Chapter Text
Some nights, Jean leaves his front door unlocked.
It's not like he’s waiting for anyone, though. Think of it more as a habit borne of convenience.
So he doesn’t even look up from his laptop when he hears someone coming in—stepping out of their shoes—shuffling over to collapse on the couch behind him.
He’s been working all night, and his eyes are starting to hurt.
He pulls off his glasses; massages the bridge of his nose, then replaces them with care.
The sun has been up for six whole minutes.
“Mornin’,” Eren mumbles, somewhere in the vicinity of his ear.
“Not your house, Jaeger,” Jean informs him. He closes his laptop and gets to his feet.
“Uh-huh.” Eren’s hands flail around in the space he’s just vacated, like they’re trying to draw him back in. Eventually he gives up; hurls himself petulantly back into the couch, and crosses his arms. “I know that.”
“And so…?”
“So I’m borrowing your couch for a day. Turn out the lights.”
“That’s the sun.”
Eren laughs. It’s a kind of sick, sad sound. “Then close the curtains.”
He looks pitiful, lying there with his arm over his eyes to block out the sunlight. Pitiful. Jean’s always thought that of him, but—well, it’s different now. In a way which is hard to put into words. Which is stupid, because that’s his job, putting things into words. (Eren on the other hand doesn’t have a job, unless you count getting high out of his mind every day since his mom died.)
Jean goes into the kitchen and makes toast and tea—enough for two.
But by the time he comes back out, Eren’s already fast asleep.
*
Mikasa only says one thing to him when she drops by in late afternoon to retrieve her errant brother:
“You do know you’re enabling him, right?”
Which is, to Jean, practically offensive. He doesn’t know the first thing about drugs; he’s never had so much as a toke in his life. But if he started locking his door again—well, god only knows where Jaeger’d end up. Dead in a ditch somewhere, most likely. (His apartment, while seedy and in somewhat ill repair, is probably still preferable to that.)
Okay, so they’ve hated each other since grade school, with the kind of single-minded dedication you only get in record-setting athletes or mental ward patients.
But he's never wanted the guy dead.
“Thanks for looking out for Eren, Jean, you’re such a great guy. Oh, of course, you’re welcome, anytime,” he calls after her back as she leaves.
He goes back inside. Sits down at the coffee table again and types out a sentence, which he backspaces angrily.
Then he sighs, shuts the laptop, and puts his head down on his arms.
If you asked him, he wouldn’t be able to tell you where it all went to shit. There was this brief period in their lives where everything was looking up, and everyone had this awesome bright future ahead of them. And then… then things happened, and everyone just sort of drifted apart.
Last he heard Reiner was going to law school, so that was good. And Armin, well, he’s doing his residency somewhere.
You know. The whole doctor thing.
Meanwhile, he’s freelancing shitty articles for shittier publications at four in the morning, while Eren’s holed up in his bathroom trying to puke into the bowl instead of on the floor all around it.
“I’m not gonna hold the hair out of your eyes for you, Jaeger,” he yells over his keyboard and a cup of life-giving coffee.
Eren sticks a middle finger out into the hallway. Then it disappears, accompanied by a loud retching sound. Yeah, Jean thinks. Real charming.
Fifteen minutes later he emerges, considerably paler. Jean tosses a roll of paper towels at him.
“At least clean up after yourself,” he grumbles.
Eren smiles weakly.
“Or what,” he wants to know. “Or you’ll kick me out?”
“You better believe it.”
But this being probably the dozenth time Jean’s said it, Eren remains unmoved. He disappears into the bathroom again, and Jean hears him splashing water on his face.
When he comes back out, he looks a little less mangy, and Jean doesn’t even say anything when he walks over, picks up Jean’s cup and drains it to the last drop.
“You make the best coffee, Kirschtein,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Jean just snorts.
“Well, anything’d taste better than your barf.”
Eren appears to give this real thought.
“Dog crap wouldn’t,” he says, eventually.
“That's what I like about you, Jaeger,” Jean tells him. “The shit that comes out of your mouth? Pure poetry.”
“Always knew there was a reason you kept me around,” Eren retorts with a tired grin.
He sits down on the couch, same place he always does, and peers at the laptop’s screen in a way which makes Jean feel weirdly self-conscious.
“—Y’know, Kirschtein,” he says, after a lull, and slowly, like he’s weighing every syllable, “there’s... other things I can do with my mouth. If poetry isn’t your thing.”
Jean rolls his eyes. (Partly so he won't have to look at Eren, because he's afraid of what he might find there.)
“Shut up and sleep, Jaeger.”
“I’m just sayin’.” Though his eyelids are already drooping, he clings stubbornly to consciousness. (The coffee doesn’t seem to have had any effect.) “Always figured you had a thing for me, Kirschtein. I mean, it’s obvious.” Jean breathes in—breathes out. Tries not to let anything show on his face.
Oblivious to his turmoil, Eren says, “You always leave your door open.”
For a moment, Jean wonders if anyone would even notice if he smothered Eren with a pillow and then dumped the body in the harbor.
Oh yeah, Mikasa probably would. Damn.
“No one besides your crazy sister is ever going to have a thing for you until you stop getting high every night of your life and go get a goddamn job,” Jean tells him, finally.
Giving up the losing battle against gravity, Eren topples onto his side. He reaches out; tugs at the back of Jean’s shirt, and grudgingly, Jean glances back at him.
Eren stares. Just stares at him, with those drugged, dreamy eyes, and mumbles, “Hey, you’re kinda hot in glasses.”
A couple of seconds later, he starts to snore.
Jean has to remind himself three times before it sinks in.
This isn’t the flicks and your life isn’t a goddamn movie. Nothing good will come of this.
There’s no happy ending waiting for you—there’s just nothing.
Once he fixes those words firmly in his mind, his breathing evens out again. His heart rate returns to normal.
He’s just being realistic. No sense in listening to the sweet-talk of a coked-out druggie who probably won’t even remember this in the morning. (Especially one who drank the rest of his coffee, ‘cause that cup probably needs to be sterilized.)
No way he’d have fallen for some angry unemployed junkie who’s fucked out of his mind and comes round to his place every other night just to screw with him. No way in hell.
He listens to the gentle wheezing sound of Eren snoring behind him, and buries his face in his hands.
Fuck.
*
Some nights are better than others.
Some nights, Eren is lucid. Then it’s almost like having a roommate. (Albeit a roommate that doesn’t pay rent and is a gigantic pain in the ass, but he’s heard stories from friends with actual roommates and that seems like a pretty accurate description.)
“Feet off the coffee table, Jaeger,” he snaps, putting the six-pack from the fridge down next to the aforementioned feet.
Eren rolls his eyes, but does as he’s told. He grabs a bottle and the bottle opener; twists the cap off with relish.
“That’s the way you do it,” Jean says, flopping down beside him to watch him lazily. “Wash that cocaine down with a little booze, am I right?”
“Fuck you,” says Eren, and drinks deep. After he surfaces, he adds—thoughtfully, as though he’s dispensing a little gem of wisdom, “Anyway, you don’t eat crack.”
Which is, Jean thinks, slightly besides the point, but he’s willing to let it slide. Nights like this—when they sit almost shoulder to shoulder, cold beer in one hand and remote control in the other, watching late-night sitcom reruns and cracking up because they’re seriously the least funny shit he’s ever seen in his life—well, nights like this he can even forgive Jaeger for falling asleep on his shoulder and leaving a spreading drool stain.
Then there are the bad nights, the ones where Eren comes stumbling in and throws up before he can even get his shoes off, raving about things crawling under his skin before passing out in the puddle of his own puke.
Then Jean gets to drag the mop out of the closet and bitch to himself about how he’s not even getting paid for this, this isn't a fucking halfway house and maybe he's going to start locking his front door on weekends, see how you like that, Jaeger.
But it's not as satisfying as you might think, telling off a guy who’s passed out under a blanket on the couch. Actually it feels pretty fucking dumb, the kind of thing a loser with no friends might do. Yell ineffectually at the unconscious freeloader in your house. Old man yells at cloud. Hah.
Funny story: one time he thought Eren had stopped breathing and he freaked out and almost ended up giving him CPR. But then Eren just kind of gave a raspy choking cough, rolled over and went on snoring.
And then he realized that he’d come this close to attempting mouth-to-mouth with a guy who’d just thrown up in the last hour, and had to spend a little time heavily re-evaluating his life choices.
Anyway, if mopping Eren's puke off the bathroom floor in the middle of the night is enabling him, then he's a fucking enabler. But he’s not standing in vomit to take a piss, so Mikasa is just gonna have to deal with that.
Once, when Eren’s only half shitfaced and mostly upright, Jean makes the mistake of speaking his mind.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it,” he says, watching Eren prod gingerly at the measly leftover takeout (that’s all he’s getting for supper, dammit, so he’d better be grateful).
“Around what?”
“Y’know. This.” Jean makes a vague gesture. “This whole thing. Why are you here? Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”
“Like you fuckin’ care,” Eren says, sounding annoyed. He takes a mouthful of cold kung pao chicken, swallows, then turns faintly green.
Jean bites back any self-incriminating answers like well, yeah or what do you think, fuckhead? Instead he settles for, “I’m not getting paid enough to put up with your shit.”
“Yeah,” Eren says with a grin, “you’re not.”
But the grin quickly fades, and he returns to a sort of morose silence, pushing food around the bottom of its greasy wax-paper takeout box.
Jean counts eighty-seven tocks from the clock on the wall before he hears it—a quiet murmur, almost plaintive: “...well, what else can I do?”
“I don’t know,” Jean tells him, voice heavy with sarcasm. “Get off the drugs? Get a job? Fuckin’ anything.”
Eren just laughs. The sound of it makes Jean want to hit him.
“Just look at me, man,” he says. “You think I can do that shit? I’m done in.” He scrubs at his face, hiding the suspicion of tears, and then laughs again. “A goddamn wastrel. Probably better off dead. Right, Kirschtein?"
His eyes are wide, lost, and he stares at Jean, through him. As if there’s anything Jean could possibly do for him. Like maybe Jean could just wave a hand and make it all go away.
Jean opens his mouth to answer, but no sound comes out. He’s desperately trying not to think of it in terms like That’s not what the Eren Jaeger I fell for would have said, but it’s hard. That was then and this is now, and the Eren he may or may not have fallen for is now a dream as distant as the moon. Whatever the future holds for Eren Jaeger, he thinks, it’s not hope, and it sure as hell ain’t a happy ending, either.
Eren’s still there, still waiting for a reply. Jean closes his eyes and turns away so he doesn’t have to look at that face, and says, so soft it’s almost inaudible, “Wrong."
He doesn't move, either, when something warm bumps into him. "Too kind for your own good, Kirschtein," Eren murmurs, muffled against his back.
And if Jean notices the back of his shirt getting damp, he doesn't mention it.
*
He writes, sometimes, on his days off. That sounds weird, but it gives him something to do, and it gives him a break from having to write what other people tell him to.
He writes with pen and paper, shunning the keyboard for a few hours at a stretch. (Somehow this gives the whole exercise a veneer of authenticity—like he’s a proper writer, instead of a paid hack.) He doesn’t really set out to write anything in particular. Usually, he just writes about whatever’s on his mind.
If there’s someone who’s been haunting his thoughts lately, someone who makes the words flow; fill pages, one after another… well, that’s not his fault.
It’s not like he’s even writing about Jaeger, specifically. He writes... about isolation; about the most wretched of compulsions. About knowing better, but not caring. About hurting everyone around you and driving away all the people who care about you, one by one, until all you're left with is the people who would be stuck with you anyway and that one guy who's too much of a goddamn fool to lock his front door.
—Okay, so maybe he is writing about Eren. But it's not like that matters, because Eren is never, ever going to get to read this stuff.
So when he emerges, groggy, from a nap on the couch one evening, and discovers Eren seated on the floor nearby, thumbing through his latest writings with apparent interest, he nearly has a conniption. Eren, however, fully absorbed in reading, doesn’t even notice that Jean’s awake until he has the papers whipped out from under his nose, with enough violence to give him a paper cut.
“Oh. Uh, sorry,” says Eren, though he doesn’t look sorry at all.
Jean swallows, hard. (Also tries not to hyperventilate, because man, how pathetic would that be?)
“You do this often?” he demands, knowing he sounds totally crazy, but not quite able to locate the switch to turn it off. “Break into people’s houses and just, like, read their personal shit? Without even asking?”
“Um,” says Eren, looking taken aback. “Dunno.” He shrugs. “I didn’t think it would be that big a deal…?”
“It’s not,” Jean snaps, in what is probably the worst and most obvious lie he has ever told.
Eren raises his eyebrows. “Okay, I got it,” he says, carefully. “Chill out. I didn’t get to read much, anyway. Whatever, right?”
“Right,” Jean says, with finality. There’s a pause while he waits for his blood pressure to return to normal. (One day, he thinks, Eren Jaeger is going to be the death of him.)
In the silence that follows, Eren shuffles from foot to foot, awkwardly. To Jean’s eyes, he seems to be teetering on the edge of saying something that he knows he probably shouldn’t—but god knows that’s never stopped him before.
“—You know something, though...” he begins, and Jean’s heart immediately plunges into his stomach. “Some of that stuff was… kinda… weirdly familiar. I’m not trying to say anything, just—I mean—“ He pauses, like he’s trying to find the words to make it all make sense. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just crazy or something. It just seemed a whole lot like—like you were writing about me, Kirschtein—”
“The only thing,” says Jean suddenly, in a quiet, deadly voice, “bigger than my dick is your ego, Jaeger.”
He looks down at the sheets of paper in his hands, considering. And then the next moment he’s ripping them up, tearing all his words to shreds—the loneliness, the wanting, the getting drunk together at three in the morning and feeling the warmth of Eren’s skin through his sleeve where their shoulders are pressed together—all of it, rips it to shreds right in front of Eren’s face and then lets the pieces fall where they may. He’s going to have a hell of time cleaning it up later but he’s making a statement right now, and that statement is: he doesn’t fucking need Eren Jaeger.
“Who are you kidding?” he asks, after it’s over. “Who the fuck would write about you?” He’s breathing hard and his hands are shaking—he feels like he’s just been in a fight. The whole time it’s happening, Eren just sort of watches him in a stunned silence. (There’s a tiny scrap or two of shredded paper caught in his hair: Jean has to resist the urge to sweep them away for him.)
“—No one, I guess,” says Eren after a long moment, and looks away. “Sorry I mentioned it.”
*
He’ll never forget the first time Jaeger showed up on his doorstep at four in the morning. He’d passed out sometime in the evening after pulling an all-nighter for a job, and while he’s drifting, dreaming on the couch, he registers this crazy loud thumping somewhere, like somebody falling down an infinite flight of steps. He drags himself to his feet and stumbles over to the door, whipping it open so he can give the motherfucker banging on it a good piece of his mind, but instead what comes out is, "Eren? What the hell?!"
“That’s my name,” Eren says, with a grin that is slightly deranged. “Lemme in.”
At a loss, Jean obeys, then immediately regrets it. Eren is unkempt, unshaven; his clothes are rumpled and he’s got dark shadows under his eyes that are decidedly not cosmetic. He stumbles inside, fumbling at jacket and shoes with hands that don’t seem to want to work right. Jean watches, horrified, and demands, “How did you even get my address?”
“Armin gave it to me,” says Eren cheerfully, ricocheting off a wall. “Said not to bother you while you’re working. But I figured you wouldn’t be working, like, now, hey?”
Actually he was, but in the circumstances that’s probably going to be put on hold for a bit. His place is a mess and not really fit for visitors but Eren doesn’t seem to mind. He grins expansively at everything in the room like it has done him a favor, and then graces the couch with his physical presence, tumbling into it with all the elegance and aplomb of a drunken elephant. Jean stares at him.
“Ohh… kay,” he says, very slowly, like he’s talking to an idiot. “But what are you doing here, Jaeger?”
“Need a place to stay,” Eren answers, airily. “Hey, look, here’s one!”
Jean grits his teeth and counts to five. “So go home,” he says, once he’s sure he’s not going to explode. “You don’t need to come here and shit up the place. Fucking go home.”
Eren rolls onto his back, presses his hand over his eyes. Shadows under his eyes, stubble across his jawline, all the evidence of several days gone without personal hygiene or proper sleep. He’s silent for a long while, so long that Jean wonders briefly if he’s passed out. And then—
“—can’t go back,” he mumbles at last, hardly audible. “Not... like this.”
For the second time that night, Jean Kirschtein is at a loss. Here’s a guy he never thought he’d see again—except at those goddamn reunions that Christa keeps organizing and he can’t say no to, and then only in the presence of his two butt buddies who more or less keep him under control. He never imagined that he’d ever have to deal with Eren Jaeger in his own fucking home, which up until about ten minutes ago was his sanctuary. (He’s pretty sure there are accepted and universal rules of engagement, and that Jaeger is breaking every single one of them.)
“One night, Jaeger,” he says, not knowing why those particular words are coming out of his mouth when his brain hasn’t signed off on them and his heart is screaming something that sounds a lot like You are so fucked. “One night and then you’re outta here. Got it?”
“...yeah,” says Eren. “Okay.”
His smile, Jean thinks, is blinding.
*
It starts out—strangely enough—as one of the good nights.
Eren shows up around two in the morning, which is like early afternoon in Eren-land. Of course, he’s already half-baked, but what’s notable this time around is that he’s brought a six-pack with him. Jean’s already eaten dinner at a normal time like a regular person, but he won’t say no to a drink or two for supper. There’s a dumb made-for-TV comedy on channel 9, so he puts that on while they drink and shoot the shit, sprawled decadently across the couch like the world’s lamest Roman emperors.
“Do you ever, like, sleep?” Eren asks, already on his second can. He keeps swinging his feet up into Jean’s lap to deposit them there, and Jean keeps shoving them off. (Around the fifth time or so, though, his laziness triumphs over his irritation and he just leaves them where they are. If that means Eren wins, well, that’s just how it goes.)
“If I don’t,” Jean says, rolling his eyes, “whose fault do you think it is?”
Eren scrunches up his face like he’s deep in thought, but it only makes him look stupid. “Are you saying that I keep you up all night, Kirschtein?” he says, batting his eyes outrageously.
The wording of it gives Jean pause, but—hey, this is just two guys fucking around, right? It’s just a joke. Just two guys joking with each other. Yeah, that’s right. So Jean laughs too, looks away; takes a drink to cover up the little awkward moment, and definitely pays no attention to the way Eren’s feet wiggle in his lap as he tries to get comfortable.
Unnoticed by either of them, the movie ends. Three beers isn’t nearly enough to make Jean’s head spin, but he thinks he could use some air, so he lurches up off the couch to crack open a window. The fact that Eren trails along behind him is kind of weird, but the booze has him pleasantly buzzed and disinclined to think too deeply about anything. He rests his forehead against the window screen, breathing in semi-fresh downtown air, and then watches the mostly-empty street outside—the occasional shadow of a car flying by, red taillights blinking in the night.
“You’re such a fucking lightweight, Kirschtein,” Eren murmurs, near his ear.
There’s something discomfiting in his voice which Jean is adamantly not registering as affection. He looks back at Eren, going for a grin that feels like it doesn’t fit right on his face.
“Yeah? At least I’m not a fucking—”
It happens out of the blue, no word, no warning; Eren leans over and shuts him up with a kiss, and Jean’s brain… shuts down.
As far as kisses go, it’s pretty fucking awful—sloppy, with too much teeth. Eren tangles a hand in his hair to hold him close, and in response he seizes Eren’s shirt, not knowing if he should be pulling him in or pushing him away. Eren’s mouth is hot and wet; the inside of it tastes like cheap beer and desperation. His tongue, a nimble little thing which teases so much more. He bites at Eren’s lip, and is rewarded with a small gasp of pain and desire. It’s terrifying in its newness, but quite honestly, what frightens him most of all is that he never wants it to end.
For one brief, shining moment, Jean is precognizant. He sees them stumbling to his bedroom, shedding clothes all over the floor of his apartment—tangled together in need, exploring each other’s bodies hungrily, learning them intimately, marking each other, and then…
And then—
And then everything will go back to just the way it is now.
With Eren orbiting in and out of his life like a rogue planet. Treating his place like a goddamn motel.
And every once in a while, they get drunk and fuck each other stupid like it means nothing at all.
It’s not how he wants it to be. Truth be told, he’s never wanted this. (It’s just that this is all he could get, so he took it.)
He yanks his mouth away, then takes a swing at Eren, which connects with a sickening crunch. It feels as though someone else has taken control of his body, which would explain why, in the next moment, someone else starts shouting with his mouth, in his voice, “Fuck you, Jaeger! You’d never do this if you were fucking sober—quit jerking me around! Every week you come waltzing in here after another one of your god damn drug binges and you—“
Eren stumbles backwards, holding his jaw. His mouth is shiny-wet from the kiss, and there’s a small cut from Jean’s teeth.
He turns his eyes down like there’s something very interesting on the ground between his feet, and mutters something which sounds suspiciously like Maybe I want to.
“Maybe?” Jean laughs, wondering if he sounds as crazy as he feels. “Maybe you want to? Well, you know what? That’s just not good enough.” He turns away, so he doesn’t have to meet Eren’s eyes or deal with the urge to lick away the blood beading on Eren’s lower lip. “Get the fuck out of here, Jaeger, and don’t bother coming back until you get your life in shape. Which will be,” he adds, sardonically, “as we both know, fucking never.”
Eren’s expression is frozen in place. He’s still holding his jaw, which is starting to bruise.
“So that’s it, then?” he says, after a while.
“That’s it,” Jean tells him. He fixes his gaze upon the sky outside, through the window. It’s a dark slate wiped clean by light pollution, with no stars to be seen.
Behind him, the door opens, closes again. The footsteps outside die away.
He’s alone.
*
It takes about three weeks for Jean to realize that yes, Eren Jaeger really is gone from his life and he's not coming back.
The first week, that’s denial. He makes two cups of coffee on Saturday and ends up throwing one of them out. He buys too much takeout and half of it goes uneaten. Up till now he hadn’t known that “denial” was a synonym for “setting money on fire and watching it burn”, but, well, you learn something new every day. At every little creak in the hallway outside he looks up expectantly, but the door remains quite firmly shut. Quiet seeps into every corner of the house, filling up all the empty spaces with itself, and the silence is so loud that Jean can’t sleep.
In the second week, he discovers anger. Fits of uncontrollable rage are interspersed with the mundane. Look at the stain on the carpet where he threw up last month, the fucking asshole, if he was here right now I’d strangle him. Oh yeah, gotta take out the trash before tomorrow or I’m gonna be stuck with bags in the hallway again. The disparity is absurd. He sits down by himself to dinner and doesn’t know what to do with his hands, where he should put them. Something is missing and if he could only just find it again, then maybe—
One night, while watching TV, he notices that he’s in the habit of sitting to one side of the couch, not in the center, and barely restrains himself from flinging the TV remote (which, most assuredly, hasn’t done anything to him) across the room.
The third week is spent malingering in a black depression. He lies half-conscious and semi-comatose on the couch, rousing himself only to eat or to piss. Take it in and then pump it right out again. How pathetic. Humans get so stuck up about their lives, but really they’re just machines that turn food into shit. For a moment it makes him smile to think of how Eren would have laughed at that—and then the pain of loss, that empty space like a cavity, like someone’s carved a hole in him, comes rushing right back.
And a week after that... he folds.
It’s humiliating. It’s disgusting, admitting defeat. But he has to start locking his door again because how long can he cling to his goddamn delusions, really? It was suicide doing things the way they did. Just asking to be mugged. Every day he woke up without some psycho murderer bursting in and knifing him to death was a damn miracle.
Well, now he’s safe, and so is his stuff.
So… fucking… safe… that it makes him want to scream.
The worst part is, he’s been thinking about what Mikasa said about him. About being an enabler.
It’s hard to think about himself in those terms. After all, no man is in a position to see the evil within himself. Especially now, after the fact. After everything’s already happened. It’s just that—Eren never came over when he was sober. Probably wouldn’t have if he was.
So maybe Jean didn’t have a reason to stir the pot.
So what? Did that make him a bad person?
Did it?
Jean just doesn’t know. The only thing he does know is if he keeps sitting in his apartment arguing with himself in his head he’s going to go crazy.
The thing to do is keep yourself busy. Never let your mind wander. So the days pass. He goes about his life and never thinks about Eren Jaeger. This, he tells himself, is almost like moving on.
The only reminder that things were once different is the ache that remains—the hollow feeling in his gut when he wakes up to an empty house and knows that no one’s coming over. Not anymore.
*
It’s been almost two months since Eren Jaeger walked out his door for the last time.
He has adjusted to life sans Eren, much in the same way that people adjust to life without a limb. Out of necessity, yes—but with difficulty, and always with the lingering sense that something is not quite right.
So he’d be ashamed to admit that, when someone starts banging on the door at midnight, his first thought isn’t even Eren. It’s just—what the fuck? Because he can’t even let himself hope. Hoping, after all, is the road to madness.
He hauls himself out of bed, into the deathly quiet living room, to the door. Pauses there, like he’s on the precipice of something, and then chances a glance through the peephole. Just one.
It is Eren, in the flesh. Looking like he’s on death’s doorstep. He’s pale, shaking; probably high as a kite, too, Jean thinks, with a sick feeling of disappointment. (Had he really thought, somewhere, deep down inside, that things would change?)
“Kirschtein.” His voice is weak; hollow, like he’s calling up from the bottom of a well. “I know you’re home.” He hammers on the door, probably loud enough to wake up the neighbors. (Jean cringes; tries not to imagine the dirty looks he’ll be getting in the morning.)
“The hell do you want, Jaeger?” he calls back.
“To come in, shithead.” He coughs, then knocks again. “Open the door.”
“Fuck off.”
“C’mon, Kirschtein.” A shaky laugh. “I’m serious here. Open up.”
Jean close his eyes. He leans his forehead against his side of the door; presses it there like he’s trying to sink right through it.
“I’m serious, too,” he says, softly. “Fuck off. Just leave.”
“Kirschtein—“
“Go away!” he yells. The door rattles a bit in its frame.
Standing there, leaning against the door like it’s the only thing holding him up, he counts to ten in his head, then checks the peephole again.
Eren is gone. The hallway is empty.
This should make him feel relieved or something, he knows. Gratified, like he’s done the right thing.
But he just feels sick. Eren came to him and he fucking turned him away again. Fucking genius. If he dies alone, it’ll be just what he deserves. (It’s ludicrously dramatic but he can’t stop himself from thinking it anyway.)
Somehow—he doesn’t register how—he finds himself back on the couch, curled into a ball. It seems like a pretty good place to wallow in self-loathing and wait for dawn.
So that’s exactly what he does.
*
It’s an hour or so later—maybe two—that Jean gets a call. At first he thinks he’s just hallucinating the ringing, because who the fuck would be calling him after midnight? But eventually he concedes that his phone is in fact doing a hopeful little shimmy across the coffee table and he should probably answer.
Bleary-eyed, he fumbles for it. He must have taken his glasses off at some point, but he doesn’t remember doing it. The world is dark and fuzzy round the edges; poorly-defined like a child’s drawing.
“Armin?” he rasps, and then clears his throat, trying to sound manly and alert, not like he’s been trying to suffocate himself in couch cushions for the better part of the last hour. “What’s up?”
“We were wondering… if Eren had turned up at your place, maybe.”
His stomach does a stupid treacherous flip; he resists the urge to punch himself. “Why? Is he hurt?”
“No, well—we don’t know, probably not, it’s just—he checked himself into rehab a month ago, and he’s been doing really well, but last night he snuck out and—well, he’s not supposed to, you see, it’s part of the program—”
Jean’s thoughts, already treacle-slow, grind to a complete halt. After several long seconds, he registers dimly that Armin has fallen silent on the other end and is probably waiting for a response, but all he can think is That fucker went to rehab and he didn't even tell me.
Eventually, Jean hears himself saying, in a strange voice that doesn’t sound like him at all, “He came by, but he’s gone now. I don’t know where he is. Should I have taken a message?”
Very slowly, Armin says, “No…” And then adds, sounding confused, “Jean, are you okay…?”
Which is weird, because of course he’s okay. Never been okayer in his life.
“Yes, I am fine,” he says. “I will be sure to let you know if he shows up again.”
“Thank you,” says Armin, and if he’s unnerved by the alien body snatcher who seems to have taken control of Jean, he hides it well. “Oh—hold on, I’m getting another call… it’s Mikasa, she must’ve found him. I’ll, er, let you know—?”
“That’s okay,” says Jean, still in that weird, faraway voice. When he presses his hand over his eyes, he is vaguely surprised to find it is trembling. “I’ll call her later.”
He doesn’t mean to do it, but ‘later’ turns out to mean ‘after about fifty-five seconds’, and a total of six and a half calls are placed before Mikasa finally picks up.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says, sounding utterly unsurprised. “Looks like you’re an asshole when it comes to phone etiquette, too. I was talking to Armin.”
“Yes, great, thanks,” says Jean, not really knowing or caring what’s coming out of his mouth. “Is Eren—“
“He’s fine,” Mikasa says, sounding irritated. She doesn’t add No thanks to you but Jean hears it anyway. “He ended up coming home. I’m going to take him back to the center in a few minutes, so I need to hang up n—”
A second voice on the other end. “Mikasa? Who are you talking to?” Silence. “Is it Jean?”
“No.”
“It’s Jean, right? Give me the phone, let me talk to him.”
“Like hell.”
“Please, Mikasa.” A deep breath. “I know I’ve been the worst person alive for, what, a few years now. That you’ve been looking out for me this whole time, and that I don’t even deserve it. I’m really, truly sorry. And I’ll make it up to you, no matter how long it takes. Starting with going back to rehab. Just…” he breathes out. “let me talk to him. To fix things. It’ll only take a minute.”
(In the speechless silence that follows, Jean grasps that maybe he’s not the only underappreciated person in Eren Jaeger’s life.)
Moments later, Eren comes on the line.
“Hi,” he says.
This is so inadequate a greeting after everything that’s happened that, well, Jean can only respond in kind.
“Hi, asshole,” he answers.
Eren laughs, shaky though it is. How he can even still smile, Jean doesn’t know. It took everything he had just to find his voice again. He feels as though he’s in the middle of a vast and unknown sea with neither ship nor sail, and sinking fast.
“That’s not the worst thing you’ve ever called me,” says Eren, lightly. “I guess I’m doing pretty good.”
There’s a hundred million things Jean could say here, but he can’t seem to form words for any of them. Instead he says, almost choking it out, “—How long?”
“Ninety days,” Eren says. “Maybe more. Depends on whether it works.”
It hurts to laugh. Jean does it anyway. “You’ll never fucking make it.”
“No, I will. I mean it.” The sincerity in his voice is terrifying. He pauses, then adds, “I’ve got a new drug now.”
It takes a moment for that to sink in, but when it does, it’s like a sledgehammer to the head.
“You shut the fuck up,” Jean says. His heart is twisting, doing loops in his chest. "Go fuck yourself. Don’t even—“
“I mean it. I mean it. Kirschtein. Jean. I need you.”
Silence but not quite. He’s sure that Eren can hear those large, shaky, stuttery breaths as he goldfishes at the air. It’s too fucking much. His whole world has shrunk down to a tiny staticky voice in his ear, and he closes his eyes, buries his face in his hands, shuts out his ratty couch, his crappy apartment, the whole rest of the world, and just focuses on Eren.
And maybe Eren realizes it too, because then he switches tacks; tries the soothing approach. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay. Look… when I get out of here… when I come back to you… you just leave your door unlocked for me, okay? Will you do that for me?
“Fuck you,” says Jean, feeling like he’d swallow his own fist if it’d just steady his breathing. “Fuck you, Jaeger, I’ll just give you a fucking key. I’m sick of you coming in here and fucking up my life. I’m sick to death of your shit!”
“Yeah,” Eren says on the other end, and if he cried a little too it’d have made Jean feel better, but nothing’s ever that easy. “Yeah. I know. Jean... Wait for me."
Jean knows he will. He's been waiting his whole life.