Jean's hands ached from where they'd been gripping the steering wheel for so long. There were miles of road behind them now. Miles, and acres, and ages. The ground was beginning to wind up around mountains again though, and the plains were giving way to rolling hills.
Marco rustled about with the newspaper in the passenger's seat, feet kicked up on the dashboard, shoulders nested in the curve of the seatback.
"You're sure?" Jean asked not for the first time, though it was rather fruitless to continue questioning it now that they were so close.
"Positive," Marco said, still reading the article. He'd been reading the article for a week now, and Jean was starting to get plain sick, and tired of it. "You just don't like the idea of being in the south again."
Jean scoffed at him, and sneered at the road. There was an intense quiet in the car's cabin. The kind of quiet that only came from sleeping on the seats for more than a night in a row to save on money, and having to look at one another every day without respite.
They were both itching for a fight. Any minute they'd been tearing into one another over something as silly as a mixed tape. So Jean avoided music, but the lack of sound only seemed to make it worse.
"We could listen to Styx," Marco said, rolling his window up, and down, and finally deciding he liked the way the way felt on his face. His right foot found itself carefully hung out into the wind, boot moving around his curling, and uncurling toes.
"We've listened to Renegade eight times on this trip already. No more Styx," Jean said. Marco made a low whining sound in his throat, glaring at the greenery that rushed by them.
"I could give you road head," he said suddenly. Jean felt like he'd been punched in the diaphragm, head whipping around to get a better look at the other boy.
Looking at Marco didn't enlighten him to whether or not he was joking, so Jean settled on a nervous laugh, turning back to the windshield. "You're kidding me right? We're both dudes, and that pretty intensely dangerous, right?"
"You'd have a point if we weren't currently out to hunt some werewolves down, and kill them," Marco said dead pan, still staring out the window.
Jean swallowed hard. "Still both dudes," he pointed out again.
Marco shrugged, and they lapsed back into silence for a few moments.
"You're horny too, though, right?" he asked after a while. "Like, this isn't just me?"
Jean gave the steering wheel a wide eyed, nervous look. He was, but that was really beside the point. It wasn't like they hadn't had time alone when they'd stopped in motels, to watch porn, and get off.
"Yeah, but what does that matter?" he asked nervously.
"Nothing, I guess," Marco said, shoving his leg out the window farther so that his knee hooked around the door. "Hey, is that a Denny's?"
Jean laughed at the sudden topic change. It was unsure why, but Marco was in love with Denny's in a way that would have made Poe's Annabel Lee jealous.
They stopped in for breakfast, and drove the rest of the day before they found themselves in the town of the Yeager animal attack, fueling up the tank at a podunk gas station that gave Jean the creeps. Marco was complaining about how they'd lived off of Pringles, and Munchies for too long, and he was so sick of them he'd never be able to look at sour cream and onion again, while Jean was actually being productive by pumping the gas.
"You should ask if there's anywhere nice to eat," Marco told him. Jean groaned, and marched off to the creepiest food mart he'd ever seen. Marco was at least kind enough to come with, trailing behind at the door to stare at the bone chimes.
A bell clanged when Jean pushed through to inside, and he found himself looking at a huge, blonde boy about his age, bent over the cash register. The kids eyes found his, almost seeming to glow in the low fluorescent lighting. They were an odd yellow color. One Jean hadn't ever seen before.
Jean cleared his throat under the scrutiny of the boy, and shuffled off in the direction of chips, when Marco's hand caught him by the shoulder.
"We were just wondering," Marco said in a cheery tone of voice, "If there's anywhere to eat around here."
He boy cocked his head as if to let the words trickle from his ear into his brain, and braced an elbow on top of the register. "Not really sure," he said in an accent Jean wasn't actually able to place. "We don't go out much. Ay, Bertl!" he called and a thin, dark skinned boy that was even taller popped his head in past the employes only door in the back. "You know about anywhere these guys can stop, and eat?"
Bertl scrunched up his face. "No Bertl," he said first, in the same accent, making the first boy smile wolfishly at him. "And no, I'm not really sure. I could try the phone book."
"Maybe Annie knows?"
"Annie is the least likely to know," Bertl told him.
"Where you guys comin' from?" the blonde asked.
"Last place we stopped at for any real length of time was Atlanta," Marco said.
"Atlanta?" the boy asked, as if he'd never heard of the place before, and was desperately trying to find something related in his mind. "That's that place where people go to loose their money, right?"
"Yeah," Marco said softly.
Jean felt really apprehensive about the whole shop, and the two boys working it, but Marco's hand was slowly tightening on his shoulder, keeping him in place.
"You guys just passin' through, or are you in town for any real reason?"
"Well, some of our relatives just passed away, and we're here for the funeral," Marco said, always quick to the excuses.
The boy's face became instantly forlorn. "We just had a friend loose his mother," he said. "Her funerals about to be comin' up. He's pretty torn up about it."
"Eren?" Marco asked, knowing the boy's name from the article.
The boy perked up. "You're Eren's family?" he asked suddenly.
"Yeah, I'm Carla's cousin, and this is my boyfriend," Marco lied. The boy cocked his head again, and Jean expected him to come out with some old southern rhetoric about Adam, and Eve before his face broke out into a huge grin.
"Stay for dinner," he told them, much to Jean's surprise. "Bert's cookin' right now, and it'll be done in about ten minutes by the smell of it."
Jean couldn't smell anything. He eyed the furs by the check out counter, and then the boy's wide, welcoming smile.
"We really shouldn't," he said quickly, shrugging Marco's hand off. "We just wanna get some take out, so we can get to a motel and get a room, and get to bed as soon as possible."
The boy seemed disappointed, but didn't push it any further. "Just a second," he said instead, and rounded the counter quickly, moving for the back door. "You find anythin'?" he called in, and they heard Bert say something before coming out with a huge phone book open in both hands.
"There's a Five Guys?" he paused seemingly to re-read that, and nodded. "Just down the street a little ways. Shouldn't be too hard to find," he told them. "Is there anything else you need?"
Jean looked at Marco, who's smile was still firmly in place. "No, we should be good for now," he said, turning toward the door.
"You're sure?" the blonde asked, as Jean's eyes caught sight of Marco's hand, hanging down by his thigh, curled inward, to point behind him to where there was a bushel of yellow flowers drying by the window.
"Yeah," Marco said.
"Well if you do, my name's Reiner. Any friend of Eren's is a friend of ours."
"We'll be sure to keep that in mind," Jean said, staring at the flowers.
"See you around," Marco said, before leading them to the door. "Don't say anything," he snapped when Jean opened his mouth after the door had closed.
Instead they walked silently back to the car, and got in. Five Guys was not hard to find, but Jean couldn't stop thinking about the flowers.
"Was that what I think it was?" he asked, when they were sitting in a freshly rented motel room, with their burgers.
"Yep," Marco replied, staring at his food.
"I've never seen it in any color other than blue before," Jean said.
"No. Wolfsbane comes in white, pink, blue, and yellow," Marco told him. "And to be honest, I really can't think of a good reason someone would be hanging up up to dry by their window if they weren't trying to keep werewolves away."
"So they know something."
"They know Eren, right? Maybe he's told them."
"They seem more hickish than anyone else we've seen so far," Jean observed.
Marco hummed around a bite of burger thoughtfully. Jean really didn't know where to go from there.
He went to bed thinking about the wolfsbane, and Reiner's half glowing eyes.
There were secrets in the gas station.