Icarus & I
Chapter 26
The others had taken the car, but Annie had a bike. She had me sit on the back, dismissing my objections of being too big. Eventually, I conceded; the bike was fairly large. And, she informed me, she'd ridden with Bertholdt before. That made me feel much more confident in my safety.
We passed through a park, an empty, abandoned lot, and a school bus loop, the quality of our surroundings decreasing jarringly drastically as we continued.
"Where are we going?" I asked, once we'd entered yet another shabby-looking neighborhood.
"You'll see."
We kept on, until we came to a single-story, run-down house at the bottom of a hill. Annie rolled into the driveway, then dismounted. I followed suit while she held the handlebars steady.
"What is this?" I asked.
"My old house," she answered. She stared up at it as though it were the corpse of a giant, of something great and terrible that had once threatened her life. "Sad, isn't it?"
Seeing its low, drooping, patched roof, its rotting beams swinging precariously over the porch, and its crumbling foundation, I couldn't help but agree.
She stepped forward, then stopped. She looked at me with that same, mixed expression that I couldn't quite decipher.
"Come with me," she said. When I came to her side, she took my hand and led me through the open door.
Annie walked slowly across the dusty, concrete floor. I noticed, firstly, that besides the dust and cobwebs, the walls were riddled with holes and cracks. In the corners of my eyes, I saw things scatter as we approached, but I didn't look. Annie's grip on my hand grew, gradually, tighter.
Then she stopped, in a wide room that sported clear shadows of furniture on the floor, where dirt and dust otherwise rested. She sat down, in the center of the floor, and looked up at the ceiling above us. Her face was rigid, stony.
Her figure unfurled and stood once more. She looked around, completely placid. Then:
"Fuck you!"
She looked up again, her eyes scanning the ceiling as though searching for something- someone- to appear from it.
"I," she shouted, "made it. I'm still going. I came all the way back, just to tell you. I'm still alive, just to spite you. You piece of shit."
I watched, mesmerized and somewhat nervous, as her entire body tensed, like she was preparing an incredible surge of energy to hurl away.
It left in a second, punctuating, "FUCK YOU!" that caused her to jump, that echoed throughout the thin, destroyed walls and in my ears.
She didn't waste a second, after that. She took my hand and hurried away, mounted her bike, helped me on, and rode back to the house.
When we dismounted again, and she chained the bike to the tree in the front yard, I asked, "What did you want to show me?"
"Nothing, really," she admitted. "I just needed you there."
"For what?"
She unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
"To keep me sane while I checked to see if I still hate that place. And I do."
I closed the door behind me and approached her, as she'd stopped behind the couch, frozen as she had been at her old house. I put an arm around her.
With a weight I don't think I'll ever truly recognize myself, she turned into me. I tightened my hold on her. We stood there, quiet as always, in one another's arms, for what felt like an eternity.
"I hate that place," she said at some point.
We spent the next few days finishing up our job in the office. She surrendered her pride to make room for a few of my ideas- though, let's be honest, practically all of my ideas were better than hers- and, as a result, things began to go much more smoothly (though she did make it a point to say no to me for no good reason every now and again, just to see my reaction. It grew flatter and flatter every time, which only amused her more).
I pulled a few of the books from the trash bag for myself, and I found one in particular that caught my interest, for reasons that will be soon apparent. It was a thin book, hardcover with grey cloth, and pressed into the cover was the title.
THE ICARUS DILEMMA,
it read.
Quickly, I stashed it beneath Annie's bed and, just as hurriedly, returned to work.
At night, Annie made it a habit to crawl into bed with me before she had to leave. I found that Bertholdt and Reiner both had taken notice of our routine, but neither said anything of it. Bertholdt simply gave me a meaningful look, once when I checked his reaction, and then followed it with a soft, hopeful smile. I took both expressions as positive signs.
In bed, at first, Annie and I lay in our usual, comfortable silence. Then, eventually, she would tell me stories. Ones that made me laugh.
"Once," she said, "there was a brown recluse smack dab on our old TV. Guess who screamed the highest."
"Reiner?"
"Reiner." She laughed, and while her quiet laugh wasn't quite so endearing as her loud one, it was definitely pretty. "You know what he did?"
I grinned. "What?"
"He just straight-up fuckin' busted the TV," she said, snorting. "Drop-kicked it and everything."
"Drop-kicked it," I repeated, impressed. "That's quite the feat."
"If that was a pun, I'm leaving."
I laughed, holding her closer. "It wasn't, I swear! Don't leave."
A giggle bubbled from her stomach to her cheeks as she buried her face in my chest to conceal it.
"You're loud," she laughed. "Quiet."
"I just really don't want you to leave," I admitted. "Sorry."
Her laughter slowed, and her arms tightened around me.
"I was bluffing, dumbass. I never want to leave this bed."
I never want to leave this bed.
The words filled me with a giddy, giddy energy. I, for one, wanted to leap out of the bed and start doing a stupid dance of joy.
"Then why don't you stay?" I blurted, knowing fully well why.
She sighed. "Because my boss is already too nice to me," she said. "I can't make her stay up another night."
An idea struck me.
"Why don't I just come to work with you?" I offered.
"Are you kidding?"
"No," I said, though I was laughing again.
"Ymir'd be pissed."
"Well, she doesn't know you know me. Does she?"
"I don't see why she would," Annie agreed. "But you can't just hang around all night."
"Watch me," I challenged. "When do you have to go?"
"In about ten minutes."
"Okay. Let me get dressed." I began to sit up, but she took hold of my arm.
"But I just want to lie down a little longer," she said, "with you. Please?"
I smiled at her devilishly.
"I've got to get dressed now, so you won't be late again."
She flopped back down under the covers.
"I hate you," she said.
"You're just jealous that you didn't think of this first."
She hesitated.
"A little, yeah," she confessed, "but you're also an idiot."
"Can't hear you; too busy being punctual."
She groaned in irritation, but I caught her smile before she hid it beneath the blanket.
The laundromat was about as empty and quiet as one might expect it to be a quarter after midnight. Annie led me inside and had begun to say, "I think we're in the clear" when a very tall, lean woman appeared behind her. Freckles dotted her dark nose and cheeks, which sat below narrow, scrutinizing eyes that were a blunt, opaque black.
"In the clear of what?" she asked.
Annie turned to face her. "Running into you," she said, clear as day. I stiffened; what the hell was she doing?
"Oh," said the woman- Ymir, I assumed. She looked at me, then cracked a grin. "Well, who is this?"
"Armin," I said. The name felt right, this time, for some reason.
"Ymir," she returned, confirming my guess. "Was hoping that Annie was a closet lesbian, but you've shattered my fantasies. Thanks for that."
I wasn't sure what to say in response, but, luckily, Annie spoke before I could get a chance to make a fool of myself.
"You have a girlfriend," she snorted. "Anyway, can-"
"Can Armin stick around during your shift?" Ymir finished for her with a raised, defined eyebrow.
"Uh. Yeah," Annie said.
"Were you planning to keep him around if I hadn't been here?"
She looked away. "...pretty much," she admitted.
"Then no. You dishonest fuck."
Annie looked at me with a silent apology.
"But," Ymir continued, that single word demanding our attention, "I wouldn't mind having a little go-for I could pay under the table."
"A….go-for?" Annie frowned. "At night?"
"Of course not at night. No shit. But…."
"...but….." Annie probed.
"I wouldn't object to an employee hanging around. Even in the late hours."
"But during the day, I'd work here," I elaborated, just to be sure.
"Yup," Ymir assured me. "Get us coffee, clean around, hold down the fort if we're short on staff- all that jazz. I hate locking up this place because I have to go somewhere and someone-" she looked pointedly at Annie- "doesn't show up. It's a 24-hour joint, for god's sake."
"Yeah, sorry about that," Annie sighed. "It's just- you know."
"I don't mind you so much," Ymir dismissed, "because at least you have an excuse. It's fuckers like Hitch. You just know she's off doing straight people shit."
"Hitch," Annie agreed.
"Hitch," Ymir sighed. "And Boris, too, the unreliable twink. But, idiots aside, Armin, I'd pay you, like, five dollars an hour. Ten A.M. to three P.M, start the day after tomorrow. You make food runs, detergent runs, clean, help man the place. Pretty much everyone's your boss. Sound like a deal?"
I mulled it over for a quick moment. On the one hand, I needed the money- as little as it seemed to be- and I would gain permission to spend the night with Annie, which I wanted to do so badly. On the other hand, however, it would mean less time to spend during the day with Annie. Though, I supposed, I did need to get out of the house, and she could come to chat anytime she felt like it. And, in any case, Ymir seemed like an extremely lenient and flexible boss. I definitely could have gotten worse offers.
So I said, "It's a deal." Ymir spit in her hand (I squeamishly pretended not to notice) and slapped it into mine in one of the worst death-grip handshakes I've ever experienced. She then wished us well, announced that she was going to get "hammered" and invited us to join her when Annie's shift was over (likely forgetting that neither of us were legal) (and that Annie's shift ended at 6 A.M.), and then sauntered out of the room with one final, lazy flick of a salute.
"...Does anyone ever show up?" I asked, after looking around for a bit.
"Occasionally," she said. "More for the arcade games than anything else."
"Arcade games?"
"That curtain over there," she clarified, pointing across from her. I walked over and pushed it aside.
"Huh," I said. They were a little outdated, but not so old that they might be worth much money to any collector. Only four of them lay behind the curtain: a claw machine, a shooter titled Shooting Range, a classic Pac-Man, and one titled Chicken Invaders. Ironically, the Pac-Man was the newest-looking one.
"We keep them covered, usually, to keep dumbshit kids from disrupting the place in the daytime."
I frowned. "Then why do you guys have them in the first place?"
"For the dumbshit kids that have to come in. With their single moms, usually."
"Oh."
Single moms. That phrase brought me a sinking feeling I didn't care to explore.
"You can pull the curtain back completely, if you want," Annie said. "I usually do, when I start my shift."
As I did so, I wondered, "What do you do, for five and a half hours?"
"Here?" Annie leaned onto the counter, looking upward in thought. She shrugged. "I check the machines, read, listen to music if no one's around. Which is usually how it is."
"Do you ever play the games?"
"Do I look like I have the money to watch a machine eat my paycheck?"
"Well, can't you just…." I tapped the coin deposit with my foot.
"I guess, yeah. But I'm also not a fuckin' theif, so. No."
"It's not really stealing, if you think about it," I reasoned. "How much do you think it'd cost, per hour, to keep one running?"
"Like, five cents."
"Now, say you play a five-minute game and pay for it out of your pocket."
"Yeeees?"
"That would cost less than a cent."
"Okay?"
"So these things are literally more money than they're worth. You pay fifty cents for a game less than a cent. Multiply that by what I'd assume is the average amount someone plays in one sitting- five games, I'd guess- and that's two dollars and fifty cents for twenty-five minutes, which costs you guys, the owners, a little over a single penny."
Annie's brow furrowed.
I grinned with a mischief I hadn't previously thought myself capable of. "You're just evening the score some," I said.
"You're evil," she said.
"I'm a Scorpio," I agreed. "Still, of course, if you just had no desire to play, I wouldn't try and convince you otherwise…"
"Yeah, no, I suck at games," she said with a disregarding fold of her arms. "So nice try, Satan."
"And I almost got her," I said in my best demon voice.
Annie snorted. "That was disgusting."
I switched to my Yoda impression. "Better, is this?"
"I'm offended," she scoffed. I Yoda-hummed, which prompted her to take her headphones, demonstrate them with emphasis, and jam them into her ears.
Feeling giddy and childish, I crossed behind the counter, rested my chin on her shoulder, and stole a headphone bud to plug into my own ear.
She was listening to a song I could've sworn I'd heard before, but couldn't remember anything about. It had a slow, ambient undertone, like water without current swirling around your ears, and higher, distant ringing playing over it. The voice of the singer was high, resonant, but smooth and hearty. I immediately relaxed into the song, resting my arms around Annie's.
I couldn't make out the lyrics, but the singer's voice rose and fell, melodious, like a siren singing the listener to sleep.
He sighed a slow, trilling note that filled my ear once, twice, three times, before the tone of the song began to shift. It became much freer, as though I were rising among the waves. The lyrics became clear, unmuddled:
The way you move, the foreign groove at night…
I could never...
The bass circled, suddenly, drums following its lead, the current of the song moving me. I took Annie's hand and pulled her from the counter, holding her slow-dance style and beginning to spin with the music.
...I could never hold you…
She started by grinning at me incredulously, but something in her quickly shifted, even as I laughed some, so that her face grew soft. I bowed my head to meet it with hers. She sighed and let our foreheads touch, let our noses brush one another.
Watch it rise up, where you hide your pearls…
We spun, trapped in the current together.
Feel the tide low, where you hide those stones you wear…
We turned, the music only in our ears.
When no one's home, do they feel cold on your bones?
All the years I've missed your warmth...
Have you missed my warmth?
On your island….
The lyrics ceased. But the song swirled around us, stronger than ever.
And we spun, at the bottom of the ocean. Dancing.
AN: The name of the song they were listening to, if you'd like to hear it, was Islands, by Young The Giant.
Short chapter, I know, but I hope you enjoyed the interactions between them! And Ymir. I'd initially had a different plan for her (I wanted her and Krista to get their own separate arc), but once that was scrapped, I knew I at least wanted her in this bit of the story. Expect to see more of her and her literal Queen of a girlfriend. God, I love them.
Now, seeing as I have finished the eremika one-shot, I can post the link:
post/163860160600/title-a-vision-a-person-a-promise-universe
There ya are! If you're curious as to how they're faring right now (short answer- not well).
I really, really appreciate all the feedback concerning the aruani writing, btw. Their dynamic is so important to me, you have no idea.
Would like to apologize, also, for pulling the "song insert" thing. I tried my best to keep the text about how it moved Armin, and then Annie, but describing the feelings music can invoke is so difficult. I also thought that the lyrics were relevant- as were their end. So I swear, I wasn't just trying to shove a song down your throat (though it is a good song. Great to fall asleep to).
Aside from that, I have little left to say. Thank you all, again, and I'll see you next chapter!