Chapter Text
This is all his fault.
Eren did this, and he only has himself to blame.
His head throbs in time with his heartbeat, and he is sore all over; like he lost a fight, or fell down some stairs. Eren shifts in bed, and whimpers, cracking one eyelid open only to close it again immediately. The curtains have been pulled shut, and the light is blessedly muted, but even the dim rays of sun creeping around the outside of the window are enough to have him cringing. The sheets are stifling, tangled up around his legs, and he tries to kick them free to no avail.
“Levi,” he whines, pawing at the mattress beside him, searching for him. There is a low chuckle, followed by a cool hand brushing sweaty hair out of his eyes.
“Nope,” Mike says, and Eren blinks his eyes back open, squinting up at him.
Everything hurts. He’s never drinking again.
He’s especially not trying to keep up with Mike again. Not his finest moment, and he groans, eyes falling closed.
“Where’s Levi?”
The night before only comes to him in snatches, blurred at the edges with too much rum, but Levi had definitely been with him at Mike and Erwin’s for most of the party.
“Tucked you in last night and went home. Said he had to meet his uncle and cousin for breakfast this morning and didn’t want to leave you alone.”
Eren hums. He doesn’t remember being put to bed, but it’s not the first time Levi has left his drunk ass in Mike and Erwin’s care; he’s grateful.
He’d much rather be hungover in bed with Mike than hungover listening to Levi’s uncle talk shit, or by himself at home. Mike slips a hand behind Eren’s shoulders and gently pulls, trying to urge him upright.
“Sit up,” he says, and Eren groans again in protest.
“Nnnnnn-nnnn.”
“Just for a second, come on,” Mike coaxes. He lets Mike manhandle him into a sitting position, squinting through the agony in his head. “Open your mouth.”
Eren would make a joke, or mutter something suggestive, but he feels like shit and he doesn’t have it in him. Lolls out his tongue obediently instead, and Mike drops a few tablets into it, followed quickly by a straw. Eren drinks; the water is cold, and delicious, and he drains half the glass before flopping back down on the pillows.
“Spoiled,” Mike says, scratching through his hair, and Eren leans into the touch.
“Thank you.”
Mike kisses his cheek. An icepack is pressed to his head, and Eren moans, clutching at it gratefully. The blankets are pulled away from his legs, replaced with only the sheet, and Eren nestles into the bed with a sigh.
“I’ll wake you up again when I finish making breakfast.”
“Mmmmmm, love you.”
“Love you too, baby. Go back to sleep.”
The sheets smell like Erwin’s cologne, and Mike’s aftershave, and Eren drifts off and sleeps like the dead.
-
When Levi shows up at Erwin and Mike’s later Eren is sitting at the table in the kitchen eating bacon, dressed in one of Erwin’s shirts and nothing else. His headache has eased back into something a little less debilitating; Mike plies him with breakfast sausage and eggs, and Erwin keeps pouring him orange juice— it’s routine, taking care of Eren when he occasionally overdoes things.
They seem to like doing it, even if they tease him without fail.
Levi has a key to their place now, and lets himself in without knocking. He smirks at Eren when he finds them, reaching out to pet his hair.
“You’re alive?”
Eren shakes his head, and Levi laughs, and sits down beside him.
They all talk in soft voices, Levi’s hand absently stroking his thigh, Erwin pausing behind him to rub at Eren’s neck with one hand while he asks Mike questions about... something. Eren isn’t really paying attention.
It’s comfortable, the four of them together. Easy. There is always something missing when he’s with Levi, or with Erwin and Mike. A passive sort of loneliness that has only gotten worse as time goes on; Eren wants it to be all of them, all the time, just like this.
It’s too much to ask, though, and so he doesn’t.
Just covets every last moment he gets, blissful and content with all the people he loves, and tries not to hurt when he has to let it go.
-
It’s Levi who picks up on it, just like the first time. Levi who insists Eren deserves to be happy, to have the things he wants. Levi who reaches when Eren holds back.
Levi, who moves into Erwin and Mike’s house like he’s always lived there; it isn’t the first time he’s been their roommate. Now they are sharing more than just space, but things don’t get weird the way Eren expects.
They get weird in entirely new ways.
Eren isn’t equipped to deal with it. Levi is underneath him in their room, thighs spread wide, making punched out little noises as Eren fucks into him when there is a knock at the door. Levi says come in, and Erwin does. Pulls out his cock, and feeds it into Eren’s mouth, and he whines around it, and fights the urge to come. It isn’t the first time this has happened, or the second, or the third.
It’s been months, and Eren doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used this.
Doesn’t know if he wants to.
He spends some evenings in Mike and Erwin’s bed, but mostly sleeps with Levi, at least at night. Levi and Erwin leave for work in the mornings, and he crawls under the blankets with Mike, and sleeps most of the day away. Sometimes the four of them sleep together, Levi on one side of him, Mike and Erwin on the other. Nothing is ever more perfect, and maybe he can’t have it all the time, but that Eren gets it at all is amazing.
He spends a lot of his afternoons splayed out on the couch; head in Levi’s lap, Mike holding his hand, Erwin absently rubbing his feet.
It’s home like no walls ever could be, and Eren lets himself sink into it. Lets himself have the things he wants—
—they’re his now, always.