Work Text:
Eren’s asleep when the phone rings.
The device vibrates upon his cheap bedside table and the wooden cabinet shudders above his apartment’s creaking floorboards. The sound of his phone’s ringing slips into his dreams with enough jarring force to slide his conscious out of his stupor and into reality.
Even before he opens his eyes, Eren knows who is calling.
By now, he’s marked it as a common occurrence; everyday the same person wakes him from his restless slumber in the middle of the night. He’s too tired to be annoyed and it’s unlike of him. It’s almost as if an unnatural muffled sort of peace has set over him. It’s painful and humiliating for Eren to admit that his lack of anger scares himself more than it would anyone else.
He picks up the phone with a dry throat. He doesn’t answer, doesn't have to.
The line remains quiet. It’s been like this for a while.
Eren can't exactly remember when the phone calls have begun to become silent but he figures it started sometime in the past few days. The strong contrast between the recent calls and the first is almost enough to make Eren laugh. The first day Eren picked up was a call full of frenzy and rage.
“Jean,” Eren had spat out the name in disgust and swiped the sleep from his bleary eyes, “it’s fucking three in the morning-”
“He’s dead.” Jean’s voice was hoarse. It reminded Eren of his own after he had screamed at the top of his lungs for what seemed like hours whilst in a fit of rage.
Jean’s two words were enough to give Eren’s stomach a sickening lurch. His anger tumbled away and all that was left was a high-pitched ringing in his ears. It made him nauseous. He tried to speak but his voice slid out of his mouth and couldn't escape past his lips—all that conjured was the taste of aged bile wrapped against his tongue.
Eren’s silence seemed to float over Jean’s head who continued on with rapid speed. His words were jumbled and they came out in strings of nonsense and mutilated sentences.
Eren didn’t want to listen. His head was spinning in circles and Jean’s voice was only making the ringing in his ears worse. It was selfish and Eren knew that. It felt like cold metal was slicing his skin and for the first time in his life, he was afraid. Terrified that everybody had been right: he never gave a damn for anyone but himself.
Jean’s words slipped in and out of his ears, nothing more than wasted water trickling through fingers—diluted echoes that were impossible to grasp.
Marco. Drunk. Car. Truck. Crash.
“I watched him die right in front of me.”
The crackle of Jean’s voice kicked Eren back into reality.
“He bled out, right then and there. His blood’s all over my passenger seat. You know when you go into those emergency rooms and it reeks of blood and shit? Yeah, like that, my car smells like that. Like the inside of an emergency room. Fucked up, right?” Jean laughed but it was bitter and sickly sounding. It made Eren want to throw up. “It’s all my fault,” Jean spat, but he couldn't keep the shaking out of his voice.
Eren began to tremble and he couldn’t stop the tremors from happening. They ran through his shoulders and threatened to tear him apart.
“It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault,” Jean repeated the words until his voice came out rough like sandpaper silting over a sodden tongue. Until the words ran over one another and fell into each other, slipping off his mouth like hot glue. Until the words meant nothing at all.
“Jean,” Eren attempted but he said nothing more. At that time, his silence was the only thing keeping him sane.
Eren doesn’t even remember how the first phone call ended. Only the soft murmur of the dial tone against his ear is all he can conjure from the bitter memory.
Three weeks have gone by and Jean still calls him every night. Eren is never sure if he’s drunk or sober.
The recurring thought of, “why me?” never fails to cross Eren’s mind but he’s too afraid to ask. He’s scared of what Jean’s answer might be. The only thing he’s sure of is that Jean talks less and less with each passing call—filling the conversation with breaths instead of sentences until he doesn’t speak at all.
Just like yesterday, today’s call is silent.
There are no words. All Eren can hear is the steady rhythm of Jean’s breathing and if he listens really closely, the soft drumming of his fingers against wood. No one speaks, but then again, they don’t have to. Each coexisting end of the telephone line remains hushed, as if cloth is plastered over both microphones.
Eren listens until Jean’s breaths begin to slow and he’s certain he’s asleep, but even then Eren doesn’t hang up. He doesn't hang up even when they begin to breathe at the same pace, both acts of respiration merging together until he's unable to tell which inhale is Jean's and which exhale is his own.
It’s silent, but perhaps silence is all they really need. Just the two together, quiet in the instrumental of the night.