A/N: Okay... So I had no idea what to do for this damn prompt. X'D I'm so ashamed, I truly am. I think it stinks... That's just me of course. I really had no idea though. I don't know why the manga or Hajima called it a J-Pop hell arc, unless that was a song listed off in the manga, in which case they should name it and tell us who wrote it. And well... I was just floating around with a blank. I didn't like this one. Next day has smut though! I can promise that! XD

Day 5: J-Pop Hell Arc (I'm never doing this one ever again -_-)

-Misty

Eremin Week!

Seven days of these two adorable idiots doing adorable thing! Rated k-m for fluff, adult language, and smut.

Chapter Five: J-Pop Hell Arc

It was snowing outside. The flurries of snow weren't very heavy, but enough to cover the city in a blanket, and Eren couldn't feel a thing.

He had gone past the point of cold. Now he was just numb. The snow had seeped into his sweater, had soaked into his shirt, and he couldn't feel it anymore. Whether it was because his mind had wandered elsewhere or because he was so cold he couldn't feel it, the reason was unknown. All Eren knew was that he had been walking for a few hours. Night had long since crept its head over the city, and Eren knew where he was at.

He was far from home.

Eren thumbed around the phone in his pocket, feeling the cold metal sliding between his knuckles and smoothing over the pads of his cold fingers. He pulled it out, looking at the screen with mild disinterest, but more hope than anything else.

He just wanted one answer. Just one.

Without even thinking of it, Eren fingers were dialing and hitting call to someone before he realized it. When he came to his senses, Eren soon learned with a terrible fear of who it was he called. He pulled the phone up to his ear, listening to the sounds of the call ringing. Part of him was hoping for an answer. Another part of him was hoping it would go straight to voicemail.

And it did.

"Hi, you've reached Armin Arlert. Sorry I can get to your call, but please leave your name and number, and I'll try to get back to you. Thank you."

Eren didn't notice it until now, but he realized that he missed that voice. It had only been a few days, yet Eren missed it more than he missed a warm bed by a fireplace.

He wanted to hear it again, and subconsciously, his fingers dialed Armin's number so he could listen to the message. He waited.

One ring, two-

"... Hello?" He wasn't expecting that. Eren listened quietly, the only sounds to be heard were in the background where Armin was, something akin to sheets moving around. Had he been sleeping? "Hello...?" The tired voice asked again.

"... Hey, Armin..." Eren mumbled into the receiver.

"Eren...? Why are you calling so late?" Was it late? Eren didn't even know, but looking at his surroundings now, he found it to be dark.

"... I'm sorry, I just..." What was it he had called for? He had done it without even thinking, and now he had Armin on the other line without an answer or explanation.

There was a sigh.

"Eren, if this isn't important, you can say it in the morning. Obviously it's not something to be discussed about at two in the morning." Was it really two? Eren remembered it being four when he left the school. How long had Eren been out in the streets?

"Armin, wait!" Eren exclaimed when he felt like Armin would hang up on him. There was a pregnant pause, and Eren thought that maybe Armin really had hung up on him. That was until he heard another heavy sigh.

"What is it, Eren?" Armin asked, annoyed, but probably not as annoyed as he would have been had this been talked about at a reasonable hour.

"... I'm sorry, okay?" Eren apologized, exasperated and tired. The cold was starting to make its presence known again, and Eren felt the chill of snowflakes landing on his bare neck. "I-I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry..."

"Sorry about what, Eren?" Armin asked, sounding apathetic to the conversation.

"About everything! I never meant for that to happen, I swear! Armin, you're the last person I would ever hurt, don't you know that?" Eren asked, and his tears burned his eyes while cooling his skin.

"... No, I don't anymore." Armin mumbled.

"Armin, I wouldn't do that to you, not again. It was a mistake, I promise. Damn it, what do you want me to say?"

"There's nothing you can say. I don't want to hear it, so-"

"Armin!" Eren yelled, and he didn't care who he woke up. "I still love you!"

"And what about the Titans...?"

"Forget about Titans! I don't care!" Tears that Eren had been trying to hold back fell relentlessly, dropping into the snow with no regards. Eren had lost all sensible form of self-control, and the sob that shook his body was painful. He wanted to hold back, he really did, but it hurt. He was in pain, and holding back wasn't possible anymore.

The snow didn't help him any either.

"I just want to see you!"

There was silence on the other line. Eren cried into the phone, trying to keep himself quiet so he wouldn't wake anyone. If someone were to see a nineteen year old in the middle of a snow covered street at two in the morning with little more than a sweater to keep him warm, they would take it the wrong way. Eren could hear voices in the background, someone talking to Armin and Armin answering, and Eren managed to quiet down some so he could hear part of the conversation.

"Just a family emergency at home..." Armin's voice.

"Do you need to go back?" Eren didn't recognize this voice. It must have been Armin's college roommate.

"No, they can handle it at home..." The last part made Eren's heart clench. "Eren...?" This time Armin's voice was stronger, his attention back to the brunette and not his roommate.

"Yeah...?" Eren asked.

"I have to go." Armin spoke with little to no emotion in his voice, and it was frightening to say the least.

"Wait, Armin-!" Eren begged, but he heard the click of the other line, and after a few moments, the dial tone began to play.

Eren pulled the phone away from his ear, looking at the screen glowing in the dull light of the street lamp. Armin didn't even give him the time to talk for five minutes. The call ended only after four minutes and thirty-two seconds.

Eren couldn't feel the cold anymore.

"Okay, Carla, you need to calm down." Levi warned, his hands attempting to pull the phone from the woman's hands. "You know there's nothing we can do right now."

"Why not?" Eren's mother cried. Levi stepped back a little, not afraid, but startled by the older woman's tone.

"We can't report someone missing until forty-eight hours have gone by. You know that," Levi rationed with her. The words seemed to work, though that didn't make anything better. Carla slumped into the dining room chair in defeat, the phone sliding from her hands and onto the ground with a dull thud. Levi looked away from her for a moment, eyes falling to Mikasa standing by the window, grey eyes peering out into the streets and ignoring the Christmas lights.

Had it not been for Mikasa, Levi wouldn't have been here right now. However, a frantic call from his niece at midnight was something that would get anyone out of bed, and Levi was no exception. He cared for Mikasa and Eren greatly, like they were his own kids even, and hearing that Eren never came home from school was upsetting enough. Now he was here, trying to calm Eren's mother down while watching over Mikasa, who seemed to be doing a better job at taking care of herself than Carla was.

"I-I called all of Eren's friends, but no one has seen him since class, and he won't answer his cellphone. Hannes is outside still looking for him, but every time I call him, he says he hasn't found anything." Carla cried, his head falling into her hands. Levi walked over to her and picked up the phone on the floor to set it on the table. He then placed a hand on the woman's shoulder, gently rubbing at the thin arm attached to it to make her feel better.

"He's fine, I'm sure he is. Eren is just thick-headed. He probably forgot to charge his phone and he's off goofing around with a friend from school." Levi assured the distraught woman, but he could barely believe the words himself.

Eren was thick-headed, yes, but he wasn't so much that he would forget to charge his phone, the thing he held on to like a life line. He also wouldn't just leave them worrying like this. He'd call them, call Mikasa and Carla for sure.

With that being said, none of them had gotten into contact with Eren since this morning, or in Mikasa's case, since class. Mikasa had a class after Eren's, so he should have been home before her. Without him here though, the anxiety was crushing them down.

"Are you sure he didn't leave any messages on the house phone, or on your cell?"

"I'm sure. I looked through both multiple times, and everything keeps coming up blank. The last message I got from Eren was him telling me that he was at school safely, and telling me that I should have a good day." Carla truly broke down then, eyes pouring what seemed to be an endless waterfall of tears that practically drenched her skin. Levi wiped at her eyes, anything to help, but he didn't know what to do.

"Eren…!" Mikasa suddenly gasped from the windowsill. The two adults turned to look at her, only to catch a glimpse of her black hair and red scarf as she bolted out of the room. Without any communication, the two of them seemed to understand, and they were up and following the girl out to the front door as quick as they had ever moved before.

Mikasa was outside in a matter of seconds. She didn't even bother with shoes or boots, she just jumped off of the porch and ran to the eerie figure creeping closer to the house. When Levi and Carla got there, it was Levi who recognized the figure as Eren, and he himself was following in Mikasa's lead.

"Eren...!" He exclaimed as he chased the boy down. Eren didn't even react to them, not so much as a passing glance until Mikasa knocked into him in a firm embrace. She had her arms wrapped around him, fingers digging into his damp hair and holding his head against her shoulder. There was barely a grunt from Eren from the impact, and that was enough to raise alarm.

"Are you okay, Eren? Are you hurt?" She asked and pulled back to look into his face. She felt shivers go down on her spine, and it wasn't from the cold.

Eren's eyes looked so dead.

"Damn it, you little shit!" Levi did a sliding stop beside the two, his feet nearing slipping out from under him, because of the snow. "Where have you been?" Levi asked and pressed a hand into Eren's cheek.

"Eren…?" Mikasa asked, trying to shake him into a form of coherency, but it didn't seem to work.

"He's got a fever." Levi said and moved Mikasa away to lift Eren into his arms. "Carla, get a thermometer! Mikasa, go get blankets and get a fire going."

"Okay," Mikasa said and darted ahead to do as she had been told. Levi took his time getting inside, not keen on the idea of tripping on ice, not with Eren in his arms anyway.

"Come on, Eren." Levi said softly and carried Eren back to where it was warm.

Eren was dreary as hell when he woke up.

His vision was too blurry, the lights were too bright, and his body felt heavy like it was filled with lead. His limbs didn't want to work.

Eren managed, however, to adjust to the light so he could squint and see everything. He could see the beige colors of his ceiling, lost to a white fog coming from his window. It was sunny out, too sunny for his liking right now, but it couldn't be helped.

He felt weak like this.

"Eren…?" The voice was loud to him, ringing in his ears, but he turned his head regardless. He knew that voice, and upon finding the person who spoke it, he figured out who it was.

Armin was sitting in a chair next to his bed, arms folded in his lap with a book under his hands. His blond hair was tousled, his complexion a little pale, and he had terrible bags under his eyes. Eren had only ever seen Armin in that condition once, and that was just after his parents had died in a car accident. What was the reason now that made him looked like this?

"… A-Armin…?" Eren asked, genuinely surprised by how scratchy and light his voice sounded. It didn't even sound like him.

"How are you feeling?" Armin asked, bending the page from his book inwards before close it.

"… Like shit." Eren mumbled and closed his eyes.

"Yeah, sounds about right. You look like shit too." Armin agreed. Eren wanted to question why the comment sounded so harsh coming from Armin, but then he remembered.

When did Armin even get here?

"Fuck… What happened…?" Armin sighed then, and Eren felt as if he had just opened up a whole Pandora's Box on himself.

"Jean said you left school like a ghost. You were gone for so long that Hannes was driving the streets until three in the morning looking for you, and Levi was even over here trying to calm your mother and Mikasa down. I guess you got back on your own, and you ended up running a fever. It broke a few hours ago… Your fever I mean." Armin explained, but this knowledge was based solely off what Mikasa had told him.

"How bad was the fever?" Eren asked while trying to sit up, but he still felt heavy.

"One hundred and three point nine." Armin told him. Eren winced, both at the insane temperature he once had and the pain that was throbbing in his legs. "Eren… You weren't trying to kill yourself, were you?" Armin asked.

"Of course not. I just got… Lost." Eren admitted sheepishly.

"And I would believe that, but we grew up here, Eren. You can't get lost here or anywhere within fifty miles of here." Armin assured, his face starting to turn red. Was he upset about something?

"Just… Just let it go, Armin." Eren said. "It's over, okay?"

"How are you feeling right now?" Armin asked. Eren looked up at him as he attempted to sit up again, and this time he managed to push himself up onto his elbows.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean are you feeling any better now?" Armin asked and stood up, setting his book down on the chair.

"I-I guess so. I feel better than I did earli-" Eren was suddenly stopped when a quick slap to his cheek rendered him deaf, blind, and dumb. His cheek stung painfully, and tears he hadn't realized he had been holding back slipped passed his eyes.

"That's for making me worry!" Armin yelled. Eren couldn't remember the last time Armin had ever raised his voice to him or to anyone else.

"W-What, you were seriously worried about me?" Eren wasn't going to lose this fight. He wasn't going to give out that easily just because the person who meant the most to him in the world slapped him.

"Of course I was! You have everyone worried about you, Eren!" Armin yelled. "You think I like being called so early in the morning by your sister? You think I like hearing that you're sick, that you may need to go to the hospital? Do you honestly think I like hearing about that stuff?"

"Obviously if it's about me!"

"You're so messed up in the head!" The blond insulted. "You had Hannes out half of the night driving in a blizzard looking for you! You had Levi here taking care of your grief-stricken mother at all ends of the night! You had Mikasa calling me and begging me to know where you were when I didn't know myself!"

Eren forced himself up onto his elbows once more, the whole room spinning. He felt dizzy, his body felt hot from some remaining fever, but he wasn't giving up. He was going to keep fighting this.

"You sit here worrying only for yourself when you're upsetting everyone else around you, and you don't even care!"

"I don't need this from someone who left for college without as much as a goodbye! Who's the one who doesn't care?"

"If I really didn't care, do you think I would have spent six hours in my car just to get back here and sit at your bedside? Do you think I would have missed my classes and gotten in trouble with my professors if I didn't care?" Armin asked, his voice becoming hoarse. Neither of them had, had the chance to yell like this in a long time, and it was a massive strain on their bodies. "At least I'm showing some concern!"

"So you're saying I don't care?" Eren asked.

"You're so thick-headed that you wouldn't get it anyway! Of course you don't, you're only thinking about yourself!"

"I was walking around in that Goddamn storm, because I was thinking of you, Armin!" Eren yelled back.

Finally, the brunt of the argument seemed to stop. With throats beaten raw and sore, possibly even scratched up, the two of them seemed to get out most of the yelling that they needed to do.

The fight was far from over though.

Armin raised his hand, his fingers extended in preparation for another hit to his cheek. Eren closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the impact and another painful round of sting that would be far worse this time than before, but it never came. When he dared to peak past his tightly closed eyelids, he saw Armin's hand waiting, as if he was deciding whether or not to go through with it. He looked conflicted, his eyes glassy and wet with tears just threatening to fall.

"I broke up with you, because it was supposed to make things easier, and now… Now I can't sleep at night unless I cry myself to sleep. I can't stay awake in class, because I can't sleep, and I'm so tired of crying. My grades are crap and it's only been the first few days into my freshman semester… I broke up with you, because I thought it would make things easier, but all it's done is make things worse… And all I've done is mess everything up…" Armin said with a whimper.

"… What are you saying, Armin?" Eren asked cautiously.

"… Since the beginning of senior year, I got worried about us. I know you had your sights set on the college here, but I knew I wanted to travel… And I didn't want to take away your opportunities here… So I thought if I broke up with you, it would make leaving easier on both of us, but I was wrong… I haven't had a decent night's sleep in months now." Armin wiped at his eyes, his arm falling to his side.

"You mean you planned it?" Eren asked, bewildered by the words leaving Armin's mouth.

"N-Not how it happened. That happened all on its own. I just used it as an excuse…" Armin said somberly.

"Why didn't… You just talk to me about how you felt?" Eren asked.

"B-Because you didn't seem to notice the amount of time we had left. You acted as if it wasn't on your mind, and I didn't want to bring it up and upset you." Armin explained.

"Armin…!" Eren exclaimed. "It was always on my mind! I didn't want to lose you either… I thought I could make a difference in college picks if I got my grades up, but it didn't help me any. The college you're going to would have made it easier by just laughing at me." Eren sighed, finally gaining the composure to sit up in his seat.

"W-Wait, you mean you tried leaving to?"

"Armin, I didn't want to lose you either. I said I love you, didn't I?" Eren asked. Like earlier, tears began falling from Armin's eyes and onto his cheeks this time. However, despite the tears that stained his cheeks, a smile spread his lips, and all too soon, Eren was smiling as well.

And then both of them were laughing.

Eren fell over despite himself, his headache killing him, and the laughing wasn't helping any. Armin fell against the bed, sitting on the side of it while his head fell over to rest on Eren's chest that was rising and falling with his laughter. The two of them laughed together, Eren having a problem remembering when he laughed as hard as he was now and Armin wondering when was the last time he had laughed this hard with Eren.

How could either of them have been so stupid?

"W-We're so fucked up," Eren said between heavy breathes, trying to recollect himself. His head was hurting worse with every heavy breath.

"We are," Armin agreed and lifted his head. "We're really bad for each other too."

"We are indeed," Eren joked and wrapped his arms around Armin's body to pull him close. Armin's head fit securely in Eren's neck, his chest resting on the brunette's and his arms resting on either side of his body.

Oh, how he missed this. He missed Eren's scent, his touch, the feeling of his clothes or his skin against his, the way his heartbeat sounded against his ear. He missed the way Eren breathed, how his breath fanned against Armin's head and was warm on his skin. He missed Eren's warmth. Eren was always seriously warm, and on cold days like this, whether it was after school or just getting to bed, Eren's warmth provided him with some of the best, and admittedly, the worst, times to sleep.

And sleeping on Eren's chest in a warm bed sounded like a great thing right now.

A/N: I think it shows that I'm struggling with this chapter. X'D