clementines. 🍂 a jean kirstein collection

unplanned (unruled)

summary ; jean liked to plan things out, and you liked to make rules. maybe you stray jeans plans away and maybe jean doesnt follow your rules. 

warnings ; mentions of death, grief. 

a/n ; something canon compliant for ONCE lmao. i dont really know if i like this one as much as i like some of my other fics, but it was raining and i just. had to write something or else id perish.

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Jean Kirstein liked to plan. Meticulously, people might say, and his friends definitely agreed that he was a bit of a perfectionist when it came to things. He always went into every situation with a clear-cut goal and a way to get there.

However, his plans didn't like him.

It had happened one too many times. He planned to be a trainee, yes, but he never planned to join the survey corps. He planned to be alone, yes, but he never planned on people actually liking him. He planned on a small life in the interiors but with the way things were going, he didn't think that that plan would come to any fruition. He had planned on his life going normally – on him not seeing death at every moment, on him not having to break the news to his dead best friend's mother on the outskirts of the city, on him not having to mourn the deaths and betrayals of his comrades over and over and over again. So naturally, jean hated everything that led him astray of his plans, which meant he hated the rain, fevers, and, most of all, you.

"are you done brooding, or do I have to hit you over the head like last time?" you asked, perching yourself beside him without permission, entering jean's space as you had done time and time again. He was sitting on some rocks near the newly discovered beach as the sun met the ocean gently and slowly, settling down into it's sleep for the night. You could see the moon in the distance, covered by heavy clouds, and you knew it was going to rain just by the smell of the air. You also knew how much jean hated the rain, and how much he hated getting sick after it as well. You also knew about how he disliked you.

You didn't know why – you always made a set of rules in your head for everyone, thick pages bound with strings, left unlabelled but you knew what it mean. You knew the but's and why's and how to's and knew what to avoid, knew how to not overstep on whatever line you had made in your head. With sasha it meant never to take her food, with connie it mean never to touch the back of his neck with him being so ticklish. With armin you knew to not touch his books and notes without permission, with Mikasa you knew what not to pry out of her and with eren you knew to listen and not engage with him while he talked about his mother or got lost in thought. That was always mikasa's field, you had learnt and noted in your book. But you never knew what you did wrong with jean, what rules you had to follow or what line you had to make. He just didn't like you, for some reason you couldn't pinpoint, and you wouldn't let it affect you as much as it did if not for the fact that you kept seeing him.

With each time you were near your friends, you were also near him, and you couldn't let yourself know someone without knowing them, selfishly, so you could write another line in your rulebook, but jean didn't let you. you saw him everywhere and yet didn't know which line to pull, which circle to add and which number he'd be on your page.

You watched as jean rolled his eyes but shifted his arm a bit to make room for you on the other rock. "I wasn't brooding." He muttered, loud enough for you to hear. You scoffed with a smile, "yes you were. You were sitting at the bonfire like a kid that just lost his favourite toy."

"I was not," he said, in no mood to tease you back. His mind whirred as did his heart and he tried not to let his hand mingle with yours as much as he wanted it to. He planned on sitting here until he saw the sun fully submerging into the water, even if the clouds were cloaking its move and the wind was picking up, making his hair ruffle against it.