A/N: I'd like to put out a trigger warning for addiction and drug abuse. Read with care, my friends.

Mikasa

The summer before my freshman year of college, I still hadn't had my first kiss. I was eighteen, technically a legal adult. Granted I'd already reached a number of adulthood milestones—I'd voted in my first election, gotten my driver's license, taken my first sip of beer, and filed my first set of tax forms—but the realm of physical intimacy remained murky to me. This was a problem because "Frosh Week" was right around the corner.

Frosh Week is a legendary five-day period, in which matriculating freshmen sit through hours upon hours of dull orientation assemblies during the day—but once the evening hours hit, everyone goes berserk. Campus erupts into a circus of drunken revelry. Mornings are spent nursing hangovers, piecing together the previous night's mistakes, and digesting the consequences. Rice Purity scores plummet.

Out of curiosity, I calculated my score in the lazy, idyllic days following my high school graduation, but quickly, I realized I was hard-pressed to check off boxes, if any at all. Having neither kissed nor dated anyone before, I was ineligible for the first ten items. I squinted at #6, which asked if I had ever danced "without leaving room for Jesus." Call it cheating, but prom was pretty crowded, so I finagled one checkbox. Thankfully, Levi had always been scornful of the underage drinking law, so I scored a two-fer with #44 ("Ingested alcohol in a non-religious context?") and #46 ("Been drunk?"). For #55 ("Urinated in public?"), I did pee behind a tree when I went hiking with my parents in Redwood National Park. And for #61 ("Had the police question you?"), a cop once pulled me over for a busted tail light when I was seventeen. My final score was a 95.

Everyone says it's best to hold off until the right person comes around. Losing your virginity is supposed to be a special moment. For some, it's sacred. "To hell with all that," eighteen-year-old Mikasa declared. Sex was last hurdle standing between teenage me and the finish line into adulthood. And so, I took matters into my own hands.

A running back on the football team had asked me to prom. He was one of those guys Gabi Braun would classify as a "Neanderthal": unintelligent, blustery, and crass. His main source of news was SportsCenter on ESPN, and he thought Lithuania was the name of a sexually-transmitted disease. Nevertheless, I went with him because he offered to pay for dinner and my ticket. However, when I told Sasha about this years later, she hypothesized that the real reason why I agreed was because my inner writer wanted to capitalize on the circumstances. In other words: harvest material for a New York Times' "Modern Love" column submission.

I went to prom for an hour or two before calling Levi to pick me up. The music was awful, and I thought my evening would be better spent watching 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper.

I hadn't spoken with the running back since ditching him that night, but he continued to stare at me in history class. He also asked to get a picture together at graduation. In his eyes, prom ended prematurely, and there was unfinished business between us, a series of unfulfilled objectives—all of which conveniently overlapped with numerous checkboxes on the Rice Purity Test. I only needed to send a single text message to light the match.

I weighed the costs and benefits, charting out the pros and cons with a paper and pencil. Indeed, cashing in my first kiss and V-card with this Neanderthal would deliver a blow to my self-respect. I mulled over this for several days, but one night, when I was listening to This American Life in bed, I realized that my definition of "self-respect" was severely warped. My definition was anchored in conventional notions of purity and virginity, as outlined by Christian ideology. But I was a devout atheist, courtesy of Levi's teachings, so these moral rulings were irrelevant to me. More importantly, I wasn't planning on falling in love with this boy anytime soon. My end-goal was to grow the hell up and to gear up for Frosh Week. I was pursuing personal development—so if anything, that summer, "self-respect" took center stage.

Within two weeks, I cleaved my Rice Purity Score in half, going from an uncorrupted 95 to a debaucherous 48.

I made it clear to this boy that things were strictly physical between us, but he wanted to use the "boyfriend/girlfriend" label as a bragging right with his friends. We made a compromise: I was his girlfriend in name only, but in practice, we were friends-with-benefits. Also, this fling had an expiration date (e.g. August 29th, the day before I moved into my college dorm). But sure enough, as all FWB arrangements go, someone caves and catches feelings. One night, when we were hooking up in the back of his car, I received my very first declaration of love.

"Honest question: do you even know what kind of Asian I am?" I replied after I got off of him, pulling a T-shirt over my head.

"Korean?" he offered lamely.

I was about to ask him to drive me home, but then the music shut off. The car battery had died. In retrospect, we should've known better than to leave the Toyota running, but in our defense, it was the middle of August with temperatures hitting the high nineties. Air conditioning was non-negotiable if our aim was to have enjoyable car sex.

The running back was too distraught over getting dumped to problem-solve, so he stayed in the backseat to stew in his emotions. I got out, hoping to wave down a passing car, but the lack of traffic on this quiet back road was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allowed us to fool around without an irritated officer rapping on the window. On the other hand, after waiting for almost half an hour, only one vehicle rolled by: a minivan. But the soccer mom behind the wheel told me that her jumper cables were busted.

I had no choice. I sucked in a deep breath before throwing up a Hail Mary. Pulling out my phone, I sent out an SOS signal to Levi, and within fifteen minutes, he was standing before the hood of my ex-boyfriend's car with his arms crossed, composing a blistering rant in his head, while I fumbled with the jumper cables.

That being said, Levi hates grilling me about my relationships with boys—but he's certainly no stranger to it.

"I think this kerfuffle might just top the jumper cable incident," Levi remarks, taking a seat on a park bench. He winces when he does, steadying himself by clamping a hand down on the back of the bench. He jerks his elbow away when I try to support his other arm. "Don't patronize me. I've got this. Just watch."

Ever since his accident, Levi has been living with chronic pain. He seesaws between two states: "hurts like a bitch" and "hurts slightly less like a bitch." Stuffed in the corner of his desk drawer is a prescription for OxyContin, an opioid capable of soothing the damaged nerves snaking down his left leg for up to twelve hours. But Levi stubbornly refuses to bring this slip of paper to the pharmacy. Rejecting pain medication is his hill to die on—a conviction that stands in stark counterpoint to the fate that befell his mother.

Levi grew up in rural Virginia—in fact, about thirty minutes east from Gabi's West Virginia hometown. He spent his weekends toting a rifle over his shoulder, decked out in all camo, save for a bright orange baseball cap. He and his Uncle Kenny would follow their trusty beagle through the woods, tracking down the fowl they sank from the skies. When they returned home, Levi's mother Kuchel would get the oven fired up, and within a couple hours, they'd be carving up a plump roast duck.

But these tender moments withered when Kuchel became another statistic in a growing nationwide overdose epidemic. For many, it begins with painkillers. Pick your poison—Percocet, Vicodin, hydromorphone, any opioid goes. When that plastic orange CVS bottle runs out, your body screams for more. An encore. Show's not over. Addiction has sunken its fangs, and you can't shake it off. Pills are pricey, so you get thrifty. You park your car in a nondescript neighborhood, and you hand over cash in exchange for a small plastic baggie—a bargain compared to what you shovel out for a prescription order. You take refuge in your basement. Slap the tourniquet on. Search for an inviting vein. Ready the syringe. And let that needle plant a sweet kiss into your arm.

"Scale?" I ask Levi when he's found a position of comfort on the bench. The pain scale runs from "1" to "10," but his baseline always rides around a "4" or a "5."

"A nice, easy 5, I'd say," he answers, beckoning for me to pass him his ginger ale and sandwich. "I think it's gonna be a good day—despite that shitshow with your fuck buddy."

"Eren is not a fuck buddy," I state, grudgingly handing him a napkin. "We got drunk, and we messed up, okay?"

"You guys literally keep a running log of your carnal desires," Levi snorts, squirting a blob of hand sanitizer across his palm. "Go ahead. Deny all you want, but the well-documented evidence says otherwise."

"It's not gonna happen again."

Levi takes a bite of his lunch. "You're wacky today," he says after chewing and swallowing.

"Please elaborate," I mutter, stirring a spoon through my styrofoam container of tomato soup.

"Objectively speaking, that incident with your high school plaything was humiliating," Levi says. "And I mean, excruciatingly humiliating. If we're talking pain scale, the secondhand embarrassment that I suffered must've hit an '8'—"

"Your point?"

"You didn't really give a shit when I raked you over the coals. You just said 'uh-huh' and 'yeah' every fifteen seconds to pretend you were listening," Levi continues. "But for some reason, you're not being your usual apathetic self today. You're all squirmy and nervous. You're all 'deny-deny-deny,' instead of going 'uh-huh' and 'yeah' like a broken record. Tell me I'm wro—fuck, what's going on?"

Something is rumbling, sending vibrations through the park bench.

"It's your phone," I tell him. "You're getting a call."

To be exact, a FaceTime call. Levi shoots me a glare that loosely translates to: Shut the fuck up. And he swipes his thumb across his phone screen to answer the call.

"Hello, my friend," my MFA advisor says. Erwin Smith is sitting in an armchair, dressed smartly in a collared shirt, even though he seems to be spending his Sunday afternoon in the comfort of his own home. "How's the city treating you? I wanted to check in to see if we were still good to meet up tonight."

"Frankly, we had a bit of a rough start," Levi says flatly. "This brat seems to be incapable of setting an alarm, am I right?" He flashes the front-facing camera towards me.

"Hi, Professor Smith," I say, waving, and Erwin beams at me.

"I hope I haven't been working you too hard, Mikasa," Erwin remarks, chuckling. "And Levi, go easy on her. Sunday's the day of rest, after all."

Levi rolls his eyes. As they work out their dinner logistics, I lean over and pull on Levi's elbow, urging him to hold his phone further away from his face.

"What the hell? Screw off," he growls.

"Do you not see how your nose is all shoved up in the camera?" I retort.

Laughing on the other line, Erwin takes my side. "We oughta listen to the millennials on these matters, Levi. Ah, there we go. I can see you properly now."

When they hang up, I cross my arms, smirking.

"At least I don't have a goddamned 'Sexual Tension Jar,'" Levi grumbles. "I'm in a whole 'nother league, so don't think you've magically gained the upperhand."

"I didn't say anything."

"Shut up."

"What? I haven't said a single word!"

"So tell me, are you into Carla's kid?"

I watch a flock of pigeons peck at the ground. Autumn has set the trees in this park ablaze with reds, oranges, and yellows. "You did bring all my cold weather clothes, right?" I ask.

"Way to swerve the topic," Levi huffs. "But to answer your question. Yes I did, Princess. They're in the trunk, next to your landlord's dead body."

Speaking of Keith Shadis, he looks like he's on the verge of fainting when he swings the door open—only to come face-to-face with my none-too-pleased uncle.

"What's choppin', Keith?" Levi says in a steely tone.

The former drill sergeant who loomed over me when I signed my lease seemed to shrink several meters. "G-good afternoon, L-Levi!" Keith stutters. "Do you want… uh, to come in?!"

"Right here's perfectly fine," Levi says briskly. "So to refresh your memory, this young lady—" He jabs a finger in my direction. "—is one of your tenants."

"I'm… well aware," Keith says. "Levi, I thought we were square."

"Sorta kinda maybe," Levi replies, shrugging. "I'll spare you the details—more accurately, I'll spare myself the torture of recounting the details—but Mikasa's in sticky-wickets with her roommate right now." I try to intercede, but Levi silences me, making a slicing gesture over his Adam's apple. "That being said," he continues. "I would like to amend our arrangement: Mikasa reserves the right to modify the lease however she sees fit."

Keith looks like he got zapped by a stun gun. "Levi," he says, after a long pause. "I would like to remind you that I'm the landlord of her building, and this current lease is a binding contr—"

"Well, I would like to remind you that you will always have a sword dangling over your head," Levi cuts in with a dismissive wave of his hand. "The article's already written, buddy. All the i's are dotted, and all the t's are crossed. I just have to hit the 'publish' button—which I can actually do right now, at this very second, on my iPhone."

"This is blackmail—"

"Careful, now."

"Fine. Is that all?" Keith spits out.

"On my end, we're all set," Levi says. He turns to me, raising an eyebrow. "What about you? Do you want a couple hundred dollars? A thousand, maybe? I'm all about wealth redistribution, and this loaded Wall Street rat can suck it."

"I... I think I'm good," I manage. "I also don't think this is legal..."

"It most certainly is not," Keith says.

"All those fancy tricks you pulled with McKinsey and friends pale in comparison to this," Levi says flippantly before stomping away. "Get all the details sorted out by next week, okay?"

"What the hell was that?!" I hiss as we head down the stairs from Keith Shadis's penthouse suite. Levi refuses to use elevators, despite his injury. It's a matter of pride for him.

"You should be thanking me," Levi says.

"It's completely fine!" I exclaim. "Eren and I will figure things out—"

"Listen," Levi stops on the landing. He has the high ground, and he leers down at me like a haughty emperor. "Do whatever the fuck you want. If things work out, then whoop-de-fucking-doo. But on the off-chance that everything goes to shit, well, consider yourself lucky. I just built you an exit ramp."

If there's a silver lining behind this catastrophic day, it's this: I now have an ace up my sleeve with Levi.

Eren helps me lug up my two laundry baskets' worth of clothing from Levi's car. I follow him up the stairs, gingerly carrying my beloved rubber fig plant, which surprisingly has thrived under Levi's care, sprouting a couple of inches taller. My uncle limps behind us with my blender. There's a charged air among the three of us in this stairwell. Levi has stockpiled a barrage of insults aimed for Eren's pride, but as a pre-emptive strike, I remark loudly, "I'm so excited for you to go on your date with Erwin."

"It's not a date," Levi growls. "We're just catching up."

"I'm gonna check your location around midnight. I highly doubt you're going to be back in Jersey by then."

"Stalk my location all you want. Rest assured, my ass will be in West Windsor, you fucking creep."

I keep needling him about this until we make it to our floor, and I continue teasing him as I pull him into a good-bye hug. He wrenches himself free from my arms, and in moments, his dress shoes are clomping down the stairs, eager to get away from here. And I lean my weight against the door, letting it shut soundly. Eren sets my clothes on the ground. It seems his mom has already headed home, leaving behind a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen counter. Finally, a moment of peace.

"Hi," I say, exhaling with relief.

"Hey," Eren replies with a sheepish, lopsided smile.

But I spoke too soon. Suddenly, there's a blood-curdling scream in the hallway outside, followed by a series of frantic footsteps. "Let me in! Hurry! Let me in!" a shrill voice pleads, pounding on the door behind me. When I open up, Armin sprints in. "Close the door, Mikasa! Before he gets here!" he cries, grabbing a frying pan off of our stove with two jittery hands.

"Who?" I demand. "What's happening, Armin?"

"That… hitman you sent to my place this morning! Eren, what the hell?! You owe me an explanation! I did not need to wake up to that!" Armin sputters. "And as if that wasn't terrifying enough, I ran into him again when I was coming up the stairs, and he started yelling all these obscenities at me, threatening to give me a wedgie—"

"He's no hitman," I sigh, reaching for the doorknob. "He's my uncle."

"Mikasa?! Don't open that! He's going to—"

"Levi," I say, popping my head out into the hallway. Just as I suspected, my uncle is tottering back towards our apartment. "This isn't the elementary school playground. Just go on your date, will you?"

After we get Armin's blood pressure down, Eren and I take turns to profusely apologize for the mini heart attack we caused this morning.

"I was gonna chew you out, Eren," Armin says, shaking his head. "But I think you guys have been through enough already. Talk about a perfect storm."

We work our way through Carla's cookies before Armin dips out to run some weekend errands—but not without nudging me and saying, "Don't forget to carry the one, Mikasa."

When he leaves, Eren and I collapse on the couch. Neither of us says a single word for at least five minutes, for fear of jinxing the peace and quiet that has, at long last, swept over our apartment. But then a smile worms its way onto my face. And before I know it, peals of laughter are spilling out of me. This, in turn, makes Eren crack up, and he's bending over in his seat, hysterical.

"I can't believe it," he says between laughs. "I can't believe you fucking multiplied. No wonder you were an English major!"

"You sent Levi to Armin's place as a diversion," I counter, wiping tears from the corners of my eyes. "Poor guy looked like he's gone to hell and back."

"For the record, I would never, ever blast death metal under this roof," Eren says, kicking my foot lightly.

"Can we talk about your abysmal cleaning job this morning? You left the vodka bottle laying around," I reply.

"I was hungover," he says. "Shouldn't you be more empathetic? Let me remind you that I was holding your hair back when you were hugging the toilet bowl this morning."

"We also forgot about the Jar. This silly, stupid Jar," I sigh, nudging it with my toe. It slides a couple of inches on the coffee table. "I'm guessing you sucked at hiding your weed stash when you were a teenager?"

"I think your uncle's just too good at finding things," Eren corrects me, and I laugh.

I lean my head against his shoulder. "I'm exhausted," I remark.

"We only got about three hours of sleep," Eren says, curling an arm around me.

"Huh? We kept it up for that long? I guess my memory's still fuzzy."

"That was all you, Mikasa. I wanted to pass the fuck out, but you were like, 'Noooo, Eren! One more round, pleeeeease!'"

"Okay, I'm pretty sure that's an inaccurate portrayal of me."

He shrugs. "Regardless, we're a mess."

"Understatement of the century," I remark.

And we're quiet again. My hand is on his knee, and his thumb is stroking my arm. Does this count as cuddling? My eyes flicker towards his face, and he's biting on his lower lip, also pondering this question. Yet he holds me closer. Friends do this too, right? Bumming it on a couch together after a long, catastrophic day, shooting the breeze? Nevertheless, maybe it's best to pry myself out of this situation—yet my body refuses to budge.

So we stay right there, in the quiet comfort of each other's company. At one point, Eren nods off. I could seriously use a nap as well, but I was planning on using this afternoon to grade undergrad essays, do laundry, and catch up on seminar readings. Gently, I slip myself out from under Eren's arm, but as I do so, he starts murmuring in his sleep.

"It's so cold," he mumbles.

"Your bed is a ten-second walk away, you know," I tell him, smiling.

"Don't wanna move," he says, stretching out across the length of the couch when I stand up. I fetch a blanket from his room, and I drape it across him, except it's too short for him. His ankles stick out, so he curls up into a fetal position, maximizing the blanket's coverage. "You're the best," he says sleepily.

I make myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and I'm about to get started on reading Falco's essay at the dining table when I glance over at the couch. Eren seems to have passed out completely. Something overtakes me, lifting me out of my seat and carrying me across the living room. Just as he did this morning, I lean down, and I kiss his forehead.

I could've sworn I saw his lips twitch into a smile.

A/N: Ugh. "Every Breath You Take" by The Police is playing right now. I'm soft. This one goes to two special fandom friends of mine.

Firstly, Sel, the motherfucking empress of one-shots (AO3/Tumblr: Kaekiro, Twit/Tumblr: Micasaas). Go give her fic, "Kaleidoscopes," a read! So I had a brief stint on Twitter before the toxicity of that place sent me running for the hills, and wow, I didn't realize how much grief Mikasa received from certain corners of the fandom until I had this two-week-ish fling with the Birb App. "Slavekasa" jokes, demeaning fanart, baseless insults—major yikes. However, Sel's demonstrated such a deep, nuanced understanding of Mikasa's quirks, not to mention a keen asf radar for Mikasa's recent moments of character development, and I've always marveled at how she can pick apart a hater's argument in no time flat. Convos w Sel have been tremendously clarifying, especially when it comes to crafting a Modern AU take of Mikasa. So thanks, Sel! You've motivated me to try to do our best girl justice in fics! (Definitely stretched the creative license on her character in the first part of this chapter… would love to hear your thoughts/criticism on the Rice Purity section haha :') Did it work, or nah?)

And then, Kazia (Tumblr: eleven9five). Check. Out. This. Girl's. Art. Pronto. Thanks for gracing me with your charming wit, day after day, and also just hyping me up in general. We've bonded over how love and relationships and all that shit is nowhere as glamorous as TV and literature makes it to be, and honestly, I kinda gag at fluff now—okay, LMAO, I say this as the last section of this chapter is literally… fluff. But still! I'm so glad that we can candidly discuss the ironies and flops and faceplants that riddle our love lives, and these chats really do help me think more deeply about a scene and reflect on what kinds of spins I can put on otherwise typical romantic moments. You rock. And thanks for giving me the greenlight on the risk I took.

As always, wow. HTCE is so fun to write. And it's even MORE fun when I get to wake up to kind messages from y'all. Thank you so so so so much for the lovely comments and feedback!

P.S. To Just Susy on FF: I saw your request about Levi/Petra, and wow, I'm so sorry for your loss... Unfortunately, I've already planned to go an Eruri route on this fic, but I'd be down to write a Levi/Petra one-shot for ya on the side! I'd PM you, but seems like you're on guest mode, so if you'd like to maybe hit me with some more deets about what kinda writing you'd like to see, why don't we chat over Twitter DM or Tumblr DM?