible, but also be good enough to improvise in a way that suits them, because one album is not enough material for full shows and they’ll need to be able to extend songs from four minutes to eight or nine on the fly. There’s very few people out there who are that good who aren’t otherwise engaged.
“We have to!” he half-shouts at Tetsuji’s back, hearing the tinge of hysteria enter his tone. “I can’t go out there and put on a bad show because we’re not ready!”
Tetsuji turns on him, and they all come to a halt. They’re nearly at the main entrance of the hospital, and there’s people everywhere, some of whom start to look their way curiously. Tetsuji puts his hands on Jeremy’s shoulders, the clawed head of his cane digging into Jeremy’s right shoulder, and his expression suggesting he thinks all the emotion and dramatics are quite unnecessary. “Jeremy,” he says, with uncharacteristic - and probably faked - gentleness, “the show must go on. Let’s get back to Evermore, where I can make a plan and talk it through with Rhemann.”
Tetsuji refuses to get into it any further in the car back to Evermore, and once they’re back in the building, he sends the girls to organise the roadies and gear for the following night, and makes Jeremy wait outside his office while he calls Rhemann. When he finally lets Jeremy in, he points at the chair in front of his desk, and Jeremy sits obediently.
“Jeremy, this is a blessing in disguise,” Tetsuji says, as he walks around his desk to take a seat. “Jason Cromwell is a liability.”
Jeremy sits in stunned silence for a beat, because although Tetsuji is right, it still feels… harsh, when Crom is literally laying in a hospital bed hallucinating insects crawling all over his skin as they speak.
“We still can’t do the show that is tomorrow night without a lead guitar,” Jeremy eventually says. Even if they could get a fill-in arranged, the person won’t be ready in a day - no one is that good.
“We’re not cancelling a Whisky gig,” Tetsuji replies, evenly. “The slots are too sought after.”
“How do you solve for the missing lead guitar then?” Jeremy asks, with a bit more attitude than is probably wise when dealing with a Moriyama.
Tetsuji smiles - and as always, it does not reach his eyes. “Jean Moreau,” is all he says, sitting back in his chair. The corners of his eyes hint at a self-satisfaction, like he just single-handedly ended global conflict.
Ten thousand and one emotions and thoughts rocket through Jeremy. The loudest is that Jean would never agree to this - he’d walked away from the wreckage of The Kings’ Men and of his own car, and Jeremy had never understood quite what had happened that had led to Evermore releasing him from his recording contract, but he’d signed with James Rhemann to be talent-managed as a solo act, and hadn’t needed to get another record contract with a major label because he was already a proven entity. Now he had a record sitting on top of the Billboard charts. Of course Evermore would love to get him back, to once again have the money-making juggernaut that was Jean Moreau’s musical genius back at home in the stable, but that just doesn’t seem realistic. The quietest feeling is hope - Rhemann, of course, represents Odysseys too, but he’s kept his talent very separate. Probably at Jean’s behest. But just the idea of doing music with Jean again brings a tiny, fragile spark of hope to life in Jeremy’s chest. That was the happiest he’d ever been, despite all The Kings’ Men’s dysfunctions. He tries to quash the hope, because the reality that, again, Jean would never agree to this, is far more omnipresent.
But the flame persists.
“He will never agree to it,” Jeremy finally manages to get out, his voice coming out weak. “There has to be someone else.”
“There’s no one else,” Tetsuji says mildly. He’s been packing tobacco into a pipe while Jeremy has been quietly spiralling internally, and he lights it now, exhaling smoke as he sizes Jeremy up. “You heard the doctor - Jason will probably never be the same. Odysseys needs a new lead guitarist permanently, and definitely for at least the North American tour leg, until we see how things shake out. He’s the best there is.”
Not for the first time, Jeremy can virtually see the cartoon dollar signs in Tetsuji’s dark eyes. All his potential arguments die in his throat; Jean is too famous and it will overshadow Jeremy’s music - Tetsuji will say he will draw crowds in. Jean should be touring his solo album - they’ll let him play a song or two from his album each night on tour if it gets him over the line. Jeremy definitely can’t say to Tetsuji ‘he doesn’t want to be around me,’ without it raising questions he doesn’t want to answer. He’s never been under any illusion that Tetsuji cares about him personally, and he certainly has never given any inkling of caring for Jean beyond his ability to perform and make Evermore money. He definitely doesn’t care that this little scheme could tear open wounds for them both that Jeremy’s not sure he could survive a second time.
“He won’t agree to it, I’m telling you,” Jeremy insists, panic entering his tone now.
Tetsuji leans forward, placing his elbows on his desk and fixing Jeremy with a calculating look. Jeremy’s heart bottoms out. It’s the look of a man who knows he has an ace up his sleeve.
“He will if you’re the one to ask him,” Tetsuji says, with a triumph in his tone that Jeremy can’t miss.
“I absolutely can’t and he absolutely won’t,” Jeremy chokes out, his voice hoarse.
“I insist you try, regardless. Evermore reserves the right to make appointments to your band, per your contract. James has agreed that we can approach Jean with the offer, and he agrees you’re the right person to ask him.”
“What about Riko?” Jeremy asks, though he’s afraid of the answer. After the dissolution of The Kings’ Men, Riko had transitioned into the family business. As of right now, Tetsuji is still Odysseys’ label contact, and road manager, and Rhemann is Jeremy’s artist manager, but Riko has been learning the ropes from his uncle and will be joining Odysseys on tour. Ordinarily, it would just be Rhemann out with them, but Tetsuji had wanted to come to show Riko the business side of being on the road.
“I’ll keep him in line,” Tetsuji says mildly, as if that had worked so well last time. He pulls a stack of paperwork towards himself, and flicks a dismissive hand at the door. “You go convince Jean, I’ll handle Rhemann and the finer details. Go on now.”
Back in March 1975, he’d left this very building essentially on top of the world. He’d been worried, yes, about whatever Riko had done to Jean in Santa Barbara after the Rolling Stone article fiasco that had made Jean withdraw emotionally, with the exception of performing a heart-wrenching, devastating song that had gone on to sell two million 12-inch single copies within its first week of release, and which he’d followed with a rockstar-level bender of drugs and drink to numb himself - but Jeremy had also just signed a recording contract for three albums after years of trying to make it in the music business. There’d also been Jean himself - kind-hearted, resilient, dryly funny, smart, fucking gorgeous, and prodigiously talented to round it all out. They’d kissed in Vegas, and Jeremy had never known he could feel like that about anyone, had never known he could feel so deliriously over the moon. For the first time in his entire life, the empty part inside of him had stopped feeling so cavernous.
He should have known, based on the patterns of his life up to that point, that it would all come crashing down around his ears; he’d stepped out onto the street in front of Evermore, only to be confronted with the news that The Kings’ Men had broken up, effective immediately. He’d raced home, intending to try to call Jean for the thousandth time in those last couple of days, only to see the blinking red light of a new voicemail on the answering machine.
“Hi, I’m hoping this is the right Jeremy Knox - my name is Lucinda and I’m a nurse at LA County. I’ve got a patient here named Jean, who is asking for you. He was in a car accident and he’s okay, but yeah, he wants to see you. The ward extension is…”
He’d turned around, gotten straight back in his car and broken several traffic laws in his hurry to get to LA County Hospital. His heartbeat had felt like it was trying to break its way out of the cage of his ribs the entire time, as the panic and the guilt swirled - so this was why Jean hadn’t picked up any of Jeremy’s calls? He could have been dead and Jeremy would have never known, because he was too distracted with what he had going on. He was the worst friend. It was happening all over again, everything was slipping out of his control, and it was just like - he’d gasped for air and tried to divert away from that line of thinking. He’d run through the hospital to the trauma ward with his heart in his throat, not caring one bit for the looks he was getting.
The relief at seeing Jean sitting up in his hospital bed, eating two-fruits-in-juice, had warred cataclysmically with the gut-punch of emotion at seeing the state he was in; the constellation of bruises and cuts across his beautiful face and down his neck, the broken wrist in a cast, the fractured ribs, and many more injuries.
But Jean had smiled upon seeing Jeremy in the doorway, those moon-bright grey eyes warm and like himself again, and Jeremy hadn’t been able to stop the tears that had come, hot and fast; the ones that spoke of all the overwhelming emotions of the last few days.
“I’d say come here and give me a hug,” Jean had said, a little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, “but you know…” he’d trailed off, gesturing at his ribs.
Jeremy had gone to his side, trying to swallow down the emotion in his throat, and had pulled up a chair and taken Jean’s uninjured hand without much of a thought or a care for who might see. He did, however, have the sense to keep their hands blocked from view through the hospital room window by his chest when he had bent his head to press his lips to Jean’s knuckles.
“Thank every god out there you’re okay,” he’d managed to say, hoarsely, brushing the wetness off his cheeks with his free hand. “What happened? I would have been here sooner, but I was at Evermore - they’ve offered me a recording contract.”
Jean’s face had changed in an instant; the smile evaporated, something in his eyes becoming hard. “And you turned them down?”
“No,” Jeremy had said, confused by the shift. “No, I accepted - it’s not every day you get offered a record deal!”
But there’d been nothing he could say, no earthly way of reasoning with Jean or convincing him that signing with Evermore was a good thing - he’d been furious with Jeremy, and when he’d realised Jeremy wouldn’t back out of the contract, his eyes had turned to ash and ice, and he’d reminded Jeremy that he’d promised to look at other labels. And no matter what else Jean said, Jeremy had the sense that that was the final straw for Jean - that throwaway little promise, broken. He’d coldly asked Jeremy to leave, and no amount of pleading had changed his mind.
The next Jeremy had heard was a courtesy call from Rhemann months later, telling him he’d signed Jean as a solo act. Everything had moved in a blur after that - Jean had put out a solo album that had gone straight to number 1 on the charts, and Jeremy had bought the record on the day it was released, but he’d never been able to bring himself to listen to it. Any time Jean’s songs were on the radio, or his face was on TV or in magazines or papers, Jeremy had changed the station, or looked away. It hurt too much.
And Jean hadn’t returned any of Jeremy’s calls since that day in the hospital.
Jeremy sucks in a deep, trembling breath and looks up at Tetsuji, still smoking his pipe idly, as though it’s an average Friday for him. He waits for mercy he knows will never come. There’s no chance Jeremy will be able to make Tetsuji see sense until Jean tells him a definitive no, so he leaves his office in a daze, and goes straight down the hall and into the bathroom, where he promptly hyperventilates over the sink. After fifteen months of ignoring it, the hunger has roared back to life beneath his skin.
He doesn’t want to do this, and maybe that makes him a coward.
But he also does want to see Jean so bad it’s like he’s been starved for a thousand years.
And it’s terrifying, how deep that chasm of feelings he’s been ignoring still is.
He has to go back into the studio to get his car keys and tell the girls to get a taxi home, so he can’t slip out without telling them what’s going on, the way he might have liked to. He briefly sketches out Tetsuji’s scheme, and he watches two sets of eyes - one pair brown, one pair hazel-green - widen with every word he says.
“Thoughts and prayers,” is all Cat says, when Jeremy is finished talking, and Laila smacks her on the shoulder.
“This might be a really good thing,” Laila says, while Cat rubs her shoulder and shoots her a reproachful look. The girls had stopped asking long ago about what had gone down between Jeremy and Jean - and he’d only told them they’d argued about him signing with Evermore and not the… romantic stuff that had preceded Santa Barbara - but the curiosity has never left them. Especially when he’d been so obviously broken for so long, despite his attempts to pretend otherwise. He still was broken, if he was being honest with himself. Jeremy wishes he could feel Laila’s optimism, and he tries to smile, but the look on her face suggests it’s more gallows grin than anything else.
“Wish me luck,” he says, and they both echo, “Luck,” as he leaves.
After a lifetime of starving, and yearning, Jeremy can taste the love at the back of his throat like blood - it has been such a rare flavour in his life, but he recognises it now, sharp and painful and metallic. He had been unprepared for it when it first came; it was like an unexpected dinner guest, when he hadn’t even laid a table. The moment at Gazzari’s, back in ‘75 - on his birthday actually - when he’d known for sure that he was in love and that it was different from anything he’d ever thought was love before that, and that he’d be forever haunted by that love, had been like a bolt of lightning out of the great blue. He swallows thickly, tasting iron, and raises his hand three times to ring the doorbell, chickening out every time. He shifts his weight back and forth, staring at the dark wood grain of the door, and nearly turns on his heel to leave.
He rings his hands anxiously, and then, finally, the doorbell. It chimes for what feels like an eternity and goes unanswered. It’s early in the morning for normal people and an obscene hour for a rockstar - somewhere around eight-thirty AM. He’d chickened out yesterday, going to the beach and then home instead and telling himself he needed time to think about how he’d approach all this, what he’d say, how he’d hold himself together when faced with the weight of that liquid mercury stare filled with disappointment. Golden morning light is soft on Jeremy’s clammy skin, but he doesn’t feel its comfort.
He rings the doorbell again.
He hears noises from within the house, a thumping like someone dropping something, and then French swearing - a sound so familiar it almost makes Jeremy laugh. Almost. He rings the bell again. And again.
The door wrenches open, with a pissed off; “What the fu-”
The words die in Jean’s mouth as his eyes fall on Jeremy standing nervously on his top step. Chords to a song written for him echo in the blood pounding in his ears, and Jeremy’s heart claws at the inside of his chest, like a starving animal.
Jean swallows. The cuts and bruises have healed - the broken wrist and cast long gone, the double black eyes are gone, the split lip and forehead are knitted back together and the skin is unblemished and perfect once more. In fact, Jeremy can’t help but notice how good he looks - in black wide-leg bell-bottoms that sit high on his lean waist, and a black collared shirt that he’s tucking into his jeans as he kicks the door open a little wider. The first few buttons of his shirt are undone, and Jeremy’s eyes fall to the notches of his collarbones, and the hollow of his throat, where a gold chain with a little Scorpio symbol rests against his pale skin. He’s grown a moustache since Jeremy last saw him, and it’s making Jeremy feel feral.
They stare at each other for a long beat, before Jeremy says, tentatively, “Invite me in?”
Jean clears his throat. His broad shoulders fill the doorway, and as he turns side on, Jeremy has to brush past him to enter the house. He knows Jean hears the little intake of breath Jeremy can’t help as he passes through Jean’s space, the scent of him so familiar it makes him dizzy.
Jeremy remembers the massive windows and the angled roof sloping upwards, and the vining pothos adding pops of green, and the open plan kitchen and lounge, all very tastefully appointed - not surprising for a house owned by Jean Moreau - but Jeremy isn’t sure what to do with himself, so he stops in the middle of the lounge room and waits. His eyes are drawn to the record player over by the wood-panelled wall, and the shelves stacked with vinyls next to it. Led Zeppelin III is on the turntable, with Since I’ve Been Loving You playing, which is as close as one can get to being made love to sonically, and it makes Jeremy’s bones feel like they’re on fire. It also feels apt - he does, in fact, feel like he’s about to lose his worried mind. Behind him, Jean shuts the front door and Jeremy is hyper-aware of him walking towards the stunning redwood piano bar that glimmers with crystal glassware and liquor bottles.
“Am I going to need a drink for this little visit?” Jean asks dryly.
Jeremy just shoots him a look, though he doesn’t say anything about the early hour, and Jean pours two neat whiskies. He carries the glasses to the kitchen bench, and then retrieves a cigarette from a pack sitting there. Jeremy finds himself floating towards the kitchen like his limbs have a mind of their own, and he slides onto a stool on the opposite side of the bench to Jean. He can’t drag his eyes away from Jean putting the stick between his perfect, full lips and letting it hang there as he digs through the everything bowl on the countertop for a lighter. The little, almost inaudible huh of satisfaction Jean makes when he finds it has Jeremy’s stomach curling into a knot on itself.
The lighter flicks, and the end of the stick glows cherry red as Jean takes a drag. Jeremy swallows, watching the smoke curl from Jean’s nose. Jean offers him the cigarette.
“So what is it?” Jean asks. He slides the second glass of whisky over to Jeremy and leans his elbows on the kitchen bench, eyeing Jeremy in that way that only he can - as if he can see every cell and atom of Jeremy laid bare before him. The slant of his mouth suggests Jean is once again finding him lacking.
Jeremy takes a second, nervous drag before handing the cigarette back over, and as Jean puts it back between his lips, Jeremy wonders if he’s remembering the way Jeremy’s mouth tastes. Jeremy is certainly remembering Jean’s. He wants to say a thousand things, all of them thick in the back of his throat - I miss the way you say my name, and I miss the way you touch, the way you taste. God. Love really is the death of peace of mind.
Unexpectedly, Jean’s expression softens, just a little. “Are you… okay?”
Jeremy looks away from that too-penetrating quicksilver stare, and spots a newspaper folded near the everything bowl. So Jean probably knows.
Regardless, he takes a sip of his drink and he clears his throat against the burn, and says, “Crom is out. Absolute garbage, impure LSD. A bad trip - really bad. He’s not the same, and the doctors think he might never be again.”
“Okay,” Jean says, flicking the cigarette ash into his crystal ashtray. He doesn’t say it like he’s surprised, which means yes, he definitely saw the article in the paper.
Jeremy drags his hands through his hair, and when he can finally bring himself to meet Jean’s eyes again, they pin him in place. The grey of liquid mercury, their intensity is like a vice, and Jeremy can’t seem to make his lungs fill.
“You could have your pick of guitarists now, and plenty who could get along with your new little manager,” Jean says, predicting Jeremy as always - knowing him in a way no one else did. “So why are you here? ” He taps his fingertip against the kitchen bench in emphasis.
“I need you,” Jeremy says, his voice quiet, only it comes out as “Because you’re the best there is,” instead. He adds a shrug, and the gesture says ‘because we are infinitely entwined,’ but everything he could, or should, say remains unsaid.
The only response Jean makes is a hmm, and the silence between them stretches.
Jeremy drains his drink.
Jean stubs out the spent cigarette.
He says, “Fuck,” like a curse, like a prayer, and throws his hands up in acquiescence. He scratches at the back of his neck. He says, “À la folie.” To madness.
Jeremy’s heart starts to pound. Once more, he finds himself feeling like a winged insect, and Jean, the funeral pyre.
To madness.
“When do you need me from?” Jean asks.
“Ahh… tonight? We have a warmup show at The Whisky,” Jeremy says sheepishly.
“Tonight?” Jean echoes, with a healthy dose of skepticism, and a frown like he’s annoyed Jeremy would joke around at a time like this. “Did you acquire a brain injury since I last saw you?”
“Don’t tell me you can’t improvise your way through a few songs based on their riffs,” Jeremy wheedles, a smile finally breaking out on his lips. “You’re Jean Moreau.”
Jean is out and out scowling now, his dark brows coming together, and Jeremy’s breath catches because he’s still so beautiful. He’s not sure he’ll survive another tour with him, and he’s pretty sure this is an enormous, massive, gigantic mistake - but he has no choice. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere, Jeremy. Did you at least bring sheet music on this presumptuous little excursion?”
Jeremy nods. “In my car,” he says, his voice coming out hoarse.
He scrambles to retrieve the sheet music, and when he gets back, Jean has a freshly lit cigarette between his lips and is massaging his temples like he’s already got a headache coming on. It’s a sight Jeremy is familiar with, from The Kings’ Men days, but it’s never been in relation to him before. His stomach just keeps on twisting itself further and further into knots.
Jean turns towards him, and Jeremy realises he’s got the receiver of his phone jammed between his ear and shoulder, the curly cord tucked under his arm, and the tension in his belly loosens somewhat. He still has the overwhelming sense that Jean doesn’t want him there, but what can be done now? They’ve both agreed to this madness.
“Yes, he’s here,” Jean says, his tone annoyed. “Yes, I did. Yes, I know I said that. Isn’t that what you get paid for, James?” Jean holds his arm out to Jeremy, impatiently opening and closing his hand in a give me gesture.
Jeremy hands him the sheet music, and Jean scans the pages while the person - presumably Rhemann - on the other end of the line talks.
While Jean talks on the phone, Jeremy wanders over to his collection of vinyls. The one time he’d been inside Jean’s house before today, he’d of course had his head turned by the shelves of records, both here in the lounge and in the music room. But he hadn’t had a chance to look at them, and he starts thumbing through the collection idly. It’s alphabetised and genre-organised, which doesn’t surprise Jeremy. Jean is exactly the sort of person who would have a robust system.
Jean is saying, “Yes, James, I have things in hand here - what I need from you is someone to come and get my guitars and take them to The Whisky,” and his tone of voice is that of someone who, no matter how kind they are, is used to getting what they need without too much fuss. But Jeremy is distracted by a flash of red and gold.
“Alright, thank you,” Jean says, and he hangs up the phone. He starts to turn to Jeremy, his eyes still on the sheet music in his hands. “Okay, that’s sorted. I’m on loan to Odysseys, officially, and-”
He trails off as he looks up at Jeremy, who is standing with a vinyl in his hands, staring at the cover.
“You bought my record?” Jeremy says, turning it around to show Jean. His throat is suddenly bone dry, and an emotion he doesn’t want to examine is swirling in his blood, making it fizz.
“Of course,” Jean says, his expression inscrutable, like it’s a given that he would after all they went through together and maybe felt for each other, and like Jeremy might be a bit stupid for thinking otherwise. “I was glad to hear the guitar I gave you for your birthday on it.”
“Sunburst,” Jeremy says weakly. The guitar features on every track on the album. “I love that guitar.”
“I’m glad,” Jean says. He sounds like he means it. For some reason, that thought sends emotion, fierce and hot and unexpected, surging through his chest like a tidal wave, and Jeremy lowers his head so that his hair falls forward and obscures his face while he tries to rapidly blink back the feeling.
“It’s a good record,” Jean says, eyeing Jeremy cautiously, like he’s waiting for something, and that statement is too much for Jeremy’s glass heart to bear. He clears his throat and starts to slide the record back into its place on the shelf, but Jean is quicker. He catches the album, and gently twists his wrist, guiding Jeremy to turn it over without actually touching him. Then he lets go, but he taps his fingertip on side one, track one.
Dangerous.
Jeremy swallows, hard, and doesn’t make eye contact. Their song. He’d wanted to record it with Jean, but of course, everything had happened. In the end, Jean had a songwriting credit for the track, and Laila had sung the call and response portion with Jeremy, and it had done big numbers as the first single off the album - number two on Billboard, beaten only by one of Jean’s songs. But it wasn’t his original vision.
“We need to start practicing,” he mutters, sliding the record away haphazardly.
Jean looks at him for a long moment in which Jeremy stubbornly refuses to meet his eye, and then he sighs and turns away. “Come on then,” he tosses over his shoulder.
Jeremy follows him into the beautiful music room he remembers from last time; two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows, and the other two walls dominated by floor-to-ceiling shelving filled with more vinyls, books, and knick-knacks collected on the road. The collection of guitars is still proudly displayed by one window, the piano still looking out through the other. It’s a room he could lose himself in, but he squares his shoulders, because they’ve got a lot to do and not a lot of time before the Whisky gig in which to do it.
They spend all afternoon practicing, going through each song on Worlds Apart, and Jeremy was right to tease Jean earlier. He barely has to listen to Jeremy play each song more than a couple of times before he’s got the riffs down pat and is adding his own flare to each song. He’s prodigiously, outrageously talented, and Jeremy has to admit they’ll put on better shows together than he could have ever dreamed of doing with Crom.
“Obviously the doubleneck, for Dangerous,” Jean murmurs, jotting it down in the notebook he always carries, where he’s been writing reminders and notes to himself for every song they’ve gone through so far. They’ve left Dangerous for last, because Jean already knows it mostly - he helped write it, after all.
“Obviously?” Jeremy asks, looking up and quirking a brow.
“You on rhythm, me on the double - I won’t have to change guitar after the introduction, and we get the bell tones at the start and the power through the middle.”
We. He’s slipped back into it so easily, and Jeremy knows he probably didn’t mean it or even notice, because this is vintage Jean - getting so lost in musical theory, and that brilliant, lightning-quick brain getting caught up in his own melodic genius. But still, the word we slices open a wound inside Jeremy that he knows only ever scabbed over at best. There’d been a time when he’d really thought he might get to record this song with Jean, and that he’d teach him to surf, and surprise him with his self-taught French, and he’d come over and hang out with Cat and Laila, and they’d -
He presses the heel of his palm to his brow, trying to shove away all the thoughts. There’d been a time when he’d thought there could be a we.
He’d been wrong.
Jeremy realises the room has gone silent, and he looks up at Jean, only to find him looking back, his expression curiously guarded.
“Ye- yeah,” he manages to stutter out. “That sounds like a plan.”
Jean presses his lips together, and a muscle in his jaw works for a beat in time, before Jeremy stands and stretches, the perfect pretense of casual.
“I should head home to get ready for the show - do you reckon you’ve got this?”
Jean fixes him with another are you sure you’re not actually an idiot type of stares and Jeremy chuckles sheepishly for something to do.
“My bad, I know you do,” he says, holding up placating hands. He beats a hasty retreat, out of that music room he could spend forever in, away from that man he could spend forever with, before Jean can so much as utter a ‘see you later.’
Because for the first time in fifteen months, there will be a later.
And that’s fucking terrifying.
The sign on the curved exterior corner of The Whisky a Go-Go reads ‘Odysseys’ in big block letters, which makes Jeremy pause on his way into the building and snap a quick picture with his 35mm - they’ve played live sets in support of their debut album, but never at a venue with the prestige and rock ‘n’ roll history of The Whisky yet. Odysseys soundcheck without Jean - Tetsuji’s orders, he doesn’t want the secret revealed until literally the minute Jean steps onto stage. His first time on The Whisky stage since ‘72. Since those first heady days during the rise of The Kings’ Men. All the Whisky staff are beside themselves with excitement, including Elmer Valentine, the co-owner of the joint, who as legend had it, had gone to a Parisian discotheque called Le Whisky á Go-Go in the sixties and brought the idea back to the Sunset Strip. He keeps shaking Tetsuji’s hand and saying things like, “This is real rock ‘n’ roll, man,” with nostalgic shakes of his head. It all makes Jeremy need to hide behind a stack of amps and stick his head between his knees, quietly panicking that he was right - Jean is too famous, the global heartbreak over The Kings’ Men still so visceral, and his own music will be completely overshadowed by this enormous presence on stage next to him.
Ironically, if Jean were already here, he’d probably be the one talking Jeremy out of his own head, as he had that time in Chicago. It’s unfair of Jeremy to begrudge him his fame, when not only has he earned it - and had been deprived of his acknowledgement and accolades for so many years in The Kings’ Men - but he’s also the most humble, kind, down-to-earth musician Jeremy has ever known. It’s just surreal to think that tonight, when he’s onstage and he looks to his left out of habit, he will actually see the man he’s always looking for.
Or maybe surreal is the wrong word - overwhelming, perhaps, that’s better. It’s overwhelming to think, after all this time, the part of Jeremy that’s felt hollowed out might actually be filled. He laces his fingers together behind his head, still keeping it between his knees, and he tries to breathe through the maelstrom of emotions.
“What on earth are you doing?” Laila’s voice says, and Jeremy can see her legs and her black platform heels with ornate white stitching step in front of him.
“Panicking,” Jeremy answers truthfully, keeping his head down.
He hears Laila’s hmm of concern. “About performing, or about a certain tall drink of French water?”
“All of it,” Jeremy says, mildly hysterically.
Laila reaches down and gently guides Jeremy to sit upright, until she can look down on him, hands on his shoulders and squeezing as she says firmly, “Jeremy, you are a born performer. You’ve been onstage plenty, you know you’re fantastic and tonight will be no exception. And this is a good thing - you missed him, right?” She fixes him with a narrow look that says if you dare lie to me…
Jeremy nods slowly. He’s missed Jean for fifteen months. God, has he missed him.
“So get out of your own way,” Laila says, using the hands she has on Jeremy’s shoulders to shake him gently. “The universe has given you this opportunity to have him back in your life. You were such good friends - work on that again.”
Jeremy swallows, and Laila holds him in place with her stare until he nods again. Man, he hates how she’s always so right and logical all the time. “He’s angry with me though,” he whispers.
“Why is that?” Laila asks, fixing Jeremy with a sharp look, and when he just shakes his head in answer, she waves it away. “Well whatever it is, he’ll come around. Just be you. Despite what I know you think inside, you are worthy of being loved, and you were not born bad.”
“Alright, alright, be gone please,” Jeremy says, gently shoving her away towards sidestage, because she’s hitting a little too close to the heart of all his lifelong insecurities there. “I need to warm up my voice.”
After he’s run through all his vocal warmups and his breathing has come back to a semblance of normal, Jeremy heads to the dressing room to change. He passes Sergio and Marty carrying a heavy equipment box between them in the corridor on his way, and they both give him big grins as they approach - he’d asked Tetsuji to bring the two back on board as roadies if they were interested, and they’d both signed on immediately. He’s glad for familiar faces who he knows work well with himself, and they know his gear, and are hard-working and professional. And now he’s doubly glad, because Sergio and Marty were always the two Jean liked best from The Kings’ Men crew also. Last Jeremy had heard, Frosty was retired from the tour life at the behest of his new wife, and he didn’t know what Zane Reacher was up to - but after the way Jean had been around him at the end of the Nevermore Tour, Jeremy was glad he wasn’t around.
People are milling about in the green room, and the space is filled with the sounds of chattering and glasses clinking, and after changing, Jeremy heads over to Laila and Cat. They are over by the dressing tables, glasses of champagne in hand and their heads bent together conspiratorially, smirking as they talk in low tones. Cat spots Jeremy coming first and grins widely at him as she straightens, effectively giving the signal for both her and Laila to shut up, and Jeremy eyes them suspiciously.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
Cat shrugs. “We were just talking about how exciting this is. Tour is less than a week away, we’re playing at The Whisky - it’s pretty groovy.”
There’s no part of Jeremy that actually believes that was what the girls were talking about, but he decides to let it go for now. Instead he eyes them - they’re both in stage clothes, and they look gorgeous; Cat in heeled brogues, black wide-leg pants and a black cropped blouse with a halter-collared neck and a keyhole cut out over the décolletage. The sleeveless top shows off her biceps and shoulders that are defined from years of drumming, and Jeremy notes how often Laila’s eyes drift to admire her girlfriends’ arms. The purple streak in the front of Cat’s hair is freshly dyed, and she’s wearing purple winged eyeliner to match it. Laila is in the black platforms with the white stitching that Jeremy had seen with his head between his knees, and glittering stockings, under a black shift-style minidress with a white Peter Pan collar. Her thick, brown hair is styled in two braids to the nape of her neck, and then flows loosely from there, the curls free to move with her but also practically off her face.
“You both look great,” he tells them, and he finally allows a grin to come to his own face. Okay, maybe he’s nervous, maybe there’s a storm of emotion in his gut caused almost entirely by one Jean Moreau, maybe everything is fucked up and complicated and weird, but he’s in a band with his two best friends! And they’re about to go on tour in support of a hit debut album! Life is really pretty good, for the most part.
“So do you,” Cat says with a sly smirk, gesturing at Jeremy’s body. He’s gone with leather pants á la Jim Morrison tonight, a black sleeveless tank with the words ‘Get It On’ emblazoned across the chest, and boots. He waves her off, dismissing the compliment in a casual kind of way, because he definitely did not agonise over this outfit choice and over looking as good as humanly possible tonight. There’d be absolutely no reason he’d need to, after all.
Cat and Laila exchange another get a load of this guy type of look, with the sly little smiles and all, but then Cat’s eyes widen as she lifts them over Jeremy’s shoulder and sees who has just been bundled into the room by Whisky security.
Laila had pretended, for Jeremy’s sake, to be fine, but Cat had taken the fallout of March ‘75 a little harder - both girls had spent weeks hearing over the phone how happy Jeremy felt around Jean, and how happy their new friendship made him, and both girls had liked Jean a lot in the few days they’d had to get to know him in LA. Cat, with her big soft heart, had been upset that not only was Jeremy hurting, but that Jean had been injured in that car accident and his argument with Jeremy about signing a recording contract with Evermore subsequently had meant he hadn’t wanted to see any of them.
Jean is pulling off the hat and sunglasses and big oversized jacket that allowed him to get inside incognito, and he spots them across the room, as Cat squeals, “You’re here!” Effusive and affectionate by nature, she takes a few steps towards Jean and starts to open her arms to throw them around him in a hug, but Jean catches her wrists. The slant of his mouth is tense, and his jaw is tightly set.
“There’s no need for embracing,” he says coolly, gently pressing her hands back towards her chest before he releases her. “Catalina, Laila,” he adds, nodding at each girl respectively. “Jeremy,” he finishes, a vein flickering at his temple. He’s clean shaven now, a fact for which Jeremy is simultaneously glad and also a little disappointed.
Cat, to her credit, is not at all perturbed by Jean’s cool demeanour. “You’re a lifesaver,” she tells him, and Jean clicks his tongue dismissively. He looks at Jeremy again, properly now, and Jeremy feels a flush creep up his neck on pace with Jean’s eyes slowly travelling down his form, taking in the sleeveless tank, the leather pants, and seemingly pausing on the silver buckle of his belt before rising again. Laila clears her throat, Cat shifts her weight from foot to foot, and the silence between the four of them grows deafening.
Rhemann appears at Jean’s left shoulder, with no knowledge of what he’s walking up to. “Well here we go,” he says, looking at each of them in turn. “The Whisky.”
The pre-show jitters take full flight in Jeremy’s stomach at those words, and he doesn’t hear what else Rhemann might say. Jean excuses himself to change, and Tetsuji joins their loose little circle to beckon Rhemann over to sign some paperwork to make the whole deal fully official. Jean is on loan to Odysseys for at least the duration of their North American tour, but Evermore does not own any of his contracts anymore - he remains under Rhemann as his artist manager, and independent of any music label. Jeremy is just glad Riko is out of town this weekend - he will join them on tour next week, but for now, it’s worked out well that Jean is not confronted with him in addition to everything else.
Jeremy can feel the instant Jean steps back into the room, because it’s as if every cell in his body becomes electrified and at attention by his presence. Additionally, a Whisky barmaid, who had been distributing drinks from a tray, shrieks and passes out upon spotting Jean, and is luckily saved from a certain head injury by Marty catching her. Jeremy watches Jean realise it is, in fact, Marty, watches him greet the familiar roadie with a small but warm smile. He can only imagine Marty is saying hello back just as affectionately, but he does have to imagine that part - because he can’t take his eyes off Jean. He’s in dark brown corduroy flares, and a Blue Öyster Cult t-shirt that’s been cut off at the shoulders and barely skims the waistband of his pants. His thick, dark waves of hair shine under the green room lights, the ends brushing his shoulders, and as he rolls his neck to loosen up, Jeremy spots a glint of gold at the base of his throat. Static roars in his ears.
Tetsuji calls out that it’s time, and Jeremy watches the bemusement on Jean’s face when the rest of Odysseys and the crew move towards each other into a loose circle and put their hands in, then all look at him expectantly. It’s Cat and Laila’s little pre-show tradition, but Jeremy doesn’t mind it at all - it’s their little go team go moment. After a moment, Jean sighs and puts his hand in, hovering it above all the others, which is good enough for them.
Sidestage, they can hear the excited muttering of the crowd and the intermittent chants of Odysseys! Odysseys! The Whisky a Go-Go has a capacity of five hundred people, so it’s intimate - all the crowd feels close to the stage, and the energy is frenetic and loud to the band playing. Jeremy pauses in the shadows as the lights start to strobe, rolling his shoulders to loosen up. Next to him, Marty is handing Jean his Gibson Les Paul Standard. It’s similar to Jeremy’s, other than Jean’s personal modifications; he’s sanded down and shaved the back of the neck to make it play easier, and installed a T-Top humbucker pickup, which cancels out noise interference from the coils. It’s also custom-finished in a gorgeous wine burgundy colour - if the concept of sex was a guitar, it would be this one.
Jean feels Jeremy looking, and he offers a small nod. “Good show, Jeremy,” he says, his expression still inscrutable. Cat and Laila saunter out onto stage ahead of them, smiling and waving to the crowd as they take their places.
And because he’s a goddamn professional, Jeremy returns Jean a dazzling smile, before he strides out onto the stage. The crowd cheers louder, receiving him with jubilance and raised arms. He lifts his mic out of its cradle, and the audience quiets down marginally, waiting for him.
“Good evening, LA,” Jeremy croons, pausing for them to cheer. Above the sea of heads, the Go-Go girls stand on their platforms, leaning on the railing and looking just as eager as the crowd. Beyond the dancefloor area in front of the stage, there’s seating that's also packed with people, their tables crowded with drink glasses and ashtrays and glittering women’s purses, and all of them are watching the front of the room with anticipation and excitement written on their faces. “It’s a beautiful night in our beautiful city, right?”
Behind him, Cat shimmers her drumsticks on the hi-hat, and Jeremy turns his shoulders to point to her. “We are Odysseys,” he says, “and on drums, you’ve got Catalina Alvarez-” he pauses, and Cat waves to raucous cheers, “-and on bass, you’ve got Laila Dermott.” Laila blows a kiss to the crowd.
Jeremy squares his shoulders towards the audience and he points to himself. “I’m Jeremy Knox, and - now, hold on,” he interrupts himself with a chuckle as the girls in the front scream, “-and normally we’d have Jason Cromwell on lead guitar, but unfortunately he’s a bit under the weather and won’t be making it out tonight.”
The crowd murmurs ‘aws’ of disappointment and Jeremy can hear the undercurrent of speculation. What will Odysseys do without a lead guitar?
“Luckily,” he says, re-holstering his mic, “we’ve got a very capable and talented friend of the band filling in for us tonight, and, in fact, for all our American tour dates that kick off next week!” Jeremy turns his head towards the wings, where he can see the tall, shadowed figure waiting between trusses, and holds his arm out to Jean in a beckoning gesture. “I think you’ll recognise him, and if you don’t you must be living under a rock - Jean Moreau!”
The cheering of the crowd becomes more than noise - it turns into a wall of sound that shakes the floor, the ceiling, and the Go-Go platforms. Jean Moreau hasn’t been seen on a stage since March 8th, 1975, at The Forum in Inglewood - the last ever Kings’ Men show. He hasn’t toured his solo album at all yet, so these five hundred or so Whisky patrons are witnessing something historic. Jean strides onto stage, taking up his position at the mic to Jeremy’s left, and he fixes the crowd with a lazy, insouciant smile - that clever performers’ mask that Jeremy recognises - as he salutes them with a pick. Jeremy glances quickly at the girls, seeing them exchange a fleeting look of wonder.
Jeremy unhooks his mic from its stand again and looks over to Jean as he massages the opening chords of Worlds Apart, the titular song from the album, the toe of his boot undulating on his wah. He turns his head, looking over his shoulder, and meets Jeremy’s eye. He draws another wail from the guitar, that reverberates up into the vaults of the ceiling. Then he smiles at Jeremy - just for a fleeting moment, before he smooths it away like he’s just remembered what happened - and the crowd goes mental, just absolutely beserk with excitement, and Jeremy’s heart turns over, because that brief flash, that momentary little curve of Jean’s lips - that was his real smile.
Jean opens up the riff proper, Cat’s drums burst to life, and Laila’s bass anchors it all, and Jeremy has to drag his eyes away from Jean and back towards the crowd as he opens his arms and sings to them, I can’t sleep at night, I still think of those days / My mind consumed with how we touched, then went our separate ways.
Chapter 2: born under a bad sign
Chapter Text
chapter two: born under a bad sign
Flashbulbs are popping, dozens and dozens of them, and white spots dance in Jeremy’s eyes even in the darkness behind his eyelids when he blinks. He can see Jean’s hand in his peripheral vision, draped over the arm of his chair, a lit cigarette dangling between his index and middle fingers. He’s got his chair tilted back on two legs, and, in fact, Jeremy’s not entirely convinced that he’s not asleep behind his Aviators. Jeremy has to admire that level of unphased and unbothered - there’s so many press and photographers packed into the space in front of the long table they are sitting at, that it’s standing room only, and Jeremy can see lanyards from every major magazine, newspaper, radio station and TV station he could imagine. He’s not usually bothered by attention because he finds talking to people easy - it’s basically just performing, after all - but even he has to admit, this is a lot. But Jean Moreau somehow takes it all in stride, tipping his chair back like it’s just another day to him.
He’d been amazing last night, and Jeremy is certainly not too proud to admit that he’d been wrong back in Tetsuji’s office - there was maybe only one man on the planet who was good enough to take Crom’s place at the eleventh hour, and that man could only have ever been the indomitable Jean Moreau. He hadn’t remembered any of the songs perfectly, but honestly that had kind of made the show better - more from the heart, or that corner of his soul where he kept music close. With his deep understanding of musical theory, he’d been able to improvise, expanding on the melodies, adding flair of his own and creating intricate, beautiful solos that gave the crowd above and beyond what they’d paid for. At one point, during Out On My Own when Jean had been crafting an exquisite, melancholic solo, and Jeremy had been sucking in some deep breaths in the moments he didn’t have to sing, he’d even dragged his hands through his hair, scratching his nails against his scalp a little harder than necessary to convince himself that he was actually awake, and this was actually real, and that was really Jean on his left.
He wasn’t the only one - there’d been girls right in front of the stage who had burst into tears immediately upon seeing Jean walk out, and somehow the word had gotten around at lightning speed during their set, because they had been mobbed upon trying to leave The Whisky at the end of the night by a horde of sobbing fans, and press, and photographers. Jeremy can’t even be upset that everyone’s focus is almost entirely on the unexpected return of Jean Moreau instead of Odysseys, because their upcoming tour dates are selling out rapidly this morning and record stores are reporting they can’t keep Worlds Apart in stock long enough to meet the demand. Tetsuji had looked like every single one of his Christmases had come at once when he’d told Jeremy that.
Plus, Jean deserves every ounce of adulation, and Jeremy loves it for him.
But now, he’s sitting on Jeremy’s right, so bored he’s maybe asleep (Jeremy doesn’t want to draw attention to it by looking), and Rhemann and Tetsuji are on Jeremy’s left, because they need to make a statement to the press.
Jean’s long, elegant hand moves in Jeremy’s peripheral vision, lifting the cigarette to his mouth, and Jeremy exhales in relief. The sea of bodies in front of them shifts restlessly and Jeremy is distinctly reminded of the pack of ravenous hyenas waiting for dinner he’d seen on some nature show on TV. Jean sits forward, his chair righting itself with a soft thunk, and he lifts the hand holding his cigarette to block his mouth from view while he leans towards Jeremy. His mouth is against Jeremy’s ear for a heart-racing second as he murmurs, “Vultures,” so softly that only Jeremy can hear, and in spite of himself, he laughs. The flashing intensifies.
Tetsuji leans toward the microphone in front of him. “Okay, we’re ready to start. Silence please - I will let you know when you can ask questions.”
The entire room seems to surge forward, just a little, the anticipation palpable.
The gathered media don’t know that Jean had already told Jeremy, the rest of Odysseys, and Rhemann and Tetsuji that he absolutely wouldn’t be speaking at the presser today, and wouldn’t be answering any questions. The focus needs to be on Odysseys, he’d insisted. He hadn’t looked at Jeremy once throughout the conversation, no matter how hard Jeremy had tried to make eye contact.
Rhemann clears his throat, and begins to read from the brief pre-prepared statement in front of him. “Odysseys lead guitarist, Jason Cromwell, is stepping away from the band to deal with some health issues for an indeterminate amount of time. Odysseys is extremely grateful to have Jean Moreau join them for the North American leg of their Worlds Apart Tour as lead guitar - Jean and Jeremy have worked together in the past, and Jean is an extremely talented musician, composer and song-writer. At this point in time, there is no end date to Jean’s stint with Odysseys, and we remain grateful to Jean for his flexibility.”
Rhemann stops talking and looks to Jeremy, who leans towards his own mic. “I am forever thankful for my time filling in for Kevin Day in The Kings’ Men last year - it gave me the opportunity to break into the industry. Jean was a big part of that, and I am very grateful-” God, he thinks, that word again, being overused, grateful, grateful, grateful, and he is, but it doesn’t really do his feelings justice, “-for his friendship and that he has agreed to help us out on tour.” He finishes with a big smile, and when he happens to glance at Jean, he’s frowning at the place in Jeremy’s right cheek where his dimple normally appears.
“Questions?” Tetsuji says, sounding bored. Every hand in the room goes up, so simultaneously there’s a little whoosh as it happens. Jeremy is pretty sure he hears Jean murmur, very softly, putain de merde. Fucking hell. He presses his lips together and tries to exhale slowly through his nose to keep from actually smiling at that.
The questions aren’t creative, and Jeremy and Jean sit back in their chairs and let Tetsuji and Rhemann bat them away; is Cromwell a drug addict? Of course not (though the four of them exchange looks that say come on, did we come down in the last shower? No one is going to admit that in an interview). Are any tour dates being affected? No, it’s all going ahead as planned. Jean, where have you been? No comment. Will The Kings’ Men ever reunite? No comment. Jean, what about touring your solo album? There’s no plans for that at this stage. Jean, what was the cause of your car accident in ‘75? He was suffering from exhaustion after a long tour. Jean, Jean, Jean -
“Okay, that’s all we have time for today,” Tetsuji says, standing and signalling that the whole circus is at an end with a tap of his fingertip on his watch face. The reporters start to jostle and shout their questions, and Jeremy suddenly has a gut sense that the room is not really under control, but then he and Jean are being bundled out through the curtain behind them and into a pre-planned escape route down a corridor.
But when they emerge through the fire exit door and into the alleyway behind the building, a mob of media and fans are waiting, and the second they realise it’s Jeremy and Jean, they start screaming and pushing and shoving and trying to grab and touch them. Jeremy sucks in a breath as someone accidentally pushes him back against the solid wall of Jean’s chest. His heart picks up, racing in his chest, and his breaths start coming out shorter and sharper as his stress levels rise. Their names are being shouted by hundreds of people, and Jeremy can faintly hear Rhemann’s voice calling them from where he’s stuck back near the door, with a mass of people between him and Jeremy and Jean.
Jean’s arm comes over Jeremy’s shoulder, across his chest, and then his mouth is at Jeremy’s ear and he’s saying, with no small amount of urgency, “Time to go.”
Jeremy doesn’t resist as Jean grabs his arm and starts to push a path through the crowd, and into a doorway on the other side of the alley. They jog through the stock area of what looks like some kind of retail shop and out onto the shop floor, Jean’s hand now holding onto Jeremy’s forearm as he pulls him along, and then out the front door of the store and around the corner into a different alleyway. This alley is mercifully empty, aside from a curious-looking orange tomcat who stops rooting through garbage to stare at them. They keep walking though, quickly, trying to put distance between themselves and the rabid mob, and just as Jeremy is clocking that this is the first time Jean has touched him in fifteen months, Jean finally drops Jeremy’s arm.
He can still feel the ghost of his palm though, of his fingertips, like a brand.
Once they’re a block or so away, when the retail strip they’d been in has given way to houses and they’re less likely to be bothered, Jean stops and sits down on a low-slung brick fence with a tired sigh. Jeremy watches him pull a cigarette from the pack in the pocket of his jeans, and, on autopilot, he produces his own lighter and flicks it, holding the flame out for Jean. The cherry flares, and Jeremy can’t drag his eyes away from Jean’s mouth as he watches him inhale, his cheeks hollowing. Jean sighs again on his exhale, smoke streaming from his mouth, and then he looks up at Jeremy standing in front of him, and offers him the cigarette.
Jeremy takes a drag, for something to do, because he’s not used to this. He’s not used to this silence between them, to this feeling that he can’t just talk to Jean the way he used to. And Jean has every right to be angry, Jeremy knows he does, because he’s spent fifteen months thinking about how of course those little promises they made to each other during tour were the most important things to Jean. He’s spent fifteen months thinking and reflecting about how Jean has been betrayed his entire life, in big and small ways, and how Jeremy was supposed to be the one who wouldn’t do that. So Jean has every right to be angry.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like hell, though.
Jean is still looking up at him though, his grey eyes appraising behind his sunglasses, and Jeremy is reminded of the two of them standing and sitting in a similar way in a carpark in Clarkston while Jeremy gently cleaned blood off Jean’s face. Something inside him aches indiscriminately. The corner of Jean’s mouth curves up wryly - not quite a smile, but something in the vicinity.
“Who do you think is freaking out more right now?” he asks, tilting his chin down a little to peer at Jeremy over the rims of his Aviators.
“Tetsuji, without a doubt,” Jeremy says, a tentative smile coming to his own face, and he hands Jean back the cigarette. “Rhemann was a college athlete, he loves a bit of push and shove. Tetsuji will be panicking that if we’ve been kidnapped by rabid fans then he will lose money.”
Jean takes a contemplative drag. “Very true.”
They lapse into silence, passing the stick back and forth, and Jeremy feels like he’s waiting for something, and he hates this, he hates this, he hates this distance that feels untraversable between them. It’s not like it used to be, when silence between them would feel comfortable and companionable, filled with the sounds of gentle acoustic guitar, or the scratch of Jean’s pen in his notebook, or Jeremy humming snatches of songs for Jean to guess (he always got them right). Instead, this feels like the uncomfortable silence of Jeremy’s childhood, where he’d feel like he had to fill it, but that no matter what he said or did, someone was still disappointed in him for existing.
The cigarette is almost down to the filter, so Jean tosses it down on the pavement and grinds it with the toe of his boot, and Jeremy gets the immediate, panicked sense that time is running out - for what, he doesn’t know, but he pre-empts Jean standing up by saying, “Hey, so I don’t know if I’ve said it yet, but thank you.”
Jean stands and stretches, and Jeremy dutifully looks away from the sliver of skin exposed between his belt and the hem of his t-shirt when he does. “For what?” Jean asks as he puts his arms down, with a curious quirk of his brow.
“Coming on tour. I know it’s putting you out.”
Jean fixes Jeremy with a strange look, and tilts his head a little. “It’s not putting me out.”
He turns on the heel of his boot, and starts to walk, jerking his chin to beckon Jeremy on with him.
“Oh come on,” Jeremy says, hurrying to keep up with Jean’s long-legged strides. “You’re angry with me, you haven’t wanted to be around me for over a year, you have an album sitting at number one that you could be touring instead, and now I’ve basically strong-armed you into a tour you don’t really want to do, to save my skin.”
Jean stops dead, turns, and fixes Jeremy with a stare that has his stomach withering away inside himself. “That’s an incredible amount of assumptions you’ve made there,” he says, coolly. Then he turns his back again and starts walking once more, quicker now, and honestly, it might have been less shocking if Jean had just punched him in the face.
What does Jean mean by that? He loves music, of course, he loves live music and playing live shows, so maybe it’s just that he’s excited to go back on tour, even if it is with his last choice of company.
But even still, that tiny, fragile spark of hope that flickered back to life in Tetsuji’s office a couple of days ago is taking each minuscule scrap of fuel and growing, putting heat back into a place in Jeremy’s chest that’s been cold and empty for a long time.
And that’s the hardest thing, the thing that wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to let himself hope.
Because this hope is so dangerous for an already fragile heart.
“Hi, how are you!? I made food! This place is beautiful! That view, my God!” Cat gushes, as Jean’s front door swings open and the man himself blinks in the face of her onslaught of words.
He eyes the massive tray of pasta bake she’s holding out in front of her, and then slowly flicks his gaze over Cat and Laila, and then finally over Jeremy bringing up the rear. Jean’s eyebrow rises. “You know I’m going on tour with you tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah?” Cat says, a confused frown drawing her brows together.
“So you’ve bought enough food to feed quite a large army…” Jean says.
“I think you’re underestimating her appetite,” Jeremy says dryly, stepping around the girls and into Jean’s house without waiting for a further invitation.
“And you and Jeremy are too skinny! My Laila is perfect as she is, of course, but she likes my pasta bake and will vouch for it,” Cat says, following Jeremy as Jean steps aside to let her and Laila in.
Jean makes a point of looking down at his own body, and then quizzically back at Cat, and Jeremy quickly averts his eyes - he doesn’t need to look anyway, because he already knows the point Jean is trying to make; broad shoulders, muscles, and Jeremy knows there’s defined abs under that white t-shirt he’s wearing, because he’s seen them, he’s touched them, and -
He shoves that train of thought so far off its rail that there’s no hope it could right itself. Explosion, fireball, no survivors.
Laila catches his eye, and she’s looking at him like she knows everything he was just thinking. She drifts closer to him, as Cat follows Jean towards the kitchen, and she joins Jeremy in pretending to be busy admiring Jean’s vinyls. It actually works temporarily, because Jean’s record collection is out of this world, and for a moment he and Laila get caught up talking about Rush’s debut album - the current vinyl on the turntable - until Laila trails off and fixes him with The Look; the one that means ‘boy, I know you’re hiding things from me.’
“What’s going on?” she asks quietly, but it doesn’t matter anyway because Cat and Jean are deep in conversation about her method for making the white sauce for her pasta bake. They’ve turned the oven on to pre-heat it, and it hums gently in the background.
“I just have… feelings,” Jeremy says, just as quietly. He looks over at the kitchen, and Laila follows his gaze, before she looks back at him. Her fingers trail over the records, and he knows the moment she spots Worlds Apart because her lips press together, and the sharp, angled line of her jaw tightens. “Even if he’s angry with me, I still have that old crush.” Of course, it’s so much more than that, but the girls don’t know that. Jean and Cat have their backs to him and Laila, and Jeremy watches Jean rubbing at the back of his neck as he talks with Cat, and Laila watches him watching. “The spark is still there, you know.” He touches his fingertips to his sternum absently. “For me, at least.”
Laila chews the inside of her cheek, which she only does when she’s trying to decide how to say something. “Jez, I once told you to be careful, and I think-”
“Are we doing this or not?” Cat’s voice calls over to them. Clearly the pasta bake is in the oven, and Cat and Jean, oblivious to the nature of Jeremy and Laila’s conversation, are ready to get on with practicing.
Laila shoots Jeremy an apologetic look that implies later and they follow Jean and Cat to the music room. They’ve been rehearsing all week, at Jean’s house because he flat out refused to go to Evermore, and then tonight they’ve got a tour launch shindig at Tetsuji’s Hollywood Hills mansion. Tomorrow, they’re off to El Paso for the Worlds Apart Tour day one. And Jeremy is a mess on the inside, a nervous wreck of jangled nerves, because he’s about to spend months on the road with the man he’d fallen hard and fast for and never really recovered from. All of those feelings, the want that crawls under his skin, have reawoken like an animal from hibernation.
And this time, it’ll be so much harder to pretend everything is normal and fine, because Cat and Laila know him so well. Jeremy knows they’re going to quickly pick up on the way he struggles not to look at Jean, the way his heart rate ratchets up whenever Jean is nearby, the way that awful little spark of hope between his ribs has him looking for signs, trying to read Jean’s face, trying to determine if he’s just being polite, or if maybe today he’s closer to smiling at Jeremy than he was a week ago.
“What are we going to do if we need keys?” Cat asks, striking a few discordant notes on Jean’s piano. He doesn’t have a drum kit so she doesn’t have much to do, but it hasn’t really mattered because practicing has been more about working out stage arrangements for the lead guitar. Jean has been throwing out a lot of good ideas too - reservedly at first, then more confidently as he realised this wasn’t a dictatorship like The Kings’ Men had been. His touring experience is amazing and extensive, and the three Odysseys hang off his every word and idea. They’re even going to try an acoustic set at one of the shows, like he and Jeremy had wanted to back then, before the idea had been summarily shut down by Riko.
“I’ll bring the Rhodes,” Jean says, not looking up from where he’s concentrating on adjusting the Celtic tuning of one of his secondary guitars, a black ‘61 Danelectro.
“But you’re the only one who can play it,” Laila puts in.
“Well, what songs would you want keys on?” Jean asks, finally looking up. His grey eyes go straight to Jeremy, who is caught in the act of leafing through Jean’s copy of Emma. He slides it back onto the shelf where he’d found it.
The girls look at him too, waiting for his answer, and Jeremy ponders for a moment. “Hard Knocks,” he says, “and maybe Lonely Hearts.”
Jean thinks for a beat, and Jeremy can almost see the cogs turn in his head as he imagines the stage and the instrumentation, and how it would all lay out in his ideal world. “I’ll record piano backing tracks for those songs tomorrow morning before we leave,” Jean finally says. “And I’ll bring the Rhodes in case you want me to play it in acoustic sets.”
With that settled, they pause for a late lunch and Cat makes herself at home in Jean’s lovely kitchen, finding plates and setting out cutlery, and serving up piles of pasta bake that are bigger than any human could actually eat. Jean shoots Jeremy a bemused look as Cat makes him sit under threat of spatula, and then cuts his attention back to Cat, saying, “Do try not to make too big a mess right before I leave the house for months.”
“Jeremy, sit,” Cat demands, acting like she can’t hear Jean. She shoves a plate of food across the bench towards Jeremy, and jabs the spatula at the only free stool left - the one next to Jean.
He reluctantly slides onto the stool, and Jean doesn’t react - he just continues dutifully eating the plateful of pasta Cat has served him. But their knees bump under the bench, and Jeremy catches the familiar vanilla sugar scent of the bodywash Jean likes, and his insides are in knots in an instant. How is he going to do this tour, he thinks for the thousandth time since Jean agreed to help, how is he going to get through this tour missing someone so much it hurts, when that someone is literally within arms reach most of the time? His appetite is gone, but he forces himself to eat, and as the droning static in his ears that came on at the knock of Jean’s knee against his own recedes, the conversation happening around him can permeate his consciousness again.
“That must be hard for his parents,” Jean is saying, his deep voice somber, and Laila nods.
“The doctor at the VA hospital said they are seeing this more and more in Vietnam vets,” she says, “and it’s stressing my aunt and uncle out.” Ah, Jeremy clues in - Laila’s cousin served during the war and saw frontline action. “He’s got this rash that comes and goes, maybe from the agent orange they think, and he doesn’t sleep. Sometimes he hears the LAPD helicopter going overhead and you’d think he was still in a jungle somewhere, like he becomes this different person.” Tears are welling in Laila’s eyes, but she quickly swipes them away and doesn’t let them fall. Cat reaches across the bench and entwines their fingers, squeezing Laila’s hand.
Jean’s jaw is tense, and a little muscle flickers over the angle of it. “I can’t imagine what it’s like reliving a war in your head every day,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck, at the curve between his neck and shoulder. His knee bumps Jeremy’s again, just momentarily and probably accidentally, and then he scrapes his stool backwards and starts clearing everyone’s plates.
Jeremy jumps up to help, and though Jean tries to wave him away, Jeremy stubbornly sets himself up in front of the sink while it fills, and relegates Jean to a tea towel and drying duty.
“What can they do about it? Medications?” Jeremy asks over his shoulder, while he swirls his fingertips in the hot water to disperse the dish soap.
“Hynotherapy and desensitization, mostly,” Laila’s voice answers. “Although there’s word of some, like, support groups I suppose? Like, social groups for vets with shell-shock where they can talk about their experiences. I think Lachlan would do well with something like that.”
Jean is leaning against the benchtop, facing the girls, whereas Jeremy has his back to them, but he’s standing close enough that his shoulder brushes Jeremy’s every now and then as he works the tea towel over the surfaces of the plates. Jeremy hands him another to dry. The conversation drifts behind his back to other topics, and Jeremy keeps his eyes on the dishes in front of him, trying to ignore Jean’s proximity and the familiar scent of him, and the way it makes his heart throb painfully. It’s just the ghost of a life that never came to be, this little scene, where in another world this is their shared house and their habitual jobs after having the girls over for a meal, and the fantasy makes something deep in the marrow of Jeremy’s bones ache.
Tetsuji Moriyama’s Hollywood mansion is an intriguing blend of coastal rendered brick combined with Japanese architectural elements added on that shouldn’t really work together, but somehow does. Jeremy arrives with Laila and Cat of course, and he’s instantly in awe of the indoor-outdoor courtyard inside the entrance, with a fountain centrepiece that bubbles gently, undercutting the chatter of all Tetsuji’s guests. A waiter in an impeccable pair of dress pants and a waistcoat hands them small glasses of what he says is ‘sake’ and they marvel over the light, crisp taste. The house is filled with musicians, actors, directors, writers, generalised rich people and everything in between - all beautiful of face, or beautifully dressed, or accompanied by someone beautiful enough to make up for any physical shortcomings. Jeremy mingles, and Cat and Laila stick close by - this is a whole new world for them, but Jeremy, who once spent an evening at a very famous music producers’ Aspen chalet hanging out with Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon of The Who, has grown unphased by these displays of fame and connection.
What is nice about these sorts of events though, is that because everyone is considered as belonging to a certain echelon of society, there’s very little of the gawking and watching and harassing that can come with being out at a bar or a club. Jeremy is almost always happy to give time to the fans, but sometimes when you’re out at a public bar just trying to get a drink with friends and unable to get through a full sentence for the interruptions it wears a bit thin. Jeremy runs into Grace Slick, from Jefferson Airplane, and they spend a good hour talking about art and the merits of mixed-media versus single modality artworks. He and the girls circulate as a unit, making conversations, having debates, drinking drinks, and checking out Tetsuji’s quietly luxurious pad.
Jeremy knows the instant Jean enters the house; his entire body is annoyingly attuned to the man. He feels the tingle at the base of his skull and his eyes slide away from the conversation he’s in against his own will, spotting Jean coming through the front door, dressed in dark blue bell-bottom jeans with a baby blue silk collared shirt tucked into them. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, and the muscles in his forearms flex as he runs one hand, then the other through his thick, dark waves of hair. He looks so fucking good in blue. Derek and the Dominos’ Bell Bottom Blues starts playing, and the irony is not at all lost on Jeremy.
Do you want to see me crawl across the floor to you? Do you want to hear me beg you to take me back?
A woman shrieks excitedly, and as Jeremy watches, a statuesque, drop-dead gorgeous blonde woman emerges from the cluster of people near the door and throws herself into Jean’s arms, and instead of gently pushing her away, as he’s been known to do with groupies before, Jean loops his arm around her lower back and lets her cling to him. Jeremy takes her in - the buttery blonde hair, the ski jump nose, the dimples - and it twigs for him. That’s Margaux Hemingway, the model and yes, that Hemingway, as in granddaughter of the writer Hemingway. One of Jean Moreau’s all-time favourite authors - that Hemingway. Her lipstick is bright, bright red, but Jean doesn’t stop her from kissing him on the corner of his lush mouth and leaving an imprint of her lips there like a brand of ownership. And it’s one thing to have seen it in all the magazines, and the gossip columns in the past six months - the pictures of Jean leaving this club and that bar and this restaurant with that model and this actress and that heiress - but it’s another thing entirely to witness it firsthand. It feels a bit like a hot knife twisting in Jeremy’s gut.
“Are you okay, Jez - you look nauseous?” Cat says, around a mouthful of canapes. And yes, that’s exactly how he feels - like his stomach is about to crawl out of his throat.
“I thought she was married?” Laila murmurs, having followed Jeremy’s gaze.
Jeremy clears his throat and returns to the conversation he’d been having with this screenwriter they’d met, and he knocks back his gin and tonic quicker than he probably should, and his eyes keep sliding to Jean over the screenwriter’s shoulder. It’s a mistake, because Margaux is guiding Jean’s chin with her red stiletto-tipped index finger towards her and then she’s kissing him, her lithe body pressing up against his tall frame. And he’s not pulling away, and something hot that feels a little too close to jealousy pulses in Jeremy’s chest, and as if he can feel a gaze on him, Jean opens his eyes and finds Jeremy looking. Jeremy can’t look away, even as his heart pounds on the inside of his chest wall, and he can’t see the detail from this far away, but he knows how Jean’s eyes become just slivers of quicksilver around blown pupils when he’s into something. He kisses like it’s art, like he’s making music, poetry and perfection, like he’s taking you apart with his mouth, and Jeremy knows what that feels like; he remembers it in astounding, agonising detail.
“Oh fuck,” Cat says, and for a second, Jeremy thinks she’s also clocking Jean and Margaux, but then -
“Jeremy!”
His racing heart flatlines.
Fuck. Fuck.
“Leo,” he chokes out.
Laila was wrong, he thinks to himself, he has to have been born wrong, he was definitely born under a bad sign or something and is one hundred percent cursed. Leo has got his hands in the pockets of his dark slacks, the set of his jaw and his shoulders as arrogant as ever as he strolls over. He tosses his flop of dark hair off his face, slides his eyes over Cat and Laila, and then ignores them in favour of drawing Jeremy into a hug. Jeremy doesn’t react; he’s too shocked.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, hating how his voice comes out weak.
Leo takes a step back, and he shrugs nonchalantly. “I’m a journalist for a local rag, I know some people here.”
“Perhaps you should go find them then,” Laila suggests, her tone honey-sweet, but her angled features sharp.
“Put the claws away, Dermott,” Leo says, with a little laugh. His gaze is dark, and it’s too intense on Jeremy. He’s always had that confidence, that lack of subtlety, and he reaches out and touches the hand in which Jeremy holds his glass, tilting it to examine the liquid. “You want a drink? Let’s catch up.”
‘Catch up’ is Leo code for ‘I think we should fuck,’ and the dizzying rush of addiction pulses through Jeremy’s veins, even as the thought simultaneously sickens him. The helplessness is the same as being an addict; the initial rush of want, followed by the self-loathing of begging for something that’s horrifically bad for you. He’s been pathetic over this man, and he hates that every time he sees him, his mind remembers that pain seconds too late to prevent the old tug of wanting something in his gut. Leo puts his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder and starts to move him, and Cat and Laila protest, but as they turn towards Tetsuji’s bar, they find Jean Moreau in their way. In the corner of his eye, Jeremy sees Cat grin at Laila.
Jean is taller than Leo by some inches, and he manages to make it feel like at least a foot of difference as he looks down at him. He looks Leo up and down slowly, his lip curling just a little, and then his gaze falls on the hand Leo still has on Jeremy’s shoulder and Jeremy can see him piece things together straight away. His irises are burning liquid mercury in the dim lighting, and then finally he meets Jeremy’s eye and does not let him look away.
“Have you met Jean Moreau?” Jeremy hears Cat say, her tone delighted. “Formerly of The Kings’ Men, now of Odysseys?” Jeremy clicks his tongue, because she’s enjoying this too much, but he doesn’t correct Cat to say temporarily of Odysseys, and nor does Jean.
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” Leo says, extending a hand for Jean to shake.
“Pleasure,” Jean echoes, except he says it like it’s not the word he’d use, and he makes no move to accept Leo’s hand.
Jeremy smiles thinly; this is absolutely the worst thing that could have happened tonight. If he had his choice in the matter, he would have never wanted Jean to ever cross paths with Leo. Especially when Leo is the living embodiment of everything Jeremy is ashamed of, everything he hates about himself, every weakness that lives inside him. Jean looks generally unimpressed, and Jeremy feels the flush creep up his neck. He gets the distinct sense he’s let Jean down. Again. Without even trying. Again.
Jean slides his gaze away from Leo as if in all the thousands, the hundreds of thousands of people he’s met since he became a star with The Kings’ Men, Leo is the most inconsequential, the most uninteresting, the most trifling person he’s ever encountered. He looks at Jeremy, and it’s now with an expression that Jeremy has a hard time deciphering - it’s almost cautious. “I need to borrow you,” he says, and Jeremy wants nothing more than to be wherever Jean is - especially when he’s now looking at Jeremy with something a little conspiratorial hidden in the slant of his mouth, like he would on the Nevermore Tour when he wanted to ditch Riko and Grayson.
“And we need to be anywhere you aren’t,” Laila says to Leo, her tone still saccharine. She loops her arm through Cat’s elbow, and leads her off towards the courtyard.
Jeremy ignores Leo’s eyes on the back of his head as he steps around him and follows Jean towards the long, curved dark wood bar in the entertaining room off the main lounge. Once they’re at the bar, Jean eyes Jeremy’s empty gin and tonic, crinkles his nose a little, and then orders them both a scotch on the rocks.
“Friend of yours?” Jean asks, when they’ve both got a drink in hand, jerking his chin back in the direction they just came from.
Jeremy flushes from cheekbone to collarbone, which tells Jean everything he needs to know. “I had no idea he’d be here,” Jeremy says, trying to read Jean’s profile - is he angry? Disappointed? What does it mean that he still wears the necklace Jeremy bought him? But also he just had a models’ tongue in his mouth barely half an hour ago, so it can’t mean much, right?
Jean pulls out a cigarette and hangs it between his lips, and Jeremy skitters his gaze away, listening to the lighter flick a couple of times. He feels the bartender looking at him; he’s a pretty, delicate-featured brunette, and the corner of his mouth curls a little as Jeremy notices him looking, and he shakes the cocktail mixer in his hands vigorously. Jeremy looks back at Jean, at the tense set of his jaw, and wants to tell him that it’s nothing, that he hasn’t even really thought of Leo in over fifteen months, that he hasn’t been able to think of anyone else, because his mind is still full of Jean and every time he closes his eyes he hears Jean’s voice, and he feels the impressions of Jean’s fingertips on his hips, and the heat of his mouth on Jeremy’s.
“Laila has some strong feelings about that, clearly,” Jean observes.
Jeremy laughs, in spite of himself, and it makes Jean look at him properly. “Ah, yeah. She’s never been a fan.”
“She’s on the money, that one.”
“I’m sorry?”
Jean takes a sip of his drink as he considers his next words, and Jeremy watches the rings of his trachea bob up and down as he swallows. “That,” he says, and the derision with which he says the word tells Jeremy he’s referring to Leo, “is what you accept when you think you don’t deserve better.” He drains his glass, and sets it down hard on the bar. “See you tomorrow.”
And then he’s gone, and Jeremy is left with the shock of Jean Moreau once more reading him as though he’s a book laid out before him, seeing through him and understanding things about Jeremy that no one else has ever managed to. It’s a feeling that is razor sharp in his chest, between his ribs.
The bartender is giving Jeremy the eyes, is asking to be fucked with those smiling eyes, but Tetsuji Moriyama’s mansion is definitely not the place for a clandestine tryst, especially the illegal sort - because while he’s fine with drugs around his stars, Jeremy is pretty sure he’d be far less cool about gay sex - and so he skitters his gaze away in a pretty good imitation of a nervous straight guy. He finishes off his own drink, feeling inexplicably lonely in this room full of people, because the person that really sees him is gone again, and his throat feels tight with all the things he wishes he could say, or perhaps should have said when he’d had the chance. It’s time to go, he thinks. Nothing good will come of this party, he’s sure, and he needs a good nights’ sleep.
Because God only knows what’s coming for him on this tour, or how he’ll survive it.
It’s an easy flight from LA to El Paso, just a couple of hours in the air, and then they’re landing and retrieving their bags from the carousel, and Cat and Laila are almost beside themselves with excitement and first-night-of-tour nerves. Jeremy catches Jean’s eye once, and they exchange an indulgent, affectionate look behind Cat and Laila’s backs - they, of course, are experienced at the whole tour thing and would never be so giddy. Jeremy would never admit to the storm of anticipation, and yes, okay, maybe a few nerves in his own gut (and a tiny pulse of thrill in his fingertips at the idea that he and Jean might be once more exchanging silent conversation in glances). In a way, he misses the days of The Kings’ Men tour, when the music wasn’t his own - it wasn’t his own secrets, it wasn’t his ragged little soul that he was offering to the world. El Paso airport security have to escort them to their waiting cars, because an enthusiastic mob has formed - mostly for Jean, but a good number for Jeremy and Odysseys too.
It’s a very warm ninety degrees outside, but the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in El Paso is airconditioned and cool as they make their way inside. The building has a beautiful red-brick facade and a copper Spanish-tiled crown roof, and Art Deco decor through the interior - it’s maybe not the five-star opulence of some of the places that The Kings’ Men stayed at in ‘75, but it’s still very nice, and Jeremy catches Cat and Laila swivelling their heads around, trying to take in as much as they can at once.
Tetsuji is at the desk checking them all in, and Jeremy notes with interest that Riko has not arrived yet. He sets his suitcase down next to Jean’s and then sinks into an armchair, around which Jean, Cat and Laila loosely stand as they wait. Jeremy realises he’s zoned out watching Jean light a cigarette and take a drag when Tetsuji comes over to them, keys jangling in his fist, and he quickly darts his eyes away and stands.
“Soundcheck is at four,” Tetsuji says, with the unspoken implication being that you are dead if you’re late. “Cars leave from here at three-thirty.” He hands them each a room key, and Jeremy sees the number on Jean’s just before his long fingers close around it - sees the number that matches his own.
And fuck, but he hadn’t thought about the fact that Odysseys are not as big as The Kings’ Men had been - maybe not yet, maybe they will be, but it remains to be seen - and so that means that Evermore won’t splash cash the way they’d done for The Kings. And that means they won’t always get their own rooms on hotel nights. And it makes sense for Cat and Laila to be roomed together - just two girls, who are best friends, in Tetsuji’s mind - and that leaves Jeremy rooming with Jean.
It takes all of three minutes, in which Jean takes the bed closest to the door by putting his suitcase on it and opening it, for Cat and Laila to come down the hallway and knock eagerly on their door. They burst through when Jeremy opens it, spilling into the room with their excited chatter overlapping. Jeremy doesn’t miss Jean pressing two fingers to the space between his brows like he’s got a headache coming on, even if the girls do. He’d been tense on the plane - they’d been separated by a random stranger whose seat was between theirs, but Jeremy had noticed the way Jean’s knee had bounced anxiously for most of the flight. He just wasn’t sure what it was - not nerves, because Jean didn’t really get nervous, and Odysseys’ crowds would be half of what he played to in The Kings’ Men. Maybe it was just hard to be around this all again, or the spectre of Riko looming was stressing him out - that actually seems like the most likely culprit, when Jeremy thinks about it. He just hopes, however childish it feels to do so, that it’s not because of him. He lights a cigarette and passes it to Jean, who shoots him a grateful look.
Jeremy whispers, while the girls are distracted by the view from Jean and Jeremy’s window, “I can swap rooms with Marty or someone, you know, if you’d… prefer…” He trails off at the narrow expression on Jean’s face.
“Why?” he asks, bluntly, and Jeremy once again has the sense he’s said the completely wrong thing, but isn’t sure why.
“I - okay-” Jeremy isn’t sure what else to say, so he lets it hang in the air, turning back to his own suitcase and massaging his knuckles against his chest idly. He can feel eyes on the back of his head, but he doesn’t want to make things worse, or more awkward, so he keeps his mouth shut and his head down, letting Cat and Laila’s excited chatter, and Jean’s occasional, monosyllabic input wash over him.
Sooner rather than later, it’s time to head back down to the lobby and over to the venue. The El Paso County Coliseum is a multi-purpose venue - even to the extent that in the past it had housed Italian prisoners of war during World War II - and there’s definitely a country flavour to the building. Out the back, their tour bus is parked, the roadies having come down from LA in it the day prior. In fact, the vehicle is very familiar to both Jean and Jeremy - it’s The Kings’ Men’s old bus, repainted and reupholstered on the inside. While the top half of the bus used to be matte black, it’s now cherry red, with gold lettering spelling ‘Odysseys’ down one side, and still chrome on the lower half.
There’s also a couple of much smaller, much older buses parked up next to theirs, belonging to Odysseys’ support band for this North American tour leg - Foxholes.
Jeremy hears Jean swear under his breath as they climb out of the car, and his stomach turns over with guilt, because he’d definitely forgotten this aspect - and that it was probably adding to Jean’s levels of stress.
Kevin Day is fronting Foxholes these days.
“I was so excited when I heard the news,” Allison croons, perching herself on Jean’s amp and swinging her pink platform heels back and forth.
Jeremy, on his hands and knees, glances up from the mic cord he’s helping Marty tape down, but the ‘news’ in question, Jean, barely acknowledges having heard Allison. He’s standing with his Gibson Les Paul hanging off his lean frame, his favourite guitar strap - the one colourfully patterned like the Disraeli Gears album cover - keeping it in place against his body. With his head bent over the guitar, his hair has fallen forward in thick, dark waves, so he’s brushed one side back behind his ear so he can see, and there’s a waiting cigarette tucked behind that ear too. He’s got a guitar pick between his teeth and a furrow between his dark brows as he concentrates, the toe of his boot undulating on the tuner pedal. He’s breathtakingly beautiful. The very sight of him makes Jeremy’s heart kick up a gear, and brings a smile to his lips completely unbidden.
“Pardon?” Jean eventually asks, briefly cutting his gaze up to Allison when he realises she’s still there and is talking to him.
Jeremy feels Marty looking at him, and they exchange a knowing glance before both looking back to the side of the stage where Jean is.
Allison is incredibly good-looking, there’s no denying that. Tall, that long shag of platinum blonde hair, the body, the grey eyes that are not dissimilar to Jean’s… she’s got it, and she knows it; a fact which is made abundantly clear by the fringed mini-skirt and the little suede crop-top. She crosses one long leg over the other, showing off miles of skin, and leans forward, placing her hands on the edge of the amp as she repeats to Jean, “I was so excited when I heard the news you were coming on tour!”
“Oh,” Jean says, with a distracted chuckle, his eyes already back on his guitar strings.
Jeremy hears Marty next to him snigger and then try to hide it with a cough. That sound actually does draw Jean’s attention and Jeremy presses his lips together and quickly ducks his head.
“I thought she was with the roadie, anyway?” Marty mutters to Jeremy, who shrugs. He’d met most of Foxholes again earlier, and their crew, and to be honest, he was having a hard time keeping them all straight. He was pretty sure Marty was referring to Foxholes’ tall, muscular roadie - Gordon, maybe? Or that might have been his last name? Jeremy isn’t sure, and he’s got a whole tour to work it out anyway.
He can feel eyes on him, so he chances looking up again. He immediately meets Jean’s gaze, and in that first second that their eyes fall on each other, Jean blinks, like he’s looking into the sun. Then Jean subtly tilts his head towards Allison and the corner of his mouth curves, just slightly, as though he and Jeremy are sharing a secret. Jean turns back to Allison, and feigns interest as she goes on talking, oblivious. Marty is watching Jeremy with a contemplative expression when he turns back to what he’s doing, so Jeremy says, “What?” but Marty just shakes his head and begins to whistle the tune of Worlds Apart. They’re done with their taping, so Jeremy stands and stretches.
The stage is a hive of activity as it’s being set up for Odysseys to soundcheck; Sergio is meticulously setting out Cat’s drumkit with her, taking notes and drawing himself reference diagrams on a piece of paper regarding how she wants her setup, and Odysseys’ two new roadies, Derek and Derrick - and yes, that is confusing for Jeremy - are positioning cables, amps and pedals. Jeremy doesn’t know much about the pair yet, but he’s pleased to see them taking a leaf out of Sergio and Marty’s book and also taking notes on things to help them remember. As Jeremy goes over near where Jean is tuning and flips the locks open on the guitar case holding Sunburst, Kevin emerges from between the trusses and lighting rigs in the sidestage.
“Hey,” he says to Jean, and then dips his chin in greeting to Jeremy.
“Good to see you, Kevin,” Jeremy says, with a warm smile, leaning over the stack of equipment boxes between them to shake the hand Kevin offers him. Jean makes a small noise low in his throat - or maybe Jeremy just imagines that, because when he looks, Jean still looks like he’s concentrating deeply, the neck of his guitar held up close to his ear as he listens to each string in turn. “So, you’re fronting Foxholes - you did say to me once they needed a male singer to compliment Allison,” Jeremy continues conversationally.
Still perched on the amp nearest to Jean, Allison rolls her eyes, which suggests she doesn’t feel like she needs complimenting at all - at least not like that - but then she and Kevin exchange begrudgingly accepting looks that tell Jeremy they’ve already had this argument - multiple times, by the look of it - and come to the decision to put Kevin into the mix. And if Jeremy remembers their performances supporting The Kings’ Men correctly, then it’s the right move. Like Fleetwood Mac, having both a male and female on lead vocals will really round out the blues-driven, southern gothic rock style that Foxholes have going on.
Allison, clearly not getting enough attention from Jean to make hanging around Kevin worth her while, swings herself down from the amp she’s sitting on with a flourish. “I’m going to start getting ready.”
“It’s still like two-and-a-half hours til we go on?” Kevin says, incredulously.
“One of us has to look good, Day, and we both know it’s not you,” she says airily, disappearing into the wings with a flounce.
Jeremy is doing a good job of pretending to be busy checking the cables for his guitar and pulling out the ones he needs for soundcheck, but his chin jerks up involuntarily when Kevin says to Jean, low and quiet, “How are you doing?”
Jean answers by playing the riff to Lonely Hearts, louder and with more anger than exists in the original chords - it’s a song about finding someone who seems to know your soul, only to lose them after only ever getting a taste. “Are we soundchecking, or what?” he asks, across the stage and indiscriminately to the rest of Odysseys, pointedly ignoring Kevin’s question. The wah still hangs in the air, trembling and then fading. The lilt of his accent is clipped, and he’s all clammed up and cold again - the little conspiratorial gleam in his eye from earlier gone, that muscle that pulses over the angle of his jaw when he’s biting something back flickering now. He turns blazing grey eyes on Jeremy, who nods and lifts Sunburst out of its case.
As Jeremy moves across the stage to his microphone, he hears rustling behind him, and as he looks back over his shoulder, Jean is shaking Kevin’s hand off his arm. Jeremy thinks he hears a snatch of Kevin murmuring something like, “Jean, please,” but then he switches to French and it’s too low and quick for Jeremy to make out. That ugly feeling that’s a little too near to jealousy for Jeremy’s liking flares along his spine, and he tells himself he’s being ridiculous. The whole exchange wasn’t even anything to be jealous of anyway - it was nothing, he tells himself. It’s just that… in moments like these, he can feel the history between Jean and Kevin, and the mystery of it makes him dizzy. Jean moves away from Kevin, towards his mic, and he shoots Jeremy a look that says well, are we getting on with it or what?
After soundcheck, time passes in a blur. Jeremy hangs out in the dressing room with Jean, Cat, and Laila, having a few drinks all together to help soothe the girls’ night one jitters. Jean gives them the same advice he once gave Jeremy - find the routine that works for relaxation pre-show and then pretend the audience aren’t really humans with their own thoughts and feelings - but otherwise he is pensive and quiet, chain-smoking and staring through space, lost in thought. Jeremy wants more than anything to know what’s on his mind, but he doesn’t dare ask. The chain-smoking is Jean’s tell - though Jeremy isn’t sure anyone else knows it’s a tell but him - and there could be any number of causes; Kevin’s presence, Jeremy’s presence, the looming spectre of Riko (not expected tonight thank God, but meeting them in a few days in Dallas). It used to be the two of them against the world on the Nevermore Tour, and though Jeremy would never ever complain about having Laila and Cat in his band and on this tour, there’s an aching in his chest that misses those times.
Laila brings Jean a cup of peppermint tea, and he shoots her a tiny, but grateful smile that flickers in and out of life like a faulty bulb, and Jeremy curses himself for not thinking of that. It’s not that he wants to ingratiate himself, like a suck-up or anything, it’s just that…
Well, he just still hates this distance he can feel between the two of them.
Because it feels hard to breath quite suddenly, Jeremy gets up and heads out of the dressing room, following the red arrows taped to the ground that point the way to the stage, until he’s in the rigging sidestage. He hoists himself up onto a spare amp, and then pulls a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lights it. Foxholes are on stage; Allison in a diaphanous, sparkling shawl over her crop-top and mini-skirt, in sky-high platforms, and Kevin in maroon flares, boots and nothing else. He’s a showy leading man, just like he’d been a showy lead guitar, with lots of undulating back and forth from his mic, taking it out of its stand, replacing it, and sidling up to Allison and sharing her mic. He’s got a good voice though, Jeremy will give him that, and he sounds really good with Allison.
Jeremy smokes pensively and eyes the rest of Foxholes. Andrew Minyard’s facial expression doesn’t change from vague disinterest, even though he drums like his life depends on it. His arms are blurs of black, those signature armbands Jeremy remembers from last year still in place. Neil Josten, the lead guitar, often turns to play towards the drums, his icy blue eyes sliding over the drum kit before he turns back to the crowd. The bassist, and Andrew’s twin on rhythm - both of their names escape Jeremy at this point, there’s been too many new names to learn today - are not as flashy as Kevin or Neil, but they’re both good musicians from what Jeremy’s seeing. The keyboardist, Renee, is super cool, as keyboardists often are, in a sleeveless denim boiler suit and her platinum, rainbow-tipped hair swinging back and forth as she nods with the beat.
Jeremy takes a drag, and sighs on his exhale, smoke streaming from his mouth and nose.
“I like them,” comes a gentle voice at his shoulder, and Laila puts her hand on his shoulder, brushing away some caramel curls.
“They definitely sound tighter, and more put together than last year,” Jeremy says, keeping his eyes on the stage. “Kevin has been good for them.”
Laila hmms thoughtfully. “Well, of course. He’s been in the business a long time.”
“True.”
There’s a pause, and then; “Are you okay, Jez?” Laila asks, dropping her voice a little lower. She rubs his shoulder gently, and he leans into the touch, hungry for the comfort.
“Yep,” he says.
Laila clicks her tongue like she knows he’s lying, and leans her temple against his. For a couple of minutes, they just stay like that, watching Foxholes play, until Jeremy hears a little inhale near his ear that means she’s gearing up to say something. “Jez,” Laila says, cautiously, and his heart seizes - Laila only speaks carefully when she’s worried about how the message will land on someone who’s particularly fragile.
“Lai, I-”
“No, honey, let me get this said,” she says, coming around to stand in front of him and cupping his face with her hands. She breathes in deeply again, fortifying herself. “When you were on tour with The Kings’ Men, I told you to be careful. I think that was bad advice.”
Jeremy blinks at her, taking a beat longer than he should to process that statement. “Sorry?”
Laila’s big, hazel-green eyes are intent and sincere. “I think that it was bad advice, and I only gave it because I never wanted to see you hurt again like you were with-” Jeremy cuts that sentence off with just a look, and Laila changes tack. “He makes you happy, and I think you should give things a chance to go back to how they were on this tour. I see you trying to give him space, and I don’t think either of you actually want-”
“Lai,” Jeremy sighs again. “He’s still angry at me over Evermore, and it’s so hard to be around him.”
“Why?”
The ache in Jeremy’s bones feels unbearable. “Because it’s not just a crush.” Something sparks up in Laila’s face, but he plows on before she can interrupt and he loses his courage. “I have feelings for him, and I wish I didn’t, you know? I wish I didn’t, because then I could just be his friend, and have him as my friend, and it wouldn’t hurt like it does when he looks at me like I disappointed him more than anyone else.”
Laila’s gaze is still intent, studying Jeremy carefully, and he knows by her little inhale that the moment he looks away that she’s starting to put two and two together. But then Cat’s laughter is tinkling towards them, and onstage Foxholes are announcing their last song, and then Cat and Jean are walking up behind them. Jeremy keeps his eyes straight ahead, on the stage, until Jean’s unexpected laugh at whatever Cat has said drags his gaze against his will, and he is so beautiful that it catches in Jeremy’s throat as he looks. His straight, white teeth, that smile as he laughs, the way the corners of his eyes smile too. Gorgeous. And fuck, he’s in stage clothes already, and it’s his white satin poppy suit - chest bare under the jacket, the red embroidered flowers with green stems climbing up the right leg of his pants and the right breast of his jacket. His gold necklace gleams in the hollow of his throat.
Jeremy looks away, his throat so dry it’s like he’s never had a drop of water in his life, and he leaps up, making his excuses about needing to change. He feels eyes on him, and he’s not sure if it’s the girls, or Jean, but he doesn’t dare let himself check. When he comes back, the sidestage is a mess of people - Foxholes milling about as they come off stage, Tetsuji, Rhemann and the Foxholes manager, Wymack, are grouped together and deep in discussion, and Jean, Cat and Laila standing near the edge of the crush, rolling their shoulders and loosening up - while Sergio, Marty, Derek and Derrick are running over the stage and quickly setting up for Odysseys. Laila and Cat turn to start excitedly debriefing with Renee and Allison, and Jeremy shoulders his way through all the people in the wings.
“It was not bad. Running Blind is good work,” Jean is saying to Kevin, his tone indifferent, when Jeremy reaches him. His gaze slides straight past Kevin and onto Jeremy, lingering on his bare chest beneath a fringed suede vest, on his tan corduroy pants, on the necklace of little shells he always wears. For his part, Jeremy doesn’t miss the way Kevin tries to shrug the compliment off, but can’t stop the little curl of pride at the corners of his lips. Something in Jeremy’s stomach feels fluttery and uneasy - he’s not sure what he expected with Foxholes supporting, but Kevin seeking some kind of approval from Jean wasn’t it.
As the roadies start to come off stage, Jean is still looking at Jeremy, so he raises a questioning brow. A slow little smirk comes to Jean’s mouth, and Jeremy’s heart takes off at a gallop as he leans in towards Jeremy’s ear, murmuring, “You look good, rockstar.”
Cat lets out a squeal of excitement as she passes them, and Laila gives them both a squeeze on the shoulder as she heads out onto stage too, lifting the strap of her Thunderbird bass over her head and settling it on her shoulder as she goes. The El Paso crowd is excitable, and chanting “Odysseys! Odysseys! Od-y-sseyssss!” and the lighting techs are strobing the spotlights from wherever their high-up perch is in this venue. By now, Jeremy has completely forgotten about the existence of Kevin Day and the rest of Foxholes, and is solely focused on his band, his stage, his performance. Jean takes his Les Paul from Marty by the neck, passes his gaze over Jeremy’s face once more, and saunters out onto stage. The cheering of the audience becomes a deafening roar at the sight of him, and he gives them a jaunty little salute as he puts his shoulder strap on. He puts the cigarette tucked behind his ear between his lips, and Jeremy inhales slowly through his nose, timing his breaths, as Marty rushes back onto the stage momentarily to light the stick for Jean.
“Let’s go Jeremy, good show!” Rhemann says, gently pushing him forward. Tetsuji just nods curtly.
Jeremy half-jogs onto stage, and is gratified that the crowd who’d just gone berserk for Jean also cheer wildly for him. He shoots them a dazzling smile, though with the stage lights, he can’t really make out facial details, other than for those closest to the stage. Taking the mic from its stand, he says to them, “Good evening, El Paso! It’s so great to be here, and man, are you all so beautiful!” Jeremy squats down at the edge of the stage to momentarily clasp the hand of a girl who is reaching up towards him, and she shrieks with delight while the rest of the audience cheers louder. He hears Cat’s little giggle from behind him as he straightens and reholsters his mic. “This is our first night on this tour - Worlds Apart, we call it - so let me introduce you to Odysseys.”
Jeremy takes a deep breath, the adrenaline of it all pumping through him, setting his skin alight. This is his first night on his tour, with his band, in support of his music, and his album - and that’s fucking incredible. He grins again, and looks to his left; Jean, standing with his hip cocked and his beautiful hands ready on his strings, cigarette hanging between his lips, looks to his right and meets Jeremy’s eye. He smirks, just a little, and a plume of smoke escapes the corner of his mouth.
Jeremy brings his mouth back towards his mic and says, “On drums back there, you’ve got Cat Alavarez. On bass, that’s our girl, Laila Dermott.”
The crowd cheers, and then when Jean plays the first little bit of the riff to Layla just as Jeremy finishes speaking, they scream even more raucously, and he and the girls laugh on stage, and Jeremy can hear more laughter in the wings on the side of the stage.
“And I don’t even need to introduce Jean Moreau, El Paso, but I will - he’s our lead guitar of course!” Jeremy points at him, and without any further preamble, as though he’s taking his cues directly from Jeremy’s mind, Jean kicks into Out On My Own - a big riffed, heavy drumming song about premature independence and raising yourself without help - and Jeremy can’t help himself from throwing out a “yeah!” that the crowd echoes back to him, hands in the air and feet stomping. As the instrumental build up continues, Jeremy looks at all of them - Cat drumming frenetically, her thick, dark hair and her signature purple drumsticks flying, Laila with her left foot tapping to the bass and the biggest smile on her face, and Jean with his head thrown back, making the Les Paul wail in the most stunning fashion - and all of the worries and the tension he’s been carrying since the news of Crom’s overdose feels like it just melts away. He’s not going to fuck this up - he was made for the stage, Jean had once taken him by the chin and told him that, and he’s starting to believe it now. And Jean - Jeremy looks at him once more, and thinks that yeah, he’s a fucking good bassist, and he’s beautiful on the keys, but he was made for lead guitar. Every undulation of his hips, every kick of his foot, every string he plucks is a symphony of intention, taking Jeremy’s music and making it soar.
Being back on stage with him is more than Jeremy could have ever realistically dreamed would happen after ‘75, and so he sings with a freedom he hasn’t felt in a while, because this is good. On stage, they can be how they were perhaps, and if Jean is still angry with him offstage, then so be it. At least Jeremy gets him back for a few hours a night, out on this stage where their musical connection transcends everything else.
He can be grateful for that, at least.
After the show is a blur of hugs, congratulations on a night one very fucking well done, the hissing of beers being cracked open, and the clinking of glass on glass as toast after toast is made. Everyone ends up back at the hotel, milling around the circular Art Deco bar, and Jeremy definitely spots a bottle of Cuervo being passed around that he intends to avoid - tequila is not his friend, and in fact the smell reminds him violently of the time he truly thought he was going to die of a hangover. His limbs feel weak now that the adrenaline of the first ever Odysseys tour show is starting to ebb away, and his upper back kind of hurts - but it’s because people keep slapping him there and congratulating him, so he can’t really bring himself to be too upset by it.
With a whisky and dry in hand, the ice chinking merrily in the glass, Jeremy makes his way over to a cluster of lounges where his band is sitting. The wooden legs and arms of the chairs are finished in a gold flake, the cushions a deep red, and he sinks down onto the spare place on the two-seater next to Cat. There’s a glass coffee table in the middle, covered with empty highballs and bottles, which tells him they got stuck in while he was getting waylaid by everyone who wants a chat on his way over. Cat shoots him a grin, and he relaxes against the backrest, letting himself slump comfortably and resting his drink on his belly as he listens in to Jean and Laila’s conversation, trying to pick up the thread of it.
“If you don’t like the effect pedals on your sound, do away with them and just play around with where your mic is set up for a really crisp, dry tone,” Jean is saying to Laila, and he pauses to take a drag on his cigarette. “I’ll show you the set up I would do, if you want?”
Laila lights up, saying, “Of course, that’d be amazing! What about amps?”
Jean is nodding and starts to explain the impact on bass tone that Odysseys’ current amplifier selection would have to a rapt Laila and Cat, and Jeremy can feel the smile that’s come to his own face, but can’t wipe it away. As he speaks, Jean leans forward, stretching his long arm out to offer Jeremy his cigarette without taking his eyes off Laila. Their fingertips brush as Jeremy sits up and takes it, and that tiny, warm flame of hope that things might be okay eventually pulses in his chest, tucked in somewhere behind his heart. He may have absolutely no love for Grayson Johnson, but he’s never forgotten him saying that Jean doesn’t ever share his cigarettes with anyone else, not even Kevin.
And speak of the devil - Kevin appears from the crowd and perches himself on the arm of Jean’s chair, handing him a fresh beer. Jean looks up at him and blinks in surprise, but he accepts it without a word. As he has since they all arrived on tour, Jeremy once more gets the sense that Kevin is hovering, though he can’t quite figure out why. Back on the Nevermore Tour, he’d been defiant, almost antagonistic, and Jean had once told Jeremy that Kevin was always running some sort of agenda of his own, but he kinda seems like an athlete with no playbook right now - a bit adrift.
“First night done, how does everyone feel?” he asks them all.
Jean, who had lifted his bottle up to the light and had been inspecting the bottom of it, now takes a sip, and Cat says, “God, I was so nervous to start! But these two-” she pats her hand on Jeremy’s knee, and uses the neck of her beer to point at Jean, “-are old hands by now, so it’s easy to pretend to be composed while they lead from the front.”
“Oh for sure,” Kevin agrees benignly, “and a pretty perfect vocal performance helps.” Jeremy, who’d been watching Jean’s mouth against the opening of his beer bottle, realises Kevin means him and feels heat rise in his cheeks. He looks over at Kevin, but spots one of Jean’s dark eyebrows rising in his peripheral vision. “It’s quite the adjustment from lead guitar to lead vocals,” Kevin concludes.
“I’m not perfect,” Jeremy says, embarrassed, studiously avoiding Jean’s eye.
“But you’re close enough for it to count,” Kevin says, and God, Jeremy thinks, he’s a stubborn one. “That’s why you’ve got an album that’s charting so well.”
“I got lucky,” Jeremy persists. He did. He knows he did. Jean Moreau will be an immortal of rock ‘n’ roll, and Jeremy’s entire career spawned from the moment Jean walked into an Evermore office and decided he wanted Jeremy, or no one. And yes, now it’s Jeremy’s music out there on an album, and no amount of Jean being famous, or insanely talented can make Jeremy succeed - though having him on tour certainly helps, and Jeremy always feels… creatively inspired when he’s around - but he still will never forget to pay tribute to where he’s come from and who helped him get here. And maybe he’s spent too much time with Jean Moreau, but he’s a little suspicious of being buttered up like this.
“He’s our modest man,” Cat says, patting him on the knee once more and then standing up, shaking her clearly empty beer bottle. “I’m out - Laila, drink?”
Laila nods and stands too, and Jeremy watches Cat surreptitiously touch her fingertips to Laila’s back, beneath her long curls of hair as they wind through the crowd. At home, the girls are physically affectionate a lot, and not for the first time, Jeremy thinks it must be hard for them to pretend to be just friends out in public like this - and it must be exhausting to have had to do it for so many years too. At least they get to room together, so they get that bit of privacy on hotel nights like this.
Jeremy cuts his gaze back to Jean and Kevin, and is about to ask Kevin if he’s back playing any guitar yet with his hand, when the sounds of commotion and yelling reach them from the direction of the bar. Jean is on his feet in an instant, and Jeremy is close behind, not waiting to see if Kevin follows. Someone yells, “Ow, my fucking arm, dude!” and it kind of sounds like Marty. Broad-shouldered, tall, and strong, Jean easily pushes his way through the crowd that’s forming around the fight, and Jeremy leans around him to see what’s happening. Foxholes’ weird little drummer - and Jeremy can tell it’s Andrew and not the twin by the armbands - has one hand on the junction between Marty’s neck and shoulder and the other is twisting Marty’s other arm harshly behind his back.
“Hey, woah, what’s going on?” Jeremy shouts over the noise, while Jean strides over to the two and prises Andrew off Marty, bodily him pushing backwards and away from the roadie and into Neil, who has appeared on the edge of the crowd.
“Calm the fuck down,” Jean threatens, raising a hand at Andrew that clearly says don’t even fucking think about it.
Marty straightens, rubbing at his shoulder, his eyes a bit wide and fearful. “I just touched him on the shoulder to try and get past him to the bar,” he says, still breathless.
Jeremy wants to be generous of spirit, and kind and sympathetic to the fact that there’s probably a very serious reason why Minyard would react to an innocent touch like that, but he doesn’t know him and he does know and love Marty. And after Riko last year, Jeremy’s not really willing to put up with violence on his tour and is not afraid to have people kicked off and sent home. “I don’t want to see anything like this again,” he says, not just to Minyard, but to everyone gathered around watching. “No fighting, end of story.”
Andrew looks at him with lidded hazel eyes and a blank expression. Rhemann and Wymack, who have clearly been at the bar having a celebratory night one scotch or two, make their way through the crowd now and start telling everyone to disperse and get on with their night. Neil has moved around to stand in front of Andrew, and is murmuring something in a low voice. Jeremy glances up at Jean; he’s tense-jawed, a muscle working at the angle of it, and his eyes are glacial as he watches Josten guide Minyard away.
Jean obviously feels him looking, because he eyes Jeremy in return, and as something in his expression softens, so too does the tension in Jeremy’s gut. Jean rubs two fingertips over his lush bottom lip, looking tired, and after a moment of contemplation, he says, “Wanna ditch the drama? Go drop some acid and listen to Tangerine?” He pulls an audio cassette out of his pocket and waves it.
Jeremy considers this for about half a second. “Absolutely.”
mirandathepanda on Chapter 1 Sat 30 Aug 2025 11:40AM UTC
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