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Everything Levi had seen in life had led him to believe that sleeping with your partner was meant to be an intimate, romantic experience.
Not the sex – that was pretty much a given – but the act of curling up close and falling asleep with your arms around each other, and your breath mingling and fuck, he didn’t know, your dreams joining together to form a giant fucking mecha robot or something.
He’d been dubious about that bullshit to begin with. It was half the reason he was approaching thirty and had never had anybody in his bed for longer than it took to achieve orgasm. Wham, bam, thank you man; now go get your sleepy drool over your own fucking pillows.
Levi’s sheets were high-class. The thread count was probably ten times your IQ. The only kind of bodily fluid welcome on that was –
Well, nothing. Levi wouldn’t even sweat in these sheets, thanks.
It’d cost him his fair share of boyfriends – both the obsessive bed sheet hygiene and his adamant refusal to let a soul sleep in there with him. Not that he particularly cared. It was weeding out the weak and unworthy.
If a dude couldn’t deal with Levi’s bedroom rules, then he didn’t get to use his bedroom tools.
Levi wasn’t going to go sleeping around with people who didn’t understand where his priorities lay.
(high quality thread counts and six pillows for himself and only himself)
So – that all led up to his current predicament.
Here he lay, twenty-eight years old and a bed sheet virgin, with none other than Eren Jaeger – his fiancé and lover of nearly four years – nestled up beside him.
And it was –
Nothing like he’d imagined it.
It was worse.
Levi had skipped right over the nine circles of hell and was now making himself comfortable in the tenth. Everything was so awful, he’d literally created a new layer of eternal suffering to adequately express himself.
Eren snored.
It wasn’t – well, it wasn’t loud per se, but the most noise Levi was used to during this time of the night was the quiet rustle of the sheets when he rolled over. This snoring thing was weird and, and – worrying.
It sounded like Eren was choking on his own saliva. Was that something that could happen? Did all snoring sound like that? Was he meant to do something? Was Eren alright? Oh fuck, what if what he was hearing now was gurgling death rattles and he was going to be a widower before he’d even gotten married?
(he’d eventually googled it on his phone – thank you modern technology that made it so he didn’t even need to leave the bed – and the internet had assured him that there was an eighty per cent chance what he was hearing was normal.
The other twenty per cent told him Eren was probably hemorrhaging internally or developing cancer.
Levi had chosen not to follow the wise words of ‘doctor fucker’ from yahoo answers.)
The snoring wasn’t even the worst of it though.
Sometime in the past two hours or so since he’d drifted off to sleep he’d… stolen all the pillows. There were at least twelve pillows on this bed – Levi liked holding something as he slept – and Eren had at least ten of them. He wasn’t even doing anything with them. They were gathered up in his arms like he was trying to hoard them for the winter or something.
This was ridiculous. Eren was ridiculous. He even looked weirdly distraught in his sleep. What little of his face wasn’t mushed unattractively into one of his hostages – and Levi didn’t use the word unattractive lightly; Eren was the definition of the exact opposite of that word, for Eren to be, god forbid, ‘unattractive’, the stars had to be lined up in just the right order and a virgin had to be dancing under moonlight somewhere off in the Siberian wilderness and –
Anyway, what Levi had been saying was Eren was asleep, his face was unattractive, and he looked upset at the fact that he didn’t have the arm span to cuddle his ridiculous armada of pillows Levi had acquired for inordinate prices at the rich person’s equivalent of bed bath and beyond.
So; he was snoring, hoarding pillows, and absolutely miserable in his sleep.
Only it didn’t end there, because apparently Eren was on a mission to see how much damage he could deal Levi’s poor, maiden heart.
He was – He was…
Levi made a small, pitiful noise of horror.
He was drooling… and he was doing it on the best pillow Levi owned. The one with the loving hand-stitching.
(Levi’s own stitching, but he wasn’t going to be telling anybody that because what hobbies he did in his spare time was for him and him only.)
It all but waterfall-ed out of Eren’s mouth like Niagara's over enthusiastic younger brother, and the virtual ocean that had already escaped the chasm that had once been Eren’s mouth but Levi would never again be able to see as anything but a naturally occurring geyser was bubbly and wet on the satin pillowcase.
When Eren snored it… it bubbled.
Was that normal? Should he be calling a doctor? An exorcist?
What was happening right now and how should Levi be dealing with this.
He was cold and miserable and couldn’t possibly own enough stain remover and detergent to wash these sheets tomorrow morning when he managed to turf Eren out of them – and they had to be hand-washed too, fucking fuck on a fucker’s fuckstick.
This was exactly why Levi had dated him for nearly half a decade before letting Eren stay the night. This was exactly why he had trust issues.
Everybody had told him he was overreacting, and now who was laughing?
(not Levi, oh god, absolutely not Levi.)
Although, the longer he thought about it, Eren himself had never said he was overreacting; had never been anything but completely supportive about the weird things Levi had issues with, his obsession with cleanliness, his borderline worrying notion of control and personal space.
It’d been Levi who suggested they try this sleep over gimmick. If he was going to marry the guy – which he completely and utterly would be, even if Eren turned into a fifteen feet octopus in his sleep – then he might as well give the couples sleeping thing a shot.
And Eren had looked him in the eye and asked are you sure.
Levi hesitated and rolled over onto his side to look at Eren as he slept. He wasn’t snoring anymore – barely anyway, just breathing a lot heavier than he needed to – but he was still drooling.
It wasn’t… Okay, yeah, it was still awful. But the longer Levi stared, the more he could force himself to grow accustomed to it.
Sure, the drooling was unattractive and disgusting, but it was essentially just human stewed water. It wasn’t actually going to stain anything. And there were a lot of worse human bodily fluids out there that Eren could be getting everywhere.
And the pillow-hogging thing was sort of cute the longer Levi thought about it. It wasn’t like he could blame Eren either. He’d been sticking pretty solidly to the opposite side of the bed, and Eren was quick to get cold and lonely, and he’d probably just destroyed the makeshift wall Levi may or may not have erected between them and taken the fluffy rubble as a makeshift boyfriend.
The more Levi made himself think on it, the less… disgusting the situation became.
This was Eren after all. Light of his life, sharer of his body and soul, the man who had so far in their courtship stood him up six times to save three different fluffy animals, break-up a bar fight, break-up a break-up and somehow get the arguing couple married along the way and uncover and put an end to an illegal Chihuahua fighting ring – don’t even get Levi started on that last one.
Basically what Levi was saying was Eren could never be disgusting to him. Could never be anything less than completely and utterly perfect in every way, shape and form.
Eren could probably become the elephant man and Levi would love him the same.
Levi heaved out a sigh that felt like it carried the weight of every single irritation itching inside him and closed his eyes for a minute to block out Eren’s drooling, snoring, unattractively squished and yet so completely and utterly adorable face.
He wanted to be annoyed. He wanted to continue his irrational tirade against everything. But it was so hard to muster up that kind of emotion when the feeling of Eren’s body in the bed beside him was so warm and comfortable and filling him with something that was undeniably complete and total adoration for this man.
Levi grit his teeth for a moment, opened his eyes to look at the ceiling, and then rolled over as close as he could and began pulling the pillows from Eren’s arms one by one.
Eren’s snorting stuttered and he stirred as Levi lifted his empty arms up and wriggled in between them.
“What’s ‘appening?” He slurred, tightening his grip around Levi’s shoulders automatically.
“Nothing,” Levi said shortly, burying his face in the crook of Eren’s neck and hoping to god that he was too out of it to realize what was going on because if he started asking questions the mood just might shatter and Levi would be forced to pretend like none of this had ever happened and that might seriously put a damper on this revelation of his.
For a second everything was still and he could feel Eren trying to fight his way to wakefulness beside him, but eventually his body relaxed like jelly and he pulled Levi close without a single word. Levi could feel the moment he slid back into sleep again, the gentle push of even breathing against his hair in a way that was, yes, still completely revolting, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind.
Somewhere up a little higher than his cheek there was a damp spot on the pillow from Eren’s drool, and this position left it so that each whistling snore was right in his ear, and it was getting a little too hot snuggled up close between them like this, and –
And Levi couldn’t wait to do it all again tomorrow.