She's beautiful.
Truly—she's honestly, magnificently, spectacularly beautiful.
Eren loves her.
Truly—he loves Mikasa in the way flowers need sun, the way he needs coffee every morning before work. He loves her in a way he thinks she loves him, too.
When the doors open and she steps out from behind the tall, white and chipped church doors, his throat closes and tightens, his nerves beginning to jump in the same familiar unease he's always had from just being around her. She does that to him—brings out a sense of anxiety that should be unnerving but isn't, because it's her, because she's wonderful and fantastic and he loves her.
Her eyes glance around the room, a quick once over at the people who have shown up to commemorate such a special occasion. It's not the most important event in her life but certainly one of her top. When her eyes catch his for the briefest of moments he sees nothing in her but a child, a small, lost child who'd played on the swings with him in their youth and had promised that if she ever got married it would only be to her best friend.
"Me?" he'd asked, voice shaky and nervous, a little too high pitched. She hadn't answered, had only smiled and pushed herself a little harder, a little faster, on her red, red, red swing.
She steps forward once more, her white, satin gown trailing behind her, not long but not short, either. Her dress is delicate and formfitting and Eren wonders if she picked it or if someone else had. She always hated clothes that clung to her body—not for reasons of vanity but because she found it harder to move and stretch in clothes that held her too tightly.
She'd never complained when his arms had been around her—too tight, too hot, too full of every god damn emotion he couldn't express with words.
When she's halfway down the aisle she pauses, as if her foot has caught on the runner beneath her, as if her mind has momentarily forgotten that people surround her in a filled church. Her eyes, large and round like a frightened doe's, look frantic before they find his. Her face softens instantly and in that moment, that short, brief, wonderful moment, he remembers kissing her every night before bed in their apartment, remembers being twenty-two and not twenty-eight, when they had nothing but ramen for dinner every night while watching rented movies because they couldn't afford cable.
He remembers holding her during thunder when her eyes would go round as saucers and then pulling her into his arms (tight, tight, far too tight) before she'd kiss his neck, always murmuring how much she loved him, adored him, couldn't see herself without him.
She seems to find her footing once more and her eyes leave his, her lips curling into a large smile as she looks around at the wedding party around him and then at the guests who have smiles bigger than hers aimed in her direction. His throat tightens a little more and he wills her to look, look, just look back at me but her eyes don't find his again. Her eyes, so pretty, round, so perfectly calm rest on her groom—ironically, one of his closest friends.
With his eyes closed tight he tries to forget, to not remember when Jean and Mikasa had sat him down for lunch one breezy afternoon and Jean had said, with far too much care and sincerity, "Will you be my best man?"
He'd looked at Mikasa, who'd smiled and shrugged her shoulders, said, "Jean really wanted it to be you."
Cruel, it was unnecessarily cruel to him and he was sure she knew it. "Why…why didn't you ask Marco?"
Jean had flushed a faint pink and answered, "He's going to be away that week. Can't return his tickets to the Bahamas, apparently…"
His eyes had tightened and he'd lowered his head and although he knew he should've been grateful for them asking him to take part in the wedding at all, all he could remember was Mikasa leaving the engagement ring he'd given her on the kitchen counter before she left two years prior.
"I…I don't think I can," he'd finally answered, glancing at Mikasa, thinking of how only a few days before he'd taken her to dinner, bought her expensive wine before taking her to his apartment. Work, she always told Jean, I'm working late.
"I know it's a lot to ask with the history between you two," Jean had said and Eren had tried not to laugh, to tell Jean it wasn't over, was never really over, would probably never really be over between him and Mikasa. "And I know we haven't always been…close, either. But it'd mean a lot. To both of us."
When his eyes open he finds she's already at the end, close to him but not close enough, and her face has softened once more as they meet the eyes of her beloved, of the one sends her flowers on her birthday and brings her tea when she's sick.
She loves Jean in a way he knows she does not love him.
He thinks of the way she'd been wrapped around him in bed the night before, his red silk sheets a her only clothing, the way she'd kissed his ear softly, softly, far too softly, and had said, "I will always love you. I just love him a little bit more."
"He's not your best friend," he'd answered her back, fingers tight on her hips, nails so deep they drew blood. "You're marrying the wrong person."
He wonders now if Jean will see those marks on her hips later, if he'll trace them with his fingers or tongue and ask how she got them. He wonders what lie Mikasa will spin to ease his concerns.
Wonders if Jean will kiss her hips the way he kisses her lips after they've committed themselves with the traditional I dos.
It's selfish and stupid and petty of him to not watch their kiss but he doesn't, instead feigns interest in the sea of people that form their mutual friends and family. He closes his eyes and when he opens them is able to imagine for a moment—just a moment, a small, impossible moment—that he's the one next to her, the one taking her hand down the aisle to lead her to their new life. Neither the bride nor the groom look back to wave at their wedding party and as much as Eren wills her to look, look, just look once she doesn't.
His knees give out when the door closes behind them and all he's left to see is the tall, white and chipped church doors, broad and looming, forbidding him to follow after her.
A/N: I apologize if updates become slower/longer, I've recently started an online class that's honestly incredibly time consuming and leaves me with no spare moment to write.