Once again we are happy to announce the next Eruri Week! Thanks to everyone who helped us to decide on the prompts with their vote. There were a few prompts that missed the Top 7 by an inch, but luckily you’ve voted for lots of general AUs. So don’t worry if your Dads or Actors AU didn’t make into the week, you can fit them perfectly into the Modern AU prompt! And here are your Top 7 of the General and AU poll:
Prompts
Jul 31: Titanwin || Reincarnation AU
Aug 1: Tea || Childhood AU
Aug 2: Flirting || Highschool AU
Aug 3: Kisses || Modern AU
Aug 4: “I love you” || Era AU
Aug 5: Praise & Worship || Cop AU
Aug 6: Wedding & Honeymoon || Omegaverse AU
As always everyone is welcome to participate. No day is obligatory and you are allowed to combine prompts. However, please make sure to tag all your entries with “eruriweek” (no spaces!). This has to be one of the first five tags because tumblr only tracks these! Otherwise we won’t be able to find your work and reblog it. It’d be nice if you read the Rules too, before you start working. Thank you!
We are looking forward to your contributions! Have fun!
he’s still half-asleep when he feels the soft dip of the mattress behind him and two small hands tickling at his back. it’s not an unfamiliar sensation, but it is one right out of a dream; this is a life he has imagined, not the life he should be living, and yet he is here, waking, breathing, wondering whose little hands are climbing up his arms. he glances around through bleary eyes and is confused to find a tiny face peering down at him.
“daddy,” she says, putting her hands on either side of his face. “wake up, daddy.”
levi knows who she is when he sees her. he knows that those perfect brown eyes belong to his daughter- but he doesn’t have a daughter, he doesn’t have a bed this soft, and he doesn’t have a shushing someone who comes and carries the toddler out of the dark room.
“daddy needs to sleep,” the someone whispers, closing the bedroom door as he takes her away. her whine carries through the walls. “we can play later.”
it’s always daddy needs to sleep, or daddy needs to rest, or daddy needs some quiet time alone. it’s that or levi, you haven’t taken your pills, levi, it was just another dream, levi, sweetheart, i’m worried about you.
he is nobody’s sweetheart.
it’s always erwin, i missed you, or erwin, don’t leave me again, or erwin, why can’t you just remember? he whispers these things when he crawls out of bed a few hours later and collapses into erwin’s arms on the living room sofa. he whispers these things when erwin has to turn off the tv when it gets too loud. he whispers these things when he asks erwin to fuck him and when erwin refuses because he doesn’t remember how they used to live: in pain, in fear, in lust. he only knows their life now: love and sunshine.
at some point, it’s not even the fact that erwin can’t remember. once levi learns how to live again with nightmares and paranoia, he learns to live with his smiling, golden husband. he learns to let erwin take care of him, because that will make both of them feel better, and he learns to shut his mouth on the days when he sees nothing but blood in his eyes.
but sometimes he catches erwin watching him with the same hawklike gaze that haunts his dreams. sometimes he catches erwin rubbing his right arm like it hurts him, even though it’s all there in one piece. sometimes erwin is too stiff, too formal, around him, around their daughter, and levi knows that it’s not that he can’t remember, it’s that he won’t. there’s a piece of his erwin in there somewhere, buried beneath the depths of that gentle smile. levi loves that smile, but he wants so desperately to tear it apart and find the exhausted man he knows is hidden underneath.
levi has good days and bad days, and then he has days where he keeps erwin up at night begging him to come back, pleading with a faceless man until he forgets what he’s really asking for, and then he cries like he never did before and erwin holds him until the dawn.
“would you tell me if you remember?” levi murmurs one night.
he’s pushed back in the pillows of their bed, their little girl in his arms. he still doesn’t always recognize her, but she’s the one person who doesn’t mind his rambling, so he lets her into his world. she’s fallen asleep against his shoulder, like she does sometimes. erwin thinks it builds bad character, but some days levi can’t bring himself to get out of bed at all; so he relents and lets her come to bed with them, at least until she’s fast asleep. then he’ll shush levi and pry her out of his arms and come back to cradle his husband until they both drift away.
“levi,” erwin says. he’s folding laundry at the end of the bed, and he doesn’t look up. “not tonight.”
“you say that every night,” levi mutters. “will there ever be a right time?”
erwin glances up at him and sighs. levi never thought it possible, but he looks more tired than he ever did before. levi is wearing him out and still he has nothing to show for it.
“if i remember,” erwin says as he carries their daughter back to her room, “i’ll tell you.”
erwin’s arms feel warm around his stomach, and levi holds onto them throughout the blue night, especially when he bursts awake from another nightmare, especially when erwin holds him until he can breathe again, especially when he realizes in the darkness that erwin is never going to remember. erwin can never remember. this tormented solitude is the price that levi must pay for his selfishness. all he asked for, in the end, was the peace that erwin deserved.
“What will happen … when I’m gone?”
It was a breath more than a whisper, but he heard it and it made his chest tight. It made his throat tight and he forced the air out.
“I don’t know.”
The light had dimmed and they hadn’t moved. The sun was now set outside beyond the walls and the candle spluttered low against molten wax.
Erwin rummaged through the mess of papers in his drawers for a fresh one. He lit the wick, pressed the melted nub into the candle stick with the butt of the new and sat back.
“I wish you would just-”
“We’ve argued enough, Levi.” Erwin rubbed his eyes. “Please.”
He sounded so defeated, so beat down and it twisted Levi up inside. He hung his head, hands dangling between his knees.
“Right, you’re right.”
The silence grew around them, uncomfortable and unwelcome.
“Would you wait for me?”
Erwin raised his head, still protectively sequestered behind his desk. He looked to his captain with furrowed brows.
“I know you’re not the superstitious type.” He bagan. “I never saw the use in praying or anything either. I mean, if there is a hell it can’t be much worse than this.”
He cocked his head over his shoulder for a moment to see he had Erwin’s attention and dropped his gaze back to the spot on the floor between his boots.
“But if there’s something else- not just rot and darkness. Would you wait for me?”
Erwin suddenly realized it wasn’t a hypothetical question but a plea.
His mouth felt dry and he fought past the gravel in his throat,
eruri week ... marriage/honeymoon. levi is the worst kind of lovesick
Sunday morning marks the end of another unsuccessful meeting at the military police headquarters: another, because it seems like Erwin is constantly preparing to have his ass figuratively handed to him by smug MP officials at these multi-annual conferences; unsuccessful, because it’s been Levi’s first time meeting the military bigwigs and he can’t say he’s too impressed. They’re not that impressed with him, either; he wasn’t invited, first of all, and it’s clear that he’s not wanted by the way they float past him to limply shake Erwin’s hand again. He may be humanity’s strongest, or whatever they’re calling him these days, but he’s gruff and polite only at Erwin’s insistence. There’s a reason they didn’t want him here.
One cheerful Garrison officer manages to piece together some semblance of cooperation between the military branches, and she’s the only one who gave Levi the time of day all weekend. She returns now to wish them well and say goodbye. She shakes Erwin’s hand, gives the usual farewell of good luck and godspeed, and then she turns back to Levi.
“Captain, I didn’t catch your last name,” she says. It’s not intended as a rude gesture; she speaks frankly and extends her grip to shake his hand goodbye. But the confident glimmer in her eyes falters when it takes him too long to respond, and she realizes her social faux pas too late.
“No last name,” Levi says, abruptly announcing his status to everyone in hearing distance. “It’s just Levi.”
She’s frightfully apologetic, but Levi doesn’t care about the mistake. She’s the only officer who’s been halfway decent to the Survey Corps over the last few days. He sends her off with well wishes and they start for their carriage.
A gang of MP privates have been lurking on the sidelines, watching the exchange of formalities between branch heads with rapture, but their attention was completely sucked into the spectacle just now, and they whisper among themselves as Erwin and Levi prepare for departure.
“They should just call him Captain Smith,” one of the privates mutters underneath his breath. If Erwin hears the snide remark, then he doesn’t deem it important enough to comment on; if he hears it all, because he’s already halfway into the carriage.
But Levi hears it.
He doesn’t let it get the better of him. He doesn’t know what he would say to them anyways, and Erwin’d be rather disappointed if he started picking fights in the street with random MP privates. But when he clambers into the carriage after Erwin, already pushing the snide remark out of his mind so he can listen to Erwin’s itinerary, he realizes with a clench of his gut that the privates are exactly right.
At least, they’re right in their own eyes. He is Erwin’s dog, as far as they know, and the more he thinks about their words, the more he sees it for himself. He follows Erwin in and out of meetings all day, never more than a length behind him. Levi doesn’t mind, and he doesn’t much care about what they say. But he starts to think about it anyways:
Levi Smith.
It’s stupid. He’s stupid, and he erases the thought as soon as it appears in his mind.
But it finds him again, creeping back into his consciousness the next week when he finds Erwin working late at night and forces dinner down his throat. He’s less like a dog, isn’t he, and more like a good wife. A good husband. He takes Erwin’s dinner tray and cleans the dishes himself. He thinks about Smith so hard that he shatters a plate in the sink and cuts himself across the palm of his hand.
He’s an idiot.
Erwin had told him, a while ago, that he might consider picking up a last name, just for formal purposes. It’s unusual for subordinates to use their officer’s first name in address, even if there’s a title before it, and he thought perhaps Levi would be more comfortable choosing a surname, just so his soldiers could have something formal to call him. The significance of that had never before occurred to Levi. Family names didn’t matter much in the Underground, as no one had much family to speak of and bastards were more than a blue moon. It’s never bothered him before, and it still didn’t when Erwin brought it up. He declined. His soldiers could call him by his name, or call him nothing at all.
He’s heard the stories they tell about him in the other branches. He doesn’t think having a last name would squash any of those rumors.
Still, he’s never known what it’s like to have a last name. And there isn’t any harm in that name being Erwin’s, is there? It’s a common name, after all. He decides to wear Smith, secretly, just beneath the surface, and see how it feels. He lives a brief second life as Levi Smith, just for a few weeks until the excitement wears off and he has more important things to worry about.
The night before an expedition, he brings a pot of tea to Erwin’s office. He has to step over rolled maps and books of equipment improvement prototypes to get to the desk, where Erwin sits, taciturn, engrossed in his survey of their plans. Levi pours two cups of tea and drinks his while he waits for Erwin to finish his review. He never does. Levi finally takes the lukewarm tea and places it on a critical spot on the formation map. Erwin blinks. He’s not been oblivious to Levi’s presence, just obsessed with his work. He thanks Levi for the tea and sits back in his chair.
Levi makes sure he drinks it all and then begins to pack up the tray. He’s tired and he’s not looking forward to the expedition tomorrow. They’re going to lose a lot of good people, he can tell, but they’ve got to spend their funds by the end of the quarter or their sponsors will withdraw. They’ve got to try, at least. He knows why, but he wishes, for once, they could spare themselves the pain.
He imagines sometimes that there’s an end to this fight. One day, they will reclaim Wall Maria. He doesn’t know how much that would solve, but he imagines it would help their world return to normal- as normal as possible: as normal as it used to be. Then maybe they’d find some answers, and then maybe they’d be free to live their lives the way they want. He and Erwin could move to the country, where he knows Erwin has always wanted to go. He’d like to learn how to garden. They could have a couple of barn cats to weed out the mice. He thinks Erwin would enjoy that, living in a cottage in the meadows. They’d have to find one near a farm, of course, and maybe an orchard as well; in the autumn they’d press apples to juice-
“What are you thinking about?” Erwin asks.
Levi has a feeling he knows. “Nothing. Go get some sleep.”
eruri week ... praise and worship [levi is trans] [nsfw]
erwin’s gaze wanders for a long time before his hands follow. and still, they hesitate. they linger on levi’s shoulders for one moment too long before they slide away. they brush against his hips and his elbows by accident, by mistake, his apologies. they ghost across his skin for so long that levi wonders if they have really ever touched him, or if he has imagined it all. then erwin’s hands press him against the walls of his office and erwin kisses him, hard and fast, before disappearing down the corridor.
levi says nothing about it. erwin gets the message, but it’s the wrong message. it’s not that levi doesn’t want those lips. he wants them very badly, on his neck, on his thighs, all over his skin. he wants those arms around him more than he has ever wanted anything before.
it’s just that he can’t. he can’t give in like that. he can’t submit to desire every time it comes chasing him through his dreams. he can’t let erwin’s hands get any farther than they already have, or he will have to pay a price much dearer than chapped lips.
they live for months, for years, in this give and take, this push and pull. erwin doesn’t apologize for the kiss, but his hands never wander again and eventually his gaze turns away too. levi still thinks about it: that warmth pressed against his body. he thinks about it when he gets drunk enough to touch himself at night, and when he’s sober enough to regret it the next morning. he thinks about it when erwin dons the bleeding crown. he thinks about it when their lives come crashing down around them. he thinks about it when everything changes and it feels like the world is going to end, and he decides that it is enough.
this time, it’s him who corners erwin against a wall. their elongated shadows dance like ghosts across the floor as levi kisses him in the candlelight, pulling him down by emerald noose around his neck. this time, it’s erwin who says nothing, asking with the search in his eyes if this is what levi wants, if this is something more genuine than a desperate attempt at living life before everything ends. this time, it’s levi who takes erwin’s hands and presses them between his legs, telling erwin every secret levi has ever kept from him.
erwin is not surprised when he sees the bandages wound around levi’s chest, and erwin does not mind when they stay wrapped amid their swathes of otherwise naked skin. levi lets erwin fuck him between his thighs like he never thought any man would ever do. erwin is gentle in his touch, his fingers trailing up levi’s arms, caressing his neck, and holding his jaw as levi arches his back into the soft kiss pressed against his lips. erwin is rough when levi draws blood through the surface of his skin and begs him to press harder, firmer, faster. erwin worships with every touch on his skin and every kiss to his neck, and when levi looks into those dark eyes, there is nothing but trust, nothing but praise, nothing but love.
he finishes wrapped in erwin’s layers: kissing him, holding him, never letting him go.
Top of the head kisses anon here! Erwin and Levi please
20. top of the head kisses [also for eruri week … titanwin]
He regrets it as soon as the needle pierces the skin. He couldn’t have made any other choice, not for his commander, not for Erwin, and yet he wishes to all the gods in this moment that he had yielded the serum to his soldiers and let them do with it as they wished. He thought he saw the path clearly, but Erwin’s blood has stained the mazes of his fingerprints and Levi’s heart aches for both of them to just die, to leave this fucked-up world behind and live somewhere green, somewhere quiet, somewhere without blood and guts and monsters.
Erwin’s face seems so rested, so peaceful, cradled gingerly in Hange’s lap. Levi hasn’t seen him sleep like that in a long time: maybe never; and now he fears that he will never sleep like that again.
But it’s too late. How many times has he made a stand about owning your choices?
He pushes the needle beneath Erwin’s skin and injects the serum.
Levi’s hands dig into the shattered tiles of the roof, his fingernails clawing for something to hold onto; but he is dragged away, heaved backwards by his shoulders and pulled from rooftop to rooftop until the deafening moan of the resurrected titan is more of a spectacle and less of an ear-shattering horror. Hange holds him back, yells at him even though he does not listen; it should be his blades, after all, that slice through the nape of that neck and pull Erwin back into hell.
That’s what he does as soon as Hange’s grip falters; he’s flying across the ruined town, the wind gushing through his hair, the blood soaked through his shirt cuffs, and his blades cut tenderly through the titan skin to damn the man beneath as he is pulled back into the living. Levi drags him from bone and seething flesh; his heart pounds when he sees Erwin’s arm, renewed, pink, and soft like a baby’s. It steams when it touches the air and although Levi cradles Erwin selfishly to his body, he feels vindicated knowing that he can never be hurt again.
Erwin blinks up at him from behind those beautiful eyes.
“You’re alive,” Levi mutters, holding him tighter.
Erwin says nothing, his weary eyes gazing up at Levi. He’s hardly lucid, and after another moment of ragged breathing, he dozes off, falling back into a peaceful slumber in Levi’s arms. His head lulls against Levi’s collarbone, his breath hot against Levi’s skin. In his sleep, his eyelids flutter as he murmurs to himself, and Levi watches in suspended disbelief the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
“You’re alive,” he repeats, whispering. He bends and presses his lips to Erwin’s forehead; he reveals at the heat. “You’re alive.”
