[🌸] Admit It | Riren/Ereri AU

20 | when i'm with you pt. 1

edited by rakaianovelette
* * *

By the time Eren heard the news of Buddy’s death, he had a meltdown of his own. It had taken me a few days to tell him, and it pained me to stress the words that I didn’t want to admit were true.

I didn’t know how the words were so natural for someone to say. I didn’t know how any words were so easy to say. People always seem to have the right words, as if they had been expecting for the event to happen and were prepared to say them. Be it a family death, the death of a friend, or someone you never knew, the words can be said so easily, but here I am, days later, choking on every syllable.

I didn’t cry in front of Eren, I tried not to at least. I told him over the course of an hour, and he was patient the whole time. It was a painful hour, filled with deep silence and heavy thinking. The situation was inevitable, I had to tell him sooner or later; and if it wasn’t I that told him, it would have been Farlan.

I had to tell Eren about my mother too. She would be released from the hospital today with only a few scratches and minor bruising. I was relieved to hear that she at least had made it out okay, and I remember visiting her after everything was over, even though I hadn’t quite known how to order my thoughts then either.

My mother was the one that told me that I had to be the one to break it to Eren first, and it was requested by Isabel that no one say anything until I did. Isabel believed that it would be a better coping mechanism that I be able to speak about it to someone I cared about the most before I myself was able to properly grieve.

So after an hour, I was able to tell Eren the truth before I had broken into uncontrollable sobbing and hiccuping. My plan obviously didn’t work, and my anger at myself fueled my emotions. Though I hid my face as best I could, not wanting the broken man inside me to show, I ended up running out of the room, dashing down the hallway to Farlan’s dorm where he waited for me with open arms and didn’t ask a single question.

I will never truly understand how people could just say it, or even be okay with talking that way in front of others, because I certainly couldn’t. The words felt dirty on my mouth. I couldn’t pull myself together to say a sentence that was easy for everyone else to say. I may have said it to Eren, to Farlan, Isabel and even to my mother. I just couldn't say it to myself. I refuse to admit he is gone, I refuse to wake up and enter reality, even so I want this all to be a bad dream.

Should I stay asleep and pretend that he had never left, or wake up and face the truth that my best friend was gone?

* * *

“Levi, you have to eat something. Here, have some left over Jell-O from the hospital—” a finger is pointed at the half filled bag of Jell-O from the hospital “—the nurses gave me loads of it,” says my mother who stood in the center of the kitchen, preparing herself a meal.  

It has only been a few hours since Farlan dropped us off at home. I said I’d be the one to help her settle back in after spending several days cooped up inside the hospital. Farlan said he had things to do, so it would work out fine.

Unfortunately, for me, Isabel had to open her mouth to say that I hadn’t eaten well ever since, well, that day. The whole situation made mother worry about me and take notice of more things than I wanted her to. This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid. I wanted her to feel anything but worry for me.

“No thanks,” I still reply, my mind being elsewhere.

My mother turns to face me, her eyes soft. There’s a small cut on her left cheek, near her eye, and I could still see some swelling from where a piece of glass was removed. Every time I’ve seen that scar since the accident, a part of me aches inside. I give her a forced smile, apparently more obvious to her that it was weak and bland.