baby

chapter 12

AT the late age of eighteen, you experienced your very first death. it was yours, it was the first time that you died. you didn't harm yourself, god no, rather someone else who obliterated you entirely. that's what it felt like though. you were so cold and frail and completely nothing.

knowing that the only person you loved and wanted was being held by someone other than you was literal hell. she wasn't yours and hasn't been yours. mikasa belonged to a brunette with gorgeous turquoise eyes and soft, supple lips that tasted of honeydew and sugar. to a beautiful, arrogant dream– one of which you don't blame her for not unveiling her eyelids, you now comprehend her reasoning.

now, as a twenty three year old, in the middle of this living room. you die for the second time. the cause of your death: a golden haired boy. someone that you never thought would be capable of tearing you apart, piece by piece. stripping your walls of the paint that made you, you. bulldozing the beams and steels that kept you sturdy. you're a pile of gravel, of unidentifiable matter.

the tips of his pretty and long fingers graze the raised skin of your forearms, you're so cold and damp to the prints of his digits. he's steaming hot to the surface of your arms, instantly igniting you into flames. burning his print into just how farmers do to cattle.

you feel sick, sick to your stomach watching him tug at the shirt you hold deeply into your chest. there's no way to run and hide, not while your knees have gone jelly and your brain has forgotten what it even is to be mobile.

he's so strong, stronger than he looks. armin has never benched a day in his life but it sure feels like he has. the tugs and pulls are forceful, enough to drag you in further into him. either that or the grip you had to your chest wasn't as firm as you thought it was. the shirt slips out of your cage, smooth like soft butter against toast.

the words that spur from within his mouth sound incoherent. like a language so foreign, so new, so enigmatic. your ears can't make them out, suddenly.

"please-" you whine, you'd cave to your knees if you were given the green light by the host buried in you.

he speaks again and yet you can't make it out.

"stop-" you beg and beg and beg. just how you're so used to.

"i wanna help you, let me do that. we're friends right?" he's dexterous with his words, he's great at it. like it comes naturally to him.

"always.." so willingly, you let him take the top. because his need to help seems so genuine and there's no way that you don't need a little saving.

you watch as he unfolds it. it sleeps in the palms of his hands, those ocean eyes skim over the printed letters. he takes in the washed away hues that sort of make the t-shirt seem vintage. the black dye all washed away into a deep gray shadow.

focused, he's deeply concentrated on the size now. this is far too big for your figure, it'll fit like a large garbage bag on your torso. or just how a rain poncho would, flowy and free and vast.

and the smell, it's masculine and expensive. it's a concoction of bay rum and teakwood, which is ancient to armin's nostrils. it's the same scent he's been around for years. from late middle school and up until now,  seniors in college, eren uses the same cologne.

it's the fragrance eren's father always wore. on trips to the grocery market for quick ingredients or runs to the library, where eren tagged alongside to be nose deep in books about wild cats and rainforests. even when they went out as a family to the beach, his father wore the same cologne.

and when he passed, eren made sure he was sent away properly– doused in the expensive cologne he adored so much.

armin, widens his eyes at the white splotch just under the band logo. he's no saint, he knows what it is, he knows all too well. he's cleaned off his own seed with black socks, black bed sheets. countless times he has, enough to recognize the abstractness of it and the way the white dries up on the dark fabrics.