Attack On Titan: Dreams

"I want to..." he interrupts, suddenly several paces closer, his hand plastered on her door frame, trying not to read into the way she reflexively leans back to put more distance between them.

She blinks up at him, mouth falling agape at his erratic behaviour, his sudden enthusiasm for changing her bandages likely throwing her in for a loop.

His eyes lock onto hers as he nods.

"It's the least I could " he cuts himself short, careful not to throw another I owe you-like phrase into the fray.

He wonders if she has even caught his near-slip up, but sees that she is instead too busy being bewildered by his craziness, and is thus hanging on his every word in confused anticipation.

"I... just want to."

There is barely a shift in her expression, and she looks troubled and even more reluctant, brow crinkling further in confusion.

"Please," he follows up, voice uncharacteristically soft in a way that has her eyes widening even further in puzzlement.

But then, she steps backward and pushes the door further open in invitation. He realizes, once he steps through the threshold, that she has likely given in more out of her concern for him.

The final dregs of daylight filter in through her curtains, bathing her room in a warm, amber glow. As he peers out the translucent curtains, he is reminded that he has slept the entire day away, and is irritated at himself anew.

However, his annoyance lasts only briefly, clipped by the sound of the door clicking shut behind him, reminding him of just where he is standing.

And then it is silent.

Incredibly silent.

It is more silent than any hush he has ever uncomfortably sat in, because he can hear his own heartbeat can hear the scuffle of her shoes against the floor as she turns around to set her heavy stone-blue gaze on his back, weighing him down in place, self consciousness prickling his skin and throwing the rhythm of his now extremely audible breathing.

"Eren... What's wrong... You don't act like this..." She whispered her concerned eyes looking at him but he breaks it looking away.

'Fuck...'

It is almost suffocating, being trapped in this small box of a room with her, feeling her eyes bore into the back of his head.

The silence that has settled over them is thick and so very full of tension and things gone unsaid, and it feels as though they two are the only souls for miles and miles, now insulated from all else from the white noise left behind in the hallway, light years away from the dining hall filled with their feasting comrades.

Yet, in all his discomfort, he knows that there is nowhere else he would rather be.

The wood creaks beneath his shoes, cracking the silence as he turns to meet her gaze.

Then, they look at one another wordlessly, and he swallows as the weight of her gaze shifts now to his eyes, heavy on him, heavy in him, as she gestures briefly towards her bed.

"You can sit," Mikasa says quietly after eagerly waiting for a response, as though with a reverence for the silence that has become their constant.

He finds it strange that her cheeks do not tint pink at the invitation, while he himself begins to grow warm.

The levity of her words, and how casually she throws her hand this way, throws her words that way, is like it's normal like she has invited him to lounge there casually many times before, and like she has invited him to fall asleep there next to her time and time again.

Now that he thinks of it, she had never invited him to do so he had just done both things in the past several times over, without invitation.

However, during such times, he had done so without any reservations, or any thought of the inappropriacy behind a young man sharing a warm bed with a young woman.

Back then, they were merely childhood friends who had slept next to one another of course, maintaining a significant amount of space between their bodies.

Sometimes they had done so out of necessity, and other times, to lie in the presence of another in the wake of any nightmares, or days that had been particularly horrific like when their parents passed away and both clinged to each other like they were the only anchor preventing them from collapsing.

But things were different now different enough that it is with utmost unease and stiffness that he stalks over to the pristine mattress and takes his place upon it, pretending he does not feel like he is encroaching on some forbidden space.

When he settles onto the sheets, his eyes fall on Mikasa's back as she makes her way across the room to rummage through her desk drawers, watching as she deposits a few supplies onto the surface.

She then picks up a matchbox to tend to to the candles sitting atop the corner of her desk, he surmises, in preparation for nightfall.

The strike of the match against the small box rips through the silence, and Eren watches as she deftly touches the small flame to the candles, with all the finesse she maintained when dicing titans to bits, and with all the grace she maintained when doing...well, anything.

She then waves the stub, the flame dying out, the warm, burnt scent of a recently extinguished matchstick invading his nostrils, permeating the room's familiar and clean and pleasant scent.

His shoulders begin to relax into a slump, body loosening in the slightest, a strange sense of calm washing over him.

Mikasa then gathers the supplies into her arms, and that same sense of calm almost instantly evaporates the minute she turns and makes eye contact with him and begins to stride in his direction.

Then she is much closer, gingerly setting the items down next to the lantern and the water basin atop her nightstand.

"So," she begins, voice startling when it cuts the silence, though her tone is light and passive.

She plucks a stub from her matchbox.

"Are you...?" she trails off, striking at the box.

No flame ignites, and her sentence remains unfinished.

He frowns.

Mikasa strikes again, the flame failing to ignite again, and she maintains her silence, as he begins to bounce his leg restlessly.

Then, she strikes again and this time, the wooden stub snaps in half between her thumb and forefinger, and he is left grinding his teeth in impatience, but trying, for once in his life, not to act on it.

Without complaint or even a grumble, Mikasa pulls another match out of the box, her eyes briefly meeting his, causing his gaze to immediately flinch back down to the box in her hand, as though he has been caught staring.

"What is it?" he blurts sharply and quietly, face warming as she strikes again a new born flame finally dancing at the tip of the small, wooden stub.

"You... " she begins without completion, yet again, as she touches the flame to the oil lantern's wick, face now screwed in focus, because it is not catching as easily as it did on the candles she had lit just moments ago.

His soul the impatience is gnawing at his soul, just as the flame is gnawing away at the stub in her grasp, stubbornly refusing to catch onto the wick. He looks back up at her to urge her to 'finish your goddamn thought already'.

But then, he forgets the demand, too busy observing that she is perhaps even more stubborn than the flame that refuses to cooperate, because she refuses to retract her hand even though it is just shy of licking her fingertips.

How Mikasa, of her to be so invested in the act of lighting a lamp, and to remain unfazed, even when the heat is beginning to sting her skin.

And indeed, how Mikasa of her, because she has succeeded, the room suddenly much brighter, her face relaxing as she swings her wrist to put out the flame between her fingers, that same strong, burnt scent filling the air once more as she looks back at him, and gives pause.

"... Never mind," she murmurs.

"What is it?" he repeats, taking care not to sound too eager, although his curiosity is once more at its peak as is his annoyance, because she is shaking her head and doing that thing again, where she broaches a topic, and retracts it.

He fumes internally, impatience spiking.

"Fine," he says instead, somehow managing to be both brusque and gentle as he pats the space next to him on the bed.

"Come... what?" he snaps in response to the puzzlement that takes over on her face.

Eren feels his face warm as she shakes her head silently, no longer even attempting to mask her bewilderment.

"Nothing," she says quietly, as she slides out of her shoes and crawls onto the bed.

As she settles in and begins to shrug off her cardigan, he reaches for the medical supplies on her nightstand, not a few seconds later turning to find her popping the top button of her blouse free.

He freezes, and suddenly he is unsure of whether he is even breathing anymore, because his eyes are locked onto her fingers as she pops another button free, in effect loosening her blouse and giving just the suggestion of smooth, beige skin.

His jaw tightens, teeth grit, mouth locked into a frown as she undoes another button, bringing the defined dips of her collarbone into view.

And then another button goes and his palms grow damp, the modestly clothed swell of her chest exposed, followed by the top half of her defined abdomen.

The firelight playing shadows on the sharp curves of her toned flesh, and the room is already insufferably hot when she undoes the next button, bringing into view...

Her bandages.

His stomach drops.

'You're a fucking pig, Eren.'