New Year's Eve Eve
Annie

Eren and I have a pattern going on.

We start each weekday, going about our own business, until 4-5PM, when we regroup at the Bean Bar. There, we chat and study (but mostly chat), before grabbing some nicely discounted dinner and drinks, courtesy of Bert. He walks me home around midnight, which is early for me, but by then, he's yawning. I wrap up whatever studying's left over, watch some late-night TV, and doze off on the couch around my usual 3AM bedtime. My roommate Mina (probably the only person immune to my bullshit) wakes me up around 10AM, right as she's about to leave for work. Again, unless it's Tuesday, and I have to lug myself to that damned 9AM with Dr. Zoe.

But even then, Tuesdays are no longer as agonizing as they used to be.

This whole pattern has been on repeat for the last three months. I'd thought that I'd grow sick of him, like I do with many people.

He has his irritating moments, where he drags out a soapbox and preaches for seemingly hours. One afternoon at the Bean Bar, he asked me what I wanted to specialize in. Trauma surgery, I told him. He asked me why. I told him tackling those nasty ER cases seemed cool. Hardcore, even. Definitely not boring.

"No, no," Eren said, "what's the real reason?"

"I just told you," I said.

"Like, why do you want to be on-call in the dead of night?" he pressed, giving me this intense look.

I felt uncomfortable. "I don't think anyone really wants to be in that position. But it's part of the job," I answered.

His eyes ignited without warning. I was taken aback by his sudden anger. Slamming down the coffee mug he was washing behind the counter, he tore me apart, going off on how I needed a better purpose. He went on and on about resolve and duty and a load of other lofty, pretentious bullcrap. The old guys looked up from their newspapers. The engineering nerds glanced up from their mystery math.

I shut him up by socking him in the jaw and storming home, skipping my nightly martini.

Bert called nervously, wondering if I was sick and needed anything. Mina was surprised to find me on the couch so early.

The next day happened to be a Tuesday. Which sucked. Eren walked right past me, not batting an eye, when he entered Zoe's lecture hall. I avoided the Bean Bar and went straight to The Colossus. I was in such a shitty mood that Bert, sensing the vibes, told me my six drinks were on him. An early Christmas gift, he insisted.

That evening, around midnight, Mina and I were marathoning cringeworthy holiday movies, when we heard a knock. To our knowledge, we didn't order any eleventh-hour pizza this time (for the sole purpose of pissing off Papa John's). Peering through the peephole, Mina called if I knew this dude: "brown hair, mid-height, blue shirt with a coffee stain, freaky bruise on his face.

I told her that I knew no such guy.

Outside, he yelled, "Are you fucking kidding me?!"

"Who is he?" Mina whispered, tiptoeing back to the couch. "Another stupid hook-up who's in love with you?"

"I wish," I replied dully, shoveling a handful of popcorn into my mouth.

Eren continued to pound on the door, shouting my name.

"He's gonna wake up the whole floor," Mina said, glancing back at the door.

"That's the point. They'll complain and the landlord's Doberman can chase him out."

"You're cruel."

"Let's be real: you'd love to see it happen. We even have a clear view of the street he'll bolt down."

"Of course not, that's awful!"

"Don't lie to me."

"Okay, fine. As hilarious as that'll be, who the hell is this guy?"

I shrugged.

"Annie," Mina pleaded.

"Classmate," I conceded.

"What did he do to you?" she continued.

"Annoyed the hell outta me."

"Everyone annoys the hell outta you. What did he do?"

"Threw his weight around."

The pounding at the door fell silent. Eren's footsteps shuffled away.

"Sweet, he's gone."

"Maybe he came to apologize?" Mina suggested.

"Nah, my money's on delivering a sequel to the lecture he gave me the yesterday. I hope the bitch rips the back of his pants off." I cranked up the volume of our movie. "We can watch him run home ass-naked."

"How about this?" Mina yanked the remote out of my hand and paused the movie. "Catch him before he's gone and hear him out just for a minute. Like I'll even text you to signal when sixty seconds are up. And if he decides to 'throw his weight around' again, we'll sic Tina on him."

"And get it on film?"

"And get it on film."

"Hm, that's a thought."

"But you have to promise me that you'll actually hear him out."

"I don't make promises."

"You do know that Tina gets cranky when her sleep is disrupted. Remember what happened to the guy downstairs?"

"Fair enough," I sighed, lifting myself up to my feet and throwing a hoodie over my T-shirt.

When I opened the door, he wasn't in the hallway but right by the stairwell, flipping through that favorite news app of his, reading some article. He wore a troubled expression on his face, playing with his scarf. Mina wasn't kidding about the freakish bruise by the corner of his mouth. I almost felt sorry.

"You've got sixty seconds," I told him, perching a few steps above him. "Spit it out."

"Listen, Annie," he began quietly. "I'm sorry I went off on you like that. It's just that something really personal happened to me, relating to that line of work. My dad was an ER surgeon downtown. He dealt with the… for lack of a better word, messiest cases, and when I was nine years-old, he took me to the hospital to show me around for a day. And that day happened to be one of the worst."

We'd fallen back into our rhythm of him talking, me listening. He told me how not ten seconds after the EMT's wheeled in two blood-soaked stretchers, Dr. Jaeger recognized these two as his closest friends. People that he grew up with in Evanston. They were husband and wife, walking through town that evening, when a car, running a red light, hit them on a crosswalk. Eren told me how he peered over the front desk, watching as the heart monitor began beeping erratically on the woman's monitor, how staff swarmed around that stretcher, switching immediately into CPR. (Mina texted me right around here, but I ignored her.) Shocks were administered, but all he could see over the flurry of activity was that flatline. The other doctors insisted that they call it, but Eren's father persisted with chest compressions, screaming at the monitor to give him any indication of life. Nothing. An hour later, the woman's husband joined her.

"My dad was the very last line of defense," Eren said, pulling at his scarf. What a strange habit. "That's why I'm going into emergency medicine. Your job is to stand at the edge of a cliff and save people from falling over the edge. You're the last guardrail before it's all over."

He apologized for sounding like such a condescending brat. He said that he was out of line. That I had every right to land him that bruise.

I told him it was all good. No grudges held. For once.

A silence ensued.

I invited him to trash Christmas movies with us. He thanked me for understanding, managing a grin, despite wincing from the masterpiece I left on him. But he had somewhere to be.

From my window, I watched him head down the street, the light of his phone screen shrinking with each step before disappearing into the darkness.

I thought that incident would throw a wrench in our… friendship—which is a word that feels a bit strange to say, but I'm slowly getting accustomed to it—but if anything, it opened the door to topics that we both felt better steering the light away from.

Thereafter, he talked about his dad some more. And his mother. About how exactly nine years later, on that last day of December, his mother clutched at her chest. Reeling to the ground. Gasping. Reaching towards the tabletop that seemed to loom a hundred feet over her, to dial 9-1-1. He talked about how he entered his home, which was eerily silent. About how he hated himself for spending an extra hour on the soccer field when he could've caught her before she hit the ground. And he talked about how his father was so grief-stricken that he couldn't stay in Chicago anymore. After dropping Eren off for college, Dr. Jaeger flew to Venezuela to join Médecins Sans Frontières. Doctors Without Borders. Eren receives emails from his father once a month. Or so he was promised.

With each "see ya" at the front door of my apartment building, the window to his personal narrative opened just a sliver wider. And weirdly enough, I haven't grown sick of him. Yet.

It's been three months since he sat down at The Colossus for the first time. He told me that he'd be gone for the week of Christmas, spending the holidays with an old friend who's just returned to Evanston from an internship in NYC.

Since the 23rd, I've been bored. So. Fucking. Bored. Mina and I got sick of trolling Papa John's, so we decided make Domino's our new victim. The delivery girl seemed too cheerful, all ruddy and giggling, so that wasn't any fun.

On Christmas Eve, we took a temporary hiatus and set our sights on this dingy little kosher place a few blocks away. Another buzzkill. The guy screamed "FUCK OFF!" into the phone before we had a chance to order the most complicated thing on the menu.

On Christmas Day, Mina woke me up by popping a bottle of champagne. Her Christmas present to me. She hugged me, thanking me for the pocketbook of savage comebacks that I slipped under the wilting aloe plant on the kitchen table (though knowing her, I highly doubt she'll use any of those witty remarks). Yesterday, before we got an earful from the kosher restaurant, she'd cut out a star (?) from a yellow advertisement and taped it the least-droopy leaf. The leaf collapsed by noon.

The days after, I decided to capitalize on the post-Christmas discounts and scoured the stores for… something. I found some options, but for the life of me, I couldn't whittle down my choices. I was between a mug printed with an swear words in bajillion different languages, a pillowcase emblazoned with an obnoxious slogan, and a grey-ish-blue scarf and mitten set.

On the 28th, I sat in the store for an hour, staring at my options. I got many weird looks from the cashier.

By the 29th, someone had already taken the pillowcase. I sat for another hour. The cashier approached me, but one glare sent him scurrying.

As two hours ago, today the 30th, only the scarf and mittens were left. A part of me wanted to hunt them down the buyer of the mug and wrest that glorious artifact from his/her hands. But another part of me praised them making my life marginally easier. The cashier rang me up faster than I can blink.

I went to the bar soon after. And I'm now chatting with Bert. Or a more accurate way to put it is that I'm now enduring yet another one of his attempts at small-talk by recalling some important things that've happened as of late. Still, he seems more comfortable, bashfully telling me about how he found a new apartment. It's also his birthday, apparently.

A twenty-something slips into the stool beside me, asking if he can buy me a drink. I tell him, go for it. I use this as a license to order some Scotch that's probably twice my age. The dude chokes a little but obliges. Then, something I say (thankfully) makes him leave. Score one for Annie.

And I sit here, drinking. Drinking because there's nothing better to do. First semester is over. I've still got that 3.7—which, to be exact, has bumped up to a 3.78. There's nothing to worry about in the time being, but for some stupid reason, I'm not at ease. I keep glancing over at the door, my heart rate escalating whenever someone enters.

"Another martini," I slur to Bert, after forcing down the Scotch. Note to self: never again.

"Uh, you sure?" he asks. In my hazy vision, I see him scrunch up his brow in something that looks like worry. Then again, he's been worried from the moment he was conceived.

I shrug. "I'll pay full price."

"Don't sweat it," he mumbles, pouring my glass to the brim and dunking in an olive.

"You rock."

I sit there, drinking and drinking. The clock ticks away.

11:30.

12:00.

12:20.

12:40.

12:50.

12:55.

12:57.

1:00.

Finally, after minutes, hours, and days of agonizing boredom, the door squeaks open. The room crackles with electricity. I forget how to breathe. A wintry draft rushes into the bar. The door slams behind him.

"Hey," Eren says with a small smile, sliding right beside me. "Long time no see."

"No kidding," I reply, cracking a whip over my erratic heart rate. Stop being stupid. Relax.

He's wearing his UChicago sweatshirt. The same one here wore when I first met him. Some white flurries have landed softly on his hair, soon to meet their end as liquid droplets. That red scarf of his, the one that he picks at when he's nervous, presumably from his alma mater, is coiled around his neck like always, looking old and tired.

"Hey… I got you s… something," I say, stumbling over my words like a moron, fumbling for the shopping bag somewhere around my feet.

"Damn, Annie," he laughs. "You're wasted, and it's not even New Year's Eve yet."

My foot hooks around the handle of the bag, and I fish it up into my hands. He laughs even more.

"So I got you—"

"Wait, one request," he says. "It's not fun when I'm sober and you're clearly not, so let me cover some ground. How many drinks have you had?"

"Like… three?"

"Bert?"

"Eight," the bartender corrects mournfully from the other end of the bar.

"Shit," Eren replies, impressed. "Eight shots then, Bert. Fireball."

"Oh my god," Bert mutters, coming over with a platter of eight shot glasses. He pours the vile, red whiskey into each before disappearing to fetch a mop and bucket in advance.

"Don't worry, I've been on a two-year vomit-free streak," Eren calls after him. "Anyhow, I just gotta get through today, and abusing my liver helps pass the time. So tell me," he takes his first shot, tipping his head back, scrunching up his face as the fireball makes his way down his esophagus, "what've you been up to this week?"

He takes a second shot as I try to recall everything, as I had earlier today. But I'm drawing a blank. Nothing noteworthy has happened. Nothing that has imprinted itself into my fuzzy memory.

A third shot.

"I did some shopping," I tell him.

He swallows #4. "Oh, and one more request," he adds after resisting the urge to gag. "I get to go first after these last four disgusting shots."

A fifth.

"Why's that?" I ask.

Bert reappears, setting his precautionary measures against the wall before attending to another customer. "If you can, take your imminent projectile vomit outside."

Eren gives him a thumb's-up. A sixth.

"Because," he says, urging himself to swallow a seventh, "in another minute, I'm pretty sure…" He hiccups.

From afar, Bert tenses. All clear. We both break out into uproarious laughter. Like not stifled giggling but obnoxious guffawing. I'm that drunk.

"So," he continues, handing me something messily wrapped. "As I was saying—fuck, I can feel the hangover hitting just about… now. Anyways, after this last disgusting fireball, I have a feeling I'm gonna drop it, and it's gonna break, so please, Annie, relieve me of this responsibility." With that, he takes his eighth and slams the glass down.

Carefully, I unwrap his gift. I see a handle. A rim. Korean Hangul. Chinese characters. Arabic script. The words "FUCK OFF." No way.

"Are you serious?" I stare in awe at the same mug that I debated over for hours this past week.

"It does this thing thing where if you fill it up with hot coffee, the fuck's disappear, and you can learn how to say shit in a shit-ton of tongues," he says, slurring slightly.

"I'm glad I got you this instead because I was looking at the same exact mug," I reply breathlessly. I pull out the mittens first. "Because frostbite and amputated fingers suck."

"Agreed."

"Also, they're easier to don when you're wasted," I add, swatting him in the face with a mitten. "Putting on gloves, on the other hand, is no easier than doing linear algebra."

That ear-to-ear grin of his makes an appearance for the first time tonight.

"And with that," I reach in and pull out the remaining garment, "I decided to get you a new scarf. The one you're wearing looks like it's from the American Revolution."

He stares at the scarf. He blinks once. Twice. He looks at me with those eyes of his that lean more green-ish when he's happy, more blue-ish when he's not. I see the latter. Mixed with confusion and liquor. I see pain, raw and undiluted. Gingerly, he takes the mittens first. Then the scarf. And swaying, drunk and disoriented, he lumbers towards the exit.

I follow after him, throwing my coat over me. I find him across the street, staring through the glass of an electronics store. There's news footage. Images of explosions in the Middle East. Refugees in tatters looking sadly into the camera. In one hand, he is holding my scarf to his chest; in the other, he's yanking at the red one. As if it's suffocating him.

"Eren?"

He looks at me. I see blue. Something inside of him is screaming, but those screams are gagged, muffled, and muted. I am more than familiar with how that feels.

"What's going on?"

He takes an unsteady step towards me.

"Eren, talk to me."

"I've missed you," he says.

"...What?"

Everything's fuzzy and spinning, and I can't feel the icy sidewalk under me. I see a streetlamp. A mailbox. The TV screens. Every neuron in my brain is firing, howling at me to get the hell out of there. But I'm frozen as he takes another step forward, his eyes meeting mine directly.

Something buzzes. Something in his pocket glows to life.

He lets it buzz. He lets it glow.

His eyes are blue, so blue.

My legs declare independence. Mowing down every red flag raised by Rational Annie, I take a step forward, standing so close to him that our noses are just a millimeter from touching. My hand reaches to touch his face. Stop, Annie. Stop where you are. But I can't stop because my body is moving as if I was possessed by some otherworldly son-of-bitch. Fuck.

And I'm kissing him. I'm kissing Eren Jaeger.

Something buzzes. Something in his pocket glows to life.

He lets it buzz. He lets it glow.


The rest is a blur. Like seeing things through the window of a car doing 80 mph.

I follow him down the street. Down several blocks, around a few corners. Every so often, under a streetlamp, he stops to press his lips against mine. Not a single word exchanged between us.

We enter a building. In its elevator, ignoring the flickering light, he pins me against the corner, kissing me at a feverish pace. His tongue spars with mine; I'm struggling to keep up with him. My hands find their way into his pants. I brush against the bulge in his underwear. Rational Annie, by now, has jumped ship.

Ding.

Still kissing, we stumble out of the elevator. He leads the way to a room at the end of the hall. At the same time, his hands run down my upper torso. Down until they're gripping my ass. Pressing me against his groin. My fingers run under his sweatshirt. Learning the lean terrain of his back. Scaling his shoulder blades. He digs into his pockets. Withdraws his keys, jingling them as he searches for the right one. After about seven drunken attempts, three of which were mine, we get into his apartment.

In his bedroom, my top is tossed to the ground. Along with my leggings and jacket. My bra. And my panties. I loop the red scarf from over his head, kissing him once before, kissing him again after. To the ground it goes. He drops the blue scarf and the mittens onto his nightstand. He removes his sweatshirt. His jeans.

On his mattress, he is kissing me everywhere. My mouth. My jawline. My neck. My breasts. My stomach. Between my legs. My toes curl, and my fingers clench his sheets. His fingers know where to touch. A gasp escapes. Right before I peak, he stops. Not a tragic coincidence but a purposeful move. He positions himself over me. This is a play ingrained into his muscles. Each movement. Each inflection.

Then he does this thing that baffles me.

Before he enters me… he kisses my nose.

Something buzzes on the ground. Something in his pocket glows to life.

He lets it buzz. He lets it glow.


I wake up with a throbbing headache. An enormous blank space in my memory between now and roughly lunchtime yesterday. The classic hangover.

I see a nightstand. Mittens and a scarf. Blue atop a pile of highlighted magazine articles, newspaper clippings, and an overturned picture frame.

Red on the ground. A gray UChicago sweatshirt. My black, lacy bra.

Something snores softly beside me. Correction: someone. I peer over to find—

Holy shit.

Eren. Eren Jaeger.

I ransack my memory for any recollection of the night before, but I only come up with a single word, some foreign phrase I've never heard before.

Then it hits me.

I take the articles and clippings from the nightstand. I skim graphic, detailed coverage from Aleppo. Vivid, unabridged descriptions of war. Headlines like "The Barrel Bomb Claims Lives of Dozens." Titles like "Charting the Mediterranean: A Refugee's Flight from Hell." I turn the picture frame over. It's a photo of Eren kissing this girl on the cheek. He looks several years younger than now. A college student undecided on his major. The girl's eyes are shining in mid-laugh. A faint blush along her nose. His red scarf spills across her shoulders. I slip the photo out of the frame. Dark hair, dark eyes. Someone I'd probably want to shove out a window. On the back, I see this message, lettered out in black pen:

I can't believe you guys made me take this. Just wanted to rub it in again: CALLED IT. Ten years ahead of you.

Your favorite third wheel,
Armin

My heart rate is being stupid again. So is my blood pressure. But I can't help it.

I reach for his jeans. I tug his phone out of his pocket. It's at 3%, but I can see that he had three missed calls last night from Dusseldorf, Germany. Dusseldorf. I flip back through the clippings. There it is, circled in red pen in an article published last week.

I lean over, borrowing his hand, careful not to wake him. I gently press his thumb against the home button of his phone. I'm granted access. I flip through his call log for other random calls that he never returned. There's one from Thessaloniki, Greece. A week ago. Right there, highlighted in the "Charting the Mediterranean" article.

Shit.

I shove the evidence back onto his nightstand, the photo back into the picture frame. I go to his contacts. I scroll down the alphabet.

Shit.

I don't dare go to his photos. Or his text messages. Already, I'm kicking myself hard. Berating myself for letting this curiosity fester for so long.

That single word that remains from last night. That foreign phrase.

Mikasa.

It's neither a word nor a phrase.

Mikasa.

It's a name.

The writer of those clippings. The identity of the callers from Dusseldorf and Thessa-however-you-pronounce-it. The girl he's kissing. The girl he loves.

Mikasa.

It's her name.


A/N: How did you all like it? Flip-flopping between Mikasa and Annie's POV's is actually one of the most fun things I've ever done because they're both so different yet their personalities overlap in certain aspects. Please leave a comment/feedback!