Chapter Text
It all begins with Marco being an idiot, as many of Jean's finest memories do.
It also begins with Weezer's 'Island in the Sun' playing loudly over the ancient radio in Corner Cup during Jean's first fifteen minutes of work, the fan rotating worthlessly above him in the burning heat.
He's bargaining whether or not it'll be worth it for him to stick his face underneath the espresso machine to wake himself up and then into a bucket of ice. At the same time, his foot is beginning to tap, despite his efforts, along with the opening vocals of the song. It's so early, and it's so hot, and he's so tired. But damn it all, this song is so good.
Hanji is out buying more creamer (an excuse to get out of this hellhole; she's so stupid for not fixing the air conditioning yet), so it's just Jean and the heat and the constant, endless, all-consuming suffering. The customers have been ducking in and out, ordering iced coffee because they're not insane and know that they'd be lighting their insides on fire they even tried to order something above room temperature. But for now, it's just him. Before he can stop himself, Jean tears open the freezer and just stands there, exactly like Hanji told him never to do. Sighing in the arctic bliss, Jean reminds himself that he could use an island in the sun right about now. Or maybe a island covered in snow and constant air conditioning.
And now, it's obvious to see why nobody would ever stay inside the Corner Cup sauna by free will. Except Marco Bodt.
"Morning!" He shouts upon his arrival, to which an elderly woman looks over from where Jean is handing her change. Marco realizes they're not alone, smiling sweetly with a nod in her direction. Jean, on the other hand, sucks in a breath and feels the sweat that's already beading on his forehead threaten to fall between his eyes. Marco lets the door close loudly behind him before he saunters over to the counter, the woman taking her coins and walking past Marco with the sweetest smile in return. "Have a good day, young man," she says to him, after she had been all but silent to Jean throughout this whole ordeal. Jean narrows her eyes at her as she escapes through the door. Another victim to the Bodt Charm.
"Holy hell, is it hot in here..." Marco says, pulling on his sleeveless shirt and standing on his tiptoes to hold his face as close as he can to the fan. He nearly falls over, stretching his neck. Jean cannot believe that this is the boy who he's willing to call his best friend. "Does this thing even work?"
"What are you doing here, Marco," Jean deadpans, sweat rolling down his back. He wipes the back of his arm across his forehead, too tired for Marco and his sleeveless shirt.
"I want coffee," Marco says, as if it's obvious. Jean knows him too well for shit like this—Marco prefers tea over coffee any day and hates the countless packets of sugar that Jean pours in his. They'd seen each other only a few days ago, but Jean notices the tiny change in his smile, his fresh shave, his shirt clean of the stain from the smoothie incident last week. Something's up.
In the meantime, Jean is still very much done with his shit. "Well why don't I just make you a steaming hot cup then..." Jean mockingly begins to turn around as Marco raises his hands in defeat.
"Please don't, I'm begging you. Jesus, it's so hot in here." Jean closes his eyes. He knows that. Marco comes closer to the counter, folding his arms in front of him and taking a seat. The diner-style seating is usually left untouched, and Jean's fearing for Marco's safety with the rickety chair beneath him. He starts to swivel the chair beneath him despite Jean's mental screams of protest. "So, how's your summer going?" He asks innocently. Jean locks eyes with Marco and slowly narrows his, watching as the tips of Marco's mouth twitch. He knows exactly how Jean's summer is going, the little shit.
Maybe his first summer after graduating wouldn't be so terrible, if he weren't the only one having a terrible summer. While he's sitting in his own pool of sweat, Connie and Sasha are off having the time of their lives life guarding at the pool and rubbing sunscreen onto each others shoulders probably-not-romantically as they feed each other grapes in the summer sun. Reiner and Bertholt, who Jean hasn't even seen since graduation, are working at the marina for the summer, playing with rich people's boats and each other's hearts during their summer to remember. Ymir and Christa might be in a foreign country for all Jean knows; he honestly hasn't bothered to check up yet. Really, the only friends besides Marco that he sees often are Armin, Eren and Mikasa—who travel like a pack of wolves and raid Corner Cup occasionally. Marco is still looking serenely up at Jean, who's glaring right back.
"It's going just fucking fantastic."
"But do you know what would make it even more fantastic?" Marco says, his eyebrows only shifting slightly upwards before Jean realizes, taking a single step back. Island in the Sun stops playing in the background, and Jean's heart hammers. No, oh no, no.
"Are you serious?" Jean asks.
"Mom and Dad are going to Prague for the weekend for some fancy business stuff, and the place is all mine. I've already called everyone, and it's settled. They're all coming, Jean." Oh my god. They've waited months for this. Jean wants to hop over the counter and into Marco's arms for a moment, no matter how weird or unnecessary that is.
"I—" Jean stops, his head slightly spinning, maybe even from the heat. Marco's family cabin in the desolate wilderness of Wisconsin was the stuff of legends, even if it was only Marco ever telling him that. This weekend, he could be up at a lake house, on a raft in the water, out of this damn heat, Marco by his side. "I can't," Jean finishes.
Marco slowly tips his head back until he's looking at Jean over his nose. "What?" He blinks twice. "You have to." Jean closes his eyes again. Marco's already starting to plead. "You're my best friend, I'm not throwing the World's Greatest Weekend without you. It'll be lacking in the 'greatest' part, then." Jean feels the sweat dripping on the back of his neck, already aching for some water to throw himself into.
"Hanji's never gonna let me take off," Jean answers. "Plus you know the deal with my parents, Marco. I'm sorry, man. Shit. " Marco bites his bottom lip for a moment, then clears his throat, shaking his head.
"Yeah, okay. It's cool. I'll just—" He looks into the air behind Jean, a little dazed. "I'll just go without you." It stabs Jean in the chest, the knife shish kabob-ing his insides and coming out the other side. Marco pulls out a debit card and places it on the counter, its slightly-scratched surface reflecting Jean's seemingly neutral expression. "I'm still dying over here, go and do your job. Iced-something with caramel please." And Jean quickly turns away from him to make him a caramel-something and chastises himself for every decision he's ever made in his entire life. All of his friends are going to be at Marco's cabin for the weekend, and Jean is going to be miserable. Figures, it's his perfect summer after all.
When Jean turns back around, Marco's rubbing his face so thoroughly that Jean's sure he's trying to scrub his freckles clean off. He thinks about apologizing again while he swipes Marco's card.
He'd put extra ice in Marco's drink as an apology, but Marco had only given him a sad smile as he'd risen to leave."Text me if anything changes..." Marco had said, looking back wistfully over his shoulder as Jean shrugs as hopefully as he can. Marco wipes the sweat from his neck and puts the straw into his mouth, simply giving a wave before walking out the door. Jean nearly collapses. Hanji is never going to let him go. But he has to.
"Hey, Hanji," Jean says ever-so-nonchalantly when she returns from errands.
"Hello, Jean. Why so down?" Her inability to look like she's dying from sweat is a little bit of the reason, but Jean looks up through his lashes and prepares to give the most pathetic speech of his life while she stocks the back fridge.
"I know you have me on shift for this weekend, but my friend—" Hanji spins around, glasses glared from the sunlight coming in through the window and throwing Jean off from her lack of expression. He tries to continue. He's rehearsed this so many times over the last half hour that it's embarrassing how bad of a stammering mess he is. "My friend invited me to see my classmates for one last time before we all leave for college, and it'd be really awesome if I could..." Hanji raises her eyebrows, and finally Jean can see her eyes again. Too bad they're stone cold.
"Oh, isn't that precious" she croons menacingly. Jean swallows. "I already put you on shift, however."
"I know, I just was hoping..." Jean feels like he's going to black out.
And he thinks about it all that night, replays the rest of the conversation in his mind. Jean did it, somehow—he got Hanji to give him the long weekend off. Maybe it was the pathetic speech, maybe it was the dying look in his eyes as he roasted slowly in the shop. But whatever it was, it worked. Persuading his parents was another, much harder story, but by some act of God his parents had stared each other hard in the eye before agreeing softly. Jean thinks that after the amount of parties they've caught him sneaking out to and the amount of alcohol they've found in his underage system, they'd never let him out of town again. But miracles still happen, apparently.
He doesn't really want many of the things that come with going to the cabin. The inability to escape these people for more than a day. The inevitable bug bites. Insomnia from not sleeping in his bed. But he needs to go, as some sort of unspoken promise to Marco that he will see their friends again before they all leave, even if it means being trapped up there. The lake water is probably gross, the entire place is probably unsanitary as hell, but then again Jean possesses the talent to be miserable no matter the situation.
So now Jean is waiting by his front door, ass planted on top of his suitcase, trying to remember if he's forgotten anything. Toothbrush, underwear, swim trunks, phone, sunblock, lucky Black Keys t-shirt from when Marco took him to a concert last year (the greatest night of his life, and Marco will never let him forget that), and a thousand other things haphazardly shoved into the case underneath him. Jean blows air up into his fringe and waits. Patience is a virtue that Jean never bothered to get, and he's become more anxious than originally planned; waiting at the door now like some sort of pet. Jean goes over the plan in his mind one last time, just to pass the time. Once this agonizing wait is over, he and Marco are going to drive the short ways to Connie's house to pick up Connie and Sasha. New luggage in tow, they'll begin the two and a half hour trip to the cabin. Jean presses his palms together—they're sweaty. His parents left for book club half an hour ago with a polite goodbye, and he's been sitting here on the floor since. Not nervous at all, Jean can assure. It's fucking hot out; that's why he feels like he's about to break into a sweat. Even if his hands feel like ice.
Jean's phone buzzes, scaring him to his feet. He doesn't even reach into his pocket to see the message, only shouts "bye!" into his empty house and sprints out the door. Marco's father's pickup truck is waiting along the curb, Jean's stomach jumping and his suitcase bumping against his thigh as he struggles to keep it and himself upright. As Jean approaches the open window, Marco leans over and beams.
"This is it," he practically sings, while Jean tosses his stuff in the back before climbing in on the other side.
"This is it," Jean confirms. He clicks in his seat belt, Marco shifting into drive. "How'd you sleep last night?"
Marco huffs a laugh. "Like I slept. I was grocery shopping." So that's what the countless coolers and plastic bags were in the back. Jean looks stunned only to humor him, not at all surprised. He wouldn't expect anything else from Marco Bodt, honestly. "There aren't exactly any good fast food places up there. Nearby, at least. So now we're prepared."
They pull out into the street, trees dipping to create a makeshift roof over them, sun filtering down on them and directly into Jean's eyes. Jean wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. Marco's dad's truck does have air conditioning, however, so Jean angles himself in front of the cool air and silently waits for himself to calm down. Memories of work and dying in a puddle of his own sweat flutter in the back of his mind, and he thinks for a moment that he must have found paradise at last, in the front seat of Marco's truck. Finally, Marco continues. "Plus, I was talking to someone."
"Really," Jean says quickly, cold sweat breaking through despite his efforts. He deflates, for a moment, as Marco's cheery voice overpowers the hum of the air conditioning.
"Nothing serious, just someone who might want to be my roommate this fall. Jeez, Jean are you okay? I swear if you're carsick already..." Jean fights the paleness out of his cheeks, tells himself to calm down, seriously and resorts to looking out the window instead of Marco's watchful eyes, scenery beginning to steadily move past them now.
Still, he has to say something. "Roommate? Ha, nice," he squeaks, locking his eyes on anything he can outside the window. It's not his fault. Even before summer break Marco had a streak of almost-lovers to stress Jean out with, no matter how weird that sounds. The boy just can't repel anyone—why would Jean be his best friend otherwise? And it's a curse, really, because now 'I was talking to someone' has become has become equivalent with 'I've already moved on to someone else much better than you, see ya' in Jean's mind, so no, it's not his fault that his throat had nearly closed up just then. Jean watches the side of the road, thinking that this is going to be the longest car ride of his life if he keeps this up. Marco flicks on the radio to break the silence.
It's a strange and bubbling feeling that Jean gets at moments like this, after Marco's fingers hover over the dial to change the radio channel until he finds something he likes. It's when Jean constantly feels his eyes being drawn away from the road to watch the line of Marco's jaw as he drives. It's a strange, fleeting feeling, and an annoying one as well, when his mouth goes dry and his chest thumps unsteadily. Just talking to a potential roommate. Just melting into the floor. "Got your sunscreen?" Marco asks over the music, breaking Jean out of whatever had kept him so still.
"Yeah."
"Bugspray?"
"Shit." And there it is. He knew he was forgetting something. Marco laughs under his breath while Jean questions how he could sit on his floor for half an hour but forget bugspray of all things.
"I know you so well, Jean." Jean looks over to him, and Marco's brown eyes barely glance over to his before they're back on the road. He sets his shoulders, and Jean prepares himself while Marco's smile flickers to his face. "I was standing in the middle of the store last night thinking to myself 'what is the one thing Jean is going to forget during this trip? Is it his charming personality?"
"Fuck off," Jean says, going back to blankly admire everything through the window as Marco amuses himself.
"Is it his sunblock? The picture of Mikasa that he kisses every night before he goes to sleep—"
Jean punches his arm so hard that Marco swerves the car to the side, nearly knocking out a mailbox. "Man, are you trying to kill us?" Jean hates Marco's freckled face. Hates it as it contorts back into gentleness, even after having almost killed them. "Anyway," Marco forces, "I finally decided that it was the bugspray that you'd forget. There's three extra bottles in the back."
"Thanks, mom." Jean would never give Marco the satisfaction of seeing him smile, so he hides it behind his hand as he leans against the glass.
"You'd be lost without me."
Connie and Sasha look like they've been waiting for hours, sitting on the porch of Connie's house before Sasha points at them turning down the street and the two of them start running madly towards the car. Sasha shouts her hello as she tosses her things in the back, Connie rushing straight to the back of the truck.
"Morning, boys" Connie cries, slamming the door behind him and looking around the cramped space with wide eyes. He practically shakes the entire car with how he's subconsciously bouncing, and Jean can only glance back into the back seat an into Connie's sunshine-brimmed eyes for a mment before it's too much.
"You ready for the best weekend of your life, Connie?" Marco asks, to which Jean mockingly rolls his eyes when he sees Marco is looking.
A door opens. "More than ready," Sasha answers, slamming the door behind her. "We've been waiting for actual centuries." Jean watches in the mirror as she drags her fingers through her hair to make a new ponytail, leaving her usual pieces of of it and letting them fall into her face. They begin to drive, and Jean looks over his shoulder and tries to put on his best smile as she tightens it into her perfect disheveled mess.
"So hows that life guard job going?" He's setting himself up for the inevitable—that they're having a much better summer than himself. But it's conversation, and it's also a two hour drive.
"Oh, you know, saving lives, sunscreen on my nose, living the dream," Connie says convincingly, mockingly linking his hands behind his head and kicking the back of Jean's seat.
“Free snack bar privileges, the crazy amount of cute people..." Sasha adds, counting on her fingers, while Jean imagines. Sure, it's a bit too covered in a pink haze, but Jean picturing them relaxing on the side of the pool while Jean is locked in his massive oven in Hell. Connie and Sasha start to bicker over who has the cleanest dive after only a few minutes and Jean turns back around, giving up. Only what, two more hours of this? As they get out of the neighborhood and onto the highway, Marco turns to Jean for a second, and Jean realizes he was already looking. He reaches to change the station with only a small neutral smile and then—there's the dreaded twang of a country guitar as Marco cranks it up to full volume.
"You know I hate country music," Jean whines, literally covering his ears.
"What? I can't hear you over this killer banjo solo." Jean covers his face in his hands. His ears must be bleeding, they have to be. He raises his eyes to Marco's waiting expression, the smug asshole. "You are so pretentious about your taste in music," Marco screams over the vocals. By the first thirty seconds the guy's already sang the words 'summertime' and 'tractor' and holy shit, get him out of here. Sasha and Connie have given up their argument and have started singing along. Marco only turns it down when they start actually shaking the car, and by then Jean has descended into the realization that the song wasn't terrible.
They keep the country station on when the four of them get caught up in a disagreement on what chain restaurant serves better french fries and Connie is literally screaming, until Marco jokingly threatens to turn the car around and they all laugh away the pink in their cheeks. The argument continues quietly in the backseat, Connie describing the amount of salt on the average McDonald's fry for what feels like ages. So Jean glances to his side and sees Marco with his lips sealed, staring at the road, narrowing his eyes slightly when Sasha tries to counter-attack Connie's argument.
Things are relatively peaceful once they're surrounded by fields and the open road and another song about tractors is playing softly in the background. When they play I Spy and Jean picks grass, they're fussing for 20 minutes on all the green things they could possibly see on the horizon until Sasha gets it and Connie's so frustrated he nearly cries. They stop for gas after it feels like years (Jean is the one to break the news that it had really only been an hour), Marco smiling at him from outside the window while Jean watches the price of the gas rise and rise and rise. Marco is wearing a light zip-up sweatshirt, his hair slightly mussed, eyes heavy as he turns away from Jean to swipe his card. He'd stayed up all night, bought three extra bottles of bug spray, and put up with them for the past hour in a confined space. So what if Jean will probably come back from this trip soaked in the world's most unsanitary water and dirt stuck under his nails. There's Marco, who stayed up all night to buy them groceries. And that's good enough.
When they reach the county there's a cheer, and when they pass a sign for the lake they all scream in unison. Jean can smell the wilderness in the wind coming in the window, the urge to stretch his legs getting stronger and stronger.
At last, they pull off the highway and into a winding bit of forest, branches from the neighboring trees brushing against the truck. It seems like the road just drops into a dirt path, the car rocking slightly as they rumble over the uneven road. Jean catches sight of a few houses through the trees, craning his neck to see if maybe that's their destination, before finally Marco sighs. “We’re here!” He sounds exasperated over it, and Jean wants to reach out and congratulate him for successfully putting up with them, even when Sasha's method for begging for fast food included her shaking Marco's seat. But Marco wordlessly takes a sharp turn onto a thinner street, drives them up to a clearing, and Jean forgets everything he was thinking.
And there it is. The Bodt Family Cabin. Dark polished wood, a high, shingled roof, deck wrapping around the entire thing. The lake sparkles invitingly only a short walk away, rocks on the shoreline growing moss and blowing long grass back and forth in the summer breeze. Jean would try to let himself take it all in, but there's already a van sitting in the slightly worn grass out front, and Jean could recognize it anywhere. In the popped-up trunk of Mikasa's caravan, the three of them are silently chewing handfuls of chips, lounged about on blankets, legs dangling. They all silently wave as Marco pulls up, too preoccupied with the food in their mouths. Jean doesn't blame them, he's starving.
“Who's ready to party?” Marco shouts from the drovers seat completely ironically, but something in Eren snaps and he's jumping to his feet while crying “Hell yeah, I am!” He drops his bag of chips in the haste, barbecue-flavored snacks littering the ground, and Jean barks a laugh that he hopes Eren can hear.
“Sorry, we got bored and hungry,” Armin says as Jean jumps from his seat and comes around the front of the car to face the trio.
“Sorry, I left a little late. Plus we had to stop once for gas; that must've taken some time. If I'd known you guys were so far ahead of me—” Armin raises a hand to stop Marco's nervous rambling.
"We haven't even been here that long."
"Jeez, Marco, spend too much time with these guys already?" Eren laughs at his own joke, empty bag still lying pathetically on the ground next to him.
There's a second of silence. "I've missed you guys," Sasha says, and Jean realizes that not everyone here has had the privilege of having their coffee shop raided by Eren, Mikasa and Armin every week. So Jean simply watches as Sasha rushes to Mikasa's arms, who buries her face in Sasha's neck in welcome. "You cut your hair," Sasha says, muffled by Mikasa's shoulder.
"It's too hot to have it that long anymore," Mikasa answers with a serene smile when she pulls back. Next to them, Connie and Eren are doing some sort of handshake that includes fake-punching each other, and Armin and Marco have assumed their spots of Proud Mother, watching fondly of the interactions of their kids. Jean steps over to them, ready to get this show on the road. Or, off the road. In the cabin, please.
“I'm burning up out here,” Jean mutters next to Marco's ear. Marco nods once before calling out to all of them.
"Who wants to see the inside?" He asks. After an enthusiastic cheer, Jean leads the way to the front door, ready to get the afternoon sun off of his skin. Watching out of the corner of his eye, Jean gazes as Marco greets Mikasa softly, complimenting her haircut as well. Jean will too at some point, seeing as two years ago he would be drooling at her side right now. But instead he looks at the soft look in Marco's eyes and almost runs into the front door. Marco fishes for the keys in his pocket, moves past Jean to open the door, and then instead of opening it, turns around.
"Are you all ready?" Marco asks.
“More than ready,” Jean says. Marco waits for more of a response. Eren finally shouts an affirmation and the others follow.
"Stop trying to be dramatic and open the door before I die of heat stroke," Sasha says, even though she's laughing while she fans herself.
"Fine, fine." And he turns the key.
So Jean has known about this place for a while, from the times where Marco would tell him "next year my parents will let you go, I promise" only to go another summer with Marco gone for weeks and Jean looking at his adventures on Facebook in the darkness of his room in a cocoon of blankets. And now, walking through the doorway into the high ceiling foyer of the Cabin of Legends, Jean has to wrap his brain around it all. The high ceiling of the entryway branches off into a living room with a massive beige couch and spotless furniture, an equally massive kitchen with probably the largest fridge Jean has ever seen, floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the afternoon sun and giving everything a golden glow. Jean feels like he's really just found paradise now. Which he supposes he has, for the next four days. "Smells the same," Marco says blissfully behind him, to which each of them slowly inhale. A tiny mix of polished wood and sunscreen. Yes, Jean can definitely live here.
"You never told me that your family was fucking rich, Marco," Eren breathes, turning in a small circle around himself. Jean glares at him, even if he was just thinking the same thing. His best friend has a cabin, and it is a thing of legends. His best friend is also apparently much more wealthy than previously thought. Sure, the pressed shirts that Marco wore when he visited his family were better tailored than anything that Jean owns, and sure he doesn't bat an eye when Jean forgets his money at lunch, but Jean thought that they were just well off. Not "we visit Prague and own a mansion of a cabin on the world's prettiest lake" rich.
"Why don't we grab the bags?" Armin breaks the thick silence of what they're all thinking. They all nod or murmur to themselves, hurriedly moving back out the door, Jean watching as each of them never looks to Marco's waiting eyes.
Even if the Bodt family has now been proved to be filthy fucking rich, it still doesn't mean that there's going to be enough room for all of them to have their own rooms and live in the lap of luxury for this entire trip. Already there are seven of them, and Reiner, Annie, Bertholt, Christa and Ymir have still yet to show. So Marco decides to give them the grand tour, point them to their rooms, see how they're gonna fit everyone in here.
"Over here," he says while walking through a doorway in the living room to a hall, wooden paneling now cast with dark shadows, "is where I thought Armin, Eren and Mikasa could sleep." He smiles to them as they walk past him and into the room, none of them questioning the decision. They simply throw their things to the bed and look around themselves, before Mikasa breaks the silence with a gentle sigh. "Thanks, Marco." She turns to Eren, who's still holding his bag. She takes it wordlessly, tossing it on the top bunk as Armin takes the bed beneath it. The rest of them peacefully watch in the doorway for a moment. Jean slightly jealous of it, of sharing a room with Mikasa, but not for long. He'd rather end up sleeping outside than listen to Eren snarl and snore in his sleep all night.
"And here's where Bert and Reiner are sleeping," Marco says, already moving further down the hall. Jean follows the rest of them and peeks inside to eye it wearily. He says a silent goodbye to probably the frame of the bed and the arrangement of pillows, because this room will probably never look the same after they're done with it. "Annie might not want to sleep in there, so she's stuck either with Ymir and Christa—" they all shake their heads simultaneously, knowing that probably wouldn't be the greatest option, "or Sasha and Connie."
"What about you and Jean?"
"Um," Marco starts. Jean feels his stomach jump just from the playing nature of Connie's voice, filled with the sudden urge to grab Connie's arm and snap it. But Marco brushes it off, like he does. "Lets be real, she won't want to stay in the same room with two guys. I guess we'll just let her decide."
Connie is still trying to mask a cheeky smile, looking over at Jean, and Jean still wants to kill him. You look at a person for more than three seconds and Connie is down your throat on when you two are going to bang. Imagine what Jean has had to go through over the past four years.
Jean goes to leave his bag in the bedroom that he and Marco are apparently sharing, breaking away from the others on their journey to make sandwiches for a very late lunch. It's quiet, and all Jean can feel as he enters the room is the blood pulsing in his head, the color rising to his cheeks. He just doesn't want to make this awkward, doesn't want any forced conversations, doesn't want to hog the covers. The room is small, the bed is big, and Jean places his bag down on the side closest to the window, sitting down on the edge just to get a hold of himself. Marco has followed him, bag slung over his shoulder, striding into the room and immediately tossing his bag down on the bed. It nearly lands on top of him, and Jean stands up from the bed as Marco realizes he's not alone.
"Oh, sorry," Marco says, unzipping his bag and grabbing handfuls of clothing. "I guess I'm used to having this room to myself." Jean refuses to let Marco see the anxiety on his face, sticking to gazing at a painting of a beach on the wall, then a few of Marco's childhood pictures on the bedside table. It's usually just his room; no wonder Jean feels so out of place there. It even smells like him in a tiny way.
"Don't worry about it," Jean says, more to himself.
"You know what? We don't need to waste time unpacking right now. Let's just go eat some lunch, yeah?" Jean looks warily towards him. Maybe he can see the way Jean jumps a little at how he tips his head to the side at the end of the question, though he prays he doesn't. Marco reaches for the doorknob. Jean forgets to move.
"Jean?" He takes that as his cue to go, pushing his feet forward. Marco waits a second before opening the door. Jean's worried, for a moment, until his best friend's smile stretches so wide that Jean's sure he'll burst. "Trust me. This trip will make taking off work worth it."
They sit around eating a proper lunch of homemade sandwiches (on real bakery bread, how fancy can this place get) at the grand dining table. Surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows and people Jean can stand, the seven of them stuff their faces and chat lightly as the sun begins to dip into the horizon. They'd unpacked everything food-related—which there's a lot of—but plastic bags still litter the glistening kitchen counter. Marco tells them they'll deal with it later, sun setting behind his glowing smile.
"I thought you said they were just behind us?" Armin asks, referring to a short blonde and her taller, frightening freckled girlfriend who were supposed to be here by now.
"I called Christa when we got here. She said they'd just reached the county," Mikasa says between a sip of water.
Eren draws his eyebrows together, leaning forward in his chair. "That was three hours ago." They all chew worriedly in the silence.
"I'm sure they're fine," Sasha assures, stealing a piece of bacon from Connie's BLT.
They're more than fine. Twenty minutes later, there's an obnoxious blaring of a car horn outside, and Eren is the first to rush to his feet and to the door.
"Here!" he shouts, while Sasha responds "then open the door, dumbass." They rush outside as Jean watches Christa raise herself from the sunroof of Ymir's car, hands in the air like she'll touch the sky as they come hurtling towards the house.
"Hey, guys!" she yells, and Ymir just gives a peace sign from the drivers seat. After parking crudely on the grass, Ymir causally gets out of the car and excepts Connie's embrace with a small smile after he nearly attacks her. Jean thinks back fondly of when, two years ago, if Connie had done the same she would have drop-kicked him the the ground. Christa, on the other hand, completely disregards the car door and just pulls herself onto the roof of the car before leaping the ground, running to Sasha and Mikasa and bursting into tears in one graceful leap. Jean stands idly by, Marco finding his side. Jean feels something pulling him and realizes it's Marco, gone to fiddle with a loose strand on his t-shirt.
"Are you hungry?" Is what he asks. Jean shakes his head, raising at an eyebrow as Marco bites his bottom lip. "Good, because I just realized I forget tonight's dinner in the fridge at home."
Armin is hugging Christa tightly when he raises his head, called to Marco's struggle. "I brought like six backup meals, Marco. This trip may have been your idea, but we're not just gonna leave you to babysit us." Christa unlatches from him, pinches his cheek, and moves on to the next victim, which happens to be Jean.
"Ah, hey, Christa." She mumbles something into his shirt, but Jean just answers by squeezing her tighter.
Marco sets his lips in a worried line.
"You are such a mom," Jean says, and Marco reaches over and tears the string off his shirt. Christa releases him, her blue eyes rimmed with tears and blonde hair falling away from her face angelically, and Jean wonders what would prompt someone like her to hold onto someone like him for so long. Before she pulls Marco into her arms, Jean catches his gaze. "There's nothing to worry about, okay? Hakuna matata."
But then it's nightfall, and they're worried.
"Shouldn't they be here by now?" Eren questions. No one's reached for a light switch while they've been lounging on the massive couch in the living room, and Jean can barely see his look of distress in the shadows. Since Reiner's been working at the pier, Jean has heard along the grapevine that somehow he's allowed to take a pontoon boat out on the lake for the weekend. That's how he, Bertl, and Annie are supposed to get here from the marina. But there's no sign of them, and as Jean faces the descending darkness outside, the rest of the conversations have fallen out into quiet worry for the second time in a day.
Another hour passes, tea is served to those who want it and things get mildly lighter—until Jean makes a comment about their boat maybe crashing and the entire room goes silent. Yep, he's still got it.
"That's it, I'm calling him," Christa announces.
"Speakerphone, please," Marco adds. Jean looks to him, and can see the idea of Marco's Perfect Trip falling away in front of his very eyes. The phone rings twice, then Bertholt's voice comes over the end, barely audible through the static.
"Hello?" He asks, sounding terrified through the unsteady connection. They all seem to lean forward simultaneously on the couch, drinks pausing at lips. Shit, Jean was right, they're dying.
Christa grips the phone with both hands. "Hello, Bertl. Where are you guys?"
More static. Jean thinks he hears him answer, but it's cut off by a wave of static. Christa tries again.
"Are you okay, Bertl? Are you guys on your way?"
The signal clears up, as his voice comes filtering back through the phone. "Yeah, we are. Reiner says he knows the way, so I'm assuming he knows where he's going." There's a sigh passed along between each of them, Connie finally downing the rest of his lukewarm tea.
"Okay, we left the light on by the dock, so please just get here safe."
"Okay, we're trying—" and then Bertholt's voice breaks off into a mix of static and a bassline, before Jay-Z begins to play on the other end. "Reiner! Turn it down! I'm trying to talk—" and then it gets louder, until Jean feels like he can hear it further than just the phone, almost like it's playing in the back of his mind. Or, behind him.
"Are they outside?" Jean asks. Eren jumps to his feet with impressive reflexes and tears open the back screen door, looking out into the night.
"I see them!" he cries, and there's no way in hell Jean is going to miss this. He bolts from his seat with everyone else, abandoning the snacks at the coffee table and running barefoot onto the night. Jean sees the boat's lights and hears the music more clearly now as he runs down the stairs of the deck to the grass before running blindly to the shoreline.
Eren is yelling, the Jay-Z lyrics getting even more clear as the pontoon slowly milks its way through the water. Sasha and Connie start dancing to the beat and laughing as Reiner spreads his arms in greeting, the music too loud to even try to hear what he's yelling.
"This kid," Ymir lulls fondly as Reiner takes the snapback off his head to wave it back and forth to the crowd on the shore. When they get close enough to the dock's light, Jean can finally see Bertl perched on the seat next to him, rocking along with the waves like a wavering tree. Reiner jumps off the front of the boat onto the dock with ease, holding a rope in hand. He gets Bertl on the dock by extending a hand until the silhouette of the lanky boy makes it onto solid ground, still slightly waving with the breeze. Annie just jumps over by herself, previously unseen, hood up over her head in the darkness. The music shuts off, and Reiner's screams can finally be heard.
"We're late, but we're here!" With enough light to finally see their faces in the glow of the house above them, Jean takes in a slightly sunburn Reiner with his snapback on backwards and sunglasses on a rope around his neck. He honestly wasn't expecting anything else, but he's surprised by the muscle-shirt-wearing walking tool that Reiner has become for the summer. Beside him, Bertholt accepts hugs gingerly from everyone, even Jean, apologizing for how slightly seasick he's feeling. Annie twiddles her fingers once to everyone, but it doesn't stop the rest of them from pulling her in and ruffling her hair until she pulls out of Connie's headlock and forcefully pushes him away.
Dinner does not get served, to Marco's delight, and they end up in a pile of limbs on the couch and on the floor for the rest of the night. Dim lighting, loud conversations, cans of pop littering the floor. It's good, and Jean hasn't seen these people in what feels like much longer than a month and a half. To think that he would be going to bed at this time any other Thursday night, maybe to text Marco until he drops his phone on his face and falls asleep, only to wake up the next morning and work in Hell's coffee shop. It makes him lean into the couch even further.
"I'm beat," Reiner says after conversation has been dead for ten minutes and they've all been afraid to break the silence. Everyone mumbles agreements or stretches themselves out, contagious yawns spreading down the line. Jean glances at his phone—it's 2:45 in the morning, and the light from his phone is blinding. There's a waiting text from Hanji telling him to have a good time on vacation with 8 smiley emojis at the end...which means she officially hates him. Great.
Marco points Reiner and Bertl to their room and watches them shuffle away, Reiner's hand low on Bertl's back and the taller boy stiff as a board as he walks. Marco then looks to Annie, mouth settling into a troubled line again. But before he has the chancd to his mouth, he's interrupted.
"You wanna sleep out here with us, Annie?" Connie asks.
"Sure," Annie replies, hood blocking Jean from seeing the look in her eyes, but unable to hide the soft smile. The hall lights are flicked on, the lamp in the living room is flicked off, and Jean sneaks one more chip from the bowl on the table before he follows Armin down their hall.
Jean simply walks into Marco's bedroom, over to his side of the bed, suddenly unsure of what to do despite wanting to fall into the sheets and get the fuck to sleep as soon as possible. Where's Marco? Jean hears the sink running in the adjoining bathroom, so Marco must have gone to brush his teeth or something. Jean yawns, rocking onto his toes. Yeah, fuck that.
But Jean is standing at him and Marco's bedside now, wondering if he should get in. They've had sleepovers before, of course, but this is different. Do you sleep in just your boxers while sharing a bed in your best friend's fancy cabin? Is there an unspoken rule that you just don't do that? What if Jean sleepwalks, or sleep-kicks, or has a dream? Marco comes padding back into the room, shirtless and freckled, and Jean forces himself to tear his eyes away.
"Everything okay, Kirschtein?" Jean sneaks a peek instead of answering, as Marco pulls on a Captain America t-shirt and catches him looking.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Jean replies, with a bewildered look in Marco's direction. Why wouldn't I be. He rushes under the covers, thinking that this might as well happen, that he's too tired now to care if Marco is sleeping in a Captain America shirt a foot away from him.
"Night," Marco says, turning off the light next to him and shifting the bed beneath Jean as he settles in. Their ankles bump together as Marco gets comfortable and Jean's heart kicks into full gear. They're still touching, just a tiny spot of skin on skin, and Jean's sure that Marco can hear his pulse now. Unable to take it anymore, Jean moves his foot away and rolls over to his side, letting out a soft yawn and feeling himself already dozing off. His skin still hums with Marco's lost presence, and Jean ignores it until it fades to nothing.
"I really hope you aren't a cover hog," Jean murmurs instead, drooping eyes locked on the tiny bit of light coming in from the hall. Marco is still is so close to him; he can even feel the tiny breath of a laugh that Marco lets out.
"I should be saying the same to you." Marco sounds so tired, and Jean takes it as their final goodnight. All is peaceful outside of Jean's mind, then. Even so, Jean's starting to accept it. He's in Marco's bed, so what? He's lucky enough just to be here, and he's lucky to be in this bed. No matter how weird that sounds. This is good. This trip will be good for him. Even if the lake water is dirty as hell and there ought to be at least one bug that will land on him. Time with friends, lasting memories. It'll be good.
He can still hear Sasha and Connie whispering to each other down the hall, before Connie cracks up and Ymir shouts for them to shut up across the house. Yes, this will be good. Jean even nearly forgets who he's sleeping next to for a moment.
Actually, he does remember, because he doesn't fight it when the boy next to him steals the covers, and makes sure to hug the very edge of the bed as he falls asleep.