#i am not sick anymore ! however ive barely eaten anything this whole week and now that i can feel hunger again this is Not Ideal | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jediryssabean · 7 years

Text

you’ve got stars in your eyes

hi everyone! i know it’s been about ten thousand years, but the thing is is that i’ve been working on a full-time internship and finishing up my master’s classes this semester, so i’m a little bit bogged! however............... that doesn’t mean i’ve been K.O.ed.......... because here i am with an update, haha.

thank you, as always, to @baegerbombtastic for being dramatic and putting herself on the floor after she looks over these things every, like, ten minutes.

so here we are, everybody. finally. more prince au.

Pairing: Eren/Levi Verse: Let There Be Light (a prince au) Rating: T (overall E) Summary: Eren wonders, a little, if every kiss will feel like it’s... inevitable. Or fated, or destined, or—or something like that. He wonders if it’ll always leave him this breathless, if the way Levi’s thumbs feel against his cheeks will always twist his stomach just like so. He wonders a lot of things as Levi holds his face between his palms, as their noses brush together when he adjusts the angle of their lips, as Levi sighs against his mouth.

“I was waiting to kiss you,” Eren tells him between one breath and the next. The watered-down sunlight of the morning flutters against the rafters, throwing oddly-shaped shadows against the slope of the ceiling. “Until I brushed my teeth, I mean.”

Levi huffs a breath against Eren’s lips, and when he speaks his voice is low enough to crawl along the floor. “Yeah, well, I didn’t wanna wait anymore.”

Or you can [Read on AO3]!

chapters: i | ii | iii | iv | v | vi | vii | viii | ix | x | xi

(The Queen Regent had come to visit him, three hours after—it. Everything. That.

She’d sat upon his mattress in the exact same place that Levi had been only thirty minutes before, and it had sighed beneath her weight, the springs groaning gently beneath too many layers of fluff and cotton and whatever else. The loft had creaked something somber, and the sound had settled high in the vaulted ceilings, like bats in some greyscale horror movie.

Eren had still been able to feel Levi’s fingers in his hair. He’d been able to smell him against the pillows, the sheets, his fingertips—even past the blood that had congealed in his nose.

For some reason, it’d made him feel sick. For some reason, everything made him feel sick.

Ha! For some reason. For some reason. For some fucking reason.

For some reason, Annie had tried to kill him.

“my darling,” his mother had said with a voice that moved like tendrils of ivy, the words curling on his duvet in the shape of pronged leaves, “is there anything i can get you?” Her hand had been softer than Levi’s, uncallused and very regal, and the pads of her fingers had brushed over his hair, his ear, his cheek in a pattern they hadn’t used since he’d been very young. Since before he’d been declared heir apparent, probably.

There had been a teacup, untouched and now long cold, within her field of vision, and yet she’d asked him anyway. It had been sitting beside his circlet on the bedside table.

It’d been funny, somehow—the way his mother had shaken dust from skills she hadn’t used since he’d been too young to speak properly, the way she’d rounded out the edges of her words into something that could sit safely on his pillows and cut nothing. He’d been unable to place his finger on why it was funny, exactly, there in the dimness of his too-big bedroom with too-many hiding places for shadows.

But then the Queen Regent had turned her body, and she’d bowed her head, and she’d left a kiss against his temple that smelled of rosewater—and Eren had figured it out. The feeling sawed its way through his chest, had dumped itself onto his bedsheets in an ugly and asymmetrical mass, had made his eyes sting with its stench.

For the first time in his life, he’d felt fragile.)

Eren doesn’t leave his bedchambers for eight days.

All things considered, it’s been the most convenient time to kill him since his birth.

People have come in and out, in blurs of sound and barely-there breezes, whispers and the smells of cooked food. Hannes, with breakfast. Jean, with lunch. Sasha, with dinner. His mother, in between meals. They’ve asked things, and he’s probably responded with sentences that don’t matter. Occasionally, he supposes, he’s showered. When he’s remembered, he’s almost sure that he’s eaten, even if it hasn’t been much.

The sun has traveled across the walls, sighed against the ceiling, only to disappear again.

When the sun sets, it feels a lot like the family crypt had, years and years ago. Eren has licked away the imitation of moss against his teeth, of cold stone, of bone-deep dampness. His thumb has traced the ornate patterns carved against marble coffins against his sheets, has left behind the feeling of stone-dust against the pads of his fingers.

At night, Levi has come to see him. Stone whispers against stone as the passageway beneath the loft opens, and Levi’s bootsteps have been almost silent against the floor, on the stairs, on the base of the loft itself.

As always, when Levi speaks, it has sounded like rainfall against freshly turned earth. The gardens cling to his clothes, leaving traces of soil and flower petals against the pillows, and the sheets, and the duvet. If Eren had turned his face into Levi’s palm, he’s certain that he would’ve been able to taste the outdoors that he’s been missing—the silver creeper vine and the fucking lemon queen sunflowers and the helenium blossoms that probably look like lit candles even with winter building in the mountains.

But he didn’t, and so the memories of the gardens only rattled around in his sinuses as Levi’s fingers moved through his hair, as he told stories about his day, as he—as he waited for Eren to say anything at all.

He’d waited a whole fucking week for nothing.

As the sun paints itself along the rafters for the ninth time, hanging golden tendrils over the wood, digging almost-silver threads into the grained furrows, Eren wonders how long a person ought to wait for—whatever. For... him to get out of bed? For him to—what? Get over it and move on? For him to... go back in time and pay more attention. For him to see this coming. For—

Eren sniffles once and it still hurts to breathe through his nose. He can taste the echo of blood when he swallows, can feel its ghost flaking against his back molars. It makes his stomach twist, makes him want to vomit, makes his muscles tighten to the point that he has to spring into motion—

Except he doesn’t. His body stays exactly where it is.

When he blinks, he can feel the crust of restless sleep cracking at the corners of his eyes.

The door to his bedchambers whispers open for the second time this morning, and a thought, edged in fog and raw cotton, tickles the back of his skull. He’s certain that Hannes has been by already with breakfast, and it’s just this side of too early for him to come and pick up an untouched plate.

Besides, these bootsteps are different.

Hannes’ have an even rhythm, solid against the floor, muffled where his boots hit carpet. This is different; the quiet, faraway flutter of the soles of boots against the stone floor, the wooden stairs to the loft, the outermost edge of the loft proper.

Eren knows them just as well as Hannes’, even as he doesn’t roll over to watch Levi crest the stairs. Just like he knows that sigh, and that hum, and the sound of Levi’s fingers trailing over the outermost stitching on the duvet.

Sunlight makes itself a curtain on the rafters. Dust motes circle one another inside it.

The image of rainfall against earth, against wide leaves, against flower petals rises from the floor when Levi speaks, starting the same way every conversation has for the past eight days.

“Eren,” he says, like he’s been saying, like he’ll say for—probably not much longer. His fingers have stopped moving against the bedspread. “Time to get up.”

Or—wait. That’s not how this starts.

Eren’s lips thin around something he could say—something witty enough that it’d be almost normal, so he could fall back into the ease of... this. Talking. But the words wither away behind his teeth, curling into unrecognizable shapes, tasting of ash as it mixes with his spit. Disgusting.

Bootsteps, shifting again, just out of view and almost silent.

The glow of the rafters haloes Levi’s hair as he steps into Eren’s line of sight and he’s—beautiful. That’s not surprising, it’s never been, but it feels like there’s a hand pressing on the center of his chest. Eren can hear his ribs cracking under its pressure.

There are lines on Levi’s face, and his lips are curved downward beneath the weight of this. His eyebrows are furrowed, as they had been the night that everything had happened, as they had been when he’d reset Eren’s nose. But, gods above, if his face isn’t painfully fucking soft, like any edges had been rubbed away by the morning.

One of his ribs breaks as Levi looks at him like that. He can feel it pop free from his sternum, leaving him winded.

“Eren,” Levi says again, and he’s impossible to look away from as his fingers find their way into Eren’s hair, his nails drawing lines against his scalp, “we’ve got somewhere to be. Time to get up.”

Eren’s voice cracks like thin ice—or like rock, breaking away from a mountain that’s too far away to hear properly. “We? We who?”

Levi’s fingertips against the shell of his ear, the side of his face, the pad of his thumb drawing over Eren’s lower lip. And then, “you and me. I told your mother we were going out today, and I’d hate to be a liar. So it’s really time for you to get your ass out of bed, yeah?”

If he listens, he thinks he can hear his own bones vibrating beneath his skin.

“Out?” Levi shifts his weight between his feet as Eren watches him, and his hair falls into place above his eyebrows. Their faces are now close enough that Eren can see the shadows beneath his eyes. “Wait, you did what?”

“I told the Queen Regent that we are leaving the palace today.” Levi’s thumb drags a trail along Eren’s jaw, catching on razorburn left from the middle of the night before—and then both his hands grab the edge of the duvet, pulling the fabric from Eren’s hands and scattering it down against the footboard.

It’s jarring, how chilly the air is around him. Jarring enough that he pushes himself upright, appalled.

“You didn’t.” For a moment, Eren can breathe through his nose, can feel his palms begin to sweat against the sheets, can feel his toes curl. But then he swallows, and the healing bridge of his nose aches when he sniffles, and the sandpaper in his windpipe begins to rub his words raw. “Where—what are we doing?”

There’s satisfaction in the way Levi cocks his head, then, and there’s almost a smile pulling at his lips. Almost. “That’s a surprise. So get out of bed.”

They’re more-or-less the same height like this—Eren, sitting up against the pillows and Levi standing just adjacent to the mattress—but Levi offers out a hand anyway.

One heartbeat echoes between them. Two. Three. A breath. Four heartbeats.

And then Eren pulls himself out of bed, using Levi’s hand for leverage. There’s no dirt against his palm to indicate that Levi had been in the gardens at all this morning, just like there’s no earthen smell clinging to his hair, or his skin, or his clothes, despite the grass-and-ground stains against his jeans. Standing up changes the perspective of his bedchambers, a little.

It brings attention to the fact that Levi is... casually dressed. Some cable-knit sweater over jeans about half-as-old as Eren is.

“Well look at you,” Levi says, like a dewdrop sliding along the curve of a leaf before it hits the ground beneath it, “still looking like a prince with your hair all... like that.”

Eren clears his throat, coughing against things that had never made it more than halfway toward the back of his tongue. “Yeah, well, you know. It’s probably the style now, having hair ‘like that.’” Levi’s hand is warm in his own when he squeezes it, biting his tongue against the urge to—kiss him? To... pull him close? To— “Good morning. Uh, to you.”

Levi scoffs, his nose wrinkling with it, his face wearing an expression far easier to stomach than—whatever that had been, moments earlier. “Good morning. Good to see you, uh, out and about.” His eyes move back and forth over Eren’s face, slowly, and it reminds him of the corridor, reminds him of the base of the stairs, reminds him of how Levi had reached across the distance between them to look at his nose and—

Eren flinches when Levi’s palm presses to his cheek, cradling the left side of his face. He pretends that he didn’t just see a fog loop around Levi’s pupils, muffling whatever feeling had been going on inside them.

He leans into the touch instead of asking about the thing he’d seen shift on Levi’s face, and wonders if Levi can feel the thrumming of his pulse through the thin skin under his fingers. “So, uh,” Eren says, and at the edges of his vision he thinks he can still see glimpses of the corridor, the stairs, that night creeping into his bedroom, “you came through the front door. What will people say?”

Something clears in the unbroken winter sky of Levi’s irises, and he blinks—blinks, frowns, wrinkles his nose. “Whatever the fuck they want. I already told you, your mother knows what we’re doing, and she gave me ‘permission,’ for whatever that’s worth. I’m not going to sneak around for no reason when the whole point is just to get you out of the fucking palace, but that starts with getting you out of your bedroom.”

Color, a little bit furious, has begun to collect in the hollows of Levi’s cheeks. Eren watches it tint the outermost edges of Levi’s ears.

The hand is back against Eren’s chest. Another rib pops free from his sternum under its weight. “Right. Sorry, I—about getting out of—sorry.”

Levi’s fingers stiffen against his cheek, his free hand coming up to join the first. His grip is solid, Levi’s thumbs moving back-and-forth in trembling lines along the shape of his cheekbones as he pulls Eren’s face down just enough to almost make them eye-level. There’s a storm beginning in the furrow between Levi’s eyebrows, in the tension beside his lips.

“That’s not what I was saying.” In his voice is the rumble of distant thunder. Eren can feel it in his own chest, rattling the loose ribs against one another. “You’ve got every right to want to stay in here. You’ve got every right to feel like—to feel like you do. But there’re people talking about how help you, but no one’s doing anything.” Gods above, from here Levi’s eyelashes go on forever—and Eren’s so glad that he can notice that. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he wasn’t able to notice that. “Don’t you dare fucking apologize to me.”

There’s something he should say to that, but Eren’s windpipe twists itself into knots and it’s choking him.

He feels like he can’t breathe.

“Besides,” and Levi’s voice shifts again, turning itself into sunlight, holding onto the rafters in a loose grip, “someone was going to know anyway, eventually. Right? You said so yourself—kissing breaks.”

For a moment, Eren can taste the hint of roses and wisteria against the back of his tongue.

(There’s a memory about the ballroom that doesn’t hurt to think about.

Eren had been able to feel Levi’s eyes on him as he’d swept around the dancefloor, the marble beneath his boots almost too polished, sending the reflections of skirts and legs and light in every direction. There had been sweat beading on the back of his neck, at his hairline, beneath the collar of his too-tight jacket.

He’d been unable to keep a stupid fucking half-smile off his face.

“so,” Ymir had said, shifting the position of her feet as they’d played a game in the middle of hundreds of eyes—switching between leading and following in classic dances, just barely toeing the line of impropriety, “are you ever going to ask your gardener to dance, or are you going to wait until next time?”

Eren’s attention had shifted from the khol painted around Ymir’s eyes to where Levi had been standing, tucked in an alcove almost hidden by immaculate roses. He’d been sharing words, in stops and starts, with Her Majesty Historia Reiss.

Levi’s fingers had fluttered in a wave when their eyes had met. Eren had almost felt it against his lips, and his ears had gone hot in the span of two heartbeats. His heart had twisted inside his chest, the smile stuck on his face going wider—and then he’d disappeared as they’d shifted around in another circle.

Ymir shifted again, falling back into the follower’s footwork.

“if you’re going to keep making eyes like that,” Ymir had said, “you’d better be asking him to dance.”

Eren had swallowed, then—had almost allowed himself to get caught up in the fantasy of sweeping Levi around the ballroom, of stealing kisses, of tipping him backward, of—all of it. “next time,” he’d said, soft enough that he’d let it get crushed beneath the feet of the other dancers, had let it get lost inside the folds of the attendee’s clothes. “we’ll ask him next time.”

“will we be invited to see that?” Ymir’s voice, just as quiet as his had been. Her breath had stirred the smell of wisteria between them. “historia and i would like to keep it for posterity.”

Eren had snorted, had rolled his eyes as they took another turn together. For the first time in his life, the fucking majestic plural had tasted of roses as he’d spoken it. Roses and champagne and freshly pressed clothes. “we guess we can squeeze you onto the list. probably.”

Ymir’s laughter had blended into the sound of violins, rising toward the domed ceiling of the ballroom, hanging there like lace.)

Eren wonders, a little, if every kiss will feel like it’s... inevitable. Or fated, or destined, or—or something like that. He wonders if it’ll always leave him this breathless, if the way Levi’s thumbs feel against his cheeks will always twist his stomach just like so. He wonders a lot of things as Levi holds his face between his palms, as their noses brush together when he adjusts the angle of their lips, as Levi sighs against his mouth.

Levi huffs a breath against Eren’s lips, and when he speaks his voice is low enough to crawl along the floor. “Yeah, well, I didn’t wanna wait anymore.”

Eren doesn’t know what to say to that, even as something starts to pile on the back of his tongue, covered in thorns and too-dry earth. It threatens to choke him, this fucking feeling rising up in his throat. It presses hard against his windpipe, starts a distant clanging in his ears.

When he takes a breath to say something meaningful, to apologize again, to do anything, it’s as if his jaw his wired shut—but it doesn’t really matter anyway. Levi beats him to the punch.

“Come on,” Levi continues, using one hand, pressed to the back of Eren’s head, to bring their foreheads together in a soft tap. The furrow between Levi’s eyebrows smooths out when it touches the center of the sunburst just above-and-between Eren’s own. “We’ve got to get you presentable for the shit I’ve got planned.”

Eren swallows twice before he speaks, and it doesn’t hurt to say, “I feel like you’re inching in on my role? The whole enigma-mystery thing.”

Levi snorts, breathes a laugh against Eren’s lips, and steps backward, letting his other hand drag its knuckles along his cheek before it drops away. “I think you’re being dramatic. There’s not a whole lot of shit I’ve got to show you. It’s not like I’m about to take you underground and show you secret passages into the city, or whatever. That’s something you would do.”

Something flickers in the back of Eren’s brain—all the things that he doesn’t really know about Levi, or the things that he kind of knows, or the things he’d like to know. It lingers there long enough for Eren to cup his hands around it and save it for later, to warm the center of his palms while he waits for the right moment to ask.

Until then, Eren’s body almost follows the sensation of Levi’s fingers against his skin, but he holds himself still for half-a-moment before he hooks one finger into the closest of Levi’s belt loops. The denim is worn against his knuckle. “That’s a little over-the-top. It sounds like you think I’m some kind of mole-person.”

“More like a gopher-person.” This time, it is a smile tugging at Levi’s features. It’s wide enough that it toys with the skin beside his eyes and it gives birth to stars in the clouds of his irises. “But come with me. We need to get you as normal-looking as possible. Campus-ready, like—“ a pause, a smile, and Eren thinks he can catch the smell of summer-warm brick, thinks he can feel the whisper of fountain-mist against his face, “—like, you know. When we traipsed around the university for your benefit.”

“Campus-ready,” Eren repeats, and when he breathes, the shit that’s been tying itself in knots in his chest feels looser than it has in days. “Right.”

The bed stays unmade as they make their way down from the loft, Eren’s finger still hooked in the loop of Levi’s jeans. The stairs creak under their weight and sunlight scatters out of the way of their shadows as their feet hit the stone floor at the bottom.

Eren curls his toes against the chill.

“I’m going to find you something to wear that’s not ironed,” Levi tells him, his voice stirring the quiet like wind through ferns. “You do whatever it is that you have to do in the morning, like maybe... brushing your hair.” One hand comes up to ruffle against the mess that Eren’s certain his hair is in, and it makes him snort against the feeling.

“What, I thought you said it looked good like that?”

“I did,” Levi replies. “But I get to see it like that.” He lets his fingers linger against Eren’s scalp before he pulls his hand away, tapping his index finger against the tattoo in the middle of Eren’s forehead. He can feel it in the soles of his feet. “Don’t forget about this.”

who could fucking forget about it? gathers in his mouth, knocks against his teeth, buzzes in his sinuses. It’s a stupid response, rubs the inside of his cheeks raw—so what Eren says instead is, “obviously. I was sneaking out of parties before I met you, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Another tap against the sunburst, and then Levi stands on his toes and tugs Eren down by his collar to press a kiss there. His heart feels like—his heart feels like— “But what I also remember is that when you were fucking around with my fields, your concealer smeared. So I don’t think a reminder is a huge issue.”

His heart feels full—full and about to burst, or maybe full but famished.

“Okay, okay.” There’s heat pooling in his cheeks, gathering in his ears, sitting in his gut. “I’ll make sure it’s absolutely protected. No one’ll see it.”

Levi laughs, letting it hold sunlight like a fucking plant, making energy out of nothing. It’s so light that it sounds relieved when it drags itself across the walls, the floor, the furniture. It makes it feel like there are flower petals brushing against the lining of his stomach, even as Levi is already stepping toward Eren’s open closet.

“All the—all the clothes that are normal are in the very back,” Eren says to the curve of Levi’s shoulders. “They’re behind a lot of shit so no one would find them.”

“Okay,” Levi turns his head only slightly to toss the word over his shoulder—and then he disappears through the arched doorway, flicking the light on as he does.

And then it’s just Eren, his bedchambers, and the plate of artfully arranged fruit that’s sitting on his coffee table. Beside it sits a mug of coffee, absolutely cold by now, a container of sugar, and a small carafe of milk. A ring of condensation has gathered beneath the carafe and spread, a little, reaching swollen hands toward the plate of fruit.

It’s tempting, the setup. It’s tempting enough that he takes three strawberries with on his way to the bathroom, tossing away the caps in the trash beneath his sink when there’s nothing but strawberry juice clinging to the corners of his lips.

The man in the mirror that meets his eyes has a lot more on his face than strawberry juice.

There’s a cut across the middle of his nose, and the skin around it is still purple-blue-green from the force with which his face had hit the bathroom counter. More bruising has gathered around one eye, and a split in his lip keeps having to grow a new scab every time Eren bites on it too hard. And, naturally, there’s the golden sun in the middle of his forehead, throwing the bathroom light back and the mirror and making the shape of his hair against his skin look a little bit like cloud-cover.

Gods above, he looks fucking terrible. Eren himself looks fucking terrible.

He doesn’t look any less terrible as he brushes his teeth.

The process of cleaning up is faster than Eren had thought it would be. The toothpaste had left behind the aftertaste of cinnamon as he rubs concealer against the noon-high sun inked into his skin, blending its edges into the same color as the rest of his face.

At least the bruising will make it easier to be somebody else for a little while. It’s hard to imagine the Prince looking like this.

The drawer directly beneath the counter chatters quietly when he shuts it, and Levi’s shape appears in the mirror over his shoulder. In his hands is a sweatshirt that Eren’s sure that he’d been kissed by Levi in and a pair of worn jeans that he’d forgotten that he owned. It probably doesn’t smell like the gardens anymore, but the thought is kind of nice.

Eren almost turns to meet him halfway, but his hips stop short of turning. Something trembles inside his chest, and he can’t move, and the mirror is reflecting a nightmare he can’t remember having.

It doesn’t go away when he blinks.

(Levi, at his back, and their reflections in the mirror of the palace restroom, offset from the corridor closest to ballroom. The lava stone is throwing and absorbing light in equal measure. The sink is whispering, water rotating around the drain sitting at the bottom of the polished bowl.

Eren’s chest feels tight, like he can’t breathe, like something’s out of place, like something’s wrong.

But Levi’s face is soft, and there’s a smile on his lips, and—

The bridge of his nose hits the edge of the bathroom counter. He can taste blood in his mouth.)

Eren’s knuckles go white as he holds himself upright against the wall beside his sink. The morning has painted itself along his bathroom walls, has collected around the drain of his shower, has fixed itself to the corners of Levi’s eyes as he looks at him with that—with that fucking face that’s almost too soft to be real, and twists itself inside Eren’s chest to spear through his ribs and his lungs and his heart.

The bathroom spins.

“Hey.” Levi’s fingers against his pulse, his cheek, his forehead. “Hey, are you okay?”

It’s like coughing up thistles when Eren tells him, “I’m fine.”

(Jean, pressed against his back. Panic, rising in his throat, a bile that burned his tonsils.

“how often have you been notified of the attempts on your life?” Shadis had asked him, the question clogged by the humidity of the summer. “your highness.”)

The same motion, for the second time. Levi’s fingers against his pulse, his cheek, his forehead, like he’s feeling for a fever. “You—” a pause that creaks like rusted hinges, and then Levi tries again. “We don’t have to go out today. It was—I shouldn’t’ve just made fucking plans. That was—I shouldn’t’ve done that.”

“I said I’m fine.” Eren clears his throat as the world rights itself, the noises of the ballroom and the murmur of the summer chasing themselves around in his ears. “I’m really, really fine. I wanna get out of here.” Tension, everywhere on Levi’s face. It’s like looking at someone carved from stone. “What ever did you pick out for me to wear?”

The clothes are draped over one arm and they’re soft when Levi hands them over—but Levi doesn’t say anything. Curtains have covered the windows of his eyes, leaving them still and a little bit frozen. Eren can feel them against his face with all the weight of mountain snow.

The bathroom is silent except for the rustle of his clothes over his hair, his shoulders, his hips. The soles of his bare feet whisper against the tile floor. Once, Levi breathes deeply and shuts his eyes.

Eren feels like he’s suffocating.

He breaks the silence underneath his own bodyweight, barreling through it shoulder-first. It washes out the numbness in his mouth with something bitter, instead.

“Do you know how Annie’s doing?”

For a moment, Levi doesn’t look like he’s alive. He’s still enough to be a painting, etched into a canvas with the edge of a knife and left to sit there. But then he swallows, and the cracked pieces of his posture begin to flake from the line of his throat, from his elbows, from the shift of his hips.

And then he says, “she didn’t last more than twenty-four hours in a holding cell.” The shape Levi’s mouth takes looks painful, like it’s scraping against his tongue to get it out. “No one’s sure if someone gave her something poisoned or if the palace guard just missed something when they searched her and she had it the whole time.” His voice gets lower as he continues, “I figured someone would’ve told you by now.”

It feels like smoke is sitting in his lungs. His face feels hot.

He thinks of the chef’s apprentice, who had died after eating poisoned food. He’s been thinking about him a lot, lately.

“Levi,” Eren says, and he sounds a lot like he had in the corridor—like his voice was coming from too far away, like it was hidden in static, “I really wanna get out of here.”

There’s no hesitation when Levi replies, “okay.”

(The plate of fruit will be cleaned before they end up leaving. Eren will be sitting on the floor at Levi’s feet, just within reach of Levi’s clean fingers as he absentmindedly toys with Eren’s hair. There won’t be much to say as they finish breakfast, because any questions Eren might’ve had will die before they ever manage to leave his lungs. Every single one will taste of ashes when he breathes in.

“it’s my fault,” Eren will say to the cold coffee between his hands. When he drinks it, it won’t be near sweet enough, but he’ll take what he can get. “the—annie. it’s my fault.”

Levi’s fingers will go still in his hair, and he will uncross his ankles, slowly. The motion will remind Eren of a predator or—something. It’ll send chills down Eren’s spine. “that’s fucking ridiculous,” Levi will tell him. The wicker chair will creak when he leans forward to hold Eren’s gaze with his own. “you’ve said yourself that you’ve never asked for what happens to you.”

“yeah.” Eren’s voice will rub against itself like dried wheat. “i know. but this time i—” It will get stuck in his throat, the first time. He’ll need to clear his throat twice to keep going. “she asked me what i was going to do when i was king. the vision i had for the—what i want for the kingdom—i don’t even know what i’m doing.” Levi’s fingers will be trembling against the crown of Eren’s head. “i think i gave the wrong answer.”

The pause between them will be as still as freshly frozen earth. And then Levi will say, “eren, you know i love you.”

Eren will blink—and then he will say, “yeah. you know i love you?”

“yeah.” Levi’s eyes will be endless, like always. Something complicated will be haunting them. “but what i want you to remember is that i fucking love you and i want you to trust me. okay?”

Eren will blink again, this time slowly. “okay?”

“okay. so believe me when i tell you that i will walk my ass into hell and drag anybody’s soul back onto this earth kicking and screaming before i let anyone tell you that your vision for the kingdom is anything less than miraculous.” A fire will be burning, somewhere behind Levi’s pupils. Eren will be able to catch glimpses of it, flashing against the storm looping around them. “you’ll be a great king.”

Eren’s throat will feel too tight to speak, but he’ll try anyway. “i want to be.”

“i can feel it in my fucking bones.”

When Levi kisses him, Eren will taste at least some kind of truth against his lips.

It will remind him of strawberries.)

(The Queen Regent had looked at him as if she couldn’t believe what the fuck had just come out of his mouth. Or maybe it was that she couldn’t believe what the fuck had come out of his mouth coupled with the fact that he’d said it while standing perfectly upright, his hands folded behind his back, holding her gaze with an iron grip.

Each of these things separately were grounds enough to lose his job. Put together? He’d probably be lucky to ever work again.

But instead of throwing him out or stringing him up, the only thing the Queen Regent had done was narrow her eyes and say, “what?”

“i’m taking eren out today,” Levi had said for the second time in exactly the same way. “there’s a nursery just inside the city limits that i get a lot of my inventory from, and i’d like him to see it. it’ll be time to remodel the gardens before you know it, your majesty.”

Levi had known for much of his life that the Queen Regent had never learned to throw a person down physically, but he’d heard a thousand times over how a finely placed word could draw blood—and so it had been no surprise that he felt her voice against his throat like a blade. “are you aware of what’s happened? there’s been an attempt on his life, and you’re asking to take him outside the palace?”

When Levi blinked, he could see flashes of Eren’s face that night. Blood had gathered on his upper lip, had worked its way down his chin. His skin hadn’t started to bruise yet, but Levi had known exactly where they would rise just by looking at him. His knuckles had been broken open, weeping blood and clear fluid, but hadn’t yet started to scab.

Levi’d felt his heart drop into his stomach—and then he’d felt it fracture, somewhere in its center.

Propriety had kept him in the ballroom while someone had held a dagger to Eren’s throat. Propriety had been Levi’s excuse for every lapse in fucking judgment he’d had since they’d met in the sunflower field, and so propriety had dissolved against his tongue as he’d reset Eren’s nose between his thumbs.

And so to the Queen Regent he’d said, “first, i’m not asking. i’m telling you that i’m taking eren out today. second, i’m sure you’re aware that this most recent attempt on eren’s life happened during your own fucking party, so i don’t feel like some mystery outing is going to put him in any more danger than him staying in his room where anyone who’s been in the palace for the past week could find him.” He’d paused, and the air had smelled of incense. The King Consort had been sitting at her side, silent.

Something shifted on the Regent’s face just then—and, in some ways, what she’d ended up saying had been unexpected. “sometimes i wish you’d taken that position in the guard. you’re the kind of stubborn that would keep him safe.” When she’d shut her eyes like that, it’d reminded him so much of Eren that he’d almost looked away—and he’d almost failed to notice that she hadn’t used the royal plural. But not quite. “but it is what it is. you’ve gotten your way, groundskeeper. if you can get him out of bed, you can take him out of the palace.”

Levi had almost squinted, in that moment, to get a better look at her face. Something about the skin beside her eyes had made him wonder if she’d been crying.

But he’d merely bowed, dropped his eyes to the star-speckled floor, and said, “thanks for the honor, your majesty.”

He’d been certain that she’d snorted—just like Eren would’ve.)

Eren’s eyes are closed against the not-quite-winter wind blows in from the open window as they wind down the highway toward the city. It pushes against his hair with heavy hands, pulling it back from his forehead as if it knows there’s supposed to be a midday sun there, blazing gold. The sky itself stretches above them almost-covered by white-gray clouds, setting the mood for the coming season with diluted daylight and more-or-less brittle air.

At this point, Levi wonders if Eren’s going to end up saying anything at all on this trip—and then he asks, “where did you live before you got here?”

Levi’s foot twitches on the gas with his surprise. “I’ve told you, I traveled a lot. My uncle and I were—“

“In a theatre thing, yeah.” Eren’s eyes look to be lined with ice, crawling from the outside inward as he watches the scenery pass by them. Levi remembers that he’s supposed to be keeping his eyes on the road. “But, like—where have you lived? Like for a long period.”

Levi’s memories pile up thick against his teeth. They’ve been easier to call up, recently. It makes it harder to lie—or maybe it’s that he’s fucking tired of skirting the edges of the truth, of letting it hold itself against his back like it’s about to run him through. It’s—it’s as if he’s blackmailing himself with all the shit he knows, and it’s starting to drive him crazy.

(“she tried to kill me.” Barely coherent, eyes wild, blood coagulating on his lips. “she tried to—she tried to fucking kill me.”)

No, that’s not quite right. It’s the fact that he missed his window to stop lying that’s driving him crazy.

“I spent quite a bit of time in Yvini,” Levi says, speaking with in a way that feel more truthful than anything else he’d considered. “I even learned a lot of the language while we were staying there. Theatre shapes itself for its audience, or some shit, and my uncle’s troupe thought that it’d be best if we knew what we were saying before we performed classics and pissed somebody off.”

Eren breathes a laugh against the torn skin of his knuckles, glancing away from the highway to meet Levi’s eyes for a hairsbreadth of a second. The wind shifts against his hair as the road curves just a little, scattering it above his eyebrows. “You always talk like you’re not cultured, and yet you were in the theatre. It’s just... weird.”

“I didn’t really care for a lot of my roles,” Levi says, and the capital starts to form on the horizon, bleeding out of some fog that’s coming from the sea even this far inland. A drizzling rain begins to bead on the windshield. “For the record, we’re not going to the theatre today. I’ve had enough of that shit for a lifetime, thanks.”

Eren laughs for the second time, but this one feels... odd. It’s not sharp, or anything, it’s just—flat, he thinks. It hits the floorboards of the car with a thud, but doesn’t roll anyone. It doesn’t bounce, or carry, or move much at all. It’s not right.

There’s something happening inside the cab of this truck that Levi can’t describe yet, but it feels a lot like stepping into hot water. His muscles are tensing against the sensation as Eren says, “I wasn’t playing a guessing game. I was just—” He shrugs with one shoulder, twisting his lips. “I was just curious, I guess. I just wanted to know, or something. Not that it was bugging me, or—I don’t know, I—“

Levi uses a split-second flicker of his eyes to judge where Eren’s cheek is before he reaches over to tap the knuckle of his index finger against his skin. There’s mist gathering there from the open window.

“Hey,” Levi can practically taste the rainwater against his lips, “feel free to ask away. It’s not like anyone knows me like you do anyway. I just don’t want you to get yourself all hyped up for some fucking fantastic surprise and then ending up disappointed.”

“You’re seriously underestimating the absolute technique of your surprises. I’m not going to be disappointed.” Eren catches Levi’s hand before he can drop it away, and he laces their fingers together with practiced ease. It’s so natural that Levi doesn’t know what he did before this—doesn’t know what he’d do without this. “Kinda sucks, though, don’t you think? Being through with acting?”

Levi slides his free hand along the steering wheel, pulling into a practically-empty parking lot edged in immaculately kept Karley rose fountain grass. “Not really.” Levi lets a half-smile pull at one corner of his mouth, arching both his eyebrows as he watches Eren’s face while the truck idles in park. “It gets fucking exhausting, said so yourself. Besides, wait ‘til your mother sees us kissing in one of those hallways. That’ll be something worth seeing.”

Eren laughs so hard that it looks like he catches himself by surprise, and whatever it was that he’d wanted to know evaporates beneath it. There’s an embarrassed color rising into the apples of his cheeks, and it darkens the skin of his throat as it moves across his features. The smile on his face is wide enough to dimple one of his cheeks and his hair settles into half the mess it’d been when Levi had pulled him out of bed. He looks for all the world like the college student he’s dressed as, and he’s so achingly beautiful that Levi can’t help but want to kiss him.

And so he does.

He doesn’t let his hands wander too far, even when he feels Eren’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks—but he does open his mouth, lets Eren do the same, lets their heads angle in different ways as their cheeks warm up from the ride itself.

Eren’s hair leaves behind the feeling of mist against Levi’s eyebrows when he pulls away, and he’s just a little bit absent when he says, “so—where are we?”

Levi’s lips are chapped when he draws his own tongue across them. He thinks he can catch a hint of strawberries and coffee and cinnamon. It must be what winter mornings will taste like, soon—tomorrow and a month from now, a year from now and a decade from now.

He has to clear his throat before he says, “this is the nursery I get all my shit from, for the gardens. I don’t exactly have the space to grow everything myself, so I’ve got to order most of it from here. It’s the only place I trust within less-than-a-day’s drive, and I wanted your opinion on what the winter gardens’ll look like.”

Eren shakes his head, once. Disbelief moves from one side of his face to the other, like wind through sunflowers. “I’m not even a little qualified to give any input on flowers. Besides—besides, what does it matter? The gardens always look beautiful because you always make them. I defer to your expertise.”

Levi turns off the engine, tucking the keys in his back pocket as he pops the driver’s side door open and slips out from behind the wheel. Eren isn’t even half-a-heartbeat behind him, the passenger-side door slamming shut before Levi deigns to comment. “It matters to me,” he says, meeting Eren behind the bed of the truck, offering his hand out, palm-up. “And you know all that shit I did with the autumn gardens? I’d like to be able to do that, but larger scale. I’d like to be able to picture you in them before I put them together. This’ll make it easier.”

Eren’s hand is warm despite the late-autumn chill, and the mist once more gathering in his hair. “You’re blowing smoke.”

“I’m being serious. I wanna see what some of the things I want will look like with you beside them. And I think you’ve passed enough of my basic botany quizzes to have some idea of what we’re doing.” A scoff, barely louder than the sound of mist as it gathers on the truck beside them. “Have I ever given you a reason to doubt me?”

A pause that Eren doesn’t feel—but Levi feels his heart slide against the mud between his lungs.

Eren squeezes Levi’s fingers at the same time he rolls his eyes, unaware of the stumble Levi’s thoughts at just taken. It feels as if he’d skinned his knees against concrete as they walk toward the stairs, a greenhouse rising behind a brick building with wide windows, scattered plants and patio furniture stretching far to either side.

“I guess not,” Eren says.

“You guess not. Okay.” The automatic doors sigh open as they hit the rubber ‘welcome’ mat, a bell chiming above their heads when they cross the threshold. The polished wood of the front counter makes the store-house look far more inviting than it has any right to be, despite the fact that it’s empty.

It smells of potting soil and heavy mulch, of hummingbird feed and freshly watered plants—and Petra’s voice rises above the shelves from the backmost corner of the small building, punctuated by the sound of her moving between displays. “One second! Sorry, you know how it goes, you expect dreary days to be kind of slow—oh!” Her body stops before her sentence does, and a smile touches every inch of her face. “Oh, shit, hi Levi! And—company!” Her attention shifts between them both, curiosity curling just beneath her eyes. “You’re new.”

“He’s with me,” Levi says. Eren’s grip is becoming almost painfully tight against his fingers, even as Petra drops a quick once-over to their hands. “We’re here for a little bit of business, a little bit of going out on the town.”

“Palace life a little rough?” Politeness lifts Petra’s tone just a hair too high, and Levi can see the questions attempting to get the better of her. He can almost catch glimpses of rolling against one another when she opens her mouth. “You both work there?”

“In different capacities. So you can see why we’d want a little time to ourselves.” Eren shifts his weight between his feet at Levi’s side, and Levi can see him thinking—just like he knows almost exactly what he’s paying attention to. Four exits: one behind them, one at the back of the store, and one to either side. Plenty of things to push over if necessary. How would he get Eren out? Easy—

Levi stops himself, and Petra nods her head. “Well, make yourself at home. The order forms are behind the desk when you’re ready. We’ll catch up when you inevitably have to stop by and pick up all the shit you need in a few weeks.” Her eyes move back-and-forth between them once more, a whiplash of motion. “It was nice to meet you—“

Eren smiles, just a little, and from this angle it looks like a giveaway—all courtesy and practiced grace, even underneath the cuts and the bruises and the weight of everything else. But then it shifts into something different, but the same, but not quite, and it’s bending beneath the charm that he’d be unable to leave behind if he’d tried.

“You too,” Eren tells her as if he’d dropped it into her hands instead of cutting off her gentle press for his name. “It’s really beautiful here.”

Her hair moves between every shade of orange as she tosses it, the ranch-style lighting turning some of it the color of pristine straw. “I know. But thanks for saying so. Enjoy the tour—Levi knows every inch of this place by now.”

She disappears back between the shelving, her footsteps following a path that Levi is certain is more habit than intent.

And then it’s just the two of them, slipping around the front counter as Levi leads Eren outside through the door in the right wall, settled between winter-breed bird seed and rain-resistant bird houses.

The drizzle outside is still steady—no better or worse than they’d left it in the parking lot. The foliage outside is still colored for the fall, all rich reds and burnt oranges, royal purples and heavy blues. But between the autumn-bloomed plant-life and the constant tropics of the greenhouse sits the hardier, winter-ready blossoms.

Eren’s sneakers are practically silent against the pebbled pathways as they make their way forward, the sound muffled by the gentle murmur of dripping water against the earth.

“So,” Levi begins.

“So,” Eren parrots back, swinging their hands between them, a gesture casual enough that it gives Levi pause, pressing down on his stomach hard enough to make him want to throw up.

“So maybe next time turn down the wattage on that charm, Your Radiance,” Levi tells him, when he means to say something else entirely—something about what this moment is like, what the next moment will be like, what he wants the rest of their lives to be like. “I shouldn’t need sunglasses indoors.”

“Ha-ha. Shut up.” Eren’s nose wrinkles at that, a bead of water dragging itself over the raised cut at the bridge of his nose before tipping too far to the side and trailing down his cheek. It’s like watching a star fall, or whatever. Like watching gems throw light from between shadows made by leaves. “I was trying to be sneaky. I think I deserve some credit for that.”

“Yeah,” and Eren is already elbowing him gently in the ribs, making an exasperated sound in the back of his throat, “it sure is sneaky when you try and blind people. Very helpful.”

“Shut up,” Eren says with deep-colored cheeks, lifting the hand that isn’t laced through Levi’s and pointing at feather-headed grasses, sitting tall in deep pots. “Do something else and tell me what those are instead.”

When he says that, it feels so—this is so normal, it’s like walking around the gardens in the middle of the day, sneaking kisses and glances, hiding laughter and conversation, knowing that the gardens would keep their secrets, if only because Levi had built them to do so. Except the ones designed for winter would be something else. Something bigger, maybe. Something secret and celebratory. Something demure and obvious. Something—

“It’s called Karl Foerster grass.” A breeze tosses droplets of mistwater to the ground, gathering in patches that’ll be puddles by the end of the day. “Fuck if I know why. It’ll grown halfway up your chest, probably closer to my collar. Stays bloomed through winter, if you care for it right. You can get it with a pink tint that I think’ll look nice.”

“Huh.” Levi watches as Eren’s eyes follow the motion of the grasses in the breeze, and there’s a distance there that’s hard to quantify. “Where do you want to put it?”

“Around the base of our gazebo,” Levi says. “Where the cosmos and sunflowers go during the warmer months. I was thinking of some moss on the outer edges of the grasses, but I’d want you to look through them first.”

Eren doesn’t say anything to that, and the thing covering his features drifts just a little farther out, almost out of Levi’s sight.

The silence stretches between them in thick ribbons, like taffy left in a fridge to cool—until Eren asks, “did I ever tell you about the chef’s assistant that I met once?”

Levi’s eyelashes are chilled when he blinks, and they leave damp imprints against his cheeks. “What?”

“When I was younger.” It’s a memory coming from far away, from a piece of Eren’s life that Levi hadn’t seen. “I was thirteen, and my family went to one of the provinces for some state-business or some shit, and my mother brought me along. This—this chef’s apprentice was, like, eighteen or nineteen, but he was tolerating me walking after him because I didn’t know anyone else there except Hannes and Nile. At the time, he’d looked too young for me to know he was a babysitter.”

It feels like Levi’s underwater, with the pressure weighing down on his ears like it is. It tugs at the echo of some gossip he’d heard years and years ago, shared between the kitchen staff at the palace.

He thinks he knows where this story is going.

“Anyway, there was this state dinner, and the food smelled like some of the stuff we have here, but different. Regional differences, I guess. But—but this kid, who’s name I didn’t even know, he was walking by and took a piece of curried carrot from my plate.” Eren’s no longer trying to follow the motions of the grasses as the mist loops around them, gathering on the hems of Levi’s sleeves. “He winked at me, like it was supposed to be a secret. It was different than playing with people here, a little.”

“Sounds like he was itching for a talking-to by Her Majesty,” Levi tells him. He wipes condensation from Eren’s knuckles with his thumb. “Takes guts.”

Eren’s laugh is sharp and singular, the smack of a marble against asphalt. His skin looks like it’s washing out into that gray color from—from this morning in the bathroom, as he’d been leaning against the closest wall. “You would know, right?” His throat bobs when he swallows—and Levi knows that he’s heard this told before, as he’d been moving between the kitchens and the staff dormitories. “So he stole this piece of curried carrot, and he ate it. I think he’d been proud of his work, or something. But then his knees hit the floor, and his hands came up to his throat, and his face started to turn purple because he couldn’t fucking breathe.”

Levi remembers the palace kitchens going crazy—there’d been palace guards inspecting everything.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I just—sat there. The whole dining hall was—was losing its fucking mind, and I couldn’t even move. I just—” Eren blinks, slow and just this side of terrified. “I’d never seen a person die before, much less just because I was there.”

Levi feels something catch against the underside of his ribs. “Eren, you have to know that wasn’t your fault. None of this shit is your fault.”

(A prince, not yet introduced to the kingdom he’d been born to rule over, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand. A hallway closer to the center of the palace, wreathed in shadows and the weak light of wall sconces, dimmed for the occasion.

“who are you?”)

Eren keeps speaking, and it’s as if Levi can feel the ground coming out from beneath him. “I kind of wish it’d just been me—that I’d never even’ve known.”

Levi unlaces their fingers, his palm burning against Eren’s own. He takes Eren’s biceps and shifts his body in front of the Foerster grass, watching the pink-gold feathers sway behind him. Eren blinks at him, startled, and his eyelashes leave pearls of mist behind when he blinks. He looks like someone who’s walked out of a fucking storybook, trying to blend into a world that’s just a hair too mundane.

Even dressed in a fucking university sweatshirt, even with worn jeans that would look perfectly in place on some overworked college student, even with bruises on his face and a cut on his lip and a split across his nose, Eren looks like a fucking Prince. It’s in the curve of his shoulders and the tilt of his head. It’s in the way he blinks and how he shifts when he stands. It’s in the way his eyes keep moving up and down Levi’s body as if he’s searching for some kind of answer to a question he hasn’t asked aloud.

He is at once down-to-earth and absolutely unreachable—almost.

Almost. Or... before. Or... historically. Not anymore. No more.

“Uh,” Eren clears his throat around a sound that had gotten wedged there, his full attention brought back to this instant in this ramshackle garden-market during this early afternoon. Levi feels it like a heated blanket over his shoulders. “Levi? What’re you—”

“Shh. I’m thinking,” which isn’t a lie. He is absolutely thinking. About—a lot of things. “Wait one second. Don’t move.”

“Levi?” A question, directed at his back as he steps around winter bushes, weaves between shrubs that are more branches than blossoms at this time in the fall, steps around meticulously placed statues of representations of gods as old as this country is. “Are you okay?”

Levi stops beside a raised shelf made of treated wood, lined with Lenten roses in porous stone pots. He picks one, a deep purple-red, lined in white, and breaks its stem halfway down, leaving just enough that it’ll grow back when the plant is pruned properly.

He’s sure that Petra won’t mind a single flower.

Eren is exactly where Levi had left him, his back still facing the Foerster grass, and confusion has smeared itself across his face like scattered fog. It’s clinging to his eyelashes, his hair, his eyebrows, his shoulders—and it deepens when Levi steps into his space, the toes of his boots parallel with Eren’s sneakers.

The blossom is soft between his fingers, its petals decorated with the drizzling rain that’s covered everything by now. The droplets shift as Levi lifts the broken stem and tucks it behind Eren’s left ear, pushing his hair back to make room enough for it to sit, undisturbed.

“Uh,” Eren says again, and whatever anguish had been haunting the hollows of his cheeks has been swallows up by something else. By this. “Do I look pretty?”

Levi wonders, looking at him, if this is what the future would look like.

(Eren in the summertime, with a circlet fit for a king—interlocking bands of white-gold in a loose braid, each stem decorated with an elegant design of leaves. The gardens would hum with the sounds of honeybees and the chatter of deeper streams, with the whisper of delicate breezes and the turning of novel pages.

Eren would look exactly the same as now, in some ways.

There would be a small sunflower tucked behind his ear—and Eren would smile, would let it dimple his cheek, would shut his book without marking the page, and he’d stand. The sun would travel along the curve of his circlet, catch on the burst of light in the center of his forehead, Levi would feel his knees go weak.

And then Eren would say, “can i cash in on that kiss now?”)

“Eren,” Levi says, and he thinks his voice might be breaking at the edges. This feels like the perfect fucking moment to just tell the truth, to get it out there, to tell him that there’s nowhere on this earth that’s safer than right here, because if there’s anything that Levi knows, it’s how to think like a killer would.

(“she tried to kill me—”)

But instead he says, “I am so fucking sorry for all of this shit that’s happened to you.” Eren’s hands come up to circle Levi’s wrists when he presses them to either side of his face. It keeps their eyes locked like this. “It’s not fair, and I get that, and I get that it’s impossible to be flippant all the time like you are and not be pissed about it.”

He doesn’t know what expression working its way through Eren’s eyes when he says, “Levi, I didn’t mean to—”

“But none of this is your fault. Do you understand me? Not that apprentice, not Annie trying to fucking kill you, and not the way she died.” Something about the Lenten rose is making Eren’s eyes a shade darker, and they’re swallowing everything. Levi thinks he’s drowning, except he can’t shut the fuck up. “You’re not—this isn’t something that you’ve got to just think about by yourself, or—lay in bed for, or whatever. It’s not just you, anymore. So let me fucking catch you before you get all... like that.”

“Again with the like that.” Eren’s left hand slides backward on Levi’s wrist, the pads of his fingers brushing over Levi’s knuckles, until he finds the winter-rose with the tip of his thumb. The tips of his fingers trail along its petals. “You’re asking me to do a trust fall. You’re kind of hung up on that today.”

(Blood on Eren’s nose, his lips, his chin. Pupils blown wide, eyes unable to settle on anything. His jacket, partially unlaced but pulled too tight. Breaths, sharp and painful and nowhere deep enough. Skin that’s too flushed and too pallid all at once.

there’s no fucking way i can tell him now.)

“Kind of,” Levi says. “You keep looking at shit that I can’t see.”

Eren hums, low enough that Levi can feel it in the center of his chest. It brings to mind the image of tires treading mud and going nowhere. “It’s stupid that you ask for that.”

“Shut up.” Eren’s sweatshirt is going dark around his collar, around the hems of his sleeves, around the university logo. The mist is starting to settle into Levi’s joints. “No it’s not and it’s rude to say so. Maybe you were raised in a really expensive barn.”

Eren doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t pull at the other end of the joke he’d made when the humidity had tasted of warmer days. “It is stupid, because I’ve already done it. The fucking—the trust fall. I came up with that metaphor way before you did.”

The Foerster grass chuckles when it rubs together—or it would’ve if Levi’ hadn’t found himself laughing, if Eren hadn’t squeezed his wrists with half-dumb laughter of his own, if the rose petals hadn’t been whispering so loudly against the skin of Eren’s cheek when he’d tossed his head.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, this laughter, and it hurts a little when it rises up and out of Levi’s throat.

But then Eren’s lips are on his own, and they’re chapped, and they’re a little cold, but they taste of their coming winter, still—cinnamon and coffee and strawberries.

When Levi speaks next, his words are traced against Eren’s mouth.

“Come on,” he says. “We’ve got moss to pick out for the gardens.”

“Yes, dear.” Eren replies—and the laughter starts all over again.

(The rain will stop by late afternoon, though the clouds will be hovering in the sky like soaked-through cotton. Birds will have gathered in the nursery’s shrubs to whistle among the plant-life and peck at feed left out in metal-work bird feeders.

The two of them will have found an almost-dry place to sit by then, leaning against one another beside the greenhouse, the air weighed down by the scent of watered foliage. A semi-circle of snowdrops will be gathered around the stone picnic table just outside the reach of the greenhouse’s glare.

“i think in a couple weeks it’ll be time to strip down the sunflower field,” Levi will say, the completed floral order form sitting on the bench between them. The Lenten rose will still be firmly in place behind Eren’s ear—the promise of some kind of future for them both of them, even if Levi hadn’t particularly described it that way. “did you still want to help with that?”

“what kind of question is that?” Eren will reply. “of course i do. i can probably even recruit some manual labor, if you’re interested.” His eyes will be backlit by sunlight, despite the fact that it’s hidden by layers of clouds above them. They’ve always looked like fucking gemstones anyway. “who cares who knows, right?”

Levi will reach across the short distance between them to drag his thumb over the sunburst in the center of his forehead, rubbing away the concealer that Eren had so carefully applied earlier that morning. It’s more symbolic than anything. In practice, Eren will go back to the truck while Levi hands it off to Petra, and no one will be any the wiser of just who had been tucked away in the gardens with the head groundskeeper of the royal house.

But Levi will wipe away the concealer on his jeans anyway, will look Eren in the eye, and he will say, “exactly. who fucking cares who knows?”

And it won’t matter, in those moments that carry with it the smell of past-and-future rains, who Levi was before. It won’t matter the things that he’d done or what he hadn’t said, because whatever-this-is will be the Levi-who-chooses. The Levi-of-now.

And as long as it’s only himself he’s telling, there will be no one who can correct him.)

#ryssafic #snk #shingeki no kyojin #ereri #eren jaeger #levi heichou #carla jaeger #petra ral #prince au #let there be light #please god let my eyes have rest #i hope you enjoy!

70 notes · View notes