New story, as promised.

Okay, so buckle yourself in for a super long author's note. This is a new story, which means that I have to prepare you for all the new-story stuff. I will try to be brief, but even then, this could take a while. Feel free to skip, but you might miss something you want to know.

First: This is a Riren reincarnation AU. Just so you know.

Second: This will be short and sweet. Ten chapters. Or maybe nine chapters and a short epilogue, but ten parts. No plot. Pure fluff. The plot is Eren and Levi being cute dorks. That is all. Do not expect anything else.

Third: Eren is 18. Levi is 25. There's not all that much of an age gap in this one.

Fourth: Hanji is female. I prefer Hanji/Hange/however-I-spell-it to be non-binary, but the pronouns can get confusing. I prefer "them" to be a "she," at least in this story.

Fifth: This is my second fanfic. I am more familiar with fanfiction-specific writing (and just writing in general) than I was when I started Risk, but I'm still kind of green at all this. If you have any questions, ask me. I like to answer them, even if I'm not particularly good at it. If you have any suggestions, tell me. I may not follow them, but they're still nice to hear. Otherwise, just cut me a little bit of slack

Sixth: This is not beta'd or edited. I do all of that myself post-completion. You are reading rough drafts. I apologize for any typos or errors, and they will be corrected if the story is ever finished, but until then, you're just going to have to bear with me.

Seventh: The rating on this may change to M at some point. I'm not sure how explicit I'm going to get with the sexual situation. No smut. I'm asexual, and I couldn't write that if I tried, not right now anyway, but enough stuff might happen to warrant a rating boost. Just a heads up.

Eighth: I really hope you enjoy this story! I've been excited to write it for a while now, because Eren and Levi are adorkable. The other story I have "in the works" is much more complicated than this and Risk. It actually has a plot (gasp) so I'm working on fleshing it out more before I actually begin writing/posting.

Ninth: I'm still in school, and I still have school-y things to do. I won't figure out if I got into my first-choice college until December, so I can't really relax until then. And if I didn't get in then I'm going to be even less inclined to post. Bear with me. I will finish writing this. But my schooling definitely takes priority over my fanfic writing. Updates should get more regular after January, because college applications will all be in by then, but I'll still have to worry about IB exams and what have you.

That should be all. Hope you enjoy

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Being an adult didn't feel much different than being a teenager. When Eren turned eighteen, he had expected to feel some huge difference, but he had woken up and gone about his day like normal. Now, he thought, he should be feeling the change. He had turned eighteen five months ago, but he had still been in school, still living with his parents, still saving only meager amounts from a part-time job. But now he was holding a box full of his belongings, officially moving out of his parents place and into the life of an independent adult. He had graduated high school and opted out of college. He got an apartment with Mikasa and Armin. He got a full-time job which would be starting in a couple of days.

But it didn't feel much different.

Eren hoisted the box - filled with clothes and magazines and videogames - higher into his arms, kicking at the slightly ajar door of his new living space until it swung open. Boxes littered the open space of the living room and kitchen, some hanging open with their contents scattered, others still sealed shut. Armin, who had been tasked with unpacking the boxes, had apparently abandoned his post, opting instead to lay face down on the battered couch they had placed in the room earlier. Eren added his box to the growing collection, shoving one aside with the heel of his shoe as he crossed the room to lean over his blonde friend. Armin mumbled something indecipherable into the cushions, raising an arm to feebly try to push Eren away as the green-eyed boy leaned over him, a wide smirk on his face.

"What's this? Armin Arlet, slacking off?" With a dramatic groan, Armin flopped over to expose Eren to the full force of his glare. He smacked an arm against Eren's stomach, but the gesture was weak and halfhearted.

"I've been unpacking things for five hours," he griped, mouth falling into a pout. "I'm tired. Why isn't Mikasa helping with this?" Eren rolled his eyes good-naturedly, grabbing his friend's legs to drag them off the couch, taking the place they had occupied and forcing Armin to sit up.

"Mikasa is actually hauling boxes up and down the stairs, unlike you, who's too delicate to handle the physical labor."

"It's not that I'm too delicate," Armin protested, ignoring the dubious raise of Eren's eyebrows. "I just don't want to be covered in sweat, unlike you. You smell disgusting, by the way."

Eren ran a hand through his hair, and sure enough, it was damp, spiked up at odd angles and slightly stiff with salt. His shirt was plastered to his back, and the cool of indoors, which had been a relief at first, was quickly becoming unpleasant as the sweat on his body cooled. Moving at the beginning of August really wasn't ideal, especially not with a heat wave ravaging the city, but there wasn't much of a choice. Mikasa and Armin were starting school soon and they needed to be moved in by then, and if that meant dealing with some heat, only Armin would complain.

"I smell amazing," Eren dismissed, picking at the collar of his shirt to sniff at it (he realized a second late that he was lying, but what did that matter?). "Like a man."

"Yes, well I, for one, like my men well bathed."

Eren couldn't help but laugh at his friend's dry expression, snorting in slightly as he breathed in wrong, something Mikasa and Armin never failed to mock him for.

"You sound like a pig," Mikasa chimed, right on cue, as she shouldered her way through the door, a stack of several small boxes resting on her arms. Eren stood to relieve her of a few of them, placing his newly acquired load off to the side as she did the same with hers.

"A devilishly handsome pig," he amended with an easy grin, ducking the hand she sent at his head with another brief laugh.

"A pig that will be fried up and eaten for breakfast if it tries to hide out in here while I haul boxes in from the heat." With a roll of her eyes, Mikasa pulled her t-shirt over her head and wiped it over her face, leaving her in only a black tank top. Eren sighed, but his smile didn't abandoned him as he followed her back out of the building.

For the most part, they were done bringing in furniture, and only had a few boxes remaining. The rest of the day (and a majority of the week, in all likelihood) would be spent unpacking their things and getting settled. With the last several boxes split between them, Mikasa and Eren made for the entrance of their building, stopping in their tracks when a woman bounced into their path.

"You must be Hanji," Eren greeted, ignoring the slightly surprised look Mikasa shot at him. Armin hadn't told them much about Hanji – only that she was a friend of his who lived in their building – but Eren recognized her.

She was a fairly petite woman, of average height and thin build. Brown eyes, hair of a similar shade, perhaps with a more prominent tint of red, perpetually tied back. Glasses: thick framed and slightly outdated. A well-worn smile. Looking at her, she seemed the type to never frown – smile lines, dimples, excitable gleam in her eyes, the whole shebang – but Eren knew that that wasn't the truth.

If there was one thing he had learned in his years (which were almost twice as long as the eighteen he advertised) it was that people rarely changed. Hanji was no exception. This Hanji, sure enough, was the same as the one he had known all that time ago – whether it was centuries or millennium, Eren couldn't say, but he was certain that she was the same, just like Armin was the same, and Mikasa was the same. He was the only one who had changed, really.

He remembered everything.

He remembered growing up in Shinganshina, he remembered the titans, remembered them breaking through the wall. He remembered his mom dying, remembered joining the military, remembered being a shifter. The only thing he couldn't recall was dying, though he assumed it had happened when he was sixteen, since he didn't have any memories past a certain, seemingly innocuous expedition.

No one else remembered anything.

As a child, it had been hard. He had had nightmares (hell, he still did). He couldn't differentiate between memories and reality. The result was years of therapy, years of internal rejection, and years of thinking himself insane, but he was mostly past it now. As past it as he could be, anyway.

Armin and Mikasa knew that they had been reincarnated, even if they didn't remember. Or at least, they knew Eren thought they had been. They were the only people he would talk to about it, and they would listen with open ears, even if they didn't necessarily believe him. Sometimes he had a hard time believing it himself, but there was no other way of explaining how he knew Hanji, despite never having met her.

"And you're Eren," the woman said, rocking forward on the balls of her feet. "And Mikasa. Armin's told me all about you." She eagerly took a box from Mikasa's arms, swiping it away before Mikasa could protest. "I was supposed to be here earlier to help you guys move, but I got kind of caught up at work. High schoolers can be pretty troublesome when they want to be. Which is practically always."

"Do you teach?" Mikasa asked. If there was one thing Mikasa had ever had trouble with, it was conversation and making small talk, but Hanji seemed immune to her awkwardness.

"Yes! I teach biology!" she responded, with the enthusiasm she had once reserved for titans. There was a pause as they climbed the stairs, Mikasa trying to think up a question.

"How did you meet Armin, then?"

"Sometimes I give lectures at the college you two will be attending," Hanji answered easily. "He attended one last year and we got in a fascinating conversation about-"

"Well I'm happy you two met," Eren interrupted quickly. He knew from experience that it was easy to get Hanji going and impossible to get her to stop. However "fascinating" that topic was, he and Mikasa didn't want to hear about it for three hours. "The rent on this apartment is surprisingly low, especially since the places are in such great shape."

"Yeah. It's actually my roommate who found the place. He's always been a little cheap – don't tell him I said so – and he's great at finding steals on anything." A million possible identities of this roommate flashed through Eren's mind, but before he could so much as open his mouth to ask a question they reached their floor, and Armin popped out the door to greet them.

"Hanji, lower your voice," he groaned. "Why do you always shout everything you say?"

"I'm not yelling, Armin. This is my default tone of voice." She brushed past him and into the apartment without invitation, and Eren's lips quirked into a slight smile at her casually obtrusive behavior. Maybe it would annoy some, but Eren found it endearingly familiar. Certainly, he would be sick of it in a few days, if it continued, but he always loved to meet people again for the first time and reacquaint himself with their personalities.

"So this is your place?" she asked, glancing around for an empty, out-of-the-way spot to place her cargo. "It's nice – not surprising, since it's the same exact thing as mine, and everyone knows I have excellent taste. Right next door, too."

"What?" Armin's lips twisted into a stern frown as he stared at his innocently smiling friend. She clasped her hands behind her back, rocking on her heels.

"Howdy, neighbor."

"Oh you've got to be kidding me."

"Nope." She popped the 'p,' striding to Armin's side and wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "If you ever need a cup of sugar, you know who to ask."

"I swear to God, Hanji, if I hear you doing any weird experiments over there I will report you to the police."

"Armin, I'm hurt. Do you really think I would be so stupid as to keep my test subjects in the apartment? That's just bad manners."

Eren glanced between the two, stifling laughter. It was rare to see Armin interact with someone the way he did with Hanji. Typically, Armin was the nice, quiet, voice-of-reason type who always watched out for others' feelings, but Hanji brought out a side of him that was more sharp-witted and teasing. Eren had been baffled by it in their last life, especially since Hanji had been their superior officer at the time, but he was grateful to see it now.

"Stop pouting," Hanji ordered cheerfully, slapping Armin on the back. "We're going to have so much fun – you don't even know. But first, do you want me to take you on a tour of the campus. I know you're already pretty familiar with it, but-" She drew out the last word, shrugging, leaving the offer open. Armin's scowl disappeared immediately, and he nodded with a smile.

"You too, Mikasa. You haven't seen as much of it as Armin has, have you?" Mikasa shook her head slightly in confirmation. She had been on campus a couple of times, but she didn't know much about it. According to Armin, Hanji had graduated from there a couple of years ago, so she would be a useful tour guide.

"Oh, and Eren. You can come, too, if you want." Eren held his hands up in front of him and shook his head.

"No thanks," he rejected. "I opted out of college for a reason. I think I'm just going to avoid school for – well, forever. I'll leave you academic people to it." Hanji shrugged as told him the offer was open. Giving him her number, she told him to text her if he found himself with a sudden desire to meet up with them. He entered it into his phone for future reference, but without plan on using it anytime soon.

He waved the three of them off before stripping down to take a shower, washing away the residue of the long day's work. The water chilled his skin but pounded warmth into the muscles of his back, which were rapidly becoming sore. His hair proved to be a fruitless task, and he didn't bother with it beyond getting it clean, allowing it to dry any which-way it wanted to. He redressed into a pair of clean, worn jeans and a t-shirt that was soft and thin from too many years and too many runs through a washer.

Hands on his hips, in a pose akin to Superman, Eren confronted the cardboard mess that was the living area. Armin had made little progress on his task. Half the boxes were unopened, and the contents of those that had been were mostly just stacked beside the container. Very little was actually where it was supposed to be. It occurred to Eren that he could use this time to start making the apartment livable, but the longer he stared at the task before him, the less he wanted to tackle it. Not on his own, anyway.

As he tried to think of a sufficient excuse to use when Mikasa and Armin got back to see that he had done no work, Eren's stomach growled. And there it was, the excuse he was looking for. He slid into the kitchen, doing a quick check of the fridge (he knew it would be empty, but it didn't hurt to be sure) before raiding the cupboard. It was on Eren's insistence, and mostly Armin's, that the cupboards had already been stocked with the "necessities." That was one job that Armin had actually followed through on.

Or so Eren had thought, until his attempted raid yielded nothing but "healthy" snacks. Definitely nothing that could appease Eren's appetite. He had forgotten that both Armin and Mikasa had been on a health kick for at least the last month. His eye twitched as he stared at the boxes of rice cakes and crackers. Where were the cookies, the candy? This problem needed to be seen to immediately.

Thankfully there was a supermarket only a fifteen minute walk from the apartment, easily close enough for an emergency junk run whenever Eren found that one was necessary (which was now, definitely now). He covered the fifteen minutes in eight - because he may have jogged or maybe even ran, but that was just semantics, really. There, he stocked up on the real necessities. Cookies of every kind he could get his hands on, a decent amount of ice cream for the empty freezer, several bags of chips, party sized bags of skittles and starbursts both.

Laden down with several pounds of junk food - his wallet compensating by being several pounds lighter - and feeling as if a major crisis had been adverted, Eren returned to the apartment. He juggled the bags between his arms to get a hand free, tediously balancing everything as he turned the doorknob.

It stuck.

Because it was locked.

And he didn't have his keys.

Or his phone.

Eren swore to God that he wasn't an idiot. He wasn't, really. He just did really stupid stuff sometimes.

With a sigh, he slumped down, the door against his back. He let the bags fall to the ground beside him, red imprints left across his arms from their weight. He supposed he would just have to wait for Armin and Mikasa to get back with Hanji. One of them would have a key, for sure. Hopefully. They were more responsible than him, after all.

After a moment of nothing but sitting in silence, Eren reached into one of the bags beside him and withdrew his sack of skittles, placing it on his lap and tearing it open. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes and dropped handful after handful into his mouth.

It was half an hour, at least, before he was disturbed by the sound of footsteps exiting the stairway and coming toward him. He perked up, sitting straighter and gripping his bag of candy tightly. Grinning, he looked over, expecting to see the long-awaited return of his roommates, only to jerk backwards at the sight that met him.

If there was one thing he had learned in his years (which were almost twice as long as the eighteen he advertised) it was that people rarely changed. Levi was no exception. The same hooded grey eyes, same small stature, same undercut, same neat look, same blank expression. This Levi, sure enough, was the same one Eren had known all that time ago.

That was what Eren thought.

But then Levi spotted him, stared at him for a long moment. Eren waited for the distaste, the disdain.

Instead he got the raise of an eyebrow, a little bit of disbelief, and then Levi smiled. Ever so slightly, he smiled.

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So, I had a lot of fun writing this. I hope you had a lot of fun reading it.