The bitter winter morning sped by as it usually did. The alarm clock blared, shrilling rousing music down his ears before the sun had even properly emerged from night-long retire. Frost glazed grass and glass, and glancing outside miserably to the equally as miserable weather staring back at him, he became all the more reluctant to peel himself away from the warm cocoon of blankets he was nestled in.

But, as usual, the thought of his handsome prince of black painted perfect and beautiful in the inward theatre of his mind encouraged him to discard his lazy morning grogginess. Perked him up enough to jab the silence button on the alarm clock, and clamber out of bed. Uniform was thrown on; his tie was laced; shoes were slid on; hair, still tousled as always, brushed; breakfast downed in a tasteless rush; teeth vigorously scrubbed with his toothbrush until his gums bled and mint overwhelmed his breath. His prince (an open clean-freak, though he thought of it more as him with a passion) wouldn't like him to be dirty after all. He even went to the extremes of splashing his entire face with warm water and scrubbing his hands red raw with a soapy sponge to make sure he was as clean as possible.

His school bag lay half-open, strewn on the kitchen floor. Filling up his plastic, recycled water bottle with water fresh from the tap, and checking twice that he had all the books he needed, he stuffed the backpack with his supplies before zipping it up and slinging the olive-green strap over a single shoulder. By this time, the door had already echoed the three hollow knocks he'd been waiting for. He hurried, dressed and ready for school, over and yanked it open, greeted by his best friend, Armin, who smiled at him, lowering his book from his face. It was another old classic today. A story from Edgar Allen Poe. Tell-Tale Heart. "Good morning, Eren."

"Hey." Formally dropping his head in an acknowledging nod, he stepped out the house, Carla hovering behind him with her brown hair done into its usual style down one shoulder. She dropped the spare set of house keys into his open palm with a rattling sound after giving Armin a brief, affectionate smile.

"Have you got your phone on you?"

Eren patted his outside, smaller backpack pocket pointedly, feeling his mobile phone's screen beneath his hand.

"Okay, good. Don't lose it."

Eren rolled his eyes at her mother-fussing behaviour and slid the keys into the same pocket, zipping it up firmly and making sure it-his phone-didn't bulge against the fabric. "I won't. See you after school, okay? We're going to be late. Come on, Armin." Gently steering his best friend by the elbow, he guided him past the fence of the house, into the streets, exhaling white smoke immediately in relief. At the moment, it almost pained him to be around his mother. His mother, kindly nurturing, a sweet woman with a gentle smile and a bad temper that rarely showed. It made him guilty, almost disgusted of the biggest secret he was keeping hidden in his life. But then he thought of that secret to its deep dark extent, and didn't feel quite so remorseful or bad anymore.

Gloomily he examined the winter surroundings as the chill began biting into his skin like tiny sets of teeth all over, rubbing his arms for warming friction. "Sweet baby Jesus, it's cold."

"You should have brought a coat," admonished Armin, peering at him from the corner of his eye. How he managed to read and walk at the same time without making a clumsy step Eren would never understand. "You could always go back for it..."

"We'll be late for school if I do that. What are you reading, anyway?" He stole the book out his hand, flipped it over, and skimmed the back, before going through the pages and reading aloud a section of the random page, despite Armin's pouts and feeble attempts to snatch it back. "You're reading about an insane man who killed an innocent old person because he had a creepy eye?" he questioned after finishing. His eyebrow tilted.

Armin hit him lightly with the leather-clad book after getting it back, jutting out his bottom lip as he struggled to find the page he'd last been on. "It's an old book, and I like Edgar Allen Poe's stories. He was a good writer. Just because you don't like reading."

"You're right, I don't like reading." He shrugged both backpack straps over his shoulders and held them as he sidled towards their close destination. "I'm not questioning your choice of hobby. I'm questioning your questionable taste. Weren't you reading about two teenagers who killed themselves or some crap like that the other day?"

"That was Romeo and Juliet!"

"Bleh." He stuck out his tongue distastefully and shook his head. "Soppy, cliched romance. Tedious."

"Wow, you used a big word. I'm proud of you." Armin, of course, saw right through his prideful act, packing his book into his bag after bookmarking his page. "You're really a big soppy romantic. Aren't you?"

"No."

"You're a big fat liar."

"Shut up, Armin."

"Ha! You're blushing!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

It was Eren's turn to pout, turning at the corner and returning Armin's guffaw fairly with a curt show of his middle finger. At the end of the street their school stood, flooded with students. They melted inevitably into the crowd of other teenagers shoving and laughing, some cast off to the side as they bowed their heads to themselves with headphones plugging their ears, isolated from rowdy society. He felt Armin, by habit, cling to his backpack as to not get lost as they fought their way past the school gates, just in time for the bell to ring for the start of the school day.

"What classes have you got today?" Armin asked as they made their way inside. "We have English together today, don't we? Or is that tomorrow?"

"I'm not sure." He reached into his backpack pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. "I know I have French today though."

Armin smirked. "Of course you do."

"What?" Eren stared at him, unraveling his timetable blindly at the same time.

"You know what."

"Don't start," Eren warned, poising his opened timetable dangerously. "Don't think I won't hesitate to hit you."

Armin burst out laughing. "Are you threatening me with a piece of paper?"

Just before they parted for the start of a sluggish, tedious day, Eren folded the timetable into four, and whacked him with it.

He was suffering another migraine again.

Eren knew this from the moment he entered, after a dragging day, the last school period of French. The teacher, sat at his tidy mahogany desk, had his raven head bent over his papers, fingers mechanically massaging his temple with his mouth twisted into a scowl. In normal circumstances, he wouldn't have been perturbed with this fact; a scowl was characteristic to be plastered across such pretty pink lips. It was the fact, the way, they were as taught as wire, grey eyes sparking with something Eren hated to see, making the teen think less of a scowl, and more of a grimace.

Dismayed, he waddled up to the desk, hefty bag cradled in his arms as he peeked at him over it shyly. He needn't speak to get his attention. As if sensing him hovering there in anxious uncertainty, he glanced up at him from his papers, and, as usual, something inside of Eren just dissolved. His heart gave a delighted flutter; his knees went flimsy, sweet, inevitable jelly and he felt colour pressing up to his cheeks in a hot rush of crimson.

His handsome prince-blank faced as usual, giving nothing but almost imperceptible body language away-cocked one thin eyebrow as the dazed teenage boy clutched the table next to him for steadiness.

"Are you okay, sir?" he finally choked out, and wished he could say more. But he couldn't, and he knew he couldn't. Not in a classroom filled with students staring or chattering to themselves in huddles of mischief. Not that he wouldn't stand on the desk right there and then and proudly declare "Hey, this is my boyfriend!" because he would, if it wasn't impossible that is...

And, under tricky circumstances, it was his boyfriend.

It had started at the beginning of this school year, when their previous French teacher had gone on maternity leave (for the second time) and another was employed to take her place until her (possible) return.

Eren had been infatuated immediately (unexplainably) at the teacher introduced as 'Mister Ackerman'. Curtained raven hair, looking as silky as black silk itself; a creamy white complexion; a precious, porcelain face adorned with uncanny dark grey eyes, narrow and cold; and overall, something too perfect to be labelled as anything but a God. In Eren's opinion anyway. He was surprisingly small albeit for someone who Eren had later found out to be twenty two. At five foot three, the only person in their class that walked below him in the literal sense was Krista, a blond lesbian with a brown-haired freckled girlfriend latched protectively onto her almost always, who since their dating had all but ditched her prior friends, Reiner and Bertolt.

Of course, it was a startlingly normal thing apparently to be attracted to the teachers. He'd heard friends, students, commenting on the 'hot' appearances of some of the young employed, Levi included. But he didn't think it was normal to be so extremely... well... drawn... and reactive around them, as if they'd known them forever and had an attachment to them more than attraction. Feeling like they belonged there in those arms, yearning to be taken into them, to be kissed, soothed, lulled...

Like the way his heart would hammer hard against his ribcage as if it wanted to break free and flee. His cheeks would flush. His belly would take home to soaring butterflies, and knots of jelly.

Something he knew he could never act on. And yet:

Their first kiss-something Eren had daydreamed and dreamt, to his own horror and shame, but was something he'd never thought would become a reality-had been a whirlwind of emotion and, in tiny doses, regret. So crappy was he, with a lack of resilience in the language department, at French he was advised by the headmaster Erwin Smith himself to take after school lessons for half an hour two days a week with his teacher, and that soon led to conversations. Conversations, that soon (somehow, so fast...) led to brushing hands, and stares held too long for it to be in any regular students' comfort zone.

They were both wallowing in confusion at the seemingly perpetual attraction helplessly stringing them together like puppets, so, when their lips touched for the first time, after Levi-that was his first name, unbeknownst to Eren even now-had finished a bout of stressing at the teen, bent over his desk, for the poor work presented, they were both surprised. Neither pulled away for an eternity, and neither remembered who'd leaned forward to cause the contact, or whether it was an accidental bump, wrong move wrong time. It was awkward and frozen and merely a clumsy press of the lips, nothing Eren, or Levi for that matter imagined his first kiss to be.

By the end of it, Eren, a stricken, blushing mess, was packing his stuff and dashing out the classroom as quick as his feet could carry him, so rapidly he tripped several times and fumbled to get back up.

He did his best efforts to hide at the back of the classroom in French and skip the after school lessons for weeks after that, which seemed to be quite alright with Levi.

But, of course again, they soon enough conversed over papers strewn with a language Eren still didn't understand; they shared a kiss far more pleasurable than the last one, and slapped down labels of 'boyfriends' with Levi's firm conditions drilled intimidatingly into Eren's brain.

The teenager skipped happily home that day with a rictus grin refusing to flee his lips.

It had been a month.

Here they were now.

Staring at each other like they didn't much know each other more than a teacher who saw their student twice a week.

But Eren found he didn't mind. Not when, in a mere fifty minutes time, they would be alone.

"I'm fine. Go sit down, Jaeger."

Silently Eren obliged, taking a seat next to his adoptive sister, Mikasa, and splaying his French book across his desk after bringing it out his bag. The lesson began. It finished slowly, in a blur of Mikasa trying to talk to him about tedious things, the school idiots snickering their jokes of dirty humour and the girls with makeup painted on their faces chattering to themselves about their next boy target, who was a 'slag' and who was a 'bitch', and what alcohol they were planning on hammering themselves with that very weekend.

The end, indeed, came very slowly.

As usual, he'd understood nothing, and his page stared up at him, a blank canvas except for the date and title scribbled scruffily and underlined at the top.

As soon as everyone flocked the room, Levi, who'd slowly sauntered over and snatched up the red-covered book, was chiding.

"You've done no work," he pointed out, hands on his hips in a languorous display of being unimpressed. Eren couldn't help but find the posture cute; his face, however, livid and exasperated, presently was not.

Eren shrugged, careless. "I didn't get it. You know I'm crap at French." He reached out for the man's hands, the hands he on a regular basis fawned over for their adorable smallness (much to Levi's disapproval), but the teacher swiftly pulled them away. Hurt with reject, the teen frowned and leaned back. "Don't be like that... it's not my fault I didn't understand..." He lowered his eyes.

"You could have raised your hand and asked me."

"But I always get really flustered when I speak to you," he whispered, "and you said you didn't want anyone to know about us, so I try not to-..." He silenced himself of his quiet protests and went on. "I'm sorry. I'll do more work now." He dug into his pencil case and drew out a pen. "What do I need to-"

He broke off, feeling a pair of warm, soft lips on his forehead. Levi's lips. Kissing him. Gently. His own face went up in flames when his confusion wore off, and he drew back to stare at him, pen dropped down onto the desk.

Amusement. Levi's face was too tinted pink, especially as he stared at him for so long.

"Sir," he began teasingly, giving him a cocky smile. "Are you blushing?"

"No."

"Yes you are. Your cheeks have gone all red. Here." He brushed his fingertips over his warm cheek; Levi slapped his hand away.

"Carry on, brat-"

"You can't hit students," he continued to jest, then gasped playfully. "I'm going to tell the headteacher."

Levi actually growled at that, exasperation flashing through his silver eyes as he glared him down. Usually, the teacher's personality changed with Eren. He was less cold, more calm, less intimating. And yet it was clear he'd provoked his stoic bitterness back in a storm.

Playfulness receded as quickly as an elastic band snapping back. Eren gulped. "S-Sorry, I won't do that, sir, you know that." He hastily went to change the subject. "So, has your migraine gone away? Have you gone to the doctors yet like I told you?"

Levi hooked his ankle around the leg of the chair beside him, dragging it towards him with his foot before sitting down on it backwards, sat astride it with his legs either side, hands resting on the back. He watched him lazily, something hidden in his usually-cold eyes now thawed but veiling a secret Eren couldn't comprehend. "I'm going to the opticians. To get a pair of glasses. It's probably eye strain."

Eren flashed him a dubious look, and Levi sighed softly.

"I'll go to the doctors, so long as you stop looking at me like you're taking an uncomfortable shit."

"I'm just worried about you," he mumbled sheepishly, smoothing out his face in fear he actually did look constipated. He hesitantly outstretched a hand. "Can I?"

Levi nodded briefly, a permission, and Eren began gently massaging his temple, delighting in the soft sigh it got from the teacher, grey eyes sliding closed.

"You're like a great puppy," Eren murmured affectionately, and hastily went on before Levi could quip a sarcastic/bitter response. "I mean, you're bloody terrifying when you want to be, don't get me wrong. Which is most of the time. But I don't know. I don't think you're all that horrible."

Silence.

"Getting soft in old age, you great dinosaur?"

"Eren. I'm only-"

"Twenty two, I know. I'm teasing. Sooooooo, siiiiiiiir."

"What?"

"What's your name?"

A huff. "This again?"

Eren grinned, leaning over and brushing his lips up against Levi's temple. They rested there, moving against the older's skin as he spoke. "What's your name? I know it starts with an L because your initials are LA. So, is it Lenny?"

"No."

"Lewis?"

"No."

"Luke?"

"No."

"Just tell me, please. Come on, I'm your boyfriend, doesn't that give me to the right to know your name?" Eren coaxed, pouting.

"You're not supposed to be my boyfriend. Shitty brat."

He innocently raised his hands.

There was silence for a long time. Such a long silence Eren thought he'd not speak at all. But finally, his lips moved around gushed words.

"It's Levi."

"What?"

"My name. Is Levi."

"Levi," Eren breathed, rolling it around his tongue, lapping it up, experimenting and savouring. "That's a nice name." He kissed his temple now, no longer brushing his lips up against it. "May I kiss your lips? Levi." He'd found painfully in this past month that if he made any wrong moves, whether it be touching him in wrong places or kissing him when he didn't want to be kissed, or being too clingy for his liking, he'd go home with bruises where his clothes would hide. He'd progressively grown careful of his affectionate displays.

"Yes."

Their lips touched. Soft lips, colliding in gentle sync, brushing and slanting as Eren's fingers slid from his temple down his cheek. He would have gotten the hint if Levi slapped his hand away, however his hand rested undisturbed on his face, a small smile playing across his lips.

"Hey, Levi?"

"Brat?"

Eren huffed a chuckle and rolled his eyes. "I love you."

"Soppy-"

"Shhh."

And he silenced his protests with his mouth.