A/N: Set sometime during the beginning their scout training. Soft eremika :)
--
The room, although a little dusty, is somewhat better than the barracks they've been stuck in for the past few months. Beams of sunlight peer through the curtains and onto the bed where the ill Mikasa argues with her captor; an unflinching Eren Yaeger sitting on the stool by her bedside. Her red scarf lays neatly folded on the bedside table, always within reach.
"I-I'm fine." Mikasa mumbles softly.
Eren can't help but let out a chuckle. The awe-inspiring Mikasa -- who kills titans with the same effort one uses to cut a loaf of bread -- is crippled by a common fever.
The last winter was undoubtedly a rough one. Training for the Scouts had only become more grueling along with the weather: the members of the 104th would often stumble back to the barracks bruised, beaten, and borderline frostbitten at the end of the day. Mikasa was never one to complain, though -- while Connie & Sasha would groan all through the night and mumble profanities in the mornings, she accepted her duties with steely resolve. He always silently admired that about her.
And here she was again, the infamous resolve shining through despite her flushed cheeks and sweaty pale complexion.
"No, you're not fine," Eren replies, drenching a cloth in a nearby bucket of cold water. "But you will be after some rest."
She frowns slightly. Most of her expressions are slight, Eren thinks to himself as he wrings out the cloth and gently pats her forehead. Mikasa's eyes flutter shut, her chest rising and falling with each labored breath. She looks peaceful, and for a moment, Eren thinks the protests are over. He starts to get up, meaning to close the curtains, when he hears a small voice that stops him in his tracks.
"But what if I get you sick?"
He turns back towards the bed and catches her eyes: deep grey ones that draw him in and make him forget the kind of world they live in for a split second.
"I don't care," He says plainly.
She gives another slight frown, but her eyes sparkle. Eren's chest fills with warmth.
Selfishly, he doesn't say that he doesn't think titan-shifters can get sick like that. He just wants to be the guy who doesn't care if he gets a fever, because right now he's the one helping her. So he grabs the cloth and dunks it again.
"You can need me sometimes too," Eren says gruffly, patting her brow.
Suddenly, Mikasa's slender hand wraps around his wrist, stopping his motions. He looks down at her in confusion. Slowly, she sits up a little to look at him face to face, his wrist still firmly in her grasp.
"I always need you," She half-whispers, cheeks a little more flushed than they were a moment ago.
Eren lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. The way she is looking at him right now is something he never wants to forget, so he etches it firmly into his brain: her soft black hair dancing ever so gently with the breeze from the open window, her eyes endlessly warm, her collarbone glowing with the soft gold of sunbeams. Fever and all, Mikasa is so incredibly beautiful.
But then, Eren's face begins to feel hot and he subsequently snatches his hand away. Immediate regret starts to brim in his very bones, yet his pride pushes him up off the stool and towards the dresser, where he feigns business looking for more medicine.
His heart rate slows, and he turns back around with remorse in his chest, but Mikasa is already laying on the far side of the bed, her back to him. Eren wants to kick himself.
For a while, he sits at the foot of the bed, listening to her breaths. Once he's sure she's asleep, Eren goes to leave quietly -- but before he can get to the doorway, he hears a voice so faint it might have been his imagination:
"Don't go."
--
The next morning, it is said that an unsurprised Captain Levi, likely intent on recruiting for a weekly cleaning of the barracks, stumbled across the two scouts -- somewhat intertwined and soundly asleep. Despite the dismal state of the living quarters, he supposedly closed the door and delegated cleaning to a seething Jean Kirstein instead.
--
might continue, let me know if you'd like me to!