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If someone had told his adolescent self that one day he would end up here, Jean Kirschtein would have been absolutely thrilled.
Mikasa has her knees bearing into his ribs, her face hidden in the curve of his neck, and the warm pressure of her body against his more than makes up for the cold draft that seeps in through the window. He tugs on the stiff fabric of her uniform, and her hands are not shy as they explore the skin beneath his jacket.
"Touch me", she says, and then he feels her dragging him over her waist, encouraging him with soft words. He obliges - how could he not? - and she arches into his touch, dropping her mouth against his in another searing kiss. Jean had kissed other girls before, but none of them had been her. It makes his chest buzz with a tingly sensation he does not have a name for.
The way she moves against him is like a dance, one he knows the choreography by heart. He has all the steps memorized; it’s been long enough. Long enough since the first time she climbed on his lap and he stammered out, are you sure? Is this okay? until she put her lips on his and he lost all his words.
It’s been long enough that he knows exactly how she’ll break and shiver beneath him, and how for a moment she’ll hold on to him like she’ll fall over the edge of a precipice without his steadiness. And her grasp will turn gentle - oh, so gentle - and the knot at the nape of his neck will soften into searching fingernails that scrape airily down his spine. And the mouth that bit him in an attempt to suppress her cries will shift into something tender that presses into the shell of his ear to whisper things that will haunt him on the nights she doesn’t visit.
"Mikasa", he breathes into her hair, and her fingers dig into his shoulders like she’s trying to pull the freckles from his skin, hot breaths steam against his shoulder, and they both know exactly where this is going. Everything is perfect. Except it isn’t.
The thing is, Jean knows he’s a rebound.
And he knows that she will be gone before he wakes, and that she will refuse to speak of this outside the four walls of his bedroom. It’s been long enough, too, since he had tried to discuss… this, whatever it was. He remembers the way her jaw had tightened, how she had turned her face away in shame, either of him or of herself, and Jean still doesn’t know which was worse.
He should have known that in this world, when something seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
Did you ever truly think you stood a real chance? his own thoughts taunted him.
For all the years he had loved her, Jean had always known her true devotion lay somewhere else. Eren had held her longer, closer than he could ever dream. He wasn’t stupid enought to think that the fact that he’s a little good with his hands could possibly change anything.
She had avoided him for days afterwards, during which he’d sulked around hopelessly, going over and over what he could have done wrong, and when she finally knocked on his door in the middle of the night again, he stepped aside and let her in, knowing exactly what to expect this time around.
It hadn’t stopped him from feeling like shit when he found her side of the bed empty in the morning.
And it hadn’t stopped him from letting her in again. And again. And again.
Jean knows a better man would just let her go. A better man would accept the fact that she could never love him the way he wants her to, that she could never return his affection with the burning passion he craves. A better man would.
But Jean had been selfish. Selfish and greedy, because he couldn’t bear to stay away once he got a taste of the sweetness he’d dreamed about for so long. He had devoured every morsel of intimacy like a starved dog, like the glutton for punishment Connie and Sasha always joked him to be, knowing very well she would much rather be with someone else.
The thought tastes like spoiled fruit, rotting underneath his tongue and making everything taste like vinegar. He hates vinegar. Mikasa’s breath hitches against his skin, and he kisses her to chase that horrible feeling away. She responds fiercely, almost desperately. He muses briefly on whether they are so different, after all.
It’s been long enough that he can tell that her body is overwrought and close to unraveling - he feels it in the tight grip of her muscles around him, the way her hands flex and tremble over his back, the deep arching of her back. Please, she cries out, and it takes just about everything he has to keep himself from collapsing.
He’s not stupid enough to trick himself into believing she chose him, but god, sometimes he wishes he were.
Jean shakes afterwards, and she settles into the mattress, curling into herself but still using his shoulder as a pillow. His chest heaves as he chases his breath, and his muscles feel like they’ve all gone slack. This is the part that hurts the most, he thinks. Even more than waking up with only her scent left on the sheets. The bruising way she tears at him while she’s climaxing - that he can handle. But not the girl who softens in his arms and makes him long for another life he can never live.
It’s always in these moments of silence that he can hear his heart split inside him. How much longer, he wonders, until every little piece has fallen out and there’s nothing left to break?
His love for her had always been genuine and innocent, if not always chaste, and it had brought him more heartache than he cared to admit. Jean had always imagined that the moment he finally had her in his arms would be nothing short of cathartic, and he had been right - just not in the way he thought he would be.
Had he ruined it, that beautiful feeling, the moment he opened his door? Had he tainted it when put his hands on her and took her in his bed and allowed himself to be her half lover, her consolation prize?
He looks at her dark hair splayed like ink over the white sheets and feels so terribly warm inside he knows he couldn’t possibly have, but he’s becoming increasingly worried that one day he still might. It weighs him down, like he swallowed a rock and it’s taking its sweet, sweet time to hit the bottom. He can’t keep doing this.
“Mikasa,” he says, and she stirs beneath the covers, humming in response.
You need to tell her, his conscience warns him, because it knows him and his inability to give her up even in thought, but Jean can’t seem to speak around the knot inside his throat.
Instead he asks: “What are you thinking?”
Mikasa turns on her side, and rests her forehead against his arm. Her breath sends goosebumps all over his skin. The moment she takes before answering stretches on for years. “Nothing important,” she tells him. But when those beautiful, beautiful eyes turn his way, his heart plummets into the pit of his stomach.
It’s not a good feeling. Not butterflies.
Mikasa is not a cruel person. Jean knows she’s not insensitive to his torment; he knows that hurting him hurts her too. Still, he always wishes she would tell him. No matter how painful the truth behind her lips might be. No matter how callous her words: I am thinking of him, I am imagining this skin is his skin, these hands are his hands. I am far away in my heart and you can never truly reach me, no matter how much you try, no matter how long you wait, no matter how hard you love me.
She’ll never be what he needs, and he can never be what she wants. She refuses to voice it, yet it is still here, this bitter melodrama, this candle that does not burn out. It’s a sickness eating him alive, something that festers inside him and steals the breath from his lungs.
He can’t do it anymore. He won’t survive it.
His own mind rages at his hypocrisy. You tell her, then, coward. Tell her what you feel, for once, and put yourself out of this misery.
He tries to. God, he really does. He works up a thousand different ways, plays out a thousand different scenarios, swirls a thousand words on his tongue at once, but all of them feel wrong. Her thumbs trail over the faint indents of his ribs on either side of his chest. She sighs and presses her chest to his side.
“Let me know when you’re ready again”, she says, and his resolve shatters like glass all around them.
“Okay,” he tells her, then strokes the underside of her jaw and presses a kiss to her lips. He’ll pick up the pieces in the morning, he decides, when she’s no longer here. In the morning, he’ll clean up the mess he made. “I’m ready”, he tells her.
He tells himself: I'm ready.
In the morning, he’ll mean it. But for one last night, he’ll let himself look at her the way he wants to look at her. Touch her the way he wants to touch her. Kiss every inch of her skin in bittersweet worship. This one last night, he’ll hold her the way he wants to. And in the morning…
In the morning, he’ll let her go.