~Days Gone By~

Silence speaks louder than words.

He sips at the coffee while running his eyes across the lines of the paper, taking in the neatly printed letters that form rigidly detached words. If there's one thing not irritating about Hanji, it's the thoroughness of each and every report. For all of her eccentricity with the titans, what information gained from Hanji's experiments is not half-assed, and it's something to be reluctantly grateful for.

The last of the coffee drains out of his cup, and Rivaille looks up only long enough to cast a mildly unamused glance at the empty contents. He extends his arm out across the table in signal, tapping the cup twice against the wooden surface as he takes the next paper from the rapidly shrinking pile across his lap.

Petra has an uncanny sixth sense for this sort of thing. Without fail, she passes by with the fresh, piping hot coffee pot in her hands, as graceful pouring the caffeinated liquid into his cup again as she is in the field.

"Seriously, when did all of you decide that I'd be the one on coffee duty every day?" she sighs in exasperation, moving away from Rivaille to Auruo, who is cheekily holding his own cup out. "I'll take a day off sometime and see how you men survive without your precious coffee."

"I'm pretty sure you decided all on your own, Petra," Erd calls from where he is sitting by the window and polishing his gear. Sunlight beaming through the glass that Erd's silhouette is blocking casts a glint on the metal and makes it difficult to see his expression, but there is no doubt a grin on his face. "You just love us too much."

"Tch." A huff escapes Petra's lips as she fills Auruo's cup with significantly less coffee than their leader's. "Not quite enough."

"Hey! Don't be skimpin' on me!"

"Sorry, a girl's gotta have her coffee too." She sticks her tongue out in a decidedly childish manner while dumping the generous remainder of the pot in her own cup.

"It's only 'cause you're sweet on the corporal," Auruo mutters resentfully, just loud enough for the rest of the room to hear, and he throws his head back as he drains his cup in one gulp. His comment leaves Petra spluttering, and coffee spills over the edges of her mug onto the table.

"Clean that up." The words are the first ones Rivaille has spoken in over an hour as he twitches his hand away from the rapidly spreading beads of dark brown liquid. Rivaille's penchant for hygiene has become a routine warning - a somewhat extreme one at times - throughout the years they have known each other. Erd tosses over a roll of paper towels that they always keep around for this kind of situation.

The door is kicked open then by none other than Gunter, who is groaning under the weight of a crate stacked to the brim with even more papers. "That crazy Titan-freak! Why does she need us to go over all this shit? Isn't that her job? We're the Special Op Squad, not a bunch of paper-pushers!"

The chatter and complaints of his team fall on Rivaille's ears as strangely soothing background noise. He half-listens as he sets aside yet another paper, bringing the full coffee cup up to his lips.

"…Hm?"

Rivaille blinks at the cold ceramic brushing against his mouth, taking in nothing but empty air. The room has gone silent beneath his notice. Strange, it's not often that he finds himself so distracted, when he has always prided himself on his reactions. It's what has kept him alive all these years, after all.

He looks up. The sun is still shining as brightly and undeterred as ever through the window, but the door is closed. There is no crate by his feet where it should have been placed. The coffee pot is sitting silently on the shelf with four pristine mugs crowded next to it.

Rivaille angles the cup downward, watching expressionlessly as the last drop of coffee rolls down to splatter neatly on the paper in his hand.

…Tch. It's empty.

A/N: I've gotten into a new series! And Shingeki no Kyojin is amazing. This was originally written as a prompt on the Shingeki anon meme, and I've cleaned it up a bit to put on this site. Every character is amazing, but I think Rivaille and his team are some of my absolute favorites at the moment. What happened to them almost made me cry… This was inspired by a very depressing pixiv comic, by the way. The site doesn't allow links though.