Work Text:
“It’s fine, you know,” says Marco one day while they’re relaxing in the barracks between Jean’s shifts at guard duty on Wall Rose.
Jean had been dozing, arms behind his head and eyes closed but brain still half-awake, in that lazy place between surrender to sleep and awareness. The sound of the other boy’s voice startles him out of his reverie and he cracks one eye to look over – it’s the good side of Marco’s face, thank God, but of course it is, because Marco is always very careful to orient himself so that Jean doesn’t have to look at his wreck of a right side. That doesn’t stop Jean from looking away after a moment or two. Something is off about his voice, a little bit tighter than usual, a little bit less sweet and calm, but it’s hard to place.
When Jean doesn’t say anything, Marco clears his throat a little and continues. “I mean, if you can’t stand to look at me. Or don’t want to. I – I completely understand.” He pauses, hand picking at the loose piling of threads in Jean’s blanket where there’s a couple inches of bed between them. “Just, what I’m trying to say is, don’t feel bad about it. Please.” A humorless sort of laugh prefaces the next statement: “Half the time I don’t even want to look at myself in the mirror.”
There it is, the thing that Jean hadn’t been able to place. It comes through loud and clear in his tone when he says that last part. Self-loathing. Definitely something Jean has a lot of intimate familiarity with; he could spot the sound of somebody disgusted with himself from a mile away. The difference is, it’s not a thing Marco does. And the thing he’s disgusted about…it’s not even something he can help.
It pisses Jean off – not in a way that’s directed at Marco, it just fills him with this unbearable, un-nameable feeling that translates best as anger to know that this is what’s become of his closest friend.
“Fuck that!” he snaps, a little too loudly. Without checking the other boy’s response to his outburst, he barrels on, without knowing where he’s headed or how he plans to get there, “There’s nothing wrong with you, ok? You’re you. I could look at you all damn day just because it’s a fucking miracle that you’re even here. You look great. You’re fine. You’re fine,” he repeats almost like a mantra, lips pursing unconsciously as his miniature diatribe trails off.
It’s the closest Jean’s ever come to telling a lie, to himself or anybody else, and they both know it. Maybe he doesn’t have a problem with Marco as he is, but Jean isn’t an idiot, he’s just desperate enough to want to believe it’s fine. But he knows it’s not. He feels caught, like he’s going to get trapped into saying something dishonest or something hurtful – it’s an either/or scenario – if this conversation keeps up.
“I know what I look like,” Marco says softly, offering a smile that’s somewhere between sad and resigned that Jean barely catches out of the corner of his vision. The brunette taps his index finger against his cheek, just under his remaining eye. “I’ve still got one good eye, remember?”
“It’s not like that,” protests Jean immediately. Marco just fixes him with that same soft, sad look, like he knows better. There’s nothing to know, Jean tells himself angrily in the same breath as the thought; he doesn’t give a shit what Marco looks like, as long as he’s still Marco. Even if other people stare and point. Even if he can’t even touch him sometimes for the fear he’ll fuck something up worse than it already is. The mess that the battle for Trost turned Marco's body into isn't what bothers him. What makes it so excruciatingly hard to look at his friend for more than a few seconds is that every time Jean sees him, it's reminder of what happened, of how he almost lost him, of the horrible fucking death he let him die. Of how Jean wasn't there to do anything, and yet another person he cared about got killed. But he can't say that, because it'll sound like he's not glad to have him back, and that sure as hell isn't it. “I just get…sad sometimes, when I look at you. That’s all.”
The noise that comes out of Marco’s partially-ruined throat is understanding.
Jean tries valiantly to correct himself. “No, I mean – ” What does he mean? What the fuck can he say to Marco, when everything he’s thinking has probably crossed his friend’s mind at some point? It’s the elephant in the room, and talking it to death is going to do about as much good as painting it bright pink. It’s still going to smash up a bunch of furniture while everybody carefully pretends not to notice the catastrophe coming down around their ears.
Even if it would do more to help than to hurt, this particular kind of thing isn’t Jean’s brand of honesty. Saying what’s on his mind is easy; saying what’s in his heart is harder and infinitely more confusing. He wouldn’t know where to start.
But for Marco, he’s willing to try. “I mean,” he says finally, staring up at the ceiling, “it hurts seeing you all down about shit and quiet all the time. You were quiet before, but it was a friendly, happy kind of quiet, y’know? You’re not happy now."
“I can try to be happier, if it’s bothering you that much,” replies Marco, sounding reprimanded. Jean wants to tear his own hair out by the roots, wants to scream.
“That’s not what I meant!”
“What did you mean?” The words aren’t a taunt. Just calm and curious, open.
“That I want you to be happy because you’re happy – ‘cause you have a life that makes you happy. Not ‘cause you feel like I’m gonna come down on your ass if you get caught frowning too much.”
It’s a long time before Marco replies, and when he does, his voice is filled with kindness – the voice of someone trying to be as kind as humanly possible, to soften an awful blow they can’t avoid delivering. “Jean,” he murmurs, “I died. I don’t have a life, happy or otherwise.”
Even though part of him knew it was coming, the words hit Jean like a punch to the gut. He can feel his chest clench tight. That gets him to look over at Marco, and he knows his eyes must be wet, blazing with emotion. It’s humiliating and vulnerable and he doesn’t care. “Yes you do,” he insists in a hoarse voice. “Yes you fucking do, don’t ever say that. You got a second chance. Maybe it’s kind of shitty, but you’re – you’re alive, you’re here, it counts.”
“It counts,” Marco repeats quietly, not pure agreement. “For me, or for you?”
“For both of us,” says Jean. He feels helpless, scared – of what? That Marco is saying he doesn’t want to live like this? No one could blame him. That Jean is going to lose something a second time that he only just barely got back? Like this whole thing is somehow about him? God, he thinks bitterly, I really am a selfish asshole.
Marco’s hand slipping into his is completely unexpected, but his fingers know what to do, lacing themselves with the other boy’s on instinct, and somehow it calms him.
“I wouldn’t have chosen this for myself, if I’d been given a choice,” Marco tells him in that careful, gentle voice. “But I would always choose to be with you.” In the slight pause between thoughts, his hand squeezes Jean’s softly. “Let me have my hangups about it, but know that doesn’t mean I want to leave you again. I’d never do that, Jean.”
An impossible swell of emotion fills the younger boy, and he rolls over, nearly crushes Marco to himself before he remembers he shouldn’t do that anymore, and settles for cupping his cheek fiercely. His lower lip is trembling and his whole face is contorted with the effort of not crying, even though he knows Marco wouldn’t care. “Good,” he whispers, voice rough. “You’d better not.”
And when Marco laughs, even with half his face torn away, Jean knows it wasn’t a lie. He’s still the most beautiful person Jean has ever seen.