Chapter Text
He should have seen it coming. Solemn and even a little shy, Eren and Mikasa had glanced at him and then at each other, searching for the words. But words had been unnecessary. Watching them there, a united front—the way that their gazes met, a swift and silent conversation—the veil had fallen away, and suddenly Armin had known what they were going to say before they could say it. Frankly, that he'd not realised earlier was embarrassing enough. All those signs that he'd noticed but not dwelled on were cast in a new and blinding light: how Eren and Mikasa had become more tactile, and the naturalness of it; how Mikasa's attention was less frantic and more gentle; and how Eren did not bristle but took that attention in stride, with a smile.
The inevitability of it undercut most of the surprise. Armin had been watching them dance around each other for so long—always close but never in step, the rhythm of their feelings uneven, uneasy—that his immediate reaction was equal parts joy and relief. He had congratulated them, and hugged them, and laughed at their tentative smiles. I knew it, he'd thought, and he'd said that, too. Took you long enough. Even though, somehow, he'd always thought it would take them a little longer.
As momentous as the development felt, in truth it changed hardly anything. Mikasa and Eren behaved much the same as they always had. In the weeks that followed their confession, Armin never saw them kiss, or hug, or even hold hands. The only intimacy he witnessed was so brief that he would have missed it had he not been standing so close. A brief lacing of their fingers beneath the meeting table, and again as they parted in the corridor, palm touched to palm like they were passing a secret in a slip of paper.
Jean’s gaze might have lingered on them a little longer, these days. Connie and Sasha were quicker to gossip or giggle if someone so much as mentioned Eren and Mikasa in the same sentence, regardless of context. But there was no real awkwardness. Or, if there was, Eren and Mikasa certainly weren't to blame.
It wasn't that Armin’s feelings were stung—that he felt anything so petty as left out—but time alone together, it was already so scarce. And Eren and Mikasa, when they were lucky enough not to be sent to separate stations on separate orders, they deserved some space. It wasn't anything so deliberate as avoidance; Armin still sat and ate and spoke with them, happily, but more and more often he found himself behind a desk at Hanji's request, the paperwork seeming never to end. He'd begun to volunteer his time more frequently. Made it part of his morning routine, even, to walk past Hanji's office at a deliberate pace. Waiting for them to recognise his footsteps. Doubling back, sometimes, if they didn't call his name. And if that yet failed, he would give in and knock on the door himself.
Usually Hanji was grateful for the help, in whatever capacity Armin could offer it. But today, for the first time in months, they waved him off before he could so much as open his mouth.
“There's only so many reports you can draft,” Hanji said with weary finality. “You've earned a break. Take it while you have the chance.”
The commander had clearly earned one, too. Their solitary eye looked sad and sore from too little sleep for too long. As Armin returned to his own room, he tried to ignore the unsettled, untethered sensation that came over him. A break. That was a good thing, wasn't it? He'd let his gear maintenance fall by the wayside, after all. Though the mechanics of his kit were fine, the harness was in a desperate state. The straps that threaded through the backplate had worn thin enough to split, even with the padding sewn there for reinforcement. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had it serviced, anyway. Unlike some of the others, Armin had not grown so much over the years as to require frequent sizing adjustments.
A repair and refit would take no more than an hour. Armin had his harness in hand, unsnarling the belts for the third time—they tied themselves into knots the moment you weren't wearing the damn things—when he turned a corner and walked straight into someone. If he'd not been so distracted, Armin would have known who it was by the mere sound of her footsteps.
“There you are,” said Mikasa, as if she had been searching too long and was relieved, at last, to have found him. Her dark eyes flicked from his face to the tangled mess of his harness. “Are you going somewhere?”
Armin swallowed his surprise and smiled, apologetic. “Oh, Mikasa. I just need to get this fixed. It's probably a couple of drills away from falling apart.”
He untwisted one of the problematic straps and bent it easily between thumb and forefinger, the leather too flimsy. A needless demonstration, but Mikasa watched and nodded anyway.
“I see,” she said. After a considering pause, she tilted her head. “Can it wait?”
The question—more a suggestion, by the tone of her voice—was an unexpected one. Usually Mikasa would be the first to notice this kind of defect and demand it be fixed, especially if it put one's safety at risk. Hell, she'd push you towards the tannery herself; Mikasa kept the equipment of the 104th to regulation better than the commander or even the captain did. She had this uncanny knack for spotting a problem before it could become a problem.
“Wait?” Armin echoed, frowning. “What for? Is there something wrong?”
Mikasa hesitated. There was a fractional change in her expression that even Armin would not have caught but for how close they were, the light in her eyes shifting. Just as the moment was drawing on too long, Mikasa said, “There’s nothing wrong, no.” And she looked at him, a deliberate and penetrative stare. “You've just been very busy lately. I feel like we've hardly had the chance to talk to you.”
It shouldn't have made his stomach drop. But she chose her words so carefully, and spoke them so fondly, that Armin had to fight the urge to flinch. Perhaps he’d not been as subtle as he'd thought. Though if anyone were to catch the slightest change in his behaviour, it would be Mikasa. That uncanny knack went beyond mere uniform standards.
“Maybe a little busier than usual, though that's only because the commander is,” Armin admitted, his smile tight. It felt hollow under her scrutiny, a liar's sort of smile. “You say that like we haven't seen each other in days. I mean, we were together at mess yesterday.”
Eren had not been there. He'd returned from Trost in the small hours of the morning, and after trips like that he rarely appeared for breakfast, but Armin and Mikasa had sat side-by-side. Elbows bumping as they ate. The silence, when it fell, had been comfortable. She had left something on her plate, Armin couldn't remember what, but Sasha had asked after it and Mikasa had given it to her. The mess hall had been the riot of noise that it always was, and Armin had had to concentrate to hear Mikasa beneath it all. Her soft and level voice, and her breathing, its familiar cadence matched almost to his own. These moments felt precious—they had always felt precious—but increasingly so now, as if he might lose the right to share in them.
It was ridiculous to think that way. Armin knew that, and he tried not to, but his emotions were never so rational as he wanted them to be. And now, Mikasa's gaze seemed to reach right through him, to uncover those very things he would rather let lie.
“Yes, we sat together,” she said. Despite the concession Mikasa sounded like she did not agree at all. “I'm going to see Eren in a little while. Would you like to come with me?”
The abrupt change of tack took Armin by such surprise that he almost said yes, a thoughtless reflex from so many years of saying yes. He managed to catch himself.
To accept was unfair. To refuse outright, equally so.
“I don't know,” he said, “I was—”
“You should,” Mikasa cut in. Her voice and manner were matter-of-fact. “Eren wants to see you.” Then, she corrected herself. “We want to see you.”
What hope did Armin have of refusing when she put it that way? Listening to her now, his self-imposed isolation felt pathetic, an embarrassing and unnecessary martyrdom. “I really think I should get this fixed,” he said lamely. He made an abortive gesture with the harness, holding it between them as if it could serve as proof of his own words and protection against Mikasa’s.
She barely spared it a glance. The look she gave him was neither accusatory nor pitying; just tender, a tenderness that seemed to show on her now more than ever. And still, it was scalding. Armin had to avert his gaze, ashamed.
“It's a rest day. You're not going to need it.”
“Well, maybe not today, but eventually...”
“Armin. There isn't any manoeuvre training scheduled for the rest of the week,” Mikasa told him, with such certainty that Armin had to wonder whether she'd checked beforehand to refute any possible excuse he might make. “I can’t even remember the last time we had a gear inspection. You can get it done another day, can't you?”
He must have taken too long to reply. Suddenly her hands were closing around his, tightening his grip on the harness, an overlapping nest: the belts, her slender fingers, Armin's own. One of the buckles pinched the meat of his palm.
“I understand that you're busy,” Mikasa said, and now she only sounded sad, “but Eren and I, we want to spend some time with you. Please.”
What little resolve Armin had left dissolved with his guilty swallow. He wished his hands weren't occupied, so he could squeeze Mikasa's back. As it was, the best Armin could do—the most he could offer at this show of vulnerability—was to lean towards her, dipping his head in willing deference.
“Okay. Of course,” he said. And then, because his throat felt raw at the sound of her voice, “I'd love to. I want to see you both, too.”
That seemed to be what she needed to hear. Mikasa's exhalation was a long and relieved one. She let him go, but rather than step away she stepped forward, the smooth skin of her cheek sliding against Armin's temple. It was a half-hug, Mikasa drawing him into the cradle of her body with her usual ease, and like this he caught the scent of her skin. The flat freshness of unscented soap and clean sweat, lifted by the warmth of her blood.
“You should bring a book to read, maybe. Out loud, like you used to.” Mikasa pulled back, and as she did so she cupped his shoulder. The lightness of the touch betrayed her strength, a comfort in how unfailingly familiar it was; in the immediate way it made Armin feel safe. “I'll meet you in Eren's room, alright? Come whenever you want.”
There was a lightness in Mikasa’s step as she turned and left, but even with the memory of her smile fresh in his mind—the way it softened her face so completely—Armin’s heart sank. It had been foolish to think that Eren and Mikasa might not notice his absence, no matter how subtle he’d tried to be. In their shoes, Armin would have been the same. It was at once the best and worst thing about knowing each other better than they knew themselves.
This wasn’t pity. To think so was unkind not only to himself but to Eren and Mikasa, too, who had never treated Armin as something to be pitied. And still, he couldn't shake it. The uncertain, unsettled feeling that had plagued him these past few weeks, the one he'd tried his best to suppress. Armin could put no name to it, or perhaps he did not want to, and so it remained nameless and persistent: as if something had shifted in the ground beneath him, the very foundations he'd once known so well, and now he had no idea how to find fair footing.
It wasn't often that Armin visited Eren's quarters, only because there was rarely the need to. Unlike the underground cell he’d once been forced to sleep in, now Eren's room was spacious and well-lit, with a sink in one corner and a desk in another. The rest of the 104th enjoyed similar luxuries, as so-called veteran soldiers. (That designation still caught Armin off-guard. The first time someone had described them that way, he’d choked on his shock.) It was a substantial privilege, especially for the Survey Corps, one granted shortly after the reclamation of Shiganshina. Their numbers had shrunk to a fraction; their allocated funding had increased tenfold. The novelty of that privacy was a morbid one, but it had yet to wear off.
Eren's door wasn't quite closed, and immediately Armin knew that Mikasa must have done so on purpose. Ajar, it was clear that they expected him; that his presence would be a welcome one, rather than an intrusion. Armin felt sheepish as much as relieved that she had read him so well.
The door nudged open as he rapped his knuckles against it, enough that a shaft of light cleaved the floor past the threshold. Armin smiled to himself. It was a nice day, unseasonably warm. Eren's curtains must have been open, the afternoon sun spilling its liquid yellow across the room. The image that came to him felt like something out of a dream, or maybe a memory, so old that the details of its context were lost to time. Eren's skinny limbs thrown over the sides of his childhood bed, Mikasa sitting primly at the foot of it. Armin himself, leaning against the windowsill, feeling the heat of the sun-beaten glass as he read a book snatched from his grandfather's shelf.
The nostalgia was bolstering. Armin had missed it—missed them—and that realisation was encouraging enough that he felt no nerves at all when Eren’s voice called him into the room.
There was no need for nerves, anyway. The scene he walked in on was nothing he wouldn't have seen months or even years ago; hell, it wasn't far off his own imagining. Eren was on his bed, above the covers, propped up against the headboard. Mikasa sat in a chair at his bedside. As she turned to Armin in the doorway, a smile took over her face.
Armin wondered whether they had been in the middle of a conversation. By the way they were leaning into each other, the bright lax look of their eyes and mouths, it seemed so. Together, in each other’s space, they looked so happy. Sometimes it startled Armin, just how happy they looked. Equally startling was the way his chest would tighten at the sight of it, as if the air in the room had suddenly grown thin.
“Armin!” Eren said, sitting straighter. His eyes lit up with genuine delight. “It must be weeks since I've seen you.”
The heat flushing Armin's face owed more to guilt than embarrassment. “I don't think it was that long ago.”
Eren hummed. “No? It feels like it, though.” He sucked in the pocket of his cheek, considering. It wasn't pointed, not really—Eren wasn't that kind of person, tending towards plain aggression rather than passive-aggression—but still it made Armin’s stomach lurch.
Mikasa came to his rescue. “It's been a while,” she said simply. “But everyone has their hands full right now. You too, Eren. You've not been around so much to see it, but the commander meets with Armin nearly every day.”
Armin blushed again. “Now, that’s definitely an exaggeration.”
“I'm not surprised,” Eren said, grinning. He really did seem... not different, exactly, but there was some new shine on him. A joy untempered by guilt or dread. “God knows what Hanji would do without you. I can't imagine the rest of us taking up the task.”
At the sound of the laugh in Eren's voice, Armin felt the tension drain from his shoulders. Why should it be strange or daunting or difficult, being with Eren and Mikasa? It never had been before. Even when he had hated himself so intensely that he couldn't breathe, when he couldn't understand why Eren and Mikasa had ever thought him worth a second of their time, not once had they given credence to those doubts.
“I don't make that much of a difference,” Armin said, smiling despite himself. He pulled a chair from Eren's desk to the right side of the bed, opposite Mikasa, and sank into it. “Though Hanji might get even less sleep than they already do.”
The conversation flowed as easily as it always had. They talked about Eren's trip to Trost and his duties there—he'd had to move the boulder he had set in the breach all those years ago, so the new railway could pass through Wall Maria—and how the district had changed from their memories of it. Armin told them about an upcoming conference with the Military Council that, if the commander got their way, Armin would speak at; and another that Mikasa and Historia were obliged to attend, together with Hizuru's embassy. The book Armin had brought lay open on his lap, but when Eren and Mikasa were here with him, laughing and talking and existing, it was perfectly irrelevant. He didn't read a word.
Absorbed as he was in their company, Armin hardly noticed it, at first. It was hardly worth noticing. But as the minutes melted into hours, it was impossible not to. Mikasa had edged so close that her legs were crowded up against Eren’s bed frame. When she leaned in to hear Armin better, her hands braced on the bed were barely an inch from Eren's thigh. Eren made no move to touch her, but every time he looked at Mikasa he would brighten as if lit from within, and even when he wasn’t he would incline his head in her direction.
It was an unremarkable intimacy. It was likely unconscious habit, here in the private peace of Eren’s quarters. It shouldn’t have bothered him, and rather Armin knew he should have been pleased that they felt no inhibitions in his presence. He was pleased—really, he was, or the greater part of him was—but still Armin’s throat stuck as he watched them.
This was how lovers were, wasn't it? The way they touched and talked, so easily, so thoughtlessly, drawn so close that they were not just Eren, nor Mikasa, but Eren and Mikasa as one. And as suddenly as the thought had come into his mind, this whole thing felt absurd. His being there, and Eren and Mikasa inviting him in the first place, and the idea that they might read together like they were nine years old again.
He closed the book in his lap, quietly enough that Eren and Mikasa did not notice. Then, with careful nonchalance, Armin tucked it in against his chest and stood from his seat. “I should probably get going,” he said, and he made a show of twisting his wrist, checking his watch. A couple of hours had passed; it had felt like no time at all.
There was an awkward pause. Eren's brow furrowed. “Why? We've all got the day off, for once. Sit back down,” he said. His tone was good-natured but firm.
Armin swallowed. Shame burned a hot trail down his throat. He looked away from Eren only to catch sight of Mikasa's face, the concern she wore so openly.
“It's fine,” Armin said. He nearly tripped on the words. “It's nothing, it's... that meeting with the Military Council. I want to make sure I'm prepared.”
Eren waved him down. “Armin, you're plenty prepared. Besides Zackley, those old bastards probably don't even…” He cut himself off, glancing at Mikasa before starting again. “Come on, you know this stuff better than anyone. You just gave us a perfect rundown of Paradis' options for foreign diplomacy, and that was off the top of your head!”
“It’s hardly the same, and you know that,” Armin said, cringing at how defensive he sounded. Really, he sounded like an asshole. He shook his head and grabbed the back of his chair, hauling it over to the desk. “I’m sorry, I just don't want to make any mistakes, okay? We can’t afford any. And once I get back from the capital in a few weeks, I'll have more free time. We can hang out then.”
It was easier to speak now that he didn't have to face them, and easier still to make some empty promise with the door in his eye-line. He could worry about the fallout of his ungracious exit later. All Armin had to do was wave as he left, and he wouldn’t even have to look at them—
“Armin. Don't go.”
Mikasa's voice would have had the power to stop him even if she'd not grabbed his arm. Her touch left him brittle, yielding; already he was eager to surrender. But before he could turn around, Armin felt the warmth of her mouth by the nape of his neck. Not the sensation of skin on skin, but her breathing an echo of it. The closeness was inexplicable. Armin froze where he stood.
From somewhere that seemed so far away, Eren said, “We want you here.”
A single footstep. He could feel Mikasa against him, her chest pressed to his shoulder blades, and her heartbeat was strong and calm. Armin looked back at Eren, standing now next to the bed. The affection in his face, he knew; Eren had often looked at him that way, and at Mikasa, of course. Sometimes, in his softer moments, even at Jean and Connie and Sasha. But this time, there was heat in that familiar stare. In Armin's chest and his throat, he felt it again: that strange wistful tightening, a feeling he dared not understand because he knew precisely what it was.
Mikasa, behind him still, reached for his hand and laced their fingers together. Her grip was strong as her steady pulse. The cushion of her palm, rough with callouses.
“Do you get it?” Eren asked, and as he spoke he moved towards the door. It was still ajar from when Armin had entered earlier. Eren closed it gently and leant back against the frame, watching them, silent and intent.
Armin’s throat was so dry that it hurt to swallow. He did not try, afraid that the noise of it might wake him from this impossible dream. Mikasa was so close, and as Armin turned he felt the soft skin of her cheek against his own. She held Armin's gaze with such intensity that he couldn't look away. From somewhere behind them, he heard Eren give a breath of laughter that sounded more relieved than it did amused.
“Is this... you want me to stay?” Armin said, more doubtful—more honest—than he'd meant. He wasn’t even sure what it was he was asking.
Mikasa smiled. Quietly, she said, “Is that so hard to believe?”
It was. It wasn't. Armin didn't want to believe, because sometimes in the space of a heartbeat he would allow himself to imagine it—two pairs of powerful, clever hands, Mikasa's bare thighs, the dark fall of Eren's hair—and his selfishness would leave him sick with shame. Eren and Mikasa had always been there, at every step. They’d saved him again and again, not just from the fight but from himself, too. How could Armin ask for anything more? How could they offer it so freely?
The noise of the bolt sliding shut put his hairs on end. Eren, standing at the door still, had his hand on the latch. He looked back at Armin and Mikasa, and seeing no challenge from them he pushed off from the wall. The room felt much smaller now, and in three short strides Eren was there, crowding him against Mikasa. A kind of capture, if capture could be comforting. Armin thought of bookends on a shelf and wanted to laugh, but the knot in his throat kept him silent.
“We love you,” Eren said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “That's pretty easy to believe, isn't it?”
“I know,” Armin said, emphatic even as his face flooded with fresh heat at Eren's candour. Because he did know; their love had never been in question. “But it's different from... from what you two feel for each other.”
“No, it isn't,” Eren told him. “To us, anyway.”
Mikasa's mouth moved against the shell of his ear. “Sometimes you can't know what's missing until it's not there.” She squeezed Armin's hand, hard. “It wasn't the same. Not without you.”
Eren’s throat worked as if he was struggling to swallow some louder emotion. “You can leave, if you want,” he said, softer this time. “But we're not saying this out of pity, or to make you feel better, or whatever you might be thinking. It's just the truth. So you can be honest, too.”
Armin meant to speak. He had to. But the truth Eren asked of him, with such keen and shining eyes, the look on his face bright enough to burn… Armin did not know how to speak its shape.
“Let us do this for you,” Mikasa whispered, her fine dark hair tickling his cheek as she bent towards him—in that moment, her air what he breathed. The feel of her skin was so much like Armin's own that it made the borders of his being thin. Made them meaningless. “We want to. That's okay, isn't it?”
In the end, that was all that it took. Armin's mind and mouth failed him at the words, at the sledgehammer thud of his heart upon hearing them. He wanted to let them. In truth, in secret, Armin had never wanted anything more.