Chapter Text
December, January
Or at least, January to December.
That’s how long it takes Levi to get to know Eren. Twelve months.
It only takes him six to fall in love.
#
The thing is, routine is optimum for Levi.
It provides stability, reliability and comfort. It’s consistent. It’s automatic. It’s easy.
Levi’s routine has been the same for years: wake up, cuddle with his cat, eat breakfast with his cat, shower, get ready for work, go to work, try to prevent his desktop from failing on him whilst he works with numbers, remember to eat, socialise, come home, eat dinner with his cat, do any at-home work that is required, read, cuddle with his cat, sleep.
Some things, of course, are a minor interruption in the general week. Grocery shopping, filling his car, visiting his mother, office parties, anniversaries, birthdays, etc. But as far as things go, Levi’s life is pretty… organised. Predictable. Controlled.
Until Eren fucking Jaeger.
#
“No.”
Levi’s eyebrow flickers, his concentration broken.
“No, no, no, no, no!”
Petra’s cry lifts many heads, Levi’s included. He knows what’s happened before he can be bothered to ask—she’s banging a curled fist on the desk beside her laptop and gritting her teeth together at the screen. Her eyebrows are knitted tightly in quiet fury. She’s been compared to a hamster before for that anger, because of her height, but trust—she’s no ‘small pet’. She has an upper body strength that has even Levi’s eyebrows arching at times.
“Did you save?” Mike asks from the coffee maker a couple of metres away. Before he even has an answer, he places his mug back on the table and begins walking away through the glass doors. “I’ll call IT upstairs.”
“Hopefully they’ll be able to recover the document.” Levi adds once Mike has left the room, saving his own work while he has the chance. All he needs is to lose a day’s work and end up redoing it all at home whilst his cat sits on his shoulder demanding affection. If she isn’t on his shoulder, she’s on the paperwork. He’d invest in somewhere she can’t reach, but Petra the cat is like Petra the human—stubborn.
“They won’t.” She grunts and covers her face with her hands, shaking her head into them. “I hadn’t saved it at all. I was just about to, after this next paragraph, and then it went blue again.”
Levi blinks as Petra scrapes her fingernails through her auburn hair and gathers it into a ponytail at the back of her head, securing it with a black elastic. It mulls in his head that perhaps he should warn her to save her work more often, but her look of determination tells him she’s already aware of her mistake, and he’s not about to go out of his own way to be unhelpful.
“If you tell Erwin, he’ll be able to replace your system.” God knows that’d be his first plan of action. Levi doesn’t know if it’s sheer luck or something else that his desktop has never drastically failed on him before, but if it did, he wouldn’t be as patient as Petra. He’d take that piece of shit into Erwin’s office, dump it on his desk, and demand a new one.
“I don’t want to bother him.” Petra answers, already tapping at some keys to see if she can fix the problem on her own. When that fails, she shakes the mouse around the table.
“How are you supposed to work if your system keeps failing?” Levi asks. “We can bring it up at the next meeting.” Ignoring any response, because he’s already dreading the day this will inevitably happen to him, he scrawls a neat note on the stack of post-its he has on his desk. He knows Erwin will provide her with a new one. He’s not an unreasonable boss.
“They’re sending someone down. Should be here any minute.” Mike picks his coffee back up, leans against the table with the snacks, and observes the room with his mug at his nose.
Knowing that nothing else can be done until an expert arrives and not one for motivational speeches, Levi gets back to his own work and notices from his peripheral vision that Petra continues to work on paper until her computer is back up and running. Not just stubborn—resourceful, too.
If only Petra the cat could work on paper. His workload would be halved.
It only takes five minutes for the specialist to walk through the glass doors. ‘Specialist’ looks too mature for him. He stands out in the sea of expensive shirts and suits instantly, with an open fire-truck red flannel and jeans that have purposeful—or maybe not, since he looks so young—tears near the knees. Levi takes in his tall frame and bronze skin when he walks towards Petra, slightly disturbed at how his ability to look away has vanished. It’s not his computer that’s playing up. It’s none of his business, really. Usually it’s easy to ignore the IT technicians.
Not this one.
“…Miss Petra?” His voice is hesitant, but not nervous.
“Just Petra is fine.” She beams at him and rolls aside on her office chair to let him have a look at the damage He bends closer to the screen, but by the look on his face, he recognises the problem immediately and begins doing something to her computer, getting on his knees so he’s eye-level with the monitor. Now that Levi can no longer see him, it’s significantly easier to get back to his own work.
Until…
“Did you update or install any new drivers lately?” As if this new, interesting stranger has a captivating voice as well. He tries to keep it quiet, considerate of the working people around him, but it’s too youthful for quietness.
Petra’s expression is blank.
“Probably not then.” The boy answers, appearing at the side of her desktop with a gentle smile. “I’ll check your RAM before opening up your base unit. Don’t wanna take everything apart if I don’t have to.”
She seems satisfied with that, nodding and responding appropriately. She offers him her chair, and then settles on getting him one of his own from the staff room, mumbling about how she doesn’t want to be the cause for his knees hurting—though, she adds, that probably won’t be a problem since he looks so young. He responds with some teasing in his voice that he’s only twenty. Twenty, seriously? When did Erwin start employing kids?
Whilst she’s gone, Levi unashamedly inspects him, eyes trailing from his bright shirt to his mess of brown hair to the lanyard hanging around his neck. What a nerd.
A nerd Levi’s itching to know the name of, though.
“Eren.” Mike calls from behind them. “Coffee?”
What a coincidence.
“No thanks.” He responds from over the desktop. Levi watches his mouth move as he replies. “I don’t like coffee yet.”
So his name is Eren, Levi notes, no longer trying to read the name on the swinging card around his neck. He seems to know what he’s doing on a computer, typing rapidly the moment Petra’s starts back up and sings the familiar tune. When Levi can finally retreat to his own work, he’s already decided that when he experiences any malfunctions (and he will, because technology is a shit), he’ll ask for Eren.
And it has nothing to do with the storms in his eyes.
He just seems to know what he’s doing.
Whilst Petra’s still gone looking for a chair, Levi struggles to concentrate on the numbers on his screen. Usually, he can avoid looking at things that capture his interest, but 1) Eren’s loud clacking on the keyboard can’t be ignored, and 2) Levi’s trying to deny that the boy even has his interest in the first place. A multitude of debates are going on in his head, somehow all centring around Eren the new IT guy.
Just as he’s getting back into his groove, a voice ejects him from his focus. Again.
For fuck’s sake.
“Hey, uh… s’cuse me? Can I borrow one of your post-it’s a sec?”
Levi looks up from his screen without moving his head, visibly vexed that his concentration has been shattered once again.
“Please?” Eren adds quickly, as if Levi’s stare reminds him of his manners. His face is visible between the two desktops in front of Levi.
Instead of responding verbally, Levi picks up the block of yellow squares and passes it to him through the laptops, returning immediately to his work once Eren takes it.
“Thanks, uh…”
Glancing back up at the drawn out sound, Levi meets Eren’s expectant gaze and answers automatically. “Levi.”
“Right. Thanks, Levi.”
Petra comes back without any further interaction, and Eren stays for at least half an hour. Levi doesn’t mean to, but he listens every time he speaks, having to remind himself afterwards that the health of Petra’s system is none of his business. Eren finalises that the RAM is fine, and so is the hard drive, but that hard disc space was probably the problem. Whilst he talks her through what that means, Levi checks his own stats, making sure that his won’t act up anytime soon.
“If you get any more problems, just let me know. And remember to save!”
Levi tells himself his skin doesn’t tingle when Eren remembers to say goodbye to him.
#
Eren doesn’t come back for a number of weeks, and whilst that’s a good thing because it means none of their computers have broken down, it still leaves Levi feeling like a punctured tyre.
It’s well into February now, and his routine has carried on as normal, with the exception that now, he has to deny the effect Eren had on him.
If he has lunch in the cafeteria (which is doubtful, he’d never eat cafeteria lunch, but he does take his own there sometimes), he doesn’t notice that he’s specifically looking for him until he feels his eyes brushing rapidly across every person who walks through the double doors. Hanji’s starting to ask if he has something medically wrong, and if she can experiment. No—the answer is always no.
And if he has lunch in his office, his eyes are plastered to the window, scouring the streets down below to see if he exits the building. The elevator trips in the morning and evening are now full of glancing eyes instead of his usual stare-at-the-doors-until-they-open habit, and someone crosses his mind now and then when he sees red and lanyards.
It’s frustrating that he has less control over his thoughts and actions. Meeting Eren was simple and not at all life-altering, so Levi is lost as to why the boy continues to pop up in his thoughts unannounced and encourage him to look around the room for his face.
Honestly, this kid is nothing special, even if those letters are in his job title.
Levi considers it a nuisance that his brain is preoccupied with thoughts of Eren, and rightly so, considering how much longer it took him to finish his at-home work than usual. But on a few occasions, he has indeed looked twice when he realised that, to his joy, Eren was in the same room as him. It happens more so in the elevator than in the lunch or staff rooms. At least twice, he’s been sprinting towards it before it closes, hair still ruffled from his pillow and collar inside-out.
What a kid, Levi thought at the time. Anyone would think he’s jealous or bitter that Eren is younger than him, but he’s the opposite. He’s curious, for once in his life. Levi’s a smart man, and he knows a lot of things, but about Eren, he knows nothing. Who is Eren?
Is Eren the type of boy who parties and hits on girls and is generally—what kids call these days—a fuckboy? Does he like to read? Does he have a library card? Does he know how to cook? Does he have a gym membership? Is he one of those little shits that puts the milk in before the cereal? Does he even have the time to eat cereal? Is his mother pouring it down his throat in the mornings, or does he live alone? How did Mike know his name in the office before anyone else did?
Who the fuck is this kid, and why is he imprinted in Levi’s brain like the way Petra’s food sticks to her fur?
Cat-Petra. Human-Petra is a very clean eater.
#
Near the end of March, Levi thinks he has a grip on his curiosity. Eren is a long-gone fad, and his thoughts centre more around Petra and when her groomer will be available to clip her nails, or what he’s having for dinner that night, or when he should call his mother to update her that he’s still alive and hasn’t croaked it yet.
Something that bothers him is the disappointment he felt in returning to his old routine. It wasn’t like returning a book to the library (which he no longer did, not since that sign at the library that asked some customers to stop ejaculating on the books), or returning home from a holiday. It held the same emotion as when he’d once tried to fix a bad habit, only to fail and resort back to the unhealthy habit. It’s that realisation that he’s unhappy with something in his routine life that eats at him.
He should be happy. He has a great job, a great apartment, great friends. He even has a great cat. Mulling over what he doesn’t have should not be a thing. A habit. But it is.
So much for his thoughts revolving around his cat.
Things mostly go bust when he’s in the cafeteria. Hanji is telling him about the effects of a pet owner’s personality on the pet’s personality. It’s something she’s dabbling in whilst she volunteers at an animal shelter—that’s one of the reasons he didn’t hand Petra right over to her when she was a kitten. Hanji would’ve spent all her time analysing the poor thing instead of letting her live.
She says he should train Petra to high-five, and that’s when the living daylights are scared out of him. Not at the thought of Petra high-fiving—at the abrupt bang of a party popper and then the cheering. Somewhere at his left, there are around five brats swarming around another, seated, brat, taking photos and passing a cone-shaped hat around and hugging.
It registers that it’s someone’s birthday when his heartrate slows. Then the blond guy—who’s built more like a rugby player than someone suited for office work—moves away, and Eren’s face is visible. The party cone is on his head. There’s a badge attached to one side of his open navy shirt. Someone thrusts a gift bag in front of him.
It sucks Levi back in, like one of those clever poems that make you think, or an anchor in the ocean, or like a very powerful vacuum. He’s wondering about Eren. It’s obviously his birthday today, but—how old is he? Is he twenty-one, or is he one of those people who uses his new age in the months before his birthday, to get used to saying it? Did he get many gifts? Does he do special things for his birthdays, like go out for dinner with his family? What birthday was his favourite?
God, he sounds like Hanji. Ready to strap the kid up and examine him, observe him, analyse him.
Levi leaves the cafeteria with his curiosity exceptionally un-gripped.
#
April showers bring forth May flowers. What else does April bring? Fucking Eren.
“Mike.”
“Hm?”
“I need you to call that kid.”
“What kid?”
“The one that fixes things. Computers.”
“Eren or Jean?”
“Eren.”
“Right.”
Mike’s hands are so large that he can do that thing—pick up the phone, hold it with three fingers and a thumb, and use the remaining to push the buttons. Levi waits beside him in his office chair, his screen an alarming shade of blue with a lot of writing on it that he doesn’t understand.
“What’s wrong with it?” Mike asks. Levi can hear the phone ringing on the other end.
“It’s gone blue and I’m not touching that shit to make it even worse.”
Chuckling, Mike passes that info on to whoever answers the phone and when he hangs up with his unnecessarily huge hands, he spins in his chair and covers his moustache with his pen. “Eren’s on his way down.”
“I hope that’s your pen and not one you found.” Levi comments as he rolls back to his desk.
With a cringe, Mike puts the pen back on the desk. “Doesn’t smell like mine. Good call.”
Whilst waiting on Eren, Levi tries to tell himself that he could fix the blue screen that abruptly interrupted his work. It doesn’t look too intimidating after he’s stared at it for a while. It probably only requires a restart. Last year, he would’ve launched the desktop out of the window in a fit of rage if he ever encountered such a shut-down, or he would’ve unashamedly whipped out the manual. Now, well… it gives him a chance at interaction with Eren.
Not that he’s any good at interaction.
If he’s lucky, Eren will expose his fuckboy nature, or start picking his nose, or do something that will turn Levi off enough to stop thinking about him and considering these inconveniences as good just because it means he gets to see him. He’d even take something smaller—a mention that he hates cats, because Petra is the goddamn world to him, or a snarky comment that hints to his homophobic side. Anything.
“Hey, Levi.” Eren walks in way more confidently when he knows who needs his help. Levi doesn’t say hello back—by the time he’s decided he’ll say ‘hello’ instead of ‘hey’, like he’s fucking twenty-three again, it’s been too long to comfortably respond. Instead, he rolls aside on his chair to provide room for him.
“Ooh,” Eren sucks some air in between his teeth, probably to signify how shitty Levi’s situation is. “You’ve got a BSOD.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“Just means blue screen of death.” Eren kneels on the floor beside him and starts doing things to his computer. “It’s actually a good thing. Means your system has shut down to prevent damage.”
“But it’s shitty that there’s damage in the first place.” Levi replies, watching him sit back on his heels whilst he waits for it to restart. Shitty as well that now he can’t work.
“Right,” Eren agrees with a smile. “We just have to restart and pinpoint the damage, then try and prevent it from happening again.”
“Eren.” Petra leans her elbow on her desk and her chin on her fist as she looks at them through the desktops. Her smile is something between smug and teasing. “Did I hear it was your birthday the other day?”
Ducking his head and breathing a laugh, Eren nods and rubs his palms against his thighs. Well, that—that was almost disgusting. Ideally, he’d wash his hands or whip out an anti-bacterial hand wash—actually, if he whipped that out, Levi’d be in love—but wiping hands against jeans? No. Unfortunately, not ‘no’ enough to turn him off. “Probably. It was on the thirtieth. Sorry if my friends made a racket.”
Huffing so low nobody can hear it, Levi considers writing out a mass e-mail.
Thanks @ Petra Ral (the human) for making me look like an asshole by not bringing up the kid’s birthday first.
Her smile loses its teasing and becomes genuine. “Not at all. Happy Birthday.” She tells him.
He brightens. “Thank you.”
“Many happy returns.” Levi adds on quietly, looking at his computer to see if it’s started back up yet.
“Thanks.” Eren’s face is still like the goddamn sunshine. Levi almost gets sunburn when he looks at him. He should put it on his to-do list to break out the SPF50 whenever Eren’s around.
“Did you have a good day? Do anything special?” Petra presses, ignoring her work to lean forward and into the conversation.
“Yeah, it was great. Had to work the first half of the day, but—”
Levi butts in, voice portraying disbelief. “Erwin made you work on your birthday? I would’ve told him to go and fuck himself.”
He thinks that might’ve been too sudden until Eren grins, wide and toothy. “It’s fine. He didn’t know until later that day. He actually gave me a card and time and a half.”
“He wouldn’t make us work on Christmas anyways.” Petra points out.
Eren’s eyebrows arch. “Your birthday is on Christmas day? Sweet. Do you just get a shitload of gifts then, or do your parents make you celebrate like a week early?”
Levi tries to ignore that Petra’s smile has gone back to smug. “I get a shitload more than I deserve.” He reasons. And it’s the truth. He didn’t deserve the elaborate coffee maker Erwin got him, nor the expensive vacuum he’d been making heart-eyes at for a month from Petra. He didn’t even deserve the collection of t-shirts printed with swear words on them from Hanji.
“Can you put in your password? Promise I won’t look.” Eren makes a point to cover his eyes and then peek over the top of them, as if to contradict his statement. Fucking kid. Even Levi admits that should’ve been cringe-worthy.
Cringe-worthy and disgusting, but Levi’s heart doesn’t seem to give a shit. Now he’s preparing his speech in court for when Eren murders someone right in front of him and he still thinks the sun shines out of his ass.
He taps it in, then presses enter with his pinky.
Eren identifies the problem, Petra chats away to him whilst doing her work, and Levi resists the urge to spin around in his chair whilst he waits.
Just as Levi’s beating himself up about not being as conversational—god, he didn’t even think of offering him a coffee or a drink like Petra did—Eren leans back on his heels, slaps his palms against his thighs, and blows out a satisfied huff.
“Right.” He starts. “That should be you. If you get another blue screen pretty quickly, then it might mean there’s a problem with the actual computer, but if you get one like, say, every… year or so, it probably means it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Right.” Levi echoes, rolling into his space as Eren gets up from his knees. “Thank you.”
“No probs.” Eren smiles, but then the edges become mischievous and he winks whilst walking backwards. “Might wanna change your password, though. It’s on the weaker side.”
“Little dipshit.” Levi mutters under his breath, staring even when that denim shirt has disappeared out of the glass doors and behind the wall.
#
“What’ve you done?” Is the first question out of his mouth when Petra’s more affectionate than usual.
Levi picks her up as he’s locking the door so she won’t run outside. She’s a little shit at the best of times, so when she greets him with a high tail and a purr (purring is strictly reserved for 4:30AM), he’s curious. More times than he’d like to admit has he considered installing cameras in his house to see what she gets up to while he’s at work. Then again, he isn’t sure if he wants to see her cry at the door for fifteen minutes after he leaves.
The first thing that greets him when he turns around is her toy box, tipped on its side with half of her toys scattered around it, and then a couple that have been batted around the floor. She continues to purr in his arms, but if he dared try to kiss her, she’d stop him with a paw against his mouth immediately.
That’s why he crooks his finger under and around her neck a few times, then drops her onto four paws. “Looks like you had fun.” He comments as she goes over to the rug and stretches on it. “That makes one of us.” He mumbles, toeing off his shoes and exchanging them for his slippers.
After he’s cleaned out her litterbox and made dinner for both of them (even though Petra’s dinner consists of squeezing cat mush out of a packet), Levi sits down to pull out his laptop and finish any work that he’s left lingering behind. He expects a lot, since his computer broke down and he was distracted by Eren. That’s when he notices his old manual sticking out of one of the pockets of his laptop bag—the one he always consulted for any problems he had with his computers. Out of interest, he flicks through the brochure, eyes scanning to look for a blue screen.
It’s there, and it says almost everything Eren said. So, the kid’s a walking manual.
What would a manual want with a stoic, robotic, boring finance worker?
The wink Eren sent him earlier floods his mind. Logic tells him it was a joke, a gesture, nothing serious. His heart is having a hard time believing that.
Shame or embarrassment or something creeps up his neck when he rolls the manual up in his fist. “No telling anyone where this went.” He tells Petra, and then dumps it into the bin.
What would a stoic, robotic, boring finance worker want with a manual…?
When he had Eren?
#
After Eren has directly helped him with his computer, he becomes like a thorn in Levi’s side. A very pretty thorn that Levi doesn’t necessarily want to pluck out.
“Hey, Levi!” Eren yells from a mile away in the goddamn foyer of their building, eyes lighting up as he notices Levi walking towards the elevator. He turns to the two people he was talking to and then runs towards him, one hand on the backpack strap on his shoulder and the other clutching an envelope.
He huffs out a breath as he slows his run right in front of Levi, his footsteps heavy and… young.
God, he’s not that young. Levi’s technically still young. He has to stop thinking of himself as the age his knees make him think he is.
That’s what he gets for vigorously cleaning since the age of fifteen.
“How are you?”
Levi doesn’t even know how to answer that. Not when it comes to Eren. If it was Hanji, he’d grab a pole, situate it between them and say ‘not fucking today, Satan’, and if it was Erwin, his automatic response would include a ton of swear words and honesty.
“Fine.” He croaks out, forgetting to return the question.
“Good.” Eren smiles, raising his eyes to watch the elevator steadily fall from level fourteen. When he looks back at Levi, he holds up the envelope in his hand, chuckling as if Levi had actually asked about it. “I just got my dog vaccinated. Now he’s all set for the year!”
Levi tips his chin up in acknowledgement, eyes drifting towards the elevator doors. At least he’s a responsible pet owner.
“Do you have any pets, Levi?”
Fuck. He’s probably one of those aggressive dog-lovers who hate cats because society says you can only like one.
He inhales, waiting for the disappointment to hurdle him. “I have a cat.”
He wants to add ‘what the fuck are you doing? This isn’t the script’ when Eren gasps and ‘aww’s’. “What’s his name?”
Impatient, he shifts from one foot to the other and huffs out of his nose, eyes plastered to the decreasing numbers above the elevator. “Her name is Petra.”
“Aww, Pet—Petra?” Eren’s neck almost cracks when he whips his head around, thick eyebrows in a furrow. “Like the Petra who works on your floor? Why did you call your cat after Petra?”
Levi frowns at him, lips tightening together. “How do you know Petra wasn’t named after my cat?”
Eren snorts and shows his teeth. “Well, I’m guessing your cat isn’t, like, thirty or fort—”
Levi arches an eyebrow at him.
Eren swallows, grin gone. “Y’know, never mind. Petra’s really young. My dog’s called Mike.” As the elevator doors open, Levi steps aside to let people out, then walks in and presses the number for floor seven. Eren leans over him to thumb eleven.
When he settles beside Levi, the box empty, he keeps going. “Funny story, he’s actually named after the Mike who works with you. Did you know he has a nose like a bloodhound? That’s how we started joking about calling my puppy Mike—well, he’s not a puppy anymore, but y’know. Dogs have good senses. Mike has good senses.” He actually elbows Levi after that statement, wiggling his eyebrows. “Get it?”
“I get it.” Levi blows some air out of his nose. It doesn’t sound like a laugh, more like he has something stuck in his sinuses, but Eren seems satisfied and keeps chatting.
“I know it’s not like, clever, but the name suits him anyways. He’s a big St. Bernard. He had huge paws, even as a puppy! How old is your cat?”
“Her veterinarian estimates her at five months.” Levi answers, side-watching for Eren’s reaction.
His cheeks grow plumper as he smiles. “So she’s just a baby! I’d love to see Mike with some kittens. He’d make them look so tiny. This is your floor.” He nods to the doors before they even open. “See you later!”
Taking a moment, Levi stares at the doors and wonders if that actually just happened.
Then he kicks himself in the ass, for not saying goodbye, and for not asking how Eren was when Eren first asked him. He’s almost at the stage where he needs flash cards for talking to a crush.
#
May is when the blood donation crew come by and use their building as a venue. On the first and second days, it’s open to all employees, and on the third and fourth, it’s open to the close public. It’s always hectic and noisy but fuck if Levi doesn’t love that scent of cleanliness in the air and shovelling medical gloves and hand sanitiser into his laptop bag when he’s on his way home.
Last year, he didn’t even have to. He got talking with his nurse over cleanliness, and she gave him a bottle to take away. She made it into his list of top ten people in his life.
He goes down at three in the afternoon, a comfortable amount of time after lunch and before he’ll go home and have dinner. It’s the last place he’d expect to feel distracted, given his interest in both biology and sterilisation, but then who’s sitting up on the first fucking fold-out bed?
Eren.
“Oh, Levi!” Eren’s eyes go wide when he sees him. He feels like one of those teenagers who accidentally made friends with a child and now the child will never stop calling on him and interrupting his teenager things. “Are you donating today?”
“I always do.” He says to him. The distance from the fold-out reception desk and Eren’s bed is lengthy, and a couple of people look up at his voice as if they’ve never heard it before. God.
“Me too.” Eren holds up his arm, complete with a blood pressure machine and a needle in his arm.
If it’s not bad enough that he continues talking to Levi throughout his entire sign-in process, keeping their conversation entirely public and loud, just as Levi’s being taken to his own bed, Eren waves his arm frantically as well, gaining the attention of his nurse.
“Oh, oh! Can you put him here so we can chat?” He gestures to the bed beside him.
Of course the nurses are fucking enamoured with him (Levi can’t talk), so they oblige him and park Levi’s ass in the bed right beside Eren. As Levi hikes himself up and starts unbuttoning his shirt to pull an arm out, there’s a look of achievement flashing in Eren’s eyes.
“Hey, we’re like blood brothers.”
“Christ.” Levi breathes when he turns his face away to get his arm out of his shirt. Underneath is a vest top, but he isn’t afraid of showing off his body. However, he is feeling like he should curl up or hide his stomach or something, because Eren is wearing a sweater loose enough for him to simply roll up his sleeves, and here Levi is, presenting his undershirt like the old man he is.
Eren’s still snickering at his own joke when Levi turns back around. “How is Petra?”
That puts a frown on Levi’s face. He knows Petra has more trouble with her computer, but that doesn’t mean he’s qualified to have a crush on her instead of him. Then again, he couldn’t blame Eren either. Petra is social, and pretty, and knows how to fucking say happy birthday to him.
“She’s—fine. Why?”
As if catching on to Levi’s unfriendly tone, Eren’s smile vanishes and he blinks. “Well, I’m just wondering. I told you about Mike, getting his vaccination, so I was just wondering how your cat is. Have you gotten her vaccinated yet?”
The cat. Petra. The cat. Right.
Levi tries to hide his pleasure. “She’s fine. She doesn’t need an annual vaccination yet, she’s only five months.” He reminds, momentarily ejecting himself from the conversation to answer his nurse. He recites his birthdate to her.
“You were born in 1986? Damn. Another year older and there’d have been ten years between us. I was born in 1995.”
Okay—shouting his birthdate out in the entire lobby? It’s almost a deal-breaker.
But then he looks at Eren, looks at those blue-green eyes, and he’s a complete sucker. He’s fucking whipped and he isn’t even in a relationship. Anyone else and he’d have at least head-locked them, but not Eren.
He’s becoming soft.
“I’ll stick with the nine years.” Levi responds. “I’m not in my thirties just yet.”
“But you will be in December, right?” Eren reminds. “The twenty-fifth?”
“Thanks for the reminder.” Levi says dryly.
Eren laughs at that. “No, I’m just making sure I have the right date. Y’know, so I can buy you a card. Wait—” His expression becomes deadly serious. “Should I buy you a birthday card, or a Christmas card?”
Levi makes a noise like a scoff, mostly to cover up the sensation of a needle penetrating his skin. “Don’t buy me anything, kid. Save your money.” And god, that response reminds him of his age again. It’s all anyone ever said to him as a kid, and now he’s saying it. May he rest in peace.
“Nah,” Eren replies, gaining a raised eyebrow from him. “I’ll buy you both. I don’t necessarily need to buy you it. Who says I don’t have left-over Christmas cards from last year?”
“Recycling is good,” is the only thing Levi can come up with.
“Yeah, it is,” Eren licks his lips. “I’d rather spend the money, though.”
From the corner of his eye, Levi can see Eren watching him. He’s fully turned on his bed, attention all on Levi. Probably trying to suss him out, find out what pushes his buttons. Whatever kids do these days. Except then, Eren pulls up his sweater to scratch at his tummy, and Levi can’t help but glance at that piece of skin that breaks up his clothes. His hip bone is nicely formed and bronzed and Levi’d be lying if he said he couldn’t see his thumb there as he’d pull Eren close and let their lips meet and—
Eren sniffs and rolls over onto his back, hair mussing up over the thin pillow. “I hope nobody’s stole that brownie.”
“What brownie?”
Eren glances at him, one arm under his head. “The brownie on the food table. We need to eat and drink something before we leave and that brownie has had my name on it from the start.”
The corner of Levi’s lip twitches. “I’m taking the brownie.”
“You wouldn’t.” With the arm attached to his blood bag, Eren lays it over his heart. “Come on, we’re blood brothers.”
Ten minutes later, when Eren’s arm is free from his needle but Lev is still attached, Eren returns from the food table with two cups of juice and a sad face.
“Someone took the brownie.” He sticks his bottom lip out exaggeratedly.
“Shame.” Levi replies, adopting Eren’s earlier position. Since sliding down the bed, he’s ended up with his free arm behind his head and his other out flat.
“Well,” Eren replied, bending one knee so he could sit half his ass on Levi’s bed. “At least I tried. If I hadn’t tried and the brownie was still there, someone else would’ve taken it.”
It’s strange to feel so comfortable here—he’s worked here since he was fresh out of college (the perks of having an older best friend with a business handed to him on a platter), but never before had he lounged with an arm behind his head and his shirt half off his body, enjoying a chat with someone he only met approximately five months ago. It wasn’t that long ago he was considering quitting this job and finding one elsewhere because it felt like he was getting nowhere in his life. He was doing the same thing, day in, day out, and the excitement of feeling grown up and lucky in everything else but love was dying off.
At twenty-one, he thought love could fuck itself, because he had a great apartment, a great job, and great friends, and what else could he possibly want? But slowly, starting with Erwin, his mind began to change. Erwin met someone he became so infatuated with that his work started slacking, and the business was no longer the most important thing in his life. Levi then watched Petra get engaged twice before marrying Auruo. Even Hanji ended up with her childhood best friend. They all seemed to have lives outside of work that were filled with other people and enrichment and he—did not have that.
It’s not that he didn’t try—of course he did. He once went out with a girl he suspected might have a crush on him. She always pestered him at the coffee shop they frequented. It turned out she just wanted a pathway into Erwin Smith’s business, and Levi was that pathway. That was back when he believed he could end up where Erwin, Petra, and Hanji were today. After a while, a handful of failed dates, and becoming comfortable with loneliness, Levi decided he just wasn’t cut out for that life.
But Eren—he sparked something in Levi that hadn’t been there in a number of years. It was something that—god, was he really admitting this to himself? —gave him a reason to believe. Believe he could be where the others were, believe he could have that life, believe he was worthy of it.
The circumstances were all off—he really didn’t think this through. He was just sucked in, without thinking of the consequences and how this could actually affect him negatively. Eren might not even be into men. He might be into people his own age. He might be into both—but just not into Levi. Even if all of that proved fruitless worrying about—he might have parents that disapprove of them. His own friends might tell him off for essentially becoming a cradle snatcher. Petra might not like him. Everything could go so, so wrong.
Somehow, Levi couldn’t pass up the chance.
Later, with a brownie from the café across the road in his hand and on the IT floor of the building, Levi tells himself: at least he’s trying.
“Can you give this to Eren Jaeger?” He shoves it into the hand of someone dressed like Eren—did everyone on this floor dress like students? —with a nametag of ‘Jean’ and walks away.
As he shoves his elbow against the door to leave, he hears Jean shout, “Oi, Eren!”
#
May melts into June, and Petra melts Levi’s heart when she gets the all clear from her six month check up at the vet.
He takes her through the park on the way home—the sky is blue and the air is clear, and she never gets to stay outside for longer than a couple of seconds, considering he usually takes the car. He figures as a treat for growing so well and strong, he’ll show her the world she watches through the window.
Her cat carrier has a clear, tough plastic window in the front, so she can lie or sit and watch the world go by like she does at home. The only difference is she’s often jostled by Levi’s hip, because that’s where she ends up situated with the strap diagonal across his torso.
When it’s quiet, he tells her that the things above them are trees, and points out all the birds she might like to follow with her blue eyes. The scenery makes him wish he had some sort of balcony attached to his apartment—he’d put netting up over the exposed area and then let her wander outside more often. She’d like that.
“No way! Levi? I didn’t know you came to this par—is that Petra?!”
“Shit.” Levi huffs under his breath, turning around after he’s glanced behind him. He makes sure his mouth isn’t dirty and smooths down his shirt, then turns back around. “Eren. It is.”
In front of Eren is a massive dog—he really wasn’t joking about the paws—dragging him towards Levi by his leash. His ears are floppy and he looks fluffy and friendly, but god, all Levi can see is that drooling tongue and grunting nose and dirty paws.
“This is Mike.” Eren’s face is split in a grin—when did the sun come down to earth? —and his arms are uncovered for once, showing off biceps that could only develop after hours of effort in the gym.
“Mhm.” Levi acknowledges, trying to discreetly remove Petra from his eye-line. She’s never met a dog before, and he isn’t about to introduce her to one so large she might alert everyone within a five-mile radius that she’s unhappy.
Eren, however, seems to give no shits. He gets on his knees in front of her carrier and presses a finger to the plastic—looks like he’s cleaning that later. He coos at her and calls her name and tells her she’s gorgeous, and in return, she presses her nose up to the plastic and tries to sniff at him.
She becomes more interested in Mike when she sees the size of him, suddenly standing up and then sitting down and standing up again. Then she starts pressing her nose against the only crack she can find.
Eren looks like he’s never read a goddamn pet manual in his life, because he brings Mike right up to her window and points at him, saying “this is my puppy, Mike!” and then Mike is slobbering all over their divider and making whines probably because he can’t get inside to pant all over his new ‘friend’.
“She’s never met a dog before—” He goes to excuse any hissing or swatting she might do, but she doesn’t seem to care, so he stops.
“I think they like each other.” Eren stands again, shining his goddamn sunny rays proudly over his puppy. He looks up at Levi, eyes squinted, before they pop open. “Oh! Did you get my gift?”
“What gift?” Levi thinks back to the last time he received a wrapped-up gift with a ribbon.
“The shortcake!” Eren presses. “As a thank you. For the brownie.”
An “oh,” slips out of Levi’s mouth. He does remember that—the day Mike came to him, dropped a cellophane-wrapped block of caramel shortcake on his desk, and then stood over him inhaling as he ate it. “I remember. Thank you for that. You didn’t have to.”
Eren waves a hand. “It’s nothin’.” He starts walking alongside Levi when Levi picks up his pace again. “So what’re you doing here? Do you take Petra for walks?”
“No.” Levi takes a peek at her to make sure she’s okay—she is, lying and blinking at the things she sees around her. “She had a six-month check-up today. I was just bringing her home.”
“Everything go okay?” Eren asks, swapping Mike’s leash into his other hand.
Levi nods. “She’s healthy. Making good progress.”
“Good.” Eren says, the same way he did when they were at the elevator and Levi forgot to ask how he was back.
When they’re underneath some more trees and Levi can rest his squinting eyes, he notices that the blue mark he thought was a design on Eren’s shirt is not a design at all—in fact, his fingers twitch, it looks like a stain.
“What is that on your t-shirt?” He asks.
Eren pulls the dampness away from his skin and Levi’s skin crawls. “Oh. I spilled my slushie down myself. It’s no big deal.”
Levi stops in his tracks, lip curled up into something he thinks might be a sneer. “Are you twenty-one, or twelve?”
Eren circles his eyes to the sky as if he’s thinking. “I’m probably both. Are you my mom, or my dad?”
Levi scoffs. “Little shit.”
Grimacing for the first time since Levi’s seen him, Eren wrinkles his shirt in his hands as if to rid the fabric of any excess liquid. Despite his joke, it looks like it’s beginning to bother him.
“Why don’t you go home and change?”
“A-ah,” Eren chuckles as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. “Uh. I live a little bit away from here and I can’t… really be bothered going back right now. Unless you have to go home, then—! Then I’ll leave.”
That sounded fake as hell, but Levi wasn’t going to question him. He sighs, “follow me,” and then starts making his way back to his apartment.
“Follow you?” Eren questions. “Where are you going?!”
Levi only turns to say, “My apartment’s closer.”
The walk there is as Levi predicted: full of Eren chatting away, Mike dragging him everywhere, and that stain on his shirt becoming a complete eyesore to Levi. If he wasn’t so anxious to get that shirt off of Eren (and for all the wrong reasons), he might actually be jittery about having Eren come to his home. He knew it was clean—it rivalled a fucking hospital—but having Eren inside his personal space was intimate in a way he’d rarely felt before.
As his key crunches into the door, he turns to give a warning. “Do not. Let your fucking dog leave your side. I don’t need to be cleaning more dirty paw prints off my windows.”
“Sure. Don’t worry about Mike, he’s a good boy.” He leans down to scruff around Mike’s floppy ears. “Aren’t you?”
“Right.” Levi says quietly, taking Petra into his bedroom. He opens the carrier for her to exit whenever she wants and opens his drawer to grab a t-shirt that Eren will probably find suitable for himself. He’ll have to be happy with a long sleeved black V-neck, because Levi doesn’t own many bright colours. The exception is his ugly Christmas sweater.
“Here,” he closes the door behind him. “You can wear thi—” And the second he raises his head, he wants to bat Eren over the ears, jump in a time machine, and pray to every god that he hadn’t invited Eren and Mike into his pristine apartment.
Eren looks again like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t—and this time, he has. Mike’s sitting on his hind legs, butt against Levi’s white leather sofa with his tongue flipped out of his mouth and a pleased expression on his beast face. Eren’s pleading with him, hissing at him to get down, and then his cheeks blossom red the moment he sets eyes on Levi.
“I’m sorry!” He stutters out. “I told him to get off—he’s clean, I swear. Just… he likes new places.”
Levi pinches the bridge of his nose. He inhales and throws the t-shirt to Eren. “I’ll get the stain out and return it to you on Monday.”
“Okay.” Eren nods, weakly pointing to Mike. “Will you… look after him while I change?”
“I suppose so.” Levi folds his arms across his chest.
Eren lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree. “Thanks! You’re an angel.” And then he skids off to the hallway, and opens and closes two doors before finding the bathroom.
Levi lets out a breath. He slowly approaches the Godzilla-sized dog on his sofa, then perches on it beside him. “So—”
Mike decides he prefers other company. He hops off the sofa, revealing muddy paw-prints, and trots over to Petra’s water fountain, leaning down to sniff her cat bed on his way. He laps at it in a way that makes him appreciate Petra’s elegance. By the time he’s done, his wall, rug, and laminate flooring are twice as wet as Eren’s t-shirt.
Had this been anyone but Eren, he would’ve sent them home immediately—hell, he wouldn’t even have invited them back in the first place. But it was Eren and Eren was—fuck. He was exhilarating. Even his messy fucking dog was exhilarating.
With the question of love flooding his brain and making his fingers tremble, Levi grabs a cloth and starts cleaning his sofa.
#