Disclaimer: Most, if not all, of the characters, setting, and concepts included in this story belong to the creator(s) of the original work that this fanfic is based off of and not myself.

A/N: This is actually a section from a larger work that is in progress right now (titled "Canvas of Memories"), but it makes enough sense to be posted alone and I figured who doesn't need more Riren Christmas fanfics? Anyway, because it is from a longer project, there are a few facts that need to be established in order to understand this one-shot. One, this is set in a modern AU and Eren is a painter (though unprofessionally). Also, Levi has all of his memories of his past life in the SnK universe but Eren does not.

Canvas of Memories: Christmas Special

Levi leaned back against the front of his couch, taking another sip from his glass of wine. He was sitting on the floor, with one arm resting carelessly on his left knee. This was one of the few days a year that he allowed himself to drink again. Even after all this time, he still held onto the hope that he could get drunk enough to make him forget everything that made him hate this day, but it was a pointless one. Considering how much and how regularly he consumed alcohol during his rebellious teenage years, back when he was reckless and idiotic (even he admitted it now), there was no way that a few glasses of wine could get him even close to drunk. Still, it did take the edge off the grief, made him feel like he was still fighting at least a little against the parents that had abandoned him. Well, perhaps "abandoned" was too strong a word, but certainly Christmas had been nothing more to them than a regular holiday.

A knock sounded on his door. Rather than actually getting up and answering it, Levi just pondered who would dare bother him right now instead of spending the holiday with their family like they ought to. Hanji was the normal suspect, but she was off in some other country at the moment so that was a bit impossible unless her flight had been cancelled-which it hadn't. Erwin maybe, but he wouldn't bother to knock at his own apartment. Perhaps someone from work? Except, Levi didn't think any of them knew where he lived. He wasn't fond of giving out personal information unless he had to. It seemed that the only way to find out was to actually get up and open the damn door. The last option he could think of was some neighbor asking to borrow a cup of sugar or something, but really, it was impossible borrow a consumable substance like that anyway, so why bother with the nicety of phrasing? Then again, it did take a special kind of idiot to be visiting him now.

He yanked open the door to his flat-a scowl already on his face-to see Eren, face flushed from the cold and the exertion of carrying so much fucking stuff up the stairs. What the hell was all of the crap he was carrying?

"I brought cake," Eren said, as way of greeting. "I was going to bring cookies, since that's kind of the tradition, but you don't really seem like a cookie kind of person so I brought cake instead. I mean, that's tradition too, right? Actually, you don't really seem like a cake person either, but I think you'll like this one."

"What are you doing here?" Levi demanded, blunt and to the point, as usual.

Eren's confused expression was almost comical. "Visiting you. What else would I be doing here?"

"Don't you have family you ought to be spending today with?"

"I already did this morning, but they're both watching classic Christmas movies so I decided to leave. I don't really understand the point of watching something you've already seem hundreds of times."

"It's hardly hundreds. You haven't been alive that long and I doubt even you would watch them more than once very year, if even that."

"I guess, but you're kind of missing the point."

Levi rolled his eyes and asked grudgingly, "Do you want to come in?"

"Yes!"

Eren walked into the flat and promptly set all of his stuff down so that he could take of his shoes. While he would have normally considered this to be very rude behavior in someone else's home-when they hadn't expressedly asked you to-since it would seem as if you were making yourself too comfortable, he rightly assumed that Levi would murder him if he tracked any mud in past the entry way.

"Besides," Eren continued, walking further into the flat, "It would be a shame to spend both Christmas and your birthday alone."

"Hanji sent you didn't she?"

Was that disappointment in Levi's voice? Eren didn't think so-it was never possible to determine the older man's emotions so easily-but that was what it sounded like. "Well, she did, but I would have come anyway," he rushed to explain, "if you had told me you would be spending the day alone."

"There's no need to feel sorry about it. Loneliness is a pointless emotion and I'm used to it anyway."

"That's even worse," Eren muttered.

"I'm not going to be lectured by a brat who isn't even legal yet."

Eren straightened indignantly. "I may not be old enough to drink but I am an adult so stop treating me like a child."

"I call it like I see it, brat."

The boy ignored the pointed jibe. "Oh yeah, here: I brought these for you." He handed Levi two wrapped packages. "One for Christmas and one for your birthday."

There was no way to express the feeling that swept through Levi at that moment. For most of his life, one event had always been pushed aside by the other. Never before had anyone tried to celebrate both Christmas and his birthday with him at the same time. Certainly, Hanji worked to acknowledge both, but she treated them as two separate things, usually celebrating them on different days. Erwin had just given up long ago since he was rarely around on the twenty-fifth anyway. Eren just made it seem so simple, as if there was no reason why one holiday should be pushed aside by the other. Just because one wasn't recognized by the government didn't mean it was any less important.

"Hey, you have candles, right?" Eren asked, dumping the final item he'd been carrying onto the kitchen counter, presumably the mentioned cake. "Then it can be both a Christmas and a birthday cake."

"I think Erwin has some around somewhere."

Eren started rummaging around in the kitchen, which would have irritated Levi if it had been anyone else. As it was, he was simply enjoying the sight of Eren in his flat, making himself at home. It was a dream he had tried to stop hoping for. He looked down at the packages that had been shoved into his arms and wondered what he should do with them. Should he open them now or wait until Eren was back? A loud crash echoed from the kitchen, catching his attention. That decided it. He placed them carefully down on the couch and went to go help the boy look.

After searching through every single damn cabinet in the entire fucking kitchen, they finally found the candles. There were only two (actually, five, if you counted the three useless stubs that Levi tossed out). They were those candles in the shape of numbers which people used when they got old enough that there wouldn't be room on the cake to fit enough candles to have one for each year.

"Do you want to be thirty-five or fifty-three?" Eren asked.

"Just forget the damn candles. They'll drip wax all over the cake and make a mess anyway."

Eren looked despondently down at the two candles. "It seems like a waste after doing all of that searching for them. Besides, how are you going to make a wish with no candles?"

"Wishes just set you up for disappointment."

"You're no fun," Eren muttered.

"If you wanted fun, you shouldn't have bothered coming here."

Eren dug around in the kitchen some more until he found a knife. "Do you want cake or presents first?"

Levi thought seriously about it for a moment. "Presents," he decided. There was less potential of Eren making a mess that he would then feel the need to clean up.

There was a definite hesitation as Eren joined Levi on the couch. "Just, uh...only open the smaller one now. Don't open the other one until I've left."

Levi looked down at the gifts, trying to determine which was "the smaller one". Both weren't very large, but while one was rectangular and flat, the other was a short round cylinder. Still, Eren's reaction made him curious. The boy seemed like the type to give inappropriate gifts to people for his own amusement, so it must be quite something if even he was embarrassed about it. The flat object was probably a painting, so that left the other one. However, when Levi set the painting down, Eren seemed relieved, so that must be the one he didn't want to be opened. Levi quickly switched packages and proceeded to start unwrapping it, meticulously prying up the tape that was just barely holding the messy packaging together. He would have to educate the boy on proper gift wrapping technique later.

"That's the one I told you not to open!"

"Why do you think I'm opening it?"

Eren quickly stood up, clearly intending to escape to the bathroom or something.

"Sit the fuck down."

He obeyed, and promptly buried his face in his hands.

The gift was, in fact, a painting and the scene it showed was one Levi could never have forgotten. The canvas depicted two hands, one lightly supporting the other as it slid a ring onto the fourth finger. The ring was what caught Levi's attention. It was a complicated band, formed of two wings, one gold and one silver, that crossed in the front.

Eren peeked up through his fingers, his face a bright pink. He began babbling nonsense in his embarrassment. "I swear, I didn't mean anything by it! It was just something I painted and, for some reason, it made me think of you so I wanted to give it to you and-" He suddenly realized that he was just making the situation worse and shut up. Levi still hadn't looked away from the painting. There was a slight panic in the boy's voice when he spoke again. "Levi?"

"What if I wanted you to mean something by it?"

The question was asked in the barest of murmurs so Eren was sure that he had heard wrong. "What?"

Levi carefully set the painting down and scooted closer to Eren, leaning over the boy and pushing him back against the armrest. "I said," he repeated slowly, making sure to emphasize each word, "what if I wanted you to mean something by it?"

Eren's eyes were looking everywhere except at Levi, so it wasn't entirely surprising when he finally noticed the half empty wineglass sitting on top of the coffee table. "Are you drunk?"

Levi moved back again, annoyed with the boy's response "I wish." He paused, then- realizing that Eren wasn't going to give him any more of a reaction to his question than another inquiry and a shocked expression-picked up the other present and unwrapped it as well.

Again, Eren rushed to explain. "It's a hand vacuum, for your desk and stuff. I mean, you're always cleaning so I thought that maybe this would make it easier or something...it's kind of a lame gift, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Levi agreed then added, seeing Eren's disappointed expression, "but you're right. It would be useful. Thanks."

The boy's face brightened again. "You're welcome!"

"I didn't get you anything." Levi finally said, feeling a bit bad about his lack of holiday spirit for once. He didn't even have a fucking tree.

"That's okay. People don't normally get other people presents on their birthdays."

"They do on Christmas."

Eren shrugged, but there was calculated nonchalance to the movement. Slowly, a familiar, shit-eating grin formed on his face. It was the one he always got right before he was going to do something reckless. "Well...there is something you could give me. You don't even have to go anywhere."

One of Levi's eyebrows rose.

This time, it was Eren who leaned closer, using his extra height to his advantage. He was right up in Levi's face, staring straight into his eyes, as he said, "You could give me a kiss."

"I thought you said the painting didn't mean anything."

"I thought you said that you wanted it to."

"It was a rhetorical question, not a statement."

"Kiss me, damn it!"

"I don't take orders from a brat."

"So, you're not going to," Eren concluded, sitting back.

"Just shut the fuck up," Levi muttered, pushing himself up to press his lips to the boy's.

Eren wasn't exactly sure what he had been expected, but this wasn't it. He certainly hadn't anticipated the wave of emotion that was currently sweeping through him. Even though he was certain he had never felt this way about someone before, the feeling was not unfamiliar. It was similar to how he felt when he was painting, like he was reaching back toward memories from a time long ago.

The words spilled out of his mouth before he could process what he was about to ask. "Have we met before?"

"What kind of stupid question is that? You see me all the time at Erwin's bar."

"That's not what I..." Eren trailed off, then shook his head vigorously, as if the sudden movement could send the confusing thoughts flying away. "So, how about that cake?"

Levi's arm was instantly an unmovable bar, restricting Eren to the couch. "I'm not letting you escape that easily."

The shit-eating grin was back. "Will you set me free if I bribe you?"

"I don't think you have anything of that kind of worth."

Suddenly the two were kissing again, and this time was definitely not as chaste as the first. Levi really hoped that the boy's skill in this matter was a result of past life memories leaking through and had not been gained from practice in this lifetime. If so, he might just have to find the person Eren was doing it with and kill them.

"I'm not really opposed to putting off birthday-slash-Christmas cake until later," Eren said, once he finally had his breath back, "but you really ought to make your wish on your birthday and I think I'm supposed to be home before midnight anyway. Mikasa may have threatened to come over here if I wasn't."

"I really shouldn't be doing this with a brat who still has a curfew."

"You never cared about the age gap before."

"I wasn't kissing you before."

"I'm old enough!"

Levi sighed and got up, uncharacteristically reaching down and helping Eren up too. Both went back to the kitchen and proceeded to cut the cake. At Eren's insistence, the two candles were lit and then promptly blown out while the boy sang a wildly out of tune rendition of "Happy Birthday". Levi had always thought it was a pointless tradition, but made a wish to humor Eren anyway. Not that he would say what it was...that was nobody's business but his own and wasn't the tradition that you weren't supposed to tell anyway? It was only once he was partway through eating his piece that Levi finally broke the comfortable silence that had settled between them.

"Thanks. This...meant a lot." He never had been good at expressing his emotions.

"No one should spend Christmas or their birthday alone, especially not when they're on the same day," Eren replied seriously. "If anyone ever made you do that, then they're stupid. And it's never going to happen again because I'm going to make sure to come visit you every year."

"You mean bother, right?"

"It didn't seem like you were all that bothered earlier, unless we're talking about a different kind of bothered."

"Eren?"

"What?"

"Shut up and eat your cake."

A/N: I actually wrote this on Christmas (seriously, I started right before midnight Christmas Eve because that was when inspiration hit). I finished at about two am Christmas day but haven't posted until now because I hadn't gotten around to getting this revised and reviewed. So here it is, finally, almost exactly three days late. Also, a huge thanks out to my friend Ren who provided the summary for this! I'm really quite terrible at these sorts of things...

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