Chapter Text
It starts with a dream.
A nightmare, really - but nightmares are the only kinds of dreams Erwin has, so he doesn't think much of it.
It is dark, in the dream. It smells like sweat, and horses, and something he knows is blood without understanding how.
Erwin is climbing something, unable to fully open his eyes and look, scrambling to get to the top, chest bursting with urgency.
The smell of blood - like mud, almost, like iron and sickness - swells up in his chest until he feels like it's going to burst, and he finally reaches the top.
Corpses.
He's climbed a mountain of corpses.
From the top he looks out, sees nothing but fog and distant trees, and - something impossibly huge moving in the distance like a man, sick, too big, too fast -
He sits up in bed gasping, sweating, hands shaking. He cannot sleep the rest of the night, and sits in his office with all the lights on, thinking of giants.
His wife tells him he is dreaming in metaphors.
It felt so real, he says, sounding foolish even to himself. It felt so real. All those people.
She sets his coffee in front of him, tells him he's too stressed, tells him to forget the corpses.
He burns his tongue on his coffee to avoid saying I put them there.
He dreams, for months, of looming giants stumbling through the fog, and when he wakes he is inexplicably afraid.
The dreams slow eventually, and Erwin nearly forgets them.
He goes to work, teaches his students, reads his books, kisses his wife. The giants fade into the back of his mind until he begins to wonder if he imagined them.
The next time, he dreams of a man.
They say you only ever dream of people you know, distort their faces until they are unrecognizable, but Erwin is sure he has never known anyone like this.
The man is kneeling on the ground, and his hair is dark and wet in his eyes - spectacular, grey, furious, impossibly hard - and there is such savage violence in his expression that it robs Erwin of his breath.
Even when he wakes he can't breathe, and he sits up and presses shaking hands to his eyes with the distinct feeling the earth has shifted under him.
He tells no one, afraid the man will disappear from his memory, but the next night he dreams of him again: how fast he moves, the viciousness of his eyes, the poorly-contained violence of his hands.
For three days Erwin says nothing, dreams of nothing. But on the fourth day, he dreams of pale toes curling in pleasure and grey eyes and strong fingers in his hair; of the giants looming in the distance and the desperate, pressing fear of running out of time -
He gasps, sitting up in bed, shamefully hard and covered in sweat, and finds his wife with her back to him, breathing too fast to be asleep.
He sinks back into the covers, sheets sticking to his sweaty skin, and tries to still his shaking hands.
Back still to him, Marie says, "Who's Levi?"
Erwin feels a cold rush of shock at the name, at the truth of it. He hadn't known until now. Or he always had.
He shakes his head.
"I don't know anyone called - I don't know anyone by that name."
He has just learned the name and yet he knows he can't speak it without praying it, and Marie must not hear that.
"You sounded like you were -" she curls in on herself and her voice goes flat and quiet - "like you were in pain."
Erwin chokes out, "Nightmare," and can't speak anymore.
The name ruins him.
He dreams of Levi every night after that, as if knowing his name has invited him in, somehow. He learns him painfully, as if he is more than a construct of Erwin's mind, as if he is a real man. He learns what he looks like when he's worried, the tightening of his eyes when he looks at the giants in the distance. He learns how strong he is - deceptively strong, terrifyingly strong, how easily he protects himself. He learns how his voice cracks when he comes, how viciously he curses.
It leaks into Erwin's waking life, the dull heartache realization that Levi does not exist, and Erwin finds himself staring off more and more frequently, looking for monsters in the fog.
It is foolish, and he tries everything to make it stop: pills, alcohol, hypnosis, therapy.
Nothing works.
Marie goes to stay with her mother, unable to take the desperate, reverent tone of Erwin's voice when he says Levi's name in his sleep.
Erwin feels like he is losing his mind, and then the dreams shift.
The giants, the horses, the omnipresent smell of blood and under-the-fingernails feeling of constant anxiety, it all disappears.
He knows this new dream is different right from the beginning. The world is different - less dangerous, less urgent. A different life. He knows this, somehow.
He knows, too, that when he turns his head and opens his eyes, he will find Levi.
But he doesn't. He turns, reaches out an arm - just one, he just has one arm and somehow feels none of the alarm he should at this development - and the bed is empty. Huge, soft and indulgent and nothing like the bed in his other dreams, but empty.
A soft noise sounds from the doorway, and he looks up to find Levi there, wearing a shirt that is far too big for him - Erwin's, he knows, and the vicious grip the sight of it puts on his heart might kill him - and holding a mug of something in both hands. His hair is longer than before, his face softer. He seems... safer.
Erwin can hear the ocean outside, and the fog on the window tells him it is cold. Levi’s skin looks impossibly warm. His voice is the same as before when he says, "You look weird."
Erwin laughs and realizes with a terrible jolt that he is here, in this dream, not just watching it. That he is present in a way he has never been before.
Lucid dreaming, he remembers it being called.
Levi walks over to the edge of the bed, feet bare and utterly silent, and presents him with the mug.
Erwin smells coffee.
"For the heathen who doesn't like tea," Levi says, and the low, soft tone of his voice makes Erwin shiver. He takes the mug and their fingers brush.
The world shifts again, and Erwin has the distinct impression that it was not right until this moment. He is unbearably reluctant to move his hand off Levi’s.
Levi furrows his brows and says, “You look like something crawled up your ass.”
Erwin looks at the bedside table - theirs - and sees a pair of glasses he knows don't belong to him, a small, startlingly ornate pocketknife, and a pile of books.
The mug in his hands has a drawing of a game of hangman, unfinished, and written across the bottom in Levi’s careful, beautiful handwriting, is This mug cost an arm and a leg .
“Levi,” he says— the first time he’s ever knowingly said it, and his stomach drops at the taste.
Levi’s permanently unamused expression lightens a little, lips curling up softly at the edges.
“You haven't called me that in a long time,” he says, and touches Erwin’s chest. “Been dreaming again?”
Erwin gasps himself awake then, alone in the dark of his own room, and feels the tilt of the earth like something apocalyptic.
He tries not to lose himself after that, but it becomes increasingly difficult to get out of bed and face a world that feels heartbreakingly empty without Levi.
Levi becomes so real that he feels more like a memory than a dream, and thoughts of him swallow Erwin's life.
He calls Marie, tells her he is afraid, that he doesn't understand what is happening. She tells him not to call anymore. He feels dangerously off-kilter, afraid to go to sleep and equally afraid to wake up.
Some of the dreams are lucid, some are not.
More than once he watches Levi die, in too many different ways and in too many different worlds, and always it plays through like a film that he is helpless to stop. Levi always says the same thing, every time.
I'll find you.
The days after those dreams, Erwin drags himself up and vomits until he feels empty, and doesn't speak to anyone.
Other times he can reach out and touch Levi, can open his mouth and speak to him, and the tender moments of peace they share together make Erwin feel like everything in the waking world is ridiculously small, inconsequential.
He dreams of the house by the ocean often. The sky is fog-colored, the water some impossible blue gray that Erwin thinks only exists in the dream because of Levi's eyes. He sits with him on the porch and they watch the waves together, drinking tea (coffee, in Erwin's case) and occasionally brushing fingertips over the backs of each other's hands. Erwin does not miss his arm at all.
Erwin finds that in most dreams, he is missing an arm up to the shoulder. When he is alone, the phantom pain cripples him - he still feels it when he wakes.
When he is with Levi, he feels nothing.
In the other dreams, he is usually missing his right arm, but in the one with the house on the ocean, it's his left. He looks over at the ring on Levi's left hand and a pang seizes his chest.
Levi puts the pocket knife in his hand, and Erwin can feel him in it, knows instinctively how carefully he made it, knows Levi has given him this piece of his heart instead of the ring Erwin cannot wear.
He looks at Levi then, the sound of the waves deafening with a coming storm, and is seized with an urge to lay him down and fuck him right there on the porch, so he does.
Erwin begins to live only to dream. His life fades away, his friendships drifting into the background. Nothing feels real, waking or not.
One day nearly a year after the start, Erwin watches himself die.
The giants are back, and he's trying to stop his insides from spilling out his stomach, and the shock of it is so absolute that he feels no pain until Levi finds him.
In front of everyone, Levi falls to his knees and touches Erwin's forehead, kisses the side of his face, whispers, Please, don't into his ear. His eyes are the color of a hurricane.
Erwin is so tired. Without understanding he says, "I'll find you." His eyes are heavy.
"I'm so tired, Levi."
Levi's hands shake. Erwin feels himself pulled under an enormous tide, and he is grateful. Finally, he can rest.
He wakes with an eerie sense of calm and loneliness, thinks of a lake in winter, and does not get up for nearly three hours.
When he does, he packs one bag, buys a plane ticket, and flies to Paris. He tells no one.
It is not until he is in the air, watching the curve of the earth under the ocean that he realizes he has no idea what he's doing.
He feels an itch under his skin since his death, a strange desire to be free, and upon setting foot in Paris he breathes easy for the first time in weeks.
He has an apartment in the Latin Quarter, one he hasn't visited in nearly two years, but his feet take him there easily and he finds it in good working order.
The itch returns just under his shoulder blades that evening, and so Erwin goes for a walk.
The city is quiet, close in a way he has forgotten, old and beautiful and, in places, shockingly poor.
He walks down to the Seine, watches the way the sky goes from pink to purple to deep, pollution-choked blue, and tries not to think of the look on Levi's face when he'd watched Erwin die.
He tells himself it's not real for the thousandth time, but he doesn't really believe it anymore. By the time he walks up the stairs and back into the city, his thoughts are so consumed by Levi that he runs straight into someone.
An angry, measured voice says in vicious French, "Va t’faire foutre, connard" and the sound of it, the familiarity of that voice, sends a shockwave of awe through Erwin's body all the way to his toes.
He's speaking before he even meets the angry gray eyes.
"Levi?"
“Shit, that’s an old name.”
The accent is new, French, but the low, even voice is unmistakable. Erwin fears he will fall to his knees at Levi’s feet.
Levi is leaning against a brick wall, half hidden in the shadows of a streetlight, and Erwin can see the tattoos on his hands. One of his ears is inside out, swollen, like a fossilized balloon. He has barely looked at Erwin once.
“If you are going to stare, make yourself useful, yeah?” he says, and Erwin did not think the sound of his voice could get more beautiful until he heard it rounded out like this. “ T’as pas une clope?”
Erwin raises his eyebrows. His fingers are numb. He doesn’t know what to do, so he just says, “Um. Excuse me?”
“A cigarette.”
Erwin’s ears are ringing. Levi’s hair is shorter this time, still just as dark, and there is a tattoo on the side of his neck that Erwin desperately wants to set his teeth against.
Instead he says, “Uh, no. No, I’m sorry.”
Levi seems to finally look at him then. He takes a step into the streetlight and narrows his eyes. Erwin can’t look away.
There is a quiet intake of breath and Levi’s mouth opens, just the smallest bit. He leans heavily back against the wall and puts his hands in his hair. Erwin says nothing. He is trapped, frozen, completely at Levi’s mercy.
Levi is staring at Erwin’s right arm, hands still in his hair.
“Levi –”
“ La ferme, Erwin .”
At the sound of his name Erwin’s knees actually do give out, and he leans his hands against the wall next to Levi. It takes everything in him not to press his face into Levi’s neck: he’s here, he’s real and he’s here -
“I don’t – Levi, I’m sorry, I don’t know what that –”
“Shut the fuck up, it means just shut the fuck up,” Levi hisses, still staring at Erwin’s arm instead of his face. “I – I need to. Think.”
Erwin waits, steals glances at the side of Levi’s face while he stares off into space, tries not to move into him, tries so hard not to collapse at his feet and wrap his arms around Levi’s legs and beg him never to leave.
Finally, finally, Levi turns to face him.
“You are real.”
Erwin huffs out a breath, halfway between a laugh and a sigh, so deeply shocked at every part of this that he can hardly speak. He nods.
“Every night,” Levi starts, then makes an aborted movement in Erwin’s direction and then leans back against the wall, “Every night I watch you die.”
Erwin’s heart, so close to breaking for so long, cracks straight down the middle.
“You-”
But Levi cuts him off, doesn’t seem to be able to stop talking, eyes wide on Erwin’s arm like he’s waiting for it to disappear.
“So many different ways, you die,” Levi says. Erwin is still, somehow, more shocked by the accent than by the fact that Levi is here , alive, real and in front of his eyes. “But always, always you say –”
“I’ll find you.”
Levi’s eyes finally meet his at that, something horrifically sad but tentatively hopeful in them. He nods.
Erwin shakes his head in disbelief. “You – you say the same.”
Levi looks away and murmurs, “ Putain,” under his breath. Erwin doesn’t need that one translated; Levi’s tone is clear.
He scratches behind the cauliflowered ear and looks down, then back up at Erwin hesitantly. “Do you – when you dream, are – are we –”
“Yes,” Erwin says, trying not to sound too desperate. “Yes.”
Levi’s proximity is like a bolt of lightning, like a magnet. Every nerve in Erwin’s body is aching for him.
Levi nods, licks his lips. Erwin can smell the leather of his jacket when he takes a single step closer, and he wonders if this is what dying feels like.
Erwin is afraid to move, so he turns very slowly and leans both shoulders against the wall. Makes no move in Levi's direction.
Levi curses again, so softly Erwin does not hear, and then he moves so fast Erwin barely sees it. His hands are on Erwin's chest, curling into fists over his jacket, shaking slightly, and he ducks his head to press his forehead to Erwin's shoulder.
Erwin remembers a dream, one in the cabin by the ocean, where Levi had come home and buried his face in Erwin's shoulder just like this, put shaking hands on Erwin's belt and said Please, I need -
Erwin cannot stop what he does next.
He wraps both arms around Levi's body so tightly it makes Levi hiccup into his shoulder, splays a hand across the small of Levi's back and buries the other in Levi's hair, cradling the back of his head. His chest feels so tight he isn't sure he can breathe, and he turns his face into Levi's hair and takes one deep, shuddering breath.
Levi smells achingly familiar; and a pang of nostalgic melancholy shakes Erwin all the way to his toes.
He could have had this, Levi was real and they - they'd wasted so much time -
He cannot believe this, that this is real , that he's awake -
"Levi," he says, with such naked reverence and adoration that he nearly feels himself blush. He's never felt so vulnerable.
Levi shakes his head, perhaps trying to put some distance between them, but pressed against Erwin as he is, the motion is almost frightening in its intimacy. He nudges the collar of Erwin’s jacket away so his lips are pressed against the skin of Erwin’s neck when he says, “You always die.”
“No,” Erwin says, chest seized tight with some startling emotion, “Not this time.”
Then Levi is pressing him hard into the brick until his shoulder blades ache, running his hands over Erwin’s shoulders, down his arms, like he’s memorizing every inch of him. His lips brush Erwin’s throat again and he says quietly, desperately, “Don’t. Die.”
Erwin brings shaking hands to Levi’s face, runs fingers through his hair and watches the infinitesimal flutter of his eyelashes. He’s trying so hard not to close his eyes, not to lean into Erwin’s hands, Erwin can feel it in the tension of Levi’s whole body.
“I won’t,” Erwin says, voice a hoarse whisper. He knows this promise is impossible to keep, but he would kill the laws of the known universe for Levi. He has killed the laws of the known universe for Levi.
“I won’t.”