Bloom. || Part I

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

Sex was just something Levi never considered. He heard about it, though. He heard that it’s dirty and intimate and wet, and it doesn’t help that he knows how egoistic people are in only fulfilling their own desires. Levi’s decided against it, against filth and strange hands wandering over a body that belongs to no one but him alone, pale skin that he keeps clean and hair that’s soft for nobody else.

Levi satisfies his own needs whenever he has to. It works well for a long time.

Then, Erwin picks him up from the streets like a lost gem that’s actually worth something, and Levi lies awake in his first night of warm sheets, thinking about how those lips that speak commands all day would feel pressed against his own.

It’s three months later that Erwin kisses him on the cheek. It’s after a mission, a comrade’s blood sticking to both of their hands in a last attempt to revive the soldier. They always sit in Erwin’s office and wait in silence, wait for something that’ll never come. It’s their little weird routine after death and blood.

Erwin’s kiss is short, raw. He smells like sweat and blood and dark wood. Levi goes rigid when lips brush his cheek, why what how what is happening what am I supposed to do. Will he do it again. No, he won’t.

Erwin apologizes quietly and leaves with a last touch of his battle-scarred hand against Levi’s frozen shoulder. He closes the door and leaves Levi with lips gasping for air and a heart screaming for words, an explanation – and the pulsing wish to find out if Erwin’s lips would feel as good on Levi’s neck, where his blood rushes and life beats in his veins.

It takes three things to make Levi drown in the natural force of Erwin Smith.

One. The darkness rising in a blue glare when Levi has his blade against Smith’s neck.

Two. The sheer power of an arm wrapping around his waist as the Commander hauls him onto his horse and away from a titan’s crushing teeth.

Three, four, a thousand and a million. The rough gentleness of lips closing around his fluttering pulse, and Erwin speaking fire and liquid, golden possession into his veins, to his heart, boring and spilling through the cracks inside his soul.

Myriads of years. Levi is open, raw, wounded by him, and Erwin fills him up again, again, again, till it all ends.

His every move is accompanied by a soft tingling of war. There are silver bullets in his veins and the blood of dead ones smeared across his throat, invisible, a warning sign for anyone who’s tempted by the lethal beauty of his body. It’s a mere instrument to kill, or so Levi thought.

But Erwin, oh, he knows how to pull Levi’s strings and bite, lick, kiss under his skin until his body is lighting the night sky in red and golden flames and Levi himself roars, heart thundering in his chest as Erwin opens him, tongue pressing between his shaking legs and takes all war out of him, all blood, fear, death.

Fifteen years later, Levi’s fingers touch the white fabric of the shirt Erwin wore when he lost his arm. Levi has always kept it inside his uniform pants’ pocket, pressed close to his body like a second skin. The dark blood stains are fading with every passing year. Before every battle, every mission, every time he has to part from Erwin with kisses and whispered love hidden behind ‘be careful’ and ‘don’t you dare die’, Levi takes out the fabric and squeezes it inside his fist.

Today, he takes it out one last time, and puts in on top of the fireplace where there’s an old picture of friends, faces that are long gone dust and dirt. Levi gently folds the fabric and lays it down, stepping back to smile, before a warm arm wraps around him and Erwin is back in their new home, a small house at the forest’s coast with trees story-telling dreams through the rustling of their leaves, and Levi turns to steal another kiss from lips he’s been whispering hidden love to since twenty years ago.

Erwin doesn’t look back.

Not to his father death or a childhood of love being ripped apart by blood and soldier’s hands tearing his family apart, taking every soul he loved.

Not to the brave men and women dying at his command.

Not to the countless lives he saved.

Erwin doesn’t look back – except when he can’t spot the black horse by his side, outside of the walls, a small rider pressed to its slender back.

That’s when Erwin Smith turns his eyes, instinctively reaching behind, only to see a small frame of wildness slash through the air, blood evaporating as Levi lands back on his horse and throws him a calm, steady glance.

Erwin turns back to face forward.

Eruri Week Day 6: Reunion

The television became his new best friend.
Levi sits on the couch, snuggled into the only blanket that still faintly smells like Erwin. He clings to the green necklace – bolo tie, Erwin calls it – as if his life depends on it. The news come up. Levi empties the rest of his beer can and stares, unmoved, eyes narrowed into slits. He doesn’t want to cry again, it hurts and exhausts him and it doesn’t fucking brings Erwin back from war. Of course, they report from Afghanistan. There’s shots echoing through the screen, dust and blood on dead bodies.

No news. The soldiers that were taken as hostages are missing. Who did it? Levi doesn’t know. They don’t tell him. They don’t let him fly into that goddamn country and get Erwin with his own hands. If those men hurt him – if anything happens to him, that stupid idiot, why did Levi have to fall in love with a soldier, a goddamn leader. Someone so good, honest, loyal.

He drowns the fear in tears and more vodka.

Two days later, Hanji bursts into his and Erwin’s little house, their eyes flickering from the water welling up in them. Good news, they say, voice cracking, hauling Levi out of his blanket pile. They found him.
Levi collapses.

It doesn’t take another word. He’s crying the whole drive to the airport, because it’s been hours since they found the soldiers and they’re on their way back to England. Levi looks horrible, all bones and dark bags under his pale skin but he doesn’t care. The gate is crowded and Hanji gets on their tiptoes to look out for – there he is. Levi crashes through the crowd like he’s ready to kill any of them, for him, to get to him.

Let me, please, please let him be alright let him be good and whole oh god he’s alive alive –

He doesn’t see the missing arm. Levi collides with Erwin’s chest, arms flying around him, burying his face in the warm chest he’s missed for so long. And Erwin manages to chuckle, a weak smile on his lips, stubble on his chin and pain dripping from his eyes. “I’m home, darling.”

Levi sobs.

Reincarnation. What a strange word. Levi had found it in an old book in the library, next to esoteric shit about spirit travel and everlasting love. Fairy tales, children’s stories. He only took this one book and never brought it back. The habit of keeping what had once become his sat deep inside his soul. That way, he found Erwin, too.

Or did Erwin find him – yes, that was it. Waiting in front of the library, eyes calm, body shorter and hair silver already, and Levi stopped sharp. The book dropped. Bodies aged and wrinkled, but souls didn’t. Souls grew wide and magnificent and Levi’s fingers clung to Erwin’s coat as he flew, crashed into his arms. How long, his voice asked, cracking, breaking into shatters of sky and hope.

Too many, Erwin said quietly, his lips kissing Levi’s cheeks bleeding from tears. Centuries. Eras for you, an eternity. Souls didn’t age.
But they could melt. They could coalesce.

Eruri Week Day 4: Little Things / Eruri Insiders

It’s the little things.

Erwin indulges in the soft red colour tinting Levi’s ears whenever their fingers brush. The meetings of the Corps can be boring and straining, but their hands lace up under the table and Levi’s other hand around the tea cup shivers the tiniest bit. It’s the little things – when he returns from a mission, both of them covered in blood and filth, clothes torn where titan’s teeth almost tore them apart. When Levi comes out of the showers, naked, skin red where he scrubbed it clean, he presses his body into Erwin’s arms and buries his face against the chest where a heart beats just for him.

It’s the little things – Erwin’s hand brushing the small of his back before a mission, up to his neck, tightening around it, and Levi’s head rolling back into the touch as if he’s been born to fit against Erwin, as if heaven and hell themselves carved both of them from a single block of marble and tore them apart with whispered words of “go, find him in another life for he is all you wanted, all you need, and the little things that will stop the bleeding of your soul”.

Eruri Week Day 3: Home / Domestic

“I don’t care how long it takes. I won’t take my daughter home to a bedroom that’s painted like a rabid dog threw up all over the fucking walls.”

Erwin massaged the bridge of his nose. He set the paintbrush down and took a deep, long breath. Levi had his arms crossed, glaring at him from below with eyes that said “I will get my way or you will sleep on the couch tonight”. It was about their baby girl and Levi was acting like a mother hen trying to make the nest for her child the most comfortable in all existence of eggs and chickens.

“Fine,” Erwin finally said and Levi’s face lightened up. “We’ll repaint it. You happy now? It’s not like I’m covered in green paint already, but whatever.”

“I love you,” Levi quietly said and tiptoed to kiss Erwin’s nose, smearing more green from his cheek across his lover’s face. Then he jumped back, grinning widely and Erwin could only growl “oh no you won’t – !” before a paintbrush slashed across his already dirtied shirt and left a bright minty streak across green. They had chosen fresh colours for their girl’s room, and Levi (as the artist he was) had begun to paint the ceiling as a sky and the walls like a deep forest full of hiding animals and beautiful flowers.

Erwin had been allowed to paint the grass, and even there Levi had to correct him and correct some of his badly drawn shadows. He was covered in all possible colours, dots of red on the butt of his old outworn jeans, legs sprinkled with pink from the roses Levi had painted.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” His voice had lowered to a dangerous snarl, and Levi squeaked adorably when Erwin snatched him around the waist and rubbed his colourful face all over his lover’s neck and cheeks.

“Ew, you are such a dumbass, fuckin’ stop that!” Levi struggled and kicked in his hug and finally dropped against Erwin’s chest like a stone, nose nuzzling into his dirty shirt. A strip of sky blue was on his forehead, and Erwin pressed his thumb next to it, leaving a sunny yellow spot.

“I hope she’ll like us.” Levi breathed against his chest, hair ruffled into a mob of darkness with pink and orange tips where paint had fount its way into it. Erwin sat down on the floor where they had put the plastic foil, pulling Levi on his lap. Their foreheads pushed together, resting gently as Erwin cupped his face and brushed his nose against Levi’s.

“She’ll love us. Who wouldn’t love to have a father like you? You painted a world for her, Levi. A world.” Levi’s smile was a rare thing, shy and insecure like a deer hiding in the forest that bloomed around them.

“You’re right. She’ll be ours, and we’ll always be hers. Our little girl.”