A/N: Would you believe this piece has been sitting on my hard drive for over a year? I'd been digging up fanfic stuff while working on Spaces Between Stars (next chap up soon! After over a YEAR, UGH) when I came across it. I never posted it! Oops!

Anyway, warnings for an unconventional role-reversal (Levi on top), explicit yaoi, excessive symbolism, and experimental run-on sentences. Enjoy!

We Were Giants

- o -

Erwin is too straight-laced and Levi just can't take it.

He knows what it's like to be uptight. Levi is the king of tight: of leather belts stretched taut, of double knots and choking zippered uniforms. Perfect self-control in a starched collar. But there was a time before he was heichou, back when he was just a man, when Levi knew what it was to be loose and out of control, lurching and surging and clawing his way up the ladder of the underworld hand over fist. He almost never has to fight for his life during battle anymore, but when he does he remembers. He remembers the careening tooth-and-nail existence of his prior self, still there somewhere inside him, and lets it loose to claim the victory he deserves. No: he doesn't deserve it but he's sweated for it and it's all the same thing in the end.

Erwin is nothing like him. He's always been an upright guy. Professional and disciplined and hard as brass tacks, sure, but bright. Fair in both senses of the word. A white marble statue with hands raised toward heaven, like the ones Levi once saw in a book about the old days. The days when man's religion was still real and gods walked the earth instead of titans.

Cleanliness is Levi's religion now, though it has nothing to do with godliness. The truth is Levi knows he's dirty, deep inside where the sun can't burn it away and all the raw scrubbing in the world can't get it out of his bones. Black with filth.

Sometimes Levi stands on one foot in the doorway to Erwin's office, shoulder propped against the frame and dark eyes watching the other man work. Erwin's pen scratches at papers freely, without pause, like Levi isn't even there. Isn't searching beneath his skin for the bones he knows will be bleached white and whole and clean. Part of Levi, the older part, almost wants to cut him open past the red and see for himself, just to be sure.

But Levi's not crazy, not quite, just loose. Besides, he likes Erwin. Erwin likes him. Mutual respect goes a long way in a partnership like theirs. It has to or they'd never work so well together.

Levi could never work for another commander. The second time some idiot gave an order that could jeopardize his men he'd lose his temper and beat him to a pulp. Leave him with missing teeth and black eyes and broken bones-not half as black as Levi's, but twice as satisfying to hear snap-and no idea of how lucky he got off for it. It's happened in the past, before Erwin. More than once. Levi is chronically amazed he is still a lance corporal, let alone not in jail by now, but he supposes on some level they have no choice. What walls could hold humanity's strongest?

Erwin's words are one such prison — the only one — but they're walls Levi chooses to tread within. Erwin's boundaries don't trap him so much as help him, solid and reasonable and honest as stone. Levi respects Erwin's walls like the sacred ones that keep humanity in and titans out, like he respects Erwin himself. They surround him with control and sense and cage the looseness at the bottom of his soul with white-marble pillars. White like Erwin's bones.

Sometimes Levi leans against Erwin's door frame, foot tapping out a slow rhythm in time with the shuffling of papers, lens-dark eyes on his commander's hunched form. He watches and thinks about what Erwin would do if he walked over and grabbed his hair in both fists and shoved his cock down his throat, fucked his face until he came, filled his belly with warm charcoal. Levi knows his come is really black, even if it doesn't look it. He wants to paint Erwin's bleach bone insides with it, taint him until he's dark like Levi. Soot-colored after an inferno.

But he doesn't dare. He relies on him too much, on the strength of his walls and rules. Levi would sooner lop off his titan-slaying hand than risk crumbling the Law of Erwin. So he stands and leers in silence, thoughts locked away behind the enigma of his expression, foot tap-tap-tapping in time with the flourishes of Erwin's pen.

Levi's gaze is heavy like charred wood so he wonders why Erwin never looks up to meet it.

- o -

Erwin's fall from grace is short and sudden, lubricated by the threat of tears and a hitched breath in the night.

Already drunk himself, Levi staggers through the after-hours dark of the office hallway, one hand on the wall to guide him though no one is around to see him stumble. They are all still at the bar, trying to blur the already fading memory of Squad Levi. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last. Ashes to ashes, another one bites the dust. Just another handful of numbers to stamp onto the endless parade of headstones that mankind calls life.

Levi wants to laugh aloud to himself to hear his voice echo off the walls, but being drunk still doesn't make him crazy, not quite, just loose. So he doesn't. He takes another step past Erwin's half-closed door before he freezes, cloying scent of whiskey in his nostrils. He turns his head and catches a glimpse of a slumped blond form through the shafts of moonlight filtering in the open window.

Erwin sits at his too-neat, paperless desk, an empty glass the only thing in front of him. He sits and he stares and Levi sees the shine in his eyes when they catch the dim light and hears the imperceptible hiccough in the still air and sees red red red.

Erwin doesn't glance up when Levi almost rips the door off the hinges. Nor does he flinch when Levi's knuckles crack across his jaw. His head spins to the right and stays there, and Levi imagines he's staring at the place on the wall where the picture of some naked, old-world god would be if it wasn't so damn dark in here.

Erwin doesn't speak so Levi talks with his fingers, erasing any damp streaks from his cheeks, heedless of poking him in the eyes.

"Don't," he growls. "You can't."

Erwin doesn't say anything, just sits there and allows Levi to do as he pleases, which only infuriates Levi more. He hits him again. And again. The fourth time, Erwin's sudden laughter stays his hand.

He wipes the trickle of blood from his lips with his pale wrist — off-white, now — and finally fixes his eyes on Levi.

"I'm tired," he says, and the fatigue of an ordinary human is evident in lines on his face that Levi's never noticed before. It turns his stomach. He releases his shirt collar and fumbles for the nearly dead whiskey bottle in the dark. It's cold as ice in his palm but he manages to pour some into Erwin's glass without spilling much. He raises it to his lips and tosses it back in one, straight down the gullet, mixing Erwin's germs with his, taking them inside. It doesn't matter anymore because Erwin is dirty like him, probably has been all along. Everything's dirty, everything is shit, and if there's one thing Levi will never be able to do it is to purify shit.

"You were supposed to do it," he finally says, face turned towards the unseen god on the wall.

Erwin doesn't ask but Levi answers the silence anyway. "You were supposed to make it clean."

Erwin laughs and snatches the bottle away and pours one for himself. "Are you talking about yourself or everything else?"

Levi freezes as Erwin tips the glass back into his open mouth and without warning he surges forward like a flood. He seals his mouth to Erwin's and sucks the whiskey right out of it, snakes his tongue between parted lips and tries to suck all of the other into himself.

Erwin peels off with a swallow and a gasp, then laughs.

"I can't be whatever it is you think you need me to be," he points out, but Levi doesn't care. Erwin may not be snowy, but there's no way he's burned black inside as Levi. Maybe it doesn't have to be perfect and sterile, maybe Levi can steal some of the in-between colors for himself. It can't hurt because it can't get any worse. Not for him.

He grabs a fistful of Erwin's shirt and yanks him forward onto the desk. Erwin only laughs again when the liquor bottle crashes to the floor and bleeds its contents all over the carpet. There will be a stain-memory there forever, but Levi doesn't notice because for half a second Erwin's laughing face looks like a whiskey-soaked angel, then it's gone again. But Levi has to have that. Has to try.

"I didn't want you like that anyway," he lies, and smashes their mouths together.

Erwin's laughter echos and fades down Levi's throat where he swallows it and tucks it into his belly. His body is hot with fire despite charred bones and Levi half-expects to see steam rising off his own skin when he unbuttons his shirt. But it's so dark and he can't see past Erwin's nose anyway. His fingers fumble with the top buttons of Erwin's shirt until they find skin, smooth as the glass of the whiskey bottle and just as biting-cold. At the contact Erwin sucks some of Levi's air into his lungs and stops laughing. Levi eats his moan and lets it slide down his throat and go straight to his already half-hard cock.

He grabs Erwin by his thigh straps and pulls his hips flush against his own, almost mounting the desk himself, heart stuttering at the brush of clothed erections. Levi strips him like a greedy child tearing the paper off a gift, careless and hurried. He dresses him down and imagines he's peeling back his tightness with each layer, absorbing it unto himself and giving off looseness in return. And then Erwin's naked like the god in the picture watching them through the black and Levi wishes again it wasn't so damn dark because this is something he's wanted to see for so long. He can tell the moonlight is beautiful through his boozy haze but he suspects Erwin is even more so.

Erwin's hands are everywhere, sliding down his spine and stroking his hips, rubbing him stiff through too-tight pants and stirring up unnamed emotions that Levi doesn't know what to do with. He's not good with crap like that so he shoves two fingers into Erwin's soft mouth and pumps until they're nice and wet. He slips them down down down, between Erwin's legs and past that twitching ring of muscle, acutely aware of the hardness not his own leaking against his thigh.

"Fuck, Levi," Erwin groans beneath him and hearing him swear makes Levi hard and angry. So he fucks his fingers into him deeper, siphoning the white from his bones through wide-stretched lips on lips.

"Some hero," Levi mumbles into the corner of Erwin's mouth, nose sliding down his jawline to suck on his pulse. Erwin's hips thrust up against him involuntarily when Levi brushes his prostate with his fingertip.

"Sh-shit," he chokes out again, and Levi hates him for being such a human underneath it all.

"Your mouth is unexpectedly foul, Commander," Levi remarks as he pops his fingers out. Then, in one smooth move as though he'd done it a million times before (Levi is a natural at most everything...except the things that matter most), he's inside. It probably hurts, saliva is poor lube, but hey, any port in a storm. Levi should've gone slower because Erwin's still tight as hell, always been such a tight-ass, but truth is Levi's a loose cannon and he doesn't really have the discipline everyone expects of him in all contexts. Not now, and he can't slow down. Or won't. He fucks Erwin open and loose like himself, not-quite-crazy. He pumps and thrusts and grinds him into the desk.

They exchange muffled grunts and whimpers and sweat. Erwin's damp all over with it but still cold somehow, like no matter how hard Levi rides him he can't warm up. But he's so goddamn tight and good off his pedestal, down here in the mud with the peasants. Under the ceiling with Levi, in their pretty moonlit hell.

Suddenly Levi twists his hips just right and Erwin gasps, spine stiffening. His hand gropes between their slick bodies for his own cock, but Levi knocks it away with a snarl.

"Not yet. When I tell you to."

Erwin makes a sound in the back of his throat and Levi's not sure if it's laughter or pleasure or pain. It all amounts to the same thing in the end anyway, a fat lot of nothing. No thing. Levi thinks he might be having an existential crisis but he doesn't give a shit because his heart is pounding a bass line in his ears and his rhythm breaks into erratic thrusts and then he's coming, shooting spurts of soot-black into Erwin and cursing under his breath. Erwin fucks him through it, mumbling a stream of words that sounds like either nonsense or profanity to Levi's ears, or maybe a blessing, he can't tell.

He pulls out and rests for only a moment before sliding down Erwin's still blood-thrumming body to his painfully hard cock. He swallows it in one gulp and is rewarded with a breathy groan. Erwin is murmuring a litany of nothings again, no things, things Levi can't comprehend though he thinks he hears his name somewhere in there and he has to hold bucking hips in place against the desk to avoid being choked. Levi hums low and long and Erwin gasps at the vibration, letting go in a rush of warmth hitting the back of Levi's throat, sliding down thick and white, down down down to be absorbed into his body like communion. Still not as white as off-white, fallen Erwin, but cleaner than his present self at least.

Erwin's head falls back against the desk with a dull thud and Levi just sags, resting his weight on top of his commander for a moment without moving, catching his breath and wondering if he should feel any different.

He doesn't though, not really, and he isn't sure if he's disappointed or just drunk.

"I told you," Erwin says from nowhere, "I told you I couldn't help you the way you wanted to be helped."

Levi wants to punch him but the high has worn off and now he doesn't dare. On some level he is dimly aware that nothing has changed, that the Law of Erwin remains intact and the walls will still confine him come morning, but for now he's drunk and loose and post-coital so he just settles for half-heartedly cuffing Erwin on the head.

"You always were a tight-ass."

"I have to be."

Levi blinks blearily at that, considering. Then he peels himself off and manages to dress in the dark. He leans against the doorway, head turned to see Erwin still sprawled naked across his desk in the moonlight. He was right; he is beautiful.

"Well, then," he says slowly, not sure if he means a lot by that or nothing at all.

It doesn't matter anyway. Erwin hums his acknowledgement but doesn't look at him, staring up at the ceiling like it might hold some great answer to a question he hasn't yet thought of.

Levi stands still for another moment or two, foot tapping out its familiar, unconscious rhythm though there is no pen to accompany it, before he turns and stumbles down the hall and across the seven block journey to his house and into bed.

The old god watching from the picture frame on the wall still doesn't say a word.

- o -

fin

- o -

A/N: I confess I'm an impostor. I really like this fic, but I have no idea if their characterization is wildly off. I never got that far into SNK, so much of this is extrapolated. Take it as you will. Thanks for reading though!