Chapter Text
He doesn’t remember me. It may be that he never remembers me, and rightly so if he doesn’t. I’m not entirely sure if I want him to. Times were different then, and sometimes I wish I didn’t remember myself. It was a world of fear, of pain, one where the sun shone, and you felt the heat on your skin without its seeping warmth, just heat. The blue of the skies there was always hiding something, even if there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. Here, it’s different. Lax. Here, you can breathe--humidity aside. But he doesn’t remember it. I know, because he smiles so wide.
I pass by him every day on my way to work.
I walk, because for some reason, karma doesn’t work and my sins were not repaid to me in kind, and I grew up privileged and admired, and inherited a job I never wanted that supplies me with money I don’t need. It’s not what I deserve for sending men to die as my career in the last life. I was anticipating hell, not walking by an organic grocery store every morning because I don’t want a driver and I feel sick to my stomach whenever I think about driving the expensive car in my garage. I’d rather walk under the honest sky, on the solid, paved ground and pass young workers toting tomatoes for their mother’s store. Sometimes it even lets me pretend I didn’t lose hundreds of men in my years as commander.
It’s kinda nice, starting over.
My memories came to me as I grew up, as if they were things I’d always known, more instinct than knowledge. At first they were stories in my head, and I wrote them down and told them to anyone who would listen. Around six or seven, I started to realize that the man in the stories was rather like me, and by nine I’d reached the conclusion that they were memories. They seemed far-fetched, and it was a concept even I thought I would grow out of, but affirmation came later on. High school, I came across living proof that my memories were real and that my old life had leaked into this one.
“Erwin?”
Levi had stared at me so incredulously, and I at him until I had a panic attack and he escorted me to the nurse. When we were alone and I had calmed down, he confirmed everything with memories of his own. I didn’t mind it, having someone to share the memories with, but after high school we decided it was best to try to live in the lives we were in, rather than in the dark one we’d come from, and I haven’t talked to him since.
Things were fine for a long while, five, six years, maybe. I went to college and lived a normal life, despite the strange memories that most often manifested themselves in dreams. I didn’t meet anyone from that life there, and I went through the motions like everyone else. It came in my refusal of the luxury I didn’t deserve. Had I been able to let go of the blood on my hands from my past life, perhaps I could’ve embraced the riches of this one, but I couldn’t. I took to commuting to my father’s company by foot, and that’s how I came across him again.
I didn’t panic like I did when I saw Levi--the strangeness of seeing a person you thought you’d imagined isn’t quite as sharp a second time. I stopped and I watched him work slowly, from the window of the shop. I stopped for so long the commuters moved around me like a river around a stone, and when he saw me and there was no flicker of recognition in his eyes, just a polite smile that one might offer to a stranger when eye contact is made, and I forced my feet to move again. It didn’t stop me from making a habit out of walking to work. It’s a bad habit at this point, and try as I might, I can’t help but think about it every time I pass him. He doesn’t remember me.
These words ring in my head every time, as he carries things in and out of the store, as he sets up the external displays with care, as he dusts his hands on his apron habitually before he shakes hands with a customer, and as I mindlessly crash into him, carrying a crate of apples for display this morning.
“Ah, sorry!” He apologizes, even though he’s on the ground and there are apples everywhere and people are going around them and he’s only barely knocked me back. “I didn’t see you there.”
“No, it’s fine.” I bend to help gather the apples. “Not your fault, really,” I add as a second thought.
“Oh, you don’t have to--” he takes the apples from my hands and sets them in the crate with practiced hands. The crate is propped up on a table and he stands, brushing his hands on his apron. I’m still. Something in my mind tells me normal people would’ve dismissed themselves by now. His eyes flicker up at me and he smiles. He’s older than I remember, much older up close. Older than me for sure.
“Thank you,” he says, and I give a curt nod. It should be my cue to leave, but I stand dumb and idle. He squints at me a little. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
It makes my breath catch, but just a little. Levi was so sure of everything. He hadn’t hesitated in the slightest. I give a polite smile and reply calmly.
“I walk by here every day to work.” It should be sufficient.
“No, no. Something else. You just look really familiar.”
“I suppose I just have a familiar face. Can’t imagine where you would know someone like me from. You look older than me by a bit.”
I shouldn’t have added the last part. It was irrelevant and unnecessary, and I shouldn’t have added it. It was more me reflecting on the situation than even saying anything worthwhile, but he just laughed.
“Yeah, I suppose so. Business men don’t typically end up in the same place as their grocers. Thank you for the help though.”
I thought that would be the end of it, but he stuck out his hand and I skipped a beat before I realized I should shake it. It was a harmless gesture to him, but for me it solidified him as more than a figment of my imagination, and sometimes I tried to fool myself into thinking that’s all he was. I wasn’t ready for it at all, but I shook it anyway.
“I’m Eren.” His eyes dart to his nametag and he laughs. “As you can see.”
“Erwin,” is my reply. I’m stiff and curt, and he has to be thinking that I don’t like him by now. I give him my best smile--at least as far as ‘strangers’ go--and continue on my way.
“Nice meeting you!”
He shouts it after me, and I can’t help but feel I’ve ruined some sort of equilibrium.
He greets me every morning. Once, I oversleep and rush by, but he stops me and hands me a pear, somehow knowing that I’ve skipped breakfast in my rush. I want to hate him for it. Where is the angry young boy whose only desire is revenge? It pains me that I can only conjure that image of him, furious, with the silver scars of bite marks on his hands. I certainly wouldn’t have imagined what a dreamer he would be without his hunger for vengeance.
He calls me ‘kid’. It’s all in jest; he can’t be more than five years older than me, but he does it.
It rains one morning, and my important meeting is cancelled over the phone on my way to work because this businessman or that can’t get there because his flight has been delayed due to the weather. The rain must be worse by the airport, because I keep walking, stop in a coffee shop and wait out the rush. When it clears, I keep walking, keep walking. Inevitably, I land in front of his shop, where he’s still dismantling the exterior displays. He doesn’t notice me until I hold my umbrella over him and relieve him of the rain that has cleared the streets of everyone else. When he turns to me, confused, I move unconsciously, and silently hope that things have carried over from the past life, even if he doesn’t remember it.
The way he returns my kiss assures me that they have.
He comes away dazed and baffled, and he opens his mouth to say something before promptly sneezing. He laughs instead and tells me we should get out of the rain, holds the door open to his shop so I can go inside. I leave my umbrella outside. I sit quietly in the chair behind the counter he’s led me to while he goes into a little room nearby, wondering if I’ve just made some horrible mistake. I could leave. Get up, grab my umbrella and go home. I could start driving to work, or take the subway, or something. Anything. I’m a link to a past he doesn’t remember, and maybe shouldn’t. I could leave and all that would be left of me would be the chime of the bells on the door.
I stay and he comes back with two mugs of tea. He stirs his pensively, eyes my wet suit and blows on his tea to cool it. Mine sits idly in my hands.
“No work today?”
“No, the meeting was cancelled. They’ll want me back after lunch.”
“Oh.” A beat. “Are you alright, Erwin?”
The way he says my name is not unlike the way he called me commander in the other life, but there are differences. His voice is deeper, more confident, he stands taller--and not just because he’s fully grown now--and he smiles. He smiles so wide.
I don’t know what to say, so I set the tea on the counter, stand, and guide his face up to mine and kiss him softly. His hands don’t move from the mug, and he stays slouched against the counter, but he moves his mouth with mine in slow, delicate motions.
“I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to do that for awhile now.” At least it’s not a lie, and I can smile when I say it.
I watch him smile into his mug as he sips again. His eyes flicker up at me over the rim of it as he drinks.
“After lunch, hm?” He says it into his tea, steam floating up around his cheeks. I try not to think of the last time I saw him surrounded by steam.
“That’s the idea.”
“Well, are you free for dinner?”
He catches me so off-guard I can’t answer him for a moment. I try to think of what I should do in this situation, what a normal person would do if they weren’t bogged down by dark memories that the other person doesn’t share.
“Dinner sounds great. Is seven good?”
“Seven is fine.”
“Alright, I’ll pick you up.” Then I add, “My treat.”
“Good,” Eren chuckles, surprising me. I’m used to polite refusal. “You started this anyway.”
I want to tell him how wrong he is, but he doesn’t remember who really started this anymore. After a few hours, I leave with his number punched into my phone. There’s nothing productive to be done at work, not with my father’s old assistant in town making sure things are running smoothly. They always are. Still, I’m there for longer than I need to be.
There’s no need for him to say anything as he climbs into my car, idling silently outside his shop, the only sound its softly purring engine. He doesn’t need to say anything because I can tell what he’s thinking. With a car like mine, why on earth do I walk every morning? And maybe he has an answer to his own question.
His life is beautiful. Hearing about it all over again is a pleasure. Of course, there are differences, by a large margin; his father isn’t a missing enigma, and he never murdered anyone rescuing his sister, but the similarities are there. His mother died of cancer a few years ago and left him the shop, he was an angry youth who started fights and got in trouble, and his determination is still unshakeable. But it’s better. All of it is better, brighter. There is no broken wall, no plague of mankind.
He’s seen the ocean.
I keep the details about my life to a minimum. I’m still not even sure which life to consider real. But I let him talk, never once thinking that he loved to talk, but simply never got the chance and again I am filled with guilt. How much joy did I take away from him, a child, a mere boy of fifteen? The responsibility on his shoulders was tremendous, and he blamed himself for every death that I caused.
Being with him is torment, but I can’t tear myself away. It hurts to think that there was a time when I thought recruiting him meant fulfilling his wishes and saving his life from the hands of the military police, but I cannot summon the logic anymore. This world has tainted me in that aspect, and I cannot fathom how I ever resorted to using such brutal means. I need to leave him, let him live his life without me and the horrible past I bring with me. I excuse myself, stand, and the chair slides back with me. I’ll find the waiter, leave a note with them that says I’m terribly sorry, but I just can’t. Something vague, something he won’t blame himself for. I’m thinking of the right words and looking for the waiter, standing and getting ready to walk away and save him from me.
“Where are you going?”
I’ve given something away. Nearly four decades in the last life and two in this one and I still can’t keep my face from revealing my true intentions, or maybe he’s just entirely too perceptive.
“Oh, just--” and I have to think of a lie on the spot because his face is too genuine, too hopeful and I can’t bear to leave. “These pants are too short and they keep riding up.”
I adjust them by tugging at the knees and he stands too. We’ve been done eating for hours.
“How ‘bout we get out of here? I’m sure the waiter is tired of us by now. We’ve been here for--” he checks his watch. “Almost two hours now.”
I nod and drop a bill from my wallet for the check and the tip. I have to pretend not to notice how Eren’s eyebrows disappear into his hair at that. Somehow, we end up at my apartment, the small one I’ve rented because the family home is more than I can stomach. I haven’t discussed it and he’s too polite to ask, but the affluence is visible even in the apartment I’ve found.
“So what exactly do you do?”
He relaxes on my couch freely, peering around curiously. This is not the timid boy with swollen cheeks having dried blood cleaned off his face by Hanji, not in the slightest.
“International business. Petroleum industry, for the most part, but there’s some mechanics in it too.”
“Well, I mean--” Eren picks up one of the aged wines I have on display on the wall behind the couch. They were a gift, but still, the money. “I’ve known plenty of businessmen who have to pat every pocket they’ve got trying to pay for groceries, and this…”
He’s prying, and I let him.
“You could call me an heir, of sorts. I got my position thanks to my father’s death.”
“What, CEO?”
“CFO.” He was joking, but I’m not. The unworthiness burns. “My mother took CEO. She’s better suited for it, if you ask me. That left CFO open, and she appointed me.”
I sit next to him on the couch, which is large enough to leave plenty of space between us.
“Must be nice, being a millionaire at twenty.” He sets the wine back and eyes me.
“Twenty-three.” I pause and add, “And I never wanted any of it.”
He just stares at me for a moment with one eyebrow quirked. I watch him studying my face and marvel at how natural he looks on my expensive couch, framed by expensive wines, in the middle of my expensive apartment. I wish I could trade him for it, for a quiet life working my mother’s grocery by myself in her honor.
“Is that why, then?”
“Is what why?”
“Why you always walk to work. I know that company. The headquarters are in the center of the city, at least ten minutes from my shop by foot. And your car--”
“Yes, Eren, that’s why. I don’t want it.” My voice is distant and quiet.
He sighs softly and takes it upon himself to crawl across the couch and leave a ghost of a kiss on my lips. I think I try to say something, but he seems to change his mind about going easy and kisses me hard enough to knock me onto my back. I hear him breathe in sharply, and there’s one from me to match. He’s on my stomach, slightly between my knees and the way he’s kissing me, I know what he’s getting at. I pull away for a moment.
“Eren…” I glance at the precarious situation we’re in and he apologizes, pecks me on the cheek and settles for laying his head under my chin. He’s moved his hips off to the side, but it doesn’t change anything for me and I curse the inconvenience of such a young body. I sigh enough to move him with the motion, and he clings closer.
“Can I stay?”
“Stay?”
“I just,” he falters. “For some reason I really don’t want to leave.”
Leave. Leave here, leave you. The fact that he can’t, doesn’t want to makes my chest hurt because he’s said things like this before. I’m glad I’m above him, because he can’t see my eyes water at the thought.
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
I let him borrow some clothes, although they don’t fit him very well, and I find an extra toothbrush I bought some time ago and forgot about. I’m sitting on my bed when he comes back finished getting ready, and he sets one knee on the mattress before stopping himself.
“Is this alright? I can sleep on the couch if you want.”
“No, it’s fine. I trust you.”
I wonder how strange it sounds, coming from me. It feels strange to say, because I’m not used to being the younger one, the one whose intentions should be purer. But then, he wouldn’t think anything of it. His whole life, I’ve been younger than him. I take a moment for myself and decide I must confirm something before I can sleep.
“Eren.”
“Yeah?”
“How old are you?”
He lies down next to me and studies my face with his strange green eyes, just barely lit by the lamp behind me in the near-darkness.
“Twenty-nine.”
I nod, saying nothing, and he curls up to me. Holding him is like diving into a memory, but for how much taller he is now. Everything is different but for one thing. We are not huddled together for warmth. I have both of my arms and his hands are devoid of u-shaped scars from where I have asked too much of him. There is a bed beneath us, and not a sack on the floor because we are on the run. We’re not surrounded by our sleeping comrades, and he’s not here because he can’t sleep any more than I can. But with my nose in his hair, I’m both sickened and comforted to find that he smells almost exactly the same.
He confirmed it, though. Six years before Levi and I were executed for treason, Eren went down in the field. I couldn’t trade an arm to save him that time.
He becomes a part of my life, even more so than before, more than in the last life. Unthinkably, I find myself glad for the six years I lived without him, because it brought us closer in age, and here there are no Wallists to condemn us for being men. There are others, but in a metropolitan city they are few and far between. He becomes the part that is not monotony, not the enforcement of undeserved wealth. He becomes knocking on the glass of the door after he’s turned the ‘open’ sign in his window and turned off half the lights, two warm cups of tea because coffee needs too many things to taste good and Eren prefers the naturalness of pouring tea and drinking it right away.
I see how modestly he lives when I lose control of myself kissing him, hands wandering too far and too greedily and all I can choke out is a needy “Please…”
“My apartment,” he breathes. “It’s upstairs.”
I don’t notice how simple everything is until afterwards, when he’s cleaned up and passed out in my arms and I’m staring at the ceiling fan as it rotates slowly, wobbling slightly. It’s sparsely decorated, the only notable thing in the room aside from the bed being an oversized window, advertising his shop and letting in the lights of the city at night through the blinds. The bathroom casts rays onto the floor from the hall where he left the light on, but everything is so simple. There’s hardly anything on the floor, but for what we took off. Aside from the bed and windows, there’s a small night stand by the bed, and two doors--one to the hallway and the other presumably to a closet--but the room is utterly featureless.
He sighs in his sleep and shifts in my arms and I find myself wishing again I could trade him. Lives, I mean. If anyone deserves to live luxuriously, if karma actually worked, it would be Eren as the heir to an international company. If I could, I’d hand over my name and my title, the keys to my car and apartment, the gate code to the family manor outside the city--anything else I could give away. If I could begin to repay my debts, I would. But no money can do that, and if I tried to use it to supplement, he would only wonder why.
And I can’t tell him that.
I can only hold him close and let him doze to the sound of my heartbeat, slow and resilient. I wonder quietly if the beating in my chest is the same, if it spans lifetimes. I wonder if he’ll hear it and remember.
I shake myself of that. I know the course of things by now, and really it’s how it should be. He can listen to my heart all night if he wants, and I can fall asleep breathing in memories, but in the morning, it will all be the same. He will wake, maybe in my arms, maybe sprawled out elsewhere, close to me, or hogging all the blankets, and it will be the same. He won’t remember me. Only what is here and now.
For that, I can only thank whatever deity keeps him from remembering.
>>>
“Commander?”
The voice is barely more than a whisper, just outside my door. Two wisps of knocks follow, and then again. Commander.
I rouse myself from my desk, dressed in my nightclothes where I’ve hoped doing so might motivate me to sleep, but nothing changes. I’m pouring over the plans left by Pixis, looking for any kind of flaw I can fix. Most unfortunately, all I can see are flaws. There are a hundred variables that could change this or that. Everything is a bank of hopes, and we need a miracle or we’ll all fail miserably.
Somehow, no surprise comes from finding Eren at my door.
“Eren?”
“I’m sorry, commander. I can’t sleep.”
“You’re anxious?”
He fidgets.
“Something like that.”
“Tea, to calm the nerves, then. Come in. I was just about to make some.”
It not a lie, though I don’t mention that my intent was to make tea to keep me awake for longer. He gives a small nod as he steps across the threshold, and his eyes land on where I’ve left the lantern and the papers going over the plans. He sits quietly at the table and I shuffle along, setting the kettle on the fire and putting away the energy tea I was planning on making, trading it for chamomile.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask, even though I don’t need to. There’s a myriad of things that could be bothering him, but they all boil down to the same thing. Still, his answer surprises me.
“My mother.”
“Why’s that?”
He gets a glassy look on his face and chews on the end of his sleeve absentmindedly. It’s a nervous habit, I’m sure. He used to bite his nails until Levi found out and made him clean the stables top to bottom for being so careless. The right motivation, a slip of the teeth, and he’d make a scene.
“Whenever things get bad, I think of her.”
I’m at a loss for words for a moment, tending the kettle silently while I remind myself how young he is. He’s still just a boy, and I know his history. I know how young he was when he witnessed the cataclysmic events of Shiganshina and the breach of Wall Maria. Then, his mother. To be so young and afraid, without a mother and a missing father, forced out of a home--he is so strong. Sometimes I forget how young he is, because no child could possibly go through all of that without growing up in an instant. Not that any child can afford the luxury of childhood these days. Perhaps that’s what we’re really fighting for.
“She was an amazing woman, I’m sure.”
“I don’t remember much of her, to be honest. But there was a time before all of this…”
“A very, very long time ago, Eren. Keep in mind that out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind. Just because the wall was intact doesn’t mean that they ceased to exist.”
It’s unnecessarily harsh, and I think to apologize for being rude, but my kettle hisses and I reach for it, and when I look back, there’s a small smile on his lips.
“That’s true. I wanted to join the Survey Corps, even then, did you know? Even before the wall was breached. She didn’t want me to go, but I…” he sighs. “I wanted to see the ocean.”
I hand him a mug of tea and he holds it thoughtfully.
“You think we’ll ever get that far?”
“To the ocean? We’re not really even sure where it is. It’s too dangerous out there, Eren. We’d never make it with so many titans roaming around.” I can’t help but chuckle. “You’ll end up like me--” I lift the stump of my arm and its ghost sleeve flops uselessly. “Or worse.”
“Yeah, but I’ve already lost an arm. And a leg. And then both arms at the same time. Losing them multiple times kinda takes the fun out of it.”
“Yes, yes. Yours grow back like creepy lizard limbs, don’t rub it in.”
I’m surprised at how quickly things grew lighthearted. I’ve never been able to spend much time with Eren, and as a whole I’d never pictured him as being capable of such joy, or invoking such ease.
He drinks his tea quietly, plain and still steaming.
“No honey?” I’ve stirred more than enough into mine.
“I...like it by itself. We could never afford honey, and now the idea of sweet tea makes me queasy. It just tastes better to me.”
“Well, hopefully it’ll help you get some sleep.”
“I doubt it.” He pauses, looks away from me, then back again sheepishly from the corner of his eye. “Can I stay awhile? I won’t bother you or anything. It’s just...too lonely in my room.”
“I don’t mind. I just need to finish some of this paperwork.”
He smiles and nods, and I go back to the plans on my desk. I’ve tried to keep my writing to a minimum, since I still haven’t gotten the hang of writing with my left hand, and it only makes the planning illegible, but I come across something that must be corrected and spend the better part of ten minutes trying to write something neat enough to read. The more I look, the more I find things that need to be corrected, but the writing is so tedious I know I’ll never get it done by myself.
“Eren, could you--” I stop, because he’s slumped over the table, cheek squished up into his hand while he dozes. I can’t help but think he looks so innocent when he’s sleeping.
I come to an impasse. I can’t just leave him sleeping at my table in an uncomfortable wooden chair, but there’s no way I could ever carry him back to his room, not with one arm. After much debate, I hoist him carefully over my shoulder and set him on my bed. The armchair by the fireplace will be just fine for me. I head to it, back to the bed, when I hear a soft voice.
“Commander?”
I turn. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”
“Yes, but it’s okay.”A pause. “Do I have to go back to my room now?
“Well,” I hesitate. “No, you can stay. I was just going to sleep in the armchair.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t mind if you…” He clears his throat. “I mean, it is your bed.”
“Eren, I’m your commanding officer.” I say it, even though it’s obvious and it really means nothing. I need to reassure myself more than anything.
“I’d feel better if…” he looks at me, seems to decide whatever came next isn’t worth saying, and rolls so that his back faces me. “Nevermind. Goodnight.”
I’m caught between my morals and some sort of desire to comfort him. It’s terrifying, this life, and Eren has gone through it practically an orphan, a soldier, and a monster. If there’s anyone who understands what it’s like to be those things, it’s me.
I don’t know what compels me to do it, but I climb into the bed and keep my distance.
“Eren… I know that this is hard, but just remember, you’re not alone. People will go to great lengths to remind you of that. I gave up an arm for it. We’re here for you. And if no one else is, I am.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I assume he’s fallen asleep again, but then he turns suddenly and pulls himself to me by wrapping his arms around my neck.
“Eren!” I try to pull back, shocked, but his grip is too tight. I realize he’s shaking, and a muffled sob follows.
It takes a moment for me to gather myself. I set my hand on his back and rub softly.
“Please don’t cry.”
His reply comes in broken portions of a sob.
“It’s… all my… fault.”
“No, no. Gods, no, Eren. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I was so careless. Don’t feel guilty. It’s not your fault.” I want to say more, but I’m not sure if I can. When it comes to putting blame somewhere, I always save it for myself, and it’s been awhile since I let myself remember how much I am at fault for. Saying anything more on the subject is next to impossible, lest I cry as well.
“Erwin…”
He’s still speaking into my shoulder, but skipping over my title is still shocking.
“Do you think, if there had never been any titans that we could have… could have…” He sucks in a breath. “Been together?”
I want to pull him away from his shoulder, lock him out of my room. No. It shouldn’t be allowed. I shouldn’t even be given the opportunity to even consider such an idea. He’s half my age, my subordinate, and love between men is illegal.
“Eren, that’s not--”
“But do you think?”
My jaw is slack, ajar, and the words die in my throat. He’s not asking for reality. Reality won’t give him peace enough to sleep.
“In another lifetime, maybe.”
>>>
The dreams are worse with him near me. They came with increasing frequency as soon as I saw Eren, as they had with Levi, so it was to be expected, but these are not the dreams of battles and expeditions, the recurring nightmare of losing my arm and waking up before I ever know if I’m not too late to save him--all the reassurance in the world that, yes, I did, does nothing. These are dreams that shouldn’t matter in the slightest, trivial things like thumbing through paperwork and making tea. They bother me the most.
I wonder, if, at least for this life, it would be better for my health to just stay away from Eren.
Whether or not it’s true, I couldn’t do it if I wanted to. I’d hurt him, or me, or both of us. It’s not like with Levi, where our past was the only thing that brought us together and our present--our future what drove us apart, mutually. Eren has no idea. And I have unsatisfied memories. As fake as this world can seem at times, being with Eren is a real continuation of the past.
Maybe it’s because I still have more years worth of memories for that world than this one that I sometimes question which is real, but I am reminded of where my corporeal body lies when I stumble out of Eren’s bed, down the hall and into his tiny kitchen where he’s relaxed in front of an old television, not unlike the frazzled little one hidden in the back room of the shop downstairs.
“Mornin’.” He looks at me. His hair is a mess, and he looks sleepy, but he smiles and pushes a bowl of dry cereal toward an empty seat at the table. He pours the milk as I sit down. “Wasn’t sure when you’d get up. Didn’t want it to get soggy.”
“Thank you.”
Seeing him is relaxing. He’s carefree and easygoing, even when he looks half asleep.
“‘S’it alright? I’m not much of a cook.”
“It’s great. I usually eat a light breakfast anyway.” I can’t help but notice how casual the conversation is, but maybe Eren’s still waking up, or he’s just not quite sure what to say after sleeping with someone for the first time.
“That’s good. You have to work today?”
“Not if I don’t want to. It’s Saturday.” I check my watch. “Aren’t you opening the shop?”
“I’ll do it in a bit. Nobody’s gonna die without their organic lettuce.”
We lapse into a small silence, where Eren watches the tv with a completely disinterested gaze and I watch his hands curl into fists in his lap and on the table, respectively.
“Something on your mind?” I set mine on the one on the table, and he reels back instinctively, clutching his hand to his chest like I’d burned him.
He looks at me, wild and animalistic for a second before he relaxes and his face falls. He keeps his hand to his chest. My stomach drops. Whatever this is, I feel like it’s my fault.
“Eren?”
“S-sorry.” He shakes himself and lets go of his hand, but not before looking at it for a long while. “Do you ever have dreams that just...get to you?”
My heart hammers. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t know. No one tell him. He can’t know.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
He huffs a small laugh.
“Probably, but this was just… so weird.” He holds his hand in front of his face again. “It wasn’t even scary. I just dreamt that my hands were hurting, so I looked and them, like this--” he holds them to his face, palms up, then flips them over, “--and there were scars all over them. But, like, circular, like bite marks. And somehow I knew it was me that bit them, but I don’t know why. I can still… I can still feel them hurting.”
I try to hide how much I’m panicking. Some part of me, I realize, has been relying on the fact that Eren might never remember. That must be the part that’s still hoping we can have a normal life together.
“That is strange. Do you remember anything else?”
He shakes his head.
“No, just that.” He looks up at me. “What do you think it means?”
I keep breathing calmly.
“I think it means you need a day off.”