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He’s unconscious, so he misses Armin’s flare of bravery, but they tell him about it later. Connie’s too stiff to slap him on the back, but he says, “Man,” and looks down at his open hands. “Man, I thought you were gonna die, Jean. Armin’s arms were shaking.”
Jean cracks his neck and winces, but in a careful sort of way; not too quickly, not too hard or weak. Just enough. “Armin?” he asks, massaging one of his shoulders with the heel of his palm.
“Yeah,” Connie says. Normally he’d be talking with his hands, but he’s seen too much today. “Yeah, he was holding onto you like he thought you were gonna die, too. The Titan got real close, though, and it didn’t give a damn that Armin was waving a blade at it — his arms were shaking —”
Jean doesn’t remember any of that. He can only recall a vague awakening on horseback, with his nose against the back of Armin’s neck. He’d thought they’d stuck him there simply because Armin was a good rider and would carry Jean well. Armin smelled like sweat and earth and blood and grime. It was heavy, and it was comforting. His hair tickled Jean’s forehead, and Jean went back to sleep.
“I thought you were gonna die,” Connie says, shaking his head slowly.
—
Thanks, he thinks to say, Thank you. Thank you, but that’s too easy, and more than that, it’s just too hard. Jean sees Armin pass him by and something is lodged in his throat, a thick something that won’t let any of those words come out, and he coughs and rubs his neck and keeps walking, feeling a weird burning sensation trail after him. Usually Armin doesn’t notice that, but sometimes he does, and when he leans to the side and asks, “What’s up, Jean?” in the way he’d ask anyone else, Jean just wants to vomit. He doesn’t have time for this, whatever it is, because there’s a lot to think about and more to do. He keeps walking, waving his hand dismissively, Don’t worry about it.
Once, though, he ruffles Armin’s hair as he walks by, and he feels like he could do a backflip, especially when Armin calls after him, agitated, “Aw, Jean!”
—
It starts to keep him up at night, in a real bad way, because he thinks about the time he’s spent with Armin. He thinks about how Armin barely made it through basic training. How did a kid like that end up saving Jean’s life? And then Jean thinks, He’s not really a kid. They’re the same age. And he was in Shiganshina. How could anyone be a kid after Shiganshina?
How could anyone be a kid after Trost?
Shit. Didn’t he turn fifteen before me? Jean’s pretty sure he did. He rolls over in his bunk, and gets to sleep when the sun starts dribbling through the window.
—
He runs into Eren in the hallway. Their elbows smack like snapping dogs and they both stumble. They manage to collect themselves without either going for the throat, because there’s just no time for that anymore; there’s no use in it; there’s no energy to expend, not on that. So Jean sneers some and Eren scowls and rotates his shoulder but that’s the end of it.
Or it is until Armin turns halfway to wave to Jean as he follows Eren and Mikasa. He looks apologetic, but relaxes when Jean waves back. Jean realizes that he keeps waving at Armin until Armin can’t even see him anymore.
This is when he starts to panic.
—
First he tries to bargain with himself. Come on, man. You don’t have time to worry about crap like this right now. There’s a lot going on. Man up, do your job. Focus. Focus. Put your right foot forward and focus. None of that works well enough, cos he can remember that on the horse, Armin made him feel safe. And he realizes, when he tries to recall the scent of it all, that he hadn’t felt that way in a long time, and still hasn’t since.
So he tries to rationalize. Come on, man. You’ve liked girls before. Mikasa’s amazing. Maybe Armin reminds you of her cos he’s around her so much. You’re just real tired lately. You’re just out of sorts. This isn’t working, either. Armin’s blond hair moves like Mikasa’s black hair. They’re a boy and a girl but it’s all the same. It’s not the same, Jean insists to himself, but there’s sweat on the back of his neck when part of him says, it is, it is.
So he tries to play it off. Well, that Armin, he’s kind of, you know. He’s like that. That’s probably why there’s a problem, if there really is one at all. He’s pretty in that way and his hair falls in that way and he’s got that sort of softness. Surely this will work. This will be the one to snap Jean out of his slackjawed fascination with another man.
No dice. Jean wants to hit Armin in the face. Armin is pretty, he’s got this sweetness to him, his chin and his nose and the apples of his cheeks when he smiles at something Eren says. But he’s not pretty like a girl. He’s just pretty like Armin. And, Jean has to tell himself, running his hand through his own hair in the middle of the night, being pretty isn’t really Armin’s fault. And that’s not why Jean likes him.
And Jean likes him.
—
He wants to remember the smell. The one on the horse, that made him feel safe. He wants to have it again, to recreate it. If you’ve yearned for someone, you know what it is I’m describing; you know the way he felt. It’s that twitching of muscle (arms, tongue, heart), that desire to inch closer. Jean inches closer. He leans over Armin’s shoulder from behind.
“What are you reading?” he asks, because it’s a pretty good excuse, he feels.
“What? Oh, Jean.” Armin tilts back to look at him, and then settles forward again, tapping across a line on a page. “Some field notes. There’s a lot I want to cover before we have to move again.”
“Good plan,” Jean says easily, and pulls himself away. He’s found the scent of Armin’s hair. He knows his face is red. You’re gross, you’re gross, he tells himself, but he sets his hand on top of Armin’s head.