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acmeangel · 1 day ago

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Small Forevers | One Shot

SFW, sad vibes, yearning vibes Levi x Y/N one shot Summary: You and Levi once thought you’d be together forever. Forever doesn’t come, and Levi is getting married to someone else. (I did, in fact, break my own heart writing this one.) Word count: 2297

When Levi first realized he was in love with you, the moment came out of nowhere.

The two of you didn’t even see each other that often. You knew from the start that Levi was more than just busy — his duty came first, and he was, in every sense of the word, unavailable.

Still, you couldn’t resist the stolen moments and scattered nights you’d spend together. You’d have endured a thousand lifetimes just for the fleeting, ephemeral moments when his gaze upon you would soften.

And, for reasons he hadn’t, couldn’t tell you, he couldn’t resist you, either.

You’d convinced him, on one especially clear-skied night, to go outside and look at the stars with you. He groaned at the idea, his thoughts already riddled with the aftermath of grass stains on his clothes and mud on his boots, but he said yes. For you.

So, you sat out in the grass by a stream with him, his head nestled into your lap. You spent an hour pointing out stars to him and making up the most absurd names for constellations you could think of, vehemently persuading him that they were real.

“I can’t believe you really believed there was a constellation called The King’s Toilet,” you giggled, looking down at him, a wry smile gliding onto your face.

“Sorry, did I not tell you fifteen times how insane that sounded?” He frowned, but his eyes betrayed the faintest inkling of amusement. “You derive too much enjoyment from making me suffer. You’re sick in the head. I should let Hange run experiments on you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t dare.” Your jaw dropped in mock-offense.

“I might.” The crease between his brow smoothed out, slightly.

A comfortable silence fell between you two, as you tilted your head back up to look at the sky.

“Sometimes,” you began, your voice wistful, melting into the midnight purple sky. “I look up at the moon when we’re not together, and I wonder if you’re looking at it, too. Wherever you are.”

You tilted your head back down, your eyes found his.

“This is why you keep me around, huh? To torment me with your sentimentality?” His gaze narrowed, but the lightest shade of pink crawled onto his cheeks, barely perceptible through the darkness.

“No, it’s not,” your voice leveled out into a mellow rhythm. “I also like looking at your nose.”

“That’s what does it for you?” His eyebrow raised, hovering somewhere between disbelief and mesmerized. “My nose?”

Mmm, you hummed, the soft lilt of your voice blending melodically into the chirping of crickets and serene trickling of the stream — he was certain that it was the most beautiful song he’d ever heard.

“It does. Among other things.” Your finger gently traced down the slope of his nose, landing at the tip of it. “But, mostly your nose.”

His eyes trailed from your finger on his nose, up your hand, up the gentle curve of your arm, your shoulder, your neck. Without even trying, he memorized every faded scar, every freckle, every strand of hair that fell past your shoulder. Consuming the sight of you was like breathing for him — involuntary, simple, but necessary for his survival.

When his eyes finally met yours, it wasn’t just that he saw something in them. It was that he saw everything.

“You’re really strange, you know. I’ll remember to look at the moon more.” His voice was dry as ever. It was the only thing he could think to say; the words he truly felt were stuck somewhere in his ribcage, tangled together and out of his reach.

“I know.” You whispered, your words dripping out of your mouth as sweet as honey onto his skin. Your finger fell from the tip of his nose to his lips. You knew.

You leaned down, strands of your hair falling forward and gently grazing against his jawline; a touch so delicately intimate, it felt like a secret he was being let in on.

Your lips pressed softly against his, which immediately parted, just for you. His tongue swept across yours. No, this wasn’t honey. It was so much better. This was ambrosia — the stuff reserved for only the gods to taste, miraculous, a promise of immortality.

This was forever. He was sure of it. You were, too.

***

As the months passed by, Levi came to visit you more frequently. You weren’t sure if this was a conscious effort of his or simply happenstance, and you didn’t ask. You just accepted it.

He’d sleep with his head on your chest, the steadiness of your heartbeat soothing him to sleep. At first, he’d tend to wake up throughout the night, staring at the ceiling or out the window; he’d wake up before you, the bed empty beside you in the morning. You’d never forget the first time you woke up to him, still asleep, nuzzled against your chest. Soon, that became normal.

You’d tell him stories about the minutiae of your daily life, which he’d listened to intently, finding that they gave him a brief, rare feeling of normalcy. You’d read him passages from the books you read — he’d mutter gripes under his breath at poetry and clench his jaw in concentration at history. You’d muse and ramble about your latest ideas, dreams, wishes, hopes, and no matter how ridiculously sentimental he’d call you, he’d always listen as if your voice was the only sound that had ever existed to him.

For the most part, this is how it was. You talked. And he listened. Physical affection was shared with softer, gentler touches, though his lips seemed to always find the tender spot on your neck below your ear, his favorite place to kiss you. His hand would wrap around the bottom of your neck, not with any force or possessiveness, but with reverence, worship.

Levi began to open up to you, too. He’d tell you a story about his days in the Underground or what went wrong during his last mission or about how uncertain he really felt, all the time. He’d confide in you that he didn’t know if good or bad even existed within him, that he wasn’t entirely sure what he was anymore. He’d reveal pieces of himself the way water flows from a cracked vase — a slow, evenly paced drip. And every time he told you something new, he looked a little bit softer, lighter.

He’d started bringing you bundles of wildflowers when he’d see you because he said they reminded him of you. By the time they’d start to wilt, he’d appear at your door, fresh ones in hand. It was like a perfectly tuned clock, set to a pace that only the two of you knew about.

When you were together, the entire universe diluted itself down to the two of you — all of the stars, the cosmos, existed just to burn between the two of you. Nothing else mattered.

It was like this for a while. But, fate is fickle, and some forevers, like the stars in the sky, burn too brightly, too fiercely, too quickly to last eternally.

His visits to you became fewer and further in between. It wasn’t his fault, you knew this. You’d never blame him for it. You’d heard whisperings of what had been going on within the Survey Corps and it was enough to make you worry. Actually worry.

It had been a handful of months since he’d last visited you, but he still fit into your bedroom like he had never left. Wildflowers in hand.

The warm glow of the candlelight in your room illuminated his features in a way that softened his often sharp appearance — he was so beautiful. He had no idea. He never did.

Your head was cradled in his lap as he sat against the headboard of your bed. His hand rested on the top of your head, stroking your hair and holding you in place, as if keeping you where you belonged.

His gaze was distant, fixated on some invisible point in front of himself, far away. He was like this the last time he visited you, too. And the time before. And the time before.

His fingers slipped through your hair; he slipped through your fingers.

“Levi,” you whispered, gently. “Where are you? Come back...”

His gaze snapped to yours, a foggy haze in his eyes. “Sorry.”

His fingers continued their soft motion through your hair.

“What’s been going on with you?” You didn’t want to ask, you didn’t want to know the answer. You were afraid that the question would pry out of him an answer that would shatter the fragile glass that had encased the two of you, preserving your connection.

“It��s…” his eyes searched yours, as if contemplating how much to reveal, how much to worry you, “complicated. Tch. Gone to shit. Everything has. I don’t have a damn clue what’s going to happen. Not that I ever have.”

You reached up, your fingers gently molded to the curve of his cheek, a familiar feeling. “Levi, isn’t it always complicated? And you always end up on the other side of it. You will this time, too.” You tried to lull him out of this riptide with your voice.

His hand found the back of his neck, rubbing it with jagged movement.

“It’s different this time. Every shitty thing is different. I can’t afford to be… away from it anymore. I can’t keep letting everyone down. I just- I have to be there. I can’t afford distractions.”

Your lips dipped into a small frown. “Is that what this has been for you? What… I have been to you? A distraction?”

“No.” His eyes widened, flooding with instant regret. “Fuck. No.”

“I guess,” you sighed, your throat working hard to get the words out, “even from the start, I knew it was only a matter of time, before…”

“Yeah,” he cut you off. “It probably was.”

Silence. A long one.

“Shit,” he muttered, the word slicing through the thick air. His hand shifted from the back of his neck to on top of yours, holding your hand to his cheek as if it was his last lifeline, his final fruitless attempt to keep you attached to him.

“You’ll be able to come back eventually, right? Even if it takes a long time?” It was a Hail Mary of a question, and you knew that, but you were desperate. The very core of your being filled with an impossibly chasmic ache at the thought of him not returning to you.

“I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep, Y/N.”

You paused. Your gaze drifted away from him. “I love you, Levi.”

“I know.” He replied quickly, his voice husky, strained. He took a breath. “I love you too, Y/N.”

It was the first time he’d ever said it.

Your eyes found his, for what you knew was the last time.

And there it was. That softened gaze of his.

“Maybe in the next life, we’ll get it right.” Your voice barely made a sound, the words disappearing into the air.

“Maybe.”

He retracted his hand. Yours dropped down to the bed.

***

It was for an everlasting stretch of time that you felt like you were left with the hollowed out husk of a soul. You couldn’t fathom the thought of ever loving again; part of you would always belong to him.

Time had a funny way of surprising you, though, the way it always does. Eventually, you learned to fill that empty husk again; it became new, different.

Your head started to fit in the crook of someone else’s neck. The sound of someone else’s voice saying your name became the last thing you’d hear every night. You memorized a new person’s list of likes, dislikes, idiosyncrasies, fears, memories, mannerisms, hopes.

You’d finally reached goals that you’d once told Levi about, visited places you thought you’d bring him to see. You’d have dreams that he’d find nonsensical, complaints that you knew only he’d understand, or read a book that he’d enjoy. You’d wake up one day and suddenly have a distaste for what was once your favorite food, and for some reason, you’d want to tell him — you’d want to write to him, “I’ve changed since then. Have you?”

You’d still look at the moon sometimes and wonder if, maybe, he was looking at it, too. Like he said he would.

When you heard through a chain of friends-of-friends-of-friends that Levi was actually getting married to someone else, it felt like your entire world shifted on its axis. It wasn’t that you were angry, or even surprised — you had moved on, and he had every right to do the same.

It was that you wondered if a part of him still belonged to you, too.

You wondered if she loved his nose the way you did.

***

The day was here. Levi stood at the altar, a place that he honestly never envisioned himself being, across from someone who wasn't you. But, it felt right. This much was true. Being with her felt like being enveloped in a slow, warm breeze that could thaw through the coldest winter air. Her love was a tender, soft comfort he’d grown used to, that he’d started to rely on. It was different.

“I do.” The words came out of her mouth soft, rounded, sweet. Her cheeks glowed. She was happy. He made her happy. Even still, it was hard for him to believe that he could have that effect on somebody.

And now, she had told everyone that this — that Levi — was, undoubtedly, her forever.

It was his turn to say it. Those two words.

He looked into her eyes.

And, while he knew that he saw something in them, he didn’t see everything.

Requested by @leviykwim

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