reiner and jean dated when they were cadets.
reiner pulling jean back from fights with eren turned into him listening to his rants with amusement afterwards, training together because jean thought reiner was “the second best fighter and teaching only eren is equal to you taking his side, braun.” they became inseparable, nearly as much as reiner and bertholdt and jean and marco. jean appreciated reiner’s steadiness and willingness to put up with him when no one else would, and in turn, he became the only sense of normality reiner had. it wasn’t hard for reiner to fall in love with him, not when jean represented the kindness he had never been shown his whole life, not when it bled through so often into their lives despite the other boy’s best efforts in the way he helped marco with his gear and brought sasha food, not when he patched up reiner after training. the way to jean’s heart was truly through those of his friends’, so reiner saved portions of his own meals for sasha, ruffled connie’s hair and gave him some casual advice on how to get girls, and watched jean smile at him.
bertholdt and annie didn’t approve of it, and they told him as much. he was getting too close to a paradis devil, but reiner didn’t care. he would leave soon, and selfishly, he wanted to have one good thing for himself before he did.
jean acted on his feelings almost instantaneously after his realisation. it helped that they were completely alone then, foraging in the forest and joking around. reiner tucked a flower behind his ear, and ran a hand through his hair, calling it a horse’s mane. jean had to look away to hide his smile, and he knew that he was fucked, because this was reiner braun, his friend and something, the only person who wasn’t marco that believed in him, earnestly, took his side and gave him competition, who could even make him smile with a horse joke. and he wore his heart on his sleeve, he couldn’t help it when he kissed reiner moments later, pulling away only to be dragged back.
they never told anyone but bertholdt and marco. reiner didn’t want jean to be tainted by their association when he eventually betrayed the 104th, and jean didn’t care about having to sneak around as long as he had reiner. but it was so glaringly obvious to everyone else when they became attached at the hip, disappearing together for hours at a time. connie and sasha all but told reiner that if jean got hurt, he was dead, and ymir smirked at jean one too many times to not have known. they only realised how much of an open secret they were when both of them came back with stories of getting shovel talks from eren over each other.
they were a whirlwind romance for two years. lazy afternoons in the forest, trading beds to sleep together, promises of marriage after jean joined the military police and reiner joined the garrison corps, the whole package.
reiner broke up with jean the day before graduation. cruel words and a crueler smile as jean fell apart in front of his eyes.
“i just wanted a good fuck, kirstein. it wasn’t personal. you were just too much of a romantic to fuck someone you didn’t care about, and you wouldn’t have touched me if you didn’t think i did too.”
“you don’t mean it, reiner. i don’t think you’re cruel enough to talk about marrying someone you saw as a casual fuck.”
“well, i don’t know what to tell you. you clearly don’t know me, otherwise you would’ve seen me stringing you along this whole time.”
and jean’s covering his ears, it’s too much. reiner knows about his anxiety, borne out of nothing, but something he had struggled with for years before joining the 104th, something reiner had held him through, steadied with his heartbeat and the weight of his arms. even now, as he shatters jean’s heart, his hands twitch to reach out and comfort him, and he almost does.
jean watches that imperceptible movement and says, “get out.”
reiner leaves him kneeling on the floor, and if he’s silent at dinner and jean doesn’t show up, that’s no one’s business.
marco dies in trost because of reiner, and all he can think about is jean, who lost his home and best friend, and maybe even his family. he watches jean talk about joining the scouts, and he decides, fuck the mission. bertholdt and annie glare at him when he joins the scouts, because they know firsthand that reiner was, is in love with jean, and will be for the rest of his life, despite his bullshit claims of it being fake.
reiner begs annie to let jean live while on the 57th expedition, and annie feels inclined to let him die just to spite him, because why does he get to live when marco, the most angelic of the devils had to die? she lets him nonetheless, after all, despite everything in their lives, reiner was the closest thing she had to a brother, and even if it had been just for a couple of years, jean had made him happy.
jean’s heart almost stops when the female titan has reiner in her fist. he might’ve shattered his heart that night, and marco’s death might’ve ruined the remainder, but reiner was the only reason jean’s heart still beat, even if he didn’t want him.
when jean finds out that reiner might be a titan shifter, they’re too far apart, physically and emotionally. eren and armin spare him the burden of being known as someone close to him, because it’s evident in his eyes, the set of his mouth, and every line in his face, that he didn’t know. he had never known that he had been in love with a monster.
jean can’t reconcile reiner with the armored titan trying to kill them. not when they’re rescuing eren and he doesn’t acknowledge him, even when jean tries to kill him. not when they charge at him with thunder spears in shiganshina, and he tells sasha and connie that they have no choice but to kill reiner, even if his ruined, traitorous heart wants nothing more than for him to live.
reiner can’t bring himself to face jean, not when he clambers his body or turns himself into bait. he loves jean, of that he is sure. he’ll protect him, until his dying breath, and that includes protecting him from himself.
hange has their blade out, ready to kill reiner, and jean knows, he knows that reiner deserves it and worse. but he sounds so earnest asking for ymir’s letter to reach historia, so like the boy who made flower crowns for jean and foraged for him and kissed him during lazy afternoons after practice and loved him, maybe, maybe for real. and so he asks for him to be spared, and fuck, he would put himself between the blade and reiner if he had to, drag him away from this whole mess, far from the ruins of his own destruction.
reiner leaves jean behind for the third time, leaves him feeling stupid and hurting, and reiner hates himself for it, maybe more than a bit.
four years pass, and reiner doesn’t fall in love again. he isn’t sure if he can even feel anymore, haunted by jean and bertholdt the way he is. the devil and the angel, though he hasn’t yet figured out which is which. his heart aches for paradis and mind numbing training and brown hair under his fingers and lithe muscles pinning him down, even momentarily.
four years pass, and jean searches for a reason. a reason, a sign, anything really, to justify what reiner had done. he tries to justify mass murder and monstrosities, and if every guy he shows any interest in looks too much like the shifter of the armored titan and doesn’t warm his bed more than once, it’s no one’s business.
jean and reiner watch each other at the raid on liberio. reiner barely recognizes jean, killing like it was second nature, civilians and soldiers alike. he wants to believe that he’s still the same boy he fell in love with, but his hands are stained by blood because of reiner. he can’t help but hope that jean will still have the compassion he had when they were cadets, or at least enough to not hurt gabi and falco when they get captured.
they’re fighting again, on opposite sides once more, when they see each other next. jean hopes reiner makes it out alive. there’s too much unsaid for him to die.
they meet in the forest, and jean wants to talk to reiner, shake him by the shoulders and tell him that he loves him, even after everything. reiner doesn’t want to live anymore. he doesn’t want jean to give him a reason to want to either, and so he tells him about marco, watches as he loses it, watches him maybe actually hate him for the first time.
jean still forgives reiner, absolves him, even after everything. and reiner wants to die a little less, but the final battle will be his graveyard, he’s sure of it, the same way he’s sure that he loves jean.
reiner will not die, jean decides before the battle. he will not lose his, whatever reiner was to him. everything and nothing, all at once.
jean doesn’t let reiner make the battle his graveyard. for the second time in six years, he gives him a lifeline, a reason to make it out.
reiner’s heart breaks when jean turns into a pure titan, and then he’s angry. angry because he had only ever wanted jean to be untouched by this war, and now he was a victim of forces he could’ve never competed against and won. that rage powers him through the final stages of the battle, and he runs to jean the moment he returns to his human form, because fuck, he doesn’t want to waste another precious moment of life away from him.
after the rumbling, jean and reiner live together. it’s efficient, and jean is scared that reiner will try to kill himself if left alone, and they’re both desperate to make up for lost time. jean had spent four years trying to reconcile with reiner’s inevitable death, but now? he could have forever with him.
they get married two years later. armin and connie are jean’s best men, annie and pieck stand by reiner’s side. levi walks jean down, onyankopon officiates, and gabi and falco are their ring bearers.
reiner kisses jean at the altar, barely a moment after the declaration and spins him around. jean laughs and hits him, and they’re sickeningly happy and lovestruck, and it’s another lazy afternoon in a forest, a moment in a bubble far from a rebuilding world with flushed faces and flower crowns.
god i need a 50 chapter slowburn this is so good
