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They sit, one on each side of the bed, faces lit by cars that throw yellow headlight glares against the wall for a brief passing moment. All is silent. All is still.
Until the quiet is shattered, broken by the scream of a late-night horn, blasting through traffic beneath their window.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The gentle rise and fall of his chest serves as a sharp and painful reminder that life remaines, though all traces of it seemed to have fled from his gaze. It's been stolen away by his companion: dark eyes, dark hair, and a soul to match. Levi exhales, matching his breathing to Eren's. He is a lopsided composition of stoic and agonized, jaw clenched even as it trembles. Eren, however, makes no pains to hide his turmoil. He allows every argument and tainted memory to roll its way down his cheeks, which glisten with the tracks of prior hurt.
So this is what they are reduced to. He and Levi are nothing, apart, but he should have known better than to expect to make something from putting them together. Their relationship has yielded only more nothing, as expected. Eren still finds himself disappointed by the fact too, which has always angered him. That disappointment seems wasteful, and in a sense, inevitable. Eren has never been fond of that word. He's utterly derisive of concepts such as fate, or destiny. They're useless to someone like him.
There's not one thing sweet or gentle about him and Levi. Nothing worthwhile and nothing worth keeping. But he finds himself returning, time and time again.
Begrudgingly, he's let Levi become his world, for Eren is stupidly weak. He's weak to this cruel man of cigarette smoke and the glint of tungsten rings on slender, pale-white fingers; this man who can't look at him, even as he drives himself in and out and in and out of Eren, as if locked into some contrived and worn-out rhythm. Perhaps that's what they are: simply worn-out and tired, only staying for the comfort of familiarity. The fact that he's so completely beneath this man's thumb sits awkward and uncomfortable on Eren's shoulders. It's tempered by the fact that Levi's as tangled up as he is. Still, Eren often grows disgusted with himself and with Levi - who is always too close, too close, too close.
Levi's presence made his skin crawl. He hates the man, he thinks, on his less charitable days. But he'll rage for days if he catches the slightest inkling that Levi's attention is straying.
Eren has never wanted to keep Levi.
But he doesn't want to let him go, either.
So they stay in each other's orbit, close, but not enough to be able to reach out to one another and mend the broken parts of themselves. Eren is fine with that.
Levi is not.
Levi loves Eren. He loves him more than anything in the world, and he'd move heaven and earth for that boy. But no matter what he does, he's never managed to ensnare the only person that ever held a piece of his heart.
The only time Eren ever truly looks at him is when they're busy dirtying their sheets. Levi's often too busy holding back bile to bask fully in the warmth of Eren's regard. But he doesn't really mind. If Eren found out the depth of his disgust for any type of sexual relations, the idiot would call off their nightly endeavors immediately.
It might soothe the small festering pit of resentment burning a hole in Levi's chest. It might start to slot the fragments of his heart back together, to know Eren cared at least that much about him. It might provide him a night of dreams and rest, instead of fitful naps that never let him see anything but the inside of his eyelids.
But sex is the only thing that keeps Eren tethered to Levi. The only thing Levi knows to get him to stay. Without it, he realizes that Eren would fade away, content to let the passage of time take them further and further from one another.
Levi doesn't want that. He can't, won't, have that. Eren is the only thing that means anything, and hell if he would let his one and only love go so easily.
So he keeps his sentiments to himself, and works harder to please and be pleasing. For Eren. Always.
But things are not so black and white.
Which brings the wheel full circle:
Levi and Eren, watching the other warily from across the expanse of their bed. It is small mattress, and yet the gulf between them has never felt so large. Secrets laid bare stretch the distance even farther.
"I want to try again. I'll do right by you this time. I swear. I need you. I love you. Please, I want to try again."
"People don't get things by virtue of wanting them, Levi."
Levi know that heaviness in Eren's voice. It's finality. And it fills his chest with ice.
"No. You can't just throw away the past seven years." There's a desperate edge riding in his voice, and it sharpens his tone to a razor-fine point.
"What have we been doing those past seven years, then, huh? What, Levi? Because I look back on them, and all I see is a waste."
"No," Levi repeats, clenching his muscles in a bid to control his trembling. "You're wrong. They weren't a waste. Goddamnit Eren! You're wrong!"
Levi's voice is dangerously close to a scream.
For the first time in their relationship, Eren feels fear in the face of Levi's wrath.
But he steadies his voice, and steels his nerves.
"Get out." Those syllables stop Levi in his tracks. They spark tendrils of panic inside him, which reach up to knot in a vice around his heart.
He's pushed Eren too far, and now Eren's pushing back. If Levi doesn't step very, very lightly, he's likely to lose him forever.
So Levi gets up, hands in front and palms facing upward, trying to placate, and prove that he poses no threat.
He ghosts out the door and hears it slam behind him.
∆
He's back the very next day. He knocks, politely and unobtrusive, once every hour, just five quiet raps. Almost the whole afternoon, he stays there, eventually sliding down to rest his back against Eren's apartment door.
He never receives an answer. Not that day.
Nor the next.
Nor any after that.
But still, he returns day after day, growing quieter and more withdrawn every year that passes without an answer from the other side of the door.
He continues his vigil. He must - because he loves Eren.
And Levi's not ready to let go.