suicidal thoughts, self harm, substance abuse, toxic partnerships, toxic masculinity, and police.

---

Before he’d even been hired, Jean was stupid enough to let himself be charmed by Elias. Not enough to fuck up an entire investigation, but enough to think too much about him as a person and not some aspect of his job. That was already too much.

“What do you make of him?” Harry - on sobriety attempt number Who Fucking Knows, day six - asked him, just out of earshot of the institute building as if it mattered how close or far they were to it. Jean had always been paranoid, but he’d taken to picking at his own skin more frequently to try and ease the feeling that something had burrowed under it. He had developed another stomach ulcer from the anxiety brought on by the feeling that he was constantly being stared down, and still he poured black coffee from a flask into the cup and downed it in one. “Bouchard, I mean.”

Jean had developed another stomach ulcer from the anxiety brought on by the feeling that he was constantly being stared down, and still he poured black coffee from a flask into the cup and downed it in one. “Shady cunt,” he spat, and resisted looking over his shoulder, choosing instead to pour another cup and hand it to Harry for the comfort of muscle memory. Thanks, babe, the other man had muttered. “Wouldn’t touch him with a fucking bargepole.”

Harry just hummed with that far-off look, rolled the flask lid back and forth between his thumb and forefinger idly, then hummed again with a frown. “You ever wonder if he might be some kind of red herring? Maybe he’s just another puppet who’s really good at acting.”

“Doesn’t change the fact he’s clearly-” Jean nodded aggressively at the building, “-just look at him! He’s fucking done something!”

Harry laughed at that, which had a calming effect on Jean for the moment. He handed over the lid, “Can’t arrest a guy for looking shifty, son,” he draped his arm over Jean’s shoulder, “which is good news for both of us, considering.”

Jean met his eyes - lucid, thankfully, a sign that he was still on the wagon - and watched them flick to the other side of the street. He moved his own to look too, and sure enough, they were the focus of at least three people who were trying desperately to not look like they were staring. Somehow their actual, visible staring was less horrifying than staring he couldn’t prove was happening. He lifted his hand to smooth down his beard and cover a smile. “I don’t think they like us.”

“For being cops, or-?” Harry kept his voice low, conspiratorial.

“Are you kidding? No- fuck no, look at them, they love cops.” Jean spoke from the side of his mouth in a stage whisper, “because they can afford to bribe us.”

Another laugh from Harry, then a small ‘ah!’ in understanding. “They can smell the broke on us,” he added, and it was Jean’s turn to laugh as he recapped the flask and put it back into his inner coat pocket. He stood up straight and put a hand to his chest delicately with a flustered huff.

“Th-those rapscallions- I can see it from here, they use prepayment meters for their energy!” He forced an exaggerated version of what he’d consider a rich person’s accent and let his voice waver in fear, not even trying to keep their previous low volume – what would these guys do? Call the fucking cops? “they– they drink b-bovril to keep warm to cut costs, I’ll bet!”

Harry was quick to join the bit with his own exaggerations, “I do believe I saw their ilk at a Coinstar the week before payday! Probably spent everything he had on drugs and alcohol-” he cut himself off, held up a finger, and broke character entirely, “well, to be fair…”

“To be fully fucking fair.” Jean agreed, hesitant to push that part of the joke further, but not entirely uncomfortable with it while Harry was, at least for now, able to joke about it at all. “Okay, we probably should go,” He let his posture drop again, “or they won’t want to bribe us in future, when we investigate them for tax fraud.”

A few minutes down the road, well out of earshot now and in an area more suited to their salary bracket, Harry asked, “so, yes or no on the idea that Bouchard is the wrong guy? I think it’s something!”

“It’s something. It just feels… this motherfucker has us playing the worst game of 4D chess on the planet, is what I think, and keeping the heat off of him-“

“Means you don’t get to have him hit on you?” Harry asked with an annoying elbow jab to the ribs. Jean levelled him with a ‘come on now’ look, which was met with a similar look with slightly different intent.

“Means we might be doing our fucking job badly. Means we might fuck this up.”

“But - and I say this as someone who has thought about it -“ Harry held up a hand to cut off any protest, “you have thought about it.”

This son of a bitch. Nice to know sobriety didn’t stop his terminal cumbrain. “I’ve also thought about smashing your face through a car windshield. What’s your point?”

“That you’d do it if there weren’t any consequences.”

“I think you should shut the fuck up. There’s no consequences to that except me not kicking the fuck out of you, so maybe you should do it.”

(That was, as they both knew, Jean’s way of saying, you’re right, but I don’t want to talk about it for that reason.)

/

Jean made it to when he collapsed into his unmade bed before he couldn’t ignore the frustrating itch between his thighs any longer. With one hand between them and another covering his mouth, he went through the motions of getting off for the sake of clearing his head; he always swallowed and muffled any of his sounds when he jerked off, because one didn’t spend years couch surfing between friends and strangers alike completely celibate.

This time, though, the act simply came with a deep feeling of shame- it was stupid to think keeping quiet would help, or erase the images in his mind that made him twitch in his own hand, but it was all he had.

He worked his cock with little more than soft gasps and sighs, switching from covering his mouth to twisting his fingers into the fabric of his bedsheets to channel some of his need without vocalising it- but he wanted to vocalise it; pulling on fabric and biting his lip wasn’t enough when in his mind, a familiar set of golden eyes stared up at him while their owner’s smooth tongue swirled around his cock in between harsh sucks and sweeping laps-

He came hard, and with a soft but rough moan that he couldn’t quite bite back. He didn’t remember the last time he was able to actually get himself off with just his own hand, let alone when it had been good enough to make his ears ring loud enough to drown out any other sound.

With all of the dopamine successfully wrung out of himself, he slumped back into the mattress and lay there until his breathing evened out and he could think of anything but his guilty need to vomit. The only reason he got up at all was the sudden spike in paranoia that someone saw. He sat bolt upright, switched on the bedside lamp, and stared hard along the edges and corners of the room- just as always, nothing had changed, but just as always, that didn’t ease him any.

He spent the rest of the night skipping out on sleep in favour of scraping his apartment for some kind of evidence of surveillance, and when he still came back empty-handed, he made himself throw up as a reward for being the worst person alive anyway.


//


Jean didn’t pride himself on his composure. It was never something he put his mind to; he just wasn’t an expressive person because he wasn’t an emotional person. There was never any emotion strong enough to push through what others called his resting bitch face. It was hard to pinpoint why. He just chalked it up to the whole depression thing, and the cocktail of medication he had to dope himself up on each day to avoid wanting to string himself up like a set of Christmas lights.

Almost eight years without doing just that. A medical anomaly. He remembered it that time, that it wasn’t a marvel, it was an anomaly, which was a doctor’s polite way of saying they were sick of trying to fix him and he should take the fucking hint.

Well, joke’s on them: he felt the same, and the only thing keeping him chugging along was stubbornness and stubbornness alone.

“You’re distracted today,” the smooth drawl made his skin crawl- out of irritation, that is, because he didn’t want to be acknowledged right now. Probably why the fucker was doing it. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing.” Jean replied, and it was only a half lie. Nothing as in, nothing new, nothing outside of the ordinary self-loathing, nothing except the fog of that medication he mentioned earlier. Nothing.

The hum he received in response was one he learned meant I don’t like that answer, but I’m outwardly a very polite person, and so I’ll just pretend otherwise. Jean didn’t need to look up to see the worst fake smile attempt he’d ever laid his fucking eyes on. He’d considered a new bit recently specifically in response: learn graphic design, make a flyer for acting classes, hand it over, and say, this might interest you!

His own lips tugged at the corner in the barest sign of amusement at his own idea. That’s one Harry would have found funny.

The thought made him look back down at his notebook. It was a slow day, through the fog, and he had nothing much else to do except scribble whatever came to mind. He twirled his pen in his fingers and added the finishing touches to his latest masterpiece:

  you’re the muscle   i cut from the bone and still the bone   remembers,

He had a penchant for pretentious drivel, you see, and that meant he sometimes scrawled down whatever thought clung to his mind like tar to lungs. If he’d been a more gifted person, perhaps a lucky person – if he’d been a better person, he’d have gone to art school or something, to make use of the one thing he considered himself halfway sort of maybe decent at.

  still it wants (so much, it wants)   the flesh back, the real thing,

He wasn’t a better person, though. He wasn’t even a decent person. He barely even scraped past the bar for being a person, so, instead, he did this shit at work in between glaring at people to make them settle down. Sometimes he got to stand up and glare, or put his hand on someone’s shoulder and glare. Mostly it was sitting and stewing in his own thoughts.

  if only to rail against it, if only   to argue and fight,

He wondered if that was the point.

  if only to miss   a solve-able absence.

Look, he wasn’t stupid, and he knew when someone was a sleazeball. Whether or not he was immune to what made them such, that was another story - a story whose conclusion was almost always absolutely fucking not - but he’d lived and worked amongst enough scumbags in his life to be able to sniff them out easily. Pigs had sensitive noses. Bouchard was good at playing the part, but the stench of scumbaggery came off him in waves to the point of it being nausea-inducing at times. Even at home, Jean felt the scum line the back of his throat — like the shit that stuck around in the last gasp of a sinus infection. He never truly left Bouchard’s side, because Bouchard was happy to let Jean’s lungs fill to the brim with the scum until it felt like he was drowning, because he’d learn to fear the feeling — he’d learn to fear water and what it could do to him. He’d learn to fear Bouchard.

For people like Jean - people whose brain had too many areas of rot to be worth anything - fear was just another kind of obsession.

Everyone in the room currently - Bouchard and Vicquemare, that is - knew this, and knew that the others knew this, and so on. They didn’t even pretend to be stupid about it, but it meant that the stakes were higher, and so everyone had their best poker face working overtime to avoid getting the rug pulled from under them. Jean also had the benefit of knowing that people like him didn’t become lackeys by being intelligent. He could see through Bouchard, but that meant he could see deep enough to the parts that told him he was out of his depth and always would be. Those parts looked like a mirror that had MORON written across the top of it and an arrow pointing downward at Jean’s reflected face, and it was a reflection he couldn’t find himself wanting to argue with.

Maybe ‘moron’ was a little nicer than what he’d have written though.

“Vicquemare,” the voice was a little firmer now, and, unsettlingly, closer. He looked up from his stupid little lamentations and met Bouchard’s stare with his own, “you’re hardly of use to me like this. Give me an idea of what’s going on in that head of yours, at least.”

Jean blinked slowly and turned his head to the side, to stare out the window to the same horizon he wasn’t ever terribly impressed by, but always seemed to look to, like he was hoping this time would be different.

“You’re my employer.” He pointed out simply. “Not my therapist.”

Elias hummed again, but it wasn’t out of irritation this time. It was one of piqued interest. It was the same way a cat tilted its head while it watched a mouse squirm and try to crawl away after half an hour of the cat playing with it. So that’s how it’s going to be, it said, how curious.

Jean was a tricky one. He was simple once you knew how to break through his shell, but it seemed like every day he had a new shell that required a new method to crack. Although sometimes it wasn’t even a day that changed it! How mercurial he was. It would be simple to just roll up his sleeves and go digging around for the answers, but Elias was partial to a challenge every now and then.

He’d dealt with police before, with all their knowledge on interrogations and experience with such things, but Jean had some new and interesting variables in his mix, and so the maze Elias could navigate with all of his eyes closed suddenly had some new walls and turns thrown in. They were simple to figure out, but then Elias would turn a corner too quickly for Jean’s liking and they’d both be back to square one.

For now, it was fun in its novelty. Elias would humour him. He’d lift his paw and let the mouse attempt to scurry to safety, just to see if it scurried anywhere interesting.

There was already one tell he’d picked up: My Employer, Jean had said. Not ‘boss’, but ‘employer’. There wasn’t familiarity there at the moment, so it was possible to come in far too hot even if he was simply coming in lukewarm by any normal standard. The biggest area of rot in Jean’s brain was one that made familiarity feel like a weapon being pointed at him. Being known - that is, being seen, ha! - without his explicit permission made him retreat- just how much he retreated and what triggered it was another one of those fun little variables.

“That’s true,” he tried first, “but consider that, as your employer, I do value employees that are able to keep out of their own heads for more than a few minutes at a time.” Jean’s eyes flicked just the tiniest bit back toward him, then back to the horizon, and back to him again. It would have been easy to just assume he’d continued staring ahead and hadn’t even heard a word, but it was exactly what Elias was looking for. There was an accusation in what he said alongside an extended olive branch.

I care. You’re forcing me to.

Jean wouldn’t take it one way or the other; he’d wrestle with both possibilities in his need to see the silver lining and his need to gouge further wounds into his ego. Even he found himself complicated, though he preferred to call it exhausting. It was that same rot mentioned, that made his emotions into a burden that even he couldn’t stand the weight of.

Fucking hell, if even his boss was tired of him, what good was he to anyone?

“My sincerest apologies. I didn’t realise there was so much to do.” He chose to deadpan as he looked across the room at the completely unchanged scenery, “Where should I begin?” He looked up at Elias with the same suffocating intensity that bore down on most. Elias couldn’t fault people for crumbling under it eventually, though he couldn’t empathise either. He met it with a quirk of an eyebrow to rub salt into a wound he knew Jean prodded and gnawed at too often for it to be anything close to healed - the one that told him he was disappointing someone in some way, even slightly. It took a few seconds for it to sting like it needed to, and Jean looked back to the horizon. “I can multitask. I’ll do what I need to, when I need to. Right now, I don’t need to do fuck all.”

Elias glanced at the half-formed thoughts lining the page of Jean’s notebook, mostly taking the form of loose doodles of a simplified mantis clustered together, with small blocks of text in similarly loose cursive slotted into the spots the mantids didn’t cover. French, mostly - to nobody’s surprise given him using English was clearly out of necessity in the same way one would take foul-tasting medicine - though the spacing was enough of a giveaway even to someone that couldn’t read the language: “Except,” Elias nodded to the notebook, “poetry.”

Jean didn’t look down. Didn’t react at all outside a soft hum of acknowledgement. There was the tiniest air of hostility there — also to nobody’s surprise when he’d spent so long with the police, where tolerance for this sort of thing might be more of a thing. Elias grabbed on to that just to see what came from it, which meant keeping silent until Jean looked up with the slightest hint of a frown to meet Elias’ blank stare to hold it steadily.

“Huh.” He said, at first with the frown, then a slow blink and a slight tug at the corner of his mouth as he looked back out the window. “You didn’t strike me as a philistine.”

If Elias wanted to keep on Jean’s good side for the sake of entertainment, he couldn’t keep pushing this. If this was a good note - and typically, amusement wasn’t always a good note - it would be wise to end on it. He simply said, “Right,” and moved away, relishing in the tiniest loss of tension in Jean’s posture as he did, even more in that which remained.

/

To Jean’s credit, he did know when to wrench his head from his own ass and focus on what was around him.

In the situation where Elias had to interact with anyone that was physically incapable of remaining civil in the face of – ah, maybe they had every right to remain uncivil, really, but the point remains that some people were more hot-headed than others. Elias, for all he appeared, looked like an easy target; he didn’t appear to be the type that had ever had to fight for anything in his life, like he might baulk and panic at the first sign of violence because his words just didn’t serve him well enough this time, maybe even try to squirm away from it by any means necessary. It was understandable. He didn’t try to work against it, because with Jean around, he didn’t need to.

Some were constantly aware of Vicquemare in the room - because of that cold gaze, you see, ever-oppressive - and would try to roll over and do whatever it took to avoid giving him any reason to do more than just stare them down. That was funny on its own. Others had to be reminded, and would settle back down upon hearing the pointed clearing of a smoke-abused throat as a not-so-subtle reminder of his presence.

Then there were those whose anger seemed to trigger some kind of amnesia in them; they’d start off wary of Jean as he perched on his seat, or stood looming in some part of the room, and watched in silence, and despite the stare, his overall silence would soon get drowned out in their growing emotional outbursts. He’d start moving then, circling to some point in the room that seemed to make sense to be in at that exact moment regardless of whether or not he was in their line of sight, and he’d return to looming.

To continue the predator and prey analogy: Elias managed to make people feel like a bigger fish than they really were, and bigger fish never seemed to account for the fact that, even being the biggest fish in the pond, they weren’t at the top of the food chain. Jean’s middle name being Heron wasn’t lost on Elias, when he watched the man wait out tirade after tirade, clearly growing impatient and irritated by the incessant nattering, but waiting for the exact moment that push would come to shove.

The big fish struck fast, but the heron always struck faster, and only when it needed to, exactly how it needed to.

Granted, this heron usually struck in the same way a freight train did and with slightly more dexterity. One second you were lunging at the man not-taunting you, the next, you were swept up in one arm, and the final, you were slammed into the floor by someone you could have sworn had left the room long ago, if he was ever in the room at all.

Sometimes Elias found himself needling people just to watch Jean. It was exhilarating, in a way; the heavy presence, the not-so-gentle warnings, the looming-circling-perching-stalking, and the front row seat to a strong man put all kinds of training and workouts into a fluid movement in order to throw another human around like it was nothing.

It was a simple, carnal pleasure. Elias wasn’t above those.

“And that’s jazz, baby.” Jean said, with a cocky smirk worn intentionally cockier as he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the food he’d merely played with on his way back to his seat. Elias didn’t pretend to get the joke, but it was part of Jean’s charm; in all his stony neuroses, he still managed to toss in the occasional curveball entirely for his own amusement. Professionalism was only as important as the bit allowed it to be.

He watched, with his own vague amusement, as Jean turned on his heel and settled back into his seat with a callous flourish and unexpected airiness you’d miss if you blinked. He rang someone to come collect their living carcass before it tried to restart the conversation. They were done here- they’d been done here since the conversation had even started, but Elias was fond enough of Jean to toss him some enrichment from time to time.

/

It took between then and their guest being escorted out of the room for the storm cloud to return to hang over Jean once more. The difference was a brewing thunder under his skin now, replacing the melancholy with a crackling restlessness from the leftover adrenaline. He could feel eyes on him as he twirled his pen between his fingers and stared hard at an empty page, and he always felt eyes on him when he worked here, but they didn’t help with the feeling that he needed to escape his skin. Somehow a cigarette didn’t feel like it would do much at all.

Stupidly, he didn’t even notice Elias approaching him until he had a lap full of the man, facing him, pushing a stray hair out of his face with his slim hand and catching him off guard completely. Elias was pleased with that result. It was always easy to disarm Jean, under the right circumstances, and here he was, forced to come out with his hands up. There’d been a flash of surprise, and then a smooth haze seemed to settle over him that softened his eyes and made his lids flicker just slightly. It was still tense, restless, but there’s not many places that can be channelled when his focus was entirely on Elias now.

It was a good sign that he hadn’t made any comment on the gross display of workplace misconduct taking place here. Not that he’d know workplace misconduct if it came and- well, sat square in his lap with obvious intent, when the workplace conduct he knew was sexual harassment and the no-homo posturing that followed.

“I don’t think you understand,” Elias purred, and Jean felt himself heat up, “just what it does to me, seeing you be so… brutish.” he smoothed out the crisp fabric of Jean’s shirt collar thoughtfully, making sure to press just slightly along the throat. “You’re really not just a pretty face, hm?”

Jean sighed through his nose, avoided eye contact like it would help, his jaw muscles working visibly to at least seem irritated. God, Elias could have squealed like a fucking schoolgirl over it, how openly bashful a display it was next to his usual micro expressions- was it his birthday?

“Just doing my job, sir.” Jean attempted to deflect. Sir? Yes, it was definitely his birthday. “There weren’t weapons, but you don’t need them when- well, there’s reasons you don’t pick fights with crazy, yes?”

“Yes,” Elias crooned, like he was talking to a talkative pet. That was another thing: the accent? Adorable. Pick fightz wiz creyzee… “main reason being, you’re here to do it for me,” he drew his hand along the sharp line of Jean’s jaw, enjoying the coarseness of his carefully trimmed beard, “and so well, too.”

The small hum of acknowledgement felt precarious for a second— perhaps Elias had overestimated his charms, and he’d just locked himself out of his own plans, or was just about to. He didn’t want to roll up his sleeves and begin on that digging just yet. He wasn’t a quitter like that. But then- ah! The slightest shift of the hips he straddled, which could easily mean physical discomfort, but the soft pink that had begun to colour Jean’s cheeks and his absolute inability to make eye contact…

Elias smiled benignly, holding back the bright and gleeful grin he mentally wore. “Oh, I’m not embarrassing you, am I?” He crooned again, trailed his hands along broad shoulders appreciatively, “I thought you might be used to this sort of thing- looking like you do, being as skilled as you are…” his hands trailed back, up the sides of his neck and stopped when they landed on both those scarred cheeks to cradle a rapidly heating face- just one more thing he wanted to try, just to see if- “And such a good boy.”

Other men might be disappointed by the sudden concentrated effort from their victim to hide any sign of emotion, but that just made this all the more fun. Jean swallowed hard and Elias felt his jaw work under his hands. There was no attempt to pull or push away — there was an allure that kept him here, a vanity on Jean’s part that wrestled with his pitiful self esteem. “Thank you, sir,” Jean deadpanned, impressively level and composed, “you’re far too kind.”

Then Jean dared to make eye contact, and Elias saw it: a reinforced wall that hadn’t been there moments before. Curiouser and curiouser! It didn’t take a genius - or an avatar, really - to figure out what had been going on here; Jean’s (ex-)partner was now completely devoid of any memory of either of them due to some sort of brain injury- tragic, truly, but Elias had been fortunate in his circling of this particular carrion, left in the dust as it was, it just made Jean all the more ready to say yes to an offer to get away from a job where he had to grieve a man who continued to work so closely with him. He’d come to Elias pre-tenderised, pre-seasoned, and ready to make a fine gourmet meal to last as long as Elias needed him to.

It hadn’t been that long since all of this, but it had been long enough. Elias was more than aware of the relationship between the two; the incessant ripping at sutures that they’d just applied to each other, the outright vitriolic obsession that kept them from finally letting go because the bad was always bad, but it always made the good so much better. He’d seen the memories of the good - ones that Jean held on to and retouched often to keep them vivid - and how they went from genuine, clandestine displays of affection made when the loneliness became too much, to a pacifying delusion that things could ever be like that again, if he just hoped enough, just one last time, one final time-

Jean had fucked and been fucked by plenty of people- strangers and romantic partners alike- all of which Elias was more than happy to analyse and think deeply about based on the memories of them he dug out of Jean’s head- but he’d only ever made love to one, and over time those instances became fewer and further between, reserved for when they were at their drunkest and needed to remember what the fuck they were still doing here-

The last time had been a month before the incident, and Jean had been sober enough to register that he was being called by a different name- that different name- he was just a replacement, and maybe he always had been.

Elias could align that with those odd few days Jean had been alone on the job and visibly hung over, unkempt compared to his usual meticulous vanity for the sake of appearing like he had his shit together. In hindsight, it was a lot more alluring than he’d given it credit for.

Now was the perfect opportunity to give it the attention it deserved. With the walls up, he’d tread carefully, but he knew it wouldn’t be too difficult — had anyone shown Mr. Vicquemare any sort of tender affection since then? Doubtful. He bristled if you even looked at him with the intent to be kind to him, because kindness, to him, was a transaction, and he didn’t want to be in debt.

“I’m just as kind as I need to be. Again, I have to ask,” Elias made sure to trail his thumb across the pitted skin across the cheekbone, feather light in a way that made the muscle underneath twitch, ticklish, “is it making you uncomfortable, Vicquemare?”

Another slight shift of the hips underneath him, then Jean shook his head. “No,” he supplied just to make sure- to be certain that the opportunity wasn’t pulled away, “I’m just not used to it. I don’t know what to do with it.”

There wasn’t a sense of shame in that statement. Just a fact. It was obvious to anyone that spent enough time around Jean, that he was an extremely selective person when it came to giving and receiving even the tiniest hint of affection. Even to himself. He saw it as a slippery slope to fondness that he would inevitably cause to rot, by way of being Jean Vicquemare. There wasn’t a fucking cure for that.

“That’s… simply surprising to me, to be completely frank. Someone like you… I suppose I just assumed you heard it so often it had lost all meaning to you! To learn it’s so uncommon…” Elias shook his head with a confused sort of frown. It softened after a moment, and then was replaced with the hint of a smile that could be warm if he wasn’t Elias Bouchard- there wasn’t a cure for that either, “So you’re telling me you don’t often get told how pretty you are?”

Jean stiffened. Another precarious moment, even if he wasn’t yet attempting to escape. His cheeks heated up under Elias’ fingers while his jaw worked too. He grunted noncommittally and kept his gaze downward. This was another one of those masculinity things, most likely.

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, it’s a compliment even for men. Don’t get me wrong, of course, you’re handsome too, but…” Elias began trailing his hands down, lightly scratching his nails over the exposed skin of Jean’s neck - this made Jean’s hips and thighs tense up momentarily, as a reward for his efforts - and further down to rest on his chest where his heart belied his mostly unbothered exterior with all its hammering against his rib cage. “Oh, I don’t know, there’s plenty of words to describe you; pretty just feels right to me. Pretty as in an art piece, the type carved out of marble-“ he shamelessly gripped the pecs beneath his hands that little bit tighter, “sculpted, even.”

Jean didn’t know what to do with himself. The restlessness was still there, growing worse the longer he had this fucking heat in his lap. He felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward in a crooked, embarrassed smile, and brought his own hand up to cover it as he grumbled something even he couldn’t decipher.

His other hand found itself holding on to Elias’ hip, feeling like a gargoyle clutching an angel- because for all he could sit and listen to this, it wouldn’t fix the damage his self esteem had taken over the years.

“And being such a good boy for me, letting me tell you all these things without complaint.”

Jean’s sigh was soft and shuddering as his hips twitched pathetically. He moved his hand to cover his face as much as it could, and Elias chuckled in a way that made the warmth coil tighter in his gut.

“Oh, don’t hide. You’re doing so well,” he purred, and only now did Jean realise his belt was being undone and he didn’t give a shit. He was getting off on this. He didn’t have an excuse outside of the restless energy from before making him impulsive, but that was so fucking weak when he knew he’d felt the same stabs of arousal in all the times he’d had the praise laid on so thick before now. He huffed in amusement, then chuckled himself, almost delirious. He steeled himself, then lowered his hand to meet Elias’ own. Where Jean’s stare was suffocating, Elias’ was sharp — death by a thousand cuts. His grin was sharper. “Very good. Let me see those pretty eyes of yours. Keep them on me.”

He slipped his slender hand down between Jean’s thighs, and felt a little too mortal for a second. Jean didn’t bother to even try and swallow down the rough moan that seemed to claw out of him, and he was— god, he was fucking soaked. It couldn’t be this easy, surely it couldn’t! Elias was hard too, but Jean was maybe two strokes away from coming fully undone.

Elias was almost upset with himself for it. He could have done that without a single touch, if he’d just waited a bit longer. Oh, well. There’d always be a next time, there was no hint of doubt in his mind about that, with the way Jean was carrying on. If he hadn’t seen proof of the man’s promiscuity, he’d be fully ready and willing to believe he was a virgin. It was sweet in that way, how he shuddered as Elias leaned forward to scrape his teeth gently where his nails had trailed earlier.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Fuck,” Jean gasped out and moved his hand to grip Elias’ other hip while he rolled his own forward and gasped when his dick pressed against a warm hand that wasn’t his own.

“Use your words, Vic.” Elias kept his voice level despite himself, choosing to taunt just that bit more. He wanted to see just how much he’d been able to butter the man up, if he’d managed to get him malleable, suggestible- perhaps to beg. Carnal pleasures, and all.

Judging by Jean’s sigh of frustration when he pushed towards a hand that pulled back to avoid touching where he wanted it to, he wouldn’t take long to crack. “Just- fucking touch me,” it came out as a half-whine, needy and wilting, and Elias almost crumbled himself.

“Where?” he asked. It was fun to play innocent, especially when it meant the increasing torment of a man built like Jean; something about dominating masculinity, role reversal, he wasn’t interested in introspection. He just knew it was exciting. He slipped his fingers easily into Jean and committed the shameless moan to memory alongside the feeling of his fingers being squeezed like Jean was trying to break them, and then added on the sight of him tipping his head back to expose his throat while he whimper-sighed to the ceiling. It was almost certainly some sort of tailor-made, bespoke gift specifically for him. He curled his fingers just enough to suggest a more deliberate touch, and rolled his wrist to tease against his g-spot in such an intentionally unsatisfying way. “Here?” He asked.

Jean moaned out a shaky curse to the ceiling and lifted his head to glare at Elias who, yes, was suddenly very aware that he was playing around with a man who could, if he wanted to, kill him with his bare hands, and that he was really only saved by the fact that - for some fucking reason, despite everything - Jean didn’t want to. “You…” Jean ground out, then seemed to give up searching for a way to be understood and instead opted to cuss Elias out in French for the sake of knowing how to cut that extra bit deeper that way. Elias wasn’t sure on the specifics, given the rushed and slurred nature of whatever was said, but he definitely just got called at least three slurs.

“No? Didn’t you ask for this… ?” he rolled his wrist again to emphasise what ‘this’ was. Another shameless moan was his reward while his fingers got squeezed around once more- it really was just so exciting, made even more so by the suddenly painful grip on his right hip and left wrist.

It was hard not to feel slightly breathless when Jean suddenly growled out, “Don’t you fucking tease me,” and used the— comparatively more delicate wrist to guide its similarly elegant hand to press properly into him, with Elias’ palm now settled firmly on Jean’s dick and unable to pull away. It should be offensive, he should be outraged to have Jean hold onto him and roughly rut his hips against his hand while he used him as nothing more than a sex toy- but fuck if he could muster any emotion that his own arousal didn’t spike high enough to drown out with every aching throb. This wouldn’t even be a learning experience, he knew, and he wouldn’t be humbled about his smugness surrounding how close to coming in his pants Jean was with just a few words. He didn’t need to learn shit-all! This was an anomaly. This was an outlier. This was deeply, overwhelmingly, unfairly sexy.

He kept his eyes on Jean, fully aware of his own delirious grin as he watched him concentrate on using his hand to get himself off and nothing more. His brow was furrowed, lips parted, eyes closed, skin flushed- it was only fair that Elias curled his fingers just slightly more, stopping the tease like he’d been— told to. God, it was easy to assume someone so obsessive about running around cleaning up after others and following orders would be simple to melt with just a few words and touches - and it had certainly seemed that it was the case! - but Jean really was just so full of surprises- Elias hoped it wasn’t an outlier for him too.

Just like that, he heard Jean sighing out, right there- god, that’s fucking good- I just need to-

“Such a good boy,” Elias couldn’t help but purr out, and was met with another squeeze around his fingers and sharp moan, “that’s it, Jean, come for me-“

He was suddenly being pulled around like it was nothing again, this time closer to Jean as the man cried out and began to cum hard around and against his hand. He’d definitely have bruises on his wrist and hip. How unfortunate, or whatever. He was far more concerned with Jean’s forehead resting against his shoulder while he continued sighing out a string of curses and whatever nonsense came to mind first. Mostly also curses.

“That’s it, there we go,” he used his free hand to reach up and scratch gently at the short hair on the back of Jean’s neck and felt the pleasant shiver that travelled down his spine and ended in a short jerk of his hips. He continued until Jean grew too sensitive and nudged his hand away far more gently than he’d been handling it earlier. Elias couldn’t resist playing dumb just for a second- he gave one last squeeze to his sensitive dick before removing his hand entirely, just to feel another short jerk in Jean’s hips coupled with a discontent huff. “Too much?” he asked uselessly.

Jean nodded against him, “Yeah, yeah- I just need a second.” he sat back, giving Elias a good look at his flushed face. He looked embarrassed suddenly, avoiding looking directly at Elias while he half-smiled apologetically. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” he gestured vaguely and cleared his throat, “I got carried away.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Elias agreed, and, in a brief moment of honesty, added, “I can’t say I mind. I didn’t take you for someone so… forceful!”

That seemed to embarrass Jean more. “Most don’t.” He smiled just the tiniest bit more and nodded down at his lap, “It’s just sort of assumed.” He continued avoiding eye contact while he seemed to return to his senses. “Usually I come prepared, but… usually not for work.”

Elias hummed in acknowledgement, but didn’t give him much of an opportunity to explain further. He had further work to do. He started by slipping free of Jean’s lap to settle on the floor in front of him, then tugged pointedly at the waistband of his still-open pants. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not done with you, isn’t it?”