December 22nd

It’s a clichée. Everyone says “it happened so fast” when someone asks them later if they didn’t see that car coming. Erwin has to admit that he’d have to reply with the same words but for another reason. That reason is four years old, called Eren and currently crying his heart out in Erwin’s arms. The ambulance’s siren is howling somewhere above their heads, and together with the paramedic’s hectic voices buzzing around him, Erwin’s headache gets worse by the second. Eren is clinging to him, whispering “D-daddy pwease don’ die”, and Erwin tries to kiss his head and say it’ll be alright. He wouldn’t die, they told him – he’d been lucky. Few broken bones when the slowly approaching car had hit him on the crosswalk. The driver had been searching for the burger he’d dropped under his seat, and when spotting the father and his son, he hit the brake. Just in time.

Erwin is lucky. His reflexes had made him curl around his son – don’t lose him, not like you lost his mother years ago, no you can’t – and everything is as fine as it could be in such a moment. The world is a blur when he’s heaved out of the ambulance and rolled into an emergency room. Someone removes Eren from his body, the boy screams louder and a friendly female voice hushes him.

Then there’s a face above him, pale and small. Dark hair frames it like a storm cloud and Erwin finds himself grinning. What a goddamn beautiful man. Oh, did he say that out loud? The face smirks and Erwin hears his own voice say “you are cute” somewhere in the distance. A laugh, smooth and silky.

“The anaesthetics are kicking in. Sir, we’ll have to do surgery on your arm. You’ll be asleep soon.” The voice speaking is low, sharp and gorgeous like liquid silver. Erwin likes it. He tries to touch the young face, mumbles something like “doctors as cute as you should be illegal”. A short laughter trickles down, and Erwin smiles like a dumbass when his world fades.

“Is that so,” the voice says and then, “maybe you’ll arrest me when you’re awake again, then.” Someone calls “Daddy” again, and Erwin sinks into unconsciousness with the picture of a nametag that says “Dr. Levi Ackerman” swirling in his mind, along with a warm voice and soft fingers grazing his arm.

December 21st

A snowflake lands on his nose, melts on the tip and drips off his face along with tears. Levi waits. His hands are stiff and rigid. He presses them deeper into the shallow warmth of his winter uniform, tries to sneak away from the cold of winter howling around his body. The carriage is late, but they bring Erwin, and that’s all that counts. It’s not Christmas yet. But Levi doesn’t celebrate some religious shit. Instead, he suddenly looks up when the snow scrunches, and then he’s running, feet making dull noises on the white inner yard of the Survey Corps’ training grounds.
Erwin gets out with slow, unbroken elegance. His right sleeve flutters in the harsh howls of the wind, empty and thinned out. He’s hollow, body drained of all energy, but Levi flies into his arms and wraps himself around Erwin. “You,” he says, breathes into his collarbone, has to stand on his tiptoes to kiss his chin. Erwin’s arm holds him, strong as always.
“Welcome home,” Levi says.
“I missed you,” Erwin returns solemnly, as if he’s giving an oath to never leave again.

December 14th.

He forgot his jacket at home, and when Levi leaves university a few hours later, it’s snowing. Two weeks til Christmas, gold and red everywhere, people in fluffy hats and warm coats. He’s the first to get out of the classroom, anything to get away from those Christmas-addicts talking about presents and family. The ground is covered in soft white flakes, his steps scrunch when he’s making his way home. He regrets not skipping that stupid class. He could be in front of his heater, a nice mug of black tea in his hands, watching Little Shop of Horrors. Levi’s mood is sinking with every minute outside, and shoving his fingers into his jeans’ pockets doesn’t help. The tips are slowly getting blue and Levi stops to blow on them, hoping that his breath isn’t as cold – well, fuck.

Suddenly the wind stops and a warm weight falls on his shoulders. Levi looks up to find a tall man smiling down at him, and fuck he’s handsome and has gorgeous blue eyes, and that jacket has to be his because he’s only in an ugly red and white Christmas sweater now. Levi recognises him – he’s going to the same class. The man grins wider. “Hi,” he says, and that’s when Levi sneezes, and the next second, that guy wraps the jacket all around him and asks “how about I treat you to a tea to warm you up?”

Levi doesn’t know what that guy’s up to. But the stranger says his name is Erwin, and that’s a nice name, warm and fluffy like the jacket. Levi loves tea, and free tea is even better. “Okay… Erwin.”

December 12th.

Erwin Smith doesn’t do things with half his heart. Levi finds out when his face is pressed into the stinking mud of the underground, when he first hears a name that sounds like power and tastes dark and rich like alcohol. Erwin doesn’t force him to join – there’s no need to pressure someone who’s following willingly. Levi will always obey, after Erwin proves that he’s worthy of obeying. And years later, Levi is naked and vulnerable for him, sprawled on the bed, spread open and crying out a stuttered symphony of Erwin’s name while the commander pours all his heart into licking, sucking, coaxing him open on fingers and a burning wicked tongue.

Erwin cannot afford to give in. Not when his arm is ripped off and torn into a bloody mess of scattering flesh. Not when the military police beat and slash into him and never stop. Nothing in this world can be allowed to see through his cracks, nothing can find the slowly dying glow of a little boy with big wishes in it. But Levi does. For him, Erwin falls and lets those warm fingers and whispering lips hold his fading light, if only just for a moment.

December 7th.

His name is Levi, and Erwin finds him like a gem hidden in the underground’s dirt. He’s wearing a knife like a trophy, eyes silver and the only bright thing down here, and Erwin thinks that someone so lethal shouldn’t be allowed to be that beautiful. His name tastes like silk and thick, warm honey on Erwin’s tongue. He’s never seen stars, and when Erwin takes him up, up on the surface and to the death of his comrades, Levi’s blade slits a thin scar into his throat. He’s keeping the blood-stained shirt forever – as a reminder.

It’s a week before Levi speaks again after Isabel and Farlan are gone, and it’s Erwin’s name that he says – quiet, almost shy, with his knife tucked away but eyes as bright as stars, and Erwin can’t help but lean down and lift him up to kiss him until Levi’s light is burning him to ashes and dust.

Erwin wears his weaknesses as a rusted ancient armour on his body. It hugs his chest and waist, crawls up his calves and curls around his shins and feet. The armour is shielding his neck and head from attacks, and only his face shows some emotions that nobody can pinpoint exactly.
Levi’s finger are sharp and thin into to bore into the gaps between his fireproof silver and push stinging pain into his body. Until this day, Levi has only ever slipped his hands through the cracks gently and pressed them into warm skin, and breathed in, and let their hearts beat as one for a small eternity.

Eruri. Tarantism. ;333

Send me a word/fandom/characters and I will write a drabble

{ Tarantism – The urge to overcome melancholy by dancing. }
sfw.

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The candle’s flame shuddered as Erwin moved past it. His feet swirled and whirled on the ground, spun around himself. Levi’s warm scent held him safe, the soft fabric of his jacket crinkling in Erwin’s fingers. The wooden floor creaked oh so quietly, music from the stereo engulfing them in twinkling notes of a piano tune. The tunes flew and purred, bass of the darker ones vibrating through Erwin’s fingers. He hummed the melody for a few seconds while Levi’s head rested into his shoulder.

“I miss you so much, my love.”

Erwin didn’t hold the tears back. He let them be, pearl down his cheeks silently. The mirror opposite of his bed reflected his wrinkled face, the laughter still caught around his old eyes. They were still blue, Levi would love them with kisses to his temples and a hand clenching over Erwin’s heart. He’d whisper, never scream, and it would smell like mint and black tea again.

Erwin’s feet stopped. He stood in his bedroom, Levi’s shirt pressed to his chest. The air was empty, and the picture of silver eyes and a pale face on his nightstand smiled when Erwin broke down, crumbled on the floor with a ragged sob. The piano’s music died away softly, a last high note echoing in the dirty bedroom. The floor was dusty, piles of clothes pressed into corners. Erwin’s feet had left the first steps in weeks.

His tears smeared the dirt on his face, fell down on the last thing Levi had worn, his white pristine shirt. Erwin fell to the ground, curled into himself and the music made way for an overwhelming silence, once and for all.

“Levi. Levi. My love, why won’t you come back to me…” The shirt caught tears, tiny whimpers at first; and then, at last, the dark sob of a broken man.

Maybe, In A Thousand Years. || sfw

The grey stench of extinct cigarettes is the only dirtiness he allows. Levi wakes up for himself in the morning, not for someone else, and blinks the sun away with mildly hollow eyes when he turns his back to the windows. Thirty steps to the bathroom, shower on, washing himself for an exact amount of five minutes. There can never be enough water. Bar soap is unhygienic, he uses a medical dispenser with white letters on it. The words promise purification. It works for him exactly 90 percent of the time. By noon, he will drown his arms in a sink full of water again, to cover the raw skin in a coat of crystal oblivion.
Levi leaves the house with a jacket neatly closed over his chest. He walks the middle of the pavement, it is his regiment over the chaos roaring in a mind that’s never been his own.

The world isn’t his. Death comes too slowly here, tenaciously sticking to the past and glueing him to an existence he’s never asked for. It’s the famous fucking puzzle where a piece is missing. Levi’s edges are tattered and bitten.

He bumps into someone. Levi looks up and chokes on lukewarm autumn air, he’s always hated breathing so calmly. The man is tall and looms, towers with a wariness lingering between his motions and his hair is too fucking bright, and Levi drowns willingly in his roaring wide-eyed glance. Levi’s fingers slip from his pockets, his mind hits surface with a high-pitched ringing.

Erwin stares. They don’t exchange names, they just know them like an old, long-forgotten lullaby. Levi touches his shoulder, the right one, where an arm feels too thin and flesh gnawed away under the trenchcoat’s wet fabric. Erwin’s hand finds his cheek and brushes up his jaw, finds a calm nest to lie in behind his ear. The old scars they carry burn for the first time in years.
“’s been too long.” Levi licks the salt off his lips, and seconds and centuries later Erwin kisses him. Levi wraps himself around Erwin, dives under his coat and lets him take all the cigarette smoke and strange world away.

“Sure took your time,” Levi whispers. Erwin chuckles somewhere between their mouths claiming each other and his arms pulling Levi away from the street, breath mingling in a symphony of pants and Levi sighing with melting eyes. “I’m sorry,” Erwin says, his voice cracks. Levi believes him.