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I had a thought, dear, however scary
about that night, the bugs and the dirt
why were you digging? what did you bury?
before those hands pulled me from the earth?
*
Levi remembers birth.
He can remember the slide of dirt against his skin and the first taste of damp soil against his tongue and air in his lungs. Unnecessary, his body had told him, but it had been sweet in his throat, so he had kept breathing.
There wasn’t light when he opened his eyes for the first time, but darkness. Darkness and Eren, but back then, Eren had just been a face, and fingers laced with Levi’s own as he pulled and pulled and the earth fell away. “Levi,” Eren had murmured with relief, eyes wide and tears streaming down his cheeks, and that is how Levi had gotten his name.
Levi remembers Eren’s hands, and the way they had felt like fire over every inch of exposed skin they touched, how they’d brushed dirt from his hair and Eren had made this sound that rumbled in his chest and made him smile. He’d cupped Levi’s face, thumbs brushing at his cheekbones, and asked, “You’re so dirty. You must be miserable. I know how much you hate dirt.”
And Levi had been born with words in his head, and his mouth, and he’d asked, “I do?” and something had changed in that moment that Levi never really understood. He remembers the shattered look in Eren’s eyes, and the way his hands fell away in slow motion.
It was the last time Eren had ever touched him.
“Levi?” Eren calls as he enters the small house they share. He always calls out when he comes home, as if he isn’t sure Levi is still there, but Levi is always there. He never leaves. Isn’t allowed to, but doesn’t really want to, either.
Levi stares down at his hands, the pages of a book held between them. They’re nearly the same color.
“Did you finish your book?” Eren asks, as he stacks newly chopped wood by the fireplace. They have plenty, Levi thinks, but Eren keeps talking about a long winter and being prepared. Levi knows warmth comes from fire, warmth that Eren needs but that he doesn’t. He likes it, but warm or cold, it makes no difference to him.
“No,” Levi replies simply, folding the pages back together and pressing his hand down on the cover, frowning. He’d gotten to the part in the book when the man and the woman had kissed and stopped, drawn back into the first memories of his life. It had been hard to concentrate after that.
Most of those memories are blurry now, the way memories are wont to do after too much time has passed. There’s the hazy buzzing of strange questions Eren had asked him, questions Levi had not known the answers to, and too many disappointed looks. And regret. So much that Levi is still unsure if it had been his, Eren’s, or both.
“Are you all right?” Eren’s voice is high and tight with concern, and his hand hovers close by, just over Levi’s hair, but he doesn’t touch. Never touches. Levi wonders what would happen if he touched Eren.
“What’s it like?” Levi asks, staring at the fire Eren had started when Levi wasn’t paying attention. He likes the way it looks. It reminds him of something, but he can never remember what. “Outside?”
Eren goes rigid, and then he laughs, but it’s fake. Forced and horrible and Levi hates the sound of it.
“Why?” His voice is too strained as he sits down on the couch, as far away from Levi as he can possibly be.
Levi shrugs one shoulder, stroking the cover of his book again.
“You’ve seen it,” Eren insists, referring to the magazines and pictures that are stacked around the house. To the television in the other room, where they watch movies, and through them Levi has seen it. Has seen places like Paris, and London, and New York. Has seen people of all colors and statures, widths and lengths.
There are no mirrors in the house, but Levi has caught his reflection in the stillness of water or the window, and he’s never seen someone who looks quite like him.
“But what’s it like?” Levi asks, voice a bit harsher, and his hands grip his book harder. He looks over at Eren, who looks nervous and fidgets where he’s sitting.
“It’s… Cold,” Eren finally begins, hands balling into fists where they rest against his thighs. His skin is brighter than Levi’s, warmer, and Levi can see the veins and tendons where they bulge against the skin. Levi looks down at his own hand, at the blueness of his veins, too visible beneath his too pale, too cold skin. “Cold, and cruel, and hard. But… Beautiful, too.” Eren looks at him. “It’s hard to explain.”
Levi would point out that the people in his books don’t seem to have a problem, but stops himself. If he wanted to read their words, he would, but he asked for Eren’s.
Levi considers telling Eren that he’d like to see it one day. Experience it. But he’s not sure if he does.
He’s not sure what it is he wants, but it’s something.
Their life, for however long it has been this way, has been the same. Slow and lazy, like time doesn’t exist. Routine. But to Levi, it feels stagnant. Like he’s grown impatient waiting, when he never realized he was waiting for something.
He stares at Eren for too long. At the slope of his neck, and the sharp angles of his hands. At his lips. Sometimes, Eren looks at him with soft eyes and a soft smile and says, “I love you. You know that, right?”
And Levi nods, but he wonders. If Eren loves him, why doesn’t he touch him? Why doesn’t he kiss him?
It doesn’t occur to Levi that he’s reaching out until he’s halfway across the couch and his book falls from his lap, displaced by the movement. Eren starts at the sound, and then freezes when he sees Levi’s pale and hesitant fingers approaching him.
“Are you afraid?” Levi asks, staring at his own hand where it hovers in the air. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Of course not,” Eren promises in a whisper, and Levi moves until his fingers are brushing the fabric of Eren’s shirt.
“You never touch me,” Levi tells him, wondering if he’ll deny it. If maybe he hadn’t meant to do it. But Eren just clenches his teeth as Levi moves closer.
It doesn’t occur to Levi, until his fingertips slide from the worn cotton of a sleeve to the soft, warm skin that rests on the inside of Eren’s elbow, that he’s touching him. Was it really always this simple? Was all Levi had to do was ask? To just do it himself? Eren closes his eyes as Levi wraps his hand around Eren’s arm and holds.
He almost looks like he’s in pain.
“Am I hurting you?” That isn’t Levi’s intention. He wonders if it feels the same way for Eren as it does for him. Eren’s skin is like fire, like pressing his entire palm into a skillet, but Levi doesn’t know pain, himself. Hasn’t felt it—can’t feel it.
A shudder ripples through Eren’s body, and he shakes his head.
“It’s just… Cold,” Eren finally says, and Levi isn’t surprised. He knows he’s cold. Like ice, or snow, or something that doesn’t have a heart to beat fresh, warm blood through his veins.
He’s not like Eren, he knows. He’s not like the people in his books. He’s different, and he’s curious, but he also knows that Eren will never tell him. Sees the sad look in Eren’s eyes when he stares at his own hands in confusion, and Levi knows that it’s better not to ask. Not to know.
It’s better.
Levi should stop, but he doesn’t. He let’s go and then slides his hand along Eren’s arm, tracing the fragile bones in his wrist, cautious and careful, before outlining the shape of Eren’s hand.
“Levi.” Eren’s voice is choked. He sounds like he might cry.
“I love you,” Levi says, voice even as he looks up at Eren. His eyes are still closed in a look of tortured bliss, but they flash open then, and Levi sees he was right.
Eren is crying.
“I-I love you, too, Levi, I don’t—”
Understand. He doesn’t understand why Levi is acting this way. Why he isn’t sitting there quietly, like he always does. Why he isn’t listening to Eren ramble about everything and nothing, like he always does. Why he isn’t content with the way things are, the way things were, like he always has been and maybe Eren had always hoped he would be.
“Kiss me.” It comes out as a demand, and Levi holds Eren’s hand, feels fire thrumming through his skin, watches his eyes widen as the words settle.
“What?”
“In every story, they kiss,” Levi explains, and he feels young and old at the same time. He always has. Like a newborn placed in a body that has seen too many years. “They fall in love, and they kiss, and we never—do that.” He’s not sure if he can say the word kiss again, with the way Eren’s eyes seem to grow larger and larger every time he says the word.
Eren doesn’t respond, bites his lip, and Levi stares at it. Wonders if it feels like Eren’s skin. If it’ll burn when he touches it.
“Unless you don’t want to.” Levi had never considered that. That maybe they’re just people who love each other and don’t kiss, and maybe that will just be another question that Levi never knows the answer to.
Eren’s eyes close and he looks away, running the hand not tangled up with Levi’s through his hair.
“Of course I do,” he whispers, and it’s rough, like the words hurt coming up. “God, Levi.” He watches one tear slide from the corner of Eren’s eye, followed by a second and a third. “Of course I want to touch you, and kiss you, of course I do.” His chest is heaving, and he’s crying, and each word has to be wrung out of his chest by force, and Levi isn’t sure what he’s done. If he broke Eren, somehow.
And then Eren moves for the first time since Levi went to touch him. He twists and his fingers dance along the line of Levi’s jaw, and he’s right there, his breath warm and wet, his nose pressed into the taut skin of Levi’s cheek as he kisses him.
It lasts a second, and Eren makes a choked sound—a laugh, but a strange one, mangled by tears—and his forehead presses against Levi’s, and Levi thinks this.
This is what he’d been waiting for.
“Even your lips are cold,” Eren murmurs, and Levi wonders, if Eren keeps touching him, kissing him, breathing on his ear, if it would make Levi warm, too.
“Is that bad?” Levi asks, wondering how to ask Eren to kiss him again after already demanding it once.
“No,” Eren assures, voice filled with wonder, and his fingers card through a piece of Levi’s hair. And Levi thinks of dirt and darkness and Eren’s face being the first thing he ever saw. “Just different.”
He kisses Levi again, the pressure harder, the touch longer, and Levi hits the back of the couch as Eren’s warmth crowds and washes over him, drowning him. He thinks maybe he’ll ignite this time, or perhaps melt, because that’s what happens, when fire touches ice. And that’s what they are, really.
Levi might not need the air, but Eren does, and when he pulls away again, burying his nose in Levi’s hair, he’s muttering over and over again, “I love you, I love you,” and sometimes, “I miss you so much, Levi. So much.” And Levi lets him, not sure what to say, hands roaming now that he doesn’t have to fear Eren fleeing. Of being afraid. Fingers skimming until he finds the spot on Eren’s hands that doesn’t burn him, the thin width of a metal ring around his finger, and closes his eyes.
It matches the one on Levi’s finger, and while Levi has never asked about them, he thinks he knows what it means. That Eren was always meant to find him, to pull him to life, and Levi was always supposed to be found by him.
*
honey just put your sweet lips on my lips
we should just kiss like real people do