notes: sometimes an idea from two years ago comes back to haunt you.
To put it lightly, Erik had many situations to manage in his life right now: He was terribly close to flunking out of Universitie Sorciere, his best friend Sawyer was extra mad at him for missing his last and most important track event of the season, his other best friend Jellal hadn't picked up his goddamn phone for the last three days, his snake Cubellios had just knocked over a bottle of beer onto his carpet, and not to even mention the incident at work last week in which one of the customers he had waitered died of cyanide poisoning a few hours after leaving the diner or the fact that he was officially out of clean underwear and didn't have enough quarters to pay for a laundry load.
So no, Erik was not happy to come home to his apartment, with an armful of paper towels taken from the school's restroom, to find a mysterious letter on his desk addressed to "My dearest Erik."
Groaning, Erik threw down the paper towels onto the very wet beer-spot on his carpet and sat down onto his bed to read it through.
My dearest Erik, it read.
I know this is the last thing on your mind right now but I just wanted you to know that I love you, and that I don't think I'll ever stop loving you. I know you're going through a lot right now and that times are really tough these days. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you in person but I wanted to at least leave this note with you and let you know that you're not alone. I'll always be here for you, no matter what.
No signature. No name. No anything indicating who the fuck it was, and this shit was even typed and printed so there wasn't even a handwriting he could match it to.
Except Erik didn't need any of that to know exactly just who it was.
"…Sorano," he sighed, rubbing his forehead.
The letter was right. This was literally the last thing on his mind right now. In fact, this was literally the absolute dead last thing he wanted on his mind right now. In the midst of dirty laundry, a stained carpet, shit grades, angry or depressed friends, and a crime scene, Erik did not want to deal with an ex-lover-now-just-friends that was clearly still hung up on him.
Tossing the love note aside, he laid back into his bed and moaned audibly with his face in his hands. Why, why, why was this not over? This was literally the third time she was trying to get back together, and from experience he knew it would definitely not work because the last two times they attempted to be a functional relationship they split the earth in half.
And they were really close the last time too… except he totally fucked up but that wouldn't happen again because —
No, no, no, no. This would never work. He shouldn't even be considering the possibility, even less recounting the past and trying to make up for it.
He had to push her off strong, and he had to do it quick.
"Right, Cubellios?" he asked out loud. He raised his head a little bit to look at his snake.
Cubellios flicked her tongue out at him.
"Exactly," Erik agreed, picking himself up and heading out the door.
The spilled beer could wait. The carpet already smelled like piss anyway.
He knocked her door like he usually did. Three sharp raps and one dull knock to finish.
The music from inside immediately cut off. Some muffled dialogue. Then loud and strong strides to her door before two metal clicks and her apartment door opened —
"Erik?" Sorano asked through the crack. "What happened—"
"We can't do this," he interrupted her. He had to drop it before she could persuade him any further. He knew he was weak and that she was really convincing, and he wasn't going to make this fall back the same way that it did the last two times.
Her eyebrows furrowed. She looked behind her door momentarily before slipping herself outside of it and closing the door behind her. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"This," he said, pointing his finger back and forth between them. "We can't be seeing each other."
She took a deep breath and exhaled, crossing her arms. "I don't want to talk about this 'let's just be friends and sometimes kiss and bang' thing that we do."
"Okay," Erik agreed, his voice raising. "Then let's not fucking do it."
"Yeah," she replied. "Let's not."
"Then stop trying to fucking come back to me like we haven't already tried to a million times!"
Her eyes narrowed and she laughed sharply. "Me?" she hissed. "Aren't you the one standing in front of my fucking door? And I have friends over right now."
"Well I didn't have a choice, now did I?"
"Of course you fucking did, you ass. I'm completely fine with being just friends and now you're trying to put this shit on me like I'm the one that came back to you, but if I remember correctly, you came knocking on my door each and every fucking time!"
"I'm not the one leaving love notes around!"
"I never wrote love notes!" she snapped, and then grimaced. "I would never write a love note —that's fucking much, if you ask me."
Erik rolled his eyes. "Then what the fuck is this?" he retorted, pulling the crumpled paper out of his back pocket and shoving it into her hands.
"What—" she said, unfurling the note and smoothing it out to read it over, her eyes running over the page. "What is this?"
"I mean, wouldn't you know?" he asked. "Since you wrote it and all?"
"I didn't write this shit," she said, tossing it back at him. She crossed her arms. "This isn't me," she repeated, shaking her head. "And honestly I'm offended you thought I would write with that kind of terrible syntax and that you thought I would even try to get back together with you in the first place."
"Don't shit me," he replied, looking at the text again. "This totally fucking sounds like you."
"My dearest Erik?" she recited, with a sneer.
He stared at the paper a little longer before meeting Sorano's eyes again. "This really isn't you?"
She didn't reply, just continuing to stare at him sternly with a cocked eyebrow.
"Okay, then who the fuck is this?"
"Well, that's your fucking problem right now, isn't it?"
He sighed again, rereading the note. Then a realization hit him. "You didn't tell anyone else where my spare keys are hidden, did you?"
"We've been over this," she said. "I'm many things but if I were to tell someone where your fucking keys are you wouldn't have found very much else left in your damn apartment."
"This was on my fucking desk and I definitely locked the door before leaving so there's no way anyone could have done it except you," Erik reasoned, eyes narrowing. "Except, of course, if it was you."
Sorano put one hand up in defense. "Absolutely not," she swore.
Defeated, Erik waved her off, tucking the paper back into his pocket. Fuck it. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it all. "Whatever," he said, turning around to the elevators. "I don't even want to know."
"Maybe it was your landlord," Sorano teased loudly, once Erik was around the hallway corner. "I guess Landlord Brain has a thing for you after all!"
"Fuck you!"
"Fucking hell," he groaned again, face down into his mattress.
He didn't even want to think about what happened with Sorano in the past hour, nor did he want to think about drying beer on his carpet floor or the fact that he missed a call from Jellal.
Well, at least he knew Jellal was alive.
Or at least that Jellal's phone was still functioning.
Who the fuck knew with Jellal.
He replayed the day over again in his head. He was pretty sure he locked the door to his apartment as he was heading out because he had struggled with the door as he was bringing back all the damn paper towels — and he was pretty sure there wasn't anything on his desk before he left because he had grabbed his beer bottle opener from his desk.
Which meant that whoever had placed the love letter on his desk had come into his apartment and left within a half hour — which was pretty reasonable for anyone that knew how to pick locks or knew where his fucking keys were.
Realizing something, he looked toward his window. Standing up, he checked the locks on the window — still in place.
"It has be Sorano," he muttered. "Or someone that Sorano told."
The only person that knew where his keys were was Sorano… well, and Jellal but Jellal had his sights set on only one certain scarlet-head woman and Jellal was practically missing for the last few days anyway.
"Sorano's a fucking liar," he repeated to himself.
He threw the note into the trash on his way back to bed and stared straight in front of him at Cubellio's tank. Cubellios was resting peacefully under the warm amber heat light, a snakeskin freshly shed to the side of the tank.
"Ah, you finished shedding," Erik said, smiling to himself, getting up again.
Erik crossed his room to the tank. He reached down into the tank and watched Cubellios wrap around his arm slowly as he picked out the shedded skin with his other hand. He pet Cubellios a couple times, bringing himself back to lie down on his bed before putting the heavy serpent on his stomach.
"You were here this entire time," he told Cubellios. "You should tell me who placed the letter on my desk, how about that?"
The snake flicked her tongue at him.
His mouth twisted. "Yeah, you're right. Of course it was Sorano."
"No," a voice said. "It was me."
Erik shot up out of bed and looked around his room. "Who the fuck was that? Where the fuck are you?" He stalked around his room, checking around the corner, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the closet. "Who the fuck are you? And how the fuck did you get in here? Where are you?"
"Here, my dearest Erik," from behind him.
His eyes widened. "That letter was from fucking you, wasn't it? Fucking hell!" He whirled around, seeing no one.
"Down here."
"Stop fucking around with me. There's no one in front of me except for my fucking snake—"
"Hello there."
Erik blinked, slowly crouching down to Cubellios. There wasn't any sort of visible audio device attached to her and he didn't see any kind of speakers on the floor nearby. He laughed.
"Clever. Trying to make me think my snake is talking," he snorted.
"I am your snake."
And this time, Erik's eyes didn't deceive him. Cubellio's jaw moved up and down in the same way anyone saying 'I am your snake' would.
"You… you're talking?"
Was that a smile? Or at least a glimmer in Cubellio's glossy reptile eyes?
"Yes, indeed," the snake replied.
"Fuck."
And yes — in the midst of being commando because of a lack of clean underwear, a very-wet and very-stained carpet, shit and unrecoverable grades, an angry friend, a missed call from friend that came back from the dead, a crime scene at work, and a situation with an ex-lover-now-just-friends — the last thing he needed right now was his talking pet snake in love with him.