my green

017 : half a person

before

it's a cruel gust of wind that bursts through his locks of hair, that lifts specks of sand, that causes his eyes to shut tight. the smell of the ocean lifts, traveling miles on until it reaches zeke and him.

they stand feet apart, barely speaking, almost like they're strangers simply existing in the same hour, whom exchange words that have little significance to them.

it's what they do though, it's what they've always done. after every fight, every argument, they fall silent, they fail to recognize their roles in each other's lives. they fail to realize they are both half of grisha and if sewn together, they are him entirely. this is something that's always stuck with eren, that combined together they make up the absence of their father.

perhaps it's why he occasionally feels so guilty after telling zeke he hates him, after telling him he never wants to see his stupid face again. it'd be like shouting at grisha, and something more hurtful than that, doesn't exist.

he kicks the sand, dirty converse denting the surface of it. his hands are in his pockets, hoodie around his torso loose and barely being a decent size–he wears it like a large paper bag. eren can't help himself but force a smile away, nothing is amusing, but he always feels the urge to burst into a frenzy under a thick atmosphere.

he clears his throat, "you better hope she didn't hear anything," he mutters, looks into the sand, ignoring zeke beside him a few feet away.

"or?" zeke asks, his optical glasses resting at the bridge of his nose, he uses a finger to push them up further, "god forbid she knows the truth, god forbid she knows anything but your real life."

eren stops whatever movements he did prior to zeke speaking, he stands, furrows his eyebrows, "why do you always have to do this–"

"do what, exactly?"

"say your stupid remarks to make me feel worse–"

"you expect me to not talk back," he asks eren as his hands feel around in his pockets for a familiar, little, rectangular box, "it should be the other way around."

eren rolls his eyes, "i'm not going to stay quiet, if that's what you're expecting."

zeke opens the box, pulls out a white stick filled with tobacco leaves, a lighter in his palm. he shrugs, places the cigarette in between his lips and mumbles out a reply that's not very interpretable.

"i forgot you're a smoker–"

"under stress, i am," he corrects eren, the cigarette now lit, and smoke seeps through a gap in his lips.

"oh, am i stressing you out?"

he groans in between his session, "what do you want eren?" he pulls the cigarette away from his lips, it rests in between his fingers and he exhales a cloud of smoke, "called me out here, pulled me away from the crowd just to harass me?"

eren doesn't think zeke deserves an apology.

"no," but he thinks he's the one who deserves the apology, "i just want you to be sorry for what you said to me yesterday."

"you want an apology?"

"you were out of line," eren reminds him.

zeke inhales another round of smoke, "you crossed it first by drinking on a school trip," he shrugs, "and by being seconds away from sleeping with y/n."

he scoffs, heat rising to his cheeks, and he knows it isn't the sun kissing his skin but rather the thought of you, "that last part isn't true."

"it is," zeke is sure.