Jeankasa Week Day 1: Hair

Title: Lifted
Rating: T
Fandom: Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan
Characters: Jean Kirschtein, Mikasa Ackerman, Marco Bodt, most of the 104th, Jeankasa
Summary: Jean and Mikasa get a little... tangled.
Notes: I you don't want to have a 3DMG IRL, you're a lying liar.

This is it. This is the race. This is a race Jean Kirschtein has to win, in order to assert his aerial superiority!

...and maybe to impress Mikasa too.

It had all started out simply, when Connie, in his great wisdom, decided that since the practice 3DMGs were free and they had a rare free afternoon due to one of the instructors having a mental breakdown they should race through the forest using the 3DMGs. Marco had wheedled permission out of Shadis somehow, but that was Marco. Jean thinks it's the freckles.

In any case, Jean hadn't wanted to join in. He was looking forward to his nap, until Connie got all up in his face and said that Eren was joining in too, secure in the confidence that he could beat Jean. If Eren was joining in, so was Mikasa, and with those two competing the rest of the trainees would most likely join in, so if Jean didn't he would be a loner weirdo and end up dead in a ditch on his own half-eaten by Alsatians.

Ymir had added in that last bit. Connie had choked on his spit and Christa had started apologising profusely, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Jean, while happy to be mean to most, felt that making Christa cry was akin kicking a puppy and stealing its food, so after reassuring the poor girl that he hadn't taken any offense, promised that he would join in.

He knew he was better than most with the and Sasha were good too, but Connie tended to ignore the actual physics of it and overestimate his speed, and Sasha broke hers far too regularly. He had never snapped a single strap, whereas several others had completely broken theirs and had to get total replacements, he had never gotten what the other trainees called 'leather burn' from the straps, and he had never broken any grappling wires, and... Well, Mikasa was entering. Part of him wanted to impress her, but the other part wanted to see if he was better than her. He was almost sure he could beat her.

Almost.

But that was before Shadis, in the spirit of competition, declared that the winner would be off kitchen duty for the next week. A simple race soon became an all-out war.

Uniforms were sabotaged, gear was ripped, people were tripped, and generally everybody made fools of themselves. Many withdrew, frightened, while others solidified their determination to compete. There was a tense confrontation between Ymir and Annie in the mess hall, which unfortunately did not lead to clothes-ripping, despite the many teenage boys yelling "CATFIGHT!"

And, now, it is time.

Marco stands at his elbow, rocking back and forward on the balls of his feet, bangs swaying.

"You're... nervous?" Jean whispers, leaning over to him.

Marco stops rocking. "No!" And then he starts again.

Jean sighs. Marco is nervous, he knows it; he only does that stupid rocking thing when he is anxious, just like the way he rubs the back of his neck when he's talking to an instructor he's scared of, and just like he chews the inside of his lip while thinking.

"Well, man, we're gonna win. Okay? Can't let the girls show us up."

Marco stills. "Yeah!" he whisper-shouts. Then he starts rocking again. "Even though that was sexist and they're way better."

Jean punches him, just in time for Mina to yell "START!" and for all of them to take off with a jerk, yanked forward inexorably like moths to a flame.

People fall in the first few minutes. Thomas wipes out when his grapple hook doesn't embed itself properly, and Samuel collides with another trainee, landing in a tangle on the ground. Jean doesn't care; he is flying, soaring, kept in the air by a few fragile strings.

It's easy, really. He has to use his gas here, make a turn there, twist to shoot his grapple hook there; it is like a wondrous equation, variables of wire and body working in harmony with constants of earth and sky.

In no time he is at the end, and he bursts through feet first, the red ribbon snapping and folding around him as he swings up, letting out a triumphant roar. The instructor balanced on the branch nearby congratulates him loudly, and Jean decides to eschew walking and return aerially.

But when he turns around, he sees Mikasa, barrelling towards him with a vengeance, the finish line her only objective. Jean tries desperately to change his course but he can't, he's too far gone now-

And just as she crosses the finish, they swing into one another and collide in a tangle of wires and arms and screaming.

Sasha zooms past them and almost faceplants into the forest floor, laughing hard enough to burst something.

"Jean?" Mikasa asks, words muffled by his thigh.

"Y-yeah?" he squeaks, neck caught uncomfortably on one of her 3DMG harness' straps.

"I am going to kill you. Painfully."

"Great!" he replies. "Just... can we leave that for another time? I'm kinda stuck."

As she growls at him, their hooks slip and they lurch wildly. Jean starts going 'holy shit!' really loudly, even though the instructors are right there and will probably castrate him for swearing. Mikasa lets out a little high-pitched scream.

"Jean, calm down!" Mikasa's hand is fumbling at his leg, trying to free a lock of her hair.

"Okay. Okay." He breathes in erratically, hyper conscious of every inch of Mikasa that is pressed to him. "We have to get down before we fall and die."

"So if I just move like..." She tries to raise her arm, but only succeeds in pressing her chest more firmly into his abdomen, which is pretty much the opposite of helping. He can almost hear his hormones shrieking in joy.

"Uh..." Jean tries to wiggle away from her a little, but that fails horrifically too, causing his belt to snag her scarf.

"Don't move-"

"Mikasa? You need help?" Armin waves at them vaguely, hanging lopsided from a nearby ash.

"No." The words are snapped through bared teeth, her lips pulled back a little. The vehemence of her statement makes them swing a little in midair.

"Stop moving!" Jean hisses through his teeth.

This is awkward, more awkward than that one time Sasha hid cream buns in her bra, even more awkward than the time Marco screamed 'JEAN!' while sleeping and then fell out of bed, definitely more awkward than the time that Reiner-

No. He is not thinking about that now.

"Can you push away from me a little?" he asks her. Mikasa braces her hands against his thighs and digs her knees into his shoulder to make a little space. It isn't ideal, but he can at least begin to untangle them.

He moves his hands from her back, where they'd settled in the initial collision, and tries to get her scarf out first. It takes a few tries but he gets it off of his belt.

"Can I take this off?" he asks. She nods, and he unwinds it from around her neck, bending down a little and tossing the thing down to Armin. It lands on his face and he lets out a little squawk.

He tries to shift again, but his jacket is caught in her pants. He eventually gets the goddamn thing off, but they wobble wildly in midair and Mikasa crashes into his stomach with an 'oof!' as he tosses that down too. Marco catches it and drops it immediately to smother his laughter with his hands

"Sorry, sorry!" She shakes her head, her nose brushing his leg. "Should I take my jacket off too?" His mind is doing things with that statement that it shouldn't be.

"W-would you mind? It might be easier..."

"Can you take it off?" His heart starts to hammer harder. By now, almost everyone has finished the race and is gathered beneath them, watching the aerial spectacle as if it were a circus act.

"Uh, sure...?" He reaches down carefully and his hands find the hem of the jacket and brush against her ribs. He stretches down further and pulls his legs up, crushing Mikasa closer to him so he can get at her jacket more easily. He grabs her lapels, knuckles against her chest, and carefully slides the jacket off her shoulders and down her bare arms. When her jacket falls, her brother catches it.

"How you two doing up there?" Eren chirps.

"Fan-fucking -tastic," Jean replies as he tries not to jostle Mikasa's head too much, seeing as her hair is still caught. His hands are shaking. Mikasa tries to help him, moving her hands to tug on a belt of hers that is digging into his cheek, but it only makes them tilt at an alarming angle. Her breathing is quick as she grabs onto him, the wires that hold them in suspension twisting.

"Sorry," she pants, hands going to his waist. "I shouldn't have done that."

"It's okay," he reassures her. "We'll get out without breaking our necks...! I hope."

She lets out a breathless laugh. "Killed by our own 3DMG and not by titans... Who would've thought?"

"Hurry up, you two!" Reiner calls. "The teachers are gonna cut you down if you two don't get a move on!"

"Shit...!" He pushes away form Mikasa and she manages to untangle her hair from his belt. It only takes them a few more minutes and a few awkward contortions, her foot hooked around his neck, to free each other. Mikasa is able to re-orient herself, face flushed from hanging upside down. Jean tries desperately to quell the redness in his cheeks as she twists clockwise, using the straps of his harness as handholds.

Now, all that's left is their twisted wires. They hold onto each other to keep from flopping over. "I'll go west, you go east," he tells her, and Mikasa nods. They place the soles of their boots against each others', brace their palms together and propel away from each other. They swing clockwise for a few moments to untangle the wires, but when they are finally completely free Mikasa falls; luckily, Bertholdt is there to catch her and she plummets ungracefully into his arms.

Jean manages to get down on his own, even if he stumbles when he lands. He also headbutts Connie, but the skinhead doesn't mind too much, seeing as he and Sasha are clutching onto each other in an attempt not to topple over from laughing too hard.

Marco rushes over to him and starts patting him down. "Jean! Are you okay?" He throws his jacket at his face.

He pushes his friend away a little. "I," he begins, and stops to see Eren getting given out to by a scarfless and jacketless Mikasa, "am going to find the nearest water source and immerse myself in it." He pauses. "For the next week."

Marco bursts out laughing. "Well, you got to get really close to Mikasa, and you won, so I don't think the whole thing was a waste!" He steps back from his friend. "Race you back?"

"I think I've had enough of races," Jean sighs, but when Marco takes off, Jean darts after him, jacket landing in the dirt.

extra

"It just..." Mikasa's eyes sparkle.

"Pops back up?" She leans further to him, enraptured.

"Yes...!" she breathes, tugging on a strand of sandy hair.

Jean sighs shakily. "Do you have to obsess over my hair?"

"It defies gravity..." Mikasa whispers as she tugs the brush through his hair. It stays flat for about two seconds, and then fluffs itself back up. Mikasa lets out a squeal like a girl with a new puppy, and begins to ruffle his hair again.

Jean endures it for a few seconds, and then makes up his mind, grabbing her wrists and pushing her into the bed.

"Jean? What are you- mmph!"

She still touches his hair, but Jean finds that he doesn't mind.