Chapter Text
The first thing Levi noticed was the eyes. Angry, clearly frightened, most likely in pain, and reflecting the light from in front of him with two twin mirrors of shiny scarlet. The person shifted slightly, moving in a way that took the light from his reflective irises and revealed the true color behind them, a startling shade of yellow, almost golden, like fresh orange juice. Levi didn't notice the most important thing until a few seconds later, and the shock was almost abrupt enough to make him sick. He wanted to rub his eyes, to make sure he wasn't seeing things, but he was afraid the creature in front of him would disappear if he so much as blinked.
This person had wings.
Great wings of grey and brown, absolutely coated in the filth of the streets. One of them was extended behind him awkwardly, like something was strained or broken, and the other was angled down, feathers spread in a defensive display, as if he was trying to make himself appear as large as possible. If Levi hadn't been so shocked, he would've payed more notice to the dirty mess of pale hair on his head, or to the fact that this man was poised to attack, despite his obvious injuries. In that moment, however, there was only one thing Levi could manage to do. He slowly spread his own wings from where they were tucked tightly behind his back, and he watched as the filthy man's expression turned from defense, to shock, to relief, and then to nothing as his eyes fluttered shut and he fell forward, face-first onto the asphalt.
There was no way Levi was going to abandon this person, the only other person he'd encountered that could possibly understand him, but he still hesitated. It was dark, and Levi was strong, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to fly someone this much larger than him— not to mention unconscious— back to Hanji's lab. He settled for stooping down and grabbing the dirty forearms of the man, doing his best to hoist him over his back without crushing his own wings. Levi couldn't help but grimace at the thought of his silky feathers being dirtied by the gritty skin, but he pressed on anyways, extending his wings slightly for balance while the soiled plumage of his charge dragged behind them.
The man was lighter than Levi expected, but he supposed that shouldn't have surprised him. If this person was in any way built like Levi, he was meant to be in the air, equipped with porous bones and metabolism fast enough to go through an entire day's worth of food in an few hours. Wings that brought a whole new meaning to the phrase light as a feather. Levi himself had other attributes, such as the odd set of bones deep inside his nasal cavity or the hard, transparent, extra eyelids tucked safely in his sockets.
Strange anatomy aside, dragging the man was horrible, sweaty work, and by the time he reached the back door of Hanji's lab, his knees gave out below him, and he ended up sinking to the ground underneath the weight of the man on his back, barely managing to bang on the wood with a shaking fist. A bespectacled women flung the door open a few seconds later, crazed and armed with a gym sock full of something, only to jump back when Levi collapsed through the doorway with an unannounced guest slung over his shoulders. He looked up at her through sweaty bangs and watched her blink once, twice, before shrieking loudly enough to wake up the entire state of South Carolina. She was obviously trying to yell words of some sort, but Levi couldn't for the life of him understand them. He managed to smack her calf and command her attention long enough to force out an irritated, "Get him off of me—!"
She calmed down enough to hoist the man off of Levi's back, giving him room to finally stand up on shaky legs. It took a fair amount of effort for the two of them to get the stranger's dirty wings through the doorway, limp as they were, but after a good deal of dragging and maneuvering, they managed to lay him down on the cold spotless floor of Hanji's lab, closing the door behind them.
"Oh Levi," she breathed, awestruck as she stared at his prostrated form, "Where did you find him? Where did he come from?" Levi answered with a tired shrug, steely eyes focused on the unconscious man in front of him. "He's like you," she whispered, bending down to touch his long, dirty feathers, "Whatever you are, he's the same."
"I think he's hurt," Levi murmured, kneeling down by the man's face. "He was holding his wing back when I found him." Hanji frowned, reaching down to lift the gritty plumage closer to her face, but it flinched away from her, and before either of them could do so much as blink, the man was standing, knocking things off the counters and banging into the ceiling tiles with his wings as he scrambled away from them. Eventually his back hit the wall, and he pressed up against it, chest heaving madly.
"Where am I?" He hissed, "Who are you?" His eyes were darting frantically back and forth looking somewhere in between angry and terrified. They took a few seconds to land on Levi, but when they did, he slumped a little lower against the wall in shock, taking in the wings that weren't supposed to exist anywhere outside of himself. Levi knew the feeling. He stepped closer, quietly, carefully. The stranger watched him with a wary glare, but he didn't shy away, and he let Levi approach until they were only a few inches apart, staring at each other under the harsh fluorescent lighting. Levi was a good deal shorter than this man, and the yellow eyes were unnerving as they peered down at him from underneath pale, shaggy hair.
Skin touched skin, and Levi looked down, surprised to see their hands brushing when neither of them had seemed to move. He watched, fascinated, as their fingers intertwined, Levi's own pale digits almost completely engulfed by the man's grimy tan skin. He didn't know why he was letting himself be touched by someone so filthy, but he held on tight, feeling the hand grip his hard in return.
The silence was broken by a delighted screech from Hanji, and the man flinched back, attempting to make himself smaller behind Levi. Hanji wouldn't be deterred, she simply followed him, no matter how far he shied away along the wall. "What's your name, sweetie?" She pressed excitedly, edging closer and closer to his face. He tugged on Levi's wrist, trying to distance himself from the crazed woman in front of him, and the smaller man turned around, opening his wings slightly to block them from Hanji's wild stare.
The man looked dazed, eyes roving across the ribbed undersides of Levi's feathers. "Eren," he whispered, so quietly that Levi almost missed it. "My name is Eren."
Levi squeezed Eren's hand in awkward reassurance, staring directly into those unnerving yellow eyes. "She only wants to make sure your wing is okay." He murmured quietly. "Will you let her look at you?" Eren hesitated, shifting uncomfortably, but in the end, he nodded, and Levi let his wings relax to reveal the impatient woman behind them. She immediately darted around the smaller man, Eren flinching away when she reached out to touch him. She pressed on regardless, settling the flat of her hand against his dirty grey feathers.
He was shaking, hand clammy in Levi's grip, but he couldn't be blamed. Levi had no idea when this man had last been inside a building, and now a strange crazy woman was putting her hands all over his feathers. It couldn't have been particularly pleasant, Levi didn't like it when she touched his feathers either. Didn't really like it when anyone touched his feathers, really, but when it came to Hanji, he didn't really have a choice. She gave him a place to live, food to eat, and clothes to wear, all entirely free of charge if he let her gently explore the stranger parts of his anatomy every so often.
She currently had one of Eren's wings stretched out, and he was gritting his teeth as she felt along the muscles and bones hidden under his silky converts. Levi couldn't help but marvel at the sheer size of the dirty things, at least seven or eight feet long from where they emerged from the back of his torn shirt to the very tips of his flight feathers. Looking at them made this all too real, flooding his mind with too many things he didn't quite know how to handle. He'd been alone with the exception of Hanji since she'd found him when he was young. She'd been about nineteen at the time, if Levi could remember correctly, and his wings had just recently grown too long for him to be able to hide. She'd found him digging in the dumpster behind her building, and he'd been with her ever since, living in the apartment above her lab for the last thirteen years. It was real, it was strange, and it was so very different from anything that had ever happened to him.
He wasn't alone anymore.
He loved Hanji fiercely, but she could never truly understand what it was like for him to constantly wonder what he was, where he came from, why he was different in the most glorious and terrible of ways.
Why there was no one else in the world like him.
Now he was confronted with what he'd wished for since the very day he'd been able to speak. He was lucky that he'd even managed to stumble upon the injured man when he'd had to drop out of the sky to avoid the searching lights of a helicopter. His whole life had been thrown into chaos, and he'd let it happen the second he'd decided to open his wings. Eren was real. He was real and alive and Levi was so close to being physically sick with the strength of the relief coursing through his body. Eren's hand had long since slipped out of his own, but he could still feel the warmth he left behind, and his fingers closed around empty air as he watched Hanji remove her palms from the dirty plumage and return to their places in the pockets of her lab coat.
"Well, the good news is nothing's broken or torn," she declared with a grin, giving Eren room to tuck his wing against his back and move away from her. "I think he's just a little bruised, thats all. What happened to you, dear?" She turned to Eren, raising an eyebrow over the thick frames of her glasses. He stayed quiet, shuffling his feathers uncomfortably and shifting closer to Levi. She nodded thoughtfully, as though he'd answered a question that hadn't been asked, and then, like she couldn't contain herself any longer, she smiled, wide and elated before picking Levi off the floor, and spinning him around, wings and all. "This is so exciting!" she cried, oblivious to Levi's attempts to escape her hold. "Look at him, he's beautiful! He's like you! He's just like you!" Levi finally managed to wrestle away from her with a growl, shaking his ruffled feathers as she continued to squeal nonsense and spin around them with her hands in the air.
He looked back at Eren, at how he drew his wings in closer every time she spun by, and decided to put the overwhelmed man out of his misery. "Hanji, I'm taking him upstairs." He said, loudly enough for her to be able to hear him over the noise she was making.
She paused in her spinning, slightly out of breath, eyes shining, long enough to say, "Make sure you throw him in the shower first, Lee!" He didn't even have time to respond before she was running off deeper into her lab, shrieks disappearing in the distance. Levi didn't say anything more, didn't have to, simply walked over to the narrow staircase, listening to the sound of tired footsteps as Eren followed him.
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It was in a huge mess of feathers that he finally managed to wrangle Eren into the shower. He was already skittish enough before having to deal with Hanji's excited screaming over finding another one of... whatever they were. It was really a wonder he was letting Levi touch him at all after that. The smaller man was having a difficult time fitting both of them and their wings into the glass-enclosed stall, but after some awkward flapping and rearranging, they were both sitting naked under the spray, with Levi positioned on his knees behind a cross-legged Eren, sifting through his dirty feathers with careful fingers.
Eren's wings were much larger than his own, thicker too, with more plumage than Levi could really even comprehend. At the very least they had to be seven feet long, maybe eight, with thick, insulated feathers that easily outnumbered Levi's own. The water ran dark off of Eren's body, dripping from his hair and shoulders, making Levi cringe with just how filthy the man was. It was only after the water was starting to run cold that Levi began to realize Eren's wings weren't grey at all, but snowy white, sparsely flecked with spots of brown. His hair was the same pure color, with similar brown streaks flecking the area around his temples and forehead.
By the time they exited the shower, Levi had thoroughly washed both of them from head to toe to wingtip. They were both shivering, dripping frigid water all over the tile of Levi's small bathroom and staring at each other with wide eyes. Eren reached out, slowly and with shaking fingers to touch the edge of Levi's wing, running the pads of his fingers along the ribbed patterns of the converts and primaries. Levi stayed silent, afraid to break the tentative understanding he knew was dawning on both of them. Chose instead to gently wrap his fingers around Eren's wrist and tug him backwards, across the hallway and into the bedroom.
Something was wrong with him. They were both naked, soaking, and entirely unfamiliar with each other, but this was different, somehow, than two strangers meeting for the first time. This was important, and the realization spoke volumes as Eren understood Levi's intentions and let himself be coaxed back onto the mattress. His eyes were reflective again, taking the yellow light from the hallway and turning it red as he settled back against the pillows and opened his wings for Levi. The smaller man crawled forward and pressed as close as he could, wrapping himself around Eren's unfamiliar body as those great white feathers enclosed him, wings and all, in their dripping cocoon.
It was silent and sacred for both of them, the stark relief of company, of knowing they weren't alone anymore. Levi knew nothing about this man other than his name, and Eren didn't know any more than that about Levi, but there was nothing more right in the world than how closely they clung together, shivering and shaking, letting themselves break as they cried into each other's dripping skin.