with purest love

i hope chap 3 made sense tho!!! initially i was planning a threesome on the camping trip as the last chapter, but because a) i had spoken about jean’s restraint and conflicting desire so much i felt it deserved to be explored properly and b) we really don’t get a lot of jean x reader alone in the first two chapters (which is my fault???? so idk???)

He tastes you, he feels you, his skin humming at every point where it’s touching yours. He parts your lips with his, and you open for him like a flower, let him in, let him have you. You let him devour you, and he tastes all his feelings reciprocated on your tongue. He hears you, a little gasp into his mouth that makes him dizzy as you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him closer.

I want you, I want you so bad. 

Your voice in his ears is like a song, every one of your desires a new note as you reach down to his thigh.

He’s not expecting you to touch him, but he’s so hard already. He’s been hard for you, gets hard for you so fast. 

You unlock him, like always, twisting a key into his chest to open him up and make him desperate to give you whatever you want. 

He pulls back, breathing hard, and asks: You’re sure? Don't want to run off to your little boyfriend?

No, I want you, Jean.

He hums. I know, I know what you need.

The fire had burned down to a deep, pulsing crimson, casting long, wavering shadows that made the campsite feel smaller, more intimate, like a private theatre in the middle of the wilderness. 

His lips attached to the sensitive cord of your neck, his mouth hot and insistent as he began sucking gentle, blooming bruises into your skin. You gasped, your head falling back, and before you could find your bearings, he stood, hoisting you up with a grunt of effort. He swapped your positions with a dizzying blur of movement, making you squeak as he settled you firmly into his camp chair.

In your drunk, heavy-lidded haze, you could see Eren across the embers. He hadn't moved, but his posture was coiled, his chest heaving with heavy, laboured breaths as he watched the scene unfold.

“Eyes on me, sweetheart.”

Jean’s voice snapped you back. He placed a lingering, startlingly sweet kiss on your knee, his hands sliding up your thighs to force your gaze down to him. He was kneeling in the dirt between your legs now, his hair messy from where your fingers had been tangling in it, his lips glistening as he licked them.

“Is this okay?” he asked, the politeness of the question clashing deliciously with the raw hunger in his eyes.

You nodded, squirming against the fabric of the chair, the friction sending sparks through your nerves.

“Words, baby,” Eren’s voice drifted over from the shadows, thick and demanding. “I wanna hear you.”

You swallowed hard, your heart pounding against your ribs like a drum. “Yes,” you breathed. “This is okay.”

Jean hummed again, as he hooked his calloused fingers into your belt loops. He leaned in, his face inches from your core, the heat of his breath soaking through your denim. “And what am I going to do to you?”

The words tripped over each other as you tried to force them out. “You’re going to– to–”

“I’m going to eat your cunt, baby,” Jean growled. “And I’m gonna make your boyfriend watch every second of it. Say it.”

The air felt thin, the smell of pine and Jean’s skin overwhelming you. “You’re going to eat my cunt... while Eren watches.”

“Such a good girl, aren’t you?” Jean murmured, his thumbs stroking the insides of your hips. “Gonna make you feel so good.”

With a practised hand, he tugged your denim shorts down, shimmying them with a teasing slowness over your hips until they fell to the forest floor. The metal buckle of your shorts is undone with practised ease beneath his deft, wandering fingers. 

You've played this scene out in your head countless times. Yet, never were you prepared, not entirely, for the reality of it unfolding here: nestled deep within the forgotten backwaters of some countryside. 

"Shit," he huffs, that devilish glint dancing in his eyes as he widens your legs, the flats of his hands pressing against the warmth and smoothness of your inner thighs. 

"So cute, sweetheart. I love these," His words drip with adoration as he takes in the sight of your panties: cotton, a soft dandelion yellow, adorned with a delicate chain of lace. Your cheeks flush as you desperately try to knock your knees together, a futile attempt to guard yourself from his consuming stare. "Let's get these off. Show me what I want to see." 

Lifting your hips in silent compliance, you grant Jean the access he seeks. His fingers slide beneath the fabric of your underwear, easing them down until they catch against the rough canvas of your trainers. With a decisive movement, he chooses to leave them on. He yanks your panties free, crumpling them into a tight ball within his fist before stuffing them into his pocket. 

"Oh, fuck," he breathes, the sound heavy with lust as your pussy is finally laid bare before his eyes. "Look at that." He marvels, and you feel yourself dripping, a clear sign of your arousal. He pushes your knees up even higher, granting himself a better view to admire the sheen of slick drips tracing a path from your very centre, down to the fluttering hole of your ass.

Where Eren's cum is still dribbling out of you. He has the desire to moan at the sight of your precious, little asshole, puckered tight.

"So, this is what you were doing on the hike, hm? Getting your ass torn open." He tuts, his voice laced with a playful scorn as he stares at the reddened skin around it.

"He's so mean, isn't he?" Jean continues to tease, nuzzling his long nose against your inner thighs.

You whine an affirmative, a sound of both protest and pleasure as Eren scoffs softly from across the fireplace. He remains silent, a rare occurrence, observing the scene with an unreadable expression.

"So pretty," he whispers, his voice a hushed caress as he leans in closer. His lips first kiss your pussy, each touch a spark igniting within you, then trails to that tiny crinkle underneath it. "The prettiest thing around."

You let out a soft whimper as he reaches up, his large hands gently taking hold of your lips, two fingers on each hand, separating them from one another. He exposes the gummy pink insides of your pussy and that darling clit that awaits his affection. Your face is tucked sheepishly within your shoulder, a mix of nervousness and burning need. You're quite ready, squirming where you lie, a hair away from a needy whine to leave your lips.

He’s so hazy. He’s hungry.

“I wanna make you cum, baby,” he slurs, his mouth brushing against your clit; he’s so high on all of it. “Are you gonna let me taste this pussy?” 

You respond with a little whimper of affirmation. 

He glances up at your face, eats your bashful expression up to stave off the other hunger. He doesn’t like to see you embarrassed, but you look so sweet and needy.

“Relax,” he says softly, brushing his hands over your thighs to reassure you. “I’ve got you.”

You relax a little under his grip, nodding.

You know how pretty you are, don’t you?

You flounder for words but settle for a shudder. You’re too flustered to answer; you look like you want to say something, but you can’t. It’s alright, you don’t have to say a thing. He knows exactly what to do.

 Are you ready for it?

You offer a demure nod in return.

“Then can you do something for me?”

Another nod.

“Yeah?” he coaxes. “Can you spread it open for me, baby?”

He’s anticipating the embarrassment before it crosses your face. You gasp his name in a tone of disbelief, and he feels guilty for getting harder on the look on your face, but it’s so cute; so is the way you’re being so hesitant when he’s watching you get wetter right above his face.

All you need is a little guidance.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. Use your fingers and spread your pussy open, I wanna see you.” 

You inhale shakily, bringing a trembling hand between your thighs as you touch yourself above him: fingers just grazing over the soft, wet skin. Breaths picking up. He can hear the neediness in them, but you’re still hesitating. You’re still so nervous, too timid to go any further without instruction.

“There you go,” he says, delivering a gentle squeeze to your thighs. “Show me your clit, princess.” 

“Oh my god, this– you’re…”

You’re so flustered, but you’re following his commands, just like always. And maybe he shouldn’t be surprised; you’ve always been so obedient to him. In the dim light, you spread your pussy open with your fingers, and everything you expose glistens. You’re soaked, your entrance fluttering below your swollen clit, seeping arousal he wants on his tongue.

“You’re perfect,” he murmurs, squeezing your hips and pulling you gently downward. “Come here. Come closer, drop down a little more.”

You’re more pliable now; he thinks that the anticipation must outweigh the apprehension, because you drop down until you’re just above his mouth. 

“Keep your pussy spread for me,” he says, practically against your skin. “I want it open while I eat you.” 

He knows exactly what you need; he gives it to you, starting with a little lick to your exposed clit. The taste of you is so good, addictive. But that can wait; for now, he focuses his attention on the most sensitive part of you, flicking the tip of his tongue over your clit as his cock strains in his pants. You’re so responsive; maybe it’s the alcohol high, or maybe it’s just that easy to draw the sweetest moans out of you, to make your pussy drool.

“Sensitive?” he murmurs into the little space between his lips and your skin.

You whimper.

He runs his tongue over your clit, flicks it over and over, and soon enough, he feels you let go a little. Your moans get louder, more lewd; he rewards you for it by sucking on your clit between flicks of his tongue, getting harder on every pretty sound you make.

You’re trembling so much he has to sink his fingers into your hips to keep you steady above him. The bashfulness dissipates, giving way to pleasure. You’re moaning his name, asking him to give you more, you’re telling him how good it feels, thanking him for making you feel so good.

Gonna cum, you whine.  I’m so close.

I know you, I can feel it. Let it go, baby.

One simple instruction. Just like that, and you’re spilling over, doing exactly as he says. This is how he rewards you for it, letting you cum for the first time on fingers that aren’t your boyfriend's; they’re longer, better, drenched and fucking you through your orgasm as pleasure rolls through you in waves.

You slump back with the last. 

“Was it okay?” he asks softly. “Was it too much?” 

You shake your head.

He delicately presses a series of tender kisses onto the velvety hollow at the back of your knee, each touch sending shivers up your spine. A low, approving murmur vibrates against your skin.

Good girl. You were so good. 

His voice is a warm rumble against your thigh. A tremor courses through your leg, betraying the depth of your reaction to his touch and words.

While he’s rubbing light circles over your clit, the hand on your side moves down, down and down until you feel his big grip on your ass. He presses his fingers to your swollen clit and gives you enough pressure to build the heavy feeling in the pit of your stomach; it sends another rush of arousal between your thighs, making everything hotter and wetter. 

The fire was little more than a bed of glowing, angry teeth now, casting a hellish red light across the clearing. The air was thick with the scent of pine, sweat, and the heavy, metallic tang of arousal. You were stranded in the centre of it, your back against the rough fabric of the chair and your legs draped over Jean’s broad shoulders as he knelt in the dirt.

He stopped, the sudden absence of his tongue leaving you cold and aching. He looked up at you, his face glistening, his amber eyes hooded and dark with a cruel, teasing edge.

You want some more, hm?

You nodded desperately, your fingers digging into the plastic armrests of the chair, your hips involuntarily stuttering forward. You were too far gone for pride, too hazy from the beer and the sheer sensory overload of the day to do anything but crave him.

“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend?” Jean prompted, his voice dropping to a challenge. He didn't move an inch. He just watched you, his hands heavy on your inner thighs. “See what he says. See if he wants me to stop.”

Your eyes jumped to Eren’s. Your body burned with a sudden, searing wash of embarrassment and guilt, the reality of the situation crashing against your brain. 

But the man sitting across from you wasn't the Eren who had held your hand on the drive up.

He was a new person entirely.

Eren was leaning so far forward that he was nearly out of his chair: his mouth was agape, his breath coming in short, ragged pants like a dog in heat. His eyes were ravenous, pupils blown so wide they swallowed the green of his irises, locked with obsessive intensity on the exact spot where Jean’s mouth had been moments ago. 

He wasn't angry; he was captivated, his hand moving rhythmically beneath the fabric of his shorts.

“E– Eren–” your voice cracked, a pleading, broken sound.

“Tell him, baby,” Eren rasped, his voice sounding like it had been dragged through thorns. He didn't even look at your face; he couldn't take his eyes off the sight of Jean’s hands on you. “Tell him exactly what you want him to do.”

Jean let out a dark, triumphant hum, his thumbs stroking the sensitive skin of your groin. “You heard him, sweetheart. He’s not stopping me. In fact, I think he’s enjoying this more than you are.”

Please, give me more.

Jean leaned back in, his nose brushing against you, his breath hot and damp. 

Don’t you know by now, sweetheart? You don’t have to beg me for a thing. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.

As soon as he applies a little pressure to his fingers, working at the tight muscles of your entrance, your pussy opens for him, stretching around him for the very first time.

Jean watches how your pussy flexes around the intrusion. It seems to fight with wanting to suck his digit in further or push him out.

“Yeah, there we go. Good girl,” he murmurs.

Your cunt swallows him to the hair that dusts his knuckles. When he begins to stroke it in and out, nice and slow, he watches how you melt against the chair.

He looks over his shoulder at Eren, who offers a jerky, tight nod, a silent permission for the game to continue.

“You trust me, right?” he asks. 

You nod, unable to find your voice.

“Say it, baby.”

“I trust you, Jean,” you whisper, the admission feeling like a final surrender of your autonomy.

“Good.”

His hand slips out of you with a quiet pop, moving with a terrifyingly gentle precision, as he begins to rub small, rhythmic circles over your perineum. The contact makes you twitch, a fresh jolt of electricity sparking through your tired nerves.

Jean’s movements are deliberate and steady. He slips his large hands under your thighs, nudging you back up and forward until you are positioned right over his face again. The cool night air hits your skin, a sharp contrast to the heat of his breath. Beneath you, you hear the wet sound of him bringing two fingers to his mouth, coating them thoroughly in spit.

Your body is a mess of sensations with your ass fluttering, small, stray droplets of Eren’s cum from earlier spilling out, slicking your skin.

“I’m gonna play with your ass, baby,” Jean murmurs, his own stomach knotting with a dark, heavy anticipation. He’s never been this bold with you, never stepped this far into Eren's territory, but the truth or dare had burned away the boundaries.

You take a shaky, jagged breath, your fingers curling into the fabric of your shirt.

“It’s gonna feel good.” He doesn't wait for a protest you aren't going to give. He grips your ass, his long, calloused fingers sinking deep into the plush flesh. He pulls you apart, spreading you open for the firelight, and for Eren, to see every inch of you. “Trust me.”

He maintains that bruising grip, using his free fingers to smear the cocktail of spit and Eren's drying cum over the sensitive rim of your ass. Your hole clenches instinctively under the touch, a frantic, tight pulse.

"Relax," he slurs, his voice a command wrapped in lust.

Even through the flustered haze, he feels you make the conscious effort to untense. You’re trying so hard to be perfect for him, to be the obedient girl he’s spent all day dreaming about. 

It’s the kind of submission that makes his blood boil.

“You’re doing so well,” he says sweetly, his tone shifting into that gentle, rewarding praise that always makes you buzz. He continues the slick, circular motions, feeling the tremors in your thighs finally die down. You’re starting to loosen, your mouth falling open as a soft, broken moan spills out into the dark.

He watches you, waiting for that exact moment of surrender. Just a little more coaxing, just a little more pleasure, and he’ll finally be able to push inside.

A glistening trail of Eren’s cum slides between the cleft of your buttocks. He runs his tongue over it, making you writhe. 

“Feeling good?” he rumbles, the vibration of his voice travelling straight through your thighs.

“So good,” you breathe, your head lolling back against the chair.

“Perfect,” he says, his gaze fixed on the way your entrance flutters and pulses inches from his face. The sight is raw, primal, and entirely too much for a man who has spent all day playing the role of the polite observer. “You ready to take it?”

You nod, your fingers twitching against the armrests.

“Okay. Now I need you to do what I say. Can you do that?”

“Yes, Jean,” you say, the words coming out small and completely obedient.

“Good girl,” he murmurs. He sinks lower in the seat, adjusting his weight until his mouth is positioned perfectly beneath you again. “I want you to gonna cum while I stretch your ass out on my fingers.”

You let out a sharp, ragged gasp as he begins to rub the rim again, feeling the frantic clench of your muscles. He can’t help but think about how tiny you feel in his hands, how much of a challenge it will be for you to accommodate him. “Okay, baby?”

A little flustered noise of affirmation is all you can manage, and he answers with a dark, satisfied, “Good.”

Then, he’s back to work. He runs his tongue over you in long, slow laps, cleaning away the nectar of your last orgasm as his fingers begin to circle your asshole with a steady, rhythmic pressure. The friction of the spit and the heat of his touch make your world tilt.

“Oh my god,” he hears you whimper, your voice a thin, fragile thread in the vast, quiet darkness of the woods.

He hears you gasp, and then he hears the messy sound of your wet fingers on your clit. You touch yourself slowly at first, and then a little faster with each tight circle he rubs over your ass. Then there’s more wetness oozing out of your slit and into his mouth, the taste of you spreading all over his tongue.

He feels your ass start to relax under his fingertips, hears you start to beg. 

It’s cute, the way you switched up so quickly, and now you’re so, so needy. 

At the same time, he stretches your asshole open around one of his spit-coated fingers, and he pushes his tongue above it.

You swear under your breath, pulse around his tongue. Your ass is still stretched enough from Eren’s cock to suck in his tongue, and the mess of cum and spit makes it easy for him to fuck it in and out of you. He eases his finger in deep, up to the knuckle and feels you clench around him with a gasp. Your little hole’s so soft inside; it’s so fucking tight and wet and sticky, but still it opens for him, stretching around his finger the same way he knows it’d take his cock.

He feels your legs shake on either side of his face, the tremors increasing when he decides he’s stretched your ass out enough on one finger to give you another. You take the second, even better than the first. You’re so greedy for it, moaning desperately.

He digs his free fingers into your ass cheeks, spreads them while he pleasures you. 

Fingers buried to the knuckle, tongue buried to the base, Eren’s cum dripping into his mouth. 

And then your breaths are picking up, and your fingers are going sloppy on your clit. 

Wetness gushes into his mouth; you’re cumming again, leaning forward and gasping, and he feels your pussy contract while your ass clenches and unclenches around his fingers. He keeps pumping them as he coaxes your orgasm out.

Jean sat back on his heels, his chest heaving, his broad shoulders finally slumping as the adrenaline began to drain. He stayed there for a moment, letting the cool night air hit his skin, waiting for the frantic rise and fall of your chest to slow into something resembling a rhythm.

“How do you feel?” Jean mumbles, his voice thick and raw, stripped of all the biting sarcasm he’d used as a shield all day.

“Really good,” you say sleepily, the world tilting in a slow, hazy arc. Your muscles feel like melted wax, heavy and useless against the fabric of the chair.

You blink, trying to clear the fog, and look down at him. His face is flushed a deep, dark red, his lips wet and swollen. But as your eyes track downward, the breath hitches in your throat. He’s covered in the evidence of the last twenty minutes, slick, shining, and—

Fuck.

Eren’s cum.

Jean’s fingers, which he slowly and gently extracts from you, are sticky and threaded with the pale, thick webs of Eren’s load. The sight is a visceral shock, a physical map of exactly how far the boundaries of your relationship have blurred in the dark of the woods.

“You–you–you,” you stammer, the words dying in your throat.

Eren strides over then, the movement fluid and predatory. He wipes his hand haphazardly on his shorts, looking entirely unbothered by the chaos he’s orchestrated. He leans over the two of you, reaching out to ruffle Jean’s messy hair with a condescending, affectionate tug, like he's rewarding a loyal pet.

“Good show, Jean-boy,” Eren drawls, his voice humming with a dark, satisfied energy. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

Jean grunts, batting his hand away, but he doesn't move from his spot between your knees. He just watches as Eren leans further in, crowding your space until the scent of Winston's smoke and cedar-wood fills your senses.

“Look at my girl, huh? Such a baby,” Eren coos against your lips. He doesn't flinch at the mess; instead, he claims your mouth in a deep, bruising kiss the second you pout for one. “Two times? That’s all you can give him tonight?”

With a small sniffle and a weary nod, you mumble out a quiet, “Yeah.” You’re physically spent, your body buzzing with a sensitivity that feels almost like pain.

“We’ll work on that,” Eren whispers, his eyes flashing with a promise that makes your stomach flip.

The fog of the alcohol wore off, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. You look from Eren’s triumphant face to Jean’s quiet, intense gaze, and for a fleeting second, you wonder if you made the right decision. 

You let your boyfriend’s best friend take you to another planet while he watched, a silent participant in your undoing.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to feel even an ounce of regret when you look up at Eren. The bright, handsome smile smeared across his face is more intoxicating than the beer, and when he leans down to kiss you again, holding your face as if you’re the most precious thing he’s ever owned, he steals the very air from your lungs until you can't think of anything else.

Jean moves with a surprising, careful tenderness, pulling your shorts back into place and smoothing the fabric over your sensitive skin as if you’re something fragile that might break if he’s too rough now. He scoops you into his arms, your head lulling against his shoulder, while Eren stays behind for a moment to kick dirt over the last of the embers, the orange glow dying into a suffocating black.

You drift in and out of a heavy, syrupy sleep as you’re carried into the cramped sanctuary of the tent. Through the fog of your exhaustion, their voices reach you.

"She’s staying with me, Jean. Don't even start," Eren’s voice is a raspy whisper, territorial but lacking its earlier bite.

"She’s exhausted, Yeager. Just let her lie down. You're going to wake her up with your shifting," Jean retorts, his voice weary.

There’s a brief, muffled bicker over the logistics of the sleeping bags, a small, familiar friction, before Jean finally yields. He lowers you gently into Eren’s bag, the synthetic fabric cool against your skin until Eren slides in behind you.

Eren curls around your back, a solid, radiating furnace of heat. He tucks his face into the crook of your neck, his breath ghosting over the bruises Jean left there. "You were so perfect," he whispers into your skin, his hand splayed flat across your stomach, anchoring you to him. "My good, brave girl."

On your other side, Jean doesn't pull away. He settles at the edge of the bag, his large, calloused hand reaching out to stroke your hair. His touch is steady and rhythmic, his fingers trailing from your temple to your ear in a silent, lingering apology for the chaos of the night.

As the woods settle into a deep, predatory silence outside, you fall into a dreamless sleep, caught between the two men who had just dismantled every boundary you owned.

         The morning light is a cruel, uncompromising grey, filtering through the nylon of the tent like a headache.

Jean is the first to stir. His head feels like it’s being split by a rusted axe. He sits up, the sleeping bag sliding off his bare chest, and his eyes land on the two of you.

Eren’s arm is draped over your waist, possessive even in sleep. You’re tucked into the curve of his body, looking soft and utterly broken-in.

A wave of immense, sickening regret washes over Jean. It hits him in the gut, turning his stomach. 

What was he doing? 

He’s a man of logic, of a certain rigid, self-imposed morality, and yet he had spent hours dismantling his best friend's girlfriend in the dirt. He had tasted things he shouldn't have tasted. He had heard you say his name in a way that he knew would haunt his quietest moments for years.

He scrambles out of the tent, his movements frantic and angry. He needs air. He needs distance from the scent of you that’s still clinging to his skin.

Outside, the campsite is a graveyard of the night’s bad decisions. Jean sits in the very same camp chair where you had been draped over him, his head dropping into his calloused hands. He kicks at the cold, grey ash of the fire, sending a cloud of soot into the air.

You’re sure? Don’t want to run off to your little boyfriend?

No, I want you, Jean.

The memory of your voice makes him tug at his hair until his scalp stings. You are so beautiful, devastatingly so. 

It’s a bitter, jagged pill to swallow: the realisation that Eren got his hands on you first, and that Jean will have to live the rest of his life with the almost, the halfway, and the memory of a night that can never be repeated.

The sharp zip of the tent door cuts through his spiralling thoughts.

Eren strides out first, looking remarkably refreshed, as if he hadn't spent the night participating in a moral catastrophe. You follow behind him, moving slowly, a slight, telltale limp in your stride that makes Jean’s heart hammer against his ribs. 

"Morning, Jeanie," Eren calls out, his voice breezy and casual, as if the three of you had just spent the night roasting marshmallows.

"Hi," you mumble, your voice small and raspy. You won't look Jean in the eye.

Jean doesn't look up from his hands. He can't. If he looks at you, he’s afraid he’ll either apologise or beg you to stay. 

"Morning," he grunts, his voice sounding like it's been covered through the very ashes he's kicking.

You reach out, your fingers snagging the hem of Eren’s shirt, a silent plea for him to fix the sudden, jagged rift between the three of you. Your body aches, a dull, constant thrum in your hips, only makes Jean’s rejection feel more acute.

Eren catches your hand, pulling you close for a second. He leans down, his voice a low, private murmur against your ear. "It’s okay, baby. He’s just in his head. Give him a minute."

He looks over at Jean, who is still hunched over in the chair like a man waiting for a sentence to be carried out. 

"Listen, Jean," Eren starts, his voice uncharacteristically steady, attempting to bridge the gap. "Things don't have to be–"

"Forget it," Jean snaps, his voice cutting like a whip. He stands up abruptly, the chair scraping harshly against the dirt. He finally looks at you, but his eyes are shadowed, filled with a turbulent mix of self-loathing and a hunger he’s clearly trying to kill. "It didn't happen. I overstepped, I know. I was drunk, and I... I lost my head."

He doesn't wait for your response. He can't look at your wobbling bottom lip or the way you’re leaning into Eren for support.

"Just get packing," Jean grunts, already moving toward his own gear with a frantic, jerky energy. "We have to go soon. I want to be off this mountain by noon."

You watch him storm past you, the distance between you feeling miles wide even though he’s only a few feet away. Your heart cracks in two; the intimacy of the night, the way he had praised you, the way he had looked at you like you were the only thing that mattered, felt so real. 

Eren watches him go, a small, knowing smirk playing on the corner of his mouth that he quickly hides when he turns back to you. He reaches out, cupping your face and brushing a thumb over your cheek.

"‘S okay, baby. He’ll come around," Eren coos, his tone soothing but with that undercurrent of satisfaction that never quite left him. He kisses your cheek, his lips lingering just a second too long. "Go sit down. I'll make you a coffee. You look like you need it."

As Eren moves toward the camping stove, the silence of the woods feels heavier than ever. You’re left standing there, caught between the man who wants to pretend you’re his and the man who is desperately trying to forget you ever were.

            The sky is a deep blue, and the car is a capsule of high-pressure silence, the hum of the tyres against the winding road the only thing keeping the three of you from shattering.

Seven hours.

Seven hours of the back of Jean's head. The line of his shoulders is a tight horizon, his sleeveless shirt revealing the corded tension in his arms, the grip on the steering wheel so tight his knuckles are bleached white. You can see the pulse in his neck from here, a quick, visible thrum beneath the skin, matching the tempo of the broken yellow lines disappearing beneath the chassis.

You know he hasn't slept. 

Not really. 

You watched him in the side mirror at the last rest stop, splashing water on his face that he didn't dry, letting it cling to his stubble like dew on barbed wire. 

He caught you looking. 

For one second, his eyes met yours in the glass, and something wounded flickered there before he shuttered it.

Now, the darkness presses against the windows, and the interior smells of stale coffee and the synthetic pine of the air freshener swinging from the rearview mirror, a metronome marking time you can't afford to count.

At the gas station, the light was flickering and yellow, smelling of diesel and old grease. He didn't look at you. He just tossed a pack of sweets onto your lap, a casual, dismissive gesture that felt like a slap. 

The wrapper crinkled loudly in your hands. 

Cherry. Your favourite. 

He remembered, and the remembering made it worse.

You felt like a lamp, rubbed raw until the wishes were gone, until the genie was exhausted, only to be set back on the shelf to gather dust.

You curl into Eren, seeking the heat that Jean is denying you. His body is furnace-bright against the chill seeping through the glass, his thigh a hard line pressed to yours. 

You share a pair of wired headphones, the cord a thin, plastic umbilical link between you as a shitty movie plays on his cracked screen. The dialogue is tinny, distant. You couldn't follow the plot if your life depended on it.

He nuzzles his nose into your hair, his breath hot and steady, and you feel the moment he decides. The shift is subtle, a deepening of his inhale, a slight adjustment of his hips that brings him flush against your side.

Then, his hand snags. A slow, practised slide under your waistband.

Your stomach drops through the floor of the car. The elastic of your underwear is damp already, has been for miles, a low-grade hum of arousal you haven't let yourself name. His fingers find it, find you, with the ease of long acquaintance, and you bite the inside of your cheek hard enough to taste iron.

You don't pull away. You can't. 

You're hollowed out, and Eren is the only thing filling the space.

The movie keeps playing. On the screen, someone is running, feet pounding through rain that looks nothing like real rain. Eren's thumb settles against your clit, not moving yet, just pressing, and you feel your pulse there, a second heartbeat between your legs. He turns his head, his mouth grazing your temple, and you know he's looking. 

Not at you, past you. At the mirror.

Always at the mirror.

You see Jean's eyes in the rearview, before the car swerves, the tyres catching the gravel at the edge of the road with a violent skrrr.

"Fuck," Jean spits, but his voice is wrong. Too high, too tight. He corrects the wheel with a jerk that snaps your head against the headrest, and Eren's hand stills, his fingers still spread against your wetness, a threat and a promise suspended in the sudden violence.

You're hot with it, the guilt, the shame, the terrifying thrill of being watched. You tuck your face into the damp heat of Eren's armpit, muffled and hidden, as his fingers move with a rhythmic, cruel precision.

His touch is so sure, no words are spoken, but you hear them. He sees your soul, he knows it's true,

And in his gaze, you love it too.

The road smooths out. Jean's driving becomes mechanical, perfect, his eyes fixed straight ahead at the black line of the road. But you can see the tendon in his jaw, the muscle jumping with each swallow. You can see the way his throat works, Adam's apple bobbing in the dashboard glow.

Eren crooks two fingers inside you, and you gasp against his shirt. The sound is small, animal. You feel him smile against your hair, feel the vibration of his suppressed laughter. 

He likes this, the performance, the risk, the collateral damage he's inflicting on the man trapped in the driver's seat.

Your orgasm builds like a storm front, pressure dropping, air thinning. Eren knows your body better than you do, knows exactly when to press harder, when to ease back, when to let the ache sharpen before he gives you relief. He keeps you there, trembling on the edge, for miles. The highway signs blur past, with mile markers counting down to some destination that feels increasingly theoretical.

When it finally happens, it's almost anticlimactic. A stuttering, broken thing that you swallow into Eren's skin, your teeth finding the hard ridge of his collarbone through his shirt. Your body seizes, clenches around his fingers, and you make a sound that isn't quite a moan,  and isn't quite a sob.

Eren holds you through it, his palm pressed flat against your stomach, pinning you in place. He doesn't withdraw his hand. He leaves it there, two fingers still buried inside you, a casual claim that feels more obscene than the act itself.

The car fills with the smell of you. Eren pulls his hand free with a wet, filthy sound that seems loud as a gunshot, and brings his fingers to his mouth. You don't have to look to know he's tasting you, savouring it, performing for an audience of one who won't acknowledge the show.

"You're dripping on the seat, baby," Eren murmurs, loud enough to carry. Not a whisper. A statement. "Jeanie, you got any napkins up there?"

Jean doesn't answer. His jaw works. The muscle jumps.

"Guess not," Eren sighs, satisfied. He wipes his hand on his own thigh, leaving a dark smear on the denim, and settles back, pulling you closer. "We'll just have to be more careful next time."

The next time hangs in the air like exhaust, invisible but toxic.

You keep your face buried in Eren's neck, but your eyes are open now, fixed on the mirror. Waiting for Jean to look at you again.

He doesn't. Not for twenty miles. He drives the rest of the hour with one hand, the other pressed flat against his thigh, fingers digging into the muscle like he's trying to hold himself in his own body.

Eren falls asleep eventually, his breathing deepening, his hold on you loosening into something that resembles genuine tenderness. You stay awake, watching the world blur past, feeling the cooling slick between your thighs and the phantom weight of Jean's eyes.

When you finally reach the exit, the turn signal clicks loudly in the sudden quiet. Jean takes the ramp too fast, the G-force pressing you against Eren's sleeping form. At the stoplight, the car idles roughly, and you see Jean's hand move, not to the gearshift, but to his own face, pressing the heel of his palm hard against his eye socket, hard enough to hurt.

"Almost there," he says, and his voice is gravel, rust, something broken down by weather and neglect. 

He isn't talking to you. 

He might not be talking at all.

But you answer anyway, your voice small in the dark: "Okay."

The light turns green. Jean drives on, and you settle deeper into Eren's warmth, wondering what you'll find when you finally stop moving.

            The motel is a low-slung, beige slab against the darkening sky, the neon sign a jagged, buzzing pink that hums in your teeth. The Vacancy light is out, you notice. Has been for days, probably. The building squats against the interstate, its windows staring blankly at the passing trucks that don't stop anymore.

Getting late.

Jean's grunt is the only anchor in the silence as he hauls the bags from the trunk, his movements violent and rhythmic. The air is cooling, the October chill biting at your skin, but your thighs are still sticky. You can still smell yourself on your own skin, and you wonder if Jean can smell it too, if that's why he won't turn around.

He slams the trunk hard enough to make you flinch. The sound echoes off the stucco walls, and somewhere above, a light flickers on in response: a pale, yellow square that illuminates nothing.

The bell over the reception door tinkles with a thin, fragile sound as Eren holds it open for you. His hand finds the small of your back, guiding you through with a pressure that feels proprietary, inevitable. Inside, the air smells of lemon-scented bleach and old, trapped dust, the chemical sweetness doing nothing to mask the underlying rot. The carpet under your boots is worn through in patches; the pattern, some abstract attempt at flowers, has faded to the colour of old tea.

The receptionist is a girl who looks like she's seen the end of the world and found it boring. She doesn't even look up as Jean stumbles in, the bags crashing against the linoleum floor with a sound like distant thunder.

"How can I help you?" she drawls, her eyes fixed on a small, portable television behind the desk. The screen flickers with the ghost of a sitcom, laugh track bleeding through without context.

"Two rooms, please," Jean cuts in, his voice sharp, a desperate attempt to build a wall between the three of you that didn't exist in the tent. Didn't exist in the car. 

He's still trying, you realise. Still clinging to architecture, to the illusion of boundaries that Eren keeps dismantling with every casual touch.

The girl finally looks up, a slow, chewing-gum shimmy of her jaw. She takes in the three of you, Eren's territorial hand on your back, Jean's white-knuckled grip on the duffel straps, your flushed throat and bitten lips, and something knowing flickers in her flat, brown eyes. 

"Mm, sorry." She pops her gum, the sound wet and deliberate. "We only have one room left."

Jean's face goes a sudden, bruised red. "What?"

She shrugs, a bored tilt of her shoulders that sends her name tag, Tiffany, catching the fluorescent light. "It has two beds, though, if it helps. Take it or leave it."

You feel Eren's hand tighten at your back, not with tension but with delight. He was counting on this, you realise. Or hoping for it. 

The distinction doesn't matter anymore.

"Yeah, we'll take it," Eren grins, his voice breezy, unaffected by the suffocating tension that has Jean's shoulders up around his ears. He pulls a wad of fifties from his pocket, the paper crisp and loud in the quiet office. He doesn't count them, just peels off enough to make Tiffany's eyebrows rise a fraction before she pockets the excess without comment.

He takes the key, a heavy, plastic thing, the number 304 embossed in worn gold, from her hand with a wink that she doesn't return.

"Thank you so much," he whistles, his hand finding yours, fingers interlacing with a casual, terrifying ease. 

He hums a low, unrecognisable tune as he leads you down the hallway, his boots thumping on the stained carpet in a rhythm that matches your pulse.

Jean follows. He always follows. The bags swing against his thighs with each step, and you hear his breathing, controlled, deliberate, angry, behind you.

The hallway stretches long and narrow, doors passing on either side like the entrances to confessionals. From behind one, you hear the muffled sounds of a couple arguing, the words indistinct but the tone universal. From another, a television blares the evening news, some anchor's voice droning about weather patterns you won't experience, trapped here in this liminal space between where you were and wherever you're going.

Room 304 is at the end, tucked into a corner where the hallway dog-legs toward the ice machine. The carpet here is darker, water-stained, and the smell of bleach gives way to something earthier, more organic.

"Ah. Our paradise for tonight."

Eren opens the door with a flourish, the plastic key card sliding green and slick from the lock. The room exhales, and you step inside.

The room is dim, lit only by the fading twilight filtering through thin, floral curtains. The pattern is roses, you think, or peonies, rendered in shades of mauve and dusty blue that might have been vibrant in 1987. Now they filter the last of the daylight into something bruised and purple, casting the room in tones that make everything look like a healing wound.

The sheets are white and starched, pulled so tight they look like they might snap. Two beds. Queen-sized, separated by a narrow nightstand that holds a single lamp with a chipped ceramic base and a digital clock blinking 12:00 in aggressive red. The carpet here is darker still, industrial brown, and it smells faintly of mildew and the particular musk of old mattresses.

In the corner, a small cable TV sits like a silent witness on a particleboard dresser, its screen dark and dusty. Above the dressing mirror, a wide, unforgiving rectangle framed in fake gold, a dark wooden cross hangs crooked, the Christ on it looking down at the stains on the floor with a hollow, silver gaze. 

The figure is elongated, stylised, its face turned toward the beds with an expression you can't read in the dim light. Sorrow, maybe. Or resignation.

It feels like a confessional. A place where sins are gathered like dust in the corners.

You stand in the centre of the room, unsure where to put yourself. The beds are too far apart to bridge easily, too close to pretend separation. The bathroom door stands ajar, revealing a slice of pink tile and the chrome gleam of a shower rod.

Eren drops his bag on the bed nearest the window.  He tests the mattress with one hand, then the other, a ritual of assessment that makes the springs creak.

"Firm," he announces, satisfied. "Jean, you take the door side. Better for your protective instincts."

Jean lingers in the doorway, the heavy bags still hanging from his hands, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the room until it touches the foot of the bed. The light from the hallway silhouettes him, rendering him featureless, a cutout of a man.

"Put the bags down, Jean," Eren says, not looking up. He's unpacking already, laying his phone charger on the nightstand like he's planning to stay for weeks. "You're making the place look untidy."

Jean doesn't move.  You can hear his breathing, which is still controlled, still angry, but something else beneath it now. Something that sounds almost like fear.

"Two beds," Jean says finally, his voice rough. Not a statement. A reminder. A last-ditch fortification.

"That's what the lady said." Eren finds the remote, clicks the television on to static snow and the emergency broadcast system tone. He clicks it off just as quickly, satisfied that it works. "Two beds. Plenty of room."

He looks up then, meets Jean's eyes across the dim space. You can't see either of their expressions clearly, backlit as they are, but you feel the current between them, antagonism and something older, more complicated, a rivalry that predates you and will probably outlast whatever this is.

"Unless," Eren adds, his voice dropping into that register that makes your stomach clench, "you'd rather sleep in the car. It's cold out, though. Getting down to freezing, they said on the radio. Frost on the windshield by morning."

Jean's shadow ripples as he shifts his weight. The bags finally hit the floor with a sound of finality, of surrender. He steps into the room, lets the door click shut behind him, and the darkness deepens, compresses, becomes something you could almost touch.

He takes the second bed without comment, sitting on the edge with his back to you both. You watch the line of his spine through his shirt, the way his shoulders curve inward, protecting something. His hands hang between his knees, and you see them flex, open and closed, open and closed, like he's practising letting go.

Eren's hand finds your waist, pulling you back against him where he sits on the edge of his own bed. His chin hooks over your shoulder, his breath warm against your ear, and you feel him watching Jean with the same focused intensity he watched the road earlier. Predatory. Patient.

"Shower?" he murmurs, just for you, though the room is small enough that Jean will hear. "You smell like me."

You do. You smell like Eren's fingers, like your own arousal, like the closed air of the car and the particular salt of Jean's withheld attention. The thought of hot water, of solitude, of even the thin illusion of privacy offered by a locked bathroom door, makes your eyes sting with something dangerously close to tears.

"Yeah," you whisper. "Okay."

Eren releases you with a slow, sliding touch that traces your hip, your thigh, the back of your knee. He lets you go like he's paying out rope, like he's measuring exactly how much slack you need before the tether pulls taut again.

The bathroom is small, claustrophobic, the pink tile lit by a single fluorescent tube that buzzes and flickers. You lock the door, click, and lean against it, pressing your forehead to the cool wood.

Through the thin walls, you hear them. Not words, at first. Just the shifting of bodies on bedsprings, the creak of mattress and frame. Then Eren's voice, low and carrying, pitched to reach you both: "She's something, isn't she?"

Silence. The sound of Jean's bed protesting as he shifts, perhaps lies back, perhaps curls into himself.

"Fuck you," Jean says, but there's no force behind it. Just exhaustion. "Fuck you, Eren."

"Maybe later. If you ask nicely." Eren's laugh is soft, intimate, the sound of a private joke you're not meant to understand. 

You turn on the shower to drown them out, but the water is loud, and the walls are thin, and you can still hear the rhythm of their conversation, Eren's patient provocation, Jean's increasingly ragged denials, rising and falling like the steam that begins to fill the small space.

You strip quickly, avoiding the mirror, and step under water that's too hot, almost scalding. It beats against your shoulders, your scalp, the tender skin of your thighs where Eren's touch still lingers like a brand. You scrub with the small, wrapped bar of motel soap, white, anonymous, smelling of nothing, and watch the water run grey with road dust and sweat and the evidence of what you let happen in the backseat.

When you emerge, skin rubbed raw and steaming, wrapped in a towel that's thin enough to read through, the room has shifted.

Eren is lying on his bed, propped on one elbow, watching the door with the patience of something that doesn't need to sleep. Jean is on his back on the other bed, one arm thrown over his eyes, his chest rising and falling with the deliberate rhythm of feigned sleep.

But you see it, the way his free hand clenches the bedspread, the way his jaw works even in supposed unconsciousness. He's awake. He's listening. He's waiting to see what you'll do, where you'll go, which bed you'll choose.

Eren pats the mattress beside him. Not an invitation. An assumption.

You stand in the doorway, water dripping from your body onto the industrial carpet, and feel the weight of the cross above the mirror pressing down on you. The Christ figure seems to have turned, slightly, its hollow silver gaze now directed at the space between the beds, at you, at the choice you haven't made yet.

The towel is slipping. You hitch it higher, and the movement makes Eren's eyes track down, then up, a slow appraisal that ends in a smile.

"Come here, baby," he says, and it's soft, almost tender. "You're cold."

He doesn't wait for you to move. He stands, his shadow swallowing yours as he guides you to the edge of the bed. He takes a smaller towel and begins to dry you off, his movements uncharacteristically steady. 

He mumbles to himself as he works the hotel lotion into your skin. It’s cheap, smelling of fake almond and chemicals, but under his palms, it feels like silk. He tracks the curve of your calf, the dip of your waist, his thumbs lingering on the softest parts of you as if he’s trying to memorise your geography in the dark.

“Pyjamas, baby,” he whispers, his breath warm against the side of your neck. “The little shorts that I like. No underwear, either.”

You nod, your throat too tight for words, and pad over to the bags. The floorboards groan under your weight as you pull out the thin cotton tank top and the shorts. They slide onto your skin, a cool, clean contrast to the humid heat of the shower. 

When you walk back, Eren is already under the covers. He reaches out, his hand hooking into the waistband of your shorts to pull you into the dip of the mattress. He hauls the starched white duvet up to your chin, tucking the edges around your shoulders until you’re a cocoon of cotton and heat. He curls himself into your back, his chest a broad, solid radiator against your spine, his arm a heavy, protective bar across your middle.

"Night, Jean," Eren calls out, his voice already thick with a feigned sleepiness.

You wait, your heart thudding against the mattress, looking at the silhouette of Jean on the other bed. He’s an outline in the dark, a man made of shadows and silence.

"Goodnight," you whisper, the word disappearing into the pillow.

Jean doesn't reply. He doesn't move. Outside, the world is just the distant, rhythmic whirr and scratch of cars on the highway. People going places, people leaving things behind.

           The morning light is a flat, unblinking white that spills through the gaps in the floral curtains, illuminating the dust motes dancing over the wreckage of the night. The sheets are a tangled mess.

Eren is the first one up, moving with a restless energy. He orders a greasy pepperoni pizza from the place next door, and the three of you eat it in a silence that feels like held breath. There is a rhythmic, clinical precision to the morning. Eren showers. Then Jean. The sound of the spray against the plastic tub is a constant, white-noise hum that masks the fact that no one knows what to say.

When you climb back into the car, the interior smells of cold oil and Jean’s soap. The engine turns over with a growl, and as the motel shrinks in the rearview mirror, you lean your head against the cool glass of the window. You fall asleep to the low, melancholic thrum of a late-night jazz station on the radio, the saxophone notes winding around the interior like smoke.

The city rises up to meet you like a wall of glass and steel.

“Come on, babe. We’re nearly home.”

Eren’s voice is a low vibration against your temple as he shakes you awake. The skyscrapers are a teeth-line against the horizon, blotting out the soft grey of the rural sky. “I’ll take you to mine so you can pick up your stuff, and then I’ll drop you off, okay?”

You nod sleepily, your limbs feeling heavy, your skin still sensitised from the friction of the night before.

         Jean storms in first, his boots loud and rhythmic against the hardwood floor. He doesn't go to the kitchen. He doesn't go to the bathroom. He goes straight for his room, the door swinging open with a violent thud against the wall.

He begins to unpack, but it's more like a demolition. He throws his duffel onto the bed, the zipper rasping like a snarl.

“You’re acting like a five-year-old, you know,” Eren calls out from the hallway. He’s leaning against the doorframe, watching Jean’s frantic movements with a cold, amused detachment. He reaches out, pulling you against his side, his hand heavy on your hip.

Jean freezes, a folded shirt gripped so tight in his hand that his knuckles are white.

“What?” Jean’s voice is a low, dangerous growl.

“I said,” Eren drawls, his eyes flicking to the ceiling as if bored by the repetition, “you’re acting like a bitch. Man up and talk about what you’re feeling and stop looking like a kicked dog.”

Eren slides his hand off you, sauntering into Jean’s room with the slow, deliberate grace of a predator. He gets face-to-face with him, a smirk playing on the corner of his mouth.

“Man, what the fuck is your problem?” Jean explodes, shoving the pile of clothes off the bed. “You’re a fucking sociopath, you know that? You invited me on this trip just to get off on making me feel like shit.”

"Nah," Eren whispers, his eyes cold and dilated. "I was getting off on watching you eat my cum out of my girlfriend's ass. I can use her however I want, because I actually have one. I don't have to spend my nights wondering why no one wants a guy who still cries for his daddy every time things get hard."

Jean’s fist clenches so hard the skin across his knuckles looks ready to split. "Don't talk about her like that. And don't you dare bring up my father."

"I'll talk about her however I fucking want," Eren hisses, leaning in until their noses are nearly touching. "She’s my girlfriend, remember?"

"She’s not a fucking object, Eren!" Jean roars, shoved past his limit.

"Aww, is Jeanboy getting upset? Sad I took your favourite toy?" Eren laughs, a sharp, jagged sound that has no humour in it. "Guess you haven't changed, still going after my sloppy seconds? I thought you’d learned your lesson after I finished with Mikasa—"

Jean’s chest is heaving. "At least I don't need to be high out of my mind just to look at myself in the mirror. You’re a fucking junkie, Eren. Because you’re too much of a coward to face the fact that you’re a hollow, empty shell. You use people to feel full, but you're still just a fucking addict."

Eren’s eyes snap wide, a flicker of genuine malice crossing his face. "I'm an addict? That's rich, coming from the guy who spent three years trying to buy his way into a girl's bed just because he wanted to feel like he finally beat me at something. You’re lucky I didn't make you pay for the show, Jean. You’re lucky I let you even kiss her–"

The air in the room snaps. Jean doesn't think; he just swings.

His fist connects with Eren’s jaw with a sickening, wet crack. Eren stumbles back into the hallway. Before Eren can even steady himself, Jean is on him, his fingers digging into Eren’s throat, slamming him back against the wall.

"Say it again," Jean screams, his voice breaking. "Say one more word about her, you fucking burnout."

Eren reaches up, his fingers clawing at Jean’s arms, but even as his face turns a bruised purple, he’s smiling. He’s smiling because he knows he’s finally turned Jean into exactly what he wanted: a mirror of his own violence.

Jean throws Eren onto the floor in a fit of rage. The fight is ugly and desperate, a chaos of limbs and heavy breathing against the backdrop of the apartment. They slam into the living room table, the doors rattling against the wall as the cross shudders. You scream, throwing yourself between them, your hands catching on the rough fabric of their shirts as you try to tear them apart.

When they finally break apart, the silence is deafening.

Jean is slumped against the wall, jaw already darkening, blood weeping from his split lip. Eren is on his knees, one hand pressed to his face. Blood slicks down from his eyebrow, his piercing torn, you realise, the skin ragged where Jean's thumb caught it.

“Eren,” your voice trembles, a hiccup catching in your throat. “Look at your face–”

Jean watches you from across the room. He sees the way you’re tending to the man who just degraded you, the way you’re choosing the hand that hurts you over the one that wants to save you. His eyes burn with a fresh, agonising wave of fury, not at Eren, but at the sight of your devotion to him.

He spits a glob of blood onto the hardwood floor, his chest heaving. "Unbelievable," he rasps, his voice thick with a bitterness that tastes like ash.

He storms out of the apartment, slamming the door so hard the hinges wail.

"Eren, oh my god, Eren," you sob, your voice a thin, fragile thread. You scramble toward him, sniffling as you reach out with trembling fingers. You try to wipe the blood from his face, cooing soft, panicked words of comfort as you hover over him.

“I know, baby. I’m okay– I promise.” He winces as he tries to shift. The blood is a steady, dark stream now, painting his skin.  “First aid kit’s in the bathroom.“

             The drive to your apartment is a suffocating stretch of city blocks and red lights. The car smells of Eren’s cigarettes and the metallic tang of the blood you just wiped from his lip. His hand is a dead weight on your thigh, heavy and hot, claiming a territory that feels increasingly like a battlefield.

Inside your head, it’s a riot of noise. You keep seeing the way Jean’s face crumbled before he stormed out. 

Is he okay? Where did he go? 

You imagine him walking aimlessly through the city, his knuckles raw, his heart a ruin. You feel the shame in your throat, a thick, bitter bile. 

You let this happen. 

"Alright, baby. This is you."

Eren’s voice is a sharp blade, cutting through the stupor. He’s idling the car at the curb, the engine’s vibration thrumming through the seat and into your bones. The streetlights outside are a cold, unforgiving orange.

"Thank you," you murmur, your voice sounding like it belongs to someone else, someone far away.

"Hey." Eren reaches over, his fingers hooking under your chin to tilt your face toward his. His eyes are dark, unreadable, but there’s a flicker of that old, terrifying confidence there. "Don't worry about him. He’s just being a baby. He’ll come around. He always does."

You want to believe him. You want to believe that the history between them is stronger than the damage done. But as you nod and let him lean in to kiss you, you feel the rift widening.

"See you tomorrow," he whispers against your lips.

You step out of the car and stand on the sidewalk, watching the red glow of his taillights disappear into the city traffic. It’s quiet now. And for the first time in days, you are alone with the weight of what you’ve done.

               The air in the club is a pressurised velvet, thick with the scent of expensive gin, sweat, and the sulfurous bite of indoor pyrotechnics. It’s New Year’s Eve, the final, desperate gasp of the year, and the room is a pulsing throat of neon blue and strobing white. Every bass drop feels like a physical punch to the diaphragm, a vibration that makes the ice in your glass rattle against the rim.

Eren is three states away, a work trip, baby, they’re lining me up for a promotion. You’re huddled at the bar with your friends, a circle of glittering dresses and loud, free laughter, trying to drown out the hollow space in your chest with a drink that’s mostly sugar and burn.

Then, the world tilts.

Through the shifting curtain of artificial fog and the silhouettes of a hundred dancing bodies, you see him.

Jean is standing near the VIP railing, flanked by men in sharp, charcoal suits, his work buddies, looking stiff and corporate against the chaos of the night. He isn’t dancing. He’s leaning against a pillar, a glass of dark amber liquid held loosely in one hand, his gaze fixed on the middle distance with a familiar detachment.

He’s still so handsome it feels like a physical bruise. The strobe light catches the clean, honest line of his profile. His hair is longer, or shorter, you can't tell, can't remember how it was, only that looking at him feels like recognising a scar you'd forgotten you had.

It shocks you, how much space he still takes up in your lungs. You haven't seen him since the morning of the return; he had become a ghost in his own apartment, a closing door, a heavy silence behind a bedroom wall, or a gym bag gone before you woke up.

Your stomach rolls, a sudden, nauseating lurch of guilt and longing. You look away before his eyes can sweep the crowd and find yours, burying your face in your drink until the cold numbs your lips.

The countdown starts at 11:59, a roar of a thousand voices rising over the music. 

Ten.

Nine. 

Eight. 

You’ve slipped away from your friends, seeking the relative quiet of the hallway leading to the smoking terrace. The air here is cooler, smelling of the October frost you left behind in the woods. You’re leaning against the cool tile wall when the muffled roar of Happy New Year! erupts from the main floor, followed by the dull thud of confetti cannons.

The door creaks open behind you. 

You turn, and there he is. 

Jean is standing a few feet away, his jacket slung over one arm, his tie loosened. 

You stand there, your fingers twisting the fabric of your dress until your knuckles ache. You can feel your lower lip starting to wobble, a treacherous tremor you can't suppress. Your eyes are hot, blurring the sharp edges of Jean’s silhouette into a hazy, golden glow.

"Hi," you whisper, the word sounding fragile in the aftermath of the roar.

You watch him decide: speak, look away, flee.

"Hey." He doesn't move closer, but the pull between you is a physical cord, tightening with every second of silence. He looks at you, really looks at you, and you see the flicker of the camping trip in the depths of his eyes.

"How have you been?" he asks. It’s a polite question, but his voice is thick with the weight of everything unsaid.

"I– uh. Good. Good." You twist a ring on your finger, your heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm. "And you?"

"I’ve been... around." He takes a step forward, and now you can smell him, that familiar cologne that has haunted your dreams for months. 

"You look..." Jean starts, his voice cracking before he clears his throat. He shifts his weight, his eyes darting to your shoes, then to the wall, anywhere but your face. "That colour. It suits you. You look really nice tonight."

"Thanks," you whisper, the word catching in a throat that feels like it's full of glass. "You look... good, too."

"It's just a suit," he mumbles, his hand coming up to tug at his loosened tie, a nervous habit that breaks your heart. "I didn't think you'd be here. I thought you'd be with him."

"Eren's away," you say, and the admission feels like a betrayal of a ghost. "Work trip."

Jean scoffs. He looks at his shoes, then back at you. "Right. Of course he is." He pauses, his jaw setting in that hard, tectonic shift you know so well. 

A pause. The music shifts, something with a bass line that vibrates in your teeth. You open your mouth to say–

What? That you think about the motel sometimes? That Eren still won't say his name? That you found a bottle of Jean's soap under the sink last month and used it until it was empty?

He speaks first. "I'm sorry about the trip–"

You're speaking too. "I'm sorry about–"

You blink at each other. The collision of words hangs between you, ridiculous.

He goes first. "I'm... I'm sorry about what happened at the campsite. It–" He stops, swallows, and you see the cost of this, the rehearsal, the decision to be the one who apologises. "I was drinking. We all were. I shouldn't have taken advantage of you like that."

The words land wrong. Advantage. As if he were the only one who wanted, as if you hadn't pressed your shoulder against his in the dark, hadn't guided his mouth, hadn't chosen.

"I'm sorry about–" You gesture vaguely. "All of it. Eren was–"

"I know." His smile is small, familiar, the same shape as his bitterness. "Just the way he is."

“Yeah. The way he is.” There's a lull in the conversation again, you two both letting the silence speak for you.

You look at your feet, watching a stray piece of glitter on the floor.

"I hope there isn’t any bad blood between us," you say, your voice thick. "I just– I don’t– I don't want you to hate me."

Jean lets out a breath that sounds like a whistle of pain. He looks up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly, trying to maintain the wall he’s built over the last few months. He’s steady, resigned to the role Eren has always cast him in.

"You don't have to apologise," he says, his voice deceptively calm. "Won't make me feel any better. Won't change the fact that I still see the back of your head every time I close my eyes."

The honesty of it strips you bare. You take a shaky step closer, the scent of his cologne hitting you like a physical memory.

"Can I ask you something?" Your voice is so quiet now, it’s barely a breath against the sound of the distant party.

"Yeah."

"Who's Mikasa?”

He turns fully to face you, and you see the calculation, how much to reveal, how much protection Eren still deserves, how much he owes you for the honesty of your question.

"Just... a girl from college. Eren fucked her because he knew I had a crush on her."

"Oh." The syllable is inadequate. You search for better words, find only: "That's–"

"Shitty. Yeah. I know." He laughs, a sound with no humour in it. "He's been doing that since we were twenty. A car I liked, he'd buy it. A job I wanted, he'd get it, quit a week later." He stops, stares into his glass. "The thing is, I let him. I always let him. I thought if I just– if I didn't fight, eventually he'd get bored. Move on. Find someone else to perform for."

"Perform?"

"He doesn't want things, not really. He wants to be seen wanting them. The wanting is the whole point." Jean looks at you now, direct. "With you, though. That was different. He kept you."

You don't know what to do with this. You think of Eren's hands, his certainty, the way he arranges you like furniture and the way you sometimes feel most real in those arrangements. 

"I'm still with him," you say, though he hasn't asked, though the statement confesses everything.

"I know."

"How?"

"Because you're here apologising to me. Because if you'd left him, you'd have come to me." He says it without cruelty, a simple observation of your mechanics. "And because he told me. Last month. She's not going anywhere. Like I was supposed to be impressed by your loyalty, or his training, or–" He stops, jaw tight. "I'm sorry. That was–"

"No." You touch his arm, the blazer rough under your fingers, the heat of him beneath. "No, I need to hear it. I want to hear what he says when I'm not there."

Jean looks at your hand on his arm. Doesn't move away. "He says you're happy. That you two are solid. That the trip was–" He hesitates, chooses: "A phase. Something you got out of your system."

"Why are you here, Jean?" you ask. "Really?"

"Work thing. Networking." He stops, corrects himself: "I tried to meet someone. A girl. Friend of a colleague, supposed to be here, supposed to be–" He shrugs, the gesture encompassing failure, the exhaustion of trying to want someone accessible. "She didn't show. Or I didn't wait long enough. I saw you and I couldn't–"

"Couldn't what?"

"Be good." The admission costs him. You see it in the flush rising from his collar, the way his hands curl into fists and release. "I tried to be good, after. I stayed away, I lied about where I was." He turns to face you fully, knees bracketing yours on the stool. "But I'm not good. I'm not the version of me that lets you go because it's healthier, or cleaner, or whatever I'm supposed to want for you. I want you messy. I want you guilty. I want you in my bed knowing you have to leave before he notices."

You should go. You should find your friends, finish your drink, take a cab home to Eren's apartment where your toothbrush waits and your side of the bed has been established through years of habit.

You don't stand.

The words land precisely. You think of Eren's confidence, the way he moves through rooms assuming they'll arrange themselves around him, the way you sometimes wake at 3 AM unable to remember if you said yes to the life you're living or simply failed to say no.

"I chose you," you say. "At the campfire."

"And then you chose him again." Not accusatory. Inventory. "You'll choose him tonight. You'll go home to his bed and you'll tell yourself this was closure, or friendship, or–" He stops, shakes his head. "I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at how predictable I am. How I keep standing in rooms where you might appear, hoping you'll need something I can provide. A ride. A conversation. A reminder that you're more than his favourite object."

"I'm not–"

"I know." He stands, suddenly, the stool scraping loud against concrete. "I know you're not. That's the worst part. You're complicated, and difficult, and you want things that don't make sense together, and I could–" He stops, breathes. "I could love that. I could love all of it. But I don't get to, because he saw you first, and he never gives anything back once he's claimed it."

He's leaving. You see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his jaw clenches, the refusal to look at you again.

"Jean."

He stops. Doesn't turn as he strides down the corridor.

"The girl. The date. Did she really not show, or did you–"

"Does it matter?" Now he turns, and his face is controlled again, the mask reassembled. "I'm here. You're here. We're both alone in ways that don't overlap. That's the whole story."

You stand. Your legs are unsteady, the gin finally arriving in your bloodstream, the music too loud and the lights too bright, and Jean too far away across the space of the bar that suddenly feels like a chasm.

Jean.

He looks back at you, and the sight of your trembling lip seems to finally snap the last of his restraint. "Sweetheart, don't. Don't cry. Please."

"I’m sorry," you sob, a small, wet hiccup catching in your chest. "Jean, I’m so sorry. About all of it. I– I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to hurt you."

"I know," he rasps, and suddenly the distance between you is gone. He’s right there. He reaches out, his thumb hovering just a fraction of an inch from your face before he finally commits, brushing the tear from your cheek. His skin is hot, his touch so light it’s almost an insult to how much you’ve missed him. "I know you didn't."

"I think about it all the time," you confess, your voice a whisper. "I think about the trip. And the way you looked at me. And I feel so... ashamed. Because I love him, Jean, I do, but..."

His hand slides from your cheek to cup the back of your neck. He’s leaning in, his forehead resting against yours, both of you breathing in the same pressurised, desperate air.

"I shouldn't have taken advantage of it," he mumbles against your skin, his eyes closing tight. "I should have been the better man. I should have let you go back to the room and forgotten I ever touched you. But I can't. I haven't slept a full night since October, just thinking about the way you tasted."

“Drive me home,” you say. “Please.”

He should refuse. You see him consider it, the moral arithmetic, the cost of another evening spent in your orbit without orbit rights.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah. Okay."

             "Let's get you out of here," he murmurs, his eyes searching yours one last time, intense and protective. He reaches down, his fingers lacing through yours, his grip firm and masculine. "Just stay close to me. Don't worry about anything else tonight. Just focus on walking."

As he leads you toward the exit, his shoulder brushes yours, a constant, searing contact that makes the walk.

The cool night air bites at your skin as Jean leads you through the heavy glass doors, his hand a steady, burning weight in yours. The parking garage is a cavern of concrete and shadows, smelling of damp stone and exhaust. Every time your hips brush against his thigh as you walk, a jolt of electricity shoots up your spine, making your breath hitch in the quiet.

He reaches his car, a sleek, dark sedan that feels far too intimate for the tension vibrating between you. He pulls the door open for you, his movements efficient but careful, as if you might shatter if he moves too quickly. As you slide into the leather seat, the scent of him envelops you, trapped in the small, enclosed space.

Jean walks around the front of the car, his shadow tall and imposing, cutting through the dim overhead lights of the parking lot like a shadow. When he climbs into the driver’s side, the car lurches slightly under his weight. He doesn’t start the engine. He just sits there in the sudden, heavy silence, his hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two.

The dashboard lights cast a soft, amber glow over his features. It’s an unforgiving light; it highlights the sharp tension in his jaw and the deep, bruised exhaustion in his eyes. He looks like a man who has been holding his breath for months.

"You okay?" he asks. His voice is barely a whisper, rough as sandpaper. He turns his head to look at you, his gaze slow and deliberate as it sweeps over your face, lingering on your swollen, tear-stained lips.

You nod, unable to find your voice, and he finally turns the key. The engine’s hum is a low thrum beneath your feet, a mechanical heart beating for the both of you. He pulls out of the lot, the city lights blurring into long, neon streaks against the rain-slicked glass.

When he passes the roundabout that leads to your apartment, the turn that would take you back to your empty bed and your quiet life, you sit up a little straighter.

“Where are we going?”

“My place,” he says, his voice flat but final.

Our place. 

His and Eren’s apartment. The place that has been a minefield for you for the better part of a year.

“Jean, I should just go home. This is… It’s too much.”

“I’m not leaving you at home alone,” he says, finally loosening his grip on the wheel just enough to reach over. He doesn't take your hand; he just rests his palm on the centre console, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating from him. “I don’t know what you’ll do. And I don’t think I can stand the thought of you sitting in the dark by yourself tonight.”

The streetlights pulse over the car, one, two, three, four, marking the distance between who you were at the club and who you are now.

"It's his apartment, too," you breathe, the weight of the betrayal already beginning to settle in your marrow, heavy and sweet.

"He's three states away," Jean counters, his voice dropping to a rough, private register. He pulls the car into the underground garage, the screech of the tyres echoing off the concrete walls like a confession. He kills the lights, and the sudden darkness is absolute, save for the faint, rhythmic pulse of a security light nearby.

             The elevator is slow, industrial, the kind that groans between floors in a building converted from warehouse to luxury lofts. Jean doesn't touch you inside it, but he stands close enough that you can feel the heat radiating from his arm. He watches the numbers ascend, and you watch his profile in the dim light.

"Jean," you say, and your voice sounds wrong in the small space, too loud, too naked. "We don't have to–"

"I know," he says, not looking at you. The elevator dings, 4, his floor, and the doors slide open with a hydraulic sigh. "I know we don't. That's the whole point."

The hallway is long, carpeted, the walls painted a colour between grey and beige that someone chose to suggest sophistication. Jean's keys jangle in his hand, the sound too bright, too ordinary for what you're approaching. He stops at the door and hesitates, his forehead nearly touching the wood.

He turns the key, pushes the door open, and stands aside to let you enter first. The gesture is old-fashioned, almost formal, and it breaks something in you, the politeness of it, the care, after everything.

The apartment is dark. Jean doesn't turn on the overhead lights, moving instead to a lamp in the corner, something with a ceramic base and a shade that casts amber light upward, painting the ceiling in warm tones. You stand in the entryway, your shoes on the mat that says WELCOME in letters that have faded to the colour, and you feel the weight of Eren's presence everywhere—the jacket draped over the chair, the mug in the sink, the particular arrangement of objects that speaks of his occupancy, his claim.

"Jean," you say again, but he's moving toward you, slow, deliberate, and you forget what you were going to ask.

"Let me look at you," he says. His hands find your shoulders, not pulling, just resting, and you feel the tremor in his fingers, the effort of restraint. "I keep thinking you'll disappear. That I'll wake up and this–" he gestures, encompassing the apartment, the night, the two of you standing in the dark "–will be something I invented."

"I'm here," you say, and the words feel insufficient, feel like a promise you can't keep.

"I know." His thumb moves, brushing the line of your jaw, and you lean into the touch without deciding to, your body answering before your mind can intervene. "That's what terrifies me." 

He steps closer, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating from his chest through his shirt, close enough that his thigh brushes yours when he shifts his weight. "At the club, when I saw you," he stops, his gaze dropping to your mouth, lingering there before returning to your eyes, "I wasn't supposed to be there. I told myself I was meeting someone. Moving on." 

He laughs, low and rough, his thumb tracing lower, finding the pulse in your throat. "And then you walked in wearing that dress, and I knew I was fucked. That there isn't anything else. That there never was."

"Jean–"

"I don't want to be the reason you leave him," he says, but his hand has slid to the nape of your neck, his palm warm and heavy. "I don't want to be the excuse." 

He pulls you closer, his mouth near your ear, his breath hot against your skin. "But I'm standing here, and you're here, and he's three states away, and I can't not want this. I can't not want you. Even knowing what it makes me. What it makes us."

He stops, his teeth finding your earlobe, just hard enough to make you gasp. 

"What does it make us?" you whisper, and you feel yourself arching into him, your hands finding his waist, pulling him closer.

"Complicit." His mouth trails down your neck, his stubble rough against your collarbone, his voice vibrating against your skin. "Guilty." He pulls back just enough to meet your eyes, his own dark and dilated, his thumb dragging across your lower lip. He presses his forehead to yours, his hips shifting, the hard evidence of his arousal pressing against your stomach. 

"Jean, please–"

"Tell me to stop." His mouth is at your jaw, your throat, his teeth grazing the tendon there with a precision that makes your knees weak. "Tell me to stop and I will. I'll sleep on the couch. I'll be good." 

"I'm tired," you say, and the admission surprises you, the weight of it settling in your chest even as your body presses closer to his. "I'm tired of being arranged. Of performing gratitude for things I didn't ask for. I'm tired of  wanting you only when he says I can."

Jean's breath catches. You see the war in him, the same war from every encounter, but something else too. victory, sharp and hungry.

"Then don't," he says, and his voice has changed, almost cruel, almost Eren's, but different. "Don't perform." His hand slides from your chin to your throat, his thumb pressing lightly against the pulse there, feeling your heartbeat accelerate. "Don't wait." 

You should push him away. You should remember the guilt, the morning after, the performance of normalcy that awaits you. But his mouth is there, and his hands are there, and the amber dark feels like the only honest space you've ever occupied.

You kiss him.

Or he kisses you. The distinction dissolves like sugar in warm water. His mouth finds yours with a softness that contradicts everything. His lips are tentative, questioning, and you answer by opening to him, by pulling him closer, by threading your fingers into his hair and holding him where he is.

Jean groans into your mouth and shoves you back against the entryway door. The heavy thud echoes through the dark apartment, a final punctuation mark on the life you led ten minutes ago.

His hands are no longer resting. They are everywhere, tangled in your hair, gripping your waist, pulling you flush against the hard, frantic line of his body. 

"Finally," he rasps against your lips, his breathing shallow and wrecked. "God, finally."

He doesn't lead you to the bedroom yet. He can’t make it that far. His hands slide under the hem of your dress, his palms hot and rough against your thighs.

"Is this what you want?" Jean whispers, his eyes dark and wild as he stares at you in the light. He’s looking for the hesitation, the flicker of Eren’s shadow in your eyes. "You want to do this here? In his place? On his time?"

"I want to do this with you," you breathe, your fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders, dragging him back down to you.

"Bedroom," he breathes against your mouth, but he's already lifting you, his hands under your thighs, your legs wrapping around his waist as he carries you through the apartment.

He drops you onto his mattress, not Eren's, you notice, or perhaps you don't notice, perhaps you only feel the difference in the sheets.

"You're shaking," he murmurs against your lips, and you realise you are, your whole body trembling with the weight of what you're about to do, what you've already done in every hidden glance, every secret touch, every night you lay in Eren's bed thinking of this.

"I'm scared," you admit, the words barely audible.

"Good." He grins, sharp and predatory, the mask of the good friend, the second choice, finally cracking to reveal what's underneath. "Be scared. Be guilty. Be whatever you need to be." His hand tightens on your throat, not choking, just claiming, his thumb brushing the corner of your mouth. "But be here. Be mine. Even if it's just tonight.”

Absent-mindedly, Jean's hand inched towards your dress, trembling fingertips grazing the material. His heart raced from the proximity, from the scent of your perfume, from the memory of you. 

He was overwhelmed by you. Like a mate tangled in a Black Widow's web, you had him pinned beneath your gaze, trapped in the silken fibres of your gaze.

His mouth parted like he might say something, but then you were kissing him, and everything else vanished.

He kissed you again like he was hungry, like he'd been waiting for this moment since the last time he saw you, and maybe even before that. His mouth was warm, open, greedy. 

You whispered his name against his lips. A warning. A confession. A sigh.

"Jean."

He answered you by gripping your ass tighter, guiding the motion as you ground up, his cock straining painfully against you already.

Fuck, you see what you do to me? 

Your dress was still on. His shirt, still buttoned. None of it mattered. Not when it felt like you were coming undone just from the way his hands fit around your waist.

You broke the kiss with a gasp. "Show me."

He looked up at you, panting like he'd just run miles to get here. "Yeah?"

"We have all the time in the world," you repeated, slower this time. More certain. 

The words made him fucking dizzy.

He barely nodded. His fingers slipped lower again, like he was aching to touch you properly, but holding back because he knew he'd lose control if he did. 

He groaned low in his throat when you kissed him again, mouth opening, breath mingling with his as your tongues met, tentative at first, then deeper, hungrier.

Sweet and sharp, like whatever gloss you wore mixed with the ghost of tequila and something that was just you. It went straight to his head, dizzying. Addictive.

He tilted his head, kissing you harder. Lips pressing, dragging, catching slightly before sealing again, wetter now, messier. Your breath hitched against his mouth, and it nearly fucking undid him. 

 His hands found your hips, steadying you, pulling you against him with a desperation he couldn’t hide.

Your hands were everywhere, gripping his shoulders, threading into his hair, tugging just hard enough to make his stomach twist. He could feel the shape of your thighs around him, the press of your chest against his, the soft whimper you tried to swallow when he nipped at your lower lip. The way you arched up into him while your hands tangled into his hair.

“God,” he muttered into your mouth, panting, “You’re driving me insane.”

His kisses strayed from your lips to trail down the valley of your jaw, your neck. You whined, tossing your head back, and, fuck, he was so hard, it was becoming difficult to think straight.

And then your hands were on him, pulling him closer, fiddling with the buttons of his white dress shirt. You undid the first while Jean's lips dropped lower, peppering hot, open-mouthed kisses to your collarbone. 

“Marks–” You gasped once you were finished undoing the buttons, pushing his shirt open and revealing his chest, his toned stomach. “Don’t leave marks.”

Wouldn’t dream of it. 

No, he knew exactly how hard to bite. Not enough to leave a trace, but just enough to have you arching up into his touch. He had always prided himself on being a quick learner, and this was no different. 

Never in his life had he ever seen a woman so beautiful.

Your hands roamed over his chest like those of a sculptor, mapping out the planes of his chest, revering his body like you were amazed. He wasn’t proud of the shaky moan that left his lips when your fingers grazed his abs. 

His hands gravitated towards your breasts. The mounds were warm through the fabric, soft in his hands. He kneaded the tender flesh more gently than he’d ever held anything before. 

Your fingers stayed tangled in his hair, nails scraping lightly against his scalp as you tugged and rolled your hips, just enough to draw a guttural sound from his throat. His mouth hung open against yours, breath ragged, hips twitching to meet yours with a helplessness he couldn’t hide.

He moved his hand. Slid it down from your chest with a kind of reverence, fingertips trailing over your ribs, the soft tremble of your stomach, until he reached your waist and gripped it like it was the only thing keeping him tethered.

Jean didn't ease into it this time. His lips pressed firm and desperate to yours, hands curling tight around your waist like he was afraid you'd disappear if he didn't hold on. You made a small, broken sound in the back of your throat and that nearly undid him.

God, he was obsessed with you.

He always had been, but now, now that he could finally touch you the way he'd imagined, he was drowning in it.

Your arms looped around his neck, pulling him closer, and he couldn't take it. He needed more. All of you.

But then he pulled you up, hands moving to the hem of your own dress. He stopped breathing for a moment as he pulled it over your head, letting it fall somewhere off the edge of the bed.

You were beautiful.

No. You were more than that. You were unreal.

His breath caught, and for a long second, he didn't move. His eyes trailed down from your flushed face to your collarbone, to the soft rise and fall of your chest, to the curve of your waist, then back up again.

"You're beautiful, you know that?" he murmured. "God, I wish you could see yourself."

Your hand curled around the back of his neck. "That's rich coming from you."

"You make me look like you're doing community service." He kissed your neck. Once. Twice.

You let out a trembling breath and pulled him back down into your arms.

Your noses bumped. Foreheads pressed together. You didn’t kiss him.

You just gasped into each other’s mouths, barely touching, the heat of your breath mingling in the space where your lips should have met. Every sound he made rattled through you. Every exhale felt like it could tip you over.

Still, he didn’t dare to move any further, out of fear of scaring you off. That is, of course, until you spoke up.

“Touch me, Jean,” you whispered, like it was a prayer, “ Please.”

The words set his heart ablaze.

And when he kissed you this time, it wasn't just desperate. It was worship. It was all the longing and guilt and need he'd swallowed down, spilling over, flooding his chest and pouring out of his mouth onto yours. You tasted like everything he'd ever wanted and never let himself have.

And Jean was going to take his time with you.

His thumb brushed against your hip bone like he was memorising the shape of you. The moment his hand made contact with the warm skin of your thigh, he couldn’t resist the urge to squeeze the delicate flesh. 

His fingers grazed your inner thighs, moving up, up, until they met with the warm fabric between your legs. You made a wet little sound into his mouth, shifting your hips down a little harder, and that was all it took to have him hook a finger beneath the crotch of your panties, pulling them to the side.

He dipped a digit into the aching warmth between your thighs, and, shit, you were dripping for him. Tracing up and down, up and down, he leaned forward and captured your lips again.

And he couldn’t stop himself. He brought his hand up slowly, deliberately, and met your gaze like a challenge.

You didn’t look away.

You watched him, wide-eyed, lips parted, as he dragged his tongue across his fingers, tasting the heat you’d left behind.

His tongue moved with purpose, tasting you off his own hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. It was salty, sweet, just the slightest tang, and he groaned at the taste of you.

It had been so long since he had tasted you.

Then, his fingers were exploring your cunt again, inching towards your core, parting the wet folds and teasing you slowly. With his index and middle finger, he traced a line down to your entrance, petting it gently. With his thumb, he searched for your clit, using the pad of his finger to rub tiny circles around it. 

Jean, oh, yes, you breathed out.

Keeping your foreheads pressed together, he slipped a finger over your hole, slipping it inside of you with no resistance. You felt even warmer on the inside, walls clinging to his digit like you didn’t want to let it go. Then, when you moaned his name again, and he decided that he would do anything just to hear you say it like that again, he added another, just because you took them so well.

“I got you, baby,” He crooned softly, just faintly enough for you to hear.

His fingers delved into you, exploring what you liked. Scissoring them, curling them, using them to feel around until–

Oh, right there! You gasped, grip tightening in his hair.

A little spongier, tucked just out of the way, a few knuckles deep. Once he’d succeeded at finding it, he began to nudge the tips of his fingers against it, massaging the area slowly, like he had all day.

He nuzzled your nose with the end of his, bringing your lips together for a chaste kiss. Right there, sweetheart?

Mhm, you replied, yes, please, right there.

You were so wet, dripping down his palm, his wrist. 

His thumb worked a little harder on your clit, eagerly rolling over the needy bud in circles, side to side.

Your breaths were shallow, uneven, lips parted as you looked up at him through half-lidded eyes that shimmered with heat.

While continuing to fuck you open on his long fingers, he used his spare hand to slip the strap of your bra off of your shoulder, then the other. The moment you caught on to what he was trying to do, your eyes widened. Then, slowly, you reached for the back of your bra and popped it open.

Released from the gentle restraint of fabric, your breasts were granted freedom, their soft curves unveiled to the world. Lightly bouncing, with taut nipples hardened into stiff little peaks. 

His eyes, filled to the brim with adoration, drank in the sight of you like this. Hair messy, lips glossy with spit, eyes blown wide with pleasure. 

Then you smiled at him, breathless and debauched, while you brought his free hand up to cup one of your tits. 

He felt unworthy. 

Still, that didn’t stop him from wrapping his fingers around it and rolling the soft skin around in his palm, from crooking his fingers back up into that place deep inside of you that had you breathing out his name.

Jean. 

Fuck, he didn’t think he would ever be able to get it out of his head. 

Peering up at you once more, he leaned forward, bringing his face up to the plush of your chest. By the time his lips finally wrapped around your nipple, you were tangling your fingers into the back of his head, into his hair.

The skin was warm, slightly pebbled as he rolled his tongue over the bud. He rolled it between his teeth next, not enough to hurt, but enough to make you grip him a little harder. He sucked like he was on a mission to brand you with his tongue, his eager lips.

You gasped, turned, arched up into him. 

More, please.

He pressed a tender kiss to your jaw, peppering the valley of your neck, your collarbone with kisses, watching the way you wriggled and arched beneath him, the way you released a shuddering breath in anticipation.

He moved lower, lower, lips lavishing your belly, your navel. Then, once he was low enough that he could practically smell the arousal seeping out of you, pooling between your legs like honey, he spread your thighs further apart.

He leaned down, then, and pressed a slow, gentle kiss to the soft heat between your legs.

Let me taste you, sweetheart.

You didn't say anything. You didn't need to. The way your thighs parted just a little further was enough.

The first taste of you, warm, wet, dizzyingly sweet, made him moan so low it vibrated straight through you. His mouth moved like he was starved, like he'd craved this for so long it physically hurt to finally have it. The drag of his tongue was messy, almost clumsy with desperation at first, and then it smoothed out.

He groaned again. Louder. Like he couldn't help himself. Like the taste of you knocked the air out of his lungs and replaced it with need.

"Oh my god," you gasped, eyes fluttering shut. 

"Fuck," he breathed into you, not even meaning to say it. He moaned again as he buried his face deeper, letting his tongue explore every part of you. Slow at first, then firmer, rougher, until you couldn't keep still. You squirmed under him, hands slipping into his hair, tugging when the rhythm sent your breath stuttering.

And he loved that.

You were soaked. You were warm and soft and perfect against his mouth. He mouthed at your clit now, tongue circling in slow, reverent swipes, and when your hips jerked, he groaned again, grinding himself into the mattress beneath you like he needed some kind of relief.

You said his name. A broken whisper.

He kept going. 

Tongue relentless now, lips wet, open, messy. He didn't care about control. He didn't care that his face was drenched with you. He wanted it. 

Fuck, he wanted you so bad. 

His hands brushed the back of your thighs, tossing them over his shoulders while he continued to devour you. Then he began moving his fingers again.

You cried out, thighs clenching.

That's it. Good girl.

Jean. You gasped, voice pitching, hips jerking as he sucked over your clit in a slow, devastating pull. 

Oh my god– Jean, please–

He grunted into you, openly, hungrily, the rumble making your breath catch as he pulled you closer by the thigh. His hand was firm, steady, but not rough. 

Your hips rolled instinctively beneath his mouth, and his rhythm adjusted to match, tongue drawing slow, unrelenting circles. He flattened it against you, licking broad and open, then closed his lips around you again and sucked softly, then harder, more insistent when you whimpered for him.

And he was a mess about it. Not shy, not distant. 

His mouth was soaking with you, face slick, lips wet and open and pressed so deep against you. He moaned every time you gasped. Every time you grabbed for his hair. 

Your words cut off in a strangled noise when his tongue flicked against the most sensitive part of you again, and again, and again, each one a little firmer than the last.

You couldn't get your thoughts in order. Couldn't make your limbs cooperate. Your thighs were trembling now, heels digging into his back as your body started to climb toward something slow and hot.

He loved it.

He loved seeing you like this, undone, breathless, stunned by how good it felt to be pleased. You were gripping the pillow beside your head now, head thrown back, neck arched beautifully as you sucked in another desperate breath.

He moved one of his hands to your hip, grounding you, thumb stroking gently there as he buried his face deeper.

His mouth dragged open and wet and full over your clit again and again, tongue gliding, flicking, pushing you higher with every pass.

Your thighs clamped around him, and he didn't pull away.

He made a depraved sound, loud this time, voice raw with need, hips grinding into the mattress from the sheer high of it. You were losing yourself, and he got to watch it. Got to be the one to give it to you.

Don't stop–

He was so lucky.

You whined his name again, voice cracking halfway through. 

You were close.

So close.

And Jean could tell. He could feel it in the way your legs shook, in the way your whole body had gone tight and breathless beneath him. The way you pulsed around his fingers. 

He wanted it. Needed it.

He wanted to be burned into you. So that even after this moment passed, even after you tried to walk away again, you'd still feel him. Still remember.

His tongue kept working you through it, steady, firm, sure. Just like him.

You were shaking.

Hands clutching the sheets, the pillow, him. Breath catching with every stroke, every pass of his tongue. Your thighs trembled violently around his head, your whole body seized in a kind of desperate, gasping stasis.

Then you snapped.

It hit so hard it knocked the breath out of you. Your mouth fell open, but nothing came out, no words, no sound. Just the raw, helpless exhale of someone completely undone. 

Your back arched sharply, and your thighs clamped around his head as you gushed, heat pouring out of you in waves you couldn't hold back.

Jean groaned into you, deep and filthy and so turned on it sounded like he was the one cumming. He licked you through it, never stopping, never slowing, tongue dragging through the wetness, tasting you like he'd waited his whole fucking life for it.

He couldn't breathe. Didn't want to breathe because you were soaking his mouth. His chin. His neck. You were everywhere, and he wanted all of it.

Your climax pulsed through you, another shuddering wave, and you cried out this time, and it made his cock twitch against the mattress. He was leaking all over the inside of his boxers, and he didn't even care. 

"Fuck– Jean– " you gasped, voice caught between pleasure and disbelief, "So good."

Yes, he was being good. He was making you feel good.

Your body said it all. The way you shook. The way you couldn't stop twitching beneath his mouth. The way your slick soaked his face, his hands, the sheets beneath you. He kept licking, slower now, but still there. Still tasting you. Still making sure you felt him.

Then, once he was satisfied, he crawled up the bed, pinning your hands to the mattress, face covered with an obscene mixture of his spit and your juices. He was practically dripping with it, even as he kissed you with all of the strength he had left. You didn't seem to mind the taste at all, wrapping your arms around him and pulling him closer, slipping just enough tongue into his mouth to have him reeling.

Jean couldn't stop looking at you.

Your hair was fanned out against the pillow. Your lips were parted, kiss-swollen, wet. Your eyes were half-lidded, glazed with the afterglow, and you looked like you'd just stepped out of a dream, but to him, you'd always looked like that.

His heart stuttered.

He gave a quiet half-smile, still breathless himself, hand braced next to your head. 

"What, you haven't cum before?" he asked, teasing gently, not mocking, never mocking, just playful, like he could tug a little laugh out of you.

You shook your head once. "Not since Eren left."

He stared at you. At your damp cheeks, your fluttering lashes, your glistening collarbones, the tremble still in your limbs. And the weight of what you'd said sat heavy in his chest, blooming out into something hot and tender and almost unbearable.

He leaned down and kissed you then.

When he pulled back, his voice was thick with want.

I'll have to take extra good care of you, then, won't I?

He watched you nod, dazed and soft, looking up at him like you still hadn't come all the way back to your body.

You were beautiful.

Not just in the obvious way. Not in the way strangers might have said from across a room. You were beautiful in the way only someone in love could understand – in the slope of your thighs, the softness of your stomach, the vulnerability in your eyes as you looked up at him, asking for more without saying a word.

I need more, Jean, you whined.

You reached for his waistband, began peeling his pants down, and he let you. He watched the way your hands moved, the way you bit your lip without realising, the way you focused on the buttons like your hands were steadier than your voice, not even caring where they landed.

He was hard, painfully so, and when you touched him, his breath hitched, jaw going tight. Your fingers, still trembling from the lingering echoes of your own release, reach for the heavy leather of his belt. The metal buckle clinks sharply in the silence of the room as you undo it, your gaze fixed on the man above you. As he kicks his pants off and rips down his boxers, your breath hitches, caught in the back of your throat like a trapped bird.

There, resting against the sun-darkened muscle of his thigh, is a sight that makes your eyes widen in awe. His cock is a long, pulsing pillar of heat, its length stretching longer than your own forearm. He’s longer than Eren, but not thicker. 

The head is broad and blunt, gleaming in the dim light. You reach out, your hand looking delicate and almost fragile as you hover just inches from the velvet skin of his length.

His words came out as a shuddering gasp against your lips. “I don’t have protection.”

You shook your head, hair shifting from side to side as you did so, and answered, “Eren has me on birth control.”

He stared at you.

His heart lurched so hard it nearly knocked the breath out of his lungs.

Fuck.

It echoed in his head, loud and helpless. His control fractured. Every reason he had for holding back, duty, caution, guilt, melted beneath the heat of your body and the way your hand slid around his length.

It’s okay, Jean, you said again, softer this time.

He took a sharp breath, chest rising beneath you, and exhaled like it physically hurt to hold himself back. His hands gripped your hips tighter, fingertips digging into your skin.

“Fuck, you’re gonna kill me,” he said, his lips brushing against your jaw, his forehead pressing to yours like he needed to steady himself. But he was already gone.

He guides his massive, pulsing length to your entrance, the broad head pressing against your slick, aching heat. He could feel you, warm and wet, like a fucking dream.

"I'm gonna make you feel good," he said softly, eyes locked to yours. "Promise."

You nodded again.

And when he pushed in, slow, careful, watching every flicker of your face, both of you gasped.

You feel the staggering width of him stretching you, a fullness so profound it feels as though he is claiming every inch of your very soul.

The heat of you, the tightness, the way your body clung to him instantly knocked the breath out of his lungs. 

You were perfect. Warm, wet, so tight around him. You clutched at his shoulders as he bottomed out, and he could feel every shaky breath you took against his throat.

Your mouth parted with no words, just a soft, fragile sound that wrecked him.

You were even softer on the inside, soft enough that your body clung to him, kept him trapped there, like you were adjusting to how deep he was, the stretch of him. Fuck, he felt deep, buried in you, right up to the hilt with his hips pressed right up against yours. He couldn't move a muscle. No, not when the feeling of your body gripping his cock was driving him up the wall.

Jean was holding his breath. He didn't realise it until you shifted beneath him, just slightly, just a circular motion with your hips, but it was enough to make your breath stutter.

"You okay, sweetheart?" He asked you, voice rough.

You nodded. Your brows were furrowed, not quite in pain, but in what almost looked like disbelief. Your pretty, plump lips were parted just slightly, dropped into a trembling gasp. Your eyes fluttered shut for the briefest moment, like keeping them open was too much to bear. Then, when they opened again, unfocused and hazy, they looked up at him like he'd hung the moon in the sky.

And he would do that for you.

Jean brought a hand up to cup your jaw. He could feel your pussy squeeze around him, walls moulding to the shape of him like he was meant to be there. 

But still, he didn't move. Not yet. He leaned forward, breath fanning over your cheek, a murmur against your ear, What do you want, sweetheart?

You gave a frustrated little huff, eyebrows drawn.

Use your words, he whispered, grinning against your jaw.

Come on, pretty girl.

You narrowed your eyes at him, teeth sinking into that swollen lip. Then you groaned softly, head falling back against the pillow. 

Jean, you breathed, the words strung out in a way that sounded like you were barely hanging on. Move.

God, your voice.

That tone alone made him twitch inside you, made his restraint wear thinner by the second.

He kissed the edge of your mouth, humming like he was considering it. 

Please?

His breath caught in his throat.

That voice was nothing like the quiet, hesitant one he'd first fallen for. The girl who used to glance away whenever his eyes lingered. That version of you was gone now, replaced by the one beneath him, flushed and soaked and so ready for him it made his head spin.

"Fuck," he whispered.

He could make you beg a little more, but that would be cruel. And he wasn't cruel.

Not to you. Never to you.

No, he wouldn't dream of keeping his girl waiting.

Yeah? You think you can take it?

Finally, Jean began to move. When he did,  it was deep. Long, thought-out strokes that made you gasp and arch your back. Your hands flew up to his shoulders.

And he brought his hips down with a passion, pulling all the way out of you, leaving just the tip inside, before sliding back into you with ease.

Wanna give you more, he thought. You can take it.

He slid his hands up the backs of your thighs, manhandling them over his shoulders. Then, a little harder, he fucked you into the mattress.

Your jaw hung open, head falling back onto the pillow while you groaned, Oh, fuck, so deep–

He could feel the tip of his dick pressing right up against the deepest places inside of you.

Then, he wrapped his fingers around your neck. The tips of his fingers found your pulse points with practised ease while he slid out, back in, out, then back in again.

Your pupils were wide, eyes glassy, half lidded with need as he tightened his grip enough to cut off your air supply. Your breaths were shallow enough for him to know that you liked it, lips soft and parted, somewhere between a moan and a prayer. 

And, fuck, you were so fucking warm. He could stay buried between your thighs forever.

"Harder," you gasped out when he finally released you, letting all of the oxygen come rushing back in. "Please, Jean. Fuck me harder–"

Anything for you.

Jean began to move his hips with more fervour, slipping in and out of your soaking wet pussy. Your body was pressed beneath his, contorted while he kept your thighs over his shoulders.

He leaned in closer, dragging his hot, open mouth along your jaw, down the column of your neck like he wanted to eat you alive. His tongue flicked out, rolling over damp skin, tasting you, your skin, a hint of sweat.

No marks, he had to remind himself while he sucked your skin right into his mouth, just enough to have you arching up into him, squeezing his cock like you wanted to keep it there. 

But, fuck, the thought of you walking around with a physical mark of his need for you, something Eren would be able to see and know that he left there.

It was enough to make him bite down a little harder.

A little one won't hurt, he thought. It'll heal up by tomorrow.

No. Don't be an idiot.

Jean, baby, you gasped out. Feels good. Yeah, so good.

He could feel you clenching down at him, drawing him in deeper, if that were even possible.

He groaned, sucking on your earlobe until you writhed beneath him.

That's it, he whispered. He pressed his forehead right up against yours, hair tickling your face while his hips slapped the back of your ass over and over again. Just like that, pretty. Let me feel you.

Your fingernails curled against his back, digging into his skin when he picked up the pace just a little, just to see how you'd react. You cried out for him softly, and Jean swore he'd never heard anything more beautiful in his entire life.

Jean, please–

His name fell from your lips in soft, shuddery whimpers, and every time it did, he gave you more, more of him, a little harder, a little deeper.

"You're so beautiful," he murmured, licking his lips while he looked down at the junction where you sucked him into you before glancing back up at your face. 

You were getting close already, he could feel it. Like you were about to break, and you wanted him to come with you.

His hand shot out, gripping the headboard to stabilise himself while he kept up the pace. Sweat beaded at his neck, rolling down his chest, his stomach. 

You clawed at his abs, don't stop, Jean, oh my god.

Like he ever could.

God, he breathed, voice cracking, you're– fuck, angel, you're perfect.

Then he reached down between you. His fingers found that sensitive spot, slick, swollen, aching, so ready, and the second he touched you there, the way you jerked against him, the sound you made–

You shattered for him.

You clenched around him so hard it pulled a groan from deep in his throat, your whole body arching beneath his, trembling through every wave of it. Your mouth fell open in a moan that hit his ears like a punch to the gut. You writhed, helpless, grinding into his hips as he kept moving, kept watching, completely mesmerised by the sight of you coming apart under him, making a mess all over his dick.

He was about to ask, gently, breathlessly, if you wanted him to keep going, if you needed a second. He slipped out of you, before sliding it back and forth until it caught on your entrance and, fuck, it sank back in like it was nothing.

Your eyes were squeezed shut, brows furrowed with concentration. Your thighs were shaking, too, telltale signs that it hurt a little more than you wanted to let on.

You got it, sweetheart. He breathed out words of encouragement as he bottomed out inside of you. Just like that. I want another from you, okay?

Your hand shot out to the side, grasping the sheets, then his chest for support. Eyes squeezed shut, mouth gaped open, you cried again, Oh my God– 

He could feel every curve of your body rolling into his, the heat, the slick friction, the pretty noises you made every time your hips met.

His head fell back against your shoulder again, jaw slack, eyes fluttering shut as he moved with you, utterly helpless. It felt like he was fucking melting. Like you were dragging him under with nothing more than the way your body moved on top of his.

It’s big. You groaned, so fucking big, fuck.

One look at you, and he knew he wouldn’t be lasting long. 

“Jean,” you breathed.

Jean. Jean. Jean.

Fuck, he thought, Say it again.

He could feel himself slide that much deeper, hit spots harder than you were able to hit by your own ministrations. Your pussy clenched down on him like it was your job; every time his hips were flush up against your ass, you rocked your hips back and forth in tandem.

God, it was perfect.

Eventually, he figured out what made you tick, which angles made you scream, which ones made you arch your back. He built up a rhythm, hips snapping up against your ass, the sensitive tip of his dick hitting your G-spot every single time. Your body was a maze, and he was lost in its intricate twists and turns.

His grip tightened around your hips, calloused pads of his fingers sinking into your soft skin like he was trying to brand himself there, to mark you, to make sure you felt him long after this was over.

He pounded up into you, sharp, more possessive than he had any right being, like he wanted to drive the point home, bury it deep enough that you never forgot it. You jolted against him, eyes flying wide, and he watched hungrily, watched as you trembled, watched as your pretty eyes rolled right back into your eyelids.

“I got you, baby, ” he grunted, hand sneaking down between your body and his, finding your clit and pinching it gently between two digits. Then, he rolled it around in tiny circles. It was small, almost imperceptible, but it was enough to have you bouncing harder, pulling him deeper. 

Jean, I'm so close. 

Jean's lashes fluttered shut, eyes threatening to roll all the way back. 

Your nails scraped his chest until the skin turned pink beneath your fingertips, dragging across flushed skin that was slick with sweat. He moaned, head tipping back for a second while he savoured the feeling of you; he could feel your walls pulsing, feel your pussy squeezing him. His hair clung to his forehead, damp and dishevelled, and he slicked it back with one hand so he could see you better. So he could see what he was fucking doing to you.

No, he didn’t even want to blink, lest he miss a moment of this.

You whined, leaned forward like gravity didn’t matter, like the only thing tethering you to this earth was him. Your mouth caught him in a hot, sloppy kiss, all tongue and moans and teeth, and you moaned into him, into his mouth like you were giving him that sound to keep.

He swallowed it down, groaning into your mouth. That’s it. That’s it, baby. Give it to me. Let ‘em hear you– You gonna cum again?

Oh– God, I think I am. You gasped. 

But then, your body spoke for you, arching up into his touch. Every time your hips met his ass, he could hear that pussy making a mess out of him. His fingers kept on rubbing your swelling clit, bringing you that much closer to the edge.

He needed to see you fall apart.

“This pussy was made for me,” he murmured against your mouth. “Only me, right?”

You gasped, nodding frantically, lips brushing his as you breathed it out, breaking for him completely.

I’m yours, Jean. Fuck, I’m yours.

And then you shattered.

Your whole body tensed, spine arching like a bowstring pulled taut, and you cried out, into his mouth, into his skin, wherever your lips could land as the pleasure ripped through you, wave after fucking wave. He could feel you, feel your walls spasming wildly around his cock while you fell apart.

Your thighs shook around him, locking up, trying to hold onto something, anything, as your release crashed through you so violently it nearly stole the breath from your lungs.

He caught you when you came down, his arms around your waist, holding you firm, grounding you as you fell apart in his lap. His name spilt from your mouth like a prayer, like a confession, broken and reverent, and he watched you, eyes wild, jaw clenched, as you rode it out.

“That’s it,” he rasped, voice thick with awe and lust and something darker. “Just like that. God, look at you. So perfect when you cum for me.”

You trembled against him, still grinding, desperate and raw, not ready to stop, even when your body was. There was a puddle on his sheets, some mixture of your juices and his.

I’m so fucking close, he groaned, licking his lips as his hands slid down your back, rough and greedy. 

You were still trembling when he grabbed your hips tighter, the way a drowning man might cling to the last breath in his lungs. 

“Fuck,” he panted, burying his face in your neck. “You feel me? Shit– ”

You clenched around him, body still sensitive and twitching, and that’s what did it. He groaned, loud, low, feral, and he stiffened beneath you, hips slamming down one last time as he came hard, breath torn from his lungs.

His voice cracked, jaw slack as he spilt into you, holding you down like he was scared you’d vanish if he let go. His whole body trembled through it, sweat dripping from his temple as he rode it out, buried deep, gasping like the air was too thick to breathe.

You both went still, bodies pressed together, skin sticking with sweat and the heat of what you’d just done. Your heart thundered against your ribs like it wanted to break free.

For a moment, neither of you said anything.

You stayed like that, chests rising and falling, his arms still wrapped around your waist, your fingers knotted in the mess of his hair.

Silence settled between you, broken only by the sound of your harsh, uneven breaths. 

Suddenly, he didn’t care about your boyfriend. He was content to have you like this.

You buried your face in his chest, shuddering breath muffled against his skin, and he wrapped an arm around you again, still holding you close.

Fuck, he was so screwed.

Jean blinked up at the ceiling. He could still feel the aftershocks in his thighs, the way you'd held onto him like you never wanted to let go.

But then, you opened your eyes, hazy with afterglow.

His eyes followed you as you lay back, legs spread wide open for him. Then, they trailed down your body, down your navel, between your thighs, until he was staring face-to-face with the most sinful image he'd ever seen.

You, eyes half-lidded with his cum dripping out of your pussy around the rim of his cock.

"Shit," he breathed in awe. Mindlessly, perhaps, his hand drifted over your thigh, massaging the skin there.

Before he could stop himself, he was reaching down, dipping a finger into the obscene mixture of your cum and his, feeling how warm you were, even after everything. You mewled, rutting your cunt down against his hand.

You worried your lower lip between your teeth, scooting your hips closer so that he could push his release back into your needy cunt. It was depraved, but, fuck, he would never forget the way you looked right then, dripping all over his fingers.

He turned his head up towards you, licking his lips as he murmured lowly, "Think you got one more for me, pretty girl?"

You looked up at him, lashes still fluttering, lips kiss-bruised and slightly parted. Then, the cutest little smile crawled over your face.

And he grinned, lazy and feral, before flipping you gently onto your stomach.

You gasped, laughing again, hands fumbling into the sheets as you adjusted, arching your back instinctively for him.

From behind, the curve of your spine, the soft sound of your breathing, it was all too much. 

"Put your hands against the headboard, sweetheart," he said, voice low and ruined, the syllables rasping out of him like they cost something. He brushed your hair off your back, deliberately, then let his fingertips trail all the way down your spine, light, reverent, more possessive than he had any right to be.

You looked at him over your shoulder.

Like this?

Jean's brain short-circuited. His breath hitched. His fingers froze mid-trace. And he had to close his eyes for a second, just to breathe through it.

You kept smiling, still playful, still soft,  but now your hands were sliding up, palms flat against the headboard, back arched a little deeper for him, thighs spread a little wider, and your hips just barely wiggled like you were taunting him. He had a clear, unobstructed view of the way his cum dripped out of you, down your thighs.

Jean's throat went dry.

His hands gripped your waist hard, jaw clenched, eyes raking over every inch of you like he was trying to burn the image into his skull.

Jean adjusted his grip, chest rising and falling in shallow little waves as he straightened up. Then, reaching down and gripping himself by the base, he lined the tip up with your dripping heat, pressing in.

You cried out the second he filled you, pushed in past the resistance until his hips were flush with your ass. Your body jolted forward. His hands clenched at your hips, but you were already trying to move. You crawled a few inches up the bed, like the sensation was too much to bear, like you had to run from it.

And, fuck, from this angle, you were squeezing his dick so hard he thought he was going to finish right then and there, but he didn't hesitate. He grabbed your hips a little rougher, dragging you back to him, and groaned as he bottomed out a second time.

You whimpered, legs trembling against the bed.

What's the matter? I thought you wanted it rough, he cooed softly, teasingly, lips ghosting over the back of your neck. You can take it, sweetheart. Stop running.

Jean, it’s too much. I– I can't–

Relax, baby, he ran a hand down your spine. I know you can do it.

His hand smoothed its way down your back again before he gripped your waist again, firm and commanding, rocking into you hard. You gasped, whined, your knees buckling a little deeper into the sheets.

But he saw the way the movement made your mouth drop. He saw the way you leaned back into him greedily, meeting his thrust in the middle, and he knew you were ready for him to give you more.

Good girl.

He pulled out as far as he could before sliding back in. You were wet, so wet that he could hear the shlick your pussy made while he fucked you. His seed seeped out of you, making a mess where the two of your bodies were joined.

Just like that, he murmured, feeling the resistance melt away as you relaxed, feeling the way you took him like you were meant for it. That's my girl. Let me see you take it.

You whined something into the pillow. It was far too soft to make out, but he heard the way your breath hitched when he angled his hips down. He could feel the way you clenched around him.

Unable to hold himself back, he began to grind into you a little faster, a little harder. Steady and unforgiving, each thrust forcing a high gasp from your throat as your hands scrambled toward the headboard again, trying to hold onto something, anything.

Your cheek pressed into the sheets, babbling. Oh my god– Jean– Jean, it's so good–

Yeah? His voice was lower now, lips close to your ear, hips driving forward harder. That's it, baby. Let me give it to you. Take it.

He pressed a kiss between your shoulder blades. You were soaked, shaking, gripping the headboard now like it was the only thing keeping you grounded.

He could feel every twitch of your muscles, every flutter of your breath as he rocked into you harder.

Don't run from it,  he breathed. You're doing so good.

His mind was going numb from the pleasure. Every time your cunt greedily sucked him in, he felt himself creep that much closer to the edge.

You turned your head slightly, looking back at him with teary eyes, mouth parted in disbelief. Then your lips parted around the prettiest sigh of his name.

His hands flexed around your hips, anchoring himself to you, to the moment.

His girl. 

You were his girl. 

His pretty girl, shaking like a leaf beneath him while your ass bounced against his hips, while you tried to hold it together. 

He had to remind himself to breathe when he looked down, when he saw your folds stretching open, parting like petals to take him in. When he saw you filled with his cum. Not your boyfriend’s, not anyone else's, but his.

My girl.

Something wild and possessive surged through him. He moved again, shifting further back onto his knees with a shuddering breath and taking you with him. You yelped when he pulled you back onto him, half pain, half shock. 

The new angle had your spine arching deeper, your hips tilting back eagerly to take more of him. It made it so that so much more of him could slide in every time he fucked into you, deep and hard.

Your body jolted as you gasped out brokenly, palms scrambling for purchase on the bed frame.

Jean picked up the pace again without thinking, without even asking, because he knew what you wanted. What you needed. His hips snapped into yours, steady and sharp, and the way your body responded told him he was doing everything right.

Your thighs quivered, your fingers curled into the fabric beneath you, and your voice cracked as you nearly screamed his name.

He was sweating, so were you, but he didn't dare to stop. Not when you were begging so sweetly for him to keep going, chanting the words like a mantra. Not when you were making sounds like that. Not when your pussy was clenching around him like you didn't want to let him go.

You let out a broken, helpless sob of pleasure when he leaned over you, brushing the hair away from your neck so he could press kisses there, like he couldn't stand not to be touching you everywhere. He pistoned into you from above, now, and purred into your ear;

That's it. Let me hear you.

You made another sound, high, soft, and cracked right down the middle. His name. Over and over again, like you didn't know what else to say.

Jean. Jean. Jean.

Jean groaned and pressed his mouth to your shoulder, lips parting over your skin like he could breathe you in through your bones. His thrusts didn't falter. If anything, he started to move harder, deeper, each movement more desperate than the last.

"You're mine," he murmured, like a secret. "You know that, don't you?"

You nodded, barely.

And when you looked back at him again, eyes hazy and red-rimmed, mouth open on a shaky breath, he lost his rhythm for just a second.

Something in his chest twisted. He had to blink through it, had to remind himself to breathe, to move, when everything in him wanted to stop time and stay in this moment with you forever.

He pulled back, slow and heavy, dragging himself out of you inch by inch until only the tip of him remained. And then he pushed back in, just as slow.

And then he did it again. Leaned back just enough to get his hand beneath your body, feeling around until he found your clit. Once he was successful, he began rubbing at the overused, swollen nub, reeling in the way you trembled beneath him.

You gasped.

Not a soft one, either; this was sharp, startled, like he'd shocked the breath out of you. Your hips jolted forward on instinct, legs trembling beneath you, and he nearly groaned just from the sound you made.

Oh my God–

His fingers kept moving, just a little more pressure, just a little more rhythm, and he felt your pussy flutter around him, tensing, clenching, like your whole body was fighting to stay grounded.

You didn't stand a chance.

And he could feel it, too, the heat, the slick, the way your body started to pulse beneath his hand, all shivery and overwhelmed. You cried out, hands fisting in the sheets, spine arching, breath catching hard in your throat.

Your whole body shook. You whimpered his name again and again.

And when you finally shattered, when you broke for him with a cry and clenched down hard, trembling all over, you gushed all over him, squirting release onto the bed, his hand, his cock.

He swore under his breath, forehead pressed to your back like he needed a second to recover, like the feeling of you pulsating around him was enough to undo him.

But the second you tried to move, tried to crawl forward on shaky arms, he caught you.

His hand slipped to your waist, the other bracing beside your head, and he held you there, body to body, breath to breath.

"Where do you think you're going?" he murmured, still catching his breath. "You're not done, are you?"

You whimpered something he couldn't quite make out, already breathless again.

And Jean smiled against your skin.

"God, look at you," he muttered, dragging his hand slowly up your spine, watching the way your muscles flinched under his palm. Before he could stop himself, he brought his hand down against your ass, eliciting a gasp. "You don't even know what you do to me, do you?"

His fingers curled into your hair, not to hurt, and when he pulled your head back just slightly, he could see the curve of your throat, the rise and fall of your breath, the stunned way your mouth hung open like you couldn't catch it.

Jean kissed the side of your face, soft and reverent. "My pretty girl," he whispered.

You were slipping away from words, from thought, and Jean was right there with you, with his mouth pressed to your neck, his hands gentle on your skin, whispering the words he could no longer keep quiet.

            After, he doesn't pull out immediately. He stays inside you, his weight pressing you deep into the mattress, his breath warm and ragged against the hollow of your neck. 

You lie together in the dark, the small apartment quiet, filled only with the rhythmic sound of your breathing, the distant, muffled hum of the city, and the ghost of Eren's presence, with his jacket still draped over the chair in the living room, his coffee mug still in the sink, his name hovering in the space between your bodies like a question neither of you will ask.

You trace the line of Jean's spine with idle fingers, counting vertebrae, memorising the architecture of him. His skin is damp, cooling, the sweat drying sticky between you. He shifts, his hips rolling slightly, and you feel him soften inside you, the intimacy of it almost more than you can bear, the indignity, the tenderness, the reality of what you've done.

"I should go," you whisper, though you don't move, though your legs are still wrapped around his waist. Still, your body has already decided to stay.

"Don't." His voice is rough, sanded down by what he let himself become, what you let him become. He presses his face deeper into your neck, his lips finding the pulse there, tasting it. "Stay the night. Stay the whole weekend." 

His hand finds your hair, making your chest ache, making you think of Eren's grip, always claiming, always performing possession, and how this feels different, how this feels like being held rather than being displayed. "He's not coming back until Monday."

You close your eyes. The weekend stretches before you, a secret, a fleeting autonomy. You imagine the mornings, waking in Jean's bed, his kitchen, his shower. 

The afternoons, lying on his couch, his hand on your thigh, the television playing something neither of you watches. 

The nights, this, again and again, the accumulation of touches that Eren hasn't arranged, that belong only to the two of you, that will become evidence if you're not careful.

"He's had it coming," Jean says, and his voice has changed, hardened at the edges. You feel him withdraw finally, the loss of him sudden and cold, and he rolls onto his side, pulling you with him, arranging your bodies into a spoon that feels practised, habitual, as if you've done this a hundred times instead of once. 

"Don't you feel bad?" you ask, though you already know the answer, though you can feel it in your own body, the nausea rising in your throat even as your skin hums with satisfaction, the guilt pooling in your stomach even as you press back against him, seeking his warmth.

"No." The word is flat, final, but you feel the hesitation after, the breath he holds before releasing. "I don't want you to think I'm doing this for revenge." His hand stills on your hip, his forehead pressing between your shoulder blades again, this time the gesture almost childish, almost prayerful. "I– I really care about you. I've cared about you since before I was allowed to.”

You turn in his arms, facing him in the dark. His face is close, blurred, the details lost, but the expression clear, the same wounded openness.

"You won't tell him, will you?" The question feels small, cowardly, the voice of someone who wants to have everything without paying for it.

"No." Jean's hand finds your face, his thumb tracing your cheekbone, your jaw, the swollen tenderness of your mouth where he bit you, where you bit back. "Never. This is between us." He leans in, his forehead touching yours, his breath mingling with yours until you can't tell where you end and he begins. "This is the only thing that's ever been just mine. Ours. I won't let him take it.

You kiss him again. 

And again. 

The kisses blur into each other, into the dark, into the temporary country of the weekend where no one knows where you are, where your phone sits silent in your purse, where Eren's name doesn't appear, doesn't demand, doesn't arrange.

The next few days are like a romcom, if romcoms were made by people who understood the nausea of happiness, the way joy can curdle in your stomach when you know it can't last. You wake to Jean's hand on your waist, his mouth on your shoulder. You make coffee in his kitchen, wearing his shirt, and he watches you from the doorway with an expression that feels too heavy for the morning light, too permanent for something that must remain temporary.

There are bouts of nausea and guilt, the moments when you pass Eren's jacket and remember his hands, when your phone buzzes with his name, and you silence it without looking, when Jean says something tender. You hear yourself respond and think this is how people become strangers to themselves.

But you agree, the two of you, lying in bed on Sunday afternoon, the light slanting through the blinds in stripes that make the room feel like a cage or a church, depending on how you angle your head. 

You agree to keep this secret. 

To bury it. 

To carry it like a stone in your chest that you will learn to breathe around, to walk with, to pretend doesn't exist.

"We'll be careful," Jean says, his hand tracing patterns on your bare back, his voice already rehearsing the performance of normalcy. "We'll only–" he stops, corrects, "–only when it's safe. When he's not here. When we can–"

"When we can pretend it didn't happen," you finish, and the words taste like ash, like the end of something before it had a chance to become anything.

"Yes." He pulls you closer, his face buried in your hair, and you feel the tremor in him, the same tremor from the first touch, the first kiss, the first time he let himself want without permission. "But it did happen. It is happening. And I–" he stops, swallows, and you wait for the confession, the I love you, the words that would make this into something you can't survive "–and I'm not sorry."

Monday morning arrives like a verdict. You dress in silence, the clothes from Friday feeling like a costume now, a disguise you no longer remember how to wear. Jean drives you to the coffee shop three blocks from your apartment.

At the curb, he stops you with a hand on your wrist. His eyes are red-rimmed, sleepless, and you realise he hasn't slept well since you arrived, that he's been watching you, memorising you, preparing for the absence that begins now.

Meet me again. 

Not a question. A request, finally, after all the permission he's been denied.

Okay, you say, though you don't know when, though you don't know how, though you know that every meeting will be a risk, every touch a betrayal, every moment of happiness purchased with the currency of someone else's trust.

You get out of the car. 

You don't look back. 

             (The rain outside the rental is a continuous, drumming static against the windowpanes, smelling of wet asphalt and rotting autumn leaves. Inside, the living room is lit only by the greenish, flickering glow of a CRT television playing a muted hockey game. It’s their sophomore year, and the house smells persistently of damp carpets, stale bong water, and the pungent, skunky aroma of cheap weed.

Eren is slouched in the centre of the sagging corduroy sofa, his long legs stretched out over the milk crate they use as a coffee table. He’s completely unbothered by the cold, his eyes glazed and bloodshot as he rolls a fresh joint with practised, steady fingers.

Jean is standing across the room by the radiator, a plastic red cup of lukewarm beer sweating in his grip. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed on the cracked linoleum floor.

"You didn’t even like her," Jean says, his voice flat, cutting through the low hum of the television.

Eren doesn't look up from his hands. He tucks the edge of the rolling paper with the tip of his tongue. "Who says I didn't? Mikasa’s great. Smart. Beautiful. Perfect rack."

"Don't do that," Jean rasps, his knuckles whitening around the plastic cup. "Don't play stupid. You knew I was going to ask her out this weekend. I told you on Tuesday. I told you while we were sitting right here."

Eren finally looks up. Through the dim, green-tinted light, his eyes are wide, glassy, and completely hollow. He raises the joint to his lips, sparks a cheap plastic lighter, and inhales deeply. The cherry glows a fierce, angry orange in the dark room, illuminating the sharp, boyish lines of his face. 

He holds the smoke in his lungs for a long, agonising beat before letting it billow out of his mouth in a thick, lazy cloud.

"First come, first served, Jeanboy," Eren drawls, his voice husky from the smoke. "If you wanted her, you should've moved faster."

"She was talking to me, Eren! For three weeks!" Jean’s voice cracks, the raw, twenty-year-old humiliation spilling out into the small room. He takes a step forward, his boots heavy on the floorboards. "You don't even care about her. You just saw me looking at something, and you had to have it. You’re a parasite."

Eren doesn't flinch. He just smiles, that slow, rakish, feline smile that makes Jean’s stomach twist into knots. He taps the ash onto the milk crate, his movements scarily casual.

"Maybe I just wanted to see if she'd actually choose you," Eren whispers, leaning forward into the blur of smoke. "And guess what? She didn't. You can't blame me for the fact that people look at you and just see... a safe bet. A nice guy."

Jean feels the heat rise in his face, a burning, suffocating shame that tastes like salt. He wants to swing. He wants to smash the red cup across Eren’s smirk and drag him onto the stained carpet. But the worst part, the part that settles into Jean’s chest like lead, is the realisation that Eren is right. 

"You're disgusting," Jean spits, turning his back on the couch. "You're going to burn your whole life down, Eren. You're going to choke on this shit, and nobody's going to be there to pull you out."

Eren lets out a low, raspy laugh behind him, the sound muffled by another lungful of smoke.”Maybe I will. And maybe one day you’ll finally get a girlfriend.”)

           Your phone buzzes as you unlock your door. Eren's name, Eren's face, Eren's voice in text form: 

Landed. Missed you babe. See you tonight? Got you something. 

You type back, the performance resuming, the arrangement continuing: 

The music from the main floor is a dull, muffled throb behind the heavy doors, making the air in the hallway feel even tighter, more suffocating. You stand there, your fingers twisting the fabric of your dress until your knuckles ache. You can feel your lower lip starting to wobble, a treacherous tremor you can't suppress. Your eyes are hot, blurring the sharp edges of Jean’s silhouette into a hazy, golden glow.

"Hi," you whisper, the word sounding fragile in the aftermath of the roar.

You watch him decide: speak, look away, flee.

"Hey." He doesn't move closer, but the pull between you is a physical cord, tightening with every second of silence. He looks at you, really looks at you, and you see the flicker of the camping trip in the depths of his eyes.

"How have you been?" he asks. It’s a polite question, but his voice is thick with the weight of everything unsaid.

"I—uh. Good. Good." You twist the ring on your finger, your heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm. "And you?"

"I’ve been... around." He takes a step forward, and now you can smell him—that woody, familiar cologne that has haunted your dreams for months.

"You look..." Jean starts, his voice cracking before he clears his throat. He shifts his weight, his eyes darting to your shoes, then to the wall, anywhere but your face. "That colour. It suits you. You look really nice tonight."

"Thanks," you whisper, the word catching in a throat that feels like it's full of glass. "You look... good, too."

"It's just a suit," he mumbles, his hand coming up to tug at his loosened tie, a nervous habit that breaks your heart. "I didn't think you'd be here. I thought you'd be with him."

"Eren's away," you blurt out, and the admission feels like a betrayal of a ghost. "Work trip."