Chapter Text
“Who’s this Levi, then?”
Desirée is smiling wanly up at Erwin, her hands hooked around his neck where Levi’s were just a moment ago. Kindly and affectionate, the mother of Erwin’s childhood friends is also one of the sharpest people he knows. This sharpness laces the look of delight in her eyes now.
For what feels like the hundredth time this evening, Erwin’s stomach does a little flip, only it’s a tiny, phantom one, because the cause of all its previous precarious movement in the past hour has left the room. And it’s almost as if nothing important can ever happen here now.
So, Erwin does not mean to sound so depleted when he says, “Levi is just a member of my string quartet. A fantastic violinist.”
“Oh, he does not look like just anything.”
They’re still swaying to the music, and Erwin hopes Desirée cannot feel the way his whole body stiffens. Mike, Moblit, Marie, and now his ex-girlfriend’s mother? Everyone seems privy to some secret part of him that he feels is too precious to share. Unlike how he wants to show Levi’s musical skills off to the world, this part of Levi — the part with the gentle smiles, the teasing lilt, the softness — this should only be his.
“Desirée, please, let’s not talk about this right now.”
She gives him a playful, knowing look, and he feels pinned like he’s a child reaching for cookies in their kitchen again. “Oh, all right, then. I’m sorry for asking!”
“That’s all right.”
“You know you don’t have to be embarrassed. I would have loved nothing more than to call you my son-in-law, but I just want you to be happy. Like my Claire is now. And Marie.”
At this, Erwin glances up at where he had registered Marie and Nile dancing together at the other edge of the dance floor. He’s laughing at something she’s said, heads bowed low, their dark hair meshed together. Erwin cannot help but smile a little too.
He is not sure what he expected, coming here tonight, but he feels none of the rotten feelings of jealousy or bitterness. Any rot is removed entirely by new growth — stirring through him like new shoots breaking through the cement. In fact, he’s not thinking about Marie at all. All he can see in his mind is a picture of Levi standing outside and alone, and all he knows is that wherever Levi is, he wants to be standing right there with him — pulling the weeds of his heart out and offering them to him, come what may.
He loves Desirée, he really does, but what was he doing here?
Standing still, he blinks down at his dancing partner. “I– I need to go.”
Desirée seems to understand. Before Erwin leaves, she looks him straight in the eyes. “Are you happy, Erwin?”
The question should be startling, but in a night of surprising moments, it feels somewhat lovely, healing. He thinks of Levi, he thinks of the violin, the future, the past.
“I… I want to be.”
The older lady chuckles, all the life she’s lived imprinted in the lines of her eyes. “Go fight for what you want.”
The entire room is a blur; Erwin has perhaps never walked so quickly in his life. He exits the ballroom in a rush, his suit jacket flapping around him like the wings of a lark with some sort of internal compass.
Night has engulfed the outdoor lawn where the ceremony took place earlier. The stage and furniture have since been kept away by invisible worker hands; everyone has shifted indoors. Light from the ballroom casts the floral arc centrepiece in an almost otherworldly glow, but the valley past the balustrade is completely dark.
Lines of the railing guide Erwin’s eyes to where Levi is standing right in the middle, under the arc, his back towards Erwin and the rest of the wedding, with the audacity of a dream.
Erwin cannot help but think of the Vaughan piece The Lark Ascending again, the piece touched by the memory of him and Levi sitting under the oak tree at the Con, that songbird trilling something merry and precious in the vast expanse of his heart. He stands motionless for a beat longer, until, inexplicably, like he’s making up for Erwin’s inaction, Levi whirls around.
Their eyes lock, and Levi smiles, cocking his head, as if saying come here, what are you waiting for. It’s the most tender Levi has ever been.
Before Erwin can gather his own thoughts rattling around his head, his mind usually so quick and helpful, but tonight so hapless and so tangled up, his legs speak for him and close the distance. He meets Levi under the floral arc.
“There you are,” Levi says, something both unreadable and eminently transparent in his grey eyes. The yellow bruising around his eye has almost completely faded, obscured a little by the long bangs.
“That’s what I wanted to say,” Erwin replies stupidly.
“How was your dance?” Levi asks, teasing.
“It was interrupted.”
“By yet another dance partner? Aren’t you popular tonight?”
“I’m so sorry, Levi.”
Levi tuts, the sound of irritation he makes at the back of his throat so familiar to Erwin he knows it by heart by now. “What are you going to do, say no to the mother of the bride?”
“I didn’t finish the dance because I came out to look for you.”
“Did you?” Levi looks down at this, and Erwin is treated to his usual mess of inky black hair that has not been styled in any way, shape or form. Is that a trace of shyness in his features? But when he glances back up, there is a strange determination in his steely eyes. “I enjoyed our dance.”
“I did, too.” Erwin can feel himself drift closer, involuntarily. However the night ends, he thinks, he needs to know something. He needs to feel it.
“Erwin,” Levi says. A melody of two notes. A summation. An entire universe in the way Levi holds his name in his mouth.
“Levi,” Erwin says. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. “But–”
“But?” No more buts, Erwin wants to say, heart folding in on itself, there is only you and me, and nothing else. But he forces the words back, too sentimental, too desperate, bolts them away.
“But I need to tell you something first.” Levi’s gaze is sharp, determined.
“I think I already know,” Erwin says.
“No,” Levi says softly, then laughs. “No, I mean, yes, there are things we should probably say to each other. But, no, I don’t mean about us. I have to tell you about why I returned to music. It’s about Isabel.”
A part of Erwin wants to declare that he does not care and can he kiss Levi already, this part of him that he didn’t realise he had, all hunger, all need, all want. But another part — the part that chased Levi in competition after competition throughout their childhood, the part that laid out every score as offering to their shared pursuit, the part that watched Levi in awe as he coaxed sounds from the violin the way a man might draw gasps from their lover — needs to know what Levi has to say, what Levi had been doing all these years, why he came back, what it all means, why it mattered, or not mattered.
Levi’s face seems to be shining in the dark. Erwin wants to place his hands on it.
“Who’s Isabel?” He asks instead.
Levi takes a deep breath and exhales steadily. “Let’s sit down.”
*
They’re seated side by side on a bench at the far end of the balustrade, staring into the depths of the valley below. Though they’re sitting close, Levi’s expression is half hidden in the shadows.
“Remember I told you that when my mother died, I was placed in a foster home with my foster sister and brother?”
“Yes. You’ve mentioned Furlan before. I’m guessing Isabel is your foster sister?”
Levi nods, and Erwin waits as Levi seems to gather some sort of remaining courage or resolve.
“When I met them, they were already staying at the house. We used to call it the Underground. Teenagers were so dramatic.” Levi chuckles tonelessly at the recollection. “Because we were all squeezed into bunk beds in tiny, windowless rooms that were probably not meant to be slept in. Oh, don’t give me that face. It wasn’t so bad, really. As older kids, we were largely ignored. It was one of those classic houses where the more foster children, the more government checks. And we kept ourselves busy but invisible, which suited our foster parents just fine.”
At this, Levi pauses. He seems so far away in this moment, wrapped up in a world Erwin will never understand — perhaps a part of him still Underground.
“Isabel was the kind of kid who got away with everything. She could have succeeded in anything, if she put her mind to it. But she will only ever put her mind to things she likes, which of course changes all the time. She had all these odd jobs, favours she owed to people, favours others owed her… She was dog-sitting for this really rich couple, who saw her as a glorified charity case — exactly how she wanted to be seen, of course. And they had this huge safe, behind a painting…”
Erwin can see now where this story is going, where Levi is leading him like a reluctant Virgil. It pains him to think of Levi then, so young, but already feeling so old, like his life had ended somehow before it even began, music nowhere to be found in the soundless Underground.
Erwin says, “You don’t have to keep going.”
“No, I want to.”
“Levi…”
“It was easy, in the end. Isabel spent months researching safes and safecracking and, what can I say, she had a knack for it. Best safe cracking hands in the biz. I always used to think… she had the hands of a violinist.” A wry smile touches Levi’s lips, barely visible in the low light. “One successful job became two, became three… We always targeted rich folks. Figured their stuff is covered by insurance anyway. Victimless crimes. I–It’s easy to justify when you’re in it. Furlan and I would assist, function as lookouts. And when we were ever in any trouble, it became clear that…I was really good at getting us out of them.”
Erwin raises his eyebrows at this.
“What? I was.”
“I wasn’t doubting you.”
“I was fast. And strong for my size. So people always underestimated me.”
“I could see how you might be a surprise to people.”
Levi gives him an amused, knowing look, tinged with just a note of sorrow, turning his whole face towards him. It’s such a beautiful face. But the yellow traces of bruising around his left eye draw Erwin’s eye — a telling reminder of Levi’s past, and, somehow, his present, still.
He wants to reach out, smooth the bruising — the guilt — away, but his hands stay closed in their fists. “Then, what happened?”
Levi sighs and picks at his callouses. “Thought we couldn’t be touched. We got too cocky; we were noticed. By the worst sort. His name is Lovof, and he’s– how do I even describe him. He’s got his fingers in every pie. He wanted us to rob his rival’s place.”
“Goodness.”
“I know it all sounds so…unsavoury.” Levi gestures in the air at the word. “I do not expect you to understand. In fact, I don’t want you to come close to understanding this part of the world at all. But you know–” Levi pauses, stares into the dark valley– “we were just kids. We were pests, unwanted, but easy to flick away. Ultimately not important. But Lovof… he ruins lives. The damage he has caused. He’s like a black hole. He sucks away all that is good in the world.”
“Levi–”
“No, let me finish. We were hired to rob his rival’s place. It was a private residence. It wasn’t even about hitting his operations. It was just about making a statement. Lovof gave us a time that he said the place will be empty. We’ve done it before, this is just like another rich man’s house, what could go wrong? But it wasn’t empty of course. We did our best to escape, we really did. I did my best…”
Erwin cannot fathom what Levi had to go through, what he was not saying, what he could have possibly done his best on. It was not learning a piece or memorising a score. This was a world that was so foreign to Erwin that he did not have a clue how to approach an understanding of what “the best” could look like.
Until this point, Levi had been drawing vague shapes out of his past, and Erwin could hardly blame him for keeping things non-specific, so it came as a shock when Levi says, directly, simply, “Isabel was shot.”
The economy of the sentence stuns Erwin into silence.
“She just dropped and died immediately. We were… we were almost at the exit when they shot at us. Just a few more steps, just turning a corner, and we would have been home free. Furlan wanted to go back, but… I couldn’t lose him too.”
Erwin feels his heart aching palpably. There is nothing more inadequate and yet nothing else he can offer but, “I’m so sorry, Levi.”
“I know.”
This time, Erwin does reach out, covering Levi’s bruised hand with his own. It is cold in the night, away from the festivities. Levi bestows him a tiny smile, as if trying to make it better – for whom, Erwin didn’t know.
“The operation was declared a success by Lovof and his people. They kept trying to give us other jobs after that. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking of Isabel. I had to leave. I was lucky I was able to leave.”
“So you came back. To music.”
“It took awhile, but yes, I came back. I wasn’t sure it was possible, but somehow Isabel’s death had the opposite effect of my mum’s. I couldn’t stop playing the violin, and then it was looking up applications at the Con… Music was the only thing I had left, well, other than Furlan.”
Unbidden, the images appear in Erwin’s mind of Levi’s knuckles flayed open and the blue-black bruise blooming over his eye that night.
“Is Furlan ok? Is he in some type of trouble?”
“It’s been hard on him,” Levi admits. “I’m not sure… but I think he’s out of it for now.”
Erwin sighs, not knowing what else to say or ask.
Levi shrugs, shifting his gaze outward again, letting the silence conclude his story.
There it is, Levi seems to be saying. My sorrow, the reasons I left, the reasons I returned, who I am. This is it. Erwin should feel grateful for the immense gift of it but he only feels ashamed, something sacred Levi has placed in his hands which he has wrung and twisted in a vice. The last six years, he had been wondering where Levi could have gone, why and how he had left the competition circuit, why he had left him to his own devices, with nobody to emulate, chase, worship. And the entire time, Levi was fighting for his life.
Erwin can’t help but telegraph this guilt, all thorny inside. “Levi, everything you’ve been through, what you’ve endured… I cannot at all imagine... Music should have been the last thing on your mind. It must all feel so silly in comparison — the things people in the Con care about, all that practising and the obsessing over performances and technicalities and rankings.”
Levi shakes his head firmly. “Music saved me. It’s still saving me, now.”
“Oh,” was all Erwin could manage.
“After everything, I can’t believe I’m here. That I get to play my violin and talk about silly little melodies all the time.”
“They are kind of silly, huh.”
“Yeah. But the best.” Levi smiles. Erwin only realises that their hands are still intertwined when Levi gives his a little squeeze. “This is going to sound sentimental as fuck, but I love caring about whether or not my playing was too flat, or debating who is the best soloist of all time, or having discussions about whether Beethoven was better before or after he became deaf.”
Erwin laughs.
“I love all of that crap. And most of all, I love playing with you guys.”
“You guys?”
“Yes. All of you. Moblit. Mike. Petra. Even Hange.”
Erwin grins. “But especially me?”
“Yes, you little shit. Especially you.”
Levi is a wonder. He had always been, when Erwin was just a child standing next to him, not knowing where else to be. Levi was always ahead of him, something to be pursued, to be looked at from afar. But now Erwin knows the truth of it: Levi is a wonder because he sees the beauty, seeks the beauty, of life, in spite of what he has been through. Maybe because of it.
And in the middle he stands, the most beautiful thing of all.
Erwin feels only a note of shyness, mixed in with all his awe and sympathy and regret, when he says, “Can I kiss you now?”
Levi scoffs, half in surprise, half in embarrassment. “Yes.”
They meet partway, lips touching softly. Erwin has no idea who has let go of whom but now his hands are free to wrap around Levi’s back as he presses deeper into Levi, his entire body buzzing. Levi responds in kind and Erwin feels Levi’s mouth opening to him, and in that one movement all his hunger, his desire offered like a gift — and he wants to rise to meet all of it, wants to hold on to Levi until something breaks, until something mends, until nothing makes sense, until it all does.
Levi’s hands move to Erwin’s face, and they’re cold, but he’s so warm. It feels like he’s about to run out of breath, but miraculously he keeps finding it. Again and again and again.
Until Levi breaks contact, catching his breath, and tilts his forehead forward to touch Erwin’s. They stay here for a moment — the cadence between movements of a concerto.
“How are you?” Erwin asks, immediately feeling rather stupid to have asked.
Levi laughs. “Good. I’m good.”
*
They walk back to the ballroom in near silence, the overlapping conversation and distant clink of glasses coming back to them in a rush when Erwin pushes the doors open, as if they’ve entered a different universe altogether. Next to him, Levi keeps his gaze forward.
Biting down a smile that threatens to overtake his entire face like a fool, Erwin brushes the back of his hand against Levi’s, just for a moment, almost exhilarating, almost nothing. Levi glances up at him and Erwin keeps his expression serene.
“Tch.” Levi scoffs, and Erwin grins.
They are about a safe distance apart when Mike catches sight of them, arching an eyebrow. “Took you two long enough,” he says, voice laced with knowing amusement.
Moblit glances between them, his gaze lingering for half a second too long, like he’s noticed something. But he says nothing, simply picking up his score as he settles into his chair.
The quartet is due to play their last piece, “How Long Will I Love You”, to send the happy couple out for the night. It’s a simple pop piece which original rendition is probably better than the intense, strings version they're about to embark on. Erwin thinks about the sum of the night: the emotions, the truth, the kiss; and he thinks about the bride and groom, Marie and Nile, about how people find a way to belong to one another; and last but not least he thinks about how Levi will likely not recognise this song either, him and his music player full of dead Russian men, and it infuses Erwin with a sort of warmth that feels so golden, so impossible in the night, unreasonable to the point of foolish, that he thinks perhaps he might combust.
Finally, Marie gives the quartet the cue and the audience quietens down. All members of the quartet prepare their instruments. Erwin places his bow on top of his strings, cues with the scroll of his violin, glances over at Levi to find Levi already looking at him, and plays.
*
The brusque noise of a door shutting jerks Erwin awake. It takes him only a moment but soon he registers it was his father who had entered his apartment, and that he had fallen asleep on his couch again — violin beside him like the unmistakable evidence of some crime.
“Dad, what are you doing here?”
“You were not picking up your phone.”
“So you decided to fly into New York City?” Erwin sits up and his right hand screeches with pain, as if the pain had as unceremonious an awakening as him. It’s common to feel the cramp these days but this morning it feels more acute than ever. He reaches for his phone with his left hand. “Also it’s 9 am in the morning — I was still sleeping.” Something about being in the same room as his father again makes Erwin feel like a petulant seven-year-old told he was not good enough to have dessert for the day.
“I had booked a flight a while back to check in on you. Now I see this has been necessary. Sleeping on the couch?” His father gestures at the the tableau in front of him, as if he had walked in to find his son passed out from underage drinking and partying, instead of the lone violin. “Did you have a late night with that girl again?”
Erwin feels a sense of indignation rise in him, and before he can stamp it down, he answers, “Her name is Marie, and you know her. You like her!”
“Erwin.” His father stares down at him from across the room. “You cannot afford to have any distractions. Not everyone has the opportunity to study at Juilliard. You only have a year of school left, and if you don't build your repertoire now, you’re only going to be left behind.”
Left behind, Erwin thinks. Like when Marie invites him to a house party and he declines because he has to practise instead. Or, when, as a child, Levi picked just about any composer and managed to soar to new heights with each one. Or, when, as a teenager, Erwin was left to the competition circuit alone. Or, now, when his father is running miles ahead imagining soloist world tours and fame and prestige, and Erwin feels just about capable of merely sitting on this couch.
His hand throbs.
His father is staring expectantly at him.
He wishes to say so much. He wishes to bolt out the door.
Instead, he clears his throat and says, “Let me freshen up, and I can show you what I've been working on.”