What was I waiting for? That was a good question. I'd spent lifetimes upon lifetimes waiting for a moment like this, and what? I was still waiting? Well, that couldn't have been anyone else's fault but my own, because standing right there, right in front of me, with his eyes glued to mine and our hearts open wide, Levi was the one who was truly waiting. He was waiting for me to make my move, and so I had to grant him something, anything, that would let him know that I had every intention to stick to my word.
I touched his hand.
For a second, he flinched. The sensation of my warming fingers against his own must have caused him a bit of shock, but only a bit. He instantly recovered, and after tapping one of his cold fingers against mine, said, "It didn't take you this long to kiss me a couple of hours ago. What happened?"
I could tell that he was asking me that seriously, but at the same time, his voice had been so tender and inviting that I didn't feel intimidated by his question at all. If he wanted an answer, I would be sure to give it.
I didn't really think through what I had been wanting to say, so instead of properly planning out my answer like I probably should have, I just ended up blurting out the first thing that came to mind. "It's because, well, our kiss is going to feel a little bit different now..."
"Oh, yeah?" Levi seemed pretty intrigued by that. He even made a show of folding his arms in a quizzical manner to express his interest. "How so?"
If there had been a less abrupt route to my answer, I would have taken it. Seeing as all of my paths were blocked, and detours diluted my way of thinking, again, the first thing that came into my head was the first thing that came out of my mouth. And judging by what my response had been, it could have been either a good or a bad thing; Levi would be the judge of that.
"It's going to feel a bit different," I started, as I absentmindedly held onto my right wing for support, "because once you and I start kissing, this time around...I'm not going to want to stop."
It was a good thing that I had been holding onto my feathers for their feeling of comfort, because after hearing my honest answer, Levi looked as if he had just seen a ghost - and I would know. I was there to witness his face, when he actually saw one.
Eyes wide and eyebrows pulled together into a crease, a rumbling of regret began to rattle my bones. What I said, had it been too much? Were he and I not at that level in our relationship yet? Were were exclusive, but maybe we weren't that exclusive. Somehow, all of this was starting to feel like deja vu, but maybe that was just me, too. My head was starting to hurt; that's when Levi's voice came in.
"You know, Eren," he said, and as I automatically turned my attention back over to him, I noticed all of the important things first. His eyes were no longer wide, his eyebrows were where they were supposed to be, and as an added bonus, all of his facial features appeared to be very relaxed and almost...desirable. Again, that was probably just me.
Actually, no, it wasn't just me, because after I had prompted him to continue his statement with a basic enough question (i.e. "What is it, Levi?"), he surprised me by saying something that I didn't know I had been desperately craving to hear.
"We can't never stop, if we don't even get ourselves started in the first place."
Okay, Levi was obviously as smooth as ever. Not to mention, for what was probably the billionth time, he was absolutely right again. If I wanted to kiss him - which Lord Almighty knew that I did - I was just going to have to do it. And just like this morning, I gave him no warning; doing so would have only caused me to feel more anxious than I already was. It was a horrible analogy, really, but if I was going to do this, I had to act fast, just like someone would when they were ripping off a band-aid. Clearly, kissing Levi was much better than a band-aid, and before I could put anymore thought into it, I used Levi's words as my guide to bring me forward.
And I did it. I kissed him.
I would never mention it, but I did have to marginally bend my knees to get our lips into proper alignment. I had been hoping to hit my mark on the very first try, but sadly, I've never been known to have the perfect aim. Before our lips had touched, the tips of our noses brushed up against each other's. I almost apologized for failing to give Levi an adequate start to our kiss, but that's when I heard the soft sound of his amused sigh. Even without the perfect positioning, I could tell that he was enjoying himself, and that gave me all the more incentive to calm down, let my instincts take over, and just do whatever felt right, just like he and I would have done back then.
When our lips had finally found each other's, there was an undeniable sense of, "Oh, alright. I know how this goes." We were hardly professionals - because who in their right mind was a professional at kissing - but we were naturals. Everything that our lips did, every way that they moved up against one another and pressed together, was only done because it was what came naturally to us. So, yeah. Definitely not professionals.
From very early on, I understood that I was the one in full control of the kiss. Levi was responsive to me, of course, but he had metaphorically handed me the reigns. I was the one who had initiated this whole scenario, so it was only common courtesy that I be the one to lead the way. Truth be told, there was something very satisfying in that.
I classified the first stages of our kiss as a series of slow pecks. Just when our lips were getting a feel for one another, we would break apart, breathe, and reunite them together once more. It was a slow process, but it was a good starting place. There was no need to get into the hot and heavy stuff right off the bat. Both parties would be tuckered out long before either of them were even close to having their needs met, and after getting interrupted earlier, I had a sense that Levi and I were both feeling very needy.
Gradually, our pecks became quicker, and instead of awkwardly standing with our hands by our sides like a pair of grade schoolers, I took the first step in introducing - rather, reintroducing just how much a simple touch could add to the overall aspects of a kiss.
I carefully slid my fingers up the length of Levi's arm, only to flatten my palm when I had reached the ball of his shoulder. From there, I held onto him loosely. I knew that he wasn't going anywhere, but it was an added sense of stability that allowed my subconscious to feel at ease.
Just from the rhythm of our kiss alone, the back and forth that was like a seesaw on my sanity, I had been able to tell that whatever I brought to the table, Levi was right there to follow it, to mirror it.
After my hand had remained at its stopping point for more than ten seconds, I started to feel something pulling at the sleeve of my shirt. It had almost been distracting enough to break me out of the tempo that we'd set for each other, but that's when I realized it would have only been foolish to do so.
With a pace that had matched my very own, Levi's hand slipped its way up my forearm, around my elbow, and onto my shoulder where he, too, let it rest.
Treating this piece of information like I'd discovered something new, I almost felt the need to test the boundaries of Levi's copy-cat tendencies. Wanting to take our kiss a little further, I pressed my opposing hand against the center of his chest. The thick thermal of his winter jacket prevented me from getting to feel the precious pounds of his heartbeat, but that was only a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. For example, my experiment had been rewarded almost instantaneously.
Levi's hand was firmer than mine, but just the same, he pressed it directly to the center of my chest. It just so happened that this action had been made during one of our breathing breaks, to which Levi ended up taking to his advantage. Instead of sipping in a breath of air, he exhaled a string of words. "You're testing me, aren't you, Eren?"
Keeping with the flow of our kiss, it wasn't until after we'd pecked twice more that I gave him a response. "Is that a bad thing?" Since when had I become so bold? The notion of having a sense of authority must have been getting to me.
A few more pecks, an audible chuckle, and then an answer that sent my heart, as well as my wings, into a flutter. "Not at all," Levi whispered, choosing to mess with our flow in order to get all of his words out, and I didn't mind that for a second. His voice had a way of deepening after his mouth had been in constant use, and it was that tidbit of sensuality that made up for the loss of our lip-lock. "In fact, I really like it. I like feeling challenged."
If Levi was after a challenge, it was a challenge that he was going to get, because with a comment like that, there was no way that I was about to let his desires slide. And what could have been more challenging than boosting our kiss up to level two?
With our newfound pattern, our lips moved together in the same, slow-fast pace as they had been before, but it was with the reduction of our breaks in between that had caused our heads to feel dizzied by the sudden lack of air. Levi's challenge? Apparently it was going to be a challenge for survival.
Soon enough, something within our systems of senses clicked and we remembered that, oh yeah, we had another set of orifices on our faces that would give us the reprieve we were after: our noses. Inhaling at the same time, it was almost comedic just how in sync we really were with one another. It was during a moment like this that I still stuck by my prior statement; now that we had started kissing, I honestly didn't think I was ever going to want to stop.
My hand began to rub against Levi's shoulder, and like clockwork, his hand began to rub against mine. Although we were both doing the same thing, it was clear that he had the upper hand. While I still maintained the control of our kiss, he had the luxury of being able to actually feel the structure of my body beneath his fingertips; all I was able to feel was the dense plush of insulation.
Speaking of feeling, I began to feel myself pushing the pace of our kiss. Before, we had worked our lips together in a timely fashion. Slow, then fast, then back to slow again. Eventually, it was as if our slow speed had been totally rerouted. Now, everything only felt fast.
The pace of our lips, the howling of my heart, and most definitely the desperation in which I allowed myself to breathe, all of it had stopped feeling relaxed and had started feeling like, well, a challenge. All it took was a shift in our speed for me to realize that I enjoyed the thrill of being challenged, as well.
We stayed like that, kissing each other rapidly and ravenously, for about three...four minutes? I honestly didn't know. My head was just so far up in the clouds that I couldn't even interpret time properly, and it was in medias res of my foggy-headedness that I had started to feel as if I were kissing Levi on a decline. Why was that? Just moments later, I heard him beginning to breathlessly laugh.
"Eren, what are you doing?" he snickered amusedly, speaking between our lips. "Come back down here."
Come back down from where? What was Levi even - oh. Well, that was pretty embarrassing. Somehow, I had ended up getting myself so excited by our kiss that my wings had taken me into flight. Oddly enough, it wasn't a reaction that I was entirely a stranger to, either. Sudden bouts of strong emotions were like a trigger to my wings. They would start to flutter and flap without my knowledge, and before I knew it, I would be airborne. It was because of one of those very spurts of emotions - anger and frustration - that I had learned how to fly in the first place.
Sheepishly making my landing, I apologized for my behavior. "I'm...I'm sorry about that." Because of me, the mood was still set, but our frequency had been ruined. How would we be able to regain the rhythm that we had lost?
Still sniggering, Levi shook his head and repositioned his hands back to where they belonged. "Don't apologize, Eren," he hummed. "It was..." Cute. He had been about to call me cute (again), when a burst of shivers surged right through him. I didn't like that. I didn't like that one bit.
Removing my hands from where they were placed, I immediately cast my arms out to him. I had hoped that he would do the same as he had done before and would huddle his way into my hold, allowing me to warm him up, but instead, he turned his attention toward the front door of the apartment complex. A young woman and her daughter began to cautiously make their exit, automatically telling us that they had been there to witness some of our show. Well, Levi's show. They couldn't see me. Wow, that made things awkward.
After they were officially out of sight and probably out of hearing range, Levi returned his gaze back over to mine. I could see from within the intensity of his irises that he had something lascivious to offer. "Why don't you and I take this back...upstairs."
Yup, definitely as naughty-sounding as I had been expecting, but that still didn't change the fact that I had no idea how to appropriately respond to him other than by asking, "...Upstairs?"
Bringing his arms together in an attempt to keep himself warm - he could have just come to me, I was ready for him - he created a heated friction by rubbing his hands up and down the length of his upper arms. Finally, he repeated his prior statement for me. "Yeah, back up to the apartment."
Although I liked the idea of being out of the public eye, I had to worry that our acts would be just as unwelcome as they were outside if we brought them upstairs. "But Erwin-"
"In my bedroom, Eren. We'd be in my bedroom."
"Oh." Yeah, oh.
Levi and I had kissed in his bedroom before - actually, that was where our first kiss had taken place - but for whatever reason, hearing that we'd be continuing from where we'd left off in a much more intimate setting reunited me with a budding bit of nervousness. I pushed past it. I pushed past my fears and against my anxieties, because you know what? Screw it. This was exactly what I wanted, and it was obviously what Levi wanted, too. I nodded my head in agreement. "That's sounds like...a good idea."
It was a perfect idea, really. What other place could provide as much privacy as Levi's bedroom? The bathroom? Maybe, but that was disgusting. There was nothing romantic about kissing someone on the toilet. A bedroom? Now that was a prime solution, and Levi and I were both in acknowledgement of that.
Unable to withstand the cold temperatures any further, Levi guided the way as we headed back inside the foyer, up a few flights of stairs, and around the corner. Upon approaching the apartment's front door, he had already been shoving his hand into his coat pocket to retrieve his keys. What he ended up pulling out surprised him. "Oh, yeah," he said, looking over to me, "I almost forgot that I brought this with me. Here, hold onto it."
I extended my hands for him and accepted the key that Levi had given to me as a Christmas present, while he continued to search around for his real keys. Grabbing a hold of them and shoving the correct key into the lock, he gave it a twist and we were back inside of the apartment.
A sort of heavy aura resided within the space, but it was a relief to see that Erwin was nowhere in sight. After he'd finished taking off his jacket and his shoes, Levi mentioned something about how he must have retreated to his room after we'd left, but we still kept it quiet until we had crept our way down the hall, had entered Levi's bedroom, and had locked the door behind us.
It was time to let the fun start right back up again.
Admittedly, it was a little awkward having to find ourselves again, but there were no worries. Levi and I were naturals - literally. It didn't take us very long to get into our groove.
As Levi walked over to the edge of his bed, I followed him. As he climbed onto the mattress and beckoned me to join, I obeyed him. And as he laid himself down onto the bedsheets, demanding for me to lay over him, it was clear to me that I was no longer the one in control.
Levi was.
I complied to his order and crawled over to lay on top of him, but before I knew it, he was grabbing me by the back of my neck and his lips were crashing into mine. Prior to this, we had been following my desired pace, but now, we would be following Levi's.
And wow, did he like to kiss fast.
My lips hardly had the chance to keep up with his own, before he was already switching the tempo. Sensing my struggle, it was with a gentle yank that our kiss had been broken apart, and Levi was breathlessly asking, "What's the matter, Eren? Can't keep up?
A challenge. That must have been it. Levi was still looking for his challenge.
Narrowing my eyes into a sinfully devilish glint, I lowered myself closer to him. Levi's provoking comment had been all that it took to get myself right back into the seductive state of mind that I needed to be in. "Of course I can keep up," I whispered, my glimmer of determination shining through. "You're the one who stopped."
And that was it. We were at it once again, and this time around, I was a full participant.
I felt a shiver run down my spine, as Levi brought his lips back to mine. Not only that, but the hand that he had placed on the back of my neck had started to travel south, sending a tingling feeling all throughout my body. Now, his fingers were tickling at the sensitive skin that parted the base of my wings, and it was that breed of stimulation that had me leaning into the touch. I had to do something to reciprocate.
With Levi's winter jacket long discarded and his pajama shirt exposed, I began to rub my hand up and down the soft texture of the material, while also relishing in the sensation of actually being able to feel Levi's body beneath me. No more thermal; just flannel and the masked definition of muscles.
Just when I felt like we were reestablishing ourselves into an essential rhythm, one that was fast, fast, and fast, Levi abruptly put a stop to our kiss. Honestly, the halt in his movements had been so unexpected that I was still trying to ease my way in for more. That's when he said, "Eren, wait. I want you to do something for me."
Do something? What did he want me to do? We were already kissing, so what else was there? Curiously, I questioned, "What is it, Levi? If there's anything that you want me to do, I'll do it. Just tell me what it is."
Nodding at my acceptance, he responded, "Good, I'm glad to hear it." He paused. Was he thinking? No, he was sitting up. But why? "Eren, sit up and turn around." Oh, that's why.
Following his command to the best of my ability, I scooted myself back toward the end of the bed and started turning around. It wasn't the easiest thing to do with my wings being so large and space-consuming, but as I got myself properly situated, I was given another order.
"Alright, now come back to me."
Not being able to see where I was going made the movement tougher than it should have been, but using the brim of my wings as a balance, I was able to remain honorably compliant to Levi's wishes. Now, if only he could tell me why he had wanted me to turn around to begin with. That day, I must have been feeling pretty confident, because I ended up flat out asking him. "Levi, why am I doing this? I thought we were supposed to be kiss-ah!"
From what I could decipher, Levi's lips had latched onto the nape of my neck, and without any further explanation, he began to suck.
Long ago, he and I had a term for this sort of thing. We would call it "marking". After we'd finished participating in lewd acts, or even after he and I had simply finished kissing, it was necessary that we leave our lasting mark on each other. With our uniforms being so restrictive and layered, no one would be able to see them unless we placed our stamp in an area that was visible to all. The common place that I had loved to mark Levi on was just beneath the sharp edge of his jaw. For me, he had always been partial to the nape of my neck.
I was starting to feel weak.
Little did I know that, this entire time, I had still been holding on to my key. Well, not anymore obviously, because with that single occurrence, my fingers flew open and reached up to cover my mouth. My key? It fell onto the mattress.
"I remembered that you like this spot," Levi whispered. I could feel him smirking against my skin as he spoke, and for a second, I had to remind myself that he wasn't talking about how we used to share these kinds of moments in the past, but how he had done this same thing to me on the first night that we'd kissed. There was a difference, though. That time, he had only been kissing my neck. Now, he was biting it, and Hell, I didn't know what I was going to do.
Whimpering out my needs and my desires, my neck arched pleasantly for him, and in my haste for pleasure, my wings ultimately propelled backward, fully enveloping him within my feathers. This felt right. This felt perfect. This felt natural, and dear God, I didn't want him to stop.
"Yes, Levi," I breathed. "I'm glad you remembered."
We must have spent a good portion of the day just rolling about, kissing each other, exploring our sensitivities, and kissing each other some more. By the time we actually cared enough to know what the clock read, we weren't at all surprised to see that it was already nearing 4PM. We had been kissing for a long time, so long that my lips had started feeling a bit swollen. Levi's remedy for that? More kisses. Softer ones, of course.
Laying on his side with my wings wrapped around him, Levi sighed contentedly and cuddled into my hold. He would never know just how much I appreciated it when he did that. It always left me with a feeling of being needed, being wanted, of being loved. However, when Levi opened his mouth to speak, what he said had ended up being a little shocking.
"I hope Annie found her way back to Mina."
Cradling the back of his head and tracing my fingers against the rougher hairs of his undercut, I hummed a noise of acknowledgement. "Yeah. Me, too."
I wasn't entirely sure why Levi had brought them up while we were in the middle of cuddling, but I had a feeling that he would say something else, something that would be connected to such a statement.
And I had been right.
Lifting his head to look at me, Levi wore his normal, not-entirely-fazed expression, but it was the look of devotion in his eyes that left me intrigued. The condition of his eyes were always the cue for when he had something important to say, and judging by the strength in the particular gaze that he was showing me, I knew that whatever it was, Levi was going to say something that was going to be worth every ounce of my attention.
"I'm not worried about forgetting you."
Yup. I had definitely needed every ounce for that.
I brought Levi closer to me, tightening both my arms and the curvature of my wings, before asking him to clarify what he had meant by his statement. I knew that we'd talked about living in the present and not worrying about the future before our whole kissing thing had started, but the way that he'd spoken just now made it seem like there was something more. "What do you mean, Levi?"
Losing his intensity, Levi opted to go with a much softer look for his explanation. That not only made me feel less intimidated, as his guardian angel, it made me feel good to know that his words weren't going to be a bother to him. He actually looked like he was kind of happy.
"What I mean is, even if my brain forgets and my mind can't piece together who you are, I'm not worried about forgetting you, because my soul will always remember you. You know, I understand it now. This feeling of wanting to cuddle with you, of wanting to kiss you, of being drawn to you, it's not because of hormones or anything perverted like that, it's my soul wanting to be close to you, because it remembers you, Eren."
It was with that powerful explanation that my heart felt whole again.
All this time, I'd been telling myself that Levi didn't remember me, that he had no recollection of who I was or had ever been, but now I knew that that wasn't entirely true. Levi did remember me, and although it wasn't in the typical sense where his memories were the basis of his thought process, just knowing that a part of him held the knowledge of who I was and had felt drawn to me, I couldn't have asked for anything better.
"Levi, I..." Didn't know what to say? Of course I did. I was going to say how hearing those words had made me feel. "I...I'm so happy. I'm so happy right now that I...I could just..."
"Kiss me?" he snickered. He got me there.
"Well, yes, but I don't think you understand just how happy you've made me by saying all of that." And I didn't think that he ever would. Nonetheless, he didn't have to understand something to know it. Even if he couldn't understand the depths of my appreciation, he could very much tell the surface of my satisfaction.
There had never been a better moment for me to say what I wanted to say next, and although I may have been getting ahead of myself by doing so, I couldn't help it. Before I could stop them, the words were already out of my mouth.
"I love you, Levi."
He'd heard me say it before, and even if he hadn't, such levels of my affection were already blatantly apparent - both through angelic and "human" means. I loved him, and Levi didn't just know that I loved him, he understood that I loved him, and it must have been that difference in mindset that had caused him to snuggle into my chest and request that I keep petting the back of his head because, and I quote, "It feels like Heaven, holy crap."
After I'd been stroking my fingers through his fine hairs for so long, I had almost been convinced that Levi had fallen asleep. His breathing was soft and his body was hardly moving, so all of the cues were there, but that didn't stop him from catching me by surprise...in more ways that one.
Hearing the sound of his voice had been startling, for sure, but it was what he had said that left me with the most awe. I had originally thought that I couldn't have asked for anything better to come out of Levi's mouth, but graciously enough, he had yet to prove me wrong.
"Thank you for my Christmas present."
Baffled at first, I told him, "But...I didn't get you anything."
I felt him shaking his head against my neck, and with the tips of his dark hairs tickling against my chin in the process, he whispered something so miraculous that I wouldn't be willing to forget it any time soon. Or never. Yeah, I was never going to forget it.
"But you did, Eren. You gave me the gift of love, and although that sounds freaking cheesy, it's the truth. And you know what? Eren, I..." he faltered, and shifting his weight against my own, took a moment to collect himself. I waited patiently for him to continue. "Eren, I understand that you love me, and I...I'm really starting to think that I'm falling in love with you, too."
Falling in love. It was a term that humans used to sparingly, and although no harm was ever meant by it, to a guardian angel, "falling" was never a good thing. You could get hurt, you could break a bone, or worse, you could die. But I had been a human longer than I had been an angel, and I was knowledgeable enough to know that Levi wasn't in danger of getting hurt by love. Not on my watch.
Taking his head back into my hand and stroking him until he met his match with serenity, I said what any good-natured guardian angel would say, and hopefully, even Levi would find some humor in it.
"Don't worry, Levi. If you fall, I'll be right here to catch you."
Hi there! Chappy here! :D
Wow, it felt really good to write this chapter. Like, really good. I've put you guys through so much angst that yes, here you go. Have a chapter entirely devoted to kissing and fluffy goodness. You deserve it. (:
And look at that! I threw some relationship development in there, too! It really is like Christmas morning for everyone right now!
Gosh, but enough silliness aside, I really hope that you enjoyed the chapter! It was an absolute pleasure to write!
And as always, thank you for taking the time to read!
- Chappy
