Holding the pizza boxes against his chest like a cage concealing a restless bird, Levi enters the Smith residence for the first time in what, a week? Not even that? He follows Eren into the living room with Erwin trailing behind him, attempting to peer over Eren's head. (You will be stabbed if mention his height, just remember that)

He's beginning to wonder if half his infatuation with Eren is due to his hair. Rubbing his fingers against the plastic box to resist the temptation to reach out and caress those seemingly fluffy locks, a wistful sigh escapes his lips.

"CAT." Eren screams. Then all of a sudden his messy hair is out of Levi's vision as he blurs and darts into the room ahead, throwing the door open.

And then everything is pink.

God, he can't even leave Erwin alone for five fucking minutes?

Levi walks into the living room, choking on a thick spew of curses. He whispers the words 'fucking hell' and 'Jesus fucking Christ' and 'holy shit', glancing at the dizzying glare of barbie-pink walls. A few paces in front of him the cat bed appears to have it's own throne -hairy and ridiculous on top of the plain carpet that surrounds it.

He stops to stare, trying to see if there's a remainder of the house he once lived in. The leather couch has been shredded at the arm rest and has a pink blanet draped over the back.

A bundle of white slides along the floor in front of him, followed by a cooing Eren, tan fingers attempting to pat the kitten's cream fur. Like a tiger looming over a lamb, Eren makes an odd whispering noise and rubs his index finger and thumb together. "Heeeere puss-puss-puss."

He glances up at Levi, quickly looking down at the oblivious cat again as his shoulders slouch, though his eyes glitter. "I found a cat." he giggles, as though his discovery isn't obvious.

That gets Eren a roll of the eyes, even though Levi's heart is still recovering from a twinge of adoration. "Would you like a medal?"

"Yes."

Levi hums thoughtfully. "I can offer you pizza." Or a blowjob-

"Yes!" Eren perks up, bouncing into the kitchen, retrieving his pizza box he'd left on the couch upon finding the cat. Things don't get much better when he turns to face Erwin.

"What the fuck," he rakes Erwin's figure with a blade-like glare. "Are you wearing?"

Erwin crosses his arms, nose pointing upwards as he looks away. "Clothes." Erwin, you might want to add the goggle glasses, the fake moustache, the bolo tie, the fishhat and- is that a My Chemical Romance t-shirt? "I wanted to fit in with the youths at work."

"Oh. Well, maybe you should wear those things around said 'youths at work'." He'll have to ask Moblit to take pictures: blackmail material at it's finest. Though, maybe not, if Erwin actually thinks he's being stylish... "Also, your living room is disgusting."

"But the pet book said that Locket would like the colour pink!" Erwin whines. Apparently the cat is called Locket. "I got lonely in the house by myself and I'm not ready for a family yet so I thought, hey, baby steps."

Quickly swallowing, thinking back to Erwin's recent pleas to join his family, Levi tells him "Cats are colour-blind. They see pink as grey."

Erwin thins his lips, glaring at Levi. "Don't ruin my dreams, Levi."

"No worries, I already did."

"Leviiiiiii, what temperature do these go in at?" Eren calls from b'en the house.

Levi instructs him as he wanders into the kitchen. "A hundred and eighty, but make sure the oven's been preheated." Levi dumps the other boxes onto the counter. "Get these ones in as well."

Crouching in front of the oven, Eren turns the temperature dial, the soft glow from the machine softens his concentrated frown and paints his skin gold. Fucking Adonis. No, better than that, because he's actually real and right here. Eren frees the pizzas of their boxes, setting them on top of the lids in preperation.

"Should take about ten minutes to preheat the oven, right?"

"Right." Levi moves to sit at the table, realizing that he hardly ever sat there before. Erwin and Eren join him, with the latter two sitting side by side. It's almost as if there's something between them... Oh, yeah, great. This is the part where they make small talk.

But how.

How do socialise.

"So Eren," Blondie, Levi is revoking your mouth so shut the fuck up. Stop stealing his man's attention. "What do you think of a guy who wears eye liner?"

Fucking Erwin and his shitty pick up lines.

"...What?"

"Well, do you think it looks nice or not?" For fuck's sake Erwin. Levi's tempted to find the cocktail sticks in the drawer beaneath the sink and stab him in the eyesocket. He does this with every person they meet, swear to god-

Eren shifts, his face blank in confusion as he stares at Levi (don't look at him; you're Erwin's problem now since you sided with him) and his mouth drops vacantly. "I-it's nice? Do you... Think so?"

"Ah, well see; there was this one night at The Wee Man, that's a bar in Calton, one that we visited frequently, and did you know it was named after Levi? He's pretty famous in those parts. Anyway, that night I dared Levi to crossdress-"

Tightening his fists on the table, Levi glowers at Erwin, realizing there and then that Erwin's soul is as dark as Levi's hair. "Erwin-"

But he doesn't stop, and soon Eren knows about one of the most embarssing/memorable nights of his life and he's laughing at Levi's expense, yet somehow he doesn't mind because would you look at that: they've gone from eyeliner to something about Levi's past and isn't that just the most darling thing?

No. Not it's not. Say goodbye to your eyebrows tonight, Erwin Smith.

Eren's prepubescent-like laughter fills the room, along with Erwin's loud smirking in Levi's direction, then he sees that the oven's ready and goes to slip the pizzas in. As they're waiting for the food cook, Erwin makes them all tea that Eren guzzles with reckless abandon and yelps when it burns him.

They spend a good portion of the time talking about their jobs and families; Eren came from a poor family and although he now considers Mikasa and Armin his family, apparently they're not as close as Levi thought.

"They were nice enough to offer me the spare room when things went to shit when I was eighteen, but since they lived with each other throughout their childhood, it's kinda obvious that I'm the odd one out, y'know?" He says, going on to explain that he hadn't been able to go to univeristy simply because of his housing situation: too far from home and not enough funding to move elsewhere. Levi notices he keeps checking his phone...

He also tells the two men that Mikasa is the opposite of Andrea: overly concerned, willing to give him all the attention in the world and often seen with a deadpan expression. Armin, as nice as he is, has a tendency to block Eren out; preferring to daydream rather than try to find things in common with him.

In turn, Levi and Erwin tell them about their family: Levi had kids on the street, his gang members, that he looked after, Erwin's dad is a police officer and his parents bicker over having another child -Erwin's mum is as bad as Erwin: insistant on having a picture perfect family.

"You're everyone's dad, Erwin."

"Am not!"

"No, you really are. But just not mine."

"Uugh, it's fine, I have Locket now."

After they've eaten, Eren looks at his phone one final time, before announcing he has to go home. Levi accompanies him, seeing as it's on his way back to Swansea. (That's the scapegoat reason he's using, anyway)

At first, it'd been a stiffling silence that encompassed them the moment Erwin closed to door on them -after Eren got his last cuddle with the kitten he'd been glued to for the majority of the night- but then they slowly eased into conversation about Levi's life at Swansea; not as bad as he first thought, but wow, did it ever remind him of his gang back at Glasgow. Noisy, close friends with the police, with a number of old ladies as their adoptive guardians.

"So, you must've made a lot of friends here, if you were that popular in Glasgow?" Eren asks, clutching his bag of sweets that he dips into every now and then.

Levi feels his eyebrows furrow as he focuses on a speck of gum on the pavement. "Hmm... Not really. Just a few neighbours here and there, but not anybody I'd consider hanging out with." His day spent with Bertholdt's group seemed to be a one time thing.

"Oh." Eren almost whispers, and leaves it at that.

"What about you? You had all those friends at Survey, do you hang out with them?"

Eren frowns, thinking. "Some of them, yeah. A few were my room mates, and don't get me wrong, but most of them were Armin's friends, and friends of their friends. Not people I know too well, if I'm being honest. Armin tells me there's no reason not to be with whoever you want to be with, but I guess I find it hard to mingle in groups."

He shrugs, shivering slightly and cursing himself for not wearing a hoodie. "When I was living at Swansea, Eld, who had moved out of Swansea at the time, he introduced me to the idea of parties. It's dumb, really. I was scared about it, but all it really is is just talking to a bunch of people. You can learn how to make conversation over the internet, and usually everyone's so tipsy that they don't give a shit as to what you talk to them about."

Levi nods, turning his head to see Eren staring up at the sky, his chocolatey hair dancing in the light breeze, and he was wearing that usual frown again. "Can't decide whether I like people or not." Eren admits ruefully.

"I just don't really like people in general."

Eren snorts. "Yeah, you'd probably prefer to just go about washing all the windows of Trost." he points to a random window, a grin threatening to bubble up. "You gonna polish it?" he teases.

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Levi looks away as he hides a smile. "I'll wipe that dumb smile off your face." It's not dumb at all, though it is a little goofy and just a tad too proud. Suits him much better than that frown.

They walk a little more in (what he hopes to be) comfortable silence, watching as the lamps flick orange and the cars on the road turn their headlights on. Passing a nearby Burger King, Levi takes note of Eren's house: two storey's high, it might've once been white, there's no garden; it's attached neighbour looking exactly the same.

"Can I come in?" Levi blurts out, fearful of having to leave Eren once again as he wanders up the path.

Eren scratches his hair, looking anywhere but Levi. "I was gonna go check on Daz."

"I won't be in the way." He reeeeally just wants to see the inside of your house, Eren. Levi wants to know what random shit Eren's got in his room. Would he have books? DVD cases stacked up high? Does his wardrobe only consist of blue football tops and worn out polo shirts?

"It's late."

"It's seven o'clock. How's that late." he saunters over to Eren who jumps at his sudden closeness.

He ducks away, out of Levi's reach, peering at him behind his fingers as he protects his face. "Please don't kiss me again."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you turn Levi into a stuttering, blushing mess of a man.

"F-French, ha-habit that's it, that's all, good day see you later bye bye bye bye-" he runs away. God dammit.

His plan for tomorrow: learn how to bloody act around people, because this is just getting beyond a joke now. Levi considers asking Bertholdt for advice, but then again, Eren did mention that there's a bunch of "conversation how-to's online". He marks it on his calendar, circling it so as not to forget.

But in the box for today, he writes (after finding a pen that works, since his has run out of ink)

"If Eren doesn't want to go home then I'll make a place for him to go. He did it for me, after all."