Work Text:
It was around the crisp of sunset when it was too late to go out but too early to stay in for late night TV shows.
Eren climbed onto his balcony, and he had to climb because he was stepping over a multitude of things including folded up chairs and rusted bicycles in order to peer over the edge of the railing. He was fourteen stories up which made peering over the edge and looking down at tiny sidewalk scenery that much more exciting and that much more sickening. He wondered if he could throw some of this crap off the edge to make more room here. He was bound to trip over something someday and clamber right over the railing and fall to his doom.
“I can see you there,” came a voice. Eren whipped his head around, leaning over and around the divider that separated the two apartments. “I can see your hair, you muskrat.”
“You can see me?” Eren inquired, craning his neck and not being able to see shit. “Do you have laser eyes or something?”
“Are you coming over or not?”
Eren leaned back and counted to five before deciding that yes, he was coming over. He always did.
He took off his jacket, leaving himself in just a t-shirt and loosely fitted shorts that he probably should have changed out of if he didn’t want it to catch on a loose hook or rusted nails, but Eren never really thought too much about these little things that could potentially kill him one day. All he ever thought about was seeing his neighbour. His neighbour with those dead eyes.
Eren cast his jacket atop the handle of one of the unused bikes before taking firm hold of the railing and hoisting himself on top of it.
“Oi, I never said you should come over.”
“It’s fine though, right?” Eren said, the most hopeful of tones escaping him. He grabbed onto the divider, shimmying himself over as carefully as he could.
“Don’t die, kid,” his neighbour told him, said with dismissal but meant with concern. “Seriously, don’t hurt yourself,” they said again more urgently this time when Eren missed a footing and made a loud scraping noise with his foot trying to catch his balance.
“I’m alright!” Eren called over with reassuring enthusiasm.
Somehow, every time he did this he was unsure if he would fall down and die but he was always extremely sure that he would make it over just to see the look on Levi’s face. His sense of perception was a bit warped, no doubt.
He leapt from one railing to the other over a gap of at least two feet and grinned at Levi when he finally met him on the other side. He always received the same look of disapproval mixed with legitimate surprise that Eren managed to not kill himself in the process of coming over.
"You could have just taken the front door," Levi said sensibly, as he does every time.
"This way is more fun."
Levi scoffed as Eren jumped down. “I don’t know if you have balls of steel or a brain made of pudding.”
“And you'll probably never know.” Eren smiled triumphantly, sticking his landing without falling down or anything.
He pulled up the other lawn chair next to Levi who went back to reading his newspaper and puffing the cigarette in and out of his mouth.
They stayed like that for a few minutes, sitting in silence except for the breaths of smoke Levi would blow out every so often. They were so harsh and winded, almost like every breath Levi took was going to be his last breath of life.
“So, do you have beer?” Eren asked, twiddling his fingers on his chest and looking out towards the navying sky. “Or I can go back to my place and get some.” He grinned at that.
“No,” Levi said almost too quickly, putting his newspaper down with a crinkle and in what seemed like badly hidden concern. “The image of you falling off a balcony with a beer in your hand is almost too real.”
Eren laughed as Levi got up instead. It was true, Eren could somehow see that as the most probable way he’d leave this world. It was both incredibly stupid-looking and incredibly self-gratifying and no doubt, it was a pretty sad image.
He waited and Levi came back with two bottles of beer, one already opened for himself.
“Don’t chug it too fast,” Levi told him.
“Yeah, yeah.” Eren opened it and chugged half of it down in one gulp anyway. He caught Levi's glare but only smirked back. “So, do you have any hobbies, Levi?” he asked offhandedly.
Levi sighed, sounding like he regretted giving Eren the beer already. “Reading the news and talking to shits like you,” he answered in a dull tone and an annoyed squeezing together of his eyebrows.
“Shits with a plural? How many people like me are out there?” Eren pouted.
“Everyone I talk to is a piece of shit.”
He grimaced a little because ‘everyone’ sounded like a lot of people, too many people for Levi to be talking to besides him. “Do you like talking to them?” Eren wondered.
“Maybe.” Levi ruffled with the newspaper.
“Do you like talking to me?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you like me?”
Levi suddenly spit like he was choking on the tobacco ashes or the dirt and grime of his cigarette and instead growled out, “Why do you ask so many questions?”
Eren smiled a bit, laughter peeling out of him when he couldn’t hold it in. But he wasn’t laughing at Levi. He would never make fun of him. “Because you always answer,” Eren said truthfully.
Levi only rolled his eyes. “Do I?”
“Yep.” But neither of them pointed out that that last question remained unanswered. “I like you, Levi,” Eren said simply.
“That’s... great to know.” Levi leaned back seemingly unfazed.
“No, really.” Eren sat up, suddenly serious.
He’d downed the whole bottle by now, face feeling hot and probably looking extra red from the agitation of the beer creeping up to his cheeks. He’d always been a lightweight when it came to alcohol tolerance and skirting around serious topics. Aside from the alcohol though, feelings weren’t something Eren thought was worth getting flustered about. He just wanted Levi to know.
“Are we really going to talk about this right now?” Levi asked him in what sounded more harsh than necessary, stubbing out his cigarette on the ash tray on the floor and rubbing his fingers together.
“We don’t have to,” Eren said quickly. “It’s just we always talk about things that I want to talk about. You never ask me about my life and I know so much about you that it feels like you hardly know anything about me, and I’ve been wondering if you even really like me half as much as I think you do?”
Levi bristled, folding up his newspaper and laying it on the floor careful not to catch it on the ash tray where the embers were still burning. “How much do you really know about me?” Levi challenged instead of addressing the real question.
But Eren thought for a moment, wondering if it was okay to just lay it all out on the table. “I know about your work, I know your co-workers on a first name basis, I know what time you get home.”
Okay, simple neighbourly stuff.
“I know your likes and dislikes. I know the things you have in your fridge because you always bring it out here. You like seafood but only the meaty kinds that you can’t afford.”
“This is on the road to being slightly unsettling, just so you know, Eren.”
He knew Levi would start regretting asking him.
“But!” Eren cut him off with a start, leaning his head back on the chair and breathing in the cold clear air so that he could keep going. “I know you’ve been smoking since you were young. Though it’s more than an addiction now, right? Like the taste and the feeling are long gone but it’s something of a comforting habit now.”
“Pff.” Levi made a sound that sounded something like derisive coughing, and Eren briefly worried about the thought of Levi choking to death. “What would a pristine kid like you even know?”
It’s true though, Eren had never smoked a day in his life. Although, from the amount of times he’d inhaled second-hand smoke from Levi, every chance he got to come over here, every day of every week of the past few months, Eren may as well have been smoking all this time.
He continued, hoping it would cure Levi's rather petulant attitude, “I know you read the papers because there was a time when you didn’t know about the world, when you were deprived of knowledge and knowing things and kept in an orphanage so excluded from the outside that it wouldn’t be too far off from being described as solitary confinement.”
Levi was silent at that.
“I know you’re a clean freak and a neat freak just by the way you always fold your papers properly and the way you rub your fingers together trying to wipe away the tobacco without dirtying your clothes. I know you hate people but you always talk about others like some kind of gossip machine, and sometimes it’s not all bad things. And I know you either read really slowly or you actually pay attention to things I have to say because you would be stuck on the same page for hours and hours.”
Hours and hours, Eren would spend here usually. Staring at the few glimmers of stars in the night city sky or the tiny glow of the fire in Levi’s lit cigarette that would brighten with every breath Levi took of it. Eren would wonder if should they had lived in neighbouring houses instead of neighbouring apartments, would they sit together and talk like this on each other's rooftops? Would they be able to sit freely without the constraints of a railing, a divider, or the ceiling of the balcony above them? The gap between them might be bigger, but Eren thought he might be able to have a bit more of a running start. Maybe Levi would catch him in his arms as he landed on the other side.
“You know too much,” is all Levi said with the intensity of a one-liner from a serial killer movie.
Eren only laughed. “So it’s all true, huh?”
“Somehow.”
“I guessed on some of it. The stuff you hadn't told me.”
“Well, you take good guesses.”
“I worked hard to observe you, that’s all.” Eren shrugged even though he was feeling elated inside. “Well, not really worked hard. It was more like – it just happened?” He shrugged again restlessly.
“…Oh, really?”
“Yeah, really.”
Eren looked over at him and Levi seemed somehow distressed. He suddenly wondered if he really went too far, if Levi thought he was creepy, or if Levi wanted him off his balcony and out of his life right now. For all the creepy psycho-personality analyses Eren could do, he still could never figure out what Levi was thinking right at that very moment.
“Do you want me to go? I can go,” Eren said somewhat dejectedly and getting ready to get to his feet. “I figured this was an invasion of privacy and I understand if you just want to stay neighbours who never talk to each other or occasionally nod or ask about the weather or increasing rent.”
“It’s fine,” Levi cut him off with a bit of an edge to his tone. “It’s fine, I just… never knew someone could care about me that much.”
“Huh,” Eren said. But it wasn’t a confused ‘huh’ it was more like a sudden revelation ‘huh’. “I guess I really do like you, Levi.”
Eren raised an eyebrow when Levi suddenly flung his head back to hit the back of the chair in frustration. “Can you stop saying that?”
Eren’s eyebrow rose even more. “Why?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Are you embarrassed?”
“Aren’t you?”
Eren pretended to think for a moment. He pretended because he already knew clear in his mind that no, he really wasn’t embarrassed.
“I’ll tell you if I am…” Eren started and he could almost feel Levi leaning in for the answer, “…if you tell me whether or not you like me.”
“That’s it?” Levi scoffed. “Shouldn’t you know already?”
“Well, you didn’t answer my question from before!” Eren said and he knew he had a point when Levi looked away. “I just want to know straight from you. It can be like, dislike, whatever. I won’t mind whatever it is.”
Levi only sighed and Eren suddenly felt bad for putting Levi on the spot.
“I tolerate you,” Levi told him. “Like you said, I don’t know much about you.”
Eren couldn’t help the fall of his shoulders. “Oh.” Even though what Levi said wasn’t straight out dislike.
“But even so,” Levi paused to think for a second. “Every night when I come home I can’t help wondering Is that kid home yet? Or when I come out here I start thinking Will that kid come over today? Then I would hear your door sliding open and see you coming out with those loose shorts and messy fucking hair like you’d been lying in bed all day and I would just think So he’s been here all along.”
Eren didn’t know what to make of this and it seemed like Levi didn't either.
“So, yeah. If that means I like you then I guess I like you. Shit, this is even more embarrassing than I thought it would be.”
It seemed like Levi needed to get some air, so to speak, but since they were already outside he opted to go inside, taking the newspaper and the ash tray with him. He didn’t ask Eren to leave yet, though, so he didn't.
But for the ninety seconds that Levi had left him alone, Eren had barely thought through anything, just sitting there with his head in the cloudless sky and ass starting to feel the strain from the cheap plastic lawn chair. The only thing he did manage to notice (when he was looking around absentmindedly) was that there was a small hole right in the divider that separated their balconies, almost like a peephole. No wonder Levi could see him while he was on the other side, nevertheless the fact that Eren thought he should be more creeped out than he felt.
Levi came back and sat down again. He dumped another bottle of beer on the floor between their chairs as he cracked open his own to down in one gulp.
Eren just stared before picking up the cold beer with ice shards still stuck to the sides and condensation making the bottle slip between his fingers.
“So, what were we talking about?” Levi looked towards Eren, taking another swig. “What kinds of hobbies do you have?”
And Eren couldn't help but smile, holding the bottle to his cheeks to cool his heating face that definitely wasn't only repercussions of the alcohol.