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Jean blinks owlishly at Coach Rhemann, his gaze tracking somewhere along the man’s left cheekbone. Divots form in the soft fruit he just caught, a bit of juice running down the side from where he has broken skin, and he forcibly adjusts his grip to something more delicate, hands and peach resting in his lap. He shifts back to his heels and scrubs the back of his hand over his damp forehead.
His mouth opens. Closes. A warm breeze ruffles Jean’s hair, and he tries to feel the damp soil of the garden beneath his knees, to hear the tinny windchimes to his right by the birdfeeder. Coach doesn’t move, aside from the fractional upward movement his eyebrows have made.
Finally, “Um.” Shortly followed by, “No thank you, Coach.”
The eyebrows continue northward. “Are you sure? I figured since you’re out here anyway, you’d want to help out.”
Something squeezes hard inside of Jean’s chest at the very distant, mostly implied note of disapproval. He doesn’t want to seem ungrateful, but he knows that Cody must have said something for this thought to even occur to Rhemann.
Jean’s attachment to Cody’s gift had been childish, foolish—it is embarrassing, in hindsight, to have been so pathetically flattered over something as trivial as the ovary of a tree. His coach shouldn’t have to go through the laborious process of watering, pruning, and fertilizing out of some misplaced obligation for a produce-deprived athlete under his tutelage.
Jean takes a breath. “I—I will help in any way that you need, but it is not necessary for you to go to such lengths for me. A peach tree requires a lot of care, and you should not have to—”
Coach holds up a hand, and Jean’s mouth snaps shut. He draws back slightly. The corner of Rhemann’s mouth curves down, and he glances to the side, as though regretting the interruption.
Jean isn’t so churlish as to openly criticize a coach’s actions, but the expression on Rhemann’s face whenever Jean displays a tendency picked up from his Evermore coaches is often impossible to endure. A part of him wants to tell him to stop looking like that, because the appearance of a wounded puppy has no place on the face of his coach. He looks down, rolling the peach that Rhemann had thrown him between his left and right hands.
Another moment of silence passes. Then, “I’m not concerned about the time commitment or anything, kid. Gardening is a hobby—something I enjoy. Do you feel put-upon when you garden here or at your place?”
Jean traces a thumb over the small, fuzz-filled dents in his peach. He shakes his head, because truly, it is quite the opposite.
“Exactly. And I’ve been wanting to grow a tree for a while now. Cody mentioning that you like peaches was just a catalyst, not the whole reason. Got me?”
Jean huffs out through his nose—a bold move. “Yes, Coach.”
He manages to look up, eyes briefly meeting Rhemann’s green, and the man’s mouth twitches. His eyebrows have, thankfully, returned to their normal position.
"Good. And besides, if you swing by a couple times a week to help me take care of it, I’m sure Adi’ll be thrilled to have someone test out his dinner recipes. Killing two birds with one stone, right?"
Everyone and their mother has been trying to convince Jean to try new foods, uncaring of the poor nutritional value that is non-conducive to muscle growth and sustained energy. Jean’s eyes narrow, and he pointedly takes a large bite out of his peach, a drop of juice trailing down his chin.
Rhemann’s smile widens.
A week later, Jeremy is a warm body sitting flush against Jean’s back, arms wrapped snuggly around his torso, and Jean deeply regrets ever deciding to bring him along, awkward interactions with Coach be damned.
“I can’t believe Cat only lets you drive her motorcycle,” Jeremy calls out over the wind as they pull up to the stop sign on Rhemann’s street. “I’ve been driving way longer than you have! I learned to drive when you were in middle school.”
Jean’s lips twitch, unbidden. “I was homeschooled. You know this.”
“Same thing,” Jeremy bemoans, his helmet clunking against Jean’s shoulder. They pull into Rhemann’s driveway, and Jean moves to pat Jeremy’s thigh, consolation and telling him to get up in equal measure.
Jeremy’s skin is sun-warm, stretched over hard, coiled muscle where his gym shorts have ridden up, and Jean snatches his hand away after barely making contact.
He kicks out the side stand as soon as he rises while Jeremy makes quick work of unhooking Jabberwocky’s carrier from the back, undoing the excessive cables that kept him safe on the journey. He unlatches the front of the crate after setting it on the ground, and the dog immediately crosses to the other side of the vehicle, licking at Jean’s legs. He puts his front paws on Jean’s knees, making a whining sound, and Jean scowls down at the pathetic creature.
Jeremy sighs dramatically. “I’m second to my own son.”
Jean rolls his eyes and scoops the dog up, and gets a strip of saliva up his cheek for the trouble. His scowl deepens. If he acquires hookworm from this, Jeremy will need to be very careful around mealtimes when Jean and Cat are cooking.
They make their way to the back garden, where Rhemann is already kneeling beside the sapling with a hose in one hand and a look of quiet reverence on his face. The baby tree—a contender peach, its small leaves glossy in the morning light—is still standing where Jean and Rhemann had planted it last week. A part of Jean had believed it would have died by now.
Rhemann glances up as the trio rounds the corner, his gaze briefly lingering on the dog cradled in Jean’s arms before flicking to Jeremy, then back to Jean.
“You’re late,” he says mildly, adjusting the flow of the hose with a slight twist. Jean’s stomach does not drop the way it should at the slight reprimand, though it does give a mild, nauseating swoop.
“We brought the muscle,” Jeremy replies cheerfully, tossing the carrier onto the patio with a clatter that makes Jabberwocky’s ears twitch and Jean cringe. “And the moral support. And—” he gestures to the dog, “—the supervisor.”
Jean sets Jabberwocky down, brushing a damp hand against his shorts. The garden smells of wet earth and crushed mint, and beneath that, the faint tang of fertilizer. The air is warm. He crouches beside Rhemann, pulling dark brown gardening gloves out of his pocket—a gift (after much insistence) from Rhemann once he realized Jean hadn’t been using any protection while working in the ever-growing garden at his own apartment.
Rhemann scratches Jabberwocky behind the ears. “As much as I appreciate this supervisor,” Jabberwocky licks his hand, “it doesn’t change the fact that Adi’s cold cucumber sandwiches are now lukewarm cucumber sandwiches. And iced tea has become tea with melted ice.”
Jean reaches out to pull a few weeds crowding the base of the tree. Rhemann doesn’t look at him, but Jean can feel the slight shift in his posture before he rests a hand on Jean’s shoulder, squeezing briefly. Jean’s muscles twitch, but he doesn’t flinch.
This is normal. Rhemann knows that Jean is unfailingly, “painfully” (according to Adi) punctual, and if there is one reason for them to be late, it is the beautiful, bleach-blonde hurricane that is Jeremy—equal parts distraction and disaster.
Jeremy, of course, doesn’t kneel. He flops down in the grass like a cat in a sunbeam, all golden limbs and lazy grin, radiating the kind of chaotic charm that could delay even the most disciplined man. “You know, Coach, I could’ve been at home doing absolutely nothing. Instead I’m here, being wildly productive, so you could be a bit more grateful.”
Jean is getting a bit more used to their banter, day by day, but his stomach still clenches at the tone.
Rhemann arches a brow. “We haven’t given you a task yet.”
“Exactly,” Jeremy says, folding his hands behind his head. “I’m here for morale. You know—look pretty, keep Jean motivated while he’s busy with his hands.”
Jean’s face flushes instantly, betraying him. He ducks his head, suddenly very invested in tugging at a stubborn clump of crabgrass.
Jeremy realizes what he’s said about half a second too late, his own cheeks going pink. “I mean—support. Like, general support.”
Rhemann looks skyward with the long-suffering patience of someone who’s seen this movie one too many times.
About twenty minutes after they get started, the peach tree has been watered, the weeds around it pulled, and Jean is working on carefully plucking off brown leaves and brittle branches when the patio door swings open. Jeremy looks up from where he’s been entrusted with the delicate, tedious task of grooming Adi’s Bonsai tree, lest he incur the man’s wrath, and Rhemann shuts off his hose.
“Lunch is here, boys,” Adi calls, setting down a tray of lukewarm cucumber sandwiches and, in the other hand, a pitcher of tea with melted ice. The three men approach, and Adi glances down at their dirtied hands with a wrinkled nose. “Wash up before you touch my delicacies, please and thank you.”
They murmur their agreement and file inside, the screen door creaking shut behind them. They crowd around the kitchen sink, passing around a bar of soap shaped like a seashell with a vague, chemical-tropical scent. Jeremy’s halfway through an exaggerated complaint about losing circulation in his fingers from the tweezers when Jean sees Adi move up behind him.
Without ceremony, Adi delivers a sharp smack to the back of Jeremy’s head.
“Ow!” Jeremy yelps, pressing long fingers to his skull. He pivots, throwing Adi a wounded look. “I was doing precision work! Your Bonsai is thriving under my care, and this is how you thank me?”
Adi arches a brow. “You were whining. About a privilege. But more importantly, that was because your tardiness watered down my iced tea.”
Indeed, Jean notes, the brown liquid in Adi’s newly-acquired glass looks far lighter than usual.
Jeremy opens his mouth to defend himself but thinks better of it, lips pressing into a pout instead. Jean gives a little extra care to the lingering dirt under his fingernails. “Technically, the tea is no longer iced,” he says quietly.
Jean tries to keep a straight face, but Adi is already rounding on him. With a quick, practiced motion, he tugs sharply on Jean’s ear. Jean instinctively twitches away. “You, I expect better from.”
Jean winces. “It wasn’t entirely my fault—”
Rhemann, still drying his hands, doesn’t even look up. “It was entirely Jeremy’s fault that they were late.”
Adi’s hand doesn’t leave Jean’s ear. “And you let him.” He gives it one final, pointed tug before releasing him. Jean glowers, rubbing his ear on his shoulder as he rinses his hands. “You should know better than to let a pretty face derail your sense of time.”
Jean goes crimson down to the collar of his shirt, nearly drops the soap. Jeremy chokes on nothing, wheezing into his sleeve like he’s been slapped. Water drips from Jeremy’s hands to the yellow-tiled floor.
Rhemann, drying his hands on a dishcloth, presses a chaste kiss to Adi’s cheek as he passes. Jean feels something in his chest tighten, a ball suddenly at the base of his throat. “Like you’re one to talk,” Rhemann says, voice low, and Jean urgently turns back to his task of flicking excess water off his hands, vaguely disgusted.
Is this how kids feel when their parents—?
Jean yanks a paper towel off the rack, perhaps a bit violently. Jeremy puts a hand on his arm, his hand warm and solid and carrying the callouses of any athlete, and Jean briefly meets his favorite color.
Adi, however, doesn’t let Rhemann off the hook so easily. He narrows his eyes—not angry, but with the air of someone deeply affronted on principle. “Excuse you,” he says, resting a hand on his hip. “Let’s be clear: I am the pretty one. If anyone is going to be a distraction, it’s me.”
Jeremy makes a small gagging sound next to him. Rhemann just grins, smug and slow like he’s already won something, and flicks the damp dishcloth at Jeremy, who ducks instinctively.
“And don’t forget it,” Adi adds, then casually smacks Rhemann on the butt as he walks past.
Jean doesn’t quite gag, not as theatrical as Jeremy, but it’s a near thing. Rhemann actually laughs, the rare, real kind that starts in his chest and shakes his shoulders. “That’s harassment,” he says, clearly not meaning it.
Adi pats his own chest lightly. “Balance, darling. Everyone’s a victim.”
Jeremy wheezes again, half-choked on laughter this time, and Jean—still standing frozen with a wad of paper towel in one hand—wants to crawl into the sink and turn on the garbage disposal. His ears are scarlet. His soul may be ascending.
“Can we not do this right before we eat?” Jean mutters, horrified, finally finding the strength to dry his hands like the act might erase the entire exchange from reality.
Jeremy leans in just enough to be annoying. “You okay, buddy? You look like you just saw the concept of intimacy for the first time.”
“I hate it here,” Jean replies flatly.
“No you don’t,” Adi calls through the screen door, already outside and plating sandwiches. He’s teasing, Jean knows, but when he briefly makes eye contact with the man, his gaze is soft. “You know you love us, kiddo.”
Jean doesn’t deny it.
Instead, he looks skyward, just as Rhemann had earlier. There is an unbearable warmth in his chest. “I am begging for a swift and merciful end.”
That weekend, Jean remembers why he brought his partner along to his coach’s house in the first place, despite the scolding he suffered as a result.
It’s easier when Jeremy’s there—when someone else is absorbing the attention, filling the silence with sarcasm or complaints or beautiful laughter. Without him, the quiet presses in closer. Jean feels it in the stretch of his spine, in the way Rhemann moves with the calm gravity of someone older, someone steady. It’s not threatening, exactly.
In fact, Jean is devastatingly aware that Rhemann would never harm him. He has known it for some time now, he thinks, but it’s a much less tamable beast in small, intimate moments like this one. His body revolts against the idea of it, every muscle taut as Rhemann leans into his space.
He cannot get himself to relax, his eyes tracing the movement of Rhemann’s hands so closely that, for the life of him, he has no idea what the man is saying. Rhemann’s voice is low, patient, explaining something about pruning angles or bud placement—Jean can’t tell. The words register like static. His breath hitches, shallow and very pointedly controlled.
Rhemann shifts slightly, the hand holding the hose reaching past Jean to gesture toward a limb that needs trimming, and Jean flinches. It’s minor. Barely perceptible. But he sees the way Rhemann stills, hand hovering, not touching, not retreating—just pausing.
“I’m not going to touch you,” Rhemann says quietly, not unkindly.
“I know,” Jean answers too quickly. It sounds like a defense. He should not be so messed up in the head that touching should even bother him, if Rhemann chose to, because that is something normal people do.
Jean desperately wants to be normal. He doesn’t know why his teammates’ touches are far more comfortable than Rhemann’s, when the Ravens arguably injured him more frequently than the Master. And worse.
They stand there a moment, the garden humming quietly around them—soft buzz of insects, the rhythmic drip of a hose left half-shut. Jean stares at the branch in front of him like it might offer an escape route.
“I just—” Jean starts, then stops. He doesn’t know how to explain a body that hasn’t caught up to the truth.
Rhemann nods once, like he doesn’t need him to. He glances at the small pile of clippings on the ground, then gestures loosely toward the opposite side of the tree. “Let me show you the other side,” he says. “Shaded spots hide the worst surprises.”
Jean exhales a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and slowly—grudgingly—his shoulders begin to uncoil.
It’s not an order, but it gives Jean something to do. He shifts around the sapling, grounding himself in the motion, and kneels down to get a better look. That side had taken him nearly twenty minutes on its own. He’d been meticulous, careful—removing only the dry, the damaged, the overlapping.
Rhemann circles around it as well, crouching to check the growth on the shaded side. He brushes a thumb along the underside of a leaf, brow furrowing. “You’ve done this before,” he says—not a question, just an observation dropped gently between them, quiet and sure.
Jean doesn’t look up. His stomach hurts. “Sort of.”
“You’re precise,” Rhemann continues. He sounds impressed, and Jean’s shoulders creep up toward his ears. “Not a lot of people are, first time out. You’re always meticulous either way, but if you hadn’t done this before, you wouldn’t have known how. I certainly didn’t show you until now.”
Jean shrugs, the movement tight. “Used to help with the garden,” he says quietly, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He rolls his neck to the side, then decides he owes more than that. “Back home, I mean. Marseille.”
There’s a pause. Just long enough for Jean to regret saying anything, for Rhemann to consider asking—but he doesn’t. He only hums, adjusting the direction of the hose that snakes through the grass, letting it trickle toward the base of the tree. Jean tries to ignore the faint whistle in his ears, furious French crawling along his skin. He can almost hear Elodie crying, stuck watching through the kitchen window even though Jean told her to go to their room, to look away.
He swallows. His tongue feels large in his mouth. “It is habit to be… precise. She liked things neat,” Jean adds, quietly, eyes fixed on the brittle tips of a nearby branch. His fingers itch to trim it. “Rocks in rows. Tools cleaned. No weeds.”
Rhemann nods, and Jean can feel his gaze boring into the side of his head. Jean stares straight ahead. “No wonder you picked it up so quickly, then. What kinds of plants did you keep?”
Jean’s stomach tightens further. They had no flowers or anything decorative, useless as such things were. Produce was almost exclusively grown fresh to serve to his father’s guests, which he and Elodie were forbidden from touching. They were always too poor to purchase anything from neighboring farms or grocers, so Jean had spent many hours in the cramped space of their wooded backyard, hunched over rows of potatoes and carrots and berries meant to be served with meats and cheeses and fresh bread, his mother’s watchful glare burning into his head.
Though, his mother did have a soft spot for his younger sister, and she thankfully allowed—
“We had a blackberry bush in the yard,” Jean settles on saying, almost to himself. “That one was for Elodie. My—sister.”
He can’t bring himself to say anything else. Nothing else that had happened in that garden is worth remembering, but he can remember Elodie smiling at him through purple-stained teeth, blatantly ignoring Jean’s fond warning that they should wash them first. “Why? Do I have bugs in my teeth, Jean-Yves?”
The silence thickens—not uncomfortable, but dense. A bird lands on the birdfeeder: a hummingbird. Laila has been helping him learn the names of common California birds in English, but it’s a slow process. Allen’s hummingbird, he thinks.
Rhemann hums after a moment, soft as if raising his voice a few decibels would somehow make Jean go off that rails—or make the train stop altogether. He’s still holding the damn hose, even though he hasn’t watered anything in minutes.
Jean’s jaw clenches. He feels something burning in his chest, and he desperately needs to eject it before it leaks through his eyes. “She never helped. The only tool she ever touched was the hose,” he says, abruptly. “And it was never watering that she used it for. She just wanted something that stung like a belt but bruised like wood.”
Rhemann is very still, and Jean almost wishes he could take the words back. He grabs the shears off the ground and snips at the ends of dying branches. He snaps them closed harder than necessary to get the job done.
His hands are moving faster now, less careful. These people always make him careless. “I used to hate the smell of wet grass,” he mutters. “Thought it meant something bad was coming. I didn’t always have to do something wrong—sometimes she’d just be watering the grass, and I was there.”
He would always be there. Because if he wasn’t, then Elodie was, and that was far worse.
That hardly meant anything in the end.
”I just,” he chokes out, then swallows. Starts again, “I want you to know that it is not… you. I know you would never—”
A hand settles over his wrist, and his pulse jumps. He finally meets Rhemann’s eyes, and what he sees there makes his hands pause. Jean stares, waiting for the wrong thing—pity, discomfort, a soft voice that might undo him. He thinks he’s trembling a little. He’s never made eye contact with a coach for this long.
But Rhemann only asks, level and steady, “Do you still hate the smell? Of wet grass?”
Jean swallows hard. Looks away. He feels the soft dirt beneath his knees, and eventually, shakes his head. He goes to say something—anything to change the subject—but Rhemann is already rising to his feet, brushing dirt from his palms.
“You’ve been doing great work,” he says simply, without looking for a reaction. Just the truth, offered plainly. “Tree’s better for it.”
Jean blinks. He feels the words land somewhere he can’t name. They don’t hurt. But they don’t sit right either, not because they’re wrong—because they aren’t. He nods, a stiff little dip of his chin. There’s a knot in his throat, and he can’t bring himself to speak around it. He’s too terrified of any words coming out choked.
And then Rhemann reaches out, and Jean’s heart rabbits in his chest, every muscle tightening.
His hand lands in Jean’s hair, rough and warm, fingers raking gently through the dark curls before giving a light, tousling shake. It’s affectionate, casual— normal , maybe. But Jean goes stock-still under it, shoulders drawn up like wires under tension.
But Rhemann’s already pulling his hand away, turning toward the house like nothing happened. “Break time,” he says over his shoulder. “If we don’t come back soon, Adi’ll assume we’ve eloped or keeled over in the azaleas.”
Jean stands frozen a moment longer, skin prickling where Rhemann’s hand had been. He presses a palm lightly to his head, as if to check that the feeling was real.
It was. Somehow, that unsettles him more than anything else.
Rhemann casts the hose to the side as they make their way inside, and when an arm slings around Jean’s shoulders, he doesn’t flinch.
A couple weeks later, on a cool summer evening, the living room still smells faintly of garlic and something citrusy—leftover from Adi’s marinade, probably. Someone’s opened a window to let the evening breeze in, and it makes it a little less heavy in the air. Cat and Laila are perched together on the loveseat, shoulder to shoulder, their knees almost touching as they flip through movie options with solemn deliberation. Jeremy is sprawled on the rug like a man recently felled in battle, claiming that dinner was too good and he might actually die.
“Could’ve warned me, Adi,” he groans into the floor. “You said ‘grilled chicken,’ not ‘culinary masterpiece.’ I didn’t emotionally prepare.”
“You had thirds,” Cat says dryly, without looking up.
“You were too polite to stop me,” Jeremy accuses, lifting his head enough to glare.
Laila snorts. “We were not. We called you a trash can, remember?”
“That was affectionate,” Jeremy insists, rolling onto his back with a dramatic sigh.
Jean hovers awkwardly at the edge of the couch, trying in vain to fold himself smaller. Rhemann sits beside him, calm as ever, while Adi has claimed the opposite end, long legs tucked under himself. Jean keeps himself angled toward the armrest, spine crooked, careful not to touch Rhemann—though every once in a while, the proximity hums in his nerves.
He knows he’s welcome. He’s been told it, shown it, again and again.
Jeremy reaches up to pat Jean’s knee, and Jean flinches on instinct. Jeremy doesn’t recoil, doesn’t joke it off—just gives a gentle squeeze like an apology that says you’re okay, then drops his hand again without fanfare. “C’mon, Jean. I need someone to help me bully the queers into choosing a real movie.”
Cat raises an eyebrow. “We’re right here.”
“I’m fostering healthy conflict,” Jeremy says, grinning. “Very team-building.”
Jean rolls his eyes. “Anything but a musical,” he mutters, voice low. He won’t give Laila a chance to force another absurd tap-dancing wizard heist upon them.
“Blasphemy,” Laila says mildly, but she’s smiling. “We’ll spare you. Just this once.”
They finally settle on something animated and intelligence-draining, the kind of movie made for children but with enough adult humor to keep everyone entertained. As the opening credits roll, Adi makes a bowl of popcorn the size of his head and passes it off to Jeremy, who somehow manages to inhale half of it while still lying down.
Jean doesn’t really watch the movie. He never does. His eyes flick to the screen, then away—to the soft curve of Cat’s hand resting on Laila’s knee, to Jeremy’s socked feet tapping against the base of the coffee table, to Jabberwocky shifting and sighing in his sleep, his snout nuzzling Jean’s ankle.
Jeremy shifts until his back is resting against the side of the sofa beside Jean’s legs, and Jean stiffens. Jeremy looks up at him, a smile in his eyes but a slight lilt to his full lips, and Jean’s cheeks warm.
It’s a question. Or an offer.
Jean swallows hard and nods.
Jeremy rests his head lightly against Jean’s knee, and Jean feels it everywhere.
It’s loud in a quiet way. Cluttered in a warm one. And Jean feels like he doesn’t know where to put his hands, or how to hold his body in a way that doesn’t betray how much he wants this to last.
He almost jumps again when a blanket lands in his lap. Adi doesn’t even look at him—just keeps his eyes on the movie, mouth full of popcorn after snatching it from Jeremy’s greedy hands. Jean exhales, tension bleeding out by degrees.
And then Rhemann shifts beside him. An arm wraps around Jean’s shoulders—not forcefully, not possessively. Just... like it belongs there. Like it’s happened before and might happen again. Jean goes still, heart thudding. His skin buzzes under the contact. He doesn’t know how to lean into it, but he doesn’t pull away.
His stomach twists, slightly nauseous, uncertain. But when it’s Laila’s turn with the popcorn, when she leans over and presses it into his hands, when Jeremy snorts at something dumb and doesn’t stop leaning on him, when Rhemann stays right there, steady and unbothered—he lets himself believe it a little. He lets his head fall to his coach’s shoulder, and rests his hand on Jeremy’s head. He runs his fingers through ridiculous bleach-blond curls.
He doesn’t pull away. Not this time.
He stays.
For them, he always will.