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“Bored,” Jean complains from where he’s lounging across the backseat.
“Shaddup,” Reiner retorts, rolling his eyes. He grips the steering wheel tightly in his large fists. It’s peculiarly windy, and it doesn’t help that they’re driving on a practically deserted highway in the middle of the desert.
Dirt scrapes under the tires, and tiny pebbles hit the windshield occasionally. Armin flinches when one manages to crack the glass. He’s bored too, although he’ll never admit it since Jean would just throw a book at him and Reiner would simply change the radio station.
But they’re in the desert. There are no radio stations.
The heat is making him sleepy, and Armin wonders not for the first time why he didn’t insist that they drive his car, which is fully equipped with a functional air conditioning unit. Reiner’s old Honda just doesn’t cut it.
Armin fixes his eyes out the window, trying to spot a break in the arid monotony. The dust devils, cacti, and desert plants had been interesting at first, but the novelty wore off long ago.
He sighs and reaches for his phone, thinking that he’ll text Eren or listen to music, until he spots the single bar in the corner. Fuck this desert, he thinks irritably. He plugs in his earphones, sticks them in his ear, and presses play.
“Ah, shit, shit!” he gasps, tossing his phone down as if it bit him.
“What’s wrong?” Reiner asks him, glancing to the side.
“I left the volume too loud last time,” Armin replies, rubbing his ears, trying to soothe the ringing.
Behind him, Jean snickers. “Doesn’t seem like the sort of mistake you would make,” he notes wryly.
“Yeah, well, whatever,” Armin says, rolling his eyes even though he knows Jean can’t see. He picks up his phone and turns the sound down before trying again. He smiles at the soothing quality, then frowns. Maybe it’s a little too soothing; he can only listen to so much Vivaldi before he passes out in an impossibly hot, impossibly silent car in this impossibly monotonous landscape.
Although falling asleep may not be such a terrible thing. . .
“Hey, Reiner, how much longer till we get there, do you think?” Armin asks.
“Are we there yet, Dad?” Jean mutters irritably from behind.
Armin and Reiner ignore him, and the latter replies, “We passed the last town a half hour ago, so we’ll probably be there in two hours.”
“Oh, thank God,” Jean says with relief. “It’s too fucking hot for this.” Armin imagines him slinging his arm across his forehead dramatically, maybe with a theatrical, agonized expression on his face.
And, when he turns to look at the long-faced young man, he finds that his assessment was spot-on. “I’m going to take a nap,” Armin announces, returning his attention to the front.
“Enjoy,” Jean says.
“Lucky you,” Reiner adds.
Armin curls up in the front seat, leaning his forehead against the window, which, though still warm, is considerably cooler than the air inside the car. He wonders if that’s how the sun feels in comparison to blue giants.
Not that he would rest his forehead on the sun.
He dozes off within minutes, lulled into a stupor by a playlist of baroque as well as hip-hop. He imagines Eren’s face, laughing at his music choice as usual.
“You’re not an old soul, Armin,” he would say. “You’re fuckin’ ancient, except when you listen to Drake or Jay-Z. Then I’m really confused about your age.”
Armin smiles, watching green-brown eyes light up, lips turned up in a teasing smirk.
He opens his eyes what feels like moments later. He’s not sure what jolted him out of his half-slumber, at least until he notices that the car is at a standstill, and he’s alone inside.
He sits up and looks out the window to see Reiner and Jean arguing. Reiner’s usual jovial smile is nowhere to be seen, instead replaced by a frustrated grimace. He wrings his hands in front of him, gesturing at the car.
Jean is scowling, which isn’t unusual in and of itself, except Armin can hear his muffled yelling from inside the vehicle, even if he can’t make out the words. He stomps a foot, face read with the heat and anger, as he glares at Reiner.
Armin sighs; he should probably mediate, even if he doesn’t yet know what they’re arguing about. He unbuckles his seatbelt and opens the door, wincing when his numb feet touch compact sand and enjoying that the air outside the car seems so much cooler. He stands up slowly, stretching his legs slightly to shake feeling back into them. He shuts the door behind him, then approaches the other two young men.
“So,” he says carefully, “what’s the problem?”
Reiner and Jean fall silent, both their mouths suddenly sealed tightly. Reiner fixes his eyes on something over Armin’s shoulder, and Jean stares at the ground, his scowl now slightly tinged with shame.
“I don’t know what the problem is,” Reiner says quietly.
“Then why are we stopped?” Armin wonders, raising an eyebrow at him.
Jean replies, obviously annoyed, “His fucking piece of shit broke down, that’s why.”
Reiner spins around, irritated on his precious car’s behalf. “It’s not a piece of shit!” he contradicts, clenching his hands into fists.
“Oh, yeah?” Jean retorts, straightening his posture. He seems completely unfazed by Reiner’s intimidating figure. “Then why the fuck did your ‘not a piece of shit’ car break down?”
“Because—“
“Hey, hey!” Armin interrupts, reaching up to put a hand on Reiner’s shoulder. He pulls the huge blonde away from the shorter, dirty blonde. “Let’s just open the hood and see if there’s a problem, okay?”
Reiner looks at him, then at Jean. He nods, his grimace relaxing into resignation. “Fine,” he concedes, walking over to the car. He opens the driver’s door and sticks his head in. The hood opens with a thump, and he reemerges. He walks around to the front of the car and pulls the hood up all the way, propping it up with its foldable, flimsy-looking stand.
Armin, and Jean just behind, walk over to him. The shortest of them stands beside the tallest, looking into the mess of mechanical parts.
“I have a confession to make,” Armin says as the gravity of their situation finally hits him.
“Oh, yeah?” says Reiner, his eyes flicking between him and the hood’s contents.
“I know nothing about cars,” he admits.
“And yet you know about everything else?” Jean scoffs from behind them. “Figures.” Armin hears a soft, scuffing sound, followed by the noise of rolling; he supposes Jean kicked a rock out of frustration.
“Sorry,” Armin says guiltily.
Reiner puts a gentle hand on his narrow shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Armin,” he says. He looks a little sheepish as he says, “I don’t know anything either. All I can do is pump gas.” He smiles slightly, although there’s not much humor behind it.
They both turn to look at Jean, who’s standing with his shoulders hunched, hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Don’t look at me,” he says with a slight shrug. “If I knew what to do, I would’ve said so.” At least he isn’t scowling anymore, Armin supposes, although he still looks fairly annoyed.
He definitely doesn’t blame him. They have a deadline, and whatever happened with the car sets them back.
Now they just need to figure out the situation, approach it in a logical way in order to solve it, and voila, they would have a solution!
“So what happened?” Armin asks Reiner. “What made you pull over?”
“There was a loud, popping sound, and the car just kind of veered,” Reiner says, waving his hand at what Armin is pretty sure is the engine. “I went with it, and pulled over.”
“I thought it was another rock hitting the windshield,” Jean inputs unhelpfully.
“No new cracks,” Armin notes as he looks around the hood and examines the front window.
“I shut off the engine, and when I turned it back on, the check-engine light lit up,” Reiner adds.
“Shit,” Armin breathes. This is most certainly out of his league.
“We can always call triple-A,” the burly blonde suggests.
“We can fix it,” Jean insists.
“You’re not even helping,” Reiner shoots back over his shoulder, his hand already reaching for the phone in his pocket.
“Do you even have triple-A insurance?” Armin wonders.
“No,” Reiner says, blinking sheepishly.
“Then let’s try to fix this ourselves, or. . .” A sudden wave of inspiration hits him, and he shifts his gaze to Jean. “Hey, Jean, isn’t Marco an engineer?”
Jean eyes him suspiciously. “Yeah, s-oh!” he realizes, grinning. “Hold on, let me call him.” He digs in his pocket, extracts a cellular device, and moves it to his ear within the span of a few seconds.
Reiner and Armin watch him. “Do you think he even has signal?” Reiner asks doubtfully.
Armin shrugs and returns his attention to the car. He tentatively sets his fingertips on the engine, then immediately recoils at the temperature. “Shit,” he mutters, sucking on his burned index finger.
Reiner smiles ruefully. “Even I could’ve told you not to do that,” he points out.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
“Hey, guys, I got Marco on the phone,” Jean interrupts, approaching to stand on Armin’s other side. He touches something on the screen, and then Marco’s static-filled voice broadcasts:
“—and I can’t wait for you to get back and fuck me.”
Reiner and Armin exchange looks, then turn their eyes towards Jean. They both burst into laughter at his horrified expression, enjoying the blush that colors his cheeks.
“Marco,” he practically squeaks, “you know you’re on speaker phone, right?”
“Oh, I am?” Armin can hear the embarrassment in his voice. “Uh, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Armin says once he’s caught his breath.
“We needed something to cheer us up anyway,” Reiner adds gleefully.
“Yeah, okay, just describe the problem,” Jean, flustered, prods.
“Well. . .” Armin quickly relays what Reiner told him, then follows it up with: “So what do you think?”
“Armin, you know I’m a computer engineer, right?” Marco inquires hesitantly.
“So?” Reiner says while Armin groans.
“It means this isn’t exactly his area of expertise,” Armin explains.
“Fuck,” Reiner exhales.
“Shit,” Jean says, his voice breathless with exasperation.
“Do you still have any suggestions anyway?” Armin wonders.
“Um, did you check the oil?” Marco offers.
“No,” Armin admits, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that before. Then he remembers that he has no idea how. He looks at Reiner, who looks equally clueless, then at Jean, who shrugs. “So how does one go about checking the oil?” he finally asks Marco.
“You really don’t know how to do that?” Marco says incredulously.
“Nope,” Armin says.
“Uh, okay, well, there’s the dipstick thing right by the engine,” Marco explains. “It should be labeled.”
Armin finds it quite easily. “Okay?” he says, prompting their over-the-phone assistant.
“Pull it out, wipe it off on something, then dip it back in.”
Armin gently pries the dipstick out. He glances at the dripping end of the flat metal rod and looks from Reiner to Jean. “Do you have a napkin or something?”
They shake their heads simultaneously. Armin sighs and, biting his lip in mild disgust, wipes the hem of his shirt along the stick, staining the fabric with viscous, black oil. He then dips it back in.
“Now what?”
“Pull it back out,” Marco commands, “and look at it. There should be holes along it. If the holes are filled, then you’re good! If not, you need more oil.”
Armin extracts the dipstick back out of the oil compartment. He takes a bracing breath, looking between his two traveling companions, both of him are wearing similar, anticipatory expressions on their faces. Together, they eye the tip of the stick.
All the holes are filled.
“Fuck,” Jean says. “That’s not the problem, Marco.”
“Oh, well, I guess that’s good,” he replies hopefully.
Armin shakes his head. “Do you have any other ideas?” he wonders.
“I, ah, no, I don’t,” Marco admits, his tone regretful. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Reiner says with a sigh.
“Yeah, well, now that that’s not taken care of. . .” Jean takes his phone off speaker, holds it to his ear, and moves it away, undoubtedly to finish whatever suggestive conversation he and his boyfriend had been having before.
“Now what?” Armin says, turning to Reiner.
Reiner frowns. “I can try calling Bertolt, but I don’t think he knows anything about cars either.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Armin concedes with a shrug.
"So what about Eren?” Reiner retorts, raising a thin blonde eyebrow as he pulls his phone from his pocket.
Armin examines him skeptically. “Eren hates cars,” he reminds the big blonde. He isn’t likely to bother his own boyfriend with automobile troubles; he’s not that desperate. Yet.
“Right,” Reiner says as he dials Bertolt. After a few beats, he says, “Hi, Bertolt.” He pauses, undoubtedly listening to some response. “Yeah, I’m fine. The trip is, well, the trip is stalled.” He chuckles. “Nah, it’s car trouble. Do you have any ideas?” He describes the situation. “Windshield wiper fluid?” He looks at Armin. “Where is it stored?” He listens, then points out a tiny plastic tank close to the back of the hood.
Armin touches it, but doesn’t open it. He can see a liquid inside, and immediately knows that isn’t the problem. He communicates as much to Reiner, making eye contact and shaking his head.
Reiner groans and tells Bertolt, “It didn’t work.” Then, to Armin, he adds, “Bertl suggested you check the gas.”
Armin smacks his forehead. “God, why the hell didn’t we think of that before?” he wonders rhetorically. “It seems so fucking obvious.”
Reiner smiles humorlessly. “The gauge read half-full,” he says with a shrug, “so I didn’t consider. Maybe it’s wrong?”
Armin sighs, then walks around the vehicle until he’s at the gas compartment. He unscrews the lid, grabs his phone and opens the flashlight app, then shines it inside. Sure enough, the light reflects off the brown liquid, and he gags at the fumes. He quickly closes the tank and returns to the man built like one.
“That’s not the problem either,” he announces as he begins to feel hopeless.
Reiner relays the news to Bertolt right as Jean returns, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. “So what’s new?” he wonders.
Armin replies, “Reiner called Bertolt, who suggested we check the windshield wiper fluid and gas. No problem with those.”
“Of course there wasn’t a problem with the wiper fluid,” Jean points out with a frown.
“Should that have been obvious?”
“You don’t even need wiper fluid for the car to run,” Jean explains, rolling his eyes exasperatedly. “That stuff is for cleaning the windshield.”
“Oh,” Armin says a little ashamed at his ignorance. It isn’t often that he’s confronted with a problem that he has no fucking idea how to solve.
Reiner hangs up his phone after bidding a quick “’Bye, love you” to Bertolt. “So do I call triple-A yet?”
Armin bites his lip and unlocks his phone. “I’m calling Eren,” he says, resigned. “He’s probably with Mikasa anyway, and she has some familiarity.”
Jean sighs with relief, and Reiner nods in agreement.
Armin quickly finds Eren in his list of contacts, touches his name, and puts the phone to his ear, listening for the dial tone. He wonders if it’ll even connect, considering the scant service in the middle of the desert, but sure enough, Armin hears the whirring that means Eren’s phone is ringing.
He picks up on the third ring. “Hey, Armin,” he says cheerfully. “Are you there yet?”
Armin smiles, already relieved at hearing Eren’s voice. “No,” he replies, trying to keep his inflection light, “but we had a bit of car trouble. . .”
“I see,” Eren says, his tone unreadable.
“Is Mikasa there?” Armin wonders quickly.
“Oh, yeah, she can definitely help you better than me,” Eren says, and Armin can hear the relief in his static-filled voice. “Hey, Mikasa!” Eren shouts in the background. “Talk to Armin!”
He hears the sound of the phone being passed from ear to ear, until a monotone greets, “Hi, Armin.”
“Hey, Mikasa,” Armin says. “Uh, could you help us?”
“If I can,” she replies. He can sense the shrug in her voice.
“Well. . .” He explains the situation, and when he’s finished relaying everything they’ve tried, she says, “Check for a leak under the car.”
“Jean, check for a leak under the car!” Armin shouts out to the shorter of his other two friends.
“Why me?” Jean wonders irritably.
“Because you’re smaller than Reiner, and I’m the liaison,” Armin retorts.
Jean gets on his knees and moves closer to the vehicle. He lies down on the dirt and shifts so that his head is just under the fender. “If this fucking car fucking crushes me. . .” he grumbles.
“You’ll be fine,” Reiner reassures him, although he doesn’t sound too confident.
Jean just sighs and slides his head and torso under the car. Armin sees a sudden, bright light and knows that Jean has turned his phone’s flashlight on. “I don’t see anything!” he calls out, voice slightly muffled.
Armin exhales the breath he’d been holding; he’s not sure if he’s relieved or not by the news. “Okay,” he says to Jean. To Mikasa, he inquires, “Do you have any other ideas?”
“Check the engine coolant,” she replies. “The engine could’ve overheated or something, and since you’re in the desert. . .”
“Yeah, good idea,” Armin says, feeling a slight twinge of irritation that he hadn’t thought of it at first.
He slips the phone, still on the hook in his pocket, and looks into the hood, then it occurs to him he doesn’t know where the engine coolant is even stored. He grabs his phone and says into the receiver, “Say, where is the coolant?”
He can hear gentle teasing when she replies, “By the engine, of course. You know how to check for a shortage, right?”
“Is it like checking the oil?”
“Yep.”
“Then I know how,” Armin says, smiling slightly, pleased that he actually knows something (even if he only learned it today).
He feels nudging at his feet and looks down to see a hand curled around his ankle. “Fucking move, Armin,” Jean’s gruff, annoyed voice says.
“Oh, sorry,” he says, stepping away from a car as Jean emerges from underneath it. He stands up, shaking his head, dust falling out and collecting on his shoulders like dandruff. He’s covered in dirt, and there’s a spot of grease on his cheek.
Armin has the sudden, irrepressible urge to laugh and is unsurprised to hear Reiner’s light guffawing. Jean glares between the two of them, then asks, his tone quite reasonable, “Now what?”
“Engine coolant,” Armin explains, fighting a grin. “It’s by the engine. Dipstick procedure that Marco taught us.”
Jean nods and moves to look for the engine coolant. He smirks as he – presumably – finds it, and pulls out a thin metal stick coated in a yellow liquid. “Gross,” he says as he wipes it on his shirt. He dips it back in, with all the finesse of an experienced mechanic, and withdraws it, a few drops scattering. His smirk disappears. “Fuck,” he says. “We’re not low on this shit either.”
He returns it to his place, wipes his palms on his jeans, then turns to Armin. “Okay?”
Armin relays the news to Mikasa, who sighs. “All right, check the brake fluid,” she says. “The opening for that should be in the very front, under the lip of the hood.”
Reiner looks at him, and they approach the hood together. Armin elbows Jean aside, and he points out the appropriate container to Reiner, who opens it. The tallest of them grimaces and shakes his head. He rubs his face, inadvertently smearing grease across forehead. “That’s not it either,” he says, sighing into his hand.
“Mikasa, that wasn’t the problem,” Armin tells his boyfriend’s sister. He bit his lip, trying very hard not to panic.
“I’m sorry, Armin, but I don’t have any other ideas,” she admits.
“Yeah, uh, okay,” Armin says into the phone. “I guess we’ll admit defeat and call triple-A now. Pay a fuck-ton of money and all.”
“Are you trying to guilt me into something?” Mikasa asks, her typically monotone incredulous.
“No,” Armin says, “I’m just a little. . .”
“Annoyed by the situation?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Can I talk to Eren?”
“Sure,” she says kindly.
A second later, another voice greets him. “Problem solved?” Eren asks.
“I’m afraid not,” Armin tells him morosely.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“We’re going to call triple-A,” Armin explains. “But the thing is, we’re in the middle of nowhere so it might take some time.”
“Oh, that sucks,” Eren says regretfully. “I was really hoping to see you tonight.”
“Me too,” Armin says with a sigh.
“Hey, did you try checking the antifreeze?” Eren suggests, brightening.
“Oh, no!” Armin realizes. He turns to the others. “We should check the antifreeze.”
Reiner moves as if to do so, but Jean says, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Uh. . .”
“Armin, what happened to your brain?” Jean says exasperatedly. “It’s called antifreeze. We definitely don’t need it in this situation; it’s too fucking hot.” He waves his hand around for emphasis, pointing out their barren, sweltering landscape.
“Oh, right,” Armin says, his face flushing with embarrassment. To Reiner, he adds, “Let’s just call triple-A.”
Reiner nods, his phone already in his hand. He ducks into his car, undoubtedly to retrieve the number.
Meanwhile, Jean shuts the car’s hood, still covered in dirt, while Armin continues to idly chat with Eren, about work, about school, about nothing and everything. . .
(During the course of their conversation, Jean sullenly leans against the hood while Reiner reemerges from the interior of his car and tells him that a tow truck will arrive in an hour.)
“I miss you,” Eren confesses.
“I miss you too,” Armin returns, “but I’ll see you soon, right?”
“Sure you will, provided Reiner’s car doesn’t break down again.” Armin hears the mingling amusement and concern in the other’s voice.
“It’ll be fine,” he tells his boyfriend hopefully. He glances at Reiner, the streak of brake fluid on his forehead, and then at Jean, covered in desert dust with a smudge of engine grease on his cheek. Armin looks down at himself, sees the new stains of oil in his shirt, and sighs. It’s been a long day, and he’s exhausted. He yawns.
“You’re cute when you yawn,” Eren says. “I wish I could see it now.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Armin retorts, although he can feel the blush creeping across his cheeks at the compliment. Then, he spots headlights angled towards them in the dusk. “I think I see the tow truck,” he says to Eren.
“So I’ll let you go now?”
“Yeah, ‘bye,” Armin says. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” He hangs up, and Armin slides his own phone into his pocket as the tow truck crosses the highway. The driver turns it around and backs it up so that the hook is close enough to be attached to the front bumper of Reiner’s car.
Armin moves to stand by Reiner and Jean as the truck’s door opens. A small figure emerges, wearing a baseball cap over pale blonde hair. They approach them, moving through the swirling dust, and then they see it’s a short young woman with luminous blue eyes and an angelic smile.
“So, what’s the problem?” she asks cheerfully.
Armin gapes at her, shocked that the driver of the tow truck is this tiny, beautiful creature, and he’s sure that the other two are doing the same. He then elbows Reiner, who flinches and clears his throat.
He explains what happened to her. Armin sees that she’s wearing a nametag that reads “Krista”.
Krista looks between the three of them while Reiner talks about the initial dilemma, their attempts at troubleshooting, their disastrous trial solutions. She takes in their disheveled appearances, before finally returning her full attention to Reiner right as he finishes talking.
“I’ll take a look,” she says with a bright smile, “but I already think I know what it is.” She walks over to the car.
The three young men watch her, Reiner anxiously, Armin curiously, Jean mutinously. She moves around it, her short legs carrying her fairly quickly, bending down occasionally to peer underneath or at the wheels. She pops open the hood, a slight smirk coloring her face, then shuts it with a satisfied grin. She stands beside the front right tire.
“You have a flat,” she deadpans, nudging the afflicted tire with her toe.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jean says, gaping at her.
Reiner puts his face in his hands, while Armin simply stares. “It was that obvious?” he says, his voice higher pitched than usual.
Krista nods, a slight grin on her lips. “Would you boys like me to fix it for you?”
The three of them exchange glances. Finally, Reiner sighs. “Yes, please.”