#ritzy-bird

  (Rated T, no content warnings)

          From the kitchen, I listened to Jean talk on the phone with his mom. Since quarantine started, he’d gone from calling her every few weeks to calling her almost every day. It’d been over a year now since he’d flown home, and since then we’d gotten engaged, and we were waiting to tell her until we could see her in person. He was impatient, of course. He was always impatient, that didn’t surprise me. But he was also homesick, something that I had never witnessed in him in the five years we’d been together. He hadn’t liked growing up bi in the south, to say the least, and ever since moving to Chicago for school, he’d been much happier.

           Granted, meeting me and us getting together probably had a lot to do with that.

           On the stove, I stirred the Southern jambalaya I was making. When Jean introduced me to his mom a few years ago, his mom prepared this for him because it was a family recipe, and because she was the only person alive who could get it right and because it was Jean’s favorite. By the fifth or sixth visit to his childhood home, his mom had figured out we were pretty serious even if we hadn’t yet. During that visit, Jean happened to go to bed early one night, and I was comfortable enough to stay up with his mom without him.

           “Come here, Connie,” she said to me, after the first snores from Jean’s childhood home rumbled down the hall.

           I followed her into the kitchen where she pulled a notebook out from one of her cupboards. She flipped to the page she’d written the jambalaya recipe down on.

           “Can you cook?” she asked.

           “Uh, absolutely not,” I blurted.

           She laughed warmly. “Well, this was the first meal my mom ever made for my dad. When I was your age, she taught me how to make it for Jean’s dad. Now I’m going to teach you how to make it for Jean.”

           We spent the rest of the night cooking. I made frequent mistakes. I had never before chopped vegetables and I cut myself. My fingers burned from the peppers. I put too much thyme in and undercooked the rice. We had to throw the batch out, but his mom reassured me that she wasn’t expecting me to make it for Jean that night. She was expecting me to make it for him someday.

           “Why someday?” I asked.

           “Well, to put it bluntly, it will take you years to perfect it,” she said, and I got the distinct impression she was holding back that it might take me a couple more years than it had taken her, because she didn’t want to be cruel, which I was grateful for and aware of anyway. Then she added, “But also because, this is a family recipe. The only people who cook this meal are in my family. Do you understand?”

           My eyes widened. “Mrs. Kirstein, I –”

           “Shush. I know. You’re not ready. He’s not ready. But you will be, and when you are,” she said, lifting the notebook, “Here’s the recipe.”

           “How will I know I’m ready?” I asked.

           “When your relationship is seasoned enough,” she said, like that made complete sense. I was tempted to explain to her that I was not the brightest bulb, and that she needed to spell it out for me, but seeing my expression, she laughed and added, “And you’ll know when that is.”

            It took until earlier today, when I saw Jean curled on the couch, burrowed into a blanket, and pouting because he missed home, to realize now was when that was.

           Well, it took that, and a conversation I’d had with Sasha earlier this week. She was seeing someone again, and of course, filling me in with all the details. The dates, the gifts, the sex, etc. She was smitten. Heartsick. Gross, and I said so.

           She scoffed. “Like you and Jean weren’t gross at first.”

           I realized, abruptly, that she was right. It felt so long ago now, but when we first started dating, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Could barely stand to spend the day apart. When we were apart, I couldn’t stop talking about him with her. If I was alone, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

           Of course we were gross then. New love was like that. Fresh love, raw love, was like that. And while you were in it, that love felt like the deepest, truest, most meaningful love in existence.

           But it wasn’t, not really. Love like that was insecure. It was naïve. Fragile. All the touching, all the talking, the thinking – it made up for a weak emotional connection that would take years to strengthen.

           To season.

           I grinned now, lifting the ladle from the Dutch oven and tasting the broth.

           “Needs something,” I said, and glanced along the countertop scattered with various seasonings Jean likely had no idea we even owned, because I kept them way in the back of one of our cupboards, behind ingredients we were much more likely to use in our kitchen on an ordinary night like this one – ingredients like peanut butter and ketchup, for example – all so that Jean would never suspect I might have learned to make this meal in secret.

           I reached for the salt and sprinkled more in. As I did so, I heard Jean say goodbye to his mom on the phone.

           “Connie?” he called a second later, from the living room. “What’s that smell? I thought you were gonna make –”

           And then he was stepping into the kitchen, and I spun to face him. I could see the recognition in his eyes as he inhaled. He tilted his head to catch sight of the stove.

           “Is that –? How in the hell did you…?” But he didn’t finish. He walked up to me and placed one hand on my back, and with the other reached for the ladle so that he could sample it too. Immediately, he moaned.      

           “Oh my God, Connie,” he said, around another spoonful. “I love you. I love you more than I ever have.”

           I snorted. Blushed. Looked away from him. I couldn’t stand to let him see what that meant to me.

           “Your mom taught me,” I said.

           “She did?” he said, lifting another scoop up, this time with some sliced andouille sausage.  “When?” he asked, mouth full.

           I shrugged. “Years ago.”

           Jean shook his head. “I’m starting to think she’s not going to be surprised when we tell her we’re engaged.”

           I laughed. “You know, I think you might be on to something.”

           He put the ladle back in the Dutch oven and then pulled me into him by the waist.

           “Thank you for this,” he said.

           “I wanted to give you something from home,” I said.

           “I am home,” he said. Then he leaned forward, and I stood on my toes – a gesture that we used to struggle to get right, used to fumble with, and was now as natural as breathing, borderline instinctual – so that we could kiss long and deep and thorough.    

Chapters: 4/8 Fandom: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Armin Arlert/Marco Bott, Armin Arlert & Marco Bott Characters: Armin Arlert, Marco Bott Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Strangers to Lovers, Alternate Universe - Magic, Near Death Experiences, Absolutely No Character Death, Asexual Character, Blasphemy, Minor Violence, Minor Blood Mention, First Kiss, No Smut, Crimes & Criminals Summary:

Armin is just a quiet, pious, and knowledgeable member of the Church of the Willow. He’s also a seer- rarely seen outside the country’s capital, and is more than happy for the safety and order his role as a servant of the city provides him.

Marco is just a kindly, generous and experienced merchant for the recently revitalized Silver Feather’s Guild. There’s nothing he can’t procure for any buyer- Rich or poor, and he does so at the lowest price out of the good of his heart.

(NSFW, rated M, no content warnings.)

 (Rated T, no content warnings) 

          The cabin looked nothing like it did when we were young. The walls had been repainted. The real fireplace had been replaced with an electric one. All the comfier, cozier furniture had been replaced with more modern pieces. The kitchen had all new appliances – that was nice, at least. And this time, making up for everything, there was Wi-Fi.

           Jean walked in through the front door behind me, and like me, froze and looked the place over. He dropped our suitcases right in the entryway, closed the door, and walked into the living room to open the blinds. We had a perfect view of the lake, surrounded by the woods, changing color now that it was fall. I smiled. He understood how to put things in perspective for me.

           This wasn’t really about the cabin.

           This was about the trip my parents had taken us on when we were teenagers. Jean’s parents’ idea of a vacation had been a tropical resort, which meant flying, and spending a lot of money, and definitely not inviting along one of Jean’s friends. But my parents preferred something closer to home. Somewhere they could drive. Fish for their food and cook it themselves. Roast hotdogs and marshmallows over a firepit.

           And go for very long hikes on their own, leaving their son and the friend they permitted him to invite alone in the cabin for hours.

           Once or twice a year for years I invited Jean to come with me on my family vacation to the cabin. During the first few years, we were just friends, and my parents thought we were just friends. They were still some of the best memories of my life. I wasn’t a fan of fishing, or grilling, or mosquitos, or being outside, or – really anything about being at the cabin other than being with Jean.

           The next few years, we were together and my parents thought we were just friends. The beauty of this, was the aforementioned hikes my parents liked to go on. Jean and I got the majority of the day together, swimming in the lake, kissing on the strand, cuddling on the couch watching whatever we wanted, eating all the junk food we wanted. Once my parents returned, all way had to do was lay off the PDA until they went to bed in their bedroom. Then we got to go to our bedroom – all by ourselves. We had to be quiet, but –

           I used to pretend we were adults, married, living on our own. After fooling around, we’d stay up talking about it, about coming back together someday without my parents.

           The next few years, my parents knew about us – had found out about us – and things changed. We were under constant supervision. Forced to behave like good friends. They liked to tell me it was because we were young, and they didn’t need to see their son holding anyone’s hand, cuddling with anyone on the couch, kissing anyone before bed but – I knew it wouldn’t be the same if I had brought a girlfriend. Sure, they wouldn’t have let us sleep in the same bedroom. I would have been on the couch at night. But other than that, it wouldn’t have mattered.

           In junior year we broke up. Our relationship in a vacuum, separated from the outside world, had been nothing but bliss. But once my parents knew, his mom knew, our church knew, our teachers knew, and from there everyone knew and everything changed.

           I didn’t go to the cabin again after we broke up. Not for years, even when I was still a minor living with my parents. I refused. At seventeen, I was old enough to stay home alone for a week on my own, and they couldn’t make me come – nor really wanted me to. It wouldn’t be a vacation anymore, if their bitter and rebellious teenage son came along and complained the whole time.

           Sometime in college, long after I moved out of my parents’ place, and long after Jean and I had last spoken, last seen one another, even – we happened to end up in the same eight AM biology class. We went for coffee after the first class to catch up and ended up at his place that night. The following morning, we got coffee at the same place before class. From that point on, we were inseparable again, already. Picking up right where we left off.

           A few months ago, Jean and I were watching a scary movie in our shared apartment, and it reminded him of the cabin. He paused the movie to ask about it.

           “I always wondered, who’d you bring after we broke up?” he asked.

           “I didn’t go anymore,” I said.

           “Really? You always loved it,” he said.

           “I loved you,” I said, “Not it.”

           He thought for a moment, but didn’t press play.

           “Would you ever want to go back?” he asked. “Together, I mean. Just us.”

           I looked at him to see if he was serious. He was. I grinned, feeling a weight I didn’t know I’d been carrying fall away. Then I kissed him.

           Now here we were, and I was suddenly very grateful it looked nothing like how I remembered.

           I strode up behind him in the living room, taking a picture of the lake on his phone, and wrapped my arms around his waist. Since I was so much shorter than him, I pressed my head between his shoulder blades rather than resting it on his shoulder – like he usually did to me – and just like I hoped, he laughed and spun around in my arms. He placed both of his hands on either side of my face.

           “What do you want to do first?” he asked. “I know you don’t want to fish, but we could take the boat out and –”

           “Go to bed,” I said.

           He snorted. “Connie, it’s noon.”

           “It was a long drive,” I said.

           “For me,” he said, “You fell asleep. You shouldn’t even be –”

           “I’m not tired,” I said, and the flustered expression he made delighted me.

           “Right,” he said, “Duh.”

           “Duh,” I said, and he started kissing me. I tried to pull him toward the bedroom but he backed away from me to grab our luggage.

           I groaned. “We can unpack later!”

           “The lube’s in here! What the hell do you want from me?” he said, while laughing.

           “To hurry your ass up,” I said and retreated into the bedroom.

           We left the door open. Threw the covers off. Got completely undressed. And did not try to be quiet at all, which would have been significantly more difficult to do now than it was when we were kids. We had both gotten much better at this.

           After, I rested my head on his chest and looked out the window at the still lake and vibrant woods. Jean trailed his fingers over my buzzed scalp, and I hummed appreciatively.

           “I always wanted to give you this,” Jean said, “Since you first told me. I remembered it on purpose.”

           I smiled. “This is what I’ve always wanted but – because it’s you. You know that right? This cabin is nothing to me without you.”

           He grinned crookedly at me before looking out the window. “Well, if that’s the case – get your fill this time, and next time we’ll do it my way. Palm trees. The ocean. Room service. Someone else gutting your fish for you.”

 (Rated T, no content warnings) 

           The sun was just beginning to rise. Rays slanted through our sheer curtains into our bedroom. Jean slept bare on his stomach, on a bare mattress, which rested on the bare floor. He was surrounded by boxes we had yet to unpack. I stood in the doorway, coffee in hand, watching his stomach rise and fall peacefully. It was a rare day I woke up early, let alone earlier than him, let alone with the sun. I was thankful I had.

           The last time I watched him sleep like this, it was night, and we were miles from here. Home, we called it then. The town was small. Everyone knew one another. More than knew one another, really. I would bet everyone in that town knew my middle name. Knew my grandparents’ middle names. It was suffocating.

            He and I grew up together, of course we did. Same neighborhood. Same daycare. Same preschool, elementary school, middle and so on. Always within a mile – walking distance – of the other.

           Somewhere in middle school, something changed in us. Something unnamable, even in our heads. A constant tension between us. What used to be natural, and effortless, became stilted. I didn’t hesitate to hug him when we were kids. He didn’t care if I shared his bed with him during sleepovers – when we were kids. It didn’t matter if we saw each other every day of the week – when we were kids. But that changed overnight it seemed, and we both knew it. Both saw the invisible, impenetrable barrier between us.

           Things were easier once we got girlfriends. Mikasa was popular, indisputably beautiful, and at the same time equally uninterested in both popularity and beauty. She could play hockey with Jean, eat a burger with Jean, watch horror movies with Jean, swear with Jean and drink beer with Jean without any of the tension.

           Sasha was nerdy and cute. She wasn’t shy, or judgmental, and didn’t care what people thought of her. She’d defend her friends to the death. I could nap with her, get high with her, play dungeons and dragons with her, read the Lord of the Rings with her and never do anything athletic with her whatsoever without any of the tension.

           And it wasn’t faking it. He liked Mikasa. I liked Sasha. None of it was made up.

           That was probably how we justified it. We didn’t even know what we were doing, or why. How could it be our fault?

           All of this worked for years. Throughout high school. Jean and I were still friends, but because of our girlfriends, were in different social circles at school and rarely had any reason to be seen with each other. We didn’t sit at the same lunch table or participate in the same extracurriculars or go to prom in the same limo. We were weekend friends, and because we had girlfriends, and because no one would see us together, the tension dissipated, and we could hang out again without making each other uncomfortable. For the duration of those years, I thought everything had resolved itself. I thought it was over.

           It wasn’t until college that things got complicated. We all went to the same college – of course we did, everyone in our town did, that was how it always was, we didn’t even question it – and in order to get out of paying for dorms, decided to live together in a two-bedroom apartment together. Jean and Mikasa on one side of the apartment, Sasha and I on the other. By then, Sasha and Mikasa had become good weekend friends too as a result of their boyfriends wanting to hang out without them on weekends, luckily for Jean and me.

           But in the apartment that didn’t change. Sasha and Mikasa still liked to go out on weekends, still liked to stay up late in one of the bedrooms watching movies Jean and I weren’t interested in, listening to annoying music together, and talking for hours. They never ran out of nonsense to talk about. All night, sometimes.

           And that left Jean and I together alone in the other bedroom.

           The tension returned. Only this time we knew what it was. Recognized it in the other instinctually. At this point, there was nothing we could do.

           We could have put it off, maybe. For a while. Years even. But really, what good would that have done? To string Mikasa and Sasha along even longer? To take up even more of their lives? That was what I liked to tell myself now, a few years later and all the time in the world to regret.

           In any case, one night in the middle of summer, the heat was scorching even after the sun went down. We had the windows open and a weak breeze puttered into the room, but it was still unbearable. The both of us took our shirts off and leaned back against his and Mikasa’s headboard. The TV was on but there was nothing to watch. We both reached for the remote at the same time, and our hands touched. We yanked them both away, and both of us immediately looked at the other as if to ask why did we just do that? And to answer, in the same instant, we know why. The next look into each other’s eyes said if we both know why, what difference does it make if we pretend we don’t?

           We kissed. We didn’t kiss the way we would have, if at thirteen or fourteen we had just let ourselves be ourselves. Chastely, tentatively, curiously, the way first kisses were.

           We kissed like a pair of lifelong lovers who’d been separated for decades and only just reunited. We kissed with the passion and urgency two people could only have while trying to make up for years lost in as little time as possible, in a minute, in a second, in a single instant of being alive. We had never kissed anyone else like that before, and never would and we knew it the moment it happened.

           That night, we had sex for the first time, and around midnight, though I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed with him, stay held in his arms, with his chest rising and falling against my back – I couldn’t. He fell asleep, bare in the sheets, moonlight illuminating his fair skin, and I climbed out of the bed, dressed, and lingered in the doorway for a long time watching him, my heart overflowing with the love I had for so long kept a lid on.

           Then I left the room. When Mikasa went to bed hours later, she assumed Jean had gotten undressed and went to sleep after I left.

           I’d told myself this story a lot since it began. Even before it ended, I was telling myself this story. This story, like most, had a beginning, middle and end, even before I knew what the end was. I didn’t want to think about the middle while it was happening and didn’t now that it was over either. It was predictable anyway, if you knew both the beginning and the end, like I did.

           I liked to think about the end, because it was also a beginning. A beginning that I hoped would also have a middle, and an end. Obviously, I knew the beginning, and I already thought I knew the end. Hoped I knew the end. Like the first story, if I knew the beginning and the end of this one, the middle was predictable. But, unlike the first story, I liked to think about this story’s middle, and I hoped it would be the longest part.

  (Rated M, CW for self-harm)