Work Text:
you'd always been conscious of how loud your voice could get.
a little annoying, you thought, because whenever you got excited about something, your voice would jump through octaves, creating an exponential curve on a graph. when you were with friends who knew how to make you laugh, your throat would make a weird sound - stuck between a guffaw and a choke of self-conscious laughter - if it was particularly funny. and your voice was always stuck between the contrasting spaces of either being too loud or too quiet, never really being able to gauge what was required when.
you'd rather listen than talk. your voice would work around the right people, your mouth having a mind of its own, spilling contents you didn't agree to, but you'd regret the sound of it later. secrets would lie, open, barren, self-aware, in a disgusting pile of weird decibels on your table, in the space between you and whoever had to bear witness to it. you always cringed at the sound of your own voice after hearing it back in video, wherever it was captured.
you grew up quiet, never growing used to using your voice until you were a late teenager. not knowing the importance of words until they were said, until after the reactions were met.
and then you met jean. loud, boisterous laughter filled the room as he shouted the rules of the game, clearly drunk, at a party you couldn't remember the importance of, and you were next to your equally as loud and agreeing friend who shouted cheers and another one, her other half, she had loudly exclaimed, her twin, really, and you could hear the resemblance in the way they both chanted a cheer of “jean! jean! jean! jean!” continuously as the guy wearing a button-up shirt that was now soaked with wine with a bottle of the liquid held a considerable height away from him, drinking with twitching lips and shut eyes. He stopped with a spluttering cough, unashamed still, a large, cocky grin plastered over his lips - plump and red with the tint of the wine. Then he let out a loud whoop and you wondered how he didnt feel the guilt of being loud weighing down on him. Maybe it was the alcohol, you assumed, taking a cautious, controlled sip of your own. Sasha and connie soon joined him, and along with their arm came yours, linked in between sasha’s tight grip.
Introductions were made, voices inclining louder to be heard over the music. “Sash told us about you,” jean shouted, a surprisingly inviting smile on his intimidating face, and you joked around, “yeah shes in love with me!” jean all but nodded with an approving smile, and the rest of the evening by pounding music that you could feel your heartbeat on, and you don't hear jean’s presence until about two weeks after it all.
He was quiet then. Suddenly his face went back to being intimidating, and his voice was heard through a groan the first time you heard it after the boisterous party. “Marc, can you please-”
Marco continues about his day, and then you add on with your unfamiliar voice shrinking under the sounds of the cafeteria that was quickly filling in with tangible shapes of voices. The rest of them have to lean in a little closer to you to listen, and your voice shakes against your chest at the bearable effort just to talk about your mundane and frankly low-grade joke about stagnant coffee that you couldnt even remember after you said it, but somehow made them laugh.
“Oh hey!” marco spoke from beside him after he spotted your head approaching them from a distance, his voice a happy, upbeat version of it’s usual quiet and important self. You waved to them with a smile, not uttering a word until you were at their table. With sasha beside you, you let her do the talking at first. Consonants loud, slight country accent clear as the day above you, she spoke about the “boooorrriinnggg” lecture she just had to attend, her back slumping against the seat. Your face rested consciously on your palm, an unintentional look shared between you and jean that said mostly nothing but quiet and secret amusement. His eyes were pretty, speaking a thousand, weighted words against his lids, all of which were heard clearly by you. Hes a stranger, really, nothing more than a name and a scruffy but pretty face, but that didnt stop the bounds of familiarity working their way through the shared space between you. Marco snorts from beside him, and pushes his remaining fries to the brunette. Sasha hums approvingly, comforting, the waves travelling to you safely. Undisturbed, just how youd prefer them to be, and her voice floats above your body, letting it settle there, with you looking at it’s gentle remnants.
“Ackerman’s classes are always a terror-shock,” jean spoke, now, directly to you, eyes on yours, and you had to stop yourself from being consumed by the tidal waves of sound - his voice, low, warm, joking, natural as if your presence was just enough for him to find comfort in.
You laugh along with him and your voice - a hungry animal of itself - involuntarily, becomes more itself than you’ve ever found it to be. Which is a shock, but then sasha rests her head on your shoulder, asking you, “when’s your next class?” her voice vibrating on your shoulder, travelling through your bones. Your voice - the hungry animal - or whatever it gently became, replies with a, “in a couple minutes.”
“What block?” jean asks, and marco checks his phone for his own calendar.
You hum even if you don't have to think, “block-b. Just a bit of a walk.”
“I have class the same way. I can walk you,” he says, casually, picking his back up from the ground beside him, his knee knocking into yours for a moment. He doesn't apologize. You get up next, picking up the remnants of the trash left on your table and follow him.
His voice is a constant after that. Surprisingly, his voice becomes something you reach out to, the tendrils of waves asking you to stay a bit longer, to shed your coat, to give him your bag to hold. Gentle commands that all but fuel your hungry voice, lungs soaking into whatever has become of his laughter mixed with yours.
“Karaoke night!” sasha shouts, entering the apartment with no remorse of her voice being louder than the howling dogs at night. You exchange a natural, knowing glance with jean who stands next to you in the kitchen, handing you a spoon. Connie follows her in, and his presence is just as loud, the shape being a little sharp against your palm, just enough to remind you that this is your friend. His bag flops against the table and he groans with each joint that moves in him.
“Im going to sing the best songs-” he starts, but jean is quick to cut his voice off, as usual, “-you’re going to sing CPR by Cuppcake you crazy bastard, im going to hit you-” “im not going to sing that! I have taste and dignity and-” “-you have a will to make us suffer.” jean states, and the two of them go back and forth while you hand marco’s cup to him in the living room. “Thanks,” he says, whispered among the background, his lips pursed with an attempt of hiding his laughter.
You smile back at him, but your laugh isnt hidden. You turn around, hands on your hips, exclaiming, “okay! Karaoke night in three hours. Then we go to mitras’ and eat something good.”
Sasha agreed with a mouthful of food and a muffled voice, and you reeled from the fact that you could project your own voice into the apartment with such force. You’ve always been loud, and your mouth always ended up working by itself, spilling contents you didn't agree to be spilt, and you grew quiet again with the consciousness of it all. You never knew how to strike the right balance between quiet and loud.
But then you met jean, who was looking at you, his mouth drawn between half smirk and half amusement, brows raised only slightly, enough to keep you questioning.
“What?” you asked him. Cornered him, really, and your voice was meant to be sharp but ended up being soft around it’s edges, a happy smile accompanying it, and jean’s smirk widened, just by a bit. He shrugged. “Nuffin,” he said, voice half-hidden and half-proud under the food he was chewing.
Chips. Barbeque, the ones you bought especially for him, the one sasha was hoarding. You narrowed your eyes at him in faux suspicion, but let it go only a bit after, turning your back to him as his voice travels to you without hinderance. “Sash, stop eating th3e damn-” “i’ll do whatever i want to!” she says, turning her back on him as well, facing the marble countertop of the kitchen with jean’s - now her - bag of chips, crinkling under her fingers as she dug through them, feeding one to you.
Karaoke was set. Three hours timing, as you said - a little too loud, unconscious of it being that way - and your shoes squeak over the floor. There had been a significant wait, but connie’s rambling had done you good. “For once,” jean said, voice barely heard over the sound of all the other occupied rooms, “he’s useful.” “that’s not what you said last night.” connie says, but his voice is octaves higher than jean’s and impossible to ignore. You open the door to the room with a smile, and marco groans. “Guys, keep it in your pants for one night.” “im not the one-!” jean starts, but sasha clamps his mouth shut with her hand. “If you're not going to sing, i don't want to hear your stupid, neighing voice complaining,” she said, a murderous tilt in the sound, something you didn't want to mess with.
Sasha in a bad mood wasn't sasha at all - a learned fact that had been taught very unfortunately to you - and you tried your best to get her moods up with whatever means necessary, hopping next to the big screen and detangling the wire of the microphone as marco scrolled through the song options, humming under his breath. A round of lemon sodas was immediately ordered, and jean left a seat for you in the corner of the couch facing the screen, an unsaid determination to get you to sit closer to him. Connie slung his arm around marco’s shoulders and, like the demon on the former’s shoulder, guided him to choose Copacabana by barry manillow.
“Wanna duet, beautiful?” he asked you, hand flat open for you to hand him the mic. You raised your brows with a smile, “you cant handle me, springer.” even if in reality, it was you who couldnt handle him, his voice ten times louder and unashamed than yours, something you admired.
“sash! Connie’s challenging you!” you say instead, smile poisoning your sentence, making it irregular. “hey! I never said-” he starts, but sasha bounces off her seat to your voice, hugging your arm, taking up the challenge and squinting at connie with vitriol. “You're on, baldie.”
Connie’s not a competitive person. He’d never cared about grades, about being first in class, about races, in board games - it was all just that to him. A game, something to have fun about; an admirable trait if went unpaired with the rest of his jokes. But he liked doing things out of spite - a revenge that flowed so deep that he had to do something drastic.
Even before the music turned on, before their cue, they'd started their serenading, making marco wince with an adoring smile as he grabbed sasha’s outstretched, inviting hand.
You made your way back to jean, as you always found yourself doing, licking your lips against the cold of the AC blasting in the room, the floors shaking under the weight of your beating heart to the thumps of the song, rhythmic and out of tune. Marco sang well, you knew this, but his voice got lost under the competitiveness of sasha and connie, shouting over each other and clambering over the lyrics as they ran away from the screen, still getting the words wrong.
You laugh, sitting down, stealing a chip from the bowl jean held in his lap as he flipped through the book of remarks strangers before you had written in the same room, their handwritings messy and intoxicated with the extensive - and expensive - cocktail menu, hearts littered under the praises of their time.
“I wonder if they added it,” you said, almost shouting as he leaned in as well, head ducking near your mouth to hold your words in his heart. Impossibly close, his cologne masking the smell of the leathery couch and the stinge of cold air, and he lifts his head, a curious glint in his eye only enhanced by the rotating, artificial, lights that played their colours on the wall along with the trapped soundwaves. “Wanna check?” his lips upturned into a smirk, a pink light bouncing off his hair, then green, then a blue, the same colours in the same order projecting onto you and the adoring afflictions of his voice were not lost on you.
Jean chuckled, the sound hiding under the unbearable symphonies, pointing his finger at one of the notes. “Someone wrote-” you had to lean in close to hear him, afraid that you wouldn't catch the waves woven so delicately and carefully for you, that you'd miss them, somehow, “-that they are sad that… oh shit, thats connie.” the note, scrawled with a blue ballpoint pen, complained about how there was a lack of the sonic movie soundtrack on the machine. You laughed, your shoulders shaking under the now weightless time, a physical proof of your smile. Jean held it in his heart, woven carefully, as if it would slip away somehow.
Something to do. Together, like a secret, because really, how else would he say it if not like this? Like the shape carved itself just for you, smooth and soft. How else would he say something unimportant so close to you, his hand encircling your shoulders, arm resting on the back of the couch, voice the only thing you hear even if the loudness of the setting is all too present and all too distracting. Because that’s what this was, even with the distracting and present and loudness of the setting, he asks you, and his words form their own shape and fall into your lap, a gentle, warm question with round edges, easy to hold in your open palms that eagerly closed over it to not let it go.
Your heart beats to the thumps of the song. Your teeth ache with the sweetness of his voice as you nod with the same glint in your eye, and the unsaid but well-heard command is enough to get him standing up and walking to the machine, checking and flipping over the songs that offered themselves, his white shirt tinted against the moody lighting, the old bracelet you made him hanging over his wrist with a poorly tied knot that somehow withstood the test of time and weather and temperatures of his warm body. His hand scratched the back of his neck, and the present song was almost coming to an end, not that you were paying attention to it, but it was hard to not remind yourself of the moment you were in when the moment included him, the same ground he stood on being the same ground your feet rested on, the same room his voice held and clung onto also being the same room your own voice was in, floating to his, something you found it doing a little too often.
Your name was spoken on the microphone, brightly, with a wide smile, something you hadn't been used to until you met sasha. Your eyes met hers, crinkled at the ends with a smile wider than her heart, as she pointed at you, “your turn! jean-boy, choose something!” met with another shared and important - because all of them were important - glance with jean, eyebrows raised, affection rippling over his features, and you relented, hopping up to the microphone as she handed it to you.
“Oh, but when i asked you to, you didn't sing? I see how it is," Connie said, teasing smile on his lips. Marco shook his head with a smile as you shrugged. “You dont pay the rent,” you said simply, and the opening to cant take my eyes off of you by frankie vallie clung to your clothes, spreading a wide and knowing smile over your face, glancing at jean again. Again.
Sasha watches. Seeing it play out - not rehearsed, a little clunky, your shoes creaking under your weight as you hop to the beat, looking at jean who, in turn, looks at you, and sasha watches. Your voice hums out the tune before you sing it, before the lyrics start rolling in, impatience staining your tongue because of excitement, and she watches. Connie gulps down his drink from the corner of the room and tries getting up, but marco pushes him back down with a gentle and forceful hand, “dont,” his voice says, lost again, and connie doesnt ask why. Sasha hands her microphone to jean, clunky and unrehearsed, and he takes it without reluctance because he could never refuse being near you.
Your shoulders shake without effort or thinking, and the usual hesitance that comes to jean so easily, like habit, almost disappears, finding solace in god knows where but he’s just glad its not there right now, with you. Brilliant smile, voice usually small and a little uneasy now grows with the swell of the song and he cant help but not sing. His voice is nothing but background and really, all he’s doing is humming into the mic just as you were moments before, and he sees everything. Your voice makes it hard not to notice you, stark against the background of the four walled-room, head bopping to the beat. It's hard not to notice when something so tangible and breathing and beautiful is in front of him, singing, smiling towards him, looking at him like you do with your eyes all shiny and almost sparkling under the shitty lights, he thinks, how can someone make a karaoke room feel like a shrine?
He's not poetic. He knows this - out of the two of you, you find more of the metaphors, the small but noteworthy variables with the phrases and words - but he’d turn into a poet just to make one of the songs you like to sing so much. Humming under your breath, kept there until future and important use while making coffee, lost lyrics that you couldn't remember building up at the back of your throat as your hand flew across the your computer’s keyboard but even then he’d choose your inexperienced and unpracticed voice over a well made concert.
Your lips shine with the light, and he forgets how to breathe. His mic floats somewhere near his mouth, he’s sure of that much, but everything else is lost to him. Your voice becomes his guide, wavering a little at the higher pitches, careful of the lyrics. You mess up once, laugh it off, shrugging your shoulders, and your smile is etched onto the speakers, making their way across the room and into his ears and, god, he can feel it. The beat doesn't matter to him, his heart finds the way of your voice and beats to it. As soft, as careful, unhesitant and unrestrained until the three minutes and twenty-four seconds of the song are over. And all he did was blink.
You turn, handing the mic back to sasha, connie’s standing applause met with a wide, unbashful grin and a little bow, faux pride in your posture.
Jean all but follows your footsteps only a little ways from sasha, as she chooses another song of her liking, and his eyes are on you, adjusting the sleeve of your shirt that had folded up. You look at him, lips moving under his gaze, sound travelling and only a little delayed because jean thinks about your lips for too long. “You have a good voice,” you remark, smiling, and he blinks. Thank god the place is only dimly lit because his face feels red, heart pumping dangerously close to his chest.
“Yeah?” he asks, as if he needs confirmation. Really, he just wants to hear your voice again.
You hum. He leans in to hear it as if it's something more important. It is, to him, every molecule that's disturbed by your voice to reach to his ear is something that he needs to be accounted for. He’ll make a home there, he thinks, where your voice lives in between the atoms, the shape it makes mid-air, just for him to hear.
“HORSEBOY THIS ONES FOR YOU,” connie shouts in the already loud speaker, making jean wince, connie pointing his finger between jean’s brows, a scowl on the latter’s features. The starting notes of “my heart will go on” start playing, and jean groans, head tilting upwards, catching the way you laugh softly, and turning to you incredulously.
“Y’know your bald head is shining like a disco ball right now?” he says in retaliation to the now belting-his-heart-out connie, his hand making a fist over his heart, eyes screwed shut, pinch between his eyebrows, knees bending at an almost-painful angle that will most surely make them hurt later, with marco doing the background vocals, eyes closed, and… was that a tear?
“Jesus, and then? what did he say?” sasha’s voice loudly asked, uncaring for any sleeping neighbours that would surely be jolted awake by her, coercing you to tell her more about the terrible group project you had just gotten out of last week. “He said he’d just give the work to someone who owed him a favour.” you said with mild but mostly dissipated annoyance.
Marco winced from in front of you, legs crossing two steps at a time. Jean scowled, turning his face to yours from where he climbed beside marco, “what the fuck?” to which you could only shrug with pursed lips. Sasha’s arm was around your shoulders, her fingers tracing comfortable shapes on the cup of your shoulder.
“Wait, who owed him a favour?” connie asked from behind you, two steps under yours. You spared him a glance and shrugged again, “no idea. And then, of course, he told me, last minute, that they couldn't do it and he didn't have the skills,” you put air quotations around the last word, clearing your throat for dramatic effect, “to complete it himself.”
“What the fuck does that even mean-” “what a fucking dick,” “god, im so sorry,” jeans voice was the first one you heard, followed by sasha’s, and then marco’s. “I wish we could still guillotine people.” connie spoke up just after you crossed the last step, marco’s shoes squeaking to a halt before your door. You fished your keys out of your pocket, opening the door to its jingle.
“Guillotines are for rich people, dumbass,” jean said, rolling his shoulders back as if the sentence itself burdened him.
“of course you’d say that, you french fuck.” connie spoke, wiggling out of his coat the second he stepped through your door. Sasha went headfirst for the couch, collapsing into the cushions without any plan to remove her own coat. Her soft snores soon filled the apartment - a trait both her and jean shared. The two could fall asleep anywhere and anytime, state of their body be damned. Jean had told you, after a long nap, his voice a low hum, that he had insomnia as a kid. He didn't know how he grew out of it, but it ended up with him on the opposite side of the sleep spectrum - unable to wake up unless shaken very violently. He asked you to slap him awake once, and when you hesitated, connie stepped in with a loud smack to jean’s cheek.
Marco stretched out his arms while walking to sasha’s room. “Im taking her bed.” he says, a tired yawn stretching out at the end of his sentence. Connie groans, “where will i sleep?” he asks, looking at you with a smirk, “if only a beautiful girl with a pretty voice tells me i can use her room…oh, if only,” he sighs, placing the back of his hand on his forehead.
“Yeah. if only, you bitchless moron.” jean says, and you shake your head with a smile.
“Do you think women are bitches, jean?” connie asks, the hand on his forehead finding itself on his chest, gasping. sasha ‘s snores break through his sentence.
“No! I.. i love women. I mean, im not like, im not… like a slut or anything, but-” “sounds like something a slut would say. Fuckboy.” “I respect women!”
“Ladies, ladies. Stop fighting over me.” you say, walking towards your room without sparing either of them a glance, expecting jean to follow you. “Cuddle with marco, con, I know you want to.”
Connie groans, again, a little too dramatically to be taken seriously in the first place. There’s no malice hidden in his voice, none of the usual complains you would've found, “fine. If you say so. See, jean? This is how you respect women.”
“Youre only saying that because she’s pretty.” jean says. You try not to let it get in your head as you enter your room, your door creaking open. “Night, marco!” you whisper-yell across the hall, even though sasha’s eyes wouldn't open even a peek with any amount of sound. “Goodnight!” he whisper-yells back from across the hall, only a couple steps away from the door of your room.
Jean and connie’s voices are still arguing about something, but you're too tired to make their words out, all of it becoming gibberish. You clear your throat - a sound that’s enough to get them to stop. “Goodnight.”
“Hey, wait-” jean speaks, and connie snickers from behind him.
Your room is silent, save from the irregular sounds of the cars passing downstairs, gravel under their rubbery tires. Everythings been said and done; teeth brushed, face washed, pillows fluffed (by jean’s persistence). You collapsed onto bed, leaving enough room for jean to squish into, the sound of ruffling blankets and the plush, squishy pillow under your ear. He lays on his back for a moment, before facing his body towards you, the deliberate motion creating squeaks of spring from the mattress. Everything has its own sound. Jean’s hands tuck under his head, and you resist the urge to laugh at his position. He sees right through you.
“Whats so funny?” he asks, whispers, really. You're not sure why. Maybe it's the overwhelming silence, the inability of breaking the warmth that crosses across both of your bodies, sharing the same blanket.
“You look funny tucked in like that,” you say, imitating his hushed voice. Maybe it is too important, you think, to talk about things that are funny in the moment for no reason but to keep your heart steady against the faraway but present sound of his - just one of those sounds that didn't need to be heard to know it was there for you.
His sigh turns into a laugh. You're both laughing at nothing, soft puffs of air, carbon dioxide overlapping carbon dioxide. Sounds are science, right? This felt a lot like poetry. Maybe they all merge together, and Jean speaks up before you can think more about it, “do you think Connie is spooning Marco right now?”
You laugh a little more. “Are you jealous?” “that we’re not…cuddling?” he asks, a little unsure, but with a small smile anyway. He's hesitating. You know him enough to know the way his voice - though soft and pliable right now, gaseous against your palms, shape unreadable - sounds when he's unsure. You shrug. “Are you?” you don't know if the whispering is making you bolder or if you're just tired. You’ve always been a little conscious of your voice, a little too in your head about needing to be soft, uncaring if your sentence goes unheard. It doesn't matter as long as youre peaceful, as long as your voice doesn't disrupt disrupt disrupt.
His cheeks go a little red. It's how you know you’ve got him. Your smile turns softer, a little more understanding. “I…okay,” he says. You're both not sure what he means by it, but you can't help but marking it as important, just as everything he’s said to you.
“Your voice is…really pretty, by the way.” jean states, eyes not meeting yours. His lips form a thin line after saying it, as if he’d been wanting to keep it a secret, as if the fact that it somehow got out was a fault. You don't have much to say to that, though, so the sentence lays there, between the space of the pillows, between the blankets. It’s weighed, careful but untamed, and it lingers there for a moment, soft and pliable and unconscious.
“I mean… like everytime i hear your voice its… its nice. Not just when you're singing. I like that too.” he rambles, voice still a hush, words still soft and pliable - putty-like, shapeless but you catch them and you don't let them go, let them seep into your skin and against your bones and into your bloodstream. “When you pick up the phone, or when you're humming something. I know it's… i know you think it's not meant to be heard. But I hear you. And i… I like hearing you.” he says. He likes hearing you. He likes hearing you. The words don't have shape. They wave over you, not tidal, not forceful, but like the same warmth of the blanket that rests over your shoulders, crinkled at the edges, a little worn out as if he’s been saying it to himself before giving it to you.
God, and youve always been conscious of your voice. So when you speak next, its a surprise to you when its not the same whisper he was speaking in, instead only a bit higher than it, enough to contain only bits of your voice, the carvings on the roof of your mouth and the back of your throat and behind your teeth have no use hiding, now, because your voice projects forward just enough. Just enough because he thinks your voice is pretty.
“I… i like yours.” you say. Your eyes slip a little shut, and you feel more than hear him shift towards you, his arm crossing over your waist. “Its beautiful. Peaceful. Even when you're…insulting eren.” you sigh into his chest. His breathing holds you just as his arms, and his warm chest stutters a bit as if he’s taking a deep breath, something that tickles the parts of your hair that are near his nose. Every sound has its feeling, every sound creates waves and its on you to make them twice more meaningful as they are despite the words they hold, and even as jean gives you wordless reactions to your senseless but meaningful words, they're all accounted for. They're all just as important, just as held as everything else he’s said because its him.
“Thank you. For speaking to me. For letting me hear you.” you say with finality, no room for argument. As if he’d argue you. His lips press to the top of your head, unmoving. His palm covers your ear, making the soft sounds of his breathing muffled, but his thumb traces shapes of his sound against your ear.
It tickles a little, but you hear the movement clearly.
Sound waves, importance given to them. By you and by him.