One-shots & Short Stories [Levi | Reader]

Names [Levi | Reader | Soulmate AU!]

Love.

It was a truly dreaded word. Here, now, with him - you hated love. You always had.

It may bring people happiness, evanescent moments of laughter and warmness, but when it fades - it leaves only the pain and the happy memories to remind them of their loss. Love is feeling too much only to learn that it's never going to be enough because it will end at one point.

Love itself had no point.

And so, you hated it.

You hated love just as much as you hated the name on your wrist, under the hair ties you liked to hide it with. The name that tied you supposedly inevitably to that one emotion you despiced ever so heatedly. You hated that your fate had been sealed ever since you were born.

However, all other people had it the same way.

So you tried to learn to accept it.

You've been thought to be polite, when you were young - around five or so - you made your first friend. You greeted him, you played with him, you liked him. A lot at that. You never asked him of the name on his wrist because you didn't want to hear it. You didn't want to think of him as a puppet on invisible strings that fate was just leading into life.

When you turned ten, you were just as hyperactive as any child that was given a temporary freedom to release its energy and creativity. You liked going out to play and you liked playing with him. You felt as if you could go on like that for forever.

When you became sixteen, you noticed he had already evolved into his final form - a person not yet accepted in society, yet so desperate to be portrayed as somebody whose thoughts held essence. He became cold and you didn't mind that, he wasn't the most sensitive as a child either. He never showed you the name on his wrist and that was fine by you. You hid so well the one engraved into your own skin that there was even a small period of time when you forgot what it said.

By the time you became twenty you started feeling differently. Or it was just then that you actually acknowledged that change.

Love caused pain - merciless pain, one that wouldn't leave you alone. You didn't need love. You fled from it, ran desperately, searching fantically for a sanctuary, for a serene reality where you thought everything was fine.

However, your sanctuary itself was the partial cause of your distress. How could you run away from that other guy and go into his arms as if nothing'd happened? How could you avoid all the questions he'd ask to make you feel safe? How could you have been so blind, just so blind to the feelings you've been possessed by?

At the age of twenty-eight, you felt no better even though almost a decade had passed. Emotions stayed. Emotions hurt. Love hurt. And it hurt badly.

'You don't know it, but I love you.' You'd whisper to the wind sometimes, wishing it could bring the message to your unfortunate acquaintance.

At the age of thirty-two, you had to put in action all the acting skills you'd had to master throughout your restless life. Your politeness, you hoped, hadn't gotten rusty.

You extended your hand and grabbed the small palm of the woman across from you. This was it. You forced a wide smile.

"Congratulations, I'm very happy for you." The words sounded happy, too happy to be genuine. And they weren't.

"Yes, it's such a blessing we've found each other." The woman spoke excitedly while tugging at the man's arm. He only looked at her and smiled, slinging an arm over her shoulders.

You wondered - was this woman actually bound to this man? Was fate what brought her to his doorstep or was it love? They were both things you hated, so you actually expressed little to no anticipation of finding the answer to that question. However, a thought bugged you still. If it was indeed fate that sealed the deal between them, how was it possible?

And then the answer fell upon you as the woman interlocked fingers with the man's hand. His name was written in a clear cursive on her wrist, she didn't even try to hide it. You felt tears at the corners of your eyes, but why? Maybe because you could've had all of that - her bright smile, her beaming eyes, her happy voice, her future intertwined with his forever? 

Maybe.

Because after all, the name written on your wrists was one and the same.

An hour later when you were being sent out of the door of their shared home, the man, the groom-to-be, was the one that decided to bid his goodbyes to you.

And suddenly, you felt like asking: "Will you show me your wrist? Just once?"

When he rolled up his sleeve and showed you that small patch of skin that lay upon his bones, that small spot supposedly occupied by the name of the person he was to spend the rest of his life happily with, you didn't see your name there.

And that broke you.

Love was cruel and it tortured people in many different ways.

It tortured you specifically slowly. It made you fall into an alternative reality, one where you thought you were fine, one where you thought you could find love, only to rip you apart from it and break your very being.

You bid your goodbyes to him and decided - I'm going to look at the name on my wrist - for the first time in years.

You unwrapped all the plastic bracelets and jewelry you'd put over your scarred skin to witness his name written in a nice, neat cursive. You felt tears pour out and there was only one way to drown them out - with alcohol and a lot of ice-cream.

Even though your heart told you you wanted to be alone, your brain made your hands move and take your phone out of your pocket. You dialed your best friend's number and soon enough he showed up at your doorstep with a bucket of ice-cream, a nonchalant expression on his face and a bottle of tequila.

You mustered a smile in his direction as he settled on the couch in the living room next to you and you told him everything about it. He gave you a soft look and held you close as you cried and cried. As he patted the top of your head assuringly, he noticed that in his rush to arrive quickly, he'd forgotten to put his usual cover-up bracelet over the name on his wrist.

You sniffled and chuckled lightly.

"Right now you're literally the only thing keeping me sane. You've been by my side for so many years, I wonder why that is. But I'm thankful for that, whatever the reason. Thank you so much for going so far for me, Levi."

His grey eyes softened as they looked over and over again at the name on his wrist.

"For you everything, brat." He mumbled softly, orbs still scanning the bold, but small and frail-looking letters on his skin.

The name you'd never asked of him to reveal; the name you'd tried to avoid encountering when he still didn't have it covered with his twenty-year-old bracelet; the name he thought you'd come to despice once you learn of it - your name.

(Y/N) (L/N).