Chapter Text
1.
Armin belonged to Eren, and everyone knew it. A few trainees had needed to be roughed up during hand-to-hand to get the point across - some guys whose gazes had lingered just a little bit too long, a girl who had confessed to Armin outside the mess hall - but the word had spread and now Eren had Armin all to himself.
Well, sometimes he had to share with Mikasa, but Mikasas was safe. In any case, Eren thought as he pressed his open mouth against Armin’s neck, she wasn’t interested in Armin like this.
“E-eren,” Armin gasped as Eren pressed up closer against his back, “stop. Someone will see!”
It was true. The sun was high and the sky cloudless. They were between lectures, and this corridor between buildings was a well-used shortcut to the mess.
“I want someone to see,” Eren said as he moved his lips until he found a point where Armin’s pulse was strong.
It felt like, if he wanted to, he could sink his teeth into Armin’s neck, tear his throat out. It’d be so much different than using a knife. Sensual. Intimate. Like how he thought sex would be. He scraped his teeth against Armin’s skin and imagined his life’s blood filling his mouth.
Armin turned in his grip, his face twisting into a frown as he met Eren’s eyes with a hard stare. “No one’s going to steal me away, or convince me to leave you, so you don’t need to be like this. Getting through training is hard enough without people thinking they have to avoid me.”
Eren answered with a frown of his own. He wasn’t trying to make Armin’s life more difficult, but if he had maybe he’d gone a little overboard? He had broken the girl’s ribs...
But she’d tried to take Armin away from him.
“I trust you,” Eren said, finding Armin’s hands with his own and tangling their fingers together.
“You should trust them, too.” Armin tilted his chin up and kissed the corner of Eren’s mouth.
Of course he trusted his comrades, but with his life. Not with Armin. Eren kissed him gently, because Armin liked gentle even if it sometimes made Eren’s muscles quiver from his own suppressed desires.
If it was Armin he could push aside the swelling of rage that was always inside of him.
Only for Armin.
2.
Sometimes Eren would wake up in the middle of the night and forget where he was. Instead of the scent of drying herbs and the fragrant reminder of dinner he’d be assaulted by the smell of too many teenage boys in a room too small for the lot of them.
Whenever it happened he was glad he’d quite literally kicked the third guy out of his and Armin’s bunk. Whose bright idea had it been to have the beds in sets of three anyways? As he wiped away stray tears he looked over at Armin, almost entirely obscured in the dark room. He lifted himself off his mattress and moved until he was straddling Armin’s body, caging him within his limbs.
Maybe they were in sets of threes because sets of two ended up like this.
He leaned down, waited until he felt Armin inhale, and pressed their mouths together. He forced Armin’s open with his tongue as the boy woke with a start and Eren drank in his breath and the sour taste of sleep.
Armin hit his shoulder with a fist, making Eren flinch. He was having a harder time gaining muscle than any of the other boys, but that didn’t mean Armin couldn’t hurt when he wanted to. Any annoyance Armin felt about having his sleep interrupted must have gone away quickly, though, because soon Eren felt fingers sliding through his hair, gripping the back of his head and holding still as Armin kissed back.
“Go back to sleep.” Armin’s words were clumsy and slurred. His hands drifted to Eren’s face and felt out the lines of his jaw.
“It’s almost morning.” The quality of the darkness through the window had softened and birdsong was coming in muffled through the wood walls. “We have to be up soon anyways.” He turned head to mouth the delicate skin of Armin’s wrist and Eren felt him shiver between his thighs.
“Just a little longer,” Armin said, his voice drifting off to nothing as he wrapped his arms around Eren’s back and pulled him down to his chest.
Eren shifted until Armin’s heartbeat was loud in his ear. He would’ve liked to continue until Armin’s gasps woke everyone up, another reminder that the boy was his, but this was alright too.
3.
After the plan to take back Wall Maria had proved to be a failure it became very hard to find Armin. Eren would walk around the farmlands, the warehouses, the shacks and lean-tos those who were left were forced to live in, Mikasa his shadow, never seeing a trace of him until Armin was ready to be found. It worried both of them, enough that Mikasa kept hold of his had as they walked and Eren was glad to let her.
The sun had almost set and they still hadn’t found Armin. It got dangerous after dark. The adults let their frustrations out, and it wasn’t good to be alone. It pissed Eren off that after all their suffering all anyone could think to do was make other people suffer more.
“There!”
Mikasa’s soft exclamation drew him from his thoughts, and she let go of his had to set off at a loping run through a fallow field, scarf flapping behind her. Eren followed at her heels and tried to see what she’d spotted. His eyes roamed ahead of them until he saw Armin sitting hunched on a short dividing wall, his right side covered in wet mud.
“Armin!”
When Armin looked up at his call Eren could see one of his eyes was swollen shut. He ran faster, but Mikasa still beat him and pushed herself over to the other side of the wall to look around and make sure no one was lurking around.
Eren sat beside him, close enough that their knees knocked together, but Armin was facing the ground and wouldn’t look at him. Armin’s hands were fisted so tightly his knuckles shone white.
“Don’t look at me,” Armin said, his voice cracking.
Mikasa came and sat by him. “What happened?” she asked as she leaned across Eren to give Armin her threadbare handkerchief, which he used to wipe the mud and blood from his face as he just shook his head silently, and that’s when Eren noticed Armin’s grandpa’s hat was gone.
“Just for a hat? Just for that someone did this to you?” he growled and reached out to touch the dark swelling around Armin’s eye, ignoring the way the boy flinched away from him.
“People are desperate,” Armin said. “I hate this place,” he added with hiss, and the hand that wasn’t still holding Mikasa’s handkerchief twisted in the cloth of his pants.
The feather-soft press of his fingers on Armin’s cheek belied the strength of the rage that rolled in him and blurred his vision. If he ever found who did this-- no. No, he wouldn’t jeopardize his chances of joining the Scouting Legion. But he wanted to. His teeth itched with the want of it.
“You’re staying with us,” he said firmly, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Mikasa nod in agreement.
“It’s not safe alone,” she added.
“I can take care of myself,” Armin replied with his mouth set in a stubborn frown.
Eren watched in fascination as a dot of blood welled up from Armin’s split lip. He leaned forward, drawn to it, touched his tongue to the blood and licked it away. Armin’s gasp of surprise was swallowed by the press of his lips, though Mikasa’s rang loud behind him.
Armin tasted like blood and dirt and the salty mix of tears and snot. Eren moved his lips clumsily, tried to lick him clean. At some point his hands had moved to Armin’s shoulders, so he pulled him closer. He quickly found his arms full as Armin collapsed against him and began to cry brokenly into his neck.
“You’re staying with us,” Eren repeated. “With me.”
His muscles relaxed as he felt Armin nod against him. Mikasa reached over to rest her hand on Armin’s shoulder, and when Eren turned to look at her we wondered why her expression looked so guarded.
4.
Eren hated the changes the last five years had brought.
It wasn’t that he begrudged Armin his promotions; he was happy that his lover’s hard work and talent was being rewarded so generously. What frustrated him, made his guts boil and writhe, was how often Armin was away for meetings, lectures, and planning sessions with the other high ranking officers. Sometimes it sent him screaming at the ceiling of his holding cell.
After everything they had gone through, after all their years together, Eren was going to lose Armin not to death, but to his very own goal.
But not tonight.
Tonight was his, and if any messenger dared to show up he’d kill them. He’d paint his walls with their guts, push their shredded remains through the barred door as a warning to anyone else who thought they could take Armin away from him. He’d show them he wasn’t just a weapon they could point at their enemy. They would all learn that keeping him underground when he wasn’t deployed didn’t mean they were safe.
The last five years had changed him too, after all. His titan form ate away at his mind and he wasn’t sure anymore there had ever really been a time when people had been safe around him. It was a haze, bright like fog at sunrise, and the memories there never solidified beyond half-caught whispers.
He wondered, more and more often, if Armin still loved him or if he only stayed out of a misguided sense of duty to keep their best weapon tame. The thought twisted through his heart as barbed wire.
“Tell me you love me,” Eren said as he scraped his teeth along Armin’s shoulder and pushed into his body. “Tell me you need me, that you’re mine and you’ll always be mine.”
Armin twitched beneath him and his fingers jerked in Eren’s hair. “I love you, Eren. I need you.” His voice, deepened by age, hitched as he tried to breath through Eren’s rough pace.
“You’re mine!” he screamed and pulled Armin closer, hands gripping his hips hard enough to leave bruises.
Armin winced and touched his fingers to Eren’s lips. Gentle.
Eren needed to be gentle. Armin liked gentle.
“I’m sorry,” he said, kissing Armin’s fingers. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I miss you.”
“I’m worried about you,” Armin said. His breath was steadier now that Eren had reigned in his temper.
“I know. You always say that.”
“It’s always true.” Armin pushed, turning them until he was on top of Eren and straddling his thighs with his head tilted back in pleasure. “I’m always worried,” he said, voice throaty as he rolled his hips.
Eren ran his hand over Armin’s firm stomach and slid it around to rest on his ass as it moved against him. “But you still love me?” he asked, hating the waver he could hear in voice.
He felt pathetic. Why couldn’t he have to same faith in Armin he used to? Instead he’d been reduced to this needy begging, having to rely on the scraps of affection Armin could give him in his spare time. He didn’t know what he’d do if Armin stopped coming to see him.
He needed Armin, probably far, far more than Armin needed him anymore. Everyone but Armin and Mikasa had washed their hands of him after what happened two years ago. Eren couldn’t hold it against them, though. He’d really lost it. It’s why he was locked down here between missions. How he’d escaped execution he didn’t know.
He loved Mikasa, he did, but she wouldn’t be able to hold him together by herself. He needed Armin.
Armin rested his warm, rough hand on Eren’s cheek and smiled down at him. “I love you.”
“And you’re mine?” Eren rested his hand over Armin’s, turned his face to kiss his palm.
“I never want to be anyone else’s.”
Eren wanted to believe him. He just didn’t see how it could be true anymore.
That didn’t mean he’d ever let Armin go, though. Not if he could help it. He’d see Armin broken across his floor first.