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It had been a long time since the last time, but from Jean's reaction he was not surprised—much—by Armin's asking. Not even in the context of it: yet another gruelling meeting, a table of pale faces and restless hands, Eren’s and Mikasa's names spoken with either cool indifference or resentment. Like they were strangers, or deserters, or traitors. Even Armin didn’t know what to think anymore; his ignorance left him with no means to defend them. Honestly, he'd stopped trying. It only made him miserable, and tired, and tired of feeling so miserable.
No word of them. No word from them. And as much as Armin struggled to keep up with it, life continued apace despite the yawning chasm of Eren and Mikasa’s absence. Blood beat its way around his body; his stomach sought feeding even when he felt no hunger; and each day the newspapers told of the progress Marley was making in the war against the Mid-East Alliance. They were running out of time. Perhaps they already had, and the Corps was just too blind—too naïve—to see it.
The meeting closed with a long, lingering period of hopeless silence. There was a tangible sense of relief at the commander's call to adjourn; the room seemed to release its held breath. Around them people stirred to life, shuffling papers and kicking out chairs, but before Jean could join the shifting crowd Armin caught his shoulder. He did not baulk or even blink as Armin whispered the request, shielding his mouth behind a sheet of notes. Instead Jean simply nodded, a wordless understanding.
The discretion was unnecessary. If Armin had said it out loud, most would have thought he was asking after Jean's company to talk tactics or play cards or to vent his spleen in private. Each would have been reasonable, and Jean and Armin were close enough anyway to warrant it. The whispering was likely more suspicious. But had anyone noticed they said nothing of it, and after allowing some thirty minutes once they'd turned in for the night—Armin sat on his bed, twisting his fingers together and watching the clock—he made his way down the dark corridor towards Jean's room.
It took him some long seconds to work up the courage to knock. His hesitation made no sense, not when he'd asked Jean and certainly not when Jean had said yes. But still Armin felt the prickling burn of his nerves, that to want this—to need it—was just another kind of weakness.
So be it. Weakness was nothing new to Armin, and this failing was a minor one in comparison to most. He knocked softly.
“Who's there?”
Even as it came muted through the door, Jean's voice was warm and resonant. Armin cleared his throat.
“It’s Armin.” Then, after a moment's pause, he said, “Come on. You know who it is.”
Armin thought he heard a laugh, though by the time the door swung open, Jean was merely smiling. As he stepped past him into the room, Jean said, “Well, you can never be too sure.”
Armin cleared his throat again. Louder, with a note of wry disbelief. “Do you get a lot of late-night visitors?”
He didn't miss Jean's laugh this time. Pitched low, as familiar as his voice, Armin felt it in his diaphragm more than he heard it.
“No, thankfully. I figure most people prioritise their sleep.”
He spoke lightly, but Armin faltered halfway through shrugging off his jacket. “Oh. Sorry, I didn't think. If you're tired—”
Before he could finish the thought, Jean held up both hands and stepped smoothly behind him, easing Armin's sleeves off the rest of the way. He hung his jacket over the armchair, and as Armin turned he saw that Jean's own was laid there, too. Overlapping one another, they resembled a pair of shed skins. The sight reminded Armin precisely why he had come, and though he should have been beyond blushing by now, still he felt his ears grow hot.
“It's fine, I didn't mean it like that. I'm not tired, anyway,” said Jean. He blew a noisy sigh out of the side of his mouth, his smile wearing thin. “Hell, who could be after that meeting? Seeing Hanji so stressed out, it's a wonder anyone kept their dinner down. I honestly can't remember the last time I slept the whole night through.”
The grimace came too easily onto Armin's face; there was no hope of disguising it. “I know,” he said, and in the sanctuary of Jean's room, he let his weariness show. “It's never good news.”
Jean clicked his tongue. “At this point, I'd be happy enough with no news. Every time Onyankopon reports back, there's more shit to add to the heap. And Eren and Mikasa...” Jean trailed off, suddenly stricken. Armin hadn't felt himself react to their names, but by the look in Jean's eyes, he must have. “Sorry,” he said.
Armin's grimace deepened into a frown. “You’ve got nothing to apologise for.”
“Well… everyone talks around it, you know? Outside of meetings, anyway. It's starting to feel like they only exist in this abstract concept, another element of the war.” Jean scratched at the back of his neck, a nervous gesture Armin had come to recognise. “I'm never sure whether you want to talk about them. It's really—it’s difficult.” Another pause, and this time Jean risked eye contact. He winced as he made it. “I mean, it's fucked.”
The bluntness could have been cruel, but coming from Jean Armin knew it was simply honest. There wasn’t much point acting coy or cold about it, anyway. His shoulders sagged.
“It is,” Armin ceded.
They looked at each other a little longer. Armin could think of nothing more to say, and so he said nothing, but he followed Jean further into the room and together they stopped by the hearth. The coals were smouldering, casting out a steady heat. Beneath their pale surface they glowed a vivid, liquid orange. Shadows flickered across the floor, the walls; onto Jean's pensive face, which in the lowlight looked softer than usual.
“Do you think they’ll come back?” he said, the softness of his voice matching his expression. For all the ease of his manner, Jean’s faith must have been as fragile as his own: he fixed his stare on the fire, as if afraid to see the honest answer on Armin’s face.
Armin swallowed thickly. The urge to cry sat so close to the surface these days, and the way Jean spoke—the fear that held him in such uncharacteristic quiet—was like a lance to a swelling. The suspicion, he could deal with; plenty among them thought that if anyone were to know Eren and Mikasa’s intentions, Armin would. Armin himself could find no fault in that assumption. But Hanji’s careful interrogations, and Connie’s questioning gaze, and the briskly-worded missives that came from Paradis—none burned quite like Jean’s earnestness now. His grief, his confusion, his exhaustion. Each managed so carefully beneath the facade, and each so much like Armin’s own.
It didn’t make sense. They couldn’t make it make sense. The only people that could had left them with nothing but the clothes abandoned in their quarters. Despite the weeks that had passed, still Armin caught himself imagining it; sometimes against his will, as when he dreamt. Eren and Mikasa standing together in the doorway, apologetic, a little like scolded children in their rumpled suits. Shame-faced, maybe, shifting their feet. And then they would explain themselves, and it would be a perfectly understandable and unavoidable confluence of events that had stolen them away for so long. Armin would have forgiven them. He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. He wouldn’t even have needed the excuse.
The hope made Armin sicker than if he’d not had any in the first place.
At last, Armin managed to say, “I don’t know. I’d thought that they would have sent a letter by now.” He shrugged, a hard jerk of one shoulder. He knew he sounded bitter, but that had to be better than sounding heartbroken. “Though if they were able to, surely they would have sent one weeks ago.”
I’d thought that they would have left a note. I checked their rooms myself, three times. I tore my own room apart in case they’d hidden something there, and I would have kept any secret had they asked me to keep one. I’d never even considered the possibility that they might leave. Where they could go. But they’re gone all the same, aren’t they?
Armin took a deep breath. And then another, and another, fighting back the surge of miserable dread. “I don’t think I can talk about this,” he said, too quickly. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Hey… hey. It’s okay.” Armin had his eyes closed, and so he felt Jean’s hands on his forearms before he realised he’d moved so close. “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Jean said, and as he touched Armin’s cheek the timbre of his voice changed, a subtle but deliberate shift. “And that’s not why you’re here, anyway.”
The effect was immediate. It was irresistible; hell, it was muscle memory. The tension in Armin’s temples ebbed and he was drawn into the sturdy warmth of Jean’s body. As he leant against him, Armin was relieved at how naturally it came back—the same way that it always had, no matter how long it had been and how changed they were.
It was impossible to tell how he looked in that moment. In the mirror these days, Armin saw only a shadow, his gaze a bleak and hollow one. But Jean’s expression was gentle, just as his touch was gentle.
He made it seem so simple. As brusque as he could sometimes be, Jean gave his affection easily, generously, once he wanted to give it and he knew it was welcome. And in this way Armin loved him; that he was alive; that he looked at Armin like he was worthy of that affection. With anyone else, this could have felt transactional—a warm body as cold comfort—but with Jean, Armin knew there was safety in his surrender.
This close, he could taste the sharp, medicinal tang of Jean’s aftershave. Witch-hazel, diluted. He lowered his gaze; Jean’s mouth was mere inches from his own, and Armin stretched up to bridge the gap. It felt good, kissing him. It felt good, how tightly Jean held him now. Armin was so sick of his sadness, how fragile it made him feel—the way everyone treated him, like he was that fragile—that they could see it all over his skin, the thinning veil he had left of it. Jean was one of the few that still looked at him like he was flesh and blood rather than a sheet of glass.
A shudder rippled through him as those hands, warm and broad and steady, settled either side of Armin’s waist. The kiss deepened, Jean’s hunger apparent. It was impossible not to sigh into it. Desire rushed through Armin’s veins with new power, and beneath it his grief shrank until it could have been nothing more than the fading remnant of a dream.
“Do you still like the same stuff?” Jean asked, breaking away suddenly. He stripped off his shirt with unselfconscious ease. Scarred, sunned skin, compact muscle. Armin indulged in naked admiration, and for once he refused to let his own insecurity temper it.
Eventually the question filtered through Armin’s distracted attention. Crouching to remove his boots, he said, “How long has it been, anyway?” He shook his head. “I keep losing track of time. Lately I’m lucky to remember what month it is.”
“Half a year, maybe. We got real busy with the port, the railway,” Jean said. He caught Armin’s collar as he stood and began undoing the buttons, smiling wryly. “Time flies, huh.”
Armin shivered at the brush of his fingertips between the fabric of his shirt and his bare skin. He was still thinking about Jean’s question. It took him a moment to choose how to word his answer, and a little longer to find the courage to say it.
“I don’t mind if it hurts,” Armin said carefully.
Jean paused. He watched Armin’s face, his gaze curious but unconcerned. “You don’t mind?” he echoed. “I think I would mind if I hurt you, though.”
That nearly made Armin laugh. Jean could stab him mid-coitus and he’d be healed up by the time they were finished, though he didn’t dare say that; he knew Jean wouldn’t find it quite so darkly funny.
“I don’t mean anything deliberate, just…” Armin trailed off, swallowing as Jean pressed a biting kiss to his collarbone. “Just, you can fuck me as hard as you like.”
He could feel the heat of Jean’s face against his throat, an intake of breath. And then, his short, startled laugh. “If you talked this candidly all the time, I bet negotiations would go much smoother.”
As soon as he stopped wasting it on words, Jean’s mouth was back on him. Armin huffed—half-amused, half-aroused. “I’m not asking anyone else to fuck me, though.”
Another low chuckle. Armin dropped his shoulders to let Jean slide his shirt back, and as soon as it hit the floor Jean’s hands were splaying across his naked stomach, his chest. Around his waist, which gave him the leverage he needed to pull Armin close again.
“True enough,” Jean said, in that humouring way that would have rankled, coming from anyone else. “I guess I should count myself lucky.”
Before Armin could so much as roll his eyes, he felt Jean’s cock, half-hard, against his thigh. His stomach clenched at its heat, the evidence of his arousal. This had its own kind of power, didn’t it. Wanting, and being wanted. Jean made it all so easy and good and real, more real than anything had felt in forever.
They left their clothes where they fell. Armin stepped back until the edge of the bed met his thighs, and there he dropped down onto it, hauling Jean along with him. The weight of his body was welcome. Armin pushed up against it, finding his strength, grinding his cock into Jean’s muscled abdomen.
“There’s oil. My jacket pocket,” Armin gasped. He didn’t want to get up, and he didn’t want to let Jean go, but they wouldn’t make much progress without it. Where Jean kissed him (in behind his ear, a sensitive spot he knew too well), Armin felt the slant of his smile.
“Good forward planning,” Jean said, rising from the bed. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised.”
Before long he was back again, bottle in hand, settling himself between Armin’s spread thighs like he belonged there. Anticipation sped Armin’s pulse and twisted his gut, hot and eager—yet Jean did not touch him. Not immediately, not for some seconds. And as Armin sat up on his elbows to gather why, he froze at the look of solemn concentration on Jean’s face. Like he’d not seen Armin naked before, too many times to count. Like he might not get the chance again after tonight, and he wanted to be sure that he would never forget.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, with such honest intensity that Armin wanted to turn away. But there could be no hiding from those eyes—suddenly dark, suddenly fierce—and Jean’s words sounded through him like a pealing bell.
Armin’s chest squeezed; his throat was too tight. He held his voice there until the threat of tears had passed, and even then he couldn’t keep the hoarseness from it. “Don’t,” Armin croaked. With a damp, humourless ha, he said, “What are you saying that for?”
Jean shrugged. He lifted Armin’s left leg, hooked it over his shoulder, and pressed his lips to the inside of his knee. “I only ever say what I mean.” His hand slid up the back of Armin’s raised thigh, the scrape of his nails teasing. “You know that.”
The press of Jean’s oiled fingers made a reply unnecessary. Armin sank back, his eyes half-shut, the room a pleasing blur in the fire’s copper glow. Jean’s touch was so practiced that Armin hardly registered the change from two fingers to three, the brush of his knuckles as he opened him up, the sweet spreading burn. Armin’s thighs tightened, trembling at the effort of holding on—of letting go—his whole body seizing when Jean twisted his wrist.
“The sounds you make,” Jean murmured, with an awed-hush desire. “God, I’d almost forgot.”
The heat in Armin’s face was distracting, and Jean’s gentleness left him too raw. He pushed back a little, impatient now. “Enough,” he said. “I’m ready.”
Jean went still. “Are you? It’s been a while, don’t forget.”
“More than ready.” Armin sounded certain despite his breathlessness—or he tried to, at least. “I told you what I wanted.”
There was another considering pause, lasting just long enough to make him nervous.
“So you did,” Jean said lowly. Different to how he’d spoken before, the gravel and gravity of his voice putting knots in Armin’s stomach, going straight to his cock, leaking and sore already. Jean sat back from him, and though Armin knew he wasn’t going anywhere—that he would not leave him—he felt a shallow pang, like the tug of a hook in his heart. A skin hunger that rooted too deep.
The space of Jean’s retreat allowed Armin to turn onto his front. For some seconds he buried his face in the pillow, collecting himself. It was easier, this way. If he did not have to see or think or feel anything beyond the physical fact of Jean behind him, above him, the way he could cover Armin almost completely. That had needled at him, once. The sure and steady way Jean had grown, the self-evident truth of it as they’d lain naked together over the years. Without thinking, Armin would watch the solid muscle working in Jean’s thighs, and see him hauling stacks of thunder spears with ease, and towering over new recruits—who would look at him with callow awe—and wonder at just how lacking he was.
He didn’t care about that now. What Armin wanted was for Jean to show him just what he could do with that hard-earned strength.
The hot, slick head of Jean’s cock pressed against him. Armin sucked in a breath at the breach. It hurt, a little, but he hardly had the chance to notice before Jean pushed inside, a shock that jolted up the column of his spine. Armin grit his teeth against his wail, chest heaving. Oh, god. The weight of Jean’s body was heavy on him but his mouth was at the nape of his neck, a gentling touch that brought Armin back from the edge.
“Relax for me.” The words were little more than damp heat in Armin’s ear. He whined at them, helpless. But Jean was not moving, and Armin knew he would not move; and so he let the tension bleed from him, sinking himself into the bed, into the ether.
It worked. Jean made a soft, approving noise, rocking his hips so shallowly that Armin hardly felt the loss before Jean was pushing back in again, over and over, a steady pressure at his prostate. The world dissolved to nothing but that, the flare of sensation and darkness, the fresh scent of the sheets mingled with sweat. Jean—around him and inside him—so deep and so full that Armin couldn’t think beyond it. Full as he’d ever been.
His cock felt hard and hot and tight. Armin squirmed, seeking the burn of friction against the sheets. He was right on the brink. He wanted it and he didn’t want it at the same time: he wanted Jean to push him up against that edge and ease him back, cruelly, slowly, again and again, until he could think of nothing other than coming. He wanted it to be blinding. He wanted it to tear his guts out, to shut him up. He wanted to be fucked until he could do nothing but let Jean fuck him, boneless and willing and sobbing. But Jean was slowing his rhythm almost to a stop, drawing out each thrust as long as he could. An excruciating, deliberate pace that had Armin rising up on his knees to meet him, the heat dragging low in his belly. Time grew thick, indistinct. Armin could hear himself panting, and in his own head it was as loud as rushing water.
Desperate, he thought. It made his insides lurch and his cock throb. Pathetic.
Jean had his face tucked in behind Armin’s ear, in his hair. He lingered there, his front moulded to Armin’s back, heart thudding against the plate of his shoulder blade. Then Armin felt the hitch in Jean’s breathing, the startled falter, and instantly he knew that Jean knew, too. The shame iced his blood.
“Armin,” Jean said, too quiet, “are you crying?”
“No,” Armin ground out. No, goddamnit, but he was; he could barely speak, his jaw aching, gasping pitchy and wet against the pillow. Of course Jean had noticed. He was too considerate not to, attuned to all kinds of responses—in most cases, a blessing. Now it just pissed Armin off; it felt like he’d been caught in a lie. And then he felt worse, because Jean had done nothing to deserve his frustration.
But to his relief, Jean did not stop. He did not try to turn Armin over, nor to wipe away his tears, the kind of comfort that anyone could offer him. Just continued to fuck him in that slow, steady way that made his toes curl.
“It’s okay,” Jean murmured. “Here...” And he pushed his hand in between Armin’s front and the mattress, squeezing his untouched cock. The firm, rough pressure of his hand—surrounding him so completely, the heat of his grip—made Armin choke, a wounded animal noise.
“It’s just us,” Jean said. His other hand closed around Armin’s clenched fist, and gently he pried his fingers apart, threading his own between them. “Just you and me.”
Armin gasped raggedly, spreading his thighs a little wider. It was an involuntary reaction, Jean’s voice soothing him even though he hadn’t come here to be soothed. No—he had wanted it to hurt, hadn’t he? Now Armin had no idea what he wanted. Maybe just more, more of this; of Jean; of tonight, this sacred space they’d carved out of reality for each other. Just you and me, Jean had said. The world could have been ending outside their window, and still that would have been true.
It fractured what was left of his senses, Jean’s grip on him. He stroked Armin off with long, even pulls that he felt every inch of, that weren’t enough until suddenly they were too much—Jean’s thumb sliding over the head of his cock, his fist closing around it—and the tears were hot on Armin’s face as he came, all over Jean’s hand and the sheets, the force of it gutting him. He wanted to collapse but he couldn’t; Jean’s arm held strong around his waist. Pinning Armin there, keeping him still as he slicked Armin’s seed up and down his softening cock. The pleasure became an overwhelming static, blistering, burning him open, but Armin stifled his hiccupping cries into the pillow. And just when he couldn’t take anymore Jean let him go, bracing his hands either side of his head and fucking Armin like that: hard and fast, merciless, each thrust driving him against the mattress as he took what he needed.
With a long, low groan, Jean spent deep inside him. The latent heat of his orgasm made Armin’s senses seize and fail. Spun out too far on too thin a line, his exhausted nerves bristling at the feel of Jean’s skin and the clammy cling of the sheets. But his mind—it was empty. Perfectly, blessedly empty. And as the shudders ebbed, Armin let his sobs shake him to the core instead.
“Armin,” Jean began, “do you want to talk about them?”
There was an agonising pause. It was particularly painful after the last twenty minutes of placid, weightless peace that had fallen over the room. There had been no expectation of speaking; Jean had waited for Armin to calm his heartbeat and his breathing, and in easy silence he had cleaned them up, straightening the sheets. As he’d fixed Armin’s hair—nudging the sweat-stuck strands from his forehead—Jean had apologised for coming inside him with the most tentative levity in his voice.
Armin had appreciated it. More than that, he’d needed it. For just a little while, they could be nothing other than what they were, what they had done to each other.
Of course, he’d known it wouldn’t last.
“You know that you can tell me anything,” Jean said, softer than before.
Armin turned his face into the pillow, inhaling a damp breath. “I know,” he said, and as he closed his eyes, he felt the crushing pull of his tiredness. “I just don’t have anything to say.”
Jean did not reply, but the shifting of his weight made Armin lift his head anyway. He was bent over the side of the bed, looking too much like he might topple over with each passing second until he righted himself, trousers bunched in his hands. Jean groped at them, searching out one pocket and then the other. At last, his expression lit up with triumph: he fished out a lighter and a slender brown pouch that Armin recognised immediately.
“Do you want one?” Jean asked.
“… You’re not going to smoke in here?”
Jean gave him a lopsided smile. “Are you asking me that or telling me not to?”
Armin pursed his lips. In Jean’s right hand, he turned the lighter over and over; it looked weighty and tactile between his long, fluent fingers.
“C’mon, no one else ever smokes with me,” Jean said, and at Armin’s hesitation, he wagged the pouch too close to his face. The smell of tobacco, strong and dark and a little sweet, muddled with the warm leather.
“I don’t think the Azumabito would be happy about us stinking up one of their rooms,” Armin said.
Another one of those enigmatic smiles. “Oh? I rather like the smell,” Jean said, looking out across the room instead of at Armin. “Though if it makes a difference, I was going to smoke out the window, anyway. It’s plenty big enough.”
And with that, Jean swung himself out of bed and walked over to the sill, his naked body netted by strips of moonlight. The windows were big—big and beautiful, with wrought iron catches and a diamond lattice, coloured glass laid in each corner—and Jean pushed them open with ease, unflinching at the rush of cold air.
“I guess that would be okay,” Armin said, the blankets still up at his chin. He wanted to sleep, and he wanted to watch Jean; he wanted to get up and join him at the window and let the coolness of night bleed into his bones, that it might leach the warmth from him and everything else with it.
Silhouetted in the window, it was harder to discern Jean’s expression. But his voice carried clear across the room even though he spoke so quietly.
“That wasn’t exactly a no, earlier,” he said, and he gestured again with the tobacco pouch, as if it were a playing card he was offering. “Sure you don’t want one?”
His resolve was slipping. Armin knew Jean could tell, but he tried one last time to hold firm. “The captain hates it. And Mikasa… she used to always comment if she caught the smell on my clothes.”
“That’s all the more reason to, if you ask me.” Jean’s expression, or what Armin could make of it, went a little wicked. “Petty acts of rebellion are the best kind.”
Armin sighed. “Jean…”
“Get over here. You roll much better than I do.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Armin said, but his sigh had the reluctant lilt of a laugh in it, this time, and already he was sliding across the bed, feeling out the floor. His toes nudged fabric; his shirt, or Jean’s perhaps. Armin looked again at the moonlit figure in the window. “Are you really going to stand there naked and smoke?”
Jean hummed, amused. “Getting the smell out of your clothes is a lot harder than off your skin,” he said. “Anyway, it’s dark—who’s going to see? Even my cock doesn’t cast that much of a shadow.”
The splutter escaped him before he could stop it. Armin had not laughed out loud in a long time, and so the noise that burst from him sounded closer to the creaking of a rusty hinge. But it was honest, and it flushed him through with fondness, and he couldn’t dampen the smile that split his face; he didn’t especially try to.
As he came to stand at the window, he took the pouch from Jean’s outstretched hand. It was the same one that he had been using for a couple of years now. Long enough that its weight and feel was familiar even to Armin. Jean had taken good care of it, as he did most of his belongings, though the leather was starting to tire. Worn pale at the corners from endless handling, the friction of his pocket. It was naïvely made: a simple slip with a fold-over top—chamois leather, to tell by its softness—its stitched edges exposed, a separate section patched in for papers. Armin laid one on the surface of the windowsill and took out a fat pinch of tobacco.
Jean was quiet as he rolled and sealed two cigarettes, twisting the ends tight between thumb and forefinger.
“Thank you,” said Jean, taking the roll-up Armin passed to him. “See? Hardly any tobacco wasted.”
The compliment was an absurd one—Armin raised an eyebrow as Jean gave it—and still he let it please him. Jean might have been teasing, but there was no scorn in the words he’d said. And it was true, anyway; he’d wasted almost no tobacco. The little that he had, Armin gathered up with a drag of his fingertips and brushed off into the breeze.
Jean was standing upright against the jamb, but Armin was just short enough to perch himself on the sill without banging his head. And so he sat there, his feet braced against the wall, his knees turned towards Jean’s body. The windows were thrown so far open that if he tilted back too far, there would be nothing to catch himself on. Nothing but Jean.
“It actually looks nice, at night,” Jean said, with a wistful look, a wistful voice. Armin, who had been watching Jean’s neat profile rather than the dark city below, followed his gaze outwards.
It was beautiful, in its own way. The Azumabito estate was far out enough from the centre that the evenings were silent, peaceful. In the distance, past the ambassadors’ handsome grounds and the tent-pitched fields of the refugee camps, the city seemed to glow. Clusters of streetlights crowded the landscape like grounded stars, bright little pinpricks that fuzzed together when Armin blinked.
The rasp of Jean’s thumb against the lighter’s mechanism was startling in this close quiet. Armin watched Jean tuck his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and found himself doing the same, a familiar mirroring.
“Did you buy that here?” Armin asked. He cupped his hand around the lighter as Jean held it out to him. Even from a flame so small, he felt its heat lick against his mouth as his cigarette caught.
Jean paused, split-second confusion before he realised what Armin meant. He snapped the cap shut and turned the lighter in his fingers, again with that dextrous ease. It was a very fine thing, which was what had made Armin ask the question. Polished brass, with an engraved design of concentric circles. Functional, but lovely, too.
“It makes for a nice souvenir, don’t you think?” said Jean, and as he considered the lighter he let out a languid breath of smoke, almost a sigh. “I figured I might as well get one good thing out of this trip. Even if it was a hell of a lot dearer than a box of matches.”
Armin took a long pull of his cigarette and released it. Caught on the breeze, their smokestreams made a dissipating lace. He could not think of a reply to Jean that was fair or funny, but the silence was companionable, and so it seemed okay to let it settle.
At the horizon, Armin could make out the vast outlines of the factories that boxed the city in. Fleets of chimneys, standing like obelisks, venting great white clouds into an oily sky. They operated even in these small hours of the morning, making bombs and guns, boats and automobiles, boots and beer. It was impossible to see real stars, here. Onyankopon had said that it was the haze of the lights below that blurred them, and for those first few nights they’d spent in Marley, Armin had found it strangely numbing. He could not navigate by this featureless sky; he didn’t know how to place himself in this world. It was like trying to stitch a seam with no feeling in his fingers.
Perhaps Mikasa and Eren were looking up right now, just as he was, searching for some familiar constellation. Or not: perhaps they had not wanted a place in this world any longer. Their choice had been to run instead, a desperate flight blinkered by fear, or love, or hate, or guilt. Armin could not understand it, but he understood now that he could not catch up to them. That they did not want him to. And sometimes, in his darkest moments, when the spite at last seethed up to the surface—when his anger grew so intense that he was sick with it—Armin wanted to hate them. He did hate them. But it would go cold just as quick as it had flared to life, and Armin would be left feeling sad and lost and hollow, because he loved Eren and Mikasa. It was impossible not to.
“Do you think they’ll come back?” Armin said. It was cruel to throw the question back, he knew, and earlier Armin hadn’t wanted to hear his answer anyway. Not Jean’s honest opinion. Not the halting way he would have said it, lasting too long and revealing too much. His assumption was unfair, though, for Jean did not hesitate at all.
“I’d like to think so,” Jean told him. “I’m just not so sure of my judgement, these days.”
Armin’s smile twisted sourly. He pressed the cigarette hard against his mouth to hide it.
“Yeah. Me neither.”
He was no stranger to making the wrong decision. Armin had swallowed the shame of his own mistakes enough times that the taste was no longer so foul, but what disturbed him now was the extent to which he had been wrong. The unwavering belief that he had understood Eren and Mikasa better than anyone—a lie, even if only to himself. How strange it was to have that illusion burst. How strange, to be left holding nothing but the frayed end of the line when it had tethered them together for so long.
His cigarette had burned down too low. Its glancing heat was a shock to his numb fingers. The air was chilly where it had been a cooling relief, and the night was no longer a novelty: once again Marley looked huge, grey, and ugly. Armin crushed the smouldering stub against the window’s frame, and he waited for the weight of Jean’s stare to settle on him.
“I think I want to go to bed,” he said.
Jean offered no challenge. He took a final, lingering drag of his cigarette, smoke curling from the corners of his mouth. Even through the clouding veil, he looked unfairly handsome. Before the wind could wick it away, Jean flicked the butt out into the dark.
“You’ll stay,” he said. It was not quite a statement, nor a question, but Armin nodded anyway. Yes, he wanted to stay. Truthfully, he couldn’t stand to be alone.
No more words were necessary. Once Armin stood from the sill, Jean reached for the stays and heaved the windows shut. All sound fell away, and as he drew the curtains across, all colour seemed to drain from the room. But Jean allowed a narrow sliver of light to pass through, just enough that they could find each other’s pale shape in the semi-dark.
Jean took Armin’s hand in his. He led Armin to bed. And after laying there too long with sleep no closer to coming, Jean must have sensed his deliberate stillness: he slid close and folded Armin in against his chest.
“Can you feel my breathing?” Jean whispered. Armin could. A deep slow rhythm, the push and yield of Jean’s ribcage against his back, the ticklish draw of air at the crown of his head, not quite enough to itch. “Just like that, okay? In…” Jean breathed in, held it for the length of a heartbeat, and released it. “And out.”
In, and out. Armin wondered at how pathetic it was to require such comforting, but he matched every exhalation, every inhalation, until it felt only natural to breathe together. In, and out. Jean was a warm presence at his back, and he held Armin like he’d put up a fight before he’d ever let him go. In, and out. Armin felt Jean’s lungs as if they shared a body. Jean’s blood, as if it were his own. It ran right through the marrow of his bones; and when he slept, it ran right through the marrow of his dreams.