Chapter Text
Jean does not like to wear clothes.
He is seven years old, naked as the day he was born, sitting beside his best (read: only) friend Marco and playing a video game.
Marco has known Jean since the day he was born. He himself had been two months old and in the same neonatal unit as Jean. Neither of them remember it, but their mothers like to bring it up occasionally when the two boys are running around begging for “Five more minutes!” before one had to leave.
Their mothers had met in the hospital, visiting their respective sons, and immediately bonded over the shared anxiety of having premature babies.
Marco was in the hospital for a total of three months, Jean for two. One together. The one month of separation when they were newborns is the longest they’ve ever been apart.
Jean’s parents were new to the area and still lived in a temporary apartment when Marco’s suggested a house recently for sale in their neighborhood. Before long, Jean and Marco lived exactly three houses down from each other. They saw each other nearly every day, and grew up like twins.
So Marco is prepared, when seven-year-old Jean throws his backpack in a corner and flings off his shirt. Jean’s sleeping over at Marco’s for the weekend while his parents celebrate his mother’s birthday.
“Why do you hate clothes so much?”
“Itchy.” Jean grunts, kicking off his pants and underwear.
“Don’t pee on anything.” Is Marco’s only warning, and even then he’s teasing.
“I won’t!” Jean cries, glaring at Marco. “Only babies pee on stuff!”
“You’re still a baby.”
“Am not!”
“You are compared to me!” Marco’s eight and in another month Jean will be, too, but for now Marco’s older and loving every minute of it. Jean, on the other hand, hates it.
“Shut up!”
“Jean! You said a bad word!” Marco’s under the impression that shut up and stupid are two of the worst words in existence, along with crap, butt, and dick (the last one his mother had actually had to come and talk to their teacher about).
“It’s not a bad word!” Jean shot back, glaring at Marco as he sat his naked butt on the floor. Marco had a rule- if Jean was going to be naked he couldn’t sit on the furniture. Marco settled into his beanbag chair and they began their racing game.
About half an hour later, Marco’s mom came to get them for dinner (mac and cheese). “Marco!” She called as she headed up the stairs, a faint smile on her lips.
Jean and Marco both knew the drill and screamed back, “POLO!” as Jean scrambled to pull on his clothes. Marco’s mom was essentially a second mom to him, and as such she was fully capable of putting Jean in Solitary Confinement (time-out) and had done so in the past. Jean’s mom was the same with Marco, although the young boy with freckles never caused her as much grief as her own strong-willed, self-proclaimed “wild child”.
She poked her head in. “Dinner’s ready! And tonight you guys are going to get to see something pretty spectacular!” She winked and left the room.
Jean and Marco exchanged a Look before following her, shrugging their shoulders. Each got a plate of cheesy noodles and went to the table, as was custom in both households.
“Boys, tonight we’re gonna eat in the den!” Marco’s mom grinned. “Don’t tell your father, Marco!” She giggled, and the boys giggled with her. Jean liked Marco’s mom, she could be so silly, like a kid. He liked his own mom, too. She smelled nice and read him stories with different voices for each character.
He was snapped from his musings by Marco, who looked at his mom and asked the important question. “Is this where we see the spec-tac-ular thing?” He sounded out the word carefully, and his mom nodded and smiled mysteriously.
“Come on!” She led them to the den, and to the TV trays she’d set up previously. Each boy sat down and looked around, excited.
Marco’s mom flipped on the tv and turned to a station neither Marco or Jean regularly watched. Some boring old people (read: adults) were talking about something boring (read: not cartoons).
“Wha iz thish?” Jean asked through a mouthful of macaroni, swallowing guiltily at an admonishing glance from Marco’s mom. “Sorry, Mrs. Marcy. What is this?”
“This, boys, is……the Winter Olympic Games!” She beamed at the two, and Marco felt himself smile in response. He looked at Jean.
“We talked about this in school, remember?! This is where those people from all the countries come and play sports with each other!”
Jeans eyes widened in realization. “Oh, yeah! They skate and ski and play hockey and stuff! Cool! I’ve never seen it before!”
Marco’s mom, Marcy, laughed. “You remember the summer games from two years ago? You boys were six.”
They both frowned and tried to think.
“People…flipped around?” Jean tried.
“There was….swimming?” Marco questioned.
She laughed again. “I bet you don’t remember the last Winter Olympics at all, then. You were four and three. They do a lot more than ski and skate and play hockey and stuff.”
Jean’s eyes widened more. “What else do they do?” He breathed, Marco nodding his head and hanging on every word his mother said.
“There’s curling, and different types of skiing and ice skating, bobsledding and snowboarding, and tonight they’re showing luge!”
“What’s that?” Marco asked, Jean this time nodding along to Marco’s words.
“It’s where people get into a really fancy sled and go realllllly fast down a track! It’s actually pretty dangerous. Look, they’re showing it now!”
The next few hours had the boys routed to their seats as they watched the luge section of the Olympics. Around 10, Marcy sent them up to bed.
Marco pulled out the trundle from under his bed as Jean chattered on about the Olympics.
“I’m totally gonna go and be the best Olympian EVER! Did you SEE how fast that guy was going?!?!?!?!” He was nearly crying with excitement.
“Shhhhh, don’t be so loud or my mom’ll make us sleep in separate rooms.” Marco warned, only subduing Jean a little bit.
“Don’t you want to do it, too?” Jean questioned, turning to Marco.
He shrugged. “I mean, it was cool, but I’d rather do a team sport.”
“Team sport? Like hockey? No way!” Jean shook his head violently. “I could never do that.”
“I know, dope. That’s why I’m not you.” Marco threw a pillow at Jean, hitting the back of his head. Jean glared.
“But if you did a team sport without me I’d never see you.” He huffed, sitting on the trundle and scowling.
“Then you’d have to do it with me.”
“But everyone else is so annoying! I don’t want to do it with them!” He groaned, flopping back with his arm over his face. “I’d just want to do it with you!”
“Well, I don’t know about any two-person sports.” Marco pointed out.
“Why don’t we go ask your mom? She knows a lot about it.” Jean said, perking up instantly.
“We’re supposed to be in bed…”
“It’s only been like, ten minutes, come on, baby!” Jean teased.
“You’re the baby, who’s still seven?” Marco countered, ducking as Jean hurled the pillow back at him.
The boys raced back downstairs, and Marcy looked up from the dishes. “I thought I sent you two to bed!” She said, raising an eyebrow.
“Just one question, Mrs. Marcy!” Jean said.
“Sorry, mom!” Marco sounded at the same time.
“What is it?” She sighed theatrically and wiped her hands on her pants.
“Are there any Winter Olympic sports where the teams are two people?” Jean asked, looking up at her with large, amber eyes. Marco stared at her with equally large eyes.
She nodded. “There’s pairs ice skating, and ice dancing, and the bobsled, or bobsleigh.”
They stared at her.
“Both the ice skating and dancing are just ice skaters who skate together.” She explained. “Bobsledding uses teams of either two or four men who use a sled to make timed runs down ice tracks.” Seeing the ideas forming in her son’s mind, she added, “Ice skating and dancing pairs are a man and a woman, while the bobsledding pairs are usually divided into men and women’s events.”
Jean grabbed Marco’s hand and yanked him back up the stairs. “THANK YOU!” He shouted, closing the door and smiling a maniac smile Marco knew all too well.
“Jean-“
“Marco Bodt!” Jean snapped, throwing off his shirt and skiving off his pants, leaving on his underwear because Marco drew the line at Jean being naked in his trundle bed.
“I have had an idea!” He went over and threw open the window, despite the cold February air.
Marco smiled, giddy despite himself. Jean’s enthusiasm was contagious. He decided to play along. “What, pray tell, could that be?”
Jean clenched one hand in a fist against his chest, and flung the other dramatically out the window to the night sky. “We will be!” He turned and, annoyed, grabbed Marco, dragged him to the window, before striking his pose again. “The GREATEST bobsledding team in the HISTORY of the WORLD!!!!”
Marco smiled and laughed, before tugging Jean away from the window and closing it. “Yeah, yeah. You’re gonna get sick doing things like that, you know.”
Jean was hurt. “Marco!” He whined, collapsing back on the trundle bed and hanging his head in his hands. “You totally ruined the moment, dude!”
“Sorry, sorry. Jean, I think it would be really fun to be on a bobsledding team with you, ok?” Marco sat next to his friend.
Jean peered out from between his fingers and sniffed. “You mean it?”
“Of course I do!” Marco stuck out his tongue, and fell backwards when Jean tackled him.
“PERFECT!”
“JEAN!!!!”
“BOYS! LIGHTS OUT! NOW!”
“……yes ma’am!”
About eleven years later, the young men collapse onto Jean’s bed after a day of running outside. They need to be at top physical condition, and that means hours in the sun.
Jean’s tall now, Marco’s taller. Jean sports an undercut and an earring, and it’s hard to tell the difference between Marco’s tan and his freckles.
Jean peels his shirt off and throws it in the corner, his pants quickly following. Many things have changed in the past decade, Marco muses, draining a bottle of water and kicking off his tennis shoes. But one thing certainly has not changes, and Marco suspects it never will.
Jean still does not like to wear clothes.