bienmoreau:

0-60 with you indeed, gdamn 😆
But okay. Here goes.

It wasn’t like the team hadn’t seen jeans scars before. He made no effort to hide them in the locker room at practice. It’s was just at no point in the lead up to this whole damn situation had Jeremy stopped to consider that it could end with jean out on the beach at night with the rest of them casually, if begrudgingly, stripping down to nothing.

The night wasn’t exactly dark and with the moon out and the street lamps at the top of the beach and the small fire they had in a raised barbecue bowl. Jere, as team leader of the losing team was the first to have to go. Laughing it off with the help of the cheap beer he’d been swigging for the last hour as a kind of liquid courage. He wasn’t a shy man by nature and most of the team had seen a little more than necessary of his skin over his time as a trojan. But that was the case for most of them when all’s said and done, the trojans weren’t really ones for the bullshit stereotypes of how a macho spots team were meant to interact.
The rest of the group still hollered their appreciation at his good spirit though as he raced down the last stretch of sand and straight into the dark water waiting for him.
The rest of the losing side didn’t wait long after that to follow suit, whooping and laughing the whole way.
Jeremy resurfaced and made his way back to the shallows just in time to see laila give jean an encouraging gesture, met of course with his signature scowl and shake of his head before he gripped the hem of his shit and yanked it clean over his head, as he balled it up and tosses it off to the side Jeremy couldn’t help be stare at him.
His long torso pulled in the motion of his throw and the different light sources giving sharp relief to his muscles and bones. The scars crisscrossing his skin almost glowing las he moved to push his Trojan issued joggers down around his ankles.

Over the years Jeremy has fine tuned not looking at his teammates. From the first time he’d caught himself watching his friend Elliot walking out of the showers after practice in high school he’d known, there are some lines you just don’t cross.

But bobbing there in the Cali sea, sill just this side of cold from the retained heat of the day, happy and a little buzzed and more than a little wired from the energy of them all, of the bet and the forfeit and his team laughing and larking in the water around him.
He found that he just couldn’t look away as Jean walked calmly down the sand towards him.

It was surreal, it was probably the strangest situation he’d been in all year and there was nothing he could do to make the little voice in the back of his head be heard. No matter how much it was yelling that he should look away.

Jean didn’t meet his eyes. Didn’t look at any of the others in the water or waiting in the beach. He simply walked into the water, holding his hands out flat against the surface when it reached his hips and then turned to look back up the beach as he sank down into it.

Jeremy was mesmerised, completely and utterly lost in the calm beauty of what he’d just seen. It was so unlike anything they had seen from the other man in the year he had been with them and Jeremy didn’t know how to fit this new side of him into the already roiling compilation that was his feelings for him.
The noise of the rest of the trojans filtered slowly back into his awareness and he shook himself slightly before dunking himself down into the water in an attempt to cover his staring.

He pushed away from the others and swam out into the deeper water. Floating on his back as he tried to clear his head, this was Jean he was thinking about. Cold and harsh and angry, volatile in the extreme at times, surely not the kind of person he should be thinking about. And yet here he was again tonight, willingly joining in with the teams antics, calm and mater of fact in a way they so rarely saw.
The raw edges that always seemed so sharp at practice somehow softer here under the moonlight, a glimpse at the quiet, gentler man that all those thorns might just be guarding.

There was something beautiful there that Jeremy found himself thinking he wouldn’t mind getting to discover.
But that line of thought was interrupted by a huge splash of salty water and a loud cackle of laughter from Alvarez.

When they were all back on dry land and bundled up in towels and jumpers Jeremy kept half an eye on Jean as he walked with laila back up the sand.
Deciding, not for the first time, that here was a man who sorely deserved a second chance and, if he was welcome, he would give almost anything to stay by his side.