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Jean Kirschtein, 24-year-old rookie cop, is freshly off duty and picking up a six-pack at the convenience store when he spots the kid loitering in the ready-made meal aisle, looking very shifty indeed. Everything about him screams “miscreant”, from the baggy jacket to the ill-fitting pants, which sag down far enough to reveal the waistband of his boxer shorts (Diesel, if anyone was wondering—which Jean certainly wasn’t).
Now, Jean doesn’t think of himself as one of those hard-ass, by-the-book cops; the kind who’d write you up for jaywalking or some trite stuff like that. He grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood, and his family never had a lot of money, so… he gets it. He really does. It’s a lot easier to just pocket whatever you want and walk out than, y’know, actually pay for it. Been there, done that, got the arrests for petty theft on his juvie record, okay?
Still. Off-duty or not, he can’t in good conscience turn a blind eye to the kid who is now stuffing a can of soda and a sandwich into his jacket. (Probably thinking he is discreet, but Jean has never seen such an inept thief in his life.)
There’s nothing else for it. Jean strolls on over, casually, stopping next to the kid, who looks as though he’s now trying to decide whether a bag of chips might fit in his jacket too, next to the soda and sandwich.
“Hey there,” he says, in a friendly voice, “you might wanna be careful about where you put those. Don’t want to forget to pay, do you?”
The kid gives a start, and then scowls like it’s a reflex. “What’s it to you?” he mutters. He looks up, presumably to glare at Jean, and that’s when their eyes meet.
And it’s kinda dumb, but Jean feels a slight rush when the kid’s eyes widen at the sight of him, because yeah, he’s still in uniform, and hopefully that is a look expressing the mingled fear and respect that he just struck into the heart of a young delinquent.
“Look, kid,” Jean says, patiently, “I saw what you did.” And, because he’s feeling magnanimous, he adds, “If you put that stuff back, I’ll let you go, all right? Won’t even mention it.”
Now, of all the myriad possibilities for reactions that the kid could have produced at that very moment in time, Jean is least expecting this one: the kid tips his head to one side, almost curious, and then lets a flirtatious smile ease across his face.
“Are you going to make me, officer?”
Jean just stares. After a second he says, awkwardly, “Uh… yes. Yes I am.”
“Okay, then.” The kid reaches up and tugs coquettishly on the zipper of his jacket to slide it down a couple of notches, far enough that Jean can see the ugly-ass Call of Duty t-shirt he’s wearing underneath. “Why doncha slide a hand into my jacket, and see what you can find?”
Jean is having rather a lot of difficulty believing the content of what his ears are reporting to his brain. He gapes for a moment, then asks, as though questioning his sanity, “Are you actually propositioning a cop while shoplifting?”
“Hey!” the kid says, quite indignant. “I’ll have you know I’m not the only thief here.”
“Oh? Got accomplices, eh?” says Jean triumphantly, looking around as though he expects them to be lining up in the aisle waiting to be cuffed.
“No, officer.” The kid winks. “But you stole my heart.”
Oh my god. Jean stares blankly at the kid for a few more seconds before managing, with some difficulty, to compose himself. (If his face was any warmer, you could probably fry an egg on it.)
“Uh. Just… okay. Look.” He pulls out his badge. “You see this, right? You know what’s going to happen if you don’t put that stuff back.”
“Yeah,” the kid answers, with a casual nod.
“And…?”
The kid shrugs. “Go right ahead.”
Jean is perfectly baffled. He has to admit that this is not usually how encounters of this sort go. (Typically, there’s a lot more swearing and calling him a ‘filthy fucking pig’, for example.)
“Uh… well, that’s… well. Okay. Turn around and put your hands behind your back. And don’t bother struggling,” he adds, “‘cause that’s just gonna make this a pain in the ass for both of us.”
“Don’t you worry, officer,” the kid says, placidly. “I won’t put up a fight.”
That makes Jean wonder if the kid is trying to lull him into a false sense of security so he can knee Jean in the nuts and make a run for it, or some equally misguided Hollywood bullshit. But nothing of the sort happens—he cuffs the kid without any issues (apart from his stupid traitor hands shaking a little, because a cute guy hitting on you’ll do that, especially if you’re desperate), and then hauls him out to the car, leading him by the arm.
This, as it turns out, was what the kid was waiting for, because now Jean is trapped in there with him for the entirety of the twenty-minute ride back to the station.
“Say, officer,” the kid pipes up, as Jean starts the car.
“Yeah?”
“You got really pretty eyes, you know.”
Jean pauses for a moment, resting his forehead against the top of the steering wheel and willing himself to stay calm, even as he feels his face heating up again. Pull it together, Kirschtein! he yells at himself, inside his head. They told you about this kinda thing at the academy. The little shits’ll say anything to keep you off-balance!
There is no reply he could possibly make to that, so he just pulls out of the parking lot. After another minute of silence, the kid continues casually, as though he hadn’t just given Jean the first compliment to his appearance that he’s gotten in years, “—So, what’s your name?”
…Okay, that’s relatively innocent as far as questions go. What could go wrong? “Just call me Officer Kirschtein,” Jean tells him.
The kid nods, like he is taking notes. “Okay.” He grins. Jean sees the white flash of his teeth in the rear view mirror. “You can call me the future Mr. Eren Kirschtein.”
“Oh my god,” Jean mumbles, and narrowly avoids swerving into the curb.
It doesn’t get much better when they finally get to the station and he drags the kid over to his desk. He cuffs Eren to the visitor’s chair and sits down to write a report, but it turns out this is kind of hard to do when someone is hitting on you every thirty seconds.
Blushing furiously, Jean chews on the inside of his cheek as Eren informs him, quite shamelessly, that he’s got really nice long fingers, and nice hands that were probably made to be held, and also a really nice mouth. (Thank the baby Jesus he keeps it PG-13, though, or Jean thinks that his head might actually catch fire from embarrassment.)
After a long and arduous struggle he finally finishes his report, gets the kid’s signature on it (although he first has to scratch out Eren Kirschtein, the i’s of which are dotted with little hearts, and demand the kid’s actual last name), then dashes a copy off to his supervisor, plus another one for the kid’s—Eren’s—file.
That was a lot harder than it needed to be, Jean reflects, as he sits back at his desk, heaving a pretty wretched sigh. Well, it’s probably karmic retribution for something or other. (He doesn’t quite remember what he’s done to warrant it, but chances are it’ll come up on judgment day.)
He focuses his eyes back on the kid, who is watching him with a little half-smile playing around his lips, and tries to adopt a stern tone.
“Look,” he says, “I’m not gonna book you this time, because it’s your first offense.” At least, the first time you’ve been caught, he adds, silently. “But you oughta know how these things go.” He takes a deep breath, then launches into the spiel they’ve all got prepared, for situations like these. “You start off with shoplifting and petty crime, and before you know it you’re breaking into people’s cars and houses to steal shit, because that’s just one step up, right? And then misdemeanors turn into felonies, and nights in jail turn into years in prison. And you’re not a juvenile anymore, by the way; you’re nineteen, and if you get yourself in trouble you’ll be tried as an adult.” He exhales again, slowly. (Doing this always makes him feel like an old stick-in-the-mud, and he doesn’t like that much.) “So don’t do it. Don’t even start. ‘cause the next time I bring you in, I’ll have to book you.”
Eren, whose eyes had gone slightly unfocused while Jean was speaking, gives himself a little shake as though getting his brain back up to speed. He looks over at Jean, and grins.
“Is that a promise, officer?” he asks, brightly.
Jean throws up in his hands in exasperation.
“Okay, enough. Get out of here, kid, just get out of my goddamn hair.”
He uncuffs the kid from the chair, leads him outside the station and turns him back out onto the street, studiously ignoring the kiss that Eren blows in his direction as he skedaddles.
The next morning, Jean gets a phone call. (This is something that he maybe should have seen coming, but hindsight, as always, is 20/20.) He picks up and says into the receiver, “Kirschtein speaking.”
“Hello, officer Kirschtein,” says a cheerful, unfortunately familiar voice on the other end.
Oh no, Jean thinks, with a sinking feeling in his gut.
“I’ve been really naughty today, officer Kirschtein,” the voice continues, coyly. “Are you gonna come and arrest me?”
Face bright red, Jean makes a noise like a sea lion suffocating inside a pillowcase, then slams the phone down.
“You okay, man?” Reiner asks, glancing up from his jelly-filled donut and his report with mild interest.
Jean swallows. He is trying not to hyperventilate, but his attempts are only working about fifty percent of the time, with an end result that makes him seem like he has a really bad case of hiccups. “Yeah. Uh… yeah. I’m good. Great. Thanks for asking.”
Reiner just gives him a weird look, and bites into his donut messily.
After that incident, the phone calls just keep on coming. Usually around nine in the morning, when he’s just about the start his day shift. Eren, as it turns out, has an incredible repertoire of pickup lines. All of them are pretty balls-out terrible, but the really sad thing about it is that Jean finds that he doesn’t even mind much because it’s not like anyone else ever calls him at work to say hi. (Except his mom, and, while appreciated, that’s different.) Soon, he starts to think of them as pick-me-up lines, because after each call he ends up going about his day with this big dumb smile on his face that he can’t seem to get rid of. Even Reiner mentions it, so obviously it has sparked a noticeable change in his demeanor. (Well, actually he slaps Jean on the back and asks, “You finally get laid, Kirschtein?” but it’s roughly the same sentiment.)
The big problem here, though, is that he’s a cop—quite a good one, if he does say so himself—and Eren is a little shoplifting shithead. Amongst other things, probably; he’s never asked and Eren’s never mentioned, but he’s pretty sure he smelled spray paint on the kid’s jacket when he was hauling him in that time, and maybe a whiff of weed, too.
“Look, kid,” he says one time, over the phone, after he gets done laughing at Are you a parking ticket? ‘cause you got fine written all over you! “You’ve already been brought in twice this week. Maybe try going a few days without getting arrested before you lay it on this thick?”
He can almost hear Eren pouting. “But then I won’t get to see you as much.”
“Shit, it’s not like you can’t see me,” Jean mutters. “I mean, the station is open like—“
He shuts up mid-sentence as his brain catches up to what he is saying and throws up desperate stop signs, but of course it’s far too late for takebacks.
“That’s an invitation, right?” the kid asks eagerly.
Jean flounders. “No, I just—“
“Definitely an invitation. Okay, see you soon!”
And he hangs up, which leaves Jean staring at a silent phone in dismay.
The very next morning, Eren shows up with a bouquet of goddamn roses. Roses! Jean thinks, in sheer horror. He hasn’t had those in his general vicinity since senior prom!
“I got you some flowers,” Eren says shyly, handing them over.
Jean just stares at them like an alien who has never encountered Earth flora before.
“You mean you stole me some flowers,” he mumbles, in a desperate attempt to crack a joke and maybe take back control of the situation. (This being Jean, naturally, it does not work.)
“Whatever,” Eren says, waving a hand airily. “Same thing.”
“Uh-huh. You know that’s illegal, right?”
Eren winks. “Not as illegal as your face, officer.”
Jean buries said face in his hands, narrowly missing crushing the bouquet against his forehead.
When Eren finally leaves, Reiner strolls over for a look. Jean is making a valiant attempt to work but the roses are taking up an awful lot of space on his desk; he barely has room on there for anything else.
“Nice.” Reiner nods approvingly. “You know, the kids I bring in here never act like this. What’s your secret?” Then he lowers his voice surreptitiously. “Listen… you think you can get that kid to do a donut run for us?”
“Shut up, Reiner,” Jean groans, putting his head down on his desk.
“No, really,” Bertholt pipes up, from the next desk over. “Donuts would kinda hit the spot right now.”
“Shut up, Bert.”
Soon enough, everyone in the station knows the kid by face, if not by name. Jean tries to comfort himself with the fact that, if the kid’s at the station with them making a nuisance of himself, at least he is not rampaging around outside being a public nuisance. Unfortunately, this public service comes at the cost of Jean’s dignity.
“Your stalker’s here again,” Reiner calls cheerfully, as though Jean wasn’t able to see Eren marching across the room towards him.
The kid passes Reiner with a cheerful, “Good morning, officer Braun!”, and then plops a lunchbox down on Jean’s desk in front of him.
“What’s this?” Jean asks, warily.
“It’s your lunch!” says Eren, sounding very proud of himself. “I made it!”
Jean gives the box a suspicious prod, as though expecting it to bark. “Is it edible?” He gives Eren a look. “Do I need to call the drug dogs in here?”
Eren sticks out his lower lip in a pout (which Jean tries very fucking hard not to describe as adorable inside his head). “Jeez, you don’t have to be like that. I got a friend to help me. I swear it’s edible, so just try it, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” Jean sighs, though he waits until Eren is gone before he opens up the lunchbox. He glances inside, does a double-take, and then snaps it shut again in a hurry.
“So, what’d he make you?” says Reiner with interest.
“None of your goddamn business!” Jean yells, taking the lunchbox outside.
In his car in the parking lot, Jean wolfs down the heart-shaped strawberry cream cheese-filled pancake sandwiches, looking around nervously in case anyone passes by and catches him doing it. Not that it even really matters by this point, but goddammit, he’d rather die than let Reiner see the inside of this lunchbox. (It’s a shame not to savor them, because they’re actually pretty delicious, but well, Jean refuses to let go of what little self-respect he has left.)
When he clocks off later that night, Eren is waiting for him outside the station, leaning against the brick wall. He isn’t wearing those stupid baggy clothes tonight; he’s wearing a nice shirt, plus pants that actually fit right and don’t flash his underpants at random strangers. Unfortunately, he is also smoking a cigarette, but even though Jean has conducted a half-dozen Just Say No campaigns in high schools, he still has to kick himself mentally for thinking that the kid looks… kinda hot doing it.
“Hi, officer,” says Eren, cheerfully. “Long day?” He falls into step with Jean as they head towards the parking lot.
Jean, who has never in his entire life been walked to his car, is completely out of his element. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing,” he asks, in a conversational tone.
In lieu of answering, Eren just pulls the cigarette from the corner of his mouth, and pushes it into Jean’s. (His fingertips grazing Jean’s lips are warm, a little rough—electrifying.)
“Here. Try it,” Eren tells him.
Jean opens his mouth a little in surprise and almost drops the damn thing. After a moment of hesitation he reaches up awkwardly, holding it to his lips to take a tentative drag.
Immediately he chokes, eyes watering as he hands it back quickly.
“How the hell can you stand that stuff?” he manages to sputter, between coughs..
Eren laughs. “Boy, you really are straight-laced, huh?” He’s quiet for a moment, putting the cigarette back into his mouth (Jean tries desperately not to think about indirect kisses), and then adds, in a thoughtful tone, “…‘swhat I like about you, officer.”
Jean shudders, his respiratory system still crying tears of blood. At length, once he can breathe again, he mutters, “Uh… well… you haven’t been arrested in a while, too, so.” Oh yeah, real smooth, Kirschtein, that’s real romantic, he thinks bitterly. He is so bad at this it’s almost sad, but the funny thing is that Eren doesn’t even seem to mind.
“Yeah,” is all the kid says, cheerfully. “I’ve been trying. For you.”
Jean snorts, looking away. “Try for yourself,” he says, in a gruff voice.
“That too, yeah. But like, fifty percent of it’s for you.” And he looks up at Jean, and smiles.
Jean has no fucking idea what to do with that, because he is not used to getting through to the kids he works with and this is overall just super weird, like something that might happen in an alternate universe. He mumbles a quick, awkward ‘goodnight’ and then gets into his car, leaving Eren standing on the curb, looking slightly forlorn.
It’s important to note that that—that image of Eren standing there, like an abandoned puppy—that’s not the image that leads him to toss and turn half the night because he can’t sleep. It’s also not the image that finally gets him out of bed at four in the morning in sheer exasperation and makes him cross the street to the 24-hour convenience store.
And when he gets there, he’s thinking maybe he’ll just get himself a drink and some candy or something, except he walks out with a lighter and a packet of Parliament lights in his pocket, instead.
He doesn’t smoke, and definitely doesn’t intend to start. Eren is just… just messing up his routine. That’s right. Anyone would be confused, in his position. He has a barrel-load of weird messed-up feelings that he needs to work out, is all.
So that’s why Jean finds himself sitting on the fire escape in his sweatpants at four-thirty AM, trying to smoke. It is, as one might expect, just as fucking awful as before, except even more so because it reminds him of Eren’s mouth and his lips, and before he even realizes it he’s finished the whole damn cigarette.
Anyways he ends up carrying the packet around in his uniform shirt pocket after that, because where the hell else is he going to put a pack of cigarettes when he doesn’t even smoke? (Not in the trash, either, because that’d be a waste of money.) He considers, briefly, giving it to Eren, but on the other hand it doesn’t seem like a habit he should be encouraging.
Of course, like most other decisions in Jean’s life, this turns out to be a bad one, because one afternoon while Eren is loitering around watching him work, Jean reaches for something and the damn thing just falls right out of his pocket and lands on his desk, plain as day. And he panics, and snatches that shit up faster than Usain Bolt, but he’s pretty sure Eren saw it anyway, because why else would the kid be grinning at him like that?
“I didn’t know you smoked, officer,” Eren says, in a sing-song voice.
“I don’t,” Jean mutters, bright red, as he shoves the pack back into his shirt pocket.
“Yeah, I gotcha,” Eren says, serenely. “You just keep that with you ‘cause it makes you look cool, right?”
Jean lets his head hit the desk. “I hate you,” he moans.
“I love you,” says Eren, cheerfully and without hesitation. And when Jean looks up in shock, Eren just flashes him a bright-eyed, impish grin.
It’s the strangest confession that Jean has received yet, and what makes it even stranger is how, after that, the kid just… stops showing up.
Three days pass without so much as a phone call before someone finally mentions it to him.
“Did you guys break up?” Reiner blurts out one afternoon, before Bertholt can shush him hurriedly.
Jean just shrugs, hunching moodily over his paperwork. Okay, so maybe the kid finally got his shit together or something. That’d be great, actually. A complete success story for Jean Kirschtein. Dedicated cop turns kid’s life around. Big fucking whoop.
Or maybe, he realized that confessing to some random dude who also happens to be a cop is a terrible idea, and noped the fuck outta there.
Jean wouldn’t even blame him for that. (Hell, he wouldn’t want to date himself, either.)
Anyway, it’s not like he’s counting the days since the kid disappeared on him. Lonely? Him? Ha! Preposterous.
Okay, maybe once in a while he’ll reach up to touch the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, chewing unhappily on the inside of his cheek, but otherwise… hell, it doesn’t even show.
He’s still got that lunchbox sitting in his dish rack. He’d been meaning to return it, but, well. Probably no chance of that happening now.
… They really were delicious. (Even if they were cut into hearts.)
An entire week passes in this fashion, by which time Jean is basically resigned to never seeing the kid again. So of course, that’s when Eren returns. One afternoon, Jean simply looks up, and there he is. Looking quite dapper in a shirt and tie, and with—it must be noted—what looks like a box of chocolates in his hands.
Jean’s brain short circuits. Luckily, his face decides to proceed without him, immediately heating up as though anticipating whatever embarrassing thing Eren is going to say to him next.
There is a brief pause, and then a random neuron fizzles in Jean’s brain.
“Wuh?” he says, intelligently. Eren beams at him.
“For you,” he says, handing the box over.
It is… surprisingly light. Jean opens it up. Inside, there is nothing but a slip of paper. On closer inspection, it is a receipt for a box of chocolates.
He flips it over. On the back of it is scrawled: I like you a lot. Go out with me?
He looks back up at Eren, speechless till he manages to gather his wits back about him.
“You… bought this,” he says, awkwardly.
“Yup. I sure did,” is Eren’s cheerful reply.
“Did you steal the money for it?”
“Hey!” For only the second time ever, he sees Eren scowl. “I’ll have you know that this is the first job I’ve managed to hold down for more than two weeks.” Then he grins again. “Every time I wanted to punch a customer I just thought about you, and it made everything okay again.”
“Uh… great. I think.” Jean kind of hates himself for finding that sweet, in a bizarre way. “So. What happened to the chocolates?”
“I ate them.” Eren has the decency to look kind of sheepish about that. (But not very.) “I was hungry. But I can get you s’more, if you want! I’ve been working properly and everything.” He grins again. “Been getting my act together, you know?”
“That’s okay,” Jean mutters. “I’m not big on chocolates, anyway.”
“Oh yeah? What are you big on, then—cigarettes?” Eren says, with a smirk.
Jean laughs, and it comes out sounding stupid and jittery and wrong. He puts the empty box down on his desk and pulls out the receipt, turning it around and around in his fingers nervously. “You’re completely impossible,” he mumbles, his eyes cast downwards.
“I know.” Eren leans across the desk, tilting his face into Jean’s line of vision to give him a smile: the same idiotic, cocky, beautiful smile that he showed Jean the first time they met. “Go out with me, officer,” he says, quietly. “Promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
—and really, what else can Jean say but yes?