Unity

Chapter Twenty Three

Eren walked in the room and sat down on the bed behind me.

"Was that Alex?" I nodded.

"Yeah, but it was seven years ago," Eren gaped.

"Wow."

.   .   .

"What are you doing?" Eren came into the living room where I was about to record with a bottle of beer in his hand. I knew things were going to be pretty shaky because Eren was probably drunk. It's not like he's going to be acting silly, though. No. It's not like that any more. Now when he's drunk, he's just flat out mad.

"Are you drunk, Eren?" Eren grimaced and scoffed.

"No!" Eren's eyebrows narrowed. He shuffled his feet a bit. "Okay, maybe a little bit."

"Did you take your medicine to make you less angry?"

"I don't need that shit!" Eren slammed his beer bottle on the table and chugged a large portion of it down his throat.

"Please just take it for once, you'll probably feel a bit better. At least you won't feel angry." Eren chugged the rest of his beer down his throat and stood up behind me.

"That's easy for you to say! You stab yourself with a needle filled with artificial 'man-stuff' once a week just so you don't turn back into a woman!" I stopped editing my video and looked down at my hands. Did he really say that? I turned around to face Eren even though I didn't make eye contact with him. I've never heard him say anything along those lines. He's always been really careful not to offend me and not to make me feel any less of a man than he was even when he was drunk. I don't know what's so different about today...

"What do you mean by 'artificial'?" Eren gave me a poker face and tried to get up to grab another beer from the fridge, but I grabbed his arm and stopped him. "Do not drink any more alcohol tonight! You've already had, what, eight? Eight cans of beer just today? Just sit down and talk to me without drinking for once!" Eren pounded the glass on the table, making a giant thump noise which was rather painful to listen to.

"Taking Testosterone doesn't turn you into a real man, Armin! It just makes you feel better about yourself!" I sat in my chair silently, but when I did talk from then on it was extremely quiet.

"Do you see me as a woman, Eren?" Eren looked at me with rage still surging through his blood.

"You carried four of my dead children! Is that not womanly to you?" I shook my head. I remembered when we tried to have our own kids years ago... he wanted them so desperately. We found out that when his dad injected him with his 'titan power' it screwed up his sperm cells and probably a lot of other stuff and now it's preventing the babies from growing. It stroke me as strange that he could talk about it so blatantly now considering how heartbroken he was when he found out.

"But Eren," his fists clenched up a bit as if I were going to hurt him. I felt scared he would hurt me if I kept up this fight, actually. "Do you see me as a real man? Me specifically?" Eren eyed me up and down like a piece of meat.

"You look like a real man, but in reality, you're not!" Tears stung in my eyes but I kept my eyelids open so no more could commence. "You're faking it! You don't deserve to live as a man when you were socialized to be a girl! You don't deserve--"

"No, Eren." Eren looked at me harshly. "You don't deserve it." I rested my head in my knees. "You don't deserve your male body. You didn't deserve your natural male puberty. You didn't have to spend years and years of intensive therapy just to go through puberty. You didn't have to have surgery to get your male-sculpted chest. Hell, I don't even have what I want the most and I can't ever have it because it's too risky. I don't want to bleed to death just because some transphobic surgeon slapped a 3-inch dick on my crotch. Everything I've worked for was given to you. Everything I've ever wanted in myself you've already had the second you were born." Eren looked at me with a softer tone. 

"Armin, I'm--"

"Don't be sorry." I stood up and headed towards the door. I took my ring finger where my wedding ring was and slipped it off my finger. I held it in my right hand. "I'm leaving for a week or two. I know how to survive with no shelter and no money." Eren shook his head violently and tried to get me to stay. "I need a break from all of this. I don't want to watch you drink all day and then get mad at me for nothing when you get drunk." I put on my coat and turned around towards Eren. "You need to get back on track, because I can't live like this." I put my wedding ring in his hand and opened the door.

"No, Armin, I didn't mean it, I was drunk! I swear, Armin, I'm so sorr--" I closed the door on him and walked down the steps of our front patio. I heard Eren curse loudly and throw something across the room. Something crashed from inside the house, so I assume it was a beer bottle he threw.

My feet took me down a path that I've never taken before. I didn't really care where I went as long as it was away from home. I didn't want to be near Eren because he's turned into an angry drunk. He's not taking medicine and he's making it even worse by drinking. He keeps lashing out at me, but that crossed the line.

My whole life I've had to deal with people telling me the things Eren had just said to me every damn day. Eren was one of the only ones to be so close to me and not be an ignorant transphobic asshole like every other person. But now that he can't stay sober, he can't keep the filter in his mind, either.

I didn't know when I was going to come back, but it was going to be enough time to let Eren sort himself out.

And knowing Eren, it was going to take a damn long time.

A/N: I'm terribly sorry but next two chapters are gonna be pretty sad and your feels might die a little bit.

I kind of feel like being an asshole so I'm gonna go ahead and write a sad chapter. Or two. Or three. Or four...

Be prepared for the next two chapters and possibly more after that. They won't be happy like the first 22...