#worms of endearment

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Would You Still Love Me? Part 2

Reiner x fem reader; established relationship; college au; comedy-fluff

synopsis: Reiner's love for you is tested in a way neither of you saw coming... The next day, he discusses the issue with his friends. Think they'll be any help?

warnings: none

notes: Part 1 beta read by @reiner69er. Banner made by me. Dividers by @delishlydelightfuldividers. Comments help earthworms grow large and healthy!

taglist: @ariasfandom

“So...” Sasha blinks, peering into the jar that sits on the table in front of Reiner. “Y/n turned into a worm, and… you’re keeping her in a jar now?”

Reiner covers the container with a piece of paper again, stifling a yawn. He hadn’t slept much, and had to admit he had been a little gutted when he’d awoken that morning to see that you were still a worm. He’d hoped maybe you’d… sleep it off or something?

“The jar’s just temporary until the aquarium and things get here.”

“Aquarium? She’s not a fish, Reiner,” says Connie, who is busying trying to finish last week’s assignment before the professor collects them that day.

“The stuff I found online said she’ll do best in a habitat with alternating layers of sand and potting soil so there’s be enough nutrients and moisture. I was up late reading about it.” Reiner tiredly rubs his face as the others stare at him.

Bertholdt, who spent the night at Armin’s dorm, rolls his eyes but says nothing.

“And you brought her to class with you because…?” Ymir prompts, a smirk playing on her lips.

“I just want to keep an eye on her, in case she suddenly changes back or something. I’ve got her phone in my pocket, and if her family calls I wanna be able to tell them I know exactly where she is.”

There’s a deeply uncomfortable pause, and Ymir opens her mouth but is interrupted.

“Well, I think it’s sweet!” Historia declares, trying to avoid an escalation of whatever is going on with Reiner. “Reiner, how can you, uh, how can you tell the worm is a she?”

“Um...” Reiner shifts uncomfortably, a hint of a blush on his cheeks. “Well, Armin says earthworms are actually uhh...”

“They’re true simultaneous hermaphrodites.” Armin finishes the sentence for him. “They have both complete male and female reproductive organs. They can’t self fertilize, though, so in a way, they function as one sex as a time during mating.”

"Yeah," Reiner says gruffly. "But y/n is a she, because she's always been. That's how gender works, right?"

“Oh, that’s beautiful!” Ymir laughs. “You must be relieved, Reiner. You and your hermaphroditic girlfriend-worm make an adorable couple. I bet they’ll even make a Lifetime movie out of your story.”

“Haha, yeah!” Connie wheezes. “They can call it, ‘Worms of Endearment!’”

Reiner is too pissed off to admit that that’s actually pretty funny. You’d probably have laughed out loud, he thinks, if you weren’t currently a worm.

“I wanna see y/n up close and see if she remembers me!” Sasha says, grabbing the jar before the sleepy Reiner can stop her.

She removes the paper and reaches in and picks you up, but you’re wet and wiggly and almost immediately slip out of her fingers, falling several feet onto the filthy floor. Sasha freezes. The fear in the room is palpable as Reiner springs from his seat and dives across the table, falling gracelessly onto the floor and cupping his hands over you to shield you from the many pairs of surrounding feet. His gaze snaps to Sasha, and his golden eyes are icy enough to send the girl into a frantic apology.

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to drop the girlfriend!! – I mean, your worm! – I, I mean, I –”

With a low growl worthy of a dog guarding a marrow bone, Reiner orders to Connie, “Give me your water bottle.”

Too afraid to question why, Connie hands him the bottle. Reiner pours a little water onto his hands, then gingerly picks you up off of the floor and uses the rest of the water to carefully rinse you clean of any debris, before setting you back down in the dirt in your container. He’s practically holding his breath, watching until you start to burrow back into the soil.

He sighs in relief and gets to his feet and grabs his bag and slings it over his shoulder, then gives Sasha another dirty look before leaving the classroom, holding your jar in both hands as if it might jump away. Everyone watches, wide-eyed.

Ymir scoffs, breaking the tense silence. “Tsh, what a man child. His girlfriend skips their afternoon make out session for a day and he’s already doting on a literal bug and pretending it’s her? Sheesh, no wonder y/n dipped. What a freak show.”

“Well… worms aren’t bugs. They’re annelids.”

“Great defense, Arlert. I take it all back. Makes what he’s doing seem perfectly normal.”

Bertholdt stares at the table. It really isn’t like you to go somewhere without telling Reiner, or to leave your phone behind. Could something have really happened to you? He makes up his mind that he’ll have to find you himself.

As class ends and the room empties, Bertholdt motions to his friends to wait. “Have any of you seen or heard from y/n since yesterday afternoon? That’s when Reiner says she, um, turned into a worm.”

Armin shakes his head. “I asked Mikasa. She said that y/n has an evening class on Tuesdays, so she and Reiner always meet around 4:30 to hang out behind the auditorium. I... don’t know why she knows that. Anyway, she saw y/n leave one of the lecture halls not long before that. She said y/n seemed tired, and Mina Carolina says y/n didn’t show up to the evening lecture. Maybe she felt sick and went home? It still doesn’t quite make sense, though.”

"Could this all be some elaborate prank they're both playing, and Reiner is just a way better actor than any of us ever thought he'd be?" Eren asks, joining them. Armin and Bertholdt filled him in on the details last night.

“His having her cell phone is pretty suspicious,” Armin points out.

Ymir shrugs. “Maybe he killed her. Maybe he just snapped, and then the guilt made him break from reality and convince himself she turned into a worm.”

“Ah, that’s stupid,” Connie waves it off. "Reiner's practically golden retriever in human form around y/n. He'd never hurt her."

“Maybe he’s got a dual personality,” Ymir counters.

“Ymir, please don’t let Reiner hear you making jokes like that,” Bertholdt says with a sigh. “Skipping classes for a weird prank like this is a little extreme, right? Look, my theory is that they had some kind of dispute--”

“And he killed her.”

Bertholdt ignores Ymir’s interjection and continues, “And she told him she wanted to take a break, or maybe even break up. She was probably so upset by that that she skipped her evening class and went home, and Reiner was so devastated that he...”

“...went totally insane?” Connie offers.

“I was going to say, ‘retreated into a comforting fantasy.’”

“Okay, but, he doesn’t exactly seem comforted, does he?”

“It’s a little over the top,” Bert admits. “But even though Reiner acts like a jock, he’s always been really sensitive deep down. When we were little, Porco told him the Rugrats all died in a plane crash and Reiner cried so hard he threw up a little.”

“So, if you’re right, how do we snap him out of it?” Eren wonders.

“What if we get rid of the worm? We could sneak in and take it and let it go somewhere. Maybe once the worm is really gone, he’ll have to face reality.”

“Wow, Armin, that’s cold!” says Connie. “And besides, Reiner might literally kill us. You saw how he looked at Sasha when she dropped y/n by accident.”

Bert thinks for a moment. “I... I don’t think I could do that to Reiner. I think the first step would be getting him to admit something went wrong between them. Then maybe the rest will fall into place. I’ll try to get him talking tonight. In the meantime, I think we should avoid mentioning the worm around him, even if he’s carrying it around. That’ll just encourage his fantasy, right?”

As they all file out into the hallway, the others seem to agree, and as they go their separate ways, Ymir can be heard whining to Historia, “If I disappeared, would you go insane and pretend I’d turned into a worm because you love me so much?”

Bertholdt, meanwhile, wonders where Reiner was headed with the worm...

Part 3 coming soon

[sharkdays]

likodot save me... save me likodot

[v-poreons]

Realizing I have to post about my ocs if I want people to know and ask more about my ocs anyways I'm trying to think of what Riff and Jive's (my other oc) dynamic would be like. I think it's definitely really awkward at first since Jive is so shy. *scurries away*

[monkayy]

i just wanted to say i love ur art so much and ur take on taylor. its so important for me that taylor be flatchested clocky femme representation and i feel like u capture that so well like ive never seen my mental image of taylor from reading worm so well-represented. its rlly incredible. also if u ever do commissions id love to see bitch in a skirt with hairy legs and choppy blond hair

Thank you so much!! I also have strong feelings about taylors design!!

I dont do commissions however my 2 art buttons are labeled "wouldn't it be funny" and "*praise*" so here

[ratatatastic]

did you see the cubs (Panthers prospects) went to a preschool on tiktok? It was the cutest thing I’ve seen all day

yes when they went to the jack&jill center on july 12th! im glad they released the footage of their more humourus activities with the younger kids because its such a treat lmaooooo

i genuinely dont know what kills me more the fact they put devine pherson stmartin and lindmark (correct me if im wrong though thats what it looks like to me but im also terrible at faces) together as a group to tackle the preschoolers

lindmark doing the gritty in front of a bunch of children while his boys hype him up

or hunter doing the worm on the reading rug and pherson and devine absolutely impressed by it 🤣🤣🤣

also not all the cubs sitting down in the reading circle to listen to devine read a book after they got tuckered out lmaoooooo

[alicecoopersbush]

i love this bird

[livejournallegacy]

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (2005) 12. Ever Fallen in Love - Thursday "Every so often it's good to get back in touch with one of the reasons that you play music, and obviously we play music because we love music. And [Buzzcocks is] one of the bands that we really love."

[pensivespacepirate]

i think why david ward isn't winning much of the poor pathetic wet cat polls aside from the popularity issue would be. he's not that much of a cat compared to jarchivist or a. lester . he isn't actively fighting against the narrative nor is pitied. he narrates afterwards so his winces and fears are not on the record. he is definitely sopping wet from the rain but he isn't weighed down by it on voice recordings. he is pathetic not because he keeps losing his battles like the other contestants but rather he didn't pick his fights so by default he loses. like at least to me he's more like a wet worm more than anything

[two-person-job]

im so normal about sym because he gives you. weird nicknames. which makes me normal.

[just-a-tiny-goldfish]

If your sidesteps were worms, who would they trust to take care of them?

Omg—as of now? And this is with the understanding that the people would know that this worm is sidestep right haha

Goodness—I guess the easiest one to answer is for Marcos. He love the rangers but right now his mob definitely has more of his unwavering trust. They can take turns taking him home like a class pet. 💕🥺

Umm my first thought for Orellia was Blue Jay…but like that wouldn’t work at all. So hmm Mortum wouldn’t work either anymore…technically none of the Ranger know she’s a villain so I guess it’s a tie between Chen and Daniel haha—I’m kinda scared spoon would eat her though 🥹

[ozlices]

i dont think enough credit is given to edward elric for being the funniest character to ever exist solely on account of the fact that he MET GOD. MULTIPLE TIMES. AND YET HE'S AN ATHEIST

based honestly no other character can ever compare to how based but also hilarious that is. he literally met god then goes to a church and is like 'yall foolish for believing in god bro he aint real'

EDWARD YOU LITERALLY MET GOD

[tea-time-terrier]

Every home needs one of these I think.

[laulo821]

cube land

taken from this screenshot of the music video linked above. this music is very dear to my heart so i drew a frame of it. also it's because i'm itching to draw him but i don't have any good idea so... yea

[txttletale]

Been a while since i sent you my unfunny worm thoughts so i tought I'd sent them now, as a Christmas gift maybe

The fact that one of the characters powers is literally "summon gun" and that character is not the one named armsmaster makes me so mad for no reason

Renowned virgin Taylor's first thought upon realizing that her back is broken being "how will i have sex now :(((" is suchs a teen thing, you were right the Taylor can horny

On that note her getting sister zoned by her crush is hilarious, ultimate girl loser

Also i met one of the gay rapists, one more to go ig, it actually shook me idk why i tought coil wouldn't be like that, he did have no problems with keeping a tween drugged in his basement

Also tattletale did know what Taylor was planning from the beginning i was right about something! RAAHH

nothing makes a better christmas gift than the knowledge that i hav ebrought evil and malice into the world (gotten someone to read worm). taylor is such a loser and it's a key to what makes her so likeable as a protagonist. the fandom sometimes acts like she's a hypercompetent Mind Genius which is true to some extent but she's also a loser who gets owned all the time and i think that's wonderdful about her!!!

[starglossie]

nothing gives me more joy than thinking about joe and cherry taking yearly trips to the onsen on their honeymoon and joe using cherry’s credit card to buy the most expensive dinner platter and cherry acting like he’s all mad about it but he’s chowing down on the lobster tail. and they know the little village where the onsen’s at by heart because they go there so frequently and the village folk know them by name and they go to the ramen shop and check out the festival. and they have MATCHING YUKATAS!!! and the village where the onsen is at is so special because they went there as adults and then as adults in a RELATIONSHIP and then as a MARRIED COUPLE so they have so many memories and then joe’s like “oh we’re gonna have the hottest onsen sex both literally and figuratively” and cherry’s like “i literally keep telling you we’re NOT fucking in the onsen.” but they do.

[ratatatastic]

me when im a worm on a hook trying to entice the bass in the pond i got thrown in