Marco’s always had enough feelings and liquid happiness and warm, soft-red love for the both of them.
Maybe that’s why Jean’s mouth is empty of any sound when the titan’s jaw closes around him, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t scream, or cry, or close his eyes.
He’s lost his heart months ago. It’s only now that it does its last beat, and stills.
“You should be proud, Jeanbo. There are only a few men who stay a soprano even after voice break.” His mother smiles, warm fingers running through Jean’s hair as she hugs him tightly. Jean hates that he’s still comforted by this even at sixteen, that his tears and dark sobs stop coming after an hour or so, that he almost forgets about the teasing of his classmates about him singing the solo in the town’s small choir. They’ve always looked down on him. Now, it’s bullying.
A soprano. He had hoped for tenor, at least, but his voice break came and went without any change to the melodies echoing in his throat. Speaking, yes, that works, but he’s got no friends to talk to anyways, and as soon as the ‘gay’ rumours start, all is lost. It’s true, yet he wishes it wasn’t. He loves singing and he loves boys. None of it is right to the people that share a classroom with him.
“It’ll be alright,” his mother hums, a melody of Jean’s favourite song on her lips. “Everything will be fine. You’ll find your place, somewhere, believe me.
Jean finishes school without knowing what a camping trip with friends feels like, but knowing very well what the words ‘fag’ and ‘disgusting’ feel inside his chest.
His mother cries and kisses him goodbye when he leaves for a town that’s bigger in mind and smaller in space than the cold village he grew up in. It will take time to figure out a major, but he’s got a flat and food and a warm bed, and – his university has a choir.
On his first day of university, Jean enters the rehearsal room. There aren’t a lot of people to audition, and he’s up quicker than he’s hoped. The choir’s leader is a short man with dark hair and even blacker eyes that frown at every applicant equally. He points out that Jean’s choice of song is “a bit unconventional, isn’t that a duet?” And before Jean can say anything else, the choir leader waves another singer closer, and asks whether he’s familiar with the score.
The answer is a yes. The other singer has a nightsky of freckles on his nose, and a smile that drags the floor away from underneath Jean’s feet. He quickly looks down when the man stands by his side.
“I’m Marco,” he says, but the choir leader orders them to start already, and Jean’s world blurs into a caleidoscope of music and melodies as soon as the first word leaves Marco’s lips.
No more talk of darkness
Forget these wide-eyed fears
I’m here, nothing can harm you
My words will warm and calm you
The warm shivers running through Jean’s blood shouldn’t feel so good. He closes his eyes and listens, floods away with the heavy drawl in Marco’s voice, some accent he doesn’t know and cannot care about. It’s like they’re singing together, for each other, voices and words melting together. His part comes up – and Jean breathes, natural, opens his mouth.
Say you’ll love me every waking moment
Turn my head with talk of summer time
Say you need me with you now and always
Promise me that all you say is true
That’s all I ask of you
The room is quiet around them. Jean doesn’t notice the taste of salt on his lips until a hand comes down on his shoulder. Somewhere, in the back of his vision, he can see the rest of the choir staring as he opens his eyes. But right in front of him is Marco, fingers curling around Jean’s shaking shoulders, and the words
Love me, that’s all I ask of you
on his lips. Marco smiles. He brings a hand to Jean’s face to wipe his tears, and says something that sounds like “welcome” through the daze of emotions inside Jean’s head. Jean blinks and smiles back, weak, overwhelmed.
“I like your voice,” Marco says, suddenly.
Jean’s first day at university is new and strange and nerve-wrecking. And still, he couldn’t have asked for more.
Jeanmarco Week 2015. Day 1: B
egin againorDream on
“Marco!”
If all other laws of nature crumble apart, this one will always and forever stand adamant and untouched – when Jean calls his name, loud and wild and with a smile that has his face light up in amber, Marco follows, every single time, no matter what.
Jean finds new dreams for them, and Marco takes his hand to guide him around stones that lie in their way. Together, they walk. Together, they dream on.
“Do you think we have a chance?”
Jean’s fingertips sow embers on Marco’s skin, and he shivers when warm hands dance down his spine, tracing the vulnerable bones that protect the flesh under which his soul flows. Marco doesn’t know what to say. They are lucky, this time. This reality is free of war and blood, there’s cars and a blue sky and a warm bed that belongs just to them and nobody else. Marco knows that Jean is afraid. He knows that he jolts awake at 4 a.m., crying and shaking, a hand digging nails into Marco’s shoulder until he opens his eyes. That’s when Jean sobs “alive, you’re a-alive” and crawls into his arms as if he wants to vanish inside Marco’s thundering heart.
He turns around, catches Jean’s soft cheeks between fingers and kisses him. The tiny noise Jean makes when Marco backs away is gorgeous, and he wants it only for himself. He smiles. Jean’s eyes are gold, liquid hope.
“Yeah. I think we’ll be alright.”
Jean knows he doesn’t deserve happiness. He’s not brilliant or talented, and he certainly doesn’t do any good to the world. But Marco smiles, sun rising on his cheeks, and kisses away all doubts from his trembling mouth. “You’re always enough,” he says. Jean knows he’s telling the truth. He’s never heard a more beautiful story than the one Marco whispers to him through touches, kisses, a strong body against his own. Maybe Jean doesn’t deserve it, but god does he take all the happiness Marco radiates into his heart.
Marco’s gentleness is a wildfire on his skin, and Jean watches, stunned in silence, as his own freezing rage fades and a soft warmth he never thought he’d deserve spreads through his bones, underneath the holy touch of Marco’s hands, mouth, kisses.
Jean didn’t believe the sweet words about how love could hurt more than a broken arm, a flesh wound, the disappointment in his father’s eyes. He didn’t believe that the reason he’d been banished from the house he grew up in, where he learnt to walk and sing, that this reason could bring him anything but pain and fear and knowing that he was wrong, wrong, disgusting, “you aren’t our son anymore”.
He didn’t believe that love could hurt so bittersweet and perfect that it swept him off his feet, right into the arms of a stranger with cheeks that were golden from freckles, a smile that was warm and welcoming and looked like chocolate and the home he was missing.
Marco found him when he was a lost child, and Jean fell for him as if he’d been born to be with this gorgeous, breathtaking hurricane of a man.
Jean teaches him the foreign language of bravery with dark promises and whispered love, with a tongue sliding along the cold of his body and lighting him on fire, with star-shining fingertips that trace all of Marco’s ugly battle scars, and with the touch of lips on his own that swear an oath of “my love, you’re the most beautiful thing I was ever allowed to love”.
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.
Marco doesn’t say it out loud. Ever since that accident took his voice, he spells love in another way.
His lips press hot, burning lines of fire into Jean’s skin. They slide up his jaw, scattering along the sharp ivory of his collarbone, nails scratching lightly until the paleness of Jean’s nipples is bruised in the most beautiful way. He loves it, he loves it all, please don’t stop. Jean bites his mouth and closes his eyes, panting heavily and whimpering until Marco smiles. His fingers cup Jean’s face, tips glowing like embers, pupils gone dark, breath quick.
He doesn’t say it out loud. Instead, his lips smile and his warm, goddamn perfect hands pull Jean close, on top of him, till they’re one and moving together, slick and good and world-shattering.
‘Happy Birthday’, Marco’s silence says, and his fingertips spell love in bold, eternal letters.
Moami 