A/N: If you guys like reading to music, I'd put on these songs for each section of this chapter…

Part I (Eren): "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Part II (Mikasa): "Now or Never" from High School Musical 3 (will explain in end note, HAHA)

Part III (Eren): "She" by Ed Sheeran

ALSO, a content warning for recreational marijuana use.

Eren

Mom and I butt heads every Thanksgiving morning. It's an annual tradition.

The second the clock strikes 8AM, the kitchen turns into a war zone. Mom's constantly on her feet, cycling between the oven and the frying pan. She's a pro at multitasking. Somehow, she can get the food processor roaring, while whisking up batter at lightning-quick speed, while flipping some eggs, while chopping an eggplant. She's ridiculously productive—which means she's also ridiculously high-strung.

"Quit standing around and make yourself useful!" Mom snaps at me, jabbing a spatula in my direction when I get a beer from the fridge. "And it's too early in the day to be drinking!"

"More like it's too early in the day to be awake," I shoot back. "I'm sure dinner will still happen if we start cooking at, I dunno, 4PM instead of 8AM? It's called Thanksgiving break for a reason, Mom." Against the edge of a countertop, I pop open the beer. The cap clatters to the ground, rolling by Mom's feet.

"Pick that up!" she snarls. "And get started on washing the dishes, will you?"

And in T-minus two minutes, we're yelling at each other. Just like old times. Mom goes off about how I procrastinate too much, which is the reason why I don't get enough sleep during the week. I call bullshit on that. Med school is just a hard-knock life, in case she forgot. But it totally makes sense that the memories are foggy for her—especially since it's been decades since she was a student. (I put heavy emphasis on the word "decades" because she's sensitive about getting old.)

Whatever the case, the real reason why I'm sleep-deprived: Mikasa keeps me up way past my bedtime. But Mom doesn't need to know that.

We take a recess from fighting when the doorbell rings. Zeke marches in with more groceries, kissing Mom on the cheek and clapping me on the shoulder. Being all goody-two-shoes, he rolls up his sleeves, washes his hands, and gets right to kneading some dough for a pumpkin pie.

"See?" Mom says, stirring the pot again (both literally and figuratively because she's making a pasta sauce). "Zeke knows how to hit the ground running! No wonder he's always got his shit together!"

"Well, sorry you gave birth to me instead of Zeke!" I holler back.

A can of cranberry sauce goes splat against the ground. Mom tears off her apron, storming out of the kitchen.

"Seriously, Eren?" Zeke sighs, lobbing a ball of dough at my head. It hits me smack in the face. "Why is it that every fucking Thanksgiving, you regress back to your stupid, angry fifteen-year-old self? Come on, asshole. Give me the beer, and go apologize."

Like usual, I try to apologize to Mom. But, like usual, she dings me for bullshitting the apology. (My eye rolls always give it away.) She stomps back to the kitchen, and Zeke tries to do damage control by talking about the Dow and NASDAQ, while I grudgingly scrub the dishes.

It's awkward and tense for the next hour. At some point, Dad shuffles in for a snack, but Mom's still simmering, which means she might get cross with him. Zeke gives me a look, silently urging me to abandon the dishes and watch TV with Dad—which I do gladly because it gives Mom and me some space to cool off.

Then, the doorbell rings again. This time, it's the Grice brothers, who come bearing a container of home-made poutine gravy. Colt moved out to New York to work as a caretaker, and Falco followed suit this past summer for college. They're from Toronto, so they're used to celebrating the Canadian version of Thanksgiving, which, for some reason, happens in October instead of November. When Mom found out about this, she started setting two more places at the table.

I swear, Falco's presence fixes everything. Every last trace of the tension between Mom and me fizzles out the second he walks in, all smiles. While Mom smothers Falco in one of her rib-crushing hugs, Colt and Zeke crack open some more beers, and I steal back the bottle Zeke confiscated earlier. Falco pokes his head over Mom's shoulder, and I wink back, pouring him a mug. I purposely got chocolate stouts, so the dark brew can pass off as coffee.

"Who knew you were my roomie's student!" I remark, handing Falco his "Americano" when he finally wriggles free from Mom's vice-grip. We sit down on a sofa next to Dad, who's staring at ESPN.

"No offense, Eren," Falco says, clinking his mug against my bottle. "But you're pretty trash at writing emails. We spent the whole first ten minutes of our discussion section talking about how that email from 'Mikasa' sounded nothing like her. She uses em-dashes a lot. Not en-dashes. Even Bert thinks it sucked."

"Oh, fuck off," I mutter, shoving him lightly. Then, I turn the tables on him. "Mikasa filled me in on some hot gossip, though. There's been some developments in your life, yeah?"

"Who's Mikasa?" Dad asks suddenly.

"Eren's girlfr—"

But I cut Falco off. "As of right now, still a roommate."

"What do you mean by 'as of right now'?" Falco asks excitedly. "Is that gonna change?"

"If I tell you, you're sworn to secrecy on this," I state firmly. "And if you spill anything to Colt or Zeke or Mom, I'm telling Mikasa about your epic Tinder fuck-ups from the summer. And she's gonna tell Gabi. Also, Mikasa works at a newspaper, so I could probably get her to publish the stories too."

"You have my word," Falco says, shuddering.

"So after Thanksgiving break, I'm gonna ask her if she wants to date," I confess. "Which is weird because we're roommates, but screw it, I like her so fucking much. We'll make it work. Well, that's assuming she doesn't reject me."

"Really, Eren?!" Falco gives me a high-five. "Gabi's gonna freak! She ships you guys so hard, and she def called it."

"Keep it on the DL, will you?" I growl. "She's on texting terms with Mikasa. I know this 'cause I had to write all of Mikasa's texts last week because of her migraine, so I heard about the fun activities you and Gabi were up to."

Instantly, Falco blushes. "Ah, yeah… well, that happened." And he adds quickly, "What did Gabi say?"

"That it 'hurt like a bitch, L-M-F-A-O.' But I think you showed her a good time, buddy," I say, patting his back.

"What does that even mean?! Those are two completely opposite statements, Eren!"

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger."

Mikasa

People are shocked when I say this, but Levi and I don't bother cooking for Thanksgiving. Everything on the table is store-bought, just hours before dinner.

This kickstarted in 2011, nine years ago, when we celebrated our first Thanksgiving together. That week, I was fighting off a particularly debilitating migraine, so I was bedridden, exempt from any and all kitchen duties. Levi knocked three times on my door before coming in with a bowl of soup.

"Look," he said, crossing his arms. "So it's Thanksgiving tomorrow, and Hange's coming over, but usually, we just order some KFC, polish off a bottle of wine, and call it a day. Oh, and we don't gush on and on about what we're thankful for. How does that sound to you?"

"If I'm being honest," I said. "I've always hated turkey. It's too dry."

"Okay, good. Because I wasn't planning on ramming my hand up a bird's ass anytime soon to fill it up with stuffing."

"I… did not need that image in my head."

I had no interest in cooking up a storm, much less dealing with hours of dishwashing that followed. However, I did enjoy pumpkin pie and rotisserie chicken, so Levi and I worked out a compromise. Enter Hange—who was conveniently a Costco member.

The next day, we camped out in the Costco parking lot about fifteen minutes before opening hours. To our surprise, a dozen other cars were also lying in wait. By a stroke of luck, my migraine had dwindled, right in time to get my head in the game. After we stretched our legs, we huddled up. With the ferocity of a football coach, Levi charted out our strategy. On the back windshield of our Subaru, he dragged his index finger through the morning mist, drawing a gameplay diagram riddled with x's, arrows, and circles. Hange gave a brief pep talk. We high-fived each other and positioned ourselves at the line of scrimmage, right before the entrance of Costco. Our competitors—other ambitious families—had also gathered. We took our mark, we got set—

And when the doors opened: We came. We saw. We conquered.

Barreling forth with a shopping cart, Hange made a beeline for the alcohol, nabbing us three bottles of wine and a case of beer. Assigned dessert duty, I sprinted towards the baked goods, where I seized the two freshest pies. Levi took on the toughest task: laying claim to the plumpest chicken in the rotisserie section. In the past years, he's gotten into heated arguments with other shoppers. One year, he got physical. He pried a chicken from the arms of a soccer mom and made due haste for our shopping cart. "GO, GO, GO!" he roared, commandeering us towards the cash register.

Hange and I loaded up the shopping cart. Levi ran out to the parking lot, and he pulled the car up to the curb. Speed was of the essence. The goal was to merge onto U.S. Route 1 before the soccer mom could sic the manager on us. This entire operation took us no more than ten minutes.

But this year, we're sloppy.

I slam the trunk shut and kick aside the shopping cart. Levi starts moving the car. I jog forward a few yards, banging on the window for him to park so that I can open the passenger door. "Were you seriously going to ditch me here?" I mutter, clambering into the backseat.

"You were lollygagging," Levi growls, revving the engine. Our Subaru howls, hurrying a middle-aged couple across a street. For good measure, he sticks up his middle finger, and they clear the way in a matter of seconds.

"Goddamn," Hange says, wiping sweat from her brow and clicking her seatbelt. "That was a crunch."

"What's our time?" Levi barks.

I glance down at my phone. "We're at 14:58," I tell him.

"And what's our record again?" he grits out, slamming his hand against the horn in frustration. The Camry in front of us honks back irritably.

"I believe it was… 6:03? That was in 2018, I think," Hange says. "Wow, this was our slowest run yet. We almost exceeded fifteen minutes."

"We made it by the skin of our teeth, fucking Christ." Levi jerks the wheel and cuts in front of a minivan. His driving used to send my blood pressure through the roof, but over the years, I've come to accept that he's just a reckless, road rage-stricken driver who, by some miracle, maintains a spotless record. He's also skilled at talking his way out of speeding tickets.

"It's okay," I try to reason. "We'll redeem ourselves at Christmas—"

"Unacceptable," Levi interrupts. "I refuse to settle for less. And the same should go for you, Princess. I saw you dragging your feet in the dessert section, texting and looking all smitten. Who was it? Lemme take a wild guess: your fuck buddy? You better not pull this shit during Black Friday because I want my my goddamned Nikon D3500—"

"Levi, Levi, Levi," Hange sighs, shaking her head. "Let me point out that you decided to pick a fight with a fourteen-year-old today, which unleashed the fury of her mother, which tacked on an extra five minutes to our time!"

"Yeah, that was extremely uncalled for," I concur.

Levi and I are evenly-matched when it comes to our verbal spars. But when Hange steps onto the battlefield, she takes my side. The balance tips in my favor, and from that point on, it's like shooting ducks in a barrel. Rolling his eyes and fluttering a white flag in defeat, Levi fumes the whole drive home while Hange and I take turns tormenting him.

But our winning streak halts when we turn into our neighborhood. Levi slams his foot on the brakes, jerking us forward against our seatbelts. We're stopped before our front lawn. "My, my," he says, blaring the horn. "What have we here?"

Sitting on our front porch is a man who I've only seen in dusty photos stowed up in the attic. He's a towering man with a wiry build. He wears ranch boots, a wide-brimmed hat, and a chambray shirt. Hands shoved into his pockets, shoulders slouched backwards, he stands up, greeting us with a mock salute and a wicked grin.

It's my uncle's uncle: the infamous Kenny Ackerman.

Eren

Thanksgiving dinner tastes amazing. But it tastes ten times more amzing when you're high—as a fucking kite.

However, Mom's got a keen radar for shifty business. I've learned, over the years, how not to do things. Firstly, it's stupid to wear sunglasses to conceal bloodshot eyes. (No one wears sunglasses indoors.) Secondly, it's also stupid to use copious amounts of AXE body spray to cover up the smell. And thirdly, it's extremely stupid to eat a whole-ass weed brownie before dinner because that shit reduces me to a giggling, babbling mess.

But after much trial-and-error, I've finally figured it out. I'm proud to announce that for three consecutive years, I've shown up to Thanksgiving dinner—utterly baked. And for three consecutive years, Mom hasn't batted an eye. It's time to pass the joint to the next generation.

"So, Falco," I say, closing the door of my childhood bedroom. Correction: we're not actually passing a joint because that shit's way too pungent. Instead, I ask him, "Have you ever hit a weed pen before?"

"Um," he says, plopping down on my bed. "I don't think I know what that means."

"How do you usually smoke? You just started this semester, right?" I ask, cracking open a window. A chilly draft rushes in, rustling the old Warped Tour posters on my walls. Mikasa lost some respect for me when I told her that teenage me went two years in a row. She despises pop-punk.

We always argue about dumb shit like this after making love. "I thought you had a punk phase, though," I pointed out.

"Punk and pop-punk are two very different things. Don't confuse them," she retorted, flicking a strand of hair out of my face. "Punk music was the rallying cry of a counterculture youth movement, whereas pop-punk is a mindless oxymoron. How can you be popular, a.k.a. mainstream, and counterculture at the same time?"

"Yeah, I'm new to this whole marijuana thing," Falco says sheepishly, taking me back to the present. "To answer your question, we usually smoke blunts, though I never do the rolling because I'm really bad at it. I end up wasting rolling paper."

"Oh, man. What a rookie stoner," I remark, shaking my head mournfully. "We gotta get you up to speed. If you're sick of dorm room pre-games, swing over to my apartment sometime, and we'll do a rolling bootcamp."

"I think that'll get Mikasa fired, though… And possibly arrested?" Falco says, gulping.

"Well, that's why we make sure she's not home, duh," I reply, and Falco beams. "But anyways, yeah, normally blunts and joints are great, but lighting up like that won't fly so well under Mom's watch. I shit you not, Falco. She's like a bloodhound, and if she gets one whiff of it, we're absolutely, positively fucked. So that's why…" I rifle through my backpack until I find my beloved vape pen. "We're gonna use this thing. Here ya go," I say, tossing it to Falco. He catches it with two hands and inspects it warily, as if it's a grenade.

The trick to getting high on Thanksgiving is calibrating the variables. It's a matter of hitting that Goldilocks zone between being stone-cold sober and being too tripped out to function properly. To pinpoint this sweet spot, your weed needs to be consistent. Dry bud is certainly cheaper, but predicting its potency is like firing at a moving target. Sometimes, you score a solid Q. Other times, you land yourself a dead batch. So that's why it's worth splurging on some THC cartridges over the holidays. Usually, carts are true-to-type.

For me, six hits, spaced out across half an hour, put me right in that Goldilocks zone: woozy enough to transform my taste buds, but sober enough to keep it together at dinner. For our rookie stoner, we dial the dosing down to three hits. Well, four because Falco keeps coughing up little vape clouds.

"You can try this out when you go home for Boxing Day, or whatever you Canadians call it," I tell Falco, crashing next to him on my bed, our legs hanging off of the edge, staring up at my ceiling. "That's the equivalent of Christmas for you guys, right?"

"Nooot exaaactly?" Falco drawls. I might've overestimated his tolerance—which means he might've overdone the vape hits. "Boxing Daaay. It's like Black Friday for you Yankees, buuut... on crack. Plus, steroids. Plus, meth. Plus… drugs. All the… drugs."

Holy shit, this kid is so fucking precious.

"Yeah, looks like you'll need to be on your A-game for Boxing Day. Def steer clear of the weed, bro," I say, struggling not to laugh.

"Yessssssir," Falco says, giving me a sluggish thumbs-up. His eyes are fixed on a water stain on my ceiling. "Eren? I have… a query."

"Shoot, bud."

He takes one of my pillows and spoons it, holding it close. "How do you know when… you're in love with someone?"

"Huh," I say, thinking this over. "That's a good question."

"Have you ever been in love, Eren?" Falco asks. "Like, I don't mean… the high school version of it. Where you convince yourself that the first girl you date is… perfect—except she's not right for you. Like, at all. But you convince yourself she's perfect because romance is new, and you're young, and you're dumb, and you're infatuated. But at the end of the day, it's just your teenage brain playing tricks on you. I'm talking… real love. Have you experienced it?"

"Yeah, Falco. I have." This answer rushes out of me before I can even process it. Too stunned to follow up, I let those words hang between us.

"What's it like for you?" Falco presses on.

"Well," I begin. "I think about her, a lot. Especially when we're apart. I'm always wondering what she's up to, how she's doing, what she's thinking."

"I know exactly what you mean!" Falco exclaims.

"Yeah?" I say, looking over at him.

"Of course, talking in-person is always the best, but I still get a little thrill when I get a text from her," Falco says. "Which surprises me because I talk to her every single day. You think it'd get old. It most certainly did in my high school relationships, but like… this is different."

"I so hear you," I say. Speaking of which, I have no idea where I put my phone, and a part of me itches to find it. "Falco, do you ever feel like you guys are speaking a secret language to each other?" I ask. "So we have all these inside jokes—way too many inside jokes—and they end up turning into some code between us that only we understand. A third party would think that we're batshit insane. But it makes sense to us."

"Yes, yes, yes," Falco says. "You know what pisses off third parties the most? The unspoken things. Like, she's on the same page as me, and if we're with our friends and someone says something ridiculous, she'll glance over at me, and she'll be smiling—oh my god, she's so cute when she smiles. Ah, sorry, I'm being gross right now—"

"Nah, man. You're good. What were you saying?"

"Yeah, so she'll be smiling, and that makes me smile, and then suddenly, we're both bent over, laughing, while everyone else is so confused. People hate it when we do that, but it's just so special to have that with someone, you know?"

"Aww, Falco. Someone's head-over-heels," I remark, nudging him.

"Speak for yourself, Eren," he says, nudging me back. "For you, what's so special about her?"

"She gets me," I reply, shrugging. "She's patient, and I need that because I'm the total opposite. I used to think that I'm a 'fly by the seat of my pants' kinda guy. You know, someone who rolls with the punches… but she makes me realize that I'm actually... not. Like, yeah. I wing shit, but that's just for the small things, like when to buy groceries and go to the bank and stuff. For bigger things, I'm always on this uphill climb with med school, always moving forward, always worrying about the next thing. Hell, I stress about shit that won't happen until twenty years from now. But she reminds me to come up for air. It's like a reality check. And God, I really fucking need that, Falco."

"Aww, Eren!" he squeals.

"Ugh, shut up."

And then he starts snickering. He begins to say something, but he stops himself mid-sentence.

"Spill it, dude," I egg him on. "Say it to my face."

"I shouldn't. It's… crass."

"Crass is my middle name."

"Don't judge, Eren."

"I won't. The floor's yours."

"Sex feels so different," Falco says. "It's out of this world when you're in love."

"Amen," I sigh. And we fist-bump each other.

Within seconds, Falco starts cracking up. He's curled up on his side, howling with laughter.

"You're so fucking immature," I say, but I'm grinning.

"I gotta ask," he gasps, through laughs, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. "You've been talking about my TA, right?"

"You've been talking about Reiner's cousin, right?" I counter.

"You suck."

"Speak for yourself, dude."

A/N: I haven't read 132 yet because I kinda need to function this weekend, but… I had actually written this a week ago. It was ready and polished up and ready to go… but I felt like today would be a better day to post. I heard snippets of what went down, though.

At any rate, I hope this cracked a few smiles. Let me tell you about why I think you should read Mikasa's section with "Now or Never" from High School Musical 3 playing in the background. So I wrote that line about how Mikasa needed to get her "head in the game" for Levi's Thanksgiving battle plan… which instantly whisked me back to my childhood, when I'd literally howl out the lyrics to "Get'cha Head in the Game" from the first HSM movie. You bet your ass I unearthed the soundtrack from a dusty corner of Spotify and streamed it for 48 hours-straight after this. Anyways, I came across "Now or Never," which is so obnoxiously intense, and I thought this would be fitting for an obnoxiously intense Costco run.

Also… "She" by Ed Sheeran. One of his older ones, before he became a pop idol. It's so perfect for the last section.

Lastly, this chapter's for Juli ( bluinary on Tumblr/FF, blubick on AO3). Juli, for some reason, I just kept thinking of you when I wrote this chapter. Your exuberance, your lively spirit… I tried to channel all that into the writing of these silly, fun scenes. You inspire me, girl. Everyone, read "Icarus & I"—her tour-de-force fic that took this fandom by storm so many years ago!