After a year in the Scouting Legion, Levi doesn’t know how he ever lived a day without the soft touch of Erwin’s hand against his neck every morning, every evening and in between when he feels like the world comes crashing down.
A few years later, and Levi learns all over again what it means to be without the only man who takes his wrath and pain and raw, wild desperation as if they’re presents, the man who bares his own throat just to kiss his lips.
Levi doesn’t cry when he jolts awake at night, from dreams filled with their dead eyes staring at him and pale hands reaching for his throat. Sometimes, they rip out his heart. Sometimes they eat him alive, teeth white like ivory and caked in crimson blood. Levi never says a word when Erwin wraps an arm around him and pulls him close. He offered to set up graves for them, their names carved into dark stone like they were honourable soldiers.
Levi doesn’t need graves. The nightmares always return. He knows that they’ll haunt him till the day he stops breathing.
But there’s a warm hand on his stomach and soft, quiet breath flooding over his neck, and Levi thinks that he can put up with the past and its roaring demons if Erwin only holds him like this every night, and maybe they’ll fly away one day and somewhere, somehow, two white birds will build a nest in a new place that Levi will call: home.
The walls Levi girds himself with are a winter’s storm, the scent of molten silver, blood on white fabric. They reach the sky, they hold and withstand and roar against the attacks of the world that bites at their roots.
Erwin doesn’t conquer him. He takes the key that Levi presents him with a bared throat, with hands clenched around a blade, living and breathing for the command he’s submitting too.
Erwin doesn’t conquer. He rules.
Levi finds out that Erwin Smith is easy to hate.
It doesn’t take much – his face pressed into the dirt, lips bloody. It takes a cravat for his sensitive neck and a short praise after a mission. It takes a touch against his arm, warm breath pouring over his lips.
Erwin Smith was so easy to hate, and even easier to love – almost natural. As if Levi’s stupid heart had waited for a demon to succumb to. The roar of hatred still beats under Levi’s skin, but it’s a deep, soft crimson now where there once was nothing but black.
Erwin Smith doesn’t believe in love. There’s no room for it, in this world of blood and choirs of death quietly humming to the rhythm of galopping hooves, stomping feet, crushing teeth.
He doesn’t believe in love, and neither does Levi. But that’s the beautiful thing about love, Erwin whispers to the soft skin of Levi’s throat, moonlight catching in the silver web of his eyes, in a dark December night filled with shy imprints of fingertips and stuttered symphonies of a lover’s name.
It’s beautiful and terrible, and it shatters both of their hearts under the weight of knowing that – that –
That love is a hurricane, and it doesn’t matter if they believe in it or not. It’s there.
Levi isn’t particularly fond of nature’s beauty, and he’ll openly admit that. But it’s one of those evenings again. It’s a warm summer night, fireflies sparkling around and radiating brightness when sitting down on his arms. He doesn’t move for hours, watches the stars as if they could reveal the world’s secrets to him – and, above all of that, Levi feels the faithful, everlasting heat of his husband’s arm across his stomach, pressing him against a strong chest, a heart beating with invincible, breathtaking life.
Erwin’s stump rests on his shoulder and Levi curls his fingers around it, places a kiss where the scar colours it with beauty like a rose’s petals.
Erwin fell asleep long ago, and Levi looks back to the sky after kissing his nose, losing himself in the fireflies’ still, ancient warmth and the stars on the nightsky – on the terrace of their little house in the forest of giant trees.
Levi doesn’t have a strong opinion about animals. They are just there, existing; birds in the sky that he doesn’t look at because they have a freedom that’s not bound to gravity and heavy leather on his chest. Cats, strolling through the survey corps’ building, catching mice and keeping them away from the grains. If they’re too persistent in rubbing their heads against his knees (something must attract those things, damnit), he sometimes gently pushes them away. They’re soft and don’t bother him too much.
Dogs. He hates dogs. The underground was full of them, and they were big and dark and stole his food with sharp teeth and growls when he was tiny and afraid.
Erwin is something in between, neither wolf nor feline.
He’s a predator Levi can’t fight, one that knows the secret to his heart and the lock that opens up his pale throat to sharp, gentle teeth. “You’re beautiful,” is what Erwin growls when he’s moving inside Levi, thick and heavy and perfect, and Levi furrows his brows before he sobs, cries broken words as he comes.
No, I’m not beautiful, is what Levi thinks. But you make dirt look like diamonds, Erwin Smith.
Erwin loves Levi’s hands. They’re pale and sharp like a predator from deep within snowy forests, taking life without dirtying themselves in rich dark blood. They were splattered with dust and slick mud when Erwin picked them up from the underground, taking them into his own.
They’re still pale, shaking heavily when wrapped around his thick cock, throbbing when a shy thumb shivers across his head, Levi’s skin drinking up his kisses and the come dripping down his fingers.
But they’re most beautiful when resting on Erwin’s chest at night, when Levi’s curled into the cave of his waist, small animal asleep with teeth and claws in reverent quietness. That’s when Levi’s hands are most beautiful – just above Erwin’s heart, holding his life caged in thin bones and young flesh.
After battle, Erwin’s lips taste like blood and steel, and it’s the only splinter of a moment in which Levi can bear with the dirt sticking to Erwin’s cheek. It’s the only moment in which he doesn’t care about rubbing the blood off his own blades, the death of comrades sticking to it like thick rainclouds that carry a hurricane.
After battle, Erwin’s hands are reverent and pray to the landscape of his body with gentleness, as they spread warmth into all his broken corners, into the shadows of Levi’s soul.
After battle, he can finally cry out when Erwin’s inside him, hot and thick and heavy, cock sliding deep, raw, until it hits that spot where Levi breaks. Where he shatters into a sob ripping from his lips, nails scratching down Erwin’s neck, tears dripping into the kiss of their tongues and lips and heart.
It’s not that Levi hates sex. But sex means people, and it means a stranger’s breath on his skin, hands grabbing his hips too tightly or not hard enough, and it means men who try and try so hard to make him feel good; men who all give up in the end. They always do, even those who loved him.
“Why don’t you kiss?” – “Relax. It’s just sex.” – “What, can’t come for me?” – “Baby, what are you hiding from me? Did someone hurt you?”
He doesn’t have sex anymore. He doesn’t kiss, doesn’t flirt. Evenings are a cup of tea and his favourite blanket, freshly washed, some movie on the tv. He falls asleep with his eyes clenched shut, curled into himself to feel a spark of warmth.
Sometimes, Levi wishes for tattoos. Little inked scars on the spots where he wants to be kissed.
A sun rising on his throat, its beams showing a path of gold to his neck. A silver mermaid swimming around his hipbone, delicate fingers resting on his thigh, a fin curled around his waist. Eagle’s wings, white and hazel, spreading on his back, and a thin emerald snake coiling along his spine like a protector of Eve’s apple, its tail reaching around to his stomach, lower.
He wants black lines that scream “please, touch me. Here, and here, kiss me, love me, fuck my living soul out, but pleaseplease let the sun rise on my neck and make my heart fly”. He already has one tattoo, a pair of crossed wings above his heart. There’s nobody to ask for its meaning. One half is drowning in dark blue ink.
He’s been singing since he can remember, and he’s been searching just as long. The world can’t be that empty, without something that has his heart burst into stars just as much as the first tunes of a symphony. It can’t be the only thing. It just – whenever he thinks he found something, it ends in tears and snow falling on his heart.
He should’ve been more careful with his wishes and the ink dripping off his silent lips.
Levi meets him in one of his music classes. Nice singing voice, deep and rich. That’s all he thinks at first, nothing special – until the man chooses a song. The docent makes Levi join in, half an octave higher, yes please accompany him.
“Demons” by Imagine Dragons, arrangement for two voices and a choir. The other people wait for the new one to start.
It takes a single line. Levi’s lips part, eyes widen. The sun on his throat blooms.
It’s the first time they melt into each other.
At some point, everyone else falls quiet, their voices a mere susurring of ocean waves. The man’s voice rises like a storm, it roars and whispers and promises darkness, rich, sweet heat that tingles all the way up Levi’s spine and into his skull. The echo is loud and quiet and it’s the first time that his voice shakes during singing.
The man looks at him the whole time, sun reflecting in his eyes, lips moving around words and tunes and pure music.
The snake along Levi’s spine moves, lazily dragging its fangs across his skin. He leaves the music room with crimson in his cheeks and a hurricane swirling through his blood.
The man’s name is Erwin.
Levi doesn’t care. He walks home in delusion, people passing by, none of their shitty words reaching him. Levi hears music, and the music carries blue eyes and velvety flames and a music that burns under his cold, lonely skin.
He’s ashamed to abuse the memory, but that voice is all it takes for him to slide under his covers later and wrap a hand around his cock, the other sliding to press into his tight heat, sobbing as he comes with hips bucking up.
When the days are cold
And the cards all fold
And the saints we see
Are all made of gold
Moami 