Chapter Text
Whenever you meet someone new, there's always this kind of little thought nagging you in the back of your head. Something like 'this boy's going to be a real nerd later' or 'this girl will be a famous ballet dancer'. Tiny and unimportant thoughts that everyone forgets when the person talks for the first time.
Eren Jaeger was different.
Mostly because those thoughts followed him, whenever he went, they always hovered in his mind, nagging him with countless whispers of 'this boy will win the Nobel prize of chemistry' or even 'this girl will develop a new kind of vaccine'. There aren't really hurtful, always telling him good things about the person's future.
But they sometimes came with a condition.
And those were the worst.
Like, 'See this blond kid in your preschool class? He's going to be a genius, Einstein's equal. That is, if he doesn't bail out of school after endless bullying in high school'.
And because Eren Jaeger is a good kid, he immediately befriends the blond kid and fights every bully wanting to annoy the boy.
Of course, he discovered with time that Armin (the blond kid) was an awesome boy and that befriending him was the best choice he had ever made.
But it doesn't mean that Eren always follows the advices given by those annoying little thoughts.
When he first began to notice that not everyone heard those things, Eren decided to stop talking about them, mostly because it unnerved his parents whenever he blurted to whoever crossed his paths things about their future and how they had to work hard on something to achieve greatness. Having something along a seer for a kid surely wasn't what the perfectly normal Jaeger family had wanted. So when Eren got to his fifth birthday, the little boy decided to hide it. Or rather, he was forced to.
Knowing that his mother would die after having a fight with him would do this to any kid.
But Eren wasn't stupid, those were just thoughts, mere things that were like dreams and didn't mean that they were true. So the kid tried his best to ignore this foreboding thought and continued living happily with his family. His mother didn't say anything about his new-found neediness and graciously gave him hugs whenever the kid asked for them. And just like that, Eren forgot about that persisting whisper in the back of his mind and went back to his merry days.
Until they crashed down.
As he neared his tenth birthday, he got in a huge argument with his mother in the middle of a little shop, asking angrily why she wouldn't let him go to Armin's place while she sternly retorted that he was to stay at home to repent on his horrible grades. It was at this point that Eren let out the most hurtful words he knew, and then dashed out of the shop, leaving his annoyed mother behind him. The kid would forever regret that word and leaving without even telling his mother that he hadn't meant it. That he would always love her.
The rest was just screams, rumbles, unending pain on his arm and leg, and blurry memories of blood running on his face.
To put it blankly, Carla Jaeger died that day after having a huge argument with her son.
Ten days later, Eren watched with dead eyes how she was let down in her grave and vowed to himself to never again ignore the thoughts in his mind. He branded that in his heart and his eyes shone brightly while he tightened his fist in the pocket of his newly made suit. When his father asked him if he wanted to keep living with him or go to his uncle's house, Eren just had to glance at his father's face to make his decision.
'If this man is left alone, he'll mingle with bad crowd and make drugs.'
"I'll stay with you, Dad," Eren answered with a tight smile.
Grisha Jaeger widened his eyes in surprise, he truly hadn't expected his son to answer that as they hadn't really spend much time together. His work as a head surgeon in the city best hospital didn't leave him with much free time and Carla had been the only one left to watch over Eren. However, his son had deliberately chosen to stay with him rather than with his uncle. And, while it was true that Carla's older brother hadn't really been present in Eren's childhood, it truly was heartwarming for Grisha to see that his son preferred him over his uncle.
"Don't worry, Eren," Grisha whispered as he tightened his hold on his son's frail shoulder. "I'll make sure that you won't regret your choice."
Eren nodded and his wide doe-like eyes blinked slowly. His father's thought had changed.
'This man will create extremely adaptable transplants.'
The little kid smiled brightly at his father. If listening to those thoughts would be enough to make them real, then he would do it.
With time, Eren realized that not every thought with conditions would be easily done. Or wouldn't come with consequences.
His sudden new sister was the proof of it.
It had been during his last year of elementary school. Eren had been dilly-dandling with Armin, distractedly listening to the blond's excited chirps of this science guy's show when his teal eyes had landed on a dark figure in the back of their class. It was another boy, like them, but the perpetual dark shadow hanging around him had scared off any potential friendly kid from approaching him. Eren himself hadn't event tried, too busy with their teacher's thought.
The man was destined for being an amazing comic designer but had abandoned all thoughts of ever becoming one because he was scared of being too poor to pay his bills. Thus, Eren had brainstormed during a whole semester on how he could change his teacher's mindset.
But the man wasn't here now and Eren wasn't really listening to Armin. The brunet thrummed lightly his fingers on his desk and suddenly was hit with the idea of discovering the grim kid's thought. Eren nodded to himself and with an apologizing grin to his friend, he stood up, scooping his crutches before he stumbled toward the gloomy kid's seat. The latter glared at him, his sharp grey eyes narrowing in anger while his lips tightened into a dark scowl.
If Eren hadn't been too busy trying to walk without stumbling over his own foot, he'd have been shocked by how scary the little boy's scowl was. But the brunet remained oblivious to that and finally got to the other boy's desk. He immediately sat on the chair in front of the boy's desk and leaned toward the latter, a wide and inviting grin on his face.
"Hello! I'm Eren," Eren greeted while using every ounce of charm and warmth he had.
It seemingly wasn't enough because the other kid glared even harder at him and his grey eyes narrowed into two hateful slits.
"What do you want from me," the boy growled.
"Huh?" Eren widened his eyes and finally got to look at the other boy's face.
Thin and pale lips, an oval face framed by long raven-like hair and finally those two hateful and scornful grey eyes.
But the apparent boy's dislike wasn't what had shocked Eren so much. His thought had been like a punch to his guts and he felt his chest constrict while his eyes widened in horror. Faint memories of screams and the blood running out of his injuries hovered in his shell-shocked mind and Eren gasped loudly.
'If she isn't helped, this girl will kill herself.'
"You can't do that!" Eren immediately blurted out, blinking rapidly his tears away.
"What?" the boy retorted with an angry frown.
'If she isn't helped, this girl will...'
"You can't do that!" the brunet repeated and he tightened his fist on his crutch. "You can't!"
The ruckus in the classroom suddenly quieted but Eren ignored him. His eyes were fixed on the boy who wasn't really a boy if he believed in his thought.
"Eren!" Armin, ever the good friend, was immediately by his side and softly pulled him by his sleeve. "Stop it, you know that he isn't like us!"
Eren frowned and watched how the boy who wasn't a girl, their face darkened when they heard that they weren't like Armin and him. However, while it was true that Eren wasn't as smart as Armin, he compensated with his instinct. And it was nagging him to help them above everything else.
Therefore, Eren shrugged off Armin's hold on his sleeve and stretched his hand toward the other child.
"Hello, I'm Eren," the brunet repeated with a stern look and a determined pout.
The grim kid ignored his hand with a huff and looked at the billboard.
"Okay," Eren hissed while he tried to ignore his anger. "If that's how you want to play, we'll play!"
And for the following week, Eren followed the kid everywhere, insistingly ignoring how his shoulder hurt from walking everywhere with his crutches and how every other kid in the elementary school looked at him as he had a death wish. The boy didn't really understand why everyone else was scared by the grim child but he simply shrugged it off. The latter did have a scary glare whenever they were angered by something. And it was true that pretty much everything annoyed them.
But was Eren was everything if not a coward. Thus he followed them everywhere and finally found out why their thought had been so bad.
From time to time, they hid in the lavatories and didn't go out during whole periods. With his special condition, Eren didn't really have to look for an excuse whenever he missed a class so the teachers had never really looked for him, thinking that he was probably resting his aching body in the infirmary. But the other kid's case was different. Eren had soon enough seen that their report was full of red grades from countless tests that they had failed to take as they had been in the toilets during them. However, no matter how many bad grades they got or how many times the teachers yelled at them, the child never stopped hiding in the toilets and it really intrigued Eren.
So much that he ended hiding himself in the toilet stall next to them.
He had expected everything, from smoking pot to vomiting. But not crying.
They had been heavy cries, no tears were involved and they didn't sniffle like every other kid would have. They just cried in heaving sobs that tore something in Eren's chest. When, after what had seemed like hours for Eren, the child stopped crying, the brunet decided to stop hiding and he softly rasped at the other kid's door.
"What do you want?" Their voice had been hoarser than habitual and Eren blinked away any tears that could have been in his eyes.
It would been a lie to say that he hadn't cried during those sobs.
Eren looked at the white face and their dull eyes. They weren't even red because Mike hadn't cried with tears. They probably didn't have any tear left in their body.
'If she isn't helped, this girl will kill herself.'
For the first time since he heard that thought, Eren actually thought about it and he widened his eyes when he realized what it truly meant.
"What are you doing here?" he asked and the kid glared at him. "This isn't the girl's room."
She blinked and suddenly there were tears shimming in her eyes. However, the kid quickly wiped them with her clothes and she glared at Eren.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" The girl hissed angrily.
"Why are you saying that?" Eren retorted while he tilted his head. "You do know that girls aren't supposed to be in the boy's lavatory, right?"
The child blinked and she nervously pushed back her long hair, letting Eren see her face. For the first time since she had been introduced in his class, the kid wasn't scowling and Eren found out that she was a really cute girl. He grinned at her and stretched his hand toward the other kid, clumsily fumbling on his good leg as he had lost his grip on his crutch.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Eren," he added cheerily before he pensively sucked on his lips and tilted his head again. "What's your name?"
"I'm..." She looked down and took a deep breath. "I'm Mikasa Ackerman."
"Nice to meet you, Mikasa!" Eren smiled brightly at the little girl and shook her hand with a small laugh.
Her thought had changed. But not enough.
"You know," the brunet added almost pensively. "My dad is a really smart, maybe he could help you out of your curse..."
"Curse?" Mikasa frowned at the little boy's strange phrasing and Eren gave her another bright smile.
"You know, the fairy tale curse you have!" he chirped happily. "I've seen it somewhere else! I'm sure that my dad is smart enough to know its counter-spell! So what do you think?"
Mikasa's eyes widened in surprise and Eren felt something warm and fuzzy settle in his stomach. Her thought had changed.
'This girl will be a great athlete.'
"What a great thing," Eren whispered to himself.
A sniffle followed his former question and soon enough, Eren's insisting stalking was rewarded by a new older sister figure.
Mikasa hadn't been the only deadly thought but she had been the only one that he had been able to effectively alter. The rest hadn't been as easy and sometimes, Eren had to lie down so he wouldn't break down in front of his friends or family.
Grisha had fulfilled his promise though and the brunet was soon rewarded by a new kind of prosthesis that made him able to walk without needing a rolling chair or crutches. Also, he helped the Ackerman, Mikasa's parents, when they were looking for a good doctor for her intake of hormones before her operation. Eren had always made sure to be with her whenever she had to meet with her doctor as she was incredibly shy for someone with such a threatening glare.
On another hand, it took Armin three other years before he found out about Eren's ability. But when he did, it took him two weeks before he stopped sulking and ignoring his best friend, one day before he stopped asking Eren if he had only befriended because of those predictions and mere hours until he ended hovering around his friend to ask him how this strange ability worked.
"You can't keep calling it thoughts, Eren," Armin finally announced with an annoyed pout (because Eren's answer were too vague for him). "They aren't thoughts because you have no real power over them."
"Then how should I call them?" asked the brunet with a shrug.
It didn't matter how he called them, they would still happen and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
"How about," Armin nibbled on his pen and Mikasa frowned when she saw it. She had already told him to stop doing that as he had ended more than a few times with ink all over his teeth.
"Armin," she interrupted the blond's brainstorming with her soft voice.
Even if her hormones had stopped her voice in deepening like boys, she still thought that she had a voice way too deep for a girl, even if Armin and Eren always told her that it wasn't true.
"What?" Armin blinked and immediately noticed what had happened with an annoyed scowl. "Come on! This was my favorite pen!"
Eren snickered and he stretched on his bed, his foot scratching idly at his prosthesis joint while he looked dreamily at his best friends. Mikasa was hovering around Armin who was still fussing over the black ink covering his lips and teeth. The two youths turned toward the brunet and they both smiled at him.
"So what's my future, o great seer?" Armin asked while he flopped down on Eren's bed, making the latter grimace when the blond stumbled over him.
"Get off, you Einstein wannabe!" the brunet growled as he tried to push away his best friend.
But as he had only an arm to do so, Armin merely batted his hand away and gave a wide smirk to his friend.
"So I'm the future Einstein?" the blond's smirk widened and he began to cackle evilly. "Wait until I show those idiots back in school how smart I really am!"
Eren rolled his eyes and stretched his hand toward Mikasa with a pleading face.
"Mika! Please!" he begged while wriggling under Armin.
The young girl rolled her eyes and stood up with a sigh before she swiftly pushed Armin away from Eren and she sat between the two boys.
"What about me?" she asked with her soft voice.
"A beautiful athlete," Eren grinned from his spot on the bed and sighed happily.
"You know," Armin chirped after a little while during which he tried to get the ink off his mouth. "You should become some kind of life adviser. If your predictions are never off, you could get some money out of that..."
"I don't want money though," Eren furrowed his brows before he shrugged. "I could always charge them with a ridicule amount of money."
"Like what?" Mikasa softly inquired while she brushed her bangs away from her forehead.
"Fifty would be more than enough," the brunet grinned at her and he stretched his limbs with a contented sigh.
"Fifty millions?" Armin gasped from his spot behind the dark haired girl.
"What?" Eren was startled out of his contented daze and he looked at the blond in confusion. "Why would I ask so much? Fifty cents would be more than enough!"
"That's what you say now," the blond commented with a huff. "Wait until you're adult..."
"Believe me, Armin," the brunet announced with a decided face. "This will never change..."
"This will be three hundred," Eren droned out while he stretched his hand toward his customer.
"But it was cheaper last week!" the man whined while he, despite his words, fished out his wallet.
"Well, tell that to the university board," the brown haired young man shrugged while he pocketed the money in his over-sized hoodie.
Eren glanced for the last time at the man's face and gave him a smile.
"Don't worry," he assured him with a small wink. "You won't need me after this one."
The man's face lightened and he brightly grinned at the young college student, ignoring how weird it could look to any bystanders if they were to see him acting so happily after giving his money to some kid without even getting something else back.
'This man will realize his dream after going to buy the Big Ass Flowers Everyday shop in the main street of the XXX city.'
Such a clear and precise prediction.
But as always since he had passed his eighteenth birthday, it didn't surprise him anymore. Even if sometimes Armin would point out that his ability didn't tend to be so precise weeks ago. It seemed to get accurately precise as time passed by and Eren wondered sometimes if he would end seeing the future like some kind of oracle. He surely hoped that it didn't because he didn't want to be the head of some kind of weird cult. Even if Armin would be pleased to be the cult leader, the boy was way too cunning for his own good.
Eren shook his head to stop thinking about Armin's greedy smile whenever they talked of founding a new cult, and glanced back at his customer. The man had some kind of constipated face with a heavy frown and his brown hair buzzed on the back while the front flopped over his forehead. But Eren didn't let the man's threatening glare faze him as he had been met with worse in his childhood. Mikasa was one scary woman whenever she got angry. That's all he had to say.
"You should buy the Big Ass Flowers Everyday shop," the brunet finally said before he yawned loudly. "Sorry about that. What was I saying?"
"Buying a shop," the man answered him eagerly.
"Right," Eren nodded before he glanced back at the man's face. The prediction hadn't changed. "The Big Ass Flowers Everyday, remember that name. If you do that, you'll be really surprised."
The man grinned almost childishly at this and he literally pranced away from the dirty back street that Eren used for his little deals.
The college student sighed heavily once the man left and he shook his head softly. Sometimes, juggling both his studies and his advising job were a bit too heavy for him, even if his work as a life adviser didn't ask too much of him. He just had to look at the client and he immediately knew what he had to say.
But it was just his luck that being a college student also meant unending and extremely pricey books to read. And even if his father was a well known doctor in the word, Eren didn't want to disturb the poor man from his early and deserved retirement for petty money. Therefore, his 'advising work' as Armin had humorously named it.
Eren felt his phone buzz in his pocket and he sighed another time before he took it.
"Yeah?" he answered before yawning heavily and he felt tears prickle at the corner of his eyes when it ended.
"Eren," Mikasa's confident voice came out of the phone and Eren blinked his tears and tiredness away.
Hearing his sister's voice always woke him up. Mostly since she had left the city to get in a famous university for her female volleyball team.
"Mikasa!" the brunet greeted happily while he leaned against the damp wall with a small shiver. He sincerely hoped that his prosthesis wouldn't get damp though. It always hurt a bit whenever it got too humid or cold. "How are you? Wait, why did you call? Did some idiot bully you? Do I need to go over and teach him some manners?"
"Like you'd ever need to do that," Mikasa huffed lightly before she heartily spoke to him. "I just wanted to talk to you, Eren."
"I can understand why," the boy nodded to himself and he slightly shuffled on his better leg, stretching his prosthesis one so it would end away from the cold and damp wall. "Is your debut match tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"Then you better kick some ass because I'll be there to make sure of it!" Eren grinned and he could perfectly picture his sister widening her eyes in surprise and warm smile at his words.
"Thanks," she told him but it was enough to convey her happiness.
"Everything for my favorite sister!" Eren assured while he decided to walk toward the busy shopping street.
"I'm your only sister," Mikasa deadpanned, causing her brother's amused snort.
"That must be why," the boy added before he cheerily walked in the shopping street. He swiftly avoided colliding with one of the shoppers, absentmindedly looking at their face, and continued talking his sister while assuring her that he would indeed be there to see her first match.
"But won't the ticket be too much for you?" the young woman asked him with an audible worry in her soft voice.
"Who do you think you're talking to?" Eren bragged while he patted his hoodie front pocket. "I've got everything covered!"
"You overcharged one of your customers, right?" Mikasa stated.
The brunet flinched and he began to whistle happily while ignoring his sister's increasing tone.
"Oh, look at the time," he announced nervously while he walked the stairs to his apartment. "I've got to go, bye Mikasa!"
"Wait, Eren!"
The college student promptly ended the call and he fell in a heap of limbs and prosthesis over his couch, ignoring the blue eyes staring intensively at his back.
"What do you want, Armin," the brunet groaned without moving from his spot.
"How did it go?" the blond asked while he closed his book and folded his reading glasses before he put them on top of his book.
"As always, it was like it was handed on a damn silver plate," Eren moaned with his eyes closed. "I just had to look at his hopeful face and there it was! It even had the address and everything."
"Even the address?" Armin inquired with a pensive look.
"Yeah," the brunet nodded before he looked up at his friend. "I did give him the name though because it would be just... bad to keep lying to him."
"I understand," his friend smiled at him and went back to his room to fetch his notebook.
As always when Eren's abilities were concerned, Armin would write it down and then think over it until he found out some kind of theory about it and ask Eren to test it right away. Like with his latest customer, they had observed his prediction and then waited for a whole week to see if there would be any difference. And there had been.
Eren was now able to precisely pinpoint locations and names.
"I'll go see Mikasa's match tomorrow, do you want to come?" Eren mumbled from his spot on the couch.
"I've got a big test tomorrow, sorry," the blond immediately answered with a sorry smile. "But tell her that I'd have loved to watch her play!"
"Will do," hummed the brunet.
It took him two hours before he even found the strength to come out of his couch, but Eren finally stood up and stumbled to his bedroom while scratching his prosthesis joint on his arm. However, he was prompt to wake up when he found out that something really important was missing from his persona.
"ARMIN! I LOST THE MONEY!"
"Oh god, not again," the blond muttered while he face-palmed.
He pushed away his books, knowing that he wouldn't get any study done until his friend found his money back, and joined the brunet in his bedroom. Eren was kneeling on the floor, his hoodie laying in front of him while he sniffed angrily and rubbed his tearing eyes with the back of his hand.
"I swear to god that I had the money when I got out of the street!" the brunet told him as soon as he saw him.
Armin furrowed his brows and remembered the news of increasing pickpockets in town with a dreary sigh.
"Maybe someone stole it?" he asked before he cringed when he heard Eren punch the floor with his good hand.
"If I ever catch that fucker, I'm going to make him regret ever meeting me! I'll fucking undo whatever prediction he has!" the brunet cursed out loud before he took a deep breath and flopped down on the floor, his eyes closed and his breath even.
Armin frowned and clicked his tongue. While he knew that his friend tended to get asleep whenever he was tired, this was way too sudden for Eren. He had to write that down in his journal. But before that, he had to put his friend in his bed. The blond sighed heavily and began by taking off the brunet's prosthesis as he didn't want him to suffer from aching joints the following morning. Once he had put away the arm as well as leg in their respective places, Armin took his friends by his armpits and with a heaving breath put him in his bed. Once he was sure that Eren was correctly tucked in his bed, the blond went back to their common room and sighed another time before he went to look in their piggy bank.
Thanks to Eren's accounting work and his own work in repairing computers, they always had a nice amount of money if there ever was the need of. And Armin felt that this was one of those time.
"But it's strange," the blond mused in a soft voice. "How could someone get past Eren's eyes..."
With the brunet's strange ability, it was extremely difficult to ever surprise him and it seriously intrigued Armin to know how that pickpocket had done it.
The next day found Eren stumbling in the train station with bleary eyes and, thanks to Armin, his stumps not aching after a night free from his prosthesis. The brunet swiftly payed his ticket fare and wandered in the station until he found his train and took a place in the first wagon he got in. He pretty much ignored the man sitting in front of him and decided to go back to sleep as he didn't get much sleep the night before, thanks to that evil pickpocket.
But he soon woke up from a hand ruthlessly shaking him by his shoulder. Eren clumsily tried to bat it away and blinked blearily when he realized that he had the face of a stranger way too close to his eyes for his taste.
But the college student quickly forgot about that when he noticed something.
He knew that stranger's face. Mostly because he had almost collided against him the day before when he had been chatting with Mikasa. And it was the suspect number one for that hated pickpocket's identity.
"You," Eren growled angrily while he furrowed his brows and searched for a good insult.
"Do I know you?" the stranger frowned and seemed to remember something because he scoffed and stepped back. "You should show your ticket, kid."
Eren blinked and glanced around him. Seems like the stranger was only waking him up because the controller was here. The brunet reluctantly stopped glaring at the stranger and showed his ticket to the man before he went back to plot on the stranger's demise.
The latter ignored him, gazing with a disinterested face at the clouds and passing pastures by the window.
But, as Eren had never been one to hold grudges over anyone, the brunet soon enough became bored of hating the stranger and he shuffled on the uncomfortable seat, stretching and then crossing his legs before redoing it once again.
"Would you fucking stop doing that!" the stranger ended hissing angrily.
"What?" the brunet cocked his head and stretched his legs once again. "This?"
"Yes!" the other man growled as he raised his head to glare at the younger male.
The latter spluttered in surprise and he almost fell from his seat. The man raised his eyebrows when he saw the college student have something along to a panic attack and he slowly rose from his seat, his hands slightly stretched toward the brunet yet he didn't move to touch the latter.
"Hey, are you..." the stranger began before he cut himself and shook his head. "Like he's able to answer you," he grumbled to himself before he sat next to the brunet and shook him by his shoulders. "Get a hold of yourself, kid."
Eren blinked and suddenly realized that he hadn't been breathing for the past three minutes.
"Oh my god!" the younger man took a deep breath and almost spluttered again when he saw that the stranger was now sitting next to him. "Oh my god," he repeated like a broken recorder.
"I'm called Levi though," the stranger deadpanned.
That was enough to cut through Eren's panicked state and the brunet blinked slowly.
"That was probably the worst joke ever made," he stated without any hesitation.
"But it did stop you from freaking out," Levi shrugged it off like being told his humor was shit was a habitual occurrence (and maybe it was). "Levi Ackerman."
"Eren Jaeger," the brunet answered on auto-pilot, his eyes still shyly glancing at the stranger's face whenever he thought the other wouldn't see him.
And here it was, the horrible prediction that Eren hadn't expected at all. Even with his seemingly seer-like powers.
'If this man doesn't marry Eren Jaeger, the world will end.'
"Well, I'd like to say that it was nice meeting you, Eren Jaeger," Levi commented while Eren still looked at him with horrified eyes. "But it would be lying because that was without doubt the shittiest meeting I've ever had..."
"Right back at you," the brunet muttered while he decided to avoid looking at Levi's face ever again.
What he couldn't see, couldn't hurt him, right?
But the 'world will end' part continued haunting him until Eren couldn't deal with it anymore.
"Say, Levi," Eren ended saying once the silence of their compartment became too heavy for him.
The man stopped looking at the window and glanced at the college student with a raised eyebrow.
"What do you want?"
And here it was. Eren simply didn't have any idea on how he could break it in to the man.
'I'm your future husband. And if you ever refuse this, you have to know that the world will end if we don't get married. You're not gay? How nice, me neither!'
Right, he couldn't.
So he grasped the flimsiest possible subject and glued a charming smile on his lips (Mikasa had told him that this one could make girls swoon if he ever decided to use it to charm someone) before he blurted the first thing that passed through his mind.
"Could you perhaps be related to Mikasa Ackerman?"
"Yes," Levi answered while his face darkened slightly.
Thinking that his smile didn't work on the man, Eren increased its brightness and almost jumped in fright on his seat when he saw the man's look down with a frown.
"Could you be his cousin?" the college student asked before he pensively frowned. "Wait, she never told me that she had a cousin..."
"I'm her uncle," Levi reluctantly told him before folding his arms over his chest.
Eren glanced at his arms and felt his throat tighten when he saw that the sleeves of Levi's shirt had been slightly pushed and that he could clearly see the man's wrist now. Or rather, the tattoo on it.
Levi caught sight of the brunet's insisting gaze and he swiftly covered his wrist with his hand before he glared at the young man.
"You didn't see shit, brat," the stranger hissed angrily.
Eren nodded silently and copied the other man by watching the clouds.
'Oh my god,' Eren thought as he tried to stay sane under Levi's glaring eyes. 'My future husband has a secret tattoo.'
It was a really long ride and what made it even longer was probably the nervousness exuding by each and every pore of Eren's body. But who would hold it against him when he was against Mikasa's uncle?
But after a whole hour, even the terrible and scary looking man did have enough of that tense silence and he ended sighing heavily before he looked at Eren's nervous face.
"You," the adult began before he furrowed his brows and glanced back at the brunet. "Eren, right?"
"Yes, sir!" the boy yipped nervously.
Levi tilted his head and seemed to remember something because his eyes suddenly focused on Eren's arms.
"Mikasa has told me about you," the dark haired man commented in a soft voice. "Did you really stalk her until she told her what was wrong with her?"
Of all the stories that Eren had expected to hear from the stranger's mouth, he truly hadn't expected that one.
"I didn't stalk her!" he protested with an embarrassed blush. "I just perseveringly followed her until she finally accepted to talk to me!"
"You even followed her in the toilets," Levi added with an amused glint in his grey eyes so similar to Mikasa's.
"I was worried about her well-being!" Eren insisted while his blush flushed all over his face and even neck.
Levi chuckled softly and cocked his head, some strands of his dark hair falling over his eyes as he did so.
"Don't shit yourself, kid," the man shook his head and smirked at the frazzled student. "I was just kidding you..."
Eren spluttered and gasped while he tried to understand how this thuggish-looking man could be even kidding him when his whole face only conveyed boredom to the whole world.
"From what I've heard of her stories, you seem like a good kid," Levi drawled and that caused an immediate flush over Eren's whole face.
"Oh god, not you too," the brunet moaned while he hid his face behind his hands.
"Not bad," the adult chuckled, provoking yet another blush on Eren's face. "Careful there, though. I wouldn't want to see you die from too much blood in your head."
"Like that could ever happen," the brunet commented while he rolled his eyes.
"Don't sass me," Levi chided him with a stern glare and the college student shrunk on his seat. Levi's playful (if that man could ever be playful) glares were way worse than Mikasa's deathly glare.
"Yes, sir!"
"Stop calling me sir, I'm not that old."
"Yes, Levi!"
"Don't call me that familiarly, we're not friends."
"Yes, uh... Mister Ackerman!"
Levi sighed heavily and rubbed tiredly his eyelids.
"You know what," he muttered almost to himself. "Call me whatever you want."
And Eren, being the cheeky little brat he had always been, saw the opportunity and seized it with no regrets.
"Yes hubby!"
And just like that, the world ended. At least, it seemed like it did end for Eren as Levi's extremely annoyed glare was so fear inducing that the brunet felt his heart miss a beat.
"Don't ever call me that again!" the dark haired man hissed threateningly at the student.
"Yessir!"
Levi sighed heavily and went back to his cloud watching with a muttered "What did I ever do to deserve this" while Eren slumped on his seat with a relieved sigh.
And those two were supposed to get married.
Days until the end of the world: 800 days.