Chapter 7

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Reiner didn't mean to fall in love with her - he didn't even mean to like her. She had festered her way into his heart, pushing past his anger and sadness. She moved through him with such expertise that he had no time to push her out. He tried, he truly tired, to look over her, but how could he? How could he possibly not love her?

She was brilliantly radiant. Her smile burned brighter than the sun and her laugh was more beautiful than music. She held such a delicate aura of grace around her as she walked, as she talked. She didn't even try and Reiner fell hopelessly in love with her. Helpless to his own feelings, angry that he couldn't control himself enough around her.

He couldn't do anything but lose himself to her.

To her love.

Because she loved him, she loved him.

She loved him.

She loved him.

She -

"I love you, Reiner."

Those words broke him so easily. They slipped past her lips and cracked him wide open, his love pouring out of him. Her unwavering affection pressed against the barriers of his heart and he wasn't strong enough. His walls caved and she came crashing through. Sweeping through every broken heart, drying every tear, kissing every wound. She eased him as he cried, held him while he fell apart. She didn't fix him, but she made him want to fix himself.

Her love - pure and undying - loved him with such certainty, such conviction, that he began to love himself.

To the very face he wished he could rip off, the very body he worked until exhaustion, the very skin he could only see stained with faceless blood - she loved it all. Her. Perfect, ethereal, beautiful, gorgeous. Her. She loved him. All of him. There was no part of him that was not set a glow by the very light of her smile, no bubbling darkness that was not tamed by the hold of her warmth. She loved him. Him. Reiner.

If she loved him then there just had to be something beautiful about him too.

Such a beautiful creature could only love others like her, and while he did believe that he didn't deserve her, he couldn't help the small part of him that began to bloom. The part of him that believed that he did deserve her, that he was worthy of her, of her blinding love. He burned for her, burned for her eyes, for her smile.

He wanted nothing more than for her to be his forever, to just love her. To hold her. He wanted to stay within the thralls of her addicting orbit, bathe himself in her sunshine. He wanted her to tear him apart and build him back up, he wanted her to hold the pieces of his heart with her warm, loving hands. She didn't even have to give them back, he didn't want her to give them back.

She was far more than just a lover - more than just a love of his life. She was the love of his life. She was completely and utterly his everything. She was warm in his veins, depolluting his blood of anger. A gentle angel that pressed butterfly kisses upon his skin with a smile, filling him with such beauty that Reiner was set aglow. A gentle angle that captured his tears as they fell upon her sunshine skin, blowing away his sadness with the smallest puff of air against his ears to huff out, "I love you."

How could he not love her back? How could he not love her first?

It was impossible, he already tried.

__________

Reiner felt his face burn, a blush that fanned down to his neck, dipping well below his collar. He tried to focus on the chatter around him. The mindless noise that floated around the Mess Hall, but it was so very hard. His heart was hammering in his chest, threatening to dance up his throat and fall into the plate of grimey soup just below him. There was so much - too much - that Reiner could have chosen to focus on, but he didn't.

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