I might change the title of this chapter later on.

Hi. I'm back, and I promise this story is actually going to be going somewhere from this point onward. Also hopefully I'll be able to update a bit more often, since the other fic that I'm working on at the same time as this one is almost finished. I'm still writing this one, since it's taking a lot longer than I first thought it would. I had the first few chapters sitting around for a few months, though, so I've had a pretty good amount of time to get some sufficient editing done. Since is this story is turning out to be so damn long, I figured it might as well be adequately written.

Shameless self-promotion time.

If anyone even cares, my author blog is asking-appelia on tumblr, and I'm tracking the following tags for this story: fic: tmi, fic: tmiu, and fic: the monsters inside us. I figured the abbreviations might make things a little easier. Not that anything has shown up with these tags yet. Hardly anyone has even bothered leaving a review on this on either of the places I've posted it. But whatever. I can wait. We still have a LONG way to go.

I don't have anything else interesting to say. It's 11:11 at night. Well, there's something.

Story time.

"And that's just about it."

The closing words of Levi's speech dragged me back into reality. I glanced around the room. The circle had been completely breezed through. Levi was sitting back down. I had missed his entire introduction.

Dammit.

Hanji looked briefly around the circle. "Alright, looks like that's everyone," she chirped. "So, since it's our first meeting, I thought we wouldn't get into anything too heavy just yet..." She glanced at the clipboard in her lap. "I've got a few ice breakers planned out, just so everyone gets to know each other a little better."

A few unenthusiastic noises were issued from the circle, Jean in particular. Levi cut in, raising his voice above the complaints. "Also, we'll be getting food after this. You'll have to participate if you want any."

The noises stopped. Sasha's face brightened like a puppy's would if you held bacon over its head. I sighed and hunched over in my chair. As if the circle of self-deprecation hadn't been enough.

As it turned out, the ice breakers weren't anywhere near as bad as I thought. They weren't anything like the stupid multiplayer games and embarrassing group exercises I had come to connotate with the term "ice breakers." We'd just started off with Hanji asking us all sorts of weird questions off of a list on her clipboard and us having to come up with answers of the tops of our heads. I discovered that Sasha's favorite band was Five Seconds of Summer, Krista's favorite quote was from Dr. Seuss, Bertolt had been obsessed with giraffes as a child, and that if Reiner had a yacht he would call it the Armadillo Warrior. If Ymir had to be a flower she would be a tigerlily. Connie's favorite superhero was Deadpool. If Armin had to choose a fictional character to represent his personal philosophy, he would probably choose Haruhi Fujioka. Annie had once stalked an internet blogger for a week. Jean wanted to be a cat for 24 hours, and the weirdest fact about Marco was that he'd had so many surgeries, half the organs in his body either weren't there or weren't his own. Levi left the room after about fifteen minutes and came back with plastic bags looped over both his arms. He dropped them on the disregarded table in the corner and started undoing the packaging on the food inside. Everyone immediately abandoned their posts in the circle and swarmed around the table like a horde of starving piranhas.

I staggered up from my chair and started towards the table. I figured that if I was going to be stuck here, I may as well get some free food out of it. I grabbed a store-bought cookie from the plastic container before all the good ones were taken and oatmeal raisin was all that was left. Once I'd obtained my small victory, I turned around and leaned back against the table to watch everyone else socialize while I stayed here and waited for the hour-long session to be over.

Levi caught my eye before I could even start.

I don't know why I noticed him. He wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, just standing around and talking to Hanji with an absconded cookie in one hand. But still, for some strange reason, I found my eyes magnetically drawn to him. Suddenly everyone else in the room seemed to fade into the background. It was just me and Levi.

And Hanji, of course. You know, since he was talking to her. No one else, though.

I tore my eyes away from Levi for a second and did a quick sweep the room. Mikasa wasn't hovering over my shoulder anymore. I didn't know exactly where it was that she'd gone, but it didn't matter. As long as she was busy, she wouldn't be kicking me to start mixing with the crowd and talking to people. And that meant I could just stand alone and watch.

I looked back at him, wondering what he was talking to Hanji about. Only... there was no Hanji anymore. Levi was turning around. He was headed towards the table.

I quickly moved to another empty corner.

Levi cut through the humming crowd of kids and started rearranging the scattered assortment of store-bought snack foods and disposable cups. Keeping my gaze fixed on him, I started inching closer. I felt kind of stupid, like a kitten creeping up on a toy mouse. But still, I kept up with the stalking. Something productive would come out of all this. I just had no idea what.

A few seconds of awkward creeping later, I was standing next to him. Not that he knew I was there. He was still fixing up the mess that the support group kids had created within seconds of the food's arrival, muttering something under his breath about stupid fucking brats why the fuck can't they control themselves. I inhaled deeply and opened my mouth to speak, but quickly snapped it shut again. There was no way I could talk to Levi if I had no idea what to say. I shrank back, dropping my eyes to the floor. It was like the call button situation all over again. My brain had gone completely blank except for the singular thought Why the fuck did I think this would be a good idea?

"Can I help you?"

"Huh?" My head snapped upright. A pair of sharp grey eyes caught mine.

Shit.

Levi cocked his head to the side, one hand resting on the table. "I asked you a question."

I stared blankly at Levi's face, which was just as bored and emotionless as I remembered. My mouth was hanging open like a broken mailbox, stuttery fragments of words sticking in the back of my throat. "I... um... I-I..."

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine, don't answer me." He turned back to the table and kept fixing things up. I didn't move. Once everything was in order again, Levi turned back to me. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

"S-sorry, it's just..." I murmured. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Levi blinked. "What?"

Realization hit me with the vague feeling of getting a door slammed in my face. There was no way he'd remember me. Nurses were probably just the same as their patients. You meet someone, you take care of them for a while, then they walk out of your life and you forget about them. That was how it had always gone for me before. There was no reason why this time should have been any different.

"I... Never mind." I turned to walk away, heat flushing my face.

"Wait."

I froze. Levi's voice reverberated in my head.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" he asked.

I turned stiffly back around. Levi was watching me expectantly, his bright grey eyes fixed to mine. "Y-yeah. At least, I think so."

I knew so. The real question was whether he did or not.

He stared intently at me for a while, his fingertips drumming against the tabletop. "You said your name is... Eren, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Eren Jaeger."

Levi's face was blank for a while longer. Then, all of a sudden, it wasn't. "Wait. Eren Jaeger?"

I wasn't sure whether he noticed my eyes lighting up or not. "Last summer? I spent a month here with a liver tumor."

A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "And you needed me to hold your hand before you went into surgery. Yeah. I remember."

The embarrassed flush returned to my face. Yep, it was Levi.

"Nice to know you're still alive." He leaned back on the table, watching the swarm of cancerous teenagers milling about the room. "So how have you been doing lately?"

"Fine," I said, doing the same. "What about you?"

"I'm just fan-freaking-tastic." He didn't give me much more detail than that. I guess he thought I had actually been paying attention during his introduction."So," he mused, "Is life any different with three-fourths of a liver?"

"Not really." It hadn't been all that spectacular to begin with. I didn't think my liver was making matters much worse than they already were.

He glanced over at me. "Not very talkative today, are we?"

I shrugged. "I don't know," I replied. "Coming here wasn't really my idea. It was all Mikasa's fault." My gaze swept through the crowd, searching for my sister. She was back in the circle, talking to Marco. The small, fragile-looking blonde kid was close by, shyly keeping his mouth shut. I'd already forgotten what his name was.

"Heh. So she's the same as before, then," Levi said, barely-detectable laughter in his voice.

"Yep."

He looked at me again. "I'm guessing you're no different, either."

"Probably," I said.

A second later, Hanji showed up. Levi turned away and started talking to her. So I left. It wasn't like I'd had much to say to him anyway.

I managed to swipe one of the remaining non-oatmeal cookies from the snack collaboration before heading back to the circle. Mikasa was still with Marco, and at some point Jean had joined the party. He was staring straight past Marco as if he and my sister were the only ones in the room. Marco wasn't saying much, only looking back and forth between the two of them while horseface ran his mouth like no tomorrow. I could tell that he was subtly trying not to laugh.

Naturally, I sat down as far from the public display of socialization as I could get.

"H-hi," a voice stuttered behind me.

My head whipped around. A pair of wide blue eyes met with mine. My heart skipped for a second, terrified that I'd accidentally cornered myself with Annie. Then I remembered that she couldn't speak.

"You aren't much for conversation either, huh?" It was the fragile blonde skater kid. My body shuddered in relief.

"No, not today," I said.

"Hm. Me neither," the kid replied. I didn't say anything more. After a few unresponsive seconds, he spoke up again. "I'm not very good at meeting new people."

"Neither am I."

"Really?"

I didn't bother answering.

"I'm Armin," the kid uninvitedly said. He looked at me with an awkwardly hopeful gleam in his eyes. I couldn't help thinking Thank god he didn't expect me to remember his name.

"Eren," I said with a nod.

Armin gave me a small smile. Progress. "So, how'd you end up here, Eren?"

I shifted around in my chair and glanced across the circle. "My sister made me go," I said, nodding towards the punky-looking asian girl on the other side. "She found an ad in a coffee shop and decided that dragging me here would be a good idea."

"Hanji asked to post some of the flyers in my grandpa's store," Armin replied, making a face that grew increasingly discontented as he spoke. "He told me about it and sort of just dropped me off here against my will. Said he wouldn't pick me up until the whole hour is up."

"Wow. Harsh." I shifted back and folded up my legs on the chair.

"So you said you have leukemia?"

I took a vicious bite out of the cookie I'd stolen. "Yeah."

"And that was the same thing your mom died from?"

I glared over my shoulder at him. "Yes, it was. What's your point?"

"Nothing. Just... wow. That's so tragic."

I screamed internally. Oh, god, not this again.

Armin didn't shut up like I'd expected him to. "You know," he said, "I can kind of relate. Or try to. I've kind of been through the same thi-"

I twisted around in the chair to face him. "There was a reason why I didn't mention it in my introduction, you know," I snarled.

Armin's mouth went slack, his eyes wide and glassy. He dropped his gaze to the floor. "S-sorry..." he whimpered.

The second I saw his face, I wanted to take everything back. I didn't know if he was aware, but he had an incredible talent for manipulating people with his own feelings. It had only taken seeing his kicked-puppy expression for a moment to make me realize what an absolute dick I was being. "No, don't be," I said quickly. "It was a valid question. What were you saying before?"

"Oh, um, just that..." Armin started, but he trailed off. "No. Wait. I already mentioned that in my introduction." He dropped his gaze and ran a hand through his fluffy blonde hair. "I'm sorry. I tend to repeat myself a lot."

"You certainly love apologizing, don't you?" I pointed out.

Armin laughed. "Sorry."

A smile forced its way onto my face. "There you go again."

"So what's your cancer status?" Armin asked, resettling himself in his chair.

"My cancer status?"

"You know, what it's been doing lately. Mine's been in remission for a pretty long time. I haven't had a relapse in years. I'm still not NEC or anything, but my doctor says my prognosis is good."

"Oh," I said. "Mine's... well, it's leukemia. It's some serious shit. Everyone knows that."

Armin's face fell just the slightest bit. "Oh."

"It hasn't been all that bad lately, though," I went on, holding one hand up in front of me as if that would stop the tidal wave of sympathy that was sure to come crashing down. "I was caught before anything went too far. I had a liver tumor last summer, but it was removed and everything. The cancer's in my bone marrow, though, and as far as my doctor can tell, it isn't going to be leaving anytime soon. The most anyone can do for me at this point is make sure it doesn't move anywhere else."

"Oh. Okay," Armin said. He seemed somewhat relieved. "So..."

"So?" I echoed.

Armin's wide blue eyes stared at me for a second before dropping to the ground. "Nothing," he said. "Just thought that you would pick up the conversation or something."

"You're not that good at making friends, are you?" I ventured.

Armin looked back up at me, his face tinted pink. "No," he admitted.

My mouth quirked up into a smile. "Neither am I," I said to my new best friend.

The rest of the meeting wasn't torturous. Hanji and Levi commanded us back into the circle. We spent the remaining twenty minutes coming up with our own ice breaker questions and shooting them at whoever looked like they wouldn't throttle us if we embarrassed them. In other words, Ymir, Levi and Annie stayed pretty quiet. Well, Annie stayed quiet regardless. You know, the whole no-vocal-cords thing. Armin wound up scrambling to answer all of the rapid-fire questions that the support group shot at him. Jean got snapped at by Levi when he attempted to ask Mikasa if she would date a guy with a two tone undercut. Or amber eyes. Or a horse face. Or basically anyone who fit his exact description. In retaliation she asked Jean if he would ever, under any circumstances, kiss another guy. That turned into an entire no-homo-but-probably-if-I-absolutely-had-to exposition, which ended with Jean receding into his chair and staying quiet for the rest of the meeting. It was probably the highlight of my day.

By the time four in the afternoon rolled around, the apprehension I'd felt at the beginning had all but disappeared. I still wanted to get the hell out of Trost. I wouldn't spend another second in that hospital if someone paid me. But I wasn't feeling ready to kill every other living organism in the room anymore.

Hanji called the end of the meeting, and the circle disassembled. Everyone was chatting as they made their way to the door. I heard a "See you Thursday" slipped into conversation every now and again. The kids all left while Levi and Hanji stayed behind to clean up the snacks and return the circle of therapeutic friendship to its former conference-room glory. I caught up with Mikasa on our way to the door.

"So," she said, glancing over her shoulder at me.

"So?" I echoed.

"So, how was it?"

"Not horrible," I deadpanned, turning away from her to stare straight ahead.

"Really?"

"No."

"That's perfect. Because we're going again Thursday."

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her. "What?"

"You heard me," she said, not even bothering to turn around.

I sighed and slapped a palm to my forehead, digging my fingers into my bangs. Well, I guess that settled the issue of how I would be spending my entire summer.

"Hey. What are you still doing here?"

I spun around at the sound of an all-too-familiar voice. Levi was walking down the hallway towards me, carrying the grocery store bags from before that now held empty containers. "L-Levi," I stammered.

"Yeah, it's me. Don't act so shocked," he said with a shrug as he caught up to me. "So how was it, losing your support group virginity?"

I stifled a laugh. He'd always had the best way of wording things. "It wasn't all that excruciating. Even if it was, I'll still be coming back on Thursday," I replied, nodding towards Mikasa, who was walking about fifty feet ahead of us.

"Nice," he said, giving me the closest thing to a smile that a person can accomplish without actually changing their facial expression. "You know," he added a second later, "it was a good thing that you decided to show up today."

I turned towards him, thinking Well, it wasn't really me who decided. "Really?"

"Yeah." He shifted one of the bags further up on his arm, which I found myself staring at without realizing it.

If you looked up toned in a dictionary, you'd probably get a picture of that.

I quickly tore my eyes away. "What makes you say that?"

"You need it," he said, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.

I didn't even bother trying to defend myself. It was always a lost cause when it came to Levi. "Whatever."

"See you Thursday, brat," he called after me as I sped up to reach Mikasa before she walked out without me.

Of all the things he could have remembered about me, it had to be that stupid nickname.

I found myself blushing in the late afternoon heat. My hand flew up to cover my burning face. I silently begged Mikasa not to turn around.

God fucking dammit, Levi.

Neither Mikasa nor I said much on our way back home. Dad was waiting in the parking lot when we came out. We piled into the car, Mikasa riding shotgun and me in the backseat. She asked if he'd been waiting around for very long, he said no, and the conversation pretty much ended there. Fifteen minutes later, we were back in our driveway. We climbed out, Mikasa said goodbye to my dad, I made some kind of pathetic effort to do the same, and he promised to be back by nine. Then he left.

I staggered back to my room and collapsed on my bed. Strange. The support group meeting was probably the first actual activity that I'd done in weeks, but for some reason I still felt exhausted.

Mikasa walked into my room without so much as a half-assed attempt to warn me. "So, support group."

I let out a long, melodramatic sigh. "Support group."

She traipsed over and sat down next to me on the bed.

"So is this going to be a thing now, or..."

"Yeah, it's a thing. Twice a week. All summer."

I sighed again. "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."

"What?"

"Is Dad going to be okay with driving me? I mean, I know he's really busy all the time, and-"

"Don't worry about Dad," Mikasa interjected, cutting me short. "I asked him about it. He told me he can sneak out of the lab every now and then for a few minutes at a time. He's got assistants to keep tabs on everything. It's really no big deal."

"Oh," was all I said. I rolled over onto my side to face her. It seemed like everyone had known I was going to support group except for me. I hadn't known that Dad could get out of work. I had always thought the multiple hours he'd spent in his lab office were a mandatory thing. Or maybe things were only that way after I'd been diagnosed.

Mikasa grabbed a pillow from my headboard and flopped down on her stomach. "So, was I hallucinating, or was that nurse you had last summer one of the admins of the group?"

"You mean Levi?" I said before I could stop myself.

By the time I turned to look at Mikasa, her eyes had widened in surprise and that smirk of hers was already creeping onto her face. "You remembered his name."

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I? He said it during the introductions. Didn't you hear him?"

"I did. I didn't think you would, though."

I willed my blood not to come rushing up to my cheeks like it always seemed to do whenever Levi came up in context. "Okay. So what if I did? He was a pretty kick-ass nurse. I was stuck in with him in Trost for a month. How could I have forgotten him?"

"You never remembered any of your other nurses."

"Well... they weren't Levi."

I immediately realized my mistake. Mikasa's smirk turned into a 100% pure shit-eating grin.

"Okay. I see how it is."

"No, you don't." I sighed in defeat and rolled over, smothering myself in my pillows. "Fuck you, Mikasa."

"Ew. Eren, that's incest."

I shut her up with a quick pillow to the face. She immediately dissolved into a fit of giggles, snatched the pillow I'd thrown and started swinging it at me. I grabbed the closest pillow that wasn't already on the floor and shoved it at her in retaliation. We wound up starting the first pillow fight we'd had in maybe two years. I tired myself out after maybe five minutes. I collapsed back into the pillows, gasping. I wondered briefly why my body had to suck at doing what it was supposed to.

"But seriously," Mikasa said, falling onto her back next to me. "What is the deal with you and Levi?"

"I don't know," I replied once I'd gotten some air back into my lungs. "He was just a cool nurse when I had him, and I guess we were sort of friends for a while? I don't know. Everything sort of just came undone after I left. I didn't think he'd be at the meeting today." I looked up at her, my eyebrows pulling into a faint scowl. "Did you know about this already too?"

"No," Mikasa said. "I didn't know you two were so close, though."

I let out a soft, nasal laugh. "What makes you think we were close?"

"Come on. 'It was a good thing you decided to show up today?' It sounded almost like he missed you."

My eyes widened and I suddenly found myself sitting bolt upright. "Wait. You heard that?"

"Uh, yeah. I was, like, forty feet in front of you. Of course I heard it."

I could feel my blood rising up under my skin and searing my face. I took a breath and forced it back down before speaking again. Levi somehow always managed to embarrass me, even when he wasn't there. "So why are you bringing him up now?"

"Just thought it was interesting. That's all." Mikasa curled up around the pillow that I'd been hitting her with a minute earlier. Her nose buried itself into her ever-present scarf.

"It is, isn't it?" I said, lying back down next to her.

Less than ten seconds later...

"So if you go to support group, you'll probably get to see Levi."

I froze. "Uh... probably."

"Do you want to see him again?"

"Do I..." The question was harder to answer than it should have been. Of course I wanted to see Levi. I wanted to know what he'd been doing, where he'd been all this time, what he'd been up to lately, and a billion other questions that would probably seem insanely prying if I tried to ask them all at once. I'd missed him. It had just taken seeing him again to make me realize that.

Then again, that day's support group had been awkward as fuck.

"You do, don't you?"

There Mikasa went again, being her usual perceptive-as-fuck self. I sighed for what felt like the six hundredth time that day. "Yeah, I... I guess I do."

"So is it a deal, then?"

"Is what a deal?"

"It's simple," Mikasa said, sitting up and leaning over me the way she always did when she was trying to make a point while we were lying down. "You go to support group and at least make an attempt to get a life, the way I wanted you to when I signed us up for this. And every time you go, you get to see Levi again. Make sense?"

I rolled my eyes. "Mikasa, I don't think you understand the full extent of my social disabilities."

"No, I think I understand them perfectly. Or at least well enough to know that signing up for the YCSG isn't as horrible an idea as you think it is."

I buried my face in the pillows and took a deep, suffocated breath, mulling over her reasoning in my head. She was right. It did make sense. The support group was supposed to be helping me get over my social roadblocks. And Levi was part of it. It made me wonder if he was in on Mikasa's plot too, whatever the fuck it happened to be.

I resurfaced from the pillows long enough to speak. "I don't think that no is a viable option."

"It isn't."

"You're going to make me go, regardless of whether I want to or not."

"I am."

"So why are you trying to bribe me in the first place?"

"Because you need incentive." Mikasa pushed my shoulder and rolled me onto my side to face her. "If you have a reason to go to support group, it probably won't suck as much. I think seeing Levi twice a week isn't half bad, for motivational purposes. So what do you say?" She smiled hopefully at me, finally showing me a facial expression that I didn't want to punch off.

I sucked in a deep breath and let it out one more sigh, longer than what any human should be capable of. "Fine."

Mikasa's smile turned into a victorious grin.