Some days are bright and warm, taste like chocolate and the sleepy salt on Marco’s skin when Jean kisses him awake, their legs tangled into a nest of safety under damp blankets.
Other days melt into starless nights, Jean curled in a corner, whimpering and clawing at his own skin till it’s raw and open and Marco kneeling in front of him, rocking him back and forth like a child, words like “it’s okay, we’re in another life, I won’t die on you again. I love you, love you” into his ear. To Jean, Marco is the only god he’ll ever believe in. He prays to him in kisses, and when the tears are gone, Marco wipes the salt off his cheeks, praising him with a love Jean can’t ever deserve.

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.

December 13th

The memories come back singing with melodies of war and tears. Jean doesn’t expect it, and neither does the stranger. They’ve never met, haven’t seen each other’s faces or watched out for a certain familiarity in people, for a faint trace of freckles on cheeks, for a sharp jaw and a loud cheerful laughter. But when Jean bumps into a man with wood-dark eyes, when their shoulders crash in the university’s corridor and all of their papers scatter on the floor, it’s like an eternal search ends. Jean feels his breath stop, heart crumble. Fingers clench, find a shirt to fist and a chest to curl himself into, and now he does believe in fate and soulmates and all that shit. Marco cries, holding him tightly and stammering “y-you remember, you know t-too – Trost, the others – we… T-titans. I shouldn’t be ali – ”

Jean kisses it all away, devours the memories from Marco’s lips and nobody understands, how they’re just standing there and kissing and crying over something they lost, somewhere, in another life.

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.