#bertkasa

Mikasa walked into the living room wearing red pajama pants and charcoal tank top. “It doesn’t look like the landlord was all that intimidating,” she said.

 Bertholdt remembered the last time they had complained to their tiny landlord, Historia. For situations similar to theirs, Historia’s fiancée, Ymir, would play pretend when she was dealing with the rougher tenants. He wasn’t sure if there was some disagreement between the two women since he noticed that Historia had been the one to approach their boisterous neighbours.

 “That’s probably because Historia dealt with them,” he smiled when he heard a small groan coming from Mikasa.

 “Why didn’t Ymir go? She would’ve scared them enough the first time. Historia probably cried to make them feel bad or something.”

 Bertholdt only nodded in response. From what he knew, it was a small group of college-aged students that lived together. He hadn’t heard other neighbors complaining about them, so it seemed like he and Mikasa were the only ones with an issue. He almost stared off into thought if it wasn’t for the loud sound of glass breaking followed by a string of curses.

 “One of them is most likely drunk,” Mikasa commented as she took a seat next to Bertholdt.

 “Did you hear about Annie?” He scrolled to the beginning of the conversation before handing it to her.

 She laughed softly as she looked through the many candid pictures of Annie almost smiling. “I remembered she wanted one for a while. Why does she like them, though? I thought they were supposed to be hard to take care of?”

 “I’m not sure about that, but her father had a small cactus garden when she was growing up, so Reiner had been wanting to get her one since he’s still in Russia.”

 “I’m happy for her. It’s nice to see her wearing something else on her face besides that ugly mug.”

 “You can’t say anything. You’re probably worse than her if you think about it.” Mikasa gave him a pointed look.

 “I’m serious! Do you know how hard it was for me to get you to acknowledge something I did or said? I gave you a compliment and all you said was thank you and you walked away! You had me feeling like Jean for a while.”

Mikasa folded her arms over her chest and scoffed. “Well, if you were more direct, then maybe I wouldn’t have pushed you away, you ever thought about that?” She locked his phone and handed it back to him.

 Bertholdt rolled his eyes and took his phone. “That’s not the kind of person I am. I’m learning to be better, though. I’m just glad it worked out in the end.”

 Mikasa smiled and rested her head against his shoulder. “So am I.”

 “You left your scarf on the table this morning, by the way,” Bertholdt said as he rested his chin on her head.

“Oh thank you. I couldn’t find it before I left for work. How was your day?”

Bertholdt placed his phone on the table and stretched his feet onto the table. “It was fine. One of my classes had gotten cancelled so I was able to sleep in. Work was pretty slow too, so we closed up pretty early. How about you?”

“It wasn’t that long. I only had two classes for today and I didn’t have work so I went to run some errands and I went to see Armin, too. He wanted me to tell you he said hi.”

Bertholdt rested his arm over her shoulders before speaking, “oh okay, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that Armin’s fine after all that’s happened.”

“Me too. It hurt me when it happened but I think it hit Armin the most since he was the closest one to him. It’s been a while but it looks like he’s making progress, which is really good for him right now.”

There was a comfortable silence that went uninterrupted by the thumping before Bertholdt spoke up again, “did you see my note this morning before you left?”

“Yes and I got it done. Here’s your card,” she said before she reached into her bra and pulled out his credit card, “the receipt is on the counter.”

“Sorry for making you do it for me. I had a paper that was due last night and I needed to get it done right since it was about a quarter worth my final grade,” he apologized.

She shrugged. “It’s fine. I told you I only had a couple of classes so it wasn’t much trouble.”

Bertholdt rose up from the couch and began making his way to the bathroom before he paused. “Have you seen my wallet?”

“It’s on the counter next to your epsom salt.”

Bertholdt felt his eyebrows raising. “Epsom salt?”

Mikasa nodded, “well, you said that your feet were hurting from standing all day, so I took it upon myself to find something to help alleviate with that.”

 Bertholdt turned to the counter she mentioned and true to her word, there was a grey bag that sat in a small rectangular bucket. “What’s the bucket for?”

“On the bag, it instructs for it to be in a small container of cold or hot water. So before you go to bed, make sure to let your feet soak for about thirty minutes. I heard hot water works the best, though,” Mikasa explained.

He threw her a smile. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”

She smiled back, “it was hard to forget when you complained about your aching feet for the past week.”

Bertholdt walked back over to the couch and rested both of his hands on both sides of her. He leaned his forehead on hers and quietly said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Be late on your car payment,” she giggled out. He stared at her soft pink lips and leaned in for a kiss when he heard another thump followed by a loud groaning. He could see the irritation in Mikasa’s face at the interruption.

“What time is it?”

Bertholdt wasn’t sure he liked the tone of her voice. The last time she had used that tone was on Black Friday. She normally wasn’t the type for those kinds of events, but Armin had wanted a specific tablet and it happened to be within her budget. He vaguely remembered her using her scary side to get what she wanted. If she was thinking what he was thinking, he felt a sense of dread bubbling in his stomach.

“It’s almost eleven. Why?”

“I’m going to let them know that,” was all she said before she got up and left the living room. Bertholdt let out a sigh. He was just as tired of their neighbours as she was, but he wasn’t in the mood to start anything. He would rather have the landlord deal with it where the two of them would remain anonymous but with Mikasa, he wasn’t sure how things would turn out.

He heard her footsteps falling back into the living room. She had put on a jacket to cover herself and made her way to the door before Bertholdt stopped her.

“Hey, uhh, how about we play Schnick, Schnack, Schnuck for it?” He asked her nervously.

She raised her eyebrow at him. “What’s that?”

“Uhh, so sometimes it’s called Rock, Paper, Scissors in America and when making a decision, you make these gest-”

“Oh you mean Janken?”

“Huh?”

“What you’re describing sounds like Janken. That’s what we called it in my home. So you want to go up there?”

“Not exactly, but I’d rather go up there instead of you.”

“Why not? I think I’d be enough to make them be quiet.”

“It’s not that. I think you’d be too much. I just don’t want them coming after us and doing things like spray painting our cars out of revenge, you know?”

“You’re scared of them?”

“Well, when you put it like that, you make me sound like a coward.” He almost wanted to laugh at the implication.

“Your words, not mine.” She reached out to grab the doorknob when he blocked the door from her sight.

“I’m serious. I’ll go up and let them know that they’re too loud,” he said as he held out a fist towards her.

“So if I win, I get to be the one to tell them.”

“Right. If I win, then it’s me.”

A short pause played between them as they both brought down their twice before unleashing their choice on the third drop. Mikasa chose rock as Bertholdt chose paper.

“Alright then. Show them what Big Bad Bert’s made of,” she joked as she opened the door and tried pushing him out.

What had he done? Bertholdt was so sure that he was going to keep Mikasa from threatening the neighbors, but now that he was going to be the one to tell them to shut up, he wasn’t sure if he was actually going to go through with it. Maybe that childhood nickname of his wasn’t just meant for the past.

 What if he angered them? With how creative people were in times like this, he wasn’t sure what kind of people their neighbors were. “Well, maybe I don’t have to go since it sounds like they’re quieting do-”

He was interrupted by the multiple voices shouting, the quiet thumps growing louder before they faded.

 Mikasa threw him a knowing look. He sighed for what seemed like the thousandth time before stepping out of the way and gestured for her to walk out. He furrowed his brows as he watched her leave with a small smile of victory. Closing the door behind him, he stepped out onto their doormat and watched as Mikasa walked up the stairs. The stairs were pretty transparent, but the floors in between were all concrete so when she reached her destination, Bertholdt couldn’t see her.

He could hear her knocking on the door. The shouting had stopped as he heard the door open. Bertholdt could faintly hear a man’s voice stammer out, “h-how can I help you, miss?”

Bertholdt had a hard time hearing Mikasa so instead, he tuned out the majority of the interaction and only listened for raised voices. It wasn’t long until he heard footsteps coming back down the stairs to see Mikasa making her way towards him. He opened the door and walked in after her.

“So what’d they say?”

 “It seemed like one of the them had gotten drunk and they were trying to make her sleep it out but she’s hungry and any time a food commercial played on TV, she threw a fit.”

“There’s people like that?”

“Well then I told the guy at the door to keep it down and he seemed to get the message. I don’t think it was that bad. He was almost like you.”

 “What does that mean?”

 “I’m saying that he was very cautious with opening the door to me, like I was going to kick it down. You probably could’ve gone up there yourself and have the same effect,” she explained. Bertholdt decided it was best to ignore that last part.

“If it’s as good as you make it sound, then that means we need to start heading to bed,” Bertholdt paused as he stretched his arms in front of him, “I have another exam in the morning and I’m gonna be at work for the rest of the day.”

 Mikasa nodded and walked over to him and stood on the tips of her toes. He was going to lower himself down so she could give him a proper kiss but he froze when she kissed part of his exposed collarbone.

 “I heard it’s supposed to rain tomorrow so can you not kick me off the bed?”