It's beautiful, he thinks, fingering the scar that runs along Levi's side. He kisses and licks down the length of it, molding his tongue to the mass of knotted tissue. He thinks he can nearly taste the blood that would've spilled, feel the pain that would've ripped hot through his abdomen. He moves on, brushing over a blooming of discolored skin, pretty and purple. Each wound meant you were a step too slow, each blow cutting you deeper into an early grave. But to Eren, it was beautiful―these physical manifestations of the human struggle. It was hope, and through one way or another, it was ultimately freedom.

Even as Eren dips his fingers beneath his waistband, Levi looks bored, like he's seen it all before, beyond the horrors of hell where the flames have long burned to nothingness and only thick, stagnant darkness resides. There's little doubt he has.

Even as Eren pulls him into his mouth and feels him harden against the stroke of his tongue, Levi remains unmoved. He wants so badly, Eren thinks, as he sinks down, down, down, to see that perfect composure break. He nearly gags as Levi nudges into the back of his throat but instead he swallows him, and again, and again.

One didn't know what it meant to be fucked until one felt the corporal, thick and powerful, between one's legs. On his hands and knees, he thinks about what Levi's face might look like in that moment. The same look Levi always wears, perhaps, but Eren thinks he's afraid to look and so he doesn't. Before long, he's twisting and arching beneath Levi, and he ceases to think at all.

The restraint Levi knows is not present, and Eren gasps into the sheets each time Levi tears into him and pleasure burns in his loins. Raw and violent—that's how Levi gives it and that's how Eren receives it. If this were another life, maybe they'd take it slow. Maybe Levi would be gentle, and maybe Levi would even kiss him, but there's no place for sweet words and soft comforts in this reality. There is only a cheap semblance of passion in the way their hips rock closer to their undoing, closer to another morning where they'll fight for their lives and everyone else's.

When he collapses on the sheets, spent, Levi is prompt in tossing him a towel.

"Wipe yourself up," he says, "before you make a mess on the bed."

He rolls over beside Eren, gaze fixed to the ceiling, and Eren wonders what he sees. He says nothing more to Eren, but neither does he tell him to leave. This is enough for Eren, this is all he needs for tonight. Tomorrow he might be dead, and tomorrow this bed might be warmed by another.