When Eren finally allowed him to touch his wings, Levi tutted.
It had taken days for Eren to be comfortable with showing his back another week for him to stop wearing oversized sweaters at home to cover the strange curves on either side of his spine. It had taken all of Levi's patience, but he hadn't pushed. He would have hated for Eren to think that it was all he wanted. Seeing his wings had been an accident during a split second where Eren had panicked as he was about to fall down a flight of stairs. If Levi hadn't been watching from floor above, he wouldn't have known. He would have wondered why Eren walked as if he were about to over-balance and why he always tensed when people came too close, but he would have attributed it to the kid's general strangeness. He was silent to the point where people suspected he was mute, but he worked hard. Often, when no one else was looking, Levi caught a look of fierce determination on the kid's face. When something angered him he kept his mouth shut, even if it was obvious that wanted to argue. Eren floated under the radar for almost a whole year, yet all it took was a small flutter of his wings for Levi to catch him.
Levi was sure Eren remembered it as vividly as he did. Eren had relaxed on the top step, breathed a sigh of relief and pulled in the lump under his sweater. All it took was a glimpse of a feather. It only took another second for Eren to realise that he wasn't alone, and he had turned his expression of horror upwards to find Levi leaning over the banister, watching him.
Neither of them spoke for about a minute. It was the end of the day, late enough that they were the last ones left on that side of the building. Everyone else was long gone, taking their insufferable conversations elsewhere. But there they were, Levi because he had stayed for a while to have a question answered, and Eren because - as he explained sheepishly later- he hid after classes and left when there were less people around who could to be suspicious of his odd behaviour. There was only so long that he could pretend in a crowd, only so much human contact that he could tolerate at a time.
But here they were now, staring at each other with varying degrees of panic. Levi was immediately fascinated in a way he hadn't thought he was capable of, and though he wanted to know everything, he worried that moving at all would give Eren a reason to bolt. He would run, find another school where he could attempt to be normal again, and Levi would never see him again. A kid like that didn't leave traces.
The minute Levi opened his mouth, Eren twitched closer to the next step. Levi watched the boy's feet and prayed he'd stay put for just a second longer. "I didn't see anything," he blurted. It was true after all. At that point, the lump under his jacket could have merely been a hunch. Maybe he'd imagined the hid a lot of things after all.
Eren startled. It didn't seem possible but his eyes widened further as he pulled his jacket tighter around himself. He looked like he wanted to ask a hundred different questions and simultaneously argue; but when he moved down a step and Levi didn't chase him, he slowly edged out of view, keeping his eyes glued to the man above him until he couldn't anymore. And Levi heard him run the rest of the way out, and he closed his eyes, hung his head over the banister and sighed.
Levi didn't think he was the kind of person who was easily shocked by anything. When others panicked, he held a sort of frigid calm that was unsettling to most people. But when Eren came back to school the next day, he couldn't help being surprised. He would have dealt with it later when he had time to think, but even sitting on the other side of the room, Hanji noticed him staring vacantly out the window, and she gave him grief about it for the rest of the day, even when Levi kicked her in the back of the knee (the kick never landed as well as he'd hoped, which only added to the day's grievances).
Eren had come back. It was obvious that he was still afraid- when Levi saw him, he kept glancing over shoulders more hunched than usual, and he skittered through the hallways as fast as he could, as if dawdling for a second would have the whole school turning and staring at him, pointing out the secret on his back and recoiling in horror, whispering and muttering for weeks. Yet if he expected Levi to say anything, he didn't.
It ate at them both. Eren didn't know how long Levi would keep the secret and Levi worried that the longer he distanced himself, the higher the chance that the kid would disappear. Levi could read people's motivations and desires off of their faces, in the way they held themselves and in how false their smiles were; but he couldn't read a thing from a blank canvas like Eren and he hated it. He debated cornering the kid and demanding an answer - because in the meantime, his imagination had conjured everything from a growth to a parasitic twin clawing its way through the boy's flesh- and just trying to forget it.
And as Levi was losing his patience, Eren cornered him.
The answer began with the boy sidling up to him in a busy hallway between classes and slipping a note into his hand. It was odd, reading a time and a place on the little scrap of paper like he'd fallen into a romance novel without knowing how he'd gotten there. At least it wasn't confessions of love he was going to get; anything like that would have him out of the room in a second.
They met after class again, the one composition class they had together, by the same stairs where Levi had seen him almost fall, and he waited. He wondered if Eren would even speak at all, and realised he didn't even know what the boy's voice sounded like.
"You're worried that I'm going to say something," Levi said for him instead, sick of the silence. "You're worried I'm going to tell everyone that there's something up with you, you won't be able to shake it off, and everything you've worked for will be ruined." He paused. Eren's expression didn't change. "Right?"
He was impassive for so long that Levi wanted to take his shoulders and shake an answer out of him. But he spoke all on his own and perfectly clearly, in a much louder voice than Levi expected.
"You want to know about me," he said evenly. The fear in his eyes from before was long gone. "You're so curious that it burns you."
There was the tension again, with more clenched jaws and glares than before. He admired the fact that Eren didn't trust him, the facade of vulnerable naivete, the caution and paranoia. If what he had seen the day before turned out to be nothing - if it turned out that Eren wasn't hiding anything at all -it would be a long time before Levi walked. He as in too deep to back out now.
"I wouldn't gain anything by telling anyone," Levi said, and Eren scoffed. There'd be nothing to gain but recognition and fame for uncovering something fantastic - but that was only valuable if Levi cared to have it. "If I were you, I would've packed. I wouldn't have stopped running until I'd found a place in a city so big no one would have a hope of finding me."
"You think I'm stupid for staying."
If Levi had been in that kind of mood, he would've smiled. "A little."
Eren's expression softened infinitesimally; a passing observer would've missed the shift and the change it made. And he asked the question Levi had only dreamt of being asked, an offer he'd been telling himself he wouldn't be made.
"What do you want to know?"
And now the same boy was sitting between his legs with his ears reddening and Levi sighed at the state of his wings. Eren had brown sparrow wings which would have been unremarkable if it wasn't for the fact that they were Eren's. And this close, Levi could see the white spots and black specks, the lighter browns and the soft down feathers that started at his shoulder blades. If only he could stand to touch them; some of the feathers were bent, others hadn't quite fallen out and they were dusty.
"When was the last time you cleaned them?" Levi demanded, appalled. He was met with a long silence.
Being with Eren had changed a lot of things, and made him open to others. The longer Levi spent with him the more he craved being touched, and learned to reciprocate those touches in a way that wasn't inhumanly mechanical. Levi could handle a hand on his shoulder from a friend now, but Eren was the only one who could so much as touch his hands without getting punched in the throat. In Eren he had friend he trusted with words that had been secrets from others for years. And eventually he learned to deal with a Eren's level of untidiness, although he did restrain some of his more chaotic tendencies for Levi's sake. So he made the effort to be gentle.
He didn't protest when Levi took his hand and lead him to the bathroom, nor when he made the boy sit on the edge of the bath. At the first sign of water, Eren jumped, and Levi jerked his hands back. He wasn't the type of person who panicked, but he worried; Eren trusted him enough to finally show his secret and perhaps Levi had hurt him. And if he ran now, Levi wouldn't know what to do with himself.
He hated to admit it but he'd spent a lot of his time concerned with Eren. Ever since the first hint of desperation in his eyes when he had offered to tell Levi everything, most of his thoughts were directed towards the boy still trying to be human. But after a few tense seconds, Eren relaxed, braced his hands on his knees and extended his wings again.
"I...sorry." His words came with the rise and fall of his chest, unsteady and barely audible. "I'm not...used to being touched there."
Levi took his place behind Eren, picked up the cloth and began again at Eren's shoulder blades, gently pulling out loose feathers as he found them. As time passed, Eren closed his eyes. His wings still twitched, but it was a gentle sort of fluttering, more a sign that he was alive than that he was afraid.
"When was the last time you cleaned them?" Levi asked again. In the silence of the apartment, his voice was too loud and Eren jumped a little. "Really cleaned them?"
"I can't remember." Levi would've berated him for it if he hadn't sounded so sad. "I just didn't see the point after a while."
He understood, of course, but it didn't make Levi feel any better. They weren't his wings, but that didn't change the fact that he felt a twinge in his chest when he began to notice gaps between feathers that wasn't supposed to be there, or a bent feather with a bloody quill, . Eren's wings were beautiful, but they weren't going to last forever.
He moaned in his sleep more often now, and it took Levi a long time to wake him up. Painkillers knocked him out, but he'd wake up in pain all over again. So instead he grit his teeth and suffered through it until the pain ebbed enough for him to be able to think of anything other than the agony.
The first night Levi awoke to bloody feathers, he woke up to Eren's panicked face too; he'd been trying to get rid of the evidence but the sheets were a hopeless mess and there was no way Levi wouldn't notice. Eren had apologised profusely and hadn't let Levi put a word in edgewise until he'd clapped a hand over the boy's mouth. It was three in the morning and they both had class later. The only thing that could've angered him most at that point was the fact that Eren was making so much noise over nothing. There were some things, he grumbled, that he really did value about cleanliness.
When he asked the next morning, Eren explained. He was losing his wings, he said quietly, avoiding Levi's eyes as if he was afraid of the expression he'd find on the man's face. Falling, no matter how quietly and discreetly, would cost him. The pain grew worse and Levi came home every day to find Eren curled up on the bed or the sofa trying not to cry, but he said that it was worth it. As he crushed the bones in Levi's hand, he talked about how badly he'd wanted to see Earth, the vast oceans and snow-capped mountains, the changing faces of the humans and their children; he wanted to experience their pain, their joy, wanted to feel heat and cold and love. Heaven was beautiful, of course it was, but spending eternity suspended in angelic grace had suddenly become meaningless. What was the point when he was so insignificant that he had never seen his Father's face? The others had wings larger than his, white like the snow he so badly wanted to touch. Eren had never fit in with them, and the more he admired Earth, the less they thought of him. Angels weren't supposed to care about Earth like that anyway. They had their duties and they stuck to them because Father had given them their work. They didn't have time to wonder. So he fell. He used the last of the little power he had to forge himself an identity and became a college student. And when the first feather tore itself out of his wing, he endured it.
They were still falling out now as Levi cleaned them. By the time he'd finished, there was a small pile of feathers at their feet. His wings looked so much smaller, so much more frail than they had when Eren had first pulled off his shirt and shown them .
Levi's fingers hovered over Eren's wing, from where it merged with his skin to where the last feather's tip nearly brushed the water in the tub, and Eren shivered. When Levi leaned forwards and pressed a kiss between Eren's shoulders, he sighed deeply. Levi felt it, under his lips, the heat of Eren's body and the tremor of his muscles. If he parted his lips, he could taste the skin...
Before he could, Eren slipped away and stood up to see Levi's work in the mirror. He turned his back and craned his neck and stared. For the first time, it seemed, Eren thought much more of his wings than he ever had.
He was beautiful. Really, even in the unflattering, yellow bathroom light. Levi could see the way some of his secondary feathers bent and the last primary twitched involuntarily; but what he cared about the most then was the curve of Eren's back, the sharp angles of his hips, the turquoise-emerald eyes reflected in the mirror. If he'd had any doubt before, the ache in his chest was enough to make him sure. He had kissed that skin and touched those hands, shared his worries on those shoulders and trusted that heart. He only wondered when he would ever be able to say the words, if ever.
Eren opened his mouth to say something (maybe a thank you, which would've been nice, Levi thought), but he grimaced instead as the pain returned. He tried to wave it off when he saw the alarm on Levi's face, but it was too late. Levi pulled him back to bed and he didn't resist. Eren let him pull the blanket up to his waist, and then he lay on his stomach and let his wings relax. He'd spent so long keeping them hidden and pulling them in that he hadn't realised what a difference it would make to stop being afraid. He was learning to love having his wings touched, and he was almost upset that it wouldn't last. And then he had to stop himself from thinking about where Levi would go once he lost his wings and stopped being interesting.
"Eren?" He had tensed unintentionally, he realised, a second too late.
"I'm fine," he murmured, and hid his face in a pillow so Levi wouldn't try to guess what he was thinking. And he was fine, at least until Levi's fingers moved. It was new and terrifying and his skin felt like it was on fire, even though all Levi did was trace his spine. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the fingers on his skin, up to the base of his neck and down his back, under his wings - gently over the raw skin- and back across over his hips, slowly and gently as if anything else would break him. And when it got too much, Eren turned and grabbed Levi's wrist, only to realise how close they were.
Eren recognised the look on Levi's face. He'd seen it on other humans and he knew what it meant, but he wasn't sure that whatever he tried would be enough. But he tried anyway, leaned forwards and pressed his lips against Levi's, then panicked and tried to pull away. But Levi parted his lips almost as soon as Eren kissed him, and then there was a hand in his hair, and Eren's fingers were clinging desperately to Levi's shirt. Levi's mouth was hot, and his lips so much softer than they appeared, even though for a moment he pressed in so desperately hard that it almost hurt. He lead and Eren followed clumsily, struggling to keep up, to be good enough because this was important. When Eren thought about letting this go- about going home and begging for forgiveness, about turning his back on the man who held him now like his life depended on it- he curled back in horror. It was too late to go back now, not when he felt a deep ache in his chest that called out to the hands caressing his face.
They broke apart, and Eren curled his fingers around Levi's wrist again, kept his eyes closed because he didn't have the courage to look at the man's face. "When I lose my wings," he said quietly, "when I…" He stopped, took a deep breath and pushed on. "When I stop being interesting to you-"
Eren felt Levi's hand clench into a fist, and he forced himself to open his eyes. He didn't see an expression on Levi's face that he expected.
"You're more than your wings, Eren," he says fiercely, almost angrily. "You always were."
Eren understands the words, but it takes him a while afterwards to realise that he is grateful. He'd never cried like that before. It was so painful, it was almost sweet.