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Jean was sleeping in another outrageous position.
It was cold at night in the barracks nowadays – winter had hit everyone pretty hard the first year of their training, and it was so drafty that the door might as well have been wide open. The blankets were practically useless.
So, some people decided to share beds to try to warm each other up.
Jean Kirschtein and Marco Bodt had been sharing one for several days now, and every night Jean managed to get himself into some incredibly ridiculous position. He’d start out fine, but it seemed as soon as Marco would finally start drifting off to sleep he’d yank the blanket over or kick Marco or swing one of his arms around. This would go on for a few minutes until Jean would finally settle down, hopelessly tangled up with either Marco or the blanket. Half the times he wound up with his head under his pillow. A few choice times it was Marco’s.
As long as Jean wasn’t thrashing around the whole night, Marco was usually okay. Sure, he’d wind up sleeping in some awkward position with one or more of Jean’s limbs tangled up with his own, but that was fine. Better than freezing half to death.
Tonight, though, Jean was being more unreasonable than usual.
First, he’d managed to orient himself in such a way that his head was almost off the side of the bed and he had both of his legs on Marco. After a couple minutes he’d suddenly kicked Marco right off the bed and then slid off of it himself, still sleeping propped up on the floor by his head.
Marco had fallen asleep almost immediately after he’d gotten into bed (it had been a particularly strenuous day) so he hadn’t really minded Jean at first. He woke up when he’d been kicked off the bed, though, and he tried not to wince too loud from hitting the floor so as not to wake anyone else up.
Marco heaved a sigh and slowly picked himself up from where he’d been kicked, and he climbed back onto the bed, crawling over to the other side and prodding at Jean.
This turned out to be a huge mistake, and all he wound up doing was getting kicked in the side pretty hard.
Marco huffed and reached over to Jean to yank him back up onto the bed. Jean turned out to be a lot heavier than he’d expected, and he wound up dropping him, so Jean slid back down and slammed his head into the floor.
This, of course, woke him up.
“Shit!” Jean hissed, twisting to the side a little and falling onto the floor completely. “Marco! What the hell!”
“You have no proof that that was my fault,” Marco whispered. “Get off the floor.”
Jean groaned and sat up against the side of the bed as he rubbed his head. “I don’t know if I want to anymore,” he whispered. “If you’re going to toss me off the bed I can’t trust you.”
“Would you rather freeze?”
Marco received no response, but a minute later Jean was reluctantly dragging himself back into the bed next to him. He was so stubborn about it that Marco had to actively keep himself from laughing, and he hugged Jean tightly.
“What?” Jean huffed.
“You’re such a child,” Marco murmured to Jean, shaking his head. “It’s cute.”
Jean sighed. “If you say so. Let go of me.”
Marco kissed Jean’s forehead and then released his hold on him, turning around to face the opposite way. After he’d settled down, Jean settled down too – he didn’t even thrash around anymore.
Marco didn’t fall asleep as quickly as he had earlier, and instead he lied there thinking. Not really about anything in particular, mostly about his day and all the silliness the past couple nights with Jean and his incredible sleeping positions. He was drifting off when his mind was on Jean, and the last thing he thought about was how nice it would be to be held by him.
Marco woke up the next morning with Jean nowhere to be found, and he sat up, looking around groggily for a couple minutes until he spotted the guy crumpled on the floor like the previous night. He let out a sigh and rolled his eyes, scooting over and jabbing Jean a couple times.
It took a couple minutes, but Marco eventually did get Jean to get up and drag his ass out to start the day. Everything went normal as usual, but Marco couldn’t help but feel that something was a little different. No one was acting weird, and nothing strange was happening, but he still felt like something was off. Maybe it was something about Jean that he’d thought about last night. Who knows?
By lunchtime Marco was sure it was something regarding Jean. Something. Marco kept noticing that stupid, slack-jawed smile of Jean’s; the smug look he would get on his face whenever Eren would screw up; the way he carried himself when he walked; the way he leaned forward just the slightest bit when he’d yawn and rub his eyes.
There was a lot of nice things about Jean that Marco found himself noticing, and he even had to stop himself from staring more times than he’d like to admit to. When everyone was eating lunch, he’d pause and watch the faces Jean would make while he was talking. Jean was always so animated when he was talking – one second he could be smiling that damned smile, and then the next he’d be scowling and rambling on about some stupid comment you’d made. His eyes were nice, too. Yeah.
Marco kept looking at him from time to time, just taking in all his features. Sometimes Jean would notice, and he’d look back at Marco and smile at him for a moment before going back to talking.
It made Marco’s heart jump.
The rest of the day, Marco tried not to look at Jean too much – he was bound to ask about it at some point, and Marco sure as hell didn’t have a good answer.
That night Jean was the one to conk out as soon as he got into bed – he’d spent most of the afternoon pretty much constantly trying to one-up Eren. They’d both wound up slamming into each other several times and getting their 3DMG all tangled up, and it overall didn’t go that well for either of them.
Marco got in next to Jean a few minutes after Jean had gotten there, and he waited a moment to make sure Jean was actually asleep before hesitantly hugging him. He tried to fall asleep like that, but his heart was beating too fast and his face felt hot and his mind was a clusterfuck of oh God, he’s going to wake up and I don’t know what to say, he’s going to thrash around and smack me or something, oh God, what if he starts having some crazy nightmare and I can’t wake him up, oh my God—
When Jean haphazardly hugged Marco back in his sleep, Marco just about went into cardiac arrest.
-
The days went on like this for a while. Get up, get Jean up too, go train, think about Jean, eat, think about Jean, train more, watch Jean, think more about Jean, eat, look at Jean, go to bed with Jean, lie awake thinking about Jean, hesitantly latch on to Jean while he was sleeping, fall asleep thinking about Jean some more. The days went on like this for months. Marco never said anything, Jean never seemed to think Marco was acting strange, and the most anyone else ever did was glance at Marco while he was looking at Jean. No one said anything, the subject never came up, no one seemed to notice anything different except Marco. And after a long enough period, it wasn’t different.
Finally one day Marco was watching Jean talk when Jean suddenly stopped and looked at him. He wasn’t smiling like he usually did, and one of his eyebrows was angled up inquisitively.
“What’s up with you?”
It took Marco a moment to realize Jean was addressing him, and when he did he started and sat up a little bit straighter. “What?”
“What’s up with you?” Jean repeated. “You’ve been really distant lately.”
“I have?” Marco asked.
“Yeah,” Jean said, starting to look suspicious. “Is there something on your mind? What have you been up to?”
“Nothing…?” Marco looked at Jean curiously. “I haven’t been doing anything weird.”
“If you say so,” Jean muttered, and he went back to talking as if nothing had happened.
That night, though, before they’d both fallen asleep, Marco heaved a sigh. “Can I ask you something?” he said to Jean.
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever think,” Marco began slowly, “that maybe somebody else already likes you? And that maybe you’re too caught up with Mikasa to see it…?”
“What?” Jean said, perking up a little. “Do you know somebody who does?”
“U-uh.” Marco’s face was heating up again, and he avoided looking at Jean. “Yeah.”
“Really?!” Jean asked happily, actually sitting up and smiling at Marco. “Who? Krista? Sasha? Annie?”
“I couldn’t just tell you!” Marco squeaked. “You’d probably march away and freak them out or something.”
“I wouldn’t!” Jean said defensively. “I’m not embarrassing like that.”
Marco snorted. “Yeah, says the guy who slammed into Eren so hard trying to trip him that he broke his maneuver gear.”
“That,” Jean began, “was not my fault. He veered to the side right when I got up close to him.”
“Uh-huh.” Marco rolled his eyes.
“Anyway.” Jean went back to grinning eagerly at Marco. “Tell me who it is!”
“No!”
“Tell me!”
“No! I shouldn’t have even brought it up!”
Jean whined. “Just tell me!”
“Good night!”
Jean kept pleading with Marco to tell him even after he’d put his pillow over his head, but eventually he gave up and they both fell asleep. When they woke up, the first thing Jean did was ask Marco who it was, and every chance after that he’d ask too. And eventually Marco was about to snap.
“Marco,” Jean piped when it was a particularly quiet evening. “Are you ever going to tell—“
“It’s me,” Marco said matter-of-factly, not even looking up from the book he’d been reading.
“What?”
“What?” Marco glanced up at Jean and raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You did!” Jean accused. “You said it was you!”
Marco laughed. “Me? You’re joking. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I’m not…!” Jean squinted at Marco, and Marco just smiled, looking back down at his book.
That night Marco got to fall asleep to Jean grumbling about how he surely wasn’t hearing things.
-
Marco wasn’t planning on saying anything at all to Jean. Sure, he certainly had some kinds of feelings for the guy, but he figured it was just some dumb crush that would pass pretty soon. So he wasn’t going to say anything. Nope.
When a year had passed, though? And his feelings had only seemed to get a little stronger?
Well, Marco was really starting to consider saying something.
How could he, though? Wouldn’t Jean be disgusted? Though, he hadn’t reacted all that negatively when Marco had so casually said it was him a while back.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure what to do.
He might as well take a shot at it.
Should he tell Jean face-to-face? He might risk someone else finding out, however, especially if Jean freaks out and has some outburst. Maybe he should try writing something.
It was worth a try.
-
The next evening would have Marco sitting by himself, not even touching his food. He was so restless and unfocused that he’d messed up countless times throughout the day, and now he was practically trembling with anxiety over how Jean was going to react. He’d avoided him all day because he was so nervous. It was ridiculous because he wasn’t even going to say it out loud – he’d written a little note the previous night to give to Jean when they were finished eating, so he could just zip away and pretend to be asleep afterward. It was just a little folded piece of paper, but it felt heavy in his pocket.
When Jean finally came and sat down across from him like usual, he couldn’t even bring himself to say anything.
Seems he didn’t need to, though.
“I think I’m finally getting somewhere with Mikasa,” Jean said cheerfully, smiling at Marco. “I even ate lunch with her today! She seemed to like me well enough.”
“That’s nice,” Marco said dryly.
“I know, right?” Jean paused to eat some of his food. “I asked her if I could practice sometime with her and she said I could. Maybe she was just in a good mood, but she really did seem to like me. Do you think I actually have a chance? I think…”
Jean rambled on the entire time he was eating, and Marco would only respond with a generic “uh-huh”, “okay”, “that’s cool”, “yeah”, “sure” from time to time.
By the time everyone else had started to finish, Marco had decided not to tell Jean after all.
He couldn’t ever measure up to Mikasa. Not in Jean’s eyes. That was obvious.
He went to bed that night sleeping as far away from Jean as he could, that note he’d written forgotten in his pocket.
-
Marco never said anything to Jean.
He kept that note in his pocket, though. He thought that maybe someday he’d find some confidence to just hand it over, but that day never came.
Jean finally found it when he found Marco’s body, that little paper poking out of his pocket.
Suddenly, all those little things made sense: why Marco was staring at him, why he’d pretended not to have said anything that night, why he’d seemed so distant whenever Jean would talk about Mikasa. What he meant all those times that he even vaguely hinted at someone liking Jean.
He memorized what that note said, and he never took it out of his pocket.
And after that, the nights seemed to become unbearably cold for Jean, no matter what the season.