clementines. 🍂 a jean kirstein collection

a safe pair of hands.

✧˚ · .Hi! I saw your recent post about requesting for Jean since his birthday's coming up. 💖

One of the main traits of Jean is his self-doubt: always feeling like he's not good enough for something/someone; always feeling like a second choice. Could you possibly do a hurt-comfort one where Jean avoids the reader after hearing a comment from someone (either in a joking or serious manner) that the reader's too good for him/reader doesn't deserve him/anything really that makes him kind of doubt whether he is actually good enough for the reader? Then reader is puzzled about why he's been avoiding them, and when Jean opens up why, reader comforts and reassures him that he would always be more than enough for them.

I just want to hug and love this man sm 💖

warnings : talks about not being enough

a/n : hi!!!! i am so so so sorry this took so long to write :') i was going to finish this a while ago, but writer's block hit me like a truck and i didn't wanna put out something i wasn't proud of/wrote just to get it out. that being said, i hope this is what you wanted! thank you for requesting and again I'm so sorry it took so long :') 

- 💌-

"they could do so much better, like, what do they even see in him?"

"i know right, they're so out of jean's league."

the library wasn't much of a place to talk, but some people went there to do so anyway, instead of using it for it's intended purpose. jean, like most people, liked to study in the library. the afternoons could get too hot to study in the common outdoor area with benches and lush green grass during the summers, and the library was a nice place with more than enough sunlight, while also being air conditioned.

jean was currently waiting for you to arrive in the library as well, to study for your upcoming midterms together, when he overheard the conversation happening a couple desks over. his day was already going bad, but now it had gotten much, much worse.

he usually wouldn't allow strangers' opinions get to him at all. jean was confident, overly so, but not when someone was pointing out loud how he had always felt. jean knew he had a track record of being...not the best person. he had been trying to tone it down, be kinder to strangers instead of soaking in his own rash decisions and impulsive thoughts. sure, he wasn't the best person ever like you, but he would agree he wasn't the worst, either. he thought he was just being honest, brutally so, not sparing people's feelings when he spoke to them about nothing but the truth, even if they were strangers. he took the harsh role of a leader in group projects, shooting people's ideas down without remorse.

he would admit he changed a bit when he met you and Marco.

Marco entered his life gently, sitting next to him and starting up conversations, easing into a close friendship with jean, along with you. but unlike Marco, you told him where and when he was in the wrong, made him realize that there would be nothing wrong in being nicer to people, rather than scoffing at them.

he didn't even realize when your company started affected him so much. your actions, the ones he adored so much, started to shape him, too. you told him, in your own frustrations, that his real self, the self he usually kept hidden from people, was beautiful. and he started to believe it.

but it felt like a crushing weight as he realized all his growth, all the things he had been doing, were going unnoticed. he was still seen as the over-confident asshole that told people off for bothering him and grunting instead of thanking people.