Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When dawn breaks the following morning, it’s married to the clangs of six soundings of the bell — yet there is a rather subdued reaction to it this morning. Perhaps it’s the cooling of the air which had at last granted a full night’s rest, or perhaps the cheerful songs of the morning birds are just that sweet. 

Eren wakes on his back and feels — at ease — no better, he feels good. For once, Eren is actually excited to be awake, and it takes him a whole minute to remember why.

Jean . 

Fuck. 

Eren rolls over and sits up, glancing at Armin’s side of the cot to see if his friend is awake. To his surprise and amusement, he sees Armin is actually fast asleep. The boy is curled up in the fetal position and has his hands buried right up against his cute little nose, huffing softly enough to disturb the strands of hair fallen near his lips. Of course the mere hour that Armin had stayed up past his bedtime last night meant that the blonde was still conked out.

Eren, already in a good mood, feels his heart practically explode under the sudden avalanche of overwhelming adoration. He brushes a hand under Armin’s bangs and leans over him to whisper softly, “Hey, Armin… psst… time to wake up.” 

Armin chokes out a sigh as he struggles to peel open his sleep-laden eyes. The first thing he registers in his field of vision is Eren’s face, which looks uncharacteristically relaxed today… he wonders vaguely if he’s still dreaming.

“Eren?” Armin shakes his head and slowly rubs his eyes. “What… what time is it?”

“The bells just rang; don’t worry we’re not late — just not as ridiculously early as you like to be,” Eren huffs with amusement. He lays back down for a moment, and unexpectedly but not unusually, wraps his arms around Armin in a big-spoon position, sighing with content into the back of Armin’s neck. “Let’s just — can we stay like this for a minute?” He asks, half-knowing the answer but wanting to try and convince his friend anyway. Sleepy-Armin is the easiest to manipulate, after all.

Armin feels a blush creep over his face, shivering ever so slightly at the sensation of Eren’s breath on his nape. He knows that he doesn’t have time for a morning cuddle if Eren is being truthful about the bells having already rung, but Walls, it has been far too long since anyone held him like this and he can’t bring himself to move from Eren’s gentle embrace.

“Okay,” he chuckles as he places one of his hands on top of Eren’s. “Just a minute.”

Eren hides his happy-grin in Armin’s long hair and squeezes him tightly in thanks. “You sleep okay? No nightmares?”

“Mm… nothing terrible,” Armin quietly replies as he curls into Eren further. “But I’m awake now, so it’s not anything that we have to worry about anymore.” To make extra-sure that Eren feels no impetus to press the matter, Armin turns his face toward him to flash a convincing smile.

Eren traces that smile with his eyes, mindlessly mapping it and finding just a ghost of the young adventurer from before. He sighs, satisfied, and closes his eyes against Armin’s shoulder. “Yeah… good point.” He squeezes Armin again, because damn it he’s just so squeezable, and then pushes back a bit. “D’ya wanna get into the showers? I think I just heard Reiner do his morning snort thing before he wakes up.” 

Armin laughs at Eren’s childish comment as he pushes himself upright. “Yes, we should get started on that soon if we’re already behind.” Slight drowsiness is still slowing his speech, but the increasing haste with which he scurries out of bed and gathers his affairs betrays his anxiety.

Eren rolls his eyes, good-naturedly, at Armin’s inability to stray an inch from the goody-two-shoes character he is, but follows his lead to get a clean uniform and his bar of soap. 

Reiner is most certainly up, and is deeply frowning at something in his hands. Eren can’t quite see what it is but imagines it is a hole in his trousers or something like that. He honestly can’t be that bothered about it. 

He is too busy fighting the sudden swarm of butterflies that had erupted south of his stomach upon wondering if Jean was up yet. 

“Bert? Oi, Bert! BERTHOLDT!” Reiner adds a shove to his bellow to wake the lanky bastard.

Bertholdt starts up with a grunt, but he only has enough strength to push his head one inch off of his pillow. “Rei… Reiner? Wha…”

Reiner shoves what are indeed his uniform trousers right up under Bertholdt’s nose, his face a perfect picture of panic. “You can sew this right? It’s fixable, right? Right Bert?”

Bertholdt languidly pushes the fabric out of his face to avoid suffocating in it. He struggles to sit up enough that he can inspect the damage, turning and stretching the trousers a few different ways before giving up the search.

“What are you talkin’ about, Reiner… there… there’s nothin’ there…”

Reiner turns pink with frustration and moves over to shove his finger at a vague spot somewhere at the inner seam between the trouser legs. “There! Can’t you see it? Oh fuck, don’t tell me you can’t fix it… they’ll see my underwear, Bert!” 

Before Bertholdt can formulate a response, Connie is jumping down from the bunk that he and Jean share and is squinting daggers at the pair of them. “Would you both shut up? It’s fuck-o-clock in the morning and I have two bastards to kill for keeping me up last night.” He aims his glare at Eren, who blushes and makes his way hastily to the showers. 

“Why the hell is everybody yellin’ this early…” Jean turns over in his cot to glare at his noisy neighbours, rubbing his temple with two of his fingers.

Connie turns up to glare at him. “Because some people kept us up last night with all their fuckin’ around in the showers. Did you and Eren make babies in there or something?”

Jean flinches at Connie’s joke before he can stop himself — Walls, he hopes Connie is joking or he’s going to be sick to his stomach. “Fuck are you talking about?” He spits out as he swings his legs over the side of the cot, leaning over to hold his spinning head.

Connie, far more awake now that he has had a morning bout of idiocy to boost his morale, points his finger at Jean before jerking his thumb in the direction that Eren went. “You. Eren. Fucking around in the showers. Sounded like you were ripping each other to shreds. I’m surprised you still have both eyes, Jean.” 

“You shouldn’t be. Naturally, I beat that little shit to a pulp.” Jean’s voice shakes as he sighs and shuffles his way down to the floor. “Not my fault he cries like a bitch when he’s hit.”

The rest of the male cadets are already walking in the direction of the shower by this point, and the general volume of the building has grown enough to drown out the sound of the showers. 

Connie grabs his towel and tosses Jean his (hitting him square in the face with it) before moving towards the bathhouse. “You don’t even hit him that hard, Jean! You always pull your punches.” 

Jean’s nostrils flare for a moment as he grabs the towel and brings it down right on top of Connie’s head. “Oh, fuck off! Since when do I ever hold back like that? Especially for that fuckin’ brat…”

Connie turns to scowl at him and rubs his head, but wisely refrains from pushing the point as he turns his focus back to the showers. 

Jean marches off ahead of Connie, afraid to give him another second of time with which to say anything else stupid (or incriminating). He slips into a stall near the middle of the shower room — closer to the back, but not tucked into any corner, because he is absolutely not trying to hide from anything or anyone today…

He’s facing away from the shower wall when he starts undressing, and his fingers freeze over the buttons of his shirt once he sees who’s occupying the stall directly across from him.

Eren is likewise frozen, hands mid-scrub on his hair and eyes wide open like a schoolboy caught without his homework. He turns a perfect shade of pink and tears his gaze away, shuffling to angle his body out of Jean’s direct line of sight. Or well… specifically his hips. 

Jean can’t help but chuckle at Eren’s unusual but somehow very fitting bashfulness. He feels a few butterflies tickle his stomach, goading him in whispers to tease the boy until he turns red from head to toe. It would be so easy, and his reactions would be equally satisfying to witness… but Connie’s blockhead ass is ten feet away and he surely won’t cut him a break if he has any excuse to interpret his comments as anything more than antagonistic.

Still, he really doesn’t want to pass this opportunity up — because it’s a new angle from which to one-up Eren, of course — so surely there has to be a middle ground, he thinks…

“Heh, you runnin’ away from me today, Eren?” Jean turns into his stall but still looks back over his shoulder at his target. “Finally run outta steam and learn your place, you brat?”

Eren reddens even more and his eyes darken visibly as his mind leads him directly back to the gear-shed where he was on his knees and definitely being taught his place. He swallows and tries to find his voice, scratchy as it is. “N-nope. Don’t feel like talk’n to a horse today that’s all.”

Jean smirks and rolls his eyes at Eren. “You sick or something? You sound worse than Commander does after a full day of training.”

“Oi, he’s right,” Reiner pokes his head out from his stall, where he had been helping Bertholdt with his back. “You sound sick as hell, Yeager. What happen? You swallow the gear instead of polish it?”

Eren’s blush runs right down his neck and to his chest. He sputters something and fails to formulate any coherent speech. He settles with shrugging shakily and turns around to hide his face in the water stream.

From the shower room door, Floch, walking in none the wiser of the situation, glances from one boy to another with furrowed brows, wondering just what he could have missed in the three minutes that he had been running behind.

Connie jumps to lean over the wall partition between him and Jean, grinning like an idiot and, with just the faintest hint of teasing in his voice, sing-songs, “Oh Jean… did you strangle Eren yesterday?”

Jean stares up at Connie with the most menacing energy that he can muster in his eyes. “And what if I did, Connie?”

Connie whistles lowly. “Damn, you were mad-mad. What’d Eren do last night? Piss himself and then blame it on you?”

Jean knows that Connie is just being his usual schoolchild self, but he feels like the idiot is somehow seeing into his recent past and throwing it back in his face on purpose. Whatever is actually happening, Jean feels like Connie deserves a flick in the forehead, so that’s what he gives him, causing the buzz-cut-lumber-head to slip off the wall with a yelp.

“None of your business, alright? He got what was comin’ for him.”

Eren somehow manages to keep himself standing after Connie’s comment and he’s doubly relieved when Jean flicks the kid on the head. At least Jean is keeping his cool — makes one of them. Eren takes a deep breath through his nose and hopes to Maria that he’s soft enough to turn around now. 

It’s excusable as morning wood and he’s really not gonna get any softer with Jean standing naked right in front of him, so Eren gives up and swivels around to wash the back of his head. 

Floch knows that he shouldn’t be staring this hard, but Eren looks so irresistible when he’s flushed pink that the redhead can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away. His stomach flips the moment he spots Eren’s partial hard-on. He’s more aroused by it than he’s willing to admit — even to himself. He half-wonders what has Eren so riled up, but a part of him worries that he doesn’t really want to know the answer…

Eren isn’t aware of Floch’s eyes on him, though he normally is — normally, he revels in any eyes on him. Honestly, right now, Eren is hardly aware of his own fumbling hands washing the suds out of his overgrown shaggy hair. 

He has his eyes trained on Jean’s knees. Solely his knees. Because if he darts his eyes up he will surely drown. He can’t smother the mass of butterflies in his stomach, can barely tame his arousal down (in a public boy’s bathroom no less), and is currently struggling to string together more than one thought without Jean’s name in it. 

Eren absently wonders if this is why people kill each other for love. He feels like he really might just kill someone. (Probably himself if this is how focused he will be in training). 

Armin genuinely cannot remember a time when Eren had failed to meet Jean with an immediate comeback for his backhanded comments, so he has to look over his shoulder and check to make sure that his friend is still breathing. He is, thankfully, but barely, it seems. Eren looks almost more embarrassed than he did that one time Hannes had drunkenly joked about him and Mikasa getting married.

It all feels too strange to leave alone, so Armin dares to turn himself toward Jean, head cocked to the side and one brow raised. “That’s a pretty bold claim to make,” he says with as level a tone as he can manage. “Did Eren try to kill you in the gear shed last night?”

Jean scoffs as he moves his hands into his hair to start washing it. “Do you even have to ask? The kid’s a homicidal maniac, in case you didn’t know…”

“Maybe…” Armin glances off to the side before pinning his eyes right back on Jean’s. “But never without reason.”

Eren smiles while glancing briefly in Armin’s direction… and then he remembers the gear-shed and promptly returns his gaze to Jean’s feet. His cheeks are hurting from all the damn blushing.

“Alright, you want a reason that bad?” Jean cocks his head toward the other side of the room. “Then why don’t you ask him yourself, Armin?”

Eren jolts his head up and glares at Jean. He is in no condition to make up some reason for his behavior and damnit isn’t that obvious to Jean?

Armin waits three more seconds for Eren to say literally anything, and when he doesn’t, Armin turns away from Jean and shakes his head. “Seems like the kind of thing we shouldn’t be shouting about in the shower room…” He chuckles before shooting Jean once last side glance and then promptly fixes his gaze on his wash rag.

Connie, having been wonderfully minding his business up until now, pokes his head around the partition and narrows his gaze first on Eren, then on Jean, before looking at Armin. “Ok now I’m confused,” he starts slowly, “Jean what does that mean?”

Jean’s eyes narrow as he begrudgingly turns back to his imbecilic bunkmate. “It means that Eren is a fucking psychopath and Armin doesn’t want to admit it. Alright?”

“M’not a psychopath.” Eren mumbles. He had intended it to sound a tad more convincing, but hadn’t thought it would come out that pathetic. He raises his head and dares to look Jean in the face, fighting a wave of nauseating flutters when he meets those golden eyes. “You are just really — really fucking annoying.” 

“Damn, Yeager,” Reiner has poked his head out again (leaving Bertholdt’s soapy hands hanging awkwardly in the air where Reiner’s head once was), and he looks almost shocked. “That’s the worst comeback I’ve heard out of your mouth to date. Shit, you beat him up real good, Jean. The hell you do to him?” 

Floch clicks his tongue, finally finding it in himself to turn around and start running his water. “Something real fuckin’ stupid, obviously,” he mutters as he aggressively rubs his bar of soap into his wash rag.

At this point, Eren feels both pinned and cornered from all ends, so he turns helplessly to look at Jean, and mouths: help me. 

Jean’s eyes get caught on Eren’s for a moment, and he revels in the twisted delight that he gets from witnessing Eren’s discomfort. The boy looks so lost and hapless that, for a fraction of a second there, Jean genuinely worries he might just fall apart on the spot. 

But he knows that he won’t — this is Eren that he’s talking about. And no matter what goes down in the gear-shed or the shower room or anywhere else in this whole damn compound, he is first and foremost Jean’s rival.

At least, that’s what Jean needs everyone else in this room to believe.

“Fine, fine, you want the real story?” Jean finishes rinsing off his body and steps out of his shower stall, wrapping his towel around himself as he speaks: “Armin was close. Eren did try to kill me last night, but not in the gear shed. It was right here in the shower room, two fucking seconds before I was about to leave and go to bed.” Jean turns his head to smirk at Connie. “He jumped me, and it threw me off-balance since the floor was wet. Sorry the ruckus kept you up, but I did what I had to do to survive, so can ya really blame me?”

Connie watches Jean with the same kind of concentration that he gives Sasha when she devises a plan to sneak more rations before bed. He nods seriously, and then shakes his head. “Nah, but how did you make him all —” Connie waves his arm in Eren’s general direction. “All quiet like that. Shit’s scary. Eren always has something to say.”

Reiner darts his head out of his stall again, and Bertholdt loses his grip on the boy’s shoulders, sending him stumbling forward into Reiner’s back. “Oi, Jean, you actually strangle him?”

Eren interrupts, finally finding enough ire inside to speak in a regular tone. He even manages to throw a challenging smirk in Jean’s direction. “Jean might have choked me a bit. But I’ll get him back.” He clears his throat, mostly for emphasis. “Just maybe after I have some water or something. Fuckin’ hurts.” 

Jean reads between the lines and forgets how to breathe for a moment — he blames it on the humidity in the shower room so that he can carry himself with enough dignity to confidently exit without raising eyebrows. “I wouldn’t count on that if I were you…”

He stops at the doorway and looks over his shoulder at Eren one last time. “I think we both know who the stronger one is, out of the two of us.”

Eren blushes darkly and not-so-subtly slides a hand in front of his groin to hide an inappropriate twitch. Fuck Jean Kirstein and his stupid smooth words, he thinks, not for the first time.

Floch’s face turns a deep shade of red as he watches Eren shrink into himself at Jean’s words. He feels his throat tighten and knows immediately that he cannot be seen by anyone for at least the next ten minutes if he wants to keep his pride intact, so he hurriedly covers himself with his towel and rushes out of the room.

Chapter Text

The mess hall is buzzing as usual; the thrum of cadets and their varied topics of interest rises and falls with excited patterns of squealing and yelling. Eren, Armin, and Mikasa are seated at their usual spot — thanks to Mikasa’s inhuman ability to be the first person in the hall without fail — but only two of the three are actually eating. 

Eren is stuck trying to convince himself that he does not want to sit next to Jean right now. He is fighting a mixture of butterflies, adrenaline, frustration and not an unignorable amount of arousal in his stomach and doesn’t dare bring his spoon of gruel to his mouth for fear of spitting it up right away. 

Mikasa, displeased with how little she has seen Eren move so far, turns to him and gently places a hand on his forehead. “Eren, why aren’t you eating?” She asks him. “Do you feel sick? Are you running a fever?”

Eren’s eyes blink once and he crosses them in an effort to find the point of contact between his skin and Mikasa’s cool hand. He does feel warm … He brushes her hand off, batting the concern away. “I’m fine, Mika. Not sick…” he pouts.

Unconvinced by Eren’s weak-sounding half-sentences, Mikasa’s frown deepens. “You should still finish your breakfast,” she insists, “so that you have enough energy to make it through training today.”

If Eren is listening, he is doing a very bad job of it. He is doing a much better job at watching Jean’s hands currently. Did they always look so neat and nice holding a spoon ? 

Armin moves his eyes along the path of Eren’s gaze until they land on Jean, who brings another spoonful of gruel up to his lips but hesitates before opening them. Both of them notice much less malice than usual in his stare and much more…

Wonder? Armin guesses. Admiration?

This is a first — Armin’s eyes widen, and he wonders just how deep this shift in Eren’s feelings could run.

Meanwhile, Jean’s skin crawls — that’s not an expression that should be present on a boy’s face — much less on Eren’s face.

“...What are you looking at?” Jean asks rather plainly, patiently holding Eren’s gaze as he waits for an answer.

Embarrassed at being caught so obviously mooning over Jean, Eren turns his attention to his bowl of gruel, “lookin’ at nothin’…” he mumbles before shoveling a tasteless bite into his mouth. 

Suddenly, the doors to the dining commons open, and Marco walks in looking good as new, if a bit more pale than usual. He finds Jean and his smile is as brilliant as the daylight. “Jean!” He doesn’t wait for an invite and slips to sit by the bewildered-looking boy. “Did I miss rations?”

Jean turns toward the sound of his friend’s voice almost automatically, its sweet timbre dragging him out of his brief mental fog. “You shouldn’t have,” he replies as he throws an arm around Marco’s shoulder. “It’s good to have you back, man; feels like you’ve been out sick forever…”

Marco leans into the one-armed hug with a soft blush, “ I felt like I was out sick forever.” He frowns suddenly, “I’m going to need Armin’s help to catch up at this rate…” Then with another beaming smile he turns his bright smile back to Jean. “How has training been?”

Oh, Jean doesn’t even know where to begin answering that question…

“Oh, same bullshit as usual,” he boldly lies as he moves his arm off of Marco and back to his tray. “Can’t remember much from class that was interesting, and I crushed ODM gear training all week, as I do.”

Marco giggles behind his hand, “As you do indeed.” He turns to look at the other cadets, most of whom give him waves of welcome, and then freezes slightly at the look on Eren Yeager’s face.

It’s not an expression he typically sees on the head-strong, energetic boy. He looks crushed . 

Puzzling. Marco nudges Jean with his elbow, “Did Eren give you too much trouble during training?” He asks softly, keeping his face turned away from Eren but not quite taking his eyes off the boy.

“Pshh, when does he ever?” Jean playfully shoves Marco back with his shoulder, chuckling at the oh-so-silly idea of Eren besting him, but the corners of his smirk twitch almost imperceptibly…

Like he can’t decide if he wants to laugh or cry, Armin muses to himself. As for where that fear is coming from, he can’t yet tell. It isn’t a fear of Eren’s strength or anger — Jean’s whole rivalry with Eren is founded on their mutual one-upmanship. So what else could Jean possibly be so afraid of?

Eren is clenching a fist under the table. He’s never felt jealous before, and he’s not quite sure that he is feeling that way now. He feels… envious . Why does Marco get to sit next to Jean so casually, meanwhile Eren, who should have every right to , is stuck between being too much of a coward to do the same, and being too bold to just sit by Jean.

Marco hums in acknowledgment, “That’s good. Connie stopped by yesterday and told me that you two got into a fight during training on Monday. I was worried that it was serious, he said Commander gave you both stall-duty and gear-maintenance as punishment.”

Jean wishes that everyone would stop drawing his mind back to those damned places before the associated memories actually trigger a boner that he will not be able to explain away. He pours his nervous energy into a dry bout of laughter, shaking his head before turning his body more toward Marco.

“Yeah, I won’t lie, it did get pretty serious…” Jean’s eyes briefly flit over to Eren to see if his admission brings the boy any closer to his usual level of animation. “But it’s only because he really pissed me off,” he continued while looking back into Marco’s eyes. “I taught the damn brat not to underestimate me, that’s all.”

Eren’s heart practically leaps to his throat when Jean uses the word ‘serious’ with relation to whatever-the-fuck they have going on. All at once he feels lighter and free from that insistent anxiety that had been silently plucking at his courage all morning. 

He feels a playful smirk return to his face and spins his spoon between his fingers, “Oi, Jean. If I remember correctly…” And he makes certain that Jean is looking at him when he continues, “You were the one that pissed me off.” 

Mikasa trades a look with Armin, privately relieved to hear Eren’s voice return to its normal vibrant, if cheeky, tone. Armin shares in that relief, but in the back of his mind he scrambles to figure out what part of ‘It did get pretty serious’ was enough to snap Eren out of his listless funk…

Oh.

Armin moves a hand over his face to shield it from view. He’s sure that the realization of Jean’s potential double meaning is twisting his lips into strange shapes.

But they can’t possibly have moved that fast in one night…

Fuckin’ Maria… Jean hadn’t meant to walk into all of that, but the deed is done now, so all he can do is blush and take it. He feels a backwards sort of peace now that he has a real reason to be angry at the damn idiot again.

Reiner, on his way to put both his and Bertholdt’s trays away, rolls his eyes at the return of that strange static energy between the two boys. “And here we go again…”

“Oh, don’t get smart with me.” Jean seemingly forgets all about Marco in an instant, quickly swiveling to fully face Eren. “Fact is you jumped me unprovoked, so I responded in kind. You got exactly what you asked for, didn’t you?”

Eren leans back a little, his spoon sitting comfortably in between his lips as he gives Jean a lazy smile. “Oh I wouldn’t say it was unprovoked , Jean. You can be pretty provocative given the right light.” 

Jean doesn’t think he’s ever felt so insulted and flattered by one line in his entire life…

Connie snorts into his mug of orange juice, getting it all over Sasha in the process.

“Hey, watch it!” Sasha swipes at the shoulder of her shirt, now wet with Connie’s juice and spit, but she can’t be too mad at him in the moment because she’s snickering just as hard as he is at Eren’s comeback line.

Reiner finishes walking the trays to the counters, “Yep. And there it is,” he sighs.

Marco’s hazel eyes widen at the sudden vitriol between the two boys and he can’t quite stop turning from one to the other with no shortness of amusement and mild anxiety. He freezes at the look on Jean’s face, a strange mix of incensed and… embarrassed?

“Uhh, Jean?”

“What?” Jean realizes a second too late that his response was too sudden and sharp to sound unaffected. He bites the inside of his cheek as he looks away from Marco’s face.

Armin trembles from the effort to keep from laughing at Jean’s persistent skittishness and he almost feels bad about it.

So Eren wants to tease Jean like they’re “serious” with each other, but Jean can’t actually handle being complimented by him?

From this, Armin can only conclude that Jean is afraid of Eren’s sensuality… that he’s afraid of Eren’s crush on him.

“Nothing — just — you look a little pink around the ears,” Marco smiles, gently teasing. 

“And?” Jean feels a sudden and strong urge for the floor to open up beneath him and swallow him whole. Surely that would be less painful than letting Eren make a bitch out of him while his whole friend group watches and laughs. “How the fuck am I supposed to respond to something so damn embarrassing? That doesn’t even qualify as an insult…”

Eren leans forward, giddy when he sees the pink tinge around Jean’s ears. “What’s the matter Jean-boy. Cat got your tongue?” 

“Never.” Jean fights the urge to lean away from Eren, to maintain their distance, but he only turns his face away, resorting to glare at the boy through one of his eyes. “Just beginning to regret wakin’ you up. Can’t stand the sound of your voice when you get this uppity…”

Eren slips the spoon out of his mouth and leans on the table towards Jean, “But you seemed to like the sound of my voice last night…” He says, feeling his own face heat up.

“ Ayooo?! ” Connie hollers from the table across, leaning back to watch the drama unfold with disbelief.

Sasha’s body mimics Connie’s as she giggles manically. “Well, I’ll be damned, horse-boy…”

Armin feels his whole body heat up at the confirmation of his suspicions; for Eren’s sake more than his own, he lowers his face in an attempt to hide his blush. 

Mikasa feels the boy shift in his seat and casts him a brief glance. A one-second look is all that she needs to process that Armin has come down with a bad case of secondhand embarrassment. 

Jean feels his legs start to shake under the table, and he prays to Maria that his hands don’t start doing the same. “I liked the sound of you screaming in pain and crying out for help,” he bites out, then narrowing his eyes, hisses, “Don’t get it twisted, Yeager.”

Marco has steadily felt his face go from pink to red in a matter of seconds just from Eren’s insinuations alone. He feels almost as though he shouldn’t look at Jean and spare him the questions in his eyes, but he hasn’t got that much self-restraint. 

He coughs lightly, hiding his question in the sound. 

“I don’t think I’m the one gettin’ anything twisted, Jean.” Eren isn’t half-done and he’s right back in his element. He’s half-excited by their verbal sparring, and half-worried that it might land him another lesson in the gear-shed. 

Well… He’s not been called a suicidal maniac for no reason. 

Jean curses Eren for daring to so closely brush the truth of their late-night escapade with his words. He’s sure that Marco had just choked back an admission to solving Eren’s riddle, and he feels like he might as well be sitting naked before the raven-haired boy.

“I can assure you that you are.” As Jean gets to his feet, he picks up his tray with one hand and the collar of Marco’s shirt with the other. “Come on, let’s go,” he huffs. “Can’t be good for your health to be breathing all of his idiocy.”

“Ooooh, I think Jean likes Eren!” Connie jeers at Jean’s retreating back, nearly falling over backwards if it weren’t for Sasha snagging his shirt.

Eren wonders if he went too far. He hadn’t wanted Jean to leave … he thought that the taller boy might snipe back at him. They were in it together weren’t they? Had he somehow crossed an invisible line?

He sits down heavily, shit — I always have to fuck things up, don’t I?  

“What was that, Eren?” Mikasa says, reaching to tug Armin’s sleeve and pull the boy out of his private mortification. She will need his empathetic brilliance to handle whatever this is that Eren has found himself in.

Eren blinks and bites his lip, “I — I don’t know really…” he mumbles. 

Armin takes a breath to settle his nerves and tunes in his attention to Eren’s defeated tone and body language. For a moment, he wishes that he had the strength to knock Jean upside the head for being such a jackass.

But there’s something much more productive that he can do instead. He looks over at Mikasa’s mostly empty tray and starts shuffling the tupperware onto his own tray. “It’s almost time for our first class, right?” He reminds her. “Let’s start heading out now, since Eren might be moving a little slower today.”

Eren turns (slowly) to give Armin a frown, “Hey, what’s that supposed to mea—”

“Armin is right. Class starts soon.” Mikasa doesn’t really wait for Eren’s consent and gathers up all three of their trays to quickly shove them on the counter for the cadets in charge of dish-duty, before returning to the boys and following Armin outside.

***

The trio leaves early enough that the paths to the schoolhouse are still mostly empty when they arrive. Armin hopes that he has bought himself enough time to talk to Eren plainly before the day gets too busy for soul-searching.

“Hey, Eren… if I ask you a question, can you give me an honest answer?”

Eren stumbles a little and turns to give Armin a confused look. “Well I don’t regularly make a habit of lying to you — would mostly be a waste of time, really.”

“Good to know.” Armin chuckles wryly for a moment, and then he looks into Eren’s eyes with a compassionate seriousness. “So when Jean said today that things between you and him got ‘serious’... did he mean that the two of you are an item now?”

Mikasa whips her head to look at Armin with surprise just as Eren sputters out something incoherent and then promptly chokes on his own words. 

“I — ahh — w-what!”

“Why would you think that, Armin?” Mikasa asks, not without interest. She absently thumps Eren’s back to try and get the boy back to normal breathing but it doesn’t really help.

“It’s a bit of a long story,” Armin admits as he wrings his fingers together, “but I’ll try to make it brief. Eren’s relationship with Jean has been different for a couple of days now, actually…” He turns toward Mikasa but doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Eren told me about a… well, a sexual encounter that they had after stable-duty, and I may have overheard their second one while waiting for him to come back from gear-maintenance…” 

Armin is grateful that his shoulder-length hair is hiding the deepening redness of his ears. He looks to his other side and sees Eren staring down at his feet as he drags them across the dirt. Armin hopes that his plainness hasn’t completely worn the boy down as he returns his focus to Mikasa and continues:

“I noticed quickly that Eren’s attitude towards Jean has mellowed out a lot — I saw him blushing and stealing glances, and he had much fewer biting words for Jean today, as you saw. Even an idiot like Jean would be able to tell that Eren has a crush, but he seems afraid to acknowledge it. Remember how he clammed up the moment that Eren took the opportunity to give him a compliment? When he said that Jean could look ‘provocative’ under the right light?”

Mikasa nods with a small frown, “Right. He did seem — uncomfortable?”

“Exactly.” Armin touches his fist to his chin as the gears really start turning. “It’s as if Jean can’t really stomach the reality that Eren has feelings for him, despite on some level willingly engaging in intimate activities with Eren that did enough to draw said feelings out of him. Did Jean not mean for things to get this deep, Eren?”

Eren has so far managed to keep his face mercifully blank. But now he looks up at Armin and he can’t help the raw expression of fear that blasts itself clear through his eyes. “I — I thought we…” He swallows thickly. “I thought we got past that…” he whispers. “I thought he knew — it’s deep for me.” 

Mikasa reaches out and takes one of Eren’s hands in hers. Physical affection might not be her first language, but she learned it for her friends. “Jean’s an idiot if he can’t see that you are being serious — but you’re a bit of an idiot too, if this morning is how you try to show him.” 

“I can agree with that,” Armin adds, “so can you help me understand why you couldn’t address your seriousness with Jean more directly, Eren?”

Eren kicks a stone, it flies and hits a tree. He sighs through his teeth. “Because I almost fucked it up worse when I did…” 

Armin furrows his brow and frowns. “What are you talking about? Did Jean not take your initial confession well?”

Eren doesn’t answer, and his face gets red enough to make Mikasa slightly concerned. She turns to Armin with alarm widening her gray eyes. Then turns back to the mortified-looking boy. “Eren?”

“I — I slipped up and…” Eren heaves a shaking breath and recalls the same feeling of freezing paralysis that hit him in the shower when Jean’s naked skin pressed against his own; with the weight of a thousand words pressing on his chest. He draws a hand down his face, “I used the damn ‘L’ word.” 

“Hmm… it sounds to me like you didn’t mean to use that word,” Armin says as he places a hand on Eren’s shoulder. “Did it slip out in a moment of panic?”

“Maybe? Probably? I don’t know!” Eren feels panicked now. He thought he had it all figured out. Thought he knew exactly where his mind was with regards to Jean Kirstein. He turns to Armin and grimaces, “I meant it… I don’t think I’ve felt like this for… for anyone. Not this way.” 

“I believe you.” Armin smiles and gives Eren a small, reassuring nod. “So how did Jean respond? Was he surprised? Angry? Embarrassed?”

Eren huffs. It’s a pained and amused sound all at once. “He just… deflected. Like I never said it.”

“Oh…” Armin feels a pang in his heart and grimaces at the pain. “That’s a rather odd way to react to a confession. And a hurtful one…”

Mikasa’s brow is thunderous, she drops Eren’s hand as hers curl into fists. “The horse-faced bastard… What a coward.”

Eren starts at her anger and holds his hands up placatingly. “Mikasa… wait. Just — I probably came on too strong. It’s my fault really — I don’t think he’s uh — I think I’m his first. First boy I mean.” 

“Wait…” Armin stops in his tracks for a moment. “So that’s why you guys are walking on eggshells around each other? You can’t directly address your feelings with Jean because he still can’t admit that he has the same feelings for another man ?”

Eren shrugs. Mikasa fumes. 

“I — yeah I guess so…” Eren mutters eventually. 

Armin picks a spot on the ground to glare at as his bottom lip juts out in a pout. “And that’s the real reason why he left you hanging after you said that you love him.” He then grabs Eren’s shoulder and turns him so that they face each other. “It is not your fault that your conversation with Jean ended so poorly last night. Jean allowed his personal hang-ups about his sexuality to shut down communication before it could even start. Relationship establishment is a two-way street, Eren, so Jean needs to find the courage to meet you halfway.”

Eren runs the toe of his foot in the dirt, drawing a line. “So what am I supposed to do? Just wait for him?”

Armin shakes his head. “The way that Jean is doing things, you’d probably be waiting forever. So I think a better strategy would be to gently nudge him to lower his guard.” He looks up at the crowns of the trees in the yard as he counts off on his fingers. “Find a spot that puts him at ease; get him alone on our free day so that no one has to rush off to training; just get him talking about himself. Which shouldn’t be difficult at all, given the size of his ego.”

Eren purses his lips in thought, brow furrowing slightly. Mikasa gives Armin an appreciative glance and then tugs on Eren’s sleeve. “Don’t you both still have stable-cleaning duty tonight? That might be as good a time as any.” 

Eren wonders privately if that is a good idea given their last interaction in the stables had been what got them into all this mess in the first place. Not a particularly good spot to get Jean to lower his guard or put him at ease . 

Still. It was better than waiting in limbo for Sina knows how long. 

“I think you’re both right. I’ll — I’ll try to get him to talk then. See what he wants this to be.”

Mikasa moves to stand in front of Eren and places her hands on his shoulders. “Eren…” She says, “What do you want this to be?”

Eren, caught between Mikasa’s unrelenting stare and Armin’s expectant face, chews his lip before silently letting out the breath caught in his chest since last night. “I want it to be — I want — I want us to be…” 

He’s stalling. He knows already what he wants. Has known it since last night. But putting it into words is frankly terrifying. But it’s just Mikasa and Armin, he can tell them. He can be honest with them. They are more than friends. More than siblings. 

“I want him to be mine. And I want to be his.” 

Armin had expected a response along those lines, but hearing Eren actually verbalize it makes his heart flutter and race all at the same time. “I have a good feeling that you can make that happen, Eren,” he says to him. “Jean feels a lot of what you’re feeling, I think — but there’s something keeping him from embracing those feelings. If you can figure out what it is and help him cast it aside, the rest should work itself out smoothly.”

Eren nods his head, and a feeling of determination takes root somewhere north of his stomach. He hesitates to say that it’s his heart — beating so strongly with the will to make Jean his — but that statement is as close to the truth as it gets. 

The three of them move to the classroom, and the day… drags on.

Chapter Text

The rest of the day hasn’t been as torturously hot —  a small mercy in the grand scope of things — so much so, that when Eren and Jean finally make their way to the stables after a rushed dinner, they are jointly relieved to find that the air is tolerable and not stifling. 

Their pitchforks are standing patiently on the doorframe and Eren wastes no time in grabbing his. He hasn’t spoken to Jean all day and is beginning to wonder how he will even start implementing Armin’s strategic plan if he can’t damn well look at the other boy — nevertheless speak to him. 

He supposes the silent treatment is rather deserved after the shit he pulled during breakfast, but he rather hopes that, now that they’re alone, Jean might break the ice.

Jean’s head feels too jumbled now that he is once again alone with Eren — he feels his stomach tense with anticipation for the stunt that Eren will surely choose to pull tonight, and he doesn’t like that he can’t describe the feeling as pure dread. He decides to focus on his task: shoveling the floor of the stables. It’s a good task that doesn’t require him to speak to or look at Eren at all…

But after a few minutes, the effort of keeping himself silent and turned away feels much more burdensome than comforting. He looks over his shoulder at Eren, whose movements look far too stiff and stilted for someone who’s been in motion all day. His lips are drawn in a tight line, brows furrowed closely together…

Jean sticks his pitchfork into the dirt and leans on it as he turns himself around. “What is it, Eren? It’s just us now. Whatever you have to say, you can just… say it and get it over with.”

Eren starts as though Jean’s voice physically touches him. He can’t hear the sound of scraping iron on the concrete floor of the stall so he knows that Jean is just standing there — waiting.

His hands sweat as he pushes the fork into a pile of soiled hay. “Not sure what you mean. I’m not — I don’t really have anything to say.” Shit. Well that was probably the wrong thing to say. 

Jean raises an eyebrow. “Well that’s a fuckin’ lie if I’ve ever heard one.” He sets his pitchfork against the wall and takes a few steps closer — testing to see how many he can take before Eren blows a gasket over the invasion of his space. “Did I wear you out that much this morning?”

Eren jerks his head up to glare at Jean, “Unless I’m wrong, it was you who ran off with Marco, lookin’ like you just got your ass publicly whooped.” 

“No I did not —” Jean folds his arms over his chest and clicks his tongue. “You made the whole thing weird as fuck outta nowhere so I decided not to waste any more of my time on it. I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I?”

Strategy, remember ? Eren hears his thoughts in Armin’s voice and takes a deep breath. He drops his load of shit into the wheel-barrow and then promptly tosses the fork off to the side before moving to stand in front of Jean with his arms crossed.

“No. You’re right. You had every right to leave. I was outta line — you don’t like when I —” He frowns and gestures between them, “When I reference this. Us . Right?”  

Jean feels his innards recoil at Eren’s gesture, but he still feels a faint heat well up along his cheeks. “What — shit… what the fuck are you referring to, Eren?”

Eren glares . “ This . Us. What we’re doing. You don’t like when I tell others about it. You get angry. What am I? Just a dirty little bathroom secret? Is that what you want?” He barely notices how his voice rises, and how the small Armin in his head has slunk back into the shadows with a sigh of defeat. 

“Why are you talking about us like we’re — like I’m your — fuck…” Jean pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut, praying that the forbidden words he pushed off the tip of his tongue will soon stop pounding on the inside of his skull. “I thought we agreed that… whatever this is… isn’t that deep yet…”

Eren half-wants to grab the pitchfork and smack Jean upside the head with it. The other half coaxes back mind-Armin from the shadows and remembers to breathe. He closes his eyes. Opens them, and reminds himself to calm the fuck down . “Jean. This is deep. For me at least.” He can hear the tremor in his voice and hopes it doesn’t reach Jean’s ears. He can’t do much about the blush on his face — but then again, even Jean is blushing now.

Jean can’t tell if the shiver that runs down his spine came from his own body or from Eren’s shaking voice. He opens his mouth and tries three different times to start a sentence without success. He wants to run from the look in Eren’s eyes, but that would be a cowardly move considering that he’s the one who put that fear and rage there.

And if Jean knows anything about himself, it’s that he is not a coward.

“...Sorry. Clearly I missed somethin’ real important, so can you at least tell me what this… us is supposed to be?”

Eren uncrosses his arms; they fall limply to either side of him and he feels — flayed open, raw, naked. He can’t look into Jean’s eyes, the gold in them is too bright — too real. 

“Jean. You — this isn’t just another fuck to me, okay. You mean something. I want us to be more than just… I want this to be something more .” He can’t say it now either apparently. Can’t just up and ask Jean to be his boyfriend. To be fair, for all the experience Eren has in the sex-department, he’s never actually had a boyfriend. Hell, he’s never even had a proper girlfriend either. Armin and Mikasa are the closest he’s had to those things, and well — they deserve a category built specially for them. 

Jean’s chest tightens; he shifts his eyes closer to ground in a vain attempt to ease the tension. He squeezes his hands into tight fists and hopes it’s enough to hide that they’ve started to tremble. “How much more are you talking about, Eren?”

Shit, well now I have to say it … Eren swallows, and forces himself to look at Jean when he says it, because dammit he’s not a coward. “I — I’d — I want…”

“You’d want what?” 

“I’d want to be your boyfriend!” Eren cracks out finally. “There. That’s what I’d want.”

Now that he can finally breathe again, Jean takes a moment to slowly expel the last of the hot, stale air from his lungs. He isn’t sure what he expected Eren to say… he was honestly hoping that Eren would chicken out and say nothing at all. Then at least he would know how to respond.

But this… this is frying his brain and his heart. He can no longer deny what it means — that he feels this fluttering in his chest at Eren’s words — and for that he wants to rip his heart out entirely for betraying him like this. “Eren…” He lowers his head, pressing his palm to his forehead and cringing at how warm it feels. “Eren, I don’t think I can do that.”

Eren feels his heart stutter. Can’t… is not won’t… Feeling high from the risk he just took, Eren takes another: he moves closer to Jean and dares to touch his wrist gently, cupping it in his hand.

He looks up at Jean’s face, feeling somewhat relieved at the pinkness around his cheeks and ears — at least he’s not alone in this weird confession. “Why?”

Eren’s touch is so light that Jean at first wonders if he’s imagining it, but one look at his wrist confirms the opposite. The heat from his face quickly starts spreading through his whole body — to keep himself from melting into the floor, Jean jerks his hand away.

“You know why. I’m — I’m not… I’m not spineless. I’m no weakling… so I can’t do this with you.”

Eren winces at the clear, if somewhat muddled rejection. But some part of his stubborn ass will not take that as a proper answer. “What does being a weakling or whatever, have anything to do with being with me ?”

Jean feels his sweat start to pool around the nape of his neck and cling to his collar. “Are you playing dumb right now or do you really need me to spell it all out for you?”

Despite being almost a head shorter, Eren feels like he’s looking down on Jean. He pokes him hard in the chest. “I think I just jumped off a cliff to say the shit I did, and you are hiding in some closet, whimpering like a fucking coward — just say what you mean, Jean!”

Jean’s indignation runs like acid through his veins — he snarls at Eren as he shoves his chest with both hands, sending him hurtling to the ground, landing right on his ass. “I mean that I can’t be seen fuckin’ around like that with another guy, Eren! That would make me less of a man in everyone else’s eyes! You can see the way they laugh and jeer at me already after you put just the thought of it in their heads… and it’s not even true. I can’t be gay, because that would make me a dirty fuckin’ useless coward and I will not have that.”

From his place on the floor, Eren wonders if it were even possible that Jean actually touched him at all last night. The way that he’s speaking — either Eren is that irresistible, or Jean is just really beefing up his defenses right now. 

He folds his knees up in front of him, circling them with his arms. “I don’t get it, Jean. Who the hell told you that shit? You aren’t weak if you like a girl, and you aren’t a coward if you like a boy. Seriously… who told you that?”

“Nobody needed to tell me anything.” A shadow passes over Jean’s eyes as he narrows them. “I saw that shit with my own two eyes.”

Eren’s eyes widen without permission. He glances away, buying time. To push Jean? Or not to… 

It could go really well — or really fucking badly.

 Well, Eren trusts Armin more than he does himself, and Armin said to get to the soft-underbelly of this beast in Jean. Eren turns back to look at Jean, and he keeps his voice as soft and open as possible. “Jean… what did you see?”

The scenes immediately start racing through Jean’s mind, and they long overstay their welcome. They’re ugly, so fucking ugly. He doesn’t want to see his mother crying anymore. Doesn’t want to hear it. This is the kind of story that he would hesitate to tell the King of the Walls himself on pain of death… so how in the world is he supposed to choke it all out to this fucking moron?

…By holding your head up and saying it with your chest.

Because you’re no bitch.

Jean takes a slow, deep breath before joining Eren on the ground.

“...Philip ran out on us, okay? And for that I don’t even want to call him my dad.”

Eren has to consciously tame his body language. Jean is actually going to talk — holy shit Armin you are a genius … 

Then what Jean said sinks in and he feels… he feels slightly sick. “How — how old were you?” 

“I was eight. And my brother was fourteen.” For a moment, Jean can’t believe he actually answered that question. But now that he’s started, he can’t back out, so he shakes his head and wills himself to keep going: “He’d been seein’ another man behind my ma’s back for a whole decade.” Jean has to laugh to keep himself from crying. “Can you believe it?”

Eren winces. “Yeah… yeah I can…”

“One of the MPs caught him in the act with his lover. Guess they got too drunk and moved the party to a local park… so he got arrested for public indecency. Couldn’t figure out a good enough cover story to fool my ma, and that was the end of it.” Jean folds his arms back over his chest, gripping his forearms so tightly that his knuckles turn white. “He left pretty soon after that — didn’t even bother to say goodbye. Not one word… all she could do for those first few days afterwards was cry.”

“Shit, Jean…” Eren feels wholly incapable of saying anything in response to that. He feels blindsided. What the hell can you even say to that… “I’m sorry, your dad sounds like a real dickhead.” 

“Tell me about it.” Jean moves one of his hands to his hair to tug at it. “It was like… fuck… like everything came to a standstill after he broke our family apart. A family that he didn’t even really believe in… he spent my brother’s whole lifetime lying to my ma every time he said that he loved her. Who the fuck does that?”

Eren frowns. “Maybe — maybe he believed the lie too? I don’t know why else he’d keep hiding it from her — or why he would stay so long otherwise…” 

“It’s because he’s a coward, Eren. We don’t have to overcomplicate it,” Jean hisses. “The man knew that what he was doing didn’t make any damn sense, but he did it anyway. Because he so badly needed the approval of all these other people in the city who didn’t even give that much of a fuck about him either way. He really thought he could keep a scheme like that going for the rest of his life and nobody would notice? Fuckin’ spineless bitch…”

Eren bites his lip. He knows enough about emotions to tread carefully — Jean might not trust him right now; this is just raw blood he’s pouring out from a wound that has been festering for Sina-knows-how-long , and if Eren digs at it too much he’ll lose whatever chance he has at building that trust. 

But fuck if he doesn’t want to find some sort of defense — something to counter Jean’s connection between his father’s mistakes and just being fucking gay. 

He settles on a leading question, something he imagines Armin might ask. “What did your brother say about him? ‘Bout what he did?” 

“Same thing I just said.” Jean shrugs his shoulders and looks more toward Eren. “We spent a lot of time talkin’ about him with each other. Seemed to help my brother take the edge off a little bit, while he was busy pickin’ up the pieces that Philip left behind. He got into a good rhythm with helping out our ma — happened so fast it was almost scary. But it was exactly what we all needed to start feeling anything close to normal again. I… honestly owe him a lot.”

“Damn. Sounds like a good brother. Where’s he now?” Eren asks softly.

Jean can’t help but smirk a bit. “He’s with the MPs right now, actually. And I’m on my way to join him, of course.”

Eren at once feels like he’s been presented with a very new reason to hate the MPs, and also with the most heart-wrenching sympathy for Jean. Who would have thought that Eren would need to compete with Jean’s fucking brother for his attention? 

He rubs his nose, searching for the right reaction to vocalize. “Guess that’s a better reason than just wanting to lay low and take it easy in the Capital. Doesn’t make it any less dumb, though. What’re you planning to do, bust more closeted fathers?”

“Oh, fuck off.” Jean stares up at the ceiling, and his expression softens ever so slightly. “I’m gonna do my job as a protector of the Capital. Whoever needs the help, I’ll be there for them. That’s what Matis is doing, so I won’t be any different.”

Eren tries to hide his eye-roll, but he can’t quite disguise his pout. At least I have a name to pin to that asshole’s face … “Yeah well, I’ll be out beyond the walls, protecting the lot of your sorry asses from the actual threats — y’know the titans?”

“Can’t exactly do that if you get eaten in your rush to play hero, you suicidal maniac.”

Eren shoves at Jean’s shoulder, but not with too much heat. He’s just glad to hear the name again. “Not gonna get eaten, horse-face. You know I’m better than that.” He pauses, sobering slightly. “Jean… you know not all of us are like your dad, right?”

“Huh?” Jean’s head snaps back down to face Eren. “Who’s all of us ?”

Eren flushes slightly. “Us. Me. Guys that like other guys…” He frowns and ducks his head. “Just — I know your dad was a horrible dick — but he’d still be a dick if he cheated with another woman. Right?” 

Jean’s eyes widen as the shock of that question freezes his body. How in all of seven years had he never once thought about something like that?

But the idea is in front of him now, so he can’t pretend that he doesn’t see it. He shuts his eyes to get a nice, long look at that picture, and sure enough, he can’t really say that he hates it any less than what had actually happened. It doesn’t change the way that he lied, the way that he ran off into the shadows away from the people who’d really loved him up until that betrayal…

“Alright. Fair point. But it’s still the case that Philip never wanted a wife to begin with. Only hooked up with other men under the cover of night where no one could see him… why did he need to use us all to hide his real desires if there was really nothing wrong with them?”

Eren’s fingers curl on his arms. “Because he was a coward, Jean. A real man would own up to the fact that he loved another guy…” And now Eren looks at Jean meaningfully: “A real man wouldn’t hide his boyfriend from everyone, and pretend that he’s some straight dude who has a perfectly fixed and right image.” 

Fuck.

Jean knows he hasn’t moved an inch but still feels as though Eren has backed him all the way into a corner of the stall. His head spins relentlessly — part of him wants to punch Eren in the face for daring to challenge his manhood, and part of him wants to curl up into a ball and cry like the coward he knows himself to be deep down. Eren is right for once, and he hates it more than anything.

Almost more than he hates himself.

Jean is now wracked by tremors from head to toe, and he no longer has the strength to fight them off. He feels tears pricking the corners of his eyes and quickly wipes them away with his sleeve. He refuses to fall apart here, no matter how much effort it takes him to keep at least his body together (his heart and mind are lost causes).

For a moment Eren had felt success — and then that was quickly followed with the feeling of insurmountable guilt. 

Shit. 

Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck!  

He had not expected Jean to take what he said and fucking break over it. But if he had to guess — and he was rather good at guessing in these matters — it looked like Jean just about had his brain pummeled by Eren’s words. 

He wants to hug Jean. And also wants to smack some spunk back into him, because Jean Kirstein is not supposed to fucking break down. 

He tries, again, to reach out and tug on Jean’s sleeve, an invitation for touch. “Jean… you — you’re not a coward. You’re the bravest, dumbest, most stuck-up prick I know. You’re not like him — so… don’t be like him.” 

Jean isn’t sure how Eren has managed to anchor him with a touch to his sleeve and a sorry excuse for words of comfort, but whatever happened, he no longer feels like he’s drowning and he couldn’t be more grateful for it. Focus, he begs himself. Hold your head up and face it.

Face him.

Once more, Jean meets Eren’s eyes and finds a softness in them that he never would have thought Eren to be capable of. As strange and out-of-character as it feels, when Jean takes another deep breath and allows himself to simply experience the eye contact without qualifying it… he finds that he’s comforted by it. That he doesn’t mind the idea of Eren caring about him like this, not nearly as much as he tried to convince himself that he would all this time. These are the feelings of the real Jean Kirstein, not the pretender that he’d presented to the rest of the corps.

“Alright. Well played, Yeager. To tell you the truth…” Jean swallows as his blush deepens, but he doesn’t dare break Eren’s gaze. “I… I do really like your eyes. I can’t really describe what it is that I feel when I look into ‘em… but whatever it is, I don’t ever really want to stop.”

Eren blushes. And then he laughs softly and draws a hand up into Jean’s hair, cupping the back of his head and bringing it down so that their foreheads touch. “Jean…” he draws the name out, smiling and closing his eyes. He opens them with a flutter and breathes out a relieved sigh. “I get it, okay. I get that you’ll need time. I’ll try to give you that, but…” He swallows his nerves and presses a soft kiss to Jean’s cheek, darting away with a hot blush on his face. “Don’t make me wait too long, ‘kay?”

Jean blinks nervously as he brings a hand up to the spot where Eren’s lips had just been. His heart jumps so hard and fast that it almost hurts, but somehow he likes the pain. 

“I…” 

Jean lowers his hand and shakes his head. Since words are failing him and he doesn’t want to look like any more of an idiot than he already does, he lets his actions speak for him. He takes Eren by the shoulder and gently pulls him forward until he can comfortably lean in and press his own lips to Eren’s cheek.

“I’ll… I’ll get there.”

Eren feels himself melt under Jean’s lips. He hadn’t expected that . Honestly… he didn’t know what he’d been expecting at all. 

He nods dumbly and rubs his arm while trying to rein in his heart, which had decided to fly off into the sky without him. He lets out a funny-sounding giggle and promptly slaps his mouth shut. 

Jean finds himself chuckling in response before he can stop himself. “What the hell was so funny about that?” he huffs as he playfully shoves Eren’s shoulder.

“Hey! Ough!” Eren has to catch himself on his hands, but he doesn’t mind too much; at least Jean is laughing too. “Shut up. I was just — fuck, okay, it’s a lot of damn emotions in here —” He thumps his chest for emphasis. “Somethin’ just sorta slipped out I guess.” 

“Tch, whatever — you are a flaming hot mess so I guess it checks out…” Jean slowly turns his gaze to the ground, bringing a hand up to rub the base of his neck. “But I am being serious,” he mutters, “in case that wasn’t clear to you.”

Eren lets out an uneven breath and moves to crawl towards Jean before sitting close beside him. “Yeah — I got that. Thanks, Jean.” Then, because the fucking heaviness in the stall is beginning to choke him, he dances his fingers up Jean’s shoulder and flicks his ear. “Sooooo… you think I’m hot?”

Jean flinches at the pain in his ear and the audacity of Eren’s question all at once. “Look, I obviously wouldn’t be entertaining you like this if I didn’t,” he hastily replies. “But don’t go getting a big head about it…”

Eren will take that as the ‘yes’ it is. He grins and then presses his nose right up under Jean’s jaw. “I think you’re hot too, for the record,” he whispers huskily. 

Jean barely suppresses an embarrassingly lewd sigh — he swallows what he can, and the rest falls out in sputters as he threads his fingers through Eren’s hair, pulling his head back just enough that he can properly look him in the eyes again. “You’re tellin’ me that like it’s news?”

Eren laughs, but it’s breathy and runs hot along Jean’s skin. “Some things bear repeating, Jean. And you are a bit thick — thought I should remind you.” 

“What the —” Jean loses his grip on Eren’s hair along with his composure, eyes widening as he slightly leans away from the boy. Once he catches himself, he comes back with an abashed chuckle and snakes his fingers around Eren’s neck to stroke the nape in circles. “You’re playing dirty, throwin’ around words like that…”

Eren purses his lips against the groan spilling out from his chest, but only manages to muffle it as he leans into Jean’s touch. His eyes flutter from the pleasure and he sighs, “I like playin’ dirty with you, Kirstein. You make it so easy…” He slips a hand down to rub a small circle on Jean’s thigh, teasing the inner seam of his uniform trousers. 

Jean gently pushes his thigh into Eren’s touch, shutting his eyes for a moment and sighing in a low tone as he lets Eren work his magic. His grip on the back of Eren’s neck tightens as he leans in to whisper in Eren’s ear: “And you play along real damn well…”

Eren snickers and quickly shifts his position so that he can kneel over Jean’s lap, legs bracketing Jean’s thighs and hips aligned with Jean’s stomach. He uses both hands to thread through the champagne-colored hair on Jean’s head and levels a flirtatious smirk at him. 

“Y’know what I’m thinkin’ Jean?” He hums.

“You’re thinking? That’s new.” Jean’s hands slide down to Eren’s hips and give them a firm squeeze. “What is it?”

Eren rocks his hips, just to luxuriate in the feeling of those hands holding him firmly. His eyes glint and he leans down to nip at Jean’s neck. “I’m thinkin’ that you’ve been a real good boy for me today, and you deserve a nice treat. What do you think, horse-boy? Wanna be my stallion? Wanna take me for a ride ?”

Jean laughs into Eren’s soft, dark locks. “That has got to be the least sexy thing I’ve ever heard you say…” He shifts his face down to the crook of Eren’s neck and leaves a gentle kiss. “But alright, I’ll humor you for a bit.”

Eren chuckles as well, and then quickly finds his voice cutting off when Jean’s lips are touching his skin. He shivers and sighs, “Yeah — well — I’ve used up most of my good words today…” He mumbles and then, without warning, sits heavily on Jean’s lap, grinning playfully. “But I’ve got a few uses for my mouth that don’t require words.”

Jean grunts and then softly moans, pleased by the pressure that Eren is putting on his cock. He leans back on one of his arms to give Eren more room to move, smirking up at the boy’s beautifully seductive frame. “That so?” He moves his other hand from Eren’s hip to the small of his back, rubbing it in circles with more conviction. “Then show me what you got. Impress me.”

Eren’s competitive spirit practically rears up at the challenge and he wastes very little time in moving off Jean’s lap and unbuckling the boy’s belt. He glances up at Jean while tugging down his trousers. “Don’t hold back — s’not like anyone can hear you here.” He taps Jean’s hip to get him to lift up before sliding both his pants and black boxers down his legs to mid-thigh.

Fuck. How has he literally seen this cock yesterday and yet feels like he’s seeing it for the first time right now? There are floods of butterflies exploding in Eren’s stomach and he feels like his own cock is fit to burst at his trouser seams. 

He grips Jean tightly at the base and guides the stiffening member to an upright position, practically salivating at the sight.

Jean’s hips sway ever so slightly as Eren so expertly handles his cock, and he shivers as he softly moans in appreciation. “Fuck, Eren… you’ll have to work to draw it out of me, though…”

Eren employs his other hand and draws down Jean’s foreskin, revealing a flushed head and a wet slit. He smirks and runs his thumb over the small opening before briefly dipping in.

Jean (foolishly) fails to anticipate how sensitive he is there — his back arches, and a strangled cry is ripped from his throat. “Eren — what are you — hah, shit…”

Eren abandons Jean’s cock for three seconds to undo his own belt and shuck down his pants and underwear to midthigh. He then moves back on top of Jean’s lap and sits on his thighs. “This okay?” He huffs breathlessly as he aims his cock towards Jean’s, hoping that the other boy will understand what he means to do.

Jean sees how close the two of their cocks are, and he hears a phantom-voice whisper to him to back away. But he doesn’t feel that impulse in the rest of his body — how could he when Eren’s hips feel so at home in his lap and Eren’s voice sounds so sweet and inviting? He looks into the boy’s eyes, and everything goes quiet in his head, allowing him to fully feel his burning desire for Eren to be closer.

“Yes,” he shakily whispers in response.

“Oh, thank fuck …” Eren groans and moves forward so that the heads of their cocks brush up against each other. He encircles both in one hand and finds that the stretch to accommodate Jean’s girth is almost too much. 

Sina, fuckin’ horse-cock bastard…  

“Gonna make it feel good for ya, Jean,” Eren gasps, and begins to rock his hips, thrusting in and out of the pocket of his hand. “Gonna make it so fuckin’ good…”

Jean is sold the moment that Eren’s hips start moving. The firmness of Eren’s grip on his member gives him chills, and the feeling of the head of Eren’s cock sliding and rubbing against his own is stealing his breath away. It comes out in rough, choppy pants as Jean slides his hand up Eren’s back until he reaches Eren’s russet brown hair again and starts gently tugging it.

“Mmh, oh fuck — please keep goin’ like that…”

Eren reapplies his other hand and begins to tease and rub Jean’s cockhead, pressing the flat of his palm hard against the tip. His own cock just barely brushes his palm on every upstroke and it makes him keen . 

“God, Jean!” He gasps, and his hips pick up the pace just a little more with every tug on his hair. “Fuck… Y-you know what this feels like?” He groans.

The movements of Eren’s palm drive Jean wild — he finally gives up on protecting his dignity, allowing rough, growling moans to spill out of his lips. “What, Eren? What… ahn… what does this feel like?”

Jean’s moans awaken something primitive in Eren, and he leans down to sink his teeth into Jean’s neck, burying a high groan into the skin. He lets the flesh go with a long lick and pulls back just enough to look Jean in the eyes.

“Feels — ahhh — feels like we’re fuckin’ the same cunt,” he grunts. 

The image lights a fire in Jean’s core — he keens as his hips thrust up into Eren’s hand, slightly out of rhythm. His face starts heating up again, and he hides it by leaning back into Eren’s neck and leaving hot, messy kisses from just above his collarbone all the way up to the boy’s earlobe.

Eren tilts his head — the move not even something he is conscious of — to silently beg for more as his voice takes on a deeper gravelly tone. “Yeah — fuck — you like that don’t ya?” He gasps as Jean finds a sensitive spot and his fist tightens on them automatically. 

“Sina, Jean…” he curses, “Mmmh, just — fuck — imagine her cunt just squeezing us. How fuckin’ tight she’d be… ahhhn, God , how wet .” The image is doing him no good for his stamina and he feels a quickening in his gut that warns of his approaching orgasm. 

“Fuck, holy shit, Eren — ahhh!” Jean’s fingers dig into Eren’s shoulder as his hip thrusts pick up speed and his mouth runs dry for how vividly he is seeing and feeling this fantasy. “Feels so fucking good… mmph, God please don’t slow down…”

Eren doesn’t think he’s capable of slowing down if his life depended on it. His fist clenches rhythmically on their cocks, mimicking the very thing he’s detailing for Jean. His other hand wraps around Jean’s cockhead, keeping it covered and warm to further the illusion. 

“Hahhh — shit, Jean I think I’m gonna cum…” He gasps, “Gonna cum all up in her cunt — knock her up real good — fuck !” 

“Fuck, Eren, me too…” Jean feels his thighs start to tremble and reaches for Eren’s hips with both hands, pressing his face back into the crook of Eren’s neck to lick Eren’s earlobe and tug at it with his teeth.

Eren moans out in a stuttered breath, his body shaking as he struggles to hold off just that little bit longer — just to stretch out this incredible pleasure. 

“Yes! Yes! Ahhhnngh, Jean!” He feels wholly incapable of speech but needs to continue, needs to savor the final bite of their fantasy. “Knock her up, Jean. Cum with me in her cunt — make her fuckin’ drip with us,” he growls.

The feral sound of Eren’s voice makes Jean’s stomach flip. All he can do is gasp and moan into Eren’s neck as his arousal heightens, gripping Eren’s hips hard enough to tear into them. “Don’t — fuck — have to tell me twice,” he pants as he thrusts into that delicious tightness. “I’ll give it to her so good… ah, hah! Fuck!”

With one final thrust, Jean’s mind goes blank for a moment as he spills onto Eren’s member, into his hands, keening and shaking as he rides out the high. He chokes out a few breathless moans as he wraps his arms around Eren’s waist to pull him closer.

Eren feels the hot spill of Jean’s cum and his body burns . “Ohmyfuckinggod, yes !” He gasps and then he’s cumming too, in ropes — five fucking times. 

The minute Jean’s arms wrap around his waist with just the hint of pulling him closer, Eren falls forward, boneless and limp as he shakes from the aftershocks. He vaguely thinks that his cock is still leaking. “Ohhh, Sina ….”

Jean welcomes the weight of Eren’s body on his own, holding Eren tighter against himself as he pants into the boy’s hair. He silently curses himself for denying himself this pleasure on so many earlier occasions.

Jean laughs as he slides a hand up Eren’s back and pats him. “That was so fucking sexy,” he purrs. “You can count me impressed.”

Eren huffs weakly against Jean’s chest before turning his face to look up towards Jean’s. “Yeah?” He hums, “Well, at least someone got to ride you — my sexy stallion…”

Jean rolls his eyes, but he’s all smiles as he presses a kiss to the top of Eren’s head. “You think if you say that enough times I’ll magically come around to it? I know this is a roundabout way for you to call me horse-face…”

Eren snorts and giggles, “Aw shit, you caught me! Sue me for having fun.” He rolls over, not wanting to crush Jean with his weight, but then quickly slings a leg over Jean’s, not quite done with the cuddles either. 

Jean places one of his hands on Eren’s thigh, staring down at it as his face burns red-hot. He feels almost dizzy, but not in a disorienting way — like the moment that he’d just shared with Eren felt so real and so unreal all at once. Like Eren had somehow actually conjured a woman into the space between them, and she’d promptly vanished as soon as he and Eren had found their own release. But still, he knew that she was never actually there to begin with… it was just the two of them, their bodies and words and breaths intertwining seamlessly.

How?

“Hey, Eren…” Jean moves his hand to Eren’s knee and holds it tightly. “Where the hell did you even get that last idea from?”

Eren lifts his head from where he had buried it in Jean’s shoulder. “Hmm?” He squints, trying to figure out what those words meant. When his brain finally decides to work again he laughs a little and traces a hand up from Jean’s hip to his chest, laying it over his heart. 

“Honestly? I think I just… I saw us together and — I mean you’ve fucked a girl before right?”

“Yes, I told you this,” Jean sighs, taking another deep breath to keep his cheeks from turning any redder. “I meant — you… I know you said you did it with Mikasa, but you’ve been so insistent on calling yourself gay and… did that do anything for you, or did you only do that because you knew it would get me going?”

Eren feels himself blush hotly and he wonders if it was possible to get even more hot and bothered after what they just did. He swallows and taps his fingers on Jean’s chest. “I — I liked it too. I like girls and guys honestly. I just — can’t really choose.” 

Jean slightly narrows his eyes at Eren. “You can’t or you won’t?”

Eren looks up to Jean’s face, finding his gold eyes and keeping a direct line of contact between them. “Won’t.” He decides. 

Jean hadn’t expected Eren to answer so directly — and not in that way. He frowns as his eyes drift back to where his hand rests on Eren’s thigh, fidgeting about. “Then… what does that mean for us if you refuse to pick one?”

For a moment Eren feels utterly confused, then his face melts into a laugh and he can’t help giggling into Jean’s shoulder. “Jean!” He snorts, “You’re such an idiot sometimes!” He moves to poke the taller boy’s nose with his finger. “Just ‘cause I like both girls and boys doesn’t mean I wanna fuck more than one person at a time.” He pauses, considering, “unless you’re into that…”

Jean tenses as the heat spreads to his ears; he turns away to nervously cough into his fist before laughing into it, right along with Eren. “Fucking Maria, Eren, let’s do one thing at a damn time, yeah?”

“That’s not a no…” Eren grins impishly. He moves his hand down to where Jean’s cock is still laid out and wet from both of their releases, and traces a finger up the limp length. “I’d say you liked it from those sounds you made…” 

Jean just barely catches a soft moan in his throat, shuddering at the contact. To get Eren back, he rushes to grab and tug at Eren’s hair, eliciting a high-pitched gasp from the boy, then gently runs the pads of his fingers in stripes along his scalp. “I can say the same about you, doll,” he purrs with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“ Jean …” Eren moans and ducks his head against Jean’s chest, breathing harshly. “I will get hard again if you keep doing that. So if you don’t wanna get another fuckin’ punishment from Commander for being out past curfew, you are gonna have to stop.” 

Jean releases Eren’s hair and raises both hands above his head, palms facing outward. “Alright, gotcha,” he sighs as he slowly moves his leg out from underneath Eren. “There’s always tomorrow, right?”

Eren pouts, still hiding in Jean’s chest. “Can I switch beds with Connie?”

Jean quickly tousles Eren’s hair and laughs mirthfully. “If you wanna fight him for that spot then be my guest.”

Eren pops his head up to level a glare at Jean. “I can easily win a fight with that airhead. I just don’t wanna wake up Armin by humping him in the night.”

Jean almost chokes on air again at the thought of such a debauched scene. “Yeah, that’d scare the shit out of him for sure,” he chuckles as he looks back down at his lap and becomes all too aware of how wet and sticky it is. “Shit… how are we gonna clean this up…”

Eren blinks and glances at his hands, only realizing too late that they were glistening with dried cum. “Oh, damn — didn’t really think about that…” He sits up, feeling both refreshed and extraordinarily exhausted all at once. “I’ve got an idea but — it’s gonna be uncomfortable…”

Jean raises an eyebrow, but the rest of his expression is rather relaxed. “Try me.”

Eren smirks. “Alright then, get up.” He stands and offers Jean a cum-slicked hand to help him up. Half joking and half wondering if Jean will actually take it.

Jean rolls his eyes and smiles as he takes Eren’s hand and pulls himself to his feet. “Alright, I’m up. What are we doing?”

Eren hides his momentary delight and surprise with a positively evil look before shoving Jean right into the water trough of the horse-stall. 

Jean lands ass-first in the water basin, his lanky arms and legs hanging out at awkward angles as his hips sink slowly into the cold water. “Dammit, Eren! Couldn’t even spare me a warning first?” He exacts petty revenge by scooping up as much water as he can with one hand and throwing it in Eren’s face.

Eren is laughing too hard to see the splash coming, and even then, he’s snorting and choking so much that he falls on his knees, holding his stomach. “You — hahahah — you look like a — oh my god — you look like a fuckin’ baby horse!” He snorts between gasping laughs. “You’ve got like five meters’ worth of leg and arm out, Jean. Oh my god!” Eren’s in danger of pissing his pants for how much he’s laugh-crying now.

“Oh, fuck you, Yeager!” Jean scrambles to push himself out of the basin and tries his best to dry himself off with the flats of his palms before tucking himself back into his soaking wet pants. “Fuck, now I look like I pissed my pants or something…”

Eren is laughing so hard now that no sounds come out except the breaths that he manages to gasp in between bouts of silent agony. He falls backwards onto the floor and curls in on himself, holding his stomach and practically sobbing out tears. 

“Alright then; one down, one to go…” Jean rushes behind Eren and wraps his arms around the boy’s waist, hoisting him off the ground before dropping him into the water basin like a sack of potatoes.

“Aaa! Jean! Wait — god I’m gonna fucking—” Eren doesn’t finish his sentence when the sudden flood of cold water soaks his trousers and waist enough to morph his laughs to a shriek.

“ Fuck ! That’s cold!”

“Yeah?” Jean grips Eren’s shoulders and pushes on them to pin the boy down. “Shoulda thought about that before dishing out shit you didn’t wanna take yourself!” 

Eren slips slightly and feels the cold water soak up his shirt too. “Jeaaan!” He scrambles to wrap his arms up around Jean’s neck desperately trying to keep any more of his skin from coming into contact with the horse-water. “That’s not fair! You’re like a whole two fuckin’ inches taller than me!” 

“Two? You’re giving yourself too much credit.” Jean rolls his eyes before easing up his hold on Eren and stepping back. “Whatever — I guess you have been in there as long as I was just now…”

Eren struggles to his feet and steps out of the water trough with a pout — looking very much like a soaked kitten. “Great. Now I’m cold, wet, covered in horse-spit and we gotta empty that damn basin because I fuckin’ pissed myself in it.” 

Jean isn’t sure whether he wants to laugh at Eren’s humiliation or cringe at the rather charged memories that the image brings up in his head. He ends up half-snorting and half-coughing into his fist before walking back to the wall to pick up his pitchfork. “Just great, Eren,” he huffs. “I don’t feel like touchin’ that just yet, so let’s finish the shoveling first, yeah?”

Eren zips himself up and glances at Jean with some confusion until he sees his expression. “Huh… Oh, you did not just get turned on by that did you…” He says shocked.

Jean swiftly turns away from Eren and thrusts his pitchfork into the manure with unnecessary vigor. “Mind your damn business and get to work!”

Oh, this is too good… Eren thinks and moves to fetch his own abandoned pitchfork. He moves to the other side of the stall and shovels quickly. “I think it is my business since it’s me you’re gettin’ turned on by, Jean,” he simpers.

Jean feels himself swoon again at the lilt in Eren’s voice, and his breath gets momentarily caught in his throat. “Careful with that tone,” he softly warns Eren, “or you might find yourself on the receiving end of another punishment, Yeager.”

The sound of iron screams on the concrete as Eren trips forward on his pitchfork. He swallows and tries to remember how to use his tongue. “Mhmm… s-sure, Jean.” He tries to make it come out haughty but fails miserably so he dumps his next pile extra hard in the wheelbarrow. “Whatcha gonna do — make me get on my knees again?” He’s blushing enough to feel the steam roll off his cheeks and he absently wonders if it’s visible in the cooling air. 

“Mm, sounds like you want that too much…” Jean pauses his shoveling to look over his shoulder at Eren. “Maybe I should just choke you next time. It’ll shut you up faster, hm?”

“Mph!” Eren catches his gasp and tries to muffle it, but it comes out like a high moan instead. Which is infinitely worse… 

“Choke me?” He repeats weakly, glancing over to Jean as he misses the pile he was trying to scoop.

Jean had been half-joking, but the genuine interest and smoldering lust dripping off of Eren’s voice has Jean’s mouth running dry once again. His lips curl into a devious smirk as he drinks in Eren’s priceless expression. “You heard me,” he replies simply as he throws him a wink before returning to his work.

Eren blinks. Swallows. Breathes. “Oh. Yeah, no I thought I heard you say you’d ‘choke me’...” he forces himself to stand a little straighter, “Would that be with your dick or your hand?” He asks as casually as he can.

Jean is baffled by how plainly Eren asks such a question; all he can do is laugh. “We’ll see how I feel when we get there, moron.”

Eren pouts in earnest now. He dumps his load into the wheelbarrow again and then swipes the handle out to smack Jean’s ass. “Why do you see the need to tease me like that…” he whines. 

“Shit — why do you feel the need to keep hitting me in the ass?” Jean takes the handle of his own pitchfork and hits Eren in the back of the head. “You have a real weird way of flirting, Yeager…”

Eren rubs the back of his head but he’s smirking too much to really be bothered by the sting. “Would it be better if I just up and said ‘you have a very fuckable ass, Jean’?”

“Absolutely not.” Jean grits his teeth as his stomach ties itself into knots. “How long are you planning on keeping this up, man?”

The shorter boy shrugs, unable to hide the blush on his cheeks, and moves to scoop out a corner. “However long it takes to get ya in my bed…” He hums.

The heat in Eren’s words shoots directly into Jean’s gut, and before he can catch it, he utters an unmistakably lustful sigh. Jean freezes the moment he hears himself, too afraid to turn around and see whatever stupidly mocking and self-satisfied look that Eren has on his face. He promptly drops his pitchfork and marches out of the stall. “Where the fuck are those buckets?” he mutters under his shaking breath.

Eren turns in time to see Jean escaping the heated stall and he can’t quite blame him — the poor boy is steaming red. Eren’s not in much better condition himself; hell, he’s half-hard again. 

He forces a deep breath of cool night air into his lungs and lets it out slowly. He’s going to scare Jean off if he keeps this up, and he really doesn’t want that. Eren wonders if Armin would be willing to lend him some strategic plotting advice to get Jean into his bed; if anyone can manipulate Jean to bottom for Eren, it would be Armin. 

Then again, Eren thinks mildly, he really wouldn’t mind bottoming for Jean… The thought sends his blood soaring, and all too quickly, he can see Jean topless in his mind’s eye, leaning over him as he pushes inside …

The gate to the stall swings open again, and the two metal buckets in Jean’s hand clang together as he hoists them inside by their handles. Three minutes had not been enough time to kill his blush, and the boy looks stark-raving mad about it. He refuses to meet Eren’s eyes as he hands him one of the buckets. “Here,” he says to the ground just behind the boy, and then he shifts his focus to the water basin to start filling his own bucket.

Eren jumps at the clanging sound of the bucket hitting the concrete floor, “Oh! Ah, thanks, Jean.” He gently sets the pitchfork against the wall and holds onto it for a moment to regain his breathing. 

He turns around and claps his hands. “Right. Well, I can understand if you don’t want to touch the water — I can fill the buckets, you can toss them out…” he says gamely, trying to hide his arousal with sheer fucking audacious cheek. 

“S’fine. I can handle it.” Jean isn’t even sure what he’s trying to prove anymore, just that submerging the bucket in the soiled water with his own hands feels like the way to prove it. He tries very hard not to think about how Eren’s piss is currently washing over his skin and how that thought makes a part of him want to drop everything and dig his fingers back into the soft, supple flesh of Eren’s hips…

Eren hopes his jaw is not hanging open but when he swallows and feels it pull up he realizes that it very much was. He walks to Jean and fills his own bucket, hands shaking on the handle. “Alright. Yeah — um — cool,” he chokes out. 

Jean waits for Eren to fill up his bucket and then beckons him with a jerk of his head to follow him outside. He feels a bit less exposed walking in front of Eren, where the boy can’t see his rapidly blinking eyes or twitching lips and get any bright ideas on what he’s thinking about.

Eren follows mutely and wonders why the silence feels both incredibly awkward, and painfully — temptingly — sexual. They leave the barn house to just outside where the compost piles are kept and dump their buckets on the side. 

Jean takes another deep breath as he casts his bucket to the side. Before Eren has a chance to turn around and head back into the stables, Jean reaches out and grabs Eren’s wrist, holding it tightly but trying his hardest not to crush it. He hopes Eren either doesn’t feel or doesn’t acknowledge the slight tremors in his hand.

He tears his eyes away from the grass to look Eren in the eyes — he means for the gaze to be stern and serious, but in his exhaustion all that he can manage to project is his bashfulness.

“Be honest: you think I look like a bitch when I get all flustered like this, right?”

Eren’s caught so off-guard by the question that the bucket drops from his hands and he blinks rapidly under Jean’s shy glare. “I — what?”

“Do you think I look pathetic? Yes or no?” Jean practically barks, but his strained expression is steeped in panic.

“Jean…” Eren feels a part of his heart break, he stretches out his free hand to cup Jean’s cheek and brushes his thumb over the sharp curve of the boy’s cheekbone. “Of course not… I think you look cute when you — when you’re like this ,” he smiles, eyeing Jean’s burning hot gaze and his pink cheeks and ears. “But not pathetic — never pathetic.” 

Jean is astounded at how easily and naturally Eren separates the two concepts — he feels like Eren is speaking to him in a different language, but through the sheer power of his conviction he gets Jean to perfectly understand every word of it. The tightness in his chest gradually begins to dissipate as he shuts his eyes and leans into Eren’s touch. “Good,” he sighs against Eren’s wrist before turning his head slightly to kiss it.

Eren shivers at the touch, it feels somehow more intimate than anything they’ve done today. He allows himself to close his eyes and memorize the feeling, the warmth and softness of Jean’s lips, the coolness of the night air, the silent but persistent thumping of his heart…

He will probably die if and when Jean ever kisses him for real. 

“We — we should finish up,” he whispers, not really wanting to but also not really wanting to get another week of stable duty. “Don’t wanna be caught out here mooning for me, do ya?” He teases softly. 

A gentle smile spreads across Jean’s face as he laughs wryly at the teasing question. “Not yet,” he whispers as he starts leading Eren by the wrist back into the stables.

Eren’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates but he’s mute and follows Jean instinctively. They manage to empty out the rest of the water trough with little difficulty, and finish as many stalls as they can before it becomes an actual hazard to be caught on the grounds this late. 

They sneak to the back of the showers with equal exhaustion and silently retreat to wash separately — Eren doesn’t think he has the energy or ability to orgasm again and that is almost a guarantee if they shower together. 

Jean takes his time running his wash rag over every inch of his body, inspecting each sharp line, each curve and crevice. Nothing has changed, he is relieved to find — he had dared to face at least a few of his real feelings today and his frame is still as tall and strong as ever. He can’t for the life of him figure out what part of it Eren thought to be cute, of all things, but he’s glad they both agree it is far from weak or feeble.

As the water runs over his hair and skin one last time, Jean lets out a breath slowly, fully. He can’t remember the last time that he felt so light.

Maybe it won’t be such a bad idea to keep this little brat close for now, he thinks to himself before shutting the water off.

Eren pokes his head from outside Jean’s stall, holding out a towel for the other boy as he’s already got one around his own hips. “Cover up, handsome, you’re gonna blind me with those abs,” he teases with a soft smile. 

Eren does feel very light-headed though — there’s water dripping down in lines over Jean’s stomach muscles. The droplets glitter like diamonds in the small shards of moonlight that leak through the shower-room windows. The rivulets of water drip down, dragging Eren’s eyes with them, and get caught in the neat dark hairs over Jean’s cock. 

Eren feels his throat get very dry very quickly. 

“Heh, wouldn’t want that, now would we?” Jean takes the towel from Eren with a grateful yet playful smile. He runs the towel quickly over his hair before sliding it across the rest of his body, perhaps a bit slower than is necessary. “So are you actually gonna wrestle Connie off the top bunk or what?”

Eren rips his eyes off of Jean’s cock and back to his face. “Honestly? I don’t think I can wrestle anyone right now without letting them know I’ve got a boner…” he admits.

Jean chuckles, too, as he sets his towel in place around his waist. “Was that ever a problem for you before?” he teases as he elbows Eren in the side.

Face burning, Eren chokes and whips around, hiding his suddenly obviously-tented towel from Jean. “Oh shut up… that was one time !” 

“And look where it landed us.” Jean gently strokes the back of Eren’s neck, hoping it does enough to relax at least his body. “It’s irritating how fucking persistent you are sometimes… but there are times when I can tolerate it, I guess.”

Eren feels his shoulders drop slightly at Jean’s touch and he breathes in a steadying breath, gratefully grounded. He tips his head back to look at the taller boy through his lashes and smiles softly. “Glad to hear that my stubborn ass is attractive to you, Jean.”

Jean takes two fingers and flicks the side of Eren’s head — not hard enough to hurt, but just hard enough to be aggravating. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself, Yeager,” he chuckles as he starts making his way out of the shower room.

Eren watches him leave with a soft grin on his face, and a heavy fluttering in his heart. 

Sina… I’m really in love…

Chapter Text

The classroom is an absolute mess of boys and girls and sounds. There had been a large-group lesson-plan initially, but in the chaos of delivered mail the chalkboard was forgotten and the teacher ignored. 

Mail is delivered very rarely, perhaps once or twice a month on lucky occasions, less so for the cadets than for the officers. So to have a delivery today is a cause for celebration. 

Connie swipes a letter from Sasha’s hands. “Hey! I didn’t know you lived in the woods! Do they even have houses there?”

“Course we do!” Sasha jumps on Connie’s back and bends his arms backwards at unnatural angles in an attempt to get him to loosen his grip. “Y’mean you ain’t never heard of a forest settlement before?”

“Hey oi! Owww that hurts! And anyway, who’d wanna settle in a forest with all those bears and acorns?” Connie sounds genuinely confused at the idea and turns to look at Sasha with some concern. “Do you live in tree houses?”

Sasha finally gets Connie’s fingers loose enough to swipe the letter back without tearing it; she then jumps away from Connie, holding it close to her chest like precious spoils from a hunt. “Our cabin’s on the ground, genius,” she snipes back. “That’s our way o’ life. Wouldn’t give it up for the whole world.”

Ymir tsks at the commotion from the two idiots and turns to lean over her desk and flick at Christa’s soft blond hair. “Hey, Christa, you get anything?” 

Christa tries to maintain a sweet, smiling face, but it doesn’t last very long. “No,” she sighs, “but it’s fine. I… wasn’t expecting anything anyway…”

Ymir frowns for a moment and then leans on her other hand, smiling softly, “Ah, that’s too bad. I can write you something if you’d like — I’ve got some pretty handwriting and some pretty words that’ll fit just right for you.” Her smile is soft but there’s that ever-present lilt in her voice which speaks to her ulterior motivations. 

Christa giggles cheerily into one of her hands, pretending not to hear the other girl’s suggestive tone so as not to lose her composure. “You’re too sweet, Ymir,” she chirps, “but please don’t feel pressured to go out of your way like that…”

“For you Christa? I’d move a mountain, y’think writing a letter’s any hard task?” Ymir croons, slipping a finger under Christa’s chin for a moment. 

“Ewww! Quit being gross!” Connie yells and throws a pencil at Ymir. “Get a room!” The pencil doesn’t quite reach Ymir and she gives Connie an unimpressed look before turning her attention back to Christa. 

Marco, having been quiet through the majority of the commotion, turns from his seat next to Jean to look at Eren, Armin and Mikasa with a soft yet sympathetic smile. “I’m guessing you guys didn’t get anything, huh?”

Armin returns Marco’s smile, only brighter, as he holds up the letter in his hands. “Actually, an old friend from our hometown managed to write to us!” His eyes light up with excitement and affection. “He’s with the Garrison, and he spent the better part of our childhoods looking after us.”

For a moment Marco looks genuinely surprised, then his face positively blossoms with a genuine smile. “Ah, that’s so wonderful! I’m so happy for you guys; I hope it’s all good news!” 

Eren pokes Armin’s shoulder impatiently. “Open it up Armin! Mikasa is waiting too you know.” Though he blames the curiosity on Mikasa, it is obvious from his wide green eyes that he is equally eager to read words from the only person who knew them in Shiganshina. Survivors of Maria seemed fewer and fewer these days…

Armin’s heart practically melts at the sight and sound of Eren’s genuine anticipation. “Alright, I’m on it,” he assures him as he slips a finger under the flap of the envelope to carefully undo its seal. To the other side of Armin, Mikasa sits patiently with a small but soft smile resting on her face.

 Marco turns his attention to the rather quiet trio behind him, “Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie? Did you get any letters from home?” He asks quietly, his eyes wide and innocent.

Reiner turns to glance at Bertholdt and then Annie before forcing a small smile on his face. “Nah, mine and Bert’s village didn’t survive…” 

Bertholdt moves a hand onto Reiner’s thigh and squeezes it under the table, casting his eyes down. Annie sighs as she ever so slightly angles her body away from them. 

“Nothing,” she says flatly.

Marco’s face falls. “Oh — I’m sorry. At least you guys have each other though!” 

“Marco, you’ve been back for one day and you haven’t closed your mouth once, maybe give it a rest?” Thomas says from where he sits sorting his mail from Mina’s. “Oh wait, here, this one is for you Jean.” 

“Really?” Jean swipes the letter from Thomas’ hands as quickly as he can. It’s been a long while since he received anything from his family — Matis keeps busy with the MPs, and he figures his poor mother is too overwhelmed and tired to fit letter writing into her own hectic schedule. 

Eren pops his head over Armin’s shoulder from where he was reading Hannes’ letter. “Eh? You get letters?” He turns to look at Floch. “Since when does Jean get letters?”

Floch snorts as he rolls his eyes. “Had no idea anyone liked him that much, aside from himself.”

“Can the two of you shut the fuck up and keep your eyes on your own papers?” Jean wastes no time tearing into his envelope to read its contents:

Jean,

I know it’s been a while. Alright, a long while. The Military Police are going to make a trip to the Training Corps, something about boosting your guys’ morale or what not, I can’t really remember what our Commander said. 

I thought I’d write to you and let you know personally, they’ve chosen me among a few others to do some presentations. It’ll probably be a few days’ worth of stuff. 

Anyway, I hope you’ve grown some since I last saw you, brat. Gonna see you soon. 

— Matis

 

The message is so brief that it takes up less than half of the page, but Jean doesn’t mind at all because that’s just how his big brother talks and it sounds like home. His heart swells at the good news that they’ll be together again when he visits the corps — it’s been years since he last heard his voice in person. He’s curious to see how much Matis has grown, both for the sake of admiring his progress and for rubbing in his brother’s face how well he himself measures up to the professional MP officer.

Eren watches Jean read his letter with a growing sense of curiosity and annoyance. It’s not that he begrudges the boy his letter, hell, a part of him is genuinely happy that Jean got one at all. But rather that — Eren doesn’t know who it’s from or what it says.

Well there’s always an easy fix, Eren thinks with a smirk. He pushes off his desk and jumps over Marco’s to snatch Jean’s letter right out of his hands. “Soooo let’s see who likes Jean Kirstein as a friend…” he sings. 

And then very promptly stops when he reads the letter. He feels as though he just got smacked in the face. “Matis?” He exclaims with shock. “Your fucking brother is visiting?”

“Oi, give that back!” Jean leaps over Marco’s desk from the other side to swipe at Eren’s hands. “Last I checked, that letter doesn’t have your fuckin’ name on it!”

Marco slowly sinks in his chair to try and get as far away as possible from the growing tension between the two boys. 

“Tch! I can’t believe they’re sending the Military Police for demonstrations!” Eren spits, letting the letter get snatched from his hands. “What are they gonna show us, how to sit and drink all day? Maybe how to walk with your nose up your ass?”

“They’re bringing the Military Police?” Marco pops right back up from the floor and his eyes are wide with sudden excitement. He turns to Jean hopefully. “Wait really?”

“That’s what the letter says.” Jean waves it in the air, wearing a proud smirk on his face. “They’re sending my brother and other top-ranking officers to whip us into shape for a few days.”

“Pfft, what, a circular shape with all the work they put in?” Eren mutters darkly.

“Oi, Jean! I didn’t know you had a brother!” Connie says, finally tearing his eyes away from where Sasha had been beating him at rock-paper-scissors for a piece of ration-bar. “Is he an officer with the MPs?”

“Yes; isn’t that what I just said?” Jean practically sighs out the rhetorical question as he folds up the letter and tucks it into one of his pockets.

Connie blinks, turns to glance at Sasha, sees that she has already eaten up the ration bar and wails. “Sashaaaa!”

Sasha sniffs as she brushes the crumbs off of her face with her sleeve. “Hey, I won it fair and square, didn’t I?” Connie only weeps, batting at her arms weakly.

Armin turns to Jean with a soft smile; it’s a pleasant change of pace to see him more relaxed. “You seem to be really proud of him,” he says. “How long has he been with the MPs?”

“Too long… ” Eren huffs with irritation and kicks at Jean’s leg just because.

Jean immediately kicks Eren in the shin in response. “Look, I get that you’re pissed off because you’ve already resigned yourself to never reaching his level, but that doesn’t give you the right to shit all over his accomplishments like you’re so much better than him and the rest of the MPs.”

Eren gives Jean a look between disgust and irritation but doesn’t say anything because truthfully — he hasn’t got much to boast of just yet. 

“Anyway…” Jean looks past Eren to put his focus back on Armin. “It’s been about… three years now? Yeah. He doesn’t write to me often because he’s so busy with leadership stuff and everything.” In a rare turn of events, Jean doesn’t bother to stifle the almost goofy-looking smile that’s plastered across his face.

Eren seethes in his mind. He has already resolved to hate Jean’s stuck-up bitch for a brother but now — seeing the look that a fucking letter has brought onto Jean’s face — he’s even more determined to hate the bastard. 

“Yeah, whatever. It’ll be good to see what kinda idiots the MPs have to offer. Be a good warning for those that are dumb enough to wanna join.” He directs his comment at Jean but doesn’t bother looking at him.

Jean turns his nose up at the obvious dig and tugs on the sleeve of Eren’s uniform jacket to pull him closer. “If you’ve got something to say to me, you can at least say it to my face, yeah?”

Eren’s face glows red in a mixture of surprised arousal and considerable irritation, but he can’t quite get out any words before he’s interrupted by Marco placing his hand on Jean’s wrist. 

“Ah, Jean? Maybe we should go outside for some air, yeah?”

Jean sees right through Marco’s flimsy diversion tactic; he doesn’t understand why his friend is reacting like Wall Rose will crumble if he doesn’t cut out his back-and-forth with Eren, but he also doesn’t want to stress the kid out and put him back in the infirmary over a personal spat. “Alright,” he half-sighs, half-grumbles as he lets Eren go and follows Marco.

Eren struggles to hold himself back from following — just to give Jean a piece of his mind of course, it has nothing to do with the racing of his blood at the most public kind of contact they’ve had since last night. Absolutely nothing to do with that.

There it is again — Floch frowns at the growing redness of Eren’s ears, knowing exactly what had triggered his flustered reaction. He tries to ignore the pain throbbing in his chest as he inspects Eren’s faraway expression. It’s as if the boy had forgotten the existence of everyone else in the room after Jean had touched him and brought them so close together…

“Hey, Eren?” he whispers.

Eren starts at Floch’s whisper and he forgets to tame his expression into one less emotionally raw as he turns to look at the redhead. “Huh? What?”

Floch turns beet red as he stares down at his hands tightly gripping his knees. “What the hell did Jean do to you?” His voice shakes through the question; he grits his teeth and turns his eyes briefly back to Eren. “Or should I be asking what the hell you did to him?”

To say that Eren was surprised would be an understatement. He’s always underestimated just how much Floch liked him. Truth be told: he’s never quite understood it.

All of his lays had been one or two-night things. Floch had been, admittedly, a much more frequent lay… but they had established that Eren didn’t feel the same.

Nonetheless, Eren feels as though he only now can understand what Floch must have felt those dozens of nights where Eren would boast about his other lays. His other misadventures . 

With a bit of compassion he takes Floch’s hand and tugs him up. “C’mon, don’t wanna have that conversation here. Armin? Mikasa? I’ll see you guys at training later!” He doesn’t wait for a response, his mind already filling in the sound of Armin’s happy voice and providing the visual for Mikasa’s solemn but acknowledging nod. 

He drags Floch outside the classroom and down from the doorway to the back. Only then does he let go of the boy’s hand and sits heavily on the floor, patting the dirt next to him invitingly. “You can ask me that again now — promise I’ll be honest.” 

Floch’s heart doesn’t know what to do with all of Eren’s earnest tenderness. He’s grateful for it — so grateful — but he’s really not looking forward to facing the pain of losing it forever once this conversation is over…

He takes a breath to steady his voice. “You and Jean… what are you two?”

Ah, Eren’s brain stutters, that’s a good question. He takes in a deep breath and pushes it out of his nose forcefully, “Honestly? I’ve got two answers because I think we’re on different pages in that regard.” He frowns and stretches out one leg in front of him while bringing the other up by his chin and leaning on it. 

“I asked him to be my boyfriend — he’s still not sure if he’s allowed to like boys.”

“What the — what the fuck?” Floch isn’t sure what answer he expected, but this one just sounds wrong. “So he’s stringing you along right now while he can’t decide whether to come out of the closet or stay in it?”

Eren shrugs, a blush dusting his cheeks lightly. “I mean — I told him I’d be willing to wait — so I guess that’s on me.”

“Oh…” Floch brings his knees up and partially hides his face in them as he hugs his legs. “So you really are that into him?”

Eren sighs, the gust of air fanning out his bangs slightly. “Yeup,” he pops sardonically. “ That into him .” He wonders if he should elaborate on “that”, but he also guesses that wouldn’t be very kind to Floch.

“Got it… then, if you’re serious about somehow making this work with him…” Floch lifts his head to look Eren in the eyes. “Can we revise our agreement? The one we made before?”

Eren’s head jolts up and he looks at Floch, really looks at him. Shit. He feels a pang in his chest that he can’t quite identify and swallows back his defensive comeback. 

Jean wouldn’t want you fucking around if he were your boyfriend… He reminds himself sternly. 

“Yeah, um — yeah that’s probably a good idea.” 

“Okay.” Floch feels a burning sensation in the base of his throat and has to pause for longer than he’d like in order to quell it. “I… I’ll need us to go back to just being friends. As much as we can after… well, everything. We can still talk and shoot the breeze, but outside of that, you can focus on coaxing Jean out of the closet and I can focus on… on letting go of false hope.” He tugs at a fistful of grass by his side and lowers his head. “Can we make that work?”

Eren swallows. Floch had been different from the start. Similar to Mikasa in a way, they had laid down ground rules, had decided that some things were okay and some things were too much. Only…

Floch, at some point, impossibly, fell in love with Eren. And Eren hadn’t been able to process what that meant. 

He only knew that it meant late night breaks in the bathrooms, hot blowjobs between classes and training, passionate kisses while hidden from view, tender if somewhat sexual names breathed between friendly banter…

Eren had never considered that Floch had been just — that desperate. He felt a little sick with himself really, knowing now what Floch must have felt for him as he feels what he does for Jean. 

If Floch needs out, it is the least Eren can do for him. He turns to the redhead and shoves his shoulder playfully. “Yeah, of course we can,” he says, and hopes his voice is the right mix of tender and childish. “You’ll be my sidekick and maybe you’ll get a taste of my glory when we go to the Survey Corps.” 

Floch has never so deeply loved and hated a man’s charm all at the same time. He laughs at the bittersweet image that Eren has painted, and it’s not enough to fully disguise the sob that escapes his throat, but it’s something. “Yeah, sounds like a good time,” he replies, and then he has to turn away to quickly wipe a tear from his face. “Sorry…”

Eren feels like his heart is going to rip. He never loved Floch. And yet he cared for him, deeply . You can’t fuck someone more than once without developing something for them. Whatever sticky feeling it might be. 

“Hey, Floch, it’s okay…” He reaches out to take Floch by his chin and turn his face towards Eren. Carefully, he uses the corner of his sleeve to dry the boy’s tears, leaving his cheeks dry but his eyes still slightly moist. 

“It’ll — it’ll get better. Promise,” he says softly. Then he bites his lip and glances away for a moment to breathe. He returns his gaze to Floch and asks softly, “Would it help you if I were to give you a last kiss? Or would it make it worse?”

The question makes Floch’s head spin. The part of him that feels like this is already long over wants to push Eren into the grass and run far away from the schoolhouse. The part of him that feels like this moment of agony will never end wants to at least have the relief of claiming Eren’s lips and his eyes and his hands as his own for one more sweet instant.

Floch reaches up to gently hold Eren’s wrist — it works wonders to steady him, to still his racing heart. He can breathe through his recollections of many a fantasy that starts with the two of them in this position: no more than two inches from each other’s faces, trembling with anticipation and aching with need for release…

If it is going to end no matter what, Floch figures he can at least have it end with the knowledge that he hadn’t completely imagined Eren’s care for him.

Floch smiles at Eren and gives him a nod. “Let’s do it,” he sighs onto Eren’s lips.

Eren uses his free hand to cup Floch’s cheek as he brings them together in a very tender kiss. It is no more than a chaste brush of lips on lips for a moment. And then Eren tilts his head just a little, and licks into the seam of Floch’s mouth — it’s instinct as much as it is raw desire.

Floch drops his jaw to let Eren in further. He hardly has to think about it, it’s such a well-practiced maneuver. He presses his lips harder against Eren’s, tracing the tip of his tongue with his own as he sighs into Eren’s mouth.

Eren knows it is selfish — but hell, he’s been nothing but selfish with Floch; why should he stop now? The raging inferno of desire which had not died down in the slightest from last night, demands release. And for fuck’s sake he hadn’t even gotten to kiss Jean yet, and he was craving those lips. 

He’d make do with Floch’s; they are sweeter, and much more pliant under his than what he imagines Jean’s to be, but they are wet and hot and good.  

He bites down lightly on Floch’s lip, a well-practiced warning for when he was going to go a little harder. And then promptly sucks the abused lip between his, groaning softly at the relief. Last kiss — gonna make it count…

Floch keens sharply as pain and pleasure mingle on his lip. His grip on Eren’s wrist tightens, and he feels his face flush deeply. He waits patiently for Eren to release him before pressing his lips right back onto Eren’s, moaning as he runs his tongue over Eren’s front teeth in a silent, desperate plea for readmittance.

Eren can’t help the smirk on his lips; he can’t help saying what he does: “Easy puppy…” he whispers against Floch’s mouth and then parts his lips, but pulls away just enough to tease Floch, just as he knows will make him desperate and hot. Just the way I like him…

Floch takes the bait and chases Eren, leaning forward to just barely catch the other boy’s lips. His center of balance is thrown off a bit — he knows how much Eren loves to put him in precarious positions. He grabs Eren’s shoulders for extra support, gently caressing Eren’s lips with his own, doing his best to show Eren how well he could match his pace. 

Surely if he performed well enough then Eren would reward him commensurately, right?

Eren’s hand has long left Floch’s cheek, the tender gesture turned into something feral as he grips into the red locks at the back of Floch’s head. He tugs hard enough to break their kiss, holding Floch barely an inch away from his lips.

“Walls, you’re so desperate, pup.” He huffs, and then licks vulgarly over Floch’s open mouth. “Bet you’re soaking too huh?” His voice deepens and purrs the words, a cocktail he perfected for Floch just under a year ago.

Floch presses his thighs together on instinct — he doesn’t even have to check to know that Eren has him marked. He whines as Eren continues to tug his hair, separating their faces and aggravating his thirst for more contact. “So — so what if I am?” he gasps. “You said this would only be a kiss… didn’t you?”

Eren doesn’t hesitate. “I can give you a nice, long, wet kiss down there if you want it, puppy.” He doesn’t even want it himself — not in the desperate way that Floch wants it. He wants Jean damn it. But Jean is busy preening his fucking feathers for his brother and Eren wants none of that shit near him. 

And Floch is always so easy — always there for him and ready… 

Shit . He really is a mean bitch. 

Floch can feel in his soul that Eren’s suggestion is a bad idea. Something whispers to him that it won’t feel nearly as good as he thinks it will in the heat of this moment. But the poor boy has forgotten all semblances of restraint knowing that this is the last time he’ll be on his knees in front of Eren like this. Whatever he can get, he’s pathetically ready to accept it.

“Please,” he moans as his hips sway all on their own, eyes drowning in a haze of raw need.

Eren had forgotten how pretty Floch begs for him — this feels like a very bitter reminder. Quickly, as he is very conscious of the rest of their class being one thin wall away, he bends and rips off Floch’s belt, unzips the fly, and pulls out his sweet cock. 

“Mmmh, keep your voice down, ‘kay?” he hums before sinking down on Floch’s cock with practiced ease. Ah, now this is familiar… He can’t help but compare Jean to Floch, finding the different bulging veins, tracing them, licking at the frenulum, finding that weeping slit and sucking on it to draw out those pearly beads of precum.

He privately admits that he likes Jean’s cock more.

The moment that Eren’s warm mouth envelops his cock, Floch’s mind empties, all coherent thoughts replaced with the sweet sensations of licking, sucking, and sighing. Walls, he missed this. It takes everything in him not to start mewling like a cat in heat as Eren’s tongue traces the base of his cock before licking a hot stripe all the way up to the tip. One of Floch’s hands goes straight for Eren’s hair, gingerly stroking and petting it to encourage Eren to keep up his masterful work.

Eren groans — Shit, Jean would do that… He pulls up and off Floch’s cock long enough to growl some instructions: “Suck on these, I’m gonna deep-throat you.” He shoves three fingers into Floch’s mouth and proceeds to do just that.

Eren relaxes his throat and slides down smoothly to the root of Floch’s cock — just to feel a little bit of resistance; just to feel a hint of what Jean made him feel in the gear-shed. Sina , he was down so bad…

Floch opens himself right up for Eren’s fingers, only slightly surprised by the initial force but quickly able to recover. His suppressed moans spill out of him in breathy, strangled fragments as he feels the head of his cock hit the back of Eren’s throat. He prays that having Eren’s hand in front of his mouth does enough to make up for his failure to keep himself completely quiet. 

Floch runs his tongue in waves along the underside of Eren’s fingers, and his hips thrust gently yet persistently into Eren’s mouth. He feels profoundly overstimulated and he hasn’t even cum yet — he fears that he’ll lose his composure entirely before Eren can finish the job, which is the last thing that he wants. All that he can do is focus on sucking and breathing as much as he can while Eren blows him. He feels helpless like this, stuck at Eren’s mercy… and he fucking loves it.

Eren loses himself in the sensations of throat-fucking. It’s easy to get lost with that slight but persistent burn, the wet sounds that emanate from his mouth and are mimicked in Floch’s. But for some reason, he can’t shake the feeling of stomach-turning dread. 

What if Jean finds him… Eren’s mind keeps repeating. What if Jean finds him like this, sees him sucking Floch off? Sees him being such a fucking whore …

Eren needs to finish this. Needs to. 

Good thing he knows Floch’s buttons as well as his own. He slips a hand down to cup Floch’s balls gently, rolling them in his fingers for a bit before slipping lower to press at the soft furled flesh beneath. He doesn’t press in, but keeps the pressure there, unrelenting. 

He rumbles his throat a bit every down stroke, and then just barely grazes his teeth on the upstroke. Barely , Floch only needs the suggestion of danger to get off. 

He finishes the boy by shoving the fingers in Floch’s mouth roughly and suddenly deeper. 

Floch briefly panics at the sensation of being choked, and the thrill goes straight to his dick, which twitches and throbs every time that Eren’s teeth graze its length. He clenches Eren’s hair in his fist and releases a broken moan over Eren’s fingers as his thrusting comes to a sudden stop and he releases his essence in strong, heavenly spurts down Eren’s throat, the pressure on his hole making it just that much sharper. He feels his whole body shake as Eren continues to suck him dry through the orgasm. The high hits him so hard that he feels dizzy, and he’s never been so happy to feel so disoriented.

Eren swallows around Floch’s release with a mixture of relief and frustration. It isn’t Jean… it doesn’t even taste like him! The revulsion he feels is only matched by the frustration which manifests into a very hard cock in his own trousers. 

Well — in for a penny in for the pound… He wastes little time with ripping his fingers out of Floch’s mouth and using the wet digits to tear open his belt, fumbling enough with the prongs to frustrate him even more. He manages to whip out his dick, already hard and on edge, and moves to stand up in front of Floch.

He taps his cock impatiently on Floch’s dazed-out face. “Open up. I’m close, just need your tongue…” He orders breathlessly.

Floch is so out of it that he can’t even pretend to fully process Eren’s words, but what he can process is the feeling of Eren’s hard, wet member right on his cheek. He could tell anyone what that tap meant in his sleep. He takes a deep breath before opening his mouth as wide as he can manage, waiting perhaps too eagerly for Eren to enter.

Oh shit, Eren thinks with a sharp pang, he wants to suck me… A pity that wasn’t what he had in mind. “Your tongue, Floch, drop it.” 

The fog in Floch’s mind clears enough that he can at least pick up on the important words — he pushes his tongue out of his mouth, stretching it outward until it makes contact with the head of Eren’s cock. Slowly, he runs it in a circle around the head before lapping at the slit in quick, wet stripes.

Eren takes his cock in one hand and begins to roughly stroke himself. He smacks his cockhead a few times on Floch’s tongue, letting the wet slapping sound drag his thoughts away from Jean momentarily. 

He’s close. 

He finds himself strangely relating with Floch, wanting even to mimic his position on the ground with Jean glaring down at him, cock in hand. 

Vividly, he remembers Jean spitting into his mouth before spearing his cock down his throat, deep enough to make Eren gag. 

That thought alone is enough to make him orgasm. And he does so right on Floch’s tongue, groaning something nonsensical and what he prays is not a garbled version of Jean’s name. 

He feels the last bit of cum drip out and moves down to kiss Floch hungrily, tasting himself and feeling perversely happy about it. He imagines it would taste similar in Jean’s mouth if he came there. 

Floch feels a few tears roll down his face as he kisses Eren back — whether they’re tears of joy, shame, frustration, or preemptive longing is lost on him. But none of that really matters to him right now. All that he wants to focus on is tasting Eren in every way that he can before he pulls away for good. The gentleness that he feels in this kiss is nothing short of pure bliss.

He is dreading the moment that it ends.

Eren feels as though he’s slowly floating down from some high space that he was in. As though he can suddenly feel his fingers, warm on even warmer cheeks, feel his legs, somewhat weak as he stands, and feel his lips — pressed so tightly, as they were, to Floch’s lips. 

He feels guilt like a dirty sludge in his stomach and wants nothing more than to break the kiss and run as far from Floch as possible. He doesn’t even want to see the redhead ever again, for his shame. 

But Eren owns up to his actions — if nothing else. And so he slows himself, kisses Floch almost tenderly, licks up the residue of his aggressive orgasm, almost apologetically. 

He feels like he needs to apologize. So he does it with sweet licks that draw steadily outwards, until they are kissing with just their lips, and then — like closing a book — he seals his lips, forbidding the deeper connection. He feels like he closes their book when he finishes their kiss with a chaste peck, slow and tentative, right on Floch’s sealed and abused lips.

“I’m sorry, Floch.” 

Those words sink like rocks into the dark underbelly of Floch’s heart.

The only thing keeping his spinning head and pounding heart grounded in reality right now is the deep, poignant look in Eren’s eyes that sells the apology without any other words needed. He can’t bring himself to look away, even as teardrops turn to proper streams down the sides of his face, even as his silent sobs lock his voice away at the base of his throat.

Floch knows that this isn’t how he wanted this to end, after all. But he also knows that he didn’t hate it. At the root of the matter, Floch really is happy to have been acknowledged at all.

So he swallows the rest of his sobs and smiles at Eren.

“...Thank you.”

Eren feels a sharp pain stab his chest. Thank you? Walls, he knew Floch was obsessed but…

Thank you ?

Eren hopes that one day Floch punches him square in the face for what he just did. But until that day, he chooses to just smile, zip himself up, and nudge the other boy with his foot. “Get yourself back together. We’ve got training soon, and I’mma need your help to beat Jean’s ass again.” 

“Yeah… right.” 

Floch feels silly for flinching at his name — feels like he should already be over it. That was the whole point of this little rendezvous, after all… 

No, he doesn’t have time to cry over this anymore, nor does he have time to ask himself any what-ifs. The day is moving on with or without him. He needs to go to training. Eren needs him at training.

Eren needs him…

He jumps to his feet and neatly tucks himself back into his trousers. “No time to waste then,” he replies as he follows Eren away from the shadow of the classroom, in perfect step.

Chapter Text

The arrival of the MP officers was all that the Training Corps would talk about for the two days that they waited. Jean shared in his friends’ excitement outwardly, welcoming any excuse to externalize his giddy anticipation of Matis’ visit. But when it got still and quiet at night, joyous sparks gave way to a few nervous butterflies in his stomach. He knew himself to be a standout cadet in the eyes of the Commander and all of his comrades — rightfully so — but he could only hope that his reputation would be enough to impress his skills on his brother…

No, of course it would be. That wasn’t really the worry… but to name the actual issue was too arduous and nerve-racking a task. The thought of it alone was enough to spin Jean’s thoughts in endless circles until his mind fatigued itself and sleep eventually claimed him.

It is early Saturday morning when the polished carriage at last pulls up and five equally polished MP officers step out of it. Jean is standing at attention in the first row of cadets and is in awe of their effortlessly dignified energy; their inherent intimidating bearing that commands acknowledgement and respect. One by one, he scans their faces for his most-anticipated guest:

The first, and the tallest, officer out of the carriage is a man with a smooth undercut, his hair a charming russet red, almost rose in the morning sunlight. He has a handsome constitution, some well-trimmed facial hair adorning his sharp jawline, and piercing angled eyes that glow like amber. 

He shakes hands with Commander Shadis, easily and with the kind of confident affability that comes with being secure in his rank and position. Then he turns to the 104th Cadet Corps, observing them as they all stand at attention in perfect, neat rows, each with their focus trained on some unidentifiable spot in front of them. The perfect troops.

Shadis moves to the front of the child-army, leading forth the five MP officers, each of whom takes a casual at-ease position behind him, some wearing smirks as they look from one immature face to the next.

Shadis speaks, his voice — as usual — too stern and serious for the occasion. “Listen up, you useless bunch of titan-meal! You have a valuable opportunity being presented to you these next two days to meet people who actually know what they are doing! These are trained and honored Military Police officers, and they are here to give you the guidance that I don’t have the fucking patience or care to! I will let them introduce themselves to you, and you better remember their names; I will not be repeating them!”

The officers introduce themselves from left to right; the first, a young woman with curly strawberry blonde hair, raises her hand with a small smile that feels a bit too showy. 

“Hello cadets! I’m officer Heike Hoffman! Thrilled to be here and help you find your way to the Military Police!”

The second is vaguely-masculine looking, but their voice is too high to sell the image. “Officer Dennis Schwarz. I will be available for questions later this afternoon if you want to talk one on one.” 

The third and fourth officers appear to be related in some way, as they have the same shade of dusty blonde hair and the same sharp arch to their eyebrows. Both are male and seem a bit too cocky for it. “I’m Officer Jonas Huber, and I’m in charge of accounting for all the newest MP gear and rifles — if you work with me I’ll give you a private show with how to use ‘em best.” He winks and gets elbowed harshly by his twin.

The twin clears his throat and says, in what must be an attempt at suaveness: “I’m Officer Jörg Huber. Don’t get me mixed up with that bastard — I’m the better shot.” 

Finally, the last officer, the brunet with the glowing amber eyes, steps forward. He gives the cadets a sweeping look, as though searching for a familiar face. “My name is Officer Matis Kirstein. I work with the young recruits to help them acclimate to the Military Police once they join. If you find yourself rewarded with a place among the top ten graduate students and wisely choose the well-esteemed division of the Military Police, I will be working with you personally to ensure your transition is comfortable, amicable, and above all — effectual.” 

His eyes land on Jean, who stands proudly in the first row, and his lips quirk up with recognition. “I will be available at all times today and tomorrow for individual talks, if any of you should like.”

Jean beams at what he perceives to be a personal invitation from his brother — something that none of the other cadets will get out of the officer, he’s sure. And all it took was one look — and he’s sold. He sees what I’m made of.

Jean feels almost too comfortable in his skin, like it’s made of steel and adorned in gold. He imagines catching up with Matis later in the day over tea or coffee, man-to-man, and he’s tickled by shivers of excitement that make it almost difficult for him to maintain his at-attention posture.

Behind him, Eren watches with his glare leveled on the officer he’s pinned as Jean’s brother. It was funny how he hadn’t even needed the confirmation of a name to know of their relationship. Maybe it was the eyes, maybe it was that stupid strut. Whatever it was, Eren hated that he could recognize it. 

He has his eyes trained on Matis, but even with all his focus on the Officer, he can still see the little excited clenching in Jean’s fingers when Matis makes eye contact with him. 

Eren forces himself to breathe. He might not have a direct way to get these Military Police pigs to leave. But he sure as hell can make them regret they came. Specifically — and he glares at Matis again, just willing the bastard to look at him — the bitch who’s stealing Jean’s attention from him. 

Shortly after the introductions are complete, the Commander puts the cadets at ease and dismisses their formal assembly. Jean wastes no time approaching the golden-eyed Officer, wanting to make sure that he’s the first cadet to secure his attention today.

“Hey, Officer Kirstein! Long time no see.”

The Officer turns around and his arms fall easily on his hips as he gives Jean a smirk. “Well, well, if it isn’t Jean-boy.” He moves a hand to ruffle Jean’s hair with a mixture of fondness and some familiarity. “Looks like you did grow some, brat.” 

Jean doesn’t really appreciate the infantilizing gesture, but he does appreciate that Matis looks pleased to see him. “Of course I did,” he chuckles in response. “I eat well and I keep fit. What else is there to it?”

A soft look passes over Matis’ face and he drops the hand in Jean’s hair to his shoulder, squeezing it slightly. “Time,” he says. Then his eyes pass over Jean’s shoulder and the soft look is replaced by a well-worn cocky grin. “Ah, who’s this now? One of your friends?”

Jean turns his head and finds Marco standing behind him, wearing a shy but sweet smile. He grabs the boy by the arm and pulls him forward, throwing his arm around his friend’s shoulders as he often does. “Yeah, this is Marco,” he says to Matis. “We’ve been in training together since the beginning.”

Marco timidly gives the Officer a salute, somewhat wobbly as he’s leaning most of his weight on Jean. “Ah, yes! Good morning Officer Kirstein! It’s an honor to meet a real Military Police officer!” He turns to give Jean a small smile before darting his eyes back to the taller man. “I was really impressed when Jean said you were his brother; we both have hopes to join the Military Police ourselves!” 

Matis raises a brow and turns his keen gaze to Jean; he looks almost pleased. “That so, Jean?” 

Jean’s trademark smirk returns to his face as he looks his brother right in the eyes. “Did you really think I was gonna kick back here and let you upstage me? Naturally I’m aimin’ to join your ranks and one day become your boss.”

Matis laughs good-naturedly and throws a soft punch at Jean’s chest. “Ha! Nice one Jean; you’ll have to do more than talk to really prove that.” 

For a moment, it looks like flames dance in Jean’s eyes as he playfully raises an eyebrow. “Oh, I intend to.”

Matis glances around and then, casually, wraps his arms over both boys’ shoulders. “I’m as hungry as a bull. Why don’t we get a bite somewhere and you can tell me about your training, eh?”

“Sounds like a plan!” Jean’s expression remains cocky as ever, but his eyes shine with delight as he drags Marco with him to follow his brother away.

The three of them make their way, along with many other cadets and Officers, to the dining commons. The noise there is deafening, and the tables are almost all full. Matis allows Jean to lead him and Marco to what seems to be their table, as it is unoccupied but for the heated glare of some small brat with slimy eyes and an even slimier expression sitting behind them. He’s accompanied by a blond — girl? — and a raven-haired girl who looks somewhat menacing. 

Marco, blushing and still flustered in the presence of such a high-ranking MP Officer, excuses himself to get them food. “I’ll be right back!” He promises with a grin.

Matis raises his hand in acknowledgment and then turns to look at Jean with a grin as Marco leaves. “I like that kid, he’s such a dork.” 

“Tch, who are you calling a dork?” Jean leans his folded arms on the table, holding his head in one hand and wearing an overconfident smirk. “He’s one of the strongest cadets in the whole corps. Right behind myself, of course.”

Matis raises his brows with surprise. “What’s your ranking?” 

“I’m… fifth right now.” Jean had briefly considered bluffing but knew all too well that Matis would call him on it, so he decided not to bother. “But trust me, I’ll bring that up at least three whole ranks before you leave here. You won’t even know what hit you.”

Matis laughs again, the sound something between genuine and teasing. “Who ya kiddin’ Jean?” He snorts. “I graduated seventh. You’re already beating my ass. Ya don’t gotta try so damn hard all the time, kid.” 

Jean’s eyes briefly widen in surprise. “Seventh? You’re serious?”

Matis shrugs easily. “Once you’re in the top ten I don’t see why you gotta rip yourself a new one just to get higher up. You’re in. That’s what counts.” 

“Fair point,” Jean concedes, “but to be honest, the competition in this corps is real stiff.” He shifts his eyes briefly to the next table over, where he sees Eren glaring daggers at him and Armin trying (and failing) to redirect Eren’s attention with small talk. “Can’t ever get too comfortable.”

Matis follows Jean’s eyes to the other table and frowns. “I see…” He then sits up straighter as Marco returns, bearing three mugs of hot coffee and some rare dry ration-biscuits. 

“Ah, sorry for the wait,” the boy stutters, “there was a bit of a line. The coffee is good! But, erm, not so much the biscuits, sorry sir.” He sits down quickly next to Jean, practically hiding behind him.

“Eh, don’t sweat it, kid,” the Officer says easily, taking the offered mug.

Jean takes a mug of coffee for himself and angles his body away from his vexatious rival to face his brother more directly. “I think I’ve done enough talking for now,” he says. “So what exciting things are you up to in the Capital, Officer?”

Matis takes a deep drink from the coffee and groans in appreciation of the warmth. “Ahh, well…” He sits back and purses his lips in thought. “Honestly? Shit’s been pretty lax the past year or so. Not half as much crime down Under; got some drug trades happening here and there but they’re easy busts. Some whore houses had to be shut down — malpractice and whatnot — couple tousles with vagrants…” He scratches his chin absently and shrugs. “We’ve done our job good; Capital’s safe as a baby’s pram.” 

“Well, look at you, keepin’ everything under control.” Jean chuckles before taking another sip of his coffee. “And people wanna talk like the Military Police are never up to anything useful…”

From the table behind them, Eren spits out his water. “ The hell? ” He whisper-screams in disgust. “Sina, are you hearing this shit? The MPs mop up the front porch and Jean is singing their praises like a damn Wallist!” 

Armin anxiously glances at the face of the Officer sitting not ten feet away from them, hoping that it doesn’t indicate too much indignation. “Eren, keep it down!” he hisses through gritted teeth. 

Eren looks at his friend with betrayal. “But he’s gonna’ get brainwashed , Armin!” He whines, albeit quieter. 

Armin does a double take and notes the uncharacteristic friendliness and ease that Officer Kirstein has drawn out of Jean — he’s sure that he’s never seen his comrade smile this genuinely before. “I think he’s already brainwashed, Eren,” he sighs.

Eren slaps his hands flat on the table as he grits his teeth. “Well… I’m gonna have to fix that then.” He brushes off Armin’s attempts to hold him back and doesn’t heed Mikasa’s soft warning, instead getting up and moving to the table where Floch, Connie and Sasha are goofing off about something.

He stands right behind Floch and puts a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Floch. We need to talk. Now.” 

Floch is at once startled by the touch and the seriousness of Eren’s tone — he chokes on his laughter before shutting himself up and turning to face the other boy. “What — what’s up?” As hard as he tries to play it cool, there are still a few vivid memories from the past few days that rear their (not entirely) ugly heads every time he looks at Eren.

Eren tears his death-glare away from Matis and shifts it to Floch; his hand squeezes slightly. “I need to destroy that fucking Officer — and it needs to happen in front of Jean.”

Connie scoots closer to Sasha; they both eye Eren warily. 

Floch’s brows furrow as he gazes at Jean and the Officer who shares his name. “What? Dude, are you trying to get us kicked out of the military?”

Eren frowns. “I’m trying to make sure Jean doesn’t join the wrong fucking branch!” he spits. And without waiting for a response, he grabs Floch by the scruff of his uniform jacket and drags him in the direction of the cafeteria. “Come on, I’ve got a plan…”

Meanwhile, Jean has downed his entire mug of coffee, and he’s hopped up on enough caffeine and juvenile excitement to regale his brother with his hot takes: “It is kinda weird that they put all this emphasis on ODM gear skill for the top ten who’ll become MPs and then hardly ever use it again… what’s up with that?”

Matis groans and pinches his nose-bridge. “Damn, they’re still training y’all with that stuff?” he huffs. “Doesn’t do you any good in the city; sure, it’s easy to use with all the buildings and whatnot, but you hit a civilian with a grapple and it’s damn well over for you. It’s much easier to just use the pistols and rifles on duty — cleaner kills, too.” 

“Exactly!” Jean casts his gaze off to the side as he frowns. “But they don’t teach us how to shoot here… I’d like to learn, though.”

Marco glances at Jean and then back to Matis, wearing a rather concerned expression. “Ah, w-wait… when you say cleaner kills… But there are no titans in Sina, right, sir?”

Matis raises his brows at the boy and looks to Jean with an amused and somewhat amazed glance. “I forgot how titan-oriented basic training is — they don’t tell you about the threats that come from the inside, do they?” He doesn’t wait for an answer and instead leans onto the table and looks at Jean curiously. “Jean, you remember what I told you about the Underground, yeah?”

“Yeah, that it’s the homicide capital of the world. How could I forget something like that?” Jean looks briefly back at Marco’s sketched-out face. “Full of thugs who’d rather kill people for money than commit themselves to an honest living. When they operate like that, how else would you expect law enforcement to respond?”

Matis nods in earnest agreement. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, and yet you know what just went down last year?” He pushes back from the table with a look of disgust painted clear on his face. “The damned Survey Corps recruited an Underground rat as some sorta honorary member. The Commander was in on it too — before he resigned his sorry ass here.” 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…” Jean is about to go off on another rant when he catches a glimpse of Eren walking by the table with Floch in tow.

“It’s almost sad, really,” Eren says, interrupting Jean’s flow obnoxiously — loudly — while facing Floch. “Such a waste of potential, too. To think how far we could have gone if the resources hogged up by the MPs was used for something actually productive? Instead we gotta watch them fuck around in the whore-houses, drink all day, and steal government funds like they’re treats in a bakery…”

“Some protectors they are —” Floch seamlessly jumps in like he’s rehearsed these lines for years. “They’re a crowd of crooks pretending to be heroes. Too spineless to face titans like they were trained to do, so they signed up to babysit the gold guzzlers instead. They have no shame…”

Eren brushes past Jean and tosses a look over his shoulder. “They should come up with a better name for the Military Police… the Coward Corps? Sounds fitting to me, eh Floch?” He smirks.

Matis’ brow twitches, and his easy smile is quickly replaced with a frown.

Jean stops processing Eren’s exact words somewhere in the middle of his obscene rant, simply seething at the sound of the boy’s voice until he dares to offer up that stupid-ass name that pushes him over the edge. Before Floch has the chance to open his mouth, Jean grabs the redhead by the arm and twists it, ignoring Marco’s alarmed protest. “Don’t fucking answer that if you know what’s good for you,” he growls right by Floch’s ear.

Floch grits his teeth and yelps at the pain but can’t shake Jean’s vice grip. “Hey, take it easy, man…”

“Oi, Jean,” Eren interrupts, sliding up to flatten his palm against Jean’s chest and press the taller boy back. “What’s the matter? Thought you liked suckin’ up to the MPs… You that sensitive to a little critique?” His grin is all teeth when he dares Jean to hear the undertone of his words.

He does — Eren doesn’t give him much of a choice — and it sets his eyes ablaze all over again. “A little?” he huffs. “You’re talkin’ a lot of shit right now, and I promise you don’t wanna find out what’ll happen to you if you keep it up.”

Eren laughs darkly when he spots Matis’ gaze following them and narrowing at the strangely comfortable contact Eren has on Jean’s chest. Perfect… He leans closer to Jean — not too close to be suggestive of anything other than contempt though, he’s not that suicidal — and hisses, “Whatcha gonna do about it, Jean? You’re not man enough to do shit to me,” he says, and means it.

Jean pushes himself off the bench to stand as he faces Eren, returning his shove on the chest. “You know that isn’t true!” He barks at him. “Seriously, sit the fuck down and take your little dog with you before I break both your arms.”

“Ah, Eren, maybe you should—” Marco starts, but Eren cuts him off quickly, his face tinged pink. 

“The fuck you just call him?” he hisses at Jean, eyes suddenly and fiercely ablaze. 

Jean furrows his brow at Eren and sighs; he thinks it’s a dumb and unnecessary move to drag a third party into their grudge match. Off to the side, he sees Floch standing frozen, jaw hanging slightly open as he gives Eren the kind of wide-eyed stare that he figures a starving man would give to his first meal in weeks.

Jean resists the urge to retch and turns his attention back to Eren. “I called him your little dog. You deaf or something?”

Eren’s eyes darken like murder. He steps right up to Jean and takes a fistful of his jacket, pulling him far too close. “You call him that shit ever again and I swear, Jean…” His voice lowers menacingly: “I will cut your dick off and shove it so far down your mouth you’ll be tasting your own cum for the rest of the year…” He lets go of the fabric and steps back. “Come on Floch, we don’t need to waste time with this idiot.” 

Floch snaps out of his daze just in time to shuffle after Eren, leaving a red-faced, utterly gobsmacked Jean standing frozen at its edge. He can’t tell if it’s anger or humiliation that’s making him feel like he might vomit up his breakfast. 

Matis whistles low, his eyes narrowing on Eren’s retreating figure. “The hell is up with that kid?” he asks no one in particular. 

Marco can see that Jean might need a moment (truthfully he might need a moment too) and tries his best to smooth the situation over. “Eren isn’t usually so — so callous, sir…” he starts hesitantly. “I might just talk to Armin to see if something’s been bothering him.” He turns to Matis apologetically. “He’s not too fond of the Military Police, unfortunately.”

Matis nods, acknowledging the explanation, and then turns his attention to his brother. “Oi, Jean. Walk with me, yeah?”

Jean’s stomach promptly turns inside out, but he forces himself to start moving again so as to not look any more guilty than he already does. “Alright, sure…”

Matis pushes himself up and gives Marco a nod of thanks before sliding out of the dining hall with Jean. He is silent for a good while until they reach the path that leads to the training fields; there his pace slows a good bit. 

“Jean…” he starts, tone rather blunt but reflective. “That kid’s a faggot.” 

Jean flinches at the word before he can stop himself. That’s new for him — he’s suddenly very aware of how quickly he’s gone from saying it fifteen times a day to effectively deleting it from his vocabulary. And all because of —

Because of the fucking moron who landed me in this tight spot. Fuck him.

Jean knows he has to act fast to avoid further raising suspicions — he can literally feel Matis’ waiting eyes on him. So he clears his throat and says, “Uh, y-yeah… guess so.”

“That other kid? The redhead? Yeah, that’s his bitch,” Matis continues; he then turns to give Jean a very stern glare. “I’ve seen enough of that sordid shit in the city to recognize it here.” He moves to lean against a large oak and crosses his arms over his chest. “Eren, right? That’s the fag’s name?”

After seeing the look of murder in his brother’s eyes, Jean is almost afraid to confirm or deny it.

“Yes,” he slowly replies after his brief pause. “What, you gonna take him out right here?”

Matis snorts; “I’m not gonna beat up some kid just ‘cause he’s fuckin’ bent the wrong way…” He glances up at Jean and his eyes glitter with something dark. “But you sure as hell are.” 

His arms unfold and he tucks them into his pockets easily. “That kid’s got the hots for you, Jean. It’s about as obvious as it gets with their kind; I doubt you’d know the look but I’ve seen enough sleazy pieces of shit give me eyes to know it.” A pause holds the air as his eyes darken further. “They all got that same fuckin’ look dad had…” he spits. 

Jean’s blood runs cold at the mention of that man. It scares him, since he’s used to his blood running much hotter in response. He wonders who Matis is really seeing as he looks at him…

“Wait, back the fuck up.” Jean clenches his hands into fists at his sides. “You want me to do the dirty work?”

Matis shrugs. “He’s after you, Jean. You gotta be the one to put him in his place.” Then his face morphs into a grin. “Or what? You still need your big bro to protect you?”

“Like hell I do,” Jean bites back. “Yeah, I’ll teach him never to think of embarrassing me like that again…”

He means it, but not quite in the way that he knows Matis expects. Still, he does feel genuine frustration and anger toward the brat, which saturates his words — he hopes that it’s enough to throw Matis off his scent. 

But Jean can already tell that it might be a lost cause; his brother’s eyes are too sharp. He feels like any second now, it’ll click for the officer, and he’ll be thrown to the ground to eat the heel of the man’s boot. He’ll be battered by merciless fists until his chest caves in. It would be no different from that scene he’d watched play out back in Trost all those years ago.

It takes everything in him not to start trembling at the thought of it.

Ignorant to his brother’s internal turmoil, Matis relaxes and slaps a hand on Jean’s shoulder with something like pride and relief. “Ha! See that you do; I know you’ve got it in ya to beat that shit to a pulp, and besides—” He grins. “I’m high enough with the MPs to bail you out if you really need it. What else are brothers good for, eh?”

Jean hopes that his laughter doesn’t sound as anxious as he feels. “You know if anyone hears you talking like that then you’ll be in deep shit, right?”

Matis rolls his eyes. “Fuck, keep forgettin’ you guys are so damn lenient here… all that queer shit doesn’t fly with the MPs.” He sighs and rolls his shoulders a bit. “Doesn’t matter, anyway; weren’t you gonna show me some shit with the ODM gear? We don’t use that stuff much, but it still looks good to know how to use it.” 

“Alright, you want a show?” Jean grabs his brother by the arm and starts leading him toward the gear shed. “Then I’ll show you how a professional works the gear. C’mon!”

Matis follows with a laugh, sounding almost fourteen again. “Alright alright! Slow down, Jean-bo!”

***

The brothers weren’t the first ones on the ODM training field; there were quite a few others there already. Reiner and Bertholdt were busy adjusting their straps, mindlessly ignoring the commotion of the MPs’ intrusion to the camp. Ymir and Christa were in gear but much more focused on chatting under the shade than doing any actual practice (Ymir was talking; Christa was knitting flower crowns). 

And perhaps not unexpectedly but most disappointingly, Eren, Armin and Mikasa were there too.

Eren spots Jean and his brother as they make their way to the training fields, and his anger for the both of them rears its ugly head with such suddenness that he misfires his trigger. The grapple would have gone straight into Armin’s foot had it not been for Mikasa snagging him out of the way just in time.

Armin shrieks as the grapple just barely misses him. He follows the hook with his eyes as it makes its swift retreat back into Eren’s rig. “What was that for?” he asks in a panic. “What’s going on?”

Eren starts at Armin’s shriek and promptly drops the handles of his gear. “Ah, sorry Armin! I misfired — are you alright?”

“Yeah, I don’t think it hit me…” Armin looks down to check and finds that his boots are unscathed, to his relief.

Mikasa lets go of Armin’s sleeve and looks at Eren with narrow eyes. “Eren, is Jean distracting you again?”

The green-eyed boy rolls his eyes. “It’s his fucking brother who’s distracting me, Mikasa.”

Armin scans the field and finds the Kirstein brothers chatting up another storm just a few feet away. “Eren,” he starts cautiously, “I’m sure Jean just missed his brother, since he hasn’t seen him in a long while. Officer Kirstein won’t be around to occupy Jean’s time forever, you know…”

Eren blushes rapidly and darkly. “I-I don’t care that he’s taking up Jean’s time! They can fucking chum up with each other all day for all I care!” He crosses his arms tightly over his chest and sends a glare down Matis’ neck. “He’s a bad influence is all…”

Mikasa glances at Eren, follows his gaze to Matis, and then turns her focus back to the seething boy. “Eren, you don’t need to lie to us. You and I both know Armin is right.” She turns to the blond boy and frowns. “Did you hear what Eren said to Jean at breakfast?”

“Mhm…” The memory of Eren’s crassness makes Armin squirm. “I know it’s a part of your daily routine to fight Jean, but your threats have never gotten that… graphic before. You were furious with Jean on a level that runs deeper than you guys’ rivalry, right?”

Eren can’t help but feel somewhat uneasy; he had meant his threat to Jean — perhaps not in a way that he would actually enact it — but the rage had been very real. He blew out a long breath through his mouth. “Jean just… he rubbed a raw spot and I got really fucking mad.” He tosses his head back, forcing a smile on his face. “But I wouldn’t cut his dick off, not really. I like it too much for that.” 

Armin isn’t sure whether to laugh or recoil into himself further after hearing that. “What raw spot?” he asks to refocus their conversation.

Eren’s face falls and he turns a dark shade of red, grabbing his sleeve with one hand as he mutters something under his breath. 

Mikasa trades a glance with Armin, silently asking if he caught that or not. The blond responds with a small sigh, and then he steps closer to Eren to stroke one of his shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says in the sweetest voice that he can muster. “Mikasa and I aren’t gonna laugh or anything.”

Eren grits his teeth; he feels almost as though he could either laugh or cry. He’s not quite sure which wins out when he finally gasps, “I had to end it with Floch and — I don’t think I ended it well…” He blinks and adds, “Jean just — he insulted Floch and I got defensive.” 

“Oh…” Armin vaguely remembers Eren running off with Floch with no explanation a few days prior, and he figures that’s when the informal break-up must have happened. “I imagine it must have been difficult to let Floch down easy… did he still not take it that well?”

Mikasa watches as Eren turns an even darker shade of red and seems to crumble under Armin’s touch. She takes a step closer and snags one of Eren’s hands, giving it a firm squeeze. “What did you do to him, Eren?” She asks, not unkindly.

Eren winces regardless. “I probably fucked him up worse than if I hadn’t done anything in the first place…” he mutters. “Meant to just give him like a goodbye kiss or something sweet… Didn’t really feel sweet by the end of it. He’s still fucking obsessed with me and I — I don’t think I hate that enough.” 

The light in Armin’s eyes briefly dims as the darkness behind Eren’s words sinks in. “Is… is that why you went to him specifically to pull that stunt in front of Jean’s brother earlier?” He lowers his gaze to the grass. “Of course it is; nobody else would be brazen enough to say those kinds of disparaging things about the Military Police right in front of them…”

Something bitter curdles in Eren’s stomach; it’s the kind of shame that makes him want to hide his face. “Ah — I didn’t mean to use him. Just, he seemed so broken and I knew that he’d say yes. I thought that maybe he’d like doing just friend stuff together…”

Mikasa lets his hand go and takes a small step back with a sigh. “Eren, I’m not sure you know how to just be friends with people…” Her words are blunt but she means no real harm by them. She turns to Armin briefly and then back to Eren with a small raise of her brow. “Even we weren’t perfectly immune…”

Armin wrings his fingers behind his back as a pink blush creeps across his face. He shakes his head to rid it of a few flashbacks that are threatening to rob him of his clear judgment. “I’m thinking it might be better for both of you if you give Floch a little more room,” he says finally. “At least keep your frustrations with Jean between you and him. So that nobody else has to get caught in the crossfire.”

Eren frowns, but can’t really argue with Armin’s sound logic. It would be the empathetic thing to do after all. And he really has dragged Floch through the mud with their little liaisons. 

He twists his lips and rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Whatever. I guess so…” he mutters. But Floch is so damn useful…

Mikasa lightly smacks the back of his head; she knows the look on Eren’s face well enough and doesn’t like it much. “Armin’s right,” she says as Eren yelps in surprise. “Leave the boy alone for a bit. Focus on Jean if you’re looking for distractions.” And then she turns to look at the Kirstein brothers and amends her statement: “But perhaps not now though…”

Eren, somewhat still irked at the back-hand to his head, turns to follow Mikasa’s gaze. “What’s that supposed to mean—” He spots Matis and Jean and feels that same burning sensation in his stomach that he first had upon learning about Jean’s idol. 

But a small part of him also feels… almost ashamed. 

From this distance, it is easy to see how eager Jean is to show his brother different grips on his blades, how ecstatic he is to have an audience for his talents. And Matis (if Eren pretends he doesn’t know the prick) humors his brother. A soft smile rests on his face as he points out the ingenuity in Jean’s grips, shows him a slightly different posture to increase his swing’s radius, bends to inspect his grapple-wires and admire their well-kept condition. 

Eren feels almost ashamed for having wanted to embarrass Jean in front of his brother when it is so clear now that Jean wants nothing more than to impress him. It’s kind of pathetic, sure, but it’s also incredibly sweet and heart-warming. 

And there’s something almost fatherly in the way Matis watches Jean, the way his eyes shine with something like pride at the younger boy’s enthusiasm. In the back of his mind, Eren remembers Jean’s words about his brother: how Matis seemingly took the place of their father, how he took on the role with iron-willed determination. How Jean ‘honestly owes him a lot’. 

Eren bites his lip and sheaths his blades. “I think I need to — I should apologize to Jean…” 

Armin struggles to believe that he’d heard Eren correctly but doesn’t really want to hear a different response if he questions it. “That sounds like a good idea,” he says to Eren with a smile.

Eren doesn’t even look back to see the soft look on Armin’s face, instead marching off right in the direction of Jean and Matis. 

Mikasa watches with a frown as Eren rushes off and then turns to Armin with a rather resigned sigh. “He’s not going to apologize…” 

Armin shuts his eyes and shakes his head. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t actually start tearing anyone apart…”

“We’ll watch him from the side — just in case?” Mikasa asks, sheathing her own blades and delicately tracing the trigger of her grapples. 

“Yes; we’ll stay where the forestation is thickest. Eren shouldn’t spot us easily that way.” Armin already has a good spot in mind; once Eren is far away enough, Armin starts leading Mikasa away.

***

Matis is interrupted in his admiration of Jean’s overhand grasp on the blade-handles when he sees a certain short-tempered brat make his way over to them. He raises a hand to stop Jean’s excited rambling and stands up straighter. 

“Looks like your little admirer wants a fight, Jean…” He smirks.

Jean looks around until his eyes land on Eren, marching over like he’s on a very important (and probably destructive) mission. The sight of him makes Jean a little lightheaded and he can’t quite place why.

With a huff, Jean steps away from Matis to meet Eren halfway. “What the fuck do you want now, man?”

Eren stops right in front of the other boy and leaves a good meter between them. He feels his heart pounding like a drum and he can’t quite meet Jean’s eyes for fear that he might sink in them — angry or not, Jean’s eyes are utterly captivating. He struggles to pull a competitive smirk on his face. “I’ve decided that I’m in the mood for a bit of ODM sparring, and since you are such an insufferable show-off I thought you’d like a bit of a challenge.” He hopes that the note of apology comes across through his borderline chaste teasing. 

Jean perks up at the idea of a contest — but not too much. Eren’s been acting so strange all day that the normalcy of this challenge makes him wonder if it’s a trap. But Matis is standing right behind the two of them, and he’s not about to turn down a perfect opportunity to show Matis his real skill. Turning Eren down would make him look like too much of a chump, and he knows his brother would be disgusted by the cowardice of the rebuff.

“You know I will,” he replies with a smug smirk. “But you probably won’t after how badly I’ll crush you.”

Eren feels his stomach flip with a mixture of relief that Jean agreed, and the same kind of excitement he couldn’t attribute to anything other than reignited lust. He spreads his arms, handles to the ODM gear set in each one, and gives Jean a real smirk this time. 

“Only if you catch me first, wuss!” And then he’s blasting off, grapples launching at lightning speed right into the trunk of the nearest tree. 

Matis snorts and moves to grab Jean’s shoulder before he takes off in hot pursuit. “Hey, Jean?” He smirks. “Wipe that nasty grin off his fuckin’ faggot face for me will ya?”

“Tch.” Jean rolls his eyes and sets his fingers into place over his own gear triggers. “Don’t have to tell me twice.” He launches his grapples at the same tree Eren used and takes off, somehow even faster than the other boy.

Eren is whipping through the branches like his life depends on it. He knows Jean is quick; hell, he’s among the fastest in the Corps, just barely behind Mikasa and Annie. But Eren is agile — he can contort his body quicker than Jean, bending like a whip and piloting around midair without losing momentum.

He makes use of that talent to the fullest, blasting off from one tree trunk to the next, launching himself high into the canopy only to swan-dive right back down, with the precision of a needle through the offshoots. 

He feels as though he’s flying away from his heart. As though he is escaping something that wants to catch him and devour him whole. He absently reasons that such an analogy isn’t far from the truth.

The thrill of another good chase propels Jean forward, deeper into the trees. For all of his ranting and raving in public, he can’t deny that he enjoys how much Eren can give him a run for his money. It gives him just the right motivation to move that much faster, push that much harder, adapt that much better. He’s never bored when Eren is his mark — he has to give the little shit at least that much.

Jean hurtles through the trees fast enough to catch up to Eren easily — it’s just the two of them out here, so Jean can spot the other boy’s lithe figure darting through the trees without difficulty. He notices that Eren’s practically abusing his agility, oscillating his altitude but maintaining a general forward motion. He’s keeping Jean guessing his next twists and shifts in direction every five seconds.

Jean opts not to try and follow him too closely — he latches on to a higher branch and moves himself upward, watching Eren swerve through the forest from above. He doesn’t normally move through the course from this high up, so he hopes that he can find a clear enough path along which to gain more speed…

Eren is instantly aware of Jean above him. He feels like a rabbit, scurrying from one tree trunk to the next while some great bird of prey follows him with unseen yet piercing eyes. 

He wonders if it’s concerning that such a feeling arouses him. Perhaps the knowledge that this ‘bird of prey’ is actually Jean, is what does it for him. 

He feels cheeky. He feels flirty. He does something reckless. 

Eren launches his grapples higher up on the next tree and as he is pulled forth he curls inwards — rolling in the air to gaze upside down at Jean, seeing the honey-brown hair glow in the slanted sunlight through the trees — and then he shoots him a wink.

He finishes his roll and rounds the tree with enough centripetal force to make tears burst through his eyes at the wind-burn.

Jean’s heart stops for a moment when he sees Eren’s stupidly flirty expression. Eren was already ahead, he thought, so why did he feel the need to go and start fucking with his head like that?

He gets startled right out of his panicked considerations when he realizes almost a second too late that he’s hurtling right into the tree that Eren had just rounded. He switches his grappling target to another tree off to the right and continues his pursuit. 

Jean feels hot after all of that stimulation, and he cannot wait to get his hands back on that little brat for what he did to him, so he can punch him in the face, shove him to the ground, wrap his hand around the idiot’s throat and watch his face flush as he gasps for air…

It almost scares Jean how pretty he knows Eren would look like that.

Wherever that brat went, he needs to find him.

Eren is out of breath by now — his mouth is dry, his eyes are burning. He feels like his legs are going to fall off with how much running along the trunks of trees he’s been doing. 

Perhaps it is a bit inevitable then when his next grapple misses the meat of the branch and instead skims its bark. Eren free-falls rapidly towards the forest floor, branches scratching his face and somehow, his fingers aren’t quick enough.

He doesn’t reshoot his grapples. 

He’s falling. Falling .

Jean’s heart drops at the sight of Eren’s body plummeting through the branches, crushing leaves and snapping twigs along its path. He knows that Eren could move fast enough to reshoot his grapples in a situation like this, but for some reason he hasn’t. 

Did he hit his head on the way down and now he’s out cold? Or is he really that much of a fucking suicidal maniac?

Whatever the case, Jean is not about to have anyone die on his watch in some stupid accident — the only way that Eren is going out here is by Jean’s own hand. 

With inconceivable speed and precision, Jean races toward the ground, quickly calculating the shortest path through the air to Eren’s limp body. He practically crashes into the boy, grabbing him around the waist with one arm and using the other to launch a grapple into a tree just ahead. It’s not enough to slow their momentum down completely, but it’s enough to keep them from breaking any bones as they land and tumble across the ground to an eventual stop.

When Jean finally feels the world still again, he pushes himself up with a groan and finds Eren lying beneath him.

One moment Eren was seeing the forest floor speeding towards him — the next moment he feels like every atom of air was thrown bodily out of him when something heavy snags him mid-fall. 

It takes him an embarrassing amount of time (and he blames the sudden rush for his stupidity) to figure out what the hell just happened. And then he feels the arm around his waist, sees champagne colored hair, and smells… Jean .

Then they are crashing to the dirt and rolling and tumbling and Eren feels nothing other than the bruises on his body, sure to appear in a few hours. 

Then the world stills. And Eren is under Jean. He saved me … The thought makes his limbs liquid. He doesn’t think he can control them, but somehow they stretch up and wrap under Jean’s uniform jacket, grabbing at his back with shaking desperation.

Eren vaguely thinks that he sobs. 

Jean shudders as Eren claws at him; he feels a deep, familiar ache start to prod at his gut, and he’s keenly aware that the adrenaline in his veins has yet to dissipate even this long after their free-fall. He looks down at Eren’s slightly awestruck face and feels his heart jump right back into his throat. He moves a hand onto Eren’s shoulder and means to give it a reassuring squeeze, but his grip tightens much harder than that.

“Eren… what the fuck was that?”

Eren blinks from under Jean, and his own hands curl sharper into his back. “I —” he starts shakily, and then his voice cuts off with a crack. He shuts his eyes painfully tight against the sudden waves of frustration and pain in his chest.

All day — no, for the past three days — he’s been dying . Jean had spoken about nothing but Matis. Nothing but the stupid fucking MP visit. Today was a nightmare for Eren. Jean’s eyes were not once on him — not once was he gifted a knowing smirk, a snarky but familiar comment…

It had all been too much. He missed Jean. Eren’s fingers grip the material of Jean’s shirt and he forces his eyes open. “You were — you weren’t mine , Jean.” 

“I — I wasn’t… what?”

Jean has to remind himself to breathe as his heart starts racing a mile a minute. There’s an energy swimming just behind Eren’s eyes that he doesn’t have a word for, but he knows it means that Eren is serious. Which drives Jean crazy, because he had never once fancied the idea of belonging to anyone like that, but when Eren looks at him like this and claws at him like this, gasping breathlessly for more of him, he feels his whole body burn for more of Eren in response.

“You…” Jean’s hand slides along Eren’s neck and back into his hair. “You fucking idiot… you really wanted my attention so bad you almost killed yourself for it?” His breath grows ragged as he alternates between tugging and stroking Eren’s locks. “Shit like this is why I call you a suicidal maniac, y’know…”

Eren whimpers and lifts himself to rewrap his arms around Jean’s neck, hiding his red face into the junction between shoulder and jaw. “It’s your fault…” He whispers, “Shoulda’ just given me attention to start with…”

Jean chuckles wryly into Eren’s hair, nuzzling it gently. “How about fucking asking for it next time, instead of harassing the fuck outta me and my family?”

Eren huffs an embarrassed laugh against Jean’s neck. “I’m asking now then…” He pulls back and gives Jean a charming smile, though his eyes feel a tad bit wet. “Jean? I would very much like your attention.”

Jean’s heart melts a little. Fuck, that look is too cute…

He pushes Eren’s hair out of his eyes so that he can see them better, giving Eren a soft smile of his own. He’s about to start teasing the boy when he hears the whirr of ODM gear quickly approaching. His face blanches when he turns and finds his brother touching down just a few feet away.

“ Jean !” Matis’ voice is icy steel, ripping out of his chest with the same sharpness of the ODM blades which he levels right at Eren. “Get the hell off him, you fucking filthy faggot!” 

Jean leaps to the side, and Eren practically throws himself back when he scrambles away from those dangerously sharp blades. But he’s not quick enough to miss the savage kick to his side from Matis’ boot. 

The Officer then turns to Jean, his face white with rage. “Get up. Now.”

It takes every ounce of courage that Jean has left to yank himself up on his feet. It’s almost not enough — his legs tremble with the effort of holding himself up. Matis’ gaze scalds his clammy skin; he can’t bring himself to look at the Officer’s face, which he’s sure is twisted with a deep and horrifying fury.

The whirring sounds of two different pairs of ODM gear fill the strained silence of the forest as Mikasa and Armin land to either side of Eren. Mikasa’s blades are already out and leveled at the senior Officer and she wears an expression that just dares Matis to lay a touch on Eren again.

Matis doesn’t seem to care. He takes Jean by the arm, and his grip is painful . “The lot of you are disgusting. Take your stupid faggot friend out of my sight before I fuckin’ lose it.” He then turns on his heel and drags Jean with him out of the clearing. 

“You better have a damn good explanation for what the fuck I just saw there, Jean…” he hisses between his teeth.

“I…”

Jean searches his brain desperately — for something, anything — to tame the inferno in Matis’ glare. But he’s too nauseous to think or speak coherently. All he can do is wait helplessly for the flames to engulf him.

“I… M-Matis, I…”

Matis swings them behind a large tree and promptly throws Jean’s body against the trunk, pinning him by the shoulders against the thick bark — his grip is strong enough to bruise and his eyes are inflamed. 

“I fucking saw it, Jean — I saw how you — how you fucking touched him.” His voice is so ragged and thick with rage that it comes out low like the rumble of thunder. “What the fuck Jean…” he whispers. Then, he shakes Jean violently. “ What the actual fuck !” 

“Agh! Matis, please—!”

Jean’s plea is knocked right out of his lungs when his body slams into the tree trunk repeatedly. He feels tears start to well up at the corners of his eyes as Matis’ grip on his shoulders becomes almost too painful to bear… but he bears it. He pushes back on his brother’s body, but not with enough force to put up a real struggle. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jean knows that this needed to happen. He played with fire, and now he’s getting burned, as he should be.

“Are you one of them now?” Matis yells, his voice breaking. “You wanna end up like dad , Jean? Is that what you’re fucking doing?” He drops one hand from Jean’s shoulder only to whip it across his little brother’s face. 

“Are you fucking insane? Are you — how could you?” he gasps brokenly.

Jean finally dares to meet his brother’s eyes, and his heart shatters when he sees the betrayal that he just heard in the man’s voice. He really couldn’t blame Matis for hurting like that — after everything that he’d done, after everything that he’d sacrificed to ensure that at least Jean would have a normal childhood, and this is how Jean repays him? By becoming the monster from whom he’d rescued him and their mother?

His shame chokes him from the inside, squeezing his tears out of him in streams.

“I… I don’t know, Matis. I really don’t know.”

Matis freezes at the sight of Jean’s tears — at the broken confession. His death-grip on Jean’s shoulder loosens slightly, and he pushes back, breathing over his shoulder. 

“They’re like that, Jean…” he says softly, turning to look back at Jean and feeling somewhat guilty for how frightened the fifteen-year-old boy looks. He moves again, pulling back a few steps and falling down onto the ground heavily, lifting the palm of his hand to rub at his forehead. “They fuck with your head — make you think you’re seein’ shit that’s not there. Worse than women. Fuckin’ use your own manhood against you. Make you think that you’re weak if you don’t give in… ‘s what happened with dad. He was snagged by a damn faggot, got himself whipped right up into that shit-stain’s bitch.” 

Jean’s knees finally grow too weak to hold him up, and he crumples to the ground in front of his brother. His eyes are wide and wild as they stare through Matis, his breathing shallow and stuttering. 

Suddenly, he’s back in the stables, staring into Eren’s hypnotizing eyes as the boy whispers to him to give in, to let go, to stop being such a motherfucking coward —

It all makes sense now. And it makes Jean sick.

“...Matis. Tell me how you break out of it. Please .”

Matis laughs weakly. “Walls, Jean —” He drags his hand down his face and looks at his brother with a mixture of pity and fear. “I’ve seen men get turned, ain’t never see them twist out of it in time…” 

“In time for what?” Jean hurriedly wipes the rest of his tears from his eyes and tries his hardest to shake the haze out of his mind. “Don’t talk in riddles right now!”

“I ain’t talkin’ in fuckin’ riddles, Jean!” Matis spits. “They don’ fuckin’ get right. They’re bent for good. Once they get caught — it’s fucking over for them.” He pushes back his brown hair, breathing harshly out of his nose for four counts. 

“It’s not too late for you, yeah?” Matis sounds nearly desperate. “You gotta just — you can’t talk to him. Doesn’t matter if it’s fuckin’ insults, classwork, nothing y’hear me? You can’t let him talk to you, they’ve got tongues like silk and their words are fuckin’ poison. You don’ get near him, okay?”

Jean’s head starts to pound; he screws his eyes shut as he holds it with one hand. “Y’know I don’t really have a whole lotta control over that, right? We sleep in bunks right next to each other. His friends are my friends so I can’t exactly avoid him at meal times. And what the fuck am I supposed to do if the Commander pairs us up for sparring?”

Matis groans and rubs his nose-bridge with two fingers. “Fuck, Jean — you gotta try!” He pulls his legs up and braces himself up on his knee as he stands. “Make excuses, ask to move bunks, hell I can ask for you — I’ve got enough rank to do it without much question.” 

He actually does, Jean realizes.

Matis is serious about this.

And he’s always known better than anyone what their best next move is…

But something is so profoundly off about the future that Matis is proposing to him. It’s… too fucking quiet. Scarily peaceful. A lot easier to navigate, sure, if all he has to do is hang with Marco from morning to night, acing training exercises and classes and then going right to sleep without uttering any unnecessary words. 

But Jean quickly realizes that he doesn’t want this to be easy. He wants the color and chaos that a good war of words brings into the room. He wants the excitement of a good match on the sparring grounds. He wants the liberating heat of a night in the stables or the gear shed — a freedom that allows him to breathe and unwind and just be…

Why must that kind of freedom wound his beloved brother so?

Jean hangs his head, too unwilling to accept the offer and too afraid to outright reject it. He is tired.

So tired.

“Jean…” Matis prompts, questioningly — carefully. 

The weight of his brother’s gaze feels far too heavy now. Jean takes one deep breath in for four counts, before slowly bringing himself back to his feet.

“I… I’ll try my best.” He faces the path that will lead him back to the main training grounds. “We need to head back now, before people start looking for us and I get stuck on stable-duty or something.”

Matis follows Jean’s eyes and his entire posture seems to fold slightly. He exhales a long breath and shakes his head. “Damn it. Right — just…” He moves to Jean and, tentatively, places a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t fuck up, Jean. Don’t let him get under your skin.” 

Jean feels like there are too many sticky, slimy things crawling under his skin already. But Matis doesn’t need to know that. He looks to him with a flat expression and nods, just once.

“Alright. I won’t.”

If Matis is unsatisfied with the curt answer, he hides it well. He drops his hand and moves onto the trail, following it with Jean out of the forest training-grounds.

Chapter Text

The Military Police Officers took their leave Sunday night, having gifted the 104th with all the wisdom they deemed possible and having given enough talks during class time to exhaust their voices and the cadet’s ears; it couldn’t be soon enough.

And yet, somehow, Eren couldn’t find it in himself to even feel happy that they were gone. In fact, he couldn’t really find it in himself to feel anything other than a bone-deep sense of rotting dread.

It had nothing to do with Matis kicking him; hell it had nothing to do with even the blinding panic which Eren felt upon having those lethal, titan-slaying blades pointed at him. 

No, his dread is completely because of Jean . Matis had dragged Jean away — with a look of such lethal rage on the Officer’s face that made Eren’s blood run cold — and hid him behind a tree and Eren… has no idea what happened after that .

Only that Jean reappeared, eventually, and now looks…

Oh Sina , how can Eren even describe it? Broken is too light a word. Shattered might be closer — fragmented, crushed, devastated, demolished, ruined — those might cover some aspect of Jean’s person. Whatever words fit, Eren only knows that he needs to talk to Jean as soon as possible. 

And for once — it isn’t with self-serving purposes. Eren just needs to fix whatever Matis broke in Jean. Needs it more than he needs anything.  

“Hey, Eren?”

Armin taps Eren on the shoulder for the fourth time in a row, worry creasing his forehead at Eren’s lack of responsiveness. “I can’t tell if you’re very distracted or just very tired. Can you talk to me, please?”

Eren jolts back to himself with the same jerky suddenness as when his grapples snap onto a tree trunk. He blinks and the sounds of the room start to slowly filter in through his ears. There’s rain hitting the roof, the groaning of old wood under too many feet, the painfully loud sound of Connie’s laugh, Sasha’s excited squeal, the soft humming of Ymir’s croon to Christa — and the bright blue pitch of Armin’s angelic voice. 

He blinks again, dumbly. “What?”

Armin’s frown deepens. “You’ve been zoning out a lot tonight,” he replies. “What’s on your mind? It must be pretty serious if you’re this out of it.”

Eren doesn’t respond right away and now even Mikasa finds it terribly concerning. She takes Armin’s hand and gives it a soft squeeze. “Jean caught him before he hit the ground — right?” She whispers to the blond boy.

“Yes, he did,” Armin whispers back, “so his physical injuries shouldn’t be too serious…”

Eren distantly thinks that his friends might be talking about him. He’s not too sure; he’s too busy staring at the empty space in Jean’s bunk. It’s been quite some time now — Jean should have finished showering, right? How long does it take to shower when one hasn’t gotten dirty? There hadn’t been training today, just classes. 

The rain grows louder and Eren folds his legs up under his chin. 

Armin reaches over and gently places a hand on Eren’s back, rubbing it in slow circles. “You haven’t gotten to talk to Jean since his brother dragged him off the training course, right? Is that what you’re worried about?”

Yes , Eren thinks. Yes, I’m very worried about that… He can’t seem to make his mouth work and so sinks deeper into himself, tipping his face into his knees and feeling a cold blanket of dread shield him from Armin’s warmth.

“You should get up. Find him,” Mikasa says, pragmatically if a bit too loudly. She doesn’t seem to notice that Eren can’t or won’t hear her. She turns instead to Armin, brows set and a determined look on her face. “Where is Jean?”

Armin’s gaze turns upward as he thinks back. “Last I saw him… he’d grabbed a towel and started walking to the bathhouse…” His eyes then shift to the door of the shower room. “But that was a long time ago. Is he still in there?”

Mikasa leans over Eren’s bunk to peer into the crowded barracks. Most of the 104th cadets had found their way over the boys’ space (the alternative was understood to be absolutely forbidden) and so Mikasa’s view is somewhat obstructed. 

She sees past the large circle where Connie, Sasha, Reiner, Bertholdt, Floch and Marco are playing some game of cards, past the bunk with Ymir and Christa, past the bunk where Hannah and Franz are busy making out, past the mess of heads and shoulders until she finally spots the shower door. 

And it is closed. It’s only closed when someone is using it. 

Mikasa turns back to Armin and sighs. “I think he’s still there, yes.” 

“And I didn’t see anyone else head that way, so he’s probably in there alone.” Armin gently nudges Eren with his elbow. “Now’s your chance, Eren. It’ll be just you and him.”

Eren doesn’t respond. At all. Not to the nudge, and not to the tempting image Armin offers him. It is so uncharacteristic that Mikasa decides there’s nothing to do but to take action into their own hands. She shakes her head with a sigh and pulls Armin off the bunk. “Let’s find Jean — if Eren can’t talk to him, we need to.” 

“We? Mikasa, you can’t go in there —”

Armin doesn’t have the opportunity to finish that thought before he’s dragged off the bunk and toward the shower room. He knows it would be a fruitless effort to try and fight her — she’s far too strong — so his best move is to follow and hope it makes her presence less startling.

Mikasa weaves Armin through the throng of cadets until she is standing right in front of the boys’ shower room. She kicks the door open without much preamble and marches right down the stalls until she can find the one that is occupied (annoyingly it takes a minute). 

She finds Jean sitting on the cold tiles, still wet from his shower, completely naked and shivering something fierce. She’d almost feel bad for him if she weren’t so determined to be upset. “Jean,” she greets, finally letting go of Armin’s hand. “We need to talk.”

Jean almost jumps out of his skin at the sound of his name, and when he sees who’s spoken to him, he almost slips and hits his head in his scramble to throw his towel over his lap. “Holy shit Mikasa what the fuck are you doing in here!”

“Sorry for scaring you,” Armin sighs, “but it’s a bit of an emergency. It looks like you’re done showering, so could you please get dressed and meet us in the main room?”

Jean frowns at the idea of having to put together coherent thoughts for the others right now. Hell, he still can’t even do that for himself. “Why? What’s the emergency?”

“Eren won’t talk,” Mikasa states flatly. “He’s been lost in his head since your brother attacked him and I need to know why you both haven’t talked it over yet.”

Jean had been trying so hard not to think about that, and now his brother’s furious voice is ringing through his head all over again. He slumps over, running his fingers anxiously through his wet hair.

“...There’s nothin’ to talk about.”

Mikasa narrows her eyes and squats down so that she is level with Jean. “I think that’s a lie.” She says it quietly, not quite gently but not quite with the same cold bite as her previous words. “Eren, Armin, and myself all saw your brother drag you off. He’s said something to you and now you and Eren can’t look each other in the face.” She spares a glance to Armin before returning her focus to Jean. “What happened?”

Jean turns his exhausted eyes upward to meet Mikasa, his lips drawn in a taut line. “If you were watchin’ that closely, then you saw the look on his face. You heard him.” He shudders as he shifts his gaze away from her again, toward the cold tile floor. “What makes you think I’d wanna tell you guys anything about that shit?”

“That’s fair…” Armin reaches forward to grab Mikasa’s wrist and gently coaxes her backward. “Then you don’t have to tell us, specifically. But I do think you owe it to Eren to at least let him know whether or not you’re alright. He’s worried sick about you, honestly…”

For an almost imperceptible moment, Armin sees the light return to Jean’s eyes. And then it’s gone again.

That’s a lie, Matis hisses at Jean in his mind. Don’t believe it.

Jean fully turns himself away from Mikasa and Armin. “Then he can stay worried.”

Mikasa tenses under Armin’s soft hold, and she’s just about ready to give Jean a good smack around the back of his skull but Armin gives her a small headshake and his grip tightens infinitesimally enough to guide her away. 

It doesn’t stop her from giving Jean a dirty look of disappointment when they do leave. 

***

Marco, while doing his utmost to focus on the card game he’s playing with his friends, can’t help but notice Armin and Mikasa leave towards the showers. He’s a bit surprised, thinking at first that they’re going there for less than appropriate reasons… and then it hits him that Jean has not yet left the showers. 

He wonders if he should be concerned — the look on Mikasa’s face was a bit scary. He comforts himself knowing that Armin will intervene before anything bad can truly happen. 

Marco sighs and then lays down his set of queens determinedly. “Alright, I’m folding.” 

Connie lifts his head up from where he has laid down over Sasha’s lap, frowning at Marco’s cards. “Eh? You can’t have more than two queens. That’s against the rules.”  

“Huh?” Sasha raises her eyebrows at Connie. “I thought the rule was that you couldn’t have more than two kings… or are both of those the rules?”

Reiner groans and lightly knocks his head on Bertholdt’s shoulder. The taller boy gently runs his hand over Reiner’s hair — it’s so casual that it appears almost instinctive.

Connie smirks and raises his fingers to count. “Nah, it was no more than two queens, no more than three kings, and —” He pauses, frowning because he’s holding up six fingers. “Huh…”

Floch heaves an exasperated sigh as he runs his hand over his face. “How the fuck did you make it this far through basic training if you literally can’t even count to five?”

Marco stifles a soft giggle with the back of his hand, but it does nothing to drown out Connie’s confident words. “Sasha can count to ten, I can count to three, it works out.” 

Reiner lifts his head from Bertholdt’s shoulder to level an exhausted stare at Sasha. “Please tell me that you will never marry him.” 

“Marry him?” Sasha snorts at the suggestion. “Connie’s like a brother to me! We’ve got like… the same brain, y’know?”

Marco smiles as Connie blushes a little. “I don’t know, Sasha, I think Connie likes you…” he teases softly. 

“Oi! Shut up! I don’t need a wife to eat me out of house and home in less than a week!” Connie sputters, cards flying everywhere as he points at Marco accusingly. He’s still pink though. 

“Haah? You callin’ me a pig or somethin’?” Sasha grabs Connie and traps him in a headlock, driving her fist into the top of his skull. “Like hell I’d do any such thing!”

Laughing at the chaos that he’d not-so-inadvertently caused, Marco turns to glance at Floch and notices the redhead’s attention is locked onto the curled up figure in one of the cots. Marco doesn’t need to think too much to realize that it’s Eren’s cot. 

“Floch? Do you want to get some tea with me?” Marco asks with the sweetest smile he can muster. “I’m feeling rather cold from the rain.” He tops it off with a wide-eyed puppy-dog look — something that has worked wonders for him in the past. 

Floch is pulled out of his stupor by the sound of his name. He isn’t really in the mood to go anywhere, but Marco asks for his company so sweetly that he can’t bring himself to turn the boy down.

“Uh, sure, I guess…” Floch hates how much effort it takes to tear his eyes off of Eren and follow Marco away.

“Heh, thank you —” Marco says, smoothing the back of his hair flat. “I didn’t really want to leave alone, but I think Connie and Sasha were about to get into another tussle-match and I really don’t want another foot in my face.” He leads Floch to the back of the boys’ barracks, where a modest setup allows for some mugs and snacks to be stored in a cupboard by one of the three iron stoves (they’re used primarily to keep the boys from getting frostbite, but some know other uses for the ovens). 

Marco busies himself by filling up one of the large black kettles with water and setting it atop the stove. “Could you light the fire?” he asks softly. 

“Sure.” Floch takes a piece of wood from the iron stove and brings it up to the flame of the nearest oil lamp before tossing it back inside. He then shuffles off to the side and watches as Marco prepares the tea leaves and sets out two mugs.

The freckled boy measures the tea leaves carefully, slipping only a single teaspoon in each mug before sealing the container back up again. “I don’t want to pry,” he starts, intending it as a warning that he is indeed about to pry, “but are you and Eren still —” He cuts himself off, not wanting to embarrass Floch — but really everyone knows. Eren isn’t the greatest at hiding their liaisons, after all. 

 Floch curls into himself a bit as he blushes bright red. “No,” he curtly replies. “We… we broke it off.”

Marco frowns empathetically and adds an extra spoon of sugar to Floch’s mug. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was it mutual?”

“I… I guess?” Floch sighs and pushes his hair out of his face. “It felt… really weird and complicated at the time, but basically, Eren wants to seriously chase Jean now and I…” He lowers his gaze to the floor. “I told him I didn’t wanna keep messin’ with him if that’s how it is.”

Marco sets both prepared mugs on the table. The water hasn’t boiled yet so he moves slowly into Floch’s space, mindful to keep some distance so as to not overcrowd him, and yet keeping a soft, inviting smile on his face, intending his presence to be something comforting as opposed to intruding. 

“I’m glad you told him that,” he says meaningfully, folding his hands in front of himself, “it was a good move.” 

Floch looks back up at Marco’s smiling face and feels a good bit of the tension in his muscles melt away. “Uh… th-thanks,” he stammers as his blush deepens. “I just… I wish it felt more like it was really over…”

Marco feels his heart ache at the low despondency in Floch’s voice. He wishes that he could make it vanish somehow — clean and tend to that raw wound Floch has inadvertently shown him. 

He moves to lift the kettle and finish their tea and yelps at the startlingly hot iron when it burns his hand. “Owch!”

Floch flinches at Marco’s cry. “Shit — hold on, I’ll be right back.” He rushes to his bedside to grab a clean towel and brings it back to run it under the faucet. Floch then cautiously takes Marco’s burnt hand in his own and gingerly presses the cold cloth to his injured flesh. “Tell me if it starts to hurt worse,” he whispers.

Marco blushes at the sudden heat which burns much more intensely than the kettle — Floch’s fingers feel like bits of summer sun on his skin. Captured heat. He wonders absently if Floch just runs warm, or if it’s a result of his own impressions. 

He gives Floch a small smile. “It feels much better, actually. Thank you.” He laughs a little. “I’m sorry I was so clumsy. It was such a silly mistake too — how could I forget that iron gets hot!” 

Floch shakes his head. “My fault for telling you a bunch of sad crap outta nowhere while you’re trying to cook.” He wraps the towel around Marco’s hand, lingering there for a moment before letting go. “You hold onto it so you don’t hurt yourself again.”

“Ah, it’s not your fault!” Marco insists, laying his hand over the towel to keep it in place. “I did ask after all —” he hesitates for a moment and then gives up the pretense of not being insatiably curious. “You and Eren… how long were you both, uh, involved?”

Floch swallows as he looks back toward the iron stove. For someone so modest you sure ask a lot of questions, Marco…

But he finds that he doesn’t hate the idea of answering him. He isn’t sure why, but he feels like he can trust Marco to keep this chat between the two of them. Something about the warmth in his expression. He just hopes that the boy isn’t the type to laugh or cringe at the details in his face.

“It’s been… a little over a year. Why?”

Marco feels surprised but he does his best to tame his expression. “Oh, wow, that’s a long time…” He’s not quite sure why he asked the question, so he decides to be as honest as possible. “Really, I’m just curious. I can’t say me and Eren talk much. I suppose it is because I’m closer to Jean —” He pauses and feels himself sink a bit. “I was at least.” 

“Huh?” It just now occurs to Floch that he hasn’t seen the amber-eyed dickhead by Marco’s side once this entire night. “Did you do something to piss him off? Or is he just being impossible?”

Marco laughs, a happy sound that comes easily to him. “No, I don’t think so at least.” He hums and taps a finger on the wet towel, thinking. “We haven’t grown apart; rather I just think he’s got a lot else on his mind right now. He was very excited for his brother’s visit — Officer Kirstein — it was all he could talk about for two days.” 

Then Marco feels himself sigh, almost against his will (he hadn’t wanted to bring back the somber mood to their conversation, after all). “I have a suspicion that something happened between them and it wasn’t very good. He’s been very quiet since Saturday afternoon. Unusually so.” 

“Oh… yikes.” Floch moves a hand to the back of his neck. “They must’ve got into a really bad fight or something, then… I bet Eren probably started it.”

Marco nods and then leans closer to Floch in an effort to keep his voice low. “Did — did Eren mention anything about instigating a fight? Because during um, breakfast on Saturday —” He cuts himself off and blushes, vividly remembering Jean’s comment about Floch and Eren’s vicious response. 

“Ah, nevermind…”

Floch’s whole face flushes red at the memory of it. “Uh — well — he, uh…” His voice suddenly sounds too small, so he clears his throat to wake it up. “All Eren told me was that he wanted to destroy Officer Kirstein in front of Jean, or something like that. But he’d never even met the guy before he visited us, so I don’t know what his problem was, really…”

Marco’s eyes widen comically. “Did he really say ‘destroy’?” He laughs again. “Well I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It is Eren.” 

“Exactly.” Floch finds himself laughing along with Marco, and it’s a very pleasant feeling. “Who knows? Maybe Officer Kirstein is secretly a lunatic and that gave Eren the perfect excuse to wanna jump him.”

Marco flushes. “Ah, careful with the phrasing — this is Eren we are talking about, after all,” he giggles, rather boyishly. 

Floch’s eyes widen as he seizes up for a moment, and then he shoves Marco’s side a little bit rougher than he means to. “Seriously, Marco? You know what I meant!”

Marco can’t help the snorting giggles now, and he swats at Floch with the wet towel in retaliation. “But you phrased it so perfectly!” he insists. 

Floch brings his arms up over his face to shield himself from Marco’s attack — he’s now properly laughing and grinning from ear to ear. “Alright, fine, I did walk into that one,” he concedes as he gives Marco one more playful shove. “My head’s all over the place — sue me.”

Marco’s face is flushed a pretty pink, and when his giggles finally melt away, he gives Floch a sweet smile. “Ah, I couldn’t do that. I don’t think I can afford a lawyer on a cadet’s stipend.” He glances towards the abandoned (empty) mugs and the hot kettle. “Why don’t you pour the water? I don’t know if I should trust myself with the task…”

Floch can’t recall ever seeing Marco’s face like this, and he’s… oddly transfixed by it. He doesn’t catch himself staring until Marco asks for that next favor, and he briefly wants to curl into a ball and disappear. But if Marco is at all put off by Floch’s awkwardness, he doesn’t show it, and that allows Floch to catch his breath enough to answer: “Oh, yeah, sure… I got it.”

Floch gently pulls the wet towel out of Marco’s hands and folds it over the handle of the kettle. He takes slow and measured steps over to the mugs so as not to spill any of the hot water on himself. “How’s your hand doing, by the way?” he asks as he carefully fills the mugs.

Marco glances at his hand and turns it around to see the slightly red palm and fingertips. He turns his bright eyes back to Floch with a grin. “I think I’ll live.” 

Floch chuckles at Marco’s charming response as he sets the kettle back over the fire. “I’ll take it,” he replies with an easy smile of his own.

Marco doesn’t ever remember holding such a long conversation with Floch, and he wonders why on earth he hadn’t done so before. The boy is honestly delightful . He’s witty, sweet, a tad awkward in an endearing sort of way, and boyishly handsome. 

He is, frankly, causing a warm stirring in Marco’s chest — something which he hadn’t felt for anyone outside of Jean. 

Ah, back to the problem at hand then… Marco thinks, feeling somewhat deflated. He accepts the mug that Floch hands to him and lets his gaze travel to the shower-room door. “Jean and Eren then…” he starts thoughtfully. “Who would have thought it, huh?”

“Tch, I sure didn’t…” Floch absently turns his own mug around in his hands. “But that’s because I didn’t want to…”

Marco takes a slow sip from his tea — it’s sweet, too sweet. “Hmm, yeah, I think I might say the same for myself,” he admits. 

Floch chuckles again before taking a sip out of his own mug — it’s bitter, but it’s tea, so what did he expect? “Yeah, I bet it’d suck having to deal with a nutjob like Eren being your best friend’s boyfriend… he’d wear even your patience out, I bet.”

Marco’s eyes widen and he lowers his mug from where it had been touching his lips. “So — they are together then? Officially?” 

Floch frowns at Marco’s obvious panic — he senses that it has nothing to do with his dumb joke, but he’s no Armin so he can’t be too sure. “Well, not yet, apparently,” he informs the boy. “Eren told me that Jean didn’t commit yet. He’s still too deep in the closet.” Floch rolls his eyes and sighs. “But Eren wants to wait for him, so he’ll be stuck in limbo with Jean for Maria knows how long. Fuckin’ crazy…”

Marco circles a finger around the rim of his mug, frowning slightly. “Can — can I be honest with you, Floch?” he asks softly.

The stroke of timidness in Marco’s voice rattles Floch. He feels compelled to lean in closer. “What’s up?” he whispers in response.

Marco feels himself blush hotly and he forces down the lump of nerves in his throat. “I — I had a rather, well, I’ve had a rather bad crush on Jean for a while now,” he admits quietly between them, not daring to look at Floch for his embarrassment. “But I was so certain he was only into girls — it’s all he would ever talk about really, but honestly I don’t think he’s ever even spoken to one alone before.” Marco snickers slightly at his own jab, shaking his head to refocus himself. “Anyway, I didn’t think I had a chance with him. And then Eren just —” He laughs again, but it’s bitter. “Funny how things work like that sometimes, hmm?”

“Oh… oh shit, I’m sorry…” Floch sets his mug down and puts his hand on Marco’s shoulder. He does it without thinking, so he panics for a moment, but Marco doesn’t shy away, so Floch gives his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “So that makes two of us who got fucked over by this rivals’ romance bullshit?”

The other boy laughs without thinking about it, and this time it’s fully amused. “Hahaha! Oh well — yeah, that’s the best phrasing for it I suppose,” Marco says, and he finds himself leaning closer to Floch, close enough to smell his cinnamon-spice aroma. 

It’s addictive. 

“Oh —” Marco blushes a little and then offers his mug to Floch. “You know… I think we might have gotten our mugs mixed up; this one should be yours.” He smiles and it crinkles his eyes a bit, pressing his round cheeks up. 

The tips of Floch’s ears redden as his eyes move back and forth from Marco’s sweet smile to the mug in the boy’s hands. “Really? What’s different about it?”

“It’s… sweeter,” Marco whispers, eyes locked onto Floch’s fingers, because if he dares to look up he might spontaneously combust.

Floch freezes for a moment, blinking dumbly at Marco. “Wait… you did that for me? How — how the fuck did you even know I would like it sweeter?”

“Ah, well —” Marco feels his ears burn and he deeply wants to hide, but he also secretly wants to see Floch drink from his mug, so he endures. “I didn’t really know for sure — but I thought that some sweetness might help smooth over a bitter conversation.” He fully expects Floch to laugh and wants to cringe at his own phrasing. 

But Floch doesn’t laugh — in fact, he doesn’t make a single sound. He simply shrinks further into himself as his blush burns down his neck. “That’s… so fucking corny but really kind of you…” He turns toward Marco to take the mug out of his hands and pass him the other one. “Thanks.”

Marco blinks at the kind-of-compliment-kind-of-jibe and smiles in spite of himself. He takes Floch’s mug perhaps a little too eagerly, and presses the warmed terracotta up to his lips. He feels butterflies flutter up his chest when he recalls suddenly that Floch’s lips pressed down on the same area. 

Like an almost kiss…

He blushes and almost chokes on the tea. 

Floch watches in half-horror, half-awe as Marco drinks from the mug with so little hesitation. He doesn’t even have time to warn — remind? — Marco that he’d taken a sip out of it already. And then the deed is done — he and Marco have officially swapped spit now — and it makes him so flustered that he has to turn his eyes away to keep himself from overheating.

They land on the mug that he’s holding — the one that Marco had prepared especially for him. He doesn’t want to see all of that effort go completely to waste, and Marco hadn’t made a big deal out of drinking from the other mug so he doesn’t want to come off like a total prude. You see his dick in the shower room every day; this is nothing compared to that…

Floch leans forward to take a small sip from the mug, and Sina, it tastes perfect. “Well, shit,” he giggles. “Usually I hate tea, but you really knew what you were doing when you put this together, huh?”

Floch’s giggle really surprises Marco; he forgets to be embarrassed long enough that he darts his eyes up and beams at the redhead. “You like it?” he restates, not quite a question and not quite confident enough to be a matter-of-fact. “I —” He blushes again and feels his legs fidget a little. “I’m glad…” He dares to be a little bold; he’s best friends with Jean after all — courage and cowardice are topics of daily discussion. “I could make you more tea — whenever you get the urge for it.” 

The sight of Marco squirming makes Floch hot from head to toe. He brings his knees up to his chest and hugs them, just in case his body’s panic response gets a bit too… obvious. “Wh… you serious, Marco?”

Somewhat confused at Floch’s reaction, Marco nods eagerly. “Yeah! Of course. Any time you want it! Ah —” Marco hesitates and blushes a little again when he amends his sentence: “Well, probably not when the others are trying to sleep, though — the noise might wake them up.” 

Floch immediately buries his face into his knees. “Holy shit Marco why would you even suggest that…”

“Huh?” Marco blinks, utterly confused. “Uh — but you asked… I thought…” Suddenly, he relistens to his words and feels like an utter idiot. “Ohmygodwait!” His face burns , and his speech is so garbled it comes out in one long word. “I-I didn’t mean it that way!”

Floch comes back up for air, and he covers his eyes with one hand as he laughs at himself. Of course he didn’t mean it that way, you dumbass harlot…

“Yeah, my bad for jumpin’ to conclusions… fuck…”

Marco, still burning from his face down to his chest, lets out an uneasy giggle. “Heh, well — being around Eren is sure to have some effects I suppose…”

“Yeah…” Floch lets his arm drop back to his side and takes a long breath in and out. “Sometimes it feels like he’s gonna haunt me forever, honestly.”

Marco feels himself calm a little; his chest is still full of fluttering wings, and his ears are still burning, but he feels safe enough to set his mug down on the table and capture one of Floch’s hands in his own. He hopes to Maria that his palms are not sweaty. “You’ll get over him soon, Floch. You deserve —” He hesitates, then presses forward. “You deserve better…”

Floch can’t believe the words that are coming out of Marco’s mouth right now, but the boy says them with enough sweetness and conviction that he also can believe them — even if only a little. His lips hang open a bit as he stares incredulously into Marco’s eyes, scrambling to find his words again and struggling to focus over the pounding of his heart.

“Dammit, Marco…” A small, sad smile settles on Floch’s face. “If I’m being honest, you definitely deserve better than me…”

He freezes and immediately slaps his free hand over his mouth. 

Fuck. That was not supposed to come out like that…

Marco is both immensely embarrassed and extraordinarily flattered. He can’t quite settle on any one emotion and ends up squeezing Floch’s hand a little too hard, noticing only that he does so when his hands feel sore. 

“Uh —” he starts eloquently. “F-Floch…” He breathes the other boy’s name out with a soft, incredulous laugh. “You are too cruel to yourself — I —” He swallows. “I would be lucky to have you…” He finishes with a whisper, all his courage flickering out like a candle.

Floch’s hand trembles in Marco’s firm grasp, and for a moment he forgets how to breathe. 

Lucky?

Surely he doesn’t think that, Floch tells himself at first, but he knows what he heard. And he knows that Marco never says things he doesn’t mean. It all overwhelms him — he has to move his hand from his mouth back up to his eyes to hide the small tears that he feels pricking at their corners.

“You… you really are too sweet, Marco.”  

The butterflies burst, and flowers bloom. “It’s easy with you…” Marco says honestly, and then lifts one hand to hide his mouth because he can’t quite believe he’s said so much — or that he’s been so forward. He feels a little lightheaded with it all. 

But Floch is still there, his hand shaking endearingly in Marco’s grasp, and he feels too overcome with affection for the boy to drown in his own embarrassment. He does pull back a little, though; his face is too warm and he worries that Floch might feel the heat. 

“Hey…” Floch squeezes Marco’s hand just a bit tighter. His other hand falls away from his face and his eyes shift from one corner of the room to the next as his body fidgets. “Sorry for makin’ everything really fucking weird just now. I don’t wanna push you or rush you into anything, I swear. I just…” He chuckles to himself as his gaze finally settles on the floor. “I talk way too much.”

Marco leans on whatever courage Jean has implanted in his character as he drops the hand covering his mouth and instead brings Floch’s hand up to his lips to place a chaste kiss on the knuckles. “I really like the sound of your voice; I don’t mind it at all,” he admits with a smile and a blush. 

A swarm of butterflies fills Floch’s stomach, and spurts of giddy laughter escape his throat. “Since when are you such a smooth talker? It almost freaks me out a little…” But the flattered grin on the boy’s face tells a different story.

“Ahahah, I do spend a lot of time listening to Jean pep-talk himself,” Marco confesses with a nervous laugh and a darkening blush. He both wants to drop Floch’s hand because the heat is scalding , and also never wants to drop it again, because the heat is addicting . “Sorry for being so forward — honestly I’m not sure where it came from.” 

“No, d-don’t apologize.” Floch briefly turns his gaze to the side — he feels like his chest is about to cave under the weight of what he’s admitting: “I… really like a guy who’s more forward. Whatever it is you’re doing… I’d like to see more of it.”

Marco is certain his face is redder than a poppy right now, and he hides his soft gasp with an undignified cough, which he doubly hides behind his hand. He has to turn away from Floch because he doesn’t think he can look at the boy straight without giving away just how much that simple line affected him — and where his mind ran off with it. 

He pulls a shaky breath in through his nose and lets it out slowly. His legs feel a bit like pudding when he stands up, tugging Floch with him. “I — ah —” He coughs again to clear the frogs in his throat. “The girls are starting to head back, so it’s probably getting late… Could I — would you mind if I…” His face is burning and he prays to Sina that he can get his request out without sounding like a total dork. “Can I hug you?”

Floch’s stomach had been twisting and turning in anticipation of a much less innocent proposition — he almost doesn’t know how to react to this request. People never ask him to just hug or cuddle… which he’d often considered to be a good thing — that people (well… one person) found him to be just that irresistible — but Sina, there’s something about the innocence of a simple embrace that somehow feels ten times more alluring coming out of Marco’s mouth.

It’s those eyes , he swears…

“Y-yeah, sure.”

Marco had been near-chewing off his nails with anticipation and agony while he’d waited for Floch to process his request. No sooner does Floch agree then he practically leaps on the boy and throws his arms around the redhead’s chest, enveloping him fully and tightly in what could have been both a platonic hug from a best friend, and a romantic hug from a long-missed lover. 

Marco’s firm and adoring hold on Floch’s body feels like pure bliss to the redhead. He lowers his face into Marco’s shoulder as he wraps his own arms around Marco’s torso, pressing his palms into the raven-haired boy’s back. He revels in the softness and brightness of Marco’s scent, in the gentle warmth that seeps through his whole body. He silently wishes that he never has to leave this spot, it feels so damn right.

“Thank you…” Marco hums by Floch’s ear, unintentionally breathing a bit too warmly on his neck as he smiles against the skin. “Thank you for having tea with me, Floch.” 

Floch shivers as Marco’s breath dances over his skin, and his fingers dig ever so slightly into Marco’s back. “Th-thank you for having me,” he whispers in reply. “I… had a really good time.”

The freckled boy pulls back enough to keep a good foot of space between their warm bodies, and he looks up at Floch through his lashes with a pretty smile. “We’ll do it again then?” He has to ask — has to confirm that they will indeed have repeats of this heart-warming, breath-stuttering experience. 

Floch giggles into his partially closed fist before lowering it to make sure that Marco can see the giddy smile on his own face (he hopes it’s charming but he’s sure he looks like a moron). “We definitely will. I’m never up to much; you know where to find me.”

Marco doesn’t quite manage to catch himself before he’s giving a little happy hop and clapping his hands. “Wonderful!” He then blushes from the roots of his hair to the collarbone on his chest because oh my god are you twelve? He tries to smooth his actions over by folding his hands behind his back and nodding once more seriously. “We should definitely head to bed now, we have sparring practice tomorrow and I’m rather bad to begin with — can’t imagine how much I’ll fall on my face if I’m tired too…” 

Floch raises an eyebrow at Marco as his smile morphs into a smirk. “How bad can you be when you spend half of your free time sparring with Jean for practice?”

Marco winces. “Pretty bad. Somehow, his techniques haven’t rubbed off on me very well — can’t learn if I’m constantly on the ground,” he laughs. 

“Man, fuck that guy.” Floch laughs along with Marco as he pats him on the back. “Let’s rest up and beat his ass together during training, then?”

“Oh, that is a good plan —” Marco hums thoughtfully, and then he turns to Floch with a grin that is almost giddy with mischief. “We could just push him and Eren together and have them duke it out. It would kill two birds with one stone.” 

“You’re a little evil… I like it.” Floch moves in closer to Marco, wearing a devious expression of his own. “But you know what’ll get them even more bent outta shape?” 

Marco leans in close, his excuse being that he wants Floch to whisper. “You’ve got an idea?” He grins.

“Hell yeah, I do.” Floch cups his hands around Marco’s ear as he quietly feeds him the details that will spell disaster for their mutually elusive lovers.

Chapter Text

The sun’s scalding heat returns in full force on Monday morning, drying the ground enough that Jean’s boots don’t sink into the mud as he rushes from the boys’ barracks to the sparring grounds. He’s sweating buckets and can already feel a headache forming, knowing that Commander Shadis will not be pleased with his tardiness and will have absolutely no patience for his excuse. 

To be fair, Jean admits to himself that even he wouldn’t believe his own story if he’d heard it from anyone else. It just sounds… so dumb. Because what kind of motherfucking idiot loses their trousers and can’t find them for long enough that they miss breakfast?

He can’t afford to think about it any longer once he finally arrives —  the rest of his comrades are already paired off and warming up for their matches. He doesn’t have to search long for the Commander, who is marching up to him with a look threatening death on his face, widening his dark, sunken eyes to a frightening size.

“Kirstein!” The Commander’s voice surpasses his look with a viciousness that would stamp out even the bravest officers’ courage. “About time your lazy ass shows up; you like stable duty that much?” 

“No, sir!” Jean freezes in place, straightening his spine as much as he can and plastering his arms to the sides of his body. 

“Well you’re gonna have one hell of a time this week because you’re gonna muck out the north stables as well as the south ones! And you can count on your little fuckin’ boyfriend to join you. Get your ass over to Yeager — the fucking brat was also late this morning for some reason — and I sure as hell don’t wanna hear why!” The Commander doesn’t exactly wait for Jean’s reaction and instead grabs him by the collar of his uniform jacket and tosses him right into the mess of Cadets. 

The Commander’s suggestive comments and word choices make Jean feel nauseous — far too exposed. He hustles away from the man, deeper into the crowd of boxing cadets, before Shadis can say anything else that agitates the angry voices still swimming through his head. He looks straight ahead of himself and finds Eren standing alone, wearing a look between indignant fury and painfully obvious embarrassment. For a heart-stopping moment he freezes in his tracks, his body unwilling to take another step forward.

He shouldn’t allow Eren to get any fucking closer to him than he already has…

But all that Matis really said was that I can’t talk to him, right?

This is a sparring drill. No words required — he can just let his fists do the talking for today.

Jean clenches them and marches forward.

Eren sees Jean from the corner of his eye and he barely tames his heart from leaping out of his chest. He had been avoiding looking at Jean as much as possible since Saturday. He didn’t want to see the effects of Matis’ private talk with the boy on his face; didn’t want to risk seeing disgust in Jean’s eyes or worse… fear . 

So seeing the boy move to him with determination, even if it’s a look of annoyance bordering on actual rage, is almost comforting. Eren uncrosses his arms and sighs theatrically. “Oh for fuck’s sake — again with your ugly ass?”

“Yes.” Jean assumes a defensive stance, staring right into Eren’s eyes. As much as he’s tempted to rip Eren a new one with his words, he won’t risk starting a full-blown argument with Eren; knowing the boy, he’d twist it into another trap. “So are you gonna fight me or what?”

Eren irritably rolls his eyes but does lazily drag his feet into the correct stance and lifts his closed hands up by his jaw. “Real clever by the way,” he adds offhandedly. “That shit with hiding my trousers this morning.” He swings lightly at Jean’s left, not intending to hit but rather to just warm up his muscles. 

Jean dodges Eren’s swing smoothly, his nose scrunching up as he raises a brow at Eren. “Huh? You’re accusing me of the shit that you did with my trousers?” He follows up his words with a swift swing of his right fist toward Eren’s face.

Eren ducks backwards, and pops up again with a confused expression. “What the hell? I didn’t touch your damn trousers!” He bounces lightly on the balls of his feet and delivers a short but sharp crescent kick at Jean’s jaw. 

Jean doesn’t quite react fast enough — Eren’s boot roughly grazes his chin, and he winces slightly with annoyance. “Oh, cut the bullshit,” he spits back. “Nobody else in the whole bunk woulda bothered or dared.” Jean pulls his arms back as he sends a brutal forward kick at Eren’s stomach.

Instinctively, Eren avoids the kick with a smart pivot of his hips and a downward deflective strike to Jean’s shin. He doesn’t quite recover his balance though, and has to stumble backwards a step before righting himself. “Well it wasn’t me! ” he huffs. “So quit jumping to conclusions!” 

“I know you’re lying, asshat!” Jean readjusts his stance as quickly as he can before throwing a straight punch at Eren’s chest. “I’m not doin’ this dance with you!”

The punch lands solidly — but not too harshly — and Eren chokes out a breath before grabbing onto Jean’s wrist and wrenching it aside, trading it for a sharp swing of his left fist right at Jean’s stupid face. 

“Funny that — you’ve got some fancy footwork and I think you’d look great in a dress!” 

Jean’s stomach lurches at the suggestion.

There it is… not falling for it this time.

Jean dodges Eren’s strike and moves in closer to grab Eren’s shoulder, using that leverage to pull Eren down and knee the boy in the gut. “What’d I just tell you, bitch?”

Eren is too close to Jean to properly defend against the knee in his stomach, and he curls in on it, gasping at the sudden pain — it feels a bit harsher than Jean’s usual. 

“Walls, Jean!” He snags at Jean’s leg with his ankle, pulling inwards sharply in hopes of toppling the other boy down on his ass. “You’re so fuckin’ sensitive today, what happened? Big brother got in your head?”

Jean staggers backwards, but he’d escaped Eren’s swift footwork just in time to regain his balance. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouts as he jumps forward to throw another punch at Eren’s jaw. “I don’t wanna hear another word outta your stupid fucking mouth, ya hear?”

A good surge of irritation gives Eren enough adrenaline to snap his arm out and deflect Jean’s incoming punch. He takes quick advantage of his opening to send his other hand right up into the boy’s diaphragm — with a bit more force than is necessary for practice. 

“Tough luck then!” He seethes. “‘Cause I got shit to say!” 

Jean doubles over, stumbling backwards, and struggles to regain the wind that Eren knocked right out of him. 

“I’m not listenin’!” he grunts through gritted teeth and, with all the force that he can muster, sends a wide-arcing roundhouse kick right at Eren’s unguarded form. He sincerely hopes that it breaks a rib or something.

The kick sends Eren flying down to the ground and then some. Eren feels like his back gets utterly eviscerated by the sharp small stones and sand and fuck he just knows he’s going to have friction burn all down his spine for the next few days.

It takes him a whole three seconds to realize that Jean did not hold back on that kick — at all. 

He pushes himself up on his elbows and struggles to catch his breath. “Dude — what the hell was that for?”

“You know what the hell it’s for!” Jean snarls at Eren as he brings his foot down hard on the boy’s face. “You tricked me! I know your game and I’m not playin’ anymore!”

Eren barely manages to catch Jean’s ankle in time to redirect his boot off his face and onto the ground. 

“The hell are you on about? I didn’t take your damn pants, Jean!” 

Jean nearly trips forward as Eren’s grasp on his ankle throws him off balance, but he recovers quickly. He swivels to Eren’s side and aims another kick right above the boy’s hip, like he means to crush the bones. “I’m not talkin’ about that! Fuckin’ hell, Eren — all last week you were fuckin’ with my head!”

Eren twists his hip out of the way and rolls over onto his knees and hands before bull-charging at Jean and grabbing him by the belts around his waist. He has enough force to take them both down and he crashes over Jean heavily, arms crushed under his own stomach as he lays prone over Jean’s gasping body. 

Eren looks up, breathing harshly himself, and finds Jean’s eyes. “Dammit — fuck , Jean. Your brother really messed with your head that much? One conversation? That’s all it fuckin’ took?” His voice breaks slightly, despite his best efforts. 

Jean’s nostrils flare, and his gaze sharpens with panic. His hands fly to Eren’s shoulders as he desperately struggles to wrestle Eren off his body. He curses himself for not moving out of Eren’s way fast enough. “Yeah, that’s all it took for me to see how you played with my pride,” he growls. “Don’t you dare start fuckin’ cryin’ about it…”

Eren hides the crack in his heart with a growl and moves his hands up to grab at Jean’s throat. “Shut the fuck up!” He doesn’t squeeze, only holds Jean there, daring the boy to provoke him — silently praying he does no such thing.

Jean’s fingers claw into Eren’s shoulders, deep enough to bruise, bracing for a chokehold that never comes. He looks into Eren’s eyes and thinks the boy has no business looking so terrified when he has the upper hand here. 

He wants to slap the part of his consciousness that urges him to reach up and thread his fingers through the boy’s soft brown hair, to stroke and soothe that hurt look away…

No. We are never doing that again.

“If you’re not gonna snap my neck then just get the fuck off of me, pussy!” 

“For fuck’s sake, Jean!” Eren’s fingers tighten just a little bit, but it’s more of a distraction than anything else, because while Jean’s thinking that Eren might actually strangle him Eren does something much much worse. He sits back on Jean’s lap and grinds down his hips. 

“You really gonna say you don’ want this?” he challenges quietly. 

“Agh!” Jean screws his eyes shut, startled by the pressure and the sharp jolts of pleasure that race through his lower half. “I don’t want it, I don’t!” He slides a hand off of Eren’s shoulder, balls it into a fist, and then viciously drives it up into Eren’s jaw.

Eren’s light chokehold is instantly broken as his head snaps back from the force of Jean’s fist. He spits out blood with a pained groan and turns back to look at Jean incredulously. “Auhg, you fucking… ass !” 

He balls Jean’s shirt in his fist and pulls the boy up to his face before slamming him back down with all the force he has in his arms. “Why do you keep doing this , Jean?”

Jean cries out in pain, struggling to hear himself think over the throbbing of his head. All that grounds him right now is the burning sensation in his face and deep in his chest — a fiery conviction that wants this little bitch off of him. He pushes through a wave of dizziness and hits Eren across the face with the flat of his other hand.

“I’m coming back to myself — that shouldn’t be a fuckin’ crime!” He hits Eren again, harder than the last time. “I don’t know who the hell you almost turned me into but it wasn’t Jean Kirstein, that I’m sure of!”

Eren feels the sting of Jean’s words hit him harder than his incoming fist. And somehow, Eren fails to block either. 

His head is spinning and aching from being snapped back and forth. He knows that he will be covered in bruises and for once they aren’t the kind he likes. Desperate to avoid further pain, he launches himself backwards and off Jean, scrambling back onto his feet. “I didn’t turn you into anything you weren’t already, Jean…”

“You don’t know me like that…” Jean pushes himself onto his knees, pausing to massage his still-pounding head. “You don’t know anything about me like that…”

Eren feels indignation snap his spine straight and he hardly has to think before he’s arcing his foot through the air and smashing it right into Jean’s head. He doesn’t allow the boy to recover and uses the momentum to finish his spin and swing his other leg right back into that same spot, clipping him with his boot heel. 

“I don’t know anything ?” He seethes, practically spitting the words out. “I know everything , Jean! I know exactly what your pathetic sorry ass is thinking every damn time you look at me! I know you look at yourself every goddamn day and think that you’re seein’ your fucking dad!” 

“What the fuck did you just say?” Jean’s fuming rage propels him to his feet and he shoves Eren’s chest with both hands. “I ain’t nothin’ like that fuckin’ good-for-nothing shit-stain! It was your sorry ass who talked me into thinkin’ otherwise! Seriously, why the fuck did I let myself believe you…”

Eren has his fists up by his face defensively; his cheeks are still smarting from the shock of Jean’s punches and he’s livid . “Yeah? That what your brother say?” He follows his biting comment with a double punch at Jean’s face. “He tell you it was all me?”

Jean hisses as he recoils from Eren’s punches. “So what if he did, Eren? So what?” He snaps another roundhouse kick at Eren’s side, throwing significant power behind it. “I’m telling you now that I’m not gonna be your cute little sissy puppet anymore, alright?”

The kick lands solidly, but Eren had been expecting it. He moves with the force until he’s able to whip behind Jean and send a front-kick right into the small of his back. “So what?” he repeats through the red-haze of betrayal. “So what? Fuck you, Jean!” 

Jean staggers forward before falling back onto his knees, his head spinning and flooding with ire, with disdain. “No, fuck you, Eren! I’m the only one who knows who I am, and I’m not letting any more of your backwards-ass smooth-talkin’ change that!” 

He quickly swipes the sweat off his brow to keep it from dripping any further into his eyes, pushing through the fog in his aching head as he scrambles onto his feet once again. He refuses to let Eren keep talking down to him.

Eren waits until Jean turns to face him and then he lowers his fists weakly. “Jean…” He hates how fucking pathetic his voice sounds but… Sina , he’s had enough of this. “Jean, please — you know your brother knows fuck-all about you. I know you better than him. You really think he’d tell you shit for your own good? You really think he gives a crap about how you feel ? He’s too stuck up his own ass to see how much of an idiot he is…”

Something snaps in the back of Jean’s mind.

An idiot?

Jean pounces on Eren, throwing all of his weight into the tackle and pinning him to the ground with his hips and his arms.

“Of course he gives a shit how I feel! If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have left basic training to look after me when Ma was too broken up to do it herself!” Jean throws his right fist into Eren’s face and immediately follows it up with his left.

“He was the one who kept me fucking sane during some of the worst years of my life! And you wanna act like you want better for me when all you do almost every damn day is look for ways to drive me further outta my mind? What the fuck are you even saying!”

Eren’s forced to bring his arms up and defend his face from Jean’s attacks. He can’t even get a word in for the sudden onslaught of pain hitting his forearms. A part of him is almost considering calling for help, but the other cadets are distracted with their own fights and don’t seem to even notice the way Jean is pummeling him. 

He waits for a second’s pause between Jean’s strikes before jerking his arms forward and shoving Jean back a bit, giving him a chance to breathe . “I’m saying that your brother is too damn hung up on your dad being gay, and that he’s rubbing that shit off on you for no good reason! Think with your head for a fucking second!” Eren spits, sitting up a bit to force space between them. “We’ve talked about it, Jean. In the stables! It wouldn’t have changed a damn thing if your dad fucked another woman, remember?”

“I don’t wanna remember!” Jean shoves Eren roughly back onto the ground. “Fact is I never even thought about other guys like this until your crazy ass came into the picture, until you started talking about ‘being honest’ and ‘having courage’ and all this other shit that got me confused. Before all of that I was fine, and now I’m not!” He slaps Eren across the face. “All of this is your fault!”

Eren blinks against the sharp snap of Jean’s hand against his face. He blinks because it wasn’t a punch — it hurt, yes — but it was so much more raw . For a moment he raises his hand to touch his warm cheek and he feels… 

He feels fucking bad for Jean.

“Fine!” he cries. “I’m sorry then!”

Jean’s eyes widen, and he stops winding up for another strike. He’s so rattled by the brokenness in Eren’s voice that he forgets his words. “Y-you…” 

Eren looks up at Jean and hopes his eyes translate his honesty accurately. “I’m. Sorry.” He repeats it slowly and clearly, carefully pronouncing the words as though the slightest slur of letters might spell his doom. “I’m sorry for fucking with your head, I’m sorry for making you confused. I’m sorry for —” He gasps in a shaking breath and his voice wobbles. “I-I’m sorry — sorry…” 

Eren’s sobs slowly dissolve the red filter over Jean’s vision. All at once, he becomes aware of the mugginess of the air, the gravelly texture of the dirt on the ground, the shuffling and shouting of the other cadets nearby... people whose heads will surely start turning once they hear Eren crying and start wondering what got him so bent out of shape.

Jean has no idea why he even cares — why this isn’t bringing him any satisfaction when it’s exactly what he had wanted to accomplish. But he simply can’t bring himself to watch the boy fall apart like he deserves to.

Because I’m a coward.

Jean throws himself off of Eren and races off of the training grounds. He doesn’t look back once.

If he had — he would have seen Eren’s teary-eyed expression morph into one of surprise and hurt . 

***

Eren isn’t sure how long he’s been sitting there on the ground, feeling a mixture of shock and heartache at Jean’s unexpected escape. All he knows is that suddenly the sun isn’t there anymore and there’s a long dark shadow looming over his head.

“I see you’re also wanting stable-duty, Yeager…” Shadis’ voice rumbles, dangerously low. 

Eren scrambles to his feet and gives the Commander a messy salute. “Sir!” 

“Where is Kirstein?” the man asks, his eyes boring holes into Eren’s soul. 

“I —” Eren croaks. He’s not sure whether to admit that Jean ran off or to make up an excuse for the boy and save them a month’s worth of punishment. But he decides quickly enough. “He’s gone to the bathroom, sir!” 

“Is that so?” The Commander leans back from Eren, almost appearing to have believed his story. Then, quick as a whip, he grabs Eren’s hair and tugs the boy up to his face. “That sounds like a fucking excuse , Yeager! Go get his sorry fuckin’ ass back over here — and if it takes you more than twenty minutes you’re gonna have a hell of a lot more to whine about than stable duty !” 

Eren is tossed away with the same disregard that someone gives to a piece of moldy bread, and he doesn’t waste any time scrambling out in the direction that Jean went. 

Stupid fucking horse-faced bastard…  

Jean finally runs out of breath once he reaches the area behind the south stables; his legs give out from under him, and his arms just barely hold him up, palms pressed flat into the grass. Still feeling dizzy, he finds that he can’t recall exactly what he’d just spent ten minutes shouting at Eren, but his body remembers the fury and the shame of it all, pricking him from the inside like searing-hot needles.

“Sina… seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me…”

The memory of Eren’s tearful apology comes back to him in full force, and his skin starts to crawl again. The Eren Yeager that he knows is never one to admit that he’s in the wrong (even though he’s in the wrong all the damn time). So part of him can’t accept that their argument had really ended that way. Because where do they go from there? Will Eren actually take responsibility for his actions and back the fuck up? Or will he find him at dinner just to take back his word and start the madness all over again?

Jean sucks in a sharp breath as he holds his head. Shit , he’s not even sure if he wants to find out what happens next…

Eren feels like he’s about to implode under the mix of irritation and worry gnawing at his insides when he rounds another corner of the classroom bunkers. He’s run from the field to the restrooms, then to the damn boys’ barracks, and now he’s figured out that the classroom bunkers are empty as well. 

He could check the stables… It’s not far off and frankly, he’s run out of options and breath. 

It’s with a sigh of relief that Eren reaches the back of the south stables and finds Jean. The lanky boy is sitting on the hay-strewn floor, a look of utter exhaustion on his somewhat already bruised face. 

Eren doesn’t dare guess what is going on in that idiot’s head. So he cuts the bullshit and sits heavily next to Jean, his legs damn-well collapsing from the strain of running and their excessive fight. 

“Found ya,” he states between breaths.

Jean turns his head and jumps once he registers who’s next to him. “Wh… what are you even doing here?”

Eren rubs his nose, wincing when he feels the bruises on his face ache at the movement. “Y’thought you could just fuck off and Shadis wouldn’t send someone after you? Please — I didn’t come because I wanted…” His voice isn’t quite strong enough to sell that last statement, though. 

Jean feels a strange haze of relief settle over him at the faltering of Eren’s voice. It frightens him, so he focuses on prepping himself to get to his feet as calmly as he can. “Alright, if you’re just here to drag me back to the training grounds, then fine, let’s just go…”

Eren snags Jean’s hand before he can get out of reach. He doesn’t look at the taller boy when he mutters, as gently as he can: “Wait. Jean — can we talk? Like actually talk, not fight?”

Jean freezes once he feels Eren’s warm hand on him. Only his eyes move to inspect the boy’s firm hold — spotting his knuckles, raw from their fight, turning white on his wrist. This feels dangerous, but he just can’t bring himself to shake Eren off…

“Talk about what? You already said you’re sorry, didn’t you?”

“That’s not —” Eren groans and drags his free hand down his aching face. “Jean. You can’t pretend like — like what we had in the shower-room wasn’t real .” He feels his face turn red and stares at two blades of hay by his feet. “You felt — feel — something for me, right?”

Jean feels his own face start to heat up as he watches Eren, which prompts him to turn his gaze outward. “I… shit…” He lowers his head to roughly push his shaking fingers through his hair. “Fine, yeah, it is something. But I honestly cannot tell how much of it is coming from me and how much of it… isn’t. Sorry, I’m not making any fucking sense, am I?” 

No — you’re really not , Eren thinks mildly. “You feel something — that’s good enough for me. I feel something for you too.” He laughs bitterly all of a sudden, and brings up both his hands to hide his eyes. “Feel a hella lot of something …” 

“Is it even the same ‘ something’ that I’m feeling, Eren?” Jean’s hand falls limply to the ground as his upper body sags forward slightly, sharp aches from vicious kicks reminding him of his worn-out condition. “You seem to be having a shit-ton of fun with yours. Meanwhile mine is scaring the living fuck outta me…”

Eren feels his body shake slightly as he heaves out a long sigh. “Y’think I’m not scared shitless by whatever this —” he gestures between them “— is?” Eren finally forces himself to look at Jean and is almost able to predict the giant swoop in his stomach when he meets those razor-sharp golden eyes. Almost . “For fuck’s sake Jean, I’ve never felt like this before. I’m as lost as you are…”

Jean swallows, transfixed by the serious look in Eren’s eyes. He takes in a breath, trying not to completely drown in those emerald pools. “You say that, but you never seemed so lost that you’d skip an opportunity to shove your desires in my face. And I…” His gaze moves back to the grass. “Well, I kinda just got swept up by the current. That never felt off to you?”

Eren shrugs, the movement only slightly choppy from the pain in his shoulders. “Jean, it’s just sex. I’ve never had an issue with that. I’ve fucked around a lot. I’ve seen guys get swept up by it, and I’ve seen guys who were shakin’ so bad their first time that I thought they’d fall apart if I so much as kissed them —” His mind briefly brings up a vivid image of Floch on his knees, tears in his eyes and cum on his face… Eren blinks it away. “It’s just sex —” he repeats, almost convincing himself. 

“Is it?” Jean’s body starts to tremble, but he forces himself to meet Eren’s gaze once again. “Be honest with me, Eren: when you talk about wanting to make me your… your boyfriend or whatever… what are you really on about? What are you trying to turn me into?”

Eren turns to Jean with a scowl. “I’m not turning you into anything, Jean.” He wisely decides to not allow himself to linger on Jean’s reference to what Eren so desperately wants to call him. “If you were actually straight you wouldn’t be as into me as you are. I’ve fucked around with straight guys — you can tell when they’re not into it.” 

“Right… so as far as I’m concerned, I technically shouldn’t be this into it, and yet here I am.” Jean narrows his eyes at Eren, hoping it does enough to mask the pounding of his heart and the further flushing of his face. “So what did you do? You figured out all the right buttons to push to get me hot and bothered, right? And once you worked me into that state I couldn’t really say I wasn’t into it, even if I normally wouldn’t be…”

“Jean — what do you want me to say?” Eren tosses his arms out, already exasperated  with the boy and all his damn denial. “Maybe I’m just that good. I’ve flipped your whole world around, right? That’s what you want me to say? That it’s my fault you’re gay for me?” 

“It is, isn’t it?” Jean had meant for that to come out as a growl, but instead it falls out as a wavering whimper. “I did change once we started messing around, Eren. I feel different than I did before. Way different. And I must be, because people look at me different now and they’re whispering shit behind my back…” Jean swallows again, but his throat somehow feels even drier. “Shit, Matis looked like he hardly fucking recognized me. I’ve never seen him so…” He shuts his eyes and shakes his head.

Eren feels a sting of remorse at Jean’s genuine grief. It’s bitter and sits heavy on the back of his tongue. He swallows and turns to stare at the hay again. “You can’t really believe him… that it’s that bad to just be with a guy. To love another guy…” he whispers softly. “Matis was ready to kill me, Jean. You really think that’s okay?”

“I…”

Jean can’t tell which of Eren’s words send such a strong shudder down his spine. Possibly all of them at once. He balls his hands into fists at his sides, boring holes into the ground with the intensity of his stare.

“No. No, that was fucking crazy on his part.” Jean pushes one of his fists deeper into the dirt. “I know if he had his way then he really might’ve killed us both on the spot… fucking hell …”

Eren laughs humorlessly. “Yeah. If it wasn’t for the fact that Armin and Mikasa were there — he really might have. Your brother is fucking insane, Jean; I don’t get why you still fuckin’ worship him.” 

The memories of their argument on the sparring grounds slowly start coming back to Jean. “I’m pretty sure I already told you why,” he mutters, “but that’s neither here nor there, right? I’m just supposed to… stop caring how he feels about me all of a sudden?” Jean’s face turns beet red as he laughs wryly. “If only it were that simple.”

Eren shakes his head slowly, half with disbelief and half with frustration. “It is simple, Jean. You’ve been doing it. You’ve hooked up with me more than — almost more than anyone else I’ve been with. I’m a one-and-done kinda guy, usually. Just not with people that matter…”  

Jean feels his breath catch in his throat after hearing that last statement. He panics as his heart threatens to pound right through his chest. His head tells him that Eren’s words shouldn’t mean that much, but the effort of trying to quell his palpitations is simply too great right now. So Jean gives up resisting.

“Fuck… if I’m being honest…” Jean hates how much his voice is shaking, so he takes another slow, quiet breath, holding it for four counts. “I just don’t think I’m used to people giving that much of a shit about me. So hearing it from you… it freaks me out a little every time.”

Eren doesn’t try to hide his small smile; it stretches his lips easily and lightly. He thinks, oddly enough, that Jean is cute. Jean is very cute … 

“That’s kinda — honestly — kinda sad, Jean.” He moves to take up one of Jean’s clenched hands, covering the bruised fist with his palm. “I — I’m not sure if it makes it better or worse but…” He frowns while thinking, unsure if he really wants to dip his toes into his sordid history. “Out of everyone I’ve been with — you were the one to really trip up my heart.” 

In any other situation, Jean would be livid at the idea of being pitied like this, but the softness and carefulness in Eren’s tone makes him feel… seen, and not unduly exposed. Slowly, he unfurls his fist underneath Eren’s hand, allowing their palms to rest against each other. “But seriously how the fuck did I even do that?” he wonders aloud. “I’ve been fighting you the whole way, on like four different levels. Or is that what got you?”

Eren snickers, muffling the sound with the back of his unoccupied hand. “Fuck if I know… You’ve been a real jerkface to me and somehow that just gets me hot and bothered.” 

“What?” Jean wants to laugh, but he suppresses the nervous tic. “Who the hell hurt you, Eren?”

The question is so out of left field for Eren that he freezes and his smile disappears. He moves his gaze away from Jean and shrugs. “No one did. Probably just — I don’t know, fucked up childhood or whatever.” 

Jean flinches at the sharp shift in Eren’s demeanor. “Sorry,” he whispers as he gently squeezes Eren’s hand. “Dumb question.”

The gentle pressure, despite the tinge of pain it brings on Eren’s bruised knuckles, makes his chest warm and gives flight to a sudden storm of butterfly wings in his stomach. He sighs out… long. “It’s not dumb. It’s — it’s a fair question. I’m just not sure how much of the answer you wanna hear…”

“Hey, I’m tough enough to handle whatever you wanna throw at me.” Jean tries to paint his signature smirk back on his face, but there’s a softness to it that brings it closer to a genuine smile. “I’ve told you my story, so… so let me hear yours now.” 

“My story’s shit compared to yours,” Eren snorts. “I haven’t even got a decent excuse for why — why I do the shit I do.” He winces at his wording and hopes his hand doesn’t sweat too much where Jean holds it. 

“Something’s just off with me,” Eren continues. “Sorta’ happened after — after Shiganshina.” He swallows thickly and allows the red, murderous, vengeful rage to come… and go. “After that I just had so much energy . I didn’t know where it came from. It was not even anger — not all of it at least. I tried talking with Armin and Mikasa about it but they didn’t feel the same… not exactly anyway.” Eren realizes he’s beating around the bush with his words and he half-hopes Jean doesn’t need the clarification. He looks at the boy to make sure of it. 

“Mm…” Jean does get the picture — he hopes that the compassion in his heart comes through in his serious yet sympathetic gaze. “That sounds really rough… and confusing, for how young you were at the time.”

Eren sighs again, but it’s a more resigned sound than anything else. “Yeah, well, my first time was before I even started training… and I just never really got enough afterwards.” He feels a tinge of shame eat at his courage, and a complementary blush seals his lips. 

Jean recognizes the energy that has overtaken Eren — vicariously, he starts feeling its pinpricks on his own skin. He moves his hand from under Eren’s hand to the boy’s shoulder and slowly strokes it. “Hey, it’s alright,” he says to him in a soft voice. “What you went through was fucking horrific, and you dealt with it the best way you knew how to. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

The heat from Jean’s hand on his shoulder makes Eren want to cry and cross over whatever little distance there is between them — and it also makes him feel horribly ashamed. Almost dirty. 

“Sure, nothing wrong with whoring yourself at age twelve to any fucking girl or boy who’ll take you… Sina, I was desperate for it, Jean. Don’t you feel — fuck — I don’t know! Disgusted?”

Jean recoils at the ugliness of that word, and he immediately curses himself for it, hoping that Eren doesn’t take it the wrong way. “I really don’t, Eren,” he quickly responds as he slides his hand over Eren’s shoulder and onto his back. “Alright, you have a history. That doesn’t make you dirty or anything remotely close to that. So… you don’t have to worry...” Jean’s blush deepens as he rubs a little circle into the small of Eren’s back. “At least not when you’re with me.”

Eren sinks back into Jean’s touch, embarrassingly eager for it. He doesn’t quite understand Jean’s words until he suddenly does and then he whips around to look at the boy incredulously. “Wh-what? What do you mean, Jean?”

“I — I mean…” 

Jean knows what he means. He can feel it in his bones now — a fervent desire to squeeze every ounce of pain and shame out of Eren’s body. But he finds it very difficult to put words to that feeling over the howling of the voices in his head. They’re begging him not to admit anything like this because once he does there will be no turning back and he’ll be headed straight for hell — or maybe somewhere worse.

But Jean also knows that to say anything different would be… it would be a motherfucking lie. There, he admits it. And yet again, Eren is the only one of them leading with enough courage to at least acknowledge what is true , what exists in reality. Now more than ever, he feels like he can’t let Eren take a nose-dive off of this cliff by himself.

It wouldn’t be fair.

It wouldn’t be right.

“...I mean I don’t want you any less after hearing your story, Eren.” Jean takes the boy’s shoulder again and gently turns his body inward, toward himself. “I… I don’t regret a single one of those nights that we’ve spent together.”

Once again, Eren feels as though he were presented with something very important — some written document which might determine his life’s purpose — and yet he lacks the ability to read the damn thing. 

He blinks and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He tries again — and fails. It almost brings tears to his eyes — fucking angry tears. 

Armin and Mikasa have said the same things to him over the years: how he’s not worth less to them even after having thrown his body under and over people for the past three or so years (especially the last two). And Eren believed them — he had no cause not to, and had no real need to even worry about it. 

Then Jean comes along, and Eren is all at once scrambling for the parts of himself that he hasn’t already spent. He feels like he needs to shed his skin for Jean, become new and perfect and clean for him. He wants to morph into a new body (maybe even a girl’s body and make this shit easier on Jean), desiring nothing more than to be pure for him. 

He’s never felt dirty in his life, and yet Jean makes him feel incredibly filthy, practically grimy and used . But somehow, the boy also manages to convince him that he’s actually not all that tarnished — that maybe with some polishing he could shine for Jean. Eren wants to tear himself up with the fucking headache it gives him. 

He takes a sudden, sharp breath in and feels it rattle his lungs. He lunges at Jean and wraps his arms around the boy’s neck, hiding his broken sob in the hair that smells like freedom. 

Jean catches Eren as the boy’s body sags onto his own, wrapping his arms around Eren’s torso and rubbing his back as the boy cries into his shoulder. It all happens so suddenly that Jean doesn’t fully register it until Eren’s tears start to soak the collar of his shirt. Half of him hopes that these are tears of relief, and half of him fears that they’re tears of regret — either way, Jean doesn’t do well when emotions run this high, so he continues to hold and gently rock Eren until he calms down enough to start talking to him.

He hopes that happens soon… but Eren’s smaller frame fits quite nicely onto his body in this position, Jean thinks, so he also doesn’t mind the idea of Eren taking his time here.

Jean’s soft rocking and his tight, secure hold have Eren under a spell of calm in far less time than he would have thought possible. He feels his breaths even out, and feels the strange lump in his throat disappear. But he doesn’t really want to leave the protective embrace Jean gives him, so he muffles his thick words against Jean’s neck.

“Sorry — I-I’m not sure where that came from…” 

“S’fine, you don’t have to know.” Jean gingerly runs his fingers through Eren’s hair and massages his scalp. “Are you… feeling any better?”

“Bit, yeah,” Eren sniffs, refusing to move and dislodge Jean’s fingers from his hair. They feel heavenly on his aching scalp. “So…” he starts hesitantly, “I’m gonna guess you’re not mad at me anymore?”

Jean chuckles as he leans his head down to nuzzle Eren’s hair. “Not right now, no. You’re in the clear.”

Eren sags further into Jean and tries to make the whimper that slips out of him sound more like a relieved sigh — he fails, so makes up for the stupidly embarrassing sound by drowning it out with words. “We — we’re good then? You’re not gonna run off on me?”

“Where the hell am I gonna run off to with you pinning me down like this?” Jean is laughing with his whole chest now, slowly sliding his hands down Eren’s back in parallel lines. “That aside… I don’t really wanna go anywhere else right now.”

Eren sits up a little in Jean’s lap, feeling the boy’s hands slip to his waist automatically — funny how we always end up here . “Good. I don’t need to chase you anymore then, right?” He pulls back enough to look Jean in the eyes (willfully ignoring that his are still shimmering with tears), and hopes his words — and their secondary, more important, meaning — come through crystal clear. 

Jean feels every inch of his skin heat up under Eren’s gaze. “You mean… you want this to be…” His grip tightens on Eren’s waist. “Are you asking me out right now, Yeager?”

Eren blushes but feels a small smirk appear on his face nonetheless. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am, Kirstein.” 

“Sina, Rose, and Maria…” Jean feels like someone has set fire to his face — no wonder Eren finds the look of it so fuckin’ funny. But he refuses to completely shrink away from Eren’s audacity, so he at least gathers the courage to look the boy right in the eyes as he responds:

“Thought I’d be too chicken to accept?” Jean pulls Eren back toward him and places a soft kiss on the top of the boy’s head. “You thought wrong.”

Not for a second time Eren curses to himself — fuck Jean Kirstein and his stupid smooth words…  

He doesn’t quite have a chance to say anything, though, because suddenly the two of them are not the only ones in the stables. 

“Oi! Jean! Eren! You both really tryin’ to kill Shadis with early heart failure?” Connie’s voice comes from just around the corner of the stables and neither boy has a chance to move before the silver-haired kid whips around the wall and then completely freezes at the sight of Eren and Jean. 

Eren… on top of Jean . 

Jean forgets every single one of his words as he returns Connie’s stupefied stare. He’s lucky the boy is such a fucking moron that he doesn’t have the sense to push Jean for comment. He’s not so lucky that Connie had brought a friend with him.

“Connie? Didja find ‘em? Whatcha lookin’ at over there?” Sasha hops over to Connie’s side, and her mouth becomes a perfect circle when she lays eyes on Eren and Jean in their compromising position. “Oh… well, I’ll be…”

“Oh, this is too fucking good!” Connie finally bursts out, his face a picture of wicked glee. “Oh my god — Eren! And Jean?” He bends over and starts howling with laughter.

Eren shifts uncomfortably on Jean’s lap. I swear to god, Connie, if you fuck up what I’ve literally just got to work for me I will screw off your head and feed it to Shadis…  

“Connie! You — you shouldn’t laugh at people like that! It’s rude!” But Sasha is not one bit better for all her preaching, clinging to Connie’s shoulders for dear life as she struggles to keep from falling over in her stifled laughter.

Jean feels his blood start to boil as he watches these clowns carry on. It suddenly hits him that they’ve seen so little of this whole ordeal. He wonders if they would still be laughing like this if they knew how many tears had to be shed, how much hair had to be damn near ripped off of their skulls, before he and Eren found themselves here. He gets a sick feeling that maybe these idiots would still be laughing.

And he decides that he will have none of it.

“Oi! If you two don’t shut the fuck up and get lost then I’ll tear both of you a new one, ya hear?” 

Eren hides his surprised smile by ducking his head down behind Jean’s neck. Connie, however, takes no heed of Jean’s warning and only snorts obnoxiously.

“For fuck’s sake Jean, you got a whole Yeager on your lap. You’re not goin’ anywhere anytime soon!” he chortles, sharing a wink with Sasha. 

Sasha giggles harder into the back of her hand. “Oh my Walls, what are we going to tell the Commander? His head will explode once we dish out the details…”

“What details?” Jean shouts at them. “Ain’t shit happenin’ — we’re just sitting here! Fuckin’ hell…”

Eren turns his head slightly, whispering his words softly in Jean’s ear so that Connie and Sasha won’t be any the wiser. “It’s okay Jean — let’s just go back to the field okay, baby?” 

Jean seizes up at the unexpected pet name, but he relaxes quickly once he allows Eren’s honey-sweet tone to fully wash over him. He sighs and chuckles to himself as he slowly slides Eren off of his lap and helps him to his feet. “Alright, show’s over,” he snaps at Connie and Sasha. “We’re going back to the training grounds, yeah?”

“That’s why we came here…” Connie admits between snorts. “But hey, congrats, you guys a thing now?”

Jean clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes at Connie. “Why the fuck are you so nosy, man?” He wraps an arm around Eren’s waist and starts walking him in the direction of the fields. “Use your fuckin’ eyes for a change.”

Eren does not whoop for joy. But he does smile like an absolute moron.

Connie turns to Sasha with mock surprise. “Doth my eyes deceive me?”

Sasha hazards a wide-eyed glance at Eren and Jean up the way before looking back at Connie with a gleeful grin. “Nay, they doth not, sir,” she replies.

Chapter Text

Eren has no idea what the dining commons have in store for him, so when the bell clangs noisily six times for dinner, he wastes no time finding Jean up on his bunk post-shower and leans on the bedposts — as casual-like as he can — before asking (like he truly couldn’t care one way or another): “So… eh, Jean… y’wanna go to dinner?”

Jean is snapped out of his private rumination by Eren’s sudden question. He had been contemplating skipping dinner altogether, knowing what kinds of gossip have surely spread since training, and he’s somewhat irritated at having his thoughts interrupted. Mostly, though, he’s just grateful to have a distraction from them. “You were looking for me?” he asks with a lilt in his voice and a playful glint in his eyes. “What, wanna make a big show of walkin’ in together?”

Eren blushes and ducks his head slightly. “Yeah — maybe — so what if I do? You too chicken to hold my hand in public, Kirstein?” he challenges with a small smile. 

Jean can’t help but laugh at Eren’s characteristic childishness. He’s glad that it hasn’t left their dynamic, even as so many other pieces of their relationship seem to be rapidly shifting and changing (almost too quickly for him to keep up with). 

“You think this is a game?” He hops down from his cot and immediately takes Eren’s hand in his own, lacing their fingers together as he pulls Eren out of the barracks. “Alright, then, let’s play.”

Eren is too elated by the sensation of Jean’s hand interwoven with his to feel any trace of his previous embarrassment. So he doesn’t even pay attention to the stupid-silly grin on his face as they make their way to the dining hall. 

He even pulls Jean’s hand back and forth slightly, swinging it and feeling almost high with glee. He hopes that their joined hands are on full display to anyone looking because damn it , Eren Yeager has a boyfriend and he wants everyone to know that!

“You ready for — whatever is in there?” Eren asks lightly as they reach the door.

Jean doesn’t respond immediately — he has to take a moment to catch his breath as his heart skips a beat. “If I’m being honest… I don’t know,” he mutters. “So whatever is in there will have to be ready for however I respond.”

“You’ll be fine,” Eren says simply, because it is simple. “I’ll be with you.” He gives Jean’s hand a squeeze — half for reassurance, half because he’s just too damn giddy not to. 

Then they reach for the door — and even without opening it, the sounds that come from inside are identifiably louder than usual. Jean bites the bullet and presses it open.

At once, he feels eyes boring into him when he steps into the room. The gazes roughly feel like they’re coming from his right and, sure enough, at a table near the center of the dining hall, Connie and Sasha are sitting on top of the wooden table, facing  the doors. Once his eyes meet theirs, they instantly trade mischievous, crafty grins.

“There he is! There he is!” Sasha points directly at Jean, using her other hand to shake Marco, who is sitting next to her, by his shoulder. “Howdy there, lover boy!”

Marco is jolted out of his thoughts and manages to give Jean a small wave and an equally small smile. “Jean! I heard the news…” He pauses and trades a subtle glance with Floch over the table — the redhead only shrinks into himself and frowns slightly — before turning back to Jean. “Is — is it true?”

Jean finds himself breathing a little easier in his good friend’s presence amidst all the chaos. He tugs Eren closer to the table and raises their conjoined hands up to Marco’s eye level. “True as the sky is blue,” he replies with his trademark smirk. “Sorry I couldn’t manage to tell you myself… these two fuckin’ loudmouths got to us first.”

“Pfft, you were askin’ for it with that little show in the stables…” Connie snorts.

Marco takes one look at Eren and Jean’s intertwined hands, totally ignoring Connie’s comment, and feels his heart snap rather painfully. He returns his gaze to Jean with as earnest a smile as he can manage, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m really happy for you, Jean. I can’t say I expected it, but I’m happy for you.” 

Jean feels his stomach squirm at the sight of Marco’s smile — he can tell that something is slightly off about it, but he can’t tell exactly what it is. A small but angry voice in the back of his head (sounding strangely similar to Matis’ voice) warns him to expect the worst from Marco the next time that they talk alone — he squeezes Eren’s hand a little harder as he tries to silence it.

He returns his friend’s smile, and a soft blush dusts his cheeks. “Thanks, Marco. I appreciate it.”

Eren jerks on Jean’s hand a little, just to draw his attention back because he’s feeling a bit possessive and wants Jean’s eyes on him. “Shall we find a spot to sit at?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” 

The boys don’t get to move an inch, though, before Connie slides over (he literally slides on the table) and gives Eren a raised brow and a smirk. “ Sooooo , Yeager decided to settle then? Shall we all stop expecting private calls?”

Eren sputters and turns a dark shade of red. There are chuckles from the other cadets around them, and even Thomas is laughing into his hand where he sits next to Franz and Hannah. Sasha is the loudest though, her rolling laugh almost comedic in itself. 

“What a bummer!” she hollers. “Didn’t we have like eight other positions that we wanted to try out?”

Two tables over, Reiner chokes on his drink, loudly . Bertholdt absently pats and rubs his heaving back with an uncanny level of domestic familiarity. Annie looks mildly disgusted.

“Sasha!” Eren squeaks, high-pitched and horribly embarrassed. He wastes no more time and does not wait for Connie’s smart-ass response, instead dragging Jean to the nearest empty table hissing, “You did not hear that. Okay?”

Jean raises his free hand above his head, smirking. “Alright — didn’t hear a damn thing.”

They sit down and Eren promptly buries his face in the arm that isn’t busy holding Jean’s hand. He doesn’t seem to be in luck, however, because no sooner have they escaped Connie and Sasha’s immediate vicinity — then do the two dunderheads find them again — and it is all too obvious a fair few of the 104th are eager to watch the showdown. 

“Oi, Eren, you can’t run off just yet!” Connie jumps off the table and nudges Sasha with a wink. “You gonna tell Jean about all your fun times with Floch yet? That kid’s sure gonna miss ya.” 

“Hey!” Floch grabs his empty water jug and throws it at the back of Connie’s head, eliciting a pained yelp from the bald kid. “Leave me the hell outta this!” His face is bright red, and his ragged breaths stream through the gaps in his gritted teeth, but his tormented eyes betray the shame that underlies his anger. 

Marco slips his leg under their table to nudge Floch’s, hoping that the redhead might feel somewhat reassured by the move. Luckily, it seems to work — the storms in Floch’s eyes slowly dissipate, and his body relaxes somewhat as he gives Marco a small, thankful smile. Marco returns it softly. 

Jean raises an eyebrow at Floch’s unusually violent behavior. He gets that Connie is infuriating , but he doesn’t understand why such a dramatic response to his goofing off would ever be necessary…

“Connie,” he says with exasperation, “maybe chill out a little? Before you get yourself in real trouble?”

Connie shrugs and smirks again, hand still soothing the bump on his head. “Hey, I mean we all got some sorta fun with Eren at some point, no? Remember first year, Eren? The stupid dance you did on me?” 

“Oh fuck off, Connie — you’re making me regret taking that dare.” Eren mumbles into the wood of the table, his face steaming worse than a titan. 

Jean strokes the back of Eren’s hand with his thumb under the table as he narrows his eyes at Connie. “You wanna talk now about the dumb shit we did when we were twelve?” He smirks as he rolls his eyes. “Though it does seem like something you’d do, since you clearly peaked back then.”

Connie gasps theatrically and turns to Sasha. “No that’s a lie, I peaked at fourteen right, Sash?”

“You betcha!” Sasha jumps behind Connie and grabs his shoulders, showing him off to Jean like a proud mother. “That’s the year ya figured out how to fit three whole potatoes in yer mouth without breakin’ yer jaw.”

Connie nods proudly. “It’s also the year I grew my first pube…” 

“Connie, have you heard the phrase ‘too much information’?” Reiner shouts from where he has dropped his spoon into his bowl of soup from horrified shock. Bertholdt is already gingerly lifting the utensil from the mess and wiping it with a cloth he seems to have magically ready for the situation. 

“No!” Connie responds easily and then points his finger at Eren. “That guy stole my innocence — he deserves to be publicly scorned, with too much information .” 

“Like hell he does!” Jean is on his feet before he realizes it, releasing his hold on Eren so that he can ball his hands into fists and approach Connie menacingly. Sasha instinctively lets go of the knucklehead and takes a good two steps back. 

“Eren at least had the decency to ‘steal your innocence’ — or whatever the fuck — in a private space,” Jean barks at Connie. “So what the hell gives you the right to air this shit out in public and act like you’re any better than him, huh?”

Connie shrinks a little under Jean’s glare and holds his hands up placatingly, knowing well enough when to stop stepping on the boy’s toes. “Hey, chill man, it’s all in good fun. Eren’s in on it — he loves crackin’ shitty jokes about his firsts with us.” 

Eren mutters something into the wood that sounds disagreeing, but doesn’t look up. He’s much too mortified. 

Jean frowns at Eren’s mopey posture before turning back to Connie with an irritated expression. “Does it look like Eren is having any fun to you?”

Connie peers past Jean’s shoulder to the figure slouched over on the table and his face loses its smirk. “Ah shit —” he curses lightly. “Hey, Eren… You know I’m just teasin’ right?” He’s almost worried as he says it. 

Eren raises his face slightly — it’s burning hot and red as a damn Sina Courtyard rose, he assumes — and gives Connie a weak smile. “Yeah, whatever, just fuck off okay? I don’t wanna look like any more of a slut in front of my boyfriend than I have to.” 

“Oh wow, he said it! It’s official!” Sasha giggles like a schoolchild and applauds Eren. It gives Jean a headache, so he pinches the bridge of his nose, but the blush on his cheeks deepens as that all-important word plays on repeat in his head.

Damn, Eren really is serious about this…

A fleeting wave of dizziness comes over Jean; he does his best to breathe through it.

“Alright, are you both done acting like fuckin’ virgins now?” Jean hisses as he shoos Connie and Sasha away with his hands. “I’d like a moment alone with him, thank you.”

“ Virgins !” Connie gasps. “I’m like — not a virgin at all!” He stops himself halfway through his thought and turns to look at Sasha with confusion. “Wait… can guys even lose their virginity? We don’t have —” he gestures to her lower bits evasively. “Whatever the hell you people have.”

Sasha’s jaw drops, and a litany of chuckles pour out of her mouth. “Did you seriously just ask that? And you don’t know what my lady bits are called?” She throws an arm around Connie’s shoulders and shakes her head. “Oh, you sweet summer child… let’s walk and talk about this, okay?”

Connie is led away by Sasha, but his next question can be heard quite clearly: “You name your bits too? I call mine Connie-junior, but like do you call yours a girl-name?”

Eren snorts helplessly and reaches out to grab Jean’s hand again. “C’mon, sit down, I’ll get us some food before those two dumbasses come back again.” 

Jean takes another breath and smiles at Eren as he takes his hand and returns to his seat. “Alright, sounds good.” He rubs his temple with his free hand. “Sina, that was exhausting…”

Eren chuckles and gives Jean’s hand a reassuring squeeze as he gets up. “I was kinda expecting it; didn’t make it any better but — at least I was prepared.” Jean’s answering laugh follows the boy as he leaves.

Some tables away, Mikasa turns to look at Armin with a placid expression. “What do we make of all that then?” she asks, referring to the absolute chaos that they’d just witnessed. 

Armin finds himself unable to hold Mikasa’s gaze for long — his eyes fall to his lap as his whole face blushes. “Well… Eren announced it clear as day, and Jean has yet to refute it…” He can hardly believe those observations himself; he reaches for his water jug to take a much-needed sip and tries to calm down…

Mikasa looks from the blond boy back to where Eren returns and sets down a tray for himself and Jean, and then she turns back to Armin. “I didn’t think Jean would go through with it — he seemed very affected by his brother’s words. Do you think he’ll back out?”

Armin watches as Jean gives Eren an easy smile, shifting his body just a bit closer to Eren as he starts chatting him up — normal talking, no shouting or name-calling. And Eren happily engages him with a honey-sweet, moon-eyed expression, hardly remembering to lift his spoon up and eat his soup. Jean elbows Eren a few times after he says something clearly out of pocket, but for the most part, the two of them look…

Happy together.

Armin averts his eyes and absently stirs the lukewarm soup in his bowl. “I… I’m not sure that he will…”

Mikasa sighs, her hand automatically coming up to caress the worn red wool of her scarf. “I see,” she says softly. “They look… good together, right?”

Armin winces at the first answer that pops into his mind — it’s tainted by his real feelings. He decides not to disappoint Mikasa with that side of himself and takes a breath before smiling and responding: “Yes, they do.”

The short response, despite being said earnestly, prompts Mikasa to take Armin’s hand in her own, squeezing it gently as she continues to watch Jean and Eren laugh over their bowls — eyes completely stuck to one another, the room nonexistent in their private world. Eren hadn’t even walked with them to the dining hall tonight…

“Eren will always need us, Armin,” she says confidently, despite it all. “He’s too much for any one person to handle.” The last statement carries multiple meanings and Mikasa knows Armin won’t need clarification to pick up on the nuances. 

All of the implications click in Armin’s head at once, and he giggles into his free hand before turning to Mikasa with a much brighter grin. “You’re absolutely right,” he replies. “We don’t have anything to worry about right now.”

He almost manages to convince himself of it. Almost .

Dinner concludes slowly as the cadets strain out of the dining hall. Some pass by Jean and Eren with grins and smirks, others with the kind of indifference that stems from not really knowing them too well. Eren sees them move by from the corner of his eye (most of his attention is on Jean after all) and gets a sudden, brilliant , idea. He pulls Jean’s half-empty soup bowl onto his tray and stacks the two together. “Let’s go walk outside; curfew isn’t for at least another hour or so and I’m fucking hot in here.” 

Jean snickers at Eren as he leans back to stretch his arms. “You can just say you’re horny, Eren,” he mutters under his breath with a smirk. “Wouldn’t that be a lot easier?”

Eren very nearly trips over the bench with both trays in his hands as he gets up. He turns a perfect shade of pink at being called out so damn well and gives Jean a rather bashful smile. “I-I could say that, yeah…” He averts his eyes because looking at Jean for too long while feeling this hot is giving him a severe case of butterflies. “You feelin’ hot too?”

Jean shifts his gaze to the side and blushes as he tugs at the collar of his shirt with one finger. “Yeah, a little bit…” He gets up from the bench and keeps close to Eren as they walk to the collection area.

As soon as Eren sets the trays down, he takes up Jean’s hand with his left and pulls the taller boy straight out the back door to the fresh, clean (if somewhat disappointingly warm) air outside. 

The moon is already out and the first twinkling stars have begun to appear, giving the entire camp a softer, almost romantic, glow. 

It’s incredibly sappy , and Eren loves it . “Wanna go to the lake?” he offers, partially because the heat under his shirt is killing him, and partially because it gets them away from prying eyes… and, alright, also because he’d really like to see Jean naked again .

Jean had forgotten that there’s a lake not far from the main grounds — just a twenty-minute walk from the bunkers. But definitely far enough to give us some privacy…

“So that’s your angle?” Jean tries to cover the slight tremor in his voice with a heavier lilt. “You wanna go skinny dipping together? Get us all nice and wet?”

Eren feels a flush of warmth melt down his face and settle heavily in his groin. He shivers and has to drag a breath in through his nose rapidly to avoid getting lightheaded at the image Jean produced in his mind. 

“Do me a favor, yeah?” he asks, voice tight. “Save the dirty talk for where I won’t be caught with a boner?”

“Ah yeah, forgot how… responsive you are to that shit.” Jean chuckles as he rubs his fingertips over the back of Eren’s hand. “Then let’s get over there quick, yeah?”

Eren looks at Jean and gives him a mischievous smirk. “Race ya!” He doesn’t wait and instead bolts off right in the direction of the woods, following the trail to the lake. 

“Seriously?” Jean yells incredulously after the boy and takes off right behind Eren, laughing the whole way. The exercise works wonders for easing his fraying nerves, and he couldn’t be more grateful for the relief.

The boys race on and off for the whole fifteen minutes it takes to get to the lake. Jean catches up easily with Eren, his longer legs and natural speed giving him the advantage, and then Eren waits until Jean’s guard is down before sprinting ahead again, cackling like a child.

Chapter Text

The lake itself is beautiful in the light of the full moon. Bright white rays glitter like diamonds on a nearly flat surface, disturbed only by the faintest ripples from a startled fish or two. 

It’s wonderfully quiet too, with just the soft chirps of crickets and faint voices of frogs disturbing the peaceful hush. 

At least that’s before Eren reaches the lake. He hardly sees the beach before he’s shucking off his boots mirthfully, stripping out of his clothes with eagerness that makes him clumsy. 

“First one in wins!” he decides because Jean has yet to catch up. 

Jean starts shaking himself out of his jacket before he even reaches the shore. “What are you, a kid?” he shouts at the boy — he means for it to sting a little, but his continued laughter greatly softens the blow.

Eren laughs and then promptly falls on his rear when he trips from pulling off his trousers. “Aww shit! I got sand up my ass now!” 

“What?” Jean is cackling now — he doubles over, and he fumbles about trying to pull his boots off. “Did I really need to know that, man?”

Eren throws his pants and underwear at Jean. “Consider it a warning!” He snorts and then runs — completely nude — right into the lake, shrieking at the bracing cold. 

Jean is so startled by the implications of the warning that he starts choking on his own laughter. While he’s out of air with which to snipe back at Eren, he focuses on stripping off the rest of his clothes as quickly as possible. 

He then turns to face the lake and gets his first good look at Eren’s naked body, shivering from the cold but still standing tall, muscular and lithe and so inviting under the soft glow of the moon.

He finds himself quietly admiring the sheen of Eren’s tanned skin as it catches the moonlight, the slight yet enticing curve to his hips, the way that his neck muscles flex as he turns his head up to look at the stars, the way that his eyes simultaneously shimmer and smolder…

Jean instantly forgets his nerves and races right up to Eren, jumping into the water behind him and wading over to press himself onto Eren’s back. “Alright, you won,” he sighs into Eren’s hair. “Sorry I’m late.”

Eren feels his body lean into Jean’s instinctively, even while his heart is pounding something fierce in his chest — even while he feels like he’ll surely never be able to speak again as long as he lives, with the feel of Jean’s chest pressed up against his back. 

The water feels warmer as Eren’s face heats up. He turns around and presses his body flush against Jean’s, each inch of skin burning pleasantly like molten candle wax. He turns his face up and presses a soft kiss to Jean’s neck. “Nah, you’re right on time, Jean…” 

Jean had known somewhere in his mind that he’d missed this, but the gentle sweetness of Eren’s kiss brings out the fullness of that longing with such force that he shivers from head to toe. He wraps his arms around Eren’s waist and holds the boy closer, pressing his lips to the top of the brunet’s head as he hums softly. “Good,” he croons. “Happy to be here, Eren.”

Cheekily, Eren thrusts his hips forward a bit, brushing his already-interested cock against Jean’s thigh. “Hmm, how happy?” he presses with a sly grin, wrapping his arms up around Jean’s neck. 

Jean’s breath hitches at Eren’s teasing — he swallows as his blush deepens, and his fingers press deeper into Eren’s sides. “Do I even need to say it?” He chuckles as his lips curl into a smirk. “You can feel it, can’t you?” He moves a hand to the small of Eren’s back and presses their hips even closer together, biting the inside of his lip as a shudder runs up his spine.

“Ahh…” Eren breathes out shakily at the intensity of pleasure that zips through his blood when he feels Jean hard against his hip, and he twitches against Jean’s thigh. He chuckles softly and moves to press a wet kiss over Jean’s chest, grazing his teeth over the skin softly before pulling back enough to speak. 

“Yeah — I can feel you…” He drops a hand from Jean’s neck and slides it down to the taller boy’s hipbone, squeezing slightly and biting his fingers into the flesh. “Jean…?” he asks, looking up suddenly. “How many times can you cum in an hour?”

Jean laughs incredulously at Eren’s question to keep from choking on his shock again. His hands settle on Eren’s hips and intently massage them as he presses a kiss on the boy’s neck. “Well, I do have pretty good stamina,” he purrs into Eren’s ear, “so it depends how hot and bothered you can get me…”

Eren stretches his neck to accommodate Jean’s delightful purr, the sound traveling straight down his spine. “Mmmh, if you’re comparing your stamina to mine, that’s still kinda shitty… I think I can cum from your voice alone,” he breathes.

Jean moans at the thought of it before he can stop himself — he presses his lips onto Eren’s shoulder to muffle the sound, gently biting the flesh before coming back up to Eren’s ear and teasing at his earlobe with his lips. “Is that a challenge?” he coos. “Or are you just that eager to prove how desperate you are for me, hm?”

The tickling, teasing, titillating sensation at Eren’s ear stutters his speech, and it takes him a minute to remember how to use his tongue. “Fuck, Jean…” He drags the hand from Jean’s hip up to his hair and tugs at it desperately. “It — it’s an invitation for later… I’m too close for it to be a fair game now.” He ruts his cock against Jean’s thigh as proof and has to bite his lip to avoid spilling the shamefully high moan that wants to pour out. 

Jean’s fingers dig deeper into Eren’s hips, and his breaths become quicker and shallower with every thrust of Eren’s hips into his thigh. “Fuck, Eren, you really want me that bad?” He leans down to kiss the juncture between his neck and shoulder, sucking the flesh and running his tongue in circles over it.

Eren whines a little, the noise pouring out between his teeth. “Hahh — yeah, Jean…” He pulls his hips back a little so that he can realign his cock and then sways slightly, dragging the engorged flesh over Jean’s own cock in a tantalizing back and forth motion. “Sina — I want you so bad it fucking hurts …” he whispers hoarsely. 

The gentle yet sharp sensation of Eren’s cock brushing against his own sends shivers up Jean’s spine, and he lets out a low moan as his own hips thrust forward helplessly. He moves a hand into Eren’s hair to tug at it and wraps the other arm fully around Eren’s waist, firmly gripping the boy’s side. “Holy shit, Eren… mmh… I need you to keep talkin’ to me like that…” He plants a quick kiss to the side of Eren’s forehead. “Sounds so fuckin’ pretty…”

The blush that crawls over Eren’s face burns and his hips stagger unevenly — jerking forward as he tiptoes on the edge of orgasm. He pulls himself back sharply by darting a hand down between them and gripping himself almost painfully. 

“Hahh! Uhh — talkin’ — yeah I can… fuck … I can d-do that…” He shuts his eyes and takes two measured breaths in, telling himself he will not cum like a damn twelve-year-old at just that low sexy moan Jean made.

Jean can’t help but smirk and chuckle at Eren’s desperation — he gently strokes the boy’s scalp with his fingers, just enough to tickle. “Wanna know something, Eren? You’re…” Jean briefly averts his eyes, and he squirms a bit as his dick twitches. “You’re really fuckin’ cute when you get this worked up.”

Eren jerks his head up to stare at Jean with a mixture of indignation and … pleasure? The compliment feels like it should bug him — he’s a man after all, right? But instead all he can feel is a honey-thick liquid lust pouring down his throat and making his tongue dry with need. 

He lifts his hands up and cups Jean’s face to meet his eyes, dilated and wide. “Jean… I’m gonna ask you something now and you — you can’t chicken out on me okay?”

Jean feels like Eren has set his skin ablaze with his touch, and yet he leans into it — he likes how much it burns. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he quips back with a shaky smile. “What’s the question?”

Eren shuts his eyes to dig up some iota of courage in his gut — though truthfully, it comes more from his dick than his chest. “I — can I — Sina, this is hard…” He opens his eyes and finds Jean’s bright golden gaze fixed on him.

Eren sees the wash of blue moonlight on the boy’s hair, the smoothness of his skin kissed by drops of lake-water, feels the heat of his body so close against his own. And the words suddenly slide out of his mouth with ease. “Can I kiss you?”

There it is — the question that Jean had been subconsciously waiting on for the whole night. Now that he’s heard it out loud, his stomach turns inside-out, and his heart almost leaps out of his throat. He’s never done this before — with anyone — and he doesn’t fully trust himself to improvise while his head is this scrambled.

But Eren’s lips are right there, ready and waiting in front of him, overflowing with sweet, tempting words that are practically dripping with want for him. Something wild stirs in his chest and in his gut, and he feels as though nothing will satisfy him except to claim those lips as his own.

To claim Eren as his own.

Jean doesn’t bother answering with words — he shuts his eyes and leans forward… until their lips meet.

Eren had held his breath. Had sworn to each Wall that he’d wait however long Jean needed. Had almost shut his eyes from the nerve-wracking anticipation.

And then there are lips on his. Soft, sweet, warm lips… And they’re right, this time …

Eren moans out that breath, wraps his arms back around Jean’s neck and pulls him closer, feeling his stomach flip with ecstasy and feeling his heart soar like it’s hooked with ODM gear and zipping between impossibly tall trees. 

Jean mirrors Eren’s sigh of relief into their kiss when he feels how perfectly they fit together. He wraps his arms back around Eren’s waist to hold him closer as the kiss heats up.

But Eren is too eager, and slips his tongue out to trace the seam of Jean’s lips, begging entry for a taste. Jean startles a bit at the sudden sensation, but he finds that it’s a pleasant feeling, and it draws another soft moan out of him almost helplessly. As for how he’s supposed to respond to it, though?

Jean has no fucking clue.

Eren is just a little confused as to why Jean’s lips are still sealed under his very polite request. He was rather hoping to get a deep taste of his boyfriend and isn’t sure if Jean is just teasing him or if he… 

Oh my god… Eren pulls back just a little, staring at Jean with bemused awe. “Jean?” He hears too much mirth in his voice and quickly tames it down. “Is this — is this your first kiss?”

Jean’s eyes widen as his body tenses slightly. He can’t hide the blush that is spreading rapidly down his neck — he silently curses his nerves as he averts Eren’s gaze. “What, did it feel that bad?”

Eren shakes his head emphatically. “No! It was — fuck — it was hot …” He pauses and settles with telling Jean the truth. “Kissing is a kind of dance. You learn the moves and know when to react to your partner — I made a move and you didn’t respond.” He smiles, almost teasingly. “I thought you had a girlfriend before — Valerie?”

“She — she wasn’t the intimate type, alright?” Jean huffs and gathers up the courage to look Eren in the eyes again. “Just… tell me what I missed and I’ll make a note of it, yeah?”

Eren hadn’t thought his heart was capable of hurting so pleasantly before; it takes a deep breath just to hold back from squeezing the ever-loving-life out of Jean. He looks up and breathes out slowly. “Walls, Jean — you have no fucking idea how hot it is that this is your first kiss…” He laughs brokenly. 

He turns his gaze back to Jean and pulls him down with a hand to the back of his head, bringing them within a hair’s breadth apart. Their lips are so close as to be a tease — but Eren doesn’t kiss Jean yet. “When I lick you,” he whispers softly, “I want you to open your lips a little. Let me inside, okay?”

What little space remains between their mouths feels electric — Jean forgets to breathe while he’s transfixed by Eren’s voice, hanging onto every tantalizing word he utters. “Uh — yeah, okay,” he stammers, feeling his mouth run dry and panicking about it internally. “Then what?”

“Then…” Eren moves closer and presses his lips against Jean’s, light enough so that he can still speak. “Then you’ll be a good boy and follow my lead…” He licks at Jean’s lips, using the tip of his tongue like a finger as he retraces the line between the upper and lower flesh. 

Jean’s heart skips a beat, and a shaky, broken moan escapes his throat as Eren’s tongue dances over his lips. He never thought he’d see the day where it would be a reflex — but without even having to think about it, Jean’s lips fall open for Eren, wholly submissive to his tantalizing demand.

Success had never tasted as sweet as Jean’s mouth, Eren thinks absently. He’s gentle at first, tracing the softer inner parts of Jean’s lips, teasing at his teeth… But he’s never had good restraint, so he’s quickly dipping in deeper — touching his tongue to Jean’s and rubbing along that soft wetness with a heady groan of arousal. 

He pulls himself away to give both of them a chance to breathe, but not so far that he can’t steal a kiss or two (which he does), just enough that he can whisper words again. “How’s that?” His voice comes out faint with lust and he has to force his body under control so he doesn’t start rutting against Jean like a dog. “You like that?” He needs to check first; he won’t push Jean over the edge — not with kissing at least. 

Jean is frozen still for a moment after Eren pulls away, eyes locked onto glittering green irises as his mouth hangs slightly open. It felt… strange, what Eren had just done, but it also felt… exhilarating. It sent sparks racing over every inch of his skin and it felt like it ended far too soon. Fuck, I need to feel that again.

“I do, Eren, I really do…” Jean cups Eren’s face in his hand and locks their lips together once more, caressing them quickly a few times before he tries out the move that he’d just learned, running the tip of his tongue playfully along Eren’s upper lip.

Eren knew Jean was a fast learner. He just didn’t realize what that would look like being on the receiving end of the boy’s brilliance. He parts his lips easily (eagerly) and gives a long shuddering moan of appreciation when he feels Jean’s tongue inside his mouth.

He’s jumping far far ahead — but he can already imagine that tongue elsewhere. 

The jolt of arousal inspires him to thrust his hips against Jean’s, and he slips his hands down the taller boy’s hips to stabilize himself — and to give him better leverage for grinding their cocks together. He does so once, long and hard. 

Jean moans low into Eren’s mouth as their tongues slide along each other, tracing lines and circles along the insides of each other’s mouths. He pushes his hips harder into Eren’s, reveling in the pressure and the friction on his cock. But as pleasurable as their deep grind is, Jean is far more lost in the sensations of their joined mouths — the wetness and the warmth, the push and pull that’s almost playful between their tongues — it’s deep and heady and floods every inch of his body with an intoxicating liquid lust. 

Jean’s reciprocating thrust only serves to feed the fire in Eren’s groin. He knows himself well enough not to feel too concerned by his approaching peak — he can climb that particular mountain many times in a night — but he has one last move he needs to make before reaching the summit. 

He breaks away from their kiss, but keeps his hips thrusting into Jean’s at a regular, fast tempo. “Jean… I’m gonna fuck your mouth, okay?” He waits for Jean’s response by giving him a strong kiss on his neck, daring to leave a slight mark on that pale column. 

“Wh-what — ahn, fuck, Eren…” Jean’s grip on Eren’s waist tightens as pleasure jolts through his body. His head spins as he keeps rocking his hips into Eren’s, feeling his arousal pooling in his gut and stiffening his cock until it hurts. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

Eren smiles into Jean’s skin and bites down a little, just to leave his mark of ownership on the boy. “You remember fucking my mouth in the gear-shed, yeah?” he offers slyly. “Well, think about that while I fuck your mouth with my tongue, ‘kay?” 

Jean lets out an embarrassingly needy whimper as the memory of that night overtakes his mind. He really wants to feel that strong rush of pleasure again…

Eren traces a hot stripe up Jean’s neck and over his cheek before finding his lips and licking crudely over them in a mockery of asking for entry. Jean’s body leans toward Eren as the boy shamelessly — salaciously — licks his skin and lips. He desperately gasps for breath before pressing his lips back onto Eren’s, keeping them open and ready for the boy’s tongue to slip its way back in.

The lips opening under his are all the invitation Eren needs. He uses one hand in Jean’s hair to hold the boy somewhat still, and then presses his tongue wetly into Jean’s mouth, daring to reach down a little further, a little deeper . 

Mimicking a technique he uses when giving head, he swirls his tongue right over Jean’s tongue, slipping it around the soft flesh. He then seals their mouths together and sucks on Jean’s tongue — drawing the flesh into his own mouth. 

Jean’s blissful sighs are broken up by a startled yelp, and his grip on Eren loosens for an instant. He feels like his tongue practically melts into the warmth of Eren’s mouth, and he softly keens into the kiss as he maneuvers his tongue around Eren’s. He does his best to keep up with the boy’s intricate dance — it’s a challenge, but the sensuality of it all sets him on fire inside. He runs his hands up and down Eren’s sides, encouraging him to keep up the dizzying pace of his tonguing and thrusting.

The way Jean struggles to keep up with Eren makes him burn with a mixture of perverse satisfaction and bone-deep affection. Eren keeps his pace somewhat brutal and then ups the ante a bit by using his free hand to grab at their erections and bring them flush together. The pleasure is so bright and hot that Eren groans right into Jean’s mouth — a novel sensation he wants to repeat.

Jean shudders at the electrifying sound of Eren’s voice and the feeling of it on his lips. His cock twitches and pulsates in Eren’s grip — and the feeling of Eren’s responding pulsing firmness against his draws out another moan from even deeper within him. 

His hips automatically start thrusting to rub his cock against Eren’s, the sensation throwing him back to the steamy night that they’d shared together in the stables — cocks rubbing together vulgarly and wetly as Eren crafted illusory porn with his words. But this time, the friction elicits a hot, heart-pounding pleasure whose strength seems to transcend words altogether. Jean’s broken whining and sighing into Eren’s mouth betrays his desperation despite his best attempts to keep somewhat in control. 

Eren feels himself near the peak again and he breaks away from Jean’s tempting dangerous lips, enough to gasp down some air. “ Fuck , Jean…” he groans. “You’re gonna make me cum from those sounds you keep making…” He doesn’t want Jean to stop so he continues to fist both their cocks, but he’s so sensitive — so damn close — that his dick is near-constantly twitching between them. 

Jean feels molten-hot pleasure race through his body, and he can’t quite catch his breath no matter how hard he tries to draw it in — the feeling of Eren’s hand and cock rubbing against his length is doing it for him. 

He shifts his gaze down to look at their pressed-together members, and the knot in his gut tightens sharply at the sight. “I don’t think that’d be the worst thing in the world,” Jean sighs as he moves a hand upward to mess with Eren’s hair again. “Bet you’d — mmh, fuck — bet you’d look so pretty spillin’ onto my cock like this…”

Eren’s voice cuts out with a gasp and he strangle-holds the root of his cock as it twitches helplessly from the cruel denial. “ Walls , Jean!” Eren gasps. “You can’t just — holy fuck — you can’t just say shit like that!” He leans back against the hand in his hair and lets it ground him somewhat. Fuck , that had been too close. 

Distantly, Eren wonders if Jean has caught on to his orgasm-denial kink. 

“I most certainly can.” Jean leans forward to leave a soft, slow kiss on Eren’s lips and then another right below the boy’s ear. His laughter is all at once giddy and sultry, throttled by the waves of his arousal. “Why are you so afraid of my words, hm?” He kisses the side of Eren’s neck, gently at first, before biting down hard into the flesh. “Why don’t you relax for me, Eren? Why not just let go?”

The kiss had been enough to melt away Eren’s ability to speak — the low laughter enough to twist his gut with dizzying arousal. And then Jean had to go on and add his stupid fucking smooth words and Eren is instantly a shaking puddle in his arms. 

The bite to his neck rather spells his doom. “Hahh! Oh fuck …” Eren moans and the word is drawn out between his teeth because his fist is clenching hard enough on his cock to hurt . He doesn’t want to cum, he wants to hold off — it’s better then when it does happen. But Jean is not making his self-denial easy. “I’m — ahh — I’m not afraid of your damn words Kirstein…” he gasps. “Just tryin’ not to fuckin’ embarass myself here…” 

Jean continues to chuckle as he gently strokes Eren’s forearm. “Maybe I woulda bought that when we first started, but now I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve grabbed your dick to hold off on cumming.” Jean’s fingers trace over Eren’s collarbone and up his neck until they reach the boy’s chin, which Jean tips upward to force Eren to meet his eyes. “So what’s really going on here? You just like torturing yourself?”

Eren can’t look away — Jean’s eyes are like the sun and he can’t look away . He loosens his grip on his cock and slips both his hands to hold onto Jean’s hips — squeezing them instead. He bites his lip to buy himself a moment’s reprieve; it shouldn’t be this hard to admit it to Jean — but for some reason it is, and his cheeks feel like they are aflame. 

“M-maybe I do…” 

Eren’s blush puts butterflies in Jean’s stomach — he smiles at the boy before planting a quick, chaste kiss on each of his reddened cheeks. “You’re a strange one, Eren,” he chuckles, “but I like it.” He moves his hand from Eren’s chin to the boy’s chest, making sure to brush his nipples as he rubs it from left to right. “You want me to keep torturing you, then? See how long you can hold out for me?”

Eren gets more and more red with each kiss, caress, and word that Jean employs over him. He wants to snipe back — prove that he’s not utterly butter in Jean’s hands — but he is butter in Jean’s hands and can’t really do anything about it. 

He presses his chest into Jean’s touch, sighing softly at the sensations and hoping to coax more from Jean. “I — honestly I’m thinkin’ I just really really want to cum now. You can make me do it again after…” Eren smiles suddenly and sneaks a hand from Jean’s hip down to grab his ass. “Hell, you can make me cum again and again and again — until I’m beggin’ you to stop if that’s what you want.” 

Jean’s hips jerk forward as he gasps at the contact, and he moans shamelessly as his mind starts flooding with images of the suggestive fantasy that Eren had painted with his words. “Holy fucking shit, Eren, ngh…” Feeling the need to retaliate, Jean moves one of his hands around to Eren’s ass before he can get cold feet about it and squeezes hard once. His other hand stays on Eren’s chest, teasing and massaging one of the boy’s nipples with his fingers.

The dual sensations spark something feral and desperate in Eren and he moves forward to press his mouth openly on Jean’s neck, sucking color forth and then biting down to bruise — the second hickey he’s given Jean. “Y’gonna make me beg for it, hmm?” he says, and his voice is thick with need. “Gonna make me say please, Jean, let me cum ?”

Jean yelps again as Eren’s teeth sink into his flesh, but he welcomes the pain, leaning his head back to give Eren access. He feels his cock start to twitch more aggressively, and it takes everything in him to keep his hands on Eren’s body, still relentlessly teasing the boy’s sensitive spots. “I think I will,” he purrs as he gives Eren’s ass another good squeeze. 

“Tell me how bad you wanna cum for me and I’ll move my hands lower…”

Eren’s eyes snap open like he’s been struck . His hands race up to grasp desperately at Jean’s hair and he forces their eyes to meet. “Y-you’ll w-what?” he gasps.

“I said… I’ll move my hands lower.” Jean stares back at Eren with a level expression, but the deep reddening of his cheeks and his slightly erratic breathing betray the intensity of his anxious lust. “I — I remember where you’re most sensitive. I can find the spot again.”

Eren has to swallow a few times because his throat is dry and he’s not quite sure that he’s actually awake. He closes his eyes tightly for a moment and when he opens them he pulls Jean’s face close for a deep kiss — and fuck he’s so glad he can kiss Jean now. 

He parts from those tempting lips wetly, finding himself very satisfied to see them shine with his spit. “I — I’d like that… I’d like that a lot, Jean,” he whispers faintly. He then remembers what he needs to do to get his reward. “Can I cum, Jean?” It’s an honest-to-god request, without a trace of his earlier teasing. “Please?”

Eren’s eagerness is music to Jean’s ears, and he needs to hear more of it. He takes Eren’s nipple between two of his fingers and twists it slightly as he kisses and sucks at a sensitive spot on Eren’s neck. “Not yet,” he whispers lowly. “Show me you really want it bad, Eren. Beg harder…”

“Ahh!” The twisting pleasure hadn’t been one that Eren saw coming, and his back arches into the pain — betraying just how much Eren likes it. “Ahnn — shit — d-do that again! Fuck , please, Jean!” 

Jean surprises himself with how much that small motion turns Eren on. He continues to pepper Eren’s neck and shoulder with kisses as he repeats the twisting motion and gently massages Eren’s ass with the other hand. “Sina, I can’t get enough of your voice when it gets like this… so fuckin’ hot…”

Eren feels his hips push back and forth helplessly under Jean’s torture and he revels in it. He can’t even give enough attention to mind his voice when it reaches a truly desperate pitch — a high, sweet, breathy tone that Eren is unaware he can even make. 

“I’ll — Oh! Ahhh — I’ll s-scream for you, Jean…” He whines and his fingers dig into Jean’s hair desperately at every twist of the boy’s fingers. “I’ll do anything — fuck — Mmmnn! Just please… Please, I need more .”

Jean feels waves of arousal roll through his body — he simply can’t ignore a plea that sincere and fucking gorgeous. He swallows and takes in a ragged breath before closing his eyes and moving the hand on Eren’s ass lower, just as he’d promised. His fingers slowly slide between the boy’s ass cheeks — Jean startles at how much warmer the flesh feels — and they slowly travel downward… until they graze the rim of Eren’s asshole.

“F-found it,” he whispers hoarsely into Eren’s ear.

Eren shakes . He’s holding himself as still as he can — terrified to threaten Jean’s confidence — but he’s doing a rather poor job of it. 

He trails his hands down Jean’s scalp, running down the ridges of his cervical spine, and then he digs into the flesh of Jean’s shoulders, clawing desperately at the skin. “Y-yeah — holy shit , Jean…” Eren whimpers, “I — I can cum like this…”

That broken, trembling voice is all the encouragement that Jean needs — with more conviction, he uses two fingers to spread Eren’s cheeks just enough that he can trace the rim with his middle finger. “Good to hear,” he croons. “Cum as hard as you can for me, got it?”

The boy’s eyes widen in response and he chokes on a high moan. “Ahhh!” His hips press forward a bit and then jolt back — increasing the pressure of Jean’s finger against his rim and threatening to have it press in . 

“ Shitshitshit ! I’m gonna cum! Fu-uhh-ck !” Eren gasps.

Jean’s stomach flips when he feels Eren’s hips buck back into his finger — he fights the momentary urge to pull his hand away, grounding himself in the heavenly sounds of Eren’s moaning and the delicious feeling of the boy’s soft, wet skin pressed against his own. He answers Eren’s nonverbal request by pressing his finger harder onto his rim, and his other hand gives the boy’s nipples a few final tugs and twists.

It’s more than enough. Eren’s moans cut off suddenly as he stops breathing and tosses his head back. Cum spurts out of his cock like a damn fountain, spraying all over Jean’s stomach and dripping down into the lake water in perfect pearlescent droplets. After three pulses, Eren sags and lets out his breath in a long, shaking sigh. “F-fuck…”

Jean pulls Eren into a tight embrace, rubbing the boy’s back and burying his face in the crook of Eren’s neck, chuckling into the soft flesh. 

For a moment he can’t quite believe where one of his hands had just been, but Eren’s limp body feels so spent and the boy sounds so damn satisfied with Jean’s work — his pride and arousal far outweighs his mild distress. He feels like he just got a small taste of freedom, and Sina, it tastes impossibly sweet.

“You really seemed to like that, huh?” Jean smiles against Eren’s skin as he strokes the boy’s hair. “Did I wear you out already?”

“Heh…” Eren laughs weakly, his voice softer than usual after having been used so much. “Give me a minute and I’ll wear you out…” He threads one hand up into Jean’s hair, pulling him back from his neck to press a deep kiss to those perfect lips. He pulls back a bit and focuses his eyes on Jean’s, finding those gold irises almost swallowed by inky marks of lust. 

“Jean…” Eren breathes out. He presses their foreheads together and smiles. “I — wow… ” His voice breaks giddily. “That was really fucking good. I think I’d let you do anything right now. I’d let you fuck me, if you asked — hell , you don’t need to ask. Anything you want — fuck my mouth, my ass, my fist…” He swallows the rest of his words down because the images become too much. 

Jean’s face turns bright red as he helplessly imagines each erotic form of completion  in rapid succession. His eyes trace over Eren’s body, from his pretty face and shoulders all the way down to the spot where his thighs meet the surface of the water. For some reason it starts to really bother him that he can’t see the rest.

“ Anything I want?” He takes Eren by the hand and starts moving toward the shore. “Then let’s make ourselves comfortable on land. It’ll work better that way — what I want to do with you.”

Eren follows in a hazy mix of a post-orgasm high and giddy excitement. “Oh?” he teases. “Planning to ravage me on the grass, Jean? Plow my ass like a real man?”

Jean chokes out a laugh as he flicks Eren on the side of his head with his free hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he says, “but I do have a very good plan. You’ll see.” He throws in a charming wink for good measure.

Eren giggles at the wink, a sound rather unusual for him, but he’s still punch-drunk from how hard he came. “Jean…” he sings, “You know you’re covered in my cum? It’s a good look on you — makes you mine …”

Jean turns his gaze down to the ground as his ears redden. “Mm, that so?” He looks down at his stomach, still wet and glistening with Eren’s slick, and he gets a crazy idea for a one-up that he almost can’t work up the courage to do… But dammit, he’s not about to let Eren win their little game that easily. 

Using his stupid pride to steel his resolve, he drags his finger across his stomach, wetting it with Eren’s cum, and watches it dribble down his finger for a moment before he pops it into his mouth. He turns back to Eren and holds his dumbstruck gaze as he sucks on his finger and licks it clean. He’s surprised by the salty taste of Eren… but he finds that he actually doesn’t mind it — how could he when it’s proof of his effect on the boy?

“Heh… there, I’ve got a bit of you inside me now.” Jean’s lips curl into a devious smirk. “I’d say that makes you more mine, doesn’t it?”

Eren stares at Jean. He’s instantly hard again and doesn’t have enough blood going elsewhere to think better of his next actions. He jumps Jean and takes the both of them down onto the grass, rolling once or twice until he has Jean pinned under him. 

He’s still staring because he can’t fucking believe that Jean Kirstein — previously an incorrigible heterosexual skirt chaser — just did that. 

“You’re such an idiot…” he laughs incredulously from his chest, heart beating a mile a minute. “You got some of me in you… There’s literally nothing that would make you more mine than that…” 

Jean feels his whole body blush with aroused embarrassment as he writhes underneath Eren, trying and failing to wrestle his way back on top. “Alright, smartass…” In his struggle, Jean’s cock starts rubbing against one of Eren’s thighs, and he leans his head back slightly as a satisfied sigh pours out of his mouth. “Ah, f-fuck…”

“Sina…” Eren curses, glancing down to watch Jean’s cock rub against him. “I’ve left you wanting…” He presses a kiss to Jean’s open mouth before teasing his way down the boy’s body, lingering on his neck to refresh the two dark marks he’s left, then traveling down further to nip at Jean’s collarbones, before sucking and licking at both nipples in turn. 

“Tell me what you want, Jean…” Eren whispers hoarsely. “You want my mouth on you? Want my fingers around you? Wanna grind on my ass until you spill all over my back, like in the shower rooms?”

Jean struggles to muffle his groans of arousal and anticipation — one of his hands flies to Eren’s hair and tugs it in a brash attempt to reaffirm some type of dominance. “I… I wanna keep messin’ with your body,” he half-whispers, half-growls in reply, taking his other hand and running it slowly down Eren’s chest and stomach. “Kiss it all over while I rut my cock against yours until I cum all over you. Your chest, your face — I wanna cover you with myself…”

Eren muffles his needy groan into Jean’s stomach and then licks up a hot stripe where his cum still lingers on the boy’s skin. “Okay…” he breathes roughly, “Okay — yeah… Fuck, that sounds hot.” 

He rolls off Jean and lays on his back, tossing an arm over his eyes as he struggles to catch some air and draw it into his lungs. “If — if you run outta cum…” he mutters inattentively, “you can always just piss on me and call it a day.”

Jean’s nervous yet aroused laughter practically spills out of him as he shuffles into position over Eren’s waiting body. “Never short on bright ideas, are you?” He lowers his hips onto Eren’s, shuddering as his half-hard cock brushes against the boy’s burning hot length. He leans forward to bring them closer together, wetting his lips before pressing them along Eren’s collarbone, biting and sucking the flesh as he goes.

Eren doesn’t bother holding back his appreciative moan; he thrusts his hips up a little to increase the friction between their cocks. “Ahnn… I-I can’t take full credit…” he gasps. “Was your idea originally — good idea, too.”

Jean sucks hard on the rightmost end of Eren’s collarbone before releasing the skin with a pop. “Of course it was — it came outta my head.” He starts rocking his hips rhythmically into Eren’s as his trail of hot, wet kisses moves down to the boy’s chest. “And there’s a lot more where that came from, trust me.” As if to give Eren a taste of it, Jean presses his lips to Eren’s nipple, circling it with his tongue before grazing it with his teeth.

“Ohhh fuck that’s good…” Eren presses a hand to the back of Jean’s head, keeping him in place as he arches into that teasing tongue. He spreads his legs slightly — the move is instinctive for him — to try and get more contact between their groins, urging Jean to hump him as he likes. Eren’s a bit too fucked-out to do much more than lay there anyway. 

“Yeah? You like that, doll?” Jean kisses Eren across his chest, landing on his other nipple and repeating his teases as he grinds harder into Eren’s hips. He feels the boy’s legs spreading just underneath him and it awakens something feral in him that compels his hips to thrust just a bit faster. Eren’s expression is intoxicating and Jean needs to see more of it — needs to hear more of those soft desperate words and whimpers that come out in spurts and bursts from those pink, kiss-swollen lips…

Meanwhile, the pet name that spills so casually from Jean’s lips sends Eren promptly to another plane of existence. He throws his head back, his soft brown hair spreading out on the grass like a perfect painting, and he moans out shamelessly. “Yes! Fuck — ohhh — yes, I like that…” His hips start pumping upwards shallowly, meeting Jean’s movements with well-coordinated instinct. “I-I want — hahh — I wanna feel you cum all over m-me.” 

“Yeah?” Jean moves back up to Eren’s face and softly caresses the boy’s lips with his own. “Then your wish is my command, princess.” He presses down into Eren’s hips just a bit harder, letting out a soft groan as the pleasure sends shudders through his core. He then leans backward enough to wrap his hand around their cocks and gives them a few firm strokes.

Eren gasps and his hips stutter in their even thrusts as he jolts forward to take full advantage of the added stimulation. He leans up on his elbows to better watch because the sight of his cockhead poking out of Jean’s fist alongside Jean’s cock is something he would pay for. 

“Sina — you have good hands…” he says weakly. Then a particularly good pump makes him keen and fall flat on his back again, fingers clawing into the grass. “Ahhh! Please — shitshitshit — oh god! Cum on me Jean — give it to me!” 

“Mmh — damn, someone’s eager tonight…” Jean slides his free hand down to Eren’s waist and lightly strokes it with his fingertips before grasping it tightly. His grip on their cocks tightens, and his thumb slides steadily back and forth over their cockheads. “Keep talkin’ like that and… ahh, shit… I won’t be able to hold back much longer…”

Eren feels like a literal doll when Jean’s hand grips his waist so tightly — almost lifting him a little off the ground in his blind eagerness. It arouses him enough to speak without a filter, and the pure filth that falls out of his lips is completely unscripted. “Oh my god, fuck it feels so good! I — ahhh — I’m gonna cum on myself. I’m gonna fucking cum on myself from your stupid-perfect hands! Walls! Oh shit! Oh fuck! ” He makes good on his swears and his cock starts leaking white cum — dripping slow and steady over Jean’s fist as Eren fucking dies , moaning and groaning and utterly wrecked. 

Jean’s jaw drops at the utter debauchery of Eren’s voice and the sinfully alluring arc of the boy’s writhing body. His mouth runs dry in an instant — it’s frightening, but it’s also thrilling. When he feels Eren spilling onto his hand and his cockhead in thick, hot ropes, the sheer intensity of his arousal makes him lightheaded. The tension in his groin becomes almost unbearable — helped along by the slickening of his fingers as Eren’s cum slides between them, Jean strokes them both faster, squeezes them harder, panting and grunting and shaking. 

Sina, Rose, and Maria, he feels like his release can’t come fast enough.

“Fuck! Haah — shit, Eren! You’re driving me crazy… ahn, fuck I’m gonna cum too…”

Eren wants it — Sina, how he wants Jean to cum all over him. But the heat and the pressure have gone from feeling heavenly to tipping beyond what he’s able to comfortably stand. He bites his lip hard, forcing himself to wait . Surely, Jean will cum soon — surely, this torture can’t possibly last any longer?

But, fuck. It’s too much. “Jean! Fuck, wait — ohshitohshitohshit— wait!” He weakly tries to raise an arm to press Jean back a little, but his limbs are barely strong enough to prop him up, nevermind reach Jean’s stomach. He throws his head back and writhes on the grass, gasping in a mixture of pleasure and pain as Jean keeps going.

Jean distantly registers Eren crying out to him, but the words’ meanings don’t sink in. The heat of his flesh is consuming him. He bucks his hips up erratically into his fist, watching Eren’s slippery, white cum coat his length. He throws his head back and lets out a breathy moan, the sharp sparks of his approaching orgasm prickling all over his skin in slivers of electric pleasure.

Jean hasn’t stopped. Eren realizes this in between the sharp swings of pleasure and pain that flood his groin. He wants it to stop — and yet doesn’t . There’s the faintest sensation behind his navel that Eren has never felt before — and it’s tugging insistently and persistently with every drag of Jean’s hand. 

Eren vaguely thinks he might cum again. He also thinks he might damn well die if Jean doesn’t stop. “Jean! J-Jean, fuck — you — haaa… Oh god ! Jean you — ahhh — you have to stop! I c-can’t!”

Eren’s voice reaches a feverish pitch and  breaks through the animalistic haze in Jean’s mind. He tips his head down and watches with shameless glee as Eren squirms and writhes beneath him. The boy is wearing a look torn between fear, pain, and helpless arousal and Jean is startled by it for a moment, but the surge of heat in his cock betrays just how much he likes it.  He finds that this particular blend of emotions looks nothing short of stunning on Eren’s face. Abstractedly, he also realizes that he hasn’t let go of Eren’s cock since the boy came. 

And yet, after seeing what it’s doing to Eren, how the boy seizes back and forth between panicked agony and need, how he struggles to pull away from Jean’s merciless grip, he’s not about to let go any time soon. He’s practically burning with desire now, and Eren is still hard, too…

“Roll with it — hah! Just a little longer, o-okay?” Jean reaches back to pet and stroke over Eren’s thigh. “Promise it’ll be worth it… oh, fuck !”

Eren’s tossing his head from side to side, eyes shut tight against the intensity. “Jean! Jean! No — I can’t !” He gasps and then his eyes shoot open because he’s impossibly cumming again. “No! Fuck! Ohmygod fuck !” And it’s dripping out of him so damn slowly — the orgasm burns in its peak. 

Eren doesn’t think he’s felt anything like it before and it makes him sob. “Sina, Jean! Stop! Too — mu-uhh-ch!” 

And still, Jean doesn’t. He revels in the panic that drips from Eren’s words, utterly enchanted by the fear that widens his eyes and sets them ablaze. He feels impossibly hard, his dick twitching and pulsing like mad as Eren’s third load of the night streams out of his abused slit and runs slowly down his length. He strokes Eren thoroughly, milking his orgasm, squeezing hard on each upstroke to draw out every last drop of the boy’s essence. 

Eren’s body is putty in Jean’s hands right now, and he’s sure that nothing in the world could make him feel stronger or more powerful.

A few more hard strokes is all it takes before Jean finally comes undone, shooting his own load in milky-white ropes onto Eren’s stomach and chest. He trembles from head to toe, grunting and moaning wildly, and then falls silent but for his ragged panting. His  body goes utterly slack and he finally releases his grip on their members, both of them softening at last.

“Holy… fuck , Jean…” Eren whimpers, agonized and utterly stupefied. “Holy… fuck …”

Chapter Text

It takes Jean a moment to come back to himself — to fully process what the hell he’d just done. He takes another look at Eren, running his eyes over the boy’s body, weak and languid and glistening with fresh cum. “Shit…” He shakes his head at himself, but his shining eyes and his proud, toothy grin betray his true feelings. “How the hell are you so fuckin’ hot, Eren?”

The boy in question manages to squint weakly at Jean and gives him an equally weak frown. “S’your fault…” He drags a shaky finger through the mess on his stomach and finds that he’s too sensitive for even a chaste touch. “The hell you do to me?” he groans in disbelief.

A satisfied hum rolls out of Jean’s throat as he leans forward to hover over Eren, propping himself up on his hands. “Looks like I broke you a little…” Gingerly, Jean takes a finger and pushes Eren’s matted, disheveled hair out of his eyes. “You did say I could make you cum again and again, till you begged me to stop, right?”

Eren’s eyes are watery when he looks up at Jean, his face a perfect dichotomy between indignation and begrudging admiration. “Y-yeah, guess I did…” He swallows thickly and tries to flex his fingers, coaxing feeling back into them. “Holy… shit — I never — Walls, Jean that was insane.” 

“Yeah, I’ll own that…” Jean sits frozen for a moment, admiring the beauty of Eren’s teary-eyed face, before slowly sliding off of him and lying by his side. “But fuck, it was so hot…” He covers his eyes with his forearm as he laughs giddily. “I had such a good time, seriously.”

Eren follows Jean’s movement with his eyes and then slowly rolls his head over to gaze at him with a dopey smile. “Heh, yeah, it was hot.” He tries to roll the rest of his body but feels a distinct lack of sensation in his hips and legs that foils his attempts. His lips pull down into a small pout. “Glad you had a good time — I’m so fucked up I can’t even move to cuddle my boyfriend.”

Jean rolls his eyes at Eren’s petulant expression, but in his post-orgasm high, he finds it downright adorable, causing a soft blush to spread over his cheeks. “So should I come over to you, then?” he asks softly.

Eren’s eyes flutter as a bashful smile takes the place of his momentary pout. “That’d be nice, yeah.”

Jean slides himself closer to Eren and wraps an arm around the boy’s back, pulling Eren’s face toward his chest. His fingers toy with the ends of Eren’s hair by the nape of his neck, gently combing through them. It all feels weirdly quiet and intimate after the wild, dirty chaos that they’d just finished enacting, but he can feel Eren still smiling against his skin, so he knows he’s doing something right.

Jean presses a kiss on the top of Eren’s head. “You’re right — this does feel nice…”

Encased in Jean’s arms, face pressed against his warm and wonderfully sculpted chest, Eren lets out a shaking sigh between his smile-stretched lips. “Jean?” He breathes, softly pressing a quick kiss to the boy’s chest. “Can I say something awfully sappy?”

Jean quietly sighs and chuckles at the feeling of Eren’s lips on his skin before sliding his hand deeper into Eren’s mess of hair. “Never pegged you for the sappy type, but alright, go ahead.” He hopes that Eren can’t feel his fingers shaking as they gingerly stroke the boy’s scalp…

Eren takes a deep breath, fortifying himself with the masculine scent of Jean’s skin. His chest feels incredibly light — like he forgot to breathe and his lungs have inhaled the expanse of the sky to make up for it. “Y-you don’t need to — to say anything back. I just, I wanna say it.” Eren shuts his eyes and cements the moment in his mind. “I-I think I…” He opens his eyes and turns upwards to find Jean’s gaze, his own eyes somewhat glazed with confusion. “Oh, I think I might be pissing myself right now…”

Jean’s eyes widen to twice their size — that’s the last thing that he’d expected to hear after all that buildup. And sure enough, he’s starting to feel a growing hot wetness pool around where his thigh meets Eren’s groin. For reasons that are beyond him, he’s too stunned by it to move.

“Dude, what the…”

Jean hides the lower half of his face behind one of his hands, mortified by the strong rose-red blush that’s searing itself onto his skin. Why (and more importantly, how ) in the name of all three Walls is he somehow still aroused by this shit?

Eren laughs weakly and tries — albeit sluggishly — to push somewhat away from Jean. But not at all to keep the slow warm trinkle from getting on the other boy’s thigh… just to watch it. “Walls… I think you really did break me — I can’t even feel myself pissing right now.” He giggles, eyes pasted to the sight and strangely, he likes it. A lot . 

“Fuckin’ Maria, I know I didn’t squeeze you that hard…” Jean tries to sound indignant, but his voice is far too breathy to sell the act. He, too, stares with rapture at  the warm, steamy liquid that’s streaming down his leg, soaking the skin. His hips squirm at the perversely pleasurable wetness, and the charming ring of Eren’s laughter makes his heart flutter and race all the more.

The stream falters, and Eren’s dick gives a very obvious twitch. “You didn’t squeeze me…” Eren says thoughtfully, clenching his abs to test if he could feel anything in his lower region. He squirts a little as a result and blushes, surprisingly embarrassed. “Think it’s just — cumming three times so quickly kinda numbed me down there.” 

“Y-yeah, that… that’d do it…” Jean shifts his body away from the puddle of piss in the grass, sitting up to dry off his leg as best he can with the palm of his hand. He’s clearly in no rush, though, moving his hand slowly over the soiled flesh and privately savoring the feeling of it. “You just… you never fail to catch me the fuck off my guard… seriously, how do you do it?”

Eren laughs truly now, a bright sound that frees him from most of his post-orgasm haze. He leans up on one arm, looking at Jean sideways and grinning. “It’s just natural talent, Jean…” He reaches out and brushes a patch of skin on Jean’s thigh where he can see the sheen of his earlier wetting, and rubs it with his thumb. He feels mildly ecstatic about the way Jean hasn’t rushed off to the lake already and has to tame the animal in his chest from devouring Jean there and then. “Guess this makes us even, huh?”

Jean returns Eren’s genuine laughter — the boy’s easygoing attitude somewhat quells the uneasy fires of embarrassment in his chest. “Yeah, I guess it does,” he sighs, and then he finally gathers the courage to look back at Eren’s face. 

He’s a bit thrown by the dark, possessive energy swimming in the boy’s eyes. He finds his heart racing all over again, but he doesn’t dare break Eren’s gaze, instead meeting him with a curious yet intensely serious stare of his own. “You’re gettin’ crazy-ass ideas again, aren’t you? What the fuck are you planning?”

The gentle circling on Jean’s thigh stops almost instantly and is replaced with a bruising claw hold as Eren whips up and snags the boy’s hair with his other hand, drawing him down for a kiss that feels borderline violent. 

Eren parts from the kiss wetly and loudly and grins at Jean’s astonished look. “A part of me wonders if you really wanna know, Jean…”

Jean shuts his parted lips and curls them into a devious smirk. “Do you really have to ask, dumbass?” As quickly as he can, he grabs Eren’s hip and digs his fingers deep enough into the flesh to bruise. “Whatever it is, I want it.”

“Oh!” Eren’s surprise at the sudden grip barely matches his surprise and stomach-flipping delight at Jean’s answering ferality. He swallows the sudden flood of want in his mouth and uses both his hands to cup Jean’s face, drawing it close so that he can bite at that delicious lower lip. Jean whimpers faintly, shutting his eyes and squirming beside Eren as his grip on him tightens further.

Eren toys with Jean’s lip for a bit and then lets it go with a lick. “Knew I could count on you bein’ game,” he says huskily. He smirks and drags his tongue slowly over Jean’s mouth, feeling disgustingly obsessed with the boy’s taste. “You make me an animal , Jean…”

Eren’s aggression awakens a rough, earthy kind of lust in Jean that he’s never felt before, and it drives him wild. He answers Eren by hastily closing the gap between their lips again, pushing hard against Eren’s as he licks the boy’s upper lip and tugs at it with his teeth. He claws at every inch of Eren’s upper body, jumping from his hips up to his sides, scratching at his shoulders and biceps, running his claws in red stripes down the boy’s back. Everywhere that he can reach, Jean feels a deep, aching need to claim it.

And it burns on Eren’s skin. He can feel the sharp bite of fingernails digging into his skin, ripping the surface to redden the pristine tan of his body. He feels fucking owned and it makes him lightheaded with glee. It takes some force but he pulls away from Jean’s kiss to growl out his desperate thoughts. “Y-you know what you make me wanna do? What kinda shitty stupid fucking things you make me wanna do, Jean?”

“No, I don’t —” Jean presses another rough, messy kiss to Eren’s lips before pulling away again. “So how about you just show me instead of talkin’ so damn much?” He snakes down to the crook of Eren’s neck and bites deep into the flesh before sucking it with as much force as he can muster.

“Ahhh!” Eren feels like he’s burning up — he swears his body is steaming from Jean’s ministrations on him — each bite and bruise feels like fire on his skin and he loves it. Bruises don’t last long on him so he takes full pleasure in at least making them appear. 

He threads his fingers through the messy spikes of Jean’s caramel-colored hair and tugs on them sharply to dislodge Jean from his neck, because those lips belong on his. The kiss is more bite than lip and he forces his tongue in prematurely to savor that sweet taste of Jean . 

He pulls back a hair. “You make me wanna walk nude through camp with all your damn marks — prove to everyone that I’m yours… still sure you want me to just do it?” he teases breathlessly.

“Oh, fuck, Eren…” Jean’s lips sting from Eren’s graceless, hungry handling of them, and he loves how much it hurts — it means Eren isn’t holding back, and he never wants that to change. He drags his nails down Eren’s sides as he revels in his inability to catch his breath. “Are you trying to make me lose my mind? Fuck, I don’t even care — just come at me already. Do your worst.”

Like a trigger, the words fire off something in Eren so primitive he doesn’t even have a chance to fight his next actions. One moment he’s sitting beside Jean and writhing in blissful torture — the next he has Jean under him and his hands clamped at Jean’s neck. 

He wants to rip Jean up, pour his own blood into the cavities and stitch him back together. He wants to leave marks so deep and permanent that Jean will never wake up without feeling that Eren has been with him. 

He’s not even sure what to do now, leaning over Jean with a myriad of thoughts bombarding him, each more desperate and vicious than the last. His heart feels like it’s going to pound right out of his chest. “Jean —” he gasps. “Fuck… Jean …” He squeezes his hand over Jean’s neck, eyes wide and desperate. “You’re fucking mine , understand?”

The wind gets knocked out of Jean when he hits the ground. He tries to take a breath, but hardly any air finds its way to his starving lungs — Eren’s vice grip on his neck is too tight. Jean’s hands fly to Eren’s forearms, and he clenches his jaw as he pushes against them in a panic. His hips are trapped underneath Eren’s — he brings up one of his knees to try ramming it into Eren’s back, but he can’t put enough force behind it to get him to budge. 

He’s stuck here, completely at the mercy of Eren’s feral, possessive, and slightly insane whims.

Soon Jean feels his chest start to burn from the lack of oxygen, and a kick of adrenaline gives him enough strength to rip one of Eren’s hands from his neck. His first instinct is to bite that hand for daring to pin him down that hard.

And that bite does quite a number on Eren. Suddenly, bright hot unpleasant pain rushes through him and he yelps, letting go of Jean’s throat and ripping his hand out of that dangerous mouth. 

And then he realizes what he nearly — no — what he did. “Shit! Jean, I’m sorry! Fuck are you okay?”

Jean’s coughs are dry and sputtering; he clumsily pushes himself upright as he fights to draw air back into his lungs. His eyes flit over to Eren sitting about half a meter ahead of him, shaking off the fresh wound on his hand, and the red haze of mortal danger that hangs over Jean’s head slowly starts to dissipate. “I’m… I’m alright,” he answers hoarsely as he trembles ever so slightly. “You don’t have to worry about me…” 

Jean takes several slow, deep breaths to remind his body that it’s no longer in danger, to remind himself that Eren isn’t trying to kill him (otherwise the lunatic would’ve pinned him again by now). He has no idea how to feel about the ferocity of Eren’s passion right now… but at the very least, he doesn’t want to shy away from it. As soon as he’s steady again, Jean moves back into Eren’s space and grabs his face, pulling him in for a deep, breathless kiss.

Eren’s eyes are wide open when Jean kisses him and remain so when he pulls back. He moves his hands tentatively to feel at Jean’s throat, ensuring that no lasting damage had been made to his windpipe and feeling almost cold with how fucking scared he is. 

Eren had done shit like this before — had lost himself in some sort of insane passion where he couldn’t tell if it was lust, obsession, or downright madness that would take over his mind. He didn’t think it would happen with Jean — he had hoped it wouldn’t. 

“Walls… Sorry, I don’t — fuck I don’t even know what I was thinking.” He pulls his hands back and searches Jean’s face, unsure of what he’s looking for but only seeing relief in his eyes. “I — I can’t even say that hasn’t happened before…” he admits weakly.

Jean starts laughing incredulously at the thought, which triggers another short coughing fit. “You regularly choke the shit out of people you really like?” he asks semi-rhetorically once he catches his breath again.

Eren laughs weakly, mostly in relief that Jean is not freaking out as bad as he is. “No — well, okay kinda? Mostly just Floch, but he didn’t know how to fight back…” 

The image briefly passes through Jean’s head, and he can’t tell whether he wants to laugh at it or retch at it. “Why am I not surprised…” He shakes his head and places one of his hands on top of Eren’s. “Don’t beat yourself up too much, okay? To be fair, you gave me three whole warnings and I heeded none of them.”

Eren’s eyes follow the movement of Jean’s hand and he feels like the weight of all three Walls falls off his chest at the casual contact. Maybe it says more about Jean’s recklessness than Eren’s trustworthiness, but he’d rather take the latter explanation and soothe his bruised ego. He rubs his nose and smiles. “Yeah well, you did say to give you my ‘worst’... maybe try ‘best’ next time, yeah?” 

“Yeah… good job saying something smart for once.” Jean chuckles as he gently rubs circles into the back of Eren’s hand with his thumb. He meets Eren’s eyes and gives him a genuine smile. 

“I’ve got moments of brilliance —” Eren teases. He sobers somewhat at the soft smile Jean gives him and feels a soft flutter in his heart. Nothing like the beast that briefly went unchained, this feeling is pleasant and something easily catered to. He leans forward a little and places his palm warmly on Jean’s cheek, brushing at the boy’s sharp zygomatic arch. “Hey… can I kiss you?” 

Jean is briefly stunned into silence by how silly the question sounds to him, but something about Eren’s soft, unusually innocent tone is incredibly endearing. He sighs as his face starts to flush again, and he turns his gaze toward the grass. “You don’t —” he starts, and then the words feel too useless to keep uttering, so he looks back up at Eren and gives him a nod. “Go ahead.”

The burst of butterflies is an unprecedented sensation and Eren feels almost nervous to kiss Jean. He knows the nerves don’t come from fear of messing up the kiss itself. He’s kissed Jean many times already and it comes naturally — the nerves must come from something else. 

He wonders if this is his roundabout, incompetent way of apologizing. 

Gently, he tips Jean’s face towards him, using the barest amount of pressure at his jaw to angle him right. And then he brushes his lips softly, tentatively, over Jean’s. He presses once and parts, then repeats the motion. Again. And again.

Jean shuts his eyes and follows Eren’s slow, gentle lead, savoring the tenderness of each brush over his lips. At some point he finds himself giggling like a little boy in between each kiss — something about this feels so stupidly juvenile after everything that had just transpired. Not that he minds it, of course — Jean enjoys this sweet, unassuming side of Eren just as much as he enjoys his multitude of wilder sides.

He brings his free hand up to Eren’s arm and strokes it as they kiss, using the leverage to pull their bodies closer to each other. He feels like he could stay right here kissing Eren like this till the sun came back up and he wouldn’t be bored for a second.

It’s Jean’s giggling that does it for Eren; he’s smiling as he plants continuous pecks on those soft lips, and then he moves to kissing the corners of Jean’s smile, and then further out to kiss his pink cheeks. He feels intoxicated in the best way, the feeling light and bubbly and so… soft. 

“Whatcha’ giggling at, baby?” he croons through his smile, pressing kisses between his words. 

Jean playfully shoves Eren and laughs harder in response to the question. “Nothin’,” he insists, and then he quickly pecks the tip of Eren’s nose. “Just havin’ a real good time right now.” 

Eren goes slightly cross-eyed at the kiss and then he laughs, happily, and moves to capture Jean’s face in his hands again. He presses their noses together in a brief eskimo kiss and then pulls Jean closer for a real kiss, planting his lips solidly against the other boy’s and sighing a soft moan into them. 

He pulls back briefly. “I’m having a good time too, Jean — honestly…” Eren pauses, and then feels his body relax considerably. “Honestly, I think I’m in love with you.”

The words simultaneously set Jean on fire and freeze him rigid. His lips fall open from shock at how calmly Eren had just made the admission. He swallows thickly in a vain attempt to ease his drying throat, scrambling to find the words with which to answer Eren.

His problem is that “I love you too” feels like an insufficient statement.

Jean has lost track of all the different ways that Eren has made him feel in just this night alone — forget about the rest of the week — and he can say with confidence that he’s never felt more alive in his whole life than he did while spending this time with Eren. That’s always been true, yes — their largely manufactured rivalry had been the only thing standing between him and a boredom-induced breakdown since the beginning of training — but now it feels true on levels that are too deep for Jean to see. 

Instead, he senses them. They hum and vibrate at the simple sight of Eren, at the rare softness in his eyes as he smiles at Jean like nothing else in the world could make him happier.

A small part of Jean feels like he doesn’t deserve such adoration. The rest of him is very greedy and wants it more than he needs air.

Jean pulls Eren into a tight hug so that he has no chance of seeing the microscopic tears that prick the corners of his eyes. “Dude, you… you can’t just… say shit like that…”

The first thing Eren feels is just bone-deep relief. The second thing he feels is a perfect mixture of joy and love so strong it makes him ache. And then Jean had to go and speak in that shocked, breathless, unbelieving tone of voice and now Eren is lost. 

He thinks his voice is wet when he laughs, but he can’t really do much about it or the stinging in his throat. “I — fuck, sorry! I speak before I think sometimes —” He tightens his hold on Jean, squeezing him with enough force to really convey his euphoria. “You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to say that, Jean.” 

Jean once again feels like he can hardly breathe with Eren holding him like this, but this time he feels no need to run from it. “Glad you finally got it off your chest,” he laughs as he rubs Eren’s back. “And I’m sorry I’m so shitty with words right now; I just…” He turns his head to tenderly kiss Eren on the cheek. “Too many feelings; I don’t even know where to start.”

Eren loosens his hold enough to turn his face up and steal a kiss from Jean’s lips. It makes him giddy to do that with the word ‘love’ plastered on his face and in his mind. He smiles softly and thumbs Jean’s lower lip, just because. “It’s okay — not all of us have a dictionary ready for love-confessions.” 

Jean grins like an idiot as he stares into Eren’s adoring eyes, marveling at the way his emerald irises shine under the moonlight. He leans forward to steal the kiss back — the first pass is quick, and the second takes its sweet time, thoroughly marking Eren’s lips with Jean’s deep admiration. 

“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just call me an idiot somewhere in there,” he laughs, and then he takes Eren’s hand and laces their fingers together. “But on a more serious note, I… I feel like a real damn lucky man right now.” With a smile, he gives Eren’s hand a soft squeeze.

Eren blushes and ducks his head a little to hide his smile. “Don’t be sappy, Jean —” He giggles and then turns his face back up towards those shimmering golden lights in Jean’s eyes. “ I’m the lucky man. I scored a prince.” 

Jean flashes an irritatingly charming smirk, but the softness and warmth in his gaze never falters. “Indeed you did, princess.” The man can’t help himself, so he pulls Eren forward to kiss him one more time, just to really sell the line.

Eren buys it eagerly and smiles into the kiss, even if his cheeks are burning a little. When they part he snickers slightly and gives Jean a salacious eyebrow wiggle. “Well… it’s gotten ever so late — and you absolutely ravished your princess so thoroughly… I don’t think she’ll be able to dress herself at all tonight, or walk to her bed. You’ll simply have to carry her the whole way to the bunkers and woe be unto you if someone sees you in the act and laughs at the sight!” 

“Is that so?” Jean gets up and walks over to Eren’s haphazardly discarded boots in the grass nearby, bringing them back over just to whack the top of Eren’s head with their heels. “Who said anyone would be laughing at me?” He chuckles as he drops the boots and moves to collect the rest of Eren’s clothes. “Won’t Duke Springer and Duchess Braus be laughing at your ass getting princess carried through camp?”

Eren pouts, rubbing the back of his head as he gets up. “Actually, your royal high-horseness. I think they’d just laugh at both of us and then probably get real worried when they see the state of your neck —” Eren moves to snag his shirt from Jean’s collection of clothes and gives the boy a wink. “It’ll look like I ravished you… ”

Jean had forgotten all about his injury while swimming through his thoughts and feelings earlier — he cringes at the unfortunate truth of Eren’s words. “Sina, Rose, and Maria…” He busies himself by taking Eren’s shirt from him and shaking it off before shoving the boy’s arms through the sleeves. “You tried to snap my neck and I threw you into the lake for it. That’s the fuckin’ story, Yeager. You understand me?”

Eren snorts a laugh and pulls his arm through one sleeve before walking his fingers up Jean’s chest and onto his chin, which he flicks playfully. “You can’t use that anymore — everyone already knows we’re fucking.” He spares a glance at the rest of his and Jean’s clothes thoughtfully before turning back to Jean with a shit-eating grin. “I could always get you a matching scarf like Mikasa’s…”

“What the —” Jean rams the heel of his palm into Eren’s forehead before straightening out the boy’s jacket. “I don’t need anything in my closet that matches your girlfriend’s clothes; are you out of your mind?”

“Oi!” Eren rubs his forehead but doesn’t retaliate much… much . “I’m not out of my mind — I was though…” he admits freely. He placatingly lays a hand on Jean’s still-bare chest, fingers dancing on the collarbone. “We can say that I was tryin’ to top, but it didn’t work out for me, ‘kay? The bruise is proof of my incredible self-defense.”

“Alright, fair…” Jean reaches for Eren’s trousers and underwear, scrunched together in a pile to the side, and he freezes when he realizes that he hadn’t quite gotten the reaction that he’d anticipated. “Wait — Mikasa isn’t actually your girlfriend, right?”

Eren mimics Jean and freezes as well. He scratches the back of his neck and shrugs. “I don’t think so…” he offers slowly before turning to look at Jean somewhat guiltily. “Uh — what do you count as girlfriend status?”

“Huh.” Jean has never been asked such a question, he realizes, so he has to think about it for a moment. “Well — are you fuckin’ her?”

Eren blushes darkly. “N- well, okay sometimes…”

“For real?” Jean shoves the rest of Eren’s clothes into the boy’s arms. “The fuck are you doing so poorly that she still walks around lookin’ bored all the time?”

“I — wait what?” Eren feels utterly backhanded and reels for a moment in confusion at Jean’s question. It takes him longer than Connie to understand the words; when it hits him he drops his clothes. “Jean! She doesn’t like it that hard!” he squeaks. 

Jean feels the hairs on the back of his neck bristle at Eren’s astonishing honesty. “Alright, I don’t need to hear anything more about that,” he grumbles as he fishes his own clothes out of the grass. 

Eren laughs incredulously and, grabbing his trousers again, starts shimmying them up his legs. “You sure? You liked her didn’t you?” he teases fondly. 

“Yeah, duh,” Jean fires back as he slides his legs into his own trousers. “But I don’t see why that’s super important right now…” He zips up his fly and tries to ignore the burning sensation on the tips of his ears.

Eren smirks and clicks his tongue. “Not now, no… but maybe for later.” 

Jean’s imagination gets bowled over by the memory of their shared fantasy from the stables, and he trips over his own feet while reaching for his shirt in the grass. “You were really serious about that?” he muses aloud as he scrambles back to his feet and hurriedly throws the shirt back on.

“Sure, you’ve never been with a guy and a girl at the same time?” Eren asks casually, fiddling with his belt as he struggles to find the prong-holes in the dark. Suddenly, interrupting his own thoughts, he looks up and turns an accusing glare at Jean. “Hold on. You said you fucked Valerie right? How the hell have you fucked a girl but never kissed anyone?”

“Huh? I — !”

Jean’s mouth hangs open uselessly for a moment as he tries and fails to produce a decently believable excuse. He is taken aback by Eren’s attentiveness to his story, which makes him feel like even more of an idiot for not trying hard enough to keep it straight. He turns away from Eren to finish buttoning up his shirt and then pull up his jacket. “Ain’t none of your business,” he mutters lamely.

“Eh!?” Eren doesn’t buy Jean’s words for a minute and feels only more confused by what they insinuate. He moves closer and pokes Jean in the small of his back. “No, no you can’t say that. We’re boyfriends now. I wanna know how the hell you’ve never kissed anyone and yet fucked this Trost girl. You owe me that much!”

As much as Jean hates to admit it, Eren does have a point. He takes a breath, and his shoulders relax as his face flushes deeper. “Look, Valerie doesn’t exist, alright? I made her up so you’d be more intimidated by my sexual prowess.” He puts a hand behind his neck and chuckles wryly. “Not that I really needed to do that since I’m so damn good at improvising… but you get the idea.”

To say that Eren is flabbergasted would be an understatement. He flounders for a while in the wake of this unforeseen knowledge and feels like an utter imbecile for not catching on sooner — and also helplessly impressed. 

“So…” He swallows and glances away from Jean’s charming expression. “So you’re telling me… You were a — a virgin? And…” Eren blinks and turns up to look at Jean with awed bemusement. “How the hell are you so fuckin’ good?”

The look on Eren’s face is priceless to Jean — he puts a finger under Eren’s chin to hold him there, and his smirk somehow gets even more smug but still never loses its charm. “Like I told you, I’m good at reading a room.” His eyes flit down to Eren’s chest before coming back up. “Good at reading your body… and you make it real easy, doll.”

Eren feels his body heat up from his toes to the crown of his head; he’s pretty sure that his cheeks are red to top it off. “Fuckin’ Maria, Jean…” he chokes. “That’s like… that’s Colossal Titan levels of unfair.” His pout doesn’t last long though because he catches onto something which gives him quite the card against Jean. Eren smirks and grabs Jean’s wrist, yanking the hand down from under his chin and pinning it to the boy’s thigh. “At least I get to say that I took your virginity. Add it to my long list.” 

“Oh, fuck off, Yeager.” 

Ordinarily he would consider throwing a punch right now, Jean thinks in the back of his head, but he finds himself feeling too damn giddy to care about fighting. Instead, he cracks up as he throws his arm around Eren’s shoulders and starts up a whole new round of stupid banter while he walks them both back to camp. This new script feels strange to follow, but it also feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Jean briefly wonders if this is what it feels like to be in love.