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It’s a weird feeling, standing where only Mikasa and Levi had been privileged to before. Despite himself, he can only describe it as “heady”. As Eren makes his rounds, Jean takes in a panorama view of the wild fields and rolling hills that surround the Scouting Legion’s headquarters. A flock of pigeons flies by unexpectedly close, nearing crashing into him, and he lets out a breathless laugh. If this is even remotely what it’s like to be an eagle surveying his kingdom, then Jean feels just a bit more free than he did before.
Staying on is no easy task, though. Eren is burning hot, the heat rolling off of him is the same as that from a fire or a kettle of boiling water and each step he takes threatens to throw Jean right off, anchoring wire or not. Well, it’s something he’d better get used to fast. This isn’t even actual combat, just the very first part of training. Eren is walking slowly and there’s nothing attacking them. Jean grimaces just imagining what the impact from another 15-meter titan would feel like. He reaches a hand out to steady himself and grabs Eren’s ear without looking.
He doesn’t know what hit him until he’s already nearly tumbling off Eren’s shoulder head over heels.
“-the fuck! Eren!”
Eren’s growl in answer is annoyed. As Jean manages to right himself by hauling on the wire, he sees Eren’s ear twitch - just like a cat’s. Jean’s jaw drops. He’d almost been knocked senseless by an itchy ear.
Mikasa soars up to join them on Eren’s other shoulder. “Are you alright, Jean?”
Jean shakes off his shock, but not his own growing irritation. “Mikasa, did you know about this?” he shouts to her around Eren’s mass of unruly hair.
Even though he can’t see her, Jean can still picture her shrugging in his mind’s eye. He sighs, then shouts again, “Nevermind.”
Eren takes this opportunity to chuckle, a low rumbling that travels up through Jean’s boots and into his ribcage. Eren’s an ever-grinning bastard in this form. Always a bastard anyway. Before Jean can kick him or stick him in the face with his sword, Eren stops and slowly swivels around to look at him. Suddenly, Jean is staring into shadowed, dusky-green eyes so large he can see himself reflected in them.
“What?” he demands cautiously.
Slowly, Eren leans his face forward and nuzzles Jean in the stomach with his nose - the action done with more gentleness than Jean would ever have thought possible. It’s hot, but not... completely intolerably unpleasant either. He lays a hand on top of Eren’s nose, patting it experimentally. Eren blinks, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement - and since when could Jean read his eyes so well anyway? - then sneezes.
And as he dangles upside down from his safety wire, feet hanging in his face, covered in Titan snot, Jean has never hated Eren more.