Lost in the Meaning (Ereri/ Eren x Levi fanfic)

Chapter Twenty Five :|: We'll Carry On

(700 followers! You guys are too cool, here, take a cookie.

Keeping you guys updated again, I recently found out that I did not, in fact, win any place in that writing contest I was talking about a few months ago. I am literally so upset, I feel like my piece was fairly decent. Oh well, doesn't matter. Doesn't make me a bad writer nonetheless. I don't know if any of you actually remember hearing about the contest or that I entered or cared of if I placed, but ya. I'ts cool though, I guess.)

Chapter Twenty Five :|: We'll Carry On

Eren's POV

Head out the window, gaging, Eren ached everywhere. He'd thrown his guts up and more and still couldn't understand his feeling of nausea. The truck roared quickly down the intersection. A few police cruisers had raced by on the opposite lane of traffic, but, besides that, the roads had been empty for minutes at a time. It was fully dark now. Their headlights illuminated little, one of them had been smashed in. It felt wrong to Eren... Making their escape in the very vehicle that had tried to kill them. Levi's Jaguar was in no condition to be driven. Plus, they would have had to find a way to flip in off it's side. It all felt very wrong.

Levi gave up little to no details on what happened to Rico and Mike. All he remembered was waking up a second time, but laying on the asphalt, and not in the passenger seat. Eren's head hurt, his arms hurt, his cuts and sores and blisters throbbed. He felt terrible. He felt he wouldn't mind being hit by another car and not waking up again.

Remembering the first time he woke up, slouched in the passenger seat, Eren recalled seeing someone recalled someone reaching down, reaching for him through the shattered windsheild. Had it been Levi? Had Levi rescued him?  What really did happen to those terrible people that had tried to kill them? After another pause to think about it, the teen decided he didn't want to find out.

Eren knew Levi was in bad shape too. One hand on the steeringwheel, the other put pressure on a laregly bleeding wound right above his elbow. The man ealier stated he thought his leg was broken, and his left eye was beginning to swell shut.  Though, he still managed to pull a cigarette out. 

"Oi, Eren, can you dig around through the ashtray and find a lighter?" Levi's voice was rough, a bit strangled.

The teen did as he was asked, opening the little metal hinger and pulling out a lighter. He held his free hand out, holding the cigarette between his fingers, and angled it so Eren could light it for him. After it was lit, Levi took a long, slow drag, holding it for a second and letting the swirl of smoke go. Instead of fogging up inside the car, the smoke was sucked out of the open windows. 

Eren leaned his head back, squeezing his eyes closed tight and concentrating on not throwing up again. Instead, he wanted to strike a conversation.

"Levi?" His throat hurt too much to do much more than a whisper. The man glanced at him, but didn't say anything. Eren continued. "Why do you smoke?"

Levi exhaled a large amount of smoke, cringing and turning his head to cough. "Something maybe you'll understand when you're older." He saw the fit Eren was about to throw, and spoke before the other could. "And I'm not talking about older physically. I mean internally older. When you find something that is so down right terrible and filthy that you can't seem to let go of. Be it a drug, a song, a person, a place. No one smoke because they want to. You never do something terrible because you want to."

'...a person...'  Eren did everything he could not to argue back that recently, internally, he was more matured.

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Levi's POV

It was filthy, and Levi hated himself for doing it. He'd straightened out his life, or at least begun to. He cringe at the filthiness of the world the rested in motion around him, and tried to keep everything, and everyone, clean. But, he couldn't seem to shake those damn cigarettes, and every time he held one, he felt as hopeless and weak as the time before. So, when Eren asked why he did it, Levi was almost at a loss of words. Why did he do it? He didn't enjoy it, nothing about it intriuged him.

He decided it was merely the fact that humans will do what humans do not want to do. Everyone is merely a brain controlling it's host body. Only parts of the brain can be used at a time though, leaving the brain still at will to the body. It was a dog-eat-dog world, inside and out, and Levi was eating himself up everytime he lit a cigarette.

Telling Eren more straight forward and harsh truth would only shake him up more, so Levi decided his best bet would be to tell the boy that, soon enough, he'll probably understand as well. Neither spoke again for a good twenty minutes. Not until Levi finally came up with a solid enough plan.

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Eren's POV

 Levi had explained to him that they were visting an old friend of his- a doctor in fact. This friend happened to live a handful of hours away, though, and the two of them had to risk more driving. This friend of his could fix their cuts and broken bone, and supposedly find a way to get Eren out of this mess.  

Eren ended up sleeping for two hours, curled up in a ball in the passenger sleep. His sleep was restless and fairly dreamless, but the image of the bright lights that crashed into them was sewn to his eyelids and even with his eyes closed, there was no darkness. BUt, somehow, he did sleep.

He slept.

And, he slept.

Until the jolt of the truck coming to a stop and the engine being turned off. Eren pryed his eyes open, feeling more exhausted than he had when he first fell asleep, and sat up straight. Even yawning took more energy than he could muster. The teens eyes grazed the scene around them, blinking slowly, and finally meeting Levi's eyes. He frowned. 

"Where are we? Why'd we stop, don't we still have quite the ways to go? How long was I asleep?"

"It's really late, and I just figured it'd be better if you weren't sleeping in a car." Levi looked away, throwing a recently finished cigarette butt out the rolled down window. 

Starring ahead, out the slightly cracked windsheild, stood a large and vancant motel. Something in Eren was doing flips, making him antsy. It was probably the fact Levi had been thinking largly about him in that terrible moment.

Yeah, that was it.

(HOT MOTEL SEX?? Probably. k bai)