Written for Tumblr's ereri summer week 2017: day 1 - medical AU

(aka the ficlet that began as a pining!Eren AU that didn't quite end up as pining or romance. Levi runs a run-down clinic in the shady part of town. Eren is a frequent visitor. Angst/comfort, ~1.5k)

The Art of Healing

"I love you," Eren blurts. Levi has his hand in both of his, having dumped rubbing alcohol on torn knuckles and slathered it in antibiotic; now he's in wrapping the gauze around the angry wound. This is the third, just today. The older man doesn't even pause. Hell, with the way he's acting Eren can't even tell if he'd heard him. But it's impossible not to have at this distance and all he can really do is wait.

Rejection; it's inevitable. A scoff. Laughter. Shit, anything. Maybe a I never want to see you again or a shove and a get the fuck out, or maybe he'll stab him with the scissors he used to cut his bandages or the needles in the first aid kit he used to get out his splinters. Cut out his heart, physically, as if he isn't already doing so metaphorically.

But Levi does none of these things, and maybe, in hindsight, that's kind of him but Eren thinks that it's mostly cruel, to be leaving him like this. Something inside hurts, vaguely aches like a dull pang in the background, and he doesn't really know how to fix it. Except he does, but it's in Levi's hands, all of it, and he can't help but wonder in this silence if this is his way of rejecting what's already become his.

I love you, Eren repeats in his head. I love you I love you I love you look at me.

But with Levi he never knows. No one ever really knows with this enigma of a man and all Eren can do is to wait.

Maybe he'll never get an answer. It probably means he doesn't ever want to hear from him ever. He'll have to take all the post-fight patching up somewhere else; either suck it up and do it himself (not likely) or drag himself down to Armin's and hope he won't tell on fucking Mikasa.

But that would defeat the whole purpose, telling anyone else. Hell Levi doesn't even know what brings him here; mild and sometimes kind of serious fist fight injuries, yes, but no one's ever bothered to venture past the surface.

And when Eren thinks about it it's ridiculous. It's even more ridiculous, not to mention presumptuous, to blurt out feelings for this man. He's nothing more than a hot headed, quick tempered brat to the seasoned retired army nurse working for the dilapidated low-income, no-ID clinic. Though. He doesn't actually know if Levi's a seasoned retired army nurse, he just kind of. Assumed.

Which makes an ass out of you and me.

Eren blinks.

Levi is staring back at him, dark eyes appearing uninterested yet somehow managing to pierce through his eyes and deep into his head; and for a moment he wonders, absurdly, if Levi has read through his thoughts.

"What?" Eren says, ever so eloquent, and the pretty face in front of him (god his eyes are fucking broken) scowls.

"I said, assuming makes an ass out of–"

"Oh, uh. Fuck. Did I say that out loud?"

Levi snorts. Eren, the tips of his ears flushing, looks down. His hands are back on his lap, neatly bandaged. He misses having Levi's hands on his. Even if they're pouring alcohol on his freshly bleeding knuckles.

He doesn't know why there's another pause there, but they sit in silence for a moment, and it's awkward as hell but he doesn't really know how to fix that, either. Why is it that it's always Levi that fixes things, always Eren that comes in to get fixed? Then, by that logic, it makes no sense why it's Levi breaking him this time.

Does he even know that he is?

"Unless you have anything else for me look at, it's gonna be ten bucks."

Ten?

"Ten?" Eren repeats dumbly. Levi's looking at him like he's an idiot, not that he really needs to, he is a fucking idiot but god, he can't just–not after this–

"Wait, Levi," he continues, heart clenching in his chest; "What about what I just said?"

Levi's eyes narrow, and in that moment Eren instinctively cringes and he hopes it hasn't shown through in the next but he's always been told his face is an open book and—

And then those steel-hard eyes soften; and maybe—he hasn't screwed up everything?

"Eren," his voice is something gentler, a tone he hasn't ever heard directed at him before—at others, yes, namely frightened children that has their turn before him while he waits or to stray cats in the back alleys behind the clinic, and while his heart does a weird flip Eren doesn't know if he likes it. God, he won't, he's not so pathetic that a tone like this will reduce him to his knees, not yet, not yet–but then Levi continues and Eren is helpless to fall silent, trying not to squirm in his seat. "Eren, listen. You don't just come to a clinic like this a couple times and fall in love with someone like me. No—I said, listen."

And he says that as if he can do anything else. Knuckles pounding dully in hand, the sharp tang of blood echoing on his tongue. Aching muscles and greasy hair and shoulders that don't fit into the joints of his torso, too heavy and too lanky and just. Ugly.

And then, more than that, bare.

Levi effectively shuts him up and there goes the last of his defenses, crumbling to reveal something ugly and misfit and naked. His heart pounds, and the oddly arrhythmic drum of the organ echoes under the bones of his ribcage like a thousand needles pricking him from the inside out.

If Levi tries to tell him that he's just mistaken, that this is just a phase, he doesn't think he could take it. Not from this man. Not from anyone else, not from himself, and not, from him.

"…Eren," he begins again.

He'd thought that he would meet his eyes. That no matter the outcome, for this, for him, that he'd scrape together the last of his guts and offer, everything he has left.

But the same man that makes him want to give up everything and let go of it all makes him want to take back the very bits and pieces he bared and hide them away, push them deep inside the cavity remaining after everything he's given up and just, forget.

And maybe he'll tell him that he's not who he thinks he is. Or maybe he'll just tell him that he already has someone. It's so fucking like him to refuse to consider that possibility until the last minute, when it's too late.

Just. Just another something too late in a sea of everything that has lost its time and place, as if he's not drowning already. I love you, he'd said.

"…Don't." The word spills out of his mouth before he even thinks of sounding the thought. "Don't. Please—don't, don't reject me."

The silence that follows carries the weight of a walk to the gallows.

What Eren doesn't know is that it is a walk for the both of them, towards the end of everything on opposite ends; nothing but two prisoners brushing past along cold concrete leading in opposite directions. The scent of disinfectant saturating the air, the tremble of his skin, the bow of his head.

Levi has never known what to say in face of so much unveiled vulnerability, spilling raw and frail all at once.

It's not new to him, but he still doesn't.

But he remembers the look in this boy's eyes, the sunken circles under his irises, the way he walks; as if he's fighting something that isn't chasing him but one that has already caught up to his back, sinking into his shadow and saddling his ankles with a weight that should not exist. He remembers blood and unrepentance and hunched figures behind rotting alleyways and eyes too hollow on children too young.

Eyes; the image of a gaze still-alight, unextinguished fire and despair; frustration and responsibility too heavy for shoulders too narrow, a back carved with scarlet scars to match the color of ash scattered at his feet. Eyes, that had met his. Lingering when he thought he wasn't aware, dropping to the floor to his return.

He, too, begins to shift before he thinks it through.

All he knows is this; so Levi reaches for Eren's hair and tangles rough fingers into greasy locks. After that it's not a stretch for him to pull the boy forward, forehead to his shoulder.

The tremble is obvious, then. The heat of another body so close to his reverberates into his own skin, and as stiffened shoulders break into shudders, a fist curling into Levi's back, Levi closes his eyes and holds him still.