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There was a chill on his skin as Eren slowly came to, shifting and seeking the warmth of two - or even one - other bodies in the bed next to him, not finding any and blearily puzzling over why this might be. It gradually came back to him that Marco was not with them because of the freak snowstorm that had reared its ugly head during his day trip to Chicago, and would not be back until later that day.
Where was Jean, though? He didn’t have anywhere to be, not at - Eren checked the alarm clock - two o’clock in the morning. Probably not later in the day, either, considering how the snow had shut down just about everything, including their own classes.
His mounting nerves were relieved when he heard the sound of something opening and closing from the kitchen. Of course, he thought to himself, sleepily scratching his head, He’s doing that dumb thing where he gets water in the middle of the fucking night. Well, he wasn’t getting any sympathy in the morning when Eren woke up before him and he desperately needed to use their only bathroom.
Eren snuggled back into the sheets, pulling the thin blanket(it had to be that way, with three young adult males’ worth of body heat underneath it) up around his bare upper body, waiting for Jean to return and warm the bed up again. However, five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and Jean did not re-enter the room.
Perplexed, Eren lifted himself from the bed, resisting the urge to take the blanket with him, and padded out to the living room/dining room/kitchen, rubbing his eyes as he went. He found Jean asleep at the counter, with a boiling tea kettle on the stove without the top on. Rolling his eyes, he walked around the counter and kicked his least favorite boyfriend in the shin.
“Jean.”
He received an unconscious groan in return. He kicked harder.
“Jean.”
Jean turned his head without lifting it, sending Eren the most threatening glare he could muster.
“You fell asleep with the kettle on, Jean.”
“Then you’d better have some fucking delicious chamomile for me.”
“Nope. But you can make me a cup, too.” Eren plopped himself down on the other barstool, giving Jean a snarky grin as he did so.
“Ugggh.” Jean groaned, but still stood himself up and walked himself around to the stove. Moments later, Eren’s cup(with excess honey) and Jean’s(black - if you could refer to herbal tea that way) sat side by side on the counter. Without waiting for it to cool, Eren reached forward and brought the mug to his mouth.
“How do you even DO that,” Jean sighed. It wasn’t a question - only an expression of disbelief. “I can’t even touch the thing with my bare hands for another, like, five minutes.”
Eren only shrugged in response. “What are you doing up?”
Jean leaned against the counter, holding his head above the steaming cup and basking in the warmth for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess I just can’t sleep without Marco here. I figured maybe this would help.”
This statement brought something wiggling slowly up from the back of Eren’s mind. “Hey, I think I dreamed about Marco, actually.”
“Do tell.”
“Like,” Eren started, trying to remember what had occurred in his sleep, “I think… he was just driving. Like, in the snow. Talking about not wanting us to worry or miss him or something.”
Jean stood up straight and slowly blinked his narrow eyes. “He would do that, wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s stupid like that. Out of any of us, I’d probably be most likely to do something dumb like that.”
“No,” Jean insisted, “He definitely would. He’d so do something like that if he thought we were gonna miss him or worry otherwise.”
“What, so you think it was some kind of premonition? Those don’t actually happen, Jean.”
Perhaps it was Jean’s sleep-addled brain, but he didn’t want to let this go. In his mind, he could only picture Marco driving in the whirling, angry storm outside, getting hit by someone else or swerving off the road… Even if Marco hated him in the morning, he had to make sure everything was okay.
“I’m gonna call him,” he said, reaching over to where his and Eren’s cell phones were sitting alongside each other, charging.
Eren looked skeptically up at him, looking almost as if he were beginning to believe Jean’s ridiculous theory. He asked, cautiously, “Do you really think he’d do it?”
“I don’t KNOW, Eren! That’s why I want to call him!”
There was a tense moment between them, their old rivalry almost showing itself, before Eren sighed, “Do it. Now you’ve got me all freaked out, too. And put it on speaker.”
Jean gave Eren a short smile to indicate his appreciation for his boyfriend’s support in this most absurd of endeavors, then dialed Marco.
The phone on the other end rang. And rang. And rang. At last, there was the sound of someone picking up and Marco’s groggily irritated voice saying, “Jean?”
“And Eren,” came Jean’s nervous reply, as he glanced at his partner in crime, whose eyes were wide with foreboding. They’d both clearly heard the annoyance in their third roommate’s voice.
There was a moment of quiet on the other side, with the muffled sound of a door opening and closing. Jean guessed that Marco had exited his hotel room so as not to disturb whoever he was rooming with. If Jean hadn’t known how much Marco hated being woken up, he’d never have believed his gentler significant other to be the one quietly hissing, “Eren…”
Eren visibly gulped. “...Marco?”
“Why is Jean calling me at two-forty-eight in the morning. And WHY DID YOU LET HIM DO THAT.”
Jean saw Eren bite his lip before continuing. “I - uh - I had. This dream.”
“You had a dream.”
“Er,” Eren was glancing back and forth between Jean, the phone, and his hands. “Y-yes.”
“Eren.”
“Y-you were - in the dream, you were, uh, driving home - in the snow -”
“I literally spoke to the two of you five hours ago explaining exactly why I wasn’t going to do that.”
Despite himself, Jean felt pretty bad about the fact that Eren was getting most of the blame for his own bad idea. He took this opportunity to break in, “Look, Marco, I was the one who did this. Eren didn’t even want to.”
There was a moment of hesitation on the other end, just long enough for Eren to send Jean a grateful look. Finally, there was a whoosh of breath and Marco concluded, “I’m going back to bed. Sorry I was so rude, Eren.”
The line cut.
Jean was torn between feeling relieved that Eren was off the hook and wondering why Marco hadn’t said goodbye to him. Eren seemed to have the same thing on his mind.
“You’re screwed, bro.”
“No way. Marco’s not gonna kill me over one stupid idea.”
“Whatever. Coming to bed yet?”
Eren didn’t wait for Jean to answer, standing himself up and stretching before heading out of the room.
After a moment, Jean called after him, “He’s not really gonna kill me, right?!”
He didn’t kill him. When Marco arrived the next day, covered in snow, he had returned to being the sweet, tolerant person he was when he wasn’t severely sleep deprived.
Still, Eren couldn’t help regretting the missed opportunity of seeing Jean get beaten to a pulp by the third point of their triangle.
A week later, it was no longer snowing, but instead the weather outside had become relentlessly cold. One step outdoors could rip the breath right out of your lungs and make you sincerely regret deciding to do whatever you were outdoors doing.
The past couple days, Jean and Marco had coped with this issue by getting Eren(who, surprisingly enough, was an excellent cook and also very good at making recipes taste delicious without spending too much money on them) to cook something that would stay in the oven for a long time, warming the whole apartment so that they wouldn’t have to pay quite as outlandish heating bills.
Tonight, however, was the anniversary of the death of Eren’s parents, and he was spending the night with his adopted sister Mikasa and their oldest friend, Armin, who had also lost his parents that same day ten years ago. While Marco and Jean had been disappointed that he wasn’t there with them, they(Or, well, Marco) understood that it was a difficult time of year for him and that nothing could be better for him right now than the company of his remaining family.
And so, here were Jean and Marco, huddled on the floor of their small kitchen with a frozen pizza in the oven and several rolls of cookie dough ready for afterward so that they would have a good reason not to turn the oven off.
Sitting across from Marco, Jean was very stubbornly trying to start a game of footsie, while Marco very stubbornly kept his feet glued to the floor, growing steadily more amused as Jean grew steadily more frustrated.
“If only you were more ticklish,” he grunted, nearly ready to give up - except not really.
Marco chuckled, “Oh, please. Those tactics only work on Eren. I have the strongest of wills and thus shall never be culled by such quibbling maneuvers.”
“Mmmmgh,” Jean grumbled, finally leaving Marco’s feet alone and pounding his heels on the ground like a toddler. “Bleeeearch.”
“What do those noises even mean?” Marco snorted, covering his mouth to withhold the laughter that was bursting forth.
“They mean ‘I wish the flipping pizza were ready’ and ‘I could eat a horse’, respectively.” Thankfully, without Eren there, he could make that comparison without some crack about how that would be “cannibalism”. Perhaps he missed the fantastic dinners, but that was one thing he could do without.
Marco got to his knees and reached up to turn the oven light on so that they could watch the pizza. It was still looking a little pale. “I don’t think it’s cooking right,” he muttered, “How high was the temperature supposed to be, again?”
Jean reached above his head, bringing the box down so he could read it. “Three fifty. Temp’s fine.”
Marco frowned and shook his head. “I really wish Eren was here. He knows all of this oven’s little quirks.”
“Can’t we call him? Like, he said it was okay if we needed to.”
“I’m sure he just meant in emergencies, Jean. We really shouldn’t bother him over something like this.”
“How about we start the house on fire and then call him and just casually mention the oven and ask how the fuck it works?”
Marco didn’t seem to hear him. He was frowning at the temperature again.
“Were we supposed to let it fully heat up before putting the pizza in?”
There was a moment of silence.
Jean said, “Yeah, that would make sense.”
Marco slapped a hand to his forehead, a self-deprecating grin on his face. “Oh my god, I knew we’d done something totally stupid.”
“Nah. You’re okay. Let’s just agree not to tell Eren about this. And let’s also not make the same mistake on the cookies.”
Soon enough, the pizza started browning, and they removed it from the oven to consume. They didn’t bother with plates - they just ate it straight off the counter.
“You know,” Jean began, noticing that Marco hadn’t come to the other side to sit himself on a barstool the way he himself had, “You can sit down. We’ve got one extra seat without Eren here.”
“Oh,” Marco said, backing off from the slice he’d been about to consume, “Yeah, I guess we do. Well, I kinda like eating standing up. I feel like it goes down better that way.”
Jean shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
They continued eating, mostly quiet aside from the occasional comment or request. At some point, Jean looked up to see Marco staring into space, a contemplative look on his face. “What’s up?”
Marco turned his gaze to his boyfriend. “It’s really not the same without Eren here, isn’t it?”
Jean nodded, looking at his hands. “Lot quieter.”
“Like, I don’t know if it would be different if we weren’t sitting here knowing how awful a day it must be for him, but -”
“No. It would probably be the same.”
“It’s kind of funny how he sneaks into things like this, I guess.”
“How so?”
“Well,” Marco said, frowning, still working out what he was saying in his head, “I guess I never notice how big a presence he is until he’s not here. He just… fills the gaps. Like - you remember our first date?”
Jean grinned. “How could I forget?”
“How awkward it was? And how much more fun we had when Eren crashed our second one?”
Jean’s face turned into a grimace. “Yeah… I really can’t deny the first one sucked. Sorry about that.”
“No! It was a cool idea and everything - I mean, if anyone was at fault, it was me - for being so… I don’t know. My only point is that, I guess, the two of us - we really need Eren, don’t we?”
Jean pursed his lips and nodded slowly. Before he could reply, however, somebody’s phone rang. Jean lunged forward and snatched the phone up. It was Marco’s.
“It’s Eren!” he exclaimed, ignoring Marco reaching to take his phone back and hitting “answer”. “Eren! Dude! You wouldn’t believe the shit Marco was just talking about you!”
“Wha - Jean? What’s he saying?”
“Jean! Don’t listen, Eren, he’s lying -”
“He said the blowjob you gave him the other day was the worst one he’s ever gotten -”
“That’s a lie! It was a very - uh - good - shit -” Marco broke off, his mind very clearly in the gutter and not coming out anytime soon.
Laughter broke out on the other end. Somehow, it was only now that they two heard how tear-heavy their boyfriend’s voice was.
“Thanks, guys. I always know you two can cheer me up.”
The movie had ended fifteen minutes ago, but neither of them wanted to get up.
This time, Jean was the one who was gone, having left for a wedding in his family. “Don’t bother coming,” he’d firmly told them, “My family is full of conservative redneck jerkwads who are too in love with their guns to understand how I could be in love with one man, let alone two. The less you see of them, the better.”
Eren and Marco were nestled on their beat-up couch together, sharing a blanket and lazily discussing what they’d just seen.
“Jean would be happy to see that one,” Eren murmured, “Even if he fails out of college, he may yet have hope.”
“Eren,” Marco said sternly, suppressing a laugh, “We’re not monsters. That’s not funny.”
“If we were monsters, you’d be big. Like a dinosaur.”
“And what would you be?”
“Awesome,” Eren replied, on the verge of sleep.
“Wake up, Eren! We still have, like, three more Pixar sequels to watch!”
“We won’t watch them, anyway. We’ll make out through the boring parts and misquote all the funny parts.”
“Isn’t that the best part of watching anything?” He became distracted by a buzzing sound. “That’s yours, I never have mine on vibrate.”
Eren groaned and shifted so that he could reach his back pocket. When he brought his phone out, he smirked and showed Marco the screen. “Score three for me. I’m only one behind you now.”
Marco burst out laughing as he leaned forward to get the score card from their minute coffee table. “I feel so sadistic doing this.”
“He knows we’re not up to anything, and if he were in trouble, he’d leave a message. He probably just wants an excuse to get away from his family.”
Marco put a tally next to Eren’s name. The top of the page read “Jean is a loser” in Eren’s handwriting and the contents were a tally of how many times Jean had called either of them over the course of the night. Marco’s score was four. Eren’s, as was previously mentioned, was three.
Upon replacing the notebook on the table, Marco noticed something. “You’ve hardly touched the popcorn.”
“It’s not salty enough.”
“Really? I thought I’d salted it plenty.”
“Like you know. You can’t even eat it. Besides, Jean oversalts so much, I guess I’ve just become accustomed to it.”
“I can totally eat it! It just has some unpleasant repercussions.”
“Like you shitting lava?”
“Well… yes.”
“You can’t eat it.”
Marco just rolled his eyes and leaned back so that they could resume their cuddling session. Eren smiled in approval.
“I like it when Jean’s not here. I don’t have to share your snuggles.”
“But you get snuggles from two people at once! I think that’s more than a fair trade.”
“But you’re the best at it. Jean’s too awkward.”
“Alright. Here’s a snuggle.” He put his arm around Eren’s shoulder and kissed his forehead. “Here’s another one.” He pulled Eren closer and kissed him on the cheek.
Eren was just laughing. “What are you doing, Marco?”
“Giving you snuggles. Here, have another.” He began forcing Eren onto his back with the power of his “snuggles”, Eren giggling like a little kid the whole way. As soon as he had Eren in the position he wanted him, Marco quickly lifted his shirt and blew a huge raspberry into his stomach, resulting in an explosion of guffaws from his partner.
“That’s not fair!” he wheezed, wiping a tear out of his eye, “I can’t even fight back! You cunning bastard.”
Marco just grinned and collapsed on top of Eren, using his chest as a pillow. From the table, he heard buzzing and a “YEEHAW!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Did you change my ringtone?”
“When you were in the bathroom. Just for Jean, though.”
“You’re ridiculous. Why is he calling me more than you?”
“Because you actually answer your phone sometimes. Also, you are a weakling that will give in and answer if he calls you enough times.”
“Yes, I’m a weakling that just totally subjugated you.”
“Hush.”
Another sound came from the coffee table - Marco’s text tone, which was now apparently the sound of a horse neighing.
Jean: Guys?
Jean: Okay tbh I was just calling because I wanted to get away from my family but now I’m getting legitimately worried please at least tell me you’re okay
“I knew it, he’s worried,” Marco sighed, showing Eren. “Can I please just text him? I don’t want him all freaked out at a wedding.”
“Fine. Weakling.”
“I’m not a weakling.”
“Weakling.”
In the midst of texting Jean, Marco sent Eren a look. “Care to test this theory out in the bedroom?”
“Hell yes.”