Chapter Text
1st December 1991
He first saw the kid getting the shit kicked out of him outside the flophouse at 13th and Spruce. The two guys were angry. The taller one kept kicking, flailing wildly while the kid scrabbled in the rain, reaching for a broken beer bottle glinting in the gutter, wedged between the kerb and the wheel of a parked car.
He kept screaming, “I’ll kill you, you fucking faggot!”
Levi thought he probably would have, too.
It was pissing rain, cold little needles that got under your collar and left your hands and ears numb. Philadelphia rain, the damp and humidity sitting over the grey city and seeping into your bones. Levi stood for a moment in the darkness between the yellow spotlights of the street lamps, watching the two guys brutalise the kid before he cleared his throat.
The shorter, stockier of the two looked up. “Frankie, look,” he said warily.
“The fuck do you want?” Frankie asked.
The kid grasped the bottle and jumped up, bringing it down on Frankie's head with an impressive shower of blood and green glass. A gash opened up on Frankie’s protuberant forehead, and he lifted his fingers to the wound in shock. The kid didn't pause, just took off running, his wet sneakers squelching on the pavement.
Levi wasn't sure what compelled him to follow.
He chased him all the way to Market Street, where the kid slipped into the subway station. Levi heard him panting and hacking in the stairwell.
“It's locked at night,” he called down. “Doesn't run after midnight.”
The only answer was the wet sound of the kid’s breathing.
“I'm not gonna hurt you, I’m not with those guys.”
“Yeah? You're a good Samaritan?”
The voice was gravelly with pain.
“You better believe I am. I'm your fucking guardian angel. So come up here and tell me if I should call someone or if you're coming home with me.”
The kid climbed out looking like a drowned rat but somehow smirking and cocky, one eyebrow raised with half his face swollen and blood in his hair.
“Alright, angel, take me home.”
They walked in silence, and Levi could feel the kid getting apprehensive as they moved further south. He pegged him as a runaway, and he wondered if he’d ever been this deep into South Philly or if he lingered in the little strip of flop houses and porno shops and bars along 13th. Levi scrutinised him, trying to remember if he’d seen him before at Woody's or the Westbury or spanging in Independence Square. He was tall, although nearly everyone was taller than Levi, and built like the Belvedere torso, so he couldn't have been on the streets for too long, with shaggy, bedraggled hair and eyes framed by the sort of thick, sooty lashes cosmetics companies tried to sell in a bottle. His bare knuckles were marked and scabbed from fighting, and he had a hungry, angry look. He didn't have gloves or a winter coat, only ripped black jeans and a Judas Priest hoodie, the sleeves fraying at the ends. Definitely a runaway.
They passed Columbus Square and the Italian bakery, fragrant smoke already curling out of the oven chimney, and Levi jangled his keys.
“I live here.”
The kid nodded and climbed up the stairs after him.
The house had belonged to Erwin's mother, and it still bore her unique sensibility in interior design. Levi was too apathetic to remove the plastic covers from the floral couches or pack away the Catholic tchotchkes — the Virgin Mary up on the fake mantel with her sacred heart painted red and gold, a tapestry of the Last Supper on one wall, crucifixes everywhere, even in the toilet. Erwin had had big plans for the house, a total remodel, but he got sick right on the heels of his mother's death, and the only room they’d managed to redecorate was his childhood bedroom, now a sleek little oasis amid the chintz.
“Take off your shoes,” Levi told the kid, gesturing to the coatrack by the entryway.
He set down a damp backpack and grimaced as he slipped off the wet sneakers. Levi wasn't surprised to smell his feet from where he stood on the bottom of the stairs. His socks were grey.
“The bathroom's up here; come on.”
The kid scrambled up after Levi. “You got a name, angel?”
It came out hoarse, and he clutched his ribs.
“Levi Ackerman.”
“Oh, we doing full names? Eren Yeager. What's Levi Ackerman doing shacking up with the blessed virgin and her shitty carpenter son?”
“I inherited the house.”
Eren frowned and looked around conspicuously. There were the Smiths, their lives lined up in chronological order in the narrow hallway leading from the entryway to the stairs — Sheena O’Brian marrying Rudolf Smith in front of St Gabriel’s, the young parents holding a tiny, wrinkled baby in a long white christening gown, a slightly older baby Erwin grinning toothlessly, shaking a rattle and looking like the Michelin man in a big white bonnet, Erwin again, missing all his front teeth and posing in the living room with a cowboy hat and two toy pistols in front of a shiny silver atomic age Christmas tree, his first holy communion and his confirmation, the family of three at his graduation from Temple University and then Sheena and Erwin hugging at his medical school graduation, Erwin in uniform just before his deployment in 1969, then a big jump forward to the photo Sheena took of Erwin and Levi at Atlantic City in 1985 when she had already gotten the cancer diagnosis but before she knew it was terminal, the two of them sitting a little apart on the beach blanket, the sun setting behind them, Erwin big and bold and beautiful like Levi liked to remember him. After Sheena died, Erwin had added the final photo — Hange’s New Year's Eve party, 1989, with Erwin beaming with his arms around Levi, wearing a ridiculous, uncomfortable foil crown studded with purple feathers, with 'Happy New Year' written in purple glitter. It was an unusual photo because Levi was smiling, too.
“Oh, shit,” Eren said. “He died. Your —”
“Lover,” Levi said.
Eren bit his lip nervously. “Was it —”
“Yes. The bathroom's here; there are towels under the sink. You can sleep here if you want. Do you want to call someone? A friend? Your mom?”
Eren laughed, a harsh bark that whistled in his chest. “Nobody to call. You know the drill. I won't bore you with a sob story.”
He pushed open the door and smiled at the pastel pink bathroom with the plush vinyl toilet seat and the little doll hiding the extra toilet paper under her knitted skirt. “Cool place, Levi.”
“There's an unopened toothbrush in the medicine cabinet,” Levi called after the closed door.
In the bedroom he forced himself to open Erwin's closet and find clothes for Eren. He had told himself he would donate everything eventually, but it hurt too much to pack up Erwin's suits and dress shirts, his leather brogues and the ridiculous running shoes he'd spent too much on, his stupid designer dinner jackets and weird sweaters and all the other things he had loved and Levi had tolerated because he loved Erwin. Unlike Levi, who wore the same uniform of black jeans and tee-shirts unless he was attending a wedding or a funeral, Erwin had loved clothes, loved wearing them and loved wearing them well. Levi found some sweatpants and a white tee, soft and utilitarian items he wouldn't feel sentimental about. He was checking Eren's shoe size (miraculously the same size as Erwin), holding his nose and trying to decide if he could get away with tossing the reeking sneakers into a trash bag when the bathroom door squeaked open and the smell of soap and minty toothpaste wafted out on a cloud of steam.
“Open the window, oi! It’ll mildew in there!” he shouted.
Eren popped back in and cracked open the window.
“Leave your clothes. I’ll wash them tomorrow morning.”
“Should I lounge around like this?” Eren asked, leaning over the bannister, his wet hair dripping onto the wood floor.
Levi looked up. Eren had the pink towel slung low on his hips. His chest was broad with a light smattering of dark hair that trailed down his taut stomach to the thatch of curly pubes peeking out. His ribs were covered in mottled bruising, the shape of a footprint clear where Frankie had stomped him. A few faded yellow bruises dotted his upper arms, and he had a whole landscape of scabs on his back and side.
“I got you some clothes,” Levi said, abandoning his plan to dispose of the sneakers.
He went back upstairs and handed the pile of soft cotton to Eren. The kid dropped his towel and started dressing, gauging Levi's reaction.
“I didn't bring you back here to fuck you,” he said, noting the wince. “First of all, you look like you feel like shit. Those guys were ready to kerb stomp you, and from the way you're wheezing, your rib’s definitely broken. Also, what are you, sixteen? Seventeen?”
“Eighteen,” Eren mumbled. “I’ll be nineteen soon.”
“Tch, I’m turning thirty-eight on the twenty-fifth.”
“You look good for your age.”
“That's ‘cause thirty-eight isn't old; you just think it is ‘cause you're practically a fetus. Come on, you can stay here. I was like you once, lost, alone, doing shit I shouldn't, getting fucked by guys I shouldn't have let anywhere near me. It's five am; you can sleep here, and we'll talk in the morning. Afternoon. Whenever.”
Eren shuffled along down the hall, chastised and visibly embarrassed. They passed Levi's room, and Eren looked into the master bedroom with the relics of illness: the bedrail and the walker, the empty prescription bottles on the dresser, the wigs, and the unused syringes and tubing still wrapped in plastic. A big painting of Jesus, his hand raised in benediction, hung over the bed, beside a Smith family portrait in muted sixties Kodachrome.
“Did they die in here?” Eren asked, spooked.
The fact that he was still here after the rebuff, following him like a kicked puppy, told Levi everything he needed to know. Levi hoped the kid wouldn't try to kill him in his sleep. Or come on to him again.
“This house was built in 1890; plenty of people probably died in here. You think Sheena's going to haunt you? A nice old lady? Someone’s mom? If she were here, she’d give you a fiver and try to feed you. Erwin died in the hospital. Pneumonia. We thought he'd get better, but life had other plans.”