Crumbling Walls | Erwin Smith x Reader 18+

Chapter 6

So Clear

As always, you find yourself walking along that all too familiar path. Your feet taking steady steps, heart mimicking them in beats. But your regular companions seem to be having a change of pace tonight.

Because the moon isn't big and bright in the sky, but merely a crescent, too young and too shy to show. The crickets you used to hear are not around tonight— due to the increasing cold they all gone hiding— you think to yourself. So it's only you, walking on your own. Accompanied by nothing but your thoughts this time. And that deep, still burning fire that he had ignited inside your body that you're still struggling to put out. To ease and control.

Earlier this evening, you walked yourself out of the headquarters and straight to your dormitory. You were fully aware of your hunger, as your stomach kept on grumbling, but you were also aware that you had missed dinner hours. And there was no point in going there so you might as well head to bed and call it a night.

As if...

Because how could you close an eye and sleep? When only two hours ago you were sat over his desk, legs wide apart and him stretching you like never before! The thought of it all still gave you a tingly feeling in the pit of your stomach. Still made the blood rush in your veins and made your skin heat under your clothes. No matter how much you wanted to ignore this feeling.

But what really kept you awake, the real reason you couldn't settle your mind to rest, was this shift happening in you. The one you refused to fathom so bad, ever since that night with him. When he remembered you and your brother. How you thought it was too late. Too, too late. To see him, that ruthless and heartless man you once saw, in a different light. From a different angle.

But now I do!!

Because he did not only remember your brother's death, but also respected it. And honored it by making it a principle of his own. You didn't realize it yet, but what happened back there at that office, what he had said to you, was actually making you switch sides against your will. While your head was still in the gray, still fighting this new idea of him, not sure what's it gonna be. Your heart, on the other hand, was willingly surrendering, flourishing and nurturing that small seed that encounter had implanted inside your chest.

Respect...

Your chest lets out a heavy exhale and you pull your mind out of the maze of your thoughts to see that you had finally reached the field and are already stepping into it. It's dark, way darker than how it used to be on the nights you came here. How you met him, twice, under that bright moon. On accident, of course.

Or maybe not?

Maybe he always comes here to sit at night, you thought about this a lot. Maybe he likes sitting alone to clear his head under the moon?

So this's why you're coming here tonight as well, because you couldn't sleep and are in a desperate need to see the reason why you couldn't sleep. To talk to him, and let him ease that chaos in your head, that conflict your body and mind are going through.

Or maybe I want to make it worse?

Maybe, just maybe, I was itching and craving that war inside of me for him...

So you walk and walk, further into the dark, chilly field. Squinting your eyes to see a little better as you go. But that doesn't last for long because to your surprise, or not actually, you see at the end of that yard, at the far left side, where that familiar bench is sat, a torch had already been lit and burning. It's amber flames flickering and ascending towards the dark skies.