Chapter Text
The music of the club dulled in my ears when I saw familiar eyes staring in my direction. They were both so intensely captivating and terrifying that it takes me a while to remember that I was straddling the lap of another man and that my arms were perched on the man’s shoulders, hands tangled in his hair – a very compromising position.
My heart stops and I steel myself for the scream-off practically waiting to happen.
It doesn’t.
He makes no move to come closer. For a minute, he just stupidly stands there, doubting his own senses, but realization catches up and I watched the color drain from those brilliant eyes. His eyes anchor me in my spot and I notice his chest heaving. I make a move to stand up, but the man below me keeps his hands firm on my waist.
For what I felt was like an eternity later, a blond-haired friend of his breaks his gaze and he forces himself to look away to refrain from worrying his friend whose name I’ve never bothered remembering.
“Something wrong, Levi?” He asks and I nod my head, making another move to stand up. He lets me do so this time.
“Fuck, I gotta go.”
I frantically search for him in the club. The longer it takes, the more reluctant I am to find him. I find myself standing outside, staring at the road, contemplating what I've just done.
See, the man I left there in the club was the first person I've ever loved and somehow, I got deluded in the triumph of the fulfilling your first love; the power to deny that 'first love never lasts.'
But it also dawned on me that the man that left me there in the club is the only person who should have ever mattered.
I had been selfish. I thought I could have both.
I had miscalculated, I thought, as I felt the guilt rip my chest. I thought I could handle the consequences.
I thought about this as I walked home that night.
The shower is running when I arrive. He emerges from the bathroom door, half-naked and dripping wet. He sees me standing in the doorway but continues drying off his brown mop of hair and turns away from me. A full minute passes before I decide to speak.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
He turns his head in my direction, finally acknowledging my presence. Another moment of silence passes before he answers.
“Is that what you’re waiting for?” He says calmly but the storm raging in his eyes is unmistakable. I see rage, betrayal, pain and then – nothing. People have told me how they could never read my expression but I’ve never understood how disconcerting it could be – until now, of course.
I do not answer.
I cannot.
Something about his silence scares me.
Fear.
Funny, I’ve never had a need to use the word until now.
He doesn’t say anything else and leaves me standing there while he changes into his pajamas. He doesn’t say anything else and flops down on the bed with his back facing me. I trudge towards the bed, wanting to hug him close, have him look at me, to talk to me, to let me apologize or explain, but as I laid down, I felt cold, like none of his warmth reaches me anymore.
His presence felt cold.
He has never felt this cold.
Explanations swarm through my head as I stare at the ceiling but there is nothing remotely close to a proper one. I do not have an excuse. I was neither drunk nor high. I knew who I was with. I knew I was with somebody I thought I had also loved. I miscalculated. I didn't realize just how much I loved him more, so, so much more.
I cannot lose him.
I know there isn't much forgiveness for what I've done, but I’ve never expected this.
I dreaded the morning, when we wouldn't be protected by the excuse of exhaustion.
I ponder about the inevitability of goodbye but I convince myself to do everything I can to fix this.
Tomorrow, when he wakes up.
-
The next day I woke up alone.
And I don’t just mean the lack of weight pulling on the other side of the bed, but the actual feeling of emptiness. It’s the same apartment yet at the same time, it isn’t. I rush to check the closet, only to find my fears materialize. There is nothing left of his things. I look around the room and anywhere I can open. Not one shirt was left, not a single sock. He’s even taken his toothbrush.
I let out a chuckle devoid of humor. So the little fucker can be thorough if he has to.
I look around once more, unbelieving of how I slept through his departure, and a conspicuous green catches my attention. There is money on the dresser, enough to pay his half of our rent. I hear his message loud and clear.
“I won’t be coming back.”
The ringing of my phone echoes throughout the apartment and after seeing who the caller is, I pick up the call.
“He left.”
I hear a sigh from the other end.
“Well, what were you expecting, Levi? Did you think he’d suggest a threesome?”
I flinch away from the phone and I take a breath before saying. “Let’s end this.”
“So you choose to be alone?”
No, I never wanted to be alone, I didn’t say. “I deserve to be alone.”
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
A short click notifies me that the call has ended and I stare at the phone in disgust.
-
I’ve cleaned the apartment plenty of times, desperately searching for something of his.
There is none.
So when weeks pass, I fool myself into believing that I am used to not waking up with my limbs tangled in his, that I don’t eat breakfast at all, that I didn’t have somebody to welcome me home, that the silence is something normal, and that the bed was mine alone.
-
Dreams are cruel.
They mock the beauty of what was once reality.
I remember the day he told me he loved me; I already knew, of course. Subtlety was never his forte but fuck if I didn't enjoy being able to pick out every emotion from even the slightest glint of his eyes.
I had intended on telling him first but the damned brat, my brat, he beat me to it.
We were hanging out on his veranda, under the canopy of the starry night. He was smoking and I was sitting on the terrace, trying to keep my distance from the stench of nicotine, but failing miserably because of my need to be close to him. So instead, we were side by side, not quite touching, throwing harmless insults at each others' quirks.
We were talking about life and other shit, quite literally. Over the years we've been friends, he had picked up my unusual affinity for toiletries.
I remember saying something that had made him laugh and I see something change in his expression.
His eyes reflected the stars as he turned towards me, giving me a picture of what the ocean would look like if the cosmos were in them. His brows, for once, smooths out and he looks so much more captivating like this. He graced me with his smile, nervous, but not any less beautiful, and somehow they made my lips follow suit.
He inches closer, closer until I can feel his breath ghost over my lips. He looks straight at me when he says -
“I hate you.”
I wake up screaming, desperately trying to find him in my memories.
-
The dull bass thudded in my ears as I placed my glass on the counter. Fifth. Yeah, that was my fifth... I think... but it may as well have been my eighth though because I wasn't exactly sober enough to keep count.
In my reverie, I fail to notice a beautiful brunette pass in front of me – almost. My hands find her elbow shortly and I tug at it to make her face me. A shocked yet irritated face meets mine and I can't help but think about how similar those expressions are. She also had green eyes, although they are not the same shade of the almost-blue ones I have imprinted beneath my eyelids but fuck – I'll take what I can ge-
“Oi, midget, you're scaring the young miss.” I look up to see a burly man scowling at me, his grimy hand gripping at my wrist.
I narrow my eyes at his vice-like grip. “Don't touch me.”
But instead his hold grows tighter and I feel the familiar heat of rage well up within me. “I said, don't touch me.”
The air between the man and I dies and the brunette takes this as her opportunity to yank her elbow off my grasp and scuttles off in the opposite direction. At her escape, the man finally lets go of my wrist but I was not done yet.
The man doubles over after I aimed a punch at the middle of his torso. Satisfied, I wipe my hand on the front of my jeans and started to turn but the man, too, was not finished and charged straight at me, and my drunken state barely manages to counter his force.
My arms get pried away from his shoulders and bound by a number of his posse. A shiver runs through my skin at the feeling of filthy strangers holding me up so I thrash and growl and punch and kick at any figure above my own.
My blows connect and I feel a few of them crumple but not without them landing hefty blows on myself.
The brawl felt like it lasted for hours, and perhaps it did because even while drunk, I am still a formidable opponent but there is only so much you can do when you're inebriated and outnumbered. So after what felt like eternity, I felt my face hit the tiled floor.
-
I dream of careful fingers playing in my hair as I sleep on. I also hear humming, and the song rings through my entirety. It’s the first good dream I’ve had in weeks.
“You’re guilt-tripping me into coming back, aren’t you?” The voice says.
It has been a while, but there is no forgetting his voice. I grunt, urging the voice to keep talking.
“I want to come back, you know. But I can’t because at the same time, I don’t want to.”
The words aren’t what I want to hear, but anything better than nothing. The fingers keep tousling my hair as a silence keeps on. I slowly drift off. I’m tired, so tired.
'He's here. He's here.' I keep repeating to myself. That's all that matters right now.
“Isn’t it fucked up that I still love you?”
My eyes snap awake. I thought I’d never hear him say these words again. I am met with wide, shock-filled eyes, and his hand floats tentatively in the air. It takes a moment before he puts it down and fixes his expression.
“Of course you’d be awake for that.” He rolls his eyes. I still can’t read his expression and that shakes me.
I stare at him dumbly. “Eren?”
“Forgot who I am already?”
“Why are you here?” I look around and saw the white room, smelled the surprisingly uncomfortable scent of disinfectant and I finally register my surroundings. “Why am I here?”
“Whoever found you called me. Apparently, I’m number 1 on your speed dial. Should I be flattered?” There is so much venom in his voice but after spending weeks without him, I'd take poison anytime.
“Feel how the ever fuck you want, brat.”
Eloquent as always. I should award myself.
He arches an eyebrow and clenches his fist as he speaks.
“Well sorry, Levi. Sorry. I’m sorry that you had to see my ugly mug first thing after you wake up, and I feel sorry for myself that I just had to see yours because when the hospital called me, I was so worried that I rushed here.”
He takes deep breaths before he continues.
“But you know what? Fuck you. I don’t know why I was even worried in the first place.” He stands up. He is halfway through the door when he says. “Please stay safe.”
Realization finally dawned on me.
He’s leaving me again. But this time, I am awake, I can stop it.
I need to.
Experience was a bad fucking teacher and I had to realize how much I loved him through another man and through his absence.
I tug off the needle from my hand and scramble off the bed. I wince when my feet touch the floor, all my muscles are sore and bruised, but I shake it off and stagger out the door.
The nurses flock towards me and I glare them off. A particularly brave one catches hold of my arm and tries again.
“Please sir, you have to go back to your room. This is not good for your recovery.”
“Fuck off. He's my recovery.”
Thankfully, the commotion is enough for him to look behind him and he walks back towards us. It takes him eternally long to reach me, it seems, as my heart painfully pounds in my chest and I swallow the pride that I know will stop me from doing what I plan to do next.
His eyes widen comically wide when I sank to my knees, ignoring the pain shooting up my thighs from the action. His jaw drops and he just looks so surprised that it got me thinking about how torrentially idiotic I was for ever losing sight of him.
He tries to speak, but no sound comes out, so he closes his mouth and opens it again, gaping like a fish.
“I’m sorry.”
His jaw drops even further, if that was even anatomically possible.
“I’m sorry.” I repeat.
“Is that it?” He laughs out as tears begin to stream down his face. “You think all you have to do is kneel and apologize and you think I’ll come crawling back to you?”
I fight the urge to wipe his tears away and interrupt him, because hell no, that’s not just it, when he continues, “I love you, Levi, but if there’s one thing I learned from moving away from you, it’s that I have to love myself more. I gave you everything. Do you know how much it hurt me when I learned that wasn’t enough for you? That I’m not enough for you?”
“You’re-“ enough. More than enough. More than I deserve. But I still want you anyway. I try to say, but he cuts me off.
“I had nothing left for me because you had my everything, Levi. I gave you my everything. I trusted you with myself . And what do you do? You threw me out like I meant nothing. ”
His tears kept falling when he kneels to my level and a trembling hand caresses my face. The touch is faint, but I am so desperate that I lean into it anyway.
He smiles sadly. “But I’m not going to give you that power anymore.”
I feel myself freeze. He gives me one last fleeting touch before he clenches his fist, scrunching his face as he looks away from me when he stands up, his tears have not stopped from flowing. He dips his head in my direction, some displaced sign of respect, before he turns and walks away.
And despite being in the middle of a public place with my knees flat on the tiles, I do not stop myself from crying.
I am the man who broke his own heart.