Work Text:
“Heeeeeey, it’s Eh-Reeeeeh!! Lookie-woopsie, I’m unavailabwu wight nowwie so weave a mwessage after the beep! BEEEEEEE— ow!” A slap that looked nowhere near the definition of gentle has Jean flinching against the barrier the group are all leaning against; hoping, wishing, and praying that they could get a glimpse of a hastily-done brown bun amidst the sea of people on the floor below.
They’re failing.
“Give me that—” Armin grunts, squeezing in between a displeased Jean and his less than displeased girlfriend. The bane of all their frustrations or not, Mikasa still refuses any form of mockery towards her brother. Though, defending him right now must equate to treading across a tightrope with eight monkeys shitting on your shoulders.
Armin finally snatches the phone out of Jean’s grasp before scrutinizing the screen. He scoffs. “No wonder he’s not answering, you were calling his work phone.”
“Work phone?!” Connie screeches, jolting from his slump over the (fucking unsanitary) barriers. “The guy has more than one phone?! The hell kinda purpose is that? Isn’t the beauty of technology being able to fit so much into a singular box?!”
“No, listen, listen. We have a system here,” Jean says, completely unrelated to Connie’s query. “I reach out to him through the work phone, and ‘Kasa here reaches out through the personal phone.”
“Mhmm, mhmm,” Armin hums. “And how’s that working out?”
Mikasa shows him her screen, taps the speaker mode. “Hey, it’s Eren. Looks like I’m unavailable right now, so leave a message after the beep.” A beep, one the group has heard far too many times to be considered as tolerable. Actually, once should be considered a travesty already.
Connie huffs, “Wow, okay. Guy’s got two phones but the voicemail’s the same recording—”
“Let’s use the third phone,” Armin proposes, and Connie chokes out a disbelieving ‘third?!’ that nobody still pays any heed to. Sasha might’ve, but she’s too busy inhaling her extra large bucket of popcorn. Cheese powder just all over her, christ, somebody get this woman a napkin or two, or three, or maybe just a giant towel and maybe a bidet and some handwash because that’s just all over her the sight should be considered the actual fucking travesty—
A cough interrupts his thoughts.
Levi turns his head towards five pairs of expectant eyes, all boring into the very depths of his soul. His frown deepens. “What.”
“Levi,” Armin speaks up first, and it’s with this tone that he can only describe as what one would use against a restless creature. It has him being set more on edge.
His eyes narrow. “What.”
“Do the thing.”
Frown morphing into a curled scowl. Eyes shrinking into thin slits. “No.”
Jean groans, fist thumping the handle of the (still unsanitary) barrier. “Come on! We have five minutes until the damn movie starts and Jaeger is nowhere to be found!”
“Then get inside the cinema already,” Levi bites, arms crossed. “I’ll wait for him here.”
“I can’t!”
“Why?”
“Eren was really looking forward to this movie,” Mikasa pipes up. “I’m not going inside until Eren’s inside.”
“And I’m not going inside until Mikasa’s inside,” Jean says.
“And I’m not going inside until these two are inside.” Connie.
“Amrgh airgh mrgshide mrgh mergth mrgshide.” Sasha.
Levi closes his eyes with a sigh. If he’s going to hear the words ‘going’ and ‘inside’ one more time—
A hand squeezes his shoulder, prompting him to look into blue eyes filled with quiet desperation. “Please, Levi?”
It’s a bit of an overkill for a situation like this. “No.” He swiftly plucks the hand off his shoulder and replaces it on Armin’s own. “It’s humiliating.”
“Four minutes,” Jean cries out to the gods above.
“Let’s use the fourth phone,” Mikasa says, Connie’s ‘fourth?!’ ignored by all as she opens her phone and scrolls through her lists of contacts. The minuscule shift in her expression suggests her success in finding this ‘fourth’ phone (that nobody else seems to know about, judging by four confused glances and one incredulous), and she taps the screen again, bringing the phone to her ear as she pierces, stabs, impales Levi with her own gray eyes.
The person on the other line answers.
“Hanji, make Levi call Eren.”
“That’s not a fourth phone—”
“It technically is?” Armin interjects. “I mean, if you think about it, calling Hanji to force Levi to call Eren can still kind of be deemed as calling Eren —”
“That’s not a fourth phone!” Levi repeats, backing away from Mikasa, who’s steadily making her way closer to the other as she nods to each and every declaration the high-pitched squealing and guffaws literally everyone can hear from the phone, even as it isn’t in speaker mode. How is this woman not deaf yet, not even gods can answer it. “Blackmail won’t work on me—”
“Hanji says if you don’t call Eren, they’ll use your toothbrush.”
“Fine, fine!” Threats like that do, though. Fucking hell, scratch out Sasha’s manners, the mere notion of any item not classified as a food even remotely five inches near that maniac’s mouth is the legitimate travesty.
With another sigh, Levi shoves Mikasa away and wipes his hands down his clothes in frustration. The harsh motion of his palms against fabric grounding him as he reels himself in for what he now confesses to himself as the inevitable. His heart starts pounding, thrumming in his ears, while he steps a few paces back, the others following suit in backing away on their own.
P r e p a r a t i o n.
Unbeknownst to the other mall goers, time slows down. The noise of chatters and pitter patters morphing into muted sounds. Breaths from five people being held as the air all around them starts electrifying. A storm, brewing.
A n t i c i p a t i o n.
With the raise of both his arms by his sides, Levi inhales one big gulp of air. He keeps it in for a few seconds, not only to alleviate the rapid pulsation beneath his ribcage, but to accumulate all the energy required for this daunting task. This task, this duty, that can only be done by him. A blessing, or a curse, he does not know. But it is who he is.
As the third phone.
“ EREN!!! ”
...Nothing happens, bar from the surprised turn of heads from passersby. The world goes back to its normal shit. A collective groan rises up from the group as they slump against the (motherfucking unsanitary) balcony.
“That’s it?!”
“Two minutes!!”
“Mmberm merbmn murmh!!”
“Hanji says they’ll use your spare toothbrushes too, Levi.”
That’s bullshit, Mikasa isn’t even on the phone anymore, but it still has Levi growling out an exasperated exhale as he turns away from the group and runs a single hand through his hair, using his hands to cup around his mouth afterwards. “Eren!! Oi!! You little shit, where the fuck are you?!”
“Mmrhm.” Sasha waves a cheese-dusted hand out, placating the group in the process. Everyone turns to her, except for Levi as he’s currently a man on a mission (“Eren, for fuck’s sake—!”). She finally swallows, darts her head to one side, and whispers, “Do you guys… hear that..?”
“Ha?” Connie brings two hands up to his ears, willing for any soundwaves Sasha somehow processed into his own brain. The others look onwards with varying degrees of curiosity.
That’s when they hear it.
This… this rhythmical…
Thudding.
The thunder of the storm.
R e v e l a t i o n.
“ Brace yourselves!! ” Armin yells. Connie and Sasha jump away to drop and roll, with the latter using her empty bucket as a helmet. Mikasa grabs onto Jean’s jacket and hauls him to the side, the other using his arms to shield her in the process. Armin ducks against the barrier, holding on for his dear life. All this happens in the span of four seconds, right behind the unsuspecting man who’s still calling out a name, and a few choice words one wouldn’t say in front of their mother.
“Fucking hell, he must’ve fallen into a shitter or…” Levi trails off as he turns back around, spotting the state the group’s currently in, and the rapidly growing dot in the distance.
He sighs.
“Ah, shi—”
Levi cuts himself off with a grunt as a figure collides with his own, almost bringing him down if not for the two strong arms wrapping around his waist and lifting him up from the floor to fucking spin him around. His own arms fly to the other’s neck, holding tightly as he buries his head in between the crevices.
“Okay, stop! Stop!! EREN!!” Levi’s muffled voice sounds as the pair spins once, then twice more. Eren’s laughs fill the air as well. Lips press against his temple before he completely succumbs to the dizziness, and he slurs out, “Put me DOWN !”
One last bark of laughter and he finally gets settled back onto the floor. The vertigo has Levi teetering to the side anyway, but the arms around him haven’t left, so Eren adjusts his body to have Levi leaning on him. “Sorry,” he says, and Levi thwacks his head with one of the arms on the other’s neck because Eren is most certainly not apologetic. He laughs again. “You called?”
“Thirty seconds!” Jean screeches from behind them, grabbing a hold of Mikasa’s shoulders and steering her into the entrance of the cinema, with Connie and Sasha trailing after them, all showing their tickets to the employee stationed before barrelling into the theatre. The door swinging behind them as it shuts closed.
“Uh…” Eren gapes at the dust cloud that had puffed into the air in the haste of the others, and Levi grimaces because holy shit this mall is actually unclean.
Armin approaches them and gives Levi a grateful look, and Eren a pat. “Eren, we’ve been calling.”
Eren grimaces. “Ah. Sorry ‘bout that. Phone died.”
“Both of them?” Levi asks. Eren’s response to that is a sheepish grin. He sighs, collapsing all his weight against the other in a fit of defeat. Levi too wonders what the actual purpose of having two phones was if neither were reachable at all.
Armin simply rolls his eyes and walks away. “Well, everyone’s been waiting for you. Let’s just start going inside.” Goddamn those two words—
Eren huffs, arms snuggling more around Levi. “Damn, if they were that desperate to watch already, they should’ve gone without me,” he murmurs. He looks down at his boyfriend. “I don’t even like that movie.”
Levi could only stare back.
A travesty.