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“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light
I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.”
– Sarah Williams, The Old Astronomer to his Pupil
. . .
Jean walks into his room, backpack slung over one shoulder, and finds Jeremy stood precariously atop a rolling desk chair.
“You are going to fall and break your leg,” Jean says, dropping his backpack onto the bed.
Jeremy startles, and the chair shifts dangerously beneath him. He twists to look over his shoulder at Jean, forehead pinched with what Jean can now recognize as exaggerated outrage. It’s easy enough to distinguish from genuine outrage; Jeremy looks just as likely to break down into helpless laughter as he is to chastise Jean for startling him. “Only if you insist on sneaking up on me.”
“I did not sneak. You are just imperceptive.” Then, ignoring Jeremy’s noise of protest: “What are you doing that is so important you would risk injuring yourself?”
Jeremy’s expression morphs into that sunshine smile that does things to Jean’s chest he has long decided not to acknowledge. “Putting up some new decorations!” He gestures towards the ceiling, wobbles, and catches himself with two hands flat on the wall just before gravity makes itself known to him. The grin he shoots Jean is not as sheepish as it should be.
Jean raises an eyebrow.
“All right, all right.” Jeremy clambers down from the chair and pushes it back into the corner where it lives. “But it’s totally worth it, promise. Here, look.”
Jeremy kneels by the power strip at the base of Jean’s bed and picks up the end of a cord that hadn’t been there when Jean left that morning. He manages to wriggle it into the last open outlet on the strip, then makes a satisfied noise and stands.
The afternoon sun is so bright, Jean almost doesn’t notice the change. Strung along the tops of the walls, curling around the circumference of the room, is a string of lights. They’re like little pinpricks of gold against the whitewash of the walls, similar to—but not quite—what Cat and Laila have hanging in the living room.
“Well?” Jeremy prompts after a moment. “What do you think?”
Jean studies Jeremy. He has no strong feelings on them one way or another, but he can tell that Jeremy likes them from the way his eyes shine.
“Frivolous,” he says. Jeremy’s smile only widens. Jean can’t look at it for long before his stomach starts to squirm in ways that are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. He looks out the window instead. “Are we going to run before practice, or do you plan on further endangering yourself for the sake of interior design?”
“I like it when you get snippy,” Jeremy says, clearly amused. “Let me get changed; I’ll meet you by the door.”
. . .
Jeremy woke in the middle of the night.
For a few groggy moments, he didn’t know what had woken him. The room was dark; the night was quiet. There was the distant sound of cars, a plane overhead, but nothing Jeremy wasn’t used to. After all, the city never truly sleeps.
Then, there was a sound from across the room—a shuddering, choked breath that sounded as if it wanted to be a sob but wasn’t allowed—and Jeremy froze mid-stretch.
Jean.
Jeremy hesitated, trying to determine if inserting himself into the situation would be helpful or harmful. Another strangled noise—like someone had wrapped their hands around Jean’s neck and squeezed—made up Jeremy’s mind for him. “Jean?” he whispered.
The room went very still. Jeremy shifted, turning to face Jean’s bed. It was too dark to make anything out clearly, but the shape under the blankets was so still it may as well have been a statue. “Are you all right?” Jeremy said after a few long moments of silence.
The quiet stretched on. Outside, a distant siren wailed, growing quieter and quieter until it faded completely. Then, Jean said, so softly that Jeremy could hardly make out the words, “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“I’m not,” Jeremy said. “And that’s not an answer. Tell me what’s wrong?”
He said it gently. He’d learned some time ago that the best way to get honesty out of Jean was to push—to pressure him until the words came tumbling out like water bursting free through a crack in a dam. He was guarded and evasive, but it took very little to get beneath his armor and peel it away piece by piece. Certain lies were steadfast, and Jeremy knew that chipping at those would get him nowhere, but honesty seemed to take Jean by surprise more often than not.
It always made Jeremy feel a little bit bad. Like he was intentionally sticking out his foot for Jean to trip on. He was trying to let Jean come to him more, in his own time, even if it meant swallowing his own feelings about something Jean did or said. As long as Jean knew he was there, ready to catch him when he fell, then Jeremy could be patient. Even if it was hard sometimes.
Jean’s silence lingered, long enough that Jeremy propped himself up on an elbow to check if Jean had fallen asleep. The glow of the city outside was dim, but it was just enough to see the whites of Jean’s eyes as he stared steadfastly up at the ceiling. When it became clear that Jean wasn’t going to speak without further prompting, Jeremy said, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But I want to help, if you’ll let me.”
Jean was silent for a moment longer. Then, he shook his head. “There is nothing you can do.”
“I can’t stop you from having nightmares,” Jeremy conceded. “But once you’re awake. Is there anything that can help…” Jeremy chewed on his words. “Remind you where you are?”
Jean turned his head to look at Jeremy. The room was dark, but Jeremy still felt pinned, as he often did, by steel gray. “You are here,” Jean said. “Many times, that is enough.”
Jeremy was glad for the darkness; it hid his flush. “And when it’s not?”
“I know that this is not the Nest.” Jean sounded like he was trying to convince himself of the fact. “But it is… more difficult at night. The dark is…”
Jean trailed off. He turned his head back to face the ceiling. Jeremy waited for him to continue, but after a long moment of silence, Jean simply said, “It doesn’t matter. It is late; we should get some rest.”
Jeremy opened his mouth, then closed it again. “All right,” he said. “Good night, Jean.”
Jean hummed and then was quiet. Jeremy stared at him for a moment more, then rolled over to face the wall, eyes tracing the near-invisible patterns in the paint.
The dark is…
Jeremy closed his eyes and exhaled. Right. That, perhaps, was something he could do something about.
. . .
Jean leaves the lights unplugged.
It’s the beginning of the fall semester, so Jeremy is living with his family during the weekdays. Jean feels the absence of another body in the room keenly, but if he piles the sheets on the empty bed just right, he can almost pretend in the depths of the night that the shadowed lump is Jeremy.
The silence breaks the illusion, of course. Jeremy snores like he’s trying to win a competition; the quiet that has replaced it is thick and oppressive, weighing Jean down into the mattress. Sometimes it feels like wandering hands and hot lips and sharp teeth, and Jean wraps a hand around his neck and digs his fingernails in until he remembers how to breathe.
The darkness only feeds the nightmares, allowing them to linger long after Jean has ripped himself from sleep. The California sun rises early though, even in September, and on the worst nights, Jean will lie still and awake until he sees the first hints of it brightening the sky. It doesn’t fix anything, but it reminds him, at least, that there is a world outside his window, and he is allowed to be in it.
He forgets that the string lights are there. There are so many things cluttered around the house, and Jeremy has left a miniature explosion of knickknacks and personal effects on his side of the room, so Jean’s mind categorizes the lights as Jeremy’s things and he doesn’t touch them. They blend neatly into the background until the next weekend, when Jeremy says, “So, do you like the lights?”
He’s in the middle of digging through his overnight bag. The first thing he’d done after dropping his bag onto the ground was crouch down and plug in the string of lights. Jean doesn’t quite understand; they don’t offer significantly more light than the ones embedded in their ceiling, and the sun outside is still bright. It seems unnecessary.
He tells Jeremy this, and Jeremy glances over his shoulder at him. “I suppose that’s true. But they look nice, right?”
Jean hadn’t really considered the aesthetic appeal. He doesn’t particularly feel inclined to do so now, either. He hums noncommittally.
Jeremy hesitates. It’s only for a moment, but Jean is familiar enough with him now to recognize it. “You can also use them at night,” Jeremy says, turning back to face his bag. “If you’d like.”
He sounds oddly serious about it. It’s because of that that Jean doesn’t immediately dismiss the idea as ridiculous, even though it is. He tries to decide how to properly convey this to Jeremy and eventually settles on, “You are meant to turn the lights off when you sleep.”
Jeremy huffs. “Yes, but these are different. It’s like… it’s like a nightlight, sort of.”
Jean wrinkles his nose. “I am not a child. I am not scared of the dark.”
It feels like a lie, but if Jeremy thinks so, he doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he shrugs and says, “I’m not either, but I still sleep with a salt lamp on.”
Jean frowns. “A… salt lamp.”
Jeremy, apparently finished with his bag, turns around and gives Jean a bright grin that outshines the lights several times over. “Yeah! It’s like, a big lump of pink salt that’s been hollowed out on the inside to fit a light bulb. Laila got it for me for Christmas one year; it’s supposed to have health benefits or something, I don’t know. The light is a lot more orange than these are, and I turn it down to the lowest setting before I go to sleep so it’s not very bright. If you think you’d like that better, I can bring it here for you to use.”
The thought of taking something that Jeremy was gifted makes nausea curl in Jean’s stomach. “No,” he says quickly, before Jeremy can offer to do something even more horrifying like buy him one. “These will suffice.”
Jeremy, impossibly, brightens further. “So you’ll try them?”
The fact that Jean cannot say no when Jeremy looks at him like that is an unforgivable weakness that he is still attempting to cut out of him. “I will try them,” Jean concedes. He holds up a finger. “For one night.”
Jeremy chews the inside of his cheek, then nods. “Okay. One night.”
Jean is spared from responding by the sound of the front door opening and Cat’s sing-song call of, We’re home! Make yourselves decent. “I will help Cat and Laila with the groceries,” he says, seizing the out with both hands.
Jeremy nods again. “All right. Oh—make sure they remembered to get the cake mix; we need it for Xavier’s birthday party this week.”
“Perhaps they exercised good judgment and left it at the store.”
“Hey, I’ll totally volunteer to eat your cupcake if you don’t want it.”
Jean’s lip curls in disgust. He turns and leaves the room, chased out by the sound of Jeremy’s laughter. It only feels a little bit like he’s fleeing.
. . .
“What do you think—warm white or natural light?”
Laila’s sigh was tinny over the phone speakers. “While I wholeheartedly support your endeavor to do something nice for Jean, I question how useful I can be to you when I can’t even see what you’re looking at.”
Jeremy huffed. “Well, what do you and Cat have in the living room?”
“I don’t remember—we got them, like, two years ago.”
“I feel like they’re warm white, but I also didn’t know there were six different kinds of white, so now I’m doubting myself.”
“Just get whatever you think will look best. Something that—I don’t know, reminds him of sunlight.”
“Which is… natural light?”
“You’re overthinking this.”
“I just—” Jeremy sighed, propping a hand on his hip as he surveyed the wall of boxes in front of him. “I want to get this right.”
Laila’s voice softened. “I know you do. Is it really that hard to pick a color?”
“Agonizing. I haven’t even gotten to the style of light string yet.”
“Just get warm white fairy lights—the kind that look like little bumps on the wire. Those should be dim enough to keep on while he’s sleeping.”
Jeremy spent thirty or so seconds scanning the shelves before finally locating the right box immediately in front of his face. He palmed it, double-checked the specs, and then exhaled with relief. “I found them.”
“Good.” There was a shuffling sound in the background, faint voices that Jeremy couldn't quite make out. “Do you really think they’ll help?”
Jeremy shrugged, even though he knew Laila couldn’t see him. “I don’t know. It seems like… like it might help remind him where he is? And I can’t be there every night anymore to help.” Jeremy started walking to the front of the store to check out. Quieter, he said, “I worry… I don’t know. That something will happen and I won’t be there to stop it? So maybe… maybe these are better than nothing.”
“Yeah,” Laila said, in a tone of voice that Jeremy knew meant she understood. That she worried too.
Jeremy was approaching the registers. “I’ll see you in a bit,” he said. “Thanks a million, Laila. I owe you one.” He paused, considering. “Actually—I’ll grab boba on the way home. Do you want your usual?”
“You are a god amongst men. Yes, please. I’ll see you soon.”
. . .
Jean wakes with his breath caught in his throat and his heartbeat racing in his palm where it’s clamped against his Adam’s apple.
The remnants of the nightmare crowd in around him, heavy and cloying. He remembers them in flashes. A hand pressed between his shoulder blades. A knee between his thighs. Teeth in the hollow of his neck. His face is pressed into a pillow, and it is dark and it is cold and it is suffocating.
He can’t breathe.
Jean’s fingernails dig into the soft flesh of his throat, as if trying to rip it open. The sting of it clears away the lingering visions of the nightmare long enough for him to see the place he’s awoken in.
The room is bathed in light. It’s soft and yellow, brightening to pinpricks of white along the border between the wall and ceiling where the string of fairy lights sits. Jean is staring up at the ceiling—not face down, he’s lying on his back. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the posters and photographs stuck to the wall above Jeremy’s bed, softly illuminated by the glow. The posters are bright and loud and the photographs are smiling and happy, filled with memories that Jeremy has been chattering about during their morning run cooldowns.
Jean breathes in—the first proper breath he’s taken since he’d woken, more than just a shallow gasp for air—and the weight crushing his chest slowly begins to unfurl.
He is in California. He must be. He knows he is. The Nest had never known a light as gentle as this.
It’s a few minutes more before Jean drops his hand from his neck. He doesn’t think he’s broken the skin this time, but he can feel the sting of the deep grooves his fingernails have left. He takes another deep breath. Exhales.
Then, he glances over at Jeremy.
He’s still asleep, sprawled beneath the covers like a starfish. One foot dangles off the edge of the bed, and his hair is a shock of yellow-white against his bright red pillowcase. His head is twisted toward Jean, mouth hanging slightly open. In his sleep, he looks impossibly young.
He would probably tell Jean the same thing. You were so young, Jean. You were so young.
Jean feels phantom hands grasping his hips, and he turns again to look at the lights, staring at them unblinkingly until his eyes water. The sensation bleeds away until it is once again Jean, and only Jean, in his bed.
The clock reads 2:37. Jean thinks about sunrise in a few hours, the anticipation of the first few rays of sunlight peeking through the gaps between the houses. He thinks about Jeremy, fast asleep on the other side of the room. He looks at the fairy lights, pinned along the ceiling by careful, tanned hands.
When Jean closes his eyes, he can still see the light bleeding through his eyelids. He does not think he will fall asleep again, even knowing that he—for the moment, however briefly—is safe.
His alarm, then, surprises him. He opens his eyes to pale sunlight, not understanding at first. Then, Jeremy grumbles something inarticulate from across the room, and reality slams into Jean full force.
It’s morning. He fell back asleep. And he did not dream.
Jean raises a hand halfway to his throat. Hesitates. Then, instead, he reaches over and turns off his alarm.
Jeremy grumbles again, then cracks open an eye to look at Jean. “G’morning,” he says, voice rough with sleep. Jean feels heat rising to his cheeks as the sound of it, and he clenches his jaw and viciously wills it away. That is not appropriate. “Are we—?” His face splits into a yawn, cutting his sentence neatly in two. “Gosh, it’s early for a Saturday,” he says, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “Are we going for a run?”
There is no morning practice because of last night’s game, so Jean nods.
Jeremy yawns again, then sits up. He scrubs a hand across his eyes, and Jean has to look away for a moment to collect himself.
When he looks back, he sees Jeremy staring up at the fairy lights.
“So,” Jeremy says. “One night. What’s the verdict?”
It’s too difficult to talk about his nightmares in the light of day. Sometimes, when he accidentally wakes Jeremy, a bit will slip out without his permission. Please don’t. Leave me alone. I don’t want to. More often, though, Jean simply freezes, unable to say anything as Jeremy talks him down quietly and carefully over the distance between their two beds. Now, in the early morning, Jean fears that naming the monsters that stalk the night will allow them to overcome him completely.
He pushes the nightmares to the back of his mind, into a box that does not feel so secure as it once did, and sits up. “They are… adequate,” he says. I like them, he does not say. It feels too vulnerable to admit that they made him feel safe. That each little light bulb reminded him of a miniature California sun, turning bleach blonde hair into shimmering gold.
Jeremy’s face cracks into a wide smile, as if Jean had enthusiastically sung their praises. “I’m glad,” he says, achingly sincere. “You don’t have to use them in the future if you don’t want to, obviously, but I’m glad you gave them a try, even if it was just for one night.”
Jean wonders if he can leave them plugged in indefinitely, or if they will break. He considers asking Jeremy, then thinks better of it. Perhaps Cat will know.
Jean struggles for a response that will not give his true feelings away. Failing that, he simply nods.
Jeremy’s smile softens into something that makes Jean’s chest ache, and he forces himself to look away. “We should prepare for our run,” he says awkwardly, pushing back the bed sheets and standing.
“All right,” Jeremy says. Jean can hear that stupid soft smile in his voice. It’s infuriating.
Jean dresses quickly. By the time he and Jeremy leave the room, the smile has dimmed into something more manageable but no less damnable. Jean needs to tighten his grip, or he’s sure to fall.
As he turns to shut the door behind him, his eyes linger on the fairy lights. He thinks about Jeremy stringing them up, smiling that same sunshine smile, and saying, What do you think? His heartbeat takes residence in his throat, thrumming hummingbird fast.
“Is everything okay?” Jeremy says from a bit further down the hallway, voice hushed to avoid waking Cat and Laila. “You look a bit tense.”
Jean swallows his pulse back down where it belongs and shuts the door. “Fine,” he says curtly. “Let’s go.”
Jeremy’s hair, when they step outside, lights up gold in the budding sunrise. And when Jean wakes that night, gasping for air and lost in the haze of black and sweat and blood, the gold of the fairy lights is there to help guide him home.