Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter One

How paranoid can one woman be?

Jean stared impassively at the lit-up screen of his phone buzzing away in his palm, his mother’s number flashing at him impatiently as he swiped the unlock button and pressed the answer button.

“I appreciate the concern, Mom, but calling three days in a row is a bit excessive, even for you.”

“Jean, don’t be ridiculous,” His mother’s voice came through sharp and abrupt. “It’s not excessive, I’m worried about you, and I want to make sure you know what you’re doing- you’ve put ‘undecided’ on all of your college course application forms so far, I’m worried sick you’re going to do something stupid.”

“And what does ‘something stupid’ constitute of, huh?” Jean asked dryly, rolling over onto his stomach and propping himself up on his elbows.

“You know what I mean! You need to pick something sensible- something that you can follow up on after you graduate. Not something stupid, like…”

“Like what?”

“Like art!” His mother snapped before she stopped herself short, drawing in a soft breath that crackled on the line. “Look, Jean, I understand you like to draw and all…but let’s be realistic, it’s never going to be anything more than a hobby, it’s far too difficult to make it in a field like that. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yeah yeah,” Jean cast a glance at the dishevelled mess his duvet made spread haphazardly over his bed. His sketchbook rested on top of it, surrounded by multiple scattered pencils dipping in and out of the creases of the duvet cover.

“Take this seriously, Jean.”

“I am taking it seriously. I understand that art’s just a stupid waste of time in your eyes and I shouldn’t make any effort towards it regardless of whether or not I enjoy it.”

“There’s no need to get all arsey with me, young man. All I’m doing is making sure you pursue something you can get an actual career out of. Now, what course are you going to enrol in tomorrow?”

“Mom…”

“Jean.”

Jean sighed, shoulders drooping in resolve. “Business.” He muttered darkly to his cell phone, reaching out and taking hold of the corner of his sketchbook, dragging it towards him before brushing away some excess eraser dust from the smooth lines on the page.

“Good boy,” His mother said primly, sounding extremely self-satisfied.

“I’m not a dog y’know,”

“If only. At least dogs do what they’re told without arguing.”

“That’s it, I’m hanging up on you. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Jean, wait! I wanted to ask you about the house and rent and jobs and-”

Beep.

Jean jabbed at the ‘end call’ icon a little more harshly than he intended to before chucking his phone to the other end of his bed. Was it so hard for one woman to let her son make his own decisions? He’d assume the bickering and hovering and constant fussing would end as soon as he moved out, but no, thanks to the convenience of modern telecommunications his mother had found a whole new way to bother him as often as she liked without having to do much more than press his contact icon and persist until Jean finally answered his phone. At this point, it would probably be a whole lot less stressful for them both if he just blocked her number.

Jean pulled his sketchbook on to his lap, rubbing his finger along one shaded patch and watching as the pencil strokes blurred and merged beneath his fingertip. He’d been attempting to draw the long, lithe figure of a pin-up girl but without a reference it was proving difficult. Her limbs kept extending far too long and wouldn’t bend in the right places, making her look like some kind of noodle woman. Discouraged after his mother’s phone call, instead of bothering to correct the drawing he ripped the page out, crumpling it into a tight little ball in his fist before tossing it over his shoulder. It hit the wall behind him with a soft little thunk before disappearing somewhere in the gap between his bed and the desk.

Jean had moved out just over two weeks ago, at the start of the summer holidays to adjust to living away from home before college officially started two months later, at the beginning of October. He’d initially suggested the idea to his mother himself, under the guise of ‘independence’ and ‘once he started college it would be harder to settle in’ to conceal what he really wanted- some actual freedom from his mother’s extremely short leash that she held him on with a vice-like grip. Freedom that he had never quite got throughout his earlier teenage life. Although, judging by that phone call, she wasn’t going to let him run free without a fight.

He shifted his sketchbook into a better position onto his knees, scrabbling in the duvet for his pencil, before holding it above the page, its tip a fraction of an inch away from the paper, hesitant where to start. The blank page sprawling before him almost seemed to be mocking, practically laughing at his distinct lack of inspiration with its plain white emptiness.

Artwork had been his greatest passion ever since he was a kid. The moment he’d figured out how to grip a wax crayon aged three, he’d been scribbling over scraps of paper, corners of his picture-books, and, much to his mother’s disgruntlement, the walls. The back covers of his primary school exercise books and the margins of his high school notes were all decorated lavishly with biro and felt tip and ball point. Jean wasn’t really the type of person to have such a strong emotional bond to a hobby, but when it came to art, it was really something else. There was something calming about the way he could arrange the lines on a page or canvas however he wanted, because he wanted to. There was something intoxicating about that level of control over creation. It was like being a god over charcoal and HB pencils.

Jean tapped his pencil against the side of his sketchbook, trying to come up with a vague idea of what to attempt to sketch that would, hopefully, go a lot better than his failed wonky pin-up noodle. He’d assumed the combination of finishing high school and moving out- with all this newfound freedom, and, most valuable of all, time- would set his creative juices flowing like a proverbial river. Apparently, that hadn’t been the case. Drawing had become something of a chore, an obligation to himself, almost. Was he compelled to do it because he felt that’s what he owed to the boy sat in stuffy high school classrooms only a few months prior? The boy who spent his time idly doodling on the corners of his maths tests already graciously embellished by his teacher’s red pen- harsh edges of spiky handwriting that read, ‘See me after the lesson!’ and ‘This will be on the exam!!’. The boy who wished for nothing more than all the time in the world to draw it and everything in it in his own interpretation, without a narky middle-aged teacher circling and captioning it with ‘time wasting!’.

Well, here he was with more than enough time on his hands and he couldn’t muster any of his former passion for shit.

Jean snapped his sketchbook shut and arched his arms over his head, stretching out the cramp in his upper body as a yawn filled his mouth. The digital alarm clock on the side of his desk shone a bright red 14:02 into the room. As if in response to this, Jean’s stomach growled in protest, indicating he hadn’t bother to get up off his lazy backside to go outside his room since he’d first woken up at twelve, not even for food.

Disentangling his lanky limbs from the duvet clinging to him like thick oil, he kicked it away from him, scooped up his sketchbook and pencil and rescued his phone from the crevice between the mattress and wall, then crossed the small room in two strides and pulled the door open with such force it rebounded off the opposite wall with a distinct crack.

He’d scarcely gone two steps down the stairs when he heard,

“If you fuck up the plaster in the walls by slamming doors I’m going to murder your ass, Kirschtein,”

Jean rolled his eyes as he reached the bottom. The ground floor sprawled out into one whole room with the living area lining the adjoining wall to the stairs and the kitchen set into the opposite wall, separating itself from the rest of the space with a worktop. The front door sat between the two halves of the house with a tiny alcove in the wall that was currently overflowing with all the shoes in the house.

“I appreciate the offer, Eren, but honestly I don’t swing that way,”

Jean’s housemate glared at him from where he was sat on one of the two sofas arranged into a right angle around the TV in the corner towards the back window, looking over their miniscule garden.

“You know what I mean you asshole.” He snapped in response. Eren was sat on the couch with his knees up to his chest, upon which rested a videogame controller. The TV screen flickered with pixelated warfare as he threw Jean a dirty look.

Jean had known Eren ever since he was a kid. Or rather, his mother had known Eren’s parents since before they were born, and they’d grown up together, going through preschool and primary school and high school. Throughout their lives they sort of retained a love-to-hate relationship, based on similarities of character rather than how mutual their interests were, or how much they liked each other. Regardless, when Jean had considered moving out and found he couldn’t afford it on his own, Eren had followed suit, and they decided to rent a place together.

“Good morning to you too,” Jean stifled another yawn before crossing the room and falling onto the opposite sofa.

“Good afternoon more like.”

“Whatever.” Jean’s gaze fell upon the low table standing between them. Upon it stood a rack of still-warm toast, wafting curls of steam into the air. “Hey, you never make breakfast for yourself. Is Mikasa here?”

Eren picked his controller back up and turned his attention back to the TV. “Yep.”

As if on cue, footsteps resounded on the stairs, and a moment later, Mikasa appeared, holding one of Eren’s hoodies.

“Found it,” she announced, walking over to the sofa and tossing the jacket at Eren. “It was behind your bed- you need to look for things when you lose them you know. Good afternoon, Jean.”

“Afternoon,” Jean mumbled in response, suddenly keenly aware he was sat in broad daylight still in his pyjamas. He pulled his sketchbook back onto his knee and flipped it open once again.

“Sure, sure whatever.” Eren brushed the hoodie off his face, still almost entirely focused on his game as Mikasa took a seat next to him, curling up and resting her head against his shoulder. It was almost pitiful how little reaction Eren gave to her display of affection, merely grunting that she was going to put him off.

Fucking hell, Eren, at least give her the time of day! Jean wanted to scream.

Eren and Mikasa had been friends since forever, and from the first day that Eren finally introduced Mikasa to him, Jean had fallen for her. Hard.

The second he’d first laid eyes upon her he’d wanted more than anything to be able to muster up the guts to ask her out. Everything about her was beautiful and flawless, from her appearance to her faultless grades- no, there wasn’t anything out of place about Mikasa Ackerman. She was perfect, in every single way…

Except, of course, for the fact she had fallen in love with Eren.

They’d been friends ever since they were kids. Whilst Jean didn’t quite know the details of the incident that brought them together, he had picked up on the vague mentions of something involving Eren saving her from a group of muggers when they were younger (although, it was doubtful that he did anything more than grab her hand and run in the opposite direction) but clearly it made a lasting impression on Mikasa because they’d been inseparable ever since. It was only in the last three years of high school that they properly got together. It was inevitable really, looking back at it now. In retrospect, Mikasa had always been hung up over Eren- almost to a disturbing extent- and it was only a matter of time before Eren decided to stop kidding himself and returned her feelings. They certainly weren’t a flawless couple, not by a long shot. They’d had their fair share of ups and downs, arguments and even a brief break up at some point in their last year- but ultimately, they were always together. Mikasa was the logic to Eren’s impulsiveness; Eren was the driving force behind her lack of ambition; she was stoic, he was raw; he was brash, she was diffident. They counteracted each other almost flawlessly to the testament of opposites attract. It was foolish and shallow to think Mikasa would ever turn away from the person she was so clearly devoted to in favour of someone like…well, someone like Jean.

Even though he’d come to accept the fact it was highly likely his feelings would never be returned and were probably eternally doomed to remain unrequited, it didn’t change the fact his heart still began to beat a little faster every time she turned those smoky, platinum eyes framed by such delicate, thick lashes upon him. It didn’t mean his words didn’t catch in his throat when her voice fell from her enticingly dainty, (and what he hoped to be) soft lips. His face still heated up like she’d just thrown a mug of coffee straight into his cheeks instead of merely touching him as she brushed past.

Hiding his increasingly warm face behind his sketchbook, Jean glanced up at Mikasa and finally put his pencil to paper, beginning to sketch out the silhouette of her head and the sloping curve of her spine against the sofa. It certainly wasn’t the greatest situation to be in- hopelessly head over heels for someone else’s girlfriend; that someone else just happening to be your roommate- but at the very least, Mikasa made a great muse, especially where his artwork was concerned.

Several minutes passed in relative quiet, the silence punctuated only by the rattling of artificial gun fire from Eren’s game and the soft scratchings of Jean’s pencil before Mikasa finally spoke.

“So, have you two thought about enrolment for tomorrow?”

Jean and Eren groaned in unison.

“Mikasa, I’ve heard enough of this from my dad,” Eren hit the pause button on his controller with a sharp click as he shifted around to face his girlfriend. “You don’t have to start getting on my case too.”

“So far all you’ve done is be vague about what you want, and unfortunately you don’t have that luxury, starting tomorrow,” Mikasa said smoothly. “You need to pick a course, like it or not.”

“I told you, I want to go into law enforcement and justice systems.”

“And I’ve told you that you wouldn’t be suited to that kind of thing.”

“Hah? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“She means you’re too much of an arrogant close-minded prick with an extremely close-minded perception of justice,” Jean said, glance darting up from his sketchbook to raise a condescending eyebrow across to the opposite sofa. He smirked as Eren flipped him off. “Hey, just ask the guy who’s brains you just blew out the back of his skull with a bazooka.” He nodded towards the screen, frozen in a scene of blood spraying over the imaginary camera lens. “He’d probably say that’s a pretty warped sense of right and wrong,”

“No.” Mikasa cast a scathing glance over at Jean who immediately sought refuge behind his sketchbook once more. “What I mean is you’re too impulsive and hot headed for any kind of job in that sort of field. That, and, I highly doubt it’ll be anything like what you’re hoping it to be.”

“What about Jean? Pick on him instead. All he wants to do is spend his time scribbling in that stupid sketchbook of his, I’m pretty sure that’s less prospective than a career in law enforcement.” Eren retorted as Mikasa slid off his shoulder and sat up properly with a wearisome look on her face.

“At least Jean knows what he wants. You, on the other hand…I’m not so convinced that it’s justice you want,” Mikasa said dryly.

“And for your information, Jaeger, I’m not enrolling in the art course, I’m going to take business.” Jean added, peering over the top of his knees to see both Eren and Mikasa turn and look at him simultaneously in surprise.

“You’re doing what now?” Eren put his feet on the floor and leant forwards, resting one elbow on his knee in Jean’s general direction. “You’re taking business? But art’s been your whole thing since…since you know, you were a kid! What’s with the change of heart?”

Jean shrugged, eyes drifting back down to his drawing. He’d been trying to catch the way the light coming through the back window reflected off Mikasa’s beautiful dark hair, but considering Eren had moved, she was no longer in direct sunlight and he couldn’t draw that from memory.

“It’s like you said, there’s no prospective career that comes from it,” He muttered, pencil beginning to trace the curve of Mikasa’s neck bowing into the swell of her chest. “It’s no big deal really.”

“Huh. That’s…huh.” Eren leant back into the sofa. His gaze flickered back to the TV but he didn’t pick up the controller again.

“That’s unexpected,” Mikasa finished for him. “But if that’s what Jean wants to do, that’s Jean’s problem. What you need to do is focus on yourself and what you’re going to do, Eren.”

The corners of Jean’s mouth twitched in half a humourless smirk. “Problem? What do you mean it’s Jean’s problem?”

Mikasa ignored him and continued to watch Eren carefully, her gaze cool and steadfast. “I know you better than you think, Eren. Trust me on this one.”

“Alright then, if you know me so well, what do you think I should study?”

“Maybe you should go into performing arts or something.” Jean grunted under his breath. “Gives you the perfect opportunity to show off after all.”

Either Mikasa didn’t hear him or chose to completely ignore him. “I think you’d do well in theatre.”

“Theatre?!” Eren spluttered, the controller clattering to the floor. “Alright now you’re being ridiculous! That’s even less useful than Jean’s art!”

“Hey!”

“Not really, if you think about it. You stand to learn a lot of valuable skills from drama and performing. People skills, for instance, and empathy.” Mikasa reasoned. She tucked a stray hair behind her ear as she spoke and Jean quickly copied the soft little coil onto paper, trying to focus on recreating every last strand of hair instead of how insanely attractive he found her profile. “Besides, you’d be good at it- you’re driven and passionate and…well, loud.”

Eren snorted. “Tact isn’t your strong point, is it?” All the same, he appeared to be mulling it over. “So…drama?”

“Theatre studies,” she corrected. “If you wait here I’ve got the course booklet in my car, you can look at it properly and see what you think.” At this, Mikasa stood up and weaved her way between the two sofas and headed towards the front door and disappeared outside with the click of the latch.

Damn. Now Jean had no reference for his half-finished sketch. He’d been in the process of trying to draw every single individual eyelash but now he looked at it properly the lines crisscrossed and jumbled into a thick black line over his drawing’s woefully insignificant eye in comparison. Fuck, he hadn’t even had the foresight to bring the eraser downstairs with him.

Jean had assumed Eren had gone back to his game but the TV still wasn’t making any sound. He looked up from the page to see his roommate watching him with a strange expression mingled with what looked like a combination of intense dislike and suspicion.

“Dude, what the hell?” Jean scowled in response. “What’s with the look?”

Eren’s gaze narrowed even further. “I swear to God, Jean, if you don’t stop making bedroom eyes at Mikasa every time you think I’m not looking I’m going to cut your balls off myself.”

“Bedroom eyes? Jesus Christ, you’ve got a problem with how I look at people? I’m sorry, that’s just how my face is. Chill the fuck out, I’m not interested in your girlfriend.”

“Funny, I didn’t know you blush every time any old person looks you in the eye or got a boner when they try to talk to you.”

Jean seized hold of the cushion next to him and threw it over at him.

“Fuck off.”

“Gladly,” Eren said, batting the cushion away so it bounced harmlessly onto the floor. “As soon as you stop fantasizing about my girlfr…wait, were you drawing her?”

Jean scoffed as disbelievingly as he knew how. “No,” he lied, turning the page nonchalantly. “But maybe you need to learn to back down. Not every guy in this world wants to steal Mikasa from you.”

“Not every guy, yeah, I get that. But then there’s you.”

Jean opened his mouth to retaliate but was cut off by the noise of the front door opening once more indicating Mikasa’s return. He fell silent, closed his sketchbook and watched sullenly as she passed him once more and went to sit back down next to Eren, with the booklet listing all the available courses for them to enrol into at Rose District College tomorrow.

“See- there, theatre studies.” Mikasa flipped through the pamphlet until she located the right page and held it out to Eren. “Have a read and see what you think.”

A couple moments of silence passed as Eren began to scan down the page before he spoke.

“So what course are you taking then, Mikasa?”

“You should know by now.” Mikasa wound her arms around Eren’s shoulders, bringing him closer to her, before planting a soft kiss on his forehead. “I’ll follow you wherever you go.”

Jean retched inwardly, not in the mood to stick around whilst Mikasa tried to sort the resident idiot’s tangled ambitions out, and stood up himself to get himself something to eat. He’d scarcely opened the kitchen cupboard and started rummaging for some form of sustenance when he felt a harsh buzzing against his thigh. He dug in his pocket and caught hold of his phone, half-expecting to see his mother’s number back to taunt him again, but no- the number blinking at him this time wasn’t in his contacts.

He swiped the ‘answer’ icon and held the phone up to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey Jean, it’s me, Connie!”

“Connie? You’re not in my contact list, man. Did you get a new phone or something?”

“Yep!” Came the over-enthusiastic response. So much energy almost made Jean wince at the sheer effort of imagining such zealousness. “My parents bought me some new stuff to congratulate me on getting into college,”

Jean smiled to himself, returning to his search through the cupboards. “Yeah, knowing your grades, that’s a miracle in itself.”

“Nice to know you’re still the same old ass that you were in high school.”

“Wouldn’t change it for the world and you know it,” Jean pulled out a package of dry crackers he didn’t remember buying. “So? What’s up? Why’d you call?”

“Well I WAS going to ask if you’d be interested in coming over to mine and Sasha’s place this evening for a sort-of-party thing but if you’re bringing your shitty attitude I won’t bother.” Connie’s tone was laced with sarcasm that Jean could practically taste.

“Ha-ha, I’ll be nice, how about that. What was that about a party? You understand that we’ve all just moved into our own places and are all about as broke as you are dense?”

“You may call me stupid, but that doesn’t sound like you being ‘nice’ at all, you buzzkill.” Connie said in a mockingly wounded tone. “But it’s nothing big or fancy, so you don’t have to worry about spending a bomb. All we ask is you chip in some cash for drinks.”

The date on these crackers really didn’t align with when Jean and Eren moved in. “I don’t know about that, sounds borderline expensive.”

“Come on dude,” Connie whined into his ear. “All of our friends’ll start getting jobs and stuff in the next couple of months before college and then once college starts we’ll hardly see each other. This is, like, our last chance to get together and see everyone properly!”

“Connie, Connie, don’t whinge at me, I was kidding. We’re not so broke we can cough up for some drinks. Hang on,” he pulled the phone from his ear and twisted around from where he was facing the cupboard to look over at Mikasa and Eren behind him. “Are you two interested in going over to Connie and Sasha’s new place tonight?”

“Connie and Sasha’s?” Eren’s head appeared over the back of the sofa, his face creasing into a frown. “What for?”

“He wants to see everyone before we all go our separate ways for college.”

“Who else will be there?” Mikasa asked.

Jean put the phone back to his ear.

“Who else have you invited, Connie?”

“Uh…everyone?!” he said as if it were obvious and Jean was an idiot for not realising. “You know, Armin and Reiner and Bertolt and Ymir and Krista and Mina and Annie and Thomas and Nac and Mylius and Samuel and-”

Jean took the phone away from his ear before he’d finished. His voice continued to babble dimly in the speaker. “Everyone, he says.”

“Sounds like it could be fun.” Eren mused, stretching his arms over his head disinterestedly before a wicked grin lit up his features. “Excellent, actually, I could do with an excuse to get shit faced.”

“That means I need to go with you to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

“Mikasa, will you quit fussing?”

Jean shook his head before speaking back into the phone. “Safe to say I think we’re all coming. Uh, me and Eren and Mikasa, that is.”

“Awesome!” Connie sounded delighted. “See you at- I don’t know, like six or something tonight?”

“Six sounds good?” Jean raised an eyebrow over at Eren and Mikasa who nodded in affirmation.

“Cool, see you then! Don’t forget to bring money- oh, and don’t forget to not bring your attitude Jean!”

“Little shit,” Jean hung up and threw his phone down onto the counter with a resounding clatter, turning back to further investigate the cupboards for something vaguely edible that weren’t crackers probably left by the previous resident. He and Eren had both severely underestimated just how much food two teenage boys could go through in the short space of time they’d been living here, and the lack of food in the kitchen pretty much summarised it. Mikasa must’ve used the rest of the bread to make Eren’s toast. If well-expired crackers were the kind of diet Jean could expect from now on as a college student, he certainly wasn’t looking forward to the experience as a whole.

Oh well. Maybe Eren wasn’t wrong. Getting shit faced seemed like a pretty good idea for tonight.

…

Mikasa ended up staying the whole day, watching as Jean and Eren played match after match in Eren’s game before she made Eren go upstairs and put on a clean shirt and pants that didn’t belong to one half of a tracksuit. Jean took this as a sign he should probably change out of his pyjamas and get a shower too, and by the time he was clean and in real people clothes, it was time to leave for Connie and Sasha’s party.

Mikasa drove them over to the other side of town. Whilst Eren, Jean and people like Connie and Sasha had chosen to spend the money their parents had given them for college as well as the scraps of savings they’d managed to scrape together throughout high school doing part-time jobs on their houses; Mikasa had instead spent hers on a car, considering she, out of all of them lived closest to the college and didn’t need to move away from her parent’s house to make the daily commute to and from college as short as possible. That, and the car made the journey even shorter.

They had all lived around and about a single large town, Rose, which was surrounded by their own smaller towns and districts. Rose was the only substantial town around for miles, meaning there was only one high school, which was where Jean had met all of these other people from the surrounding villages. Now that college was looming ominously just around the corner for all of them, it seemed like the most logical step to just move away from home and as close to the college as possible, which, there was only one of, unless you made the long, long trip to the nearest city, Sina.

“So everyone at this party’s all going to Rose District College, right?” Jean asked as Mikasa turned into the cul de sac that Connie had specified. “I mean, I’m all for the party aspect, but if we’re all going to be seeing each other once term starts Connie’s excuse of wanting to see everyone is a bit void.”

“No, not everyone.” Mikasa replied, peering over the steering wheel as she checked the house numbers one by one. “Armin’s going to a university out of town.”

“And I’m pretty sure Annie wants to go to Stohess University College in Sina.” Eren added from the passenger seat besides Mikasa. Jean watched him curl his upper lip into a disapproving sneer. “Apparently, a District College wasn’t good enough.”

“That, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but a few people are probably going into apprenticeships and the like.” She twisted the wheel in her sharply, pulling the car smoothly into park on the curb, wheels softly bumping up then coming down to rest on the road as she killed the engine. “This is the one,”

Jean looked out from the backseat window at Connie and Sasha’s house. They, too, had been renting for the past couple of weeks, but he hadn’t anticipated the house to look so…well, like a home. In such a cosy little neighbourhood curving around into one solid little community. The house was big and bright and stood alone, separate from any others around it. The walls were white washed, but not stark or cold, if anything it made the house look endearing, like the idea of a picket fence. Jean and Eren’s place was at the end of a row of grim little terraced houses and certainly didn’t feel like a home. It felt like exactly what it was- student accommodation. A grey, gloomy building that was much- much smaller than Connie’s place.

And the little prick had the nerve to go on at me complaining about being broke, he thought sullenly as he hurriedly combed his fingers through his fringe, patting it into place as he checked his reflection in the car window. Satisfied, he clambered out of the back seat, nearly tripping over his own feet as he straightened up and slammed the car door behind him. Puberty certainly hadn’t done him any favours over the past five years. He’d shot up like a weed two years in, and, thankfully, whilst he’d lost his child-like puppy fat, he’d remained a bean pole ever since, awkward and long and lanky. He’d never quite outgrown the awkward stage of having poor coordination either and evidently now he had the grace of a newborn baby giraffe.

They could hear music throbbing from inside by the time the three scarcely walked up the driveway (which was, mercifully, empty- Jean didn’t think he could handle the gloating if they’d had a car on top of the envy-inducing house as well) when suddenly the front door flew open and rebounded on its hinges, accompanied by a joyous shout of “Hey guys!” before the front door bounced back and smacked the speaker aside.

Jean grinned as they reached the entrance. “Hey Sasha. I see the new place is treating you well.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Sasha said gruffly in muted humiliation as she pushed the door open again with a touch more care. Her eyes quickly lit up when she saw Eren and Mikasa standing behind Jean. “Hi Eren! Hi Mikasa! It’s so good to see you again! It feels like it’s been for-ev-er!!” She accentuated this by throwing her arms around Mikasa into a one-sided embrace that wasn’t reciprocated.

“You saw us two weeks ago at graduation,” Eren rolled his eyes before stepping into the hallway, past Sasha clinging to Mikasa, who had gone stiff as a board. “But this is your place? It’s huge! How far are you guys from the college here?”

“It’s not that big,” Sasha snorted. “It’s just…spacious!”

“That makes our place a cupboard,” Jean said under his breath, following Eren into the hallway as Mikasa peeled herself away from Sasha. To their left was the living room- already there were people milling about inside, visible through the glass panes in the door- and dead ahead was the kitchen at the end of a good stretch of twenty feet or so. Everything was white, clean and bright, compared to the dinginess of the place he and Eren were currently calling home. It looked like it belonged to some well off married couple rather than a couple of just-graduated high schoolers.

“The college is about ten minutes down the road, if I remember correctly.” Mikasa said in response to Eren’s question. “It’s not far by any means.”

“Fuck, so how expensive is rent? We looked at flats and stuff closer to the college but we couldn’t afford any of them,” Eren turned on Sasha who shrugged nonchalantly.

“I don’t know, my parents told me not to worry about it, they’ve got it covered.”

Eren and Jean shared a shrewd look at each other, simultaneously recalling the almost identical lectures that both their parents had given them before they both moved out, about responsibility with money and using it wisely because what they’d given them was all they’d be getting from them. If they wanted more, they had to go out and work for it. Speaking of which, that was something else Jean had to look into. If he didn’t start working this summer, he might as well move back into his mother’s house here and now.

But that was another problem for another day. Pushing these thoughts to the back of his head, Jean opened the door to the living room and stepped inside.

The thud of music and the dim chatter mingling amidst a heavy dubstep beat washed over him immediately.  As Connie had said, all the people he had come to know throughout high school were here - big, burly Reiner and endlessly tall Bertolt sat on the sofa in the middle of the room watching the music video playing on the screen in silence; tiny, cute Krista stood next to the TV’s blaring speakers with the fierce-faced Ymir’s arm draped over her shoulders as she attempted to make conversation with lily-livered Daz, flinching under Ymir’s unrelenting glare. The token lovesick couple Franz and Hannah were canoodling and crooning into each other towards the back corner of the room, where there were yet another pair of double doors, opening out into a back room which connected to the kitchen. There, he could see Nac and Mylius talking over their drinks and half-watching as Thomas and Connie were arranging cups onto the table for, what Jean assumed would be, a game of beer pong.

Jean made his way past Franz and Hannah, who were completely oblivious to Mina and Samuel stood only a few feet away sharing looks mixed with equal parts amusement and disgust at the blatant display of affection- clearly they just didn’t care, which made an interesting change. Back in high school it was all about secrecy and holding hands under desks and kissing behind the lockers when no one else was around.

Connie looked up from stacking plastic cups- apparently, this was two-tier beer pong- and caught sight of Jean approaching. His face quickly split into a grin as he abandoned Thomas’s side, leaving him to fill the cups by himself, and met Jean halfway.

“Hey, man, good to see you! Although you took your sweet time,” He chuckled as he clasped Jean’s outstretched hand and bumped it against his chest.

“Fuck off, it’s like six thirty. So we missed half an hour. Big deal.” Jean said.

“Well you’ve got better time keeping than a few others.” He rolled his eyes, skimming over the party before raising his hand in greeting as Mikasa and Eren entered the room. “Armin still hasn’t shown up, neither has Annie, or Mylius-”

“Annie’s not coming,” Reiner interrupted from across the room, raising his voice to be heard over the music. He twisted around in his seat to face them from the back of the sofa. “She’s busy with moving to Stohess next week and wasn’t interested.”

“That’s to be expected. She’s always been a wall flower, anyway, a party’s not really her scene. Hey, big guy, what’s she studying?” Jean yelled back.

“Uh…”

“Geology,” Bertolt piped up from beside Reiner.  His face quickly coloured when Reiner raised his eyebrow at the speed of his answer as he cleared his throat. “She’s studying…geology…”

“Geology? Like rocks and stuff?” Connie wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Why’s she getting into that? Sounds like a hell of a lot of boring to me.”

Bertolt shrugged, and both he and Reiner turned back around to properly greet Eren as he walked past. It took a split second before Eren sighted the beer pong set up and immediately made a beeline towards them.

“Are you guys about to play? I want to be pissed out of my head before tonight’s over, so I’ll join in. Oh right,” He paused, dug in his pocket and withdrew his house keys. “If I’m too drunk to remember where I put these I’ll need someone to let me into my house so…here.” Eren tossed Connie his keys who caught them, looking bewildered.

“You drove here didn’t you?”

“Mikasa did,” Jean corrected, stifling a yawn at Eren’s zealousness. “I don’t know what he’s on about, if he can’t even see straight by the time he gets home she’ll deal with it. Speaking of alcohol, I’d like to complain that my hand is currently empty and my throat is well and truly dry.”

Connie shook his head, grinning as he held his hand out and made a beckoning motion. “Nope, money first, then you can drink to your heart’s content.”

“Cheap bastard.” Jean stuck his hand into his back pocket and retrieved a bank note bunched up into a crumpled mass. He hastily smoothed it out in his hand before dropping it into Connie’s open palm, who looked at the meagre note with an almost disappointed expression. Jean frowned. “What?”

“You call me cheap?” Connie asked mockingly, raising an eyebrow and laughing as Jean’s face quickly darkened. “I’m kidding, geez, no need to look at me like that. Help yourself to a drink, it’s all over there.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the kitchen counter, overflowing with six-packs and cartons of bottles and cans of various beers and spirits. “Although, you might just want to make it one.”

“Connie, I’m this close to smacking you in the face with this bottle.” Jean plucked a glass bottle off the side and pried the lid off, it’s jagged edges digging harshly into his hand as he flung the little metal cap at Connie laughing his face off.

He opened his mouth to retort but before he had chance, he was cut off by a cry of,

“Connie!! What are you doing?!”

Connie spun on his heel to see Sasha storming across the room with a positively thunderous look on her face. He automatically flinched as she drew level with him and crossed her arms over her chest.

“What do you think this is? This table isn’t for your stupid games; I was going to put food out!” She said testily, still scowling like a menacing puppy. “Hey! Stop that!” She jabbed a finger at Thomas and Eren who were in the process of pouring beer from bottles into the plastic cups, who both jumped instinctively at her sharp tone, very nearly slopping a lot of drink down themselves.

“Food? Oh come on Sasha, no one wants to eat! Tonight’s just an excuse to get hammered and drunkenly reminisce on our high school career before we all disappear from each other’s lives,” Connie sighed in exasperation.

Sasha was having none of it.

“Nope, wrong answer!” She held her arms up in a cross over her chess. “I refuse to hear it! No party is complete without food, and I don’t want to hear otherwise! Besides, I ordered some food specially, just for tonight.”

“Special how?” Eren was wiping beer off various parts of himself. “Special enough to make up for the fact I don’t get to play beer pong?”

Sasha looked positively delighted with herself. “I ordered some pastries and stuff from a bakery that I found not too long ago- when I had to walk to school for exams and stuff, I used to walk past this bakery and it always smelled so good but I never had any money on me, so I figured now was the perfect time to get something!”

Jean could feel his lips twitching into a smile behind the lip of his beer bottle as he raised it to his mouth and took a sip, the acrid bitterness spreading from the tip of his tongue to the back as it washed down his throat. He couldn’t deny that he’d sort of missed this, the friendly banter, the ridiculous antics, Sasha’s stupid fixation on food. It was strange to think it could all disappear in the next few months, even though they were all going to the same college that Autumn. Somehow, he knew, and had a pretty good feeling that everyone else knew, that this was definitely marking the end of an era.

Well, best make the most of it.

He tipped his head back and gulped down as much as he could without spluttering, wiping his mouth on his shirt cuff. “Alright, so Sasha’s got food on the way, but in the meantime, we can still play. Don’t worry,” He cut Sasha off as she opened her mouth to protest. “You can have your table back by the time your bakery order shows up.”

“…Sure.” She didn’t look convinced, but took a step back anyway. “But only until then, OK?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Connie waved her down as he pushed his sleeves up, a wicked glint lighting up his eyes in delight as Thomas finished filling the last cup. “I’ll go grab the balls!”

The next hour or so was full of shouts and cries of both disappoint and joy as Jean and Connie crowed at Eren or Thomas’s lousy aim or groaned as they had to chug a half cup of beer every time they managed to land a hit. Eventually Reiner joined in, knocking multiple cups over in the process, and to even out the teams, Sasha joined up on Jean’s side and proved to be quite adept at aiming and getting the other team extremely well doused in alcohol.

At one point a little later, Armin finally showed up, apologising for being late, and mumbled something about studying for an additional entrance exam he still had to take to secure the place at the university he wanted to go to.

“Armin!” Eren exclaimed, already getting pink in the face as he threw his arms around him, squeezing him tight as he giggled like an idiot with joy. “I’ve missed you buddy!!”

“Hi, Eren, it’s good to see you too,” Armin laughed half-heartedly, unhooking Eren’s arms from pinning his own to his sides. “Hi, everyone, nice to see you’re all having a good time.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to university, Armin.” Connie said thickly, raising his next cup to his lips. He wasn’t quite drunk yet, but certainly teetering on the edge. “Where are you going again?”

“I’m going to start by studying geography and biology at Maria State University, but eventually I’d like to consider doing an extra major in psychology at Paradis City University, near the coast.” Armin seemed to swell with pride and anticipation, his bright blue eyes shining enthusiastically. “I don’t want to stay in one place, feeling confined for the rest of my life. I want to see the world, and I think studying all over the country is a good start, don’t you think?”

“That’s so cool,” Eren wound his arm around Armin’s shoulders, who started in surprise as he hugged him close to himself once again. “But I wish you weren’t going away…I would’ve wanted to housemate with you instead of horse face over there-” At this, he gestured at Jean with his cup, its contents sloshing down the sides. “But I’m still happy for you- look, everyone, look how smart my Armin is. He’s going to university!”

“Yes, we’re all very proud of Armin.” Mikasa appeared behind Armin and rested her arm over his shoulder on the opposite side, patting his back in encouragement before she took hold of Eren’s arm and pried it off him. “But maybe don’t smother him, Eren.”

The group laughed as Eren snatched his arm away from Mikasa, glowering at her for a few seconds before bringing the plastic cup in his hand up to his lips and downing its contents with no reservation. Clearly, he was still intent on following up on his earlier promise to get as nailed as possible.

“I don’t tend to agree with him, but Eren’s right, that’s pretty cool Armin,” Jean added. His own thoughts were starting to turn a bit blurry, but everything felt a little softer, a little fuzzier around the edges and there was a happy warmth sitting in the bottom of his heart right now, so he was, for the most part, feeling good. However, now he was thinking of Armin chasing his dreams, he couldn’t deny he was a little envious. He leant on the table, resting his elbows against the solid surface and balanced his chin in his palm, his tone wistful. “It’s great you know what you want to do with your life.”

“What do you mean, Jean?” Reiner was in the midst of drinking three of Thomas’ beers that he’d lost to Jean’s team. Thomas in question was currently sat crookedly in the corner of the room with his head in his hands, marking himself as the first casualty of the evening, with Krista next to him who was rubbing him on the back and asking if he was OK. “You’ve got dreams too, don’t you? You know, the whole art thing?”

The familiar bitter feeling swirled up from within once more as Jean dropped his gaze, swirling the dregs of his last drink in the bottom of the cup in his free hand.

“Yeah, sort of.” He mumbled, barely audible over the music. “They’re just not very realistic, I suppose.” He straightened up as Eren managed to finally land a ping pong ball into a cup to an accompanying cheer. His next drink was quickly pushed into his hands, and obligingly, he began to drink.

“Speaking of dreams and shit, what’s everyone enrolling in tomorrow?” Connie chipped in as he lined up to take his turn aiming with the ball. “I’m taking a course in public services before getting an apprenticeship at the Royal Police Academy if I pass the first year!”

“I’m taking the catering course!” Sasha drawled, raising her hand as her face split into a wide, sunny grin. The ball that Connie had just thrown clipped the side of a cup and bounced off the side of the table, rolling away onto the floor and halfway across the room. “Just think of all the cooking and the prep and the flavours, ahhhh, it’s going to be so good!”

“Anyone could have guessed that, Sasha.” Reiner smiled and rolled his eyes, downing the last of his drink, shuddering in repulse at the taste. “Is this supposed to be fun? This stuff tastes like cat piss.”

Eren nudged him in the ribs. “Shhhh, just knock it back and don’t ask questions. What course are you enrolling in?”

“Huh? Oh, right. Well, I’m not planning to go to college, actually. I’ve been applying for apprenticeships in engineering and mechanics.”

“Why engineering?”

“I want to work on vehicles and machinery for the armed forces, that’s something that I think would make my parents proud. Bert’s doing the same,” Reiner nodded over at where Bert was stood, stooping so he could make conversation with Armin. “Except he’s going into more reserve stuff. I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him about the details.”

“Krista’s doing an apprenticeship type thing too,” Ymir added. She had come to stand at the edge of the group to watch the game as it progressed, not entirely distancing herself from where Krista was comforting a woozy-looking Thomas, but far enough away to be out of the vicinity of any impromptu vomit. “Well, sort of. She wants to do nursing so she’s obviously got to study medicine, but she’s going to be working in a doctor’s clinic every so often as part of her course.”

“And what’re you doing?” Jean asked her, finishing his drink and placing his empty cup onto the table.

Ymir arched her eyebrow, narrowing her gaze at him as if the answer were obvious. “I’m going with her, of course. A frail little thing like Krista needs someone to keep an eye on her around all that blood and sickness and the like. I have to stick around and make sure she doesn’t cave.”

“Forgive me, but you don’t strike me as the nursing type,” Jean gave her an equally mocking look in return.

Ymir’s expression darkened. “Go fuck yourself with something sharp and pointy, horse face.”

“Case in point,” He smirked, before hastily ducking as she flexed her arm and threw her still-full cup straight at him. Despite his attempt to dodge, it crashed into his chest with a wet slap, its contents splashing and soaking right into his shirt through to his skin, sending a chill running across his torso.

“Ymir!” Krista’s disapproving cry could be heard over the roar of laughter that rose up from almost everyone else around the table as Jean plucked at his drenched shirt, mouth open, unsure of how to retaliate. Ymir stood across from him on the opposite team’s side, a smug grin tugging her lips into a cruel smile.

“You bitch,” He gasped as Connie and Eren slapped him on the back, guffawing at his misfortune. “The hell was that for?!”

“Oh I wonder what,” She said dryly, her tone laced with sarcasm.

Jean quickly felt the heat rising in his cheeks as he looked around, seeking some form of support to fight his corner, but no, everyone was too busy laughing their faces off. Sasha was bent double, Reiner was leaning on the table and covering his mouth with one hand, his shoulders shaking in laughter; Connie and Eren were practically on the floor, Bertolt was chuckling and even Armin had an uncertain but undeniably amused smile curving his lips upwards.

A combination of humiliation and his bruised ego swelled within him for a split second; he took an indefinite step backwards, only to bump into Mikasa.

“Here,” she said quietly, taking hold of his elbow before he even had the chance to start uttering an apology. She turned him around and began to guide him towards the door. “How about you go clean yourself up whilst everyone calms down.”

He didn’t have the time to protest by the time he’d digested what she’d just said; she’d already pushed him right through the living room (Past Franz and Hannah, who had since migrated to the sofa and were still completely oblivious to the rest of the party), and a second later, right through the door which she shut in his face.

Jean watched after her through the glass pane helplessly as Mikasa turned on her heel impassively, her expression unreadable as she walked back towards the back room, disappearing. He was left, alone in the hallway, his shirt sopping wet, thoroughly disgraced, stinking like some horrendous combination of vodka and cider.

He didn’t need this.

The lingering jealousy that had sparked from Armin talking about his goals and pursuing his dreams reignited and something like fury bulged into his chest, sending a sour taste spreading into his mouth. He couldn’t deny it; he was practically spitting with envy. Not just of Eren and his under-appreciated relationship with Mikasa, like usual. But listening to everyone talking about how they were going to be actively following their dreams within a few short months…that struck a very resentful chord within him. It seemed so ridiculously unfair; everyone was out there chasing their passions and looking forward to the future, and Jean had to bend beneath his mother’s iron will and the harsh reality of the world and study something he had practically no interest in.

He had to forsake his dreams for the practicality.

How fucking sad.

Usually he’d feel angry at such loss of control to the circumstances, but instead he felt surprisingly disheartened and strangely hollow. Maybe he’d resigned to this inevitable turn of events long ago. That’s life, after all.

Jean turned away from the door, running a hand through his hair, before self consciously patting it back into place, as his gaze fell onto a box of cigarettes with a lighter resting on top of them placed next to the door. Funny, he didn’t recall either Connie or Sasha ever smoking. Maybe they belonged to someone else.

Whatever, he could do with an excuse to get outside for a while.

He snatched up the box and the lighter and opened the front door, relishing the feeling of the cool evening air that washed over his face as he pulled the door closed behind him. He took two steps forward before sinking down onto his heels and taking a seat on the doorstep.

It took two or three attempts to light the cigarette before the light finally took; instantly billowing a familiar chalky texture of smoke into his mouth. He wasn’t exactly a habitual smoker, but he’d had his fair share of cigarettes on and off throughout high school. It wasn’t something he did often, either, more of something that helped calm him- gave him chance to think things over in a cool, steady process that followed the simple action of raising the cigarette to his lips, taking a drag, and then letting the thick, acrid-smelling cloud out again.

Jean tipped his head back and blew a long stream of smoke skywards. It was late July, so the evenings were still light, but the shards of light were beginning to recede behind clouds dappling the rapidly darkening blue expanse above him, and there was a distinct chill in the air. That much was especially evident when he became keenly aware of just how damp his shirt was. Even from out here, when everything was so much more still and quiet compared to the riot going on inside, he could still hear the thump of music from the TV speakers, feel the thud of a heavy bass reverberate in his chest dimly as the summer evening breeze ruffled the leaves of the trim hedge separating the house’s front garden from the next.

He was tired, to be honest. Just so sick and tired of having everything he’d ever dreamed of put onto the back burner. To have his hopes and dreams pale into insignificance when compared to those of his friends, who, by the current state of affairs, were shaping up to have a better future than him in any light. After all, Armin was considering sciences and Reiner, mechanics; how could his trivial little sketchbook rival that? Krista and Ymir would be going into the medical profession within the next two to three years- well respected, if nothing else. And Sasha was following her lifelong dream. Any idiot could see how irrelevant it was to sit at home all day watching your lifelong crush from afar and wistfully copying her profile onto a sheet of cheap-ass paper with half-assed effort and a talent barely worth considering.

Jean brought the cigarette back up to his lips, his heart dipping in his chest, filled with dark sentiment and bitter acquiescence. He wasn’t special. He knew that. What could he possibly hope to gain from drawing out a fantasy world? What possible career could span from that?

His throat burned and his eyes were beginning to water from the ash curling from the tip of the butt between his fingers as he puffed out another cloud, watching the smoke waft into the air, linger for a second, then dissipate as it was carried away on the wind as he tapped the excess cinders onto the ground.

Maybe it was better this way. He knew, deep down, his mother was coming from a sincere place of love and affection. Business studies would be better for him in the long run. The experience, at the very least, should be enough to see him through the right job interviews to get to the right place and settle into the right way for him. That in itself was a tolerable idea.

It was the knowledge of the sacrifices that he’d have to make that hurt the most.

The dim hum of a vehicle’s engine and the clunk of it drawing to a stop as its engine was killed drew him out of his thoughts, and he looked up from the doorstep with mild interest. A small van had pulled up to the curb and a boy was getting out, rummaging in the passenger seat for something for a few seconds before retrieving a large, white box which he hefted into his arms as he straightened up.

It wasn’t a new van- once upon a time it must’ve been white; now it was stained, discoloured, and clearly old- what, with its rounded hood and perfectly circle headlights. It looked very out of place and of another era, especially when parked next to Mikasa’s relatively new (albeit second hand) Renault. The side of the van bore what looked like hand-painted red script with paint flaking off at the edges, curving into the words

Bodt Family Bakery

Jean raised an eyebrow, wondering for a split second why the hell a bakery was making a delivery at past eight o clock in the evening, before his foggy mind addled with a combination of dolefulness and beer, realised it was probably the bakery order that Sasha had mentioned two hours earlier.

Well he took his sweet time, he thought grimly as he brought the cigarette back to his lips once more.

“Excuse me,” The boy had made his way up the driveway and was now standing over Jean, looking down at him with as pleasant a smile as one could expect someone to give a drunk teenager stinking of alcohol with a huge wet patch down his front. “Does Miss Braus live here?”

Jean looked back up at him, resting his chin in the hand holding his cigarette, the other laying carelessly over his knee. The stranger was tall; not exactly slim, but well-built nonetheless, with broad shoulders, upon one of which he rested the white box he’d brought from the van with one hand. His dark hair was parted in the centre, framing his rather wide forehead and a bright, cheerful expression peering through a smattering of freckles spilt over his cheeks and nose. His cedar coloured eyes remained steady on Jean as he stood above him, with a clearly well-practiced, winning smile.

Jean looked him up and down once more- taking in the light flecks of some dusty substance clinging to the fibres of his checked shirt and streaking down the fronts of the thighs of his jeans, where he clearly must have rubbed his hands off onto. Flour, he supposed.

He put the cigarette into his mouth and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“She’s inside with the rest of the party.” He said blankly. The music still thudded on from behind the closed door. “Although if you knock, I don’t think they’ll be able to hear you.”

“Ha ha, I guess not.” The boy looked towards the door as he spoke, shifting the box into his arms. “So this is all for a party. I should’ve known, no single person would order this much for just themselves.”

Jean snorted under his breath. “Guess you don’t know Sasha too well,” He said to himself, looking away from the delivery boy as he inhaled deeply on the cigarette, resisting the instinctive urge to cough and hack up a lung.

“So…if it’s party- if you don’t mind me asking- what are you doing out here all by yourself?”

Jean twisted around to face the stranger once more, eyebrows raised. “Why do you want to know?”

“It just seems a bit lonely to be out here all on your own, when you could be in there, having fun with all your friends.”

He shrugged and turned away once more, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and exhaling a long stream of nicotine vapour into the air. The boy next to him cleared his throat.

“They’ll be fine without me.” Jean muttered savagely. “They’ve got nothing to worry about, least of all about me.”

“That doesn’t sound like you’re having a particularly good time.”

“Sounds like you’re pretty observant, Sherlock Holmes.”

He chuckled at Jean’s retort, before he looked at him with an odd sort of sideways glance as if he was carefully considering something. A moment later, he laid the box in his arms on the porch just in front of the door and slowly sat down next to Jean.

Jean instinctively leaned backwards, away from the guy he’d scarcely just met and had only shared a handful of words with.

“Alright, just what are you doing?” He asked, bewildered, more confused than anything.

The boy looked surprised at Jean’s aversion to his simple act of sitting. “What do you mean?”

“No offense, bud, but I don’t know you. Why are you…you know….” He gestured at him vaguely, motioning how he was seated on the doorstep beside him. “Sitting with me?”

“I hate to see someone by themselves,” He said softly. He shifted a little, drawing his knees closers to his chest as he folded his arms beneath the bends of his legs so they rested against the backs of his thighs. “So, tell me, what’s got you sitting out here all by yourself when there’s a perfectly good party going on back there that I’m sure you’re a part of?”

Jean opened his mouth; then hesitated, closing it- then opened it once more.

“I…I just kind of felt…out of place.”

He nodded understandingly.

“And I…I thought I should just…get away for a bit.”

“What made you feel out of place?” He asked.

Jean shrugged. “I don’t…well. It’s something to do with college and the future and all that stuff.”

“You’re starting college? That’s great!” He sounded almost awed as Jean watched him curiously from the corner of his eyes.

“It’s not that hard to get into college, you know.”

“I know. But not everyone you meet wants to go to college, or can’t get into one. It’s great that you managed to get a place. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah…but that’s not the problem. It’s the courses. It’s just…you know they always say ‘follow your dreams’? Whoever ‘they’ are…but you know that’s a thing? And we’re told all our lives that the only way to go is to follow our dreams and do what we love because that’s the best way to guarantee our success in our futures? And we’re encouraged- as kids, no less- to find things that we love so we can find something to build our future careers on top of. Now that I think about it, that’s kind of sad, actually. Everything we were taught as mindless kids, scarcely forming opinions of our own was to lead up to this moment? That’s so…grim.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Fuck, I’ve got no idea where that came from. I’m just babbling nonsense.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Carry on.” The stranger coughed once more as discreetly as he could, and Jean looked up to see the faint breeze carrying the smoke from his cigarette straight into the poor kid’s face. He didn’t say anything, but the way his face was pinched in an effort to remain composed and not disgusted at the pungent smell.

“Sorry, I’ll put it out.” He dropped the stub onto the ground and crushed it beneath the heel of his black plimsoll, clearing his own throat in an attempt to get rid of the astringent residue clinging to his taste buds.

“Thanks,” he dipped his head in appreciation. “But you were saying?”

Jean’s gaze dropped to the ground. He traced the outline of the individual concrete slabs laid into the driveway, following the regular, geometric pattern they were laid out in, picking out the tiny clumps of moss and cracks in the concrete that you’d ignore at first glance. “It’s just…have you ever felt like your dreams are just too far out of reach for you? And everyone else around you is finally getting somewhere- but you’re suddenly lagging behind and desperately trying to play catch up, but you just can’t make it?”

“Hmm, can’t say I have,” Jean was dimly aware of him shifting a little besides him. “Why, what’s your dream?”

Jean shook his head. “It’s stupid.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.”

“There’s literally nothing good that can come of it.”

“Don’t say that, you don’t know something like that for sure.”

“I know it, alright, and so does everyone else in my life.” Jean sighed, doing his best to suppress the defiant feelings of injustice surging into his chest. “How far can you honestly get with art? It’s not worth the time and effort put into it, for what little worthlessness you get out of it.”

“Art?” The stranger echoed. “You draw? Or paint- or-”

“I draw, mostly. Or,” Jean’s fingers twitched in obstinate resolution. “I used to. Starting tomorrow, I guess, not anymore.”

“What happened to make you decide to abandon art?”

“Nothing happened. I just realised- I was told that it wouldn’t be a good idea to major in something so useless.”

“That’s not nice of them to call your dream useless.”

“But it is.” Jean twisted around and looked him dead in the eye. “Think about it, when was the last time you heard about a successful artist that wasn’t dead? Or an artist that doesn’t scrape by and spends his weeks working behind the counter at a fast-food place? An artist isn’t a substantial career, is it- it’s a hobby, nothing more, and to be honest, not worth it in the long run.”

“Isn’t there things you can do with art, though? Graphic design, or animation, or illustration…”

“That’s not what I want. I want to make art in my own right, not for anyone else.”

There was a long pause as Jean ran his hands through his hair, no longer caring about keeping it in place as he pressed his palm to his forehead, resting his elbow on his knee. What the hell was up with him? Why was he opening up- completely opening up to a complete stranger, no less, that he’d never spoken to before, about something he didn’t even have the balls to calmly discuss with his own damn mother? Maybe it was alcohol that had loosened his tongue, or maybe it was because he was feeling vulnerable. Maybe it was a combination of both. Maybe he was just so full of self-pity and detriment the first person to come along and show any willing to listen was good enough for him. How appropriately pathetic.

“So, uh,” The other boy was the first to break the long silence, otherwise only penetrated by the tempo of the next song beginning to pound through the walls and resound behind the front door. It was a slower song this time, with an equally heavy bass, but the singer’s voice- although garbled and muffled- sounded mournful and full of longing. “You sound pretty convinced that art isn’t for you.”

“Mm hm,” Jean mumbled, pressing his lips together grimly. No, actually; art’s the only thing for me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s the fucking idealist in me, who thinks we live in some utopian fantasy world where you don’t have to Grow the Fuck Up.

“For someone so adverse to the idea, you’re horribly hung up over it.”

Jean stared at him. He was looking elsewhere- eyes directed down the driveway to the other side of the street, but his focus was elsewhere. He unfolded his arms from behind his knees and clasped them together, resting his chin on his fingers.

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve done nothing but tell me how terrible this idea of you studying art will be, and that doing so will only bring terrible things your way. But,” He returned Jean’s gaze, far more cool and collected than Jean currently felt. “You wouldn’t be so upset if you weren’t hung up over it. So clearly, you still love it.”

Love.

Now that was a word Jean didn’t use often. Was that true? Did he…love…his artwork? Sure, it was his favourite thing to do in his spare time, but to love something was to show a hell of a lot of commitment. Commitment, he assumed, that didn’t involve abandoning it in favour of something deemed more practical by people that didn’t know him as well as he knew himself.

“Listen, I know you probably don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say, especially if you’ve already your mind up, but I’ve always believed that since we’re only on this earth for a short time, we should spend that time doing what we love, and chase our dreams. Surely there’s no harm in that. If doing art’s your dream, you should pursue that. And you have no idea where that might take you in the future. You don’t know what may come of it until you try.”

“I mean no disrespect, but if you honestly think I can build a substantial career and generate a decent income from drawing pictures every day, I’ll start to think you’re a bit of an idiot.” Jean grinned humourlessly and rubbed at his temple in exasperation. “It’s a cliché saying, isn’t it? ‘Follow your dreams’. And we’re encouraged to live up to that manifesto as soon as we formulate the first vague idea of an interest in our heads. There should be an asterisk, though. ‘Follow your dreams’- ‘only applicable with large amounts of common sense and decent knowledge of the way the world works.’. Is that what you do?” He turned his gaze over onto his companion. “Do you live your dream?”

“Well…sort of.” He drew his knees back up to his chest again and tilted his head to one side, looking thoughtful. “I run my family’s bakery, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted, ever since I was a kid. There was nothing I wanted more as a child than to be just like my parents and capable of making magic with pastry like they did. You never quite understand it as you get older, but when you see things like baking through a child’s eyes- there’s nothing quite like that kind of magic.” As Jean watched his eyes grew brighter, shining with a child-like fascination, similar to that of which he spoke. His voice gathered speed and buoyancy with enthusiasm, and his hands grew animated as he talked. “Creating something so delicate, so beautiful, so intricate, so sweet and so- so delicious- out of the most basic things…that was incredible to watch and it’s all I ever wanted to do.”

“Woah, woah, back up,” Jean shook his head, waving him down and into silence. “Hang on, you said you run your family’s bakery?”

“Yes?”

“How old are you?”

“I just turned nineteen last month.”

“Fuck.” That was a real low blow to the self-esteem. Here was a boy- man- whatever- who thought the most beautiful things in the world were flaky lumps of pastry, and he was running a business? At nineteen? And here Jean was dithering in uncertainty at the crossroads in his life with absolutely no clear idea of his real ‘dream’ or how to achieve it. “You run a bakery all by yourself?”

The gleam in his eyes began to die away quickly as the corners of his mouth drooped in uncertainty. “Yes…? Well, I have been recently. I used to work with my grandfather, but unfortunately he passed away earlier this year.”

“Uh…sorry, man. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

“It’s fine,” He looked back up, giving Jean a small, sad little smile. “What’s done is done. He was a wonderful grandfather to me when it mattered most- and he taught me a lot. Without him, I probably wouldn’t be able to do what I do today. Not just about baking, either- I never went to school, so he taught me everything I needed to learn at home.”

Jean cleared his throat as a futile attempt to diffuse the tension. Even though this guy talked about his grandfather’s passing with that stupid little smile on his face, there was just something about throwing a relative’s death into conversation that was a mood killer. “So, uh, what about your parents? If your grandfather was your guardian, are they…um…also…?”

“Hm?” He looked surprised. “Also? What? Dead? Oh, no, definitely not! No, no, my dad left when I was nine. I haven’t seen him in a really long time. And my mother is almost always away from home because she writes cookery books and does shows at food festivals and stuff, so she’s all over the place all the time doing tours and book signings and all of that. My grandfather was the only one at home with me for the longest time, so I tend to mention him before my parents. Sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead you like that.” And with that, he flashed Jean another overly bright, happy-go-lucky smile.

“’S fine,” Jean mumbled. He toyed with a loose thread flying away from one of the pre-torn holes in the knees of his jeans, rolling it in between his forefinger and thumb. Well, if his evening hadn’t already been ruined by having all his hopes and dreams crushed by the free roaming spirits of his friends’ ambitions outliving his wasn’t enough, here he was: feeling stupidly insignificant next to a home schooled, eternally optimistic halfwit who genuinely believed Jean could and should sacrifice all hopes of a successful future and pin everything on the extremely- extremely slim chance that he could become an artist. Yet this halfwit was running a business, and successfully, by the sounds of it, and there was only a year’s difference in age between them. There was no way he could achieve what this guy had by his nineteenth birthday. “And…it doesn’t get lonely?”

“Lonely?”

“Well, you’re by yourself all the time. You’ve lost the person who was closest to you, your dad’s dropped off the face of the planet, and your mother’s somewhere halfway round the country- how does that not get lonely?”

“It doesn’t, really,” His answer was a little too quick as he diverted his gaze to his feet, his voice airy and not entirely convincing. “I mean…it certainly helps that I love what I’m doing. It makes me happier than anything that I can do this, and keep up my family’s legacy. The bakery’s been part of us since my great-great-great grandparents, and now it’s mine. That’s something I want to take pride in. I can honestly say there isn’t anything I’d rather do.”

Jean tipped his head back and looked up to the sky. It was beginning to streak with thick dark blue veins of cloud as the night drew closer, a handful of stars beginning to fleck the wide vastness, lightyears apart. “Must be nice,” he said softly.

“Yeah. I…I guess it is.” He looked back up at Jean sat beside him, the same soft smile reappearing on his freckled face. “Do you see what I mean, about doing something you love? It really does make all the difference. It’s not worth trying to do something that you have no interest in. And as far as I can tell, the conflict you’re feeling right now is because you know, deep down, you really don’t want to give up art.”

“I could do without the psychoanalysis, thanks,” Jean snorted. “Look, I appreciate your encouragement and all, but honestly, at this point? I just need to move past it, and onto the next part in my life. I have to build a more stable future for myself, like it or not. The art course would be full of coursework and extra projects, and I still have to get myself a job- fitting all of that in as well as trying to finish a million and one art assignments just isn’t worth it. Not in the long run.”

“A job?”

“Yeah? You know, so I can pay rent and afford living and stuff.”

“Oh. So you don’t live with your parents either?”

“Parent. My dad left my mom and I too, but a bit longer ago than yours did. And no, I don’t. I moved out two weeks ago.”

“That’s good,” He followed Jean’s gaze to the night sky. “The moving out part, I mean. Not your dad leaving.”

“I know, I gathered as much. You don’t seem like the kind of guy who has the balls to make fun of that kind of thing.”

“I feel like that was something of an insult,” he said dryly, raising an eyebrow as Jean grinned maliciously at him. “But I’ll choose to take it as a compliment and that you seem to think I come across as a nice person.”

“Nice, sure, but invasive as fuck, too. It’s not everyday someone starts interrogating you about your hopes and dreams. Speaking of which,” Jean jabbed a thumb over his should at the box laying on the doorstep behind them. “Don’t you have a delivery to make?”

“Huh? Oh! Of course, I completely forgot,” He scrambled to his feet, turning around and hastily scooping up the box as he rapped hurriedly on the door with his knuckles. “Damn you and your distracting mixed up ambitions,”

“Hey you were the one who wanted to talk,” Jean scoffed, a smile still playing on his lips as the latch in the door sounded and it swung open. He turned back around, picking up the box of cigarettes at his side and the lighter, debating whether or not to have another as he heard Sasha’s exclaim of delight when the baker’s boy handed her delivery over and accepted her payment. He was dimly listening as he wrote down the exchange in a notebook tucked into his shirt pocket, handed Sasha her change and bade her a good night, thanking her for her custom, and stepped away from the doorway.

“Hey, Jean?”

Jean twisted around to see Sasha leaning out of the door frame, one hand resting on the solid wood, the other precariously balancing the big white box. She was peering down at him with a mild look of concern knitting her brows together.

“Are you coming back inside? Are you alright? You know, after…” she motioned to the spill down his chest.

Jean plucked at his shirt, surprised to find all the anger in him from earlier almost dissipated. Almost…the next time he saw Ymir he’d be tipping an ice bucket on her head. But not right now. Now, for some reason, he was feeling surprisingly mellow. Resigned, still, especially with the knowledge that come tomorrow he’d be giving up his most precious escape for good, but in his alcohol laced mind, everything was beginning to settle and blur around the edges and for a few brief moments of drunken stupor, things felt alright.

“Yeah, I will do.” He replied. A fresh cigarette slid out in between his fingers- well, looked like he’d have to have one now. “In a bit though. Just give me a few minutes.”

Sasha looked from him to the delivery boy still standing on the step and back again, still looking a little bewildered before the crease between her brows finally smoothed and she gave Jean a sunny little smile.

“Alright then. But hurry back, OK? Eren’s somehow managed to sink nearly a dozen balls and your team’ll probably want help finishing those drinks off. Connie’s having trouble standing as it is.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

With that, the door swung shut with a quiet shush, just audible over the thump of the music still pounding a new, heavy beat and electronic sound. Jean picked up the lighter at the side of him and spent a few seconds clicking at the flint, waiting for a spark to ignite.

“Well, I best be off,” The boy standing next to him said.

“You sure?” Jean lowered the newly lit cigarette and put the lighter down back besides him. “You don’t want to…I don’t know, stay for a bit? You’ve never been to a proper party before, have you? Don’t you want to see what it’s like? I’m sure Connie and Sasha would be more than happy for you to join us.” Jean waved a hand behind him at the door. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was asking him to stay, it was uncharacteristically good of him. Whatever. It was the alcohol, right? All in the alcohol.

His lips spread into a gracious smile. “You’re right about that, I’ve never been to a party before. And although I’m grateful for the invitation, I really can’t stay. I’ve got to go back to the bakery and get the things ready for tomorrow- and be in bed by ten, and it’s already-” He paused to check his watch. “Half past nine. I really need to go.”

Jean nearly choked on his cigarette. “Shit, I’m sorry for keeping you. I completely forgot, bakers like you must be up at like- what, five in the morning?”

“Three, actually. There’s a lot to get done when you’re effectively a one-man band.”

“Jesus, go then, go get your sleep. I’m not about to be the one who ruins a day of business for you by making you oversleep.”

“Haha, I’m going, I’m going. Have a good night, Jean.”

“You too.”

Jean watched his back as he walked all the way down the driveway to his beaten up little van before a thought suddenly occurred to him.

“Hey, wait!”

He jerked suddenly, his dark head nearly colliding with the top of his van as he opened the door, about to get in. He looked up, surprise etched into every freckle dotting his face.

Jean faltered for a split second before calling out once more. “I didn’t get your name,”

“My…name?”

“Yeah. I mean, you know mine. Or overheard it. Whatever.”

There was that saintly little smile that lifted the corners of his lips into his cheeks, rounding the muscles as they were pulled up into his face in amusement before he spoke.

“It’s Marco.”

Marco. Soft, warm, calm, controlled.

And with that, he got into his van, started the engine and reversed out of his parking spot. Within a matter of seconds, the van rolled around the cul de sac and out of sight.

Jean sat on the door step alone, watching the spot where the van had last been for quite some time until he finally jumped- the forgotten cigarette had finally burnt down to a stub whilst he was distracted, burning the tips of his fingers.

He dropped the stub onto the ground, crushing it besides its predecessor, before patting the front of his shirt- mercifully, it was much drier than before. Still smelled foul, but at least he wasn’t damp anymore.

With that, he got up, rubbing his singed fingertips together and went back to the party, resigning himself to one last night of blissful ignorance and copious amounts of alcohol.

Maybe it would take the edge off everything he planned to do, and everything he had to give up.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two

Whoever was playing the drums really needed to fucking stop. And was that a horn? What the hell was a practical band doing marching up and down the streets at the first sign of morning light and disturbing Jean’s sleep?

It took a few moments as his sleep-addled mind gradually slid into bleary consciousness, thickly realising that the horn blaring into his ear was the ever-persistent ring of the alarm on his phone; and the drum was a heavy beat pounding away on the inside of his skull like a bass during a particularly enthusiastic riff.

He moaned and turned over, muffling the alarm’s noise as best as he could as he pressed his face into his pillow, feeling like absolute shit. His limbs felt as heavy as lead, his eyes still ached with sleep, and his throat as rough as it would have been had it been scrubbed vigorously with sandpaper. Everything still felt as little hazy, but whether that was with fatigue, or if he was still a little drunk, he wasn’t entirely sure yet.

The incessant blare of the alarm wasn’t dying away like he’d vainly hoped it would, and he wondered what on earth possessed him to set it for so early in the morning. His hand emerged from beneath the duvet and groped about the mattress wildly until he caught hold of his phone and brought it up to face, wincing at the brightness as it lit up in his palm.

OK, so it wasn’t as early as it felt. The little pixel digits on his home screen read 8:30 as he jabbed haphazardly at the screen with his index finger until the alarm shut off, breathing a sigh of relief as he sank back into his pillow, wanting nothing more than to drift off into the sweet painlessness of oblivion and not remain awake feeling very much like he’d been hit by a bus. The exhaustion saw his eyelids slide shut and nearly drop back off to sleep, before the phone inches away from his face suddenly vibrated violently, buzzing right through the pillow into the depths of his skull

Startled, he shot upwards, his heart pumping at a million miles an hour- almost immediately regretting it as a surge of nausea bulged at the back of his throat and he very much felt like he could puke. The room spun for a few seconds as he blinked harshly several times, massaging his temple in a futile effort to ease the pain in his head away.

When the room stopped spinning, he scooped up his phone once more to see a text message from none other than his mother’s icon, flashing at him almost as impatiently as the real woman. He opened the text- Are you awake yet? Don’t forget you’ve got college enrollment today! Don’t be late! Love as always Xx

Ah. That explained the alarm.

The tension in Jean’s shoulders slackened as a disgruntled groan rose from low in his throat as he closed his eyes, resisting the urge to body slam himself back under the covers and sleep until dusk. He was pretty impressed, actually, that his drunk self had had the foresight to set an alarm for today. Truth be told, he couldn’t recall much of the party after he’d gone back inside. He dimly recalled a very drunk Eren forcing a new drink into Jean’s hand followed by another and another- and there had been a lot of chanting, a lot of chugging, and even more alcohol slopped down his front, but at that point it hadn’t mattered because almost everyone smelled of cheap beer and vodka and were enjoying the delirium that the drinks gave them. A faint memory of the party dying away into the early hours of the morning surfaced- presumably Mikasa must have driven him and Eren home. Thankfully, she had enough self control to remain sober. Otherwise he’d probably be waking up face down on Connie’s living room floor amidst a sea of plastic cups and empty bottles.

He scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand. The just-hit-by-a-car feeling still lingered in every fibre of his being, a sort of dull pain tugging on his bones. It had been a while since he’d drank as much as he had last night, and the last time he’d had a hangover this severe must have been several months ago at least. What a pretty sight, showing up to his college enrollment hungover. At least he wouldn’t be the only one. Eren was probably quite the wreck as well; plus, Connie and Sasha-who probably weren’t in much better shape- would be at enrollment with them. Oh joy, they all could look like a hot mess together.

Come on Jean. Get it together.

He swung his feet out of bed and placed them on the floor, grimacing as he realised he was still wearing the same alcohol-sodden t-shirt and jeans from last night. He smelled overwhelmingly of stale beer and unwashed body. Whatever- a much needed shower would help him shake off some of this grogginess.

The hot water didn’t have the soothing effect he’d initially wanted. It scalded his shoulders as he stood beneath the shower head and made his still-thumping head feel overwhelmingly hot as if it were boiling.

Jean soaped up his hair and scrubbed at his chest, trying to get rid of the stench and clamminess from last night’s party off his body. He’d wanted to get absolutely shit faced, and that had certainly succeeded- his mind was slowly defogging as he gradually gained proper, full consciousness, and he could piece together the indistinct recollections of him yelling passionately (singing was too dignified a word for the strangled noises he’d been making) along to some song playing on the TV with Sasha, as well as trying to get Armin to chug a beer to little success. He’d protested Jean and Eren's insistence profusely with the excuse he had studying to do tomorrow and he didn’t want to be drunk by the time he got home that night or hungover the following morning; despite Eren’s convincing that he wouldn’t get drunk from one little drink. Eventually they’d managed to make him cave, and he had valiantly managed half before spluttering and spitting it back out (thankfully, neither Connie or Sasha seemed to mind that he’d sprayed it across their living room carpet- or maybe they were just too drunk to notice or care).

Thinking of Armin made Jean remember their discussion from the beginning of the night, when they talked about their hopes for the future and the courses they’d be enrolling in for the next day. That same bitter feeling from last night reared its unwelcome head in Jean’s mind as he tried his best to swallow the reservations he still held before he stuck his head back under the water, rinsing the soap out of his hair with a little more vigour than usual.

Was he really doing this? Was he really giving up the one thing he loved to do, forever? After he started the business course, he wouldn’t have the time or energy to continue with his art- and even if he did, there wouldn’t be any point, and it would just make him feel bad for choosing to pursue something else. It was all or nothing. One or the other.

But then again…

No, damn it, no. He needed to focus. He needed to ignore that little petulant voice in the back of his head that demanded it be satisfied with his own selfish desires and ignored all things pragmatic. Even if he did enroll in the art course and spent the next two years working his ass off; painting pictures and making sculptures and slaving away and pulling all-nighters and having no time for a job and not being able to afford anything and having to move back home with his mother and have to put up with all of her smothering and her getting over-involved and berating him for choosing a useless subject…Say if he put up with all of that, and two years from now came out the other side clutching a crisp, fancy art degree…then where would he go from there? What the fuck could he do with an art degree? At least if he did well enough on the business course and showed enough willing- maybe managed to get in a good word with his lecturers- then he’d have a better chance of picking up an apprenticeship or getting a placement in some notable corporation. Hell, even if he didn’t get that, he’d get at least a good idea of how to market and sell, valuable skills potential employers would love. Hell, or even how to start his own business. Kind of like-

Shit.

Marco.

Jean stopped dead in the shower and stared at the white-tiled wall.

How could he forget?

That overly-curious boy from the bakery who sat on the doorstep with Jean- who had been stinking of alcohol and cigarettes and was already half-drunk, and yet, somehow, he hadn’t cared. He’d gently asked Jean questions until he eventually spilled every insecurity and reservation he currently held. He’d smiled that stupid little smile and told Jean all about himself as if they’d known each other for considerably longer and in return, Jean had opened up like he hadn’t in a long, long time.

Only now, in his sober, hungover state, did Jean actually realise just how humiliated he felt.

Even with the scalding shower water crashing into his face and running down his cheeks in rivulets he could feel the heat creeping up them uncontrollably.

What an idiot- he’s an idiot- you’re an even bigger idiot- you stupid drunk piece of pathetic, whiny…

Jean reached out with one impulsive hand and twisted the dial on the wall controlling the shower right down to freezing with one quick thrust of his hand, biting his lip to stop himself from crying out at the jets of water that instantly became almost unbearably icy, raking frigid needles down his skin and washing over his face in a numbing Arctic rush. He bore it for a few seconds- just enough for the heat to evaporate from his face- before he scrabbled at the dial once more and turned the faucet off, allowing himself to gasp at the bitter cold he’d subjected himself to.

What the hell was that all about?

The memories of that brief half hour (maybe it was more? He couldn’t remember clearly enough) spent talking about dreams and aspirations under the darkening evening sky beginning to speckle with stars came flooding back alarmingly fast. Marco telling him about his family and their bakery, and how he ran it by himself- how much he seemed to genuinely enjoy the craft and career he was born into- and him gently persuading Jean to pursue his love for artwork and enroll in the art course the following day.

Jean stepped out of the shower and seized a towel from the rail on the wall. What the hell did Marco know about anything? To him, dreams equalled success, because his had conveniently just happened to co-align. And good for him, Jean was sure he deserved it. But that’s not how it worked for most people, least of all for him. It was foolish to take Marco’s standpoint at their age.

Well. At least his concern had come from a sincerer place. He wasn’t deliberately trying to misguide Jean, he wasn’t a bad person, not by any means. He was just a bit of an idiot, that’s all.

Jean crossed the landing back to his room, cursing every step he took. It felt like a bowling bowl was rolling around in his head with each stride he made, clunking against his skull, resonating with a constant, dull ache. His eyes still felt laden with exhaustion and as he closed his door behind him it took every fibre of his willpower to stop himself from falling back into bed. Instead, he went to his wardrobe, sifting through his shirts and jeans until finally deciding on an oversized, hooded pullover emblazoned with a logo he didn’t recognise nor care about, with a pair of tracksuit pants. Comfort and function over fashion today. It’s not like he’d be making any important first impressions today, he was just putting his name down for the course, no big deal.

The business course. Just to clarify that to himself.

He pulled his clothes on; ducking to check his reflection in the mirror resting on the chest of drawers next to his door. He looked about as great as he felt- eyes ringed with bags darker than a panda’s, and still dimly bloodshot and watery. His damp hair was matted and unruly as he ran his fingers through it, trying to muss it up to the right degree as he smoothed out his slightly overgrown undercut. That was something he hadn’t thought about, haircuts. As much as he was reluctant to admit it, his mother usually did it for him before he left home. But there was no hope in hell that he’d be showing up on her doorstep just for a measly haircut- not just two weeks in from moving here, nope, no way. He’d have to find a barber nearby and pay like everyone else. Shit, he really needed to find a job if he’d be forking out cash every couple of weeks just to keep his undercut tamed. Maybe it would better to buy some hair clippers and try and do it himself- then again, he might run the risk of looking like a poorly shorn sheep.

Giving his hair one last tousle, he left his mirror and stepped back out of his room, yawning behind his hand as he went downstairs with the vague idea of making himself a steaming hot cup of dark, hideously strong coffee to shock his senses back into being.

He reached the ground floor and was surprised to hear someone greet him with a softly-spoken “Good morning,”

Jean looked up from rubbing the corner of his eye to see Mikasa stood behind the kitchen counter, looking remarkably awake and alert considering how late they’d been out last night.

“What’re you doing here?” Jean asked.

“I stayed the night. Didn’t think it was worth driving all the way back home if I was just going to be back here in a few hours to pick Eren and you up to go to enrollment. Assuming, that is, you want a lift.”

“Yes please.” The idea of walking a good three quarters of an hour to college in the midst of summer with his head feeling heavier than the world itself was not an appealing thing. “So, uh, what time did we get back last night?”

“I brought both of you home at about half three this morning.”

Fuck. No wonder he felt like crap, running on four hours, thereabouts, of sleep.

“You look like hell, by the way. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Thanks for noticing,” He said grimly, rubbing at his temple where there was an uncomfortable throb. “I tried extra hard this morning, can’t you tell? Do we have any coffee, by the way?”

Mikasa nodded and wordlessly pushed forwards a coffee pot that he was pretty sure neither him nor Eren had brought with them when they moved in. Clearly she’d already made some with the foresight that she’d have hangovers to deal with. Whether it was intended for his hangover in particular was highly unlikely and had probably been intended for the house’s other resident, but whatever, he could pretend.

Jean went over to the kitchen to stand beside her, pulling down a mug from the cupboard above their heads and set it down on the counter. He tried to ignore the flutter of his heart as his arm brushed against hers as she passed him the milk and sugar from the other side of the counter. Usually he wouldn’t have put those in coffee meant to nurse a hangover (having a blacker than black blend seemed to be more effective in his experience) but he found himself dumping them liberally into his cup before he could stop himself anyway, so as not to invalidate her act of kindness. He really was an idiot. Hopelessly, inevitably, head over heels…

“Where’s Eren, by the way?” He said quickly before his mind could wander much further.

“Still in bed. I was about to go wake him up. I was thinking we should leave for the college in about an hour?”

“Sounds good to me.” Jean weaved his way past the kitchen counter, heading straight for the couch, onto which he collapsed with a satisfying mush of the cushions, bringing his coffee to his lips. He almost retched at the milky-sugary sweetness that swept over his tongue. The taste of coffee was very dim. Dammit. This wasn’t going to ease a fraction of the pounding in his skull or soothe away the curdling queasiness in his stomach.

He reached out and felt along the sofa for the TV remote, fingers slipping between the crevices of the seats until he felt something hard and rectangular knock against his fingertips. He looked over to where his hand was and saw his sketchbook, lying abandoned from yesterday afternoon on the seat next to him.

Jean lowered his coffee cup and placed in on the table next to him. He swung his feet forward, resting them on the floor as he pulled the sketchbook onto his lap and opened the front cover. The cardboard back was covered in squiggles of pens that hadn’t been working and harlequin patterns he’d doodled absent-mindedly. This was the sketchbook that saw him through the last few months of high school- he’d started by drawing in it pretty frequently, almost every day- whether that be in a particularly boring class or when the teachers were yammering on about the importance of clear aspirations for the future. As time wore on the drawings dwindled, becoming smaller, quicker, more sketchy and messy. His time and passion had worn thin as his entrance exams had approached, made evident by the smudgy half-hearted crap he’d produced in that time.

Jean flipped the page, fingers stroking down a hasty drawing of a rose shedding its petals as it withered and died. Was this the one he’d drawn before his Chemistry exam, or his English literature one? Did it matter? By his standard, it was a pretty abysmal drawing. Compared to the incredibly detailed pencil sketch of a ghostly galleon ship at the front of this sketchbook, it certainly wasn’t anything particularly stunning. He flipped past it only several pages until he got to the finished drawing of Mikasa from yesterday. He’d drawn her profile haughty and angular, extending her already lithe limbs, and exaggerating her features so she seemed other-worldly like a goddess or ethereal nymph- though this was due more to him trying to disguise his mistakes rather than his creativity. There was something hollow, something lacking in the confrontational gaze he’d attempted to recreate. He ran his index finger down the thin curve of her spine, the pencil smudging softly against his fingertip. It wasn’t amazing, by any means, but still better than the stuff he’d been drawing the past month or so. At the same time, though, you could see his dwindling interest from the drawings at the beginning to these at the end.

Was it worth it? Was it really going to be worth it, throwing away the potential in his capabilities?

Was it wise to abandon this now whilst he still could, and stop himself from disappointing his artistic ability any further?

Surely this was for the best. Surely, this was the right move to leave this behind him.

We’re on this earth for a short time…we should spend that time doing what we love.

Where was the love in business numbers and analytics?

He closed his eyes as he exhaled a heavy stream of breath as the familiar freckled face from last night swam in his mind’s eye, smiling that stupid little smile.

Damn you and your idealist bullshit.

He hadn’t been aware of Mikasa standing right behind him until he felt her breath tickling against his neck.

He instinctively jolted, initially startled as he whipped around in surprise before he realised she was looking at the crudely exaggerated caricature of her lying in his lap. He instantly slammed the sketchbook shut with both hands as his cheeks began to prickle in hot shame. Fuck. She wasn’t supposed to see that.

Mikasa looked a little bewildered by his haste herself and raised her eyebrows as she took a step back.

“It’s looking pretty good, Jean.” She said plainly, as she left the back of the sofa and walked over to the bottom of the stairs. She rested her hand against the banister nailed to the wall and looked over at him once more. “But I don’t think my spine works like that.”

Jean felt his whole face burn in undiluted humiliation, waiting until her footsteps died away before he hurled the sketchbook over to the other side of the room, watching sourly as it bounced off the other sofa and hit the ground relatively harmlessly.

If that weren’t a sign to give up drawing, he didn’t know what was.

…

Rose District college was a great, sweeping structure, made mostly of glass, and built into the shape of a crescent with four separate buildings standing separately in the curve of the main block. They were all labelled individually as Humanities and Language, Maths and Science, Technology and Engineering, and Creative Arts and Media. The remaining subjects and courses were held in classrooms in the main building.

All five structures stood at the end of a long walk from the car park, a good three hundred metres or so away at least. The walk up to the main building was surrounded a wide, sprawling lawn area dotted with a few trees of varying sizes. Already, the people who would be their future classmates were hanging around here, sprawling out under the warm July sunshine as they sifted through their welcome packs that the college had given them, factoring the details of their chosen courses with mingled expressions of anticipation and disappointment.

Jean tried to ignore the disappointed faces they passed and as they walked up towards the main building, where they were directed to go by signposts reading Students for Enrollment- This Way.

Business. Business. Business. That was the course he was going to go for. He’d made his mind up weeks ago. He’d had his doubts, but that was over with- he was going to focus, he was going to be successful, he was going to do something useful…

“You still sticking with business, Jean?”

“Yep.” He said gruffly, stuffing his hands into his pockets bitterly. Fuck this.

“Man, I can’t believe you’re actually doing it,” Eren mused from besides him. He was holding Mikasa’s hand as they walked, swinging it back and forth as if he wasn’t experiencing the infuriatingly painful hangover that Jean was. He too looked like he’d taken a trip to the seventh depth of hell and back- he had roughly the same colour and constitution of a horror movie zombie- but didn’t seem fazed nonetheless. “You were always the kid with the sketchbook in high school, what made you change your mind?”

“Practicality and common sense.” Jean retorted. “Not something you’d be familiar with, I’m sure. Still signing up for theatre studies?”

“Yeah, got a problem?”

“None at all. Just let me know how you’re doing with your drama degree in two years’ time when you’re unemployed with few lingering prospects.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Stop it, both of you.” Mikasa interrupted, shooting them both a disapproving glare that shut them up more effectively than any of her words ever would. “Jean, not everyone shares your pessimistic values, so please keep them to yourself.”

If being a pessimist meant being a realist then that’s the way he was, he supposed, as they finally reached the wide glass double doors held wide open for them by staff members giving them blindingly false smiles as they held out leaflets for various courses as they walked through.

The entrance hall yawned open into a huge expanse filled with people milling about and queuing up for enrollment. The noise didn’t do Jean’s headache any favours, with the echoes of the hall bouncing around in his ears and stabbing at something internally that stung. The quicker he could get this over with and get home to his bed and a flask of considerably stronger coffee to nurse this hangover, the better.

“Hi! Are you three here to enroll?” A cheery voice from besides them spoke. “First years? This queue over here please!” They held out a hand to their left, indicating one of the longest lines in the whole room, just below a huge staircase leading up to the first floor. At the head of the queue, there was a desk stretching a good ten feet in length, upon which multiple files were stacked and a dozen people were behind with computers, signing people onto the system one by one. “Give your name and details and which course you’d like to enroll into, alright?”

“Sure,” Jean said gruffly, rubbing his aching eyes with the cuff of his sleeve as the three of them walked over to the back of the queue. The side of the staircase they were stood under was lined with multiple long, thin canvases splattered in different shades of paint, forming strange, whimsical shapes. He sneered and turned away, trying to avoid looking at them at all costs. Whimsical, his ass. They were gaudy and practically mocking him. “We’re going to be here for ages.”

“That reminds me. If you want a lift home as well, then you’ll have to stay a little longer,” Mikasa said. “Eren and I need to go to the Arts block and sort out proper audition times.”

“Huh? We have to audition?”

“Yes, Eren, we do. I did mention this to you yesterday. But we’ve got a few weeks before then at least, so you don’t have to worry about that today.”

“Jean! Jeaaaaaaaan! Hey, Jeanbo!”

It was so loud and Jean was so disconnected from the whole scene he didn’t notice his name being called until the speaker cried out the childhood nickname that he had never quite shook off once his friends found out about it. He whirled around, ready to spit venom at whoever had just yelled his most embarrassing alias (although, horse face wasn’t particularly favourable either) out to the entire college, only to see Connie approaching from a little way off. He was waving at all three of them with his welcome pack held in his fist, his other hand stuffed into his pocket. There were two or three files tucked under his arm as a ridiculously bright grin lit up his features. He too was certainly a little paler than usual and a little sallow-eyed, but seemed to be functioning nonetheless.

“Hey,” he said as he reached the three of them. “You’re all upright this morning! I’m shocked, I thought for sure you’d be on your back suffering from liver failure, Eren, given the amount you drank last night,”

“I tried. Mikasa kicked me out of bed at dawn, pretty much.” Eren grinned lopsidedly, clearly proud he’d managed to impress Connie with his alcohol tolerance.

Mikasa raised an eyebrow. “It was half past nine.”

“And you,” Connie turned to Jean. “You weren’t far behind! After you came back from outside you properly went for it, there’s literally nothing left thanks to you.”

Jean shrugged haplessly. “I had a lot on my mind.” He mumbled. The drinks had certainly helped soothing that away, so what if he helped himself to more than he probably should have? At the very least they helped him enjoy the party much better than he’d been so far. “By the way, call me Jeanbo in public again and I’ll skin you.”

Connie held his hands up in mock fear. “Woah, big man, slow down there. It’s a joke.”

“So? What do you want?” He snapped. He couldn’t help it. He was in pain, ready to throw up, and wanted nothing more than to go home, and Connie’s annoying buzz of a voice was like a knife twisting in his frontal lobe.

“I came to see how you all were and what courses you’re going for, geez, don’t bite my head off. None of you three mentioned what you were taking last night.”

Jean jerked a thumb over at Mikasa and Eren. “Those two are taking theatre studies, and I’m enrolling in business. There, question answered.”

Unfortunately, Connie didn’t nod and saunter off like he’d hoped he would. Instead, he stared at Jean as if he were insane, his already-wide eyed practically bugging out of his head.

“Are you insane?”

Whoop, there it was.

“I like to think not,” he said dryly.

“But-”

Jean sighed irritably. “Look Connie, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to ask me about art and why I’m not doing that and why I’m abandoning it, but honestly I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about anything to do with artwork right now. I’ve thought this through and I’ve decided to go with business, alright, and I really don’t feel like explaining why, so don’t ask me to.”

“Alright,” Connie looked visibly uncomfortable, and an uneasiness had settled over all four of them until Mikasa eventually spoke.

“Where’s Sasha, Connie? Didn’t you enroll together?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, but we both finished signing up earlier,” He waved his welcome packet at them once more. “so she’s gone to meet her teachers in the catering department up there.” He nodded up the stairs. “Or, at least, that’s what she said she was doing. For all I know they’ve got samples up there and she sniffed them out.”

“So she’s alright after last night as well then? She drank a lot too- not to mention eating most of that stuff she got from that bakery.” Eren laughed quietly to himself. “She certainly didn’t seem to care about sharing.”

“I’m impressed you remembered that,” Connie grinned in return. “Yeah, she’s fine. Not the slightest bit hungover.”

“Same can’t be said about Jeanbo over here.”

“Shut your trap, Eren.”

“But you know Sasha, ‘sharing’ isn’t part of her vocabulary.” Connie added. “I thought I’d have one of the pastries she bought in last night for breakfast, but nope, already gone.”

“Next, please!”

With Connie distracting them, none of them had noticed that the people in front of them had slowly but surely diminished, and now they were the ones next in line. There was a woman with short-cropped blonde hair parted in the centre waiting for the next student, looking expectantly at them.

Mikasa nudged Eren forwards with her elbow.

“Go on,” She urged. “You first.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

Eren turned away and went over to the front desk, giving his name and details before saying which course he wished to enroll in.

Shit, this was it now. Jean could feel his heart begin to thump pointedly in his chest. No going back after this. He wouldn’t change his mind after this- he refused, absolutely point blank refused to go back after this.

“Oh yeah,” Connie mused suddenly from besides him. “Speaking of bakery stuff, that reminds me. I’ve got something for you, Jean.”

“Huh?” Jean’s head whipped around, internal conflict forgotten. His pounding heart faltered and leapt at the word ‘bakery’- the taste of cigarettes and the smell of alcohol and the calm, soothing voice coming back to him all at once. “What do you mean?”

Connie smiled a crooked little smile as he dug into his back pocket, withdrawing a small white envelope bent in half. He smoothed it out before holding it out to Jean. “A guy showed up on our doorstep this morning and asked if we’d be seeing you again, and if we were would we mind giving this to you. So here, this is for you.”

Jean reached out and took the envelope from Connie’s outstretched fingers, turning it over to see his name printed on the front in a careful, steady hand.

“What did he look like? The guy who gave it to you?” he asked, trying to ignore the tremor in his voice. What on earth could Jean expect to receive from a practical stranger? He desperately tried to rack his brains and attempted to remember any point during their conversation where Marco had said he’d wanted to give Jean something.

“Uh, he was kinda tall, had dark hair parted in the middle. Oh, and freckles, he had lots of freckles.”

No argument there then. It was definitely from Marco.

“So? What is it?” Connie asked eagerly.

“I…don’t know.” Jean swallowed, trying to regain a little of his composure. “But do you mind? I’d rather open it without you peering over my shoulder.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine, whatever. If you want me gone I’m going to see if I can go find Sasha. I’ll come talk to you when you’re not being a hungover asshole.” And with that, he left, turning on his heel and disappearing up the long flight of steps within moments.

Jean turned his attention back to the envelope he held between his index finger and thumb. He honestly had no idea of what to expect. What kind of thing could you expect to receive from someone you’d met hastily and spent thirty minutes- at best- drunkenly discussing the injustice in the ways of the world?

Then again, they’d covered some…interesting topics last night. Dead family members, for instance. That was always a favourite.

He was dimly aware of someone else at the desk yelling “Next!” and Mikasa departing from his side- she must have lost interest in Connie and Jean’s exchange when Eren went to enroll and had been focusing on him since.

Finally alone, Jean turned the envelope over and ran a finger under the glue sealing it shut, ripping the top open. Nothing incredibly out of the ordinary fell out into his open palm- no, in fact there was nothing in the envelope, except for a small sheet of paper folded in two. He fished it out and unfolded it to see a letter, addressed to him, and written in the same concentrated, sloping font matching the front of the envelope.

Hi, Jean

I hope you don’t think this is too weird- the more I think about it the stranger this idea may seem, but for some reason after last night I couldn’t stop thinking about you and your college dilemma. I’m not the best person when versed in social norms but I had no other idea of how to contact you, so I’m sorry if this is more than a little strange! I hope enrollment goes well for you tomorrow. Or today, I suppose- that’s when you’ll get this note, anyway. Regardless- I have an idea for you. A proposition, I guess.

I don’t know how much of last night you remember (forgive me for saying so, but I’m pretty sure you were drunk by then), but the clearest thing I can remember, at least, is you looking so passionate when you talked about art. Even when you were cursing it to hell and back and saying it was stupid and a waste of time, there was a warmth in your eyes that I can’t think of how to describe any other way than a stupid cliché like that. I’ve never seen anyone look so tender whilst dissing something at the same time in my whole life. Even now the very idea makes me smile. Clearly it means a lot to you. And the more I think about it, the more of a shame it seems to let that passion burn out and die.

Anyway, I did some thinking- about what you said about needing to find a job, but also wanting business experience, and I had an idea. As you know, I’ve run my family’s bakery by myself for the past six months, and I won’t lie, it’s been tough, and I have considered finding someone else to help me with running the business as a whole. And after meeting you last night, everything just sort of clicked. What I’m trying to say is, I’d like to offer you a part-time apprenticeship at the bakery.

This way you can take your art course whilst still gathering first-hand experience running a business AND get paid at the same time. I know it sounds like a lot, but honestly, I think it’ll be worth it in your case!

I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do, and I’m sorry if this is overstepping boundaries, but I thought I would offer all the same. If you decide to take up the apprenticeship, make sure to tell your college (I did some research last night- if you link the apprenticeship to your course, you’ll get extra credits plus work experience points) when you enroll, and please come and see me as soon as you can!

Hope to hear from you soon,

-Marco

Below his signature, his address was printed, signed with the bakery’s name- Bodt Family Bakery, Amble Lane, Jinae, a part of Rose resting on the outskirts, and to Jean’s knowledge, not very far off from where he was currently living.

Overstepping boundaries? I think we’re well past there by now! He thought, breathing out shakily in some combination of relief and bewilderment as he reached the end of the letter. Forget overstepping boundaries, this is a special kind of invasive at this point.

He stared at the paper crinkling in his fist, completely lost. What the hell was he supposed to think? Was this a good thing? Was this supposed to be the answer to his non-existent prayers? Was this the universe doing him a kindness for once in his life? Or was this just Jean’s run in with the idealistic idiot from last night overstaying its already uninvited welcome?

Damn him. What kind of person just up and offered someone a job after knowing them for less than a day? And what did he know, anyway- he was just some guy that Jean happened to run into when he was drunk and probably overshared with on some stuff, but whatever, that was over and done with. It wasn’t supposed to come back to bite him. He hadn’t intended to see Marco ever again.  Not because he disliked him- quite the opposite, the idiotic charm was kind of endearing, really. But he was too much of an optimist for his own good, and this? This was…this was…

…almost too good to be true.

Jean looked away from the handwritten note and back up at the paintings following the curve of the staircase. This was what he wanted…right? What he’d always wanted to do- an excuse to create art, and do what he truly loved. The twists and coils of paint bleeding into the canvases were nothing special- probably the result of a whole class doing a study on the same artist- but all the same, they were beckoning, they were the start of something new. Or, in Jean’s case, revisiting something old.

This…this could work.

He couldn’t deny that studying business practically wouldn’t harm him. He’d be working in a shop, he’d be around numbers and stock and production all the time, and getting paid no less. That meant he wouldn’t have to worry about finding a job that he could fit around his college hours. He’d earn money whilst studying what he wanted, paying his rent, and getting work experience at the same time that would no doubt benefit him in the long run. Granted, it wasn’t quite a business degree, but it was something, right?

It all seemed far to convenient.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Hadn’t he come here with a crystal-clear idea of what he wanted to do in his head? He’d been so determined, so, so determined to do the right thing- to be logical, and sensible, and follow his mother’s wishes, albeit begrudgingly. Because she did care about him, and wanted the best for him. And a business degree looked a hell of a lot better on a job application than an art degree did.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

This would’ve been so much nicer if it had come at a better time. He was mere moments away from making a final decision, and now, here he was, presented with the most last-minute conflictions that were physically possible. Would he even get along with Marco? Sure, they’d talked last night and it had been pleasant enough, but that could happen with any stranger. They’d just met, it was the friendly-faced façade that everyone put up for well-intentioned small talk. He had no idea whether or not under all that niceness was someone who was just a bit of a twat in all honesty.

Then again, he had proof- literal handwritten proof of this generosity clutched in his hand right this second. He didn’t know the guy. And Marco didn’t know him. He didn’t know which path was best for Jean. Then again, he didn’t even know himself.

Jean closed his eyes for a second and took a deep, steadying breath. He wanted, more than anything, to turn on his heel and high tail it out of here, seeking comfort in the one thing that had always managed to ease him in times of trouble.

Clearly, then, your choice should be obvious.

Pencils and paper wouldn’t pay the bills, wouldn’t lead to anything worth doing in the real world- he needed to do the right thing, like his mother had badgered him to for weeks and weeks, ever since he finished high school. He needed to make the wise, responsible choice…

Then again, he wasn’t here to please his mother. She wasn’t the one having to study something she had no interest in for two years only to resign herself to a career for the rest of her miserable life just because it was ‘safe’ to.

He was here to seek out his own path.

“Next, please!”

He was here to make his own decisions.

Jean put one foot forward, hesitant, before the other followed.

He was going to do what he thought was best for himself.

“Name?”

He was going to do what he wanted, God damn it.

“Jean Kirschtein.”

“Alright- and which course would you like to enroll into?"

Damn you freckle face.

“Art.”

…

Jinae was not somewhere Jean had frequented after moving into the main part of Rose, despite the fact it was only about a twenty-minute walk away from where his and Eren’s house. Other than the fact it was so close, it really couldn’t be any more different from the long street of identical, flat-faced terraced houses that he now called home. Jinae was a sizeable neighbourhood that twisted into lanes and dead end streets, full of eclectic houses with neat exteriors and well-trimmed front gardens.

Jean glanced down at the letter laying on the passenger seat next to him, eyeing the address apprehensively before leaning over the steering wheel of Mikasa’s car, looking earnestly for a street name. He’d met up with Eren and Mikasa after he finished enrolling, welcome pack and various important papers in hand; before being told they’d be staying an extra hour to attend a voluntary welcome session for all Performing Arts students, and Jean would have to wait for them both if he still wanted a ride home. He instead asked if he could borrow Mikasa’s car for a little while, dually promising to pay for the petrol he used and to come back to pick the two of them up once they were finished with their introduction.

Truth be told, he wanted to go and see this Marco guy as soon as he could to guarantee he could get this job without any fuss. He needed it if he was choosing to go on the art course. Well, there was no ifs or buts about it now; he’d put his name down, he was officially going to be an art student come the first day of term in October.

He thought he’d feel more excited about that fact and have a lot less trepidation built up and wedged into his chest.

Jean swallowed harshly, trying his best not to focus on those thoughts as he turned the car out of the looping drive he’d been following and went down a smaller side street, bringing him out onto a wide, sloping road curving around a large grassy bank in the middle of the neighbourhood. He wasn’t exactly familiar with this part of town, so he was doing a lot of guesswork as he tried to locate the bakery, following the vague, and slightly optimistic hope of it being towards the general direction of his house.

It was odd, to have a bakery in Jinae, now that he thought about it and was seeing the place for himself as he drove around. It was an almost entirely domestic part of the town, with next to no retail domain. The last shop that Jean had passed had been right on the very edge of the neighbourhood- so it was a strange place to have a business located. It was an even stranger thought to think that navigating these twisty little lanes and drives would become second nature if all went well and he got the job.

Baking…what on earth had possessed him to make him think he would be able to do that? He didn’t know one ounce about making anything from scratch, let alone baking. If his diet of ready-made meals and instant cups of noodles from the past two weeks were anything to go by, he’d be pretty hopeless at a bakery, where knowledge of how to make food was kind of important. You know, just a little minor thing that you might need.

No, no, he couldn’t psych himself out now. He was done with wallowing in self-pity and petty forbearance. He wasn’t going to whine; he was going to grit his teeth and get shit done- he’d had enough of complaining inwardly and enough was enough.

That didn’t stop him hesitating as he stopped the car at a T junction and caught sign of a street sign reading “Amble Lane”. His heart leapt for a split second as he glanced at the road to check for other cars, before slowly pulling out and swerving on to the right street.

The lane constituted of a quaint little loop of houses built around a diminutive roundabout decadent with flowers, not dissimilar to the cul-de-sac that Connie and Sasha’s house was located in. The houses here all looked relatively new with stark, soulless outer walls and blank, vacant windows. There was one house, however that stood out from the rest like the sun in the sky.

It was an old building; light cream in colour, and latticed with dark wooden beams beginning to bow with age. The timber framed the long, oblong windows with dark brown shutters thrown open and pinned against the walls. It wasn’t as tall as the buildings around it- appearing almost meek and demure, but what it lacked in size, it certainly made up for in character. The front of the building's lower storey was almost entirely covered by one large window jutting out from the main structure, the glass of which was etched to form a swirling pattern of stylistic vines bordering the display it presented. To the left of the building stood a big brown wooden door with black bolts and hinges, encasing a glass pane painted with an elegant flowing black script, reading ‘Welcome’. A sign stood next to the building amidst several pots of flowers, curving into a banner shape. Jean didn’t need to get any closer to see what it said. Especially since he could see from where he was sitting in the car that same beaten-up van from last night parked on the pavement just next to the house.

There was absolutely no doubt. This, clearly, was the Bodt Family Bakery.

Jean brought the car to a stop on the curb just outside, parking close to the van and letting out a slow, steady breath in an attempt to calm his racing mind. He had no idea what had made him so tense, but his heart fluttering away in his chest and his fingers trembling ever so slightly certainly didn’t help matters.

He pulled down the sun visor over the driver’s seat and quickly checked his reflection- sadly, there was no way to make his sleep-deprived face look an y less hellish, as he paused to scrape his fingers through his hair and tousle it properly before he seized hold of the letter from the seat next to him, pulled the key out of the ignition and opened the car door before he had the chance to lose his nerve.

Jean looked up as he made his way to the door- then stopped short as he caught sight of his reflection in the window. He couldn’t have chosen a worse day to dress like an absolute slob. Suddenly more self-conscious than he cared to admit, he smoothed out the creased front of his hoodie and adjusted his tracksuit pants, gone bobbly with a combination of age and overuse, as best as he could- before his gaze fell upon the display just behind the window.

He didn’t know whether to be shocked or impressed. Both, probably, but neither emotion seemed to be more prevalent than the other as he stared upon rows and rows of delicately iced cakes; fat eclairs practically oozing cream from either end; Danish pastries glistening temptingly as they dripped gooey icing; stacks of vanilla slices iced in pastel pink, yellow and white to form a flaky pastry tower; monster sized pretzels looping into thick, soft rings dotted with fruit and cinnamon; cream puffs the size of his fist organized into lines like portly little soldiers stood to attention; colossal muffins practically exploding from their wrappers flavoured with chocolate, raspberry, and blueberry; chocolate mousse spraying from the tips of cream horns spiralling into a spongy little twist…

There was more food here than what Jean ate in a week. Hell, a fortnight.

He said he does this all by himself.

Suddenly feeling ten times more intimidated, Jean ran a nervous hand over his hair one last time, before squaring his shoulders, attempted to calm his already unsteady nerves, and placed his hand on the door knob (a curved little black thing, engraved with miniscule patterns that left an imprint on his palm), and pushed it down, opening the door and stepping into the shop.

He was immediately greeted by two things. One, being the trill of a bell that tinkled above him as the door swung open, announcing his arrival. The second, the overwhelmingly strong smell of bread that practically hit him straight in the face like he’d just been smacked with a sack of flour and yeast and…shit, what else did you find in bread? Fuck. He was not going to be good at this.

The shop itself wasn’t especially big- maybe about twelve feet in every direction. Directly ahead of him was the counter, attached to which was yet another display case showcasing heaps of bread rolls and buns and small loaves varying in colour, shape, and texture. The wall to his right held larger loaves of bread in all their weird and wonderful manifestations- long, thin baguettes next to flat, disc-like rye; besides little mountains that looked like they were erupting cheese, plus many more than Jean couldn’t identify for the life of him. The left wall had a singular table and two chairs pushed up against it, next to a cupboard, its top lined with several fat recipe books. A big, old-fashioned silver till rested on the counter, beginning to grow tarnished with age around the edges, and the ceiling was low, veined with the same wooden timber visible from the exterior. Behind the counter, the wall was disconcertingly blank, save for a noticeboard, decorated lavishly with scraps of paper scrawled all over with notes alongside a handful of newspaper clippings and the odd thank-you card. There was an empty doorway a little off-centre behind the counter, through which, at the sound of the bell, came a cry of “I’ll be with you in a minute!”

Jean stuffed his hands in his pockets, letter balled up in his fist, as he took an apprehensive step forwards, looking around the shop properly. Everything was so old. As if the bakery and everything in it had been preserved from another time. With the exception of the metal grilles and fridges keeping the display counters cool, it would have been ridiculously easy for Jean to convince himself he was in Europe at some point during the middle ages. The bakery was so tantalizingly charming, like a toy set, Jean desperately wanted to sketch it from all angles and preserve what it looked like in this moment forever.

A moment after this thought crossed his mind his brow furrowed in surprise. That was a strangely odd familiar feeling make a resurgence. When was the last time he’d felt compelled to draw something? No, not compelled…obligated. Like he would do his senses a disservice by not doing so.

He hadn’t felt that in a long time.

There was a clunk from beyond the empty doorway that caught Jean’s attention, followed by the clatter of something falling onto the floor. Moments later, a soft sigh of “Dammit.” was audible, accompanied by a quiet shuffling as they assumedly picked up whatever they had dropped. A short pause passed, followed by the creak of the floorboards of someone moving towards the door way. Jean instinctively stiffened, suddenly feeling very unprepared and somewhat intimidated. A second later, the same tall figure from last night appeared around the doorway, the same, familiar smile etched into his features as he walked through the frame towards the counter.

“Hi, sorry to keep you waiting! What can I-” Marco stopped dead in the middle of his sentence as his gaze locked with Jean’s, his words trailing off into silence abruptly.

Jean cleared his throat self-consciously. “Hey,” He said, raising one hand and cocking it in greeting. “Remember me?”

“Jean! Of course I do- of course I remember you, but I didn’t expect to see you so soon. Not that I didn’t want to!” He hurriedly corrected himself. “It’s great to see you- I mean…”

“Nice to see me when I’m not drunk?”

“Well, yeah, I guess that too,” the corners of Marco’s lips twitched in uncertain amusement. He was wearing a red checked flannel, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing his forearms covered in long, shiny burn scars. A white apron was tied around his waist, clearly not being very useful, as the rest of his shirt was speckled with flour. “Oh, did you just come from enrolling at college? How did it go? What course did you choose?”

“Yeah…about that,” Jean stuck his hand back into his sweatshirt pocket, withdrawing the crumpled note that Marco had sent to him via Connie, smoothing out the creases before holding it in the air so he could clearly see what it was, raising one eyebrow deliberately. “I wanted to ask you what all this is about.”

The smile on Marco’s face quickly faded, replacing itself with a much more abashed expression. ““It was…it was just a thought that occurred to me this morning- I’m sorry I couldn’t mention it to you face to face, but I had no idea where you lived or how to get in contact with you- since you mentioned you were going to college in the morning, I thought I’d ask if your friends would be so kind to pass it onto you-”

“You know, it’s not really the means of getting it to me that bother me the most.” Jean said inexpressibly.  “Well, it does a little bit, but not as much as- well- just- why?”

Marco blinked. “What?”

“What?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why? As in, why me?” Jean took a few steps forward so he was level with Marco on the other side of the counter, brandishing his letter as he brought it down onto the counter and jabbed at it accusingly with his finger. “Why get so involved over something so trivial?”

“You think it’s trivial?”

“Come on, you don’t know me, I don’t know you. Just because we spent half an hour talking last night doesn’t mean that we’re the best of friends now.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’ve just as good as implied it- look.” He stabbed at the rows of Marco’s neat, concise writing on the countertop. “This is the kind of thing you’d offer to a friend. Like I said, we don’t know each other!”

“I know.” Marco said quietly. His gaze dropped to the wrinkled piece of paper Jean was practically thrusting under his nose, puckered with creases from being in his pocket.

A sort of frustration welled in Jean’s chest. “So why?” He demanded. “Why me?”

There was a tense pause for a few moments as he watched Marco pick up the paper, his eyes skimming over his writing before he folded it once more along its creases. He looked up to meet Jean’s gaze and gave him the same cheerful little smile. “I told you. I didn’t want to see you dreams go to waste. And I know,” he cut Jean off as he opened his mouth to argue. “that it seems strange, especially considering we’re not much more than strangers. But everything you said and everything I needed just seemed to align so perfectly…you need a job; I need someone to help in the bakery. You want to study art; I need someone with artistic flair to decorate cakes and such. You want business experience, and here, you can get it first-hand.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Why do you care so much about my dream? No offense, but it doesn’t have anything to do with you. What made you want to dive in headfirst and help me achieve something that even I don’t understand clearly?”

At his question, Marco visibly bristled uncomfortably, the smile slipping from his face as he averted his gaze, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. The undersides of his wrists were chalky with flour. “I…I’m not sure,” he stammered. “It just sort of…stung to see someone who had to give up something that they clearly loved for practicality’s sake.”

Jean’s eyebrow rose once again. “So you admit it’s not practical?”

“No, I don’t. I refuse to admit that.” He exhaled quietly, closing his eyes in defeat before opening them to look Jean dead in the eye. He tapped the folded paper against his fingers on the other hand as he spoke. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to step into your personal affairs, and I didn’t mean to intrude, that was never my intention. Everything I offered was with genuine intent, I promise. Please accept my sincerest apologies.”

Jean faltered, not sure what to say in response. He hadn’t quite intended to confront him like this, but he couldn’t help it- there was no way to sugar coat this into the least offensive way possible, and he was practically aching with the desire to know what possessed a person to get all up in someone else’s business. But now even he couldn’t deny he was feeling a little bad- watching this guy dip his head, looking profoundly wounded made Jean feel like he’d been a bit too much of an asshole.

“Y-yeah,” he stammered hastily in an effort to punctuate the silence. Uncomfortable, he folded his arms, a sort of guilty conscience chiding him for berating the poor kid when he had every intention to accept his offer. “But you don’t- uh, you don’t have to apologise, it’s OK. It’s just…it was a strange offer that I wasn’t expecting."

Marco looked up and gave him a one-sided, forgiving smile, resting his hands against the counter as he leant forwards against them. “So, I take it you’re on the business course, just as planned, huh?”

“Uh…not exactly.”

"What do you mean?”

Jean could feel a blush beginning to dust his cheeks and he rolled his neck to one side in an effort to diffuse his embarrassment. “I…I came here to tell you that I put my name down for Art. And that…I’d like to accept your offer…please.”

Several seconds ticked by in dead silence, the only audible noise the whirring of fans keeping the counters cool as Jean forced himself to meet Marco’s gaze. He was staring at Jean, a combination of utter confusion and disbelief written all over his face, his dark eyes held wide open, completely bemused. Jean shifted uncertainly under his perplexed expression, willing for him to say something and shatter the tension.

Instead, he began to laugh.

It started with a twitch of his lips, a low chuckle in the back of his throat before the smile spread to his eyes, lighting them up so they were bright and full of humour as his head drooped and begin to shake in surprise, the muted chuckle turning into a peal of laughter bouncing off the walls and filling the room with its warmth, that, as much as he tried to resist, had Jean’s own lips curved upward in an odd sort of benevolent confusion over what was so funny.

“You- absolute- asshole,” Marco managed to say between breaths as he tried, futilely, to calm himself down. “I thought you were so angry with me you never wanted to see my face again! But you’re here to say you want the job? Just what the hell is wrong with you?”

His words sounded a lot less intimidating when he was laughing between them, his feature split into a bright sunny grin as Jean shrugged in response.

“I could ask you the same thing,” He replied, allowing himself to return the smile. “Not every person asks someone they met drunk at a party to come work for them,”

“Ha, fair enough,” Marco straightened up, rubbing the side of his nose as he exhaled steadily in an effort to take the amusement out of his voice. “Well, I accept your acceptance of the job and you can start as soon as you’d like. Oh, but you’ll need training first. When do you want to get that done? Remind me, when do you start college?”

“October,”

“Brilliant, we’ve got the whole of August and September to get you fully trained and used to how things are run. Hang on,” He turned on his heel and disappeared into the back room, returning with a calendar and notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. He laid the calendar out open on the counter and flipped forwards to October. “What date?”

“The third.”

“Right,” Jean watched as Marco circled the corresponding date on the page and wrote college starts next to it in the same sloped handwriting that he’d written the letter in. “So when term starts, make sure you get a copy of your timetable and we can sort your work hours out between your classes. Until then, you’ll have a minimum of two weeks training before you can start work properly, which we can get done throughout the summer. I’ll also have to sort some other things out, like getting your wage and the like in order, as well organising some- ah, I’m sorry, this is probably a little overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“A little,” Jean said nonchalantly, reluctant to admit he was reeling a little- not just at Marco’s incessant organisation, but also at how willing he was to just accept Jean on board without any questions asked. He didn’t even seem to be considering the fact that Jean was an entirely incompetent cook and probably going to be useless as a baker.

“Alright, then why don’t we just start with your training.” Marco said gently, flipping the calendar back to the start of August, before he opened the notebook he’d brought with him- it was a planner, full of lists of ingredients and sales numbers. “When do you want to start?”

Jean shrugged. “Whenever’s convenient for you.”

“Does next week sound alright, or is that too soon?”

“Sounds good.” The sooner he started work, the sooner he’d get paid. If he was going to dedicate a majority of his time to art come the autumn term, leaving him with less time to work, he’d need all the money he could get so he could keep affording food and rent and other basic needs.

Marco nodded and flipped the page, underlining August the eighth. “Cool, I’ll make sure to get everything sorted out for you by then.”

“Yeah…thanks. Really.”

“It’s no problem.”

“No, I mean it. Not every guy would go out of his way to do something so- so overwhelmingly nice for an idiot he met on a whim. You’re a good person- maybe a little too good. For all you know, I could be entirely useless at art and chasing a whimsical pipe dream.”

Marco laughed again. “Haha, that’s true. But I’d rather see someone happy, even if they weren’t talented or skilled in whatever they wanted to pursue, than stuck in something they hate.”

“That level of optimism can’t be good for you.”

“Hey, it’s gotten me through life this far, I can’t complain.”

Jean chuckled, slowly shaking his head derisively. “So…I’ll see you next week, then. What time?”

“Four thirty?”

“In the morning?”

Marco smiled knowingly. “You get the afternoon off, I promise. You’ll just have to compromise a few of your late-night parties, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, yeah, very funny.” Jean scratched the back of his neck awkwardly as a terse moment of quiet passed between them. “Alright…I’ll see you then.”

“See you then.”

He turned around and made his way towards the door, somehow feeling a lot lighter than he had before, as if that damn optimism had been so strong it had a physical form that rubbed off on him whilst he reached out and took hold of the door handle.

“Hey…Jean?”

Jean looked back at Marco still stood behind the counter, watching him with a strange, mingled expression that he couldn’t quite read.

“I…I look forward to working with you.”

Jean let the first proper, real smile he’d felt in a long time break out onto his face in response.

“You know what? I think I do too.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Three

It was more than a little awkward trying to explain to Eren and Mikasa as he went back to the college to return the car about his new predicament- that he wasn’t taking business after all, he’d put his name down for art, like everyone had expected, and not only that, but he’d also found himself a job and would be starting within the next week. It was pretty much the last thing they’d been expecting for him to do, so needless to say, he was subjected to many, many, insufferable questions from Eren on the ride back to their house. What made you change your mind? Where are you working? Why at a bakery? How did you get a job that fast? Can you even bake? So you’re definitely doing art now? You’re not going to back out of it again?

Perhaps seeing Jean’s sudden proverbial step forwards had initiated a kind of challenge in Mikasa, because the second they got home, she demanded Eren pull out his laptop and start applying for jobs himself. Whether this was in Eren’s best interest or a kind gesture in Jean’s regard to ensure they’d have an as equal income as possible to make paying rent easier wasn’t clear, but he liked to think it was the latter (Despite the frustratingly high likelihood that it probably wasn’t).

Instead of sticking around to watch the couple bicker over the computer screen and feel increasingly sour, he disappeared upstairs, shutting himself into his room and at long last, collapsing back into his bed. Earlier, his priority had been getting home as soon as possible to sleep away the rest of this damn hangover, but somehow, he was feeling a lot less like a moving trash heap than he had been that morning. Where there had been a knife twisting into his brain there was now only a dull ache that twinged if he turned his head too fast. He lay on his bed for some time, but sleep eluded him as he rolled back onto his front, sighing in defeat. He reached out and picked his sketchbook up off the corner of the desk next to his bed, thumbing through the diminishing drawings until he got to the Mikasa-nymph portrait from yesterday.

Was this all really going to be worth it?

The doubts were still there, heavy and laden with guilt, rolling into a heavy ball dripping with reservations in the darkest corner of his mind. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite bring himself to focus on them. He was finally doing it- he was finally going to do what his childhood and high-school self had dreamed of for years- he was going to study art full time.

Jean stretched his arm out once more and picked up one of the pencils lying discarded over the desk top and flipped to a clean page. He put the graphite tip to the paper and began sketching out the timber-framed structure of the bakery from memory.

It all seemed a bit too surreal. Maybe that’s why he had trouble believing himself.

He drew peacefully in silence for a good half hour or so, content with tracing out the woodgrain of the timber beams and the latticed windows and their shutters, feeling remarkably at ease for once, before he was interrupted by the buzzing of his phone laid on his pillow, the screen flashing impatiently at him as he picked it up, only to see his mother’s icon next to the second text he’d received from her that day.

Hope enrolment went well, sweetie. I’m proud of you!

Yikes. His stomach turned nauseously as he bit his lip, staring at the phone he held gingerly in his hand. That was something he hadn’t thought about. What the hell was he going to tell his mother?

That’s another problem for another day, he mused, switching the phone off and tossing it carelessly away. It slid off the pillowcase and into the dip formed between the mattress and the wall. He’d let her stew in her blissful little illusion of Jean’s conformity for a while before he told her the truth.

For now, it didn’t matter. For now, all that mattered was him.

…

Four- thirty in the morning didn’t sound so bad when Jean went to bed the night before at half past ten. The little timer on his phone when he set his alarm told him he’d get five whole hours of sleep before then, which was pretty much what he had run on throughout high school when he’d stay up for hours under the covers, drawing under the light of his phone well into the early hours of the morning. The bakery was a half an hour walk away, so he set his alarm for half past three to give himself a little time to get ready before he had to leave in order to get there on time. No problem. Five whole hours.

But by the time he woke up to the blaring noise of said alarm, it certainly felt bad.

He’d never met a single person in his life who enjoyed getting up at the butt crack of dawn, and he certainly wasn’t one of them.

He slapped the alarm off and resisted every fibre of his being that wanted to turn over and go back to sleep, waging a war against his eyelids that desperately wanted to close again. By the time he finally convinced his defiant limbs to cooperate, he was already running fifteen minutes late.

He pulled on the oldest pair of skinny jeans that he owned and an old band t-shirt underneath a plain collared button up, throwing on his biggest, comfiest hoodie over the top in somewhat of a daze.

By the time he was finally dressed and had pulled his shoes on, it was already five to four, and he’d have to leave in five minutes, leaving him no time to get anything to eat. He resigned instead to making himself a cup of coffee and to take it with him in a travel mug- but when he came downstairs and opened the instant coffee jar, he was met with a cloud of bitter smelling dust and not much more.

Dammit. He’d been grocery shopping the day after enrolment last week, and yet already supplies were running low. He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he dropped the jar back onto the counter, looking up to stare blankly at the shelf in front of him. It was originally a spice rack, but considering they had no spices to put in it, three recipe books were carelessly wedged there instead. Jean’s mother had given them to him as a housewarming gift as she made him promise he’d eat well and make his own meals- but they hadn’t seen any use since then.

Normally, he would’ve just walked past and ignored them completely- but the one of the author’s name emblazoned on a singular spine caught his eye.

Maria Bodt.

Bodt…that was Marco’s last name, wasn’t it? And come to think of it, Marco had mentioned that his mother wrote recipe books, and that was why she was hardly ever home. Or was he imagining that?

Curious, he plucked the book off the shelf and examined the front cover. It didn’t look like anything he’d associate with Marco- which would be anything old and oozing antiquity to match the rustic bakery he ran. No, this book- titled “Meals in Thirty Minutes- Perfect for the college student on a budget!”- was big, bright, and contemporary. He opened the front cover to examine the authoress’s profile on the inside of the dust jacket. The photo heading the little section of text was of a woman with dark hair bound into a side braid, and a broad, oval face and high forehead, flecked with a fine dusting of freckles over her cheeks. She was leaning onto a counter, smiling broadly into the camera so the corners of her mouth crinkled. The longer he looked at the photo, the more he realised she bore a striking resemblance to Marco.

Huh. He would never have known a renowned cookery author’s son lived only a short way off from his own house. And he certainly wouldn’t have expected to be working under him within only a week of meeting him.

By the time he finally snapped the book shut and placed it back onto the shelf, it was already past four, and he needed to get going right now if he still had any hopes of being on time. He didn’t want to let Marco down- not on the first day, at the very least. He stalked out of the kitchen, swiping his keys and phone off the work surface and stuffing them into his pocket as he tried to rub the sleep out his eyes, making his way over to the front door.  He pulled it open and stepped outside, closing it behind him with a little more noise than he’d intended to.

The sky was still dark except for a band of dark blue light resting on the horizon, punctured by the silhouettes of the houses across the street, bleeding into the inky sky. Several dark clouds streaked the dark expanse, and whilst it certainly wasn’t warm yet, there was a kind of clamminess in the air, indicating a humid day ahead. Thankfully, the sunrise would come within the next hour and make it feel a lot less early in the Goddamn morning.

At the very least, the cooler morning air shocked something into him, helping him wake himself up a little better. He forced his heavy limbs to shuffle down the street, head bowed, resisting the urge to yawn every three seconds.

He had to pick his pace up hastily when he realised just how late he was running, and had less than twenty minutes to get to Jinae, resigning himself to walk the rest of the way at a brisk pace. The world was almost entirely silent as the day’s light began to bleed into the dark sky. The only people he encountered drove past in big, black cars crawling along the road like beetles with glowing eyes, and even they were few and far between. He supposed these were the business people who worked in big cities like Stohess, where Annie was going within the next couple of weeks, making the lengthy commute out of Rose. Surely that took several hours itself.

Would that have been him in five years- give or take- if he’d refused Marco’s offer? Driving miles and miles away every day, too early for the rest of the world to be awake? It sounded…pretty lonely, if he was honest. And kind of sad. As someone who had nearly always thrived in solitude, this thought surprised him.

Whatever. He had his own job to worry about this morning. And more importantly, to get to.

By the time he reached Jinae and climbed the steep incline (which felt so much more severe when he wasn’t driving up it), he was breathless and almost cried in his sleep-deprived stupor when he caught sight of the bakery’s tiled roof stretching into the sky. The lower floor was aglow with light, oozing out onto the pavement from inside like golden honey. Already, there was a distinctively warm smell filling the air that prompted Jean’s stomach to growl automatically. Damn. He’d really wished he’d had time to eat.

He walked up and around the curve of the pavement before stopping right outside the door, pausing to quickly verify the time on his phone. As he pulled it out of his pocket and pressed the home button, his lock screen blinked to life, and the digits rolled to 4:29. One minute to spare.

Right. Work mode.

He took a quick glance at his reflection in the door’s window pane- self-consciously ruffling his hair to tame the remnants of his bed head- before he reached out and pushed down on the door handle. Mercifully, it was already unlocked, and the door swung open, the familiar tinkle of the bell sounding his arrival.

The warmth hit him instantly like a smack to the face, billowing over his cheeks, making them prickle in response as he shut the door behind him and immediately shrugged his hoodie off. The shop was strangely bare, compared to the first time he’d been here. There were no loaves of bread lining the shelves, the display counters were empty and there wasn’t so much as a speck of pastry or crumb to be found.

There were noises coming from the back room though- the shifting and clanking of metal, the muted clatter of plastic and as he closed the door, the slam of an oven being closed.

“Hello?” Jean called out into the stuffy room.

“Is that you, Jean?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m in the back- come on through.”

Jean laid his hoodie tentatively next to the till, before lifting the counter’s hatch out of his way and stepped behind, laying it down reverently behind him before making his way over to stand in the doorway leading to the back room.

It was bigger than the shop floor- not by much, but enough to fit various large metal appliances along the walls and still have extra work surfaces holding bags of flour, sugar, and an assortment of mixing bowls, wooden spoons, pots and pans. There were shelves lining almost every part of the red brick wall, containing spices, various boxes and tins labelled with their contents. Hung above the countertops to Jean’s right there was a set of knives hung on the wall in their own brackets, and next to that, a wooden clock with a pendulum swaying from side to side in its little glass case. Directly to his left, there was a steep staircase leading to the second floor, and dead centre in the room was a large countertop, beneath which were wooden cabinets and drawers. In the far-right corner there was a small kitchen table with four chairs around it, next to a small stove and sink that wasn’t too dissimilar to the cooking range in Jean’s kitchen. Directly opposite in the far left, stood a huge, old fashioned brick oven built into the wall and curving outwards into the room. The door to it was iron wrought, engraved with an image of wheat stalks crossing over each other, and below it, there was a slightly smaller door, which was currently open, exposing the fire fuelled by logs, stored in a basket pushed up against the wall.

There stood Marco, stooped over as he chucked in several more chunks of wood through the little door and nudged them into place with the poker held in his other hand. Today he was wearing a sleeveless black shirt, exposing a lot more freckles on his upper arms, and a pair of baggy, faded grey jeans. At Jean’s entrance, he looked up, face instantly breaking out into a smile as he knocked the iron wrought door shut and dropped the metal latch into place.

“Good morning!” he said brightly. He placed the poker back into its stand next to the log basket and straightened up. “Glad to see you made it!”

“Morning.” Jean didn’t see what part of it was good. The warmth was even more intense in here, and it certainly didn’t help his drowsiness. It felt being awash in the cosiness of one big blanket and he would have gladly snuggled up in a corner and gone right back to sleep on the flagstone floor. He did his best to suppress another yawn, eyes watering in tiredness. “Just barely.”

Marco smiled sympathetically. “You’ll get used to it, I promise. It’ll just take time to adjust.”

“Says you. By the way, you don’t happen to have any coffee, do you? We were all out and I’m-” Another yawn- “struggling to keep my eyes open.”

“Sorry. I don’t.”

“How the hell are you awake and lively at four-thirty in the fucking morning without caffeine? I’m sorry; this is a foreign concept to me.”

Marco laughed. “I think it’s a combination of just being used to it, plus, I’ve always found baking is a pretty great stimulant for tiredness. Trust me, you’ll be awake in no time. There’s nothing that wakes you up quite like the smell of fresh bread.”

Jean could think of several things that would wake him up better- a tall, dark, Americano, for one- but decided against bringing it up. Petulance probably wasn’t the greatest thing to pull on your first day at work.

“So…what am I doing?”

“Right,” Marco pushed back a stray lock of hair falling out of place onto his forehead, resting the other hand on his hip. “First and foremost, wash your hands over there.” He pointed at a low sink over to Jean’s right. “Then grab an apron from the table here, and I’ll show you the basics of bread.”

Jean obliged, pushing his sleeves back above his elbows as he went over to the sink and began to rinse his hands under the warm water. He was nervous; he couldn’t deny that. How exactly did one slip into conversation that he was quite the useless cook and that his experience in the kitchen was limited to unwrapping a ready-meal and poking some numbers into the microwave?

All he could do was pray he’d pick it up quickly.

Jean towelled his hands dry on one hung below the sink before picking an identical apron to Marco’s off the middle table and tying it around his waist.

Marco waited patiently for him on the other side of the worktable, one hand resting on the surface as Jean walked over to join him. There was a small bowl of dubious looking brown, cloudy liquid next to his hand, alongside a bowl full of speckled flour, a small bag of sugar, a plastic container of salt, and a jug of tepid water. As Jean approached Marco gave him an encouraging smile- which Jean tentatively returned- before launching straight into explanation.

“This-” He jabbed a finger at the odd brown mixture thing- “is your yeast mixed with a small amount of water so it’s already activated. It’s had to stand for about ten, fifteen minutes, but you can tell it’s ready by watching the surface. If it looks like it’s starting to move by itself, then the fungus is working.”

He slid the bowl towards Jean, who grimaced as he noted the sludge-like texture shifting ever so slightly below the surface.

“Fungus?” He echoed, lip curling in disgust. Marco simply laughed at him.

“Yep, and it doesn’t get more glamourous than this. Here you’ve got regular bread flour-” he rested a hand on the rim of the bowl nearest to him. “Pre-measured for your convenience. The water acts as a kind of bonding agent. And the sugar and salt adds to the flavour. These are the absolute bare bones of what you need to make bread. Obviously, as you start experimenting and attempting different kinds, some of these ingredients are interchangeable, as is the method to make it, but I figured it was probably best to start you off with your basic white loaf.”

“Wise choice,” he mumbled sarcastically beneath his breath.

Marco didn’t appear fazed. “I didn’t ask, but do you have any experience in baking?”

“Nope. Absolutely none.”

“Ah, right. No, no, don’t worry, that’s not a problem. It means that we’re starting in the right place. So, first, take your flour and tip it out onto the work surface.”

Jean looked at him. “I do what now?”

“Tip the flour out onto the work surface,” he repeated calmly, and reached out to pat a large wooden slab on the table, like an oversized chopping board, in front of Jean. A second later he let out a soft chuckle. “Yes, I’m aware of how bizarre that sounds. Just trust me.”

Jean took hold of the bowl hesitantly, still not entirely convinced this wasn’t just Marco making a twat out of him by making him do something entirely ridiculous.

“You’re sure?”

“For the last time, yes. Just don’t get any on the floor. It’s a pain to clean up.”

Finally following his instruction, Jean began to tip the bowl’s contents out onto the wooden board, steadily trying to sift it out bit by bit.

Unfortunately, that failed in a spectacular fashion, when the first second he inclined the bowl slightly, the flour inside it slid from within, collapsing onto the work table in a great whoomp. A dusty cloud of flour immediately flew up from the impact and straight into Jean’s face, making him instinctively splutter as it glided straight up his nose and stuck there.

Marco spluttered from besides him as he gagged. “Sorry, forgot to mention, it’s a finer grain than most so it’s got almost no traction whatsoever. Especially not in plastic bowls. But flour clouds are pretty much inevitable when you do it this way. It’s just another one of those things you get used to and learn how to avoid.”

Jean coughed viciously, trying to clear his throat. “Is that why you’re always covered in flour?” he asked raggedly.

“Pretty much. It’s messier doing it this way, but I prefer it so much more to using a bread machine or mixing bowl. It’s easier, and you just get a more…hearty, full bodied loaf at the end. Anyway, come on, let’s get through this as quick as we can.”

“What time do you open?”

“Eight.”

“Shit.” Jean glanced at the clock- it was getting ever closer to five by now. “OK, what now?”

“What you want to do is make a sort of well in the middle of the flour- not all the way to the bottom, just enough to form a pit. Then you’ll put half your warm water, your activated yeast, a dash of sugar and a tiny bit of salt, and then you’ll start scraping it together with your hands without breaking the walls of the well. So, you’re piling the rest of the flour into the middle covering the hole, and then smoothing it back out. Then slowly, but steadily start to…kinda…mush it together. There really isn’t a better term for that.”

Jean snorted as he picked up the yeast bowl, swilling it around. “So all of this?”

“Yep. Straight in.”

“And I just use my hands?”

“It’s called handmade for a reason.”

He smirked, undeniably amused at Marco’s surprising amount of sarcasm as he dug his fingers into the peak of the flour pile, carving out a shallow pit and dumped in the yeast, half the jug of water and two pinches of sugar to one pinch of salt as per Marco’s instructions before beginning to scrape it together, just as he’d told him.

“That’s it- just keep bringing the flour back to the middle, and it should eventually start to feel a bit like porridge.”

“Sounds about right,” Jean said dourly, his face twisting into a wry expression as he felt the uncomfortable dampness seeping through the flour beginning to stick to his fingers in a disgusting, wet, sloppy texture.

“Flour your hands if it starts sticking to you too much, and now, as you’re bringing it together, add the rest of the water bit by bit. Just a little at time, mix a bit, and then repeat. Alright, you got it?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Once you’ve added all the water you can start being a little more aggressive with it. Your aim is to get rid of as much stickiness as possible before we can start kneading. You’re OK doing that whilst I get starting on the pastry for vanilla slices?”

“Sure…I think,” The wet, gloopy mix certainly didn’t feel appetising yet as it stuck to his knuckles and caked itself under his nails. It felt very much like he was a kid mixing a mud pie in the dirt. It was hard to see this becoming bread within the next couple of hours. “So, uh, what else do you have to do this morning?”

“Well,” Marco spoke without looking at him as he walked past towards to the opposite counter, bringing out a clean mixing bowl from a cupboard underneath the work surface as he passed, pausing only to scoop in several handfuls of flour from a sack under the counter before going over to the fridge and taking out a dish of butter already cut into cubes. “I’ve already got the rye, wholemeal, and mixed grain breads in the oven. The pastry for the croissants is ready and just needs to be shaped and cooked, but we can sort those out just before opening- people like to buy them warm anyway. It’s pretty much just a case of putting all the cakes and pastries together now, and making sure they’re chilled before they go out on display.”

“Did you seriously have time to already make all of that before I got here?”

“I’ve been up since three.”

Something telling him that Marco had mentioned that before stirred a faint memory within Jean before it was quickly replaced with indignance.

“Wait, wait, so why tell me to come in at four-thirty if you start way before then?”

“Because teaching you is going to take time, but I still need to bake enough to fill up the displays,” he said calmly. He dropped the butter cubes into the flour and began to rub them into breadcrumbs between his thumbs and forefingers with a well-practiced deftness. “If I showed you how to do everything step by step we’d still be on pastries by afternoon. Plus, I figured it’d be kinder to let you get adjusted to the early mornings like this rather than jumping straight in at three AM.”

“And you don’t ever struggle with all of this? I mean, there’s a crap ton of stuff to make, and up until now, you’ve done it all by yourself. You can’t tell me that’s never hard.”

“Of course it isn’t. I’ll keep baking throughout the whole day, which is a pain, especially considering I can’t watch the shop, and have to keep going back and forth. That’s why I pre-measure everything the night before, because come morning, I don’t have to bother with weighing and measuring; I can just throw everything together and get it in the oven as quick as I can. How’s your dough looking?”

Jean blinked, before looking down at the sludgy mass his fingers were half imbedded in. The dampness had nearly completely gone away, and was beginning to feel a bit smoother.

Marco finished with the butter and flour and rubbed his hands down his apron on his thighs and came over to inspect. He took the dough from Jean’s hands and pressed it with the heel of his palm a couple of times experimentally, flipping it over twice before he smiled in satisfaction.

“Feels about right. You’re ready to start kneading. This is where you get ridiculously rough with it. Basically, just beat the crap out of it- well, beat the crap out of it, but with purpose. Focus on folding it over into itself, getting as much air trapped inside it as possible so when it rises it’s light and fluffy and not dense or stodgy, which also means it won’t take as long in the oven. Do you know how to knead?”

Jean shook his head.

“That’s fine, I’ll show you.” Marco leant forwards and pushed the dough in the centre with the heel of his palm again, stretching it out only to fold it back in. Jean watched his fingers dig into the pliable substance before pushing it back out again, turning it over in his hands in a series of quick, successive movements. The muscles in his arms immediately began to ripple beneath the skin- and in that moment Jean realised just how muscular Marco actually was.

His biceps bulged reflexively every time he stretched the dough out, the tension easing in and out of his arm as he worked the dough. There was a fine smattering of freckles, largely concentrated on his shoulders, that began to scatter and peter out the further down his arm they got. They diminished in number amongst the multiple shiny scars going up and down his forearms, evidently from countless burns. With an oven of that size, generating that much heat, it wasn’t hard to imagine getting burnt frequently at all.

It got to a point where Marco’s arm muscles became an actual distraction and Jean was focusing more on them than on what his hands were doing. Even though Marco himself didn’t seem to be putting much effort into kneading the dough, the work his arms were doing said otherwise. Jean became very keenly aware of just how scrawny his own arms looked besides his and folded them across his chest reflexively, clenching his doughy fists together, trying not to feel wildly substandard at his side.

“So we do this to make the dough as elastic as possible,” Marco explained, rolling the dough under his palm one final time as he took a step back. “And you’re looking for a springy, silky, smooth texture. Do you know what the fastest way to get that kind of feel in the dough is?”

“…Biceps?”

Marco blinked, before following Jean’s gaze to his upper arm. His mouth stretched into an embarrassed smile as he reached up with one hand to rub the patch of skin above his elbow, laughing uncertainly.

“Ha…well, there’s no denying that they help,” he said, a dubious smile playing on his lips. “You’re not entirely wrong; it’s strength and elbow grease. Like I said, give the dough a pounding.”

“Got it.” Jean pushed his sleeves back up to rest above his joints. “Just do it in an effective way that traps air in it, right?”

“Right! There, learning already. I’m so proud.”

“Shut up.”

Marco clapped him on the shoulder as he went back to the pastry mixture for his vanilla slices. “It’s a large hunk of dough, so don’t worry if it takes a while. It’s enough of an effort to knead dough effectively for one loaf, let alone six, so like I said- just take your time, focus on kneading it as thoroughly as possible. It’s something else you’ll get quicker at the more you do it.”

Jean didn’t anticipate how hard it actually was to shift and mould the dough under his fingers like Marco had. He’d handled it like it was air, smoothing out it’s ridges and flipping it over and over in quick succession- but in Jean’s hands, it was heavy and thick and took a lot of effort to push around the wooden surface. A lot more effort than he cared to admit.

Fold. Stretch. Push. Repeat. Fold. Stretch. Push. Repeat.

Fold…stretch…push…fold…stretch…push…

The strain in his upper arms was beginning to manifest itself in a sharp ache twinging within his upper arms every time he folded the dough over on itself. It didn’t seem to be getting any more elastic or silky or smooth in texture- if anything, it just felt like Jean was pushing a ball of half-set cement around and around in circles.

He was dimly aware of Marco moving back and forth from behind him- going over to the fridge to chill his pastry, switching on the stove to start mixing the custard filling in a saucepan, crossing the room back to the oven and hauling out the aforementioned tray of rye and wholemeal loaves, puffed over the tops of their tins and deep golden brown in colour. They filled the kitchen with an even stronger aroma of fresh bread that made the pangs of hunger in Jean’s stomach more painful than ever.

Damn it. This was really starting to hurt now. But he didn’t want to give up before he’d scarcely begun- come on, it was his first day and his first task, yet already he was quickly running out of steam. The fact that he couldn’t stop yawning certainly didn’t help; the combined oppressive heat of the kitchen and his own exertion made his brow begin to prickle uncomfortably with sweat as the darkness from outside gradually receded and the sun began to rise, visible through the doorway leading to shop floor.

“Having trouble?”

Jean nearly jumped out of his skin when he realised Marco had abandoned his pastry to come over and stand behind him, watching him quietly with a sympathetic look on his face.

“Fuck, announce yourself next time,” he said gruffly as Marco chuckled to himself.

“Sorry. Do you want me to take over? I don’t mind. You can ice the vanilla slices, if you like.”

“I’m fine. I can do it.”

“Are you sure?”

Jean tried to ignore the sweat beginning to trickle down his back and the fiery burn in his arms. “Yep.”

“Jean…”

“What?”

“You’ve been at it for a good half an hour.”

“So?”

“It needs to be proving, at the very least, by now.”

Jean looked up from the dough and gave him a blank stare. Marco blinked a couple of times before the realisation dawned on him.

“…You don’t know what proving is, do you?”

“Uh…should I?”

Marco’s shoulders drooped in a mix of amusement and defeat as he passed a hand over his face exasperatedly, a crooked smile visible beneath his fingers as he wiped his chin.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. That’s why we’re doing this, you’re here to learn.” He sounded like he was convincing himself more than he was convincing Jean. “Here, I’ll finish kneading and you go frost the vanilla slices. Proving, by the way, is just leaving the dough in a warm place- for instance, a proving cupboard.” He pointed over to one of the shiny metal units on the other side of the room. “Which allows the yeast to make the bread expand, improving both taste and texture.”

Jean allowed himself to be shunted to the side, uncharacteristically obedient, as Marco took his place, once more expertly beginning to work the dough, stretching and tugging and turning it over in his hands effortlessly.

“I’ve already made the frosting-  it’s pretty runny, so just pour it on decently thick and spread it over the pastry with a palette knife from that drawer under there, as evenly as you can. Start in the centre then work your way into the corners, then when you’re done put them in the fridge to set,” Marco instructed, nodding towards the counter where he had been working previously. Whilst Jean had been batting his dough around fruitlessly, Marco had already made and baked his pastry from scratch- the vanilla slices, not yet cut into individual pieces, lay on the side on a cooling rack, as a large rectangle of pastry already filled with carefully piped swirls of fresh crème pâtissière between each delicate, flaky layer. There were three bowls stood next to the pastry base, one with pink icing, one with yellow, and one with white.

“How many of each colour do you want?” Jean called over his shoulder.

“As many as you like. Get as creative as you like with it. You’ll have to set up the display when they’re ready anyway, so do what you want.” Marco tossed the bread dough into the air one last time before throwing it back into the bowl that had held the flour. “Don’t worry if there’s leftover frosting- that’ll keep.”

Creative, huh?

That, he could do.

He pulled the cutlery drawer open with a rattle- sifting past the countless wooden spoons, measuring spoons, spatulas and brushes (that, he assumed, were for egg washing), until he caught hold of a palette knife. He wrapped his fingers around the handle, knocking the drawer closed with his hip as he reached out with his other hand and grabbed the bowl with the yellow frosting. He probed it cautiously with the tip of the utensil to get an idea of its consistency, lifting it slightly so it seeped thickly down the metal blade, noiselessly dribbling back into the bowl. It was very similar in texture to the watered-down acrylics his high school art teacher had given them as a semi-efficient cost cutting method of sharing a whole box of paints with a whole class for the full school year. They hadn’t been the best kind of paints- but they were the kind of paints that Jean was familiar with.

Dimly aware of Marco slamming the door of the proving cupboard somewhere behind him, he picked up the yellow frosting and angled it over the pastry, carefully pouring out a fair amount, forming a wide, circular globule into the centre, and, just like Marco had instructed, spread it as evenly as he could manage into the corners. Now, the fun part.

Jean wiped the excess frosting off the palette knife with his apron, before tilting it in his hand and carefully beginning to carve a swirl, starting from the middle with the fine edge of the blade. Keeping his hand steady, he branched off the spiral with multiple smaller ones, lightly scoring the surface of the gradually thickening icing until he reached the edges. He laid the knife aside and instead took hold of the bowls containing the pink and white frosting, pulling them closer to him as he dipped one finger into the pink and withdrew it, swirling it around his finger so he had as much as possible- then submerged it into the white and began to loop his wrist, drawing circles, over and over until thin, streaky, pink marbled veins ran through the its contents.

Taking up the palette knife once more, he used it to guide the steady flow of icing as he fed the marbled white-and-pink into the crevices he’d just made, smudging and blurring the harsh edges with his finger, the same way he’d smudge the pencil in a drawing, so they all swirled together, forming a kaleidoscope of colour.

Jean wasn’t a huge fan of colour when it came to his artwork. He mostly stuck to sketching, so he was well adjusted and perfectly content with the monochromatic scheme of graphite and paper. He didn’t paint much at all until he got to high school (thanks to his mother, who never allowed paints in the house when he was a kid for fear of mess) and took up art as a serious subject. Although it would never be as strong as his passion for traditional drawing, painting had been one of the best things about his high school life. He hadn’t done it, however, since way before studying for exams, when the art room was closed to him so he’d spend less time in his fantasy world and more time at his desk cramming his head full of equations and formula and poetry analysis.

It almost felt nostalgic, painting with the icing the same way he had on a piece of poster board taped down to the desk.

“Jean…”

He started violently once more, very nearly dropping the bowl in his left hand on top of his work.

“You need to stop doing that!”

Marco was standing behind him again- but this time, not in passing, like before, but as if he’d been stood there, watching Jean for longer than he’d been aware.

Jean turned his head- only to see Marco staring at the giant slab of pastry and cream. Or rather, staring at the work Jean had done on the icing. He couldn’t quite read the expression on his face. Surprise…? Disappointment, maybe? Exasperation?

“What? What’s the matter?” He snapped. Oh fuck. Please don’t say he did it wrong. He didn’t want to have screwed up a second time in a row. Damn it, why couldn’t he have just iced them in three separate sections, so they looked normal- why did he have to go and make it overly complicated for himself, why did he make things difficult- “You said be creative…so…uh…I just…”

“I know,” Marco cut him off quietly. “I just…I didn’t quite expect-“

Shit.

“-you to do them so well.”

…Wait, what?

Jean blinked as Marco’s face immediately broke out into its standard sunny grin as he looked straight at him, his dark eyes warm and approving.

“I mean, obviously I knew you were an artist, but I’m impressed! Really, I’ve never thought of mixing all the colours together before- and definitely not patterning them like you have,”

“I’m not an artist,” Jean mumbled, abashed. He wasn’t quite sure how to react. It just felt…odd having someone who knew what he was doing in this kitchen by second nature suddenly compliment him and daresay he did something better than he could do.

“You do art, don’t you? I’m pretty sure that makes you an artist. See, I knew you were good at art! There you were yesterday trying to psych me out by saying you might be useless at it.”

Jean shrugged helplessly. Despite his begrudging unwillingness to accept it, the feeling beginning to glow at the pit of his stomach was warm and pleasant, and most certainly welcome. He hadn’t been praised for his art in a long time- he hadn’t even allowed himself to enjoy it, merely berate it, so ultimately, in the end it would have been easier to give up.

Maybe it didn’t have to end quite so sourly now.

Well. It better not. He’d just signed up to pursue a degree in studying it for the next two years.

“Seriously. I mean it. I’m impressed. You should be proud,” Marco said, reaching out and patting Jean on the shoulder. “But as lovely as they are, you’ve still taken quite a while and we still have to open in-“ He looked up at the clock. “-two hours, so shove them in the fridge then get the dough from the proving cupboard. You have to knead it again- don’t worry, it’s easier this time because it’s risen, so it’s better to work with! And then shape it into six separate loaves. Then we’ll prove it once more for just ten minutes, and then it can go in the oven. Then voila- your first loaves of bread, made by your own hands, from scratch.”

“And yours. You’ve done most of it.”

“All I’ve done is knead it and throw it in a cupboard. Don’t worry,” he paused and winked at him. “With practice, you can throw things in cupboards just as well as me, too.”

“Fuck off,” Jean snorted in amusement, unable to disguise the smile in his voice. “You’ve got one hell of a high opinion about yourself, don’t you?”

“Only when it comes to baking. Now come on, those need to go into the fridge to set.”

With the bread dough once more, Marco showed him how to divide in into equal sections of six, before kneading it for a second and final time- although, this time around, it was a lot less like kneading, and more like beating the actual crap out of it. Afterwards, he guided Jean’s hands into shaping a wide, oblong-shaped loaf, scored along the top to regulate the air within it, before they put them back into the proving cupboard, and Marco began to show him the vital skill of how to make puff pastry for the Danish pastries. Jean was informed that puff pastry was a staple of many of the things made in the bakery, and knowing how to make it from scratch without instructions was an invaluable skill. Before long, the bread went into the oven, the croissants came out and Marco had him filling massive eclairs with whipped cream until they looked ready to burst, before slathering them in thick, runny chocolate. Next came the mercifully easy cream puffs: simple meringues piped with a sweet vanilla filling and a scattering of strawberry chunks. Jean surprised himself by being relatively good at making these. He tried to ignore the simplicity of them and instead focused on Marco’s praise, however empty it might have been.

Eventually, just before seven, Marco left the tray of bread rolls he had just prepped for baking and hauled the oven door open, grabbing a tea towel from the counter besides him to cover his hands as he pulled out the tray holding the bread Jean had made.

“Here you go,” he announced. He balanced the tray on one hand and gently pressed down on the top of one of the loaves. It’s richly coloured surface dipped at the pressure, then immediately sprang back as he removed his finger. “Cooked to perfection.”

Jean looked up and dusted the meringue powder from his hands onto his apron as he eyed the bread Marco placed on the counter next to the oven, flashing him an encouraging smile.

“I don’t know why you’re smiling. They look fucking awful.”

The only well-shaped one was the one Marco had done to show Jean what to do. The remaining five were crooked and misshapen, as if they’d caved in on themselves. Their surfaces weren’t smooth and even, they were bumpy and warped as if they were growing warts, like a toad’s back.

“No they don’t. They’re your first attempt. You can’t have expected to get it perfect on your first try.”

“Of course I didn’t. But I did exactly what you told me to- and you helped- so why do they look like actual shit?”

“They’re not that bad,” Marco insisted. “And like it or not, they’re still going out for sale, regardless of whether they’re up to your standard.”

“Are they up to your standard?”

“That depends. My standard of baking or my standard of selling?”

“Both.”

“For selling, they’re fine. They were made in a sanitary environment and they’re not burnt or undercooked, which means they’re perfectly fine to eat. For my standard of baking, I would’ve done my family a great disservice if I produced bread like this.”

“Fuck. You don’t pull punches, do you.”

“If nothing else, I’m honest,” he said cheerily. “That much I can promise you. Are you finished with the cream puffs?”

“Yeah. They’re significantly less crap than the bread, you’ll be glad to know.”

“Ha, ha, very funny. Well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to finish everything in here- would you mind cleaning the shop floor before we start putting everything out? The counters just need wiping down and the floor needs sweeping, but that’s pretty much it. Oh! And the glass; make sure you clean the glass. All the cleaning stuff you’ll need is just beneath the front counter.”

“Are you sure? You don’t need any more help?”

“I’ll be fine. But we need to open soon and I can’t finish everything and clean the store at the same time.” Marco smiled graciously, but it was clear he was being dismissed. Jean ran a hand through his hair before turning around and walking back out onto the shop floor.

The dim light from outside had now brightened considerably. The circlet of houses visible through the shop’s window was now filled with sunlight filtering between each building, casting long shadows already beginning to withdraw as the sun rose. It was just visible now, cresting over the roofs across from the bakery, slowly ascending into the pale blue sky amidst wispy white clouds like a balloon.

Jean retrieved the cleaning supplies from beneath the counter- a broom, dust pan and brush, one bottle of sanitation spray, and one of glass cleaner as well as a roll of blue paper towels. He set about wiping down the insides of the counters and polishing the glass just as he’d been asked, confident that, at the very least, he could get this right. Having a clean freak of a mother was actually paying off for once- he’d learnt to clean very thoroughly after spending countless hours trying to scrub crushed pieces of charcoal out of her carpet. Now that was something he wouldn’t miss about home.

He finished brushing up around the legs of the table and chairs on the left of the shop floor, and went to the stand with the books piled on top. He paused when he glanced at the spines and saw that name again- Maria Bodt.

So it was true; that really was his mother. Why wouldn’t it be? Bodt wasn’t exactly a common last name.

Just to make sure, Jean paused in sweeping and propped the brush up against himself as he reached out and selected one book at random, opening its front cover to check the picture on the inside of the dust jacket. The same photo as the one in the book back at his house looked back at him steadily, dark hair and freckles and all. It was uncanny: Marco was unmistakably her son.

“Those are my mom’s books.”

Jean turned around to see Marco standing in the kitchen doorway. He was balancing the huge tray of vanilla slices, freshly cut into little rectangles, on his shoulder with one steady hand, the other resting on his hip as he met Jean’s gaze with a droll little smile.

“I gathered as much. You look almost exactly like each other.” Jean held up the book and motioned to the picture on the inner cover. “It’s almost creepy.”

“Yeah, I get told that a lot. That’s how most people recognise me, actually. More than once I’ve had people come in here and ask if I’m Maria Bodt’s son. They tend to get kind of excited when they realise they’re inside the bakery she grew up in as well.”

“She’s…pretty well known, isn’t she? Your mom?”

“I guess.” Marco cocked his head thoughtfully. The smile was still etched onto his face, but it didn’t hold the same warmth as it had before. There was something cold that glinted in his eyes that didn’t light up with the sincerity his smile usually brought to them. “I don’t really think about it much, to be honest. The only reason I keep those out-” He nodded towards the bookshelf at Jean’s elbow- “is to sell. It’s the one thing my mom insists I do. I can run the rest of the bakery how I like, just so long as her books are out.”

The room suddenly felt very cold, despite the sun’s rays pouring in through the front windows. Jean was quiet as Marco went over to the front display cabinet and pulled out a pair tongs and began to put the vanilla slices out onto a wooden board, one by one. He felt very much like he was toeing a boundary he probably shouldn’t cross. Tension was thick in the air as he slid the recipe book back into place with the rest of them. Even though Marco wasn’t looking at him, he could distinctly tell that the warmth he had emitted constantly- ever since they’d first met- had almost completely gone. Clearly there was something going on with his mother that Jean probably shouldn’t get involved with.

He finished sweeping the floor in silence as Marco went back and forth from the back room, beginning to fill the counters and shelves with everything they’d been baking that morning after laying down crisp white sheets of wax paper with lacy edges. Actually, as Jean watched him setting up the shop out of the corner of his eye as he finished cleaning, it looked like there was a lot more food there than they’d had time to make in the past four hours. At least, that’s the way it seemed. Soft heaps of currant buns were stacked in the counter that Jean didn’t remember seeing in the kitchen earlier. Neither did he recall the multitude of custard tarts that he watched Marco place between the other cakes in the window display. Or those loaves of brown bread that looked like they’d been plaited into chunky braids. Or those cinnamon rolls.

“How much did you make last night?” Jean demanded when Marco returned with a heap of macaroons that he’d already arranged onto a plate. There was no way he’d made those whilst Jean had been there.

Marco blinked and halted in his tracks, a little surprised at Jean’s tone. “Uh…like, food wise?”

“There’s no way you made all of that whilst I wasn’t looking.”

“Um…all I do at night is measure out all the ingredients I need, like I said earlier.” Marco smiled, raising one hand to scratch at the back of his head uncertainly. “I’ve made most everything else either in the hour before you arrived or whilst you were working on the bread and the vanilla slices.”

“Bullshit.” It was all Jean could do to not gape at him and the shelves around them, lined with loaf after endless loaf. “How? How did you have time? You couldn’t have- I was there-”

Marco shrugged helplessly as he placed the plate on the counter next to the till. “I’ve been doing this for a while, Jean. Give me some credit here.”

“You’re not human, you know that?”

“Haha, you think so?”

They were interrupted by the chime of the bell on the front door as it creaked open and a small, shy face appeared in the crack. It was a little girl, no more than eight or nine, with blonde hair tied into demure pigtails and a backpack on her back, peering sheepishly into the shop.

At her appearance, Marco seemed to light up once more.

“Good morning, Ellie!” He said brightly. “Is it that time already?”

She giggled, her cautiousness immediately replaced with a sense of familiarity as she entered the shop properly, returning Marco’s equally as sunny grin. “G’morning, Mr Bodt!”

“You here for your mother again?”

“Yep!” She nodded vigorously, pigtails bobbing up and down. Marco immediately went around to the shelf on the other side of the shop and took down one of the loaves that Jean had made that morning. Jean very nearly opened his mouth to protest, but Marco seemed to sense his intention and shot him a knowing glance, raising one eyebrow as if asking him to contradict his better judgement.

The little girl must have followed Marco’s gaze and caught sight of Jean standing in the corner. The complacent look on her face was immediately replaced with confusion as she sidled over to the counter where Marco was putting her bread into a paper bag for her and whispered, rather loudly, “Mr Bodt, who’s that?”

“Who?” Marco looked up from the bag in his hands, over at Jean with a look of mingled amusement. “That’s Jean.”

“What’s he doing here? I thought I was always your first customer!”

He laughed and handed the packaged bread over the counter into her waiting arms. “You are! You’re always my first customer. Jean’s not a customer. You should get used to seeing him. From today, he’s going to start working here.”

“Mr Bodt…”

“Yes?”

“This bread looks funny.”

Marco blinked, looking almost caught by surprise by her blunt expression. She was looking at the bread in her arms visible through the little plastic window in the paper bag, her little face creased in doubt as she examined the uneven bulbous surface and blotchy colouring dubiously. Jean would’ve laughed if it weren’t so damn tragic that even a kid could see the terrible state of the bread he had made. He turned his back on them both and dropped into a crouch, focusing on sweeping the dust pile he’d collected into the dustpan in a resolute attempt to make himself as invisible as possible.

Maybe don’t get used to seeing me around too frequently, kid. He thought to himself grimly. If that’s the kind of bread you can expect from me, then this job is doomed to fail before it’s even started.

Then again, Marco had praised his decorating ability, hadn’t he? He’d proved competent at that, at the very least. That was worth something…right?

Jean was pulled out of his reverie when he heard Marco’s voice speak up once more, just as soft and gentle as before, yet almost reverent in its tone.

“And? So what if it looks a little funny? It’s the taste that counts, isn’t it? Sometimes when we try new things, things we don’t expect we’ll like, we end up being pleasantly surprised like that. Even if it’s not something you think is worth trying- because we never know what it might be like once we try it, do we?”

There was a short pause before the same giggle piped up again, followed by a clink of a handful of coins clattering onto the counter.

“You’re funny, Mr Bodt!”

Despite himself, Jean snorted.

“Glad you think so. Now, go on, get back home, before your mother gets me into trouble for keeping you. Have a good day, Ellie.”

“Bye! And…bye, Mr Jean.”

Jean jerked instinctively and turned his head just to see the back of her disappear out of the door with a chime of the doorbell as it swung closed behind her. He brushed the last of the dust pile into the pan in his hand and straightened up, eyeing Marco on the other side of the counter curiously.

“Who was that?”

“One of the neighbourhood kids.” Marco raised a finger and pointed to her retreating figure, visible through the shop window. She crossed the roundabout to one of the houses on the other side of the street and disappeared inside. “Her mother sends her for a loaf of bread every morning. She’s a sweet kid, really.”

Jean was quiet.

“Is something wrong?”

“No…it’s just,” A smirk was beginning to play on his lips. “she called you Mr Bodt.”

Marco’s cheeks visibly pinked. “And?”

“You don’t seem like a Mr Bodt.”

It was Marco’s turn to snort as he ran a handg through his fringe, pushing it off his face as he chortled at Jean. “Trust me, it feels as weird as it sounds. Hey, you got to be Mr Jean, though.”

“Ha. That might be easier for her. My last name’s a pain to pronounce, especially if you’re a kid.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Kirschtein.”

“Yikes. That’s harsh.”

“Plus, I got an awkward first name, as well- written like J-e-a-n and said like zhawn. It’s as if my mother actually wanted me to grow up to be the pretentious asshole always correcting people on his name.”

Marco chuckled softly once more as Jean walked past, holding the full dustpan in one hand and the rest of the cleaning things in the other to return to their proper place. He lifted the hatch in the counter and lay them back underneath, where they belonged, as Marco side stepped to let him through.

“Hey, Marco, where’s your trash can?”

“There’s one in the kitchen- wait, Jean.”

He halted mid-turn in the general direction of the back room as Marco looked over at him, an almost uncertain look starting to knit his brows together in an expression Jean couldn’t quite discern.

“Yeah?”

“You heard all of that stuff about the bread, right?”

I’ve heard a lot of stuff about bread this morning, bud. You’re going to have to be more specific. “Uh…sure.”

The tension knotting itself into Marco’s brow immediately unwound as his entire face softened once more into the familiar open, approachable amiability that Jean was used to. He made his way over to him, taking the dust pan from Jean’s hands as he did so, and turning on his way towards the doorway where he paused for a moment to speak.

“Good. Just…bear it in mind, OK? There’s no shame. We’re all like funny bread at some point in our lives.”

And with that, Marco disappeared into the kitchen.

Jean stared after him for a few seconds, one eyebrow raised, perplexed, before it struck him.

Sometimes when we try new things, we end up being pleasantly surprised like that. Even if it’s something you don’t expect you’ll like. Even if it’s not something you think is worth trying.

His cheeks began to prickle with heat.

“Hey, if you’re calling me ‘funny bread’ now that’s it, I’m quitting.”

Marco just laughed.

…

Jean hung around the shop until a little past ten in the morning when Marco informed him he had a few deliveries to make to several cafés around town that had placed orders with him, and Jean might as well go home. He was insistent that he didn’t need any more of Jean’s help and practically had to push him out of the door and told him to rest up for the same thing tomorrow.

Well, at least he was aware that Jean was severely fatigued at this point.

He arrived at home just before eleven to find Eren sitting on the sofa just like he had the day before they enrolled for college- video game and sweatpants and all- who looked up at Jean’s entrance and instantly declared upon his arrival that he looked like death, with eyebags that rivalled a panda’s.

Not in the mood to spat with his housemate, Jean ignored him and made a beeline up the stairs straight to his room and immediately collapsed onto his bed, not even bothering to close his door behind him. He’d suddenly been struck with irrefutable exhaustion on the walk home and his eyes were aching so much with sleep that they felt physically ready to fall out of their sockets. His limbs were heavy and cumbersome- his biceps in particular were beginning to throb with the exertion from earlier- and taking the weight off his feet and throwing it right onto bed was the closest he’d come to feeling euphoria in his life. He didn’t think he’d be so tired after only a few short hours of working. Then again, maybe this was the consequence of spending the past few weeks staying up until three in the morning either drawing or playing video games with Eren and waking up at noon.

Was this all really going to be worth it?

Waking up at the butt crack of dawn every day, baking mediocre bread, getting in the way rather than helping…was this really all going to be worth putting himself through, just so he could pursue the silly little idealisms in his head?

He rolled onto his side, bunching up the duvet into his arms and clutching it close to his chest as he curled around it, into his preferred sleeping position. At least he was getting paid. Even if he proved as completely and utterly useless as he had on his first day, he’d be spending all of summer earning- that was better than nothing, right?

Yeah. He’d focus on that. Instead of misshapen bread and his inability to knead properly. Focus on the money. Focus on the pay check.

But as he finally slid into unconsciousness, all he could think of was a stupid smile curving upwards into a splattering of freckles.

Damn you, freckle face.

This better be worth it.

Chapter Text

Chapter Four

The first two weeks passed in a short, sharp breaths of early morning air and whirlwinds of doughy knuckles, flour-streaked shirts, and the smell of pastry beginning to permanently cling to Jean’s clothing. He’d refused to let Marco have him take it easy and forced himself to get up at quarter to three in the morning so he’d be there at three thirty instead of an hour later. Which would have been fine and dandy, if his unflinching sense of commitment wasn’t all but wreaking havoc on his sleep schedule. Jean had taken to falling asleep the moment he got home from the bakery (which varied between any time from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon), waking up for food sometime early evening, only to lie restlessly in bed once night fell trying to convince himself to sleep. Of course, this only led to him falling reluctantly out of bed in the early hours of the morning after broken fragments of rest to repeat the whole damn cycle again. Jean scarcely even saw Eren, except for a few brief moments when he ate dinner or returned home from work. Not to mention the rest of his social life- that itself was all but dead. His phone had been practically silent for once in his life, without even his mother’s usual twice-a-day texts buzzing through periodically. It slowly felt like his life was this odd rush of stumbling through his waking hours at the bakery, only to exist in and out of consciousness upon his return home, until the next morning when he could go back. His only respite from this routine were his Sundays, when Marco didn’t open the bakery so they could have one day off a week.

At least, in his brief evenings of wakefulness, he had time to draw. And not in the way he had before he’d enrolled in college- that had been drawing out of obligation to himself; drawing because he felt like he had to, because he’d felt robbed of all his time in the lead up to his entrance exams before he left high school. Nothing about those drawings had felt right. They felt…superficial and forced. But now? Something was…different.

Jean had spent two or three nights trying to sketch the bakery in its entirety from memory, carefully retracing every crooked line in the timber frames, pencilling in the lattices of the windows, and scratching out the harsh edges and angles of the doorframes and the shutters. There was something wickedly charming about that building that wasn’t lost on him the more he saw it. It was the first thing that had acted as a proper source of inspiration for him in a long, long time. It was the first time he’d felt good about one of his drawings since…well. He couldn’t remember when.

Even though the debilitating daily routine had Jean living a strange, zombie-like lifestyle, he couldn’t quite bring himself to feel unhappy about it. Of course, that feeling was severely tested when his alarm blared out at half past two every morning and all he wanted to do was throw it right out the window- preferably into a steaming vat of something hot and molten- but early mornings and hard work aside, the deep-rooted pessimism that had taken up residence in his soul many, many years prior seemed to have dislodged somewhat. Maybe it was because he was being productive for once in his damn life. Or maybe it was Marco’s eternal optimism rubbing off on him.

Jean wasn’t quite sure which explanation he preferred.

But he certainly hadn’t expected to feel this good about his decision to study art in place of business so soon. He’d expected to be apprehensive all the way throughout the remainder of the summer, only having his guilty conscience reluctantly ebb away once he properly started on the art course. It was almost remarkable how little he regretted not choosing the business course back on enrolment day and how eager he admittedly felt about starting to study art properly once October came. That’s not to say some nights as he sketched away the sleeplessness from underneath his duvet, he’d feel a rueful pang in his chest and stop for a few moments to wonder what the hell he was doing to himself- living from three in the morning to two in the afternoon and ardently anticipating a silly little idealism he’d wanted to pursue as a kid. But no matter how many times he’d thrown his sketchbook and pencils onto the floor in response, regardless of the moments his heart soured and he felt so goddamn stupid…by the time morning came and he opened that bakery door and was awash in the comforting warmth and tantalisingly delicious smells, and that same ever-present cheerful smile…those feelings were gone.

In the space of two short weeks, things had completely turned around, changing Jean’s attitude along with it. Whether that was for the better? He couldn’t answer that. Not now.

That remained to be seen.

…

One bright, pink-skied Thursday morning Jean arrived at the bakery as per usual, announcing his arrival with a shout of “I’m here!”

“Hey, Jean!” came the response from the back room as Jean took his jacket off and laid it on the counter, weaving through the hatch and making his way to the doorway leading into the kitchen.

Marco wasn’t stood over by the ovens like normal, or bent over a batch of dough, or even doing anything. He was leaning against the middle table, well-toned arms crossed over his chest casually, his apron still tied around his waist, as if he were waiting. The expectant look on his face gave way to a cheerful good-morning smile at Jean’s appearance in the empty door frame.

“Good morning!”

“Uh…morning,” Jean said hesitantly. Was he missing something here? They had lots to do and only four hours to do it in. When he arrived most mornings, there was no slow start, no coffee break, no dithering about. He’d roll his sleeves up, jump right in and start doing what Marco told him to, until he had to go and clean the shop floor. “What’s up? You’re…not baking.”

“Nothing’s up. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” Marco chuckled at his stricken expression. He reached out behind him and picked up Jean’s apron from where it was lying abandoned on the table from yesterday. “Today’s just kind of a big deal because…well, you’re finished with your training. I’ve taught you everything you need to know to start working here properly. Basically, you can bake without my supervision and start learning actual techniques, instead of the bare minimum.”

“What?” Jean stared at him. “What? It’s only been a couple of weeks…I mean, the bread I make still looks like it fell out of a troll’s asshole. There’s no way I can manage to make something- anything- on my own. How the fuck am I ready to start moving onto the more advanced stuff? Are you blind?”

“Hey, give yourself some credit. You’re pretty damn good at making cakes, not to mention decorating them. Making bread isn’t easy, that’s the point. It’s not something you can perfect in a handful of attempts. You’ve done well enough getting to where you are now. Look on the bright side! At least you can knead well now!”

Jean tried to ignore his blatant embarrassment beginning to paint itself over his cheeks, doing his best to suppress the memories of more than one occasion with Marco letting him valiantly struggle over various batches of dough before he gave in and kneaded it for him. It was only within the past week he’d finally managed to get the technique down, but even then, he was still exceptionally slower at it than Marco was. He tried not to think about that too much.

“I’m not saying you’re on your own now, don’t worry,” Marco said softly. He laid the apron across his arm and brushed off a few stray flecks of matted dust and flour from its front. “I’ll still be here to give you a hand- should you need it- as always. Well…actually, that’s what I needed to talk to you about.”

Jean shot him a confused look.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing big! Please don’t look so panicked! All I needed to tell you is that- you know those deliveries that I make to the cafés around Rose? Well, usually I make them at about seven in the morning.”

Jean began to nod before he halted abruptly. “Alright…but you’ve been doing them at, like, ten.”

“Indeed I have. Because I haven’t had time to do them at seven. I’ve been here, training you.” Marco gave him another gracious smile as he spoke. “But now you’ve got the most basic parts of your training covered, you can manage the shop until I get back, and I can make deliveries like normal.”

Something burning a steady fire of indignance and slight trepidation rose in the back of Jean’s throat. “So,” he said slowly. “You’re basically saying you changed your delivery schedule for two whole weeks because of me?”

Marco cocked his head to the side. “Yeah?”

“What did these cafés think of you doing that?”

“Oh, they weren’t happy. God knows why; most of those places don’t open until eleven in the morning anyway. But I managed to convince them it was all for the best. See, without you here, I’d have to close the shop, like I used to, which meant I either wouldn’t get to open at eight or would miss an hour of baking to deliver this stuff.”

Jean let out a long, exasperated stream of breath and ran a hand through his still bed-tousled hair. That didn’t sit right with him at all. Marco shouldn’t have had to compromise his work schedule- and maybe even jeopardize the precious relationship with his customers- just for Jean’s sake. That fact alone made his stomach flip guiltily and his fists tighten in dissatisfaction.  He wasn’t worth the extra trouble, and besides, even he, far more inexperienced, could tell that was a terrible business move in the grand scheme of things. Surely customers would want a consistent service, not one thrown into upheaval because of one mediocre change in the form of his addition of to the mix?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Marco interrupted Jean’s frantic thought process and held up a hand for quiet when Jean opened his mouth to protest. “Believe me, it’ll work out just fine. If the business managers got pissy at me for changing the delivery times, then that’d be their choice. We’re fortunate enough that that didn’t happen. But it’s back to normal now, so there’s no damage done.”

“It’s not just that,” Jean cut in, his tone unintentionally sharp. He folded his own arms awkwardly, suddenly feeling very stiff and self-conscious as he averted his gaze, choosing instead to stare at the floor as he scuffed the toe of his trainer against the flagstone. “Honestly, it’s kind of your willingness to bend over backwards for me that’s bothering me. I mean, ever since I showed up you’ve done so much for me- giving me this job, trying to teach me business, and baking, obviously. Seriously, if I weren’t a little more used to it by now, I’d think you had an ulterior motive or something.”

Marco gave him a crooked half-smile laced with uncertainty. “You’d rather I do nothing and watch you struggle?”

“No!” Jean said a little too quickly for his own liking. He cleared his throat hesitantly. “Uh…I mean…I appreciate it, of course. Just…please don’t let your reputation go down the drain on my account. I don’t need that kind of guilt resting on my shoulders, thanks.”

He laughed properly for the first time that morning as he straightened up and held Jean’s apron out to him. “Alright, I promise I’ll be careful. Now, come on, get to baking. I’ll get as much done as I can, but I’ll be leaving to do these deliveries at seven, as promised, and I’ve also got to go pick up some more stock ingredients from the supplier’s warehouse.”

“What? How long will that take?”

“Well, it’s on the outskirts of Rose, on the complete opposite side of town- you know Karanes? Near there. So…a couple of hours, maybe? I’ll be back at eleven-ish, I’m sure. Then you can go home.”

“Marco, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Why?”

“You’re leaving me alone here. Someone with only two weeks’ worth of experience and who still makes crappy bread. Tell me you’re not worried with a straight face.”

“Of course I’m not worried! Have some self-confidence, Jean. Look, if it’ll make you feel better, all you have to do is watch the shop whilst I’m gone, and we’ll fix this baking anxiety when I’m not here another day, OK?”

Jean squared his shoulders gracelessly in muted gruffness. “Could have put it another way, but sure.”

Marco laughed and tossed the apron at him. “Enough lamenting. Crappy loaves of bread don’t bake themselves.”

He pulled the apron off the top of his head and glared at him, unable to stop the smirk beginning to tug at the corners of his lips. “You’re a real asshole when you want to be, you know that?”

“Oh, I’m so glad. I was worried this butter wouldn’t melt outlook would grow boring after a while.” Marco said sarcastically as he turned around and began pulling out bowls of pre-measured ingredients from the cupboards beneath the middle table, ripping the cellophane off the top of them and balling it up into his fist to toss over the room into the trash can in the far corner. “Come on, bread. Now.”

The next couple of hours passed without incident as Jean carried on with the regular morning routine he’d established for himself- kneading dough until his biceps practically screamed with exertion, icing vanilla slices, piping cream and drizzling eclairs with chocolate, dragging trays in and out of the ovens. He’d gotten his first burn on his inner wrist on his third day and it was still very much there, forming a harsh little pink welt on his arm, like a lipstick stain. He couldn’t help but wonder if by this time next year, he’d be covered in them. Like Marco was.

Every now and then he snuck a surreptitious glance at the inside of Marco’s forearms, trying to count the number of faded dashes streaking through the freckles. There was one long, shiny burn scar that ran right up the inside of his left wrist, a good six inches long or so. Its outside was puckered with age and the taut skin was shiny, showing it was several years old, at least. That must have been his worst one. Jean’s own arms prickled at the thought of how deep the original burn would have had to have been to scar so prominently. That was something he certainly didn’t look forward to. He wondered if it would be worth investing in some oven gloves that went up to his armpits, instead of using Marco’s method of just grabbing things through a tea towel. Even that began to burn his fingertips if he held onto it for too long. Marco must have been blessed with heat proof hands, or something.

Eventually the clock ticked around to seven and Marco announced his departure after loading the delivery van parked outside on the curb with six lots of orders, despite Jean’s protests.

“Jean, you’ll be fine. Trust me. All you have to do is to clean the shop, get everything out on display, and then keep an eye out for customers. Seriously, what’s so scary about that?”

“It’s not scary,” Jean retorted hotly as he glowered at the keys to the van in Marco’s hand, whilst the other undid his apron. “I just don’t feel like being held accountable when I accidentally burn this place to the ground.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “You’re not even going to be using the oven, so I’d like to see you try. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” He paused, halfway out of the door and gave Jean a look mingled with amusement and something resembling fondness. “It’s not like you to be so plaintive, you know.”

Jean stuck his middle finger up at him, making him tip his head back as he laughed.

“I’ll see you in a bit, alright?”

And with that, Marco walked out of the doorway and disappeared from sight. Jean counted his footsteps thudding away, one by one, until the front door was opened, signified with the chime of the bell, and was shut again with a soft clunk. The noise of a car door being opened and slammed shut was audible from outside, followed by the rumble of the van as it came to life. Moments later, the spluttering engine died away as it rolled off the pavement and drove away, diminishing into silence.

And Jean was alone.

He exhaled shakily, eyeing the table lined with everything they’d been baking that morning apprehensively. He’d never been quite so nervous before, even though he wasn’t entirely sure why. Usually he considered himself pretty chill and not easy to aggravate. But there was this innate fear wedged deep into the forefront of his mind of fucking up and throwing every single kindness Marco had done for him back in his face.

Come on, what was the worst thing that was going to happen? He’d cleaned the shop every day since he started work (excluding Sundays, of course), there wouldn’t be any problems there. And how hard was it really to put everything up on display and into the counters? You didn’t need any special skill to manage that. As for customers…well. He’d watched from afar whilst Marco dealt with them up until now. How hard could it really be? If someone wanted something all he had to do was package it up in a paper bag or box and charge them. No big deal, right?

The uncertain thudding in his chest said otherwise.

Trying to shrug off the unease as best he could, Jean stalked out onto the shop floor and seized hold of the cleaning things from beneath the counter and set to work, scrubbing at the glass counters so harshly the paper towels bunched into his fist made squealing noises of protest. He swept and brushed and cleaned until every inch of the bakery gleamed, before he set about filling the counters with one product at a time.

Marco made hoisting the baking trays onto one shoulder whilst using his free hand to put its contents onto the shelves appear effortless. Clearly, that was something else that came with practice. The edges of the trays dug into Jean’s neck as his arm strained to keep it supported, making his shoulder ache and burn with the effort. Eventually he just gave up and hauled the trays back and forth from the kitchen to the shop floor with both hands, balancing them precariously on the counter as he stacked cakes and loaves of bread.

Well, Jean thought grimly, rubbing his throbbing arms as he put the final tray of eclairs onto the counter. If I get nothing else out of working here, some biceps would be nice.

The rosy pink sky outside had receded within the past few hours and now the sun was properly up, bathing the little crescent neighbourhood with in yellow morning light. Big, grey clouds blossomed overhead, fracturing the sun’s rays so the shadows cast on the ground came and went, darkening and sharpening periodically. It certainly didn’t look promising, weather-wise. Hopefully, it would stay fine for Jean to walk home later without getting rained on.

That said, it wasn’t cold, far from it. The already-peaking August temperatures weren’t going to diminish any time soon, and the stuffy warmth of the bakery didn’t help matters. As this thought crossed his mind, Jean plucked at his shirt and sniffed himself cautiously. He cringed as the faint musky hint of sweat whirled up his nostrils. Damn it. He could only hope that it wasn’t that noticeable. It’s not like he could help it- the warmth from the oven heated the building to its very core, and combined with him having to viciously knead and lift and so forth, he got very hot, very quickly. All this exertion was akin to a workout, he was sure.

Jean snorted to himself. That wasn’t something he was familiar with.

He placed the last éclair into the counter and took the empty tray into the back room- pausing to flip the sign in the window from “CLOSED” to “OPEN”- where he stuck it into the sink already full of hot soapy water and rinsed it down, wiping it clean of every trace of chocolate and smear of cream before propping it up against the wall to dry.

That was it. He was done.

Jean re-emerged from the kitchen, brushing the soap suds off his hands onto his apron and checked the clock mounted on the wall above the book display. It’s little ornate arms read half past eight. The dull tick of the second hand resounded in the otherwise silent shop as Jean pulled the stool out from underneath the counter and sank down onto it, drumming his fingers against the edge, unsure of what to do with himself. The shop was spotless, everything was in its proper place, and he’d already washed everything up in the kitchen. There wasn’t really anything left for him to do other than twiddle his thumbs and wait for a customer to show up.

That was a thought, Ellie hadn’t come by yet. Usually she was here the moment the clock struck eight, but there was no sign of the kid. Huh. That was strange.

Unless she caught sight of Jean in the window and no Marco and high-tailed her way back home. She always made enthusiastic conversation with Marco but shied away from Jean, other than mumbling a “good morning” and a “good bye”. Not that he blamed her. He wasn’t really the type who was that good with kids, whereas Marco was proficient enough at it for the both of them.

Blowing an exasperated breath out of his lips, Jean spun in his seat to look at the noticeboard behind him. Every square inch was covered in bits of paper- there were only a few odd fragments of cork board visible behind the pins and thank-you cards that Jean poked open with his index finger to read the inscribed messages on the inside- Thank you so much for the wedding cake- The catering you provided for the reception was incredible! – We’re all very grateful for your work…

Beneath the cards there were several polaroids and printed-off photographs. Two were of the same couple, one of them posing in wedding attire in each other’s arms, another was of them standing behind a massive white five-tiered cake, brandishing a knife together and grinning brightly into the camera.

Jean ran his finger down the white tower of a cake. The exposure on the photograph meant he couldn’t see the details all that well, but he could just about distinguish one crisp curl of decorative fondant from another, forming a gigantic frill cascading down one side of the cake. It was colossal, as tall as the bride and groom it had been made for when perched on the low table between them. Even in the blurry, slightly out of focus photograph, the effort Marco must have put into that cake was blatantly apparent. It was no small task, clearly, to make a cake of that size, let alone to decorate. And all by himself?

It was getting harder to think of ways this boy couldn’t amaze Jean any more than he already had.

He let the thank you card drop back into place as his eyes flickered over the rest of the notes pinned around up around. Most of it was scribbled orders and deadlines, some already well past, and shopping lists and notes and tally charts. But as his gaze skimmed down the board, a little wedge in the bottom corner, slightly discoloured from the other scraps of paper, caught his eye.

Cautiously, Jean peeled back the outdated order laying over the top of it with his finger and thumb. His breath hitched in his throat.

It was a photograph, no bigger than one used in a passport. Three tiny faces were beaming through the little picture- two he recognised, one he’d never seen before. It was a family portrait, with a man and woman bent low to fit into the frame with their chubby-faced son between them. All three of them were smiling, joy etched into every freckle covering the young boy and his mother’s faces as their faces practically split in two with the size of their grins. The man with them was smiling with far less enthusiasm, and was instead watching over the two of them with a tender look in his eyes. He had dark hair like just like his wife and his son, but was strangely devoid of freckles, contrasting oddly to them both. All the same, they looked happy. Joyous. Perfect.

The edges of the minute picture were crinkled and furry with age and the colours were faded, as if it had been exposed to sunlight for a long time. Judging by Marco’s age in the photo…he must have been seven or eight? He looked ridiculously young. That would make the picture at least ten years old. When did Marco say his father left them…?

It was strange, to see a perfect portrait of such a happy family preserved from another time. Especially if he compared it to now- with Marco living by himself, his mother halfway across the country on countless promotional tours, and his father out of the picture completely. Jean knew first hand that a happy family exterior definitely wasn’t always reflective of what went on beneath the surface. Dim recollections of arguments from his childhood bubbled up from the depths of his mind, along with swear words screamed at the top of his parents’ lungs and doors slamming and heavy footsteps pounding up and down stairs, before one night his father stormed out the front door and never came back. He’d only been four at the time, and it took a long time for him to realise dad wasn’t coming home ever again. Maybe something similar happened with Marco’s family.

Guilt began to creep into his chest the longer he stared at the photo, leaving a bitter feeling swelling within him. The photo must have been hidden for a reason, and staring at it felt like he was invading on something personal that Marco didn’t want to share. He knew if it was his photo, he wouldn’t want someone he’d known for only two weeks snooping around and staring at it and drawing his own conclusions out of thin air.

The trill of the bell rang out in the dead silence.

Jean jolted from where he was sat, jerking his hand away from the photo so the note over the top of it flapped back down, feeling very much like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He whipped around, expecting to see blonde pigtails and a back pack as he opened his mouth to say ‘good morning’- but the words died on his tongue when he saw the woman in the door.

She was smoothing away stray fly away hairs provoked by the humidity from her short, strawberry blonde hair cut into a sharp, angular, asymmetric bob. She was only small- maybe five foot or so, if he was being generous- and slender, accentuated by the loose, dark grey muscle tank she was wearing, emblazoned with some band’s logo he didn’t recognise. A black studded handbag was slung over her shoulder, beaten and frayed at the edges, but what really caught Jean’s eye were the tattoos adorning the otherwise unmarred milky white skin down her arms. They were bright and bold, with harsh black outlines forming jagged angles framing colour within. The only stretch of bare skin was her left wrist, which looked oddly bland when compared to the rest of her colourful arms. As she turned her gaze onto Jean- bright blue eyes, lined with deathly sharp eyeliner, widening in surprise- he saw she had her septum pierced, and three sets of earrings going up each ear lobe.

She was the last type of person you’d expect to be wandering around in a suburban neighbourhood like Jinae.

“Oh.” She said, staring pointedly at Jean. “You’re…not Marco.”

Jean shook his head. “Uh…nope. Not Marco. He’s not here right now. Um, obviously.”

“He’s alright, isn’t he?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, he’s fine, he’s just out delivering some stuff.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” The woman breathed a sigh of relief, a thankful smile spreading over her lips as she took a couple of steps forward and bent down a little to examine the contents of the counter below the bread shelves. She was wearing a pair of big, old, battered combat boots that looked like they’d seen wars and thudded against the floorboards. “In all the time I’ve known Marco he’s never once had a day off- you had me worried for a second. He hasn’t had anyone else in the bakery since I moved in, and that’s a good couple of years ago now.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating one of the houses on the other side of the roundabout. “He’s such a sweetie, always been nothing but nice to me. Which, not many folks are, considering my appearance.” She chuckled to herself, extending one of her arms and running a hand up and down the inky decorations.

“That’s the kind of person he is, I guess,” Jean said with a nonchalant shrug. He tipped the stool back as he stood up, debating whether or not he should ask her if she wanted anything. He wasn’t exactly used to this talkative-customer crap and wasn’t entirely sure how he should respond or how long he should let it run for.

The woman looked up from the counter with a sly grin on her face. “Oh-ho, do I detect some level of relatability in that sentence? Let me guess, did you meet him when you were in a not-socially-acceptable state too?”

“Uh…well, I was drunk…”

“Ha! I knew it. I think he’s got a special fondness for us weird ones.”

Jean wasn’t entirely sure he was happy being classified as a ‘weird one’.

“Sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to be invasive. I’m too talkative for my own good. Do you think I could get two of these croissants? And…one cinnamon roll, and two pain au chocolat?”

“Oh…yeah, sure.” Jean reached over and scooped up a pair of tongs from their stand on the counter, grabbed a couple of paper bags, and reached into the counter to begin to package up her order.

She watched him in silence as he pulled out the little reel of stickers below the counter bearing the bakery’s logo to seal the bags closed, and carefully began writing out her receipt by hand, just like how he’d seen Marco do. A few terse moments of quiet passed between them, punctuated only by the solid click of the clock on the wall.

“I’m sorry if this is out of the blue, but…are you Marco’s new boyfriend, or something?”

“What?!” Jean yelped before he could stop himself, his pen going scrawling off the receipt in surprise. “His what?”

“Oh God, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have assumed, I’m so sorry…guess that’s a resounding no, then,” She said hurriedly, cheeks beginning to pink. “It’s just, all this time I’ve known Marco, he’s been running the bakery pretty much by himself, even while his grandfather was ill- and I was trying to rationalise why he’d hired someone seemingly out of the blue…I didn’t mean to jump to conclusions.”

“No kidding.” Jean cleared his throat, keenly aware of the heat creeping up his neck and running over his face, prickling uncomfortably. He ripped off the ruined top page of the notebook used for receipts and began writing her a new one as nonchalantly as he could. “His boyfriend?”

“Well…yeah.” She faltered at Jean’s expression. “You…you didn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“That he’s…Marco’s gay.”

Jean tried not to let his surprise show on his face as he shrugged, peeling her receipt off the pad and placing it on top of the packages next to his elbow. “It’s not something we’ve really talked about.”

“Ah…yeah, of course. Oh God, I’m such an idiot. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.” She clapped her hands to her cheeks in embarrassment. There was a butterfly tattoo inked onto the index finger of her right hand, one of its wings coloured blue, the other white, and just as sharp and pointed as the outlines of the rest of the tattoos swirling up her arms. “Just…how much do I owe you?”

“Seven fifty.”

She scrabbled in her bag for a few moments, fishing out her wallet before plucking out a ten and holding it out to him. Jean took it and went to put it in the counter, beginning to count out coins for her change before she shook her head.

“Keep the change. I know it’s not much, but think of it as means of apology. Please don’t tell Marco about what I said- I mean, he’ll tell you when he’s ready to, I’m sure. It wasn’t my place to blurt it out like that, so…please?”

“Y…yeah, sure. I won’t bring it up.”

“Oh, thank you so much.” The worry in her face immediately broke into a relieved smile once again as she snapped her wallet closed and dropped it back into her bag. She scooped up the paper bags Jean had laid out on the counter for her and stuffed them inside as well. “You’re too kind, really. What’s your name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Jean.”

“Well, it was lovely to meet you, Jean. Just out of curiosity, why are you working here all of a su- wait, no, don’t answer that!” She interrupted herself. “I’ve already got myself in enough trouble asking questions as it is. Maybe another time.”

“Sure.” Jean blinked few times, somewhat bemused at her…eccentric manner. She didn’t seem fazed, bidding him farewell and asking him to give her regards to Marco before she disappeared, the bell announcing her departure as she flounced past the shop window and out of sight.

Jean sank back down onto the stool and sighed. Apparently, there were some real oddities around here- that woman was most definitely one of them. That said, she clearly knew Marco, and had done so for some time. Well, it wouldn’t be hard to become acquainted if they lived in the same cul de sac, would it? Seemed like she was pretty familiar with him, regardless. Especially if she knew about his grandfather.

Wait, hadn’t she said something about him being ill? Marco had never brought that up, had he? For someone who had been so open about his grandfather’s death within their first few moments of meeting it other, it seemed a little strange for Marco to have skipped over a detail like that.

Speaking of details, he would never have guessed Marco was gay. Granted, he hadn’t thought about it much- why would he, after all? But Marco seemed like the type girls would absolutely adore. Genuinely sweet, hardworking, dedicated, friendly, and open. Not to mention tall, muscular, and handsome. In a freckled, flour-streaked kind of way.

Apparently not.

Then again, it was hard to imagine Marco as the dating type. He came across as so pure and…devoid of a sex drive. Damn. Jean wished there was a better way to put that. Really, though, what could you expect from a guy who’d practically resigned to spend his whole life baking in this stuffy little kitchen?

Jean shoved a hand into his hair and raked it back fiercely. Why was he overthinking this? What did it mean to him if Marco liked guys? It didn’t change his opinion of him, not by any means. And why was he trusting the word of some tattooed crackpot whose statement had absolutely no validation behind?

So Marco liked dick. What the hell. Big deal.

Jean rocked back onto the stool and glanced back over his shoulder at the noticeboard again, lingering pointedly on the paper that concealed the photo beneath. The image of the gentle-faced, tenderly smiling man looking adoringly at his wife and son crossed his mind once more. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to fracture such a happy little family in such a short space of time.

The bell chimed once more and Jean snapped to attention, leaping up from his seat. He smoothed the apron out over his thighs and did his best to muster a friendly, customer-service smile as he greeted his newest customer.

“Good morning, how may I help you today?”

The morning wore on bit by bit, fed by a steady trickle of customers, most of whom Jean dimly recognised from seeing them two or three times before in the past two weeks. Almost all of them commented on his being there instead of Marco, and more still liked to dither and chat and prattle their praises of how he was such a fine young man and how wonderful it was to finally see he wasn’t on his own anymore. As the hours eased on, and the recounts of multiple customers were spewed at him, Jean was beginning to feel like he scarcely knew anything about Marco at all.

The morning rush eventually lulled into dead silence by noon and Jean slumped back onto the stool at long last. His eyes were aching and it was becoming an effort to keep them open. He slouched onto the counter, burying his chin behind his folded arms, eyes trained on the door just in case another customer might sidle in. He didn’t want to congratulate himself too soon, but he felt like he’d done pretty good business so far. There were plenty of holes in the display counters now when earlier there was nothing but stacks upon stacks of stock. A warm sense of pride settled in the cavity of his chest, completely numbing his misgivings from that morning. Maybe he could do this. The baking side of things was definitely something he still had to work at (the customers who’d asked for loaves of bread he’d baked had most definitely given them long, unsure looks from the corners of their eyes) but selling? So far, he seemed to have a knack for it.

A yawn bubbled up from the back of Jean’s throat as he stretched his arms over the counter for a few moments before settling his chin back onto them. He rolled his head onto one side and gave the clock on the wall a sidelong glance. Its hands pointed to just past twelve.

Huh. Marco was supposed to be back for eleven.

He was dimly aware of this thought, but he was beginning to feel extremely heavy and woolly-headed with sleep. He was struggling to keep his eyes open as the poor sleep schedule from the past two weeks finally began to catch up with him. With no customers and nothing to do, he had nothing to stimulate his senses and keep him awake. Though he was valiantly trying to fight it, dark blotches kept clouding the edges of his vision as he blinked hard. A combination of the bakery’s warmth and the rapidly greying sky outside dimming the sunlight made it almost impossible to shake off the drowsiness. No, he couldn’t fall asleep. He was at work, for God’s sake. He had to stay awake- just until Marco got back, and then he could go home. No problem. He shifted his position so his cheek was laying against his forearm, exhaling softly so the fair hairs on his wrist fluttered as one last thought crossed his foggy, under-rested brain.

He should be back by now.

…

…Fuck.

When he finally opened his eyes, it was significantly darker outside than it had been when he’d last been conscious, and the shop’s front window was speckled with raindrops. Rain was lashing down with a vengeance from an iron-grey sky full of swollen clouds, bouncing off the pavement and splattering against the glass. There was the faint, but unmistakable pattering of each drop pelting the ground as they struck the window in a steady, unbroken beat.

It took Jean several moments to focus himself properly and realise where the hell he was and what he was doing there. Whilst outside was so drear, the room he was in was bright and aglow with light, and warmth pervaded his entire being. Somewhere nearby, the sweet smell of something divinely delicious permeated the air and filled each slow lungful of air with all the reassurance and familiarity of a homemade comfort. For a few precious moments, he felt so at home and at ease he almost fell straight back to sleep.

Until his right ass cheek gave a sharp twinge and his eyes shot open, the edge of the stool cutting painfully into the back of his leg.

Jean’s arms whipped out from underneath his head to stop himself from sliding right off the stool as he made a wild grab at the counter to steady himself. Something heavy resting on his shoulders slipped and without thinking he raised one of his hands to stop it. His fingers brushed against something soft and woollen laid reverently over him like a shawl. Pulling it away from his shoulder a little bit, Jean sat up and frowned, examining the blanket draped over his back and pooling around him onto the counter, as he tried to figure out where the hell it had come from and what it was doing over him.

Wait.

He’d fallen asleep, hadn’t he.

Shit.

There was a noise emanating from the back room- the steady hum of one machine or another and a soft rustling of paper, followed by the muted clatter of plastic against metal.

Jean’s butt felt horrifically numb and his arms were prickling with pins and needles from where his face had been resting on top them. He hurriedly tried to shake them out and regain some essence of feeling as his gaze darted to the clock. Both hands were together, pointing simultaneously at the number six at the bottom of the face.

What the hell?! Half past six? How the hell was it half past six?!

There’s no way he’d been asleep for six whole goddamn hours. No way in hell- surely, if the bell had gone off, or if a customer walked in, he couldn’t have missed them- fuck, this did not look good…how was he supposed to explain this? Sorry, I was bored as fuck, overworked, and didn’t have enough self-control or willpower to stop myself.

He ran a hand through his hair fretfully, the blanket bunching together in the crook of his elbow. It brushed passed his jaw, and he paused for a moment to bring it up to his nose and sniff it tentatively. The same musky, sweet scent he’d noticed as he’d awoken swirled up his nostrils, edged with a musty tinge of deodorant and the savoury aroma of the bakery.

“I see you’ve woken up.”

Jean flinched instinctively, dropping the corner of the blanket from his face at the sound of Marco’s voice as his head whipped round to see him standing in the doorway behind him. He met Jean’s gaze coolly, eyebrows raised in amusement. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing the scars gleaming in the overhead lights as he casually crossed his arms across his lower chest. His cheeks were pink with warmth and his hair dishevelled, as if he’d run his fingers through it multiple times and haphazardly tried to smooth it back down.

“Good evening, sleeping beauty,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips as Jean quickly rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to surreptitiously wipe his chin in case he’d drooled or something in a rather poor attempt to remove all evidence of his spontaneous nap.

“When did you get back?” Jean asked. He suppressed a yawn as best he could, grimacing instead at the hot air bundling itself in the back of his throat.

“About one o’clock this afternoon.”

“Shit. Marco, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep- I don’t know what happened, one moment everything was fine, and then all of a sudden everything was dark and warm and comfortable and I couldn’t stay awake and I just-”

“Jean, Jean,” Marco interrupted him with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Mistakes happen. I’m not mad.”

“How can you not be mad?” Jean pulled a dismissive face. “Dude, I fell asleep and I was the only one in the store. Anyone could have walked in and stolen the till, or something-” He gestured vaguely at the rest of the store. “-and I would’ve missed a crap ton of customers, and…and…why are you laughing?”

Marco’s shoulders were shaking up and down as he held one hand up to his mouth, pressing a knuckle against his mouth as he shook his head hopelessly. “Sorry, it’s just funny to see you so flustered. Cute, I daresay.”

Cute…?

Jean opened his mouth to retort before the memory of the encounter with the tattooed woman from earlier resurfaced and his words died on his tongue. Wait…cute? Was…was Marco flirting with him?

Fuck.

Either he hadn’t noticed Jean’s sudden speechlessness or interpreted it as him running out of things to say, but Marco continued speaking regardless. “Honestly, Jean, it’s not a big deal. I don’t blame you. I’m surprised you lasted this long, actually, before you crashed. You’ve done so well with your time keeping until now I’m quite impressed it took you until today to finally exhaust yourself. Besides, I usually close the store at around two anyway, so we missed out on an hour of potential sales- and the last hour is never busy anyway- so no major losses there. Besides, seems like you did pretty well by yourself this morning. I’ve seen the inside of the till. I’m proud of you.”

“Um…thanks, I guess.” Jean desperately hoped he wasn’t as red as he felt. The blanket around his shoulders started to slide off again. He tugged it off, wrapping it around his arms and bundled it into his lap.

“Here.” Marco held out his hand. “I’ll take that.”

“Did you...put this on me?”

“Well…yeah.” Marco pushed back one side of his fringe, his already-pink cheeks deepening in colour a little. “Sorry, was that weird? It’s just- it was starting to rain and I didn’t want you getting cold.”

Jean exhaled a short, disbelieving laugh. “Why didn’t you just wake me up?”

“I don’t know. You just looked so peaceful for once. I didn’t have the heart to disturb you.” He rubbed the side of his nose awkwardly, a small, rueful smile visible from beneath his hand. “You don’t frown when you sleep.”

Jean blinked. He raised his hand to touch his forehead in tentative confusion. Sure enough, he could feel the tension knitting his brows together into a scowl. Marco began to laugh at him as his hand dropped to his lap and his expression darkened.

“So I have a resting bitch face. You still could’ve woken me up.”

“I’m sorry,” Marco chuckled weakly, pressing his hand to the lower part of his cheek as he regarded Jean as if his words were highly endearing. “I will next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Jean retorted hotly. He stood up and shoved the blanket into Marco’s arms, half-catching him off guard. “I’m not going to fall asleep on the counter again.”

“Sure, sure.” Marco didn’t sound convinced. He folded the blanket over his arms before ducking behind the doorway and placing the blanket on the bottom step of the stairs on the other side of the wall.

A few moments of tense silence passed between them once Marco straightened up again and Jean deliberately avoided his gaze. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, trying to ignore the humiliation swelling in his chest and beginning to tingle on his face. There was something so…juvenile about falling asleep spontaneously, and even though Marco didn’t seem to mind, his ego was considerably bruised. He felt like such an idiot and wanted nothing more than to punch himself in the face for being so…so…vulnerable.

“I…I should probably head home,” he said eventually.

Marco’s expression seemed to falter a little in disappointment. “Oh…yeah. I guess. Oh, but the rain…”

Jean looked over at the shop window. Fat droplets were still streaming down the glass, forming thick ribbons washing down the shop front between speckled beads of water. The entire world seemed grey, obscured by the heavy rain lashing down without mercy. He grimaced as he reached around his back and undid his apron, laying it next to his hoodie that he’d left on the other side of the till that morning as per usual. Walking home in that was not going to be pleasant.

“I’ll be alright,” he lied. He pulled the hoodie on over his head, forcing his arms through the sleeves before going to put his hood up.

“Don’t be an idiot. You’ll get absolutely soaked.”

“So? It’s just a bit of water.”

“That’s not the point.” Marco sighed. “You’ll make yourself ill. Whereabouts do you live?”

“Uh…you know the intersection that takes you onto the freeway towards Trost?”

“Yeah?”

“Near there.”

“Brilliant. I can give you a lift.” Marco nodded primly and began rolling his sleeves down. “Just give me a few minutes finish up in here and get the van keys-”

“No!” Jean blurted out before he could stop himself. Marco stopped short, his eyes widening a little in surprise at his tone. “I- I mean- thanks, but I’ll be fine. I’ve been enough trouble as it is.”

Marco raised one eyebrow. “Jean, I’m not letting you walk all the way to the edge of town in this weather.”

“Honestly, I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be alright. I don’t mind walking. Besides, I need to- uh, pick up some food on my way home.” The lie spread over his tongue, sharp and bitter. “So…”

“If you want food, feel free to take whatever’s left.” Marco gestured at the half empty counters behind them. “I mean, I know it’s not much, but you don’t have to pay for it, at least.”

Jean gaped at him. “Are you serious?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, all I’m going to end up doing with it is throwing it away.” Marco shifted awkwardly from where he was leant against the doorframe. “Tell you what, I’ll get you a box to put whatever you want in, then I’ll drive you home. No,” He held his hand up when Jean twitched to respond. “I insist. I’m not letting you get drenched for no good reason other than your own stubbornness.”

With that, he turned on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen.

Jean took his hood down slowly, stomach turning anxiously. He wasn’t sure why the idea of having Marco take him home was making him feel like he’d had truckloads of butterflies shoved down his throat into his stomach, but he was certain it wasn’t the most pleasant of feelings and he’d rather brave the rain than sit next to him in the passenger seat.

Well…technically he did know.

His eyes darted to the corner of the noticeboard hung on the wall, lingering on the bottom corner and the concealed photo beneath it, swallowing painfully as the memories of the conversation with the woman from earlier crept into his mind. “You didn’t know? Marco’s gay.”

He had so many questions and he had no idea if he had the self-control to restrain them. He didn’t want to reveal that he’d been slightly more invasive than he probably should have, and he certainly didn’t want to jump the gun and tell Marco he knew about something considered…private. But his curiosity was burning away within him and his guilty conscience gave a painful twinge periodically as the burden of carrying something so…so intimate weighed heavily on his mind.

Jean took a couple of unsure steps forward towards the doorway before Marco popped out again, almost crashing into him, holding two small, white, empty cake boxes bearing the bakery’s logo in the crook of his arm. Jean stumbled back in surprise, misjudging his step backwards so his foot caught behind his other shoe, making his stagger backwards.

Marco reached out with his free hand and caught held of his elbow to steady him.

“Careful! You alright?”

“Yeah,” Jean mumbled, abashed. He was extremely conscious of Marco’s firm grip around the base of his upper arm, reed-thin when compared to the taut, defined muscles of his own. He awkwardly wriggled free the moment Marco’s fingers slackened. “Just tripped.”

A small smile crossed Marco’s face before he diverted his gaze to the boxes he was holding against his chest. “Alright. Here, fill these with whatever you like. You have a housemate, right? Take something for him too. There’s plenty left, so take as much as you need.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I am. I’d rather see you take it than let it go to waste,” Marco said, depositing the boxes into Jean’s arms. “Just give me five minutes, alright? Then I’ll take you home.”

“Sure.” Jean watched as he turned back into the kitchen, untying his apron as he went. “What are you working on, by the way? I thought you said you didn’t bake at night?”

“I don’t, usually. But I finished getting everything ready for tomorrow a bit earlier than usual, so I’ve just been experimenting with a few new things,” he called over his shoulder. He dropped his apron onto the table, cluttered with a few open recipe books and notebooks and several bowls streaked with various ingredients. Plucking a tea towel off the side of the oven, he lifted the catch and swung the iron door open. He reached in with the towel over his hands and pulled out a tray of little pastry twists, golden with molten cheese bubbling away on top. The kitchen flooded with the aroma of savoury pastry and rich cheddar intermingled into a harmonious blend that filled Jean’s nostrils within moments. He inhaled deeply, relishing the rich, fresh smell.

Marco watched him carefully, a small grin forming on his face. “So?”

“Marco, they smell fucking amazing. Whatever the hell they are.”

He laughed. “To be honest, I don’t have a name for them yet either. But once they’ve cooled off a little, you can have the honour of being my first guinea pig, if you like.”

“That sounds like less of a treat than it should.”

“Ha! Just go get your food and let me know when you’re done.”

Jean obliged and walked around the counter to hover over the display cabinets and baskets of bread he’d stacked onto the shelves only a few hours prior. He’d surprised himself, actually- there was a lot less here than he remembered. He’d ended up selling a lot more than he’d ever anticipated. They were completely sold out of white and brown bread, vanilla slices, and cream puffs. He took the last two croissants and a cinnamon whirl with a couple of leftover muffins that he grabbed haphazardly. In the second box he stuffed as many bread rolls in as he could fit. The cupboard situation at home grew dire within days after either he or Eren went shopping, so he certainly wasn’t going to pass up free food when the offer stood.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t actually eaten anything that he or Marco had made since he started working here. He closed the second box, sealing it shut with a sticker from beneath the counter with a small frown on his face. He’d always been working the morning shifts until now- the moment he arrived at the crack of dawn he started work and didn’t stop, and the second he could go home, he always had. There had been no time to pause and sample anything. Which was kind of illogical, now he thought about it. If he was selling this stuff he should at least know what the damn things tasted like.

As if on cue, Marco’s footsteps resounded from the back room, and moments later, he appeared at Jean’s side. He was wearing a dark coloured varsity jacket that was too short in the arms, exposing half an inch too much of freckled wrist. In one hand he held the keys to the van, and in the other, a napkin, in which was one of his freshly baked cheesy pastries.

“Here,” he said, holding it out and dropping it into Jean’s open palm. “Still warm. What do you think?”

“Give me chance to try it, first,” Jean remarked sarcastically as Marco’s smile deepened. He peeled back the napkin. The edges of pastry flaked onto the paper. He could feel the oven’s warmth leeching into his palms as he raised it to his lips, inhaling its rich, heavenly scent once more before taking a bite.

When Marco had said the smell of bread was more invigorating than coffee, Jean had thought he’d simply never had a half decent cup of the stuff before and as such, hadn’t given the bread any real credit for waking people up.

But the second his teeth sank into the pastry, equal parts savoury and cheesy, he saw exactly what Marco had meant back then.

The tang of the cheddar immediately spread over his taste buds, coating them in a liberal amount of flavour that was countered by the delicate pastry- so fluffy and light with scarcely any texture, but gloriously crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. He’d scarcely started chewing when any remnants of drowsiness left over from his tired state completely evaporated within seconds. The delicious taste completely filled his mouth and stuck in his throat, spiralling the same delightful aroma into the back of his nose once again.

“Fuck,” he murmured through a mouthful of pastry. “Fuck.”

Marco was watching him intently, his face split into an eager grin. “Is it good?”

“My mouth is so fucking happy right now.” Jean chewed a few more time before he swallowed, taking a few moments to completely process the flavours still lingering on his tongue. “Jesus Christ, you can bake.”

“Oh thank goodness. I was so worried I’d been doing it wrong all this time.” Marco rolled his eyes sarcastically, the smile still etched onto his face as Jean cuffed him playfully on the shoulder. “It’s good then?”

“More than. It’s pretty damn amazing.”

“Glad to hear it. I’ll have to try making them again some time. Anyway,” He held up his other hand, spinning his keys around his index finger a few times before catching hold of them in his palm. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Marco flipped off the light switches, plunging the bakery into a shadowy dimness, not helped by the grey light from the early evening dulled by the rain. It was still pounding into the pavement viciously when they stepped out of the door- pausing, so Marco could lock up- before they made a rapid sprint over the short distance to the van and wrenching the doors open to avoid being pelted with rain as much as possible.

Jean collapsed into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind him and wiping the rain droplets off the top of the boxes he balanced precariously onto his lap with the sleeve of his hoodie. The interior of the van was just as old as the outside- black, leather seats streaked with age, torn at the seams and sewn shut with layer over layer of bunched-up stitching. The dashboard was slim for optimal leg room- although Jean still had to wedge his knees behind it- and covered in dials that were completely different to the interior of any modern car. The only vague similarity to one in the dash was a sleek, black radio that was definitely not from the same time period as the van.

Jean reached over his shoulder and did up his seatbelt, dimly aware of Marco doing the same before inserting the keys into the ignition and giving them a sharp twist. The engine sputtered to life and the headlights blinked two or three times before illuminating the road before them.

“Right.” Marco drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he rolled off the curb and began to follow the curve of the roundabout in the road. “The intersection that takes you to Trost, was it?”

“Yeah. I can tell you where to go from there.” He could’ve had him follow the route through Jinae that he took every morning- but it was so full of walking through twisty little lanes and back streets, it was probably faster to go via the intersection.

They drove down the little incline leading up to the bakery and Marco took the first right out of Jinae, towards the main road. There was no sign of the rain letting up. It splattered against the windshield and trickled down in thick rivulets, blurring the world around them as the windshield wipers worked furiously, squealing with the strain.

“Sorry about the noise,” Marco said eventually. He bobbed his head at the protesting wipers. “The van’s old, as you can probably tell.”

“Yeah…” Jean glanced at the dashboard dials, the needles jerking back and forth shakily as they drove. “When’s it from?”

“Hell if I know,” Marco muttered. He paused at a T junction, looking both ways, before taking a left out of the neighbourhood. “It was my grandfather’s originally, and no matter how much my pare- my mother wanted to exchange it for something newer, he refused to get rid of it. Said it would be like selling part of the bakery.”

“Your grandfather was pretty sentimental, huh.”

“I guess so. But we all are when it comes to the bakery, at least. I mean, not going to lie, even I’m a bit emotionally attached to this old piece of junk. Even if it does break down three times a year and is probably on the verge of falling apart at this point. It’s the car I learned how to drive in, after all. And it’s special, you know? Plus- oh, crap.”

They’d just been on the verge of pulling out onto the main road that would take them directly to the intersection. It was rammed with cars in a near-standstill of bumper to bumper traffic, with the fastest speed equalling that of a snail on a good day.

“I completely forgot about rush hour.” Marco’s gaze darted to the wing mirror and checked the road behind them. “Damn, there’s cars behind me, I can’t even turn around. Ugh. I’m sorry, Jean. This might take longer than anticipated.”

“’S OK,” Jean mumbled.

A few moments ticked by in silence as Jean unwrapped the rest of his cheese-pastry and finished it off in several swift bites before it cooled off. The engine grumbled dimly and the rain continued to fall, clattering against the van’s roof as they joined the massive queue on the road.

“Do you mind me turning on the radio?”

Jean shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

Marco reached forwards and twiddled a couple of knobs and pressed a button, getting static for a good five seconds before it crackled and the audio came through clear, spluttering twice before finally beginning to run smoothly. A soft bass beat layered over the twang of a guitar riff began to play, accentuated by the steady rhythm of drums. The vocalist’s voice was raw, but not ragged, as the verse began to play.

I’m in love with an angel, heaven forbid. Made me a believer, with a touch of her skin.

Jean was half-listening disinterestedly before he noticed Marco tapping his fingers against the wheel in time to the drums, his lips working soundlessly as he subconsciously mouthed the lyrics. Jean straightened up in his seat.

“Dude, you like Theory of A Deadman?”

“Huh?” Marco jerked and looked over at Jean, before his gaze darted over to the radio. “Oh…yeah. Why? Is that weird?”

“No. It’s just not the kind of music I thought you’d like.”

“It isn’t?”

“I was expecting more of…I don’t know. Something…gentler.”

“Oh really?” Marco leaned back in his seat, smiling to himself as they inched forwards by a whole three feet before having to stop again. The whole road was glowing with red brake lights, reflecting off windows and washing everything in a rosy hue. “Do you like ‘Deadman’ as well, then?”

“They’re not bad. This is a good one, though.” Jean pointed at the radio, still chirping the chorus.

I’ll fly, on my own. It’s time, I, let you go.

“Have you heard any of their other stuff?”

“Like what?”

“Hm…how about Drown? Bad Girlfriend? Bitch Came Back?”

The boxes nearly fell off Jean’s lap in surprise.

“You like Bad Girlfriend?” he demanded. What?! That song was infamous for its…explicit lyrics, which didn’t mesh well at all with Marco’s gentle demeanour. Besides that, it was most definitely a song from a strictly heterosexual point of view. Which really didn’t coincide with what he’d been told earlier about which way Marco swung. Of course, music taste wasn’t restricted to sexuality. All the same, a song about a girl shaking her ass wasn’t something he thought would coincide with someone who was into dudes.

Marco’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah. I do. I know it’s not the nicest of songs lyrics-wise. But I think it’s very tongue in cheek, and besides, it’s catchy.”

Jean spoke before he could stop himself. “But I thought you were-”

He clapped a hand over his mouth.

Marco stared at him, bewilderment edged into his expression as the song on the radio dwindled to an end and the radio presenter began talking once again.

Jean didn’t move, eyes wide in shock at his own audacity as he met Marco’s expectant gaze, completely clueless on how to divert the conversation. Dammit. He hadn’t meant to be so blunt about it. He hadn’t meant to bring it up so soon. He hadn’t meant to say anything. It wasn’t any of his business to begin with.

“I was…what?” Marco said finally. He spoke slowly as one eyebrow raised in confusion, not taking his eyes off Jean. “What were you going to say?”

“I- I, uh, I just- I mean- I didn’t- um, well- you see…”

“Jean…”

Jean swallowed gingerly. “I…I, uh, met one of your customers today. A, uh, lady- really short, with piercings and tattoos?”

Marco nodded slowly. “I know who you mean. What’s she got to do with…?”

“Well…she just…she didn’t mean to- but she- kind of…told me you were…uh… He was painfully aware of his face feeling like it had been set on fire, as his stomach flipped nervously. His heart thudded against his chest, guilt written all over his face. “…gay?” He squeaked.

The tension in Marco’s shoulders immediately slackened. “That’s it?”

Jean nodded numbly, humiliated.

A horn blared from behind them, the noise exploding out of the car as Marco jumped in the driver’s seat, realising the queue was moving again. He quickly flashed his lights in apology and accelerated forwards for a few yards before slowing once more and rolling to a stop. It wasn’t until then that he finally spoke again.

“Is that all?” he asked again.

Jean cleared his throat awkwardly. “Y…yeah.” There was a long, tense pause. “She didn’t mean to bring it up- it just kind of happened, so don’t be mad at her or anything, because it really was just an accident-”

“Are you bothered by it?” Marco interrupted him. His words were remarkably steady, his tone completely collected.

Jean halted in his speech abruptly. “By what?”

“Being gay. Homosexuality. Two guys kissing. The whole shebang.”

“No! No, of course not.” Although you could have used a better term than ‘shebang’.

Marco was silent for a few moments before he finally looked back at Jean with a sidelong glance so he didn’t entirely take his gaze off the road this time. There was the faintest trace of a smile on his lips.

“And? Did you believe what she said?”

“Well…yeah. I didn’t see much reason not to.”

“Fair enough.” He turned back to face the road. The car’s lights in front of them lit up his face with a dim hue of red. “Well, she was telling the truth. Yes, I like guys.” He tilted his head back at Jean. “Why did you want to know?”

“No reason.” Jean’s mouth felt painfully dry. He licked his lips in a vain attempt to get some saliva flowing again. “It just sort of…came out. No pun intended.”

Marco let out a short, soft snort before lapsing into silence again. The dim hum of the radio was the only thing punctuating the silence between them, beginning to warble a song that neither of them recognised nor paid attention to.

Jean felt like such an idiot. Why, why did he have to go and make things awkward? If he’d just kept his goddamn mouth shut, he wouldn’t be feeling like he just got whacked in the face with a red-hot piece of iron. Why, why did he have to know? What did he possibly have to gain from clarifying something so insignificant? All he’d succeeded in was making Marco uncomfortable and himself look like a prejudiced asshole. Nice going. That was really a great impression to make on your employer of only two weeks.

The grumble of the engine was the only thing piercing silence as the traffic began edging forwards again, gradually crawling down the high street. The intersection was tantalisingly close now. Jean couldn’t wish for them to get there anymore than he currently was.

“So…have you had many relationships, Jean?”

“Huh?” Jean’s head snapped to the side. “What?”

“Sorry. I know it’s a bit of a strange question.” Marco wasn’t looking at him as he leant back in the driver’s seat. There was a rigid line of tension running down his arms as he tapped his index finger against the wheel. “You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to.”

“No, no, it’s OK.” The least he could do was answer a fairly harmless question to compensate for his distinct lack of humility regarding Marco’s sexuality. Jean scratched the side of his nose nervously. “I’ve had a couple.”

“Girls?”

“Yeah.”

Marco paused. His grip on the wheel slackened a little as they finally broke free of the traffic and reached Trost intersection, grinding to a halt at the traffic lights.

“So, where am I taking you?”

“Make a left here, and I’ll guide you through the neighbourhood.”

He nodded and flipped on the indicator, it’s incessant clicking filling the van and slicing through the tension like a rapid fire of tiny bullets. The sky was gradually growing darker and darker, the rain still showing no signs of letting up. The windshield wipers continued to squeal over the glass, wiping away fat rivulets of water streaming down the window.

Jean shifted gracelessly in his seat, attempting to find a more comfortable position for his cramped legs. “And what about you? Had any yourself?”

A few seconds passed before Marco nodded stiffly. “Just one.”

“Was that recently, or…?”

“It was a good year ago now.”

“Oh.” Jean pressed his lips together. Idiot. He was just making it worse, wasn’t he? What he wouldn’t give to crawl into a ditch and shoot himself right now. The hot shame didn’t go away, insistent on colouring his pointed features as he turned away from Marco and stared out of his window, desperately hoping the reflection of the red stop light would disguise his flushed face.

The lights finally blinked to amber, then green, and they made the left turn, quickly leaving the main road behind and beginning to travel down into a more domestic neighbourhood. The buildings gradually grew closer and closer together as they continued down into the ever-narrowing street, until they crashed together to form the familiar terraces similar to Jean’s place.

“It’s just down here,” he said, indicating a side street on their right. Marco obliged and made the turn, emerging out onto the curve of road Jean was currently calling home. “And it’s this one here.”

“This one?” Marco pulled up to the pavement just outside the grim, grey-faced house, wheels mounting the curb for a split second before they came bumping back down ono the road.

“Yep. Home sweet home.”

“You said you’re living away from you mom, didn’t you?” Marco leaned against the steering wheel, peering up at the building. “What’s the rent like?”

Jean shrugged. “It’s alright. It’s the cheapest place we could find that wasn’t more than half an hour’s drive away from the college. I know, it’s miserable, isn’t it?”

“No, not at all. It’s…” The words died on Marco’s lips before they’d scarcely formed.

He grinned half-heartedly. “Dude, it’s OK. Compared to your bakery, it’s like a mud shack.”

This finally elicited a laugh from him and some of the tension still present finally slipped away. “It’s not that bad.”

“Try telling me that after I go in and deal with the roof leaking or some nasty ass piece of damp,” Jean said dryly, curling his lip into a grimace. He unbuckled his seatbelt and let it slide through his hand and snap back into the clasp over his shoulder. “Seriously though, thanks for the lift. I admit, it was better than having to walk,”

“At long last! The contrite stubbornness has been shifted.”

“Fuck off.” Jean shook his head in mock despair, before hesitating. He wet his lips nervously. “And…I’m sorry for being…you know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Marco finally twisted back around in his seat and met Jean’s gaze once more. The uneasiness in his expression had been alleviated at long last as his face spread into the comfortingly, reassuring smile Jean had become accustomed to. “Did you honestly think it was that big of a deal?”

“Um…maybe.”

Marco chuckled softly and shook his head a little. “Trust me when I say it’s not. Besides, you know me a little better now. That’s something, at least.”

“Yeah.” Jean smirked in response. “Sure.”

“So…I’ll see you in the morning, then?”

“Unless you don’t want me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I need to see if you just got beginner’s luck with sales today or whether you’ve actually got some technique I need to be aware of.”

Jean snorted. “I think it’s the former.”

“Go on. I won’t keep you.” Marco jerked his head towards the house. “Go get some rest. Can’t have you falling asleep on us again.”

“Ha-ha.” He stuck his tongue out childishly before reaching out to open the door. The latch released with a heavy clunk. “I’ll see you and your attitude tomorrow.”

“Have a good night, Jean.”

“You too.”

He clambered out of the van and slammed the door behind him, clutching the boxes to his chest to shield them from the rain as best as he could. He darted around the back of the van and up the short driveway towards the front door, scrabbling in his hoodie pocket for his house keys. The water droplets trickled down the back of his neck, dampening the neck of his shirt as he jammed them into the lock and twisted, placing one hand on the door handle- before he paused, and waved one last time over his shoulder at the van still parked on the curb. A combination of the dimming light and the blurriness of the rain made it hard to see- but he thought he could just make out the faint shape of Marco waving back.

A second later and the engine grumbled to life once again and the headlights blinked to life. The tires crunched against the ground as the van pulled away, red taillights disappearing around the corner within moments like the wings of a butterfly.

Jean pushed down on the door handle and stumbled into the entrance way, yanking his key out of the door and knocking it closed behind him with his foot.

“There you are. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back.”

He looked up at the sound of Eren’s voice and condescending tone. He was stood in the kitchen, looking over at Jean from behind the fridge door, over which he was currently bent and rifling through its contents.

“I was at work, dumbass.”

“Duh. But you’ve never been this late before. What kept you?”

He wasn’t about to admit to Eren he’d fallen asleep at the bakery. He kicked his shoes off, wedging them precariously on top of the other shoes in the shoe rack with his feet before passing a hand over his rain-beaded hair.

“Eren, does the phrase ‘I was at work’ not mean the same thing to everyone else as it does to you?”

Eren’s hand wound back around the fridge door, middle finger extended.

“Classy.” He crossed the room to stand behind him, placing the boxes onto the counter top as Eren finally straightened up and shut the fridge door with a reluctant thud. “How goes your hunt for a job?”

He pulled a face. “Don’t remind me. Mikasa’s been on my back about it nonstop. I’m looking, OK, I can’t just magic one out of thin air like you did. Speaking of which, bad news.” He rubbing the side of his jaw dejectedly. “We don’t have anything to eat.”

“The hell? Where’s the frozen pizza I bought yesterday?”

“Ate it last night, remember?”

“You mean you did. It’d only been in the freezer for an hour before your fat ass was after it.”

“Hey, you had some too!”

“Yeah, because I didn’t want to waste it.” Jean sighed, shaking his head in dismay before he ran his finger under the lip of one of the bakery boxes he’d brought with him, ripping the sticker in half. “Consider today your lucky day. I brought food home.”

The box had scarcely been open for a fraction of a second before Eren’s hand darted in and grabbed the first thing resembling sustenance and crammed it instantly into his mouth.

“Oh my God, yes. That’s so good,” he mumbled through a mouthful of bread roll. “I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Why don’t you just go shopping like a normal person?”

He shrugged, chewing thoroughly as he plucked two more pastries out of the box and walked back around Jean, heading straight back to the couch. The TV was flickering with a paused still of some action movie, mid-explosion with the actors being blown backwards off their feet.

“You’re the one with the income, Jeanbo.”

Jean scowled darkly. “You can’t spend all your time holed up in here playing video games and watching movies all day, you know.”

“Ugh, you sound like Mikasa. I know, OK? I’ll get a job or something soon, but in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy myself. Got a problem?”

Jean rolled his eyes in exasperation as he picked up the other, unopened box and went over to the fridge to inspect its contents- or lack thereof- for himself. Whatever had possessed him to move in with a dense man-child of a roommate was beyond him.

“You know what, this stuff isn’t half bad,” Eren’s voice piped up from the other side of the sofa once again. “Did you make this?”

“I dunno.” Jean grimaced as he slid the box onto one of the fridge’s shelves. It was so bare is was almost physically painful to look at. There was only a half-finished carton of milk wedged into the side door, a packet of processed ham, and a mostly empty box of eggs. He’d actually have to go shopping after work tomorrow, no doubt about it. He slammed the door shut as he straightened up. “Probably.”

“I didn’t know you could bake.”

“What do you think I’ve been training to do for the past two weeks, asshole?”

“Jean?”

“What is it, Eren?” he snapped.

“Who was that guy who dropped you off?”

Jean shot him a look from over his shoulder. Eren met his gaze from over the top of the sofa, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“You saw that?”

“Dude, you were like, ten feet from the kitchen window. Of course I did.”

“That…that was Marco. He’s the guy I’m working for.”

“Oh, right. Marco…” Eren’s forehead creased in thought. “Do we know him?”

“Not as far as I know. Wait…you might have glimpsed him in passing. His bakery is the one Sasha ordered from at the party, remember that?”

“Does that mean you met him when you were sat outside after Ymir threw that drink at you,” Eren scrunched up his nose in a patronising fashion. “Wow, you got a job through pity. Nice going. Maybe I should start sitting outside houses with half a can of beer, see if that’ll get me a job too.”

“Go fuck yourself.” Jean muttered darkly. He seized a bread roll for himself as he stalked past the couch, ignoring Eren’s obnoxious chortling and headed for the stairs as he stuffed it into his mouth with the intention of getting a shower before going straight to bed.

He pulled his hoodie and shirt off over his head halfway up the staircase, balling them up in his hands as he reached the landing before he halted- with a familiar scent wafting up his nostrils. He stopped at the top of the stairs, eyeing the clothes in his arms before tentatively raising them to his face, burying his nose into the fabric and inhaling deeply.

That same musty sweetness of body and bread aroma clung to his clothes, just like that damn blanket had.

The colour rose high into his cheeks as he dropped the shirt and jacket right there onto the landing, kicking them away so they were swept against the wall before he opened the bathroom door, slamming it shut and locking it behind him.

Chapter Text

Chapter Five

The summer gradually began dying out as September arrived; the leaves atop the trees set aflame with bright hues of red and yellow and gold as the temperatures fell further and further in preparation for the onslaught of the approaching winter.

Autumn had always been Jean’s least favourite season, because it meant going back to routine and schoolwork and all the things he’d detested about being a high school student. But for the first time in years, that sense of dread never quite surfaced this time around. Maybe it was because he was focusing all his time and energy into his job and didn’t have time to fret over starting college at the start of the following month. Or maybe it was because he felt genuine excitement and anticipation to properly start on the art course.

With one week to go before the first day of college, he, Eren and Mikasa all received big, brown envelopes through their letterboxes, containing their respective syllabuses for the upcoming year; a list of required equipment (which, in Jean’s case and to his dismay, was extremely extensive- who needed three separate sketchbooks in different sizes for one term?), a letter of acceptance, copy and paste warm wishes, and a copy of their timetables.

Jean brought his timetable to the bakery with him the next morning, and Marco spent a good half hour or so poring over it whilst Jean cleaned the shop floor, consulting both it and his calendar as he tried to figure out an even schedule of work hours that met the minimum required for the extra credit Jean would get at the end of the year, whilst simultaneously fitting in time for his classes, plus extra for studying.

“Right,” he announced eventually, rubbing one hand exasperatedly against his temple. His brow was pinched into a little frown, puckered slightly in concentration. “I think I’ve figured it out. If you’ve got class at nine in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, you can work up until we open- and if you finish at half past eleven on those days, you can come back, should you want to, for the extra hours. As for Tuesdays and Thursdays, you don’t have class until the afternoon, so you can stay the whole morning and by the time you’re finished for the day, I’ll have already closed by then, so you can just go straight home after class. Does that sound good?” He glanced up from staring intently at the timetable, tapping his pen against the countertop and giving Jean a pointed look. “That should give you the minimum hours you need for extra credit.”

Jean paused in sweeping and straightened up, leaning against his broom. “Sounds good to me,” he said, deciding it better not to admit he needed to see this all visually for it to make sense. When it was spoken aloud it just sounded like a jumble of days and numbers. “Can you, uh, write all this down?”

“Sure.” Marco paused as he bent low over his notebook and began scribbling it down. “You’re going to have it rough, you know. Working from three in the morning and not finishing class until the afternoon on some days. You’re sure you still want to do this?” He looked up at Jean, his brow furrowed in doubt as he tore the page out of his notebook and held it out to him along with his timetable.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” Jean said dryly as he reached over the counter and plucked the paper from Marco’s grasp. “The only reason I’m here is because I chose to do the art course. If it weren’t for you, I’d be stuck doing business.”

“The only reason?”

“Well,” Jean shifted on his feet. “I mean…don’t get me wrong, you’re pretty cool too.”

Marco laughed. “Thanks. I’m so touched.” He propped his elbows up on the counter and rested his chin in one of his hands, gazing almost wistfully out of the shop’s front window at the dawn bleeding into day. A satisfied smile played on his lips as Jean unfolded the torn-out page to examine his work hours. “I hope it’s fun for you, though. College, I mean. Sounds like something you’d enjoy.”

Jean looked up from the paper in his hands. “You’ve never been to college, have you?” he asked gently.

“Nope.” Marco’s gaze broke away from the window as he made a mock, patriotic salute at Jean. “Home schooled through and through.”

“Do you ever wish you could’ve? You know, gone to a regular school?”

“Hmm.” His mouth twisted in thought. “Sometimes. But there’s no use looking back on it now, right? It’s been and gone, and besides, I’m happy here.”

“Marco?”

“Yeah?”

“You haven’t given me any hours on Wednesday.”

Jean turned the paper in his hands around and stabbed at the empty column in the middle of the page with his finger.

Marco blinked a few times before he raised an eyebrow, looking mildly confused. “Well…yeah. You need at least one day off. You can’t be here every day. You’d completely exhaust yourself.”

“You close the bakery on Sundays and I get a day off then. Isn’t that enough?”

“It is for me, but I’m not the one attempting to juggle working from three in the morning on top of a college education.”

“Marco, that’s-”

“And while we’re on the subject,” he interrupted smoothly, pulling the calendar over to himself once more and drawing a long, black line through one full row of dates. “I want you to have next week off.”

This time Jean couldn’t conceal his adamant refusal. “What?! Why?”

“So you have time to adjust. Look, obviously I’m no expert on the subject, considering I’ve never experienced college for myself, but from what I’ve gathered it’s not exactly the least taxing thing. Trust me. Combined with these work hours and getting used to your new schedule, you’ll be dead on your feet, and you need to have it together for your first week, at the very least.”

“But-“

“Jean.” Marco gave him a withering smile, a knowing look settled in his eyes. “I’m not having you fall asleep in the middle of one of your classes on account of me.”

Jean pressed his lips together stubbornly, warm shame prickling on his cheeks as he recalled passing out on the bakery’s counter only a short month ago. Marco was right, as much as he didn’t want to admit it- he could really do without a repeat of that kind of exhaustion. All the same, it didn’t feel right, somehow, to leave Marco to run the bakery by himself for a whole week. Even though Jean had only been around for a few brief weeks, even though his bread was still dubious in both appearance and taste, even though he was sure Marco was more than capable to return to running the bakery by himself like he had before- it still felt…wrong.

He and Marco had developed a sort of routine to get through baking in the morning- moving around one another in the kitchen, timing things to go in and out of the oven passing each other utensils wordlessly, instinctively knowing what the other needed to do in a near-perfect harmony. Obviously, he didn’t see himself as a vital part in running things, not by a long shot. But leaving Marco alone for a full week, without showing his face even once seemed…cruel. And even Jean couldn’t deny the fact that he would…well, he’d kind of miss being around.

“Is it the money you’re worried about? Because if you want, I can pay you anyway.”

“No!” The word was torn from Jean’s mouth before he could stop it. “No, it’s not the money. Are you insane?  You can’t just pay someone for work they’re not doing.”

“Honestly Jean, I don’t mind-”

“I mind.” It was his turn to interject. He slammed his hand against the counter and glowered at Marco as disapprovingly as he knew how. “I’m not going to cruise by on your pity, and I’m not going to accept pay for work I didn’t do. I get where you’re coming from, and I appreciate the sentiment behind it, but I’m perfectly capable of working the full week when I start college and I don’t need Wednesdays off, so just fill in my regular hours for next week and let’s be done with it.”

“If it’s not the money,” Marco said slowly. He eyed Jean expectantly, completely undeterred by his attempt at an intimidating stature. “Then what is it? Why do you want to work so badly?”

The heat was beginning to creep back into Jean’s cheeks as he opened his mouth to retort, only to exhale of soft whisper of air. Fuck. How was he supposed to say ‘because I feel guilty for leaving you by yourself’ without sounding like a hopeless sap?

Marco’s dark brown gaze was steady and unyielding as his eyes bore into Jean’s, who twitched and looked away helplessly. His hand slithered off the counter and dropped to his side.

“Because…because I…I don’t think it’s fair to leave you on your own to run the bakery by yourself.” He mumbled reproachfully.

“You do realise that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years?”

“I know that,” Jean snapped. “But it’s just- it just seems unfair for me to just up and leave and…you know…”

Marco waved him quiet. “I get it, I know where you’re coming from.”

Thank God. Jean’s limited skill at articulation had never been so severely tested.

“I’m being serious though. I don’t want you working a single hour next week. Likewise, I appreciate your concern towards me, but it’s nothing I haven’t done before. Thank you, though. That was uncharacteristically sweet of you.”

“Sweet?”

“Poor word choice?”

“No. Not if you’re a fourteen-year-old girl.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Puppies are sweet. Going to visit a friend in hospital is sweet. Wanting to work regular hours is just common sense.”

Marco ducked his head and chuckled to himself. “If you say so. You’re still not getting those hours.”

“What if I show up anyway?”

“Then I’ll keep the doors and windows locked and hide from your intimidating sweetness in the back room.”

Jean rolled his eyes and stuffed the two timetables into the pocket of his jeans. Clearly the battle was lost. Marco, as it had turned out, was apparently pretty stubborn when he wanted to be.

“That’s it? No clever remark? No comeback?”

“If you’ve made your mind up, what can I do about it?” Jean muttered resignedly, picking up the mop resting against the wall and squeezing it out into the bucket before letting it fall to the floor with a wet slap. “I’ll have the week off then.”

“And Wednesdays.”

“And Wednesdays.” He sighed and narrowed his gaze at the grinning freckled face staring back at him from the other side of the counter. “You’re lucky, you know? Most people have trouble getting their employees to want to work at all, let alone a full week.”

“Oh I’m well aware of it. I’m very lucky to have you here at all.” Marco stood up and picked the calendar up off the countertop to hang it back next to the doorway into the kitchen. He pinned his spare copy of Jean’s work hours across from it on the noticeboard over the top of several outdated order sheets. “Trust me though- you’ll be grateful in the long run. Especially when it gets busy, like around Christmas time.”

“There’s no way I’m having days off then.”

“Well, we’ll talk about that closer to the time. Though, even I have to admit,” Marco turned around and gave Jean a warm, reassuring smile. “I’m going miss your company. Make sure you tell me all about it when you come back Monday after next, OK?”

“Yeah.” Jean began to swipe the mop over the floor in long, broad strokes, barely able to suppress the sincere glow starting to kindle in his chest. “Will do.”

…

Jean scarcely made it to class on time on his first day.

He’d assumed that he would’ve been well adjusted to waking early by now from his summer spent working at the bakery from dawn until early afternoon, and, logically, he’d relied on his being used to the early starts to get him up for college that morning.

He’d assumed wrong.

That hadn’t been the case. Clearly, his body had taken advantage of the extra hours of sleep it had been deprived of for the past two months and didn’t stir, completely ignoring the alarm Jean had set as an extra precaution the night before. Instead, he woke up at quarter past eight to Eren thumping on his door telling him that Mikasa was picking them up in fifteen minutes and if he didn’t get his ass out of bed by then they were leaving him behind.

He threw on the first shirt he found that wasn’t streaked with flour and stuffed his backpack with anything and everything he could possibly need for art in a mad rush of sleepy, hasty delirium whilst he stuffed his legs into a pair of jeans and crammed his unkempt hair under a beanie to disguise its unwashed state as much as possible before he flew down the stairs on the wings of fear of being late on his first day.

So here he was, stalking the corridors of the upstairs of the college’s main building, lanyard bouncing on his chest as he looked for his classroom.

It was like a goddamn maze up here. Jean grimaced at the poorly diagrammed map that had been included in his welcome pack along with his timetable, the squiggles and bold geometric shapes of colour showing individual rooms not making much sense as he rounded a corner, eyes fixed on the little number plaques above the doors, looking for room 8-50. Christ. This college was huge.

 8-54…8-53…8-52…8-51…

He slowed to a halt outside the big white door to his art classroom, pausing a moment to unzip his bag and stuff the useless map back into it between the two different sized sketchbooks that could fit into his backpack. He’d left his A3-sized one at home, more out of forgetfulness than anything, but he convinced himself they wouldn’t be doing project work on the first day. Assuming that’s what the A3 sketchbook was for.

This was all so surreal. He was actually here. He was going to pursue what he’d wanted to do ever since he was a kid. He was going to actively try and achieve his dream.

Somehow.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t nervous. If anything, he was remarkably calm as he tugged the beanie down over his yet-to-be-addressed bedhead and placed a hand on the door handle. He just felt a bit like a grade A twat for oversleeping and completely pissed off at himself.

What a lovely, artistic mood.

Jean pushed the door open, blinking in the white fluorescent lights as he stepped into the stark room, walls surprisingly devoid of colour or decoration considering it was an art classroom. Several heads all jerked up at his entrance from the big wooden work benches scattered around the room in no particular order. At the head of the classroom there was one, smaller, light coloured desk that was remarkably clean when compared to the rest of the paint splattered work surfaces. It stood before a large projector screen that was currently blank, next to a ink-blurred whiteboard that was in the process of being erased by their teacher.

He too turned around at the noise of Jean closing the door behind himself. This man didn’t look anything like the eclectic oddity of an art teacher Jean had been anticipating. He’d been expecting some weedy little middle-aged guy who dressed in obnoxiously coloured waistcoats and grew a beard that he gelled into style to compensate for a bald patch. No, this guy was tall- intimidatingly so- and everything about his fair, well-trimmed hair combed away from his face, bold jawline, crisp white shirt and tan trousers pressed into razor-sharp creases screamed immaculate perfection. He was even wearing a tie. What kind of art teacher wore something that was liable to flop into paint palettes and get in the way? This guy looked like some rigidly strict analytical professor or lecturer of some sort. Not an art teacher.

“Um…” Jean cleared his throat, somewhat self-conscious with every pair of eyes in the class now fixated on him. “Sorry I’m late.”

“No, it’s alright, you’re just in time,” the teacher said. His voice was low and gentle, reverberating in a low rumble as he spoke. He turned away from erasing the whiteboard and bent over towards his desk, tapping at the keyboard of his laptop for a few moments. “Just have to put you in the register...everyone else is here, so that must make you Mr Kirschtein, correct?”

“Just Jean is fine,” he mumbled, hoisting his backpack into a better position. A few members of the class snickered.

“Very well.” The teacher smiled reassuringly and straightened up once more. “Take a seat and we’ll get started.

Jean slid into the empty seat furthest away from the front of the classroom at the least crowded table with only two other students sat around it. One was a pale girl with wild, dark hair teased into a storm cloud and a multitude of piercings in her face. She emitted a distinct smell of hairspray as Jean passed her to take his seat. The other was a guy wearing a rainbow tie dye jacket, with bleached dreadlocks tied back at the nape of his neck.

Oh man. Jean couldn’t stick out more if he tried.

As he pulled his A4 sketchbook and pencil case out of his bag (noting that was what everyone else had done) he quickly surveyed the rest of the class and felt something in his chest wither and die when he saw pretty much all of them were similarly…alternative. Bright colours and mismatched outfits, tattoos and piercings, a rainbow spectrum of hair colours and increasingly odd styles. They were all so vibrant and interesting in their own unique way. Even the students who weren’t currently channelling a Crayola aesthetic were intimidatingly well groomed and dressed to kill. And Jean? Jean was…well. Some idiot sat in the back wearing the one clean shirt he currently owned and dishearteningly average.

Hi, insecurity, my old friend. You’re back to make me regret my life choices? Great!

“Alright then,” the teacher spoke once again. He flashed his gracious smile at the class as he uncapped a whiteboard marker with a quick snap and turned to write on the whiteboard in a bold, looping script forming his name. “My name is Erwin Smith, and if all goes well, I should be your art teacher for the foreseeable future. I hope you’ve all had an excellent summer and are now suitably refreshed and ready to begin your college careers. The art course, as I’m sure many of you already know, is often misconstrued to be a cop-out of a subject, and I’d just like to reiterate that that particular notion is a complete and utter misconception. Art is most likely, I daresay, one of the more taxing subjects you can take. There’s no small amount of coursework to get through plus additional projects, as well as extracurricular if any of you are looking for extra credit at the end of the year. Which, by the way, I recommend you all pursue. Regardless, let me tell you now that if any of you are labouring under the delusion that this year will be an easy one…well then.” The same, gracious smile was now dripping with condescension. “I eagerly anticipate your verdict of the course at the end of the year.”

Wow. It wasn’t quite a threat, but near enough to unsettle Jean somewhat. He made it sound like they were going to try and attempt to survive a yearlong, battle royale type fiasco rather than smear some paint over a few dozen canvases. Art was hard, and draining- even Jean could admit that- but it wasn’t going to be that bad, was it?

He swallowed softly, dropping his gaze to the surface of his sketchbook’s blank cover nervously. Maybe this was a bad choice. Maybe he shouldn’t have chosen art after all.

“Nevertheless, I have confidence most of you will persevere and produce quality artwork over the course of the next few months that you will be unspeakably proud of. Speaking of which, your first project for the year,” Erwin tapped the board with the marker pen, indicating what he had written. Two big, bold words crushed together. “Self identity. As set by the exam board. Now, as it’s the first day and I’d rather not overwhelm you all by getting you to slave away over research pages in your sketchbooks at a topic you’ve scarcely had time to comprehend- I think we should start the year with something that links nicely to your first project. The tried and tested, good old self portrait.”

A resounding, collective groan emitted from almost the entirety of the class amidst mumbles of disgruntlement. Jean opened his sketchbook, smoothing out the first page reluctantly. Self portraits were agonising, and way too easy to become self-deprecating. Come on, out of all the stunning things that the world had to offer, you choose to draw the thing you were doled out in the genetic lottery and were subsequently stuck with for the rest of time? It took a special kind of conceited to enjoy that. He’d rather not, thanks.

“No?” Erwin raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “I take it self portraits aren’t favourable, given the general consensus? Well, then. If you’d prefer, I’d like you to get into partners and draw each other in your own individual styles. It doesn’t correlate with ‘self identity’ quite as much as I’d like,” His lip curled impassively. “but all the same, it’ll serve well enough to evaluate your exclusive strengths and techniques. If you want to stick with a self portrait, then that’s fine as well. Be prepared to feedback and explain your piece at the end of the lesson. Feel free to use any material you see fit- there’s pastel chalks in the back cupboard, acrylics under the sink…I’ve got some new watercolours here…”

The moment Erwin uttered the word ‘partners’ the two other occupants of Jean’s tables immediately shot a glance at one another and clearly made a quick, unspoken mutual decision to partner up together. They both got up from their seats wordlessly to go and collect materials, leaving Jean alone to sift through his pencil case looking for the right pencil.

Fine. I didn’t want to draw you either. He thought sullenly. Self portrait it is, then.

Jean dug in his pocket for his phone, unlocking the screen before opening the inner camera- it would serve well enough as a mirror- inwardly grimacing at the grainy image presented to him. What part of his long, angular countenance was he supposed to try and make look vaguely aesthetically pleasing? There were a million and one things he’d rather draw right now. Even his classmates agreed. Not a single one approached him to ask if he wanted to partner with them.

Whatever.

Jean found the right pencil, propped his phone up against his pencil case a short distance off to serve as a makeshift mirror, and began to sketch out the guidelines for his head. One large circle divided into quarters, tapering down to form a rounded point for the tip of his chin.

The very second his pencil touched the paper he felt an internal quiver of satisfaction through his hand, instantaneously blanketing the jumbled feelings of reservation and regret and disdain in a comforting sense of familiarity that immediately eased his discomfort. Mostly. There was no magical moment where the classroom around him dissolved and it was just him and the paper- no, he was still dimly aware of the pencils scratching around him and the tinkle of paint brushes in paint water jars. But it felt…good. Even if his subject was his own unkempt, ugly mug that he’d rather not have to analyse at such close quarters whilst in such a state…it felt right to be drawing with purpose again. The last time he’d felt this good whilst drawing was when he sketched the bakery for the first time. A small, surreptitious grin slipped onto his face when he recalled the multiple little sketches he’d made since then, pressed together behind the covers of his personal sketchbook at home. He wondered what Marco would think of them. He’d have to show him some time.

Finished with the outline and proportions of his head, Jean extended the lines past the chin, tracing the muscles in his neck and the silhouette of his shoulders. His hand dragged over the page, smudging the outline of his jaw onto the drawing’s yet to be filled in face.

Jean cursed inwardly, one hand dipping into his pencil case to seek his eraser. Pencils with a softer lead were his personal preference, but they were an absolute bitch when it came to smudging.

Shit. He couldn’t find his eraser.

He must have left it on his desk, with his regular sketchbook, from when he drawing yesterday. Great.

Jean’s gaze darted up, eyeing his classmates sat across from him, debating whether it was worth breaking the unspoken rule they seemed to have established to ignore Jean at all costs to ask if he could borrow an eraser. Neither of them were using pencil. The dark, pierced girl seemed to have an oddly contrasting art style to her outward appearance- very muted, very gentle, with soft-coloured strokes of water colour crisscrossing the page in an abstract fashion. The other guy seemed to prefer using stark, black ink, creating the girl’s portrait out of negative space in an interesting way Jean had never really seen before. Whether this was his personal style, or simply his way to replicate his subject’s monochromatic appearance remained to be seen. Either way, both were clearly talented. And skilled. And far, far superior to Jean. A wider glance around the room confirmed his trepidation. The portraits that he could glimpse from here were bold, bright, and unique in every way.

He glanced down at his lap, his drawing appearing nothing more than diminutive little scribble in comparison.

No way in hell am I asking them for anything.

Maybe it was his arrogance. Maybe it was plain old awkwardness. But maybe it was something…else.

He’d never felt more compelled in his life to throw his pencil away and bolt from the classroom to sprint to student services and beg them to change his course from art to business. Clearly, here, he wasn’t talented, or special in anyway. Everyone in this class was far beyond a simple pencil-and-paper sketch that anyone with a decent grip on anatomy could muster- no, instead they had each developed their own personal style and techniques, and it all looked so damn good. He’d come into this class as a naïve fool. It was hard enough to make it as an artist as it was. But in comparison to this kind of skill? He didn’t have a hope in hell. Maybe it was better to give up, and quit whilst he was ahead.

But then…what about Marco?

Jean looked up from his sketchbook as his heart began to thud guiltily against his chest.

He’d believed in Jean. He was the person who made all this possible. If it weren’t for him, Jean wouldn’t even be here right now. He’d be sat in some other stuffy classroom, listening to the drawl of numbers and figures and business plans in a grim resignation regarding his future. Marco had told him to have faith in his dream, and that it wasn’t worth giving up- despite Jean’s eternal pessimism and derisive attitude. He’d been so eager for Jean to do well.

Jean squeezed his eyes shut, conflicted.

He couldn’t let Marco down now. Not before he’d even begun. Giving up would be like throwing everything nice Marco had done for him so he could pursue his goals right back into his eternally optimistic freckled face.

Jean reached over the table and tapped his phone screen to prevent it from hibernating. It lit up once more, reflecting his own image back at him, as he tightened his grip on his pencil and began to sketch intently, glancing up only to check he was being accurate to his reflection on the phone screen.

Obviously, there was the smudge he had to address. If he was too stubborn to ask to borrow an eraser, he’d have to take some artistic liberty and turn it into something else. The trouble was what that something would be. He tapped his pencil against the page, deliberating. Right now it just looked like a bruise or a streak of coal dust.

His eyes fell upon the white-smudged cuff of his sleeve.

Damn it. I thought this shirt was clean. He rubbed the dusty residue off the fabric between his forefinger and thumb before he halted abruptly.

Of course. Flour. If he smudged it a little more to lighten the colour, he could easily make it look like flour.

He’d practically breathed the stuff just as must as oxygen throughout the summer. It was hard work trying to find something he owned that wasn’t streaked with the stuff by now. It was all over most, if not all his clothes, dusting his shoes, rubbed into the fibres of his jeans, almost always in his hair and caked under his nails. Even his mattress emitted little clouds every time he threw himself into bed.

Turns out you might be helping me more than first anticipated, freckle face. He smiled inwardly.

The next hour of the lesson passed in relative peace. There were a few murmurs of conversation, and the hum of Erwin’s voice as he wandered around from student to student, asking about their techniques and style and offering critique. Jean did his best to drown them all out and focus on his own drawing. He didn’t feel like shattering his newfound motivation by reminding himself of his inferior skill by comparing his piece to those around him. He had to finish this, if at least for no one else, for Marco. He couldn’t let him down now. Not after all he’d done for Jean.

“It’s nice to see one of my students actually doing the initial task,”

Jean instinctively started at Erwin’s voice suddenly resounding behind him. The teacher was bent over his shoulder, examining the sketchbook propped up on Jean’s knees, resting against the edge of the desk. His piercing blue gaze wandered over the details of the drawing, taking in every traced outline, every curve of graphite, every blur and smudge.

“Oh…right.” Jean blinked, resisting the urge to slam his sketchbook shut and smother it under his arms. He was nowhere near finished- his shading was half completed and the drawing was still largely blank, lacking the same level of the detail he’d spent the last quarter of an hour putting into the face.

Erwin didn’t appear fazed by Jean’s clear apprehension as he continued to examine the page, not even looking at him. “You’re also the only one making a pencil study.”

I’m already well aware, thanks. “Should…I have used something else?”

“Hm? Oh no, it’s not a problem. Merely a style choice. Speaking of which, you have an interesting blend of realism and exaggeration here that’s particularly endearing. Your angles are too sharp for true realism- but again, not a bad thing, it’s unique.”

“Uh. Thanks.”

“Your use of light and shadow needs a little work. Overall, your anatomy is fairly concrete, the contours of the face are especially good.” At this, Erwin reached over Jean’s shoulder and indicated the areas he was highlighting. “But I must ask, why the smudge?”

“That’s um, a mistake that I took advantage of.” Jean admitted hesitantly. He motioned with his pencil to the similar splotches of smudging he’d added along the collar of the drawing’s shirt. “It’s supposed to be flour?”

“Why flour?”

“I…I work part time in a bakery.”

“Ah, I see. Good, I’m impressed. You’ve linked a different part of your life to the drawing, which works well with the concept of ‘self identity’. You’ve done well.” Erwin straightened up, finally making eye contact with Jean and giving him that same maddeningly gracious smile he’d been flashing at the rest of the class. “I look forward to seeing how your style develops throughout the course.”

That was probably intended as a compliment, Jean thought dryly as Erwin left his side and moved around the desk to talk to the pierced girl and gently prompt her to discuss her artwork. But he might as well as come out and said Jean had more than enough room for improvement.

Then again, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. If he was already some superior artist who’d mastered use of light and anatomy and all that jazz, then what would be the point in him being here? He was here to learn, to adapt his artistic ability, and to develop it. It meant, at the very least, that he was on the right path.

Yeah. He’d keep telling himself that, for now, at least.

Erwin finished talking to the girl on Jean’s table before he straightened up and addressed the class.

“You’ve all done remarkably well for your first lesson. It’s wonderful to see so much prospective talent in one class. I eagerly anticipate the work you’ll produce over the next few months we’ll be seeing each other. Now, we’ve got about half an hour of the lesson left, and I’d like to briefly discuss the curriculum for this year with you all before you leave. If you’d like to continue with your portraits, that’s fine, just listen whilst I talk.” He made his way over to the front of the classroom, standing behind his desk as he opened a large file that crackled with plastic wallets. “As I mentioned earlier, your first project will be the concept of self identity. The year will be divided into three projects like this one in total. You’ll be starting the next one in the New Year, and the final project will serve as your exam. In addition to the coursework for the individual projects, there will be assessments and studies that you will have to complete- as well as additional, voluntary work, like helping with set pieces for the performing arts department. Now, each project should consist of…”

Jean was half listening as he abandoned his self portrait and began doodling absent-mindedly in the corner of the page. Three projects in one year didn’t sound so bad. Well, depending on the quantity of work required for each for a good grade, of course. Hopefully he’d have time to get it all done. Maybe Marco would let him work on bits and pieces when he was behind the counter in between customers…?

As much as he was abashed to admit it, that idiot really had done Jean good these past few months. Who’d have thought four months ago, when he finished high school, that he’d be working in a bakery under some guy he’d met at a party whilst drunk so he could study art? After all, if his next few art lessons went somewhat better than this one, Jean would be practically living the dream. He’d be living away from home, making his own money, and studying what he’d always wanted to. That degree of almost fictional stability was more than Jean could ever have asked for.

You’re a special breed of fool, Jean Kirschtein.

Oh well. He’d see how long this blissful happiness could last.

As Erwin went on to talk about the minimum passing grades, Jean began to absent-mindedly sketch out the outline of a second figure’s face, adding dark hair parted in the middle of his forehead and a smattering of freckles over both cheeks. Damn, freckles were hard. If he wasn’t careful they’d end up looking like polka dots. Maybe it would be better to think of them as stars…?

Out of nowhere, Jean was interrupted by his phone screen lighting up and immediately vibrating wildly, sliding off the pencil case onto the desk and reverberating obnoxiously through the table. The noise was vicious, enough to make every pair of eyes in the room turn on Jean- including Erwin’s- as he seized it off the table and desperately tapped at the icon to turn it off vibrate.

Jean deliberately avoided making eye contact with anyone as he let his hand holding the phone fall into his lap inconspicuously and instead looked forward to the whiteboard, doing his best to ignore the prickling humiliation on his face as he pretended to appear attentive.

Erwin cleared his throat and continued, now going on about expectations and tracking progress, and, thankfully, one by one, the remaining students staring at Jean finally turned away. Not without further snickering, though.

He was rapidly making himself appear as quite the disruptive weird one in the class. Maybe he spoke too soon when he said he was almost living the dream.

When the final person looked away from him, Jean ducked his head to stare at his phone as he unlocked the screen to see who was messaging him now. Surely everyone he knew was aware he was in class at this time?

Nevertheless, he was surprised to see his mother’s icon lit up on the screen alongside the message that he tapped on. His heart sank.

Shit. He hadn’t spoken to her since enrollment. To her credit, her ridiculously frequent, borderline invasive amount of texts she usually sent had dwindled since then. Except they’d dwindled into nothingness. And he hadn’t even noticed.

Jean stared helplessly at the text cradled in his hand beneath the desk.

Hi, Jeanbo! I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch this past few months, but I decided it would be better not to bother you over the summer and give you chance to get your first real taste of independence. (He was surprised the word ‘independence’ was even part of her vocabulary) Anyway, I heard it was the first day of college today and wanted to wish you luck on the business course! I’m very proud of you. I’m sure you’ll do brilliantly. Have a wonderful first day. I can’t wait to hear back so you can tell me all about it! Xx

A dry, humourless smile pricked at one corner of Jean’s lips, partially at being called ‘Jeanbo’ unironically for the first time in months, and partially in disbelief at himself for completely neglecting to bring it up to his mother that he’d defied her wishes and broken every promise he’d ever made to her regarding his college education. It was too damn late for tact now. How the hell was he supposed to casually bring up this practical act of treason in her eyes after not even bothering to talk to her even once?

His thumbs hovered over the keyboard, unsure of how to respond. Christ. He was an idiot.

Hi, Mom. Sorry it’s been so long. And I didn’t tell you but I actually enrolled in art instead…

Nope. That was far too apologetic. He tapped the backspace key rapidly.

Funny you should say…

Wrong again. Too joking. She wouldn’t appreciate that.

I decided I didn’t want to do business after all…

Not that he ever wanted to in the first place. Delete.

I actually got offered a job that meant I could study art, so I decided to take that instead…

For god’s sake, couldn’t he just say what he was thinking instead of tiptoeing around the issue?

Jean closed his eyes and took a long, shuddering breath, beginning to type one last time.

I have a job. I’m doing fine. I’m on the art course. Business didn’t feel right. I’m sure you understand.

That last line was more wishful thinking on his part rather than faith in his mother, but if he was being so direct with her, might as well cushion the blow with showing he had some fragment of trust in her. Regardless of whether that trust was fictional or not.

Jean stared at the little lines of text in the input box on his phone for several minutes, chewing indecisively on the skin around his thumbnail. Fuck, he was scared. Intimidated, to say the least. There was an innate fear of disappointing his mother lodged deep within him and he hadn’t quite learnt to justify his own decisions over her expectations. He was never the rebellious type. Sure, he was a loudmouth, not one to sugar-coat anything, and always the first to call something out if he thought it was utter bullshit. He was never afraid to speak his mind, but ultimately, in the end, he’d always conformed, always played the system. When he was kicked out of his art classroom and told to focus on his exams in high school, he’d complained and bitched endlessly, but he did as he was told. He’d always toed the line. Difficult, but never disobedient.

Maybe it was time for things to change.

Jean couldn’t help but remember his mother’s insistence- her harsh, clipped words, practically spat down the phone at him the last time they spoke. I’m worried sick you’ll do something stupid. It’s never going to be more than a hobby.

And then compare them to the words of gentle persuasion and encouragement he’d heard almost daily for the past two months- That’s not nice of them to call your dream useless. I knew you were good at art! If doing art’s your dream, you should pursue that- spoken with a genuine smile, a spark in his eyes, the stars on his cheeks.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out which had been a better influence on his decisions this far.

The class had been dismissed and his classmates were beginning to disperse in small groups, filtering out of the room one by one. Erwin was bent over his desk once more, typing something up onto his laptop as his class left.

Jean seized hold of one of the straps on his backpack, stuffing his sketchbook and pencil case back into it haphazardly before yanking the zip closed and shrugging it over one shoulder as he stood up to leave, phone still in hand.

Erwin looked up as he made his way towards the door, one of the last students to leave.

“See you tomorrow, Mr Kirschtein. Excellent work today,” he said, inclining his head towards Jean genially.

Jean nodded stiffly in response, one hand lying against the doorknob. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He pushed the door open and stepped out of the classroom, gaze falling to the still-lit screen of his phone in his palm, finger hovering over the ‘send’ button. He let his back fall against the wall next to the door resolutely as he brought his free hand up to his face and rubbed at his temple in exasperation. He’d had enough of his own stupid insecurities, his own innate fears.

With one, swift movement, he brought his thumb down and jabbed send.

He adjusted his backpack onto his shoulders properly and stuffed the phone in his pocket, beginning the walk back along the corridor to head back to the main hall, vainly hoping Eren and Mikasa would have finished class at the same time as him so he could get a lift back home.

He ignored the vicious buzzing against his thigh as he passed through the double doors and began to descend the stairs to get to the atrium as missed call after missed call came through.

He’d let her stew in it for a while.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six

“Jean! Ah, I’m so happy to see you again! How was it? Was it good? Did you have fun? What was it like?”

Jean had scarcely stepped over the doorstep before Marco appeared in doorway to the back room; eyes bright and eager, his mouth stretched into a joyous grin. As per usual, his sleeves were pushed back above his elbows and his shirt was smeared with flour. His hands were white and doughy and clutching a tea towel to his chest as he met Jean’s gaze with an expression full of apprehension and anxiety.

Jean snorted as he closed the door behind him.

“Hi to you too, Marco. So glad to be back and on the receiving end of interrogation. Just what I need at the crack of dawn on a Monday morning.”

Marco’s taut expression broke down and he smiled weakly, leaning against the doorframe as Jean shot him a mischievous grin. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to jump at you like that.”

Jean swung his backpack off his shoulders, bulging with his art supplies, as he pulled his jacket off and crossed the bakery to the counter to lay them down next to the till like he normally did. “Did you miss me that much?”

“Honestly? Yes.” Marco raised one eyebrow, waiting for Jean’s jaw slacken in surprise before he burst into laughter. “Seriously, I wasn’t expecting for this place to feel so quiet without you after such a short time.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I’m not kidding! I missed the sarcasm and the funny-looking loaves of bread.”

“I’m pretty sure those aren’t things you’re supposed to miss,” Jean said dryly, shaking his head in fond derision as Marco continued to chuckle to himself, throwing the tea towel carelessly over his shoulder. The warmth emanating from the very walls of the bakery from the oven’s fire enveloped Jean and crept over him like a second skin, comforting and almost achingly familiar as he paused and inhaled deeply, revelling in the heartening aroma of the building, musty with age and already baking bread. A mild sense of elation began to settle in the pit of his stomach. It felt very much like returning home.

“So? How was it?”

Jean shrugged nonchalantly. “Alright. Better than I expected, actually. The college itself is a fucking maze, but I’m in the same room for most of the week so finding my way around isn’t too much of a problem. The classes themselves aren’t too bad.”

“Yeah? What have you been doing?”

“In class? Working on our first project.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure.” Jean reached over and unzipped his bag, rifling past the multitudes of loose pencils and fineliners and miniature tubes of acrylic that had already escaped their cases. He pulled out his sketchbook and placed it on the counter, flipping the front cover open for Marco’s inspection.

“It’s…you,” he said steadily.

Jean looked up from his backpack to see Marco having stepped away from the doorway and leaning on the counter, bent over the sketchbook and examining Jean’s self portrait from his first class last week. His dark eyes flickered over the smudged lines arranged into a parallel of Jean’s face, blurred around the edges where the soft pencil had rubbed off against the opposite page.

Jean nodded, zipping his backpack up again. “Yeah. The theme of the project is self identity, so the first thing we had to do was either draw each other, or ourselves.”

Marco looked up from the sketchbook, a sly grin playing on his lips, one eyebrow raised. “Did you not want to draw someone else?”

“Ehhh…not exactly. I’m not as narcissistic as you’re implying.” Jean avoided his gaze, focusing instead on the page between them. Something inside him gave an obnoxious twitch when he noticed the doodle of Marco from his first class still very much there, and only millimetres away from Marco’s hand flecked with bread mixture resting on the counter. “We were supposed to pair up, and there wasn’t an even number of people in the class, that’s it.”

Marco nodded sympathetically, bowing his head once more to examine the drawing, eyes trailing over every detail. “It’s so good,” he said in a hushed voice. “I mean…I don’t know what I was expecting, I knew you were talented and all…”

“Please don’t gush over my face. It’s creepy.” Jean hastily reached out to turn the page before Marco could comment on the rudimentary caricature of himself. “It’s not that good. At least see what else I’ve done before you pass judgement.”

Marco chuckled to himself. “You don’t have to earn compliments, you know.” He wiped one of his hands against his apron on his thigh, dusting away as much floury residue as he could as he kicked the stool out from underneath the counter and sat down before carefully taking hold of the corner of the page and turning it over, studying the first few pieces of artist research Jean had put together in the past week. He took in each row of Jean’s spidery, jagged handwriting, every fleck of paint splattered over the corners of replicated drawings, taking his time in delicately passing over every piece before he got to the next sketch.

“Oh! It’s the bakery. You…you drew the bakery?”

Jean looked over at the sketchbook once more. His own, jagged, angular interpretation of the bakery lay open before them both. “Um…yeah.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “First homework assignment. We had to draw things we like.”

“And you chose the bakery?”

The back of his neck prickled. “God, Marco, way to make me feel like an idiot. Yeah, I did. What else was I supposed to draw? The only other thing I really like is drawing, and how was I supposed to draw drawing? So…I decided the bakery was the next best thing.” The familiar burn rising in his face was surfacing again as he did his best to ignore it and keep a placid expression, half-expecting Marco to laugh.

Instead, he looked rather touched. Marco’s expression softened. “No, you’re not an idiot- it’s just…” A gratuitous smile lifted the corners of his lips, more to himself than anyone else. “You like it here that much?”

Jean let out a half-hearted tut of disbelief as he reached out and smacked Marco on the back of his stupid smiling head. “Duh. Why do you think I keep coming back?”

“Fair enough.” Marco rubbed the point of impact, looking less hurt and more abashed. His floury hand left his dark hair white and dusty. “You’re pretty sentimental yourself when you want to be, you know that?”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No problem. So, are all these drawings things you like?” Marco motioned to the next few pages as he flipped past, one by one.

Jean nodded, raising both arms over his head as he stretched languidly. “Mm-hm. Just sort of started drawing people from movies and bands in the end.” Not that he had any particular favourites. He’d mostly started drawing in the evenings over a cup of instant noodles and one of Eren’s movies playing, doing his best to ignore the guy himself snuggled up with his girlfriend out of the corner of his eye. His drawings were sketchy, rough, and drawn with the harsh edges of jealousy.

“Who’s this?”

Jean halted, mid-yawn to see Marco pointing inquisitively at a half-finished drawing that took up one whole page by itself. It was a bust sketch with barely any shading, just a sketchy outline framed by the ghostly remnants of countless erased pencil marks imbedded into the paper. It was of a girl with bare, broad, strong shoulders and dark hair sweeping over her incomplete face, scarcely brushing her collarbone. A girl with what was going to be a familiar, unflinching expression that sent Jean’s insides wild with lust.

Normally.

His heart leapt into the back of his mouth as his face began to flush.

“No one,” he said hurriedly. He reached over and snapped the sketchbook shut, unzipping his backpack on the counter with one hand and hastily cramming the sketchbook inside with the other. “Just…a girl.”

“She’s someone you like, though?”

“Not really.”

“But…you drew her as one of the people you like?”

“Things. Things I like.”

“People aren’t things, Jean.”

Marco lapsed into quiet as he watched Jean weave his way past the hatch in the counter, dropping it with perhaps a little more force than normal so it bounced back into place with a harsh clatter as he stooped to seize hold of his apron from underneath the counter and shake it out to tie around his waist.

“Are you mad?”

Jean shot him a bewildered look. “What? No.”

“She’s someone you like, though, isn’t she? I’m not wrong there, am I?”

He folded his arms defensively. “How do you know?”

Marco didn’t reply right away. For a split second, it almost looked as if his face fell, briefly, before he swivelled around in his seat to face Jean properly, meeting his gaze directly. “Because she’s the only one you’ve dedicated a full page to. Don’t look so scared, Jean, it’s OK. I’m just curious. There’s no shame in admitting you like someone.”

“I know that,” Jean snapped. He paused, allowing his voice to soften. “It’s just…Marco, tell me honestly, what did you think of that drawing? Of her?”

“What? As opposed to your others?” Marco scratched the side of his nose in thought. “Other than the fact it’s unfinished? Um…I don’t know. It was pretty good?”

Jean didn’t say anything.

“…You don’t agree with me, do you.”

He exhaled sharply, gaze dropping to the floor as he scuffed it with the tip of his shoe awkwardly. “No. The lines are messy, the proportions are off, and it just…isn’t right. I’m mad at myself for not being able to draw her right, I mean, I see her every day, and I’ve already drawn her enough times, you’d think I’d be good at it by now…”

He trailed off as he looked up from the floorboards to see Marco watching him carefully.

“Don’t give me that look.”

“I’m not giving you a look.”

“Yes you are. Like you’re judging me.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“No. You definitely are.”

“Why would I be judging you?”

“Take a wild fucking guess.”

Marco raised his eyebrows. “Is it something to do with you drawing the person you have a crush on?”

Jean felt his heart skip a beat and flutter like a dying beetle in his chest as Marco said the words he’d been unwilling to vocalise for years. Everyone who knew him well enough knew about his deep-rooted…admiration over Mikasa and his stubbornness not to admit it. Just about as well as they knew how hopeless the odds of it being reciprocated were.

“No shit.”

“Isn’t that normal, though? You know, fixation on the person you like?” Marco’s placid expression was replaced by a thoughtful little frown. “Why are you embarrassed about that?”

“Well…it’s a bit creepy, isn’t it? ‘Oh look, I have a sketchbook full of drawings of you. Love me, please.’”

Marco laughed. “OK, I’ll give you that, that is a bit creepy. Then again, depends on the person. I’m sure some people would find it flattering that you’d want to draw them.”

“Safe to say I don’t think she’s the kind of person who’d be flattered. And neither would her boyfriend.”

“Shit.” Marco grimaced sympathetically. “It’s like that, huh?”

Jean nodded stiffly, sourness edging his tone harshly. “Unfortunately. Always been like that.”

There was a brief pause as Marco stood up, nudging the stool back into place under the counter and he pulled the tea towel off his shoulder, tactfully silent.

Jean dug his nails into his arms, gripping them tightly to himself as he nudged the floor with the toe of his shoe a bit more. Normally he’d feel a lot more…abashed at discussing something he’d tried to keep hidden- albeit, unsuccessfully- from everyone for as long as he could remember. But for some reason, with Marco, he was being uncharacteristically unreserved in admitting his unyielding crush.

“I just…at the very least, I just want to be able to draw her. If nothing else. If that’s all I can do. I don’t understand why I can’t. It was always so easy before.”

“I get that. It’s like you’re under a special kind of pressure when you’re trying to create something that’s important to you, right? I get the same way when I’m making a wedding cake, or something for a similar big occasion. It’s such a big deal for someone and you don’t want to mess it up. Sort of like that?”

Jean let a weak smile slip onto his face. “Yeah. Kinda. Glad you understand.”

Marco shrugged, smiling back. “I try. Anyway, speaking of baking, we should probably get started- I just wanted to see your art, I didn’t realise I’d take so much time.”

He turned on his heel, starting to make his way into the back room.

“Hang on. You’ve got flour in your hair.” Jean stopped him as he reached out and ran his hand through the short-cropped back of Marco’s head, tousling it to get rid of the powdery white clinging to the dark brown.

“Oh…thanks.” Marco hunched his broad shoulders ever so slightly, almost like he was embarrassed. Jean withdrew his hand, hesitant, suddenly keenly aware of how familiar he was being. His heart pressed itself into the back of his throat and took some effort to swallow down. “You alright on starting with pastries today?”

“Y-yeah. Sure.”

“Thanks.” Marco crossed the room, back over to the centre table where a lump of half-kneaded dough was sitting, awaiting his return. He pressed into it a couple more times as Jean started getting out ingredients for puff pastry and placing them on the worktop near the sink, before he threw the hunk of dough into a bowl and covered it in cling film. “And would you mind finishing this bread off for me once it’s done proving?”

“Huh?” Jean twisted around from where he was beginning to make butter and flour crumbs. “Yeah, of course. Why? Are you working on something else?”

Marco didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows mysteriously with a knowing smile as he picked the bowl up and made his way over to the proving cupboard in silence.

Jean regarded him, confused, for a few moments before shrugging it off and turning back to his pastry mix, half-watching Marco moving about in the rest of the kitchen from his peripheral vision, going from the fridge to the overhead cupboards and bringing out unfamiliar bowls and an old-fashioned set of scales that he’d never seen him use before. Wait…once, and that was for someone ordering a birthday cake. He must have another cake order to finish. Whoever ordered it must have wanted to pick it up spectacularly early if Marco was getting started on it now, when there was the rest of the bakery’s stock to make as well.

They lapsed into silence as Jean directed his attention onto his pastry mixture and Marco got started on whatever the hell he was doing.

Truth be told, the same aching curiosity from the evening spent sat in Marco’s van in the rain amidst endless traffic was burning away within Jean once more. He felt like Marco knew so much more about him than the other way around, and besides, he couldn’t deny that he was interested in him, to say the least. The most he knew about Marco that could even be vaguely considered personal was something he wasn’t even supposed to know.

The thoughts of that tiny photograph pinned up on the noticeboard, hidden by an outdated order form made Jean bite his lip guiltily.

He waited until he finished the pastry mix and had it laying out on the counter in a big, doughy lump before he turned around, resting his hands on the work surface behind him.

“So. Your turn.”

Marco was on the complete opposite side of the kitchen with his back turned, concealing what he was working on. Only when Jean addressed him did he jump, head whipping to the side as if he’d been caught doing something wrong.

“What? What’s my turn?”

Jean surreptitiously bit his tongue, barely able to suppress the mischievous smile tugging at his lips. “I said,” he repeated slowly, “your turn. You know crap tons about me. I think it’s about time you tell me about you.”

Marco’s initially surprised and borderline frightened expression softened as he arched a single eyebrow and complacency mellowed his face once more. “You think so?”

“Yeah. I mean, you know all about the person I like, for instance.” Jean paused for a moment, teasing his precipitating question. “Do you like anyone?”

“I don’t know all about them. You never told me her name.”

“Why do you want to know her name?”

Marco’s shoulders twitched as he turned back around, stubbornly silent, and continued with whatever he was doing wordlessly.

Jean scowled. He was avoiding the question. “If I tell you, will you answer my question?”

“…Sure.”

“Her name’s Mikasa.”

Marco nodded thoughtfully. “Mikasa…that’s pretty.”

“Glad you think so. Well?” Jean drummed his fingers impatiently against the counter behind him.

“’Well’ what? If you’re done with that pastry, then that dough should be finished proving by now.”

Frustration welled up within Jean. Apparently, Marco was determined to remain quite the enigma. “Alright,” He disregarded Marco’s statement to persist. “There, you know her name. How about you? Do you have a crush on anyone?”

“Jean, if you don’t get on with that bread we won’t finish on time.”

His scowl deepened as he reluctantly crossed the room to the proving cupboard, wrenching the door open and pulling out the bowl with the now-expanded dough. “Yeah, yeah, I’m on it. So?”

Marco looked up and over his shoulder at him once again.

“Why do you want to know?”

Jean shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. It just feels like you know so much about me. You know, my interests, my dreams, my family, my whole fricking life, and I hardly know anything about you. Just,” His voice dwindled to a mumble. “trying to draw parallels, I guess.”

“Is that so.” Marco avoiding looking at him for a few more tense moments of silence, finishing something quietly before he turned back around to look at Jean pointedly. “Well, what do you want to know?”

Fucking hell, Marco. This is like pulling teeth. “Do you like anyone?”

“In what way?”

“I swear to God, Marco, if you keep dancing around the question I’m going to kick you in the balls.”

A knowing little smile slipped onto Marco’s face as he eyed Jean coolly for a few more seconds.

“Do you like anyone...romantically?”

“Hm.” He turned back to whatever it was he was working on. “I wonder?”

Jean let out a half-strangled cry of exasperation, admitting defeat. Getting Marco to talk about himself proved almost impossible.

“Come on, what’s the big deal? You’re being so damn cryptic today.” He tore the cling film off the top of the bowl and tipped the dough out onto the table in the middle of the room, sinking his knuckles into it fiercely. “Obviously you like someone. Otherwise you wouldn’t be making such a big deal out of trying to hide it.”

By the way Marco hunched his shoulders again in an involuntary expression of embarrassment, Jean could tell he’d guessed correctly.

“It’s nothing important,” Marco said eventually. His voice was quiet.

“Can I at least know he…his name?”

Marco shook his head.

“Alright, fair enough,” Jean said slowly. The exchange was no longer a game, no longer playful or teasing. It felt very much like edging on dangerous territory, and Marco’s reluctance to talk about it was getting to be unnerving. “Can I ask why you’re so reluctant to talk about it?”

Marco paused in what he was doing- still hidden from Jean’s view- the tension in his upper body unwavering before his shoulders finally slackened and dropped as he tipped his head back, exhaling a long, reluctant sigh.

“Because,” his voice was low, rumbling deep in his throat. “he wouldn’t understand. And he likes someone else, too.”

Jean did his best to muster half a sympathetic grin as Marco eyed him semi-reproachfully over his shoulder.

“Yeah. I know how that feels.”

“Will that do? Is your curiosity satisfied?”

“With what? You barely told me anything.” Jean raised one eyebrow sarcastically as Marco winced and looked away. He didn’t carry on with what he was doing. His head drooped as he leant against the counter, suddenly looking…fragile. Vulnerable. Hurt.

Jean’s skin crawled guiltily. A small part of him wanted to go over there and comfort him. He cleared his throat hastily and went back to kneading with renewed vigour. “I mean,” he clarified. “If you’re that uncomfortable with talking about it, I understand. Another time, maybe.”

“Yeah. Another time.”

Several minutes passed by in silence as Jean finished kneading the dough and separated it into individual loaves before he spoke again.

“So…what are you working on over there by yourself?”

“Full of questions this morning, aren’t you?” Marco snorted softly, a faint trace of humour in his voice. “You’ll see for yourself in a bit. But please, get that bread in the oven already and get started on those pastries, otherwise we won’t be finished until noon. Remind me, when are you due in college?”

“Nine.”

“All the more reason to hurry the hell up.”

“And I thought I was the ass,” Jean mumbled to himself, biting back the smile tugging at his lips regardless as he went to obligingly retrieve a baking tray from beside the oven.

The rest of the morning in the bakery passed in a blur of hurriedly trying to get everything that needed to go in the oven baked and ready on time before Jean had to quickly clean the shop floor before he had to leave at eight to walk to college, a good three quarters of an hour away. He vaguely wondered, as he frantically mopping the floor with two minutes to spare, whether it would be worth asking Mikasa if her kindness would extend far enough to pick him up from the bakery to get to college in the mornings. On second thoughts, maybe it would be better not to. Not after he’d admitted to Marco his repressed feelings for her.

It wasn’t until he’d finished cleaning and ripped his apron away from his waist, stuffing it under the counter out of the way and was in the process of putting his jacket on, that Marco emerged from the back room, a white cake box balanced on his forearm. He slid it onto the counter wordlessly before he turned back around, making to return to the back room.

“Wait, what’s this?” Jean asked, one arm bent at an awkward angle, half-stuffed into his sleeve.

“Hm? It’s for you,” Marco replied monotonously. A small smile graced his lips. “It’s a gift.”

“What for?”

“For staying away for a full week like I told you to.”

Jean’s brow darkened with a scowl as Marco laughed at his expression. This is what he’d been working on? This is what had taken him the best part of the morning to make?

“What is it?” he asked, successfully managing to pull the jacket sleeve over his arm finally and reaching out to run his fingertips under the cardboard lip of the box’s lid.

“Stop! Nope, don’t open it in here. Wait until you get home.” Marco batted his hand away. “I don’t think I can withstand the embarrassment.”

Jean raised an eyebrow. “Just what the hell have you given me that you’d be embarrassed over? If I open this thing and find an edible pair of tits I don’t know whether to laugh or thank you.”

Marco guffawed, covering the lower half of his face with his hand as he snorted until he ran his palm back up to push his hair away from his face.

“Alright, away with you, before you’re late.”

“Fine, fine.” Jean seized his backpack and threw it on over his shoulders, before picking up the cake box with much more care. It was solid and heavy as he balanced it over one arm and held it in place with the other resting on top. He paused for a minute, dithering, before he said quietly, “You didn’t have to make me anything, you know.”

“I know I didn’t have to. I…wanted to. That’s what friends do, right?”

Friends…Jean hadn’t thought of his and Marco’s relationship beyond the confines of their employer-employee dynamic before, but when those words left Marco’s lips it just felt…right. And comforting. Yeah. He was comfortable with Marco. More so than Eren, with whom his degree of friendship was expressed with near constant bickering. He was too damn awkward around Mikasa to consider her a close friend, and definitely not someone he was comfortable around. Connie and Sasha weren’t people he could connect to, and whilst he held a begrudging, unconditional fondness for them, oftentimes he found their presence to be an annoyance. And even though he still considered their old group of friends- Reiner, Annie, Bertolt, Armin, Krista, Ymir, and everyone else- as friends by the barebones textbook definition…well, he’d had his place in there somewhere, but had he ever felt completely at ease? Had he ever allowed himself to be vulnerable, or weak, or complex, and express his true feelings?

Hell, Marco had got those out of him on the first night they’d met. Marco was kind, understanding, generous. He…understood Jean, and stood by him, and supported his decisions and his dreams. He was helping him pursue his dreams. There wasn’t ever a more concrete example of a ‘friend’.

Besides, with the majority of his old group of friends now scattered across the country pursuing their respective dreams, it’s not like he had much real human connection to begin with.

Everything was suddenly getting a bit too deep and personal and Jean was beginning to feel like quite the sentimental idiot at the warm glow of gratefulness welling up inside him. He cleared his throat and gave Marco a curt nod.

“Right. Friends. Thanks, really.”

Marco’s smile didn’t falter. “You’re welcome. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

Jean lingered, unsure of how to just break away from the conversation like that as he met Marco’s unwavering gaze for an almost uncomfortable period of time before he blinked and turned on his heel, heading for the door. He reached out and flipped the sign on the door from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ before pushing down on the engraved handle, the bell chiming its farewell as he closed it behind him and breathed a long sigh of something resembling relief.

Was it just him, or did that look Marco had in eyes look somewhat…wistful? Sad?

He wished he was better at reading people.

The air outside was refreshingly cool when compared to the stuffy warmth of the bakery, carrying October’s chill on the faint breeze whispering through the old eaves of the building as he began to walk away, intending to head home to drop Marco’s gift off before he went to college.

He eyed the white lid of the box in his arms sceptically, his curiosity bringing him to a reluctant stop mere feet from the door.

What on earth could Marco have spent so long making for him, the punk he’d picked up off a doorstep because he felt sorry for him?

Ignoring Marco’s instruction to wait until he got home, Jean dug his fingers under the cardboard lid and wrenched it upwards.

He stared. Chewed on his lip. Didn’t know if he should laugh or feel intensely gratified.

It was a rectangular cake made to resemble an open sketchbook. The fondant pages, separated by liquorice spirals, were piped with coloured decorative buttercream around their edges, framing tiny recreations of the contents Jean’s real life sketchbook. They weren’t perfect, or accurate, by any means; but there was the little drawing of the bakery nonetheless, and a distorted, wonky version of Jean’s self portrait. The shaky outlines were painstakingly etched lightly into the surface of the white fondant with grey lines of food colouring, studded with silver balls to accentuate the curves of each individual drawing Marco had tried to damn hard to recreate. Along the bottom of one of the pages, there was a line of near flawless calligraphy, reading: Congratulations on your first week of College.

Jean’s mouth was painfully dry as he spun around and reached out to wrench the door open to confront Marco- but as he pushed down on the wrought handle, it jammed. He tried again only to realise it was locked.

He cursed. Tricky little bastard. He shaded his eyes with one hand and peered through the window at the top of the door, breath fogging the glass as his gaze swivelled around, searching for Marco. He was nowhere to be seen on the shop floor.

Jean knocked, he called, he tried the door handle more to no avail, but eventually it became clear Marco wasn’t going to answer him. Unwillingly forced to give up by the fact he was growing later and later for college, he turned one last time and walked away, out of the cul de sac, defeated.

Sat behind the door with one hand wedged under the handle, Marco exhaled a sigh of relief as he passed his free hand over his face, breathing out shakily between his fingers in a fruitless attempt to calm his fluttering heart, unable to conceal the grin creeping onto his lips.

…

Fuck Mikasa.

Fuck Mikasa and her stupid, flawless, far-too-pretty-for-her-own-good face.

Jean rubbed his face in exasperation, groaning inwardly as he reached for his eraser for what felt like the millionth time and rubbed away his latest attempt at trying to mimic that cool, diffident expression he’d fallen for so long ago. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t quite capture the intensity of her storm cloud grey eyes, or the sloping curves of her lips, or mimic the right breadth of her cheeks and her jawline. Everything was too broad, too slanted, too out of proportion. The harder he tried, the more he seemed to struggle.

He dropped his eraser back onto the desk and leaned against his elbows, massaging at his temples furiously. Come on, how hard was it to draw a face he’d seen almost every day for a good portion of his life? Even using the photo references on Eren’s social media, glowing on the screen of his phone at his elbow wasn’t helping in the slightest. No matter what he attempted the drawing just looked…well. Shit.

Erwin had left them mostly to their own devices that morning whilst he diligently marked work from his other classes at his desk. So here Jean was, valiantly trying, and failing, to finish his portrait of Mikasa.

The page was beginning to get furry from the amount of times he’d erased the drawing, leaving faint grey marks crisscrossing through the guidelines he hadn’t yet had the heart to rub out. He pressed his forehead into his palm, exhaling heavily through gritted teeth. He was this close to tearing the page out and ripping it into a thousand pieces before throwing the whole sketchbook at the wall. But that was best to be avoided, ideally. Since his classmates didn’t exactly have the highest opinion of him in the first place.

His gaze darted up from between his fingers to stare darkly at his classmate across from him on the table. The guy with dreadlocks was, thankfully, absent today, not that it made much difference. Neither he nor the pierced girl had exchanged a single word with him since their first class last week. She was currently painting away, completely oblivious to Jean’s moody glare. Any evidence of his existence to her was shut out with an oversized pair of headphones clamped over her skull, buzzing dimly with a faint bassline audible from where he was sat.

Whatever. Making friends wasn’t a necessity whilst he was here. He had enough of them anyway, albeit as scattered as they were.

Besides, he had Marco.

His heart fluttered a little in his chest as the thought of that perpetually smiling face crossed his mind. He pressed his lips together, swallowing the eager trepidation rising in his throat as he adjusted his grip on his pencil and attempted to sketch out Mikasa’s jawline for the thousandth time.

Jean couldn’t stop thinking of him. Specifically, how he’d been acting this morning- so quiet, reserved, unwilling to talk. Completely dancing around Jean’s questions until Jean felt physically guilty for daring ask them in the first place, manifesting itself in a dull ache in his chest. It had been so unlike Marco to be so guarded. It was…unnerving, to say the least. Whatever was eating him up better not be too serious. Jean really hoped he was alright.

Well, it wasn’t like Marco wasn’t entirely himself. The cake box sitting in Jean’s kitchen proved that much.

The gnawing feeling gave way a little, and a warm, comforting glow began to kindle in its place as Jean bent low over his drawing, smiling surreptitiously to himself (despite having drawn that line in the completely wrong place). He recalled the soft little swirls of icing and palatable interpretations of his own drawings forming a physical exhibition of Marco’s kindness. He still couldn’t believe he’d done that for him- completely disregarded his own workload to do something nice for him. Which, in retrospect, wasn’t exactly smart. He was just a special kind of idiot, really. Jean’s kind of idiot.

His short lived good mood barely had time to surface before it was torn in two as he went to shade an extra tendril of hair and accidentally dragged his hand over the lower half of Mikasa’s unsymmetrical, poorly reconstructed face, so dishearteningly unlike its real-life counterpart. The line forming her crooked jaw and all of the shading below it smudged upwards, blurring into the face in a smudgy mess. Jean cursed silently. Fuck this.

Exhaling a stream of breath in frustration, he flipped the page over to a clean piece of paper as he pressed his palm against his neck, supporting his head, and rested his elbow against the desk as he bowed his head over the page, intending to start afresh. He tapped his pencil against the spiral bound centre of the sketchbook, glaring at the page in a vain hope something worth a good mark would materialise if he waited long enough.

His inspiration was starting to run dry again. He needed something just as inspiring as the bakery had been when he first laid eyes upon that- he needed something fresh, new, interesting, to pique his artistic curiosity and get the creative juices flowing…

Jean almost snorted in derision at himself as he dragged the pencil down the page, lightly sketching out the silhouette of a human jawline. Creative juices. What a cliché. Even if he felt like the abominably average odd-one-out amongst his classmates, apparently he was starting to sound a lot like them. Creative juices…what a stupid concept. There was no such thing as ‘talent’ to rely upon when it came to art, whether in fluid form or otherwise. There was only skill. And his was raw and desperately needed honing- especially if he couldn’t manage to draw one measly portrait of the girl he liked. What a joke.

He bit his tongue in concentration as he focused on tracing thin, individual lines of dark hair, following the curve of each strand sprouting from the crown of the head. Damn. This wasn’t looking right. The jawline was heavier than it should be; sharp, instead of dainty or graceful. His attempt at drawing Mikasa’s high cheeks just made them look too long, forming an oval rather than a heart shape…hang on. He could make this work.

Jean paused, pencil hovering over the page as he stopped himself from tracing a strand of hair flowing down past the drawing’s chin. If he just drew it shorter…and parted in the centre…and exaggerated the roundness of the chin, so it looked deliberately oval…

His initial grapple with anatomy was soon forgotten as Jean quickly found himself engrossed in his new drawing, focusing on broadening the neck and redefining the shoulder muscles so they were broader with a more rounded form, and, of course, scattered with freckles.

He was concentrating so deeply on his drawing that he didn’t even hear Erwin address the class, and wasn’t aware until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He jerked in surprise, instinctively covering his sketchbook with his arms, automatically defensive. He couldn’t have been more surprised to see the pierced girl leaning across the desk, looking directly at him.

“Were you listening?” She asked, opening her dark lipsticked mouth in Jean’s general direction for the first time. “He-” (Assumedly, she was referring to Erwin) “-asked us to swap sketchbooks and critique each other’s work.”

“Huh? Oh.” Jean let his shoulders drop as he reluctantly removed his arms from the surface of the page he’d been covering. “Right.”

She sat back down in her chair across from him and slid her own sketchbook over to him. Her hand remained outstretched, beckoning for Jean to do the same.

With a soft gulp, Jean flipped to the front of the book and begrudgingly handed it over. Suddenly, everything in there meant to represent his own identity felt way too personal and he wasn’t entirely sure he was comfortable sharing it. Or, at the very least, everything he’d put down as making up a part of him was beginning to seem…stupid. And trite. Just surface level observations, like he was a two dimensional being with no real depth or distinction to him as a person.

Regardless, he bent his head over his classmate’s sketchbook and began to thumb through.

 Much like Jean was partial to pencil and charcoal, her most used medium was blurry watercolour, although she did dabble in ink drawings, occasionally decorating the edges of her artist study pages in elaborate biro. Her newest drawings were portraits- scribbled, messy figures of people with street snaps of the real-life subjects glued in next to them, depicting people dressed in alternative fashion, work uniforms, and religious garb; people inked with tattoos and with crazily dyed hair, people of all colours, nationalities, styles and backgrounds. Her drawings were round and bold and splashed with primary colours accentuating each bright mark of their identity.

“These are pretty cool,” Jean said, flipping through the four pages she’d dedicated to the study. “What, uh, inspired you?” That was the right kind of question to ask an art student, right?

“Hm? Oh, those?” The girl looked up from Jean’s sketchbook, where she was currently studying his sketches of the bakery. She flicked a loose strand of hair, straying free from the storm cloud forming the rest of her hairstyle, over her shoulder. “I wanted to try and portray how people reflect their identity on the outside, you know, with clothes and body mods and stuff? So I took some pictures out on the street and redrew them in my own style. Thanks, by the way.”

“You’re welcome,” Jean mumbled, bowing his head once more and he flipped the page, realising he’d come to the end of her drawings so far. Well, he was feeling like quite the twat. If her sketchbook was anything to go off, then he’d completely misinterpreted the project and made it way too personal to himself. No one else had tried to draw the girl they had a crush on, or a list of things that they liked, had they? Well, might as well get the ridiculing over with now. He closed the sketchbook and returned it to its owner before speaking. “So, um, what do you think?”

“Well,” She flipped back a few pages to Jean’s artist study pages. “these are really good. You’re great at working in the style of other artists, and they’re presented really well. I’m a bit confused with these though.” She returned to the part of the sketchbook dedicated to the drawings of things he liked. “What do these have to do with identity?”

Jean cleared his throat self-consciously. “They’re supposed to be things I like? As in, literal self identity?”

“Oh.” She paused, before launching into a long winded explanation, pointing out the flaws in the anatomy he’d drawn and his poor shading; giving tips on using light and shadows, using terminology Jean wasn’t entirely sure he understood before she reached the substandard drawing of Mikasa he’d abandoned. Her lips twisted into grimace. “This one is just…bad. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but we’re supposed to be critiquing right?”

“…Sure,” But that kind of stung to hear.

“Is she your girlfriend, or something?”

I wish. “Close friend.”

She nodded vaguely, clearly not paying much attention and focusing more on criticising. “Yeah, well, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this but the anatomy is really off, you’ve got a few proportions mixed up, and it’s just messy. But this one…” She turned the page over and Jean felt his heart skip a beat as she revealed his drawing of Marco.

He waited, holding his breath as his eyes darted over the page, trying to find the inevitable flaws for himself before she did, in a vain hope to cushion the blow her words would make…but to his surprise, he couldn’t find them. No matter how much he stared, tried to criticise himself, deliberately looking at it through critical eyes, it just looked…right. He was- dare he say it? Proud.

“Your anatomy is much better on this one. I like how it’s kind of exaggerated, but still realistic. You’ve still put shadows in the wrong place though, like, if the light’s coming from here then you half of these shadows don’t need to be here. Are these supposed to be freckles?”

Jean nodded with bated breath. “Mm-hm.”

Her nose was hovering an inch off the page, making her nose ring slide down her nostril as she peered at the details curiously. “They kinda look like stars. Your pencil marks have given them little tails. Was that intentional?”

He shook his head.

“That could be kind of cool if it was, you know, for the whole identity part.”

“What, like I could link it to…I don’t know, star signs or something?”

“Yeah, that’s a cool idea.” She sat up straight again, fiddling with one of the many piercings in her ear. Her brow was still furrowed as she stared at the drawing. Jean waited for her to look up and give the sketchbook back, but she didn’t move.

“Is that everything?” He asked tentatively.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, not taking her eyes off the page. “Hang on, I’ve seen this guy before. You’ve drawn him earlier, right?”

Before Jean could say anything she’d flicked back to the front of the sketchbook, laying it open on his self portrait from last week. A moment later she stabbed the bottom corner of the page with one black painted nail bitten down to the stub, her expression triumphant.

“There! Isn’t that the same guy?”

Jean didn’t have to look where she was pointing to know she was referring to the rough little doodle he’d tried to hide from its inspiration that very morning. He pressed his lips together and nodded resolutely.

“Yeah. That’s him.”

“So what’s his significance to your self identity? Since, you know,” She shrugged as she snapped the sketchbook shut and tossed it back at Jean. “you’ve drawn him twice already.”

“He’s just a friend as well,” Jean said coolly. It had only taken an entire week and a direct instruction from the teacher to get her to even utter a word to his face, but now that she’d started, apparently she wanted to know every goddamn thing about his drawings and the people in his life. He didn’t quiz her on what she’d chosen to do. Neither had he criticised her art at all. Uh…whoops. He couldn’t decide if that made him a nice person or a shit art student.

They both fell back into comfortable, merciful silence as they began to pack away their things, waiting for the clock to tick around to signify the end of class and for Erwin to dismiss them. Even though he was quiet, the girl’s statement was stuck in Jean’s head and he couldn’t quite figure out why.

What’s Marco’s significance to your self identity?

If he took the past three months into account, Marco had had a pretty big hand in shaping who he was as a person. Artist and part-time novice baker. Neither of those things would have applied to him if Marco hadn’t stepped into Jean’s life.

He could feel his heart thumping against his chest as he stared at his back pack resting in his lap, vaguely wondering if this was supposed to be a deep, poignant moment of realisation, and that would explain why he was suddenly contemplating Marco’s impact on his significance. But no answer, epiphany or otherwise, presented itself.

All the same, he couldn’t get that thought out of his head, long after Erwin had finally dismissed the class and Jean made his way out of the college, starting the long ass walk home by himself, not in the mood to wait around for a lift home. He was alone with only that ever present thought stuck in the forefront of his mind.

What is Marco…to you?

By the time he finally got back, kicked off his shoes and threw his backpack down to be forgotten about until tomorrow, he was sick of his own thoughts buzzing in his skull like maddening insects as he crossed the room to the kitchen, before his gaze fell on the cake box still resting on the counter from that morning. He paused, lingering hesitantly before he tentatively lifted the lid. His heart plunged in his chest.

The formerly intricately decorated cake had been decimated, fondant torn away to expose pale, spongy innards of what was once a masterpiece, now half missing. Rage swelled in his chest.

“Eren, you ass!”

Jean’s voice thundered through the otherwise empty house only to echo back at him. That lucky bastard must have already been home before him and already left. Asshole. He sighed in irritation, before he reached out to carefully pick off a corner from the already destroyed cake, reasoning he couldn’t make it look any worse than it already did. He placed the morsel of cake on his tongue and chewed slowly, closing his eyes as the sweetness of the fondant mingled with the fluffiness of the sponge spread to the back of his mouth.

Light and airy, with just enough body to be satisfying; sweet, yet not too much, just enough so that it wasn’t sickly in combination with the fondant. It was perfect.

His phone in his back pocket began to vibrate and chirp out the default ringtone he’d never bothered to change. Swallowing hastily, he dug it out of his pocket and stared at the screen as his mother’s number flashed back at him.

The sweetness of the cake still coating his tongue quickly soured as his face darkened into a scowl. He didn’t feel like talking to her. Not today.

Jean jabbed the dismiss call icon and exhaled sharply. He was sick of the silence. Silence was too empty, and his mind was all too willing to fill it up with endless thoughts he didn’t feel like addressing right now. He scrolled through his apps until he got to his browser, opening it up and typing into the search bar the first song that came into his head. The same song that he and Marco had listened to that rainy night they spent together in the van- Angel, Theory of a Deadman.

The raucous vocals of the lead singer and the chords of the guitar plucking out the steady ballad soothed whatever conflict there was wedged inside him as he closed his eyes and picked off another corner of the cake, savouring the fruits of Marco’s labour lingering on his taste buds.

What is Marco…to me?

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven

The relative ease of Jean’s first week at college quickly wore off.

His initial inspiration and creative drive quickly dried up and snowballed to an obstinate stop as he was hit with the most severe case of art block he’d ever experienced. He spent the majority of the month that followed scowling at blank pages in his sketchbook, his pencil clutched in his unwilling fist, with absolutely no idea what he should be doing. The drawings he managed to produce were done so with great effort and gritted teeth, but when he looked back on them, all he saw were dark lines carefully arranged in a way that was theoretically correct, but lacked…soul.

Jean was never the type to romanticise his artwork. It was the thing he enjoyed most, and it meant a lot to him, but it was never anything more than capturing an image in his own interpretation. It was never anything more than that- there was no such thing as character, or emotion, or movement in inanimate, two dimensional streaks of graphite on a piece of paper, and the pretentious artistic types that said so were just pulling words out of their asses so they had more to say than “looks good”.

And yet he couldn’t think of any other way to describe his art, so lacking in something that he reluctantly put it down to the fact they were devoid of substance. Whatever the hell that meant. Inspiration? Meaning? Significance?

Whatever it was, it was a bitch, and it needed to fucking stop.

…

November had arrived in a sudden onslaught of cold; premature frost gathered on the car bonnets and hedges that Jean passed every dark morning on his way to work, his breath misting in the air before him and icing the tip of his nose as he made the trips to and from the bakery and to college. It would have been nice if, now that he’d been presented with a beautiful frost-webbed world, that he’d derive some inspiration for his sketchbook, but no, apparently, that wasn’t the case.

So here he was, sat hunched up on the sofa one foggy evening, glowering at Mikasa and Eren rolling around on the floor over the top of his woefully blank sketchbook.

In the interest of saving money, he and Eren had decided to restrict themselves to only using the heating on the ground floor, theorising that since heat rose, their respective rooms would be warm by the time they went to bed. Consequently, they spent every evening cooped up together in the same room, which meant Jean got to bear witness to…this.

Eren was lying spread eagled on his back in the middle of the floor, taking up most of the space between the two sofas, with Mikasa on all fours beside him, bending low over his form, giving Jean a very gratuitous view of her…

“Do you guys really have to do that here?” he said irritably, clearing his throat and doing his best to ignore how low the neckline on Mikasa’s shirt was.

Eren lowered the script he was inspecting and glared at Jean, upside down.

“We’re rehearsing, asshole. If you’ve got a problem with it, take it up with the head of the drama department.”

“What the hell kind of performance means you have to-” Jean gestured furiously at the two of them, borderline entangled in such a compromising position- “do whatever the fuck it is you’re doing?”

“It’s supposed to be a murder scene,” Mikasa said monotonously. She leant back on her heels. “Why, what does it look like?”

Eren’s fierce expression didn’t waver. “Mikasa’s playing an inspector, I’m the corpse. What’s weird about that?”

“You don’t make a very good body, Eren. As far as I know, they don’t talk.” Jean shifted his sketchbook into a better position on his knees. “Wait, if you’re dead, why do you need a script?”

“Because he comes back to life.” Mikasa answered.

“What the hell kind of play is this?”

“I never said it was good.” Eren finally averted his gaze from Jean as he shuffled through his script. “It’s a piece of shit, but it’s important for our final grade, alright? I’m about as enthusiastic about it as you,”

Jean snorted. For different reasons, I suspect. I doubt you have any qualms seeing Mikasa from that angle. “Never thought I’d hear you talking like a responsible student, Eren. Mikasa’s worked wonders on you.”

The glare quickly returned.

“Fuck off.”

“Gladly. But it’s cold as polar bear balls upstairs so, unfortunately for us both, I ain’t going anywhere.”

“Eren,” Mikasa chimed in. “Focus.”

“Right.” He sifted through his script one last time before letting his arm fall as he closed his eyes, doing his best to imitate lifelessness. Mikasa scooted forwards on the floor and leant over him once again.

Jean quickly diverted his gaze before he could get anymore distracted, resuming to stare blankly at the sketchbook propped up against his knees.

He didn’t understand what was wrong with him. Sure, he’d had art block before, but it had never lasted this long, nor been so severe. It was such hard work trying to come up with artwork that linked to ‘self identity’- an abstract concept in itself- made even harder by his own physical struggle to create anything halfway decent. If he hadn’t promised himself to do this for Marco, he would’ve thrown the whole goddamn sketchbook in a fire already.

Jean sighed inwardly, peeking over the top of the page once more, half-listening to Mikasa reciting her lines. She was amazing at many things, but acting wasn’t one of them. Her tone was stiff and self-conscious, her movements reluctant and wooden as her fingers danced over Eren’s chest, supposedly looking for evidence.

How someone could still look so incredibly attractive whilst doing something they were clearly terrible at was beyond him.

His gaze darted back and forth between her and the page as he adjusted his grip on his pencil and began attempting to draw her for what felt like the thousandth time since his bitter failure last month.

Every muscle fibre in his fingers locked in place, refusing to cooperate, as Jean forced himself to trace out her figure in broad, sketchy strokes- knees together, arms extended on the floor, shoulders forward, graciously displaying her…ahem, assets; chin pointed down, head inclined slightly to the left, hair falling across her face…

“Eren, I can see you breathing.”

“Shut your face, Jean.” Eren didn’t open his eyes, but his brow furrowed in annoyance the second Jean spoke.

Jean smirked to himself, ducking his head to avoid the disapproving look Mikasa shot at him.

“Just trying to help with realism.” And trying to dull the feelings of failure already starting to creep up on him.

His drawing was terrible. Laughably so, with spidery limbs riddled with questionable anatomy, shitty composition and even worse proportion that made Mikasa look like a spaghetti-limbed bobble head. It was even worse than his last attempt, and that was putting it lightly. Indignation bubbled up inside him before bursting into weary, disheartened defeat. He didn’t understand. This had always worked for him before- when in doubt, draw Mikasa. Drawing her was the one way he could express his unrequited feelings without having Eren chase him down with a chainsaw, and so far, it had worked. But for some reason, it was now proving impossible.

Jean looked up from his lap at the couple on the floor. Mikasa kept messing up one line, and Eren was prompting her every time, clearly having given up on being a convincing corpse.

What was Jean supposed to do now? It’s not like he had anything he really ‘identified’ with. Art was his one and only true interest. He wasn’t truly passionate about anything else- clearly evident in the soulless, empty drawings he’d been producing up until now.

Of course, there was an exception.

Jean thumbed back through the past month’s work until he got to his drawing of Marco and stared at it in silence.

The only drawing he’d managed to capture any scrap of real substance in. Whatever that substance was. Life, energy, interest…soul.

His eyes were bright and alive, his jawline jutting out- not in a strange, disproportionate way that Jean was susceptible to often draw- but in pride; his expression was broad, deep, questioning, provoking emotion. Jean’s fingers ached at the thought. He wanted nothing more than to capture that sort of vitality again, over, and over, with more power than the time before, more life.

Jean’s face was feeling uncomfortably hot as he quickly flipped back to the sorry excuse for a drawing and tore it out, crumpling it up into his fist before dropping it on the sofa cushion beside him. He exhaled shakily, heart thumping against his chest.

What was wrong with him? He’d never been so fixated on a single subject before. Not even Mikasa. He’d always been able to draw other things- he’d always wanted to draw other things- but to just want to draw Marco?

No matter how he said that to himself, it just sounded plain weird.

He brushed these thoughts away and decided a second attempt was his best bet. If he just focused this time…

Once again, he pressed his pencil tip to the page, eyes flickering upwards for a brief second only to linger helplessly as he stopped short to see Mikasa lean down low over Eren’s ‘dead’ body when he seized hold of her around the waist, making her burst into peals of laughter. He grinned as he sat up, rehearsal clearly forgotten, and craned his neck upwards and kissed her, softly.

The sour bite of jealousy took a chunk out of Jean’s heart as he watched them laugh in each other’s arms, happy, contented, together.

There was something he could identify with. Jealousy. Maybe he should just paint his whole fucking sketchbook green and draw the things he wished he had.

He slammed his sketchbook shut, swinging his feet off the sofa to stalk over to the kitchen, away from the two of them practically generating their own warmth, entwined there together on the floor. Jean wrenched the fridge open, looking for something, anything, to dull the throb of petty envy gripping his heart in a granite grasp.

Fuck you. Fuck you stupid, happy couple, in your stupid, happy relationship.

“What’s up with you?” Eren’s voice drifted over from across the room as Jean pulled out a box of pastries he’d brought home earlier that morning and straightened up.

Jean frowned, shooting Eren a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“Why’d you throw your sketchbook down and go storming off like that?”

Jean rolled his eyes as he dropped the box onto the kitchen counter, doing his best to avert his gaze from the two of them to avoid igniting any further spark of spite within him. “I didn’t storm.”

“Uh, yeah you did.” Eren was quiet for a moment before his gaze drifted to the abandoned sketchbook. “What were you drawing anyway?”

The back of Jean’s neck prickled in humiliation as he opened the box and fished out the first pastry he came into contact with.

“Nothing important,” he said dryly. “Not that it matters, it was crap anyway.”

They lapsed into silence as Jean put the box back in the fridge and knocked the door closed with his foot. He peeled away the wrapper surrounding the pastry in his hand and took a big bite, closing his eyes to savour the rich, full-bodied flavour that spread to the back of his mouth, engulfing his senses for a split second, so all he could taste was the genuine hand of someone who knew the definition of comfort like second nature; feel the warmth and familiarity of the bakery cloaking him like a blanket, smell that musty combination of bread and sweets and firewood...

He opened his eyes, gaze instantly falling on the couple entwined in each other on the floor. Eren was leaning against the sofa behind him, one arm still looped around Mikasa’s waist, the other raised as he held the back of her head and leaned in to kiss her again. She was all but straddling him, cupping his face with both hands, her expression bright and adoring, endearment and pure joy lining every crease of her face.

Jean felt his heart stammer in his chest, bitter with envy, yearning for the same level of intimacy.

But, for the first time in his life, he wished it could be with someone else.

…

Even though the following day was his day off, Jean still woke up at three in the morning out of habit and lay awake for a good hour, trying to convince himself to go back to sleep. Finally he decided it was hopeless and reluctantly rolled out of bed, peering blearily into the darkness. His teeth chattered and gooseflesh crawled over his skin as he got up and crossed the freezing landing to get to the bathroom, spending a little longer than normal under the hot jets of water in the shower before he returned to his room, got dressed, and sat down at his desk to stare at his sketchbook once again under the light of his desk lamp. Maybe, if he just sat it out, and forced himself to draw, he could move past this artistic slump.

He tapped his pencil against the desk, a scowl burrowing deep into his brow. He’d been sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike for a full month. He didn’t know what he was waiting around for that wouldn’t have already hit him in that much time that had already passed. If he didn’t come up with something soon, he’d fall behind in class and have to play a ridiculous, hectic game of catch up for the rest of term.

Jean buried his face in his hands and groaned to himself. This was supposed to be easy. He was supposed to be good at this. The whole point of him taking art was to do something productive with the skill he already had. And what had he done so far? Nothing but consistently disappoint himself.

He lowered one hand and leafed through the pages of the sketchbook until he got to the drawing of Marco, the one drawing that felt alive, bold, confident, and as genuine as the real thing. He rested his hand against the page, feeling blood drumming at the base of his throat as he swallowed painfully.

So, the only drawing he was proud of was the one of Marco. But he couldn’t base his entire project around Marco’s face. Where was the self-identity in that?

Jean sat his desk, alternating between glaring at blank pages and scrolling through various apps on his phone until dawn began to filter through the bleak darkness of the morning, turning into dim grey light that crept up onto his desk through his window. He slammed his sketchbook shut and kneaded his hands through his hair furiously. What he wouldn’t give to be at the bakery this morning, dimming all these stupid fears of failure and inferiority in mountains of dough and the thick, heady scent of sugar and firewood and must…

Jean shook his head fiercely, ignoring the kind brown eyes that floated into his mind, the broad, freckled cheeks lifted by the corners of his mouth into a smile.

Not today.

He was sick of this. He’d had enough of this standstill. It wasn’t funny anymore- not that it had ever been- but he needed someone to drag him out of this pit of artistic gloom and set him on the right path again…maybe Erwin would have some advice. He was their teacher, after all. Jean didn’t often go searching for help; for most of his life he’d been fiercely independent, after figuring out that if you wanted something doing, the best way to make sure it gets done is to do it yourself; but even he couldn’t deny that he needed help anymore.

Not that he could confidently say he’d been living up to that mantra. If it weren’t for Marco giving him this damn job, where would he be now?

No. Enough. Shut up brain. We have bigger things to focus on.

Jean got to college early, not in the mood to wait around for Mikasa to fetch the car after she stayed the night, and walked there himself. He was the first of his classmates to arrive at their classroom, entirely empty, except for Erwin, who Jean could see sat at his desk through the window at the top of the door, jotting something down on a notebook in front of his computer.

Jean couldn’t have been blessed with a more perfect opportunity to get his advice without being under the critical eye of his far more skilled, pretentious peers.

Shouldering his backpack properly, he squared his shoulders, reached out to grasp the handle, and swung the door open before he lost his nerve.

Erwin looked up at the sound of the door opening, raising his eyebrows in surprise to see Jean standing in the doorway.

“You’re early,” he said, checking the gold watch on his wrist. “Either that, or my watch has stopped again.”

Jean quirked an uncertain smile. “Uh, yeah. I didn’t have work this morning, so…”

“Ah, yes, of course. You’re the one who works in a bakery, correct?”

He nodded, clutching at the strap of his backpack awkwardly.

“Well, take a seat, you’re welcome to stay until the rest of your classmates arrive.” Erwin averted his gaze from Jean, going to look back at his computer monitor.

“Wait,” Jean interrupted. “I was…I was actually wondering if you could give me some advice.”

Erwin looked at him in surprise.

“That depends what you want advice in,” he said steadily. “Anything to do with your artwork, I’m more than qualified to help, but anything personal, I’m afraid you’d be better seeking help with one of the college counsellors.”

It was Jean’s turn to look bewildered. Was his social standing in the class really so bad that even the teacher thought he needed help? Professional help?

“Then you’ll be glad to know it’s to do with artwork,” he replied uncertainly. “I just need some, uh, guidance on the project.”

“Oh.” Erwin’s expression immediately mellowed into a gracious smile. “Then of course, I’ll be more than willing to help. Do you have your sketchbook with you?”

Jean slid his backpack off his back and placed it on the desk closest to the door, unzipping it and retrieving his sketchbook as Erwin stood up from his desk and came over to his side. Jean laid it out on the desk and opened the front cover.

Immediately, Erwin began turning pages, examining every trace of ink and scratch of pencil with an unflinching, searching gaze, from which nothing could hide. Jean waited, watching him apprehensively with folded arms, until he reached the end of the sketchbook and finally spoke.

“What is it you wanted advice on?” Erwin asked, his tone smooth and even.

Jean opened his mouth, hesitating for a moment. Wouldn’t it have been better to lead with that question? “I just…need help with the prompt. I don’t know where to take this whole idea of self identity without making it all about one thing.”

“Explain to me what you’ve done so far.”

“Uh…alright.” Jean reached over and flipped back to the end of the section with his artist research, where the little drawings of all the things he supposedly liked covered the pages in miniature. “I took the idea of identity literally and tried drawing all the things I liked…well, kind of.”

“’Kind of’?” Erwin echoed.

Jean rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t really like anything. Not enough to base a project around. The only thing I’m passionate about is art and I can’t really draw about drawing.”

“No,” Erwin straightened up. “you can’t. But you can focus on the concept of artistic expression and how that influences identity. I see your problem, and I completely understand. Defining your own identity is a challenging thing, especially when you’re as young as you are- I wouldn’t have expected you to know yourself with enough certainty to focus exclusively on yourself.”

Jean’s heart sank. “So I was doing it wrong this whole time?”

“No, I didn’t say that. There’s nothing wrong in trying to put a little bit of yourself into your art- that’s the basis for any impressive piece of work, regardless of what form it takes. But, in your instance, I think you relied too much on the assumption you already knew yourself well enough to capture every aspect of yourself as a person. When- and, forgive me if this is presumptuous- you probably still have a lot of personal development to go through before you can define yourself so easily.”

Jean didn’t know what to say. He thought he’d get some regular, friendly, artistic advice and a few prompts from his art teacher to give him the push he needed- but no, instead, Erwin was spitting straight wisdom at him; deep, profound wisdom that was way too concise for this early in the morning. The most unnerving thing was, the more he thought about, the more Jean realised Erwin was right. He’d done what Jean had found impossible and put the feeling he couldn’t name into words. It wasn’t so much a lack of inspiration as it was a lack of identity in the first place.

“Now, you asked for my advice. Creating anything based on the things you enjoy is a good start, but if you’re lacking inspiration, I suggest you shift your focus onto the creation of self identity rather than the concept itself. Take it in a less literal direction. Find out what defines people, and that in turn might help in defining yourself. Instead of documenting the result, create the process.”

“And you said you weren’t a counsellor,”

Erwin’s smile twitched in amusement. “I can’t pretend to be one. Does that make sense? Or was that a little too abstract?”

“No, no, it was fine.” Jean said. “Almost freakily accurate, actually. But I think…yeah, it might help.”

“Glad to hear it.” Erwin paused, regarding Jean out of the corner of his eye for a few steady moments before he spoke again. “Right. I want you to take the day off. I’ll sign you in so you’ll still get your attendance mark, but today, I want you to go out there-” he made a broad, vague gesture to the door- “and find your inspiration, whatever that is for you.”

Jean blinked. “Are you sure?”

“Most certain. If you haven’t been inspired sat in this classroom for the past month, then I don’t expect you to suddenly be in the space of another day just because you’ve decided what to look for.” He looked down at Jean and smiled once more. “I eagerly anticipate what you come up with.”

Jean shoved his sketchbook back into his bag and wandered out of the classroom, making his way back down the corridor to the atrium in somewhat of a daze. Well. His day had barely begun and he’d already been the recipient to one of the most profound things he’d ever heard in his life before nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning. You were trying to define yourself before you knew everything about yourself.

Part of him wanted to be angry at himself for feeling like such an open book, but a larger part was more impressed that Erwin had managed to pick up on what he was feeling with only the tiniest amount of information- when Jean had been stuck in his own mind for all this time and still hadn’t figured it out for himself.

His awe carried him out of the college and down the long path leading up to the front entrance, only bringing him to a stop when he reached the gates and halted, suddenly realising he hadn’t the slightest idea where he was going or what he was doing.

Being given the day off college to go and find inspiration was all well and good, but where exactly was he supposed to find it? Inspiration was a concept, just like the idea of his artwork lacking soul and energy. But just like those two things, it was vital.

Jean chewed indecisively on his lip, glancing down the street as he balled his hands into fists, keenly aware of the cold wind chilling them to the bone. He could go home, but the likelihood of him getting any work done was extremely low. He could walk into the town centre, where he could watch people and draw them, like the pierced girl from his class had. But that was her idea, not his. He wanted something that was his own, something original, something individual, something that really gave off a sense of self.

He ran a hand through his hair. His short lived bout of motivation was quickly fading, already being replaced with exhaustion and weariness. He’d been awake since three in the morning. He needed sleep. He needed a cigarette. He needed to go to the one place he’d found true inspiration for the first time in months, and be around the one person who’d truly inspired him, for the first time in forever…

Jean froze, hand resting on the back of his head.

Would Marco mind him showing up, even though it was supposed to be his day off? Jean wasn’t particularly bothered about being paid for the extra day, but if Marco would just let him watch the counter, just so he could be in the place that had kicked his creativity into action from the first second he saw it…and, more importantly, just so he could be with the first person to properly encourage him from the first second they met.

Jean’s face was beginning to feel uncomfortably hot and the wind blowing against it very cold. He lowered his hand from his hair and ran it down his face, pressing frigid palm to blazing cheek.

Maybe he should ring him first, and make sure it was OK. Common courtesy and all. Even if it proved to be a useless move and he didn’t get any drawing done, at least he’d be doing something productive and have a temporary sense of fulfilment to mask the hollow feeling that was failure.

He had already fished his phone out of his pocket and was about to press the keypad icon before he realised he didn’t have Marco’s number.

Well, shit. Forget common courtesy.

Why was he so…apprehensive about showing up at the bakery unannounced? His fingers were shaking against his face, still burning red, and his breath came in short little puffs of air. Marco had said it himself. They were friends. Friends could hang out anytime, and if he was free, why shouldn’t he spend that time with his friend?

And besides, he couldn’t deny he enjoyed Marco’s company. Even if he shooed Jean off, seeing him might just be enough to inspire him, even a little bit. He’d been the only one successful at it so far, after all.

Fuck it. Jean kicked a pebble as he spun on his heel, scuffing the toe of his converse against the pavement as he set off at a brisk pace, stuffing his freezing hands into his pockets and breathing out a long stream of cloudy air. I’m coming to see you, Marco. Like it or not.

...

It was a little past nine when Jean finally got to Jinae and arrived at the bakery. He’d stopped at a convenience store on the way to buy a box of cigarettes in the vain hope that the steady, familiar process of smoking would put him a little more at ease, like it normally did. But the second he’d lit the tip of one and taken a long drag, all he could think of was that alcohol tainted summer night, smelling beer and tasting smoke and talking, talking about the world to the boy in the baker’s van.

He managed half of the cigarette before he was so overwhelmed with nostalgia, and a powerful sensation he couldn’t name, that he threw the stub on the floor and crushed it with his heel.

The bakery itself was surprisingly quiet. At just gone nine in the morning, he expected to see the regular steady influx of customers darting in and out of the door. But there was no one.

Jean frowned as he crossed the road of the cul de sac and got to the front window. It was overflowing with pastries and cakes like normal, but the lights were off in the rest of the shop. He cupped one hand around his eyes and peered into the window, looking for any evidence of Marco being in there. Not a freckle was in sight.

Concern was beginning to bubble up at the back of his mind as he stepped back from the window and made his way to the door. The little sign in the window was flipped over to ‘Closed’. That was…odd. Marco only closed on Sundays.

Tentatively, Jean reached out to try the door handle, surprised when it gave way in his hand easily, the bell above him in the doorway jingling out its welcome.

Jean stood in the doorway, closing the door behind him, frowning in confusion.

“Hello?” he called out into the empty building.

No response.

It took him a moment of wondering why on earth Marco would leave the bakery, unattended, with the door unlocked, before he glanced out of the window to realise that the van was missing.

Of course. At this time in the morning, he’d still be making deliveries, which explained why the bakery was full of stock with no one to sell it to. Didn’t explain the unlocked door, though- unless Marco had just forgotten about it.

Jean grinned to himself as he flipped the sign in the window over to ‘Open’, crossed the room and weaved around the counter to drop his backpack next to the till as he snapped the lights on. Forgetting to lock the door sounded exactly like the kind of mistake that endearing idiot would make. Well, he was here now. Might as well do his job, since Marco wasn’t around to do his.

He pulled the stool out from underneath the counter and took a seat, retrieving his sketchbook and pencil case from his backpack. He’d scarcely shoved the bag out of sight when a customer appeared- expressing how glad they were that Jean had shown up to open the bakery before they left for work- and after they left, Jean was almost immediately greeted with the morning rush, a steady influx of customers from all over Jinae. His sketchbook lay abandoned next to the till for nearly an hour before the final straggling customer left and Jean could attempt to start on his project once again.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he sank down onto the stool and opened the sketchbook to a clean page, brushing it down with one hand as he picked up his pencil and pressed its tip to the page experimentally. A moment or two passed as his eyes flickered around the room- looking for something, anything- a trace of existence, a scrap of human life that he could reimagine and recreate to form something based on identity. He stared at the timber frames veining the ceiling, the wooden beams framing the door, the iron studs nailing the floorboards down around the skirting board, all remnants from another time. He found himself thinking of just how old the bakery was. Marco had said it had been run by his family for the past four generations. It was an incredible piece of history, now that Jean actually thought about it. A fragment of the past preserved in an ever-changing world, a tiny piece of permanence that age had not yet brought down- and Marco was part of it. This was his heritage. A huge part of him. His identity. His identity, defined by the process of the bakery’s ownership being passed down, generation to generation.

OK…that realisation was all well and good, but how was he supposed to translate that onto paper? What could he possibly draw that represented everything he’d just summarised?

Jean was still staring at the blank page when he heard the distinctive rumble of an all too familiar engine. His head jerked up eagerly, just in time to see Marco pull up outside the bakery’s front window.

He watched as Marco leant over the steering wheel, peering at the bakery in surprise, clearly having noticed the lights on when he’d left them off. Jean bit back a grin as he watched him kill the engine and open the door, the tiniest crease of a frown dipping his brow as he stepped out onto the pavement and met Jean’s gaze through the window. Jean smirked, raising his hand and cocking it in greeting.

Marco’s eyes widened as he bolted to the front door, fumbling with the doorknob in his haste before the door swung open.

“Jean!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? It’s your day off- and- how did you…?”

Jean raised an eyebrow and pointed at the door behind a very flustered Marco.

“You left the door unlocked,”

Marco opened his mouth as he twisted to look at the door in mild horror, before turning back to Jean and clapping a hand over his mouth.

“I did? Again? Shit.”

“Again?” Jean echoed, snorting in disbelief. “You idiot, you’ve done it more than once?”

Marco half-grimaced, half-smiled.

“More times than I care to remember. Crap. I’m such an idiot.” He looked back up at Jean and the frown on his face quickly returned. “But what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at college?”

Jean shrugged as he tapped his pencil against his knuckles. “My teacher gave me the day off. I asked him for help with my project and he told me to go and find something that inspires me instead of staying in class.”

It was Marco’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “And you chose to come here?”

Jean gulped softly as his stomach flipped uncomfortably, embarrassment beginning to prickle on his cheeks as he looked away sheepishly.

“Yeah. And?”

“Nothing. It’s just a little weird. Why would you want to come to work on your day off? Wouldn’t you rather be at home?”

“Hey,” Jean looked up and mockingly pointed an accusing finger in Marco’s direction. “Don’t you be telling me what’s weird and what’s not, Mr Home Schooled.”

Marco laughed as he crossed the room and lifted the hatch in the counter, stepping behind it to pull out some paperwork to track deliveries from under the counter.

“Sorry, Mr College Student. Just give me some warning next time before you show up unannounced.”

“I was going to call you, but I don’t have your number.”

“Aha…well, yeah, that’s because I don’t have a phone. I mean, there’s a landline upstairs, and you’re welcome to have that number, if you want. But obviously if I’m out then I won’t get your call.”

Jean stared at him. “My God. You’re living in this day and age without a phone. You’re a rare breed of disconnected.”

Marco laughed. “So, the project’s not going too well, huh?”

Jean shifted in his seat as his gaze fell to the blank page once more, the sinking feeling in his stomach returning.

“Unfortunately.” He grimaced. “Like, the theory’s all there, I just need an idea of what to…well. Draw. Got any ideas?”

“Your theme is self-identity, right?” Marco asked as he sifted through the order forms. His mouth puckered up in thought as he cocked his head to one side. “Have you considered doing…I don’t know, emotions or something?”

“Emotions?” Jean repeated incredulously. “Why emotions?”

“Well…you’re always so straight forward and open about your feelings. That’s a pretty big part of you as a person. Or, at least, I think it is.” Marco gave him a shy, surreptitious sidelong glance as half a smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “You never dance around anything, you’re just honest. I…kinda admire that about you.”

“Um…thanks.” Jean’s heart fluttered in his chest as Marco’s eyes lingered on him, just long enough for their gazes to lock, so he could see every individual fleck of gold in the rings of Marco’s dark irises before something in his chest gave a sharp throb and he forced himself to look away.

“A-anyway,” Marco cleared his throat. “That could work, couldn’t it? Because you can ‘identify’ with emotions.”

Jean nodded as he pressed his lips together, deliberately trying to avoid making eye contact again. What on earth was that? That…skip of a beat his heart just made, and that sharp twinge the moment he realised his eyes were fixed on Marco’s for a second too long. God, they were probably the most beautiful dark eyes he’d ever seen. As warm and comforting as he found coffee…but without the bitterness. No, they were like hot chocolate. Thick and dark and sweet…but then again, they sparkled with his own intensity, with richness of gold, as if he held a galaxy in each one of them.

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Eyes! There was an idea. Known to one and all as the windows to the soul- he could link that to self identity, right? How a person’s very essence was reflected in the shape of their eyes, the intensity of their pupil, the pigment of their irises?

…It was a start. But if he wanted to draw Marco’s eyes, he’d have to look directly into them again. And, judging by his still pounding heart, it wasn’t the best idea to test how weak it was feeling.

“Hey, Jean?”

Jean jumped instinctively. “What?”

Marco looked bewildered at his sharp response for a moment before he spoke. “Um, can you just pass me that pen?” He nodded towards the till, at the pen resting on top of the notepaper they used to write receipts.

Jean picked it up and held it out to him. Marco extended his arm to take it, the sleeve of his shirt sliding up to expose a bandage around his wrist. Jean stared as Marco’s fingers brushed against his as he took the pen.

“What did you do to your wrist?” He demanded.

“Huh? Oh, this?” Marco pulled his sleeve back, holding his wrist out for Jean to see properly. He smiled, embarrassment knitting his eyebrows together. “I just burnt myself on the oven this morning, nothing new.”

“Fuck, man. You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Like I said, happens all the time.” His expression relaxed as he wiggled his fingers at Jean. “Just look at the rest of my hand. It’s scarred and burnt to hell and back.”

Jean obliged, hesitantly reaching out and tracing his finger lightly down the creases of Marco’s upturned palm. It was crisscrossed with burn scars; some light, some dark, some reflecting the light, others just little marks of discolouration. Some were raised and other, newer ones, were still puckered around the edges with scar tissue. He could feel the little indents and crevices they made as his fingertip skimmed over the top of them. They weren’t prominent enough in shape or colour or size to be noticeable from afar, and it was only now, at such close proximity Jean could distinguish the unmarred skin from the scarred.

Marco twitched at his contact. Jean quickly withdrew his hand.

“Sorry.”

“No, no it’s OK. I’m just kinda ticklish.” Marco pulled his sleeve back down, still smiling. “It’s pretty nasty, isn’t it?”

“No. Not really. It’s…kind of cool.”

Marco threw him a disbelieving look, eyebrow raised.

“How?”

Jean tapped his pencil against his fingers again, still avoiding eye contact as best as he could. “Well, it shows what you’re capable of, and what you’ve been through. Scars are…I mean, they’ve all got an individual story behind them. It’s like proof of your history, proof you’ve existed, and made a mark on the world, because it made a mark on you. Well,” He bit his lip and grinned, sneaking a sideways glance at Marco. “marks, in your case.”

Marco was quiet for a moment as he raised his arms, holding his palms up to examine them thoughtfully.

“A story, huh…” he said, more to himself than Jean.

The room was suddenly far too quiet and the words that had left Jean’s mouth suddenly sounded so…so…cliché, and pretentious, and ridiculous. What was he even saying? What the fuck was he doing, spouting some vaguely poetic bullshit?

“Sorry. That…sounded kind of strange.” He admitted.

“No it didn’t.” Marco said immediately. He took a second, examining his hands himself before he clasped them together, weaving his fingers through each another. “Really, though, none of the stories behind my scars are that interesting. Most of them are from the oven.”

“True, but if you think about it, that says a lot more about you than you might think.” Jean rested his elbows against the counter, twirling his pencil in his fingers as he spoke. “Not many people have that many scars from just an oven. So, that clearly shows you’re a baker, which is something personal to you. It’s what’s in your family, right?”

Marco smiled ruefully to himself. “Yeah. My…” He swallowed. “My…mom…always says I have hands like my grandfather whenever I see her. Don’t know why. She’d have hands like this if she baked too. She was never as enthusiastic about it like I was.”

Jean nodded slowly as Marco looked up from his hands with a somewhat vacant expression, his gaze elsewhere, clearly not focusing. Marco’s mother was a subject he hadn’t dared bring up himself. Every time Marco had mentioned her, he’d referred to her casually, but there was something cold underlying his normally warm tone, something foreboding and strange. It wasn’t something Jean thought was wise to provoke.

Marco broke the silence. “Funny, really. It’s like a legacy of scars in my family.”

A legacy…family…

Those words kept turning over in Jean’s mind as they fell quiet; Marco picked up his pen and starting to fill out the delivery forms, whilst Jean rocked back in his seat, staring at the blank page of his sketchbook. The concept of legacy, and stories, written in the marks on someone’s body…interesting. That could be something he considered.

He started sketching out the basic guidelines for a human hand, steadily building up the muscle around the joints and bone structure, less prominent in the knuckles, focusing more in the roots they made under the skin in the hand itself. He began to shade, adding discolouration and lines indicating damage to the skin. The steady process of use. The process of building a story imbedded into someone’s skin.

Jean glanced over at Marco’s free hand, resting on the counter. He had a small cluster of freckles on his wrist, peeking out from underneath his bandage. He went to add them to the wrist of his drawing before he stopped, hesitating, glancing at the little dappled patch of Marco’s skin. He let his gaze travel up his arm, thinking of all the scars and freckles hidden by his sleeves- remembering watching the muscles ripple beneath his skin as he showed Jean how to knead on his first day of work- recalling every little pin prick every freckle had made over his shoulders and down his biceps.

The last time he’d drawn freckles, he was told they looked like stars.

Stars.

Stories…and legacy…they’d been marked in the stars since the beginning of time, way back when the ancient world was still being built and people placed merit on the arrangement of the lights in the sky. Stars, that even today, people relied upon for guidance, for dictation on their personality. Marks that weren’t quite part of the world, but made up a huge part of the earth’s night sky. Without them, something would be missing.

Jean’s heart was beginning to pound in his chest once again. The stories people carried with them. The marks on their skin.

And here Marco was with a sky full of stars scattered over his cheeks alone.

He exhaled steadily, gripping his pencil, and, with a final glance at the man across from him, began to sketch, copying the outline his profile made and the incline of his back as he bent low over the countertop. Round, broad shoulders; well-defined arms, sharp angles. The gentle slope his spine made. The little nub at the small of his back. The trim waist. Nicely narrowed hips. The firm, bold, sculpted curve of his-

It took a few moments of his gaze lingering on one specific spot of Marco before he realised what he was doing.

There was no stopping the blood rushing to his face as he hastily averted his eyes and pressed his free hand over his lower face in a vain attempt to conceal the mad flushing.

He’d been checking out Marco’s ass.

Jean breathed shallowly into his hand, not trusting himself to look again.

What was wrong with him? He’d never looked at another guy like that before! Not once, not ever…

You’re tired. You’re sleep deprived. You’re frustrated with your art. And you’re trying to draw the guy, for God’s sake, of course you’ll be checking out his ass. You’ve been checking out everything else.

Tell that to the almost painful thudding in his chest.

“Jean? You alright over there?”

Jean’s heart leapt into his mouth.

“Fine. I’m fine.” He snapped.

“Oh…OK. You’re bright red, though. You sure?”

Jean shook his head fiercely at Marco’s gentle voice.

“I’m sure. I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong.”

Marco didn’t respond straight away, watching Jean carefully, somewhat bemused as the other refused to look at him.

“What are you drawing over there?”

The hairs on the back of Jean’s neck raised in fear.

“Nothing.” He lied. He raised his pencil and quickly scribbled over the drawing’s face. “Nothing important at all.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight

He ended up staying at the bakery much longer than anticipated.

Even though Marco closed at two o’clock like normal, Jean had stayed and they’d ended up talking, long into the early hours of the evening. When Jean asked, Marco told him about the bakery and its history in great detail for his art project- briskly skipping over anything about his parents or his childhood- and in exchange, Jean told him all about his life outside of college, about his friends, about high school, about his mother and how she had always tried to dictate everything Jean had ever wanted to do. Marco was surprisingly empathetic, and before they both knew what was going on, the shadows were growing long and the sky was dark, already beginning to speckle with stars.

Marco drove him home again after apologising profusely for keeping him out so late, but not before they briefly stopped at a fast food joint and both bought themselves burgers and fries, since neither of them had eaten since noon. They spent a while longer in the parking lot, with laughter on their lips, grease on their fingers, and Marco’s rock music playing on the radio, talking endlessly about their favourite bands and movies and books.

Jean almost managed to make himself forget about how he’d caught himself eyeing up Marco’s butt.

Almost.

When Jean finally got home, bidding Marco goodbye until tomorrow, the whole house was in darkness. The only light came from the TV, which was buzzing faintly. Eren was spread out on one of the sofas, paying no attention whatsoever to the screen. He had one arm covering his eyes, the other dangling over the edge of the couch, clutching a half empty bottle of beer. Two discarded ones lay haphazardly beneath him on the carpet.

Jean sniffed pointedly as he dropped his bag on the kitchen counter.

“What’s up with you?” he asked.

Eren just groaned into his arm.

“…I brought home some fries for you. Do you want them?”

Another grunt.

Jean rolled his eyes.

“Fine, don’t talk to me then,” he mumbled under his breath, throwing the greasy paper bag he’d graciously thought to get onto the counter, because he’d known Eren wouldn’t have had the initiative to get off his ass and feed himself. His gaze fell on the obnoxiously bright coloured case of Eren’s phone on the counter next to his bag. It buzzed and the screen lit up, displaying a long list of unread messages, sent periodically over the past hour.

Jean pulled his sketchbook out of his backpack and went over to the other side of the room, collapsing onto the opposite couch.

“You’ve got a thousand texts back there. Aren’t you going to answer them?”

Eren shifted so Jean could see a sliver of dark green eye squinting dubiously at him.

Jean raised his eyebrows.

“You might want to go easy on the drink as well. You’ve got college in the morning. Also, how come you had the sense to buy beer but not to get some food whilst you were out?”

“Uh, you sound like her,” Eren finally spat, hiding behind his arm again.

“Her? You mean Mikasa?”

He nodded.

“Did you two have a fight or something?”

Eren let out a sort of muffled cry before finally moving his arm to run his hand over his face, grabbing a fistful of hair in frustration.

Jean smirked half-heartedly. “That’s a yes, then.”

The TV was still buzzing away in the background, but neither of them were paying any attention to the drone of the narrator’s voice. Eren glared at the ceiling with the kind of intensity you could expect from a person experiencing inner conflict that he was desperately trying to blame on someone else.  And all Jean could think about was how rare it was for Eren and Mikasa to be mad at each other.

Sure, they were always bickering- like most of Eren’s relationships, platonic or otherwise- but proper, full blown arguments were scarce. The last time Jean had borne witness to one they were still in high school. It wasn’t a comforting thing to see, which was odd coming from Jean’s perspective, considering his standpoint on Mikasa, but when those two were fighting, it was a sign things weren’t quite right. Eren and Mikasa being together was something constant, they were never apart. When the equilibrium was upset, it didn’t bode well for the rest of normality.

Well, Jean could vouch for that theory. Things weren’t as they normally were for him. For the first time in his life, he’d checked out a dude’s ass.

His stomach practically did a backflip when this thought crossed his mind. He attempted to divert his attention and opened his mouth to speak.

“So what’s going on? It’s not like you to point-blank refuse to at least talk to each other.”

Eren was quiet for a moment, studying the ceiling a little longer with a frown etched deep into his brow before he threw Jean a look full of distaste.

“Because she can’t make up her fucking mind.”

Jean blinked, waiting for more.

“Care to elaborate, buddy?”

Eren sighed and propped himself up on his elbow, taking a swig from his beer.

“I don’t understand her. It was her idea for me to get this fucking job in the first place, and now that I have one all she does is complain?”

“Oh, somewhere actually hired you?”

“Yes, asshole.” Eren glared at him. “Part time waiter, afternoon and evening shifts. Got a problem with that?”

Jean bit back a grin as he shook his head and held up his hands in defence. Drunk, angry Eren was aggressive, but equal parts disorientated, so watching him get angry when he was pissed was like watching a Chihuahua yap furiously at something five times its size. Vocal, but for the most part, harmless.

“No, no problems here. Very respectable.”

Eren watched him reproachfully for a few more moments before he turned away and flopped down onto his back.

“I just don’t understand her. She gets mad at me for not having a job, but now I have one, and need to skip a few classes to pay the fucking bills she gets all preachy that my education is so goddamn important that I should just flat out refuse to work the fucking shifts they give me. I didn’t sign up for the damn job just to not show up, so what does she fucking expect? I just…” He exhaled sharply and downed another gulp.

“You didn’t enroll into college to skip classes, either.”

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t need your smartass comments on top of hers.”

Something resembling frustration welled up in Jean’s chest as his eye twitched.

“She’s just being considerate, you know. Mikasa cares about you. It’s not her fault you get pissy about it.”

“Ugh, not you too.” Eren rolled onto his side, glowering pathetically like a child. “Look, you both wanted me to get a shitty job, and now I have one, you’re just going to bitch at me anyway?”

“It’s not bitching, it’s common fucking sense. If you’re going to get a job whilst attending college, the hours have to fit around each other, that’s how it works. Why do you think I get up at three in the damn morning every day? Come on, I’d expect this level of density from someone like Connie, not you.”

Eren stuck out his lower lip and blew a raspberry.

“Grow the hell up, Eren.”

“Don’t want to.”

Jean sighed and rubbed at his temple irritably. “How Mikasa puts up with you is beyond me. You don’t deserve her.”

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?” Eren’s head jerked up from the armrest. “You’re telling me I should be grateful for someone whining at me for doing something responsible?”

“I’d hardly call getting an inconvenient job responsible, but for argument’s sake, yes. Grateful for someone who’s got your back, who’s looking out for you, who’s trying to help you make the right decisions? Grateful to have someone who genuinely cares about you enough to call you out on your bullshit, someone who’s texting you right this second to try and fix things whilst you get drunk and bitch? Yes, you should be fucking grateful, because there’s a million and one guys in this world who’d give their left fucking arms to have someone like Mikasa looking out for them.”

Eren fell quiet. The scowl left his face as his brows knitted together in thought. He tapped his fingers against the neck of his beer bottle, the anxious trill of glass ringing out in the otherwise silent room.

“You think so?” he said eventually, his voice almost meek. “You think there’s people out there who’re jealous of me?”

You’ve got a real, live one sitting right in front of you. Thankfully, in his drunk state, Eren seemed to have completely forgotten about Jean’s terminal crush on his girlfriend. “Of course there is. So maybe you should think twice before sulking like a kid.”

“I’m not sulking,” Eren snapped as he flipped himself onto his back once again, but the fierceness in his tone was gone, like his heart wasn’t in it anymore. He tipped his head back, mouth puckered up in thought. “I wonder if I can take days off this early…” he mumbled to himself. “Hey, Jean, you have a job. How do you persuade your boss to let you take time off?”

Jean snorted, partially at the idea of Marco being his boss- he didn’t know anyone who spent the evening sat in a delivery van eating fast food and laughing about something vaguely suggestive the radio presenter had said with their boss- and partially at the idea of having a day off. At this point, that was the last thing he wanted.

“I don’t have days off, asshole.” He shook his head as he picked up his sketchbook, resting it against his knees and opening it to a clean page. “And Marco isn’t my boss. He’s a friend.”

“Marco…” Eren said, as if he was testing the word out for the first time. “…you’ve mentioned him to me before, right?”

Jean shot him a look. “Yes.”

“Huh…” He furrowed his brow. “Remind me, who’s he again?”

“Christ, Eren, you need to go to bed. You’re drunk.” Nevertheless, he leaned over his sketchbook and with a few strokes of his pencil he roughly sketched a broad, oval face framed with dark hair. He tore the page out and handed it over to Eren. “That’s him. It’s his family’s bakery that I’m working at. He was at Connie and Sasha’s party- briefly- remember?”

“Oh. That was fast.” Eren took the drawing and held it above his face, squinting in the dim light. “Hey, you’re pretty good at drawing.”

“Thanks for noticing.”

“Yeah,” Eren studied the page for a few more seconds before holding it out for Jean to take back. “Never seen him in my life.”

“As I thought,” Jean said dryly.

“’S good drawing, though. And you did it really fast. And it’s…good.” He tipped his head up to look at Jean, upside down, a mischievous grin suddenly lighting up his face.

The back of Jean’s neck prickled. “What?” He demanded.

“Nothing.”

Jean seized hold of the cushion next to him and hurled it at his housemate. It smacked him in the face, harmlessly bouncing onto the floor as Eren made a disoriented swipe at it.

“Just go to bed already.”

Eren raised a hand and pointed at the TV screen.

“Can’t. I’m watching TV.”

“No the fuck you aren’t. You haven’t looked at it since I’ve been home.” Jean said darkly. “What even are you…” The words died on his tongue as he finally looked at the screen.

Of course. It had to be.

“It’s some shit about astro…astrology? Astronomy? Which one is it?”

Jean stared at the CGI diagrams illuminating their living room, jerkily animated to replicate the life cycle of stars, only half listening. He swallowed painfully.

“Astronomy. Astrology is the mystic star sign bullshit.”

“Oh. That one, then.”

It had to be, didn’t it? It just fucking had to be.

If irony were to manifest itself a physical form, Jean would very much like to deck it in the face.

Just focus on your art. Look, stars, use them as reference. Make the most of it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

He tried to repress it. He really did.

But all he could think of were those damn freckles.

…

Jean got to the bakery the next morning in relatively high spirits. After spending the majority of yesterday with Marco, he found himself almost looking forwards to his alarm screaming at him hours before the sun showed its face.

Because…he’d get to see him again.

The thought made him stop for a second to wonder why the hell seeing someone he’d seen almost every day for the past three months made him feel so good. Like an intrusive visitor, the memory of his attempt to draw Marco yesterday resurfaced, thick, fresh, and heavy with feelings he couldn’t categorise. He did his best to shove these thoughts to the back of his mind as he opened the bakery door, greeting Marco like normal with his heart thudding at the base of his throat. Whatever he was feeling, he didn’t like it. It made him unsure, conflicted, and felt like it could jeopardise his friendship with Marco. The last thing he wanted to do was make things weird. He needed this job if he was studying art, to appease his guilty conscience for not taking business, if nothing else, and to rid himself of as much self doubt as possible. This sense of…dread creeping into his chest was…foreboding, if nothing else. If that was what it was.

All the same, as Jean and Marco spent the morning baking together, laughing and talking and mercilessly teasing each other like they had the night before, Jean couldn’t stop the warmth wrapping itself around his heart like a kraken around a ship.

This needed to fucking stop.

Marco didn’t have any deliveries to make that morning, so once they’d finished opening the shop, he stayed behind the counter with Jean, who was working on his sketchbook again to kill time between customers until he had to leave for college at noon. He didn’t say anything, but Jean was secretly glad not to be on his own for once. It felt good to have Marco…here. With him.

This REALLY needed to fucking stop.

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot.”

Jean looked up from the sketchbook on his lap to see Marco digging in his pocket for something. He frowned and opened his mouth to ask what he meant before Marco pulled out a small, flat, rectangular object. It took a second before Jean realised what he was looking at was an extremely primitive cell phone.

Marco waved it casually in the air, a rueful smile playing on his lips. “I went out last night after I dropped you off and finally bought a phone. It’s archaic, but at least it’s functional.”

“Why did you decide you needed one all of a sudden?” Jean asked, bemused.

“You said it yourself.” Marco shrugged. “I was disconnected. Seems kind of stupid, in retrospect, to have a business and be unreachable to people who need to contact you. And I…I kind of figured…it’d probably be easier for us.” He cleared his throat. “You know, to keep in contact? Just in case you decide to pull a stunt like yesterday and show up out of the blue.”

Jean’s mouth quirked in amusement. “You want my number?”

Marco’s cheeks visibly pinked.

“You don’t have to make it sound weird,” he mumbled fiercely, reddening as Jean laughed.

“Sorry,” Jean said. He reached into his back pocket and retrieved his own phone, swiping the lock screen and opening his contacts. “Of course you can have it. Just don’t send me nudes, OK?”

Marco snorted as Jean held up his phone screen for him to copy the number from. “You should be so lucky.”

“Oh, confident, aren’t we? Might have to retract my previous statement and see if they live up to your expectations.”

“Jean, I’m not sending you nudes.”

“Aw, man, right after you got my hopes up. I’m wounded.” He placed a hand on his chest, pretending to look affronted, before laughing at Marco’s disapproving stare. “I’m kidding.”

Marco rolled his eyes and went back to peering at his screen, his brow furrowing so a little crease of skin dimpled into a ‘v’ in the centre of his forehead, the same way it always did when he was confused. “Right, I’ve got it. How do I save you as a contact?”

Jean held his hand out. “Give it here, stuck-in-the-fifteenth-century.” He took the phone from Marco and immediately snorted when he saw the screen. “Dude, you’re on the notes app. You need to go on contacts to save a number.”

“Fuck. I’m an idiot.” Marco covered his face with his hands, groaning in humiliation as Jean sniggered.

“Not often you drop the F-bomb, old man.”

“Old m…? I’m one year older than you!”

“And still don’t know how to use a mobile phone. There,” Jean held the phone up, angling it in Marco’s direction. “You go onto contacts- the little address book- then press new contact, input the name and number, and then press save. See? Easy.”

Marco took his phone back, cheeks still dusted pink. “I hate you. You’re a condescending ass.”

“I’m your favourite condescending ass.”

Marco tucked the phone back in his pocket, a wry smile slipping onto his lips. “Yeah. I think you are.”

Jean’s comeback dried in his throat as he opened his mouth to retort, only for a whisper of air to escape, his own face begin to sting with colour. He quickly ducked his head and spun around to face the counter in his seat, doing his best to hide the flare in his cheeks. What was he supposed to say to that? He was Marco’s favourite-

Before Marco could say anything else, the bell chimed its merry welcome as the door swung open and a customer walked in.

“Good morning!” a familiar voice said. “It’s been a while, Marco!”

Jean looked up, only to see the strawberry blonde bob and the intricately inked arms of the woman who’d accidentally told him Marco was gay.

Marco wasn’t fazed. He smiled brightly, as if he were acknowledging an old friend. “Good morning! It has, hasn’t it? Have you been particularly busy lately or…?”

“No, not really. Just been saving money. I’m planning to get something to fill this blank space here-” The woman held out her left forearm, indicating the one spot on her devoid of ink- “so I’ve been pinching pennies left right and centre. I’ve missed your pastries though. Breakfast hasn’t been the same without them.” She laughed shortly before her gaze swivelled around and fell on Jean. Her eyes immediately lit up in recognition. “Hi, good to see you again! Jean, right?”

Jean cleared his throat and nodded stiffly. “Yeah. Jean. Hi.”

Marco looked surprised. “You’ve met?”

Jean shot him a knowing look out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes, once before. That was when I- oh!” The woman said before cutting herself off. Her hand flew up to her face, eyes widening in horror. “I mean- um, did you tell him?” she asked Jean tentatively.

Jean hesitated.

“What-? Oh! Is this about the whole being gay thing?” Marco said, one eyebrow raised. “I’m, um, not mad about it.”

“I’m so sorry, Marco, I didn’t mean for it to happen, you know how I am, always running my mouth off, I’m too eager for my own good, so I’m really sorry-”

“It’s fine, really! Please, don’t apologise. But uh…how did it come up in conversation? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Jean turned away, biting his lip.

“I was wondering why you’d hired someone all of a sudden and asked if he was your boyfriend.”

Jean didn’t know what to expect. Laughter, maybe. Perhaps Marco would brush it off with his carefree smile, maybe with that pretty laugh of his before reverting to a more mundane conversation most customers could expect.

What he didn’t expect was for Marco to choke.

At first he spluttered in disbelief- a strangled mix of laughter and words of protest that entangled in one another before he started coughing, quickly going very red until Jean reached over and thumped him on the back.

“I’m fine,” he gasped. He flashed Jean a grateful glance, exhaling steadily before he turned back to their customer. “No, he’s not my boyfriend, I’m just helping him with business experience for college.”

“Are you OK?” The woman asked. “That was, uh, quite the reaction!”

Marco smiled. “I’m fine. Now, what can I get for you?”

“Right, yes. I’ll have…um, one Danish pastry, one croissant, two muffins…and one cinnamon roll, please!”

Marco immediately went about packaging up her order, chatting pleasantly with her about various menial things like the weather, and how it was forecasted for the coldest winter on record to be quickly approaching, and whether this would affect various things. Typical customer service spiel that Jean tuned out as he turned his attention back to the sketchbook resting on his lap.

He’d been doing his best not to, but he’d ended up drawing Marco again. Or, at least, a part of him. He’d been tracing out the patterns his freckles made and connecting the dots, interwoven with scars and scratches and burns. But after seeing him blush so violently he was half tempted to turn the background into a rosy, vibrant galaxy, with the acrylics he had bought before the beginning of term and had scarcely used since. He hadn’t been tempted to use colour in months.

Colour…

Jean’s gaze flickered upwards to the woman standing on the other side of the counter, who was counting out her change from the bottom of her spike-studded bag. He examined the art etched into her skin. There was an ornate blade on her right bicep, a circlet of vines around her elbow and a big, dark, bold tribal pattern down her wrist. A compass ringed around the back of her hand, and, of course, the little blue butterfly sat on her index finger, bright and stark against her pale flesh.

He scrutinised the intricate little details in every curve of ink, evaluating the style. The colours were vibrant and the outlines were harsh- bold, angular, and thick. Each tattoo didn’t seem to blend seamlessly into one another like a regular tattoo sleeve, but instead stood alone as individual pieces, woven around each other with precision and care, despite the heavy hand with which they were inked.

Jean wondered what each one of them meant. Of course, not all tattoos had meanings, but most were symbols of some sort; symbols of preference, affection, mantra, guidance, inspiration. Each one was a little part of the person who wore them on the outside. They were marks in the skin worthy of stories too, weren’t they?

The woman looked up from her bag as Marco finished writing out her receipt and caught Jean staring. Surprisingly, she smiled.

“Do you like my tattoos?” she asked.

Jean nodded. “Yeah. I’ve…I’ve never seen ones like them before.”

“Oh yes, they’re very unique.” She chuckled to herself and raised her right arm so she could twist it around, allowing Jean to see each tattoo from every angle. There was one he hadn’t noticed on the inside of her elbow- a line of typewritten script, deliberately splattered with ink, reading vertraue uns. Was that German? Jean made a mental note to Google translate it later. “They’re pretty old though, you should see some of his new stuff. The new designs are gorgeous. You should come by the- oh, wait, is that the time?” Her black lined eyes had darted to the clock on the wall and suddenly widened in panic as she seized hold of the paper bags stuffed with her pastries. “I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry! I’m sorry, boys, hopefully we can talk again soon. I’ll see you both later!”

She snatched the receipt Marco held out for her and hurriedly crammed both it and her purchases into her handbag before she darted over to the door, her big, heavy boots thudding as she went. She wiggled her fingers in goodbye and disappeared with the trill of the bell.

Jean breathed a sigh of relief and snuck a glance at Marco, still recovering from his spluttering episode earlier.

“You alright there, bud?”

“Me? Spectacular. Just feel like I’ve sandpapered my throat, that’s all.”

Jean sniggered. “She’s quite…overbearing, isn’t she? I wonder why she was in such a hurry.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s going to work, which is probably why she buys five pastries every time she comes in.” Marco shrugged. “I assume she gets them for her co-workers.”

“Really? It’s kind of hard imagining someone with so much metal in their face to have a regular nine-to-five job.”

“You’ll have to ask what she does the next time she comes in.” Marco said with a gracious smile. “But she’s not really overbearing. Bright and cheerful, and I guess a little in your face, but at least she’s kind. She was the only one who noticed when my grandfather…” Suddenly the words seemed to catch in Marco’s throat. His voice trailed away.

Jean bit his tongue, uncertain of what to say as he tried not to let his surprise register on his face. Marco hadn’t said much more about his grandfather other than what was strictly necessary when he told Jean about the bakery’s history. He wasn’t sure if he should provoke this topic or leave it be- before now Marco had always danced around it, at best, if not avoiding it at all costs.

Even now, his eyes had glazed over as he chewed his lower lip, a distinct tremor visible in his fingers as they curled them into fists. Jean swallowed.

“Marco-”

“No, no. It’s OK.” He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a few moments, just long enough for his expression to ease and the tension in his shoulders to slacken. “She was the only one who noticed when my grandfather stopped running the bakery with me. She’d ask after him every day, and brought flowers, and visited after hours to make sure if I was OK…right up until after he…he died.” There was a distinct crack in his voice and he ducked his head, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand fiercely.

“Marco, you really don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

“I know.” Marco took a long, steady intake of breath before he opened his eyes again and looked directly at Jean. “But I think it’s about time I did. I’ve just bottled it up until now, and I shouldn’t have. Over time it’s just made it…worse. But if I tell you, it might…” His voice trailed away again and his gaze broke as he shook his head. “Never mind. Point being, she’s a good person.”

“Y…yeah. Certainly sounds it. How long have you known her?”

“Um…that’s got to be two and a half years now.”

“What’s her name, by the way? I’ve been referring to her as the tattooed woman in my head up until now, and something about that just sounds disrespectful.”

Marco opened his mouth before a look of realisation dawned on his face. “…You know what, I couldn’t tell you. I never asked.”

“Marco, usually that’s the first thing you ask a person when you meet them.”

“I know! But it’s kind of different when they’re a customer, right? I mean, it’s a bit creepy if you start asking people for their names when you serve them, isn’t it?”

“You know Ellie’s name.”

“Ellie’s a kid, that’s different. I didn’t even ask you your name when we first met. I only found out what it was because someone else said it.”

Jean smiled to himself, remembering that summer evening spent tasting smoke and spitting bitter resentment of the circumstances to the first person to ever care enough to ask. For a night so full of bad feelings and such negative emotions, he found himself looking back on it with a surprising amount of fondness.

“It feels like that was a lot longer ago,” he said. “Doesn’t it? The party where I met you?”

“It does?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it’s been what, four, five months? It feels like I’ve known you for years.”

Any remnants of sadness still evident in Marco’s face were quickly buffed away as he smiled- not his normal, complacent, friendly smile, but a smile that extended from the corners of his mouth up to the lights of his eyes, brightening so Jean could practically see the galaxies of gold flecked inside them, see the joy etched into every freckle. A smile so bright his heart skipped a beat. So pure it left him speechless. So captivating he almost stopped breathing.

“Yeah…I…I guess it does. I mean, it’s…it’s been a really long time since I’ve felt close to…well, anyone.”

Jean blinked and shook off his temporary paralysis, blindsided by that smile.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t have many friends. Um, scratch that. I don’t have any friends.” He laughed, but it was humourless, hollow and lacking in any real amusement. “So I guess it kind of makes sense to be so attached…no, attached is the wrong word. Um, I guess I’m trying to say…I’m not used to having friends?”

“No- no, you have to have friends. You’ve got me, there’s one.”

“Yep. One and only.”

“What about her? Tattooed woman?”

“I don’t even know her name.” Marco pulled a face. “Does that even count?”

“How about Ellie?”

“She’s a sweet kid, but not really a friend, Jean.”

“Wait, wait, there’s a guy, isn’t there? You admitted it yourself, the other week, you said you had a crush on someone. He’s got to be a friend.”

Marco visibly jumped and colour immediately began to flood over his cheeks, darkening between the freckles and blotching on his forehead as he hastily looked away, rubbing one arm with the other hand awkwardly.

“Uh…um…well…yeah, I mean he is.” His tone was wavering like a candle in the wind. “Technically.”

“What do you mean technically? Either he is or he isn’t.”

“He is,” Marco repeated. His cheeks blazed with colour. “It’s just…you…uh, you already mentioned him.”

Marco’s voice had dwindled down to a mumble, scarcely more than a breath on his lips as he reached the final word, whispering into the air like a ghost quickly swallowed by the silence before Jean had time to hear it. It took him a second to figure out what Marco had said.

It felt like someone stabbed him in the stomach.

His heart flipped in the cavity of his chest and his breath snagged in his lungs. His eyes widened as what Marco had just said registered. He can’t mean me. He can’t. How can it be me? I’m not special or attractive or- or gay!

The furnace in his cheeks flared up as he quickly looked away, dropping his gaze to the sketchbook on his lap, staring, but not really seeing.

 “Very funny, Marco,” he said, failing to disguise the tremor in his voice as he laughed shakily. “You’re kidding, right?”

“O…of course. Of course I am.” Marco laughed with him, but neither of them convinced the other it was genuine laughter. They were both hastily avoiding eye contact, red faced and trembling.

“Well, if you’re really that friendless, we should…uh…p-probably do something about that. I’ll introduce you to mine at some point.”

“O-oh. Yeah. Thanks.” The silence that followed Marco’s words was too empty to bear. “I, uh, I didn’t know you liked tattoos, Jean?”

Thank God, he was diverting the conversation.

“I’ve never really thought about it.” Jean replied, the strain in his voice painfully evident as he turned to a fresh page. “I mean, they’re cool, I guess.”

“Yeah. They are…”

The tension in the room was so thick Jean was having trouble breathing. He propped his sketchbook up against the counter and pressed the tip of his pencil against the page, trying his hardest to not think about anything at all. If he started thinking he knew he wouldn’t like the direction those thoughts took.

“Well, I’m going to…clean the kitchen a bit. Do you mind watching the counter?”

That was a lie. They cleaned the kitchen together every morning after they finished baking. Marco just needed a convenient excuse to escape.

But that was probably what they needed. It was so awkward in here right now Jean wanted to grab his things and run.

“Yeah,” he said. He pressed his lips together, focusing on the graphite tip of his pencil splintering into speckles of grey on the paper as he gradually applied more pressure to the tip. “Sure.”

He was dimly aware of Marco’s steps disappearing into the back room behind him, waiting until the sound reached the back of the kitchen before he exhaled a long, withheld breath, attempting to calm his racing heart.

He wasn’t serious. It was a joke. You misheard him. You’re making it up. You’re so desperate for affection you’re clawing it from thin air.

Jean tried his best to focus on drawing, attempting to recreate the sharp, angular lines of the tattoos he’d been admiring only a few short minutes ago.

But before long they had already morphed back into a star system of freckles spreading over the cheeks of an all too familiar face.

…

In the week that followed, Jean didn’t know if he should forget about what Marco had said, or focus more on the feelings it had stirred up inside him.

He didn’t want to do either. It would have been easier if Marco had kept his mouth shut and hadn’t said anything, joke or otherwise. But for some reason, Jean’s brain really liked to hold onto the things that came out of Marco’s mouth, and that little, breathless whisper had niggled in the back of his mind near constantly.

Among other things.

Jean heard his deep, reverberating laughter in his dreams. He felt his strong, steady hands over his when he was at his wits end with his artwork. He saw that broad, blinding smile painted on the darkness of his eyelids every time he closed his eyes. He saw his freckles in the stars emerging at dusk, arching high into the sky, out of reach.

He just couldn’t get Marco out of his head.

Jean knew this level of fixation. He knew this level of fixation well. He’d known it for years and years, interwoven with his unrequited feelings and pining glances in the direction of a girl too captivated by an idiot who didn’t deserve her unrelenting affection. He knew this was his mind telling him it wanted something.

But he’d never known it wanting someone else.

He’d never, ever, looked at a guy like that. Not once. This wasn’t real- it couldn’t be, right? This wasn’t him. He’d never met anyone like Marco before, not anyone he had ever felt so…connected to. Marco just…got him. He knew what it was like to feel disconnected from those around you, and he understood the passion and drive Jean felt to create and inspire. How could Jean not be attached to him?

Maybe these kind of feelings were normal…?

He could damn well pretend they were.

Needless to say, things were a little awkward at the bakery now. It was steadily easing up as the week went on- probably because Jean was becoming better at repressing those pesky intrusive thoughts- but every so often he’d catch Marco looking at him sideways with that…look in his eyes. That look that Jean couldn’t define. And his heart would skip a beat, his skin would crawl, and he’d inevitably drop something. He felt vulnerable. He felt weak.

Wednesday was his escape. His one day of normality, where he could pretend the other stuff going on in his life was irrelevant and he could just focus on college and art and drown himself in preparing for his final piece for the self-identity project.

Or at least, it was supposed to be.

“Sorry,” Erwin said, pulling a sympathetic face when Jean got to the otherwise empty classroom. “Class is cancelled today. I’ve got an urgent meeting to attend, that I was due in-” he checked the face of his wristwatch- “ten minutes ago. I’m just waiting to make sure everyone knows they don’t have to stay. You can go home, if you like.”

“Oh.” Jean could feel his heart sink in his chest. He’d been running late that morning and completely forgotten to pick up his house key on his way out. Eren was the only other person with a key (provided he hadn’t lost it again- he’d misplaced his first one and they’d had to get him another one cut) but he was in class, and he didn’t just want to waltz in on the drama class and admit he’d been an idiot. He had pride to uphold, dammit.

Erwin raised an eyebrow. “You sound disappointed.”

“I was just looking forward to working on my project. That’s all,” he admitted.

“It’s going better, then?”

Jean nodded. “Yeah. A lot better.”

“Glad to hear it. Your sketchbook is one of my favourites to mark, actually.” Erwin smiled at Jean’s stunned expression. “You’ve shown one of the most remarkable amounts of improvement of the whole class, and as a teacher, that’s always gratifying. And, more importantly, self-satisfying.” He chuckled. “Since we’re on the topic, I didn’t know you were interested in astronomy.”

Jean felt his heart turn a somersault in his chest. He fiddled with the strap on his backpack and dropped his gaze to the floor. “I-I’m not. Not really,” he mumbled fiercely. “It’s just…easy to do.”

“Clearly.”

Jean could practically taste how unconvinced Erwin was in the air.

“Well, regardless, I’m glad you’ve found your stride. And it’s nice to see a student so eager, too. Oh, and before you go,”

Jean halted, about to turn on his heel and walk out the door.

“There’s a class trip to an art exhibition early next month. I’ve mentioned it in class before, but you’re one of the few who still haven’t given in money for their tickets. I’d prefer it if all my students were to attend.”

“Oh yeah.” Jean dimly recalled the letter he’d been given a few weeks ago. He’d crammed it into his backpack and hadn’t given it a second thought up until now. It was probably still there, if he looked for it. But he wasn’t about to admit that in front of his teacher. “I, uh, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, actually. With it being near Christmas and all, I might not be able to get the time off work.”

Erwin’s smile faltered. “Of course. I understand. It’s a shame, though.”

Jean wasn’t in the mood to stick around and humour Erwin’s attempt at guilt-tripping him, and spun on his heel, walking straight out through the door to begin heading back down the corridor towards the atrium. He didn’t mean to be rude, but he just wasn’t in the mindset to entertain anyone’s bullshit lately. He was too preoccupied with his own problems and invasive thoughts.

Besides, it wasn’t technically a lie. If the trip was next month, he and Marco really would be preparing for the Christmas rush, and he was almost certain he’d be working extra hours and picking up extra shifts. This was Marco’s first Christmas running the bakery completely on his own and Jean couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him to face it by himself, even for a single day, whilst he flounced about some gallery pretending to see depth and meaning in artwork he struggled to appreciate. Especially if it was modern art. Stupid introspective bullshit.

He owed it to Marco, at the very least, to be around to help him when he needed it most.

But that wasn’t just it, was it? His sense of obligation wasn’t the only thing that dragged his sorry ass out of bed every morning. There was something more, something that ran deeper that made him quicken his pace by a fraction when the bakery came into view and flooded his mind with warm smiles and freckles. He genuinely wanted to see that idiot smile from the bottom of his heart, over and over, just to watch it light up the galaxy in his eyes.

He’s a friend. He’s just a friend.

That wasn’t true. It wasn’t healthy or normal to obsess over a friend to this extent. Friends didn’t fill sketchbooks with drawings of each other because they were physically incapable of drawing anything else.

Shut up brain. You don’t know shit.

Jean got to the cafeteria on the first floor of the atrium, pausing to buy a sandwich since he hadn’t eaten that morning- he hadn’t brought home any leftovers for the past few days- and flopped down at one of the empty tables, away from the rest of the few students dotted here and there. Most were studying, either bent low over textbooks or tapping away at laptops, earphones stringing them away from the external world, running on pure determination and caffeine alone by the looks of the paper cups at their elbows and dark circles ringing their eyes.

Final exams were coming up soon. Jean’s hand in date for his project, and deadline for his final piece would be just before Christmas…fuck. That seemed uncomfortably soon.

He hastily dug into his bag and retrieved his sketchbook, flipping past the front pages to evaluate where he was at with the rest of his project. He’d done development work, and original pieces, and case studies; as well as external things he’d worked on with the rest of his class, like still-life pieces Erwin had conducted to teach them how to properly use light and shadow to add detail.

Jean chewed on his lip as he flicked past page after page, realising Erwin was right. He’d drawn a lot of stars. It didn’t look good- if he wanted a half decent grade he needed some degree of variety in his work. Granted, he’d done a few other bits that related to his ideas of ‘marks’ on the body- he’d drawn veins as flower stems, stretch marks as lightning bolts, scars as seams, bruises as supernovas…shit, that was stars again.

Time to divert this project away from Marco. Far, far, far away from Marco. So far he couldn’t touch it with a fifty foot barge pole.

It took several minutes of Jean scowling at his sketchbook before he realised he had no idea what else to draw.

Come on, Marco hadn’t consumed his life that much! Surely he had something, a remnant, a scrap of something else he could throw into the mix.

Other friends! He had other friends! There was a start.

He propped his elbow up against the table and rested his chin on it, beginning to sketch how he best remembered his friends: drunk and half loopy in the happy delirium of finishing high school at the party last summer.

It seemed so long since he’d seen everyone. He’d glimpsed Sasha in passing going up and down the stairs, to and from their respective classes, but aside from Eren and Mikasa who he obviously saw every day anyway, he hadn’t met up with anyone else since the party.

Let’s see…Reiner and Bertolt were doing army stuff, weren’t they? The specifics weren’t clear in Jean’s mind. It had been so long since he’d talked to either of them. Annie and Armin were studying at universities in different cities…Krista was studying nursing, so that meant she and Ymir would be in the college somewhere, although Jean hadn’t seen them. Connie was doing public services, so he’d be out of the college doing physical work most of the time. And that left Mina, Thomas, Samuel, Nac, Mylius, Hannah, Franz, and a handful of others…

Jean realised he hadn’t the faintest idea what any of them were doing. He’d never bothered to ask what they would be studying. And with his aversion to any form of socialising, in physical or virtual terms, he had no way of keeping up to date with them.

His dropped his gaze guiltily to his drawing, his heart sinking.

He’d been so preoccupied with his own thoughts, his own happiness, his own fixation around Marco that he’d almost completely forgotten he’d ever had other friends. That certainly wasn’t healthy.

He bit his lip and tightened his grip on his pencil, going back to doing his best to sketch semi-realistic caricatures of his friends from memory, taking some artistic liberty since he had no references to go off. It didn’t technically link into his original concept of ‘marks on the body’, but he needed something to distract him from the all too familiar feelings of conflict beginning to bubble up inside him again.

Jean paused after he drew Sasha’s ponytail flying out behind her, pencil hovering above the page as he dimly remembered her singing along to the music video playing on the TV, spinning around on the spot and taking hold of his arms and dragging him into the middle of the room to join her. A small smile pricked up the corner of his mouth, partly at her antics, partly at his drunk self for going along with it and bellowing out the lyrics with her. You could always count on Sasha for guaranteed ridiculousness. It was an irreversible part of her, a trait she was born with…you could say she was born under that star…

What, I could link it to…star signs or something?

Jean wanted to bash his head against the table at his own words coming back to haunt him. He groaned inwardly, dropping his pencil with a clatter and pressed his hands against his face.

Stop. Thinking. Of. Fucking. STARS.

But he knew, at this point, it was futile, as he pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, so all he could see was the popping of bright white lights, illuminating the darkness like…

No no no no no!

Before he could stop himself, he was googling star signs and their constellations and his friend’s birthdays, drawing the corresponding arrangement of stars above their respective sketches.

Damn you. Damn you and your freckled face making me seem obsessed with this astro-whatsit bullshit.

“Hey, that looks familiar.”

Jean nearly jumped a foot into the air when someone spoke behind him, so close he could practically feel their breath against his neck, uncomfortably warm. He whipped around to see a familiar shaved head peering over his shoulder at the sketchbook, his face broadening into a grin as he snickered at Jean’s reaction.

“You asshole, don’t creep up on people like that!”

Connie laughed and straightened up, unfazed by Jean’s glare. “I didn’t creep, I practically yelled your name from over there-” he pointed- “but you were a bajillion miles away. Hi, by the way, it’s nice to see you too.”

Jean sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Speak of the devil, he thought grimly. Now he was starting to remember why he hadn’t seen this guy in months. Personal choice had a lot more to do with it than circumstance.

“What are you even doing here?”

“Um, believe it or not, I AM a college student too. And no, before you ask, I’m not skiving class. Wait, are you?”

“No.”

“Are you drawing what I think you’re drawing?” Connie asked, leaning over Jean’s shoulder. “Hey, let me see!”

Jean yelped in protest as Connie seized hold of the sketchbook and flipped to the front, thumbing past the pages and dodging Jean’s scrabbling hands as he desperately tried to retrieve it.

“Connie don’t be a dick, give it back-”

“Why?” he asked innocently, raising a eyebrow. “I’m just curious. This is your class sketchbook, right?”

“Yes, but- wait, how do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

Jean stopped trying to pull the sketchbook from Connie’s grasp and frowned. “How did you know I’m on the art course? The last time I talked to you I was taking business.”

“Come on, you were never going to take business. You were kidding yourself, you know that, right?” Connie said, rolling his eyes. “Everyone knew you weren’t serious.”

“I was serious- everyone? What do you mean everyone?”

Connie laughed again as he turned another page. “Forget about it. You’re doing art now, anyway, so no big deal. Who’s this, by the way?”

Jean’s stomach flipped and he felt something stab in his chest as he averted his gaze hurriedly. He didn’t have to look to know who Connie was referring to. Hell, it’s not like he’d drawn anyone else Connie didn’t know.

“His name is Marco,” he mumbled reproachfully to his shoes.

“Marco?” Connie echoed. “And he is…?”

Jean sighed. “He’s the guy I work with. Oh, he runs the bakery that I’ve been working at-”

“So he’s the bakery owner!”

Jean’s headed whipped up again as he frowned at Connie’s look of recognition on his face.

“You know him?”

“No, but Eren’s told me about you getting a job at a bakery and shit.”

“Woah woah woah, Eren did?”

“Yes?” Connie shot him a confused look. “Jean, you realise we still hang out, right?”

“When?”

“In between classes and stuff? After college? Outside of college?”

“How come I was never invited?”

“Because you never want to talk to anyone. Dude, I haven’t heard anything from you in like, six months.”

“Four,” Jean mumbled savagely. “It’s only been four.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Connie waved him down disinterestedly and went back to flicking through the sketchbook. “You must be pretty attached to this guy. He’s, like, all you draw.”

Jean felt the blood rush to his face. He quickly rested his elbow on the back of his chair and did his best to hide his flaming cheeks behind the crook of his elbow.

“Yeah, and? Got a problem?”

“No. I didn’t say it was a bad thing, quit jumping down my throat.”

“Right.” He exhaled slowly. He’d hadn’t seen Connie in months, and so far he’d just snapped at him. If he wanted to pretend he had other valid friendships than his with Marco, then he could start by not being a dick to his others, at the very least. “Sorry. So, uh, what do you think? Are they any good?”

“Hell if I know. I don’t even know what this dude looks like.” Connie shrugged with a wicked grin. “For all I know it looks nothing like him.”

“I’m not talking about accuracy, dumba- I mean, Connie. I’m asking if they look good. Do you like them?”

“Uh, sure, I guess.” Connie looked bemused. “I mean…they look nice. I don’t know what you’re asking. What do you want me to say?”

“Never mind.” Jean slumped in his seat. A part of him wanted to know if his…his…creative drive was evident in those drawings, and whether they’d improved with time as his feelings for Marco grew and- nope, stop it, don’t go there! He didn’t expect Connie of all people to be that degree of perceptive. And he was thankful, if he was honest. “Forget it.”

“OK,” Connie said as he turned to the last page. His face immediately lit up with a grin as he examined the drawing. “I like this one though. This is me, right? That’s totally me! You’ve drawn me!”

“Yeah, it’s you.” Jean tugged down on the corner of the sketchbook to see Connie grinning goofily over the half-finished sketch of the party, pointing at the hasty sketch of himself. “Among others.”

“Is it supposed to be our party?” Connie squinted at the page. “Man, that was fun. We should-”

A sharp buzzing resounded throughout the table, interrupting them both as Jean clapped his hand over his phone.

“Sorry,” he said, ignoring the incoming call. “You were saying?”

“We should do it again, shouldn’t we? Hey, since Christmas is coming up, everyone should be coming home! Dude, we can have, like, our own Christmas party.” Connie’s face was bright and eager, his enthusiasm practically shining through his voice. Jean saw the opportunity to snap his sketchbook closed and snatch it back.

He grinned triumphantly as he lay his artwork back on the table, guarding it protectively under one arm. “Sure, I guess. Just no cheesy Christmas jumpers.”

“J-ea-nnnnnn, you take the fun out of it,” Connie whined. “Fine, no Christmas jumpers. You’ll come though, right?”

Jean opened his mouth to reply before the buzzing returning, his ringtone twice as loud and incessant. Impatient, he jabbed at the ‘dismiss’ icon and turned back to Connie. “Yeah, sure. Wait, I might not be able to stop long. I have to be up early in the morning for work.”

Connie didn’t seem to be listening. “OK, OK, whatever. Right, I’m going to go and find Sash and figure this out- I’ll text you and Eren later-”

“Sure,” Jean smirked to himself. Sure, Connie was a little shit most of the time, but it wasn’t the same without him around. It would be nice to see a few familiar faces again, and reunite with the rest of his…friends…

Friends…

Jean’s gaze fell onto the closed sketchbook wedged under his forearm. Thoughts of dark hair and freckles immediately sprang into his head- with a smile, but a small, sad, shy smile, a smile that had missed out on a type of happiness for all of its life that Jean had promised to remedy.

His head jerked up at Connie’s retreating figure.

“Hey, Connie!”

“Hm?” Connie stopped in his tracks and turned. “What’s up?”

“Do you…uh, would you mind if I invited Marco?” Jean cleared his throat. “He, um, doesn’t have many friends and I promised I’d introduce him to mine. If that’s OK with you guys.”

Connie’s face screwed up in thought. “I don’t know man…he’s got to be a nice guy if he’s friends with an ass like you…either that, or he’s just as much of a jerk as you are.”

Jean scowled and Connie immediately burst into laughter.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Sure, bring your boyfriend. The more the merrier.” He waved his hand over his shoulder and resumed walking away. “See you, Jean.”

Jean’s stomach twisted painfully at the word.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” he yelled after him. Either he was out of earshot or chose not to respond, because a second later Connie disappeared and Jean realised a handful of students were staring disapprovingly at him over the lids of their laptops for breaking the silence. Jean cleared his throat and ducked his head, ignoring the flare in his cheeks as he checked his phone screen.

He ignored the two missed calls and went straight to messages, composing a new one addressed to Marco.

Hey, my friends want to throw a Christmas party sometime next month. I promised to introduce you, do you want to go?

Jean’s thumbs hovered over the keys as he read and reread the two short lines of text over and over, before he blinked and shook his head, wondering why he was hesitant about sending a damn text message. He pressed send and put his phone back down on the table, reaching over to pick up the sandwich he’d bought and ripped the packet open.

He didn’t have to wait long before a reply came through. The phone had scarcely buzzed before he had scooped it up and already had it unlocked, eagerly reading the reply. Marco had sent,

That sounds fun! If you’re inviting me I’d love to go! Thank you!

Jean smiled warmly, amused at Marco’s enthusiastic tone of voice in his text. He took a bite out of his sandwich and thumbed a reply.

Awesome, I’ll let you know dates as soon as I get them.

He hit send and chewed twice before he nearly retched. This was not good bread. It was dense and flavourless, with next to no texture and no aroma whatsoever. The thin slices of processed meat between didn’t salvage anything- it was like eating plastic between two slabs of cardboard. This was nothing compared to the light, fluffy, delectable bread Marco had taught him to make.

His phone vibrated with a response again, but before he could read it, another phone call came through. Impatient, Jean hit ‘ignore’ without even looking at the number and checked Marco’s reply.

I look forward to it! Aren’t you supposed to be in class??
______

It was cancelled. I’m just hanging around the college rn.

______

Why don’t you just go home??
______

Forgot my house key.
______

Do you want to come hang round here again?

Another call. Jean swiped past it again.

Yeah I’m on my way.

Maybe he’d get a half decent breakfast after all.

He stuffed his sketchbook back into his bag and swung it over his shoulder, beginning to make his way out of the cafeteria and towards the stairs, heading for the main entrance. It wasn’t until he stepped outside the big double doors that he checked who was trying to ring him.

Four missed calls, one after the other, all from his mother.

Nope. Not today. He wasn’t going to let her ruin his good mood.

Jean stuffed his phone in the pocket of his jeans and shouldered his backpack, beginning the long walk to Jinae. To Marco.

But a little voice kept niggling in the back of his mind.

You can’t keep ignoring her like this.

Yes, he could. Or he could damn well try. He was ignoring everything else that posed a threat to his otherwise peaceful life. His mother, his friends…

…even his own, undeniable feelings, blooming deep in the otherwise barren wastes of his chest.

Chapter Text

Chapter Nine

The date of the party quickly rushed up to meet them. Since final exams at Rose District College were close to Christmas, Connie had organised the party on the first Friday of December, just in time for everyone who was away to come home for the holidays, but far enough away from exam time to ensure no one had to compromise a study session to attend.

Needless to say, Marco had no idea what to think.

Jean have him the date and details and found it quite endearing to watch him babble anxiously in between his promising that he’d get Mikasa to pick him up so neither of them would have to worry about staying sober to drive home. Marco had creased his brow into that same cute little frown that he made when he was confused- talking at a million miles an hour, and asking all kinds of questions whilst Jean gave him lackluster answers.

“Should I bring anything? Like a gift of some sort?”

“I dunno. You can if you want, but I don’t think they’re expecting anything.”

“Well, it’s like a gesture of good will, isn’t it?”

“You make it sound like a peace offering.”

“How many people are going to be there?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you know them all?”

“How can I know if I know everyone if I don’t even know how many people are going?”

“What?”

“Forget it. Marco, you’re overthinking it.” Jean propped his chin up in his hand. “Literally, just show up. That’s all I ask.”

Marco exhaled steadily like he was attempting to calm himself. “OK, OK, fine.”

There was a brief pause.

“So, um, what should I wear?”

Jean groaned and smacked his forehead.

“What did I just tell you? Quit overthinking it. Wear what you want.”

“I’m sorry!” Marco threw his hands up in the air in frustration. “But I’ve got no idea what’s considered normal for this kind of thing! Is it just t-shirt and jeans? Or should I wear a shirt? Or are you actually doing the Christmas jumper thing?”

“No, no Christmas jumpers, or I’ll personally skin you. Christ, it’s like the second of December, it’s way too early to get festive.” Jean said disinterestedly. He couldn’t help his mind as it began to instinctively wander; and he thought of Marco in a shirt and tie- a surprisingly welcome image in his mind’s eye; broad shoulders and svelte waist, accentuated with the appeal of formality…

No, no, no, none of that.

Marco was still wringing his hands anxiously.  

“Will you relax?” Jean snapped. “You’re not that much of a social oddity,”

“Oh really. Let’s see,” Marco began to count on his fingers. “Has never owned a phone up until last month; has never been to a party; has never been to school; has never drank a drop of alcohol in the company of others; has never smoked or done any drug or anything of the sort; and hasn’t had a single friend for his entire life?” He reached the end, looking more surprised at himself than anything. “Wow. That sounds even worse than I thought. I’m an actual failure of a teenager.”

“You do realise those things aren’t compulsory?”

“You’ve done them all.”

“Yeah, well, that’s me. There’s no standard. Just because those things are common doesn’t make them ‘normal’ or things you should do.” Jean frowned at Marco’s flushed face, creased in anxiety and taut with worry. “Does it bother you that much?”

Marco bit his lip. “Um…maybe.”

Jean sighed. “Then what are you so worried about tonight for? Literally, if you want to go to a party and drink and smoke and make friends, then that’s all stuff you can do tonight.”

“It’s not the doing part that worries me,” Marco replied. He continued to gnaw on his lip and crossed his arms defensively across his chest. “I don’t know how to do any of it. It’s not something I can put into words. I don’t know. You probably wouldn’t get it.”

“Oh really? You don’t think I, your self-confessed only friend, could understand?” Jean interrupted with a raised eyebrow. “Let’s see…it’s like the weirdest inferiority complex, right? Everyone around you seems in control and like they’ve got everything figured out. But you feel like you’ve been left behind and are desperately trying to figure things out for yourself, but it’s really fucking complicated and you have no idea where to start. Everything that you’ve been told is easy seems ten times harder for you than everyone else and it feels like something’s wrong with you because you’re struggling with the most basic of things. Something like that?”

Marco blinked and the tension lining his expression, fraught with worry, alleviated at long last. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, hesitant. “Uh…yeah. Pretty much.”

Jean’s lips twitched into a smile as his gaze fell into his lap, idly rolling a stray thread from his apron between his thumb and index finger, a little in awe of himself. He’d pretty much just described everything he’d felt when they first met- when he was the one in turmoil, torn between practicality and his dreams, feeling like there was no happy medium. When everyone else was looking to the future with bright eyes and he was the only one glowering at it sourly.

How times have changed, he thought dryly as he watched Marco’s expression crease in worry yet again. He would never have anticipated working in a bakery of all places, let alone whilst studying art, the very thing he had sworn to give up only a few short months ago. It was almost funny, really, thinking back to that night. It felt very much now that his and Marco’s roles had been reversed- once upon a time, he was the one who needed all the reassurance Marco could give. It was strange feeling like he was the one who’d got his shit together for once in his life.

Seeing Marco so anxious kind of hurt, though. Jean’s chest tightened as he carefully examined the normally optimistic freckled face- brows knitted together and eyes misted over with misgivings. He kind of wanted to squeeze his hand and make him feel better.

Wait. No.

Jean cleared his throat, crossing one leg over the other. “Trust me when I say you’ve got nothing to worry about, OK? Just promise me you’ll come. I want you to meet everyone.”

Marco looked up sheepishly. “Even if I embarrass you?” he squeaked.

Jean laughed. “How are you supposed to embarrass me?”

“Well, I’m coming as your guest!” Marco said, quickly beginning to look flustered. “If I end up looking like an idiot I don’t want it to reflect badly on you or-”

“You’re not going to look like an idiot, I promise. Not anymore than usual, anyway.”

“Hey!”

Jean sniggered at Marco’s less-than-intimidating glare.  “Just come with me, please. To keep me sane, if nothing else.”

“What do you mean? I thought these were your friends?”

“They are!” Jean said. “They are, it’s just…well, they’re not friends like you and I are friends. You know?”

Marco regarded Jean sideways in confusion. “I’m not sure I do. How are we different from your other friends?”

Jean opened his mouth to reply but no words came out, just a pathetic whine of his voice before he clamped his jaw shut, all too aware of the blood rushing to his face.

“Jean?”

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.”

“Are you blushing?”

“What? No. I don’t blush.”

“Yes you do, you blush all the time. Go on, what were you going to say?”

“Does it matter?”

“Jean…”

“Marco.”

“Please?”

Jean sighed, unable to refuse the charming wheedle that made Marco’s voice dip an octave lower, making it rumble in his chest and resonate like velvet. Jean heart fluttered against his ribs like an obnoxious little bird whose wings he desperately wanted to tear off.

“It’s just…you know, we spend so much  time together and it’s- yeah, I mean, I enjoy it more than- time spent with anyone else…?” He closed his eyes and breathed out through his nose sharply, nostrils flaring. “There, are you happy now?”

“Jean, that’s so sweet!”

“Oh, fuck you.” Jean snapped, opening his eyes to scowl at Marco, who was beginning to laugh. His whole face felt like it was on fire, but what was the point in hiding it now? “What have I told you about using the word sweet?”

“Come on, even you can’t deny that what you just said is sweet. I’m right, aren’t I? You know I’m right,” Marco grinned, finally unfolding his arms to place a hand over his heart. “Really, though, I’m touched.”

“I take it back, you can stay here by yourself tonight.”

“No! I’m sorry, I didn’t say anything. Please let me go with you.”

Jean turned and smiled triumphantly. “You’ve changed your tune. Feeling better now?”

“I guess,” Marco said with a shrug. “I mean…it helped hearing you say everything you did. It’s nice to know you understand. It’s…comforting.” He laughed again. “Sorry, this is getting sentimental, isn’t it?”

“A little.” Jean tilted his head. “Oh god, if you’re sentimental now, imagine what you’re like when you’re drunk.”

“I’m not going to get drunk.”

“Yeah, I said that before my first party too.”

“I’m not going to get drunk!”

“Sure, sure, of course you’re not.” Jean drawled. “Alright, so I’ll get my roommate’s girlfriend to pick you up at about six this evening, and if all goes to plan and she stays sober, she can give you a lift back too. Sound good?”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

Jean looked over at the clock on the other side of the store. The second hand was nudging ever closer to closing time, and with only fifteen minutes to go, they needed to start clearing up and closing the shop.

He stood up, pushing his stool behind him as he raised both arms over his head and stretched with a languid yawn, waiting for the joints in his elbows to audibly crack before he lowered them in satisfaction, when he noticed Marco watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“What?”

Marco visibly twitched when Jean spoke like a tiny animal- almost funny, considering his size and strength- and abruptly turned away, busying himself with the first thing he could, which was shuffling the empty paper bags resting on the counter back into order.

“W-what?” Marco stammered.

Jean raised an eyebrow. “You were staring at me.”

“No, I wasn’t. Um. Not on purpose.”

Jean tilted his head and peered at Marco who was doing anything but meeting his gaze.

“What’s with that smile then?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I smile all the time.” Nevertheless, the little, besotted grin playing on Marco’s lips didn’t go away as his hands- usually so careful and precise- fumbled with the paper bags and knocked the pile askew, sending half of them flying out onto the floor.

Jean rolled his eyes as he hitched himself up onto the counter, too lazy to go around to the hatch, and swung his legs over. He dropped down on to the floor and began picking them up automatically.

“I…I was just thinking about what you said,” Marco admitted. He hadn’t made a move himself to pick up his own mess. He seemed far too preoccupied with forcing himself not to look at Jean. His cheeks were pinker than normal and his fingers looped together anxiously on the counter.

Jean straightened up, clutching the stray paper bags to his chest, a distinctive tremor in his chest beginning to throb.

“It’s just…I mean, I’ve never been someone’s friend before, so this is all a bit new for me,” Marco continued. “And…I don’t know, this sounds kind of lame, but you mean a lot to me. I enjoy spending time with you too and- and I hope you know that.”

Part of Jean wanted to laugh. Part of him wanted to be the condescending prick he normally was, and tease Marco for saying something so mawkish. But a larger part had completely turned to mush. He could feel the blood drumming in his fingertips as he tightened his grip on the paper bags he clutched, and he was pretty sure if his heart were to beat any faster he’d be suffering a cardiac arrest any moment now. It was such an odd, vulnerable state to be in, the like of which he’d never been in before, and he knew instantly that he hated it.

Yet he didn’t want it to stop.

So instead of laughing and telling Marco to fuck off, Jean smiled a little as he lay the bags down on the counter next to Marco’s hand reverently, finally meeting his dark brown gaze.

“Yeah,” he said, eyes flickering over every constellation he could find on Marco’s face. “I know.”

…

Jean stared at his reflection in the window of the backseat, biting his lip as he raised his hand and ran it through his hair for the millionth time that night, trying to get it to tousle to the right degree. Nothing about this felt normal. He was wedged into the back of Mikasa’s car, behind Eren in the passenger seat, wearing a dark emerald green shirt he had no recollection of owning and the stiffest, skinniest pair of black jeans he could find, feeling like an overdressed twat.

Connie had sent him a text ten short minutes before they had left to pick up Marco, telling him that the dress code was ‘semi formal’- no doubt only to spite Jean’s aversion to Christmas jumpers- but apparently, he was the only one who got the memo. Mikasa was dressed fairly normally, but her standard of dress was pretty high anyway, so she didn’t really count; but Eren was wearing some godawful cheap, knitted atrocity, garish decorations gone bobbly with age. Jean could see one tacky sleeved arm between the gap in the seats, reaching over the gearstick to rest on Mikasa’s thigh as she drove.

Jean glared at Eren’s arm, the familiar sour bite of jealousy clamping into his chest. Eren and Mikasa’s fight from a few weeks ago had been short lived and ended almost as quickly as it had started. Hell, the very next morning, when Jean had come downstairs before work, he’d found Eren’s phone on the couch, lit up with message after unread message rephrasing the words ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I love you’ in a thousand different unnecessary ways. Clearly the apology had been mutual, because for the next few days, he’d scarcely seen Eren until the evenings, when he came home with dark lipstick smudges on his jawline and the dumbest grin on his face that could only be the evidence of making mutual amends.

They were muttering to each other now, soft words and sweet nothings eliciting a giggle and a chuckle here and there. Jean could easily listen to their conversation if he were paying attention, but he didn’t need the extra provocation to vomit. It was so disgustingly cliché, and trite, and sweet, and endearing, and so wonderfully affectionate…

God damn it, he was jealous as hell.

Jean breathed out heavily through his nose and let his head fall against the window with a soft thud, letting the cold sensation of the glass spread over his scalp, almost comforting against his uncomfortably warm skin. He closed his eyes, letting the steady rhythm of the car’s wheels bumping over potholes lull his tumultuous insides. He was sick of being the third wheel, always the pity party, always the desperately lonely one.

But you’re not. You’ve got Marco.

“Jean? Am I going the right way?”

Jean opened his eyes and sat up in his seat at Mikasa’s voice and glanced out of the window. They were at the T-junction just before the fork in the road that led up to the short incline preceding the bakery’s cul de sac. For some reason, the thought of walking up to the bakery’s front door and seeing Marco again made butterflies dance in his stomach, as if it wasn’t something he did almost every day.

He swallowed painfully.

“Yeah. It’s just up here, on the left.”

Mikasa obliged, turning into the junction and up the little slope. The silhouettes of the surrounding houses in the neighbourhood skewered the dim evening sky peppered with inky streaks of dark clouds. The bakery sat, as always, dead centre, straight ahead, pride of place. The shop lights were on, spilling a honey coloured glow out onto the pavement below the shop’s front window, empty and strangely devoid of produce.

Jean’s breath hitched in his throat as Mikasa brought the car to a stop outside the building, just behind Marco’s van.

Why are you so nervous? It’s Marco, you know him, you see him every day.

Yes, but this was the first time they were officially hanging out as friends. It was…weird. And nerve wracking.

Scratch that, it was downright terrifying.

But…in a good way?

Jean wanted to slam his head against the window repeatedly in a vain hope it would knock some sense into his completely and utterly conflicted brain. He’d never felt more apprehensive doing something so menial before in his life, and yet the rush it was giving him- the nervous anxiety, the butterflies in his stomach, and the fluttering of his heart- well, that was a strange kind of feeling he wasn’t entirely averse to.

God knows why.

It took him a second to realise Eren and Mikasa had both twisted around in their seats and were watching him curiously.

He bristled self consciously.

“What?”

Eren raised an eyebrow as he finally lifted his hand from Mikasa’s leg and made a vague shooing gesture.  “Aren’t you going to…? You know?”

“What-? Oh. Right.”

Jean unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the car door, swivelling out of his seat and doing his best to ignore Eren snickering like the little prick he was.

“Dude, you’re totally spacing out. What’s up with that?”

Jean didn’t say anything as he got out and slammed the door behind him. Ignore him. Ignore him. You’re not going to get angry tonight. You get to see Marco.

A little flare of happiness ignited as he slammed the door shut and walked around to the pavement, towards the bakery’s front door. Was it unlocked? Or should he knock? This was weird. He’d never been to see Marco like this before.

From where he was standing he could hear the buzz of Eren and Mikasa’s voices from the car behind him and it felt increasingly obvious that he was being watched. He squared his shoulders and headed straight for the door, peering through the empty window, looking for any indication of Marco being ready to leave. The shop was woefully empty. His face fell as he faltered. Had Marco forgotten they were coming to pick him up? That wasn’t like him.

“He is, isn’t he? I knew it, I fucking knew it. It’s so obvious, oh my God,”

“Shush, Eren. Leave him be.”

“Come on, you have to have noticed,”

“And? It’s not our problem. Let him figure it out on his own.”

Jean was just about to reach out for the door handle when he heard the faint drone of the conversation coming from the car. He frowned, fingers outstretched. Were they…were they mocking him?

Before he could turn around and stomp back to the car and demand what the hell they were on about, there was a flicker of movement that caught Jean’s eye in the back of the shop through the doorway leading to the back room. He raised his hand to the glass pane at the top of the door and rapped twice, spreading his palm in greeting when the familiar face looked up at once.

Marco smiled the second he saw Jean- he motioned for him to wait for a moment, bobbing out of view, before he reappeared in the doorway, his old varsity jacket draped over one arm and holding a small white box in the other. He paused to snap off the lights and weaved around the counter to cross the shop floor.

The moment he stepped out from behind the counter, the smile on Jean’s lips faded.

Marco was wearing a wine coloured shirt with a black tie- every ounce of debonair charm Jean had pictured earlier that day- his broad shoulders strong and sculpted, flattered by the fit of the shirt, instead of looking bulky. His black jeans were straight legged, but still clung to the taut shapes of his thighs, flattering, all the way up to his well rounded, distinctly firm-

There was no denying it. Even Jean, and his insistence on denying his conscience every truth it tried to bestow upon him, couldn’t mask the blatant truth.

He looked hot.

Jean scarcely had time to blush or suppress the thought like normal before Marco opened the door and smiled at him once again, that same smile that lit up every star flecking his skin and the galaxy whorls in his eyes.

“Hey,” he said softly.

Jean blinked as he stepped back to let him close the door and lock it behind him. “H-hey,” he stammered. “You…uh…I told you to wear what you wanted.”

Marco looked at him in surprise, before he glanced down at his chest, fingering his tie uncertainly. “This is what I wanted to wear. I don’t know, I just felt like putting some effort in. Should I go change?”

“No!” Jean said far too quickly. He quickly cleared his throat. “Um, no. It’s fine. At least I’m not the only one dressed up.” Although Marco looked far, far better than he did.

“So I look OK?”

Yes. More than OK. You’re literally perfect. “Yea- uh, I mean…this is the first time I’ve seen you not covered in flour.”

Marco met his gaze, pulling a bemused expression. “Oh?”

“It’s a good look for you. You should wear it more often.”

“I’ll consider it,” he snorted softly as he pulled his jacket on, covering those well-defined shoulders enhanced by rich colour, much to Jean’s disappointment. The jacket just clashed with his otherwise well-dressed self. Although, considering how cold it was getting to be, and the fact every breath Jean took was misting in the air, it was probably a necessary evil. “You’re one to talk. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“Oh…um, right. Thanks.” Jean looked down at himself and crossed his arms over his chest. Should he have worn a tie? Seeing how dashing Marco looked with one made him feel like he was missing something.

“I’m serious. You look nice in a shirt.”

Jean smirked and scuffed the pavement with the toe of his sneaker. “You should see me without the shirt.”

“Oh yeah? Maybe one day.”

Jean’s heart was banging against his chest so hard it almost physically hurt as he opened his mouth to retort, before finding he had nothing to say in response to the tenor of Marco’s words left ringing in his ears.

He’d intended to say that like a joke. He hadn’t meant to sound so…coy.

He most certainly hadn’t expected Marco’s instantaneous, flirtatious response, either.

 “Anyway,” he said hastily. “Um, what’s that?” He nodded at the box Marco was clutching to his chest.

“This? It’s…uh, I know you told me not to bring anything, but…”

Jean shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just go, before we’re late.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Either Marco was completely unaware how amorous he’d sounded just a moment ago, or he was much better at hiding his feelings than Jean, since he certainly didn’t seem as fazed as Jean felt. Already, after being in his company for a grand total of two fucking minutes, Jean was beginning to feel hot under his stiff, emerald collar. This didn’t bode well for the rest of the evening, he thought grimly as they reached the car and Jean opened the door to the backseat and clambered over to the other side, Marco following suite.

“Mikasa, Eren, this is Marco. Marco, this is Eren, my housemate, and this is Mikasa, Eren’s girlfriend.” Jean mumbled in obligation, avoiding eye contact with anyone as he motioned to each person respectively.

Eren and Mikasa had twisted around in their seats again, as Jean peeked up from beneath his lashes, watching Marco shut the door behind him and extend a courteous hand between the seats in greeting.

“What’s up? I’m Eren, like horse face said,” Eren said with a lopsided grin, reaching out and grasping Marco’s hand awkwardly.

“I’m Marco,” Marco said, looking confused. “Um, horse face…?”

Jean scowled and drove his knee into the back of Eren’s seat, getting a resounding “Ow! Asshole,” in response.

“It’s his stupid nickname for me,” he said, glowering at the back of Eren’s head with all the distaste he could muster as he reached out and yanked down on his seatbelt to fasten it.

“Oh come on, it’s everyone’s nickname for you,” Eren retorted, twisting around to Marco again. “Come on, you have to have noticed. He looks like a horse, doesn’t he? He looks exactly like a horse,”

Marco’s eyes darted back and forth between Jean and Eren, opening his mouth, and letting out a long, uncertain “Uhh….”

“Eren, stop it,” Mikasa cut in sharply. She eyed him disapprovingly before she pivoted in her seat and offered her hand to Marco as well. “Mikasa,” she uttered plainly by means of introduction.

Marco nodded and smiled graciously, shaking her hand as well. “Nice to meet you.”

“It was just a joke,” Eren mumbled reproachfully. His gaze drifted back to Marco before he quickly added, “Besides, I never said having a horse face was a bad thing,”

Jean raised an eyebrow, confused. “Was that a compliment? You’ve never said anything nice to me in your life. Marco, quick, pinch me, I’m dreaming.”

Marco chuckled softly as Mikasa started the engine, swerving out of the cul de sac. He met Jean’s gaze before his eyes darted to the back of Mikasa’s head, then back to Jean as he mouthed the words, “She’s Mikasa? The Mikasa?”

Jean quickly jerked his head at Eren with a warning glance, then hesitated, and nodded slowly. Shit. He’d completely forgotten that he’d told Marco about his crush on Mikasa. That made things awkward, to say the least.

But when was the last time he’d looked at her like that? When was the last time he’d gotten lost in one of her gazes not even directed at him, or longed for the gentle touches and kisses Eren was forever the unappreciative recipient of? When was the last time his heart stuttered in his chest when she spoke? When was the last time he’d been left breathless by the slightest brush of contact? When was the last time he’d been so taken aback by her beauty that he’d wanted to capture her likeness and immortalise it forever in the leaves of his sketchbook?

A tight band constricted sharply around Jean’s heart as he crossed his arms over his chest defensively and looked out of the window at the neat-trimmed suburbs flashing past.

He knew. He knew exactly when he’d last felt like that.

Jean snuck a surreptitious glance at his best friend sat mere inches away.

Those feelings weren’t about her anymore.

It was so damn awkward in the car. The orange streetlights overhead flickered across the dashboard as the car rolled down the darkening streets, the droning hum of the engine the only audible sound. Eren and Mikasa had stopped talking and Jean certainly didn’t want to be the one who broke the silence. He didn’t know what to say, for starters. And he didn’t entirely trust himself to open his mouth and not say something stupid.

Jean stole another glance at Marco. He was sat very rigidly in his seat, his back dead straight, bowing his head to avoid smacking it against the roof of the car. A few stray tendrils of his dark hair were brushing the ceiling, and as Jean watched, he reached up to smooth them down, combing his fingers through to even out the centre part. As he lifted his arm, his shirt bunched around the bicep as the muscle flexed, tightened the seams so the tiny stitches pulled ever so slightly. Every time they passed a streetlight his face set aglow in orange- probably the most hideously unflattering light a person could stand under, yet somehow, it had the opposite effect on Marco. His freckles were bathed in light, distinguishing the shadows on his face, making his rounded features appear sharper, darker, alluring.

Jean’s heart continued to thud guiltily in the confines of his ribcage as reluctantly looked away. His fingers itched for a pencil and his sketchbook so he could capture that sharp contrast of light and shadow scattered amid the stars. His throat burned with compliments unsaid as he bit his tongue and fought to hold them back.

“So,” Marco’s voice was the first to cut through the silence. “Um, do you both attend the same college as Jean?”

“Yeah,” Eren replied.

“Oh! What do you study?”

“We’re both on the drama course.” Eren motioned to himself and Mikasa and turned around in his seat to face Marco at an angle. “Jean never told you?”

“Never really had the chance to bring it up,” Jean mumbled fiercely.

Marco was unfazed. “So what do you do in drama? What’s the course like?”

“Eh, it’s alright. There’s a lot of play analysis and essay writing, which is boring as hell. But it’s not that bad.”

“Do you have to write a lot of essays? Jean never has any.”

“Yeah, well, Jean studies art.”

Jean straightened up in his seat indignantly. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“No I didn’t. It’s not bad, it just doesn’t take much…well, brain power.” Eren smirked.

“Hey!”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong. Couldn’t be more wrong.”

“He still works a lot,” Marco interjected. He glanced over at Jean, a soft little smile curving his lips upwards. “Jean’s always drawing when he’s watching the counter.”

“It’s not like drawing is the equivalent of writing a twelve page paper though, is it?” Eren replied disinterestedly.

“It’s a damn sight harder than you seem to think it is.” Jean narrowed his gaze at him disapprovingly, as he shrugged nonchalantly and turned to address Mikasa.

“Speaking of college shit, did we have homework this weekend?”

Mikasa shook her head. “No. We don’t have any homework between now and exams at the end of term. We just have to study.”

“Balls.” Eren’s head drooped.

“You have exams?” Marco looked at Jean in surprise, his voice incredulous. “You never told me. Do need more time to study? If you want time off, you’re more than welcome to it.”

“What? No, I don’t need any time off. Not when it’s nearly Christmas, you’ll be rushed off your feet by yourself.” Jean said. “And I don’t have exams, technically, but I have to finish my project and hand it in before the last day of term.”

“Everyone has some kind of deadline before Christmas,” Eren spoke again. He tilted his head towards Marco. “I mean, didn’t you have any in high school?”

Marco’s mouth dropped open as his eyes darted over to look at Jean helplessly. “Um…”

“Marco didn’t go to high school,” Jean said for him.

“Oh. Then…?”

Marco nodded, straining a smile. “Home schooled.”

“Oh.”

The awkward silence returned in full force. Jean quickly looked out of the window again, bouncing his knee in an attempt to distract himself in the oppressive uneasiness. What he would give now to have some of Marco’s loud, raunchy music playing at full volume to drown out the silence, noise filling the quiet so he didn’t have to think.

“So how long have you been working at the bakery, Marco?” Mikasa broke the silence this time as they turned down a side street to avoid the main road. Her voice was steady and calm, lifting in tone with something resembling curiosity.

Marco instantly brightened up. “Oh, I grew up there, so I guess you could say I’ve been working there my whole life. But I’ve been running it by myself for almost two years now.”

Two years…? That wasn’t right, was it? Marco had told Jean that his grandfather had died at the beginning of this year- he’d never said anything about running the bakery alone for two whole years. Jean looked over at him, confused, but he wasn’t paying attention.

“I see.” Mikasa paused. “And business is good?”

“Yeah, pretty good. Since the bakery’s been there longer than most of the houses, it’s kind of become an important part of the community, and almost everyone’s been to visit at one point or another,” Marco laughed nervously. “I mean, not to sound condescending, but I think that’s what people want in a bakery, or any sort of similar business- a sense of familiarity and tradition. You know?”

“It sounds like a lot of work for one person to do by themselves.” Mikasa said coolly.

Marco faltered. “Well, it’s not that bad. I mean.” He shifted in his seat, scratching at the side of his nose awkwardly. His gaze flitted from the back of the drivers’ seat to Jean sat across from him. The same little adorable smile pricked up the corners of his lips once again. “It’s not like I’m doing it by myself anymore.”

Jean’s face burned as his gaze met Marco’s for a fleeting second before he tore his eyes away, praying that the glow of the streetlights weren’t enough to pick up on the maddening flush rising in his cheeks.

“That’s right. You have Jean,” Mikasa said. She paused as they reached a stop light and leant back in her seat, tapping her fingers against the wheel. “And you like it there, right, Jean?”

Jean blinked, caught off-guard when he realised she was talking to him now. “Huh? Oh…yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I? If I didn’t work there I wouldn’t be able to study art.”

He could practically sense the soppy grin Marco had plastered over his face that very second. It took every ounce of his willpower not to look at him.

Mikasa’s grip on the wheel relaxed as the traffic light blinked to green. “Good.” There was a brief pause as they turned down another street. Quaint houses became big, contemporary boxes, indicating they were well out of Jinae by now. “Do you go to many parties, Marco?”

Marco frowned, bemusement tugging his mouth into a smile. “Um, no, not really.”

“Are you excited for tonight?”

“S-sure. I mean, of course.”

“So what about your parents? What do they do?”

“They…uh…” Marco opened his mouth to reply, the tiniest frown etching itself into his brow as he cast an unsure glance at Jean, clearly unnerved by the invasive question. “I mean…”

Jean shrugged helplessly. Quite frankly, he was just as confused as Marco looked. It was unlike Mikasa to be so…inquisitive. She’d never asked this many questions to Jean before in his life, let alone to a practical stranger she’d only heard him talk about before tonight.

Luckily, Eren interjected.

“Hey, Mikasa, what’s with all the questions? Does it really matter what his parents do?” he said. “Lay off.”

Marco visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

“Besides,” Eren continued with a short laugh. “I don’t know why you’re acting so worried. It’s not like they’re dating or anything,”

The temperature in the car plummeted to absolute zero.

Jean’s heart crammed itself into his throat, his stomach plunging like a stone. His face ignited as he tightened his grip on his arms, still crossed over his chest, as he desperately tried to think of something arrogant or condescending to retort sharply back, but nothing came out.

Everything went dead silent as Eren suddenly realised the gravity of what he had said. He stiffened, before sliding down in his seat, picking at a loose thread on the cuff of his jumper in gruff, mortified silence. Mikasa didn’t say anything, but Jean could see her shoulders were raised and tense, as she shot Eren a disapproving look, a scowl briefly darkening her face as if he’d crossed an unspoken boundary.

All Jean could hear over the drone of the engine was the blood pounding in his ears as he looked over at Marco.

His lips were parted, scarcely touching, as if he too wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. He was sat rigidly in his seat, cheeks as fiercely rouged as Jean’s felt. He met Jean’s glance, and even in the dim light, Jean could see the colour blemishing his freckled face darken as he quickly looked away.

“That wasn’t what I was trying to imply,” Mikasa said finally. “I was just…I just wanted to make sure Jean was happy.”

Normally, Mikasa expressing an interest in anything vaguely concerning Jean would’ve made his knees weak and his heart soar past the furthest galaxy humanity had discovered. But he was so preoccupied with trying to appear as nonchalant as he physically could with a complexion the same colour as a lobster, and doing his very best not to think about him…and Marco…and dating…

“You sure?” Eren muttered into to his chest. “I’m pretty sure your dad asked me the same kind of questions when we started going out.”

Mikasa’s knuckles on the steering wheel whitened. “Eren, don’t take this the wrong way, but please, shut your mouth.”

Yes, Eren, please shut your fucking word hole because if you say anything else stupid I’ll be sorely tempted to barrel roll out into the street. Jean cleared his throat awkwardly, dimly aware of Marco doing the same as they fell quiet, lasting for the rest of the short journey, way up until they arrived and mumbled begrudging thanks to Mikasa for giving them a lift. The walked up the empty drive way, standing in silence as Eren knocked on the front door. Almost immediately, the door was thrown open by a beaming Connie, grinning like an idiot. The steady pulse of music was audible from inside as the door opened, bleeding into the cold evening air. Much like Eren, Connie was dressed to the nines in some cheesy festive getup; a tacky, knitted jumper and a Christmas hat pulled down over his shorn head.

“Hey, you guys are finally here!”

Jean glared at the Christmas tree motif splashed over Connie’s chest. Its achingly bright colour scheme clashed horribly. It made the artist part of him want to scream.

“You don’t look very semi-fucking-formal,” he said.

Connie glanced down at his sweater, then looked back up at Jean, eyeing his shirt and dark jeans as a malicious smirk lit up his face.

“Oh my God, you actually fell for it,” he snorted wickedly. “I can’t believe you thought I was being serious!”

Jean faltered. Oh. So the whole ‘come dressed semi formal’ text Connie had sent him earlier had been a joke at his expense. In retrospect, it seemed obvious. What kind of party thrown by college students had a dress code? Let alone one that required college students to dress semi formally?

But retrospect was worth jack shit. Indignation swelled in his chest as Eren began to snicker beside him. Jean shot him a dangerous look over his shoulder.

“You knew?” he demanded.

“Sure I did,” Eren grinned, raising his hand to high five Connie with a triumphant slap. “You have to admit, it’s pretty funny,”

“No it’s not,” Jean glowered at them both, humiliation burning inside him until he felt a warm hand rest against his shoulder reassuringly. He turned to see Marco looking at him in concern. Jean heart fluttered like a caged bird once again, as he hastily averted his gaze, closing his eyes and taking a short, deep breath. Calm down. He’s here. It’s OK. Hey, at least he wasn’t the only one who’d actually put some effort in what he was wearing. As long as Marco was with him, he wouldn’t look like a total idiot.

“Hey, man, I still have your house key from last time.”

“Eh, keep hold of it and give it back to me on Monday. Can’t be fucked keeping track of it tonight.”

He opened his eyes just as Eren and Mikasa squeezed past Connie into the hall, leaving him and Marco on the doorstep. Connie’s gaze drifted to Marco, before lingering on Jean expectantly.

“Oh, right,” Jean said. “Um, Connie, this is Marco. The friend I told you about.”

“Yeah, I know.” Connie grinned at Marco and held his hand out in front of his chest. “’Sup? I’m Connie.”

Marco stared at Connie’s raised arm, looking bewildered.

Jean rolled his eyes and grabbed hold of Marco’s wrist, dragging it forwards and making him grasp Connie’s hand in response. He bit his lip to stop himself from laughing out loud at Marco’s expression as Connie bumped his shoulder against his. He probably hadn’t anticipated this level of familiarity.

“Um, nice to meet you,” he said with a shaky grin as Connie withdrew and let go of his hand. “I, uh, I brought this for you.” He glanced down at the little white box he’d brought with him in his free hand and held it out for Connie to take.

Connie blinked in surprise as he accepted Marco’s gift. “Oh…uh, thanks! I mean, we weren’t expecting anything, but thanks. Uh, what is it?”

Marco shrugged, a weak smile tracing his lips. “Nothing too big. Just my way of saying thank you for inviting me to your party.”

“You’re in for a treat, man,” Jean grinned, bobbing his head towards the box in Connie’s hands. “The stuff Marco makes is to die for,”

“Oh, it’s food?”

Jean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course it’s food. It’s from a bakery.”

Connie laughed. “Ha! True. Then I’ll probably need to hide it from Sasha. Anyway, come in if you’re here for the party, it’s freezing out here.” He held the door open to let Jean and Marco step inside, closing it behind them. Marco shrugged off his jacket, politely asking where he could put it, as Connie waved vaguely at the stairs, telling him, “Just dump it anywhere.”

Jean rubbed his arms, relishing in the warmth of the house as Connie made his way around them and darted back into the living room through the open door. Jean watched Marco carefully hook his coat over the end of the banister. On an external level, he seemed perfectly composed, but Jean knew him better than that. He knew him well enough to see the slightest tremor shaking his usually steady, careful hands; to take note of the tension holding his shoulders in a rigid line; to notice the tiniest trace of a bitemark on his lower lip, indents marring the smooth, soft pink skin from where he’d been chewing it anxiously.

“Jean?”

“Hm?” Jean snapped out of his reverie. Fuck. He’d been staring at Marco’s lips. “What’s up?”

Marco regarded him for a few moments, as if unsure whether or not to say something before he shook his head, dismissing it. “Nothing.”

“You sure?” Jean asked, eyebrows raised. “Are you nervous?”

Marco bit his lip again, gaze trailing away to stare pointedly at the open living room door. “Um…a little.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know! It’s…weird. Like, these are your friends, and I don’t know anyone, and I’m so damn awkward, I don’t even know how to greet people, I just-” he gestured vaguely, before dropping his hands to his sides, head drooping in dejection. “Maybe this way a bad idea. Maybe I should just go home.”

“Nope, no way. There’s no way in hell I’m letting you leave me here. Come on, Marco, everyone else is going to be dressed like them.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, referring to Connie and Eren’s appalling choice of Christmas wear. “Don’t let me be the odd one out,”

Marco crossed his arms over his chest and scuffed the ground with the toe of his converse, uncertain.

“You know,” Marco said, gnawing on the skin around his thumb nail with a humourless smile. “The fact that we’re both going to stick out isn’t exactly encouraging,”

“I know, but please? I’ve already told everyone you’d be coming. At least meet them. You were the one you said you wanted to make more friends.”

Marco’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “Yeah, I did,”

“Marco. It’ll be fine. You’ve got me.”

Marco’s gaze flickered up from the ground, lingering on Jean for several moments before he smiled, properly this time. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Jean swallowed, ignoring the hammering of his heart against his chest and turned on his heel into the living room.

It remained mostly unchanged from the last time Jean was here, excluding the addition of multiple strings of fairy lights draped over every available surface, twinkling in the already dimly-lit room. The TV was on and blaring music again, but this time, there was a small group of Christmas jumper-clad people huddled around it, hooking something up with wires. People hung around, talking and exchanging pleasantries. It was early, no one was drunk yet, and it felt welcoming, instead of wild and stupid, which Jean figured would be better for Marco-Nervous Disposition-Bodt over here.

Jean quickly skimmed over the small clusters of people, picking out a few familiar faces the gaggle of people he dimly recognised from high school. Bertolt and Reiner were stood together joined by the ever-elusive Annie, who Jean hadn’t seen since graduation at the beginning of summer. No Armin, as far as he could see. No Franz and Hannah canoodling on the couch like last time, either. Connie was part of the group lingering around the TV, and from where Jean was standing, he could see Mina, Thomas, and a few others he didn’t know gathered around him. Eren and Mikasa were already mingling; Eren with drink in hand, talking enthusiastically to Krista and Ymir.

That reminded him; he still needed to get back at Ymir for the whole throwing-her-drink-at-him from last time. The memory of the plastic cup crashing into his chest, soaking his shirt, and filling him to the brim with humiliation as everyone around him laughed at his misfortune surfaced, achingly fresh.

But then again, did she really warrant his revenge? Now that he thought about it, if it hadn’t been for Ymir throwing the drink at him, he wouldn’t have gone to sit outside and sulk. And if he hadn’t been sulking outside…well. He would never have met Marco.

Jean looked at said person stood beside him. Marco’s arms were as stiff as wood, pinned at his sides, and his hands were clenched into fist, teeth gnawing at his lip as his gaze darted around the room at each person in turn, his forehead creased worriedly.

“You all right?” Jean asked gently.

“…Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Marco said. He took a deep breath and did his best to muster a smile. “So, uh, what do we do?”

“First, I want a drink,” Jean replied, heading over towards the back room, adjoining the kitchen, weaving past various people he either sort-of-remembered or had never seen before in his life. He frowned as they got past and reached the table that had formerly been used for beer pong. There was nowhere near this many people last time. Last time, he’d known everyone. But as he located the stack of drinks and opened a box of beer, handing a bottle to Marco, he cast his eyes around the room and frowned, finding the people he knew to be the minority.

“What’s wrong? You look confused,” Marco asked.

Jean pried the metal cap off the top of his bottle, squinting at the swarm of people spread out around them. “I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just…I didn’t expect there to be so many people here that I didn’t know.”

“You don’t know these people?” Marco’s voice was iced in something that sounded like fear. His grip on the glass bottle Jean had handed to him tightened. “But you said these were your friends- you said you knew- you said-”

“Hey, hey, calm down. I know some people,” Jean said quickly. “I thought it was just going to be people I knew here as well.”

“Oh.” Marco visibly relaxed. He looked down at the beer in his hands, eyes skimming over the label before he twisted the cap off as well, glancing up at Jean to make sure he’d done it right. “So, um, who do you know?”

Jean took a swig of his drink and began pointing people out. “The small group in the corner- the tall guy’s Bertolt, but everyone calls him Bert; the beefcake’s Reiner, and the chick is Annie.”

“Do they-?”

“No, they don’t go to college. If I remember correctly, Reiner and Bertolt were doing apprenticeship placements in the army. And Annie’s come home for Christmas from Stohess University.”

 “Oh, wow. That’s impressive.” Marco raised his bottle to his lips, paused, then took a small, swift sip, pulling a face.

“Bad, right?” Jean asked, grinning.

“Terrible,” Marco agreed with a grimace. “But I’ve spent more nights than I care to remember watching crappy movies and drinking far nastier stuff, so give me a minute, I’ll adjust.”

“Sure,”

“So, who else do you know?”

Jean nodded over at Eren and Mikasa. “The girls talking to Eren right now are Ymir and Krista- tall and short one respectively. The girl with dark hair in pigtails over there-” he pointed in the general direction of the TV- “is Mina, and the guy with the wicked sideburns is Thomas. I know all of them from high school. Obviously, you’ve met Connie…and Sa-”

“Hey Jean!”

“-sha’s coming over to say hi right now,” he finished with a grim smile. “Hey, potato girl, how’s it going?”

“Don’t bring that nickname back now!” Sasha had made eye contact with Jean from across the room and immediately made a beeline towards him. Now, she pouted childishly, sticking out her lower lip with a huff. She too was wearing a festive jumper, emblazoned with a crude caricature of a reindeer. “Haven’t heard it in months, I thought I’d finally gotten rid of it!”

“No way. If I’m stuck with horse face, you’re eternally potato girl,” Jean smirked mockingly. “It’s not something to be entirely ashamed of. It takes balls to eat a potato in the strictest teacher’s first lesson in high school,”

“Ha, damn right,” Sasha laughed, looking him up and down. “You’re looking quite dapper tonight, Jean, if I do say so myself.”

“Don’t. This is the result of Connie’s sense of humour,”

Sasha grinned. “Fine, I won’t say anything. How’s art going?”

Jean froze, beer halfway to his lips as he stared at her, before he lowered his hand with a dejected sigh. “You know too, huh?”

“Connie told me. But I figured you’d choose art in the end, anyway.” Sasha cocked her head to the side. “I mean, it’s not like you to have poured so much time and energy into something to just abandon it in the end. You’d see it as a waste of time.”

Jean shrugged, sort of unnerved how spot on she was. “Yeah, I guess,” he mumbled.

Sasha smiled knowingly. She tilted her head the other way and looked directly at Marco, who visibly twitched at her attention.

“Hey, do I know you?” she asked.

Marco’s eyes widened in panic and he looked frantically between her and Jean, clutching his beer to his chest with whitening knuckles.

Jean chuckled and nudged him gently.

“Do you remember Sasha? She was the one who ordered food from you last time,” he said.

A look of realisation quickly dawned on Marco’s face with a quick smile as he extended his hand.

“Yes, of course!” he said hurriedly. “Um, nice to see you again. I’m Marco.”

“Of course! You’re the bakery guy!” Sasha beamed as the recognition dawned on her face. She ignored Marco’s outstretched hand and instead threw her arms around his neck in an over-zealous greeting. Jean snorted, trying not choke on his beer at Marco’s completely taken aback expression as she released him. “It’s great to see you again! But- um, why am I seeing you again?” She cast a puzzled glance back at Jean.

“Oh,” Jean quickly swallowed. “I work for him now.”

“You work in a bakery?”

“Um, yeah?”

“A bakery.”

“Yes…?”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Honestly, Sasha, I haven’t seen you enough to tell you.” Jean rolled his eyes. “Connie told me to bring Marco with me, so, here he is. Oh,” he turned to Marco, “Sasha is Connie’s housemate, by the way.”

“So, how is the art course going?” Sasha asked.

He shrugged. “Eh, it’s alright. It’s fun,” he quickly added when Marco suddenly looked stricken. “I mean, of course it’s fun. But it’s a lot of work.”

She nodded understandingly. “Yeah, I get that. I have so much coursework to catch up on before the end of term, plus a mock prep exam before the end of term, so it’s just…”She raised her fists in the air and mockingly shook them at the heavens before dropping them back down to her sides with a carefree smile. “But whatever, it’s worth it. I get to study and work around food, I mean, it’s practically heaven.”

“Of course it is. Hey, Marco,” Jean bobbed his head at Sasha. “Sasha takes catering at college. That’s your thing, isn’t it?”

“O-oh, yeah!” Marco nodded a little too enthusiastically. “Um, What are your classes like?”

“Pretty interesting actually! Sometimes we cover the more boring things like the health and hygiene and stuff, which I know is important, but it’s so-o-o dull, but most of the time, we’re doing practical work!”

Marco smiled knowingly. “The business side of things is nowhere near as fun, is it? Necessary evil, unfortunately.”

“Actually, my professor was saying the other day if I continue with the work I’m doing and do well in my exams next year he’ll put me forward for a work placement with some contacts of his in the industry,”

“That’s good!”

“I know, right? But I want to know more about your bakery! Tell me, what does-”

Jean zoned out, half-listening to the drone of Sasha’s voice and the soft rumble of Marco’s as they began to talk food preparation and sweets and cooking, nodding along when Marco glanced back at him for reassurance every so often. It took him a while, but after a few minutes, the tension that remained in Marco’s shoulders finally began to ease as he relaxed and began to talk more and more animatedly the more Sasha asked about baking. His tone grew buoyant and enthusiastic and he tripped over his words, not with nerves, but in haste as his eagerness took over. Passion laced every word that fell from his pink-hued lips, and his dark, golden-flecked eyes, brought out by the twinkling of yellow fairy lights, shone.

Of course Sasha’s shared enthusiasm for food and deep appreciation for good pastry would bring out the best in Marco. She understood what Marco meant when he talked about his deep-rooted passion and devotion to his family’s craft, and could identify with his enthusiasm better than Jean ever could. Sure, Jean knew what it was like to be passionate about something- his artwork was a prime example- but still…

Something eerily familiar and unwelcome slid into Jean’s chest, wrapping around his heart and tugging at it harshly.

He certainly knew jealousy well enough to know when the green envy coiled in his chest began to writhe like a pissed off serpent. But now? Whilst he was watching Marco and Sasha discuss baking? Why was he jealous of that? He talked about baking with Marco every day he saw him. He literally had no reason to be envious, not in the slightest.

But as he watched Marco’s eyes glisten, saw his mouth widen into a smile, and listened to the enchantment in his voice as he spoke, his heart began to pound with an even more unwelcome, unappreciated feeling, that no amount of bitter-tasting beer could dull.

“So, uh, Sasha,” Jean interrupted, cutting Marco off. “What’s with all the people?”

“Huh?” Sasha faltered. “What do you mean?”

Jean gestured vaguely around the room. “I don’t recognise half the people here.”

“Oh, right. It wasn’t intentional.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Not everyone could make it. I know Armin’s still at uni and a bunch of our old friends didn’t want to come, so Connie invited a few of his new friends, and I invited a couple of mine, and then people asked if they could bring extras so we figured why not?” She looked past Jean at Marco. “Like you brought Marco.”

“Yeah. Right.” Jean cleared his throat, desperately searching for something to say. “Um, what’s Connie doing with the TV?”

“Setting up karaoke.”

“Karaoke?” Marco echoed weakly.

Jean curled his lip. “OK, why exactly?”

“Why not?”

“Everyone’s going to be pissed within the next two hours.” Jean raised his beer before he made eye contact with Marco and hastily corrected himself. “I mean, most people will be pissed,” People who didn’t have work at three tomorrow morning. “Drunk, loud teenagers and microphones aren’t a great mix.”

“I don’t know, sounds like fun to me,” Sasha shrugged again. “Besides, you and I did it last time,”

“You did?” Marco turned to Jean, eyebrows raised in surprise.

Jean felt the heat rise in his cheeks. “No,” he scoffed. “Not seriously. We just- uh- I mean- I was drunk-”

“We all were,” Sasha laughed. She clapped Jean on the shoulder as she began to walk away. “I’m going to see if they need help. Save me a song, horse face!”

Jean leant against the table, quietly fuming as he downed the remainder of his beer and placed the empty bottle on the table behind him, passing a hand over his face.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Marco said quietly after a moment, watching Sasha disappear into the throng of people before he turned back to Jean.

“I can’t,” Jean admitted. “And I don’t. Unless, like Sasha said, I’m drunk. And tonight I’m not going to be.”

“Fair enough,” Marco said. He watched as Jean picked up a second bottle, wresting the cap off and downing a quick gulp, before he pulled a face. “Are you sure about that?”

Jean glanced at him, following his disbelieving gaze at the new drink in his hand and scoffed. “Yes, I’m sure. Damn, Marco, have some faith in me. I’m not going to get drunk off two beers.”

“Wish I could say the same,” Marco said, cocking the bottle in his hands. “Haven’t had enough practice.”

They lingered by the table together for a little while longer, talking aimlessly about little things before Thomas came up to Jean and started an animated conversation, largely disregarding Marco after Jean tried to introduce him. It took a while to get Thomas to disappear, but once he finally did, Jean turned around to find Marco talking to a couple of girls, who he could only assume were Sasha’s friends from catering, because they were talking about baking again.

He smiled to himself, sipping on his beer. Sure, it kind of hurt watching that passion ignite in Marco’s eyes that he thought had been exclusively reserved for him. But it felt equal parts good watching Marco finally strike up a conversation with people his own age and actually appear to be enjoying himself after lamenting about it for so long.

The sky grew darker outside as the evening withdrew, leaving them with only the faint, scattered illumination of fairy lights strewn around by means of light. At long last, the karaoke was hooked up, and music began to blare, and the party began to thrive in the dim room. Jean introduced Marco to a couple more people, who quickly engaged him in conversation, leaving Jean to drift away aimlessly. They seemed to take an instant liking to him, which was good. But that in turn meant they certainly didn’t care enough to ask after Jean.

He talked to a couple of people he didn’t know, introducing himself as Connie or Sasha’s friend accordingly, but it was nothing more than small talk. In between every conversation, he found himself scanning the heads of everyone in the throng of people, searching desperately for the dark hair and freckles he knew so well. Every time Jean saw him talking to a new person he had to force himself to stay away, and every time he had to remind himself that this was good for him- the whole reason why he’d brought Marco here was so he could meet people and make friends, just like he’d wanted.

He kept swallowing his envy and his desperation to go back to Marco’s side, restraining himself to smile encouragingly every time Marco’s gaze flitted over to him worriedly as someone new pressed another drink into his hands and eagerly struck up a conversation.

Jean had lost track of time as he finished his fourth and final beer, leaving the empty bottle on the sideboard with a cluster of others with an inward apology to Connie and Sasha who would have to clear up tomorrow. He certainly couldn’t drive right now, but he was nowhere near drunk yet. Provided he headed home within the next couple of hours, he’d fine for work in the morning.

The rest of the party appeared to have reached its mostly-sober peak. Someone was bellowing into the karaoke microphone just as unintelligibly as Jean had predicted; whilst a far from sober Eren on the side lines begged Mikasa to go next, who was point-blank refusing the encouragement of everyone around her. Marco was standing a little way off next to Sasha again, laughing with the others. Even though Jean couldn’t hear him, he could almost imagine the soft, throaty rumble in his chest with every gentle chuckle tumbling from his lips.

Jean’s heart fluttered in his chest as he looked away, spotting Ymir and Reiner sat in the far corner of the room. Ymir was perched on a small chest of drawers with Reiner beside her, sat on a chair brought in from the kitchen, one big, burly arm draped over the back.

They both looked up when they saw Jean approaching. Reiner’s expression immediately brightened as he waved him over.

“Hey, Jean, good to see you!” he said brightly.

“Yeah, you too,” Jean grinned and clasped his hand in greeting, nodding stiffly at Ymir who was swinging her legs against the dresser. “Uh, hey.”

“Hey, horse face.” She smirked. “Life treating you well?”

“Not bad,” Jean admitted.

“How’s the art course?”

“Fucking hell, does everyone know?”

Ymir pursed her lips.

“It’s not exactly a secret that you like to draw, Jean,” Reiner said tactfully.

“I know that, but I told everyone I was going to take business.” Jean frowned. “Am I that predictable?”

“No,” Ymir said, drumming her fingers against the top of the chest of drawers. “Not predictable. More…unbelievable.”

Jean stared at her. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Reiner said. “Ymir just means…well, when you said you were going to take business, your heart wasn’t in it.”

“Ymir knows exactly what she means, and she doesn’t need some meathead to try and decipher it for her,” Ymir snapped, narrowing her gaze at Reiner. “Come on, Jean, you couldn’t have been less convincing if you tried. You’re not the kind of person to just bend under someone else’s will because it’s practical. You knew what you wanted, and to hell with anyone who tried to get in your way.”

Jean was quiet for a few moments.

“You think so?” he said eventually.

Reiner shrugged with a reassuring smile. “It’s not a big deal, don’t think about it too much. But hey, Jean, you look good! Have you been working out recently or something?”

“Huh? Oh,” Jean crossed his arms over his chest, the back of his neck prickling uncomfortably. “Uh…not really. Why do you ask?”

“I dunno, you just look…” Reiner gestured at him with the hand slung over the back of his chair. “Better.”

“That’ll be the bakery work you’ve been doing. Bet it’s done wonders for your biceps,” Ymir interjected, eyebrows raised. “I’ve met your buddy Freckles over there. Told me all about you and your little part time job,”

“Marco?”

Ymir tipped her head back, taking a swig out of the cup in her hand. “Didn’t pick up on his name, but if you say so. Go on, give us a flex, let us see.”

Jean scoffed as he fell back to lean against the wall. “No.”

“Aww, why not?”

“Leave him alone, Ymir.” Reiner narrowed his gaze at her disapprovingly before he turned back to Jean.  “I was talking to Marco earlier too,”

Jean’s internal reproach seethed as he mumbled, “I saw.”

“He seems nice. Had a lot to say about you, though- the guy was practically singing your praises. Glad to hear you’re both happy though.” Reiner paused. “He seems rather taken with you, Jean,”

“Yeah, well, we’ve become pretty good friends.”

“Friends…?” Ymir echoed, eyebrows raised once again.

Jean watched as she and Reiner exchanged a long, awkward glance before they quickly masked their expressions behind their drinks.

“What now?” he demanded, heat surging into his face once more.

“Nothing, nothing.” Ymir waved him down. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch,”

“I’m not getting my- oh, shut up.” Jean glared at her, chortling away over the rim of her cup, and decided it was best to try and change the topic before things could get awkward or personal. Both things Jean had had quite enough of tonight. “So, how about you guys? How’s the army thing going, Reiner?”

“Pretty good, thanks.” Reiner lifted his arm off the back of his seat and spun around, resting his elbows on his knees as he spoke, “I’ve got a placement almost guaranteed for me by the time I finish the apprenticeship in a year and a half, so that’s great. Most of the time I’m studying engineering theory, but when I get to do practical work, it’s real stuff, like practice on actual military vehicles.”

“Uh, don’t get him started,” Ymir groaned. “He’s been yammering on and on about it to anyone and anything that listens. It’s all I’ve been hearing all fucking night, talk about something else,”

“Fine, how’s nursing?” Jean asked, eyebrows raised. “I bet they really love your gentle, maternal nature.”

Ymir stuck her middle finger up at him. “Fuck you. I’ll have you know I’m acing the nursing course and set to pass with flying colours, so stick that where the sun don’t shine.”

“Damn,” Jean said, surprised. “Never thought you’d be so proficient at a subject you only took so you could be around Krista.”

“Shut your face, Jean.”

“I don’t think Krista’s the only reason she’s doing so well in class,” Reiner added with a condescending smirk. “Haven’t you been studying gynaecology recently? I can’t see you having any problems with that, if you know what I mean.”

He and Jean snickered together as Ymir sneered and drove her foot into Reiner’s knee. His elbow slipped off his leg, making a large quantity of his drink slop over the rim of his cup and onto the carpet as he yelped in surprise.

“Oh yeah? Says the guy going into the army to ogle some other hyper-macho dick weeds with muscle masses higher than their IQ,” she said, condescension skewering her tone.

“No I’m not. You’re just trying to piss me off.”

“Is it working?”

“…A little.”

“Ha!” Ymir clenched her fist in triumph. “Mission accomplished.”

“Anyway.” Defeated, Reiner shook his head and went back to Jean. “So how is college going for you?”

“Huh? Oh. ‘S good, I guess.” Jean shrugged. “Lots of drawing, can’t complain.”

Ymir and Reiner stared at him.

“That’s it?” Ymir pulled a face. “It’s good?”

Jean frowned. “What else do you want me to say?”

“Dude, isn’t this is something you’ve wanted to do for months? No, wait, years? Don’t you have more to say than just ‘s good’?” she demanded.

Someone’s gentle vocals began to resonate in the speakers of the TV, voice catching with a soft clip on every syllable with the lilt of each note. Jean turned his head to see Eren and the rest had finally persuaded Mikasa to sing.

Her voice was hollow, yet hauntingly beautiful, and had captured the attention of almost everyone in the room as she dragged out the lament of a heartbroken ballad. The dominant buzz of chatter in the room died to a hum for a few moments and her voice resonated in every corner of the room. Jean listened, absent-mindedly tapping with each stroke of the piano in the music, watching her intently. How she tilted her head, inclining to the left a little with every high note, the soft outline her profile made in the dim light. He waited for his heart to thud with longing.

“Jean? Hello?”

He blinked as Ymir snapped her fingers at him impatiently.

“Well?” she persisted.

Jean sighed, running a hand down his face. “I don’t know! What do you want to hear? It’s good, ok? Isn’t that enough?”

Ymir brow furrowed into a frown as she glanced back at Reiner, clearly unconvinced.

Reiner rubbed the back of his neck. “Is something wrong, Jean?”

His cheeks prickled. “No.”

“It’s just…it’s not like you to be complacent. Like, if you’re doing something you’re not happy with, it’s not like you to stick it out. You’d complain…” Reiner’s voice trailed off.

“Wh-? Where did you get the idea I’m not happy? Guys, I’m fine. I’m studying art, I like it, end of story.”

“For fuck’s sake, Jean, if you were really enjoying yourself you wouldn’t shut up about it like this sack of shit.” She jerked her thumb at Reiner. “You’re a condescending prick who loves to brag, no two ways about it. So spit it out. What’s up?”

“Not how I’d put it,” Reiner said, lip curling. “But basically, what she said. Seriously, man, is something bothering you?”

Jean stared at the floor in silence. People had gone back to their conversations as Mikasa’s song came to a close, ending in a long, sweet note, and the clamour of the party resumed amidst a little ripple of applause. Someone else was being encouraged wildly to sing next, despite their protests as the microphone was forced into their hands.

What more was he supposed to say? Sure, he enjoyed his art classes- he much preferred them over the idea of studying business- but he couldn’t exactly sing his own praises like Reiner and Ymir were, when he was an under-performing student at best. His grade was nowhere near the top of the class, and despite Erwin’s encouragement that with the right hard work and dedication he could bump up his grade considerably, it was disheartening, to say the least, to be reminded that he wasn’t special, not in skill nor creativity.

Sure, at heart, he’d always been a show off. But he’d never been more humbled in his life than he had in the past few months. Between being surrounded by far superior artists in college, and being constantly reminded at how much more together Marco had his life than Jean’s could ever hope to be when they were at work was humiliating, to say the least.

Oh yeah, and he couldn’t forget the whole thinking things about his best friend that he’d never thought before in his life about anyone else. Let alone a guy.

Especially since he was the only fucking thing Jean could draw these days.

But he wasn’t about to tell Ymir and Reiner about that.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled resolutely.

The riff of a new song was starting. A muted clatter of drums and the plucky resonance of strumming guitar strings began to throb through the speakers, the din overpowering the protesting cries the chosen singer was still making amid the laughter and egging on of the people surrounding him. Jean didn’t look up, staring intently at the toes of his shoes, not sure what else to say.

“Look, if you don’t want to go into detail, Jean, it’s fine,” Reiner said eventually. He was leaning forwards in his seat and watching Jean carefully. “But we’re your friends, you know that? We care about you.”

“Yeah, some friends. Haven’t seen you in nearly five months and the first thing you do is interrogate me?” Jean grunted in response.

The singer had finally stopped protesting and reluctantly began to sing as Jean finally looked up to meet Reiner’s worried gaze, the crooning lyrics of a love song beginning to throb through the speakers, a smile behind the end of every line, adoration in a soft hiss between the singer’s teeth. The music drummed in the walls, pounding in Jean’s chest.

“We’ve been busy,” Reiner said. If he was feeling any remnant of guilt he certainly wasn’t showing it. “And I’m sure you have as well. I’m sure trying to balance work and college isn’t easy.”

“Damn right,” Jean snorted.

“Don’t try and make it out like we’re the bad guys,” Ymir interrupted, cocking a finger around her drink at him accusingly. “You and I go to the same fucking college, dipshit. If you wanted to see us all you had to do was come looking.”

 “Yeah, but-”

“Don’t you have friends in your class?” Reiner asked.

Jean’s face burned in humiliation. The singer’s voice was ringing in his ears, but not unpleasantly. His crisp words and clear, strong belt were raw, but not unrefined. “Uh…not really.”

Ymir guffawed into her drink as Reiner shot her a disapproving look.

“It’s not like that’s a bad thing,” Jean retorted, grateful for the dim light disguising some extent of his flushed face. “I’ve got more time to myself, which I don’t mind, and I’m busy enough as it is, with going back and forth between work and college most days, besides, I’m not going to be friends with someone for the sake of being friends with them-”

“How about Marco?”

Jean broke off at Ymir’s interruption and faltered, the familiar feeling of butterflies swarming into his stomach as she nodded at the karaoke group, a knowing smile playing on her lips. He followed her gaze and felt his breath catch in his throat.

It was Marco singing.

His cheeks were pink and his shoulders were hunched like a big, shy bear, despite the strength in his voice. Sasha was clinging to his arm and smiling encouragingly, doing her best to put him at ease as he sang, his reluctance evident in his stiff posture, clutching the microphone with both hands as he broke off in the middle of a line to laugh at himself.

Jean’s heart began to thud against his chest as Marco looked up and met his gaze from across the room. He grinned at him, but Jean was too surprised to bring himself to smile back, staring at the joy radiating from every freckle on his face as their eyes met and he lifted the microphone back up to his lips, opening his mouth to continue the song in his strong, clear voice. The same warmth and brightness from his usual speaking tone was still there, just with a melodic edge, and Jean cursed himself for not realising sooner.

Jean ducked his head, unwilling to face Ymir again.

“What about Marco?” he asked gruffly.

“He’s your friend, right?”

“Of course he is. Why do you think I brought him here?”

“Just a friend?”

Jean closed his eyes, irritation twitching in his skull. He could feel blood pounding in his fingertips as he clenched his fists. “What else would he be?”

“Excellent question.” He could practically hear the smirk in Ymir’s voice. “What else would you want him to be?”

Jean peeked up from beneath his lashes, looking hopefully at Reiner for some form of defence, but he was watching Jean just as expectantly, frustratingly silent.

Jean sighed and finally looked up, allowing his gaze to drift back over to the centre of the group where Marco was standing, listening to every chord he struck with his tongue, every clip the sharper syllables made against his teeth, the soft breaths he took in between lines that whispered with a soft, static crackle in the speakers. A throb of longing pulsed through his chest.

“Marco is…” he began, the waver in his voice painfully obvious. “I wouldn’t be doing any of this-” he gestured vaguely- “if it weren’t for him. He’s…I guess he’s like the first person to properly encourage me, you know? And he’s not just supporting what I want to do. He’s actually given me a reason to pursue what I want, and he understands- he just understands everything you tell him.” Jean raised a hand to his mouth, chewing at the edge of his nails. “I just…I’ve never felt more connected to someone in my life.”

There was a long pause as Jean closed his eyes, Marco’s voice soaring on a long, broad, final high note from across the room, striking every chord in Jean’s chest, reverberating through his ears and rattling in his skull. He exhaled shakily before he opened his eyes to see Ymir and Reiner staring at him.

All of a sudden he realised just how vulnerable and pathetic he’d sounded, and once more, his face grew hot, creeping down his neck and stinging his chest.

He hadn’t wanted to drink any more than he already had that night, but right now he really needed something, anything to dull this barrage of unwelcome emotion swelling in his chest.

“I mean, that’s friendship, right?” he said, voice rife with agitation. “Like, best friends, you know?”

Reiner’s mouth twitched as if he was trying to hide a smile. “Jean, do you…like him?”

Jean couldn’t fight the fire raging on his face that second or the distinct crackle in his voice as he spoke. “Are you crazy? No! I like Mikasa, remember?”

“You’ve liked Mikasa since, what, forever?” Ymir said, shaking her head in derision. “And what for? Because she’s pretty? Because she’s talented?”

Jean pressed his lips together guiltily.

“Don’t you think it’s time to give up on that pipe dream? Liking someone for something so shallow isn’t how relationships work, Jean. For one thing, it’s creepy, dude, she has a boyfriend, and for another, attraction isn’t love.”

“Love?” Jean spluttered. The word felt raw and hot and unfamiliar against his tongue. “Who said anything about love?!”

“OK, OK, jumping the gun a bit here,” Reiner interjected. “Forget love- that’s something else entirely- but Jean, you do realise it’s not a bad thing to start liking someone else, right?”

“I know that, but-”

“Is it because he’s a guy?”

“No! We’re friends! That’s it!”

Reiner raised his eyebrows. “Jean, come on. You haven’t stopped glancing up every other second the moment you started talking to us. Hey, just look at when you were watching the two of them sing! You barely looked at Mikasa for a second. But you couldn’t keep your eyes off him, could you?”

Jean buried his scorching face into his hands. Was he really that easy to read? He’d spent all this time trying to deny everything he’d been feeling, refusing to believe his own impulses to the point where he’d maybe just convinced himself his fluttering heart and loss of breath every time Marco was around was just pure jealousy. But ten minutes with two people he hadn’t seen for months was apparently enough for them to guess everything he’d been feeling and put it into the words he didn’t want to hear.

“Oh my God, will you shut up,” he groaned.

“You don’t watch a friend with eyes like that.”

“Eyes like what?”

“Eyes like a hungry fucking animal,” Ymir said sharply. “It’s not a bad thing to embrace your feelings, you know. Even if- especially if they’re not what you expected.”

Jean’s hands slid down his face as he gaped at her over his fingers. “Excuse me?”

“Seriously, man, trying to suppress it isn’t good for you,” Reiner said. His gaze drifted over to the opposite corner of the room, past the karaoke crowd, where Bertolt was talking animatedly to Annie. They couldn’t hear a word they were saying from over here, but judging by Bertolt’s flushed face and erratic, over-enthusiastic hand gestures, they didn’t really need to. Reiner sighed wistfully, eyes lingering a little too long on Bertolt. “Trust me.”

“Guys. Seriously, I mean this in the best way, but what the fuck?” Jean turned on them, gritting his teeth. “Do you really think I’m about to take advice from a girl who trails around after Krista like a bodyguard but refuses to admit that she wants to be with her, and a guy who doesn’t have the balls to tell his best fucking friend he’s wanted to bone him since puberty?”

Reiner quickly looked away and crossed his arms over his chest, clearly abashed, but Ymir didn’t flinch.

“Krista and I are none of your business, dick munch,” she spat, glowering at him. “But doesn’t wanting to bone your best friend sound pretty fucking familiar? Does that ring any bells in that fucking ungrateful head of yours?”

Jean bit his lip. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest, but not in the giddy, excitable way that felt like the strangest kind of tentative happiness. No, this was pure fear. Not at Ymir’s threat, not even at her extremely terrifying glare; but instead, at himself.

This was real. This feeling eating him alive. It was real, it was here, and there was no denying it at this point.

He was fucking petrified.

Jean stared at Ymir, at a complete loss for words. Gone was the condescending smirk from a few mere moments ago and replaced with a scowl. His gaze fell onto her cheeks- similar to Marco’s in the sense they were freckled within an inch of their life- but hers, dark and in little clusters, spreading high up into her hairline, were different from his. Marco’s were largely spaced out and formed wide arcs over his face, most densely concentrated over the bridge of his nose and growing more scarce towards the edges of his face.

“What?” Ymir snapped. “Don’t just stare at me like a dumbass. Say something.”

“Look,” Reiner said gruffly. “We’re just trying to help. And if you don’t want our help, fine. But take my word for it.” He turned to face Jean, meeting his gaze more directly than ever before, years of suppressed emotion rimming his blue eyes. “There is nothing, nothing worse than watching the person you love fall for someone else.”

Jean could feel chills erupting on the back of his neck as he twitched, uncomfortable under Reiner’s gaze. He didn’t need to stick around. He didn’t need to hear this.

“We’re friends,” he insisted savagely. “And that’s none of your damn business.” He let his clenched fists drop to his sides and turned on his heel, beginning to stalk away with the intention to go chug the first pint of alcohol he could get his hands on- the stronger, the better- whilst damning his resolution to remain mostly sober.

“Jean!”

His heart slammed into his chest before he could take a single step forwards, sinking into the cavity of his ribs. He looked up to see Marco squeezing past the small crowd of people ringing the TV, his stupid grin plastered on his face as he trotted over to them.

Jean forced a weak smile onto his face in return. “Hey, Marco,” he said in as nonchalant as a tone he could muster. As if he hadn’t been discussing whether or not he wanted Marco’s lips on his just a second ago. Which he didn’t…right?

Marco stopped by his side, face still broad with his smile, a little breathless from singing. His cheeks were still pink, but his eyes were bright in elation. He was standing so close Jean could feel the warmth radiating from his skin against his own.

Jean swallowed painfully, doing everything physically possible to stop the surge of blood into his face.

“You doing all right?” he asked, not quite looking at him in the eye.

“Yeah, great!” Marco nodded vigorously. “Your friends are really fun, Jean. I mean, a bit overwhelming, but still fun!” He turned to face Ymir and Reiner who were watching them both expectantly, grin unwavering. “Have I met you guys?”

“Yes, you have,” Jean said, shooting a warning glance over his shoulder at the two of them, telling them to keep their mouths shut. “Reiner and Ymir.”

“Right, sorry. I’ve met a lot of people tonight,” Marco ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Um…”

“Jean was telling us about your bakery,” Ymir said smoothly. “And about how much he likes it there. Right, Jean?”

Jean glared at her. If you breathe another fucking word I’ll staple birds to your car, I swear to God.

“…Sure,” Alright, it sounded fucking pathetic, but it was marginally better than the truth.

“Oh right. Yeah. It’s pretty great,” Marco chuckled before an awkward silence fell over them. Ymir resumed kicking her heels against the dresser once again, a smug little smile slipping onto her lips. Reiner didn’t say anything, crossing one leg over the other in indifference.

God, this was so awkward. Jean wanted the ground to swallow him up. He wanted to be at home, in bed, with his sketchbook, alone, and with no one to bother him. No one to try and decipher the feelings he didn’t want to understand. No one to question his sexuality.

No one who made his resting heart rate register as a panic attack, made him stumble over his words, made him long for his company, to have him by his side-

Marco turned back to him, looking somewhat surprised. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I wanted to ask you something, Jean,”

“What is it?” Jean asked gruffly.

Marco kept smiling nonetheless, amusement circling his dark eyes, set alight by the glimmers of the golden fairy lights strung around them. “Connie was telling me about your sketchbook. What’s all this about you drawing me?”

Oh God.

Jean’s heart stopped beated.

Oh God.

Connie you little shit.

How the actual fuck was he supposed to explain that? There was no way to just casually say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s because I actually find it physically hard to draw anything else but you nowadays, oh, and also I think you’re really handsome, please wear a shirt and tie and be surrounded by fairy lights more often, because I really, really want to draw you like that too’.

Jean opened his mouth but no sound came out, his jaw falling slack, the rasp of his tongue sharp and ragged in his mouth.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ymir and Reiner share a knowing look.

Some kind of strangled combination of indignation, humiliation and fear snapped inside him with a painful pang.

“I…just- I mean…I…I don’t…it’s not what…you…uh…I…”

Every word caught against his lips, snagging at his teeth, tearing at his throat. Oh God. This was physically agonising. The mortification spreading thick and strong through his body, making his head ache and spin, his cheeks set ablaze for the dozenth fucking time, his fingernails digging into his palm as he looked frantically from one person to the next.

 “I mean- I…I think I need some air,”

Escape. Just escape. That’s all he needed.

He darted around Marco and bolted for the living room door, barrelling into the hallway without stopping to listen for any sound of protest as he fumbled with the front door handle, finally getting it open and bursting out onto the porch.

The cold air smacked him in the face, flooding over his flaming cheeks in the most relieving way as he shut the door behind him, breathing out shakily in an attempt to calm his heart still hammering against his chest. He walked down the two steps of the porch and rested his back against the solid brick wall of the house, tipping his head back to look up at the sky.

A dry, humourless smirk twitched on his face.

Of course. It just had to be a clear fucking night, didn’t it? It just had to be a night without the slightest wisp of a cloud in the inky blue sky obscuring a single star.

The night had long since fallen and everything was crisp, dry, and freezing. The warmth in Jean’s face was quickly dissipating as his eyes flickered over the night sky, devouring each and every constellation, naming the ones he’d seen in the library books he’d borrowed to use as reference for his art.

Gemini, two partners entwined in each other, dancing overhead. The great Pegasus leaping from the horizon. The serpentine head of Draco peering over the silhouetted rooftops of houses spiking into the sky. Orion’s belt, spreading over three stars high above, like the three freckles Jean always made sure to include in every drawing he made…

Jean pressed a hand to his face.

“I can’t fucking escape you, can I?” he whispered to himself. “Can’t get you off my fucking mind…”

His voice trailed away in to the cold, manifesting momentarily in little fogged clusters in the air. From out here, the party was just a faint throb of music and the soft patch of light cast from the living room on the driveway. From out here, Jean could pretend he was alone.

The cold air caught in his lungs with every breath he took as his eyes slid shut and his hand slithered away from his face, falling back to his side.

Everything felt so…raw. This was all so new- terrifying- bewildering, and Jean didn’t know what to do. It was so unfamiliar, he wasn’t even sure what this feeling was, because it certainly didn’t feel like any emotion he’d ever defined before. He felt like he didn’t know himself anymore. This aching desperation to be with a person he never, ever thought he’d fall for…this wasn’t him, was it? It certainly wasn’t the person he’d been only a few short months ago. Not on the inside, at least.

He opened his eyes and stared up into the sky, lost in oblivion as he crossed his arms over his chest, hands clutching at his arms as he rubbed some warmth into them. He felt the sinew of recently developed muscle, flexed taut under his callused fingertips catching on the fine arm hairs along his skin. He arched his back, the seams of his shirt straining against his shoulders, broader than they used to be.

Everything had changed.

And yet he was scared out of his mind. Of his own fucking feelings. How pathetic.

It was so cold. Chills were beginning to erupt over his skin, the tip of his nose already icy and growing number by the second. But he didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to go back. He was too embarrassed, too scared, too intimidated.  He wanted to disappear, let the emptiness cocoon him, where it was safe and he didn’t have to think.

But there was no off switch. Only the biting cold and his tumultuous insides, churning apprehensively.

He didn’t know how long he’d been standing outside when he heard the front door open, a soft squeal on its hinges, and the pulse of music with the hubbub of the party heightened for a split second before the door was closed again. Jean turned his head as whoever had left stepped out onto the porch.

“Hey, Jean.”

His breath hitched in his throat as he quickly straightened up, running a self conscious hand through his hair.

“Um. Hi, Marco.”

Marco smiled sheepishly at him from the porch, ducking his head as his gaze briefly flitted up to look at him before it fell to the ground once more. His face was still pink, practically radiating heat into the frigid air, his tie was somewhat loosened and a little crooked, and his hair was ruffled and sticking up at odd angles. His jacket was folded over one arm.

“Are you…” he cleared his throat. “Are you, um, OK?”

Jean nodded stiffly. “Y-yeah. I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“’M sure,”

“OK. Good.” Marco’s voice trailed away as he shifted uncomfortably. He was so close Jean could distinguish every freckle marring his skin despite the distinct lack of light. He couldn’t seem to look at him in the eye. “Look, I’m…I’m going to go home. I don’t think I should stay out much later when we still have work tomorrow, and I think…I think I was starting to make things awkward.”

Jean pressed his lips together and nodded again. “Do you want me to ask Mikasa to take you home?”

“No, it’s OK. Eren’s pretty drunk and she seems to have her hands full. I don’t want to bother her. I’ll just walk home.” Marco paused as he looked up, staring vaguely off into the distance, still not meeting Jean’s gaze.

Jean tipped his head back again, examining every glowing pinprick in the sky, at a complete loss for words.

“Did you, uh…did you have fun?” he eventually asked.

“Yeah, I did. Thank you.” Marco scratched the back of his head, doing his best to smooth down the parts of his heart sticking out. “Thank you for bringing me here. I appreciate it. Your friends are really nice.”

Jean snorted softly. “Glad you think so,” he muttered. Being subjected to borderline interrogation and having someone throw everything he’d ever thought to be true about himself into question wasn’t exactly his definition of ‘nice’, but whatever.

They meant well. He knew that, deep down.

Very, very, very deep down.

It kind of hurt, actually. He was still so confused and felt like he was in the dark about everything, and yet people around him seemed to have him all figured out. That wash such a blow to his already bruised ego, still sore from the fact they were out there, succeeding in life, and here he was, stagnating, stuck in a vicious cycle of not knowing where to go from here.

The silence ached, dripping with a thousand words unsaid as they lingered on the doorstop, both unsure of what to say, what to do.

Marco shifted on his feet and wobbled- suddenly lurching forward as he stumbled. Jean darted forwards and caught hold of his arm. His shoulder brushed against Jean’s chest. He smelled musky, with a faint waft of alcohol.

“Are you OK?” he asked, hauling him upright again.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Marco insisted, steadying himself. “You can let go.”

Jean found himself surprisingly reluctant to release Marco’s arm and curl his hand back into a fist. He balled it under his folded arms.

“You told me you weren’t going to get drunk tonight,” he said, quirking a half-hearted smile.

“I’m not drunk.” Marco replied firmly. “I’m just…tired.”

“Fair enough.” Jean didn’t quite believe him, but arguing was pointless. “Then let’s get you home.”

“Jean, you don’t have to come with me-”

“I don’t really want to stay here,” Jean said quietly. His stomach flipped, ridden with guilt as he bit back the words he couldn’t bring himself to say. I’d much rather be with you. “And I want to make sure you get home safe.”

“Jean-”

“Let’s be honest, I’m more sober than you right now, and the last thing we need is you getting run over because you’re spacing out.”

Marco bit his lip with a slight smile before he glanced back up at the house, a frown pinching his brow together. “But your friends…”

“They won’t miss me.” Jean shrugged. “They knew I had to leave early. Like you said, we’ve got work in the morning. I’ll just go home.”

Marco’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “Alright,” he finally agreed. He didn’t move for a second, toying with the label on the neckline of his jacket before he looked up and met Jean’s gaze at long last, cheeks still flushed, smattered with freckles, and still beautiful, in every way. “This is kind of strange, isn’t it?”

Jean forced himself not to think of how good Marco looked stood there in his shirt and tie, breathless and shabby from the party, somewhat hazy and distant, laced with alcohol. “What’s strange?”

Marco gestured vaguely around them. “We met here. This is where we began.”

Jean’s heart was pumping steadily against his chest again as he tried to stay calm. Intoxicated Marco seemed to lack a filter for saying sentimental, sappy things. “Yeah. We did.”

“Except you were sat here.” Marco looked pointedly at the porch step. “And you were a lot drunker. And smoking.”

“Thanks, Marco. Not my finest hour,” Jean grunted, his heart fluttering as Marco chuckled; the noise rumbling in his chest. He swallowed wistfully. “I could really use a smoke right now.”

The slow, familiar process of inhaling something so harsh and detrimental would really help calm some of his goddamn jittery nerves.

“And you didn’t want to talk to me.”

“And it was a lot warmer.” Jean shuddered, clutching at his arms and stamping his frozen feet to bring some life back into them. He hadn’t brought a jacket of his own and was kind of regretting it. It’s not like he’d anticipated walking home in weather colder than a penguin’s left testicle, but what could he do? He didn’t want to let Marco wander home in the state he was in. “Come on, let’s get going.”

They walked down the driveway together in silence and up the street, reaching the mouth of the cul de sac and crossing the road down the side street from where they’d arrived.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that actually,” Marco said eventually. “Ever since I met you.”

Jean glanced back at him. “What’s that?”

“Why do you smoke those things?”

“Really?” He snorted. “You’re asking why an art student smokes?”

Marco faltered. “Is it supposed to be obvious?”

Jean smirked and held his hands up, ironically theatrical as he quoted, “’He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven’.”

Marco blinked, staring at him. “What was that?”

“Edward Bulwer-Lytton,” Jean shrugged, grinning. “You know, the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ guy?”

“I didn’t know you liked classic literature.”

“I didn’t know you could sing.”

Marco ducked his head in embarrassment. “Oh God. That was so embarrassing,” he mumbled. “I just went with it because I didn’t want to be a spoilsport, or anything- just- just forget it happened.”

“Alright, I won’t say anything,” Jean said. “Anyway, I don’t. The only reason I know that quote is because I read it on the back of someone’s sketchbook in high school, and since I saw them in the art room every single day, it kind of stuck with me. It sounds like the kind of pretentious bullshit an art student would say though, doesn’t it?”

Marco smiled. “Are you a pretentious art student?”

“Sometimes. Wait until you see my journal of slam poetry.”

Marco’s laugh was so full and warm, ringing out in the otherwise still night with the same melodic lilt in his singing voice, lifting the end of his laughter to a higher note, making Jean’s heart swell.

“Seriously though, why do you smoke? Surely some age-old quote isn’t your only reason. You’re smarter than that. You know they’re not good for you, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know that.” Jean waved dismissively. “You sound like my mom. It’s not like I smoke often.”

“Then why-?”

Jean shrugged as they turned down a slope, leading past the gates of an empty parking lot, heading towards the main road.

“It’s kind of a distraction. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gross, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but it’s kind of comforting, in a way?” He gesticulated, unsure how to define it. “I only smoke when I’m feeling down, or conflicted, or just need to think. There’s something…I don’t know, almost comforting about being in control over something that has the potential to kill you? And with every breath it’s like a little lungful of defiance because it hasn’t killed you yet. Oh God. I am a pretentious art student, aren’t I?”

“Maybe,” Marco laughed again. “But I like you just as you are, pretentious or not.”

Oh, that hurt. That hurt so good.

“I think…I understand.”

“Yeah?” Jean turned to face him. “You do it too, don’t you?”

Marco’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? Smoke?”

“No, dumbass.” Jean snorted and raised his eyebrows. “You like rock music, right? The louder the better?”

“Um. Sure.” Marco looked bewildered. “But I don’t think that’s as bad as smoking, Jean.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about the feeling of release you get, or the way the noise just drowns everything out when you’re hurting on the inside, so damn loud you can’t think.”

Marco’s pace slowed, his grip on his jacket tightening. “You knew?” he murmured.

“Kind of.” Actually it had been an almost completely misguided stab in the dark, but Jean had figured such loud, raucous music that didn’t co-align with Marco’s personality whatsoever had to have some kind of significance. “Well, anyway, it’s kind of like that. It’s…distracting. It makes the hurt go away, just for a little bit.”

“What’s hurting you, Jean?”

Jean didn’t reply. They fell quiet, walking side by side in silence.

Jean gritted his teeth, digging his fingers into his elbows, his nails leaving little red crescents in the skin. It was so bitterly cold. He was really regretting not wearing something warmer at this point. Gooseflesh crawled over inch of his body, as he shuddered, breath hanging in the air, as if he really were smoking.

“Are you cold?” Marco broke the silence.

“Nope,” Jean muttered sarcastically. “Haven’t you noticed? It’s like Barbados up in here.”

A smile twitched on Marco’s lips. “Do you want my jacket?”

Marco’s jacket? “No. I’m fine.” Any closer to Marco right now and he doubted his heart could take it.

“Jean.” Marco tilted his head to peer at his face. “You’re practically going blue.”

“Don’t you need it?”

“I’m fine. Here.” Before Jean could stop him, Marco had already unfolded the jacket in his arms, shook it out, and swung it around over onto Jean’s shoulders like a cape. “Better?”

Jean stuck his lower lip out childishly in an attempt to disguise his cheeks quickly turning pink as he tugged at the collar. It was slightly bobbled with age on the inside, but still soft for the most part. It smelled of musky bread flour and the smoky oven at the bakery. Marco’s body heat still clung to the fabric. It felt familiar, it felt safe, it felt warm, it felt like Marco.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly.

“So,” Marco said after a brief pause. “Um, if you only smoke when you’re sad…”

“What are you getting at now?”

“You said back at the house you could do with a smoke.”

“And?”

“Does that mean you’re sad?”

“I never said sad. Christ, Marco, can’t a guy just crave his nicotine without psychoanalysis?”

Marco bit his lip. “Jean, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Why did you want to leave? Why did you storm out?”

Jean shrugged, feeling the back of his neck prickle under Marco’s jacket. He clutched at the lapels and pulled them closer against his chest, seeking comfort in its warm embrace. If he were to close his eyes and try really, really hard, it was almost like it was Marco’s arms wrapped around him.

“It’s not important,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Jean…”

Marco had stopped in his tracks. They had almost reached Jinae at this point, standing at the crossroads that would otherwise take them into town, back the way they came, or towards the main road, in the vague direction of Jean’s house.

“What are you doing, idiot? It’s freezing, don’t stop.”

Marco didn’t move, standing a few paces back, staring at him imploringly.

“Please tell me what’s wrong. I don’t like knowing you’re upset.”

Jean’s heart began to pound again, ricocheting against his chest. Marco’s face, set aglow by the orange light of the street lamp overhead, was etched in concern. His shirt was creased and his tie was crooked but that didn’t matter. To have someone feel concerned for Jean was a strangely wonderful feeling.

Wonderful, but equal parts frightening.

He bit his lip and turned away. What the hell was he supposed to say? He wasn’t about to admit anything Ymir and Reiner had tried to get out of him. He scarcely believed it himself. Saying it out loud was…terrifying. This wasn’t the him he was used to. This wasn’t the him he had yet learned to trust. For all he knew, all the emotions building up inside him were merely a scapegoat, an outlet as he tried to get over his hapless crushes from the past. Everything was so conflicted. He felt so useless, so stagnated where he was in life, stuck in a perpetual turmoil he couldn’t navigate his way out of.

Jean sighed, beckoning for Marco to follow him. “Come on, don’t stop walking.”

“Jean-”

“I’ll tell you on the way,” he interrupted quietly. “Just…come on.”

Marco took a hesitant step forward, almost disbelievingly, before he resumed his pace and they walked into Jinae together in silence.

“It’s nothing big,” Jean finally said. “You don’t have to worry. It’s just…I don’t know. Everyone seems like they’ve got everything figured out. Sasha’s got this great opportunity with catering. Ymir’s top of the class in nursing, by some fucking miracle. Reiner’s already got a placement, after scarcely four months into his apprenticeship. Even you.”

Marco blinked. “What about me?”

“You’re running a business at nineteen. Half the time I forget you’re only a year older than me because you just seem so together…”

“That’s not true,” Marco mumbled.

“Really? Because look at me. What prospects have I got?” Jean threw his hands up in defeat. “I thought studying art was it for me. That was all I wanted to do. But where do I go from here? College isn’t the be-all, end-all. It never was and I don’t know why that never occurred to me. But I just don’t know where to go from here.”

“I thought you were happy.”

“I thought so too,” Jean said, his head drooping dejectedly. “But I’m just…overwhelmed. I’m doing what I love, and I should be happy, but there’s still no prospective future afterwards, is there? Where do I go after all of this?”

They had nearly reached the T-junction before the incline that led to the bakery.

“You could always…” Marco cleared him throat. “Um, you could always stay with me, after you graduate. Working, I mean,” he added hurriedly. “Just so you’ve got a career in the meantime whilst you build up a portfolio, or something.”

Staying with Marco sounded quite appealing. More appealing than he cared to admit.

Jean shivered and tilted his head back, watching the starry sky thoughtfully. Marco had stayed tactfully silent about his sketchbook and the whole drawing him thing, thankfully. But his throat was burning with all the things he wanted to say, but didn’t want to say. There was a distinct difference in his mind and it felt very much like he was a vessel for two very different people.

“That doesn’t sound that bad,” he admitted shakily.

“Can I help at all? Can I help you through this, Jean?”

Jean shook his head. “No. This is something I need to figure out on my own.”

“We’ve got a little less than two years to help you figure this out. You don’t have to worry about it now.”

“I do, Marco. Not you. Just me.”

“R-right. Sorry.”

His grip on the jacket’s lapels loosened and he let his hands drop back down to his sides, swinging a little too wide as Marco’s already unsteady footing lurched in his direction.

For a split second, their fingers brushed together and their hands collided.

Time stood still. The breath in Jean’s lungs was trapped. The warmth of Marco’s palm against his freezing one was suddenly all he was aware of. He could feel Marco’s fingers going to curl around his, inch by painful inch, so warm and familiar, so welcome and right, and yet-

Jean snatched his hand away, holding it up to his chest, eyes widened, breathing rapidly like a frightened rabbit as he stopped dead.

Marco quickly reddened.

“Jean, I-”

Jean shook his head, fear and apprehension building up within him, so strong he couldn’t breathe.

“I-I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry…l…I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

And with that, he spun around in the opposite direction and ran.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10

Impossible things. So many freaking impossible things.

Jean Kirschtein, an unwavering realist, was studying art, instead of business, at college.

Jean Kirschtein, the guy who had set toasters on fire in the past, was working in a bakery.

Jean Kirschtein, renowned for being a notorious asshole, had made friends with the gentlest, kindest, most beautiful boy in the world.

Jean Kirschtein- Jean-straight-as-an-arrow-Kirschtein- was not as straight as he had believed himself to be.

Breathless, Jean fumbled with his key in the front door, stabbing the lock several times before finally jamming it in and managing to wrench the door open. He barrelled into the house and kicked the door shut behind him, scrambling upstairs, two at a time, until he crashed into his room and stood in front of the mirror resting on the chest of drawers- wild-eyed, windswept hair, cheeks fiercely rouged, jaw slack.

He stared at his reflection, panting.

I like him. I like him. I like him.

Those three incessant words buzzed in his ears, churning in his mind over and over, getting more and more frantic.

I like him I like him I like him I like him oh God I want him.

“I am in love with Marco Bodt,” Jean whispered, the nuance of every word catching on his teeth, dragging every syllable. His voice was hollow and painfully loud as it rang out in the otherwise empty house, making him wince.

The same cold fear from earlier pooled in his stomach.

Love was a strong word, not exactly something Jean was familiar with. Love was a foreign concept, something powerful, denoting the kind of devotion he hadn’t yet come across in his eighteen years of life. Love was probably jumping to conclusions here.

Infatuation, on the other hand, was another story, with which Jean considered himself quite familiar. This was definitely infatuation of the most extreme kind.

Jean was struggling to breathe as he looked back up at the mirror.

“I like Marco,” he said again. The very fucking name tumbling from his lips sent chills down his spine.

This had never occurred to him before. He’d never, ever thought, not in a million years, that he’d ever fall for a guy. Let alone fall this hard. He had always been so self-assured and headstrong that it seemed unlikely such a huge part of him could go undetected for this long. He thought he knew who he was. But now, with this…situation thrust irrefutably into his face- it felt a lot like the wide-eyed, tousle-haired teenager in the mirror staring back at him could very well be a stranger.

What if this wasn’t real? What if…what if this was just some strange sort of involuntary reaction that made him direct all his affection to the one person who was nice to him on a day in day out basis?

Maybe he was misreading all of this. Maybe he was just trying to get over his fruitless crush on Mikasa and attempting to make up for his hapless attempt (or lack thereof) at making friends at college. Marco was the one and only person in the world that Jean eagerly wanted to see every day. It was normal to feel so attached when they were together so often, right?

The longer he stared into the mirror, the less plausible his own unconvincing argument began to feel.

Oh God. He was scared. He was scared shitless. The person staring back at him with frightened eyes in the mirror was someone entirely new, someone he didn’t know, someone he wasn’t sure he wanted to be. Everything that was wrong before just seemed to feel right, and he didn’t know whether he could accept that as a new normality.

With a painful jolt, Jean realised he still had Marco’s jacket draped around his shoulders like a cloak.

He’d been clutching onto it this whole time, fingers digging into the soft fleece like a security blanket. Marco’s warmth that had clung to the fabric had long since been replaced with the heat of Jean’s frenzy, and yet, its gentle, solid weight settled over his shoulders felt familiar and safe.

It felt like Marco.

He ripped it off his shoulders and threw it as hard as he could across the room, feeling sick to his stomach he watched the sleeves flutter and sail through the air until striking the wall and falling soundlessly onto his bed. Jean slid down the chest of drawers and collapsed onto the floor, pressing his shaking hands to his mouth.

Part of him wanted to cry, but a bigger part wanted to laugh at the hilarity of the situation. He wanted to laugh and laugh and mask all these new, unwelcome feelings burrowed in his soul with hysteria until he could forget about them.

He wanted that jacket around him so bad. He wanted to breathe its familiar scent- bread flour, firewood, and Marco’s musk- he wanted to wrap the sleeves around his waist and close his eyes and run his fingers over the warmth imbedded in every fibre and pretend Marco was still wearing it. Oh God, that sounded so fucking good.

Why did it have to sound so fucking good?

Jean’s chest tightened as he sat there in the dark, breathing raggedly into his cupped palms and fighting the overwhelming urge to laugh himself stupid with this strange sense of elation clouding his mind, making him feel drunk and giddy.

I like Marco Bodt.

This was terrifying.

I like Marco Bodt.

This was possibly the best he’d ever felt in his life.

I like Marco Bodt.

This was easily the most bewildering, humiliating, ridiculous position he’d ever found himself in.

And he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Jean looked over at the backpack he’d dumped on his desk just a few short hours earlier when he’d gotten home from work. His sketchbook and folder containing all of his external artwork were spilling out onto the surface amid a sea of pencils and crumpled balls of paper.

He and Marco weren’t like that…right? This was just his mind- probably riddled with more alcohol than he remembered drinking- over analysing and emphasising every feeling he’d ever had, right?

He ignored the voice of reason in the back of his mind screaming that that half-assed excuse didn’t explain the countless drawings, the sidelong glances shared at the bakery, the delighted spark that ignited in his chest every time Marco smiled at him. He ignored his almost-sober state as he stumbled to his feet and scooped all his artwork of constellations, star systems, and anything with so much as a spot resembling a freckle into his arms, before he marched back downstairs and dumped them in the trash can.

He still had two and a half weeks, give or take a little, before the project deadline. Barely enough time to redo a majority of his coursework, but he might just be able to pull it off. It didn’t need to be fancy- just enough for him to scrape a passing grade- then if he worked a little harder next term and aimed for the higher grades that should even out his overall grade for the year…

It was a stupid plan, and a stupid move, but he just needed to get this- whatever this was- off his chest and, preferably, out of his life.

Jean stormed back upstairs, tearing his shirt off as he went and throwing it on his bedroom floor carelessly, kicking off his jeans before he dove into bed. He threw the duvet over his head and willed his mind to be quiet, ignoring the pulse drumming at the base of his throat. Ignoring the flutter of his heart in his otherwise hollow chest. Ignoring the desperate ache in his fingers seeking the warmth of the boy he craved.

Ignoring his hands, weaving out from under the duvet, groping the mattress blindly until they found what they were looking for. Ignoring how he pressed the soft fabric gathered in his fingers to his nose, inhaling every essence of him.

Ignoring the happiness flooding through him as he clutched the jacket close to his bare chest, pretending the small smile that slipped onto his face didn’t exist.

…

It felt like he’d been asleep for only a few minutes before his alarm dragged him from his brief, dreamless sleep in the early hours of the morning.

Jean groaned into the pillow, huddling tighter into a ball with a slight shiver, deeply regretting going to sleep in just his underwear- it was just about bearable here under the duvet but he could tell the second he got up his body temperature would plummet to absolute zero.

He nestled into something soft over his nose, snuffling into its comforting scent, drowning out the beeping alarm with blurry, indistinct images of the bakery wavering in his mind’s eye. He was knuckle deep in dough, bathed in the warmth of the fire crackling beneath the oven, the air thick with the heady scent of frosting and baking, and a face inches from his, freckled and shining with a thousand stars…

Something distinctly throbbed between Jean’s legs as his eyes snapped open and he bolted upright, yanking the jacket away from his face. Oh God. Oh God. He had to be imagining the faint pounding in his crotch.

A sickly sweet tingle was pooling in the pits of his stomach and spreading to the tip of his dick more eagerly than he cared to admit.

Jean buried his face into the duvet spread over his knees, trying with every fibre of his being not to recall the way Marco’s face had been set alight in the orange glow of the streetlamps last night, or how his beautiful singing voice struck every chord in Jean’s chest, or when the soft heat of his palm skimmed against Jean’s as he went to grip it tightly, or the fact that Jean had just slept with his fucking jacket, and said fucking jacket was giving him a fucking boner.

He pressed one hand against his groin, heart sinking at the firmness beneath his palm. He blindly fumbled along the desk in the dark for his alarm with his free hand and slapped it into silence.

Every breath he took was bated and shallow as he willed his cock to calm the actual fuck down. His heart drilled against his ribs. He wasn’t ready for any of this. All these unwelcome, invasive, unreciprocated feelings welling up so hard in his chest he felt ready to burst…

Who ever said they weren’t reciprocated?

Jean’s gaze slid down to his upturned palm resting on the duvet- the hand that wasn’t currently occupied with trying to squash the life out of his unsolicited boner- thinking of Marco’s fingers brushing against his mere hours ago. The way his whole hand went rigid for a split second before going to curl around Jean’s. The way Jean fucking snatched it away and ran like a fucking moron.

Part of him was reluctant to show his face at the bakery ever again. But a bigger part wanted to see Marco more than ever.

To, uh, return his jacket, of course.

Jean cast a disapproving glance dripping with disdain at the aforementioned article of clothing pooled into a crumpled heap next to his hip. He couldn’t believe this. The situation was almost laughable to the person he’d been only mere months ago; he was a hopeless art student, working from stupid-o’clock every morning at a bakery, currently sat in bed next to a jacket belonging to a guy he’d fallen completely head over fucking heels for.

Eventually, the strain tugging at Jean’s underwear slackened and he finally rolled out of bed to get dressed, perhaps a little more hastily than usual when he realised just how long it had taken for him to kill the excitement in his boxers.

Jean pulled his hoodie on over his head before he picked the jacket up and did his best to smooth out the wrinkles it had suffered from the night spent gathered against his chest, praying that Marco wouldn’t notice the state it was in. He raised it to his nose one last time and inhaled deeply, trying to see if there was any trace of himself that Marco might detect that was too obvious to have just come from borrowing it for the walk home. It was warm with the heat of his bed, but for the most part, still musky and comforting and-

Jean shook his head and snatched up his keys and phone from the dresser where he’d left them last night, stuffing them both into his pocket. He flung his door open and headed downstairs, peering into the gloom as he felt along the wall for the light switch.

With a soft snap the downstairs room was illuminated, revealing Mikasa bent over the couch in the midst of lowering a half-sentient, clearly inebriated Eren down carefully. She looked up in surprise at the light, blinking at Jean.

“H-hey,” he said in a low voice. “Did you just get back?”

“Yeah,” Mikasa whispered. Eren was practically a dead weight in her arms, semi-conscious as she propped his head up against the arm rest, eliciting a drowsy mumble in fruitless protest. She ran a gentle hand down the side of his face. “Don’t worry. You didn’t miss much. Connie and Sasha started kicking people out about an hour ago.”

“That’s early.”

Mikasa shrugged and straightened up, looking back over at him. “Are you going to work?”

Jean nodded. “Yeah.”

“Try be quiet when you get back. He’ll probably still be out of it.” Mikasa’s gaze fell back on Eren, her steely grey eyes hard with disapproval, but unable to lessen the affectionate smile quirking at the corners of her lips nevertheless. “Do you mind if I stay over?”

“Huh? No, not at all. But why don’t you just carry him up to bed?”

“If he throws up on the sofa it’ll be easier to clean.”

Jean grimaced, making a mental note to never sit on that couch ever again.

“You’re a special kind of someone, you know that?” he said as he went over to the front door. “Not many people would stick around to mop up their boyfriend’s vomit. I don’t know how you put up with him.”

Mikasa gave him an odd sort of sidelong glance as she sank onto the opposite sofa, crossing her legs. “What do you mean?”

Jean faltered. “Uh…well, you know, you do a lot for him. Even when he doesn’t seem to appreciate it. That’s all. Not like that’s a bad thing,” he added hastily. “It’s pretty admirable, if I’m honest.”

She was quiet for a few moments as Jean pulled a pair of his trainers from the shoe rack, her gaze trailing over Eren’s sleeping face. His jaw was pockmarked with smudges of her dark lipstick that she reached over to rub away with her thumb.

“It’s what you do when you love someone,” she said quietly, laying her hand back in her lap. “You just want to be there for them, no matter what. Even if it is just dealing with vomit. You never get tired of the feeling of being needed.” The same tender smile that had once made Jean’s heart ache quirked at the corners of her lips. “You know what I mean.”

The ache of longing never came. Jean snorted humourlessly. “I wish.”

“You don’t have to.”

It was Jean’s turn to look bewildered. His head jerked up, brow furrowed into a deep crease. “You what?”

“You don’t have to wish,” Mikasa repeated, turning away from Eren without a trace of tact in the blank slate of her impassive expression. “You have someone you care about too, don’t you?”

Jean’s chest constricted painfully.

“Fucking hell. What did Ymir tell you? Or was it Reiner?” he groaned, jamming his foot into a shoe, perhaps a little more forcefully than usual. “I swear to God I’m going to skin them.”

“They didn’t say anything.”

“Like hell they did,” Jean spat. His laces snapped from side to side as he tied them, recalling the condescending smirks and raised eyebrows over drinks last night. Accusation after accusation hurled at him, thinly disguised as presumption and genuine concern.

Well… it’s not like they were wrong.

What would’ve happened if he’d stayed? What if he’d stayed at the party and explained to Marco that he was all he could draw nowadays and that wasn’t a fact he was entirely unhappy about? Or what if he’d really told Marco what was eating him up on the walk back to Jinae-- or hell, even if he’d held his hand for two fucking seconds?

Where would they be now if he hadn’t run away?

One side of Jean wanted nothing to do with the other, more persistent side that wanted to clasp Marco Bodt’s cheeks and kiss the living daylights out of him. The side of himself that Jean hadn’t known to have surfaced until recently and was nowhere near ready to come to terms with.

There was a long, lingering silence as Jean crammed his other foot in the remaining shoe, stuffing the laces behind the tongue before Mikasa finally spoke again.

“By the way.” She raised one lithe, pale arm and pointed across the room at the kitchen counter. “You’ll want those later.”

Jean followed her gaze to see a familiar heap of folders and stacks of papers, sketchbook rescued from the trash sat at the top of the small mountain, pride of place. He scowled and turned on his heel, reaching out for the front door’s handle.

“No, it’s fine, I don’t need them. You can just throw them away again.”

“What about your deadline?”

Jean’s fingers curled around the cool metal of the handle, an icy shot of apprehension striking him in his chest. He shrugged. “I’ll figure something out.”

He pushed down on the handle, pulling the door open with a resounding click, and was about to step outside when Mikasa spoke.

“It’s OK, you know, to be in denial.”

Jean froze.

“It’s hard, and I understand that. But you can’t just ignore these things and hope they’ll go away, because they won’t. The only person you’ll end up hurting is either yourself or Marco.”

He whipped around the door.

“Marco?” he spluttered. “Who said anything about Marco?”

Mikasa raised her eyebrows. “He likes you, Jean.”

“Well, yeah, I mean, we’re friends-”

“He likes you, likes you. And I don’t think he’s the only one.”

Jean’s tongue turned to sandpaper.

“How do you know?” he croaked.

“You don’t draw me anymore.”

Jean’s blood ran cold. All the heat in his body rushed to his face as he gazed at Mikasa’s indifferent expression helplessly. How the hell he was supposed to explain himself? Had she seen his old sketchbooks, with page after page of sketches done in her likeness? Or even worse, had she seen his most recent piss-poor attempt at the front of the sketchbook lying on the kitchen counter only a few short steps away?

“That’s not- it’s not what you think- I was just-” 

“I didn’t mind, you know. Mostly.”

“Sorry- I wasn’t trying to make you- it wasn’t meant to be creepy or- I just-”

“Jean.”

Jean bit his lip.

“That’s not the issue here,” Mikasa said, seemingly unfazed.

“There’s no issue, full stop,” Jean muttered.

She raised an eyebrow. “You need to talk to Marco about how you feel.”

This again? Did everyone know just how hopelessly Jean had fallen for him? Christ, and he’d thought he was being subtle. Subtle enough to fool himself, at least.

Crap, does that mean Marco knows?

“It’s not like that,” he lied, his grip on the edge of the door tightening. “I’m not like that.”

Mikasa’s gaze was unwavering as her dark eyes flickered over his hardened expression, fiercely rouged cheeks and tremble of defiance in his chin. She watched him silently for a few, long, drawn out moments before she sighed, and finally dropped her gaze.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you who you are, much less what you should do. That’s none of my business.”

Damn right.

“But you should know that it isn’t hopeless. Marco likes you too. He was talking about you almost non-stop to anyone and everyone who would listen.”

“He was?” Jean’s heart quivered in his chest before he hastily cleared his throat. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Mikasa gave him a withering look as she unhooked her legs from one another and stood up, walking around the back of the couch towards the stairs.

“Talk to him, Jean, just to make sure you’re both on the same page, at the very least. He’s a nice guy, and I don’t want to see either of you getting hurt, especially not by each other.”

And with that, she disappeared upstairs.

Jean exhaled sharply and let his head fall against the door frame with a soft thump, screwing his eyes up in frustration as her footsteps died away.

Why was this so simple for everyone else? Why did they all think that this- facing these recently surfaced emotions, suddenly questioning his sexuality, and falling so damn hard for someone like never before- was simple and easy to process? This was terrifying.

But everything that Marco was to him was just right. And the thought of being with him, and caring for him, and loving every damn freckle on every god-forsaken square inch of him- God, that was intoxicating. He wanted it so bad. He wanted Marco so bad. His beauty, his strength, his warmth. More than just a drawing in his sketchbook or a jacket in his arms. He wanted every ray of light from his dazzling smile every damn day. He wanted to be his and his alone.

He couldn’t refuse to believe it any longer. At this point, his only choice was to accept it and either move past it or move forward. Especially if everyone else was already one step ahead of him and seemed to know what he wanted before he did.

“You should listen to her, you know. Mikasa’s advice is solid.”

Jean opened his eyes and turned his head, still resting against the doorframe, to see Eren propping himself up on his elbow, watching him from across the room.

“You sobered up fast,” Jean remarked dryly.

“Nah man, I’m still way out of my head.” Eren gave him a bleary, crooked smile. “’S why I’m being nice to you.”

“Gosh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome. But yeah, you should probably listen to her.” He made a disoriented jab at the ceiling, gesturing at the upper floor, before his voice dropped to a theatrical whisper. “Trust me, she knows what she’s on about. Even if she does go on and on and on…”

Jean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Eren, I appreciate that this is some kind of attempt at advice, but if you’ve got something important to say just say it.”

“Hey, I was getting there.” Eren pouted. “Look man, no one cares if you want to make out with a dude, ‘s all cool with us.”

Heat rapidly began to creep up Jean’s neck again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Either Eren didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him, because he continued regardless. “What’s not cool is if you’re too much of jackass to admit you have feelings like everyone else, and sometimes those feelings aren’t feelings you’re really happy about.”

Jean hesitated. “I wouldn’t say I wasn’t…happy.”

Eren grinned again and cocked his finger at him. “Exactly! That’s the point. You’re happy, right?”

“…Sure.”

Eren spread his arms as if it were completely self-explanatory. “There you go.”

Jean’s brow twitched. “I’m going to need a little more than that.”

“What are you, stupid? If you’re happy with this dude, then why are you such a melodramatic douche nugget all the time? Why don’t you just, you know, do what you do best, and just be honest?”

Ouch. Kind of stung to be called melodramatic by a drama student of all people.

“Because this isn’t just about me,” Jean said. Something in his chest squeezed painfully. “I can’t just expect Marco to like me back just because I happen to be a guy.”

“Oh, so he’s gay? That helps.”

“It doesn’t help a damn thing. The odds of Marco liking me back are so low it isn’t even funny.” If you take away the fact that he literally told you he likes someone and only has one friend. Namely, you. Jean swallowed. “He’s just…so together. And I’m…”

“A mess,” Eren supplied. “No, no, it helps. It means you actually have a chance with him.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Seriously man, if he was into girls as well you wouldn’t have a hope in hell with him. They’d be all over him. He’s way too good for you.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“If we’re being honest, I don’t know what he sees in you,” Eren flopped back down onto the sofa and rested his chin on his folded arms. “Buuuuuut I figure that’s his business.”

“So you…uh, do you really think…” Jean picked at the sides of his fingernails, deliberately avoiding Eren’s gaze. “That I might- I mean, that he likes me? Like, likes me likes me?”

“I don’t know, looks that way to me. I could be wrong. But again, ’s not really my problem. You should probably ask him instead of me.”

The cold air from the half-open door was creeping in and stinging against Jean’s still-warm cheeks as he pressed his forehead to the door frame once again and groaned.

“It’s not that simple.”

“It never is,”

Jean looked up to see Mikasa had reappeared, and was stood at the foot of the stairs, the duvet from Eren’s bed bundled in her arms.

Eren’s head shot up from the couch again, his face instantly lighting up in joy.

“Babe! C’mere, tell Jean to stop being a pussy,”

Jean glared at him. “Fuck you.”

Mikasa smiled as she crossed the room and dropped the duvet on the couch at Eren’s feet. He reached out and grabbed her hand, lacing his fingers with hers and clumsily pulled her down to his level to kiss her. She wrinkled her nose and pulled away.

“Eren, you stink.”

“Thanks. Love you too.”

They laughed, and Jean looked away as their lips met. Shameful envy prickled in the pits of his stomach, like it always had when he’d seen the Eren and Mikasa lavish each other with affection. And whilst he’d be trying to convince himself for the past few months that those feelings hadn’t changed, this degree of jealousy was so different now compared to what it was before.

Before, it was a hopeless ideal, hapless longing for the attention of a girl he had absolutely no chance with. But now? Now, a reality like this- like theirs- wasn’t just in reach, but could actually be attainable- he could, theoretically do this. He could have everything he’d ever wanted.

With the guy of his dreams.

A shiver ran down his spine as the thought crossed his mind. He had a big old stinking crush on Marco Bodt. No use pretending it wasn’t true anymore.

Now if he could just muster up the courage to tell him…

“It’s not like you to clam up, Jean,” Mikasa said after she finally withdrew from Eren’s lips. She looked over at Jean, her expression considerably less stoic now that Eren was awake. “Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with being in denial. But the truth is always the best way forward. I’m sure you know that. You’re one of the most honest people we know.”

“I wouldn’t call being an ass honesty,” Eren said.

Mikasa slapped the side of his shoulder playfully. “Shush, you. Go to sleep.”

Jean pretended to heave as Eren seized hold of her waist and pulled her down onto the sofa besides him, nuzzling into the crook of her neck in the most blatant, drunken expression of love. “I can just about deal with vomit, but if you two end up banging on the sofa I’m moving out.”

“Oh piss off and go to work,” Eren waved him off disinterestedly. “You’ll understand after you go see your boyfriend.”

Jean rolled his eyes and turned on his heel, about to leave, before he paused, one hand resting against the door handle as he slowly looked back over his shoulder.

“Hey…can I ask you something?”

Mikasa and Eren were both clearly waiting for him to leave so they could- uh, proceed (Mikasa was all but straddling Eren at this point)- but nevertheless, they twisted around and looked at him expectantly.

“How…long have you known?”

“Known about what? Known about you being gaaaaa- ow!”

“Probably not much longer than you,” Mikasa said, ignoring Eren and gave Jean the faintest glimmer of a smile. “You’re an open book, Jean. If you’re pining it’s fairly obvious.”

Jean felt his cheeks redden. Great. That meant she knew the whole time he was hung up over her.

He cleared his throat. “And you both don’t mind? Like it’s no big-”

“Jesus fucking Christ, why would we mind?” Eren asked incredulously. “Dude, if this mean you’ve stopped eye fucking my girlfriend every time she walks into the room then of course I’m- ow! Fucking hell, Mikasa!”

…

The walk to the bakery that morning seemed to go by far too quickly. One moment he’d stepped out the front door, then suddenly Jean was halfway there and the next thing he knew he was already at the crossroads leading into Jinae and all too quickly he was just a street away and standing at the foot of the hill trying to calm his racing heart, clutching Marco’s jacket with a death grip for comfort, his breath coming in short, rapid bursts misting the frigid air.

No backing down. No running away.

He pressed the jacket to his nose one last time and drew a deep breath, letting the image of the boy who was kind and beautiful and perfect carve into his mind one more time, just long enough for dizzy, intoxicating infatuation to spur his legs into moving as he trekked up the hill, pushing his reluctance to the back of his mind. There’d been a brief upswing in his outlook on the matter after talking to Eren and Mikasa, but since then, his confidence had taken a severe nosedive and he was right back to being terrified for a multitude of new reasons.

Alright, so he was fairly sure the feelings he had for Marco was mutual. Or, at least, he hoped- really, desperately hoped- they were, given the (woefully little) evidence he had to go off from the past few months he and Marco had spent together. That didn’t make the idea of vocalising things he’d desperately tried to keep under wraps for weeks now any less intimidating, or the thought of facing Marco after last night any less daunting.

Oh God, last night. He’d run away like a terrified child because Marco had touched him. How the hell was he supposed to pretend that had never happened?

Jean was halfway across the roundabout before he realised that there was no smoke curling into the inky dark sky from the chimney of the bakery like there normally was when he arrived, nor was there the familiar honey yellow glow of light spilling out through the front window from the shop floor.

Jean frowned quickening his pace as he reached the front door, habitually running his thumb over the intricate design on the doorknob before he pushed it down and swung the door open. The bell chimed as he stepped into the shop and closed the door behind him, peering into the silent gloom. There was no familiar shuffle of Marco’s old, well-worn trainers traipsing over the kitchen floor, nor the rattle of baking trays and crackle of greaseproof paper, or even the soft clunk of firewood being methodically placed into the oven’s fire pit by his gentle, capable hands.

“Marco?” Jean called out into the almost eerie silence, his own voice ringing back at him. He crossed the shop floor and edged behind the counter, cautiously making his way to stand in the doorway to the back room, running his hand over the wall until he found the light switch and snapped it on. The room was empty. “…Marco?” he said in a much quieter voice.

A floorboard creaked from above and Jean nearly shot out of his skin. His head whipped towards the stairwell, his grip on Marco’s jacket tightening as a second floorboard squealed and a figure appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Jean? Is that you?”

Jean felt his heart stammer in his chest at the morning rasp snagging Marco’s words into a throaty rumble. “Y-yeah.”

“What are you doing here so early?”

Jean frowned. “Uh…Marco, it’s nearly four in the morning.”

“It’s what?” A moment later and Marco came thundering down several steps, nearly missing his footing as his hand flew out to seize hold of the handrail and bring himself to an abrupt halt. His dark hair was sticking up in complete disarray and his big brown eyes were wide in a combination of panic and surprise. “Oh God, did I oversle-” he quickly trailed off when he saw Jean staring and it scarcely took a second before realisation dawned on his face.

Marco was wearing a big, black baggy t-shirt wrinkled with the evidence of being slept in, and not much else, leaving Jean to gaze upon several inches of completely exposed, freckled thigh.

 “…Ah.”

Colour flooded Marco’s cheeks, visible even in the dim light as his hand crept to the hem of his shirt to tug it down in a vain attempt to conceal his tantalisingly short boxers.

Jean’s mind instantly went to places it’d never wanted to be in at four-in-the-fucking-morning before at the mere sight of the soft, sculpted curves of Marco’s legs. His pale flesh was dappled with freckles speckling his knees and flecking his ankles- and try as he might to hide under his shirt, it wasn’t enough to conceal that incredible fucking ass Jean had been unapologetically admiring for the sake of his artwork for the past few weeks. Not to mention the undeniable bulge that Jean had to physically tear his eyes away from to save Marco some scrap of dignity.

That same sickly pleasurable feeling from that morning was pooling in his stomach once again, throbbing all the way to the tip of his dick until he was sorely tempted to pull his hoodie down to cover his thighs as well.

“Um. Hi.” Marco eventually said, clearing his throat. “I- uh, I didn’t realise it was so late and I- I should probably…”

“…Go put some clothes on?”

“Y-yeah,” Marco’s pink face darkened as he backed up a couple of steps, toes curling self-consciously as a pained smile tugged at his lips. “I’ll- I’ll be down as soon as I can- um, if you don’t mind getting started that’d really help- um…you know where everything is…don’t worry about the oven, I’ll sort that when I come down- and I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…I just sort of-”

“Marco.” Jean interrupted. The strain of self-control was painfully evident in his voice. “Don’t worry about it. Just…please. Go get dressed.”

“Right.” Marco took another tentative step back before he spun around and practically scurried back upstairs, much to Jean’s relief, tripping on the top step as he went.

Jean let out a long, shaky breath as he dropped the jacket on the table and leant back against it, passing a weary hand over his face.  It should be illegal for a person to have such an invigorating effect on him. Hell, some of the thoughts running through his head probably were illegal.

Jean glared at his crotch from between his fingers. The waistband of his jeans were beginning to bite into his stomach, the slightest indication of strain around his groin gradually pushing the zipper flap up.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he muttered fiercely as he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and stuck them under a hot tap, scrubbing at his skin until it burned red before he dried them off and wrenched open the cupboards underneath the worktop, expecting to see the usual bowls of Marco’s carefully pre-measured ingredients neatly lined up and ready to use.

Of course, they weren’t there.

“Shit,” Jean hissed through his teeth and slammed the door shut. He should’ve known. Marco wouldn’t have had time to pre-measure everything out like he normally did the night before after last night. Unless he’d done them in the afternoon after Jean left instead? Or early evening, just before they’d picked him up…?

Whatever. That didn’t matter. The important thing was the fact Jean had no ingredients already prepared for use and would have to go through the time consuming process of laboriously measuring them out himself with opening time growing uncomfortably closer with every sullen tick of the clock.

Jean had measured ingredients out with Marco before during the evenings he’d chosen to hang around the bakery instead of going home after they closed, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know what to do. But he was so used to having Marco by his side in the kitchen it felt…wrong to be doing it by himself. Marco had always been there to clarify and correct him, explaining every technique and each ingredient, and every so often gently taking hold of his wrists to guide them in the right direction…

Don’t think about his warm hands on yours. Don’t think about his fingers tracing the insides of your wrists. Don’t think about his chest pressing against your back. Don’t think about his lips inches away from your ear. Don’t think about his hot breath tickling the side of your neck, or the way his voice rumbles deep in his chest, or the way you can hear his lips part, or every fucking breath he takes…

It took about ten minutes for Marco to appear at the foot of the stairs- thankfully now wearing pants- but still looking significantly worse for wear. His hair, usually so neat and precisely parted, was still tufty and unkempt; dark rings underscored his eyes, lidded with exhaustion, and he was significantly paler than normal, making his freckles seem extra stark against his skin.

Jean peeked up at him from beneath his lashes from where he was kneading bread dough on the countertop.

You know what? It should also be illegal to look that fucking hot when you’re hungover.

Fucking hell. Jean bit his lip. How was he supposed to do this?  Hey Marco, I kinda sorta positively think I’m in love with you. Was this how it was supposed to work? Did he just come out and say it? Or was that…weird? And maybe somewhat oppressive…?

He should’ve asked Mikasa and Eren about this before he’d left the house.

Marco ran a hand through his hair, messing it up further and gave Jean a sleepy smile, the sort that made his heart waver in his chest and any remnant of reasoning melt into molten hard on in an instant.

Fuck you Marco.

Yes, good idea, fuck Marco.

Jean wanted to slam his face right into the bread dough caking his fingertips.

“Hey,” Marco said softly. “Sorry about that. I didn’t realise what time it was. I’m not really used to staying out so late.” He laughed, but the noise sounded hollow and shook with nerves, swelling to fill the empty room’s silence.

Jean scraped the dough off the countertop and threw it into the plastic bowl at his elbow. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” The corner of Marco’s mouth twitched. He rubbed at the side of his face, yawning. “Feel like it too.”

If only your definition of ‘shit’ wasn’t synonymous with still-really-fucking-hot.

“You’re…uh, you’re OK though, right?” Jean asked. “I mean, you haven’t thrown up or anything?”

“No.” Marco paused. “Not yet. I certainly feel like I should,”

Jean raised his eyebrows. “Sure you’re OK?”

“I’m fine.” Marco declared. He took a step forward and immediately lurched forwards, hands flying out to catch hold of table’s edge. “I mean, mostly…oh.” His gaze had fallen on the jacket Jean had left on the edge of the worktop. “Where did this...? Oh. Right.”

The memory of the incident last night came surging forth in simultaneous, unspoken acknowledgment, lingering unpleasantly as Jean bit his tongue and Marco’s pale face flushed.

“Sorry,” Jean said. “I forgot I was wearing it when…uh…”

“Yeah,” Marco said quickly, ducking his head. “Yeah, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He picked the jacket up, folding it over one arm and smoothed it out. There was a distinct crackle of paper and Jean watched a bewildered crease deepen between Marco’s brows as he dug into the pocket and pulled out several slips of paper.

“What’s that?” Jean asked.

“They’re…um, they’re phone numbers?” Marco blinked at the scraps in his hand, perplexed.

Jean wiped his doughy hands on his thighs and stalked over to where Marco was standing, peering at the crumpled wads of paper laying in Marco’s palm.

“That’s Connie’s,” he said, recognising the familiar blocky scrawl that used to graffiti the edges of his textbooks. He reached over and sifted past it. “That means that one’s probably Sasha’s and that one- uh, I don’t know. That one- I don’t know either- and…uhh…” Jean broke off, retracting his hand in hesitation, staring pointedly at a scribbled row of hasty ‘X’s lining the torn edge.

Marco’s pink cheeks darkened. “They’re- um, I think they’re from girls.”

A sharp, envious pang leapt in Jean’s chest, prickling at the base of his throat.

He swallowed, forcing a sly grin to slip onto his lips. “Oh yeah?”

Marco brushed him off, crumpling the paper up in his fist. “Shut up.”

“Didn’t realise how much of a Casanova you were.” You fucking liar. All Marco has to do is smile at you to get your motor running.

“It’s not like that!” Marco said in protest. “I-I didn’t mean to- I was just trying to be nice and then-”

“Was this before or after karaoke?”

“What? Um…after, I think.”

Jean laughed. “Marco, what did you expect? You sang a love song in a room full of drunk girls.”

Marco’s cheeks burned. “And?”

“You do realise what most girls wouldn’t give to be serenaded by a tall, handsome dark haired guy at some point?” He failed to mention it had worked rather well on him as well.

Marco visibly stiffened, colouring blotching up to his forehead, almost completely obscuring his freckles.

Jean leaned back. “What?”

“You think I’m handsome?”

Oh fuck.

Oh fuck.

Jean’s throat burned, his lips parted, but no sound came. Blood was pounding in his ears and rapidly creeping up his neck as well. His eyes flickered in panic over Marco’s face- his beautiful, star-speckled, perfect face- taking in the slope of his nose, his broad, high forehead, his dark eyes holding golden galaxies, and every damn freckle splattered over his cheeks, before lingering a second too long on his lips.

Should he do it? Would Marco appreciate his spontaneity? They were close, all he had to do was take a step forward and crane his neck up and angle his face towards Marco’s and-

“Anyway.” Jean turned away.

Damn it.

“Joke’s on them, I guess.” Marco mumbled, glancing at his fist with an almost forlorn expression.

“Yeah. Looks like you’ve got some hearts to break. This Casanova’s got his heart set on dick.” Even though he was deliberately trying to sound mocking, Jean’s voice gave a pathetic waver towards the end of his sentence, as if that hopeful twinge in his heart was determined to make itself known. The same hopeful twinge that desperately wanted to know if the dick that Marco wanted in particular was the one Jean was currently struggling to keep under control in his pants.

Jean went back over to the bowl of bread dough, throwing it into the proving cupboard behind him and slammed the door a little more forcefully than he intended. He wanted to be honest with Marco and tell him exactly what he was feeling, but how, exactly, was he supposed to do that when his heart crammed itself into his mouth at every given opportunity? Every scrap of confidence he had just went to fucking pieces the second Marco so much as looked at him, stoppering his throat and tying his vocal chords in knots.

A great crash resounded from behind him and he started, whipping around in surprise to see Marco standing next to the shattered fragments of a ceramic bowl that had clearly been knocked off the work top.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Marco said, motioning at Jean to ignore him. “Just knocked it off- ‘m fine-”

Jean pressed his lips together. “Marco…”

“I’m fine.” Marco insisted, squatting down to pick up the largest shards from the flagstone. “Just a bit…tired.”

“And hungover. And probably still drunk.”

Marco scoffed. “Jean, I wasn’t drunk.”

“You weren’t sober either.” Jean crouched down next to him, gathering up the remaining broken pieces. He straightened up and placed the handful of ceramic shards on the countertop beside him when an idea suddenly occurred to him. He surreptitiously wiped his hand on the side of his jeans, and, with a deep breath, held his hand out, offering it to Marco.

To his surprise, Marco immediately reached out to take it- then clearly hesitated, his fingertips twitching back on themselves for a split second. It was as if the brief events of the night before had manifested once more in the air between them, and they were both painfully aware of it.

A moment or two passed before Marco finally gave him a grim smile and took hold of his palm, allowing Jean to haul him upright.

The warmth of Marco’s hand spread like wildfire up Jean’s wrist, winding past his arm and spreading into his chest, prickling deep in the confines of his ribcage before shooting up his neck and straight back into his face. He could feel every taut muscle beneath his fingers, every capable line and inch of scarred and freckled flesh; every ounce of skill imbued into the gentle tips of Marco’s fingers, reassurance and strength coiled in his palm.

But it wasn’t just his hand, he was holding Marco. He was holding Marco’s hand. The very thing he’d run away at the prospect of last night.

It was an effort to keep his breathing steady and bated at this point, with his heated face and his heart banging against his chest so fiercely he was honestly surprised Marco couldn’t hear it. Oh God, he was holding Jean’s hand, inches from his pulse pounding in his wrist- would he be able to feel it?

Thankfully, there wasn’t enough time to start internally freaking out. Jean had scarcely pulled Marco to his feet before one of Marco’s knees practically gave out from underneath him and he staggered forwards again. Jean’s other hand automatically flew out to steady him.

“Marc-! Jesus Christ,” He sighed. “You need to go back to bed.”

“I’m fine,” Marco muttered again savagely. His grip on Jean’s hand tightened.

“No you’re not. You’re a mess.” Jean said. He became all too aware he too was squeezing Marco’s hand in return just a little bit too tightly and quickly loosened his grip, letting his hand fall back to his side with a guilty shudder in his chest.

Marco glanced at the hand that Jean had so suddenly jerked from his grasp, before he bit his lip and ran his fingers through his unkempt hair. His fatigue-ringed eyes flickered up to meet Jean’s as he let out a shaky, defeated laugh. “I don’t understand. How are you not a mess?”

Jean gave him a half-hearted smirk in response. “Well, it shames me to admit it, but I think you drank more than me last night.”

“That’s not my fault. People kept getting me drinks when I was talking to them-”

“Yeah, but they didn’t pour them down your throat, did they?”

Marco’s smile broadened as he ducked his head. “No,” he admitted.

“Not that I’m going to stand here and lecture you like your mom,” Jean continued with a playful slap in Marco’s (rock hard) chest with the back of his hand. “But please, for the love of God, go back to bed. You look exhausted.”

“No,” Marco said stubbornly. “It’s not fair on you to do this all by yourself.”

Jean sighed as Marco made his way- carefully- around to the other side of the work table, pulling open the same cupboards underneath where his pre-measured ingredients were usually stored. He watched as the same look of comprehension dawned on his face as he was met with their barren contents.

“Oh…I didn’t...I completely forgot I still had to do this when I got home.” He laughed nervously. “It was the last thing on my mind after you- um, after you…dropped me off.”

Jean’s chest constricted painfully at Marco’s tact- or lack thereof- as he went over to the fridges and pulled out a tray of eggs and a block of butter, intending to start on making pastry. “Why didn’t you just do it in the afternoon instead? You know, after we closed and I left?”

“In retrospect, I probably should have,” Marco said. “But I was working on- oh.” He clapped a hand to his mouth, dark eyes suddenly wide and flaring with panic as he hastily straightened up and darted across the kitchen and through the doorway onto the shop floor, clutching hold of the doorframe as he scanned shelves beneath the counter for something. “Oh shit. I completely forgot.”

“What? What did you forget?” Jean asked, urgency mounting in his voice.

Marco pulled out a folder from the counter, striding back across the kitchen as he flipped through endless order forms until he found the one he was looking for. He ripped a handful of paper from one of the plastic wallets with a sharp crackle and spread each individual sheet across the worktable, smudging them with the leftover floury residue of the dough Jean had been working on.

Jean hurried to Marco’s side to see hasty sketches of a three-tiered cake from various angles, decorated liberally with notes in the careful slope of Marco’s handwriting.

Marco pressed the heel of his palm to his eye. “Damn it, damn it, damn it. I was designing this for most of yesterday and I completely forgot that it was supposed to be for today.” He reached out and pulled out the printed copy of the order form from underneath his crude sketches. “They’re supposed to be picking it up at eleven. Oh God.”

“Wait, what’s it for?”

“An engagement party, I think,” Marco gestured at the order form, massaging his forehead with his other hand. “I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I just forgot.” He slumped against the table, resting his elbows on the surface and groaning into the crook of his arms. “And my head is killing me.”

Jean reached out, hesitant, his fingertips hovering scarcely an inch above Marco’s shoulder. At this point it seemed a bit selfish to pursue his own romantic agenda when Marco was clearly still in pieces from last night and had much bigger problems to focus on- and yet he couldn’t watch Marco in pain, slaving away over something he’d pour his heart and soul into and sap him of all remain fervour until he was practically an exhaustion-riddled ghost. What he wouldn’t give right now to be able to wrap his arms around his waist, bury his nose in the crook of his neck, press his lips to that little cluster of freckles beneath his left ear; take him by the hand and lead him back up to his bedroom and curl up next to him, basking in the dull thuds of a hangover and the faint smell of stale alcohol and the remnants of drunken stupor, waiting for the first rays of winter sunlight to filter through the curtains.

Jean’s heart swelled and he balled his hand into a fist, forcing it back to his side as Marco finally straightened up, glancing at Jean with an expression that could only be described as entirely worn out. Guilt dropped like a stone into the pits of Jean’s stomach as he met Marco’s eyes, dull and exhausted. He shouldn’t have made Marco go with him last night. Or, at the very least, he shouldn’t have let him drink so much.

He swallowed desperately. “Does it need to be done for today? Maybe you could just call and-”

Marco shook his head. “No. It’s for today. I can’t believe it just slipped my mind like that though- I guess it was just the last thing on my mind after we-”

He stopped abruptly, his gaze darting back onto Jean in alarm.

The tension was back, crackling in the air like static as Jean bit the inside of his cheek and hastily looked away. Don’t think about last night. It just made everything he wanted to do now seem shameful and trite.

“R-right. I’ll get started on this, then,” Marco gestured at the papers scattered before him, surreptitiously clearing his throat. “If you could just get as much done as you can…that’d be great.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Jean nodded. He could feel Marco’s gaze lingering on his longer than necessary as he spun around and swept the broken shards of the bowl off the counter into his hand and dumped them in the trash.

“Um, I’ll probably need your help with decorating when you’re finished.”

“Right. No problem,” Jean said, pulling out an empty bowl and various utensils to get started on the pastry.

“…Jean, I…”

Jean looked over his shoulder at Marco. He was standing next to the worktable, his fists clenched at his sides, that familiar worried crease forming a divot between his brows, conflict etched in every line on his face.

Jean swallowed. “What?”

“It’s…never mind.” Marco ducked his head as he shuffled the cake designs back together again. “We’ve got three hours until we open. Just, um, see what you can do.”

They fell quiet, save for the clatter of plastic and scraping of bowls and utensils as they both set to work. The air felt thick and stifling long before Marco finally started the fire beneath the oven, and heat began to blossom throughout the building. Jean tried to keep his head down and just focus on finishing as much as he could whilst Marco focused on the special order- but he couldn’t stop his mind wandering, and sneaking a glance at him every so often, feeling his heart pound in fifty different new ways every time he so much as glimpsed a freckle.

Why did this have to be so hard?

Telling Marco how he felt needed to wait. He had to focus on the task at hand. Feelings and hangovers aside, Marco still had a bakery to run, and without Jean’s help, there wouldn’t be any stock on the shelves before the break of dawn.

Neither of them spoke a word as the dark sky outside began to lighten to a murky blue, not even looking at each other as they crossed paths and brushed past each other taking things in and out of the oven.

Jean had never felt like he was being eaten away on the inside by something so strong before. There was such a distinct internal clash raging within him- the idealistic dreamer that wanted to wheel around, stride right up to Marco and lace their fingers together, just to feel one another whilst the words of confession he’d be withholding for too long tumbled from his lips. And then the older, more familiar, die-hard realist he’d been for most of his life, that told him to wait and take things slow and do what was practical, not what his heart willed.

Jean bit his lip and threw a glance over his shoulder at Marco as he arranged unbaked croissants onto a baking tray. He watched Marco carefully drill holes in the two lower tier cakes with a dowel rod for extra support, eyes narrowed in concentration. How he could be so careful and precise in the midst of what appeared to be the worst hangover he’d ever experienced was beyond Jean. He was just so…together. He had everything. He did what he wanted and what he loved, he spoke his mind, without forsaking the practicalities of every day life. Marco didn’t live in a fantasy world, the kind of which Jean had been deluded into believing was the only kind of life that his dreams could come true in. Marco was living proof that the bitter realism Jean had consigned himself to didn’t have to be a grim complacent existence amidst the mundane.

Jean’s heart throbbed. Marco had everything he could ever want. And Marco was everything he’d ever wanted.

What made him think Marco would want him- bitter, condescending, pessimistic, tangled ambitions and all- in return?

Eventually opening time rushed up to meet them, and Jean reluctantly left Marco alone to continue with the intricate process of decorating the cake to fill the counters with what he’d managed to bake by himself- woefully less than the counters were accustomed to hold- but at this point, all that mattered was they had something in them to sell. Jean scarcely had time to hastily wipe down the counter before their first customer- Ellie, as always- came for her usual loaf of bread, and from them on, he scarcely had time to dwell on anymore thoughts of unrequited feelings as he was left to deal with the near-constant stream of customers that followed.

Things finally slowed down a little over an hour later when the counter’s contents started looking dismal and somewhat bare. Jean knew he’d have to go back into the kitchen and start baking again to replenish them, but combined exhaustion from last night and the little sleep he’d had, and an unwillingness to be in the same room as Marco made him more than reluctant to do so.

Jean sighed, resting his elbows on the counter and propped his chin up on his folded arms. Anxiety was back in full force and the idea of walking straight out the door mere feet away from him was rapidly becoming more and more appealing. But he’d run away before, hadn’t he? And look where that had landed him. He’d come back, and not for the first time, either. He’d kept coming back to Marco since the first night he’d met him. Something told him that wasn’t about to change.

Jean’s phone buzzed against his thigh, jarring him out of his miserable, pining reverie. He glanced up to check the street outside was deserted of potential customers and dug it out of his pocket, swiping the screen to unlock it. His eyebrows shot up in surprise to see he had a text from Ymir.

They hardly ever spoke to each other unless it was face to face. Even then, those interactions were somewhat precarious- hell, just look at what went down last night.

The hell does she want? He thought with a scowl as he tapped on the message icon. If she was just there to pester him about what he’d said last night he was just going to block her number and ignore her completely. Ultimately, whilst her and Reiner’s words of begrudging wisdom might have helped Jean properly face his feelings for the first time, she certainly didn’t need to know that, least of all take credit for it. Besides, what happened between Jean and Marco was their business, and theirs alone. Jean didn’t owe her anything.

Except, maybe, that if it weren’t for her throwing that drink at him, he and Marco might have never met.

It was a photo message. The picture took several seconds to load, but the moment that it did, Jean felt his heart jump in his chest and nearly dropped his phone as he hurriedly checked that Marco was still in the kitchen and couldn’t see the picture and got the wrong idea.

It was a grainy photo, taken in the dim light of Connie and Sasha’s living room last night. The background was indistinct and blurry, but that didn’t really matter, when the subject of the photo was of Krista full on lip-locked with none other than Ymir herself. One of Ymir’s arms were extended to take the picture, the other wrapped around Krista’s waist, whilst Krista had her hands clasping Ymir’s freckled cheeks, seemingly oblivious of the photo being taken. The caption underlining it read,

Your move, horse face ;)

Jean bristled instinctively, somewhat affronted at Ymir’s brazenness and total lack of shame. But- oh God- there was that undeniable coil of envy lacing itself around his chest tightly, as he stared at the very thing he’d been aching to do to Marco for longer than he cared to admit.  Damn Ymir, turning this- this very personal thing that had nothing to do with her- into a competition. So what, she got to kiss the girl she liked, good for her. How was that supposed to help him?

He thumbed a message back.

It’s got nothing to do with you. Leave me alone

Seconds later, she responded.

If I didn’t know you had a certain baker boy waiting for you I’d say you were jealous

Jean scoffed.

What makes you think I’m jealous

At that moment, the bell on the door chimed, and Jean laid his phone down to serve the customer that walked in. He packaged their order, rang them up, scribbled out their receipt, and by the time the bell rang again, signifying their exit, Ymir’s reply had come through.

Don’t kid yourself

Jean went to type indignantly about how wrong she was, but before he could even start another message popped up.

Tbh I should probably thank you.

If you didn’t bring it up and piss me off last night I probably wouldn’t have a girlfriend now

So thanks I guess

You’re not that bad

Jean didn’t know what to say.

Where are you going with this

It took Ymir a while to reply. Jean suspected the message that he finally received wasn’t the first one she’d typed out.

Don’t be an idiot you dense motherfucker I’m not going to preach at you n shit we did enough of that last night

Just letting you know it feels good to be gay

Despite himself, Jean bit back a derisive grin, fingers hovering over the keyboard for a second in hesitance before beginning to type.

I’ll keep it in mind

Her reply was instantaneous.

You’re gonna do it?!?!

Jean’s stomach turned. He swallowed.

Don’t think I have a choice at this point

He lowered his phone, tapping it against his fingers as he watched a car pull into the roundabout outside. Ymir had a point, really. It was…harmless, ultimately. Literally nothing was stopping him except his own nerve.

The phone buzzed again.

Good man

Listen I got a hangover to nurse and a girlfriend to cuddle so don’t be a pussy and go get you some baker boy dick

Jean felt his cheeks automatically flare up again. Damn her. Well intentioned as she might be, making people uncomfortable was her speciality. She’d be laughing herself stupid right now at the thought of Jean getting flustered at the mention of Marco’s-

“What’re you looking at?”

“Huh? What? Nothing.” Jean whipped his phone out of sight under the counter so fast it audibly cracked against the wooden edge as he hastily switched it off at the sound of Marco’s voice.

Marco was standing in the doorway, looking at Jean with a curious, bemused expression. Jean felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as a soft smile slipped onto his lips. He was carrying the three-tiered cake in his arms, balancing the board it rested on against his forearms as he lowered it onto the counter, breathing a steady sigh of relief.

“Are you done?” Jean asked, straightening up as he slid his phone back into his pocket.

Marco was a miracle worker, no two ways about it. In the brief few hours he’d had to both bake and decorate, he’d successfully produced this…well, masterpiece. It was seamlessly covered in white fondant, smoother than marble, and around the base of each layer was an immaculate ring of piping, looping in crisp, lacy ridges, perfectly symmetrical and absolutely flawless.

Marco smiled a little timidly. “Not quite yet. They wanted flowers on the side of the cake like this-” he pulled his initial sketch from underneath his arm and pointed at the rough sketch, indicating a waterfall of what were labelled as ‘roses’ down the right side of the cake, curling into a little crown perched on the top tier- “so there’s just them left to attach. I was going to ask if you’d, um, help making them?”

“Make what? The roses?” Jean shrugged. “Yeah. Of course. Just show me what to do.”

“R-right.” Marco smiled tentatively once more and disappeared into the back room, returning with a wooden board spread with paper thin pink fondant cut into tear drops. “So.” He placed the board on the counter between them. “All you have to do is make a base out of fondant, then wrap each individual petal around, one at a time- curl the edges back a bit…”

Jean peeled back fondant petals and wound them around one another under Marco’s supervision until he was satisfied with the results. Marco began attaching them to the cake and Jean hitched up his legs and perched on the counter, passing Marco each finished rose for inspection before they went on the cake. They worked in silence, but Jean couldn’t decide whether that was because they were too busy focusing on getting this thing finished or because neither of them could find the right words to say.

Jean’s heart swelled as he watched Marco work from beneath his lashes, pretending to be totally absorbed in the half-finished rose cradled in his palm. Marco pressed his lips together when he was concentrating, taking a step back every so often to evaluate the overall effect and adjust a petal here and there. Just say it. Just say it. What’s the worst that could happen?

But what words was he supposed to use? He couldn’t find the necessary amount of tact or the right balance of impulsiveness. He should’ve done this last night. Before they’d parted. He should’ve clasped Marco’s hand tight and kissed him, right there and then, consequences be damned, when everything could be blamed on the alcohol. It had worked for Ymir, hadn’t it?

The memory of Marco’s fingers brushing against his, so warm when his were so frigid, so eager to curl around his, so reluctant, came rushing forth for a fleeting moment, prickling high in his cheeks as he ducked his head and wordlessly held out another rose for Marco to take.

He felt Marco’s hand settle over his for the split second it took for him to gently pinch the twisted sugared stem and take it from his grasp, pulse fluttering as Marco’s skin brushed against his.

This time, it lingered.

He waited, breath caught in his throat, for Marco’s hand to retract.

It didn’t.

Jean, scarcely daring to breathe, looked up, brows slowly knitting themselves together in confusion.

What…was Marco doing…?

Marco wasn’t looking at him, nor the cake. His gaze was averted, staring aimlessly at the floor without really seeing. His forehead was creased in worry once more and whilst he seemed perfectly aware of where his hand was and what it was doing, it looked as if he was very much fighting to keep it there, as if resisting the urge to tear it away, like Jean had done from his last night.

“Um…” Jean’s voice was barely a strangled whisper. He cleared his throat. “Um, Marco…? What’re you…?”

“I…oh. Um.” Marco glanced back at him, gaze flickering between Jean’s face and the rose he was half holding between his forefinger and thumb. “Sorry. I…I just…” He closed his eyes and visibly swallowed as he finally took the rose from Jean, twisting it between his fingers properly. “I, um, I think I owe you an apology.”

“…What?” Jean’s frown deepened. “What for?”

Marco closed his eyes and exhaled sharply through his nose. He took a moment to compose himself, opening his eyes to affix the rose to the cake on the middle tier, taking several moments to fiddle with its placement and peel back its petals before he spoke again. “I-I don’t think I’ve been very considerate of you.”

Jean’s mind raced to think of a time where Marco hadn’t been considerate. He’d given Jean so a job, a means to study art, work experience, a deeper understanding of himself- when had he ever not done something in Jean’s best interest, however unappreciated it might have been?

“I don’t…I don’t follow.” Jean licked his lips nervously. He had the next piece of fondant in his hands, ready to mould, but scarcely dared to move.

Marco deliberately avoided his gaze, continuing to carefully prod the roses into better positions. “I don’t want to jeopardise this…um, I don’t want to make things weird between us. I really don’t. And I don’t…well,” he let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job.”

“Marco?”

Marco finally looked at him, dark eyes wrought with anxiety, flecks of gold swimming in agitated whorls.

“What are you trying to say?”

“…Last night,” Marco said eventually. “Last night, before you went home- when we were walking back I…I didn’t mean…I mean, that is to say…I didn’t mean to…you know.”

Jean bit back a mad desire to laugh. They were talking about holding hands as if Marco had just grabbed hold of his dick right there and then. Hell, not even holding hands, the merest brush of their fingers as their hands collided.

Jean swallowed and did his best to force what he hoped was an encouraging smile onto his lips. “You’re talking about the hands, right?” Damn it, even his voice shook at that part.

Marco’s freckled cheeks flushed as he looked away again with a curt nod. “Yeah. Right. I mean, like you said last night- I’m not trying to make excuses or anything- but last night I’d had so much to drink and I was still on a high from having such a good time and I wasn’t thinking straight, and I know you’re- I’m sorry I was-”

“Marco,” Jean interrupted softly. “You don’t have to apologise.”

The tension in Marco’s shoulders slackened. “But I-”

“Marco.” Jean repeated. He reached out and took hold of Marco’s wrist, gently upturning it to drop another finished rose in Marco’s open palm. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

Marco blinked. His lips parted as if he had something else to add, but he pressed his lips together and turned to attach the rose onto the cake along with the others.

Minutes passed before he spoke again.

“Jean,” There was a note of desperation in his voice. “You…you know how much you mean to me. I won’t try and hide that. And I don’t want- the last thing I want to do is make you feel uncomfortable. So just know that- that what I’m about to say isn’t me being hopeful or thinking I can change you because I understand- I know that’s not how it works…I-I just think you should know because I don’t think it’s fair that you don’t because that’d be like lying to you. A-and I’d never…I don’t want to lie to you, Jean.”

Jean’s lungs felt tight. His blood was drumming in his ears so loud he wasn’t entirely sure he was hearing Marco correctly. Every inch of him was scarlet and burning and aching and suddenly words seemed like a barrier; cumbersome and heavy and he’d had enough.

Nevertheless, Marco went on.

“I think you know. I think you’ve known for some time.” His voice was a little softer now. His fingers traced the fragile edges of the petals he’d placed so meticulously amongst the others, scarcely leaving a groove in their wake. “I haven’t made much of an effort to hide it. I mean, hide how I feel. And I’m sorry, because I know I shouldn’t- especially when you already have someone you- and I’m not the kind of person you’d ever- and you’re not like me…” he cleared his throat before he let out a mirthless laugh. “Do I have to go on, or have I embarrassed myself enough?”

Jean shook his head. “I understand,” he said quietly.

Marco smiled, but there was no joy in it, no light in his expression, no glimmer of emotion. “Good. I know that it’s stupid and I shouldn’t- and I know- I know we’re just friends, and I’m happy to still be friends-”

“We’re not just friends and you damn well know it.”

Jean surprised himself at the decisive tone of his voice. He met Marco’s gaze and for a long while they stared at each other, neither sure what to say.

Do it! Jean’s mind was screaming. Do it, do it now! Tell him!

But he couldn’t just- oh God, what words could he use? What was he supposed to do? Where were his hands supposed to be? Should he hold Marco? Should he even touch him?

The sullen tick of the clock throbbed in the heavy silence and they both knew the moment had passed as Jean bowed his head and began curling the petals of one last rose, twisting them at the stem and rounding the petals so the bowed against one another. Marco was unscrewing the lid of a jar of red food colouring, dipping the fine tip of a brush into it and quietly beginning to shade the inside of each individual rose spraying up the side of the cake.

Jean wordlessly handed him the rose as he finished and watched Marco lay the brush down and fix the last decoration into place, adjusting several pieces here and there. The overall effect of the cake was beautiful, no mistake about that. But the roses, at a distance, would be nothing more than one big pink clump to the less detailed and appreciative eye.

Jean cleared his throat. “Anything else left to do?”

“Just this.” Marco motioned to the brush in his hand as he picked up the food colouring once more and dipped the brush back into it, going back to very carefully colouring the inside of each sugar rose bud.

Jean watched him apply careful swipe after swipe of colour. Whilst the darker red made each rose stand out a little bit more, it didn’t do much in terms of dimension.

He reached out and rested his hand on top of Marco’s.

“May I?” he asked softly.

Marco twitched at the contact, cheeks rapidly darkening again. His eyes darted between Jean’s face and the paint brush before he nodded, words seeming to fail him.

Jean swallowed his apprehension and mounting trepidation as he took hold of Marco’s wrist, like Marco had done for him so many times before and gentle guided his brush strokes to form a gradient beneath each crisp edge, blurring seamlessly into the fondant, arching over every curve and pooling in each crevice.

He was hyper aware of Marco’s breath, hot against the side of his neck; and Marco’s side pressed against his, and both of their pulses pounding at phenomenal speeds. It took all of his effort to focus on shading each individual rose and not on the fact he was right next to Marco, he could feel every tremor, every flutter of his heart, every nuance of his breath. It was an effort to keep his own breathing steady at this point. He let his hand slide down a little further until he was grasping Marco’s hand, steadying the slight shake in Marco’s fingers. Something told him Marco wasn’t paying much attention as to what Jean was teaching him, but focus was the last thing on either of their minds at this point.

And did that really matter now?

“Jean?”

Jean didn’t know how long they’d been standing like that when Marco finally spoke. It could have easily been hours and he wouldn’t have noticed.

“Yeah?” he breathed.

“Was…was Connie telling the truth last night?” Marco asked. “Have you really drawn me before?”

Jean closed his eyes, his grip on Marco’s wrist loosening. He nodded. “Yeah. Loads of times.”

“Loads?”

“Yeah. Loads.”

“O-oh.”

“Sorry. Is that weird?”

“Weird? No! Not at all. I actually…I actually think it’s very flattering.”

There was a brief pause.

“Hey…Jean?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you…would you draw me again? Properly this time so I…so I can see.”

Jean looked up at him. “Really?” He let go of Marco’s wrist. “You want me to draw you? Now?”

Marco gave him a sheepish smile. “Y-yeah. I mean, only if you want to…” his voice trailed off as Jean nodded.

“Of course I will.” When had he ever not wanted to draw Marco? “But I- uh, I don’t have my sketchbook with me.”

“That’s OK. It doesn’t have to be fancy.” Marco put his paintbrush down on the counter and pulled out a paper bag and a pencil almost worn down to the nub from the shelf below. “If you’re sure- I don’t mind waiting-”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Jean reassured him. He kicked the stool out from beneath the counter, taking the paper bag and pencil from Marco and settled himself down. As something of an afterthought he shot a guilty glance at the cake.

“Don’t worry about it,” Marco said, as if he’d read his thoughts. “I can finish this by myself now.”

Jean nodded slowly and ducked his head, glancing up one last time and gave Marco a glimmer of a smile, reaffirming to go back to work. And with a long, shuddering breath, he placed the pencil onto the page and began to draw.

Drawing had always been an act of clarity to him. A captured moment immortalised on paper. And whilst he occasionally drew from his imagination, his real fascination and focus was realism, and capturing that which was real for him at that moment. What was true. Drawing, to him, had been not much different to taking a photo.

When had that changed?

The first person Jean had fallen in love with was a girl in high school two years older than him, who frequented the art room just like him. She was the one who had him smoke cigarettes behind the bins and spit indignance into the dirt and smear anger onto canvases with paint and little conviction. Her sketchbook was the one he’d learned the smoking quote from. In retrospect, it wasn’t ever true love, but a kind of awed respect he’d found in an idol, because she epitomised everything Jean had ever believed an artist to be. So when her kiss found his lips one grey afternoon, fingers crusted with dry paint cupping his cheek, tasting of cigarettes and her bitterness, it was her certainty, not her love that he found himself craving.

But Marco had never been that to him.

Before Jean had met Marco Bodt, he’d never once second-guessed himself in his life. He’d done everything as it seemed fit to do, living a life dictated by practicality and common sense. He was straightforward, honest and frank. He’d never been afraid of the truth before he met Marco. He’d never once done anything as precarious as sign up for an art course, simultaneously disappointing his mother and giving himself an uncertain future, to say the least. None of this questioning himself- his choices, his artwork, his sexuality, him as a person- would never have happened if it wasn’t for Marco.

Marco had never been about certainty. Marco had always been a question. Marco wasn’t a final note, he was a turning page. Marco was everything Jean had yet to see in this lifetime- Marco was the window of opportunity that opened and cast light upon things Jean had never considered before.

The pencil was brittle and the woodgrain of the blunt end kept snagging at the paper bag, but Jean persisted, not even needing to glance up at Marco. He’d drawn this face so many times his fingers knew it better than any shading or perspective technique.

Marco may not be certainty, but he was the way things were supposed to be. That had never changed, not since day one. Not since the day Jean had met him, overflowing with bitter resentment, still tasting the grit of nicotine, his mind entirely closed on the pretence of realism.

He’d been saying no for far too long.

At what point was he going to stop denying things for himself and those around him?

At what point was he going to let Marco into his heart?

“Finished,” he said softly, sliding the paper bag across the counter.

Whether Marco had also finished with the cake and had been waiting for Jean to finish as well or whether Jean had caught him unawares, he didn’t know, because instead of avoiding his gaze like he was so sorely tempted to do, Jean looked at him dead in the eye. Marco could read him better than anyone else. Maybe he’d see the fanciful conviction dancing in his mind’s eye.

Marco ran his fingers over the drawing, paper crackling beneath his fingertips. “Jean…”

Jean didn’t say anything, didn’t dare look at the drawing, didn’t avert his gaze, because he didn’t care. The drawing could look like a heap of shit for all he cared. At this point, it didn’t matter.

“It…it looks just like me,” Marco said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He bent down to examine it closer, growing closer to Jean with every passing second. His eyes flitted between Jean’s unrelenting gaze and the drawing on the counter. “You’re pe… so talented.”

Jean could feel the warmth radiating off Marco, practically count each individual eyelash at the distance they were from each other, but for the first time, it didn’t send his heart ricocheting off his chest. A strange sense of calm had pervaded his senses, and whether it was temporary or not, he didn’t know.

“Thanks.”

Resistance, he’d stopped resisting. If this were how things were going to be, why was he fighting?

Marco’s gaze finally broke away from the drawing and Jean saw his chest rise and fall with each breath, saw his eyes flicker down Jean’s face, saw the way his jaw angled, ever so slightly towards his.

Maybe his heart was pumping, he couldn’t tell. Everything just seemed to stop as he leaned forwards in his seat, instantly lost in the sea of constellations splashed across Marco’s cheeks. His breath was warm and intoxicating. His firewood and pastry musk was heady and enthralling.

His eyelids were sliding shut. They were painstakingly close.

Marco’s lips parted, tantalisingly near to Jean’s, all it would take was one, last, invigorating breath…

The bell rang.

Jean and Marco instantly sprang apart.

In that moment, the spell had broken.

A man and woman walked into the shop, apparently completely oblivious as to what they were intruding on from mere nanoseconds ago.

“Good morning,” the man spoke. He had his arm around the woman’s waist in what was probably supposed to be an affectionate, courteous gesture, but appeared somewhat forced and wooden. His chin was speckled with a rather weak excuse for facial hair, which he rubbed at in a self conscious motion. “We’re here to pick up an order?”

“R-right, of course!” Marco said, a little too hurriedly. Every inch of his face had turned pink, from the tips of his ears right down to the point it was a surprise his freckles weren’t turning crimson to match. He flipped over the order form lying next to the cake. “You must be Mr Dok? This is for you, then.”

The woman clapped her hands in delight and crowed approvingly as they approached the cake, gushing praise, but Jean wasn’t listening. He pretended to have dropped something on the floor and ducked below the counter, doing his very best to pretend he didn’t exist.

Just like that, it was gone. That brief spell of bravado, that faint inkling of confidence, when everything was suddenly going right…gone. Snatched from right under his nose.

Jean buried his face in his hands, groaning inwardly. Now the thought of kissing Marco was right back to being the most intimidating prospect in the world.

“J-Jean, if you would be so kind…?”

Jean looked up from where he was crouched to see Marco doing his best to smile as if they hadn’t just been about to press their lips together mere moments ago. He wasn’t quite meeting Jean’s gaze.

“If you wouldn’t mind packaging this up…?”

Jean nodded numbly and straightened up, wordlessly making his way into the back room to fetch the tallest cake box he could find, only half listening as Marco charged the couple from behind him.

He found the box he was looking for and went back out onto the shop floor without a word. Marco didn’t acknowledge him, long after he left the shop to help the couple load the cake into their car, and long after he came back in and stood beside Jean behind the counter once more.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

Maybe disappointment was written all over his face when he got home, because neither Mikasa nor Eren said anything as he stormed in through the front door and disappeared upstairs without a word. Mikasa had glanced at him and the trace of a frown had crossed her face, but she remained silent, and Jean was grateful to be ignored. Whether their silence was out of tact, or whether Eren had been too drunk to recall the morning’s conversation, he didn’t know, and quite frankly, he didn’t care.

Jean slammed his bedroom door shut and dropped to his knees, rummaging in his backpack until he found a slightly crumpled, half-empty box of cigarettes lying at the bottom beneath a fine residue of pencil shavings. He brushed them off and stalked over to the window, heaving the sash open and stuck a cigarette between his teeth, clicking the cheap little plastic lighter until the tip ignited and bitterness coated his tongue.

He settled his arms on the sill, resting his chin on top of them, and closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply, letting the acrid stench corrupt his lungs, rake down his throat and cloud his mind. It made him feel full of something, something tangible instead of the tangle of emotion he’d found himself caught up in. The contradiction was appealing; replacing the thoughts of a person so good and whole with something terrible and bitter.

Of course, this was hopeless. Nothing could ever replace the thoughts of Marco constantly lingering in his head, more permanent than the aftertaste of nicotine could ever be. At best this was a distraction, and a futile one at that. He couldn’t just couldn’t find the comfort in it anymore. Nowadays, to him, comfort was the chalky, harmless texture of flour, not smoke; the grit of graphite on paper, rather than between his teeth; and in a person who could heal, not a thing that destroyed.

Jean bore it as long as he could until he spat the cigarette out, ground it down into a stub on the windowsill and shut the window. He collapsed onto his bed and rolled over onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He ran his fingers over his lips, allowing the morning’s events to replay in his head over and over.

Marco had been going to kiss him. And Jean had had every intention of kissing him back.

Whether it was exhilaration or panic that ran through him and made him groan and curl up into a ball onto his side, burying his face in the rumpled duvet, he didn’t know. But now, at least, it was apparent that a large part of Jean’s fears were for nothing. His feelings weren’t unreciprocated, and apparently, hadn’t been so for a long time.

How hard would it have been for him to seize hold of Marco’s shoulders the second he’d stepped back into the shop and press their lips together? Why did he have to leave things so inconclusive, as uncertain as they were before?

Jean’s face emerged from the duvet and he glowered at the heavy grey clouds rolling overhead through the window, casting his room in bleak, wintery light. He couldn’t help imagining what Marco was doing right that second. Maybe, he too was sat alone in his room above the silent little shop, staring out of his window at the very same sky, wondering if Jean felt the same way he did.

Jean’s chest tightened painfully.

Marco had been so honest with him- albeit somewhat cryptic- but Jean didn’t know whether he had it in him to give Marco the same courtesy. How was he enough for Marco? How could he ever be enough for Marco?

Marco was perfect- he was beautiful, smart, skilled; considerate beyond human comprehension, stable and honest and everything Jean couldn’t begin to compare to. Marco had given him everything he had, and yet it wasn’t enough. Jean craved every part of Marco, and if it meant giving him everything he was in return, then that was a small price to pay.

But it didn’t feel like enough. He’d never done anything in his life to deserve someone as wonderful as Marco.

Let alone anything enough to be worthy of him.

…

This sentiment followed him, a gloomy figure glowering in his wake, for the two weeks that followed as the pre-holiday chaos descended into his life with the grace of a sledgehammer.

It didn’t take long until they were overwhelmed with Christmas orders at the bakery. Marco had him making tray after endless tray of mince pies, amidst reams of gingerbread cookies, rivers of frosting and snowstorms of icing sugar that filled every waking moment until they haunted Jean’s dreams.

College wasn’t much better. Erwin had given the class a checklist of things they needed to complete by the end of term, marking the end of their first project. This didn’t exactly catch Jean off guard- but then again, it wasn’t like his sketchbook was entirely finished, either. Between funnelling most of his energy into completeing his coursework and trying to perfect his shortcrust pastry, Jean had very little time to dwell on his feelings, much less act upon them.  As far as he was concerned, between the sleepless nights, graphite-smudged fingertips and icing sugar-streaked shirts, Marco was the last thing on his mind.

Well. He certainly liked to think that was the case. It was a little hard to put the thoughts of someone who was almost the exclusive focal point of his entire art project (he’d lost sight of the ‘self-identity’ aspect some time ago) out of mind completely. Especially when he was around that particular someone from three in the morning until long into the evening on some days.

Even so, Jean bit back the words burning with lust at the back of his throat when they were around each other and neither he, nor Marco, discussed anything beyond slow, painfully platonic small talk. Besides a surreptitious sideways glance here and there, or an occasional brush of contact that lingered for a second or two longer than necessary, it was almost like they’d taken a thousand steps backwards and gone back to being little more than strangers.

Still, Jean held his tongue, did his job, went home and pored every repressed emotion into constellations sparkling on each and every scrap of paper and woven corner of canvas he could find. Burning up, quietly on the inside, until eventually the last day of term arrived.

Jean threw the folder stuffed with his overflowing sketchbook, several intricately decorated portraits, and pages and pages of development work onto Erwin’s desk at the end of their last lesson. He’d painted and sketched enough stars and twisted constellations to last him a lifetime. An immense feeling of relief spread through his chest now it was finally over and he left college feeling considerably lighter. There were two whole weeks before he’d have to even think about picking up a pencil again, and now all he had to worry about was one last day at the bakery before they closed for Christmas Eve. Then that would be it. He didn’t have to face Marco until after Boxing Day.

Jean couldn’t quite bring himself to be happy about that.

His brief elation from handing in his coursework didn’t last long and quickly plummeted back into the pits of his stomach, hard and unyielding and sour.

He got home that night to a text from Marco telling him he didn’t have to come into work the following morning until seven. He frowned at first, confused, but maybe it was just to give him a little extra time to emotionally prepare for what he assumed would be their busiest day, since Christmas was only two days away. Marco was probably just being considerate. Like he always was. In the way that made Jean’s heart ache just a little bit more.

Regardless, he was grateful for the few precious extra hours he got to sleep in before he rolled out of bed long before the sun would rise and left the house. The morning air was frigid and inky blue. Fractals of his breath hung in the air as he tipped his head back to stare at the starless sky, already swollen with dark clouds veined with the orange hue of the streetlights. As usual, he got to the bakery far sooner than he would’ve liked, the intricate handle icy cold against his palm as he opened the door.

“Hey.”

Jean looked up as he crossed the threshold. Marco was already waiting for him, stood on the wrong side of the counter, his arms crossed nonchalantly across his chest. He gave Jean a sheepish smile and Jean waited for his stomach to finish the customary somersault before he nodded curtly in response.

“Hey,” he said, closing the door behind him. “You alright?”

Marco shrugged. “Not bad. You?”

“Alive and functioning. Can’t complain.”

“Yeah.” Marco chuckled. Jean’s heart quivered in his chest and he hastily ducked his head, deliberately avoiding eye contact.

There was a long, tense pause, punctuated with the dull throb of the clock on the wall. Jean’s gaze swept over the store, looking everywhere except at Marco, before he realised all the counters were empty and Marco wasn’t making the slightest movement to fill them. Only now did he notice, as he inhaled all he could smell was the mustiness of the building and stale flour instead of the enticing aroma of baking bread he’d grown accustomed to.

“So,” Jean said, breaking the silence as he began to make his way to the counter, heading for the back room. “Are we opening later today or…?”

“Not exactly.” Marco’s smile was somewhat strained. “I, uh…well, I had something…else in mind, actually.”

Jean halted abruptly and stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I might have told you the tiniest white lie about working today.”

Jean’s eyebrow twitched. “Oh?”

“I…OK, just- bear with me,” Marco passed a hand over his face, a half-hearted grin playing on his lips. “I have something for you.”

“OK…?” Jean blinked, bemused. “Hang on- are we working today or what?”

Marco gave him a cryptic smile. “That’s up to you. I mean- just…here.” He picked something up off the counter at his side and held it out to Jean. “This is for you.”

Jean reached out tentatively, then hesitated. “Marco-”

“Just take it, or I’ll throw it at you.”

Jean smiled in defeat and let Marco press the envelope into his hands, ignoring the hitch in his breath as Marco’s fingers brushed against his, warmth against his frigid skin. He let his gaze fall to the blank envelope in his hands. He turned it over and ripped it open.

“Being cryptic doesn’t suit you,” he remarked. “What is it, anyway? The nudes you promised me so long ago?”

Ha! The irony in that didn’t escape him.

Marco snorted. “I never promised you anything. It’s just a thank you, for all your hard work over the past few months.”

Jean’s head jerked up.

“What? What’s wrong?” Marco asked.

“I haven’t got anything for you.”

The side of Marco’s mouth quirked. “Why would you?”

Because I care about you so fucking much it physically hurts to think about-

“You’ve done more for me than I’ve ever done for you.”

Marco shifted on his feet, suddenly looking somewhat sheepish and mumbled something that sounded like, “That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is. Don’t make me list everything out loud, we’ll be here all day.” Jean stared at the envelope, guilt tingling in the tips of his fingers. “I’m such a dick.”

“No you’re not. I didn’t mean to make you feel- I’m sorry, Jean- I-I mean, if you don’t want it I’ll just…”

But Jean was already pulling two slips of card out of the envelope which he turned over in his hand, frowning as he stared at the fine black texted printed on the glossy surface.

“They’re…tickets.”

“Y-yeah. Well, admission passes.” Marco’s cheeks were starting to pink. “I heard- um, found out that there was an art exhibition at the Science and Culture Museum over in Krovla, and I- well, I figured since, you know, you’re studying art and all, why not? I-I thought you might like it and we could…we could go together.”

Jean pressed his lips together guiltily. Marco’s generosity would be the death of him. The guy was perfect, impossibly perfect. It had never once occurred to Jean to get Marco something to show him his appreciation for all he’d done for him. God knows Marco deserved it. Hell, if Jean’s opinion held any merit, Marco deserved the whole fucking world.

Jean’s thumb swept over the dates printed in the top corner. “Are these for today?”

“Well today’s the exhibition’s last day, so…” Marco shrugged.

“You know,” Jean said, a dim recollection stirring feebly at the back of his mind, “I’m pretty sure this is the same exhibition I was supposed to go and see with my art class. There was a trip a couple of weeks ago. You could have told me. The only reason I didn’t go was because I didn’t want the time off work.”

“Sorry.” Marco smiled weakly. “Would you have preferred to go with your class, instead of me?”

Jean’s heart leapt and crammed itself into the back of his throat and he hastily dropped his gaze back to the tickets lying in his palm. He swallowed. “No. I wouldn’t.”

There was a heavy pause.

“Jean, we don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I don’t mind.”

“I didn’t say that.” Was Marco insane? Did he really think Jean would forsake this, a chance to spend a whole day with the person he’d been almost incapable of shifting from the forefront of his mind? The big city, art, and Marco- what more could he want?

Then again, he reminded himself. Marco doesn’t know what you think about him.

It would have been so easy, there and then, when they were mere feet apart, for Jean to lean forwards and plant the long-awaited kiss he coveted so badly onto Marco’s lips, picking up from when they were so abruptly interrupted mere weeks ago. It would have been even easier to just blurt out a hasty confession- nothing particularly eloquent, and probably lacking tact, but enough to do the job.

Hot shame prickled in the pit of Jean’s stomach. He wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth Marco. The only things he’d ever given Marco was a night out that resulted in a head-splitting hangover and a shitty portrait scribbled on the back of a paper bag. If that didn’t paint a picture-perfect depiction of Jean’s complete lack of benevolence he didn’t know what did.

All the same, it took every fibre of his being to resist the unyielding urge and instead force himself to digest this grim reminder for the hundredth time. Trying to deny himself Marco wasn’t easy. It made every brief meeting of their gazes flit away from each other nervously, it made Jean’s heart cave in on itself, his stomach clench, left red crescents on his hands from his nails digging into his palms. It was a physical pain, a dull ache, burning like hunger.

“Marco, I-” Jean wet his lips. “I…thanks. You shouldn’t have.”

A relieved smile spread across Marco’s lips, reaching right up to the creases in his eyes. Jean’s heart somersaulted in his chest.

“Think of it as a Christmas present, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Not really. I haven’t got you anything for Christmas either.”

“Nothing for-? Well that’s it, you’ve ruined my Christmas.” Marco pulled an aghast expression, holding one hand over his heart, pretending to be affronted. “No, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Seriously, don’t worry about it, I don’t want anything.”

A bunch of mistletoe wouldn’t go amiss, I bet.

Jean groaned inwardly. Stop it. Stop thinking of him like that.

“So…is that a yes?”

Jean looked up to see Marco cock his head to the side, watching Jean from beneath his lashes, his expression unbearably endearing.

“Do you want to go?”

An excuse to spend the whole day with you? Of fucking course?!

“Yeah, why not?” Jean crumpled the empty envelope into his fist. “Where did you say it was? Krovla? Isn’t that like, three hours away or something?”

“Not quite.” Marco said, weaving his way around the counter and leaning through the kitchen doorway, grabbing the all-too familiar jacket from the hook on the wall. “But I thought we could catch the train? Shouldn’t take us too long that way.”

“Sure. Whatever works.”

“Great.” Marco slipped his jacket on. “Let’s get going.”

Jean waited for Marco to lock up and together they walked down the lane leading down the main road, heading towards the station. There was a faint strip of grey light illuminating the rooftops around them as the new day and its inhabitants roused. A steady stream of morning commuters drove past as the streetlights blinked off, one by one. Frost faintly crunched beneath their feet, lacing the fronts of windows and spidered across car windscreens. The cold air pinched at their cheeks and stole the breath from their lungs as they trudged along in silence, side by side.

Jean’s eyes drifted to Marco’s hand, swinging at his side, only inches away from his own. They were dangerously close to colliding and considering how well that went last time they really didn’t need an encore. Jean stuffed his hands in his pockets, ignoring the burn in them that desperately wanted to reach forward and grab Marco’s, and consciously slowed his pace by a fraction so he fell slightly behind just enough to get a gratifying view of Marco’s….

Jean clenched his fists inside his pockets, half-heartedly trying (but not really) divert his gaze from Marco’s denim-clad ass.

I am so gay for you, Marco Bodt.

The train station was already bustling with last minute Christmas shoppers and businessmen alike and in the throng of people it was pretty much unavoidable for Jean to end up practically pressed into Marco’s side as they fought through the crowds to get to the ticket machines. He could smell the mustiness of Marco’s jacket and blood rushed to his cheeks. He sincerely hoped he could blame it on the cold air.

“Wait here,” Marco said eventually. “I’ll go buy us tickets.” He squeezed past a woman arguing with a station attendant and disappeared from sight, leaving Jean to press himself against the wall and avoid getting trampled as much as possible.

God, this felt surreal. Obviously he’d spent time with Marco outside of work before- but the whole day! He was going to spend the whole day with Marco. He was almost ashamed to admit how giddy it made him feel, almost like being drunk. Going out with Marco.

He froze.

Wait…was this a date?

His heart began to thud.

It could certainly qualify as a date. Just the two of them, going to see an art exhibition, in the city… Maybe that had been Marco’s intention all along. Maybe this was part of a big plan to-

…To what?

Would Marco try and kiss him again?

Jean breathed out shakily and ran his fingers across his lips. Not like he had any intention of refusing said hypothetical kiss. Or was he overthinking this? Maybe Marco was just being nice- so wonderfully, overwhelmingly, intimately nice- and Jean didn’t have the right to get his hopes up that it could mean anything more.

Ten minutes later Marco returned and gave him his ticket. “We’re on Platform six, our train’s in fifteen minutes.”

They wormed their way through the ticket barriers and onto their platform, which was significantly quieter, and found an empty bench to sit together whilst they waited in an odd sort of silence.

Jean watched his feet next to Marco’s on the floor, trying not to let his gaze flit to Marco’s hand resting between them. He wished- he wanted to take it into his own so badly- but there were too many people around, and he was scared, he was unworthy, and he was far too much of a coward. He slid down in his seat, burying his chin in the fabric of his hoodie.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the city,” Marco said eventually.

“Yeah?” Jean sat up a little. “How long?”

Marco pulled a face. “Six or seven years ago? Longer, maybe? I think my grandfather took me when-” He broke off abruptly. His posture immediately stiffened.

Jean gave him a cautious sidelong glance. “When what?”

“Sorry, I just…” Marco shrugged helplessly, clearing his throat. “…when things got really bad between my parents.”

Jean’s breath hitched in his throat.

“He took me to the same museum that we’re going to today.” A small, shy smile slipped on Marco’s face as he fidgeted with the cup in his hands. “I…we were both really happy to get away from the bakery for once. And away from my parents. It was fun to just forget about everything for a few hours and just get lost in something else entirely. At least it was until…” The smile on his face dropped. “Grandpa struggled so much on the stairs between exhibits and I…I think that was the first time I realised he was getting ill and I…” he trailed off and glanced at Jean, looking somewhat surprised that he held a captive audience. “Sorry, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to-”

“Marco. It’s fine.” Jean reached out- hesitated, for one, long, hard second, his hand hovering in the air between them, before he rested it on top of Marco’s. “What were you going to say?”

Marco stared at their hands, lying on top of one another in surprise, as if he couldn’t quite believe Jean’s boldness, before he let out a long shaky breath that hung in the air before them, letting his shoulders sag. “I think…I think that was when I realised he wasn’t going to around forever. And with my parents fighting and being busy with work I-I think that’s when started to feel…alone. Truly alone.”

Jean felt Marco’s hand shift beneath his and jumped when Marco laced their fingers together.

His heart was pounding and it took every fibre of his being to keep his breathing even.

Don’t fight. Don’t fight.

He gripped Marco’s hand in response, savouring the warmth against his icy fingers, the strength imbued in his palm, the feel of Marco holding this small part of him, needing him.

Jean licked his lips apprehensively. “I-”

A train thundered past on the tracks and they both jerked in surprise. Jean snatched his hand away. Once again, the moment had been lost- quite literally slipped from beneath their fingertips- and they shared one brief, pointed glance before clearing their throats and looking away from each other, as if nothing had happened, the only difference being the shame reddening their cheeks.

It took painful, concentrated effort for Jean to not look at Marco that it seemed an age had passed before Marco was getting to his feet and gesturing to a train rattling into the station at their platform with a casual, “This is us.”

They boarded in silence, finding the carriages mercifully quieter than the station had been. Marco led Jean down the aisle until they slipped into empty seats across from each other with a table between them. Maybe that would make Jean keep his hands to himself.

He was ashamed. Every part of him wanted to pursue Marco, wanted to hold his hand a thousand times, rest his head on his shoulder and press his lips to every constellation on his freckled cheeks, but it just didn’t feel…right. A heavy sense of guilt pooling in the pits of his stomach made him wonder whether this was even OK. Did Marco’s feelings make him feel so validated he was just leading him on at this point? How did he ever think he could be enough for this person who’d been on his own for so long- how arrogant was it to assume that Jean would be whole enough to fill the void that had been part of a large chunk of Marco’s life?

The train set off and the industrial sector of Rose was quickly left behind them as they sped up, the scenery opening out to the sprawling countryside, sparkling with the frost in the grey morning light.

Jean watched the world go by as the train clattered over the rails for as long as he could before he finally gave in and let himself speak.

“That’s the first time you’ve talked to me about your family.”

Marco looked surprised. “Is it?” He shook his head. “No, I’ve told you about the bakery and everything before-”

“Sure, you’ve told me about your history. But not about your family. There’s a difference.”

“Oh yeah?” Marco gave him a weak smile. “What difference is that?”

Jean shrugged. He hadn’t been planning on giving a textbook definition. “Well it’s like- you know, it’s easy to talk about who people were and what they did but that’s, just, you know, a small portion of who they are. Who people are and I-I guess who you are- are defined by those around you? I don’t know. There’s a difference, OK?”

“OK.” Marco was still smiling, but there was little substance to it now. He was quiet for a moment. “Alright, say someone doesn’t see their family all that often. No, say they don’t see their family at all. How do you define yourself then?”

“I- I don’t know. I guess you find your own family in the people you care about. Like…you know…surrogate.”

“Huh.” Marco sounded thoughtful. He turned back to the window and propped his chin up in his palm, the landscape flickering past in his dark eyes before they turned back to Jean, full of apprehension. “By that definition, I guess you’re the closest thing I have to family. At the moment, anyway.”

An explosion of chills broke out on the back of Jean’s neck, shooting down his spine and making every hair on his body stand on end.

“S-sure,” he mumbled. “I guess.”

“That…made things pretty awkward, didn’t it?” Marco laughed weakly. The noise dim and hollow.

“No. ‘S fine.” Jean pressed his lips together. Marco had no idea how much hearing those words made his heart soar.

They lapsed into silence once more. Marco turned back to the window and Jean pulled his phone out of his pocket just to give him something to do other than linger in unpleasant silence, taut with unspoken words. It took him several moments to realise he was doing nothing more than swiping back and forth between his homescreens which was proving to be a futile distraction. Without realizing it, his gaze had already slid back to Marco, and he couldn’t stop himself from admiring the shape of his profile, the way he held his head slightly inclined to the window, his dark eyes reflecting the fleeting world rushing past them.

Jean placed his phone on the table and leaned back in his seat. His fingers ached for a pencil and the solid weight of his sketchbook propped up in his lap, just so he could capture the expression on Marco’s face- just so he could remember every handsome curve, every line and every fleck of pigment, every shadow, just to savour the image.

No…to savour the moment with him.

“You look really pretty,” Jean mumbled, without thinking.

He clapped his hand to his mouth.

Marco jerked at the sharp sound, looking genuinely surprised until he seemed to realise what Jean said.

It took similar effect to that if Jean had simply slapped him in the face.

His eyes widened and his cheeks pinked, clearly taken completely aback.

“Sorry?” he said, his voice barely more than a weak whisper.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

“U-uh- I didn’t mean- that didn’t come out right- I-I was just trying to say that- um- looking out of the window like that- you- er-” Jean’s face was ablaze with heat. He swallowed painfully. “It suits you.”

You stupid sonofa-                                                                                                  

Marco raised a disbelieving eyebrow. Jean held his breath. He couldn’t believe how unbelievably stupid he was to just open his mouth without thinking and saying whatever stupid shit had been plaguing him ever since he first caught himself staring at Marco’s butt all those months ago and realised just how…not-straight he was. He was such an idiot.

To his relief, Marco laughed.                                                                                             

“It suits me?” he repeated disbelievingly.

“Y-yeah. That’s what I was trying to say.”

“Well, thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.”

Jean deliberately avoided looking at Marco, carefully training his eyes on some fixed point in the distance out of the window without really registering what he was seeing and doing his best to focus on keeping his jaw clamped firmly shut, before his loose cannon of a love-struck tongue betrayed him again.

A minute or so passed before he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that Marco was still watching him, a satisfied smile playing on lips, like he knew something that Jean didn’t.

“All right, what are you doing now?”

“Nothing,” said Marco. His smile would have been infuriating if Jean didn’t love seeing it so much. “Just enjoying the view, I guess.”

Jean scoffed. He rapped his knuckles against the glass. “The windows on this side, dumbass.”

“I know.” Marco paused. “You’re right. I think there is a certain appeal.”

Jean’s heart skipped a beat in his chest, and though he opened his mouth to retort, no sound came out, scarcely a pathetic whimper. He couldn’t handle this for much longer. Sooner or later he was going to kiss Marco Bodt harder than he’d ever kissed anyone and only certain destruction or imminent death would be able to stop him. Especially if Marco kept on doing…this.

Flirting. Shameless, undeniable flirting.

Thankfully, Jean’s didn’t have to concoct an answer that might save some shred of his dignity, as they were interrupted by his phone vibrating across the table, its screen lighting up and flashing, indicating an incoming call.

“Who’s that?” Marco asked as Jean picked the phone up and scoffed at the contact icon.

“No one,” he said, swiping the dismiss button. “Just my mom.”

“Really?” Marco raised his eyebrows. “Your mom is ‘no one’?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Um, yeah, you did.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Jean gave Marco a withering look. “Nothing.”

“Jean...”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t just ignore your mom like that. Clearly she wants to talk to you. What if it’s important?”

Jean scoffed.

There was a terse pause.

“Jean- when was the last time you talked to her?”

Jean pressed his lips together, deliberately avoiding his gaze. He shrugged.

“Jean.”

Jean threw his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know! It’s been a while, all right? It’s not a big deal, so don’t-”

“But she’s your mother…”

“Yeah, and the last time I talked to her she made it pretty clear she didn’t approve of what I wanted to do with my life and did everything in her power to stop me.” Jean glowered at the edge of the table sourly.

“She wanted you to take a business course, didn’t she?” Marco was quiet for a few moments. “Have you told her what you’re doing now?”

“I haven’t talked to her properly since July.” A vague sense of homesickness bubbled up in Jean’s chest and he laughed bitterly in a vain attempt to suppress it. “But yeah, she knows I’m doing art. That’s it. I’ve told her I have a job but I didn’t say where and I haven’t…mentioned you.”

Marco chuckled. “You’ve got some nerve, Jean, lecturing me about family when you don’t even talk to your own. Why won’t you talk to her?”

“Just forget it. Like I said, it’s not a big deal.”

“I’m just trying to understand.” Marco rested his elbows on the table, leaning forwards in his seat. “Clearly she cares about you, otherwise she wouldn’t bother calling.”

“It’s not like I’ve totally blanked her. I keep intending to reply. I just…don’t.”

“Well-meaning intentions don’t count. How can you just ignore her like that?”

Jean bristled in his seat, feeling somewhat interrogated. How was he supposed to explain that the one person he’d never felt he could be himself around was the woman who’d raised him single-handedly for most of his life? He couldn’t make himself out to look like more of a thankless asshole if he tried.

“Look, I know that she just wants the best for me,” he began slowly. “But she and I have very different ideas of what is and isn’t worthwhile. And I just…I don’t know.”

“You don’t want to disappoint her?”

“Yeah. Sure. I guess so.”

“I’m sure she’s more disappointed that you won’t even talk to her.”

Jean rolled his eyes. “Can we not talk about this now? No offense, but I didn’t agree to come to this thing with you just to talk about my mom.”

“It sounds like you don’t trust her.”

Jean gave him a withering glance. “What did I just say, Marco?”

“Hey, hear me out. I understand.” Marco did his best to look encouraging. “Really, I do. Not trusting someone is…well, something I’m actually pretty familiar with.”

Marco’s gaze dropped to the surface of the table and they fell quiet once more as the train juddered to a halt. They were silent as several passengers disembarked and a few more boarded and as the train set off once again, neither of them spoke a word for a good few minutes before Marco cleared his throat.

“I’m an older brother, you know.”

Jean nearly choked on the breath in his lungs.

“You’re a-? I thought you were an only child?”

Marco gave him a feeble smile. “It feels like I am most of the time, but yeah, I have younger siblings. Half siblings, technically speaking.” He spread his hand and began counting off his fingers. “Rafaele, Stefan, Fiore, and little Aria, who I’ve never actually met. They’re my dad’s other kids.”

“O-oh.” Jean slid down in his seat, more than a little surprised. “You never-”

“I know I’ve never told you about them. Like you said, I’ve never told you about my family properly, have I?” Marco took a short breath. “But since we’re stuck on this train for another hour, might as well do it now. I mean, only if you want to-”

“Yeah, sure, go ahead.” Of course Jean wanted to know.

Marco nodded and folded his hands together on the table, then unfolded them, clasping them together in apprehension, before he began to speak.

“My parents met when my mom was working at the bakery. She was home schooled like me, and she’d spent her whole life in the same place, which is where she met my dad. He was an amateur photographer at the time and he found the bakery…inspiring I guess.”

“Me too.” Jean said before he could stop himself. Marco gave him an odd look and he hurriedly added, “I mean, the first time I saw it the first thing I wanted to do was draw it.” The bakery had always been enchanting and whimsical and an absolute feast for the appetite of any creative mind. He’d used it countless times for his art project before now, especially at the beginning, before his subject became more…Marco-centric.

“I…I guess it’s not too different to how we met, then, is it? If you think about it,” Marco said tentatively, his eyes flickering up to meet Jean’s for a split second before he shook his head and continued. “A-anyway. Needless to say, my dad quickly became a regular, and to make a long story short eventually Dad moved in with her, and then they had me. He still did photography- you know, weddings, parties, commissions, all that stuff- but mostly he and Mom worked in the bakery together. I think the idea was to give my grandfather the opportunity to retire. But, that didn’t work out so well.” He laughed. “My grandfather was way  too attached to the bakery, so of course he didn’t want to leave, and neither did my mom, so…that was a problem. I mean, the bakery isn’t huge to begin with, but with three people plus me, things were…well, cramped.”

Jean nodded, pulling a face. It was a modest building at best, maybe just big enough for two people, three at a push. Throw a kid into the mix and it was hard to imagine them not constantly tripping over each other.

“Dad wanted us to buy our own house. He wanted to move out, because, you know, that’s what people do when they start a family. Which is understandable, I guess. It would’ve given us a lot more room. But, like I said, Mom didn’t want to.” At this point Marco’s shoulders hunched over and his fingers wound themselves together on the table. “I…I guess she thought the best way to raise me would be the same way she had been raised. Which I’m not mad about,” he said hastily, “Don’t get me wrong, I love the bakery and I love what I do, but- you know…”

“I understand,” Jean said softly.

Marco’s knuckles whitened as he clenched his hands together. “I think they had very different ideas of what raising a kid meant. Dad wanted me to have a normal childhood, and go to a regular school, stuff like that. Obviously, that never happened but it didn’t stop them from fighting about it. It was…bad. I felt so guilty listening to them argue because- it felt like I was a problem. Their problem. And if I wasn’t around things would’ve been so much easier for them.”

“Marco, that’s not true-”

Marco shook his head, as if trying not to deter himself from telling his story. “Mom started writing her first book when I was about seven, and Dad travelled a lot for his photography jobs, but neither of them earned much, so we didn’t have a lot of money. They couldn’t have bought a house if they’d both wanted to. That’s not to say they weren’t busy- God knows they were always busy. Which is why I pretty much raised by my grandfather. It got to the point where Dad was only home once or twice a week, and it didn’t take long for…” He gave a humourless smile. “Mom figured out pretty quickly he was having an affair.”

“…Oh.”

“Exactly.” Marco was still smiling, but there was no trace of any substantial emotion behind it, not even a glint of bitterness or betrayal. “I didn’t know what was happening but I could tell that something wasn’t right. It felt like it came out of nowhere, but then again, if they couldn’t find time to spend with their son, I’m fairly certain they weren’t making time to spend with each other either, and how can a couple be happy if they don’t even see each other?”

Marco’s voice was gathering speed, his words practically seething with months- no, years of repressed resentment. Jean wanted to reach out and rest his hand on top of his, maybe lace their fingers together once more and try to be some semblance of comfort, but Marco’s hands were bound together so tightly they were almost bloodless.

“Mom didn’t say anything right away, at first they just started arguing more. When she got her first book deal and the money started coming in, I think she realised she might be able to build this ideal future that Dad wanted, and she figured that if she could give him that he might stay…” His voice trailed away and there was a short pause. When he spoke again, his voice was dark and hollow. “Well. That didn’t work.”

Jean didn’t know what to say. He was feeling somewhat overwhelmed at how forthcoming Marco was, seemingly out of nowhere. It was as if now he had broken the proverbial damn he’d held strong for so many months, his story was rushing forward in torrents, and he couldn’t stop.

“One night, Dad just sort of…broke. He came home, and they were arguing about something- I can’t remember what it was, something stupid, like they always did. Then I remember he was suddenly saying he’d met someone else and he was leaving and wasn’t coming back. I remember just…sitting on the stairs listening to him telling Mom all of this and just feeling numb.” Marco screwed up his eyes and tilted his head back. “It was the hardest thing to understand when I was so young- I knew my parents weren’t happy together, but I’d never imagined Dad not being there. To this day, I don’t understand why my father did something as bad as he did. I know Mom wasn’t a completely innocent victim, but still, she didn’t deserve this. I,” He hesitated. “I’m not sure I’ve actually completely forgiven him for that.

“Then he just…left. Without a word. Not even a goodbye.”

“Yeah.” Jean clenched his fists against his lap, thinking back to the nights spent huddled under his duvet, listening to his parents screaming like banshees until one night the front door banged shut and didn’t reopen, and all he could hear for hours after were his mother’s broken sobs echoing from the stairwell. Empathetic bitterness for Marco spiked in his heart. “I know how that feels.”

“I didn’t see him until he came back a few months later to see me. My mom was out at the time, so it was just Grandpa and I. Grandpa wasn’t happy to see him, but he still let Dad talk to me. He told me that what happened between him and Mom didn’t mean he didn’t still love me, and that he still wanted to be part of my life, and I wanted to believe him so badly, but what reason had he given me to justify the faith I had in him?” Marco’s voice wobbled, and he took a moment to compose himself with what looked like a great deal of effort. “After that visit, things just got worse.

“Home was bad. Mom completely isolated herself from us while she was working on her next book until she got her first book tour- it was nowhere near as big as the ones she does now, but she was still going to be away from home for a good month. And all this time, my grandfather was doing his best to take care of me and run the bakery by himself, even though he was getting old and long overdue to retire, even though his health was getting worse and worse…”

Marco’s voice trailed away once more, and this time it took him a good minute or so before he carried on.

“When I was eleven, Dad finally invited me to come stay with him for a few days. It took weeks to persuade my Mom to let me go, but eventually she did, and I met…her. The woman Dad left us for.” He took a deep breath. “His new wife, Carina. Well. His first wife, since he and Mom never got married, which is why I’ve got my Mom’s surname- that doesn’t matter.

“They live on the other side of the country, and it’s got to be seven or eight hours car journey at least- and by the time I finally got there I had no idea what I wanted to see. I expected Carina to be the fantasy stepmother, completely wicked and rotten to the core. I wanted to hate her so badly.” He shuddered as if he were repulsed at the very idea. “But she wasn’t like that at all. She was so…nice. She was nothing like this terrible woman my mom had made her out to be- although I guess her bias is understandable- but even though Carina did her best to make me feel at home for the time I was there, it just felt wrong. At this point they already had Rafaele, who was one at the time, and they were already expecting Stefan, my second half-brother.” He let out a dry chuckle. “It didn’t take my dad long to move on, did it?”

Jean managed a strained smile. “Guess not.”

“I never felt like I was part of their family whilst I was there. I was like a stranger hovering on the doorstep, being tolerated rather than welcomed. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe I was the problem. I just felt…wrong. My mom was always working and away from home, and my dad had already replaced her with someone else, and it felt like he was finding replacements for me as well.” Marco’s voice grew quieter. “I loved my grandfather with all my heart. I still do. He was the only person there for me when I had no one, but…well, he was my grandfather…”

“I get it,” Jean said. “There’s only so much company an old man can provide to a kid, right?”

“Right.” Marco pressed his lips into a thin line. “I still heard from my dad, and I spent a few days with them every couple of years or so, so I got to meet Stefan, and Fiore, my first half-sister, after they were born. It didn’t get any better though. Every visit made this…” He gestured helplessly in the air. “-rift between my dad and I grow bigger and bigger. Things were changing and I wasn’t around enough to be a part of it- I felt stuck- trapped- in the past whilst everyone else was moving forwards.” He let out a dry chuckle that sounded more like a mitigating wheeze. “Sometimes I’m convinced it would have been so much easier if we’d never spoken again.”

“That’s can’t be true,” Jean interrupted. “He still wanted to see you, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t keep inviting you back.”

 Marco squeezed his eyes shut. “That’s not the point, Jean. It hurt me seeing them all so happy when I was just the awkward first son from the awkward first relationship that went down in flames. I didn’t fit in. Their family was so perfect and mine was so broken- it made things at home seem so much worse, and it just seemed like my dad didn’t need me, now he had another family, and I was back to feeling guilty.”

“Why?”

“Because he didn’t need me. He had his new, perfect family- his new, perfect wife, and his four perfect, normal kids. I was- I am just the product of a mistake. Nothing,” he said savagely. “will ever convince me that that’s not true. No matter how many times Dad said he still wanted to see me- how could I believe him? The telephone calls and visits dwindled with time and when we did speak neither of us knew what to say. We were strangers who happened to be related.

“I know now that him leaving was probably for the best, but how could I trust him when he left us in such a bad place? Mom was completely obsessed with work, Grandpa was ill, and my whole world had come to pieces in the span of a few short years.”

Jean waited, but Marco appeared to have finally run out of steam. He was hunched over the table, clutching at his arms and completely avoiding Jean’s gaze.

Jean licked his lips apprehensively. “That’s it?” he asked tentatively.

Marco peeked up at him from beneath his lashes. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“I think that’s enough for one day, don’t you?”

Jean folded his arms apprehensively. “So…what about now?”

“Now?” Marco paused. He exhaled a long, exhausted stream of breath. “I still talk to my dad, but not often. I have another half-sister, that’s Aria, but I’ve never met her. I think she’s three now, so that means it’s been…four and a half years since I last went to visit. As for my mom…I think the last time she was home was a week or two before I met you. And obviously my grandfather is no longer with us.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you alright now? Do you miss them? Are you still lonely?”

Marco visibly hesitated. His fingers dug into his arms as he looked away before he exhaled and finally met Jean’s gaze directly. His dark eyes were bleak, the light in every golden fleck extinguished, leaving a barren, haunted abyss behind.

“Sometimes more than I can bear.” His voice shook. “It’s gotten worse since…since I…”

Marco licked his lips and apprehension hung thick in the air until it became clear he had little intention of finishing his sentence.

At that moment Jean wanted nothing more than to reach out and hold Marco close to him, tight enough to create the illusion of security. He wanted to be close enough to hold his delicate heart in both hands and place it with his own until they beat in perfect synchrony. He wanted to be the one to make Marco see he didn’t exist in solitude and Jean’s feelings for him, laced into his ribcage, were so strong they physically hurt.

I’m here. I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you. I won’t ever leave you.

But how many times must Marco have heard those words before from the people who were supposed to love him the most? How many times had his father promised to be around to watch him grow up? How many times had his mother sworn she’d be home in time to kiss him goodnight? How many times did his grandfather swear he’d never let Marco be alone, before life’s cruel hand voided his promise? It was arrogant of Jean to assume that only his words were sincere, and even more so to presume that they would bring Marco any comfort. Words were fragile, promises could be broken, hearts shattered like glass.

What made Jean’s words any different?

 “When we first met,” Jean said tentatively, “you told me you could never be lonely as long as you were doing what you loved.”

Marco blinked in surprise before he snorted. “This might come as a surprise, Jean, but I think I might’ve lied.”

“Well that’s obvious now.”

Marco gave him a tentative smile. “I’m surprised you remembered.” His voice was relatively soft in comparison to the resentment that had sharpened it only moments ago. “Do you…do you remember much? About the night we met?”

Jean hesitated. It would be so much easier to lie. He could blame it on the alcohol, or claim his words had long since been lost in a haze of nicotine and the stuffy summer air of that night that seemed both scarcely a moment past and years long gone.

“Every moment,” he said reverently.

He though he saw a glimmer of something pass over Marco’s face- something he couldn’t quite discern- that deepened the lines of his smile and reignited a brief spark in his eyes for a brief second before he shook his head.

“Anyway,” Marco continued, “You understand, don’t you?”

“Understand?”

“Why I told you about everything?”

“Um…” Jean frowned. He’d hoped that it was just a sign of Marco finally showing him that he trusted him- which might still be part of the reason- but somehow, he got the feeling Marco meant something else.

At Jean’s extended silence, Marco gave him a withering look. “I’m trying to tell you that family is important. I…I never got to know mine. Not properly. And it’s hard. I don’t like spending all this time by myself, I don’t like having to run a business alone, and I don’t-”

“But you’re not. You’re not doing it alone anymore.” Jean licked his lips apprehensively before he reached over the table and lay his hand on top of Marco’s. “You’ve got me.”

He held his breath, hardly daring to believe the words that had tumbled from his mouth. They came so easily, there was no biting his tongue, no sour feeling curdling in the pits of his stomach when he spoke.

Because it was the truth.

The same glimmer passed over Marco’s face once again, manifesting itself in a small, shy smile as he laced his fingers with Jean’s and gripped them tightly.

“Yeah. I…I do, don’t I?”

Jean smirked. “You do.”

“But…that’s not my point.” Marco’s expression fell and he twitched his hand away. “Jean, I…I want you to see that family is precious- I’d give anything to be close to mine- and even though yours is small, she still wants to see you, and she still wants to talk you. And you shouldn’t…take that for granted.”

Jean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. His instinct was to mask the guilt pervading the edge of his sense, slowly sinking into the pits of his stomach like an anchor, by being facetious. He did his best to muster a sympathetic expression.

Marco’s brow creased. “You all right?”

Sympathetic expression was not a success.

“I’m fine.” Jean hesitated. “Look, I…I get it. I’m sorry about your family- I mean, not that it means much, since I can’t change things but- but what I can do- if you want, or you know, need me- uh- what I’m trying to say- well, I’m here for you now. And…if I can ever do anything to help- yeah. I’m, uh, here. I guess.”

“You want to help?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Marco smiled and slid Jean’s phone across the table. “Then call your mom.”

“Marco-”

“Please, Jean. For me, if not for yourself.”

Jean sighed. “I’ll call her later.”

“At the very least send her a text. Let her know you’re doing OK.” Marco raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to keep pestering until you do it.”

Jean closed his eyes and begrudgingly obliged. He picked up his phone and began to compose a short message.

Hi Mom. I’m sorry it’s been a while, I’ve been busy. Thought I should let you know work and college is going fine. We’re paying our rent on time and only had our electricity shut off once.

He read this out loud to Marco, who gave him a mingled look of pity and amusement.

“You think she wants to know about electricity?”

“Well, what else am I supposed to say?” Jean retorted defensively.

“Tell her about you. Tell her you’re happy, at the very least- I mean,” Marco looked stricken. “You are, aren’t you?”

Happy? Not quite. Try: hopelessly head-over-heels, pathetically hung up over, and completely and utterly into you.

“…Sure.” Jean tapped at his phone for a few more seconds. “Life is good and I’m happy. There, is that enough?”

“Well, you won’t be going down in history as one of literature’s greats,” Marco said with a teasing grin playing on his lips. “But yeah. That’s fine.”

Jean scowled. “You’re the worst.” He paused, his thumb hovering over the send button, before he tapped in an extra couple of sentences.

Have a good Christmas. I miss you.

He bit his lip and pressed send before he had the chance to delete it.

“Thank you, Jean.”

“No problem,” he mumbled. “You’re probably right, I needed to say something sooner or later.”

“Aren’t I always right?”

“You’re always an ass, that’s for sure.”

“Hey! That’s not true. You’re ten times more of an ass than me. A…uh…likable ass.”

Jean fought, with little success to keep the smile on his face from stretching into a delighted grin.

“Thanks. I like you, too.”

…

Krovla’s Museum of Science and Culture was a big, old building, looking very out of place between the glass plated sky scrapers surrounding it. It was bedecked in silver glimmering lights and inside the entrance hall, every suit of armour and globe and picture frame was liberally decorated with tinsel whilst tinny Christmas carols played on endless repeat from the speakers on main desk.

Marco showed the receptionist their admission passes and she directed them up a flight of stairs and across a walk way to the exhibition hall where the event was taking place. They got their tickets out, but before they could give them to the security guard they were admitted entrance with a careless wave.

“What’s the point of the tickets if they don’t even check them?” Jean said once they were out of earshot.

“It’s the last day of the exhibition, he probably doesn’t care. Maybe it’s just a bit of seasonal goodwill.”

“Ugh, don’t give me that.” Jean rolled his eyes. “Might I remind you ‘seasonal goodwill’ is the reason I don’t have a single shirt in my closet that doesn’t have icing sugar on it.”

Marco smiled. “You don’t like Christmas?”

“Eh. It’s alright.” He shrugged. “Kind of gets less fun as you get older.”

“Yeah. I get that.”

The exhibition hall was a big, open atrium, with a dome shaped ceiling, decorated with a circular mural depicting the sky at different times during the day- sunrise, with its duck-egg blue sky and candyfloss clouds; midday, stark and bright with birds and vines creeping around the borders of the mural; sunset, dark and enchanting with rich streaks of red and orange and purple; and finally, midnight, an inky sky with golden stars forming several familiar constellations Jean recognised- Gemini, Taurus, Canis Minor and Betelgeuse, to name a few.

Jean glanced over to his side and smiled surreptitiously to himself as Marco tipped his head back and mouthed, “Whoa.” From this angle and where they were standing, he could see the stars of the mural reflected in Marco’s dark eyes, accentuating the tiny gold flecks, so this time, it truly did look like he held a galaxy trapped beneath the surface of his iris.

The hall itself was divided with display boards mounted with artwork, forming a maze of canvases and sculptures displayed on makeshift plinths in the middle of it all. It was busier than Jean had anticipated. There were plenty of pretentious, city-dwelling, eclectic hipster types milling aimlessly about, peering at the paintings with well-practised worldly wise, overly solemn expressions.

“So, what about you?” Jean asked as they wandered towards the first display. “You seem like the kind of guy who gets really festive, but you didn’t even decorate the bakery?”

Marco hesitated, pulling a face. “It’s not that I don’t like Christmas. I guess I’ve just been too busy to think about decorating. No, I can’t say I’m looking forward to it much this year.”

“Why not?”

“Well...up until this year, I spent it with my grandfather. Last year was hard.” Pain briefly flitted across Marco’s expression. “At least Mom had the decency to come home- she tries to for the holidays, or at least she says she does- but last year, it was only a month before Grandpa passed away, so he wasn’t well. Definitely not a happy Christmas.”

“Oh. Right.” Jean looked away guiltily. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“It’s OK.”

“Is your Mom coming home for Christmas?”

“She was supposed to arrive yesterday, but there’s snowstorms where she is at the moment and her flight was cancelled. She said she was going to try and get a different plane, but she’s got New Years’ events with her publishers a few days after Christmas so I don’t know. I might not see her.”

They fell into an uncomfortable silence as they both turned away from each other and stared at the painting they’d come to a halt at. It was a simple landscape of an industrial city. The colour palette was extremely dark and grey and the image was depicted with careful, precise brushstrokes, forming the blocky, grim, stylistically angular architecture.

“So…” Jean began tentatively. “What about…?”

“My dad’s family?”

Jean nodded.

“They try, I guess. We exchange Christmas cards. I might get a Skype call or a letter if I’m lucky.”

“No presents?”

“I don’t think they know me well enough to know what I like.” Marco laughed, but it was mirthless and bitter once more. A pang of sympathy struck in Jean’s chest.

“I guess that’s not the important part,” he said hesitantly. “If they cared, they’d want to spend time with you.”

“It’s not that they don’t care.” Marco shrugged. “It’s…well, it’s easier, I guess, to barely talk to each other. It’s hard to put into words- it’s like…getting you to text your mom.”

Jean raised an eyebrow. “How’s that even remotely similar?”

“You didn’t talk to her because you didn’t care about her, right?”

 “No…?”

“It was just easier not to do anything.” Marco gestured vaguely. “You see what I mean? All relationships take work on both sides to maintain, no matter what kind they are. My family just doesn’t have that. They care, just…not a lot. Not enough to want to see each other at least once a year, or send gifts, or just talk about…nothing.”

“Christmas must fucking suck for you.”

“Pretty much.” Marco smiled thinly. “Feeling extra lonely this time of year is the closest thing I have to a Christmas tradition.”

“That’s…sad.”

“I know, right?”

Jean didn’t know what to say. All right, so Marco’s life wasn’t as perfect and seamless and he let on. But seeing him laugh and smile whilst speaking words practically dripping with resentment and heavy with the weight of a thousand grudges was disheartening, to say the least, bordering on upsetting. Marco had spent so long by himself it was as if he’d forgotten there were people he was allowed to be vulnerable around.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn this trip into one big pity party.” Marco laughed. “I’m a huge fucking loser, I know.”

“No- no, it’s fine. I’m kind of happy, actually. I’m glad you opened up for once,” Jean admitted, scratching the tip of his nose awkwardly. “It’s…nice to know you trust me.”

Marco glanced over at him, the faint glimmer of something more powerful than his succinct smile passing over his lips before he turned back to examine the paintings.

“So, what do you think of this one?”

They’d come to a stop in front of a large canvas depicting a semi-abstract portrait of a woman with a cluster of roses of a head. The vines and thorns snaked around her milk-white limbs, and as Jean took a step forward, he could see a face contorted in a silent scream between the rose petals.

“Kind of creepy, not going to lie.”

“What, there’s no metaphor?”

“I’m sure there’s some bullshit symbolism of the confines of society with some deep, powerful message in there somewhere.” Jean smirked. “But honestly this just looks like something the artist hallucinated because they hadn’t slept for the past week.”

“All right, how about this one?” Marco pointed at a smaller picture a little way off.

Jean screwed up his eyes as he scrutinized the monochromatic image of a pair of dice starting to crumble at the edges, decaying fragments laying at the bottom of the picture.

“Broken dreams,” he declared. “Giving in to greed and gambling. Either that or someone was pissed that they were missing pieces to their Dungeons and Dragons set.”

Marco chuckled softly and Jean felt his heart swell.

“And this one?”

Jean looked over to see Marco stood in front of a still life. He came over to stand at his side and gazed at the almost renaissance-style piece, depicting a basket of food on a wooden table in front of a latticed window, through which there was an amber coloured oak tree. Leaves drifted from its mighty boughs to the yellowing lawn. The entire colour palette utilised the rich, intense colours of autumn.

“…New beginnings,” he said.

Marco put his head on one side, looking doubtful. “Really? New beginnings? Isn’t that represented better in spring? Everything in this is dying.”

“Not everything.” Jean pointed at the food basket in the foreground. It was crammed with crimson apples, miniature pumpkins, and grainy, hearty loaves of bread, shaded so realistically Jean half expected the crust to flake off if he ran his fingertips across their surface. “Food is used to symbolise energy. Even though everything else may be dying,” he gestured to the tree. “Life goes on, even though everything changes. The seasons. The colours.” He swallowed. “The people.”

“Not going to lie, I’m a bit disappointed that wasn’t as snarky.”

Jean scowled and elbowed Marco in the ribs.

“Hey, you were the one who asked what it meant.”

“I didn’t think you were going to take it seriously,” Marco grinned, rubbing where Jean had jabbed him before he lowered his hand, letting his gaze drift back to the painting. “Still, I’m…I’m kind of jealous.”

“Jealous? What, of me?”

Marco nodded.

“Why?” Jean asked incredulously.

“You’ve got something to be passionate about. I don’t know, I’ve always found that admirable. I’m jealous you have dreams and you’re doing your best to pursue them.”

“I would have those dreams if it wasn’t for you.”

Jean spoke before he could stop himself again. A small smile quirked at the corners of Marco’s lips, but his cheeks were slowly flushing as he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

“Marco? Is that you?”

Jean and Marco both jumped and spun around in surprise at the sound of their names.

Standing behind them was the tattooed woman they knew from the bakery. Her heavily inked arms were hidden under a fashionably tattered dark grey sweater and she’d replaced the metal plugs in her ears with dark ones emblazoned with snowflakes. She was grinning broadly as she cocked her hand in greeting.

“Oh, hi!” Marco said. “Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you too.” She glanced between the two of them. “You boys are awfully far from home. Not at the bakery today?”

“Nope, closed until after Christmas,” Marco replied.

“Thank God,” Jean said.

Marco gave him a sarcastic look over his shoulder which Jean returned, raising an eyebrow as if daring Marco to contradict him.

“Well, I didn’t expect to run into you today. I didn’t know you liked art, Marco,” the woman said, looking pleasantly surprised.

“No, not me, it’s Jean who likes art.”

Jean grinned half-heartedly as she turned to look at him, her expression brightening.

“Oh, yes, of course! I think I remember Marco said something about you studying art, or something?” she said, looking thoughtful. “Ah, makes sense then, that must be why you’re here for this exhibit. It’s a culmination of new and upcoming artists, mostly art school graduates, which is why we’re here.”

Marco blinked, politely confused. “We?” He echoed.

The woman jerked her thumb over her shoulder at a short, dark haired man standing several feet away, looking critically at a painting. He was wearing a dark coat with its collar upturned, but from where he was standing, Jean could just about make out a few distinctive curls of ink emblazoned around his throat. The man’s face was puckered up in a scowl of either distaste or scrutiny- Jean couldn’t tell- as his steely grey eyes flickered up and down the canvas, clearly in the middle of a highly scathing, in-depth critical process.

“Me and him,” the woman said cheerfully. “That’s Levi, he’s the owner at the tattoo parlour where I work. We’ve got a temporary vacancy at the shop, so we come to art exhibits like this to scout out fresh talent and new designs.”

“Oh.”  Jean said. “That’s- uh- interesting. I didn’t know tattoo shops worked like that.”

“They don’t, usually.” She placed one hand on her hip and tilted her head to the side, looking rather proud. “But Levi doesn’t like to do things like they’re usually done. Even if the artists we scout aren’t tattoo artists specifically, he believes in collaborating with a large spectrum of artists from all walks of life for- well, for a variety of reasons actually.”

Jean could feel Marco’s eyes boring into the side of his skull so hard he could practically hear what he was trying to say with every fibre of his being. He ignored him. “Like what?”

“Publicity, for the artist, first and foremost. Business, for both them and us- well, not me specifically, I’m just a piercer- but you know, the tattoo shop itself. Plus, it’s good for the customers, it gives them a wider variety of designs and artists to choose from. It’s a great system for commission work for all the freelance artists out there.”

“That’s…pretty cool.” A vague idea was starting to form in Jean’s head- maybe it would be worth his time to take his sketchbook down to this tattoo shop and see where his luck might take him…

“I didn’t know this was an exhibit for graduates,” Marco interjected.

“Really?” The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Then-?”

“This is Jean’s Christmas gift from me,” Marco said, shooting him a small smile. “Because he’s been so busy with his college work and extra hours at the bakery I thought it’d be a nice thank you.”

“Aw, Marco, that’s so sweet! You’re a lucky guy, Jean,”

Jean felt his cheeks redden and he ducked his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he scuffed the floor with the tip of his shoe. “Yeah…sure am,” he mumbled into his chest.

“I- I mean- as a friend, of course,” she hurriedly added. “A-anyway, speaking of which, I would love to see some of your art sometime, Jean-”

“Petra? Who are these?”

The three of them looked up over Petra’s shoulder to see the short, scowling man had come over to where they were standing and was regarding Jean and Marco with about as much contempt you’d expect someone to give a dead bird their pet cat had dragged in.

Petra didn’t seem fazed by his stormy expression in the slightest. Her sunny expression didn’t falter in the slightest as she beckoned him over.

“Just a couple of friends,” she said.

Levi looked the two of them up and down. Jean felt like some kind of criminal under his unyielding glare, as if his very existence was highly offensive and vaguely felt like he owed the man some sort of apology. He snuck a glance over at Marco to see a similar indeterminate look of mild panic on his face, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He resisted the urge to reach over and give his hand a reassuring squeeze.

“You know these two?” Levi narrowed his gaze. Now he was standing closer to them, Jean could see the tattoos on his neck more clearly- a black sun and moon inked on either side, intertwining at the base of his throat, the tips of the designs just licking his jawline.

“Yeah, this is Marco, and this is Jean. This is Levi,” Petra turned back to the two of them. “My employer and the guy who did most of my tattoos.”

Jean nodded and Marco mumbled something resembling a ‘nice to meet you’ before they fell into a long, awkward silence, exchanging tentative glances at one another as Levi glowered at them.

“U-um, Marco runs the bakery that I live next to!” Petra said in an attempt to break the silence. “The one where I buy everyone pastries from!”

“Really? This kid?” Levi’s expression didn’t flicker. “And you?”

It took Jean a second to realise Levi was staring pointedly at him.

“Oh, me?”

“Ain’t no one else I’m talking to, kid.”

“I- uh- work there too.”

“Huh.” Levi crossed his arms over his chest, looking between the two of them. “You two on a date or something?”

Jean opened his mouth to reply before the words fully sunk in, and when they did, it was like being drenched in cold water. His heart leapt into the back of his throat and his face ignited, his stomach clenching. He dimly registered Marco was stammering at his side, but all he could focus on was that one word.

Date. Date.

You two on a date?

Is that what this looked like to other people? Had they been wandering around so intimately they just exuded something that screamed ‘we are a couple’ despite that not- unfortunately- being the case?

Wait- unfortunately? Did Jean seriously just express chagrin at the fact they weren’t together?

That was a first. A terrifying first that made his knees weak, his heart flutter in his chest, and made it painfully hard to resist biting the back of his knuckles and screaming. The incessant questions whirled around his head in a tempest he’d long since given up trying to quell.

“A-ah, nope, no, noooo they’re not!” Petra yelped. “They’re just friends they’re not- well, Marco is, but Jean- actually I don’t- not that that matters but- no, no, they’re not together, they’re just friends and this isn’t- ah, I’m just making this worse, aren’t I?”

Levi grunted sarcastically. “Just say no.”

“That’s probably our cue to leave you two be,” Petra gabbled, flashing Jean and Marco an apologetic grin that looked more like an awkward grimace. She grabbed hold of Levi’s arm and started steering him away in the opposite direction. He didn’t look thrilled to be manhandled in such a way, but he didn’t resist, as Petra called over her shoulder, “Sorry about that, you two- you guys have a good day, alright? And happy Christmas!”

“Happy Christmas,” Jean and Marco mumbled together as they watched Levi and Petra’s retreating figures get swallowed in the depths of the gallery setup.

Tension crackled in the air between them, so thick it felt physically stifling. Jean didn’t know whether he had it in him to dare look at Marco again. Part of him knew if he tried there was a good chance his weak heart would give way and he’d go down like a wet noodle.

“So,” Marco eventually said- the slight tremble in his voice didn’t go unheard- “at least now we know her name is Petra?”

Jean snorted.

“Sure. That’s what we got out of that conversation.”

“What, you got something more? Do tell.”

“You mean besides nearly pissing myself once that terrifying midget started talking?”

Jean laughed when he saw the dopey, relieved grin on Marco’s face out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m so glad that wasn’t just me.” Marco ran his fingers through his hair. “You felt it too, right? He was just so- so…”

“Threatening? Despite being the size of a twelve year old?”

Marco covered his mouth with his hand, laughing. “Jean! What if he hears you?”

“Then I’m just asking to get my ass kicked.” Not that he cared. He’d take a thousand ass-kickings by a pint-sized, fierce-faced tattoo artist just to see that glorious expression on Marco’s face right now- the light in his eyes, the joy in the lines around his smile, his freckled cheeks ripe with laughter. Something warm spread its wings in Jean’s chest as if his very heart wanted to soar from the confines of his ribs. What he wouldn’t give to see that smile every day of his life.

“Come on, it wasn’t that funny,” he said. Not that he wanted Marco to stop.

“I know, I know- I just…” Marco straightened up and for a second their eyes locked onto one another so directly Jean felt his heart somersault in his chest. “It’s…no, never mind. I shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t what?”

Marco shrugged and turned away, making his way down through the gallery so Jean had to trot to keep up. They passed by and lingered next to a few more paintings in silence- churning maelstroms of colour forming visual metaphors neither of them particularly appreciated. The noise of other people around them gradually died down as they moved through the exhibit, the crowd thinning out to maybe one or two individuals wandering around the closer they got to the exit. It wasn’t until they were completely out of earshot of anyone did Jean dare to speak.

“People keep making that mistake, don’t they?” It came out as more of a statement than a question.

“What mistake?” Marco asked.

Jean closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. His heart wavered, hesitance flickering on the tip of his tongue. He clenched his fists. “People think we’re…”

“Oh.”

Jean didn’t even need to finish the sentence.

“Y-yeah. I guess they do.” Marco take a short breath. “That…that must be annoying for you, right?”

Jean hesitated, digging his nails into his palm. He bit his lip. Stop it. Stop resisting. “Marco?”

“Yeah?”

“You were honest with me. Really honest. And I’m grateful that you were.” It was an effort to keep his breathing steady at this point. “I-I don’t think it’s annoying. Not anymore.”

He was dimly aware of the almost alarmed glance Marco shot him out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t bring himself to react. It was taking every ounce of self-control he possessed to not grab Marco by his waist, spin him around and make a public spectacle out of kissing him, hard, for all to see.

“Not anymore…” Marco echoed, sounding thoughtful, and maybe- was that just Jean’s imagination?- maybe a little wistful. “That’s…that’s good. I think.”

They walked through a few more sections of the exhibit, but Jean had almost completely lost interest in the artwork by now. His mind was elsewhere and all he could think of was Marco and how badly he wanted Marco and how everything came back to Marco.

He followed Marco through the last few displays, not paying any attention to the art around them, and instead, tipped his head back to the mural on the ceiling. His gaze lingered on the midnight blue of the night sky, tracing the shapes each golden constellation made with his finger against his thigh.

It took him a moment to realise Marco was watching him carefully, and a second later, followed his gaze. They didn’t speak for a moment, both absorbed in the art above them.

“Do you like stars, Jean?” Marco asked.

Jean hesitated.

“Not until recently.”

“When’s recently?”

Jean didn’t reply, only letting his eyes dart over to give Marco a long, meaningful look.

Comprehension quickly dawned on Marco’s freckled face. “O-oh.”

“I know.” Jean let his gaze drop and a defeated grin play on his lips. “It’s really cheesy. You don’t have to tell me.”

“That’s not what I- no, it’s…” Marco closed his eyes, visibly swallowed, crossed then uncrossed his arms. “Jean…can I show you something?”

Jean blinked. He shrugged. “Sure.”

Marco glanced towards the exit, then back at Jean, and before Jean had time to react, seized hold of his hand in a remarkable act of boldness that took Jean so aback he couldn’t even protest as Marco pulled him out of the exhibition hall and led him back along the walkway, back to the stairs.

His hand was hot against Jean’s palm. Every nerve in Jean’s fingertips felt like they were buzzing, as if they’d touched fire and screamed to be yanked back. But he didn’t want to. He had hold of him- he was touching him, had him in his grasp, and the tighter he squeezed, the more affirmation this was real, and exhilaration coursed through him, dizzying and intoxicating, like a drug.

Jean let Marco lead him up four flights of stairs, ignoring the burn in his calves as they climbed past the History exhibits and the Science floor, completely oblivious for the first time in his life to the people who stared at their blatant display of hand holding as they passed.

Higher and higher they climbed, until they reached the top floor and Jean finally came crashing back down to reality as Marco’s grip on his hand loosened and eventually fell away.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to drag you all the way- I just- I thought you’d like this,” Marco apologised with a wan smile. There was a wispy breathlessness to his voice- probably from climbing all those stairs at such a rapid pace, but all the same, Jean smiled back, his heart hammering against his chest as he reached out and slipped his hand back into Marco’s once more.

“That’s OK. What did you want to show me?”

The grin that split Marco’s face as he stared at their hands made Jean feel physically dizzy.

“This way.” He stepped forwards, gently tugging Jean along, who finally looked at his surroundings properly.

They were completely alone on the top floor of the museum. It was structured into one long hallway made even narrower by the display cases lining either side of the corridor. Jean peered through the glass as they walked past; there were old microscopes, telescopes, diagrams in research notebooks, maps charting the sky, a model of the moon skewered with a miniature flag, photographs of old men with monocles and impressive facial hair, newspaper clippings from the last century declaring the successes and failures of various space exploration programs, and framed pictures of celestial bodies in the midst of exploding- red giant, white dwarf, supernova.

Marco brought him to a halt at the end of the hall where there was a pair of double doors. He grasped one of the handles, glancing at Jean with a delighted look in his eyes.

“This was my favourite part the last time I was here,” he said breathlessly. “I think you’ll- I know you’ll love it.”

Marco opened the door and Jean let him pull him through into a room that was in complete darkness.

“…Marco, I can’t see a thing.”

He peered into the gloom as Marco chuckled at his side.

“Come on.” He tugged on Jean’s hand and led him down what felt like a ramp slowly descending into the centre of the room, their only source of light a few faint purple LEDs glowing at their feet.

Jean stumbled over his own feet and cursed. “Are you sure we’re even allowed to be in here?” He had no idea what to anticipate. The whole situation had a locked-in-the-broom-cupboard-alone-together vibe, and he wasn’t sure he was entirely opposed to that.

“We’re fine. Look,”

They’d reached what Jean assumed was the centre of the room and were standing next to a squat, cylindrical object, just about illuminated with a few more weak purple lights. Now that his eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, Jean could just about make out the room they were in- it was entirely circular and there were two or three rows of empty seats ringing around them, slightly tilted back to face the domed ceiling. There was a switch on the thing between them labelled with a polite notice: ‘Please turn off when finished.’

“It would’ve been nice to come and see one of the shows here,” Marco said. “But since it’s just us, I think this’ll be fine.”

“Marco-”

Before Jean could say anything more, Marco bent over and flicked the switch. There was a dim whirring noise as the projector between them flickered to life.

A second later, and the room exploded into stars.

Jean’s mouth gaped open as he tipped his head back, staring in wonder, totally captivated as tiny beads of light speckled the entirety of the room. The overall effect was a little disorientating- some of the stars seemed to linger in mid-air, suspended in nothing even though they were only projections. Slowly, the night sky began to revolve around them, their little personal galaxy completely ignited, so tiny in principle and massive in scale.

“Wow,” Jean said in scarcely a whisper. “I…wow.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Marco said. “I knew you’d like it.”

Jean looked over at him. Marco was staring at a constellation directly above them, his face illuminated by the projector and the hundreds of tiny stars it cast onto his chest and cheeks. They reflected in his eyes, truly alive and bright for real this time, as if the sadness that had come into them only hours earlier was unfathomable.

“You look really pretty,” Jean said.

Marco gave him a funny look, laughing uncertainly. “Don’t you mean it suits me?”

“No.” Jean shook his head and gripped Marco’s hand a little tighter. “I think you look pretty.”

His heart was racing so fast he almost couldn’t feel it anymore. There was blood pounding through his veins and breath in his lungs coming back and forth so rapidly it was impossible to process it all anymore. All he could feel was Marco in his hand, see Marco in his eyes, and knew this was their moment.

“Your freckles-”

“Hm?” Marco let go of Jean’s hand to touch his own face self-consciously. “What about them?”

“They match up with the stars.” Jean murmured. “They match perfectly.”

He took a tentative step closer, just close enough to feel the heat of Marco’s breath fluttering against his cheek.

Marco eyes flickered across Jean’s face, the colour in his cheeks not disguised by the lack of light. His lips scarcely parted as he said, “Show me.”

Jean reached out, hesitant, before he let his fingertip graze over Marco’s cheek, barely ghosting along the surface of his freckled face. He was warm from the exertion of climbing all those stairs and let out the smallest breath as Jean made contact, making his heart skip a beat.

Trembling, Jean trailed across the little arc the silver stars made on Marco’s face, chills exploding all the way down his arm, his heart quivering deep in his chest.

“Gemini,” he breathed, following the constellation down the divot Marco’s cheekbone made and along the firm line of his jaw, his fingertip catching against the rough, callused ghost of Marco’s stubble.

Marco closed his eyes and Jean’s breath caught in his throat at the delicate curves of his eyelashes, his high browbone shadowed beautifully in the dim light, his cheeks literally sparkling with constellations. The freckles on the inner corners of his nose by his eyes dappled gold, something he’d never been close enough to notice before- and he was beautiful, too damn beautiful, beautiful enough to conquer the darkness, and Jean couldn’t handle it anymore-

Jean’s finger wandered over the bridge of Marco’s nose, his touch featherlight, tracing the projection along the expanse of his cheek, down to the bow of his lips.

“Aries,” he whispered. His voice was shaking.

He was so close. He had hold of him. He could feel him, he was real, more than a drawing on a page, more than a star in the sky. He was perfect, he was here, and Jean had nothing left to refuse.

His thumb skimmed over the surface of Marco’s lips, so supple and soft. Marco quivered beneath his touch, parting his lips as Jean’s thumb swept across them.

He cupped Marco’s cheek in one hand- and raised the other. He paused- and clasped Marco’s face with both hands.

 And with that, he kissed him.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twelve

Marco stiffened in surprise beneath Jean’s fingers and almost felt as if he were on the verge of recoiling and reflexively pushing Jean off him. Jean screwed up his eyes, focusing on trying to channel every unspoken word, every closely guarded throb of desire for just a few more, painful, precious seconds before he withdrew, breathless, the burn of the kiss lingering on his lips. His heart slammed against his ribs, practically ricocheting off every surface it could, like it had become entirely disjointed.

Marco’s dark eyes were wide like a startled rabbit, Jean’s boldness having rendered him nearly catatonic. The seconds ticked by and the moment began to seem like nothing more than a shared hallucination. Anti-climax soured the tip of Jean’s tongue, chagrin pounding into the tips of his bloodless fingers as the tension in his shoulders slackened and his hands went to fall back down to his sides-

Then Marco’s hands were around Jean’s waist, pulling him close, and in the next moment he kissed him- softer, but almost hungry. His lips were burning, and his cheeks were on fire, and Jean could feel every breath Marco drew fluttering against his cheek, every ounce of blood pounding through his veins. Every heart beat echoed in his ears, every fibre of his being was knotted beneath his fingers, and it was finally enough, Marco was enough, and he was here, and he had him, he finally had him.

His breath had been stolen from his lungs- Jean wasn’t even sure he was breathing at all anymore- but he kissed Marco back, harder and more passionate than he’d ever kissed anyone ever before, and there was something else, something new and solid that rested between them, an intimacy neither of them were accustomed too but equally as eager to yield to.

Marco’s breath was hot and sweet. His nose pressed into Jean’s cheek when he kissed him again, and again, and again, each one more feverish than the last. Months of pent up emotion had suddenly broken through their mutual dam and were surging forth with a power neither of them could, nor wanted to, restrain.

Jean ran his hand down the side of Marco’s face, caressing his cheek and trailing down his neck, until coming to rest against his chest, the rhythm of Marco’s heart banging against his palm like a drum. Marco tilted his head, leaning into the hand still cupping the other side of his face, and Jean felt Marco’s hands shift from where they held his waist, sliding down to his hips, the small of his back, the arch of his spine. Maybe he couldn’t quite believe he actually had Jean in his arms and could touch him like this and was desperate to become acquainted with as much of him as possible before this dream was over.

Jean pressed himself against Marco’s chest, dizzy, breathless, every extremity buzzing, every hair stood on end. His world was reeling, like he was teetering on the edge of a precipice, stuck in the fragmented moment with his stomach lurching and every sense burning like fire, prickling like ice. He couldn’t tell where he ended and Marco began, they were just one, together and entwined for the first time, and it was everything, truly everything he could’ve ever hoped it to be-

It was a dull echo from outside that made them both jolt in surprise and their lips finally break apart. Both of their gazes darted to the door in momentary panic until they simultaneously realised the buzz of voices on the other side of the door were still halfway down the corridor and weren’t about to stumble upon this spontaneous rendezvous of theirs.

Jean felt Marco relax.

“We should probably stop doing this,” Marco said. His voice was slightly husky, breathless from their kiss.

“Stop doing what?”

“Trying to make out where other people might find us.”

Jean laughed, not even bothering to disguise the way his voice shook in a sort of relieved tremble. Every part of him was quaking and if he let go of Marco he was fairly sure his knees would give way. “Doesn’t that take some of the fun out of it?”

“Maybe?”

“Should I do it again?”

Marco’s skin literally exploded into clusters of goose bumps under Jean’s fingers. He grinned as Marco brushed him off, but not without an affectionate smile of his own. The little constellations Jean had traced just moments earlier still peppered his cheeks, webbing tiny clusters of freckles together.

“Anyway,” Marco said as he reached down to flick off the switch. The stars disappeared with a snap, plunging the room back into its former gloom. Marco’s hand slid into Jean’s once more. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jean didn’t argue, and together, they left the museum, hand in hand once more, avoiding each other’s gazes by staring at the ground, wearing identical, surreptitious grins, like they were both carrying a secret only the two of them knew.

They spent the rest of the day in the city; wandering aimlessly in and out of shops on the high street to pointlessly browse whatever the avaricious last minute holiday bargain hunters had left in their wake. Jean spent a good while debating whether or not he had enough money left from his last pay check to afford a vintage leather jacket that Marco wholeheartedly approved of (for that very reason), and a whole while longer dithering outside an art supplies store staring at the crisp, blank pages of fresh sketchbooks and the taut skins of blank canvases before they found themselves in a bookstore, where Marco was contented for a solid hour. His fingers danced over the spines lining the shelves, every so often slipping one out to bury his nose in for a few moments before he slid it back onto the shelf.

“I didn’t know you liked reading,” Jean said, surprised.

Marco shrugged with a wan smile. “It’s how I fill the time when I’m not working. Reading is…less isolating than watching a movie or something- you know? It’s always more fun to watch a movie with someone else but when you’re reading you do it alone, but you’re more invested in a different world, actually seeing through a character’s eyes and it…it just feels less lonely, I guess. Sorry. I know. That’s really sad.”

Sad enough to make Jean’s heart ache in his chest, to the point where he wanted to seize Marco by the lapels of his jacket and kiss him again, hard, oozing sincerity from every pore, gabbling every word of comfort between kisses that he knew. Marco had been so lonely for so long all he had left of himself to expose were walls. Countless, countless walls that Jean was avid to tear down with his own bare hands, but at the same time, he knew they were fragile. It had taken Marco this long to let Jean into this one little part of his life, and if he broke those walls now, he’d be tearing away what little sanctuary Marco had left to protect himself.

Not to mention he was keenly aware of the amount of people browsing the shelves around them, who would practically get a front row seat if they started playing tonsil tennis right here and now.

Instead, he made do with grabbing hold of Marco’s hand again and giving it what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze before he plucked the book Marco was currently holding out of his grasp, promising to get it for him. A Christmas gift, in exchange for the museum trip.

“I should introduce you to Armin,” he remarked as he gave Marco his book back after the cashier handed it to him. “Eren’s best friend. He’s studying on the other side of the country right now, but he likes books too.”

Marco clutched the book to his chest, smiling. “I’d like that.”

By the time the afternoon rolled around, the iron grey light was already beginning to recede. At this point they were both ravenous and stopped at a poky little café down a backstreet, away from the clamour and crowds of the busier restaurants on the high street. Every so often, Jean caught Marco looking over the top of his menu with that big, ridiculous grin on his face, or such a look of delight just lingering beneath the surface of his dark eyes, Jean could feel his heart swell in his chest and couldn’t help grinning idiotically back. The whole world felt…different, somehow. Colours felt a little brighter; lights shone a little gentler; every step was lighter and every breath he drew didn’t constrict his chest in a cage.

The walk back to the train station along the city’s high street was permeated with the warm, sweet smell of holiday delicacies wafting over from the Christmas markets and the glimmering of fairy lights, twinkling in shop windows and spiralling around lamp posts. They spent the train ride home in companionable silence as they sat side by side, fingers laced together on the armrest between them as the darkening sky let the season’s first few flakes of snow drift to the ground. By the time they arrived back in Rose and Jean let Marco walk him home, still hand in hand, the air was full of snowflakes spiralling down from the clouds swollen with light pollution, dancing on the frigid wind icing their fingers together.

“Here we are,” Marco said when they finally reached Jean’s front door. The light of the TV flickered through the window from inside and if they were quiet, they could hear the dim hum of Eren and Mikasa’s voices.

The finality in Marco’s voice brought the day to a grinding halt. Everything so wonderful and dreamlike about the past few hours came to an abrupt stop. The sense that this was it echoed in the silence like the wrong note being hit at the end of an otherwise beautiful song, discordant and jarring.

Jean let go of Marco’s hand for the first time in what felt like a good few hours. The bitterly cold air skimmed over his palm, feeling emptier than he ever remembered it could be and far colder than he would have liked. He swallowed. “…Thank you. Thank you for today. For…everything.”

Marco let out a short laugh. His gaze fell to the book Jean had bought him in his hands, a small smile playing on his lips. “No problem. I…should I thank you as well?”

“Please don’t. Let’s not make it weird.”

“Right.” He laughed again and they fell silent, unsure of themselves once more.

Jean wasn’t entirely convinced this wasn’t some kind of dream. The solid warmth of Marco’s hand in his was already beginning to rapidly fade and he wasn’t even sure if he’d just hallucinated the kiss in the museum or not. It all felt so surreal- how could this be real, how could any of it be remotely real? After so many months of denial and frustration and stolen glances and scribbling in his sketchbook- was this really it? This wasn’t just the manifestation of a daydream he’d doodled in his sketchbook (on more than one occasion, he might add) that transferred to Jean’s conscious like the ghostly imprint it left on the opposite page?

The silence was punctuated only by the snowflakes drifting to the ground between them, neither of them daring, nor particularly wanting, to break it by saying goodbye. Goodbye meant closure, and even if it was just temporary, Jean was completely ensnared in the happy delirium the time they’d spent together had brought. As soon as Marco left it would all crumble back into cynicism and bitterness and sulking under his duvet with his sketchbook propped up on his lap, ignoring his phone, pretending he couldn’t hear what his roommate was doing to his girlfriend in the next room.

“I really don’t want today to be over,” Jean mumbled eventually, stuffing his hands in his pockets and glancing down the street from where they’d walked, watching the snow settle on rooftops like a fine sprinkling of icing sugar.

“Me neither.” Marco agreed. “But...”

“But what?”

“I- I was going to say- well.” Even in the dim light, Jean could tell Marco was blushing. Hell, they were so close, he could practically feel the warmth radiating off his cheeks. “We could always do this again? Some time? If you want?”

“Are you asking me out in advance?”

“Can’t fault me for trying to be prepared, right?” Marco licked his lips apprehensively. He cleared his throat, looking at Jean from beneath his lashes. His lips parted before he spoke. “I was wondering…can…um, can I kiss you again?”

Jean’s heart leapt into the base of his throat, an explosion of goose bumps completely unrelated to the weather crawling down his spine in a sort of delighted disbelief. He glanced down the deserted street, vaguely wondering if anyone could see them from behind their curtains, then shrugged as nonchalantly as he knew how. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Marco took a tentative step forward and there was a moment where they both hesitated, painfully aware of one another. Marco drew a deep breath and pressed his lips to Jean’s one more time.

It was warmer and slower this time, different in the sense it wasn’t as powerful, but still enough to make Jean’s knees weak and his heart rocket into an entirely different plane of existence. Everything around them fell quiet. The snow skimmed over their raw cheeks, the cold raked its fingers through their hair; and for a few, precious moments that Jean could cup in his hands, there was that feeling of completeness once more; warm and reassuringly real.

“Can I ask you something?” Jean said when they broke apart.

“Sure,”

“Was this meant to be a date?”

“Technically it was your Christmas present.”

“Yes, but was it supposed to be more than that? Did you plan this? Was this just one, big elaborate scheme to get me to kiss you?”

Marco shrugged. “No. Not really. I mean- I admit, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t set this up without the tiniest hope that something more might happen. But no. I would never have expected you to kiss me.”

Jean raised an eyebrow. “So you’d planned to kiss me? Not the other way around?”

“Hey, your words, not mine.” Marco laughed. “Why, are you mad?”

“Mad? At you? Never.” Jean gripped Marco’s hand again, committing every contour and line he felt to memory so he could savour the moment over and over. “But, you probably could’ve done it a whole fucking lot sooner and it would’ve saved us both a lot of grief.”

“That’s true.” A few moments passed in the same, lingering silence, dripping with anticipation before Marco spoke again. “I…I should probably get going.”

“Yeah. Probably. It’s…been a long day.” Jean shifted on his feet, hoping his disappointment didn’t manifest on his face. He glanced at Mikasa’s car parked a little way down the street. “Do you want me to see if Mikasa’ll give you a lift back or…?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’d rather walk.” Marco paused. “I…guess I’ll see you after Christmas.”

“Right.” Jean pressed his lips into a thin smile and let Marco’s hand slide from his own, his breath flickering in his lungs until the very moment their fingertips glided apart. “Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas, Jean.”

And with one final glance over his shoulder- his expression brimming with an amalgamation of relief and affection and just a touch of reluctance- Marco turned on his heel and walked away, a shadowy figure cast orange in the streetlights, the snowfall that settled onto his shoulders eventually swallowing him whole at the end of the street.

Jean watched him go until the very last second, his lips buzzing from that last kiss, his heart still bouncing in his chest with nervous energy. In the space of a day, everything had changed. Everything felt different and strange and unfamiliar- but in a new, refreshing way, that was equal parts fascinating and terrifying. Now, however, he could taste clarity of the tip of his tongue, clear and crystalline like water.

He went inside and shut the front door behind him, dusting snow from his hair and off his shoulders. The house was in near complete darkness, save for the flicker of the TV and the low light from the lamp on the coffee table. Mikasa and Eren were sprawled out together on the couch. Mikasa leaned against Eren’s chest in the crook of his arm, reading, whilst Eren divided his attention between whatever overplayed holiday movie was dancing over the TV screen, whilst planting periodic kisses on the top of Mikasa’s head.

They both looked up at the sound of Jean closing the front door.

“You’re back late.” Eren remarked.

“Yeah. I guess.” Jean replied absent-mindedly, pulling his shoes off and heading towards the stairs, his mind still stuck outside, stuck in a repeat of kissing Marco again and again like a broken record.

“What kept you?” Eren said.

Jean didn’t really want to say. He wanted to keep that precious, fragile moment between him and Marco, close to his heart where no one else could see it, where it couldn’t be touched or moved or broken. For now, it was his, and only his, and no one else but Marco knew. A tiny, insignificant moment the universe wouldn’t regard as revolutionary, a fragment of time history wouldn’t remember as pivotal, an event that was somehow so huge and earth shattering to them with no actual evidence to anyone else of it ever happening.

That was poetic. Maybe a day spent in the art exhibition among pretentious types had made Jean catch something that smelled of overpriced coffee shops and glasses without lenses.

He hesitated at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the banister, before he shrugged.

“Just stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah. Just stuff.”

Mikasa nudged Eren in the ribs. “Leave him be.”

“What? I’m not doing anything.” Eren narrowed his gaze at Jean, a condescending smirk already beginning to tug at the corners of his lips. “So…how’s Marco?”

“Marco’s fine.”

“Oh yeah? Just fine?”

“Eren. Don’t be a pest,” Mikasa interjected, but all the sternness in her tone couldn’t mask the look she was giving Jean- a tiny, knowing glint in her eye, her lips twitching ever so slightly like she was trying to disguise a smile.

They know. Of course they know. You’re on cloud-fucking-nine and practically danced your way across the living room, grinning like you’ve just won the lottery.

All right, so subtlety wasn’t Jean’s strong point.

He let Eren and Mikasa bicker playfully back and forth for a few moments, present but not really in the moment, before he announced, “I’m going to bed,” to no one in particular and headed upstairs.

“What, this early?” he heard Eren say behind him, followed by, “Oh yeah, by the way, I’m leaving for my dad’s for Christmas tomorrow. Don’t fuck with my shit while I’m gone.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jean called back dryly and pushed his bedroom door closed.

The room was in the same disarray it had been in for the past three weeks. The duvet lay in a crumpled heap pulled free of the mattress. Dirty, flour-streaked clothes were strewn around the room. Discarded bits of paper and broken pencils littered the floor underfoot. It was still the same, dismal, poky little room he’d left this morning. Life was still the same dismal, grim affair it had always been.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t and only two people knew it. Everything else in the world was running its due course; people were living their lives, unaffected, the trains were still running, there was still air to breathe, and there were still stars in the sky. But it was as if a bomb had gone off and only Jean and Marco had been there to witness it. It was almost laughable at how people could walk past them without noticing the debris in their hair and the shrapnel beneath their skin.

Jean’s skin was still crawling and his body was wired with boundless adrenaline as he paced the room, mindlessly scooping up bits of his mess here and there, only to put it down in a different place that it didn’t belong.

This all felt somewhat anticlimactic. He’d spent months and months watching Marco from across the room- biting his tongue, bowing his head, avoiding his gaze. And then in the span of a few short hours that had all come undone for one fleeting afternoon. But now it was over, and everything had changed in their heads whilst physically remaining the same. It was surprisingly…mundane. Just Jean sifting through a heap of laundry like he’d done a million times before as if he hadn’t just kissed a boy. Twice.

And enjoyed it.

Every goddamn second.

His heart was beginning to race at the very idea of kissing Marco again. Was he just supposed to accept this as normal now? Would he walk into the bakery from now on anticipating and reciprocating a kiss in greeting and little, deliberate touches that lingered with affection, instead of guilt? How long before he could become accustomed to something so…domestic? How long would he have to wait before the novelty of him being a guy and Marco being a guy wore off? How long before he could grab his hand without thinking, how long before he could rest his head on his chest, how long before he could sleep by his side, how long before he would open his mouth and let his lips thoughtlessly form the words I lo…

Jean shook his head. He was jumping to way too many conclusions way too fast. Everything had changed. The other facets of his life just…didn’t know it yet. Time would bring change, he knew that. It was an achingly slow process, like waiting for a glass to fill, one drop at a time. But it was coming, and so far, all he’d done was venture close enough to peer over the cliff’s peak. It would take days- weeks, maybe months before he finally teetered off the edge.

This was only the beginning, after all.

…

Jean woke up before it was even properly light. The shadowy light cast into his room was cut into fractals by the frost from last night’s snowfall webbing across the window as he eased his eyes open, blinking blearily at the ceiling for a few moments before yesterday’s events welled up in his mind’s eye, spreading a hapless grin across his face and unclenching a knot in his stomach he didn’t even know was there.

I kissed Marco. I kissed Marco. I kissed Marco- fucking- Bodt.

Euphoria shot through his veins like adrenaline as he pressed his knuckles to his eyes, savouring the fleeting moments racing beneath his eyelids, remnants of a dream. The look on Marco’s face after he kissed him. The searing of his lips. The grin on his face cutting through the snow like sunlight…

And his face alight with constellations, eyes capturing the stars, cheeks detailing the cosmos.

How on God’s green earth did he get lucky enough to kiss Marco Bodt?

Excellent question, he thought grimly and slid his hand beneath his pillow to retrieve his phone, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he unlocked the screen. He hadn’t forgotten in his happy delirium that Marco was still fucking lightyears out of his league and Jean in no way, shape, or form deserved him. It still bothered him. It sat in the bottom of his heart, a bitter, black cavity, eking decay.

But at this moment in time, basking in the afterglow of quite possibly the best kiss of his life, Jean couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

It took him a moment or two to process that he had a text message. The icon sat at the top of his notifications, brandishing a sample of text, emblazoned with Marco’s name.

Jean tapped it before he could even think twice, devouring the message so hastily he had to go back and reread it twice to digest what it said.

Hey. Sorry I know it’s late but I don’t know I can’t sleep and I was thinking of you and I wish today wasn’t over so quickly. Is that weird? I have a feeling it’s pretty weird and probably not something you needed to know about

Sent at 2:12 AM. For a guy who rarely went to bed later than nine at night, he wasn’t kidding about not being able to sleep.

Before Jean even knew what he was doing, his fingers were scrabbling to jab the call icon, and in a heartbeat his phone was pressed to his ear, the dialling tone reverberating against his skull.

It took a few moments before the tone was cut off by a staticky crackle, and followed by Marco’s subdued voice, managing to muster a sleepy, “Hello?”

Jean’s heart quivered on the tip of his tongue at the sound of his voice. His grip on the phone tightened. “Hey. Hey, Marco. It’s me.”

“Jean?” He could hear the surprise in Marco’s voice, still husky from lack of use overnight. “H-hey. Good morning. I- uh- hey.”

Jean closed his eyes whilst Marco spoke, relishing the grainy buzz of his voice. “Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“No, no, not at all.” Marco said. He paused, then added, “Actually no, that’s a lie. Sorry. I-I don’t know why I said that. It’s fine though, I don’t mind.”

“Oh. OK. Good.”

There was a moment or two filled with only the drone of the phone line, a tired drawing of breath, a rustle of the duvet, a nervous swallow.

Jean cleared his throat. “How…how are you?”

“I’m…good, thanks. You?”

“’M fine.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah…”

Jean opened his eyes, staring back up at the ceiling, a strange sense of idiocy slowly beginning to settle over him. He had no idea what to say. He had no idea what he was even doing. He’d been on autopilot, still semi-conscious at best when he’d pressed the call button. It had made perfect sense only a few moments ago, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, what else could he expect himself to be doing? Clearly, Jean’s subconscious ache for Marco’s presence was rapidly letting itself to be known- and the closest way he could get to Marco right now was through his phone and by hearing his voice. Maybe he just wanted reminding yesterday had actually happened. Maybe he was already in too deep.

Regardless, words eluded him.

He heard Marco stifle a yawn down the line.

“What time is it?”

Jean pulled the phone away from his ear and glanced at the screen. “Nearly half past eight.”

“Oh. Not as early as I thought.” There was a weak laugh before Marco’s tone fell flat, “Jean, are…are you OK?”

“Huh?”

“Is everything all right?”

“What? Yeah, everything’s fine. Why?”

“I just…is something bothering you? Why did you call?”

Warmth dusted the surface of Jean’s cheeks. “I…uh, don’t know. I-I guess I kinda wanted to hear your voice again? I think? Something like that.”

There was a short pause before Marco spoke again. “Is this about the text I sent last night I don’t know what I was thinking. It…seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” He let out a humourless laugh, his voice wavering.

“Hey. It’s OK. I’m glad you did.” Jean wriggled upwards, propping himself up on his elbows. “I know what you mean. I…feel like I’ve got something to say. But I’ve got no idea what that is.”

Marco’s voice fell quiet, scarcely a mumble. “About yesterday?”

Jean faltered. “Well…yeah.” What did he mean, is this about yesterday? What else did he think was on Jean’s mind? Was their time spent together just supposed to have faded into the monotony of just another day, to be regarded upon as nothing especially pivotal or halfway as earth-shattering as Jean had thought it to be?

“I’m sorry.”

Jean frowned. “What for?”

Silence. Long, drawn out, pensive silence.

“I’m not sure…?”

Jean choked on a laugh. “What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“I-I don’t know! Apologising just seemed like the right thing to do! I don’t know what you’re thinking or- or feeling or- I don’t even know how I’m feeling and this is just- so weird I don’t know…I don’t know how to process this?”

It was phrased like a question, and though his tone was partially plaintive, Jean could almost see the smile dancing between those words. He bit back a grin of his own and ran a hand through his hair.

“That’s- that’s not a bad thing, is it? I mean- yeah, same. I’m…confused. Not quite sure what to think.” That was putting it lightly. “At least we’re on the same page? A similar page?”

“I guess?” Marco chuckled. “You really freaked me out for a moment there.”

“How?”

Marco’s voice wavered with hesitance. “I…thought you were going to say that you… maybe you wanted to pretend yesterday was a mistake- and it shouldn’t have happened, and you wanted to forget…” He trailed off.

Jean felt a small, sympathetic fragment of his heart break off and wither in his chest. “Are you serious?” he said softly.

Marco didn’t say anything. Maybe he nodded. All Jean could hear was the steady intake of his breath and the little anxious rattle it made in his chest.

How could he think that? After he kissed him- after Jean kissed him- and spent almost all day with their hands drawn together like magnets. What did he think those hours spent sharing surreptitious glances and knowing smiles meant? Did he really think it had been nothing more than a momentary lapse in Jean’s judgement?

Jean opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn’t come. It had been a conscious effort for Marco to admit that- he could tell from the strain on his words and the reluctance that held his silence. He could practically hear the gears in Marco’s brain whirring, trying to decide whether or not he should’ve let himself appear so vulnerable so soon. He’d let the tiniest shred of evidence of that lonely, insecure boy’s existence that Jean had only become properly acquainted with yesterday, surface, just long enough to break the glass armour Marco had built for himself for a split second before he could submerge himself into the comfort of obscurity once again.

“Marco, that’s…you know that’s not true, right?”

“I…I guess you wouldn’t have kissed me twice if it were, would you?”

Jean let a relieved grin slip onto his face, shoulders sagging as he fell back onto his mattress. “Probably not.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to put a downer on the conversation.”

“No. Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“Don’t apologise. You don’t have to say sorry for feeling something.” That was rich, coming from Jean. He’d done nothing but make excuses and pretend he was ashamed of the things he’d been feeling for years now.

“Right. I’m s-”

“Hey. Stop it.”

“OK, OK.” Marco sighed. “See, that’s what I’ve always admired about you, Jean. You’re…unapologetic. You’re just yourself. You don’t hesitate, you just…are.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jean grimaced, switching the phone from one ear to the other. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve spent making excuses for myself to not be honest with you about how I feel? It’s been months of me pretending I didn’t notice and pretending I was still someone I thought I was and pretending I didn’t feel like I did…” Jean’s voice trailed away. This was…easier, somehow. As if by removing each other’s physical presence it made speaking aloud less confrontational, more therapeutic.

When Marco replied, his voice was consciously tentative, as if he were daring to poke a sleeping dragon. “How do you feel Jean?”

Jean bit his lip. Talk about a loaded question.

“No, wait, don’t answer that.” Marco interrupted before the first word even had a chance to form on Jean’s lips. “Let’s not do this over the phone. I…we should talk about it in person.”

“R-right. OK. We’ll do that.” Jean swallowed. “Hey, listen, Eren’s going to be away for like the next three days. If you want, you could come round and…uh…we could spend Christmas together? If you want?”

“Oh. Jean.” Marco fell so quiet Jean had to check twice that he was still on the line. “I-I’d love to, don’t get me wrong. I’d really love to, trust me. But last night my Mom called- she managed to get a last minute flight to come home, so I’m going to pick her up from the airport tonight and I…I think I should spend some time with her. You know. Not that I don’t want to spend time with you as well, because of course I do…”

“Marco, it’s OK. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I understand,” Jean said, hoping the twinge of disappointment turning in the pits of his stomach didn’t manifest itself in his voice. “I’m glad you get to see your mom.”

“Yeah. I think I am too. Which isn’t something I say a lot.” Marco’s voice dropped to a sort of mortified mumble. “That makes me sound so fucking ungrateful.”

“No, no, it’s cool, I know what you mean. You deserve- no, you probably need to see her.” Jean heaved himself upright once again. “How long is she staying?”

“Not sure, but she’ll be gone by New Year’s.”

“And the bakery reopens after New Year’s Day, right?”

“Right.”

“Cool. I…I guess I’ll see you then?”

The smile slipped back into Marco’s voice. “You know we can see each other before that. I mean. If you want.”

Jean snickered softly. Of course he wanted to.  “Yeah I guess we can. After your mom visits, though, right?”

“Yeah, I think- I think that’s probably for the best. Not that I’m ashamed of you or anything, because I’m not-”

“No, I get it. I agree. I…didn’t say anything to Eren or Mikasa last night, so no one knows about yesterday.”

“Just you and me.”

“Exactly.”

“Should…” Marco hesitated. “Should we keep it that way?”

“I think so. For now. I think…” Jean fingered the duvet between his forefinger and thumb. “I could use some time to…adjust.”

“I think we both do. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything about our…well. Us.”

Jean could tell he’d been going to say something else. The unspoken word lingered in the air, just as loud in concept as it was as if it had been vocalised. Our Relationship.

It was a heavy word carrying connotations both of them were still too cautious to associate with themselves. Especially now, with whatever they had- whatever they were now- which was a whole fucking world away from platonic.

“I’m not ashamed of you, Jean,” Marco added softly. “If this is what makes you comfortable then that’s what we’ll do.”

A soft warmth kindled in Jean’s chest as he leant against the wall, smiling to himself. “Thanks. You’re a great guy, you know that?”

“I try my best. So, how about you?”

“What about me?”

“How are you spending tomorrow?”

Oh, right. Of course.

“I…uh, I’ll be here, probably.” Jean paused. “By myself.”

Marco sounded almost wounded. “You’re going to spend Christmas alone?”

That hadn’t been the intention. Eren was going back to Shiganshina to visit his dad, and with him gone, Mikasa would go back to her parent’s house. As far as Jean knew, the rest of his friends would be doing the same. He knew Sasha had a huge family and was likely to have dragged Connie back home with her. He hadn’t seen nor spoken to Bertolt or Reiner since the party at the beginning of December, so who knew what they were doing. As for Ymir and Krista…well, if the stuff he saw Ymir posting about online nowadays was anything to go by, it was fairly logical to assume they’d be spending the holidays wrapped around each other like vines.

Jean’s tone hardened. “It’s not a big deal. That’s what you were planning to do.”

“No, I was planning to spend it with my mom, I just didn’t know whether I was going to get to,” Marco said. “Jean, I…I think you should…no. Never mind.”

“No, what were you going to say?”

Marco didn’t reply.

Comprehension dawned on Jean’s face and he quickly sat bolt upright.

“You think I should visit my mom.”

Marco’s silence told him he was right.

He groaned and let himself fall against the wall with a resolute thump. “Look, sending her a text is one thing. Going to see her is a fucking completely different ball game.”

“I know, Jean, trust me, I know,” Marco said hurriedly. “I-I just- I didn’t know you’d be by yourself tomorrow and I don’t want you- I don’t know, doesn’t it seem like a good opportunity?”

“To do what?”

“To talk to her?”

“I can do that over the phone.”

“But you haven’t, Jean, that’s the problem.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“It’s as much as a problem as me not getting to see my mom for the past six months.” Marco sighed. “Look, I’m not going to force you to do anything. I never have, and I never will. But please, Jean, just…think about it, OK?”

“If I was going to ‘think about it’ I probably should’ve done that a week ago,” Jean mumbled. “If I go back now she’ll skin me for showing up last minute.”

“Jean. Please. Promise me.”

“Fine, fine, I promise.”

“Thank you.” There was a long, awkward pause. “I…I guess I’ll leave you to it.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

“I’ll…see you soon, Jean.”

“See you soon.” Jean pulled the phone away from his ear, his finger hovering above the dismiss button for a moment or two before he heard Marco’s parting words.

“I’m glad you called.”

Then the line went dead.

Jean dropped the phone on the duvet and hugged his knees to his chest, his back against the wall. So that’s all it took. A mere suggestion from Marco to see his mother, and that stupid suspension of disbelief all came crashing down. That rose-tinted world of stolen first kisses and hand holding and apprehensive phone calls. He’d been brought back down to reality with an abrupt thud, wicked like a bruise.

He prodded at his phone until he found the message he’d sent to his mother yesterday. She still hadn’t replied. He didn’t even know if she’d seen it. Only one way to find out, and that would be to ask her.

He didn’t want to. He really didn’t want to. The mere thought of her face puckered up in disapproval, lips drawn up, disdainful gaze boring into him as he showed up on her doorstep as everything she didn’t want him to be- working in customer service, studying art, and not having talked to her for nearing five months…

And Marco.

Jean buried his face in his hands. Oh God, Marco. What on earth was she going to think when she found out about them? He’d never given such a thing a moment of thought before because, well, he’d never had to. Before he left home he’d had no reason to doubt he was anything but straight as a rod. Then, of course, Marco Bodt came bumbling into his life in that stupid little baker’s van of his and threw him for quite the curveball.

But he didn’t have to tell her. Not yet, anyway. He was under absolutely no obligation to try and get his mother to understand a part of himself even he didn’t fully comprehend yet. That was fair, wasn’t it? If Marco understood, surely she could find it within herself- somewhere- to do the same?

Jean exhaled a steady breath into his knees. That took a little bit of the pressure off. But that still left the other looming issues he’d totally ignored up until now- the biggest and most offensive of which, choosing to study art, when he’d sworn he wouldn’t.

How was he supposed to explain that? He chose art because some boy told him to follow his dreams? How was he supposed to get around that small feat of reasoning without treading dangerously close to the fact he was head over heels with adoration for said boy?

“It shouldn’t be this fucking hard,” Jean said to himself through gritted teeth.

Dysfunctional families were normal. More common than people liked to believe, anyway. He knew Eren’s home life hadn’t been great after his mom died, and Jean was fairly sure Reiner’s family weren’t brilliant- hell, after yesterday, he knew that even Marco had his fair share of family skeletons rattling around in that top-secret closet of his. Jean wasn’t the only one with this kind of problem. It didn’t have to be a big deal.

Of course he still cared about his mom. He loved her, deep, deep down. She was the woman who raised him almost single-handedly. No matter what she said or did, that fact would always remain, and he’d always, always respect her, and be more grateful than he knew for that.

Didn’t she, at the very least, deserve a son in return who talked to her?

The phone felt heavier in his hand than it had when he was talking to Marco. Its edges cut into his palm as if he’d picked up a brick, weighted with reluctance and indeterminate feelings he’d long since swept behind the proverbial sofa, pretending they didn’t exist.

Marco’s words from the train ride yesterday were lingering at the forefront of his mind. Family is precious. I’d give anything- anything to be close to mine.

Just recalling the look on his face made Jean’s chest tight. Resentment and sadness, regret and despondence, tangled up in one another amongst the freckles, feelings he couldn’t define for a woman he knew he should love but had methodically distanced herself for a large part of his life.

It wasn’t like that for Jean. Jean had someone who wanted to be there for him. He had someone who wanted to support him and see him succeed, flourish in a world that had broken her heart and left her with a three-year-old son whose father they never saw nor heard from again. Jean had a mother who’d tried to be there for him, every step of the way, no matter how many times he’d tried to push her away.

His gaze fell onto the text he’d sent yesterday. The text that had received no response.

Had he pushed her too far?

He lifted the phone to his ear. It hummed like an irritated insect threatening to sting. It was an effort to keep himself from trembling. His lips felt like granite, his tongue like sandpaper when the dialling tone ended abruptly. His voice grated past his lips before he had chance to think.

“Hey, Mom. It’s Jean. I…I was wondering…is it too late to come home for Christmas?”

…

Mistakes. The world’s full of them. Always has been, always has been. On rare occasions, there’s happy accidents, mistakes that make life a little better- the discovery of penicillin, the invention of the chocolate chip cookie, the accidental meeting of a baker and a high school graduate on the steps of a house on a summer evening. There’s mistakes that are neither here nor there; mistakes that make one person happy but lend to someone else’s suffering- finding someone else’s money on the pavement, meeting someone you might fall in love with at a funeral, enrolling in the college course you’ve always wanted to, only to discover your mediocrity. And then there’s just mistakes. Flat out mistakes that weren’t supposed to happen, a tear in the fabric of your existence, times where things unravel, things fall from your grasp, and everything spirals out of control.

Jean meeting Marco? Happy accident. Choosing to study art? Fun at the time, but ultimately pointless in the end.

Jean choosing to go home for Christmas?

Definitely a mistake.

The universe tried to warn him. At the very least, it certainly didn’t try to make the process of getting all the way back to Trost any easier.

After he ended the phone call, he sent Marco a short text- I’m going home- and clambered off his bed, showered, then returned to try and scrape together a handful of clothes that didn’t have icing sugar around the cuffs or flour on the knees, which took him far longer than he cared to admit. He packed, then unpacked, then repacked his sketchbook and drawing materials multiple times, not sure whether to present himself as non-confrontational as possible or straight up defiant, bearing art supplies like the red flag of rebellion.

Eventually he decided to bring it, just in case, and if the visit went badly, he could always hide it beneath the crumpled floury shirts he’d scooped up from the floor.

Everything else he needed seemed to have conveniently lost itself. His keys were behind the dresser. His wallet was in the wrong hoodie pocket. Eren had packed Jean’s toothbrush instead of his own. His phone charger was downstairs, wedged beneath one of the sofa cushions.

The process was so frustrating and gave his trepidation ample time to amount to a heavy iron vice of anxiety, gripping at his heart. Jean nearly gave up before he even left the house. He scooped up his phone, completely prepared to send his mother a message- I’m sorry, I can’t do this, I’m sorry, I just can’t-  but he stopped short when he saw Marco had replied. It wasn’t much. Just a smiley face, nothing special, nothing even particularly personal. But it was enough. Just enough to remind Jean to stop, take a breath and remember why he was doing this in the first place. Enough to see him finish packing, step out the door, and catch the first of the three buses he’d need to get to travel all the way back to Trost.

All three of which were late.

Jean spent the best part of the day hunched over his sketchbook in the backseats of mostly empty buses, backpack at his feet, trying to drown out every intrusive thought with headphones blaring music he wasn’t entirely sure he liked anymore. A lot had changed since he’d last been at home. He was a different person, in more ways than one, and he wasn’t sure how his mother was going to take that. Especially since most of the changes he’d undergone probably made him a giant fucking disappointment.

Whilst he was waiting for his last bus he stopped at one of the few stores that were still open and pick up some potted plant embellished with a bow in an effort to look festive. It wasn’t much of a Christmas gift, but it was something, at least. Something to diffuse whatever bomb was liable to go off. A peace offering.

It was already getting dark when the last bus finally showed up, and Jean watched the shadows grow longer across the sprawling fields through the window as they rumbled down country lanes before they finally emerged into the achingly familiar suburbs of Trost. There was a pang in Jean’s chest as they passed the places he knew so well, completely unchanged in the time he’d spent away from home.

Was that what Trost still was for him? Did he still consider it home?

He screwed up his eyes in distaste. He’d never really thought of the house he shared with Eren as anything more than the Place where he Currently Lived. As for Trost…fundamentally, he supposed, it was home. The place where he’d grown up, the place that had seen every scraped knee, bad haircut and fresh outbreak of acne. There’d always be a fondness in his heart for the streets he was accustomed to and a place to seek comfort in his mother’s house.

But home?

Home meant comfort, it meant protection and warmth. Safety and familiarity. Love.

Maybe home to him nowadays wasn’t a place. Maybe home to him was a person.

Jean shook his head and rang the bell, bringing the bus to a grinding halt at the top of the street he knew so well. He couldn’t think about him right now. He had someone else that he needed to focus on. For now, anyway.

He shouldered his bag, tucked the plant under one arm and disembarked from the bus into the frigid air. The doors slid shut behind him and the bus rumbled off into the encroaching darkness.

Trost hadn’t seen enough snowfall to have blanketed the town in white like back in Rose. Just enough for Jean’s footsteps to crunch as he walked, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, and trying not to let the doubts swirling in his mind like ominous dark clouds get the better of him.

There was no turning back. There were no more buses after the one he’d just gotten off. He couldn’t go back to Rose now, even if he wanted to.

The sky was overcast, heavy with dark, swollen clouds tinted a deep, inky blue, not one star in sight. Jean’s breath misted the air in front of him as he made his way down the street of houses bedecked with wreaths and lights twinkling at him from all angles. Christmas trees glittered in the windows of living rooms and he caught glimpses of families sat together in their homes, talking and laughing as they pulled the curtains closed, shutting his envious gaze out.

Jean came to an abrupt stop. The oh-so familiar house he’d grown up in was sat mere feet away, at the end of the same garden path he used to draw on with chalk as a kid until his mother made him hose his scribbles off. The plants and flowers in the little front garden were trimmed back- not in a particularly meticulous way, just enough to be tamed, in the careful, knowledgeable way that his mother had gained working as a florist over the past ten years. The curtains across the front room were drawn. The only acknowledgement of the holiday season took form in a modest little wreath hung on the knocker of the front door.

Jean gripped the strap of his bag, taking a deep breath, and forced himself to unlatch the front gate, letting it swing closed behind him without the squeal of protesting hinges that used to greet him every night after he got home from school. His heart beat a steady drum in his chest as he reached the front door and raised his hand to knock- then paused, hesitating. He could see the glow of the kitchen light from down the hall through the frosted glass beneath the plastic leaves of the wreath.

All he could think of was coming face to face with the woman he remembered speaking to at the start of summer. The woman who dismissed his dreams with a careless spit of rebuttal, who told him his future was predetermined, who all but confirmed Jean’s life would be nothing but a hapless attempt without her strict guidance. That day, sat cooped up in his freshly moved-into room, barely fledged, but bitter enough to have lived a lifetime’s worth of grievances. That day when he met…

Jean closed his eyes, picturing the smile he’d grown to adore dancing across lips he knew to be softer than a dream, constellations sparkling across cheeks that dappled gold at the edges, and recalled the gentle words of encouragement ragged with a sleepy rasp pressed against his ear.

No running away. Not anymore.

He knocked.

The noise rang hollow, a pulse in the silence pounding in his knuckles. His hand dropped back to his side like a stone.

Jean drew a long, shuddering breath, waiting just long enough to debate whether it was worth knocking again before he heard the click in the latch and finally, finally came face to face with the woman he’d been avoiding as long as he could.

Jean’s mother was a short woman with the same ash blonde hair as her son, drawn back from her face into a bun at the nape of her neck, a few strands pulled loose around her face. Her features weren’t quite as angular as Jean’s- although he had definitely inherited his mother’s acute, narrowed eyes- but though her face was softer, her expression was more severe. Even now, that severity didn’t falter as her gaze fell upon her son, dressed in clothes crumpled from a day’s traveling, clutching a potted plant and wearing the world’s most sheepish expression on his face.

He waited for some flicker of emotion to register. Some spark of recognition, any trace of affection that softened the fine lines in the creases around her eyes, even if only for a moment.

He cleared his throat.

“Um. Hi, Mom.”

“Jean.”

How did she do that? How did she manage to command every fibre of his being with just a single utterance of his name? Was this ability to make his spine snap to attention and make him feel immensely guilty an inherent skill, or practiced art that one could only gain through motherhood?

“Good to see you, at long last. Come in, you’re letting all the heat out.”

His mom stepped away from the door and Jean ducked his head, pressing his lips together as he crossed the threshold.

The hallway remained almost entirely unchanged from how he remembered it. The same hardwood floor, scuffed at the edges where he’d used to race his toy cars as a child. The same few photos of him growing up hung in a line on the walls in frames his mother’s sisters had given them, embellished with the words family and live and laugh. The banister on the stairs was still missing a pole from where it snapped five years ago when he swung himself around on it. Little remnants of his life he’d all but put behind him.

“Um,” Jean dropped his bag on the floor, readjusted his grip on the potted plant and held it out to his mom once she’d shut the door behind him. “This is for you.”

“Poinsettias? How lovely.” She took the plant from him, pausing to stroke one of the flower’s bright, fire-engine red petals, and- was that it? Was that a glimmer of a smile playing on her lips? “Very festive.”

“R-right. I forgot, you probably have tons of them at work, don’t you?” Jean laughed, but it shook, like a wavering note. “So, uh, Happy Christmas, I gue-”

He was interrupted by his mother’s arms winding their way around the highest point of him she could reach- somewhere around his chest- and suddenly she was holding him in an embrace he’d come close to forgetting. He let out a tiny, unintentional squeak of surprise, and at first instinctively recoiled. But his mother’s grip was firm and fast, and even though it took him a moment, Jean allowed himself to relax, and slowly, begrudgingly, reciprocate.

The moments ticked by, kept by the hollow click of the clock mounted on the wall.

“How was your journey?” And just like that, it was over. His mom withdrew, and they were standing apart once more, considerable distance between them.

Jean shrugged. “Buses were late. Slow and uncomfortable. You know.”

“You’re in one piece, aren’t you? No need to complain.”

“Mom, you asked.”

“Barely been home five minutes and you’re already talking back. And to think I was starting to miss it.” She shook her head before she turned on her heel, beckoning Jean down the hall. “Shoes off. Sometimes I wonder how on earth I raised you. Really, waiting until Christmas Eve to ask about coming home for Christmas. Did I not teach you common courtesy?”

Jean pulled his trainers off  and followed her through to the kitchen. “No- I mean, yes, but-”

“Never mind, you’re here now. Have you eaten?”

Jean looked up hopefully. “No?”

His mom placed the poinsettia on the kitchen windowsill before she gave him a sort of prim nod, rolling back the sleeves of her cardigan. “Good, you can help with dinner.”

“Not…what I was expecting.”

“You should know better than anyone nothing in this house is served up to you on a silver platter. You help or you don’t get fed, even if you have just come swanning back from college. Speaking of which,” she shot him a knowing glance over her shoulder as she opened one of the overhead cupboards and pulled out a couple of onions and a knot of garlic. “We have a lot to talk about, Jean.”

There it was. The loaded question he’d been waiting for.

Jean folded his arms, his toes curling against the cold kitchen tile. When they’d spoken on the phone that morning she hadn’t asked about college or work, or even rent. She’d just seemed genuinely surprised to hear his voice. Clearly the surprise had worn off, and now the elephant in the room was making itself known, hanging over them both like a big, dark storm cloud.

“But, that can wait.”

Jean looked up and immediately flinched as an onion came soaring towards him on a direct course to smack him in the face. He just about managed to catch it as he looked over at his mother, bemused.

She held out a knife, motioning at the chopping board on the kitchen surface. “Come on, jacket off. You’re staying, aren’t you? Now make yourself useful. We’ll talk about…the obvious,” her lip curled. “after dinner. For now, I want to hear about how you’ve been, and I want that onion finely diced.”

Jean obligingly shrugged his jacket off and slung it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Are you serious?”

“About as serious as I am about throwing this knife if you don’t do as I ask.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You’re right, if I missed and hit the wall it would ruin the wallpaper.”

“And you wonder where I learned to talk back,” Jean said dryly, taking the knife from her. “What are we having, anyway?”

His mother plucked one of the numerous recipe books she owned off the top of the fridge, flipping past several pages before turning it around and showing Jean a glossy picture of a sumptuous looking pie, golden pastry and hunks of meat tumbling out onto the plate. “A recipe I’ve been wanting to try for a while but never got the chance. I was going to make it myself and take it over to your Aunt Corinne’s, since I was going to spend Christmas with her and your Uncle Kylian- until someone decided to show his face after…how long has it been? Six months?”

“No,” Jean retorted hotly, feeling his face redden. He halved the onion a little more forcefully than he intended, making a hollow thunk when the knife hit the chopping board. “It’s only been…five. Or something.”

“Oh, forgive me. Five months, not even worth mentioning, forget I brought it up,” she said, rolling her eyes in a manner Jean wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with (he made the exact same face when he was patronising Eren). “Careful with that. Don’t leave scratches in my chopping board.”

“Yes, sir,” Jean muttered under his breath, earning a swat on the back of his head.

“Don’t you be getting cocky with me, young man, just because you’ve managed to survive these past few months on your own, God knows how. It doesn’t seem that long ago I had to pack your bags for you because you had no idea what you needed to live by yourself.”

“Yeah, well, things have changed.” He earned his own money, he cooked his own meals, he kissed boys.

“In that case, do tell. I’m fascinated to learn how you haven’t starved yet.”

So Jean told her, carefully avoiding any mention of college, his artwork, the bakery or Marco, any subject that he thought might induce unnecessary controversy into their conversation. College and art and Marco for obvious reasons, but as for the bakery…well. For a woman who pictured his success as an office worker with a desk to call his own, he didn’t think she’d wholeheartedly approve of a career that was labour intensive and intrinsically messy. Besides, talking about the bakery meant talking about Marco, and that was a slippery slope he knew would end in him revealing way too much.

This left remarkably little to talk about, now that he thought about it. Jean talked about the damp in the bathroom that got bad when it rained, he complained how Eren was easily the world’s most temperamental roommate, he recounted the time they got their electricity shut off and had to ring the landlord to sort out their electricity bill, something that he and Eren had argued about for a good two hours before either of them mustered up the courage to pick up the phone.

He swiped at his eyes stinging with the onion fumes with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.” He pushed the chopping board across the counter to where his mother was stood.

“So you and Eren are still getting along?” she asked, pausing to spoon flour into her food processor in preparation to make pastry, and took the chopping board from him, scraping the onions into a pan.

Jean shrugged. “Mostly.”

“That’s something, at least. When you first came up with the idea of you two moving in together I was worried sick you’d tear each other to pieces in the first week. You never got along when you were in school.” She shook her head as she put the lid on the food processor and switched it on. It roared to life, drowning out any other semblance of sound as it rattled and slogged through the dough with the enthusiasm of a pensioner.

Even though the simple act of making dinner together was fairly monotonous, both of them were keenly aware of the odd sense of foreboding in everything they weren’t saying. It was like anticipating a missile; Jean knew the impact was coming, but he couldn’t calculate the place it would be dropped or the time it would take to make its descent, so all he could do in the meantime was brace himself and hope for the best. Futile, he knew, but he’d been anticipating the worst the moment when the front door had opened. The fact neither of them had yelled yet was a serious achievement. But the knowledge that it was coming, no matter what he said or did, made whatever they were doing now feel like a façade, a game they were playing with each other to delay the inevitable. Pretending to be civil with one another when Jean knew his mom wanted nothing more than to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, demanding to know what on earth had possessed him to do something so stupid as to defy her wishes and study art, of all the useless, impractical subjects in the world- this calm before the storm felt forced, rehearsed, like they were waiting for their cues to start spitting sparks.

His mom switched the food processor off and it droned back into silence. She lifted the lid and tipped the dough out onto the flour-sprinkled surface. It oozed out of the mixer like a gelatinous slug.

“Don’t just stand there like a lemon,” she chided, “Get out a pan and start cooking the filling.” She bobbed her head at a dish of sliced and seasoned meat. “When was the last time you were in a kitchen, Jean?”

Jean cleared his throat as he retrieved a frying pan and turned the hob on. “Not long ago.”

“Colour me impressed that you’ve managed to keep yourself fed. There were days when you were in high school when you’d spend so long cooped up in your room, drawing, you’d forget to eat.”

Jean looked up, surprised that she had been the first one to bring the subject of his art up, and a little hopeful that the easiness of her tone meant she’d learned to accept and maybe even support his choice to…

No, the disdainful curl of her lip was still there. It lasted barely of a fraction of a second, but just long enough for any hope Jean had held for the most fleeting of heartbeats to shatter on the kitchen tiles.

“And how about money? You’re still being sensible, I hope?”

“Yes, Mom. What heat am I supposed to cook this over?”

She reached over the counter and slid the open recipe book towards him. “You’ve mentioned you’ve gotten yourself job before now, haven’t you?”

Jean bit the inside of his cheek. “Yes, Mom.”

They fell quiet for several moments- maybe she was waiting for him to say something- but his stomach turned at the idea of her finding out about Marco, so he trained his eyes on the recipe book between them, scarcely paying attention to what he was reading before he noticed the name that was embossed at the top of the page in smooth cursive. An oh-so familiar name.

His breath snagged in his lungs.

His mom cleared her throat impatiently. “And? How is that going?”

“It’s going fine.” Jean pushed the recipe book away and tipped the meat into the pan with a wet crash, quickly sizzling to life. There was an apprehensive pause, as if his mother was waiting for him to say more, but he pressed his lips together and pushed the meat around the pan with a wooden spoon, stubbornly silent.

“What are you trying to hide, Jean?”

He flinched at her sharp tone, resisting the urge to take a step back and she took one forward, scrutinising his face with the unrelenting gaze of an interrogation officer.

“What? Nothing. I’m not trying to hide anything.”

“Where are you working?”

“I…” Jean’s shoulders sagged in defeat, the words on his tongue scarcely a whisper. “…A bakery.”

“A bakery?”

As he’d feared, scornful incredulity crept into her voice, distaste for the working class she herself was a part of, manifesting itself into a superiority complex that even Jean didn’t understand.

“Y-yeah.” He scrambled to salvage any shred of dignity his mother could regard him with. He seized hold of the recipe book and flipping it shut, revealing the cover emblazoned with a picture of a woman whose face framed that of her son’s. “Her bakery.”

The image of Maria Bodt from the cover of the recipe book grinned upwards from between them as Jean watched his mother’s jaw fall open as if to retort- and then it shut, her eyes widening in pure surprise, followed by her brow furrowing as her gaze swivelled between her son and the airbrushed picture of Maria Bodt’s freckled face, as if she couldn’t decide whether Jean was being serious or not.

“You’re joking,” she said at last. “Maria Bodt? A bakery? She’s not a chef, not a baker, Jean!”

“No, but her son is-” Shit. “I mean-”

The meat in the pan was starting to spit at him. Jean grabbed the spoon and stirred it around, letting its venom settle and giving him chance to draw in a well needed breath, steadying his pumping heart before he continued.

“It’s her family’s bakery, and her son runs it.”

“And you work there?”

“Yeah. I…met him. At the start of summer. And he offered me a job.”

“He?”

“Her son.”

“What’s his name?”

Jean lifted the pan off the stove and drained the excess juices into the sink, watching it dribble down the drain, hoping no remnant of telling affection seeped into his voice as his lips formed the two syllables he’d grown remarkably attached to.

“Marco.”

Sweet and perfect, curling around his tongue, warming his insides like ginger.

“Well. I’m…surprised.” His mother folded her arms, looking less disappointed than he thought she would- maybe that disbelief raising her eyebrows into her hairline masked the slightest hint of approval he desperately sought? “Maria Bodt…the Maria Bodt? Have you met her?”

“No. She’s not home often. At least, not according to Marco.”

“And…how old is he?”

“Marco?” Jean hesitated. “Nineteen.”

His mother sucked in a sharp breath, then swore under her breath, before she sunk her knuckles into the pastry dough on the counter, perhaps a little more viciously than necessary.

“A nineteen-year-old running a bakery. By himself.”

Jean nodded. “Mm-hm. Well, mostly.” He lowered the pan onto the countertop. “He’s…he’s got me, now.” Now and forever. “I know what it sounds like,” he added hurriedly. “But Marco- he really doesn’t act like a teenager- he’s responsible and works hard and he’s dedicated and…”  He’s kind and beautiful and has the softest lips I’ve ever kissed…

“I’d hope so,” Jean’s mother remarked gruffly. She continued to work the dough between her fists in a sort of furious mash. “I’ll be honest, Jean, something about that just doesn’t sit right with me. It sounds far too…convenient to be true.”

Jean raised an eyebrow. “You don’t believe me?”

“No, I believe you.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “It’s just…Maria Bodt. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Jean said impatiently. “Is she that big of a deal?”

His mother let out a sort of derisive snort. “She’s certainly made quite the name for herself in the culinary world. I’ve been using her books for years.” At this, she reached out and gave the recipe book and the image of Maria something of an affectionate pat. “To think that my son- my son is working in her bakery…”

Jean put the pan back on the stove by her side and folded his arms, shoulders hunched, watching her expression carefully. “Maybe you can meet her one day. She might like to meet you.”

The words came before he could stop them. Oh fuck.

“Why would she want to meet me?”

Jean resisted the urge to clap his hand over his mouth. He hadn’t meant that to slip out quite so easily- he had been racing ahead, thinking of days in the not-too-distant future that saw him nearly fully come to terms with and eagerly awaiting the day he could proclaim he was dating Marco Bodt. Naturally, he’d expect that Maria would want to meet his mother just as much as she would the boy who was- would be dating her son.

But he wasn’t ready, not by any stretch of the imagination, to admit that to anyone except himself- and maybe Marco- let alone his mother.

He stared at her dumbly for several seconds, his throat constricted around the words trapped in his throat like rocks, jaw clamped shut, blood drumming in his temples as his hands curled into fists against his chest beneath his crossed arms.

He shrugged.

Turned away.

“I don’t know. She might.”

“If even you, the one working in her bakery, haven’t met her, Jean, what makes you think she’d be interested in meeting your old mom?” She laughed and Jean let some of the tension in his shoulders slacken. Thank God. She hadn’t picked up on the context he was desperate to hide. “So. Tell me about this Marco. What’s he like?”

Jean’s stomach flipped. There was a subject he could drive into the ground multiple times before he got tired of doing so. Marco was like...everything. He was beautiful in his own dark haired, broad shouldered, freckled kind of way. He made every breath less laborious, every word that tumbled from his lips sound sweeter, everything he touched into art. He exuded an intolerable form of allure in everything he did that Jean was about impervious to as a moth was resistant to the magnetism of a flame.

“He’s cool.”

Jean could’ve slapped himself.

His mother, however, seemed satisfied.

“Good,” she said primly. “Nice to hear you’ve actually made a friend. You’ve always been antisocial. I thought you might have trouble meeting people once you started college.”

Marco? A friend? Ha! Now there was a thought.

But the mention of college once again ran a cold spike through the pits of Jean’s stomach. She was trying to prompt him. He could tell by the way she let the silence between them linger, buzzing with a kind of energy that instigated a reply, the end of the last sentence hanging on by a thread of a subject unwilling to be dropped.

“Hey, Mom, you’re beating that pastry to death. It’ll come out too thick if you overwork it.”

His mother opened her mouth to retort, then seemed surprised that Jean had something worth considering. “This isn’t properly mixed yet, Jean. If you want a smooth crust it has to be thoroughly kneaded.”

“No, that’s bread dough, and you knead it to make it elastic and make sure it’ll rise, not to mix it. Pie crust is better when it’s a little rough- adds a better texture. And you can’t just roll it out,” he said as his mother reached for a rolling pin. “It has to rest before it’s baked, otherwise it’ll shrink and the filling will-” He mimed an explosion with his fingers and stopped dead when he realised his mother was staring at him. His hands fell to his sides, and he turned away, cheeks burning. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

“No, no, that’s…useful to know. Than…well done, Jean.”

Jean glanced over at her and finally, finally, there it was. The slightest pull of a smile dancing on her face, lingering in a moment lasting less time than it took to draw breath before it was gone. But it had been there. The tiniest spark of approval. A hint of pride.

Something cold and stony wedged in Jean’s heart gave way, crumbling at the edges.

“Well then. You put this pastry to rest- how long does it need?”

“At least an hour.”

“All right. You sort that out then go sit down in the living room and I’ll make us some tea. Then we can…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t really need to. Jean knew what was coming. He’d known from the moment he’d set foot inside the house. No, he’d known from the moment he heard the abrupt cease of the dialling tone that morning when his mom answered the phone. It had been an asteroid visible over the horizon, hurtling towards him, and now it was about to make impact.

What a fucking drama queen.

Nevertheless, he did as he was told. He wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge as his mother bustled about behind him, flipping the kettle on and throwing tea bags into mugs, chastising him for making a mess.

Jean went back out into the dimly lit hall and made his way to the front room, feeling the wall for the light switch. He found it and the room snapped into light. The first thing he noticed was the tingly fresh scent of pine before he saw the fir tree stood in the corner of the room, its branches bare and completely devoid of decoration. A scattering of presents wrapped in iridescent paper twinkled from beneath its lower branches, and next to it on the floor was a dusty cardboard box that had been dug out of the attic, stuffed with their old Christmas decorations.

His mouth fell open in surprise.

“Don’t just stand in the door way,” His mother said from behind him. “Come on, in you go.”

“You got a Christmas tree? A real tree?” he said.

She rolled her eyes, voice laced with sarcasm. “Oh good God, where on earth did that thing standing in the corner of my living room come from. Of course I did, you silly boy.”

“But we haven’t had a Christmas tree since…I was like, twelve?” Jean turned as his mother ushered him into the room, his brow furrowed in confusion. “And never a real one- you always said they were too messy and expensive and a waste of money-”

“I know what I said in the past,” his mother said, pressing a mug of tea into his hands. “And to tell you the truth up until this morning we weren’t going to have a tree of any sort.”

“What changed?”

She gave him a wan half-smile. “Let’s just say you weren’t the only one feeling impulsive.” She nudged the box of decorations on the floor with her foot. “I thought we could decorate it when you got here.”

“Together?”

“Absolutely not. I was planning to nip round the neighbours’ for tea whilst you did it all.”

Jean let a grin slip onto his face as he placed his mug on the mantelpiece and dropped to his knees, pulling a string of lights out of the box. “Do these even work anymore?”

“Hang on. Let me go find some batteries.”

Jean sifted through their decorations as she disappeared for a moment, laying tiny plastic reindeer and silver bells and glittery baubles that left a sparkly residue on his jeans and fingertips out on the carpet.

“This is what I do at the bakery,” he remarked as his mother re-entered the room having retrieved new batteries.

“Decorate trees?”

“No. Marco gets me to decorate cakes and stuff.”

His mother found the end of the lights and pried the back off the battery pack, slotting in the new ones. “Why, is he not any good at it?”

“No. He’s better at it than I am.” Jean shifted awkwardly. “He just…says he likes the way I do it.”

The last battery snapped into place and the string of lights burst into life, jewelled tones of emerald and sapphire and ruby casting a kaleidoscope of colour up Jean’s arms and across his lap.

“I didn’t expect them to still work,” his mother said, depositing the power pack in Jean’s hand. “Put those on first. So how long has it been since you started working at this bakery?”

Jean pressed his lips together as he got to his feet and began winding the lights around the tree’s spindly branches. It was shorter than him and just as narrow, so it didn’t take long to reach the bottom. He was left with a good few feet of spare cable that he did his best to tuck out of sight. “Since the start of summer. Marco taught me as much as he could over the summer before…you know.”

“College?”

The word hit him like a stone in the back of his skull.

Jean briefly closed his eyes and nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

“Speaking of which.” Her voice was curt and cut through the room like a chisel. “I think that’s something we need to talk about, don’t you?”

Jean winced, resisting the urge to say no, no, no, things are going so well, don’t ruin it with that now.

He nodded again.  “Mm-hmm.”

“What happened, Jean? What went wrong? You were all set up and prepared to do the right thing- you left home with a prospective future and you just…threw it all away.”

“Nothing went wrong, Mom.”

“Jean.”

“What?”

She reached out, hesitant fingers curling in on themselves before she placed her hand reverently on his shoulder. “Please, take this seriously.”

“I am.” Jean shrugged her off. “I am, and I always have. I didn’t take art for fun.”

“Then what did you take it for?”

The words died on his tongue. He’d taken art because…what? Because he enjoyed it? That was the very fucking definition of fun. He couldn’t just contradict himself and pretend that made his choices justified and more sensical than the ones his mother had proposed for him.

His mother sighed and handed him a handful of baubles. “I don’t want this to turn into an argument. God knows we’ve done enough of that over the years.”

Jean’s shoulders hunched over. “I…don’t want to argue, either.”

“Good, so let’s have a civilised discussion about this for once. I’m trying to understand you, Jean. The last time we spoke you knew exactly what you were going to do, and as far as I know, you were planning to take classes in business, like you said you would. Was that a lie? Did you lie to me?”

“I…” He hesitated. “No. I didn’t.”

His mother sighed and sank down onto the sofa. She took a long sip from her mug. “I didn’t think you were. Don’t give me that look, I’m your mother. I know what you look like when you’ve got something to hide.”

That meant she knew he wasn’t telling her everything. She knew there was more to the story than a simple act of spite.

Jean hung the last bauble he’d been given on the tree and held out his hand for his mother to hand him some more.

“So. Tell me what changed.” she said.

“Nothing changed,” Jean said before he could stop himself. “I mean- well, yeah, of course it did. I just…I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know if I can…I’m trying, I want to try, to be honest with you, but…”

“What is it, sweetheart?”

There was a tremble in his fingers as he slipped the bauble’s string over the spindly branch. Sweetheart. He hadn’t heard that in months, even before he’d moved out. Only now did it hit him how long he’d been away from home and how far he’d driven himself away from something he needed, no matter how much he’d told himself otherwise. He needed this. His spirit was fragile and it needed some form of stability before he could go on. His world was changing in ways so drastic it was almost intimidating. And if he couldn’t find strength, or any sense of permanence, in his roots then where could he go from here?

“I don’t know how. I’ve never known how to be honest with you, Mom.”

There was no glimmer of emotion that passed over his mother’s face like a breeze this time. This time shock seemed to fully register in her widened eyes and every part of her face that seemed to sag, crestfallen. Jean immediately felt guilt turn his stomach over at making her look so wounded and quickly grabbed his mug off the mantelpiece, just for something else to do other than register the disappointment on his mother’s face.

“And what does that mean? Jean?”

He clenched the mug in both hands, knuckles whitening. “I just- I didn’t know what you’d say and…when I was a kid, I never did anything you told me not to do, and I grew up with the idea that there was only one way to do the right thing and…I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“Yes,” his mother interrupted. “It is. If this is how you’re feeling, Jean, I want to hear about it, and if it’s my fault, then I bear the burden of responsibility for it. It’s been six months since I’ve spoken to you. Six months. Do you have any idea how much I worried over that time?”

“I’m sorry-”

“Is that why you didn’t want to talk to me? Because I raised you wrong?”

“No. That’s not what I meant.” Jean took a deep breath. “I was scared, OK? I was scared of what you’d think, and how disappointed you’d be in me, and it was…easier to avoid you than it was to explain myself.” He set his mug back on the mantelpiece will a hollow thud. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Disappointed.”

Hesitation wormed its way across her expression and she closed her eyes, turning away from him for a moment, her lips pressed together.

“…Yes, I am. I won’t lie. I mean, really, art, Jean? Art? I don’t understand why you’d ever give up the opportunity to do more than that- be more than that-”

“I don’t see it like that,” Jean interjected. “Art’s never been a restriction or pointless to me, and sitting in a classroom learning about profit turnovers and taxes is.”

“I know, sweetheart, I know how important your art is to you. But you’ve got to understand that there’s a difference between what’s important and what’s realistic.” She placed her mug on the floor and came over to stand by his side, stooping to scoop up a handful of decorations, and began to string them onto the tree herself, one at a time. “Drawing and painting may be fun but it’s not going to help you in the real world like taxes and profit will.”

“What do you mean by ‘the real world’?” Jean said. “Mom, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been living in the real world. I’ve been working and earning money and learning how to live on my own. This isn’t a practice run before I get released into the real world, this is real and I want to make it count.” He clenched the ornament in his hand, the plastic buckling beneath his fingers. “I don’t want to waste my time with something that doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Jean, I understand…”

“No, Mom, you don’t.” Jean surprised even himself with the sharpness of his voice, his words edged with iron, cold and heavy. But now he’d started, it was harder to stop. “You never have. You’ve always told me what was right, never let me find it for myself. You’ve always said there was only one way to do things and I’ll probably pick the wrong one so it’s better if you just choose for me. You taught me that everything I wanted was wrong and impractical and wasn’t worth anything even if it made me happy.”

“Don’t speak to me like that.”

“I’m trying to be honest with you, Mom, like you wanted me to. Didn’t you ever see that I found it easier to be myself around other people? Did you ever notice that the only person I ever hid things from was you? Because it was easier to pretend those parts of me you said were stupid didn’t exist than it was to try and change them so you’d approve.” He’d spent years quietly stewing with silent defiance, hoarding pencils and sketchbooks away from her critical gaze, waiting until he was alone to fulfil the need to create rather than obey, like he was told.

They’d both stopped pretending to decorate the tree now. Jean and his mother were facing each other properly for what felt like first time since Jean had stepped through the front door, making direct eye contact without either of them flinching or avoiding the other’s gaze. At long last they were confronting each other, and not just literally. Jean was letting himself be vulnerable for a person who wasn’t Marco, and his mother was listening to him, something he could never, ever recall her doing in the past.

“Is that what you’ve been looking for? My approval?”

“No. Yes. But…it’s complicated.” Jean bit his lip. “I’m not asking you to approve. It’s OK, you never have. I just…I just need you to be there. I just need your support. I just need…” Something unconditional, a foundation he could rely on, when his whole world was changing and slipping from his grasp, he’d still have firm roots tying him down.

“But you haven’t let me be there for you, have you.” She made it sound like less of a question, more of a statement. “I’ve tried, Jean. I’ve tried to call you, I’ve tried to get in contact, and you’ve shut me out.”

Jean’s gaze dropped to the floor, head hung in shame. He wasn’t proud of that. It had been cowardice, but it had been comfortable, like a blindfold to the inevitable. This conversation was impending no matter what he did, but it was so much nicer to pretend it wasn’t coming rather than spend any time formulating any kind of response.

“I thought maybe I should let you shut me out. I tried to keep my distance, because I thought maybe you needed this. Maybe you needed to see that you wouldn’t be able to do this by yourself and learn something through your own experience. But, clearly, that didn’t happen. So, let me ask you one more time. What changed?”

It was obvious, wasn’t it? If he was as easy to read as she made him out to be then surely, the reason was practically silently screaming itself hoarse. The reason, the name, must be riddled in every crease of his lips, whispered on every breath he took.

Marco.

Marco changed everything. If it hadn’t been for him, Jean would have never chosen art and taken up his stupid job offer to compensate. And if he’d never done that…where would they be now?

They’d probably have never seen each other again. They would have never learned so much about one another, they would have never have questioned anything about themselves, they never would have kissed. Jean wouldn’t have learned what drove him. Marco would still be alone, a boy, scarcely a man, waiting in that poky little bakery all by himself for people who promised they’d be home months ago.

He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted the whole world to know about how wonderful Marco was and the magic he worked, how he coaxed things out of Jean even Jean didn’t know had been there. But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to. It had to remain in his heart for just a little longer, a secret between the two of them. Their moment and no one else’s, because that was what was important- fragility finding strength in unity. Freckles beneath fingertips. Soft breaths and hushed sobs.

There was nothing stopping him from being honest without telling the whole truth, though.

“Everything,” he said. The word filled his throat, blossomed into heat in his chest, swept his breath in rapture. “Everything changed because I…I realised I could be more. I realised that it didn’t…it didn’t have to be the way it was- I could change even if you didn’t like it, even if I’d be a disappointment.”

But it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, he could disappoint everyone in the world, and there would still be someone there to hold him in his arms and kiss his brow and tell him he believed in him.

“Jean. You’re not a disappointment.”

“But-”

“I know what I said. I am disappointed, I won’t hide that, but you…as reluctant as I may be to admit it, you’re growing up, and this is part of a learning curve.” She sighed and patted his shoulder. “You’re not much more than a child and I still want to treat you like one, because that’s the only way I know how to support you. But even I understand that…independence,” The word sounded almost foreign coming from her, “isn’t something you can be taught. I know I have to learn how to let you go and let you learn about this for yourself.” She drew a short breath. “The world isn’t kind, Jean. And I don’t want you to hurt. But more than that, I don’t want to be the one who hurts you.”

“Mom, I…” His voice shook and it took a great deal of effort to swallow the lump in his throat. “That…means a lot.”

His mother gave him a strained smile, the fine lines around her eyes creasing in sympathy. She bent down and sifted through the box of decorations between them, handing Jean ornaments for him to string onto the tree. He obliged for a few minutes in silence, allowing the air between them to settle. The exchange had all happened so fast and Jean was so surprised that it had ended without coming to blows he wasn’t entirely convinced this was the end.

“Oh no,” his mother said softly. “Oh, what a shame.”

Jean looked to see her fish out broken shards of a ceramic bauble from the bottom of the cardboard box, her face puckered up in distaste.

“Look.” She held out the pieces for him to see. They were embossed with the fragmented remains of his name in cursive. “This was a gift to celebrate your first Christmas, do you remember?”

“Not really.”

“It’s been on the tree every year since you were born.”

“And we haven’t had a tree in years,” Jean said dryly. He took the largest piece from her open palm and examined the smooth gold ink, tracing the curling script that formed the -‘ea’- of his name and half the -‘n’- split down the middle. The remains of the message- ‘with love on your first Christmas’ -was scrawled above his name, and beneath that was a smaller, broken line of text. Jean tilted the shard to diffuse the light reflecting off the metallic paint where it hadn’t flaked off with age.  - ve from your D -

“Was this from Dad?”

A dark cloud passed over his mother’s expression. The thin smile on her lips dropped like a stone, forming the grim, taut line he was more accustomed to seeing.

“Yes,” she said tightly.

“And you kept it?”

“Yes. Because it was yours, Jean.” She plucked the fragment from his hand and tipped the rest of the shards onto the windowsill to be disposed of later. “It was a silly trinket, really. Sentimental. Nothing more.” But she stopped, gazing at the little heap of broken porcelain, something unreadable lingering in her tightly drawn expression. She reached out and stroked the same fragment of cursive Jean had held only moments earlier. “You loved your dad so much,” she said quietly. “You know you used to stand on the back of this-” She patted the arm of the sofa pushed beneath the windowsill. “-every night, waiting until you saw his car pulling up outside. He didn’t deserve that. My little boy.” Her voice wavered, a broken note, and experimental ripple in the water.

Jean’s fingers froze from where they were hanging decorations. He’d never heard her sound so sentimental in his life. He’d never seen tears glimmer against the red rims of her eyes since the night his dad left. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react. He stood by the tree, wooden with apprehension, lips parted, not sure what to say.

“Mom,” he managed.

“What is it?” She swiped at her eyes with her thumb, and just like that, the evidence was gone.

“Are you OK?”

“Of course I am. Don’t be silly. I’m just…” She broke off, but a smile slowly spread itself across her face. “I’m just happy my little boy came back to see me. Even if he isn’t so little anymore.” She let out a choked laugh and reached out, cupping Jean’s cheek, her smile growing more watery by the second. “I’m proud of you, Jean. I really am. You’ve done so well on your own and I’m so proud. I just want you to make something out of yourself, and not end up like him. Your father left because he didn’t like the responsibility that came with having a family- he thought there was something bigger and better out there in the world for him and I…unfortunately I can’t help but see that in you.”

A glow had begun to kindle in the cage of Jean’s chest at finally being told he was worthy of being proud of- but at the mention of his father, his shoulders sagged in disappointment. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“No, but you father had us, Jean. He had a family but he threw it all away because he somehow thought we- you were less than whatever stupid notion in his head told him was in store if he left. And this is what I want you to wrap your head around. What I need you to understand.” She patted his cheek softly before her hand fell back to her side. “I’m sure it’s easy to get swept up in fancy ideals and silly ideas but you have to have solid ground beneath your feet first and foremost, before you start throwing things away that can’t be replaced for something that might be out of your reach. Does that make sense? Is any of this sinking in?”

“I know what you’re getting at.” Jean crossed his arms over his chest. “But is it worth it, in the end? Is stability worth being miserable for? If you wake up every morning hating the alarm clock and willing your weeks away for fleeting weekends…does any of it really matter?”

“Jean,” his mother said, dispirited. “Jean, do you think I spent my life dreaming of marrying some fool who wouldn’t stick around to see his son grow up, work two jobs and raise possibly the most difficult child in existence?”

Jean hung his head. “No,” he said in a small voice.

“We have to compromise. As unfortunate as it is, that’s the way life is.”

“But it doesn’t have to be,” Jean said before he could think. “I know it’s not easy and I know it’s unfair and odds are always, always going to be stacked against me but Marco said- I mean,” he hastily corrected himself. “Isn’t success subjective? Are…are we not even supposed to try anymore?”

His mother regarded him for what felt like a long time, indecision flickering beneath the surface of her amber eyes. The same eyes Jean had inherited. The piece of her he’d always have, no matter how far he tried to keep himself from her.

Eventually she spoke.

“I don’t know the answer to that anymore, Jean. It’s something you’re going to have to learn by yourself. But at least let me be there for you whilst you do. Please, don’t shut me out again.”

Jean nodded, swallowing thickly. “I won’t.”

“And I’ll…try, for you. I’ll try to understand and support you in your pursuit of-” Her lip began to curl again. “artistic success. But promise me you won’t give up this bakery job of yours, you need a backup plan, like it or not, and Maria Bodt’s bakery should be enough for now. Listen to this Marco of yours. He seems like he’s been a good influence on you.”

Jean’s insides clenched when she referred to Marco as his, momentary panic flaring up for fear she knew far too much already- but no, he’d given her no reason to think he was anything more than a friend. He’d come real fucking close, but hadn’t slipped up just yet.

He cocked his head slightly. “How?”

His mother laughed. “Because you came home. I’m not stupid, Jean. You’re as stubborn as stone. After spending so long away there’s no way you would’ve come crawling back by yourself. Someone had to have said something to you.”

“I didn’t come crawling. And what made you think it was Marco?”

“A lucky guess. But judging by your reaction I’m not wrong.” She reached out once more and hooked a hand around the back of his head, tipping his head down so she could crane her neck up and plant a soft kiss on his forehead. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”

The back of Jean’s eyes were beginning to burn. He sniffed viciously and swiped at his nose with the cuff of his sleeve, and wrapped his arms around her.

“I’m sorry, Mom. For everything. I shouldn’t have- I shouldn’t have done a lot of things and I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re disappointed and I know this isn’t what you wanted but I’m going to prove you wrong.”

She laughed. “Ha! Is that a promise?”

“Yes. Well. I’m gonna give it my best fucking shot.”

“Jean!” She swatted him in the chest, but before he withdrew, he thought he heard her say “I hope you do, too, son.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen

“So? How did it go?”

Jean was in his old bedroom, sat with his back against the headboard of his old bed, his knees drawn up to his chest, his phone pressed to his ear. He swallowed.

“OK, I think,” he said. “She took the whole lied-to-her-and-avoided-her-for-six-months thing pretty well, I guess.”

“Good.” Marco sounded relieved. “I’m glad you were able to work things out. Seriously. I know that wasn’t easy. I’m proud of you, Jean.”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Jean mumbled into his chest.

He and his mother had finished decorating the tree several hours ago, after which they settled down to a later-than-anticipated dinner, where his mother asked him about his art course, showing an interest he’d never known her to have before. The disapproving pucker in her lips hadn’t completely disappeared- it came and went with the conversation- but the fact that her objection to the matter was beginning to crumble, even just a little, was a comforting prospect. She even asked if she could see his sketchbook, to which Jean did his best to tactfully refuse. There were way too many drawings of Marco in there, and she certainly wasn’t stupid. If she saw them she’d definitely know Marco was more than just a friend. And Jean wasn’t quite ready for that, not yet. He and his mother had just crested a huge tidal wave and finally, after years of swelling storms, found calmer waters. He didn’t want to do anything to unnecessarily rock the boat that had taken so long to still.

It felt…odd to be so comfortable at home. To actually find himself home. No longer having to tread on eggshells, no more stubborn silences, fewer secrets and less scornful gazes exchanged across the kitchen table. Jean could open his mouth and, nine times out of ten, wouldn’t be berated for what came out. He could provoke discussion instead of conflict, and his mother would fold her hands and listen. That’s what he’d been missing out all this time. He didn’t need someone to offer solutions or try to fix him. He could do that on his own. All he needed was for her to listen.

Before they’d finished clearing up after dinner, Jean had felt his phone in his pocket begin to vibrate against his thigh. He half-fished it out, revealing just enough of the screen to see who was calling. His breath hitched in his throat when he saw Marco’s contact icon blinking at him, compelling him to hastily excuse himself and run upstairs, grabbing his bag from the hall as he went before he barrelled into his old bedroom and answered before the last buzz of the call even had time to die away.

So here he was, hunched up in a corner of the achingly familiar room on the bare-stripped surface of his mattress, gazing at the slate-grey walls, the half-empty bookshelves, the absence of clutter his mother had long since cleared away since he last lived here. Gazing, but not really seeing. He was entirely focused on the voice he held cupped in one hand, cherishing the buzz of every syllable, letting each word settle deep in his chest.

“How about you? How did things go on your end?”

“Funny you should mention that, actually,” Marco remarked dryly. “I set off for the airport a couple of hours ago.”

Jean frowned, shooting a glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table, surprised to see how late it was. “The airport’s not that far, is it? What time was her plane supposed to land?”

“Half past eight.”

“You know it’s nearly ten o’clock, right?”

“Yep,” Marco said. “Well, as you can imagine, it’s Christmas Eve, so traffic’s a nightmare.” As if to accentuate this, there was a dim roar of an engine passing by in the background. “And the van’s decided that it didn’t like the idea of making this trip, so…I’m currently sat on the edge of the highway, neither here nor there. It’s wonderful.”

“Fuck. You all right?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry. The engine started making noises that I thought I knew how to fix, so I pulled over to check it out, and now it won’t even start. It does this all the time, but I’m not usually this far from home.”

Jean began to get up. “Do you need a lift? I can borrow my mom’s car and-”

“No, no, Jean, it’s fine, really,” Marco interjected. “You’ve only just gotten home, I don’t want to drag you away. I rang the breakdown company, they’re on their way, and my mom knows I’m going to be late. Thank God you convinced me into getting a phone.” He chuckled. “Otherwise I’d be stuck here for a lot longer.”

“…All right, if you’re sure.” Jean reluctantly sank back into his mattress. “You sure you’re OK?”

“A bit cold, but other than that, I’m fine. Maybe a little bored.”

“Is that why you rang me?”

“Partially. I also wanted to find out if you’d actually made it back to Trost or if you bailed last minute. Which, I’m glad clearly isn’t the case.”

“Nice to know you’ve got so much faith in me,” Jean remarked sarcastically. “How long before breakdown gets to you?”

“Shouldn’t be long now. I’m not far off the airport, so I should be home with Mom…well. Before midnight. Ideally.” He let out an exasperated breath. “You know what, it’s a damn good thing I don’t believe in omens, otherwise I’d think this was the universe’s way of telling me this was a bad idea.”

There was a thoughtful pause.

Jean wet his lips, apprehensive. “Are you- uh, nervous?”

“About seeing my mom?” Marco thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe a little? It’s…just been a while, so I…don’t really know.”

“Yeah. I get that.” Jean fiddled with the stitching along the edge of the mattress cover. “When…was the last time you actually saw her?”

“Um…three weeks, maybe, before I met you? She came home last Christmas, and she was there in January when my grandfather… She stuck around for a while after that.”

“But?” Jean prompted, sensing there was more.

There was a distinct moment where he could almost see Marco hesitate in his mind’s eye.

“I…I thought she might be staying for good for a while, because she didn’t bring up anything about book tours or cooking shows, and I thought maybe- just maybe she wouldn’t want me to live myself just yet. But it turned out she was just using the down time to write another book. She was gone again by April, back for a bit in June, and then disappeared again, and the most I’ve seen of her since has been over Skype and on the other end of a phone call every now and then.”

Jean opened his mouth to reply, struggling to muster words of comfort in a way that sounded sincere instead of pitying or condescending, but his tongue had turned to a leaden brick in his mouth, his mind frustratingly blank.

“That…sucks.”

Wow, Kirschtein, your eloquence continues to dazzle us all.

“Yeah. It does, it really does.” The bitterness that had crept into Marco’s tone quickly receded as his laughed. “But who knows. This time might be different.”

“If I’m being honest, it doesn’t sound like she deserves all these chances you’ve been giving her.”

“No, she’s not…I mean, it probably seems like she’s awful but- really, she’s not as bad as I might make her sound,” Marco corrected himself. “She cares, and she’s always happy to see me, and she tries to be there, but…”

“You don’t have to defend her. Shit parenting is shit parenting.”

“It’s not like that. It’s…the job, you know? She found success, and who can blame her for wanting to hold onto that whilst she can?” There was a lingering strain in Marco’s voice.

“Marco, you…” Jean drew a short breath, hesitant words dancing on the tip of his tongue. “You’re allowed to be selfish, you know. You don’t have to pretend.” Not around me. “It’s…it’s OK.”

There was a long, drawn out silence, only broken by the distant rumbling of traffic on Marco’s end of the phone.

He didn’t reply.

Jean bit his lip, cursing himself. He’d spent the whole evening slowly dismantling so many of his own walls he’d completely forgotten to tread carefully around Marco’s. He’d crossed a line, Marco’s silence told him that much. Marco wasn’t ready to let himself be so vulnerable in front of him, and if Jean tried to force him to open up, he’d break, smothered beneath the rubble of the decimated barricade meant to stand tall and shield from view, not to withstand attack.

He fought to find something else to say.

“My mom knows about you,” he blurted out.

Marco’s response was instantaneous. “What? But I thought we said-”

“No- I mean-” Jean corrected himself. “-she knows about you. Not about…you know. Us.”

“Oh.” Marco was quiet for a moment before curiosity clearly got the better of him. “What did she, uh, say?”

“She…admires your mom.” Jean hesitated. “She’s impressed that you taught me how to bake. And she thinks you’ve been a good influence on me.”

“That…uh, bodes well, I guess?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Hey…Jean?”

“Yeah?”

“When…when you say us…what do you mean by that? What…what does us mean to you?”

For the second time, Jean’s tongue lay heavy in his mouth, unspoken words tangling into nonsense at the back of his throat.

Us was a far cry from platonic. Us, such a short and inconsequential word that littered casual conversation, just two figures, bound into a single syllable. But its definition was weighted with a relationship that remained to be figured out. A first time for Jean and a new experience for Marco. Somewhere between more than friends and significant other, but still too new to be clarity. There was still a poorly constructed web of cluttered feelings they needed to sift through together, and somehow it didn’t feel right to try and do it when they were unable to even meet each other’s gaze.

“I thought you didn’t want to do this over the phone.”

“I don’t. Not really.” Marco paused. “But it’s been stuck in my head. I don’t- I don’t know how I’m supposed to talk about you in front of my mom.”

“Just say I’m your friend.”

“But that’s not the truth.”

“You don’t have to tell the truth.”

“I don’t want to lie, either. You’re not just a friend, you’re more to me than that and I- I’m sorry, I know this is probably ten times weirder for you than it is for me, but…”

“Marco.” Jean interrupted. “Look I…I get it. I know this is weird and I don’t- I don’t know how we’re supposed to handle this.” He tipped his head back until it hit the wall. “Is there a way to handle this?”

Marco sighed. “I wish. I’m sorry. You’re right. Let’s talk about this the next time we see each other. When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. Might stick around for a couple of days, or however long it takes for me to run out of clean underwear.”

Marco laughed. “You could always do laundry, you know. I know that Mom has a New Year’s event thing with her publishing company that she’s probably going to attend, so she’ll be gone by New Year’s Eve. Do…? Um.” He cleared his throat. “Do you want to- since we didn’t manage Christmas- do you want to see each other then? We could- um, you could come hang out at the bakery, like normal, if you want?

“New Year’s? Um. Yeah. Sure.” Jean fidgeted with the mattress cover. “Sounds great.”

“Great. It’s a date.” The word clearly slipped out before Marco could think because in the next moment he was gabbling to correct himself. “I- I mean-”

Jean bit back a grin. “Yeah. Right. It’s a date.”

There was a pause.

“No sign of the breakdown guys yet?” he asked.

“Nope. Nothing. Just miles and miles of traffic.”

Jean threw himself onto his stomach and reached over the edge of his bed, fishing through his bag until he pulled out his sketchbook, scrabbling in the front pocket for his pencil. “I’ll stay with you until they get there.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I want to.”

He could practically hear the smile behind Marco’s words when he replied, the sound of his voice flaring within Jean’s chest, gratifying and harmonious.

“Thanks, Jean.”

…

Christmas day was relatively uneventful in the Kirschtein household.

If it weren’t for his mother waking him up mid-morning with the promise of a cooked breakfast, Jean would have easily slept half the day away. Instead of throwing his pillow across the room at her, he heaved himself out of bed and spent what remained of the morning with her, sat at opposite sides of the kitchen table in companionable silence over steaming mugs of coffee. His mother read the paper whilst Jean flipped through the supplements with vague interest, half-listening to the same Christmas songs the radio was playing on loop.

He was surprised to learn that the gifts sat beneath the tree were for him. He hadn’t been expecting anything- he certainly didn’t deserve anything- but he appreciated the new pair of trainers, headphones and set of clean shirts his mother had picked out for him all the same. They weren’t particularly personal gifts, or relevant to his interests, for that matter- but then again, both Jean and his mother were keenly aware that that was a matter that still rested on uncertain ground- all the same, it was enough of a gesture to warrant a hug of gratitude that lingered for perhaps a few more seconds than strictly necessary.

They ate the rest of the pie they had made last night for dinner before they settled themselves in the living room in front of the TV as night fell, to watch whatever seasonally appropriate movie was on. Eventually, his mother dozed off, glass of wine in hand, leaving Jean with his sketchbook propped up on his lap, checking his phone every few minutes, maintaining a discreet conversation with Marco.

He and Marco spoke again that night before he went to bed. It wasn’t a long call, just long enough to confirm that Marco had indeed gotten off the highway last night and wish each other goodnight. Jean didn’t ask about Maria’s visit, and Marco didn’t tell. He figured it was wise to give Marco the space and privacy he was used to whilst he was with his mother to avoid trampling over any potential minefields, so he didn’t press the topic, and all he could do was assume Marco was grateful.

He left Trost two days later. His mother walked with him to the bus stop and before he could leave she pulled him into a tight hug, pressed a kiss to his forehead and made him promise not to ignore her calls ever again. Jean begrudgingly agreed and hugged her back, assuring her that he’d let her know when he got back to Rose safely before he was interrupted by the bus driver blared his horn at them, yelling that they didn’t have all day.

Jean got back to the grim little place he called home before Eren. He dumped his bag in the doorway and decided to take full advantage of the short afternoon he had entirely to himself, relishing in sole control of the TV and playing a handful of Eren’s games without his permission before the roommate in question stormed in through the door, throwing his bags halfway across the room, thunder raging across his face. Clearly, his Christmas hadn’t gone as well as Jean’s.

“What’s up with you?” he asked.

Eren didn’t reply, shooting him a tempestuous glance from across the room instead, several days’ worth of resentment lurking beneath 

Jean held up his hands in mock surrender. “Fine, I won’t ask.”

But as he lowered his hands, watching Eren wrench open and slam cupboard doors shut, doing everything in his power not to erupt in every direction- for the first time in his life, Jean genuinely pitied him. He’d known about Eren’s somewhat turbulent relationship with his father ever since his mother passed away when he was ten. Apparently, the light in which Eren regarded his father had only worsened with time- after all, Jean got to see that first-hand. Hell, he lived with the rage and frustration it had given Eren on a daily basis. But it had never stirred up anything close to empathy in him before.

So he wasn’t sarcastic. He didn’t make a snarky remark and take a cruel shred of pleasure at the scowl it brought to Eren’s face like he normally would as Eren came over and threw himself on the opposite end of the sofa furthest from Jean, scowling. Instead, he didn’t say anything, and silently slid the controller across the sofa, resigning himself to player two.

…

New Year’s Eve was upon them before he knew it. There was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground when he woke up, sometime after noon, and a new text blinking at him on his phone from Marco.

Mom left this morning. You can come over whenever you feel like it :) :)

Anticipation formed a hard knot in his stomach as he stared at his phone. He hadn’t forgotten, not for a second, about his- his date. God, that sounded bizarre. An actual date with Marco. Did this mean he could say they were dating?  Was that all it had taken? A couple of rapturous kisses in the snow and mumbling to each other on the phone in the dead of night?

Well if he’d known it was going to be that easy, he’d have made a move months ago.

He sent back Sometime this evening OK? and got another mildly infuriating smiley face in response. How could an obnoxious cluster of pixels only capable of characterising a singular emotion be fitting enough, when in reality both he and Marco knew whatever they were wasn’t as simple as ‘happy’ or ‘resolved’?

Things were never that easy. Certainly not simple enough to denote into a single facial expression. Every emotion, every feeling clogging up Jean’s chest like spiderwebs were multi-faceted, convoluted layers upon layers that were hard to define, and much harder to wipe away. Even so, if there was one thing he knew, it was that he was nervous as shit.

No pretty way to put that.

The last gasps of daylight were quickly receding by the time Jean finally showed up on the bakery’s doorstep. The little shop stood quiet and dark, lights from the neighbour’s houses glimmering off the surface of the window, illuminating its bare counters, not a speck or crumb in sight.

Jean ran his fingers through his hair more than once, smoothing down his freshly trimmed undercut (courtesy of his mother), checking his reflection in the window before he eventually rapped on the door. An anxious sort of anticipation wound itself amongst his ribs, tingling in the tips of his fingers, twitching in his jaw.

His heart scrambled all the way up his throat when he caught sight of Marco as he appeared in the back of the store, the freckled face he adored so much lighting up the moment he saw Jean through the window. He crossed the shop floor and unlocked the door, grinning.

“Hey,” he said.

It felt like it had been an age since Jean had heard Marco’s voice unmuffled by the static of a phone call. He did his best to muster what he hoped was a relatively composed smile. “Hey.”

Marco stepped back and let him come in, shutting the door behind him, and there was a moment where neither of them seemed to know what to say or do in the gloom of the bakery.

Was Jean supposed to take initiative here? All he really wanted to do was seize hold of his face and try and capture a fragment of what it had felt like to kiss him for the first time just the other week- but something held him stiff and self-conscious, a drill in his temple keenly aware that this situation was horrifyingly new for the both of him. Perhaps, for Jean (though it might be selfish of him to think so) slightly more so. Kissing a guy for the first time was one thing, but being physically compelled to kiss that guy over and over was a strange sort of disconcerting that was going to take some getting used to.

Maybe Marco sensed there was an unestablished boundary here because he didn’t seem to know what to do either. He glanced at Jean, briefly meeting his gaze, before his dark eyes danced away, that stupid little smile slipping on and off his lips. His fingertips twitched at his sides.

“I’m, uh, glad you could make it,” he said eventually.

Jean stuck his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Me too.”

Say something, you idiot.

“So. Did…you have a good Christmas?”

You idiot.

“It wasn’t bad.” Marco hesitated, then pulled a face. “Well. It was bearable. There’s only so much you can hear about families of editors and people you don’t even know before the idea of slamming your head in the oven starts to sound appealing.”

“Jesus Christ, that got dark real fast. Wouldn’t consider dialling it back a bit, would you?”

Marco laughed a shaky laugh, scratching the back of his head. “Sorry. You know what I mean. How about you?”

Jean shrugged. “Went better than I thought. I told you pretty much everything on the phone.”

“Right,” Marco laughed nervously again. “I- I didn’t know what else to say. I…uh…”

There was a brief silence before Marco took a tentative step forward and Jean glanced up at him, meeting his gaze properly. They were only inches apart and Marco instinctively rocked back on his heel.

“I-I- um,” he stammered. “I was going to…um, may I?”

Jean blinked before he realised what the tilt of Marco’s chin towards Jean’s face was implying, caution flickering in his doubtful expression.

“Oh- um, yeah, sure.”

Marco shuffled forwards and Jean tipped his head up just in time for his jaw to clumsily bump against Marco’s before their lips met. The kiss was featherlight, lasting less than a heartbeat before Marco flinched and stepped away.

“You’re freezing,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

Jean snorted. “I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s not exactly Mediterranean out there.”

“You don’t say.” Marco gave him a weak smile before he cleared his throat, gesturing upwards. “I thought we could- uh, maybe hang out upstairs?”

“Um, yeah. Sure.”

Jean followed Marco across the bakery, behind the counter and let Marco lead him upstairs for the first time.

There was no landing to speak of- instead, the top of the stairs came directly out into a small kitchen. The timber framework of the building ran through the walls, contrasting oddly to the starkly modern kitchen appliances surrounding them. A dining table stood in the centre of the floor, and though there were half-empty packets of food on the sideboard and empty dishes piled next to the sink, the room had a strangely indistinct hollowness to it, as if no one really lived there. Cracks ran through the plaster of the walls from picture hooks bearing no pictures, the only evidence of what had once been hung left in ghostly imprints on the wall.

Marco gestured half-heartedly at the room before his hand dropped back to his side. “This is home,” he said, sounding considerably less enthused than normal. “Let me give you the official tour. The bathroom, office and spare room are down there.” He pointed at a small, dark hallway through the open door on the other side of the kitchen. “And this,” he took a couple of steps to their right, resting his hand on the handle to a second door, “is my room.”

He pushed the door open and Jean followed him in.

Unlike the soullessness of the kitchen, Marco’s room felt like it had a little more life to it. It smelled like him- sweet and musty, as if Marco was as much a part of the bakery as its walls- but what instantly caught Jean’s eye was the sheer number of books, lining the shelves mounted crookedly on the walls, piled on top of a chest of drawers whose drawers didn’t close all the way, littering the bare wooden floor in stacks. A laptop was sat in a tangle of faded blankets on a double bed taking up most of the room, several books strewn amidst the bedding.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you liked reading,” Jean remarked.

Marco grinned half-heartedly. “Sorry if it’s a bit of a mess. Here.” He moved his laptop off his bed and shoved the blankets off into a corner, smoothing down the rumpled duvet, making space. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Jean lingered by the door apprehensively for a few moments before he obliged and kicked his shoes off as he sat, hitching his legs up onto the bed. He glanced at Marco, meeting his gaze for a fleeting second before Jean cringed and hastily looked away, pretending to examine the rest of the room.

There was a TV hung up on the wall across from them, under which was a small stack of DVDs. There was just enough daylight left to cast the room in a murky grey, windows fogged with condensation, edged with lacy frost.

“Does it get cold in here?”

“Kind of. If we’ve been baking then it warms up the whole building for a bit, but even though the walls are thick, there’s a wicked draft. Which is why I’ve got these.” Marco patted the heap of blankets next to him.

“No heating?”

“Nope. Well. We’ve got a portable heater, I think it’s in spare room at the moment.” Marco shrugged, smoothing out the duvet around him. “It’s not much, but it’s home, I guess.”

Jean tipped his head back, letting his gaze run down the beams arching over the ceiling, forming lattices in the walls.

“I think it’s great,” he said.

Marco gave him a tight-lipped smile and they fell silent for a few moments.

“So…how was she? Your mom?” Jean said eventually.

It took a while for Marco to reply. He pressed his lips together, fiddling with the corner of a blanket, before he shrugged. “She’s…fine. I guess.”

“That’s…good?”

“Yeah. I mean, I think so. How am I supposed to know? It’s not like I know how she was for the other eleven months of the year.” The hard edge that crept into Marco’s tone withered at the end of his sentence and his shoulders sagged in defeat, his hands balling into fists. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that- I didn’t-”

Jean reached out and grabbed hold of Marco’s hand resting on top of the duvet, running his thumb over his clenched fist until he felt Marco relax. “Marco…you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. It’s OK.”

Marco glanced at him before his gaze fell to their entwined fingers. It took him a moment before he finally gripped Jean’s hand in response, just tightly enough to let him know to not let go. “I just…yeah. She’s fine. She might be getting her own TV show in the New Year. That’s pretty much all I’ve heard about for the last five days. So…can we maybe not? Talk about her?”

Jean bit back the swell of questions at the back of his throat. Curiosity burned the tip of his tongue- but how could he, when Marco had that look on his face? A look so closely guarded, so nearly, nearly convincing enough to pretend there wasn’t a crack running through his guise, his eyes lined at the edges with a voice begging him, imploring that Jean didn’t take it further, implying it wasn’t the exhaustion of the subject that held his tongue in an iron vice.

Jean forced himself to nod. “If that’s what you want.”

Marco smiled and squeezed his hand one more time. “Thanks. I’d rather hear about you. Was it weird being home after so long?”

“I guess.” Jean shrugged. “I mean- yes and no. The house is the same and mom’s the same- well, sort of.” He hesitated, running his thumb over Marco’s knuckles for comfort. “She’s trying. I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but it’s something, and…she’s never done that before. So…yeah. Things are better. I think.”

They were getting there, at least. It was a gradual process, and it was going to be about as easy as trying to drag himself through barbed wire. But one day at a time. That’s all he needed for now.

And Marco. He had him in his grasp once more, solid and whole between his fingers, reassuringly real. He hadn’t noticed in the week they’d spent apart that some part of him had rung a little hollow, some corner of his heart ached just a little when he heard his voice on the phone, and it was only now that he could see him in person- touch him, run his hands over his arms, dig his fingers into the fabric of his shirt…

He cleared his throat and looked away. His hand fell out of Marco’s, balled into a fist between the creases of the duvet, out of sight.

“Good…that’s good. I’m glad.” Marco said. “So…um, I figured we could watch a movie? I don’t have much, but if you want to pick something…”

Jean watched Marco get up and go to the opposite side of the room, sifting through his modest collection of DVDs, making suggestions until Jean said, “Yeah, sure, whatever,” before he finally picked one, put it into the DVD player, and settled himself back on the bed next to Jean to watch the pyrotechnic-riddled opening of some superhero flick.

Jean drew his knees up to his chest, his back pressed against the headboard, trying to allow himself to relax and let his mind wander, suitably distracted by the cartoonish violence of spandex-clad actors running around in front of green screens, but he scarcely made it past the opening credits before he found his gaze drifting back over to Marco.

He was sat cross legged at Jean’s side, seemingly completely focused on the TV screen, but it was obvious he wasn’t really processing what he was watching. His dark eyes had an almost glazed look to them, reflecting the blue light of the screen, and only slid back into focus when he shot the occasional surreptitious glance over his shoulder at Jean, which Jean hastily avoided. He held himself rigidly- his shoulders too high, elbows bent stiff at his sides, his hands folded taut in his lap, far too angular to be comforting.

Jean bit his tongue. Did Marco seriously think that they could just act like nothing had changed? As if they hadn’t ended every day for the past week on the other end of a phone line, waiting for the other to fall asleep? Was he just pretending the elephant in the room didn’t need addressing?

Or, Jean thought, he’s scared to be the first one to bring it up.

A twisted knot drew itself tight in his chest as he folded his arms on top of his knees, burying his face in them.

Silence brought a pretence of contentedness. At this moment things were calm and undisturbed, but if either of them wanted to reach common ground, it had to be broken, and ripples had to be made. Not that Marco’s apprehension wasn’t understandable. There was no telling if those ripples would grow, gathering speed and strength, whirling into a riptide, dragging them apart.

Jean looked at Marco from over the top of his folded arms, his eyes tracing the rigid curve of his spine. And he knew. He knew exactly what was on Marco’s mind. It had taken them both six months- six months of dancing around feelings Jean refused to acknowledge, six months of pretending they didn’t know where the other stood, six months of averting their eyes and burying their heads in the sand- for them to get to where they were now.

How was this any different?

He was sick of it. He was sick of trying to rein everything in. He was sick of biting his lip until he tasted blood, digging his nails into his palms, bottling and shelving every inclination for another time, another day, another place.

“Marco,” he managed to say. His voice sounded strained, grating, even. Marco visibly flinched at the sound of his voice. His back immediately straightened as he shot an almost alarmed glance back at Jean. No, not at him. Marco was very carefully, deliberately avoiding directly meeting Jean’s gaze, his eyes lingering somewhere just below Jean’s cheek.

Jean wet his lips nervously. Honesty. He could do this. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was this.

“I thought…you wanted to talk.”

He watched the Adam’s apple in Marco’s throat bob as he swallowed anxiously. His hands balled into fists in his lap as he hunched over, looking away.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah. I did.”

Jean waited. “…And?”

Marco didn’t respond at first. He glanced out the condensation-fogged window at the darkening sky, looping his fingers over one another in his lap, before he sighed and finally, sheepishly, met Jean’s gaze, looking at him from beneath his lashes.

“I don’t really know where to start,” he admitted. “I…there’s a lot to say and I’ve tried to…ah, crap.” He ran a hand through his hair, managing a hollow laugh. “I had everything that I was going to say planned but when you actually showed up it just…went to shit.”

Something cold twisted itself deep in Jean’s gut. “You thought I wasn’t going to come?”

“I- no, that wasn’t- I mean…” Marco broke off and shrugged helplessly, his voice dwindling to scarcely more than a whisper. “There was just…this tiny part of me that thought…maybe you wouldn’t.”

Jean opened his mouth to reply- but found he had nothing to say.

Marco had spent his whole life watching people turn their backs on him. He had watched when his father shut the front door of his new, perfect home in his face, and all the affinity and solace that the prospect of a family brought with it. He had watched his mother bid him farewell and vanish in the vast crowds of an airport, no telling when he’d see her again. He had watched his grandfather- the one person who had tried, valiantly, to be there for him- disappear beneath the lid of a casket, a broken promise smothered beneath the earth.

People weren’t permanent in Marco’s life. They were customers, lingering in the shop for a handful of fleeting moments before they turned on their heel and left the door swinging behind them, not once looking back, a memory to be forgotten, the only evidence of them ever being there in perhaps the faintest jingle of a bell.

Maybe that’s why Marco had looked at Jean with such remarkable surprise the first time he visited the bakery. Jean knew that now. Imagine his disbelief at the existence of a person who came back and kept coming back, day after day, rolling up his sleeves to work at his side with every glimmering sunrise. Even after every disastrous loaf of bread, even after the early mornings left him wanting to claw out his eyeballs, even after they spoke their vulnerable hearts far too soon and he fled- he came back. Again. And again. Like a goddamn fucking boomerang.

Jean struggled to find the concept of a person wanting to be around Marco unbelievable. Surely, Jean couldn’t the only one to have found himself in his presence, rapt, unable to move or think or speak any semblance of something coherent because Marco embodied an aggregate of all that was precious and liberating and breath taking.

But one look in his eyes- his beautiful, enchantingly dark, golden-speckled eyes- riddled with a thick residue of trepidation in the brimming red rims, told Jean that he was on his own.

He swallowed.

“Of course I would,” he said. There was a thoughtless waver to his words as he painstakingly tried to find the right ones. “I…well. I missed you.”

Marco leaned back against the headboard beside him, staring at the TV on the opposite wall. He clenched his hands together in the divot of his knees. Silence, so thick and heady Jean could practically feel it in every breath he drew, curdling in his lungs.

Jean buried his face behind his arms once again, pressing his lips together. Shit. He couldn’t do this on his own. He needed Marco to stop internalising everything and talk to him. They’d done enough skirting around each other over the past few months to last them a lifetime, and if there was a time for them to confront the looming tenacity of the desire to tangle fingertips, press lips to the crooks of necks, be lost in a moment so sweet and tangible it danced on the tip of the tongue- surely it was now.

“I missed you too.”

He said it so quietly Jean nearly didn’t hear him over the rumble of an explosion in the TV’s speakers. The sentence scarcely parted Marco’s lips, slipping out like a short exhale. He slowly turned his head to look at Jean, meeting his gaze for a few fragmented seconds before his eyes fell away, lingering pointedly on what Jean suspected were his lips as he cleared his throat. He turned away.

It wasn’t like Jean had shown up expecting to run into Marco’s arms, tackle him to the floor and kiss him hard enough to actually see stars. He hadn’t expected Marco to clasp his face and wax lyrical about how ridiculously in love with Jean he’d found himself. Hell, he hadn’t even expected that tiny, less-than-a-heartbeat kiss at the front door, the imprints of which he still felt imbedded into the cracks of his lips. If they were being entirely honest (which, so far, they weren’t) Jean didn’t know what he’d been expecting.

But it hadn’t been this.

Stony silence. Reluctance driven in between them in the headboard they leaned against like a knife. Apprehension riddling taut lines in Marco’s rigid figure at his side. And countless, unestablished boundaries wavering in and out of sight, manifesting in every brush of contact, blaring sirens when their eyes met.

Jean waited for Marco to say more, but nothing came. The light from the TV danced over his face, making out his features in hazy shades of lilac and delicate blue contrasted with sharp shadows in the darkening room. It was as if Marco had used up every ounce of transparency he possessed on the train the other day and now they were right back to square one- brick walls and a tenuous heart, locked deep in the barricade of his ribs.

They sat in silence for a good portion of the movie, both watching, but neither even remotely paying attention. It was the merest of distractions and nowhere near enough to stop Jean from feeling like he was about to burst.

Somehow, this was worse. Being within inches of Marco, unable to touch him. A cacophony of uncertainties balanced on the tip of his tongue he struggled to articulate. It made a dull, heavy ache in his chest, pressing into his stomach and against his throat, burdened with the knowledge that Marco had more to tell him but refused to do so.

Jean was just starting to contemplate whether coming here had been a mistake when Marco finally broke the silence.

“Is this…is this weird for you, Jean?”

His voice was hinged on apprehension, the creak of his lips evident on every word.

Jean tilted his head to see Marco staring right back at him, eyes flickering from point to point on Jean’s face, still reluctant to maintain steady eye contact.

Jean dug his fingers into his arms.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Marco bit his lip and looked away for a moment, before he dragged his gaze back to Jean, forcing himself to confront him. Whatever gave him the idea that this was a confrontation, Jean didn’t know, but he despised himself for the very possibility of making Marco feel like he had a battle to be fought ahead of him. This was supposed to be easy. The moment they broke a barrier with that first kiss was supposed to be the wrecking ball that drove through the reservations he’d put up, harkening smooth sailing from here on out.

“I just…I was wondering if this was…strange. For you.” Marco paused. “You know. This. Me. A guy.”

“…Oh.” Jean faltered. “Oh. Um. Well. Yeah. A little.”

“I’m sorry. Weird question.” Marco made an exasperated noise that sounded like a frustrated groan as he buried his face in his hands.

“Not saying that it’s a bad thing,” Jean added hastily. “It’s…good weird? Like- yeah, it’s…new. But it doesn’t feel wrong. If that’s what you’re asking.”

Some of the tension Marco held in his shoulders seemed to slacken somewhat as he peered at Jean over his fingers.

“Yeah. I guess I was.” He exhaled a short, sharp breath, passing a hand over his face and fell quiet again.

Jean waited for a few moments to tick by.

“Is that it?” he asked uncertainly. “Is that all you wanted to ask?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Jean pressed his nose into his hoodie sleeve. This was so painful. Forget pulling teeth, this was like wrenching nails out of concrete with his bare hands. Every fibre of his being desperately wanted to run his hands over Marco’s face once more, finding new constellations on his skin, become acquainted with every curve and contour of his face, neck, shoulders; count every rib, trace the divot each muscle made…

Restraint held him in place in heavy, cold, iron shackles.

“Marco,” he said, the helpless nuances of his name snagging at his teeth. “Marco. What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not,” Marco mumbled, surprisingly quickly. “Not afraid. It’s…”

“If you say it’s complicated I’m going to punch you.” Because it didn’t have to be. Not anymore. And Jean could see that now. They’d come so far after wasting so much time and if he had to watch it regress back into a complex nest of feelings swept into the closet to be dealt with another day he would scream. “You can talk to me, you know.”

Marco nodded stiffly. “I know. I know I know, but…well, I guess this is…weird for me, too. Just…in a different way.” He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, before he turned and faced Jean finally, finally, looking at him, dead in the eye. “You kissed me.”

It took Jean a moment to get over the dizzying wave that assaulted him from the intensity Marco’s direct gaze held before he managed to process what he’d actually just said.

“Yeah. Sure did.” He fidgeted with the cuff of his hoodie. “Should…I not have?”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Marco said hurriedly. “No, I just…wasn’t expecting it. And then you let me kiss you again. And again. And I didn’t…”

“Do you really find it that unbelievable?”

“If I’m being honest? Yes.”

“Why?”

Marco raised his eyebrows. “Well, for starters, I thought you were straight.”

“If it’s any consolation, so did I.”

The smallest tug of a smile twitched at the corner of Marco’s lips that he clearly fought to disguise.

“I don’t know,” Marco said, letting his gaze fall to the crumpled blankets on the bed between them. “I just…thought that maybe it was a mistake. A lapse in judgement or- or something. Maybe I’m being stupid.”

“Does it matter if you are?” Jean hesitated and then reached out, placing his hand on top of Marco’s resting against his knee, lacing his fingers with his own. “I…I don’t care if you think it’s stupid. If you’ve got something to say, I want to listen.”

Marco scoffed. “I’m not that interesting to listen to.”

Jean shrugged. “Agree to disagree.”

Nevertheless, Marco gripped his hand in return, lifting it close to his face before he cast a worried glance at Jean. “May I?” he said softly.

Jean nodded and Marco’s brushed his lips across Jean’s knuckles, his breath warming the back of Jean’s hand with the tenderest of kisses. Jean’s heart wavered in his chest, airy and featherlight as goose bumps exploded down his arm.

Holy shit.

Marco lowered their hands back down to the bed, but he looked worried. Anxious lines ran along his normally smooth brow, his gaze distant.

“What’s wrong?” Jean asked, squeezing his hand a little tighter.

“I…” Marco hesitated. “What does this make us, Jean?” He looked up at him sheepishly from beneath his lashes. “I like you. I…I like you a lot.”

There was something liberating about hearing those words fall from Marco’s lips, an intensely freeing sensation that alleviated the weight lying dormant in Jean’s chest, even just for a moment, making him curl his toes, painting a dopey grin on his face.

“You’ll be glad to know the feeling’s mutual,” he said, and there it was again, something so innately relieving it was almost like taking a shot, without the unpleasant burn raking down his throat and or the acrid taste. Admitting how he felt not just to himself, but to Marco, out loud, felt like a bird bursting out of its cage, careening into the sky, euphoric.

Marco made a small noise like he was choking- but at long last, he was smiling, even if it were just a glimmer of its usual glory, weighted at the edges with reservations- but the smile on his face made him look more like himself. The smile that Jean loved so much it hurt.

“I- I’m not used to this,” Marco said.

“To what?”

“Being…honest with myself in front of someone else. I- most people don’t…I don’t want to be myself around them, but…well. You’re not most people.” Marco sighed, his anxious gaze flickering over Jean’s face. “Can I ask you something? Personal?”

Jean blinked and nodded, a little dumbly, somewhat taken aback at discovering he was held so highly in Marco’s regard. “Yeah. Sure. Anything.”

“You don’t have to answer.” Marco bit his lip. “When did you know? Like- at what point did you realise- that you weren’t- that you-”

“That I liked you?”

Marco’s cheeks pinked as he nodded. “R-right.”

Jean tipped his head back until it hit the headboard with a soft thud, blowing out a long, thoughtful breath between his lips. That was a good question. When was the first time he looked at Marco and thought I want to be with you? Sure, there was the time he first caught himself staring at Marco’s ass- but that hadn’t been the beginning. Was there a moment before- a surreptitious glance, a careless word, the telling throb of his heart- that first ignited that unyielding spark in his chest? Or did it come later, dawning on him with time it took for the seasons to change, as gradual as the leaves changing colours and breaking off branches, one by one?

“I…don’t know,” Jean admitted. “It didn’t happen…suddenly. There wasn’t one moment that just made me realise. I never meant to, it just…happened.” He thought for a moment, gazing into space as the events of the past few months rewound in his head like an old spool of film, scenes of flour-dusted sunrises and kissing beneath a thousand stars flickering by in an instance.

“But if you had to say when,” Marco persisted.

“If I had to?” Jean hesitated.  “It…it was probably after the party.”

“The party? Really?” Marco’s nose wrinkled. “Oh God. I was drunk. I didn’t say anything…weird, did I? Something that made you…?”

“No, no. It was after something my- uh- friends,” His lip curled at the word. “said to me. I think that night it just kind of hit me, like- like- holy fuck, I really want to kiss this guy and only death and hellfire is going to stop me at this point. It was kind of frightening, actually.”

The slightest essence of a smile was playing over Marco’s lips again. “In those exact words?”

Jean gave him a lopsided grin in return, readjusting his grip on Marco’s hand. “Retrospect is a magical thing. I don’t think I had a single concise thought that night.”

Was that only the start of this month? So much had happened in such a short period of time it was hard to believe the person he was mere weeks ago was the same as the one currently sat next to Marco Bodt, in Marco Bodt’s room, holding Marco Bodt’s hand, Marco Bodt’s kiss still lingering on his lips. The person who had been terrified to look into a mirror, as if the inclination of wanting to kiss a guy had left him with a flaming red stamp branded on his forehead, was now the person staring at someone so wonderful, so precious to him, that it took every ounce of self control he possessed not to fly and him and plant big, gay kisses over every exposed inch of freckled flesh he could reach.

“What about you?” Jean asked. “When did you think hey maybe this asshole isn’t all that bad?”

“You’re not an asshole, Jean. Most of the time.”

“I don’t think that was a compliment, but I’ll take it.” Jean remarked dryly. “So?”

“Oh God. I don’t want to say. It’s embarrassing.” Marco cringed.

“Come on, I told you mine.”

“OK, OK, fine. Um…when we first met I-I thought- I really liked- stop laughing at me- I thought you were hot, OK?”

Jean nearly choked, a mingled noise that was halfway between a laugh and a derisive snort catching in his throat. Ha! He honestly couldn’t think of a moment where he’d ever been significantly more of a mess. The fact that Marco found him- some scrawny, drunk, horse-faced prick sat on the steps of a house, smoking, whinging about the world and everything in it- even remotely attractive, really raised some questions about Marco’s standards, but hell, if he would drop them to rock-fucking-bottom for Jean, he would take it.

“Now you’re just taking the piss,” he said, nudging him with his shoulder.

“I’m being serious!”

“Is that why you talked to me? Because you thought I’d tap that?”

“No!” Marco shoved him back, but it was followed by a short pause, in which his grip on Jean’s hand tightened. “…But I will admit it was a pretty major factor.”

“Wow, Marco. And I’m the asshole?” Jean smirked before his expression softened at the sight of Marco’s face. The tension had all but been erased, the lines fraught with worry smooth once again, and his smile, oh God, his smile. The week they’d spent apart left Jean unprepared to bask in the glory it brought to his face. It was like watching sunshine parting grey storm clouds. Jean shifted a little closer, pressing their clasped hands against his chest above the steady rhythmic beat of his heart. “But hey,” he said softly. “I’m glad you did.”

Because he’d never be the same after this. Even if Marco hadn’t reciprocated his feelings, there was no reset button, no restore factory settings to return to default Jean after this. Too much had changed in the time they had spent together for it to be forgettable- and that was the exact opposite of what he wanted. Even if this was all destined to go down in flames, he didn’t care, not for one moment. The very fact he was here, in this reality, talking openly with Marco about how much he wanted to kiss him, was a moment he wanted permanently etched into his skin, in the form of we made it.

“I…I kind of feel like I should kiss you again,” Marco whispered, the soft tickle of his breath fluttering against Jean’s face.

Jean blinked and realised just how close they were all of a sudden. His nose was dangerously close to brushing Marco’s cheek, instinctively tipping his head forwards, angling his chin towards Marco’s jaw, desperate.

“Go for it,” he mumbled, and in an instant Marco’s lips were pressed to his, tasting like a sweet, week-old memory. He let go of Marco’s hand and cupped the back of his head, fingers seeking refuge in the shallow fuzz of his hair. Marco’s hands crept up to rest on his thighs, making Jean’s breath tangle in his throat at the pressure of Marco’s touch, the way his fingers dug into his jeans, holding him firm.

Jean had never kissed anyone and felt a part of them resonating in synchrony with his heartbeat before. Let alone kissed someone who lingered in his subconscious for days on end, a brand his lips wore like a wreath. Pure, unrestrained longing saw their hearts collide, igniting simultaneously in the same intake of breath, melded into one.

And good God, was Marco one hell of a kisser. No lingering taste of nicotine, no crude edges, no ulterior motives. Just passion melting inhibition until blood roared in their ears and the hairs on the back of Jean’s neck stood on end and his head was so overwhelmed he could scarcely think.

Jean wrapped his arms around Marco’s neck, gripping the shirt stretched taut over Marco’s back, lost in the incredible, liberating sensation of being able to kiss him away from interruption, judgement or scorn. Their actions were more honest than their words. Marco’s hand came to rest on his hip, his thumb tracing a supple arc over the protrusion of Jean’s pelvis that made him arch his back and come real fucking close to practically whimpering into his mouth.

Marco’s cheeks were fire against his by the time they broke apart and their foreheads came to press against each other, breathless, chests heaving.

“Holy shit,” Jean whispered. Fuck. He couldn’t form a coherent sentence if he tried. If drugs came anywhere close to how mind-numbingly intense Marco’s kiss was, then Jean probably needed to look into rehab.

Marco was breathing heavily through his nose, his dark eyes flickering over Jean’s face, not in fear like before, but in a mellow sort of appreciation, like he was taking the time to admire the brush strokes on a canvas. When he spoke, his voice was ragged and husky, essences of Jean still lingering on his tongue. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

Jean, unable to speak, swallowed and nodded weakly.

“Out of…everyone…all the people in this world…what made you want me?”

Jean leaned back.

“You can’t be serious.” He squinted at him, trying to discern whether or not Marco was messing with him. “How can you not- I mean- look at you.” Broad, rounded shoulders, not a sharp angle to be seen. Freckled biceps bulging beneath the seams of his shirt. Slim and tall, a sprawling galaxy smattering his cheeks and the most gorgeous smile, possessing the power to snatch breath from the most resilient of lungs. Marco was what you got if a statue of some Greek or Roman god wore an apron and had flour smudged on his nose.

But as Jean searched Marco’s face for the tiniest trace of a mocking smile quivering on the edge of his lips or an insincere gleam lurking in the dark surface of his eyes, Jean found nothing except the lacerated edges of the carefully constructed façade Marco was still unwilling to let slip. A cracked mask that concealed insecurity, fragility- anything but the strength he fought to portray, day in, day out, for so long that maybe even Marco had forgotten who he was beneath it all.

Or, at the very least, preferred not to think about.

“Yes, exactly, look at me.” Marco caught hold of Jean’s hands, running his work-roughened fingertips over the tips of Jean’s graphite greyed knuckles. “I’m- I’m no one special. I’m just some…some guy. Some…messed up guy who lives alone and bakes bread for fun. Jean you’re- you’re not…you’re worth more than that. Than me.”

It was as if a balloon had burst unexpectedly with a bang, killing the happy delirium from only a moment ago in an instant, sickly bitterness pooling in the bottom of Jean’s gut.

“That’s…that’s not true,” he said, but the words took considerable effort to force out, like granite rasping over his tongue. “Marco, you know that’s true.”

Marco didn’t say anything. He let go of Jean’s hands, letting them fall as he turned away. He brought his knees up to his chest, resting his forearms against them.

Jean hesitated. He wasn’t glass, he was more resilient than that, but he had fallen, and he bore cracks that rang hollow. At any given moment he was liable to fall to pieces and Jean didn’t know if he was capable of holding him together.

“Marco.” His voice wavered. “Marco, please...look at me.”

“…I’m sorry.” Marco’s shoulders curled forwards, anguish briefly flitting across his face as he screwed up his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m not being fair. I- I shouldn’t be trying to…drag you down with me like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take a look in a mirror, Jean. You- you’ve got so much- a home, a family who cares. People who care. The whole world at your feet and…you’re talented and funny and interesting and…so fucking hot- how do I…even begin to compare?”

Jean fought a mad desire to laugh. Was he serious? In what fucking world was Jean better than Marco Bodt? The strong, fiercely independent, all-round fucking saint who had given Jean everything, asking for nothing in return- who believed he wasn’t as good as some pretentious college kid with a minor in assholery and mommy issues?

“Now you really are taking the piss,” he said. “I don’t know who you’re talking about but it sure as hell isn’t me. You said it yourself. I’m an asshole.”

Marco threw him a sideways glance, clearing evaluating whether or not it was worth his time to disagree. Eventually he settled on, “Fine, but you can’t deny that you’re not talented.”

“I can sometimes draw somewhat comprehensive faces. Big deal. Millions of people can, and do it thousands of times better than me. I’m not that special, Marco. Not as special as you think. Not…not like you.”

Marco scoffed, but he wasn’t laughing. It was scornful, disbelieving, bitterness flaking at the edges that made Jean’s heart ache to realise he truly didn’t believe his own worth.

“I’m not special, Jean. I’m just…me.”

And that was exactly what made Marco so damn perfect. He wasn’t anyone but himself. He hadn’t spent his life trying to bend to other’s expectations, he hadn’t let others define him- he just was, and now there was an honesty established between them Jean saw he wasn’t some untouchable godlike being. He was just a boy, beautiful and smart, who held the power to change everything.”

“You’re…the first guy I’ve ever wanted to kiss,” Jean said softly. “I think that makes you pretty damn special. At least to me.”

Marco’s face went from lightly sun kissed to scarlet lobster in an instant, even though he tried to hide it by ducking his head in a fruitless attempt to conceal his chagrin.

“T-that…that doesn’t mean anything,” he stammered, but clearly, he wasn’t even trying to convince himself anymore.

“Felt like a pretty big deal for me,” Jean said.

“OK, OK, fair enough.” Marco ran his fingers through his hair, the colour in his face slowly receding until it left just a pretty blush of sunrise pink across his freckled cheeks. “You didn’t answer my question, by the way.”

Jean frowned. “Which one?”

A weak smile crossed Marco’s lips as he dropped his gaze, wavering for a moment. “What…  what does this,” He gestured between them, “make us?” He peeked up at Jean from beneath his lashes before his shoulders sagged in defeat. “I…I know it might seem like a stupid question at this point when I’ve…kissed you, but I- I just- does this mean I can- um, call you my- uh…boyfriend…?”

Holy fucking shit.

Jean thought he’d been speechless before.

He’d been waiting for that for what felt like forever, perhaps even before he even knew himself. And now here it hung in the air between them, the soft syllables a thousand times sweeter when curled into the quiet baritone of Marco’s voice. A commitment. A dedication. A promise to someone that yes, I will be yours to hold close to your heart, to see the best and worst sides of you, to become acquainted with every inch of every facet you possess. Laughter in place of music. Purple blemishes on collarbones. Milky white flesh, unbuttoned jeans. Clasped hands, breathless whispers, unbroken kisses.

Jean exhaled a long, shaky breath, shuddering in his chest, raising the hair on his arms.

This is my boyfriend, Marco.

 Marco? He’s my boyfriend.

Have you met Marco? My boyfriend?

So sharp but sweet on his tongue. Anxiety made his gut clench for a split second before it was quickly replaced with elation.

This wasn’t a big deal. This wasn’t revolutionary. This situation of theirs wasn’t ground breaking or spectacular or even particularly remarkable- hundreds upon thousands of people were asked to be someone’s boyfriend every single day. Millions of boys had boyfriends. Regardless of whether or not Jean accepted or refused, it wouldn’t stop the sun rising in the morning. In the grand scheme of things, this moment was fleeting, unimportant, never to be acknowledged by the universe again.

But for Jean, and his small, obstinate, self-absorbed world, it was a profound rupture in the fabric of everything he had once thought to be true.

“Is that a statement?” Jean asked, cursing his voice for wobbling. “Or are you asking me?”

Marco bit his lip with a shy grin. “A- a bit of both…?”

He hadn’t moved, but he was watching Jean with the intensity you’d expect from a hawk watching its prey. Pressure bit at the back of Jean’s throat, his tongue leaden in his mouth, cheeks flaming.

“Y-yeah,” He barely managed to whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder. “Yes. I- I’d like…I want to be your boyfriend.”

There it was, the word he’d been avoiding like a hailstorm of bullets for months. It was strange and sounded almost foreign in his voice, but at the same time, it felt like a ton of bricks felt had been alleviated from his chest. But maybe that was because of the grin that nearly split Marco’s face in two, reaching right up to his eyes, golden galaxies alight and dancing with sunlight glistening in the surface of his irises. 

Marco’s mouth was moving soundlessly as if he was trying to say something, but kept hesitating, erring back and forth with himself before he finally mustered, “…Good. That’s…that’s good.”

“It’s weird. It’s OK, you can say it’s really fucking weird, because it really is really fucking weird.”

Marco thought for a moment. “Good-weird?” He proposed.

And he was laughing, and Jean was laughing, and the whole situation was so fucking weird that it had to be laughable. Broken, bruised, thrust together by the circumstances; scars ran deep and mistrust even deeper, but they’d found each other, and they were each other’s and Jean didn’t know what to think, what to feel, what to say.

But he was happy. Deliriously happy. The kind of happy that tasted like clarity, that felt as if his heart had been wrung out, aching, but clear and clean and light in his chest. The kind of happy that just fills you, makes your curl your toes, hunch your shoulders, grin to yourself like an idiot and press your face into your hands. He felt like a fucking kid, unable to process and struggling to express the complex emotions tangled in his ribs in a way that wasn’t so physically embarrassing.

Not that that really mattered. Not now, anyway, if they were really going to do this proper…relationship thing. Marco would end up seeing every side of him- the good and the bad, the monotonous and the humiliating, the with clothes and without.

The movie had long since ended at this point, so Marco got up and switched the DVD over for the sequel, settling himself back on the bed next to Jean, much closer than before, so their knees were pressed against each other as the film opened in a similar fashion to the one that came before it. Explosions, spandex, and all.

Marco kept up a running commentary throughout, explaining the plot they’d paid so little attention to before when Jean started questioning its continuity. Clearly a weight had been lifted from him too, because he was laughing and smiling and acting so much like himself Jean’s heart swelled every time he saw Marco glance at him, like he was checking that Jean wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He smiled, he laughed at every snarky comment Jean made, he yawned and pressed his leg against Jean’s, tired tears glimmering in the corners of his eyes.

And Jean loved every second of it.

About halfway through the movie Marco fell silent, and it wasn’t until his head lolled to the side and fell onto Jean’s shoulder did he notice that Marco had fallen asleep.

Jean’s back stiffened, his breath hitching in his throat in surprise- but he didn’t have time to feel awkward or embarrassed when he had the chance to admire the soft curves of his eyelashes brushing the tops of his cheeks, his sleepy breath fluttering against Jean’s shoulder with the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Jean scarcely dared to move, partially because the surprise of Marco’s sudden vulnerability had rooted him to the spot, and partially because he didn’t want to risk disturbing him because good Lord. Was there ever a moment where this boy wasn’t the most beautiful person to walk the earth? Even when unconscious, his features were assembled so perfectly they looked sculpted by an artisan’s deft hands, his cheeks dappled with tawny stars.

“I’m so fucking gay for you,” Jean whispered, surprised at how natural it felt, how intrinsically familiar it sounded. He’d been yelling these things in his head for weeks and only taken notice recently. Maybe, he thought, this wouldn’t take as much adjusting to as he’d expected. He gazed at the crown of Marco’s dark hair. Loving Marco felt about as natural as breathing.

Is that what this was? Was this…?

No, too soon, far too soon. Jean had come a long way as far as clarifying things were confirmed, but he still had a long way to go, and a mountain of complex, confusing feelings cluttering his brain that he hadn’t yet found the courage to set about tackling.

But for now, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was he was here, and Marco was here, as real as the weight pressed against Jean’s shoulder.

Jean tipped his head to the side and leant against Marco’s, pressing his nose to his parting, enjoying his musty sweet scent, so close and authentic, instead of second-hand from the bedroom or a jacket clutched to his chest. Marco shifted beneath him, but Jean didn’t move, and Marco didn’t wake up. Jean closed his eyes and timed his breathing to match Marco’s, trying to imagine the sound of his heartbeat.

The movie ended, but Marco didn’t budge. The remote was on the other side of the bed and Jean neither had the heart nor wanted to move to get it. Instead he waited until the TV went into hibernation and dug his phone out of his pocket. The clock read 23:38. Not long now until the bells rang out and the fireworks shot into the sky, heralding in the New Year in explosive lights and a cacophony of sound.

Jean hadn’t placed much merit on the concept of the New Year for the a long time. As a kid, it had been a seldom-allowed excuse to stay up late, eagerly bouncing on the back of the sofa, craning his neck up to the sky, waiting for it to explode into colour for a few precious moments before his mother ushered him to bed. As he got older he regarded it as little more than the event that marked the time to switch calendars over and remembering to write the correct date in the margin of his school books when he returned after winter break. This time last year, he and his mother been fighting- about what, he couldn’t remember (which was proof enough in itself that it was something trivial)- and he’d slammed the door to his room in her face, proceeding to sulk over his sketchbook for the rest of the night. When midnight struck, he’d twitched his curtains back, watched a couple of rockets shoot into the sky overhead, before he chucked his sketchbook on the floor and threw the duvet over his head. He had started the new year isolated, alone, a kid who was hurt and angry but begrudgingly coming to terms with the fact that maybe that’s just how life was. Maybe it was all miserable storm clouds and fights with parents who didn’t listen and just a long series of staring down an endless corridor, watching moments rush by, dashing the sketchbook and pencil from your hands, watching them clatter to the floor.

Jean cast a glance back at Marco.

Look how he was ending the year. Sat on the bed with of a person- a boy- so good and whole and wonderful it made his chest ache, the saccharine sting of his kiss tingling still tingling on his lips. Studying art. Having visited his mother and successfully managed to talk to her for the first time since…well, ever.

“Hey…Marco?”

Jean waited for a response- a sleepy grunt, a mumble, anything.

Marco didn’t move.

Jean sighed and pressed his cheek against the silken top of Marco’s head.

“Everything you said about me earlier? How…how I was funny and interesting and had prospects, or whatever- that’s not me. That was all you. Everything I am now, everything I have today is because of you. If you’d never…we’d have never…and I wouldn’t…”

It wasn’t bearable to think about. Imagine if he’d made the decision to ignore that stupid letter Marco had given to Connie to pass onto him. Imagine if he’d chosen to study business instead of art. If he had, he certainly wouldn’t be here now. The likelihood was he’d be sat in his room back at his and Eren’s place, duvet over his head whilst he pretended not to hear Eren and Mikasa banging in the next room over. His sketchbook would be crammed in the bottom drawer of his desk, long since given up on ever seeing sunlight again.

“That’s why I like you,” Jean murmured into the top of Marco’s head. “That’s why you’re special. You changed everything.”

A moment passed when suddenly Marco drew a sharp intake of breath and twitched. Jean held his breath, humiliation burning at the base of his throat at the idea of him hearing the sincere garbage falling out of his mouth- but he still didn’t wake up, and Jean relaxed.

He opened the browser on his phone and went to his newsfeed, managing to get up a live broadcast of the New Year’s countdown from the capital city of Mitras. Crowds of phenomenal sizes lined the riverbanks as people jostled and bustled about, some fixated on the giant clock in the town square, counting down the seconds until midnight. Fog rose off the surface of the river and enveloped the mass of people in a sort of haze. Jean vaguely wondered if Connie and Sasha had made the road trip to Mitras for New Year’s like they’d always talked about doing since they got their licenses in high school. He scanned the tiny pixelated people for a face he recognised, but the camera angles were constantly switching, between the crowds and the news anchor.

The giant clock boomed like a cannon, signifying the final sixty-second countdown and it took similar effect to a gunshot. The crowds became agitated, moving like a swarm, some people already beginning to yell out the countdown.

A minute to go.

Jean glanced at Marco on his shoulder, wondering if he should wake him up, but one look at his gloriously peaceful face told him he didn’t have the heart.

Fifty seconds.

It had never felt different before, why did it feel so different? Nothing was going to change. New Year’s wasn’t a real thing, it was just a pointless celebration people decided to throw time and energy into as an excuse to get hammered.

Forty seconds.

So why was apprehension forming a knot in Jean’s chest? Why were his fingertips rigid against his phone? What was this strange sense of anticipation tight in his chest and resting on his shoulder?

Thirty.

He knew the answer. Of course he did. This year wasn’t just a passing of time. It wasn’t just a reset button to start the rigmarole of life again.

Twenty.

This New Year was the start of something good. For the first time in his life, Jean was excited for the New Year because with it, it was going to bring a whole new world of experiences- moments he’d never dreamed of, a life he never thought he’d lead because of the person nestled against his side, because of the person he could call his own, because of this person he’d fallen for so fast and so hard would be gripping his hand just as tightly as he was holding his, and they’d walk side by side through everything the year held in store for them.

Together.

Ten.

The chant had begun. The buzz of thousands of voices chorusing numbers in unison echoed in the speaker of Jean’s phone as he watched hands find loved ones in the crowd- arms around shoulders, hands around waists, fists in the air.

“FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!”

The sky exploded.

Not just on his phone screen but outside the window of Marco’s bedroom, too. The whiz of rockets arching into the sky and erupting into glimmering green, red, yellow and gold sparks filled the town, rumbling in the ground, only slightly muffled by the bakery’s walls.

Jean watched fireworks explode over rooftops  through the window, shimmering light dancing across the room, the boom of the explosions resonating in his heart. For a moment, Marco shifted, but he didn’t stir.

Jean glanced back at his phone. The newsfeed was mostly focusing on the fireworks display, ten times more spectacular when refracted in the water of the river as well as in the sky, but every so often they would cut to shots of people in the crowd.

People laughing. People crying. People cheering, bright and optimistic. And people kissing.

Kissing at New Year’s wasn’t really a custom he understood. He’d seen his parents do it once, but that was a vague, fuzzy memory from a time before he properly understood what was going on, but he’d seen it plenty of times on TV and in movies. Maybe people thought they’d be lonely if they didn’t. Maybe it was just the best way to expel the crazy amounts of infectious energy borne from excitement. Maybe that was just what people wanted their first act to be in the new year they found themselves in.

Before Jean could think, his eyes were instantly drawn to Marco’s lips.

Pale pink and parted, ever so slightly, soft and full, just begging to be kissed.

Jean hesitated. He’d never had anyone to kiss on New Year’s before. Maybe his mother pressed a stern but affectionate kiss on the top of his head before she swept him off to bed all those years ago, but obviously, that was completely different.

He paused, then licked his lips and craned his neck around and planted the softest, tiniest kiss on Marco’s lips, lingering for just a moment before he withdrew.

He waited with bated breath for some kind of reaction. At first, there was nothing, and he thought he was safe. But then Marco wrinkled his nose, shifted against his shoulder, and his lips parted further.

“Did you just kiss me?” he asked.

“What? No.” Jean said before he could stop himself. “I-I mean- look I- I didn’t mean- and it’s just- I mean, you always ask, so- you were asleep…” Jean swallowed. “D-did you hear- me? What I said earlier?”

Marco smiled sleepily, easing his eyes open just a fraction so Jean could see a sliver of deep brown gazing at him fondly.

“What part?” he asked.

Jean groaned and buried his burning face in his hands. Marco laughed, took hold of his wrists and forced them away from his cheeks so he could reach forwards and plant a kiss of his own on Jean’s lips.

“Happy New Year, Jean.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 14

Jean woke to a dove-grey sky visible beyond the window, a crisp coolness in the air numbing the tip of his nose. It took several moments of blinking sleepily to process where he was and what he was doing there, only dimly aware of the faint stirring in the sheets beside him followed by the occasional drowsy sigh and the tickle of his warm breath at the nape of his neck.

Jean rolled over, struggling to believe that this was the best place the universe had decided for him to be.

Every part of Marco’s face was so deliberate and meticulous- from the contours his cheekbones carved into his jaw, to the taper of his nose and the delicate dip of his cupid’s bow only just visible from beneath the duvet he had gathered to cover his lower face. If Jean couldn’t feel the warmth emanating from his side of the bed, it wouldn’t be difficult to convince himself Marco had been carved out of stone.

He resisted the urge to reach out and run his fingers across Marco’s face just to confirm he was, in fact, real and not a figment of Jean’s sleepy imagination, and instead contented himself to snuggle as close as he dared, closing his eyes once more and trying to match his breathing with Marco’s. Marco made the tiniest of noises, scarcely more than a sleepy mumble, nestling deeper into the burrow of blankets.

Jean let himself slip into the sweet realm of semi-consciousness, just present enough to have some semblance of concise thought. There was a precious sort of fragility in this grey morning moment that he knew would shatter the second he forced himself to properly wake up.

When he opened his eyes again, Marco was looking directly back at him, dark eyes misty with sleep.

“Hey,” he said with a morning rasp and a sleepy smile.

Jean couldn’t stop himself from smiling in response. “Morning, sunshine.”

By the time the fireworks had finally stopped last night, Marco had fallen asleep on Jean once more, and despite the fact Jean had found it in himself to shake him awake, to say Marco had been reluctant to even entertain the thought of watching Jean leave was an understatement. He’d wrapped his arms around Jean’s waist and implored him to stay, throwing the duvet over both of their heads before promptly going straight back to sleep, leaving Jean to lie awake for considerably longer, running his fingers up and down Marco’s arm draped over his hips.

Marco chuckled. “Good afternoon, I think.”

“Same difference.” Jean’s hand brushed against Marco’s from underneath the covers and their fingers laced together like slotting two jigsaw pieces in place.

Marco squeezed Jean’s hand in return, his dark eyes flickering across Jean’s face as his lips parted for a moment, hesitant in a way Jean was beginning to recognise he did whenever he wanted something.

Jean grinned and propped himself up on one arm. “You don’t have to ask every time, you know,” He remarked, and pecked Marco’s lips, short and sweet, barely enough time for the feeling to linger. “If you want to kiss me you can just do it.”

A little colour seeped into Marco’s cheeks as he closed his eyes in abashed appreciation. “Never had a good morning kiss before,” he mumbled. “‘S nice. Could get used to this.”

Jean bit his lip, trying to suppress a grin, unable to stop his own gaze from immediately sliding back to Marco’s lips. “I mean…I can do it again, if you want.”

Marco craned his neck up and kissed him back, savouring the moment once, twice, and once more. His supple lips grazed the divot of Jean’s chin, making his hair stand on end. He still couldn’t believe how natural it felt to kiss him- basking in this most vulnerable state, committing to an action so instinctual it might as well be primordial.

“So,” Jean said softly as they broke apart, as if Marco’s lips had taken part of his voice with them. “Do you want breakfast, or…?”

“Mmm.” Marco squeezed his eyes shut and slid back down under the duvet, burrowing into his pillow once again. “Later.”

“I don’t think you can eat any later than this and still call it breakfast.”

“It’s my last day off and I have no intention of getting up any time soon.” Marco’s sleepy grumble was muffled by the duvet, which he promptly pulled over his head, even as Jean tried to tug it away. Marco slept on his side, curled in on himself like a dormouse, which might’ve seemed odd for someone as broad as he was, but now that Jean saw him with his knees practically tucked beneath his chin, trying his best to shut out the weak wintery sunlight spilling across the pillow, the endearment of it all was enough to reaffirm that he didn’t have the heart to disturb him.

Jean ran his fingers across the top of Marco’s head- the only part of him the duvet left exposed- his fingers not even raking through the silky thicket of Marco’s hair, if only to take full advantage of the fact he was allowed such intimate contact now and was testing his boundaries, if nothing else.

“Back to work tomorrow?”

Marco sighed. His voice was muffled, “Yeah.”

“Looking forward to it?”

“Are you looking forward to going back to college?”

Jean grimaced as Marco pulled down the duvet for a split second to catch a glimpse of his expression and gave him an infuriatingly knowing smile that quickly disappeared beneath the covers once more.

“If you want breakfast, feel free to help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen. I think there’s some coffee left from when my mom was here.”

It didn’t occur to Jean this was just a means to get rid of him so Marco could go back to sleep until he’d left the bedroom and had already switched the kettle on and was gingerly opening every cabinet in the kitchen in search of a mug, but he was in such a mellow, unfamiliarly good mood it barely fazed him. He stuck two pieces of bread he’d sawn off from a half-finished loaf left out on the counter into the toaster on the sideboard and successfully located the open bag of instant coffee Marco had mentioned.

He took his meagre meal back into the bedroom to find Marco in the exact spot he’d left him, dead to the world once again. Jean hitched his legs up on the bed beside him, feeling quietly philosophical as he sipped his coffee and watched the occasional snowflake drift past the window, listening to the whistle of the breeze in the bakery’s eaves and the sleepy snuffle of Marco’s breath.

His fingers were itching for a pencil. He desperately wanted to try and capture the whimsy and fragility this moment gave him on paper, but he didn’t have his sketchbook with him, so he contented himself with looking about the room over the rim of his coffee cup, skimming over the spines of the books lining the walls. He didn’t recognise many of the titles- he’d never been a huge reader- but there were a fair amount of stars and planets embossed alongside author names, indicating plenty of sci-fi and fantasy, and he almost bit his tongue at the irony of it all. Some well-worn comic books stood above the bed, the same superheroes they’d been watching last night. Jean glanced at the nightstand and realised the book that had been left there was the one he’d bought for him on their- well, their first date.

An indiscernible lump rose in his throat as he picked it up and turned it over in his lap. He didn’t know why he felt so remarkably touched that Marco was actually reading the damn thing, but his heart quivered pleasantly in his chest regardless as he skimmed over the opening chapter with little expectation, unsurprised to find it struggled to hold his interest for much longer than the time it took for him to absorb more than a few words. He flipped ahead several chapters instead. The book fell open to reveal Marco’s makeshift bookmark, a paper bag from the bakery downstairs. Jean’s heart fluttered once more when he noticed the drawing on the back.

“You kept this?” he said, picking out the portrait of Marco he’d drawn for him the day after the party.

“Hm?” The duvet slid off Marco’s head as he sat up at the sound of Jean’s voice. He squinted at the paper bag Jean held for several moments before he smiled sheepishly, sinking back into the blankets. “Oh…yeah. Of course. I wasn’t going to throw it away.”

“Why not?” Jean narrowed his gaze at the hasty scribble, smudged lines forming less of a portrait, more of a rushed impression of Marco’s freckled face.

“Because you drew it for me.”

“I could draw you a better one.”

“But I like this one.” Marco plucked the drawing out of Jean’s grasp and the book from his lap, slotting the bookmark reverently back into its place. “It’s special.”

Jean snorted over the rim of his mug. “Your standards are pretty fucking low, you know that?” He nodded at the book in Marco’s hands. “So, how’s the book?”

Marco ran his thumb across the outer pages, a soft glow kindling in his smile. “I like it so far. There’s this multi-species crew on a spaceship that punches holes in the fabric of space…”

Jean leaned back and basked in the simple joy of listening to Marco’s voice come alive as he flipped through the book, explaining characters and plot points Jean neither pretended to know much about nor particularly cared to, under normal circumstances. But when it was coming from Marco, he was fucking rapt. He listened to the joy in the hush of Marco’s voice, admired the light that sprang into his eyes, relishing the companionship he’d been starved of for so long.

This was exactly where he was supposed to be.

They spent what was left of the day like that; nestled side by side, another movie playing in the background as Jean let Marco tell him all about the rest of his favourite books. Their contents were of little interest to him, but he thoroughly enjoyed listening to Marco feverishly explain the adventures he’d been taken on through fantastical realms and outer space each time he buried his nose between pages.

Eventually, Marco pulled out a selection of the graphic novels from above the bed and Jean leafed between those, running his fingers across glossy pages, drinking in the thick-inked silhouettes and over-contoured biceps. Marco cracked his book open once again and buried himself back into his literary space adventure, leaning against Jean’s thigh.

When he grew tired of superheroes, Jean absent-mindedly scrolled through his phone, quickly discovering he wasn’t the only one to have ended the year on a high note. Krista had posted a collage of photos of her and Ymir with a long, sappy caption he couldn’t be bothered to read. Connie and Sasha, predictably, had been out somewhere the night before that involved loud music and copious amounts of alcohol, made evident by the pictures they’d shared of the aftermath and a documentation of a morning trek to the local store for energy drinks and junk food to nurse hangovers. Eren had posted a picture he’d taken of Mikasa snuggled into his chest, having fallen asleep before midnight struck, underscored with “another year and my gf’s still hotter than urs”.

Jean scoffed internally. He glanced down at the boy pressed against his leg, beautiful brown eyes steadily swiping across the pages of his book, oblivious to the thud resonating in Jean’s chest.

He liked the picture and moved on.

…

“Hey, horse face! Are you sucking dick yet, or what?”

Jean held up his sketchbook over his face with a low groan. Barely been a day since he’d been back at college and already subtlety was apparently no longer part of his vernacular.

He’d stared at his reflection in the back of a soapy baking tray before he’d left work, wondering if anyone in his class would be able to tell how much had changed in the two weeks they hadn’t seen him, as if he wore a declaration of his relationship like a tattoo across his forehead. Marco’s goodbye kiss still lingered on his cheek, feeling like a brand, and he vaguely wondered if it were visible to anyone else, unable to stop running his fingers over the spot where Marco’s lips had been every few minutes.

Erwin had handed him back his coursework with a knowing smile, which Jean puzzled over until he read the teacher’s comments section on the marking sheet, praising Jean’s usage of symbolism to express the concept of supressed identity and unrequited feelings. He didn’t return the smile and stuffed his coursework down into the deep recesses of his backpack, sourly fishing it back out again when he was informed it had to go to the exam board.

And now here came Ymir, without Krista for once, from the other end of the main staircase milling with students and teachers alike, bellowing like a foghorn with little to no regard for Jean’s dignity.

Not like she ever cared about preserving that.

Jean willed his flaming cheeks to vanish and vainly hoped that the few people around him who turned around curiously at Ymir’s proclamation would disappear too.

Ymir didn’t seem fazed. Shit eating grin plastered on her face, she weaved through the stream of people surrounding them and intercepted Jean’s bid for freedom at the foot of the staircase.

“Hey, pony boy, don’t ignore me.”

Jean glared at her with all the disparaging resentment he could muster. “Could you not?” he snapped.

Ymir cocked her head, the very picture of infuriating innocence. “Could I not what?”

Jean rolled his eyes and went to walk past, but she stepped in front of him, and again when he tried to move to the other side, and again when he moved back.

“Come on, man. You never replied to my last text. You don’t get to tell me half a story and not expect me to want to know the ending. So? Baker boy dick or nah?”

Jean’s face continued to scald. He scrubbed his chin with the back of his hand.

“Fine.” He mumbled savagely. “Things are fine. OK? Are you happy?”

Ymir’s face fell.

“And?” she persisted.

“And? What do you mean and? That’s it, that’s all there is to it. You’ve got your ending. Can I go now?”

“That’s…pathetic!” Ymir looked deeply offended, more than anything. “You’re telling me there was no passionate seduction? No offering your virginity up to Baker Boy on a silver platter? No dick-sucking? At all?”

Jean’s face fucking seared.

“Why the fuck do you care so much about dicks?” He said, louder than he intended, gaining several more perplexed glances in his direction and a few sniggers to boot. He clamped his mouth shut, ruby red and internally wishing he could rip open a passageway to a void he could throw Ymir in where she couldn’t humiliate him.

Ymir was, as always, completely unfazed. “I’m a lesbian, I’ve got no experience of these things,” she said, nonchalant. She leaned against the banister, tipping her head back without taking her eyes off Jean like she was trying to analyse him. She sighed. “So, Marco problems are still full steam ahead. And here I was thinking we’d seen some character development.”

Jean bristled.

“They’re…” He cleared his throat. “They’re not really…problems anymore.” He faltered.

“Oh?” Ymir’s eyes widened as she proceeded to pounce on his vulnerability like a cat. “Who made the first move?”

Jean fought to keep a straight face as he recalled those precious few moments in the museum’s planetarium- being able to run his fingers across Marco’s face for the first time without restraint, becoming acquainted with parts of him sight alone hadn’t granted access to; pressing their lips together, alleviating the anxious weight neither of them knew they’d been burdened with, and doing it over and over again to capture the same euphoria.

“Me.”

Ymir’s wicked grin burst back onto her face, lacking a certain degree of malicious intent it usually bore. “I can’t believe it. It turns out horse face really does have a pair! Hey! Get a load of this!” She twisted around, addressing no one in particular. “Jean Kirschtein actually has testicles, folks!”

“Don’t talk to strangers about my junk.” But even Jean couldn’t help the smile that slipped onto his face, coveted triumph difficult to mask. As abrasive as she was, Ymir had an innate ability to make things feel so inconsequential that they might as well be mundane. So Jean wasn’t as straight as he’d thought himself to be. What did it matter? His sexuality was still a confusing beast he’d decided to wrangle later- much later- but why should he let that stop him from being happy? He and Marco had fought with themselves to get to where they were now. To hell if Jean was going to let being reluctant stop them when they’d come this far.

“Ah, so this is pride,” Ymir said, pretending to flick away a few imaginary tears. “I feel like a mother bird watching her chick fly for the first time. It’s mostly relief, actually, you’ve been a difficult child.”

Jean snorted. “You are the furthest fucking thing in the world from a maternal figure to me.”

“And such is the burden I bear anyway. Does Reiner know? He’ll want to hear about this.”

Jean’s grin faltered. “Uh…no. Not yet. Wait—” He interjected as Ymir’s hand flew to her phone. “I don’t want- Marco should probably know—"

“Ymir!”

He was interrupted by a shout from above. Both he and Ymir looked up to see Krista come scurrying down the stairway, skirt fluttering, bag swinging against her hip and her golden hair billowing about her shoulders like a halo. Ymir’s face immediately lit up and she spread her arms wide.

“Babe! You took forever!” she chorused as Krista reached the bottom few steps and quite literally leapt into Ymir’s waiting arms, hooking her legs around Ymir’s waist and giggling as Ymir kissed every inch of her face she could reach before Krista took a hold of her freckled cheeks, making her stop, and kissed her properly. Jean automatically averted his gaze, not sure if this meant he was being dismissed. He began to shuffle away, which seemed to catch Krista’s attention, because she looked up from Ymir and implored to be let down.

“Hi, Jean,” Krista said breathlessly once her feet were back on solid ground. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I didn’t see you there.”

I bet, he thought, quirking half a smile in response. It was hard to be as snarky with Krista as he was with pretty much everyone else, mostly because it was near impossible to hate the girl, which was saying something, considering every other person in the galaxy had a penchant to finding his last nerve and getting right on it. Krista just exuded an influential aura of good natured, genuine-intentioned wholeness in that big, pretty smile of hers, and she was the only girl- no, person in existence who had the ability to all but turn Ymir into a lap dog, despite being only four feet tall and about as threatening as a sugarplum fairy. That was something that warranted Jean’s respect.

Ymir automatically draped a protective arm around Krista’s shoulders and rested her chin on her head, almost as if she feared their little public display of affection wasn’t clear enough to those around them that Krista was hers. Krista snuggled into Ymir’s embrace gratefully.

A stab of envy drove itself somewhere into Jean’s gut as he was reminded of the warm, capable hands he’d left to come here followed by pervasive surge of urgency to get back to them as soon as possible.

“Did you have a good Christmas?”

“Huh?” Jean was pulled out of his reverie by Krista’s question. “Oh…yeah. Yeah, I did, actually.”

Krista beamed at him as if she’d never been more delighted to hear a piece of news in her life.

Ymir nudged her. “Actually, he’s got some pretty big news to share.”

God damn it, Ymir. Couldn’t she at least give him a chance to bring this up himself?

Jean forced himself to smile and nod, avoiding eye contact at all costs, knowing that Ymir was thoroughly enjoying herself making him as uncomfortable as possible. He refused to give her the satisfaction.

“It’s…not really a big deal.” Hypocrite. To you, this is the biggest deal since the fucking moon landing.

Krista’s brows came together as she looked between him and Ymir, big blue eyes blinking in confusion. There was a long, taut pause as Jean struggled to find what to say. This was…pivotal, somehow. This was coming out. It wasn’t something he’d ever anticipated himself doing, so he’d never even considered how he might go about doing so. Despite the fact he knew Krista was the least judgemental person in the world who’d probably be nothing but delighted for him, the apprehension weighing on his tongue didn’t go away.

Evidently Ymir had decided he was taking too long, because before he could even draw breath she blurted out, “He’s only gone and gotten himself a boyfriend.”

Jean glared as she cackled at his thunderous expression, but Krista’s mouth widened in delight.

“No way!” she exclaimed, wriggling out of Ymir’s grip so she could throw her arms around Jean instead. “That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you!”

“Uh…thanks.” Relief swelled up in his chest at such a visceral reaction. He awkwardly patted Krista’s shoulder, keenly aware Ymir would be more than willing to rip out his kidney if he so much as lay a hand on her in the wrong way.

Krista let go of him, smiling so broadly it was a little dizzying to look at. Ymir’s arm quickly snaked back around her shoulders.

“Who? Who is it? Is it someone we know?” she asked.

Jean rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you remember the party last month?”

“Ohhh!” Krista clasped her hands together. “Is it Marco?”

Jean’s shoulders sagged in defeat, weary grin slipping back onto his face. “Yeah. It’s Marco.”

“I knew it!” Krista positively glowed as she grabbed hold of Ymir’s hand and tugged on it. “What did I tell you! I knew it!”

“Trust me, she didn’t need telling.” Jean rolled his eyes, but there was hardly even a trace of exasperation behind it now. Krista’s unrestrained delight made him feel so much more at ease than Ymir’s shameless approach. She hadn’t bothered to question him, not for a second, not even caring that Marco was, in fact, a guy. It was pretty gratifying to realise that this really wasn’t that hard.

This was…pretty easy, actually.

“I can’t believe it. I’m so happy.” Krista’s mouth widened in delight.  “You know what would be amazing?”

“What?” said Jean.

Krista’s smile glimmered at him as she turned back to Ymir. “If you and Marco came on a date with us!”

Both Jean and Ymir instinctively stiffened, catching each other’s eye in equal parts horror and the mutual understanding of oh God, don’t make us spend an evening with each other or it’ll either end in bloodshed or someone behind bars.

Maybe both. Probably both.

“Maybe we should, uh, give them some space, babe,” Ymir said, confidence faltering for the first time. “You know, new relationship and all.”

Krista scoffed. “We’ve been together for a full month and the closest we’ve come to a date is happening to eat food in the same place.”

“What?” Ymir threw her hands up in indignation. “Tell me that isn’t quintessentially what a date is.”

“You know what I mean,” Krista said. “Oh, come on, it would be fun! Right, Jean?”

Jean twitched. “Uh…I guess. I don’t know. It…it might be a bit early, like Ymir said.” He decided not to mention the extremely sickly-sweet nature of his and Marco’s trip to the art gallery. “Eren and Mikasa might go with you.”

Krista shook her head. “I’ve already tried. Ymir didn’t want to, because she- how did you put it?”

“Can’t be dealing with all that heterosexual nonsense,” Ymir said.

Jean fought the instinct to laugh when he saw Krista’s gaze narrow into the closest thing her cherubic face could make into a glower, clearly less than amused.

“You know how rude that sounds,” she chided.

 “It’s true though. Jean lives with them, and look, it was enough to turn the poor boy gay.”

“Ymir!” Krista elbowed Ymir in the ribs, and Ymir let out a mocking cry of defeat, clutching the point of impact, pretending to be deeply wounded, as Krista turned back to Jean. “If you don’t mind tolerating my girlfriend for a few hours, we’d love to go out with you and Marco at some point. I’d like to see him again, he was so nice the first time.”

“He is,” Jean mumbled without thinking.

“Are you doing anything on Friday? Let me and Ymir take you guys to dinner.”

Ymir snorted. “I’m sorry, are you paying?”

Krista ignored her. “Does that sound good?”

Jean scratched the back of his head, opened his mouth, hesitated, and then shrugged. “…Yeah, sure. Why not. I’ll ask him.”

“What, like you need his permission?” Ymir said. “Man, you’re not even a couple of weeks in and you’re already whipped.”

“Ymir, shut up.” Krista snapped.

“Babe…”

“Ymir.”

Ymir’s jaw clamped shut.

Jean smirked. “I’m sorry, who’s whipped?”

The satisfaction of managing to land that scathing remark was nearly worth getting chased by Ymir, wielding his sketchbook as a weapon across the atrium after that.

…

“Hey…Marco? Are you doing anything on Friday night?”

It was early that Wednesday morning, technically supposed to be Jean’s day off, but he’d gotten out of bed and left the house for work on autopilot and not realised until he was halfway there. He figured he was already up now and if he got to see Marco an extra day then he wasn’t about to complain, even if Marco had initially insisted for him to go home but after a peck on the lips or two, he’d quickly changed his tune and, albeit a little begrudgingly, let him stay.

The fuzzy blue light of the wintery dawn was cresting over the rooftops visible through the front window, filtering across the window display full of delectable pastries whilst Jean and Marco waited for their first customers to appear. Jean was stood behind the counter next to the till, as always, and Marco was sat a little way down from him, sorting through some paperwork and assorted order forms. Normally, he’d do that sort of thing in the back room, but for some unestablished reason he’d decided to keep Jean company this time. Not that Jean was complaining. He craved Marco’s company like an addict craved the rush of a hit.

“Friday night? Absolutely nothing,” Marco said smoothly. His eyes slid up from the form he was filling out, a smirk playing on his lips. His pen didn’t stop moving. “Why? You want to take me out on a date or something?”

Jean folded his arms and leaned against the counter. “Yeah, actually.”

Clearly Marco hadn’t been expecting to be right, because his pen went squiggling across the page and he sat up abruptly, surprise etched into the creases of his forehead. “Wait, really?”

“Well. Sort of. If you want to be technical about it, we’re getting taken out on a date.”

Marco’s brow twitched. “Sorry, what?”

“All right, just hear me out,” Jean said, rubbing the back of his neck. “What’s your opinion on double dates?”

Marco opened his mouth to reply, but frowned, looking completely lost for words, as if the prospect of such a thing had never occurred to him. Jean might as well have asked him what his thoughts were on the economic status of the kingdom of bread elves.

“If you’re asking me if I’ve ever been on one, then no, I haven’t,” Marco said at last, still looking perplexed as he lay his pen down and rested his elbows on the counter. “You’re saying you’ve- we’ve been invited on a double date?”

Jean nodded. “Do you remember Ymir and Krista? Really tiny blonde girl and the taller, kind-of-an-asshole looking girl who was pretty much always with her? They kind of hooked up after the party we were at and I saw them the other day and they asked about you and if you’d be interested in maybe—”

“You’ve told people about us?”

Jean faltered. “Um. Yeah.”

It hadn’t occurred to him that he probably should’ve asked Marco before he started telling people about the two of them. There were two of them in this relationship, after all. It wasn’t just Jean’s news to tell. He inwardly cursed himself for being so stupidly insensitive. What he and Marco had- what they were- was the most intimate thing Marco had had with any other person for nearing a year now. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume it was something he’d want to hold close to his heart, even if only for the time being before they started broadcasting their relationship to the rest of the world.

Jean shifted on his feet, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Should I not have?”

“No, that’s not- I mean- Jean, you can tell who you want,” Marco said. “I’m just…surprised.”

Jean looked up at him from beneath his lashes. “Why?”

Marco let out a strained laugh that shook with relief. “Because that’s probably the last thing I expected! You weren’t…I don’t know, nervous? Worried?”

Jean shrugged. “Not really.” Maybe a little. But Marco didn’t need to know that.

“I know I was the first time I came out,” Marco said. He was still looking at Jean with the same level of curiosity he might regard a mildly confusing maths question. “I mean, it’s not so bad nowadays, I don’t really care who knows who I like. Well. It depends on the person.”

Jean’s interest twinged. He cleared his throat. “How many people…uh, know?”

Marco tipped his head back, mouth twisted in thought. “The first person who knew was my mom. Then my Grandpa. A couple of friends, but I don’t speak to them anymore. Petra and most of my mom’s editorial team know, but both times were kind of an accident. Then there’s you, and that’s about it.”

“That’s less than I was expecting.”

Marco shrugged and went back to his paperwork. “I like to say I’m out, but I just don’t advertise it, you know? Although, now that I’m thinking about it, a rainbow flag would look really nice hanging in the window.” He held up his fingers in a frame, pretending to evaluate the bold declaration of pride before he let his hands fall back to his side. “It’s up to you, Jean. If you want people to know, you can tell them. I don’t mind.”

Jean smiled gratefully at him. “Thanks. That’s really cool of you.”

“Although,” Marco began, a wavering note in his voice as he regarded Jean with a sidelong glance. “I would recommend a certain degree of…I want to say caution, but that sounds like you’re in danger, and that’s not what I mean. You should just…be aware that people- other people- will probably treat you differently, if they know. I’m not saying it’s a certainty, just something to be aware of.”

Jean pulled a face. “Is it really that big of a deal?”

“To some people, yeah, it really is, and it’s not a fun experience finding out who it matters to. It hurts and—” Marco broke off. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to freak you out, but I know you’ve only been with girls before and there’s no use pretending it’s not…different.”

He was right, Jean thought, his friends probably wouldn’t care if and when he told them about him and Marco. A few might be a little surprised, but he could easily name half a dozen people he considered even remotely close to him who’d at least dabbled beyond the confines of heterosexuality. No, his only real concern, now that he thought about it, was his mother. The thought of that coming out experience was enough to make his stomach twist inside out. He’d seen the viral videos dotted throughout the internet of shame-faced kids and wonderfully tolerant parents doling out heartfelt hugs and wiping tears from wet cheeks. But he’d also seen the other end of the spectrum. He’d googled how to admit you like a guy to your mom when he was still at home over Christmas one evening when she was sat across the table from him and the images of strict suburban parents brandishing signs emblazoned with slurs and condemnations made him feel sick. Like most of his problems, he’d been vehemently ignoring the prospect ever since.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He reached across the counter and grabbed hold of Marco’s hand, running his thumb over his knuckles as he met his gaze directly. “I’ve wanted this- us- for so fucking long. As long as you’re happy doing this, then so am I. Everything else will just have to figure itself out.”

“It’s not quite that simple.” Marco said, but he seemed pleased nonetheless.

“I know. But I’m OK with that. I’m OK with you, after all.”

“You’re OK with me? I can’t believe you’d say such dirty things at work.”

Jean smirked and leaned in closer so his nose was barely an inch from Marco’s.

“So,” he breathed. “About that date…”

Colour bloomed into Marco’s cheeks as his head inclined towards Jean, anticipating a kiss, but Jean tilted his chin back, teasing him.

Marco licked his lips, his eyes fixed on Jean’s mouth. “Can I—”

“For the last time, you don’t have to ask.” And he kissed him, savouring the long, slow moment, setting fire to his lips.

Marco broke away first, gripping Jean’s hand. “I just- thought I should in case this is new for you or- something- in case we needed to establish any boundaries or…OK, OK,” he shook his head. The last thing Jean cared about in the world right now was boundaries. “This time I’m going to kiss you.”

He let go of Jean’s hand and clasped his cheeks instead and kissed him so soft and sweet Jean went weak at the knees. It was like kissing pure sunshine, with thumbs running across his face just for the sake of contact.

It made him wonder why the hell they waited so long. Six long months of avoiding eye contact and pretending he hadn’t been staring at Marco’s ass. He’d had full relationships last less time than that. But with Marco, it was suddenly easy. If he’d known just how easy it would be, he would’ve made a move long ago. If only he could’ve seen that then, then maybe—

Jean didn’t get to finish that thought, because before he could, they were interrupted by the chime of the bell as the front door swung open.

He and Marco flinched and sprang apart, simultaneous panic flaring up in their stomachs, quickly souring and turning to guilt when they saw Ellie stood in the doorway, eyes wide, mouth slightly open almost like a cartoon character who was clearly aware she’d interrupted something she really hadn’t expected.

Warmth prickled in Jean’s cheeks as he turned away, trying to disguise his chagrin. He cursed inwardly. Of course, out of all people to walk in at that very moment to see him and Marco making out it had to be a fucking kid. He was partially irritated that his moment with Marco had been cut short, but the better part of him was more ashamed that he’d been on the verge of taking his top off right there on the shop floor in plain view.

“Ellie! Hi! How are you today?” Marco said breathlessly, as if he too were pretending she hadn’t seen him and Jean lip locked only moments ago. “What can I get you today?”

Maybe Ellie could sense their apprehension (Did kids her age have a sense of humility? Shame, perhaps?) because she seemed tentative to approach the counter, creeping across the shop floor and mumbling her usual order, gaze darting between Jean and Marco.

Thankfully, Marco seemed just as frantic as Jean felt to divert her attention and was maintaining a constant stream of chatter about nothing in particular- “Are those new school shoes? I love your new school bag- hey, have you seen the size of the muffins today? They’re practically bursting out of their wrappers- tell you what, I’ll package some up for you to take home for your parents, just promise you won’t eat them all on your way back—"

Eventually, Ellie giggled, and Marco breathed a sigh of relief.

“I won’t,” she promised, taking the paper bag Marco slid across the counter for her and handing over her handful of coins. “Thank you, Mr Bodt.”

Jean turned back around and caught her gaze for a moment, detecting perhaps just a vague hint of something resembling reproach, before she turned back to Marco and beckoned him closer. Marco obligingly leaned over the counter. She rose up on her tip toes, cupping her hand around her mouth and asked in a rather loud whisper, “Is he your girlfriend, Mr Bodt?”

Jean had to disguise his splutter as a cough, biting back the grin that threatened to show itself as he glanced back over his shoulder to see Marco’s face go the same colour as his raspberry macarons. His head drooped, and his shoulders shook ever so slightly, as if he too were trying to fight laughter, before he quickly regained his composure and looked back up to meet Ellie’s gaze.

“Something like that,” Marco said in a strained voice. “You be careful on your way home now. Tell your parents I said hi,”

Ellie skipped her way back to the door, pausing to glance back at them one last time before she left, pigtails bouncing out of sight with a final chime of the bell.

“OK. That. That right there. That’s a boundary.” Marco said once his shoulders had stopped quivering. “No kissing on the shop floor. Especially not where Ellie can see.”

Jean had to laugh. Out of relief, if nothing else.

“I take it she didn’t know?”

“Well she does now.” Marco passed a hand over his face. “Oh, man, I really hope this isn’t how she finds out boys can kiss boys. I would hate to be the reason her parents have to give her the talk.”

“We’ve all got to learn about it sooner or later,” Jean said. “So, any thoughts on that date?”

“Oh yeah. Friday, right?” Marco tipped his head back, screwing his eyes up in thought. “…Sure. Yeah, I don’t see why not. Krista and-?”

“Ymir.”

“Ymir, right, right. I’ll remember that. Yeah. Let’s do it.” Marco grinned.

Jean leaned back over the counter for one last kiss. “Don’t be late.”

…

“Where is he?”

Jean’s shoulders hunched over as he checked his phone for the dozenth time, swiping through his messages in the vain hope a text had soundlessly appeared in his inbox in the thirty seconds since he last checked.

“I don’t know.” He sighed, thumb swiping across the keyboard, sending yet another where are you? into the abyss.

“It’s been, like, an hour.” Ymir scowled, shoving her hands in her pockets and stamping her feet.

“Twenty minutes,” Krista said, checking the little gold watch on her slim wrist. “It’s OK, he’s just running a little late.”

The three of them were bathed in the yellow light spilling out of the front window of the restaurant they had arranged to meet at, six o’clock, sharp. When Jean had double checked this with Marco it hadn’t seemed to be a problem- if anything, he’d sounded more enthusiastic than Jean felt about this whole affair. A good seventy percent of the reason why he’d agreed to this date- maybe even seventy-five, if he was being entirely honest- was for Marco’s sake. Their conversation on the train and the painful, withdrawn expression painting loneliness on Marco’s face stuck in his memory like a brand, a sore reminder. Marco had been excited to see Jean’s friends again, he knew it.

So where was he?

The second hand on Krista’s watch was nudging closer and closer to half six and they hadn’t heard a word from him. Not a single excuse, apology or even confirmation that Marco was actually going to show. Jean’s phone remained a cold, silent slab in his frozen fingers, its screen remaining obstinately blank.

“Jesus Christ it’s cold as balls out here,” Ymir shuddered. “We’re going to have to wait for a table if we stay out here much longer.”

“We can wait,” Krista said as she turned back to Jean. “Anything?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. You guys can go inside if you want, I’ll wait out here for him.”

“No, we’ll go in together,” Krista said resolutely and tucked her hands in the front pockets of her demure white fur-trimmed coat. “I’m sure Marco will be here any minute now.”

“Or maybe he bailed,” Ymir added, raising her shoulders in defiance when Krista threw her a dirty look. “Hey, come on, we’re all thinking it.”

Jean didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. His heart was beginning to pound and an anxious twist riddled his gut as he strained to look up and down the dark street, searching for the familiar white van. Maybe Marco had decided against the idea last minute. Maybe Marco didn’t really want to go out with Jean. Maybe he’d finally come to his senses and realised he was wasting his time, and Jean wasn’t worth his effort, and—

The phone in his hand buzzed and Jean nearly dropped it in surprise. He scrabbled to switch it on, eyes flying across the screen.

“He’s on his way,” he announced, sweet relief flooding through his chest. “He’s running late, but he’s on his way.”

“Halle-fucking-lujah.” Ymir gave a listless cheer. “Now can we please move our asses six feet that way through those doors and go inside…”

“Seriously, if you guys want to go in and start ordering, I don’t mind.” Jean said.

“Are you sure? You don’t have to wait by yourself.” Krista asked.

Jean smiled at her and held up his phone. “As long as I know he’s coming, I’m good out here. I’ll see you guys inside.”

Krista looked reluctant. “If you’re sure…”

Ymir grabbed her girlfriend by the shoulders, mock saluting Jean as she began to steer Krista towards the restaurant’s entrance. “Your sacrifice is commendable,” she said dryly and together, she and Krista disappeared inside.

Jean turned back to face the street and sighed, watching the cloud of his breath dissipate into the air. There were still remnants of half melted snow on the ground and the frigid night air had numbed his fingers so thoroughly they were permanently curled in on themselves, but he was so relieved, he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. The text hadn’t been much- just a short Sorry, I know I’m late, but I’m on my way followed by See you soon- but it had been enough to ease Jean’s paranoia, at least for now. He hadn’t been worried up until that last half an hour, when the doubts started to set in, and honestly, the lack of faith he had in him and Marco together was a little disheartening.

He looked up and saw a familiar figure hurrying down the street towards him, jacket fluttering and his face set aglow beneath the streetlights, baring an apologetic smile as Jean caught sight of him.

“I’m so sorry,” Marco said the moment he reached Jean’s side, pink cheeked and breathless. “I’m sorry I’m late, I didn’t mean to take so long, something just came up and I couldn’t- well, anyway, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, I promise- and I- hi,”

“Hey,” Jean said, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Glad you made it.”

Marco’s dark eyes flickered across Jean’s face for a moment and he took a step forward then rolled back on his heel as Jean took one back, awkwardly raised arms catching at each other’s elbows as they clumsily became reacquainted.

“Um- I’m just going to…there,” Marco said and planted a soft kiss on Jean’s sharp cheekbone. His breath was hot, his breathing rapid. “I’m really sorry. Were you waiting long?”

“Kind of. Ymir and Krista are already inside.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the restaurant. “What kept you?”

“Huh?” Marco blinked.

“Why were you so late?”

“O-oh, right. Something came up. That’s all. It’s nothing. No big deal.” Marco’s voice was rapid as his breath, coming in short bursts, and when they were this close, Jean could practically feel the frantic drum of his pulse. There was a tautness to his lips when they spread into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes; worried lines spidering through his freckles that Jean couldn’t recall seeing before. “It’s fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” Jean raised an eyebrow.

Marco touched his face self-consciously before he shook his head and laughed in a manner that had clearly been rehearsed beforehand.

“I have to admit, that’s not the first thing I’d hoped you say.”

“Did something happen?”

“No, of course not. Everything…everything’s fine. I promise.” Marco closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before allowing a slightly more earnest smile to spread itself across his face. “You, on the other hand, look nice.”

Jean would be lying if he said he hadn’t perhaps spent a little longer styling his hair than usual that evening or taken a good quarter of an hour to find clothes that didn’t have either flour or paint on them, but he refused to let himself be flattered into giving up. “You’re changing the subject.”

“Please, Jean, just forget it. I’m fine. Everything’s OK. Let’s just have a good night. Please?”

Jean wasn’t an idiot. He knew Marco was hiding something. Even though Marco was highly skilled at disguising how he really felt behind a meticulously crafted, smiling mask, he couldn’t quite smooth over all the cracks. Or perhaps now Jean knew him well enough to spot his hair, messy from his fingers raking through it, or the way a muscle near his mouth twitched every time he spoke, or how he wouldn’t quite look Jean in the eye.

But what could he say? It had taken over six months to get Marco to tell Jean enough about himself for Jean to be able to say he knew Marco well enough. What could he possibly say to get him to tell the truth now?

He sighed and shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you want. We’ve kept the other two waiting long enough, anyway.”

Marco’s shoulders sagged in relief and he apologised all the way into the restaurant as Jean held the door open for him and they made their way inside, scanning the place for their date companions.

It was a Friday night and the sheer amount of people at the restaurant made that fact evident. There was a small mob crowding round the bar and there was hardly an empty seat in the house. The air was full of lively chatter and periodic outbursts of laughter punctuated by the scraping of cutlery and clink of glasses. Big groups of friends toasted to another night out, families tried to settle their squirming kids, colleagues chattered amiably, and couples leaned across tables, smiling stickily around shared desserts beneath dim lights. People on dates, just like them.

Jean’s stomach couldn’t help but flutter at the thought. When was the last time he’d been out on a proper date like this? He wracked his brains, but all he could think of was that one time he and an ex-girlfriend shared a miserable portion of fries in a fast food place instead of attending class whilst the manager glowered at their school uniforms from across the counter. It hadn’t felt anything like this. More authentic. Conventional.

By some miracle, Ymir and Krista had managed to get a table. Jean saw them right in the middle of the restaurant, completely oblivious to the crowded tables around them. Ymir had her arm around Krista, who was leaning against her, looking at each other as if they were the sun, lips murmuring in conversation. Jean motioned for Marco to follow him and they weaved their way through the tables, only being noticed by the other two when they reached their table.

“Marco! Hi! You made it!” Krista leapt up from her seat to throw her arms around Marco. “I’m so glad you came! I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Krista,”

Marco initially flinched at such a visceral greeting, but nonetheless, he smiled and returned the hug with one arm. “Of course I remember you. It’s nice to see you again.” He straightened up and cocked a wave at Ymir, who had remained resolutely seated. “Hey- Ymir, right?”

Ymir jerked her head in acknowledgement. “’Sup.”

“I’m sorry I’m late. I didn’t mean to keep you all waiting,” Marco said as he and Jean slid into the booth across from Krista and Ymir. The moment Krista sat down Ymir’s arm snaked back around her shoulders. “Can I make up for it by buying you guys a drink?”

“First round on baker boy? Now that’s something I can get behind.” Ymir smirked at Jean. “Good news, kid, you found a keeper.”

Jean scowled and hid behind a menu as Marco smiled obediently. Fucking Ymir. This was just a game to her. She could poke fun at him all she wanted, but Jean was determined not to let her wily tongue screw things up. Ruining their night might not have been her intention, but she was certainly capable of doing so with a poorly timed snide remark or a misinterpreted jibe. He kept his jaw clamped shut and pretended to scan the menu instead.

“Hey, want to know something pretty ironic?” Ymir interjected.

“What?” Jean grumbled under his breath.

Ymir jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “See for yourself. Look who our server is.”

Jean lowered the menu and nearly did a double take.

“Eren?”

“Eren?” Marco echoed. “Your housemate Eren?”

“Apparently we picked the restaurant Eren happens to work at,” Krista said. “Funny, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jean said. Eren was doling out dishes to another table, unmistakable in his garishly coloured uniform, unaware of their presence yet. Jean’s heart was beginning to pound. “Funny.”

He wasn’t nervous, was he? No. Definitely not. He wasn’t ashamed. He snuck a glance over at Marco, who was flipping through his menu and maintaining small talk with Krista. He seemed to have relaxed somewhat and was smiling and laughing, and when he caught Jean looking out of the corner of his eye he smiled and placed his hand on top of Jean’s on the seat between them, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Jean did his best to muster a smile in return.

He wasn’t ashamed of Marco. He was just…apprehensive. Eren didn’t know about them yet. Well, not for certain. He definitely knew more than most, thanks to their drunk conversation after the party, but Jean hadn’t said anything since then and this was the first time he was out in the world introducing Marco as my boyfriend. The words still felt gummy in his mouth, almost like a foreign language.

“Hey, lovebirds.” Ymir snapped her fingers at them. “Sorry to interrupt you two dreamily gazing into each other’s eyes or whatever, but do you know what you want?” She motioned over her shoulder at Eren. “Because I’m about to call him over here whether you’re ready or not because I’m fucking starving.”

Krista snorted. “Give them a chance, they’ve only just sat down.”

“And if I don’t eat in the next ten minutes I’m going to pass the fuck out.”

“I’m decided.” Marco said. He turned to Jean. “Jean? You ready to order?”

Jean glanced over at Eren’s back, his gaze darting back to Marco, then back to Eren, before he sighed and laid his menu down. Might as well get it over with. No use delaying the inevitable.

“Yeah, go for it. Bring him over.”

“Thank God,” Ymir said and stuck her arm in the air, beckoning Eren over just as he finished with the other table. He turned around and they all saw him do a double take as he caught sight of them, glancing over his shoulder like he couldn’t quite believe it. His gaze lingered pointedly on Jean for a moment or two before flickering over to Marco as he stalked across the restaurant, still looking stunned.

“If it’s any consolation, we didn’t expect to see you here either,” Jean said as Eren reached the table.

“What are you guys doing here?” Eren demanded.

“Uhh, let me think…to admire the interior decorating. We’re here to eat, like everyone else, genius,” Ymir snapped.

Eren sneered at her.

“Sorry, Eren, she doesn’t mean that. I haven’t fed her in the past two hours so that’s her stomach talking.” Krista smiled serenely.

It was at this point Marco decided to pipe up.

“Hey, Eren,” he said, spreading the fingers on his free hand in greeting. “It’s been a while, huh?”

“Yeah…hey, man,” Eren said. Jean saw his gaze fall straight to his and Marco’s hands laying entwined on the vinyl seat and watched as the comprehension slowly dawned on Eren’s face.

“So…are you guys here on, like, a date or something?” he asked, voice wavering around the word ‘date’ ostentatiously with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Jean wanted to slam his head into the table.

“Yep!” Krista beamed.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever, it’s a date, now can we please get some food before I fucking die, thanks,” Ymir interrupted by slapping her menu against the table with an audible crack.

“Slow the fuck down and let me do my job first,” Eren said, producing his notepad and pen. “Drinks?”

“Ooh, I guess alcohol can tide me over until we can eat,” Ymir blew out a stream of air melodramatically and held up four fingers. “Four beers. What are you guys having?”

“Ymir.” Krista said. “We’re not here to get drunk.”

“You’re just saying that because when you get drunk you turn into the horniest little —”

“Ymir? Believe it or not, no one wants to hear about your sex life right now.” Jean had noticed Marco’s cheeks rapidly gaining colour and interrupted her, eager to divert the subject.

Ymir smirked at him again like she knew she was already starting to piss him off, but nevertheless, they managed to order their drinks and their food and by the time Eren left, still glancing over his shoulder wide-eyed every few moments as he walked away, a relative calm had returned to their table.

“So,” Marco said, taking a sip of his cider. “How long have you and Ymir known each other?”

“Oh, gosh.” Krista screwed up her face in thought. “Since high school? It feels like it’s been forever. We were only friends up until recently, though.”

Ymir cleared her throat. “Babe, I think we’d been more than friends for a whole lot longer than you think,”

“How long have you been together?” asked Marco.

“Just over a month. We got together at Connie and Sasha’s party, actually.” Krista cocked her head and twirled the straw around her drink, gazing off into the distance happily. “Ymir finally worked up the courage to ask me out.”

“O-oh?” Marco said, and Jean didn’t even have to look to know Marco was staring at him and thinking the exact same thing. Nope, they weren’t the only couple to come to certain realisations that night. Ymir just happened to be more…well-adjusted than Jean had been.

“It’d been on my to do list for a while,” Ymir said, lolling back in her seat as if it had been nothing more interesting than fixing a broken pipe. The corner of her mouth quirked. “And so had she, if you know what I mean.”

Krista closed her eyes and pressed her lips together in an exasperated smile, mumbling an apology as Marco laughed politely, but her lack of indignation at Ymir speaking almost exclusively in innuendo made Jean suspect Krista might actually rather enjoy sharing the more intimate details of their relationship. More than she let on, anyway. Maybe it was her way of being possessive, like Ymir’s constant need to be hanging on to some part of her just in case anyone ever thought there might be some miniscule chance she was single. Hell, maybe sweet little Krista had a lot more to her than he thought.

“Can I ask what made you decide to ask?” Marco was saying. He scratched the tip of his nose. “If that’s not to personal.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Ymir tipped her head back, her sly gaze sliding over to Jean for a split second before snapping back to Marco. “Let’s just say I had a conversation earlier that evening that made me decide it was time to kick my butt in gear. As a wise man once said, you don’t get bitches unless you ask first. Nicely.”

“I’m not sure what kind of reaction you were expecting, Ymir, because I know you didn’t just call me a bitch.” Krista said. The word ‘bitch’ sounded funny and affected in her prim little voice, and they all laughed.

Ymir raised her glass to her lips with a nonchalant shrug. “That’s why I asked nicely.”

“How about you guys?” Krista leaned forwards on the table. “Had you been together long before you decided to come out?”

Jean wanted to wince at the words ‘come out’. It wasn’t like he’d done much of that himself yet, but nevertheless, he opened his mouth to reply.

“The day before Christmas—”

“New Year’s—”

“—eve,”

Both he and Marco spoke at the exact same moment. Jean tilted his head to one side, one eyebrow raised whilst Marco gave a sort of apologetic half-smile, half shrug.

Krista and Ymir looked surprised and shared a look before Ymir snickered.

“Whoops,” she said. “Looks like Jean’s been in this relationship a week longer than you, Marco.”

“That’s not it,” Jean mumbled. He could already feel blood beginning to creep into his cheeks.

 “I- I think we both sort of knew we wanted to be more than friends for a while.” Marco chuckled nervously.  “We just made it official in the last couple of weeks or so. Would you say that’s about right, Jean?”

“Something like that,” Jean said darkly. Ymir and Krista shared another knowing glance and simultaneously took a long sip of their drinks as if they knew exactly what Marco was talking about.

Fuck them. They didn’t know what had been going through Jean’s head at the time. They’d had over half a decade to get to know each other well enough to take things to the next level. He and Marco had had a measly six months and were hastily tripping up over themselves already.

He wasn’t embarrassed; he kept telling himself that, but it didn’t stop him from looking away and trying to avoid catching anyone’s gaze. The restaurant was still bustling and filling up faster by the second. Eren and his co-workers flew past every so often, gabbling goofy greetings and doling out menus and drinks as fast as their garish uniforms would allow. Jean skimmed the room over the rim of his glass, catching the gaze of one woman against the back wall who was staring pointedly at them. The moment they clocked each other she looked away, returning to her meal and her family, but Jean had seen her and wondered what warranted her interest.

“Can I ask a sort of personal question, Marco?”

The prospect of Ymir asking personal questions was enough to pull Jean out of his reverie.

“You can not,” he said.

Marco lay his hand back on top of Jean’s once again. “Sure, I don’t mind. Go ahead.”

Ymir leaned forward in her seat and rested her elbows on the table, propping her chin up on her folded fingers. “What made you realise Jean was the one?”

Jean spluttered over his drink, struggling not to choke. Ymir deliberately teased out the words, putting particular emphasis on the rhyme, evidently delighted as she cackled at his reaction.

“Woah, woah, woah, overreact much?” she said, relishing every second.

“Ymir.” Krista chastised.

“What? I mean how did Marco know he was the one I want to date, not how did he know Jean was the one, the one.”

Jean cleared his throat, setting his glass back on the table with a resolute thud. “You make no sense.” Marco tentatively patted him on the back before Jean brushed his hand away, mumbling “’M fine.”

“You don’t have to answer her, Marco,” Krista said. “She’s kind of a jerk.”

Ymir held up her hands, indignant. “Babe,”

“And that’s one of the many things I love about you,” Krista immediately put on her trademark, simpering smile, big, gooey eyes and everything. It wasn’t hard to see Ymir visibly defrost a little around the edges as Krista tilted her head upwards to share a brief kiss.

Jean could see Marco’s leg twitching under the table. Guilt ballooned in the pit of his stomach. He could practically taste the overwhelming pressure from next to him. He’d barely looked at Marco for more than two consecutive seconds since they’d sat down. Was Marco feeling ignored? Should Jean put his arm around him, or would that look like he was copying Ymir? Maybe they could just keep holding hands under the table. He rubbed his thumb against his fingers, and on second thought, decided to keep his clammy hands to himself. He wiped them down on his jeans and snuck a glance to his right. Marco had politely averted his gaze from Ymir and Krista whilst they were otherwise engaged, but at the slightest tilt of Jean’s head he immediately turned to face him. He gave something of an encouraging smile.

“You all right?” he mouthed.

Jean started to nod, then shrugged, then went back to nodding. He didn’t know. He was wildly uncomfortable, that was all he knew for sure.

“Where the hell’s our food?” Ymir demanded the second Krista detached herself from her lips as she snatched up her drink. “I got beer, I got a girlfriend, girl just needs herself a hamburger and she will be in fucking ecstasy,”

“Oh, speaking of food.” Krista turned back to face them, flashing a sunny little smile at Marco as she clasped her hands together on the table, shoulders tucked up so far, the ruffles on her cardigan brushed her ears. “Marco,” she began. “I was doing some baking the other day, so I was looking on the internet for recipes and I came across this one name that kept cropping up and I thought it sounded familiar, so I thought I’d look it up to make sure I was right, just in case, and—”

“Let me save us some time and translate her rambling,” Ymir interjected, gesturing with her beer bottle. “Krista decided to google you before we came out here and it led to some light internet stalking- nothing major,” she added as Krista’s jaw dropped, affronted. “Just enough that she wants to know if Maria Bodt is your mom,”

“…Oh.” Marco’s lips were twitching, as if he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or not.

Krista had gone pink. “It wasn’t stalking,” she insisted. “Like I said, I thought the last name sounded similar so I just…looked you up. I’m sorry, is that weird?”

Jean couldn’t help but smile at how flustered she was and tried his best to disguise it behind his hand propped up on the table.

“No, no, it’s cool.” Marco nodded. His hands tightened into fists at his sides beneath the table. “Yeah, that’s her. She’s my mom.”

“That’s so cool,” Krista said, cupping her face in her hands. “I knew she was from around here, but I didn’t realise it was so close.”

“Yeah. That’s pretty sweet.” Even Ymir seemed to be marginally impressed. At least, she was nodding. Maybe. It could have just been a coincidental jerk of her chin. “Everyone round here grew up with their mom feeding them Maria Bodt recipes.”

Marco’s lips tautened into a forced smile. “Yeah…”

“Do you work with your mom, then?” Krista continued.

Warning bells started to ring in Jean’s ears. He lowered his hand, throwing a surreptitious glance at Marco. Marco’s fists were still balled up on his lap, his knuckles going white.

Jean cleared his throat. “Hey, Krista?”

“Have you met her, Jean?” Ymir interuppted, raising her eyebrows.

Jean hesitated. “Well, no, but—”

“What? Working at her bakery and haven’t even met the woman? That suuuucks.”

Marco was doing well to maintain his mask, tugging the corners of his lips into a placid smile, but Jean could see the harsh lines traversing down his arms and the tension riddled in his muscles as the back of his neck grew hot and blotchy. Jean shuffled in his seat awkwardly. “It’s more Marco’s bakery than anything,” he said with a shrug.

Marco’s shoulders slackened.

“She’s not home much,” he said at last in a surprisingly even tone. “She gets busy.”

Jean couldn’t help but admire his self-restraint. If he had been the one they were quizzing about his mom he had undeniably mixed feelings about, he would’ve snapped by now and already smashed a glass or two. He reached out and patted Marco on the shoulder a little more awkwardly than he intended but judging by the briefest smile that glimmered across his lips, Marco seemed to appreciate the gesture all the same.

“Right, of course.” Krista nodded sympathetically. “I can’t get over the fact she’s your mom. Did she teach you everything you know?”

Marco pulled a face. “Some of it. Baking’s not really her thing. She focuses more on cooking in general.”

“I did wonder about that,” Krista said. “I was looking for ages for a good cake recipe, but she doesn’t really have one, so I thought I’d check online which is how I noticed the names and, well, you know how that went.”

“If it’s baking recipes you want, you’d be better off just asking Jean,” Marco said.

Jean stared at him.

Marco shrugged. “He knows pretty much everything I know at this point.”

“That’s a huge fucking lie, and you know it.” Jean said. What the hell? He was nowhere near Marco in terms of- well, almost anything, but particularly when it came to baking. Marco could chuck flour and yeast and a handful of sugar into a bowl without measuring a single ounce and churn out a delectable brioche loaf. Jean still mixed up yeast and egg wash.

“No it’s not.” Marco said. “I can honestly say you’re just as good nowadays. Better, when it comes to a few things.”

“Marco. I have literally forgotten yeast in bread before.”

“That was ages ago—”

“That was last week.”

“Oh my god, are you for real?” Ymir snorted. “There’s like, three ingredients in bread, how do you miss literally the most important one?”

“You try making bread at three in the morning,” Jean sneered at her. “See if you don’t forget anything.”

Krista sat back in her seat as she watched this exchange play out, and cocked her head a little. The smallest of frowns slipped onto her brow as she regarded Marco for a few seconds, her big, blue eyes lingering pointedly on the colour in his cheeks and his white knuckles, almost as if she were evaluating him. He politely maintained eye contact, like he was anticipating another question. Without breaking eye contact, the frown vanished, and she said, “Hey, Ymir, would you come to the bathroom with me?”

“What? After only one drink?” Ymir said. “Before the food’s even here?”

“Yeah, come with me, won’t you?” Krista got to her feet, smoothing out her skirt and held out her hand. “We won’t be long.”

“What do you mean we won’t- ohhhh.” A look of comprehension dawned on Ymir’s face and she scrambled to her feet, slipping her hand into Krista’s. “Sure, sure, let’s go.”

Krista flashed Jean and Marco a quick smile. “Back in a minute,” she said, and tugged Ymir off across the restaurant, Krista’s blonde hair bouncing around her shoulders, Ymir’s ponytail bobbing behind.

Jean watched them go. They passed the table where the woman Jean had caught staring at them was sat, and she too watched them walked past. Her gaze lingered pointedly on their intertwined fingers and Jean thought he saw her shake her head before she went back to her meal.

“Marco, what the hell?” He said, twisting around to face him. “You know the only reason you keep me around is because I’m good at cake decorating.”

The corner of Marco’s mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t say that’s the only reason anymore.”

Jean shooed away the butterflies that fluttered in his stomach. “Why are you lying?”

Marco’s shoulders slackened. He fell back against his seat and heaved a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was the only thing I could think of to get them to talk about something else. You know, other than my mom.”

“Oh.” Jean paused. “Right. Yeah. They were really laying it into you, huh. Sorry about that.”

“No, I get it. When people find out we’re related, it’s all they want to talk about too. I’m used to it.” Marco said, and he genuinely seemed to mean it. “It’s just…you know. This is supposed to be a date, right? I don’t think it’s too weird to not want to talk about my mom?”

Jean held up his hands. “Nope. Yep. Makes sense.” He’d felt the same way when they’d been sat on that train together and Marco had been trying to convince him to text his own mother. Few things in this world killed heady lust than discussing their parents. “Are you doing OK?”

“Me? I’m great. Ymir’s a bit…well, you heard what Krista said.” Marco chuckled softly. “I’ll be fine once I get used to her. How about you? You’re uncharacteristically quiet. Is everything all right?”

Jean blinked. Was he all right? He didn’t know. Part of him was delighted that he was even out on a fucking date with Marco to begin with. But another part of him was…unyielding. Up until this point, he’d just sipped sourly at his drink and watched the conversation unfurl before him. It wasn’t Krista’s fault. It wasn’t even Ymir. He just felt like he was sitting on spikes, constantly on edge, and he wasn’t entirely sure why.

“I’m…I don’t know,” he said, and that was the most honest response he could muster right now. “I guess it’s just…nerves. Or something.”

That part was slightly less honest.

Marco’s expression softened. “Come here,” he said and shifted across the seat, leaning towards Jean.

Despite himself, Jean leaned back. “What are you doing?”

Marco blinked. “I was going to kiss you,” he said, as if it were obvious. “You said I could, remember?”

“Y…yeah. I did. Sorry.” Jean closed his eyes and let Marco press his lips against his own, familiarly slow and sweet. One thing was for sure, and that was that no matter the situation, Marco was one hell of a kisser. His kiss didn’t work wonders, but it was enough to somewhat loosen the hard, anxious knot pressing against Jean’s ribs like a rock.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end when the chatter of the restaurant seemed to lull for a moment. Jean’s eyes flew open and his heart began to thud, expecting to see every pair of eyes in the room turned scornfully on them- but no, he was wrong, everyone was too focused on their own conversations, except…

That woman at the back of the restaurant was staring at them again, but this time she wasn’t making any attempt to disguise her evident disgust. Her top lip curled in on itself and as one of her children began to turn around to see what she was looking at she quickly distracted him with food from her own plate. She didn’t take her eyes off Jean and Marco, though, and shook her head once again.

Jean froze.

Marco must have felt Jean’s whole body turn rigid beneath his kiss because not a moment later he pulled away.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, his brow knitted together.

Jean tore himself away from the woman’s scornful glare and back to Marco.

“We’re being stared at,” he said in a low voice.

Marco looked up and followed where Jean’s gaze had been moments ago, his dark eyes lingering pointedly on the woman’s table across the room for a few moments. She wasn’t staring anymore now she’d knew they’d cottoned on, but she glanced up every couple of seconds out of the corner of her eyes. As if they couldn’t tell. Regardless, Marco shook his head.

“Ignore them,” he said, and went in for another kiss, but Jean brushed him off.

“Maybe…not here,” Jean said tentatively. He swallowed. “Later.”

He couldn’t read the expression that fell across Marco’s features, but thankfully, he didn’t have to.

“Incoming.” Eren had arrived back at their table with their food, his arms laden with plates. “Jean, move your shit before I burn myself on these fucking things,”

“Do you treat all your customers like this?”

“Most of my customers don’t leave paint all over my bathroom,” Eren retorted. “Heads up,”

He was already sliding a plate off his arm towards Jean, landing with a thunk on the table and skidding across the surface. Jean batted his drink out of the way without thinking. The glass wobbled with a hollow sound, teetering over its side before it tipped over, splashing its contents all down Marco’s front.

Marco jumped up as Jean swore, grabbing a fistful of napkins to dab hastily at the hem of Marco’s soaked shirt.

“Ah, shit,” said Eren. “My bad.”

“Watch what you’re doing, you asshole,” Jean snapped.

“I’m fine,” Marco insisted, but he let Jean daub at his shirt until he threw the soggy napkins aside and picked up a new handful. It took a moment or two before Jean noticed the people seated around them were watching, some tittering at the sight of Marco’s misfortune, but that didn’t bother Jean as much as the realisation there was an audience to see his hand in such dangerous proximity to Marco’s crotch. The sensation of just touching Marco, regardless of context, was enough to get Jean heated up under the collar anyway, and no one needed to see that.

He let his hand fall and allowed Marco to take the napkins from him and finish the job, perhaps with just a little more colour in his cheeks than normal as well.

“Jaeger!” Someone barked from across the restaurant. “What are you doing over there?”

“Crap, not the manager.” Eren groaned under his breath. “Nothing. Just a spilled drink.”

Eren’s manager scowled, craning his neck over at their table to see the extent of the damage. “Get it cleaned up, Jaeger,” he commanded. “And seat these gentlemen somewhere else.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“What’d we miss?”

Ymir and Krista were back from the restroom, still hand in hand, with Ymir looking perhaps a little more dishevelled than she had when they’d left the table. Her shirt buttons were mismatched and she kept patting her hair back into place with one hand. There were faint, pale pink ghosts of Krista’s lipstick dotted along her jawline and trailing down her neck, but neither seemed particularly fazed or even remotely self conscious about what they’d been doing.

“What happened here?” Ymir said, eyeing the overturned glass, their waterlogged table and the splash marks up Marco’s front. “We leave for five minutes and you try flip the table?”

“That’s not what happened.” Jean exhaled sharply through his nose.

“Jean spilled his drink.” Eren said.

“Hey, it was your fault!”

“Uh, no, I wasn’t the one who knocked it over.”

“You were the one who made me—”

“Jaeger! What’s taking so long?”

Eren’s manager had appeared at his side and glowered at him before turning to the others and beginning to apologise profusely. “I’m so sorry for the delay. Let me give you a hand moving your things to another table. Let’s see, where can we put you…? Ah, perfect timing.”

A group from the back of the restaurant had just stood up to leave. A couple of Eren’s co-workers swept in to clear away the debris they had left in their wake as the manager led Jean’s group over to the new table, continuing to issue apologies for Eren’s incompetence. A fresh round of drinks were produced for everyone and a fistful of clean napkins for Marco to finish cleaning himself up. The manager left after one last apology and a promise to knock a charge off their bill.

“Gotta say, I’m liking the customer service here. Krista, we can come here any time.” Ymir said, considerably less snide now that their food was here, and she had a full bottle of beer once again.

Both Jean and Marco glanced at the soaked bottom of Marco’s shirt and said nothing.

Eren was still hovering near the table. He cleared his throat.

“Sorry about that, man. I hope your shirt isn’t ruined.”

“It was an accident, don’t worry about it.” Marco smiled, waving away his apology. “Not your fault.”

“Nah, it was Jean’s.”

“Hey—!"

“Jaeger! These people are waiting!”

Eren cocked his hand. “Well, enjoy your meal or whatever.” And with that, he left, flipping off his manager behind his back as he went.

“Well that was eventful,” Krista remarked.

“You sure you’re OK, Marco?” Jean asked.

Marco nodded, smoothing out the damp patch on his front. “It’s just a wet shirt. I’ll survive.”

They set about their meal at long last, the conversation lulling into interests and hobbies. Ymir, between wolfing down her meal in big, messy gulps, surprisingly managed to maintain a mostly sincere conversation with Marco about books, briefly explaining one of her folks working in records at a library when she was growing up. Krista and Jean talked about college and their mutual friends and laughed when Krista divulged a few things about Ymir he never would have guessed- like the extent of just how needy she really was when it was just the two of them, demanding physical affection Jean hadn’t thought a harpy such as herself would require. Normally, Ymir would’ve lunged across the table and taken him by the neck, making him swear never to breathe a word of it to another soul, but she seemed to have mellowed out somewhat and contented herself with snatching a couple of fries from his own plate to throw at him. Her arm went back around Krista and they continued to laugh and talk, and Jean was finally beginning to relax. This was what a date was supposed to feel like. Marco’s hand had crept over from his own lap and was currently resting on Jean’s thigh, and since it was beneath the table, where no one could see, he didn’t mind. In fact, he was thoroughly enjoying himself.  

The feeling didn’t last long.

Krista offered Ymir some of her food and held out a bite on her fork. Ymir swooped in without hesitation, smearing sauce across her cheek, and Krista laughed, swiping it away with her thumb as Ymir pretended to bite her finger. They laughed again and leaned in to kiss. When they parted, Jean’s heart sank. In the space between where Ymir and Krista’s faces had been he saw woman he’d caught staring sat behind them, not even making an effort to hide her grimace at this point now that they were sat only a table away. She watched Ymir and Krista kiss the same way one might watch a wild dog maul a carcass. She turned away and motioned for a member of staff.

Jean’s heart began to pound. He ducked his head and tried to focus on his plate, on Marco’s hand, reassuringly solid against his thigh, and thought of all the things that had made him smile in the past ten minutes. The knot in his chest tightened.

Maybe Marco felt Jean’s stiffen beneath his fingers because he stopped eating.

“Jean?” he said, but Jean wasn’t listening.

“Excuse me?” He heard the woman say. He peeked up from beneath his lashes and saw Eren skid to a halt at her call. “I’d like to move tables.”

“Oh.” Eren glanced over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the restaurant’s pretty full. I don’t think I can do that.”

“I want you to move us.” The woman demanded. Her voice began to raise. “I’m not going to sit here a moment longer than I have to. We shouldn’t have to watch them whilst we’re trying to enjoy ourselves.” She shot a menacing glare over at Jean and the rest of his table, glowering at them as if they had purposely come out to ruin her evening. Her children looked over as well, curious to see what had upset their mother enough to want to move.

Eren followed her gaze, frowned when he saw she was referring to Jean’s table, before he shrugged and began to turn away. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the restaurant is full,” he repeated, but this time there was an edge to his tone. “The best option I can give you is to turn around and stop looking at them.”

Jean thought he was the only one of he, Krista, Ymir and Marco to be paying any attention to this conversation, but to his surprise, Krista twisted around in her seat.

“I’m sorry,” she said, in her high, affected voice, lacerated with ice. “Are we doing something to upset you?”

The woman didn’t stop glaring at them. “Oh no, dear,” she said, bittersweet niceties between gritted teeth. “You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

“You’ve been staring at us for the past hour,” Jean said.

Marco’s hand tightened on Jean’s thigh. “Jean,” he said, a warning note ringing in his name.

Jean’s heart was still thudding, but his irritation won out over his anxiety. “What’s your problem?”

She bristled. “I’ve got no problem with gays,” she said. “But do you have to be so…so open in front of my kids? They’re only children.” She turned back to Eren. “Well? What can you do?”

“They’re not doing anything wrong.” Eren said. “Just ignore them.”

“Excuse me?”

Krista tossed her hair over her shoulder and dropped her fork with a clatter. She whirled around, seized Ymir by the cheeks and kissed her, hard.

The woman’s face rapidly darkened as her kids crowed in astonishment at Krista’s blatant display of defiance. Jean couldn’t help but want to laugh at the look of sheer horror on the woman’s face, regardless of how disgusted her bigotry made him feel.

“I want to speak to your manager,” she demanded. “Now.”

Eren was fighting back a smirk of his own, but at the word ‘manager’, it quickly receded into a scowl and he begrudgingly stalked away, undoubtedly in search of his next reprimand.

Jean would’ve thought this was exactly the sort of thing Ymir would take delight in, but to his surprise she was the one prying Krista off her.

“Krista, stop it,” she was saying. She took hold of Krista’s wrists and gently eased them away from her face. “Stop. It’s not worth it.”

“I’m not going to sit here and do nothing,” Krista began, but Ymir shook her head.

“Aggravating the situation isn’t going to help,” Marco added softly. He leaned across the table, his brown eyes lined with apprehension. “I know you’re angry, and justifiably so. But sometimes we just have to…move on.”

Krista took a deep breath. She threw one last dirty look over her shoulder before she exhaled sharply, picked up her fork and went back to her meal. Ymir and Marco did the same, but Jean wasn’t hungry anymore.

He’d been angry like Krista at first, indignation searing itself into his chest and sharpening itself against his tongue. But now that the spike of defensive adrenaline had settled back into the pit of his stomach, he was starting to feel cold and numb. He’d never had someone consider him or his friends physically repulsive before. It wasn’t that he was offended- but this wasn’t about him. This went deeper than that.

He looked up from his half-finished plate and saw he wasn’t the only one who’d lost his appetite. Krista was prodding food across her plate half-heartedly and Marco kept half-raising his fork to his mouth, only to lower it once again, not even looking at what he was doing. Even Ymir, who had been eating with such gusto, hadn’t touched her food since. She kept glancing over her shoulder, at the woman who was now in a heated argument with the manager who was offering her vouchers and free drinks as if he owed them a great debt.

One by one they laid their cutlery down and finished their drinks in a sullen silence. Marco’s hand was resting back on the seat between him and Jean, and Jean wormed his hand under his, lacing their fingers back together. Whether he was trying to comfort himself or Marco, he wasn’t sure, but it made things feel a little less severe when they had a hold of each other. Marco squeezed Jean’s hand in return, out of sight, beneath the table once more. Hot shame ran through Jean’s veins instead of raw longing. He was holding a hand but felt like he was holding a secret bound with heavy shackles and chains instead.

“Maybe we should go,” Jean said, his voice half getting lost in the noise of the restaurant and to the silence of his companions, a wavering note of hapless defeat.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

The words had scarcely left his mouth before Ymir leapt to her feet as she rifled through her wallet and slammed a few notes down on the table amongst their half empty glasses and half-finished meals. Krista shrugged on her coat and held out her hand, which Ymir took without hesitation. They walked out hand in hand, unaffected, unmoved, regardless of the scathing glare painting targets on their back.

“I got it,” Jean mumbled when he saw Marco fumbling with his wallet. He pulled out some cash and left it with Ymir’s, and after a moment’s thought, the handful of coins that had been lining the pockets of his jacket. It wasn’t much of a tip; intended more of an acknowledgement of solidarity. He stood up and slid out of the booth. Marco followed, and Jean watched as Marco’s gaze slid straight to Jean’s hand. Jean cleared his throat and slid it into his pocket, out of reach. They followed Ymir and Krista across the restaurant and back out into the frigid evening air, goose bumps rippling across exposed flesh within seconds.

“So, what’s next? The night’s still young,” Ymir remarked. “We could catch a movie, go for another drink…”

“We’re probably not going to stay out much longer,” Jean said, gesturing at himself and Marco. “Kind of have to be up at the ass crack of dawn to run a bakery.”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Krista with a wan smile, tugging Ymir by her hand down the street. “Think you can spare us one more hour?”

They all followed Krista as she led them past the neon lights of bars and restaurants heaving with the crowds Friday night brought. The tang of cheap alcohol hung in the bitter air amidst clouds of cigarette smoke being blown their way from little groups clustered around doorways, the orange flare of lighters briefly illuminating their features long enough for Jean to see their eyes linger just a fraction of a second too long on Ymir and Krista’s hand in hand stance, turning to he and Marco in turn, a glimmer of expectation, context of their companions giving their secret away without a word. No one spoke, no one yelled after them, but the unsaid words were painted in the air all around them, as heady and acrid as the clouds of nicotine spewing from parted lips curved in infuriatingly knowing smiles.

Krista took them away from the streets and into the town square. The shop fronts were shuttered and lightless, but a few still had tinsel in their windows framing signs advertising New Year’s discounts and shiny foil decorations glistening in the streetlights, remnants of the holidays. There was a big ice rink dead centre of the square that had been there since November and was now coming to the end of its annual stay. Despite this, the rink was aglow in yellow overhead lights, and from where they were standing Jean could see several people skidding back and forth, a few kids shrieking in delight to a tinny soundtrack of outdated pop music.

Krista made a beeline straight for it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ymir said, stopping dead in her tracks. “Nope. No way. Not happening.”

“Oh, come on, Ymir, it’ll be fun!” Krista pleaded.

“The day you get me on an ice rink is the day Jean Kirschtein stops being an asshole.”

“Hey—!”

“Sorry babe, it’s not looking likely.”

Krista pouted and continued to tug on Ymir’s hand. “Please?” she wheedled. “It’s been forever since I got to skate. I used to go all the time. Won’t you at least try it? For me?”

“I’ll skate with you, Krista.” Marco stepped forward. “Right, Jean? You’ll come too?”

Jean shrugged. “Sure. I don’t see why not.”

Marco bared his teeth in something resembling a grin. “Good, because I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Krista clapped her hands together in glee. “Thanks, you guys! See, Ymir, even Marco wants to give it a go, even though he’s never done it before.”

Ymir held up her hands and shook her head. “If baker boy wants to slide around on some ice with you for a bit then he can go ahead. I’d prefer to keep my cranium intact. I’ll just sit and watch and laugh when you all break your necks.”

Krista stuck her tongue out at her. “You’re such a spoilsport,” she scoffed. “Fine, we’ll have fun without you. Come on!”

“Can you skate?” Marco asked Jean as they followed Krista up a narrow ramp to the booth where a less than enthusiastic clerk was waiting for them.

“I’ve been skating once or twice when I was a kid,” Jean said. “I can stay upright. Have you really never been before?”

“Nope.” Marco shook his head. “I always thought it looked fun, but I never got the opportunity to try it for myself. If I was out in town around Christmas when I was a kid, I was probably with my grandfather, and putting him on ice was probably a bad idea.”

Jean smiled, trying to ignore the invariable tug on his heartstrings.

They went up to the booth’s window and asked for an hour on the ice. Marco insisted on paying this time, saying it was only fair, since Jean bought dinner. They swapped their shoes for chunky plastic ice skates, hard and uncomfortable and difficult to walk in as they hobbled their way across the platform towards the rink.

The moment she set foot on the ice, Krista was off, gliding across the ice like a swan. She made one, smooth circuit around the ice in the time it took for Jean to step off solid ground and gain his bearings, ending in a dainty little pirouette, to which Ymir, who was leaning over the barrier at one end of the rink, applauded dutifully. Krista snickered and was off once again, weaving in and out of the few other people skidding past.

Jean turned and watched Marco put one tentative foot out on the ice. He immediately slid further than he intended, and he seized hold of the barrier, panic flaring up in his face.

“Slippier than I thought,” he said as Jean laughed.

“Here.” Jean extended his hand. “Take your time. It takes some getting used to.”

Marco pressed his lips together and took Jean’s hand, gripping it tight as he straightened up and placed his other foot on the ice, jerking back and forth a little as he slid forward a few inches.

“It’s OK, I got you,” Jean said. “Just relax. Now try putting one foot in front of the other. Not like walking- sort of side to side, like this.”

He pushed off his left foot and began to slowly skate forward, pulling Marco along behind him. Marco wobbled forward, throwing his free hand out to steady himself, before feeling himself starting to topple over, and instinctively lurched back.

“Oh man,” he groaned, grabbing hold of Jean’s arm for stability. “It really is way harder than it looks, huh. How is she doing that?”

Jean followed his gaze, watching Krista casually loop around the rink, hands behind her back as she nonchalantly spun on her heel and skated backwards, her chin pointing over her shoulder before she twirled around to face forward once again without breaking her stride.

“Let’s just focus on going forwards first, shall we?” Jean chuckled.

Marco’s fingers dug into his sleeve. “Don’t let go.”

“I won’t,” Jean promised. “We’ll go slow.”

He pushed off on his left once again, doing his best to stand up straight and counteract Marco’s unsteadiness tugging him this way and that. Marco’s face was hardened in concentration, his dark eyes narrowed and fixed on his feet, trying to get them to cooperate as he held Jean’s hand for dear life. It was like skating with an ungainly baby giraffe. The sheer amount of effort etched into his features was enough to make Jean’s heart swell. He was just so…cute.

A couple of kids skated past them and Jean looked up to see them giggle as they passed big, graceless Marco stumbling around, but it wasn’t them he paid attention to. He’d caught sight of who he assumed were their parents, watching them from the other side of the barrier with stony expressions, eyes drawn right to his and Marco’s hands gripped tightly together.

In that moment Jean’s palm burned, his fingers beginning to slacken.

“There, you got it,” he said, not even looking at Marco. “You’re doing great.” And with that, he let go.

Marco instantly jolted forward, hands flailing, but he managed to steady himself for a moments, giving him time to straighten up and reassess the situation now that he didn’t have Jean for stability. He put one foot out, just as some other kid went whizzing past, throwing him completely off balance. His leg flew out from underneath him and he collapsed onto his ass with a graceless thud.

“Ow,” Marco moaned, wincing. “Bad idea. Shouldn’t have let go.” He grinned up at Jean nonetheless and held out his hand once more, asking to be helped up.

Jean stared at his hand. He glanced back at the little cluster of adults a little way off, blank, unreadable gazes still fixed on them, unwavering. He could hear the blood drumming in his ears.

Did they know? Could they tell? All he and Marco were doing were holding hands- for perfectly understandable reasons. Not to say that there was anything inherently wrong about holding hands just because, like Krista and Ymir. Or was there? Some people they’d passed on the way here certainly seemed to think so. Multiple pairs of eyes had hurried to objectify their intertwined fingers as they walked passed. That woman in the restaurant certainly made her objections clear enough. Jean didn’t want a repeat of that- not here, not anywhere.

So what was he supposed to do? Hide? Keep Marco a secret and only hold his hand beneath a restaurant table or behind closed doors, when no one was looking? Reserve physical contact so severely he couldn’t even help his boyfriend up off the floor?

He was taking too long. Marco’s expression started to falter.

“Jean?” he said. He went to follow Jean’s gaze, but before he could, Krista came skidding to a halt besides him.

“Need a hand?” she said sympathetically. She bent over and offered him her hand. “Here- there we go.” She heaved Marco to his feet with surprising strength.

“Thanks,” Marco said. He wobbled a little. “Hey, could you show me how you- well, how you don’t just fall over?”

“Sure!” Krista beamed. She kept hold of his hand and began to pull him forward. “Jean, you don’t mind me borrowing your date for a bit, do you?”

“No, go ahead,” Jean mumbled.

“Just follow my lead,” Krista said, and with that, she and Marco went off together, her confidence on the ice more than enough to counterbalance Marco’s shaky wavering until they managed to skate big, sweeping arcs with little incident.

Jean skated after them by himself at a much slower pace, maintaining his distance for the most part. Those few minutes they’d had where he forgot where they were- when the disapproving gazes of others went unnoticed, when the giggles of kids didn’t matter, when it was just him, and Marco, and Marco relying on him- he’d been happy. He’d forgotten what apprehension felt like. Finally, he could touch Marco freely and have it be OK. They could’ve fallen over and broken bones just like Ymir said they would, and they would’ve sat there and laughed because it just didn’t matter anymore.

But for some reason, the moment Jean saw anything he suspected could be scrutiny his blood ran cold and he forgot what it was to want to be intimate.

Am I ashamed? He wondered as he came skidding to a halt, careening into the barrier with a thud, bracing himself with his hands. Ashamed of of himself? Of Marco? Or at his own inability to be as dismissive and blithe as Krista had been in the face of bigotry, blatant or otherwise?

“Not that’s I’m jealous or anything,” a voice drawled from behind him. “But mind telling me what your boyfriend’s doing with his hands all over my girlfriend?”

Jean turned to see Ymir had sidled over to stand near him, chin propped up in one hand, eyebrows raised expectantly.

Jean scoffed. “She’s just showing him how to skate. I promise you, he’s not interested in girls, Krista’s all yours.”

“I literally opened that sentence saying I wasn’t jealous. God, Jean, are you deaf?” Ymir said. “No, what I’m saying is, shouldn’t he have his hands all over you?”

Jean felt heat prickle in his cheeks. “I’m sorry?”

Ymir slapped him on the back. “Come on, shouldn’t that be you out there? I saw you two at dinner, he couldn’t keep his hands off you. Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.”

“What? No, of course not. Are you crazy?” Jean gestured vaguely. “It’s just- you know, Krista’s so much better at skating, I figured…you know.”

“…Sure.” Ymir narrowed her gaze at him. “You look like your dog just died because Krista knows how to skate. Right.”

Jean’s shoulders sagged in defeat as he passed a hand over his face, groaning.

“No,” he said. “It’s not that.”

“Didn’t think so. Isn’t this what you wanted? You’re on a date, buddy, might as well act like it.”

“I know, I know.” Jean sighed. “It’s just…I didn’t…” He licked his lips apprehensively. “Can I ask you something? Personal?”

“Yes, lesbians can have sex, no, scissoring isn’t a thing. What? That wasn’t it?” Ymir feigned a look of surprise. “Well, shoot, that’s what most people want to know. What is it?”

Jean shifted on the ice, digging the blade of his skate into the frozen surface so shavings of ice began to pile up around his toe.

“When did you know?” he asked. “That you liked girls?”

“…Huh. So this is a serious conversation. Right. Got it.” Ymir folded her arms on the barrier and rested her chin on them, rocked back on her heels. She blew a raspberry. “Let me think. You know, I don’t think I ever just realised. I just knew, right from being a little kid that I wanted to marry a girl someday. I don’t know, that’s just how it was for me.”

Jean nodded. “So…you’ve been dealing with this all your life,” he said.

“Dealing with what?” Ymir cocked her head to the side to look at him.

Jean didn’t reply. Instead, he looked straight ahead, right to the other side of the rink where that group of parents were still stood. They weren’t staring anymore, just chatting amiably amongst themselves. Maybe he really had imagined the scorn in their gazes. Maybe they weren’t looking at him and Marco at all, and instead were just keeping an eye on their kids, you know, like you’d expect.

Was he that paranoid?

“You know what happened in the restaurant?” he said, his voice hollow.

“Ohhh, you mean dickheads like her?” Ymir said. The kids that had gone whizzing past earlier were skating by now, and upon hearing Ymir’s flippant use of bad language, they immediately burst into fits of giggles once again. Ymir wasn’t fazed. “Yeah, I’ve dealt with my fair share.”

Jean folded his arms. He dug his fingers into his flesh. “Do you ever get used to it?”

Ymir exhaled sharply through her nose.

“No,” she began. “I don’t think you do. It sucks. It sucked then, and it sucks just as much now. I guess you just get more…tolerant of it. Don’t get me wrong, I get fucking pissed when someone tries to tell me I’m going to hell just because I’m holding my girlfriend’s hand. But I think you just learn that you’re not going to change people’s minds by fighting back. Again, not saying I don’t want to. But you know, you’ve got to weigh up your options. Is it worth knocking in their front teeth, or getting home safe so you can kiss your girlfriend goodbye and see her again tomorrow?” She mimed the scale, tipping her hands back and forth before letting them fall back against the barrier. “Is that what this is about? You’re still thinking about that cow?”

Jean hesitated.

“Look, I get it. I do. But you can’t let other people’s opinions define how you treat Marco in public. Come on, Jean, he’s your boyfriend. If you can’t act like it, then what’s the point?”

“I know that,” Jean snapped, but she was right, he knew she was right. Things were always so much easier said than done, though. He could resolve right here and now to never care about another human being’s opinion as long as he lived, but in the moment, when he caught sight of a blank stare, a judgemental gaze barring repulsion and seething with hatred- he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help being afraid, for himself and for Marco.

Ymir nudged him.

“You should talk to Krista,” she said.

“Why?”

“She’s like you. Well, sort of. She didn’t think she was gay until she met the right person. In this case, moi. Besides, I think you guys have more in common than you think.”

The corner of Jean’s lips began to quirk.

“Hang on. Are you seriously trying to do something nice for me? Did that heated lamp you’re standing under melt your icy heart?”

Ymir rolled her eyes and dug her bony elbow straight into his ribs. Hard.

“I try to be nice to you, asshole, so you insult me in return? And you wonder why I’m nasty.”

“Hey, Jean! Look!”

Jean and Ymir both looked up to see Krista and Marco skating towards them. Krista had let go of Marco’s hand, and he was skating by himself, albeit still a little wobbly as Krista weaved back and forth around him, flanking him from all angles. He barrelled into the barrier at Jean’s side with perhaps a little more force than intended, clutching it to steady himself.

“Haven’t quite worked out how to stop,” he admitted breathlessly with a weak smile. “But I think I’m getting there,”

“You’re a fast learner. I’m impressed,” Krista said, pulling up short beside them. Ymir immediately reached out and Krista automatically leaned into her embrace from behind. “See, Ymir, I could’ve taught you the same!”

“Tempting offer, but no thanks, I like to keep my dignity intact.” Ymir said.

“What were you guys talking about?” Marco asked.

Jean shook his head. “Nothing important.” He wiped his hand down on his jacket before he held it out to Marco. “Skate with me?”

Marco looked surprised for a moment, but the look was quickly replaced with an eager grin that spread across his lips, rounding his freckled cheeks.

“Sure,” he said, slipping his hand into Jean’s.

Jean saw Ymir and Krista share a knowing look once more out of the corner of his eye, noticing the matching triumphant grins they both wore as he and Marco pushed away from the barrier and back out onto the ice, fingers laced together, digging into each other’s knuckles. Jean forced himself not to look at anyone as they went around in a neat circuit of the rink, choosing to focus only on the patch of ice in front of him and the boy whose hand he was clutching so tightly it was as if he feared what would happen if he let go.

Their hour came to an end, and he, Marco and Krista clomped their way back over to the attendant in the booth to return their skates and retrieve their shoes.

“We should probably head back,” Marco said once he’d pulled his sneakers back on. “Like Jean said, we need to be up early tomorrow.”

Krista pulled a face. “It’s such a shame you have to go. Tonight’s been so fun.” She reached up as high as she could on Marco and hugged him, tight. “We have to do it again soon, OK? If nothing else it makes Ymir take me out for once.”

“And she says I’m the needy one.” Ymir shook her head before she turned to Marco and bumped her fist against his shoulder. “Good to see you again, big guy. You take care of Jean for us, yeah?”

Marco smiled. “I will,” he promised.

Krista wiggled her fingers at Jean. “We’ll see you around college, Jean.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you around.” He straightened up. “Thanks for doing this for us.”

“Eh, it was mostly for me.” Ymir shrugged. “But you know, win-win and all that. We’ll probably stay out a little longer.” She paused for a moment. “Sorry it didn’t go exactly to plan for you.”

Jean shook his head. “It’s cool. Hey, Krista?” He put his head on one side. “For the record, you know what you said, back in the restaurant? I think that was pretty bad ass of you.”

Krista seemed perplexed for a split second before she realised what he was referring to, and a grin spread across her face. Ymir rolled her eyes.

“Don’t encourage her,” she snapped. “Go on, get out of here, both of you. Losers going home early. Go on, shoo. Begone.”

“We’re going, we’re going.”

Jean made his way down the narrow ramp, Marco following suit as they made their way across the barren town square, the noise from the ice rink growing ever fainter behind them.

“Did you drive here?” asked Jean.

Marco nodded, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. “Yeah. Do you want a lift back?”

“Sure.”

There was a terse pause.

“Hey, Jean?” Marco cleared his throat. “Do you want to stay over?”

Jean’s heart seized up in his chest.

“I mean- you know, because with work in the morning and everything- it might be easier- I understand if you don’t want to—”

“No, no, I get it. I mean…yeah, I’ll stay over.” Any excuse, Jean. Any excuse. “If that’s OK?”

Relief softened Marco’s features. “Of course,” he said. His hand immediately reached out for Jean’s as they walked before something seemed to occur to him, and the smile fell from his face and his hand froze, leaving his arm outstretched awkwardly before falling back into place.

Guilt curdled in the pit of Jean’s stomach. Marco wasn’t stupid. Jean hadn’t said anything, but Marco knew why he had been averting his gaze, twitching his fingers away, brushing Marco off. In the midst of all the bitter words spat their way, the fleeting gazes and the glowers, there was one person Jean had forgotten to take into account.

“I’m sorry.” The words came before Jean had a chance to think. “I’m such a dick.”

“What?” Marco’s brow creased. “No, you’re not.”

Jean glanced over his shoulder. They were alone. The shuttered shop fronts remained grey and obsolete, and any remaining stragglers were either too drunk or too focused on where to procure their next drink to notice them. He exhaled and slid his hand into Marco’s, gripping it tight. Anger burned at the base of his throat, sour in his mouth. Anger at himself, anger at his inability to do something as simple as hold Marco’s hand without checking for glowering pairs of eyes feasting upon the sight like vultures.

“I…I thought I didn’t care. I didn’t care, not at first. But tonight I just- I realised…” Humiliation constricted his throat. “I’m just a coward. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair on you.”

Marco’s thumb brushed over Jean’s knuckles. “Jean.” His voice was as soft as velvet, a pool of warmth in the frigid air. “Are you OK?”

Jean’s shoulders sagged. “I’m…I’m fine. I’m just angry. At myself.”

Marco didn’t say anything for a moment or two. His thumb continued to sweep back and forth across the back of Jean’s hand, careful, precise movements, the tiniest hint of contact acting as a comfort.

“I…” Marco’s voice wavered. “I understand. What happened at dinner tonight- it’s not an easy thing to come to terms with. But I want you to know that’s not normal. It’s not something you’ll have to face every time we go out in public together. We were just unlucky.”

Jean met his gaze, eyes flickering across the face he knew so well, the face so achingly beautiful the thought of not being able to touch him freely was enough to break his heart.

“How do you learn to ignore it?”

“I don’t think you do.” Marco shrugged. “It’s always there. But I think you learn how to value the other person- the person you’re with- more than what strangers might think.”

“Great.” Jean kicked a crumpled beer can. “So I really am just a dick.”

“I didn’t say that,” Marco protested. He clutched Jean’s hand. “What I’m trying to say is, I know how you feel. And I understand that you need time to adjust. If the only time we can hold hands is under the cover of darkness or behind the counter then…then I’m OK with that. For you. Besides.” He gave a shy, half-smile. “I’ve only done this once before myself. It freaks me out a bit too.”

The anxious knot in Jean’s chest unravelled, coils of cold relief sweeping right down to his toes. He squeezed Marco’s hand in return, looking back at him with every ounce of gratitude he could muster. He must have been a saint in a past life or something, because Jean Kirschtein sure as hell had never done anything in his life worthy of Marco Bodt’s compassion. “I don’t deserve you.”

The smile on Marco’s face deepened as they turned off the main street and down a back alley where his van was parked up on the curb. As they reached the van, however, and Jean let go of his hand to make his way over to the passenger side, the smile fell from Marco’s face as if something had just occurred to him. He didn’t unlock the doors right away, clutching the keys to his chest in hesitance.

Jean frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“I…I think I owe you an apology of my own.” Marco didn’t meet his gaze. “For not being honest with you.”

“About what?”

“Why I was late.”

“Oh.” If Jean were being entirely honest, he’d almost completely forgotten about that. “Hey, don’t worry about it. It happens. No big deal.”

“No it’s…something happened.” Marco screwed his face up. “At the bakery. Just…I’ll show you when we get there.”

“What do you mean something happened? Marco? What’s wrong? Is someone hurt?”

But Marco didn’t answer any of Jean’s flippant questions. He unlocked the van and got in, waiting for Jean to do the same. Begrudgingly, he did so, and the old engine spluttered to life as Marco pulled away from the curb.

They spent the drive back to the bakery in strained silence. Marco was wearing his worry lines once again, his lips pressed into a line so thin they were almost bloodless. He didn’t look at Jean, not even once, the whole ride back. Jean kept his eye trained on Marco’s knuckles, white against the steering wheel, agitation prickling up the back of his neck. He didn’t know what to expect. He’d never seen Marco so reluctant to be honest with him before. Was it really that serious?

The van ascended the little incline before swinging into the crescent where the bakery sat. Jean sat up a little further in his seat, frowning as the familiar building came into view.

“What happened to the window?” he said, peering into the gloom. He couldn’t see all that well in the dark, but from what he could tell, the shop front was completely opaque, obscured by something he couldn’t make out.

Marco still didn’t say anything. He parked outside the bakery and got out of the van, slamming the door shut behind him. Jean scrambled out of his seat to follow.

The window was completely boarded up with big slats of wood, stamped with the logo of some crisis company he didn’t recognise.

“Marco?” he said, urgency rising in his voice.

Marco had already opened the front door and let himself in, made evident by the hollow chiming of the bell. Jean quickened his pace and darted around the front of the van, catching hold of the door before it had chance to swing shut.

The bakery was pitch black, even more so than usual now that there was no natural light. But Jean could just about make out what remained of the window pane.

There was a giant, gaping hole smack in the middle of it. Jagged shards of glass stuck out like teeth and cracks splintered throughout the glass all the way to the edges of the window frame.

Marco snapped on the light just as Jean closed the door behind him, illuminating the full extent of the damage.

“I had to wait,” Marco spoke at long last. His voice was strained. “for someone to come board it up. I couldn’t leave before they did. That’s why I was late.”

Jean couldn’t care less about Marco being late at this point.

“What happened?” he said, running his hand across what remained of the intact window, feeling the ridges of the fractures spun throughout the cool surface beneath his fingers like a spider’s web.

“This.”

Jean turned his head to see Marco pick up a brick that had been resting on the counter.

“Some…kids, or something threw it through the window. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier. I didn’t want you to worry.”

Well, fuck that. Jean was worried now.

“You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“No, no, I was in the back when it happened. I didn’t see anything, I just heard the crash.”

“Did you call the police?”

“What? No. Why?” Marco looked confused.

Jean gestured at the gaping hole in the fractured glass. “Isn’t it, you know, vandalism or something?”

“No, no way.” Marco shook his head. “Like I said, it was probably just some kids messing around. Mistakes happen. Please, don’t worry about it Jean. I’m fine. No one was hurt. Everything’s OK.”

“You idiot.” Jean strode across the floor and wrapped his arms around Marco’s shoulders, pulling him close. “Everything’s not OK, you’ve got a huge fucking hole in your window.”

Marco made a noise a bit like a surprised kitten when Jean initially barrelled into his chest, but a moment later his arms wound around Jean as well, and he rested his chin on the top of Jean’s head.

“Hey,” he said softly, voice muffled in the thicket of Jean’s hair. “Windows can be fixed.”

“They could’ve hurt you.” Jean mumbled. If he pressed his head against Marco’s chest, he could hear the steady thud of his heart, close enough to match the jumping pulse in Jean’s throat. If they stayed like that long enough, maybe they would eventually synchronise.

“I’m fine, Jean. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Jean pulled away from their embrace to look Marco in the eye.

“Asshole, like it or not, I’m going to worry about you one way or another. You’re mine to worry about now.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen

The new window was put in first thing Monday morning.

Jean wasn’t there to see it, but when he came into work the following morning it was almost as if nothing had ever happened. The glass whole once again, no longer spidered with unsightly cracks. Sandy remnants of glass no longer crunched underfoot, and the brick that had sat on the counter all weekend had vanished. The only indication that something had ever happened to the original window was the missing design of twisted vines that used to adorn its edges.

“I didn’t have time to find the same stained glass. I just wanted to get it fixed as soon as possible so we could open again.” Marco explained. “But that’s OK. I thought of something better. I want you to do it, Jean.”

Jean glanced up from piping stiff swirls of frosting onto a long row of miniature cakes. “Sorry?”

“I want you to decorate the window. You know, like it used to be. Or different, whatever you think looks best.” Marco beamed at him over a tray of what looked like long, doughy sausages that he was in the process of plaiting into chunky braids. “Come up with your own design. Just let me know what you need, and I’ll get it for you.”

And so, once they’d finished baking and business lulled into the occasional passer-by, Jean obligingly settled himself behind the counter with his sketchbook, his pencil hovering above the page, quivering with rough ideas. He didn’t have class until that afternoon, so he had plenty of time to hang around the bakery- and Marco- until then.

He started off by sketching a big, boxy frame for the window, and instinctively began peppering the frame with a nebula of stars. Automatically mapping out the night sky was almost habitual after he’d memorised so many constellations for his last project, and though he was relatively pleased with the result after a good fifteen minutes of delicately mapping out the night sky and a shower of comets, he tilted his head, eventually concluding that maybe stars weren’t the best fit for a bakery.

He continued to experiment between serving customers with a sketchy variety of bread and pastries, then a more abstract arrangement of formless swirls and layers of textured patterns; followed by a field of flowers which he saw in his mind’s eye painted in muted tones. He drew the window display- mountains of muffins, fat eclairs in neat rows next to a scatter of macaroons, and framed each tray with a border of roses, with ornate picture frames like cameos, with snaking vines, pointillism spirals, mandalas and icy fractals.

“What do you think about it being seasonal?” he asked when Marco popped his head out of the back room to see how he was getting on.

Marco smiled. “Seasonal sounds great,” he said. He leaned over Jean’s shoulder and traced the drawings on the page with a featherlight touch, fingers scarcely skimming over the page. “So, flowers in the spring and snowflakes in the winter? That sort of thing?”

“Something like that.” Marco was close enough for his breath to tickle against Jean’s skin, warming the back of his neck. A ripple of chills ran down his spine. “Do you like them?”

“I love them,” Marco said. “I can’t get over how good you are at this stuff.”

Jean scoffed, leaning back against Marco’s chest. He was reassuringly sturdy, built like oak. “You’re just saying that.”

“I mean it,” Marco said. His chin tilted towards Jean’s head, but he paused, lingering there for a moment, giving Jean a chance to shoot a glance out of the window at the cul de sac outside. The cars parked on the street and in driveways were motionless, the pavement deserted. He gave a slight nod, and Marco pressed his lips to Jean’s temple. “You could change the window design every month with all those,”

“What, as well as working and trying to get a degree? What kind of free time do you think I have on my hands?”

“Oh, plenty,” Marco teased before abruptly straightening up. “Whoops. Incoming.”

Jean followed his gaze to see someone across the road, making their way towards the bakery. He immediately leaned forward, away from Marco, who was pushing his sleeves up as he went over to the display case, ready to serve.

Jean watched him cross the room, sweeping crumbs off the counter as he went. He couldn’t get over how wonderfully patient Marco was being with him, and he had no idea where he kept all that self-control.  In the morning, when it was just them, Jean wasn’t entirely proud to admit that they often didn’t start work for a good twenty minutes after he arrived - but when there was even the slightest possibility of other people being around, Marco, for the most part, kept his distance, for Jean’s sake. Of course, there were little moments every so often- a surreptitious hand on the small of his back, or a fleeting kiss to the temple, like just now- and this was enough for now, at least until the time came when Jean was better adjusted to the idea of being formally, publicly, out. The fact that Marco showed such unendingly tolerance to this, for him, made his heart swell all the more. God knows Jean had had fleeting moments of coming this close to throwing caution to the wind and launching himself at Marco across the counter, bystanders be damned.

The bell chimed, and Jean glanced up from his sketchbook to see a familiar sharply cut bob pop around the door, followed by the same old beat up combat boots tramping across the floor, studded handbag swinging by her side.

“Good morning!” Petra beamed as she waltzed in, grinning at them both. Her tattoos were obscured beneath an obnoxious fur-trimmed coat, save for the compass on her hand and the little blue and white butterfly on her index finger. “How are you boys doing?”

Marco smiled back. “I’m good, thanks. Yourself?”

“Not too bad.” She dropped her bag on the counter, rifling through its contents for her wallet, as Jean returned to his sketchbook, drawing the silhouette of a new window and embellishing its corners with bugs and beetles and butterflies flitting amidst the bread. “We’ve been nice and busy at work lately, so I’m kept on my toes. It’s a nice change of pace. Let’s see, what shall we have today?” She leaned down, examining the display. “Mm…blueberry muffins, I think. Ooh, three of those, and two of the raspberry and white chocolate ones. Thanks, Marco.”

“No problem.” Marco plucked a couple of paper bags out from beneath the counter, opening them with a flourish of his hand and went about packaging up her order.

Petra rested her arms on the counter as she waited, long nails drumming against her arm. Jean looked up from beneath his lashes just as she glanced around, catching his eye. She grinned at him.

“Hi, Jean. What are you up to? Are you drawing?” She spied the sketchbook resting in his lap, propped up against the counter. “Ooh, can I see?”

“Um…” Jean hesitated. This sketchbook in particular was a personal one he’d started keeping under the counter for when the shop was quiet. It had been a while since he’d last perused its contents, and he was reluctant to let someone he didn’t consider much more than an acquaintance come across something that had the potential to be deeply embarrassing only a couple of pages back from his window designs.

Too late.

Petra was already sidling down the length of the counter, craning her neck in order to get a better view of the page.

“Oh, very nice!” she remarked at the page of scribbly designs. “What are these for? Go on, show me properly—”

Jean pressed his lips together but spun the sketchbook around for her nevertheless. To his surprise, not a second later, she was nodding approvingly.

“For the window,” he said, by means of explanation. “Marco asked me to come up with a new design for the glass since—”

“Since it was broken?” Petra’s expression soured for a split second, and she glanced up from the sketchbook to look back at Marco. “I came over Friday afternoon to make sure everything was OK when I saw it. I can’t believe someone threw a brick at you like that. Did you call the police in the end, Marco?”

Marco smiled. “I did, but there wasn’t much they could do.”

Jean raised an eyebrow. He’d spent most of the weekend with Marco, and this was the first he was hearing of anything to do with the police. He shot a look at Marco over Petra’s shoulder, opening his mouth to speak- but Marco shook his head. Clearly, he was aware Jean knew he wasn’t telling the truth, but now wasn’t the time to dispute his claim.

“What a shame.” Petra shook her head and turned back to Jean’s sketchbook. “But you know what? It might’ve been worth it in the end, if this is what you’re getting instead. I mean, look at this! Such lovely attention to detail!”

Jean fiddled with his pencil, turning it over in his fingers as he found himself sitting up a little straighter, a half-smile slipping onto his face. “Thanks.”

“You said you study art at college, didn’t you?” Petra said, and without warning, flipped back a couple of pages. “Oh, have you seen this one, Marco?”

Jean’s stomach turned over in his gut when he saw the picture she held up. It was one of his many, many sketches of Marco- a simple profile of just his head that Jean had spent more time on than he cared to admit, trying to get every freckle as accurate as he could. In the sketch, Marco’s head was tilted back, his eyes turned skyward, graphite lips parted and maybe a little exaggerated, but unmistakable, nonetheless. It was nowhere near the most embarrassing drawing of Marco that Jean had drawn to date, but it was enough to make his cheeks burn all the same.

Maybe Marco was on the same wavelength, because even though he kept smiling, a little extra colour slid into his face as well. “I haven’t seen that one before,” he remarked dryly, giving Jean a knowing look.

Jean scratched his nose and turned away.

“These are amazing,” Petra continued as she laid the sketchbook back down on the counter and continued to flip through. “I had no idea you were this good! You’ve got real potential, you know that?”

A fleeting sense of optimism wavered at the back of Jean’s throat. “You think so?”

She nodded. “I know so.” She turned another page, stopping at a drawing of a pair of hands- Marco’s hands- cupped around a rose, petals flaking off and drifting down the page. “This would make a great tattoo,” she remarked. She looked up at Jean, cocking her head. “Have you ever considered getting into tattooing?”

Jean’s mouth went dry. “Uh…”

Tattooing?

His idea of a tattoo shop was a bleak, foul place; walls emblazoned with tasteless sample designs of tribal patterns and stock image skulls; a scowling, bearded tattoo artist lurking behind the counter wielding a buzzing gun in their hammy fist, each knuckle stamped with a letter denoting some kind of threat, and probably less interested in the concept of creating art and more enthusiastic about the prospect of inflicting pain.

No matter how hard he tried, Jean couldn’t picture Petra’s sunny, slight, strawberry blonde self working in the grim, dingy place of his imagination. His gaze drifted to the butterfly on her finger, stark against the white of his sketchbook, outline crisp and sharp. There was nothing careless or tacky about its delicate little mismatched wings curled around her knuckles with clear precision.

Petra slid his sketchbook back across the counter. Her lips were pulled back into an amused smile at his hesitance as she said, “You should come down to the tattoo shop where I work sometime. You remember Levi, right? My boss? He might be interested in seeing what you can do- trust me, even though he likes to make you think he’s unapproachable on the outside, he’s got an eye for talent, and…well, you never know.” She shrugged. “Something to think about, maybe?”

Jean swallowed. He pulled his sketchbook back into his lap, running his hand across the page. “Yeah…maybe.”

He looked back up at Petra’s eager grin and gave a half-hearted twitch of the corner of his mouth in return before she went back down to Marco at the other end of the counter and flipped open her wallet, counting change out onto the counter.

But Marco wasn’t even looking at her. His gaze was fixed solely on Jean, his shoulders raised in anticipation, his lips pressed together as if he was fighting to stop himself blurting something outright. Jean could almost feel Marco’s eyes boring into the side of his skull as Marco took Petra’s money, handed her the muffins, and waved her off. The moment the door swung shut behind her, he spun on his heel, eyes shining.

“Well?” he burst out, as if he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “What do you think?”

Jean shoved the sketchbook back under the counter. “About what?”

“Tattoos! Jean, this is perfect!” Marco said. Evidently, Jean’s blank expression was somewhat disenchanting, because he frowned. “Come on, remember what one of the first things you said to me was?”

“Uhh…” Jean screwed up his eyes. “I think I pretty much told you to fuck off.”

Marco’s shoulders sagged. “Jean. You told me the only reason you didn’t want to study art at college was because you didn’t know how to make a career out of it. Well…here you go. Tattoo artist.  Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Had the career of tattoo artist ever occurred to him? It seemed so obvious, in retrospect. He didn’t have any interest in graphic or interior design, and he knew with undeniable certainty he’d never be able to make a living out of selling canvases and sculptures, unless gallery openings let patrons wear ripped jeans and floury shirts. Tattoos weren’t as rigid as formal art, just distant enough from design to be considered freelance. As far as careers in art went, it certainly seemed like it’d be a good fit.

But the moment he began to imagine what it would be like to hold a tattoo gun in his hand, his mother’s face swam before his mind’s eye, narrow, unforgiving gaze and severe expression taut in disapproval.

He knew exactly what she would think.

“I don’t know.” Jean shrugged. “Maybe?”

“You’ve got to at least think about it,” said Marco. “It’s a great opportunity to show off what you can do. What you’re good at.”

“I’m not that good.”

“Petra thinks so!” Marco’s voice softened. “I think so.”

“You’re both nice people, of course you’re going to say that.” Jean shook his head. “I can draw OK. But seriously, the idea of drawing something on someone and it just being there- like that- forever- doesn’t that freak you out? Freaks me out.” He had looked back at the stuff he had been drawing from just last summer and found himself physically repulsed. Imagine people wearing his mistakes like brands for years and years, until the end of time, old artwork haunting him in form of a photograph tucked into a plastic wallet of a portfolio forever…

What if he drew something, tattooed it, and then looked back on it the next day and realised he’d been having an off day and just scrawled a donkey shit piece of garbage onto some surly biker guy’s bicep?

Better hope Marco liked the rugged look, because Jean’s nose was going to end up with something broken every other week.

“Promise me you’ll think about it,” Marco implored. He walked back over to Jean’s side, hand coming to rest on the centre of Jean’s back- a gesture not blatant enough for any potential onlooker to notice, but intimate enough to raise the hairs on the back of Jean’s neck. “Take your sketchbook to this Levi and at least hear what he has to say.”

“I…” Jean bit his tongue. “I don’t know, Marco. You remember that guy, right? He was so fucking scary. If I showed him anything he thought was even remotely bad he’d probably break my fingers so I’d never insult him by drawing ever again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Marco scoffed, but there was a pause where the waver in his voice suggested otherwise, and his gaze drifted over to meet Jean’s. They both snorted. “OK, so I wouldn’t put it completely past him. But you’ve got such a good chance. What’s wrong? What’s holding you back?”

“I’m not a great artist,” Jean replied. “I’m not that bad. Sometimes I’m kind of good, but not good enough to stab things permanently into people’s flesh.”

“So? You’ve still got two years of college left. You’ve got time to learn.”

“It doesn’t work that way with art. You don’t always get better. You just sort of…keep doing what you’re doing and hope it eventually looks a little bit more like it’s supposed to.”

“Jean…”

“OK, let’s say I go talk to this guy,” Jean twisted around in his seat to face Marco properly. “and by some fucking miracle he likes what I do. What happens then? What if he wants me to start designing stuff right away? What if he offers me a job, like you say?”

“Then you take it.”

“On top of working here and going to college?”

“If he offered you a job, you wouldn’t have to work here anymore.” Marco said, without hesitation.

Jean stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’m serious.” Marco’s thumb swept back and forth across a small patch of Jean’s back. “Look, don’t get me wrong, you’ve been amazing to have around these past few months, and I’m really, really grateful for all your help, but you’re a much better artist than you are a baker.”

Jean placed a hand on his chest, pretending to be affronted. “I am, quite frankly, insulted.”

“You know what I mean!” Marco said. “Baking isn’t your dream, Jean. But art is.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to stop working here.”

If Jean were to be entirely honest with himself, enough time had passed that he didn’t really remember his initial reason for not wanting to study art. He just recalled art being synonymous with pointless and waste of time and will disappoint your mother, but all of sudden, when Marco came careening into his life in that old banged-up van of his, it was none of those things. Art became a goal, something to actively pursue and strive for, all because one boy sat down on some house steps one evening and listened to him when no one else ever had.

All this time he’d been studying and working as hard as he could, not because of the prospect of getting to be a professional artist, or to have his name go down in history as one of the greats, but because he wanted to make Marco proud. Marco had given him the means to learn a trade, earn a living, and do something he enjoyed on the side, all things Jean had coveted, but was fully aware that he didn’t deserve. Every all-nighter he’d pulled, spent filling up sketchbooks, smearing paint on canvases with itching eyes and blisters on his index fingers- it was all for him. So Jean knew there was at least one person in the world he wasn’t disappointing.

And things were so good now. He was happy, wholeheartedly, unabashedly happy for the first time in years. Admittedly, his classes weren’t his favourite things in the world, but they were vastly better than the sit-down-at-a-desk-and-crunch-numbers alternative. The bakery was his home away from home, and even though getting up before the sun on only a handful of hours sleep was probably wreaking internal havoc on him both cognitively and physically, he couldn’t bring himself to care, because at the end of the day, he was dating Marco fucking Bodt.

Jean’s life wasn’t perfect, but with Marco in the picture, it came pretty fucking close.

Why would he want to upset the apple cart now?

Marco chuckled softly. “Hey, I’m not kicking you out,” he said. “It’s not like you won’t get to see me anymore.”

“Good.” Jean leaned back against him once more, savouring the sense of solid security his presence provided. He shut his eyes. “But I think we’re jumping to conclusions. Even if I was some kind of artistic prodigy, they wouldn’t just hand me a tattoo gun and have me start full time next week.”

“Yeah, probably not,” Marco ran his fingers through Jean’s hair. “But you are going to at least consider it, right?”

Jean tipped his head back and opened his eyes. “I don’t know, Marco. Things…things are going pretty OK at the moment. I don’t know if I want them to change.”

“Not even if it’s for the better?”

“Stop it, you optimistic bastard. You’ll infect me.”

He wasn’t as averse to change as the person he’d been less than a couple of months ago, who’d stared into a mirror, frightened by the wills of his own heart. But he wasn’t exactly at the point to welcome it with open arms. Not yet. For now, it was a future problem for future Jean to deal with. But when he was here, near enough in Marco’s arms, he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything else.

Marco smiled at him. “I just want to make you happy.”

Jean reached up, his fingers brushing against Marco’s freckled cheek. “You’ve done plenty of that already.”

…

He left at noon to get to his afternoon classes; a double dose of art history followed by a life drawing class he struggled to keep his eyes open for. Jean had gotten to the point in his artistic career where he wasn’t even fazed by the nude model stood in the ring of art students anymore and was all together more concerned with keeping himself from keeling over face-first into his easel in exhaustion.

He trudged home in the fading light, scarcely capable of forming cognitive thought as he dragged his feet along the pavement. It took him several attempts of stabbing his key haphazardly at the lock when he finally got home before the door finally swung open and let him stumble into the living room at long last.

Eren was already home, perched on the kitchen counter and scrolling through his phone whilst he waited on the microwave. He looked up to see Jean enter, and watched him drag himself across the room, drop his bag and collapse backwards onto the couch, throwing an arm up to cover his face.

“You still alive?” Eren said without a trace of sympathy.

Jean grunted. “This job is killing me.”

“Then find a new one. One you don’t have to get up at half past fuck every morning for.”

“I’m not looking for a new job,” Jean snapped. “I haven’t got time.”

“But you’ve got time to lie on the sofa and complain?”

Jean groaned. “Fuck off. Try getting up before the sun and then spend four hours at college trying to get the shading on a stranger’s ball sack right, see how you feel.”

Even from across the room, he could see Eren’s upper lip curl. “You draw ball sacks?”

Jean flipped him off, too tired to even conjure an insult to retort. He still had to make dinner, finish the essay he’d started for art history, and do some work in his sketchbook before he crashed. But the longer he stayed horizontal with his feet propped up against the back of the sofa, any semblance of appeal those things might have initially held were rapidly losing to sweet oblivion. He was more than happy to let it take hold, dragging him into a dark, dreamless realm with no essays, no naked strangers, and no insufferable housemates.

“Dude, can you not put your shoes all over the sofa? Your feet are filthy.”

“What, do you care about the couch cushions now, or something?”

“No, I care about having to clean up after you,”

Jean sighed and dug his toe into the back of one sneaker, managing to succeed in worming it off his foot and fall to the ground with a thud. The other sneaker was a lot more resilient, and after a lacklustre attempt at prying it off, he gave up, wiggling his one exposed set of socked toes at Eren. “Happy?”

Eren scoffed at his half-assed excuse for cooperation, but before he could retort, the microwave let out a high-pitched beep and he slid off the counter to retrieve his dinner.

Jean let out a long stream of breath and passed a hand over his face. He didn’t think he’d ever been so physically drained before in his life. And it wasn’t just today, either. He wasn’t sure when sleep had fallen to the bottom of his list of priorities, but all of a sudden it seemed like all his waking hours seemed to be spent either running back and forth between the bakery and college or working on one project or another, often staying up until soft fingers of light began to probe through the narrow gap between his curtains onto the pages of his sketchbook. And when he wasn’t busy with work or school, he was constantly thinking about Marco and navigating the bizarre landscape that came with every new relationship. Every facet of his life right now had equal parts time and commitment constantly poured into it, which wouldn’t be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact he could practically taste his impending break down on the wind.

Whatever. He’d deal with that hurdle when he came to it. Sure, he was sleep deprived beyond belief, but otherwise he wasn’t doing too badly for himself. He’d passed his first term at college with flying colours- quite literally- he had a steady job, he’d found himself a boyfriend. Not too shabby.

Anything else that tried to shove its way onto his plate, however, would be enough to induce a nervous breakdown.

“Hey, Cinderella.”

Jean grunted from beneath his hand. “What now?”

“Might want to pull your glass slipper back on.”

“What the fuck are you on about?” Jean opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows, giving Eren a look of confused disdain. He was leaning back against the kitchen counter, fork in one hand and ready meal in the other as he nodded towards the window.

“Prince Charming just pulled up and has been sitting outside for like, five minutes.”

“What?” Jean scrambled to his feet. “Marco’s here?”

. “Great, you know who I was talking about.” Eren scoffed. He paused and watched as Jean ducked around the window, peering outside to see that Eren was, in fact, telling the truth. The shabby little van was parked on the curb right outside their house, and if Jean dared to peep out just a little further, he could see Marco in the driver’s seat, glancing at their front door. Apparently, he had little intention of coming inside, because instead of climbing out he stayed in the van, tapping his thumb against the steering wheel, deliberating. His other hand kept going up to touch one of his ears, an odd gesture, fiddling with his ear lobe.

Jean’s mind raced as he tried to think of why Marco was here. They hadn’t arranged to meet up tonight, had they? It was entirely possible to have slipped his mind in his sleep addled stupor, but even so, where Marco was concerned his information retention was near infallible, running on two hours of sleep or not.

“So…that is what he is, right?”

“Huh?” Jean twisted around from the window to see Eren watching him from across the room, green eyes lined with scrutiny, like he was tried to figure out some complex problem.

“You know.” Eren cleared his throat and jerked his head at the window. “Your prince charming, or whatever.”

Jean fought his instinctive desire to laugh. “What?”

Eren gesticulated with his fork, stabbing at the air. “You know what I’m trying to say,” he snapped. “Just wanted to know if you guys are…you know. If you’ve made it like, an actual thing.”

“Are you trying to ask me if I’m dating him?”

“Yes, oh my God. At long last.” Relief mitigated the edges of Eren’s scowl and he muttered beneath his breath, “That’s the last time I try being considerate.”

“Dude, just ask. You don’t have to make it weird.”

“Fuck off. The last time you brought it up you were in hardcore denial. How am I supposed to know if you’re still being a little bitch about it?”

“You were sober enough to remember that?” Jean remarked dryly.

Eren threw him a scathing glance. “Are you guys a thing now?” he asked around a mouthful of food.

The all too familiar knot in the pit of Jean’s stomach grew taut once again. His and Marco’s relationship was none of Eren’s goddamn business, and if he had the energy, he would’ve been sorely tempted to retort something along those lines, perhaps with slightly more colourful language than necessary and an expletive or two thrown in for good measure. But, even though it pained him to admit, Eren’s curiosity wasn’t at fault. Like Ymir, he’d seen Jean’s internal struggle- want against willpower- and simply wanted to know the end of the story. Jean was grateful, at least, that Ymir hadn’t carried out her initial intention of broadcasting the fact that he and Marco were now, in fact, together, to anyone and everyone who would listen, because if she had it was almost guaranteed he and Eren wouldn’t be having this conversation.

He took a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, we are.”

Eren didn’t say anything for a moment. He bobbed his head in a sort of fluid motion as he chewed. He looked away, swallowed, and eventually mumbled. “Cool. That’s cool.”

That was it?

Was it relief that slid off Jean’s shoulders, or indignance at not getting a bigger reaction? This was no minor occurrence, this was Jean blindly taking a bold step into the unknown; this was new and strange and so unlikely, it warranted a dropped jaw, at least. Maybe a raised eyebrow.

Not even a trace of mild surprise?

He stared at Eren, who shovelled another forkful down his gullet and continued to chew nonchalantly.

Had Jean been hoping for a more substantial reaction?

“Jean?”

Jean looked up, yanked out of his reverie. “Huh?”

Eren jabbed his fork at the window. “You gonna go see what he wants, or what?”

“Uh…yeah.” Jean grabbed his discarded shoe and crammed his foot back into it, wobbling on one leg as he hobbled over to the front door with about as much grace as a three-legged spider. He paused to run a hand through his hair, sweeping it back into its stylistic tousle, before he let himself outside, the cold air biting at his face.

Marco glanced up from where he was sat in the van at the sight of motion, and the moment he saw Jean a weak grin spread itself across his face. He held a hand up in greeting. Jean stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked over as Marco rolled down his window.

“Hey,” Marco said.

“Hey yourself.” Jean bent down so they were eye level. “What’re you doing sat outside my house, creep?”

Marco shifted in his seat, smile slipping on and off his face. “Sorry. I should have called. I was going to knock, I was just…well, trying to work up the courage.”

Jean fought to keep a straight face. What an idiot. His idiot. “What’s up?”

“Right.” Marco cleared his throat. He jerked his head at the passenger seat. “Fancy a ride?”

“A ride?” Jean echoed with a frown. “Where?”

Marco pressed his lips together and didn’t respond, but there was a knowing gleam that glimmered beneath the surface of his oak coloured eyes, even though he tried to disguise it by ducking his head. He didn’t say anything, just glanced pointedly at the passenger seat once again.

Jean rolled his eyes and begrudgingly made his way around the cab to the passenger side. He opened the van door and obligingly got in. “What’s up?”

Marco didn’t respond right away. He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine spluttered to life, coughing and wheezing as he eased the van off the curb and headed down the road, away from the house. Jean groped around for his seatbelt, bewildered. “Where are we going?” he asked again.

Marco readjusted his grip on the wheel. “I’ve been thinking,” he began.

Jean raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Good for you. Any new development I should be aware of?”

Marco gave him a withering glance out the corner of his eye before his gaze snapped back to the road.

“About you.”

“I’m flattered.”

“About what you do,” Marco persisted. The sun was sinking beneath the rooftops arounds them and the hazy grey of twilight was rapidly giving way to black behemoth clouds rapidly swelling in the sky. Streetlights began to blink on, one by one as they drove out of the residential area Jean lived and down towards the main road, casting the dashboard in amber light. Marco continued, “You’re always doing something. I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me before just how busy you actually are but- I was just thinking- you’ve got so much you want to do. You’ve got…dreams, ambitions. I admire that.”

“Uh. Thanks.” Jean tilted his head forward. “Are you going somewhere with this? Speaking of which, are we going somewhere?”

“Yes.” Marco’s grip on the wheel tightened.

“Have you considered, I don’t know, sharing, perhaps?”

Marco’s eyes darted over to Jean for a split second. His lips were still pressed together. “You have to promise not to be mad.”

Mad? At Marco? That would take an earth-shattering, fate-altering, course-of-history disrupting event.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Marco licked his lips. His arms were locked tight, as if he’d never been behind the wheel of a vehicle before. He glanced at Jean once more and cleared his throat.

“Listen, running the bakery is a full time job, but I’m so used to it at this point it’s easy to forget how much time it takes- it’s just part of my life. And I don’t think I was aware of that when I gave you this job. I didn’t realise how much college work you’d end up doing. So, I’ve been thinking… about this morning. What Petra said.” He swallowed. Jean watched his throat bob up and down. “I…I don’t want to be the one who gets in the way of you achieving what you want.”

Jean’s chest constricted. “Marco,” he said in a warning tone.

They came to a stop at a traffic light and Marco took this opportunity to look over at him properly. He was forcing himself to smile, disguising apprehension between the grit of his teeth.

“Don’t be mad,” he gabbled. The red stop light’s glare cast his face in shadow, scarlet picking out the wavering light in his eyes and catching the shine on his hair. “I- I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything, it’s just- I know you and I didn’t think you’d ever…”

The traffic light was catching on something else, too. As it blinked to green and Marco’s head whipped back around and the van roared forward, a jade green streak of light caught Jean’s eye in the haze of blurry movement, glimmering from Marco’s right ear.

Jean leaned forward in his seat to get a better look. That had never been there before.

“Did you get a piercing?”

Marco flinched. He let go of the wheel with one hand and reached up to touch his ear lobe self-consciously.

“Um…yeah?” he squeaked.

The penny dropped.

“Oh, fuck.” Jean fell back into his seat. “You went to the place Petra works, didn’t you?”

Marco’s smile weakened at the edges. He fingered the stud in his ear. “What do you think?”

Marco didn’t automatically get Jean’s approval just because he was acting cute, hell no. Was he out of his mind?

“Oh my God.” Jean pressed his face into his hands, tipping his head back. “Tell me we’re not heading over there right now.”

Marco didn’t say anything. Jean peeked through his fingers and saw him glance guiltily at the glove compartment. Jean wrenched it open, and, sure enough, out came the sketchbook he kept at the bakery tumbling into his lap.

“No,” he said. “No. Not happening. Marco, turn around. I’m not going there now.”

“Jean, please,” Marco pleaded. He showed little inclination of slowing down- if anything, he pressed down on the accelerator harder. “Please, just listen. I went there this afternoon after work just to see what it was like because this is just too good of a chance to just forget about.” He bit his lip. “I talked to the owner, Levi. He was about as pleasant as the last time we saw him, but he agreed, Jean. He said he wasn’t going to make any promises, but he agreed to take a look at your work.”

Jean shook his head. No. No way. “I- Marco I can’t just show up and show this guy some- some pathetic scribbles I made to pass the time—”

“They’re not pathetic.” Marco was avoiding looking at Jean at all costs, keeping his eyes trained stubbornly on the road. “You heard Petra this morning,”

“She was just being nice.” Jean’s heart was beginning to pound in his chest. All she’d seen were a couple of pages back and forth from his window sketches this morning. He suspected after a more thorough examination, she wouldn’t be singing his praises quite the same. He gestured at the sketchbook in his lap. “Do you have any idea how old some of the drawings in here are? How bad they are?”

He’d had this sketchbook since the end of high school. It had seen him through the whole of last summer when he’d first met Marco, and even though it had been less than a year, it was more than sufficient an amount of time for Jean to acquire a healthy distaste for the drawings he’d done as a sallow, aggravating teenager, who fought with his mom every other evening and moved out the second the opportunity reared its underwhelming head. Everything in that sketchbook was either from when the only things he knew about drawing were what he’d taught himself (evident in the amateur evidence pencil strokes erased a thousand times, lingering on the pages like ghosts) or they were rushed and haphazard, sketched behind the counter between customers. Even the drawings of Marco had been done beneath a guarded hand, pencil flying across the page, arranging lines in order to satisfy a selfish urge to capture one beautiful moment after the next.

Jean couldn’t just waltz up to a professional- an expert in all things ink and good anatomy- with this spiral bound dumpster fire and slap it down before him. Jean’s pride wouldn’t be able to take it. Between his own sharp eyes that were more than capable of picking out his own flaws, and the times when he had to sit through a torturous hour of critique after finishing a piece at college, he was fully aware just how mediocre he was. Few classes were more infuriating when he had to listen to the same classmates who insisted art could be anything point out the multitude of ways he’d mishandled his paintbrush like a list of criminal offences.

“I can’t,” he said, voice straining. He might as well show up at a lion’s den, naked and fully garnished on a silver platter. “Marco, I just can’t.”

“Why not?” Marco said in a sharper tone than he probably intended. He paused for a long moment before he flipped on the indicator, it’s incessant click guiding them to the curb as he pulled over at long last, the engine quietening to a dim rumble. Jean had to fight the urge to wrench the door open, leap out of the van and hightail it down the street in the opposite direction. When Marco spoke again, his voice had softened considerably. “Why not?”

Jean glared at the sketchbook digging its hard corners into his stomach. Thumbing through these battered pages himself was mortifying enough on its own, and it wasn’t just his lack of faith in his own skill. He couldn’t count the number of drawings he had in there that were either of Marco or somehow related to him, drawn when Jean was wallowing deep in a bottomless swamp of reluctance and heartache, pining. There was no other living soul who had seen everything between these cardboard covers- for one, because it was embarrassing, but for another, it felt deeply personal. This wasn’t just Jean’s art, this was an intimate history of his own, like a visual journal of his messy brawl against himself and his ever-growing infatuation with his best friend.

“It’s…embarrassing.”

Marco’s face fell, unable to disguise his disappointment at such a limp excuse. He fell back into his seat with a heavy sigh. “Jean… I’m not going to force you to do anything,” he said, the soft lilt of his voice denoting sincerity. His hands slid off the wheel down to the crevice of his lap. “You know that, right?”

Jean crossed his arms across his stomach, letting the sketchbook slide off his knees and fall into the footwell with a clatter. He didn’t stoop to pick it up. He didn’t respond.

He could feel Marco’s gaze lingering on him, trying to catch some semblance of a reaction. Truth be told, Jean didn’t know how to feel, much less how to express it. Something hot and indignant was stirring in his chest, part of him intent on opening his mouth and demanding just who the hell Marco thought he was, trying to make Jean’s decisions in his stead, acting like he knew what was best for him. But he couldn’t bring himself to be angry at Marco.

“After we first met,” Marco spoke softly. His eyes were downcast, gauzy with the recollection of the night long past. “After we talked, and I went home I…I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And about what you said.”

Jean arched an eyebrow. “What, the part where I said I hated my life, or the part where I basically called you an idiot?”

Marco shook his head. “You kept talking about how upset you were over having to give up your dream.”

“O-oh.” Heat prickled high in Jean’s cheeks. He scratched the tip of his nose. “You remember that?”

“All of it.”

“Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“No, it’s not.” Marco twisted in his seat and looked Jean dead in the eye. “What you said stuck with me. I couldn’t get you out of my head and all I could think was how incredible it must be to have an ambition of your own. I don’t know what that’s like. I was born into my family’s bakery, and if we’re going to get morbid about it, then I’m probably going to die there, too. It’s all I’ve ever known. Doing something else- being anything else never even occurred to me. But you…” His voice tailed away, fingers looping together over and over in his lap. “You can choose.”

Jean sighed. He ran his fingers through his hair and gazed out at the darkening street. “You don’t have to keep running the bakery if you don’t want to.”

“What? No, that’s not what I’m getting at,” Marco said. “The whole reason I offered you a job was because after talking with you and seeing what it was like to have to give up something that means everything to you I just thought I- I can’t let that happen. Not to him. Not if I can help.”

Jean slid down in his seat, eyeing the sketchbook at his feet reproachfully. “Well now you’re just making me feel like a guilty asshole,” he mumbled.

“If that’s what it takes!” Something resembling an anxious laugh skirted the edges of Marco’s voice. Jean gazed at the stubborn, decided shape of his mouth, the hardened glint in his eye, sincerity oozing from every pore. Forget overstepping his boundaries, Marco was striding miles and miles into forbidden, uncharted territory, and if it had been anyone else trying to tell Jean what was best for him, his sharp tongue would have already cut them to pieces. But with Marco he couldn’t do that- couldn’t even think that, because he knew Marco, and every inch, every fibre of Marco’s being was made of good intent and selfless impulse.

“Marco…” Jean went to speak, trying to pluck words out of the air to formulate a sentence that would be enough to encapsulate everything- his gratitude, his fear, his overwhelming, intoxicating adoration. “I…thank you. Hearing that means a lot. I, um.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve never really been supported in anything I wanted to do.”

Marco leaned over from the driver’s seat and placed his hand on Jean’s knee. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

“Tattooing?”

“I meant a career in art.”

“Yes.” Without hesitation. More than anything.

Marco smiled. “And what about tattooing?” he prompted gently.

Jean bit his lip. That required a little more deliberation on his part. “I… I haven’t had time to think about it. I… I guess I’m nervous?” He screwed up his eyes. “And I don’t want to let you down. You’ve got so much faith in me it’s scary.”

Marco chuckled. “Sorry. I’ll try to reign it in.” His hand was still resting on Jean’s knee, the warmth of his palm reassuring. “I’m not asking you to make a decision now. This is a big deal, I understand. But at the same time, I don’t… I don’t want to watch you work yourself to the bone and have nothing to show for it. If you weren’t going to seize the opportunity…”

“Then you’d do it for me?”

“Sorry. I do it because I care.”

“I know.” And that’s what made Jean absolutely crazy for him. Marco cared when no one else did. Marco was there for him not out of obligation, not out of selfish agenda, but because he was him, and Jean was his, and for no other reason than they wanted to see each other thrive, feel a smile beneath their lips and share each delicate moment between their intertwined fingers with the same brazen heart.

Jean took a deep breath. He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and exhaled steadily through his nose. Slowly, he uncrossed his arms and reluctantly reached down to the footwell and picked up the sketchbook, picking at the crumpled corners and smoothing out the minor damage its fall had inflicted.

“This doesn’t have to guarantee anything,” Marco was saying. “I just think you could really benefit from getting a professional opinion- or an idea of where to go, or what to pursue…”

“All right,” Jean said softly. He glanced up at Marco and did his best to muster something resembling a confident smile. He had a feeling it resembled more of a grimace. “I’ll go. I’ll talk to this guy. For you. But, before I do, two things.”

Marco cocked his head, eyebrows raised.

“Kiss me first.”

A grin spread itself across Marco’s lips as he shuffled across his seat and leaned across to the passenger side without reservation. “Oh, absolutely,” he said, and Jean met him halfway, hooking his fingers around the back of Marco’s head, pulling him closer to kiss him. One long, intense moment, searing across Jean’s lips to stir some fragment of self assurance in the pit of his anxiety-riddled stomach. If Marco Bodt- otherwise known as every saint to have ever existed incarnate- was willing to kiss him, then anything was possible.

“What’s the other thing?” Marco said when their lips parted, noses still only inches apart. When they were this close, Jean could see the little amber flecks in the dark vortexes of his irises, like speckles of sunlight as Marco’s eyes flickered across Jean’s face in an appreciative fashion.

Jean tilted his head to get a better look at Marco’s right ear and stretched out his fingers from around the back of Marco’s head to brush the brand-new piercing, a little triangular stud, edged in black. It was still hot and irritated beneath Jean’s touch. “What made you get a piercing?”

Marco laughed and brought his hand up to tentatively touch it once again. “I… I guess I was just feeling impulsive?” he said. “I don’t know. I’ve never done anything spur of the moment before. I just liked the way it looked.” He shrugged. “What do you think?”

Piercings weren’t something Jean had ever considered something he found attractive in particular- his first girlfriend had had a tongue stud, but he had found it more annoying that anything. It was distracting when she talked, all he could focus on was the silver ball catching the light every time she opened her mouth, flashing at him, and it was just plain uncomfortable when he kissed her. But on Marco?

“I guess you could’ve come back from a tattoo studio with a lot worse.”

“I wasn’t feeling that impulsive.” Marco lowered his hand from his ear and reached out- his fingers hovering uncertainly in the space between them before he rested the flat of his palm in the divot of Jean’s chest, his fingertips featherlight against the jut of Jean’s collarbone. “Your heart’s going a mile a minute,” he mumbled, the tickle of his breath brushing against Jean’s cheek. “You sure you’re OK with this?”

“Yeah. I mean…mostly.” Jean forced a half-hearted smile onto his face that was probably more grimace than grin.

“You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“My dignity? My motivation? Any shred of belief in myself?”

“Stop that,” Marco said, his hand curling into a fist against Jean’s chest. “You’ll amaze them. You’ll see.”

Jean wished he could say he believed him- but you know what? If this was all he had to do to have Marco look at him with even the faintest evidence of pride, then it was a small price to pay. Even if it were just to see him smile. Anything, absolutely anything for that smile.

The van spluttered back to life and they set off once again, Marco’s free hand still on Jean’s knee. They went back down the main road leading into town, but instead of following the high street they branched off before they hit rush hour traffic, and Marco took them down a side street Jean couldn’t ever recall passing through before, lined with white washed buildings- a bank or two, a florist, a handful of offices.

The tattoo shop was unmistakable, despite looking nothing like the dingy hovel of Jean’s imagination. A black rectangular arch emblazoned with its name in white fluorescent lights- Atelier Freiheit- framed the smoked glass that made up the rest of the shop front. Its glass door was engraved with a pair of white wings- one shaded in with the harsh, abrasive lines typical of etching work, and one left as just an outline, presumably, the shop’s logo. It didn’t appear unwelcoming because it was objectively repugnant. It was like a sleek, gleaming fortress, so professional that Jean innately knew he was wasting his time.

They pulled up just outside and Marco killed the engine. Jean’s heart continued to bang against his chest, hard, as if it were trying to be audible from across the street. He fingered the edges of his sketchbook, glancing between the smoky glass shop front before him, and the tattered pages in his lap beginning to curl with use.

Marco didn’t say anything for a while, waiting patiently for Jean to make the first move.

Trepidation mounted in the back of Jean’s throat, leaving a sour taste in its wake. His last encounter with this Levi he was supposed to be meeting was playing on his mind, which reduced Levi to a less than favourable caricature of not much more than a stormy glower and a curled lip severe enough to rival even Jean’s mother’s.

This was a horrible idea.

But Jean had been asked to come here. He wasn’t inviting himself. Clearly, Levi was open enough to give him a chance- and Marco was right, at least Petra had faith in his skill. Maybe not in him, but it was a start.

“Let’s get this over with.” Jean unbuckled his seatbelt and thrust the door open, practically lurching out onto the pavement in his haste. Marco followed suit with considerably more composure, locking the van behind him as he weaved around the bonnet to Jean’s side. He slipped his hand into Jean’s.

“You’ve got this,” he said, his voice velvet-supple.

Jean squeezed his hand in response, swallowing, and let Marco tug him gently into motion, up the steps of Atelier Freiheit. He could’ve had all the encouragement in the world, but without Marco guiding him forwards, Jean doubted he would ever have been able to coax his legs to follow suit. He clutched his sketchbook to his chest, knuckles whitening.

They reached the door and Marco let go of his hand to hold it open for him. He bobbed his head into the store.

“Go on,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”

Jean shut his eyes for a split second, pushing misgivings to the back of his mind, like a cascade of stones hurtling down a cliff face, and stepped forwards across the threshold.

The first thing he noticed was just how clean the place was, and then just how empty it felt. Jean could almost see his own reflection from a less than flattering angle in the black floor tiles, gleaming under white studio lights. The charcoal grey walls bore little decoration, save for a dozen or so picture frames with sample designs hung in a precise manner, the exact same distance apart, methodical to the utmost degree. There were two cube-shaped leather seats placed symmetrically either side of the door where they’d entered. Directly in front of them was an immaculate white desk, behind which sat a man with light hair pulled back from his face into a bun at the crown of his head, the sides of which were shaved. His sleeves were pushed back to his elbows, revealing the tumult of tattoos wound around his forearms. The only one Jean could make out was a blue and white hummingbird taking flight from his wrist, mismatched wings outstretched, careening up to the crook of his elbow.

The man glanced up from his computer screen when he saw Jean enter, Marco closing the door behind him.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Jean swallowed. The astringent stench of chemicals hung in the air, stinging his nostrils. The drone of a tattoo gun buzzed periodically from somewhere through a doorway that stood at the back of the shop, besides which was a work station set up next to a stool, where Petra was sat, cross-legged, looking at her phone. Her head snapped up at the sound of the man’s voice and her face immediately lit up in recognition.

“You came!” She exclaimed, hopping off her stool and tucking her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. “Eld, you remember Marco? He came in this afternoon?”

“Ah, yeah. First time.” Eld’s gaze shifted to Marco, going straight to the stud in his ear, and nodded, gesturing vaguely at his own in recollection. “That must make you Jean, right?”

“Uh.” Jean tried to unstick his throat. “Y-yeah.”

“Great.” Eld didn’t seem surprised. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Levi’s in the back, he’s just finishing up with a client right now. Shouldn’t be more than ten, fifteen minutes, if you don’t mind waiting.”

Oh, hell. Give Jean any more time to go over all the reasons why this was a terrible idea and he would smash the glass door in his haste and be hurtling down the street without a second thought, trailing shards of glass and shitty sketches in his wake. What was he doing? How did he let himself get talked into this?

“We can wait,” Marco said. His shoulder brushed against Jean’s from behind him, reassurance, affirmation that I’m still here. You’re OK.

Jean did his best to force a sickly grin. “Sure.”

He wanted to squeeze Marco’s hand- he needed grounding, the stability it provided, but his hands remained clammy, clenched around his sketchbook as he sank down into one of the seats besides them. His heart was jumping in his chest, snapping right up to the base of his throat as if it were on a bungee cord.

He watched Marco sit next to him out of the corner of his eye, bumping his knee against Jean’s. Any onlooker would see the brush of contact as purely accidental. Jean knew he would, if he didn’t know any better.

Petra came over from her piercing station and leaned against the front desk. “How’s the ear doing, Marco?”

Marco smiled. “Still sore.”

“It won’t last long, promise. You’re young, you’ll heal fast. Give it a couple more weeks, you’ll see.” She paused. “I have to admit, I was pretty surprised when you asked to get it done! Never thought you’d be interested in piercings.”

Marco shrugged. “Just wanted to try something new.”

“Well, it’s a slippery slope, kid,” Eld chimed in as he turned back to his computer. “Trust me, you get one little piercing, and before it’s even healed you’re already thinking about where your next one’s gonna go. Just you wait,” He grinned, lips receding enough to reveal a gleaming bar pierced through the minute sliver of flesh beneath his cupid’s bow. “You’ll be back here asking for a tattoo before long.”

Marco laughed, but Jean wasn’t listening. His gaze was locked on the doorway at the back of the studio, straining to hear any snatch of conversation he could between the periodic buzz of the tattoo gun. He felt like he was about to walk into the dragon’s keep, a boy from humble beginnings sent to appease the five-foot-tall beast. But instead of gold coins and precious jewels, all he had were a handful of tarnished coppers and unwarranted faith to set him on his merry way.

“Jean?”

“Huh?” Jean blinked, only to find all three pairs of eyes were lingering on him expectantly. Marco was the one who had spoken, and at Jean’s startled expression, he gently nudged Jean’s knee with his own once again.

“Petra just asked if you’d ever considered getting something done yourself.”

“Tattoo, piercing, any kind of body mod, really.” Petra shrugged. “Anything tickle your fancy?”

Jean faltered. It wasn’t really something that had ever crossed his mind before. Maybe he’d considered a stud or two like Marco’s in the past, back when he was with the girl with the pierced tongue, but never seriously. He certainly hadn’t given it a second thought after they broke up. As for tattoos, he didn’t have any particularly strong opinions about them. It wasn’t as if he was a stranger to doodling on his arms in particularly boring classes, inking chains of skulls, winding vines, and webs of galaxies along his forearm in blue ballpoint pen, only to get home and have his mother seize hold of his wrist and chastise him with the same old spiel about ink poisoning and how terrible it looked to have pen marks smudged up the cuffs of your school shirt, and if he had time to do all this why wasn’t he paying attention in school? He would be handed a bar of soap and she would proceed to stand over him at the kitchen sink until he’d scrubbed away every remnant of ink, leaving his flesh was pink and tingling.

He could picture her face right now if she could just see where he currently was, and quite literally see her mouth twist in horror at the very idea of what he was considering.

Jean could scrub and scrub all she liked, but there was no amount of soap in the world that would be able to get rid of a tattoo.

“I…don’t know,” he said eventually.

His voice rung hollow, swelling to fill every corner of the shop. Even the buzzing from the back room ceased for a moment or two as both Eld and Petra’s expressions faltered and they shared a worried look.

“W-what did you get done first?” Marco said hurriedly, Jean’s saving grace.

“Me?” Petra tugged back the distressed sleeve of her flannel shirt and held up her hand, flexing her fingers so the compass on the back of her hand wiggled. “Needed some direction in my life at the time, or so I like to tell people. We don’t really recommend getting such visible tattoos as your first ones, though.”

“That’s nothing,” Eld snorted, and turned to one side, exposing a network of cogs and gears inked into the shallow fuzz of his shaved scalp, fitting the curve of his skull. “Go hard or go home, I say.”

“As you can see, some of us like to ignore all given advice wholeheartedly,” Petra said dryly.

Marco grinned obligingly, but Jean had lapsed back into only half-listening, glancing back and forth between the sleek, gleaming tiles on the floor and the doorway at the back of the store.

Eld tilted his head, raising an eyebrow at him. “You’re kind of quiet, aren’t you?”

Jean flinched. He was so preoccupied with the idea of confronting Levi, he was completely unaware he was making quite the shit first impression. He opened his mouth to reply. “Um…”

“Oh, Jean’s lovely,” Petra said. “He’s the one who serves me at the bakery- you’ve just got to get to know him a little bit. Wait until you see his artwork—”

Jean’s stomach clenched.

Petra was beckoning for his sketchbook. “Here, Jean, show Eld—”

As if on cue, there was they were mercifully interrupted by the sound of footfall from the back of the store, and someone appeared at the doorway, one arm held out awkwardly at their side, a multitude of swirling colours ringed with harsh black outlines glistening beneath a swathe of plastic wrap. They were talking to someone over their shoulder, “Thanks again, bud. I can’t wait to show this off to everyone!”

“Yeah, yeah.” A sharper, indifferent voice said from behind them. The person moved aside to reveal Levi lingering behind them in the doorway. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt as if it wasn’t still the dead of winter, his surprisingly well-defined arms covered in black ink from shoulder to wrist, customary scowl pinching his severe features together. He leaned against the doorframe, pulling off his black rubber gloves with a snap. “Just keep it clean.”

“You’re all done?” Petra spun around and beckoned the customer over. “Ooh, let’s have a look.”

Both she and Eld leaned over to admire the blurry ink on the guy’s forearm, making remarks that Jean heard, but didn’t process. His gaze was fixed on the short, glowering man silhouetted in the doorway across the room. Their eyes met for a split second. Levi affixed him with his steely, iron-grey stare, before making a short, dismissive noise and turning away, disappearing back into his studio.

Jean’s heart resumed its thudding. Invited here or not, Levi still maintained an expression that suggested he was perfectly willing- and capable- to bludgeoning Jean to death with his own shitty sketchbook if he ended up wasting Levi’s time.

“All right, you take care of yourself,” Petra was saying as the customer made his way to leave.

“We’ll see you again,” Eld added. The glass door swung shut, and the shop fell silent, the still air not even permeated by the periodic buzzing anymore. “Well, that was quicker than expected. Jean?”

Jean blinked. “Huh?”

Eld nodded at the spot where Levi had been a second ago. “What are you waiting for?”

It took Jean a second to realise he was referring to Levi. Apparently, the dismissive sound Levi had made meant follow me.

Jean got to his feet on far shakier legs than he cared to admit, sketchbook tucked under one arm, digging the nails on his free hand into his palm. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to stand there like a fucking idiot whilst Levi leafed through his sketchbook, revulsion burning itself further and further into the lines of his already formidable features, not even needing to vocalise that Jean was wasting his time, that his skill was mediocre, at best, and that was on a good day; that Jean was destined for nothing greater than spending the rest of his days holed up in that poky little bakery, icing cakes and wistfully dwelling on what could have been…

That didn’t sound too bad, actually. Not the wistfully dwelling part, but staying in the bakery- staying with Marco…

Jean glanced over his shoulder. Marco was standing alongside him. He gave him an encouraging smile, and Jean saw his fingers twitch.

I’m right behind you. You’ve got this. I know you can do this.

He had no choice. The only thing worse than walking out of here, head hung in shame, was to back down and sprint away with his tail tucked between his legs. He wasn’t a coward. He couldn’t be a coward, not with Marco standing at his side- sweet, beautiful, perfect Marco, who had every scrap of faith he possessed in Jean. Not in his skill, not in his capabilities. In Jean.

Jean swallowed, clenched his fist, and forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and went across the shop floor, Marco never more than a couple of feet away. If Eld and Petra found Marco lingering in Jean’s wake like a shadow odd, they didn’t give any indication of thinking so- or perhaps Jean simply wasn’t focusing on what other people thought right now. He had one goal, one ultimatum.

Don’t let the faith Marco had in him be for nothing.

They reached the doorway to the studio, and Jean braced himself as if he were about to dive into a frigid lake. He drew in a sharp intake of breath and plunged forward.

Unlike the front of the shop’s black tiles and dark hued walls, everything in the studio was stark and white, from the polished floor to the blank, boxy walls, where a couple of shelves, lined with inks, and a single full-length mirror were hung. The whole room wasn’t much bigger than a broom closet, just enough space for a workstation set up at the far end, a black leather stool, and a matching reclining seat in the centre of the room, swathed in plastic wrap. As Jean walked in, Levi was in the process of ripping this off, spraying the exposed leather with some kind of disinfectant spray and proceeding to wipe it down. The stinging stench of chemicals and rubbing alcohol was even stronger in here. There wasn’t a streak of stray ink to be found, not even the slightest trace of dirt. The studio, much like the shop, was immaculate, practically sparkling beneath the harsh studio lights veining the ceiling.

Levi didn’t look up right away. He tore a strip of paper towel off a roll nearby and continued to scrub at the chair, not even acknowledging Jean’s presence.

Jean opened his mouth, unsure how he was supposed to initiate this kind of conversation. He felt like he was walking into a job interview, a reluctant audition, proffering himself up on a metal tray, primed for dissection.

He looked over his shoulder- Marco was still there, lingering just on the other side of the doorframe with his encouraging smile still painted across his face, Jean’s gospel at this point. He watched as Marco cast a fleeting glance across the shop at Eld and Petra. They weren’t paying attention to any of them anymore, and Marco took the opportunity to slip his hand into Jean’s, warm fingers curling around Jean’s clammy ones. He inclined his head forward, towards Levi. Go on.

Jean clutched the sketchbook to his chest.

“Um…”

Levi’s flint-grey eyes snapped to the side, catching sight of Jean in his peripheral. He didn’t turn, nor seem remotely surprised, or even interested, just mildly annoyed. Jean figured that was just his default resting expression at this point.

“Yeah?” was all he said.

Jean shifted on his feet, throat painfully dry. “Uh…I don’t know if you remember me. I’m, uh, Jean.”

It took him a second before his conscience gave a sharp twinge, reminding him of basic human etiquette. He tucked his sketchbook under his arm and stuck his free hand out.

Levi’s surly gaze lingered on Jean’s outstretched palm for a second before he looked away, choosing instead to continue cleaning the already spotless chair, leaving Jean’s discouraged fingers to curl back in on themselves.

“I remember you,” Levi said after a few unpleasant moments. He straightened up, balling the paper towels into a crumpled wad in his fist. “You were the kid at the museum. The guy with his not-boyfriend.”

Blood prickled in Jean’s cheeks. He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. About that.”

Levi caught sight of Marco over Jean’s shoulder and Jean watched as his eyes immediately slid down to their intertwined fingers. He raised one razor thin eyebrow. “Or not,” he said.

Jean felt Marco readjust his hold on his hand. Judging by that momentary slip, he guessed his face wasn’t the only one slowly beginning to resemble a raspberry.

But that didn’t matter right now.

Jean squeezed Marco’s hand and loosened his grip.

“I…uh…I was wondering- well, when Marco asked- I mean- I brought…”

“I know why you’re here,” Levi interjected. “I’m not an idiot. That’s all you’ve got?” He narrowed his gaze at the sketchbook under Jean’s arm.

“Um…yeah.”

“All right.” Levi crossed his heavily inked arms across his chest and leaned against the chair he’d just finished cleaning. “Jacket off.”

“…I’m sorry?”

“You heard me.”

Jean shared a bemused glance over his shoulder with Marco, who seemed equally perplexed at Levi’s strange request. His jacket? What for?

Maybe this was Levi’s peculiar way of telling him to make himself at home, some strange, abrupt form of hospitality.

“Come on, kid, we haven’t got all day,” he snapped.

Jean flinched, deciding it was better not to question the guy who had needles within arm’s reach and the expertise to wield them. He hooked his fingers around the hem of his hoodie and pulled, his t-shirt riding up as he wriggled it off over his head. He tugged his shirt back down, ran a hand through his hair to smooth it back into place, and balled the hoodie up under his arm, transferring his sketchbook into his hands.

“So,” Jean said apprehensively. “I brought my sketchb—”

“Your legs as bare as your arms, or what?”

For the second time, Jean faltered, caught off guard, bewildered.

“What?”

Levi shut his eyes and exhaled through his nose irritably. “I said,” he said, infuriatingly slow as if he were addressing a child. Or a misbehaving dog. “Where’s your ink?”

“Oh.” Jean hesitated. “Uh…nowhere.”

“You’re serious? You got nothing?”

Jean shook his head.

“Get out.”

Levi’s voice was offhand, without a trace of mirth, let alone tolerance. He turned away, leaving Jean standing agape at his abrupt dismissal, and pulled a roll of plastic wrap out from one of the drawers behind him, starting to rewrap the freshly cleaned chair.

That’s it? Jean thought in disbelief. The corners of his sketchbook skewered into his hands, leaving red pinpoints in his flesh.

This couldn’t be it. This had to be a joke. A test, of some kind. Maybe Levi was waiting to see if he had any balls, or whether he’d go scurrying like a rabbit from a fox the moment some form of opposition slapped him in the face. Maybe he wanted to see just how serious Jean was about his art- yeah, this was all a scheme, there was no way he’d fallen before he’d even reached the first hurdle, and all Jean had to do was…

Levi’s tempest-grey eyes darted up as he finished wrapping the chair and scowled at Jean still stood in the doorway like an absolute tool.

“What are you still doing here?” he demanded. “Leave. We’re closing.”

A cold iron fist clenched itself around Jean’s heart at just how wrong he’d been. This was the worst possible outcome. Not standing here, humiliated, as Levi flipped through his sketchbook, critical gaze doing all the talking for him- no, it was being robbed of even the opportunity to prove himself, not even granted the good grace to have been given a chance.

“But I thought—”

“Yeah? You thought wrong.” Levi glowered at him. He turned his back on them and continued to tidy his workstation, placing tiny bottles of ink back into their designated places on the shelves, as if Marco and Jean weren’t even there.

Helpless, Jean looked back at Marco, silently pleading for help. Marco’s brow was furrowed just as deeply as Jean’s, equally as perplexed, but at Jean’s imploring gaze, he squared his jaw and took a step forward.

“I’m sorry,” Marco said. “When I talked to you this afternoon you said you’d take a look at Jean’s work.”

“Yeah?” Levi didn’t turn around. “And?”

Marco frowned, looking back at Jean in disbelief, searching for what else to say, as if his statement should have been clarity enough. The back of Levi was about as engaging as the front. You certainly couldn’t hold anything resembling a vaguely pleasant conversation with either.

Red hot shame was starting to burn in the pit of Jean’s stomach, its flames licking his cheeks and prickling across his back, futility finally starting to set in. This was hopeless. He was past caring at this point. Levi clearly didn’t have time for any of this, humouring him or otherwise, and he’d rather not stick around where he wasn’t welcome any longer than he had to.

“Marco,” he mumbled, eyes downcast. “Marco, let’s just go.”

“No, Jean.”

Jean looked up in surprise at the acidity biting into Marco’s tone. A look he’d never seen before had settled in the dark depths of Marco’s eyes, a hard, unflinching glint that saw him clench his fists at his sides and grit his teeth. When he spoke again, directly to Levi’s back, it was without a hint of fear.

“Aren’t you going to at least take a look at what he’s brought?”

“I thought I told you two to leave.”

“You told me you’d look. You said if he came back with me, you would.” Marco’s voice was gathering speed, blotches of heat creeping up from his neck past his jaw.

Jean caught hold of his hand and tugged on it vainly. “Marco,” he implored. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.” Marco brushed him off, turning back to Levi. “You said you’d give him a chance—”

“I know what I said,” Levi snapped, cutting Marco off abruptly. He turned back around once again, arms crossed, expression as severe as an executioner. “And I know what I promised.”

Some of the tension in Marco’s shoulders slackened. “Then—”

“Your boyfriend back there is the one that needs to revaluate his priorities before he comes swaggering back here again.” Levi shot an accusing glance at Jean.

“Me?” Jean spoke before he could stop himself. The fuck did Levi mean, swaggering? He’d been on the verge of trembling like a chihuahua this whole time. “What did I do?”

“More of a question what didn’t you do, kid.” Levi’s lip curled. “The fact you two are still cluttering up my studio means your skulls are too thick to hold even an ounce of common sense, so while I’m feeling generous, let me break it down for you. I said I’d give my advice to someone interested in the field. My field. The thing I’m qualified to give advice on. Do you think I go around giving every art student I see a dose of wisdom and an apprenticeship out of the good-fucking-will of my heart?”

Jean fought to prevent himself from snorting at the very idea of this stone-faced man who didn’t seem capable of expressing a wider range of emotions besides anger and revulsion having a heart beneath all those layers of iron-grey frost.

“No,” Marco hesitated. “But—”

“I wasn’t finished,” Levi snapped. “No, I’ve got better ways to spend my time. I’m not an art teacher, I’m a business owner looking for employees. Did you expect me to take you seriously when you have no fucking idea what you’re getting yourself in for?” He gestured at Jean, at his bare arms, at his chest and legs. “Take a good look in the mirror, kid. You’re asking for a tattoo artist’s advice when you’re as white as a sheet of goddamn paper.”

Jean saw Marco bristle out of the corner of his eye. “That’s true, but you could still—”

“No.” Levi cut him off. He tapped the side of his skull. “The stuff I’ve got up here? What you see around you? This is years and years of hard work. Blood, sweat, tears, all that crap. A shit ton of cash. I built up everything I have from the ground. You want me to just give you that for nothing? Don’t make me laugh.”

Marco’s shoulders squared once again. “But—”

“Marco,” Jean was the one to interrupt him his time. He laid a hand on Marco’s shoulder, willing him to calm down. “It’s OK.”

“No it’s not—”

“No, I get it.” Jean sort of knew where Levi was coming from. He couldn’t count the amount of times he’d ripped a page from his sketchbook and wanted to tear his hair out with it; how many half-finished canvases he’d had to smother with white paint to start again; the number of never completed sketches laying crumpled beneath his bed, his desk, the bottom of his backpack. He’d stayed up and watched the moon rise into the night sky and remained awake long enough to watch it make its painfully slow descent, because he couldn’t get this one facet of this one piece to look just right. He knew what it was like to sit at his desk for hours and hours on end, staring at blank paper, pencil hovering an inch above the page, waiting for ideas that never came. He knew what it was like to be committed to something so integral to his soul he skipped meals, he forgot to sleep, he glanced up at the clock wondering just how late he was allowed to be before incurring serious repercussions.

But he had no proof.

“One of you gets it,” Levi said. “You the brains out of the two of you, or what?”

It was Jean’s turn to bristle, fists clenching around his sketchbook, but Marco shook his head at him.

Levi rolled his eyes. “Look, like I said, I’m no teacher. The shit I do isn’t taught, anyway. You want to learn? You teach yourself. That’s how I know you’ll be worth my time.” He narrowed his sharp gaze at Jean’s bare arms. “Come back when you’ve given it actual fucking thought and have some kind of tattoo of your own.”

Jean saw Marco’s expression brighten. “Then you’ll—”

“I’ll think about it,” Levi said. “No promises. Show me some base line comprehension of what you’re getting into and I’ll consider seeing what you can do.”

Something faint, something bright that tasted like hope, stirred at the base of Jean’s throat.

“Now get out.”

Aaand there it went.

Marco let out a long, frustrated breath and passed a hand through his hair before he turned back around to Jean, holding his hand out. “All right, we’re going.”

Jean took his hand, too lost in the surrealism of the moment to think about who could see them. Was that seriously it? Did that just happen? Every moment that went by made it easier to believe it had just been a fever dream, a disconcerting slip in time- but no, it was over, that was it. He could leave.

Marco tugged on his hand and he went to follow him in a disconcerted delirium, trying to process the last few minutes.

“Hey, kid.”

Jean blinked and looked back over at Levi.

He was sat down on his leather stool, turning his tattoo gun over in his hands. The ink of his tattoos licked all the way up to his knuckles, jagged, incoherent shapes constricting his long, bony fingers.

“Don’t get your hopes up. And don’t go looking for my approval. Hell, I’m only one person. You got it?”

Jean swallowed. He nodded.

Levi leaned back in his seat, crossing one leg over the other, gaze unyielding. Gooseflesh crawled over Jean’s skin beneath his scrutiny.

“You decide to play your cards right, then you know where to find us.”

Jean stopped dead.

Was that seriously a….? Was he just…?

Levi spun back around in his seat, resuming his cleaning, evidently dismissing them for real this time.

Jean pressed his sketchbook to his chest, clutching Marco’s hand, and let himself be led back through the shop. Eld and Petra were still lingering at the front desk, uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps they’d heard everything. Petra did her best to muster an encouraging smile as Marco and Jean slipped by.

“Sorry,” she blurted out just before they could reach the door. “Sorry, I know that could’ve gone a lot better for you guys. Levi’s a good guy deep down, I promise. I- I can try- let me see if I can talk to him, work something around him- but—”

“I get it,” Jean said. “No promises, right?”

Petra pressed her lips into a thin line. She nodded. “You don’t know stubborn until you’ve worked with Levi,” she said, and laughed a little. “I’ll see you two soon, anyway.”

If she’d noticed their clasped hands, tucked out of sight as best they could manage between the folds of Marco’s jacket, she didn’t say anything, and neither did Eld as Marco thanked them for their hospitality and bid them both farewell. And with that, he and Jean left, emerging back out onto the street. The sun had long since set by now, and everything was cast in shadow beneath the white light spilling out of Atelier Freiheit. They walked wordlessly back to the van and got in, silence gnawing at the air between them. Marco didn’t start the engine. Jean opened the glove compartment, shoved the sketchbook back inside, and pulled his hoodie back on.

“I’m sorry,” Marco said eventually. “I’m sorry, I was an idiot, I didn’t think it through. I didn’t mean to- I should’ve known, I should’ve talked to you first, I shouldn’t…”

Excuses tangled with apologies came tumbling from Marco’s lips, each one sounding more desperate than the last as, carrying the same guilt one might expect to hear in confession, and something in Jean’s chest withered listening to the agitated note plunging Marco’s voice into a painful sting. He didn’t want to hear it.

Jean twisted around in his seat, seized Marco’s face and kissed him.

Marco initially flinched, caught off guard, but Jean held him fast, and a moment later he felt the clenched knot in Marco’s jaw loosen beneath his touch. Maybe it was out of relief, or some pent-up form of adrenaline that drove Jean to press his lips to Marco’s, hungry, destitute of the physical intimacy he craved. Maybe it was the only way he could think to express the debt he felt he owed, mediocre means to convey a concept beyond his comprehension.

“Shut up,” he mumbled against Marco’s lips. “You did nothing wrong.”

Marco inclined his head towards Jean’s, his kiss trailing away from Jean’s mouth, lips fluttering against Jean’s chin, speckling along his jaw, dipping onto his neck, nuzzling into the crook of his shoulder. Jean’s breath hitched. Something sickly sweet curdled in the pit of his stomach, plummeting deep into his crotch. He grasped at the back of Marco’s head, fingers caught in the soft prickle of his hair, a hideously delightful shudder darting up the length of his spine.

Marco eventually withdrew, his hand still wound around the nape of Jean’s neck, his thumb tracing soft arcs across his skin. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Got carried away.”

“Stop it.” Jean dug his fingers into Marco’s scalp. “I kissed you, OK? Stop apologising.”

Marco pressed his lips together, avoiding Jean’s gaze, but nodded nonetheless. They let go of each other, the aftermath of their kiss leaving a cloying taste on Jean’s lips, and set off again, rumbling back along the main road to Jean’s house. Jean sat in silence, quietly turning the events of the evening over in his head. Levi’s initial dismissal, his reasoning, his eventual, begrudging offer, rattling around in Jean’s skull like loose stones.

“Here we are,” Marco said, sounding more than a little dispirited as he pulled up once more outside Jean’s place. It stood in darkness, Jean’s gloomy little corner in the world. The idea of spending the evening alone, listening to everything in his head bounce off the silent walls was less than appealing.

“Do you want to come inside?” he said.

Marco blinked. “What about Eren?”

Jean shrugged, past caring at this point. “Either upstairs or at work. Doesn’t matter.”

“Are you sure?”

“He has his girlfriend over all the time, why shouldn’t I? I mean,” Jean hastily corrected himself. “Boyfriend.”

A relieved grin cracked through the anxious mask on Marco’s face and he laughed, like music to Jean’s ears. “All right. As long as it’s OK with you, then sure.”

In what fucking universe did he think it wouldn’t be OK?

They got out of the van and Jean let them both into the house, flicking on the lights. The only sign that Eren had been there at all that evening was his dirty cutlery lingering in a cesspool of dingy dishwater at the bottom of the sink and the empty plastic tray from his microwave dinner left out on the counter. Jean pulled a face, sweeping them out of sight.

“Make yourself at home,” he said, rubbing down the counter with his sleeve. Fucking Eren, having a go at him for getting his shoes all over the sofa when Jean was the one cleaning up after him most of the time. “Are you hungry?”

Marco slid his shoes off at the front door, pairing them up together and placed them carefully next to the already cluttered shoe rack spewing a tumble of trainers onto the floor. “I could eat.”

Jean opened the fridge door, ducking down to examine it contents- half a six pack of Eren’s shitty beer and an expired pack of processed meat- and swore, proceeding to peer into the freezer. By some miracle, it wasn’t as barren as the fridge.

“Frozen pizza sound good?”

“Pizza sounds great.”

Jean grinned and dug his thumb into the cardboard box, switched on the oven, and slid the frozen slab of pizza in, knocking the oven door shut with his hip. Marco was still lingering in the middle of the living room, evidently not sure what to do with himself. Jean gestured at the sofa.

“You can sit down, you know,"

“R-right.” Marco settled himself onto the couch, tucking one leg up to his chin as he contented himself with looking about the room, taking in the mismatched second-hand furniture, the miniscule square of concrete too miserable to be deemed a garden visible through the back door, the narrow staircase squashed up at the other end of the room.

Jean crammed the torn pizza box into the trash as best he could and made his way over to the couch- pausing by the fridge again to purloin two bottles of Eren’s beer- and threw himself down on the opposite end of the sofa, scrabbling in the gaps between the cushions until he located the TV remote. He switched the TV on, handed Marco a beer, and twisted the top off his own, taking a deep swig. It was well needed, he reasoned. With everything today had thrown at him, a little liquid comfort couldn’t hurt, even if it was cheap and stolen from his roommate.

He tipped his head back and sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. Exhaustion was creeping back up on him, settling around his shoulders like a cat. Levi’s words still hung in the air before him. You know where to find us. Spoken with the utmost confidence, almost as if he knew Jean’s return was inevitable.

“Are…are you OK, Jean?”

Jean pressed his lips together and forced himself to nod. “Tired.” He rubbed at his eyes and tilted his head to the side, looking over at Marco. “But ‘m good.”

Marco didn’t look convinced. The worry lines Jean so hated to see were back in full force, lacerating their way across Marco’s face, drawing his features together in a disheartening frown. He sipped his beer, grimaced, and dropped his gaze from Jean. His eyes were elsewhere, shifted to focus on something completely internal.

“I…” He paused, his voice wavering with misgivings. “I’m sorry, Jean. I really am.”

“I told you, it’s fine.”

“No, it- it isn’t.” Marco screwed up his eyes. “I had no idea he was going to be like that. I really thought he might do something good for you, but…I never meant to put you in an uncomfortable position- you know I’d never do that, right?”

Jean leaned forwards, sitting up straight. “I know,” he said softly.

Marco’s knuckles were whitening against his beer bottle. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I just thought…I was trying to do something for you. Something good.”

“You did.”

Marco looked up at him. “But Levi…”

“Is an asshole, something we were already keenly aware of,” Jean said. “And the only way I can get his approval is essentially through blackmail, which is always a nice way to start a career.”

Marco was nibbling the skin around his thumb, but at Jean’s remark, he snorted, despite himself. “Yeah,” he said shakily. “Talk about ulterior motives. Wait.” His head snapped up. “Did you just-?”

Jean raised his eyebrows.

“You’re not seriously considering it, are you?”

Jean brought his beer up to his lips and took another swig. Honestly, even he didn’t know at this point. All he was doing was throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what stuck. Everything running through his head right now was purely hypothetical, but vocalising them to Marco, someone with far better impartial judgement than his own, was preferable to sitting alone, beer in hand, internalising pros and cons, where the lines were blurred and incoherent.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “I mean…I haven’t thought about it. Much. But tattoos are pretty cool.”

Marco’s eyes were wide, and he didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or let his jaw drop, stunned.

“You’re sure about this?”

“Nope. Not sure about anything.” Jean swirled around the contents of his bottle. “’S just a thought for now.”

They were interrupted by the timer on the oven going off, and Jean got to his feet and went back over to the kitchen to retrieve their pizza. He arranged the slices onto the cleanest plate he could find and brought it back over to Marco, setting it on the cushion between them and taking the opportunity to cram a red-hot slice into his mouth, just to give him an excuse not to have to speak for a minute.

“I…I’m glad, I guess.” Marco said eventually.

Jean glanced over at him. He swallowed. Painfully.

“You sound disappointed,” he said thickly around a mouthful of scalding cheesy paste.

“No. I’m not.” Marco hesitated. “I’m just…shocked. I didn’t think that could have gone any worse.”

Jean shrugged. “The stuff Levi was saying about wanting to make sure I was worth his time- I kind of get that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s still a dick. But I understand not wanting to take a gamble. With art, it’s like- you invest so much time and effort into it- it sort of ends up being a part of you.” If Jean wasn’t an artist- albeit an unexceptional one- he wasn’t sure how he would define himself. Part time baker? Pessimist? Straight up asshole? “For someone like him, like Levi, who’s built everything his is around his art, you can understand why he doesn’t want to take risks.”

“Yeah…” Marco’s voice trailed away. He picked up a slice of pizza and sunk his teeth into it, grease glistening in the low light of the TV, chewing thoughtfully for a second. “Still, it’s kind of unfair he wants you to have a tattoo as proof. You had proof right there in your hands all along.”

“Again, a dick move, but not completely unreasonable.” Jean stretched out onto the sofa, propping his feet up on the coffee table. “Whatever. Nothing’s happening any time soon. So don’t worry about it.”

“Probably not a good idea to rush, is it,” Marco chuckled softly around his pizza. “Say you did get a tattoo, any idea what would you want?”

“Nope.” Jean’s lips twitched into an evil smirk as he motioned to the small of his back. “How about your name, right here.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Jean snorted and crammed another slice of pizza into his mouth. “You’re cool with this, though?” he asked. “Tattoos and shit?”

“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Marco said, eyebrows raised in surprise. “If it’s what you want to do then I’m all for it. I mean, you didn’t mind the piercing.”

Jean smirked. “Do you think you’d get anymore?”

Marco laughed. “Early days, Jean. Early days.”

A wonderfully satisfying sensation had cosied itself into Jean’s chest, an earnestness that coaxed out the strain riddled into his muscles, unclenching his fists, uncurling his toes. There was a sense of unmistakable euphoria when he kissed Marco, liberation and yearning and the selfish desire to devour every scrap of affection he could. But just sitting here- doing nothing more sensational than stuffing their faces with pizza with the TV droning in the background- had its own appeal, a sort of delightful domesticity he’d seen from afar and never knowingly coveted before. He’d sat on the opposite couch, sourness pooling in the pits of his stomach as he bore witness to Eren and Mikasa doing the same sort of thing, never even once guessing that within a few short months he’d be lucky enough to find himself in the same position.

There was only a single slice of pizza left at this point, and Jean nudged the plate along the sofa, offering it to Marco. He took it and Jean slid the plate onto the floor, out of sight, figuring since Eren had left his garbage for Jean to deal with, he could cope with a dirty plate when he got back from work.

He snuck a glance over at Marco as he finished his pizza. Admittedly, whilst basking in each other’s company had its own sort of appeal, his fingers still hungered for the pleasure of gliding across Marco’s skin, to run through his hair, to trace the pattern of one freckle to the next. He laced his fingers together on his chest, tapping his thumbs together, waiting for Marco to finish eating and wipe his hands down on his jeans.

Jean cleared his throat. “Hey. Um,” he began. “Would…would you mind if I, uh…I mean…could I maybe sit with you?” By the end of his sentence, his voice was barely an embarrassing squeak.

Marco blinked in surprise. Maybe he wasn’t expecting Jean to be so direct. “O-oh. Yeah. Sure.”

He shifted over, sticking his legs out of the way, making space for Jean, and leaned against the arm of the sofa, extending his own like a broad invitation. Jean shuffled over, hesitant, before Marco patted his chest, indicating where he should lie. A flutter of nerves burst into Jean’s chest and he kept telling himself there was no reason to freak out- it’s just Marco, it’s just Marco—

Jean lowered himself down into the crook between Marco’s arm and chest, heart banging against his chest as he laid his cheek against Marco’s shoulder. A quiver of satisfaction, certainty denoted that yes, this was the place he was meant to be, ran through him.

He heard Marco let out a short exhale of breath, his upper half rising and falling with Marco’s chest, as wound his arm around Jean, and for the first time Jean truly felt the strength encompassed in a single one of Marco’s limbs, his bicep flexed around his shoulders like a protective wall.

“Is that OK?” Marco asked. The rumble of his voice reverberated against Jean’s cheek. “Are you comfortable?”

Jean nodded, shifting against Marco’s chest, hardly daring to believe his own boldness had led him to this moment in time, right here, right now. He’d never been held like this before, and he would be the first to admit it was a hell of a lot more appealing than he initially thought. Now he knew why the two girlfriends he’d had in the past enjoyed it so much. There was an innate sense of security, but beyond that, a sense of vulnerability that they both felt only the other could be trusted with. Sure, Jean had slept in the same bed as Marco before, but there had been ample space for them both to stay on separate sides. Here, on this narrow strip of couch, they had no choice but to intertwine with each, slot together like jigsaw pieces.

“Jean.”

Jean was dragged out his head with a harsh tug by Marco’s voice.

“There’s… something I’ve been meaning to ask you about, actually.”

Jean twisted around as best as he could. “What’s up?”

Marco was avoiding his gaze yet again. He reached up with the hand that wasn’t currently resting on the small of Jean’s back and rubbed at his jaw.

“You don’t have to answer right away,” he said. “It’s just… I’ve been wondering how… how far you think this… thing we have will go?”