FRIENDS ➳ jean kirstein

029. NEW YEAR'S EVE

Eren — December 31, 2020
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Eren drank to have fun, Charlie drank to get drunk. It was a truth he was well acquainted with. Still, as he watched her do a row of shots that Floch had set out on the edge of the pool table, joint clutched in her other hand, Eren could not help but wince and look away.

He loathed the sight, but he knew that telling Charlie to slow down would be in vain. Ever since she started drinking, she had a habit of getting, quite literally, black-out drunk, and still Eren was sure he had never seen her ingest quite as much alcohol as she did that New Year's Eve (and that included the time he had to haul her out of that swimming pool).

Eren was beyond worried about Charlie; he knew her more-than-usual excessive drinking was an effort to drown whatever she had been feeling ever since her dad up and left again. But she had been refusing to talk about it, insisting that she was fine. Half an hour before, when Eren gently expressed that he thought she'd drank enough, she told him that she was just having fun. But he knew better than that.

"She'll be a nightmare to get home later," Mikasa grumbled. They were in Floch's games room, leaning against the wall. A can of cider and a cigarette were clutched in each of Mikasa's hands respectively.

"I'll get her home, don't worry about it," Eren said. He glanced at the enormous clock that was perched on the wall, and it told him that it was twenty minutes until midnight. He had assumed he and Charlie would kiss when the clock struck twelve, but she didn't seem to be in a fit state to do anything besides collapse on the floor.

There was a chorus of roars of approval as she downed the last shot, slamming the glass down on the edge of the pool table and throwing her arms in the air in triumph. A rosy-cheeked, inebriated Connie clapped her on the back, and Jean Kirstein forced his way through the cheering gathering. With an arm placed on the small of Charlie's back, he murmured something to her that Eren couldn't hear across the room, especially not over the nauseating, mingled sounds of yelling, laughter and god-awful music, and then he led her into the hallway.

"Wanna go for another smoke?" Eren asked Mikasa. "I need to get outside for a minute."

Mikasa's eyes flickered towards the clock. "No thanks," she replied. "I—uh—I wanted to try find Sasha, actually."

If he hadn't known just how embarrassingly huge Mikasa's crush on Sasha Braus was, Eren might have written off the sudden pink flush in her face as an effect of the weed and alcohol she had consumed. With a knowing smirk, Eren gave Mikasa a nudge of encouragement, then excused himself from the games room.

Floch's house consisted of three impressive storeys. Instead of going all the way downstairs, Eren opened some doors and peered inside some bedrooms until he found one that had a balcony and no couples that really should learn how to use locks.

He turned on the bedroom light and dimmed it, casting an easy glow on the simplistic yet expensive furniture. The key was in the balcony door; he turned it, relished in the relieving gust of cold, December air that met him when he pushed the door open. Far below, the hills rolled down until they met field and road, and Eren could see the lights of the town in the distance.

From the pocket of his cargos he produced his case, selecting one of the three joints inside and lighting it. The tobacco tickled his throat, and the weed burned in the most pleasant of manners. Leaning on the glass railing, Eren tipped his head back and exhaled a twisting coil of smoke into the star-freckled sky.

The thunderous noise of the party was a distant hum now. The balcony was in the front of the house, but he could just about hear laughter, joyful squeals and splashing from the pool out back. Eren felt his head begin to swim, lazily swaying from side-to-side. He closed his eyes, allowing the feeling to envelope him. The balcony floor vanished beneath his feet. He was weightless, formless.