The happiness in his father’s voice as Erwin pushed a ring onto Levi’s shaking finger was the second-best thing for Eren today. He gently teased Levi as he hugged him, sniffing quietly into the shoulder of his adopted son. “Wow, didn’t think you could cry like that, Dad.”

“Shut up,” Levi returned with a shiver in his breaking voice, and wiped his face before pulling back, eyes glinting with tears of happiness. Erwin beamed by his side, smile radiant as always, and Eren pulled him into a tight embrace as well.

“Told you he’d say yes.”

Levi raised a brow and laced his fingers up with Erwin’s, tip-toeing up to catch his lips into a soft, shy kiss. “You asked our son if you could marry me?”

Erwin only cupped his face and rested his forehead against Levi’s, breath still quick, nervous, from asking his boyfriend of seven years if he wanted to spend the rest of his life by Erwin’s side.

“Of course. And technically, he’s not my…” – “You know that you’re basically his father already? Idiot. You are his dad. He’s your son.” Eren nodded. “True. You’re family, dad.”

It didn’t take much more to have Erwin’s broad shoulders tremble, and Eren rolled his eyes. “You’re both stupid. Tell me when the marriage is. I gotta go buy a proper suit for Jean so he doesn’t look like shit when we’re embarrassing you both by making out on the after-marriage-party in front of aunt Jane.”

Levi threw something after him, and Eren fled upstairs with a grin flashing across his face, hearing Erwin’s warm laughter behind his back. Then there was silence, and a last whisper from Levi. “Yes, yes. Of course I w-want to, god. Thought you’d never ask…”

Eren vanished inside his room. He threw himself onto the bed and dialed Jean’s number. It didn’t take long for a dark voice to echo through the speaker.

“Yeah?”

His grin went soft, gentle. “Hey babe.” He heard Jean shuffle around a bit, and when he spoke back, his words were warm and quiet. “Hello, love.”

Things were okay, Eren thought. Life was good. And the best thing today was when, a few hours later after talking to Jean about the world and everything and how they’d graduate college together next year – that was when they hung up, and just before their phones died, Jean whispered the softest little “I love you… idiot”.

The best thing today.

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.

Hurricane.

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.

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.