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The second person she came out to was Jean Kirschtein. (Connie, then Jean, then herself -- she hadn't really known for sure until she'd said it aloud.) She hadn't meant to it just. Happened.
It was a dumb fight, but they were all dumb fights; she had a lot of pent-up emotions and Jean was easy to rile up. It was a good combination. Or a bad one, maybe, since she never walked away feeling any better about herself.
"Fuck you," she spit, and dropped her backpack, threw a punch at his face. Jean blocked it, easily, and laughed.
"Fuck you, Jaeger," he returned, and then, taunting: "I don't hit girls."
And Eren just. Stopped.
She'd heard it before, of course -- You run like a girl, or You throw like a girl, or Girls would kill to have eyelashes like yours -- but something about this time was different. Because she'd been talking to Connie, maybe, or because she'd actually been letting herself think about it. This time someone else said, Girl, and she thought, Yeah.
"I'll still hit you," she said, and dropped back into a fighting stance.
Jean looked at her, didn't say anything and just stared, like there was something he could figure out from her ripped up Vans or her skinny jeans or the oversized hoodie half-zipped over a v-neck t-shirt. Like there was something he could figure out about her that she hadn't figured out herself.
"Yeah?" he asked. She knew he didn't mean the fight.
"Yeah," she said, and relaxed, leaned against the wall. They were out back of the school, near the track where Mikasa and the rest of the cross country team were practicing.
Jean took a step closer, then another, looking at her with every step like he wasn't sure she wasn't going to attack. Which, jesus. She's not feral.
He leaned against the wall next to her. Their fingers brushed, once, before Eren pulled her hand away.
"Don't go getting ideas," she said sharply, eyes still tracking her sister's form running in the distance. "Just because I'm -- just because I'm --"
"I'm pretty sure I'm gay," he said abruptly.
"Oh."
Jean looked at her, that weird way he had of turning his neck like the muscles were all fucked up or something, so he didn't have to move away from the wall to stare. "Yeah, oh," he said, and laughed. It didn't sound like he thought it was funny.
It was kind of funny, though. Not that he was gay, but that she was … disappointed. This was a lot of new -- newly-realized -- emotions all at once. She really wasn't sure how to deal with it.
"Like, totally?" she asked, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. She put her hand back on the wall, her pinkie touching his pinkie just a little. His hand didn't move when he shrugged.
"Dunno," he said. She didn't say anything, and he shrugged again.
"Huh," she said. "Cool."
"Cool?" He half-frowned at her, eyebrows wrinkled. It was her turn to shrug. When she nudged her pinkie up against his, he laced them together. She let him.
;;
(On Monday, she left lunch early to get stuff from her locker before class. By the time she realized Jean was following her, it was too late to say anything without making it weirder than it already was. "Not totally," he said, voice quiet and confessional in the empty hallway. It had been like three days, but she knew what he meant, and she met him halfway when he leaned in to kiss her.)