Jeremy stops smiling in tbc.
He's too tired to breathe, too exhausted to function, so smiling is unthinkable: every time he attempts it, every time he forces his lips into a curve, the smile falls off his face seconds later.
He stops trying after a while.
And then he crashes his car. And he nearly loses his life and he nearly loses his career, but he doesn't.
He's alive, but now he's got a gnarly scar bisecting his lips, top and bottom, stretching over his left cheek. It isn't pretty, but it's the wake-up call that gets him out of his house, that gets him to stand up for himself, and leave the family that is killing him, for good.
He picks himself off the floor, one broken piece at a time, and he climbs back up from rock bottom.
Still, he doesn't smile. Because now his smile has turned into a reminder of what he almost lost—of how stupid he's been, how blind, how delusional. He can't smile, because now his smile—his pretty smile, and his pretty face, the one thing he knew he had working for him beyond a shadow of a doubt—is ruined. His smile is a monstrous, ugly thing; a sad, difficult thing. It hurts to smile, both physically and emotionally.
So he doesn't smile; not for a long time.
Not until Jean—who's missed Jeremy's smile like a limb, like a lung, like a piece of his heart is gone too—makes him smile.
It's something silly, something Jeremy has heard for months now: Jean complaining about his teammates, being rude and unforgiving as always, but his snark makes Jeremy smile, for the first time in what feels like forever.
It's a small, soft smile, a helpless one, an amused one. His lips curve, his cheeks stretch, and it aches, but it happens.
And Jean interrupts his tirade in favour of staring. He stares so long that Jeremy blushes, embarrassed, worried that he's really put Jean off this time, with his ugly smile and scarred face, but Jean shakes his head, cups Jeremy's cheeks and murmurs, "There you are."
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