Work Text:
Levi can’t make tea.
It’s ridiculous. Levi can make tea. Of course he can. He’s been making tea for himself for years. He doesn’t even think when he does it sometimes, knows the perfect weight of his battered teaspoon by heart, remembers one scoop and a half because he prefers his tea strong, and on certain days, a little sheepishly, with just a slight dash of milk.
But somehow, he can’t make tea. More accurately, he can’t make the tea. The teas. Eren’s teas.
It’s not like when Eren went to the courthouse because there isn’t a will and there isn’t a question of whether or not he’ll come back. Mikasa and Armin are with him, and as they left all three were eagerly chatting and almost slipping off their horses sideways in barely restrained excitement. It’s good for them, the dream. Reaching it. Seeing it.
Levi’s done, he thinks, with dreaming. The ground is solid beneath his feet, even when his ankle twinges sometimes.
Erwin drinks every cup without complaint. Levi keeps waiting for one of those backhand compliments Erwin used to give Eren, “It’s quite good”, wasn’t it, with that small, frost-edged smile that spoke of long political maneuvering. But Erwin never says a thing, just looks him in the eye and thanks him sincerely and drinks whatever sort of hellspawn concoction Levi’s managed to muster together this time.
He can at least say that business is going well and that the garden hasn’t died. Historia’s been coming by periodically to shove her way through the front door, making it clear that she, at least, will not allow Eren’s greenery to die in his absence, especially after the one time Eren invited her for the afternoon. It’s a visit she seems to have taken heart, though she still watches Levi with eagle eyes when he wanders into certain distance. Before she leaves the next day, he manages to shove a broad, wooden barrette with subtle patterning into her hands, and closes the door hastily behind him.
“Charming,” Levi hears Erwin mutter from the living room, where he’s been discreetly tracking his and Historia’s interactions all afternoon. He’s still sitting with the same stack of papers he started with in the morning, his unsteady, left-handed signature painstakingly scrawled out on each page.
Levi makes him a cup of tea, a proper cup, and leaves it with the saucer at the table nearby. If Eren were here he would know exactly what plants Erwin would need. But Eren is off chasing the dream that once intimidated him in its scope. Not that he won’t come back. They just don’t know when.
Things are different without him, unsurprisingly. Eren isn’t anything as grand as a muse to either of them, nor is he simply a reminder of old days. Eren lives with them, and they live with him. They eat together in the morning, before Erwin goes riding off to do whatever complicated political things he does in Sina. Eren and Levi while away the morning however they see fit – working on commissions, reading books, checking on the vegetable plots, and once upon a time, doing muscle exercises. Nowadays, the crutches stay tucked at the back of their coat closet. They try to eat meals together, but it’s not a big deal if they don’t; they can’t be around each other all the time. Levi still plays chess with his tavern buddies and Eren’s still goes out for friendly chats and shop talk about his herb stock or Levi’s orders.
They sleep in separate beds most of the time, and it’s not so much the emptiness, but the fullness. There’s a cabinet in the hall he barely opens because the gardening tools are there. The kitchen smells earthy, like petrichor, like rainwater, and Eren’s things are stuffed in between the bookshelves, line the bureaus. The red yarn in Levi’s knitting basket is the same kind that was used to make Eren’s scarf. And whenever Levi steps out into the backyard, he’s reminded that the garden is Eren’s place, still often stunned by the riot of green he never would have seen Underground.
Eren leaves himself notes taped to the drawers where he stores his herbs and barks and leaves. Erwin can’t understand them either; they’re in Eren’s own shorthand. Even after months of living together, he’s still full of surprises. But sometimes when Levi examines the writing, the hasty flicks of pen, the dots and tails of trailing letters, and smooths out the crinkled papers, he feels like he could get closer, learn closer.
“It’s quite good,” Erwin tells him one day, but he means it, blinks down at his cup in surprise. He smiles, broad and wide. Perhaps they should invest in sunflowers, Levi thinks idly, and takes a sip from his own mug. It’s not Eren’s recipe, but it’s not bad.