Chapter Text
Having dirt under his fingernails again was a relief. Yesterday’s rain left the soil cool, damp, and malleable between Armin’s fingers. The clouds still hung heavy and blue-grey, but today, Armin didn’t mind. It was his first day out in his grandfather’s garden since the snow had started to melt to ugly greyish mounds at the roadsides. There weren’t many weeds to pull, and the flowerbeds didn’t need any watering; his main purpose in being out here was just to touch the earth and see the first splashes of colour pushing their way up through the soil. Armin was years away from being an expert gardener. Certainly he knew far less about it than his grandfather did, and when it had come time last October to settle bulbs in the earth for the spring, he’d chosen those flowers which he was most certain to care for sufficiently. His ambition, however, was growing. University terms ended much earlier than high school ones; since he’d have that extra time on his hands, maybe next year he’d tackle something a little more difficult, a little more impressive. For now, he nurtured what he had.
At the moment his bare knees were pressing into the earth before the daffodils, which were fresh and clean after the downpour. They were more striking in the sunlight, of course, but for now they were bright enough on their own. The wind still bit deeply enough that he could have justified wearing jeans, if he hadn’t had plans already. Shorts were requisite. As for the dirt, he suspected he was going to spend a lot of today skidding across the grass and the mud, so it was just as well to get a good healthy coating of it now.
The hinges of the gate to the back yard creaked. Armin didn’t have to look over to know who it was. His grandfather was at work, and Mikasa’s shift would have just ended; even she wasn’t quick enough to have sprinted over here so soon. There was only one other person who would just let himself in like this.
Unless I’m about to be robbed or murdered, Armin thought—but the voice that called out belonged to the last person who was ever going to hurt him.
“Ahh, they’re already coming up, eh?”
Armin smiled a little and shuffled over by about a foot so that he was situated before the next patch of flowers. These ones were bluish-purple and growing in clusters on their stalks.
“A few of them are,” he said. “They’re not all where I put them, though. The squirrels must have gotten at them.”
Footsteps started toward Armin through the wet grass.
“That’s alright. Looks better like that anyway—gardens are weird when they’re all ruler-measured and perfect, you know?”
“You’re not the one who has to cut the grass around that tulip.” He waved a hand over his shoulder, but if Eren looked at the little burst of red peeking through the grass, right at the centre of the yard, he didn’t pause to do so. He knelt beside Armin. His eyes were on the hyacinths. His gaze was intent, interested, warm—not quite gentle, but closer to it than most of his teachers would have thought possible. It wasn't that he never managed a soppy expression or a soft touch. The way he handled Armin's hair was and always had been nothing short of tender (with one early exception), and he had gotten an awfully silly look on his face when Historia had gone railing after the police who'd been badgering Ymir. Everyone had thought he'd fallen in love with her on the spot.
That more or less summed the situation up. Seeing Eren being just quietly, softly proud or happy or encouraging was not unheard of, but it was rare enough that people tended to think that he was either out of his head or experiencing some other totally different emotion. He did not strike people as the kind of boy to make friends with alley cats and plump blue birds. Circumstances had to be just so, and Armin wasn't altogether sure what the conditions were.
“I’ll do it, then,” Eren said. “Hell, they’re looking pretty good already.”
“I am not going to call you over to cut the grass. Ever. I can do it myself.”
“Without running over this tulip? Remember that time you almost went right over your own cord and Mikasa had to—?”
“We don’t talk about that,” Armin said with severity that was only halfway an act. Eren snickered.
“Fine. These, then.” He reached out and touched one of the hyacinths, just resting his fingertip against the blue of the petals. “You know what they mean?”
Armin shook his head. Normally such an admission would have embarrassed him, but with Eren as with Mikasa he didn’t feel compelled to pretend to some infinite store of knowledge.
“I just planted them because they were pretty, and easy.”
“They’re constancy. And the daffodils are…” Eren’s brow rumpled for a moment. “They’re respect, I think. Something like that.”
“Why do you know so much about this, anyway? I wouldn’t have expected you to be interested in flowers at all, let alone abstract floral symbolism.”
Eren shrugged loosely and sat back. He was dressed every bit as recklessly as Armin was, if more loudly—dark blue shorts, blisteringly orange t-shirt, and extreme indifference both to the cold and to the clash of complimentary colours.
“You pick things up, right?”
“How do you just casually pick up information like that?” Another shrug.
“We should get going,” he said. “It’s probably going to rain again. I mean, I’m still not sure I get why we need to do this now… It’s so early.”
“You don’t have to go with me,” Armin said. "Mikasa and I can manage just fine." As he shifted to get to his feet, Eren twined one arm around his, tugged him over, and kissed the side of his mouth. It was delivered without direct comment, as if kissing was as natural a part of getting on their feet as any repositioning of their arms or legs.
“I want to, though,” Eren said.
It had been three months since Armin had kissed Eren, and although he smiled every time he thought about it, sometimes the guilt would rattle the expression right back off his face. Upon discovering Eren's romantic interest in him Armin had decided to let Eren settle his own feelings, and then he’d gone and mashed their faces together at the first temptation. The next morning neither of them had mentioned it. By the time Armin had woken up Eren had been poking around in the kitchen, trying to help Armin’s grandfather with breakfast. They’d gone about their business as normal, which was to say they’d spent most of the day lounging around, talking about school and movies and politics and soccer, and touching far too often without giving half a damn about whether the meaning of it had changed.
Then there had been Historia’s party, just a few days afterwards. She’d been frighteningly keen on making sure Armin was prepared for the thing. It had made him a little insecure about his usual self-presentation. That had been temporary; it had ended when her motive for picking out fitted collared shirts in just such a colour, and with this particular tie and slacks that fit like so, had become clearer. No real attempt had been made to hide her intention. She’d personally arrived on his doorstep to drag him to her party about half an hour before Eren and Mikasa were due to pick him up, and when he'd asked her what exactly she was up to, she'd said something about how she thought he and Eren could use some looking after. Once at her house, she’d hidden him away in the kitchen until his two friends arrived. Ultimately she’d had Ymir corner Mikasa with a fumbling conversation about job hunting. Armin had been ejected from the kitchen at just the right time to trip directly into the arms of an entirely defenceless Eren Jaeger while some disembodied yet excitable voice yelled about the mistletoe hanging overhead.
That night, Armin had learned that alcohol would still burn his lips when smeared across them by Eren’s; he’d drunk the heat in without caring that they were in full view of both soccer teams and Historia’s other friends. It wasn’t as if he’d been riding some wave of boldness from the alcohol. He’d barely managed to sip his way through half a beer while confined to the kitchen to wait out his sentence. The kiss had made him dizzier than shots could have. They’d woken up sprawled together the next morning; Eren had had his head trapped in Armin’s shirt where the third button should have been fastening together the two halves. That had been a strange thing to wake up to, especially since Eren had been snoring softly into Armin’s undershirt and curled up like a contended cat. The various social media sites were full of pictures of it, Armin was sure. His own computer was too pitiable for him to have much of an online presence, so he hadn’t had to see the aftermath.
Since then the whole relationship had been surprisingly mild, given Eren’s normal tendency to run into everything headfirst and screaming. Their friendship had been much the same, but full of kisses on the cheek, the forehead, the nose, the hand, the temple. Rarely the lips, and never anywhere south of the jawbone. Armin happily accepted any physical affection he was offered and stole a few kisses of his own, but he suspected Eren was getting frustrated with himself about the absence of a clear distinction. There was a notable lack of a strictly demarcated before and after—a definition of what exactly they were now, to each other.
Thinking that they couldn’t very well let snowstorms and Historia solve all their problems for them, Armin had brought it up once, in precisely those terms. “You’re Armin,” Eren had said. “That’s the most important thing.” And he’d been certain, and he’d been right, so Armin had let it rest.
At least this time around they were both puzzled about it together, and at least this time they both understood how it was ultimately going to be resolved. Sometimes when there was a quiet moment in a movie or between homework questions, or when they happened to catch one another’s eye as they were walking home, Armin was sure that Eren was going to ask him. Every time, Eren would give a quick shake of his head and sometimes a sheepish smile. Not the right moment, or not the right idea behind it. Armin would give Eren’s hand a squeeze or his cheek a kiss, because it didn’t matter. Not to him. What was important was that Eren was with him, and they understood one another. They didn’t have to be dating for Armin to be satisfied; no official sanction or adherence to formal tradition was going to make him feel any more strongly for Eren than he already did, and always had. If that was what Eren wanted, though—if it would put that broad grin on his face more often—then yes, Armin wanted it. He wanted Eren, romantically; he had that, even if it was nebulous at times, and was sure as hell not going to hesitate about getting more.
Except that this time, it was Eren’s turn. They both understood that.
Armin’s phone thrummed against his hip before he could respond to Eren’s statement. He drew it from his pocket and found a message from Mikasa.
I don’t think you’ll end up needing your jacket.
Alright. We’re on our way.
Did Eren even bother to bring his. I told him to.
It might be in his backpack. Did you end up inviting Annie?
She has work. I’ll get started.
We’ll be there soon.
“We have to go,” Armin said, picking up the backpack that had been sitting on the grass to his left. There was a buzzing in his lips now. It rattled through his whole head and for a moment obscured everything. More. More touching. There should be more touching. But he’d set down a plan for today. It could fall to bits later, once they’d finished. Not now while the timing still mattered. “Mikasa’s waiting already.”
“We should hurry, then. She’ll just kick our asses all the harder if we let her get warmed up first.”
“Yeah. Want to run?”
Armin suggested it knowing that Eren was going to outpace him—knowing that for Eren, ‘run’ inevitably meant ‘sprint.’ Maybe Armin would use a few shortcuts; maybe he’d manage to keep up; but at the moment none of that was important. He just wanted to feel the burn of exertion in his limbs and the slap of the pavement beneath his shoes. He just wanted to start moving.
“Hell yes,” Eren said, flashing an easy grin. Every expression seemed easy, the way he wore them now. The fact that he didn’t shoot the suggestion down with a ‘but you’re going to wear yourself out once we get there,’ or a ‘God Armin are you trying to die,’ meant a lot. It was part of how Armin knew that change was happening, even if it was slow. After all the frenzy and clatter of last semester, and after months of being treated as if he were made of glass, he and Eren had found their footing again. The grey winter months were over, and soggy though it was, spring was looking better than ever.