#fawkkkk

You glance at him from the corner of your eye as he stands, stretching lazily before trailing after the recruiter. As he walks past, you catch the faintest whiff of something clean and expensive, so unfairly good.

Life really isn’t fair. Not only is he ridiculously good-looking, but he’s also tall. And he smells good.

You force yourself to refocus, but as you follow the recruiter inside, the awareness of him lingers, making your heart rate spike even more. You shouldn’t care— he’s just another candidate, really, just another competitor. You should be silently praying for his downfall. But something about the way he carries himself, so effortlessly confident, only makes you hyper-aware of your own unease.

By the time you’re seated, you push all unnecessary thoughts aside.

The interview goes well— better than well, actually. You answer the behavioral questions smoothly (after rehearsing them so many times you could probably recite the prompts in your sleep), showcase your problem-solving and people skills (shoutout to all those painfully competitive career workshops from uni), and even throw in a few well-placed jokes that make your interviewers smile (carefully crafted after an embarrassingly deep dive into their LinkedIn profiles).

By the time you walk out, you feel good— so good that, on a wild impulse that not even your obsessive need to be prepared could have accounted for, you find yourself stopping in front of Eren by the elevators. He’s leaning against the wall, scrolling through his phone like he has nowhere to be.

“Hey,” you say.

He looks up, surprised. His sharp green eyes flick over you, taking you in for a moment before he responds. “Hey.”

You hesitate for half a second. Then, before you can overthink it, you say, “We were in the same interview group, and I think you’re really cute. Would you wanna go out sometime?”

Eren blinks. He wasn’t expecting that. Hell, even you weren’t expecting that. But when someone has a face card like his, sometimes you just have to shoot your shot.

Then— silence. A long, excruciating pause. The kind that stretches just long enough to make you wonder if you sounded creepy. Oh god. Maybe you came off weird. Or desperate. Or worse— maybe he thinks you’re completely out of his league, and not in the fun, delusional way.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he exhales, his gaze flicking over you once more before taking out an airpod to bluntly say, “I don’t really date.”

Oh.

You try your best not to let the rejection sting for too long. After all, Eren’s gorgeous and probably gets asked out by girls all the time—enough to build immunity to it. What could you say? Beautiful people should date other beautiful people, and even with your fair share of self-confidence, you felt deep down that he was out of your league.

But your obsession with being prepared had its perks. It helped you be adaptable in situations like this. “No worries,” you say smoothly, flashing him a casual grin (one you practiced in front of the bathroom mirror, imagining hypothetical situations like this) like it’s no big deal— despite the fact that your heart feels like it’s been stomped on. “Good luck with the internship.”

And with that, you turn and leave down the stairs, pretending like it never happened.

A month later, you get the acceptance email.

You’re beyond thrilled— thrilled when you (finally) announce your highly coveted internship at frickin’ Amazon, thrilled when you go out to the club with your girlfriends to celebrate the end of internship application season, and thrilled when you hear about the sweet, sweet pay (which you’re already planning to save up for a winter break trip to go snowboarding) during the Zoom onboarding meeting.

You’re so thrilled, in fact, that you can’t imagine anything ruining your high. That is, until you walk into orientation and see a very familiar face sitting at one of the tables.

Eren Yeager.

His gaze flicks up as you enter, recognition flashing in his eyes. For a split second, neither of you says anything. You freeze, feeling your face flushing with heat. He holds your gaze for what feels like an eternity before you break it, quickly looking down at the floor, mortified beyond belief. The probability of this happening was practically zero.

And yet, here he is.

You tug at the hem of your newly bought shirt from Mango (a mini present to yourself to celebrate landing the internship of your dreams, the pinnacle of what your college experience had amounted to on your resume), trying to distract yourself, but nothing can shake the immense embarrassment you feel.

To make matters worse, the project manager steps to the front of the room and announces, “Alright, summer interns! You’ll be working in assigned dev groups for the summer. Let’s introduce you to your teams.”

You can already feel the impending doom, as if the universe and all its forces are conspiring against you. What were the chances? Your opps must’ve gotten together in a group chat and ordered the most expensive bootleg spell from Etsy to make sure this moment— your moment, the one you’ve worked your butt off for— was as awkward as humanly possible.

You knew life was getting too good to be true.