Chapter Text
I only made it about four minutes into my shift before I began to taste blood and had to start swallowing – it was safe to assume that I probably looked awful at the moment, if my split lip and hole scraped into the side of my cheek was anything to go by. Armin was still hovering nearby, clearly not convinced by the plethora of 'I'm fine's and 'Don't worry about me's I'd thrown at him, so I did my best to refrain from shuddering as the thick metallic fluid slid down my throat. I was convinced I hid the revulsion on my face pretty well until I looked over just in time to see his baby blue eyes flash away, trying very hard to look as if he wasn't analyzing my every movement.
“Armin,” I sighed, “Please get back to work.”
“I am working.” He replied indignantly, his chin raising up just a fraction.
“You've been picking up the same book and putting it back down for the past two minutes.”
“I'm trying to decide if Watership Down can really be considered a classic or if I should return it to the fiction section.” He fired back, trying very hard to sound convincing even though he and I both knew he had been the one to put that display together in the first place and wouldn't have put anything on the table that he hadn't already thoroughly researched. I rolled my eyes just discretely enough for him to see, but said nothing more.
Most days, being a barista in the cafe located inside the local bookstore where Armin worked was nothing short of a blessing; having my best friend around to talk to whenever there was a lull in business was always preferable to ramming my head into a wall repeatedly to relieve the boredom. In this instance though, I just wished he would give up on trying to ferret information out of me and get back to doing his job before a manager came over and saw what a sub-par job he was doing of stocking and organizing books. Armin, however, was nothing if not persistent; sixteen minutes later, he was still hanging around just a couple meters away from the pastry display case, pretending to rearrange the books sitting on the classics table this way and that before I finally got fed up.
“If I tell you what happened, will you please move on from reverse-alphabetizing that table and actually get to work?” I asked, slightly exasperated.
Armin placed a copy of The Awakening down gently and looked up at me with an annoyingly triumphant smile. “Yes.”
I sighed again, “I fell, okay? I woke up this morning a little late and I was rushing too much and when I walked out the door I was still pulling my jeans up and tripped over one of hems and tumbled down the stairs and crashed to the floor of the lobby.”
“Oh my gosh, Eren!” Armin gasped, “You have to be more careful!”
Armin must have decided that my admittance of my own stupidity was a signal that he was allowed to approach and examine my wounds, as he quickly ducked around the counter and placed a hand on either side of my face before I had the time to back away.
“How did you manage to bloody yourself up this much? The floors of your apartment building are wood, not concrete.” Armin asked, gingerly pressing his thumb to my swollen cheek.
Wincing, I said, “I may or may not have bashed my head into the wall when trying to grab the railing to stop myself.”
“Eren!” Armin scoffed, “You're lucky you didn't break your nose!” I simply hummed an affirmation as he continued his examination, doing my best to keep still as he poked and prodded any bruised or tender areas. Usually, I got annoyed fairly quick whenever anyone tried to fuss over me too much, but for some reason I didn't mind too much when Armin did it. “Did you black out or anything after you fell? Do you have a headache? Are you dizzy? Nauseous?”
“I'm pretty sure I don't have a concussion, if that's what you're getting at.” I said, “I didn't really hit my head that hard, it just scraped off some skin.”
Armin seemed satisfied enough with that answer to stop checking my eyes for pupil irregularity and lowered his hands. “Well, if you're okay you should have at least cleaned up a bit before coming into work.” He said with a slight frown, “You're going to scare off the customers.”
“I, erm, I was going to, but like I said, I was already running late.” I mumbled lamely.
“Maybe you should go to the restroom and at the very least wet a cloth and wipe off that smeared blood.” Armin said, putting his hand up to his own cheek as if he were the one with the skin abrasions. “And you could try to tame your hair a bit too, it's sticking up all over the place.”
I realized I had bit down on my lip when a sharp pain emanated from where the skin had split, and I let out a soft groan as I began to taste blood once more. “Could you maybe grab the first aid kit and help patch me up?”
The look on Armin's face tells me that he probably would have offered anyway if I hadn't asked, and he nods, “Yes, of course. Now you go wash up while I grab the kit and I'll meet you there.”
I shot him a grateful smile and began to make my way over to the public restroom, the feeling of dread I had done a good job of avoiding thus far finally settling over me and growing heavier with each step. I hadn't completely lied to Armin when I had told him that the reason I hadn't cleaned off my face, I really had been running late and if I had gone back up to my apartment I probably would have gotten into some trouble with our boss, but that wasn't the whole truth either. Neither was my reasoning for asking him to accompany me to the restroom.
It wasn't that I couldn't fix myself up on my own, it was that I really, really did not want to be alone in front of a mirror.
Steeling myself as best I could for what was to come, I shoved open the men's restroom door without stepping inside, listening to see if anyone else happened to be in there already. Luckily, I was met with only silence, and after allowing myself one more moment of hesitation, I stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind me. It wasn't as if I wasn't prepared for what I was going to see when I glanced over towards the row of three mirrors hanging directly above a line of porcelain sinks, but somehow no matter how many times I did this I couldn't squash the teeny tiny part of me that believed this time might be different.
I couldn't seem to shut up that little voice in the back of my head telling me that maybe, just maybe, when I look in the mirror I'll see my own reflection staring back at me.
Of course that little voice was swiftly and effectively cut off the moment my gaze fell upon the figure staring back at me from his place behind the mirror's glass.
He was striking, to say the least, but almost eerily so. Under the fluorescent lighting of the bathroom, his skin had almost a deathly look about it, reminiscent of a corpse in more ways than one; the near translucently pale skin was stretched tight over his angular visage, creating hollows beneath his high cheekbones and dramatic shadowing over the planes of his face. This only managed to call more attention to his already too-conspicuous eyes; framed by the ebony locks that hung on either side of his face, his irises appeared to be made up of pure silver, their brightness contrasting starkly against the deep dark circles that resided beneath them. Though his eyes were bright with something I couldn't decipher, his straight eyebrows and already thin lips pressed into an even thinner line gave him a perpetual expression nonchalance, which never failed to anger me. Worse than that was the fact that he could almost be considered beautiful, but there was a strange, ethereal quality about him that kept that adjective at bay.
“Wow kid, you're a mess.” came his low, modulated voice, “Did your foot catch on something on your way down the stairs this morning?”
“Shut up.” I groaned, stepping forward to run the tap. He often made small comments like that, sounding completely offhanded but hitting too close to the truth for it to be coincidence. It often felt like he wasn't limited to only observing me when I stood in front of a mirror, which was a scary thought that I chose to ignore more often than not.
This whole thing started just over a month ago. At first, the changes were very slight, like how I began to notice that when I looked in the mirror it appeared as though I had lost weight- my cheekbones were protruding slightly, my ribs and collarbone were more pronounced when I lifted up my shirt. Before long though, the alterations in my reflection began to get more drastic: my lips appeared to have thinned a bit, my skin looked paler, my hair got darker, little changes that I tried to dismiss. For the most part I did a pretty good job of ignoring these odd adjustments, passing them off as a trick of the light or perhaps an illness, but one day I noticed the eyes in my reflection had changed from their usual teal to a molten silver and that was when I knew something was very, very wrong. Not long after that, he seemed to give up on mimicking my appearance altogether, instead favoring the appearance I saw before me today. Since he had stopped trying to impersonate me, he instead took to occupying his time with verbal harassment - oftentimes he targeted my appearance, making snide remarks that I couldn't really form a rebuttal for because I honestly had no idea what I looked like since he was, you know, monopolizing the space where my reflection should have been.
Such was the case today.
“Not that your face isn't always a train wreck, but you should at least try to clean yourself up a bit; if you don't do something about that split lip of yours you're going to end up bleeding on your shirt, which would be disgusting.” he said, lip curling up in clear antipathy.
Every fiber of my being wanted to completely ignore my bleeding lip now just to spite him, but I had told Armin I was going to at the very least wash off the blood before he came to help fix me up, so I had no choice but to yield. I could feel myself glowering as I tore off a sheet of paper towel to run under the tap, and when I turned back to face the mirror, the man was looking at me with clear amusement in his eyes, as if he was entertained my the small tantrum I was throwing. I had to resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him.
Armin entered the restroom then, causing me to whirl around, bracing my arms against the sink and widening my stance as if I were trying to hide the person residing in the mirror from view. He seemed to take note of my odd behavior, a concerned crease running between his eyebrows before saying, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, are you okay?”
“I, erm, yeah, yeah, I'm fine.” I replied, willing my heart rate to slow down. Behind me, I could hear the man in the mirror let out a sharp huff that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Luckily Armin seemed not to hear him, instead pulling open the box of first-aid supplies and beckoning me closer. My eyes automatically flashed behind me, wondering if Armin would be able to see the figure behind me if I moved away- for some reason I was still clinging to the vain hope that he was not all in my head and when Armin looked into the mirror he would find the same strange man staring back at him.
As if reading my thoughts, his voice came from behind me saying, “He can't see me, if that's what you're worried about.”
I couldn't tell if I was relieved by that information or not.
Regardless, I stepped forward and let Armin swipe my open wounds with an antiseptic pad and smooth a bandaid over my cheek with the pads of his thumbs, absently thinking how lucky he was to be oblivious to the gaze I could feel boring into my back from behind. “Are you hurt anywhere else that you haven't told me about?” Armin asked, his fingers working their way through my tussled hair, trying to tame the unruly locks. Those words were nostalgic somehow, taking me back to when we were younger, sitting on his porch steps after school and him patching me up after various altercations with a whole slew of individuals over the years; oftentimes I would insist that I was fine, just to have him quit fussing over me, but he always managed to figure out where I was hurting one way or another. He had always been ridiculously observant and attentive to others' needs, so it was of little surprise to me when he decided to go to school to study medicine and become a pediatrician.
“I think that's everything, Dr. Arlert, thank you.” I said playfully, moving away from his reach. “You should probably get back to work though, I really don't want you getting in trouble because of me.”
Armin rolled his eyes, but smiled nonetheless, “Don't worry, I told Hannes you got a little roughed up when I was grabbing the first-air kit and he said to take my time.”
“Well, I don't want to keep you any longer than I have to, and aside form my splitting headache, I think I'm going to be fine. Thanks, Armin.”
“I'm just glad you finally broke down and told me so I could help you before you ran into Mikasa- you know if she would have found you first, you'd already be sitting in the emergency room.” Armin said teasingly.
Unfortunately, Armin was probably right, and I winced at the thought. “She's probably still going to flip when she sees my face.”
“The swelling should go down significantly by the time your shift is over,” Armin said, latching the first-aid box up again, “by the time she comes to pick you up you won't look half as alarming as you did when you walked in this morning. I don't think she'll bother you too much about it.”
“I hope you're right.” I sighed, trailing behind Armin as he made his way out of the restroom.
I had almost forgotten about the man in the mirror entirely until I heard a quiet, “See you soon, brat.” follow me out as the door swing closed behind me.
Worse still, I couldn't decide if those words were meant to be a promise or a threat.