ʟɪɢʜᴛ ꜱᴘᴇᴇᴅ | 𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣 𝙟𝙖𝙚𝙜𝙚𝙧

13. 𝙒𝙃𝘼𝙏 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙃𝙀𝘼𝙍𝘿

013, 𝙒𝙃𝘼𝙏 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙃𝙀𝘼𝙍𝘿

if u see any spelling errors or inconsistencies no u don't.

.⋆𐙚 🍒

I'VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD HOW PEOPLE DO IT.

How they unbutton their lives in the middle of crowded rooms, letting the contents spill like pockets turned inside out—crumpled receipts, torn photographs, half-healed bruises offered up without flinching. As if their hearts were built without locks. As if vulnerability were second nature, not something you had to rehearse in the mirror with shaking hands.

I see it sometimes—snippets of strangers and near-strangers, people I orbit but don't quite touch. They make it look effortless. Like peeling back your layers isn't a risk. Like the quiet that follows won't turn on you.

But I've never known how to do that. My stories calcify in my bones before they make it to my mouth. They gather dust in the corners of my chest. I hold them like secrets no one asked for. Like weapons. Like prayers. They echo in my skull with nowhere to land. No map. No audience.

Even with the people I care about—however few they are—it never feels easy. There's always that split-second pause before I speak, that mental edit, that tightening in my throat like my body's not sure if letting go is worth the aftermath. I don't trust words the way they do. I don't trust that if I hand someone the softer parts of me, they'll know what to do with them.

It's strange, isn't it? To be known and still feel hidden. To feel so deeply and not be able to express it. To want to say everything and end up saying nothing because the translation from heart to mouth never comes out right. Like I've got a language only I can speak, and no one else hears it the way I meant it.

Friday mornings are usually peaceful.

But when Hitch Dreyse wants answers, peace doesn't stand a chance.

My door slams open like it's been kicked. Cold air rushes in like punishment, slicing through the warmth of my blankets like a blade. I barely have time to register the sound before I hear her footsteps—fast, irritated, too purposeful for this hour—and then comes the impact: her knee digging into the mattress, the covers lifting, her entire body worming in beside me like she owns the space.

Which, to be fair, she kind of does.

Before I can blink, she's under the blanket with me, practically shoving me into the wall. Her skin is ice-cold and her hair smells like peppermint coffee and leftover lip gloss. There's a chill clinging to her like static electricity, and it jolts against my warmth the second our shoulders touch.

I groan into the pillow. "Hitch—Jesus fuck—"

"Alright," she says, voice low and lethal, like she's been rehearsing it all night. "I gave you over a day to figure your shit out."

She flips the blanket over both of us and yanks it high, like she's preparing for war beneath the safety of fleece.

"You need to tell me what the fuck you were doing with Eren Jaeger yesterday—and why the fuck you left like that."

I sigh. Loud. Long. Dramatic enough to make a point. But it doesn't deter her. Nothing ever does.

"He asked me if I wanted to get food and I said sure," I mumble, voice still raw from sleep. "Then I left because I had a shift at the café."

She scoffs, full-bodied and entirely unimpressed. "You always have a shift. You've had shifts since the day I met you. That's not a real excuse, that's your emergency exit from human interaction."