Chapter Text
The first thing Eren noticed was that there was someone next to him.
He was slowly resurfacing from sleep when he felt it. At first, everything had been foggy. He hadn’t been sure what it was. Something warm and smooth was lying under the sheets beside him. He had his arms draped around it, pressing it close to his chest. First he thought it was a pillow. He didn’t remember the previous night all that well. He might have fallen asleep while cuddling with one, or possibly grabbed it at some point during the night. It wasn’t the first time that it had happened.
Then he realized that the pillow was breathing.
The numb, sleepy block in Eren’s brain started to dissipate. Slowly he became aware of everything around him. He hadn’t fallen asleep with a pillow last night. He couldn’t have. Armin had come over, he had passed out on the couch, and Eren had left him there and gone to bed. Then Levi had gone under the covers with him.
Levi had gone under the covers. The cat had been next to him when he fell asleep. And now there was...
There was someone there. Their arms were pressed against his chest, their legs curled up around his, their head right next to his on the pillows, its weight making the plush dip and pull away from his face. And that warm, smooth thing he’d been feeling-
It was skin.
Eren’s eyes were open in an instant.
The first thing he saw was sleek, raven-black hair. He thought of Levi, but it wasn’t him. The cat was nowhere to be seen. Not on the pillows, not at the end of the bed, nowhere. There was just this motionless lump of a human being lying under the covers with him. Eren turned his eyes back to the stranger. Their face was hidden under the blankets, as if they had fallen asleep leaning on Eren’s shoulder and hadn’t been bothered when he pulled the covers all the way up to his nose. Eren untangled one arm from the sheets and raised his fingers over the edge of the blanket. He just had to see their face. He had to know who it was that had somehow ended up sleeping with him. And hopefully sleeping was all that had happened. With a shaky hand, he pushed the covers back.
Lying next to him was possibly the most beautiful young man that Eren had ever seen in his life.
He was dead asleep. Eren couldn’t help feeling relieved at the fact. His unresponsive face looked peaceful, blissfully oblivious as most sleeping people’s do, yet weirdly graceful for someone who was completely numb to the world around them. His skin was pale, smooth and damn near flawless. Soot-black eyelashes brushed his cheeks, about an inch below a pair of dark, skinny eyebrows. He had a sharp, pixie-like nose and delicate lips in a perfect cupid’s bow that were so devastatingly inviting that Eren almost wanted to touch them. A sweep of glossy black hair was scattered haphazardly over his face, cut into two layers, a longer one overlapping one that was cut close to his skin. From what Eren could see, he didn’t appear to have any clothes on, and he wasn’t about to go lifting the covers to see whether or not he was guessing correctly. But that wasn’t what stood out to him the most about the stranger.
It was definitely the ears.
Peeking through the stranger’s hair were two pointed ears. They were black, just like the hair surrounding them, covered in fine fur with soft, thin tufts running up the inner edges. Eren stared at them. He couldn’t even begin to guess what they were or how they had gotten there. He wondered momentarily whether they were real or not. But if they were fake, then they were astoundingly realistic for prosthetics. Not to mention comfortable, since the man had managed to fall asleep wearing them.
Eren’s breath caught in his throat. Those look almost like...
But no... It can’t be...
Before Eren could finish the thought, the stranger’s eyes opened.
That color. Silver-blue. He’d seen it before.
The stranger looked drowsily up at Eren, his eyes lidded and hazy. He didn’t seem to take any notice of the dumbfounded look on the student’s face. He simply scrunched his eyes up a bit and blinked them open a little more, took in a deep breath and let it rush back out in a languid sigh. His eyes squinted closed again and he stretched his arms out in front of him, his palms pressing into Eren’s chest where they had been resting against his shirt since he woke up. Eren stared in bewildered silence, his eyes wide and fixed on the stranger. He seemed completely unaware of his situation. Then everything stopped. The ears on his head flicked, and the stranger’s eyes were open again in an instant. Eren felt him flex his fingers on his chest. The man was staring straight ahead, and the sleepiness in his eyes was slowly giving way to surprise.
He was staring at his hands.
The stranger blinked, and his eyes wide open when had been drowsily narrow only a second earlier. He inhaled sharply, letting slip a quiet gasp. He quickly pulled his hands away from Eren’s chest and held them up in front of his face, flipping them palms-up and palms-down, bending and unbending his fingers as if he weren’t sure that any of it was real. Then his hands moved to the sides of his face, his neck, his shoulders and chest, feeling everything within their reach. All the while there was a look of mild shock on his face, as if he had been given surprising news and couldn’t decide whether it was good or bad.
“What the...” he breathed. Then he gasped again, and his hands flew to his throat. He pushed himself into a sitting position, looked down at himself for a moment, and his lips started to tug upwards into a smile. “Oh my god. O-oh my god, I’m... I can...” He trailed off and his head spun around. His eyes locked with the emerald gaze of the boy next to him.
“Eren,” he said breathlessly.
The student stared at him. He felt as if there were tar covering his vocal cords, like his tongue was stuck to the inside of his mouth. He couldn’t find the words to speak. There were so many things to say, but there was no place he could start.
“W-who are you?” he finally stuttered. The stranger looked at him, seeming slightly surprised at his choice of words. A few awkward seconds later, Eren forced himself to speak again. “How do you know my name?”
The stranger kept staring, as if he were confused, then he blinked and all of the cloudiness in his eyes cleared away. “Eren, it’s me,” he said. “It’s... it’s Levi.” The two of them kept their gazes locked for what felt like hours of silence. When Eren didn’t respond, the stranger spoke up again. “You... you haven’t forgotten, have you?”
The realizations hit Eren all at once, like running headfirst into a plexiglass wall. He blinked a few times, and if it were possible for his eyes to get any wider, they definitely did. “Levi?” he gasped. “B-but you’re...”
“I’m human,” the man finished for him. “I know. I’m human. I-I’m...”
He never finished his sentence. Instead, Levi threw himself on top of Eren, planted his hands on either side of the student’s head and pressed a hard, passionate kiss on his lips.
Eren shuddered in surprise. Everything was happening too fast. He remembered the previous night as clear as any other. Levi was a cat. Or he had been, at least. Now he was a human, and he was on top of him and kissing him- and he was definitely naked. Eren was sure of that now. He froze up and lay still as a mannequin as Levi pinned him in place and kissed him over and over again.
“Thank you,” he whispered against Eren’s lips. “Thank you, Eren. Thank you so much...” Then, all of a sudden, it stopped. Levi drew back to take a breath, his hands cupping either side of Eren’s face. He stared down into his eyes for a moment, then his gaze flicked down at himself. More accurately, his stark-naked self. “Oh. I-I am so sorry!” he blurted out, and then he was pushing himself off of Eren, scrambling back to the empty side of the bed. His ivory skin flushed a charming shade of pink. He stared at his legs under the covers for a second, then his eyes moved nervously back over to Eren.
“Hey, you wouldn’t mind if I, er... borrowed something of yours, would you?” he asked.
Once upon a time, Eren had found a cat in front a thrift store in the rain.
Thirty days later, the cat became a human. One whose name, oddly enough, was the same one that Eren had chosen for him. His name was Levi.
Eren ventured out of his room to see Armin and Mikasa milling about in the kitchen and making muffins for breakfast out of whatever was hanging around in their cabinets. He glanced over his shoulder at Levi, who was sitting on the end of his bed. He had dressed him in a t-shirt that was far too big for him and a pair of boxer shorts that he’d had to safety-pin to stay up on his hips. Levi was smaller than Eren had thought. Then again, he hadn’t ever thought that his cat would one day not be a cat anymore. Besides that, he had been unusually small when he was a cat as well. It only made sense, when Eren thought about it.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go out and warn them first.”
“Fine,” Levi said, watching Eren impassively from his spot. The student thought it a little funny. He didn’t seem to have changed at all from the way he was when he was a cat.
Leaving it at that, Eren crept out into the hallway and made his way into the kitchen. Mikasa and Armin turned to him as soon as he walked into the room, both of them looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “Morning, Eren,” Armin said, cracking an egg on the side of a mixing bowl. “Sleep well?”
“Um... yeah,” Eren replied. He reached up and ran a hand nervously through his bedhead hair. “You guys might want to try and make a few more muffins out of that batch.”
“Why?” Mikasa asked. “It’s just the three of us. We won’t need that many.”
“Well, actually, about that-”
“Okay, I think it’s been long enough. What am I missing out on here?”
Eren spun around at the sound of a voice that he had been so used to saying nothing but ‘meow.’ “I thought I told you not to come out here until I told them!”
“I got bored. How long could it possibly take to say a few words? The cat’s a human, he’s in my room, boom, you’re done. Besides, I thought it might be easier to show than tell. What do you think?”
Eren turned back to the others. Armin was staring at the newcomer with eyes that had widened into cue balls, and Mikasa looked like she ready to pull out a knife and attack him.
“Eren, who is that?” she demanded.
Eren took a deep breath. This would take a lot of explaining.
“Armin, Mikasa... this is Levi.”
“Eren,” Armin said slowly, “Levi is a cat.”
“Well... not anymore.”
The start was just about as rocky as it could get.
One second, Armin and Mikasa were staring at Levi as if he- no, because he had magically appeared in their apartment without even a whisper of warning. Then Eren was trying to stave off Mikasa’s violent reaction and the torrent of questions that both his friend and sister were firing at him in rapid succession. Levi tried to step in and help, but that didn’t do much, especially when it came to calming Mikasa down. Eren couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going through her head, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to. The madness didn’t stop until Levi snapped his fingers.
“Stop,” he commanded. Then both Armin and Mikasa had gone silent, a slightly stunned look on their faces. A second later, they relaxed, and everything was back to normal.
Eren spun around to face Levi. “H-how did you...”
“Simple,” Levi said. “I’m a sorcerer.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Armin said for the sixth time that morning. “Levi is a cat. So if you’re Levi, then-”
“Correction. I was a cat,” Levi interjected.
“Okay,” Armin said. He nodded blindly and pushed his glasses further up on his nose. “I-I’m sorry, this is all just so... ugh. I just can’t get it into my head. Can you explain to me how this happened again?”
“I made a few questionable life choices, and an old friend of mine wanted to teach me a lesson,” he explained. He picked up his cup of peppermint tea and took a leisurely sip. Eren watched him as he did, taking note of his odd habit of holding the mug by the brim. He wondered if it was something Levi had always done, or if he had simply forgotten to hold a mug properly after spending over seven months as a cat.
“What kind of life choices?” Mikasa pried.
“None that you should be concerned about,” Levi snipped in reply. “And he wasn’t really my friend, per se. Erwin was my boss at the bookstore, actually. We just happened to have known each other for a long time.”
“You work in a bookstore?”
“Well, it’s not really a bookstore. That’s what we call it, to make things easier, but the purpose it serves is a lot more complicated than that. It’s too many details to get into right now. Long story short, we sell magical items and services out of the back. Anyways, I’d done a few regrettable things... well, I didn’t really regret them, but Erwin must have been ashamed of the fact that I had done them, and one night I was out for a drink and he cornered me. We fought for a bit, then... poof. I’m ten inches tall and I’ve got a tail.”
“You still have a tail,” Eren pointed out.
Levi glanced behind him. The student had been right. Draped over the back of his chair was a sleek ribbon of jet-black fur. It sprouted from the base of his spine, just above the waistband of Eren’s borrowed shorts, and extended all the way to his calves. It was brushing the floor, flicking against it in a slow, steady rhythm. “I suppose it’s going to take a while for all of the side effects to wear off.”
“So, since you’re human again,” Mikasa mused, “does this mean the spell is broken now?”
Levi looked down at his tea and shrugged. “I can’t really be sure. For the most part, I’d like to believe it is. I am myself again. regardless of the... minor developments.” He looked up toward the ceiling and twitched his ears to reinforce the point.
“But you must know how to break it,” Armin insisted. “Erwin couldn’t have just left you in the dark. He had to have said something, even if it was vague or some kind of riddle-”
“Well I think you’re giving the man more credit than he’s worth.”
“So... he just left you like that? He didn’t even give you a hint?”
Levi was quiet for a moment, and his tail brushed pensively over the floor. Eren watched him carefully, waiting to hear what he was going to say next. “In all honesty, no,” Levi finally said. “Although, judging by what I’d done, I could make a pretty solid estimation of what it was.”
Eren’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. He’d spent too much time with Levi to let something so obvious slip past him. Maybe he had learned to read him too easily. That was probably the only reason that he knew the former cat was lying.
“And what was it?” Mikasa asked, trying once again to dig up some kind of incriminating dirt from Levi’s past.
“I already said I don’t want to talk about it,” Levi tossed back, shooting her a razor-sharp glare.
“Why not?”
Levi sighed and returned to staring disenchantedly at his tea. “It’s a part of my past that I don’t want to go back to. That’s all.”
“Okay. Then we’ll stop asking about it,” Eren said. He looked pointedly at his sister. “Right?” Mikasa responded by rolling her eyes and letting out a melodramatic sigh.
“Now that you’re... sort of human again,” Armin chimed in, “what are you going to do next?”
“Not sure,” Levi said. “Not too long ago, I probably would have gone straight for revenge on Erwin, but... I don’t know. I feel like things have changed since then.”
The memory of the little falling-out he had witnessed in Armin’s apartment surfaced in the back of Eren’s mind. Then he remembered the note. Erwin had said that he needed to drop in on Levi because he had thought the cat was close to breaking his spell. Levi had to have had at least a vague idea of how he had fixed his situation. And if he had been so resentful then, how come he wasn’t anymore?
Eren’s head was swarming with questions, but something told him that trying to get answers right then wouldn’t work out too well.
“I’ll probably just go back to the bookstore,” Levi went on. “It’s the only place I know for sure that I can go. Erwin will probably be there, and I’ll have to find out from him everything that happened while I was gone. And what he did about my apartment. I swear to god, if that bastard let me get evicted...” Levi left the sentence unfinished and started over. “I’m sure I’ll figure something out. And I think he’ll be happy to see me not wanting to skewer him anymore.”
“Alright,” Armin said with a shy smile and a nod.
“Hey, Levi...”
Levi’s ears twitched, and he looked up from his tea to fix his gaze on Eren. The student felt a nervous knot twist up in his chest. He wasn’t sure why it was there. He had never felt strange talking to Levi before, not even when doing it made him feel like a crazy cat boy. But things seemed so different now that he was a human.
“Yeah?”
“Um, before you go... do you want to spend the day here?” he asked.
Levi cocked his head to the side and looked vexingly at Eren. The knot tightened, and he scrambled to make the question a little clearer. “I-I mean, if it’s far from here... You can go right away if you have to. But if you don’t... i-if it’s not...”
“I know what you meant, Eren,” Levi cut in. “And no, it’s not that far. I could probably stand to hang around for a bit... if certain people don’t object.” He glanced exclusively at Mikasa.
“I’ve got work today anyway,” she snipped. She dumped her muffin wrappers into the trash, drained the rest of her tea mug, then stuck it into the dishwasher along with her plate. “I’m getting dressed,” she said as she stepped out of the kitchen and crossed over to her bedroom door. “My shift is going to start not too long from now.”
“Wait, Mikasa, aren’t you-” Eren started, but his sister shut her door before he could get the rest out.
“What was that about?” Armin asked.
“Something tells me she still isn’t fond of me,” Levi said sarcastically.
Eren sighed. “I was going to ask her about Jean’s party tonight. I mean, he’s probably gotten her locked in with it anyway, but it’s always worth asking. I wouldn’t put it past her to try and work all night.”
“Wait, that’s what day it is? I forgot. Happy Halloween, Eren.”
He smiled at his friend. “Thanks for that. It was delayed as hell.”
Armin scoffed and grinned back at him. “Oh, shut up and appreciate me for once in your life.”
“Better do what blondie says,” Levi said, leaning mischievously towards Eren. “He’s probably the only reason you have a chance at passing your calc exam.”
Eren spun around to face him, his face blazing. “Maybe I should have been shutting you out of my room more often.”
“That would have been fine with me. I had your sister’s to stay in. Fact is, I preferred it.”
“What? Why?”
“Eren, you aren’t exactly the most organized person on the planet.”
“I-I know that, but... is that really the only reason why I couldn’t keep you out of there?” Eren stammered.
“Well, there was that, and the fact that pissing you off is so much fun,” Levi said with a smirk.
“So you were just putting me through all of that crap to spite me.”
“Not entirely.... but yes, I was.”
Eren groaned and dropped his head into his hand, carding his fingers into his hair. “Levi, you piece of shit.”
Levi’s smirk deepened and he laughed deviously. “Yeah, that’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”
Mikasa left not long after. Despite the minor outburst in the morning, she still stopped to give her regards to Levi. It seemed almost like she would miss him. Eren had tried to read her expression when she said her goodbyes, but she left too quickly for him to figure it out. After she had headed out to the diner for another day of Keith’s regime, Eren and Armin took Levi downstairs to get him something to wear that would actually fit him. They rifled through Armin’s closet for a while and settled on a pair of dark grey jeans, knitted socks and an old pair of converse that Armin wouldn’t mind giving up for a while. They had tried to pick out a shirt for him, but he insisted that Eren’s was fine, even though it hung off his slight frame like drapes on a window. He shrank it to his size with a snap of his fingers and did the same for the shorts he’d borrowed from his former caretaker. Eren wondered for a bit why Levi liked wearing his clothes so much. But the thought didn’t stay for long. After picking out a heavy sweatshirt, hat and gloves for him to borrow when he left, the three of them went back up to Eren’s apartment.
“I have a shift at the vet’s office starting at one today,” Armin said shortly after Eren put another kettle on for tea.
“You do?” Eren responded. “You’ll still be back in time for the party at eight, right?”
“Of course I will. I just can’t stick around much longer.”
Eren stood at the counter and glanced at the clock. “Well... how much longer can you stay?”
“Eren, you’ll be seeing me again tonight.”
“Come on, Armin. Not even for tea?”
“Where do you think we are, Buckingham Palace?” Levi cut in. “Let the kid go, Eren. He’s got more important things to do than hanging around your clingy ass.”
Eren spun around and glared at Levi. “I am not clingy.”
“Says the guy who asked the random stranger he woke up next to to spend the day with him.”
The student rolled his eyes and turned back to his friend. “Just... go whenever you need to. I’ll see you tonight. Right?”
“Yeah,” the blonde replied. “I’ve just got to go back to my place and get my books.”
“I thought you said you were going to work.”
“I am, but if I catch a break, I can always put the time to good use.”
“Big if there,” Levi said.
Eren glanced at him again before crossing the apartment to where his friend stood by the front door. “Alright. See you later, then.”
“Later,” Armin said. He stopped in the middle of pulling his jacket on and looked over to where Levi sat curled up in the corner of the couch. “Goodbye, Levi,” he added wistfully. “I’m sorry I can’t be here to see you off.”
“That’s alright,” Levi said, sounding warmer than Eren had expected him to. “Hearing a goodbye from you right now is enough.”
A slight smile shone through on Armin’s face, and with that, he walked out the door. Eren listened to his footsteps scamper down the stairs, then the outside door slamming shut a while later.
“Well, isn’t this a familiar situation,” Levi said.
The kettle was steaming by then. Eren picked it up and poured out the hot water into their mugs from that morning. “What is?” he asked.
“Us. Being here,” Levi elaborated. He drew himself up from the couch and crossed over into the kitchen. “Alone,” he added quietly.
“Well, my sister’s a workaholic, my friend has his own responsibilities, and I don’t see many other people. So I’m sorry if my social life isn’t exciting enough for you.” Eren pulled the small corner cabinet open and began poking through the assortment of teas. “What kind would you like this time?”
“Here, let me take a look.” Levi stepped closer and wedged himself into the corner next to Eren to look into the contents of the cabinet. Eren tensed up and took a step back. At the same time, he spied the mulled cider flavor that he had been looking for when he had brewed his first cup that day. He reached for it, and in that same second Levi had picked out the mason jar of assorted bags that Mikasa picked up in the places around town. Their hands brushed for an instant when they both reached for the cabinet at once. Then both of them took their hands back.
“S-sorry,you go ahead, I was just-” Eren started.
“No, that’s fine, you can-”
“No, you go ahead, you’re the guest.”
Levi turned to Eren, a knowing look in his eyes. “I’ve been the guest here for a month,” he said with a smirk, scraping quotation marks into the air around guest. “I’m surprised you’re not sick of me by now.”
Eren laughed. “Why would I be sick of you?”
At that, Levi gently shook his head and snatched the jar from the cabinet. “Thirty days and you still never cease to amaze me.”
“What?” Eren asked numbly, but Levi had turned his attention to his tea. The student pushed the question to the back of his mind, grabbed his mulled-cider box and went about doing the same.
They spent a long time sitting on the couch, doing nothing but talk. Eren didn’t bother keeping track of the time. He nearly always took Saturdays off work, and that one was just as average as any other. Well, other than the fact that the cat he’d picked up at the beginning of the month had magically turned into a human. An exceptionally lovely human, at that. Eren knew there wasn’t any getting around it. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Levi, even when he was sure that the sorcerer would sprout claws and scratch his eyes out if he kept staring at him.
Things that had been so confusing weeks before were cleared up in a matter of hours. There were so many things about Levi that Eren had never bothered asking about. That was mainly because he had been a cat until that day and wouldn’t have been able to answer. But as Eren sat there with him and the conversation kept running like a leaky faucet, he got to thinking that it might have been nice of him to ask sooner, even just to let Levi know that he was interested.
Levi hadn’t always been able to use magic. He had grown up rather normally, then his parents had died when he was seven and the family that had taken him in was badly disconnected. He was about twelve when he had first gotten into sorcery, and he had abused his new powers rather recklessly once he learned how to use them. He was eventually caught by the manager of a bookstore where he would often run off to when he didn’t want to be stuck home with his fake family. The manager, Erwin, was the one who taught him everything he knew. He learned the rules of the game from him, learned to recognize the signs of other sorcerers, and numerous other things that he hadn’t even thought about when he had first taken magic up as a hobby. After graduating high school, Erwin had employed him at the bookstore and he tapped into his inheritance in order to start going to college for a major in creative writing. He wanted to be a writer. He always had, and he honestly couldn’t see himself doing anything else with his life.
The more Eren heard, the more connected he felt to the man across the couch. He had lost his mother, then his father had left not long afterwards, then fallen into foster care in relatively the same way. He had used almost the very same strategy to get himself into college and pay for his apartment. He’d always had an affinity for English, and that was what he knew he had wanted to major in. He didn’t think he had enough stamina to try and write a novel himself, but he read pretty obsessively. So he’d decided he would go into publishing, maybe become a critic or editor of some kind. He wasn’t sure yet. But then, neither was Levi when it came to his career.
That was where the problems had started.
He wanted to be a writer, he said. A novelist, to be specific. He had all sorts of ideas in his head. The only setback was that he had no idea how to execute them. So he had started going out in the city where he lived, looking for inspiration. He had eventually gotten what he was looking for, but along the way, he had run into a lot of other things. So he had gotten himself into a habit. When he wasn’t buried under a mountain of work from classes, he would be out searching for himself. And... a few people other than himself as well.
“That was where Erwin started having issues with me. I mean, the man basically took me in as his student, and he was watching me leave work and head straight out for the red-light district almost every night. He never said anything about it, but I’m pretty sure he knew what I was doing all along. I’m surprised he didn’t confront me about it sooner.”
“What happened after that?” Eren asked. “Was that why he turned you?”
“No,” Levi said. “Well, that was how it started, but that wasn’t the entire reason. It wasn’t until I started dragging other people into my issues that it started to get to him.”
“How did you manage that?”
“One word, Eren. Sex.”
Eren stared at him for a moment. “For some reason, that doesn’t surprise me very much.”
“Oh, don’t flatter me,” the sorcerer deadpanned. “Anyways, by the time I graduated, I had turned into... well, I was kind of a skank. I probably had more one-night stands in those few years than any person should in their entire lifetime. I would go out all the time, pick people up, then try to get rid of them as soon as I could. I didn’t really have many friends other than Erwin, and I didn’t have much else to do, once I was out of school.” He paused for a second and gazed earnestly at Eren. “Armin isn’t your only friend, is he?”
Eren couldn’t bring himself to answer.
“He is, isn’t he?”
The student shrugged. “I... don’t have very good people skills.”
“Neither do I. I just happen to be pretty enough to get people to look past that for a few hours.” Levi took a sip of his elderberry tea and leaned back into the couch. “If you learn anything from this conversation, Eren, it should be this: Don’t make the mistakes that I did.”
“Am I going to get myself turned into a cat?” Eren said with a smirk.
“Hey. That was low,” Levi tossed back. “That was how it happened to me, though,” he added a second later.
“And Erwin didn’t tell you how you were supposed to break the spell? No, wait, it was called a hex, right?”
“Yes, but calling it the general term makes things a little easier.”
Eren shifted in place. He couldn’t help feeling like Levi was equivocating, dodging his questions as if they were tennisballs shot out of a launcher.
“You said you had guessed about it, right?” he prompted.
“That’s the idea, Eren. I guessed. I don’t know if I was right.”
The words from Eren’s dream echoed in his head. They do say that true love can break any spell, but... I really don’t think you’ll be able to do it.
“Well, what did you guess?”
Levi stared at him for a second before turning his sharp, nervous gaze to the wall. “Listen, I... I didn’t want to say this in front of the others, but... I think Erwin expected me to fall in love.”
For the second time that day, Eren felt as if the floor had dropped out from underneath him.
“What?”
“I said it was just a guess. But when you think about it, it makes sense. Being an animal but feeling like a human, knowing you’re one on the inside... No one takes you seriously. No one cares about you. If a cat falls for a human, it can never work. They will never feel the same way about you if they don’t know who you really are.” He sighed and pulled his knees up close to his chest. “It wasn’t really anything less than what I was doing to everyone else that I had ever... done things with.”
Eren took a deep breath and tried to speak. His words seemed to stick in his mouth. “B-but... does that... does that mean that you-”
“I don’t know, Eren. I just... I don’t know,” Levi murmured.
The conversation seemed to fall flat right then and there. Still, they were reluctant to move. It wasn’t until they had both drained their tea and the cups had started to grow cold that someone finally looked at the clock. It was almost four.
“I should probably get going, if I want to get back to the bookstore before dark,” Levi said.
“Do you think Erwin is going to be there waiting for you?” Eren asked tentatively.
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t be.” A small smile pulled the sorcerer’s lips. “Sometimes I really think I miss that altruistic bastard.”
“Well, if you have to leave, I’m not going to hold you here,” Eren said. He pushed himself up from the couch, ignoring the protesting ache in his legs. He turned toward Levi and extended a hand to him. The man stared at it for a second, then turned his eyes to Eren’s and placed his hand in his. The student pulled him to his feet, Levi’s socks slipped on the hardwood and the two of them almost crashed into each other. Eren steadied him, his heart fluttering a bit, and the both of them took a step back. Levi’s implications stuck in the back of his mind like pins.
But it was just a guess, right? Levi wasn’t actually-
“Eren, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but... would you mind lending me the taxi fare?” the sorcerer asked. “Cats don’t make a habit of carrying money with them, and it would be a bit of a stretch to try and walk back.”
“Sure. How far is it?”
“Not too much. About thirty should get me there. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll figure something out.”
“Thirty. Right,” Eren said with a nod. He went to the kitchen counter and searched around for his wallet while Levi went to the door to slip on the converse that Armin had let him borrow. He found his fingers almost imperceptibly shaking when he unfolded it and took out a few days’ worth of tips. He wasn’t sure why. He just hoped that Levi wouldn’t notice when he handed him the money.
“Thanks. I promise I’ll pay you back,” Levi said as he took the fare from Eren. Then his eyes moved from his face to something over his shoulder. “Hold on. I think I’m forgetting something.”
“But you didn’t come here with anythi-” Eren started, but Levi had already walked off before he could finish. He disappeared behind Eren’s bedroom door, then came back a minute later clutching something small in his hand.
“It was on the pillow. Must have fallen off when I turned back,” he said. He held up his other hand and a small click echoed in the apartment. When Levi took his fingers away, Eren saw the small woven forest-green band. He had fixed the size and clasped it around his wrist.
“Isn’t that your collar?”
“Yeah,” Levi said, looking fondly at the accessory. “What of it?”
“Nothing, I just... I didn’t know if you would still want it.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You got it for me.”
The warm, fuzzy blaze that Levi had summoned in him many times before flared up in Eren’s chest. He tried to ignore the nervous fluttering that came with it now and instead busied himself with selecting something to wear outside. It was only sensible to let him go on his own, but Eren didn’t want to just yet. It wasn’t the first time that Levi had made him do something that went against every logical nerve in his brain.
They started talking again once they were outside.
“Hey, Levi, I’ve been wondering about something.”
“What?”
“Um... this is probably going to sound kind of stupid.”
“Most of what everyone says is kind of stupid. I don’t see how this will be any different.”
“Okay. Well, when you were staying with me, and I got you the litter box... er... what were you doing to... you know?”
Levi glanced sideways at him. “You mean where was I taking shits?”
“Uh... yeah.”
“It’s not that hard of a question to ask, Eren.”
“I know! So... what were you doing?”
“I was using the bathroom. You know, like a human.”
“Oh. I just sort of assumed, since you were a cat...”
“Everyone generally did.”
“I would think so.” Eren paused for a second, then added, “I’m sorry for trying to make you eat cat food.”
“You should be. There was no way I would eat that fucking sawdust.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I heard you. Now I’ve got a few questions of my own.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Where the hell did you learn how to take care of a cat?”
The air wasn’t nearly as cold as Eren had grown accustomed to over the past month. He was glad of it. It meant that he wouldn’t be freezing in whatever costume he managed to scrape together for Jean’s party that night. He might be when he came home, though.
Eren hadn’t even realized what he was walking out of until then. He tried to think back to the last time he had slept alone. For almost the entire past month, he’d had Levi with him at night. First in his room, then on his bed, and eventually the two of them had become used to sleeping side by side. He looked over at the sorcerer, his sleek cat ears flat against his head and hidden under Armin’s beanie, his tail held low and close to his legs. He would miss him. He would miss him a lot. Why hadn’t he thought about it until then?
Eventually the lights of town were glowing around them. The streets were all decorated for Halloween. Eren had never even noticed them before. The decorations had probably been up all month, and everything would probably be taken down again within the next few days. Things always seemed to pass so quickly. His life had become so packed that it felt like the world was moving on without him and he was struggling to keep up with it. Everything always slipped straight past him before he really even knew it was there. Eren had to wonder why there never seemed to be enough time to keep them around for long enough.
“Hey, Levi...”
Their steps slowed down and the sorcerer stopped to turn around and face him. “What is it?”
“I-I was just wondering something.”
The smaller man looked expectantly up at him. “Which is?” he said after a while of silence.
“How are we going to-” Eren started, but he quickly thought better of his words. “Do you want to stay friends? I mean, once you leave, are you going to be coming back again, or...”
“Of course I’m going to come back,” Levi said definitively. “You put up with me for a month. Do you really think I’m going to waste meeting someone like you?”
“But how are you going to find me again?”
“Well, I know where you live, if that’s any consolation,” he said with a smirk. “And you’ve got a phone. I’ve seen you use it.” Levi extended one arm and pulled his sleeve back. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pen, would you?”
“I don’t think so. Hold on, I’ll check.” Eren dug his hand into his pocket and searched desperately around, but his hand came out empty. “Sorry. I don’t.”
“Hm. That’s alright,” Levi said. “What’s your phone number?”
Though he wasn’t sure how he would remember, Eren told him. Then he watched as Levi pressed his thumb and forefinger together, then rubbed his fingertip across his pale skin. To Eren’s surprise, a line of clear black numbers appeared in its path. Before he could say a word, Levi took Eren by the wrist, rolled his sleeve up and rubbed his thumb across his skin. Another line appeared in what looked like deep blue ink.
“That’s my cell phone,” he said. “Well, it is if Erwin has been taking care of it while I was gone. I’ll let you know if it’s changed.”
Levi let go of Eren’s wrist, and the student pulled his sleeve back down. His skin prickled where Levi’s fingers had swept over it. “Thanks,” he murmured.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. Things were quiet for a while. A few people walked past, a car or two drove by, and then Levi spoke up again. “Eren, about what I said earlier...”
“About what?”
“When I said that... When we were talking about how I broke the hex,” Levi continued, stopping to correct himself halfway through.
“I thought you said you weren’t sure.”
“That’s the thing. I’m not.” The sorcerer took a breath before going on. “Are you?”
“I don’t know either. I mean, I like you... as a person and everything, now that I know you are one, but-”
“Eren, you’ve said you love me on more than one occasion. Does this mean that things are different now because I’m a human?”
Eren shivered at the bite in Levi’s voice. “N-no, I... I’m not taking anything I said back. Just... with humans and cats, the implications are all different. I don’t... I don’t want to just throw the phrase around without meaning it.”
Levi stared at him for a long time before his eyes dropped to the sidewalk. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay, I understand.”
“Levi, i-if you were hoping that-” Eren began, but he was cut short.
“It doesn’t matter,” Levi said. “However you feel about me, it’s fine. I can live with it. Can I just ask you for one thing though?”
Eren hoped the cold air could counteract the burning blush in his face. “What is it?”
“It wouldn’t kill you to be caught waiting for a cab with another man, would it?”
It didn’t take long for a cab to show up. It was only a few minutes, at the most. But Eren wouldn’t have minded standing there for hours, if that was what it came to. Levi stood at the edge of the curb, one arm held out over the street. At some point, he’d switched hands, and the one he had been holding up swept back a little too far. Eren had caught it, their fingers locked together, and neither of them had let go. It was something small, obviously. Almost insignificant. But it was something nonetheless.
The two of them watched as a deep yellow sedan finally pulled out of traffic and came close to the curb. Eren felt something sinking in his heart that he couldn’t quite place.
Levi turned around, his face looking dismally blank. “I guess this is goodbye.”
“I guess it is,” Eren said. He tried to take his fingers back from Levi’s, but they weren’t willing to let go. “You’re going to come back, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Of course I am,” Levi replied. Eren thought he felt his fingers squeeze just a little bit tighter around his own.
“Then... I suppose we should go ahead and say it.”
“We probably should. We can’t stand here all day.”
Eren had to bite his lip to get the words out. “Goodbye, Levi.”
Then, before he knew what was happening, Levi was standing right in front of him. The small sorcerer placed his free hand against Eren’s chest, stood up on his toes and leaned forward. Their lips met, and Eren could have sworn that he felt his heart explode in his ribcage.
“Goodbye, Eren,” Levi whispered against his lips. “I’ll see you again soon.”
He pulled back a second later. Their fingers unlaced, and Eren watched despondently as Levi stepped away from the sidewalk, pulled the passenger door open and disappeared from sight. The cab pulled away from the curb and wove back into traffic. Eren didn’t move from his spot until the car was nothing more than a speck in the distance. Then, feeling disenchanted and half-sure he was in love, he turned away and started back home. He had a Halloween party to humiliate himself at, and this whole experience would take a lot of liquor to come to terms with.
Levi. He had come into his life as a cat and left as a human. At least, Eren hoped, he had left just for now. He would be coming back. He had said it too many times to take it back. Just like all those times that Eren had said... other things. Maybe Erwin would have kept up his life for him while he was absent and he would have his job back when they met again. Maybe he would have a novel in the works, and maybe he would let Eren read it. And if everything was just as much of a mess as it was the first time they met, Eren would be okay with that, too. As long as he got to see him again, he would be happy.
If Levi hadn’t been writing already, he would definitely have something to write about now. Eren was fairly sure they had witnessed an entire halfway-decent love story over the course of one October. And it was definitely a story people would want hear.