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“Drink down that gin and kerosene,”
Eren rolled over in his bed, positive, positive that his phone couldn’t be ringing at this hour.
“I’ll keep my jealousy close, ‘cause it’s all mine / And if you say this makes you happy then I’m not the only one lying,”
His ringtone, which usually filled him with nostalgia for his high school days, was blaring angrily in his otherwise silent, dark room. In that moment, Eren grudgingly understood why his boyfriend so disdainfully called it and many of Eren’s other favorite songs ‘noise.’
He threw an arm over his eyes, rubbing them forcefully before squinting at his phone’s too-bright screen.
It was Levi. Eren immediately sat up, worry overtaking his irritation at being awoken at--what fucking time was it, anyway?--anyway, at being awoken too early. Although his sleep schedule was pretty fucked up thanks to college and part-time work, Levi had never called Eren in the middle of the night. He usually didn’t call Eren, period. He just kind of appeared when the mood struck him.
Eren was hardly an anxious person, but the timing was enough to make a few frightening images flash through his mind as he fumbled to reach his phone, nearly dropping it. He took a deep breath. At any rate, if something was wrong, he should stay calm.
Eren cleared his throat before he answered. “Hello? Levi?”
The line was quiet for a moment, before he heard soft laugh, one that he didn’t hear often. “Hey, babe.”
Eren’s face immediately heated up what felt like 30 degrees. Babe? “Levi, is that you?”
“Who else would it be?” His quiet laugh again. “I hope you don’t have too many other guys calling you up in the middle of the night.”
“Is everything alright?” Eren asked, bemused.
“Alright? Everything’s great, babe. Everything’s fantastic.”
“Fantastic?” Eren repeated, then everything clicked, and he sighed, relieved. “Levi, are you drunk?”
“Yeah,” Levi answered, straightforward as always. “Wanna go somewhere?”
“Now? ”
“No, next year.”
“Levi, it’s 3 in the fucking morning.”
“Correct. But there hasn’t been much fucking in my morning, and I’d like to change that, if you don’t mind,” Levi’s voice was nearly a drawl.
Eren could feel his throat tighten around the words he was going to say, so he swallowed them and choked out instead, “Where are you?”
Eren walked quickly off campus, hands in his pockets, feeling oddly nervous. He’d known Levi for almost a year and a half and been going out for nearly a year now, and of course they’d drank together--they were in college--but Levi had never… never sounded like that . He rarely heard him laugh twice in the same five minutes, rarely heard his voice slow and steady like that, and had never been called ‘babe.’
Not to say that what they had wasn’t great. Levi was a great boyfriend, though a peculiar one. He was terrible at keeping in contact but excellent at finding Eren at opportune moments; his facial expression rarely changed and he talked about himself even less. But a warm hand around Eren’s waist, tersely-written notes left around Eren’s room, too-sweet coffee left outside his room in the morning, always told him what Levi himself didn’t.
Yeah, Levi was dreadfully soft under all those piercings and leather, the appearance that startled Eren’s suburban mother and earned the slight suspicion of his sister. They only saw the poker face, the cold eyes, the studs in his lip and eyebrows. At this point, all Eren could see was the tense line of his shoulders whenever he drove Eren anywhere on his motorcycle, his protective hands on the small of Eren’s back, careful, so careful. The way his words got twisted up in each other whenever Eren shyly complimented him. The little lift of his chin whenever Eren took his hand.
Levi liked his image, though, Eren thought fondly. And Eren was falling fast for both sides of him.
He remembered when they met, and how he--and Armin-- had thought all that steely-eyed silence was brooding mystique and dangerous thoughts. And some of it was, sure. But some of it was just awkwardness.
Armin had realized it before he had, as usual. Eren had remained starry-eyed for a good, long while, but not blinded enough to miss some telltale changes in the way Armin interacted with Levi. Armin was a timid person, especially with people he didn’t know, but a month or so after meeting Levi and seeing him on a regular basis, became oddly comfortable with him. They were all in the same club, one for activism and social justice, and therefore encountered each other frequently.
They’d been working on their website together when Eren noticed.
“Sorry, could you pass me that paper, Levi?” Armin had asked, and it had been his tone of voice that caught his attention--so carefully neutral, almost gentle, as ridiculous as that seemed. And Eren had watched them for a moment, and realized how efficiently they worked together.
“Why do you talk to him like that?” He’d asked Armin later, and Armin just blinked innocently at him.
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know--like he’s a wild animal, or… or a little kid.”
“I talk to him same as I talk to you,” Armin had said, a little smirk on his face, and Eren felt like he’d been left out of some inside joke. “You should try talking to him sometime.”
“W-why should I?” Eren had immediately turned red and stammered.
Armin had just shrugged. He was worse than Mikasa and his mom put together, when he put his mind to it, Eren thought angrily.
In a typical Eren fashion, though, he’d ended up doing just as Armin suggested. He’d never been very good at beating around the bush, so he’d gathered up all his courage, and asked Levi after one of their club meetings if he’d like to get coffee sometime. Levi had agreed with a terse nod, and Eren wasn’t sure if he should be excited or not.
“Why did you want to get coffee with me?” Levi had asked him bluntly, after a few minutes of small talk.
“Um,” Eren held his cup in both hands, looking down as his cheeks warmed. “You mean, besides the fact that you’re gorgeous?”
Levi just narrowed his eyes a little, as though Eren had spoken in a foreign language to which he had limited exposure.
“Well,” Eren swallowed nervously. “I guess--you’re always saying really smart, interesting things at club meetings and stuff, so I wanted to get to know you better. Plus you’re funny.”
“You think I’m funny ?” He asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” Eren smiled hesitantly. “Your sense of humor is kind of gross and immature, but it makes me laugh. Plus no one would ever expect it, coming from you. I like unexpected.” To a fault, sometimes.
This seemed to satisfy Levi, who nodded pensively.
“Why did you say you’d get coffee with me?” Eren blurted out, on impulse.
Levi’s expression soured slightly, and he answered in a quiet grumble. “Because you asked.”
This didn’t satisfy Eren at all.
Looking back now, he realized how many things Levi had said with that little phrase and that little frown, and how far they’d come, that Eren could understand those things so effortlessly. Because you asked -- not because someone had asked him to coffee, but because Eren had asked. And that pinch of his face, because I like you, goddammit, and you’re trying to make me admit it, which is so not punk.
He’d been trying to explain this to Mikasa, who’d gotten angry at Levi for something he’d said to Eren, one day after they’d been dating for about a month and a half. Eren was worrying about Jean and Marco, who’d had an argument and told him about their respective sides. Levi had contributed something about how he “may as well be dating a toilet for all the shit you swallow.” Eren had just laughed, but when Levi got up to go to the bathroom, Mikasa asked angrily, “How can you let him say things like that to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“He just called you a toilet , Eren.”
“He didn’t mean I was an actual toilet,” he said, as though this was obvious. “If you don’t have something to take your shit then you’ll get constipated and die.”
“What?”
“He’s saying I listen to people.”
Mikasa looked up, and Eren realized Levi must have entered the room. He turned, and Levi was looking at him with surprise--which in itself was unusual. He rarely made such distinctive expressions.
Before long, it faded into his standard deadpan look, as he said firmly, “That is not what I meant at all, you fucking latrine.”
Eren did realize, as he was walking through the campus that night at 3:07AM, that most people wouldn’t find that kind of thing endearing. And he understood, that most relationships weren’t like theirs, in a way.
But in another way, weren’t most relationships like theirs? Or good ones, at least. You think that someone’s a little funny or a little clever, at first. And then you realize that it’s something more, something you can’t understand without learning their language, deciphering their code. As though each person was their own country, you might be a tourist for a while, visiting the most entertaining places and seeing the most attractive sites. And you fall for that, a little bit, the enticing lure of novelty. But a moment comes when it occurs to you--you don’t have to just visit. You could have a home there. The land changes under you, or rather, you change amidst the land, as the novelty wears off and something else takes hold. Just by staying there you’ve started understand, little by little, more than you thought. And you learn, finally unravelling all those things you were originally drawn to, that you believed to be just quirky or charming, that they have depth, and that only makes you love them more--
… Like. Makes you like them more. What was he saying? It was 3:13AM and he was delirious. He was delirious, and sleep-deprived, and about to have sex with his drunk boyfriend. There was nothing romantic about it.
“In me, you can confide, when no one’s by your side… Let me be, your everlasting light.”
Levi was lying on the grass by a tree, hands behind his head, singing ever-so-softly.
Well, maybe there was something a little bit romantic about it.
“Love is the coal, that makes this train roll… Let me be, your everlasting light.”
Eren walked towards him, breathlessly. Levi sat up at his approach, and smiled, and goddamn, wasn’t that beautiful? He wasn’t sure how to capture this feeling in words, as it gripped his chest with warm hands and made it hard to breathe.
“You skipped like, seven verses,” was what Eren said.
“I’m also a good two octaves lower,” Levi replied. “And in a different key.”
“What do you know about keys?” Eren scoffed.
“My mother was a music teacher.” Eren fell silent, because Levi almost never mentioned his mother, who had died when he was in junior high.
Levi stood up when Eren didn’t respond, rolling one of his shoulders. “Anyway…” He smirked. “What happened to my fucking morning?”
Eren rolled his eyes, but entwined their fingers all the same. “I dunno, you’re the one singing love songs in the park all by yourself.”
“You loved it, you fucking nerd.”
Eren hoped the dark hid his blush. He ducked his head down to catch Levi’s lips, which pressed, dry and tasting slightly of whiskey, gently into his own. Levi’s hands, a little cold, crept under Eren’s t-shirt, an old one from a concert tour. His thumbs traced Eren’s hip bones, and then slid around to his back. Eren shivered. He could feel Levi sigh a little, and they kissed unhurriedly, despite what they both claimed to have come for.
“You’re funny today,” Eren murmured, when their lips had parted and Levi was pressing a soft little kiss to the underside of his chin.
“Yeah…” Levi hummed in response. “I felt funny, so I decided to get drunk.”
“Good to see you’re forming healthy habits.”
“Shut up,” Levi pressed their mouths together again for a moment, then broke away, just leaning his head into Eren’s neck, tracing circles on the skin of his back.
“You felt funny before you drank?” Eren prompted quietly.
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” he huffed. “But it’s pretty much all your fault.”
Eren gulped. Shit. “Did I do something?”
“Same thing you always fucking do. It’s just been getting to me more.”
Eren wasn’t proficient enough in this language to understand this just yet. He tried to pull away, but Levi held tight. “Don’t move,” He grumbled.
“What did I do? Or--what do I always do?”
“You’re weird , that’s what you do. You’re a freak.”
“Yeah, I know--”
“No you don’t,” Levi interrupted him. “You really don’t know, and at this point I don’t think I can explain it to you.”
“Try me.”
There was another pause, one Eren wasn’t sure how to deal with. Levi finally spoke again.
“Do you remember our first date? When I asked you why you asked me out.”
“Of course,” Eren replied, nonplussed.
“You said you wanted to get to know me better.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
Eren stared at him.
“It was like you’d never fucking met me before,” Levi continued, voice even with just a trace of disgruntled tone. “Why the fuck would you want to get to know me, of all people? Are you touched in the head? I wouldn’t want to get to know me.”
Eren was beginning to understand. He let out a breath. “Yeah, I guess I’m just a freak then.”
“And now, it’s been months, and we’ve been hanging out and stuff, and…” Levi looked down at his hands, around Eren’s waist. “You’re still here.”
“Yeah, I am.”
Another pause.
“I don’t care if you die, you know,” Levi said conversationally.
“What?”
“I don’t care if you die, or if you disappear, or turn out to be doing this to prove a point or something.” He continued to avoid Eren’s gaze. “But I really care about this, right now.”
Eren was breathless, again. “I bet I care more.”
“I bet you don’t.”
“Do too.”
“Prove it, then.”
He couldn’t, but he could translate everything Levi had just said to him. Eren could leave him, tomorrow, or the next day, or any time, because Levi considered the time they’d had together, and the time they were having together to be--as precious as Eren did, in short.
“I love you,” he said, and he didn’t mean for it to slip out, or his voice to sound so choked, but it happened.
“I still don’t care if you die.”
Eren laughed, still short on breath, and wrapped his arms around Levi fully. “Can’t you speak in English for once?”
“Sure,” Levi’s voice was quiet, but Eren still started, a little bit.
“I love you too, babe.”