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Jean is good on the 3dmg. Alright. Eren knows this. He's gotten over the fact that Jean is good at something eons ago. He's no longer the fourteen-years-old who would get stomachaches over that asshole being good (maybe, ugh, better than him) at something. He's fifteen now, he's all mature and shit. It's not even his business, is it. What does it matter if he's good on the gear, why, even.
And Jean is a bit of a showoff. So what. It's a trait of his character and not even the worst one. Eren thinks it's not serious, but Jean used to be such a non-serious soldier, after all, and maybe it's nice that he got to keep a little bit of that spirit even throught everything that happened. Their lives suck anyway, and if he tries to lighten up the mood every once in a while, he's allowed to, it's normal.
So Eren doesn't care when Jean shows off on the gear, not even a little. He doesn't watch with his mouth slightly open and his eyes wide as Jean completes on his very first try the turns of a rather complex motion that nobody got the hang of yet.
After all, it's not like he's done - he's still on time to...no, the third jump came off perfect and then the hooks… did he threw too late?
No, he hears Captain Levi hiss lightly in approval… Eren would have launched the hooks too soon, then. Instead, Jean is perfectly timed. His own momentum keeps him up without using the gas, and he completes his backward flip and even finishes with a tiny little half-twist that could pass off as a way to reduce speed before impact but everybody here - Eren, Captain Levi, Commander Smith, Armin, Mikasa - knows is just a bit of a flourish, something for the benefit of the people staring at him with their noses in the air.
Showoff.
He lands perfectly, light as a feather - Eren is sure the grass around his feet doesn't bend. The speed blew cold Spring air against him, making the delicate skin of his cheeks glow red and his hair messy, softer than usual, but aside from that he looks fresh as a rose, and his smile is bright and wide, enthusiast, for once without any trace of mockery or irony or smugness.
Jean really has fun on the gear, Eren realized this a while ago. It's half the reason why he's this good, he thinks. He just loves it up there, and up there loves him back.
"Very good, Jean," Commander Smith says.
"Oh, it's nothing. It's..." Jean is terrible at taking compliments. He's red as hell, and sputtering, and looking at the ground, very obviously not knowing what to do with himself.
"No, it's truly impressive," Commander Smith adds, and if Eren didn't know better he'd think he's enjoying how flustered he's making Jean. "In so many years of career, this is only the second time I see a cadet complete the whole routine on the first try," he adds, with a significant look at Captain Levi, who snorts and rolls his eyes.
Jean is probably not hiding his face in his hands only because it would make him lose all his just faticously earned cool points, but he's still staring at the ground as he stammers a thank you, Commander-sir.
Eren is about to go away, disgusted - ugh, he shows off like that and gets complimented for it, ugh ugh ugh, what has the Scouting Legion become - when Jean's eyes surreptously turn to Eren. His smile gets wide again, his eyes bright, and Eren feels himself get hot under the collar, so he turns his face to the side and scowls at the ground with all his might, but stays glued on the spot.
Then, Mikasa comes close to ask Jean tips on how to complete the maneuver, since she herself didn't manage, and Jean is stammering again, and if glares could kill Eren would be murdering a lot of innocent grass.
---
"Hey Jaeger, think fast!"
Eren realizes what's happening only when he's up in the air, pressed against Jean, being carried like a princess.
To his great shame, he recognizes Jean not because of the weak joke shouted in his direction as a late warning or because he looks at him, but because he's got his face in his uniform and Jean's skin has a distinctive scent.
Fuck. He's this far gone already?
The air whistles around them, and Eren is grateful Jean is as good as he is, because compensating for another body as one goes so fast on the 3dmg isn't the easiest task in the world - but Jean is obviously planning something, probably studied a good path between the trees - there are no sudden changes of direction, no slowing down, only the air slamming against his body and Jean's hold around him, and saying that Eren is confused would be an understatement.
Jean stops when they reach a specific spot on a tree, puts Eren to sit down on a branch before sitting down himself against the tree's trunk.
He's red in the face and smiling in that peculiar happy way again, and Eren finds a very interesting spot to look at on the tree bark. There's an ant on it. Who knew they could climb so up high?
"Why the hell did you bring me up here?"
Somewhere in Eren's peripheral vision, Jean shrugs. "You'd know if you stopped staring at your own hand like an idiot."
Eren is pissed off enough that he raises his eyes to look at Jean - only he stops mid-motion because in doing so he caught a glimpse of the view.
The tree isn't as tall as the giant trees of Maria, but it's tall enough, and it's on top of a smallish hill, so there's a sprawling view on the whole of the district - rivers and tiny towns and lakes and hills and farmhouses no bigger than Eren's nail - and the tall, never ending stretch of Wall Rose - but...
It's not much, just a tiny stretch of green behind. Just a tiny little sliver, but...
"It's Maria! Maria land! Land behind the Wall!"
Jean's voice has gone kind, soft, almost apologetic.
"I noticed you could see a little bit of Wall Maria territory before, during the training, so when the Commander said I had the rest of the afternoon I went looking for a good spot, and...well. I know it's not much, but, places from which you can see behind the Walls are rare, so..."
Eren feels his face flush. He goes back at staring at the ant, even if his eyes keep on sliding back to that tantalizing stripe of green every once in a while.
Maria. Home.
"What the fuck are you even doing?" he mutters, sounding more shy than angry.
"Sweeping you off your feet." He kicks lightly on Eren's thigh. "Is it working?"
"Fuck you."
Jean laughs. "It is, isn't it?"
He slides next to him. The branch doesn't even budge, it's a sturdy one.
Eren kicks his own feet as they dangle from the tree's branch, like a child.
"Why are you doing this?"
He's pouting, and it's only a matter of time before Jean makes some stupid comment about it, but he can't stop.
"Eh. I noticed you're a bit pissy lately so I wanted to. I dunno. Make it better for you?"
"By wasting gas and kidnapping me to take me to a dangerous place? You're such a fucking idiot. I really hate you."
Jean does a double take, and his voice is filled with pleasant surprise when he talks again.
"Wow. That good?"
"Shut up! Nothing's good about this!" Eren says, indignant.
Jean just laughs and presses a little kiss to his cheek.
Eren makes a big gesture of wiping his cheek clean.
"Oh stop it," Jean says, already losing his patience even if there's still laughter in his voice. "I can read you by now, so there's no need to keep your silly front up."
"What silly front? I don't have a silly front!"
"Sure you don't. Like earlier."
"Earlier?"
"You might have looked ready to kill for the rest of the world, but I know you love it when I show off on the gear a little."
"I don't!"
"You go all red and real quiet and then if you can you always pull me in some corner so we can make out."
"What? No, it's...you...you were just showing off because Mikasa was looking and also the Commander... "
"Oh come on, do you seriously think I would've been putting up such a show for the Commander? I mean, I would've done everything well anyway, but that little extra umpf I put in - well, that was aaaaall for my asshole of a boyfr-"
Eren, deep down, does kind of care about Jean, so he does check twice, quickly, with his eyes, if at least one of his ropes is still hooked before he pushes him off the branch mid-word.
Jean curses loudly, but readjusts quickly, and his other hook whistles in the air as he finishes his course after a five meters drop, hanging upside down.
He's the one who's a pro on the gear, after all.
Eren takes a deep breath, and then another, because he feels his insides all scrambled in the worst way ever even before jumping after him.
But jump after him he does, so Jean won't waste the rest of the afternoon complaining about Eren being a dick, at least. And maybe also because he kind of wants to be in the same place Jean is at the moment, but Jean said he can read him by now so he'd better read that too in his behavior because like hell Eren's saying it out loud.
Eren isn't as graceful as Jean, so when he pushes next to him, upside-down just like him, he bumps into him with maybe a little too much energy, but...but it doesn't matter when he sinks his hand in Jean's hair and kisses him right on his stupid mouth that is still spewing insults in his general direction.
He kisses him with all he has, which Eren thinks isn't much but Jean whines a little in the kiss and his legs go weak (his legs go weak all the time if he kisses him proper, it's pretty cool) only they're upside-down so his legs slide around Eren's waist in going weak, his boots crossing behind Eren, which has the (completely accidental, Jean would probably claim in front of witnesses, but they're alone up here) side effect of pulling Eren closer.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Jean mutters against his lips, probably angry and aroused and confused enough that he doesn't realize he's echoing Eren's words.
"Sweeping you off your feet. It's working, it seems."
"Fuck you," Jean says, but he's smiling now, a quieter version of the bright smile from before, and Eren feels really close to tears so he just starts kissing him again to distract himself from the instinct.
Except he maybe ends up crying a little bit anyway but the tears fall down in the ten meters drop under them and nobody will ever find out, just like nobody needs find out about how Jean's knees go weak with Eren's kisses, or what exactly Eren whispers against Jean's lips, or what words Jean finds about how Eren's eyes look as he cries, and how Eren's face is hot and his stomach is in his boots and his pulse is in his throat in a way that has nothing to do with gravity or cold Spring air.
The valiant little gyroscopes built in the axis of the gear click with the effort of putting them upright, but they ignore them. They just kiss and kiss until they're both going blue and getting headaches with the rush of blood to the head.