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When they were kids, Eren and Armin decided they wanted to see the ocean in person. Living in their little landlocked town, the ocean was something different. It was the edge of the world. It was freedom. It was too far away for summer vacation and spring break budgets to allow.
They grew older and both still wanted to see the ocean. Armin had a plan. There were great colleges around all sorts of towns near enough to coastlines to take a trip every once in a while. He could get scholarships, and work shitty part-time jobs to afford tuition. Hell, he was smart enough that a lot of places would probably offer him a free ride. Armin was going to see the ocean and he knew just what needed to be done to do it. It would fit with his other dreams.
Eren didn’t plan things. He certainly wasn’t failing school, but his grades weren’t ensuring his pick of any college. That almost didn’t matter to him. His dreams were to get out of this town and see the ocean and then the rest of the world. There was so much out there. How could he be content to stay in this same town the rest of his life? He was homesick for the world, belonged everywhere and nowhere.
Jean was perfectly content to stay in the area. He could go to a state school, and get a degree, and go to job fairs, and work some damn office job until he dropped dead of a heart attack at 65. He liked the comfort of home, liked the stability of this town. There wasn’t much in the way of idealism for Jean. He just wanted to live life without fucking things up too badly. Maybe get married and have a couple kids, get a dog, the whole average shebang.
So when Jean kissed Eren one night, a little drunk after a party at Reiner’s, he knew there was no permanency in it. Eren was always going to want the escape, was always going to be filled with the restless wanderlust that Jean just couldn’t understand or want in himself. Jean tended to have a problem with being too blunt with people and when Eren whispered a nervous “I love you” that night, Jean didn’t hesitate to reply, “Don’t be stupid. You don’t want to love me.”
It was one of those things they didn’t talk about. They probably wouldn’t have even without the rejected confession. Eren and Jean didn’t do things like kiss. They fought each other. They fought other people together. They were smoking buddies. There was nothing romantic about the way felt about each other. Except that Eren had said he loved Jean, and Jean wanted to love him back but knew it couldn’t work out. It was a just a night where they were both a little drunk, and so there was no reason to talk about it.
Senior year went by too quickly. Adulthood with all of its tough decisions was looming around the corner. Most of their friends knew what they wanted to do or where they wanted to go. Jean had his vague idea; he just had to keep up his grades in college. For now Jean was just hoping to enjoy his last summer of freedom.
He hoped that meant he could sleep as much as he wanted, but an insistent tapping at his bedroom window argued otherwise. Groaning, he grabbed his phone to check the time. 4:46am meant he’d only been asleep for a little less than two hours. The tapping wasn’t going away anytime soon and Jean trudged across his floor to the source of the noise. Throwing back the curtains, he was only mildly surprised to see Eren’s face behind the glass. He sighed and opened the window, knowing Eren didn’t let up on this sort of thing.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” he announced as soon as his feet hit the floor.
“You’re the one who knocked on my god damn window,” Jean replied, rubbing his eyes.
“No. I’ve got to get out of here,” he repeated as if he was making any more damn sense by repeating himself. “This town. This area. Let’s go see the ocean, Jean.”
His eyes were so lit up in excitement that Jean could have confused him for a kid on Christmas. That kind of enthusiasm was so infectious, and Jean answered the only way he could. “Aren’t you supposed to go see the ocean with Armin?”
A bit of the spark went out of Eren’s eyes. “Armin’s got a job this summer, and then he’s off to some prestigious college. He wasn’t going to accept their offer, but he’s almost got a full ride. I wasn’t going to let him fuck up his future just because I couldn’t get into the same place.” His eyes looked intently at Jean’s. “If I don’t leave now, I don’t think I ever will.”
“So why don’t you just leave? You don’t need to drag me with you. “
Eren had that sad look again. He was never very good at hiding any of his emotions. “I didn’t want to go alone.”
“Couldn’t you take Mikasa or literally anyone else?” Eren had to have seen the problem with keeping cooped up in a car with Jean for the day and a half drive it would take to get to the coast.
“They’ve all got their own stuff, and Mikasa would try and talk me out of leaving. Please Jean. It has to be you.”
“Because I’m not your concerned sister and I’ve got nothing better to do with my time.”
“You’re my first choice after Armin anyway.”
“Touching. Lemme grab some extra clothes and my bank card and shit. It’s a long trip.”
Again, Eren’s eyes lit up and he sat impatiently on Jean’s bed waiting for him to get ready. It was still too early for this shit, but it wasn’t like Eren was going to just let him get back to sleep anyway. It wasn’t like he had other plans, and maybe he should check out the ocean before coming back to this small town and going to college an hour away. A little more life experience couldn’t hurt anything, and leaving Eren alone probably wasn’t a good idea.
After leaving a note for his mom that he’d be gone for a few days – he was eighteen now, so he decided he didn’t need to ask permission to skip town – he grabbed his bag and Eren’s arm. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”
Only a few cars were on the road. The early commuters to factory jobs and opening shifts. Once they hit the highway, a few passing semis and cars loaded up for long trips sped along. It would probably be peaceful if Eren wasn’t blasting his music. Jean didn’t hate his taste in music, but he wasn’t a fan of having it at full volume at five in the morning. He couldn’t take it anymore and turned the dial down.
“Hey! I was listening to that,” Eren protested.
“Yeah well, you woke me up after less than two hours of sleep, so I’m catching some shuteye without blowing out my eardrums.” He slumped in the seat, turning his head away from Eren.
“You didn’t have to come, you know,” he mumbled.
“And leave you on your own? You’d probably end up dead.”
“Hmf. Get some sleep Jean. I’ll wake you when we stop for food or gas or whatever.”
It was some kind of fate that they needed gas at the same time their stomachs started growling. Luckily there was a little diner attached to a gas station. It was one of those places that mostly served truckers, with a fine layer of grease on the counter and coffee that could probably peel the paint off the walls, but the food smelled too good to resist. The waitress reminded them of the criminal justice teacher, Hanji. She had the same look in her eye that showed a lust for life. A trucker called her “sweet cheeks” and she pulled his arm behind his back and forced him out of the restaurant. A couple of the regulars laughed, commenting on how stupid some of the people who came in here were.
It was a fun place, but Eren insisted they get back on the road so they could get as much mileage behind them while it was still daylight. Jean let Eren turn up the music again, saying he was well-rested enough to tolerate feeling his teeth vibrate. He should have probably seen the danger in Eren drumming on the steering wheel and getting a little too into the music on the busy highway, but he’d let him have his fun.
Eren turned the music down and Jean sat up wondering what was going on. “Were you really going to just sleep away your whole summer?”
Jean rolled his eyes. Of course Eren wouldn’t understand. Someone who got up so early in the morning to take a spontaneous road trip to the beach couldn’t understand the need for relaxation. “I was going to relax and enjoy my freedom before I went to college and have to deal with real adult things.”
“Hanging around your house in our shitty town is freedom for you?”
Jean groaned and leaned his head against the dash. “Can we not get philosophical here? Taking the time to not worry about my future for a couple months is a little freeing, yeah.”
“I guess when you put it that way,” Eren acquiesced, but made a frustrated noise. “Don’t you feel stuck, though? Are you even trying to get out of there?”
“I don’t know, Eren. I’m probably going to end up living in or around that shitty town until the day I die, and I guess that means I’m stuck, but I just don’t feel that way about it.”
“How can you stand it?” Eren sounded so sad. It wasn’t quite pity for Jean, but more like he wished he could feel the same way. “I feel so trapped there. I don’t know if I’m going back.”
Jean raised an eyebrow at Eren’s last statement. “You better not be kidnapping me.”
He was met with a laugh. “Nah, man. I’ll take you back to that piss hole. I mean after college. Who knows? I might take up a study abroad program and just stay out of the country. Drop out and backpack across Europe. I want to see the world.”
This type of talk wasn’t unusual for Eren. Everybody knew he wanted to travel all over the place, but hearing him talk about never coming back home, or dropping out and just doing nothing. Of course Eren wouldn’t see it as doing nothing, and even Jean had to admit, it sounded like an ambitious dream. It worried him, though.
“You’re gonna do all that on your own?”
“I don’t think anybody else wants to share that life with me. I could meet plenty of people on the way, and I’ll write to Mikasa and stuff.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed wandering around the world by yourself. What if some psychopath kidnaps you and tortures you and sells your organs on the black market?”
“You watch too many movies. Besides, it’s just as likely, and probably more since your thing was oddly specific, that some psycho could come and shoot up your office building at whatever dead end job you’ve got lined up for you.”
He had a point, but Jean didn’t want to admit that out loud. Travelling in foreign countries on your own was asking for trouble. Sitting in some cubicle may be boring, but it was the safer option. People died just crossing the street or slipping in their bathtubs. Jean knew life was fragile, but that didn’t mean he was going out to seek danger for the sake of some idealistic want to see the world. There was a chance he’d go overseas, but he’d have a travel plan and do touristy things in big cities. Hoping for an open hostel wasn’t a dream life.
The conversation for the rest of the afternoon was lighter talk about their friends. There was a bit of nostalgia for when they were in elementary. Things had been so much easier, then. It seemed so simple for eight-year-old Eren to declare he was going to live in the ocean, and when asked what he was going to do for money, he’d reply that he’d sell fish. Armin had agreed to help him fish and build a boat with him so they could sail around the world.
Jean had dreams like being a baseball player or an actor or a guitar player. He was one of the top batters in their high school team, but missed out on getting an athletic scholarship. There was limited space for that and Jean had come up just under the cut. He didn’t have any dreams of playing professionally anymore so it wasn’t something he was too heartbroken over. He’d found out in middle school that he just wasn’t cut out for acting. He didn’t like memorizing lines or wearing costumes. He did still have a guitar, but it was more a hobby now than anything. A music career was too unstable for his liking anyway.
Eren thought it was dumb that he didn’t have any big dreams, and Jean thought it was dumb to not even have some sort of a backup plan. They’d probably never agree, but it didn’t stop them from trying to get the other to understand.
They stopped in a little town for supper and a place to sleep. Apparently the only motel room available had a queen sized bed. Jean was too tired to care about sharing a bed with Eren, only warning him not to hog all the covers. Eren still seemed awake and restless. Jean wondered when the last time he slept was.
“Eren, you need some sleep.”
“Maybe we should have kept driving a bit more. Get there faster.”
“You have to be tired by now. I slept in the passenger side of your shitty car most of the day and I’m tired now.”
Eren snorted. “I just don’t feel like sleeping yet, okay?”
Jean sat up and moved closer to Eren. “What’s going on?” Sometimes Eren got like this where he’d seem to have endless energy, but that would only mean he’d crash later. Jean didn’t think he could stop a crash from happening, but it still worried him. When Eren was younger they thought he just had ADHD, and after his mom died, things only seemed to get worse. He was more volatile than happy, but he was still energized and disorderly. Things had gotten a little better over the years, but sometimes when he’d get like this he could snap if pushed too much. Jean didn’t worry too much for himself so he was usually the only one that would push him, even if it might be the wrong choice.
“I told you. I just had to get out of there.”
“Is it really so bad back home?”
“I can’t explain it very well. It’s not that the place is bad, and the people are so great, but I just can’t stand being stuck in one place. I’ve wanted to leave since before I even knew there was more out there.”
Jean wrapped an arm around Eren’s shoulder and leaned against him. It wouldn’t change anything, but he figured Eren needed the comfort. “I don’t understand it, but I hope you find what you need somewhere out there.”
“Thanks. For everything. I know it was stupid to drag you out of bed, but I’m really glad you’re here with me right now.”
“You know I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. I’m glad I’m here too, even with your too loud music and waking me up too god damn early.”
Eren leaned in and his lips pressed against Jean’s. They were completely sober for this kiss and Jean could really appreciate how nice it felt. It wasn’t exactly surprising; they had been having a moment, but it still wasn’t expected. Either way, he hummed pleasantly, encouraging Eren to continue and wrapping a hand in his hair.
“I still love you,” Eren whispered, breaking the kiss.
“I still think that’s a terrible idea.” He breathed into Eren’s neck. “I love you, too, though.” He did love Eren. There was a lot about him that got on his nerves, and they disagreed about so many important things, but he couldn’t help the way he felt with him. He couldn’t help but love this crazy asshole.
He felt at home in a way he never had before. He felt it in the way he looked at the slightly peeling wallpaper of their shitty motel room. He felt it in the way Eren whispered his name against his skin. Jean had never felt a longing for a place or a moment like Eren did, but he knew he’d miss this as soon as it was over. Part of him wanted to stick around here, and live here in this motel with Eren in this tiny town with their one motel, church, police station and diner. Everything else a half hour drive to the next town. It was beautiful in its simplicity. But Eren hadn’t seen his ocean yet. Hadn’t seen the world. So Jean was the one to drag him out of bed at an ungodly hour to make the rest of the way to the coast.
“I can drive the rest of the way there, since you drove so long yesterday.”
“No. I’ll get too bored just sitting on there. Driving helps me focus.” Eren was in a much better mood since last night. He seemed more stable. Sure, he was still a little restless and insistent on seeing the ocean by the night, but he was less feverish about it. The passion was there without the crazed look in his eye. Who knew just getting him laid would calm him down a bit?
Jean didn’t regret it, though. It was freeing to admit his feelings, though he suspected Eren already knew. He was good at reading people that way. Jean wanted to spend as much time with Eren as he could. He supposed he always had. He’d make up excuses about not having any cigarettes just to bum or share one with Eren, sitting in silence but alone.
“We could go on more road trips this summer,” he suggested. “Maybe not as long as this one, since gas is hella expensive. But go see that World’s Largest Frying Pan a couple counties over. Make a weekend out of checking out the capitol.” He smiled. “Once school starts up we could visit each other on our campuses. I’d even be willing to check things out and see if we can get into the same study abroad. I’ll make sure you’re safe before you start backpacking it.”
Eren wasn’t smiling. Jean didn’t think he said anything offensive, but a lot of times he didn’t realize when he said something wrong. That, and Eren took things seriously and was more likely to react negatively to something Jean said than any of their other friends would.
“What happens after that?”
“What do you mean?”
“After I take off, I’m not coming back to town. Are you planning on meeting up with me in random countries?”
“I want to be with you as long as possible. We have an end but I don’t want to cut us off before we reach it.” He huffed and crossed his arms. “It’s not like I’m asking you to buy a little house with me and stay stuck in our home town the rest of your life. Despite how much I don’t get it, I want you to live your dream.”
“Why are you so content to let me go?”
“I’m not. I want you to be happy, though.”
“What if I gave up all that so you could be happy? I think I could be happy with you.”
It was tempting and Jean wanted to lie, but he was bad at it. “No you wouldn’t.”
“But Jean, I--”
“Sometimes, love… just isn’t enough. You’d be happy for a while, but you’d want to leave.” He held up a hand as Eren tried speaking again. “Not leave me. You’d want to escape being stuck somewhere.”
“You can’t just give up what you want so I can be happy and not expect me to want to do the same.” Maybe Jean should have been driving. Eren was getting more focused on their conversation than the road.
“I’ll get over it. Eventually. I do love you, but after enough time passes, I’ll move on. If you stick around, I’m just going to end up feeling guilty and wondering when the day comes that you’ll leave. I don’t want to do that to us. No resentment. Let’s just enjoy our time together while it lasts.”
Tears were streaming down Eren’s face, and Jean offered to take over driving, but the other just shook his head and wiped his eyes. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It would be easier if we were still just friends.”
“Nah. You know I wouldn’t have been able to keep it in for too long. I’m glad you told me. It’s important.”
“Even though you know we’re not going to last,” Eren asked through gritted teeth.
“Most people don’t know whether they’re going to last together or not.” He leaned back, bumping his head against the seat. “I don’t know why you’re fighting me on this. You loved me yesterday and you still wanted to travel the world.”
“You could come with me.”
Jean let out a laugh and Eren scowled. “Sorry, sorry. Come on, Eren. I’d go crazy living like that, and you’d go crazy staying in one place. That’s why I want now. Maybe, in a few years, we’ll see if we change our minds, but for right now, promise me you’ll live your crazy, stupid dream. Promise me you’ll send me postcards and shit.”
“That’s… really cheesy, Jean.”
“I’m emotional, right now.”
“Fine. I’ll send you the worst postcards I can find. They’ll all say “Wish You Were Here” and have terrible generic pictures on them.”
“I’m into it. Send me dirty postcards, too.” A little smile showed on Eren’s face. He still looked sad and angry, but Jean was wearing on him.
It was another couple of hours before the smell of salty air drifted towards them and Eren was getting fidgety. It was a good thing his car had cruise control or the whole ride would be messy. He pulled into the parking lot by the beach and practically sprinted out to the sand. Jean grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, choking him a little. “Get your swim trunks on first.”
Somehow it made a little more sense to Jean why Eren needed to get out so badly. Jean had never seen him look like he belonged somewhere so much. There was no getting him out of the water until an officer came by to tell them that public hours for the beach had ended.
They spent a week down in the little coastal town. It seemed to renew Eren’s vigor to see the rest of the world. Fall came too quickly for Jean’s liking, not getting nearly as much sleep as he wanted with Eren constantly wanting to go and do things, but he didn’t mind so much.
The summer after their freshman year of college, Eren didn’t come back home. Jean got a postcard a couple weeks later. Somehow Eren had scraped up money for a cheap flight to Belgium. There were lighthouses on the card. A silly generic picture. He was planning on visiting beaches around the world, to compare it to the one they visited. After a while, though, the postcards stopped coming. He still sent letters to Mikasa, so at least Jean knew he hadn’t been sold off to the black market.
Jean was settled. He enjoyed his office job enough. It was a nice challenge and his coworkers were friendly. There was a pretty girl who snorted when she laughed and she always laughed at Jean’s jokes. They bought a little acreage outside of town, and their kids loved the huge yard. He was stuck but never felt trapped. Sometimes when he was alone, he thought of Eren and their week at the beach. A spark of longing would hit him, and just as soon it would be over. Eren was more than just a memory, but their time had ended. Quicker than Jean had expected, but at least from what he heard Eren was happy. And Jean was happy, too.