break the habit. [eren x reader]
// hello coffin dwellers! dee here, finally with a fic in progress!! :) decided since eren's been on the mind, i'd give em a go- i haven't written for him in awhile, so apologies if im rusty! this fic will be updated on wednesdays and we'll see how long i'll keep it running lol it depends if im not lazy LMAOOO cw: eren and reader are childhood best friends, mikasa is a lesbian do not @ me that ending NEVER happened smh, reader has chronic anxiety, smoking, learning to break the cycle of addiction and trauma, replacing smoking with chewing gum, bad coping mechanisms, overall a hurt with comfort fic !!
your parents weren’t great people. you knew this after being born the eldest daughter; and their only daughter, might i add. your parents fought a lot of the time; a broken marriage far too deep with wounds and often you wondered why they never split up.
so when their stress wasn’t on themselves, it was on you. you became their target for everything; a father who wanted you to be successful like him, and a mother who wanted you to settle down and give her grandchildren; to even walk in her footsteps as a stay-at-home wife.
but you detested the thought; built on rebellion since you came out of the womb, you chose to live your own story and found yourself adoring the highs life had to bring; whether it was through skateboarding, or breaking school rules, your childhood was a masterpiece of a wild ride.
and throughout your childhood you met eren jaeger; a stubborn headed, foul mouthed boy who wanted to leave a mark on the world, one way or another. he moved in next door with his younger sister mikasa, after his mom died and his father ended up marrying another woman.
you two shared a lot in common, it seems. a love for adrenaline, a love for adventure, and most of all, you understood one another when it came to each other’s problems. eren knew your parents weren’t in your corner since day one, and often than not a lot of the time you found yourself sleeping over in Mikasa’s room next door when your world was turned upside down and venting to both of your closest friends. but through this family stress came more than just anxiety; it came with a habit you wish you could break to this day.
you started only truly smoking in early high school; when your friend Jean offered you a hit of his cigarette after finding you hyperventilating on the first day of school behind the bleachers.
ever since then, you couldn’t stop. you found nicotine to be the only way to ease your mind; the familiar burning of the tobacco in the back of your throat being the only thing to bring you back to earth.
eren, on the other hand, distastefully disagreed with your habits. often than not he was the one offering you mint chewing gum on your worst days, the same days your father would start a heated debate over what you wanted to do with your life; or when your mother would cry at the fact you just couldn’t fit into her “perfect daughter” image.
around the end of senior year, you and eren stop talking after getting into a huge fight. life seemed to drift from you since then; now a college student barely scraping by and the only thing going for her is her studies in gender equality.
you felt hopeless, to say the least. talking and making friends was hard, and your anxiety issues only seemed to catch up to you after high school graduation. you wondered where things would’ve taken you if you had decided to follow in your parents’ footsteps.
you end up going to a party on campus to clear your thoughts one night. little did you know, the same pair of teal eyes you’d come to drown in as a kid were quick to follow, after furrowing at the sight of a familiar cigarette laced between your fingertips.