Chapter Text
“Let me buy you a drink or something, it’s the least I can do,” Levi said after the funeral, jacket swung over one shoulder with one hand and the other in his pocket. “Your mom wouldn’t want you just moping around.”
Shot of Jäger. One whiskey, one vodka. Both on the rocks. Two shots of tequila. Lights winking off glass, Levi’s silent laughs, head tipped back, tipsy glow in a catlike sidelong glance, cradling rumble of bar noise—conversation, laughter, cheering, music—
The bedroom door hit the wall a little too hard and Eren laughed, stumbled, grabbed a fistful of Levi’s shirt to keep from tripping over his own two feet.
“Shit,” Levi muttered with that vodka rasp, chuckling to himself as he checked to make sure the doorknob left no damage.
Levi flopped down onto his bed. Or maybe Eren accidentally tripped him. “Sorry,” he blurted, but dissolved into laughter when Levi just smirked and caught him by the wrists and dragged him down with him. Under Levi’s button-down, his skin was so hot and soft—through the crisp, lingering smell of being outside in the dark, smoking outside a bar, after thought of aftershave. Ohh. Slow, hungry kisses, graze of teeth, curling tongue. A short, involuntary moan shivered through Eren’s teeth onto Levi’s lower lip. Maybe more an excited sigh with voice than anything else as their bodies moved. Gentle, lazy, distracted grinding, the kind that was more like a side effect of the greedy kisses.
“You know what one of my favorite movie scenes is?” Eren asked, only slurring just a tiny bit as his feet almost got tangled in the sheet he clutched around his body like a cloak, standing at the foot of Levi’s bed. Shirt, somewhere off the side near the nightstand. Pants, too.
“No, I don’t, enlighten me,” Levi hummed in that bored way of his that didn’t really sound bored at all, just cool and mysterious, smirking where he lay on his elbow on the bed in just his shorts.
“‘Erin Brockovich,’” Eren announced, holding out a hand regally. “And she and George have sex, she gets up and acts out her beauty queen speech wrapped in a sheet.”
“Are you going to act out a beauty queen speech?”
Eren lit up in an exaggerated smile, turning in a few circles and waving like royalty. “World peace, drugs and alcohol are bad for you, hungry children, we’re going to have great sex…”
His feet really got tangled and he stumbled to a stop, laughing.
Levi grinned, eyes hooded. “‘Eren’ Brockovich, everyone,” he muttered, and Eren laughed harder because that was so cheesy but really actually funny. Levi held a hand out, stretch of smooth skin up to a bare shoulder, naked chest. Jesus, he was so good-looking. Older, but on that line of hot and handsome. Strong jaw, flashing eyes, a really dangerous calmness about him despite how obviously ready he was to get to the action. Koi tattoo, dancing along his right side as he moved.
“Come here and fulfill your duty, then,” he husked.
Eren dropped the sheet and bounced onto the bed, clambered to straddle him though he wasn’t alone in the effort. Just boxer briefs on boxer briefs, hands on hips, tension of Levi’s middle as he crunched up and their mouths crushed together in a bruising, horny kiss. His fingers dove down under the waistband of Eren’s shorts, just past his tailbone, eager press of palms on his ass.
Eren rolled his hips down as he sat up straight on Levi’s lap, stretched his back a little. His toes curled against Levi’s shins, hands pressed to his chest. His mouth buzzed where Levi’s kisses had left their shape, their heat.
“It’s a great scene,” he gasped, still on the movie. “She and George admit they love each other, off the nose, with a perfectly-written line from Erin, and all this intense emotion. You know what that is? I call it the ‘Point of No Return’ but on a beat sheet it’s the ‘Break into Act Two—’”
Levi ground up his hips. Eren’s fingers twitched on his chest, graze of nails. The feel of Levi fever-hot and hard below dangerously sensitive places sent sparks of drunken delight like fireworks popping under his skin. Thud of his heart that rushed straight down through his gut to his dick.
“Eren,” Levi muttered in that lovely way of his, something between an impatient sigh and a tender whisper. “Stop talking about the movie.” He hooked his thumbs in Eren’s waistband and started peeling him out of his shorts.
“Harder—harder, oh—shit—”
There was sex and then there was fucking and then there was fucking. Jostled, biting kisses, head hung, fingers fisted in the blankets and muscles cramping. Hot, sticky, itchy, throbbing, he was going to feel bruised in the morning for sure—Levi’s breath was balmy on his throat, little bit of nighttime stubble, and he really liked when Eren’s open mouth caught his fingers because every time it did, it made him thrust deeper, and Eren was almost embarrassed of how hard he came but it was hard and God damn, rough sex like this was such fucking release—he needed it right now, he wanted to be torn into, he needed to feel something different from what he’d been feeling the last week, the hospital, the funeral parlor, the wake, exorcise it all—
The electric hum of the apartment heat kicked on overhead.
“We—can’t sleep facing each other,” Eren groaned through his teeth. Hard to talk with your body bouncing. Sore, post-orgasm numb, tingling into the fingertips. “It’s like too—much eye contact or—lights on—”
Levi shut him up with another hard kiss, tongue in his mouth, teeth on his lip. And then he came, too. Pounding so hard, the bed finally squeaked a little like the way Eren’s voice did as he tried to muffle the loud, breathless sounds of sensual overload in Levi’s pillow.
It was a freak accident.
She was at a friend’s house. An old man suffered an aneurysm while driving and he was already dead by the time his out of control Nissan Titan crashed through the living room wall. The E.R. told Eren his mom didn’t feel a thing—none of the ruptured organs or broken bones. Maybe she didn’t even realize what happened, because she basically died on impact.
He only threw up three times. Once at Mikasa’s apartment, back from the hospital, because he cried too much. That upset Mikasa. Then the next night because he drank too much. That also upset Mikasa, and Armin, too. The third day, he just wasn’t hungry so he couldn’t keep anything down, and that upset him because he was tired of throwing up.
But by the end of the week, he felt better. Better. As an adjective, partly or fully recovered. As a feeling, a weird sort of shorted-out daze.
His mom had always told him not to let feelings drown you by holding your breath below them.
Maybe he was holding his breath.
Eren figured he was just being an adult. When he was younger, he was quicker to irrational emotion. It wasn’t that he didn’t grieve or feel anything. It was just that adults had to keep going. It was what growing up was about.
Nothing he did or felt now would change anything. So what the fuck else was there do to?
The funeral parlor had been one of those turn-of-the-century homes businesses loved to renovate into law firms or dentist offices, perched on a little rise of land overlooking the neighborhood that sloped downwards towards the water. Friends. Family. White lilies. Uncle Rod being an asshole. Eren’s dad being awkward. His mom’s publisher and agent, tearful hugs at the door.
Mikasa leaned close with a hand pressed tenderly to his back and whispered, “Eren, your shirt’s on inside-out.”
Marco had come with Jean, Marco with the freckles who worked at Tea Republik with Mikasa and always made Eren and everyone free drinks when they came in.
Levi sauntered over with his hand in his pocket and his coat slung over his shoulder, which didn’t seem right for a peacoat but made the effect all the more flustering. Levi, his mom’s longtime friend and old editor. Levi, who Eren hadn’t seen in a couple years. Levi, with his gray-blue eyes and finger-combed hair.
Levi, who said, “Let me buy you a drink, the least I can do…”
Levi, breathing down his neck, his hand between Eren’s thighs, grinding him like a pestle into bucking mortar—
Bvvt. Bvvt.
Eren’s eyes popped open.
Bvvt. Bvvt. My old man is a bad man but I can’t deny the way he holds my hand… Bvvt. Bvvt.
Light washed through the glass patio doors and clawed at his eyes. Eren groaned and pulled the blanket higher over his head. His phone stopped ringing. Thank God. Where was it? It didn’t sound like it was on the bedside table. Jesus fuck, he was so hungover. His head was pounding. Mouth dry, head congested. He needed a Zantak or something. Zantak and Advil, some gummy vitamins—
Wait, patio doors? He didn’t have patio doors.
Eren’s eyes popped open again and he threw the blankets off his head with only a tiny wince. The real wince came when he sat up too fast and a wave of no-dinner dehydration headache dizzied him, made his stomach lurch.
Oh. Right.
Levi Ackerman’s bedroom.
Eren rolled out of the bed to the floor with a couple of thuds and crouched, peeking around the mattress at the master bath. Nobody. Lights out. His eyes slid over; he squinted out the door into the apartment. Nothing.
He was alone in the place. He could smell coffee. Coffee sounded like fucking ambrosia right now.
Peaceful morning. Softly overcast but still such a bright sky. Fall was funny like that—beautiful and purified. Sound of cars below the apartment building, city noise. A clock ticking somewhere.
Eren crawled carefully around the room, gathering what clothes of his he could find. He sat there in just his boxer briefs for a moment with his head against the patio doors, gawking down past the patio where he could see all across 5th Ave, the very edges of Pike Place through high-rises and squat original brick. The headache was retreating to a dull throb. He was stiff and groggy, so stuffed-up. Sore inside, too. He needed to pee. Then he’d get out of here. He—
The funeral. The bar. Smoking a cigarette while the light from streetlamps swam in and out of the car and Levi Ackerman drove them back to his apartment and…
Shit.
Eren threw his shirt against his face like he was close to suffocating himself in it and rattled out a mortified moan of, “Ohhhh fuuuuck…”
He’d slept with Levi. His mother’s friend, Levi. In Levi’s bed. Where Levi had more than certainly slept with other people before. In Levi’s apartment, which held a handful of memories to Eren and was now tainted by a drunken fling with his mother’s friend Levi Ackerman. Oh God, he’d fucked Levi. Actually, Levi had fucked him. Oh God, don’t think about it that way. Oh God, he hardly knew a single thing about the guy—sure, he’d technically known him since he was like thirteen or something, when he’d had the world’s biggest, stupidest teenage crush on the guy, but right now—twenty-four and hungover—he didn’t really know him. Like, where did he work now? Did he have a lot of one-night stands? Did this count as a one-night stand? Oh God, his mom was probably going to haunt him for this. The night of her fucking funeral and he got drunk and slept with a friend of hers. What a stellar son he was. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Talk to Levi about it? Just pretend it never happened? He—
Eren’s phone vibrated for a text message. Oh, it was in his pants. He really wanted to just crawl into a hole and die. But he checked his phone. Two missed calls from Jean. A text.
From: JEAN-BO
call when u can we need 2 talk
Eren almost forgot to pee before rushing out. He’d get coffee somewhere else. There was a note taped to the inside of the front door:
I’m at work. Here’s my number if you don’t have it – 206-262-3198
Eren ripped the note down like it might make the whole fiasco not real. It didn’t. It was real. He didn’t know why he shoved the note in his pocket. But he did.
“Do you know how much it drives me crazy when people substitute the literal number two for the word ‘to?’” Eren blurted when Jean picked up the phone. Outside his car, the world streamed by a little brighter than his headache would have preferred—the trees that lined the streets bursting green and waving as he passed, the lake playing peekaboo here and there between colorful houses patchworked together into the kind of neighborhood that lent its character so well to Seattle streets. Slate-blue PNW bungalows, ocher Asian-inspired Craftsmans, Tudors with exposed beams, guarding the faded concrete and guarded by crooked concrete steps.
Jean chuckled a little. Eren sacrificed hearing half of it as he juggled his phone, trying to get the speaker on without sideswiping any of the parallel parkers. He cracked his two front windows and lit a cigarette, phone perched on his knee. He felt a little better after a shower, medicine, coffee. It was Friday; his class started in forty minutes and he needed to find parking somewhere then make it across campus.
“I’m sorry,” Jean said from Eren’s knee, voice a little tinny but at least loud enough. “Are you not as fascinated with the malleability and constant flux of language as I am?”
“Nerd,” Eren grunted, blowing smoke out the window. He knew Jean was only half sarcastic. The autumn air was crisp and purified, tossing almost-dry hair in and out of his eyes gently and tickling his neck at the collar of his jacket. “Hey, I accidentally took your key again yesterday, before the… The funeral.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I stayed at Marco’s.”
“You know, you might as well make me a spare by now.”
“Ha,” Jean said, “yeah.” There was a pause in which his hesitation was painfully obvious. Eren could feel it in the car like the autumn wind sneaking in. Finally Jean went on: “That’s, um—that’s what we need to talk about.”
Eren almost choked on a drag from his cigarette; he missed the window and the ash flew back on him. Fucking A—
“Oh,” he said. “Are you serious right now? Are you—?” A sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff ripped from his throat and left his voice chalky. He swerved a little, trying to swipe ash off his clean jeans but only managing to smear gray into the denim. What we need to talk about.
Jean was obviously anxious. “Well, it’s not—it’s not what you’re expecting.”
“Uh, I’m expecting something very specific and I think it’s totally logical.” Eren stopped a little hard at a red light and drummed his thumb impatiently on the steering wheel.
“It’s just,” Jean said, “I think things are moving kind of fast. And I know we talked about wanting to try exclusivity, but we’ve only been dating for like, four months…”
“‘Not what you expect,’ huh?” Eren sputtered, and now it was more like a laugh than a scoff. Maybe he’d short circuited somewhere if he was laughing about this. “Okay, I get it. There’s someone else, right? That’s why you’ve been dragging your heels, that’s why you’ve wanted to stay casual even after four fucking months.”
“Eren, come on,” Jean snapped. There was a rustling sound as he switched ears or something. “First of all, four months is really not that long. Second of all, you went out and got drunk and didn’t even come over to my place last night.”
Stab of guilt that immediately became that humiliated shock and self-hatred for sleeping with his mother’s friend. Eren swallowed hard over a sudden lump in his throat and let his eyes roam out the window, around the five-way at the U-Village.
“Well, you didn’t ask me to come over…”
“I figured you would want to, your mother just fucking died.”
“Thanks, Jean,” Eren spat, voice like glass, but it wasn’t necessary; Jean already immediately recognized his fault.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that. I just thought you’d want comfort or something.”
“Well, you didn’t call me, did you?”
“No.”
“There you go.”
“Listen, I feel like the way we look at relationships is different…”
“Is that your version of it’s not you, it’s me?” Eren snorted. “What about ‘you’re going to make someone really happy one day!’ Or, ‘I need some space, I need to focus on my career, I’m not ready for a serious relationship, I’m not good enough for you, let’s be good friends, I like you but I’m not in love with you.’ Take your pick.”
“What the fuck do you want me to say?” Jean fired back. “At least I’m being honest. I think that counts for something—”
“Listen,” Eren said flatly, loftily, holding the phone up to his mouth and switching lanes one-handed without dropping more ash on himself. He didn’t understand how he was so calm. Kind of in shock or too hungover to be worked up, probably. “Here’s what’s happening. This is the aversion to emotional commitment part. Pinch Point number two, probably. Next, we part in anger. Then there’s the great turn-around. And—”
“Eren!” Jean interrupted, sharply. “This isn’t a fucking story! That’s not how it works!” His voice got so smooth and authoritative when it rose like that; it always caught Eren off guard. “That’s the problem here, okay? I don’t know what the fuck you want in a relationship but I don’t think I can give it to you, whatever it is. I didn’t want to do this after, you know, what happened, but—look, if that’s how you need it to work in your head for this to happen, fine. Sorry I couldn’t be romantic enough for you—”
“Shit,” Eren sputtered.
“What?” Jean said. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Eren slouched in the driver’s seat, one arm propped on the wheel as he waited for another light to turn. “I put my shirt on inside out again,” he grumbled.
There was a pause, and then Jean laughed. It was weirdly soothing and at the same time really painful, because it was one of the things that Eren had fallen for earliest and hardest.
“See, that’s what I like,” Jean said faintly. “I like you, Eren. You’re a fucking good friend of mine. But I don’t think we should date anymore.”
“Still cliché.” Eren turned off the speaker and just held the phone to his ear. He didn’t care anymore. Bring on the ticket.
“I don’t want it to be awkward,” Jean mumbled.
Eren scoffed weakly. He turned onto Greek Row—ah, right there. Parallel spot. Yes. Lucky. Leaves danced dead on the street. He loved this time of year. Perfect sweater weather. He swung out a little and fumbled for reverse.
“At work,” Jean went on. “I don’t want to not have you in my life, I just don’t want to be with you anymore. Can we be friends? Can you make room for that in your romance plots?”
Eren was quiet. It took him a moment to realize he wasn’t even thinking about something to say back, just sort of staring and breathing and remembering to keep breathing. Don’t want it to be awkward…
Someone behind him honked. Shit, he was still angled out into the street. He’d stopped parking halfway because Jean had hit something somewhere in him that felt like a grossly deep bruise. Romance plots? What the fuck did that mean?
“Can we talk about this later?” he husked as he backed in a little more, enough for the driver to swing around him but not at the right angle to actually park. “About still being friends? I’m pretty sure it’ll happen, but I can’t really process you dumping me right now. Like, I get it—but just give me a few days.”
“Yeah.” Jean sighed. “Sounds good. Sorry.”
“Sorry, too,” Eren mumbled. “I’ll see you later.”
“I kind of need my key.”
“Are you on campus yet? I’m parking right now.”
“Yeah. I’ll be in the office.”
“Okay.”
Eren hung up. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, sighed heavily. Shifted back into drive and swung out again for the last angle at parking—
SCRR—CRUNCH!
He jerked forward as his car scraped to a sudden violent stop.
Against the side of a car driving the opposite direction on the narrow, tree-lined street.
Shattering headlight. Tires squealed. A dull thud and heavy rattle.
Eren gawked, mouth open.
A very nice, very new-looking white Audi sat at an angle across the narrow street, its back bumper up against the curb and a sizeable dent in the rear passenger door. And paint from Eren’s front bumper. Or maybe just paint scraped off. He couldn’t tell.
The driver in the car ahead of him look around for a moment. Turned on his hazards. Opened his door very carefully and climb out of his shining white car, which with his long coat and fuck-me-businessman hair spelled absolute doom by way of insurance bill and premium spike.
Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
With another long, heavy sigh, Eren punched his own hazards and flopped back in his seat, scowling. He rolled down his window all the way and flicked out his cigarette butt, pouting fiercely at the tall, blond Audi driver as he came over rubbing the back of his neck.
“You okay?” he asked patiently, the kind of patience that was maybe a little judgmental.
“No,” Eren replied. Who the fuck would be so calm after some motherfucker in an already sort of dinged-up Toyota hit the back of their nice white fucking Audi?
“You want to pull over up there a little further?” The blond man turned around and surveyed his car with a hand in his coat pocket and the other on Eren’s hood. “It doesn’t look that bad. I can drive it. We should get out of the way before we exchange insurance.”
“Sure,” Eren muttered through his teeth. “Sounds good.”
His mom was dead. He just got broken up with. He went out to drink last night after the funeral and accidentally slept with his mother’s friend, who was significantly older than him, and who was supposed to be reserved from crushing on from afar, not to mention his mother’s fucking friend, he did not have time for this between Jean’s key and class at one, and now he fucked his front headlight and he fucked an Audi. Maybe it was time to check the rearview for the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, coming down the street with the police lights. Okay, maybe that was a little histrionic. But at this point, it wouldn’t be a party without them, right?
end ch. i.