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Mikasa and Jean lay by the riverbank stripped down to their damp underclothes, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, stretched together in a patch of sunlight that seeps in through the trees. The grass tickles the exposed skin of her back and legs, but she makes no move to leave. She probably should—they’ve been neglecting their chores for just a bit too long now, which normally wouldn’t really be any problem for Mikasa, but the days are growing warmer, the air is mild even with the shade; she’s still got half a pile of laundry to get through and she’d been hoping to get it done quickly, so the rest of the clothes and sheets won’t dry all rumpled-like inside the basket. She’s in no mood for Levi’s patronising tsking, there’s a method to it, you got to drape them right, yes, yes, she knows.
“Dinner tonight?” Jean breaks the quiet, bringing his hand up to cup the inside of her thigh, index and thumb drumming a faint beat on her flesh. His lips stretch into a barely contained grin when she squirms slightly at his touch; he’d been delighted when he had found out she’s the littlest bit ticklish on her legs and neck one night while blowing raspberries all over her skin like a child.
“I was thinking salmon,” Mikasa sighs, pressing her lids shut, and pinning his fingers under her own before he gets too carried away. He’d been less delighted to find out that she does not respond well to being tickled, though he forgets it, or chooses not to remember. “And your mother’s famous vegetable soup.”
He seems to agree with her choice, humming softly. “We still have half a bottle of the red that Connie brought last time.”
“We can have that too.”
“What about dessert?” Jean turns her palm up, teases it flat and sneaks his fingers through hers. She’s suddenly aware of how dry her skin must feel, with all that scrubbing with rough lye soap, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Don’t you have a henhouse to build?” Mikasa taunts, just on principle.
“Alright, alright. I’m just cooling off.”
“We’ve been cooling off for an hour now,” she points out, weakly, letting out a faint laugh. Truthfully, Mikasa feels as though she could lay here in the sun with him forever and never get sick of it—listening to the water flowing idly through the stream, breathing in the smell of wet grass and moss and soap, their hands entwined and basking in the warmth of the season. It baffles her still that she gets to do this; that this peace is really her life.
“You make it, then.” Jean stretches his spine lazily, doesn’t bother to stifle his yawn. He settles back into place, clearly not inclined to leave either.
“Okay,” she nods, kicking his calf with her heel gently. “What do you feel like?”
“Surprise me.” Jean nudges her back with his knee, and then slings his leg over hers absently. “Ah—since we’re on the subject, I was thinking,” he starts turning his face to her, eyeing her expectantly. “We should build a stable, or a paddock. So we could keep some horses around. Hideki would love that.”
Mikasa considers it—Hideki would love that; he’s often lamented to her that riding down to the village is so much more fun than walking, and that’s why, Hideki had declared with child-like, brutal honesty, it is so much more fun to go there with Jean or with Uncle Connie than with her. She doesn’t know where they’d even put up a paddock, in this terrain, but she’s sure Jean could figure it out. “Maybe,” she agrees, mock-solemn. “Why don’t you go ahead and build me a mill while you’re at it?”
“You know,” Jean frowns, twisting slightly to take a look at the creek behind them, tugging her closer by their joined fingers until her cheek is rested against his sun-warm, bared chest, “that’s not a bad idea at all.”
They fall into silence again, then, and Jean takes turns between stroking her hair and her nape. She has a sneaking suspicion he’s trying to lull her to sleep so he won’t have to go back to hammering nails into wood to make Levi’s geese a nice little shelter, and Mikasa thinks she’d let him get away with it—if it weren’t for the damn laundry growing wrinkled by the minute. She kisses the spot just under his collarbone before untangling herself from him, with no shortage of complaints on his part.
Jean’s whining dies out when she eases out of her dampen brassiere and flings it over her shoulder. She steals a quick glance behind her—it lands just beside his head, and he beholds it a little wide-eyed. Mikasa shakes her head, stifling a laugh, and wraps herself with the closest piece of cloth she can reach. It’s one of Jean’s dress shirts, already dry in the clean basket, the cotton pleasantly fine and smooth over her skin. “Oh, this is nice,” she notes, running her hand across the fabric. “Really nice. Where’d you get it?”
"Hm,” Jean blinks, his gaze snapping away from her brassiere quick enough to be comical. “The shirt? I'm not too sure. Probably Krolva, maybe Mitras,” he props himself up on his elbows, tilts his head to the side a little. “Keep it. You look stunning in green.”
“You say that every time,” Mikasa rolls her eyes. “First it was pink, then yellow, and blue last week.”
“But there’s something about right now,” Jean insists, sitting up straight and reaching out both arms to pull her to him again. Her hands meet his halfway. “It’s like… the way the world seems to frame you, like this.”
“Yeah?” Mikasa encourages him, because he looks so pretty when he gets in his talking moods. He’s always so generous in his compliments; and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy hearing them. Such pretty words, just for her. They never fail to get her fluttering at the pit of her stomach. Jean nods, as she settles between his legs, happily obliging her silent request.
“It’s—the trees, and the grass,” he gestures behind her, “and the light…” Jean trails off, like the sight has him lost in thought, looking a little wistful, and it is really so very pretty. “Even the sun, just behind your head,” he takes her face in both hands, thumbs teasing the edges of her mouth with the littlest, gentlest bit of pressure, guiding her a bit to the left as if staging a scene. “Just there, right there. It's almost like a halo.” Jean shakes his head as if it’s something he can’t quite elucidate. He just looks at her, for a moment, hand on her chin, and Mikasa allows it, even if her cheeks are burning at his expression.
“I’ll paint you, sometime,” he decides-offers-suggests, “so you can see it too.” Jean’s hands find her cheeks again before he plants a kiss in the space between her eyebrows. “And maybe I just think you look beautiful in all the colors. That's not too hard to believe, is it?”
It really isn’t, is the truth, and Mikasa is not being vain—she’s rarely ever vain, or particularly proud of her appearance at all, but Jean has a way of making her feel the way he sees her. It’s not too hard at all to believe that, in his eyes, she does look beautiful in every color.
“So, black, you mean,” Mikasa says, being purposefully obtuse, because Mikasa is not good with her words like Jean. She’d like to be able to say such beautiful, genuine things, things that would make him swoon and blush like she always does. She knows other ways to make him blush, of course, but she’d like him to keep talking, for now.
He raises an inquiring brow at her. They’re close enough she can see his freckles; this is the furthest she likes being away from him, if being pressed flush together isn’t an option. “Black?”
“Isn’t that what you get, when you mix up all the colors?” Mikasa mimics his expression. “I distinctly remember you telling me that, and I took your word for it, of course. It’s the kind of thing a painter should know,” she blabbers on, and thinks she might sound a little stupid, but not nearly enough for her to stop. She gauges his reaction; puzzled, pondering, even. “Or you don’t think I'd look good in black?”
“It’s not that at all,” he says, evenly, a little smug, like he thinks he’s got her, as if she’s played right into his game.
“What is it, then?” Mikasa nudges him, teasing.
Jean shrugs, nonchalant, tucking away a stray piece of hair behind her ear, looking so very sure of himself. “I’m just more used to picturing you in white.”
“So marry me, then,” Mikasa says—it just rolls out of her mouth, something instinctive and impulsive, impetuous and cautious, a demand and a request all at once, and she gets to make him speechless for a change.
For a moment Jean just looks at her, searching her face. She’d caught him off-guard, that much is obvious; he’d probably been expecting her to roll her eyes, to laugh it off a little nervously. If she’s honest, she had expected it too. Jean likes flirting with her, she’s learned, and it’s a little unfair sometimes because he’s so good at it and she’s so terrible. But now he looks as if he’d slipped up in combat and taken a punch to the gut, and she’s the one with the smirk on her face.
He blinks, squints, and it’s almost accusing. “What?”
“Marry me,” Mikasa repeats, and her voice doesn’t even come close to wavering. Who’s got who, now, she thinks, not unkindly, a little smug. She allows herself to savor the disoriented look on his face for a moment, brushes her lips against his almost chastely before she speaks again. “I’m your wife in every way that counts,” she takes his hand between hers, feeling his heartbeat pound in his pulse. “I should be in name, too.”
Jean lets out a long exhale, air whistling between his teeth and he squeezes Mikasa’s fingers tightly. It’s his turn to kiss her, and he does until Mikasa’s dizzy with it, his arm around her waist as she melts into him. He lets out a disbelieving laugh into her mouth, and she laughs along with him, just because. “Mikasa Ackerman,” he announces proudly, “my wife.”
“Mikasa Kirschtein,” she says, as if trying it on for size, and they both seem to realize it sounds stupid at the same time, because their laughter comes out mirrored.
“Jean Ackerman,” he attempts, wincing slightly as he traces a finger along her jaw. Mikasa can’t help her smile, because it’s stupid, they’re stupid, and she feels silly and fun and so in love she can barely stand it.
“Maybe we can just leave our names alone,” Mikasa suggests, and pulls him down to the ground with her again, rumpled laundry and the rest of the world forgotten. Jean lays on top of her, obnoxiously flattening her body between his weight and the mossy floor, so she jerks her hips to move him so that he’s stretched on his back and she’s got both elbows splayed across his chest. He pillows his head with both hands.
“Mikasa Ackerman, my wife,” Jean repeats and grins up at her. Mikasa beholds him, this beautiful, wonderful man at peace and smiling. Jean Kirschtein, my husband, she thinks, and it overflows from her heart, bubbling up in her core and curling up inside of her. “A spring wedding,” he says, “with those blue flowers you love.”
“It’s spring right now,” Mikasa says, caught up in the moment and the way Jean’s eyes light up.
“We need Connie,” he agrees, eager, bright, and Mikasa is so pleased with herself that she’s the one that can put that look on his face, “and my mother.”
She pictures Connie’s eyes widening behind his spectacles, snatching them away from his face to make sure he’s heard it right. And Marie, she’ll be just ecstatic—Mikasa can already see her exclaiming, oh, dear! standing in her kitchen with her hands fisted in her apron, plump cheeks flushed in her excitement, oh, my!
“You get them. I’ll tell Levi and Hideki,” she says, dipping her head to kiss him again, hand firm on his hip. One kiss turns into two, turns into three, four; Mikasa imagines a ring pressed to the back of her neck where Jean’s fingers hold her close and shivers with it.
“I can get them here by the end of the week,” says Jean Kirschtein, her husband, brushing her hair back from her face oh-so-tenderly, oh-so-surely.
“Perfect,” Mikasa smiles at him. “I’ll start looking for bellflowers.”