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Zane Reacher finally, to a sense of satisfaction that makes Jeremy sick to think about, kills himself. He hurt Jean, Jeremy tells himself, but the relief that floods through him when Cat texts him that morning is blinding.
Jean insists he’s fine. He goes to class. To practice. To home. And for all intents and purposes, he is fine.
A bit quiet but he’s usually quiet so Jeremy doesn’t think too much on it because he looks over at his backliner as he chops vegetables and there’s a soft smile curling his lips. It eases the near-constant worry Jeremy holds in his chest for Jean’s wellbeing.
It comes back with Jean into the living area from the bathroom, his eyes downcast, and says he’s heading in for an early night.
Jeremy knows him well enough now that he knows something is wrong. He voices as much. “Are you alright, Jean?”
Jean looks up at him then, eyes a little wild. Not scared but bordering on a wild animal not yet backed into a corner. Then he presses his lips into a firm line and nods. “I’m okay.”
It’s a lie and they both know it but Jeremy knows when to let things slide so he sighs and leans back on the couch and offers Jean a lax smile. “Goodnight then. Sleep well.”
Cat eyes the exchange curiously from where she sits on the floor in front of Laila’s chair—not a papasan one like she used to have—with her girlfriend’s fingers in her hair. Laila doesn’t appear to have been watching the men but Jeremy knows better than to assume she wasn’t equally as wary of Jean’s answer. After Jean’s bedroom door falls shut behind him, Cat fumbles for the TV remote, turning up the volume of their movie before she speaks, “do you really think he’s okay?”
“Not really,” Jeremy says, “but I can’t force him to talk if he’s not ready.” Wild animal, remember?
Laila hums. “He’ll come to us when he’s ready.”
Sometimes that waiting feels like it’ll never end.
Cat snorts, “you mean he’ll come to Jeremy.”
That’s enough to make Jeremy’s neck burn with the heat of a blush. He knows that Jean is closer to him here than anyone else but he’s always chalked it up to being Jean’s partner , he feels exposed having their closeness commented on.
“I’ll check on him after the movie,” Jeremy says. “Just to make sure he’s alright.”
That’s enough of an answer for the girls who have learnt to trust Jeremy with Jean’s wellbeing for the most part. He was the only one Jean didn’t push away when he was upset and they knew that.
He doesn’t really pay attention to the movie, too caught up in worrying about Jean in the face of Zane’s—it feels wrong to call it a tragedy—death.
However normal it is at this point, it never feels as such when it comes to the Ravens dropping like flies. They used to be Jean’s team and now their deaths are met with barely more than apathy, less emotion as the time passes and more join the fallen. But Jeremy had expected more of a reaction to Zane’s timely demise, something more than a twitch of his brow and a “that’s unfortunate” but that’s all he got.
The credits haven’t even started rolling when Jabberwocky gets up out of his bed and pads over to Jean’s door and starts scratching at the bottom like he wants to get in.
Jean sometimes lets the dog in to sleep with him once everyone else has gone to bed and makes sure to let him out before they get up for practice in the morning but Jeremy has woken up in the middle of the night before and been unable to find Jabberwocky and briefly thought him missing, wandered out onto the balcony through the locked door and whisked away on the night air. Only to pause short of waking Jean up because the two of them were curled up in Jean’s bed, Jabberwocky tucked in the bend of his knees.
But the three of them are still awake and Jabberwocky is smarter than he lets on so something shifts under Jeremy’s skin and he’s out of his seat and walking down the corridor before he even realises what he’s doing.
He knocks on the door.
Silence.
He knocks again. “Jean?”
Silence.
He pushes the door open and slips into the darkness, shutting it swiftly behind him, leaving Jabberwocky in the hall.
Jeremy finds Jean on the ground next to his bed. Blood smeared on the hardwood floors.
There’s jagged cuts all along the backs of his forearms, some on his biceps. None on his hands. Jeremy’s heart pangs painfully in his chest when he realises that’s because they’d be too hard to hide there.
Jeremy recognises it. The pieces of gold, the blade discarded in a small puddle of crimson. His razor. The stupid fancy one he has one of here and one of at his mum’s house that comes apart to replace the blade because it's the one that gives him the closest, cleanest, shave.
And Jean has taken it and taken it apart, to exchange the blade for blood.
“Jean?” he asks around the worry threatening to suffocate him, squeezing his throat until his voice is somewhere between a croak and a wheeze.
Jean looks up at him then, grey eyes wild—animal in a corner—and scrambles, his empty hands coming up to his arms as if he can shield his wounds from Jeremy’s eyes. But there’s too many.
Jeremy knew Jean had an issue with hurting himself, but he didn’t think it went beyond that quick knee-jerk reaction he had to distress in which he would claw at his throat or arms and leave little crescent shaped divots in his skin or angry lines of red speckling where he had scratched hard enough to burst blood vessels but not enough to break skin.
This was something else entirely. Though, maybe not.
“Jeremy,” Jean says, his voice strained and heavy like he’s tired. He scrambles back a bit but his back hits the bed frame and he can’t go any further. “Go away.”
Jeremy has made a habit of always respecting Jean’s boundaries but he sets his jaw and stands his ground. “No.”
“Jeremy,” Jean pleads.
“No,” Jeremy repeats, stepping further into the room. “Jean—” what is this? are you okay? what happened? what do you need? “—what have you done?”
He cringes as the words leave his mouth and Jean shrinks. He hadn’t meant to be so accusatory, he didn’t want Jean to feel bad, he wanted him to tell him how he could help. Foot meet mouth.
“I—” Jean starts, his mouth opening and closing like he can’t find the words. “I’m sorry.”
It’s not the answer Jeremy wanted though. Jean was always sorry, it made him sick to think of the guilt Jean carries between his shoulder blades, pressing in on him. Jeremy wanted Jean to be okay, not sorry. He had nothing to be sorry for.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Jeremy says as he takes a few steps and comes to Jean’s side where he crouches. Jean shies away from his touch. Jeremy tries not to take it personally. “How can I help?”
“Go away,” Jean says again, his voice small and bearing no weight. He has a hand over the rough red line just below his elbow that is still oozing blood. Red covers Jean’s pale skin.
Jeremy ignores him. “Let me help you, Jean.”
Jean just sighs and drops his hand. Jeremy takes it as much of an invitation as he is going to get and he grabs Jean’s arm, turning it over in the dim light of his lamp and inspecting the wounds. They’re deep, but Jeremy will need to see them cleaned and in better light before he knows if he needs to drive Jean to the emergency room for stitches. Plus Laila would know better than him, maybe Jean would trust her opinion more.
Almost as if reading his mind Jean speaks. “You can’t tell them.”
Them being Laila and Cat. Jeremy doesn’t relish in keeping secrets from them but he’s getting worryingly close to willing to commit a crime for Jean Moreau.
“I won’t,” Jeremy promises. “We should go to the bathroom and get these cleaned up.”
Jean stills, stiff under his touch. “They’ll see.”
“They won’t,” Jeremy assures him. “I’ll check that they’ve gone to bed. I can’t hear the TV anymore.”
It kills him to leave Jean’s side but he slips out of the room as quickly and quietly as he entered. Laila and Cat are hovering outside their bedroom door when the door clicks shut behind him.
“Is he—” Laila starts as Cat looks from Jeremy’s face to his hands, “is that—”
Jeremy tucks his bloody hands behind his back. “It’s okay,” he whispers. Lying to them twists his gut.
Cat’s eyes are wild but she drops her pitch. “What happened?”
“He’s—” the words falter as Jeremy’s heart trips over itself. “He hurt himself.”
“Is he okay?” Laila asks, stepping closer. Jeremy holds up a bloodied hand to halt her.
“I think so. I’m going to take him to the bathroom to get cleaned up and then I’ll see if he’ll let you come and look at the wounds. I don’t know if they need stitches but he doesn’t want you guys to know.”
Hurt flashes across their faces and Laila schools her expression faster than Cat does. “Okay, let us know if you need us. Come on, Cat.”
Cat looks like she’s going to argue but she lets Laila pull her into their bedroom and shut the door behind them.
As soon as they’re gone Jeremy turns back to Jean’s door and pushes it open.
“They’re gone,” he says and Jean slowly picks himself up off of the floor. He refuses to meet Jeremy’s eye, gaze fixated on the floor as he steps over the blood and pieces of Jeremy’s razor to join him in the hallway.
The wounds look worse in brighter light. His arms are streaked and smudged with blood but the cuts stand out, darker and angrier.
Jeremy doesn’t say anything and walks down the corridor to the bathroom where he flicks on the light.
Jean sits on the closed lid of the toilet and offers his damaged arms to Jeremy’s careful touch. He runs the tap until it’s warm and runs a face cloth under the flow until it's wet and wrings it out before turning to his backliner.
Wordlessly, he starts gently rubbing at the spaces between the cuts, washing away as much blood as he can. The light yellow fabric of the cloth is quickly muddied by red but he just adjusts his grip and presses a clean stretch to Jean’s arms again.
Jean doesn’t speak either, just watches Jeremy wipe at his arms, wring out the cloth under the water yet again, and return to cleaning up his mess.
It takes a few minutes for Jeremy to find his words. “I thought you were coping."
Jean stays silent for so long that Jeremy doesn’t think he’ll get a response at all but eventually Jean speaks in a quiet voice, almost as if he doesn’t want to disturb the air with his breath. "I don’t want to cope,” he admits. “I’ve spent my whole life coping. With this. With that. With everything.” He takes a shaky breath. “I’m tired of coping, Jeremy, I want to live. "
Jeremy’s chest squeezes. He wants nothing more than for Jean to live. To enjoy living. To be able to bear the weight of all that has happened to him easily, or to hand it off to Jeremy to hold for a bit so he can smile and have nothing holding it back.
“I want to help you,” Jeremy says.
Jean sighs, “you can’t.”
“You have to let me try.” Jeremy needs to try. “Please.”
Jean pulls his arm back from Jeremy’s touch and presents the other for cleaning. “Okay,” he admits softly.
“Okay?” Jeremy echoes, stunned.
“You can try.”
Eventually Jeremy will finish cleaning Jean’s arms and convince him to let Laila look. She will be quiet and remain as impassive as possible as she inspects the wounds and determines that although they will leave nasty scars in Jean’s ever-growing repertoire, they won’t need stitches. They will each take one of Jean’s arms and wrap it in bandages from the first aid kit under the sink.
Jeremy will walk Jean to his room and help him get situated in bed and tuck a blanket over him and his freshly wrapped arms. He will pick up the pieces of the razor as he leaves and take them to his room with him so Jean can’t fish them out of the bin and he will throw them away on campus tomorrow, perhaps in the farthest bin from the court.
But for now he studiously wipes at Jean’s arms and tells him he’ll try.