✓ bizarre love triangle ; erwin smith

NINE

I shook my head lightly, half-lying.

In truth, I was freezing my buttocks off. It was cold, terribly so. And no amount of clothing was going to cure that even indoors, not when our clothing was horribly thin and best-suited for summer.

"You're a terrible liar, you know?" Erwin mused at me before throwing me a blanket from one of the supply crates we brought in.

I nodded at him, thankful.

Unraveling the folded blanket before wrapping it around myself, I proceeded to help him throw some logs into the fireplace while trying to keep the blanket around my shoulders.

I paused in what I was doing upon seeing Erwin had not moved ever since. I arched a brow up at him, wondering why he suddenly stopped and was now staring at me with unfamiliar gentle amusement.

I tried to ignore how I felt heat slowly climb back to my body.

"What?" I asked him suspiciously.

He looked at me and chuckled, "You're adorable."

That took me aback as I stared back at him as though he had been high from snow. "What?"

He brushed it off with a little chuckle, "You can sit this one out, you know? One person is enough to light up the fire place."

"Are you trying to say I'm useless in this situation?" I accused.

Erwin immediately stopped chuckling as he snapped his head towards me with alarmed worry, shaking his head off profusely. I found it endearing with the way he frets in worry of having offended me, it showed just how much he cared.

"No, no, no—"

Then I finally bursted into laughter, unable to contain myself as he gazed at me shortly in confusion before slowly cracking a smile of his own with how I amused myself.

"I was kidding." I said, still grinning up at him.

"That wasn't funny." He retorted with a smile still present on his face.

"Why're you smiling then?" I teased light-heartedly.

"Because you're smiling."

Then I felt like an idiot to have smiled so much.

We just stared at one another, fondness clear in our eyes— one that I was confident to be solely platonic. After all, this was a friendly banter. A casual one, one we haven't been able to enjoy ever since we dropped by the pub nearly a year ago.

I ceased this moment to shamelessly peer at him.

I could get lost in those eyes. Such a vibrant hue that reminded me of a clear sunny day, one I would find most enjoyable with a cup of warm beverage and a plate of biscuits.

They reminded me of good times.

I wondered if that's where they'd gone. Those treasured moments I spent a great time reminiscing. All this time, when I had thought they'd been lost over the caresses of the breeze— they'd simply found home in his warm kind eyes.

"Smith, Thorne." Miche entered the room before looking like a deer caught in headlights, as though he had interrupted something with the tension in the air.

I cleared my throat and stepped forward, still holding the blanket.

"Miche?" I called, urging him to continue.

"We're being assigned a task."