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jediryssabean · 7 years

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i am free whenever you’re in front of me

listen. i know. it’s been a couple months. but it’s internship time! you know how it goes!

BUT FINALLY IT IS HERE. thank you as always to @baegerbombtastic for reading it over and probably thinking internally “i said it was FINE oh my GOD” multiple times.

but no really, i appreciate it. xoxo

Pairing: Eren/Levi Verse: Dead on Arrival (an urban fantasy au) Rating: T Summary: “Fine,” Eren replies. “Okay. Levi, do you want walk through an uncomfortable number of dead people so that we can go to my childhood home for a couple hours to see the sunrise?” Levi can see his jaw working around an expected refusal, just like he can see Hannes’ eyes flickering between them both from where he stands at Eren’s side.

It really is comical—and a little bit sad, the way Eren’s face walls itself up like that.

It is then that Levi says, “yes, I’d love to, thanks for asking.”

Or you can [Read on AO3]!

chapters: i | ii | iii | iv | v | vi | vii

(Hot chocolate by the waterfront on a day that all three of them had managed to merge their schedules just enough get off work before sundown. Puget Sound had held the sun afloat, turning itself yellow-gold-orange with the effort of it all—but there’d been pink and purple at its farthest edges, ready for the coming dusk. The semi-constant cloud cover had framed the sun like a cap of painted cotton.

It’d been cold enough to see his own breath.

“what’ve you been up to lately?” Farlan had asked, sniffling once. Winter had never much agreed with him, even before the calendar had told him that it’d arrived. “you’re never home when we call, you don’t leave notes, your phone is always going off in your pocket like you think we don’t notice...”

Isabel had laughed, had thrown it into the breeze coming in from the Sound. It had smelled of saltwater, mingling with the steam rising from the mouth of the cup held between his hands.

Levi had shrugged, had thought of Eren, had cleared his throat. “i’ve been busy. work shit, work shit that you give me, life shit.” Another shrug, and the hot chocolate had been warm beneath his tongue. “you two are the ones that tell me i never get out enough.”

A pause, filled with the whisper of the water, the cawing of seagulls circling the docks just out of sight, the endless chatter of traffic against pavement, deeper in the city. And then, “so, does that mean you’re getting out more?” Isabel had asked him, her eyebrows moving upward on her forehead in a way that asks far too many questions. He should’ve been more choosey with his words. “are you getting out with someone? with other people? i’m assuming you don’t mean hanji, or you would’ve said hanji.”

“you’ve been cultivating a social life and you didn’t even say anything?” Farlan had pointed at him with the lid of his cardboard cup, scattering loose beads of hot chocolate toward the Sound, only to have them pushed back to fall against the concrete. “this is obstruction of justice.”

“stop using your fucking detective words like that’ll scare me.” Even breaths had led to an even reply, hd tasted of hot chocolate and saltwater, had been heavy with the urge to describe, in brief and vague detail, just how much his life had changed recently. But instead he’d said, “use them instead to keep us updated on your body-snatcher case. how’s that going?”

Groaning, loud and put upon, and Farlan had almost thrown his cup into the wind in frustration.

Levi’s social life had been largely forgotten after that, had been swallowed by the lumbering of the police bureaucracy and Farlan’s curses against it. The sun had turned a burnt red in the water by then, and Isabel’s fingers had found their way between Farlan’s own. For moral support, for comfort, to calm him down.

For a moment, Levi could almost feel the other half of the city moving around him as it had started to rise underneath the shadows crawling through the city streets. But the city’s smell hadn’t changed, the seagulls hadn’t faded into something darker, and the traffic had been just as steady in the dusk as it had been in the late afternoon.

But his phone had vibrated in his pocket, and Levi had known that less-than-mortal things were stirring, were calling four o’clock in the afternoon the early morning, were tasting the twilight like others might taste the dawn.

And he’d smiled.)

There is something different about tonight.

The most obvious thing is that Eren is sitting outside the door to the morgue, tucked against the corner of the wall and the three-inch-thick plastic. The tile underneath his backside is probably fucking freezing, because the morgue is always fucking freezing—but he’s sitting there and staring down the hallway, his eyes lit from behind in the nauseating glare of the fluorescent lights. There’s dirt beneath his fingernails and there are no coffee cups in his hands, just like there’s no easy smile on his face, and there’s still the smell of formaldehyde and chilled-corpse hanging around in the space behind him.

Levi is caught between the urge to check his pulse and the urge to push his hair away from his forehead.

The corridor seems to vibrate with the humming of the lights, drawing out the shadows in the ugliest of places, making mildew-stains out of them, letting them crawl across the floor. Levi begins to feel the frequency in the roots of his teeth, in his sinuses. Whatever-this-is feels ominous, or maybe it just feels heavy, or maybe he just doesn’t have the word for what this feels like. It’s just… different.

And underneath everything, Levi can smell Eren’s magic—heather and rainwater and freshly turned earth.

“Eren?” It’s like a bubble pops when Levi speaks, scattering the almost-silence along the walls, lodging it into the grooves along the tile floor. He watches the force of it move through Eren’s body, from his shoulders to his feet, and it’s a little bit like watching a predator shift. It could be the angle that’s making him think that. It could be the way the shadows hover in the hollows of his cheeks, sharpening them to deadly points. It could be a lot of things.

When Eren looks up at him, his pupils are the size of moons.

“Oh shit,” he says, and he blinks slowly, as if his eyelids are heavier than they look. “Hey, Levi.”

“Hey yourself.” Levi’s knees creak when he crouches down to sit beside him between the corner-space and the door to the morgue, settling his backpack onto the toes of his shoes. Down here Eren’s magic is thick, bleeding into the space around him. Levi’s hairs rise on his arms. “So… what’re you doing down here? Did you run into a black cat in the garage?”

Eren snorts, softer than the rustle of fabric, and he shakes his head. “First of all, that fear is rooted in baseless superstition. Second of all, cats like me just fine, it’s dogs that have an issue with the way I smell. And third—“ His eyes shift out of focus, falling away from Levi’s face to follow something else on the floor, or not on the floor, or… something, “third, the garage reeked of gasoline, and my head’s killing me. I thought I’d wait here instead.” A pause, and the hospital sings to itself around them tunelessly.

Eren lets the quiet fill the hallway without interruption, stretching toward the bulbous shape of the camera at the far end, with no light blinking to show that it’s even on.

A protective measure, probably.

The chill is worming its way through Levi’s skin toward his bones. It makes his teeth grind together, a little, and he can see it lifting goosebumps on Eren’s skin. This close, he can see countless other things—the dirt under Eren’s fingernails is also on his palms and his knuckles, the hair at his temples is stiff with sweat, and the stains on the knees of his jeans are beginning to flake in the way that blood does when it’s been sitting too long.

Levi can’t taste anything except Eren’s magic when he breathes in, worry needling at his stomach, his throat, the inside of his ears. When he swallows, he can feel fresh rainfall in his mouth, unspoiled by the sting of smog or acid or city life. It’s like being smothered, like there are strings of it clinging to his lips, like it’s piling on his shoulders and curling around his collarbones.

Eren picks up a different thread of a different conversation, stretching it taut between his fingertips, before Levi can open his mouth to break the silence.

“So how was work today? Did you do anything cool?” A smile, small and a little gray, pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Besides, you know, being in a giant refrigerator.”

Levi finds himself breathing out a laugh that reminds him of the morgue—cold and stinging of antiseptic, tasting of the powder on his nitrile gloves. It’s as if the air had changed in the space of the corridor, sending the afterimage of the night Eren’d had into a spiral down a floor drain. “Ha-ha. I’ve never heard that joke before. Were you holding onto it while you waited? Was the anticipation killing you?”

The smile widens, carves out Eren’s face, and his eyelashes go on forever. “That is a pretty funny joke.”

Levi’s cheeks go warm as he rolls his eyes, shoving Eren’s shoulder with one hand. His body gives way beneath it, wedging itself farther into the corner with a laugh that echoes, skipping down the entire length of the hallway before making its way back to them, rolling to rest at their feet. “That’s not what I meant, and you fucking know it. Your sense of humor is terrible.”

Laughter, louder and rising upward. Color makes its way back into Eren’s cheeks, smoothing out the edges of his cheekbones. When his eyes come back to Levi’s face, they’re glowing, and his pupils are narrowing into something that makes more sense, that looks like it hurts less, that seems more natural.

No, wait. It seems more human.

“Come on! That was funny,” Eren says. “That was genuinely funny. You just don’t think it’s funny.”

“Nobody thinks it’s funny. I can bet you six more takeout dinners that Connie doesn’t find it funny, and you eat like a fucking—I don’t know. Like a fucking bear about to hibernate.” It’s getting warmer in the corridor, or maybe the chill just isn’t bothering him anymore, but there’s a dryness to his lips that still feels like worry.

He can’t stop looking at the stains on Eren’s knees.

Indignation, a quiet presence between them, and a tone that feels like petulance. “Using magic burns calories, thanks. And I’m not taking that bet.” There's a pout pulling at his lips. Fucking Christ, he really is as young as he looks, isn't he?

But Levi's response is already out of his mouth before he can comment on Eren's expression, or his mouth, or his age. He doesn't like the way it tastes as it shoves its way past his teeth. “Why, because faeries only take bets that they can win?”

Silence falls again, and this time not even the light fixtures dare to break it.

Moments like this happen, Levi is coming to find. Atmospheric shifts, the bending of light, the constant freeze-and-thaw of things that are safe to say and things that aren’t. Levi watches it happen on Eren’s face, sees the meeting of worlds in his expression, sees the narrowing of his eyes and the jut of his chin and the tightening of the skin beside his eyes.

(“does this mean i’m free to ask whatever questions i want?” Levi had been pushing, then. Had shoved against Eren’s walls with both his hands, the challenge sour in his mouth. He’d spit it out like fruit-seeds, like chunks of gravel, like phlegm. “you were so gracious with that last one.”

Eren’s face had done something similar, then. Levi had seen the—there had been pieces of Eren, sharp and made of stone, mashed together with his softer edges. It had been like watching two storm systems meet over an open horizon.

Levi’s throat had been burning with some kind of shame, as if he’d reached out and slapped Eren across his cheek.)

He expects Eren to brush him off, to ignore his question entirely, to keep talking until whatever tension is in his jaw disappears.

But Eren has never been predictable. Levi wonders when he'll come to terms with that.

“Something like that.” Eren’s voice is made of endless glass, catching the light and throwing it, making his words glitter like stars, or like snow, or like chips of polished rock. “Faerie wagers are a magic all on their own, and they can get people into a lot of trouble.” Eren smiles then, even if it doesn’t exactly look normal. “You more than me. I mean, I could’ve made that ‘six takeout dinners’ work more in my favor. It’s really not specific. Takeout , just like taking food out? I could make that cheap, even if I lost.”

“You,” Levi begins like he’d never said anything that had brought to mind the shattering of statues or the tearing of pages, and he keeps going just the same, “are being an absolute asshole right now and giving away all your magical secrets.”

“Not all of them,” Eren replies. “I did tell you that I love being an enigma. It keeps things interesting.”

Levi scoffs, ready to say something else, to carry this until his spine is frozen solid and his backside has gone completely numb—but Eren keeps going, rolling the shape of his words between his hands like clay in the heartbeat between one thought and the next.

“Really, though,” he says, and his knuckles crack when he flexes his fingers. The dirt beneath Eren’s nails is still distracting, “how was work?”

Levi’s backpack rustles against the toes of his sneakers as he shifts against the wall. “It was interesting, I guess. A legal dispute, but not quite involving the police department yet. A family wanted to know if the death of their business-mogul matriarch was foul-play or not before they start digging through her will.”

Eren laughs, more through his nose than his mouth, and it sticks to his lips. “Ha! Wow, that’s some Clue bullshit, isn’t it? Damn. What did you find out?” His eyebrows arch and his smile goes crooked, and for the first time tonight Eren looks more like… himself. “Unless that’s privileged information. I probably don’t need to know.”

Levi snorts, shaking his head. “What’re you gonna do? Tell your faerie friends about morgue drama? Report me to the ethics board? No one ever sees me with you, so would they really believe you anyway?”

More laughter, absolutely unrestrained. Levi’s lucky, he supposes, that he works in the basement where people rarely go. Surely someone would’ve caught them by now—or maybe it’s less about the basement and more about extra protections. Maybe there’d been a reason for the smell of magic curling around Eren’s shoulders like a second skin.

“Yikes! You’re right. Nobody would believe me, and I’d never tell anyone.” Eren stretches out his legs in front of him, and the stains on his knees crack with the motion, splitting into microcontinents against the denim. “Besides, where would I get my gossip and thrills then? There’s only so long you can make charms before your brain starts to go numb.”

The hallway tumbles when Levi rolls his eyes. “You’re trying to pretend you’re boring, and it’s not working.”

Eren nudges him, his elbow against Levi’s, and his smile is small and soft. “I learned it from you, obviously.”

“Shut up,” Levi tells him. “God. Whatever. How’s your work been? You’re looking a little too filthy to’ve been on charm duty all night. Did you get in a scuffle with a goblin?”

“You’re just making shit up,” Eren says, and his eyes move away from Levi’s face, their color going dull beneath… something. Curtains. Shutters. Walls. “Goblins always travel in packs. I’d never scuffle with just one goblin.”

This is a redirect. Tangentially relevant, but only holding itself together with threads, with spider silk, with halves of halves of hair. Levi has become very familiar with how these maneuvers feel, how they move against his skin, how they turn into rivers large enough for the original question to get lost in—just like he’s become very familiar with the act of swimming against the current.

“Of course. My mistake,” Levi replies, and his fingertips feel cold when he presses them against one another. “Did you scuffle with a pack of goblins? A horde, maybe? Or did you trip on your way across the street to get here?”

The air around them pops as if it’s alive with energy, with static, with something. And the only thing that comes out of Eren’s mouth is, “no.”

It breathes against the floor like mist, trying to disappear before it can turn into anything else, before it can form into a sentence or an explanation. It leaves footprints down the hall that wash away when the air conditioning rumbles to life, the aluminum tubing rattling softly down the hallway. Nothing else follows it, and Eren’s lips thin, chapped skin brushing against chapped skin in a way that has to be uncomfortable.

The cold is more apparent when it’s quiet like this. It’s surprising that Levi doesn’t see his breath when he says, “then what happened to you? Seems to me that you’re not…” It’s a struggle, finding the word that he needs. The one that he ends up settling for is, “yourself.”

Eren blinks, then. He blinks, and his lips twist, and the skin beside his eyes wrinkles. Shadows flicker beside the edges of his pupils, and the color in his cheeks washes out just enough to make his skin look blue or gray or—

“Levi,” Eren says, and his voice is a wire pulled tight, threatening to split apart at the center, “I really don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Levi doesn’t know how to respond to that with anything other than silence.

It’s an explanation in and of itself, really. It’s the reason behind the atmosphere, the driving force behind the thick film of difference that’s splayed upon the walls and Eren’s features and his posture. It’s alarming enough to give rise to ice chips in his lungs, to make them gather against his sternum.

Eren begins to pick at the dirt beneath his fingernails. The sound doesn’t even make it halfway down the corridor before it fades into nothing.

That’s what probably makes it seem so jarring when Eren clears his throat. “I didn’t bring coffee today, so I should make it up to you,” he says. The skin underneath his left thumbnail is clean by then. “I can’t say that I forgot, or anything, but you know how it gets when you’re in a rush somewhere. I guess I would’ve rather been empty-handed than late.”

“Eren,” Levi’s tone feels like a warning in his mouth, scalding his hard palate. Or—hm. Maybe it tastes more like shame, a bitter weight on his tongue. He’s got a habit of stepping in shit when he speaks, and he wishes that he could just fucking learn to stop already. “I really don’t give a shit about the coffee.”

“Okay,” and Eren’s tone is lighter, this time. Levi can’t tell if he’s faking it or not, but his eyes are shining, even through whatever-it-is that’s happening inside them. “Rephrase. We should do something. Let me take you somewhere.”

Levi doesn’t know what this is, this thing growing beneath his ribs. Eren’s smile softens, pulls at the corners of his eyes, and Levi’s bones crack beneath the weight of it, squeezing his lungs, making his fingers feel like liquid despite the chill.

Eren doesn’t look human in lighting like this, with the way it cuts his jaw, his chin, his fucking cheekbones—but he doesn’t look entirely inhuman either, and Levi finds himself noticing it more often lately. He’d seen it in the library, had caught it on the street, when his whole body had been alive with laughter and the thrill of being almost-caught.

There’s something about the way the shadows of his magic waver, a little, beneath the weight of a smile like this one, though—the way the wrinkles beside his eyes lose their tension. There are so many things that happen on Eren’s face at any given time, and all of them are just this side of too-beautiful.

Levi thinks he wants to kiss him.

His brain bounces against that thought, the marrow of his bones going through some sort of ice-cold whiplash as his body tries to compensate for the force of it—going from concern to humor to this—and it makes his throat too dry to swallow properly. His toes curl inside the fabric of his shoes, and when he speaks it’s as if there’s desert sand scraping between his teeth.

“Does that mean you have somewhere in mind?” he says, and his backpack shifts again on the toes of his sneakers. The zippers rattle like wind chimes.

A hint of a fragment of humor, tucked at one corner of Eren’s lips. It seems to make his skin glow, as if he’s lit from inside. “Have you ever wanted to see a Welsh sunrise?”

Levi snorts, even as the breath gets squeezed from his lungs. “Is this the part where you tell me that Seattle sunrises are strikingly similar, and you suggest we go see one from, I don’t know, a mountaintop or something? Isn’t sunrise practically past your bedtime?” He can feel his eyebrows arch in his forehead as the barely-there amusement moves across his face like a—like a fucking shooting star.

“I mean, I guess technically it’s past my bedtime,” Eren tells him. “But that’s not the point, because this is actually the part where I tell you that we’re going to Wales.”

Laughter bursts from Levi’s throat, an unstoppable force. This is so—it’s unbe-fucking-lievable. Bringing stars to life is one thing. Casting memory spells and crafting sleeping charms is something else. But going from one side of the globe to the other? That’s unreal. It’s unreal, incredible, impossible. He’s collected a lot of poetry in his lifetime—from adventures to epics to faerie rhymes. He’s ended up reading even more than he’s owned, and he’s never heard of anything quite like this.

Then again, he supposes, if anyone could promise transatlantic travel and mean it, it’d be Eren.

“You’re serious?” Levi says, the too-loud echo of his disbelief still sliding down the walls in a liquid pattern. “You’re completely serious.”

“Absolutely,” Eren replies, and his clothes rustle as he pushes himself upright, the red-brown stains on his knees flaking as he does. Handprints shift against the denim on his thighs, the same dark color as the mess on his knees.

When Eren offers out a hand for Levi to take, his palm is completely clean.

Eren’s grip is solid as he pulls Levi to his feet, already lifting Levi’s work-bag with his free hand to hold it within reach. Levi can feel his legs creak as he shifts his weight between them, can feel his spine trying to stretch itself out from where he’d been sitting too long against the absolutely freezing tile. It’s only when Levi rolls his shoulders, loosening the tension in his neck, that Eren taps his fingers against Levi’s own sternum with that fucking half-smile still hanging from his lips.

“You’re going to need to stand back for your own safety, sir,” Eren says, and fuck if there isn’t something impish flirting with the arch of his eyebrows. “Keep your hands and feet attached to your body at all times.”

Levi snorts, taking three steps backward and crossing his arms loosely over his chest as Eren makes his way toward the plastic-and-rubber doors that separate the hallway from the morgue. He can feel goosebumps rising underneath the weight of his coat, the fabric doing nothing to eat through the chill of the freshly-dead. Or maybe that’s just the admiration, the thrill of watching magic in action. Something like that.

Eren braces one hand on the metal doorframe, tapping out a slow pattern with one knuckle of the other against the almost-hollow plastic of the doors. His voice is low and melodic, but the words are unintelligible at this volume. The only thing Levi knows about this spell is that it’s making his stomach knot, making his mouth go dry, makes... the hallway seem almost warm.

The fluorescent lights flicker as the smell of heather and rainfall rise up from the tile floor, and the atmosphere buzzes with... everything. Levi’s ears pop underneath its pressure, and a breeze pulls at his clothes with all the force of a human hand. His backpack shifts against his spine as he shifts his weight to keep himself solidly on his feet.

And then the doors of the morgue rush inward, their shape clapping against the doorframe hard enough that Levi’s almost surprised that they don’t fall from their hinges.

What’s on the other side of those doors is definitely not the morgue.

Eren takes half-a-step back, out of the reach of shadows that look like they’re writhing just outside the reach of the corridor’s lights. Tendrils of them cling to the edges of the doors, where they would be pushing through thick strips of plastic if they’d been opening into the morgue like they’d been supposed to. The impression of lights, flickering in the shadows’ depths, make Levi’s eyes ache, make his sinuses feel as if there’s something heavy pooling inside them.

Levi opens his mouth to ask a question—to wonder out loud what the fuck is in his morgue, to ask what the point of this particular show of magic is, to get information as to how this shit manifested so quickly when his workspace had been entirely clean almost half-an-hour ago.

But all the things he’d wanted to know turn to dust on his tongue as a man steps out of the darkness and into the hallway proper. There’s... nothing sharp about him. He’s made entirely of human lines, his pupils the width of a mortal man’s, the stubble stretching from the hollows of his cheeks to the curve of his chin looking absolutely and completely normal. The only thing of note about him at all is the tattoo of a single dark feather, curling around the back of his left ear and trailing down his hairline, its shaft disappearing beneath the collar of a well-worn coat.

None of the shifting shadows are clinging to him. At all.

More questions, all of them fighting for attention behind Levi’s teeth—except the man is already laughing, already speaking loudly with an accent that’s not-at-all like Eren’s own, already pulling Eren into a hug with one hand.

“Holy shit, look at you,” the man says, ruffling Eren’s hair before the embrace is even over. “You’ve gotten so fucking tall, you know that kid?” He keeps one hand on Eren’s elbow as he pulls out of his, the crow’s feet by his eyes bending with good humor—ages of good humor, though he can’t be much older than his late forties, maybe. “You’re a giant. Eren fucking Jaeger, all grown up.”

Eren’s hair is a goddamn mess as the unidentified man ruffles his hair for the second time, and Levi can see that he’s probably grimacing, even though he can’t see any part of his face from this angle.

“Can you stop that, please? You’re embarrassing me.” Eren steps away from the man who isn’t letting go of his arm, turning so that Levi has a now-unimpeded view of them both.

“Embarrassing?” A pause, and Levi finds himself meeting blue eyes the color of some washed-out photograph of the ocean in the middle of the day. He could say something here, if his brain could cacth up to the rest of this situation—to the shadows and the mysterious maybe-mortal man. “Ah. And who’s this?”

Beneath the smell of Eren’s magic, Levi can smell something else. Cedar-wood incense and rose water.

“This,” Eren says, exasperation pulling his skin tight across his cheeks, “is Levi. He’s the doctor whose morgue you literally just walked out of. He’s a friend of mine.”

“A morgue?” Eyebrows, arching high toward a sandy-blonde hairline. “What are you doing in a morgue?”

Eren smiles, then, and it loosens something in his eyes. It almost looks easy. “You’d be surprised.” He sniffs once, rubbing at his nose before he continues, his attention falling onto Levi in a way that makes his lungs flutter with the reminder that they’re supposed to be used. “Levi, this is Hannes. He was my babysitter.”

“He makes it sound a lot less glamorous than it really was, I promise.” He can place is accent, almost. Hannes’. It’s not French, and it’s not quite Slavic, so—German, maybe? Levi can’t be sure. “He got into a lot of mischief when he was really little. He was curious little bear.”

“I did not, and I wasn’t.” Eren’s nose wrinkles, his eyebrows furrowing just enough to make his eyes look darker. It might be intimidating, somehow, if his cheeks weren’t pink with sheepishness. “But I didn’t actually ask you here just to introduce you Levi. I called for a favor.”

“That’s what happens when kids grow up, they only call when they need something.” Levi doesn’t know who Hannes is talking to, but there’s a flare for the dramatic in him somewhere. Surely it has to be for someone’s benefit. “But what did you need?”

Hannes has to look up, just slightly, to meet Eren’s eyes when he turns his head back to face him. It makes Levi wonder if this must be weird for someone that Eren had called his babysitter. It makes him wonder when they’d spoken last. “I’d like you to take us to Wales for a couple hours,” Eren tells him. “The sunrise is beautiful this time of year.”

A slow blink, still human-looking enough that Levi can’t quite call it feline. “You want me to take you to Wales.” Hannes’ glance feels like a flicker of dew against Levi’s cheek before his eyes are already back on Eren’s face. “Both of you?”

Eren nods, just as slowly as Hannes’ blink at been. The fluidity of the movement looks a little less human on him. “Yeah. Both of us. He’s never seen it, and it’s something that everyone should be allowed to look at once.”

Hannes lifts a hand to his mouth, the length of his index finger pressed against the space between his lower lip and the beginning of his chin. “Does your mother know that you’re planning to step on her soil for your adventure, little bear?”

Ah, a familiar feeling in the pause that stretches between them—ice across the surface of a lake, stretching from the shoreline to the center with no discernable movement beneath it. And then, “are you going to tell her?”

Hannes’ mouth moves for an answer. His lips part, and his chest inflates with whatever might come out of it. But this time, Levi breaks into the conversation first, the pieces of all the things he’d had to say falling to the tile floor, pushed from between his lips by the question already leaping from his tongue.

“Does she need to know?” Levi asks, and he can feel his eyebrows rising in a way that has to look incredulous.

For a second, the only sound in the hallway is the humming of the lightbulbs. Not even the shadows still shifting inside the morgue—or not-the-morgue—have nothing to add to the lack of noise. But then Hannes laughs, just as loudly as he had when he’d seen Eren standing in the doorway, and it really is a fucking blessing that the morgue is located so far beneath the hospital proper. There’s been so much noise down here tonight already.

“I can see why you’re a friend of Eren’s!” Hannes scatters his words like coins, letting them clatter wherever they land. Some of them sound heavier than others—particularly when he continues by saying, “are you sure that you want to make the walk?”

It feels like a challenge, even if it isn’t one. Levi knows it isn’t one. And yet his teeth grind together and his jaw sets, and he can feel stubbornness pushing rods through the center of his bones. “Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

“You’re human, right?” Hannes lifts one of his eyebrows, cocking out one hip in a way that reminds Levi so much of Eren, even as Eren himself is covering his eyes with one hand. The question isn’t left in the air long enough for Levi to answer before Hannes is already pushing forward, “right. Travelling through Doorways isn’t something that mankind just does. We’ll be walking Between—and mortal eyes weren’t meant to see that.”

so what? is the response already crawling its way up Levi’s throat. But Eren takes the conversation between two fingers, and for the first time since Levi had met him, his is the softest voice present.

“You know the story of Eurydice,” he says, and it’s not a question. “This would be... similar but different. You’d have to keep your eyes closed and hold onto my hand so that you don’t get lost, or trip over anything or...” He trails off, dropping his hand from his eyes, and his lips are pressed thin. He doesn’t keep speaking.

Levi sighs, and it tastes like Eren’s magic. Tension that he hadn’t even felt gathering bleeds out from his shoulders. When he speaks, it isn’t to Hannes—if he can have a conversation without Levi being involved, well, the reverse is just as true. “I can see why you didn’t open with that originally, but you probably should’ve explained what we were going to do.”

Eren’s skin goes gray, a little, the color bleeding out of his cheeks. “It’s not exactly a selling point. It’s also not very—“ his lips twist and his eyes drop to the floor. “I can’t open Doorways myself. I need someone else to—“ The same expression, for the second time, and then nothing.

“Eren,” Levi says, “just ask me again. Give me the uncensored version of what we’re going to do tonight.” Silence, stony and filled with the humming of the lights and the trailing edges of rainwater and heather and soil. “You keep asking me to trust you. Return the favor, and ask me again.”

A sudden influx of color back into Eren’s face, turning his cheeks dark. It’s funny, really. He looks embarrassed, only this time he’d done it to himself, more-or-less.

“Fine,” Eren replies. “Okay. Levi, do you want walk through an uncomfortable number of dead people so that we can go to my childhood home for a couple hours to see the sunrise?” Levi can see his jaw working around an expected refusal, just like he can see Hannes’ eyes flickering between them both from where he stands at Eren’s side.

It really is comical—and a little bit sad, the way Eren’s face walls itself up like that.

It is then that Levi says, “yes, I’d love to, thanks for asking.”

What’s funnier, of course, is what happens when Eren’s surprised—and besides, it’s only fair that Levi return that favor, in pieces. He doesn’t think he’ll ever really be able to outdo Eren when it comes to the unexpected. But this face? The way Eren’s eyebrows are arching and his face just relaxes, the way his cheeks can’t seem to decide just how deep they want their color to go, the way his eyes can’t seem to settle anywhere on Levi’s face? That’s good enough, he thinks.

Hannes’ palm against Eren’s shoulder breaks the chatter of the hospital’s electrical equipment, and the smile on his face deepens the furrows by his mouth, his eyes, across the bridge of his nose.

“Kid,” Hannes says, shifting his arm to hold Eren’s neck in the crook of his elbow, even as he’s met with half-murmured swears, “I think I like him.”

Eren shoves him away as he makes a face, stepping just out of reach, smoothing out his clothes with one hand. He shakes out his hair in an attempt to settle it, to fix the admiration that it had been through. It doesn’t help.

He turns to Levi with an open hand, looking totally abashed—fucking embarrassed, like he can’t believe any of the exchanges just took place in the middle of the hallway in a hospital basement. But his eyes are shining, and there’s still a fraction of a piece of a smile holding tightly to his lips.

“Does that mean you’re ready?” Eren asks. Levi watches the way his mouth works his way around the words as he says them, watches the way his eyelashes kiss the bruise-colored smudges beneath his eyes. “It really is uncomfortable. And you really can’t open your eyes.”

Concern, soft in the hollows beneath Eren’s cheekbones.

Levi’s pretty sure he still wants to kiss him.

(“we’re running for the door,” Eren had told him, had smelled so strongly of his own magic, and his eyes had been catching the planetarium light like the stars they’d been in another life. His voice had been threatening to buckle beneath barely-contained laughter. “hold your breath.” His fingers had been warm, and solid, and callused.

Levi’s read poems like this, over the course of his life—read poems and heard stories about mysterious and magical strangers that bewitch mortal souls. They’ve been written in religious texts and novels, passed through oral traditions and painted on murals.

He’d known then, just like he knows now, how tales like this often end.)

“I’m ready, I won’t open my eyes, and you’re taking your sweet fucking time,” Levi replies, and Eren laughs in a way that brings to mind fog on the surface of Puget Sound, curling between the support pillars of different piers along the city’s coast. It raises the hairs at the back of Levi’s neck, like everything else Eren does when his voice looks like that, when his face looks like that, when he looks at Levi like that.

He doesn’t kiss him in this hallway, with the mortal-looking stranger watching them both.

But he does take Eren’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and the fluorescent lights hum softly as they step into the shadows where the morgue should’ve been.

(Franz’s blood had still been flaking from his knees as they’d walked through the Doorway between life and its after. The shadows had whispered, had brushed over Eren’s body like worn cotton, had opened up into a barely-visible pathway made of cobblestones.

Thick branches had poised themselves in a canopy, too tightly woven to let through any in any light. Ravens and turtledoves murmured together, somewhere out of Eren’s line of sight—but that wasn’t saying much. There hadn’t been a whole lot within his line of sight to begin with, except the vague shapes that hurt his eyes to look at, the curve of Hannes’ shoulders, and the shape of Franz Kefka, holding Eren’s bicep with a rigid grip.

Levi’s hand had been shaking in Eren’s own.

The shadows in front of them had trembled when Hannes turned his head to speak, their movement making Eren’s head swim, rattling against the city-noise beating against the inside of his skull. “you don’t look very well, kiddo,” he’d said, and it had sounded as if his voice had been coming from far away, from the mouth of a tunnel, from behind a too-thick wall. “been firing all pistons lately?”

Eren had squeezed Levi’s hand, once. He’d heard Franz’s labored breathing beside him, bubbling softly through the hole in his chest. He’d been able to feel the way his blood had been congealing on his own knees, had been able to hear the cracked-ice laughter of the Sluagh.

He’d been able to taste his own blood in his mouth, and had wiped at his nose with his thumb.

“you know what they say,” Eren had replied, his words almost getting lost in the chatter of too-many ravens, still tucked away in the dark. “no rest for the wicked, and all of that shit.”

He’d been rewarded with no laughter, and if there’d been a sigh it had been lost in the ambient noises of the path they’d chosen—whispered last words and faded memories, vestiges of the dead as they made their way into the world that comes after. More than memories lived in that place.

A child’s laughter, somewhere—familiar. Heather and rainwater—and then the taste of river-mud and reeds. The pop of bubbles as they’d rose to the surface. The flicker of green eyes in a break between the shadows, the glimmer of water clinging to the eyelashes there, mud beneath fingernails stuck to the soles of shoes.

And beneath all of that, the smell of his mother’s magic—cedar wood incense and rose water.

“we’re almost there,” Eren had said, keeping his eyes forward even as he’d been speaking over his shoulder, had raised his voice to make himself heard over the rasp of Franz’s breathing. “you okay?”

“please tell me that this shit will be easier on the return trip,” Levi had replied. He’d spoken softly, had almost thrown his voice onto the cobblestones to hide against the moss there. His eyes had been closed, squeezed shut, and Eren had only barely been able to see the dead curling around his shoulders like mist.

“this shit will be easier on the return trip.”

A sigh had rattled Levi’s shoulders, even if Eren had been unable to hear it. “you mean that?”

Eren had held Levi’s fingers, then. He’d squeezed them tightly as he’d watched Hannes turn his head to eavesdrop. “do you want me to swear, like, an oath or something? i think I’ve got enough juice for that. ‘if I’m a liar, turn me into a toad,’ or... whatever.”

Laughter, and it had been surprising. “no,” Levi had told him, and Eren had been sure he had no idea what that kind of thing did to him. It felt like someone had been squeezing his heart between two hands. “you’re always saying what a shit liar you are.”

“i am,” Eren had said, and the cobblestones had begun to turn into grass under the soles of his shoes.

“and i trust you.”

Hannes’ shape had fleshed out, had become outlined in the undecided dimness of late-night-early-morning. Eren had seen the shadows beginning to break around him, had been almost able to catch the smell of the moorlands, underneath the pathways of the dead.

“yeah.” Eren’s voice was an obstruction in his throat, and it had tasted of the blood in his nose. “i know you do.”)

God above, he’s missed this fucking place.

The cemetery at the cathedral smells like the rest of town—like moorland and recent rain, like the lingering weight of gasoline and winter settling in, like old brick and the rivers on either one of its ends. It’s fucking nostalgic, reeks of childhood memories, and even with Seattle beating its rhythm at the back of his skull, he can feel the magic here. Sure, it isn’t his own, and he’s not even sure he could use it, now that it’s been so long, but he can feel it, and it makes his chest ache.

It also makes him a little bit nauseous.

“You’re good to open your eyes,” Eren’s breath comes out white when he speaks, and his free hand trembles as he wipes at a line of blood that keeps trying to leak from his nose.

“A cemetery,” Levi says from his place at Eren’s shoulder, and he sounds entirely unimpressed with where they’d ended up. But the chill is already bringing color back into his cheeks, and his hand only shaking a little within the grip of Eren’s own from the—the walk they’d just taken. “We’re in a cemetery.”

“We started in a morgue,” Eren replies. “Doorways like this connect one place where dead people are to another. It’s how gravekeepers get around.” He nods at Hannes in front of them, lounging against a headstone that might be as old as he is, moss clinging to its base. “That’s, uh—he’s one. They... collect the dead. Help them move on.”

“So they’re like the Grim Reaper, but multiplied.” Eren’s heard this tone before. It’s the calm before the storm—the kind prefaced by the noise of the Hunt, or the whisper of water leaking from a broken pipe and onto shattered concrete, or the absolute freezing feeling of an autopsy table against the naked skin of his backside.

“And better dressed.” Hannes looks up at them both, his eyes looking some weird, incandescent orange-yellow from the lights at the edges of the graveyard’s wall. It’s unsettling, even when Eren knows they’re blue. “But don’t you youngsters have a sunrise you’re waiting for? A night on the town to experience? Trouble to inevitably get me in?”

“Ha-ha.” His own footsteps are silent against the stairs, though Levi’s are just half-a-sigh louder as he follows behind him, their hands still linked. Eren doesn’t know who’s supposed to let go first. He’s never actually led someone through a Door before. “You’re funny. We’ll meet you back here just after sun-up?”

There are questions crowding Hannes expressions, and they look nothing like the questions Levi asks him. There’s too much worry there from too long ago, and there’s catching up he wants to do, and all of it is digging into Eren’s skin with half-bitten nails, their jagged edges looking for purchase.

It’d been risky to do this. He’d known that going in. Hannes had always had a place at his mother’s ear, just like he also knew a shitload of Eren’s history, and all his baby stories, and all the—everything. It’s a test, maybe. Eren’s testing himself, and he’s testing Hannes, and he’s testing... Levi?

No. That isn’t what he’s doing.

He’s sharing.

His family and the place he grew up. The views from his childhood, the way this town smells, the side streets and the landmarks, the Welsh-written streetsigns and the—rivers.

Feels more like a romantic comedy when he puts it like that.

“I’ll be here,” Hannes says into the silence that had stretched just a little bit too long. “Try not to get carried away. I know how kids today can be when they have a night off.” A smile pulls at his stubble, nudges his eyebrows up his forehead like there’s something hidden in what he’s saying, and this feels like something that could’ve happened in any number of novels that he’d read. Over dinner, maybe. With less ravens and more—whatever. He doesn’t know. More something.

The ground is somewhere between hard-and-soft beneath their feet as they cross the cemetery-proper, weaving between cross-shaped headstones and polished stone nameplates. The grass hisses with the sharp edges of winter frost every step of the way.

Levi’s fingers are still a vice on his own. They’ve gone numb.

Neither of them say anything as they reach the edge of the churchyard itself, the single-lane road stretching past their feet and into the town itself, almost-leafless trees standing to either side of the street itself. It’s a little bit atmospheric, this early in the morning. Smells like ancient magic, rising from the dirt, mingling with the newer, electric hum of modernity sitting in the powerlines and on roadways, sleeping in houses or working a restaurant.

And so Eren decides to ruin the atmosphere by speaking.

“So,” he says, a breeze whispering through empty boughs as it dances down the street, “I’m sorry about the... walk. The... Door. The...”

“Shut up.” Eren hadn’t thought that Levi’s grip could get much tighter, and is proven wrong. “I was just—surprised. I didn’t expect—“ Words in the shape of fog, a sharp exhale that looks like steam, and then, “the description was a little vague. I guess I just—“ Another pause, this time emphasized by thinning lips. “What do you hear, when you walk through a—a Door?”

Ivy glitters with frost across the road, clinging to a stone wall of the same make as the one at their backs. Eren keeps his eyes there when he replies, “that’s a complicated question.”

“‘Complicated’ like you don’t want to tell me?” It’s not an accusation per se—it’s like Levi’s waiting to decide if it’s an accusation or not. Eren hadn’t known there was a tone for that. “Or ‘complicated’ like I’d need a degree in—that.”

Eren snorts, and he can feel what’s left of his nosebleed freeze inside his nostrils. “It’s complicated like it’s complicated. The—we literally walked through dead people. What you hear depends on who’s haunting you at the time. If it’s nobody, it’s white noise, or ambient shit. Like—wind through tree branches. Crows or something cawing from some indeterminate distance. Rain on cobblestones.” It’s too cold for his palms to sweat, but he can feel them trying. “What’d you hear?”

Another breeze, and then silence settles again. It’s quiet enough that Eren can almost hear the dryads snoring beneath the bark of their trees. A Barghest howls, out in the moors somewhere, and another one answers—and another one. The sounds raise goosebumps under the collar of his jacket as they fade into... music? Into—laughter, out in the darkness and far away.

Well, he supposes, it is the faerie time of year. He’d just forgotten what rural fae were like.

Eren clears his throat to break the stalemate between the wind and the distant celebration of the fae. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve asked. That was—it’s different for everybody, is what I mean—“

“Flatlines.” Levi interrupts him, and it’s quick enough that it hits the asphalt like he’d spit it there, breaking into pieces like glass. “Flatlines, like on heart monitors? Crash carts. The high-pitched whine of one charging. Someone was crying, but I—“ The ivy trembles as the nighttime drags its fingers through the leaves, and Eren watches it. “You said that—you said the return trip would be easier.”

Despite their grip, Levi’s fingers are pliant enough when Eren squeezes them gently. “Yeah. You should just hear pretty standard ‘meditation sounds’ on the way back. Going through a Door keeps the dead firmly where they belong.” Eren hums, lifting his gaze from the ivy to the stars, pinned to the sky like silver dust. Fuck, he’d forgotten that there’d been so many. “Ghosts usually hang around when they feel like they’re leaving someone behind without... support? Gratitude? I don’t know. Sounds like you were haunted.”

He thinks of the specters he’d seen curling around Levi’s body, even obscured by the Otherworld’s shadows as they’d been. They’d wanted to say something—but then, the dead always leave something unsaid.

(Tonight had, in the simplest of terms, been fucking rough.

Franz’s blood had been congealing on Eren’s knees, leaking from any number of wounds. His chest had been pulled open, a hole carved out in his ribcage. His eyes had been open and staring at nothing, and his skin had been white enough that his veins had looked like scripture against it.

Blood had been caked on his fingers, too. Had gotten beneath his fingernails as he’d checked for a pulse.

It had made him want to vomit, the way it’d felt almost like gel by then.

But he didn’t.)

“Did you know that?” Levi sounds a little bit incredulous, and Eren can almost trace the way his nose must be wrinkling one particular line of stars. “That I was being haunted by shit, and you didn’t tell me?”

Eren’s lips are chapped when he rolls them over his teeth, but he smiles anyway. “Nah, didn’t know for sure. I can’t see dead people. I didn’t get blessed with that skill. Can’t fucking raise the dead either.” A wisp of a cloud blurs a fraction of the stars in his field of vision as it makes its way to the—east? Toward the sun. “But I could’ve guessed, yeah. You were a surgeon.”

“So, what, you decided that we’d go to Wales for a cleanse?” Ah. Yeah, that’s definitely incredulity, and definitely an accusation. And it’s just a little bit unwarranted, really. Levi has a habit of making Eren out to be far kinder than he is, in some ways.

“No,” Eren tells him. “I decided to go to Wales because you took me to—you showed me where you—“ It’s difficult to describe what Levi had shown him in a way that makes sense. Eren can already feel himself failing. “Well, anyway, we live in your hometown, and I thought that—I—“ Shit, his head hurts, and he can feel his sinuses getting ready to leak blood again, and for a second the sky sways, even though he’s standing completely still. “I wasn’t actually thinking, probably. Call it whimsy. The exorcism was just a bonus. But congratulations, you’ll probably sleep even better, charm-free.”

In the second-third-fourth silence that follows, Eren wonders if Hannes might be eavesdropping on them from the graveyard at their backs. And just as quickly he decides he doesn’t care overmuch if he is. So what? He already knew they were coming to Wales, and the only thing Eren had done was present as an inarticulate tool. Nothing new.

The branches rattle and Levi’s grip eases on Eren’s fingers, but he doesn’t let them go.

“You sure as shit don’t give yourself a lot of credit,” Levi says.

“Maybe you just give me too much.” How can their hands be as warm as they are when it’s this fucking cold? “But did you want to actually start walking in the direction of the moors, or did you just want to stand, like, ten meters from where we got dropped off?”

Levi’s laughter is like—a firework. A cannon. The—the breathless sound of tires on asphalt that’s been layered over by fresh rain. Or—Eren doesn’t know. But he lets go of Eren’s hand to press his fingers to his mouth, muffling anything else with them, digging his teeth into his lower lip with a snort.

He’s gorgeous, Eren thinks. Some kind of stunning. The kind of beautiful that doesn’t feel toxic when it’s touched.

The human kind of extraordinary that his mom had told him stories about.

(“humankind is beautiful,” she’d said, and she hadn’t even known she’d think herself a liar one day. Her finger had been soft against his cheek. “like you.”)

“Okay, fine. Let’s see what this is all about,” Levi says, his cheeks pink but colored like grapefruit with the streetlight positioned as it is. “Lead the way.” The stormclouds of his eyes look backlit by moonlight when he smiles, tucking his hands back into the pockets of his coat. “I get to keep my eyes open for the tour part, right?”

“You think I’m not funny, but you ask me that?” Eren’s legs feel stiff as he starts walking toward the intersection down the street, but he thinks he can feel laughter somewhere in his body. Maybe in the warmth of his palms. “But yes, you get to keep your eyes open. Otherwise you’ll miss all the pointing that I’ll be doing for your benefit.”

There’s still a wan-ness to Levi’s cheeks as he smiles, and there are still shadows beneath his eyes, but his shoulders seem lighter when he says, “right. So what’ve we got to the left and right?”

Eren gestures with a flourish of his wrist, holding his hand, palm-up, to the right. “Well, to the right we have the River Clwyd way, way over there, and we’ll be heading that way last. To our left, past all these buildings and shit, we have the River Elwy, which is what this place is named for.”

The street is empty as they take their left, and Levi hums. It carries far in the almost-stillness. “Tell me the name of this place again.”

“Llanelwy. Church on the River Elwy. Saint Asaph in the, you know, conqueror’s tongue.”

“Ha.” Levi’s fingers brush against the stone façade of buildings in the cathedral’s style, a sigh in the sporadically-broken dark. “It’s got two Ls though. You say ‘chan-elway.’”

“Nope.” Eren’s feet are moving in a way that doesn’t feel natural here. It’s all city-pulse and the push-pull of the tide, all noise and the end of academic semesters, all Sluagh and the—and the coming winter solstice. “I say Llanelwy, you just can’t make that sound with your mouth because you weren’t taught. You can say Saint Asaph, if you want.”

Eren knows that exact expression—the set of Levi’s jaw and the almost-scathing glace. It’s the look that said ‘i don’t want to forget anything,’ the one that demanded answers. “No. I’ll figure it out, thanks.” He scuffs the heel of one shoe against the sidewalk, shifting the weight of his backpack on his shoulders. “So you were born here? Seems kind of small for a personality like yours.”

He can taste the hint of saltwater, can feel it hitting the back of his tongue to mingle with—with riverwater. With riverwater and mud and the last swell of air in his—“Technically, I was born one town over in Bodelwyddan, because the hospital’s there, but more-or-less this is it.”

It’s just this side of hilarious when Levi’s eyebrows arch as he tries to figure out how to spell whatever it is that had come out of Eren’s mouth. It’s funnier still to watch him work his mouth around the syllables. “It’s fucking quiet. I thought this was one of those places that was supernatural central, where all the fae stories come from.”

The smell of Indian takeaway rises from up the street, one of the only places open so early, before the sun has the opportunity to even get a leg up on the stars. Eren doesn’t remember if it had been there when he was younger or not. Probably not. His stomach growls anyway.

“It is where the stories come from, yeah,” Eren says. “Because of that, smaller towns tend to mind their own business, and the faeries tend to live outside them. Mortals here and up north? They’re fucking superstitious, and they’re more likely to be able to catch glimpses of—the fae, of us—than, say, anyone who lives back home. The nightlife over there? A community within a city. The nightlife over here?” He shrugs and his shoulders grind in their sockets. “Children have a bedtime for a reason. People that don’t usually have someone they pray to, or made a deal with something that lives in the middle of some farmland no one’s touched in years.”

“So how’d you get by, then?” Eren can already see the question was a reflex, can see the way Levi shuts his in the split-second of regret. It’s not a new expression by any means, but it hurts, still. Stings, a little. “I—sorry. That wasn’t the right—“

“Kids like me age like—like people.”

“Eren, what the fuck, you’re still people—“

“Kids like me age like people until we hit our magic, and then everything slows down. I guess the fae genetic system kicks in when a human would hit some sort of puberty, and then it staves that off until fuck knows when.” Christ, that takeaway place smells good. He really shouldn’t’ve burned through his magic like he had. He really should’ve at least tucked a granola bar in his back pocket. “Besides, no one’s going to say, ‘I think your kid or your wife or whoever is a soul-sucker.’ Most of the time.”

Disbelief gives way to bemusement, gives way to displeasure, gives way to, “most of the time.” Levi’s nose wrinkles, and he kicks a loose stone down the slope ahead of them, lined with closed restaurants and the single Indian takeaway place, with businesses and parked cars. The can hear it long after it disappears from view. “Eren.”

Levi slows to a stop, just ahead of him, and he turns his body so that they’re facing one another. At his back is the rest of High Street, the River Elwy, the rest of town—the home that Eren had grown up in. His eyes are liquid mercury, circling a black hole.

“Uh,” Eren says. “Yes?”

“What do you hear when you go through a Door?” The breeze is playing with the ends of Levi’s hair, and this is a picture to savor. It’s—something else. Levi, and the town he grew up in. Levi, and his cheeks are pink and his lips are chapped and his face is so, so serious. Levi, and Eren, and magic that he hasn’t tasted in a long, long time.

God, he wants to kiss him. That’s the least romantic question ever, and Eren wants to kiss him anyway.

“I told you. Depends on what baggage you bring.” His breath is white, then peach under the streetlight, then gone.

“That’s not what I asked. What do you hear? Not, like, generally.” Eyelashes against Levi’s cheek when he blinks.

Eren’s lips are dry when he draws his tongue over them. “Depends. I don’t—I mean, it’s not like I use Doorways all the time. I haven’t—it’s been years. Tonight got a little crazy, I guess, so I’m just tired, and I—I took someone with me. I relocated him, before. He was a changeling. He’d—you know.” The pause feels like an ice sheet waiting to break, but Levi doesn’t say anything. Just waits. “Connie and I listen to police chatter, emergency calls, all that. It’s how we—before a changeling ends up in a morgue, you know?”

Levi doesn’t laugh, or smile—but he blinks, drops his eyes to Eren’s knees, and he frowns.

(Whispers from the shadows, laughter, and the smell of death-and-ice, or a frozen corpse, of something mummified crawling out of a too-cold tomb. There’d been four, maybe. Just enough to cause a problem, but not enough to take him out for good, maybe.

Someone had been playing with their food. Again.

Hands, grabbing for his thighs, covered in Franz’s blood. Shocks of magic that connected more often than not, but where ultimately unimpressive. Eren’s heart beating in his own throat, the last Slaugh falling hard on an iron knife that had hissed against his skin when it had connected.

A wheezing sort of laugh, a dying whisper, “you stole something from us. return it.”

Maybe it hadn’t been so surprising that there’d been a ghost tagging along with him.)

Eren continues, wiping and his nose. “Anyway, rough night. His name was Franz, and he followed me, I guess. I’d hoped he’d been dead long enough, that it wouldn’t be a problem. But he’d been bait, and I’d fallen for it.” His palms are sweating officially, now. It’s uncomfortable in this weather. “But that’s rare, really. Hardly ever meet a fresh corpse, and it’s not like I was you, carrying around all of... that.” That almost makes Levi smile. Eren can see it at the corners of his mouth. “Usually, I guess, I just hear me.”

An exhale, like a falling rock. Levi’s hand comes up to his own chest and presses against his sternum like he’d been hit there. “That’s—a little fucked up, don’t you think?”

When Eren snorts, his head aches. He hates that expression on Levi’s face. Hates the fact that he’s the one that put it there, too.

(Riverwater. Mud. Hands in grasses too slimy to get a grip on. Hand on the back of his head.

Life, bursting around him, filling up his mouth as he’d died the first time.)

“Hadn’t really noticed.” Eren knows there’s sweat on his palm, just like he knows that it’s cold outside. He knows that calluses always feel worse in cold weather, just like he knows that he shouldn’t even be here in the first place. But he offers his hand for Levi to take, lets the chill tease at the back of his neck with a gentle touch. “But come on. I’m tour-guiding, not trying to harsh our vibe.”

Levi watches. Waits. And the breeze caresses his face, softly. “How come all this shit happens to you?”

“I’m a capable young man,” Eren tells him, wiggling his fingers. “And I’ve got you, right? Mr. ‘I-agree-to-crazy-shit-like-transatlantic-travel-for-fun.’ Keeping me on time and all that shit. A fucking enabler of all my terrible habits, like verbal puzzles and caffeine addiction. Some people aren’t so lucky. They’re just grumpy.”

“Shut up.” Levi takes his hand, falling into step beside him as they walk in the opposite direction, toward the farmland moors and the River Clwyd. “I told you before, maybe I always wanted to get stolen away on some bullshit adventure. You’re—fucking unbelievable. I—“ There it is. The vice grip, returned in all its glory. “I’m... sorry. For all the... stuff.” When Levi clears his throat, it sounds like sand in a glass jar. “So... Hannes seems nice.”

“He is,” Eren agrees. “Mostly. After we—“ A raven, chattering above the takeaway restaurant, ruffling its feathers against the cold. “After we moved from here, my mom was always busy. Like, Hannes was my babysitter before, but he was around all the time while we were in Cardiff, and then in London. I didn’t know he’d moved to the Pacific ‘til today. I just assumed he’d still be here.”

“It was always just me and my mom,” Levi says after two moments’ worth of silence. “At home, I mean. My father was a piece of shit, I’m pretty sure, and so was my uncle. We did just fine.”

It’s—equal, when Levi does that. That’s not shocking. There’d been the planetarium, the surgical atrium, the—his fucking birthday. But there’s a level of equivalence in this tit-for-tat whatever-they’re-doing that feels... overwhelming. Like—like ‘here, this is mine,’ and ‘okay, here’s mine.’

This isn’t magic, but it feels like it is. It’s too old for words.

“Hannes was—I mean, he was kind of my dad.” It feels strange, saying that out loud. It’s not something he’s ever admitted before. Then again, he supposes that he’s not quite a teenager anymore. “But don’t tell him I said that. He’s the one who taught me to swear, to throw shit, to... I don’t know. Be... human, I guess.”

“Isn’t that weird? For a—a faerie.”

Eren laughs, barely loud enough to scrape the roof of his mouth, and there’s a mix of energy in his mouth. Seattle and Llanelwy, old and new, moorland peat and asphalt. “He’s not a faerie. He’s human, just like you. Well—not just like you. But like you.”

Levi’s eyebrows arch, and his breath can be seen on puffs of white as they climb back up the hill they’d come from. The sky is softening into a deep purple, melting underneath the weight of what’s to come. “Okay, so, do you want me to actually ask the question, or are you just going to tell me?”

“Because I’m kind and giving, I’m going to tell you,” Eren says into Levi’s laughter, echoing down the street, probably hitting the Clwyd like a skipping stone. “He’s dead, but he’s like... an employee. He works for—he works for my mom. Only humans can do this job, usually. Lesser fae that’re made for this shit ride with the Hunt, punish souls, all that. Fuck if I know why. But it’s another way someone can make a bargain with the fae—service, for your life. I’m sure you’ve heard of deals like those.”

Their feet, hissing against the concrete. Music, still going in the distance. Whatever fae they are, they’re almost certainly off their faces by now, wasted on wine aged for this season. “He works for your mom.” A laugh, killed early, and it turns into a scoff. “I should’ve put that together. He—“ Levi shakes his head, looks down, looks up again, “he’s nice, kid.”

“I know.” Eren changes their direction, transitioning them from the sidewalk to grass, the soil beneath their feet the same hard-soft mixture of the graveyard. “Shit, though, keep this up, and you’ll meet my whole family eventually. Connie’ll brag that he met you first.”

There’s... something complicated happening on Levi’s face just then. A twist of his lips, a furrow between his brows—and then, a smile. It’s small, but fuck if it isn’t a smile so soft that it makes the scenery around them look like watercolor. “You’re pretty shitty at keeping me out of your goddamn business, huh?”

Levi’s lips would be chapped beyond belief if they kissed right now. Eren’s heart flutters under his ribs at the thought of that.

“You’re just really great at being nosy, more like. I’d been doing fine at it, before.”

Levi takes a breath and holds it before he lets it out like steam from a train, letting it rise toward the sky that’s getting lighter. The stars have already started to fade into pinpricks. “That? I’m not sorry for.”

“I really didn’t expect you to be, but thanks anyway.”

The grass crunches beneath their feet, stiff as it is with the frost that’s covering everything else. Will-o’-wisps dance in pairs farther along the shrub-line, some of them ducking toward the jagged edges of the trees. Eren can almost hear them whispering, even from this far away. If he shuts his eyes, it’s almost distinct—the will-o’-wisps, the faerie songs, the sound of practically silent paws on damp soil, the breeze between the frozen grasses making the scenery sing like windchimes.

Even the Seattle inside his head can appreciate peace like this.

In the center of someone’s private properly, just out of view of the River Clwyd, Eren stops.

With Eren’s fingers held in his own, Levi can’t help but follow suit.

His hand is cold when he lets Levi go, shrugging his jacket from his shoulders, shaking it out to drape it over the frosted-over ground. Here, there are almost no obstructions to the horizon, barring some trees rising from the river’s shoreline and some shrubbery put in lines that make attempts at squares to denote one person’s land from someone else’s.

Eren is sure that there are faerie rings that the shrubs were built around.

“Aren’t you going to freeze your fucking fingers off?” Levi’s arms are crossed over his chest, and there’s stubbornness tensing up the lines of his shoulders. “Is this necessary?”

Eren shifts his weight between his feet, curling the fingers of one hand under his chin. “I guess we could stand, or sit on the cold, probably-wet ground as if the hallway in the hospital’s basement wasn’t freezing enough, but, you know, it’s your choice.”

Silence, but not really. Faerie-music and wisp-whispers, wind across the dirt and through trees. The sky is going pink while they stand there. And then, “fine. But I’m buying coffee on the way back to your place.” Another pause that’s anything but silent, because Eren can feel his heartbeat drumming in his ears. There’s a dryness to his throat that has nothing to do with the cold. Because—“If... I can walk you home,” Levi continues. “I know it’s been the other way around, but we’re—“

Levi sets his jaw and Eren wants to kiss him. He doesn’t know what he wants to say to that, sure, but fucking hell does he want to kiss him.

“I want to walk you home,” Levi says. “I want you to let me walk you home. For once.”

Gold is beginning at the edge of the horizon to the east. Eren’s surprised that he can see that from here, because he feels like he ought to be laid out on the ground from the—the weight of that. Or something.

“Okay,” Eren says, and his voice comes out a hiss. He clears his throat and tries again. “Okay, sure. But can we get, like... food instead?”

Levi blinks at him, once. Blinks twice. And then—that fucking smile. That watercolor smile. “Yeah. Sure. We’ll finally be even.”

nah, Eren wants to say, even as the words get stuck in his throat. i don’t really think we’ll ever be even.

With a cough that still tastes like blood, even though his nosebleeds have probably frozen in his sinuses for the second time, he takes a seat on the jacket, beckoning Levi down with one hand. “Whatever. Sit down, the show’s about to start. This is what we came here for.”

Levi snorts, easing onto the ground in a way that he can keep his knees close to his chest, and he looks up, watching. The dimness smudges the edges between his profile and the world around them. Eren’s chest feels tight, and he wonders if he’ll survive this.

Sunrises are slow things, after all.

“You know something?” Levi says. Eren watches the way he says it.

“What?”

“This place smells like you.” It’s almost a whisper, and the sun is cresting, like a whale in water. Light begins to make its way toward them. “Your magic. It’s weird, but—“ Levi makes a face, and his eyelashes are golden. “But I can see this place in you, a little. Even when you’re definitely some city-kid.”

“Says the guy with a Prius, born in a metropolis.” It’s taking a ridiculous amount of effort to move his jaw like this, to speak like this, when all he wants to do is take Levi’s face between his hands and hope that there isn’t any more blood beneath his fingernails. He wants to know if Levi’s cheeks would warm up beneath his palms as he brought their faces together for a—

Eren pulls his eyes away, and looks out at the fields.

The sunlight catches on some treetops, works its way around their shadows, and turns the frosted grass into a kaleidoscope of color. Each blade turns into a tiny prism, throwing different perspectives of the visible spectrum of light in a thousand directions. It stretches toward them by inches, and it’s mostly red, and it’s gorgeous, and the light is hurting Eren’s eyes to look at it. It’s making them water.

Eyes like his weren’t made for sunlight, really.

But god, just listen to Levi talk.

“Holy shit,” Levi says beside him, and he’s shifting from holding onto his knees to sitting on his knees, watching the movement of the sun along the grass with one hand shading his eyes from the glare. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Eren, what the fuck.”

“Didn’t I tell you so?” Eren makes his voice a sing-song, some bastardization of a simple spell that he really doesn’t have the juice for, but does it anyway. “I told you there was nothing else like a Welsh sunrise.”

Eren presses his fingers into the dirt behind him and pushes out.

His magic is hot in his mouth, tastes like the countryside, like heather and rainwater, and he can feel the electricity of it hurtling through his circulatory system like he was sitting right in the middle of Seattle itself. A wind that’s not in any way natural whips through the grasses, shifting the prisms from red to gold, gold to orange, orange to pink, and back again, as if they’d been sitting in the middle of the ocean.

It sends two chisels of pain right behind his eyes, makes his nose go warm and oozy, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that he’s going to felt like he’d been hit by a train tomorrow.

But Levi’s looking at the horizon, and his eyes are shining, and one of his hands is reaching out to hold onto Eren’s shoulder. He’s shaking him, and he’s laughing, a little, and there will be beautiful laughlines on Levi’s face later in life.

“You were fucking right,” Levi says, and he sounds like he’d just got done running around the world, and Eren catches his nosebleed with his thumb before Levi turns to look at him, before Eren can see his pupils go wide with awe, before he can see the way his eyes move back and forth along Eren’s face.

Eren wonders what he has to look like, in lighting like this. Wonders if he wears a sunrise half as well as Levi does.

“Hey,” Levi says, and the back of his hand is pressed to Eren’s cheek. It’s cold against his face. “You okay? Your... eyes are watering.”

“Yeah,” Eren says, and there’s a willpower he didn’t know he had that’s keeping him from leaning into Levi’s touch. “Homesick. Fucking thrilled. You should see your face.”

Levi scoffs, shoves at his cheek with no malice, with good humor, with an almost-laugh. He turns his attention back to the sunrise, keeping one hand pressed to his brows to make sure he doesn’t go blind from it, to make sure he doesn’t miss a second of the way the world looks when it’s freshly bathed in the morning.

Eren sniffles and tastes blood.

“Thank you,” Levi tells him, and maybe there’s water in his eyes too. “Holy shit, thank you for this.”

This is worth it, one hundred percent.

(When the bell above the shop door rings, it will be two-twenty-nine in the morning, Pacific Time, and Eren’s head will be fucking killing him. The city will be too noisy in his head, he’ll feel like his hands were never made of anything lighter than scrap metal, and his feet will definitely bring to mind the idea of cinderblocks, duct-taped to his ankles.

Connie will know right away, because Eren’s done this before.

But Levi will have two boxes of pizza, and they’ll still be hot, and Eren’s nose won’t quite be threatening to bleed anymore. Right then, anyway.

“oh,” Connie will say, and the store will smell like his magic—like cinnamon and maple syrup—and there will be some bullshit horror movie playing on his laptop, dyeing the wall behind him in faded shades of grey-white. “shit. hi, doctor-medical-examiner levi.”

“it’s just levi,” will be the reply. Eren will already be leaning against the counter, will already be dusting away the feeling of blood on his knees. Wales will have left the taste of memories between his teeth. “but i brought pizza. somebody implied he was starving.”

“somebody is always starving, because somebody is always up to something,” Connie will agree, solemnly. The pizzas will change hands, and the smell will be overwhelming. Eren’s stomach won’t be able to shut the fuck up. “are you staying? i was watching nosferatu. it’s on hulu.”

Levi will look from Connie to Eren, and Eren will feel—relief. He’ll feel—something. And he’ll smile, a little.

“yeah,” Levi will say, into the store that smells like magic. He’ll speak like he belongs there, and Eren will want him to, even as a part of him flinches, knows this is dangerous, knows this is fucking stupid. But he’s a fucking sucker for happy endings, isn’t he? “i’d planned on it.”

Connie will smile, and he will say, “then i’m going to get some plates. one sec.”

Oh yes. Fuck yes. God yes. Everything will have been worth it, standing there in Pacific Time. Even the fucking ghost he’d brought with him to the morgue.

Surely this will be something that Eren will remember for the rest of his life.)

#ryssafic #snk #shingeki no kyojin #ereri #eren jaeger #levi heichou #connie springer #hannes #dead on arrival #faereri au #faerie au #wheezes softly and with much desperation #i did it

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