"Eren, can we talk?"

Eren turned to look at Mikasa. It was cleaning day and the two of them had been assigned the basement. They had been quietly working for about an hour, Eren scrubbing the floors, and Mikasa cleaning spare parts for 3D maneuver gear at a small table in the corner. The air was cool and dusty and the room was lit solely by candlelight, but it wasn't uncomfortable. Eren usually enjoyed just being in Mikasa's company. Eren continued scrubbing as he replied.

"Yeah, sure. Is it serious?"

"No, no, it's nothing serious. It's just..." Mikasa paused and set down the bolt she had been wiping off. "You know that you can tell me anything, right?"

"Yeah?" Eren's reply came out as a bemused question. "What's going on?"

Mikasa sighed. "You know that I'm not – nobody here is, really – the type to, you know, judge someone based on who they love, right?"

"What? " Eren laughed. "What are you talking about?"

Rubbing at her forehead, Mikasa decided to just put it bluntly.

"It's not a bad thing to be gay, Eren."

Eren stopped scrubbing. He set the brush aside, and fell back to sit on his knees, looking up at Mikasa.

"You know, Mikasa, I'm really glad that you said that." Eren closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, letting his exhale fall out of his mouth slowly. His eyes finally opened again and he looked at Mikasa seriously. "I think that Jean might be gay."

Mikasa nearly fell out of her seat.

No matter where Jean and Marco began walking on their rare breaks from work, they always seemed to end up where the horses are corralled near the stables. Both had grown up riding horses, and both found a sort of home-like comfort in watching the animals walk around their fenced enclosure. Sometimes, like today, they would sneak in to brush and clean the horses. Despite this not technically being part of their job, nobody ever really seemed to complain about them doing the extra work.

"Shh, girl," Jean whispered to a whinnying horse. He pulled a sugar cube out of his pocket and lifted it to her mouth.

"Hanging out with your sister?"

Jean turned to the voice. Eren was at the water pump right outside of the stables, filling a bucket. He must be scrubbing floors today. Jean turned back to his horse, who was whinnying again.

"Aw, Katherine, did that ugly boy scare you? It's okay, he scares most people. I think it's just the way his face is." Jean patted Katherine's nose and turned to glare at Eren.

"At least I don't look like a horse," Eren shouted.

"You keep comparing me to a horse. You know what horses have that titans don't?" Jean smirked and gestured rudely towards his crotch. "I've seen your titan form, Eren, and I just want to know: How does that work for you in bed?"

Eren finished filling his bucket and stuck out his pink tongue at Jean before turning around. Jean watched his back as he retreated, in shock that Eren had done something as juvenile as sticking his tongue out at him (and Jesus, what kind of freak has a tongue that pink?), until he finally went out of Jean's line of sight around a corner. Jean sighed and went back to Katherine, who seemed to be calming down.

"I think that Eren actually does freak her out. Poor girl. I wonder if it's Eren's titan thing?" Jean looked at Marco. Marco was leaning against the stable wall, his arms crossed and a skeptical look on his face.

"What's up with that look?"

"Nothing, just, you know," Marco started to smile. "How about that Eren Jaeger, huh? Quite the guy."

"What does that mean?" Jean grabbed a brush and moved to the next horse, closer to Marco.

"I mean, you do talk about him a lot," Marco began, trailing off and grinning widely at Jean.

"Pfft!" Jean scoffed. "No I do not."

A few moments silence passed.

"He just gets on my nerves so much, you know?" Jean groaned. Marco rolled his eyes. Tossing the horse brush to the soft ground, Jean strode over to slump down on a small stool in the corner of the stable.

It was all Marco could do to not laugh out loud as he approached Jean to give him a comforting pat on the back.

"There, there, Jean."

"It's incredible to watch."

"What's more incredible is that I don't even think they know."

"Of course they know, why else would they be doing it?"

Connie and Sasha had taken a break from pulling weeds in the garden to watch a scuffle that had started in the field. Jean and Eren, it appeared, were trying to wrestle one another to the ground. There were no actual punches being thrown, but the two had each other locked in their grips and were currently just sort of swaying and rattling back and forth rather than doing any real fighting. Every few seconds a muffled yell came from the middle of the skirmish and Sasha would narrow her eyes.

"You know what," Sasha began slowly, nodding, "I think you might be right. They are genuinely dumb enough to believe that they still hate each other."

"Do you think they know deep down and maybe they're fighting to avoid confronting it?" Connie wondered.

"Are you planning on writing romantic fiction about them or something?" Sasha laughed, elbowing him in the ribs roughly. He flinched, but he was still smiling. He shoved her back and she gave a retaliatory shove and the fighting quickly devolved into laughter diluted with quick kisses. Behind them, Jean and Eren's shouting reverberated through the quad.

Armin thought that maybe Jean and Eren were under the delusional impression that they were the only ones that could hear the whispered yells that were echoing through the dining hall.

"God, you're so gay for me, aren't you, Eren?" Jean emphasized his name, hissing it through his teeth as he stabbed a bit of potato on his fork.

"If I'm the gay one, why were you feeling me up out there today?" Eren whispered back, refusing to look up from his plate.

"I was not feeling you up! I was trying to get leverage on you so I could flip you!" Jean pounded his fist on the wooden table and there was a small clang of dishes.

The two boys went wide-eyed and stared up, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. Everyone had, of course, noticed, because everyone had been listening in on their conversation the whole time. They were so used to these little spats each night, however, that nearly everyone had learned how to be inconspicuous about it. Armin and Mikasa glanced at each other when Jean and Eren began whispering again, quieter this time.

"What's all that about?" came a low whisper in Armin's ear.

Armin swiveled his head around to look at the source of the whisper; it was Erwin Smith. Levi lazily trailed in a few steps behind him before finally leaning against a wall and inspecting his fingernails.

"I'm sorry, sir. They've been like this for a while," Armin murmured back.

Erwin raised an eyebrow. "Any bets on when they'll finally get it over with?"

Mikasa gave an uncharacteristically wide smile. "Hanji's running the betting pool. 5-to-1 odds it's within the next two days."

Levi stepped forward and looked at each of them carefully before wordlessly pulling three coins out of his pocket and tossing them onto the table. Erwin reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin, placing it gently on top of Levi's.

"We're going out for a ride. Say hello to Hanji for us." Erwin gave the small group a charming, toothy smile and strode off, Levi following close behind.

Jean and Eren had somehow maneuvered their dining hall fight to an abandoned hallway without really noticing. They were absorbed, entirely preoccupied, with the idea of outdoing the other.

"You're such a fucking idiot!" Eren punctuated his shout with a shove against Jean's chest. "I can't understand what all those girls see in you."

Jean smirked widely and leaned in close to Eren's face to whisper. "Those girls are what you get when you've got a dick like mine, Jaeger."

"What, a miniscule one?" Eren whispered.

"Bigger than yours."

"Prove it."

The two stood in silence, still less than a foot apart, breathing heavily for a few moments. Finally, Jean stepped back. He hooked his thumbs in the waist of his pants and turned to Eren, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm not going to take my dick out in the middle of a hallway!" Eren was blushing now.

"Then let's go in here," Jean insisted, pulling his thumbs out of his pants and grabbing Eren's wrist, pulling him into a room a few meters down the hall. Jean shut the door behind them and hastily grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and pulled it in front of the door, leaning it over and hooking it under the doorknob.

"There," Jean said, still whispering, turning to face Eren and placing his hands at the waist of his pants yet again. "Now I'm the only one that's going to see your dick."

Eren unbuttoned his pants slowly.

"On three, okay?" Eren asked.

"Okay."

"One," Eren began.

"Two." Jean smiled.

"Three," they said it together, and pulled their pants down.

The room was silent. The boys inspected one another. After an amount of time that Jean would describe as "a minute" and Eren as "forever," Eren finally broke the silence.

"Well yours is a little bigger I guess, but-"

"Ha, told you!" Jean laughed triumphantly.

"But," Eren repeated, "Why's yours all," Eren made a vague curving gesture with his hand. "Crooked?"

"What?" Jean looked genuinely shocked and his head fell to look down. "Oh my God, is that not a normal thing? Marco said that was a normal thing!" Jean ran a hand through his hair and started breathing heavily.

"Jean, no, no, it's fine, don't freak out, your dick is fine!" Eren put out placating hands, trying to calm Jean down.

"How am I supposed to calm down when you've got this perfectly proportioned dick and mine's all…" Jean exaggerated the movement Eren made earlier.

"Jean, listen to me," Eren stepped forward (it was more of a waddle – the waist of his pants was still gathered low on his thighs) and put his hands on Jean's shoulders, looking at him in the eye. "Calm down. Your dick looks great. Nothing's wrong with you. I'm sure that's just a normal thing that happens." Eren shook Jean's shoulders until Jean met his eyes, then guided him slowly through steadying breaths. Again, the two found their faces a matter of inches apart. Each synchronized breath they exhaled hit the other's face. Eren's eyes flickered down to Jean's lips.

"W-What are you, gay?" Jean gave a nervous, high-pitched scoff. Eren took a small step forward, and Jean felt Eren's dick, harder than Jean remembered it looking, against his own, which gave a small twitch.

"I don't know. Are you?" Their breath fell out of synch. Eren's was coming in faster, shallower now as their faces inched neared each other.

"I don't know."

Both would later insist it was the other who moved in first, but the two were already so close there was little distance to travel in the first place.

For the first time, Jean and Eren were not in a battle, not warring for first place. For once, their movements against one another were hesitant, timid, slow, as if they were afraid to break this new, fragile thing. All traces of their past aggressions were gone and the two moved together gently.

Eren's left arm drifted around Jean's waist and pulled Jean's hips flush against his own, their growing erections now rubbing against one another. Jean instinctively rolled his hips and Eren's fingernails dug into the bruises in his back, but Jean was past caring. His tongue melted into Eren's and a low hum fell from his mouth. Eren broke his mouth away to rest his forehead against Jean's.

"Fuck, Eren," Jean whispered in a low gravelly voice.

Eren created space between their hips, the tips of their cocks still rubbing up against each other, and brought his hand to wrap around them. Eren's hand began to move and Jean's breath hissed in through his teeth. Suddenly, his hand was wrapping around Eren's, both of their hands pumping slowly, painfully slowly, but neither of them picked up the pace.

It struck Eren around the same time it struck Jean that the position they were in was neither particularly comfortable nor sexy. If someone were to walk in right now, they would see two boys with their pants bunched down at their thighs, their shirts riding up their stomachs, their cheeks embarrassingly red and their hair amply ruffled. They probably made quite a sight, but neither could bother to be particularly concerned about that at the moment. Eren moaned lightly as Jean pulled his body closer, silently thanking Jean for blocking the door.

Their eyes were both trained on the hands wrapped around their cocks, but every once in a while, one would catch a flash of the other's eyes meeting their own, if only for a brief second. Then, their eyes finally met, really met, and neither could look away. Jean took his hand and secured it tightly around the back of Eren's neck, and Eren's hips jutted forward into their hands. Jean's mouth was open and emitting low, short moans with nearly every breath, and Eren's lower lip was caught between his teeth and a whine sounded from the back of his throat.

Eren took in Jean's appearance; his pink face glistening with sweat, the roots of his obviously dyed hair visible only from such a short distance, the slight whine at the back of Jean's throat that came with each sharp breath Jean gave, and if that wasn't the cutest damned thing to Eren. Jean was looking at Eren much the same way, taking in his features. His delicate lips, nose, eyes, were all incongruously fragile-looking on a face Jean had seen torn apart by wind and fists and monsters. His eyes were so big, and so different from when they were clouded with fury, gentler than Jean had ever seen them, and they were so close to his, and all Jean could think was, "Mine, mine, mine…"

Their foreheads still touching, Jean nodded once, and Eren understood what it meant, he was close, too. With a few final pumps, Jean's come spilled over their hands and Eren's cock, and his voice cracked as he attempted to hold back a loud moan. Eren, not far behind, came a few moments later, his come mingling with Jean's all over their hands.

After a few moments of heavy breathing, the two parted. Jean took a step back. Eren took a step back. Their messy hands and cocks hung uselessly in the cold air of the room. Then, Eren slowly brought his own hand to his mouth and licked a stripe of cum off of the back of his hand. His mouth closed, and he swallowed audibly. Jean whispered a quiet "fuck" to himself and licked his lips.

Eren finished cleaning off his hand and pulled his pants back up carefully. He took the two full strides towards Jean, grabbed his hand, and brought it to his mouth, unhurriedly licking it clean. Jean's breath was still coming in pants. Before Jean realized what he was doing, Eren dropped to his knees. He grabbed the sides of Jean's pants and pulled them up slowly, deliberately, taking extra care with Jean's dick and tucking it back into his pants.

Eren's eyes were still wide, happy even. In the back of his mind, Jean had sort of expected Eren's war face to return, his mouth curled, his eyes narrowed, and his eyebrow twitching. But Eren's lips were caught in a smile, unimposing and personal. He was calm, frighteningly calm about this, and Jean was certain the only reason he wasn't panicking was because he was still coming off the high of a really excellent orgasm. Maybe they both were.

"I called it, you know." Eren was speaking in a voice just above a whisper as he gave Jean a pat on the hip to signify he had finished fixing his pants.

"Called - called what?" Jean asked, half-lidded eyes watching Eren carefully as he made his way up from his knees.

"That you were gay for me." Eren flashed Jean a devilish smile. All remnants of orgasm-muddled fogginess on Jean's consciousness disappeared.

"I'm not the one with come in my mouth right now, Jaeger!" Jean yelled.

"Shh, shh!" Eren shushed Jean, moving back towards him and placing a finger to his lips. "You don't want the whole castle to hear, do you?" Eren whispered. He removed his finger and placed both of his hands on Jean's cheeks, cupping his face carefully. Eren placed a swift, chaste kiss to his lips and backed away, still smiling. Jean's cheeks flushed.

"Shut up, Eren," Jean whispered, and he moved back in for another, deeper kiss.

AN:

the inspiration:

[11:37:25 PM] Delaney: i'm going to write jean/eren where eren is literally fucking jean up the ass and jean says "god you feel so good" and eren's like "what are you, gay"
[11:37:46 PM] seb: PLEASE,
[11:38:07 PM] seb: "i LUV suckin dick - not in a gay way tho lol just a bro way"
[11:38:12 PM] seb: bro jobs
[11:38:29 PM] Delaney: "f-mmmph! god you're s-so - MM, HARDER - so gay"
[11:39:52 PM] seb: mikasa sits him down very seriously "you know you can tell me anything right" "yeah mikasa of course" "you know, being gay isnt a bad thing eren" "im SO glad u said that, have u noticed jean is a little gay?"
[11:40:01 PM] Delaney: FUCK
[11:40:14 PM] Delaney: god i have to write No Homo

thanks for reading. all my stuff is on AO3

sorry for weird formatting when i first published. should be fixed now.