chimera -

EVERYONE    KNOWS    ME    NOW    ?          a    man    is    but an    empty shell.               i.               private    & selective    multimuse     featuring     animanga muses from     SHINGEKI     NO     KYOJIN,     HAIKYUU,     JUJUTSU     KAISEN,     &     more.               ii.              written     by     hale,     21+,     she/hers.          iii.               𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘴.    𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘴.   𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵.          iv.           rules    &    roster    below.    𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒    𝐈𝐒    𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐈𝐗.   

when they had first become ambassadors, the shoes had been too big. survivors had been surrounded by canyons of devastation - imprints & footprints of where colossal men had made their final march, crushed everything underneath, & made it burn. 

too big, & everyone knew it — that had made it easier, at the beginning, for more survivors to agree to the responsibility to act as diplmatcs. they spread themselves across a map, & sometimes it meant that familiar things were far too distant. 

the early years had been hollowing & harrowing in their loneliness.

of course, eventually, weather & time meant that there would be erosion on old footprints. devastation never goes forgotten, but the urgency dissolves. 

it means that there’s space for diplomacy to consolidate – then there are fewer ambassadors overall, & those remaining found themselves stuck together in the major cities. 

it makes for redundant conversations. it makes for far too much familiarity, even among comrades who know their colleagues better than they know old scars.

in cities of shared duty, armin has known jean in hotel rooms, through the want for warmth splayed out on rented beds. 

sometimes warmth is just armin’s arm draped against jean’s shoulder. 

sometimes warmth is a kiss, caved to equal pressure. jean wants for something steady. armin wants for something both ruinous & honest. 

armin has never known anything jean to be anything but honest. jean struggles with lies, so he’s always been at least partially honest. it makes him reliable in a way that armin has recently been struggling to understand – reliable in a way that means armin doesn’t mind when jean’s head rests against his chest & counts heartbeats.

ruinous & honest. armin doesn’t see honesty in himself that much, anymore. over the years, he has conceded to embody the truths of too many individual men: a soldier, then a strategist, then a weapon, then a leader. armin acts their mouthpiece, & his voice grows distorted. he doesn’t lie outright, but he walks on blurred lines.

he enjoys it, genuinely – the person he’s evolving to be. he thinks he’ll always stay in motion, walking on blurred lines. 

it must make him a type of reliable too, because jean gravitates to him & lends himself to him longer than he should. 

jean wants for something steady, & travel has been wearing him thin. armin can tell because he has pressed the pad of his finger to the skin beneath his eyes & felt fatigue there. 

there are fewer ambassadors overall. armin may spend the rest of his life following old footprints, but jean can take a break.

they argued about it, a few months ago, when they had visited the island for a wee.

armin had said that jean should stay, at least for a while. & then armin had traveled on his own. they agreed to meet again in the next city, the next month.

 that had felt like an argument, too – unresolved, even now, as they find themselves reunited in another seaside city. 

what did you do while i was gone? jean asks. 

sent: what did you do while i was gone? from: @nectarot

somewhat abashed, armin resists the urge to stare at the floorboards & avoid eye contact. instead, he flattens his lips into a smile. it doesn’t last long, & he feels himself deflate.

‘ — i don’t know, honestly. all things worth doing, i’m sure. did you like being home? was it warmer there than it is here? ‘ 

jean wants for something steady. he could choose to stay stationary, to rebuild a home outside of honest & ruinous.

he leaves the glass there, stares at it.

reiner brought two bottles to the apartment as a surprise. the braus family had been gifted a case of expensive wine, & they had shared their good fortune. even when they have little good fortune to give, they share it anyway.

reiner can’t decide how conversational he feels. he sits together with bertolt in the living room, & reiner’s socked feet threaten to settle beneath bertolt’s thigh in a pursuit extra warmth. reiner texts & then tells a story. texts & then tells a story - the way he talks, it seems that arlert & jaeger are strained again.

reiner waves a hand & glances over at bertolt’s neglected glass.  ‘ i don’t want you to get drunk, but that’s a very fine chardonnay you’re not drinking, ‘ he says. 

sent:  i  don’t  want  you  to  get  drunk,  but  that’s  a  very  fine  chardonnay  you’re  not  drinking; from @ch0kinghalos

the skin at reiner’s hand is flayed raw & red. he’s lost his gloves about three times the past week. bertolt has already agreed to let reiner borrow his gloves tomorrow, though he’s not looking forward to their untimely disappearance. 

reiner swears he won’t lose them, but some things don’t come as a choice.

bertolt knocks reiner’s hand aside in a concession, & he picks his wine glass up again. he takes another sip. 

despite bestowing the wine as a gift, he thinks that reiner is frustrated with him. more likely, he wants to be angry & hasn’t quite managed it yet. maybe he’ll work up to it. 

bertolt ignores it. 

bertolt does a very good job at imagining a world in which he can’t know anger. irritation & annoyance are mosquitos, & rage or fury are more distant pests than that. 

but he can imagine : the idea of anger conjures something white hot, & bertolt has enough of heat. whether it be from this life or a previous one, bertolt has had enough of heat.

it makes him a coward. there are worse things to be than a coward.

even so, when he closes his eyes sometimes, he can imagine being a coward & still being crowded tight enough into a corner that he erupted, rearranged himself into something nuclear. those who surrender to fear are just as capable of becoming the beast at bay. 

there are nights, too, that he closes his eyes & is so certain that he knows the melting point of every living thing —- & that he has been capable, once before, of boiling alive every living thing. he could probably do it agai.

knowing everything that he might be, he sleeps easy.

even if he sleeps in contorted positions sometimes, with bedsheets twisted around in knots around his legs — he sleeps easy, the way that people capable of fever always do.

honestly, the first time he properly understands that he holds memories from another version of himself —- he pretends it’s fever, & he tries to ignore it.

he tries to ignore everything. 

reiner has been pointing this out, recently, because he can’t figure out why bertolt refuses to want anything. 

bertolt doesn’t have much ambition. he doesn’t want to try to date. he doesn’t want to ever think about expanding outside of who he is – even in lived spaces. 

in the apartment, there are pieces of bertolt littered across the space – but most of the living has come from the reiner & annie. bertolt only presents himself as a relic; it is easier & preferable to let others expand for him. 

reiner has never called it selfish directly, but it has bothered him. reiner is so earnest that he has always been at the cusp of heartbreak, & it makes bertolt’s shortcomings a little like pressing on a bruise.

in fevered states, bertolt remembers that it was supposed to be reiner & him against the world. then he remembers that he doesn’t want to fight. then he remembers reiner’s calling him unreliable; bertolt knows that reiner had been right.

nowadays, reiner is healing some – fidgeting with pills in his pocket & then laughing as though he were shaking the world when he tells a story about his work at the braus’ farm. 

it’s been cold recently, frigid enough that breath threatens to freeze as soon as it escapes their lips. but still, reiner has laughed.

the apartment’s been cold, too – the window in the living room is too drafty, despite the make-shift curtain bertolt has set alongside it. so reiner has spent the past two nights tangled in bertolt’s sheets too & sometimes waking up on the floor.

bertolt sleeps easy. reiner does not. 

there’s something unreliable in this, too. 

nowadays, bertolt plucks at fraying blue strands at his sweater. it’s been washed too many times, & bertolt pretends that the blue is just as vivid as it was the day that he got it. 

nowadays, he & reiner sip white wine together. reiner does a poor job of burying things between them. he probably would like to see bertolt get drunk, if only to break the balance of bertolt’s neutral temperament – 

bertolt doesn’t think that reiner is yet stricken by fever. it’d be kinder if he never did get struck, but bertolt doesn’t think reiner will be so lucky.

it’s not really a fever, after all. 

it’s just old memories, old sins, & old camaraderies churning up ghosts at the nape of the neck. 

it makes some futures  feel inevitable, mostly — a difficult thing, because bertolt remembers dying & being passed down as someone’s inheritance.

he regrets dying. he had been seventeen & unsettled enough by arlert’s sacrifice that he had presumed for a moment that burning arlert would be enough. as a result, dying had been his own fault, in the first life –

he’s older than seventeen now, & the years that he has won makes him feel even more stuck in stasis than he had ever been.

it’s hard to look at arlert recently - for a lot of reasons, both past & present. 

bertolt watches reiner’s brow furrow as he struggles to reply to a message on his phone. 

he’s texting arlert now, presumably. in recent years, reiner & arlert have struck a friendly type of . . . agreement when things are soured between arlert & jaeger. 

bertolt resigns himself to difficult things. he picks up his wine glass again, & his lips hover at the rim. he makes more space for reiner’s feet beneath his legs.

reiner exhales a huffed laugh that spells out confusion. he stares at his phone & taps at its screen. ‘ i have a tendency to get involved with unavailable men, ‘ reiner says - as though it were supposed to be a shared joke, or as though it were something that should be shrugged aside.

sent:  i  have  a  tendency  to  get  involved  with  unavailable  men; from @ch0kinghalos

mostly, it feels pointed – but not enough. bertolt sucks on the side of his cheek & looks the opposite way. he is unreliable, & he tries to ignore everything. 

either way, reiner will stay the night in his bed tonight too. the drafty window in the living room shudders against a burst of winter wind. 

bertolt sets his wine glass back down & goes back to picking at his shirtsleeve. ‘ i mean, from what you’ve said . . . your deal with arlert is about both of you being unavailable, isn’t it? it’s about what you say outright, isn’t it? ‘ 

he avoids saying things outright, himself. reiner indulges him too much. 

‘ fetch, ‘ he’ll say. then he’ll say something easy, like mineral water, or something outlandish – like a meal from the other side of town or an expensive kind of liquor that he only wants for the bottle. 

once, he asked ness to retrieve the phone number of a woman at a club for him – just to see if ness would comply.

ness had chosen to comply –  she asked, looking him up & down, if he was asking for her number on behalf of his friend or for his own sake. though he flushed a furious red, he had smiled with false shyness & allowed himself to say, ‘ both. ‘ 

because her question had been a stupid one. 

ness had decided years ago that there was no separation between kaiser’s interests & his own – most of the time, he thinks that kaiser would agree. 

he gives her his number, & she gives him hers – ness takes it to kaiser, & kaiser preens because he likes to play fetch as proof of his own cruelty, as proof of the ways that he has trained ness to heel.

kaiser is a little childish like that, sometimes, in how easily he imagines that relationships can be made into black & white. 

of course, ness finds it difficult to argue against childish things. he likes impossible things & sweet things too much  – & he has spent too much time hearing his preferences for imagination equated to youth, & youth equated to stupidity. 

& so he plays make-believe alongside kaiser. impossible things can be simple, so it’s fair game to pretend simpler things. so nowadays, kaiser has him trained - if kaiser needs the crutch, then why not? 

they play fetch, & ness doesn’t mind – he says so, hums as much, & takes no questions. 

so long as it’s the two of them & kaiser’s illustration for power, he doesn’t mind. even if it fucking sucks – 

sometimes magic is made of bloodsacrifices & hurt & hurt & hurt. sometimes the impossible happens only after everything real is scraped through & clean & empty. 

ness doesn’t mind.

he likes being needed. 

kaiser doesn’t really know yet how much he needs him. 

ness thinks he knows how much he needs kaiser.

eventually, they’ll be better than this. in the meantime, ness daydreams sometimes that they’re in the middle of weaving a legacy – or at least, ness is playing spectator to the beginning of a legend. 

ness wants for kaiser, & kaiser wants to be permanent. 

as such, ness is certain that his and kaiser’s interests synonymous. 

so long as it’s the two of them, it’s fine.

it’s different, though, when kaiser plays their game for a third party. ‘ be a doll and get me a mineral water,  okay? ‘ he says, & he sounds as though he’s already forgotten what he’s asked.

prompt: be a doll and get me a mineral water, okay?; sent by @mindsafe

be a doll, & fetch. kaiser wants ness out of the room. he wants to talk to whoever else has commandeered his attention, &  it’s naive, childish, upsetting that  kaiser has managed to forget that playing make-believe is not enough to make it real. 

the impossible can happen, but pretending is not enough.

ness clenches his hands hard enough that they start to tremble, that his nails start to dig into the meat of his palms. 

ness knows how to smile, so he does. 

even if he bites his cheek hard enough that it might bleed.

‘ i know what kind you like,’ ness agrees to fetch. 

for now. 

kaiser doesn’t look at him.

ness clenches his fists tighter.

‘ kaiser, ‘ he begins & breaks their script. ‘ you know that i know more of what you like than anyone, right?’ 

he knows the drinks, the foods, the passes on the field kaiser likes.

he’s good at that sort of thing. at making a religion of things. 

ness had decided years ago that there was no separation between kaiser’s interests & his own – most of the time, he thinks that kaiser would agree. 

‘ i’ll be right back,’ ness pledges unnecessarily. kaiser hadn’t asked. 

rules: answer and tag six people you want to know better.

favorite color: smoke grey like a lil cloudy day or earthy brown ☺️

last song: wheezing i think the last thing i listened to was the mashup of let's groove x dumb crasy; don't worry about it

currently reading: i'm on an ao3 binge recently but i've been listening to the audiobook for heat.ed ri.valry recently (hearing it read is so wild an experience; good for comedy). the actual book i've been reading is called fearing the black body: the racial origins of fat phobia which has been a really interesting historical narrative of body talk & such. i think. i might read the mills house murders as my next recreational read though!

currently watching: i've been rewatching some mha & glee (genuinely hysterical) when i'm working as well as jjk. i might try to watch adolescence next though!

currently craving: spicy ramen & not to have work

he doesn’t think he’s very good at it. even if he can say the right thing, he feels grit & indignation & things that should have been sticking against his teeth. he thinks it makes him abrasive, makes him coarse. but then he shares drinks with other diplomats to conclude professional conduct, & it turns out that they all speak some version of the same language – 

so he walks away hungover happy & prepares for travel again. by ship, by air – he travels as frequently as he stays put. 

it makes him certain that salt might stick to him wherever he goes - salt & soot & someone else’s sorrow. he smells all three even when he comes home & rides outside of the city to see familiar faces.

by horse, it takes two hours to ride out to the town where mikasa has been.

the ride is nice in the spring when flowers are still blossoming. it smells sweet. 

when he sees mikasa, he thinks spring looks sweet too. 

it doesn’t matter that they are battleworn. there is always new life piled on top of the old. 

it makes jean realize, sometimes, with a kind of  born-again awareness that peace is not always a tranquil thing.

it can look like whatever this is now – with mikasa standing still in the pocket of time that she has frozen for herself, with jean still traveling & wishing he weren’t.

salt & soot & someone else’s sorrow starts to smell stale. he has agreed to stomach it until he can’t anymore – he’s talked with armin sometimes stopping, & armin says that it isn’t an endurance test.

of course, armin also said that he doubts he’ll ever stop moving himself. armin has turned nomadic, since the end of the world. it makes him more of a stranger than he’s ever been. 

jean wonders sometimes, if mikasa feels similarly – about springtime & strangers & salt on the skin. 

he visits her anyway, time & time again. he brings her the mail from town, & she makes space for him enough that sometimes they talk about what it would be like if he stayed.

so they sit at the porch – it’s too late for coffee, so they sip tea instead.

mikasa’s cat pokes holes into jean’s trousers when he kneads at jean’s lap, & jean is more convinced than ever that the cat must hate him.

mikasa watches him & observes : there's something sweet about you.

prompt: there's something sweet about you; sent by @nectarot

‘ maybe, ‘ he says anyway. jean lets the words lull over his tongue. the shape of them is unfamiliar. he rolls his shoulders.

the cat digs in its claws further. ‘ but did you ever have the chance to develop a sweet tooth? ‘ 

meanwhile, kei wears skepticism against his skin like barbed-wire; it’s protective as much as it is functional enough that he doesn’t trust akiteru to communicate the worst to him & to be the bearer of bad news.

if he had, they wouldn’t have ever fractured. but even so, kei trusts akiteru with everything else. sometimes, he’s still reluctant for that.

trust is not a decision he ever wants to make.

akiteru knows kei’s reluctance to trust well enough that it makes his voice sheepish through the phoneline when he calls to tell him that their had been an accident at the gym, that everything was fine, that he had just driven kuroo to the hospital – everything was fine. but he hangs up before he can explain more; he says that the doctor is there, so he’ll have to call kei back. 

kei waits seven minutes & bites his cheek until akiteru calls back.

kuroo had probably sprained his wrist – he would be fine, but he would late getting back to kei’s apartment.

akiteru rambles sideways – he hadn’t realized that kuroo had been staying with kei most of the time that he was visiting sendai. akiteru had known kuroo & kei had been spending time together, that they had been harboring more time together . . . 

akiteru starts to hint at a question, & kei pretends not to hear it.

kei’s always been good at responding only to the things he wants to hear. it frustrates kuroo, sometimes; it sinks stones in kei’s stomach, sometimes, too – because it is far too easy to twist kuroo’s words against him & keep imagining the worst, always.

so akiteru keeps talking on the phone, & kei stopped listening, mostly.

kei thinks that the two of them, the tsukishima brothers, must be intrinsically different — they are built in different volumes and different colors of charisma. it makes akiteru infinitely more trustworthy than kei is to himself.

so kei sucks in the side of his cheek & doesn’t catastrophize – because he does well under pressure, strategizes through worst-case scenarios, & believes wholeheartedly that the world is always supposed to sink.

in recent days, he has been doing better at believing that he can stand upright even if the world does sink.

he’s not too sure what to do with new beliefs, new versions of himself, new worsts, new bests.

when kuroo tumbles out of akiteru’s car later, his arm suffocated in a cast so orange that it makes kei’s eyes burn. he smiles at kei as though he were about to laugh - as though his injury were the tailend of a joke about things that could only happen to kuroo.

apparently, kuroo’s wrist only needs to be immobilized for six weeks – kei is habituated now to think of injuries by numbers & recovery rates & physical therapies. so all things considered, things could be worse.

he lists strength exercises to kuroo that undoubtedly, kuroo already knows, & he makes a dinner that promises to be bland.

tsukishima always underseasons his cooking. he knows it, & he doesn’t feel much compulsion to make any changes to his habits anyway.

kuroo stretches on the couch & needs to shower & stinks like hospital. he pretends not to be tired, & kei drifts close enough to tap the center of kuroo’s forehead – to keep him awake long enough that he can eat & probably shower.

everything was fine, & kei starts to feel a bit as though he probably should be worrying more than he is – or else he should be fussing, or something.

he’s never been the type of person to coddle, & kuroo knows that. if he didn’t know that, then they could not come to the agreement that they have – shared meals, shared sleep, shared selves. they agreed to this, & they laid their cards on the table to negotiate privacy, publicity, & prospective futures.

but it takes kei three minutes too long to realize that he had served kuroo pork that he can’t cut on his own with a broken wrist, & kei is supposed to be good under pressure.

everything is fine, & kei feels the urge to drop his head on the table & to think of every detail he might have missed & to think of where things could have gone wrong – he tries to imagine how akiteru’s voice would have sounded if things had been terrible, & he tries to imagine how worst-case scenarios are now something he shared.

instead, he cuts kuroo’s pork for him across the table. his ears start to burn pink, & they eat without conversation.

the meal is enough to rally some of kuroo’s energy. though he no longer seems at the verge of falling asleep, kuroo still makes no effort to go shower. he mentions something about needing a plastic bag while kei is finishing the dishes, & kei realizes for the first time that he’s never broken a bone.

he’s been sprained, bruised, & dislocated.

kei has yet to break a bone.

there’s still soap on his hands when he turns towards kuroo & demands for the details about his wrist’s prognosis & care instructions & follow-up appointments.

kuroo indulges him, & kei paces. his nose wrinkles as he tries to commit dates to memory – from the corner of his eye, kei can tell that kuroo appears equal parts amused and bewildered.

kei decides to stop looking at kuroo & keeps pacing long enough that kuroo decides on an intervention.

there’s the press of his lips to his temple & then to his jaw as kuroo speaks aloud his reassurances ( ‘ i’m okay; i’ll be good as new. you’re good, & i’m good ‘ ).

kei isn’t fretting. but then again, he’s always been good at responding only to the things he wants to hear. he lets kuroo kiss him once, & it does nothing for kei’s mood — though his shoulders start to lose some of their tension.

he finds a plastic bag for kuroo’s cast, & he knows he’s not good at this. at caring for another person, at fussing, at wanting — but kuroo had agreed to this ( to all of this ) so tsukishima points a finger at kuroo as he sends him off to the washroom. ‘ you’re not allowed to do stupid things, you know. ‘

like get injured. like get hurt.

kei’s gaze drops down to the orange of kuroo’s cast. kuroo shouldn’t have been allowed to do that either, frankly.

but he kisses kuroo’s cheek anyway, & it’s a middle-ground between them.

kei relaxes some while kuroo showers, but not all the way. he’s done pacing, but he pours himself a glass of kahlua & milk. he makes a list of all his grievances in his head.

kuroo emerges from his shower, hair plastered to his head, & observes kei. ‘  stop  scowling —  you’re  such  a  grinch, ‘ he says & sounds too fond.

continuation of this; in answer to  stop  scowling   you’re  such  a  grinch. submitted by @ch0kinghalos

kei airs one of his grievances aloud anyway to be even more of a grinch. ‘ while we’re at it — i know it was my idea for you to go practice with my brother, but you don’t need to get too close to him. he’s nosy, & he’s embarrassing. ‘

kuroo threatens to laugh, & it’s enough that kei almost smiles.

even so, kei offers him a sip from his drink anyway.

it was jarring to remember eren as he was the first time — armin couldn’t quite tell if he were dreaming or there were memories coming to him in error — but he remembers eren sometimes in glimpses twelve & fresh with grief. he remembers him indignant & hungry. he remembers eren at fifteen, turning his hunger into a determination to be unstoppable.

he remembers being fifteen himself, watching eren die for the first time.

he remembers being fifteen himself, scraped shell-shocked hollow & thinking that he might never forgive himself for being weak enough to make saving his life someone else’s burden.

he remembers them older & can’t remember all of it. he knows he gave his life at some point too, & he doesn’t know how.

he remembers them older again, remembers holding something massive against his spine & feeling as though he were large enough to refute religion. he remembers eren, distorted & part-way dead.

he remembers dreadful things & eren’s complicity in an apocalypse.

so armin loses track of time sometimes when he remembers things. then he comes to & realizes that he’s left the sink running too long, & his fingers are starting to prune.

he has not known eren a lifetime. they’ve known each other only for the better part of a year, & eren’s a boy who left handwritten messages on armin’s coffee cup — he’s a boy who’s never going to get his deposit back on his apartment because there is too much of himself & his paint splattered against his apartment walls.

it feels paradoxical to knit a constellation between eren & the lifetime that armin remembers before —- paradoxical to concede that parts of them might have known each other long enough to mean something, when armin ( as he is now ) keeps marveling that all of this is too fast.

& so eren comes as a headrush, comes as whiplash. he does armin’s make-up once for a party , because eren’s always liked the idea of using armin as a canvas — eren paints his eyes with mostly streaks of silver & blue like ocean waves. eyeshadow powder crumbles in eren’s bedsheets when he gets distracted & kisses him instead.

at the time, armin agrees to things he wouldn’t agree to otherwise —- things he might have done anyway, but it’s easier to make concessions when eren is so close, always so close.

they go to a club weeks later, & it stinks of sweat & someone’s spilled beer. reiner looks uncomfortable in a corner, tapping his fingers into an empty percussion against the bar surface. he keeps checking & rechecking that his phone is in his pocket, & there’s connie too — laughing as though he were made for the sake of laughter. armin supposes that connie is laughing at something eren must have said, but it’s hard to hear —- mostly, it’s hard to hear until eren is close, always so close.

eren says something stupid, like ‘ they don’t have a good bathroom to do coke in. ‘

 sent by @ch0kinghalos: they don’t have a good bathroom to do coke in. 

armin almost rolls his eyes —- mostly because it doesn’t matter, & partly because he can already guess eren’s follow-up comment. maybe if they go where private, he can do a line off armin instead.

he might have been able to argue that it was a stupid thing to say, if he hadn’t agreed once. if he hadn’t returned the favor in kind & felt as though he were sharpened into razor wire. capable & not weak anymore —- for a second, he’s characterized by focus & racing close to the sun; he is wanting for fun ( for once in his life ) & wanting for fun again ( lest it be the end of his life ).

eren says his bit & doesn’t mind being affectionate —- he kisses the side of armin’s neck three times & slots his thigh between armin’s legs & pretends it’s a casual embrace. but there’s a glint in his eye that is mean because it’s hungry, rather than being hungry because it’s mean.

armin recognizes him, recognizes the glimpses that he’s remembered. armin pushes him back against his own mattress later anyway, when they’re sober-minded enough to crave adrenaline again.

eren does not remember what armin remembers. it’s nice that way because it makes them mundane.

it’s nice that way because armin doesn’t have to figure out how to explain that a part of him thinks that maybe ( maybe ), he’s picked up in this life where he left off in the last. even if he & eren had once shared a lifetime, armin had survived past that too. he had been the worst best version of himself, or else the best worst version.

either way. fucking either way.

armin decides again ( it’s not the first time ) that he doesn’t like substance. he can drink okay, & it makes him feel sleepy like a laugh — - he indulges in that, but he’s remembering that he can’t shake the old feeling of always needing to be a relic of both hurt & honed habit.

so he quits, anyway, sometimes. & it’s not hard to do so.

eren behaves with him sometimes & thrives in the domesticity of them at their sweetest — he can cook better than armin can when he wants to showcase his strengths. he makes himself sweet, the way he chooses armin a million times —

he’s good at putting armin at the center of the world. it’s a bit all-consuming.

eren is still caught in his hunger. this world ( this life ) is a kinder life than the last, but eren is still the product of whatever culture his world has sown. people are lonely now & restless for meaning; so eren champs at the bit.

then he remembers, & everything turns undone. armin remembers more because he’s remembered longer —- he thinks that eren either wants him more for what is remembered or just hates himself into a tornado.

it’s sad, sometimes.

it’s nostalgic, other times. there had been a lot of loss then. it’s different now, but it sits somewhere inside them without a roost.

it’s hard to forget the feeling of being almost-gods, once upon a time. they are not equipped to be almost-gods. so most of the time, most of the time, they swim in some sort of tsunami — recognizing more of the past in themselves than they recognize the present.

eren is whiplash, & armin is the product of someone else’s inherited noose.

most times, eren feels like forever. his hair is a little bit of chestnut organically grown — & he is the product of whatever culture his world has sown. so he is chestnut, & it makes him home over & over again.

it just turns out that they have different definitions of what makes a home.

they keep arguing sometimes about logistics — whether they should stay put, whether they should move fast. they keep arguing about the way they talk — armin refuses to say too much about himself ( about the way things were ), & eren is feeling close to wanting to splatterpaint it against a new canvas. they argue about small things — armin keeps wearing airpods in the house, & eren doesn’t realize that he isn’t being heard.

they argue.

they argue.

eren wants to be hated, & armin just wants to fucking do something.

they argue.

they can’t argue forever. eren feels like forever, & he says : ‘ i’m fucking serious. it’s fucking over.  us — ‘

sent by @ch0kinghalos : i’m  fucking  serious.  it’s  fucking  over.  us. 

armin isn’t ready for it. he doesn’t know what he’s done this time — maybe it had been an offhand comment, or maybe it’s just the product of a list of everything he should have done better. maybe eren just wants to pick a fight. they’ve been creeping closer to a final argument for days now. this is not the first time eren has ended things with him. it’s probably won’t be the last.

even so, armin pauses as he scribbles annotations into a pile of papers that he’s been editing. the point of his pen digs a little too deep into the paper, & his eyes blur. he can’t tell if he’s tired or if he is at risk of crying.

‘ fucking great, ‘ he mutters. the crassness doesn’t feel right on his tongue, but he is tired. he recaps his pen & stares at his paper. ‘ —- do i get to know why it’s over? or do i have to wait to hear it second-hand? what exactly are you going to tell our friends about me & what i’ve done? i promise you, eren, that they’ll only be getting raving five star reviews out of me —- ‘

he glances sideways. eren is watching him, always hungry. he looks desperate rather than mean.

sae had told him as much, when they had been younger than ten. unintentionally, sae called himself caregiver more often than her work schedule had allowed, & then it had been a lot of grey spaces.

sae does better knowing the sequences of things. he likes coloring inside the lines — he’s creative in the way that he’s never needed colors to blend together to find innovation; he just reorganizes their order so that it’s something that’s never been seen before. it makes him a genius, people say — but then they never define genius.

rin calls him a genius anyway.

according to their mother, sae could have been an artist. she remembers his drawings ( even in coloring books ), & said that there was artistry in that.

any mother says that, though. & her second child used to scribble over faces, so that even coloring book pages could be the same as a blank page.

neither sae nor rin remember much of their childhood drawings, anyway. but still, their mother keeps on her rampage.

it suits her now, when she presses her cellphone against rin’s ear & catches him off-guard, still shedding his shoes & outer jacket at the door.

he is sixteen, & he shouldn’t need wrangling — but she finds him easier to wrangle when he is in such public spaces. once he retreats upstairs to his room ( previously a shared room ), he is harder to reach.

habitually, he accepts the phone but already starts to offer it back without looking. ‘ i don’t want to talk to anyone on the phone, ‘ he says — both to his mother & to the nameless other one the phone.

she shakes her head at him, so he keeps the phone pressed against the phone. she must imagine that the world is ending, because sae’s voice announces - ‘ she’s worried you’re moping too much. ‘ sae’s voice is a tiny thing through a cracking phone line, & rin shoves the phone back to their mother again —

‘ i don’t want to talk with him, ‘ he insists, & it’s a fruitless thing. she does not accept her phone back, but she makes it clear that rin won’t be able to leave the entranceway until he’s finished the likeness of a conversation.

he’s known that his mother expects irregular calls from sae, that they talk — but he’s been under the impression that every itoshi has come to the silent understanding that the communication between two brothers should not be moderated.

it cannot be helped that they are at an impasse.

even so, he had also been under the impression that the silent understanding should make each brother a blacklisted topic to the other. it’s none of sae’s concern if he’s been ‘moping. ‘

besides, moping seems like an oversimplification.

rin closes his eyes for a minute — sees red, sees green, sees black. he recomposes himself & speaks into the phone like a dead man, ‘ i’m not moping. nothing’s wrong. ‘

nothing’s wrong. his team just qualified for nationals, & rin has learned how to control the soccer field as a puppeteer. he’s coloring inside the lines. everything’s wrong. he thinks something inside him is boiling him alive.

‘ you know you can’t lie to me. tell me what’s wrong, ‘ sae’s voice says. he speaks flat, & he’s always spoken that way.

sent by @mindsafe : you know you can't lie to me. tell me what's wrong; sae & rin

but if rin closes his eyes again, he thinks he can imagine sae’s amusement — their mother thinks the world is ending & that rin is weak.

if he weren’t weak, they wouldn’t be having this conversation.