His 3DMG has run out of gas and he watches petrified in his helpless position, as two titans - five and seven meters of mindless killing mass - start walking with heavy steps towards him. Not only is the earth shaking but so his whole body and there are only five deafening words resonating inside his head: “I'm going to die”.

He stands in the middle of the ruined street, his comrades screaming and fighting around him but he is unable to join them; he can't even will his feet to move. It's like all sensible thought has left his mind, the certainty of an imminent, painful death the only thing he can manage to grasp in his terrified state.

The titans are getting closer, towering over him in all their horrifying enormousness, hands reaching out and their eyes moving crazily in their eye sockets. His legs give out under him and he falls on the hard ground, not even noticing the pain on his knees. All his senses are numb to the point he barely knows where he is and what is about to happen.

He watches with a strange taste in his mouth as one of the titans reaches out and wraps its fat fingers around him. He finds himself being lifted to stare at big, bloody teeth and the pressure around himself increases until he feels something crack and his eyes widen.

The desperation and fear and pain all bubble up his throat all the way from his stomach and he starts screaming like he has never screamed, the knowledge that he is indeed going to die, that he won't see the light of another day too much for him to handle. He tries kicking, biting and punching but he can't move and it hurts and the titan's face is coming closer, closer till it's all he sees. His eyes close for their own accord as a sob catches in his throat.

He waits for the fatal bite, the cold unconsciousness, but they never come. There is the sound of something cutting the air twice, then a loud roar and then he falls.

When he wakes up he is sitting against a wall, the dead bodies of the titans laying a couple of meters away from him all with equally deep cuts on the back of their necks. He turns his head to the side and sees L landing swiftly in front of him, the blades of his gear dripping blood on both sides of him. There a few bruises marring his face and a rather painful looking gash on his thigh but he’s alive. He’s alive and that's more Sungyeol could ever ask for.

L squats next to him, takes his chin between calloused gentle fingers, even gentler eyes sweeping over his face, eyes boring into Sungyeol's after his inspection.

“Are you okay?” L asks in a stiff tone. The way his eyes regard his body and the clenching of his jaw is enough to show both his rage and his concern. Sungyeol wants to say yes, I'm okay, that it was just a few bruises, but he knows it's not so he just looks at him. “What happened?”

“I-I ran out of gas...” Sungyeol's voice when is low, pained. L looks at him a few seconds more and sighs, takes one of his gas cylinders and hands it to him. He shakes his head, trying to ignore the striking pain on his left arm. “I don't think I can use it, my arm-”

“It's alright.” L looks around, spotting a narrow space between two houses not far away from where they are. “You'll stay there while I go find a horse. Don't move and stay quiet. If a titan comes this way, make sure you don't even breathe until it passes by. Have I made myself clear?”

“Y-yes, Captain...”

L helps him to his hiding spot and then runs without looking back, resolve fueling his every step. Sungyeol bites his lip to silence the groans and huffs as he shifts to better regard the damage. A broken arm for sure - his elbow doesn’t look right and he can't move his fingers. With a little pressure against his ribs he realises a few of them must be broken as well as it's painful to even breathe. His fingers skim over his face, noting cuts and a big bump on his forehead from when an abnormal had slammed him against a tower. It hurts. His whole body hurts. Even so, he can't help feeling lucky. If L hadn't found him he wouldn't have been able to feel all this - he wouldn't feel anything at all. He would be dead.

He wonders how many of his comrades haven't been so lucky. Is Dongwoo still alive? Woohyun? Gods, he hopes they are. He wouldn't know what to do if they weren't there with him, supporting him. They were the only friends he has left. Losing them... it would most definitely drive him crazy in the worst of ways. With a heavy heart, he prays to whoever is there to listen for his best friends to be safe and sound.

L comes back soon after, as quietly as one can be bringing a horse with them, and helps him up the animal.

“You know your way back, don't you? I alerted the Stationary Guards; they'll open the gate the second they spot you. Be quick, don't look anywhere else.” He knows what that means, don't get distracted, don't try to help. He nods but before L can whip the horse Sungyeol leans down, careful not to fall down since he only has a hand to hold on to the reins, and pecks him on the cheek. It's quick, ethereal, but he hopes it's enough.

“Be careful,” he mumbles, mirroring the tight smile L directs at him, and then he's riding off to the Wall.

The walls of his room are stark white, his bed sheets are blue, his wardrobe is something between brown and black. The colours soothe him more than anything because he knows them; he knows the hues and knows he can only find them in his room back at the quarters, which means he is safe; he is home.

A sudden snore disturbs his internal contentment and he startles, wincing when his body protests at the movement.

He turns his head slightly to look at the source of noise and sees Myungsoo sleeping on a chair, head resting atop his folded arms on the table near the window. He looks peaceful like this, young.

Knowing that Myungsoo is alive and with him has a flood of emotion striking him from the inside out and he can feel the almost foreign stinging in his eyes. He tries to blink the tears away but they keep on coming. He can't hold them back; no matter how hard he tries, so he presses the side of his face against the pillow and cries. It's quiet at first but eventually it turns into downright weeping.

“Sungyeol...?” Amidst the relief soaking through him he hears Myungsoo calling his name and he sees him making his way towards the bed. Now he feels the weight of Myungsoo sitting just next to him and the reassuring hand caressing his hair and he wants to hug him so hard but he can't because half his body is in pain so all he can do is cry harder until he can't cry anymore.

It takes fifteen minutes until his sobs quiet down and all that is left is the embarrassment of breaking down like this in front of someone.

“Do you feel better?” Myungsoo asks him ever so gently. His thumbs wipe the moisture from Sungyeol's cheeks away and his palm is warm against his skin, so Sungyeol leans against it unconsciously. Sungyeol nods and looks at him, lower lip between his teeth. Myungsoo looks beaten - he has bruises and cuts all over - but other than that he seems okay. There is a little frown between his eyebrows that gives away how worried he really is though and Sungyeol lifts his good hand to smooth it out. He leaves his hand there, on his face, and Myungsoo smiles.

“I-I thought I was going to die - I was so afraid. I thought I was never going to see you again, any of you...” Sungyeol stops, lowers his gaze, unsure of what to say, scared of the possible answer, “Are Woohyun and Dongwoo...?”

“They're okay. Woohyun got a rather hard blow to the head so he is still unconscious, but he is out of danger.” Sungyeol sighs in relief, tears welling up in his eyes again although he manages to control the urge to cry this time. Myungsoo grabs his hand, squeezes it and takes it to his lips to kiss his knuckles with such reverence it makes his stomach flutter. Sungyeol shakes himself. He, on no account does fluttery.

“When I saw that titan get you... it was like something inside of me exploded. I think I've never killed two titans so easily... , I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I hadn't arrived on time. I would have probably... stayed out there killing every ing titan that crossed my way until there wasn't more strength in me.”

Sungyeol understands. He understands because he knows he would do the exact same thing. If his friends died, he would be terribly sad, he would mourn them and he would be so angry he'd definitely do something stupid. But if it was Myungsoo...

Now it's his turn to squeeze Myungsoo's hand, and the latter smiles at him again.

“Good thing you're an excellent timer then,” Sungyeol mutters. It's not funny, he knows, it wasn't even meant to be a joke but Myungsoo laughs, because Myungsoo laughs at everything Sungyeol says.

Myungsoo leans down carefully, like he has always been with him, and kisses him softly on the lips. It's an innocent kiss, a kiss that says we're here now, we're okay but Sungyeol feels butterflies anyway (which is gross, he thinks distractedly, but it's the first thing that comes up that describes the weird feeling in his stomach).

His fingers play with the hairs at Myungsoo's nape, in a less-than-subtle way of letting him know that he doesn't want to stop kissing him any time soon. His lips are chapped, but soft nevertheless as they slide against Myungsoo's in a loving but desperate way, as if he is making sure that Myungsoo is not going to disappear. Their tongues are nothing but gentle, their lips nothing but urgent and their hands itch to reach out and touch.

A knock on the door jolts them out of their kiss. They part, just a little, so that they are staring at each other's eyes. Sungyeol beams.

“Uh... Captain L, Smith has required your presence at the meeting,” a voice Sungyeol doesn't really recognise says through the door and Myungsoo sighs heavily.

“You have to go, don't you?” He asks, quietly.

“Yes... we've had a lot of casualties. This raid has been useless. I told them that the new recruiters weren't ready yet for an expedition of this caliber but...” He shrugs half-heartedly, frustration and sadness evident in the strained set of his shoulders. “We have to look into the archives to see who hasn't made it back; we have to notify the families. Then they'll probably start throwing accusations at each other-”

“It isn't your fault, Myungsoo... we decided to join the Survey Corps. It was our choice. We knew what we were signing up for. You can't keep blaming yourself every time someone dies when you weren't the one forcing them to join you. You know that, right?” He searches Myungsoo's eyes for a moment and then he is being kissed again, this time harder, with an urgency he knows well.

“I'll be back after the meeting,” he says with feeling when they part. Sungyeol watches as Myungsoo's face morphs silently into L's and then he's out of the room.

Sungyeol knows Myungsoo and L are the same person. Of course he does, he’s not crazy. But he likes to think there's a huge difference between the two anyway. He is L when they are out of the safety of the Walls, when they are training or analysing new strategies and tactics. L is impassive and competent in his field, which has gained him recognition and praises from the king himself. L's efficiency has led him to become the youngest captain ever (there used to be a law against people under thirty years becoming high-rank soldiers but life expectancy has dropped shockingly fast in the last decade so it had been decided to repeal the law).

He knows that before him, there was only L. L with his straight-forward thinking, cold demeanour and impeccable career. But then Sungyeol came around, tripping over his own feet, being extra loud and joking to lighten the mood at dinner yet surprisingly getting into the fifteen best at training trials. L had been impressed by his more than admirable hard work and definite goals (“I want to exterminate every single titan and save humanity from doom,” Sungyeol had said the day he joined the trainees squad, a fierceness in his voice that contrasted deeply with the gloomy look on his face).

After they started talking one rainy day after dinner, L started to change. It was only when it was him and Sungyeol, but the change was there. He started being more carefree, smiling and talking and acting more like a person his age and less like a robot programmed to kill titans. He became, in a sense, a more mature version of the kid that he had been once. A kid named Myungsoo that loved food and running about till late hours in the afternoon with his friends, laughing and playing hide-and-seek like it was the best thing in their little world.

Sungyeol learnt all of this through years of unsteady friendship, always whispering on dark rooftops with lukewarm beer to feed their spirits and the feeling that what they had, whatever it was, would never last. L had to leave and it was never certain when or if he would come back and all the waiting - oh, the waiting had been the worst part of it all - finally made the affection he felt for L, for Myungsoo, bloom into something else. Something he hadn't felt for so long it had scared him less.

But Myungsoo returned.

Myungsoo understood.

And Myungsoo loved him back.

It's true that it's not wise to love in a world where dozens of people go fight death every day, especially when you are a part of them. Sungyeol has learnt this lesson the hard way, watching all the people he cared about being ripped to pieces before his eyes far too many times. His parents when he was just a little kid, the girl he had first fallen in love with, his neighbours, his friends... all of them casualties of a war that seems to have no end, a war humans have been losing for a long time.

It's not wise and even if they know, they still seek each other's eyes when they are in the same room, they still fight the hardest when one of them is in danger, and they still kiss quietly when no one else is around.

They still love each other.

Myungsoo doesn't seem to realise they are in too deep already and sometimes tries to reason with him (“What if I die, Sungyeol? What if one day my comrades bring my lifeless corpse with them? What if it's you who dies out there?”).

Sungyeol doesn't want to think about what ifs. He lives in a present where Myungsoo is with him even after all they've been through, a present in which he is painfully injured but alive, a present that does not allow thoughts like will this last, is it going to be okay? because the future is something none of them have for sure. Therefore they fight for each other and they fight for humanity and they fight for a future that might not be there, not once forgetting that the key to success is never giving up.

a/n: wow it really is short, it didn't look like it was when i was writing it xD i don't really have much to say... hope you enjoyed it! :3 (and thank you a looooot to those who suscribed! i love you)

comments are always appreciated <3