"Hay-Hay!"
Groans and curses of pain escaped from the trembling table after Hanji practically pounced on top of it and hammered a flyer in my face like a thesis on the Church door. A wash of bright hues flashed at me, warming the darkness, monochromatic soul of mine. The palette of shades was so overwhelming, it was giving me a seizure. Every pair of eyes were snatched up from fellow judgemental peers and hurled at our direction, but the girl remained immune to the needles of unspoken criticism as she seized the pamphlet up to my vision.
I lazily made a mental note of the hot pinks of a ball gown sketch, and the dazzling glittery hair that swept across the flyer dramatically like a Cinderella mopping the floor with her blonde locks. Cool ... so is this a Windex ad?
The excited light in Hanji's orbs were soon overwritten with overt annoyance as she observed my undivided attention bestowed upon the debris of numbers and equations rather than the Disney Princesses fan art she has in her grasp. She grovelled like a five-year old stamping her feet, demanding for the latest Barbie doll that comes with more plastic moulds of shoes.
"Urgh, Hazel! Look at this!" She tried shoving the two-dimensional tresses in my face again.
"Mhm." Humming routinely, my eyes still fixed upon the chicken scratches of figures. Their knobby elbows and awkward knees were scrawled across the dry leaves of pages, like a line of ants wandering towards the edge and off onto the table.
The limit does not exist.
"Come on! This is prom we're talking about! PROM!"
"Hm, nice." I smiled down at the curves of my graph. She still hadn't gotten to the point where I'm supposed to care.
"Adler!" She roughly grabbed hold of my cheeks, competing with my Calculus textbook for my attention, "Stop being such a nerd and listen to me."
Who would have expected those words out of Hanji, the Hanji, who risked her life for baby reptiles as a part of her experiment? Who would drag you out of your beauty sleep to 'brief' on a scientific epiphany at two in the morning? Who probably writes romance fanfiction with Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, all in the name of science?
"Is this where you ask me out to prom?" I grinned at her glasses, slapping her hands away.
"No, but I bet someone else will." Her forehead gave way to the Mexican wave of her brows as they mischievously wriggled.
"And who might that be?"
"I am sworn to secrecy!" The future young scientist's mouth quivered in a forced line. Weight of silence caused her chin to tremble slightly, as she struggled to keep the words from bubbling out of her throat. I wasn't about to pry.
"..."
"Girl, let's go together! Maybe we'll drag along Erwin and Mike and Moblit and Levi as dates; not like they've got a choice!"
The sisters of Hanji's brows did their thing again, worming on the dancefloor of Hanji's forehead.
This was starting to sound polygamous as fuck.
It felt as if a giant hand had clouted a hole in the library ceiling, with all the radiance of stars channelling over Hanji. Her excitement had an exuberance that was uncontainable; even the brightness of the sun paled in comparison. It felt like I was purposely doing a rain dance to summon a thunderstorm to smother out her sunshine, "There's going to be so much food! And I can't wait to go shopping for dresses! You'd look so cute in one, although we'll probably need to get you a bombshell bra because you've got mosquito-bite tits-"
A pile of Calculus textbooks rained down on her head. She was buried underneath the mass of equations. Literally. Don't ask me how that happened.
"I'm not actually going."
The pile of books on the ground twitched to my comment.
"...What...?!"
________________________
"Oi, brat."
Footsteps ricocheted in my direction.
"Still got that knife of yours'?" He cut right through the bullshit with that rowdy attitude. We can all give this raven-haired thug credit for being obnoxiously blunt. His shadow clawed across the ceiling, loitering the empty wide hallway of lockers. Dust shrivelled and retreated to every heavy step of his.
"Why would I?"
"I need it to cut a bitch." He brusquely replied.
"Like you?"
Levi glowered at my crude comment, leaving the signature Tch when my rusted locker door screeched shut. The murky darkness drained from his figure, slashing across the ginger tones of the late sun in a distorted shadow.
"Anyway, I'm gonna go." I slung my bag across a shoulder promptly, hardly acknowledging his presence, "Don't stay too late cleaning."
I stepped past him towards the double-doors that promised an exit to the bleeding sun before his fingers snapped up and dug into my forearm. Every cell in my body, every fibre of my being, shrivelled at the red flags of this stoic boy and his demeanour. I watched the muscles of his arm tighten as he jerked me closer to him. They were ropes of nerves and a canvas of scars.
The floor retreated from my feet and left me at the disposal of the male with ebony hair in front of me. My sole launched and ploughed into his side, before firming planting back to the ground as the scaffold of my bones swooped to ground level to twist him off. The piece of shit wouldn't budge. Either he gained a tonne of weight or ... I was too weak. Urgh, did I SERIOUSLY just admit that?!
He was probably hiding a knife in his pocket to carve the life out of me, and physics seemed to endorse him.
"I'm not done with you yet." The boy muttered, his clutch constricting like a vice-grip. Goosebumps were summoned to the unfamiliar sensation of his callous hand, and I struggled to scrape every piece of him off, "Fight me. You owe me that."
I looked up at the stoic male, my face crumpled up like paper with a what the fuck expression.
"I don't owe you shit." I reminded him, helplessly trying to break his grip. I needed a fucking hammer for that.
"You seemed to have forgotten that you broke into my house." He countered, his slanted eyes flashing, daring me to deny.
"Because you were si-"
My sudden realisation halted me.
"No one gives a shit about your health problems." My teeth clenched, my eyes diverted from his as I heard him smirk while quoting me, "You've made that perfectly clear. Which makes it a home invasion."
"No, legally it doesn't, dumbass." I was grasping for a rosary within my pathetic legal knowledge.
"Alright then, it's fucking trespassing."
Pain swelled across my frame when he connected his elbow to my ribs.
Oh, this fuckwit came prepared.
The light shimmered off the columns of lockers clustered together like wreckage folding into itself. A forceful dent was made in the middle and the steel pillar looked as if it was doubling over. It was a prophecy, mirroring my state in the next ten minutes.
"Let's make a bet." My curls gently slid down my shoulder as I finally gave up. My mind distracted itself from dread and misery, tracing along the folds and wrinkles on his black shirt, before refining on the prominent lines of his exposed collarbones. I did anything but look at him.
"I have a feeling you're gonna elaborate."
Those piercing eyes of cobalt struggled to contain the overwhelming amount of accomplishment to the exasperated arch of my brows. His glance was so sharp, so shrill it would run the steak-knives industry out of business. At that very moment, my gut screeched at me and jammed a foot up my ass for being stupid enough to do the Michael Jackson moonwalk on a landmine trap.
"If I win, I get to make one request."
"And how do you know I'm not gonna end up beating your sorry ass?" The words were thrown back at him instantly, dressed liberally in a cocky tone.
"Oh, I know."
______________________________
Shadows were warped by the setting sun. I focused on our distorted figures splashed against the walls harshly, smiling in amusement that Levi in all his 5'3 glory couldn't stack up against his hollow shadow. As time ambled past, our figures relentless stretched out, longer and longer.
"Alright, alright, you don't have to rub your victory your win in my face." The huff was defiant as I avoided his gaze. Despite losing, I denied him the pleasure of observing me admit defeat, "I am true to my word."
His lean shadow towered over mine. An arm locked in his vice-grip of a hand, elbow digging under his ribs. Forearm, all bone and muscle, locked on my throat. A track of plasma engrained the side of his mouth.
For some sick reason, I would have gotten all my bones broken in the middle of this hallway and no one appeared. Plot convenience, huh?
I exhaled, watching my shadow singe into the walls, frozen in sequential shock. My eyes widened behind the seclusion of my hair when he whispered in a low rumble beside the shell of my ear.
"Go to prom with me."
We were battered. Tangled in elbows and knees. What a strange place and time for those words to bleed out. It was like a rom-com voiceover to a scene of murder.
Suddenly, that blonde mop of hair was mustered in my memory, the hue of the pink gown flashing, refusing to be forgotten. I prayed my face wasn't mimicking the disgusting shade of blush.
"Levi Ackerman~" My lilt oozed, shaded with mockery to hide my own girlish disbelief, the conventional notions of romance. My mind was beyond comprehension that someone would actually consider this potato with a painfully-awkward grin and ... well, quoting Hanji, mosquito-bite chest size as prom date material. This was a joke, a cruel, cruel joke. "Did you just ask me out to prom? Next, it's going to be marriage! And then children! Oh, I'm swooning!"
"Tch."
His eyes followed me reluctantly as I scraped his arm off me. The dragging of his calloused fingertips over my pale wrist left ripples over my skin long after he was gone. The thug straightened himself up, crossing his arms as his eyes of steel bore holes into the ground. He was so rigid, so stern for a guy with a guaranteed, blackmailed yes to the proposal. I could practically smell the smoke lacing into the air from the laser of his glance at the wooden floorboards.
It was a safety hazard, Cyclops.
"Why me?" I exhaled.
"Why not?"
Because I am a sexless potato.
"Man, seriously, you didn't need to beat me up to ask me that." I shrugged while rubbing my wrists, despite the fact that I would have denied without blinking. But he doesn't know that, does he? "Some flowers, a new car, maybe an engagement ring would do. But hey, since you asked so nicely."
A ticket was shoved in my face, the left side of his lips curling into a smirk. He was one step ahead. "It's not like you've got a fucking choice, Adler."
This fuckwit definitely came prepared.
For the strangest reason, I could envision Hanji's eyebrow Mexican Wave very, very clearly.
I bet someone else will. Her voice squeaked in my head.
What a piece of shit, that Hanji.
"Do you still need that knife?"
He shifted his head towards back at me when I asked him. His jaw sliced back the shadows as what was left of the sun highlighted their prominence. The man eyed me from the side and at the ticket tucked away in the grasp of my fingers.
"Not anymore."
_____________________________
[A/N]:
Yo everyone. CHRISTMAS IS AROUND THE CORNER Y'ALL I'M SO HYPed
Anyway, I'm still writing because I suddenly want to, and I can in this little gap of time SO UNFORTUNATELY YOU GET MORE SHIT FROM ME THROWN AT YOUR WAY
I'm so pissed off at having unfinished works on my page -so I'm trying to finish this off
I love constructive feedback/criticism/whatnot so just tell me I suck and yeah. Please comment and vote (if you like the stuff, no blackmail!), and thanks to all of you who support the half-assed, illogical shit I spout, or are just lurking around and reading my shit I love you all <3
With much hate,
AttackOnFeels