Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Armin is often prone to working longer hours than most, longer than even Jean sometimes. He is by far more dedicated to his work than anyone else, feels a stronger sense of purpose, where most newer squadrons are in it for the potential fame and glory. There are even times when Jean - Commander Kirstein - feels unworthy of the title he holds.

Armin has his own office now, one with a lock, which Jean has procured the key to with much struggle on Armin’s end. For all Armin’s perceived bravado of professionalism, his mind is as debauched as Jean’s, if not more so.

And both of them are still young, aged prematurely by war and death, left to live the role of war heroes, to fill the shoes the adults before them tore to pieces before they were left behind. There are certain parts of their lives that are poisoned, ruined beyond repair, but in Jean’s heart of hearts he likes to think they are still boys.

Jean clicks his heels obnoxiously, walks into Armins office with Armin barely acknowledging his entrance into the room with a mere glance upwards. Armin is scratching words onto parchment, hand flying across the page, when Jean leans down over the back of him, stills his hand.

“If I were to command you to bend over this desk for me, would you?” Jean asks lowly.

Armin snorts, tries and fails to suppress a shiver as Jean noses at the curve where his neck meets his shoulder.

“If you spoke to anyone else the way you spoke to me, you’d lose rank so quickly your head would spin,” Armin replies.

Jean grins against his skin, “But you’re not anyone else. In fact, i think you might like the way I speak to you.”

Jean very obviously leans over Armin’s shoulder to gaze into his lap and at the thickening bulge of his trousers. Armin sighs like he’s tired of Jean’s antics, like he’s put out by the idea of impromptu sex on hard surfaces, but Jean knows better, even without the visual - he can feel the arousal pulsing through the veins in Armin’s neck alone.

Armin pushes the chair back, ignoring Jean, as he puts two of the books back into their respective shelves that were once resting on his desk. Jean watches with an amused smirk, and kicks the chair away from the desk. Armin returns as though he hasn’t noticed it’s gone.

He faces Jean with the tiniest of smiles, and something sharp and vivid coils its way around Jean’s heart, and suddenly Jean is caught inhaling him like a drug, hands immediately sliding into his hair, cradling his skull as he kisses him.

He has Armin pushed into the edge of his desk, groaning as Jean fucks his mouth with his tongue. If anything Armin is more hasty than Jean, untucks the edge of his shirt with trembling hands and unbuttons his trousers as he jumps down from the desk to turn around. He doesn’t even bother removing any of the straps of his gear - in fact, the way he shoves them down leaves angry red marks in his backside, pinching his skin, and as Jean pulls away to let him get situated, he has to hold his mouth shut for fear of salivating at the sight before him.

“Commander…” Armin mutters quietly, impatiently. This is no longer a tease, it’s a plea.

Jean fumbles with the oil in Armin’s desk, nearly lets it slide from his palm in his frantic haste. By the time he’s sliding into Armin, both of his hands are slick with it, trailing the open palm of one up the nape of Armin’s neck, pushing his hair between the spaces in his fingers and gripping tight enough to hold him down.

Armin moans and pushes back, fucks himself with the confidence of a seasoned whore, fists clenching empty air on the surface of his desk. Jean bends down to kiss Armin’s neck through rhythmic panted breaths, to bite the pale skin just behind his ear, marking him with bruises no one will see but them.

He can picture it, too. Armin not long after waking in the morning, skin warm and hair still damp from the baths, pulling it to one side and craning his neck to inspect the damage. He would smile when he saw it, Jean knows he wants the visceral reminders. The first time Jean had seen the scratch marks on Armin’s thighs, the ones that came from his own fingers, he’d panicked. Armin interrupted his spewed apologies, grinned against his mouth and said “I like it”.

When he comes, Jean is bent over Armin entirely, open mouth pressed to skin, moaning into the base of the his skull. His hair only got longer as they grew, Jean unconsciously massages the bulk of it still in his grip against Armin’s scalp, loses himself in the familiar scent of the man he loves. When Armin comes it’s with his back arched and a shout muffled by his own fist, his spine curved, digging into Jean’s chest.

Jean turns him around as best he can. Armin didn’t take long to catch up to him in height, but he’s smaller than Jean in other ways, slighter and more pliant, especially after sex. Jean manages to maneuver Armin onto his back, pinches him in the side to watch him squirm as Armin laughs at Jean’s struggle to pull his pants back up over the leather straps on his thighs.

“You always look so harried and flustered like this. It almost makes it seem like you are usually decent, of all things,” Armin says, grinning.

“And you look completely fucked out,” Jean comments, entirely out of breath, and then gestures with his fingers- “Up.”

Armin pushes himself up with great effort, flattens what he can of his tousled hair and his shirt, sits against the edge of the desk. Jean only takes a moment to fix himself up, before moving to stand between Armin’s knees.

He cups Armin’s face in one hand while the other works at taming the wild strands of his hair, the ones disrupted by his own fingers. Armin laughs quietly at Jean’s concentration, blows upward at the hair that falls in his eyes in the process.

He is the most important part of Jean’s life now, the most precious thing he has left, Jean thinks - not for the first time, and definitely not the last.

Jean dips down to kiss him, deep and slow, tongue caressing the roof of his mouth. Armin moans helplessly, and Jean wills himself to correct his weakened knees, knows he will never leave this room if he doesn’t forcefully remove himself from his tactician.

“As you were,” Jean says awkwardly, clearing his throat, and struts out of the office to leave Armin’s flushed pink cheeks and quiet laughter.

Chapter Text

Armin wakes in a slotted haze of light pouring through the blinds, the entire room bathed in orange. The air is still and quiet, cool where his skin is exposed from their blanket. Jean lays heavy on a deep sleep, half of his head buried beneath a pile of pillows that he always claims are unnecessary. He should be cold with how much of his back is exposed to the room, the covers pooled at the base of his spine, but even from here Armin can feel his warmth, it radiates from him the way Armin imagines those undiluted rays of sunlight might feel if they weren’t still so close to winter.

“Why are you awake?” Jean grumbles. His eyes are still closed, his voice rough with sleep and muffled by the pillow. Armin scoots himself down, burrows beneath the blanket and pulls the other corner of it up over Jean’s back.

“Just admiring the view,” he replies lightly, and Jean’s mouth pulls in this half twisted smile, eyes still shut, this helpless reaction to being constantly charmed by the boy in his bed.

Armin’s body still feels weak, tired and stretched thin, the muscles at his thighs aching and sore. It’s a good kind of pain, the kind of pain that reminds you you’re alive, that you can still feel things. The world could crash and burn at their feet, and Armin would be happy to be alive enough to care.

“Why would you cover up the view if you were admiring it?” Jean grumbles mildly, wiggling his backside beneath the covers.

Armin chuckles softly, scoots closer to Jean and pulls his arm out from beneath the pillow to make room for him.

Their bodies slot together like they were made to fit together - Armin’s bony knees don’t knock against Jean’s, they slide between his, the skin on the inside of his thighs bare and warm. Jean rolls backwards a bit, opens up his stomach and his chest, envelops Armin in warmth and then spreads it, breathes heat into the side of Armin’s neck.

What Armin wants to say is something along the lines of ‘are there views you can feel?’

What he says instead is, “I can still feel you inside me.”

Jean groans, wrecked and deep from the pit of his chest, tucks Armin’s naked body tight against his, wraps around him. He sleepily licks at Armin’s pulse point and mutters out a hoarse- “You’re gonna kill me saying that kinda thing.”

Armin smiles, presses his face into Jean’s hair, and squints his eyes against the brightness pouring in through the windows. Armin once thought you could really say you knew someone if you could identify their smell. Eren smells like dirt and sweat, like the sodden earth after rainfall. Mikasa smells like warmth - fire and cotton, the floral soap from her hair.

With Jean it’s something different. Jean smells like skin and sweat, smells like Armin’s breath, muted sighs from open mouths. Jean smells like a memory, like skin sliding together, like hair being held onto and pulled.

Armin can feel Jean’s cock stirring against his thigh, warm and a little sticky, both of them having collapsed in exhaustion before any baths could be run. He pushes his bony knees, nudges against it, twists his hips until he feels all of Jean against him.

“I always want you to feel me,” Jean mumbles, voice barely a whisper and half gone in the drowsy beginnings of arousal. Armin pushes his hips forward enough that he presses hot against Jean’s soft stomach. “Never want you to forget what this feels like.”

Armin kisses Jean’s ear, licks the edge of it just to watch him shiver, and then sighs and succumbs to the exhaustion his body is so resistant to embrace.

At least for now, it seems, Jean isn’t going anywhere.

Chapter Text

Jean paces around the lower deck, muscles taut with anxiety. It smells like rot down here, like damp wood and the humid remnants of earth dredged in from their boots. 

If Jean closes his eyes he can do it - he can hone in on the gentle sound of the water sloshing around them and completely ignore the quiet whimpers coming from behind and to his left, from the boy they have tied to the anchor on the ground. His sodden white shirt clings to him, one of Jean’s own that he’d wrapped around his naked form when they found him that way.

Captain Smith had muscled him into submission, treated the boy like a danger and not like the weakened pile of limbs that sat before them. He’d stalked off angrily afterwards, leaving Jean to watch him, and it seemed almost as if he was disappointed in how little the boy had fought back.

His legs look too pale and soft for the way he was found, for having been seemingly stranded out in shallow water, unconscious. His skin seems too thin, too fragile. He still has the imprint of Erwin’s boot on his neck, bruised around his throat where the edge had cut off his air supply.

Jean leans down, bends his knees and winces when they crack, crouches in front of the boy. He would sit himself down if there wasn’t a shallow layer of seawater sloshing over the floor boards, keeping the edges of his own shirt’s tails on this boy’s body soaked.

"Can you speak?" he asks firmly, loose tunic pushed up past his elbows, leaning his weight on the bend of his knees.

The boy shivers, shakes his head like he’s warding off a memory, and Jean’s feet splash fresh droplets of water onto the bare skin of his thighs as he scoots closer to him.

He has a voice, it seems. He makes a soft sound when Jean’s hand touches his throat, the pad of his thumb tracing the half moon bruise there. Being this close only leaves room for pause, a moment to consider how silent it is down here, how the sound of the water and the creaking of the wood drowns out everything else - before the boy’s eyes catch him frozen.

There’s a depth of mystery to them, wide and glossy, the color the purest blue Jean’s ever seen. His pupils are small, smaller than Jean’s brain tells him they should be, which only emphasizes the color and the crystallized shocks of icy white that strike through the color in them.

He looks… almost inhuman.

"What is your name?" Jean questions, using his hand now to tip the boy’s face upwards. In doing so he lets his fingers rest behind the boy’s ear, and something about the pulse here feels off - different.

The boy crumples in on himself suddenly, as if he heard the thought straight from Jean’s mind. He splashes a bit in the puddle surrounding him, his legs long and lean, pulled into himself with stilted, awkward movements. He shivers against the anchor he’s been tied to, looks something like a pile of wet linens someone kicked off to the side.

“Eren…” he mutters softly.

“Eren? That’s your name?”

Jean scoots closer to him, and the boy flinches again as Jean grips his jaw, tilts his head so his face hits the muted light of the candle on the wall. He’s strangely beautiful, Jean thinks, with his wide-eyed gaze unerring, holding Jean almost stunned with it. His skin is so pale, so pure and fragile, Jean can see the hints of blue veins beneath his fingers, pulsing throughout his neck. His hair is as pale as his tone, yellowed roots darkened by prolonged exposure to the sun.

“Nobody means to harm you,” Jean promises thinly, “It’s just… you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were exactly where they told us the key would be.”

Something dark glimmers in the depths of the boy’s eyes, but Jean attributes this to a trick of the light. He drops his hand from the boy’s face with a sigh, runs that same hand through his hair, works out a creak in his neck.

“This goddamn key is all my Captain can think of. What kind of pirates hunt for things so inane? It’s probably made of iron and rusted by now.”

Jean blinks at the boy, who blinks in return. He still shivers in fear, but it’s lessening slowly, he’s loosening his recoil. It’s like the sound of Jean’s voice is soothing him- and, to be honest, it’s soothing Jean just to have someone to speak to about all this.

“We don’t even know what the key does. All we know is the beast that stole it, Jaeger-”

“Eren,” the boy whimpers again, interrupting Jean’s train of thought.

“Yes, Eren,” Jean sighs, leans forward to brush a dampened clump of frosty hair away from the boy’s eyes. He doesn’t flinch this time, at least, though his eyes follow Jean’s hand. “We’re hunting two myths now, I’m convinced. Only Erwin’s ever seen either the beast or the relic. I think everyone thinks he’s mad, anyway.”

Jean startles slightly as the boy lifts himself to his knees, sloshes forward through the puddles at Jean’s feet until he’s reaching for Jean’s face. Jean frowns in confusion as the boy touches the curve of his jaw, traces underneath his eyes with his thumbs.

“You aren’t from anywhere near here, are you?” Jean asks quietly, huffing as the boy continues to prod at his face, to study his features. “Who is your Captain, huh? Or your King? Who do you report to?”

“Eren.”

Jean sighs tiredly, slumping against the ache in his knees as the mysterious boy begins to take fascination on the buckles of his boots.

“That’s probably not even your name, is it?”

Striking blue eyes lift from Jean’s boots to meet his gaze, and the oddest of expressions flits across the boy’s face - he’s smiling.

Jean can’t help but focus on the bruise at his throat, how the purpling yellow looks almost insulting against his otherwise smooth and silken skin. The boy decides to sit on his shins now, his naked form only just barely covered by Jean’s own shirt. It hugs the form of his body enough for Jean to see that he is frail, perhaps weakened by having been stranded for god knows how long.

And Jean finds himself stricken with the urge to keep this boy safe, to protect him with the same kind of fervent vigor that Erwin protects his own outlandish ideals, his insane ‘plan’. At the very least, it didn’t take much for this mysterious being to seem to take ease in Jean’s presence, to smile and play with the shiny metal parts of Jean’s attire.

“No one will hurt you,” Jean says, this time his voice stern in its resolve. He reaches out again, brushes the backs of his fingers over the bruise on the boy’s neck. “I promise.”

Jean still doesn’t have a name for him.

He thinks it might be Eren, but that seems to be his general response to everything. At the very least, Erwin has stopped going down there, stopped demanding he be treated like some kind of prisoner. Jean was given the go ahead to move him to a cabin, to let him sleep somewhere less damp.

The only problem is, Levi is returning soon. This only means Erwin has to fill him in on what he missed, has to explain to him why there’s a half naked and shivering boy holed up on their ship, borrowing Jean’s shirts and speaking in hums and garbled whispers.

“You aren’t as pale, at least,” Jean says, pushing the boy’s hair up off his forehead to examine the slightly less pallid state of his skin. He isn’t exactly warm, but less damp and scattered. His hair is dry, and although it still looks like a tumbled mess, it’s almost endearing in how soft it is.

The boy never replies, at least not really. Sometimes he’ll grunt, sometimes he’ll say a word that Jean doesn’t understand.

And in all honesty, it’s not something Jean is entirely unfamiliar with. Back when Jean was on the island with his parents, he would accompany them on their trips of intelligence, would study these near archaic tribes and only get sleepy towards the end of the days, when the sound of his father’s quill on the parchment lulled him into a drowsy sleep-like state.

This boy almost seems like he’s lost his tribe - a creature of comforts too foreign for Jean to really grasp, a being of some kind of different world.

Or maybe the one sided conversation just leaves Jean far too much time to think.

—

“His name is Armin,” Mikasa had said, kicking coils of rope beneath the curve of the ship, never one to submit to grunt work. She’s better than Jean ever will be, but she will never surpass his rank.

Jean only scoffed at her, had written her off as soon as it registered who the hell she was speaking about.

“Why would he tell you his name? I spend far more time with him.”

Mikasa looked at Jean like she meant to say something, like she had every intention of correcting, or possibly scolding. Instead she shrugged, boots thudding against the wood as she kicked, and kicked.

“He just did,” she said. “His name definitely isn’t Eren.”

—

Jean kneels so his knees press into the boy’s, squeezes the both of them onto the tiny cot with careful precision. He pushes a wild few strands of hair away from the boy’s face, frustrated when they don’t stay put like they did when he was all damp.

“Do you remember talking to Mikasa?” Jean asks, not expecting an answer.

He damn near chokes on his own tongue when the boy parrots the name almost instantly.

“Mikasa.”

Jean is frozen to the spot, staring as the boy blinks down at Jean’s hands, traces the outline of his knuckles with his own fingers. He says her name so easily - dragging out the consonants and hissing the ‘s’ like it were a chant he’d uttered beneath his breath.

“Yes,” Jean says, all while the boy lifts Jean’s hand to examine the lines on his palm, holds it up in front of his wide-eyed face like he’s looking through telescopes instead of staring at plain skin. “She said you told her your name is Armin.”

The boy smiles at Jean’s hand, like the limb is conversing with him in a language he can better understand, and it says things he enjoys. He uses both of his own hands to flatten Jean’s palm, stretching skin over bone.

“Armin,” the boy says quietly, and then licks the very center of Jean’s palm.

Jean’s breath hitches, and though the blood flushing his face makes him feel hot, the blood in his veins threatens to freeze… What if he can speak? How many more times will Erwin try to kick information out of him, how much longer can his frail form withstand it? And Levi’s return-

“Ar-min,” the boy says again, this time elongating the vowels, rolling the ‘r’. He’s still watching Jean’s palm, examining his hands.

“Is that your name?” Jean asks, watching with careful curiosity as the boy places the pads of Jean’s fingers onto his closed lips. Jean can feel his pulse in his hands, an echo from his wrist, and it picks up speed the longer this strange boy keeps his mouth on him. “Armin?”

The boy grins this time. His lips part, jaw stretching. He opens his mouth, repeats “Armin,” and then sucks on the very tip of Jean’s middle finger.

“Do you want to know my name?” Jean asks, and somehow having his fingers in this boy’s mouth is making him feel hot and dizzy, the wet warmth of his tongue a sensation he can somehow feel right down to his toes, a heated spark. “It’s Jean.”

The boy keeps mouthing at Jean’s fingers, tastes with the pointed tip of his tongue, delicate enough for it to tickle. Without really noticing how or why, his stomach does a swooping flip, and then he’s only half an inch away from the boy’s face, breath coming in hard pants.

“Jean,” he repeats, urging the boy to repeat it too. He parts the boy’s lips with his fingers, plays with the soft wet of his tongue and makes himself woozy with it, his head drooping and heavy.

The boy - perhaps his name really is Armin - pulls Jean’s hand away from his mouth, places the limp, moist fingers against his throat.

“Armin,” the boy says, his voice as delicate as it is rough, a whisper from the deep. He then gently places Jean’s fingers against his own mouth, and Jean parts his lips without thinking, tastes this boy on his own skin. “Jean,” the boy says.

Jean lets his hand fall into his own lap, forgotten, somehow now utterly transfixed by the ethereal creature before him. His eyes are so big, so bright and so blue, and they look almost wet in the dim light from the candle.

“Armin,” Jean says this time, with a steady firmness to his tone, and he grins helplessly when he catches the boy- Armin’s attention with it, makes him look away from Jean’s hand to his face.

The spell gets broken the minute Armin’s door is kicked right through.

Without warning, with not more than a flash of fluttering black, Jean is on his backside on the ground, and Armin is pinned by his neck to the wall by Levi. Levi’s jaw is firm, his gloved fingers biting into Armin’s pale flesh. Jean is screaming at them, but he must’ve hit his head when he fell - he can’t hear himself all that well.

“—us where it is.”

“Erwin, make him speak—”

“—where the key was meant to be—”

It all comes back into focus around the time he notices Erwin standing like a statue behind Levi, tall and foreboding, the army beneath the initial threat of the punch.

“What are you doing to him? He barely knows our language,” Jean finally coherently groans, rubbing the back of his softened skull.

Levi whips his head around and spits on Jean’s face.

“You speak out of turn, rat-”

“Levi,” Erwin quickly warns.

“This demon,” Levi sneers, and Jean flinches at Armin’s helpless whimper, “Is lying to us all.”

“He’s only a boy,” Jean protests, and upon the gentle thud of approaching boots, Jean catches a small side-ended glimpse of Mikasa outside the door there.

“I say we gut him,” Levi says evenly, eyes piercing holes into Armin’s gasping pale face.

“It would be better for us if he could speak,” Erwin says.

“He has the key on him, he wouldn’t be in that exact spot—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Search him,” Erwin interrupts, voice booming in its otherwise quiet authority. “The key must be on or in him somewhere.”

Levi shifts his hand to grip the boy’s jaw, squeezes Armin’s mouth so that it opens, examines the flat of his tongue back to his throat.

He’s so rough with it, the frail jut of bone from Armin’s jaw seems at risk of shattering beneath his hand. Jean almost attacks him for it, gets this feral churn to his gut that tells him that Levi isn’t allowed to touch the boy this way, that Armin can only be touched by him - he’s mine, he tasted my fingers, I tasted him myself.

“I will search him,” a stern voice approaches from behind.

Mikasa thuds forward towards the bed, peers over at Armin’s pale face, still clutched in Levi’s grip, as she pulls her sleeves up over her elbows. Jean wants to yell at her too, but something holds him still, holds him quiet.

She looks around the room, and then more pointedly at Levi. “I am not having an audience,” she says.

Levi smirks, and then tosses the boy by his head to the ground. Armin whimpers when he falls, and Jean shouts again.

He would kill him, if he could. The captain used to be great, but this dread foaming scum has poisoned him, turned him mad with the way he encourages this endless search for the godforsaken key. Mikasa hasn’t moved to help Armin, but she isn’t stepping on the boy’s throat, either.

“Leave us,” she says, looking not at Jean.

What Jean means to do is lay out a bare threat, tell her that if she hurts Armin he will hurt her twice over. What he says instead is a weak and deploring “Please don’t hurt him.”

“Out,” she yells, and then slams the door at Jean’s back.

—

He goes to see Armin the next day. He has the bruise of Levi’s hand on his neck, but no more than that. The boy even smiles when he sees Jean, like he recognizes him.

“They want to keep you on the ship,” Jean says, playing with Armin’s hair, stroking the backs of his fingers across Armin’s cheekbones. Armin, Armin, Armin. He fairly chants the name in his sleep now. “They found nothing on you, but they think you know something about this treasure they seek.”

Armin smiles like he isn’t listening, like he can’t comprehend what it means to be a prisoner on a ship sailing for nothing but uncertainty. He plays with Jean’s hand again, kisses his fingers. Jean presses them to his own lips, gives them back to Armin like some kind of quiet promise.

Tomorrow they excavate the caves they were told held similarly dated relics, to continue the search for the unknown. The day after that, Levi leaves again, and Jean can sleep beside Armin in this very cot, can share the warmth of his own body that Armin is still strangely lacking.

“I’m sorry he hurt you,” Jean says, lets Armin’s tongue guide Jean’s fingers over his teeth. “I won’t let it happen again.”

Something dark flashes in the pits of Armin’s eyes. Armin grins.

“Eren,” he mutters quietly, and Jean decides to ask Mikasa to watch him while he’s gone, to keep an eye on him.

He’s just a boy who lost his tribe. That’s all.

Chapter Text

Jean’s brain works in a similar way to that of a clock - all pre-determined processes and mechanical functions, logic over spontaneity. It’s why, on this particular night, Jean approaches Armin with a plan. A plan that has taken weeks of mental anguish to perfect, a plan that perhaps might earn him at least half of a broken nose, courtesy of one Eren Jaeger.

But no, it has to happen this way.

It doesn’t help that he’s shaking. It doesn’t help that Armin sits down next to him and looks at him like he’s grown a second head, wary in a new sort of way, one that he never was before and one that makes Jean’s heart feel like it’s being pierced by thousands of needles, all at once.

Armin sits, curled in on himself and small, tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. Jean finds himself wishing he had the foresight to do it for him, to display some mildly innocent sign of affection without having to be told by someone else to do it first.

This, at least, is his plan. He can take solace in that.

“Why does it feel like I’m about to be reprimanded?” Armin asks warily.

“You aren’t,” Jean eagerly shakes his head, hoping the jerkiness of it goes unnoticed. “I just. I’m not good with words, you know?”

Armin nods tentatively, though he smiles a little. “Yes… I know.”

“So like. When you tell me things that aren’t exactly what they mean, I don’t always get it, right?”

Armin nods again. “What have I said to confuse you?”

“No, no, nothing, I just-” Jean sighs shakily, rubs the back of his neck with a clammy palm. The words sound stupid in his head, and he’s fully expecting Armin to laugh at him, but he would prefer that to his biggest fear - to somehow managing to offend him. “I need you to know something. It’s not anything you’ve said, it’s things I haven’t said. Because I don’t know how to say them without being direct, you know?”

Narrowing his eyes, Armin replies, “Okay now I’m the one that’s confused.”

His half amused smile is a relief, if anything. Jean can only hope it stays put.

He’s braver than this. He’s stared death in the face, and if anything, Armin himself has shown him not to fear it.

Still…

It feels a little like jumping from a steep cliff as he gently places his hand on Armin’s shoulder, cups the curve of his neck, lets the very tips of his fingers sink into the hair loose on Armin’s nape.

“I wanted you to know,” he says, and it’s now or never- “That it’s okay for you to cry.”

—

The most infuriating thing about Eren’s brickheaded aggression is that he can sometimes be staggeringly right in it all.

This, however, was not one of those times.

“You’re treating him like he’s made of glass,” Eren had snapped, and Jean - already flush and covered in the cooling damp sheen of a day’s sweat - had only enough energy in him to roll his eyes. “I’m serious, you think he likes being ignored by you now? You think avoiding the subject is going to do anything but make him feel like damaged goods?”

And now, Jean knew his intentions were good, which is probably why he managed to hold back the urge to snap. The other infuriating thing about Eren is he sometimes has no fucking clue. Especially when it pertains to events that Jean was there for and Eren was not.

“I don’t treat him like anything. I’m giving him space-”

“He doesn’t need space!” Eren had practically boomed, and Jean’s head instantly whipped around to look for bystanders.

“How do you even know that, Eren?”

“Because he tells me. He tells me he thinks you don’t like him anymore, that he’s worried you’re afraid of him now or something.”

Jean had sighed and stopped packing his things, stood raw and brimming with distress, staring Eren straight in the eye. Jean would never try and say he and Armin had similar experiences that day, but he was there.

“I’m afraid of upsetting him,” Jean had admitted, without entirely intending to. Eren’s stunned silence only spurred him to continue. “I’m afraid of him remembering something with me that he doesn’t want to remember, I’m afraid of being the cause of that. I’m not afraid of him.”

“Well, he doesn’t think that way,” Eren said, and then purposefully shoved Jean with his shoulder as he stormed past him. “Use your words and say that to him, not me.”

Jean was beyond the point of rage. He’d surpassed loud and angry and dropped right into defeated and sad. Eren’s intentions were good, he’d repeated it in his own head to keep himself from losing it, but he was so, so wrong.

Eren had no idea what it felt like to want to kiss the boy you once clutched to, the one who saved your life, the boy that taught you how to love the things you had right the moment you had them - only to feel like it was all ripped out from under you, to realize that someone else, some vile creature, could have perhaps ruined what was once the sweetest of affections.

But even then, he knew Eren hadn’t had that thought planted in his head from nowhere. The thought that Armin had went to someone other than him, upset over his distance, made his chest feel like it was collapsing in on itself.

If Jean was going to do this, he would do it his own way - that much he knew for certain.

—

Armin’s brain works in a way Jean doesn’t think he’ll ever understand. He can be methodical and forthright, he can be so cunning and sharp witted it’ll make your head spin. But in the same respect - sometimes in the same moments - he can be the wind that takes you off your feet, he can wrap you in prose and poetry, can make you fall in love with words and the shape his mouth makes when he speaks them.

It becomes a bit of a conundrum - to understand what Armin says versus what Armin does. It’s why, the first time Jean had kissed him, he’d laughed when Armin kissed him back. Not because it was a joke, although the momentary flash of panic on Armin’s face seemed to say the thought had crossed his mind, but because he was relieved, because he’d gotten it right.

Jean doesn’t like to think about it.

That isn’t to say he wants to ignore what happened, but he doesn’t want to relive it, doesn’t want to remember. So why should Armin have to? How can Jean possibly cup the soft curve of his jaw to kiss his temple when someone else has stained the gesture with calloused fingers? How can Armin possibly forget what it felt like?

The most alarming thing is how completely unaffected Armin seems, even now. It’s probably why Eren doesn’t get it, why he can’t see past the facade.

But Jean was there.

And that kind of thing doesn’t just go away.

—

“What the hell are you talking about?” Armin snaps, standing after smacking Jean’s hand away from his shoulder.

It stings about as much as Jean had expected it to, to have his touch rejected, although even Jean is savvy enough to figure this isn’t the same- not at all.

“I’m saying it’s okay to be upset, you know?” Jean says, pleads almost, and scrambles to follow where Armin stands to face out the window of their room, crosses his arms over his chest like it’ll shield him from the memory.

“I’m fine,” Armin says resolutely.

“I know,” Jean replies tiredly, “You’ve been really fine lately. Too fine.”

Armin shakes his head, a bitter smile tainting the corners of his mouth. “Why does everyone else get to tell me how I’m supposed to feel?”

“They don’t,” Jean says, and then sighs in relief as he approaches Armin from behind, places that same hand back onto his shoulder and watches as Armin allows it to stay there. “I’m not telling you how you should feel. But I will tell you that I’m not fine with it.”

Armin’s brow furrows tight as he glares down at the floor, but Jean can’t stop for fear of losing steam.

“I’m upset for you. I know I don’t have a right to be, but I am. And I guess I’ve been kinda scared to tell you that. And I figured, if I’ve been scared to tell you how I feel, then how scared would you be?”

Armin says nothing, only continues to stare at the ground like it’s an infuriating puzzle he can’t quite decipher. Jean leans forward a little, tries to look at the angry furrow of Armin’s brow to catch his gaze, to make Armin look at him to see that Jean is being sincere about this, and that he doesn’t really know what he’s saying other than pleading for Armin to be honest with him.

It’s in these few moments that Jean notices a fat sheet of moisture clinging to Armin’s lashes, and how, when he blinks, it seems as though that first solitary drop that falls clear of his cheeks is perhaps heavier than any other burden they’ve collectively had to bear.

“Hey, Armin, it’s fine,” Jean says, and he begins squeezing his hand, rolling out the tension he can feel in Armin’s shoulders. Armin makes a quiet, heartbreakingly broken sound, a trembled heaving breath, and then really begins to cry. “I won’t tell anyone you’re crying, it’s okay.”

Jean turns into something like a broken record - telling Armin it’s okay, over and over again. He doesn’t say he’s okay, or that it’s going to be okay, because those feel like empty promises. All he’s saying to Armin is that it’s okay to hurt. He’s been brave enough in his short life- and who’s to say crying isn’t brave anyway? Jean was terrified of saying this to Armin - that has to count for something.

“I’m sorry,” Armin mumbles wetly, sniffling in that quiet way he does so often, the familiarity of it making Jean grin like an absolute idiot. Out of context, he probably looks like the most insensitive fool on the planet. It’s no wonder Eren is always yelling at him.

“I’m sorry too,” Jean says, and very, very slowly cups Armin’s face by the curve of his jaw, turns so that he’s facing him. When Armin doesn’t pull away, Jean is so relieved he thinks he might feel like crying as well.

“I like it when you kiss me,” Armin says in a hushed voice, eyes eager and bright, rimmed in red and tears. “I will always like it when you kiss me, okay?”

Jean nods and then finds he can’t stop - his head shakes in its perpetual reassurance, and suddenly his vision is burdened by tears he’s frustrated to admit he didn’t want to allow. He kisses the cool dampness of Armin’s lips, clenches his eyes closed tightly enough to clear his sight from being blurred.

“See?” Armin says, and then Jean is laughing like he did the first time, foreheads pressed together as they both share water stained grins. Jean kisses him again, and again, and lets every single one hurt just a little less than the last.

Armin wipes beneath Jean’s eyes with his thumbs, and while Jean is tempted to say something like ‘I don’t have a right to be upset over this, I’m sorry for crying’, he instead finds the courage to tell them both this time, “It’s okay.”

Chapter Text

It takes a lot to get Armin to snap.

He’s felt it before - jaw tight, pulse jumping, fearing that it might tear the skin at his temples. He feels with a profound clarity, a potency that sometimes nearly cripples him.

But he has since learned to hold it together.

Armin didn’t quite break the first time he thought he’d lost Eren, or the second, or the third. He didn’t break when Annie betrayed them, when Armin realized what it meant when people told him "trust no one". He’s seen death steal lives mere inches from his face, has tasted the last few drops of living blood, has smelled the rot of a thousand corpses.

There becomes constant elements in life, pieces of yourself you reshape to fit the mold you’ve been given. Eren had to leave them all. He’d transformed one time too many, and Hanji took him away. Mikasa couldn’t sleep, said she’d fight to go find him, said she’d give it all up for him. She told Armin he was a coward for not wanting to do the same, and that’s when Armin learned to coat his heart in reflective metal, to shield himself from things that could kill him far worse than the titans ever could.

She threw her own life away for Eren, and the potential to save thousands more. Armin would not do the same.

There is a part of Armin that’s taught himself that love is convenient, that love is rightfully selfish and should be considered an indulgence to pursue. Love is staying too long in a hot bath, love is a luxury, love is the rich, smoothness of chocolate after months and months of grain. It’s why he only allows himself to miss Eren at night, to miss Mikasa only when he knows no one else can see it on his face.

It’s why he thinks Jean’s smile seems that much brighter to him, it’s why he thinks he views Jean as someone to be desired - because he is selfish and Jean is convenient.

.

There have been many times…

Times where Armin’s body was tossed like a cotton stitched doll, where bones and voices were broken. Times where Jean had carried him thrown over his shoulder, entirely on foot. Times where Jean was the only living human for miles around, and where Jean sobbed in empathetic pain when he was forced to push Armin’s leg back into its socket.

Times where Jean’s eyes were wet with tears, where he looked at Armin like he was the one thing he couldn’t bear to lose. It’s in those times that Armin could convince himself that he loved Jean because he was beautiful- because he’s the only one that hadn’t been broken before this all started, and the only one who knows how good the world can be if it ever ends.

.

When Jean was promoted to Captain, his mother was there - in the audience she stood crying and covering her mouth with trembling hands. Jean is loved, and will always be loved, so it makes no sense for Armin to want to love him more.

It is selfish. Armin wants the familiar touch of someone that knows him - of someone who has seen him at his weakest, who knows how crippled he can be by self doubt. Someone who perhaps knows his emotionless shell is something he’d crafted after years of emotional torture.

He almost does it once.

After the ceremony, Jean - no, Captain Kirstein, with his official rank tied on a patch over his heart, threaded through the cotton so delicately. Captain Kirstein, with his mother out on the fields, crying with beaming pride for her son, while the man of the minute sat in a broom closet, shoved up against the wall. Armin only found him there because that’s where he used to hide, before they’d been gnawed into adults by mangled teeth and snap-jaws, before Armin realized that crying was a weakness he couldn’t afford.

Jean sat there, head in his hands, eyes red and tired when he lifted his face to Armin’s lantern. He looked so young.

"I don’t think I can do it, I can’t live up to this shit, I don’t know how to send people to die," he’d sputtered.

Armin crawled between his knees, took Jean’s face in his hands. His mouth was wet, glistening in the flickering glow from the lamp, and his eyes were quivering, searching Armin’s face for an answer. Tell me not to do it, they seemed to beg, tell me I’m not good enough for this, that I don’t deserve it.

He nearly kissed Jean and his damp lips. Jean was the hot water rushing over him, the taste of chocolate on the tip of his tongue, a taste they could perhaps even share. He could feel it like someone had sparked the corners of his mouth, this tug that threatened to wind around the two of them and tighten, to pull them together until Armin could crawl beneath Jean’s ribs, guard his still beating heart.

It’s funny, they say, how much of a disappointment Mikasa was. How she was meant to follow in Levi’s footsteps, to become the strongest warrior. And how peculiar, they might add, that her wibbling dependant waif of a boy is the one who seems to have taken it all on his back.

Armin did not kiss Jean. He squeezed the curve of his jaw, jerked his head so their eyes were level.

"You are the best leader humanity could hope for," Armin had said, and then perhaps cruelly added, "And you deserve this."

.

Love is not allowed in places of war and death. Love is weaker than broken limbs, stronger than any weapon- beast, human, or otherwise. Love can kill you and leave you alive enough to feel it.

Armin knows Jean loves him. He’s told him, explicitly so.

"I will keep you safe," Jean had pleaded, pulled at Armin’s neck, tore at his jaw with fingers aching to keep him still, keep him here, "I will keep us both safe. You tell me to be selfish- I will be, for us.”

"Your views are idealistic at best," Armin had chided, and pulled away to stand, "It isn’t worth the potential loss of control."

"I’m not worth it?" Jean had asked quietly, and then resigned his pulling hands to his own lap. "Armin, please-“

"What would you have to gain?" Armin said, and just thinking about what he was about to say had made him feel ill with the kind of pain he’d made a point to avoid. Jean just wouldn’t go away. “Other than public shame? Or perhaps you enjoy the constant nagging worry of almost losing someone to a never ending battle-“

"You say that like I don’t already love you, Armin, I know all of this already-"

"What do you want?” Armin had snapped.

Jean stumbled from his bed, slunk to Armin as if he’d been shot in the leg, debilitated by Armin’s persistent rejection. Armin always wondered if Jean knew he wasn’t rejecting him so much as rejecting himself.

"I want to be able to kiss you in the mornings. I want to hold you and know your heart beats a little faster because of it." Jean had managed to stop Armin in his tracks, turned so he was facing him, pushed hair away from his eyes. He got close, close enough to nose at Armin’s temple, to smell the scent of his hair. "I want to hear the sounds you make when you come, I want to make love to you until you forget that we’re all dying."

Armin had almost snapped again. Fevered dreams plaguing him since he was young enough to be woken by them, dreams of Jean covered in sweat and heaving, dreams of Jean’s mouth and his tongue pulling noises like secrets, coaxing Armin into breaking, just for him.

He’d pulled away from Jean, then. Muttered something about wanting to save humanity, that being selfish is different than being careless, that lives still mattered, even if Armin didn’t allow himself to dwell on how, or why- and more specifically why losing this felt like proving someone else right.

Jean had let him go, and had been a little harder ever since.

.

.

.
So it makes no utterable sense as to why it happens now.

Why, after all these years, it is something so simple to have done it, he will never understand. Perhaps there is something deeper rooted than what Armin sees, perhaps it means something more, something almost poetic.

Or perhaps Armin is simply tired of being miserable and alone.

"What is this?" Armin asks curiously, holding the foreign steaming basket in his palms.

"Muffins, or scones maybe," Jean says, "They’ve morphed a little more than I intended them to."

Armin blinks up at him, stunned.

"They have chocolate in them," Jean continues, a shy eagerness to his voice, "-small chunks of it, I thought you might like them. It’s, uh, my mother’s recipe."

Something sacred and hollow within Armin’s chest shatters, broken shards of metal tearing a sob from the back of his throat. Armin drops the basket, scatters the baked lumps of sweetened dough all over the floor, and clutches Jean’s back, his shoulders, his neck - grips in rhythmic pulses, like he’s afraid Jean isn’t actually real, isn’t truly alive and well and here.

"Armin, what-"

And he is tired - so, so tired - of being alone.

"I hate you," Armin sobs, his mouth wet and pressed against the side of Jean’s neck. It sounds a lot like a confession. "I hate you so much."

Jean has long since given up displaying how Armin’s words can hurt him. So instead of asking ‘why’, he says, “You don’t have to eat them.”

Armin glares up at him, eyes hard, but softened around the edges by resigned tears. Jean is beautiful, Jean is wonderful, Jean is loved and knows how to love, and that does not, has never, made him weak. Armin has hid from the living loss of his two dearest friends for years, and only cowards tremble in the shadows of the past.

"How can you still— Why do you always—“

Jean looks at him a little sadly. “Because you make my life better. And because I still hope that some day you will think I’ve made yours better, too.”

There is a hot pillow of dough that wedges itself between Armin’s bare toes, that nearly burns as he lifts himself up, stands at a height optimal to kissing his Captain, his friend, his comrade. His life, or part of it.

And it isn’t sparks or fireworks or explosions of grandeur. It’s Jean’s stubble scratching Armin’s chin, it’s Jean’s mouth being warm and wet and tasting faintly of sugared dough, it’s Jean gasping and parting his lips, clutching Armin’s sides like he’s worried he might fall away from him. It’s feeling the one thing Armin has never allowed himself to feel.

"That was my first kiss," he says in a daze, well an adult now and reeling in shock.

Jean looks like he might cry, and Armin will yell at him if he does- yell at him until his voice grows hoarse and he lets himself cry too.

And Jean, being ever the hopeless romantic he is, makes nothing more than a simple promise.

"It will not be your last."

Chapter Text

armin awakes to jean’s erection poking him in the thigh, jean sleepily grabbing for any piece of armin he can reach, tugging him close and pushing his hips forward in quiet insistence.

armin smiles sleepily, touches the bridge of jean’s nose, lets himself get pulled closer. his body is still sore from the night before, limbs heavy and fluid, his back, and lower, still aching almost pleasantly.

jean grins against his chest, blindly traces armin’s nipple with his nose.

“you smell like me,” he mumbles, and armin hums.

“can’t imagine why,” armin replies.

jean rolls them over, until his face is pressed into armin’s stomach, and he’s trailing his hand down armin’s naked thigh. he kisses his way down from armin’s navel, making armin’s cock twitch and hit the underside of his chin, but then he stops and pulls away rather suddenly, glaring down at his hip.

“jesus,” jean whispers, thumbing a particularly dark and purpling bruise in the shape of his own fingers. “did i do this to you?”

armin grins, reaches down to place his own hand over jean’s, moans a little as he makes jean’s fingers press back into their indentations on his skin. “mhm.”

jean pushes armin’s hand away, dips down and kisses his hip, soothes the bruise with his tongue. “sorry baby,” he mumbles.

armin grabs him by the top of his hair, his gut churning pleasantly when jean whimpers and looks up at him with lust hazed eyes.

“i liked it,” armin says firmly, and then holds jean’s head in place while he spreads his legs. there’s hickies smattered all along his inner thigh, some large and dark blue, others small and pink. armin only knows because he spent an entire hour in the bathroom last night looking at them, tracing them and smiling, all blissed out from it.

armin lets go of jean’s hair, whines a little when jean spreads armin’s legs wider, leans back to survey the damage. he still looks a little shocked at himself, but the flush staining his cheeks and his neck says he knows, he just didn’t expect armin to be so responsive to it, to want it as bad as he does.

jean spends another moment staring at armin’s thighs with a pensive expression. he then dips down and kisses the soft skin where armin’s leg meets his hip, breathes shaky puffs of air over his groin and then kisses the base of his cock in a kind of warped mix of ‘thanks’ and ‘sorry’.

“i said liked it,” armin says again, because he thinks jean needs to hear it, needs to know he’s wanted just as bad as anyone else. armin tilts his hips up, whining when jean only barely grazes the head of his cock with the very tip of his tongue. “no one can see them, they’re just for me.”

jean makes a desperate sort of sound and then leans down, takes armin’s cock in his mouth and sucks on the head, kisses the wet pearling tip the same way he kisses armin’s mouth when they get particularly filthy.

and jean, for being as cocky and mouthy as he is normally, is oddly shy in bed, at least vocally. so when armin whines and says, “you can fuck me again, i’m still wet,” jean lets armin’s cock fall out of his mouth and groans, pressing his face into his hip.

“god, you’re so fucking horny when you’re sleepy, it’s amazing.”

armin grins. “better than coffee,” he says lightly.

jean crawls up the length of his body, warmth radiating from the flush now creeping down his chest, pressing the damp of armin’s cock alongside his own. jean lets his hand wander, presses his fingers into the space between armin’s legs, curses when one of his fingers easily slides into him, caresses the wet warmth deep in his body.

he pulls out and slides three back in, fucks armin with his hand while he only barely hovers over him, his back breaking out in goosebumps when armin keens and bites on his ear lobe.

“i want one where people can see,” armin says, voice pitched low, directly into jean’s ear. “i want it, i want you to mark me jean, please.”

jean curses again, quietly, carefully. he pulls his fingers out of armin, spits in his hand and slicks up his cock. he crowds armin on the mattress, slides into him in one long, slick stroke, and armin’s head falls back on an inward and silent scream.

jean is ignoring his request on purpose, because he’s still worried that sometimes he goes too far with armin and what armin lets him get away with, thinks things like bite marks and bruises are too stigmatized by society as ‘slutty’ or ‘rough’, even though they both like it, in their own way. he instead curves his back, sucks on armin’s nipples until they’re damp and sensitive, peaked and almost numb from the repeated attention of jean’s tongue.

“jean,” armin says, voice as firm as it can be while he’s full, so fucking full, pushing back on jean’s cock, his chest thick like it’s padded in cotton. jean is the safest thing armin knows, and he knows all of the darkest pieces of him. “do it,” he begs, “please?”

groaning right into armin’s neck, jean eventually relents. for the longest time he just presses his face there, tongues wetly at armin’s pulse. when he starts sucking on the skin, biting with his lips, it’s so sudden and sharp that armin moans, broken and ragged.

“you like that?” jean rasps, laving his tongue over the hot bruise armin can feel forming, rolling his hips into armin’s body. he’s close, his mouth turns all dirty when he’s about to come. “you want people to know you’re mine, yeah? like this cock so much you can’t have anyone else, right? tell me, baby, how bad do you love getting fucked?”

armin whimpers, high and tight, forgetting where he is for half a second as his eyes roll into the back of his head. jean’s hips piston almost fluidly, the tip of his cock consistently kissing armin’s prostate, and he would tell jean he loves it, wants his cock all the time, misses being stretched wide when he can’t have it, but his words are all garbled and jammed in his throat. there’s a burst of white heat, and he’s spilling hot all over his own stomach, jean groaning into his neck.

“fuck, baby, i’m so close,” jean whispers harshly, and then bites down on the bruise at armin’s pulse, comes in sharp spasms when armin cries out and clenches around him.

armin groans getting out of bed, because he hurts, but in the best of ways. he can’t go any longer without cleaning himself up a little, it’s kind of disgusting now. he’ll take a shower in a bit, when he can trust his body to manage to stand for long enough in a steaming hot room.

he stops short to look at himself in the mirror though, and smiles almost serenely. there it is, a mottled purpling bruise the exact shape of jean’s open mouth, dark and blooming right below his ear. he doesn’t even notice jean followed him into the bathroom, not until jean’s sliding up behind him, kissing his ear and then just below it, moving armin’s hair out of the way to reach the mark he made there.

“does it hurt?” jean asks, kissing it a little harder to test.

armin grins. “yes.”

“why do you like it?” jean mumbles, hiding by burying his face in armin’s neck, wrapping his arms around armin’s chest. he’s half hard again, armin can feel it poking his thigh like it did earlier, and it’s probably just from seeing how much armin gets off on being marred and branded.

“every time it hurts, i feel you,” he says, and jean whimpers into his neck.

“do you like it?” armin asks quietly.

“mhm,” jean mumbles, and then he’s kissing the bruise again, mouth open and licking.

they stand like that for a while, with jean clinging to armin like he can’t believe he’s real, and armin admiring the shape of jean’s mouth on his skin. the bruises don’t really hurt all that much, not unless you poke at them, but it doesn’t matter, and besides, they always fade. it’s armin’s quiet way of saying he’s happy to be wanted, and jean’s way of agreeing and saying he wants to keep. the real brand he’s left is deeper, even they can’t see it, but armin knows it’s there, and maybe that’s why he likes the smaller, more tangible reminders.

Chapter Text

"armin, for fucks sake."

jean grumbles, turns over onto his back and is involuntarily forced to drape his arm down the length of armin’s spine, forced to sit back and watch while armin treats the side of his body like a cat might claw the fuck out of a scratching post.

"m’sorry," he mumbles, but jean knows for a fact he doesn’t mean it.

armin keeps rhythmically pushing his dick into jean’s hip, begging and asking in insistent silence, moaning a little into the side of jean’s pec, pressing his face into the warm skin there. he’s writhing around like a fucking animal, so if jean thought he was going back to sleep, he was wrong.

"what do you want?" he asks him, finally, with far less frustrated gusto than initially intended.

armin doesn’t say anything, just sits up wordlessly, grinning like the cat that caught the mouse, his hair a tangled nest of blonde all shoved to one side and obscuring part of his face. he would look evil, almost, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s sex on legs when he’s horny, the way he kneels between jean’s knees, pushes his ass up into the air like he knows jean will see it. 

he sucks jean into his mouth, the softness of his cock not at all deterring, and jean instinctively moves his hand to massage the base of armin’s skull, coax him along, tell him without telling him that he wants it, yeah, that’s good, so fucking good baby, your mouth is so hot around my dick.

armin punches jean weakly in the thigh, making him jolt, and then snigger out a laugh at himself for having said that out loud without meaning to.

by the time jean is hard and aching with it, his balls tight and ready for release, armin is clambering up from between his legs. he keeps making these needy little noises, soft breathy grunts, hungry whimpers from high in his throat.

he kisses jean sloppily, missing his face a few times, his legs straddling one of jean’s thighs, pushing the damp head of his cock down and up into jean’s hipbone.

"what do you want?" he asks again.

armin reaches behind himself, takes jean’s dick into his hand, strokes it with purpose, the cock of the barrel of the gun— pun sort of intended.

"i want you," he says quietly, his voice wobbling on another quiet moan, squeezing the head of jean’s dick to emphasize the whole thing.

jean’s eyes are still closed, his head pillowed back, and he’s about to smirk and start ranting about when doesn’t armin want him— but then armin is sitting on his cock, sucking him into the residual wet heat from a few hours before, and jean’s eyes fly open, desperate to see at least a piece of what this fucking feels like.

armin’s hand still reached behind him, holding jean’s dick in place while he lowers himself, his eyes practically shut in half-mast lust, his pupils - where jean can see them - blown right the fuck out. armin, holding himself up with his open palm on jean’s ribcage, the other slapping to the bed right to the side of his shoulder. armin cursing a long, hissing, “fuck yeah” when he takes jean to the root.

jean isn’t even doing anything, doesn’t have to. armin keeps rolling his hips back, his spine apparently made of jelly, fucking himself on jean’s cock like he’ll faint if he doesn’t get it now, immediately. jean lolls his head to the side out of sheer morbid curiosity— 4 in the fucking morning.

he’s not of the right mind to complain, though, not like this. not with the wet, familiar heat of armin driving a homing needle right to his brain, making jean forget anything else exists. not with the way armin bounces on his dick, breathing labored and choppy, like he’s running some kind of marathon.

"ah, ah, fuck, jean—”

armin sits back on his heels, pushing himself up. he stops moving his hips up and down, and instead sits with his full weight and starts rolling his hips in circles, that special sort of DIY stimulation that makes jean’s eyes roll into the back of his head every fucking time. 

jean’s eyes don’t have to be open to know armin’s jerking himself off. he feels it about half a minute later, spurting hot all over his belly, armin’s balls dragging against his skin. he hears it too, in the whiny, hitch pitched moan armin emits, damn near pornographic. if armin weren’t half asleep he’d be more careful, quieter. 

for a second there, jean assumes that’s it, that’s all that was needed, armin got off on his dick and he can go back to sleep now, but armin isn’t quite done yet. he lifts back up on his knees, leans back a little, his hands by jean’s thighs, which tightens the fuck out of the angle. he starts rolling his hips again, and jean pants out armin’s name in probably a few incoherent languages, and then fills him full.

armin lifts himself up and then collapses like a sack of stones at jean’s side, presses his face into jean’s armpit and makes a little happy noise of contentment. 

he’s filthy, they both are, but jean can hardly move now, the warm residual ache of orgasm making his limbs feel like they’re made of lead.

"go to sleep," jean mumbles, another attempt at chiding armin for keeping them both up. armin is more than likely asleep and doesn’t hear it, which is for the best, because jean smiles when he says it, and armin probably can’t see that either.

Chapter Text

Jean is slowly beginning to realize that there’s no such thing as black and white. That the world is too full of color to limit things to only two options; that ‘yes’ and ‘no’, or ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ are for storybooks and preschool.

Which doesn’t make any sense to be thinking about now, but it’s been a long day, the afternoon sun finally setting low enough that his building is covered in shadow. He’s sitting in his off-campus apartment with Armin out on his tiny window balcony, the black iron bars beneath them creaking with every little move they make.

It’s the spring parade, a huge farce of fund raising, and for the first time since Jean’s known him, Armin isn’t participating. He thinks about asking why, perhaps interrupting Armin mid sip of his beer (yes, he sips, slowly) and demanding to know why he’s withdrawn his otherwise magnetic personality from such a people-heavy event.

He doesn’t have to ask, though, when he sees the float both Eren and Mikasa are sitting on.

It’s a mobile kissing booth, essentially, with two options. Five dollars to kiss either Eren, or Mikasa. Jean bursts out into a laugh that makes the entire balcony shake when he catches Eren’s dopey, well-kissed face leaning into his palm - and then contrast of Mikasa looking like she’d rather be anywhere else.

“Should’ve put you on that thing,” Jean says, his voice still shaking with amused laughter.

“What? The whole point of the kissing booth is to actually raise money,” Armin states matter-of-factly.

“Exactly, everyone wants to kiss you.”

Armin snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“You have kissed someone before, right?” Jean asks, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

And there it is. The only answer Jean wanted, out of all of this.

“Holy shit, you haven’t! How-”

“It’s by choice, okay,” Armin interrupts, looking sufficiently flustered. “I’m very particular about what I put in my mouth.”

“Have you even wanted to kiss anyone?” Jean questions him, refocusing his face to the rear-end of the parade, frowning a little at the way it gradually reveals the mess left behind.

“I really wanted to kiss Annie in 10th grade,” Armin says, with a wistful little sigh that makes Jean pat him on the back in some kind of sympathy, “But she kinda hated me, or it felt that way.”

“Annie hated the world, not just you. And I can’t even picture her kissing anyone.”

Armin shrugs, “I guess you’re right, although I still probably would now, if she asked.”

There’s a small pause that seems fitting for the afternoon, the end of a useless celebration, the balcony starting to cool off from the late afternoon warmth. Armin’s hair is tucked behind his ear on the side closest to Jean, and he has a tiny little mole right on the shell of it, like the marks they make in sharpie before your ears get pierced.

It’s something Jean has noticed before, and for some reason the pseudo-intimate familiarity makes him blurt, “Not even Mikasa? You’ve never been curious and asked her to like- I don’t know.”

Armin shoves Jean’s shoulder, rattling the balcony. “Not everyone has the hots for her like you do.”

“I don’t anymore,” Jean says, his grip so tight on the balcony it makes his knuckles turn white. “But you spend, like, all of your time with her.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Armin says, and he’s smiling almost serenely when he adds, “I’ll die a virgin. I’m okay with that.”

Jean scoffs, and then sloshes the thin, filmy backwash of beer still left in his bottle. “No, you won’t. You’re just selectively blind.”

Armin sees Jean’s empty beer, and then examines his own, and with an unspoken agreement, they both climb back into the window to head back to his and Marco’s fridge. Marco is currently passed out on the couch in the living room, with Connie’s head pillowed in his lap, Sasha must be in the bathroom.

Jean grabs them both another beer, the noise outside calming down to a hum. Armin sips his beer, leaning on the kitchen counter, and he keeps staring at Jean’s mouth like it’s puzzling him, a small wrinkle between his brows.

“What?” Jean asks, catching Armin in the act, though Armin doesn’t look even remotely ashamed.

“How many people have you kissed, then?” Armin asks, still frowning like he’s trying to solve some kind of complex equation. “Since you’re clearly the Kissing Casanova here.”

Jean takes a larger gulp of beer, hissing almost arrogantly from the burn of it down his throat, and says, “A few.”

“Names,” Armin demands.

“Okay, uh. Hitch, Sasha, Ymir-”

“That one is definitely a lie!” Armin interrupts.

“No, it’s not. It was a dare, it still counts,” Jean waves Armin off, and continues, “Uhh, let’s see… Hannah, Connie-”

“Connie?!” Armin practically shrieks, and Jean has to actually slap a hand over Armin’s mouth to keep him from waking up the boy in question, who is currently still using his roommate’s lap as a pillow.

“Yes, Jesus.”

“You…” Armin begins, his mouth working over silent words, though none of them come out. He looks at Jean like he’s made of stone, something unbreakable and not at all reflective, the kind of thing you have to chip away at to find the core. Really, it’s much simpler than that, but Armin still seems to brace himself somewhat, as he says, “Okay, come here.”

‘Here’ ends up being Jean’s coat closet, Armin closing the door quietly behind them and then flicking on the dim light overhead.

Jean waits until he’s sure Armin can see his face to smirk and say, “Is this supposed to be suggestive? Something you wanna tell me?” Despite the fact that his heart is thumping like the feet of a thousand rabbits.

“Just- shut up. I want to do it.”

Armin looks so forcefully determined that it throws Jean, takes him a minute to catch on before he asks, “Do what, Armin?”

“Kiss you,” Armin says, plain as day, and Jean’s not sure what to make of this, other than the fact that it’s making his stomach flip and his palms sweat. “I mean, be kissed by someone, anyone. Just. You, anyone. I guess”

Jean swallows thickly, Armin’s fiercely determined face turning adorably pink. “You sure about this?”

Armin nods. “Yes.”

“It’ll be a lot different than kissing Annie,” Jean says, although he’s already taking small, measured steps closer to Armin.

“And I never got to do that, I don’t care,” Armin says, his breath now coming in short little huffs as Jean steadily moves closer. “You put this idea in my head, it’s your fault.”

Jean doesn’t even bother confirming or denying, just leans down to very chastely kiss his closed lips. Armin’s mouth goes all soft, and it falls open on a tiny, quiet ‘oh’. Jean doesn’t pull back much, and his eyes keep flitting back and forth between Armin’s eyes and his mouth, so that when Armin leans up and into him, it isn’t a surprise.

He kisses him again, this time deeper, more thoroughly. He has to swallow down a deep groan when Armin’s tongue licks at the seam of his lips, his head tilting to one side, similar to the way puppies do when they want something from you. Jean opens up for him, lets him explore his mouth. Armin’s tongue is a little sloppy and overeager, but it’s okay, it’s more than okay. All Jean can hear is the rustle of the coats at their backs, and the soft clack of their tongues moving together, and it shoots through him like a shot, like a needle piercing right into the part of him that’s been sitting dormant and unsteady.

Eventually Jean ends up pulling away because it feels like Armin isn’t breathing right, so when Armin bursts out a barely restrained exhale, Jean laughs and wipes the corners of Armin’s mouth with his thumbs as he says, “You have to breathe, idiot.”

Armin nods, gazing up at Jean with this struck stupid expression, his eyes all unfocused and shimmery, but the moment is cut sharply in half when Sasha, rather violently, opens the door on them.

“Wow, okay,” she says, her eyes going wide, “So, um. Can I get my coat, please?”

Jean grunts, grabs at the ugly purple monstrosity, and tosses it in her face, not looking away from Armin, who looks like a mouse who’s had his tail stepped on.

Right as Sasha’s about to leave, she says, “Can I just let it be known that I’m not really all that surprised-”

“Get out, Sasha!” Jean bellows.

Once the door clicks behind her, they’re covered in silence. Armin fidgets a little in his spot, seemingly reluctant to pull away from Jean.

“What did we just do?” he asks Jean, quietly.

“I kissed you,” Jean mumbles, suddenly unsure of himself.

It’s like diving in a pool without knowing which end is the deepest - you just hold your breath and hope you don’t knock yourself out. It feels a little like Jean’s hit his head, his focus a little blurry, and he can’t seem to decide what to do with himself. He settles on smoothing down the collar of Armin’s shirt, the same way his mother used to fuss over him.

“That was more than a kiss, though - wasn’t it?” Armin whispers, as if anyone will hear them from in here, touching his lips like he can still feel Jean there. “It felt like more,” he adds.

Jean laughs nervously, “You the expert now then?”

“Jean-”

“Hey, let’s go get more beer,” Jean diverts, clearing his throat and dropping his hands from Armin’s neck. “I feel like Connie’s gonna steal whatever’s left in the fridge.”

They end up back out on the balcony with the last two beers, the cooling calm of night making the remnants of the parade strewn across the ground look like an explosion happened here. Jean has his legs crossed, his knee bouncing in nervous little jerks, and he’s waiting for Armin to say something like ‘can we forget we ever did that?’ or ‘so, are you gay?’

He says neither. Instead, Armin leans his head on Jean’s shoulder to watch the sparse cleanup crew sweep up bunches of confetti and trash. It’s the kind of affection Jean has only ever associated with girlfriends, but it doesn’t feel weird that it’s Armin - just unexpected.

Jean ends up kissing Armin’s hair, because it feels like the right thing to do after stealing his first kiss so selfishly, and he can feel Armin shiver against him, an immediate reaction.

“You don’t, like, feel sorry for me, do you?” Armin asks.

“No?” Jean glares down at what he can see of Armin’s head, still resting on his shoulder.

“Okay. Because you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t think I ever would, Armin. You’re too full of yourself.”

Armin laughs, shoving gently at Jean’s shoulder. “Gee, thanks.”

“Any time,” Jean grins.

“No, but… Really, thanks,” Armin adds quietly.

Jean’s heart seems to pick up speed, nerves and anxious excitement all balled into this almost vibrating tension. “For what?” he asks.

“Don’t make me say it.”

Jean takes Armin’s empty beer, and then jostles the balcony railing when he moves to stand, his balance only barely steady enough to lean down into Armin’s ear to quickly whisper, “There’s more if you want it.”

He doesn’t wait for Armin to process it, though the flushed heat spreading out to the tips of his ears tells Jean he might. Jean only kicks himself when he remembers they just finished the last of the beer, and that Armin is still at the window, waiting for him.