lovefool | eren x levi

thirteen years.

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levi ackerman, for the record, is not straight. 

with one glance at him, you could tell that his feelings were not composed of strictly females. it was a silent observation that everyone had made by now, and after years of levi ackerman being your classmate, you wouldn't care that much. levi knew this, and he embraced it. 

and yet, there was a minor problem. levi didn't know where his feelings ended.

while he did have immense romantic passion towards people of the opposite gender, he also held that same spark to the hundred other genders there were. 

not to mention the concept of sex! oh, it confused levi to his very last nerve cell. did he ever want to imagine lying in the same bed as someone else, even going as far as spooning them? would he ever favor touching someone else's skin in his sleep, looking at another's private parts and liking it?

ghastly. scandalous. revolting.

these thoughts started when mikasa was complaining about her classmates during lunch.

"i'm glad you guys are horny teenagers. it's like i'm surrounded by them now!"

"horny? they're aroused?" levi asked, spooning a diced strawberry in his mouth.

"it's only natural, with puberty and hormones," armin added from the end of the table. "they just tend to verbalize it more than us."

"armin, you've felt like that before?"

armin clicked his tongue, trying to find something to say, and sighed. 

"well, it's hard to explain it. i don't have sexual urges. it's all just a worldly process for me, you know? it's much more fun for me to read a book than the thought of coition."

he agreed, even nodding his head at armin's words. judging by the look on mikasa's face, that wasn't the normal move. was he supposed to disagree? he couldn't tell.

"levi, you do know that isn't natural, right?" mikasa said. armin shushed her immediately.

"what are you doing, participating in the norm? don't dehumanize him for not being the majority," he said curtly, scolding her. then, he turned to levi, placed his hands over levi's, and smiled.

"levi, i'm ace. that's why i don't feel sexual attraction."

levi blinked. there was a term for that? an actual community? for a minute, he thought that they both were just outsiders; they were in most situations.

"what's ace?"

"asexual. it means you experience little to no sexual attraction. you could still have sexual desire or libido, of course, seeing as they are different," he rambled. "and you could still enjoy sex, just not feel a particular need to have it. it means different things to different people, i can't exactly define it to you."

still, mikasa squinted her eyes at levi, as if he was the sun, and she forgot to wear glasses.

"levi, are you...?"

"i think so."

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"you know what? fuck labels." 

armin had sat him down, numerous articles, blogs, and videos pulled up on his laptop. he was determined to educate levi, to make him a little less confused.

"really?" armin asked, pausing a video that explained communities all in the asexual umbrella.

"yes. fuck them all. they're just making me more confused, and i really don't want to define what i feel with one single word anymore. knowing that i'm not a lunatic is enough for me."

armin clapped and cheered, closing his computer. he ushered eren in at once. "no labels! nonconforming levi!" he said incoherently, though eren seemed to understand.

"oh, cool. great. i'm happy for you, lev," he said with a pat on the back. levi froze at once, hearing that nickname.

"um, okay."

mikasa peeked out the corner, walking into the room as well. levi didn't know that everyone had been over armin's house today.

"so you're... you know...?"

"yeah."

"awesome."

he nodded, and mikasa hugged him, trying to silently tell him that she supported him, though she held herself on too high a pedestal to ever say it out loud.

they played scrabble after.

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just as much as levi hated labels, eren hated going home. he extended the time that he hung out with armin, or levi, just so he'd never have to make the walk back. it wasn't because of the distance between houses, how long it took him to go to and fro, or how sore his legs would be when he went back home. it was because of his parents.

his parents weren't bad people, much from it. they worked their hardest to raise eren better than they could ever imagine, and whilst they did not achieve that, eren didn't end up completely horrible.

after kuchel's drift from the world, the dark outline of their marriage seemed to darken, until it eventually became the only color.

if there was any part of going home that eren hated the worst, it was dinner. sometimes, they ate separately and avoided any arguments. those were the best days. he ate in silence and walked back upstairs to his room, shutting the door, slamming any sound of their yelling out.

but today, his mother and father sat down at the table, and eren gulped, counting down the seconds until the chaos started.

it had been ten minutes. eren had just stabbed through lettuce and put it into his mouth when carla had looked at him.

"don't you think your father eats weird?"

eren glanced at grisha. there was nothing particularly off about his eating, it looked like how a generic person would eat. but still, carla peered at grisha, eyeing the way he cut up the chicken breast with blatant critique.

"why is everything i do peculiar to you, carla?" grisha asked, putting his utensils down.

"not everything, just–"

"is it because i don't have the same mannerisms as kuchel ackerman? or perhaps, i'm just not kuchel ackerman?"

"don't you dare put her into this!" carla bellowed, standing up. grisha stood up as well.

"it's like you hate every little thing i do! i can't even breathe without you having a problem with it!"

eren sighed and put his fork down, grabbing his bowl as he walked away from the dining room. their voices went from passive-aggressive sentences to screaming exclamations. eren speedily scraped the remainder of the food into the trash, put the bowl into the sink, and ran upstairs before they could insert eren in whatever they were talking about.

the screaming did not stop until long after eren fell asleep. in order to drown out their voices, throwing around levi's mother's name like it was a football, he blasted music into his ear.

while it was not good for his eardrums, it was good for his emotions. it toned them down and filed them away just long enough to fall asleep.

in one corner of his mind, he wanted them to divorce. he turned up the music louder to forget that thought.