Chapter Text
I want you to be mine
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Eren’s been looking forward to this trip for weeks. Between classes and work, he’s been needing some time off and a week and a half of cabin fun with his best friends is the perfect way to end the semester.
He’d arrived before anyone else and decided to start unpacking when the front door slammed and footsteps could be heard. He’d assumed it was Connie and Sasha finally making an entrance, it was their cabin, after all, so he hadn’t bothered to check who it was.
It wasn’t until he’d unpacked and gone back to the living room that he saw.
Which is why he’d asked;
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Because Eren is one hundred percent sure that Jean was not supposed to join them. He’d checked and double-checked with Connie that Jean wouldn’t be joining them this year.
Dammit.
Jean shrugs. “Last minute decision.”
Eren, always prepared to find something to argue with Jean over, says, “Well you should remove your boots before you come inside. Have you seen the fucking wet sludge you’ve tracked in?”
Jean shrugs again like the menace he is, runs a hand through his hair — it’s longer now than when Eren last saw him, but really, Eren doesn’t exactly make a habit out of seeing Jean if he can avoid it — and says, “I have time to clean it up. Connie and Sasha won’t be arriving until tomorrow anyway.”
“What?”
Because if there’s one thing Eren cannot deal with, it’s spending an entire night with just Jean. Okay, deep breath Eren, because Ymir and Historia are on their way and will be here in a few hours and it’ll be okay. It’ll be fine.
“Connie said they’re stuck at the airport, he sent me a text. All the flights are delayed until at least tomorrow because of the storm.”
Eren isn’t listening to Jean at all. He’s mentally trying to figure out how far away Ymir and Historia should be right about now. If they left their apartment this morning like Eren did, then they would be driving through… And they would arrive at…
“But luckily for you, I have a brain and I got food before it was too late and we’d be snowed in here.”
Eren turns and moves from the living room to the room he’d claimed to find his phone, charging, where he’d left it before he was oh so rudely interrupted.
He calls Historia.
“Please tell me you’re here soon?”
Historia giggles. “My, my, Eren, I didn’t know you were that excited to meet your nephew!”
Historia, five months pregnant and without a biological family worth shit, had named her closest friends as her family. Eren and her had grown up closer than brother and sister, because they had the fortune of being able to talk about sex more intimately than any brother and sister could.
Ymir would probably have murdered Eren for all the times Historia had changed in front of him, if he wasn’t about as straight as a cooked spaghetti.
“Look, Connie and Sasha’s flight is cancelled and they can’t get here until tomorrow at the earliest. So please tell me you’re close?”
Historia sighs. “Oh no, are you there all alone?” Eren makes a non-committal sound at that. “Actually, we’re stuck about an hour outside of town. The roads are horrible and we can’t—”
“But you’re so close. Please.”
“Eren, baby, I know you don’t like being alone, but—” The line scratches and Eren is positive that Ymir just stole the phone from her wife.
“Listen here you little shit, I’m not putting the life of my wife and unborn son on the line because you’re scared of being alone.”
Eren takes a deep breath. Okay. Yeah, he’s being unreasonable. He can’t do that to Historia.
“Right. Sorry. I get it. I’m sorry. Can I have Tori back, please?”
“You’re not going to try and convince her, are you?” Ymir asks sternly.
“No please, I just… please?”
There’s a brief silence as Ymir hands the phone to Historia again.
“Eren, I know you don’t—”
“I’m not alone,” Eren breathes out in a rush. “Jean is here. And Connie and Sasha are stuck at the airport and you two aren’t coming and Jean is here.”
Either the air is too thin because he’s up on a fucking mountain, or Eren is on the verge of a panic attack.
Eren and Jean have always been rivals. Their hatred of one another has never been a question and has always been mutual. Ever since junior high, when they had gotten into an argument in English class on whether or not the Trojan Horse was real — it absolutely was, and Eren will die on that hill — and then later at recess, when Jean had called Eren ‘a smooth-brained douchebag’ and Eren had of course punched him in the jaw over it, they’ve been at odds ever since.
Since, unfortunately, they share the same group of friends, perhaps over the years they could be called ‘frenemies’ — but their relationship has not much improved. Albeit fistfights between them are a rare occurrence now. Eren chalks that up to maturity, and the fact that he could actually go to jail for battery were Jean to press charges.
“You’ll be fine, Eren. What are you, five?” Historia asks. “You can’t be more immature than your nephew who isn’t even born yet, come on.”
“I’m sure my nephew will hate Jean too. He’ll have great taste, just like his uncle.”
“You’d like Jean if either of you could go five minutes without getting into an argument.”
“That’s just it! If either of us could! I’m an easy-going person,” Eren argues. “It’s Jean who’s an unreasonable nightmare!”
“Did Eren just describe himself as easy-going?” Eren hears Ymir mutter in the background. Eren glowers at his iPhone as he hears Historia choke on a laugh, trying to pass it off as a cough. She’s always been an atrocious liar.
Eren is of the opinion that he is very easy-going, thank you very much. It’s just Jean, with his arrogance, his self-righteousness, his insufferable need to always be the smartest person in the room, his stupid… hair. Well, okay, his hair isn’t actually too bad, especially after he let it grow out. Like hell is Eren going to tell him that though — it’d go straight to his already too-big head.
Though… calling Jean horseface really has become more of a habit than an actual insult. Dare Eren even say it’s become an affectionate pet name? Except there’s nothing remotely affectionate about it. Absolutely not. But Jean isn’t ugly, Eren won’t unnecessarily lie. He’s kind of a pretty boy, in a rugged, lazy sort of way. He’d be exactly Eren’s type if he wasn’t — Jean. Yeah, Eren’s gay and he isn’t blind, of course, Jean’s hot. He also just happens to be the worst.
Eren fastidiously does not think about his not-crush, agitatedly twirling his nose ring in between his fingers. What is he to do? Should he brave the snowstorm, the elements, and any possible bears? Eren’s sorely tempted. Because really, what could be worse than being stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere in a snowed-in cabin with none other than Jean horseface Kirstein? How are they supposed to pass the time? By playing scrabble? Pictionary? Eren broods.
“I think I might actually go to jail for manslaughter if I’m left here alone with Jean. Overnight,” Eren tells Historia, slumping down on the bed. This is in fact a very real fear. “And I don’t think prison is as much fun as Orange is the New Black makes it out to be.”
“Of course not,” Eren hears Ymir’s unnecessary commentary, again. “You wouldn’t go to a prison with all of the lesbians.”
Eren gapes down at his phone. “Tori, do you have me on speaker?!”
“I’m bored.” That’s Ymir’s voice, fucking again, even though Eren was obviously not talking to her. “This is free entertainment — do not take that away from me, Jaeger.”
“Eren, I promise, it’ll all be fine,” Historia attempts to soothe. “You and Jean are big boys, and you probably have more in common than you think. If you’d both just lay down a white flag for the night, you might even have some fun. Can’t you just try to get along with him? For me?”
“Yeah Eren,” Ymir calls. “Be accommodating, for once in your life. You can’t stress out a pregnant lady.”
“You’re only gonna be able to use that card for a few more months,” Eren shoots back miserably. He’s going to die. He’s actually going to die. He’s going to end up like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining, and Ymir and Historia will have to dig him out of the snow, lamenting that they should indeed have braved the weather because if they had, they wouldn’t have lost such a dear soul far too soon. It soothes Eren, in a way, to imagine his own tragic death. He’s sure everyone would miss him so dearly. They’d probably cry. He hopes they’d at least have the decency to play Highway to Hell at his funeral.
“Then I’ll take advantage of it while I can,” Historia hums, pleased. “Love you, hun.”
“Love you too,” Eren says back, only partly insincere because he can’t stay mad at Historia, really. Still, Eren can’t help but try his luck. “I’d love you even more if you just drove one more hour—”
The sound of the phone line clicking is Historia’s only response.
“I can feel the love leaving my body,” Eren says uselessly to his phone, the dead air crackling through it before he sighs, flopping back bonelessly onto the bed. He could just hole up here and have an early bedtime tonight. His sleeping schedule has been atrocious as of late due to finals. But wouldn’t that be just a bit too pitiful? Wouldn’t it make Eren look like he was avoiding Jean, like some coward?
Well fuck that. Eren isn’t a coward and he isn’t avoiding Jean. And it is very lonely to be stranded up here all alone, in this big, empty room filled with echoes. This is as much Eren’s cabin as it is Jean’s — he doesn’t own it, but he was invited, and that has to count for something. His invite was probably genuine, while Jean’s was surely out of pity.
Vindicated, Eren shakes off his fit of hopelessness and returns downstairs, a changed man. Immature? He’ll show them all that he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.
“Historia and Ymir aren’t going to make it tonight,” Eren tells Jean, who’s busy putting food away in the refrigerator, looking as if he hasn’t a care in the world. “The weather’s too bad for them to risk it.”
And at least Eren cared enough to call and ask.
Jean looks over at him, sparing him only a fleeting glance. “Yeah, Ymir texted me earlier that they’d be around tomorrow.”
Ymir and Jean text? Eren didn’t even know they knew each other!
Eren feels an ugly scowl cross his face. It takes all of his strength to smooth his expression back over into placid indifference.
“So,” Jean shuts the refrigerator door, leaning his elbows over the island, drumming his fingers agitatedly against the marble as his eyes flick from Eren to literally anything else in the room. “That means it’s just the two of us for tonight.”
Eren can’t contain his sigh. “Yep.”
“Wonderful,” Jean mutters under his breath. Eren is positive he was meant to hear it.
“Marvellous,” Eren echoes Jean’s derision, and Jean’s eyes sharpen into a familiar glare as he frowns up at him.
“Are you seriously playing copycat?”
Eren ignores him. “I’m starving. What did you get to eat?”
“Take a look, your highness,” Jean says sarcastically as Eren brushes past him, shoulder-checking him in the process. Eren prickles, Jean’s glare is like a physical weight, a brand burning into the back of his neck. Of all the days not to wear his hair down. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“... Why did you only get vegetables?”
“What?”
“What do you mean what?” The threads of Eren’s patience are frayed, dangerously worn thin, and perilously close to snapping as Jean leans over Eren’s shoulder. Eren attributes the prickle of heat that shoots up his spine at the feeling of Jean’s chest against his back just another form of irritation. “Look at this. It looks like you went shopping for a family of fucking rabbits. You know I hate vegetables, you bastard.”
“They’re called ingredients, Jaeger,” Jean snaps, finally taking a blessed step back. “You know, the things you cook with? In order to make food? There’s pasta in the cupboards. I know it might be a little more complicated than instant ramen like you’re used to—”
“Oh fuck you!” Never mind that Eren’s diet has strictly been cups of noodles for the past three months. Eren could cook if he really wanted to. He’s just never wanted to. Or learned how. “Are you serious? Why did you get a damn root?”
“... That’s a radish.”
“Sounds fake to me,” Eren rolls his eyes, slamming the refrigerator door shut with his hip. Whatever. He’ll just wait until Jean makes his food, and then subtly steal off his plate.
Yet when he turns around, Jean’s still uselessly leaning against the counter, watching Eren almost expectantly.
“What?”
Jean raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to make us some food? You know, you actually have to take the food out of the refrigerator to cook with it.”
“It’s your food,” Eren snaps, heat rising to his face. “You do it.”
“How does that make sense?” Jean argues. “I bought it — you cook it. Division of labour, bitch.”
“Are you discriminating against me?”
“What?”
“Because I’m gay,” Eren elaborates because he can see that Jean is a moron in need of an explanation, one Eren is more than happy to provide. He smirks, despite himself. “So naturally because I’m gay, I should be the one stuck in the kitchen, making the food, right? Pretty homophobic of you, Jean.”
Eren learned very early on, ever since he came out at the tender age of fourteen, that the best way to either get out of something or make someone else do something for him was to accuse them of discriminating against him. It’s a tried and true method, and very reliable. It’s why his father let him get his nose pierced — because Grisha may be a serial cheater, but being accused of being a bigot was apparently a step too far.
Yet Jean just looks at him, fish-eyed. “You do know that I’m bi, right?”
“What?” No, Eren did not in fact know that. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. What, are you discriminating against me?” Jean mocks him but Eren’s still reeling from the revelation that Jean isn’t the straight, unattainable boy he’s been stupidly, secretly lusting over for years to really pay it any mind. Because everyone knows it's fine to have a crush on a straight guy. It's like a rite of passage or some shit. But if Jean swings both ways…
Suddenly, it’s as if Eren sees Jean in an entirely new light. One that is ethereal, bright-edged, incandescent. Haloing him in stunning brilliance, catching on the sparkles embedded deep in his honey-golden eyes—
No, fuck, that’s just the fluorescents.
This changes nothing. So what if Jean swings both ways? He’s only ever swung a fist in Eren’s direction — and Eren has always responded in kind. Sometimes with teeth. Fifteen was an interesting year.
The point is, that it’s too late to alter their dynamic. Not that Eren would even want to. He pities the poor soul who ends up with a horse as a boyfriend. Imagine the money one’s bank account would haemorrhage on hay alone...
Besides, if Jean ever found out about this not-crush, it would be just another thing for him to ridicule Eren about.
“Fine, whatever,” Eren dismisses, in a tone that implies he couldn’t care less. Nailed it, his inner voice caws. “I’m allergic to lettuce, so I can’t cook.”
Jean’s hands curl into fists like he wants nothing more than to punch Eren squarely in the face. Eren kind of hopes he does. “You can’t be allergic to lettuce! That isn’t a real thing!”
“It is too!”
“I didn’t get lettuce anyway! Go get your eyes checked.”
“Fuck you!” Eren finally loses his temper — he managed to spend five minutes trapped in a room with Jean Kirstein, without raising his voice. Historia should be proud. But like an ember relentlessly prodded, anger flares hot and heavy in his chest, choking his lungs in smoke as he hisses. “That’s it, I’m done. I tried to play fucking nice with you Kirstein, for the record. But I really am done. I need some space.”
“Fine!” Jean snaps back, eyes narrowed, his anger burning just as hot as he throws his hands up, pointing. “There’s the door!”
“I’m not leaving! You leave!”
“And go where?!”
“I don’t know,” Eren shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans against the counter, nasally imitating Jean. “There’s the door.”
“Are you deranged? I’m not going out by myself into a snowstorm just because you’re having a temper tantrum.” Jean spits, like the damn horse he is, looking at Eren as if he’s the devil incarnate. Temper tantrum. Eren sees red.
“I’m not having a temper tantrum! Stop gaslighting me!” Eren snaps, aggressively pushing past Jean, who squawks ‘gaslighting you?’ like a confused parrot in the background. “Fine — if we’re going to be forced to inhabit the same space, then I claim this side of the house. I don’t want to see your stupid, horsey face for the rest of the night. Preferably for the rest of my life.”
“And there it is! Ten minutes without a horse-themed insult, a new record.” Jean slowly claps behind him, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Eren hurls a pillow at the ground. “Wait, what do you mean you claim that side of the house?”
“Am I speaking in another language? What’s not clear about it? The house behind these pillows is mine, and the rest of the house past the pillows is yours. This is the boundary line that you can’t cross. I won’t cross it either before you start whining.”
And Jean said Eren was having a ‘temper tantrum.’ Shows how much he knows. Eren’s temper is the furthest it has ever been from tantrum territory, thank you very much.
Yet when Eren looks up, perfectly satisfied with his perfectly reasonable response to this perfectly insane situation, Jean is looking at him as if he’s suddenly sprouted a second hand. Eren is going to scream. “What? Take a picture horseface, it’ll last longer.”
“Are you,” Jean starts, then stops. He drags a hand over his face, groaning loudly into his fist before he continues, sounding like the most tortured man on the face of planet earth. “I don’t even know how to deal with you, man. Why are you separating the house like we’re still in preschool?”
Eren glares. “It’s how my parents dealt with the divorce. Well, they had masking tape. Do we have masking tape?”
“Oh brother,” Jean mouths, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Are you seriously using your dad as a role model? Really?”
“So what if I am? He was a psychologist.”
“Yeah, past tense,” Jean grumbles. “So what happens to me if I cross this ‘forbidden’ boundary? Will it smite me on the spot?”
“I’ll hit you, obviously.”
“And what if I hit you back?”
Eren’s teeth click together so harshly he swears he hears one of his molars crack. “Then I’ll hit you back even harder!”
“Oh, I’m so scared,” Jean sneers, but Eren, like the adult that he is, has reverted to the golden rule — if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. It is worlds different from the silent treatment, which is only deployed by children and emotionally manipulative ex-husbands.
Eren drops to his knees, searching for the remote. He’s feeling very sorry for himself, truthfully, and all he wants is to drown out his sorrows with the obnoxious storylines of shitty reality TV. No one has ever suffered more than he has. He tries to ignore the sound of footsteps approaching, because hey, as long as Jean doesn’t cross the pillow fence, then there’ll be no issue. Eren keeps a subtle watch on him out of the corner of his eye.
Yet all Jean does is sit down on the armchair opposite the couch, still firmly behind the boundary line. Huh, so Jean does know how to be obedient… he’s still glaring at Eren like he’s trying to cleave his head in half with his mind. Eren makes a show of ignoring him. The hardwood floor is unforgiving against his knees, and Eren winces as his joints creak. Frustration is once again rearing its ugly head, because where is the damn—
Eren jerks his head back at the sound of the television clicking on, nearly breaking his neck in the process. Jean has the remote. Of course, he does. Eren thinks about tackling him and taking it back by force — but then he’d be breaking his own rules. Moodily, Eren throws himself back onto his couch, half-heartedly trying to think of a loophole.
“Don’t pick something stupid,” Eren mutters, kicking his feet up on the coffee table.
“Sorry, what was that?” Jean calls, obnoxiously reclining back with the most smug fucking expression Eren’s ever seen. “I can’t hear you from my side of the house.”
“Then maybe you should get your hearing checked,” Eren calls back gloomily. Jean snorts.
“Don’t use recycled insults on me, Jaeger.”
Jean continues aimlessly clicking past channels and Eren, bored with nothing better to do, watches with his chin perched in the palm of his head. He bites his tongue up until Jean clicks past Nickelodeon.
“I like Spongebob.”
“You would like Spongebob.”
“You’re telling me you don’t like Spongebob?”
“I mean, it’s fine?” Jean shrugs. “You seriously want to spend the night watching Spongebob?”
“Why can’t I? Oh, wait stop, it’s Rick and Morty.”
“I’m not watching that damn show. It makes me feel like I’m gonna be put on a list.”
Eren rolls his eyes. “Do you even like TV? Or are you having fun cycling through all of the channels?”
Jean flips him off without tearing his eyes away from the flickering screen. “So I have a discerning taste, fucking sue me. Hey, do you think any channel would be playing Breaking Bad?”
“You would like Breaking Bad,” Eren mocks, pulling the edge of his phone case on and off, on and off. “Old burnout decides to cook meth with his junkie student, gets rich quick only he has about a dozen literal skeletons rotting away in his closet. How eerie, it could be a foretelling of your life.”
“I wouldn’t cook meth,” Jean argues. “Who has time for that? I’d just sell my weed.”
“Oh, sure. My bad,” Eren pauses, sitting up a little. Jean rarely says anything that interests him, after all. “You have weed?”
That finally draws Jean’s attention away — but only for a moment, just long enough for him to shoot Eren a side-long look. “You have money?”
Eren sulks. “You could just spot me.”
“Hell no,” Jean laughs, his eyes catching anew on the random sports program. “Why would I do that? I didn’t bring any with me, anyway.”
“Then why even say anything?” Eren demands. Jean just gets worse and worse. Jean grunts back something that sounds vaguely insulting and though Eren bares his teeth, it was mumbled lowly enough for him to not quite catch all of the words, and so Eren is somewhat at a loss for which comeback would be most effective. While he’s stewing on this, his traitorous eyes can’t seem to stop straying in Jean’s direction. Simply to make sure Jean isn’t trying anything funny and is indeed staying on his own side, of course.
Jean is sort of fascinating to look at. In a critical, covetous, seeking-something-too-big-to-put-into-words kind of way. The golden gleam of the lights catches on his pale hair, his long, dark eyelashes, which are really the longest lashes Eren has ever seen on anyone. He would ask Jean if he was wearing mascara, though he’s afraid it wouldn’t sound much like an insult. It’s so fucking irritating, how aesthetically pleasing Jean is to look at. Life would be so much easier if he actually was as ugly as Eren claimed he was. Instead, he has the nerve to sit sprawled on that damn chair, legs lazily apart, muscled arms crossed over his stupid, broad chest as his teeth idly bite at his bottom lip.
I wonder if his jawline is actually sharp enough to cut me, Eren wonders, and immediately hates himself for that thought. He looks like he could rough me up. Man-handle me. Ah, these fucking thoughts! Brain worms, all of them. Eren vows to see a priest as soon as he returns home, he must have been possessed or something.
Eren pulls his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself. Hasn’t Connie’s parents ever heard of the mind-blowing, modern marvel called the heater? Why is it fifty below zero in here? Eren swears he can hear his teeth chattering. It feels like frost is seconds away from crystallising on his eyelashes. Eren curses himself for giving Jean the side of the house that held the couch with a blanket draped over it. And the bastard isn’t even using it!
So if Eren, accidentally, indulges in a fantasy in which he and Jean are sharing the blanket… that’s only because his circulation is poor. And Jean does look like an unfairly warm person to lean into.
Once or twice Jean and Eren’s eyes catch and Eren is quick to scowl as his eyes dart away, acting like he was glaring just to glare, and maybe plotting Jean’s murder. Maybe Eren would be if he had an alibi. Or if he wasn’t so distracted by the strangely comfortable silence between them.
It actually is eerie, now that Eren is aware of it. This feels too — easy. Nothing has gone wrong in the span of ten minutes, and that’s wrong in and of itself. His skin prickles with anticipatory heat and his blood cools over with dread as finally, his gaze falls on the next disturbance of the night.
Eren almost wishes he could blame the way his heart jumps into his throat on Jean.
“Yuck!” Like a cat freshly sprayed with water, Eren all but jumps off of the couch, fur ruffled and tail puffed. If he had claws, no doubt they’d be stuck to the ceiling, where he'd preferably be for safe haven. As if it is, Eren wields a decorative throw pillow in front of him, crossing to the furthest side of the room. It’s as far away as he can get and it’s still not nearly far enough. “Oh my God. Oh my God!”
“What?” Jean asks, sitting up and looking at Eren with wide-eyed alarm.
“Look!” Eren gestures wildly with his hand, shivers running up and down his spine. God, he can’t even look at the thing himself. “There’s a fucking spider!”
“Really?” Now Jean’s voice has gone entirely flat as he sighs, slumping back into the chair. “Dude, don’t fucking scare me like that. I don’t want to die from a heart attack at twenty-two.”
“If anyone’s going to have a heart attack, it’s me,” Eren argues. “What are you doing just sitting there? There’s a spider right there!”
“So?”
“So?!” Eren is appalled. Jean is somehow stupider than he ever could have dreamed. “So it’s a spider! Kill it!”
Jean scoffs. “You kill it. I’m busy.”
“Doing what? Watching Family Feud? Get off your lazy ass and make yourself useful, for once!”
Jean finally looks at him, and the look in his eyes makes Eren’s heart drop. Oh fuck. Oh no. Eren knows that look. He’s worn that look one too many times when getting one over on his half-brother. That is the look of a man who finally has his mortal enemy right where he wants him.
“Sorry, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do,” Jean says, feigning sincerity while his lips tick up into a smirk and his amber eyes gleam. “It’s not on my side of the house, you see, and I wouldn’t want to trespass.”
For the love of—
“I’m giving you permission,” Eren forces out through grit teeth. Jean shrugs, as smug as he is punchable. Too bad Eren is too paralyzed by fear to do anything about it.
“How do I know this isn’t just a test?”
“Jean, I swear to God,” Eren hisses, flinching when the spider scuttles five perilous inches closer. If it takes another step towards him, Eren swears he’s going to light this cabin on fire. Sorry, Connie.
“You aren’t even religious,” Jean laughs. “It’s on your side of the house, therefore it’s your problem. I don’t give a damn about spiders, anyway.”
Eren gapes. “Wow, and you call me the suicidal blockhead?”
“It’s harmless.”
“How do you know it isn’t poisonous?!”
“... Because it’s a daddy long legs, clearly.”
“Way to assume its gender,” Eren sneers. “Maybe it’s a black widow.”
“Black widows don’t live in this region, dumbass.”
“Well maybe it’s visiting!” Eren shrieks — in a very manly way. Jean doubles over in laughter.
“Oh my God,” Jean’s laughing so hard Eren can’t be sure he isn’t crying. “You can’t be serious, Eren. Are you actually afraid of spiders? This is the best night of my life, I’m going to die.”
“Fuck you, horseface! You just wait until I get over there, I’ll kill you so hard—”
“You said you wouldn’t cross the boundary!”
“This is anarchy! Laws are meaningless! It’s every man for himself,” Eren spits. Worryingly enough, the spider seems agitated by their fight. Spiders can smell fear, Eren just knows it. He can feel its beady, sinister black eyes on him, burning through him, and Eren somehow knows it’s seconds away from pouncing. It’s already chosen him as its victim. It must be Jean’s pure aura of asshole that’s saved him. Even spiders want to avoid him and his horse-like countenance.
Eren stands stock still, holding his breath, while Jean laughs his ass off in the background. He’s drenched in cold sweat. The spider just — sits there, waiting for Eren to make the first move. Eren is seconds away from bolting, throwing himself through a window if need be, when Jean’s laughter finally dwindles into breathless, gasping giggles.
“I wish my phone wasn’t dead, or this would so be going on YouTube,” Jean snickers and Eren glares helplessly. “C’mon Jaeger, it’s just a little spider. Just throw your pillow at it. Really, this is just pathetic, even for you — what the fuck?!”
Eren’s head jerks to the side as Jean bodily throws himself out of his chair. He watches slack-jawed as Jean shouts out garbled obscenities, crawling backward on his hands. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, when icy claws of fear sink deep into his throat.
“Oh my God,” Eren is going to pass out. “Don’t tell me there’s another spider!”
“Fuck the spider, Eren!” Jean cries, standing up and assuming a defensive position, still safely within the bounds of the pillow boundary. “Do you see that?! How’d a shitting moth get in here?”
Eren blinks. He blinks again.
His eyes drift over to the window, where a small, light-brown moth is helplessly battering itself against the closed window, stupidly searching for the light. Unbidden, he feels a smile cross his lips.
“Don’t tell me,” Eren begins, voice cracking with laughter. “That Jean Kirstein is afraid of moths?”
Jean turns to him, his glare deadly. “Eren, I swear to God—”
“You big baby! You’re scared of a little moth?!”
“You’re scared of spiders!”
“Everyone’s afraid of spiders! That’s a normal fear all humans have! Who in the hell is afraid of moths?”
“Have you ever seen a close-up picture of one?” Jean demands. “You wouldn’t be so damn cocky then!”
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the world’s tiniest violin playing.”
“Fuck you!”
“No, fuck you!”
“Alright!”
Simultaneously, both Eren and Jean freeze. This time, however, for a very different reason.
Did Jean really just—
Nah. Nope. But maybe...?
Suddenly, Eren’s throat is desert dry. His heart beats hot and agitated in his throat. The spider is all but forgotten, as Eren looks into Jean’s wide, bright eyes, glossy with an unspeakable warmth. He suddenly curses the distance between them. Why the fuck is there so much space that exists between their bodies? That shouldn’t be allowed. Eren is now convinced the pillow boundary was the worst idea he has ever had.
Eren watches, heart racing, as Jean’s pink lips part, and he subtly licks his lips, before clearing his throat. “I mean — I just meant alright, let’s call a truce. I’ll kill the spider if you kill the moth. Sound fair?”
Eren blinks back into reality. Cold, harsh, unwelcome reality.
Of course.
“Fine,” Eren sniffs, feeling as some of the tension drains from his shoulders. Wordlessly, he and Jean cross the room. Eren tries to pretend that he isn’t disappointed. It’s not very hard, considering he isn’t. Not at all.
What follows is the most embarrassing five minutes of Eren’s life, after which he and Jean make a silent, non-verbal pact in the form of desperate eye contact that they will never this repeat to anyone, ever. How hard could it be to kill a single, tiny moth, Eren thinks. Apparently, pretty fucking hard.
Moths may be suicidal, as a general rule, but this one seems pretty hellbent on living a continued existence. Eren rushes at it with his pillow and it immediately flies into his face — and while Eren isn’t afraid of moths, because there is no way he would stoop so low, it’s alarming all the same to have a crazed, fluttering bug fly right at you, guns cocked and loaded. Eren might scream, he might not.
It’s drowned out by Jean shrieking, “Get it off, get it off, it’s in my hair!” Out of his peripheral vision, Eren watches as Jean races towards the kitchen, furiously hitting his head. Eren’s too busy beating his own face with the pillow to accurately gauge what happens next but judging from the unholy clatter that follows, Jean has found the cupboard where the pots and pans are kept, and now Connie’s parents’ cabin may have a few more dents on the floor than it previously had.
Eren is flinging his pillow in every single direction, blind with fear and adrenaline, screaming at the damn moth to just fucking die already, and the important part of the story is Eren does emerge the victor of this bloody battle. He smacks the moth where it stupidly lands on the corner of the television, the pillow leaving behind no more than a brown smudge. Eren is filled with vicious satisfaction for all of five seconds.
The less important part of the story is that the television wobbles from the hit, precariously placed on the edge of the stand as it is. Eren had been too wrapped up in moth slaughter to notice the dangerous position it was in. His brain stalls as panic flares through his very cells — Eren is a broke university student who can barely afford the air he breathes, much less a flatscreen TV — he rushes forward, heedless of all else. Jean, apparently having destroyed his own opponent, had seen the television about to crash to pieces to the floor at the same time, and rushed over just as fast as Eren.
It all happens in a blur.
One moment Eren is tripping over a bent corner of the rug, hands outstretched, heart stilling as the floor falls out from under him, and the next he’s somehow on top of Jean, heart racing, breath stumbling from his lips as he desperately tries to catch it.
Truthfully, to say Eren is on top of Jean is a very generous way to describe their current position. Eren is — straddling him, there’s no less damning way to put it.
Fuck, it’s as if the universe is out to get him tonight! Eren should really move, before Jean beats him to it and pushes him off, except Jean isn’t pushing him off. No, Jean’s just looking at him, with dark eyes through darker lashes, his eyes red-rimmed and his cheeks suffused with pink. Eren then registers the placement of his thigh — right in between Jean’s legs. Eren feels if he so much as twitches, so much as breathes, it will irrevocably shatter the moment between them.
But he wants to move, desperately. Madly.
Jean is so warm and his body feels so right beneath Eren’s, firm and solid and etched from sharp edges. That faint scent of his drifts through the air again, something undeniably masculine and spiced and soaked in woodsmoke, unmistakably Jean. Eren’s going to do something he regrets. Blood is surging through his veins, and his heart constricts painfully inside of his chest, itching with a heat only one thing can sate.
Oh, it would be so easy to close the mere inches between them. To give in and press their lips together, and be blissfully consumed by heat. Eren sways forward, feeling almost as if he’s caught in a trance as he leans closer—
Since it has been established the universe is out to get him personally, of course at that exact moment does a thump sound from upstairs.
Jean goes stiff beneath him, as Eren’s blood rapidly cools inside of his veins.
“... What was that?” Jean asks, very carefully. Eren glances warily towards the ceiling, heart racing now for an entirely different reason.
“The wind?” Eren offers, in the least convincing voice ever. A second later, there’s another, louder thump, this one leaving the walls shaking with its impact.
“What the hell?” Jean whispers, his voice coloured with a foreign trace of something like fear. He tries to hide it with furrow-browed annoyance. “Is there someone else here?”
“Have you seen anyone else?”
“Then what was that?”
“I don’t know!” Eren tries and fails to find some sense of calm amidst the sudden storm that has taken over his heart.
There’s a heat from the way their bodies are pressed together. With Eren’s thigh between Jean’s, their chests touching, Eren isn’t sure which of them is breathing the quietest.
Jean shifts slightly and Eren can feel something hard and hot pressed right up against—
Nope.
“Okay!” Eren says as he sits up, ignoring the way his cock twitches from the slight stimulation. “I’ll make you a deal.”
Jean, still lying on the floor from when Eren got up, blushes prettily — coughs and sits up properly, still on the floor next to the TV, which did not fall, by the way, so their whole awkward encounter was for nothing.
Eren clears his throat, shuffling in place, looking down at Jean. “I’ll cook lunch if you go up to check what that noise was upstairs.” Eren is proud of himself for coming up with a decent compromise. Also a compromise which doesn’t entail the fact that he’s terrified of what the fuck that sound was.
Jean’s eyes narrow. “Do you even know how to cook?”
Eren squeaks — in an entirely non-girly way of course. He’s gay but he’s not a wandering stereotype. Except for the fact that he loves skirts more than pants and his smokey-eye is perfect and his eyebrows, if he does say so himself (and he does), are always on fleek.
“Of course I know how to cook!” He says, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’m not a child.”
“Really?” Jean smirks. “Because you just screamed like one over that spi—”
“And we’ve established that spiders are a universal fear. You’re scared of fucking moths, dude. You’re the child here.”
“You mean you established that. Plenty of people are scared of moths, you know.” Jean stands up, but from where he’d been sitting and where Eren is currently standing, they’re now almost chest to chest again.
“Really?” Eren barely notices the hitch in Jean’s breath as he leans in closer. Too occupied with winning the argument. Which he will. “I don’t know anyone scared of moths. Besides the child in front of me.”
Jean blushes slightly and Eren’s overcome with the need to make him blush even more. Maybe even stutter. Perhaps he could make him scre—
“Well I’m taller than you and I know how to cook, so you go check out upstairs and I’ll make you a gourmet lunch.”
The firmness in Jean’s voice is hard to argue with — really hard if you catch Eren’s drift and he grumbles as he moves towards the stairs.
(It isn’t a ghost as much as it’s Eren’s precariously placed bag that had fallen from the edge of the bed.)
“Seriously, are you a virgin?” Eren asks as he comes back downstairs to the smell of vegetables.
Jean sputters. “What?” He turns around to glare at Eren. “No I’m not— whatever makes you think that?”
Eren shrugs, finds a beer in the fridge behind all the goddamn greens and sits at the kitchen counter. “Vegans are virgins.” Which is so not true because Eren’s friend Armin is a vegan and very much not a virgin.
(Eren made sure of that when they were sixteen.)
But he likes riling Jean up. Likes making him question the life choices that led him to Eren.
“They are not—” Jean starts but then shakes his head. “And besides.” He turns back to the greens on the stove. “I’m not a vegan.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Just because I know how to make good, nutritious food without slaughtering an animal, doesn’t mean I’m a vegan.”
“Vegetarian, then.”
“Why are you like this?”
Eren shrugs. “It’s fun to see how many times I can make you scowl. I think it’s about eleven, now?”
“I will eat this entire meal myself and let you suffer from starvation.”
Eren laughs — laughs! — at Jean’s horrible joke. “You’d never. You need me around to keep your ego in check.”
“Oh please like yours isn’t just as big as mine.”
“No, I think yours is bigger, actually.”
They stare at each other for a moment. Eren’s beer forgotten, the smell of the roasting vegetables encompassing everything in the entire kitchen but Jean seems to have forgotten his task to provide them with a meal.
Are they even still talking about egos?
They could be, but they could also be—
Jean’s the one who breaks eye contact first, turning his back to Eren to fiddle with the food again, adding spices and cream and something that looks like soy sauce. Eren takes a sip of his beer, letting the alcohol warm his blood, even if the percentage is abysmally small.