The Ereri Project!

Past

Eren doesn't really like thinking about his past much.

Which isn't to say it was extraneously sad or difficult, compared to other people he was actually really well off. It was just lonely, and he remembers not being very happy.

He remembers teaching himself how to ride a bike because his dad was always busy and his mom was too tired when she wasn't working one of her two jobs to help him.

He remembers teaching himself how to use the microwave when he was five or six because his parents didn't always have time to make him breakfast or, on weekends, lunch.

He remembers happy Christmas mornings but by the afternoon his mom would be napping and his dad would be taking calls from work.

Then he remembers that black haired teenager with the redhead sister who used to babysit him.

Levi had been the only person Eren had ever met who actually listened to him and talked to him like he wasn't a burden.

His teachers at school were nice, of course, but they didn't have time to ask what his favorite TV show was, or whether or not he could tie his shoes, or if he ate breakfast that morning.

Levi's sister and parents were nice but Eren had been shy back then and preferred being babysat at his own house.

There was a certain freedom Eren had in this three years with Levi he wouldn't realize he had until he was a little older.

After Levi's family moved away, Eren's parents hadn't gotten him a new babysitter so he started having to do almost everything on his own.

He knew his parents didn't really have time for him so he never complained but it still kind of hurt.

He'd been incredibly excited to find out he was getting a sister when he turned eleven. He just didn't know she was going to be a girl his age instead of a baby.

Either way, he had someone to talk to and study with again besides Armin.

Middle school is a bit of a blur for Eren but what he does remember is the crisis he had when he realized he wasn't thinking about girls the way most boys his age were.

He wasn't really thinking about boys either though, just that boy who used to watch him when he was a kid.

Mikasa just thinks it's weird, Armin thinks he should let it go. But he can't, Levi just sits there in the back of his mind constantly.

He doesn't date until high school, when he and Jean start secretly going out. And he doesn't date again after they break up and Jean starts hating him.

Eren's never told Levi, but he was a virgin the night they met again.

He's also never told him how much his heart was racing or how his palms were sweating or how happy he was just at the sight of the older man.

He's never told him how nervous he was being in Levi's bed that night or how anxious he was the first few months they were dating that Levi would leave him.

He wishes he would have.

Holding his husband's hand now, watching him sleep in the hospital bed, he wishes he would have said a lot of things.

Tonight he's just counting his blessings that Levi is alive and Petra hadn't been in the car with him. Tonight, that's enough.

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A/N: AWE!!!