If the sun is beauty, then the moon is grace. The sun illuminates even the darkest of crevices, spreading its everlasting light and casting away the shadows that encompass our hearts. But the moon isn't to be forsaken, for the moon is our grace. Its elegance and its charm coaxes the nightlife into stirring, beckoning its dwellers into a starlit serenade. The safety of the sunlight, and the sensuality of a midnight. Yes, if the sun is beauty, then the moon is grace.

Eren is my beauty, and I am his grace.

Still holding the blanket to his chest as we walked across the expanse of the meadow, Eren turned his gaze toward me. He had a tender look in his eye, much different from the snarky smirk he'd been showing me a few minutes ago. "So, what do you think, Levi? It's a lot cooler when all of the leaves are changing colors, right?"

He was referring to the tree, of course, but for a moment, I was struck dumbfounded by his question. The leaves? What leaves? I wasn't even looking at the tree. How could I possibly think to turn my attention to the leaves and the lumber when I was looking at amber?

Eren may not have been aware of it, but at the exact angle at which the setting sun was reflecting vibrance off of his visage, his eyes had been set ablaze; a fiery image of ferocity and flamboyance. Even his burgundy bangs had taken on a whole new identity. The dense color was no longer recognizable as such, but had instead become a brassy copper, almost like the blondest of strawberries.

I wanted to say something. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel his fragility, but not hold. Holding would be too much. Mere mortals do not have the right to capture such beauty, to bind it by unbathed arms. Right now, I wasn't in the presence of that same little brat who came waltzing into my tattoo shop a few months ago. I was in the presence of Eros, of Apollo, and I felt unworthy of such magnificence.

Damn it, I was in way too deep.

"Uh, Levi?"

Eren must have gotten flustered from my staring, because when I didn't answer him right away, his cheeks began to dust and his eyes began to waver.

"I'm sorry, what was your question?" I remembered Eren's question, I just wanted to hear him repeat it. In any case, the topic of my staring would be diverted and a new conversation would be brought into the light; what little light was left, that is.

"I asked you about the tree," he spoke softly, even gesturing toward it with his head. "It's really cool when all of its leaves are changing, isn't it?"

Finally facing forward, I looked ahead of where our footsteps were taking us. And Hell, "cool" was quite the understatement, but maybe that was just the artist in me talking. Regardless, that tree was so much more than just cool; it was a God-given gift of grand generosity.

I'm not all that familiar with the anatomical names of plants and trees of the like, so if the tops of trees actually have a biological term to them, I apologize. For my own sake, let's just call it the "halo". Why the halo? Well, all of the leaves that dressed the top of the tree were drenched in a delicate, honey-yellow hue. Descending from the halo to the "neck"of the tree, the age of the honey-yellows began to show, transforming them into crisp, orange gradients. It was almost stupefying how such natural beauty could exist in a world so overpopulated with modernization and technology. And finally, rounding the "skirt" of its majesty, a vibrant red dripping with life and lust corrupted the remaining leaves with a taste of temptation.

Out of all of the words in the English dictionary that there were to be said, Eren chose to describe this spectacle with a term of slang that didn't even pair up with its original meaning. Okay.

Although I didn't agree with his word choice, I couldn't exactly disagree with him, either. It was an understatement, yes, but it was a statement nonetheless. "Yeah," I sighed, shuddering at the sudden chill of my own breath. Was it just me, or did the temperature drop, like, five degrees is five seconds? No, that wasn't it. It was the sun. Without ever recognizing its absence, the sun had taken its leave for the better these standard hours, giving way to the hollow of a moon that was just barely peeking beyond the horizon.

I heard Eren gently chuckle, as he began to unravel the blanket within his arms. "Good thing I brought this," he muttered, as he stretched out is softness. "I forgot my jacket back at my apartment, and I noticed that you weren't wearing one either, so I figured we'd find some use for a blanket. Here, come closer."

Eyeing him with slight skepticism, I followed his lead until our arms met with a brushing friction. As he wrapped the blanket around the both of our shoulders like a cape of comfort, I felt the need to ask him, "Why do you keep a blanket in your car?" It seemed like an odd thing to me, considering that it wasn't summer anymore and I'm almost positive that he had no plans to go to the beach. Then again, wouldn't a towel be more useful to him?

"It's funny that you ask," he said, sounding a bit ashamed as we continued our strides toward the tree. "You see, on my way home from one of my photography gigs, I'd say...about three years ago? Yeah, definitely three years ago. Anyway, on my way home, my car just decided to break down on the side of the road. And, you know, with my luck, it just so happened to be one of the coldest days of my entire life, so I practically froze my butt off until...yeah."

"Huh?" Wait, why did he trail off? Hell, the story was just about to get interesting.

Shaking his head, Eren feigned amusement by laughing off his discomforts. "No, no, it's just that...the person who I called to come and pick me up was, well... It was Jean."

Oh. I see.

Eren pulled at his portion of the blanket, coiling it around his shoulders with grip so tight that I had to struggle to keep a hold on my end of the faded fabric. "...Remember how I told you that I lost my virginity in the back of a car?" I tried not to, but yes, I did, unfortunately, remember. "When Jean saw how cold I'd gotten, he figured that we should at least spend some time cuddling in his car, you know, with the heater on and stuff. Well, one thing led to another, and before I knew it...yeah. Anyway, enough about that."

"Do you regret it?"

My toes were tipping over landmines, and I knew that, but this wasn't the first time that Eren had brought up Jean during our common conversations. It wasn't that I felt insecure about his feelings for me, or that I feared the rekindling of long-lost feelings for his ex-lover. My question was purely a matter of past and present. Now, I can't speak for everyone when I say this, but many humans, by their nature, are filled with regret. Regret over missed opportunities, or the regret of timely mistakes that thicken our skin and break our hearts.

I've always been a firm believer of the past. Whether we like it or not, we are defined by our past. The presence of our present selves is proof of that. Scars, stretch marks, tattoos, and tears; temporary and permanent. They are the signs of love, life, lust, and loss, and they define us as we are, who we were, and what we will become. That is why I believe so strongly in the past, and that is why I whole-heartedly advocate the importance of permanency in a decision.

"Do I regret it?"

I nodded, and put a halt on our trek toward the tree (when I said the meadow had been vast, I hadn't been kidding. It's a big ass meadow, alright?). The volume of my question spoke louder than the words themselves; that's why I knew that Eren would need some time to mull over his answer. It was a heavy one, because if he delved deeper into it, I wasn't simply asking him if he regretted losing his virginity. I was asking him something much more complex.

In its essence, I was asking him if he regretted ever dating Jean at all.

With a breath big enough to fill up his lungs, Eren let out a lofty sigh before loosening his grip on the blanket. Now it hung around his shoulders lifelessly, an image that shed a nostalgic memory of our first morning together. Ah, but even in the faint glow of an evening rising, nothing could quite replicate the masterpiece of that morning.

"You know," Eren started off slowly, "I used to regret it. All of it. I used to regret everything about Jean. I regretted how special he made me feel. I regretted ever allowing his hands to touch me. I regretted all of the hours I spent loving him, and all of the hours I'd spent living under the illusion that he loved me."

A small gust of wind took to the leaves of the oak tree, causing them to rattle and rustle, providing ample ambiance for a moment so melancholy. Lifting his head at the sound, Eren closed his elegant eyes and inhaled the fragrance of fall. It was with that motion that he dropped his hold of the blanket entirely, disregarding its warmth as his own arms took its place in a half-hearted embrace.

"But I don't regret any of it anymore. In fact, this might sound kind of crazy, but I'm actually thankful for the pain. I'm thankful for the tears, and I'm thankful for the hurt, because without it..." Eren opened his eyes. He wasn't quite looking at me, nor was he looking away, but nevertheless, I could feel his attention. He may not have been looking at me with his eyes, but he was most certainly looking at me with his heart. "Without any of it, I wouldn't have met you, Levi."

It honestly hurt to hear something so truthful. Because of Jean, Eren fell in and out of love. Because of him, he'd spent months in mental recovery, trying to place unplaceable justification on the decisions that he had made, and at what cost? To meet some halfway decent guy who owned a tattoo shop and could erase the markings of his mistakes? Sounded like a pretty big price for something so simple, if you asked me. I was just doing my job - or at least the opposite of it. I wasn't the one being punished here. The punishment was on Eren, a pitiful kid who wore his heart on his sleeve, only to have it tainted before being ripped away from him.

Now it was my turn to look at him, but not really look at him. Turning my head toward the tree where countless numbers of lovestruck teens must have professed their undying emotions for one another, I exhaled a clouded breath, before putting my wonder into words. "Was it really worth it?"

As I'd mentioned, I wasn't looking at Eren, but I could practically feel the confusion on his face as it slipped through his lips. "Huh? What do you mean?"

Sighing once more, I figured that I'd better tear into my thought process and lay it all out for him. Shouldn't have been too difficult, right? "What I'm saying is, was I really worth it, Eren? Am I really worth all of the pain and all of the heartache that preceded our first meet-"

"Yes, you are."

There was no hesitation; in fact, the little brat interrupted me while I was talking. But that didn't matter, nor did I really care. What he had to say next blew my mind away.

"You may not realize this, Levi, but before I met you, I was pretty sure that I'd forgotten how to smile. You know, not like the fake smirks and the cocky grins that I flash here and there, but an actual, real smile. I felt like my mouth just, it just couldn't form the shape of one anymore. But then you, you helped me find it again, among many other genuine things. You helped me find my laugh, and my sensuality. You helped me discover that it's okay to dream again, and that it's not all that scary to get your feet wet before diving in when you know you're really falling for someone. Really...falling in love with someone."

And there it was. The heart that Eren wore on his sleeve was making its show again. It may have been a little stitched up here and there - adorned with pinches and patches on its parts - but it was alive. It was alive, it was beating, and it was full of unconventional, unconditional love.

I'd never been a smoker, but I could go for a light right about now. Just when I thought Eren couldn't be any more of an idiot, he goes and says something like that. Honestly, how can he say something so sentimental with such a straight face? Did he even realize how fast my heart was beating because of him? How fast it was beating for him? If I died of a heart attack tonight, it would be all his fault.

"Falling in love with someone, you say," I repeated, breathing off the draft of my breath. Maybe if I fantasized the act of smoking, I'd be graced with the false aftereffects of faux nicotine. "Sounds nice, doesn't it?"

Letting go of half of a laugh, Eren shook his head and bent over to retrieve the fallen side of his blanket. Once it was back up and around his shoulders, he simply said, "Yeah, it does."

Falling in love, huh? I'd never really thought about it before. No, not until Eren came into the picture, that is.

When we finally - finally - made it to the surfaced roots of the grand oak tree, Eren suggested that we lay the blanket on top of the grassy patches of earth and lie beneath the leaves. Holding no oppositions to such a suggestion, we flattened out the blanket, spreading it as far as its aged fabric would go. As we laid there, with our knuckles just barely brushing, but not entirely touching, realization dawned on me. "You know, Eren," I started, turning my head toward him. "You never finished telling me why you keep a blanket in your car."

"Oh, that," he snickered. He must have thought that topic had gone stale, seeing as I was already pretty confident in his answer. "Yeah, well, after getting stranded like that, it spooked me into wanting to be more prepared for those kinds of things. Like, not only do I keep a blanket back there, but I also keep a couple of water bottles, a flashlight, a few snacks, and a first-aid kit."

"Sounds to me like you're getting ready for a zombie apocalypse, or something."

Eren rose a hand at me. "Hey, zombie apocalypses are serious business. If I was getting ready for one of those, I'd need a crossbow, maybe a few bottles of hydrogen peroxide, and some better snacks."

Rolling my eyes at his stupidity, I turned my attention back to the leaves. It was a mystical experience to be staring directly at them from beneath the tree. Whenever I came into the meadow to clear my head, I'd only made it about half of the way that Eren and I had traveled; I'd never been this close to the oak tree itself before.

Eren pulled me out of my thoughts, when he spoke up again. "Hey, Levi?"

I eyed him questioningly. "Yeah?"

"You said that this tree is where people come with their boyfriends and girlfriends to make out and stuff, right?"

"That's right."

"And you said that you've been here quite a few times before, right? Didn't you say something like that?"

My brows began to furrow, as I turned my head back over to Eren again. Whatever he was saying, it sounded like a lot of bush beating to me. "Eren, what are you getting at here?"

Fiddling with fingers that rested restlessly on top of his abdomen, Eren turned his head toward me as well, before asking, "I've just been wondering... Did you ever come here with one your boyfriends or girlfriends?"

Was he being serious? What kind of question was that? He wasn't making any...oh. Oh, I see. I knew exactly what Eren was trying to do. It was a "couple" thing, and it was cute, but he honestly had nothing to worry about.

He was trying to find a place that we could call "our place".

"I came here with Hanji once."

"Wait, what?!"

I don't think I'd ever seen Eren sit up any faster in my handful of months of knowing him. Even when he'd fallen asleep in one of the tattoo chairs for the first time, he still didn't jump up any quicker than how he'd jumped right now.

In any case, now was probably a better time than any to tell him about Hanji and me.

Sitting up with him, I scratched the back of my neck before running my fingers over my undercut. The hairs were getting a bit longer than I typically liked them; I'd have to get another trim soon. "You see, Hanji and I tried dating each other when we were back in college. We didn't really have feelings for each other, no more than we do now, but we were both pretty lonely and in need of some affection."

The look on Eren's face was so priceless that I would have actually paid money to preserve it.

"You two... You actually dated each other?"

Still scratching the back of my neck, I shrugged. "Yeah, but it only lasted for a couple of weeks. When we had our fill of kisses and other things, we realized how gross dating each other actually was. She and I, we're pretty much soul mates, but in the friendship kind of way. Does that make sense?"

Still wearing the same, shocked expression from before, Eren nodded even though his words went against the gesture. "It does, but what I still don't get is why you would take her here if you knew what this place was all about."

I shrugged again. "I mean, we thought we were in love, or really falling for each other at least, so we figured, 'Hey. Why not make out at that tree where everybody else makes out. Sounds romantic, right?' Well, no, it really wasn't. When we pulled up to the end of the woods in my car, we spent a good five, maybe ten minutes swapping spit before actually getting out and walking over the forest brush. And by the time we made it halfway to this tree right here, we already knew that we weren't a couple anymore."

Eren blinked. "You just...knew? Like, neither of you made it official or anything, you both just...?"

He really seemed to be having a difficult time understanding the complexity of my relationship with Hanji, and I didn't blame him. We were pretty strange, in a perfect kind of way. "Yeah, we just knew. Like, her hand fell out of mine, and that was it. We walked back to the car in silence, and on the way to our college campus, we chatted like we were best buds again, nothing more."

Thinking back on it, it really was a weird way of ending things, but whatever. I'm just glad that things between us ended when they did. After all, Hanji met Mike no less than a week later.

"Wow," Eren breathed, gazing back up at the tree. "That's...wow."

Yeah, wow. Excuse you for being so judgmental.

With a raised eyebrow, I clicked my tongue and punched Eren's shoulder lightly. He deserved that after making me feel like the weird one out of the both of us. Even so, the effect that I was going for didn't bite. Eren merely laughed at my hit, and instead of shying away from it, he grabbed a hold of my wrist and held it captive.

I watched his fingers as they continued to curl, tighter and tighter, until the edges where his nails clenched my skin began to tint with white. It didn't hurt; no, I've felt much more pain than this, but it was a bit unexpected. Why was he holding onto me so strongly? Was he trying to tell me something?

Just as before, a shock of wind took to the leaves and caused them to shutter and shake; however, this time around, the leaves actually began to disperse.

It was as if the sky was crying amber, leaving the wind to wipe away its tender tears as they spiraled and swirled around the innocents. Eren and I sat together, motionless, astounded by the view. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and honestly, I wanted to stare a little longer, but that wasn't about to happen.

Using the hand that he had firmly clasped around my wrist, Eren pulled me into him, drawing our lips into a dance just as erratic and erotic as the leaves that twirled around us.

Our bodies rolled along the roots as we kissed each other like it was the end of the world; or a pending zombie apocalypse at the very least. Holding onto my head like I was his most precious possession, we licked each others' wounds by licking each others' lips, relishing in the sweet scent of seduction.

Just as confused as I was by my impromptu make out session with Eren, I understood it just as well. This was a date, after all; however, regardless of that - and this may sound incredibly open - but I almost felt as if Eren and I had reached a milestone in our relationship where this kind of thing just suddenly became natural, much like a reflex. He must have been itching to kiss me from the moment he'd caught me staring, just as I'd been craving the taste of his metallic tongue the moment I began to stare. It's funny, really. Neither of us said a single thing to each other, and yet, we were both feeling the same thing from the very start.

We were such idiots. Idiots...in love.

Digging his knees into my hips, Eren straddled my waist as he kissed me up and down. Starting from forehead, tracing down to the base of my neck, he left nothing unmarked, not a single space unloved. And God, did it feel amazing. Wordlessly cussing and breathlessly praising him left Eren with enough initiative to reclaim my lips yet again. He was so good at it, so damn good at kissing that it pissed me off. I wanted to rip him off of me and scold him for being such a natural, but what did I do? I let myself melt into the ground and drown in his kisses, feeling pampered in every way as his delicate hands rushed from my head to my heart.

He loved me. Eren loved me. There was no doubt in my mind, just his gestures alone were enough. Eren loved me.

And yet, in a blur of breathless bliss, Eren desperately broke his lips away from mine. I'd half-expected him to start hounding down on my neck, just liked he'd done in the late hours of that night we'd spent together, but he didn't. He remained stagnant, unmoving, huffing and puffing for air.

And then he said them. The words of my thoughts with a volume I could never produce. He'd spoken them softly, but confidently, full of emotion and, well...love.

"...I'm in love you, Levi."

Honestly, if you're going to say it like that, don't look like you're about to cry. You'll make me wanna comfort you for a feeling that doesn't need comforting.

And so, with a heavy sigh and heartfelt touch, I nudged the backs of my fingers along the daintiness of Eren's burning hot cheek. Also, if you're going to say something as big as a love confession, you're bound to want to hear a reply, right? Well, if it was a reply that Eren was waiting for, it was a reply he was gonna get.

Reaching around the back of his neck to pull his head down to my chest, I made sure to press his ear to my heart. And I had a purpose for doing that, of course. If Eren found any disbelief in what I was about to say, then maybe hearing just how much my body - my being - already loved him would change his mind.

"You know, I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you, too, kid."

Hi there! Chappy here! :D

And there you have it! At long last, a love confession from these two dorks! And, you know, it only took 21 chapters, haha...haha... *cough*

Alright! In all seriousness, I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and so I hope that all of you enjoyed reading it, as well!

Also! On a side note, I feel like I never say this enough, but if you want to keep up with updates for this story and other things that I write, you can always follow my tumblr (kairixxxsora16)! I mostly reblog Eren/Levi, Attack on Titan, and DRAMAtical Murder stuff! (:

Anywho, as always, thank you for taking the time to read! I really always appreciate it!

- Chappy