A/N: I was so surprised to get so many requests for With You, I Am Home. I'll be closing requests until further notice. Thanks for all the creative ideas.
And thanks for being so patient with waiting for these chapters. Track takes away a lot of my precious writing time, and I write about the same way I run a 32k—very slowly, very sweaty, usually incredibly dizzy and lightheaded by the end of it all.
This is what I consider to be the end of the first act—there's plenty of conflict to come.
4. A STUDY IN ANATOMY: LUNCH CONVERSATIONS AND POST-DRINKS
They carpool now—he takes the Wednesdays and Thursdays, she takes Mondays and Tuesdays, and the Fridays they split—at his suggestion. He still struggles with that nasty tendency of his to run late, usually stumbling out of the apartment right at seven, hair uncombed, shoes half on, and still struggling into a sweater, Mikasa already waiting expectantly outside the door.
"Sorry about that," he says as they hop in the car five minutes late one Thursday morning.
"It's all right," she says, rifling through her bag.
"If it causes too much trouble, we don't have to do this anymore. I'd understand."
"Really," she replies, "it's fine. It's nice to hear someone other than the radio talk through my mornings."
They run into Armin in the parking lot, and the three greet each other accordingly
"Here," he says, handing Eren a wrapped parcel, "my grandpa told me to give you this."
"Thanks," Eren replies. "How is the old man? I've been meaning to stop by."
"Doing well. Mobility's probably his biggest challenge right now. I feel bad, leaving him alone all day. Of course, he says he doesn't mind."
Eren nods. "That sounds like the old man," he turns to Mikasa, who walks in silence on his other side, in conscious attempt to include her in the conversation: "I lived with Armin and his grandfather for a few years in high school," he says, holding open the door for both Mikasa and Armin to pass through.
She lifts her head towards him in silent thanks before glancing at the watch on her wrist. "Perhaps you two can tell me more at lunch," and she parts ways with them, heading to her room up in the science department.
"I'm meeting my first period in the library today," Armin says as the two reach a fork in the hallway. "She's really begun to open up," he adds as he looks back over his shoulder. "I'm glad we're getting to know her."
Eren inwardly agrees.
. . . . .
As scheduled, Koen meets up with him during his free period, a silent specter that hangs in the threshold of the doorway to the English office until Eren or another teacher calls him in.
"Shakespeare's tough," Eren explains, expanding on his introduction of the new text, Romeo and Juliet, from today, "the old English doesn't do us any comprehension favors as readers. That's the "fun" of it, I guess. In a way, we're technically reading a different language."
Koen purses his lips, his entire body rocking forward with the nod of his head.
"Anyways," Eren continues, pushing forward an outline from today's presentation on Shakespeare and a fill-in-the-blank worksheet for Act I Scene I, "just take it slow. You don't have to get through the first scene tonight, but just try to get through line one hundred fifty-eight. The worksheet will help you guide your reading."
"Okay," Koen replies.
"Why don't you go ahead and get started over here. I'll just be at my desk if you need any help. Oh, one more thing: the nice thing about this edition is that it gives a summary of the scene before the start. Refer back to that to check your understanding. And don't be afraid of the footnotes."
Eren returns to his desk not too far away, watching out of the corner of his eye as Koen stares at the book before him, tapping its edges on the table and spurring the pages against his thumb. Koen hangs his head and sighs before gritting his teeth and cracking the book open.
Things have improved. Not by much, but improvement is still improvement no matter how small. He's changed the seating arrangement: separating the chatty group in the back, and moving Koen up to the front where he can inconspicuously remind him to return focus with a gentle tap to the desk, providing him with notes that outline presentations and worksheets to guide comprehension, allowing extra time on assignments. All of it's helping—he seems to retain more information, and doesn't get distracted as often in class, but it's not enough. Not enough for his class alone, and certainly not enough for the rest of Koen's classes. Eren knows that.
The conference is next Friday. It'll be him, Ms. Petra Ral, Mrs. Klaus, and Koen. His palms sweat just thinking about it. As his first parent-teacher conference, this will be his first time on the other side of the desk, first time as the villain, first time as the asshole educator whose words will be misconstrued as malicious and condescending. The parents will be sure to hate him after this. Koen sure seems to.
The clock hits the halfway point for the period, and after reviewing what Koen has completed, clarifying some points, pointing out a few details—Eren spots a smirk when he mentions how Shakespeare was notorious for slipping in innuendos left and right-and commending him on his effort and success, dismisses him.
He experiences a twinge of hurt when Koen doesn't return his goodbye, but he reminds himself that he was, in many ways, the same with this sort of thing—worse, even. He resented extra help and extra accommodations, ignored outstretched hands, misinterpreted good intentions for pity or mockery, and misplaced his own insecurity onto his educators, told himself they thought him stupid and unteachable. How shocking—and a touch amusing—to find himself on the receiving end.
"Eren?" a voice rouses him from his thoughts, and he turns to face Krista, her small frame peeking into the English Department.
"What's up?" he asks, slightly surprised to see her.
"The copier down in the Music Department broke on us," she says, waving a sheet of paper, "you all won't mind if I borrow yours, will you?"
"Go right ahead."
She thanks him with that saintly smile of hers when she finishes making her copies. It's the sort of smile perpetually accompanied by its own chorus of angels. "No, you're not crazy," Armin once assured him when he asked, "it happens to me too. It's weird."
"I hope I'm not being too forward when I say this " Krista adds as she begins to leave, she twirls a piece of hair on a finger, "but I noticed that you and Armin often sit alone. If you'd like to join us at lunch today, our table has more than enough seats."
Eren looks up from the papers on his desk. He scratches his nose and clears his nose, hoping that he comes off more composed than he actually feels: "Yeah, sure. That's—thank you."
"I'm sorry we never invited you to sit with us earlier. That was thoughtlessness on our part."
"It's fine. No harm done."
Krista smiles again: "Oh," she turns back, "and make sure you bring Mikasa," and then she's gone.
He and Mikasa—they have an unspoken pact. Conceived on the day she finally took him up on his offer for tea, they may not have known each other for long, may not have gotten off on the best of starts, but they both desire a sense of something more—admittance into the realm of their peers, a feeling of belonging among others—and they're going to achieve it with the help of one another. So when he tells her about their new lunch arrangements in the break room, he's taken aback by her response.
"I don't know," Mikasa says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Come on, it'll be a good experience."
Lost in thought, it's as if she doesn't even hear him. Arms around herself, she retreats into herself. "I have to meet with a student today anyways," she finally says.
"Maybe tomorrow then?"
"Maybe," she replies.
The bell rings for the next period, and they part ways.
. . . . .
Not wanting to appear rude, he follows through regardless of being unaccompanied, and they more than understand when he explains at lunch.
"Why are you apologizing?" Ymir snears out, each word annunciated in a way that shoves him towards intimidated regret, "Do you really think it some unique circumstance?"
"Don't mind her," Krista chimes in.
"It would be best to be wary," Ymir grins a wolfish grin.
Krista's eyes disappear with her smile as she gently pats Ymir's arm, "She means that we all usually only stay for one half, and then meet with students the other half."
"Oi, who said you could put words in my mouth?"
"Ymir, you're going to scare him off!"
"Consider it a test of his courage,"
"Ymir!"
Unsure of what to make of the scene, Eren averts his eyes to his potatoes, when a foreign spoon inches its way onto his plate.
"Sasha!" Connie's voice rings out.
"What! I didn't do it!"
"You don't know him well enough to do that!"
"He wasn't eating his food! He's a waster."
"Sasha, I swear to god."
"It's all right," Eren interjects, "you can have them. I'm not that hungry."
He thinks he spots tears brimming in the corner of Sasha's eyes as she slides his plate over: "Thank you," she whispers, and in the background Connie shakes his head solemnly.
"You don't understand what you've just done."
He's right. He doesn't.
Rather than contribute to the multiple conversations surrounding him, Eren instead let's himself soak in the table dynamic—he hasn't sat at a table with this many people since high school. Apparently, adults don't differ all that much from adolescents in their lunchtime banter—though perhaps that's because they're all really still in high school—side conversations dominate for the most part, occasionally overlapping, laughter and bickering erupt one right after the other, sometimes simultaneously, and when the entire table engages in group discussions, it's a struggle of volumes, a jumble of words, back and forth, back and forth, a refreshing sort of exhausting.
And when his peers leave for the halfway point, a mess of goodbyes flying at him amidst chattering and more bickering, he's left with the only other occupant of the table, the only one he hasn't heard speak yet.
"Annie Leonhardt, right?" he asks her.
The girl rolls her gaze to him, cold blue eyes piercing him from behind blonde bangs. "Yes," she says.
"So I take it you're not meeting with a student this half?"
She rises, taking her garbage and collecting the rest of her things. "No," she says without inflection before leaving Eren at the table alone.
He decides it best to head back up to the English Department in hopes of spending the rest of his lonely lunch productively, and takes a detour to the science wing. His steps seem to fall faster and faster as he nears the room, a detail he vaguely registers as odd, but an instinct he doesn't fight; he takes the stairs by twos, flies around blind corners, until finally, he peers into her classroom door.
The room rather dark, quiet and undisturbed, sunlight peeks through the gaps in the closed blinds. Squinting through the glass and through the dim, he spots her at one of the lab tables, sandwich held in both hands as she eats alone.
Eren raises a fist to knock, but stops short of the doorframe. She chose to eat alone in her room today for a reason. Suddenly, guilt settles in the pit of Eren's stomach, and as he retreats, he can't help but feel as if he's somehow at fault.
"Missed you at lunch today," he says later in the car.
"I had a student that needed the period to make up an exam. You know how it is," she stares out the passenger window, lets the curtain of her hair obscure her face.
"Yeah. Of course. It's no problem."
They drive the rest of the way home in silence.
. . . . .
When he throws his book bag on the floor, he starts at the unprecedented thump of something rather hard against the floor, the corner of something wrapped in parchment sticks out of his bag.
Tearing through the paper, a tattered and faded copy of The Gray's Anatomy lies beneath. Puzzled, Eren searches the wrappings for a note, any sort of explanation that the old man might've attached for him. Next, he checks the front cover, and stops there.
Scrawled in near print he hasn't seen in close to fifteen years is his father's signature, Grisha Yeager, scrawled at the top corner of the page. His thumb traces the lines, follows every rise and fall of the letters, feels as if he's reliving the very moment his father took a pen to the surface: watches his fingers gripping too tight around his utensil, pressing down forcefully as his wrist forms the figures in aggressive passivity, adding his signature a tedious formality that delays him from the useful contents that lie beyond the cover.
And then Eren flies through the pages, passes chapter and diagram, glances only briefly at the illustrations, the various systems drawn out, eyes instead intent on the notes that mark the margins, his father's writing filling the blank spaces, oftentimes illegible, or too muddled to discern without focused examination. Days later on, at night when his father's lost voice calls to him from the pages, he will read through each annotation in attempt to piece together this riddle left behind, his inheritance, attempting to untangle the mess of medical jargon and additional anatomical notes, and arrange it into some sort of message, decipher his father's code. But for now, he scrambles to his cell phone, furiously scrolling through his contacts and pressing the call button with such force, he thinks he may crack the screen.
"Eren?" Armin's voice answers on the fifth ring.
"Hey, is your grandpa there?"
"He actually just went to bed. Want me to wake him for you?"
Eren paces back and forth around his bedroom, The Gray's Anatomy in hand. He taps his fingers along the spine. "No, no that's all right," he says. "Actually, this weekend—do you mind if I stop by for a visit?"
"Not at all. He'll be so excited to hear that you're coming."
"Thanks. See you tomorrow?"
"I'll see you tomorrow. And Eren?" Armin asks, "Is everything all right?"
Cold sweat sits on the back of his neck, and his head pounds with an incessant buzzing. "Yeah. Everything's fine," he says. "Thanks again. And tell the old man I said hello."
"I will. Goodbye, Eren."
"Bye."
He lays face up on his bed a long while after that. He should be eating dinner, or grading papers, or organizing lesson plans, but his stomach churns and his head aches; there's no way he can keep anything down, no way he could do anything intelligible with his head buzzing like this, and so he steps outside and prays the night air will remedy his ailments.
A late-autumn breeze sends him shivering, winter's prelude biting at his neck and ears. For a moment, he considers running back inside for his coat-for even the moon, still used to summer heat, deems the night too unbearable, and hides her face in the cloak of the night—but decides against it. The cold, at least for now, calms his racing mind and churning stomach, and with each step and each breath he returns to himself, the whispers that fill his room—that seep from the book shoved underneath his bed-far, far away.
Walking the block, beneath the flickering streetlights, the night bites its tongue, eager for someone else to fill the void. No cars travel the street, no owl calls from a treetop roost, only his shoes against the pavement, each step a gentle tap, breaks apart this lock-and-key-lip night.
He keeps his mind on a tether, let's it wander but never stray, he resists this persistent beast, desperate for quiet since total silence always evades him. He doesn't think about the day his father left, doesn't think about his mother's funeral, doesn't think about the jagged pieces of puzzle scattered round him, how it keeps him up at night, how he sleeps less and less, he doesn't think about how his thoughts are beginning to eat him up alive.
Finished no thinking about anything, and finished circling the block, all the details of his walk distant and unrecallable, looking across the drive at the apartment building on the walkway that overlooks a view of the parking lot, he spots a lone figure leaning against the railing, a mere silhouette in the night.
"You're up late," Eren says, taking the last few steps on to the landing.
"People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," Mikasa replies. She turns to face him, and when he draws closer, he can pick out the smallest of smiles. Eren takes the spot on the railing next to her, and the pair stares out into nothingness together.
"I couldn't sleep," he says after a long. "Had to clear my head."
"And has it cleared?" she asks.
Eren shakes his head. He shivers despite the absence of the wind. "My mind hasn't been clear in a long time." From the corner of his eye he catches her face turn towards him, the moon of her features dimly lit in the residual lights on the street and in the lot. He becomes keenly aware of her figure not a foot away from his.
"Will you be all right?"
"I'll be all right," he says, " I always am. It's just inconvenient, keeping me up late," and then he groans, pinching the bridge of his nose, "We have school tomorrow."
Mikasa exhales, and Eren almost mistakes it for the whisper of the wind, its docility and softness just barely distinctive from the darkness's sigh rather than the breath of her lungs. He finds himself stretching towards it: doesn't recoil, doesn't huddle into his shirt, but longs for the sound, ears aching to hear it again.
But as he reaches out, she shrinks back, her own arms drawing tight around her, twin constricting serpents.
"Listen...Eren," she says, "today at lunch, I...I didn't-"
"It's all right," he cuts her off, spares her the confession. Intently, he looks her straight in the eyes, daring her not to look away. "It's all right."
Her throat drops and rises as she swallows, the hint of tears glinting at the corner of her eyes. "It's hard," her voice wavers, "learning new things, unlearning old ways...God, there's so much to unlearn."
"We don't have to sit with them if you don't want to," Eren replies. "We can go back to the way things were before."
"No. No, I want to try. I have to at least do that," she turns to face him. "Eren—tomorrow—is it all right if…"
"Of course. Of course it is."
For a few moments longer, they observe the passing night in each other's silent company: the chatter of the rustling leaves, the lone car that passes through their street, there and then gone, somewhere in the distance, a siren sounds.
The clock hits thirty past one when they decide to part ways; they exchange drowsy goodbyes and fatigued waves.
"Eren?" Mikasa calls out at the last minute.
He looks back over his shoulder. "Yeah?"
"I know it doesn't seem like it," she holds her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes downcast, "but I'm trying."
Eren looks at her hard. "I know. I know you are," he says, and he means it.
He returns to his room. And, his mind quiet, sleep descends upon him as soon his head hits the pillow.
. . . . .
Armin saves them seats on either side of him, a feat harder than you'd think with so many people crammed at one table. Immediately, the table breaks out into their usual chatter, most of it directed at their new guests—particularly at Mikasa. Both Krista and Sasha engage in separate conversations with her, and Eren spots that telltale sign in her posture—the one where she grows rigidly straight, expression so stoic it almost breeds the illusion of icy contempt. But when he locks eyes with her, giving her just the slightest of nods of the head, she relaxes her shoulders and loosens her clenched jaw.
Lunch goes well. The three of them partake in the discussion, interjecting here and there, even eliciting the occasional laugh from one of their peers. Eren finds himself intermittently glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, relieved to find her more relaxed, responsive to the conversation, engaged—though silently—in the table's ongoings. Something she says aside, with only a glint in her eyes, sends Sasha into distressed groaning and Connie into a fit of laughter; and though a complete outsider to that specific discourse, Eren finds himself suppressing a grin nonetheless.
Lunch goes so well, that when they're invited out to drinks this evening, Mikasa accepts first out of the three of them.
"I've nothing going on tonight," she says, looking directly at Eren and Armin as she answers.
In a moment of disbelief, Eren's voice fails him.
"We'll be there," Armin says, giving Eren an inquisitive poke in the side.
. . . . .
From the passenger's side he catches glimpses of her in the back through his spinning vision, her flower blouse beneath her cardigan undone three buttons down, and he wonders when that happened, for she hadn't started out three buttons short at the beginning of the evening.
Wracking his brain for the moment, he sifts through the scenes of the night in search, recalling Connie and Sasha's rather rowdy game of pool, earning looks of disdain from the other patrons, Annie absent from the outing altogether, Ymir, completely sober, smirking while whispering something into the ear of a giggling Krista, undone by a single shot of Fireball, while the three of them—him, Armin, and Mikasa-sat just down the bar. Perhaps it happened after his third or fourth beer. Or maybe after the shot? Or had the shot come before that? Fuck.
They reach the apartment building before he ever figures it out. They fumble out as they exit the car, Eren showering Armin in compliments and Mikasa in thanks.
"Will you two be all right?" Armin leans out his window, eyebrows knit together.
"It's a glass of water and then straight to bed," Eren gives him a two-finger salute. "See ya later this weekend."
"Goodnight," Mikasa adds.
They watch as Armin drives away, taillights disappearing from view, before heading up to their building.
He watches in amusement as she sways from foot to foot as they walk to their apartments, as if there's a song playing in her head that she just can't stop herself from dancing to, her cheeks tinted with the heat from her last glass of wine. Her cardigan slides partially down her shoulder, revealing the ridge of her collarbone. He can't help but wonder what it tastes like.
"What're you smiling at?" she asks, looking at him curiously.
"Nothing," Eren lies, and he feels his smile split wider.
Frowning, an accusing brow raised, with her thumb, she brushes his bottom lip. "Than what's this?"
"You're drunk."
"You are too."
They stand toe to toe, her eyes, though her expression remains as composed as ever, shine like pieces of the night sky, and the moon of her face stares up at his fully, unashamed, unwavering. "Goodnight," she whispers. And his breath hitches in his throat.
Later, when he looks back on this moment, he will not be able to recall who leaned in first-if it had been him or her—but Eren Yeager finds himself with his lips on hers, kissing her hard, her fingers curling round the red fabric of his scarf as he presses all of him into her.
They part for a moment—only just a moment—eyes searching the other, half in shock of what they've just done, the other half for the look to indicate that this, right here, right now, is what the other wants, too. And then they rush together once again, second kiss more fevered, more hungry than the first, so incredibly eager to taste, and touch, and feel, whatever this is that they feel between them.
Still wrapped in her, Eren fumbles with the lock and key, the simple task made all the more difficult with too many beers to count sloshing in his stomach, and her hands trailing lower, lower, grasping at the hem of his shirt, and, the door relenting with a clumsy shove, the pair usher inside.
