#pikujean

At the moment, a recent discovery has forced her to find a different place to sleep. Under normal circumstances, the revelation would make her smirk as she closed the cabin door, perhaps even making a dig about Armin and Annie suddenly deciding to appreciate each other’s company in the midst of the night. But with the exhaustion currently plaguing her system and making her limbs feel as heavy as lead, Pieck lacks the energy to care. 

So she wanders the passageways in the dark, the ends of her white nightgown flowing by her legs with every step. The upside to being this fatigued is that she’s far too tired to be surprised by walking in on the couple — though at a certain point, Pieck wonders if there’s no other part of this ship where Armin and Annie could enjoy each other like a five-course meal. As limited as the space is, there’s certainly no shortage of rooms with working locks. But then again, perhaps Pieck is in no position to judge. 

So she continues to walk with cat-like tread, the material of her slippers cushioning the sound of her footfalls. It isn’t long before Pieck arrives at her location, a cabin near the bow of the vessel. She wastes no time and knocks on the door. She waits a few seconds, mindlessly tapping her foot as the seconds pass, then knocks again when she realizes that the first few had heeded no results. 

Before she knows it the door opens. As to be expected, Jean looks utterly exhausted at this time of night, standing bare-chested, bare-footed, and clad in only the bottoms of his sleepwear. His hair looks so dishevelled that one could never guess how much fancy pomade he slathers onto it every day. His facial hair looks rather unkempt as well, looking further from stubble and a lot closer to a short beard in this light. He seems to be fighting back a yawn just before he greets her.

“What do you want, Pieck?” asks Jean in lieu of a proper welcome. 

Despite the peculiar circumstances, Pieck manages a smile just before she speaks. 

“Hey, so I just walked in on Armin and Annie…”  she begins, then pauses to think of a proper way to describe what she had seen. “…doing something best done in privacy.”

Normally, Jean would either laugh, roll his eyes, or do a little bit of both. Pieck would be in a similar boat, as she had become accustomed to either chuckling along or nudging him with her elbow whenever they noticed Armin and Annie going out of their way to be alone together. At this point, Annie’s usual excuse of “helping Armin with paperwork” was almost comically transparent. 

But tonight, Jean lacks the energy to even smirk at the scenario. Instead, he stares at her blankly without even a hint of an understanding nod. 

“Seeing as Armin won’t be needing his bunk right now…” Pieck continues. “…do you think I could take it?”

Jean shrugs nonchalantly. “It’s all yours.” 

He steps out of the way and lets her into his cabin, an offer she graciously accepts. 

The space consists of two bunk beds stacked on one side, a porcelain sink on the other, and nothing more. It’s identical to the room she shares with Annie, yet the presence of Jean’s larger frame makes it feel just a little bit smaller. The bed on the top is pristine and untouched, whereas the bottom looks like it had been recently used by a poor soul trying to cram all six-foot-something of himself onto the limited space. 

Suddenly all of Jean’s complaints about their accommodations lacking in certain dimensions feel a lot less petty. 

Jean closes the door behind them, then grabs the top off his sleepwear off a nearby hook before pulling it over his torso. He leaves it unbuttoned as he rubs his tired eyes, gracelessly climbing onto the bottom bunk and settling on his back with a hand behind his head. His casual, unfazed demeanor is much appreciated on her end — as well as his current state of undress, but it’s not like she’d let him know that. It helps that they’ve been in this position before — her looking for a new place to sleep because the resident tiny blondes decided to spend the night dancing horizontally, Jean being more than accommodating, and Pieck suddenly having a front-row view to her comrades’ chest hair. 

Surprisingly, Jean is quite comfortable with a lady in his sleeping space. She’s not entirely sure why, but as Pieck kicks off her slippers she thinks of all the times she had nonchalantly hopped into Porco’s bed when he wasn’t in it (much to his annoyance), or the stories Connie had told her about this girl named Sasha that he and Jean once knew. Evidently, Jean had spent a lot of time in the presence of a female friend, falling into the kind of closeness where certain boundaries could come down. Pieck briefly muses on how their experiences on both ends had led to this — to Pieck feeling safe enough to request the spare bunk for the night and Jean as courteous as he can be about the situation. 

“So… what’d you catch them doing this time?” Jean asks as he gets settled. 

Pieck scoffs, reminding herself to look him in the eye. “Something that makes them legally married in at least six and a half countries.”

Her flippantness makes him raise an eyebrow. “Six and a half?”

“Don’t ask,” Pieck asks as she climbs the ladder leading to the top bunk. When she majestically flops onto the bed, she lets out a grunt that feels louder than she intended it to be. 

The mattress below her feels like the dozens she had slept on before — somewhere between too firm and too soft, but never just right. She sighs as she shifts her body on the foreign surface, doing her best to get comfortable in the unfamiliar space. The scratchy ship sheets feel cold as she pulls them over her frame, a feeling that she knows will go away once she gets settled yet she can’t stop herself from ignoring it. She closes her eyes and practically wills herself to fall asleep, desiring nothing more than to just get things over with already. Even if there’s nothing important happening in the day ahead of them, the sooner she embraces slumber like an old friend the better. 

Pieck doesn’t know how much time passes before she suddenly remembers that she had missed out on a vital part of her routine, something she had grown accustomed to doing nearly every night of her very unaccustomed life. 

“...oh fuck,” she says once the realization settles into her. 

In the bunk below, Jean hums, sounding like he’s closer to sleep than she is. “What?”