Chapter Text
It’s not unusual for Annie to wake up with a horrific hangover on Saturday mornings, but their regularity never seem to soften the blow. And this one is particularly bad.
“Ah-” she says out loud, wincing as she sits up. Black spots with weird yellow fuzz at the edges obstruct her vision. Her intricate iron bed frame seems to bend and waver before her eyes into a tangle of black spaghetti, and her head feels like it’s splitting down the middle. Suddenly her stomach lurches, and she just barely makes it to the toilet. As she’s throwing up, she reflects on the fact that she always has to hold her own hair. Isn’t she supposed to have some slightly-uglier-gal-pal doing that for her and patting her back sympathetically?
Speaking of gal pals. The bathroom swims before her eyes again as another dizzy spell takes over her, this one laced with memories of Mikasa’s lace dress spread over her own thighs, their mouths mashing together hungrily. Did that really happen? She must be imagining it. Mikasa would never do that. But it seems so real- she can remember the exact scent of her perfume and how her hands had felt all over her. But Mikasa would never do that. Why would she? And why would Annie have gone along with it? Well, to be fair, she had been drunk. But no amount of alcohol could make her kiss another girl, not even Mikasa, no matter how much she’s starting to like her.
She stumbles back to her room, still mulling things over, trying to decide if it had really happened or if in her drunken haze, she’d concocted some incredibly elaborate cross between an illusion and a wet dream. She stands in the middle of her carpet for a second just squinting in the light coming through the balcony window and vaguely trying to remember where she’d been going. Something on her bedside table catches her eye- a folded piece of notebook paper. She walks over and unfolds it.
Hey Annie- so last night Mikasa basically carried you down the stairs and dumped you on us. You were really drunk, your shoes were broken, and there were tear tracks on your face. Being the antisocial shitwad reserved person you are, we understand you probably don’t want to explain what happened to us. But if you do, we’re happy to listen. Reiner drove you home and Bertoldt got you in bed without waking up your dad. Just call us your own personal James Bon Call us if you need anything.
-Reiner and Bertoldt
Annie grips the paper so hard her hands shake. Even in this state, she can put together what this means. Mikasa brought her downstairs. So she’d been upstairs with Mikasa. And she definitely remembers kissing someone in the bathroom after crying a lot. Reiner and Bertholdt said there were tear tracks on her face.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What am I gonna do. Fuck.” She grabs at her hair. How could she have done that? Kissed another girl? Kissed Mikasa? She really likes Mikasa, but not in that way…or does she? Mikasa is amazing. She’s perfect, really- too perfect. She makes Annie feel like she’s everything, somehow. Shit. Is she gay for Mikasa? She’s kissed boys and liked it. She’s never really been attracted to supermodels or the Pin Up girls in Reiner’s posters. But she’s really attracted to Mikasa. She presses her hands to her temples as her phone lights up next to her. She grabs it and reads the message-
Greindr: is it cool if we get u at 6 tonight
This is too fucking much. It’s ten in the morning, she’s having an identity crisis, and Reiner wants to make plans to go do something illegal tonight.
Sure whatever but don’t text me again today
Whats got u in a bitch fit now
I said not to text me again today
She waits a second, but there wasn’t another message. Closing her eyes, she slides back under the covers as her headache pounds on, magnified by the painful light under her eyelids. She kissed a girl. And she liked it. Unbidden, that Katy Perry song starts playing in her head. She wants to scream. Was Mikasa drunk, too? If she wasn’t, she’d remember. Annie doesn’t even have a way of finding out- Hey, I think I may have gotten totally shitfaced a while ago and made out with you. Were you by any chance totally shitfaced too and therefore can’t remember it, except now that I’ve just reminded you, you totally do remember it? She curls even farther into herself. She has to see Mikasa every single day. How are they going to handle this? If Mikasa does remember, will she say something? I’m not going to say anything about it, she decides finally. She’s not going to fuck up a perfectly good friendship, one that she had been really enjoying. She would stay silent, and hopefully it would fade into the background of her life, the way everything eventually did. But nothing ever faded without leaving its mark, and Annie can’t help but wonder if maybe kissing Mikasa would leave a good one as opposed to a scar.
She considers going downstairs for something cold to press against her head, but before she can make that decision, she hears footsteps on the stairs. She quickly drops her phone into the drawer of her bedside table and slides back under the covers, doing her best to look asleep. The footsteps creak sluggishly along the wooden floorboards and stop dead in her doorway. Annie holds her breath. After an extremely long ten seconds, he finally walks away again.
Annie lets out her breath when she hears the telltale squeak that means he’s gotten back into his recliner downstairs. She knows she can’t avoid him all day and she might as well face him now, but she just doesn’t feel up to it. He’ll have questions- prying and scrutinizing, with terrible consequences if she gives the wrong answer. Her phone chimes again and she pulls it out of the drawer.
Hoover Vacuum: hey I know you told reiner not to talk to you again but I wanted to see if youre okay and if you want to talk or whatever.
Annie bites back a groan. There’s another thing- she knows Bertholdt is really into her. How would he feel if he knew she’d kissed Mikasa? Would he be freaked out? Crushed? Would she lose one of her best friends? Goddammit, why is life like this. This is why she never goes anywhere or talks to anyone. Shit like this happens.
Im fine thanks for asking tho
Are you sure?
Yeah
Ok. See you tonight?
Yeah.
Without waiting to see if he texts back, she silences the ringer and puts her phone down again. They’re going out tonight. That means she’ll have to sit in Reiner’s nasty car, and in her current state, she doesn’t feel like doing that at all. She pulls her covers over her head, which has stopped stabbing and is more just throbbing. See you tonight. She doesn’t want to see anyone tonight, especially not for what she and the others are going to do. She wishes she’d never gotten them involved in all this stuff in the first place, but crime is an addiction. It’s a strange concept, but there is something about it that sucks you down like an undertow and keeps dragging you back out before you can even try to get away. Some kids are addicted to drugs. Some are addicted to alcohol. Some are addicted to sex. Reiner, Annie, and Bertoldt are addicted to crime. Sometimes she looks at Sasha and Connie and sees how happy they are and thinks that maybe weed would be a better alternative, but there's no getting away from what she's done now.
She remembers the first time they’d done something. The night it started.
“You are not going to that dance.”
“Why not?” she demanded. She actually didn’t really want to go to the Spring Fling, but it was the concept of the thing. She wanted to go so she’d be able to say she’d worn a short black dress and danced with a boy and left her shoes on the side of a gym floor. She hated dancing, but she felt like she needed to go to at least one. To say she’d done it. To at least have had the experience.
“Because I said,” her father answered.
“Is it because there’ll be boys there? I promise I’ll turn down the thousands of suitors I’m sure to attract,” she said sarcastically.
“I don’t care. You’re not going,” he said. The bottom half of his face was the color of bruises from the stubble he hadn’t shaved in week. A beer bottle was clutched half-heartedly in his hand, and little drops of it sloshed onto the floor. “Tell me, what have you done in the past few weeks to deserve it? Nothing. You don’t do anything.”
“Exactly, I don’t do anything!” said Annie furiously. “So that means I haven’t done anything to deserve not being allowed to go. Why won’t you let me?’
“I told you why!” he barked, then closing his eyes and pressing a hand to his forehead. “Don’t fight me on this, girl. I’ve told you my answer, and that’s final.”
“That’s not fair,” said Annie, her voice low. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. “You can’t stop me.”
“Oh yes I can!” he said, yelling suddenly. He sat forward in his recliner, a shaking finger pointed in her face. “Know your place, girl!”
“Girl, girl!” Annie yelled. “You always just call me ‘girl’! Do you even know my real name, Dad? It’s Annie!”
“Do not take that tone with me,” he growled, lifting himself slowly out of the chair like a dog raising its hackles. Annie resisted the urge to step back. “Go to your room. And don’t you dare talk to me this way again.”
Annie’s eyes stung. “Mom would have let me go,” she said. She didn’t mutter it. She spoke it, loud and clear, and knew immediately that she shouldn’t have. Her father’s face twisted, enraged and horrible. With the foreboding noise of hundreds of springs creaking and bones cracking, he raised himself all the way out of his chair and started taking huge, angry steps towards her, yelling the whole way.
“No she wouldn’t have! Because she didn’t care! She didn’t give a damn about you! Why do you think she left? She couldn’t be bothered to take care of you! She didn’t love you, and she never will!”
Annie’s back was against the wall, her father’s red face too close to hers, spit flying from his gray lips and his eyes screwed into slits of rage. Annie’s chest shook.
“You’re wrong,” she said, her voice shaking. Tears blurred her vision. “Just because she didn’t love you doesn’t mean she didn’t love me.”
There was a sudden, loud smashing noise. Annie screamed and jumped back in fear as her father threw his beer bottle furiously to the floor. Shards of glass flew across the floor, one of them sticking in Annie’s ankle. She looked up at her father’s face, trembling. There was complete silence except for the sound of her shaky little sobs and his heavy breathing.
“You shut your goddamn mouth,” he said, his lips shaking and his teeth gritted. Annie backed towards the door, not taking her fearful eyes off of him as she fumbled with the lock. “Good! Leave! Get out! I don’t want to see your face!” he shouted as the lock clicked open and she ran out the door, not closing it behind her.
He didn’t follow her. She wasn’t sad or freaked out. She was angry. Angry that he would say those things. He was wrong. He was fucking wrong. Her mom loved her. It was her dad that was the bad guy. Right? How much could she really remember? Maybe her dad was right. But- no. If her dad loved her, he wouldn’t have hurt her.
She stopped in her tracks. That’s right. If he loved her, he wouldn’t treat her like this. So that meant he didn’t love her. My dad doesn’t love me, she thought. It felt like a punch to the gut, that realization. It was her and her father alone in that house, and he didn’t love her.
The streetlamps were buzzing over her head as she treaded through the streets. She didn’t know where she was going. Where do you go when you realize your own father doesn’t care about you?
Your friends, she realized. You go to your friends. Even if your family doesn’t care about you, your friends will. She turned around and began walking towards Reiner’s house- it was closest.
The night was silent but for the slapping of her flip-flops on the road. Most of the streetlights here didn’t work, and she squinted into the darkness in front of her to see. Then, out of nowhere, something smashed into her.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going, bitch!”
She could see the outline of a guy now- a stumbling, gangling guy. A drunk guy. She remembered the bottle in her father’s hand. That same bottle being smashed on the ground as he told her that her mother didn’t love her. The tiny crumb of glass still stinging her ankle.
“Bitch, huh?” he said, biting her lip. Then, without another moment of hesitation, she turned- pull your momentum from the ground- swung her fist- keep your thumb outside your fingers so it doesn’t get crushed- and punched him square in the eye.
“Augh! What the fuck!” yelled the guy, holding a hand over his eye. She raised her arm again.
“Annie?”
Reiner and Bertholdt were standing behind the man, staring at her in horror and confusion.
Shit.
“My…my dad,” she said. She felt trapped, a deer in the headlights. Her voice felt disembodied. “He hates me…my mom…the bottle…he threw it at me.”
“Why are you beating up that guy?” asked Bertholdt quietly.
“Yeah, what the hell, you bitch?” he asked, stumbling around.
“He bumped into me, and he’s- he’s drunk, he called me a bitch, I just-” Tears were coming again. “I- I needed to do something! I needed to hit something! Someone! I- I had to!”
Reiner and Bertholdt just stared at her. Her throat felt tight. Then Reiner stepped forward and grabbed the guy under his armpits.
“Ow- hey! What is this?” he yelled, swinging his fists weakly.
“Go ahead,” said Reiner, staring at her. “Take one last hit. Get it all out. I’m serious. If it’ll make you feel better, just do this. Then we’re done.”
Annie stared at him.
“Reiner- Annie-” said Bertholdt nervously.
“What?” she asked swinging to face him. “What do you think I should do? Tell me, please. Bertholdt, please tell me.”
Bertholdt stared at her with eyes that loved her a little too much. “Do it. Do what you have to do. I won’t tell anyone.”
Annie stepped forward.
“Wha…wait…” slurred the guy, looking up at her nervously. She pulled her fist back, put all her weight behind it, and threw it into his stomach. He made a stifled gasping noise, the sort of noise that would’ve been really loud if there had been any air behind it. Annie stared down at him. She felt good. Powerful. There was now one more person in the world who would never fuck with her again.
“Can you breathe?” she asked him.
“I- I’m calling the cops,” he wheezed, sucking in air.
“No you’re not,” Reiner answered. “You’re getting in my car, and I’m dropping you off back in town.” He grabbed the man under his armpits, and, with one very charged look back at Annie, helped him limp down the rest of the way to his driveway.
Bertholdt turned to look at Annie.
“Bertholdt…” she said. She didn’t know what to say. What was there to say?
“Your dad hurt you?” he asked.
“He wouldn’t let me go to the dance,” she said. It sounded so stupid now. “I said my mom would let me, and he got really mad and smashed a bottle on the floor. A shard of it got in my ankle, and I ran away. To here. Then I beat up a guy,” she said, then hugged her arms around herself. Oh God. She’d just beat up some guy.
There was more silence. The left side of Bertholdt’s face was lit up by the moon, his pale lips pressed together and his eyes wary. Finally, he said, “Your ankle? Let me see it.”
They sat down together on the sidewalk and Annie showed her ankle to him. With big, tender fingers, he prodded at the skin around where the glass was stuck. Annie sucked in a breath.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, withdrawing his hands. He looked up at her. “I’m going to try to get it out.”
Annie nodded. Bertholdt pulled out his phone and instructed her to hold it over her ankle. He leaned his face in close, carefully gripped the piece of glass between the pads of his fingers, and slowly pulled it out. A tiny drop of blood sprouted from the cut, burst, and trickled down to her foot. Bertholdt wiped gently at it. Too gently. Annie pulled her foot away.
“Sorry-” he said quickly.
“It’s fine,” she muttered. The atmosphere felt weird now. Annie stared down at her lap.
“I’m glad you got that out of your system,” he said finally. “Sometimes…” He looked away. “Sometimes I want to do that, too. Hurt someone.” Those words in Bertholdt’s voice were jarring.
“Yeah?” Annie asked, surprised. “Why?”
“Usually because someone hurt me,” he responded.
“That sounds right,” Annie replied. The two of them stood up and started walking back to Reiner’s house. They waited for him in his room after hurriedly greeting his half-asleep mother on the family room couch. When Reiner came back, he closed the door behind him and sat down with the two of them on his bed.
“Annie,” he said. “That was fucking amazing.”
Annie cracked a small smile. They talked a lot that night- enough to agree that what she’d done was cool. Yeah, cool. She felt better. Hell, she’d do it again. She’d punch him harder, more. Reiner let her sleep on the floor next to Bertholdt that night, and she’d gone to sleep feeling reassured. That what she’d done made sense, was reasonable, was right. But what she knew was so different from what she felt. And she knew what she’d done. And she knew what she had started, even then.
Two weeks later, Reiner broke up with his girlfriend. Well actually, she dumped him. He wasn’t just angry, he was angry-sad-embarrassed. He needed to take it out on something. Annie and Bertholdt followed a few steps behind him through the nighttime streets as he walked with miserable determination in his footsteps. Finally, they found what he’d been looking for- a road near the school where there were nothing but boarded-up pawn shops and takeout places. He pulled a rock out of his pocket, took aim, and threw it through the window of an abandoned Thai food place. There was an enormous shattering noise as they clapped their hands over their ears and thick slabs of glass cascaded down from under the faded awning. Then it was silent. They all stared around themselves at the wreckage, then looked slowly back up at each other.
“Go,” said Reiner urgently. “Go, go, go.” They took off running as fast as they could back down the street as a car turned around the corner. The cool air and smacking of shoes on pavement echoed in their ears, and they made it back to Bertholdt’s house in five minutes flat.
It took a long time, but Bertholdt finally cracked too. To be honest, Annie hadn’t really thought he’d had it in him, but apparently his father losing his job was enough. They spray painted the brick wall outside of the school with swear words, crudely drawn pictures, and random splotches. It was all anyone could talk about the next day- Oh my God, did you see the wall? I wonder who did it? Dude, it’s actually great. Do you know how much it’s gonna cost to fix that?
And that, Annie thinks, is how they became addicts. It isn’t necessarily the thrill of the crime itself (although that does help), but the fame that follows. The hushed murmurs, and the not-so-hushed ones. The wondering and musing about who’d done it, and the knowledge that it had been them. Walking around amongst the rest of the world, knowing that they’re the mysterious criminals everyone’s talking about, that they have the power to open their mouths and create a scandal- it’s exhilarating.
Annie had lied to Mikasa. Her father isn’t just neglectful- he’s abusive, and she knows it. She’s not blind. But sometimes she thinks she is, because no matter how obvious he makes it that he doesn’t care about her, she can’t ever stop hoping that maybe, just maybe he does. Deep down. Deep down, he has to still care. There’s one memory she has of him- they’re in the backyard, kicking a soccer ball back and forth over the brilliant green grass. She remembers laughing and shrieking as she bounded back and forth to get the ball, and she remembers her father smiling too. What’s more, that was after her mother had left. So she knows he has it in him to be a good father, and she always thinks, if she just gives it a couple more weeks, he’ll turn it around.
Annie reluctantly sits up and pushes the covers back for real this time. Hangover or no, she has to face the world at some point today.
**********
Annie doesn’t know what to expect when she gets to the field for the game- the entire team to be standing in a line with their arms folded and Mikasa pointing an accusing finger at her, probably. But they’re all just standing around stretching- obviously. Obviously. How would they even know? They wouldn’t. They didn’t. They’d better not.
Then she sees Mikasa.
And Mikasa is also stretching and not acting weird.
Maybe because she hasn’t seen Annie yet. Annie’s suddenly not sure- just a few days ago, things had been coming to her so easily with Mikasa, and now she’s back to square one- wondering if it’s okay to walk over to her. Of course it’s okay to walk over to her- they’re the captains. But will she remember? As Annie treks across the field, she can’t decide if she hopes Mikasa remembers or not. She shouldn’t want her too, but…she sort of does. She wants something to happen.
“Hey,” she says, regarding Mikasa nervously. Mikasa stands up and fixes her with a gaze.
“Hey,” she says back. And something in her tone lets Annie know that she remembers. She remembers everything. Fuck. Fuck. She’s so fucked.
Annie drops her bag on the grass and sits down in a butterfly position so she won’t have to look at Mikasa. “So, um, who are we playing again?” she asks, hoping her voice sounds normal. Her throat feels half-clogged, and her face is warm. She feels it just then- that overwhelming sense of self-hate she gets sometimes. In that moment, she hates herself so much. She wants someone to come hit her in the face. She wouldn’t retaliate. She wants Mikasa to slap her in the face, kick her in the stomach, anything. She hates herself- hates herself for doing something stupid, for fucking up something good. And she’d been drunk when she did it. Alcohol. Fucking alcohol. It ruins everything in her life- she wishes she could say she’d learned her lesson and wouldn’t drink again, but she knows that’ll only last until someone offers her a bottle again. She hates herself. She hates herself so much. She-
“Annie? Are you okay?” asks Mikasa, sounding genuinely worried. There’s caring in her voice- caring that shouldn’t be there. But it helps. It makes Annie feel just the littlest better, and just like that, the fog lifts.
“Yeah, sorry, just tired,” she mutters, unfolding her legs and pushing her hair out of her face. She forces herself to look Mikasa in the eye, and to her surprise, she doesn’t encounter any hostility whatsoever. Her eyes are kind, worried, caring- and slightly wary, perhaps, but she doesn’t look upset. “You said Eisenhower, right? Oh, we’ll kick their ass easy. They’re total shit.”
Mikasa laughed. “Don’t jinx it.”
“You believe in jinxing?”
“A little.”
“Dipshit.”
So this is how it’s going to be, Annie thinks as Mikasa calls the team to huddle up. We’re just going to act like nothing happened? I guess I can make that work.
They win the game by a landslide, and afterwards, when the rest of the team has left, Mikasa digs a bag of Goldfish out of her jacket pocket.
“Want some?” she asks, waving it in her face.
“Come on, Mikasa, you know I want some,” says Annie, sticking her hand in. As she’s pulling it out, it brushes against Mikasa’s fingers. Annie stiffens, but Mikasa does nothing. She risks a glance up at the other girl’s face. Her expression is almost unreadable, but Annie thinks she sees just the hint of something- a challenge. Annie sticks them in her mouth and makes a big show of licking her fingers, then looks at Mikasa sideways out of narrow eyes. A devious little smile twists her lips.
“You’ve got a weird look on your face,” Reiner tells Annie when he comes to pick her up.
“Your face looks weird every day,” replies Annie absent mindedly, ignoring Reiner’s splutter of protest. She touches her lips and discovers that she does have a little smile on them. She can’t help it- Mikasa’s finally brought her a new challenge. She hasn’t quite decided what she’s going to do about it, but all that matters is it’s there. A new challenge. A spark. Whatever happened, Mikasa isn’t just going to let it fade, and neither is Annie.
“Turn here,” Bertholdt reminds Reiner, and everything comes crashing back down. That’s right- they’re going to graffiti the wall outside the Burger King tonight. She’d suggested it about a week ago, but now she doesn’t really feel like it. All she can think about is how Mikasa would react if she knew this is what Annie does in her spare time.
“I’m gonna put a great big dick on the wall and write Zach Reynolds on it,” Reiner announces, parking the car between two stuttering streetlights.
“You should be an artist,” Annie deadpans, climbing out of the car without even opening the door. Bertoldt turns on his phone’s flashlight feature, and Reiner holds up the softly clinking plastic bag of spray paint cans. Annie stares jealously at his dark zip-up hoodie, wishing she’d thought to bring something to put on. They creep around past the big windows spilling smudgy orange light to the blackened parking lot in the back, where two shit-heap cars are parked- probably belong to the kids desperately trying to get a wink of sleep behind the counter now. Reiner checks the time, then grabs some cans out of the bag and tosses them to Annie and Bertoldt.
“Reiner!” hisses Bertholdt as he almost drops his.
“What, you’re telling me that after two years on a football team you still can’t catch things when they’re thrown at you?”
Annie can see his cheeks turn pink in the harsh light of his phone. “You should at least give me some warning- if I’d dropped it, someone might have heard it,” he says quietly.
“Nah, their shifts don’t end for another forty-five minutes- no one’s coming out here for at least that long,” said Reiner, shaking his can and popping the cap off. Annie eyes his hoodie jealously as a chilly breeze sweeps through the parking lot. Reiner gets to work immediately blaspheming Zach Reynolds’ name all over the back wall as Bertholdt absent-mindedly sprays some random lines across the left end of it. Annie moves her arm in a huge, satisfying, swooping motion and watches with pleasure as a violently purple heart appears in front of her. As she focuses on thickening the lines, the air around her is silent but for the hissing and occasional rattle of paint cans. She glances to the side and sees Reiner- who’s taken his jacket off and dropped it on the ground, the ungrateful bastard- writing in huge letters, ZACH REYNOLDS IS A COCKSUCKER. Something about this pisses her off for some reason.
“Why the fuck does everyone use that as an insult?” she demands, breaking the silence. Both Reiner and Bertoldt turn to face her.
“What, cocksucker?” asks Reiner in a confused voice, pointing a thumb at the graffiti in front of her.
Annie folds her arms over her chest. “Yeah. What’s wrong with sucking dick?”
Reiner laughs. “Got something to tell us, Annie?”
Annie glowers at him. “No. I just mean that guys seem to think it’s the worst fucking thing they can say to each other.”
“Well, ‘cause it’s saying he’s gay,” Bertholdt says with the voice of a teacher genuinely baffled by the stupidity of his students. Annie feels very defensive and awkward all of a sudden.
“So?” she demands. “Why would you give a shit? Why is that a bad thing?”
Reiner glances from her to Bertholdt as if saying to him, the hell’s she on about? Bertholdt has the nerve, the fucking nerve to shrug at him as if to say, girls, man, I don’t know.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Reiner says finally. “It’s just something people say. You say it. I heard you call Lewis a cocksucker, like, a week ago.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have,” says Annie, feeling like even more of a shitty human being than usual. “Paint over that,” she orders suddenly.
“What, cocksucker?” asks Reiner, looking bewildered. “Why?”
“Because I said,” Annie replies, trying to keep her voice under control. “Just do it, Reiner.”
“Annie, what the fuck-”
“I said to just do it!” Annie yells. Bertoldt flinches, and both he and Reiner look around nervously.
“God, okay,” says Reiner, sounding simultaneously pissed off and apprehensive. He lifts his paint can up, but before he gets the chance to use it, there’s the sound of a door opening and an employee calling out, “Hey, is someone there?”
They all exchange a horrified look.
“Dumbass, they heard you!” hisses Reiner.
“Just go!” Bertholdt whispers as the door opens wider and footsteps advance towards them. Annie and Reiner bend down and gather up as many cans as they can in their arms. They scurry around the right side of the building and press themselves inside the little alcove formed by a maintenance door, shoulders shoved together. Annie doesn’t need to look up to know Bertholdt’s face is turning bright red at the contact. As soon as the footsteps fade away again, she pushes herself out and leads the way back to Reiner’s car. They’re silent on the way back. She can tell that Bertoldt could tell that she could tell and ugh. Everything is tense and weird, again.
Reiner finally breaks the silence to say, “I left my jacket there.”
“It’ll be fine,” Bertholdt says at the exact same time Annie says, “That’s what you get for taking it off.”
They’re silent again, then Reiner turns around to say, “Annie, are you okay?”
“Reiner, keep your eyes on the road,” Bertholdt begs.
“I’m serious, Annie, what was that back there?” says Reiner, ignoring Bertholdt.
Annie lets out a huff of breath, fluttering the hair hanging in front of her face. She watches the flashing lights of the cars outside glitter off her nail polish as she hangs her hand out the window. “Nothing. I just- I mean why is calling someone gay the ultimate insult? It’s so fucking stupid. Why does everyone think it’s such a bad thing to be gay? Like, no one says anything to Ymir and Krista. It’s like you don’t even realize that that word actually means something. Like…gay people are real. They exist.” She stops just in time to realize that not only is she rambling, she sounds really fucking stupid. Reiner and Bertholdt are exchanging their she’s-acting-weird glances again and Annie wishes she were on a different planet.
“Okay,” Reiner says finally. “We won’t say that stuff anymore, we promise.”
“No, I just- you can say whatever you want. Ugh! Shit. Whatever. Never mind, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Just…do what you want,” she says, slouching down in her seat. Her face is red and she feels stupid and embarrassed. Embarrassed. This is so embarrassing. She’s acting so dumb. She feels almost like there’s a wall between her and the boys- they’re all speaking, and asking, and listening, but no one is hearing. Nothing is getting through this wall. The backseat has never felt so isolated. She feels so incredibly tired all of a sudden- she just wants to crawl up and fall asleep.
“Annie,” Bertholdt’s voice, soft and gentle, passes suddenly through the wall. Annie looks up. “If there’s something wrong, please just tell us. I…we want to know. So we can help you. Like we always do. You know we’ll help you. Is it your dad?”
Annie sighs. They mean the best, she knows they do. And she knows they care and will do everything they can to help her. But for once, she doesn’t think they can. “No, everything’s just been weird and stressful lately. Seriously, just ignore me. I’m fine.”
She’s not fine, though, really. She keeps thinking about Mikasa, and thinking about how she keeps thinking about Mikasa, and thinking about how weird/gross it is that she’s thinking about Mikasa so much. What it means about Mikasa. What it means about Annie. She’s pretty sure she knows, but hell if she’s going to admit that to herself. She’d have to rethink her whole…everything. It would be like living her entire life behind red-tinted lenses and then suddenly having them replaced by blue-tinted ones and being told to act exactly the same. Everything would be different, and she doesn’t think she’s ready for that.
“D’you guys want food or anything?” asks Reiner.
“Just take me home,” says Annie tiredly. As usual, Reiner stops the car and lets her out at the top of her street as opposed to in front of her house. Even though her dad is probably out drinking somewhere, she doesn’t want to risk anything. She hurries through her back door, has a slight internal debate when confronted by a can of Coke surrounded by Bud Lite’s, grabs the Coke, and goes upstairs. Her room is huge, but it always feels like a prison. Her dad rules the downstairs while she scampers from room to room up above, trying not to cross paths with him. She hates being in the house period, and she thinks vaguely about how nice it would be to have a car. She does fine stealing money from her dad’s pockets when he’s passed out-drunk, but the money in the account he started before she was born is exactly enough to get her through college. Assuming she gets a scholarship, she’ll need any extra money from it to find her mom- nothing left over to buy a car with.
Mikasa has a car, she thinks. Except it’s more just Eren’s car- she’s actually never seen Mikasa drive it. She thinks about Mikasa driving her somewhere in that car- just the two of them, the windows open, their hair blowing around, the inside warm from the sunlight. Then Mikasa would pull over on some abandoned road surrounded by green grass and wildflowers, and she’d lean over, and-
No. She wouldn’t lean over. They wouldn’t be on some abandoned road. The farthest Mikasa would ever drive her would be to practice and back. God, but she wants that, the sunlight and the car and the flowers and Mikasa. Mikasa more than anything. She’s so confused, she wants to scream.
She downs the rest of her soda, tosses the can across the room into the garbage, and slides down under her covers, fully clothed. She wishes she could say she falls right asleep, but in truth, the thought of Mikasa’s skin on hers keeps her up for hours.