crush culture | jean kirstein

chapter two

The sports field bleachers are always empty after class hours. The jocks use the field for after school training almost every day, but other than that, it's pretty empty to you because it's just the football team getting their asses yelled at by their coach.

"Okay, so what's our game plan?" Jean asks you once you have both settled down on the topmost row of the bleachers. Ahead the both of you is the aforementioned football team doing a bunch of burpees and pushups and their hotheaded coach yelling out impatient orders. You shift on your seat and get yourself comfortable before answering Jean's question.

"Well, we write a letter," you say in a 'duh' tone as Jean slightly rolls his eyes with a smirk. "Tell me what you like about her and we'll add them to the letter you wrote, then we'll revise the whole thing afterward."

He looks at you, offended.

"Excuse me, revise? The whole thing afterward?"

You nod.

"Uh, yes? Quoting song lyrics isn't a way to a girl's heart, Jean," you retort, suddenly remembering the pre-written letter he wrote to Mikasa. He quoted Taylor Swift song lyrics.

"I take offense to that. My letter was good."

"Keep telling yourself that, buddy," you say as you pat his back. He glares at you. "Joking, but you're paying me to write. It's only fitting if I make major revisions."

He sticks his tongue to the inside of his cheek and scrunches his nose. "Yesterday, you were just preaching about how you can't write love letters like Shakespeare—which, by the way, I proved wrong—and now you're scrapping everything and going back to scratch? You wrote my two poems nicely and I think you did a great job, but right now I'm against the scrapping part."

You grunt.

"I actually can't write anymore. I lost my writing skills in fifth grade, but I'm doing all this for my father because of rent. So I'll write a new letter full of the cutest things to Mikasa Ackerman just to satisfy your sixty-euro payment— what are you doing?"

As you tell him that, Jean goes through his sports bag and unravels a pretzel packet. He places the packet in front of you, on top of your binder, and goes back to his sports bag to zip it back up.

"Uh, what's this?" you ask him when he doesn't answer your previous question, picking up the packaged pretzel and raising an eyebrow.

"A pretzel to satisfy your cravings and to motivate you to write."

You huff.

"You're giving in to my orders? That quick?"

He shrugs.

"You made a point about me paying you, but I still mean it when I say that my letter was good." He creases his forehead. "Anyway, what d'you got?"

Your stomach and appetite give into his treat.

"Okay, first question." You unwrap the cellophane from the pastry and take a bite. Honey mustard. It's good. "What do you like about Mikasa?"

Jean stares into space and focuses on his thoughts. You take the given opportunity to eat your pretzel as his mind silently runs wild in miles per second.

"She's pretty," he finally says, then goes back to stalling for another few seconds to come up with a second reason. "She has a good energy, too. You know, unique? Oh, I know! Tell her she has a magnetic energy because a lot of people are attracted to her and stuff."

You take another bite of your pretzel, not sparing the boy a look. "Jean, no."

"Why not?"

"I mean, the magnetic energy part was poetic, but we don't need to remind her of Science class and scare her with Shakespearean writing. I think she's had enough of it."

"Then what do we do?"

"We talk to her casually." You eat the remaining pretzel and crumple the cellophane in your hands. You store it in your pocket. "Like a normal love letter? Unless you want to be Shakespeare and useth this typeth of dialogue in thy lett'r. Thanks for the pretzel, by the way. It was valorous."

He laughs.

"Yeah, okay, you're welcome. I can't even understand a thing you just said."

"So, casual?"

He nods after giving it a quick thought.

"Casual."

"Alright, great." A small smile comes to rest on your lips alongside the weird feeling of excitement in your belly. You have no close friends in school and in town, so Jean first posed as a threat to you; but you have a feeling that it's about to change once you develop a new friendship out of this experience. "Tell me more about Mikasa."

"Okay."

Then the boy starts to ramble, but this time about the most useless things he can ever think of for the letter. Maybe he's slightly forgetting that you're writing his crush a letter and not a poem, so you try your best to politely get him to stop.

"Jean?"

He stops talking. "What?"

"I don't think her favorite ice cream flavor is beneficial to the letter," you say. He slouches in his seat. "What I meant to say was, tell me about your feelings. What do you see in her?"

Jean leans back on the bleachers and rests his hands on his thighs, staring out into the open field and finding new interest on the goalpost.

"I already told you. She's pretty and has a good energy."

You slowly nod your head as you let go of your gaze on him, now watching the football team tackling each other to the ground in a practice game. Silence falls between you two, both of you deep in thought, but you're positive that whatever Jean is currently thinking of is way different than what's inside your head.

"Do you love Mikasa?" You ask out of nowhere.

He looks at you with an expression you can't recognize.

"Of course I'm in love. I wouldn't be doing any of this if I wasn't, right?"

Your lips form into a small grimace.

Something in your gut tells you otherwise, but you don't want to push things any further. With popular girls like Mikasa Ackerman, people are bound to fall into crush culture and glorify her because it's become a societal consensus to dance with the waves of romance and be in a relationship. You see it as a type of infatuation, a short-lived admiration for someone, and with the way Jean just justified his feelings—citing his unsure tone at the end of his answers—makes you see his feelings leaning towards the infatuation way.

Nonetheless, you shake your mind off of it and decide to give him another chance. Maybe Jean is just too inarticulate and the type to depend on his actions rather than his words.

"Okay," you simply reply, then grab your binder and get to work.

»»——¤——««

a/n: i published the intro of the pieck fic because i'm bored lol part one will be published later in the day. check it out<2