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Eren drags his knuckles along the stone surface of the wall.
He barely flinches as the rough texture scrapes at the skin. In fact, he welcomes the sensation, welcomes the momentary distraction it provides from the memories threatening to consume him whole. They sit heavily against his shoulders, forcing him to live through the hell over and over and over until his senses are once again overwhelmed by the ghosts of their past experiences. Of the horror they endured only four hours ago.
The sight of Armin sprawled across the bloodied rooftop shingles, broken and burned almost beyond recognition. The desperate rattling sounds his throat and chest made every time his lungs fought for more air. The heat emanating from his skin against Eren’s face as Eren leaned over his best friend, begging and pleading and screaming for Armin to continue breathing. To hold on for a little longer. To stay with him.
Once again, Eren must remind himself to breathe as well, to push through the tightness in his core that makes his chest spasm, the feeling of cold hands wrapping around his diaphragm and squeezing. Once again, he fights the knot in his throat that makes it impossible to speak. Once again. Once again.
He tears his eyes from the buildings lying in utter, blood-stained destruction just outside Shiganshina, at the rust-colored dust that continues to drift in the breeze and glide among the carnage the Beast Titan left behind. A lingering metallic scent burns his nose and sends his eyes watering for a completely different reason this time. He’s supposed to be searching for survivors with the others. He isn’t sure there’s a point anymore. Anyone they didn’t find during the first three hours after the fighting ended would be beyond help at this point, wouldn’t they? By the fourth hour, there’d be no one else to save. No one else besides the two survivors they already had in their care. Eren steals a glance at the small splashes of color contrasting against the lighter shade of the stone wall, at the small forms lying unconscious on the bedrolls.
Sasha. Armin.
Eren’s breath catches painfully in his throat again and he averts his eyes. He hates it. He hates how hard it is for him to know his best friend is lying nearby, vulnerable and unaware. Somewhere else.
He wants to be with Armin again, to sit beside the bedroll and hold his hand the way he and Mikasa did when they first laid him there. He wants to run his fingers through the soft blonde fringe that falls away from Armin’s face, to watch the subtle movements underneath Armin’s eyelids and study the delicate skin that subtly shifts as his eyes move in some kind of restless sleep.
But he can’t. He tried. Long before Jean had to coax him and Mikasa from Armin’s side in order to search the city remains, Eren tried. But the pain cut too deep. Even when he tore his jacket from his body and slipped it around Armin’s shoulders, it hurt. It hurt too much.
It still does.
It’s been four hours now. Four hours since he helped pull Armin from the nape of the mindless titan he had to become in order to live. Four hours since he clutched Armin to his body with reckless abandon, paying no attention to the way the heat of Armin’s skin against his own burned him, or the way the steam licked at his face. At least Eren’s own titan abilities healed those burns quickly, he thinks. How many times had Armin pulled Eren from his own titan over the past several months, held him close despite the blistering burns he’d have to nurse on his hands later?
Armin. So selfless and loving and kind and courageous. He’d always been a constant in Eren’s life, always there to comfort him or drag him from danger or sit with him while he healed from countless injuries. Always. Until he almost wasn’t. And it isn’t until now that Eren realizes he’s taken it all for granted—taken Armin for granted, because in his mind Armin would always be there.
A sharp sting in his finger cuts through Eren’s thoughts, and he curses as he glances down at his hands to find he’s tugged a hangnail completely from its cuticle. He lifts his thumb to his lips to suck at the drop of blood his nervous habit produced, but barely manages it against his hand’s violent shaking. He almost laughs.
Just this morning, Armin helped him get his shaking under control. At the time, Eren associated the sudden rush of strength with the freedom he seeks beyond the walls, with the prospect of making it to the ocean and breaking from the cage the titans trapped them in so long ago. But the longer Eren stares at his trembling fingers now, the closer he comes to the realization that it isn’t entirely true. He wants freedom more than most everything else in the entire world, and yet…
It was Armin that awakened that dream in him, Armin with whom he associates the very idea of gaining freedom from the walls. And now, sitting here, gazing up at the sky above him—such a strangely vibrant shade of blue among the grief and devastation strewn about below it—Eren realizes if he were to leave the walls now, he wouldn’t feel free. Not if it meant leaving the very catalyst for his dream behind, the very source of drive and hope and bravery that pushes Eren to cultivate those same qualities in himself.
He’ll never feel truly free if he doesn’t achieve it with Armin at his side.
The realization hits him head on, and it’s all Eren can do to keep himself from staggering back at the brunt force of it.
“Armin.” The name slips through his lips in a rush of air. Hands instinctively grappling for his shirt collar, he tugs on the fabric in some futile attempt to breathe easier and, dumbfounded, turns his head to glance back at the bedrolls in the distance.
His heart skips a beat. He sees Armin now, hovering over Sasha and tugging at the blankets covering her. Awake.
“Armin.” The name comes out only slightly louder this time as Eren hefts himself to his feet with a momentum that sends him stumbling.
It doesn’t matter how exhausted he is or how visibly he’s been shaking. He pushes his legs forward. His heart pumps the adrenaline through his veins with every violent beat against his sternum. He runs with a new burst of energy, fueled by the fact that he needs Armin in his arms right now—needs to touch him and feel him, to hear him speak and breathe and remind Eren that he’s here. That he’s alive.
This time, he screams. “Armin!”
He watches Armin start, then turn to look at him. He can see Armin’s eyes from here, blue, wide, and blinking at him in confusion. “Eren?”
His voice. Eren feels his entire gut wrench the moment he hears his name. Whatever words Armin intends to say next, however, dissipate the moment Eren drops to his knees in front of him. Eren barely registers the sting the brunt force shoots into his legs as he lunges forward and throws his arms around his best friend. He clings to Armin like a lifeline.
Maybe he is.
Maybe he’s the only thing that keeps Eren alive, that keeps him from giving up and believing the only way to achieve true freedom is to cut his life from the world completely. The reminder that, though the world is hell, there is something good in it too. Something real, soft, forgiving, and good. Something that makes Eren feel like he’s useful and needed and worth something among all the despair and suffering and anger. Something beautiful.
Eren feels Armin tense up against the force of the sudden embrace, but he doesn’t care. Armin is in his arms. He’s solid and warm and here. And as he tightens the hold his has on Armin, squeezing him, he wonders if it’s possible to become entirely and irreversibly consumed by another person, by the heat of their body and the warmth of their breath against one’s skin. He can feel himself shaking, can feel the painful knot in his throat unravel into a sob. The tears come again.
“I’m—” Eren’s throat contracts, and he has to force the rest of the words out. “—so glad you’re back.”
Armin’s breath catches, and Eren can feel it. The boy in his arms relaxes into the hug, shifts a little, and a soft, tentative hand presses against Eren’s back.
“What?” Armin whispers.
“I…” Eren doesn’t know what to say. His thoughts are lost in the heat emanating around them, in the feeling of the sun beating down on his back, in the tears that now stream freely down his face. Armin doesn’t remember what happened. He doesn’t know why Eren’s hugging him like this, yet he still hugs back. Somehow, realizing this prompts Eren to hold him even tighter, to sob even harder.
“It’s alright,” he finds himself saying. He knots his fingers into the fabric of the jacket Armin wears. His jacket. “You’re alright now.”
“Now?” Armin asks. Eren can feel the hands on him, rubbing his back momentarily before tightening their grip on him too. “Eren, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“Armin.”
“Yes?”
“Armin…” Eren whispers the name again. He lets it linger between the two of them, as if speaking it aloud might confirm to himself that this is really happening, that it isn’t some fever dream carrying him off somewhere that doesn’t exist. He pulls away only slightly, just enough to press his forehead against Armin’s and cup the back of the boy’s head with his hand.
He has to tell him. Eren knows he does. He has to tell him everything that happened, everything Armin did. They’ll have to return to the reality of their situation soon, to the hurt and the death and the fear. For now, however, Eren wants nothing more than to lose himself in this moment with his best friend.
He threads his fingers into the hair at the nape of Armin’s neck, damp with sweat and sticking to the warm, precious skin underneath it. Eren feels much too hot himself—he cringes at his own sweat beading and dripping down his back—but he doesn’t pull away. He looks at Armin through the hair falling over their brows, and he wants nothing more than to reach up and touch him, to run his fingertips over the soft skin of Armin’s cheek and jaw, to gloss the pad his thumb delicately over the faint freckles dotting Armin’s nose before dipping lower, to his lips. Armin’s breath brushes over his face, mingling with his own until he becomes dizzy.
He feels like he’s choking, like he needs to come up for air. Instead, he inches his face forward just enough to touch the tip of his nose to Armin’s, overcome suddenly by a hot and painful urge to close the distance further and graze over Armin’s lips with his.
“Eren,” Armin whispers. His voice quivers, and it isn’t until now that Eren notices how tightly Armin’s clinging to him. “Please talk to me.”
And Eren wants to. He wants to. But even as he opens his mouth to say something, anything, he’s hit with the realization that there will never be enough words to fully convey what it is he’s feeling. That, somehow, his body’s telling him the only way to alleviate the ache burrowing beneath his ribs and threatening to tear him apart is to pull Armin even closer until he breaks. To kiss him until both of them are gasping for air, until Eren’s choking and sobbing and screaming Don’t ever leave me again.
He does none of these things. He only has enough time to release one more shaking breath before two words spoken nearby shatter his world.
“He’s awake.”