Chapter Text
jean stands at the deck of the ship looking out at the surrounding ocean. you watch him from the other side of the deck. you watch the wind brush through his hair. you watch his jaw clench as he looks up at the trail of smoke the ship is leaving in its path. you watch him.
(you’ve watched him before. you’ve spent years watching him. most times he catches your gaze and shoots you a smirk. a knowing smirk, a friendly smirk, a pitiful smirk? you don’t know. but he looks you right in the eyes when he does it and that’s all that seems to matter to you.
“what you lookin’ at, huh?” he says, knowing full well it’s him. you huff out a smile in response, trying to cover up the speeding of your heart and the dryness of your mouth.
“nothing much,” you say, and he breaks out into a smile that makes you break out into a wider one. you’ve known jean for years, you’ve been through battle and war with him, yet in this moment you still can’t tell if he knows. if he knows the way your heart tugs in your chest when he breaks your stare and looks away.)
he catches you this time too, albeit this time is different. this time the wind is rushing through both of your ears, and even if he wanted to say something, you wouldn’t be able to hear him from how far he is. even if he wanted to say something, he doesn’t. he holds your gaze and looks at you solemnly, looks at you with the kind of exhaustion that makes you want to grab him and whisk him away from all of this.
there is no smirk this time. there is no joke quipped or cheeky smile. he stares at you and it would seem almost blank if you didn’t know him inside out. and then he nods at you (a slight nod, like it’s taking all of his power to do it) and goes back to looking ahead at the waves on the horizon.
“you okay?” a voice softly asks you, cutting you out of your thoughts. you turn to your left and find armin.
“armin, hey,” you say, and offer him a smile despite current circumstances. armin nods at you again, ushering you to answer his question (like you’d tell him the truth. like you’d admit that in the midst of this war and carnage and the end of the fucking world, you’re thinking about jean kirstein and wondering if he’s thinking about you. you’re thinking about jean kirstein and wishing his heart was aching because of you and not her).
“i’m fine, i’m just –”
“just?” armin cuts you off, interrupting your rehearsed response. just looking at the waves, you wanted to say. but you know that just as you’ve know jean for years, armin has known you for those years as well. and even if you haven’t been with them through the same thick and thin that they have all endured, he knows you enough to know that you’re still pining after jean in the wake of corpses and flames.
“…just,” is all you can say back. armin offers you a slight smile (pitiful, almost. you don’t want to be pitied).
“right.”
“and you, are you okay?” you ask armin. armin nods his head at you.
“to the best of my ability.”
“and…” you look back off to your side at jean, who’s still holding the railing of the boat and looking out at the distance, “how about him?”
“he was talking to mikasa earlier and hasn’t said anything to anyone since,” armin bluntly states. you refuse to make eye contact with him.
(the mikasa of it all.
the mikasa of it all is a simple yet utterly painful concept. no matter how much you train, how much you pour your soul into being better, how much you are there for jean, you will never live up to mikasa.
and you are there for jean in an amount that is almost poisonous to you. you watch him watch her pine after eren, you offer him words of support, and in the darkest of moments you offer him yourself.
“jean,” you whisper in the in the night. you both stand leaning against the walls of headquarters, having just come back from a busy day of basically being the backbone behind building the new paradis railway. the chill of the night is biting at your cheeks and fingers and you’re barely able to see each other despite the dimly lit lantern hanging from the wall.
jean’s nose is brushing up against yours, and his breath is fanning your cheek. you had just come out here to talk, to escape the chaos of dinner (you more so believe it was to escape mikasa trying to urge eren to finish his food, but this is something that you can ignore for now as jean softly holds your face in his palms).
“is this okay?” jean whispers back at you, and when you look up into his eyes they are already boring into yours and you’re almost entranced by the reflection of the flickering lantern in them. you wonder if you stare long enough would you be able to make out mikasa’s silhouette in his thoughts?
this is not the first time this has happened. where jean has snuck you away to talk, or to walk, or to on some occasions kiss. and each time you think you feel even more deeply for him and for the way he listens and laughs at what you say. each time you think you disregard the fact that he is secretly wishing you were her more and more. more and more until you simply will yourself to forget. you swallow.
this is all you will ever get from him. that’s okay.
“yes,” you respond.
he offers you a soft and almost fleeting kiss. )
armin nudges you.
“right, okay,” you say, basically mechanically. you avoid armin’s gaze. this is ridiculous. now is not the time to become jealous and insecure of this crush that has plagued you for much too long, and yet here you stand doing exactly that. at the end of the day, you are stuck on this boat until you reach the azumabito hangar. you are stuck watching jean and wondering what it is about you that is not enough for him to be agonising over you and not her.
“maybe you should go talk to him,” armin offers.
“no, i think he’d rather be alone.”
“it’s the end of the world,” armin says. annie slowly walks past the two of you and climbs back down below deck. armin’s eyes momentarily follow her until she’s out of his vision. he looks back at you, “no one should be alone.”
armin stares at you meaningfully, and suddenly your limbs are moving before you will them to and you’re making your way to the other side of the deck. to jean. he turns his head towards you as you approach him and you can feel your stomach tie into a knot. you’ve fought men and titans, and this is what is sending your heart racing.
“hey,” you greet once you sidle up to him. jean offers you a close-mouthed smile. tired.
“hey,” he’s looking at you.
“how are you doing?” you ask as carefully as you can, jean’s smile widens and you both know it’s not out of any rush of happiness.
he laughs sarcastically, “great,” and you feel stupid until he smiles at you again, a real one this time. one that comes from sharing this whole ordeal together, “how are you?”
“fantastic,” you echo a similar sentiment. he huffs out a short laugh and you’re both looking at each other.
out of the context of death and destruction and feeling the weight of the world on your collective shoulders, you think jean looks quite beautiful right now. his eyes are tired, he has scratches across his face, his hair is tousled and there are smears of dirt over his clothes – but you are captivated by this view of him and the ocean. you think it is the most solace you have been offered in the past twenty four hours.
“you know…” you’re suddenly saying, and jean’s eyes are flitting back and forth between yours, “you know you can talk to me, jean.”
jean nods slightly and curtly, sidling up closer to you in what feels like an attempt to make sure you know what he is saying is true, “i know.” he doesn’t break away from your gaze.
“okay,” you say, “just… just reiterating.”
he tears his gaze away from you and stares ahead at the blue once more, and then you hear a slight mumbling from his direction.
“…there really isn’t anyone else i’d rather talk to.”
lie.
(jean always does this thing sometimes. he lies without meaning to, without really understanding the depth of his words. or maybe he doesn’t really understand the depth of how well you know him.
you think he has a habit of saying what he wishes to be true, what he believes to be true through logic and deduction, but not what is actually true.
he’s supposed to meet you straight after dinner outside to go for a walk. it’s not that serious, you’re just hanging out because you’re friends. you’re spending time together because your friends – but unfortunately when it comes to him it is that serious. everything is always that serious and you’re stuck waiting under the same lantern he kissed you at outside (this has become some sort of regular meeting spot now. you wonder if it holds the same significance to jean as it does to you), stuck leaning against a shitty cold wall and wondering what’s taking him so long.
at first, you don’t care – not really anyway. jean is boyish in the way that he has the same boyish stupidity that runs through half of the male population of the regiment under the age of twenty one (even armin). he’s either still eating and taking his time because he’s forgotten, getting caught up talking to someone, or taking a shit.
you venture back into the warmth of headquarters to find him and you know once he spots you he’ll remember and excuse himself.
and you do find him, outside the entryway of the dining hall of course distracted by talking to someone. talking to mikasa. and you know he was on his way out because he’s at the entryway. and some twisted part of you is enraged by the hypothetical of him knowing that you’re being kept waiting and choosing fleeting conversation with her over meeting you. a part of you is enraged by the part of you that is enraged.
and a part of you is slowly sinking back into yourself, hiding in the darkest corners of your body and trying to hold yourself together. trying not to catch onto small snippets of conversation and compare your voice to mikasa’s, your mannerisms to mikasa’s and your flare for conversation to mikasa’s (maybe you need to make yourself smaller and softer and quieter).
and then jean catches sight of you, eyes widening slightly. he holds up his index finger and mouths two words, ‘one second’.
lie.
you feel almost out of your own body when you make your way back outside and wait for ten more minutes.
you know that deep down you are somewhat just a simple distraction for jean from mikasa. whatever he wants you to be, you find yourself already morphed into it. whether a friend to laugh at his jokes or someone to hold. someone to hold him.
that does not make the reminder of it hurt any less. )
“right,” you say, lips pursed.
“what?” jean asks, angling his head to look back at you.
“nothing.”
“oh, come on,” he’s elbowing your side, echoing images of him from when he was just a young cadet, “you can’t hide from me.”
and you can’t help almost laugh to yourself at the irony of that. hiding from him is something you have been doing for years. hiding the true extent of your feelings, hiding the parts of yourself that you think will scare him away (the jealous parts. the upset parts. the angry parts that wish you had never offered yourself to him. that you had kept yourself to yourself.)
“it really is nothing, jean,” you say, placing a hand on his elbow and pushing it back down to his side. you swallow, “compared to all this anyway.”
jean holds your gaze, thinking about your statement and then sighs.
“yeah, i guess everything would be.”
a comfortable silence settles between the two of you, as you both listen to waves breaking and the wind rushing past your ears. you both lean over the railing, eyes squinting as you look out once more. the view does not get old. you don’t think it ever will.
“i hope that with some miracle eren makes it out.”
your head shoots towards jean, and you can tell he’s trying his hardest not to meet your eyes. his jaw clenches and unclenches and his grip on the railing is tighter than necessary.
“yeah,” is all you can say back. you want to give him enough room to speak. to be listened to. even if it means you have to bury whatever it is you may feel or may want to say.
“and i hope we do too,” jean continues.
your heart sinks. the thought that he may not make it terrifies you even more than the thought of your own demise. it’s scary that you feel enough for someone to not even blink an eye at your own imminent death but feel your world may come crashing down at the thought of theirs.
“jean, i –” you’re suddenly blurting out, and the way jean’s head immediately shoots towards you cuts you out of whatever it is you were going to say. you don’t know what it is you were going to say, but it feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of your mouth.
“yeah?”
“i have something to tell you,” you pronounce every vowel and syllable carefully, trying to sound them all out in a way that soothes the way your insides feel like they’re caving in.
jean’s brows scrunch in concern and you can feel him gravitating towards you (which does nothing for your heart), “yeah?”
you can hear hange yelling in the distance and out of the corner of your eye you can make out the hangar slowly coming into view. jean follows your gaze and notices it too, but then he’s looking back at you as more people shuffle across the deck.
“i –” you try to start, but there are more yells. reiner stomps up the steps and onto deck towards hange.
“i –” it gets caught in your throat again as you make out mikasa’s dark hair blowing in the wind and walking over to armin.
jean, filled with sweet concern gently places a hand on your arm, and you wish you could disappear. you wish you could escape this feeling, this aching and this torment. you wish you had never met him. you wish you could be someone else. you wish you could be the perfect someone else for him, the one that is enough.
“i love you,” you blurt out.
you’re staring at him in shock at your own words and he’s staring at you like he’s trying to piece your words together over and over to figure out what they really mean. you swallow and swallow and swallow and your heart runs and runs and runs. there’s more shuffling all around you and suddenly everyone is above deck, chattering and planning and discussing.
but it’s still just you and jean alone at this corner and you can’t hope but pray for this moment between words to go on forever, so you never have to know his reaction. so you never have to plan how to go on after it.
jean’s hand moves from your arm as he now clasps your shoulder. like a comrade.
“i need to go.”
and he makes his way to hange.
you stand and listen to the howling wind alone.