A/N: A series of one shots I publish for Ereannie week!

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Day 1/8

First time

It's almost impossible to see through the dark shrouding the field beneath the plateau. The abyssal sky is cloaked in thick clouds, ignited with flares of lightning and rumbling with mighty bursts of thunder. Eren Jaeger inhales the damp air, tasting the impending storm on his tongue as he leans his shoulder into the rifle's stock, his forefinger curling around the trigger, squinting into the night vision scope.

It's their platoon's second mission, his first out in the field.

"Don't be nervous," the intrepid voice beside him remarks, as frigid as the thin layer of frost settled beneath them despite the warmth in her breath as it fans the back of his neck. It is ever present and unnaturally alive, somewhat inhuman, partially omnipotent.

He thinks that this girl is more dangerous than what they're hunting. She could curls her fingers around his throat and strangle him so easily he wouldn't have a chance to fight back, leaving him here in the Outlands. It's almost funny how small she is in comparison, but she's lethal, he's seen it; witnessed her floor the biggest guy in their squad like he was an incompetent child.

Suddenly he doesn't like the idea of being out here with her, alone in the dark of the Outlands, almost like the last year of training in the same recruit platoon has had the same effect as shaking hands with a complete and charming stranger.

He could radio out to the half of his squad that stayed behind to track the search groups from behind the safety of the Wall in the Command center, just like he had done during the first mission, but she could use her combat knife, and slice open his voice box with the flick of her wrist. The several other pairs of soldiers roaming the Outlands could find him, if they bothered to look.

He doesn't know why he's more intimidated by her than by their real enemy.

In retrospect, she is his friend, they've made that clear as a baseline minimum. Of course – when he briefly glances over to meet her gaze – he can see the strange thrill burning behind her eyes like sapphire embers, and it bothers him. She's enjoying this. How twisted.

"Relax," she whispers as soothingly as before, shifting a little closer to him so her chest is pressed almost completely up against his side. He guides his eye back to the scope to avoid looking at her. "Focus, Eren."

A suppressed tingle creeps down his spine. He swallows dryly, not at her but at the jerking object in his line of sight. "It's my first time," he informs her, because she was chosen to go out on the last mission while he was selected to stay at Command.

"I know. Just breathe." Her gloved fingers trace the stitching of his coat, across the expanse of his hips. "I only killed three myself last time. It's not that bad."

"But it's a person," he tells her insistently, the bulls eye of his scope connecting with the swaying forehead of the figure in the field.

"It isn't alive anymore. It's not a person, it's just a corpse."

He grits his teeth. He knows that. Everyone knows that.

"I thought you wanted to kill them all, Jaeger?" she purrs into his ear, mocking the dream he had declared the first day during recruitment, nipping suggestively at his earlobe with her front teeth like she's going to devour him alive. Just like those damn monsters. Honestly, he would rather they got to him first. "Especially after they killed your poor mother when you were just a child?"

"Fuck off," he hisses, hot and bothered by her typical psychological bullshit. She hums against the base of his skull, her knee gradually rubbing up the length of his thigh. "Ah – For fuck's sake Annie, how am I supposed to do this if you're distracting me?"

"If you're too chicken shit to pull the trigger, I'll have to do it for you."

At the sound of crashing thunder overhead Eren immediately fires, the resounding explosion of gun powder muffles by the natural roaring in the void, and the bullet streamlines through the air with an acute, descending whistle. The skull of the shambling body snaps back against the force, before the limbs jerk violently and the torso falls limply to the grass. "There," Eren grumbles, but a victorious smile has settled in his features, "not bad for a first shot."

Annie smiles against his shoulder. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Bite me. You can get off on this, but I'm not anything like you." He means it – she's being sadistic, cruel, and belittling, just as her last mission partner had mentioned, and if he doesn't watch her her hands might end up between the heat of her own legs.

Her finger tips slide along the length of his cheek. "And what am I then, Eren, if not a human like you? A monster like them?"

"Annie," he stresses when he hears the slight crack in her normally undeterred tone, "I didn't mean it like that. I meant that you and I are – Sina dammit, it doesn't matter. I'm sorry, alright? Just let it go."

The duo of blazing blue orbs spears him with a calculated glare. He shudders, distracts himself by turning his attention into the scope once more. "Don't brush it off Jaeger, tell me what you really meant. I'm curious."

"You're not curious," he shoots back, spotting another shambling corpse several yards away from the one he previously gunned down. "You're just trying to provoke me. I don't know what your problem is but you can't play your weird mind games with me." He pulls the trigger but the bullet shreds through the wheat stalks, completely bypassing the rotted corpse's head. "Shit."

"Who said I was?"

"Is this because it's your birthday and no one got you a fucking gift?"

Annie draws back from him, furrowing her brow quizzically, and he doesn't have to look at her to know he's hit the right nerve. Thunder grumbles overhead once more, illuminating the back of her head like a broken halo of heavenly light. "You… remembered? But you can barely recall how to lace up your own boots."

"Of course I remembered your birthday, Annie." He shrugs passively, realigning the marker with the creature's forehead. "First of all, for the record, I can tie my own damn boots just fine. Secondly, I was going to surprise you with your gift, but since you're obviously having emotional trauma over the lack of distributed attention, you can have the cursed thing now. It's in the left – OOF!"

She throws him onto his back, not hard but suddenly, her arms around his waist and her lips melding perfectly with his. He hums in surprise, melting against her familiar touch, the growling ebbing into a satisfied moan. She breaks off so she can tuck her head into the crook of his neck. "No one's ever remembered," she mutters, kicking her legs into the air almost childishly, "but at least this one doesn't suck anymore."

Eren scoffs under his breath, fishing out the necklace from his pocket. Despite the grime and muck it resembles a circle. Like a sun, because her hair reminds him of the sunlight they rarely see anymore. "I looted it from that dead corpse we saw on the way here."

"How romantic," she chides with a furtive eye roll. She accepts the grimy necklace and wipes the front with her jacket sleeve, revealing the flattened sapphire stone in the center of the gold circle. "You think it's worth anything?"

"Maybe if it's real."

She tucks it away into her breast pocket. "What do you say we keep shooting? Maybe we'll find something else on the other bodies. The fuckers don't need any of it, right?"

Looting reanimated corpses isn't exactly a birthday party theme I'd care to indulge in, he ponders, but he just smiles instead. There's a first time for everything.

"Anything for the birthday girl."