Levi
Oh, lookie here. It appears someone's picked up a new hobby.
Listen carefully, I'm going to tell you some useful life advice: There are several telltale signs of a new stoner—all of which will cause you to feel the most crippling sense of secondhand embarrassment. Picking them out of the crowd is like finding a zebra in a herd of cattle. For one, they reek. This is either due to this naive delusion they have, in which drenching themselves in body spray or perfume will magically whisk the odor away (note: doing this is akin to, say, draping a sheet over a freshly-killed corpse in the living that you don't want your parents to see when they come over), or simply due to sloppiness, a degenerate fatal flaw of many teenagers. Too high to function, they don't even bother with the old college try, so they walk around in their own little smogs of evidence.
Mikasa is guilty of both, depending on the time of day. In the evenings, when she comes back from school, practice, and whatever teenagers do afterwards, this overly-pungent tropical spray/deodorant/perfume thing radiates from her, and I have to escape outside and smoke a cigarette before the stench clears from my nostrils. But later in the night, after a shower, after she locks herself in her room to do "homework," she does a one-eighty. Another sign of a newbie: they're ravenous. Nothing can sate their hunger. Several times, she lumbers from her den, devoid of her grace, her balance, and her dignity, almost faceplanting onto the landing. Dragging along her personal ozone layer, she makes a sluggish beeline for the fridge, opens the door, stares for a full minute at its contents, enthralled, wowed by the vivid hues of fresh produce, dazzled by the interior light, and eventually, she returns up the stairs, to her poorly-ventilated room, with food spilling from her arms. En route, she may pause to gape at the Van Gogh knock-off in the hallway.
"Have you ever listened to Pink Floyd before?" I asked her once as she shuffled back to the stairs with a jar of peanut butter tucked under her arm.
Yet even with the TV on, in addition to The Wall playing from her computer upstairs, nothing can hide this terrifying noise from her room, a noise that sounds like an asthmatic pterodactyl with hacking out its lungs. And, ladies and gents, I present to you the third sign of someone who sucks at weed.
You know, I'm actually quite tickled by this. Every evening, there's a new poorly-crafted explanation for her bloodshot eyes, ranging from pollen allergies (in the wintertime) to crying sessions (over Grey's Anatomy) to "accidentally pouring shampoo into [her] eyes." She's in denial, and I don't blame her. When the tentacles of teenage-dom finally have in their grasps those stick-up-the-ass wonder children who actually vacuum their rooms once a week, those kids naturally kick and scream and flail. Mikasa's still a teenager, and adolescence is an unsparing disease, no matter how many hard she tries to fight it off. She's crossed the threshold into Stonerville, which, for most people, is the point of no return.
This morning, I found several crumpled sheets of rolling paper in her trashcan—corpses of multiple failed joints. I almost laughed.
When I knock on her door, I hear scuffling on the other side, the classic "Fuck! Burn the evidence!" fiasco. Kick the stash under the bed! Flush the joint down the toilet! Febreeze the shit out of the room!
"What do you want?" she demands, opening the door just a crack.
"FYI, I've got someone coming over at seven. She's an old friend."
"Do I need to have my earphones in at full blast later in the night?" she says wryly.
"It's not like that," I reply irritably. "We'll be in the kitchen. I'm just giving you a head's up, so if you trip on the stairs, your dignity might actually get shafted."
"Cool."
"Should I be worried about anything?" I cross my arms, unimpressed. "Are your grades tanking? Do I need to ground you?"
"My grades are actually on the upswing."
"Really."
"I'm studying right now."
"What is with you with all this studying? It's Friday night. Go get wasted with your friends. Weed is supposed to be social experience."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, aren't you cute, playing innocent little lamb."
"You know," I call after her as she closes the door on me. "If you suck that much at rolling joints, a hand pipe isn't a bad alternative."
In my books, there's another set of stoner classifications, if you will. Happy and sad. Happy stoners are fucking annoying. Unending giggles, lopsided grins, obnoxious antics all around—no, thank you. Luckily, brooding, pensive Mikasa isn't a happy stoner in the least, which, I suppose, lumps her in the other camp. Sad stoners smoke to numb things out, to roll a hazy curtain over things they don't want to be seeing, to let the high drown out their lows. Of course, this may backfire. Oftentimes, it does. For some, weed actually has a clarifying effect, bringing the sucky aspects of life into full-focus, and from there's it's a vicious cycle. You want to get higher, further away from it all, but those less than appealing things flood back into mind at increasingly sharper resolution; you get so high—that when you finally fall, you're shattered.
I wonder what she's trying to numb herself from.
Hanji dances through the house, ogling at the antique grandfather clock in the living room.
"Holy shit, you've got it nice here," she squeals, running a hand over the chestnut frame. "Levi, I don't know why the fuck you're thinking about leaving."
"Shut up," I hiss. Upstairs, The Wall is playing, but you can never too sure when and where Mikasa decides to lurk about like a creepy shadow.
"Oh, so she doesn't know yet?" Hanji puts her hands on her hips. "Shouldn't you at least give her the decency of informing her that you're not into this? See, that's a sign that you're not one-hundred percent sure about this. A dead-set Levi wouldn't give a fuck. He'd barge down her door right now and scream it into her face with the help of a megaphone."
"I haven't gotten around to it," I grit out. I hand her a beer.
She takes a swig and sways to the bookshelf. "Ooh! Have you had a chance to take a look at all these? All your favorites are here, it seems! The classics, Stephen King, all the Pulitzers—damn, you don't ever have to set a foot out of this house. Oh, so tell me about her. Mikasa. Where's she at?"
"You wanna meet her?"
"Is that even a question?"
"She might be a little busy right now."
"Oh, she's got a boy over upstairs? Is that why Pink Floyd's playing so loudly up there?"
"No, try again. The boy is obnoxious as fuck, but luckily, they're on the rocks right now, so I don't have to deal with him for a while."
"Wait, wait, tell me about this boy! Is he a cutie?"
"He's annoying as shit."
"Oh, so he is cute!
"How did you even make that connection—you know what, fuck it. I don't care."
"Are they gonna get over their rough patch soon?"
"As someone who's deeply invested in their petty drama, all I can say is that there's some weird-ass sexual tension going on."
"Um, no, there isn't." Mikasa has materialized in the kitchen, and she's glowering at me. She seems like she's sobered up. She aggressively wields a banana in her left hand. "If you're so bored to the point of making up gossip to entertain yourself," she says, peeling the banana with a violent jerk of her wrist, "do yourself a favor and get a day job."
"She speaks the truth!" Hanji chimes in, bounding over to imprison Mikasa in a chokehold/hug. "Nice to finally meet you! I'm Hanji! I hope Levi hasn't been making your life too miserable lately!"
The two actually hit it off—that is, hitting it off in the sense that Mikasa replies to Hanji's spray questions in complete sentences. Mikasa later recedes back into her lair, and Hanji refocuses her attention onto me.
"She's a great girl."
"Debatable."
"But she did make a good point about you. Open up your computer," she commands.
"Why."
"Just do it."
My email inbox is flooded with messages from the employers Hanji contacted on my behalf. Over the course of this week, I've stared at them, wondering if I should even bother sending an "oh, sorry, never mind, I don't give a fuck about this actually" message. Whoever's in charge of the substitute teacher position gave up hope for me when I didn't show up to the interview last Wednesday. The recruiter for the librarian position dropped me after a persistent two emails. But as for the local newspaper, they've been hounding me, sending me follow-up after follow-up. Funny how the world works: that's my last choice out of these three unappealing jobs.
Sure enough, I get an earful for the next hour. I go through the usual scheme. Focus on a point on the wall, tone her admonitions out, replay an episode of Game of Thrones in my head until she wears out. Nod a few times to establish the illusion of attention. Nod more vigorously when she accuses you of not actually paying attention.
But to be fair, she's not wrong.
Living here isn't all that bad. To my surprise, an afternoon of bookkeeping revealed that Michael Ackerman left some cushy arrangements for Mikasa and me. He and Mikasa's mom both held engineering jobs with enviable salaries, and they were big savers. Although they could've afforded something far nicer, they settled for this little suburban home, not particularly glamorous but certainly comfortable, and they didn't chase after flashy brand-name cars, even though that was well within their payrolls. Their priorities were clearly centered on stability, having paid off both the house and having saved enough for Mikasa's undergraduate education, not to mention having they've shuttled away a good amount of money to cover at least two years' worth of living expenses, and—wait, there's more—they've also invested in a sizeable amount of stock to fall back on.
And hell, I'm hardly Mikasa's guardian. Even a marijuana-hazed Mikasa can take care of herself just fine. My presence is just a formality, something to appease a law.
It makes a whole lot of sense to stay.
Yet the neurons in my head are firing away, willing me to get away from here. Because, here, I have no excuses. Here, there's no excuse for being responsible for someone else; Mikasa makes it too easy. Here, there's no excuse for steering my career back on track; I've got virtually no financial burden in this set-up, and those previous headaches of making the rent on time are no longer relevant if I stay put in this upper-middle class paradise. I get ten hours of sleep in a queen-sized bed. I actually eat three meals a day. I shop for groceries at Whole Foods. I get to make my coffee everyday using this fancy, high-tech Keurig. Here, there's no excuse for getting my life together.
Hannes recently informed me that the probate court is backed up for some reason, and I can't get my guardianship hearing—my exit ticket out of here—until next next Friday, almost two weeks from now. Which means I can't pass the buck on these funeral arrangements.
It occurs to me that I need help. Mikasa wants nothing to do with this whatsoever, so I only have one option.
"Hello?" Carla says on the other end.
"This is Levi."
"Oh, hi! How are you doing, Levi? Everything going okay?"
"I'm fine. I have a question."
"Shoot."
"Who do I invite to Michael's funeral?"
There's a pause on the other end. "Uh, so I don't get out of class until 10 PM, so do you wanna come over around that time? We can talk about it face-to-face because, yeah, you must be in a really tough position, planning a funeral for someone you don't know that well. I can give you a hand."
Around 10PM, the brat opens the front door when I knock.
"Leroy," he sneers. "Come on in."
"It's Levi." A no-shoes house, I assume, from Eren's Star Wars socks. I kick off my snow boots.
"Mom's not home yet," Eren calls over his shoulder, leading me into their kitchen.
If there's one thing about suburbia, it's impossible to get lost in these houses; each and every one of them looks the same structurally. What distinguishes one house from the next is the atmosphere. While Mikasa's house—or, to be exact, my house—is neat, clean, and fairly quiet, the Jaeger house is, to put things lightly, pandemonium. Upstairs, music—presumably the brat's—blasts from a speaker, interfering with the soccer game, also at full-blast, on the downstairs TV. Dirty dishes stack sky-high in this creaky Leaning Tower of Pisa-like structure in the sink. On the floor, slobbery dog toys are strewn everywhere, in addition to a puddle of a golden retriever laying right in the center of the kitchen floor, suspiciously unmoving.
"Looks like you finally got rid of that fucking bathrobe," Eren comments when I take a seat at the dining table.
"Thanks for noticing."
He seats himself across to me, where a half-eaten bowl of mac-and-cheese awaits him. "Real talk, do you actually want to be here?"
"Great segue."
"I like to cut to the chase."
"I'm flexible," I equivocate.
"So that means no, you don't want to be here."
"Not necessarily."
"What's with all these bullshit answers?"
"I think your dog's kicked the bucket."
My prediction is accurate: Eren has an attention span of a fly. He immediately kneels by the golden's side, poking and prodding him, until the dog sneezes and halfheartedly flops his tail.
"See, he's still goin' strong, aren't you, boy?" Eren coos, switching into an overly-affectionate dog-owner's voice. He ruffles Dusty's ears; Dusty manages a weak whine in protest.
"So what's the deal with you and Mikasa?" I prod, turning the tables. Two can play at this game of Let's Ask Strings of Intrusive, Deeply-Personal Questions! "Is this a whole Ross and Rachel, 'we're on a break' sort of bullshit?"
"What are you talking about?" He's on his feet, fidgeting awkwardly with the mac-and-cheese held close to his chest. I've successfully injected the nervous jitters into him.
"Oh, please. Friends is stupid sometimes, but it's still a cultural relic, you uneducated swine."
"No," he snaps, "that part I actually got, but I don't get is—shit, what the hell… what are you even saying?"
"That was so incoherent, I don't even know how to respond."
"There's nothing going on between us, okay?"
"That's what all you teenagers say when you get busted."
This goes on for a good five minutes. With each passing second, Eren grows angrier and angrier. I wonder how long it'll take for his head to explode from sheer anger. Unlike Mikasa, Eren's a fucking idiot. While she knows not to take the bait, I get a 110% bite rate from Eren. He just has to respond with some poorly-constructed retort, and my God, fucking with him comes with this perverse sort of joy. It's disturbing how much fun it is to make this kid uncomfortable.
"Well, listen, Leroy, I've got news for you."
"Oh, do tell."
"There's no way Mikasa and I could possibly be a thing because, well, guess what, I'm hooking up with this other girl, and—"
The time is 10:15, and his mom walks in on the middle of Eren running a Hail Mary to save his pride in the wake of my fuckery.
"You what now?" Carla demands, her eyes wide. "I heard something about a girl?"
Eren is ashen-faced. Dead-silent, desperately searching for a reply, coming up dry.
Now, I have two options. I could unilaterally fuck him over and tell Carla excitedly, "Look! Your son has a new side bitch he hooks up with!" That, in turn, will open a writhing, grimy can of worms for a mother of a horny teenage boy. Carla will then detonate. She'll launch into the a heated, furious version of the Talk and go on and on about STD's and condoms. Watching the brat's reaction to everything will be marvelous.
Or I could also fish him out of this boiling pot. I could be a merciful tyrant and do him a solid, ultimately bypassing that wildly entertaining first option. The answer seems clear, but the first option only offers intense, immediate satisfaction. This second option, however, comes with long-term upperhand status, where I have a dagger dangling over the brat's head—constantly. What I mean, is blackmail. Leverage.
The kid will essentially be my bitch.
"Oh, we're talking about Game of Thrones," I slide in. "He's saying that if he's hypothetically Tyrion, hooking up with women left and right, he'd probably be swimming with various venereal diseases because condoms haven't been invented yet in that world."
Eren gapes at me. Jingle, jingle. I now have him on a leash.
"Well, I'm sorry to have interrupted the, uh, insightful discussion you two were having, but Eren, I'm gonna need you to clean up that mess in the sink, and—shit, is Dusty alive?!"
Eren, still stunned by my turnaround, takes a moment before responding, "Yeah, he's just tired. I was trying to teach him how to play fetch again."
Carla spins on her heel—to find the minefield of dog toys in the hallway leading to the door. I may have sacrificed a nuclear mother-to-son licking, but I still get to witness a sufficiently furious lecture over cleanliness with a bonus ear-pulling performance by the mother-of-the-year. The victim of this performance tears up as he slinks away to do the dishes.
When Carla cools down, we sit down, and she goes over what she has in mind, which equates to her essentially planning the entire funeral (fine by me, may I add). She wants closed casket service next Sunday, and she instructs me to choose the simplest casket design available. She gives me the name of a flower I've never heard of before to order through the funeral home for the service, and she scribbles down the name of a clergyman, who she'll call later in the week. She rattles off a short list of funeral attendees—an exceedingly short list, totalling seven people comprising of her family, Hannes, Mikasa, and me.
"That's it?" I ask, peering at the names.
"What about Mikasa's friends?" Eren suggests from the sink. "Armin and Sasha?"
Make that a total of nine people.
"What about Michael's friends?" I inquire.
"He… didn't have many friends in the end," Carla says quietly, clicking and unclicking her pen. "I mean, we could add his teammates from when he played at Notre Dame. He used to have them over all the time, but I think he'd have liked to keep it simple. Just some close friends and family."
"Coworkers?"
"Nope, he switched jobs constantly."
"What about his best friends? College mates?"
"That's Grisha, my... husband. I was close to Michael's late wife. We were a crew when we went to Notre Dame together."
"Lots of double dates, I'd assume."
Carla laughs. "I actually didn't date Grisha until after he got out of medical school and worked for a few years."
"Third and fourth wheel, then."
"Oh, you bet—"
Someone enters from the front door. Carla stiffens. Eren jerks his head towards the entry hallway. A man wearing a shirt and slacks appears in the kitchen. Her wears glasses, and his hair reaches the nape of his neck.
"Grisha," Carla states with little warmth.
"Carla," the newcomer says quietly.
Eren turns, a soapy plate dripping from his hands. "Hi, Dad."
His Dad nods. "How are you, Eren?"
"Good."
"So you're Levi." Grisha walks over and extends my hand. We shake once, briskly.
"That's me."
"I'm Eren's dad," Grisha says. "How is Mikasa doing?"
If only there were some tactful way to say, "She's probably high as a kite right now, and her father's recent death doesn't seem to have any affect on her psyche. She's fuckin' weird." But given this charged atmosphere, I doubt that even if I could express that in most eloquent English, the thought wouldn't be very well received at the moment.
"She's hanging in there," I reply, settling for ambiguity—almost a lie by a omission, but the key thing is that there's a morsel of truth in that.
"How's Zeke?" Eren asks.
"He's still in school. He got accepted for an internship at the circuit court this summer."
"Nice," Eren says, turning back to the dishes.
"It's been a ride, but I'm glad he's finally finding his footing."
No one answers.
Eren, sensing the awkward tension, glances around before shutting off the faucet, wiping his hands on a towel, and contributing, "Yeah, I agree."
Another silence.
Across from me, Carla scribbles something on the notepad. It's just etchings, indecipherable and meaningless. "So how's Dina?" she mutters, making no effort to conceal a sharp sourness.
"Mom," Eren says.
"Is she still brainwashing herself with that centuries-old brick of bullshit—"
"Mom."
"Still parading around with those brainless signs of hers? Still trying to convert everyone into thinking like a prehistoric—"
"Mom! Goddammit, can you chill?" Eren interjects heatedly.
The dining chair screeches against the hardwood floors. Carla gets up and storms towards the stairs. She swings around and stares Grisha down. "You came to get the stuff you left behind, right?"
"One of many reasons."
"But the main one, obviously. It's in the garage. There are two boxes."
With that, she's gone, leaving yet another silence to hang in the air. There comes a point when drama unrelated to you no longer becomes entertaining, and I think I've reached that point right about—now.
"You free next Sunday?" I ask Grisha, cutting into the awkwardness as if it's a chunk of lukewarm butter.
"What for?"
"A funeral."
"For Michael?"
"No, for Kim-fucking-Kardashian—yes, for Mikasa's dad."
"I'll be there."
I swiftly exit that cesspit of tension, scooping up the seven-person list, leaving Eren to talk with his dad. From the front driveway, I can see, behind a curtain, Carla's shadow pacing about in a room upstairs. I pass a new car, presumably Grisha's. It's parked along the side of street, rather than in the driveway, as if he's a visitor rather than a resident. That same car passes me a minute later when I make it back to my current residence.
Mikasa isn't stoned when I get back. She's in the living room reading.
"Where were you?" she asks, not bothering to give me the slightest courtesy of a "Hi!"
"Jaeger's house."
The trigger word. She puts down her book and gives me an alarmed look. "Doing what?"
"Interrogating your boyfriend. He wouldn't spill the beans, so I got to waterboard him. A few times."
As if I've flipped on a switch, she flushes. "You actually need to shut the hell up with those jokes," she growls.
"Yowch, someone's pissy. Did your stash run out? Are you going into withdrawal right now?"
"I'm taking a break."
"Is that a confession at last I hear?"
She rebounds, "A break from homework."
"Homework."
"That's correct."
"Homework as in… running out of rolling paper and resorting to loose-leaf notebook paper to roll your shitty joints." Her face is impassive—her default setting—but I pick up on a minute twitch at the corner of her eye. Gotcha. "Oh, I see you, Mikasa Ackerman. I saw that miserable excuse of a joint when I was taking out your trash. Jesus, did you not see the little gift I left you the other day?"
"I saw it. Thank you. It's a pretty glass ornament."
"That's no glass ornament, you dipshit. It's a hand-pipe. I'm being nice to you for once. Do you not recognize compassion when it hits you square in the face?"
"A hand-pipe used for what?"
"This innocent girl ruse was funny the first time, but now it's getting stale."
"Speaking of stale, we need more bread. Can you get some tomorrow? I'm busy. I have a… sleepover."
"Oh, so a party. To be exact, a rager."
"False. I have practice in the morning, and I need to go to the mall in the afternoon."
I shrug and turn on the TV, effectively destroying her serene reading space.
She's gone the following morning, and she doesn't get back until the evening, hauling shopping bags up to her room. I order pizza for dinner: a good buffer food. Something to ward off hangovers—at least, the more extreme hangovers.
When she comes down from her lair, I see her in make-up for the first time. She's wearing something that wouldn't qualify as conservative: a crimson, V-neck cami top thing that shows off some cleavage with dark skinny jeans. She doesn't look bad, except her whole look is offset by the squirmy grimace on her face.
"Those look painful," I comment, nodding towards the pair of strappy heels suffocating the life out of her feet.
She nervously takes a bite of her pizza. "You're not wrong in that."
"I'm forecasting a twisted ankle."
"Thanks for believing in me."
"I don't."
"I was being sarcastic."
"I wasn't."
She mutters something under her breath before getting up and slipping on a jacket. "I'm leaving."
"One more slice." I point at a rather sizeable piece.
"I'm not hungry anymore."
"Fine, have fun hugging the toilet bowl all night."
"What are you talking about?"
"Just eat the fucking slice."
A/N: WOW! I'm geeked because on FF, we're up to 89 reviews! We're almost to triple-digits, fam, and so I've got a deal for you guys: if we can make it to 100, I'll give you guys a present (*cough* Chapter 12 on Saturday night/Sunday morning).
We're getting into some choppy waters between Eren and Mikasa right now, and oh, don't I love angst. I know I've been neglected Levi's hemisphere (i.e. his background, his situation, his history with Erwin), but for now, Eremika's gonna get center stage. For all of you Eruri fans out there, I'm afraid you're gonna have to wait a little bit. I'll throw in a few nuggets here and there, but Levi's time to shine will come later.
I really gotta thank you guys for giving me a piece of your time and providing me some feedback. Looks like Current Procrastinating and A Self-Deprecating Person both blazed through the fic last night, and wow, you guys rock, going out of your ways to leave a comment on EVERY fucking chapter, like damn, my heart skipped a beat when I saw all those email notifications. S/O to ChocoRoyale, Rogmes, Jungianca6, and bersange on AO3, and to Eien no Moonlight, jenna789, omnipotent13, CaptainHuggyface3218, and Elivra26—LOVED reading all of your impressions, thoughts, and kind words. Damn, I'm so pumped right now. And also I'm sending virtual hugs to Kaekiro/Selena for listening to me vent about writers' struggles (uh, if you haven't read her fics yet, hop onto AO3 and check out "Kaleidoscopes"!). And another S/O to eien-no-tsuki, jungianca6, and saythanksplease for your support on Tumblr! I'm screaming because every one of guys are so great, and y'all are the light of my life.
Ngl my wrists kinda hurt from typing so much in the past few days, but this update spree shall remain ABLAZE. See ya guys, soon!