Angel [Ereri/Riren]

Chapter 15- Levi

A/N: 

Slight NSFW warning. 

I wouldn't say that I've been avoiding Eren on purpose. But, I would say there is the slight possibility that I've been avoiding Eren on accident. 

My life was completely upturned when I met him in the grocery store. Not in a bad way, but it doesn't necessarily have to be bad to send me into a mild state of panic. I'm in my 30's, and I thought romance had completely passed me by, and I was okay with that. I had come to terms with it, and just found fulfillment in my life from other things. Then, this tall, clumsy ass, brat waltzed into my life and now nothing feels the same. 

He revived butterflies in my stomach that I thought were long dead. He touches parts of me and it feels like they didn't exist until he brushed his fingers across them. He kisses me and it always feels like it's for the first time– exhilarating and breathless. 

But that's the thing. 

In my life, good things have always come and gone, like a summer rain storm. No matter how much I will them to stay, things are always temporary. I am not made for sustainable love, and I have seen it enough to know this is true. 

Eren makes me feel a way that I have never felt before. I have loved, and do love people, of course. But this feels wildly different. It feels different from the way I love Erwin or Hange, or the way I love my childhood friends back home, Farlan and Isabel. It feels different from how I love my mother. The love that I have for them is assumed; steadfast and resilient. 

But with Eren...it feels more intense. I know the way that I feel about him, and I feel very strongly in that, but that is not the part that I am apprehensive about. I know that he feels some type of way about me; I think he likes me. But, that feeling is more of a slow burn. Although, the second we locked eyes in the bread aisle (how romantic), the dormant butterflies erupted with a vengeance in my abdomen. I knew he was special, though I did not realize it at the time. My body recognized him immediately, I just had to decipher the hints it was giving me. But since this type of feeling has never lasted for me, I worry that he will grow tired. Everyone grows tired of me eventually. 

I am afraid that I will fall too deep, for nothing. For it all to end in flames and I am left to sweep up the ashes. I have been alone for most of my life, and I am okay with that. But now that I am not for the first time in what feels like centuries, I am reminded of how good it feels to be wanted. The pleasantness of it is what makes me nervous. I have survived many a heart break, but none would amount to the pain of this one. I do not think I could bare it, if it were to happen. The possibility that it could happen lingers in the back of my mind, and embosses itself on my eyelids when I close them before it's swept away by my dreams, or memories, I suppose.

I did not realize it until now, but I have been keeping Eren at an arms length, as to not get hurt. I haven't really seen him in a while, except for in passing and a text here and there. I have even called him a few times. But we haven't been with each other in two, hell, almost three weeks. 

We've been seeing one another for four, almost five months now, I believe. I have never felt it important to keep track of things like that. This is the most time we've been apart since we started seeing each other, and it's all my fault. But I feel lost and hopeless. 

I'm lying in my bed, a now cooled cup of black tea on my nightstand, having gone untouched. My phone is there too, plugged in and charging. My legs are tangled in my top sheet, and my duvet lays over top of me, pulled up to just under my arms, which are splayed out left and right. I drag my fingers along the edge of my mattress, feeling where it ends. My chest bare, I breathe in, feeling my skin expand, then constrict, in time with my inhalation and exhalation. I am still alive.