Prompt- AU where Armin runs a book cafe and Eren gets tricked into working for him. Levi is a regular patron who only buys coffee if Eren's there ("kid makes good coffee") and reads seemingly incomprehensible texts like War and Peace.

Ereri (Eren/Levi)

Word count: 1,211

I don't own SnK, blah blah blah. Please feed the animal(author) and review.

Eren-

How did you get tricked into this?

You love Armin. He's like a brother to you and Mikasa. But loving him and working for him are definitely two very different things.

Armin tells you to think of it as a family business.

Mikasa tells you to "suck it up and take the damn job, you're a college kid without many options."

You can't decide whether you want to jump for joy or kill yourself.

At least Armin decided to open a book cafe and not anything too… weird. Thanks to Armin, you know books. Thanks to college, you know coffee. Both of them together? This job is practically a breeze. You make excellent coffee, and- unlike some of the other workers- you're fairly good with people, so you usually end up working both counter and barista. Which isn't a bad thing. It keeps you on your feet, keeps you from stalling and inevitably getting too energetic. It keeps you, overall, happy.

Your only downfall is that you can't stand assholes.

There's this one guy, a regular, that you avoid like a plague because of it. Levi is his name. You only know it because of the number of times you've had to write his stupid name on his stupid cup. His favorite is a chai latte, hold the goddamn whip.

As much as you spite the man, you've never once spit in his drink or gotten his order wrong.

And never have you received a single "thank you" for your work. Even people who literally might have five minutes in the shop give you a thanks and a dollar tip. He gives you a nod and maybe an extra bill on a good day.

It makes you want to punch him.

But you don't. Because even the ever-lenient Armin would have to fire you for that kind of asinine action. So instead you give him a very sarcastic "you're welcome" whenever you pass him his drink.

And you never once get his order wrong.

You try to ignore the nice little warm trail his fingers leave when your hands accidentally brush. You ignore the nervousness you feel when the little bell rings and you look up to see if it's him. You ignore the pit of disappointment in your stomach when it's not. You ignore the butterflies that threaten to fly up your throat when it is. You ignore the weird emotion that's definitely not anger that you get whenever you hear him talk.

You ignore it, but you can't help it when it happens.

So when you decide to spend your one day off of both classes and work for the week at Arlet's Cafe, you can't help the flood of nervousness-attraction-fear that fills you when Levi plops down in the seat right across from you. He doesn't have his usual chai latte, hold the goddamn whip in his hand, but he does have a rather intimidating, heavy-looking tome that he all but drops onto the table in front of you, opens to a seemingly random page, and begins to read.

And you, blushing college Sophomore, try your damn hardest to focus on the stupid physics lab homework that's due the following day. You try your hardest not to even look at him, because you know for a fact that you'll get caught up in the way his slender fingers turn each page as though it's fragile, or the way his eyes flick across the paper like he's either barely even reading it or very familiar with the work, or the way his undercut looks so damn soft it makes you want to pet it just to see if it's really as soft as you imagine it to be.

You try your hardest not to get caught up in that, because you know there's no better way to scare someone off than to get caught staring at them, and you'd like to keep your balls right where they are, thank you very much.

Eventually you finish your Physics and move onto English, and you're completely taken off guard when Levi picks up your abandoned Physics work and begins to check it. He hands it back with little notes penciled in his immaculate handwriting in the margins. Things like "clarify" or "needs a little more support" or "that's not right and you know it". Tiny, sarcastic remarks that you didn't even think one could make sarcastic just by writing.

At the bottom of the last page, you find he's written, "You make much better coffee than the swill these other baristas try to pass off as such." You smile and thank him for his help. He dismisses you with an idle wave, not even looking up from his reading.

It becomes a regular thing between the two of you; every Thursday, when you have no work and no classes, you and Levi will sit across from each other at the same table every week, you working on homework, him reading his complex codexes and proofreading/checking whatever you've finished. The two of you are often so focused on whatever you're doing that you don't even try for conversation. Not that you really need it- after all, all that really needs to be said can be written, and the two of you carry out perfectly fluid discussions in the margins of your papers. You find yourself becoming almost a poet of sorts, the way you manage to cram all you need to say into a few short, carefully worded sentences. Levi always seems to be able to one-up you, though.

You learn a lot about Levi this way. You learn he really does like the chai lattes you make. You learn he likes older books like War and Peace or The Picture of Dorian Grey. You learn he's a Senior at Trost, studying Performing Arts with a minor in Literature and Language.

You learn he's not currently seeing anyone.

You're not certain when your conversations with him changed from notes in the margins of paper to spending long hours just chatting with each other, books and homework pushed to the side and forgotten, but one day you go home with his phone number and his Skype.

Levi sends you messages often, both over Skype and over your phone messenger. Always snarky little comments about his co-workers or his classmates or his teachers and their TAs. They never fail to make you laugh, or at least chuckle, even in your worst moods. He's still as snarky as ever when talking to you (though he's still somehow able to make it sound formal), but you understand it's more his personality than a legitimate want to offend you.

It's the sixth or seventh day in a row of you and Levi sitting side-by-side at the table, his hand combing through your hair as he tries to explain a concept that should have been taught to you in class but ended up going completely over your head, that you realize the two of you are probably considered an item. It really doesn't bother you as much as you thought it would.

You give him a peck on the cheek as you leave, and he just smiles like it's something you do every day.