Series Title: Textidents Happen

Fic Title: Star69

Pairing: Jean/Mikasa

Rating: T for language (Jean has a potty mouth).

Author's Note: First Jeankasa fic, ya'll! It's hella AU for reasons. Also, *69 is the bell star code for Last Call Return. Yeah, IDEK.

Happy reading~

START CALL

Jean is in the middle of cooking dinner when his phone beeps. He carefully flips the pancake over—because despite what Marco says pancakes are appropriate 24/7—then lowers the heat and sets the spatula aside before retrieving his phone from the table.

The screen displays an unknown number. Frowning, he swipes it on and almost drops it when an image appears on the screen. Someone sent him a selfie. A full-frontal selfie. A full-frontal selfie featuring a half-naked girl. Who also happens to be the hottest person he's ever seen in his life. His eyes linger first on her face—because holy shit she's gorgeous—and then her chest, modestly-sized and concealed by a twizzler-red bra, before dropping lower, to abs that make Jean itch to do a thousand sit-ups right then and there. He touches his flat stomach, partly out of self-consciousness and partly because it's getting uncomfortably warm in there.

He almost drops his phone again when it releases another beep. A text bubble appears beneath the photo that reads:

From Unknown Number: Eren told me I'm getting fat.

From Unknown Number: I'm going to have to disagree with him on that one.

From Unknown Number: I bought the red one like you suggested.

From Unknown Number: You're right, it does make them look perkier.

Jean's indignation on behalf of Unknown Number—because whoever this Eren person is, they're a raging douchebag—fades when he reads the last two texts. His mouth goes dry, and it takes every ounce of self-restraint his eternally horny twenty-two year old body possesses not to look at the picture and stare at the evidence of a wisely made purchase. It's obvious this girl is texting him by accident, thinking him to be a friend or lover or whatever, and Jean may be a pervert but he's not a creep. Or at least he tries not to be one. Which he definitely will be if he ogles the picture like he desperately wants to, knowing what he knows and all.

A jarring sound bounces off the kitchen walls as he pulls a chair out from under the table and drops like a stone into it. He bites his bottom lip and stares uncertainly at the screen, deliberating on the best course of action to take. After a moment he pulls up the keyboard and begins to type.

To Unknown Number: Hi. Uh, I think you've got the wrong number?

Less than three seconds later his phone begins to vibrate from an incoming call. The caller ID reads Unknown. He stares at it, swallowing heavily. This is not how he expected this to go. He figured the girl would text him an embarrassed apology, ask him to delete the picture, and maybe block his number for good measure. He didn't think she'd actually call him.

He lets the phone ring long enough that his palm begins to tickle from the vibrations. Hesitantly, Jean swipes the Accept Call arrow and puts it to his ear.

"You're not Annie," a voice says immediately. It isn't a question.

Jean tries not to think something stupid—like how unfair it is that she also has a really nice voice—and clears his throat.

"Uh, no. Sorry." Honestly, he isn't sure why he feels the need to apologize. It's not as if he's done anything wrong.

"No," the girl refutes, "it was my mistake. I should have made sure I inputted the correct number." She pauses. "I would appreciate it if you could delete the photo I sent, however."

Or else, she doesn't say, but Jean hears the threat anyway, and he'll never admit to anyone that it makes him shudder.

"G-give me a second," he says, and lowers the phone. He opens their conversation tab and allows himself a brief moment to admire her picture—it's fucking ridiculous how beautiful she is—before deleting it with a pang of regret. He picks up the phone and says, "Okay, it's gone."

A beat of silence follows his statement. Jean considers that she might not believe him—he wouldn't, were he in her shoes—but then she says, "Thank you," in a voice that's noticeably warmer and fuck, her almost-but-not-quite-nice voice is far, far lovelier than her I-will-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you-if-you-mess-with-me voice and Jean doesn't ever want to stop listening to her talk.

Unnerved by the unexpected thought, Jean says, weakly, "It's no problem."

"Right. Well, goodb—"

"For the record, that Eren person is a total idiot," Jean blurts out, unable to stop the words from catapulting off his tongue. "Either that or completely blind. Possibly both because you're the furthest thing from fat I can think of."

More taut, awkward silence follows and Jean feels himself start to sweat. He curses his goddamn mouth with its lack of filter and pulls the phone away from his ear, one-hundred percent sure he's been hung up on, when the line crackles from what he thinks is an exhale.

It's humiliating how quickly he presses the phone to his ear again.

Cautiously, as if she's trying to decide whether or not responding is a good idea, she says, "Well, to be fair I did sit on him. And I'm not exactly light."

Jean's cheeks hurt from the relieved grin that breaks out across his face. She responded. She actually responded. Now all he has to do is crank up the charm and refrain from saying anything that'll result in him having his number blocked.

Basically, he needs to channel Marco.

"Uh, yeah, you really don't look like you would be." It takes him a moment to realize what he's insinuating and he scrambles to backtrack. "Not that I'm saying you're fat! You're not! You're just, y'know, muscle-y. Which definitely isn't a bad thing! You're, like, stupidly attractive which I'm sure you already know and don't need me to tell you and yeah."

Maybe it would have been best if she'd hung up on him after all. At least it would have spared him from making an absolute fool out of himself.

This, Jean thinks bitterly, is why he can't have nice things.

"S-sorry," he stutters, because apparently he hasn't embarrassed himself enough.

The girl says, "It's fine," and Jean thinks she almost sounds amused. He releases a breath. That can either be a really good thing or a really bad thing, depending on why she's amused. Also, on what kind of girl she is. Jean needs more data.

"So. 'Stupidly attractive,' huh?" she says after a moment.

Jean coughs, startled, and digs deep, deep, deep inside of himself for his usual cool. He comes up empty.

"Well I'm not blind, so…" He coughs again. Shit, but the tension in the air is making it almost difficult to breathe.

"You know, it should probably concern me more that you were probably perving on my picture. You did delete it, right?"

"Of course I did!" Jean insists, slightly insulted by her lack of trust (even if it is justified).

"Just making sure." She definitely sounds amused now.

Jean tries to scoff but ends up coughing into the crook of his elbow instead. He hopes like hell he isn't getting sick, what with Midterms starting in a week. It'll be just his goddamn luck, too.

"…You alright?" she asks when he's finished.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jean assures her, embarrassed but also somewhat pleased by the show of concern. That has to mean something, right?

Jean ignores the voice in his head—which suspiciously sounds like Marco—that insists he's grasping at straws and seeing what isn't there.

"Guess I caught a cold or something," he continues, telling the voice to shut the hell up.

"Oh. That's—"

"Oi, Mikasa!" Jean hears someone shout from her end. It sounds like a guy, and Jean's stomach clenches with something that has no business existing and he refuses to name. "They're downstairs! You ready to go?"

Static, and then the girl calls back, her voice muffled like she's pressing the phone against something, "Almost ready! I'll be down in a minute!"

Mikasa, the guy had called her. Mi-ka-sa.

Of-fucking-course she has a beautiful name, too.

More crackling static, and then finally her lilting voice is in his ear. "I have to go."

Even knowing it was coming doesn't ease the weight of disappointment that settles over him. He restrains the sigh that threatens to escape and says, "Yeah, uh, okay. It was…nice. Talking to you, I mean."

Jean can't tell if she means it or not when says, "Yeah. You, too."

This is it. She's going to hang up, possibly block his number, and Jean is never going to hear from her again. The thought bothers him in a way it shouldn't, because he doesn't even know her. Who cares if he never speaks to her again? It won't affect his life any.

And yet he can't bring himself to let it happen. Not without seeing if he can prevent it first.

"Jean," he says in a rush.

"What?"

"My name. It's Jean."

The time it takes her to speak again feels like an eternity, though logically he knows only scant seconds have passed.

"Jean," she enunciates slowly, as if she's sampling the way his name feels on her tongue. His eyes flutter close—he doesn't think he's ever liked the sound of his name so much. "I'm Mikasa."

Her second act of reciprocating. And it can mean one of two things—either she's too polite to blow him off (which Jean doubts, considering the tone she used with him earlier, but maybe that's just wishful thinking on his part) or she's at least a little interested in seeing where this—whatever this is—is going to lead. Jean hopes it's the latter.

"Mikasa," he repeats.

Jean lets his eyes fall fully shut. He tries forcing his legs to stop bouncing—a nervous habit he's never been able to break, despite his and his parent's combined efforts—but after a moment gives up. Decides he needs an outlet for his haywire nerves, considering what he's about to do.

"Can I—" Jean halts, wets his lips, and calls himself a chicken shit before forcing the rest of it out. "Can I talk to you again?" He almost bites his tongue preventing the please that very nearly slips out and replaces chicken shit with pathetic fuck.

This isn't like him. In fact, it's so unlike him that a part of him is starting to think it will be in his best interests to never associate with Mikasa again. If she can make him feel like this after three minutes of knowing her he doesn't even want to think about the affect she'll have on him if they really get to know each other.

Jean's never been smooth when it comes to talking to people he finds really attractive, but he's never fumbled and flailed as badly as he's doing now. It's kind of terrifying. Scratch that—it's a lot terrifying, and if he's smart he'll back out now, save himself potential humiliation at best, heartache at worst.

But Jean isn't thinking about that with the seriousness he probably should be. He's too busy praying she'll agree to worry about anything else.

"…Okay," Mikasa says, sounding uncertain for the first time that evening.

"Great. That's…that's great." He licks his lips and tries not to sound as eager as he feels. The last thing he wants is to scare her off. "So I guess I'll text you later."

"I…yeah." Another exhale, and then more firmly she says, "I look forward to it."

Jean hopes with everything in him that the unmanly sound he made was only in his head.

"Bye, Jean."

"Yeah, uh. Bye, Mikasa."

She hangs up, and Jean takes a moment to just stand there and breathe before he sets the phone down. Not even a second later the fire alarm lets loose an ear-splitting wail that causes him to flinch so hard he bangs his knee against the underside of the table.

Ignoring the throb of his knee, Jean whirls around. Gray smoke is billowing from the pan on the stove top and it takes him that long to remember the fucking pancakes. He swears and rushes to turn the stove off, and then, coughing (god, he's such an idiot), grabs a potholder and transfers the pan to the sink. A sizzling noise fills the air when he turns the water on and it hits the pan, the impact sending hot water boils and cloying white smoke towards him.

Jean waves a hand in front of his face and hurries to shut off the fire alarm. He returns to the sink when it no longer sounds like it's threatening to attack and dares a peak. Cringes, because his pancake looks like an overdone burger and the pan beneath it is completely ruined. He isn't sure which one of them upsets him the most.

Much later, when the kitchen is mostly clean and a cup of instant ramen is spinning away in the microwave, Jean retrieves his phone.

He received a few messages while he was busy. The first two are from Marco, but Jean skips over them to open the ones from Unknown. His heart thuds heavily in his chest as he begins to read.

From Unknown Number: Send me a picture of you. I want to know what you look like, too.

From Unknown Number: Topless, preferably. It's only fair.

From Unknown Number: Bra is optional.

Jean leans against the fridge so hard it rattles, runs a hand through his sweat-damp hair, and releases a helpless laugh. His evening has been nothing short of bizarre—starting with an unexpected selfie from a half-naked goddess and ending with his kitchen up in smoke—but he can't say he regrets any of it. Not when he has this to look forward to.

The microwave beeps and goes dark, but Jean ignores it—the ramen needs time to cool anyway—and makes his way towards his bedroom, which has the best lighting in the apartment.

If Mikasa wants a topless selfie of him, she'll get one.

And maybe, if she likes what she sees, she'll return the favor.

A guy can hope.

END CALL

A/N: The next installment should be up in a few days. It's technically the last one, but tbh I already have a handful of oneshots planned for this verse so who even knows.

Anyway, thanks for reading, everyone! Comments are super appreciated, as always!