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He finds Erwin on the roof, eyes fixed on the sky, on the stars that formed patterns with strange names that Erwin had told him once before, information that had been lost almost as quickly as it came.
The mission had been a disaster, and perhaps it was always going to be, like the ones before it and the ones to come. Somehow in the end, it’s always them left, breathing and whole, and Levi tries not to think about how that could one day change.
“What are you doing here?” He asks, coming to stand beside the man who towers over him, powerful and strong even when he’s worn down to the bone and weighted with a world of burdens he never shares.
Always the commander, rarely just another man. Levi tilts his head up in an attempt to catch a gaze that will not meet his own.
“I was waiting for you.” Erwin says, voice soft, the crack in the mask that leaves Levi waiting on bated breath for something more– because when Erwin speaks it sounds like some kind of admission, like he is telling him something secret and forbidden.
A beat, the smallest silence seems to drag on for hours between them until he swallows hard, peering down over the edge at the cobblestone far below.
The courtyard is empty, silent. It often is after an expedition, the wounded and weary remnants of their numbers nursing stiff drinks in town, or curled up in their bunks in a desperate attempt to sleep away the horrors they had managed to survive.
Sometimes, Levi is among them. He has never been much of a drinker, and he has never been much of a sleeper. But it soothes something within him to be near the living, to see the strength it takes to look death in the face and turn from it, no matter how battered, how shaken.
Levi has seen the worst humanity has to offer, has lived it. But he has seen love, too, comradery. He has seen soldiers– children– give their own lives to save the lives of their friends. He has seen children die to make their shrinking world bigger, better, for people they do not know and will never meet.
He could use a drink now, certainly. But instead he is here, before a man broken before his time. There is nowhere else he would rather be. The thought makes his mouth dry.
He sniffs, scratches at the side of his nose. He looks away from Erwin, a feeble attempt to give the man a little bit of dignity in his mourning.
“Shouldn’t have wasted your time. I don’t come up here much anymore.” He says, shoving his hands into his pockets.
He does not say, this is where I mourned the family you took from me. He finds, more and more with time, that he no longer believes that. It was the titans, Erwin had told him back then, and Levi knows their carnage well enough now to find that agreeable. True, even.
And Levi knows Erwin, too. How do you blame the man who has gifted you the sky?
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a rueful smile tug at Erwin’s lips, as if he can hear Levi’s thoughts.
“But you’re here now.” Erwin’s hair, kept impeccably slicked back even days into an expedition, is falling into his eyes now, damp and clean. It curls at the ends, Levi realizes with a start, when it is left to its own devices. He is no longer covered in dirt and blood, and the gash he had received from an errant tree branch across his left cheek has been covered with a bandage.
Here, in his civilian clothes, his hair curling and his face riddled with freckles from four days out in the sun, it is easy to imagine Erwin as a little boy. He must have been angelic in a way that Levi had never been, chubby-cheeked and wild blonde ringlets, blue eyes impossibly wide with insatiable curiosity.
He is angelic now, in a way that Levi never will be.
The smallest silence, the smallest distance between them and Levi aches to let his hand stray, to close the few inches between his fingers and Erwin’s, to hold on to something warm and real.
“Yeah.” He mutters. “I guess so.”
He considers even the quickest brush, something almost accidental, something he can carry with him until he finds an excuse to let himself linger-- to brush a hair back into place, that brief contact when Erwin will take a cup from his hand, a teasing nudge.
When he lifts his head, Erwin has turned, back towards the sky, blue eyes trailing over him, picking him apart piece by piece, unreadable as ever.
Levi looks down again, face burning as an angry blush creeps up his neck. “Shouldn’t you be kicking your ass in your office by now?”
Erwin gives out a quiet laugh that does nothing to ease the red in Levi’s cheeks or nauseating pounding in his chest. They’re close enough that Levi can smell the cologne he wears, strong and smoky, a gift from the wife of a noble who liked him a bit too much, if anyone were to ask Levi’s opinion in the matter. Still, the scent leaves him dizzy, his fingers curling towards his palm to keep them from reaching out. Nails pressed into skin, a little pain to keep his head on straight.
“I thought I’d kick my ass where I could get some fresh air instead.”
“Productive of you.”
“Yes, I thought so.”
Levi hardly has to lift his gaze to see the soft smile that tugs at Erwin’s lips, the quiet break from the hardened, commanding mold that could break the man beneath it. Just another man, with limbs that can be torn apart and a heart that can stop beating as quickly as any other.
He clenches his fist a little tighter.
“Why were you waiting for me anyway? Forget how to take a shit on your own or something?”
“Ah… well, I,” Erwin has a habit of rubbing his arm when he is feeling particularly vulnerable. It is something Levi has seen in the candle-lit evenings in his office, when they are buried to their eyeballs in paperwork and exhausted to delirium. It is something Levi has seen in the carriage after a particularly excruciating trip to the capital, after Erwin has spent hours asking after the families of wealthy men and making idiotic small talk inbetween carefully masked pleas for just a little more funding. It is not something Levi has seen directed at him. “I suppose I was seeking out comfort.”
Levi could have laughed. For a moment he thinks he might, but his heart hammers harder, his breath comes out shorter. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, and then back again.
“From me?”
Erwin’s brows lift, as if in surprise.
“Who else? You’ve always been my source of comfort. I rely on you for it… perhaps more than I should.” Levi does not look up-- he won’t look up. Not until large, calloused fingers brush against his chin, guiding him until their eyes meet, Levi’s wide and Erwin’s burning and bright. “You’re… you hold me together.”
Levi means to step back, to turn before he embarrasses himself, before Erwin can realize that with every moment Levi mends and stitches, he unravels, that there is only so much of him left that he hasn’t already given away.
“Well, somebody has to babysit you,” He manages, voice weak. He means to push, but Erwin pulls, hand trailing from his jaw to his cheek as the other raises to cup his face, holding it like it is something precious, something sacred. It is nothing if not confusing. Levi has never been sacred or precious, has never been anything but a weapon, a tool, a sloppy string of glue to hold the world together. “Erwin...”
Blue eyes only stare, considering, lingering on lips that part underneath their heavy gaze, before darting away.
For a moment, Levi thinks that Erwin will let go then, that he will realize what it is he is doing, what it is that Levi wants, that this is all some strange and irreparably awkward misunderstanding.
Soft lips against Levi’s forehead say otherwise, Erwin’s hulking frame stooped and bent.
Levi stands frozen, rigid, a fleeting thought wondering if he might throw up or maybe even drop dead right then and there because he has never felt his knees go weak like this before and every last gasping breath has been knocked from his chest entirely, and when he lifts onto his toes, eyes slipping shut as pathetic instinct takes over and allows him to sink, he thinks that this is probably either a cruel dream or a horrible idea.
Cold night air hits his cheek where a hand had been only a moment ago, a hand that somehow finds its way to his waist, and it is only then that Levi is able to breathe again.
“Erwin,” He says again, frowning up at a face he can’t quite read, nearly perfectly posed as always, but the hand at his waist gives the smallest tremble. He will give Erwin an out even if it destroys him, if that is what he wants, pretend this never happened and keep his twitching fingers and dumb and desperate longing to himself while there is still time-- before he gives what’s left to give. “This is fucking stupid.”
He wants something clear, something he can take and run with. Erwin is sure of many things but he is never so sure of himself. It is easy to forget that, until Levi is staring that uncertainty in the face. Still, those hands never leave him, and Levi finds himself leaning into the large open palm that continues to cup his face, large fingers brushing against his cheek, his lips, the tip of his nose.
This is fucking stupid.
“I.. often feel a little stupid around you,” Erwin says at last, the words dripping slowly from his tongue like the confession of a sinful man. Levi thinks he could tell him until they’re old and gray that those little confessions mean nothing because Erwin has done nothing wrong, and he would never tire of it.
He can feel the hold begin to loosen, doubt coming in to take away whatever this is as Erwin opens his mouth to speak again, to form some kind of apology, to turn away.
It is soft and it is subtle and it is all Levi can do-- lifting again to press a fleeting kiss to Erwin’s jaw-- but it is enough.
It keeps them there until morning.