Happy, happy birthday, @raindrop-rouge. May your day be filled with laughter, smiles, cake, tea, bubbles, and everything good.Ā This is for you. <3
āYou are beautiful,ā Eren says one night, his soft-spoken words cutting sharply through the quiet darkness surrounding them and making Levi blink open his eyes to meet a pair of shining eyes that regard him intently.
A contradictory frowns forms on his brow, disagreeing and puzzled. Levi isnāt vain, but he knows his body is too small for a grown man, forged by a life on the streets that only taught him how to survive, leaving behind nothing but broad muscles on too feminine limbs, and a too translucent skin paled by an ongoing lack of sunlight and proper nutrition. His movements are sharp and directed, efficient and precise. Not round and smooth like Erenās.
His face isnāt pretty either, with the droopy eyes that are too small and colourless, half-lidded, shadowed, and bruised by too many restless nights and cruel days, by sorrows and grief and loss, with his pitch black hair that stands too much in contrast to his bloodless skin. His cheekbones are too prominent, his lips thin and chapped. His beard, if he could grow a decent one, would be patchy and just as odd-looking as he is himself. Something that should have been more than it is.
His hands are petite and calloused, his feet cicatrised after years and years of being tied to the straps. His back is marked by them as well, his neck too thin and aching from the weight on his shoulders.
Words donāt come easy to him, and when they do they are harsh and curt and vulgar, and too often not what he really wants to say. His personality is jagged and his spirit jaded, his core blackened by blood and broken beyond repair.
A life in the darkness has made his body strong at least, battered and branded, but powerful and chiseled as well. Itās making him capable of dealing with whatever is thrown their way, able to do his best to protect. Heās a weapon, edged and deathly and violent.
And yet he can see it in Erenās eyes that meant every word. Their green and blue is paled by the silvery light of the moon and the lingering traces of sleep, but their intensity is just the same as always, conveying nothing but serious honesty and openness.
Levi swallows and reaches out with a rustle of the bed sheets to brush over a prominent, brown eyebrow, a stubbled cheek, a soft bottom lip that wraps around his fingertips to catch them in a kiss.
Eren, Levi knows, isnāt really what others would call a raving beauty either. His hair is mouse brown and mussy all the timeāa wild beast like its owner, always vivid and fighting against an invisible force, stubbornly defying anyoneās will in untidy strands that beg to be touched and caressed and ruffledāor combedā, but also daring to try. His skin is tanned by spending his whole life under the merciless sun, the fading stripes around his neck and wrists dividing the parts where the heat kisses him every day from the part thatās always hidden under his clothing.
Despite all of Erenās hardship there is no single scar on his body, making it into something that shouldnāt really exist, something dangerous and surreal, something barbarous and threatening, something contradictory.
Then there are his eyes. Not quite as big as they once used to be, but still as expressive. Two shiny, burning flames of neither green nor blue and somehow both, that havenāt lost their feral fire over the years and oddly stand out in that still boyish face that should be much more tarnished than it is. They are just as unnatural as the rest of him.
He is perilous and an oxymoron simply by existing, by still living and breathing. Heās abnormal.
And yet, to Levi, this man is beautiful. Gorgeous even. And then some.
Erenās pulse is speeding up under Leviās touch, making him think silly things and dream against all odds. Erenās body is pristine and warm, teaching Levi that time heals all woundsāat least the ones one can seeāand that there is hope. The fury that has once dominated Erenās features has abated, cooled down into a dangerous, unstable simmer that will never leave completely, and yet every time he holds Levi Erenās hands are gentle and kind, even when the hunger between them boils over into a rough, all-consuming need.
They trace Leviās ugly scars as if they were saying hello to a dear, old friend and when they come to rest against the nape of Leviās neck the fingers begin to play with the stubbles of his undercut in caressing circles like it is everything they ever wanted to do.
When Eren looks at him his eyes are like a pair of gems that seem to have a direct link to Leviās soul, unyielding, endearing, and enticing, gazing at Levi and laying him bare as if he was the answer to all of Erenās hopes and dreams, the remedy for all his sorrows and tears, a guiding light through the darkest of times. Levi looks back and Eren holds him there, steady and unwavering, until Levi can feel the blush rising on his chest, his arms, his neck, his cheeks, and ears until the cool night begins to sting on his skin.
āBastard,ā he whispers, and Eren chuckles. Pokes Leviās nose. Snuggles closer. Smiles. Fills the world with colours and ease.
His laugh is like the sun glistening on the oceanās surface on that early spring day, fickle and warming, dancing and cheering, lively and vast, lifting and grounding at the same time, like listening to the water caressing the shore in affectionate waves and to the breeze whispering through the marram grass nearby whilst feeling the sand under his naked feet. Itās like seeing the open planes and birds for the first time, stunningly green and too much, yet never enough all at once.
Levi has seen a lot of strange things in his life, but the one laying right next to him in their bed must be the strangest of them all. A miracle.
Beauty isnāt really something you see or that you can measure like tea leaves for the perfect cup.
Itās something that can only be experienced in its entity, something so simple as blinking against the overpowering daylight after nothing but darkness and something so complicated as trying to count the stars up in the sky after being enclosed by clay and dirt for a whole lifetime.
He still doesnāt know what it is that makes Eren look at him like he does. But when Eren pulls him into his arms to hold him against his beating heart and kiss the top of his head, their legs intertwining and their bodies sharing that wonderful heat close-close-closer, he knows itās Erenās right to see more than the eyes let on, just as it is his own, and he wonāt question it, just as Eren doesnāt in return.
Eren isnāt one to make false promises. Everything he is and does screams blatant honesty and commitment, and yet Levi expects with every passing day that Eren will change his mind eventually.
But this is Eren and the world will cease to exists when he stops loving like he does, with everything heās got. As long as heās let heāll press his velvety smile against Leviās frown, and pass a silent promise with sweet brushing of lips, meeting of tongues, and connection of something Levi hasnāt found a name for yet.
He seizes it nonetheless and wraps it around his heart, makes it his armour and his shield.
Even though he doesnāt know how long it will last he at least has this and the knowledge that once someone chose him and thought him perfect in all his flaws.
He looks into these too sparkling eyes and smiles, letting himself fall as they begin to count the stars.
