Chapter Text
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?” John Steinbeck
***
Jean Kirchstein just felt something hit him in the back.
He turns on his heels and glares at his friends. Eren has his hands behind his back and aims an innocent expression at the sky.
“Jaeger, did you just chuck a snowball at me?” he asks, eyebrows furrowing.
“It was Mikasa,” Eren says.
Jean deadpans. “If Mikasa had thrown it, it would have gone straight through me.” He’s had a snowball fight with them once before – he would know. He still has bruises. That girl throws hard.
She elbows her brother in the side. When they come closer, Jean squints at him. “I see the fuckin’ snow on your gloves, Jaeger.”
“Can you two please be civil with each other for once?” Armin begs.
“Motion seconded,” Annie mumbles in addition.
Eren laughs. “Yeah, yeah, sorry.”
Jean holds open the door for Annie and Mikasa, and they thank him for it on their way inside.
Armin stands in front of him, and the two of them exchange a quick kiss. “How are you?” he asks.
Eren passes behind him – he and Jean meet eyes for a split second, Jean with a look of I’ll get back at you later for this, and Eren with a look of I’ll be waiting.
“I’m pretty good,” Jean replies with a shrug. “The real question is, how are you?”
Armin smiles a small smile and swings his arms back and forth a bit. “I feel really well, actually,” he says. “Better than I have in a long, long time.”
“That’s great,” Jean says, exhaling into a matching smile. He ushers Armin inside, and the two of them meet at the booth Eren, Mikasa and Annie have already grabbed.
Their waiter is Bertholdt, a tall guy who talks quickly, and who happens to be friends with Annie’s cousin Reiner. Annie and Armin order green tea, Jean and Eren ask for coffee, and everyone decides to split a basket of French fries as an appetizer.
Without trying to seem obvious, Jean slides his arm around Armin’s upper back.
“You know, there are three new species of sharks that are really close to getting put on the ‘endangered’ list,” Armin starts, angling his head up at him.
Jean faces him now. “Seriously? That sucks.”
“Doesn’t it?” The energy level in Armin’s voice jumps. He begins to gesticulate. “Such a huge disappointment. One of them, the tiger shark, it was clearly from fishing. People had started to use it for shark fin soup.”
Jean could listen to him talk like this for hours, if he could.
“Isn’t shark fin soup just an aesthetic?” Eren cuts in. “Like, the fins serve no purpose. They don’t even add flavor.”
“That’s exactly right,” Armin says, pointing his face and a finger in his direction. “It is the most horrible thing ever. Fishing boats catch the sharks, chop off their fins, and then drop them back into the water and leave them for dead, immobile and bleeding.”
“What assholes,” Eren says with a scowl.
Bertholdt comes with the coffee, tea and fries. He scurries over to the next table. Mikasa dumps salt onto the basket and starts to eat out of it two fries at a time. Eren takes a handful.
Jean stares mesmerized at the steam pouring off his drink as the topic changes. Armin’s chemotherapy is still not over. It’s not going to be over for another year or two. But there is a different feeling to it now, a certainty that Armin is going to beat this cancer once and for all. That the ocean is not going to just boil away. Lately everyone has felt this ease, and life is looking up. Jean no longer carries the heavy, dense worry in his heart.
He glances out the frosty window and counts cars in the parking lot by the number of snowy roofs. His lips twitch a bit. He picks up the mug by the handle, inspects the rim, lifts the mug to his mouth and drinks. The coffee is scalding hot – it burns his throat on the way down, but he just keeps drinking until half of it is gone. Warmth pours into his chest. He sets down the mug with a final gulp. And the second everyone else stops speaking, he opens his mouth and says, “Armin, you still haven’t been to the ocean, have you?”
He feels Armin inhale deeply as they meet eyes. “No, I haven’t,” he says. He chuckles a little and turns toward his friends, about to start talking to them again.
“Well, why don’t we just go?”
Armin returns to Jean and cocks one eyebrow. “What?”
“We can just go,” Jean says, tensing his shoulders. “I mean, it’s at least a thirteen-hour drive from here to the nearest coast, but we have time – the semester’s not starting for more than a week. Why not?”
He has a car. Armin doesn’t have a license yet, but no one has to know, and he’s not a bad driver – he’s taken driver’s ed. They can take turns napping, and down one energy drink after another. They can spend the night at a cheap motel in some coastal town and drive back later the next day.
If they go fast they can make it there by New Year’s Eve, Jean does the math in his head. They can run along the snowless ground, sit in the sand, breathe in the temperate air, dip their toes in the water. They can watch fireworks on the beach and kiss at midnight. The very thought of it makes his heart flip in his chest.
“You’re serious?” Armin asks. His mouth can’t close.
Jean nods. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go – that is, if you’re feeling up to it. If you think you can handle the trip, health-wise.”
Armin stares dumbfounded at him for a moment, wills himself to breathe, blinks hard a few times, and throws questioning glances at all of his friends.
“Dude, you should go,” Eren says. “If you feel well enough for it, you should go.”
“Go,” Mikasa says with a smile. Annie nods.
Armin turns back to Jean. His wide eyes scan him up and down, seeking some indication that this is all a dream. It is not.
“Okay.” A grin grows on his face, and he starts to nod more and more vigorously. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do it. Let’s go to the ocean.”
Jean grins back. He lifts his arm from around Armin, who stands from the booth first. Jean downs the rest of his coffee and then takes out his wallet, but Eren waves a hand and shakes his head at him. He pockets the wallet, and holds Armin’s hand all the way out the diner to his car. As soon as Armin sits in the front passenger’s seat he laughs as if he still cannot believe they are doing this. Jean turns the keys in the ignition and backs carefully out of the parking spot, and off they go.