The happiness in his father’s voice as Erwin pushed a ring onto Levi’s shaking finger was the second-best thing for Eren today. He gently teased Levi as he hugged him, sniffing quietly into the shoulder of his adopted son. “Wow, didn’t think you could cry like that, Dad.”

“Shut up,” Levi returned with a shiver in his breaking voice, and wiped his face before pulling back, eyes glinting with tears of happiness. Erwin beamed by his side, smile radiant as always, and Eren pulled him into a tight embrace as well.

“Told you he’d say yes.”

Levi raised a brow and laced his fingers up with Erwin’s, tip-toeing up to catch his lips into a soft, shy kiss. “You asked our son if you could marry me?”

Erwin only cupped his face and rested his forehead against Levi’s, breath still quick, nervous, from asking his boyfriend of seven years if he wanted to spend the rest of his life by Erwin’s side.

“Of course. And technically, he’s not my…” – “You know that you’re basically his father already? Idiot. You are his dad. He’s your son.” Eren nodded. “True. You’re family, dad.”

It didn’t take much more to have Erwin’s broad shoulders tremble, and Eren rolled his eyes. “You’re both stupid. Tell me when the marriage is. I gotta go buy a proper suit for Jean so he doesn’t look like shit when we’re embarrassing you both by making out on the after-marriage-party in front of aunt Jane.”

Levi threw something after him, and Eren fled upstairs with a grin flashing across his face, hearing Erwin’s warm laughter behind his back. Then there was silence, and a last whisper from Levi. “Yes, yes. Of course I w-want to, god. Thought you’d never ask…”

Eren vanished inside his room. He threw himself onto the bed and dialed Jean’s number. It didn’t take long for a dark voice to echo through the speaker.

“Yeah?”

His grin went soft, gentle. “Hey babe.” He heard Jean shuffle around a bit, and when he spoke back, his words were warm and quiet. “Hello, love.”

Things were okay, Eren thought. Life was good. And the best thing today was when, a few hours later after talking to Jean about the world and everything and how they’d graduate college together next year – that was when they hung up, and just before their phones died, Jean whispered the softest little “I love you… idiot”.

The best thing today.

He started painting because it was the only outlet for his emotions. Mikasa told him that he was just feeling more than other people. Eren doesn’t believe her when he loses all his inspiration from one day to another. So many of his paintings still scream for colour, they beg him for blue and green and the hues of a fresh sunrise, for blood and thick, velvety darkness. Eren sits in front of a blank canvas and can’t find his colours again.

Then there’s Jean. He’s all pale like snow, skin cold and scarred. The red lines run over his arms, along his thighs, and there’s a spot on his leg where a surgery left an deep crimson abyss, hairless and smooth.

They don’t fuck. They meet in a bar, Eren’s hands grasped around a drink that’s supposed to help him find colours and lines. Jean just sits down by his side, touches his arm. Says: “Hello.” And that’s it. They talk all night. It’s four dates until Jean lets Eren kiss his cheek. It’s four more until he strips naked for him and lies down on the warm sheets of his bed, and Eren hasn’t touched him once below his thin, vulnerable throat, but he paints him.

Jean’s skin is the canvas he’s been searching for. The colours return, and they’re brilliant on the snow-white, on the soft cold that shimmers all over Jean. Eren paints for hours and hours, every day, and Jean is patient and silent.

One night, Eren’s emotions return, like a thunderstorm that’s been roaring on the horizon far far away and suddenly comes down with a black scream. It’s impossible to resist. He apologizes a thousand times after just kissing Jean, he pulls him close and lets him go and somewhere, somehow, the word “love” floods from his lips.

Jean is silent. His skin is warm, for the first time ever, when he pulls Eren close and says: “Don’t you dare apologize.” And asks him to please, please – do it again.

The night was the coldest they’d had in centuries, but Eren’s hands were spelling love on his naked skin, and it was impossible to be cold by his side. Jean had long given up to hold back his moans, his sighs that were coloured with heavy, golden desperation dripping down his lips. Eren kissed it all away, a whispered “baby, shh, I’m all yours” flooding Jean’s blood. His toes curled, legs sliding around Eren’s waist.

“Are you scared?” Eren was looking at him as if he was a star, something to be admired. Jean’s heart felt heavy under the admiration he wasn’t used to, the one that Eren was pouring over him – as if it wasn’t worth all diamonds and happiness in the world, to be looked at by those eyes just once.

“No. Never.” His legs tightened around Eren’s waist, Jean’s heavy breath hitching when a thick cock pressed against his hole. Eren closed his eyes and cursed quietly, then leaned over him to rest their foreheads together. His fingers found Jean’s lips and slid along them, salt and warmth and liquid love staying behind as a taste.

“I’m all yours, baby.” Eren held him in his arms as if Jean was his own soul, and then everything became small, unimportant – blurry. Eren slid into him easily, his cock splitting Jean open so beautifully that a sob shattered in his throat and rose out of his lips. “F-fuck, Eren. Eren, Eren, I – please, oh pleaseplease – “

“I got you. ‘m here, shhh.” Kisses on his face, the feeling of being whole, filled up by Eren’s thick cock inside him – Jean fell into those warm arms and smiled, shudders taking over his body, lips curling around another sob. Eren’s lips found his own. “Won’t let anyone hurt you again, baby.”

“I know. I – f-fuck, I’m – I’m not scared anymore.”

Eren’s eyes went wide, his body almost dropping onto Jean. “You – “ But Jean pulled him down, both arms around his strong shoulders, burying his nose into the sharp ivory of his collarbone under warm flesh. “Please.”

And Eren, with a soft smile, something wet shimmering in his eyes, obeyed. He carried Jean away that night, and Jean knew he wouldn’t forget the warmth that spread through his bones and finally, after all this shit and pain, reached his heart and the wreck that was left of his soul.

It Should Be.

It should be Jean standing at the ocean, digging his bare feet into the cold sand, watching the thunderstorm rise over crashing waves, tears blown away by salty wind and dried from the fading sun. It should be Jean, clenching his hand around Eren’s little key, the one that’s always around his neck and dangling where his chest is warm, where his heart is beating softly, steadily, forever. It should always be Jean, seeing the ocean as they’d promised each other, right there when Eren had lost all his limbs from being cut out of the Titan once more, writhing and crying in pain, Jean holding his body and kissing the screaming ache in his bones better.

It shouldn’t be Eren, standing there motionlessly when the storm went down, when rain pattered on his face and carried his wild desperate scream into the skies.

It shouldn’t be Jean’s wings of freedom, the emblem from his jacket, clenched tightly in Eren’s shaking fists, dried blood splattered all over it and the white colour of the wings… gone dark.

Ours.

At first, he thought it’d be a catastrophe. A foolish idea. “I don’t think you understand,” he told Jean and Eren over and over again, fingers tangled tightly in his lap, knuckles white, insecure. “You don’t – I can’t. I, I love you both, f-fuck, I do – but you wouldn’t be happy – ” Jean then leaned in to kiss his mouth, gently, and Eren ran a warm hand through his hair, fingers grazing his neck. “We love you,” Jean said solemnly, and Marco wanted to object, but Eren went on “and we know what asexual means. But we love you. We do. We want you to be ours, and we’ll belong to you.” Jean kissed him again, and Marco nodded, heart aching and tears welling up in his eyes.

It isn’t a catastrophe now. It’s good, it’s warm when he’s sandwiched between their bodies at night, when Eren’s hands rest on his stomach, heavy and strong, when Jean nuzzles his nose into his chest. They’re good. Maybe he can start believing… that they do love him. Because the tenderness they have for him is all he needs, all he thought he’d never get.

December 11th

Erejean. sfw. sadness, death, and a sacrifice of one – to save the life of all.

A loud flourish echoes along the top of Wall Maria. The signal. Jean looks up from the piece of metal he’s been toying with. Mikasa, Armin and Levi are following behind Commander Smith, faces stony and cold, their gear still whirring from cannonballing them up the wall. Levi throws Jean a quick glance when passing by, and there’s something like pity in it. Armin doesn’t speak, neither does Mikasa. Everything’s been said between the three of them. Jean still remembers the scent of white lilies, of rain and an empty grave, three days ago. Nothing left to bury.

Eren.

They line up on the wall, and Jean stands by their side. Armin touches his shoulder, his breath hitching as tears slide down his cheeks. He’s grown up, hair cut short like Mikasa’s. Jean remembers how he used to love her, and then stopped to devote his heart to someone else.

Hanji is the last one. They come with a basket full of shimmering silver that’s moving and trying to crawl up the walls of its cage. Levi takes the basket to hold it, eyes cast away, face dark from shadows and ice-cold hate. They all sacrificed so much, but… not enough. Not as much as –

Hanji takes the weapons out one by one, setting them on the edge of the wall. They look like silver beetles, thick as a fist, with feelers and a blinking red sensor on their blunt heads. The machinery inside whirrs and moves as Hanji touches every single one, activating them. Mikasa wraps her arms around Armin and holds him when he starts to cry. Levi leans against Erwin, whispers the name they’re all thinking about. The Commander wraps his only arm around his neck, kisses his hair. Hanji’s tears are silent when they watch the bugs rise into the air, gas evaporating from their bellies and catapulting them, the sky’s the limit for humanity’s greatest invention.

The Titans they lured to Wall Maria are glaring with hollow eyes and hungry red maws, spit flying, steam erupting from where they stumble into each other. All along the wall are hundreds of soldiers, opening baskets and letting out silver bugs into the air. The rest of them is in the Forest of Giant Trees, and all over humanity’s last safe haven are clouds of shimmering beetles swarming the sky, the sun reflecting on their bodies.

The mechanism is complex and Jean doesn’t understand it, but Hanji does, and all of them remember the sacrifice that it cost one of them. “We will construct a machine that will sit on Eren’s neck. When we need him out of the titan, when he’s going wild or things get dangerous – then the beetle cuts him out precisely. He doesn’t need to lose his limbs each time,” Hanji had said. They had all agreed, had seen the demonstration on the Titan puppets they’d been training with, back in older days. The silver beetle had worked perfectly. Eren had said it was cute and at least small enough so his Titan self wouldn’t be distracted. Jean had mocked him about the silver insect sitting on the nape of his neck for days, they’d fought about it.

They’d kissed before their last mission. He can’t turn back time now. He can’t wrap Eren in his arm and rip the beetle off and –

It was quick. Blood, flesh, no screams. Eren’s heart stopped, and his death had brought humanity victory. Too many Titans attacking him on the last mission. Levi had screamed “get him out, he’ll be eaten!”, and the beetle, conditioned to his voice, obeyed. In theory, things always work. In theory, there’s negative numbers and a peaceful word, love and kindness. The silver beetle twitched once, and then its sharp claws cut.

And they didn’t stop.

There was no corpse to bury, nothing left when the Titans lashed into him. Jean watched. He screamed his heart out, his soul and his living beating heart, cursed at the broken fucking world and at the key dangling around his neck, a simple talisman Eren had given him.

“To protect you, idiot.”

Just days later, the military forced Hanji to change the beetles. A few adjustments and the weapons were programmed to react to a certain body temperature and electrical signals.

Now Jean watches them attack, and he opens his hand to look at the piece of metal he’s holding. The key’s rusty and a little skewed, and Jean gently wipes it until it’s shiny again. While the beetles exterminate, while giant bodies fall like rotten trees, and while all the other soldiers are cheering, the Survey Corps stands still.

The Commander raises his left hand. He salutes. They all follow, fingers against their foreheads. Armin’s broken sobs and Mikasa’s quiet tears travel away with the wind swirling through their capes, and Jean lets his hand sink down to look at the bitemarks they are all carrying on their palms, deep red and just days old.

“Jäger,” Levi says into the wind.

‘You always wanted to protect others,’ Jean thinks and clasps his bitten hand around the key, the talisman he got from warm lips brushing against his own, and a voice whispering.

“To protect you.”

Eren yanks Jean around and slams him into some wall, just after Jean said goodbye in a voice wet from tears and a night of ragged sobbing in Eren’s arms, and Eren whispers the usual soft insults into his ear before he locks their lips too harshly, too gently to be enough, steals Jean’s breath and promises that he doesn’t have to go.
Please don’t.

For once in his life, Jean swallows pride and fear and gives in to the warm hand curling around his neck.