Chapter Text
Everything hurt.
Every inch by unbearable inch the pain resided, a throbbing that seemed to last forever, not getting better nor worse. His left side was especially giving him trouble, muscles screaming at even the smallest movement. Everything below his torso was either numb or severed. He didn’t have the courage to look down and check.
What even happened?
They were en route back to the walls. It was getting dark and he remembers the shortcut they took through the forest. At the time it seemed like a logical decision: no titans were around the edge and, even if there were, they wouldn’t be active around this time.
Everything came at once.
First it was the bone-rattling crash of lightning behind them, a gargantuan shadow bolting towards them, trees bending like blades of grass in its wake. Eren was mere moments from transforming himself but was knocked off his horse as a herd of abnormals came crashing into their formation, splitting them up. The fall had him rolling into a tree, sharp rocks catching his fall. He watched the ground beneath him saturate with his blood, yet he didn’t transform. Even as he watched his fellow cadets fly into the mouths of titans, their bodies mere streaks of red in the dirt, the leaves around splattered in crimson.
His body did nothing. Limp and useless.
Even now, his body is still far from healing completely. Why? Why was he so useless? He cannot let go of how helplessly those soldiers looked at Eren as they dangled from fingers the size of pillars, begging him to do something. But he remained on the forest floor, bleeding out, watching them disappear behind massive rows of teeth.
His vision starts to darken at the edges.
Eren tries to remember more. Were there other survivors? If so, where are they? Why is he in so much pain after all this time? His body would have healed by now. He feels the familiar tug of fatigue at the edges of his consciousness.
I’m dying, he realises. Is this how I go?
He panics. Fingers claws weakly at the damp earth, wetness rolling down his temples, a murmured chant of ‘no no no, please’ slipping out of his chapped lips. He feels his heart splutter its last few beats but his mind is running a mile a minute. I can’t go like this. All those people that died for me, I have to fight for them.
Jean.
The thought is sudden and, for a second, it startles away the fear plaguing his mind. Eyes warm and bright like pools of honey, complexion pale, ash-blond bangs, a sharp smile.
“J…ean”, he hears himself gurgle.
The name fills his chest with gold light. Always picking fights with Eren and generally being the pretentious ass that the squad has grown to like somehow. Eren liked him too, not the ‘pretentious ass’ part but those odd times Jean was more tender. Like that time when a freak accident resulted in Eren losing about half his face, and Jean was there when he woke up a couple weeks later, cradling his hand and meeting his gaze with a soft yet solemn expression. Or that time an especially draining experiment with Hanji left Eren’s body trembling, and Jean silently fed him soup and bread on the days Mikasa and Armin were too busy to visit.
In the distance, he thinks he hears something. It was pitched high and drawn out, but Eren couldn’t decipher what it was. Perhaps a titan had come to relieve him of this pain, or he was so far gone that his mind was playing tricks on him.
The chill against his skin tells him that the sun was long gone but he couldn’t open his eyes to confirm the thought. Exhaustion weighed down his head, chest, and arms; all fight drained from his body.
Breathing is suddenly tiresome.
“…Eren?”
“Eren!”
—
“EREN!”
He wakes with a start, eyes wide yet he sees nothing.
Slowly, he begins to register his surroundings: the soft ripples of bedding on his back, the clean smell of fresh laundry in the air, and the sound of very angry footsteps approaching.
Wait.
Before he can attempt to sit up, the room is suddenly filled with light and Eren scrambles under the sheets to shield his poor eyes.
“Oh no you don’t, mister. You’re already thirty minutes late, get up!” he hears the new presence bark from the other end of the room. He listens as those angry footsteps rounded the bed and stopped just outside his dome of safety. “Up!”
What in the world are they talking about? Late? Late to what? The last time he checked, he was dying on the battlefield, so why was he, a wounded soldier, being yelled at by some crazy person. Eren lifts a corner of the sheets up to sneak a look but all he was met with were pasty white knees, one of which bounced impatiently. The person connected to said knees saw that he was very much conscious and proceeded to tear the bedding away, dousing his vision once again with blinding light.
His eyes adjusted much quicker this time, meaning he got an eyeful of the person, and to say the wind was knocked out of him was an understatement.
The guy was sporting an awful glare but that didn’t deter Eren from noticing that the he had eyes as bright as the morning sun and his skin was as clear as porcelain. He had soft, dirty-blond locks which almost touched his shoulders, whereas the sides of his scalp were shaved down to his darker roots. Eren definitely knew this guy.
“H-holy shit. Jean?” he was staring unblinkingly at him, who was yet to ease the crease between his perfectly sculpted eyebrows. There was no doubt; this had to be Jean. But… Since when was he so… Eren let his eyes travel downward and took in the white top and shorts he was wearing, which showed off his very long, very distracting pair of legs, only to look up and see that the scowl was gone and instead a very bashful look was in its place.
So… Pretty.
“What are you looking at? If you think I’m gonna give you morning head and risk you getting fired from your job, you’re sorely mistaken.” Eren spluttered at that, scrambling back in his bed just to put some distance between himself and this weirdly adorable version of his friend.
“MORNING WHAT?” he squawked, which earned himself a pillow to the face.
“Get up, seriously. If I come back and you’re sleeping again, I will cough on your breakfast.” And with that, the door to the room is slammed shut.
What in the world…