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i.
"Here," Erwin says.
By reflex, Levi holds his hands out and lets Erwin drop whatever into Levi's hands.
Erwin's already heading down the hall by the time Levi manages to bite out, "What the fuck?"
Erwin stops in his tracks, shoulders drawn into a tight line. Levi glances from Erwin's back down to the pair of shitty glasses frames sitting broken and misshapen in his palm, and back again.
"They belonged to Hanji, I believe."
Levi lets his gaze sink back down to his palm. Both pieces of glass are missing and the frames themselves are dented, bent and broken in about thirty different ways. Shitty glasses. Levi had never thought he'd mean that so literally. "Ah."
Most of Hanji's artifacts had been seized after their death. It had been a while ago. Levi's not entirely sure how Erwin had even gotten a hold of them -- government nutjobs had taken most everything. (For "record-keeping", Erwin told him, but Levi has the sneaking suspicion that all that material had been burned by fucking wall cultists.)
Carefully, Levi pockets the frames.
Without glancing back, Erwin says, "You're welcome."
In acknowledgment, Levi grunts.
ii.
You can’t see shit from the top of the buildings in the capitol.
Levi had thought about it a lot in his adolescence. He had dreamed about the rooftops — open, free, clean. Levi had thought that from the buildings of the capitol, he’d be able to see the whole goddamned world.
Turns out that’s total shit. The buildings are too tall. Rooftop after rooftop is all Levi can see from the center, buildings growing taller and taller as they extend out from the center. He decides, kicking the back of his heel against the wall of the building beneath him, that the city was designed by a fucking idiot.
Then, his thoughts fall silent. Levi watches as he breathes out little puffs of steam-white air, runs his bare hands up and down his shoulders. It’s not an odd experience for him. He’s had the ability to clear his mind for years — he’d never have been so good at the 3DMG without it. However, he doesn’t remember ever being so much...at peace.
It’s getting colder as the days go on. Levi wouldn’t be surprised to see the first snow in the next few days.
Below, the door to the building opposite Levi swings open and Erwin emerges, accompanied by another man. Levi stands, toes catching against the shingles, and swings down to meet Erwin on the sidewalk, the wall of the opposing building crumbling against the force of the 3DMG’s hook.
Erwin glances back as Levi’s boots clatter against the pavement. The other man — far shorter than Erwin, although clearly taller than Levi — nearly jumps out of his own skin in surprise.
Levi locks eyes with Erwin. Neither of them say anything.
“I’ll see you again, I hope,” Erwin says flatly, holding out his hand to the unfamiliar man.
“Erm — “ the man says. He glances from Erwin to Levi and back again, his neck fat jiggling as he does so.
Erwin raises an eyebrow.
“Uh, right,” the man stutters before taking his leave.
Levi remains silent as the man proceeds down the street, and waits for Erwin to set off in the opposite direction before following.
In the wake of the fall of the walls (Levi has seen it printed as “the Fall” in recent news, and can’t help himself from rolling his eyes every time he does), Erwin’s self-proclaimed job is to camp out in the inner walls and deal with the politics of expansion: allocating resources, communicating with the outside, planning for government setups. Levi helps. He hangs around Erwin in order to look threatening at opportune times, and throws in the occasional bit of not-idiotic advice when whatever discussion he happens to be privy to becomes too convoluted for productive discussion. (For example, yesterday he had very eloquently told an old rich man to, “shove his head up his own ass” before elaborating at Erwin’s insistence that his idea, “didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working for people who have no money.”)
All-in-all, Levi is satisfied with the way things are.
He and Erwin walk in silence for minutes, the shoulder of his coat brushing up against Erwin’s upper arm, Levi doubling his pace to keep up with Erwin’s.
“Ah, Levi,” Erwin says.
Levi grunts in response.
“I almost forgot.” He stops in his tracks, reaching deep into his coat pockets. Levi stops a few steps ahead of him, staring back at Erwin with a skeptical gaze. “Here.”
He holds out a pair of leather gloves.
Levi takes them, blinking.
“I saw your other ones have holes worn in them. Thought you might appreciate a new pair.”
“Oh,” Levi says. Without looking at Erwin, he slips them on. “Thank you.”
iii.
“You look like you’ve had a bad day,” Erwin says, sitting at the foot of the bed. Their bed.
Levi stretches, plopping his feet right onto Erwin’s lap. Slowly, Erwin’s eyebrows scale up his forehead. “I’m fine,” Levi says.
Erwin hums. “Stay there.”
He proceeds to push Levi’s feet off his own lap and leave the room.
Levi leans back against the pillows.
Multiple. Levi has multiple pillows. And a house. And...free time.
Levi had dreamed for most of his adolescence about living in the inner walls. He had just never thought, ever since he joined the Survey Corps, that he would ever actually find himself there.
In all honesty, he had never imagined that he would live this long.
Swallowing, Levi pulls himself out of that line of thought. “Where are you going, old man?”
From the other room, Erwin shouts back rather flatly, “I’m not old.”
Levi huffs. By reflex, he goes to lift his reading glasses and a book from the bedside table and pauses, staring at the objects. He has reading glasses. And books. Turning his gaze slowly to the side, he adds “bedside table” to the ever-growing list of stupid amenities Levi is now wealthy enough to posses.
He sighs, cracks open his book, and slides the glasses up his nose. “Sounds like something an old person would say.”
Erwin lets out an involuntary groan. Levi doesn’t have to look at him to know that it’s the groan he makes when he stands up from a crouch — because Erwin is old, he has problems like that sometimes. Levi mutters to himself, “See? Old.”
He glances up when Erwin steps back into the bedroom, one hand hidden in the small of his back. “If we’re talking personality, I think you’re aging far more quickly than I am.”
Levi scoffs, crossing his ankles. “I’ve always been like this.”
“So you’ve always been an old man?”
“Shut up.”
Erwin sits down at the foot of the bed once again, one hand still clasped behind his back.
Levi glances up from his book, then back down again. “I’m not going to ask, Erwin, you might as well give it to me.”
Erwin chuckles. Levi stares at the page, not paying attention to the print but Erwin’s smile out from the corner of his eye. He swallows, then holds out his hand.
Erwin presses something cool and metallic into his hands. Levi curls his fingers around it, bringing it closer to his face to examine.
“Chocolate?” he asks.
“Yes.”
Levi snorts. “Are we rich now?”
“It was a gift.”
Levi adds one more thing to his mental checklist of things he doesn’t need but has anyway, unwraps the candy, and proceeds to chuck the entire list.
“Thanks,” Levi says, and splits the bar in two.
iv.
One night, Erwin comes home hunched over himself, cradling something in his palm beneath his coat.
“Levi, I need you to come see this.”
Levi stands, abandoning his book on the coffee table. “What?”
Slowly, carefully, Erwin pulls back the flap of his winter coat to reveal a small, raggedy kitten sitting in his palm.
“What the fuck,” Levi says. “That’s the ugliest kitten I’ve ever seen.”
It really was: missing patches of fur, its snout bent into an awkward shape he could tell was going to last into adulthood, and, at the moment, dripping to the bone.
“You’ll get along then.” Erwin smiles, dumping the wet thing in Levi’s hands.
“I — Erwin, no — “
However, it is already far too late for Levi, who, after about five seconds of having the tiny, confused creature sitting in his hands, is totally enamoured with the poor thing. He stares down at the kitten, which mewls softly, its heartbeat thudding soft and rapid against Levi’s palm.
“What the fuck,” Levi says. “Why did you do this?”
“It’s getting colder,” Erwin says. “I found it on the streets.”
Levi stares down at the tiny, dirt-covered mongrel sitting in his palms. It looks up at him and meows. It sounds a bit like a little scream.
Levi presses his lips together, holding back a sigh. Calmly, Erwin sits in the chair Levi had previously been occupying.
“Fine,” he says, turning around. Then, “I need to wash it.”
As he passes Erwin on his way to the bathroom, Levi sees Erwin smiling to himself.
v.
When Erwin places the copper-colored key in Levi’s hands, Levi doesn’t recognize what it is for a long, long second. It hits Levi slowly, a physical testament to Levi’s failure. Maybe not his greatest failure ever, although as he sits there and stares down at the key to Eren Jaeger’s basement, it feels like it might be.
Gently, Erwin folds Levi’s fingers into a fist around the key and wraps his own, larger palms around Levi’s. “I thought you would want this,” he says.
Levi grunts in response. He would’ve thought that he would be better at dealing with this sort of thing by now, considering all the people who’ve died under his command. All the people who’ve died because of his own damn mistakes.
Clenching his eyes shut, Levi twists his hands out of Erwin’s, leaving the key where it is. “It’s worthless,” Levi says. It’s just a thing. “Keep it.”
Erwin looks at him with sad, pitying eyes. “I miss him too, Levi.” He holds the key out between thumb and forefinger. “Take it.”
Levi glances up, locks eyes with Erwin. “Taking it won’t bring him back to life, Smith.” The use of Erwin’s last name sends shivers down his own spine. “There’s no fucking point.” Levi tosses his legs over the side of the bed, turning away from the whole situation. “Throw it in a fucking landfill for all I care.”
“Levi,” Erwin says, wrapping his arm around Levi’s shoulders. Levi grits his teeth. “The point is not to bring him back to life,” he says. “There are other purposes for keeping...mementos.”
He remembers Hanji’s glasses sitting in the top drawer of his dresser. He swallows.
“You have Hanji’s glasses.”
“I fucking know.” It’s different. He was never responsible for Hanji.
“Why is that different?”
Erwin is slow, working one step behind Levi’s own thoughts, but it forces Levi to answer. “Hanji’s death wasn’t my goddamn fault.”
Erwin’s eyebrows furrow. “Eren’s death wasn’t your fault.” He pulls Levi closer to him, careful, consoling. Levi lets it happen, his head falling against Erwin’s chest.
It goes unsaid, but Levi knows. It’s more Erwin’s fault than anyone else’s — he always thinks that. Feels responsible for every damn person under his command.
Levi blinks. Fortunately, neither of them have to worry about that anymore, only manage to live with the ghosts.
In that moment, something lands on the bed right next to Levi. He glances in its direction, automatically tense, before he realizes that it’s just the shitty cat. She’s grown in the past few weeks, so she’s not as tiny as she had been previously, but still small. As Levi stares at her, she whines loudly and proceeds to curl up right next to him.
Levi rolls his eyes, and pushes Erwin off him. As if he needed fucking emotional support from the shitty cat.
“Give me,” Levi says, snatching the key from Erwin’s hand. He tears himself away from Erwin’s arms, stalks over to the dresser, and slips it into the top drawer right next to Hanji’s glasses.
When he glances back at Erwin, he does so slowly, leering over his own shoulder.
He finds Erwin smiling. Or — not smiling, exactly. There’s no actual smile on his face, it’s just that warmth and satisfaction roll off him in waves.
Levi furrows his eyebrows. He can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s somehow been tricked.
Beside Erwin, his shitty cat meows loudly. Erwin leans back on the bedspread, and internally, Levi shrugs. He steps towards the bed, scoops up the shitty cat (who makes a very loud, very clear noise of protest which Levi promptly ignores) and collapses back in bed. It’s been a long day. It’s been a long, long life.
“Thanks, Erwin,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” Erwin says, stoically. He then tacks on at the very end, so quietly Levi can just barely hear him, “Grumpy old man.”
Levi sits up, shitty cat scuttering off him in an only slightly painful whirlwind of claws.
“I’ll fucking cut you, grandpa.”
i.
When Erwin gets up Christmas morning, Levi has already been awake for hours.
He sits at one of the two chairs in their living room, feet propped up on the coffee table, shoddily-bound book spread out over his thighs for casual reading. It’s rather peaceful, actually: his schedule totally clear, Erwin’s schedule totally clear, nothing to do but take a much-needed day of rest —
The bedroom door slams open. Erwin breezes through in a huff. “Levi, it’s almost noon, why have we not — “
Casually, Levi holds out a package wrapped in plain brown paper and sketchy-looking twine in Erwin’s direction. He does not look up from his book.
Erwin stops dead in his tracks. “It’s Christmas, isn’t it?”
Levi adjusts his glasses. “Yup.”
With a heavy, tired sigh, Erwin says, “I’m sorry. I forgot.”
In that moment Levi glances up at Erwin and sees the disappointed expression on his face, and finds himself blindsided. Unwittingly, Levi feels his lips part in an expression of surprise. “Erwin, I don’t care.”
“You got me a gift.”
Levi withdraws the package and tosses it onto the coffee table. “Actually, it’s for Shitty Cat. I didn’t get you anything.”
Erwin chuckles weakly as he turns to sit in the other chair. “I really am sorry.”
Levi rolls his eyes and sits up, placing his feet on the ground. Christmas presents — along with pretty much all presents, in fact — are ultimately useless. There are far more important things in life. Levi doesn’t understand why Erwin has his dick in such a knot over it.
“Erwin,” Levi says. “I don’t fucking care.”
Erwin stares at Levi’s shitty gift sitting on the coffee table. And “shitty” is extremely accurate: it’s shitty in both its wrapping and its actual content. It’s some tome with stupidly small font that Erwin will never have the free time to read, let alone actually be able to read with his shriveled old man eyes. It is, frankly, a terrible gift.
“Erwin,” Levi says again, snapping his fingers at Erwin, whose gaze jerks up to meet his. “You’ve given me enough shit already.” He leans forward and snags the gift from the table. “Now open your damn present,” he says, tossing the book at Erwin’s chest.
It hits Erwin square in the chest accompanied by a mildly worrying hollow noise.
Erwin, however, doesn’t seem phased. “Thank you, Levi,” he says.
Levi scoffs. “You haven’t even seen what it is yet.”
“I don’t need to.”
Levi rolls his eyes, leans forward, and promptly meets Erwin for a kiss.
He leans back in his chair afterwards, arms crossed. “Hurry up and open it, I’m not getting any younger.”
Erwin smiles, corners of his mouth pulled up into an expression that makes Levi’s stomach flip in his gut.
“Of course, Levi.”