Guns and Cigarettes [Levi/Rivaille x OC]

Chapter 16: There's Black, White & Blue

"Yours?" It crumbled underneath my fingers. Almost like dirt.

It's not like I'm a vampire or anything, but I could almost taste the metallic undertones at the back of my throat. It reeked of grievance, strife. Just another life cut short.

Another bob of the Adam Apple. "No."

His dodgy-looking bike greeted me when I glanced over. Its head was tilted in anticipation, warping into confusion, and dread, watching me remove the traces of life from my fingertips. What else did it witness?

I wanted to inquire where this earthy smear came about, but did I really want the answer to that?

Fascinating how easily blood was spilled. Almost like milk.

"Good."

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The wind whipped through my hair, running a cold scrawly hand through the tangles crusted up by the last remnants of apple cider. It bit at my skin, it pinched at the goose bumps littering my arms, my legs, the little sliver on the back of my neck. Trying to thrust me back from the steel railings before I plunged into the pond of ink below.

Did mother nature always have to intrude?

The traffic whirled past behind us as we peered over the golden-stained bridge under a yellowing spotlight from a nearby, barely-upright streetlamp. Every erect streetlight felt the need to splash a circular lawn of illumination along the passage, like another Broadway for commoners like us. A stencil of the city glow pencilled in over the burnt sky which churned like smoke, colluding with the river to bury all traces of pollution in its depths.

And I looked over at the male next to me, who rested his protruding elbows on the railing with his inky curls beating by his face. His eyes held the city in those tiny beads. They mirrored the world in two little capsules with a hint of gloss varnishing on top. Periodically shifting back and forth. Between the nightscape disentangled before us and my stupid face struggling behind the bush I call hair. But I leaned in closer to his face just to colour correct my vision.

Hadn't I always thought that Levi had dark, tiny eyes? Something like the tinted windows of a car. I swear to God they used to look like voids of a black hole. So deep, and dark, and corrupted ... like a burnt pizza base every time I attempted a cooking session. But now, or at least at one point, of every single tint in this spectrum unrolled before us, they were the only thing that stood out.

They look unmistakenly blue.

Like two tiny generic Viagra pills blue.

They were so blue they might as well swallow the entire sky whole.

When did this change?

He was a crude, short little fuck who loitered corners like a predator. And gives unfiltered opinions when no one asked for them. And jumping out of fucking nowhere, quite literally, getting his nose into your business and stalking you with elusive questions and cheap cigarettes. Typical. Cliché.

But it was a boy who stood before me. Someone who was perpetually, everlastingly hungry. Someone who was so socially-unfit, and rude, and violent, but stripped of all this territorial bullshit. Someone who had a mother he would occasionally bring up in the dark next to you to keep the silence out.

And he had blue eyes.
Clear Angelite gems.
Hiding behind that stupid haircut that I suspect he gives himself.

My eyes languidly repositioned on a distant glowing toothpick of a building in the distant. It used to be just black or white. Right or wrong. Let those turtles drown or scoop them up. Now all the lines are blurring and new colours are surfacing. More complex. They danced around like the city's reflection on the canvas of water. I frowned at how nothing could be pinned into place. My head hurt.