Work Text:
Levi put up with group meetings for one reason and precisely one reason only. Erwin, his boyfriend at the head of the table. Truth be told, Levi did a lot of things with Erwin as his one reason for doing it, but that was to be expected - Erwin was the first person to make Levi feel something, really feel something, other than hate and anger and murderous intent. So when the news played a clip of a plane crashing from the Karanes Airport, the very same plane that was supposed to take off today to Sheena to fly Erwin and half the dance team to their competition, Levi was already calling Erwin’s phone in a blind panic. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. There was no way Erwin was dead.
When his fifteen or so calls hit voicemail every time, he switched to calling Miche, but the call only hit a redirection message. Nanaba’s was about the same. Gunther’s phone wouldn’t even connect. For a moment, calling Moblit seemed to be the call that would connect, until the redirection message came. He flung his phone down in anger, snarling as the phone bounced into the couch cushions of his apartment on the northern side of town.
He silently fumed for the next three days in a panic, going through about half of his accumulated tea stash and cleaning the small apartment top to bottom at least a dozen times in that time. When he started dusting the baseboards, Levi almost damn near started crying. They were clean, of course, but he usually did the same thing to Erwin’s apartment on cleaning days.
The first time he’d been to Erwin’s apartment, the sheer amount of dust almost knocked him into a sneezing fit. Of course there were no cleaning supplies in the house. And the only thing under the sink was roaches (which were promptly cleaned up with napkins and paper cups). So when Erwin went out for his other job as a desk clerk, Levi went to the store and picked up a half-trunkload of cleaning supplies to get the apartment in order. Maybe a little too in order, because when Erwin came back, he dumped his briefcase right where an old dining chair used to be, only to hear it click and burst open on the newly cleaned floor.
Reminiscing about old memories like the man’s already gone. Levi shook his head and squeezed the windex bottle, spraying a fresh layer over the windows. He isn’t even gone yet and yet here you are. His hands swiped the microfiber cloth over the glass, swipe, swipe, swipe…
What day it was, he didn’t remember. He didn’t care. He tried not to care. But he still put his phone on charge and set every notification on loud - a mistake, as people started trying to contact him. People he didn’t even know. So he muted every notification except for those in his contacts and kept cleaning.
Sometimes, people brought him food. His cousin Mikasa came to check on him a few times with her friends Eren and Armin, recently graduated and new members of the dance group. Most times, she still wore her Maria Academy uniform, but Eren already had on his green jacket every time he stopped by, the logo of their dance group branded on the back in the crossed blue and white wings. Whatever Armin was wearing was a gamble, but at least it was clean. All three of them would usually stay and try to talk with him for a while, but they end up leaving sooner or later for something or other. Levi doesn’t care much.
When Petra Ral sends him a call, he picks up. He doesn’t expect to hear Hange’s tired, but firm voice.
“Hey, Levi.”
Said person almost drops his phone as he puts it on speaker. “Don’t ‘hey’ me, you have some explaining to do! Is everyone alright?!”
The silence he gets is not at all comforting, but he needs to know. “Where is everyone? Are they okay?”
“I’m sorry…only me and Erwin made it. I’m calling from Petra’s phone because mine got destroyed in the crash.”
“Just hold on. I’m coming,” he tells them, fishing his keys from his pocket and rushing outside.
Levi practically ran to his car outside the apartment, flooring the pedal and probably breaking no less than a dozen laws in his haste to get to the hospital emergency room. The nurse on duty visibly flinched when he slammed his hands on the counter and demanded to know where the survivors from the plane crash were. Her next words threw his heart into the road and smashed it into a million pieces.
“Only two of them made it here.”
“Which rooms?” he growled, trying not to show his anger. A couple other patients waiting for admittance cast angry glances in his direction, but a resulting glare from him snapped their heads away from his figure quickly.
“Sir, we can’t allow you to see them right now. What relation are you to them?”
Levi narrowed his eyes and glared at the orderly, doing his best to rip them to pieces with his stare. “What are the names of the survivors and which rooms are they in?”
“Let him in. He’s with me,” a ginger haired woman answered, walking out from behind the medbay doors.
“Petra, you better have one damn good explanation for whatever is going on, damn you.” He crossed his arms and glared at her, sighing loudly. “Letting Hange use your phone to call me didn’t tell me anything.”
The ginger doctor choked on a laugh and tapped her badge on the bay doors, gesturing to them. “You first.”
“How bad is it?” He was having none of the other woman’s calming attitude, grumbling expletives under his breath as he stormed in.
Petra sighed. “Hange got off lighter, so they’re hurt, but in a room, and on your left. Erwin’s still in the ICU last I checked.”
“No, you don’t get to tell me that and not let me see him,” Levi snarled. “I’ll fucking wait outside the damn room if I fucking have to.”
“You can’t be serious. You-”
The shorter man cut her off with a wave. “Which room?”
“I’m not telling you now that I know you’ll do that,” she reasoned. “You’re just going to scare the doctors and everyone else like that, so just don’t do that. I’m not telling you.”
“I’ll find someone who does!” He turned and snapped his green coat collar up, stalking up to the nearest desk and repeating his demands.
Petra facepalmed and mumbled apologies to the befuddled nurse as he scribbled out his demands and pushed the note across the counter to the angry raven haired man. He promptly scanned the note, shoved it in his jacket pocket, and headed towards the nearest elevator, leaving Petra to follow him and apologize for all his crazy actions.
The elevator pinged and the doors creaked open. Levi stomped in, followed by Petra, and two other doctors who evidently had business on another floor. They disappeared at the second floor, leaving the other two passengers to travel in silence to the fourth floor.
"What happened to the rest of them?"
Petra looks at her shoes and adjusts her white coat. "They didn't make it."
"I know that. But what happened to the rest of them?" he presses.
"Officers are saying that the engine malfunctioned on the plane," she relents. "The paramedics who got there said most of them died on impact when it hit the ground. I believe it was Moblit who shielded Hange with his body, and they tried to save him, but he didn't make it here. Erwin got away alive, but with a lot of damage, and they put him into surgery to try and keep him alive."
At his panicked glance when the elevator doors open, she tugs him out by his sleeve. “He’ll survive,” she whispers, and the weight in his chest lessens slightly, but not entirely. “They aren’t going to let you in-”
He strides off through the hallways and his stormy eyes look for room 141. The glass walls are covered with curtains and there’s about four different machines outside preventing him from going in, so he plops into the nearest chair and resolves to worry for the next three hours.
Petra leaves around hour 1 to go check on her patient wing and make sure they’re all stable, and about three different orderlies ask him who he’s waiting for. When Levi says he’s waiting for his boyfriend Erwin, they all fall silent and awkwardly make their exits. He has half a mind to beat one up and ask if they’re homophobic, but it’s probably against the rules to beat up an orderly, so he doesn’t. He also doesn’t because he’d be damned if the first thing Erwin woke up to was a report of his short boyfriend fighting a homophobic orderly.
Five hours later, Levi went home begrudgingly when the nurse informed him that visiting hours were closed. Erwin’s room doors hadn’t opened once since the doctors wheeled him out of what was apparently the OR and into another adjacent room. He caught exactly one glimpse of a masked face with a bunch of tubes coming out of the sides and almost choked on air at the amount of tubing it was.
Petra came back a few times to check on him, but he wasn't moving. A nurse stopped him from going into Erwin's room the four times he tried it, so he resigned himself to sitting on a chair outside watching until they kicked him out.
-
He was back to the fourth floor the next day, and the day after that, after crying his eyes out for the one and only time he ever would. The orderlies still glared at him when they went by, and he glared back. The nurse attending Erwin (and Petra) told him that Erwin was close to waking up from the induced unconsciousness the hospital put him under to heal him, but Levi couldn’t see him just yet without proper paperwork. He paid a few visits to Hange on the first floor and found out that the only damage they sustained was shrapnel to the eye and minor scrapes thanks to Moblit. Most of the damage seemed to be mentally, though, but he didn’t expect anything else. They talk for a while with him, but eventually the rest of the squad (their newbies, Eren, his cousin Mikasa, and their friends) come to visit, and he makes a quick departure.
The whole crew tried to visit Erwin too, but Levi took one look at the people hopping out of the elevator and gave them his best death glare, that one that promised a very thorough ass kicking outside of the hospital if they caused any noise. Most of the newbies turned away in panic, but his younger cousin and her friends Eren and Armin slowly approached him. Eren flopped into a nearby chair and set it protesting with a loud squeak, which Levi met with a stern glare. Mikasa elbowed him and he sat up properly, sliding back into a slouch when she wasn’t looking. Armin opened his mouth to talk, then saw Levi’s thunderstorm gaze and closed it, thinking better of his decision.
All three of them left for lunch at the cafeteria. Levi sat there in the chair and sipped from his teal thermos of tea, his finger catching on the edge of a peeling sticker of a raccoon. Mikasa got it for him as a gag gift, saying that it was just like him when he was grumpy in the morning, he remembered. He put the thermos down and looked at Erwin’s door again. The clock overhead read 1:03. At 1:05, the nurse exited the room with a clipboard and nodded to Levi as they left.
“If you want to come in, he’s stable enough. He’s been getting there for a couple days now,” they say to him on the way out. Levi thanks them and waits until they walk out of sight with their infernal clipboard and tapping pen before easing the glass door open.
Seeing Erwin, as always, is a breath of fresh air. Which is quickly punched out of his lungs when he takes a closer look and realizes his arm is missing - his right arm, and there are too many tubes to count running in and out of his beloved.
He sat next to the bed for who knows how long. Eren and Mikasa and Armin came back once, saw him inside the room, and promptly excused themselves. For that, Levi was grateful. Even if they didn’t know much about Erwin other than the fact that he was one of their dancing group…well, ex-dancer, he forced himself to say. There was no way Erwin was going to make it back to dancing as he used to without his arm. And there wasn’t even a release date for when he would make it out of the hospital yet. He was going to need a damn strong drink after all of this.
“Just had to get on that plane and go, didn’t you all,” Levi mumbled, half to himself and half to the man in bed next to him. “Don’t you dare leave me and Hange alone, you hear? I’m not going to let us be the only ones left. Don’t you dare leave me. I need you.”
Erwin gave no acknowledgement of his words or any sign that he heard. The machines hooked up to him carried on in their beeping and monitoring, tiny machines with no heart, just wires. He didn’t even smell like himself; no, he smelled like what Levi could only describe as death. Nothing. Void.
“Don’t leave. Don’t leave me. Don’t you die on me,” he repeated, trying to make himself believe that Erwin wasn’t going to die. He shouldn’t, not after what the nurses told him, and not after what Petra told him, but he didn’t quite believe it yet. Not when the evidence was looking at him dead in the face (heh, dead, his brain whispers as he tamps the thoughts down).
- timeskip brought to you by levi's tea -
Two months later, everything was back to normal...or as normal as it could be. Levi attended about a dozen funerals in twice as many days, funerals for his fellow dancers and friends. Hange starts attending as they are released from the hospital, and every time, everyone always says the same thing to them, or to the relatives.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Sorry" seems to be all anyone can say these days. He doesn’t want their apologies. They can’t bring back Eld’s kind smile or Moblit’s frantic organization or anything else. Those apologies won’t be fixing anything, a fact that he is all too quickly reminded of as someone else apologizes once more. The amount of people he and Hange called notifying them of the deaths was in the near hundreds now, he supposed. Almost every evening some new relative is calling, or some random person. It hurts every time Levi tells them what happens or hears what happens.
He tastes chlorine when he first tells the joint dance group what happened. The backs of his eyes burn and Levi realizes that if he closes his eyes or blinks, he’ll cry. This is exactly what happens later, in the studio bathroom, when he slumps against the wall and scrapes his blunt nails on the already smooth tile. He exits about ten minutes later, all evidence gone except for his broken fingernails. Nobody else knows. If Levi was as careful as he knew he was, nobody ever would.
Most days, Levi goes home in a fury, silently stewing and brewing, radio blasting a Fall Out Boy album in the attempt to drown his thoughts out. If he’s feeling like it, he stops by Starbucks to get a London Fog - his favorite drink ever since Erwin introduced him to it a while back. His car pulls up outside Erwin's giant apartment, and he takes the elevator up, glaring at anyone who has the nerve to look directly at his stormy eyes. He spends his nights on the couch, TV droning in the background to replace the quiet and the absence of someone else in this apartment. Levi quit attending group meetings and only showed up to dance and rehearse and work his second job as a part-time fencing instructor.
If he isn't out and about, he's usually at the hospital, talking to his recovering boyfriend. Those are the highlights of his shitty week. Sometimes, if he's feeling a little better, he'll tell Erwin the highlights of his issues with the dance group, or about his students at fencing.
"For the last time if Eren can't keep his trash off the damn floor I don't care that the brat's our second best newbie, he's on garbage patrol for the next week." Levi leaned back in his chair and looked back at the ceiling. "Mikasa is so much better than him at almost everything. But really it's just picking up the damn trash."
"Trust you to pick favorites...based on their cleanliness," Erwin laughs. "Eren's probably trying his best."
"Like hell he is. The brat always just ends up getting tested by shitty glasses," he says, naming his nickname for Hange's new glasses, adjusted with their own technology to fit their new eyepatch. Levi takes a long pull from his travel mug of tea and sighs. “He’s just absolutely crazy.”
The blue eyed man chuckles again and reaches for Levi's hand with his left side. "Well, I think you can do just fine getting him to behave. I believe in you."
Levi gives his boyfriend one of his rare smiles and leans in to peck Erwin on the side of his mouth. "Thanks."
"Did you just kiss me?" Erwin side-eyes the shorter man and narrows his eyes in some semblance of a playful glare.
Levi plays along, lowering his voice to a gruff tone. "Was I not supposed to? Your side eye is horrendous, by the way. We’re going to work on that."
"Can you do it again?" The facade cracks and his eyes go back to their original ocean blue. "Please?"
"Don't you dare do your damn puppy eyes on me..." The ravenette obliges him before Erwin can do anything else.
"But you love them don't you?"
"I love all of you. Now shush," Levi grumbled.
They sit in silence except for some quiet banter and sometimes Erwin falls asleep. Levi always tries not to sleep but he always ends up slumped in a chair, head on the side of the bed (or Erwin’s good shoulder if he’s close enough). Sometimes Hange visits too, but they’re usually busy with work affairs. Dancing really is so much harder behind the scenes, Erwin usually says. Levi agrees most of the time, unless he’s rejecting some bullshit idiot who knows him from when he had a string triplet. Then he would definitely say that playing an instrument would be harder backstage, but only because of the sheer amount of stuck up people involved.
Erwin doesn’t argue with that. He knows better than to do that, anyways. After all, he’s the one who offered Levi a chance in the dancing crew, and one of the only ones now to know what exactly happened at Levi’s old profession.
- timeskip brought to you by erwin's eyebrows -
When Erwin formally gets discharged and checked over for full recovery, Levi holds his breath the entire time. When Erwin passes and the doctor signs the final pieces of paperwork, he lets it out. And when he gets the text from Hange that there’s a party going, he damn near chokes on it.
“What is it?”
“Hange’s throwing a party,” Levi bites out. “For you. For your recovery.”
“It would be rude not to go, then. Where is it?”
The stormy eyed man chuckles. “My- your- our apartment,” he finishes.
Erwin pauses in clipping his seatbelt to the buckle. “What?”
“That’s what I said. I don’t even know how she got the keys, but she’s in there right now…and so is the rest of the squad. They’ll be happy to see you, Erwin.” He backed the car out of its parking space and turned onto the main road, flicking on his turn signal. “So your apartment is where I’m going.”
The blonde says nothing, only leans back in his chair and looks at the traffic. “I guess I should get ready to face the crowd- hey, where are you going?”
Levi turns the car into a Starbucks drive through with a deft twist of the steering wheel. “I’m not ready either, which is why I’m getting a drink. Did you want anything?”
“The usual.”
“Got it. So, one London Fog, one Caramel Macchiato, and one piece of lemon cake because I don’t know how bad Hange’s cooking is, and I don’t want to find out,” he says. Levi repeats the order into the drive through and the person on duty notes it all down. ‘$12.62’, they say, and as the car pulls to the window, Levi flicks the change pocket in his wallet open and digs out the exact change and bills. He shoves them through the window and takes the small bag and drinks, passing one to Erwin after careful reading of the labels (he’s never going to make the mistake of not checking since he accidentally drank Erwin’s birthday cake frappe…).
They pull up in front of Erwin’s apartment and Levi puts the keys back in his pocket, hopping out to open Erwin’s door and help him out. He opens the door carefully and looks around. “There’s…nobody here.”
Erwin flicks the light on and Hange leaps out from behind the couch shrieking. More people pop out from behind furniture and scream “Surprise! Welcome back!”
Levi reflexively flips his knife out of its garter sheath and flings it into the couch. “Don’t any of you ever do this shit again!”
The brunet throws their hands up and picks the knife free. “What in the heck, Levi?”
Erwin sets his drink on the side table for keys and side-hugs his boyfriend. “You know better than to jump-scare him, Hange.”
“I didn’t know you would be with him!” they defend, handing Levi his knife back. “I know.” They are one of the only other people alive now to know that Levi can and will stab anything that surprises him as a reflex.
“Come on, shitty glasses, when am I not?” the man in question demands. “Oi, brats. Out of the damn furniture. Why are you even here?”
“Well, I wanted to go for drinks, like old times,” Hange says as they get out from behind sofas and shelves. “But I’m not getting half this group arrested for fake IDs.”
Mikasa prods Eren in the side and raises her eyebrows. “See?”
“Hey!” The two teenagers shove each other back and forth in a hug as Armin and Jean dodge around them.
Levi turns to go into the kitchen when Hange steps in front of him, waving their arms wide. “Nonono don’t go in-”
“Move, shitty glasses!” he grumbles, muscling them aside and looking at the mess of flour on the countertops. “What in FUCK! What were you guys trying to do?”
Erwin chuckles when he sees the mess, prodding a lump of burned cake by the sink. “I think they were going to make me a cake.”
“Out of charcoal?” Levi dusts the flour into a pile and puts it in the trash along with the blackened coal of cake. “Hange, just put on a movie and I’ll cook something. Erwin, you go with them. This is your party after all.”
“Oh, no. I’m supervising before you burn this place down,” his boyfriend replies, leaning up against him from behind.
“I burned pancakes one time!”
“You caught the toaster on fire twice, love.” Erwin gestures at the sad, charred piece of metal by the trash can. “Don’t tell me the only thing burning in here is your love for me, okay?”
“It is.” Levi puts a pot on the stove and fills it with water, fetching pasta from the pantry and sauce from another. “I won’t burn anything, Erwin.”
“That’s what you said before my potholder went up in flames.” He holds the offending piece of quilted fabric up, winking at Levi through the hole by the corner.
Levi dumps pasta into the pot when it boils, sets a timer, and snatches the potholder out of Erwin’s hand. “What! I got rid of that!”
“Well, I saw it in the morning and kept it,” his partner defends, right as Sasha dashes into the kitchen and yanks the fridge open.
“Oi, brat!” Potholder in hand, Levi slams the door to the fridge closed hard enough that a picture atop the fridge rattles. “Dinner’s in 10. Don’t eat or you’ll ruin your appetite!”
“Hungry,” she complains. “Please?”
“No, just give me five damn minutes. Go sit down and watch whatever shit is happening, brat.” He ushers her out of the kitchen and turns to face Erwin, dropping the potholder into the trash.
Erwin laughs. “I won’t keep it this time.”
“You’d better not or I’ll shave your damn eyebrows.”
“You wouldn’t dare do that to your still recovering boyfriend.”
Mikasa shouts from the living room, having overheard. “He totally would!” A chorus of yells follow from the living room- at the movie or at the joke, he can’t tell.
“I thought you were on my side, brat-” Levi colors around his ears and sighs. “I would, though.”
“Well, then how can I make it up to you for keeping that embarrassing potholder? I want to keep my eyebrows,” Erwin tells him.
Levi grins. “Like this.” He pulls Erwin close by the collar of his shirt, kissing him firmly and backing him against a wall.
The pasta timer beeps, and they break apart, glaring at the offending stove.
“Sooner we get this done, sooner we get back to what we’re doing,” Erwin reasons, right as he goes to get the plates ready. Levi drains the pasta and dumps in the sauce, stirring it and adding seasoning.
Levi chuckles. “Eat first. Pause the damn movie and come and get dinner, brats!”
They swarm from the living room and mob the pasta, settling around the table and on the countertops and everywhere they can go. Hange picks up a plate of the leftovers and plops on the kitchen island, slinging an arm over Levi’s shoulder. He shrugs it off, but Hange repeats the action and Erwin puts his good arm around his waist. And just for once, he finds he doesn’t mind as much.