Chapter Text
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He never really smokes. It’s not his thing, neither his preference. It feels like swallowing soot and crunching on coal. The smoke is harsh on his throat and his vision swims, the vertigo subtle when it sneaks up on him and makes him lose his balance.
This time, he uses the balcony railing as a crutch and chokes his way through his second cigarette. The process is unpleasant as he drags smoke into his increasingly sullied lungs, which is the kind of distraction Jean needs.
The hair he decided on a whim to let grow past his shoulders sticks to his sweaty nape, aggravating his misery beneath the scorching sun. He inhales the last of the cigarette and crushes the stub into the floor. His arms shake lightly when he moves them to put his hair in a bun using one of the ties Gabi offered him the last time she came to see her cousin.
He hasn’t spotted him in a month (or was it two months? he’s not sure. he’s not counting). The building they were confined to under the Committee’s watch is modest in its size, barely a level above a prison, minus the jail bars and the stationed guards. It’d be almost impossible to never cross paths, to run into each other on the way to the exit or when ascending stairs. The rooms offer space for one small bed and the hallway is akin to a tunnel.
But Jean is not complaining. He’d will it if he could, to never see the sight of him again. To draw a blank at the mention of his name or anything that implies his existence. The source for a lot of the tragedies that have marked his life, and the irony of no longer holding a grudge.
Frankly, he’s just tired at this point. He’d reached his limit years and years back, and he’s been in a perpetual state of exhaustion since. He mostly operates on autopilot, detached from reality like a floating speck of dust, his own feelings foreign to him.
Jean no longer knows what he wants or what deserves cherishing. He doesn’t know anything and understands much less the point of pulling through in a world primarily operating on cruelty. This line of thinking does bring him shame, after the many lives that have perished before their time, and the ashes that still hold him to his promise. To put some meaning to their demise.
But what meaning is out there? What is it that deserves this much dedication to the act of living? To protect the island? To preserve Paradis from the inevitable attacks? They’ll be fucked as soon as what’s left of humanity recovers, and there’s not much he can do about it.
He doesn’t regret stopping the rumbling. He doesn’t regret preventing further manslaughter. Jean still lives with the horror of it all, he doubts Actual Hell could rival what he had to witness in the aftermath. But he knows he messed up somewhere, in the four years leading up to the massacre, they messed up (he should’ve talked to him, should’ve tried harder to understand him, should’ve planned something in discreet with Armin or anyone willing to listen and see the way Eren was morphing right before their eyes).
The bitter taste of regret sours his gums, and he spits past the railings on an empty street. Jean keeps sweating miserably in the heat, his shirt clinging to his skin. He closes his eyes and sighs, still mourning in his heart the missing rain.
He turns back inside the house, to the tunnel hallway where it’s a bit cooler, and rounds the corner to walk upstairs, a section of the house he never felt inclined to explore. The narrow stairs carry out the heavy thumping of his feet, signaling his arrival to the second floor residents, but Jean doubts there are any to begin with. He genuinely can’t remember the last time he encountered any of the warriors. Their meetings with the Committee are held separate from the rest, and Jean can’t really say he’s burning with curiosity to know of the details.
He reaches the hallway of the second floor, the dizziness that claims him after an adventurous fling with a cigarette making him lightly tremble. All three doors in his periphery are closed shut, grains of dust swimming in the blazing sunrays.
He’s not sure why his legs decided to take him on this route. Jean opens the one window illuminating the hallway and leans forward to watch closely the construction workers by the sea. The fog of grey blur has lifted up, which gives him a better view of the ocean, or The Ocean of Death, as he’s come to call it, when it spits out corpses from its maw, burdening the survivors with haunting visions.
With his mindless venture leading nowhere, Jean turns around to walk back downstairs. He’d start packing if he had anything personal to bring with him. Clothes and the three pairs of shoes he owns should do on this trip home where he’s no longer welcomed.
Shaking his head at the floor, Jean takes closer steps toward the staircase, leaving the window opened. He gives the deserted floor another sweep with his eyes (lingering somewhere in the middle), and he would’ve missed another fourth door at the end of the hallway had it not been for the faint echoes originating somewhere close.
Naturally, he goes to check, out of boredom (out of desperation for some distraction because he doesn’t want to think about tomorrow’s mission. He’d hook a long thin rod up his eye to sever his nerves if he could). When he makes it closer to the source, his footsteps loud against the floorboards, Jean halts before the opened door to take in the scene.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t expect to see him. After all, only Annie and Reiner bothered to move in when their group was first assigned this place. He’d heard once from Armin that Pieck lives with her ailing father full time to take care of him. Annie shows up once in a blue moon, lurking around the place like a ghost and disappearing the next morning. Once, he caught her cresting the hill at the crack of dawn like an apparition, still limping from her severely damaged knee that she never got the chance to heal. Jean was so caught up in the absurdity of that early morning that he almost missed the person following her close behind; Armin, judging from his frame and the way he carried himself. Slouching a little, steps unhurried to accommodate Annie’s slower pace. He remembers going back to sleep and waking up late in the afternoon.
With Reiner, there’s no set rule. It’s up to fate, and Jean’s luck. Shitty when Reiner’s around. Less shitty when he’s not.
Again, Jean no longer holds a grudge, or at least any desire for vengeance. He just doesn’t know how to address a person he fervently resented for almost half a decade (and maybe he still resents him, deep in his heart. maybe he’ll never truly forgive him).
The door opens up to a small bathroom, bright from the few stripes of sunshine striking the only person occupying the space. The hanging mirror is cracked at the edge, and the reflection is watching him with surprised golden eyes.
Jean doesn’t walk in. He remains rooted to the same spot, his own eyes watching with disbelief the thick red drops racing down Reiner’s jaw to hit the sink below, the razor in his hand hovering near his bleeding skin, unmoving. The soap is also tarnished with his blood, and so is the towel around his neck.
What on earth.
“Jean?” Reiner begins, dropping his arm, and the razor blade. This section of the house is the loudest in the whole building, seeing as it looks over an open market with street vendors bellowing their prices in open air.
Reiner is still staring at him through the mirror, quietly bleeding over the sink, titan scars mapping the tender skin beneath his eyes. They stretch at the rise of his eyebrows, questioning, and with some shock Jean realizes something; Reiner no longer seems to know how to shave.
He swallows down the urge to cuss, but the biting meanness, he can’t help. “You’re here? I thought you were staying with your mother. You know,” he flicks his hand nonchalantly, “spending what remains of your days with her, like a good son.”
Reiner doesn’t react to his jabs. Unimpressed, he regains his composure and brings back the blade to his face, eradicating his stubble one stroke at a time. He has approximately four clean cuts on his jaw, and they’re leaking a lot of blood. This time, he drags the blade down his chin so carelessly that Jean gets actually horrified at the way his skin splits with ease beneath the razor. It opens like soft butter, and the blood glides gently the length of his neck.
“Give me that.” Jean, without properly thinking his actions through, immediately reaches forward to snatch the blade from Reiner’s hand. It rains crimson over the floor, on Jean’s feet.
Reiner turns around from the mirror, the gold in his irises brighter up close, under streaming sunshine. “What are you doing?”
A wooden chair sits alone by the corner, near the window, and Jean grabs it to throw it harshly near Reiner’s legs. The scraping against the floor is an ear-splitting noise that makes Reiner visibly flinch.
“Sit down,” Jean says, wiping the blood on his thigh. He was about to ditch these pants anyway, so he’s okay with the sullying. What he’s not okay with is the disaster he’s bearing witness to.
Reiner frowns, seemingly confused with what Jean is trying to achieve. “What? Why would I?”
“You suck, that’s why. Sit down.”
He sits not that long after, and Jean finds himself surprised at his compliance, the chair lightly creaking as it carries his weight. The towel does a fine job gathering the blood that keeps spilling through the cuts. Reiner takes the ends and dabs at his wounds, his face showing no signs of discomfort, blank and unmoving with every drag of the rough fabric against abused flesh. Flesh that will never again close up in the blink of an eye.
Jean grimaces with rising irritation and wedges himself in the empty spot between Reiner’s resting legs and the sink. He moves first to wash his hands and the blade, and wipes them on the shirt he’ll be ditching along the pants. Reiner silently watches him, his eyes clear of emotion, like the quiet pull of the sea under a cloudless sky. Jean looks down at him, seizing up his bleeding jaw.
He’s met with no resistance when tilting Reiner’s head upward, the tendons in his neck straining with the motion. The soap should sting his wounds when Jean lathers the underside of Reiner’s chin for a smoother glide, but like before, the man remains unresponsive to pain.
It’s obvious why that’s the case. Jean’s not a mule. “You’re freaking me out,” he voices out anyway, his concentration turning to the task at hand.
Reiner continues appraising him. Sunshine strikes the side of his face this time, his hair growing paler in the light. “Why’s that?”
“I don’t know, you’re not reacting like a normal person.” The first strokes of the blade are easy and cause no harm. Jean turns to wash the blade in the sink then turns back around to find blooming amusement in the corners of Reiner’s scarred eyes. His expression is too subtle to come across as mocking.
“I was never a normal person, Jean.”
“Well, you can try acting like one,” Jean says. “Fix your head to the left.”
He pulls at Reiner’s skin with his fingers and scraps off his stubble, dancing around his injuries like he’s grazing explosive mines in a field. The one time Jean’s index accidently slips into the cut on his chin, Reiner exaggerates his cries of pain and Jean rolls his eyes. “Not like that, don’t make me hurt you for real.” He waves the blade in the air, meaning to threaten.
Reiner puts his hands up in surrender, but the hint of a smile is clearly evident on his face. “I’m heeding your advice, Jean.”
“And you’re doing a terrible job.”
“Typical of me, huh?”
“Shut up and let me get this over with,” Jean snaps less harshly than he intended. The tension in his forehead is beginning to wane. And he notices, belatedly, the light stretch pulling at his own lips.
The silence that follows doesn’t get a chance to turn awkward thanks to the echoing bustle that filters through the opened window. It’s hot, so hot in this bathroom that Jean’s damp shirt feels uncomfortably glued to his skin. His palms have started to sweat and the trembling in his arm reveals to be less than ideal when his hand slips again and the blade nicks Reiner in the chin, causing a cut deeper than any of the ones before it.
Horrified at his own mistake, he rushes to press his sleeve to the open wound, blocking the blood from pouring out. The fabric of his shirt starts to soak and the razor slips from his damp hand to meet the floor in a harsh clack. He uses his other hand to support the back of Reiner’s neck, pressing deeper with his sleeve on the wound. His arms never cease to tremble.
“S—Sorry,” he stammers in his haste to stop the warm, vivid blood, flowing like a stream down a pebbled road. Reiner’s pulse is erratic against his slippery fingers. The heat of his body is engulfing. Under streaking sunshine, the crown of his head is a shock of bright, soft yellow. The proximity makes Jean want to contort on himself, to turn into a misshapen lump of flesh that never sees, never feels.
Reiner’s eyes are facing heavenward. They stare, unblinking, as if he’s beholding some stuff of wonder, something that fascinates the soul. A descending deity. The freakshow of his lifetime. The wetness slipping the corners of his eyes tell of nothing, and Jean, for obvious reasons, doesn’t have the heart to admonish this man further, which explains why he doesn’t jerk back when Reiner rests a large hand on his own. The same one that’s still holding Reiner’s chin together.
“This hasn’t been my first injury since I stopped being a shifter,” Reiner begins. Jean’s gaze is fleeting, alternating between the stained floor and the eyes that seem to kindle some life in their midst. To him, whenever he’d catch a glimpse, the man would seem dead as a log. Deserted carcass awaiting its demise in a year’s time.
His heart is stuffed with the shock of his relief.
“I kinda permanently damaged something in my left arm anyway. It’s okay, Jean,” Reiner says, tightening his hold around Jean’s hand. The clear drops slip again, and Jean has to physically challenge himself to not reach forward and wipe them off.
What he can’t fight though, is the way his fingers start brushing lightly the short hair on the back of Reiner’s neck. His body is strung along by fine threads and he can’t keep his limbs at bay.
“This won’t heal well. You’re fine?” He inquires, because he did, indeed, fuck up. Being courteous is a virtue to the Kirstein family. Jean cannot forget his roots.
“Yes, of course. The best I’ve felt.” And then Reiner does something very rare. He smiles like he’s been brought in to life for the first time. He smiles like the times have always been kind, like it’s worth it being here, eyes crinkling, face softening right beneath Jean’s touch. It’s messed up. Jean is scorched to his core when he finally pulls back with his blood stained sleeve and tingling skin.
The softness around Reiner’s face lessens, but there’s enough evidence of its lingering existence that Jean disregards delirium as an explanation. Delusion. He’d take it all over reality, as it has a knack for punching him in the mouth, knocking his teeth out.
Reiner of old keeps watching him. Buried nostalgia springs up beneath Jean’s ribcage and coils thorns around his heart.
Deciding he can’t deal with this today, or ever, Jean excuses himself, already making for the door. His legs carry him two steps out before he gets tugged back inside the bathroom by the gripping force of the man that has shaped so much of his life in the worst way possible. He gets pulled in by the greatest wave and he no longer has it in him to struggle for air. So he gives in.
Reiner is still holding tight to his wrist. There’s something pained curling the corners of his lips, and the slipping tears have gained a heartbreaking quality to them, mingling a muted pink with the swelling blood around his cuts.
“Let go,” Jean says on instinct, his limbs giving up fight. He knows nothing and feels nothing. He genuinely can’t process this.
“There’s something I need to get from the market. Come with me.”
“Let me go, Reiner.”
“Jean. Please.”
Jean thinks about his upcoming mission home. He thinks of the high chance of never coming back. And the growing distance that might never get breached. And the limited years bracketing Reiner’s days on earth.
He thinks of regret, of a parting word, of old days and new. He thinks and thinks. Then he stops thinking all together. Damn it all.
Reiner drops Jean’s wrist. His face goes right back to a blank sheet of indifference, all traces of emotion vanishing in bright daylight. It steels Jean’s resolve when the thorns curl tighter around his heart, crawling up the walls of his throat, picking his flesh apart. Wiping Reiner’s bloody tears with his unstained sleeve assuages some of the burn in his throat. The soft hair at Reiner’s nape curls against his fingers.
He sighs deeply, then says, “Never bother shave on your own again, dumbass.”
Reiner, clearly taken aback, takes him a second to respond. “There’s no one to help me with it,” he finally admits, fingers lapping over the loose threads in his pants.
The man is a source of turmoil. The man is a source of hope. Jean can’t seem to let go of him yet, so he swallows through the tightness and says. “I’ll do it for you when I come back.”
Reiner smiles again, and it’s not strained. “On my death bed, you mean.”
Jean blinks, and blinks, and then he shows a genuine smile of his own. “Yeah, on your death bed. Reserve a place for me.” He picks up the razor from the floor, willing the blur clouding his eyes away. “I still need to do something about your face. Lean your head back and don’t move, Reiner.”
Sunshine feels merciful on his skin, a lot less punishing. Jean pushes up his sleeves and gets to work.