#Kiah Victoria | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

karikarasuno · 8 months

Text

sonder ch. iv

Pairing: Erwin Smith x Fem!Reader x Levi Ackerman

Rating: Mature

Warnings/Tags: Angst, Alcohol Consumption, Recreational Drug Use, Pregnancy Scare, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

Word Count: 6.4k

song(s) for the chapter: strange by celeste, another life by kiah victoria, small things by jojo, in the kitchen by renee rapp

a/n: going back to writing this post my own irl break-up has been an...experience. hope you enjoy the v real heartbreak lol

chapter iii | chapter iv | chapter v

You called out of work the next morning on account of a migraine. Which was mostly true. The source of the migraine though was sobbing for hours into your pillow until you exhausted yourself and fell asleep. It was noon by the time you officially opened your eyes. Your vision was still uncomfortably blurry and you were still wearing your jeans and t-shirt from the day before. When you found enough energy to drag your ass out of bed, the person you saw in your bathroom mirror was pathetic. Your hair was a mess and your eyes were swollen and bloodshot. Your whole face looked like it retained enough water in your cheekbones to fill a kiddie pool and you were in desperate need of a shower and change of clothes.

There was no effort put into the outfit you changed into post shower. Your sweater was baggy and old, and your shorts were short enough to disappear under the hem of your sweatshirt. What awaited you in the kitchen was something that you had completely forgotten about. The red splatter stains across your wall looked similar to a murder scene. The little dots were high enough to meet the top of the refrigerator and you concluded that the wall was ruined. The only way to fix it would be with a fresh coat of paint.

Maybe a change of decor would begin the process of erasing your weekend with Onyankopon from tainting every corner of your goddamn home. It was the last thing you ever expected. He was never supposed to show up at your doorstep and ask for answers. You were supposed to have a messy run-in back home. Maybe when you went back to your parents’ for the holidays. But definitely not here. Cities away and in a place you were just starting to call your home.

You slipped on sneakers and left with your hair wrapped in a scarf to the hardware store. You needed paint. And you needed it today because you couldn’t keep looking at your wall. You also couldn’t stay curled up in your bed for the whole day in self pity. You needed to be productive. In some way or another.

Your phone was left unchecked for nearly the whole day until you hopped on the train and put on your headphones. You fully intended on ignoring any messages and just playing some music but there were texts from Erwin, Levi, and Pixis. Your curiosity was too intense to ignore them, though.

Erwin: Hey, seems like you’re staying in today. Text me if you need anything

Levi: Dinner?

With three different recipes attached.

Pixis: Feel better soon. See you tmw.

The guilt that rattled around your chest was audible despite the music in your ears and the roar of the train on the tracks. But you’d respond later. You just needed for this pain to pass and everything would be back to normal. It wouldn’t take long, you reasoned, just a few distractions and it would be as if this horrid weekend never happened. You arrived at the hardware store with really no plan, heading straight to the paint aisle and becoming instantly overwhelmed with the mass amount of paint swatches aligning an entire wall.

It would be smart for you to choose something that matched your already existing furniture. Maybe an eggshell or something. But you decided if the color was too close to what you had without an exact match you’d end up having to paint the entire living room. And that would be too much.

So you chose a wine red. A burgundy that would cover the wine splatters with ease and serve as an accent wall. You didn’t give yourself enough time to muddle over your choice because you’d end up convincing yourself not to. You’ve already spent too much time thinking and you were over it. You needed to just do something. For the sake of your sanity.

The elderly woman at the paint counter took her time making the paint. And while you weren’t in any real hurry, you found your foot incessantly tapping the floor while you fidgeted with the hair tie secured around your wrist. Anxiety was a companion of yours for some time now. Before Onyankopon and before this job. So you were well aware that this was just one of your ticks. Which only meant that sooner or later you’d be hit with a wave of paranoid anxiety that you wouldn’t be able to control. But that was a future you problem. For now, you just needed to keep busy.

Which should be easy enough, given the project you recently gave yourself. When the lady was finished with your paint you thanked her over your shoulder as you turned down the opposite aisle to grab supplies. By the time you reached the register with a cart full of things you realized there was no way in hell you’d be able to drag this onto the train and back to your home. So you ordered an Uber. The man who arrived sized you up warily, clearly noting your still puffy eyes and your lack of presentable clothing for your outing. But he popped the trunk and helped load all of your things into it. He even offered to help you unload when you arrived home. You declined. Your mother gave you enough lectures about stranger danger to last you a lifetime and a half.

You carefully placed everything on your doorstep as you unlocked your door and dragged everything inside. The hard part was next. The couch was heavy but you needed to shift it forward and cover it with plastic so as not to accidentally ruin it with paint. Rolling the paint over the wall was therapeutic. Mindless back and forth that you were losing yourself in. Exactly what you needed.

The splatters were gone. One trace of Onyankopon already disappeared beneath one coat of paint. If only everything else revolving around him was that easy to forget. But the lingering feelings of regret and anguish were set aside in favor of pouring more paint into the container. In favor of mistakenly smudging paint on the ceiling and belatedly realizing you forgot to use painter’s tape for clean lines. And then remembering that you did not have a step ladder. There was one you could borrow right next door, but the thought of facing Levi or Erwin in your current state sent a wave of unwarranted shame down your spine.

Not that they would judge you. It was just odd to think about including them in a version of you that they knew nothing about. Someone you knew they wouldn’t recognize because you could hardly recognize her. The version of you that was their friend, but a woman who was so deeply broken and fragile, you were almost embarrassed of her.

So, you decided against the ladder. Resulting in a sloppy paint job and many amateur mistakes, but it was done. You threw off your sweatshirt somewhere along the way. And your living room was currently a disaster, but cleaning up was the easiest part. Your thoughts falling to the wayside, while your hands and feet did everything you needed. You threw away the plastic that enclosed your sofa, the paint slowly drying as you poured whatever paint was left in the small container into the paint can and hammered the lid down.

There was a small towel closet at the end of your hallway that you stored everything in, disposing of the head of the paint roller because you had no intention of soaking it and squeezing off the paint that was drenching it. You also pushed the couch back into place, but careful not to press it against the wall. And despite the mistakes you made, the end result was something you were happy with. One that you could take some pride in because you worked hard for it. Circumstances aside.

Your next challenge was one you hadn’t foreseen. Your bed was a mess when you were ready to finally crawl into it. But as you stared from the foot of your mattress all you could think about was him. And his smell. And how he managed to work your body over and over until you were so satisfied you fell deeply into sleep. Then, the crushing guilt brought you back to how it ended. So many mistakes and now you couldn’t even sleep in your bed without being reminded of him. It was pitiful, really.

You snatched a pillow from your side–the one he hadn’t slept on– and an extra blanket from your closet before dragging yourself to the living room. It still smelled like paint, the chemicals roaming around the open space but you preferred that to the warm scent of vanilla and musk trapped between the threads of your sheets. Maybe the scent of drying paint could burn the memories from your brain with each inhale.

Maybe you could suffocate the thought of Onyankopon from your mind. Drown the feelings in your heart with layers of thick paint. To be left to dry out slowly and be forgotten. Eventually.

There was a certain skill that came along with avoiding those important in your life. A certain je ne sais quoi when it came to carefully crafting excuse after excuse for weeks on end. The nightly dinners you had come to rely on with Erwin and Levi came to an abrupt stop. The lunches with Moblit ended swiftly when you began to take on so many projects at a time that it should be impossible for anyone to complete. But when you arrived at work at 7am and left well past 7pm, the projects didn’t seem like enough.

They were worried about you. That much was clear. And that worry seemed to have trickled down to Marco. Who was standing awkwardly in your doorway with a manuscript you had asked him to read over for you. You almost felt bad for how much work you were throwing at him. Forcing him to read some of the worst writing you’ve ever laid your eyes on, but accepting the novel either way. Purely to keep busy.

But now you truly felt the consequences of that when you glanced at the stack of papers in his tightly clenched hands and only found rows of red ink. That couldn’t be good.

“That bad?’ You leaned back in your chair, papers and sticky notes covered every inch of your desk and if you didn’t have a method for your organized mess you would’ve gone crazy. Not that you already haven’t.

“Worse,” he replied, shoulders still tense and his feet still rooted just outside your door. He was nervous and you knew that was your own fault. You had isolated yourself so dramatically that he probably saw you as a different person completely. You dragged a hand down your cheek and took a steadying breath. Your exhale was loud and it was sad that you couldn’t even remember which project you handed over to him. Amidst the hundreds you were taking on.

“Which one is that?” You opened a folder on your desktop that held all of the manuscripts. It was obnoxiously long so you clicked into the search bar as you waited for him to read out the title to you. You printed it when you found the document because you always concentrated better when you had the hard copy in your hands instead of scrolling through it on your computer. Pen to paper was best, even if you were aware that it was the more wasteful option.

“Wanna go over it with me?’ You offered, hopeful that this tiny olive branch could be the start of mending your distant relationship. He simply nodded, taking that step into your office and sitting across from you.

“Sorry in advance,” he said with a small smile, eyes lighting up with familiar amusement.

“For?”

“What you’re about to experience.” And for what feels like the first time in forever you laughed. The sound bubbled up your chest and burst unexpectedly from your lips. His smile broadened and he situated himself more comfortably in his seat as he started reading it aloud.

And he was right. It was worse than you initially imagined.

The pier was the next stop over and you were tempted to ride it until you got there. Tempted to relive that day, but the wind was howling and the chill that fell down on the city was enough to have you steering clear of the waterfront. It was mid-September when the weather decided to fully commit to autumn. The days were still long, the sun setting after seven on most days, but the cold that it started to bring was a pleasant reminder that summer didn’t last forever. When the heat started to become too much, you could always remember that the shift in temperature was just around the corner. You just had to be patient.

You also needed to sleep. Your body was quickly starting to feel the consequences of lying awake for hours until your alarm blared to signal it was time for you to get up and dressed for work. The dispensary wasn’t too far from work, so once your day ended you hopped on the train and made it your first stop. There was an urgency crawling beneath your skin, a sinking desperation in your gut because all you wanted was rest. The tossing and turning was getting infuriating. Especially since you still didn’t have the strength to sleep in your bed. The couch was comfortable enough, but you were positive that if you slept in the bed that you shared with Onyankopon your sleep would be that much worse.

Which said a lot, since you averaged maybe an hour or two a night.

A few blocks later and you were at the storefront, a man standing outside to check your ID before he opened the door to let you in. It was a little strange at first how casual it all was. Not used to seeing so many people of all ages in a place to buy weed. And you did eye the older couple a little longer than you should have as they asked the employee so many questions it made your head spin. But the young woman took it all in stride. She grinned at the couple with fond enthusiasm as she walked them through the different strains.

You ended up leaving with a pack of pre-rolled joints. Because you surely didn’t have the time nor energy to roll them yourself. It’s been a while since you smoked, probably over a year now since you only really did it with Onyankopon on nights the two of you wanted to enjoy a good meal or watch some stupid movie.

But you remembered the sleepiness after smoking. The way your body would just relax into itself and the black out sleep that always followed. It was dreamless most of the time. Not that you minded. It was actually what you had been craving. Because when you did sleep, it was filled with dreams that wouldn’t really constitute nightmares, but they were awful nonetheless.

Your home was dark once you arrived, night fell around the city earlier than it usually did. Another sign of the turn of the season. You managed to stumble around your home without turning on any of the lights, only flicking on the lamp once you changed into your house clothes and shuffled into the kitchen. The lighter you kept in the junk drawer was thankfully still there, buried beneath a pair of scissors and some command strips.

Usually Onyankopon always lit it first for you, holding the lighter to the end while you propped the joint between your lips to prepare for an inhale. But you were alone this time around, in the dim light of your kitchen, preparing for an inhale with shaky hands. The end burned cherry red and fire orange. The smell hit you first and instinctively you breathed in deeply. Too deeply while the tiny flame still burned the tip. You choked on the bitter smoke, your lungs heaved as the heated air burnt your throat. You were out of practice, that much was clear, but you already felt some of that blessed lightheadedness you were so desperately seeking. You grabbed a tiny ceramic ramekin to stand in as your ashtray, inhaling with unsteady breaths each time the smoke fully expelled from your chest.

Simple minutes passed, but anyone could have convinced you that hours had been drained away. The only thing left, besides your aching heart, was the craving for food. You were starving, only having absentmindedly stuffed a granola bar from the break room a little after lunch time. Marco had offered to bring you something on his way back from the sandwich shop he was heading to, but you declined. Realizing now that you regretted that decision immensely. There was nothing in your fridge besides molding strawberries that you kept forgetting to toss, a bottle of half finished red wine, and some sparsely used condiments. You turned to the pantry next, finding a jar of peanut butter and nutella. And in a very generous turn of events, a loaf of bread that thankfully lacked any traces of mold. It was strange. Going from carefully crafted homemade meals, cooked in the presence of friendship and comforting company, to nearly burning two pieces of bread smushed together by melted gooeyness. But you ate it anyway through a familiar haze that you welcomed but not in the same ways as you used to. Not out of a matter of want, but of a matter of need.

You nestled into the cushions of your couch once you finished eating. After a few nights of sleeping on the sofa and concluding that you weren’t going to your bed any time soon, you decided to drag over a few pillows and a blanket. It made it much more comfortable, even though you knew you should just toughen up and go to your bed. But you were far too stubborn and heartbroken for that.

Luckily, sleep found you quicker than it had in weeks. It was a dark, blank affair. You didn’t remember when you fell asleep or how, and you still woke up before your alarm, but far more rested then you had in far too long. The sun trickled into the living room between your slatted blinds, your curtains swaying gently from the breeze of the air conditioning.

Fatigue still made your limbs heavy, but your mind wasn’t racing and neither was your heart. You had become accustomed to the palpitations always residing in your chest. But those seemed to ease. Yet there was still this unsettling feeling that washed over you. That coated your vision in sepia and dulled all of your senses.

You hardly remembered the ride to work. Or the mug of still hot coffee settled in front of you as you stared at your computer screen. Something was off, but you couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Your stomach kept churning, and bile was sitting just below your rib cage. Waiting, threatening to come right up your esophagus. Your mind had been a mess these last few weeks, but today it felt like your entire body was fighting against you.

You made it to lunch somehow. With a mild headache and what felt like indigestion. And when you ate the protein bar you kept stashed in your work bag, that seemed like the final straw. The bathroom was a short walk from your office, each step forcing what was spinning in your stomach to rise just a bit higher. You rounded the corner of the stall and once your eyes made contact with the toilet everything came up all at once. Your eyes watered and your throat burned. You struggled to keep your knees from buckling beneath you as your breaths came out in pained, heaving wheezes.

When you were finished, you simply stood there with a hand clutching your stomach while the other wiped snot and tears from your face with toilet paper. You were weak and sweaty. Like the beginnings of a cold. But the sickening feeling that rattled you around all day was starting to twist into a very frightening realization.

Your period was late.

You snatched your phone from your back pocket and immediately opened the calendar app. You counted backwards by each week. Landing scarily on the seventh week. The week that Onyankopon arrived unannounced. The last time you had sex. Unprotected.

The nausea worsened as your head reeled and your heart thumped in your chest and throat. Loud enough to drum in your ears and blur your vision. You couldn’t be. That was the last thing you wanted, especially now. When you were the biggest mess you had ever been.

Your world was actively crumbling around you. You couldn’t seem to find your footing or your place or even your head most days.

How would you even bring this up to Onyankopon?

But instead of allowing yourself to recklessly overthink for longer than you should, you went straight back to your office to grab your wallet and headed out to the nearest pharmacy. It was only a few blocks, but each step was more painstakingly stressful than the last. The thumping in your ears refused to stop and the bustling city around you faded so drastically, it was as if you were truly the only person alive.

Once you purchased two tests, you went to the empty office space a few floors below yours. The previous tenants left suddenly. Something about the CFO committing fraud and causing the entire company to go bankrupt. And since then the building owners have had a hard time renting it out again.

Today you were grateful for that. Because if it weren’t for white collar crimes, you’d be hyperventilating in your own work’s bathroom at risk of any of your coworkers walking in. And the mere idea of that sent another wave of tears to your eyes that you refused to let spill over.

You chugged the bottle of water you purchased, pacing the empty bathroom to the beat of your footsteps echoing against tile and your breaths releasing in shallow puffs of air. When you finally did pee, you couldn’t keep your hand from shaking. Luckily, you were able to get enough on the stick for the three lines to show up as it analyzed the sample.

Your hands were sweaty, and you hadn’t realized it until you grabbed your phone again to set a timer and the case came back moist against your palm. Three minutes. In just three minutes you’d find out if your life would be turned upside down and spun around until you could no longer stand or see straight.

And as the seconds ticked by, anxiety etched its way into your chest and you couldn’t breathe. A panic started to build that was far more intense than what you’d been feeling sitting in your gut for weeks. This feeling felt like reality.

Like if you didn’t get your shit together now, surely you’d fall into a state of numbness that you may never recover from. The reality of just coasting through life solely off of apathy became so unrealistic because you needed to love again. Needed to care and indulge. Needed to learn to be a person without all the sticky complications of compromise that came along with a relationship.

Just as your panic began to worsen your phone rang in your hand. For a second you thought it had already been three minutes, but instead it was Erwin. You weren’t going to answer. You shouldn’t have answered, but before you could think twice about it, your thumb slid across the bottom of the screen.

You didn’t respond. Mostly because your breathing was uneven and words were stuck in a track of honey down your throat.

“Hello?” He asked, a slight urgency to his voice. And when he said your name there was a crack in the syllables that made it up. Worry coated everything that followed until you were able to croak out an, “I’m fine.”

“You’re not and you haven’t been,” he sighed, absolute exhaustion sounding through the receiver and you knew the sound all too well. “What’s going on?”

“I think I’m pregnant.” That was the first time you said those words aloud. The first you even allowed yourself to fully say or think the word pregnant without sheer panic wracking through your entire body. But saying them to Erwin felt like the right thing to do. Like you had to in order for the pressure in your chest to ease, even if it was only a little.

“What?” He stammered, clear disbelief in his tone. “How?”

And that made you chuckle, the tears pricking at your eyes finally spilling over your bottom lashes and smearing across your cheeks. “I think you know how, Erwin.”

He chuckled alongside you and the sound warmed your heart because things were slotting into place again. The thoughts that ran through your head recklessly were beginning to slow and it was because confiding in your friend was something you needed to do. Rather than continuously running away.

“Well, I know how. It’s just unexpected, is all.”

“I’m waiting for the test results. I locked myself in one of the empty office bathrooms,” you admitted, fear building again once you realized you still had a minute and a half left.

“I’ll wait with you. If that’s what you need.” A sob caught in your throat at his sincerity. You refused to accept anything from anyone for so long. Isolated yourself so deeply that the wounds never began to heal even when you tried to convince yourself they were scarring over.

“Ok,” you whispered, dropping your head into your hand and heaving out a breath that allowed even more tears to fall freely. There was mutual, tense silence on both ends of the call. You could tell Erwin wanted to say something more. Something reassuring. But words couldn’t offer much comfort when your whole life could change in less than a minute.

The timer went off. Erwin sucked in a breath, but still refrained from saying what was clearly on the tip of his tongue. You refused to look at the test. Because you genuinely didn’t want to know the result. Either answer breaking your heart in some way or another.

What if you wanted this? Needed this? The opportunity to care and love unconditionally for someone else. Even if right now you didn’t have enough of that love for yourself.

“Well?” Erwin asked hesitantly, urgently asking for an answer that you were too afraid to give him.

“I’m scared.” You admitted. Chest hurting and eyes stinging in preparation for a fresh wave of tears.

“I get it, but you have to look at that test. You need to know.” You stared at where the test rested on the counter, the screen no longer adorned with three blinking lines. Instead, there were letters composing two words. And for some reason the ache in your chest blossomed into something more horrifying. More heartbreaking.

You wanted it to say this because it only made sense. It only made sense for you to not be pregnant. But that didn’t stop the sob from crawling up your throat and your knees to give out beneath you.

Erwin was calling your name, but it sounded distant. Albeit, concerned. It was hard for you to register much outside of your rapid breathing and disordered thoughts. You needed a moment, just a second to let it all out before you could admit to it out loud. Admit that some part of you wanted that test to be positive for your own selfish reasons. Even though you knew how ridiculous it all sounded.

“I’m not pregnant,” you said, voice hoarse and thick from the congestion sitting in your sinuses. “Which should be a relief, so I don’t know why I’m feeling this way.”

“You should go home,” he offered, obviously unsure of what to say or if anything would really help in this situation.

“I have a lot of work to do,” you argued, even if saying the words aloud just felt like another excuse to bury yourself in distractions.

“It’s Friday. How much work are you really going to get done in the afternoon that you can’t just do on Monday?” You rolled your eyes at him knowing he had a point, you just didn’t want to admit he was right. “Go home, and I’ll stop by after work.”

The company sounded nice. Especially since you’ve been so lonely these last few weeks. And being alone with just yourself has become rather frustrating and pathetic, but you still responded with, “you don’t have to. I’ll be fine.”

“Sure, you will,” he said, and you could hear the small smile in his voice as it tickled with amusement. “We just miss you, is all.”

The conversation didn’t last much longer than that. You agreed to dinner tonight, although it felt a bit intimidating after you ditched them so many times. But the haze was lifting a bit. The fog of heartbreak was clearing enough for you to be able to envision more than just how to get through the work day. An ease started to settle. It was uncomfortable since it had been so long since you felt even a morsel of ease. And the pregnancy scare did nothing to alleviate that. But you finally remembered that you weren’t alone. That you had somehow, even in this new city, found people who cared.

And you refused to give that up, now that you could grasp it again.

The dinner Erwin promised wasn’t exactly what you had in mind. Somehow, ‘dinner’ was Levi meeting you on the steps to your home (because Erwin didn’t want you to be alone) and then walking 10 blocks to a bar once he got out of work. Dinner was also Levi and Erwin introducing you to Hange for the first time, which then included an awkward run in with an angry Moblit.

“You avoid me for weeks only to turn up at my bar with these two! What’s that about?” He asked, both hands parked on his hips with a towel slung over the clothes he still wore from work. You offered him a shy smile and a shrug, hoping that would suffice.

“Not your bar,” Levi replied, walking around you into the dimly lit space and through a door that was marked ‘employees only.”

“He’s not wrong, Mobs. Technically this is Hange’s bar, maybe if either of you proposed already it could finally be yours,” Erwin teased while shrugging off his jacket and draping it over a worn in barstool. As the two retained their playful back and forth, you took that moment to finally look around. There were booths lining the wall with a large u-shaped one pressed into a corner near the windows. The leather was brown and in need of some TLC, but it somehow made the space cozy and inviting. The lights were low hanging lamps from the ceiling, singular as they dangled over each table and bathed it in golden.

There was also a small stage towards the back wall that held a single mic stand, and a booth that you presumed had to do with the karaoke machine attached to it on the ground. But opposite that was an old pool table. The green fabric needed to be upholstered and the head of one of the sticks was missing the cue tip. But there was so much charm surrounding the atmosphere. There was a sort of reckless care that came with the decor. Effortless yet intentional.

Which after your short conversation with Hange, it seemed like that was their whole vibe. Hair tossed in a claw clip perfectly messy while running around in a comfortable pair of dark wash jeans and an oversized flannel with the buttons undone.

“Can I get you something?” A deep, unfamiliar voice said from behind you. If you weren’t so hyper aware of the space you were in, it would’ve startled you, especially after turning around and being confronted with the tallest, broadest man you had ever seen.

“Uh,” you stuttered, eyes stuck on his chest where the fabric of his black t-shirt seemed to be a touch too tight. And when you finally met his eyes–dirty blonde hair messily resting over his forehead– he was smiling at you. Amused. “I’ll take a long island.”

He whistled, “first drink of the night?” He grabbed a tall glass and started gathering the ingredients to mix it.

“Yeah,” you stuffed your hands in your jacket pockets, cheeks warming at the call out. Instead of settling on the stool, you stood and kept taking in your surroundings. Moblit handed Erwin a beer as he polished some glasses, while Levi came striding out the back room with an excitable Hange following. His scowl was ever present, if not deeper set than usual. That brought a small smile to your face. At least one thing remained consistent after all this time.

The tall bartender slid your long island across the bartop and you stared at it for a second longer than normal because he was prompted to scoot it closer to you with his index finger. “Still want it? Unless you’re no longer drinking to forget something.”

You slipped the cold glass against your palm with a breathy chuckle. “Yes, I still want it and what makes you think I have anything to forget?”

He scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest, “no one starts a night of drinking off with a long island. Trust me, I’ve been doing this long enough.”

“Ah yes, the bartender to therapist pipeline,” you teased, sipping the drink and pleasantly surprised by the lack of alcohol you tasted. You saw his point now, if he was making drinks like this it was easy to have one too many.

“I’m Mike, by the way,” he laughed, wiping down the counter as he watched you drink. You offered your name in return after another suspiciously long sip.

“And if you keep mixing drinks like this make sure you cut me off after two.”

“Sure thing,” he grinned before Moblit called him to the opposite side of the bar to help with something. And you were left alone with the best long island you’ve ever had, watching the chaos of this friend group spiral out in a room full of strangers.

“He really was so handsome,” you giggled drunkenly, hanging off of Erwin’s elbow as he led you in the direction of your neighborhood.

“He is also taken,” Levi said, tugging the edge of your sleeve to steer you around a bent traffic cone Erwin hadn’t noticed since he also had one too many beers tonight. “And how did I get stuck babysitting you two?”

“Boooo,” you complained, ignoring Levi’s question, “all the hot, nice men are taken nowadays. I mean look at you two escorting my drunk ass home and tucking me into bed when any other woman in my situation would be getting dicked down tonight.”

“That’s the last thing you need after your day,” Levi grumbled, cheeks turning distinctively pink and you weren’t too sure if to blame it on the wind or not.

“Try months,” you pouted, the words not as heavy as they would’ve felt if not for the alcohol and the way your night turned your day around. You should’ve confided in them weeks ago. After Onyankopon left, maybe it would’ve made this transition that much easier. Hindsight was a tricky bitch if you were honest. Always giving you clarity when you need it least.

“You wouldn’t wanna be with Mike, anyway,” Erwin slurred, his blush definitely due to the alcohol. “He’s a bit intimidating, if you know what I mean.”

“Erwin, please,” Levi scolded, “don’t be so crass.”

You and Erwin shared a look before you fell into a fit of laughter, your breathless giggles following you all the way up the steps to your front door and stumbling over the threshold. As you stripped out of your clothes and laid on the couch in nothing but your underwear, you smiled to yourself. Your chest was full. The yearning ache that had been nestled there was lessened, your breaths coming easier for the first time in forever. Before falling asleep though, you checked your email after plugging in your charger for the night.

The usual was there, drafts from work and websites advertising their current sales. But there was one with Onyankopon’s record label as the sender. When you clicked on it all that was there was an audio file, the subject reading: thought you should hear this.

This should wait until the morning, when you were hungover but at least sober. The nerves were back. And you tried to take the steady breaths you taught yourself to calm down. But nothing was working, and your thumb just hovered over the big play symbol. Until you clicked it.

It was poppier than his usual songs, but it was a raw cut. Only his voice and a piano. This must be the first demo. Which somehow made the song hurt more because you knew it wasn’t intended for him, yet he was recording his own version. His voice was raspy around the edges and hoarse as it carried along certain notes. You should have stopped listening after the first verse. But it was addicting. Listening to his voice as he sang about how you broke his heart. A fresh cut. A new wound you had to lick.

Nothing about this separation has been predictable or remotely familiar. And you’ve never felt more like a stranger within your own body, but to know after all these years you were slowly becoming strangers to each other. Just ghosts of past versions of yourselves continuing to haunt one another. Until either of you were able to find your way out of this purgatory you managed to create.

To heaven or hell, you still didn’t know where this would land you. And time was humbling, if you’ve learned anything at all.

#eruri x reader #eruri fanfic #snk fanfiction #aot fanfiction

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