A/N: This was a response to the three-sentence meme on Tumblr that once again got out of control. The prompt was "dialed-the-wrong-number-AU."
He really shouldn't be doing this.
It's been exactly a week since Eren caught Jean playing tonsil-hockey with another guy in the cinema line downtown, five days since he turned his small but cluttered apartment inside out and destroyed every scrap of evidence of their time together, two and a half days since he finally bit the bullet and pressed "delete" on Jean's number in his phone. He should just leave well enough alone, wash his hands of this whole train wreck, and move on.
But he can't. Not until he gets it all off his chest.
He chants to himself over and over that this is for closure as he punches Jean's number in - for the last time, he tells himself - and takes a deep breath as the line begins to ring.
Someone picks up, and before the bastard can get even a syllable in, a week's worth of pent-up hurt spills out of Eren's mouth, engulfing his ex-boyfriend's ear canal in a scathing verbal deluge.
"Listen here, you lying piece of shit scumbag. Congratu-fucking-lations on your new lay, I hope you choke on his dick so hard you can't talk for the rest of your pathetic excuse of a life. You suck in bed. I hate your fashion sense. You better hope we never run into each other again because the next time I see your ugly horse face I'm going to rip your fucking balls off and stuff them where the sun don't shine."
He takes a second to suck in another breath, frantically debating whether to just hang up now or keep going, because now that he's gotten started he's finding it very hard to stop, when a quiet voice pipes up from the other end of the line.
"Rough night, huh?" The voice says, all husky timbre and velvet smoothness.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Sweet baby Jesus, please no.
That isn't Jean's voice.
He rips the phone away from his face and looks down at the numbers on the screen. He'd been under the impression he still knew Jean's number off by heart, and sure enough, he'd typed it in perfectly.
Save the last digit, anyway.
Eren gulps, swallowing down the lump of mortification threatening to bubble up from his throat. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, like a fish out of water, before finally managing to squeak out a tentative "Sorry, wrong number."
"I'd, ah…figured as much," the voice replies. It's totally flat, making it very hard for Eren to sense anything, so he just counts it as a win that he hasn't yet been yelled or cussed at in return.
"Next time you feel like ripping someone a new one, you might wanna double check you've got the right person first." They've exchanged no more than a handful of words so far, but Eren swears there's now a hint of amusement in the slight lilt of the man's voice.
A few seconds of silence pass before Eren remembers the man is still waiting for his response. "Right. Yep, of course. I'll keep that in mind for sure. Sorry again," he stutters out, thumping his head backwards against the couch cushions and lamenting his rotten luck.
"No problem. Have a good one," the man replies. He hears a soft click, and he's once again alone on his living room floor with nothing but a bottle of Jack and his outdated DVD collection for company.
Thank god for small mercies, he thinks to himself, twisting the bottle cap open with one hand and flicking through the DVD stack with the other.
Three hours later and Eren is sprawled out on the carpet halfway between the kitchen and his bedroom. He's sang and cried along to Moulin Rouge a few times, he's pretty sure, but his vision started to blur somewhere around his fourth or fifth drink so it could have been anything, really. He vaguely remembers making his way out to the balcony after that, but his heartfelt rendition of Someone Like You received a rather underwhelming response from the neighbours, so here he is now, making snow angels on the ground and wincing from the carpet burn that will surely sting like a bitch the next time he showers.
Through the alcohol-induced haze, the gears of his brain stutter to life and he vaguely registers that he's pretty damn bored. And lonely. He lifts his hand off the floor and fishes around in his pockets, and - miracle of miracles - his phone is exactly where he left it and perfectly intact, as far as he can tell.
Time for a booty call, oh yeah, he cheers, jabbing at his phone until a number, any number, appears on the screen. He plasters it against the side of his face and waits.
"This better be fucking important or else," says a very tired, very angry voice that rings warning bells in a far-off corner of his brain.
"If I said you had a great body, would you hold it against me?" Eren proposes, patting himself on the back for coming up with the goods on the spot.
A beat of silence, and then, "Fucking Christ, that was terrible."
Eren frowns. He was pretty sure that one would be a winner.
"You must be tired, coz you've been running through my mind all night," he tries again.
"I am tired, it's two in the fucking morning thank you very much, and the only place you'll be running to is the ER if you don't cut the crap right now."
"Aside from being sexy, what do you do for a living?"
"Do you have a death wish or are you really that big of an idiot?"
"The word of the day is legs. Let's go back to my place and—"
"Right, that's it, you're done. I don't know who the fuck you are, but if I get another call from you again I will find you and I will end you. Goodbye."
"I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind, that I put down in wooords, how wonderful life is, now you're in the wooorld!" Eren croons in desperation.
Silence again. Eren thinks the man might have hung up after all, but then his ears pick up a soft huff that sounds almost like a laugh.
"You did not just quote Moulin Rouge at me."
Bingo, Eren thinks.
"Oh-ho, big fan, are we? I bet you're a fellow movie buff. What else do you like? Come on, try me."
The man lets out a muffled groan that sounds remarkably like I'm too old for this, and Eren can almost see him burying his face in his pillow.
"Alright, I'll bite. Anything's better than fucking pick-up lines. Streetcar Named Desire."
"Stella! Hey, Stella!" Eren yells into the receiver.
"Pipe down you asshole, it's bad enough you've woken me up, at least have some respect for your damn neighbours," the man snaps.
"Right, sorry," Eren whispers back.
The man sighs. "Casablanca."
"Here's looking at you, kid," Eren murmurs solemnly.
"The Godfather."
"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse," he says in his best Sicilian drawl.
The man lists off several more classics, and Eren hits back with an impersonation each time. Their back and forth comes to a natural halt a while later, the man grudgingly acknowledging his "neat little party trick."
"Heh, I knew all those movie marathon weekends would come in handy one day. Armin and Mikasa would be so damn proud," Eren says.
"Who and who?" The man asks.
"My childhood friends. We used to take turns going over each other's houses to watch movies every weekend. We're from a small town, so there wasn't much else to do."
"Me too, actually," the man replies.
"Really? Where from?" Eren asks.
The next thing he remembers is snapping awake and feeling the warmth of his own drool trickling down his chin. He pries his head off the carpet and lets out a long groan, half from the sunlight assaulting his eyes and half from the pounding headache bouncing around in his skull. He looks around dazedly, trying to blink the sleepiness away, and notices his phone lying face down where his head was resting a moment ago.
Last night comes rushing back to him in snapshots of movement and snippets of sound that fit together like puzzle pieces into one horrifying realisation.
He had called up the same stranger twice in one night, and had subjected said stranger first to verbal abuse and then to sexual harassment.
The panicked little noise he makes struggles up his parched throat and dies on his tongue, adding to the foul taste in his mouth.
He nearly jumps out of his skin at the sudden vibration of his phone. He reaches for it with shaky fingers, bracing himself for whatever should be flashing on the screen.
What he sees is a series of text messages from a vaguely familiar number.
[11:11 am] I'm going to bet you're either retching into a toilet bowl or lying in a pool of your own filth right now. Gross.
[11: 16 am] But anyway, I guess you're not half bad when you aren't spewing cheesy pick-up lines all over the place.
[11:22 am] Name's Levi. I'd save it in your contacts if I were you, since you asked for it about a half dozen times last night.
[11: 25 am] Try not to wear it out. And for fuck's sake, pick a decent hour next time.
"Well shit," Eren says, grinning so hard his cheeks hurt.