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After living with Eren Jaeger for over six years (which was a miracle and an achievement in and of itself), Jean Kirschtein had learned a few things.
Besides the fundamentals of patience, he learned what it felt like to care for someone so much you voluntarily babysat them because the idiot lightweight was dizzy drunk off of Smirnoff Cherry Vodka and Coke.
Nothing said I care about you, bitch like brushing the bangs out of Eren’s eyes because he was crying and heaving over the toilet seat.
Nothing said I really care about you, dipshit like cleaning up puke in the hallway because the stumbling jagoff didn’t make it to the bathroom fast enough.
Nothing said You’re my best friend, jackass, and I love you like letting Eren fall asleep beside him in his bed because he was scared the moron would throw up again and choke himself to death.
The first thing Jean learned, which was completely irrelevant but something he considered worthy of note, was that a Ham and Gruyère sandwich was just a prissy name for a ham and cheese sandwich.
If you entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 82nd Street, walked up The Great Hall staircase to the second floor, there was an expensive café, respectively called The Great Hall Balcony Café and Bar.
When he eventually got bored of trailing Eren around European Paintings, 1250-1800, he’d slip over to the bar and waste his paycheck on French Martinis and Ham and Gruyère Sandwiches (sans the whole grain mustard. Ew.)
Normally, he was able to sneakily take photos of Eren that he could sort through while he ate and drank alone. Most were of the tall, broad-shouldered art student, hunched over his sketchbook, long, unruly hair falling in his eyes, fingers stained with graphite as he squinted at some masterpiece on the wall.
His best friend (bless his sleepy, artsy soul) never minded, especially if Jean sent the photos to Mrs. Jaeger. She liked to know her son was alive and not living in the studio, inhaling paint fumes. And the more photos Jean sent, the shorter Eren’s phone calls to her had to be.
And Jean knew first hand how boringly horrid mom phone calls could be.
Another thing Jean learned, which was actually important, was that Eren had ADHD.
He found out during the spring semester of their freshman year of college, when he had walked into their dorm after his morning classes, to see Eren mid panic attack. Jean probably shouldn’t have given him one of his Ativans. But the sight of Eren fumbling around their room, slurring his words in a gasp of, “I can’t find my pills,” made something uneasy squirm in his stomach.
It was the first time, Jean remembered, Eren exuded vulnerability without the electric currents of rage.
(They found the pills in the pile of dirty clothes heaped under Eren’s desk.)
Since then, Jean could pick up on it. He realized Eren wasn’t ignoring him or forgetting things just to be an ass, knew that once he started to hyperfocus on something, the world melted and nothing else existed. Jean came to expect it, especially when Eren had a big project due.
When Eren slammed their apartment door open, Jean knew it was going to be a long night.
Eren dumped his backpack on the floor, immediately pushing their coffee table across the room to give himself space to spread out his art supplies.
“You’re home early,” Jean said, taking off his glasses to clean the smudges with the bottom of his shirt. He double checked to make sure he saved the jpeg files on his laptop to his backup hard drive before closing photoshop. The last thing he wanted was to call his client and say he lost her pregnancy reveal photos.
“People were annoying me in the studio,” Eren said, absently waving a hello. He paused on the way to the kitchen to fill his paint mug with water. “I really need a boyfriend.”
Jean blinked at him. How Eren’s thoughts went from people-were-annoying to needing-a-boyfriend was beyond him, so he asked, “Where did this come from?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded thoughtful. “But you have your thing or whatever with Mikasa—” Jean squirmed in his seat, blushing, “—and, like, I don’t want to die alone.”
“You’re so fucking dramatic sometimes, it’s a wonder I haven’t killed you yet.”
“Oh, okay, you fucking hypocrite, do you remember last week?” Eren tried mimicking his voice, teasing as he said, “Marco from the bar didn’t answer my text and now I can’t ever go back there ever again.”
“Hey, Mikasa picked him out and—“
“Please, no, I don’t want to know what threesomes you two have.”
“We didn’t have a threesome—”
“Nope! ” Eren shouted, rushing into the kitchen, “I don’t wanna know!”
When he returned, he fell to the floor in an ungraceful heap. Some of the paint was already on the floor, smearing from where Eren had stepped. There was no point in getting fussy over the impending mess. Their carpet had seen worse things than splattered paint.
Jean let him be, checking the calendar they taped on the fridge to confirm that Eren had a critique the next day for his piece in the Thesis Exhibition.
And Jean never told him — wouldn’t ever tell him because it was too much to verbally acknowledge that they were best friends — but he was always proud of Eren for getting into Columbia’s Graduate Arts Program. He had never even considered going to graduate school, was perfectly fine with his freelance photography work.
——
When his stomach started growling, Jean reluctantly paused his game of FallOut. (He was so close to romancing Hancock, needed to level one more time to max out his charisma, and he knew it was just a game but the damn Ghoul stole his heart.)
Dropping the Xbox controller on the couch, Jean glanced down to where Eren was sitting at his feet.
“Eren.”
He didn’t answer.
“Eren. Hellooo.” It took more willpower than he would have liked to admit, to resist yanking Eren’s hair. “Dude. The aliens are finally here to abduct you… Dinosaurs escaped Jurassic Park and Chris Pratt is at the door asking for your help… Did you hear Todd Howard released Skyrim for Gameboy Advanced… Victor Nikiforov cheated on Yuuri Katsuki—”
“What?” Eren screeched, eyes wide in disbelief as he snapped his head around to stare at Jean. “Really?”
“Oh my god, relax before you fucking have a heart attack.” He smacked the back of Eren’s head as he stood up, stretching with a yawn. He slugged towards the kitchen, asking, “Pizza Rolls? Or Bagel Bites?”
“Wait, did Victor really cheat?” Eren called from the living room.
He grit his teeth. “Pizza Rolls or Bagel Bites?”
“Who told you? Is it online?”
“Pizza Rolls,” Jean decided, nodding to himself as he opened the freezer.
“Jean—”
“Jesus Christ. No, he didn’t cheat.”
“Don’t scare me, asshole!”
When their crappy we-barely-made-rent-this-month dinner was finished heating in the oven, he set a plate of pizza rolls between the Eren’s mug of tea and the tubes of blue and green acrylics.
“They’re hot.”
With a smirk, Eren looked up, waggling his eyebrows, “Like me?”
“No,” Jean said. “Like your sister.”
Eren didn’t seem to care that his fingers were dirty, caked in paint and turpentine when he shoved pizza rolls in his mouth. “Ew, gross, bro.”
Jean rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help the twitching of his lips. “Bro.”
“Bro,” Eren laughed, pulling up the collar of his shirt to wipe the crumbs from his face.
Jean turned, socked feet padding softly across the carpet to his room, waving his hand as he headed off to eat dinner in his room. “Broooooo.”
“Broooooooooo!”
“Eren,” he said, looking back at him just as he swallowed down another mouthful of pizza rolls, “get some fucking sleep tonight, alright?”
“Yeah, yeah, you too.” Eren picked up his paintbrush and accusingly pointed it at him, grinning like an asshole, “so don’t fucking stay up on Pintrest all night.” With his other hand, he blindly picked up his tea, and Jean prayed it was, in fact, his tea and not the tainted paint water.
(He only liked calling Mikasa late at night so they could meet up. One call to tell her that he and Eren were getting on the subway to go to the hospital because Eren drank a whole cup of paint water was one too many.)
But Eren didn’t wince like he had last time, (wince, not even choke or cough but wince) so Jean knew they were safe.
“Don’t fucking call me out—”
Eren’s smile softened. “Your boards are fucking fine and fucking organized, I promise.”
That meant enough to him, so he didn’t reply, because he didn’t need to.
——
As expected, Eren was still awake when he woke up at 3 a.m. to piss.
He nudged his toes against Eren’s thigh (soft enough not to startle him, so the hand he had curled around the paintbrush didn’t wobble and accidentally smear across the canvas.)
“Hey.” His voice was rough with sleep. He didn’t have his glasses so he couldn’t be sure Eren was staring at him when he lifted his head. “It’s late.”
“I’m almost done.”
Jean scoffed. Yeah, right. Almost done meant another four hours, which ultimately meant Eren wouldn’t sleep at all.
“Okay,” he said. He went and grabbed the fuzzy blanket from his bed and slumped on the couch, curling up to go back to sleep.
Eren sat up straight, dropping his brush in a mug with a clink. Knowing Eren, he put it in his drink. “Oh, c’mon.”
Jean hid his smirk in the fabric of one of their decorative pillows. Guilting Eren always worked.
“You’re seriously going to sleep on the couch?”
His voice was muffled when he replied, “Yes.”
What felt like a pencil hit his shoulder.
“Asshole,” Eren grumbled. But Jean could hear him shuffling, covering his palette in Saran Wrap, capping his paint, standing with a yawn to trudge to the kitchen, pour the water down the drain and wash the caked goop off his brushes with soap.
Their landlord probably hated them — probably hated Eren, really, he broke the drywall once before — for clogging the plumbing.
Jean really couldn’t find it in himself to give a shit.
One of the most crucial things Jean learned was that Eren was not a morning person. At all. Not even on his birthday or Christmas. There was no way he could get that fucker out of bed without a forklift or the threat of the nuclear apocalypse.
Or, an espresso macchiato and a bacon, egg, and cheese on a bagel.
“Get up.”
“No.”
“We have to go grocery shopping.”
Usually, Jean did all the grocery shopping. He enjoyed doing all the grocery shopping because when Eren went alone he always forgot their list and never remembered to buy toilet paper.
(“Why do we go through toilet paper so quickly?”
“I don’t know, Eren, maybe it’s because you masturbate while brushing your teeth and always need toilet paper to clean up when you could do it in the shower and let the water wash it down the drain.”)
This wasn’t just any ordinary trip to the grocery store though. Oh, no. This was what would steal Armin’s crown as The Bestest Best Friend Ever.
Close to the top of the list of things Jean had accumulated in his knowledge of Eren was Eren’s type. Which, he couldn’t really explain but the new guy working at Trader Joe’s was definitely his type.
It took weeks of planning, making extra trips to the store to secretly learn the guy’s schedule. All to build up to dragging Eren’s ass out of bed to meet the damn dude.
So he had no remorse when Eren glared at him, “I can’t believe you. You had the audacity to wake me up but not actually die.” A hand came up to cover his mouth when he yawned, one hand still locked in a death grip around his coffee.
Eren still hadn’t noticed that Jean handed him a travel mug that said ‘Move I'm Gay’ in an obnoxiously big rainbow-colored font. (Yes, it was part of the plan.)
“You’re such a—” another yawn, “—a dick, you know?”
“Oh, look.” Jean completely ignored his comment. “That guy’s handing out free frozen yogurt samples, go get one.”
“‘No,” Eren said, using the sleeve of his sweatshirt to rub his eyes. “It’s too early.”
“It’s actually one in the afternoon.” He nudged Eren forward. “Go.”
Eren threw a glare over his shoulder, but his eyes were still clouded with sleep and his cheeks puffed up, so it looked more like a ridiculous pout. He wasn’t that intimidating anyway, with his hair tied up in a messy bun, wearing his pajama pants and old Powerpuff Girls pullover.
Jean trailed behind Eren with their grocery cart, not too close but still hovering, wanting to witness the moment. Secretly, he was excited.
“Do you want one?” the guy, Levi, according to his name tag, asked, voice sounding entirely bored. His eyes, Jean noted, however, raked up and down Eren’s body in a glimmer of interest.
It took all of hell to keep Eren from fidgeting, so Jean knew he found a keeper when Eren went completely still. Which ultimately only meant one thing: Eren was too stunned with how gorgeous the guy was to move.
And because Jean knew his idiot best friend so well, he could tell Eren was a little flustered too. A groggy sort of flustered that made his train of thought one step behind, noticing in delay how attractive Levi was, and then noticing he was already holding out the paper cup for him for to take.
Eren adjusted his grip on his coffee, no doubt sweaty with slowly building nervous butterflies. He took the yogurt, staring at Levi with a dorky look. He might as well have started drooling.
Knowing Eren needed some prompting to start a conversation, Jean decided to save the awestruck dipshit from himself.
Standing up straight from leaning on the handle, he pushed the cart forward, looking at Eren like a parent would their child, chastising but doting. He was confident in this, Eren was always a little good with words, suave when he needed to be.
“Okay, what do we say?”
Except, for everything Jean knew about Eren, nothing could have prepared him for his response.
“I love you.”
Jean wanted to hit him; Eren was a fucking moron, if this wasn’t proof that he shouldn’t go to bed at six a.m., Jean didn’t know what was. He was embarrassed for him.
But…
If Jean hadn’t had two coffees already, he would have missed the subtle wide-eyed blink and pink cheeks Levi faced Eren with.
With a helpless sigh, which went unnoticed by the two because they were too busy ogling at each other, Jean glanced down at the grocery list.
Setting this up was worthy of stealing Armin’s crown.
The rest, wooing the guy and winning him over, was up to Eren.