Chapter Text
Remembering Sunday, he falls to his knees
They had breakfast together
But two eggs don't last
Like the feeling of what he needs
They had been seventeen when Marco disappeared.
Jean was in denial for months. He couldn't have lost the one person who promised to always be by his side, could he?
It wasn't like it was this big, dramatic thing either. One day he was there. The next he was gone. Simple as breathing.
It was hard to breath for a while, with Marco gone.
Jean didn't understand. Not for a few weeks. It took some time, but he thought he had pieced together what had happened.
Both of them had lived in the city, Jean a little higher class than Marco, but that didn't matter to them. Jean didn't care about anything of that- not his class, not his government, nothing. He was pretty unattached to the world around him. All that mattered was his own safety, and, once they got close, Marco's.
Marco noticed everything. He kept his eyes wide open, and he didn't unsee anything. It wasn't an uncommon piece of gossip that his parents resisted. Not part of the actual resistance, mind you, but they didn't totally accept Kronos either. Marco grew up in a household where free thinking was praised.
Jean didn't realize how dangerous that was at the time.
“Jean, there's this book you have to read. It was banned a few years ago, but it was amazing. Don't know why it was banned. Mom says it made people feel too much.” That was when they were younger, ten maybe.
“Hell Marco, why do you have banned books?” He kicked a pebble lying in his path off into the gutter. It made a clanging sound when it hit the metal. “You're a goody-two shoes if I ever met one.”
Marco blinked innocently, smiling wide. He had lost a tooth a day before, so he talked with an excited lisp. “It's my mom's favorite. She hid it when they searched the house. I'll sleep over at your place and you can read it.”
They had sleepovers nearly every weekend, when both weren't sick or their parents weren't grouchy, so it wasn't abnormal when Marco came over to his house with his sleeping bag that Friday night. “I didn't tell my mom I took it,” he whispered, pulling out crinkled brown paper package, like they used to use in the olden days. “You read it, I'll play video games or something.”
Jean loved it. He loved the look on Marco's face when he flipped the last page shut more, all bright eyes and scattered freckles. “I don't get why it was banned, that was really good,”
“I know, right? The government does a lot of things that don't make much sense.”
That phrase seemed to pop up more as they got older, carry more meaning. Marco's eyes would harden when he said it, and Jean didn't like that. Marco was his sunshine, sunshine wasn't supposed to be so cold.
“Did you know,” they were fifteen now, “they're cracking down on LGBT+s?”
“Weren't they already?” Jean hated it when Marco talked political. All Jean needed was a nice apartment in a safe neighborhood, with Marco as his roommate. He would fantasize about it some days, the two of them living together. Marco would cook breakfast when the sun was just beginning to show it's face, and Jean would grumble but he wouldn't really mind. He was a morning person when Marco was involved. He liked the idea of waking up to his ruffled bedhead, the smell of frying eggs. Maybe Marco would be wearing an apron, and Jean would tease him for it, tug on the little ribbons that held it to his waist.
“Yeah, but like, harder than before. Ymir got questioned a few days ago, for being too close to Krista. She wouldn't take it, of course. I heard she's on the run.”
“So what?”
“Jean, you do know I'm gay, right?”
He said it like it was simple. Normal. Important. “Shit, no I didn't. Don't say that out loud Marco, I don't want you getting in trouble.”
It didn't come up again. But Jean thought about it a lot. Once that was in the open, he started to think. What was it Marco saw in other men? What did he see in him? Suddenly, his little dream of them living together seemed dangerous, forbidden.
But it sounded even sweeter.
Little details began to pop into his head. Maybe Jean would ruffle Marco's hair teasingly, running his hands through the soft curls. Maybe Marco would be shirtless, wearing nothing but his boxers when he cooked. Maybe they would share a bed, and cuddle for warmth on winter nights, even summer when it was too hot for clothes. Maybe they would be naked, sweating, lazily kissing and their legs tangled up and Marco would be moaning softly into his mouth, Jean's tongue moving to work on his neck.
“I found a good group to join,” Marco was in his first and last resistance group when they were sixteen. He was growing bolder with it, and held Jean's hand when they were alone. Dragged his eyes away from his lips to his eyes again, still smiling like he knew something Jean didn't. It made Jean lose himself for a few moments, forget about the rules.
The few moments turned into minutes, hours. Jean knew that he loved Marco. He was starting to understand why Marco would want to resist. Jean wanted to flaunt his boyfriend around outside, not keep their feelings hidden in a dark room in the dead of night.
“Jean, you know I love you, right?”
“What's this about?” Of course Jean knew it, but walking in the park in the middle of the afternoon in broad daylight with other citizens in earshot was no place to say so.
“I just wanted you to know. And I'll never leave you. Ever.”
A week later, he was gone, a few days after Marco's birthday. It was like he knew something would happen. Or maybe he jinxed it. Jean didn't like either idea.
Someone must have found out about the group he joined. Overheard his confession, maybe. There were so many things that could have happened, and Jean felt empty.
He searched his room. Stayed at the Bott place for a couple days. Marco's parents didn't care. They were too heartbroken to protest.
Jean found the number of one of the resistance groups members lodged underneath the bed frame, a tiny furling piece of paper. He took a deep breath and dialed.
“Yeah, what do you want?”
“I'm Marco's... friend,”
“That supposed to mean something to me?”
“He's gone. The Titans took him, I'm sure of it.”
A pause. “Shit.”
“No kidding.”
“What do you know?”
“Not much. But I want in.”
“...You wouldn't happen to be Jean Kirstein, would you?”
“What of it?”
“Meet me at the rundown cafe on Twenty First Street. Midnight tomorrow. We'll talk.”
Turns out his name was Eren Yeager. Annoying as he was, Jean couldn't find it in himself to hate him. Because Marco knew him, Marco was friends with him. And Eren knew what he was talking about, when it came to resistance.
“If you're serious about joining us and it's not just the grief talking, meet me here again Saturday. I'll bring a few friends for a quick interview. If you're lying...” Eren left it at that, his blue eyes narrowed as he finished the last of his coffee, throwing a few coins down on the table.
Jean had said it on a whim, grasping at straws to somehow get back to Marco. But everyone told him that he was dead. And that was something Jean couldn't just accept without doing something. How could they just take away someone like Marco, so innocent and pure? Someone so sweet and kind, who kissed him breathless? Who could kill someone like him, in cold blood? Marco didn't do anything wrong. He followed his beliefs, the ones that said you could marry who you want and read what you want and think and say what you want and go outside the walls of the city.
The interview went well enough. Armin was nice, and Levi looked like he wanted to beat him up and chuck his unconscious body in the nearby river, but was holding back because of orders. Mikasa just stared at him coldly. All three agreed that Jean could join that Survey Corps, what they called themselves. Jean was only somewhat surprised to learn they were the biggest and most feared resistance group in the city. Marco didn't fuck around.
“Marco was a good person. He talked about you a lot. He really loved you,” Armin told him before he and the others left.
Jean's heart ached, and he cried that night, the first time since Marco was taken. It was the past tense that got to him.
He moved out to the Survey Corps headquarters permanently a year later. He was a good solider, and believed in the cause. He brought the copy of Catcher in the Rye, the book Marco made him read all those years ago, with him. Armin seemed to appreciate that. Eren looked pleased, but called him a nerd anyway.
Four years passed. Jean healed, but he thought about Marco everyday.
It was a sunny day in September when Armin burst into his room, teary eyed and panicked. “J-Jean...” He was panting hard. He must have run there, despite Armin's weak stamina. “We captured a h-high ranking government solider.”
“Fuck yeah!” Jean leaped to his feet, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Best news I've heard all month! What're we gonna do with 'em? Let Hanji go nuts?”
“N-No Jean, I don't, I don't think you're going to want that,”
“What do you mean?”
“Just come with me. It's important.”
It wasn't like Armin to act like that. Jean sobered up and followed him to the prison cells in the basement of the building.
The solider was frowning, analyzing the white room from his spot chained to the wall, tense, like he was about to spring away at any moment. There were bruises on his face, loud and angry, but Jean knew that the same freckles would be there, under the dirt and blood.
“See what I mean?” Armin whispered, but Jean barely heard him.
Because Marco, his Marco, the one who was killed by the government five years ago was alive and allegedly working for everything he had wanted to fix.