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“Eren is coming back.”
Words Levi hasn’t heard in two years lift his gaze from the dish cloth circling back and forth over the counter he stands behind. Armin’s clear blue eyes greet him.
Levi arches a brow as he sets the cloth down and wipes his hand on his apron. The bell over the door rings, announcing the arrival of a new customer; a quiet teenager named Georgia who always sits alone in the corner beside the window.
Armin clears his throat. Continues, “he says he is staying this time.”
“He says that every time.” Levi takes the empty mugs from Armin. “Refill?”
Armin beams gratefully. “Please.”
Levi grabs his freshly ground coffee and fills the kettle behind him. He jerks his chin towards the lone figure at the middle table. A red scarf that is not at all appropriate for the season is wrapped around her neck; a gift from Eren.
“And for the gloomy one over there?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Levi nods and tends to his other customers; an old couple, Gina and Francis who like him a lot inexplicably, followed by another two. Caroline and Belladonna; frequenters who always smell of herbs and wear clicking crystal necklaces, urging Levi to get himself a stone. For his birthday, they brought him a quartz that still lays untouched on his mantlepiece.
Levi wonders why Hanji hasn’t come by since their morning coffee. Their crazy aura adds to the atmosphere.
He doesn’t think of Eren. He regards the tastefully painted walls and handles his minimalistic china cutlery, frowning at the floorboards’ accumulated coating of dust. It is warm here, but not too warm. Lively chatter permeates the air, people’s moods enhanced by the treats on their plates. The day is not too busy, but not too slow either. Just the way Levi likes it.
Armin stays at the counter, waiting for more than the coffee, Levi suspects.
“Hey, Levi?”
Levi flicks his eyes up from mixing Armin’s creamer in. “Yes?”
“If you stumble into him….” No need for a name, no, not when Eren hangs around like a bad omen. “Try to be gentle. I know that…you two aren’t exactly on speaking terms but his voice sounded broken when I talked to him. I think-- that he really is staying this time.”
Levi hums noncommittally, cautious and guarded, but his stomach has started to catch up with the news in a series of pinging contractions. Either that, or Levi is about to experience some explosive diarrhea. He shouldn’t have eaten that mexican food Hanji brought yesterday.
“Sure. Don’t want Mikasa coming after my ass anyway.” Levi puts his deterring glare forth, even as he keeps his voice even. “I’d rather not ‘stumble’ into him again, Arlert. Don’t bring him here. I’m closing up early.”
Armin smiles guiltily. “What’s the occasion?”
“This.” Levi shoves the coffee tray into Armin’s hands, with another tart and cheesecake. A corner of his lip ticks up when Armin fumbles to catch it, a look of utter panic in his eyes.
He sidles to Mikasa in what might resemble a walk of shame, mumbling under his breath, and Levi resists the urge to laugh as he serves Georgia and gives her an extra cookie just because she seems like she needs it.
At the table for two across from Levi, Eren’s ghost loiters, his absence a presence all on its own. Levi meets Mikasa’s slate grey gaze, communicating a solemn congratulations. She shrugs, anxiety hovering over her. Armin is relaxed, assured.
Levi is indifferent. Eren has been in and out for years. This is not a new occurrence, nothing to get agitated over.
Levi has everything. His café that he has worked so hard for, the orderly life of voluntary solitude and, when he pleases, an endless supply of people to chat with. He is contented. He has built this little nook in the world, carved out his space, and he needs nothing more.
Still, a familiar feeling tugs at him, and Levi is realizing as of late, want can be a lot stronger than need . By the time Mikasa and Armin leave, joy brings a spring to Mikasa’s step as the approach of her childhood friend nears. Levi feels sorry for her, but he understands.
Mr. Hannes comes by as the last customer, always late, mildly tipsy. “Eren is coming home soon.”
“So I’ve heard.”
An earnestness enters Hannes’ gaze as he scratches his stubble. “Do you know when?”
“No, I don’t. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Who knows with him.”
That is probably the most Levi has said about Eren in years. Mr. Hannes’ somber smile-nod proves that.
Levi serves Mr. Hannes’ usual of cherry pie and Oolong tea, his own chest inexplicably tight.
He finishes up cleaning the café, puts up the ‘closed’ sign and secures the lock three times. He needs to clear his head. Levi is not one for overwrought sentimentality but catharsis and nostalgia are only natural parts of being human and some fresh air ought to clean his lungs of the corrupting difficulty to breathe.
Slowly approaching afternoon frames Levi’s way through the arrival of summer encouraging remnants of flowering buds into full bloom and sending bird chicks into flight. Coarse grass crunches beneath his soles. Heat sticks to the cuffs of his sleeves till he rolls them up. The high sun warms his back. Full trees sway ever so gently -- gaps of light painting green remind him of the colour of Eren’s eyes. His feet carry him to his old neighborhood, the street he grew up on. Where he met his first love in late spring.
…
Levi hated moving.
He hated how many boxes there were and the cramped space of the car for hours on end and the new heatwave that wouldn’t dissipate. He remembers every little thing got on his nerves. He missed his old home already. The new one was too big. When they reached the place, it took more hours to unload all their belongings. By then Levi had tired of his books and his uncle Kenny’s continuous drawl and swatting away the flies sticking to his skin like the suffocating humidity.
But the most annoying of all? A kid next door whose family was unpacking at the same time as Levi’s. Eyes a vibrant green as bright as the sun that wouldn’t stop staring. Which in Levi’s current state, passed as an offense rather than a compliment. Then again, it would have anyway, what with the scrutiny and overtly nosy curiosity he’d never liked from kids his age. Most of them were barbaric idiots.
Levi inspected an interesting crack in the pavement, signaling how much he did not want to talk. The boy with light-spawned, headache inducing eyes walked up to him anyway. Levi kept staring at the ground.
“I’m Eren. What’s your name?”
Levi didn’t respond. Didn’t know that Eren would wear down every single one of his defenses in no time at all.
A woman shouted for Eren at the same time Levi’s mother called out his name, and he scowled.
Despite his mom being well in earshot, Eren cupped a hand over the side of his mouth and yelled, “coming!” Extravagant and overzealous from the first instant. He turned to Levi, all cheeky grin and gap-tooth. “Nice to meet you, Levi.”
He ran off. Levi thought that would be the end of it. He mumbled a “good riddance”, more than ready to flop onto the bed upstairs and do nothing for the rest of the day. But when he went to his room, the window overlooking his own revealed the same messy-haired boy. He pulled a face at Levi, sticking his tongue out and perching his thumbs on his head as he wriggled his fingers.
Levi wrinkled his nose and slammed the window shut in Eren’s face.
“What a brat.”
He decided he hated Eren the most out of that whole day.
That is how it all started, anyway.
…
They met again at school. Every time Levi shooed Eren away, he persistently buzzed right back into Levi’s space like a dense fruit fly. Through his efforts to befriend Levi, and at some point, between Mother telling him that he needed to acclimate and uncle Kenny saying Levi would be lonely forever like this, Levi begrudgingly gave in. A grave mistake in hindsight. When he surrendered however, it didn’t happen because he was scared of solitude’s unproblematic comfort but just to get Eren to shut up.
Eren did not.
He became a constant. Carla, Eren’s mom, and Mother grew close; a damning penalty for any kid. He was stuck with Eren. He might as well get used to it.
Stage one of acclimation process went like this:
The weather was hot. Oppressively hot. Forty five degrees at the obtrusive start of summer. Yet Eren had somehow convinced Levi to go get ice cream. The sun beat on their heads and on the mirage-laden asphalt so that Levi could hardly see through the blaring white over his face. As Eren stood next to him, the cars zipped by in flashes of red-blue-black-grey. The two boys’ hands sweat under the heatwave, grossly gluing their palms. Even so, Levi’s small fingers clenched tighter around Eren’s. One step, two steps. Look left. Look right. There was an order to these things. A way to be safe; instilled and ingrained and practiced.
They stepped off the pavement.
Eren let go.
Eren let go and he started running, running into the middle of the monstrous death machines through a chorus of warning beeps and Levi’s heart stopped. He cried out but it was already too late. His saliva cloyed in his throat and his heart pounded as he stared at the tiny figure evading a car by a hair’s breadth.
Eren’s head bobbed up on the other side and so much relief overtook Levi he could have fainted. Eren’s arms swung back and forth, brave and carefree. No hesitation, not even a moment’s thought.
Levi followed, safely, waiting for the cars to pass first and advancing when the spot in front of him cleared with a half-furious stride.
“What the hell was that?” he yelled, surprising both himself and Eren as lakewater green stirred on him.
“What?”
“What ? What do you mean ‘what’! You could have died, you fucking idiot!”
Eren pouted. “You shouldn’t swear so much.”
“Not the point, Jaeger. Answer the damn question.”
“If you don’t stop, I’ll tell your mom.”
Fleeting panic touched Levi. He leveled Eren’s gaze. “No, you won’t.”
Dropping his threatening expression instantly, Eren giggled. “No, I won’t.”
Levi sighed. “Why did you do that, brat?”
Eren shrugged. “It felt good.”
Levi frowned. How could knowing your life is in danger feel good?
Two decades later, he still doesn’t know the answer beyond the shape of something intrinsically Eren.
“My heart was beating so fast, Levi. I could hardly breathe and the wind was whipping at my face and my hair was blowing and when I stopped I could still hear my heart, Levi. It felt really good. Levi.” Eren had a nasty habit of repeating Levi’s name one too many times in his excitement and Levi disliked it but especially because it made him feel so seen. Made him want to listen to Eren. “Like. It felt like this is why I’m alive. To do this.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Because people were not born to die.
“But it’s true! You gotta believe me!” Eren reached for Levi and it shocked him. Literally. Electric sparks zapped his fingertips and he snatched his hand away. School taught him about friction, about certain types of fabrics generating that energy when rubbed together. But it didn’t feel like that .
Eren curled his fingers back with a look of remorse. “Sorry.”
Levi shook his head. “Let’s just go.”
They acquired the ice cream. Eren ordered the most bizarre flavor imaginable and called it adventurous when Levi thought the ‘chocolate cookie dough brownie vanilla coffee fudge caramel with pistachio’ would end in Eren having a heart attack on the spot. But Eren just gave himself a gradient cream-chocolate mustache, constellations shining in his eyes. Levi regretted every decision that had led him there.
Later that evening when the heat had cooled and Levi’s brain stopped melting in his skull, he googled a few key words on his computer and the result ‘adrenaline junkie’ sounded the most accurate to him.
He learned over the course of the next few years that no other description fit Eren better. That no description ever would.
At some point, they ended up exchanging their life dreams through Eren’s irritating insistence. He can’t remember if they were in his or Eren’s room, except it was probably Eren’s, because the empty chip bags and the sketchbook paper strung across the floor in streaked colorful chalk and watercolor couldn’t have been his. And he couldn’t have been the one to invite Eren over first.
“Open a tea shop,” Levi chewed out, distastefully eyeing the crumbs on Eren’s cheek.
“That’s boring, Lee.” Eren poked out his tongue. He had been trying out nicknames. None of them stuck.
Levi scrunched his brows and crossed his arms. “Well, what do you want to do, Backstreet Boy?” Levi’s efforts were more creative.
Eren’s eyes sparkled, which shouldn’t have been physically possible. Just a fancy lie to describe someone who looked happy, but Eren really did have an excited, glittery sheen about him.
“Explore the world.”
“That’s childish and vague.”
“I like your dream,” Eren said suddenly. And it didn’t sound false, though he had just declared it boring a second ago. “How about a café? That way, you could have cakes and pastries too!”
Later, Eren would give him design and decor cut-outs, and even later, Levi dredged them up from memory and chose the exact corduroy with the exact shade of teal Eren had snipped from magazines.
“I’ll think about it.”
Eren waited for Levi to change his answer too. Levi didn’t, still a little offended, and because he used to be a stubborn little shit.
Without warning, Levi found himself sprawled across the bed, eyes on the ceiling, Eren’s arm across his chest, giggles vibrating against him, air huffing into his neck. “You’re supposed to say my dream is cool too, silly.”
Levi dislodged himself. He wrangled Eren’s spindly limbs off of him. Levi’s voice cut sharper than he intended. “Oi. You forgot about personal space, numbnuts.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Eren rubbed the back of his neck, shame red and readable on his face. Mother had told Levi multiple times not to feel guilty for reinstating his boundaries but Eren’s face had crumpled so much Levi couldn’t help the shriveling in his chest. A grape turning into a raisin, draining of its water, leaving nothing but wrinkles.
“It’s fine. Just don’t make a habit out of it.”
Eren nodded earnestly, heart on his sleeve. “I won’t. I promise.”
Strangely, Eren kept to that promise.
The next night Levi couldn’t sleep. He doesn’t know why but he had opened his window and sat on the wide-cast stone sill. There Eren sat across from him, swinging his legs. In the silence of the night, their whispers carried over.
“Can’t sleep either?”
Levi shook his head.
They passed Eren’s brother’s baseball between them and talked about nothing and everything till the sky broke out in streaks of blue and orange.
A few months streamed by. Eren and Levi grew into ‘official friends.’ Trips to the sea and seashell collecting sealed the deal. They split their findings in two. Eren liked the spiral, snail-like ones more than the longer or flatter shapes. Although people were fickle and Levi knew they came and went just like the months of the year, Eren stayed. The first of his kind, throwing Levi off guard.
But then Eren met two new kids at school. Mikasa, a girl similar to Levi except not as emotionally incompetent, and Armin, a shy, smart blond.
Whenever Eren hung out with the pair, Levi’s ribs twisted and broke, compressing, stretching into his lungs and puncturing them, making breathing impossible. Levi didn’t confront Eren. Of course, he didn’t. Dignity stopped him. Like it did. Like it still does.
In the company of other people, Levi had found not competition, but a contract expiration, the death of their short friendship when summer waned and autumn arrived. He gave Eren the cold shoulder. Eren, heart on his sleeve and shining eyes, had obviously never been put through the cold shoulder before. Even his playful insistence fell apart, until Eren stood in Levi’s room pawing at his own watering eyes.
“You’re mad at me.”
Words sat heavily on Levi’s heart and lungs, a hot, inflammatory motion sickness, like vomiting out stones. “You left me.”
“I didn’t!” Eren wailed. He hiccupped. Tears trickled down his cheeks, clear beads pooling in his green eyes, making them glisten. His total willingness to show his sadness without defenses pushed Levi’s honesty.
“You like them better than me.”
“That’s not true.” Still crying, Eren walked towards Levi and Levi backed up. Eren waited, and Levi, in lieu of freely offering trust and touch, nodded. Eren’s arms wrapped around him, tight-squeezing.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like that but you’re my best friend ever.”
Levi hugged him back. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered, in a voice foreign to his ears. Something about Eren made him want to be vulnerable. Despite the raw feeling on his skin that spelled out the start of a glass wound -- so light and untraceable you didn’t notice until the hot slide of the liquid and the blots on your clothes. But Eren’s lashes tickled his cheek like butterflies, and Levi forgot.
“I won’t.”
Levi clung to Eren. Even though he knew -- and despite the map pinned to Eren’s bedroom wall -- that Eren would break his promise eventually.
Shaking, Levi curled up alone in his room, surrounded by a dark strangeness though all the lights shone. Knives tore under his skin and banshees screamed in his head as he sat in the corner, spine jolting with rib-dislodging sobs.
Eren climbed in, but Levi didn’t know until his voice carried through the cotton stuffing in Levi’s ears and the lava swimming in his chest.
“Levi.”
Levi’s blackened vision unfocused and his eyes slammed shut as saltwater scorched his cheeks. Everything was so damn hot and Levi couldn’t breathe .
“Stay away!”
“Levi.” Eren crouched down to his level and slowly took his clammy hands, prying his fist open, releasing the sting of the purple-red crescents he had imprinted in his blind frenzy.
“Breathe. Come on, Levi, like this.”
Levi opened his eyes, peering at the lift and drop of Eren’s chest. Mimicking the pattern.
“Great, you’re doing well. Just like that. Keep going.”
Levi’s lungs opened up, inch by minute inch, Eren’s voice and his touch grounding. When Levi fully alighted on the world around him, he couldn’t help the wonder in his voice.
“How did you do that?”
Eren shrugged, not acknowledging that he had soothed Levi out of a panic attack like a regular chore on a Tuesday. “I’m a doctor’s son.”
Maybe while looking into a soft, proud smile, allowing Eren to run his thumbs in circles on his wrists, feeling his pulse and listening to his steady breathing, that Levi’s heart thudded in a new way. That he first got the ludicrous thought: Eren was magic.
They shared that vulnerability; didn’t lose it for a long time.
Sometimes, Eren had boundless energy crafted and merged by moonshine and fairy dust. Other times, through the pact of their open windows, sad songs drifted across the air while Levi battled recurring insomnia. Having heard Carla and Grisha yell, having seen the reflected moisture in Eren’s eyes at school and the angry red swelling around his eyes. Levi’s next breath on a too-hard-too-soft mattress committed him to the source of the melancholic music.
He’d never done it before, and Eren wasn’t there to tell him to go back in, so Levi fixed his eyes on the black hole where Eren should have been sleeping and leapt.
His footfalls landed light on Eren’s floor. He wriggled under the blanket and behind Eren, who didn’t so much as stiffen. The smooth sweep of his back expanded against Levi’s chest with his next inhale, and raised Levi over his spine. Back then, Eren wasn’t much taller than him. In their closeness, Levi found a natural state of being. Maybe the evanescence of his lack of honest companionship or the kaleidoscope of feelings or Eren’s quiet sniffling is what prompted him to say the first words, reaching for Eren’s hand as he did.
“Do you want to talk about it?” A clear abstraction; anything and everything Eren needed to discuss; as intrinsically necessary to tend to as Levi’s own wounds.
An exhale, more sob than word, “yeah.”
Levi nuzzled his nose into the nape of Eren’s neck. “Then talk.”
And then came the cracked mold of shared hurt. Levi doesn’t remember what their idiotic argument included in the flip-book of many ranging from significant to insignificant. But he remembers they’d shut the windows and curtains in each other’s faces, Levi’s stomach sinking. He remembers the heartsick heat between his ribs. He remembers thunk-thunk-thunks imploring his glass when he couldn’t let his consciousness slip even as he kept his eyes closed.
Levi unbolted his window and hissed, “what?”
Eren stood, his shoulders hunched, the pelting pebbles in his palm.
“I’m sorry.”
And just like that, all was forgiven.
“You missed me,” said Eren, far too smugly, when Levi let him in through the door. It made Levi angry because it was true.
“Shut up.”
Levi hugged him. They stayed up all night ill-advisedly eating snacks and watching horror movies.
Levi realized on the horrid rising curvature of puberty cresting into adolescence that Eren is pretty. Really pretty.
It was terrifying.
It was new.
It was exciting.
It was in the glimpses he saw of Eren in the mornings through the blowing curtain swathing his frame, ghostly gossamer that saturated his shadow until it receded to reveal skin. Messy hair. Loose limbs. Fever crawled up Levi’s face. He retreated, aching, burning, stomach tight with a novel sort of nausea beneath his navel -- not unpleasant for all it still twinged and jumped and swooped and crashed.
Waves crashed before two pairs of feet, the saltwater tickling the tips of their toes digging into the sand where Levi and Eren sat side by side. There was overlapping blue and green. At times cold as ice, teeth-chattering and numb skin. At others, warm as an embrace that smoothly wrapped around Levi. Gentle and calm. A soul that couldn’t be tamed. Unruly and wild. Right next to him all the same.
Blue reflected in Eren’s eyes, turning the lush, verdant bedding in them turquoise as the sunset brushed his skin rose gold. Brine and summer air settled in Levi’s lungs but when he faced away from the big, burning ball he only met another. Eren was so close. Pearls grinned at Levi. Eren’s breath had carried something sweet, though Levi can’t recall what exactly. Peaches, maybe, from the drinks they had just had. Skin flushed. Bright. He glowed. Like the sea glittering under rays in Levi’s periphery, Eren glowed.
“You’ll see, Levi. One day I’ll leave this cramped little place and explore the world.”
The air around them clung to Levi’s skin, weighing him down with the saline cold radiating off of it. Levi rubbed his arm. The goosebumps didn’t dissipate and so he reconsidered as he bit back.
“This town ain’t big enough for you?”
Eren’s smile stretched as wide as the eternal skyline. “Not even close.”
And why did that implication bother Levi?
Maybe because Eren was radiant. Maybe because when they were cooking, Eren pulled him into a ridiculous dance, showing him the moves to follow as the sun spotlit them and Eren’s laughter dizzied him under a woven star-shimmer spell while the scent of cinnamon and spices hung in the air, mingling with the heat. Or maybe because Eren was a constant and Levi is a fan of routine.
As if it would keep him, Levi wordlessly took Eren’s hand.
But the waves kept receding. They came back, but they always left too.
Levi had actively memorized that moment, which is the only reason it is so crystal clear now. The deep, rushing, undulating roar like a bass. Eren’s voice. The sweet salt on his tongue. Eren’s breath. Endless blue on blue. Eren’s eyes. Cold and warmth. Their shoulders touching. Eren’s face, gaze trained on the horizon line connected to the sea where the sun steadily sank. As accepting of his fate as Levi. Because neither of them had a choice. Not when their respective companions are exalting and exigent and a goliath of utterly undeniable proportions. They would be swallowed whole and they could do nothing except wait until they were permitted to rise again.
Like the sea, Levi didn’t even need to interact with Eren to feel his presence. Eren chose him. Eren, who is endless and ever-expanding. Denying him would have wound up in the same tragedy of a foolish sailor thinking they can defy a force of nature. Resistance was futile, like clawing at one’s throat to breathe once the saltwater has invaded, once Eren has filled every crevice of Levi’s being and every airway. Levi couldn’t breathe without him.
Even back then, Levi knew he would drown in Eren whether he wanted to or not. Living while having Eren in his sphere was like being on a ship. If he didn’t love and respect Eren then he would not make it to shore again. But since Eren picked him, and since he had loved and respected the boy with the soul of the sea, Levi didn’t want to reach stable land anymore. He didn’t get a choice with Eren. He never did. He didn’t want one either.
So Levi watched Eren watch the sea, and watched the sea watch Eren, and he watched Eren crash and drift and come in strong and turn his tide again.
Levi drowned in him.
In the twilight of their teenage years, Eren became a charming flirt. Levi had adjusted, like he always does. Perhaps because Eren never settled on one person in his ever-stretching limbs, dropping them as fast as countless hobbies, or that he told Levi about every crush with this pretty blush powdering the apples of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears. Jealousy’s necessity fell when Eren remained just as affectionate, though Levi occasionally experienced the odd writhing, stinging sensation from time to time.
One evening, he opened his window to let in the breeze. Next shot, Eren on a heap on the floor after a gut-wrenching crash. Levi jolted upright.
“Eren, what the hell?”
Eren shook his head and stood on twig feet. “I wanted to see you.”
Levi narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
Eren shrugged. “I just did.”
“You couldn’t have used the door, dumbass?” Levi stood up and put his phone down, concern getting the best of him. “Are you in trouble with Carla again?”
Eren snorted. Pushed one hand into his pocket and waved the other. “If I was, I’d be hiding under your bed like last time.”
“Fair point.” Levi allowed the tension to drain. “Now, what is it? Barging in unannounced is kind of your thing but what’s with that look--?”
Eren had his teeth buried in his lower lip, eyes downcast.
“You like that indie band, Southern Heights, right?”
Levi’s brows bumped together. “Obviously.”
“What would you say if I told you that I possibly maybe may have acquired tickets to a concert?”
Levi’s heart picked up, powerfully drumming against his sternum. His breaths fell short. He can still recall the mineral taste that coated the cave of his mouth at the time. “You’re shitting me. Are you going to take a dump on my carpet now?”
Anyone else would have been disgusted but Eren laughed gustily, a bark of shivering air that knocked against Levi’s ribs and echoed between them. Then, Eren produced two glossy black-and-silver tickets from his pocket.
Levi prided himself on self control but in that moment, his focus narrowed to a hideous but flattering flower-printed shirt and he streaked through his room into Eren. Levi hugged him like he could crush him, even though Eren towered a head over him already.
Eren’s vibrating energy infected him and Levi felt like a keyed up kid’s toy, just as giddy as a child, the way only Eren incited. Until ice dunked over his head and he pulled back as frigid frost slipped beneath his skin and flew into his heart.
“Wait. Eren, I can’t go.”
Eren grabbed his arm, his voice certain and summery, chasing away the winter clouding Levi’s heart. “Sure you can!”
Levi snatched himself back, feeling small under Eren’s bright gaze. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t .”
Eren’s face softened, but he gently persisted, “I’ll be right there with you, I promise. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Eren had done this for him. He never told Levi how he got the tickets or how much he saved up, but Carla told him, and Mikasa and Armin reaffirmed; three months of his allowance and the paychecks from the fast food joint Eren worked part-time at.
Levi didn’t know that when he said yes. He only knew the light of Eren’s eyes spurring him on and his overwhelming warmth and how he reached for Levi again and the noise from his blasting heartbeat.
Music blasted in his ears and his heart pounded and Levi found himself jumping and swaying with the rhythm, the way he would have thought ridiculous. But with Eren next to him, it felt right. When Levi thinks back to all those years ago, for a split second he feels as alive as he did looking at Eren. A center of focus in a whirling haze of light and shadow, his lips ripe as raspberries and his eyes bright. Burning in a fire of his own soul, caught up in his dream but still there with Levi like a scene out of a movie. Levi stood in pitch-dark broken up only by neon, Eren dressed in starlight beside him, appearing in flashes painted by strips of pink-blue-green-purple. But Levi swore in the fluidity of the way he danced like a flame, he shone like the sun, Levi waiting for him to rise and swallow the night in his golden blaze like the most beautiful sight Levi ever saw. Levi wanted to only ever dance with him, and he had wanted, so badly, to kiss him.
They were seventeen and kissing at a party. Disastrous and heedless of calamity. Lost on Levi, the muffled song sounded like the reverberation of an echo of a halo of a stretched out word that sounded like “love” and they fell, fell, fell. Levi felt the migraine from a future hangover coming just as his back hit a mattress but Eren was so close, closer than he’d ever been, and Levi set alight with the clash of sun-and-sea that made up Eren altogether. Burning to the core, both of them burning through the darkness of the room till they glowed like two points of light-and-heat intertwined. Levi couldn’t have woken up from the spell if he tried.
Eren stopped first. He settled, as if realizing who he was touching. Over Levi, arms on either side of him propped by his palms, as the time ran out and their firefly-spark faded.
“I…” He licked his lips, cracking but soft. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Levi couldn’t help but chuckle as his senses oozed back in. “No, you shouldn’t have.”
Eren got off him, sitting on the edge of the bed, leaving Levi stricken and desolate and fighting shivers in the absence of his body heat.
“Let’s never talk about this. We probably won’t remember when we’re sober.”
Levi would. Levi would forever. Walking through patches of warm sunlight, laying in the beams on his couch, he’d remember Eren’s warmth and he’d miss it more than anything.
“Sure,” he said dryly, bitterly. No one else would have deciphered the difference to his usual cynicism, no one but Eren.
“Levi, I like you. A lot, actually. But you’re my best friend and I don’t want to ruin what we have. I mean--”
“Stop, Jaeger. That’s enough.” Levi held up his hand and let the pure acid liquify into lemon-sourness doused with sugar. Gentle. As gentle as Levi could be. “I get it. You don’t need to explain. You never did.”
Eren, unbothered by the lingering sharpness, accepted Levi as always. He started, before relief uncoiled him like a released spring. Bouncing, he held out. “Friends?”
Levi rolled his eyes and took the ridiculous handshake. “Forever.”
Eren flopped against him. “Oof.” Blanketing over Levi’s body, stretching his arms and kneading Levi’s back, making a low, yipping noise.
“Do you mind?”
“What?” Eren muttered. “I’m sleepy.” He snuggled closer, letting out a content sigh. Then, he passed out.
Just like that, Eren had fallen asleep on Levi’s shoulder and Levi stared at the ceiling, stunned. A surprised chuckle puffed out of his chest and he turned his head into the tickling rises of Eren’s hair strands stuck to his forehead, covering his ears. He pressed his lips there just so. “Sleep tight, brat.”
At some point Levi must have dosed off because Armin woke them both up with a flashlight on their faces. Eren insisted on accompanying Levi, the two of them sleepily shuffling over the concrete, holding each other up. Though his house resided across the street from Eren’s, Eren climbed up and tipped face-first onto Levi’s bed.
Levi poked him. “Eren.”
“Mhrm.”
Levi sighed and fit himself around the mess of a man. Eren’s warmth pulled him under faster this time, slack bodies tangling around each other like in childhood.
Levi is in the park. He takes a deep breath as the vivid green of the leaves taunts him.
Some things are harder to recall. Others are starkly clear. Like Eren’s bizarre fashion sense or how he smelled like the forest through the brackish freshness of their seaside town. How he studied in a tank top in his backyard. How he had an obsession with glass bottle caps. How his messy bedroom had a certain charm to it, how he never slept until he crashed for days on end, or how whenever Levi visited, without fail, Eren had a shake or slushie in his hand.
Some are sensations that the years can’t wash away, like the press of Eren’s hand into his skin, like his elbow stabbing into his side when they cuddled, like his lips tasting of cherry soda.
Some are just words, spoken to him in a kindly sympathetic voice, just as Mother caught the hitch of his breath and weeded out the flowers Levi coughed up around Eren.
“You’re going to have to let him go someday.”
A half-assed denial of a response; see-through, transparent. Levi still locked himself in his room and had his first truly painful crisis. Eren would leave. He would. If Levi were near his room that moment, he would have torn the maps and roads from his wall, shredded the black and white trails and ripped the grass and sand patches. But as it went, he had to grieve and acclimatize.
Another year passed as seasons carried over with the moon’s wax and wane and the tide turning into the sand. Time surged ever forward; an unstoppable force barreling towards the beginning of the end.
Slow down. Take a breath. Set the scene.
The break after senior year. Eren’s birthday. Late spring, or early summer. Eren and Levi on a balcony. Eren’s impending departure. They had a sendoff party earlier in the week with all their friends. Later, just the two of them in Levi’s apartment which Eren took more pride in than even Levi, and that’s saying a lot considering Levi fought tooth and nail to get it. Indulging in their own private celebration. One on one. Just the way Levi liked it most, and an especially rare treat in those last days.
Bittersweet sorrow remained from Levi’s overwhelming despair. He had camouflaged himself successfully into the absence of Eren. Grieved the loss of him before he had left. Ready for their goodbye, Levi could enjoy this. A bottle passed back and forth, a heart to heart, the delicious night that tasted of promise and future and--
“I love you.”
Blood. It tasted like the blood from Levi biting down his tongue. He tastes it in the present too, when he runs his tongue over his teeth.
The three words sounded like a lot more too.
Hitting black ice. Screeching tires. Shattering glass. Sirens.
Levi couldn’t breathe.
Eren had stood like a silhouette, black in Levi’s vision, against the dark night sky in the small balcony. Not enough space.
“Did you hear me, Levi? I love you.”
Levi sucked in a sharp, cold breath and reeled his head back, his voice wheezing and cracking around incredulously excruciating laughter.
“Don’t say that. Goddamn it, Eren, don’t say you love me when you’re leaving, you bastard. Don’t joke around like that.”
But Eren’s face set in stone, his sincere frown deep, painfully earnest. The summery air blew through his hair, over the decisive shade of his eyes, as much black as green. Seaweed. “I’m not joking.” Then, again, “I love you.”
Levi stared at Eren. Eren stared back with all the fire of a hundred suns and all the tenderness of a thousand flowers and the green of a million evergreen forests and the blue of a billion oceans.
Undeniable. Utterly undeniable.
Levi retreated, away, the small of his back digging into the railing. “You’re leaving me.” The ‘me’ added to the end was a childish echo at eight years old from when Eren had made new friends. An echo that swallowed him whole.
Eren grabbed his hand. “Come with me.”
Levi froze further. Fierce, lightening and darkening, the spell crept up on him, pulling him down, wringing his hand loose from his clutch in the ground. Cinnamon hit his tongue, hard and potent, choking him as his eyes seared and his mouth burned. “No.”
Eren didn’t miss a beat. His expression didn’t even change. His grip only tightened. “Then we can have a long distance relationship! We can figure it out.” He pulled and pulled, and drew closer till Levi could see his face and nothing else, like waking to a blinding white sun. Levi, a wooden hollow, stood still in the frame of his arms.
“Levi, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Closing his eyes, Levi clenched his jaw to suppress his gasp, the words dragging shivers through him, holding his lungs hostage. If he let go, he’d tip over against Eren. His knees bucked, his heart too big for his chest. He grit his teeth. Then, despair summoned anger as he snapped his eyes open and shoved Eren away.
“No.”
As Eren stumbled back, the hurt in his eyes shook a strangled sob in Levi.
“You won’t even try? You won’t even fight for us?”
Levi’s remorse came in the form of mumbled, sour words. “It won’t work, Eren.” You’re too well tangled with my soul for it to work.
Eren’s gaze stirred from its glaze, from the shock of Levi physically removing him from his space. He shook his head, chuckling. Levi didn’t know if he wavered, not when he always won, when he perhaps knew in his marrow that Levi felt the same for him. “Very on brand, Dark Lord.” His air turned, and with it the air around them turned. Eren’s limbs twitched, and Levi knew he wanted to reach out and touch. “But I know you love me too. Stop pretending you don’t.”
Frayed, frazzled, exposed. It made Levi more vicious, sharper, because how dare Eren tell him how he felt and how dare he be right? Levi felt like a child, helplessly grasping at straws to defend himself. He wished he could just walk up to the night sky; a horridly Eren sort of thought.
“I won’t wait for you. I’ve been waiting all my life and I won’t be your project or your little quest to figure your own shit out with.”
He slipped back into the room. Small, but orderly. Comfortable, his own. Levi had made it for himself and then Eren told him to let it go like he hadn’t been gearing towards it his whole life.
Eren’s furious voice followed his intrusive footsteps, his presence flooding Levi’s space, brine and pine. Powerful, dominating, stealing the oxygen.
“Is that what you think? That I’m using you?”
Levi rounded on him, spitting, “you don’t even know what you want. You were always chasing a stupid dream.”
Eren flinched. “You told me you’d come with me! You told me you would follow me, remember? When we were eight.”
“We were eight , Eren. I fucking lied.” Unlike him, but Eren had a penchant for making Levi act unlike himself.
That struck Eren for a moment. He blinked rapidly. But then his face gentled off the denial, supplanted by a tenderness like a barbed wire thrown back at Levi. Eren pushed, softly now, even as he sliced his name into Levi’s side. “I want you .” Giving into the energy. Hesitating, trembling fingers. But Levi didn’t stop him, even when their eyes met, and Levi let him take his hand.
Even as Eren pulled him apart, Levi stepped closer towards him, his voice thawing, his heart melting. “Then stay.”
Eren’s face contorted in pain. “I can’t. I have to see what’s out there. I have to.”
And Levi felt like a cheap consolation prize that Eren rejected, like silver, when Eren was gold to him. He kept their hands joined, a shaking olive branch as he steadied his voice. “Choose.”
“I can’t !” Eren cried, desperate. In the end, he was the one who let go, who slipped away from their tangled link.
Levi’s hand hung where Eren left it, until he dropped it, curled it into a fist. He whipped his head to Eren, the sheen rising over his eyes like the blare of the sun like the mirage on the day they met. Chasing down a ghost as Eren wrapped his arms around himself in a lonely embrace. What right did he have to look so broken when he threw Levi away? And from a crushed part of Levi rose a scream, “make up your damn mind, Eren! Hurry up and leave already!”
Because another minute would have collapsed Levi into Eren’s arms. Because he felt blind and in the dim light, if only for a moment, Eren was his.
Eren sobbed, stricken tears falling. He was never good at not crying. Something Levi had always loved about him. Not blank-faced, even when blank-voiced. Never covering up. Never capable of it.
“That’s it then.”
After Eren stole Levi’s sunshine, Levi hardened to ice. Impassive, unyielding. “That’s it.” Silence reigned. A cosmic contrast to everything Levi wanted to say.
Tell him you love him too at least. Tell him before he leaves and you can never say it, he’d thought foolishly, in the characteristic weakness of teenagers that adults roll their eyes at. Back then, it felt different. Zapping electricity unexplained by physics.
But if Levi had said it, Eren would have kissed him, and if Levi still tasted the kiss from their sweet seventeen then he would have burned and drowned and forgotten every ounce of practicality. He would have jumped off any ledge like their overlooking window sills. He would have dove into the ocean, he would have climbed a mountain, he would have followed to the ends of the earth, he would have done anything Eren asked. Even in his youth, Levi knew it couldn’t work like that. He couldn’t turn his life over for one man, even if what beat between his ribs adored him. Even if he skewered his heart the moment he turned down Eren’s bared own.
But no. That wasn’t what happened. Because Eren was the one to let go.
Eren, who was beautiful in his fury, even as a hail of tears devastated his perfect face. Wrecked and bloodshot, but still gorgeous and stunning and breathtaking. Levi only longed to reach for him with an acute ache that wracked through his bones. He wanted to cradle Eren in his arms, run his fingertips over Eren’s jawline till it softened, over his forehead till the creases faded, to stop time and to forget, forget, forget all that had come before. Emotions boiled inside him; most potently a sick indignation. Because Eren didn’t relent through their fight. He was still leaving and the confession didn’t change that.
If the whole world gathered to watch, Levi wouldn’t care. He’d still dance with Eren, if only Eren would ask him. But Eren had made his choice. Levi wasn’t enough. He doubted anyone would have been enough to keep Eren in one place. Would have satisfied the insatiable fire Eren was.
Levi doesn’t know how long they stayed there staring at each other, but at some point Eren took a step, then another, then passed Levi to the door. And it was over. All their memories amounted to nothing except shattered shards they avoided cutting themselves on. Through it all, Levi’s head filled with their kiss at that party, how Eren had clung to him like he wanted him forever. What a lie.
It stretched on for far too long, the moment Eren left, even as he strode away from Levi as fast as he would have escaped the plague. When Eren slammed the door after him, Levi held the knob, as if to stop him, but he only helped Eren’s momentum. Eren’s footsteps faded down the hall. Levi pressed his back to the door, slid against it and let the saltwater trapped in the roof of his mouth go. He cried harder than he ever had in his life. Mourned all over again.
Levi opened his café only a few years later. He lived. Moved on. Eren was one man; everything to Levi, everything and nothing at all. He was no one. He was someone Levi needed to let go of. So, Levi did.
Over the next decade, Levi heard of Eren being back in town periodically. Like an unpredictable disease. And yet the town felt incomplete without him. Everyone missed him. The swing sets and cafés and local festivals included. The only way Levi had to anticipate his impending arrival: whispers spreading among the townsfolk like a wildfire, like a swarm of insects, like Eren was a celebrity and not just some boy out of the many ones who had left. Maybe because Eren ‘Social Butterfly’ Jaeger had befriended basically everyone then up and left them. Unintentionally cruel, but brutally so. A butcher with a smile.
The symptoms were as follows: Levi would see Eren’s shadow running around, see him in the playground they frequented as kids, see Eren in that one kid that pushed himself too hard on the swing, legs kicking at the sky, as Levi sat next to him paralyzed, scared he would fall. The voice of a kid telling his friend to join in, their friend staring the same way Levi stared before obeying as if mesmerized. Levi forgot why he wanted to grow up so badly, independance be damned. Eren’s ghost appeared in thoughts and emotions and biting nostalgia that had Levi flipping through photo albums like a maniac and cleaning obsessively.
Levi would go to his old house out of homesick remembrance and dodge Mother’s balled inquiries. When he inevitably went rummaging around his old room he’d find one thing or another of Eren’s. His overstated Zeppelin yellow-and-orange shirt that he wore the night he ran away from home. Carla had tearfully called Levi begging him to bring Eren back. At 3 am at the edge of town, Levi found Eren in a gay bar with a lost, hopeless look in his eyes. Levi bought Eren a drink and drove him back home knowing one day he’d have to let Eren go. Each insignificant scrap unearthed a memory. Like one of Eren’s traveler’s magazines cramped beneath Levi’s bed. Or his dumb little trinkets and thread bracelets. Or paper clippings; Eren’s notes and grocery lists lost between the closet and the wall, behind the mirror, jammed into a shut drawer. Or Levi would find strands of Eren’s hair spiraling around the clothes Levi left behind when he moved out.
An endless, fucked up treasure hunt when they’d never even dated before.
Mr. Hannes would visit Levi at the café and ask him if he knew anything about when Eren would arrive. Grown up women from their old school gossiped not far from his earshot. Levi couldn’t understand it, what exactly Eren searched for, how insensitive he could be to his own family’s and friends’ sadness.
The way it happened on holidays: Levi’s sense of dignity prevented him from actively avoiding Eren but he would give himself some other excuse to run his errands a little earlier so he wouldn’t stumble into Eren there at the market. Mother and Carla made multiple attempts to invite them both over for Christmas at the Jaegers’ residence which always ended in the same way. The atmosphere awkward and stilted, Levi and Eren only exchanging words when necessary or backed in a corner. Mikasa and Armin and their mothers carrying the conversation, while Zeke and Grisha shifted uncomfortably. The torture ended too late and too soon, because like a bird in a cage, Eren took flight as soon as a few hours passed. Always leaving first, up into the sky to another country. A relief, and a stab in the heart. Guilt nagged Levi sometimes, when Carla and Mother were so close, that he and Eren were acting like terminally teenage brats.
Eventually, their mothers gave up trying to resurrect their six-feet-under friendship, just as Eren kept sending those measly cards to Levi on every occasion even when the world around them evolved to online messages. In turn, Levi kept scribbling out pathetically unsendable letters.
Now, after a year of nothing except cards, Eren was coming back. This time Armin says he is staying for good. Levi’s world wouldn’t stop for Eren; it hadn’t before, and it wouldn’t after ten years of a suppressed hurting. The town missed Eren, but it too had moved on. Some restaurants and shops changed, others remained the same. Levi found satisfaction. He had his life, and Eren had his own.
Levi’s stroll through his town only ends up switching from asphalt to sand at the seashore for his own sake, for his own closure with a place that holds his memories, not to look for the lost love of his childhood.
He finds Eren there.
Sitting on a chaise. Hair mussed by the sea breeze, so much longer than Levi remembers. Eren is taller too, shoulders squared. Instead of an emotional storm starting in grief and ending in spite, Levi feels nothing. His hatred and misery drain out of him all at once. All that remains is an emptiness, a tired sort of fondness. Levi sits next to the stranger who knows all his secrets, the stranger staring listlessly at the sea with that same familiar look of being lost in his eyes. Only this time it is carved deeper, and more bitterly.
“Hey.”
Eren’s back twitches and his shoulders jerk. He turns to the side in disbelief. A light penetrates his fatigued eyes, as if it hasn’t been there for ages. His voice radiates softness and surprise and relief.
“Levi.”
The years fall away. Roll off their backs like water off a duck. And they are kids again. Eren smiles sadly, his knitted brow rounding, and Levi can’t help smiling too.
“So…did you find whatever it is you were looking for out there?”
Pain flickers over Eren’s stubbled face. Too late, Levi notices the white stick between his fingers and the ash tray next to him. “No.”
“Mm. Krista seemed to be it for a while.”
Eren takes a drag and shakes his head, a lock of long hair displacing into his eyes. “A fling.”
“Did I scare her off when you invited her to my café and I told her how you ended up hanging from the tallest tree upside down by your underwear, or how you ate a moldy cucumber on a dare once?”
Levi had also told her how a hungover Eren stopped their car and threw up all over a diner floor because he couldn’t get to the bathroom fast enough. He doesn’t know if it had been an effort to sabotage their relationship, but it had the desired effect of Eren never coming over to his café again. Though it must have been Mikasa and Armin that sent him that way in the first place and Eren didn’t have enough brain cells to know that ‘The Tea Bar’, an ironic name Eren had picked himself, belonged to Levi. The horror in his eyes when his gaze met Levi’s? Priceless. Meanwhile, Krista insisted that she liked the place too much to leave.
They both chuckle at the memory, some joint thread of their brains weaving.
“That was a low one, Levi. But no.” Eren drags and blows a cloud out of the side of his mouth. “She just…didn’t get me.” Scratchily, he adds, “didn’t get me like you do.”
His voice is different too. Deeper, coarser. When Levi inspects his face closer, he notices cracked lips, dark bags under Eren’s eyes, the shadow over his face accented by the hairs sifted over his upper lip and on his chin. Unused piercings and a forgotten tattoo, the ink peeking from the side of his collar; a thin, forked tongue of a snake that descends down his neck. The rest is all edges and points. Jawline prominent, the ends of him like the tips of sharp objects, knives or scissors or razors. He used to be clean shaven, filled out and healthy and glowing -- the skeletal look suited Levi more -- hair tied up in a messy bun. More lean than muscular, never skinny. But Eren looks like a homeless person, not someone coming home.
“The Eren I knew wouldn’t smoke.”
He also had shorter hair, ending at his nape, not cascading over his back uncared for. Eren’s self-negligence is clear in every part of him. For all the opportunities, the world really hasn’t treated him kindly. Levi doesn’t need to ask to know that much.
Eren snorts derisively. “The Eren you knew wasn’t lost and jaded.”
“Oh, but he was.” It is easy to talk to him, as easy as if Eren had left yesterday and come back this afternoon, and Levi doesn’t know why they never tried to talk before.
“He listened to My Chemical Romance even though he never admitted to being an emo.”
Eren snickers, more genuine than self-deprecating this time, more familiar. He turns to Levi with a fondness in his eyes. “It’s good to see you haven’t changed, old friend.”
Levi’s heart stupidly clenches around an age-old yearning that is all the last minutes have left.
He wants to say Eren would be surprised but it’s not true because Levi really is a creature of habit and most things haven’t changed, so instead he says, “you clearly have. When did you become so rude, brat? And when did you get so tall? Ugh.”
When Eren lets go this time, his apexing shoulders shake and he laughs quietly but he laughs like himself. “Damn, I missed you.” Eren looks at him for a second. Levi keeps his face unreadable, but Eren finds something there, because he repeats words from their childhood. “Say you missed me too.”
As if he has no choice, Levi complies, “I missed you.”
Eren warms around the eyes, and Levi’s urge to wrap a blanket around him alleviates when he smugly claims, “thought so. You never returned my cards, but I knew you wanted to so I kept sending them.”
“Nevermind, it was a moment of weakness. I’ve been doing just fine without your pestering, Jaeger.”
“Stubborn ass.” Eren inhales the smoke, like some method of self-harm, and turns his fingers over, tapping the stick as ashes fall like dying stars. “Sounds about right though.”
His airy tone does nothing to lessen Levi’s concern. “Eren. Don’t be that way. Of course I missed you, numbnuts. Hell, I’ve thought of you nearly every day.” He stops, already having revealed so much of himself. Eren, a passing thought, but a persistent one; whenever the sunshine dotted across the leaves right, at the start of every summer, whenever Levi visited Mother, whenever he passed the playground or Eren’s favourite club.
“I thought of you every hour. Wondering what the hell I was doing away from you.”
It stuns Levi, and it shouldn’t. Eren confesses easily, something that hasn’t changed despite the drastic shift in his outer appearance. He is still Eren. He’d always been that way.
“Then…why did you leave?”
For a moment, Eren is entirely silent. The cigarette trembles in his grip. He puts it out in the tray next to him beside the other two stubs. And finally, in a voice as small as when he’d had a nightmare at eight years old and burrowed into Levi for safety, he admits, “I don’t know.”
Levi should feel angry, maybe. But all that’s really there is pity and he nudges Eren with his elbow. Skin on skin for the first time in so long, and it zaps Levi like electricity all over again.
“You must have some clue in that head of yours.”
“I…guess I was trying to find myself?” Eren struggles, rubbing his arm like he felt the electronic sparks too. “I really don’t know, Levi. I thought the world could tell me who I am.”
“It can’t. You figure that out yourself.”
Eren needed to learn to be willing to settle. He never listened when Levi told him that in their youth. Simply wasn’t in his nature; not with that wild-eyed, wandering spirit. But no number of places or people or high-flying jobs or opportunities could give him meaning if he didn’t find it in himself first; in his life as it is, not searching for some arbitrary concept across the seas. A decade must have taught him that already. Levi hopes it has. He had hoped Eren would learn the lesson sooner, and had been near-confident that he would.
Eren’s expression flickers again as he frowns, with not only a lost look, but an utterly disoriented one. Because in youth,, he’d been so assured he needed to go out there, and his disappointment is as evident as his longing for that dream used to be.
“I think I realized that far too late.”
Before them, the sunset bleeds -- crimson seeping from a slit-wound between the clouds -- and stains the golden canvas.
Slowly, as if mustering up his will, Eren speaks, “I know I have no right to ask after what…what I put you through, but could you forgive me?”
Levi could act like he is surprised, offended. But he isn’t. The words mingle in the air, all salt and brine and forests, before Eren even said them. It made sense that he would say them. The hurt should surface, the anger should rise. Levi waits and yet, as the tide rushes in beneath their feet, neither of those two emotions do. Instead, a longing fills Levi’s lungs.
How could such painstakingly compiled resistance fall? And how couldn’t it, when he’d written Eren dozens of letters begging him to come home but never sent them? When he could never dance with anyone else? When Eren needed him so badly, and when they had always come to each other’s aid no matter what feud lay between them?
“You know, what I said back then, I still mean it, Levi. Haven’t stopped meaning it. Is that…is that okay?”
And when Levi doesn’t respond, Eren just keeps going. Desperate, earnest, pleading. Insistent, like always. With a tendency to ramble if Levi doesn’t stop him, to keep spilling out his heart, no end in sight.
“Levi…if you’ll have me, I’ll make it up to you. I swear, Levi. I’ll make it all up to you. Every lost minute.”
Levi’s throat thickens. He must have thought of this scenario a hundred times, thought of how exactly he’d break Eren’s heart too, how he’d tell him to go back the way he came from. Though he feigns his indignation, his makeshift words sound void even to his own ears.
“Do you honestly believe whatever feelings we shared as dumb teenagers are still there or is this another desperate attempt at self-discovery?”
Eren’s face maps agony in three parts like a symphony; twitching brows, trembling lips, teaming eyes. “They can’t be gone. Feelings like that don’t just go away.” So precious, so many seeds planted in the tender soil of youth. A love buried. If only watered, it could bloom.
Levi can’t help the affectionate sympathy when presented with Eren’s blind optimism; a trait so wholly, entirely Eren he remembers who taught him that dreams do come true.
“There you are.”
Maybe the observant phrase is exactly the solvent Eren needed, because as easily as a decade ago, he takes Levi’s hand. He doesn’t let go this time. Determined, decisive, with a tumultuously certain conviction in his eyes. “And I can prove it. I can.”
Levi’s lip quirks into a smirk. They are face to face now, looking each other in the eye. Maybe it is all a bit too much. Maybe Levi is losing it because a hysterical laugh bubbles in his throat.
“Jeez, Eren. At least buy me dinner first.”
Eren immediately barrels forward, clutching Levi’s hand to himself like a lifeline. “I could do that! I know I’ve been gone a while but The Red Swan must still be open! Or if it’s closed you can take me anywhere you like. Come on- let’s go now--”
“Slow your roll, pretty boy. I was joking.”
Eren deflates, his erratic gestures stilling, but he keeps their fingers locked. “Oh.”
Levi prefers it this way. He really does. Eren has always been spur-of-the-moment. Never good at not saying what he felt the moment he felt it. No grand gestures, no tact, just truth and his bared heart. Charming, in an adorably clumsy, sweet way.
Besides, if Eren had planned some fancy dinner out, Levi would just be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Too on edge to enjoy the expensive ass meal, anticipating the announcement that, actually, Eren has a kid on the other side of the world “but it’s fine, isn’t it Levi?”. Or a bad diagnosis. Or, “by the way, I was married for a while there.”
Endless displays of Eren’s long-held, hurtful recklessness. Instead, like this, there is no room for any caveat. Just this moment.
Eren’s hands lift slowly like they lay unused and discarded for years. He searches Levi’s eyes, skims for refusal, but Levi lets him take his face.
And maybe it is foolish, as foolish as setting out in a tiny boat, as foolish as giving into a wanderlust, waylaying boy with the sea for eyes, but Levi feels his innermost center lighting up and Eren needs an anchor, he needs someone to stabilize him, and they had always filled the spaces between each other’s ribs. What does Levi have to lose except another two decades? Ten years with Eren Jaeger plants hurt-and-hope in your body like a terminal disease, and Levi doesn’t want a cure. Not anymore.
Levi is twenty eight now, with his life in order and his satisfaction growing bland, and Eren, Eren is fire and cinnamon and powdered sugar and sunshine and the sea. At twenty eight, he still makes Levi feel seventeen.
Thumbs caressing the joints of Levi’s jaw, Eren leans in close and Levi can smell the smoke on his breath but he doesn’t recoil. He feels Eren’s hesitation, his remorse, his fear. Eren is trembling like he is terrified.
Levi sets his hands over Eren’s on his face. “It’s okay. Eren, it’s okay.”
Eren hangs his head as his hands drop to Levi’s arms and Levi’s hands to his shoulders. Trying to steady himself, choking back his tears, crying all the same. Levi feels a bittersweet sort of joy. This is familiar, too.
“I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry.”
Levi presses his lips to Eren’s forehead. “It’s okay.” And it isn’t, it couldn’t be, but they can talk about all that later.
Eren lifts his face, and Levi can recognize the Eren he knew between the lines. Determined again, Eren sucks in a sharp breath, cold heat washing over Levi’s lips before Eren presses forward. He joins Levi on his own chaise, overeager and zealous from the first instant. He wraps his arms around Levi, like he is the one who might disappear, and Levi crumbles. He clings to Eren, arms around his neck, wound so tight he could strangle him. He inhales his pine scent and licks the smoke-and-spice sweetness off his tongue. At twenty eight, Levi feels like a tall child. “Don’t leave me,” he whispers.
“I won’t. I promise.”
Eren left once. And ten years later, he came back.
Like the sea to the sand, like all bodies of water into the ocean, and all their summers converging into one.
...