Work Text:
age: 12
He was laying face down in his bunk when he heard the distant voices of Eren and Mikasa enter the barracks and get closer. The first day of training was harder than he had thought it would be, and although he wasn’t one of the ones on their way back to the fields, he didn’t feel any triumph in surviving his first day. Instead, his mind kept on imagining just how more difficult training would get as they progressed. Would he be able to keep up? He had to. He refused to be left behind.
“Armin,” Eren said, shaking his leg. He grunted in response and forced his aching limbs to move so that he was half sitting up and half laying down. He peered down, and Mikasa silently gave him a look of sympathy.
“You’ll get stronger with time,” she offered while Eren handed him a piece of bread.
“You didn’t come for dinner but we thought you needed the rest.” Eren said. “How are you feeling?”
Armin accepted the food gratefully. Even though he didn't have much in the way of appetite, he took a hearty bite out of the bread. He needed to take care of himself. “I'm feeling better, less like I fell out of a wagon and more like I just ran a few kilometers.”
“That’s good to hear,” Eren smiled up at him. “You did good today Armin.” Unbidden, he felt himself begin to flush, but before he could hide his face Eren continued, “Do you feel up to cutting Mikasa’s hair right now?”
He perked up at that, it had been awhile since he had last been allowed to cut her hair. “Yeah of course!” He quickly finished what was left of the bread and went down the ladder that led up to his and Eren’s beds. “I was wondering why Mikasa came in with you. Are you even allowed to be here?”
“Nobody’s said anything yet,” she said, vaguely threatening. Behind her, Armin could see that the other cadets were staring at her. Some in earnest curiosity, others in blatant interest. He doubted any of them would dare to force her out, he doubted even more that any of them could, but their eyes and attention made him feel uncomfortable all the while.
He reached up to grab her hair, dark and full, the complete opposite of his own, and asked, “How short did you want to go?”
She shrugged, ever indifferent, but Eren gestured somewhere above her shoulders and below her ears. At his questioning look Eren said, “So that it doesn’t cause an accident or something with the odm gear.” With those words, Armin let go of Mikasa’s hair to touch his own. It would probably be best for him to cut his own hair as well, but he had grown fond of the way it had started to grow past his shoulders and curl around his face.
“Do you really think that’ll be an issue?” he asked, a bit worried. It would be a month or so before he would be able to tie all of it back without having any locks slip out, and he didn’t want anything to set him back even further in his training.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Armin,” Mikasa said. “Eren just likes-”
“Yeager!” a deep voice interrupted, and a large blond came up behind Eren and swung an arm over his shoulder. A taller, nervous looking boy followed him closely. “You breaking the rules already? Who’re these lovely ladies you’ve managed to drag in here?”
It took a second for what he said to truly register. Ladies. Plural. Armin felt his heartbeat resound throughout him once, twice, and then blood rushed to his ears. Ladies. He knew he didn’t look like a man, he was too young and too scrawny to pass as an adult, but he was still boyish. His chest was flat and he had no curves. And maybe his hair was long, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a boy. He looked blindly at Eren and saw the exact moment that he understood what the blond had meant.
An undercurrent of anger rippled throughout Eren's face, it never failed to scare Armin a little bit, the ease with which all of Eren's rage was released. He shoved the blond’s arm off of him forcefully, knocking him back a few steps. It went silent in the barracks, the rest of the cadets having picked up on the tension. “Armin’s not a girl, are you fucking blind asshole?” Eren said. “Apologize.”
The blond put up both of his hands up in the air in a mock-surrender. Armin couldn’t quite tell if he was genuinely trying to show that he had meant no harm or if things were about to escalate. He looked towards Mikasa for support, but she only spared him a sympathetic glance before retraining her eyes onto Eren to make sure he didn’t start something he couldn’t finish. Always their protector.
“Eren,” Armin tugged on his arm because he’d be damned if Eren fought on his behalf. “It’s fine. I’m sure he didn’t mean it on purpose, let’s just go.”
“Yeah,” the blond’s friend spoke up. His voice was timid but firm. “Reiner’s not like that. It was an honest mistake.”
“An honest mistake, huh?”
“It was a mistake, Yeager,” the blond, Reiner, started. He turned to Armin. “I’m sorry for what it’s worth. I just didn’t realize.” His words did nothing to quell the embarrassment coursing through him. I just didn’t realize. So in the eyes of others, Armin really did look like a girl. That was good information to know, if not a bit humiliating.
He forced a smile that he didn’t feel like giving. “It’s fine. I accept your apology.” Reiner nodded at him.
Eren scoffed, grabbed his hand and began to pull him towards the doors. “Whatever, let’s go.” Armin couldn’t do much except for let himself be led out of the barracks. He reached out blindly behind him for Mikasa, and when her hand hesitantly slipped into his he felt steadier, more grounded against the onslaught of everything that was Eren.
He led them outside, around the corner of the building where the light from the lanterns just barely reached them. There were a small number of cadets still milling around, but the candles in the lanterns were looking a bit low and Armin wondered how soon their curfew was. He hoped he had enough time to shake off the embarrassment before they had to go to bed, although realistically he knew this memory would follow him for quite some time.
“I can’t believe the nerve of that guy,” Eren said. He seemed to almost vibrate with energy, itching for the fight he didn’t get to have. “If he so much as looks at you the wrong way, I’m gonna kill him.”
He shared a look with Mikasa, and he thought back to how much the blond had towered over them. “It’s fine Eren, really. I mean, yes I’m feeling a bit humiliated, but he apologized and I’ll get over it soon enough.”
“It’s only our first day,” added Mikasa. So calm down , he heard her unsaid words.
He squeezed Eren’s hand, and then let go. “Thank you,” he said simply. “Did you guys bring any scissors?”
“Huh?” Eren said, a bright flush on his cheeks. He must have been more upset than what Armin had first suspected.
“For Mikasa’s hair, did you guys bring-” he stopped as he saw Mikasa pull out a pair of scissors from her waistband. “Thanks,” he said, turning them over in his hands. They were a bit rusty and hefty, but they would do. With the poor lighting he was worried he wouldn’t do too good of a job, but Mikasa didn’t seem concerned, and so he got to work.
*
It took a bit of skill to evade the curious eyes of the other cadets, and he kept his gaze firmly to the ground as he made his way to their bunks, Eren following behind silently. He climbed the ladder slowly, taking the bed closest to the wall this time around. He took off his shoes and put them into his cubby at the foot of his bed while Eren climbed up to join him. They said nothing as they went under their respective blankets, not even a goodnight when the last of the lanterns were put out.
He felt on the brink of sleep when he heard Eren shift closer, and he forced his eyes open. “I’m sorry,” he began in a whisper, “if I overreacted.”
“I appreciate it, but you don’t need to get like that. I’m not weak, I can handle myself.” He said those words so often it was starting to feel like he was just trying to convince himself. The world needed no convincing, it had already judged him to be helpless and worthless.
“I know you can, Armin. Me wanting to protect you has nothing to do with me thinking you’re weak because I don’t. I think I have the right to get mad when I see people treating you like that.” In the dark he could just barely make out the outline of his face, but Armin still felt like he was seeing too much of him, hearing too much from him. He heard rustling from the crisp military-provided sheets, and then fingers wrapped themselves around his wrist. He flipped Armin’s hand over, so that his palm faced up, and began to trace the pads of his fingers. He didn’t know when innocent touches between friends had begun to feel so charged, but his skin felt ignited everywhere Eren had traced. Distantly he hoped his palms wouldn’t get too clammy.
Eren paused in his ministrations, and he could almost hear him thinking about what to say next. “Just…” he whispered, “promise to let me know if someone bothers you while me and Mikasa aren’t there, okay? We’ll take care of it.”
“Okay,” he whispered back. There was no point in arguing with Eren, he had learned over the years. Especially when he thought he was right in his cause.
“No, I need you to say it. Say that you promise.” Damn him.
“I promise.”
When said into the dark like that, he could almost pretend that it was a promise he would keep.