I Nurture Seeds of Bitter Fruits
Category: Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Summary:
After Eren announces he will be leaving for Marley, Jean tries to convince him to stay.
It doesn't go well.
Eren’s calf throbs. In the morning, before roll call, he had slit it open with a paring knife and buried a wrought-iron nail in the muscle. It is the only pain in his body, and focusing on it would be satisfying.
But that can come later. Right now is the dinner, the dining hall with cast-off wine spatters across the granite floors. Clamorous laughter at their table. Jean knocking his knee against Eren’s. Jean’s been nibbling at a plum all evening, just the skin, juice slicking down his wrist.
Three weeks ago, the day after the summer solstice, Eren had announced he would be leaving for Marley. His own business, he’d said. More important than nosing the military’s asses here. Jean has grown quieter since then, started soaking Eren with mournful looks when he thinks Eren isn’t looking.
He’s doing it again.
Eren forces down the last of his hard bread and gets up. “Turning in early.”
Mikasa and Armin exchange glances. Eren souses himself in the gentle concern of their eyes; that concern will be gone before long. The important thing is that they will be on Paradis, a decade after he is dead, chests rising and falling, eating, laughing, and perhaps, sometimes, speaking of him by the ash tree they used to lounge under. He wants to reopen the wound on his calf.
He goes up to his room, pretending not to notice the shadow tailing him, and leaves the door yawning. They all got private rooms after Shiganshina. They all, that is: not even enough people to replace the senior members of the Survey Corps. Eren had spent half that first night staring at an ashed rectangle on the wall, where a charcoal sketch of the previous occupant’s parents used to hang, rifling through all the ways he could kill Reiner’s people.
Jean slinks in and shuts the door, leans against it with his hands behind his back. He will probably volunteer at Historia’s orphanage or a hospital after Eren makes sure Paradis is safe, but Eren doesn’t ask. He imagines Jean untangling a child’s hair from a holly bush, clinking his teeth against ice in a whiskey glass, toeing grooves in sugary sand. He imagines himself within earshot.
“I need to talk with you,” says Jean quietly, not meeting Eren’s eyes. “You’re being an idiot.”
Eren has ruined Jean’s nose for less. It could be a believable non-excuse. “I don’t have time for your tantrums.” He is going to turn a city across the sea into a twitching corpse and Jean is going to curl up and cover his ears and think he could have done something, if only he understood Eren better. That’s the problem with people like Jean; there is no religion in them. He will rattle things, break them apart, put them back together, when all he should be doing is kneeling into the new world that Eren is laying before him.
Jean shuffles to the desk, fiddles with the fountain pen he had given Eren on his sixteenth birthday. Engraved cap, flexible nib. He must have saved for weeks. Must have planned for longer. To make proper notes for the things you and Hange keep yapping about, he’d said. You keep ruining HQ’s dip pens. “You can’t leave.” His tone is flat, controlled.
Does the nail feels larger than it is? “Wasn’t aware Hange died and made you Commander.”
Jean fingers a loose button on his coat. It is a disgrace, a loose button on a squad leader; Jean had declared so himself when they were cadets. “You can’t. Think about Mikasa.”
“This isn’t about Mikasa.” Eren gets up in Jean’s face, close enough for the scent of stale sweat to tickle his nose.
Jean rubs circles onto his own wrist. The juice stains are still glistering softly there. His gaze slips to Eren’s mouth, and he leans in, slow.
Eren seizes Jean’s hair - downier than he ever imagined it was. He tastes sour plum, the zing of wine. He cuts his tongue on Jean’s teeth and pain flares bright and metallic, so he does it again, arching against him. Jean’s lips are chapped but cushiony, his chest a warm solid place that beckons Eren to press his cheek against it. Wisps of hair come away in Eren’s fingers, and Jean makes a high, aborted sound.
“You call this talking?” Eren murmurs against Jean’s mouth.
Jean’s eyes flicker half-lidded in the firelight. Up here the clatter and blare of the dining hall are a hundred miles away. The sough of Jean’s breath mingles with the singing of the crickets outside the cracked-open window. “Don’t leave,” says Jean, in a warbling voice.
Where will Paradis be if Eren doesn’t leave? Black stains where the crops used to be. Animal tracks blown off the crust of the earth. Dismembered houses. All those people Eren’s never met and never will meet - he’s responsible for the sunrises they should be able to see.
And here, Jean, withering.
Better withering than dead.
“Why don’t you give me a reason not to?” Eren says.
Jean’s brow crags. His eyes are dewed. “A reason not to? Why are you so fucking suicidal?”
Eren is standing on the silvered clouds. “That’s why you’re always yelling at me for almost dying?” He kicks Jean’s shin and Jean hisses. “Pigtail pulling?”
“Shut up. Just.” Jean’s shoulders heave. He looks ridiculous, this huge man in military uniform with a medal at his throat, crumbling against Eren’s hands. How many Jeans are there across the sea with pincushion hearts?
Eren supposes it does not matter. None of them are his Jean.
The nail beckons. It will have to wait.
Eren shoves Jean onto the bed, and surprise flits across Jean’s face - or perhaps it is only the light. In seconds half their clothes are on the floor and Eren is handprinting Jean’s thighs. Jean shakes, a little. He might not have done this before. Eren aches to ask.
He works Jean open with barely his own spit, and Jean balls the bedsheet against his mouth to muffle his grunts. As a giver Jean might have warmed oil in his palms, asked Eren twice if he was sure, placed a pillow beneath his hips.
Eren tells Jean to get on his back. The first push in burns.
Jean’s face is a rictus. “Eren,” he grits out, “stop, stop.”
This is who Eren was always going to be. He hopes Jean will be the one to land the finishing blow, even though he knows it will be Mikasa or Armin. “You came to my room at night, you let me kiss you. You wanted this. You can’t go back now.”
He waits for Jean to swing at him, for them to dissolve into incisors and knuckles and fingernails. Jean flings his arms across his eyes. If Eren floods his insides with wine, he can forget Jean’s lips splitting as they pull back in a grimace, but the barrels in the HQ kitchens have been emptied out and he will have to break into a wine merchant’s cellar. He salts his mouth, kissing Jean.
Jean does not ask him to stop again.
Eren wants to end it quickly, but he keeps going soft, and blood tacks the sheets. In the middle of it he considers buckling and crying into Jean’s reddened neck. This cannot be the trajectory of Eren’s life; it is happening to someone else, someone Eren can pity or curl his lip at for a few seconds and then forget. His calf blazes, and the room blurs.
When he finishes, Jean’s eyes are glazed over, the pillowcase damp and wrinkled. He’s still making little sounds, like it’s not over.
Water. Eren needs water, and soap. He thinks of hiding himself in the baths for a full day. He wonders if regeneration can stop him from drowning.
He rolls off the bed and wipes himself off with the bedsheet. The crickets’ song is shriller now, building to a crescendo that does not come, but Eren cannot shut the window without trapping in Jean’s scent. “Go, then,” he says. He sits at his desk, with a posture that even Levi could not have faulted, picks up the fountain pen, and scratches in his notebook to pretend that he is occupied. Disjointed sentences - right now his father’s faded notes are only half memories.
He glances at Jean as he limps out, coat gaping, shirt buttoned wrong. Will he sleep tonight? I took away all the restful sleep from your life, Eren thinks. The pen splinters. The hiss of the dark sea segregating Paradis from their enemy roils in his ears.
Steam is starting to warm his pant leg. The wound must have festered.
Eren had planned on extracting the nail tonight, but now, he thinks, he will leave it in, carry it with him along with the memory of Jean pinioning Eren’s shoulders and saying, I’m really counting on you in a blistered voice.
The room is suffocated by heat. He folds the shards of the pen into a handkerchief and places it in the desk drawer. He wets the tabletop.
He is keeping his family safe.
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Summary:
After Eren announces he will be leaving for Marley, Jean tries to convince him to stay.
It doesn't go well.
Eren’s calf throbs. In the morning, before roll call, he had slit it open with a paring knife and buried a wrought-iron nail in the muscle. It is the only pain in his body, and focusing on it would be satisfying.
But that can come later. Right now is the dinner, the dining hall with cast-off wine spatters across the granite floors. Clamorous laughter at their table. Jean knocking his knee against Eren’s. Jean’s been nibbling at a plum all evening, just the skin, juice slicking down his wrist.
Three weeks ago, the day after the summer solstice, Eren had announced he would be leaving for Marley. His own business, he’d said. More important than nosing the military’s asses here. Jean has grown quieter since then, started soaking Eren with mournful looks when he thinks Eren isn’t looking.
He’s doing it again.
Eren forces down the last of his hard bread and gets up. “Turning in early.”
Mikasa and Armin exchange glances. Eren souses himself in the gentle concern of their eyes; that concern will be gone before long. The important thing is that they will be on Paradis, a decade after he is dead, chests rising and falling, eating, laughing, and perhaps, sometimes, speaking of him by the ash tree they used to lounge under. He wants to reopen the wound on his calf.
He goes up to his room, pretending not to notice the shadow tailing him, and leaves the door yawning. They all got private rooms after Shiganshina. They all, that is: not even enough people to replace the senior members of the Survey Corps. Eren had spent half that first night staring at an ashed rectangle on the wall, where a charcoal sketch of the previous occupant’s parents used to hang, rifling through all the ways he could kill Reiner’s people.
Jean slinks in and shuts the door, leans against it with his hands behind his back. He will probably volunteer at Historia’s orphanage or a hospital after Eren makes sure Paradis is safe, but Eren doesn’t ask. He imagines Jean untangling a child’s hair from a holly bush, clinking his teeth against ice in a whiskey glass, toeing grooves in sugary sand. He imagines himself within earshot.
“I need to talk with you,” says Jean quietly, not meeting Eren’s eyes. “You’re being an idiot.”
Eren has ruined Jean’s nose for less. It could be a believable non-excuse. “I don’t have time for your tantrums.” He is going to turn a city across the sea into a twitching corpse and Jean is going to curl up and cover his ears and think he could have done something, if only he understood Eren better. That’s the problem with people like Jean; there is no religion in them. He will rattle things, break them apart, put them back together, when all he should be doing is kneeling into the new world that Eren is laying before him.
Jean shuffles to the desk, fiddles with the fountain pen he had given Eren on his sixteenth birthday. Engraved cap, flexible nib. He must have saved for weeks. Must have planned for longer. To make proper notes for the things you and Hange keep yapping about, he’d said. You keep ruining HQ’s dip pens. “You can’t leave.” His tone is flat, controlled.
Does the nail feels larger than it is? “Wasn’t aware Hange died and made you Commander.”
Jean fingers a loose button on his coat. It is a disgrace, a loose button on a squad leader; Jean had declared so himself when they were cadets. “You can’t. Think about Mikasa.”
“This isn’t about Mikasa.” Eren gets up in Jean’s face, close enough for the scent of stale sweat to tickle his nose.
Jean rubs circles onto his own wrist. The juice stains are still glistering softly there. His gaze slips to Eren’s mouth, and he leans in, slow.
Eren seizes Jean’s hair - downier than he ever imagined it was. He tastes sour plum, the zing of wine. He cuts his tongue on Jean’s teeth and pain flares bright and metallic, so he does it again, arching against him. Jean’s lips are chapped but cushiony, his chest a warm solid place that beckons Eren to press his cheek against it. Wisps of hair come away in Eren’s fingers, and Jean makes a high, aborted sound.
“You call this talking?” Eren murmurs against Jean’s mouth.
Jean’s eyes flicker half-lidded in the firelight. Up here the clatter and blare of the dining hall are a hundred miles away. The sough of Jean’s breath mingles with the singing of the crickets outside the cracked-open window. “Don’t leave,” says Jean, in a warbling voice.
Where will Paradis be if Eren doesn’t leave? Black stains where the crops used to be. Animal tracks blown off the crust of the earth. Dismembered houses. All those people Eren’s never met and never will meet - he’s responsible for the sunrises they should be able to see.
And here, Jean, withering.
Better withering than dead.
“Why don’t you give me a reason not to?” Eren says.
Jean’s brow crags. His eyes are dewed. “A reason not to? Why are you so fucking suicidal?”
Eren is standing on the silvered clouds. “That’s why you’re always yelling at me for almost dying?” He kicks Jean’s shin and Jean hisses. “Pigtail pulling?”
“Shut up. Just.” Jean’s shoulders heave. He looks ridiculous, this huge man in military uniform with a medal at his throat, crumbling against Eren’s hands. How many Jeans are there across the sea with pincushion hearts?
Eren supposes it does not matter. None of them are his Jean.
The nail beckons. It will have to wait.
Eren shoves Jean onto the bed, and surprise flits across Jean’s face - or perhaps it is only the light. In seconds half their clothes are on the floor and Eren is handprinting Jean’s thighs. Jean shakes, a little. He might not have done this before. Eren aches to ask.
He works Jean open with barely his own spit, and Jean balls the bedsheet against his mouth to muffle his grunts. As a giver Jean might have warmed oil in his palms, asked Eren twice if he was sure, placed a pillow beneath his hips.
Eren tells Jean to get on his back. The first push in burns.
Jean’s face is a rictus. “Eren,” he grits out, “stop, stop.”
This is who Eren was always going to be. He hopes Jean will be the one to land the finishing blow, even though he knows it will be Mikasa or Armin. “You came to my room at night, you let me kiss you. You wanted this. You can’t go back now.”
He waits for Jean to swing at him, for them to dissolve into incisors and knuckles and fingernails. Jean flings his arms across his eyes. If Eren floods his insides with wine, he can forget Jean’s lips splitting as they pull back in a grimace, but the barrels in the HQ kitchens have been emptied out and he will have to break into a wine merchant’s cellar. He salts his mouth, kissing Jean.
Jean does not ask him to stop again.
Eren wants to end it quickly, but he keeps going soft, and blood tacks the sheets. In the middle of it he considers buckling and crying into Jean’s reddened neck. This cannot be the trajectory of Eren’s life; it is happening to someone else, someone Eren can pity or curl his lip at for a few seconds and then forget. His calf blazes, and the room blurs.
When he finishes, Jean’s eyes are glazed over, the pillowcase damp and wrinkled. He’s still making little sounds, like it’s not over.
Water. Eren needs water, and soap. He thinks of hiding himself in the baths for a full day. He wonders if regeneration can stop him from drowning.
He rolls off the bed and wipes himself off with the bedsheet. The crickets’ song is shriller now, building to a crescendo that does not come, but Eren cannot shut the window without trapping in Jean’s scent. “Go, then,” he says. He sits at his desk, with a posture that even Levi could not have faulted, picks up the fountain pen, and scratches in his notebook to pretend that he is occupied. Disjointed sentences - right now his father’s faded notes are only half memories.
He glances at Jean as he limps out, coat gaping, shirt buttoned wrong. Will he sleep tonight? I took away all the restful sleep from your life, Eren thinks. The pen splinters. The hiss of the dark sea segregating Paradis from their enemy roils in his ears.
Steam is starting to warm his pant leg. The wound must have festered.
Eren had planned on extracting the nail tonight, but now, he thinks, he will leave it in, carry it with him along with the memory of Jean pinioning Eren’s shoulders and saying, I’m really counting on you in a blistered voice.
The room is suffocated by heat. He folds the shards of the pen into a handkerchief and places it in the desk drawer. He wets the tabletop.
He is keeping his family safe.