Work Text:
Levi is still awake, the drywall texture of his ceiling swirling nauseating patterns in the dim light that pours in through his curtained window. He squints his eyes closed, reaches up and presses into them with the heels of his hands until the swirling patterns show up behind his eyelids too, then turns on his side, pulls the covers up over his head. The legs of the pajama pants he normally wouldn’t wear to bed scrunch up underneath his knees, and the shirt twists across his torso distractedly, but it’s cold in the apartment, and he’s not going to turn up the heater just to pay extra on the bill.
He can’t sleep.
Focusing his gaze on the digital clock resting mockingly on the nightstand beside his head, Levi reads that it’s already past three in the morning. It’s not like he has anything pressing to attend to tomorrow, but he would very much like to get a normal night’s rest for once. He doesn’t know why insomnia decided to rear its galling head and take him again after nearly three years of peaceful nights, but he does know he’s not doing much to quell the disastrous affliction.
The painful growl of his stomach makes him pull the stifling comforter down off his head and sit up, letting his bare feet drop off the edge of the mattress and settle on the carpeted floor. He is not one to eat in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t felt like having any dinner all those hours ago, and he isn’t too keen on starving himself.
When Levi pushes the door of his bedroom open and walks down the short hall to the kitchen, the first thing he notices is one of the lamps in the living room has been left on, the dim light falling around the corner of the hallway. He almost growls in annoyance of wasting electricity before stepping out of the hall and taking in the unexpected image of Eren curled up into the side of the couch, his shoulders tight and his head bent into his lap, the blue glare from his phone illuminating the edges of his figure.
The brunet looks smaller than he actually is while clothed in the oversized red flannel pajamas, a matching set of long pants and buttoned shirt that Levi had gifted him last Christmas and hadn’t seen him wear before, and he feels a sudden surge of overwhelming fondness from deep beneath his ribs that he immediately bites down.
“What are you still doing up?” he asks from where he stands at the end of the hall.
Eren snaps his head up in obvious surprise, the phone slipping out of his hand and onto the couch next to him in the process. “I didn’t hear your door open,” he breathes, recovering quickly and grabbing his phone back, shutting the screen off and uncurling himself from the cushions. His hair is disheveled, whether from fatigue or the constant motion of running fingers through the locks like Levi knows he does when he’s stressed, Levi can’t quite tell yet.
It’s distracting.
Levi came out here for a reason.
He doesn’t respond to Eren’s comment, entering the kitchen to open the pantry and hopefully find something that won’t upset his stomach terribly.
“I’ve just…” Eren starts his belated answer, ending it with a long, tired groan. He doesn’t continue.
Toast is safe. He carries the loaf of bread out and sets it down next to the toaster, asking, “You’ve just what?”
“Nothing,” he says, too quickly. “It’s not a big deal.”
Levi pauses in turning the dial. “It’s three in the morning, and you’re still out here. It can’t quite be a small matter.”
There’s a momentary hesitation, one filled with a harsh exhalation that presents as a scoff, before Eren very nearly shouts, “I said it’s not a big deal! Why do you care anyway?” It comes out in a choking sob, voice breaking, and Levi turns to see him pulling at his hair like he knew he would, and his face twisted in emotional pain.
He waits to say anything. The single slice of toast pops loudly in the silence that envelops them, and Levi takes his time setting it down on a small plate and spreading a pat of butter across it, takes his time washing the knife and wiping the counter of inevitable crumbs, before sitting at the table. He eats quietly, and is dually surprised and not at all when Eren stays in his seat.
“You need to sleep, Eren,” Levi says calmly after swallowing the last of the toast. “This isn’t very healthy.”
Another scoff. “Says you, I’m not the only one awake,” Eren says pointedly.
Levi stands and washes the plate, too, before dragging out two mugs from the cabinet and the milk from the fridge. “Don’t start being a brat about this,” he chides lightly. “Not like I have anything to do tomorrow.”
Silence. Then, grumbled, “Whatever.”
Levi hums indifferently and goes back to his task of heating the milk and stirring in the hot chocolate mix, watching Eren out of his peripherals as the brunet resumes thumbing through his phone doing god knows what despite the warning. He can see the exhaustion clouding the normally bright, teal-green eyes, the furrowed brows that relax only slightly the longer he distracts himself, the way his fist comes up to rub at one of his cheekbones, and Levi once more has to force down that unnecessary rush of affection. He’s been doing so for two years, one more night isn’t going to make a difference.
He looks away after realizing just how long he’s been staring, finishes stirring both mugs without mentioning anything else.
The warm water lulls him, running over his hands as he rinses the spoon off, but he’s still very awake.
“Levi.”
He turns, dish towel in his hand, at Eren’s call. The brunet has an apology in his eyes as he asks, “You think it’ll snow?”
“Sure,” he says, and it sounds just as soft as his heart burns.
The mugs are hot against Levi’s knuckles when he picks them up by their handles, and he’s flicking off the kitchen light with his elbow before joining Eren in the living room. He nestles in at the other end of the small, worn couch and holds out one of the mugs—a sky blue one with large snowflakes patterned on the ceramic, very seasonally appropriate—to Eren, waiting until he turns to settle him with an appreciative look.
“Thanks,” Eren murmurs, taking the hot chocolate from him and gulping down a large swig almost immediately. His eyes widen comically and a hand flies to his throat. “Shit!”
“Careful, it’s hot,” Levi warns offhandedly, cautiously sipping from his own, light pink ‘i woke up like this’ mug.
“My own fault,” he says, dejected, setting the mug down with a quiet clink on the side table.
Levi studies his roommate from over his own drink. It isn’t typical that Eren falls at the challenge of harmless banter, or even admits his own mistakes, however simple and unobtrusive they may be. The easy acceptance worries him, and he pays attention—after Eren goes back to scrolling down his screen—to just how many times he becomes suddenly unfocused, or his eyelids close for longer than a blink, or he tries to hide a yawn behind the sleeve of his flannel. Levi’s concerned, and he knows the kid is just being stubborn, and the night is truly testing him because all he can think about and all he wants to do is pull Eren closer and reassure him that everything’s fine, shush him and lull him to sleep with slow kisses that go nowhere.
The screeching of tires on the streets outside breaks through his thoughts.
He sets his mug on the coffee table in front of him and gets up to raise the blinds of the window to witness the scene. Instead of a car horribly careened to the side of the road, a pristine white street paves out beneath the window, and the orange gleam from the streetlamp right outside the wall of the apartment catches on each flake of snow as it cascades slowly down to cover the earth.
“Eren,” Levi calls from his place at the window, a hand resting on one of the solid wood blinds, and he jerks his head in a beckoning gesture when the brunet turns to look up at him.
Eren cuts his own question off with a soft gasp when he takes his place next to the shorter man, fatigued eyes widening ever so slightly, the teal-green color shining with slow-developing enthusiasm. Levi can feel the moment his heart soars.
Before he can do anything stupid like card his fingers through the messy hair or wrap his arms around his neck and pull him down, Eren turns to him with a smile and says, “Let’s go outside.”
Levi trains an unimpressed look up at him. “It’s freezing,” he deadpans.
Eren hums. “You have a jacket,” he says simply, the solution quite obvious.
“It’s three in the morning,” Levi points out not for the first time. “And I don’t trust you not to give us both hypothermia.”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
He pauses for a moment, trying to come up with something . In the end, however, he merely grits out, “Whatever,” and he knows he’s lost the battle to stay inside, knows that the only reason he’s even doing this is because he’s been hopelessly ensnared. Eren will surely be the death of him, if not tonight then sometime very soon.
They’re bundled up and out the door only after Levi sends Eren back into his room to put on gloves, because he’s not going to deal with the brunet’s inevitable complaints when it was his idea to begin with. The snow is falling quieter now, with only a few flakes clinging to the shoulders of his woolen coat, and the powder underfoot muffles the sound of their steps as they make their way out from under the apartment’s overhang and into the middle of the road, their footprints the only marring issue in the clean layer.
“Well, Eren, are you happy?” he asks once they’ve stood still long enough that Levi can feel the cold seeping into the bottom of his boots. He decides against shifting his weight from foot to foot in order to keep up the appearance, but it’s proving difficult.
Eren hasn’t stopped gazing up at the sky with a wondrous look almost permanently set in the way his eyebrows are raised and his lips are curved into a wide grin, and it’s certainly not the first time he’s experienced snow, but Levi doesn’t feel the need to ask why the precipitation is suddenly so enthralling. He feels only the need to wonder why Eren desired such a distraction.
“Very,” he sighs, finally pulling his sights away from the scene and meeting Levi’s gaze, the endearment that forces its way through those stormy irises only thinly-veiled, and Levi has to look away before he completely loses it.
Just like he’s not one to eat in the middle of the night, he’s not one to participate in juvenile snowball fights, but tonight is undeniably testing all of his personal boundaries.
The first of the cold projectiles hits him square in the chest, causing him to look up from his shoes and send a warning glare at Eren, who laughs animatedly as he dusts the leftover powder off his gloves quite redundantly when leaning down to gather more snow anyway.
“ What are you doing?” Levi demands, taking one of his own gloved hands out of the pocket of his coat to brush the caught flakes off his chest with a couple swift strokes.
Eren packs the snow tightly in between his palms, shooting Levi a dangerous smirk. “Surely even you can understand that, old man,” he quips before rearing back and sending another snowball flying his direction.
Levi sidesteps out of the way without a thought before it has time to hit its target, stating, “I’m barely two years your senior, age has nothing to do with it. Maturity, on the other hand…”
“Hah!” Eren barks loudly, his breath fogging and dissipating almost simultaneously in the air around him. “You’re just no fun!”
As the taller of the two persists in his fruitless onslaught of snowy bullets, Levi can only allow it to continue by bearing in mind that at least he’s no longer lying curled up on the couch with his thoughts encumbered by distress and torment. He truly would do anything to keep Eren in this joyous, laughing state.
Which is why, after dodging yet another pitched snowball, he reluctantly, finally , retaliates, giving Eren exactly what he was asking for—a nice handful of snow directly against his unguarded face.
“Cheater!”
Levi raises a questioning brow. “How, exactly?”
“I totally wasn’t ready,” is Eren’s subpar reasoning as he tries to wipe his face of snow with gloves that are already covered in it, only making the situation worse when he forces some of it down the front of his shirt and jacket. “Cold, cold, cold!” he repeats, and Levi huffs out a sharp laugh.
“You are truly hopeless,” Levi remarks, forgetting about their short-lived battle in favor of stepping over to Eren, shaking his head as he goes. “Honestly, at this point you may as well get hypothermia anyways.”
Eren lets out a low hmph and lets his hands fall to his sides when Levi draws his own, nearly dry gloves up and brushes off the fine powder from his neck, his cheeks, his nose. Both hands come to a rest at Eren’s cheekbones, and he has to will his thumbs into staying frozen and not mindlessly brush over his cold-nipped and reddened skin. He swallows apprehensively, not daring just yet to look up into the teal-green stare he can feel like fire. Only after Eren whispers his name in a hesitant question does he meet those wide eyes.
Levi regards him for a moment. Eren is bursting with something akin to expectation and excitement, and he hasn’t moved away, and his hands are shakily pressing against Levi’s hips, holding him steady, and he has a soft, encouraging smile threatening to tear Levi to shreds. Levi sweeps his thumbs across Eren’s cheekbones experimentally, receiving his response in the form of Eren’s arms wrapping more firmly around his waist. Then, without letting his mind scream at him to pause and consider the implications of this before he messes up their perfect serenity, a tranquil sort of tip-toe dance he’s mastered after two years, he does exactly what he wants to.
Eren’s lips are cold against his own when Levi leans up and pulls him down in both a soft and ardent kiss that he’s been waiting years for. He moves in slow, close-mouthed motions, heart fluttering dangerously at the feeling of Eren’s own reciprocation, before having to pull away after a few moments when the wind picks up around them and he realizes just exactly where they are.
“I’m freezing my ass off,” he mutters, earning a low laugh from the brunet.
Eren hums behind a small smile, eyes half-lidded and thumbs circling calming patterns into Levi’s hips, the layers of clothing between them diminishing the effect only slightly. “There’s unfinished hot chocolate upstairs,” he offers.
It takes everything in him to not curl his lip in this moment. “Which is most likely lukewarm by now,” Levi points out.
“There’s unfinished... other things upstairs,” Eren murmurs suggestively, pressing them closer against each other.
“You’re exhausted, Eren.”
He has the decency to look mildly offended at the comment, stuttering out mere shocked noises before admitting, “I didn’t mean that! ”
Levi curls his lips into a rare smile and snorts out a laugh at Eren’s expense. “Good, I can say that for now I’m glad. I’m too old for that, as you’ve kindly pointed out to me many times before. Also, and I’m sure I’ve said this multiple times tonight, it is three in the—”
The rest of his sentence is swallowed when Eren leans down once more and captures his mouth in another searing kiss, the chill melting away quicker than the first when the brunet swipes his tongue across Levi’s lower lip. Before he can do anything drastic like comply to the request, Levi dips his chin to break the kiss and growls, “If we don’t get inside right now I am locking you out of the apartment indefinitely.”
Eren’s laughter echoes through the empty streets, and Levi, despite the empty threat, smiles warmly.