ʟɪɢʜᴛ ꜱᴘᴇᴇᴅ | 𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣 𝙟𝙖𝙚𝙜𝙚𝙧

26. 𝙉𝙊𝘽𝙊𝘿𝙔 𝙂𝙀𝙏𝙎 𝙈𝙀

026, 𝙉𝙊𝘽𝙊𝘿𝙔 𝙂𝙀𝙏𝙎 𝙈𝙀

.⋆𐙚 🍒

ANGER IS A FIRE I WAS BORN INTO.

It is my inheritance, passed down like a bone, like blood. My mother carried it in her voice, sharp and surgical, cutting me open with words she called discipline. My father carried t in silence, in the heavy slam of a door, in footsteps that never came back down the hall. Their anger bled into me before I ever had the language to name it—before I even knew there was anything else to feel. 

I learned to speak it fluently. Learned that rage was safer than sadness, that fury was harder to abandon than hope. Love flickers, but anger endures. It smolders under the skin, seeps into the lungs, becomes a second heartbeat.

And it's back now—alive and merciless—because of him. Because of that night, the haze of smoke and exhaustion, my head on Eren's shoulder, when he told me about last August. About the rooftop. About how we had already met, an entire year ago, at some party I'd been too drunk to remember.

The spark caught then. Because how could be not tell me sooner? How could he look at me for weeks with that familiarity in his eyes, let me question my own sanity, while he carried the truth in silence. I thought I was imagining it—the way he seemed to know me too well, to catch my thoughts before they reached my lips. I thought it was a trick, a game, that maybe he made every girl feel this way.

But the deepest scorch came from myself. That I forgot. That I let it all slip into ash, while he remembered every flame, every word, every moment. He carried it like embers in his chest, glowing steady, while I was nothing but charred blankness.

So I tried to douse it. To smother the blaze with distance, with silence. I shoved him away, begged him to leave me alone, as if keeping him out could keep me from burning alive. Vulnerability is an open flame, and that night I was engulfed. I don't even know how much I spilled—about my parents, my childhood, about Finch. Maybe everything. Maybe too much.

And everyone who's ever walked into that fire has left me in the smoke. My mother. My father. Finch. Why would Eren be any different? Better to push him out before he smelled the charred ruin of who I really am and decided it was safer to leave.

But tonight the fire caught again. Stronger. Hotter. He struck the match without even trying. He made my heart race. He let me pour gasoline over my scars—about the first man who ever hurt me—and instead of running, he swore he would never add to the burn.

It should have meant nothing. Promises are paper. They always burn. I stopped trusting them years ago, watching them crumble into ash in my hands.

And yet—God, I want to believe this one. I want it so desperately that I find myself leaning toward the fire instead of away. Let it scorch me. Let it consume me. Because for the first time, I want to believe there's a flame that won't destroy me.

The key scraped metal—thin and bright in the hush of the hallway—then bites. Eren turns it. The lock gives with a soft click, the door sighs open, and the apartment exhales with a mix of Eren's scent and clean laundry. The entrance is narrow, a small opening we have to slip through together. 

My shoulder brushes against Eren's. My hip knocks against him. His jacket hangs heavy on me, all varsity glory weight and his scent baked into the lining—spearmint, smoke, and now cherry. Heat. It makes me dizzy in a way that has nothing to do with the burn of the weed or the fading alcohol in my bloodstream.