Chapter Text
Jeremy Knox was good with his life–no, he really was. Ending out senior year happier and healthier than ever. Whole. Working on himself. He’s excited for his last year at USC. Maybe he’ll bleach his hair next year, instead of just the highlights. It’ll be good to shake things up. Cat is dozing on the couch to his right, Laila stroking her hair idly. The season-ending party’s done, and they’d just about picked everything up, but Jeremy doesn’t feel like leaving just yet.
It was a good season, he knew. Even if they’d lost. Losing to the Foxes this year had felt much better than losing to the Ravens the year prior, at least. When he’d done his rounds after the game, his team had felt disappointed, sure, and also completely winded, but there was a sense of exhilaration with the new challenge. It did not hurt that they were decidedly less concussed than they would’ve been after a Raven game.
His days are good. His weeks, his months, largely content. There are the nights, though. Nights where he’s gone to therapy and socialized and danced and eaten and exercised and showered, slipped out the door into a stranger’s bed and back into the apartment, showered again. Nights where he’s done everything he could do, and still the want comes in. In the warm light of the apartment he wishes he could call home, Jeremy tries not to dwell on the want. There are a great deal many things he needs to remember to be grateful for. There are many more things he has the power to change, control, improve, things he has made better for himself.
There are wants he cannot change, though. His family. The cold, white halls of that house, spotless and tastefully decorated. The chair in the dining room that will always remain empty. What happens to him after next year. His inability to master LSAT logic puzzles or meet his brother’s eyes for longer than a moment. The itch under his skin on the worst nights that tells him only one thing can fix this feeling.
Jeremy eyes the soulmarked words on Cat’s wrist where it’s flopped over the edge of the couch. Looks back at the word on his leg. This, too, is a want. Not a need, he reminds himself. We have the lives we choose to make, we are complete on our own, it doesn’t mean perfect and might not mean happy. But still, a traitorous part of him wants it. A soulmate. Head-over-heels where-have-you-been-all-my life love. A place in someone’s heart, in their life, on their body. He had thought he wouldn’t have one for the longest time, not until the word showed up on his leg at sixteen. The very first thing that someone out there in the world would say to him. And then- and then.
Laila squeezes his hand, interrupting that particular thought spiral. They’d told him more than once he gets a look in his eyes when he daydreams about this sort of thing. You did good tonight, Laila mouths, smiling warmly. She doesn’t want to wake Cat, after all. Captain.
The title reminds him of his final task of the night, after all the dishes are washed and toasts celebrated and guests packed off into their warm soft own beds. The cell number that Kevin Day had slipped him before the game, the one that’s been burning a hole in his pocket for hours. Another thing to shake his final season up. Good change, hopefully.
“Hey, Laila,” he starts, soft. Cat stirs anyway, looks up too. “I need your help with something.”
“Sure,” she says. She gives Cat a kiss on the head, sits up straighter. There’s lipstick marks all over her face, staining the collar of her oversized and worn VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS sleep shirt. There is almost none left where it started on her girlfriend’s mouth.
Jeremy scrolls to the only unused number in his contact list and hits dial. The phone rings four times before Jean picks up. It’s silent for a moment, nothing except white-noise static, until-
“Yes?” Jean Moreau’s voice is hoarse, tinny through the phone, and his accent shortens the reply by a half-syllable, but it doesn’t matter. Because he is an idiot, Jeremy’s heart swoops into his stomach. Again. Like every other time he hears the word. He takes an embarrassingly long moment to collect himself, breathing out through his nose and ignoring the phantom tingling on the inside of his left thigh. It’s not happening.
“Jean Moreau?” His voice cracks a little bit, and he winces. Wait, shit, he should probably actually introduce himself. “Jeremy Knox,” he says, eloquently following it up with nothing else.
There’s something on the other line for just a second, a half-pain, half-static hiss before the call goes dead.
Jeremy slumps back into the couch cushions and stares at the ceiling. He knows better by now, knows it’s not it after thousands of missed connections and dashed hopes. There are still a few of the glowy stars left on the ceiling from the night that Laila and Cat had moved in here.
“Oh, Jer,” Laila says, not unkindly. “Did he say it?”
“Yeah, and then he hung up.” He does not make eye contact with Laila, doesn’t want to see her eyes get soft when she talks about this like she always does. He’d counted the stars, last year, on a night fathoms more difficult to get through. Sixteen perfect pairs and one left alone. A corny metaphor that should not have the power to resonate with him emotionally. He sits up, tries to brush the feeling off. “Was I weird? I sounded weird.”
Cat leans over and claps a hand on his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the where's your helmet? written in Laila’s careful cursive looping around her wrist. “You weren’t weird. You just had that look-”
Jeremy wilts. Laila sits up, pointer finger raised like she’s about to interject, and Cat throws her hands up defensively. “It’s a good look! I think it’s like, super romantic to hear it everywhere and hold out anyways. Very dreamy.”
It’s pathetic, he thinks. Having the most generic soulmark in the world and still feeling the heart-skidding world-stopping golden moment of hope every goddamn time. There were baristas and group project partners and many, many hookups who had seen the curling script on his inner thigh and repeated yes? with a crooked smile like it was funny. Jeremy had melted each and every time. He’d freeze, reply with something clever and witty and unique a half-beat too late. They never reacted in kind, no recognition in their eyes beyond a get-on-with-it gleam from some of the hookups. His heart would sink, and that would be it. Somehow, it hurt just as bad every time.
“Hey, it’ll happen sometime,” Cat says, squeezing his shoulder. “I’m sorry for teasing, Jer. You’ve just got a lot of love to give to the world in the meantime.”
“I was being weird,” he croaks. His hair is dry when he runs his hand through it. “That’s why he hung up.”
Laila scoots closer to him on the couch, puts her hand on top of Cat’s. “You’re making a cross-country cold call on a cell phone,” she reminds him. Thank you, voice of reason. “It probably fell through, or he was surprised. Try again.”
He wrinkles his nose. Cat reaches out and taps him on it. “Fix your face, baby.”
He dials the number again. Three rings later, Jean picks up. “Yes?” he repeats, low, and Jeremy grips the phone so hard to avoid dropping it that he hears a little bit of a crunch. “Sorry about that earlier, I must have hit the wrong button.” His voice doesn’t even crack this time, and Laila gives him a thumbs-up. “It’s Jeremy Knox, from USC? Kevin gave me your number after the game. Do you have a minute to talk?”
The silence on the other end is deafening. Jeremy takes the phone off of his ear and checks- still connected.
“Wait, why are you calling Jean Moreau?” Cat stage-whispers. Jeremy and Laila hold a finger to their lips in unison.
On the phone, Jean takes a deep—does it sound ragged?—breath and says: “I need a few minutes.”
“Yeah! Sure thing!” Jeremy chirps, winces. Too peppy. “I’m free all night, so go ahead and call back whenever.” Jean hangs up again. Not one for words, or too hurt to talk.
Jeremy takes a second to savor his last second of peace as the sole owner of this piece of information. “So, we’re signing him next year.” Sure enough, the girls’ jaws both drop in unison.
Cat wraps her head around it first. “Because of the-”
“No! Jesus, Cat. He’s not my soulmate, and I wouldn’t sign him just because of that even if he was. The Ravens are…he trails off. Well, he can’t play for them anymore. Kevin says they put him in a bad way, he’s too injured to finish the season.”
Laila’s surprise has hardened into wariness. “He’s a great player, don’t get me wrong, but him here? He’s literally the reason we call the Raven backline the Concussion Corner.”
Cat tilts her head to either side, considering. Jeremy knows she’s already made up her mind to agree with Laila, though. “You really think he can play clean? With everything going on with the Ravens?”
Jeremy nods. If he can’t convince them, the rest of the team will be an impossible sell. And Jeremy Knox is a bit short on political capital as captain after tonight’s failed gambit. “He’s a big get. It could help us. And Kevin doesn’t ask for favors, like, ever. So I’m inclined to extend him the benefit of the doubt, if nothing else.”
Laila raises an eyebrow. “Oh, well, if Kevin Day asked you to do it, then we all fold.”
Cat smirks. Oh, no. “Does he know if he asked the speed at which you’d-”
“You said you weren’t gonna use that against me!” Jeremy makes a solemn note to never be honest about his celebrity crushes with either of them at team parties. For a week. Maybe more.
Laila rolls her eyes. “Exy’s most controversial fuck-marry-kill pick aside, do you seriously think this will work? Logistically, athletically, culturally. Everyone knows what the Ravens are like.”
Jeremy is beginning to think everyone doesn’t fully know what they’re like, given the way Kevin’s been talking about the severity of Jean’s condition. “I know that I really want it to work. I–yes. I can make it happen. I need you both to back me up on this, with the team. And I think we are all going to have to look out for him. In whatever sense of the phrase that ends up being.”
“Alright,” Laila nods, and that’s it. “I trust you.”
Cat salutes. “O captain, my captain. What do you need from us?”
There’s the basic logistics to settle–the housing, registration, paperwork, majors, announcing this to the team, the press. There’s also the feelings part of it. How to make Jean feel welcome? How to make sure he can adjust? Is he hurt? Can he recover? Jeremy runs a thumb over the soulmark on his leg, considering, then stands up and strides over to the whiteboard Cat and Laila have against the living room wall.
“Right,” he says, voice pitching into Captain Mode. “Where do we start?”
“What do French people like?” Upon further reflection, Jeremy thinks Cat should probably sleep some more before she gets in on planning.
“Colonizing my people,” Laila says solemnly. “Also, Cigarettes? Baguettes. Croissants. Pronouncing the word croissant. Red wine. Bisexuality. Protesting. Striped shirts.”
“Well, one of those has to be right.”
“Okay, let’s start with figuring out housing logistics. Tomorrow.” The want in his lungs subsides just a little bit in the face of the task ahead of them, fed. Sharing a place in someone’s life is a beautiful dream, but sharing a place on his team is something that’s got to happen in the next few weeks. This, he can do.
Jean Moreau never believed in soulmates. Never looked over the open horizon and yearned for his one true love like a princess in a tower in some children’s story. The words on the body, those were harder to deny the existence of, but the meaning behind them was certainly empty. He knows they are not real because the Moriyamas already own his life, his body, his future. They would stake a claim on his soul, if they could. The fact that they could not made it clear soulmates were simply not a part of material reality in any way that mattered.
His mother had once had a mark, good morning (صباح الخير ) in curling Arabic that stretched from the top of her wrist down to her longest finger. She wore gloves, at home or otherwise. If Hervé Moreau had a mark, it was neither seen nor discussed. The Nest was not so different from this. Ravens do not have soulmates. Your game was your soul, and your game belonged to the team. More of Jean still belonged to Riko Moriyama. Marks were to be covered at all times and never spoken of. There was hardly an open horizon to look out and yearn over, besides. It is hard to face the endless maze of black cinderblock walls and hope for anything.
In his early days there, once the idiot-hope that his soulmate might appear to save him from all of this had been beaten out of him, he prayed that he would remain unmarked like his father. If not unmarked, he prayed the mark would be easy to hide, easy to anonymize. And if none of those things could be true, he just prayed that it would not be Riko, nor any other Raven. Except except except, his stupid traitorous heart would supply, sauf– he rarely hated himself enough to finish that line of thinking.
Like every other part of Jean’s life, he gets neither the comfort of his hopes nor any control over the obliteration of them.
Jean does not know when the mark shows up for certain. What he knows is that during his freshman year in between the first horrible night and the next, the words JEAN MOREAU? JEREMY KNOX. show up on the back of his neck where only the others over him could see. Thirty minutes later, everyone knew.
It is difficult to think of any first words more damning than these. A full name that everyone recognized, the name of an opponent, a mockery for something that had happened when the only thing Jean could understand about the English-language Exy articles Kevin had shoved in his face was the pictures. Irrefutable proof that Jean was compromised, deviant, wrong. Worse still, physical evidence of a claim other than Riko’s on his body which well and truly belonged to the Moriyamas.
Jean survived the initial revelation, barely. The awful nights continued afterwards. Increased in both frequency and creativity. Jean covers up, is never seen in public without a neck guard or turtleneck compression shirt. Before Trojans games, they make sure he is rendered physically unable to speak. Years of it bring resignation, if not peace. Rock bottom is at least a floor to rest on. There is no new revelation, just the familiar burden of the old. They could rub it in his face and humiliate him in front of the team and cut, choke, bite, lacerate him all the more for it. They did. But they could not make him agonize over it in the privacy of his mind unless he let them. So he tried his best to put it out. He vowed not to dwell on it when they were not forcing him to. There was no use for fairy stories in a life such as his. Ravens do not have soulmates, and property must have still less.
But he did dwell, didn’t he? There were the lowest moments–the miserable haze of a fourth-fifth-sixth concussion, an hour curled up on a shower floor, a set of teeth biting into his shoulder, hands that wrapped around his neck– he took comfort in sensible things, then. The knowledge that there was no getting worse, no lower, just the pain of the moment and then further than that, an end.
But Jean is nothing if not a liar and a fool. There were moments lower than those. The silence, after. The crack of light between the doors of the nest as they swung shut. The blurry period between sleep and waking where there is no difference between opening and closing his eyes, where he must realize that an end has not come because there is still more to endure. Those are the moments where Jean cannot keep the hinges of his ribs shut to stop fickle hope from fluttering out. Jean thinks about what it might mean to have a soulmate who Kevin says is kind and fair, someone he knows is beautiful and quick to smile. He dwells on hands that would not hurt like he imagines a mouthful of sugar, a life in the sun. The moments after the hoping are the worst of all. Those moments he will kill himself over before the Moriyamas can kill him, and this is not allowed because his life is theirs. So Jean does not dwell on his soulmate.
This, too, is ripped away from him. In the Foxes Nurse’s spare bedroom, not cleared to do anything except stare at the ceiling and convalesce, there is not much else for Jean to do but dwell, try not to, and dwell again. Jeremy calls, Jeremy says the words on Jean’s neck like a kick to the heart that stops it for good. Jean endures. He picks up when he is called back. Polite. He will not dwell on it. The solitary blessing, Jean thinks, is that Jeremy does not seem to know or recognize him back. Some slack in the leash, a break when no others have seemed to come.
This is, as is typical, Jean’s only break. The Foxes shaved the back of his neck, to treat his injuries, so the secret he has kept covered for years and been beaten and broken over countless times is simply known to every member of the least reliable and most volatile Class I Exy Team in the country. Jean can muster the hurt to feel betrayed, ashamed, enraged. He cannot bring himself to be surprised by this turn.
For these weeks, there is no certainty, not even the stability of denial, of impossibility. Riko is dead. Jean is out of the Nest and off to California, for a life in the sun. Jean is still property. He is injured beyond belief, he can still play, he is not cleared but must recover immediately and earn a professional Exy contract or someone will shoot him in the back of the head. The ties on his body and soul are different, and now the difference must matter. Perhaps Kevin would be willing to swing a racquet at his throat to relieve him of the burden of speech, for old time’s sake.
There’s not even dwelling alone, here in South Carolina. Here, Jean is forced to reflect on his life with a rotating cast of misfits and headache-makers. It is supposed to be his last day in Palmetto, and so naturally, he must deal with all of them one after the other.
There is Abigail “call me Abby” the nurse, who hovers with her questions and her overprescription of pain relievers, more than Jean deserves. Gentle hands take more energy to be around, energy Jean lacks today. You always have to be on guard for when they could turn. Hands that hurt can be trusted to continue to hurt you. Easy. When she thinks Jean isn’t looking, she slips a bottle of Advil in his duffel. He makes a note to dispose of it later.
There is David Wymack, who packs his bag and arranges all of Jean’s papers in a folder, explains the boarding pass and security and how to get on a plane. He is overfamiliar. In this way, he is very similar to his son. That and the shape of his nose. He wants to clap Jean on the shoulder at the end, as Jean has seen him do with his Foxes, but clearly thinks better of it, curling his fingers in and shaking his fist in the air the once. “Good luck, kid. I’ll be around in the morning to drive you over.”
There is not even a moment of peace after that before there is insufferable Neil, his misplaced forever partner who insists on misplacing himself further each and every day. He fidgets for two minutes in silence in the chair across from Jean’s bed, bouncing his legs and drumming his fingers, looking this way and that. Jean cannot see his roots in the sunlight–the dye choice was correct, then.
Jean levels a cool glare at him. “Oh, now you cannot think of anything clever to say?” He would not like to hear it if Neil could think of something, but holding it in is clearly tearing the boy to bits.
Neil opens his mouth. What comes out is: “I think their striker sub, Desmukh, she should be using a heavy. The extra power would help the trajectory of her pitches.”
Jean wishes the last hit to his ribs had gone to his skull so that he might have not had to remember this stupid conversation. “God above, this is why I cannot stand you. This is your advice?”
“I’m sure you can keep yourself alive. You’ve always been better at surviving than me, Jean.”
“This is not hard,” Jean rolls his eyes. “You are determined to get yourself killed.” Every day in the Nest with Neil took another three off Jean’s life. Him and his clever mouth and spark of anger that inevitably lit the way to trouble.
Neil shrugs. ”I think I’m better at actually living, though. How’s that?”
This is some kind of infernal Neil-joke that he ends up actually meaning just to worsen Jean’s headache. Their lives are bought and paid for, there is nothing more than survival, more than-
“I see what you’re thinking,” and Neil is pointing at him now. In a kinder world, Jean would have the range of movement to bite his damned finger off. “We have to pay for our lives, okay? It’s a leash, I know it is. But it’s not a cage. I made that deal. Even if I made it for you, I don’t regret doing that.” This much is clearly obvious, but Neil continues. “But you have a life to go do something with. Why don’t you give that a try? Let the light in. Open your heart.” He rests a foot up onto his chair, rubs at his achilles where Jean knows his soulmark is. “Live.”
“I am going to fucking kill you.”
“That’s the spirit.” Neil gets up from his chair, bouncing twice on the balls of his feet. “You are going to choose to kill me someday, and I am going to choose to go for a run and feel the free wind and bright sun on my skin before kissing my soulmate with tongue. Living.”
Jean sighs. “Make sure you have arranged for someone else to say something kind at your imminent funeral. I will not.”
“Seriously, though. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be there. I’ll probably be there when you don’t need me.”
“Goodbye, Neil.”
“Remember,” he says, tapping his temple three times. He claims to have liberated Jean, then condemns him to continue to suffer the insufferable time over time in the past three minutes. “Live a little. And try not to break Kevin too terribly badly when he swings by.”
…
Jean is staring at the ceiling and dwelling on how little he wants Kevin to come by when there is yet another knock at the door.
It is the dealers, Danielle Wilds the captain and Allison Reynolds the wreck. He supposes it is unkind and hypocritical to bestow this title on someone else in his current state. “Why are you here?”
Allison eyes him up and down, not lingering on his injuries. “Your hair looks kinda busted, Frenchie. I can fix it.”
If she goes near his neck, he thinks he might kill her, or in his diminished state, take out an eye. He tells her as much, and she just raises an eyebrow at him. “So then I won’t do that,” she says like she’s talking to a child.
He shrugs. What is one more indignity in this godforsaken house. “Fine.”
It ends up being–not alright, but sufferable. Reynolds works quickly. Dan holds up a hand mirror so Jean can always see where Allison’s hands are, and they do not take much off. “Want to see?”
“No.” Jean has seen enough of himself.
“Weirdo.” Allison pauses, like she is expecting him to thank her. When he doesn’t, she leans in. “I heard Coach talking in the hall about whether it would be better for you to buzz you bald before you left,” she tells him. “So that it would grow back even. They did that to me in rehab, once. I didn’t like it.”
“I would not have liked this, either.” He is finished, but she’s still looking at him expectantly. “Fine. Thank you for that.”
Allison nods, putting her scissors back in her pink sparkly bag. “Your hair is curlier than you think it is. Get some product.” He has no idea what product is or which one she is referring to. His hair is certainly not curly, just unruly if left long. She taps Dan twice on the shoulder and struts out of the room.
Wilds lingers a moment longer. “Jean,” the she begins. “No hard feelings, okay?” “Good luck.” Dan smiles, magnanimous. Somehow, Jean is sure she genuinely means this. “Also, LA is super dry, so I put some Aquaphor in your bag.”
Jean does not know what to make of this. So he won’t.
…
Jean hears Kevin walk up the stairs and wait at the top, tap-tapping his feet forwards, backwards, and again for fifteen minutes before deigning to walk through the door. The instant he makes eye contact with Jean, he shoots a hand out to clutch the doorframe like he is forcing himself not to bodily flee the room.
Jean says nothing to him. He is not sure what would come out of his mouth if he were to open it now. It takes Kevin thirty full seconds to creep over the chair and sit in it. Ridiculous. It isn’t going to bite. The second Kevin is seated, he braces his elbows on his knees and slumps forward.
Jean takes a deep breath in. Unlike what he has come to expect, Kevin does not smell like he is having an affair with the concept of cheap vodka. Jean assumes the thing that is making his hands shake is cowardice, then.
Kevin looks up, flicks his eyes to Jean’s before darting his gaze away again. “Jeremy Knox called.” Kevin at his most tentative is Kevin at his least tolerable. His voice is warbling, soft, hopeful. This has to go well, Jean can almost hear him think. “Called me, after he’d spoken to you, I mean. He…he wants to make this easier on you.”
In that instant, Jean is overcome with so much contempt it feels like it will pull him straight down into the earth. Kevin and his childish fixation on Jeremy Knox. Every day for years, it was nothing but The Trojans, they play fair. Jeremy is an excellent striker. Kevin’s first full sentence in carefully-taught French that could in any sense be described as fluent was about a pass that some Trojan senior made to Jeremy to clinch a completely irrelevant mid-season Oregon game.
Kevin, who cannot decide if he wants the man or wants to be him. Look at this article about the Trojans, Jean, it has good pictures. This is the way the game should be played, Jean. Kevin, who continued this even after he’d seen Jean’s mark. Perhaps in some attempt to instill hope, in actuality a brutal reminder of what Jean could not have. Twice over. Perhaps Kevin simply could not help himself.
Jean has learned, over the years, that it is best to run from the things that he wants the most. But he is honest enough with himself to know what those things are, to look them head-on before he must turn his back. Kevin has always run from even understanding what he truly wants, because he is the worst kind of coward. He fears himself.
This does not mean Kevin is not painfully easy to read. Kevin wants Jeremy, wants—Jean will not aggrieve this wound— some part of Jean, wants Jeremy to save Jean so Kevin can have saved Jean, wants them both to save him. Kevin wants principles, wants the courage to stand by them, wants to have not turned his back and let it all happen. Wants the goalie, wants Neil, but not as badly as whether he wants to know for sure if he wants them. Wants Riko back at his side, wants to not want that. Wants to forget.
Jean thinks Kevin wants like a baby who has dropped something heavy, porcelain, sharp. Wants for someone to pick up the pieces and put them together, kiss him on the forehead and say there there, it is all better now. To hide the cuts picking up those jagged edges of his mess left on their hands so he does not have to see the blood. It is going to be alright. I forgive you. It did not hurt so badly at all.
The worst part of this is that it takes one instant and then another of glancing into Kevin’s pleading eyes, green and sparkling with big shiny tears, for the weakest part of Jean to still want to do this for him. No. If Jean caves now, he will stay here with Kevin forever. Kevin leaves, and breaks everything on his way out. He plays Exy because he is obsessed with being useful, and striker because his is terrified of ever being relied on. No more.
“Do you think,” Jean’s voice is low, “that there is any way to make this easier for me?”
Kevin blinks, and the tears spill out of his eyes. He makes no effort to wipe them away. “I think it will be good for you.” His hands worry at the edge of the bedspread, unsure of how much he can cling to. “I think it will be hard. But if anyone-“
Jeremy, again. “You think because his name is on the back of my neck that this is my choice? That it is good for you to choose this for me?”
These are questions that Jean knows Kevin is not capable of answering. And he does not answer them, curling against the side of the bed and hiding his face. “I have chosen very little in my life. What I have chosen, you ignore.” Kevin looks back up at him, uncomprehending and miserable. Of course. “By all means, Kevin Day, give me away again.”
“I’m sorry.” Kevin’s voice is plaintive, miserable, bleeding through his hands.
“Look me in the eyes and tell me what for.”
He does not. Kevin stands up on shaky legs and looks at Jean's hands, his neck, his mouth, his hair. Not the eyes. “I will see you on the NCAA finals court next April, Jean.” He makes it as far to the door before turning back, eyes locking with Jean. “I-“
For a moment, the world stops. Jean almost wavers, blinks first, opens his mouth to pour out an apology. But the moment ends. Kevin runs out of the room, down the stairs, out into the world. What Kevin would have said then, Jean does not know. Thinks he is better off not guessing at.
He cannot sleep this headache off, feeling that there are still eyes on him. The goalie Minyard is staring at him from the hall, unblinking.
“Kevin will run to the bottle so that he does not have to remember this conversation happened,” Jean tells him finally. “Do not let him.”
Andrew just tilts his head to the side. Why should I listen to you?
“Regardless, he will make it your problem.”
“He has a talent for it. Enjoy California.” Andrew follows Kevin out. Jean does respect that he prefers silence over saying things he does not mean.
He rests his head on the pillow. The back of his neck seems to buzz. Kevin Day has a soulmark as well, Jean’s seen it. Something in Spanish, down the left side of his abs, following the hard angle of his waist. As far as Jean can tell, he has never wondered about it, never paid it any mind. There was no room in Kevin’s mind, not when single-minded devotion to Exy and fear of himself took all the oxygen in every room.
…
Renée waits a respectful amount of time before she pays her visit. He can hear her downstairs, putting on a pot of tea and calmly chatting with Abby in the kitchen, but she waits until he is ready to come upstairs.
She pulls Kevin’s chair a bit closer to him, sits. “How are you feeling, Jean?”
“I do not like it. Any aspect of it, but especially…what it all means. Kevin and Neil—and you—made the decisions for this to happen, but it is all because of the words. I do not like having the choice made for me by some”—he gestures around the general vicinity of his neck. “Belonging to this other thing.”
Renée reaches her hand out to rest on the bedspread next to his hand. “You always have a choice, Jean. It’s important to me that you know that.”
“You of all people should care for your soul,” he says, eyeing her cross. He has not been to mass since a handful of times as a small child, but the way the light seems to move through her and linger under her skin reminds him of the stained-glass angels he would stare at instead of listening to the priest. Calm. Shining. Far, far away and up where he could not touch.
“Me of all people.” She smiles, sharper than Jean has seen from her. And then she’s standing. The sliver of light cracking between the blinds haloes the back of her head. Her hair glows in every color in the warmth of the sun as she looks down at him. Slowly, she undoes the top four buttons of her soft white cardigan. Jean blinks, dizzy.
She shakes her head softly at him before he can voice the question. Jean keeps his eyes politely trained on the silver cross she wears. Like the beginning of some dream he does not understand, she takes the crucifix up in her hand and pulls her sweater wider, so that Jean can see in the pale divot of her sternum—You must be Natalie.
“The person who said the words, he wasn’t good for me anymore.” Renée says this with a soft and resolute sadness Jean knows intimately. “We were already halfway to getting each other killed.”
“Who is Natalie?” Jean says finally.
“Someone I choose not to be anymore. Maybe my soulmate was destined for the person I was becoming, but I did not want to be that person anymore. No matter what it says, I don’t have to be Natalie.” She drops the cross, and it slides back into place against her mark like coming home.
She buttons her buttons and sits back at his side, hand next to his hand. “The lives we are born into do not have to be the ones we die in, Jean. We belong to ourselves first. Our lives, our bodies, our souls are ours to share.” Renée shrugs. “Or to keep to yourself, as you begin anew.”
But Jean Moreau does not belong to himself. Never has, never will. Property has no life to share. He closes his eyes and breathes out through his nose and pretends it does not hurt to do.
“I know,” Renée whispers. “I know about all of that.” She moves her hand closer to his, grazes his little finger. “Your soul, though—that’s yours. Wholly. No one can take it from you.”
She reaches into the light behind her head and undoes the clasp of her necklace. “Here,” she offers. Call it a souvenir. Renée clips it behind his neck, just avoiding brushing the short part of his hair. Miracle of miracles, Jean does not flinch at all. The cross is still warm from where it rested over her heart, and Jean shivers. Souvenir. “Remember,” Renée begins, cupping her hands over the cross, over his heart. “You always have a choice,” Jean Moreau.
He looks down at Renée, eyes glittering impossibly in the warmth of the evening light and grieves this small moment of hope.
The sun sets. Abigail and David Wymack circle back, ask their same questions, receive their same answers. He feels fine. No, there is not anything that he needs. Yes, he would let them know if there was. When they settle, the house is quiet and dark, save for the little plug-in light in the shape of the sun in the corner of the room. Jean is—fond of it. Such a thing would have made him feel safer, in the Nest.
Sleep does not come easily. It never does. A storm shakes the house, lights up the windows, and the downpour sets Jean’s teeth on edge. The thunder is somewhat calming, though. Someone has told him in the past week that it does not rain at all in Los Angeles. Someone also told him they get earthquakes every week, which surely cannot be true. Jean closes his eyes, and then it is the morning. Nurse Abigail asks him if he dreamed of anything, and he tells her no. There is a moment when he wakes, though, where he searches for the feeling of the sun on his skin, the wind in his hair as though recently absent.
Wymack drives him to the airport with his bag. For a horrifying moment, he thinks Kevin will join them, but Renée is the one waiting in the backseat for him. She puts Jean’s duffel in the trunk like it’s something precious.
Neil, hellion that he is, intercepts them while jogging around the corner. For a few moments, he chases after the car like a dog until Wymack stops.
“I almost forgot to give you these,” he says, somehow not out of breath whatsoever. Out of his tiny running shorts pockets, he pulls out a pair of sunglasses, reaches through the window to press them into Jean’s folded-up hands.
“I do not need these.” The lenses are absurdly large. Either Neil thinks Jean’s bruised face needs hiding, or that he is so weak he cannot remain outside without special protection. True, his headache lingers behind the eyes at present because the sun is too bright, but he has always been able to endure this.
“They let you stare at stuff without anyone being able to tell what you’re looking at.” Jean frowns. Neil is a deeply vexing person.
“Also, Kevin said you get real photosensitive when concussed. And that you would lie about it so I should come up with another reason.” Neil is also a rat when he feels like it, which is quite often when it comes to Kevin. “These are his hangover sunglasses.”
Jean does not want to put the sunglasses on, but he has to. He shoves them onto his face before anyone can see the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. Kevin Day, who Jean will never forgive, drinks to forget the many, many ways he has hurt Jean from his cowardice and braves the sun alone to ease Jean’s pain. The lenses are dark. Jean’s headache immediately recedes.
Neil tilts his head at him, assessing his reaction.
“Know me less,” he says to his misplaced forever partner. If Jean were to be honest with himself, it is not truly Neil he is speaking to when he says this.
The hellion smiles in his evil way. “No.” Neil looks down at his watch. “This has added two minutes to my mile time. Think I can make it up?”
Before Jean can answer, Neil does what he does best and runs away.
“Thank fuck that didn’t take long, we’re already thirty minutes late,” Wymack barks from the front. Jean is not sure what the driving laws are in South Carolina, but he is certain Wymack breaks a few on the way.
Renée walks him to airport security, as far as she can. He takes her hand, cannot find the words to say to this strange, beautiful woman who took him out of the Nest when she had no reason to. The crack of light between the doors that burst through.
She smiles at him, her lit-up stained-glass smile. “Decide what to be. Go be it.” She squeezes his hand. “You’ll be in my prayers. Don’t be a stranger, Jean.”
In a daze, he wanders over to his gate. He gets on the plane. Jean finds his seat. Next to the window, Renée had said. It’s so sunny at 30,000 feet. He closes the shade, wincing at the light. It is all too much. He pulls the turtleneck collar of his undershirt up high over his neck, making sure it will not move, then puts his hood over his head, just in case.
Fear has governed Jean’s life for nineteen years. His instincts have kept him alive. For the first time in a long time, though, he does not know where to place it, does not know whether to fear the cage or the open sky more. The brand on his neck, the Moriyama’s leash, Kevin’s meddling, Renée’s choices, Neil’s live-until-it-kills-you spirit, these things contradict and swirl in Jean’s mind. He knows enough of the world to understand that some things are simply inevitable, that every choice will lead you to them. Freedom is the sliver of light under his window shade, the thousand-meter-fall to the ground.
Jean lowers his sunglasses over his eyes, pulls his turtleneck up once more, and waits for California.