Chapter Text
Eren drops his last box onto the floor and uses the back of his arm to wipe away the sweat from his forehead. Despite feeling gross, he stares proudly at the empty house in front of him.
He has just bought his first home all by himself.
Sure it's a very, very old house that no one seemed to stay in for a long time - according to his realtor. (Although his realtor didn't tell him why everyone before him has left this house long before their mortgage was paid off.) But that only helped him as it lowered the price so he could actually afford something. So he can't complain too much.
Even with the house's unknown history, he still can't believe the steal he got for this house. He has a home that has a solid foundation, it has been nicely renovated over the years to fit a modern lifestyle, and it's in a fairly nice, quiet neighborhood.
Nothing can make him leave this house unlike all those other people before him. Nothing. Plus, he has no more money left even if he wanted to leave and find a new place. He's stuck here for years to come and he is ready to make this his home.
"That's the last of it." He hears Armin say behind him with a thud against the floor.
"Thanks for your help, guys." Eren looks at his two friends. "It's going to be a little weird living without you two but I'm excited for this new adventure."
"Are you sure about this Eren? Armin and I can still move in with you. You have two extra rooms." Mikasa reassures Eren.
"I told you this a thousand times but I don't need either of you living with me. I don't want to be in your guys' way anymore. It's time to start living on my own." Which will be hard for them all because they've been living together since they were young. But it's time to spread his wings. And Eren doesn't want to feel like a burden to them.
They all met a loonnggg time ago in one of the worst circumstances. They were all forced to live in the same orphanage after all their parents passed away and none of them had extended family to take care of them.
They were the only ones in the orphanage that were the same age so they all naturally became friends. And from early on, they all promised to always stay together and protect their new found family of three.
Then when they were kicked out of the orphanage at 18 years old, they continued to live together in a small apartment that didn't fit them all. Although it was also the best option to room together because coming from an orphanage, they didn't have a lot of money or anyone to help them out.
So for the next year, they worked their asses off to earn and save money in order to get a better place and truly have a stable, comfortable life.
When they found a larger apartment and Eren landed a good job in construction, he forced Armin and Mikasa to continue their education while he spent his time working to be able to pay the bills for them all.
The two refused multiple times until Eren forced them to give in. They both had an opportunity to go to university on scholarships which they all knew they couldn't pass up if they wanted a better life. Armin and Mikasa eventually agree to Eren's plan but only after amending it to Eren pays the rent while Armin and Mikasa switch between paying everything else - utilities, groceries, and other necessities all three of them will share.
This worked until Armin and Mikasa got into graduate school. It was then that Eren felt like he was getting in their way and being a distraction to them as they study for their master and future phd degrees. He knew that him working odd hours and living off of a couch in the living room wasn't good for any of them. Neither of them said anything but Eren knew that him coming back at abnormal hours would always wake up his two best friends or disrupt their studying and that would impact their education.
Therefore he made a tough decision early on to save every penny he can and move out so Armin and Mikasa can focus on graduating in peace. He knew that they didn't need him for paying rent anymore since their master degree programs paid them enoigh to cover it. And once again, the two didn't agree to Eren's new plan originally but nothing could stop Eren once he was set on it.
He waves to his two friends as they get in their car and drive away. And once they disappear down the street, he closes the front door. It echoes off the barren walls, reminding him how alone he truly is now.
Eren turns around and takes a deep breath as his eyes take in his new home. It's really his. All his. It still feels like a dream.
Then he stares at all the boxes on the floor and sighs. He's too tired to even consider unpacking everything right now.
So he doesn't.
And instead he heads up the stairs to his new room. He mentally thanks Armin for his foresight when earlier in the day, he made them set up Eren's bed because he knew Eren would be too tired later to even put his bed together. Eren's not surprised anymore that Armin seems to know Eren more than Eren knows himself.
After almost falling asleep in the shower, he plops down on his bed and doesn't even remember falling under.
Eren flinches to life when he hears a loud banging sound coming from downstairs. He is still half asleep but his heart is racing from the sudden noise. No noise is good when it's nighttime.
He wills himself to get up to check on the noise while thinking that it'd be just his luck that someone broke into his house on the first day.
He creeps down the stairs slowly and quietly. His eyes scan the whole area on the way down but so far he doesn't see or hear anyone moving around. He carefully places a foot on the tile of the first floor before turning on all the lights and checking each room.
He finally stops at the opening of the kitchen and finds the potential source of the loud noise that woke him up.
He stares at a fallen box with pot and pans all over the kitchen floor.
Eren sighs at the now mess on the floor. It must have fallen off its pile of other boxes full of kitchen stuff.
He looks at the clock on the microwave to see that it's actually late and past the time that he usually eats dinner. Then he looks back at the stuff on the floor.
"I guess this is my sign to make some dinner." He says to himself.
He picks up a small pot, fills it with water, and places it on the stove. While the water begins to heat up, he takes that time to clean up the floor - placing all the pot, pans, and tupperware in their new home in the cabinet next to the stove.
He moves to his next box that has his dry, packaged food only to pull out a packet of ramen. Something quick, easy to make and eat so he can go back to bed faster. He dumps it in the pot when the water starts to boil.
He's stirring the noodles when he hears a quick noise behind him of something moving. But it stops when he turns around. The only thing behind him is the stacked boxes that have been there since hours ago. Nothing has changed and they shouldn't be making noise. He figures that he's more tired than he feels and his mind is making him hear things.
He gives one last look around before turning back to the noodles and continues to stir them until they become soft and separate. He moves them to the sink where he empties half of the water and adds the ramen seasoning. He lets the ramen noodles soak in the broth while he digs through the boxes for a bowl and a fork.
As he's rummaging through, he hears the noise again. Like something is shifting. He turns his head towards the noise and out of the corner of his eye he sees the box holding his dry food move a little bit forward. But a split second later when he is full on staring at it, it doesn't move anymore. He narrows his eyes on the box, mentally daring it to move again. But he also notices that it has moved from the position it was in just a few minutes ago.
When it doesn't move any further, he goes back to what he was doing and puts the bowl and fork on the counter. But he doesn't get very far when he hears the noise a third time. He whips around just in time to see the food box move further off the box it's stacked on, ready to fall over if pushed anymore.
"What the hell?" Eren is irritated now. He stomps over to the box. "They told me they got rid of all the fucking rats in the house. They better not have missed one."
He grabs the food box and moves it to the floor. "There. Now you can't knock it over, you damn rat. Stay out of there or I'll buy some rat poison just for you." He threatens aloud. Sure his threat won't do anything because wild rats don't understand human words. But it still gives him reassurance that he won't have to wage war on the rats.
With a sound mind, he walks back to his ramen. Finally he is able to pour the ramen into the bowl with no interruptions. And he totally forgets the event when he basks in the wonderful taste of the instant ramen after a long day of work.
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(The next day)
Eren drops down onto his couch and closes his eyes while his head rests on the back of the couch. He's been unpacking all morning, most everything is placed in their new home, and he just needs a little break now.
But when he's half asleep, he is interrupted when he hears cardboard sliding on the tile. He cracks an eye open halfway and looks around the best he can without moving his head. He doesn't see anything so he closes his eyes again, convincing himself that he just imagined the sound after pushing boxes around all day.
Then he's awakened again with a loud bang, giving him deja vu of how he was awoken last night. But this time, the couch that he's on is shaking too from the sound.
Eren sits up frantically and really looks around. Was there just an earthquake and something fell down? This part of the world didn't have a lot of earthquakes but it's not uncommon either.
Eren slowly gets up while examining the living room. Nothing seems out of place, nothing has fallen over. So he takes a step, walks away from the couch, and somehow hits a box with his foot and is sent stumbling.
When he stables himself from falling over, he looks behind him at the floor. There is a box right there behind the spot on the couch where he was sitting. He stares at it for a good few seconds because he knows for certain that he did not leave a box there.
So somehow it has found its way over here. And Eren takes cautious steps towards the box. He knows that it couldn't have moved on its own. And it seemed pretty heavy when he hit his foot on it. There's no way rats could've moved it but he has no other idea how it got there.
He kneels down and opens the box slowly at a distance. He doesn't need something to jump out at him.
Thankfully nothing jumps out and all he sees in the box is his cleaning supplies. His body relaxes a bit. It's just cleaning supplies. Nothing to be scared of even if it moved here by itself.
He starts laughing at himself as he just stares into the box.
"Are you trying to tell me something?" Eren asks to his cleaning supplies.
He had the house cleaned before he moved in, but of course that didn't last long after as he moved everything in and started unpacking.
Eren sighs to himself and goes into the box to grab the counter cleaner and a rag. He might as well start cleaning before he gets really tired again and the house grows messy because he has put it off.
He starts with cleaning all the surfaces in the kitchen and rest of the first floor before moving up to the second floor bathroom. And it's in there that he's getting frustrated at a stain on the counter top. It's not coming out no matter how many times he scrubs it.
He finally throws in the towel (literally) when he accepts that it's not coming out. He throws his rag down on the counter top in frustration before storming out and moving onto the next thing - vacuuming the tile so he can mop after.
Eren nearly forgets about his war against the stain on the second floor bathroom until he's back up there vacuuming the floor while the first floor is drying. And he's so focused on making sure that all the dirt is vacuumed up that he didn't realize that the rag he threw earlier has moved. But it's on his way out that he does a double take because the mark he was fighting with is now miraculously gone.
"Huh?!" Eren yells into the empty house. "What?!" He leans in closer to the counter top, examining every inch of it. And there's no mark to be seen. "What the hell? Where did it go?!"
A mark like that that he had spent 15 minutes trying to remove is simply now gone like it was never there? How? How was that possible?
He feels a headache starting as he tries to wrap his mind around what has happened. He knows that a rat couldn't have moved his box of cleaning supplies earlier and a rat definitely couldn't have cleaned his countertop.
He doesn't want to accept what this could possibly mean because he doesn’t want it to be real. So he doesn't acknowledge the thought anymore and quickly leaves the bathroom. He's done anyways and doesn't have to worry about the mark anymore, which he mentally thanks whatever was able to clean it.
With a headache growing stronger and stronger, Eren returns his vacuum to the downstairs closet, grabs a snack from the kitchen, and just stays in his room for the rest of the night. And he definitely isn't thinking about the possibility that he's not alone in this house.