Armin's mum was quietly bemused to come home to find her son cooking dinner with his phone in one hand. The truth was, he'd argued with himself all the way up the three flights of stairs about apologising to Eren. He considered ringing him, wondering if Eren could talk over the phone, before remembering that even he himself got nervous over the phone and therefore it would be thousands of times worse for someone who couldn't even talk to him indirectly. This was where the idea for messaging came from- after all, most of Eren's communication was of the written kind, so surely a text would be nice.

Except he didn't have Eren's phone number.

He did, however, have Mikasa's, as she'd given it to him before leaving the science classroom, in the form of a neatly folded piece of paper hooked into his jeans pocket. He'd almost forgotten it, and was pleased to find it still in his pocket, more crumpled but still wholly intact.

Hi Mikasa, could I have Eren's phone number? :)

As he'd been chopping the onions, she'd called him. She was certainly less intimidating over the phone, but it wasn't as easy to pick up on the subtleties in her voice that made conversations with her so fixating and memorable.

"Armin?"

"Uh…" He nearly dropped the phone as he adjusted it against his ear, before coughing nervously and continuing, "Hi Mikasa."

"When did Eren leave you?"

"Um… It must have been about… about 45 minutes ago, maybe, I think." He scraped the onions into the pan, and cursed as the oil spat at him. He'd left it on heat to long before adding the ingredients, he'd been distracted.

"You're at home," Mikasa surmised quietly in his ear.

"Yeah." The more verbose Armin would have made a joke about burning the onions, but Armin as he was was even loath the say, "Eren dropped me back. A-Are you telling me he's not home?"

There was a silence, in which Armin listened to the slight buzz of static in his ear. Mikasa was somewhere quiet- probably at home- so why was she whispering?

Armin should probably keep his nose out, but he couldn't help but be interested by the dynamics of Eren's family. Mikasa should have been a warning sign: she obviously cared about Eren and that was nice, Armin thought, but she was almost obsessive sometimes and other times letting him go out alone with Armin, despite the fact he'd had a panic attack and Armin hadn't known how to deal with it. And then there was Eren's reactions to her, and the talk of his family. His reactions to Mikasa weren't stable; plus, it bugged Armin that Eren had talked about his "family" whereas Mikasa had only mentioned "Eren's mum". Did he consider her family while she detached herself from Eren and his mother? Or was Eren talking about someone else- a dad, maybe?

Armin wouldn't call him and his mum a "family". They'd never done family things, nor had either of them tried to live up to any social roles that being in a family might bring about. Though it was possible, he considered, that Eren thought differently on such matters.

"What did you do?"

"Oh… This afternoon? We, er… We wandered, I guess- after Jean and Eren had had another fight- and ended up at the Brandenburg Gate after Eren kind of had a panic attack."

"The Brandenburg Gate?" Her voice was sharp, like a pin in a balloon.

"That's what you picked up on? He… He had a panic attack. And you've not answered my question," Armin frowned. The onions were burning. "I know Eren can fend for himself, but he didn't seem right when he left me but I figured it wasn't too long until he got home and saw you and you'd probably understand better. Except, right now, you're trying to keep things from me. If you want me to help you and help him, then both of you have to trust me a little bit."

After he closed his mouth, Armin once again found himself hating himself for having said too much. Mikasa's slightly menacing aura evidently had its positives as well as negatives.

After a few seconds of thick, fuzzy silence, Armin heard the tone to indicate Mikasa had hung up.

He slammed his phone on the counter and took the now browned onions off the heat. Maybe it was none of his business, but then why had Mikasa been so inclined to ask for his help? It unnerved him still, because he wasn't sure in what way he was supposed to be "helping" anyone. If that afternoon had been anything to go off, Armin had just stirred up some things Eren obviously hadn't wanted to discuss, and done a bad job with helping with his panic attack.
Suddenly, the image of Eren looking up at him from under his eyelashes, pupils blown wide as if he were on drugs, his lips parted in light arousal, flashed into Armin's mind, and he blushed a deep crimson colour, shaking his head to rid himself of the memory.

Deciding to distract himself, Armin set about salvaging the pasta he'd been trying to make before he'd been so untimely distracted. It wasn't as if he stopped thinking of Eren, the same questions still repeating themselves at the fore of his mind, but he blocked out the negative things, instead smiling to himself about how nice it had been to talk about stuff in general with him. It had been a while since Armin had done that with someone of his own age. Eren had indeed shown a genuine interest in Armin when he talked about schoolwork and exams; whereas with Jean, the conversations were at best strained, where neither side was listening to what the other was saying, just obnoxiously putting across their own point of view with Marco playing referee.

About a minute and a half before Armin's mother walked through the front door of their poky flat, Armin's phone buzzed. He'd almost forgotten about it, yet there it was, flashing away by the microwave as if it had been watching him muse. He snatched it up. A message from Mikasa.

004930523437 and tell him Grisha isn't in.

Who on earth was Grisha, and why was he important to a boy who was out on his own in the dark on a school night, following a panic attack?

Armin didn't have time for Mikasa's strange ways at the moment, and vowed to text her later once she'd had time to mull his words over. For the moment, he rushed to input Eren's number, drafting a text he hoped didn't sound too clingy.

Hi Eren, it's Armin, Mikasa gave me your number. Apparently you're still out? I'm really sorry if I upset you, I'm not very good at picking up when's a bad time so I really didn't mean it. Mikasa says Grisha isn't in, idk what that means but if you're avoiding going home then please don't stay out in the cold, you're welcome to have pasta with us? :)

He considered putting a daring little kiss on the end, but it seemed cheap, so he abstained, sending the message quickly and continuing to clutch the phone while he drained the pasta, for his mum to then walk in and for them to pursue the tail of normality.

"Do you want to know the secret ingredient?" he mumbled into his food. His voice was too monotonous for his mum to work out that it was a question, but that was fine. She was always too tired to answer. "It's chilli oil." The addition hung in the air, rang in Armin's ears, contrasted too heavily with the dull clinking of their knives and forks against the white plastic-esque bowls from which they ate. Sometimes he wondered if this was how his entire life would play out: nothing more than monotony and a weary silence.

"Does that have to be there," his mum asked, nodding half-heartedly at his phone on the right side of his placemat, blank screen staring up at him as if in jest of his loneliness.

Except she was interrupted in continuing her point: not by the phone, unfortunately, but by the buzzer at the front of the flat. It had been so long since it had last rang that Armin had forgotten what it sounded like. He could tell, however, that the electronic resonance had some sort of loose connection as even though it was a relatively short ring, the sharp edge was clearly audible as the tone echoed through their apartment.

Armin took his phone with him, pointedly, when he went to answer it.

"Hello?" When was the last time they had used the intercom? Maybe one day, they would be able to afford to live a little and order pizza to deliver, and he'd get to use it again.

For a few seconds, there was no reply.

"Armin, come down."

His heart skipped a beat. He was pretty sure he couldn't mistake that rare voice anywhere; though he had to admit, it was strange hearing Eren talk normally, as opposed to throwing out callous base emotions or intoning an ephemeral whisper. Without romanticising Eren's problems, it seemed a beautiful moment all the same. There was almost a hint of desperation, and Armin's heart started racing as he was suddenly struck with the image of Eren that morning, a pen behind his ear, aura brightening as his eyes met Armin's across the classroom.

Armin cursed himself internally as he hurriedly let himself out of the flat and began pounding down the stairs, almost tripping into the wall opposite him on the landing. Eren must have dropped Armin back just after half 6, after they'd taken the tram to avoid the busy streets in the centre of the city, and after having made his way upstairs, crashing out face-down on his bed in despair at having upset Eren, picking himself up to make dinner, texting Mikasa, salvaging dinner and then serving said meal and eating, time had taken its steady toll. Judging by the time on Armin's phone, Eren had been outside a good hour and ten. Sure, Mikasa hadn't said either way whether Eren had gone back or not, but he wagered she wouldn't have rang him if she weren't genuinely concerned, as she didn't seem to be one to take a route of logic that would perpetuate idle chit-chat. Neither of the siblings were what one might be inclined to call effusive, in that way.
No wonder Eren had sounded desperate.

Armin didn't hesitate before tearing the front door open. Perhaps he should have, as thought may have deterred him from such a dramatic action, and might have given him a chance to remind himself that the boy stood on the doorstep was one who made his heart clench and his mouth turn visibly down at the corners.

Eren looked surprised to see him.

"Eren! You must be freezing!" He could see his breath in the light of the hallway, and it was obvious from the way he was huddled into his jumper that Armin wasn't wrong. "Why don't you come up? I-I really am sorry about before, I won't ask questions if you don't… Eren?"

Armin had seen Eren's face without the glow of recognition. After all, Eren had only been attending the same school for a few weeks, and they'd only started properly getting to know each other in the past few days. That, and Eren having a panic attack had quite obviously been unaware of Armin's presence, too consumed with what looked like a crushing, mortal fear of something Armin could not see. The expression Eren wore on the doorstep of Armin's apartment building wasn't one of non-recognition, but in the same way, there was something not quite right about the way the light registered in his eyes.

The dark-haired boy took a step forward, holding Armin's eye contact. He looked like he had a purpose for being there, on Armin's doorstep. He didn't look like he wanted to say something, not this time, but he did come across as having something he wanted to otherwise communicate.

That was, until he turned on his heel and sprinted back down the street, leaving nothing but a frustrated Armin and the sound of scuffing trainers etched into his short term memory.

004930523437 is Germany's country code, Berlin's area code, and then JAEGER spelt on a phone keypad. I hope y'all appreciate my subtle sense of humour, even if the coding probably makes it a landline rather than a mobile. In Germany, they call a mobile "ein Handy", which I really wanted to use, but again, I didn't want to call it that in case I confused everybody. I'm probably confusing everyone as is by saying "mobile" rather than "cell".