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Mikasa tries to keep quiet as she cautiously approaches the sleeping MPs, slouched over in their wooden chairs. As she passes, she slips the large keyring from one guard’s loose fingers into her hands, her heart pounding, sweat beading her hairline.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing here.
The short of it was that she hadn’t been able to sleep. She knew Eren was being kept down in the cellars below the military apartments. Armin had told her, worriedly, and before she decided to do something about that information, she’d been tossing and turning in her bed, her body thrumming, muscles stiff, as if she could feel his presence from seven floors under. It hadn’t taken her very long at all to get moving. She’d even forgotten her shoes.
Mikasa follows the row of flickering torches down to the large cell at the end of the hall. Her nightgown is long-sleeved, but the open neckline and her bare feet and legs leave her skin prickling. She stifles the urge to rub her arms.
She stops in place when she finds him. He sits on his cot, half in shadow, his forearm resting over his bent knee. Like a wild animal's, his green eyes gleam at her from the darkness: predatory. Tracking.
“I was wondering when you’d come.”
Mikasa swallows, clutches her keys tighter. She didn’t expect the sound of his voice to be so disarming. “Are you implying that you were waiting for me, Eren?”
“I never said that.”
It’s instinct that has her inching back when he stands up and walks to the bars of his cell. He’s shirtless, she realizes as the light hits him. And wet. Rivulets of water run down from his long hair onto his shoulders, sliding over the ridge of his defined clavicles and then down the hard muscle of his abdomen, slipping beneath the waistband of his pants. Her stomach flips, and it takes her entirely too long to realize that she’s been staring.
Mikasa flushes and forcibly averts her gaze to look back up at him. He has his hands wrapped around the bars of his cage, his knuckles white beneath the strain. He gestures at her with his chin.
“Were you about to go to sleep?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says slowly, trying not to feel exposed beneath his scrutiny. “But I couldn’t.”
He makes a sound deep in his throat. “So you decided to see me instead. Figures.”
A flash of shame strikes her for her perceived predictability, and suddenly, she cannot fathom why she’s here, why she even bothered. Why, even now, she still finds herself so unsettled by him. By his height and his width and the new, suffocating weight of his attention. It sinks beneath her skin and nestles into her marrow, lingering.
Did Hange feel this too?
Ah, she thinks. Right.
“Did they interrogate you?” she asks.
“Obviously,” he says. “Hange was the last person to try before they gave up for the day.” He sends her a strange look. “Unless—“
“I’m not here to question you,” she interjects, offended by the implication. “If I were, I would’ve already started.”
“Isn’t that what’s happening right now?”
“No.” She glances away, tightening her grip around her elbows. The key ring dangles from her left hand. Eren points at it.
“Are you here to break me out then?”
“No.” And the question, even if phrased sarcastically, reminds her strikingly of why she’s here, of why he is, and the whole dirty crux of it: his war, the raid on Liberio, Sasha.
(Mikasa at the grave, crying, curled over herself in a self-soothing gesture. The words: “If you win, you live. If you lose, you die—“)
Anger wells up like a hot balloon in her gut, rising into her throat and onto her tongue where it curdles sourly. Before she can stop herself, she demands, “Do you know where I was today?”
“No. But I think you’re going to tell me.”
“Sasha’s grave,” she spits, unmoved by his sass. She steps forward, inches from the iron bars of his cell, from him— this close, she has to crane her neck up. “Her grave, Eren. She’s dead.”
A sneer curls his lip. “I don’t remember killing her.”
“You can’t be that heartless,” she gapes. The key ring shakes in her hand. “She was our friend. It was because of you that we decided to raid Liberio, that we basically declared war on the rest of the world! You, who said that you cared about us more than anyone—“
“The world was going to declare war on us,” Eren hisses. “I did what I had to do. To protect us.”
“That’s not true,” she insists, stepping closer, closer, closer. Her heart pounds a bloody tattoo against her ribcage. “It’s Zeke, I know it is. You aren’t like him. You wouldn't do that. You—!”
Eren snarls and abruptly shakes the bars of his cage, forcing a gasp from her throat. Her stomach drops as she meets his eyes, a glowing, acidic green, cold with malice.
“I don’t think you know the things I’d do,” he says, low enough to be a whisper, but the implications seem to echo between them. With a pulsating, agonizing clarity, she realizes that she can’t look at him. Not now, not with this cage, not with this sudden stretch of distance that separates them and makes him inscrutable. She knows Eren, she knows him and his ambitions and his idiosyncrasies. She knows how hot he runs, how like a forest fire, he razes the earth to a scorching wasteland with his rage. But he was fair. He had compassion, a set of principles. He wasn’t like them, like Yelena and Zeke, with their scheming and cold manipulation. He was different. He was—
But was he really? she thinks, remembering the apathetic glaze in his eyes, the impassive set of his jaw. The emptiness. “Eren, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I can’t—“ The words leave her as a ragged gasp, and she tries again, unable to look at him. “I can’t argue with you like this. The cell… I can’t—“
“You have a key in your hands,” he says, glancing at it. Their eyes meet, and his distinct expression of expectation startles her. Challenges her.
“Use it,” he commands.
The menace in his voice and the aggression that stiffens his muscles should frighten her into leaving. There’s nothing good that will result in her staying, she knows. There’s not even a point. At this stage, no argument they have now will lead to anything productive. If she were truly smart, she’d visit him again tomorrow with Hange, with Armin. She would extract the information they needed that way, and the knowledge of her hapless foray into the cells tonight will die between them. Eren has never been a tattler. He won’t talk if she doesn’t.
And yet.
While avoiding his eyes, she steps towards his cell door and sticks the key into the slot, trying to ignore how visibly her hand trembles. With a twist of her wrist, the lock turns and the cell creaks open. Before he can even think of sneaking past her, she shoves herself inside and slams the door shut, but Eren has made no move to escape. He only stares, his head tilted, as if trying to read what she’ll do next.
He narrows his eyes. “What are you really doing here, Mikasa?”
“What?” she asks, flushing.
“If you’re not here to interrogate me, if you don’t want to argue with me, or— and I don’t see a weapon on you— kill me—“
She gasps his name, gutted at the thought. Eren only continues to approach. He ducks his head and looks into her eyes. In a low voice, he asks, “Then what do you want?”
Her heart thrums like an injured hummingbird at the base of her throat, her skin prickly and over-warm. He’s close enough that she can feel the heat that radiates off his body like a furnace— Eren has always run so hot, in everything— and again, she finds her eyes drawn to the broad expanse of bronze skin and sinewy muscle. It’s so disarming to be this close to him. She doesn’t remember him being so large.
“What?” he demands, impatient now. His gaze is fevered, his jaw clenched hard enough to shatter. He grabs the meat of her upper arm, forcing her breath to hitch. “Don’t give me that fucking startled-deer look of yours. Tell me or walk out and leave.”
Immediately, she shakes her head. The idea is inconceivable. And as he ducks ever closer, a rivulet of water slips into the hollow of his collarbone. She finds that she wants to bite—
“Mikasa.” He sounds softer now, suddenly, on the edge of pleading. His big hands skim the fabric of her nightgown, and her left hand tightens around the keyring hard enough for the metal to warp beneath her fingers. A terrible pressure builds in her belly, making her want to do something, but she doesn’t know what. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t even know him.
She gasps when his palm settles onto the bend of her waist, looking up him. He looms closer, his eyes black, the iris a thin ring of green around dilated pupil. Her heart throbs, and she wants—
He knows what she wants.
He surges down and kisses her.
At first, she’s still. She doesn’t know how to respond— she’s never kissed anyone— but Eren’s fevered desperation forces something from her, and she rests her hand along the curve of his shoulder. Just then, he pulls back, mouthing at the soft line of her jaw. He begs, “Kiss me back. Kiss me—“
Mikasa whimpers, curling her hand into his messy bun and forcing him down against her mouth again. Their kiss is desperate, fumbling and uncertain due to lack of experience, but instinct drives them forward.
Eren curves his rough hands under her thighs and hitches her up against the bars, leaving her to wrap her legs around his waist to maintain balance. He presses close, crowding her, wrapping one hand around an iron bar and the other around her neck, tilting her head back so that he can lick down her throat. Mikasa gasps sharply, her hips jerking when he sucks hard at her pulse point. His lips curve into a smile as he soothes it with his tongue.
An unbearable heat begins to build within her gut, coiling down to her groin as she feels something stiff press into her stomach. Eren kisses her again, licking into her mouth when she seeks to relieve it, canting her hips upward so that he’s flush against the cradle of her thighs. He groans, thrusting hard into her and sending stars behind her eyes. His grip turns bruising around her waist, and he buries his face into her neck to whisper, ragged, “Do you like that? It feels good?”
She nods frantically, unable to speak from biting her lip. He snaps his hips into hers again, a toe-curling friction against her clit that forces him to swallow her shuddering sigh. His palm slides down to her ass, pushing her up against him as he drives into her harder. Gasping, she throws her head back, rattling the bars, but she’s too intoxicated to notice. Too lost in the thrall of his hot skin and wet mouth and rolling hips as he edges her closer to something she can’t comprehend, has never felt, has never allowed herself to feel.
“Fuck,” he hisses, messily kissing her chin, her cheeks, anywhere he can reach. “Mikasa, you feel so good, baby. You have no idea— God, I would give anything to fuck you.”
She whines at how broken he sounds, how desperate, like he’ll die if he doesn’t touch her. The cell shakes as he rewards her with another particularly rough thrust, and she grapples against him as her cunt clenches around nothing, the emptiness painful. She moans, canting her hips up against him, searching for something to no avail. She nearly sobs with frustration.
He kisses her, mouth red, wet. “What is it? What do you need?”
She shakes her head, huffing wetly as she rolls her hips into him again. The hard line of his cock nestles sweetly into where she’s soaking, and Eren groans so loudly her heart plummets. Suddenly, she remembers the sleeping guards at the entrance. His cell was at the end of the long hall, but their voices carried. If they woke up now—
A fresh wave of panic threatens to consume her, and she catches his eye. Just as she’s about to quiet him, to remind him of where they are, of what they’re doing, he wraps his hands around her hips and grinds his erection directly into her throbbing clit. An abrupt, euphoric bliss steals over her, stampeding over her inhibitions. She shakes, clinging to him tight as sparks flare within her chest, an animal keen torn from her throat. Eren rocks against her all the while, prolonging her orgasm, muttering frantic nonsense into her skin.
When the white haze begins to clear, she first notices that she’s dropped her key. It rests by his bare foot, the metal ring bent and mangled. Her hands, now free, dig into his naked back, scratching down. His face is buried into her chest, his lips pursed against her breast as he whispers, “Fuck, you’re so beautiful. I wanna… Mikasa, I need to—“
“Not against the bars,” she whispers, half-drunk, cupping his face. “The guards. They’ll notice—“
“Let them,” he hisses.
“Eren.”
He narrows his eyes, but with a growl, he carries her over and slams her back into the brick wall next to his cot. Before she can scold him, he grabs the front of her nightgown and tugs it down to expose her breasts. He sighs blissfully at the sight of them and cups one, molding it to his palm. A sharp burst of pleasure strikes between her legs as he gropes her, and she whines, arching herself against him. Eren laughs, crazed. In disbelief.
“Since the moment you walked down here, I was thinking of doing this,” he says, kissing the slope of her breast, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, plucking at her like strings. “You have no idea what you do to me. All I could think about was touching you. You were yelling at me and all I could think about was how much I wanted to fuck you.”
Mikasa sobs, her cunt fluttering, empty, empty, empty. His cock rubs into her wet slit, and she reaches down to tug at his belt, driven by some nameless but desperate instinct. When he notices, he roughly bats her hands away and quickly unbuckles his pants. As she pushes them down with her feet, Eren’s hands fly to her hips and he slips her underwear off, stuffing it into his pocket with a predatory grin. He yanks her dress up as he pulls his cock out, and Mikasa tries not to react as he presses the head against her entrance, a fresh fear bleeding at the back of her throat.
But then he slips inside.
A sound that's half growl-half groan rumbles from his chest. He forces his face into the curve of her sweaty neck as he curses, babbling nonsense, but she can’t hear him. She can’t perceive anything but the feel of him stretching inside her, fucking her open. It doesn’t hurt like she thought it would— like it’s supposed to— but it’s an intimate pinch. It brings tears to her eyes.
Eren thrusts again, pushing in so deep she forces her head against the wall. He kisses her cheek and her jaw and her eyelids, his voice reverent, fragile on his tongue.
“I’ve dreamt of this,” he whispers, snapping his hips. “I dreamt of you. You. Just you.”
She whimpers, pressing her cheek flush against his own. Their slick skin slides together as he continues to thrust, to split her open down to the muscle and her marrow, exposing her bleeding heart. She chokes down a sob and wraps her arms around his neck. She doesn’t know why she’s crying.
Eren’s harsh pounding settles into smoother, longer thrusts as they find their rhythm. His hands rest on either side of her head, one sliding into her hair to kiss her searchingly. Starlight bursts in the pit of her stomach as she presses closer, yearning to bind themselves inseparable; the ache so profound it threatens to choke her.
He breaks away from her mouth with a growl as his hips jerk, thrusting so deep she keens. “I’m gonna… Mikasa, I’m gonna come, baby.”
“Please,” she gasps. “Please, Eren, I wanna feel you.”
He groans louder, longer, shoving her up against the wall as he drives into her with a renewed vigor. His hand dips between them to rub her clit, and it’s almost too much. Too much. She whines, so wet he’s slipping, the pressure near-painful but sugar-sweet.
With a snarl and a sharp thrust, his cock pulses inside her, a strange warmth filling her belly. Mikasa follows just seconds after, biting down on his collarbone to muffle her scream.
They slump against the wall, his weight pressing her into the cold brick. His face falls onto her shoulder as she slides her legs from his waist and forces herself to stand. And then she just holds him, because the instinct is always there. Because he can never be close enough.
He kisses her again, and she whispers, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
A strange light flickers in his eyes, a bone-deep regret that she pretends she doesn’t notice.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he agrees.
The writing is on the wall. She pulls up her ruined nightgown and leaves.