Usually after sex there was this nice peaceful bubble of time where Eren could forget who exactly his boyfriends were. Sure, they were still Erwin and Levi, but they weren't spies. They didn't have fifteen guns hidden in various spots around the apartment – every once in a while Eren would forget that they were there until he opened a drawer and saw one and had to catch his breath. They didn't regularly sweep the apartment for bugs or change out their phones if they got the impression that theirs were tapped, which seemed to happen every month or so. They didn't have Eren always call the cable or electric company if they sent someone over to confirm that they were supposed to be there before he let them in. He didn't have to randomize which grocery stores he went to so that he didn't have a regular schedule someone could track. He didn't have to live in this unnatural paranoia.
But as soon as the doorbell rang, that all came crashing back to him. His bubble was burst and his boyfriends were spies again. Erwin shoved Eren off his chest almost roughly as soon as the sound reached their ears and by the time Eren looked up, both he and Levi had thrown on their pants and were armed with handguns, slowly heading towards the front door of the apartment.
Eren tore the sheet off the bed – it was dirty now anyway – and wrapped it around his waist as he stood up.
Levi glanced back at him when he heard the movement. "Get in the bathroom," he ordered, turning back to the threat that waited outside the door. Any visitor knew to call first, so to Erwin and Levi anybody who came unannounced was a threat. In their line of work, it was a decent assumption to make.
Still, even though he knew the risk, Eren was not fond of being ordered around like that right after sex, and he was just overall unhappy that his peaceful, no-threats-to-your-life bubble had been burst so abruptly, so he just stomped into the bathroom and shut the door. He closed the toilet lid and sat down and he tried to not be angry at Erwin and Levi for treating him like some little kid. He knew it wasn't their fault. They just didn't want him to get hurt or put him into any danger. But even so, Eren had never been a passive person, just sitting by while others did the work. He hated being treated like a damsel in distress. Besides, he couldn't imagine that what was waiting outside the front door was really a threat to their lives, so he remained for the most part pissed off that his post-coital nap got so rudely interrupted.
It was silent outside for a minute, and Eren imagined Erwin and Levi signaling silently to each other and arranging themselves in front of the door so that they had a good shot at the visitor if they happened to be a threat. He imagined Levi staying back with his gun raised as Erwin looked in the peephole to see that outside it was just-
"Helloooo!"
Of course it was Hanji. Hanji always chose the exact wrong time to come over, and would frequently forget to call first. Eren could faintly hear Levi complaining to Hanji about calling ahead and Hanji blowing Levi off, and when he heard Erwin mention that he was going to "go get Eren," he decided it was time to stand up and leave by himself. He didn't need to be fetched like some lady in waiting. He opened the bathroom door just as Erwin entered the bedroom, not caring that Hanji could possibly see him wearing just a sheet around Erwin in the doorway from the other room. He crossed to where his clothes had been thrown on the floor and started dressing, pretending to ignore Erwin in the doorway.
"I was just coming to get you," Erwin said, not realizing Eren's foul mood. "It's just Hanji."
"I could hear," Eren said blankly as he pulled on his jeans.
Erwin had entered the room and was putting on his own shirt when he noticed Eren's attitude. He went over to the boy and put a hand on his arm. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
Eren sighed with his shirt in his hands. He didn't look up at Erwin. "No… Yes, just…" He didn't want to get into the 'you're-dating-spies-so-you-always-need-to-be-on-high-alert' argument when they had a visitor. He didn't want to get into it at all, though it would probably end up coming about later. So he just lightly fudged the truth. "I was looking forward to our nap."
Realizing it was something that simple, or at least that's all Eren would admit to at the moment, Erwin chuckled and hugged Eren, who was still holding his shirt. "I know. I'm not too happy about being interrupted, either. At least Hanji didn't get here just a few minutes earlier, right?"
Eren nodded into Erwin's chest and the man released him so that he could get dressed. Once the both of them had finished, Erwin grabbed a shirt for Levi and the two of them went into the kitchen, where a disgruntled-looking Levi and an ever-enthusiastic Hanji were sitting. Erwin tossed Levi his shirt and he put it on as Hanji lit up when they saw Eren.
"Eren!" Hanji called, standing and hugging him even though he was still kind of pissed off. Hanji never seemed to care if someone was pissed off. "It's been so long since I last saw you!"
The boy attempted to smile but it came across more as a grimace, but it didn't matter because he was still being crushed in Hanji's arms. "Yeah…" he said weakly. "Um… Would you like some coffee?"
As Hanji accepted and thanked Eren for his very generous offer, Levi muttered in the background about "not letting that monster anywhere near caffeine." Eren ignored Levi's comment and he went to go change the grounds and start the coffee maker.
Hanji sat back down and Erwin joined them at the table, asking, "So, Hanji, what brings you over here?"
Levi added, "Unannounced."
Hanji just smiled at Levi's snark and said, "Well I heard that Mr. Grumpy here got hurt on last night's mission and I wanted to make sure he was okay!"
Levi scoffed. "How generous. I'm fine, though."
Hanji didn't listen to Levi's assurance and grabbed the man's bandaged arm, pulling off the bandage to look at the stitched-up wound as Eren came back to the table with cups of coffee for the four of them. His and Hanji's were black – "Hanji takes it black like their soul," Levi had told him the first time he'd offered them coffee – Levi's had a spoonful of sugar, and Erwin's just a dash of milk. Eren had learned their coffee orders long ago. He set the mugs down on the table and watched Hanji examine the wound he'd stitched up. He knew that Hanji took care of Erwin and Levi's – and other spies in whatever organization they worked for – health and was like the team doctor, but he had also overheard them talking about making explosives and poisons a few times when he had been listening in on things he shouldn't have been. So he didn't exactly know the extent of Hanji's job. He didn't exactly know a lot of things about the organization Erwin and Levi worked for. He didn't even know its name. But Eren did know that he would not want to be in a twenty-block radius of Hanji with explosives, but that was probably a good trait to have in this line of work. He could definitely see Hanji being able to blow things up.
The doctor – Eren had found out, since Hanji was a little bit more talkative about their work than Erwin and Levi, that Hanji at least had gotten their MD – poked and prodded at Levi's wound, making the man even more disgruntled. Eren sat down and he and Erwin just observed, sipping their coffees. "This is very nicely stitched, Levi," Hanji eventually said. They looked at Erwin. "Did you do this?"
Erwin put down his mug and smiled. "No, that was Eren," he said proudly, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Ooh, Eren, you're getting better!" Hanji exclaimed. Eren had asked Erwin and Levi to teach him how to suture a while back when he felt helpless whenever either of them came back hurt, and after some argument they decided it really couldn't hurt to know. Hanji had come over and helped him, showing him how to practice on oranges.
Still, Eren wasn't fond of how much field practice he got, actually stitching up one of his boyfriends. So, even though Hanji had meant it as a compliment, the words stung. "Yeah," he said with a forced smile. "Thanks."
Hanji had grabbed their bag and was rustling through it and looked up when they heard Eren's tone. "What's got you so down, buttercup?" they asked, still searching for something in their bag. Hanji was like Mary-fucking-Poppins with that bag of theirs. They had everything in there. They eventually pulled out a large bandage and replaced the one they had pulled off Levi's arm to inspect the wound.
Eren didn't want to answer Hanji's question, so he took a sip of his coffee instead. Erwin answered for him when he saw Eren's evasiveness.
"You may have interrupted an, ah, intimate moment when you arrived," he said diplomatically.
Hanji got the message and perked up. "Oooh, so you three were in the middle of spanking the monkey, eh?" they motioned between the three of them and made some weird gesture that the others assumed was meant to be something lewd.
"No, but we had just finished," Levi said, not caring what the doctor knew about their sex life.
"Oooh," Hanji said. They looked at Eren across the table, who had his head resting on his crossed arms on the table now, and stood up and walked around to the boy. They wrapped their arms around him, once again nearly crushing his ribcage. "I'm sorry, honeybuns! I didn't know I was interrupting cuddle-time!"
"You would have known if you had called first," Levi reminded.
Hanji shot Levi a sharp look, still not letting go of Eren. "Well, I'm sorry I was worried about your health and wellbeing!"
"You know we'd call you if it was something serious, Hanji," Erwin reminded.
Eren gasped for air, still being crushed. "Hanji?" he gasped. The doctor looked down at him questioningly. "Could you let go of me please?"
"Oh!" Hanji exclaimed when they noticed how blue Eren was turning. "Sorry, sweetcheeks!" They let go of him and walked around to their seat at the table as Eren was finally able to breathe again. The four of them sat in relative silence for a minute, just sipping their coffee. Hanji would often begin a sentence but then glance at Eren and stop, knowing that Erwin and Levi tried to keep the boy as detached from their work lives as possible.
Eventually Eren got the hint. He took his mug and stood, saying, "I'll be in the bedroom." He grabbed his laptop and headphones from the living room before practically marching off into the bedroom and closing the door behind him. He hated it when things got this way, when everybody tiptoed around him because he was the innocent little kid who wasn't allowed to know anything. He knew Erwin and Levi did it to keep him safe, but… that didn't mean it was any less frustrating. And besides, what would be so bad about him knowing what was going on? If anything, it would help put his mind at ease, knowing where Levi and Erwin were and what they would be doing. It had to be better than whatever horrific fantasies his mind conjured up. But no, he had to be kept in the dark about everything. He tried not to get jealous of Erwin and Levi, because he knew relationships like theirs didn't work if one of them was jealous of the other two, but there was just so much more that they knew about each other than he knew about them. As much as Eren tried not to let that get to him, he couldn't help it sometimes. And when he started thinking that way, the only thing he could do was try to ignore it. He laid down on the bed, which still reeked of their recent activities, and opened his laptop, deciding that what he really needed to do right now is play some violent videogames.