Chapter Text
“It’s too bright,” Eren thinks as he looks up at the singular lamp post looming above him in the otherwise pitch black night. Bright is okay, usually, but not when your eyes are blown wide wide and every florescent watt is frying its way into your cornea. Hurts kind of good, zipping straight back into his brain. When it's all over and done maybe this is how it'll feel, like looking into a streetlamp.
“You ever think about the apocalypse? Or like, the coming of Christ?” The words leave his mouth slower than old honey, like the kind his grandma used to keep in his cellar shelves. Pure golden stuff with dust on the outside.
A guy looks up from between his legs, eyes also big and black, mouth open. Like a fish, Eren thinks stifling a laugh. He puts his tongue back in his mouth and huffs a heavy sigh. Hot breath hits Eren’s bare left thigh.
“Not really”
“Cool yeah me either,”
There's a pause. He's waiting to gain momentum.
“I bet it's bright you know? I bet it's bright and big and I bet none of us actually make it. And I can't believe you didn't make some dumb reference to actually cumming I gave you such a good set up.”
“I was kind of busy.”
The guy leans down on his forearms awkwardly and goes back to work. His eyes are closed but Eren rolls his anyways.
The streetlight illuminates a small hoard of flies, gnats and the like. All swarming swarming tiny bodies being bathed in artificial heat. They must stay there for hours.
“I wanna feel as good as a gnat,” He cards his fingernails through the guy’s hair, feeling the sweat and grease under the pads of his fingers, pushing him farther down, “Make me feel good.”
Later, not much later, holding 2 crumpled bills and 2 quarters in his right hand Eren crosses the street. Don't bother looking both ways, he thinks, even though his heart beats faster as he skips across the yellow lines. The bus stop is empty, who knows when the next one comes. Doesn't matter, he's got time. Lots and lots of time.
It’s Friday night, maybe Saturday morning. Odd hours and lots of good low vibrations to keep him steady. Things are just getting started. Not that he has any particular plans. He pockets the change, hands too sweaty to hold them. Side effects.
The guy was put off when he’d asked, of course. Instantly moody and rolling his jaw.
“But I know you have some.”
Not like that was a conclusion Eren had to work hard to reach. The guy stayed where he was for a moment, holding eye contact. So what if Eren was kinda bluffing. He’d already came twice and things were definitely going in his direction tonight.
The guy had reached into a duffle bag tucked under the seat and pressed a small baggie in Eren’s hand, sending jolts of electricity through his already buzzing body. Yeah, definitely completely going my way, I could ask for anything and he’d give it to me. And then, damn I really am wired.
“Nice thanks love you owe you one.” He was flying out the car, trying hard to bite back a face splitting grin.
He probably thinks you're using him, half of Eren thinks, as he crunches down on the bitter white pill like it’s a skittle. But we are using him, the other half counters. It’s quiet after that because you really can't argue with that kind of logic.
He'd been stocking up, squirrel like. Pills and powders and good old fashioned green for days when he wasn't feeling fancy. The less he paid for the better and he was good at asking nicely.
It's not like he knew why he had the sudden compulsion to save and obsessively count and collect the things he usually injested without a second thought. It had started without him realizing. Then one day after work he was lining up all the different baggies and capsules and saw that most of his questionably colored carpet was covered. He tip toed through them, studied the way they spread out around his mattress. So much substance.
That night Eren slept with them surrounding him, and in the morning he had woken up feeling even more off than usual. He stared at them and they stared back. He exhaled heavy and asked the universe, “Why?”
And the universe shrugged and said, “You tell me.”
So that led to now, somehow. He's got loads with him, tucked inside an off green backpack. Doesn't feel right to leave them at home. It's loads dangerous and stupid, Eren knows. And yet…
There's other stuff in the backpack too. Other kinds of just in case kind of stuff. Toothbrush, phone charger, socks, tangerines, hair ties, a dictionary. Essentials.
Eren likes to pretend he's not paranoid.
Or that all of this is normal and he's not been amping up for something big recently. God knows what. And then there’s the deal with the money. Something he doesn’t even want to creep close to thinking about.
There’s a small wave of nausea as he dry swallowed the disintegrating pill, licking the rest of it out of the in between of his teeth, but he rides it out.
Snowflakes flutter in front of his face close enough to touch and he waits to feel cold sprinkles reach his cheekbones. So pretty, he hums.
But it’s spring, late spring at that. The air still has a small sharp bite but nothing hard enough to draw blood, or, snow.
Right, he blinks. No snow here. Just specks of light reflecting against his eyes, still blown wide. “Just me and these damn insects.”
Greedy fingers twitched inside his jacket pockets, he was practically vibrating but his brain said more, his brain said you could be better. A quick glance down the desolate street. No bus in sight. And all other excuses fly out the always partially open window.
Except there is one, and it’s looking at him and maybe it’s been looking at him for a little while now, not that Eren would fucking know.
“Um, are you like, alright?” The boy standing two feet from him asks.
“Uhh,” the words get stuck in Eren’s throat like he needs to down some drain-o. Okay breathe, he doesn’t know how fucked you are, he’s just asking because...because why…?
It occurs to Eren that he’s been smiling, ear to pink tinged ear the entire time and the boy is still looking at him except now he’s stepped a little closer and into the dull diluted light the streetlamp is giving off.
He sees a sharp jaw, messy two toned kind of hair, a row of piercings glint under the low street lamp light. The strung out magpie part of Eren wants so badly to touch the silver hoops and crosses. His fingers twitch in his jacket pockets, like they’d wander over near the boy’s face if Eren wasn’t careful.
He’s too close, Eren wants trace his jawline, solidify his existence, feel the way his skin would vibrate against his own. Eren’s thinking 8 thoughts a second, hardly holding on to a single one, very aware small distance between them. I wonder, he thinks, if the world stopped a while back. Or maybe I stopped and the world is spinning too fast.
I can’t keep up either way.
The boy has been talking, and Eren can feel the words filling the space around him, pressing against his sides.
“-it’s just you’ve been blanked out since I came to this stop and I watched a bus pull up in and wait for you to get on and you didn’t even move you’re just kinda standing there. And smiling I guess which is kinda starting to freak me out I mean-”
“The bus was here?”
His voice comes out a little quiet and soft, like it hadn’t been used properly in a while. Which is odd because he got plenty of use out of it in the back of What’s His Name’s car maybe 30 minutes ago. Or was it an hour? Time came and went as it pleased these days.
The boy across from him shut up and nodded, somewhat gravely. Eren took a deep breath in through his nose and nodded as well. He shut his eyes, continuing to nod, feeling the world move around him. Things were still going, slowly. Then something clicked.
“Why didn’t you get on?” His voice sounded less hoarse this time. The two toned haired boy shifted awkwardly,
“I’m not taking the bus, I’m walking to my car. Just thought it was strange that you didn’t even move when the doors opened. And when I got closer you were saying something about insects.”
“Yeah, they’re all over.”
“They what?”
“They’re um,” Eren looked up into the very insect-less sky, “gone I guess.”
They had the right idea, better follow. He gives the boy a half grin and a what-can-you-do shrug before turning on his heel and beginning to walk in the other direction. He gets exactly 4 paces before the boy calls out to him.
“Where are you going?”
A quick spike of annoyance strikes through Eren. Yeah the boy is hot, so hot his whole body feels drawn in but he’s off or too soft or something equally as deadly. Even Eren can see that.
Fight or flight, rings his brain. You know what one is easier. He balls his fists up, ready to target all this strange energy at something. Except, his fingers are still shaking, weak bones he knows. So maybe not. He considers his options.
Home? Empty rooms, boxes shoved in the corner, tv on the floor (probably not even connected), maybe 2 boxes of cereal and a couple half finished bottles of alcohol in the cabinets. Lots of orange pill bottles shoved in the back of the fridge or rattling under his bed. Small comforts in creepy places. Cold. Vacant. Home.
No, probably not.
Eren shimmies his shoulders, a-little-too-long bangs falling in front of his eyes, “Good question.”
“I could,” And the boy was coming closer to him again, Eren feels his pulse jump. “I could drive you somewhere.” The boy has the audacity to look down at his shoes shyly, “If you wanted…”
What do you want, where are you going. Why do you fucking care, Eren wants to scream. But he doesn’t and he wants to blame something, the drugs or the way this boy stands, weight distributed evenly but chest caved in.
There’s something to it. This odd interaction in the early hours on the edge of town. Like we’re alone in the world, he thinks. But it’s all happening really fast. He doesn’t feel like letting it go just yet. Eren guesses that none of the regular rules apply.
“Where,” He’s looking at this boy’s neck, at the thin lines of blue veins peeking from beneath the folded collar of his sweater, “are you going?”
The boy shrugs, broad and shoulders high, twice the size of him. Probably because he fucking eats, thinks Eren.
“I got an apartment in the city, that’s where I’m headed, but I can take you where ever.”
Is he asking me to come home with him? Do you want to say yes?
“Mmm,” Eren grinds his teeth together. The real question is why are you here?
Easy boy, he says to himself, why the fuck do you care anyways. Don’t scare him away.
“Yeah I’ll go where you’re going.”
“Really?”
“You’re the one who offered.”
“Yeah I know I’m just making sure, don’t be a dick.”
Eren grins, “But that really is my forte.”
This boy is playing The Smiths, the highway is empty and Eren’s coming down, way down, and Morrissey has both hands around his ankles. He almost cheers when he sees the cityline come into view.
“So you don’t have anywhere particular in mind?” The boys’ hands are tense on the wheel, like they have been since Eren first sat on the black leather seating.
Eren hums, “I’ll just get out wherever you end up at, and find my way from there.”
Where they end up is in front of the boy’s apartment, which is about what Eren expected after seeing the quality of his car. He tries to seem unimpressed anyways.
“So what do I owe you?” Eren asks, fumbling through his backpack. The boy has a look of pure confusion, knitting his eyebrows together, mouth brought into a small frown. There’s a beat before he speaks.
“Nothing, I just,” And he’s looking away again, chewing on his bottom lip, “wanted to do something nice, I don’t know.”
He’s cute, Eren thinks, and opens his mouth to ask again,
“You sure I don’t owe you anything?” This time his hand wanders over near the boy’s knee, not touching it but close. He waits for the boy to let him close the gap. Instead the boy jerks away, begins unbuckling his seatbelt.
“Yeah I’m sure.” Different tone now. Definitely made the wrong move there. Eren unbuckles as well and opens the passenger door.
“Thanks anyways, I owe you one.” Like I’m ever going to see him again, Eren thinks as he slides out of the seat, backpack in hand, and into the cool morning air.
And for a while he’s just there, wandering. It’s not like he really had a plan in the first place so he doesn’t see a need to call anyone right away. The streets are a little empty, and a little like home. Vendors using hooks to open the front of their stores, people wrapped in worn out coats sleeping on the sidewalks. Smoke and steam and neon signs being turned on. The way the sky looks before the sun touches it and how that somehow makes even the grimiest parts of the city seem good. All fresh and sharp. He curses the people dressed in neon out running at this hour.
Eren stumbles along under hoards of gray birds, smelling the city wake up and feeling the weight of his bones.
He feels like a cell phone, slowly losing energy, on 5% now please plug in. Two days of no sleep or any substantial food will do that to you. In the back of his head he’s wondering how long he can keep this up. This out of rhythm living. How long before he finds his way back or falls off the track completely.
But by now he’s positively crashing and his phone is dead, of course, and he finds himself wandering back to where he dropped off. In front of the nice rich boys’ apartment. So nice but not nice enough to accept a thank you blowjob. Bet he’s the kind who doesn’t lock his car doors, he thinks, and one jolt of the backdoor handle proves him right.
He wakes up to a sharp right turn, almost falling off the seat he’s so precariously curled upon. Engine on, car is moving. It’s possible he should be worried but he can’t find the energy to be. His eyes are dry but he watches the passing scenery out of the backseat window for a couple minutes anyways before sitting up and asking, “Where are we going?” while trying to stifle a yawn. The boy in the front seat almost drives the car off the road.
This is how Eren ends up being screamed at on the side of a busy highway. The boy has been yelling for ten minutes straight and Eren can barely hear him over the rush of the traffic. He bets that this dude is the kind of guy to take his shirt off in a fight.
“I bet you take your shirt off before you get into a fight.”
“Dude what the fuck have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying? Are you fucking with me?” The boys lips curl up, exposing a long line of pearly whites. They’re sharp and that does something to him but mostly it makes him pissed as shit.
“Are we gonna fight?” He shouts over the roar of a semi.
The boys gives him a very serious look for a couple seconds, and then, “You are fucking with me.” Not yet dude.
“There’s just something about your face, I can’t really place it,” He pauses thoughtfully, “ I want to punch it.”
“If my face is so punchable then why the fuck did you sneak back into my car?”
A minivan passes by, Eren catches sight of a kid pressed against the window wide eyed with small hands. God it's loud out here, the front of his brain feels swollen.
“I was tired.” He puts both palms out in front of him. I surrender, there was no real reason, his brain weird logic told him there’d be no consequences. I was tired. What can you do.
The boy runs one hand through his hair, looking pretty rough himself. He’s staring out off the overpass, at the merging and twisting lines of cars and freight trucks and heavy smog hanging above it all. Eren shivers in the constant wind.
“I could leave you here you know.”
Eren doesn’t doubt it. Not that he’d like to be stranded on the side of the road miles away from the city but it is a real possibility.
“No doubt.”
“You aren’t worried?”
He’s been stranded worse places, maybe. Two summers ago he woke up on the roof of a highrise office building surrounded by empty bottles, with cum in his hair and acid still in his brain and fruit that was beginning to rot in the midday sun. Everyone he had been with had already ditched but at the time he wasn’t sure if anyone had been there at all. He had to count his fingers to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
“Not really. I’m a little more concerned for my balls if anything. It’s fuckin freezing.”
“You’re fucking weird.”
“Been told that. So what now?”
“What?”
“Where’re you going?”
“I don’t,” The boy looks at his shoes again, “You know...” He points in the vague direction that traffic is flowing. West, maybe.
“Going on a trip?”
“Something like that.” He’s eyeing Eren suspiciously.
Eren squints, taking in the long line of cars, rear lights blaring red. “You want some company?”
The boy shakes his head, eyes not leaving the road in front of him.
“I don’t even know you man.”
“Yeah sure, but we got time. You don’t really want to leave me here right? And you don’t want to drive me back to where I was either, right?” So he’s bullshitting, but Eren happens to be particularly good at bullshitting. “I know I don’t look like it but I’ve got money. You won’t have to worry about me robbing you or anything.” Jean’s eyebrows shot up at, probably something he didn’t even consider. “Look look,” Eren reaches into the deep pockets of his bag, and shows him the bundles of wadded cash. “There’s more too.”
“Christ...” Jean’s looking anxiously from the money to Eren’s face. “Where did you-”
Eren waves his hands non-committedly, shoves the bundles back into his jacket.
“I told you I’ve got money, come on, wherever you’re headed sounds far away and you don’t want to do that all by yourself. I’m great at killing time.”
“Isn’t there like,” Jean seems to struggle with finding the right words but Eren knows what he’s trying to say. Isn’t there a job you need to go back to, a rent that needs to be paid, school that has coursework? Isn’t there someone you need to go back to?
“No.” Eren answers simply.
Jean lets out a big breath. Everything around them moving, pushing forward, going somewhere and they both know they can’t stay here long before they get swept up in the current.
“Okay. Sure, why the fuck not.”
They’re back in the car now. It smells like aftershave and exhaust fumes. They sit in silence. Eren’s mouth tastes of a couple different things but none of them are tangy regret. He can’t say the same for the boy in the driver's seat. The left blinker clicks on and they merge back into the stream of cars.
Maybe it’s too early to know.
“Why West?”
“Wanted a better view of the sunset.”
Sounds like bullshit to Eren.
Somewhere between where the highway narrows out and the mountains become more prominent Eren and the boy start talking. Kinda weird though, cause they’re very obviously sticking to the surface stuff and edging around the big thing. Why are you here? Why did I even ask to come? How far are we going? Even thinking them in his head feels like too much. Blank spaces after the question marks. He swallows pills with a sticky sweet gulp of the boy's energy drink with some disdain. “I can’t believe you drink Monster.”
“I can’t believe you’d willingly swallow Redbull.”
“I’d willingly swallow a lot of things.”
There’s a heavy pause there, and the boy reaches for a half used pack of cigarettes kept in the glove compartment. Offers one to Eren, who says yes out of politeness. They smoke for a while, letting the stench cling to their sweatshirt sleeves. The trees grow taller and thicker in density. They’ll probably lose cell service soon and if Eren cared or had anyone to text he might be worried.
There has to be a reason for this, Eren thinks. People like him don’t leave unless they have something they’re running away from. Whatever the reason, Eren doesn’t press it. It’ll come out when it’s ready. That’s about as zen as he gets these days.
They slept in the boy’s car that night, pulled over in a gravel off road turnaround under a tall sign advertising life insurance. Eren read the yellow lettering over and over and bit the inside of cheek hard enough to draw blood. How much would he be worth once he was dead? How would he even know. How much money was in his bank account right now? Enough. That’s what he’d been told since dad left.
Their seats are reclined as far as they can go. Eren stares at the tan ceiling. Sleep won’t come.
In a car he owned for a quick couple of months there had been a fat stripe of black eye liner above the passenger seat. A product of a night he and a couple of other guys had attempted to do full make overs in a parking lot around the back of the financial district.
Attempted was the key word. It had been hard to see with all the smoke and lack of space and limbs stretched out everywhere covered in tight denim and leather asking if this shade of red was suited to their skin tone.
He’d crashed the car not too long after while trying to eat yogurt and turn up a Bowie song as loud as it could go. Is there life on mars? Is there? He never watched the news.
Eren tried to fit as much of his body as he could under the small blanket the boy had given him.
“Hadn’t been expecting company,” Was all the boy had said as he tossed Eren the cheap polyester blanket. When he unfolded it the creases stayed. Cold was seeping in from outside the car. His ankles were like ice.
The boy in the seat next to him was sleeping, his shoulders rising and falling. He was just a dark outline, Eren was trying to fill in the blanks.
Every so often an occasional car drove by, a low sweep of headlights barely illuminating the cabin of the car, rush of noise and then gone. Ground control to Major Tom. How did he end up here.