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Falling in love wasn’t something soldiers got to do.
It wasn’t for them. They had a duty. A promise they had to keep. Love could happen once they retired, but members of the Survey Corps didn’t live long enough to receive that luxury. They would die long before they got to find out what it was like to love someone, to court them, to marry them. Soldiers dedicate their hearts to a cause, not a person.
Then why, Armin thought, was he letting this continue?
Back pressed against the wall, Jean’s lips on his neck and his hands in his hair - Armin had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep quiet. It was terrifying, knowing that any minute someone could stumble across them in the dead of night, or discover that they weren’t in their beds. But at the same time, and against all logic, something about this hushed silence broken only by the occasional gasp or the shuffling of their feet made him feel alive . Maybe it was the tension, the knowledge that this could all be over as soon as it began. Maybe it was knowing that they were breaking the rules. Maybe it was just Jean - the way he felt, the way he sounded, the way he kissed him.
Jean held Armin’s face in his hands, breaking away for a moment to pull back and look at him. It was hard to see. The night sky was completely overcast, and the only light they had to see by came from the slowly-fading campfire everyone had abandoned when they went to bed. But in the darkness, Jean could still just make out the blue of Armin’s eyes, and that was enough for him.
During the day, Armin never looked like this - he never looked this happy , or this content. In the day he was serious and he was studious and he approached everything with such an analytical stance that it creeped Jean out sometimes. Here at night was the only time Jean got to see the side of Armin he’d truly fallen in love with. But they both knew that was the way things had to be - they didn’t have a choice but to do whatever it took to survive. Jean knew Armin didn’t like everything about the way he chose to act around the others, either. It was just something they both had to accept.
Out here, though? All of that could be disregarded. Like the rest of the world didn’t exist, Jean and Armin just savoured being together, ignoring the future and all of the suffering that they knew was coming their way. Losing each other was inevitable, and they both knew it. They would both suffer immeasurable pain and sacrifice and hardships; that was the future they had chosen for themselves. To fight for their freedom and make a better life for the people that came after. But out here in the dead of night, where they could speak only in whispers and move with almost complete silence… that was where they didn't have to be soldiers for a while. Where they could be in love and stop with all the bullshit and admit all the fears and all the worries they had. Jean let himself be vulnerable out here. He hoped that it helped Armin as much as it helped him.
“Beautiful,” Jean murmured, brushing Armin’s hair out of his face. He looked good with his hair like that. He liked it pushed out his face a lot better than how he usually had it. Armin grinned a little, and Jean felt his stomach flip. That was another thing - Armin never smiled like that, and Jean couldn’t help but feel some smug satisfaction that he was the only one that got to see it.
Armin tried to commit everything about him to memory, in preparation for the day he knew was coming. He was a shifter. He could survive almost anything… but Jean? No matter how much Armin tried to pretend during their nights together, Jean was just a soldier. A damn good one, but a soldier just the same. Any number of situations could lead to him getting killed, just like hundreds of men had before, and hundreds of men would after. The possibilities seemed endless. A suicide charge. A titan appearing out of nowhere. Other unforseen shifters to put a spanner in Armin’s plans. He’d never been adaptable, he’d always broken down when his plans went wrong. What if that happened, and Jean got killed? It would be his fault.
No. Think. Remember him.
The way his hair looked now it was growing out, how good the stubble on his face made his jaw appear even sharper. The soft little smile on his face when it was just the two of them. And now, how his eyes narrowed when he could tell Armin was starting to get upset.
“You’re overthinking,” Jean stated, his voice a whisper.
“It’s getting harder not to,” Armin admitted.
“Save it for the morning,” Jean said quietly, leaning down to kiss him again.
“Jean…”
“What?”
Armin sighed, checking around for people before he went on. They’d had too many close calls to mention lately. He pulled away, sitting down on the cold ground, wiping his eyes.
“Sometimes I can’t help but think that doing this… it’s just going to make it worse when something bad happens.”
Jean’s brows furrowed and he sat beside him, wiping his mouth and adjusting his belt. He ran his hands through his hair and looked right at Armin, who wasn’t meeting his gaze.
“I thought,” he said, his voice getting a little louder, “that the whole point of this was so that we didn’t have to think about that shit.”
“I know… It’s just. It’s hard, Jean. I don’t know what to do.”
“Kiss me,” Jean said plainly, turning Armin’s face so they were looking at each other. Armin was holding back tears. “And stop thinking so fucking much. You never let yourself rest. There’s no point speculating about what’s going to happen when you can’t plan for it all. You - you get so caught up in your head, you never take the time to appreciate what’s actually going on.”
“I can’t just stop !” Armin whispered back, getting frustrated, his voice breaking slightly. “Don’t you think I wish I could turn my brain off for five seconds? That I could stop thinking about what it’s going to be like when you’re gone, and Eren’s gone, and even Mikasa, and I’m just counting down the years until they feed me to someone else? I wish I could do that but I can’t-”
He was interrupted by Jean pulling him closer and pressing their lips together again, roughly, without holding any of his feelings back. Jean couldn’t hear him talking like this any longer. If his words couldn’t make him stop thinking, maybe his actions could. He could feel Armin’s tears as they kissed and held him tighter, trying to show him how much he loved him, even though he’d never said it.
“Just appreciate me while I'm here,” Jean whispered after what felt like an eternity, still holding Armin’s face in his hands, pressing their foreheads together and breathing heavily. “Please. I’m here right now, so hold me.”
Armin crumbled then, wrapping his arms around Jean and letting the tears flow freely, trying to keep quiet as he cried, pressing his face into the man’s shoulder to muffle the sounds.
“I don’t want the sun to rise,” he breathed. Jean felt that in his heart. He dreaded first light. It only represented another day of uncertainty, another day of fighting for a freedom nobody knew if they’d ever attain, and it was terrifying, but Jean would be damned if he was thinking about that now.
“It hasn’t. Not yet,” Jean said in return, taking Armin’s hand and squeezing it gently. His skin was rough and calloused but the backs of his hands were still soft. He kissed his hand and looked into his still-teary eyes.
“You’re right,” Armin said, using his other hand to wipe his eyes.
Jean just stared at him for a little while. The fire had died down some and it was getting harder and harder to see, but Armin still made Jean breathless. There was a lump in his own throat.
“It would be pretty selfish of me to tell you I’m in love with you, wouldn’t it?”
A moment passed where Armin just stared at him wordlessly, but then a small smile crossed his face.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, it would.”
Jean smiled back. “Good thing I don’t care about being selfish.”
Armin rolled his eyes, but his chest was filled with so much warmth and passion that he couldn't be angry. Their feelings were finally out there in the open, spoken aloud, not just shared between those silent kisses and lingering touches and intimate eye contact. Armin knew Jean was right. He had to live in the moment more. He knew when it came, his death would be meaningful.
But he wanted his life to mean something, as well.
So before the first rays of orange light could touch the horizon, before the darkness turned to light and they had to go back to their normal selves, Armin squeezed Jean’s hand back and looked into his eyes.
“I love you, too.”