#praesidi

Strong winds howl around their shelter, whistling through the cracks in the walls and rattling at the old doors and window frames, spilling the icy chill in through every gap. The downpour is like a white noise against the glass, so heavy that it's loud—raindrops hitting as hard as rocks, that certainly felt like rocks when they were caught in it.

Eren says: ❝ I want to complain, but I don’t even have the energy.❞

From where he's sitting in front of the dusty old fireplace that he's still trying to light.

Jean, on the other hand, pivots around in his spot beside the window that he's been scowling out of, with his hair and clothes still soaked through and stuck to his frozen bones, and doesn't mind saying, "That's fine, I've got us covered. I don't know what's worse, us freezing to death in that freak-storm or getting crushed beneath this old heap—" The boards above his head let out a long and dismal groan, as if on cue, and Jean pauses to watch it and wait for it to stop—or possibly collapse on him...

He decidedly moves, side-eyeing the beams as he wanders back over to Eren and carries on his complaints. "Half the furniture's rotted to dust. Whole place is damp—the fire-wood's damp. There's no spare clothes. Moths have eaten through all the blankets. Can tell no one's been this way in a while. Looks like it's been forgotten about..."

Fortunately though, and despite all of Jean's griping about it, Eren hadn't forgotten about this old outpost. They'd still be caught out in the storm if he hadn't found it, which Jean is sure was more for his own benefit rather than Eren's, the titan shifter's, anyway. See, he and a good few others from his particular unit spend months out here, but it's to Jean's understanding that very little of that time is spent actually outside of the big, creepy beasties that they all control. This dump is evident that's true.

95% of the time, Pock is ready to fight every time. The remaining 5% is for instances such as these, where he's been lulled into sleep with a sense of safety in the passenger seat of his beloved car while he's trusted Eren to drive them over to the next state. No anticipation of danger, just the cramped comfort of a quiet journey ahead.

So when he's awoken suddenly by a deafening blare of sound, it probably looks like something of an outer body experience to Eren. Porco shoots up with a startled jolt and smacks his arm to the door, alert but confused, before the noisy racket that had disturbed him starts to make a bit more sense to his sleep-addled brain. Then he sees Eren sitting there, beaming his big-ass boxy smile at him with a pie in his hand and a candle poking out of the top.

"Wuh..." It does nothing to aid his confusion.

Thankfully, Eren stops the music. If you could call that music. Personally, Porco can't fucking stand Heat of the Moment and Eren knows this, he's told him enough times, but the desire to throttle him for this horrific wake-up call is hindered solely by that pie.

It takes far too long for Pock to finally realize that it must be his birthday.

Once he does, he groans into his hand as he rubs over his eyes and drags himself up out of his slouch. "That's why you wanted to drive..." Now it all makes sense. Somehow, Eren never forgets. Their variety of gifts on the road might be limited, too, but the kid knows how to strike gold when it comes to Porco's gut.

No one would hear the loud, raucous laughter coming from the deepest depths of the ship's darkest bowels. No one else had a reason to be climbing down all those ladders and scurrying across the skinny mesh walkways, dipping under steaming pipes and concerning themselves with the meaning of all those blinking lights that they pass.

This dingy, grease-filled, dark, oily den belongs solely to the engineers of the crew. This particular closed-off section inside the bowels could be considered their lair, of sorts, where an old barrel has long since been upturned and finished with a flat board for a surface on top; the makeshift table in which their entertainment during the quiet hours usually tends to manifest.

Tonight, it's a game of Liar's Dice, a few smuggled drinks, and Eren's retelling of the time he'd gotten arrested for trying to steal a puppy from some guy trying to pawn it off outside of a grocery store, that serves as the highlights.

More than amused about the barking pocket that had been his apparent downfall in his otherwise flawless getaway, Porco can't help but shake his head at the younger man, and think his own teenage years of rebellion have been put to shame. He might've been something of a troublemaker, once, and depending on who you ask, but Eren's wild escapades would've been handy back-up to have all those years ago when he'd argue that he could've been worse. Eren, evidently, would've been the perfect example of worse.

At least Porco had never been caught by the law.

Eren says: What else was I supposed to do?

"I don't know," he admits with a shrug, before suggesting, "Run faster?"

Porco wasn't there, of course. So it's very easy for him to think of a number of ways that Eren could've potentially avoided that sudden backfire. Legitimate ways, and not just the one purely meant to torment that he had decided to share. But these are all hypotheticals, at the end of the day, and nobody likes a know-it-all at the best of times.

But in hindsight, especially.

Rather, Porco leaves his answers there with a pointed grin (pointed only because of the ridges that follow after his fangs) and turns his attention back down to his cup. Underneath it sits five dice: two of them have landed on four, another one on five, then a two and finally, the last one a six. He taps his index finger to the top of the tin for a thoughtful moment, then considers his company for another quiet breath more.

Sooner or later, Porco eventually clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

He’s trying to brood, does his best to prickle up and straighten his back, flex his jaw and avoid eye contact as she approaches. To let it known she’s crossed a line, like the many they’ve crossed with one another going back centuries now, but after so long a catastrophe seems... little more than a fray in a new shirt. A nuisance, but not the end of the world. For them, anyway. But she can be incredibly hard to ignore, always was, regardless of the fact Death has touched upon someone he thought dear for a time and has taken away the brief bond he was slowly coming to cherish. The flatteries whispered against his skin in that sultry tone she is...admittedly intoxicating in its own way. 

[text: smol anger] this is true