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theragethatisdesire · 1 month

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quick bright things - eren jaeger x afab!reader, 18+!!

okay hi. after my many-months writing hiatus, i am offering up this humble creation. welcome to the world of quick bright things, caught somewhere between a fairytale and a shakespeare play and a priceless piece of jewelry. this was inspired by....a lot of things, from midsummer night's dream to saltburn to the secret history to romeo & juliet like, you name it and i've probably crammed it in here. eren is a lot different than i normally write him (or read him, for that matter), i hope you all find him as lovely as i do! this will be 2 parts (for now...), i'm not sure what else to say except i'm happy to be back and i hope you all love part 1 ₊˚⊹♡

pairing: eren jaeger x reader

wc: 10.4k

DISCLAIMER: this post contains MATURE CONTENT that is intended only for those over 18. if you are a minor, please do not read below the cut.

cws: alcohol, swearing, smut, fingering, reader has female anatomy, wet dreams, allusions to cannibalism (idk that's a stretch it's more of a metaphor), exhibitionism, cum-eating, creepy stepsiblings, rich assholes, throat-closing amounts of sexual tension, i honestly don't even know what to put here

without further ado...

"Last year I abstained / this year I devour / without guilt / which is also an art."

“Now don’t forget: university is for discovery, for adventure.” Your mother tucks the front of your shirt into your skirt, tugs at your collar until it’s sitting prettily against the cliff of your collarbones. It’s not a good fabric, this shirt; it’s cheap and scratches uncomfortably at the summer sunburn still lingering on your chest. “It’s for finding your passions, your life path, yourself…”

“Darling, you’ve been philosophizing since breakfast. You’re going to give the poor girl a conniption.” Your father chuckles lightly, swinging the hammer at the wall of your dormitory and finishing the hanging of one of your many posters over your creaky, lofted bed. The posters are bright and colorful, almost garish in the pristine, ancient light pouring in from the windows. With a slow blink, you realize you’re going to take them down later, that they feel incongruous with the dust particles and the oak furniture.

“It’s alright, really.” You manage a smile of compromise, lips clamped tight to hold the flutter of nerves in your throat at bay. “I think I’ve got it from here.”

There’s an expectedly teary goodbye, a small monologue from your father about how much you’ve grown, and a few reminders from your mother to separate the darks and the lights when you do laundry, to focus on your studies. Just before she slips out behind her husband, she grabs you by the shoulders and presses her lips to the side of your head, kisses a blood-red print into the shell of your ear.

“Don’t forget. Find something.”

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

Whether it started with that conversation or with the buildup that accompanied the thirty-six months of monotonous paper-writing and numb boredom of your first three years at Oxford, you can’t be sure. In truth, maybe your first three years weren’t all that boring, and they only seem so by comparison of everything that came after, but you can’t be entirely sure of that either.

What you can be sure of is that something down the line—between meeting Sasha in that class on Milton and squeezing her hand as the plane landed and the dozens of bottles of champagne you’ve consumed over the last weeks—something led you to this moment, standing in this kitchen somewhere outside Verona with your bare feet against the hot clay tiles, staring at the sharp angle of an unfamiliar, tanned collarbone.

He’s coated in linen: a half-unbuttoned, burnt-orange drape of a shirt is rolled carefully up around strong forearms, and one large, boyish foot peeks out from his baggy jeans, propped up on its throne upon the opposite knee. A golden cross winks at you from his chest, nestled in the sparsest dusting of chest hair and dripping with the same peach juice that’s sliding down his Adam’s apple, from his strong chin, from the crooked smirk that’s pointed at you like a knife.

You recognize him before he speaks– this must be Eren. Sasha’s mentioned him enough times: the shock of rich, dark hair, the lakewater eyes, the way he leans back in his chair like a king and cocks his head like a trickster. This is Eren, and you tell him so.

“Guilty.” The sun compliments everything about him but his smile, a little too sharp with too much danger behind it. It’s a smile made for moonlight. “And you are?”

A memory surfaces in your mind, a cautionary childhood tale. “You can never let a fairy know your name,” Emma tells you, graver than death, crouched in the bushes beside you, “or they steal you away, and you can never be human again.”

“Well?” Eren says expectantly, head leaning even further to the left. He’s studying you, the baggy linen pants pooling around your toes and ruby-studded ears poking out of a fray of frazzled bedhead. You feel naked, feel a wild urge come over you and wonder how his eyes would glow at you if you were. You shiver, goosebumps raising in the stuffy summer air. When his lips twitch, you realize Eren’s noticed; you feel feverish.

You mumble your name at him, as if it’s something given unwillingly. Waking the espresso machine seems like the right thing to do with your hands, and you’re grateful for the noisy mechanical sounds it provides to shatter the still morning. You bring an absentminded hand to rub over the tip of your ear, feel if it’s grown to a point yet.

“We haven’t met, have we? I feel like if we had, I’d remember.”

God, you wish he’d stop talking.

“Well, do you go to Oxford?”

“Sometimes.” You roll your eyes, and he laughs, little bells and glass shattering. “I’ve been abroad for the last semester. I flew in from Egypt a couple of weeks ago.”

“Hm,” you hum to yourself, choosing a small red cup for your morning coffee. You aren’t sure what to say; the most exotic place you’ve ever visited was a seaside town three hours from your house.

You can hear his newspaper crinkling; the sound of him putting it down betrays his arrival behind you, but you still don’t expect the puff of warm breath over your shoulder. He comes into your space like he belongs there, like there’s never been a door that wasn’t held open for him to stride through. “Are you still asleep?”

Before you can answer, you hear a shriek from down the hallway, and you breathe a little sigh of relief, thanking whatever ancient gods that belong to the hills you’re in for the interruption. Venus springs to mind, and you swat her and her entourage of Graces away from you with a huff.

“You absolute asshole!” Historia comes barreling into the kitchen, dramatic, fluffy dressing robe spilling out into the unrelenting summer heat behind her. You realize that in the three weeks you’ve spent with her, you haven’t once seen her in the actual kitchen, watching the way the breakfast chef’s eyes widen at the sight of her as he hurries by with an armful of eggs.

“Stori!” Eren elegantly catches her best attempt at a tackle with the good grace you assume he does everything with, breaking out into a warm peal of laughter. “Since when do you not love a surprise?”

“Since always.” Historia’s face is scrunched up where she’s buried it into the crook of his neck, forehead red with the effort of squeezing Eren as hard as she can. “You could have at least called, I mean– ugh, I didn’t even get the chance to get your favorite–”

“Relax.” Eren urges her, rubbing soothing circles into the small of her back. He carries them both over to his seat, plopping down and curling her up in his lap like a child. Eren holds his cup of coffee to her lips temptingly, and Historia shoves it away with another scowl. You hide your giggle at her antics behind your espresso, not wanting to remind them of your presence, but enjoying the show all the same. “Brat.”

“Ow,” Historia hisses when he pinches her thigh, expression lightening when she catches sight of something on the wall. “I always forget how pretty the kitchen is here.”

“Where’s your brother?”

“Still getting dressed.” Historia’s blue eyes turn to the frescoed ceiling with an irritated huff. “You know he can’t stand to be seen in his pajamas.”

“That’s because he doesn’t wear any,” Eren remarks with an eye roll of his own. “You could have called to let me know we’d adopted such a pretty houseguest for the summer.”

Your face burns with acknowledgement, and you can feel your toes curling into the clay bricks of the floor hard enough to scrape the tip of your pinky. Eren seems satisfied at your bewilderment, letting his eyes drag over your hardly-covered chest lazy as a wandering mouth.

“Why would anyone wear pajamas under those heavy duvets? It’s almost thirty-two degrees out.” Armin breezes in in a feigned display of nonchalance, but you can see the way his eyes skim over Eren like a ship narrowly avoiding an iceberg. The Titanic was inevitable, and so is the gravity of Eren sitting golden on the other side of the room.

“You look good, Min.” Eren squints his eyes at Armin’s shirt, nearly identical to his own. “Where’d you get that?”

“You left it last summer,” Historia hums, tucking her head under Eren’s chin and nuzzling into his chest more completely. Armin makes a soft snort of irritation, grabbing for a fig in the bowl of fruit on the counter and beginning to rummage through the cabinet drawers.

“Do you want half a fig?” Armin’s cool gaze slides to you, and you shake your head, feeling a little underwater as two lifelong relationships unfurl in front of you, your mind still fuzzy from last night’s wine. “Historia?”

Historia says no as Eren says yes, and Armin makes his sound of annoyance again before continuing his rummaging, muttering about the inconvenience of finding a knife.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” Sasha, still disheveled with sleep and grinning bright as Christmas morning, pops her head around the doorway. “Shouldn’t you be overseeing the construction of your pyramid?”

“I’m not dead, Sasha,” Eren laughs—it really is distracting when he does that—pulling Sasha onto his other knee, ignoring Historia’s grumbles of discontent. The NYU Men’s Lacrosse t-shirt that Sasha cropped too short rides up, exposing the swell of her breast, but no one acknowledges it. Eren’s hand tucks in snugly around the curve of her hip, easy and natural, and you wonder if his fingers have ever itched to travel up under the hem of her tiny sleep shorts.

“Not dead yet.” Historia glares up at him venomously, reluctantly making room for Sasha to pile onto Eren and smother his face with kisses. Sasha pulls away from him suddenly and frowns.

“Peaches?”

“Where are the knives in this fucking kitchen?” Armin’s growl of frustration is loud enough to make you jump, and Sasha giggles at you.

“Jesus, Armin, you’re going to kill her, and it’s not even noon.” Sasha slips off of Eren’s knee, practically bouncing over to where Armin’s viciously jiggling a locked drawer. She slides open the drawer next to him and draws a long, wide knife from it, passing it to him with the blade extended and her eyes on you. “Did you meet Eren?”

“Careful of his hand!” Historia squeals, shooting an arm out towards Armin as if she can deflect the tip of the blade from across the room.

“It’s fine, Stor.” Armin’s voice floats across his nearly-bare shoulder, mild and careless as it grazes the collar of the too-big button down sliding off of his slim frame.

“That knife’s a little big for a fig, Sasha.” Eren stands, placing Historia on the table and pinching her cheek when she scowls at him.

“There’s no such thing as a too-big knife– listen to me. Did you meet Eren?” Sasha’s fingers are gripping into the flesh of your arm– hard. Your eyes widen in surprise at the urgency in her eyes, like if you haven’t been introduced to Eren, there’s grave danger afoot.

“We met.” It happens quickly and easily, the slide of his heavy arm around your shoulders. You can feel your body tense under the lazy weight of him, big hand wrapped around you like it belongs there. “I don’t think she’s particularly fond of me.”

Eren shoots you a wink that you’re sure is intended to mean something, a reference to an inside joke that you have yet to establish, maybe.

“I didn’t say that,” you say in your own defense, wanting to yank Sasha to the side and demand to know why she hadn’t warned you that Cupid himself was going to greet you in the kitchen this morning. Armin slices the fig neatly in half, a strangely practiced motion performed by small, soft hands. He offers it to you again insistently, and frowns when you shake your head.

“I said I wanted it, ‘Min,” Eren says with a hint of red to his words, snatching the halved fig from Armin’s hand and biting into it voraciously, little pieces of the flesh spattered around the corner of his mouth.

“You’re such a brute,” Armin scoffs, picking the meat of his half out gingerly with an oyster fork that you don’t remember him grabbing from the drawer.

“Why don’t you like Eren?” Sasha pouts at you, grabbing the hand that’s squashed between yours and Eren’s hips. Your palm feels hot against her fingers.

“I said I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say much of anything, to be fair.” Eren’s got the fig pressed to his mouth, digging his teeth and tongue around in the husk of it obscenely enough to make your cheeks warm. Being so close to him is filthy, that cross around his neck is looking you straight in the eye to make sure you feel it.

“Eren’s always a pest,” Historia provides from her perch on the kitchen table, picking at her perfectly manicured toenails, “why would she like him?”

“You like him plenty,” Armin says, not looking at her. It’s not the first time that’s been brought up, if Historia’s answering sneer is anything to go by.

“You’ll love him if you give him a chance.” Sasha smiles hopefully at you, nodding.

“Yeah,” Eren grins down at you, teeth colored with fig, “give me a chance.”

“Eren, you’re going to scare her off,” Armin says with a roll of his eyes, peering around Eren’s broad shoulders to look you up and down. The way his eyes drag over you makes you feel like there might be a stab wound somewhere on your person that you don’t know about yet, the adrenaline of the moment keeping you numb.

“Back off her, Eren,” Historia echoes, “she’s fun, I don’t want you to make her leave.”

“She’s not going to leave.” Eren looks directly at you as he says it, something in his smile growing imperceptibly darker. A dare. How much will you let me get away with?

You stare and stare at him, ignoring the continued bickering of Armin and Historia in the background. He’s golden and blood-red, oil smeared on his forehead and a crown of thorns nestled in his dark thatch of hair if you look close enough. If you’re not imagining it, his hand might be tightening around your shoulder, maybe he’ll leave a purple bruise on it.

“Of course not,” Sasha interrupts your thoughts, thumbing at your cheek affectionately, “she belongs here. With us.”

“She’s our little fairy,” Historia giggles dreamily, referencing the long-winded fairy tales you drunkenly make up every night, casting each other as heroines and knights and dragons.

“Right,” Eren agrees, not breaking your gaze, “our little fairy.”

The only thing that comes to mind is your childhood friend, Emma, looking on at you sadly with her muddy toes, watching the wings sprout from your back.

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

Days lug themselves by, barefooted and dragging their heels, and most of the time, even the monotonous rise and fall of the sun doesn’t help to differentiate one calendar block from the next. Like a bat, or maybe a slinky, silvery fish in an underwater cave, you rely on your other senses to track the passage of time.

For example, today, you know it’s a Wednesday because Maria, one of the three house chefs, brings fresh peaches up from the co-op down the hill every Wednesday. Sasha’s spent the last thirty minutes hand feeding you peach flesh as you lounge by the pool, insisting that you suck her fingers clean of juice and feeding you little sips of champagne each time you sober up enough to tell her that that’s lewd. Historia swats at you and giggles at the smacking and slurping sounds you make around Sasha’s fingers, oiled-up palm landing on oiled-up hip with a wet slap; Armin admonishes her quietly from his seat beside her, insisting the girlish noises emanating from the three of you are tearing him from his book. You can feel Eren watching, too– that’s all, though. Always just watching.

You wonder how opaque the lenses of Armin’s sunglasses are, perched haphazardly on your nose, wonder if they’re doing a good job of masking the slow lick of your gaze over Eren’s skin, wonder if you care. Maybe the champagne is finally getting to your head.

“We should go in soon,” Historia sighs, a hand tossed across her forehead. She’s a little movie star, built for the golden age. “It’s so hot.”

“It’s always this hot,” Sasha argues, and you can practically hear the furrow in her brow, not willing to take your eyes off of the trickle of sweat running down Eren’s chest to see it for yourself. You’re really getting the hang of it, this opposite-sense thing. Everything’s upside down here in the heat.

“She’s getting hungry,” Armin supplies, wiping the sweat off his palms to reach up and turn the page of his novel. Brideshead Revisited. A little on the nose, isn’t it?

“I am not!” Historia hates when people point out her appetite, but not really. She kicks up a fuss because it’s “ladylike”, and she’s advised you to do the same.

“You are,” you sigh, really feeling the heat sink into you even with the heavy, lazy movement of lolling your head to face her, “you always get hungry around this time.”

“What time is it, then?”

You don’t reply– you don’t know the answer.

“I think we’re all hungry,” Eren, ever the peacemaker when he can find the time to be so, sits up, letting the shirt that’s been shading his face fall into his lap. Your eyes track its descent– even that seems slow. He says something to you, managing a crooked grin while he squints in the heat of the sun, but you don’t hear it.

“Huh?”

“Everyone except you, anyway,” he repeats himself, reaching over Sasha and smearing his thumb through the peach juice collected on your chin. Eren’s thumb disappears between his pink lips, and when he sucks on it with a satisfied hum, your jaw clenches hard enough to hurt.

“I guess it’s getting close to dinner,” Sasha says regretfully, picking her wristwatch, a priceless Braus family heirloom, up from a puddle of orange juice and tanning oil. “We should probably clean off.”

“I might even shower twice,” Armin rubs a hand over his belly with a grimace, “this tanning oil makes my skin greasy.”

“I feel disgusting,” Historia agrees, sliding red toes into her sandals and standing with a dramatic stretch.

“Filthy,” Eren murmurs in agreement. He’s still staring at you.

“I’ll be in soon. I’m so close to the color I wanted for today– I just need, like, ten more minutes.” You peel down the strip of bathing suit stretched over your hip, showing off the distinct mark of yesterday’s color and today’s tan.

“You’re crazy,” Sasha scoffs, throwing some designer sarong her mother lent her over her shoulder, “I’m melting.”

Armin and Historia pause their bickering over who gets to wear Armin’s Cucinelli belt to dinner—Armin wants it for his trousers, Historia for her maxi dress—just long enough to offer a momentary goodbye, breezing along into the house with Sasha. You settle back into your chair and take a deep breath, letting the sun sink into you just long enough to forget that you’re not alone.

“Open up.”

You’ve been enjoying this game of trading one sense for another, and you keep your eyes shut firmly, letting your jaw fall open and your tongue hang out. A piece of peach, fleshy and dripping with juice, finds its way onto your tongue, pinched too roughly between strong fingers. When you close your lips around the fruit, the fingers stay with it, frozen in their pinched position and forcing you to suck the peach from them, to swallow around them, to run your tongue along them and get as much of the meat as you can. When the fingers withdraw from your lips, you open your eyes and gasp quietly.

Eren’s leaning over you, a solar eclipse that smells like tan skin and sounds like Campari, and in the silhouette of the sunlight, you think he’s smiling.

“You’re still hungry,” he says, a question that’s left its punctuation mark behind. You think of Historia, of the improper shame of revealing your appetite. You dodge.

“I’m never hungry.”

“Never?” Eren crawls over you to kneel between your legs, propping one of your ankles up on his shoulder. The game you started is ripped out of your hands, chess pieces flying into the pool, scattering across the table, knocking over bottles and matchbooks. It’s so silent out here in the sun it hurts, and you almost miss the constant buzzing horseflies of early summer.

“Never.”

“If you’ve never been hungry,” Eren muses, tilting his head so that his cheekbone fits into the sensitive arch of your foot, reaching a hand down to splay it wide on your belly, “you’ve never been full.”

“How do you figure?” Your words come out throaty, waterlogged.

“Can’t have one without the other.” Eren shrugs, turning his head to the side. His lips brush against your heel, your Achilles’, the swirly seashell dangling from your anklet. You dig your teeth into your bottom lip, toes twitching behind his ear. “I don’t believe you, anyway.”

“No?” You try to tilt your head coyly, like your heart’s not clawing and scratching against your throat to get to him. Hungry, indeed.

“You wouldn’t stare like that if you didn’t want to.”

You’re taken aback, but not enough to fall out of the moment– Eren’s lips closing around the knob of your ankle slowly, like the pit of a fruit, make sure of that.

“Didn’t want to what?”

Eren’s hands meet the cushion on either side of your head hard enough to rattle the chair, his long, tanned body stretching over yours. He’s close enough to brush his nose against yours, but you can still see the hazy green of his eyes flicking here and there on your face: from your eyes to your lips to the beauty mark on your cheek. Your poolside lounge feels more like a butcher’s block under your taut spine.

Sasha’s told you about the wolves in these hills, that they howl murder at night, but they’re sleepy and indulgent in the heat of the sun. One of Eren’s canines catches the light and glints at you as he grins.

“Eat yourself sick.” He practically spits it into your mouth, one thigh pressed into where you’re sticky and sinful, and he chuckles under his breath when you shudder under him, feverish in the late-afternoon heat.

Before you can even think of biting back, Eren’s off of you, picking your sandals off of the ground and sliding them gently onto your feet, stopping to run his palm from your ankle to your kneecap with an appraising hum.

“We should head inside,” he says evenly, offering a hand to pull you to your feet, “I’d hate for us to miss dinner.”

You don’t have anything to say back to him, letting him lace his fingers through yours like lines in a play, interspersing seamlessly with the summer scenery. Eren leads you through the kitchen, waits patiently for you to take your sandals off, and waves you on your way up the stairs, saying he needs a cigarette. As the distance between you grows, your mind grows clearer, and you turn on your heel, calling down to him from the top of the stairs.

“Eren? Eren? Where are you, Eren?”

“Call me something else,” Eren pokes his head around the corner, smoke pouring from the grin on his face, “whatever you want, really. Make your own name for me.”

“You stare at me, too,” you say, tearing through his impishness. Eren cocks his head, unperturbed, smile growing wide as he nods.

“I do.”

“So you’re…” You can’t bring yourself to say it, not where it might echo in the cavernous hallway, where it might take the form of a confession. You scamper down the stairs, nearly sliding on bare feet, almost crashing into Eren when he appears at the foot of the staircase, catching you with two broad palms on either side of your ribcage. You pluck the cigarette from his mouth, stick it between your own teeth, narrow your eyes accusingly, and whisper: “You’re hungry too.”

“For every man hath business and desire, Such it is.” Eren takes the cigarette back, pulling on it and making a clear show of trying to hide a smirk.

“Hamlet?”

“A woman with teeth and a brain,” Eren tilts his head at you, “aren’t you something?”

“Do you always quote Shakespeare when you want to fuck somebody?”

“Only when I want to fuck you.” Eren stubs the cigarette out on the ancient oak of the staircase railing, grins up at you brilliantly, smiles brighter when he notices how obviously flustered you are.

“I need to go take a shower,” you say hurriedly, choking on the remnants of your shame and your confidence as they burn out in your throat, making an attempt to back up the stairs away from him. Eren laughs at your attempted escape, catching you by the wrist and pulling you close to him, close enough to dizzy you on the tendrils of smoke still sticking to him. Your breath stills, your heart slows as Eren wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you together, skin on tacky skin.

“Oh, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” Eren coos to you, mouth moving against your cheekbone. “C’mon, just one bite.”

“He that is proud eats up himself,” you hiss a quote back at him in response, ripping yourself from his grip and scrambling up the stairs, heart pounding and cheeks burning. You can hear a lovesick sigh follow you up to your room, and hope that the slam of the door behind you is enough to keep it from touching you.

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

The murky waters of your vision ripple out into clarity, and you’ve found yourself in a forest. You’ve been here before, you recognize the tall, thick trunks and the bed of fallen leaves under your feet. You’ve been coming here since you were a little girl, been wiggling your toes in the greenery since before you could remember. You never come alone.

It appears just as you remembered: a blinding glimmer of light, a flame for a head, and ribbonlike wisps of energy that beckon you like arms, like love. One step towards it, and it disappears, vanishing into nothing with an echo that might be laughter. You think it’s happy to see you.

When it reappears a few feet away, you take your first steps, sighing at the feeling of the wild enveloping you, of the prickling of your skin, kissed by the chill winding through the trees. You wish you could explore this place, so familiar and so strange all at once, but you know you have to keep moving, keep following the lights as they lead you deeper and deeper into the forest. They won’t hurt you; you aren’t sure why that’s true, aren’t sure why you keep moving. You just know better than to stop.

They lead you over a familiar path, winding past a creek, over a bed of flat stones with an ice-cold creek running over them. You never tire here, legs pumping and arms working to push yourself faster. You’ve never caught the lights, and you aren’t sure if you ever will, but again, you know better than to doubt. It feels like hours, feels like minutes, feels like purpose, chasing these lights through the forest, but suddenly, something’s new.

There’s a little chirping sound, almost conversational and too high-pitched for you to understand; you’re not even sure if you recognize the language. It ricochets around the bones in your body, touches something ancient in their marrow. You almost jerk your head to the right to find the source, but you resist, pushing ahead on your path as the lights lead you deeper. You get the feeling that you’ve gone off-script somewhere, that this is a part of the forest you haven’t seen before, but the warmth in your bones shoos your doubts away. You’ve never been this far, but it feels like home.

A growl curls around the shell of your ear, plants fear right in the center of your chest. Your eyes widen at the light before you before it disappears; you frown at the next one, not daring to speak but demanding an answer anyhow. The lights will save you, won’t they?

Shrieks from overhead, guttural, animalistic calls, howls and chatters of excitement; you never presumed to be alone in this forest, but you never presumed to be in danger, either. The lights urge you on, vanishing and regenerating at an alarming rate, your feet drumming against the forest floor faster and faster. A sliver of moonlight begins to glow from the trees a ways off, an indication that there’s a clearing ahead, and you shove the bile in your throat down, swing your arms faster, ignore the frantic fluttering of your pulse in time with the bestial chorus ringing clearer and louder from the trees with each passing second.

You do, against all odds, manage to launch yourself into the clearing, and the moment you feel the soft cushion of moss under your feet, as opposed to the branch-littered, crunchy path of the forest, you nearly stumble to your knees as your eyes adjust to the sudden brightness of the clearing. The grumblings of the woodland entities have quieted, an almost awestruck silence settling in the open space around you.

“There you are.”

Your head snaps up comically fast– “You?”

“Me,” Eren says, that razor-sharp, moonlight smile lighting up his face. He looks…right here, as if the forest is extending a sense of belonging, as if he’s been here longer than the ancient trees themselves. Even the little crown nestled atop his head is fitting: a tangle of brambles and thorns and leaves tucked into his dark locks. Is that a throne under him, that mass of branches and leaves and some silvery metal you can’t place?

His eyes glow in the starlight, illuminated with a certain hunger that you can feel reverberating through your bones. It should be frightening, but it’s enticing. You feel welcome.

“What are you doing here?” Your tongue is slower on the uptake than your mind, and you can feel the suspicious expression folding your facial features, hiding the thrum of anticipation the sight of him brings.

Eren cocks his head pityingly, smiling at you in a way that would seem predatory if it wasn’t so entirely disarming, so entirely inviting. Your feet are bringing you closer before he even speaks— you know why you’re here before he says it.

“I’ve been waiting so long,” Eren beckons you onto his lap, firmly grabbing your shoulder and silently demanding you straddle him when you try to turn away from him, “you’re beautiful, so…alive here.”

He takes a bit of your hair between your fingers and rubs it, satisfaction flickering over his face. It’s then that you realize how little fabric covers you; really, it’s only a thin, wispy excuse of a dress, hanging in tatters around your body and leaving your skin free for the taking. Taking notice of your dress leads you to take notice of another pressing matter: Eren’s naked beneath you.

“Where are we?”

“Does it matter?” Eren reaches up to toy with your hair again, smiling gently. He tilts his head up, asking you for something you can’t identify, but that you already know you’re willing to give. Your soul, maybe.

Your lips meet his in a tentative brush, a motion that feels shy, but practiced. It’s a reflex, an instinct, to kiss him this way. Eren groans gutturally against your mouth, pressing into you deeper, digging his fingertips into your bare skin. The chorus of inhuman chatter erupts around you both again, and you jump, almost pushing away from him before he stops you with a firm hand against the small of your back.

“Sh,” he whispers, nipping at your chin, “don’t pay them any mind. You’re with me, remember?”

It’s difficult at first with the ever-growing hum of life around you, but it grows increasingly easier to melt into him, to lose yourself in the rhythm of him. He’s thick and hard underneath you, pressed right where you’re already slick and ready for him, and he’s got a tight grip on your hips, working you against him to make sure you feel it and oh– do you feel it.

A debauched gasp pours from your mouth to his; Eren sinks sharp teeth into your bottom lip with a grunt of approval, pulls you up to situate you over his twitching cock. You can feel the lecherous eyes of the woodland creatures, spirits, monsters, whatever they may be around you, looking in on the sticky, tangible arousal building between your bodies. The steady glow of Eren’s eyes, the prick of the thorns in his hair under your fingertips, the insistent weight of him pressing against the wet heat of you: all of it keeps you grounded, keeps your hips rolling into Eren like your life depends on it, like it’s what you were born to do.

“Are you ready?” Eren murmurs, quiet as the grave, stilling your hips and lifting you.

“I’m not sure, I–”

“I’ve been waiting so long,” Eren interrupts, “so long for you– you’re ready for me, I know you are.”

And with that, he’s sliding you down onto his cock, splitting you open, dropping your jaw. The cacophony from the forest grows deafening, but the glowing eyes in the brush streak and blur as your eyes flutter closed, a stuttered moan falling from your lips.

“Oh–”

“Knew you were ready,” Eren sinks his teeth into your collarbone, lets you wiggle and roll your hips until he’s situated comfortably inside of you. “You were born for this. For me.”

You can’t even bring yourself to disagree, to refute, to question. It’s godly, the way he fills you, the twinge of pain in the pit of your belly that doesn’t waver, no matter which way you squirm. The longer you sit, perched upon him– you feel something akin to divinity, akin to prophecy ringing through your bones. You were born for this.

“Eren…” It’s more of a sigh than anything, a confession and an admittance of guilt, a repentance. He likes the way it tastes, you can tell by the way his hands grip you harder, roll you along his cock faster with an urgency that betrays his calm, adoring gaze. He’s sinking his claws into you, bit by bit, and you’re better for it. You belong here, with the night on your skin and Eren nestled inside of you.

“Don’t ever leave,” Eren smiles gently, as if it’s a choice, “stay with me forever.”

The pleasure’s beginning to peak in your stomach, the howls swirling in the air around you start to feel more like a blanket, the moonlight like a crown. His hands are so hot they almost burn, his tongue licking up your neck feels like a baptism. Your back is arching, your blood is rushing, the stars are speaking to you– what are they saying?

Your fingernails have left angry indents in your throat where you’ve clutched into the skin in a desperate attempt to regain your breath, shooting up out of your slumber with a vicious jolt. Your head spins with the sudden movement, the antique furnishings of the room bleeding into candlelit blurs as you heave for breath.

“Sleeping?”

You nearly jump out of your skin at the gravel of Eren’s voice, having believed yourself to be alone. Some instinctual part of your mind almost remembers falling asleep on the loveseat in the glass-enclosed sunroom earlier, one too many martinis to thank for that, but you can worry about that later– Eren’s your priority now, shirtless and leaned against the doorframe with one eyebrow raised and a very telling flush rising to his cheeks. The chilly wetness between your legs brings your dream to the forefront of your mind. Had he heard, somehow?

“What are you doing down here?” You do your best to narrow your eyes into something convincing enough to pass for annoyance, unsure if you’ve managed to pull it off with the rapid rise and fall of your chest.

“Water,” Eren says simply, raising a glass you hadn’t noticed he was holding, “but it seems like you might need it more than I do.”

“I don’t–” He ignores you, crossing the room to hand you the ornate glass. Your throat is dry, and so you drink, eyeing him suspiciously as you sip.

“Dreaming?” The corner of his mouth twitches almost imperceptibly.

“Nightmare.” You push yourself up to sit, crossing your arms defensively over your chest. “How’d you know?”

A long pause, Eren’s eyes dragging over you slowly, your skin burning. “You were squirming.”

“It was disturbing,” you say truthfully, looking over your shoulder and half-expecting to see some horrible monster leering at you from the doorway, salivating over you and Eren, “but I’ve had this same dream since I was a kid. Part of it, anyway.”

“Need company?”

“No,” you say quickly, shaken by the dream and how low Eren’s pajama pants hang on his hips, “I just need to get to my real bed. I’m sure sleeping outside had something to do with it.”

“That’s not true.” Eren’s scooping you up into his arms before you can open your mouth to argue, as if you even would. This isn’t unusual for him; you’ve grown used to his tendency to touch you, to hold you close to his chest as though you belong there. It echoes in your head, you were born for this. A shudder wracks through your body. “Cold?”

“Mhm,” you hum, not trusting your own voice. Eren nuzzles your head deeper into his shoulder, lets you get a noseful of the scent of him. Dewdrops, mankind, a rotting forest floor. It gives you a disconcerting sense of deja vu.

“Sleeping outside is good for you,” Eren goes on, scaling the stairs with impossible ease, “my mom used to tell me that.”

“Is that so?” It brings a sleepy little smile to your face, despite yourself: the image of a messy-haired, fussy baby Eren, curled up in his mother’s lap and looking up at the night sky.

“Sure.” You can hear the nostalgia in his voice. “The stars can talk to you that way, through your dreams. They show you where you’re supposed to go.”

Your blood runs cold at that– does he know? How could he? He’s a man, not a mind-reader, not a mystic. Right? You let him carry you to your door in silence, the only noise being the padding of his bare feet down the Turkish carpet runner in the hall. When he gets to your door, Eren finally starts to move to let you down, and your mouth moves without your permission, voice small and echoing in the still nighttime air.

“Eren?”

He freezes, muscles locking you in place against his chest. “Yeah?”

“Was I talking in my sleep?”

Eren settles you on your feet before answering, leaving one lingering hand on your hip and bringing the other up to brush at your cheek. Your eye must have been watering– his thumb catches a stray tear. His smile is a little too sharp when he answers.

“No, why?”

“Just wondering.” Relief courses through your body, but your muscles stay taut under his touch.

“Okay,” Eren looks you up and down one more time, as if he’s making sure you’re all there, “goodnight, then. I hope your dreams get better.”

When he turns to go, the broad silhouette of him growing darker as he retreats, you remember something fragile underneath the floorboards.

“Wait, Eren! You forgot your water.”

“My what?” When he turns to face you, he’s still grinning– baring his teeth, more like. You think you’re imagining the glow in his eyes, too fresh from that dream.

“Your water. I think I have a cup in my room if you need it.”

“Oh.” Eren waves a hand nonchalantly through the air, catching a stray stream of moonlight. You can see the dust particles dancing around his hand, enchanted by his movement. “Wasn’t thirsty."

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

It’s a slinky, dazzling dress; Elie Saab, Spring 2005, maybe? 2006? Sasha had lent it to you, insisted upon you taking it, really. It’s got to be worth at least your years’ rent payment, dripping with Swarovski and cut low and square across your chest, and easily the most decadent thing you’ve ever worn but– it’s family dinner night. No expense is spared.

Historia sits across from you, reaching one dainty hand out for Armin’s negroni, nearly dipping the massive drop-pearl charm on her bracelet into the first course: a cold, cucumber soup. Armin nudges her meaningfully, scowling and handing his glass to her, glancing apologetically at the stiff-backed butler across the room, who wasn’t looking anyway. Sasha’s at the head of the table, working on Historia’s serving of the cucumber soup, dunking focaccia bread into it in a voracious manner that you’re sure wasn’t outlined in the etiquette courses she’d endured as a child. And he’s next to you, naturally.

His dinner jacket looks out of place on him, oddly enough: angular and overly formal, as well-fitting as it is. You wish it was a little greener, a little more playful, something to match the Eren you’ve gotten to know under all the glitz and glamour. It’s too human for him, really, but that thought makes you shudder faster than you can shove it to the side.

“Wasn’t that the girl from Luxembourg?” Sasha asks through a giggle, finally leaning back to allow the butler to collect the remnants of her first course. Historia frowns at her, gulps back nearly half of Armin’s cocktail.

“No, the girl from Luxembourg was a slut. He wouldn’t have touched her.”

Armin and Eren exchange a look that implies that, whoever the slut from Luxembourg might have been, she didn’t escape their clutches unscathed. Historia notices the guilty smile dimpling Eren’s cheek and smacks Armin in retaliation.

“Ouch, Stori!” Armin scowls right back at her; if you didn’t know about Armin’s father’s remarriage to Historia’s mother, you’d think they were actually related.

“She was a slut,” Historia sniffs, finishing the rest of Armin’s cocktail in a second swig.

“It was Eren’s idea– you’re always punishing me for what he does.” When the staff place the second course, some sort of ceviche, in front of him, Armin crosses his arms over his chest and looks away like a huffy child. Sasha laughs and swats at his shoulder.

“Don’t pretend you don’t have your own hand in things. You can’t blame everything on Eren.”

“Maybe he can,” you shrug, the champagne going to your head. You’re feeling impish, feeling like one of them. Wildly, you reach a hand up to pinch at Eren’s cheek, smiling to yourself when you feel it turn warm under your fingers. “I mean, just look at him. He’s a devil.”

“Am not,” Eren scoffs, slapping a hand on your leg and shaking it playfully, “you weren’t there anyway. Min’s very convincing when he wants to be.”

“I am.” Armin smiles at you, head tilting intrepidly. “I can get Eren to share anything I want, I bet.”

It feels loaded, like a challenge, and Eren’s fingers tighten where he’s gripping your leg. When you chance a glance to the side at him, his jaw is tense, gaze focused on Armin like a threat, like a predator.

“Not anything,” Eren says, voice low and dangerous, more somber than you’ve ever heard him. Armin’s face falls for a millisecond, scrunching his nose at the murderous glint in Eren’s eyes, before he clenches his jaw and glances between the two of you with a haughty smirk.

“Est-ce vrai? En êtes-vous sûr? Tu l'as dit toi-même - je suis convaincant quand je veux quelque chose.”

“Ne commencez pas avec moi, pas pour ça.” It’s hardly louder than a murmur, but the threat carries all the same. You look to Sasha with widened eyes, hoping for a translation, but she’s chewing slowly on a bite of her ceviche, looking at Armin, Eren, then Armin again with a strange expression you’ve never seen before.

A heavy silence settles over the table, Eren’s fingertips leaving sore spots through your dress where they’re digging into your thigh, and Armin’s eyes dancing over Eren’s face, that same smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. Daring.

“You two are so in love,” Historia gripes with a roll of her eyes, smashing the carefully-cubed ceviche on her plate into a mush. You eye the smear of meat on her fork disdainfully and set down the bite you had been about to pop in your mouth, opting for your glass of bubbles instead.

The jokingly grumpy lilt of Historia’s comment seems to cut the thread of tension that had grown taut between the two men, as Armin allows Sasha to pull him away from Eren and back into his corner of the table with her and Historia. Their conversation drones on, the ethics of Eren and Armin’s tendency to tag-team women fading into the background as you wait for Eren’s hand to slip from your thigh. It doesn’t.

His thumb rubs idly over the slit of your dress, brushing it back and forth over your bare skin for just long enough to get you used to the pressure of his palm beaming heat through the thin fabric, get your guard down. And then his fingers slip underneath, grabbing into the hot flesh of your thigh.

You jump ever so slightly, flighty as a fawn, and Eren chuckles under his breath beside you when you choke a bit on your champagne. He’s cool—stoic, even—as he bashfully bats away the scandalous insinuations of Sasha and Historia’s storytelling, the lewd raise of Armin’s eyebrows at the mention of a certain leggy redhead in Prague. His hand stays steady, possessive and permanent on your leg. When Armin and Historia start arguing over yet another of Armin’s alleged missteps with one of her college friends, Eren takes the opening to lean into you, murmuring into your ear.

“What’s got you so jumpy?” His breath puffs out hot and sensual against the shell of your ear, and you can feel your earring lifting with the movement of his lips. He’s so close.

“Not jumpy,” you answer under your breath, trying to keep your composure.

“Hm,” Eren hums, leaning back just enough to study your profile, “wasn’t sure if you’d dozed off, started dreaming again.”

Your head whips towards him in what is surely an uncouth accusation of insinuation, borne of shock, but luckily, Armin’s too busy being hand-fed ceviche by Sasha and scolded by Historia to notice. Other than his eyes, Eren’s stiller than death, watching over the antics with the littlest smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. His eyes, though, flick down to you, glinting like a dare.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means something?” It’s a challenge, and you realize too late that the rope around your ankle has cinched, and you’re caught in his trap.

“No,” you say, hoping for more conviction in your voice, but it comes out as a breathy whisper. The corner of Eren’s mouth twitches, and it pulls an irritated huff from you.

“Tell me about your dream. The one that woke you up the other night.”

“Tell you– w-what? Here?”

“Yes, here,” Eren repeats you, quiet and calm, keeping one eye on your bickering friends to ensure you’re kept all to himself, “unless it’s something you can’t share.”

The blanching of your face tells him everything he needs to know, and that sickening admission almost overshadows the fact that he knows. He undeniably knows, now; maybe not the specifics, but enough to know that you had woken up sticky and gasping after a sinful dream. Maybe he even knows it was about him.

You’ve given up on trying to understand the otherworldly elements of Eren; the way he seems to appear at inopportune moments and know what you’re thinking at every turn, but this is too much. You quickly realize that while you’re not sober, you’re certainly not drunk enough to deal with him, and you finish your glass of champagne in a single gulp.

“You’re one to talk about sharing,” you hiss at him, trying to will away the goosebumps prickling your arms as his fingers inch higher, skating along soft skin. Eren’s demeanor falters, if only for a moment– he looks frustrated.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Eren leans into you, brows furrowing. “I don’t share just anything, and especially not just because ‘Min wants a taste.”

“Am I yours to share?” That heavy swig of champagne has gone straight to your head it seems, as you turn your face up to him defiantly, finally saying the quiet part out loud. The weight falls off your shoulders like a head, and you can almost feel the itch of the guillotine at your neck as the words leave your mouth. Eren, ever the gentle executioner, only lets the calm fascination return to his face, brings his fingers further up your thigh.

“Tell me about your dream, hm? They’re not listening, it’s just you and me.”

He’s only inches away from where you’re already beginning to grow hot and wet– he hasn’t even done anything, and you want to chastise yourself over the undeniable need beginning to bubble inside you. Eren’s smiling so sweetly, as if he’s lulling you into a sense of complacency, and your tongue hangs heavy in your mouth, eager to spill your secrets.

“I…I’m scared.”

Eren’s eyebrows raise and his smile grows a bit toothier, disbelief written plain on his face. “Of me?”

“Sometimes,” you say, small and honest as the grave, “it’s like you aren’t real.”

“I’m very real,” Eren insists, two fingers pressing against the damp silk of your panties, his eyes lighting up when you stifle a gasp, “doesn’t that feel real?”

“Wait–”

“The dream,” Eren says again, increasing the pressure of his fingers, “were you scared of me there, too?”

“Yes,” you whisper, ashamed and painfully cognizant of the feel of him between your legs, “I was in a forest, running after the little lights, they– I’ve seen them for a long time.”

“Since you were a child,” Eren repeats your confession from the other night. He’s reading you, you realize, not like a book, but like a poem. You couldn’t put the difference into words if you had to, but there’s a certain melody to the flickering of his gaze over your hot face.

“They’ve never led me anywhere before,” your words hitch in your throat, stopped dead when Eren’s fingers start rubbing circles over your swollen clit. The silk is thin and soaked, and his fingers slide over you in a way that feels god-given. Your jaw hangs ever-so-slightly, the butlers coming to change the course. You wait for Eren to slip his hand out from under your dress, fearful of the staff watching as he toys with you, but he only nods encouragingly.

“Keep going.”

“Um,” you stammer, swallowing thickly and glancing at the plate of bleeding, rare filet in front of you, “they took me to a clearing in the forest. There were creatures, ones I’ve never seen before.”

“Did they hurt you? Any of them?” A furrow appears between his eyebrows, deep and concerned. Some small part of your brain, muted since Eren’s hand slid beneath your dress, worries itself with why Eren seems so disquieted with your dream– it’s not like you actually could have been hurt, it was only a dream. Wasn’t it?

“No, they stayed away. They just made a lot of noise, but they all got quiet when…”

A knowing smirk. “When?”

“When I saw you.”

Eren pats your thighs gently, urging them apart; he looks relieved, exhilarated, unreal. If you didn’t know better, you’d think his eyes were glowing in the candlelight. Armin, Historia, and Sasha’s clamor across the table grows louder with each passing second, but as soon as you begin to wonder if you should be doing a better job of hiding what’s very clearly happening under the slit of your dress, Eren’s fingers have wiggled their way beneath the fabric of your silk thong. Your teeth dig into your bottom lip, eyes widening.

“I was glad to see you,” Eren says quietly, “in the dream, I mean.”

“You said you’d been waiting for me,” you whisper, keeping your voice low to hide the whine scratching at the back of your throat, “that you’d been waiting a long time.”

“I bet I was,” Eren hums thoughtfully, grinning viciously when he sinks a finger into you, clearly relishing the way your fingernails tighten into his wrist. “I never lie.”

“Even in a dream?” You feel fuzzy and warm, blinking moony, worried eyes up at him. Eren shakes his head in confirmation, curling his finger and making your thighs clench. “You put me in your lap, and–and, you had a crown. It was nighttime, I think, and the moon was really bright. You were inside me.”

Eren slides another finger in to match the first, and you’re hardly able to stifle a moan when it comes fluttering through your teeth, a breeze of a sound compared to what you’re struggling to keep captive in your chest. Eren’s other hand reaches forward to grab a small piece of the carved steak, brings the meat up to your mouth and brushes it over your lips.

“Eat,” Eren instructs, smiling placidly as you mindlessly obey, biting into the red meat, “but keep telling me.”

He waits patiently for you to chew around the bite of steak he’s offered you, eyes searching you for something– what it is, you can’t be sure. Your mind is wobbling around the flashes of memory of your dream, distracted every few steps by an overwhelming rush of pleasure from between your legs, Eren’s fingers curling incessantly against your walls. You swallow, never taking your eyes off of him.

“You fucked me.” The confession is breathless when it leaves you, and even through the haze of what you pray isn’t a rapidly-approaching orgasm, you don’t miss the way Eren’s shoulders stiffen, the way his eyes flash.

“Did I fuck you, or did you fuck me?” Eren murmurs back to you, mischief in his eyes and a tense gravel to his voice. “You said you were in my lap, after all.”

“I—oh, god—I don’t know,” you’re barely able to keep your voice low, a little whimper interrupting you, “Eren–”

“Keep going, it’s okay,” Eren’s fingers don’t slow– in fact, they begin to move more harshly, “you’re safe with me, you know that. I showed you in the forest, didn’t I?”

“Mhm.” You can’t stop your forehead from falling onto his shoulder, teeth digging into your lip so hard you aren’t sure if that coppery taste is from the steak, or your own blood. The conversation in the room, despite being made by only three people, feels like a deafening rush in your ears.

The realization hits home that Eren’s going to make you cum all over his fingers in front of your friends, the staff, and your dinner, and he’s going to wrench it out of you in a matter of seconds, if the tightening of your gut is anything to go by.

“What else?” Eren practically growls in your ear, low and hoarse. “Is there anything else?”

“You asked me– fuck, you asked me something.” Your hips are canting forward into his palm, your face tacky and warm thinking about the couture fabric under you, now drenched in your cum and sweat. “Eren, you have to slow down, please–”

He’s merciless, pumping his fingers into you ceaselessly, rendering you a lost cause. “What did I ask you?”

“You asked—oh, my god—asked if I, if I would stay with you forever.”

“What was your answer?”

You can’t respond, not with the way you’ve stopped breathing to swallow down the debauched moan bubbling in your chest. Your entire body tenses, strung tight as a bow around Eren’s fingers as the knot in your stomach unravels, cool, inevitable release finally crashing over you. Eren works you through it, murmuring little hushes into your hairline, and placing a comforting hand over your fingers that are digging into his wrist, smiling against your forehead as you slide your hips back and forth over his hand.

You manage to pull the whole thing off impressively subdued, no more than a tinny whimper leaving your lips, only to be absorbed by the sleeve of Eren’s dinner jacket. When you dare to sit up, to meet Eren’s eyes, he’s still looking at you expectantly, as if that wasn’t enough.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” you whisper, waiting for Historia to chastise you, or Armin to make a lewd comment. The three of them are still arguing, Sasha stealing bites from Armin’s plate each time he turns to snap at Historia, who’s now sitting amongst a crowd of empty crystal glasses.

“What was your answer?” Eren says again, pulling his fingers from you and smirking at the glisten that stretches down into his palm.

“I woke up,” you say with shaky conviction, trying to glare at him.

“Are you still scared of me?” Eren asks innocently, picking up a piece of his steak with his hand and feeding it to you again. Your cum mixes in with the flavor of the steak, gives it a certain tang and salinity that makes your heart beat faster, even though you’ve just floated back down to consciousness.

“I– I don’t think so, but…” you trail off, looking down at the plate. Eren brings another piece to your lips, letting you bite half and giving the rest to himself, not missing the opportunity to suck on the tips of his fingers. Your thighs press together when his eyes flutter shut, knowing what he’s tasting and watching him revel in it.

“But what?”

“I don’t think I understand you,” you confess breathlessly, “I think that’s what scares me. I spend all day looking at you, and I never feel closer to understanding you, to really touching you. It’s like you’re not…” you trail off in search of the right word.

“Real?” Eren cocks an eyebrow at you.

“Human,” you say without entirely meaning to, widening your eyes at him in apology. “I’m sorry, not in a bad way necessarily, but– you feel…like you’re above me. In a sense.”

“Above you?” Eren frowns, forgetting his dinner entirely and looking straight at you with rejection written all over his face, wrinkles you want to smoothe over with your thumb.

“I just…” you sigh, finding it harder to meet his gaze by the second, “I don’t understand what you want with me.”

“Still?” Eren tilts his head. “Even after that?”

“The dream?” You nearly chuckle in exasperation. “It was just a dream, that’s all.”

Eren frowns a little, reaches for your glass of champagne– oh, god, when had that been refilled?– and hands it to you. He watches you take one sip, and then another, that concentrated pull of his eyebrows never ceasing until you reach a shaky hand out for your fork, beginning to feed yourself small bites of steak. His perplexed expression ripples out into one of contentedness, smiling gently as he watches you take care of yourself.

“All days are nights to see till I see thee, and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee,” Eren finally says, looking at you very much like you’re supposed to be parsing something out from his quote.

“On to the sonnets now, are we?” You cock a playful eyebrow at him, despite your tired, slouching posture and your repeated attempts to keep your guard up. Eren grins mischievously, leaning in as if he means to press the tip of his nose to yours.

“I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say–”

“If it be love indeed, tell me how much?” You’re quicker than him on this one, a vicious little smirk cutting across your face when you manage to cut him off. Eren’s eyebrows raise, impressed, but you don’t keep him down for long.

“There’s beggary in love that can be reckoned,” Eren finally says, twirling the ring on your pinky absentmindedly. You don’t even remember when he laid his hand atop yours, but it feels heavy and comforting, and so you let it lie there, just for the time being.

Your post-orgasm exhaustion hits you like a train, the temptation to slump against Eren’s shoulder winning out over your propriety. You’ll sit back up by the fourth course, you tell yourself, nibbling on a large piece of parsley that had come as a garnish on your plate. Eren doesn’t seem to mind the weight of your fuzzy head nodded into the cotton of his shoulder; in fact, he seems to adjust himself so you can nuzzle closer, eyes blinking owlishly as you reach for your glass of bubbles. You’re teetering dangerously close to the edge of unconsciousness, and you almost wouldn’t care, until something catches your eye.

Over the rim of your glass, Historia is staring at you. It’s not a look of admonishment, but more…caution? Concern? Pity? All you can discern for certain is that Historia must have seen everything Eren did to you, everything he’s still doing to you, taking a caviar bump off the back of his hand and laughing at Armin, shoulder shaking under your cheek. Historia’s brows furrow at you, her bottom lip wavering slightly.

You sit up suddenly, ignoring the way the room spins with the speed of your action. Eren turns his head to you, surprised, only to follow your gaze across the table to Historia. You’re trying to keep from looking at him, but you can’t help yourself, watching his expression crumple into something stern and disparaging.

Historia withers for only a moment, before narrowing her eyes at him threateningly. Eren squeezes his hand around yours. Sasha shoves Historia admonishingly for not listening to her joke. Armin’s eyes focus in on where your fingers grip your champagne flute hard enough to turn white.

You think you see a few pairs of familiar, glowing eyes in the bushes outside, peering in on the scene at the table. You think you need to go to bed.

#eren jaeger x reader #eren yeager x reader #eren jaeger smut #eren yeager smut #eren jaeger fanfiction #aot #aot fanfic #eren jaeger x you #eren yeager x you #attack on titan x reader #aot x reader #that's all for now folks!!!!#more to come in part 2<3

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skrunksthatwunk · 4 months

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you go to a lesbian blog and find it says women only!! no men allowed!!! and go oh! excuse me, um, what about other lesbians? plenty of lesbians are genderqueer... and they go well, okay, go fuck yourself tim chop off your sweaty dick and stop calling yourself a lesbian. you do not have a dick, actually. you think about that fact often, even though it does you no good. you do not tell this person that.

you go to another lesbian blog and it says women only and you try again, and this time they change it to wlw + nblw only (non-men who love non-men :D). and you'll say hey i appreciate that but gender's not really that cut and dry for a lot of people. someone could be both a man and nonbinary, for instance. i just worry that you're looking at nonbinary as a generic third gender, or an extension of womanhood. i mean yeah you include nblw in your tags but all your posts are about pussy-havers exclusively. what's with that? and they say go fuck yourself you pervy man pretending to be a lesbian. you tried to sneak in but i won't let you.

so you go to a lesbian blog with a dozen or so posts about queer people needing to be more weird about it and you sigh in relief. but you still see the men dni. that's odd. hoping for the best, you say hey! i know you mean well but please maybe don't put men dni at the end of the lovely posts on your lesbian blog bc some lesbians are men. and they'll be like ok!! well you're allowed ;) and you say no that's not. no. some men are lesbians not just me. you think about your own dicklessness and wonder if that's why you were given entry. and you add that even if male lesbians are allowed, there's no indication of that. how would anyone know without asking? and they're like ohh gotcha gotcha well men dni + this is for sapphics only!! and you'll be like ok well that treats the concepts of men and sapphics as mutually exclusive identities and i just told you that's not true and you agreed with me so.. i don't think that solves our problem. and they're like. ok. fine. men dni but genderfluid and multigender people are allowed! and you're like no see that's. that's still the same thing.. you're saying the same thing just with different words. if you don't want men to interact but you're fine with multigender/genderfluid/etc ppl interacting then you either don't see them as Real Men (because they don't reach a standard of Full Manhood) or Complete Men (because they're only Part-Time Men), both of which suggest that they are, in some way, not men or less-than men, which is invalidating and defeats the point of the exception in the first place (accommodation) OR that you don't really mean the dni which is confusing and inconsistent and makes guydykes feel weird and uncomfortable and excluded from the lesbian space you're trying to cultivate. and they're like um. ok. so. cishet men dni? and you're like well i think that makes more sense, but what if someone identifies as both a cishet man and a sapphic? again, if we're trying to accommodate the genderfucky populace then that has to be a possibility that is considered. and they say god you people are never happy. what do you want me to do? what am i supposed to say to keep the right men out? and you pause. you empathize with the need for a space free from dudes trying to fuck you straight and feminine. dudes who watch lesbian porn and joke about what they'd do if they were allowed into girls locker rooms. who look at you like a piece of meat, and like someone who looks at women like pieces of meat in the same way he does. you get it. you know. you want a space where you can be sapphic, too. that's why you came to these blogs in the first place. you brace yourself and you say well i don't know that there are "right men" to keep out. i don't know that there's any single label that would accomplish whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. you could go for "sapphics only" or "queers only" and i think that might be the closest thing to what you want, but it's never going to be perfect. creating any exclusive space is going to shut out people you didn't account for, and the broader the label, the more people will be shut out that you didn't want to shut out. and what about people who don't know if they're allowed? what of questioning transbians, where are they supposed to go? and, frankly, i think i might rather my dykey posts get read and appreciated by a gay guy who sees me as a man than a woman who only sees me as a sacred womb, pure from male perversions or violence or whatever. i think community might just be more complex than a dni can handle. and they look at you and say i don't want to not have a dni. i think you're too permissive. you can't just "what about" or microlabel your way into everything. go fuck yourself, i bet you're not even a lesbian anyway. go find a real problem to get mad about.

you go to a lesbian blog. you ignore the men dni because you know you probably don't even count to them. or maybe you do count and, out of respect for your manhood, they'd shun you accordingly. you try to feel okay about that. you scroll past dozens of posts about mediocre men and gagging at straight friends' boyfriends and how gross and undeserving men are of the beautiful women they couple up with and how all women should be gay so they can get treated right and and and and and. you finally find a post about curling into someone you love and feeling at peace and try to lose yourself in it. you know that feeling is what unites you, what makes you belong. you try to focus on it. you think about carding your hands through a butch's hair or lacing fingers with a femme and feeling warm and loved and more yourself than you ever have before. like this is who you're meant to be. you read about lesboys and butch boytoys and genderfucky dykes and big hairy deep-voiced wonderful women (like you want to be someday, like you wish you could make yourself) and you try to ignore the men dni underneath each and every post. and you daydream about meeting someone kind and earnest at a lesbian bar even though you don't think any such bars exist within three states of you and you can't drink and don't want to drink because you need to be in control of yourself at all times so you don't fuck up like you're always about to and here in the nonexistent lesbian bar you feel wanted and safe and in good company. you picture your ideal, happiest self. it is a mistake. ideal-you has a goatee. not the mascara one you smear on and call drag even though you know it's not drag, not really, the beard you call drag because you think everyone would look at you sadly if you told them it was just to pretend you had something out of your reach. a beard that's soft and that you grew and that cannot be smudged away if you get too comfortable with it. the dream shatters. your people pull away from you, their scoffs mixing with the mind-numbing gay girl bedroom pop you learned to settle for just to have something that almost resembled you, they all pull away and turn their backs and do not look at you. you're too close to being a man now, even though you're the same amount of man as before. and they know you're not supposed to interact with men, not as you would with dykes, at least. and it sours. it's all your imagination, all in your head, but it sours.

you sigh. you think about how small you are. how short, how narrow, how feeble. how your voice pitches up when you talk to strangers because it's easier to speak quietly when it carries more, and because you're nervous. because it's a chore to talk, like everything is. you think about testosterone. you think about how your family would look at you, the questions they would ask, your answers they would only pretend to accept. the uncomfortable glances and whispered questions they'd try to hide from you. you think about how small you are, and how small you will always be. how you don't know of a way to fix it, but even if there was one, no one would want you anymore. you'd be the only one thinking it made you a cooler dyke. you think about how you don't even want a T-voice all the time, how you'll never be able to switch it at will, because you don't know how and can't bring yourself to figure it out. you think about how your throat closes around every hint of your own attraction. how wanting is perverse, how wanting is invasive, how wanting is embarrassing and too vulnerable so it must stay anonymous, as an online witness, and how you can barely manage to form or maintain friendships because your brain makes you pull away, always spinning out and struggling to recover from the simplest of interactions. how they'll all leave you and you won't chase after them at all and how that will hurt them. how stuck you get. how it looks like nothing's holding you back, how that frustrates everyone who thought you were going to be more than you were. the people you love who understand except when it comes to being ghosted, being shut out. how you don't want to hurt them. how you can't tell them that because you're stuck. how you turn to stone when touched, how you never reach out, how you lose your speech and can't look at people, how your autism is fun and sexy until it becomes real and you never see them anymore, how much you longed for someone who knew everything without you having to explain, and who loved you anyway. how unreasonable you know that is to expect of anyone. you think about that not-even-real lesbian bar. you think about how you still can't drive. how you can't leave your home on your own, without dragging somebody into helping you. how you can't leave your body. how you can't leave your manhood behind.

you think about finding another lesbian blog and ignoring everything. about skimming it for the parts you can juice some meaning from. the parts men ignore and don't understand, and how typical of you it is to do so. or the parts where you're not welcome and you should accept that, because it's for lesbians only. how you are a lesbian anyway. how you're meant to choose lesbian or man, how each is a betrayal of some kind to yourself or your people, your family, your lovely strangers, your rare friendly acquaintances. about the parts that tell you you're not wanted, that you're ugly and lazy and gross and insert yourself everywhere without even asking. about the parts that tell you you are hated, and how lesbians are above it all by rejecting men. how lesbians are each blessed miracles. about the parts that say you should be ashamed of being whatever twisted confused freak you are, of everything, of looking and wanting or not looking or not wanting, of picking and choosing instead of taking it all in with a smile. after all, shouldn't you take it? or is your ego too fragile, as men's so often are? aren't you tired? good. we're not here for your consumption. and we sure as hell don't want your company or "community" or whatever. didn't you read the sign? no boys allowed. and if you want to come in you have to make up your mind. as if you haven't told them the only answer you have. you're both. you're both.

you know you broke the rule by interacting.

but it gets lonely sometimes. you wonder if they know.

#before i maybe get yelled at:#1) no i do not think ppl are evil for having men dnis no i do not think these are all equal transgressions even #though there is an overlap that should be examined that i think is based in a degree of lesbian separatism + exclusionism #2) yes there are lesbian blogs and people that are cool about genderfucky people. i'm not talking about them #3) this is a stylized vent post about trying to find lesbian content on tumblr that isn't like this. all these dnis/rules are ones i have #encountered. no i do not literally tell these people to change their dnis to suit me. the conversations are symbolic and ideological in #nature. if i find a blog with men dni i generally go somewhere else. it's about emotions. it's about my feelings on that it's not literally #about dming someone demanding they change things. it's not about demanding that You change things or else you're a bad person.#4) it is about the conflicts and hypocrisy and inconsistency of strict and exclusive sexuality labels persisting in gender-diverse spaces #and how it affects me as a lesbian who is a man who is a woman who is fucking whatever else. and yes it is about transphobia too.#5) it's about how lesbians feel the need to exclude men and how i think efforts to do so fail and hurt ppl and are often misguided #tht i think also comes up in like. bi lesbian/mspec lesbian/gaybian discourse. i'm not any of those myself but it seems like there's overla #6) if this post seems whiny and sad and insecure that's because it probably is. i have a right to be all of those things.#7) no i do not think all lesbians are man-hating assholes. i am a lesbian. i love lesbians. i love dykes and most of them are fantastic ppl #i just think the general bullshit of the world leads to this defensive thing that ends up hurting others in our community y'know?#8) i get that my perspective/experience is a bit unusual and many lovely ppl haven't considered it. that's part of why i'm sharing this #nyarla dni #<- sorry man it's too vulnerable. gonna keep this one to the internet-only folks

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