The Monsters Inside Us

by angstwithtea

Rule number one: Never fall in love with someone who has a terminal disease.

15. I'm Sorry But Your Son Is Gay

Hello, friends. I have been gone.

I know that I say I'm going to post new chapters more often in just about every single update, and that has never happened. Not even once. In fact, I think the more that I say it, the bigger the gaps between chapters gets. So... I should probably stop saying it.

IN OTHER NEWS, my lovely beta frozenheart23 doesn't pronounce the initials of the support group as letters. They pronounce YCSG as if it's an actual word. Yeah. YSCG. Just that keyboard smash of letters right there. I don't know how that works, but apparently their brain is too lazy to pronounce each letter on its own. Also their brain sometimes reads it as "yogscast." So, at their request, it is now official. YCSG is now pronounced "yogscast."

No, you are not allowed to fucking argue with me. I am the writer. I am your god now.

I'm wasting a lot of time, and I want to get this chapter posted before midnight, so I'm just going to go ahead and get my tumblr plugs out of the way. My new author blog is the-angstiest-author. I think it's pretty much all set up. I might make a page for The October Story, since it has a grand total of two fan posts. I'm also tracking the tags "fic: the monsters inside us" and "fic: tmiu" if anyone wants to make any posts about this. Please do. I like knowing that my writing makes people feel things.

Enough of begging for virtual hugs in the form of reaction GIFs. You came here to read about gay tsundere cancer babies.

Story time.

---

I expected coming back to the Youth Cancer Support Group to be something like walking out of a movie theater and coming back in ten minutes later. I had only been there for a little while. Metaphorically, I had stayed just long to see the opening credits and get the gist of the plot. Then had I left. I knew that everything would be entirely different by the time I came back. It had been at least three weeks since I had seen any of them, both alive and otherwise, and I had the feeling that I had missed out on a lot.

I had disappeared while everyone had stuck faithfully by. And I might have been coming back (albeit begrudgingly) of my own free will, but that didn't mean the others would be happy to see me. I had left them in a state of crisis. I had no idea what the hell was going on with them, and that singular fact scared me shitless. But, unlike watching an entire movie (or ten), this was something that I had to do.

On my own, I might have never gone back, but other variables had worked themselves into the equation, and now there was nothing left for me to do but solve it before things became any more complicated. I had promised Levi, however unwillingly, that I would be coming back. Then I had promised Armin, and I was pretty sure that I had promised everyone else in the group as well by then. I had basically destroyed any chance that I had at going back on my word. Now I had no choice but to come crawling back to the group like the sad, lonely, pitiful person that I was.

That was how I ended up sitting in my dad's Highlander on the way to the coffeehouse that I hadn't been to in what felt like weeks.

"You sure you want to do this?" my dad asked curiously. "You've been out of the group for a pretty long time."

I distracted myself from staring aimlessly out the window to turn and look over at the driver's seat. "Yeah. I'm sure. I never really wanted to leave forever anyway. I just needed a break."

"Why would you need a break? You don't really do much else."

I rolled my eyes and went back to staring out the window. "Way to rub it in, Dad."

He stopped just short of smiling, but still laughed under his breath. "Sorry. Too soon, I guess."

Four years isn't too soon, Dad.

I listened to the wind rush by outside the window where I rested my head. The average temperatures had dropped by a lot since I had last spent a considerable amount of time outside the house. That's just what happens when you spend such a long time inside that you miss the changing of the seasons. The car shuddered a little as my dad tapped on the brakes, and I slid forward and lost my position on the window. We turned into the parking lot of the small plaza in the middle of town, pulled up in front of Beans, and shifted into park.

The day was October eleventh, and I was finally going back to the YCSG.

I had gotten Levi's email the day after the impromptu therapy session in my basement. Then my heart had gotten a little more excited than I was comfortable with when I realized that now I had his personal email. It was nothing out of the ordinary, just his name and the messenger he used. But that was exactly what came to mind when I thought of him. Nothing fancy. Business as usual.

It was also sort of disappointing that I thought of him that way, but that was beside the point.

The meeting on the eleventh at three was the closest one coming up in the course of that month. There was also an four-day hiatus between this one and the next, so I had the choice of either getting my ass back in gear as soon as I could or leaving the question of whether or not I was actually coming back hang over everyone's heads for another four days. The meeting also happened to fall directly onto one of Mikasa's ludicrous number of practice sessions, so I would be attending on my own.

That meant I had to be stuck in the car with dad. By myself. Sucking at making conversation. For a whole fifteen minutes.

"This is the place, right?" he asked.

"Yeah. I printed the schedule, so if it's not, someone must have forgotten to tell me," I replied. My hands went straight to the buckle of my seat belt. I wanted to get out of that car as soon as I could.

My dad laughed a little at my pitiful attempt at humor. "Well, I'm just glad to know you're talking to your friends again."

"Like I said, Dad, I wasn't planning on leaving forever."

"Alright, alright," my dad said. He looked over at me, a faint smile on his tired-looking face. "I hope it all goes well."

"So do I," I mumbled. I pushed the car door open and climbed out onto the pavement.

"Text me and let me know that they're in there, alright?"

"Yeah, I will."

"I'll be back to pick you up in an hour."

"Okay," I said, fully aware that he wouldn't.

"Good luck, Eren," he said with another tired smile.

"Thanks, Dad," I said. Then I pushed the car door shut and walked into the coffeehouse alone.

Beans was a pretty stereotypical small-town coffee place. The shop had a warm, earthy color scheme, soft indie music playing in the background, and mismatched chairs at little square tables scattered around the floor space that were shoved together whenever groups of more than two showed up. There was a counter off to one side with a chalkboard menu pinned to the wall above it. There was also a tiny area at the end of the shop furthest from the entrance, a few square feet of space that was elevated about six inches above the rest of the floor where people could host the open-mic poetry nights that every decent coffeehouse has or perform with their shitty amateur bands if they bribed the establishment enough. I'd seen the advertisements at least a thousand times before, but I had never thought that any of the performances were actually worth seeing.

It seemed like an average day in the coffeeshop. There was a moderate amount of customers, a couple of baristas behind the counter, and that one douchebag sitting at the table by the window and staring at the screen of his laptop as he tries to write the shitty novel that will never be perfect enough to be called 'finished.' Then I noticed the clutch of young people clustered in the furthest corner of the shop. There were so many that some of them hadn't been able to fit around the three tables they had pushed together, and the two biggest ones were sitting on the ledge of the excuse for a stage. And they were making out.

Looks like I'm in the right place.

"Eren!" somebody squealed. I looked up from Reiner and Bertolt's careless kissing just in time to see someone tear free from the group and launch herself at me. I didn't even have time to say hello before Hanji scooped me up into a bone-crushing hug.

"Hi," she said apologetically when she finally let me go. I tried to suppress my gasping for air while she looked fondly at me and squeezed my hands in hers, her brown eyes misty behind the windshield of her glasses. "Where have you been, Eren? Everyone's been wondering about you."

"They have?" I choked out, just a second before-

"Hey, Eren's back!"

"Eren, where the hell have you been?"

"Thought you could bail on us, did you?"

"Get over here! You've got so much explaining to do!"

I didn't need to be asked twice. I made my way over to the corner, then got sucked into an endless vortex of hugs, arm-punches and the inevitable questions. Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why did you leave all of a sudden?

I couldn't answer them all at once. And for the most part, I didn't answer them at all. I just let them do whatever they wanted while I waited for everything to subside. Krista was the only one missing. I didn't have the heart to ask anyone what was going on with her. I knew enough just by the memory of what had happened at the last meeting I had been to. But Armin was there. It wasn't for the first time in weeks like it was with everyone else, but having seen him before didn't take anything away from the value of seeing him here.

True to his word, Armin had met up with me at that very same coffeehouse a day earlier and reacted to seeing my face in pretty much the same way as everyone else was now. He'd had even more questions on his own than the rest of the YCSG had for me now, and I had just about the same number of answers. We had spent hours there, trying to make up for the time we had lost when I broke down. Now we were back together, along with the rest of the support group, and everyone was all over me as if I had just returned from the dead.

Then, in the midst of everything else, I picked out one face in particular that I had missed seeing almost as much as I had missed my best friend's.

A small smile had somehow found its way to Levi's lips."Nice seeing you again, brat," he said. "I knew you would come back to us eventually."

I almost forgot to text my dad after that.

It took the group ages to get over the fact that I was no longer off floating somewhere they couldn't reach me. And once they did, it was straight back to the usual YCSG. Talking about problems, sorting them out, and everyone being there for everyone else. As much as I didn't want to admit it, and as wrong as it had felt to me weeks earlier, I had missed it a lot.

Sure, I knew I still had a problem. But having people to deal with it alongside me was sure as hell a lot better than dealing with it alone.

Not that I told any of them what that problem was.

The meeting dragged on twice as long as it was supposed to, if these meetings were even intended to stick to the same one-hour time constraint that the ones at the hospital had. It seemed like no one wanted the group to split up and the members go their separate ways, just in case someone disappeared without warning again. I had to text my dad and let him know that I wouldn't be going anywhere for a while longer. He never responded and for a while I wasn't even sure if he had read my text, but the fact that I never saw him pull up in front of the shop had to count for something.

The sky had started to dim before anyone made any effort to leave the group. First it was Sasha, who said that her mom was waiting outside and that she had work she needed to finish before school started the next day. Connie left not much later, then Annie, then Marco with Jean in tow. Bertolt and Reiner were the last to go, and even when they walked outside they didn't really leave (meaning I saw them jamming their tongues into each others' mouths for a solid three minutes through the front window). It would make a decent amount of sense to say that they were the most unwilling to go, even if my guess happened to be untrue.

All four of us had our chairs clustered around a single table. Armin sat next to me, shooting me meaningful looks and proud little smiles approximately every other second. Hanji was across from me, practically climbing over the table to get closer to me and firing questions at me faster than an automatic machine gun. Levi sat on my other side, and he was... just being Levi. That was all he ever really did.

It suddenly made a lot of sense that Hanji was normally the one who took care of individual sessions rather than her co-admin. In a few minutes, she had managed to drain half of the information out of me that Levi hadn't even been able to guess at in an hour and a half. The parts about what had bothered me about Ymir's reminder, specifically. And those parts only. I made sure of that. And even that much still set off a reaction with the rest of the group. Armin insisted on giving me a hug, even though I felt pretty sure that I was past needing one. Hanji did the same thing, despite having gotten the urge to strangle me with friendship out of her system earlier on in the meeting.

Levi was the only one who didn't seem all that affected. He didn't have much of a reaction. I wasn't surprised about it, knowing him the way I did. At least I wasn't until I felt the toe of someone's sneaker nudge my ankle under the table and his eyes fixing on me a second later. At that moment, I lost my composure and that strange instinct that had screwed me over more than a year ago surged up inside me. Right then, I wanted to grab his hand more than anything. But this time, I kept my hand in place. Having a replay of last summer would only make my problems worse. I was supposed to be getting over him, wasn't I?

Not only that, but randomly grabbing his hand would also let my secret out right in front of Hanji and Armin. That would have made matters worse than any covert hand-grabbing possibly could.

I lost track of how long we stayed there in the coffeeshop. I was surprised the staff didn't start bothering us for taking up space without buying anything from the counter. It was as if we had forgotten how time worked, like we could ignore everything else in the world as long as we had each other. I had forgotten how being around the support group made me feel. How it felt as if I had found a second family, one that I had chosen for myself. One that I knew understood and cared when I had no idea what the hell had happened to my real one. I had forgotten what it was like to have friends. And maybe that was because I thought that feeling like that was wrong. But when I was actually with them... actually happy... it didn't seem to matter.

Unfortunately, there was also something else that I had forgotten. And that was texting my dad.

Somewhere in the middle of a discussion about something completely unrelated to cancer, I heard the door across the shop swing open and click metallically shut. I ignored it. Probably just another customer. Beans was a pretty popular place, as far as its small target audience of Shiganshina was concerned.

I stopped ignoring it when Mikasa strode across the coffeeshop, straight towards our table.

"There you are, Eren. What the hell have you been doing? Dad said you haven't texted him for hours!"

I felt my stomach drop out of place and land somewhere on top of my pelvis. Shit. I was supposed to tell him I was still here, wasn't I?

"I- uh, I-I'm sorry, I..."

"I guess it doesn't matter now. Not like you would have gone anywhere else anyway." Mikasa leaned over the table and planted her hands on the edge with a huff. She had conveniently decided to stick herself between Levi and me. My ex-nurse glanced carelessly up at her, then looked away again just as Hanji wiggled out of her seat and hurled herself at my sister.

"Mikasa! We thought you were gone too! We all missed you so much! I'm sorry you didn't see everyone else, just you came in so late and we were already past our scheduled closing time and people had things to-" and the rest was faded out into squeaky, unintelligible gibberish as the LPN from hell pulled Mikasa into another of her suffocating hugs.

"See, Mikasa? You had nothing to worry about. Eren is in good hands," Levi said. "Mostly," he added as an afterthought, glancing pointedly at Hanji.

My sister refused to acknowledge Levi's comment as she waited patiently for Hanji to loosen up her death grip. She wormed her way out of her arms and turned back to me, a tense look on her face. "Come on. Dad's waiting outside." She stood up and turned around to walk back out, then stopped mid-step. "Or not."

Or not? Her words made my guts twist up into one solid block of impenetrable knots. Slowly, so painfully slow that I could feel my neck vertebrae clicking into place, I looked up from the table and towards the entrance to the coffeehouse. The door was swinging shut again, and there was someone standing there. Relatively tall, hair a lighter shade of brown than mine, silver-rimmed glasses, a tired face that put me on a cross-country guilt trip every time I looked at it...

Holy shit, my dad was standing in the fucking coffeeshop in front of my fucking therapy group. What the fuck was he doing? What the fuck was I doing? What the FUCK?

My dad carefully approached the table. Everyone turned to look at him. If the knots in my stomach could have gotten any tighter, they definitely did.

"Sorry, am I interrupting something?" he asked.

Hanji jumped to answer him. "No, no, of course not!" she chirped. "We were supposed to be finished up a while ago, actually. It's no big deal, we'll get going if you-"

"What? Oh, no, wait, I'm not management," my dad said, holding up a hand to fend off Hanji's enthusiastic apologies. "I'm Grisha Jaeger. I'm Eren's dad."

At that second, everything felt as if it were suspended in space. The color drained from my face and every last one of my nerves was on edge. Holy shit. Of all the things that could have happened to me today, it had to be this.

Hanji stared at him for a second as if he'd just said he was a god, then her head began bobbing slowly up and down. "Oh," she mused quietly. "Oh, yes. I see it now." She began nodding faster, a bright smile spreading across her face. "Well, Mr. Jaeger, welcome to the Youth Cancer Support Group! I'm Hanji. I'm a group administrator. Nice to finally meet you!" She stuck her hand out towards him, and he cordially took it. Knowing Hanji, I was surprised she didn't just attack-hug him and get it over with. A person must have had to attain a certain level of friendship with her in order to warrant that kind of abuse.

"Well... hello, Hanji," he said. "Listen, I'd love to stay and get to know you all, but my daughter kind of has a schedule to keep to..."

His words stuck in my mind like misplaced pin. Wait, so now Mikasa's the one who doesn't have time for anything?

"Then just let me introduce you," Hanji pleaded. "It'll be quick, I promise. Two minutes tops." Her entreating grin glowed in his face, though I wasn't sure that sort of thing would work on my dad. Then I remembered that he'd been married once, and Mom had suckered him into things the same way plenty of times.

My dad started to respond. "I- I suppose that-"

"Great!" Hanji squealed, leading my dad towards the table. "I'm sorry not everybody's here. Like I said, we stayed late today and I guess people had other things planned... Anyway, this is Armin, one of the members, and this is Levi, the other admin. We manage the group together. You know, scheduling meetings, planning activities out, that sort of thing."

My dad's eyes followed along with Hanji's hand as she pointed out each of the people she named, then went back to the kid who was trying to hide behind the blonde coconut shell of his bangs. "Ah, so you're Armin?" he said. A slight smile crossed his face. "Nice to finally meet you. I've heard a lot of good things about you."

Armin looked slightly pinker than normal. "Y-you have?"

I couldn't deny that I was thinking the same thing. As far as I knew, I had never even mentioned Armin around my dad. I didn't even think he knew that I had friends.

"Of course. Mikasa talks about you all the time."

Well, that explained it.

"And you're Mr. Jaeger?"

My head flicked to the side and my eyes landed on Levi. He had his gaze firmly fixed on my dad. His eyes didn't seem as sharp as they usually did. They were more inquisitive than anything else. I looked back up at my dad, waiting for someone to say something more, just so the anticipation would go away.

My dad and my crush were meeting face to face.

"Yes, I am," my dad replied. "Said it when I first walked in, actually."

"Sorry, just... you look kind of familiar," Levi said, his eyes wandering observantly over my dad's face. "You wouldn't happen to work in any field of science, would you?"

I almost missed the flash of pride that appeared in my dad's eyes. "Actually, yes. I'm a microbiologist. I study pathogens. How did you know?"

Levi's eyes widened by a millimeter or two. "Wait a second. You're Dr. Grisha Jaeger?"

"Well, if you want to be formal about it-"

"I was studying your findings for a paper in one of my classes," my ex-nurse said, sounding oddly excited. "You're... I can't believe this. This is such a weird coincidence. Not to be awkward, but I am a huge fan."

"You... are?" my dad mused. he sounded more than a little dumbfounded. "I didn't think my work had gotten this much notice."

"Well, as far as I know it's not world-famous, but the things you've done with staph and strep are just... and the shingles project, recreating altered cultures in the lab. I'd never heard of anyone else even attempting that. You, sir, are a genius."

My dad's face lit up with a proud smile. "I... thank you. I don't know what to say. I've never had someone recognize me on an off chance before."

"Dad," Mikasa cut in quietly. She had her phone in her hand and was glancing insistently at the door every other second.

He sighed and turned toward me. "Alright," he agreed. "We can't stand around forever. Come on, Eren." I pushed my chair back and got up from the table. Armin tugged the sleeve of my hoodie and prompted another hug from me. I glanced nervously at my dad and decided to just go in for it, whatever he thought be damned. Not that he really seemed to mind seeing me hugging another guy in public. Mikasa must have told him about Armin being a cuddlebug, too. It made me start wondering about what else she'd told him without my consent.

She better have kept her mouth shut about Levi, I thought bitterly.

"I'll see you at the next meeting, right?" my friend asked when I let go.

"Yeah, of course," I said. Not like I had much choice over it anymore, thanks to that stupid agreement I had made with Levi. I had the nagging feeling that I would be hearing from him if I tried to get out of it.

"It was a pleasure meeting you, Dr. Jaeger," Hanji said sweetly, going in to shake my dad's hand again while Levi watched in silence, that look of mild admiration still replacing his regular bored expression.

"The pleasure is all mine," my dad said warmly. I joined him and Mikasa, and my sister started for the door as soon as I left the table. I glanced back over my shoulder. "See you guys next week," I said a little more sadly than I had intended.

"See you, doctor's boy," Levi replied.

I felt my face turn bright red and silently hoped that my dad hadn't heard him.

---

Mikasa and my dad were in a heated conversation about the MMA team the entire way home. She had a tournament coming up the following weekend (which I probably wouldn't have heard about until a day before) and according to her, our local team was not at all prepared to be facing off against the one they had been pitted against, some team of rich prep-school princesses from Stohess who allegedly had access to all the personal trainers and steroids they could ask for. She was nervous about the fight, mad about some of the girls who just sat around during practice, and most of all pissed that the coaches had decided to arrange such an unmatched fight. It was probably the first time in a while that I had seen her so stressed out about anything.

"And the way the coaches run things, the team always comes first," she ranted as my dad tried to keep his eyes on the road. "I've explained to them before that I've got AP classes in school and I need time to do homework, but they just don't care. I'm trying to balance all this stuff and the fact that they want to add an extra half hour to our practices this week is not helping at all."

"I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out, Mikasa," my dad said consolingly. "They've done worse before, and you've always been able to work around it. Besides, if there's anyone on the team who should be worried, it isn't you. You're one of the best fighters they have."

"Maybe, but that still doesn't change the fact that they've literally put us in a no-win situation. I don't know why they even organized this match in the first place."

"Maybe the Stohess team was looking for a confidence boost."

Mikasa stared angrily at him until he glanced away from the road again. My dad sighed, seeming a little deflated. "Sorry. Terrible joke."

I didn't mind listening to the two of them talk. They got a little bipolar with each other sometimes, but that was only to be expected. Mikasa had to make up for the hours of time lost when Dad wasn't home, so all of the subjects and feelings that should have taken days to process were all run through in a span of minutes. It might have seemed weird to a bystander, but not to me. I was used to it. I even found it interesting to hear what they had to say. Besides, as long as they were engaged, that meant I didn't have to do anything. I could just sit in the backseat like a tumor and no one would care.

"It was nice of you to come and meet the group today," Mikasa said, having moved on from her state of panic.

"I figured I would have to do it sooner or later," my dad replied. "They seem like a nice group of people. Too bad only a few of them were there."

"Yeah, they're pretty cool." She paused for a second before adding, "Well, most of them are."

My dad glanced over, curious. "What do you mean, most of them?"

"Just a few of them are a little... I don't know. Less than prime friendship material," Mikasa hedged.

"I'm guessing Jean wasn't one of those?" my dad said with a smirk.

I jumped in my seat as if my dad had suddenly slammed the brakes. Wait. Dad knew about Jean?

Mikasa shifted in her seat, one hand coming up to play with a strand of her hair. "Um... He kind of was at first, but..." she said. I could practically hear her blushing.

Mikasa shifted in her seat, one hand coming up to play with a strand of her hair. "Um... He kind of was at first, but..." she said. I could practically hear her blushing.

My dad laughed as he turned back to the road. "That's how it usually is. I remember when I was in high school, every girl I talked to thought that I was such a geek when they first met me. All I knew how to small-talk about was science fiction, actual science, more science fiction..." He took one hand away from the wheel to flick it in the air for emphasis. "I couldn't get a girlfriend to save my life."

"The difference between you and Jean was that you probably weren't desperately seeking one."

"You don't even know the half of it, sweetie," my dad said with another laugh. The tires bumped over the curb as he pulled into the driveway. Then, to my surprise, he took the keys out of the ignition after parking the car. He undid his seatbelt and pushed the driver's side door open.

"You're not going back to work?" I asked. He wasn't ready to bolt back out again. This was new. I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not, but it was new.

"Not tonight," he answered after pulling the back door open for me, even though we both knew I could have done it myself. "Our current samples need to culture for a while, so I've got a little more free time than usual. Thought I might as well spend it with you two."

"Oh," I said neutrally as I climbed out of the backseat. "Okay." I might have been mistaken, but I could have sworn that there was something sad behind the last few words he said. It sounded almost unfinished, like there was something he had left off.

I hardly ever see you as it is.

Pushing the unspoken sentence to the back of my mind, I made a beeline for the door and started walking.

By force of habit, I went straight from the entryway to the stairs, dead-set on hiding up in my room for the rest of the day. Dad and Mikasa stayed behind in the kitchen, presumably to make something for dinner that sucked less than what Mikasa and I usually threw together for ourselves on the days we felt like trying to cook. I might have joined them if I weren't absolutely craving some time by myself. Social interaction might have been nice, but it was exhausting. Then again, cancer made everything I tried to do feel exhausting.

Even with headphones secured over my ears and a steady stream of acoustic covers pouring from the speakers, I could still hear something slip through from downstairs every now and again. A laugh from Mikasa, some shitty joke from my dad, some comment or another that came out louder than it was supposed to, I was never really sure. I couldn't make a single thing out, but I heard them all the same. It was like no matter what I did, their presence wouldn't leave me alone. Not even an amateur, girl-voiced version of Fall Out Boy could drown them out. After about an hour of aimless scrolling on Tumblr and hiding from the rest of the world, I figured it wouldn't kill me to come back out for a while. Besides, it might have been a nice surprise for Mikasa if I came down to the kitchen without having to be called.

The smell of marinade hit me before I had even gotten down the stairs. Along with it came the hiss of a sauté pan, the steady hum of the oven fan, and the muffled conversation that had been popping in to visit me every few minutes before I had decided to return the favor. Judging by the smell, Dad must have been making something oven-grilled. The idea of decent food motivated me to keep walking, since he was the only one out of the three of us that had cooking skills beyond throwing together whatever took the least amount of skill to prepare. I didn't remember us having very much in the way of fresh meat in the fridge, but there might have been some shopping bags in the trunk that I hadn't known about.

The next thing that I heard after the initial wave of kitchen noise was, "They're so gay it's not even funny."

What?!

I burst into the kitchen. "What are you talking about?"

Both my dad and Mikasa turned immediately to face me. My sister was standing at the stove, one hand flipping green beans around in a pan and the traces of a smile lingering on her face. My dad stood by the oven, looking like he was trying to hold in an unbridled laugh.

"Hey, Eren," Mikasa said, clearly struggling to keep a straight face. "Finally decided to join us?"

"Yeah," I warily replied. "Sounds like an interesting conversation you guys are having."

"It definitely is," my dad said. He turned away from me to hide his face-splitting grin and pulled the oven door smell of marinating spices flooded the kitchen. "The support group sounds like a, er... an interesting cast of characters."

"Heh. I guess they are." I made my way past Mikasa to the cabinets, just to give myself something to do. "Plates or bowls?"

"Plates," my dad replied. He peered over Mikasa's shoulder at her work with the veggies. "Try adding some more garlic powder. They still look a little plain."

"What's for dinner?" I asked aimlessly.

"Dad's making strip steak," Mikasa avidly responded. "Feels like it's been ages, doesn't it?"

As if the smells surrounding me weren't bad enough, the thought of non-amateurly made food was almost brought me to the point of drooling. "It does."

I kept myself busy with the tableware while my dad and my sister continued to chat without me. It would have made sense for me to join in, since I had dragged myself out of hiding in the first place. But I was still taking baby steps with the whole social interaction thing. Besides, they seemed to be doing just fine on their own. I didn't feel any pressing need to get involved.

"So, Bertolt and Reiner are together?" Dad prompted, picking up right where he and Mikasa left off.

Hold on. He knows about them too?

"Yeah. And they're pretty shameless about it." Mikasa smiled to herself. "I'm kind of proud of them for it, actually." She looked intently at me for a second before turning back to her beans. I wasn't sure if she wanted me to notice or not, but whatever her intention, I got the message all the same.

No, Mikasa, we are not going down that road. Not tonight.

"What makes you say that?" Dad asked.

"It's kind of hard to explain. Just... the fact that they're so proud of who they are. I mean, I know it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but it's still something that so many people don't approve of. They just don't seem to care. They're so strong about it, even with their cancer and everything else they have to deal with. Ymir and Krista weren't anywhere near as bad about the whole PDA thing, but they were... They were also really..."

Mikasa trailed off and stared at the stovetop. She didn't have to continue for me to know what she was referring to. The two and a half weeks of self-inflicted house arrest had left enough of an impact on me. My dad, on the other hand, might have required a little more enlightenment.

But instead of blanking out as I had expected him to, he seemed to wilt right along with her. "I know what you mean," he said. "It's such a shame, what happened to her. I can't even imagine what Krista must be going through."

I'm pretty sure you can. Don't you remember, I don't know, the exact same thing happening to you?

"She hasn't been showing up to any of the meetings lately," Mikasa went on. I heard her switch the stove off. "Most of the group thinks she's going to end up quitting."

"Seems a bit defeatist to me. I would think that she'd need some support more than ever right about now. Why would she cut herself off at a time like this?"

Excuse me?

I slammed a fork down on the tabletop a lot harder than I had intended to. In a second, both of them had turned in my direction, their surprised eyes fixated on me. I felt a shiver run through my nerves and I scrambled to find an excuse.

"Sorry. It slipped."

A moment of awkward silence dragged by before everything went back into motion. Mikasa scraped at the pan in front of her. "I think these are just about done."

"Hold on, let me check first." My dad took a look at her handiwork before nodding in approval. "Yeah, they look great. Good job. Eren, give your sister a hand, would you?"

I left the skewed fork where it was and went to the stove to help my sister dump everything into a serving dish. Once dinner was set up, the conversation once again took off and left me a spectator in the dust. I couldn't find anything to say in between disgustingly greedy bites of strip steak anyway. Holy hell, I had missed being able to taste other people's cooking. My dad was at least ten times the chef I would ever be.

"Do you actually think those girls from Stohess are on steroids?"

"I have no idea. They're rich enough. With their kind of money, people can do pretty much whatever they want to."

"I know, but don't they test for that sort of thing? If word ever got out about it, the team would definitely be in some sort of lawsuit."

"It's just some stupid rumor, Dad. I never said I believed it. It's just got the rest of the team scared to death."

"Not you?"

"If I work hard enough, I shouldn't have anything to worry about."

"How are the AP classes working out for you so far?"

"It's only October, and I'm pretty sure it's going to get a lot worse."

"It sounds like an interesting topic, but that's a lot to learn in three weeks, don't you think?"

"And the entire thing is set up around whoever's parents pay the most money to get their kids into the program. I've told her a thousand times it's not even worth trying."

"You can't just have an all-or-nothing attitude. There has to be some kind of middle ground to take."

"I get it when she explains it that way, but when I think about it on my own it still doesn't make sense."

Yeah, even as a spectator, I didn't do a very good job of keeping up with them.

I didn't even know what the conversation topic was until the support group had come up again. And then somebody mentioned my name.

"What about you, Eren?"

I looked up from devouring my dad's cooking like a starving wolf with a sudden start. "Hrm?"

Mikasa cocked her head at me. "Have you even been listening?" she asked with a tone of minor irritation.

"I- I kind of got lost. Sorry," I mumbled nervously.

"We were just talking about all the success stories that you guys have heard from the rest of the support group," my dad quickly explained. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to be half as put off as my sister did. "I was just wondering if joining had helped you at all, since everybody else seems to be doing so well."

I placed my silverware down and thought for a second. "I'm not really sure what constitutes 'help,' but I think it has," I said pensively. "I've made some friends through it, and it's gotten me out of the house. I guess those are both pretty good things."

A tired smile creased my dad's face. "That's great," he said. "I've been meaning to ask you about it for a while now. I've heard a lot of things from Mikasa, but you've never said anything about it yourself."

"I guess I'm just kind of quiet," I mused absently.

"You didn't used to be."

They were only words, but they flew across the table and hit me as if my dad had physically thrown them. I tensed up in my seat at the sound of them, at the slight wistfulness in my dad's voice. I looked at him for one nervous second before my gaze fell back to the table. I didn't even want to think about what he was implying by that, but I found myself wondering anyway.

You didn't used to be.

What did it mean? Was I not supposed to be keeping to myself like this? Did he think something was wrong with me? Something was, but it was never anything I would have told him about.

"People just change, I guess."

"I suppose you're right," my dad agreed listlessly. He paused for a second, just long enough to convince me that the conversation was over, then he continued. "Do you remember what it was like before you started staying in so much?"

I raised my eyes to him and my fingers subconsciously tightened around the handle of my fork. "Yeah," I said coldly. "It wasn't that long ago, Dad."

"I know it wasn't, you just seem so different from the way you were then."

"I didn't have cancer back then."

An icy cold silence descended over the room. The look on my dad's face was stunned, hollow, as if I had just told him that I had killed a man. Maybe three. He looked as if he were hearing me mention my disease for the first time. Like he had been pushing that fact to the back of his mind for years and years and it had never been able to come forward and be processed. Then, a second later the look was gone and everything was back to normal.

"Why are you asking me all of this anyway?" I said as calmly as I could.

"Is it a bad thing for your father to want to know how you're doing?" he replied. "I haven't been able to talk to you in a while. I'm just curious about it, that's all."

"You aren't the only one who's been curious lately," Mikasa said quietly.

I straightened up in my chair and whipped my head in her direction. She glanced over at me, and I glared daggers back at her.

Mikasa, don't you fucking dare.

"What?" my dad asked absently, almost comically. He seemed so confused, torn between responses, as if he weren't sure whether this were some kind of joke or something he should be concerned or possibly angry about.

"Shut up, Mikasa," I hissed under my breath.

"Eren, don't talk to your sister like that," my dad chided me before turning back to my sister. "What did you say before?"

"I really think Eren should be the one to explain it," she replied confidently.

Then my dad was facing me again. "Eren?"

"Mikasa, stop it," I snapped again.

"No."

"Why not?"

"He has to find out sometime, Eren."

"Find out about what?" my dad cut in desperately. He looked frantically back and forth between the two of us. "Eren, what is she talking about?"

"Nothing."

"It's not nothing, and I'm not going to let you keep pretending it is."

"But it's not important!"

"Eren, it's been screwing you up for weeks. You need to tell him."

My dad seemed to be just barely clinging to our words. "You... what? What is going on?"

"Eren has a-"

"Stop."

"For christ's sake, Eren-"

"Mikasa, I told you to stop!"

"For the love of god, would someone explain to me what the hell is going on here?" my dad said, struggling to be heard over the both of us.

Mikasa turned to him and fixed him with an intense stare. "Dr. Jaeger, your son is gay."

There.

That was it.

There it was, out in the open, where everyone could see it.

That was it.

I slammed my feet against the floor, scraped my chair back and left. I heard my dad shouting my name after me, but I didn't care. His voice started to fade out behind me as I stormed up the stairs and into my room. I wouldn't be staying around to deal with the fallout after Mikasa had dropped the biggest bombshell since the beginning of that summer. I slammed my door shut behind me and collapsed onto the floor. I leaned back against the wall, my knees drawn up to my chest and my forehead pressed to top of them. My dad's voice was quieter now, muffled, but it was far from gone. The walls between us weren't enough to cut him out completely, no matter how much I wished they were.

The seconds passed, and it wasn't long before the shouting stopped and lowered into muted conversation. I heard the distorted whispers of Mikasa's voice trying to explain to my dad, him responding to her, the shock, the confusion and upset in his stifled words. I couldn't understand a single thing they said, but I was more than aware of the insinuation in the tones of their voices. Mikasa was concerned, as usual, trying to fix the situation on her own because she was the only one in the house who could. And my dad...

He was at a loss. Not angry, not resentful, just startled.

It went on for so long. Too long. Not long enough. I couldn't tell, and it didn't matter. I tried as hard as I could to ignore the change in the air when the conversation stopped and turned into footsteps traveling up the stairs, one set behind the other. The latch of my door clicked open without even the slightest warning and Mikasa came sweeping in.

"Get up," she commanded.

I looked up from my knees and stared obstinately up at her. "No."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Eren, quit being a bitch," she snapped. She stood directly in front of me, her hands poised assertively on her hips. "You need to go out there and talk to him. It's not going to happen any other way."

"Maybe it could have if you had kept your fucking mouth shut!"

"What is with you? Why the hell don't you want to tell anyone anything anymore?" Mikasa crouched down in front of me and leered directly in my face. "This is why I signed you up for the support group in the first place. You're so closed-off it's not even funny."

"I am not closed-off."

"Says the guy who is curled up against a goddamn wall."

"A wall in my room, which you walked into without my permission, which you do way too much as it is."

"Dad is literally right outside. He is confused out of his mind, and he needs to get answers of some kind. Now you need to suck it up, go out there and sort things out with him. I think he's been in the dark long enough."

"I don't give a shit what you think," I hissed, latching my stare onto hers. "I am not going to do this. You're the one who opened their fucking mouth, and you should be the one to fix it.

"Fine. Be that way, if you want. It's not going to help you." Mikasa jammed her hand in between my legs, took me by the arm and hauled me to my feet before dragging me roughly out into the hallway and face to face with my dad.

"Okay," she declared once we were both sufficiently stuck. "I just want to say one thing. I am not an instant messaging service. I am tired of being your go-between. Clearly, you two need to talk. Not through me, not over text, here. Right now. You." She crossed her arms tightly over her chest and fixed her acidic gaze on me. "You have a lot of explaining to do. And you," she added, turning to my dad, "are going to listen to him, no matter what he says. I'm not going to be a crutch anymore. For either of you. Now, if you two are done being a couple of pansies about all of this, I'm going to clean up downstairs."

Then she turned on her heel and went back downstairs. I stared after her, my head swimming, not just over the sudden confrontation but also over the fact that she had just uninhibitedly called my dad a pansy and had no repercussions. I looked back up and my dad's stare met with mine. There was a look on his face that I had never seen before. I wasn't sure if it was shock, anger, or something else entirely that I was seeing. I felt my chest starting to tighten up. My teeth worried anxiously at the inside of my lip as the seconds wore on and neither of us spoke. It didn't seem like there was anything to say. No words, no place to start.

I was never going to tell him. He was never supposed to know.

And yet, here we were.

I took a deep breath and swallowed the lump in my throat. "Um... you know that thing they say at weddings, right before the couple gets declared-"

"What, I didn't know my son was gay?"

It was all I could do not to take a step back from the venom in his words.

"Dad, I-" I just barely manage to croak out. "I'm not gay." He stared skeptically at me, and I felt the sudden need to add, "Not completely... I don't think."

"How long have you known?" he asked straightforwardly. A shiver crawled down my spine. He was all business. I was past the point of remedy, and it was too late for him to try handling this carefully anymore.

"Since August," I murmured shamefully.

"August..." Dad sighed and carded a hand into his hair. "Christ. That long?"

"Maybe longer, but...but that was when I figured it out, really."

"How?"

I felt like a defendant on trial, guiltier than anyone in the history of law, and my dad was the accuser. His cross-examinations were tearing my defense to pieces. There was nothing more that I could do but be as honest as I could. If I was going to be punished for my crimes, I might as well go down honorably.

Besides, if I lied about it now, Mikasa would probably just tell him later.

"I... It was when I..." I started. Or I tried to start. My thoughts were too scattered for anything to make sense. I couldn't find the trigger, what had made me realize the truth in what I was feeling. The dreams. The party. The back-and-forth of reconnecting with Levi. Seeing Levi without a shirt. The unfamiliar softness that Levi had shown me in the bathroom that night. Levi in my basement. Talking to Levi alone, the different sound in his voice when it was just the two of us together. Lying next to him while Armin played the guitar, half-asleep and dizzy, the feeling that no one else was paying attention. Levi.

Levi.

"It was when I started feeling things for Levi."

If I had sprouted a pair of wings and taken off through the window, my dad still wouldn't have been as thrown for a loop as he was when the words dropped out of my mouth.

"And it took me until August to figure it out," I finished.

My dad stared at me for a second, blinking over and over as if I were some kind of hallucination. "Y-you... what?" he responded numbly.

"Yeah. That was what I thought, too. You know, when... everything happened."

"Whoa, whoa, wait," my dad cut in, raising his hands in front of himself to stop me. "Slow down. This is too much..." I waited in silence as he took a breath and looked away from me for a second. "Okay, tell me if I'm wrong... You've been... not-heterosexual... since August?"

"Well, I said it might have been longer, but that was when I really-"

"And you... have feelings for Levi? The one I was talking to this afternoon?"

I pursed my lips into a tense line and sighed. "Yeah."

"Okay... Okay... oh, god, how did I even..." My dad turned away from me again, running his hands over his face and muttering to himself.

"Dad, if I-"

"No, no, don't say anything else, Eren. Just... just stop for a second," he said. He had his hand held out toward me again in some attempt at a peacemaking gesture. "I- I'm not angry with you, alright? What you feel is what you feel, and... and I shouldn't try to get in the middle of it or change it, but... oh, god, how did I miss this?"

It only took me a second to realize what was happening. He was blaming himself. I was watching him twist up inside over everything that I had just said, struggling to take in all of the information that was just too much to process all at once. He must have thought that I was trying to mess with him, that I was rebelling, or that this had happened to me because he hadn't been there to keep me on the right track. Or maybe it was just because something incredibly major had just happened and he hadn't been there to see any of it.

"Dad, it's not your fault-"

"I know, I know. This is... It's the way you are. It's nothing anyone can change, it's just..." He had to breathe again before he could keep going. "This is just all so sudden."

"I-I know," I said quietly, dropping my eyes to stare at the floor. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I wasn't going to tell anyone, really. I thought it would go away if I kept pushing it back. No one was ever supposed to know."

"You told Mikasa."

"I didn't mean to. She just got it out of me. I never meant to say anything, but then all of a sudden it was just... out there."

Something that might have been a laugh slipped out of him, but there was too much tension in the room for me to be sure of anything. "Kind of like what happened tonight, then?"

I nodded and the corner of my mouth twitched upwards a bit. "Y-yeah. Exactly like tonight."

"And Levi, you... you like him?"

I couldn't give him an honest answer while looking him in the face. "Yeah."

"Why?"

The question sounded like a joke to me at that point. It was the same one I had been asking myself day after day, over and over until the words had lost their meaning. And every time there had been a different answer. Nothing ever stuck, whether I came up with every reason in the world or chalked it up to my own loneliness, the anomalies of last summer or some kind of cancer-induced hormonal imbalance. The question meant nothing to me anymore.

I felt something for Levi, and I had no choice in the matter.

"The more I think about it, the more it seems like there's no reason at all."

"Eren." My dad was speaking through an exhale, and my name sounded exhausted as he said it. He shook his head wearily and looked at me in a way that was almost affectionate. It would have been, if my ability to read him hadn't been so screwy and outdated. If we hadn't been separated for what felt like forever. "Sometimes I really don't know where the hell either of us has been for the past four years."

I stared at him, feeling lost. I could understand what he was saying, but none of it made any sense. I wanted to say something in return, but no words would come to me. Nothing would make the situation any better. All that would come out of my mouth was a small, bewildered "Huh?"

"What?" my dad said, as if he didn't know he had said the words out loud. Then the surprise on his face told me that he really didn't. "Oh. I-I'm sorry, I'm so out of it..." He rubbed unsurely at the back of his neck, then fixed his eyes on me again. "Listen, Eren. I... I just want you to know... how do I put this... No matter what your... orientation is... you're still my son. Nothing is going to change that. You know that, right?"

For a second I was stuck staring at him like a startled squirrel. I didn't know what to say in response to that. It wasn't what I had been expecting. Then again, I had never planned on him finding out about any of this, so I hadn't really expected him to respond at all. When Mikasa had ripped the truth out of me at the table, I had been waiting for... I don't know. Anger? Resentment? Something a little more negative than what I was currently getting. My dad didn't seem upset about it. More than anything, he seemed shocked. A little disappointed, maybe, but that was it.

When I finally coughed up my response, it came out as a little nervous murmur. "So... you're okay with this?"

"Okay with your sexual orientation?" he asked, as if he couldn't believe I felt the need to.

I nodded. I couldn't get any more words out past the congealing lump in my throat.

"Is there any reason why I shouldn't be?"

I swallowed and tried to force myself to speak up some more. "I-I don't know. I just thought that... maybe you'd be a little... Ugh. I just don't know how to put it. You remember what Mikasa said." I hoped he would catch the imploring look on my face before I dropped my gaze hopelessly to the floor. "It's... it's not something everyone approves of. I-I thought..."

"Did you think I would get angry with you just because you feel a certain way?" my dad asked rhetorically. I didn't catch on and opened my mouth to answer a second before he continued. "Eren, you know me. I don't see the point in judging people over that sort of thing. Obviously you haven't already forgotten the conversation I had with her in the kitchen. And you're my son. What did you think I was going to do, disown you? Just because you like people with the same gender?"

"Um... n-not completely, I mean, this is the first time I've ever-"

"Eren," my dad cut me off again. I stopped muttering excuses and looked up at him and the sincerity in his faded green eyes.

"Listen to me," he said gently. "I don't care if you like girls, or boys, or anyone else that falls in between the two. It shouldn't matter. That won't change anything between us. I'm not going to look at you any differently. To me, you're still Eren, and until the day I die that isn't going to change. I know you were scared to tell me. Mikasa explained everything downstairs. She told me what was going on, and I just want to say... I understand."

"Y-you do?" I murmured.

"Yes," he reassured me, a second before adding, "At least I hope I do. I'm not mad at you, I promise that. Shocked, maybe, but that's it. You're my son, and I love you, no matter who you turn out to be."

I stared at him for what felt like an eternity, my mouth feeling numb, a million words bubbling up in the back of my throat but none of them strong enough to fight its way out into the air between us. The silence stretched out longer and longer like the muffled scratch from a record when it runs out of grooves and the player's needle begins skipping over the label at the center. Still, the conversation didn't feel finished. It couldn't end like this, there had to be something more.

"Dad, I..." I said dryly, forcing the words past the block on my vocal cords. "I don't know what to say. A-are you really..."

"Yes, Eren. I am perfectly okay with your sexual orientation, whatever it happens to be. How many times am I going to have to say that before you stop feeling the need to ask me?"

"Oh." The word was nothing more than a confused little murmur. "Alright."

The awkward silence came back for a while, and the two of us stood in the hallway and stared into each other's souls, as if one of us would find something there. My dad sighed after the longest time, took his hands out of his pockets and held his arms out toward me. "Look, I know it's been a while, but... would you mind?" he asked.

Despite everything that I might have said about him before, the second he offered me a hug I ran to him like a little kid. My dad huffed a little when I crashed into his chest (I was definitely not as small as I used to be) and I banded my arms around his waist and squeezed. My dad's arms draped around my back and tightened, pressing me close. And just like that, it felt as though things were different. It was something that I had never felt before, or maybe just something that I hadn't felt in such a long time that I had forgotten what it was like. I felt safe. Protected. Like I was being held by some kind of invincible safety raft, floating alone in the middle of this ocean of all of the shit I was struggling to deal with but knowing there was someone, somewhere who would be willing to help me through it. All I had to do was ask.

Wow. I had forgotten how nice it was to get hugs from parents.

"This isn't awkward for you, is it?" he asked out of nowhere.

I leaned my head onto his shoulder and squeezed harder. "Nope."

Everything was comfortably quiet again for a while longer. Then...

"But... Levi? Seriously?"

And that was when we finally broke up the hug. I unwound my arms and looked unenthusedly at my dad. "Please, just don't ask."

"I know, I know, you already said you aren't sure why you have feelings for him, but..." my dad mused awkwardly. "I don't get it. Why him? What's he like?"

The tiredness in my dad's face was still there, but there was something lifted from it. He looked at me, that inquisitive-scientist look on his face. Heat crept up the back of my neck. Christ. Just a minute ago we had been having such a nice moment, and then my dad had to go and make everything uncomfortable again.

"There's, um... There's a lot of history between us, and a lot of what he does is giving me mixed signals," I explained (or tried to). "Let's just say it's complicated."

"He's giving you mixed signals?" my dad inquired. "So you think he might like you back?"

"No," I answered quickly. "Definitely not. The way he acts, I'm surprised he even considers me his friend. Besides, it just wouldn't make sense. I mean, what do I have to offer him? I'm just some cancer-infected brat, and he's cooler, and more focused, and smarter, and he has a job and plans for the future, and he's older-"

"How much older?" my dad cut in.

"Not much older."

"Eren, you're sixteen. If he's even a little older than you, a relationship between the two of you could be illegal."

I wasn't sure whether I should have been annoyed or happy that he was worrying about something as minimal as Levi's age. "He's a college student," I admitted, my face burning. "He's twenty."

"Twenty?" my dad said in disbelief. "Wow. Didn't know you aimed so high."

"Dad, it's not that bad a difference," I said with a heavy angsty-teenager sigh. "Besides, it's not like... not like it's going to go anywhere, anyway."

"So you aren't even trying to get him to reciprocate?"

"No," I said dismally. "It's not like there would be any point if I was." And that was as far as it went. He didn't need to know any more than what I had already told him. So I never mentioned anything about the aftermath of Ymir, the two-week breakdown, or the multitude of emotional bullshit that I had already given up to Mikasa. He had enough to deal with from me already. He didn't need to hear any more.

"Well, then," he said. He didn't seem disappointed that I wasn't chasing after someone far beyond my range.

"I'm getting over him," I put in.

"You are?"

"Yes."

"I thought you would be."

Things were quiet again for a while before he added, "You know, if you ever need someone to talk to about this, or anything else, really... I know I don't always get to my phone right away, but I'll try my best to get back to you if you call me or text me or..."

"Okay, okay, I get it," I said to slow him down. A small smile had somehow made its way onto my face. "Thanks for being so... okay with this."

My dad smiled warmly back at me. "There isn't a reason in the world why I wouldn't be." He glanced at the staircase, and the sounds of running water and clattering dishes were just starting to die off. "You think we should go and help her out?"

"Probably."

We left the conversation at that and headed downstairs to assist Mikasa in whatever was left of the after-dinner cleanup.

The night had left me with a weird feeling in the deepest recesses of my chest. Just like the strange things that Levi had stirred up in me, it was something I couldn't really describe, though I knew that it was for an entirely different reason. It was a warmth, a fuzziness, almost like a colony of tiny hamsters had decided to move into my bone marrow and replace the leukemia cells. (I would not have been opposed to that switch at all.) Just like what had happened after joining the Youth Cancer Support Group, something in my life had just placed a band-aid over some invisible cut that had been open and bleeding and hadn't scabbed over in years. I couldn't be sure how long the feeling would last. For all I knew, it could have disappeared by the next morning. All I could do was enjoy it while it was still there.

I had my dad back for a few hours, and that was all that really mattered.