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“Your bed is a mess.”
It slips out, because obvious facts like that always slip out of Levi where cleaning is concerned. He meant to say something like hello or I’m glad you’re still alive, but the sight of rumpled sheets and crusted mud on the floor keeps him from voicing any sort of friendly sentiment.
“It’s not my bed,” Eren says. He sounds guilty.
What?
“That’s my bed,” he says, pointing at a bunk on the other side of the room. The sheets are tucked in tight, no dust on the bedframe or tracked mud on the floor next to it.
“Oh.” That slips out, too. “You’ve been cleaning up after the others?”
“They’ve been busy,” Eren says.
Translation: they don’t care.
“And you haven’t been?”
“Well—I thought—the order you gave us said to clean—”
“You thought right,” Levi says, feeling a small kernel of warmth in his chest. “Good job.”
He turns and walks away before he can see the sudden smile on Eren’s face.
The strange interlude in the squad’s bunkroom is the first of many, it turns out. Everywhere Levi looks, there’s Eren doing chores and keeping the place clean—scolding his peers for tracking in dirt, carefully peeling the eyes out of potatoes, helping Sasha with the cooking. Levi even finds him mending some of the curtains in the storeroom, a chore even Levi isn’t picky enough to assign.
Levi thinks about it more than he should. It confuses him, because when Eren first became a member of Levi’s squad he was careless. He dropped things constantly; he forgot to wipe his boots before coming in; he was sloppy with cleaning when Levi wasn’t there to tell him to do it over—all normal, new-recruit habits were there. He knows Eren improved during that time, but there was still some carelessness left in him.
All of that is gone now.
Three days into their wait for Hange at the cottage, Levi happens to be standing outside the kitchen when he hears an argument. His hand is on the doorknob—he could announce his presence—but he stands there eavesdropping like a kid.
“Are you a housewife?” Jean asks, and the scraping of bristles on soles leads Levi to think Eren might be forcible wiping the other soldier’s boots.
“I told you,” Eren says in a hiss. “The captain has high standards—”
“Are you his housewife? I doubt he cares this much—”
“Don’t you understand? We’re his new squad now. He doesn’t have the time to train us like his old one—it’s important—”
“What, you think your time with him before gives you a special connection? You telepathic now?”
“N-no. But—the worse we are at stuff, the more…”
One of them sighs; Levi suspects it’s Jean. “The more he’ll realize they’re gone?”
A silence.
“He knows, Eren. Nothing’s going to change that—not anything you do.”
Levi steps away from the door, his hands shaking. That’s what has Eren running about the place like this? He turns and heads back to his tiny bedroom, closing the door behind him. His hands are still shaking when he sits down on the bed and drops his head into them.
This isn’t good. Grief is easier to deal with when people assume he’s above it. Burdens aren’t lighter when shared; you can’t lock a shared load up where no one can see it. Instead it lingers in the air, a silent weight that can’t be dislodged.
Levi stands up, sighing heavily. This is what he gets for eavesdropping.
“Eren?” he calls as he leaves the room. The murmured conversation in the kitchen stops abruptly, and Levi opens the door.
“Ah,” he says, as if he didn’t know exactly where to find him. “There you are. I’d like to talk to you in private.”
He doesn’t miss the significant look Jean gives Eren, and he wonders if that look means teacher’s pet or something else. Eren, meanwhile, seems to be putting on his brave soldier face.
“We’ll talk in the storeroom,” Levi says, because he can hear voices outside getting closer—soon they’ll be pouring into the kitchen, or else he’d ask Jean to leave. A tiny part of him wants to watch Eren tell them all to scrape off their boots, but the thought is less amusing now that he knows the reason behind Eren’s obsessive behavior. Then again, hasn’t Eren always carried that intensity with him? Maybe he brings it to everything he does.
“Yes, sir.”
Levi leads him into the storage room, where crates are stacked high enough to block a good deal of the window’s light. It’s not dusty, because Eren’s been in here too, but there’s no place to sit but on crates—and Levi knows he doesn’t look very commanding when his feet are dangling down from a high perch.
Eren holds the salute, looking like he intends to stand that way for the whole talk if need be.
“Relax,” Levi says. “You’re not in trouble. Do you have something to say to me?”
The salute loosens, then disappears completely, and a confused look emerges on Eren’s face. “No?”
“Are you asking me to confirm your no or do you not understand the question?”
Eren’s hands twitch at his sides, and Levi wonders if he should have let the kid salute through the whole conversation. He looked more comfortable that way, which is something of a miracle; salutes aren’t meant to be comfortable.
Levi snorts when he realizes what’s bothering Eren: it’s the height difference. He’s at least ninety percent sure. Eren keeps adjusting his stance, as if he’s not sure how to hold himself, and his eyes skirt away from Levi’s, trying not to look down at him. In hindsight, this is probably the first time they’ve talked this close to each other when they haven’t been sitting down.
“I don’t have anything to say, sir.”
“Hm?” Levi says. He was prepared to disillusion the kid—tell him it’s not his responsibility to worry, and to stop estranging his squad mates through his overzealous behavior—but he doesn’t really want to bring it up if Eren won’t. “I suppose that means we’re done here.”
He reaches for the door, but before he can pull it open he feels Eren’s hand on his wrist. He looks at it, confused, almost, and Eren snatches the hand back.
“If you want to talk to someone—I—um—I’m here. I mean, I can—can listen.”
Not talk, though, apparently. Levi straightens, words on his lips—but they all fall into nothingness when he sees Eren’s face; the boy has gone beet red, and he’s holding the hand that touched Levi to his chest. When his eyes pass over Levi’s there’s something in them—the edge of a plea, begging Levi to—what? Pretend this never happened? No, that doesn’t seem right. That’s not what that look means. Levi blinks in sudden understanding.
Eren has a crush.
“It’s fine,” he finds himself saying, not sure what he’s referring to. He pulls the door open, and this time Eren doesn’t stop him. “Don’t take on too much responsibility where it’s not needed. You’ll wear yourself out.”
Eren nods tightly, and steps through the door Levi holds open for him. Levi watches him go, and hears some ribbing from the other squad members when Eren enters the kitchen, his head lowered. Eren snaps back at one of the ribbers, and then Levi hears the front door open and close.
Now that Eren’s out of sight, Levi stands in stunned silence, recalling the boy’s flushed face.
Apparently it wasn’t the height difference making Eren uncomfortable, after all.
“You’re avoiding me.”
Levi jumps, the warm, dozy feeling from a moment ago disappearing. He’d been sitting at the large kitchen table, maps and orders spread out in front of him to disguise his insomnia as something more useful, and somehow—and he’ll think about this later, when he’s alone—Eren had snuck up on him.
“Obviously not very well,” Levi says, shuffling the papers in front of him. He doesn’t look up when Eren sits down next to him, though every other sense in his body seems attuned to him—and it’s not because Eren is his charge. It’s because he has been avoiding Eren. Ever since that day in the storeroom, he’s been struggling not to think of him—a boy more than ten years his junior, whom he’s known for less than a year; an important piece of survival’s puzzle. And it’s not Eren’s role in the upcoming events that Levi finds himself thinking about.
It’s Eren himself.
Levi is used to being a constant in people’s lives—the one who comes back from expeditions, the one who never smiles, the one who’s picky about cleaning and tea and what horse he rides—but he’s not used to someone going out of their way for him, not in this quiet, solitary way that doesn’t ask for a response.
It feels like he has someone taking care of him, and that’s—odd.
What’s odder is that there’s a part of him that wants to let Eren take care of him. There’s a part of him that wishes his charge would graduate from concerned glances from across the room to—something.
Levi isn’t sure what. He has the feeling it goes against whatever semblance of rules the scouting legion has in regards to that sort of thing.
“I meant it,” Eren says, and finally Levi looks up. A familiar determination shines in Eren’s face. “I won’t apologize for it, because I meant it. But if I’ve offended you in some way I’m sorry for that. Maybe it’s not appropriate.”
“How do you see this playing out?”
“What?”
“I’m genuinely curious. What do you see happening? I take you into my confidence—we spend more time together—then what?”
Eren blinks at him. “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”
That stops Levi short. Has he misread the boy? But that look in the storeroom—no. He’s fairly sure. “I was under the impression you harbored feelings for me.”
Eren’s cheeks flush, and he swallows—but then he steels himself. “Oh,” he says. “That.”
Levi nods.
“I… don’t think you’d like hearing how I see it play out. It’s not really appropriate for conversation. Sir.” And then Eren smiles. He smiles—in apology, Levi thinks, for his insubordination—and then the unthinkable happens.
Levi finds himself snorting.
Eren stares, and Levi raises a hand over his mouth to hold back more unwelcome noises—but he’s thinking of the kid’s daring, and how he came right out and said it, the look on his face—and it’s hopeless. His shoulders shake with silent laughter.
Warmth creeps into Eren’s gaze, and somehow transfers itself to Levi’s stomach.
This is bad, Levi thinks. He was supposed to keep a straight face—leave things in no uncertain terms—but it’s late, and his brain must not be working right.
“That’s not the response I was expecting,” Eren says, with a new smile that’s just a little too hopeful.
“You’re certainly honest.”
“And determined.” His eyes lower in apparent embarrassment, but he brings them back up a moment later, meeting Levi’s stare head-on. There’s a skittishness in his words and movements that makes it hard to believe he’s being this bold, but his eyes when they meet Levi’s are as determined as ever.
Levi keeps his tone neutral. “Pushing your luck there, soldier.”
“You seemed to like it the first time.”
And he still does, which is another problem. He thinks of how anxious Eren was in the storeroom, and wonders if it’s nightfall that does it—the lamplight that barely fills up the room, all the dark corners. It’s easy to be a little more himself, like this, and he wonders if Eren feels a little more like himself, too—himself being an insolent brat with a smile that seems to go straight through Levi. Levi thinks he could stop this in a matter of moments. He could pretend to be offended and mortify Eren forever, make him regret this unlikely attempt at flirtation until he feels it down to his bones, but instead of doing that he does nothing.
Eren’s gaze drops after a long silence, and finally he blushes.
“I—I’m not… that’s not all. Not all I want, I mean.”
Levi thinks of Eren’s obsessive cleaning, the conversation with Jean. He knows what the boy means: he cares.
Levi wishes he could laugh at that, too, but he can’t. Nothing about it is funny.
“If you’d give me a chance—”
“Chances aren’t mine to give,” Levi says quickly, even though a part of him wants to let Eren finish. He wants to hear what Eren will do if given a chance, wonders what fumbling promises might drop from the boy’s lips.
He’s young, Levi reminds himself, and that’s another reason not to let him finish. A memory surfaces from his time belowground—a crazy woman, or near-crazy, rolling a chain of wooden beads in her hands, the pieces clicking, her voice over and over saying, this too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass.
Eren’s infatuation will pass, if Levi lets it.
“You mean because we could die tomorrow?” Eren asks, in a bright voice that doesn’t suit the question. Levi nods.
“That’s not the kind of chance I need,” Eren says. He sounds confident, and Levi watches him rest his hands on the table, fingers curling. Inches separate them from where his hand lies, scarred and worn, all knuckles and calluses. Eren’s hands look new—are new.
He wonders what the boy means to do with them.
He doesn’t have to wonder for long; soon those hands are moving, sliding over the tabletop, and then Levi feels that new skin against the back of his hand, smooth fingertips tracing old scars. Growing bolder, Eren’s tan hands uncurl his pale one before enfolding it, and warmth slips into Levi’s cold fingers.
“Chances like this,” Eren says, and he’s staring down at their hands, too. “I’d be happy with those.”
Levi studies the boy’s lowered eyes, wondering what they see. What is it that Eren thinks Levi can give him? Strength? Hope? Is it all just dirty fantasies, wrapped up in genuine concern for a superior?
He knows what he could long for in Eren, if he allowed himself to. Comfort—that quiet consideration that Eren has been showing him for days now. He imagines some other life, living in a cottage like this or some townhouse in a city not plagued by titans. He imagines smells of cooking from the kitchen and welcome homes. It’s an absurd fantasy, probably born of seeing Eren patching up curtains and helping with meals, but it’s a warm one.
It’s the time of night, he thinks, when he realizes that he’s let his imagination run away with him. It’s one thing to be an old man lusting after a young boy—quite another to fantasize about marrying him and living somewhere quietly. He barely even knows Eren.
It must be the quiet life he longs for. Has to be.
“Levi,” Eren says, and something in Levi’s stomach jumps.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to say it, without a title.”
Levi’s free hand comes up to rub his forehead. He has to stop this. He has to. Hange will be here any time now—they’ll be starting the new leg of their mission—but Eren’s hands are warm around his.
“Fine,” he says, and green eyes flash up to meet his.
“Fine what?”
“Fine to this. If these are the chances you want, fine.” He tries not to see how a blush rises to Eren’s cheeks. He knows the boy will only push for more, after this, but Levi decides to cross that bridge when he comes to it. “Tell me something. About you.”
“Anything?”
Levi nods. Eren’s hands tighten around his fingers, and then—haltingly, with eyes cast down—Eren begins to talk.
Levi finds that he likes to listen.