Authors note: This was originally written for a prompt on snkkink, and is now being crossposted here for those who prefer to read on this site.
They were red. Armin's face burned a similar rosy color with shame, a hot itchy flush spreading throughout his body as he pictured the lacy red silk panties Reiner had convinced him to wear. They weren't a cheap, whore red, but rather a classy burgundy that reminded him of roses that had grown outside of his old house in Shiganshina.
He shouldn't have said it. Oh, why had he said "I wish I could do something to make it up to you." to Reiner? Was having to wear women's lingerie (where had Reiner gotten these?) a fair payback for carrying his heavy gear during marches? He would have been kicked out of the squad if not for Reiner, but still... he'd never live it down if anyone found out.
Armin was very, very nervous about that for one reason: the military just had to have white trousers as part of the uniform. Never mind that they were easily stained, blended in nowhere except during winter, and worst of all, despite being thick and sturdy, rather prone to being transparent in regards to one's undergarments. There was a reason why all of the girls had switched to the standard-issue white linen underwear. Nobody wanted to be teased about their visible panties when the uniform pants were inevitably pulled tight against the skin.
A bead of sweat ran down Armin's neck as Instructor Shadis's eyes glanced over them, standing at attention for the yearly review, and decided to linger on him.
He was cursing the bow on the front, big and red and, he knew it, he just knew it, prominently standing out against the tight white perfection of his uniform pants. Shadis's eyes, however knowing, moved on and Armin was soon mercifully out of the spotlight as Connie somehow about-faced in the wrong direction.
When the inspection was over, Armin risked a glance down. The bow was not, contrary to what his paranoid mind had insisted, visible at all. He sighed with relief, then groaned when Shadis informed them they were being "rewarded" for their review score with a ruck march. Even better, since they were now third-year trainees, the weight of the gear was going up by ten pounds, and the distance they would march in one day would be going up to twenty miles in length. The other trainees began scattering, off to prepare their gear.
Tears welled in Armin's eyes. He had enough trouble trying to keep up with the current marches, where they only carried 45lbs of gear and had to run ten miles. He really was going to get kicked out, and have to live as a civilian, a weak parasite living off the strength of better people. Even worse he would lose his friends.
The tears, more physical proof of his weakness, as if that were needed, were shaken from his eyes as Reiner's meaty hand slammed down on his shoulder, startling him.
"R-reiner...what do you need?" he asked, swiping at his eyes as discreetly as possible.
Reiner tactfully ignored his tears. "Let's go prepare our gear." he said, pulling Armin along.
And Armin was numbly grateful. He understood what Reiner was offering.
Somehow, in the equipment shed, despite the harsh and all-seeing eye of Instructor Shadis, and the milling about of many inquisitive young people, Reiner was able to slip 30lbs of gear out of Armin's pack and into his own without anyone being the wiser. And even more amazingly, and to Armin's great distress, he was able to slip the flimsy, burgundy-red bra that matched the panties Armin was wearing into Armin's pack in return.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, Armin thought, depressed. At least he might get to stay in the military, even if he would go down in history as one of the kinkiest soldiers to ever defend humanity against the Titan threat.
The march was uneventful, though Armin did feel like death warmed over at the end of it. He had even (embarrassingly) thrown up at the end, although thankfully, he wasn't the only one to do so. He wasn't the only one who didn't believe Mina's bullshit excuse about the lunch stew giving her food poisoning, either.
The next day, in the dormitory Reiner caught up to him. He was lying alone, a book spread out on his chest, but he was too tired to read it. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest when he breathed, let alone moved or held an object. Everyone else was outside, using their free time to enjoy the first nice day of spring. He had begged off, citing the need to get every moment of extra rest he could.
Now, with the long and forbidding shadow of Reiner falling across him, he wondered if he should have taken Eren and Mikasa up on their offer of company.
"Do you still have what I gave you yesterday?" Reiner asked.
Armin nodded meekly, reaching one aching hand under the mattress to find the bra. It was a ridiculous thing, all lace and ribbons and deep, rich dark pink-red silk.
"Put it on."
Armin gulped, taking a quick peek out the window to make sure no one was approaching the dorms. He shed his uniform top, resenting the heavy ache in his arm as he unbuttoned the white dress shirt. His nipples hardened in the still-cool spring air, and he was grateful for the warm cover of the red silk as he tied it closed behind him.
He turned around, for Reiner's inspection, catching a glimpse of himself in the little diamond-shaped mirror that Jean had hung on the dorm room's closet door. He was so not into this at all, but he still thought he looked quite slim and sexy in the little piece of lingerie. So NOT a good thing for a guy, but if he was a girl... he'd be at least as pretty as Christa, if not Mikasa. Definitely in their league.
"Hmm. No."
The bra really didn't seem to do it for Reiner. He had, weirdly enough, asked for it back, and returned with something he called a "skong" that he said he wanted Armin to try.
"Skong" was probably the least sexy word Armin had ever heard in his life, but the resulting item, a black thong with a transparent black mesh skirt not unsimilar in shape to their brown uniform covering, seemed to please Reiner a lot more. He even had Armin come sit in his lap for a while in it.
From that day on, each week, Reiner brought him a new pair. Eventually, he had enough pairs that he was able to wear a different pair for Reiner every day, and he had accumulated quite a pile of the incriminating lacy scraps of fabric. He kept them in more than one place, which he knew increased his chances of getting caught, but also reduced the seriousness of it. One pair or two of striped bikini briefs was explainable; possibly gifted from a pining girlfriend, or a pair swiped from the girls' to masturbate into (he was unsure if he could pull off that lie, but it seemed plausible, and he was determined) but being caught digging into a stash of fourteen pairs of panties?
That would out him as either a seriously deviant, committed panty-stealer, or a cross-dresser. A soon-to-be notorious pervert either way.
Reiner took care of their washing, collected them at the end of week at the same time he gave Armin the new pair to try on. Armin had no clue how he was discreetly laundering a bunch of girl's underwear, but he afraid to ask. He didn't particularly want to know any more details of Reiner's panty-thing than he needed to.
Armin had never really gotten the panty thing until he was given the blue pair. Reiner had seemed kind of embarrassed over them, apologizing for their relative plainness and unsexyness, saying he had only gotten them because they matched Armin's eyes, but Armin loved them. They were classic briefs, in an unremarkable soft cotton, but with elegant dark blue criss-cross lacing on the sides that ended in little bows. It made him feel uncomfortably, arousingly, like a present to be unwrapped.
While Reiner would often stick his hand down Armin's pants to cup a silk-covered cheek, or bring his hand around to the front to slide his fingers through the leg-holes and up under the fabric, an action that never failed to make Armin blush with shame, no matter how many times it was done, it never went beyond that, that odd panty-fondling.
Reiner could spend an hour simply rolling the fabric of the waistband, tugging at it and feeling the lace in his palm, Armin's smooth skin rubbing on the back of his hand, when they were laying together in his bunk, but he was never that interested in playing with what was inside the panties.
It wasn't like Armin iwanted/i Reiner to have sex with him. It was just that being submitted to the constant simulataneous, contrasting textures of Reiner's rough, soldier's hands rubbing his skin and the soft, silken panties being tugged and pulled around on his most sensitive parts all the time was driving him mad with horniness.
He had never been very interested in self-abuse, seeing mindlessly pleasing himself to be pointless, but now he was chagrined to find himself ducking off for some private time as much as any of the other young male trainees.
Maybe it was the panties.
It was when Armin had finally gotten used to the panties, so comfortable and normalized, that it happened. They were on one of the dreaded ruck marches, and Armin was feeling less beat than usual, when the skies, gray and ominous, opened up with rain. It poured all it's heavy wetness down on his head, and he huddled down under his cloak, hoping none of the raindrops would get on the tops of his pants. They didn't, but they didn't need to. The heavy rain never let up, and with five miles to go, and then the ten back to the training camp, it wasn't long before his cloak was entirely soaked through, and then his jacket, and then yes, the tops of his pants and finally, his panties. And this day, he wasn't wearing a discreet little thong, or a secretive caged lace open-panel pair consisting of a few skinny strips. No, today he had on a pair of thick, red ruffled boy shorts with a black velvet bow in the front.
The cloak covered them through the march, but he could practically feel them, bright red like an alarm against the soaked-through, transparent whiteness of his uniform pants.
When they got back to the dormitory, it was a fujoshi's dream as the room filled with naked young men. All the boys eagerly threw their heavy wet cloaks on the pegs near the entrance way, and raced to pull off sopping jackets and pants.
All but Armin, who nervously headed to the closet to grab a spare, dry pair of clothes and get the hell out of there.
"Where are you going?" Jean asked, as Armin headed for the door, bundle of dry clothes safely ensconced in a sailcloth bag.
"T-to the baths!" Armin said nervously.
"Jeez, well at least put on a dry cloak." he said, reaching for Armin's cloak, which was dripping unfortunately all over the dormitory floor.
It was in a frozen horror that Armin saw the cloak spilling into the air, heading for the hook next to the door.
"Woah." Connie said, catching sight of the red, beribboned patch that covered Armin's groin. Jean hadn't noticed yet, too intent on grabbing a dry cloak from the closet. He turned around at Connie's exclamation, just catching a glimpse of Armin's ruffled heinie as it sped out the door.
The door slammed behind him and he just missed Millius's comment of "You know, that's kind of hot." as well as the nods and murmurs of agreement that followed it.
The next day was awkward. Armin was tired; he waited in the empty bathing room till long after dark, not wanting to face the teasing jeers of his teammates. He had hoped that only Connie and Jean had saw, and maybe not understood what they were seeing, but the burning hot stares of his teammates, male and female alike, directed at his bum, let him know that word had spread to everyone.
Even Shadis's eyes lingered on his loins, like the rest, looking for the tell-tale sign that he was wearing some overly-luxurious piece of women's lingerie under his training uniform. He could have told them they were out of luck; he was, for the first time in months, wearing the standard-issue white linen drawers made available to the male soldiers.
To get away from the heated gazes of his comrades in arms, he volunteered to do the mercifully solitary duty of cleaning rust off the used gas cannister's that day.
He was near the cannister-pile, scraping the rusty paste off of a seriously-dinged up cannister when his solitude was invaded. It was Bertholdt, that quiet and unobtrustive man, who first walked by, whistling, in the direction of the woods. Armin was about to turn back to his miserable task when Bertholdt innocently scratched inside his waistband, hiking a few inches of pink lace into visibility.
Armin resisted the temptation to rub his eyes. Okay, so maybe Reiner had sucked his submissive buddy into his panty fetish as well. It wasn't surprising. He dismissed it and went back to work.
However, a few minutes later, Jean and Marco walked by. It was all Armin could do to resist groaning and hiding his face. He controlled himself, forcing himself to act normal.
The smile died on his face though, and his hand dropped down from it's casual wave, when he noticed that both their uniform bottoms were soaked through, revealing matching black thongs. They headed into the woods with nary a look at him.
He was seriously freaked out. Then Connie came by.
Connie, however, did not pass by him, instead walking right up to him.
"Man, Armin, these things are great! I can't believe I've gone my whole life without wearing these!" he said, pulling a fistful of leopard-print panty fabric up over his waistband to show Armin his enthusiasm.
"You're a lot braver than I thought." he said, and then walked off, in the same direction of the woods everyone else had headed into.
Then Armin did groan, shaking his head in disbelief. He was supposed to believe, what, that he'd converted every male of the trainee squad into being a panty lover? And they were what, sneaking off into the woods for a panty-fanclub meeting?
Armin was still staring off into the distance in shock when Eren and Mikasa came up. They were arm-in-arm, and Eren was blushing and looking reluctant.
"Hey Armin." Mikasa said. "We're heading to Frederick's of Wall Rose. Are you coming?"
Not waiting for an answer, they strolled off into the woods after everyone else.
Finally, Armin got up, leaving the dirty cannisters behind him, and walked into the woods. If there was a Frederick's near camp, he wanted to see it.
FIN~
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