The Ereri Project!

Cravat

"Hey Levi?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you always wear that thing on your collar?"

Levi furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "My cravat?"

"Yeah, that thing," Eren replies.

Levi sits up from where they're lying in the grass. They've been "dating" for roughly a year already if Levi counts right.

It's been a long year though, so much has happened: so many headaches, so many glares from Mikasa, but overall Levi isn't unhappy.

He might be happier than before actually. He looks over at Eren, who is looking at him and waiting for an answer. "You've never seen me without it have you?" Levi asks.

Eren shakes his head. "You never take it off unless you're going to bed and then it's so dark I might as well imagine you still wearing it."

"That's mostly on purpose," Levi says.

"Why? Are you covering something up?"

Levi tugs off the fabric and undoes the top button of his shirt. Eren sits up beside him. "You don't have to show me if you don't want to."

"I've been meaning to anyway," he replies and undoes a few more buttons.

Eren stares at Levi as the older man pulls over his collar. Eren's eyes widen a bit at the side of the scar there.

At the center of Levi's throat where his neck meets his chest in the starting part of a long, deep, linear scar reaching around the right side of his neck and over into his shoulder where it warps into what looks like a large burn. It's pink and raised slightly, making his skin bumpy. "What happened?" Eren asks eventually.

"Before Erwin found me," Levi says, rebuttoning his shirt. "I didn't keep the greatest of company, there's a worse one on my back."

"I'm sorry," Eren replies.

Levi shrugs. "I'm alive."

Eren looks down at his lap and reflexively clenches and unclenches left hand. He'd lost two of his limbs and they'd come back because of his titan.

He didn't have any scars at all because of his titan. He didn't like that for as strong as Levi was, those scars would never go away. Levi looks at Eren, who has grown uncomfortably quiet. "Calm down, brat," he says. "I don't mind them. They're reminders."

"Of what?"

Levi huffs a chuckle and leans back on his hands. "Of how lucky I am to have survived this long. Both of the injuries that caused my scars could've killed me."

He looks at Eren.

"I'm especially lucky because surviving meant I could meet you."

Eren looks away from Levi then, the serious look on the older's face making his chest ache a little too much. He lays back down and the only thing he can think of to say is the only thing he can ever bring himself to say when he feels this way. "I love you, Levi."

He knows Levi won't say he loves him too, because he can't it and Eren knows that.

But when Levi rolls on his stomach and throws his arm over Eren, nuzzling his face into the brunette's shoulder, Eren likes to think Levi was at least thinking it.

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A/N: The really reason why he wheres it is because he want to be prim and proper. But I wanted to make a story of why it's there so... TA DA!!!