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This wasn’t a normal school. This school housed demigods and mythological creatures, taught them how to control and hone their powers to fight. They learnt combat and potion mixing, they learnt how to build on their stamina, how throw a javelin like it was a spear aiming for a target. They weren’t normal people. They were being schooled into the world’s protectors.
And Eren… He had no idea that he was born for this until, well, pretty much a week ago, when he had gotten his ass chased across the city by determined gutter rat demons. He was a son of Poseidon, apparently, which always managed to boggle his mind the fuck out, because Poseidon had been just a myth to him - but nope, apparently not, ‘Hi Dad’. So when he was shoved into the school’s cafeteria, head whipping around as the rest of the school dallied around in their normal routine, he hadn’t counted on this sudden feeling among his confusion and ostracism, at meeting a pair of dark, narrowed eyes, irises lined with silver, a beautiful pair of eyes framed by thin, luscious strands of black hair. He hadn’t expected to feel suddenly breathless like he was all of a sudden drowning. It was akin to something like a whoosh of air taking all the breath in his lungs. He felt his heart thump hard and fast in his chest, an erratic beat to the normal steadiness it had been only seconds ago.
He nearly goddamned fucking dropped his tray.
And, despite Eren’s usual hot-headedness, anyone who knew him would also know that he’s a fucking coward when it came to flirting. He backs out, he doesn’t go for it - ever. But there’s something which makes him take a step forward, and another, and another, until he’s standing at the silver-eyed beauty’s table, who sits alone with his own tray of food before him.
The silver-eyed beauty is a small looking guy with a pointed look and a permanent frown on his face.
Eren clears his throat, “Um. Hi.”
The guy raises his brow and oh my god, I fucked up, Eren thinks suddenly. “I’m um, Eren.”
“Levi.”
“Y-You’re beautiful!” Eren exclaims before he fucking legs it.
After that, he mopes around for days.
And he doesn’t stop moping until Levi actually comes up to him.
“I have one question.” Levi says, and his arms a crossed.
“Yes?”
“What the hell are you doing to me?”
“Wh-Wha?”
“Did you use some sort of fucked up potion on me?”
“No!”
“Then why do I find you cute?”
Eren blinks, “You um, find me cute?”
“Almost unbearably so.” Levi admits, and he sounds a little pained about it.
Eren blinks before grinning. He’s about to say something until suddenly, the back of his head is being slammed against the wall behind him, the front of his face covered by Levi’s hand.
“Ow!” Eren exclaims.
Levi is scowling, “Can you not fucking grin?”
“What? Why not?!”
“Because it makes my heart do this weird fucking thing.”
“Um, skip… a beat?” Eren asks, eyes widening.
Levi grunts, “Yeah, it feels like that.”
Eren laughs and Levi starts cursing at him to stop, you fucking brat or I’ll kick your teeth in.
They actually grow closer after that and start hanging out.
The breathless feeling doesn’t leave Eren. He finds himself reminding himself to breathe sometimes, because it feels like he doesn’t do so enough around Levi. But there’s something about Levi which makes him feel like he’s alright with everything - with being a demigod, with being a dork.
Yeah, Levi is small, but he’s also incredibly strong. He’s at the top of their class, and he’s amazingly smart. He can do anything, and the pride that swells in Eren is something that actually embarrasses Levi whenever he finds Eren bragging and celebrating for and about him.
“Fucking stop you dork.” Levi says, and casts his eyes downward.
Though Levi is a hostile kind of person, when he warms up to someone, he warms up to them. Maybe that’s just an only Eren thing, but despite his harsh, cutting words, he’s the kindest (in Eren’s opinion only).
Eren grins, “What? You’re getting shy, Levi?”
Levi shoots a glare up at him, and Eren can see the very slightest of blushes edging underneath Levi’s eyes, at the apples of his cheeks.
Eren bites his lip, “Well,” he says and he leans down a little, meeting Levi’s eyes, “you deserve the praise, and so much more.”
Levi’s eyes widen the slightest bit before Eren leans forward the slightest bit, and then they’re kissing.
And there’s something, always that goddamned fucking something. Not just because they’re kissing, but there are sparks. Eren’s hands skirt on Levi’s frame, moving down to rest on the other’s lower back, and he reaches a little underneath Levi’s shirt to feel skin, feeling flames start to ignite at his fingertips.
He pauses, opens his eyes and gasps.
They’re… They’re fucking glowing.
“Levi,” Eren whispers suddenly.
Levi frowns suddenly and his eyes snap open, “What? Why’d you fucking st-“ His brows arch up and then he’s whipping his head around them, looking at the almost firefly like lights that are engulfing them. “What the fuck?”
“It’s not you?” Eren asks.
“It’s not you?”
Eren blinks and takes a second before clearing his throat, “I, um, think it’s us.”
“This is the gayest shit I’ve ever witnessed.”
Eren laughs softly and leans his forehead on Levi’s shoulder and they stay like that a moment, in the low light, before Eren speaks. “I know it’s too early, I know we’ve just had our first kiss, but there’s something about this, about you, Levi, that I know is, like, really important. Like, more than life important - foreverimportant. And just,” Eren pulls back off Levi’s shoulder and his honest, turquoise eyes meet Levi’s, “I love you.”
Levi blinks but the lights spark at Eren’s confession, glowing a hot white before they calm down again and they’re that warm, yellow glowing again.
Eren smiles, “You don’t need to say anything now, but I just wanted you to know. You’re… important.” Eren smiles and presses his lips to Levi’s once again, but before a second has passed with their lips pressed against one another, there’s a high, sharp, alarming ringing sound.
The doors slam open.
And then there’s pain all over Eren, unbearable and hot, bad. He feels like they should have run, that they should have escaped, that this is the most danger he’ll ever be in.
He’s pulled away from Levi, and their lights - they die out, flickering one last time, before they’re gone.
There are arms grabbing at him, burning into his flesh the handprint of his captors.
“Levi!” He yells, sees those silver-lined eyes wide with fear, before there’s a sharp, horrible pain at the top of his head, and then all he sees is black.
“Zeus has never been a fair kind of person, in my opinion.” Hades says.
Levi lies on his back, looking up at the ceiling of… Of hell, really. The top of the huge, endless cavern he’s stuck in, shadows up there flickering because of the flames and the lava below.
“Why?” Levi asks. He’s not asking anyone anything in particular but even he knows that he sounds like aweakling.
“Did you know that humans used to have 2 heads, 4 arms and 4 legs?” Hades says. “Zeus, dear elder brother, was scared that the humans would become too powerful, so he split them up - tragic, I know - but that’s not the real tragedy, oh no. Because, you see, he split them up so that they wouldn’t find each other ever again because otherwise they’d regain their power, but then again, there’s always that odd chance. Pity, isn’t it, that you and Eren chanced the odds. If they’d allowed the both of you to live, two demigods who complete each other, you’d be too powerful for my dear older brother to want to take a chance on.”
Eren.
“So yes, Eren’s dead. You’re alive, though I hardly think being in hell can be called living.”
Eren’s dead.
“But here, my friend,” Hades says and he leans over Levi. He doesn’t look like the god of the underworld, doesn’t look like a god of shadow and death. He looks like any of the other gods up on Olympus, “is where all the sour, bitter, evil dwells. And my, am I in luck. I’ve been in search for just the right kind of leader for an army of vengeance.”
Hades holds his hand out in an offer to help Levi up.
“What do you say? Would you like to burn down Olympus and its gods with me? Watch them suffer, slaughter them like they did Eren?”
And he sees Eren, kind, earnest and easygoing Eren, telling Levi that this isn’t right, that he shouldn’t do this.
But then he sees his same Eren, on his knees, hands cuffed behind his back, and he sees Zeus’ bolt of lighting come crashing down from the blackened sky - he once called it the Heavens, where Zeus’ bolts came from. But he knows now that Zeus’ power never came from the Heavens. Nothing so evil could come from the Heavens. But they came down from the black clouds, and when they did, Levi had shut his eyes in a prayer.
When he had opened them again, Eren’s gone. A mountain of charcoal. That’s all that’s left of him.
And he feels the sorrow turn to bloodlust like he’s never known before.
He reaches out and grasps Hades’ hand before he’s pulled up.
He brushes himself down, and meets his dark, silver lined eyes, burning with metallic fire, with Hades’ “I call dibs on Zeus.”
Hades chuckles, “Whoever gets to him first, then, Son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.”
But beauty is never lasting, and love can turn black, like charcoal.