Cuddyblupaivon - Arisu Hobbs

a pearl

☞ erwin smith x reader [gender neutral], mild erwin x levi [one-shot word count: 1.6k]

☞ sfw, angst, canon au, not rly any spoilers

☞ cross-posted on ao3

☞ fic plot: ‘you’re growing tired of me. you love me so hard and i still can’t sleep.’

even away from the war, erwin is still stuck in it. even away from the war, you still feel like you’re going to lose him at any moment.

☞ a pearl

erwin loves you.

he loves you. he shows it in the way he places a gentle kiss between your eyebrows before he goes to sleep, he shows it in the way he reaches for your hand across the table when you eat your breakfast together, he shows it in the way he hugs you hello and goodbye, he shows it in the way he lightly slings an arm around your waist when you walk together.

he shows it in how, when you both whisk yourselves away to the middle of nowhere in an attempt to escape the discord within the walls and the consequences of erwin’s desertion, he tries. he tries to be peaceful and to be content and he tries to smile at you through the window as you work at the garden, the mid-afternoon sun creating an angelic sheen around you so much so that erwin is even more reminded of how he is out of place. how heaven cannot be a place for him.

you can feel him slipping, you can feel the tug in the threads the connect the two of you. he wakes in silence and he sleeps in silence. he touches you when he thinks you won’t notice, in the dead of the of the night with his forehead pressed against the back of your neck and arms wrapped in an iron grip around you. you stay as still as possible. if you show you are awake he will recoil again and the chasm in your heart will reopen.

“i love you, erwin,” you say one night when you have both got into bed, lying and staring up at the ceiling. you hear him shift next to you. seconds too long pass and bit by bit, you wonder if he will get up and leave.

“i love you,” he eventually says. you want to be relieved, but he says it like it hurts. he says it like he’s trying not to choke aloud. when you turn your head to look at him, he’s already looking at you.

he shifts towards you and presses a kiss to your lips, lingering longer than he usually does these days. the false hope is sickening.

then he turns his back to you and drifts off to sleep.

the thing about war is that it has a smell. you used to smell it on erwin all the time, and it was pungent. it was bitter. but at some point, it was what you knew as home. in his arms, it was home. when you stopped smelling it on him the relief that flooded your veins made you feel selfish. and when he realised it was no longer singed into his nostrils, the disappointment that rushed through his chest made him feel selfish.

and one day, he gets a letter. and he can smell it off it. he can smell it in the careful writing signing off a name ‘Squad Leader Levi.’

“he wants to meet,” erwin tells you as you sit across from each other at the table, “he says he just wants to know what happened.”

you look up at erwin, already knowing the answer, “and will you?”

erwin is so painfully obvious in avoiding your gaze, “i think i will.”

you don’t care about your selfishness when you silently wish that the war doesn’t steal him away again.

he comes home one day later that week smelling of it and you have to bite back your tears (you have to swallow the sheer size of them back down your throat) when you realize his eyes are bright again. when he leans down to reach you in the chair you’re sitting in to capture your lips in a kiss, tongue melding into your mouth and tasting of tea. hand cupping the back of your neck, breath erratic against your cheeks.

he hasn’t kissed you like that in so long.

you both lie in bed and he turns to you first. your eyes are screwed shut and he brushes his hand softly over the skin of your arm so you pry them over carefully. you don’t know why you are so afraid to look at him.

“it was fine,” he says quietly.

“good,” you take a breath, “so, levi won’t tell?”

“no,” erwin assures you, hand still ghosting over your skin, “no, he won’t. but, he wants to meet again.”

“okay.”

“every week. for advice. to update me,” erwin doesn’t fail to hide his smile.

“i see,” you say.

“so, can i?”

a pause. you wonder what he’d do if you said no. you feel you just might, just to put up some kind of fight against the constant pull between you.

“you don’t need my permission,” you say curtly.

erwin laughs, “i suppose not.”

he wraps his arms around you, pulling you closer into him until your back is nestled comfortably in your chest. you wonder if he can feel your heart in your throat. like there’s a pearl clogging up your esophagus.

weeks pass and you want to give in to his touch. you want to give in to how he offers it so much more generously now, how he walks with intent, how he kisses you like he’s starved before and after meeting levi. but it burns. every lingering fingerprint on your skin burns, it stings. and he’s slipping from you faster and you want to hold on, you want to cry at his knees at tell him that you can’t share him with titans anymore. that you thought you had escaped this.

eventually his touches mean nothing to you because you start to taste it in his mouth and you wonder if levi knows you sit here every night feeling like you’re being dragged into the ground.

erwin loves you, he does. he loves you so much his heart is shattered and angry. he loves you in a way that burns, in a way that leaves wrongdoings and chaos in its way. and he thinks maybe that’s why he finds himself retreating into levi’s arms, melting into levi’s mouth and hoping he will never reform. drowning himself in the scent of carnage he is oh-so-familiar with.

it is sick and it’s twisted. but he is a devil, and he is undeserving of you. and he hopes one day you will realise that too. he hadn’t planned on this. he hadn’t planned on doing this to you, but he doesn’t know how else to give you what you deserve. how else to be happy and peaceful and content with you away from the war, how else to give you what you had begged him for at his bloody bedside all those months ago.

he hovers on top of you in bed, patterning kisses down the column of your throat and tracing circles into the skin of his forearm and you think of how beautiful he is. how maybe you’ll stay with this feeling if you can see him like this again.

“i love you,” he whispers into your ear and he just barely hears your breath hitch in your throat. he watches a tear slowly trickle down from your lash line to your temples and parts his mouth in confusion. you can’t look at him, so you train your gaze on the window beside the bed.

“i know,” you whisper, voice strained.

the stench of war attacks your nostrils when erwin nestles himself under your chin and wraps his arms tightly around your back, pulling you to him with such a force that you think he might crush you. you think you don’t mind if he would.

your arms lay splayed out on either side of you, unable to bring yourself to bring them around erwin as well. thoughts thunder in erwin’s mind and guilt eats him up in a way that makes him worry if there will be anything left of him by morning. you know. you’ve known this whole time.

“i’m sorry,” he mumbles into your skin, and the buzz of his voice sends your head spinning. you don’t say anything back. what is there to say? he still remains with you here, every night. even though you know he wants to gamble away his life with every fibre of his being.

there is the erwin, devoted to a war. there is the erwin, with hollowness behind his eyes without it. there is the erwin, losing himself in the arms of another spoil of war to regain some kind of sense of self for you. each one would have hurt you, and you would have still loved each one regardless.

you both drift off to sleep and you are not surprised when he still returns home once a week tasting of tea. you learn to live with the ache. it is a parasite affording you the arms of your lover.

when erwin whispers his affections to you at night, you allow yourself to forget. but as you lay awake when he drifts off to sleep on top of you, you are always met with the same gut wrenching conclusion.

you, too, are in love with a war. and this one has golden hair and piercing eyes and the smile of a devil.

and its smell tears into your heart but you love it regardless.

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cuddyblupaivon

3 years ago

🤣🤣🤣🤣

These Are Some Screenshot Studies I Made A While Ago From Pt 2 Of The 'No Regrets' OVA! (so Yes, I Used

These are some screenshot studies I made a while ago from pt 2 of the 'No Regrets' OVA! (so yes, I used refs for this!). I was rewatching Breaking Bad while doing so and when that quote came on, EruRi just called to me. What a beautiful start of their love story 💜

🚫 Please don't repost!

✅ reblogs are appreciated of course!

1K notes View Post