clementines. 🍂 a jean kirstein collection

sound//waves

summary ; each sound has its own shape, something tangible for you to feel. jean's shapes are weightless but important, and you find the importance of your own shapes through him. 

warnings ; reader being self-conscious of her voice :') idk what the trope is here. pining idiots who don't realise they're both in the same boat, also brief alcohol consumption.

a/n ; hehe,,, this fic was a pretty long time coming i think? but its for @/samepictureofjeankirsteverday on instagrams celebration for hitting 1k days!! so congratulations!! its also inspired by her own fic, quietude on ao3 :) pls give it a read its SO CUTE and i loved it sm <333 congratulations again :33

ALSO i have never done karaoke before so im sorry for any,,, errors. i genuinely dont know how they work and ive watched only like 2 animes with a very vague karaoke scene </3 just pretend that every inaccuracy is For The Plot 

right tile art creds ; 

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you'd always been conscious of how loud your voice could get.

a little annoying, you thought, because whenever you got excited about something, your voice would jump through octaves, creating an exponential curve on a graph. when you were with friends who knew how to make you laugh, your throat would make a weird sound - stuck between a guffaw and a choke of self-conscious laughter - if it was particularly funny. and your voice was always stuck between the contrasting spaces of either being too loud or too quiet, never really being able to gauge what was required when.

you'd rather listen than talk. your voice would work around the right people, your mouth having a mind of its own, spilling contents you didn't agree to, but you'd regret the sound of it later. secrets would lie, open, barren, self-aware, in a disgusting pile of weird decibels on your table, in the space between you and whoever had to bear witness to it. you always cringed at the sound of your own voice after hearing it back in video, wherever it was captured.

you grew up quiet, never growing used to using your voice until you were a late teenager. not knowing the importance of words until they were said, until after the reactions were met.

and then you met jean. loud, boisterous laughter filled the room as he shouted the rules of the game, clearly drunk, at a party you couldn't remember the importance of, and you were next to your equally as loud and agreeing friend who shouted cheers and another one, her other half, she had loudly exclaimed, her twin, really, and you could hear the resemblance in the way they both chanted a cheer of "jean! jean! jean! jean!" continuously as the guy wearing a button-up shirt that was now soaked with wine with a bottle of the liquid held a considerable height away from him, drinking with twitching lips and shut eyes. He stopped with a spluttering cough, unashamed still, a large, cocky grin plastered over his lips - plump and red with the tint of the wine. Then he let out a loud whoop and you wondered how he didn't feel the guilt of being loud weighing down on him. Maybe it was the alcohol, you assumed, taking a cautious, controlled sip of your own. Sasha and connie soon joined him, and along with their arm came yours, linked in between sasha's tight grip.

Introductions were made, voices inclining louder to be heard over the music. "Sash told us about you," jean shouted, a surprisingly inviting smile on his intimidating face, and you joked around, "yeah she's in love with me!" jean all but nodded with an approving smile, and the rest of the evening by pounding music that you could feel your heartbeat on, and you don't hear jean's presence until about two weeks after it all.