Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1594529.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Shingeki_no_Kyojin_|_Attack_on_Titan
  Relationship:
      Jean_Kirstein/Eren_Yeager
  Additional Tags:
      dudebro!au, Sexual_Content, Homophobic_Slurs, Recreational_Drug_Use, boys
      being_dumb, Swearing, repressed_sexuality, aggressive/violent_behavior,
      somewhat_graphic_descriptions_of_skating_injuries/wounds
  Series:
      Part 1 of dudebro_au
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-05-10 Words: 8340
****** sticky hands and grip tape ******
by searwrites_(sears)
Summary
     originally posted on tumblr.
     ----------
     this was a prompt from superveryvery - erejean skater dudebros that
     dont get along and then do. i liked the prompt a lot and decided to
     do something a bit more substantial with it
It’s one of those days that signifies the beginning of summer - where the air
isn’t that warm, but the sun seems to bake the concrete and heat you from the
soles of your feet up through your bones. Eren still wears a hoodie, his old
one that says ‘modern life is war’ in white lettering on the front, the one
that has holes at the sleeves for his thumbs to fit through. He usually can’t
stand the summers - they drag on forever and this town is boring as fuck as it
is, but something about today just feels good.
 
He traipses over to the skate park, shoes scuffing against the tarmac as he
crosses the street to it, and then stops dead at the gate, sits and glares at
the sight before him. The park isn’t usually this packed, but that’s beside the
point - there’s a crowd forming. Around a person, it seems, that’s hogging the
the back platform of the vert wall.
Eren approaches it as if he doesn’t care, as if something new or some kind of
celebrity being in this town isn’t exciting. He shoves his hands in the pockets
of his torn up blue jeans, stands up on the balls of his feet as he gets to the
gaggle of teens just to see what all the fucking commotion is about. The fact
that more than half of this crowd is made up of chicks is not something that
goes unnoticed.
“Dude, you’re from Cali? Holy shit, have you met anyone famous?”
“You’ve skated the boardwalk before?”
“Do you surf too?”
Eren scowls at the sight he’s met with - this neon plug fucking beach waster.
He’s got a beanie that’s too small shoved on the crown of his head, one that
will almost definitely flop right off of him once he kicks off, and then these
skin tight denim shorts cut off above the knee paired with a hideously bright
yellow tank. What kind of asshole wears cut off shorts, honestly?
“Excuse me,” Eren says, voice sharp and threatening, “Some of us actually
fucking skate here.”
He shoves his way through the crowd, ignores the squawks and glares, and then
not-so-accidentally bumps into the beach hipster. Serves him right for
existing, really.
“You can’t skate in any of the other half a mile of concrete, bro? Gotta shove
off right here, huh?” Neon asshole asks, and Eren pushes right up into his
face, sneers and bares teeth like a dog protecting his territory.
“Muscle beach is that way,” Eren says, pointing back to the road with his
thumb, and then he positions his deck on the edge of the ramp, hooks it on the
truck to keep it there.
Eren isn’t stupid. He hears what the girls are saying about him. “He’s an
asshole, ignore him” and “No friends apparently means no fucking manners” or
“Shove him off it, Jean.”
“Nah bro, just move back, it’s cool.”
Eren whips his head around at this, glares at this Jean dude like he’s offended
he isn’t more pissed off than this. Jean is actually pulling the crowd away
from the ramp, giving Eren space. He says something about ‘showing them later’,
and then as Eren kicks off, the crowd finally disperses.
-
The sun is just beginning to dip below the horizon, cooling the air down, and
if Eren’s skin wasn’t damp with sweat, he would’ve noticed it sooner. He’s got
the hoodie pushed off his shoulders, hanging around his elbows as he stomps to
a halt, kicks up his board, and moves to leave the park for the night. He’s got
homework to do, too much of it. Being in all advanced classes in high school
sounds a lot less intimidating than it actually is.
Eren nearly jolts out of his skin then, because Muscle Beach is sitting back on
one of the quarter pipes around the dome, his legs dangling, kicking against
the structure of it. He’s watching Eren, has been for some time, it seems.
“The fuck do you want? Got nothin’ to do now the sluts aren’t lined up to suck
your dick?”
The boy laughs - actually fucking laughs, so hard he keels over with it,
clutches his stomach.
“Oh man, why are you so fucking angry? I thought grungers actually being full
of teenage angst was a myth, thanks for proving that particular stereotype
right, bro.”
Eren frowns, deep enough that he can feel it in the wrinkles between his brows,
can tell he’s making his face ugly and isn’t intending to. Fuck this guy, he
doesn’t know shit. Eren should walk away, and is about to, but then he starts
running his mouth again.
“I’m Jean,” he offers, and Eren rolls his eyes, “You’re Eren, right? Sasha told
me your name. I just moved here, I’m from-”
“Cali, yeah, I heard,” Eren says, tone full of annoyed bite. Why is this
conversation even happening? When is the honest to god last time anyone wanted
to talk to him since Armin moved away?
“Right. You’re pretty good, you know?” Jean says, like Eren should be flattered
by the compliment, and Eren scoffs.
“Pretty good? The fuck do you know about good?”
Jean shrugs, smiles with only half his mouth. “Enough,” he says.
Eren decides this conversation is going nowhere, and it’s kind of weirding him
out how this Jean kid is all smiles at him now, acting like he’s interested in
Eren. Eren isn’t even interested in himself, shit.
“Hey, you should swing by my place tomorrow,” Jean calls out, but Eren keeps
walking. “I live in the blue house at the cul-de-sac, you know where that is?”
Yeah, Eren knows. It used to be Armin’s house. Still, he ignores Jean and
doesn’t turn around, hops over the rail to get to the fence gate at the road.
“I’m building a half-pipe in my backyard, you could test it out for me, yeah?”
Jean shouts, and this gives Eren pause.
He turns, glares at Jean, and asks, “Why the fuck are you building a half-pipe
when you live two blocks from the park?”
Jean shrugs, does that stupid crooked smile shit again. “That’s what I do.”
Eren can only imagine. That’s what he does - like he needs more magnetism to
get people interested in him, needs more reason to have these kids want to be
around him, at his house. He’s from out of town, that’s more than enough, but
it’s only been one day, and this guy already seems like a total whore for
attention.
“Whatever,” Eren mumbles, and then leaves the park.
-
So, Jean is a total tool.
Eren blames his glaringly obvious tool-age as the reason for thinking about
this. In the end, he decides to actually go to Jean’s house, if only to see
what it’s like without Armin there. Which doesn’t make any sense at all, but no
one has to know that. He tries to think up an excuse for Jean, for showing up
at his house like one of the many from the flock of sheep he’s probably
filtered in and out of his backyard, but Eren can’t find it in him to makeup
that kind of bullshit lie. He’s curious, he’ll settle for that.
He lets himself in through the gate, momentarily forgetting that it isn’t his
former best friend that lives here anymore, that he can’t just waltz in like he
owns the place. He almost turns around and leaves, spooks himself into
realizing what a fucking dumb idea this was, but Jean snaps his head around and
catches him, stands from where he was leaning over what looks to be a
practically finished half-pipe.
“Shit, I didn’t think you’d come,” he says, and Eren rolls his eyes, tosses his
board deck-side down in the grass.
“Friend used to live here,” he mumbles, surprising himself with his own honesty
and then blushing from it, distracting them both from whatever he just said by
knocking aimlessly on the curved plywood of the ramp.
“You build this in a day?” Eren asks disbelievingly, standing to push the
weight of his foot against the seams in the wood. “You only just moved in,
right?”
“I already cut the frames and supports before we moved,” Jean says, and Eren
walks over to his board to pick it up. “Just had to put it all together.”
“Sounds like you bought a fucking kit,” Eren grumbles, and Jean rolls his eyes.
Eren places his board in the center, crouches down and rolls around using his
hand on the pipe for support, surprised by how impressed he actually is with
it. No lumps, it’s nice and smooth.
“It’s not rocket science,” Jean says, and then jumps up to sit on the platform.
Eren doesn’t even ask, just starts to skate, slipping a few times with how
fresh the surfacing is, and ignores the way Jean is so obviously watching him.
“Pretty good,” he says intentionally, huffing and running fingers through his
greasy hair, his skin only just starting to get sticky with sweat. It still
isn’t hot, but Jean makes it look like it is - still in those too-short-shorts
and barely there tops.
Jean smirks, “Thanks. Few people around here have asked me to build them one
too, might make some decent cash from it.”
Eren snorts, smirks a little himself when he skids his board and the screech of
the wheels makes Jean flinch. “Why the fuck would anyone pay you to build them
a pipe when they have a park?”
Jean shrugs, fiddles with some twined up hemp fucking bracelet he has around
his wrist. “Convenience, I guess?” and then he looks up at Eren, “Privacy?”
Eren says nothing, and apparently this only pushes Jean into spewing more
bullshit. “You can come skate here whenever you want,” Jean offers, on some
kind of similar tangent to whatever he was talking about before with the whole
privacy thing, and it pisses Eren off. “You obviously know how to let yourself
in. Come by whenever, you know?”
Eren ignores this on purpose, hoists up his board and hops off the platform
into the grass, makes a break right for the gate. He’d gotten what he wanted.
Yeah, house looks the same, grass still grows, the half-pipe works. Back to the
park.
“You ever longboard?” Jean calls out after him, and Eren groans at how this is
turning into a thing for him.
“No, we aren’t surfers here. No ocean means no waves, bro, or haven’t you
noticed?”
“Oh, I have noticed,” Jean says, and Eren turns just in time to watch him
sprint over to him, the loose hem of his tank top bouncing around his chest.
Which is a fucking odd thing to stare at, so Eren pulls his eyes up to Jean’s
face. “Here,” he says, handing Eren a blue and brown longboard, big and hideous
orange wheels, just as neon as Eren would expect from Jean. “You’ve got the
perfect roads for it, could drift for miles downtown.”
Eren snorts, pushes the board back into Jean with probably too much force. “I
don’t do that shit,” he says.
“Don’t?” Jean asks, and then cocks his head to the side, “Or can’t?”
“Fuck you,” Eren says, and then snatches the board from Jean’s fingers, tosses
it down to the concrete a little too hard and pretends he can’t see Jean’s shit
eating grin out of the corner of his eye.
They ride down the length of Jean’s street, slow and lazy, Eren stood stiff
with hands in his pockets on the board. It wobbles more, but at this speed it
doesn’t really make a difference. Jean is way too into it, crouching down and
letting the very tips of his fingers brush against the asphalt beneath him,
swerving into a drift, despite the road being completely flat here.
Downtown here isn’t like downtown anywhere else - it’s small, only about four
blocks wide and maybe six deep, but it’s the only part of town that boasts real
hills, that isn’t completely flat. Jean doesn’t even give any kind of warning,
just crouches real low on his own longboard and scoots off, drifts from side to
side down the slope, uses his hands on the ground to pull him back from the
curves. It’s like he’s surfing and the road is his wave, and Eren lets himself
get lost in that for only about half a second before he remembers Jean is
expecting him to follow.
Eren pushes off, crouches down with probably significantly less grace, and then
starts off down the hill. There’s no cars, the town is dead right now, so
there’s no real reason to panic. Even still, Eren’s heart starts thundering in
his chest, lands a little too heavily on his hands a few times and scrapes his
knuckles. He misses a swerve, goes out a little too far at too high speeds,
wobbles and loses his footing. Jean is way the fuck down at the bottom by now,
so he probably has fucking front row seats to Eren’s foot slipping and then him
subsequently eating shit.
The board skitters off out of his scope of vision and his entire body flips
with the awkward angle he was at. His knees thud against the concrete, followed
by his hip, followed by his elbow. On every point of impact Eren’s brain
fizzles out a little, and then once the world has stopped spinning, Eren lifts
himself up onto his hands, notices how mangled and bloody his knees are, torn
right through the denim in his jeans. His elbows are scuffed, too, little holes
in the sleeves of his hoodie.
“Jesus,” Eren hears, and then groans inwardly at the sound of Jean’s feet
slapping against the asphalt, at the fact he’s fucking running over to him,
“You didn’t say you couldn’t cruise, fuck, I just assumed you could. Are you
alright, bro?”
Eren sits back on his knees, shoves at Jean hard enough to have him falling
backwards onto his ass, which is only satisfying until he sees the wince on
Jean’s face. Which is fucking infuriating in itself - why should he give a shit
if he hurts this asshole? Eren shoves that train of thought aside, pushes up to
stand.
“Fuck off,” he says, pulling his hoodie back up over his shoulders, wincing
himself as he tries to pull his jeans up over his wounds.
“You don’t have to be such a dick,” Jean bites out, and Eren catches sight of
him standing again, picking up his board. “Hurt your fucking pride more than
your knees, apparently.”
“Suck my dick,” Eren mumbles tiredly, stalking away.
“Maybe I will the next time your lonely ass comes crawling to my house.”
“Is isn’t your fucking house!” Eren yells, voice cracking with the force of it,
and then turning back as his cheeks burn in shame at letting through that much
obvious emotion.
“It is now,” Jean says, but Eren is far enough away that he can pretend he
doesn’t hear him.
-
Eren sees Jean at school sometimes. He ignores him just the same as he ignores
everyone else, the same as everyone else ignores him.
Except Jean doesn’t ignore him. Jean will catch him staring and wave at him
like he wants to come over, Jean will say ‘hi’ in the hallways and laugh when
Eren burrows into his hoodie, hikes his backpack up higher onto his shoulders.
Eren ignores him because it’s easy, because it’s what he does. It really
doesn’t have all that much to do with what happened over the weekend, although
his knees are still fucking sore from it.
The upside is that Jean is apparently a fucking idiot like the rest of them,
and is in all basic level classes. The only class they have together is
homeroom, because the school is so small that there’s only two homerooms for
the entire senior population.
Just another couple months - then he can stop pretending he wants to be book
smart, and sleep in until the afternoons.
-
Eren only goes back because the park is too busy, skates on Jean’s ramp like
it’s his own, and like he hasn’t been avoiding Jean.
Friday nights are always the busiest, especially since there’s usually a
football game, and the field is across the road from the park. It’s a
degenerate hive for underage drinking and copping a feel on trashy chicks,
which would be appealing, if Eren didn’t hate every single one of them.
Which is why it’s so startling when the back door opens. Eren’s initial
assumption is that it’s Jean’s parents, coming out to yell at him for the noise
and to tell him to fuck off, but it’s actually Jean that walks out, in a too-
tight pair of joggers and a tshirt, looking pretty fucking cozy. He grins at
Eren and leans over the rail on his porch, smiles like he’s just as surprised
as he is pleased with himself. Eren figured of all people, Jean would be the
first one to line up for that kind of ritualistic teenage circlejerk back at
the park, but maybe not.
“Hey,” Jean says casually, and Eren’s sneakers squeak louder than his wheels
when he skids to a stop. “You missed me?”
Eren scowls at him. “Fuck off,” he says, and then uselessly adjusts his hoodie
over his shoulders, submits to his nervous ticks.
Jean’s grin only grows, if it were possible, and he leans further over the
rail. “Maybe I missed you,” he says, and Eren glares at him like he’s just
admitted to fucking his sister and liking it, or something.
“Are you high?” he practically yelps.
Jean snorts, crumbles in on himself with the laugh, like it’s weighing him
down. He doesn’t even have to confirm it, Eren knows, but he still slurs out a,
“Yeah, bro. Hah.”
“God, you’re fuckin’ gay,” Eren mutters, and he is going to aggressively deny
to the grave that he heard Jean’s baked ass say “so what if I was?”
Eren just huffs, looks down at the holes in his converse, heart pounding in his
chest. It’s just adrenaline, that’s all it is. That and Jean scared the shit
out of him by coming out like that. Coming out of his house. Not… yeah.
“I need to go,” Eren says.
Jean is apparently some kind of superhero when he’s high, because he hops over
the railing like it’s nothing, lands on his feet. The joggers he has flutter
around his bare ankles, and Eren looks at this and realizes he doesn’t even
have shoes on.
“Stay for a while, bro, it’s not even that late,” Jean says, flopping onto the
platform and patting the space next to him, trying to get Eren to sit down. “I
got more weed if you want.”
And he kind of does want, but that would make this feel like more than it is.
Like he actually came here for Jean, or to spend time with Jean, and not to
steal a few quiet minutes on his half-pipe.
Eren sits down next to him, a little farther away than where Jean’s hand was,
all despite the incessant nagging in the back of his brain telling him this is
a bad idea. He’s just nostalgic, he reasons, he’d spent most of his childhood
out in this very backyard, gazing up to the stars and pretending to be out
camping with Armin.
“Sasha’s throwing a party next weekend,” Jean says, and then pulls a mangled
looking joint from his pocket, hands it and a lighter over to Eren without him
having to ask. Eren reluctantly takes it, sparks up and lets the weight of the
smoke filling his lungs drag him down, make him heavy with it. “You wanna
come?” Jean asks.
Eren shrugs. “Probably not.”
“You should come with me,” Jean slurs, and then he lazily tosses his arm over
Eren’s shoulders. “It’ll be fun.”
Something about having Jean’s voice so close to his ear, to feeling his breath
on his neck, makes Eren shiver. It’s not bad, but it’s fucking uncomfortable,
and he’s not doing this now. He shoves Jean’s arm off of him with a grunt,
probably far more aggressive than necessary considering how fucking wasted Jean
seems to be already.
“I’m not fucking going,” Eren grumbles, and then he kind of wants to collapse
into a heap and burrow beneath his hood, hide from the world and more
specifically from Jean, because Jean doesn’t even seem fazed, just shrugs it
off.
“Think about it,” he says, and the flippancy with which he says this is what
pisses Eren off enough to get him standing and waltzing right back through the
gate to head home.
-
Eren hates this fucking town.
Eren hates this town, and everyone in it, and yet he still doesn’t want to go
away for college. That should fucking tell you something, that should be a
huge, glaring red flag that he is obviously not interested in furthering his
education, but his mom still refuses to listen. She even threatens to ground
him, and then rescinds it, because she’s too fucking nice.
Nice doesn’t matter when she’s perfected the art of making Eren miserable,
though. He almost lifts his phone to call Armin, but he stops himself. Armin
has new friends, lives in a dorm on the campus of his boarding school now.
Armin will definitely be going to college, but Eren doesn’t want to. He won’t,
he doesn’t fucking care. It makes no logical sense with how much he hates this
place, but people move for regular jobs all the time - he doesn’t need to keep
trying to be smart to accomplish that.
Still. The way his mom looks at him, with that tiny little frown, like she’s
more disappointed in herself than in Eren, makes Eren want to punch a hole in
the wall. He doesn’t have any cigarettes left over from the last time he bought
them, and then aches for a deeper kind of release, and doesn’t realize what
he’s doing until he’s halfway to Jean’s house.
Much like the rest of his life, there is no plan - he’ll figure it out as he
goes.
-
They’re both laid out on the platform of the pipe this time, both sets of feet
dangling off opposite edges of it, heads laying side by side. They’ve got a
pipsqueak of a joint being passed between them, but it’s enough to calm Eren’s
nerves.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Jean asks.
Eren is too baked to snap at him for asking, too drowsy and stuck in this
pathetic melancholic sludge. He wouldn’t talk about this otherwise, but Jean
just makes it so easy.
“My mom wants me to go to a good school,” he says, voice clipped short when he
inhales more smoke.
“Let me guess - you don’t want to?”
Eren exhales, watches the smoke dissipate against the faint light from the
stars, pretends he’s making clouds. Do people look for shapes in their own
clouds? What if you could shape any cloud you want?
Jean reaches up to shove at Eren’s shoulder, and Eren comes back to himself and
answers, “Not really, no.”
Jean then plucks the joint from Eren’s fingers, takes a longer drag and holds
it in his lungs for a while.
“What then, you wanna stay in this town forever? Skate until you’re an
arthritic old geezer, or some shit, and you can’t even bend your knees
anymore?” Jean asks him.
It twinges something sharp enough to get Eren to snap. “Fuck off, dude,” he
bites.
Jean shrugs, and Eren can feel it, shoulders touching heads, close enough that
they’re almost connected like puzzle pieces.
“Alright, it’s your choice,” Jean concedes. He then takes another hit, passes
it to Eren, and quietly adds, “But I think you’re better than that.”
Eren goes back to forming clouds, pretends he doesn’t hear it.
-
Eren ends up going to the party with Jean.
And it’s not because he wants to. Or even because he likes Jean. It’s because
there’s fuckall else to do in this town, and somehow the thought of skating
alone has lost its appeal. Which is a thought he doesn’t want to delve too
deeply into right now.
The worst part is, he’d decided to go the day before. Which meant before he’d
walked over to Jean’s to meet him, he knew where he was going, there was a
vague semblance of a plan. This is only a problem because it makes Eren self
conscious, even if he knows he shouldn’t be. He doesn’t want to impress any of
those assholes, but he still wears his tighter jeans, the ones without holes in
them. He wears a button up flannel and washes his hair, and then gets angry
with himself because he looks like someone he isn’t - ends up tossing his
hoodie over all of it for comfort.
Still, he goes anyway. He goes, and Jean grins at Eren when he sees him like he
knows something Eren doesn’t, so Eren turns right around and walks away. He
knows he isn’t leaving, but then so does Jean, apparently. Jean only skips a
little to catch up to him, starts walking by his side towards Sasha’s house.
Jean looks more casual than he does, too, which is infuriating for some reason.
He’s got the same skinny shorts on with a Volcom tee, and then a snapback that
sits halfway up his head, the bill of it flat. His hair curls up into it too,
like he’d styled it, but that’s the only indication that any real effort was
put into this look. Eren isn’t even as bothered by the fact he wears shoes
without socks anymore, he’s just kind of nervous about everything now.
The party itself is so fucking unappealing, Eren doesn’t understand why almost
their entire high school is here. The music is too loud and too poor in
quality, the bass rumbles all of the bullshit knick-knacks on the shelves of
all the walls, makes it seem like the entire structure is jumping. Jean grips
Eren’s wrist, pulls him through the steaming crowd of sweating and grinding
teens, and then places him safely in the corner of the kitchen as he pours them
both drinks.
Two rum and cokes in, Eren hasn’t moved. Jean asked him if he wanted to dance a
few times, but Eren refused to even grace those kinds of questions with
responses. Eventually, of course, Sasha waltzes over. There’s been people
coming up to say ‘hey’ to Jean all night, but they never stick around for long
when they see who he’s with. Sasha seems a little bit tipsy, though, so she
doesn’t seem to mind.
She leans up on her toes to whisper something into Jean’s ear, and Eren’s gut
churns in rage. How fucking rude can you be, what kind of a shitty hostess
tells secrets at herown party? She has one arm gripping Jean’s bare bicep, the
other curled around his shoulder, and Eren suddenly hates her more than anyone
else in the room.
“Over there?” he hears Jean ask her, once she’s done fluffing up her tits,
putting herself on display. She’s only wearing a black skirt and a sweater, but
Eren would still say she looks like a slut. Doesn’t have to explain that to
anyone.
“Yeah,” she says, and then glances out over the crowd of people currently
cavorting in her living room, bites down on her lower lip.
“Really?” Jean asks, and something in his voice makes Eren pay more attention,
has him turning and looking like perhaps an active participant in this
conversation. “That’s who you’re fucking?”
Sasha punches him in the arm, and Eren is flooded with a strange rush of
relief. The rum must be finally getting to his bloodstream. Maybe now that she
isn’t whispering and rudely excluding her own guests, Eren is less inclined to
hate her.
“Jesus, we’re not fucking,” she says, cheeks tinged pink. “We’ve been on like
two dates.”
Jean uses his height over her to his advantage, sizes this guy up. Eren glances
out to where Jean is looking, and catches Connie standing awkwardly in the
corner, scratching the back of his neck like he doesn’t know what to do with
himself. About time, Eren thinks. He only wonders who asked who out, who got
there first.
“Eh, he’s alright, I can see it,” Jean says, and for some reason this makes
Eren blush.
Sasha does too, and then slaps his arm and says, “God, you are so fucking
flaming.” She then turns to Eren, and startles him by speaking to him as she
asks, “How can you stand hanging out with him?”
I can’t, Eren thinks, I can’t fucking stand it, because I don’t understand why
I get so excited the closer we sit on the half-pipe, I don’t understand why
just sitting there with him feels almost better than dropping from the lip of
the ramp, he came in and built quarter inch plywood walls around the two of us,
and he’s not fucking letting me leave.
Eren doesn’t say any of this, though. His chest is burning from something,
something he assumes is just alcohol, even though he’s never felt anything
similar to it before. His limbs feel a little light, not entirely different to
a high, and he catches Jean smiling at him and wants to scream.
He shrugs in response to Sasha’s question, decides it’s probably best not to
answer it.
What she says next makes Eren’s blood run cold, makes all of that warm,
pleasant fuzz from earlier drop right out of him.
“You two make a cute couple.”
“Fuck off, Sasha!” Eren yells, pushing her so hard she stumbles backwards, and
ignores the enraged and protective outcry that follows in his wake, storms
right the fuck out of her house without looking back.
Eren tunes out the rest of the world, chucks whatever was left in his red cup
into the grass and adjusts his hoodie over his shoulders as he shoves his fists
in his pockets and walks home.
Jean sprints up behind him only a moment or two later, stops him by placing a
hand on his shoulder, which Eren violently jerks away from. Jean sighs and
instead chooses to face Eren, to walk backwards since Eren refuses to stop
again.
“She was only teasing,” Jean offers, and Eren isn’t doing this, isn’t talking
about this shit right now. “Look, I’m sorry okay?”
Something in Eren snaps. He stops dead, guilt weighing down in his gut, and
flails his arms around for effect.
“What in thefuck are you sorry for?”
“I don’t know?” Jean shrugs, and his voice is all high pitched and strained.
It’s the first time he’s really sounded like he’s at a loss around Eren, and
something about it makes Eren uncomfortable. “I’m sorry I never stick up for
you. People always talk about you and say you have no friends, but I’m your
friend, right? I should stick up for you.”
Eren’s face flushes hotly, his chest aching in something like shame. Jean says
it like he signed some kind of contract, like Eren is a pet he bought and is
suddenly realizing he needs to take responsbility for it. It’s bullshit, and
Jean is probably just drunk and spewing off fucking nonsense.
“Shut the fuck up,” Eren grumbles, and tries to walk past Jean, but gets
stopped again.
“Just, wait, okay? I’m sorry I took you to the party,” Jean says, and Eren
groans with feeling this time.
“Oh mygod, stop fucking apologizing, please-”
“-and Sasha didn’t even mean it, okay, she was just teasing me-”
“Stop!” Eren screams, this time loud enough to get Jean to shut up and look
significantly startled. “I didn’t fucking come here for you, I was just bored,
okay? The only reason I fucking ever hang out with you is because I’m bored.”
Jean pulls back like Eren’s slapped him, recoils from the punch of the words as
his face twists into a confused frown. Eren’s chest goes all tight, hurts the
way it hurts when other people make fun of him at school, and he hates himself
a lot right now. Jean doesn’t try to fight him this time, so Eren stomps the
rest of the way home alone.
-
Jean has the kind of smile that makes Eren angry.
He sees it at school a lot, and somehow the knowledge that he can smile like
that when Eren and him haven’t spoken for almost a week feels not unlike
swallowing moss covered stones, a thick and uncomfortable weight in his gut.
He just- he has this mouth that stretches wide of sharp teeth, ones that make
him seem like he’d be dangerous if he wasn’t so fucking charming. It reminds
Eren of James Dean, or James Franco, or one of those ‘James’ assholes that he
figures are socially acceptable for guys to consider attractive.
But then that would be like admitting he finds Jean attractive, and fuck that
with a nine foot pole.
-
It all boils down to this - Eren sliding open the lock on Jean’s gate from the
other side, slipping into his house on a warm almost-summer afternoon. Eren
half-expected a bunch of people to be here, so he’s a little surprised to see
Jean sitting cross-legged on the lowest point of the half-pipe, a book filled
with some kind of graphic diagrams open in his lap.
Jean glances up to him, his otherwise calm face sliding down into a frown, and
then focuses back down on his book.
“Fuck do you want?” he asks.
Eren shrugs even though Jean isn’t looking, his board thudding as it hits the
grass. “Skate? I guess.”
“You have a park for that,” Jean says sharply, and Eren’s stomach turns.
He isn’t sure why he’s here, didn’t plan this out at all. He doesn’t want to
apologize, that’s not… it’s just, Jean doesn’t seem like he misses him at all,
walks around school like he fuckin’ owns the place and ignores Eren’s existence
like all the rest of them do.
And yeah, okay, it fucking hurts that he does that. After saying Eren was
better than whatever, or sharing his weed, or looking up at the fucking stars
together. Do people honestly just forget that kind of thing? Is it so easy to
forget a friend? Jesus christ, they weren’t even friends.
“Fine,” Eren mumbles, picking up his board. “I’ll leave.”
“You’re a fucking coward, bro,” Jean says, like it’s casual, like he’s back at
that park surrounded by starstruck townies that think a tan is something to
marvel at. Like he doesn’t even know Eren.
“Who the fuck are you, then, huh? Why doyou get to say what I am when you don’t
even talk to me anymore?”
Jean laughs, tosses his head back and makes Eren flinch at how cruel it sounds.
Jean stands up, shakes his head like Eren’s some kind of lost cause, and walks
up to his porch.
“Why would I even want to talk to you?” Jean asks, and this stings a little
more than Eren had hoped. Hearing it come from him and not from his own head,
it isn’t nice. Jean then opens his screen door. “I don’t get perpetually bored
the way you do, apparently.”
Eren stares at the back of him, struck stupid like he can’t move. Something
like rage boils up from within him, threatens to overflow. Jean is being
intentionally cruel, his mind supplies- and acting on blind rage, he bolts into
the house after him.
Jean is out of immediate sight, but it doesn’t matter. Eren knows this house
like the back of his hand, knows the second bedroom is up the stairs, third
door on the right. He takes the steps two at a time, thuds a little too loud to
be in any way stealthy, and then slams Jean’s door shut behind him as he enters
his room.
The worst part is how obviously surprised Jean is, maybe even a little afraid,
and how hard he’s trying to hide it.
“You don’t want to talk to me?” Eren says, getting right up in Jean’s face,
almost a little impressed with the way Jean doesn’t back away from it. “Why in
thefuck wouldn’t you leave me the hell alone then?”
Jean takes a pause at this, scoffs a little and looks at Eren like he’s no
better than the dirt on his shoes. Eren would usually be inclined to agree, but
not right now, not when Jean is making him somehow feel more worthless than
everyone else in his life combined.
“No wonder you have no friends,” Jean says lowly, disgust thick in his tone,
and the last thread holding Eren together snaps.
He shoves Jean backwards hard enough that he hits the edge of his bed, stumbles
backwards on it and hits his head against the wall. His hand immediately
grapples, tugs hard enough that Eren hears the threads on the stitching of his
shirt snap. Jean isn’t doing much to fight him, only flailing and trying to
keep his body in the right position, covering all the potential vulnerable
openings Eren might take advantage of.
They push and shove at each other hard enough that Eren is panting through his
nose, his face hot from exertion, his joints burning from trying to keep Jean
from kicking him away. He ends up pinning Jean to his own bed, sitting on his
stomach and holding both of his wrists in one hand. He must sit on something
funny, because Jean yelps a little, and then it’s like he’s realized he has a
voice.
Only what he says feels like a swift punch to the gut by itself.
“You wanna fag bash me, huh? Do it, then. Fucking hit me.”
Suddenly the room is too quiet. The static filling his ears from earlier is
gone, and all he can hear is the crack in Jean’s voice, the way they’re both
breathing so hard. He jerks backwards like Jean’s spit on him or something, and
his chest aches the worst he thinks it ever has.
“What in the fuck are you talking about?” he asks hazily.
Jean surges up suddenly, grabs Eren by the collar of his shirt. Eren’s brain
braces itself for a punch, but what it gets instead is the rough press of
Jean’s lips, the startling realization that Jean’s mouth is on his mouth, that
Jean is kissing him.
Eren’s brain short circuits then. He yanks Jean’s hands off of him, tears his
shirt for sure this time, and holds Jean back down against his bed. Jean just
lays there, goes a little limp like he’s resigned himself to whatever fate he
just sealed with that kiss. He’s expecting Eren to hit him still, he’s waiting
to get beaten, and Eren is struck with the horribly timed impulse to cry. His
throat goes all tight and his chest aches, and then before he can think about
what he’s doing, he leans down himself.
He kisses Jean harder this time, more like a fight than a show of affection,
but when Jean moans into it, he softens. It kind of feels like throwing up, in
a weird way. His stomach lurches, and his mouth gets all wet, like it’s waiting
for something more than this. The only way he knows he isn’t throwing up is the
distinct flicker of heat in his groin, and suddenly all of it makes sense, and
none of it matters.
Jean moans again, louder this time, tangles his hands up the back of Eren’s
hair, as Eren parts his lips, opens his mouth and starts licking Jean’s tongue.
It’s wet and messy, and Eren is still resisting something he can’t place, but
Jean has gone all soft and pliant beneath him, almost needy, arching up and
chasing whatever brand of poison Eren is currently injecting into his
bloodstream.
Their mouths part eventually, both of them breathing so hard it makes the air
around them feel hot, and then Jean is leaning up to press kisses along Eren’s
jaw, tilting his head to lick and suck at his pulse point. Eren starts rolling
his hips down without realizing it, chasing that feeling in his groin, wanting
something to come of it. He only realizes his arms are trembling when they
buckle in effort and he nearly falls on Jean. To keep it from happening again,
Eren pushes up and away from Jean, and whatever clouded haze they’d entered
somehow clears.
Jean pulls away from Eren, sits and faces him on the bed and looks at him like
he’s still a little afraid. Whether he’s afraid of being hit or waiting for
Eren to bolt and say he’s bored, Eren isn’t sure.
Eren has his own fears, if he’s honest. That this somehow isn’t real, that this
is Armin’s empty house he’s sitting in alone. That Jean is playing a joke, that
this is just an elaborate prank so that everyone else in school can call him a
fag, as well as whatever else they call him. It’s a little late to take it all
back though, and Eren feels sickeningly needy, like the farther away Jean is,
the less stable he feels.
So, he kicks off his shoes, gets up on his knees and scoots closer to Jean.
Without any real grace to it, he wraps his arms around Jean’s neck, pulls him
close enough that their chests are pressed together. The last part that touches
are their lips, and then Eren helplessly whimpers when Jean starts kissing him
with the same kind of expertise he uses to build pipes.
And Eren loses track of time like this, kneeling in between Jean’s legs, his
arms shaking, kissing him so hard his mouth is sore and raw from it. He starts
to re-situate himself, gets off his knees and presses as close as he can, and
that’s when it happens - when Jean pushes close enough that he feels his dick,
hard and hot through his shorts, and Eren pulls back.
It’s more of a perceived acceptable reaction than something he actually wants
to do. He finds himself thinking about it, too, getting lost in it. He’s never
touched someone else’s dick, only his own. It felt warm and hard, even beneath
two or three layers of fabric. He wants to touch it without that there, without
the barrier, which is a startlingly strange thing to think. He tries to regain
his conscious thoughts and then starts touching his mouth, stroking the tender
skin around his lips.
Jean does this thing where he almost surges forward and then stops himself, and
he looks afraid again. Eren hadn’t noticed, too lost in his own head to see it
until he catches Jean’s terrified stare, watches as he carefully crawls closer
to Eren.
“We don’t have to do anything, you know?” Jean asks, and his voice is so
broken, so wrecked from moaning and sucking on Eren’s tongue that it makes
Eren’s cock jump in his jeans. “Kissing is nice, right? We can just kiss.”
Eren nods in a daze, answers with raw honesty, all pretenses of lying to Jean
now completely thrown out the window. Jean scoots real close to him again, cups
both sides of his jaw, and starts kissing him again, slides the wet, swollen
fat of his lips between Eren’s.
I did this, Eren thinks. Jean is panting because of me, his mouth is red and
wet because of me. His mouth is red, and wet, and hot. So fucking hot.
Eren pulls away then, shuts his eyes and rests his forehead against Jean’s.
Jean strokes the soft skin behind Eren’s ear with his thumb, and Eren shivers,
gets distracted and dizzy enough from his touch to ask.
“Will you suck me off?”
Jean’s groan is so deep it sounds like he’s dying. Like Eren can say things
like this and kill him with words. Eren smirks a little at the thought.
“Fuck yeah,” Jean breathes, and then pushes Eren onto his back.
Eren determinedly stares up at the ceiling for all of thirty seconds, basically
until Jean has his pants undone and is yanking them down his legs. He watches
with a sick kind of attention, too horny to really be embarrassed about
anything - how scrawny his legs are, how dark and overgrown his pubes are, how
Jean is probably very gay and has probably seen much more impressive dicks than
his, how Jean is all tanned and smooth skin and Eren is the pastiest white boy
you’ve ever seen.
None of that matters, because Jean pushes Eren’s legs apart, kneels between
them and leans down, and he glances up once at Eren with that fucking half-
twisted smile and then closes his lips over the head of Eren’s cock.
All he does for a while is suck on the head, his tongue rolling against the
slit as he does, his lips still red and hot. Eren stares at him like a fucking
idiot, jaw dropped and stupid, but he can’t look away. Jean’s mouth is so hot,
and when he sucks it’s so tight, so fucking tight, Eren can’t really help but
roll his hips up into it, chasing the feeling.
Jean knows what he’s doing, because he pins Eren down with hands on his hips,
pulls back enough to rub his face on the tip of Eren’s dick, get his lips wet
with Eren’s precome, and then sucks him down as low as he’ll go.
Eren sees stars. Not the kind of stars he sees with Jean’s head next to his,
not the kind of stars you make clouds for with smoke from burning lungs. He
lets his head fall back, starts to whimper Jean’s name for no reason, just
plays with it in his mouth as best he can, lets his stomach muscles jump every
time Jean pushes down a little harder, sucks a little tighter.
“Dude, I’m gonna come,” he says, curling around the focal point of his
conscious being that is currently residing in Jean’s mouth, flinching at how
close he is. The words aren’t even words, he just breathes out and moans, tries
his best to warn Jean. It feels like fire shooting through his veins, like the
best kind of black tar, and then he’s shouting out nonsense and spilling hot
down the back of Jean’s throat.
Eren only has just enough coherence to notice that Jean’s swallowed his come.
His come, the shit usually reserved solely for the drain in his shower and the
center of a fist full of tissues, is sliding down Jean’s throat, inside of him.
Jean then licks his lips and grins, and Eren pounces on him.
He ends up pawing uselessly at Jean’s shorts, leaning up to kiss Jean’s mouth
and moaning at how hot and slick it is, how much of himself he can taste on
him. He fumbles with the buttons, four of them in a row instead of one and a
zip, and can’t seem to pull himself away from Jean’s mouth long enough to
focus.
Jean pushes him away gently, stills his hands and holds him at arm’s length.
Something small and terrifying manifests itself in Eren’s gut, something like
rejection, but it all slips away when he notices just how blown the fuck out
Jean’s pupils are.
“You don’t have to do it back,” Jean says, his voice thick and rough from
having Eren’s dick down his throat. Eren already feels himself getting hard
again, shit.
“Fuck you, man,” Eren says, shoving Jean’s hands off his shoulders, and
scowling even deeper when he notices Jean grinning in response to the outburst,
like he knows he’s got Eren now, he’s got nothing left to worry about.
Because fuck him for thinking Eren doesn’t want to be as much a part of this as
he does. Fuck him for thinking Eren might not want to taste him, might not want
Jean to fuck his mouth and cry out his name when he comes.
“I’m not some kind of pussy,” Eren bites out, a supplement to his earlier
outburst. Jean’s grin turns into a smirk.
“No, I know you’re no pussy,” Jean says, and Eren makes sure to punch him in
the arm before pushing him back, before finally winning the battle with those
fucking buttons and ridding Jean of his shorts.
-
Getting high afterwards is kind of like the icing on the cake. They stumble
back into clothes, legs made of jelly and hearts running like wild rabbits, and
then Jean leads Eren down and outside by the wrist. They lay out on the pipe,
this time in the middle together, with Jean being bold and using Eren’s stomach
as a pillow.
He feels like he has a second heart in his stomach, another pulse that Jean can
probably feel racing, and when Jean pulls out the joint it’s like being given
water after a marathon.
There’s probably something important Eren should say, perhaps both of them need
to say, but it can wait for now. The adrenaline and arousal is finally ebbing
from his blood, finally allowing him to calm and settle, to breathe deep enough
that he can see Jean’s head rise and fall with it from his stomach. Eren pushes
his fingers into Jean’s hair, plays with it, rubs at his scalp. Jean makes a
sound like a purr, and Eren laughs, for what feels like the first time in
weeks.
“You give pretty good head,” Jean says casually, around the smoke billowing
from his mouth.
Eren snatches the joint from him. “Pretty good,” he scoffs, but he doesn’t
resist it when Jean’s hand finds his, when he threads their fingers together
and holds on tight.
This summer might not be so boring now.
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