to love a liar

the little duckling

🧪wasn't gonna update but since it was my bday yesterday i thought why not give you a smut chapter as a gift 🙏🏽

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It was silent for a while. None of you said a word. Twenty minutes of silence passed. You stared at the ceiling, feeling his weight beside you.

"So . . ." you softly began.

"I should probably explain more, huh?" he blankly said.

He looked at you and you tried to offer a look of reassurance. He had just dumped a whole bomb on you with his aunt dying. You wanted to understand better but you didn't want to push him.

"What happened?" you started with the most obvious and basic question.

He took a deep breath, "I was close with my aunt. She helped me a lot with getting through my mom's death and my dad getting back with Dina."

You listened to him as he played with a stray strand poking out of your blanket.

"She was a journalist and she suspected that there were corrupt officers in the police force in Marley. She was looking into it, I guess that officer realized and killed her in her yard. She was stabbed in the back over thirty times."

You gasped and quizzed, "But you . . . were the one to find her?"

"I kept calling and texting about her coming to my graduation the next day," Eren began to explain. "I wasn't hearing back so I drove all the way to her."

He paused. His thoughts appeared scattered, like he was looking in a broken mirror, trying to figure out what to do between gluing all the pieces back together or to find a shard big enough to see his own reflection in.

"It was around sunrise when I found her. I guess she was dead since the night before. She was in her garden, blood was all over the house, all over her office and notes. The cops said she showed a lot of struggle, and she managed to get out of the house before she died."

When he explained, he did it ever so slowly. He was brokenly going through each word, and it was killing you.

"How does Historia's ex play into this?" you asked.

"After being questioned by the police and seeing my dad and brother, I came back," he illustrated. "I was walking around a busy plaza and a bunch of kids from school were there celebrating graduation. Everyone was there. Historia's boyfriend came up to me and asked if I was okay and I just . . . beat the fuck out of him. Unprovoked. I just needed to feel something and I—I fucked everything up."

You moved his hair out of his face, "Is he okay?"

Eren nodded, "He was in the ICU for a week. He pressed charges but ended up dropping them."

"The case for Aunt Faye's murder, it's soon?" you asked.

"Another four months," Eren shook his head. "Zeke and I stress about it a lot."

"Is that why you want to go into law?" you turned your head.

He nodded, "I always did but this whole thing made me get more into it."

You thought about everything he told you. His mother dies, then the only other maternal figure in his life who had helped him get through all his troubles ends up being killed in such a horrific way. Not only that but he was the one to find her mutilated corpse. The people he loved the most, stolen in such a cruel way.

"I wish I got to meet Aunt Faye and your mom," you whispered.

"Me too," he said. "They would love the shit out of you."