Chapter Text
The rain is cacophonous bouncing around in Mike’s head. It makes him restless and irritable, a too-tall too-tense coil of trained muscles ready to snap at the first minor inconvenience to cross his path. He pushes that destructive energy into something productive instead, but the storm continues past what he can do. That’s when the draw starts.
It’s a hot tickle in his chest, right under the skin. If he could rip his skin open, he’d be able to touch it, but he can’t, so he paws at his chest instead. He lays down in bed for a fitful hour before he finally jumps up with a far-away crack of thunder, throws on clothing, a coat, boots, and leaves with the jingle of his keys. He leaves his phone. He knows where he is going.
He doesn’t understand what brings him to this building five blocks away, but some nights, it feels so maddeningly close, as if he should reach out and take it, but he doesn’t know what or why. He’s captive to his instincts and they demand he appear here often, drenched or otherwise. There are lights on in some of the apartments, but the one he’s drawn to the most is dark. Like a lovesick puppy, he stares at it, wishing for the light to come on and banish him back home with a hot tickle just a little less painful.
One in the morning is still a bustling time for this city. He’s lost in the city center’s rush. So many sounds, so many voices. He could count the number of footfalls and know the size of the crowd if he wanted. The rain washes away most smells, but many are amplified by it. He drags the collar of his coat up to protect his nose from the onslaught, but it’s not enough. Closing his eyes against the brightness of neon flashing, Mike leans his back to the streetlight and waits for the draw to lessen.
Instead, it grows urgent, makes his heart pound. He groans, palming it as he listens to twenty separate conversations all at once, but there’s a startled little “fuck!” and suddenly, it’s deathly quiet.
When his eyes snap open, he zeros in on an occupant of this building. Their back is turned, but he can see them struggling to unlock the front door. He takes a step unconsciously and they drop their keys.
He’s through the crowd and on the bottom step by the time they pick the keys up and begin sorting through the ring to find the correct one. Without turning around, they mutter, probably to him, “Sorry, give me a moment.” The ache in his chest vanishes and he suddenly feels the exhaustion of twenty hours awake.
Mike takes in their scent as he watches their thin fingers shake. If he listens closely, he can hear their erratic heartbeat. They’ve been in a restaurant for hours, something fancy here in the downtown, he can tell by the richness of the smells. In a flash of lightning, he finds they’re blonde under the pink neon advertisements, and the storm is right on top of them because the thunder clap is immediate and deafening. They tense and drop their keys again, and their whole body is frozen long enough for Mike to stoop and collect their keys. It’s a vaguely threatening gesture but he’s compelled to do it, he has to help them in some way. He picks the correct key on the ring, slots it, and opens the door.
A thin hand, palm up, and in the instant it takes for him to give back the keys, he studies them. A jacket soaked through hides most of them, but they’re small, average in height but lacking substance. Tears cling to their eyelashes, and Mike can smell the saltiness more clearly than anything else, and he feels compelled, yet again, to do something, but their heartbeat has levelled out like a mirror sea after a storm, and to encroaoch on their personal space any more than he already has will be predatory.
They don’t thank him. They’re not even looking at him, but rather, somewhere around his chest, and some part of him understands this action. He drops the keys in their outstretched hand on his way down the steps. Already, the world’s noises are filtering back in from the protective little bubble around that person, and he feels more cranky than before.
;
The work week leaves him incredibly frazzled but he knows he should stay away from the building five blocks away. ‘Your Honour, you don’t understand, I had to be near them’ did not hold up in court, and he did not want that person to feel threatened by him. Yes, he thought of them often, of how the world zoomed in on only them, and how his senses were not bombarded with stimuli, but if he tried to explain it in words, he would definitely sound like a stalker.
A passing coworker comes back from lunch break smelling like that person, and he asks them where they went. They tell him the name of the place and it raises his mental alarms because his best friend’s husband works there. Mike thinks of ten possibilities in which he goes there and finds the person he’s after, and he thinks of every scenario going horribly wrong.
But that person, they were a guide. He has to talk to them properly, at least once, to see if they know it.
;
There’s a sentinel nearby, because the world comes slowly into focus. Nanaba stops drowning in the torrent of emotions around her, and just as if she had been physically drowning, she bursts above the surface of her mind, taking a breath of fresh air. She spends so much time locked in her head, unable to move past the colossus, that she isn’t entirely sure what to feel. It’s akin to relief, she thinks.
It’s the same sentinel from a few weeks ago in the thunderstorm. He’s sitting with Erwin in the section Levi is waiting tonight. It’s good to have a face to the presence she’s grown familiar with. Some nights, when she was too overwhelmed, she would begin to inexplicably feel more calm, and she knew if she looked outside, she would see him on the sidewalk below standing under the streetlight. She knows he lives in a building five blocks over, because other nights, she felt compelled to make the journey over, called by a sensory overload bright like a beacon.
Erwin must know that his friend is a sentinel. Levi must know, too, and she’s glad that she doesn’t have to come in contact with him.
She carries on with her duties around the restaurant, relishing the aid of a compatible sentinel nearby to quell her torment. This little intersecting dance they do, where they bounce into one another every few weeks just when everything feels like too much, it’s nice. She wonders, though, if they had a real conversation, would they decide to pair up? Back in the thunderstorm, she’d been so sure he would say something, that he would understand that they’re drawn together, but she’d felt such profound confusion from him that she couldn’t muster the confidence to say anything at all.
“Wanna take this to Erwin's table?”
Nanaba looks over at the adult beverage Levi's grabbed from the bar and placed on a tray. She shakes her head and rolls another set of silverware in a cloth napkin.
“That other guy, his name’s Mike,” the little sentinel says. “He asked me about you, all sly.”
Trying not to let her interest show, she shrugs, but she can feel how Levi is not buying her act. He sets the tray down next to the silverware bin. “Take it over.”
It would be so easy to lose herself in the uncertainty as it wiggles around her neck. She reminds herself ten times to make eye contact. It’s easy with Erwin. She knows him, and he looks up as she approaches. Without knowing what drink Levi is having her deliver, all she can do is hold up the tray, waiting for either of them to raise their hand and take it. Erwin nods his head at his companion, Mike, and she sets the drink down in front of the same big hands that gave her her keys back when she kept dropping them.
“Enjoy,” she tells him, completing forgetting to make eye contact, but at the comforting caress in his lowly spoken gratitude, she feels safe enough to look at him.
He says, “thank you,” and there’s a preternatural quiet in the emotions coming to her from all over the restaurant. She meets his eyes and there’s so much in the world around them, she’s dragged up from her head like never before. The veil is lifted back and the world is bright, the noises are louder, she is suddenly aware of so much more than just the inner hearts of the people around them.
His stare is so intense, she can’t help but feel exposed, so she blinks and looks away, and slowly, the world begins to cloud over again. She can feel Erwin leeching away her desire to run. He reels it in for her, so she stays and looks back at Mike, startled by the bright burst of delight that erupts between them.
“It’s,” Mike starts but he’s clearly at a loss for words.
Erwin and Levi have known one another their whole lives. Theirs was a steady understanding of how the other brought them out of their heightened senses, and in the back of her mind, Nanaba can feel his curiosity as he watches her and Mike staring at one another.
The other guide gently says, “It’s nice, isn’t it, Nana?”
All she can do is nod. To Mike, he says, “It’s finally quiet, huh?”
“So quiet,” Mike agrees. He’s so much more in awe, and then she realises that this is all new for him, that he must not know how it feels when it works.
“I… I should finish my shift,” Nana says slowly. It'll be better for Erwin to explain everything.
;
“You never told me if feels that grounding,” Mike accuses Levi.
The small sentinel shrugs. “Oops.”
“I think you scared her,” Erwin says. They're all crammed in a booth after closing time and Nanaba keeps looking over in their direction, but she's keeping her space. Erwin understands, because the joy Mike is emitting is nearly supernova. Even with Levi at his side, it's a lot to take in. Mike has been watching her so intently, only pulling his gaze back when someone mentions that it's a bit too creepy.
“You said we had mutual friends,” Mike says, slowly tearing his eyes from the new guide and looking to Erwin. “Why hasn't anyone mentioned her?”
“Well,” Erwin drawls. “Levi and I… wanted to be the ones to bring you together, we wanted to witness it, since we're a bonded pair....”
“You were matchmaking?” Mike feels disbelieving.
“Well, we thought you guys’ proximity, you'd find each other, I dunno, organically,” Levi says, defensive. His arms are crossed over his chest. “Apparently you're both dense as bricks.”
Erwin smirks and pulls away Levi's defensiveness. “To be fair, you were getting there. Think of us as just giving you two the last gentle push.”
“She told us what happened in the storm a while back,” Levi says, “and you didn't put it all together?”
Mike sits back in his seat and slouches down. “Did she know?”
“Yeah,” Levi snaps, and Erwin rubs a hand down his thigh to steal this stubborn defensiveness.
“Nanaba had a pretty good idea,” Erwin says. “It's not a big deal. You've met now. That's the important part.”
Levi slides out of the booth. “You two get outta here. I'll take her home, Mike, get that possessive look off your face.”
;
Levi gives her Mike’s number but she decides to sit on it for so long that she forgets she has it. They continue in their strange orbit through the rest of the spring, and in the beginning of summer, thanks to the Smiths, he's an asteroid splitting the atmosphere and creating a crater on her surface.
“You're too skinny,” Levi says, using his protective sentinel tendencies as an excuse to invite her over for dinner twice a week. He shoos her out of the kitchen before she sits with Erwin in the living room.
It's polite to bring an offering when invited to dinner, but they know she's less capable, and Levi has no problem relegating that duty to the other guest always conveniently invited over on the same nights. Mike lets himself in, tonight having a bottle of wine under his arm.
“Hey,” he greets. Erwin responds, she stays quiet. She keeps her words close when they’re together only because she’s not sure of herself. She knows this silence can be interpreted as disinterest, but she can look him in the eye now without hesitation, and she hopes he can understand that the gesture is worth more than any words she can say to him. It’s okay, though, because he’s a quiet person, too. Hopefully soon, the asteroid will break the crust and drive into the mantle, leaving him an easy path to who she is under all the self-defense.
He walks her back to her building after dinner that night and after she unlocks the door, he turns to leave but pauses and turns back. She can feel the conflicting desires radiating from him, the self doubt and uncertainty and nervousness, so she waits quietly as he puts his words together.
“Please don't take this as a sexual advance,” he begins, and that soothes her somehow, which in turn relaxes him as well. “I’d like to have brunch with you this weekend, or lunch, or dinner, if you want. Just us. I’d like to… discuss a partnership.”