JAWS (Complete)

Chapter 17

*I need you*

There's a short note in the end of this chapter

Enjoy 😘

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"This apartment looks gayer every time I'm in here."

"And somehow, strangely enough, I'm not hearing any complaints."

"Of course not!" Ymir saunters into the living room, making a beeline for the baseball pennant hanging on the wall. "It used to look like a William-Sonoma catalog threw up in here. Now it looks like someone actually lives here."

Reiner can't deny the truth in that, and follows her into the living room. "Did you only come up here to insult my taste in decorating?"

"Pfffft." Ymir turns from the pennant and reaches out to give Reiner a friendly punch in the chest. "This isn't your taste. This is some interior designer's idea of a bachelor pad for a guy who would get married in a couple of years and then have his wife take over. That's why it's so bland. It's a blank palette for someone else to draw on."

"No, it's..." Reiner pauses, and looks around his living room. He really looks at it, for the first time since Jean left and he paid for the remodel, and dammit, Ymir is right. It is bland, boring and colorless, or colors that can be easily painted over, everything neutral and inoffensive and completely unremarkable. The only spots of color in the entire room are the bright green tennis ball Sarge has left under the coffee table and the bright red Trost Rogues pennant on the wall. "Huh."

"See?" Ymir crosses her arms over her chest and grins, looking pleased with herself. "Don't question me when it comes to colors and patterns, big guy; you won't win."

"I guess not." Reiner is still a little dazzled that he'd never realized it before, but Ymir is absolutely right. This is a blank canvas bachelor pad, readymade for a future wife to paint over, and he had been in such a daze the last few months that he'd never noticed. Abruptly, he turns on his heel and strides to the hall closet, flinging open the door and digging deep inside it.

"Oh, come on, you don't have to go back into the closet on my behalf."

"You hush." Reiner would normally take the joking in stride a bit more, but he's a man on a mission, and his mother's visit, two weeks in the past now, still stings a little.

"Hush, huh? Are you going to start calling me dahling next?"

Reiner emerges from the closet, a dusty, rolled up poster in hand. "What?"

"Historia told me your fuckboy has a Southern accent."

"Don't call him that." Reiner doesn't like using his Lawyer Voice when he doesn't have to, but he's not taking any shit on this particular issue. "His name is Galliard."

Ymir studies his face for a moment, and then, miraculously, backs down. "Okay, Galliard has a Southern accent. She heard it when she met him in the elevator."

"Yeah, he does." An accent which he normally tries to downplay; Historia must have caught him at a bad time if he'd let it slip. "It's pretty subtle, though, and he never calls me dahling." Reiner steps past Ymir, towards a blank spot on the wall. "Can you go grab the tape off my desk?"