Chapter Text
April, 2005
Somewhere, off campus, a church bell rang out the half-hour.
“Hey.” Mike’s voice came through heavy and level from the other end of the line. “Cops find him?”
“Yeah. Hospital.” Erwin managed to get out, words thin and reedy. He’d been struggling to find his voice again in all of this for days.
“How bad?”
“I don’t know yet. Furlan just texted. He’s on his way there.”
“Shit…” Mike sighed, the sound of it echoing across to Erwin from the edges of reality, “You can’t go. You know that.”
“I know.”
“Your finals start tomorro-”
“He’s gonna die, isn’t he?”
Erwin wished that it was more of a question; for anything other than silence and the steady clip of Mike’s breathing to be the answer in this impossible place where neither of them wanted to be. Erwin tried to remind himself to do the same, but the need for oxygen was lost among the riot of fear and loss and nothing at all inside him. Levi was still breathing somewhere. Until he wouldn’t anymore.
“I hope not,” Mike said, “I really fucking hope not.”
“Why can’t he stop?”
“I don’t know, Erwin.”
“But I told him...” He was losing, Erwin knew. He was losing this. “I told him -”
“I know you did, man.”
“And he doesn’t care?!” Erwin asked, desperate for his friend to tell him anything other than the truth. Levi cannot not care. Levi was, is, a good person. He promised him.
“I think...” Mike started, somehow reading Erwin’s thoughts in the silence, “I don’t know - I think this is bigger than him. Bigger than me, even. And I’m fucking huge.” Mike sighed, the jest meant only to underline the obvious: that they were as powerless to stop this as Levi was.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Erwin tried, desperately. Because it never really had. How could anything control Levi? Ever.
“I know.” Mike said, and through the haze of his own loss, Erwin registered the defeat behind it. He was not the only one losing Levi tonight. “But I don’t think we’re gonna make any sense of it. And this is getting way too hard to watch.”
“Yeah.” Erwin said, agony and instincts fighting against what his mind already knew. This must be what it’s like to drown.
“I’m sorry man, I really am.”
“Yeah…”
“Call me after you talk to Furlan, if you want. I’m up studying anyway.”
“Thanks…”
Mike hung on the end of the line for a moment, but what else was there to say, really? What are you meant to say when the world ends? The empty hum of the call cut out, and Erwin could feel his body starting to respond. A tether snap. A tremble that started in the pit of his stomach, spread to his limbs, stung at his eyes.
He folded his phone shut before it overtook him; made his way towards the bed. See, I tucked in the corners, he thought, hopelessly. The phone bounced when it hit the mattress, and the feeling rushed out of Erwin’s limbs.
Something, he wasn’t sure what it was but something, had been keeping him numb since Levi disappeared; kept Erwin beyond the space of panic. All he felt when the calls had started going straight to voicemail, when Furlan rang him, frantic, to ask if Levi had gone to see Erwin in Pennsylvania, was blank. But that was gone now. And this was terrifying. A wall of rising water. Levi was alive...if that was better. What a horrible thought.
If anyone were to find Erwin now, what would they think? He was supposed to be an adult. He was supposed to be in love. Not tearing at his collar because there wasn’t enough air. Or curled in on himself on the floor of an empty dorm. Not tugging at his own hair because the pull and the feel of it was better than anything else his body was supplying. This did not feel grown. This did not feel strong. He did not understand. Not after...everything. Not when they were supposed to have time now, and that was Erwin’s fault. Levi had waited so patiently for him, because Erwin hadn’t known that it was alright until Levi showed him, and let him be his; because Levi was better and braver than he was, and Erwin had wasted it. Levi was burning it. And there was no why or how to any of this, no room left in his head for anything but I love him , and please , and open rebellion against the idea of leaving Levi alone in the dark when his light was dying. Disgust at himself for knowing that he would do it anyway. Because he was a coward. Because the thought of watching Levi retreat from him slowly, unknowing which time would be the last, when he would finally go too far for stomach pumps and Narcan to bring him back, was unbearable.
He could scream. He wanted to. He did.
He really had thought, stupidly of course, that after the last bender Levi was serious about stopping for good. Levi had been sick and shaking on Erwin’s mattress for days. Had barely avoided being locked up, again. Had been so scared of himself, after, and Erwin didn’t know what to do with it. Not with Levi weak and uncertain, or with his own waking nightmare. So he held Levi’s hand while they scrambled to get professors to excuse their absence, when Levi got warnings from the dean about losing his scholarship, expulsion. And you would think - anyone would think - that that would be enough.
And, horribly, it had been, for a while. He started getting clearer, more attentive, more like himself. Erwin remembered the day he heard the person he loved so much come back into Levi’s voice. The months passed. Things almost felt the way they used to between them. So Erwin was certain that Levi was serious about never doing that again. Was thrilled when they spent the weekend in the city together some time later, and Levi had been content not to drink at all. They had plans to go to Erwin’s family home in the Catskills after finals. Levi had been looking forward to it.
Or not. Not enough, anyway.
Erwin did not know how long he sat there, or at what point he laid himself down to press his cheek to the cool linoleum of the floor, or why he couldn’t remember what it felt like to hear Levi’s heart beat beneath him. But he hadn’t tried to commit it to memory. He hadn’t thought that he would lose it. And now Levi was gone. For all intents and purposes, he was gone. This would take him, sooner or later, and all Erwin could do about it was weep, and weep, until he was empty again; try to keep the sound from carrying through the walls.
A sharp tone broke the silence, and Erwin’s face was sticky against the floor as he pushed away from it. He turned, wiping at his eyes to see where amongst the sheets his phone had bounced. He stared at the illuminated circle on the front of it, kneeling at his bedside, phone buzzing in his palm. Furlan. Erwin lifted up the collar of his shirt to brush across his nose. Forgot to speak.
“Hey.” Erwin could hear cars and the sound of people rushing around in the background. Furlan sounded exhausted. “So, he’s still out but he’s stable. Looks like he got jumped too, or something. They don’t know. An ambulance brought him in this morning, but he didn’t have his phone or wallet so they couldn’t ID him. Doctors said they found all sorts of shit in his system, so, they’re gonna move him to detox.”
“Ok.” The word came out slow, and chapped, and raw. Erwin tried to clear his throat.
“Someone found him passed out on a corner in fucking Bushwick.”
“Oh…” Frigid air was filling Erwin up from the inside out. Levi hurt and alone in a gutter was not what Erwin wanted. He wanted Levi safe, happy, alive, in his arms and...and wanting that too. The sound of Furlan’s exhale crackled through the receiver.
“I’m gonna head home, but I’ll text you the address of the hospital so you can - ”
“I’ve got finals this week,” Erwin forced himself to cut in.
“...Oh.” Furlan said, short. “Yeah, me too.” The next part would be the worst, Erwin knew. “Well, he’ll be inpatient for a few days, but he should be out by next weekend, and -”
“I’m not coming.”
“What?”
“I said I’m not coming this time.”
Furlan was silent for a long time, sirens and sliding doors filling in the static air between them, and when he did speak, the venom in his tone was clear and sharp.
“What do you mean you’re not coming, Erwin?”
“Furlan -”
“I’ve been all over the fucking city for two days trying to find him. Were you even looking?”
“From Philly?! How?” Erwin’s despair was turning inwards and incinerating itself, striking out to match Furlan’s ire with his own impulse to hurt someone for this. It was childish, but it was something stronger to stand on than the agony of it. “What am I supposed to do that you can’t? That Mike can’t? That anybody can’t? Run over there and fuck him till he’s better? I can’t fix this. I’ve fucking tried. It doesn’t matter!” Erwin was screaming. Delirious. His voice finally cracking. “He doesn’t give a shit what this does to me - or to you - or to himself.”
“He needs help, Erwin.” Furlan was changing tactics, or perhaps Erwin had truly frightened him, “and when he misses finals this week - fuck - he’s got nowhere else to go, Erwin. He’s just - he’s not well.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Erwin spat. The wave of temper was slipping away, but in its wake Erwin could feel the presence of something more terrible: the space of Levi in his life, three years of him. The phone slipping in his sweaty palms; tears pooling on the edge of it against his cheek. It was time to go. He felt ill.
“I can’t do this.”
“Erwin, no. Listen,” Furlan’s voice was spreading up, pleading, “I don’t know what he’ll do if you -”
“I’m sorry, Furlan.” Erwin did his best to steady his voice for the end. “I’m glad he’s safe.”
“Erwin!”
“Tell him not to call me, ok?”
Erwin folded the phone in his palm, and then in on himself.
Somewhere, off campus, a church bell rang out the hour.