Chapter Text
Red light.
Blue light.
Red light.
Blue light.
The lights are flashing.
Red and blue, red and blue, red and blue, back and forth and back again so fast they turn purple.
It’s loud. A sound like screaming, getting louder and softer, louder and softer, louder and softer…
Wait.
No.
Not screaming.
Sirens.
Sirens. Lights. Voices. Shouting. Crunching. Glass and metal. Acrid stench. Burned rubber. Asphalt. Rain.
His eyes open, but this can’t be the real world anymore.
It’s on its side, the ground going up. He’s on the asphalt, wet and rippling with raindrops. Shards of broken glass glitter in red and blue, those flashing red and blue lights.
Wait.
The road.
He’s on the road.
Like, his face is on the wet surface of the highway.
The world’s not on its side.
He is.
He blinks, and the scene starts coming back into focus.
He’s on his side, pouring onto the highway from a mangled mess of twisted metal and broken glass. There are shreds of black rubber, pebbles of shattered glass, and droplets of angry, red blood flashing purple and blue with the lights.
He looks over.
He’s in his car.
Or…
What’s left of it.
His prized Maserati MC20 is a broken shell. He sees warped grey chassis and cracked black plastic, and half a windshield with the middle blown out. He sees a black leather performance seat, bent and twisted.
It’s empty.
“Huh…” he mutters, blinking hard, putting his hand on the ground and pushing. The asphalt is cold and wet. Glass bites into his skin. He pushes harder, shredding his fingernails on the surface of the road. He catches on something, down around his hips.
He looks.
Seatbelt.
Fumbling, he reaches for the release. It takes three tries, but finally, pressing down on the red button frees him, and he tumbles out of the car and onto the road. His sweatpants catch on a jagged edge of the Maserati’s white exterior. He pulls them back up again, rolling to his knees, looking around.
“Marco…”
Where is Marco? His seat’s empty. He’s not with the car.
The ruined pile of junk that used to be the car.
He looks over at it, now, trying to make sense of what he sees through the pounding between his ears. There’s blood on the windshield. Long, red ropes of it. Dripping onto the road and mixing with the rain.
The car is…
It barely even looks like a car anymore.
There’s nothing left of the smooth, sleek white exterior that he’d loved so much. One of the tires is missing. The other three are twisted and bent and flattened. The passenger’s side is all but crushed, nothing but scrap. The seat’s sticking out at a funny angle, and…
There’s blood on the windshield.
On the road.
On his clothes.
“Marco?”
He’s louder, now, looking around.
Marco was here. He was right here. He was right…
He was right there in the twisted-up passenger seat.
Windshield. Blood. Passenger seat.
Seatbelt.
“Marco!”
His shout catches the attention of one of the nearby first responders, a firefighter looking over at him from another twisted, misshapen, smoking ruin of a car a few yards away. There are two men lying on the ground by it. They’re bleeding.
“Marco?!”
He looks around, turning so hard and fast he ends up on his ass. He’s dizzy. The world is spinning.
Where the fuck is Marco?
The firefighter approaches him. She takes him in, her eyes sharp and quick.
“Hey, you alright, you hurt anywhere? Why don’t you sit still for a minute, we’ll get you checked out, ok?”
Her voice is kind but firm. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He shakes her off and hauls himself to his feet.
“Where is Marco?” he demands, but he hears it like a whisper. A choked whisper. There’s something hot and wet on his face. It’s not the rain. It’s not blood, either.
“Marco? Was he in the car with you?”
He looks at her. She’s young. Too young. She looks up and away. It’s instinct. He follows her gaze.
About twenty feet away.
On the ground near the sidewall.
On the wall, a smear of blood and… something.
On the ground, a lump of… something.
In the same color of Scout green as the shirt Marco had been wearing.
When he’d picked him up that afternoon.
When he’d kissed him in the driveway.
When he’d taken off his seatbelt and–
He launches to his feet, stumbling back and away from the firefighter. She shouts for him, reaches for him, but even on his worst day, he’s stronger and faster. He ducks her arm, her grasping hands, and he runs unevenly between the two cars, past the two men on the ground, over to the green, Marco-sized lump on the highway.
He collapses there.
Onto his knees.
Marco…
Marco’s handsome face…
Half of it is missing.
The one eye that remains is half-open and blank, its beautiful warm brown like bourbon over ice turned flat and black in the rain. In ruin. His freckles. His sweet freckles. The constellations on his cheeks. They’re gone, too. His lips are drawn and pale. His face is a ghastly, grey mask, and he’s not moving.
Not breathing.
He’s lying in a pool of blood.
His torso’s shredded, flashing blue and red. Bones rip from red flesh and red skin and red everything.
Marco is twisted and broken.
He reaches for him anyway.
“Marco… Hey, Marco…”
Marco is cold. He needs a blanket.
“Marco, baby, come on, get up.”
He puts a hand to Marco’s face, patting gently. He needs to wake up. He needs to get up. They need to get going. They’re going to be late for practice. Levi will have their asses if they’re late again.
“Baby… Come on, we have to–”
Kirschstein…
Marco’s corpse says his name, but it sounds echoey and distant.
Kirschstein!
It’s louder this time.
And it’s distinctively not Marco’s voice.
“Kirschstein!”
Coach Smith’s voice, sharp as glass, cuts through the fog inside his head. Jean blinks, and Marco disappears.
Just like he always does.
Jean fades back into the Fritz Room, seated at the massive conference table with the rest of the starters and coaching staff. The chair to his left is empty.
No flashing lights. No blood. No Marco.
“Sorry, Coach,” he mumbles, reaching up to brush a few strands of his ashen blond hair out of his face. He glances down at his palm. He half expects to find shards of glass there.
But he doesn’t. His palm is whole, and healthy, and covered with calluses.
Most of the team is staring at him. They’re always staring at him, now. He’s been back at practice for a week. They need to get the fuck over it, already.
Coach Smith looks at him, those deadly blue eyes piercing directly into Jean’s soul. He’s starting to lose his patience. Not that Jean blames him. That’s the third time today he’d zoned out in the middle of a meeting.
He’d be sick of him, too.
Jean looks down and away before he can see the expression on Erwin Smith's face transform from stern to sympathetic. A month ago, their team lost a pillar. He's beginning to worry that his star receiver lost much more.
"This is going to be a difficult subject," Coach Smith addresses the room and the sixty-something players and coaches gathered there. Jean focuses on drilling a hole into the Wings of Freedom logo emblazoned on the long, glossy mahogany conference table with nothing but his eyes.
He knows what this is about. He's been dreading it for weeks.
"All of us have been grappling with Marco's loss over the past month." Eyes around the room drift to the empty chair at Jean's left, where a green jersey with the number seven on it is stretched over the back. "He was a teammate. A brother. A fellow Scout. He always will be. While this franchise carries his memory with us in everything we do from here on out, we still have a mission to accomplish.
"The first order of business is this. We'll be retiring the number seven jersey, effective immediately. His home jersey will remain here, on the QB's chair. His away jersey and helmet are being prepared for display and will be the centerpiece of a memorial in the headquarters lobby. The rest of his gear will be offered to his family.
"The second order of business is, unfortunately, the matter of his replacement. With Marco's passing and now Thomas's retirement, the Scouts are without a quarterback. Pyxis and the management team have been in negotiations with another team in the League for a trade. I'm pleased to announce that these negotiations were successful. The Scouts have secured a new starting quarterback, who is enroute to San Jose as we speak."
At this, many in the room straighten their backs and lean forward in their chairs. Since Thomas had announced his early retirement after a disastrous couple of games as the Scouts’ new starting quarterback, the question at the top of everyone's minds was who would carry them now?
It seems they finally have an answer.
"As devastated as we are by Marco's loss, the Scouts' management and coaching staff have high hopes for the future of the program with this individual at the helm. It's a name all of you will be familiar with. He's young, but in his short time in the League he's already demonstrated a natural talent and level of skill that's carried his team to two Super Bowl appearances, including one win."
Jean perks up, now, too. Though, he's less interested than he is apprehensive.
Please. Please don't say the name I think you're about to. Anyone, anyone but him.
"Beginning tomorrow, Eren Jaeger, formerly of the Tennessee Titans, will don the Wings of Freedom as the San Jose Scouts' new starting quarterback."
Fuck.
Excited muttering goes up around the room, players leaning over and whispering to one another. Eren Jaeger, the Eren Jaeger. A Scout.
Jean's heart hardens with ice, and his stomach falls through the floor. The Scouts could have negotiated for any quarterback in the NFL, but of course they chose the one most likely to drive Jean into an early stress-induced retirement himself.
They chose Eren to take Marco's place. As if that little weasel had a snowball's chance in hell of living up to Marco's legacy, championship-winning record or not.
"I expect each of you to do your best to welcome him to the team. No one will ever truly be able to replace Marco, but I'm confident we'll go far with Eren."
Jean's not entirely sure, but he gets the feeling that Coach Smith's gaze lingers a little longer on him than it does anyone else.
"He'll be joining us tomorrow in the Maria Building at 7am for training. I'll see all of you there. Dismissed."
The room dissolves into movement and eager chatter as the players and coaches around the room get up and begin to make their way out of the two sets of doors at the front and back of the conference room. Out of the panoramic window on the other side, the sun is setting over the city of San Jose, spilling gold down into the city streets.
Jean gets up with all the rest, but Coach Smith's quiet voice stops him in his tracks.
"Jean. Would you stay behind a minute, please?"
It's not a question. Not really. So he slides back down into his chair. Connie catches his eye on his way out the door and gives him a pitying look. Jean grimaces. The last thing he wants is anyone's pity.
When the rest of the team and coaching staff has filtered out and the room is quiet, Coach Smith approaches him. He sits in Marco's chair, perched on the edge, eye to eye with Jean.
"Are you sure you're ready to get back into it? We need you, but we need you healthy and focused. I'm sure everyone will understand if you need more time."
Coach Smith's voice is soft and so oversaturated with compassion it makes Jean's stomach ache. He clenches his teeth against a wave of nausea, looking down at the table.
"I'm fine, sir. I was only in the hospital for a couple of days."
"That's not what I'm talking about," Coach Smith says with a heavily implied and you know it at the end. "You experienced something traumatic and lost someone you cared about. I know you and Marco were close."
The way he says it, his voice getting softer and softer toward the end, coupled with the painfully sympathetic look in his eyes that are too damn close, makes Jean truly feel like he might be sick.
He speaks like he knows more than he should. Like the word close carries a kind of weight to it that it doesn't for anyone else on the team.
Did Coach Smith know? If he did... was he the only one?
Coach Smith pins him in place with his dangerously blue eyes, and Jean feels like his skin's been peeled open. His inner world is on display for the judgment of his head coach, one of the men he respects the most. Coach Smith does know.
If he weren't trapped in the awful gravity of Coach Smith's alien gaze, Jean would absolutely be sick. His grip on the arms of his own chair tightens briefly, the knuckles going white. It lasts only a moment, but it’s enough. Erwin Smith’s quick, sharp, calculating eyes dart down at the movement and back up again to Jean’s face. They’re even softer now, and they carry an echo of pity that makes Jean want to dive headfirst out of the panoramic window into the San Jose sunset.
"It's alright," Coach Smith continues, heedless of the bomb he's just dropped in Jean's lap. "You'll get no judgment from me, and no one else knows. The two of you conducted yourselves with nothing but discretion and professionalism, and I admire that."
He'd deny it, but lying to Coach Smith was never something that worked out in anyone's favor, case in point. He should have known. If anyone were to see through his and Marco's careful obfuscation of the truth, it was Coach Smith.
"All I'm trying to say is that if you need more time, I'm happy to give it to you. If you need to talk to someone, the counselor is always available, as am I."
If there were any way for him to escape this conversation, he'd gladly take it. Coach Smith is staring him down with the kindest, gentlest look on his face Jean thinks he's ever worn, but he's holding his and Marco's relationship up in front of him like a mirror to be confronted. Jean's not ready to confront it. He's not sure he ever will be.
Whatever was going to happen to Jean's career, Marco was his future. Now that future is dead and buried.
As he has at least once an hour since it happened, Jean wishes with all his might that the Fates had taken him instead. Or at the very least, that they wouldn't wait much longer.
"I don't need to talk to anyone, sir," Jean tells his coach quietly, letting his eyes fall on the green jersey on the chair behind him. "I need to go back to work. I need... I need to make him proud."
At his quiet declaration, Coach Smith lets a small smile grace his lips. He nods once, reaching over and patting Jean's knee.
"I admire that, too," he says. "Should you ever decide you do need to talk to someone, my door is always open. I hope you know by now you can trust me to keep your confidentiality. Now, go get some rest. You're meeting your new quarterback tomorrow."
"Yes, sir," Jean answers, getting up to leave.
As he puts his hand on the door handle, he hears his coach call out to him one last time.
"Oh, and Jean? Be nice to Jaeger. None of this is his fault."
🏈
In the morning, Jean is one of the first to pull into the parking lot, his Meteor Gray Porsche 918 Spyder gliding to a stop in one of the player spaces nearest the door to the Maria Building. It's a little before 6:30am, the sky just beginning to lighten over San Jose from a deep, rich purple to a hazy lilac.
The car's engine purrs for a moment or two before Jean kills it, stepping out into a crisp, California October morning. Out of the trunk he pulls his green Scouts gym bag with his jersey number six and his last name embroidered on it. Slung low over his narrow hips are a pair of black sweatpants with a matching black zip-up hoodie, each marked with the Scouts' logo, a pair of crossed blue and white wings, the Wings of Freedom.
Like the rest of his teammates, just about all of the gear he wears or uses is Under Armour, and all of it is branded. From late July to mid-February, his ass belongs to the National Football League, and all of its corporate sponsors. As the highest-ranked receiver in the entire League for the last two years, Jean Kirschstein is under more scrutiny than most. Even on drill days, he's gotta look the part.
When he enters the building, it’s quiet. Some of the lights haven’t even been turned on yet. His footsteps echo down the glossy hallways, painted green and blue and white, and bedecked with depictions of the glory of Scouts past.
He walks into the locker room at exactly 6:30, sitting down in front of his locker to change his shoes. Jean doesn’t realize he’s not alone until he sits back up again.
He’s so surprised at the dark figure standing there looking down at him from the side that he jumps, dropping his cleat on the ground, his heart pounding from being both startled and annoyed.
“Jesus, Jaeger. Give a guy a warning, would ya?”
Eren arches a brow at him, his arms crossed over his broad chest.
“I did. Guess you weren’t paying attention, not that I’m surprised.”
Jean scowls. First time seeing one another since being drafted back in 2022, and they’re already off to a fantastic start.
Eren looks just about the same as Jean remembers, but his hair is longer. The dark, brunette locks are pulled back into a low, messy bun at the back of his head, a few strands falling loose around his face and ears. His large, expressive, almost impossibly green eyes are looking down at him with some mixture of disdain and contempt. Heavy brows, button nose, pouty lips, a little shorter than Jean, but just as lean.
No, he certainly hasn’t changed much.
For the sake of the team and Marco’s memory, Jean decides his best bet is to swallow his irritation at his snide jab, the same way he’s ignoring the way the corner of Eren’s mouth seems to want to curl upward in a sneer.
“You’re here early,” he says, his tone intentionally light. As if he couldn’t care less about this development. It’s just another day. Eren’s just another quarterback, and Jean’s dealt with plenty of those before. Jean goes back to changing into his cleats, turning his shoulder to Eren as he does.
“I could say the same to you,” Eren answers, rooted in place. Jean can see he’s already wearing his practice cleats. At least he’d come prepared. “You one of those freaks that likes to get here over an hour early every day to sweat even more than you were already gonna? You seem like the type.”
At that, Jean can’t help but roll his eyes, tying up the laces on his cleats and standing. Now he’s looking down at Eren, shaking sandy hair out of his eyes and gritting his teeth.
“Seem? You’ve known me since high school, idiot. Pretending you haven’t isn’t gonna make you seem any cooler to my teammates.”
Eren takes a step closer. If he didn’t have his arms folded, they’d be chest to chest and nose to nose. He does sneer, then, his green eyes sparkling with irritation. Jean really hates to admit it, even to himself, but the Scout green of the shirt he’s wearing makes the color stand out even more. Or, maybe that’s just the shitty lighting in here.
“They’re our teammates now, Jeanboy.”
Eren’s back hits the lockers with a crash that echoes down the hallway before he can even blink. Jean towers over him, teeth bared in a snarl, golden eyes flashing like fire, and his forearm pressing hard against Eren’s throat.
So much for honoring Marco’s memory.
Eren bucks against him, but Jean only presses down harder, rejoicing at the little flicker of fear he sees in the depths of those pretty green eyes. His face turns red, the veins in his neck swollen.
“Call me that again, and I’ll fucking kill you, understand?”
He doesn’t bother waiting around for Eren to answer. He shoves off of him and pivots on his heel, disappearing out the door and leaving Eren in the locker room, alone.
Out in the hallway, lights have come on, and Jean hears voices coming from the other end. He turns, bursting through the door onto the indoor practice field before anyone can see him. He walks up the turf field, long strides eating up the distance. He’s got ants under his skin, his shoulders high and tight. He shakes his hands, hoping it’ll help loosen him up, but no dice.
He shouldn’t have done that.
He really shouldn’t have done that.
Not only did Coach Smith make absolutely clear what he expected from Jean the day before, but he can only imagine the look Marco would have given him. He’d have pulled Jean away and yelled at him for being a piece of shit to a new member of the team, but worse than that, he’d have this disappointed look in his doe-brown eyes.
But later, when he showed up at Jean’s house anyway, he would have held him, and listened to him, and kissed him sweeter than he’s ever deserved, and taken his clothes off, and slid into his lap, and…
And called him Jeanboy while he unraveled in Jean’s loving arms.
He’d picked the nickname up from Jean’s mother, and despite (or perhaps because of) Jean doing everything within his power to prevent it, it had stuck. To hear a name Jean’s had used on him by two people who loved him more than life itself thrown in his face like trash by some worthless little punk who’s hated him since they were teenagers…
It had hit him like a clap of thunder. The rage. His body had moved before he could stop it. Not that he would have even if he could have.
The fear in Eren’s eyes had felt too good.
And he knows Marco’s disappointed in him for that.
Still, Jaeger’s going to take everything that belonged to Marco and twist it, make it hideous. He doesn’t get to take Marco’s nickname for him, too.
Jean joins the rest of his teammates that are beginning to gather near the fifty yard line, using the extra few seconds to shake off his lingering nerves. There’s nothing he can do to change what’s already happened. All he can do now is move forward. Plastering an easygoing smile on his face, he approaches wide receivers Connie and Sasha, his two closest remaining friends on the team, slinging his arms over their shoulders and leaning his entire body weight on them.
They turn, grinning at him.
“Hey, man!” says Connie, reaching up to ruffle Jean’s hair and grimacing when he feels sweat still gathered there.
“You guys ready to meet this Jaeger guy?” Sasha asks, wiggling her eyebrows at them. “I hear Pyxis had to fight with the Titans for a solid month before they would agree to cut his contract.”
“That’s a load of shit,” Connie snaps at her. “That would mean he started negotiating the second Marco died. I wouldn’t exactly put it past him, but that seems sketchy even for him. I think the Titans just couldn’t afford his veteran contract. He’s one of the highest-paid players in the League, right now.”
Jean thinks it’s entirely too likely Pyxis had started negotiating for Eren the minute he’d received the news of Marco’s passing. Their general manager wasn’t exactly an unkind man, but nothing mattered more to him than the success of the program. Not even his players. He’d trade Jean away in a heartbeat if he thought there was a better receiver out there he could get his hands on.
Jean opens his mouth to respond, but at that moment, the door opens. In steps a sharply-dressed Coach Smith, followed closely by a deeply unimpressed Eren Jaeger.
A hush falls over the waiting Scouts. The coaching staff arrays itself behind Coach Smith. Like a well-trained army, they await the instructions of their commander.
“Good morning, Scouts,” calls Coach Smith, to which the Scouts respond by facing the front, snapping their heels together, and thumping their right fists over their hearts.
“Good morning, sir!” they call back with a single voice, the sound reverberating off the walls.
Coach Smith nods his approval, and he gestures to the sullen-looking figure standing at his right.
“Scouts, as we discussed yesterday, today will be your first practice with your new starting quarterback, Eren Jaeger, who’s joining us all the way from Tennessee. Marco Bodt’s absence is sharply felt by us all, but this program still has a bright future ahead of it. In his memory, we advance.”
The heads of Jean’s teammates bob their approval as they listen, but Jean doesn’t join them. He’s too busy ignoring the cold, green gaze he feels boring into him from the other side of the field.
“Alright, you all know the drill,” Coach Smith calls. “Offense, passing drills. Defense, footwork. Special teams, field goals. Go.”
Like an orderly horde of insects, the Scouts scatter. The offensive players jog down to one end of the field where Coach Ackermann waits for them along with Coach Smith and Jaeger, the defense huddles around Coach Zacharias near the fifty, and special teams makes its way to the other end where Coach Bozad appears to be struggling with the net.
Jean and the rest of the Scouts' offense form a loose half circle around Coach Ackermann. Mikasa bounces up and down on her toes, Connie and Sasha stretch their arms, and Jean picks up each of his feet in turn to stretch out his quads. Jaeger's standing there with his arms crossed, watching Coach Levi with a guarded expression.
"Alright, Jaeger and Kirschstein, you go last," Coach Ackerman instructs, beckoning one of the other offensive coaches over with the ball basket. "The rest of you, pair up like normal. Starting at the endzone. Everybody, line up!"
In pairs, the offensive team clusters in the end zone behind the line. Jaeger drifts a little closer, but he keeps a significant distance between himself and his primary tight end. Like Jean's got some kind of disease he's worried about catching. With an internal sigh, Jean closes some of the distance, watching Connie and Sasha waiting on the line for Ackermann's whistle.
"Ten yards!" calls Coach Ackermann to the first pair. Then the whistle sounds.
Soon enough, it's he and Eren locked and loaded on the goal line, Jean with the ball in his hands and Jaeger on his toes, poised to spring when the whistle sounds. When it does, it pieces the air, and Jaeger springs lightly from the line, Jean stepping back and winding up his throw. Jaeger's quick and almost weightless on his toes, making a sharp pivot at the ten in plenty of time to snatch and cradle Jean's floating pass.
Not bad. For ten yards.
They trade, Jean tossing Jaeger the ball and sinking into his stance, hands loose and ready at his sides.
The whistle blows, and Jean darts forward, eating up the ten yards of distance and pivoting so quick the field around him becomes a green blur. When he does, he has just enough time to catch sight of the ball sailing high over his head, way too high and thrown too goddman early.
With Marco gone, Jean is easily one of the fastest players on the Scouts' entire roster with the exception of Mikasa. The only way for the ball to have outrun him like that is if Jaeger threw it as soon as he stepped off the line.
Shit.
If Jaeger thinks Jean Kirschstein's about to be the only moron to let the ball hit the ground on a ten-yard pass, he's got another thing coming.
Quick as a flash, Jean bunches the powerful muscles in his legs and springs high, high into the air, arching backward, throwing his fingertips toward the ball with a full body extension. They close around it and he locks them in, tucking the ball into his chest in just enough time to execute a shoulder roll when he hits the ground. His knee never touches the turf, and he jogs back to the line to toss Coach Ackermann the ball.
"Nice, Kirschstein," Coach says. "Thirty-five yards!" Whistle.
He rejoins Jaeger at the back of the line, smirking when he turns his scowl in Jean's direction.
"Thanks for making me look good, Jaeger, but I don't really need your help with that."
Jaeger tries to set him on fire with his gaze, and it only makes Jean's smirk wider.
At thirty-five yards, the point of the ball sails directly into Eren's chest, and he snaps it up with no more effort than snapping his fingers. Jean, however, is forced to scoop up the ball nearly from the turf. As he jogs back down the field, he notices a few surprised looks on some of the other players' faces. Ackermann's is carefully neutral.
Eren Jaeger's one of the best quarterbacks in the League. He doesn't botch two practice throws in a row.
Not that Jean's complaining much. The wilder he throws trying to trip Jean up, the more impressive he's going to look when he manages to receive the pass anyway, and the worse he's going to make himself look to his new team.
Jaeger seems to get the memo after the third attempt fails at forty-five yards. Jean's pass lands in his hands right on target, but Jaeger's fires off wildly to the right, forcing Jean to make a desperate dive toward the sideline to pick it out of the air with time enough for a tuck-and-roll.
He's beaming when he takes his place with his partner at the back of the line, and to his surprise, the scowl seems to have slid off Jaeger's face entirely. Instead, he watches Jean return to him with a kind of cautious curiosity. Not that Jean's level of skill should have come as a surprise to him. They played together in high school and then later in college, taking both teams to multiple post-season appearances and even a few championships.
They'd worked well together, once.
He jogs back to Eren's side with a smile on his face, his hands held out at his side in triumph. "I could do this all day, baby," he crows, taking a high-five from one of the other players without ever letting his eyes leave Eren's.
And then he slaps his ass for good measure.
The pattern repeats itself when the Scouts move to rushing drills.
Though it's far from his primary skill, as a tight end, Jean is expected to be ready for just about anything the Scouts offense needs from him, to include rushing. Tall, strong, and wicked fast, he's still a capable ball carrier, even if his rushing yard stats don't reach nearly the same astronomical highs as his receiving.
Of course, one might not know that watching him struggle when Jaeger leaves him wide open to the opposition's defense. His quick feet and lightning reflexes save him more than once from a sack by a charging Scout, but he also gets the wind knocked out of him once when Sasha speeds toward him and doesn't pull her contact when she should, expecting Jaeger to step in on Jean's blind side.
He lies on the turf, wheezing, for a moment or two with Sasha apologizing profusely and Jaeger smirking down at him.
"I could do this all day."
Meanwhile, not a single Scout is able to lay a hand on Jaeger when it's his turn to carry the ball. Jean at his left is an impenetrable wall, and Jaeger makes the down every time he catches the snap.
By the time the Scouts wrap up their drills in the early afternoon, Jean is worn and frustrated, his sandy hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead and neck. Jaeger had toyed with him the entire rest of the morning, leaving him open when he should have been blocking, throwing wild passes to try to force Jean to drop the ball, and choosing to rush when he was meant to be passing. Though his inconsistent passes gave Jean the opportunity to flex a few of his lesser-used skills, even Coach Ackermann seemed a little unsure what to make of Eren Jaeger's first drilling session with them.
"Chin up, Kirschstein," quips Dieter on their way back to the locker room. "Everyone has down days."
Jean only growls in response. He's not taking credit for this down day, brought to you by one Eren Jaeger.
The man himself trails the pack, talking quietly with Mikasa, the Scouts' best running back. Even so, walking at Connie's and Sasha's sides, he can feel those green eyes pinned to the spot between his shoulder blades, the place he's certain Jaeger would gladly plunge a knife, were anyone dumb enough to hand him one.