Chapter Text
The whole thing hadn’t been Eren’s idea. Not directly. Mikasa had arranged for it after being harangued once too often about how she should teach the rest of them her ‘ways,’ as if her athleticism was simply some secret she stored in her locker at the off-campus gym. She went there after class sometimes to kill her extra energy if she hadn’t burned enough while jogging. Today Eren had announced that he would go out running with her. When pointing out the high incidence of muggings on and around campus after dark had simply produced a declaration that Eren was just as capable of punching out an attacker as she was, Mikasa had thought about it for another minute and then decided that they would go to a more controlled environment. Sasha, both their friend and at that moment their barista, overheard.
“Ohh, you’re going to the gym? Can I come? It’s been too long since I’ve worked out—my joints are getting all stiff.”
“Yes,” Mikasa said.
“Can I invite Jean?”
“…Yes.”
“Great. I’ve been bragging about how far I can run—I’ve got to prove that I can go farther than him.”
It only snowballed from there. By the time Reiner texted them half an hour later to confirm a time, it had become a full-blown event. Mikasa, Eren, Sasha, Connie, Annie, Reiner, Bertl, and Jean were all going to be in attendance.
Eren didn’t mind. Some of them he’d only known since the first few weeks of classes—themselves only a few months ago now—but they seemed like a fun group. ‘Fun’ had been sorely lacking since he and Mikasa had arrived at university. The campus was broad and sunny, the professors were engaged and interesting, the city was large and new—and Eren was still managing to be bored. Lethargic. Some days, positively listless. It wasn’t that the course work was too hard for him, or that he’d had trouble making friends. He wasn’t anything approaching miserable. He just didn't have the drive to go out and do anything beyond what was required of him. Maybe if they had so many people with them, he'd be a bit more open to improvisation.
It was the sort of hope that virtually guaranteed regret in the near future.
They took the bus there. There was a ‘recreational facility’ on campus that they could have used just as easily, except that the place was always full to bursting and wasn’t open late enough to accommodate them. It was after eleven o' clock when by the time they'd all found their way onto the bus, and the rec centre closed at ten thirty. Some local gym owner had made a deal with the school such that students could use his facilities free of charge in return for a whole pile of advertising courtesy of the university’s graphics department, and presumably some slice of the students’ tuitions.
“We don’t need any ID, do we?”, Connie asked while they were all piling off of the bus and it was far too late.
“Just your student card,” Mikasa said, and there was a collective sigh of relief. “And don’t bother the people who work there. They don’t need it.”
“Why would we bother them?”, Jean asked. Mikasa shrugged.
Eren suspected there had been some reason for her comment, but didn’t care enough to press for it at the moment. The social atmosphere was surprisingly good, given that when they went out as a group like this arguments were almost a certainty; he didn’t want to ruin it by bickering with Mikasa.
The gym was larger than Eren had expected, and not nearly as shady and makeshift. When they entered it, the place was nearly empty. It was early enough that the gym on campus would have just been closing, so the great migration would not have yet begun. Eren had never gone to the rec centre. Actually the only gym he’d ever used had been the deserted, rather pathetic one at his high school; he had no idea how this place worked. His friends fell more or less naturally into a line leading to the desk by the door so they could provide their IDs. Eren was so busy thinking about the weird plastic-and-sweat smell of the place and marvelling at the emptiness of it that he didn’t notice the person at the desk until Mikasa moved on and Eren was right before him.
There hadn’t been time or interest enough for Eren to form some expectation of what someone who worked at a gym would look like. This boy would not have matched it if Eren had bothered. He was narrow across the shoulders, short even for someone sitting down, and with small, delicate-looking hands. Something about the curve of his cheek made him look positively angelic, even with his face turned down towards the binder sitting before him. His hair was blond and smooth and, for a moment, more distracting than the proverbial golden apples.
“ID,” the young man said, for the third time. Eren gave himself a mental slap and found his wallet. Privately Eren hoped to get a good, lingering stare from the blond when he checked to verify that Eren’s face matched the photo on his student card—Eren wanted to know what colour his eyes were—but the boy didn’t even bother to glance up. He took the card, jabbed the name ‘Eren Jaeger’ into the keyboard to his right with sharp, precise strokes, and then held the card back out again.
“Are you planning to get out of the way ever, or…?”, Jean asked. Eren set his jaw, shot Jean a glare over his shoulder, and marched off to join Mikasa. She was making for a hall at the back, and he’d followed her right to it before she turned and stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Not this way,” she said, pointing behind him. “Over there.”
He’d nearly waltzed right into the women’s showers to get changed.
“Right,” Eren said. He chose not to look at the line to see which of his friends were snickering at him. They must have realized what his problem was—he didn’t know how to be anything but obvious, and certain members of his social circle never let him forget it.
But it wasn’t what he was doing. He was here to work up some energy—to get some exercise, get his heart going, get his blood moving. That was all. Beautiful young men were entirely, completely beside the point, and he had the force of will to keep them there.
They didn’t end up staying for that long. Connie had an early class the next morning, Jean had worked right through the night before on a philosophy paper (or at least used that as an excuse for why Sasha outran him on the treadmill), and they were in some danger of all falling asleep in a pile on the bus home if they stayed much longer. It was midterms season, and there wasn’t one of them without two dozen research books to scour or a study booth in the library to covet.
Of course, it turned out that, for Eren Jaeger, mental exertion was ten times as exhausting as physical. His eyelids drooped in the library if he stopped focusing for more than ten seconds at a time, but this place was different. He felt more awake here than he had in his dorm room since orientation week; he felt lit up, somehow, like he hadn’t in ages. Maybe if he came here more often he could use the excess energy afterwards to study, but that didn’t occur to him right then. At the moment he was only really concerned with making the sensation last as long as possible.
“I’ll catch the next bus,” he said, as the others all relinquished their machines. Reiner was the last to do so. He’d been demonstrating the absolutely absurd amount he could benchpress (and causing Eren and Jean to agree that under no circumstances were they to ever pick a fight with Reiner). Eren himself had stepped momentarily away from the treadmill he’d claimed after Jean’s defeat.
“Eren,” Mikasa said, as the others all moved for the changerooms. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” She pinched his nose.
“Don’t bother him.”
“Bother who?”, Eren said, but his eyes betrayed him. They strayed over to the young man at the desk, who was poring once more over the binder in front of him.
“I wouldn’t have brought you if I’d thought you would be a pain for the people who work here. Don’t flirt with people who are at work.”
“I know—hell, Mikasa, I’m not an animal. I never even said anything to him. And I’m not going to, alright? I just feel like I can run a few more kilometres. You know. Here where I’m safe from muggers.” Mikasa narrowed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and then marched off. She didn’t have to say it—the ‘I’m going to ask him next time I’m in here,’ or the accompanying , ‘I will fill all of your shoes with toothpaste you harass this boy.’ Eren had been living with Mikasa since they’d been children. He knew she was right, and, more vividly, he knew she was not to be crossed.
So, once the others left and Eren returned to his running, he kept his head down. The gym attendant had apparent schoolwork to do, and Eren had work to put off; there was no sense ruining a perfectly good situation by floundering and starting a conversation and making an ass of himself. By the time another twenty minutes passed Eren’s calves were burning; it was after midnight, and the next bus should be arriving soon. Now was as good a time as any to go. When he went through to the change room he found the floor wet—the others must’ve had showers. Probably it was polite, since he’d be bussing home; the things reeked enough without him adding his own personal stink. Normally Eren wasn't all that quick on the draw when it came to etiquette, but he was feeling so much better already, now that he'd finally gone out, that he thought maybe he'd be doing this some more. He might as well learn the ways of the busfarers if he was going to be counted among their number.
Eren pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the time. He should have another fifteen minutes before the bus’s scheduled arrival, plus the ten to thirty on top of that before the thing actually arrived.
He had time. Of course he had time.
He remained confident about this until approximately the moment—standing out on the damp locker-room floor with a towel around his waist—that he acknowledged that he had in fact opened the correct locker. The lovely sharpie artwork and its accompanying obscenity on the door made it unmistakable. After he stared at this for another moment Eren opened the locker again, as if the result would be different this time. A (nearly) bare metal box greeted him. His backpack was gone. His backpack containing all of his clothes but his underwear. Was gone. He was alone in a gym with the world’s most beautiful person, after midnight. With nothing to his name but his underwear.
Eren was not at university for anything overly taxing on his causal reasoning skills, but he knew his friends well enough to work this out. Someone had stayed behind to wait until he got in the shower. Then that someone had made off with most of Eren’s clothes and all of his dignity.
That same someone is getting tripped down the next staircase I catch them at, Eren decided.
Guilt was an amazing thing. Jean had never been the sort to sit in statuesque stillness, but this level of fidgeting was certainly unusual—especially on the bus, where he typically tried to look as aloof and casual as possible. This whole thing had been his idea. He’d overheard Eren’s comment about the muggings, and it had grated. The boy did not appreciate Mikasa or the care she took with him. Jean had thought a lesson in helplessness might cut his hubris short. He’d asked Connie to hide in one of the stalls until Eren left, swipe Eren’s things, and leave his phone there so Eren would have to call and ask for a ride home.
He would have done it himself, but he’d been friends with Eren since junior year of high school, and rivals since they’d been tiny over-aggressive ninth-graders with something to prove. There was no chance in hell that Eren would not have sensed the deception if Jean had been the one lying in wait.
Jean and Connie were nearly back at the residence where they shared a dorm. They’d talked about maybe waiting nearer to the gym itself, but in the end Jean’s need for coffee had won out. The nearest place open this late had been several minutes away by bus, so bus away they had. From there they’d just sort of ended up here, watching the main gates of the school flick past through the window. Connie had his head leaning back against the glass, rattling anytime the tires went over a bump. Both he and Jean were already starting to regret doing this. They could have picked a better night for it, at least.
Something beeped. There were others on the bus, so it could have been anyone's phone. Jean was content to go on believing that and ignoring it until it happened again. This was not just any beep. It sounded familiar. He and Connie both looked at Connie’s left pocket at the same moment.
“Shit,” Connie said when the familiar ringtone sounded again. His phone was not where it was supposed to be. They had just stranded their friend out in unknown territory with nothing but his underwear.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jean said. “What’s he supposed to do? We can’t just leave him like that.”
“Don’t say it like it’s my fault—”
“It is your fault!”
“I was distracted by the fact that I had to touch Eren Jaeger’s used boxers, alright? I always get stuck doing the dirtywork. This is just your cosmic payback.”
“Well Eren’s the one eating it, not me.”
Connie sighed and sank lower on his bus seat.
“Alright, don’t worry—we’ll go back at the next logical stop, alright? It’ll be fine.”
Eren was as dressed as he could manage, and he’d left the towel hanging around his neck. It was sort of like having a shirt, anyway. He was going to be needing that. Since it was the blond guy’s job to guard the gym, the odds of Eren getting out there and making use of the phone at the desk without being spotted were slim to none. He didn’t need to scar or startle or generally harass the boy. He was already doing coursework while covering the graveyard shift at a gym; he probably didn’t need his life getting any worse. The best thing would be to just go out there openly. Stealth wasn't really Eren's strong suit anyway.
He was as prepared as he could be, given the circumstances. He couldn’t very well hide in here forever. The guy had probably seen worse before anyway—people had been pulling this prank since elementary school.
He works in a gym for fuck’s sake. He'll be fine.
Eren pushed open the door to the change room and stuck his head out. His gaze first went to the desk, since as far as he could tell the young man was bolted to it—but it was empty. A whirring sound directed Eren’s attention to the gym equipment, and specifically to the bicycle at the end of the row nearest to the change rooms. The gym attendant had set up a notebook on a spindly, wire music-stand; he’d stationed it just beyond the handlebars, and had his gaze fixed to it as his feet turned the pedals. He blew upward in a vain attempt to push his bangs back, out of his eyes; when it didn’t work, he lifted his hand and dragged his wrist across his forehead.
‘Beautiful’ was not a word that rose very often in Eren’s mind. He usually thought more in colours and movements and sounds than words, and he’d never been that concerned with aesthetics. He’d been getting his hair cut the exact same way his whole life, and though he tried not to dress badly, he’d never put that much thought into how he looked, or how other people did.
But the way the young man’s back sloped down from his shoulders, and the way his arm curved in and then jutted out as it descended to the elbow, and the way his hair fell around his face—most especially the look on his face, with the angled brows and the clear eyes and the mouth pressed into a firm determined line. He looked like there was nothing in the world beyond what he was focusing on in that moment. That was beautiful, and Eren didn’t care that his mental image of Jean fired a spitball into the back of his head and called him a pretentious prick.
Eren gave a quick shake of his head. This was very much an inappropriate thing to be doing. This guy had probably forgotten Eren was even there, so Eren had him at a disadvantage. He had to talk, not ogle.
In his haste to declare himself, he said the first thing that fell out of his mouth. It wasn’t the most tactful choice, but he realized that too late.
“You know, if I was self-conscious about working out I’d think I'd go for the weight machines.”
Most of this speech was delivered not to a composed young man on a stationary bicycle, intent on his notebook, but to a wide-eyed boy freshly fallen to the floor, staring at Eren through the still-spinning spokes of the machine’s front wheel. He’d fallen off around the word ‘know,’ and Eren had filled out the rest of his sentence more because his brain was distracted and his mouth kept running than because he really meant to.
“You’re still here,” the blond boy said. That was some consolation; the superstudent’s brain wasn’t working either.
“Yeah,” Eren said, and was glad that he was still mostly hidden behind the door. The other boy was already turning an unhealthy shade of crimson just for having been caught on the machines; Eren could only imagine how he’d have felt to be discovered there by someone more than half naked. “Sorry for messing up your studying. My friends ran off with my clothes.”
“I…” The boy hauled himself back to his feet with the aid of the bike’s handlebars. The red in his face was not diffusing at all. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” Eren leaned out a bit farther so that the other youth could see that he was, at least, shirtless. “Did you see someone go tearing out of here a few minutes ago?”
“Um…short, with really short hair… I wasn’t concentrating when I signed him out, so I don’t remember his name.”
Connie, Eren thought with a sigh. At least that meant it probably hadn’t been done with true malevolence in mind. He wouldn’t have been certain how to respond if Annie had done it, since he was never sure of her motives or what exactly she was thinking.
“It’s alright, I know who it was,” Eren said. “Anyway, could I use your phone? I’ve got to call my sister.”
“Oh—sure. Yes.”
Eren ducked back into the change room for a moment so he could fasten the towel around his waist. He figured this was probably more decent, in the end. That done, he went out and found that the gym attendant had swivelled on his heel and was facing firmly the other way, with his back perfectly straight and his arms folded.
“I’ve got a towel,” Eren said as he made for the desk. “It’s fine if you want to…not do that.” The other boy’s shoulders relaxed, but he didn’t turn. The most Eren got was a glance when he made it to the desk. Eren took some pride from the fact that he didn’t let himself glance back to figure out the young man’s eye colour. Better not to know, really.
He had the landline’s receiver held up to his ear and his fingers hovering over the number pad before he realized that without his phone he had no idea what anyone’s phone number was other than his parents’. They were about six hours away, and they would probably just laugh at him anyway.
“Uhh…” He set the receiver back down. “Actually, maybe I’ll just take the bus.”
The other boy finally looked at him more directly. Eren suddenly became even more aware that he was mostly naked.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’ll be fine. I’ve done weirder things.” All in high school or earlier, though. Actually, I guess this is the first time I've really done anything that makes me a jackass at university. Huh.
“Alright, but… You need something to wear other than that. I think I’ve got an extra set somewhere, hold on…”
“You don’t have to,” Eren said, but the young man had already scurried away through a side door. When he returned a few moments later he was carrying a small red and black backpack, from which he pulled a blue t-shirt and a pair of shorts.
“They’re clean,” he said. “Probably too small…”
“You brought these to work out in?”, Eren asked as the shorter boy passed him the clothing. His savior blushed even more deeply.
“Theoretically,” he said, and dropped his gaze to the fabric so he wouldn’t have to meet Eren’s gaze. It gave Eren the opportunity to look at the plastic nametag pinned to his shirt. Armin. He glanced back up at Armin’s face and decided that the name suited him. “I tend to not, since…”
“It’s easier to escape to your desk this way if anyone comes in?”
“Yes,” the boy said, and looked like he regretted it; his teeth came down firmly on his lower lip, just fast enough and just long enough to look like it hurt. “Um. If you could go get changed, please. The next shift will be here soon. They’ll get the wrong idea.”
Eren complied and retreated again to the change room.
Getting into the shirt was a bit of a struggle, but it was no worse than his high school gym uniform, really. The shorts were just the typical basketball sort, with an elastic waistband, and they weren’t too short on him. The shirt must have been too large for its owner in the first place, so although it was a bit tight across the chest, it at least didn’t ride up around his ribs as much as he’d thought it might.
The other boy seemed to disagree. When Eren arrived again out in the main machine room, the gym attendant had to muffle a sound against his knuckles. Eren had the profound suspicion it had been a laugh.
God, he hoped it had been a laugh. If Armin could laugh at him, maybe it meant he wouldn't continue to be so painfully uncomfortable about all this.
“Hey, I don’t care,” Eren said. “I can do ridiculous.”
“If you say so… But I don’t think I can send you on the bus looking like that.”
“I’ll call a cab.”
“Was your wallet in your backpack?”
“…Yeah.” It had just occurred to him to dread Mikasa’s reaction to this whole situation—he’d inevitably have to borrow money from her to pay for the taxi, which would require that he explain what the hell was happening—when the other boy spoke again.
“My shift’s over in two minutes. I can take you home.”
“You really don’t have to do that,” Eren said, and it was a lie in intention if not in explicit wording. The young man really didn’t have to, but preventing it from happening was the last thing Eren wanted. His heart leapt at the prospect. “You’re already letting me borrow your clothes—”
“This way I’ll know where you live, so I can egg your house if you don’t return them.” Armin paused. He looked like he’d just been caught swearing in the presence of an elderly relative. “I wouldn’t ever actually do that.”
Eren nodded once. He tried to look serious so that Armin wouldn’t think he was being laughed at.
“Okay.”
“You can go wait outside if you want. I just need to sign you out on the computer so Historia doesn’t think someone’s still hiding in here.”
“I hope you don’t need my student card…” Armin shook his head and moved around the desk to access the keyboard.
“It’s already in here. I just need to mark you down as signed out," the keyboard clacked a few times, "and…”
The gym’s front door squealed as it was pushed open. Both boys looked up at the same time. Eren’s instincts reacted first and sent him sliding over behind Armin, as if there was any chance at all that he could condense himself into invisibility behind someone so much smaller than him. Armin recovered a moment later, with the advantage of a working brain. Without turning around he grabbed Eren by the wrist and dragged him down onto the floor behind the desk. Armin himself remained standing. He slid along to the far end of the desk so that he could lean out and greet the new arrival.
“Hi, Historia,” he said, and Eren thought his voice was a bit higher in pitch than it had been. “Did Ymir not come in with you?”
The petite blonde girl making her way around the equipment shook her head. She had a paper coffee cup in one hand; the other held the shoulder strap of her backpack, which she was just swinging from her back.
“It’s just me tonight,” she said. “Ymir’s coming in in the morning.”
Eren wasn’t really listening—in part because this was none of his business, and in part because he’d found, pushed up against the back of the desk, a whiteboard. Scrawled on it in big, loopy, pink and purple letters was the sentence, ‘HERE FOR THE MONEY, NOT FOR THE HONEY.’
He snorted. He couldn’t help it. It earned him a light kick in the knee, which was difficult for Armin to deliver when he was at the far end of the desk—but he managed it without falling over.
“That’s too bad, especially for this shift,” Armin said. He’d needed to say something to override his impulse to hiss in Eren’s direction. “They’re not supposed to schedule us by ourselves overnight.”
“I know. It’ll be fine though; it doesn’t look like it’s exactly busy tonight.”
Her brisk footsteps led her to the office door. Armin simply turned slightly so that he stayed between her and Eren even when she turned into the office.
“Okay,” he said once the heavy door had swung shut behind her. He offered one hand to Eren and was already reaching out towards the music stand with the other. “Go now—we have to go—”
The moment Eren was on his feet he had one small hand pushing between his shoulder blades, steering him towards the door.
“Gogogogo,” Armin whispered frantically, and didn’t let up with the pushing until they were out in the cool November air. Winter hadn’t really hit yet, and the nearest thing they’d seen to snow was a shimmery layer of frost coating the windows in the mornings, but the wind still bit at Eren’s mostly-exposed legs and arms. He didn’t mention it. Armin was going so far out of his way for him that he didn’t see how he had the right to complain.
Besides, he felt more awake now than he had in weeks. If the cold was contributing to that, then he was all for the cold.
He followed Armin as the latter hurried to his car, which was compact and so incredibly green that even the dimness of the parking lot couldn't mask it.
“Sorry,” Armin mumbled, “sorry,” as he wrestled to get his keys out of his jeans pocket and then into the passenger door’s lock.
“S’fine,” Eren said. “Was that your sign in there?”
Armin paused and looked right at him.
“It’s Historia’s,” he said, without the quiet maelstrom of apologetics. “People are awful to her. They’re always asking for her number, and it’s not easy to say no when you’re working.”
“Right. Sorry.” At last Armin managed to open the door. While he opened the back door to toss his stand and notebook inside and then circled around to the driver’s side, Eren got in. The car was cramped and full of litter from fast food places. “Sorry,” Armin said again as he settled into the driver’s seat. “It’s been…sort of a long time since I cleaned, and I spend a lot of time in here.” Before Eren could say that Armin really did not need to apologize for the state of the car he had offered up as a rescue vehicle, Armin went on. “But we’re lucky. I mean you’re lucky. Normally I ride my bike to work. I just didn’t want to have to manage that.” He waved one hand over his shoulder to indicate a truly enormous textbook sitting in the middle of the backseat.
“Oh god,” Eren said. He decided that Armin must have been a junior at the very least to have to contend with such books. “What do you even do with a textbook that big?”
“Wind up drooling on it a lot, mostly… Now, where do you live?”
“Maria Hall.”
“Really?”
Eren thrust his chest out unintentionally. Frosh status was to be avoided, even if he really was in the fall term of his first year at university. If he was being mistaken for an upper-year, he couldn’t help but be flattered.
“Do I not seem like a freshman?”
Armin shrugged and turned his attention to the ignition, but he didn’t successfully hide that he was smiling a bit.
“Getting left without your clothes in a school facility seems like sort of a first year thing, I guess,” he said quietly.
With a great and embarrassing rush of giddiness Eren realized that Armin was, yes, comfortable enough to make fun of him. To distract himself from this Eren messed with the radio, flicking between stations with (probably irritating) abandon. He couldn’t decide what he wanted to listen to, let alone what he thought this stranger would want to hear. He left it on something sugary and mindless, tried to ignore the acute angle to which his legs were forced by the smallness of this car, and looked happily out the window for most of the drive.
He was so distracted that he didn’t notice that the car had stopped, or that Armin was saying something, until the latter poked his arm.
“What do you take in your coffee?”
“What? Why?”, Eren asked, straightening up from his comfortable slouch and looking over. The brilliant clashing colours of a drive-through menu turned Armin into little more than a silhouette.
“Um…” Armin gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, squared his shoulders, took a bracing breath, and said, “Because we’re here now. It’s fine if you don’t want anything. I was going to stop here anyway. But I do have to finish the order, so…”
“I don't take anything in my coffee,” Eren said. This was not actually the case, but Mikasa took her coffee black and it had always struck him as somehow tough. Once he had the coffee in hand it was too late for regret, so he tried to down it as fast as he could only to scorch his tongue and narrowly evade humiliation by spit coffee.
If Armin noticed this spectacle occurring in the passenger side, complete with the wide array colours Eren’s face turned as he dealt with both the heat and the bitterness, he remained mercifully silent. Eren wasn’t sure how to judge that sort of quiet, and he wasn’t all that comfortable with quiet when he was wearing someone else’s clothes, sitting in someone else’s car, and drinking coffee bought with someone else’s money. He felt there should be more of a connection here, to help justify or refund Armin’s generosity.
Failing to come up with some topic they had in common—because really, the more he thought about it the more this boy was a total stranger to him and the worse this whole situation became—Eren decided he would resort to small-talk. He could talk about the weather, or the campus. He could talk about his own major (music) or ask about Armin's. Harmless, easy topics. Those were what he needed.
His mouth, once again, had other ideas.
“You know, I didn’t mean you should be embarrassed to get caught on the machines,” he said, and listened to the words go unbidden from his mouth with interest but not with real alarm. “I just figured if you were so self-conscious about it that you don’t do it when anyone’s watching, you’d go for the weights, since the results there are—more what people go to the gym for in the first place.”
“I…” Armin took a corner with more care than really was warranted so that he could buy himself a moment. He made a conscious decision not to get embarrassed and kick Eren out onto the sidewalk and zip away. He’d been locked up studying in his room or in the gym so much lately that he’d hardly interacted with anyone other than Historia, Ymir, gym management, and a few of the friendlier patrons of the gym. Sightings of him were so rare that his roommates had taken to calling him the abominable snowman. The only reason he even knew that was because he’d seen the note on the fridge declaring it his week to get milk.
“It’s just cardio,” he said at length. “It’s not about muscle. I can’t really win the machismo game anyway.”
“Well,” Eren said, twisting in his seat so that he faced Armin more directly, “that’s fine though! Fuck the macho bullshit. Cardio’s more important than—biceps, or anything, right? A strong heart’s the most important thing. And you were going a pretty good, steady clip there, when I walked in. I think you’ve got one.”
“That’s—thank you,” Armin said, sounding surprised at himself for not apologizing again.
They passed the university gates just a few moments later, and sailed quietly past the gold and black grids of residence windows that flanked the road. Eren had never made much of the campus before, but now that he bothered to look, it was sort of pretty.
“Maria’s just the first one on the right, here,” Eren said, tapping the window.
“I know.” Armin brought them smoothly to a halt in the parking lot—having, by some apparent miracle, found a parking space near the rear gate.
“Can I borrow your phone?”, Eren asked once the car had stopped. He’d just remembered an obstacle: if you were in past curfew, you had to present residence security with your student card or be admitted as a guest. “I think I remembered my sister’s number.”
Armin handed it over and waited patiently while Eren typed out a request for Mikasa (or the person he hoped was Mikasa) to come let him into the building.
“Aargh,” Eren said after a minute or two passed with no response. “She might be in the shower or something.” She never used the ones at the gym, after all. “She’ll get back to me soon, though, I swear. She’s a light sleeper, so it’s not like she’s just snoring through it or anything. You won’t be stuck here all night.”
“It’s alright,” Armin said as he pulled the keys from the ignition. “I really have nowhere to be.”
“Won’t your roommates be worried?”
“I don’t think so.”
The silence, long though it was, wasn’t as painful or wincing or awkward this time. In the thirty seconds or so before the radio shut itself off, Armin was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, perfectly in time with the sappy love song. Hell, he was doing a better job of keeping the rhythm than most of the kids in Eren’s high school concert band could have.
Eren wondered whether he majored in music. He had after all been studying off of a music stand, and those hands... So of course he was a music major—probably he played, oh, the flute. Something graceful like that, which carried the melody up above the general mill of the harmony.
But the silence, comfortable though it may have been for Eren, was probably getting too long. He was making an upperclassman—an upperclassman in Eren’s own program, as he had just decided—sit out here in a parking lot with him and miss out on valuable sleep.
An upperclassman with a job, too, Eren thought. And a really awful courseload, if we're going by that textbook. I owe it to him to at least make conversation.
“Hey,” he said, “did I thank you yet? I’m not sure if I did. For all of this. Though I’m going to have trouble falling asleep now, I think. I mean—not that I mean—that sounded really leering. I’m talking about the coffee.”
“Alright,” Armin said after blinking slowly. Eren was so preoccupied with looking at Armin’s eyes (because Oh fuck look at his eyelashes) that it took him a moment to notice that Armin was smiling. “Sorry about that. I tend to assume everyone keeps hours the same way I do. Coffee at midnight isn’t as much of a problem for me.”
“What, you’re up late studying?” Don’t assume that you waste of space for fuck’s sake— “Or, out partying or something? Club…activities?”
“Studying,” Armin said. "I try not to explore too much after dark."
"Explore? The city?" Armin nodded.
“Ahh, okay. And I mean—don’t apologize for it. Hell, it’s good I’ll be awake later than usual. All I’ve been doing lately is sleep anyway. I should live a little. It’s supposed to be part of the whole university thing. Not to just know school subjects, or whatever, but to know—people.”
“Not everyone’s great at that.”
“But you are! You saved my ass—several times!”
“That's putting it a little strongly. It was all just...normal stuff to do—”
“No—you would’ve been totally within your rights to just kick me out of the gym and wash your hands of it. But you didn’t. You even got me coffee. And holy damn, this coffee is bitter," Eren said, because he was talking now, and still riding his happy little high from his first adventure of the year, and he wasn't going to be easily stopped. "I mean, I can hardly even taste after burning my tongue like that, but I can still tell. But that’s not a complaint at all against you—it’s my own fault. I was trying to impress you, I guess. Even though you got a double-double so there isn’t a single reason to think you’d be impressed by someone drinking black coffee. But I just wanted to try.”
Well, there it went, out there in the open. It had been a very long time since Eren had confessed a crush to anyone, let alone to the crushee. He'd certainly never done this with a stranger. He really wasn’t sure what to expect.
But Armin didn’t react like he was surprised.
“You don’t need to impress me. Really. You're in sort of a weird situation, here. You're allowed to just…be.”
That was of some reassurance. This was an absurdly strong crush for someone who Eren had known for less than an hour, but so it was. He wanted so much to just lean across the gap between their seats and kiss this boy. Armin's shoulders were relaxed; he held his coffee cup with both hands and was tracing his thumbs slowly along the lid; his mouth was soft, like he wasn't searching for anything else to say. Like he was waiting.
Eren would have loved to deceive himself that this was because he was beyond casual and comfortable; he would have loved to think that Armin was, in fact, waiting to be kissed, or to be asked a direct and important question. There was a warmth in his gut that told him this was the case. Tonight had already been odd enough. He was anything but afraid of kissing someone he barely knew.
But Eren was not so lost in tonight's strange wave of energy that he'd lost track of common sense. More likely, Armin had just misinterpreted what Eren had said. Understood it non-romantically. This whole mess was just a situation born only of strangeness and subsequent politeness. This was not a date. Eren could not spring a kiss on him without context, without warning. Armin was only being kind the way strangers were kind. It was just—altruism. Well, just altruism’s a bit unfair, given that it’s altruism I’m talking about here, Eren thought. He risked another glance at Armin, who in his surprise at hearing his own phone go off had just missed his mouth and spilled coffee down his shirt.
“Oh, fuck,” Armin said softly.
This guy is an angel, Eren decided.
“I should get going,” he said as he glanced down at the small screen of the phone sitting in his palm. "That was my sister; she's going to meet me at the doors, so I'll get out of your face."
He handed the phone back to its owner. As he stepped out of the car, Armin spoke.
“I hope you get your clothes back.”
“Good.” Armin’s eyebrows rose. “That was supposed to be ‘thanks.’ I'll bring yours back to the gym once I've done laundry.”
“Alright. And beat up the friends who stole your clothes, for me. Not that—I don’t mean this was inconvenient or anything like that.”
Eren grinned at him. It wasn’t as embarrassing to be a stammering, miscommunicating mess when the person you were trying to talk to was just as bad as you were.
“No, no, I got it. Thanks again, eh? I owe you. If you ever need that book hauled around for you, just let me know.” He shut the door, but had just turned around to face the residence entrance when the car door popped right back open. Armin was leaning across the passenger seat, clinging to the steering wheel with his other hand like it was all that was anchoring him to the earth.
“I just wanted to know, because I’ve never been on that many, but… Did that feel like a…not very good first date, to you?”
Eren ducked so that he could stick his head into the car again. His eyes were wide but so, so focused on Armin.
“Does that mean it did to you? And are you angling here for a slightly better second date?”
“Eren.” After the obligatory split second of startled tension, he turned and found Mikasa standing on the sidewalk that bordered the parking lot. He’d been right; her hair was dripping, and her phone was in hand.
“Right,” Eren said, and with a regretful glance at Armin, he shut the car door for a second time. He stepped over the curb to join his sister.
“What happened to your sense of self-preservation?”, she asked as they walked to the building. “You don’t know him. This is a very basic safety failure. Kindergarten level.”
“You were all protective of him, though. I figured you wouldn’t be if he was an asshole.” The look she gave him confirmed that she had one major counterexample in mind. “Wow, thanks a lot.”
“I feel bad for him. And the girls who work there. I don’t think they have an easy time.” She sighed and poked his arm. “I’m happy he brought you back though. Jean and Connie will be happy, too.”
“Why should they care? They did it.”
“They think you’re wandering around the city mostly naked. I received more than fifty texts while I was in the shower telling me you had vanished and assuring me they would find you. And asking me not to eviscerate them.” She paused for a beat; a slight frown crossed her brow. “Do I scare people?”
Eren snorted.
“Yeah. Try not to kill them, though. I'm not that mad." After all, he probably would not have had the chance to really talk to Armin had his clothes not so mysteriously wandered off. Certainly Armin would not have had to leap to the rescue, and then Eren probably would not have been swooning quite so hard.
Then again, he would like it if next time they met, he was fully dressed. Eren was quite happy with the general shape of himself, even if he wasn't as impressive to look at as Mikasa; but he felt he could have made a better first impression. To Armin he was probably always going to be 'That naked guy,' when he felt he could have just as easily been 'That really good-looking guy' or 'That amazing trumpet player guy' or 'That upstanding sort of guy saving that kitten from a tree.' Or something.
"I was thinking we could all go out again tomorrow night,” he added, to avoid having to answer questions about why he was in such a good mood.
"Where?" Eren shrugged.
"Anywhere, really. I just want to do something. It's good as long as we're moving."
They were in the building’s east stairwell before Armin finally withdrew from across the passenger's seat. Then he took a deep breath and dropped his head against the steering wheel with such force that the horn blared. He couldn’t even manage to be embarrassed, or to twitch back away from it; he let it go for a good three seconds before he pulled himself back again.
That was not how he’d expected his night to go. He crawled halfway into the back seat, picked up his mammoth of a textbook, and left his car behind. Just beyond the double doors of Maria Hall he showed his student card to the exhausted-looking security woman, cut across the lobby, and took the west stairwell up to the second floor. As he shuffled along the hall towards his room he rubbed his forehead where it had met the steering wheel. It stung a little, now that the shock and general emotional spike had diminished. Sorting the information was taking longer than it should have, in part because that had all felt so much like some sort of stress-produced dream.
It wasn’t until he was opening the door to the suite he shared with his three roommates that the last words in their conversation were categorized and stored properly. They'd found their proper mental shelf with its little mental label, and as Armin read it his fingers went rigid on the handle to the door.
He. He had just.
He had just been asked out on a date. By a boy whose name he’d never bothered to ask or to look at, on his student card or on the gym’s computer. Who had been wearing Armin’s clothes. Who had fluffy touchable brown hair and bright, intent, warm eyes that had made Armin too flustered to just let him into the building where they both lived.
He could be my neighbour for all I know.
That was an incentive to get out of the hall if there’d ever been one. Armin clicked the door firmly shut behind him. He sighed a little in the dark of the kitchen and let the weight of the textbook drag his shoulders down.
Well. This was perfectly ridiculous. He’d better wring as much study time out of this night as he could to try to put the thought of it behind him. There was nothing to be done until the other boy brought him his clothes back anyway, and in the meantime it would be easier on his concentration to just pretend it hadn't happened.
There were of course the assorted images that might make this difficult. The slant of his collarbones, the curve of his neck, the shape of his jawline. Armin wasn't that worried about those. It was his eyes. Those eyes weren't going to be easy to put out of mind.