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Levi falls in love at first sight.
“It’s impossible to fall in love at first sight,” he hears someone on the radio say while he’s on his way to work. “Especially for two people to fall in love at the exact same time, don’t you think?”
It’s almost predictable that he falls for a kid, a boy, still in his teens (it doesn’t matter that it’s late teens, it just matters that there is a one beginning his age, and Levi is nearly thirty), instead of a woman like his parents always hoped he would. He’s had no interest in romance or relationships of the romantic sort before, and he’s told his parents this much. His father insists that he find a nice girl, but lately his mother stops with the ‘wife’ chatter, and starts with the ‘soul mate’ or ‘partner’ chatter. Levi knows she just wants him to be happy, but he’s too rough around the edges for anyone to go out of their way to discover the sleek, smoothed-out interior.
He works as a bartender at a classy little bar called Ma Fuite. He’s there almost every night, scanning the crowd, people watching as he fills out orders and fills up glasses. His tip jar is average, as he makes good drinks, but his eyes scare the customers away. Women have learned to stop flirting with him and shoving his tips into his vest pockets, because he turns his cheek and slips them into the tip jar where they belong. Nights are mostly uneventful, although when there’s an outbreak and the bouncer is busy, he takes care of it cleanly and swiftly. He trades snarky banter with his co-workers and the owner as though it’s second nature to him, and it is.
Levi’s life is easy until he falls in love.
It’s a lovely spring night, a slight chill in the wind after the rain like kisses to the neck. The flowers have begun to bloom and there are petals littering the sidewalk as Levi drives to work. When he’s behind the bar, starting to take the first orders of the night, a lanky brunette with damp hair and a dress shirt (the sleeves of which are wrinkled like they were pushed up haphazardly) steps into the bar and looks around. He has the stamp on his hand from the bouncer announcing he can’t drink, and that should be warning enough, but Levi doesn’t notice that. He’s the first person in the establishment to look up to see him, and he’s given the private gift of being the only person to see the way the boy’s large blue-green eyes light up when he sees the ebonized parlor grand piano adjacent to the bar.
Levi’s chest aches immediately, and he has to hold onto the bar for support. He can feel himself shaking, starting to sweat, his heart beating so fast it’s drumming in his ears, and he knows exactly what this feeling is. It’s not foreign, like he expected it to be, because he knows it’s love, he’s confident about it. When the customer nearest to him asks him if he’s alright, he mumbles some form of affirmation, eyes not leaving the brunette. The kid sees him, and at first he’s got this odd look on his face, freezes mid-step, but he plods right over and sits down at the bar, directly in front of him. He folds his hands in front of him and smiles a terribly brilliant smile that makes Levi’s chest clench around his heart and he grips the bar so hard his knuckles turn white. This doesn’t feel real.
He introduces himself as Eren and explains that he’s a pianist. Levi doesn’t think much about that and instead thinks that his voice is the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard, that he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
Eren asks about the piano, and if he’s allowed to play there, for free, tips or otherwise.
Levi knows the owner won’t mind, always one for someone to play the piano as long as it isn’t ‘Old McDonald’, and he nods, waving his hand to the piano and letting the boy know he’s free to play when he wishes. He can hardly trust his voice, let alone his legs, but when Eren turns to leave, he makes a request and pulls a five out of his tip own tip jar.
“Clair de Lune?” he offers, holding the bill out to the brunette, and he’s surprised to no end that his voice doesn’t shake, that he doesn’t crack. He can’t help but smile, even when he’s known to never smile, especially not at customers, when Eren meekly takes it (maybe he imagines it, but it’s like Eren avoids making contact with his skin, afraid it’ll burn or something), nods. “Make it good. There’s a tip bowl behind the piano leg closes to the edge of the stage.”
Eren laughs and nods again, thanking him for the five and turns to the piano to get everything set up. Levi loses face as soon as Eren’s back is to him, and once again, the customer asks him if he’s alright at the same time another sits down and asks for a drink. He realizes, as he’s mixing an Old Fashioned, that he could’ve lied and said he needed to get the owner. That would’ve given him some time to keep Eren to himself; at the bar sitting there while they waited for the yes that Levi knew was coming.
He doesn’t care so much about his missed opportunity when Eren starts to play, because the piano is angled beautifully so that he can see his face.
His expression is one of someone who loves what he does. He’s proud of the music he makes, and he’s determined to uphold to Levi’s quasi-challenge. Eren plays out a few scales, a few random notes to acquaint himself with the ivory keys, stroking his fingers against them gently like they’re precious gifts, a lover’s cheek. The song starts off slowly, softly, and slowly builds up throughout the song, Eren swaying with the strokes of the keys accordingly. His expression changes from time to time while he plays, gracefully gliding between loving and focused. The one time he lifts his eyes from the keys is when he meets eyes with Levi, and he smiles, a question.
Is this good enough?
It’s better than good enough. It’s so much more than Levi expected. He nods, keeping his eyes locked on Eren long enough to see his smile fade back into concentration, and it takes every ounce of his self-control to force his way back to work. He scrubs the bar and pours drinks for customers while Eren works his magic from behind the piano.
The song ends in much the same way it began, in a slow, soft murmur. He pulls the melody off so well, by making the song his own, that people are throwing him requests and making teetering little trips up to the stage to toss tips into the bowl. He does the songs he knows, or the songs he can pick up on, ranging from classics, to show tunes to Disney songs. He seemingly sells the crowd on a beautifully-done version of ‘Colors of the Wind’ and ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight’, to which the same old couple dances to and rouses the applause of the other patrons that slowly fill and leave the bar throughout the night. Eren takes a quick break to order a glass of coke and talk with Levi about how he’s been playing the piano since he was eight, nearly eleven years, before a young girl, barely twenty-one, requests that he play ‘For Good’, which she informs Levi is from a musical. Eren does it, of course, but not before flashing that brilliant smile at him first.
Levi expects Eren to leave with the girl, and she asks him to, but he turns her down and stays with Levi until closing. He plays a couple more softer songs that Levi doesn’t recognize while he’s cleaning tables and flipping chairs and picking up pieces of trash and wadded up dollars and, to be expected, at least one wallet that he’d be returning first thing tomorrow. Even after everyone else has left, and Levi is the only staff member left, Eren stays behind, stays with him, keeps his eyes on him, follows his every move and it’s unnerving because that’s exactly what he wants to do to Eren.
He finds out more about Eren than he expects to. The kid is nineteen, of course. He’s attending college, reaching for a master’s degree in music but can’t quite afford it, even with musical scholarships and the grants he’s given due to his family’s poor income status after his father’s disappearance. Levi finds out that all of Eren’s tips combined equal out to more than your average weeks’ worth of work at a part-time job, at least. His last name is Jaeger and he has an over-protective sister that almost wouldn’t let him come to the bar after seeing Levi for herself (and finding out that she was adopted makes Levi feel a bit better for never noticing being scrutinized the day before, because he doubts he could forget anyone who looked like Eren). He has a best friend named Armin, whose intelligence is apparently years beyond him. He also talks so, so much and Levi thinks maybe he just likes the sound of his own voice, but Levi likes the sound of Eren’s voice, too, so he can’t and doesn’t complain.
Eren also has no ride home, because he walked there with promises to his sister that he had someone who could take him, when, in reality, he just intended on walking back.
Levi does what any good person would do, of course, and offers him a ride when he realizes Eren’s following him out to his car after lock-up. He’s already at the driver’s side door when Eren accepts his offer, and the brunette is standing behind him, but he doesn’t move from his spot. The street lamps make it hard to see all of Eren’s features, and this bothers Levi to no end. He can’t make out Eren’s cheekbones properly, and he certainly can’t see the way Eren’s eyes shine, but that doesn’t matter, because suddenly Eren’s pressing him up against the car door, arms pressed to either side of him to keep him from moving, and the boy mumbles out some sort of ridiculous apology that Levi pretends not to year out of a minor case of second-hand embarrassment.
“This is gonna be really weird,” Eren mumbles. He leans closer to Levi anyway. The shorter, older man can smell mint gum on his breath and some tropical-smelling soap on his skin. He can see him more clearly, now, up close. “But I’ve been feeling like I need to do this ever since I saw you and my chest kind of hurts and I really don’t know what to do, so—“
Nobody will believe Levi when he says that Eren was the one to initiate it, was the one to grab his face and press their lips together.
His hands are shaking against Levi’s cheeks, either from nerves or from the chilly air. His eyes are clamped shut and jaw clenched, like he’s afraid he’s going to get punched in the mouth. Normally, really, Levi would, and maybe under different circumstances he would with Eren, too, but his body melts into Eren’s like a chemical reaction, a chemical attraction perhaps, and he can do nothing but languidly drape his arms over the kid’s shoulders, around his neck. He thinks the firework metaphor is a little too cheesy for a first kiss, so he avoids it like the plague, but perhaps there was a spark there, with the way every trace of Eren’s skin lit his on fire. He could somehow hear the sound of Eren’s breathing and his lips moving against his over the sound of his heartbeat, and he thanked God for every second of it.
He wants the boy closer, closer, closer, as close as he can get him, but Eren pulls back a little too prematurely. His lips are only a mere inch or so away from Levi’s, though, and his eyes are in completely clear view when Levi opens his own.
“Don’t say anything stupid,” he hears himself say when Eren opens his mouth. “And don’t you dare apologize.”
Levi curses the dark, because he’s sure Eren’s blushing right in front of him and he can’t even enjoy it. He almost pulls away to drag Eren into the car, where he can at least turn on a small overhead light to get some better lighting than ugly fluorescent street lights, but Eren leans in for another kiss, relentless, and Levi relaxes into it, letting the boy do what he wants. He’s never experienced anything quite like what he feels when Eren gently parts his lips and greets tongue with tongue, or the reaction the boy’s moan pulls out of him when he bites down on his lower lip. He realizes he has to suppress these urges, though, because, Goddammit, there are security cameras that see shit like this and nobody’s gonna let me live down making out with a teenager like a teenager in the parking lot.
They part, and this time, Levi talks him into the car, mostly for the sake of being out of sight and hidden behind tinted glass, but then he remembers that Eren has to go home.
He doesn’t want to take Eren home, not really, but he asks him where he needs to go anyway.
Eren shifts a little nervously in his seat, but with a burst of confidence, or maybe stupidity, he asks, “Would it be too daring to say your place?”
“Yes,” he says.
He takes Eren back to his small house anyway, perfect for two, yet, strangely, too small for one.