[AN] I hope you like your fan service in the form of fluff.

Bonus Chapter: Pretty Boys

Jean liked girls with pretty hair. Mikasa had the silkiest, shiniest hair he'd ever seen, and he'd never met a girl quite like her before in both appearance and personality. She was exotic, stoic, independent, graceful, talented -

'Damn.' Groaning, Jean let his head fall forward, banging it off the wooden picnic table with a dull 'thud.' There he went again, letting his thoughts wander. If he kept thinking about Mikasa, the list of all her positive qualities would never end. Beneath that head of ink black hair was a mind he wished he could explore, but she guarded it in a maze of thorns that Jean couldn't navigate through. She's…

Jean slammed his head again.

"Are you feeling alright, Jean?" inquired his closest friend Marco Bott. The two were enjoying the day off from training with coffee and rations of priceless meat. Leaves hung brown and brittle on their gnarled antecedents, and the air was crisp and cool. The thermometers read just above ten degrees Celsius, and the only things keeping them warm was the coffee in their bellies, the sun on their backs, and their woolen sweaters.

"I feel like an idiot," answered Jean, turning his head to look at Marco, who gave him a pat on the back and a knowing smile.

"That's because you are an idiot," he said.

"What the hell, man?" Jean lifted his head and rested his chin on a palm, eyes searching far but unseeing. The sun on the bare skin of Jean's hands and face and neck reminded him of the warmth of Nephele's hair. It had grown long in the past year, and he wondered when she'd cut it. Most girls kept their hair above shoulder length so that it wouldn't get in the way during training or battle, but hers already reached the swell of her breasts. It was thick and wavy too, and longer than it looked.

"It's hard to find love in a world full of so much hate," said Marco the Wise as he sipped from his tin mug. Steam kissed his cheeks and reddened them.

"You always say the lamest shit," Jean chuckled.

"It's true," insisted Marco.

"What part? That lame statement you just made, or mine?"

"Both." The pair laughed, and caught each other's gazes, holding them for a few moments before Jean let go. Marco frowned and took a long draught of his coffee. He took it with two tablespoons of sugar, as milk was also hard to come by.

On the other hand, Jean preferred his with five heaping spoonfuls. He couldn't stand the bitter taste, and didn't understand how people preferred their coffee black. It seemed like the "manly" thing to do, but that was a bunch of bullshit. Jean thought that people worried too much about conventional standards and practices. Maybe he was looking a bit too deeply into his cup of coffee.

"So, you going to tell me what happened? Was it Nephele or Mikasa?"

Sighing, Jean swirled the contents of his mug, his breath as visible as the rising steam. "It was Nephele. Remember that bracelet I got for her two months ago? The one in that jewelry store in Dunstad?"

"Yeah. That thing was pretty, and it cost you a pretty coin. What of it?" Marco asked.

Jean swallowed, suddenly feeling several degrees hotter despite the chill. He anxiously drummed his fingers on the table, wary of the conversation.

"Well, she gave it back to me yesterday after I'd asked her to eat lunch with me." Burying his face in his hands, he shook his head, hiding his expression. "I should've known better! She never wore it, and I always got this weird feeling in my stomach whenever I looked at her wrist to see if it was there, but it never was. But I still… Fuck!" He slammed his head again and stayed like that.

Marco patted his back again reassuringly, but this time his hand stayed there, right above his shoulder blade. He could feel how tense his friend was beneath his palm, and noticed that tension wane as the seconds passed. Marco was much warmer than Nephele's crimson hair, thought Jean.

Peeking up at him from the cracks between Jean's fingers, Jean felt some unfamiliar feeling well up in his chest, filling his lungs. It wasn't overwhelming. It was like air, but sweeter and of more substance. It was warm like Marco, and it spread throughout his entire body.

"Now you know how she feels, and you can start moving on."

Jean righted himself, and Marco's hand marked a trail of warmth to his other shoulder to pull him to his side.

"But I don't know how I feel," Jean caught himself saying, staring at the freckles on Marco's face, just inches away from his own. Who knew one could feel so warm in autumn?

"You do. You just haven't found the right words for it yet."

Jean didn't think there were words to describe what Marco's hand felt like, the effect of his kind, unwavering gaze, or the feeling suffusing his heart. He just knew that he wanted his best friend to be more than that. He wanted to run his fingers through his short, cropped hair and kiss his freckled cheek and hold his clumsy hands.

Instead, he sat on that picnic bench and waited for Marco's hand to fall from his shoulder like the leaves from the trees.

Nephele's words resonated in Jean's head.

"I'm not the one for you, but I think you've already met that person."

He felt even more stupid now for not realizing what was right in front of him more than he had when he was deluding himself of Nephele's feelings. Marco. Kind, freckled, virtuous Marco.

Jean was forthright, but he was also a bit of a coward when it came to certain matters, and battles of the heart were one of them. Marco was his best friend, and he really didn't want to screw things up.

The next week, Jean distanced himself from his friend to see how he'd react, or if Marco needed him as much as he did. During meals, Jean would eat with the lower-ranked trainees rather than Marco and the rest of the group, and he focused more on training than socializing with him.

Well, he tried to focus, but his thoughts were muddled.

Marco didn't seem too upset about Jean's absence, always wishing him to have a good day with smiles and sunlight on his face. Jean didn't know what to think. Was this just Marco being good old, naive Marco, or did he really not care to be in Jean's company to begin with?

The cadets were due for a fifteen minute break, and Jean noticed Nephele sitting on her fallen, rotted log, watching her peers as they walked around on two legs and sliced through the air with longing and envy. No matter how pained and saddened she looked to not be able to join them, she seldom tore her gaze away. She was observing.

Polishing off his steel with a cloth, Jean made his way to her, freshly fallen leaves crunching beneath his boots. The forest seemed more open now, without all the foliage, but somehow much darker. The branches beneath their once verdant adornments were twisted and sinister, reaching towards the cadets as they swung by with wooden fingers.

"How's it going," Jean said. What would have been a question sounded more like a statement from how flat his voice was.

"Alright, I guess. The weather is lovely. Autumn's my favorite season because the colors are so vibrant," she said, now staring up at the reds, yellows, and oranges above.

"I hate it. Too cold, too dead. I prefer summer." He wrapped his arms around himself, staring up with her as he unscrewed his flask of water.

"Summer is fleeting. In autumn, when the leaves start to die, they show their true colors. People are a lot like that."

Jean nodded and didn't say anything.

"What's with you and freckle face?" she asked.

Shrugging nonchalantly, Jean said, "I dunno. Why do you ask?"

She sighed and tilted her head back, her hands placed on the mossy oak on either side of her. "Geesh, you're the most straightforward guy I know, but when it comes to love you dodge your own feelings. Don't you remember what I said to you the other day?"

Of course he remembered. At first her words hurt him, but then he realized that it was just because of the truth in them. He used to be head over heels for Nephele, but now it was different. It was like she and Marco switched roles.

"Yeah, but it's Marco. He's so trusting and ignorant and I don't know how to…" Shaking his head, he pushed back his hair. "I don't know."

"I don't have much experience under my belt when it comes to romance. You're blunt and honest, so just be yourself. That's the trick. You should be a natural when it comes to this kind of stuff."

"So what should I do, then? Say, 'Hey, Marco. We're good mates, right? Well, I want to be more than your mate,'" he scoffed, but Nephele nodded and smiled.

"Yup. Pretty much."

Jean watched as a crimson leaf fell free from its sisters and brothers, and drifted down to the earth to join its fallen ones.

"Who is it?"

"Who's what?" asked Nephele with a bewildered tilt of her red head.

"Who's the one you chose over me?"

Nephele chewed her lip, her wolfish grin replaced with a frown. He could see the name dance on the tip of her tongue, see the confliction in her oceanic eyes. She was going to tell him a secret that she'd been keeping even from herself.

Her gaze went to the cast, lingering there with a sadness that must have broken her heart more severely than Levi had broken her leg.

"It was Levi, wasn't it." Again, a statement rather than a question. He remembered seeing them training together, the way Levi stared at her like she was some wounded animal ripe for the killing, the way she gazed at him with admiration and longing. They'd dance like lovers rather than teacher and trainee, like they weren't holding swords in their hands and pointing them at each other's throats.

"I didn't get to choose," she murmured to the trees.

It occurred to him then, the truth of that day. "He broke your leg, didn't he." Once again, a statement. She didn't say anything, still not betraying Levi but not exactly protecting him either. "I'll break his fucking face," Jean promised, his hands now fists as he stared at her.

Nephele scoffed, something between a sob and a laugh, shaking her head. "You can try."

"We should tell someone! That bastard needs to go to prison or something. That's assault!" he insisted, his face red. She shushed him to keep his voice down. Other cadets looked over at them to see what made Jean raise his voice.

"Please, Jean. I just want to heal." When he looked at her, he noticed the dark circles beneath her eyes that she tried to conceal with her mixture of clay and powder. His hands relaxed.

"Do you love him?" This time it was a question.

"No. But I could have, and that's the shitty part."

For the past two years, Jean and Marco had shared the same bunk. Marco's bed was above Jean's, and when the freckled boy climbed up the ladder to sleep for the night, Jean watched his body move, swallowing his words. His lips tingled like pins and needles.

"Night, Jean!" Marco wished him from up above, the wooden bunk creaking as he made himself comfortable.

"Yeah, night."

Jean couldn't sleep. He laid in bed, staring at the bunk above his, where Marco was snoring lightly. The slumbering choir of cadets sung a chorus of snores, adding their voices to Marco's. It'd been an hour since Jean had settled in for the night, but his thoughts kept him awake. Marco stirred.

"Mmn," he murmured, rolling over on his mattress above Jean, who whispered anxiously, "Are you awake?"

"Jean?"

The moment was nigh. Jean's hands were slick with sweat, and he wiped them on his cotton trousers as they trembled. He'd thought of all sorts of ways to go about this: flowers, some stupid poem about his feelings, and he had the notion to just push him against the nearest flat surface and kiss those kind, thick lips of his, but that seemed a bit too forward. He should probably wait for "the right moment," but Jean didn't think it mattered when, where, or how he confessed his feelings.

Jean decided he'd just settle on the truth. It's what he did best.

Pushing the covers off of himself, Jean swung his legs off the bed, his socks muffling his feet as they touched the floor. He ran his fingers through his hair, tousling it, before starting up the ladder. When his head cleared the top bunk, he looked at Marco to see if he was awake, and felt the blood rush to his cheeks when he saw his friend, rubbing his sleepy eyes with the back of his hand and leaning up on one arm. His hair was mussed from the pillow, his cheeks speckled with the short whiskers.

"What is it?" he mumbled, blinking at Jean as his eyes started to adjust.

"Well, I…" Jean stayed there, halfway up the ladder, as he struggled for words. If things went badly, maybe Marco would just forget about this late-night chat, or think that it was just some dream. "I wanted to talk to you about something, if that's alright."

"Sure thing." Marco, as selfless as ever, pushed sleep aside to talk to his friend. He gave him a sideways smile and sat up, giving Jean space to join him on his bed. He sat cross-legged with the blanket over his lap, and motioned for Jean to sit beside him. Anxiously, Jean did so.

Jean had never declared his love for another before. Was this love? Mikasa and Nephele felt different, and he hadn't directly told them of his sentiments either. He wouldn't know the depth of his emotions until he explored his own heart, so Jean opened his mouth to explain himself.

"I haven't realized until now," he began, before shaking his head and trying to rephrase himself with, "Well, I might have felt this way before but not realized it , I'm not sure, I guess I've always thought of you as a friend, but maybe I don't want to be friends-"

"What are you trying to say?" asked Marco, worried and confused. "You don't want to be friends?"

"No! I mean yes," Jean blurted, words stumbling on his tongue. 'Damn it, I'm such an idiot!'

"Did I do something wrong?" Marco questioned, worried that he'd unintentionally offended him.

Jean held his hands out in front of him, looking around the dark barracks to see if their conversation had awoken anyone. So far so good, it seemed, as not a man stirred.

"You didn't do anything," he assured, trying to relax both Marco and himself. Taking a deep breath like it may be his last, Jean slowly said, "I like you," and then - after a bit of thought - explained with, "More than a friend."

Marco's eyes slowly widened at this revelation, his drowsiness fading from them and catching alight with understanding like the sun rising at dawn. "Oh," he murmured, at a loss for words.

Fearing the worst, Jean's heart dropped in his chest, his red face now pale. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. You can just forget we even had this conversation if you want," he said, eerily calm and apologetic as he moved to head back to his own bed.

Marco's hand around his upper arm stopped him. His hand alone seemed far warmer than Jean's entire body, maybe even his heart, but Marco started to warm even that as well with just his touch.

"Wait."

And so he did, with bated breath, waiting for Marco to tell him that his feelings were reciprocated. He knew before Marco even said anything just by looking at his face, seeing him smiling demurely, brows drawn together, feeling his fingers brush against his skin with familiarity. Girls were pretty and all, but Marco was enigmatically beautiful.

"I like you, too."

Jean was going to fall in love with him one day.