Notes: Someone on my Erejean blog asked for Erejeanmarco. Ask and you shall receive, I suppose! Thanks to by beta, missplacemat on Tumblr, for making sure that everything made sense and that Marco's characterizations are accurate. She's written some super awesome Erejeanmarco fanfiction of her own under the name Gaarplacemat on Ao3. Go read it!
Disclaimer: Shingeki no Kyojin|Attack on Titan and its characters are not my own. It is a publication of Kodansha with anime produced by Wit Studio Production. The storyline and characters themselves are the creative property of Isayama Hajime. The only content I own is the story below as you see it written. I do not profit from the publication of this work, nor to I receive any form of monetary compensation at all. The story was written purely for the enjoyment of myself and others.
Chapter One
"We're gonna end the summer with one last bang, man. It'll be awesome. Just like old times. You and me and Marco, a bunch of beer and our own stretch of beach. What do you think?"
Some evil little part of Eren wants to respond that that's the dumbest idea he's ever heard, not only because Eren doesn't feel like being the third wheel to Marco and Jean's domestic bliss, but because the 'old times' Jean is speaking of were approximately five years ago in college when their obligations were sparse and free time easy to come by. But another part—the part that misses everything that comes with his two best friends from college—regrets the distance that has gaped open between them in the last three years and wants to jump at the chance to be with them without the interruptions of the outside world.
So he smiles across Jean and Marco's kitchen table and says, "Yeah, sounds great. At the old cabin, or…?"
"Totally," Jean says with a grin, Marco's freckled hand on his shoulder where he's hovering with a spatula in his hand from flipping hamburgers, and a glint in his eyes that Eren can't quite place. "My granddad gave me the deed last year, so it's all mine now."
"Cool," Eren mumbles into his glass of milk, and watches Marco flip the hamburgers again, the muscles in his back moving visibly underneath his thin tee-shirt. Eren wonders if it's weird that he knows the pattern of freckles on Marco's shoulders, and if so if that's less or more weird than him knowing the exact number of moles on Jean's back. He doesn't know when he came about the knowledge, but he knows that he clings to it like a drowning man clings to something that floats. "When?"
Marco turns off the stove, puts down the spatula and comes to stand behind Jean, arms on the tabletop next to Jean's elbows and head lowering to be level with his. "Labor Day weekend. We were gonna leave on Thursday because we have Friday off. But you can meet us up there on Friday if you can't get it off. It'll give us time to get things set up."
Probably screw like rabbits, too, before Eren came along and became a living obstruction to their sex life. Not that Eren would really care if they banged in the next room—not that it would even be the first time he'd been in the next room while Jean grunted and Marco made a series of high-pitched moans that raised in crescendo until, "Oh! Oh, God, I'm coming!"—but Marco is weird about it and Jean tends to obey Marco on these matters.
Eren isn't resentful. He really isn't; despite being in love with his best friends for seven years, he's never resented them. He's been frustrated, in various quantities and forms, and somewhat depressed at times, but never resentful. In fact, he's incredibly happy that they've found happiness with each other. All he has ever wanted is for those closest to him to find happiness. If that means the only two people he has ever truly been in love with find love with each other and move on from him…well, so be it.
"I really doubt that Levi will give me Friday before Labor Day off on such short notice," Eren says, fingers and eyes on the rim of his glass, "so I'll probably have to meet you guys up on Friday night. But it's fine, yeah. Sounds like fun." He takes another sip of milk and raises his eyebrow at the two of them, because they're both giving him this look. He's always gotten the distinct impression that Jean and Marco were connected on some plane that Eren couldn't even hope to tune into, and it's only more apparent when they both look at him like that. With Marco leaning over Jean, arms bracketing him on both sides and chin almost on his shoulder, they almost give the illusion of one being with four arms and two heads. "You guys are sure this is okay?"
"Of course," Jean says, adopting a frown. "Why wouldn't it be? We asked, didn't we?"
"I just…You guys are a couple, and…wouldn't you prefer to have a holiday to yourselves?"
Marco looks at him with a kind of blank, uncomprehending stare that implies the idea of having a couple's vacation with Jean had never even crossed his mind. Jean's frown increases, his lip curls like he wants to say you are you kidding but, in typical Jean fashion, is too lazy to actually speak the words.
"Why," Jean says finally, "would you think that? We're with each other all the time. We live together." He sounds genuinely confused, and then genuinely hurt when he adds, "Do you not want to come? We won't force you." Marco's eyes widen to approximately the size of dinner plates at this idea, warm and brown and puppy-like. A cold hand clenches around Eren's heart.
"No, it's just…never mind. Of course I want to come." He gives what he hopes is a convincing smile and drains the last of his milk. "I'll bring the Guinness, considering Jean will probably bring his queer beer."
"Corona is a good beer—"
"Corona is queer beer," Eren and Marco chorus, glance at each other and grin. Something in Marco's smile and Jean's eye roll convinces him that this might not be such a bad idea after all.
In the end, Eren does not even risk asking his boss for the Friday before Labor Day off. He loves his job, and he knows how lucky he is to have found a job as a vet tech to get him through veterinary school, but Levi is also vaguely terrifying at times and runs his practice with an iron fist. Eren supposes he could have asked Erwin, because Erwin is easier to talk to, but everything works its way back to Levi eventually, and asking Erwin for a day off would be kind of like asking one parent for a cookie after the other just said no - an inflammatory, possibly hazardous situation, and not one that Eren wanted to put himself in.
So he works until his last appointment on Friday—two o'clock—and then stays for an extra hour to help Levi with an emergency involving a dog getting spikes in his paw from someone's indoor cactus. At three, he slips away after asking Levi's permission to leave, gets home and grabs his pre-packed suitcase and two cats. After two stops—one to drop the cats at Armin and Miksa's, the other to pick up two cases of Guinness—he's on his way out to Jean's granddad's beachside cabin. It's an hour-long drive that he takes his time with, plays music and sings along, calls Marco to tell him he's on his way, and ultimately uses to destress from the week behind him.
Jean and Marco have brought up Jean's Chevy Tahoe rather than Marco's Cruze. Someone in Marco's family either works or worked for Chevrolet, and they get a serious discount on purchases and leases. The Tahoe they've had since they graduated college. The Cruze is a new addition, but it's quickly become Marco's baby. Either way, it's no real mystery why they chose to bring the Tahoe rather than the Cruze—more room, for one, in case all three of them decided to hop in one car and go somewhere. Similarly, the Tahoe has four-wheel drive, and a lot of the roads around here are dirt. Eren parks his bright blue 2010 Focus next to the black CUV and turns it off, stares at the ocean for a moment, and finally gets out when Jean appears around the hood of the Tahoe.
"Fancy seeing you here," Jean says, while Marco grins from the porch. "How was your drive?"
"Alright," Eren says, with a noncommittal shrug, and throws his duffel over his shoulder, grabs one case of beer. "I beat rush hour more or less, so it was nice." Jean slaps a hand on his shoulder and keeps it there as he and Eren scale the front stops, where Marco wraps Eren in a hug and takes the beer from him.
"I'm making dinner," Marco says, "but it won't be ready for an hour or so yet, so you have time to unpack. After dinner we were thinking about taking a walk down by the beach. You can come, if you want." The way he says it gives Eren the distinct impression that Marco actually really wants him to come, whereas Eren would have assumed the opposite. He wonders if his friends just literally have no idea how to do this whole couple thing, even after five years. They've always been open with their relationship around Eren, but he would have assumed it would have stopped by now as they got older and settled down.
He also wonders if they're having troubles, if Marco doesn't want to be alone with Jean for whatever reason. It's hard to imagine that, with the way that Marco leans into the kiss Jean drops on his cheek, and the brush of fingers that Marco delivers to Jean's arm, but if there is anything that his twenty-six years of life has taught him, it's that appearances are deceptive.
Finally, after standing there for a moment under the guise of checking his phone—in all actuality, he's staring at his lock screen, trying to decode the meaning behind Marco's offer, and ultimately coming up blank—he mumbles, "Yeah, okay."
"Great," Marco says with a smile, and nods towards the hallway. "Jean and I took the master bedroom, so you're stuck with the guest."
"That's fine," Eren says, because it's probably better than the sofa bed he had to crash on last time they were here—at that time, Jean and Marco were not dating yet, Marco and Eren insisted on Jean taking the king-sized bed in the master bedroom for himself, and had an almost-argument over which one of them would take the sofa bed—and shuffles down the hallway. He can't help glancing in the master on the way down, though. Doesn't try really hard to resist, to be honest. He stares at the nightstands, the novel Marco is currently reading on one and Jean's reading glasses on the other; at their clothes mingled together in their shared suitcase, propped open on the trunk at the end of the bed; at the haphazardly-made bed. Raw longing claws at his chest. He pushes it down, as he's gotten so good at, and resolutely pushes himself into the guest room.
He begins the subsequent hour settling in, transferring all of his clothes from the duffel into the dresser, both to give himself something to do and because he doesn't really like living out of a suitcase. This he finishes within twenty minutes, though, so he tosses himself across the bed afterward and dozes.
Marco shakes him into wakefulness, smelling spicy and delicious. He smiles when Eren opens his eyes, says, "Hey, sleepyhead, want food?"
Eren makes a groggy noise in the back of his throat and follows Marco and a savory smell to the kitchen, where Jean is spooning generous amounts of sour cream out of a bowl and onto something that looks like Marco's famous tacos. Eren's heart sings.
"Tortillas are on the counter," Marco says, retaking the seat next to Jean. "Corn for the normal people and flour for the gringo over here."
"Corn tortillas are an acquired taste, okay?" Jean mumbles into his leaking taco.
"Says the gringo."
Eren grins and retrieves two tortillas—corn, because tortillas are one of only two things that Marco gets really defensive about; the other is coffee—and fills them with meat and cheese from the slow-cooker. "Jean isn't that bad, Marco. He can kind of tolerate spicy food?"
"My mother has a jar of store-bought mild salsa in her fridge that is labeled for Jean because she doesn't know how to make mild salsa and Jean can't eat hers. A Mexican woman owning store-bought salsa? Blasphemy." Eren glances over his shoulder just as Marco is smiling benevolently at Jean, watching as he goes cross-eyed trying to focus on the end of his taco and not on the conversation. Marco says, "Te amo, Papi," and Jean blushes. Eren looks away, feeling like he's intruding, and wraps his tacos.
"You're good at that," Jean grumbles, and glances once more at his sadly dripping taco.
"I helped my ma wrap sarmas a lot," Eren says, setting his plate on the table and turning around to retrieve the milk from the fridge and pour himself a glass. "They're these…stuffed grape leaves. Not like the Greek ones though, because those are stuffed with tomato and rice and the ones she made were stuffed with lamb. She made them for our neighbors a lot when I was a kid. I never really liked them…but I learned to roll them like a pro." He looks up at the both of them to find them staring at him as though what he's saying is the most interesting thing in the world, even though they've probably heard this ten times. Eight years is a long time, and Eren is relatively sure that only his sister and possibly Armin know more about him than these two. He wonders if they're making fun of him for being a broken record and telling the same story over again. "What?"
"Nothing," Marco says, and he's the first to look away. Jean does so as well, after he sees Marco do it out of his periphery.
Eren takes a bite out of his taco, groans in appreciation and says, "I love you, Marco."
"I love you too, Eren," Marco laughs, but there's an odd tone to his voice. It makes Eren feel a little self-conscious until Jean reminds him of the time junior year that they stayed up all night helping Marco make tacos because he forgot a promise until the very last moment, and the rest of the dinner is spent happily reminiscing.
Eren has always loved the ocean. When he was a kid growing up in a landlocked state, he idolized it to a certain degree. The ocean was his idea of Nirvana, or something similar. He used to think about it all the time. About what it looked like, felt like, smelled like. The first time he saw it, it was with Jean and Marco. He and Jean had just gotten past the stage in their relationship where an argument broke out every time they were within twenty feet of each other, and Marco was a mutual friend. They drove three hours from their university to the ocean. Eren remembers the wet sand between his toes, the taste of salt and the mist on his skin. Remembers Jean's halo of dirty blond hair as it looked in the sunlight, and Marco's laugh as minnows raced between his feet.
The sun is setting by the time they reach the beach. Eren takes off his sandals, rolls his jeans up to mid-calf, and goes walking in the damp sand where the tide had risen earlier that afternoon. Marco and Jean are slightly in front of him, probably near enough that he could brush their backs with his fingertips if he stretched out his arm. Marco has an arm around Jean's waist, and Jean has a hand in Marco's back pocket. Eren smiles at it, even as his heart tugs. He's gotten so used to the persistent ache that he almost doesn't notice it anymore.
They walk half a mile or so, past several hotels and a boardwalk. Eren falls somewhat behind, because it's hard keeping up with two guys who are near six foot and all legs, but every time he gets a little too far away, Marco and Jean pause and wait for him to catch up. At one point, however, he stops. He slows down, walks a few feet into the surf, and stands there. He wonders if Jean and Marco will wait for him or just keep walking, figuring he'll snap out of it and follow eventually. Even he doesn't know quite why he felt the need to pause.
It doesn't bother Marco and Jean. They are at his side within a minute, Marco on the right and Jean on the left.
"Alright?" Marco asks, arm slinking around his shoulders. Jean presses, warm and solid, against his arm.
"Do you ever feel…alone?" Eren mumbles.
"How so?" Jean inquires. He nudges Eren's arm until Eren finally wraps an arm around his waist. They stand there for a moment, the three of them, like a brief, lopsided stretch of wall standing in the surf.
"I dunno. It's silly, but…Ever since Mikasa and Armin got married, I've been…" he shrugs. "Wondering if I've got a place in their lives anymore. In anyone's lives. Everyone's getting married. Sasha and Connie, Historia and Ymir. Hell, even Bert and Reiner are settling down, and they were the last ones I thought would ever sit still in one place. Meanwhile, I haven't had a date in two years." He glances between Marco and Jean. "And then there's you guys. You've got each other. Not that I'm unhappy for you. It's great that you've got each other. I'm just…" desperately, hopelessly in love with you; incapable of functioning without you; despondent at the idea that someday our friendship and moments like this will just be memories, "selfish."
"Shh," Marco breathes. Eren feels the noise against his hair, closes his eyes. "No you're not. It's understandable that you'd feel that way, but you're not. Anyone who's met your sister knows that she'd rather die than close you out of her life, and so would Armin. Jean and I…" Marco takes a pause that stops Eren's heart. He doesn't look at the expression that Marco and Jean exchange over his head, instead forcing himself to keep breathing. Marco tightens his hand around Eren's shoulder and says, "We'd never let you go."
"You're stuck with us, Jaeger," Jean says, equally as quiet and equally as intense, into his ear. Eren thinks about sweet nothings and bites into the inside of his cheek.
"We should…um…get back," Eren says eventually, because if he stays here, lets himself be held by these two, he may never be able to force himself to leave. "It's getting dark."
"That's the whole point," Marco says. "The nights are beautiful here. You can see every star." He breaks away, wanders back beyond the wet sand of the tide line, drops his shoes into the sand and himself onto his bum. Eren stares at him over his shoulder, watches as Marco wiggles his fingers. "C'mon. We're gonna stargaze." He continues wiggling his fingers until Jean moves over to him, then grabs his hands and pulls him down. They kiss. Eren smiles.
"I'll leave you to it, then," Eren says.
"Eren," Marco says, sounding as exasperated as Marco is capable of sounding. "Come here. Ay Dios mio."
"But—wouldn't—"
Marco shuffles to him on his knees—dampening his jeans in the ocean as he does so—and grabs Eren by the hands, shuffles backwards, falls onto his back and brings Eren down. Eren has a fleeting thought—are they sixteen or twenty-six?—before he realizes that he has fallen onto his knees straddling Marco's lap. He gapes uselessly for a moment, unmoving. Marco smiles at him, earnest and sweet and beautiful and bright.
"Hey there," Marco breathes, hand absentmindedly on Eren's thigh. Eren feels a tug on his heart that echoes the one between his legs. "Come here often?"
"No," Eren says. A goofy, nervous laugh exits his mouth when he can't think of anything better to say. He glances at Jean, not knowing what he's expecting to see on his face, but somehow knowing that what he finds—a soft, unreadable expression, amber eyes shimmering, gorgeous with his hair haloed amid the sand and a gentle curve to his lips—is the last thing he'd have thought would be there. He loses his breath for a moment, long enough for Jean to reach out and pull him down between him and Marco. They scoot close to him. Eren can't help but feel like a child bracketed by his parents in bed; safe and secure and protected.
"Now," Marco breathes, resting his head on Eren's shoulder. Eren wonders, desperately, why Jean pulled him down between them. Why he's not on Marco's other side so Marco can put his head on Jean's shoulder, so that Jean can hold Marco's hand without having to reach under Eren, his arm leaching warmth through Eren's shirt. "Look at the stars."
Marco keeps his head there for a long time. Eren revels in that spicy smell that always seems to float off of Marco. It triggers an olfactory sensation of wellbeing. Jean knocks their feet together and Eren knocks back, because he and Jean have never quite grown out of their rivalry. It takes Eren several minutes to realize that what he and Jean are doing could be considered footsie by a bystander. Eren stops and, after a few nudges trying to coax Eren back into their game, Jean does as well. Marco rubs a thumb into his shoulder. If Eren closes his eyes, he can almost pretend that this is what it's like all the time—that if he turned his head and caught Marco's lips, Marco would kiss back sweetly—that Jean would watch on with an expression that Eren can see so clearly in his mind that his toes curl—
He sits up. Marco's head drops into the sand and he feels bad about it but he needs to get away, needs to separate himself from these two before he does something detrimental.
"Eren?" Jean asks, sounding alarmed. "What—"
"I need to, um…I don't feel well, I need to lie down, I—"
"Hold on, let me put my shoes on," Marco says, and Jean makes an agreeing echo of the same, but Eren shoes his sandals onto his feet, shakes his head, says no, no, I need to be alone, and takes off back towards the cabin.
The walk takes half an hour, and by the time he gets back he's far too exhausted to do anything but flop into bed and stay there. He feels terrible about his outbreak, knows that Jean and Marco must be worried sick, but he didn't know what else to do at the time. He turns onto his side and curls up, considers that it wasn't exactly a lie that he told them—his stomach aches from stress and worry—and prays that the rest of the weekend doesn't go this way. That he can get control of himself, stop being a flake.
"Fuck," he mutters, before he sleeps.
End Chapter
Notes: Thank you for reading!