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levmada · 2 years

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First Times Anthology ch.8: endlessly, forever

work summary » Intimate, vulnerable, gentle. Concepts Levi is a stranger to, until you.

ch.summary: You and Levi take a retreat. After your relationship comes to a natural conclusion, he makes peace with the future.

content/warnings: light references/descriptions for PTSD, flustering Levi, highly domestic, highly horny, oral (f!receiving), edging (f!receiving), Levi’s birthday, creampie (f!receiving), very brief rimming (f!receiving), soft dom!Levi, heavy themes of self hatred at one part, getting Levi drunk and also fucking him to sleep, alcohol consumption, complete fluff overdose, Hange being chaotic (again)

wc: 17.5k

a/n: WOW HERE WE ARE!! i may or may not have worked extra hard for the personal satisfaction of posting the last chapter exactly six months since the first one.

i am horrified i may not have made the last scene justice, but i have also never finished a longfic ever in my entire many years of writing fanfic LMAO😅

i never thought this fic would ever be. a favorite for me, but then it was, and then other ppl read it, and they liked it too :( im simply very thankful + proud of myself for this.

v fitting i end it with an obscenely long chappy lol right?

THAT BEING SAID! a while ago i began to write some... side stories to this series. i just never posted them bc they are farther into canon. i dont plan on writing a sequel to this fic, so imma be posting those (3 rn) periodically to fill in the blanks for fun. think of them like one-off oneshots that fill in the universe lol.

anyway here we go!!

ps: i never project myself onto levi ackerman

previous part・work masterpost

Listened to while writing:

It happens, as acts of fate often do, by surprise.

Today, the sky is awash with that crisp, clean blue that autumn does so well, but clouds are forming and the air is breezy, the first warnings of the coming winter.

You (by Levi’s request, unsurprisingly) have half a dozen seasoned soldiers raking the burnt gold, crimson, and brown leaves, tossing them beyond the fences, and finally scrubbing the gutters until they turn silver.

Meanwhile, fresh-blooded Scouts—those who graduated just last spring, but also lived through the summer expeditions—are on their third or fourth lap now, showing only subtle signs of slowing.

That’s because Levi is running with them.

He has always preferred the hands-on approach.

With a clipboard clasped in your hands, you smile slightly to yourself. It’s no crime to watch him frighten the others into shape while you add up some numbers.

The turn of the season calls for quality checks of all equipment before the Corps more or less enters hibernation for the winter. Besides, mice always find a way into the food stores time of year.

You turn your head as a Scout—a slim, doe-eyed man whose name you don’t know—thumps a fist to his chest in salute.

“There’s a situation at the gate that requires Captain Levi’s attention, Lieutenant.”

“At ease,” you reply with a nod, and he relaxes. Everyone knows about you and Levi, but most assume you both to share the same attitude.

You wave your hand in the direction of the field, but Levi is already on his way over, having noticed the scene. Under one arm is his uniform jacket, along with the padded weights he sometimes likes to strap on for the “extra challenge” when he trains.

Twenty damn kilos.

“What’s so important that you didn’t think to go to the Commander first?” Levi is asking, eyes narrowed.

As it turns out, a man waits at the front gates who wants to have a word with Levi specifically. He claims he knows him, and he hasn’t taken no for an answer.

Didn’t give a name, either—not to a bunch of screwy soldiers, anyway.

You shoot Levi an inquisitive look, but he has nothing in terms of explanation. He might as well go and see who it is, but no, “don’t waste your time escorting me. Get back to your duties.”

The messenger takes his leave.

You nod curtly at Levi with a promise to watch over the training (and the yard upkeep) until he returns, a task you take upon yourself without him needing to say a word. Just for that, a small feeling, like fear but sweeter, blooms in his chest.

During his short walk, Levi wracks his mind of any civilian men he knows with the audacity to show up to the Scouts’ headquarters just to “have a word” with him. It doesn’t feel right.

The Survey Corps aren’t taken seriously, everybody and their mother knows that, but they aren’t protested against outside of the returns from expeditions—usually because of grief, but always convenience.

He can’t think of anyone.

Out in front of Trost HQ stands a wrought iron gate of spear where another pair of Scouts acknowledge Levi with brief salutes.

He waves them away, revealing a scruffy mouse of a man standing outside, defiantly toeing the loose dirt with his shoe. A cigarette dangles from the side of his mouth.

An onslaught of memories rush through Levi’s mind, in sharp contrast to the slow smoke drifting up into the air.

Levi blinks, then blinks again. “Yan?”

A coy grin crawls over Yan’s cheeks, showing teeth. “Yo, Levi…! Good thing you remember me. Was afraid your comrades woulda arrested me soon otherwise.”

He shakes his head. Is he dreaming? “They wouldn’t have.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I guess I’m used to the MP’s way of doing things.”

Yan is as sheepish as ever, and as skinny, too. The last time Levi saw him, he was suffering atrophy in his legs, as lots of people Underground did. His treatment was the down payment on the job that got Levi in the Scouts in the first place.

Gripping one of the spears, he scrutinizes Yan with his eyes. “There are other ways to get my attention if you wanted us to chat. Why’re you here?”

Yan kicks at the dirt some more. He doesn’t seem peeved that Levi doesn’t bridge the gap between them by opening the gate just yet. It’s been years, not that Levi was ever the trusting type to begin with.

“You never liked small talk. I just don’t like owing people my life, you know?”

Levi’s lips press into a thin line. He means coin. “You’re not serious.”

Yan shrugs around another puff of tobacco. “I am.” He peers over Levi’s shoulder. “Your friends are being really nosy.”

A cursory look behind him proves Yan right. More than a few are now clustered around the entrance to HQ, curious as to what the Captain is up to, and more curiously, what some civilian wants with him.

Levi glares in their direction, causing them to quickly disband. “Caution is a positive quality around here.”

Levi doesn’t doubt Yan has honest intentions; he never was cut out for life in a gang. Any job he, or sometimes Farlan, ever gave him that was bigger than petty thieving made him go bright red in the face.

He was just a kid, like most of them were. Isabel’s nickname for Yan was ‘peep’.

Levi crosses through the gate, shutting it behind him. They end up strolling a few paces for guaranteed privacy despite the new clouds gathering above, threatening a drizzle. What few that are out and about on the streets are bartering coins for supper. Dew sticks to the grass.

Levi has a right to be wary. “I wasn’t the one who slipped you all that cash with your pay, back then. I didn’t even contact Lovof first. None of us could’ve afforded your treatment.”

“Hm.”

Levi crosses his arms. He can spew excuses all day.

“Still.”

He scoffs. “What’d you do, then? Steal the King’s purse?”

Yan smiles toothily. “That'd be breaking the law… I would never,” he drawls dramatically. “I just seduced my doctor after she fixed my legs.”

He isn’t impressed.

It doesn’t take long to get an honest answer out of Yan, though. Apparently, he has been saving up for a long time now—some well-paying factory job in one of Sina’s booming industrial districts.

“Believe me, Lev’,” Yan tosses the cigarette away. “I know—"

“You better throw that litter away where it belongs.”

A throaty chuckle leaves the man, and he crouches down. “And here I thought military life might’ve made you go soft.”

“Are you a comedian now, too?”

Yan laughs again, but the light mood doesn’t last long. It dampens as the crooked smile on his face dissolves.

Levi braces himself in case Yan says their names. Out of everyone, he must’ve been the last to hear that they were gone.

“I don’t care about some slimy noble,” Yan says. “And about the extra pay, I know you didn’t know. You never would’ve okay’d it. You were a real penny-pincher when you wanted to be.”

Levi thinks back. His years in darkness feel like a recurring nightmare he one day stopped having. He says nothing.

But he can admit it feels good, seeing Yan again—like coming upon a keepsake that you were sure you lost years before. Levi has known loss all his life, and people born down there seldom ever get out, let alone live through the atrophy.

“Glad you’re doing well for yourself,” Levi tells him, and he is. “But you don’t owe me. Buy a house or something.”

“I got all I need,” he tells him, as serious as death. “C’mon, Levi. Don’t make me beg.”

The look on Yan’s face is pitiful.

Levi gets it. Just like the only reason Levi would even consider taking the money, Yan definitely came with Isabel and Farlan in mind. Not just him.

“You’re a fool,” Levi sighs.

“Well then,” you huff fiercely. “Hm, I have an idea. Let’s go over the reasons again.”

Levi’s tight hold on his reins tightens a little more, making Sweetie snuffle. He’s been dealing with two brats since you left this morning.

A shame that he checked out an ordinary scouting horse rather than taking Nibbles, his horse, but you made a good argument at the time, and besides, you liked her name.

“No.”

Mildly, you shake your head, smirking to yourself. “Well then. Are you gonna keep complaining about being given all that coin? Think very carefully about your answer.”

“Your only joy in life is embarrassing me,” he replies. No hesitation.

“It is not,” you laugh. “Anyway, let me remind you.”

He glances over his shoulder, past your connected wagon neatly packed in with enough belongings to last you this winter. That tree hollow doesn’t look any farther away than it was ten minutes ago.

Dammit, how much longer?

“First of all, HQ is dead in winter. Not even you can find a way to run yourself into the ground. Two: It’s money! It’d be a shame not to spend what’s left since you apparently don’t need it.”

He doesn’t. A week earlier, on the same day that he requested Erwin’s permission that he didn’t need to take a leave of absence (Erwin actually laughed at him), Levi had that recurring nightmare once again. He took a trip back Underground to deliver half of the “debt” to an old, trusted contact. A lot of good will be done with it.

“You’re right so far,” he says.

But he knows what’s coming next. With your horses lugging along the wooden wagon, he can’t gallop away to avoid a repeat of the reasons you gave him to do all this.

It’s not that you’re that serious, nor does he have anything to vehemently disagree with—it’s simply that embarrassing.

He locks his gaze straight ahead, focusing in on a single tree branch that looks like it would collapse if someone blew on it a little. He can’t wait to pass it by.

“Besides the fact that it would be good to take a holiday for once,” you go on, “unfortunately—”

“Stop.”

“—our headboard is cracked! And you didn’t want to be at HQ while it got fixed for some reason.” You smirk. “So there. And how could I forget reason number four?”

He drags your name out in warning, but apparently, you have become deaf. The crunch of thin snow beneath your horses hooves has no chance of drowning you out.

“Let me set the scene for you,” you cackle. You’re enjoying yourself. “There we were, in the privacy of our own quarters, in quite a compromising position, don’t you remember?”

He crushes the pathetic tree branch with his glare. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Your high little laughs litter every word now. “S-Sure you do! It was the third time that month, Lev’, and it was the same culprit—”

“Hange is a fucking pervert, even worse than you, I know. Are you done?”

You spot the utter contempt on his red face and take pity on him. It’s only as much fun to tease Levi as readily as he plays along.

“Yeah,” you relent with a light sigh, fog puffing out.

He relents too. “Finally.”

“I know this is a big deal for you,” you say, a touch more seriously. “I can’t even remember the last time I slept in my own bed back home.”

He, who doesn’t have a tangible home to speak of, feels as pained as you sound. He nods, knowing.

You bring up your family a little more often than he does, which is never. But the thing is, in preparation for this trip, you were both passing through Utopia District and decided to pay them a visit since you find yourselves that far north so rarely.

It isn’t that some tragedy struck home in the meantime and you weren’t informed. No one got laid off or went broke, no one was even sick.

The exact opposite. Your mother and father were happier than ever, actually. Retired. What reconnecting you did came down to a slew of joyful nothings, which made it impossible to talk about your own life—except for one Levi-shaped piece of news.

Your mother practically launched through the ceiling, crying out in glee. It was mortifying for him, but up to then, he had only allowed two people in his life to ever hug him: his own mother, and you. Yours really knew how to squeeze the life out of someone.

But then, there were the nothings. How the cold snaps back in August were worrying, but December has been surprisingly warm, so the Chrysanthemums were miraculously still in bloom. Your mother’s old garden—“You started a garden?” you had asked—was flourishing. And now that he was retired, your father had nothing to say about the scar of resentment whose fresh wound had propelled you into military life in the first place. His biggest concern these days was watering your mother’s plants.

They were older. You told him that that part put it all in perspective for you. “I should be thrilled they’re doing well. I mean, I am, but…I’m too different now. They don’t feel like my family anymore—like we’re two different species. You know what I mean?”

After hearing that, Levi took you to your favorite bookstore in Sina to buy you something (as it turned out, somethings) to make you feel better.

Afterwards, he even let you kiss him on a crowded street despite his crippling embarrassment of showing affection in public. For that reason, you asked first.

Without saying anything, your cloth sack of books hooked under one of his arms, he turned towards you and scooped up your chin. That peck really seemed to make you happy.

In truth, he hadn’t known what to say at the time. Sure, he doesn’t know what Kenny’s up to, if he’s still breathing enough to be up to anything at all, but if he is, Levi dreads the day he finds out about it for many reasons. One being that Kenny’s dearest joys in life differed from most people’s, to say the very least.

“What’re you looking at me for?”

Your eyes stay on him. “I just like looking at you.”

Face pinched, he turns the other way. An image invades his mind of himself from a third person perspective, and he inwardly recoils.

“Well, stop,” he complains mildly, blushing. Since this morning this has been happening, because he just can’t get away, which you have been taking full advantage of.

“I can’t.”

He makes a sour face. “I mean stop looking.”

You grin. “Give me an hour to gather the strength.”

“We’ll be there in an hour.”

“That’s right!”

Levi doesn’t have a passion for decorating as long as things are in perfect order. This is why you tell him what you want where, down to exact inch, and he can do it all without a single margin of error.

He isn’t perfect of course, but he’s always determined to be.

The biggest thing you brought along (that wasn’t already here) was a mattress, and you don’t have a speck of dust in terms of decorations, but still.

Now that the wagon is empty (the largest piece of furniture you brought was a mattress, but still), your horses are secured in their stalls, and you’re done spending the better part of the late afternoon cleaning the cabin from ceiling to floor together, it’s time to breathe.

Levi leans back against the kitchen bar with his cravat undone around his neck. Seeing how he sweat through his shirt long ago, he has three whole buttons undone below his collar.

What are breaks, anyway?

He takes in the finished product and decides he’s pleased, but it still feels like a blank sheet to him, it being so new, so unused. What to do next?

That’s how you find him the next time you pop your head in from outside, dabbing your forehead of sweat with a handkerchief as white as the snow on the ground. You whistle.

He crosses his arms and looks away, looking unbearably coy. “What’s next?”

The possibilities have you rocking in the doorway. You simply can’t contain your energy.

“Well, it’s the golden hour, ‘Vi. Are you hungry?”

You both set up in the kitchen and get to work, however—odd cooking of all things soon becomes in his mind. Time isn’t counting down before work, and you have so many options, for once excluding watered down stew and bland military provisions.

He frowns as he sparks a match for the wood underneath the stove. The thunk of a knife on a cutting board, that’s you.

It hits him, sudden and severe, that he will be enjoying your cooking every day, at least when he wasn’t doing it. You always say he has a knack for making something out of nothing.

Earlier, you made fun of him for hopping back onto the counter in order to reach for a can of broth you had placed in the highest cabinet.

Whenever he pointed this out, you offered to get it for him, to which he scoffed: no, he obviously doesn’t need help. It was just a can.

An odd feeling turns over inside him.

Despite your earlier transgression, he still wanted to follow your recipe tonight. However, for as long as the cabin has sat empty before now, parsley, rosemary, and all manner of spices were overgrown beyond the clearing outside. While you were busy picking those, it was up to him to chop the lettuce.

Which quickly turns into a much more arduous task than he expected.

His personal dagger that followed him up from Underground had finally breathed its last years before, but he has always kept a collection (a habit that has followed him since childhood), including kitchen knives. Any weapon he can hold is an extension of himself.

Which is why it is frustrating him to no end that he can’t cut this damned lettuce right. Suddenly, he feels like a novice.

Brow puckered in irritation, he stops and measures the mass of filleted greens with one hand. With his other, he flips the blade backwards absentmindedly as he reconsiders his approach.

This isn’t flesh, and it most certainly isn’t a threat. The kitchen air is dense with steam from the wood burning under the stove, screwing with his head.

Come to think of it, he can’t remember the last time he took all this preparation into cooking. Maybe he’s been killing things for too long.

This is how you find him, asking, “How’s it coming?” to which he grunts noncommittally. It’s not coming along at all, which makes him even more determined to make some progress.

So, he lines the thin pointed edge up, and tries again with a flurry of quick chops. What results is a murder scene on the lettuce’s part.

After a long moment, he senses you watching over his shoulder, so he stops, waiting for your judgment.

“Baby, you’re stabbing them.”

“Tch.” He flicks the blade around once more, and shaves the cracked, brown pieces off the board and onto the napkin. “No, I’m cutting. There’s a difference.”

Then you’re closing in on him from behind, and loosely taking his hand that he grips the handle with. “Well, you’re cutting like it’s going to attack you,” you say softly. “There’s not gonna be that much resistance, either. Hold it looser, like this.”

Without thinking much of it, he slowly relaxes against you, tilting his head a tad to make room.

“I would’ve figured it out eventually,” he argues weakly. His chest flips in embarrassment.

“I know,” you reply. “But I’m already here, right?”

A nod. He decides to follow your direction if you insist on giving it, it’s just unthinkable that he would require help with a task like this. It’s a surprise, how complacent he has become.

From behind, he hears your breath hitch. The steam. Neither of you say anything, but you’re hasty in lowering the flames after that.

It takes two weeks to adjust when this vacation was to last five. By mid-January, the frost will have melted away enough for there to be work to do again. In the meantime, there is only the two of you.

No matter what environment he’s in, Levi pours his energy into a clean environment, but suddenly the environment started begging for his attention even more, like the loose gutter leaking due to melting snow.

What about the mess of leaves plastered to the roof, too? And all the damn weeds crawling up the side of the cabin closest to the forest like leafy tendrils?

So this is what average people get fussy over? he thinks. These are their worries? Their priorities?

Either way, they are yours to share.

Most things you do, you do together. You pull the weeds and rake the leaves, he fixes that dangly gutter on the roof, and while he was at it, replaces the rotted bricks in the chimney, and cleans soot out of the fireplace, and also—

Surprisingly, he begins to find immense satisfaction in getting these simple, but crucial tasks done.

The problems that sometimes erupt are even simpler, and even at those rare times where they aren’t, they’re still child’s play in comparison to the more hellish ones he’s used to.

Like the acorns. Levi got it into his head that he would clear the entire yard of anything but grass, including acorns. You started snatching up each and every one he tossed aside, plopped them in a wicker basket, and threw them back to the squirrels.

By their nature, however, the acorns never stop coming. It infuriated him. He only came to enjoy this chore once it became a routine each morning, following slow blinks and easy yawns.

To such an extent that he constructs a simple wooden bench for the rear side of the cabin. Most of the squirrels live in the forest, so you could throw your acorns out all you want without tiring yourself out.

It was a surprise, too.

You weren’t done thanking him even as you were shaving it down and polishing it, having been an apprentice to a woodworker in your youth. The result was more elegant than Levi could ever have dreamed of doing himself.

The best part of all however, was waking up together. You can always wake up together. Every morning carries a slow, gradual rise to awareness, and your warm lump under the blankets is always there for him to reach for. Plus, he can always, always grant your request for “five more minutes”.

The mornings are his favorite, to say the least.

The bedroom is simple, but larger than you’re both used to (despite your ranks, especially Levi’s, luxury simply doesn’t exist in the Corps). The perpetual smell of ceder, laundry, and more faintly, old paper always sits inside. The folded curtains, hued like thick cream, stay closed in the mornings to block out enough sunlight for you two to sleep in.

But Levi can never bring himself to. Instinct, or habit, always wakes him around dawn, and at dawn he still trains. It was unthinkable that he would allow himself to grow soft, so there was no argument.

In fact, you join him more often than not for the same stringent exercise routines you’re used to back at HQ. Sometimes you spar, and at others you hike into the forest while the sun is still creeping up into the sky, flooding the morning with purpley pinks. Even the birds are just waking up.

It’s not yet that time when you jolt awake this morning, or rather, late enough for it to be considered that.

Why? A freezing hand is brushing over your bare belly where your blouse fails to cover. An arm curls around your waist.

You whine sleepily and knock away the ice cube. “Hand’s cold,” you groan, eyes stubbornly sticking shut. “S’wrong, Lev’?”

No reply. You toss a look back to be greeted by what you can make out to be a blank look on his tired face.

He blinks, and then you blink, long and slow. “Was I not touching you anymore?”

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he mutters.

Levi doesn’t deny it, which means yes. In response, you tug his hand back around you, causing him to grunt.

Sometimes, one of you rolls away from the other during sleep, causing him to always snap awake shortly thereafter.

There is nothing else he’s still embarrassed over more than that.

“Hm. C’mere,” you whisper, and squirm over to face him. He tangles your legs together and puts his arm around you, even clinging—but not without another choked grunt.

Now that you’re more awake, you delicately tuck a piece of hair behind his ear. You’re close enough to feel his warm breath on your face.

“Is it your hand again?” you ask.

He huffs through his nose. “Go back to sleep.”

Ever since he had quite literally fixed the cabin’s every conceivable flaw, he has been floundering for more projects to complete.

He’s definitely compensating, but you don’t point this out.

You kind of expected it, which is why you approved at the beginning, but only as long as the land’s beauty didn’t cost his health.

“Levi.” you chuckle a little, blinking in the dark. “Don’t make me ask you to take a break for your break. The roof won’t leak for another hundred years ‘cause of you.”

“Hm. You’re welcome.”

“I mean it.” You brush your noses together in an eskimo kiss. A lazy peck on the side of his mouth, however, has your brow wrinkling. His skin feels rougher than usual, even scraped.

With another kiss, this one to his sharp jaw, he huffs again. “Not now. Sleep.”

“I’m not trying to start anything,” you huff back in pretend-offense. “I never see you with facial hair. I think it’s cute.”

“…I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever tried growing more? Like… a curly mustache.”

He snorts loudly. “Go back to sleep.”

“So that’s a no.”

His scoff is muffled by the pillow he buries his face into. “I just, haven’t had the time to shave it.”

You scrub the sleepiness from your eyes and sit up a little to peek down at him. With what little side-eye you’re given, you can tell he’s giving you attitude.

You lay your hand over his jaw, and lo and behold, rough hairs scrape your palm.

“‘Haven’t had the time’ my ass,” you grumble quietly. “I’ll do you one better than that.”

He buries his face deeper into the pillow. The most you can do now is scratch gently at where his undercut lays, stuck up in places.

What must be the sheer agony he feels from your offer makes him groan a little. “You do enough.”

“Never,” you say.

“Always.”

“Never.”

You go back and forth more and more insistently. He, just on principle, quits the game first, but doesn’t compromise, either.

So neither do you. You climb belly-down on top of his back so you’re stacked on top of each other like pancakes.

“Ngh.”

“Levi,” you whisper in his ear, but no response. His eyes are closed.

You gape softly. “Are you actually pretending to be asleep right now?”

Nothing.

You’re at your wit’s end. “Let me,” you whine into the curve of his shoulder.

Huffing, you bully your hands under his lean sides. “Or else.”

“You’re a brat,” he mutters fondly.

Your lips quirk, but that isn’t the response you wanted, so you scrape your fingers all over an infamous tickle-spot of his: right below his ribs where his belly muscles properly begin, and a huffy laugh immediately bursts from him.

Even though he could easily throw you off, he bullies a hand under himself to bat you away as his chest wracks with contained snickering. His squirming is neverending.

Not on your watch. In a frenzy, you wiggle your fingers all over his ribs.

Levi makes lots of grabs, but it’s too sensitive, and his hand feels like a broken paperweight. He scrambles for the sheets instead, airy, earnest laughing sounding from the pillow. You burst into a fit of your own to hear it.

“You brat,” he gasps, and in one solid movement finally throws you off, like a bull. On your side of the bed, thighs land on either side of your waist, his bony knees digging into your hands to keep you still.

Your laughter quickly dies out. New tension eats at the air as you stare up at each other through the darkness, at a stalemate. The only sounds are your rough breathing.

“Never,” you pant, and you mean that. “You never let me do anything for you.”

His sigh has a touch of defeat in it, which is what makes you cry out so loud to feel his freezing palms snake up under your shirt. You didn’t expect that.

Reflexively, your back bows away from him, until a small gasp is pulled from you. The way his hands slot up underneath your breasts makes his thumbs dangerously close your nipples.

“Fine,” he relents, and casually begins to roll his hips down into yours. “But let me do one more thing for you first.”

You do.

Levi has never allowed (or needed, really) you to do something as personal as shave his face. The fact that this is happening in the first place is a testament to how much he loathes the “rat shit” on his face, and how hard he’s been working lately.

“You not going to return the favor,” you tried to explain to him. “We’re not bartering.”

“That depends on whether you cut me or not,” he said, not inspiring a wave of anxiety to wash over you.

To accommodate for his height, you decided on taking the cushioned chair from the sitting room whose color could be easily mistaken for rotten plums. Sitting on his lap was just an added benefit, which is the only reason he told you, “Good idea,” instead of rolling his eyes and retrieving the chair anyway.

The basin you’re using is clean, white porcelain, in sharp contrast to the sick-looking state of the water once you’ve gotten started.

For good luck, because you’ll be prettified just to knick him on accident, you tap the side of the basin (ting-ting-ting) with each pass of the small blade—which also helps in case of stray hairs.

He looks personally insulted every time you do this.

“Don’t ruin the blade by tapping it with the edge, and you’ll chip the—”

“Shh,” you soothe.

The straight edge falling down around his mouth abruptly quiets him, but he always has plenty enough attitude for all hours of the day, in all situations.

He glares at you.

Ignoring him, you cradle his chin and sweep it downwards in long, fragile motions. With a soaked cloth, you dab away all stray hairs and cream.

Just a little longer.

So another hour, he likes to retort, all because you’re taking this job seriously—a grave statement considering you perform any and all tasks with care already.

“You just like to complain,” you quip lightly, although his scowl dissolved about a half-hour ago. As some point, he just started to watch you, and hasn’t averted his eyes since.

It’s a titillating feeling, his eyes like soft silver, always in your vision. The air feels like a fuse, eternally waiting for sudden ignition.

He traces the knobs of your spine beneath your shirt. “If I praise you, you’ll lower your guard, and there’s a higher chance you’ll make a mistake.”

Ting-ting-ting.

“My Levi just gets sweeter by the day, hm?”

He glares, just barely.

“Don’t clench your jaw like that, honey.”

He obeys.

You know he has a point, however, which motivates you to imagine this as more of a battle. A real fight leaves no room for mistakes, let alone praise.

He is sweet, but he gets clingier and clingier these days, which never fails to make you a little smug, warmly so. If things were different, you would enjoy it even more, the way he holds onto you (right now, literally).

Another fifteen minutes pass after you reach a perfect rhythm: a continuous loop of slow swipes, tap-tap-tapping the basin, then sweeping the rag over the spot you just completed. Only sometimes, you lather on some extra shaving cream.

With your thumb and forefinger, you hold the nape of his neck, not unlike in those moments you want to comfort him.

You’re in your own little world, and so is he, for his gaze hasn’t left yours since you don’t know when anymore. One moment, he was glancing in the mirror, but before you knew it, you couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t looking at you.

Your hold the same, you raise the razor once more, and the dream is shattered.

Just before the edge could brush down below his chin, Levi’s eyes snap wide. He seizes your wrist at once, causing you to jerk back.

To your shock, he still doesn’t let go; his shoulders rise and fall with his breaths, his grip so tight that you feel your bones grind.

“Levi,” you wince, “Stop! Too tight.”

His hand pulls backwards as if stung, and he retreats back in the seat, eyes wide and blank.

Sitting very still, he swallows as he rubs the bridge of his nose. “…Sorry. I’m sorry. You surprised me.”

You lean back as well, your heart pounding in your throat. After how hurt his hands seemed the night before, you underestimated his real strength.

You should know by now. He’s just always so kind to you.

Despite rubbing your smarting wrist, you shake your head frantically. “It’s okay.”

He blinks back into reality, still looking somewhere past you. “What did you say?”

Once upon a time, he couldn’t even stand being kissed on his neck. You should’ve known putting the razor anywhere near there without a warning would upset him.

“It’s okay,” you repeat. “I’m sorry, you’re safe. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I wasn’t thinking.”

He’s watching you with as much space put between you as possible. “Did I hurt you?”

“It’s okay.”

His eyes dart down to your wrist, which seems to answer for him. With his knuckles a peachy white on the armrests, he takes a swift breath through his nose. “Get up.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

You shake your head, your hands slapping down over both his hands. “No, I’m not hurt! It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was an accident.”

Levi doesn’t doesn’t so much as twitch to shoo you off, but he looks devastated, as if he injured you within an inch of your life.

“Here,” you say, voice high with pleading, and set your wrist in front of him.

You shake it a little. “Levi, please, look. I’m okay.”

“Okay…” He drags the word out skeptically, but you don’t move, and with some more time, he eventually reaches out to touch your wrist.

You don’t stop swearing up and down that this isn’t the catastrophe like he thinks it is. Even though it feels like a bruise is waiting to rise to your skin’s surface (which you don’t voice), you know you startled him. It was as accidental as an accident can get. He didn’t break you.

“I don’t wanna stop before I’m finished,” you tell him gently. “And if it makes you feel better, I know you won’t let it happen again.”

His chest rises with a long, even breath. “Forgive me,” he speaks against your wrist. He’s been kissing it.

In response, you glide it over his soft cheek, shaking your head. “Why? There’s nothing to forgive.”

He swallows heavily, his adam’s apple rising and falling with it. He does feel fine for you to continue, but he feels like a sitting safety hazard, too. Handling a razor shouldn’t be as dangerous as it usually is.

“Is it okay?” you ask.

“Worry about yourself.”

“I’m okay,” you tell him again, real close.

He sighs.

“Honey.”

“...I believe you.”

A tiny thrill moves your stomach. Your brows raise. “You’ll let me?”

“Are you asking me to repeat myself?” he retorts, but sheepishly. Turning his head, he presses a chaste kiss to your palm.

This warms your heart. The blade was left on the counter at some point, but you lift its handle now, and settle back in.

You take your sweet time lathering on the perfect amount of shaving cream below his chin. For all the agonizing, he needs very little work done here.

“You’re stalling,” he comments quietly, and bears his throat a little. He doesn’t sound annoyed, which means he’s nervous

Over the act itself or hurting you again, you don’t know, but he’s no longer looking at you.

You begin.

Once again holding his nape, you tip his chin where you need it, and eye the dark hairs that trail below one of his sideburns. Easy.

“Good,” you will say every so often. You don’t care that Levi isn’t a child, whether he needs to be praised or not. At least he won’t make a mistake for lowering his guard, not here. “Good job staying still for me.”

He shifts. Now you guide the razorblade downwards, over where his pulse thuds beneath his skin.

You pause when he takes your forearm. If he changed his mind, it’s not clear; he simply clicks his tongue and looks the other way.

“Lev’?”

“Keeping you steady.”

You are steady. He on the other hand could double for a wooden board.

His lips tug down. “It’s not you. You should know that.”

“I do,” you say, and you mean it.

Nothing but your breaths and the scrape of the blade’s thin edge breaks the air anymore. Other than the bump in his throat bobbing when he swallows, frightening you into pausing, you don’t hit any more obstacles.

His steady hold on your arm never completely leaves you. Eventually, he moves further to caress your bicep, the bare minimum of holding it, and near the end, it floats down to your waist.

“Done,” you murmur, scratching a little at his nape. You’re proud, and not only of him: your hand didn’t waver the whole time.

He glances towards the mirror, rubbing his face.

You hold your breath.

“You did well.”

Your heart leaps. Sighing evenly, you finally lean back and trace your thumb across his sharp jaw, ignoring the ache in your back for your efforts—even moreso, your wrist.

He looks perfect, skin soft and smooth again.

“So… Trust me now?” you quip lightly.

He shoots you a small, pinched look, and glances back at the mirror, now feeling his neck as well.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says quietly. “I told you, it was—”

“Joke, honey.” You scratch his undercut, then lean in to kiss his cheek. “Just a dumb joke.”

After you coerced him into letting you trim his hair too (to be fair, he had been complaining about it for a while; it had gotten to the point of him pinning up his bangs in the front as well as that fucking rat’s tail in the back), he coerced you into doing your hair.

“This is what you get,” he retorted, “if you’re gonna be such a saint.”

It wasn’t even his birthday yet. He expected, as usual, that you were concocting some secret plan in order to celebrate, so he wasn’t about to take all your pampering lying down.

So he used everything he knows about hair on you, and everything he knows about hair, he learned as a kid.

The tips of his ears burned when he saw your lips part, then your eyes sparkle in the mirror’s reflection.

“Wow, you made me look so beautiful.”

To which he flicked your ear. “Don’t insult yourself like that.”

Your beauty isn’t conditional.

Mercifully, the stakes didn’t rise any higher than that, no matter how you pounced on him twice later—first when he was coming upstairs after locking up the cabin, and then as he left the bathroom—to squeeze and rub all over his shoulders.

He won that one. A repeat of that night a few months ago—your magical hands lathering that fiery-cold lotion into every inch of his aching muscles—was cruelly appealing, but this amount of pampering was overwhelming all the same. You did enough without him asking.

So he didn’t need one, not today.

Now, the bedroom is full of darkness. He can’t see you; he can only listen to your slow breathing and feel you there, comfy and pliant in his arms.

Tonight is one of those nights when his mind refuses to slow down, let alone stop. Sleep is stubborn and far away, but at least relevant thoughts sit there for him to chew on to pass the time.

There is no other area in Levi’s life left where he doubts himself, besides here. It is crippling at the worst of times and a murmur at the back of his mind at the best. The worry of the hour tonight revolves around showing you how thankful he is, and how grateful.

He doesn’t doubt you: your resolve is strong, and it doesn’t falter, doesn’t drift, day by week by month by year. If you ever have a concern, he has utmost confidence that you will voice it, but this issue is firmly between Levi and himself.

He knows your feelings, but he doesn’t believe you understand the true gravity of his own. A wave washes over his chest when your soft, sleepy face crinkles into a smile when he’s the first thing you see upon waking up, and his throat tightens in moments of fleeting peace. Casual kisses at the most random of moments jolt him with electricity, and he knows now that he would risk too much if the worst of circumstances demanded it.

Earlier today, he meant what he told you: if what you did hadn’t especially caught him off guard—hurling his mind to a different time, place, and feeling—he wouldn’t have doubted pressing his throat against your blade, not for a moment.

But funnily enough, after all this time he still isn’t good at knowing when you’re joking.

There are words to convey his feelings when actions fail—of course there are. His word is his bond; they’re promises (even if not explicitly said), but he frowns deeply, because that isn’t the problem. Caring for you more than he has ever cared for another is a promise he can keep.

Sometimes, he feels real jealousy with the ease with which you annihilate him with your random compliments. Using words is important to you, but he struggles so deeply.

Could he? He gets the distinct feeling the world will end—that the sky will rain fire, or the ground will crack open the ground’s foundations—if he so much as parts his lips, but at the same time, he has never been more confident. Words stick to his tongue.

He whispers your name.

No reply. You don’t even stir. All you are is a warm, sleepy lump cradled back against his chest.

He presses his lips to your clean hair. You sleep as if you have hundreds of years at your disposal to do so, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Frowning under a sudden sense of nausea, he turns his head to cool his face with the deep navy pillow. His lips part, then shut, then part, like a fish moments away from suffocation.

Thunder is in his chest. Could he?

“I… love you,” he whispers.

But the world doesn’t end, it just feels like it does. Why?

It presses down on him so much he could shout, so, after holding his breath until his lungs burn, just in case, he shuffles away from you. The mountain of blankets are yours.

He turns over onto his other side, facing the curtained window.

Why does he have to catch his breath? Why is it so terrifying to let someone in?

Despite the thick veil of curtains, he knows what vast night exists beyond it. It is easier to believe that you both exist in a void where no one and nothing exists beyond it, than to take enough air into his lungs. He feels that same terrifying freedom as if he were just passing under the gate that divides the cage from the sky.

Words are binding, and as such, sometimes prisons. But you aren’t shackles, and this skip in his heartbeat isn’t chains. It took him so long to come to terms with that.

Even when he shuts his eyes, the world spins. If he was ever in range of sleep before, he’s certainly wide awake now.

Now, all he can think about is whether he locked the window before you both laid down to sleep.

It’s nearing the turn of the winter season when nature is the most dull, discolored muck it’ll ever be, with a sky like wet cottonballs. The chill day by day is so ferocious it bites through layers of wool and cotton.

Fittingly, you and Levi share an unspoken conversation, and come to an unspoken fact: the two of you can’t stay here annually. You communicate in little looks—the way Levi visibly grows more antsy, or the pinch in your expression when looking out into the fog in the mornings. Neither of you comment on fixing up the house anymore, and his sleeping patterns have worsened again.

Whether you can or can’t becomes a moot point when the cabin is indeed heaven, but all the while, hell waits beyond the mouth of the forest.

Your duty (especially his) waits, freedom waits, and the turbulent future waits as well. Your responsibilities are a burden you could, and would not, give away.

The way things used to be, Levi’s duty was his sole cause for living. While he’s never stated it outright, you’re confident you’re important to him—but more severe matters take precedent without question.

Like a weed, even guilt has been growing in you, not just for Levi alone. You’ve spent more years as a soldier now than you’ve been alive (the consequence of entering the Cadet Corps as young as you did ).

Neither of you can live in good conscience in this bubble for long, where no fighting, blood, or death exists. You understand the way Levi has always felt now, if to a lighter extent—how it all feels too good.

You feel, you know that while you’re away, you will yearn for this the rest of the year just as much as your very first day without it.

Worst of all, neither of you—even you—can’t promise that you one day will return. There are many promises you wish you could speak into existence, but you must keep in mind that they’ll never come to pass.

For instance… you love him. So much as glancing over at him on the sun-speckled porch after supper, his knees folded up to his chest in what has come to be his chair (when you’re alone, he doesn’t feel the need to appear so prim and proper), makes you overcome with adoration. That’s all it takes.

Levi has taught you that you don’t need to speak a word to hear it loud and clear, but you want to.

The yearning to make sure he knows worms around in your chest madly, but you’re confident he’d never hear of it. Seeing how you’ve never heard it before, and the pressure he feels where normal people wouldn’t, you fear endlessly how he would react.

Your cuticles are swollen from picking at them in all your nervousness.

You came to this conclusion about staying at the cabin at the end of December, near his birthday (his supposed birthday, anyway).

The day itself turns out to be the perfect distraction. You couldn’t get away with stealthily keeping awake until the sun crawled above the horizon so you could surprise him with breakfast, nor could you sneak away before he woke. Impossible in any circumstance, really, so either way he was out of bed before you could even surprise him a different way.

Infamously, Levi loathes celebrating his birthday—”What’s so special about the day I was born?” he likes to retort. “It’s just another day.”—but that has never mattered to you.

Last night, you prepared in advance. As soon as you shoot awake in bed, you dash downstairs while still half-asleep to slam the apple fritter in the oven, and put away the tea he already brewed in favor of the more precious tea leaves you had saved for him.

You take great care in everything you do, especially the tea (down to counting down the seconds it needed to steep in your head), then a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, buttery toast, avocado from the closest market, and even sliced ham. Ham!

It’s going overboard for sure, even for you, but he deserves it.

Levi’s footfalls abruptly pause upon the sound of the back door shuttering closed.

You can’t help but grin. The sweet, greasy smell of cooking meat must have spread throughout the whole downstairs at this point.

Then, rapid clicks of his boots against the creaky wood erupt until he appears in the doorway.

“Good morning,” you chirp over your shoulder. “You know what day it is?”

Scoffing, he marches right over and crushes you in his embrace from behind.

You laugh despite the ache in your knees; you’ve been stooped over a hot stove for the better part of the morning.

His lips make a trail of kisses from your jaw to your shoulder, saying, “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“I thought I had to?” You touch his hair. “That’s news to me.”

He blinks down at the counter, then abruptly lays down wetter kisses. “How broke did you go?”

You melt against him and make more room for his teeth, making you shiver. “Levi.”

“Tell me, sweetheart.”

“No.”

His hands slip beneath your top, humming softly in satisfaction to find you aren’t wearing a bra.

“Levi,” you say, softer.

He massages your soft breasts into his palms, pushing, then squeezing them together.

Your eyes flutter as heat pools down below your waist. “Honey, I’m not done.”

“I’m thankful,” he murmurs, ignoring you, and rolls your nipples under his rough thumbs.

You swallow a whine. “Don’t you want to eat?” you ask thinly.

No answer. He’s busy suckling a reddish mark into your neck.

He’s very convincing. Maybe letting breakfast cool isn’t such a terrible idea.

Delicately bracing the center of your chest, one of his hands slips down. Its rough callouses feel immensely satisfying against your belly.

Just when it (surprisingly) looks like he’s going to go along with eating after all, his palm follows a path down between your thighs.

You gasp softly. One fingertip sweeps continuously through your slit, beneath your panties.

“All this is for me, isn’t it?” he says conversationally into your ear. “Of course I want to eat.”

“Fuck,” you whisper, taking support from the counter to rock into the fingers just lightly circling your clit. “Fuck, Levi.”

With no hesitation, he cages you in against the counter so you feel a hint of hardness pressed against your backside from behind. Heavier, hot breaths puff against your neck.

Suddenly, you don’t care if everything is ice cold by the time he’s finished with you. He can take you anywhere, and the idea of it happening right here, makes your heartbeat throb in your clit.

“Let me—”

“Yes.”

With an amused huff, he rubs you with practiced fingers and pulls away, making you whine.

Now turned to face him, his middle finger lands on your bottom lip, tugging it down slightly. You feel it’s wet.

Maybe you should’ve worn lipstick.

Levi’s eyes gleam as your tongue darts out for a taste. “You’re so messy,” he comments, guiding you towards the dining table. “C’mere. Let me clean you up.”

Shocked by his forwardness, your stomach jumps as you’re bent over the wooden table—which you already set with placemats and silverware. Your bottom half is in flames.

“Thought you were eating,” you hear yourself say.

“That too.”

As your shirt comes off, “Real funny, Captain.”

He ignores you. The moment you sense him dropping to his knees, taking your sticky panties down along with him, your breath jumps.

“Exactly.”

A tiny whine is stolen from you as his hot breath hits your pussy, constructing sharply from the cool air.

He kisses the backs of your spread thighs. Lithe hands spread you open. “If you’re gonna make us celebrate, I wanna celebrate my way, and not hear you complain about it.”

He doesn’t bother teasing. His lips press to your fluttering hole, before he begins lapping at your cunt.

Levi, not teasing you.

“Ah!” you gasp from the bottom of your lungs. A hot, wet tongue pushes through your slit, which is now properly soaked.

You grope for something—anything to steady yourself. You manage his soft hair, and a groan of approval vibrates your clit.

Bright pleasure vibrates through you, and doesn’t stop. Hell if you know where his sudden confidence is coming from, because while sex with Levi never fails to blow you away, he’s making you go cross-eyed.

The sound of slurping sounds from below, made louder by the way he holds you completely open.

You jolt from the overstimulation, your hole twitching around nothing.

You shudder, begging, “Please, please,”—you feel so empty.

You want to ask what’s gotten into him, but the words evaporate as soon as his heavy tongue pushes into your tight cunt.

Instinctively, you tighten with a soft cry, which only encourages him to start fucking you with it.

He keeps your twitching thighs spread, and moans deep into you. Even more instinctively, you pull him by his hair, forcing his tongue. The sound that results has you gaping into the polished oak table. Something clatters to the floor.

Levi’s hips twitch forward into nothing but his zipper. He’s forced so close he’s halfway suffocated, but he loves it—he loves to be used for you to feel good.

It’s a mystery to him how you really believed he wouldn’t want to fuck you with his tongue, especially on his birthday.

His favorite part is your sweet, heavy taste—he simply can’t get enough—or how you cough out a cry in surprise when three fingers sweep your clit up and down in swift c’mere motions. Maybe it’s your warm, pillowy cunt squeezing his tongue, or the way two of his fingers easily bury inside next to it. He curls them up snug against your favorite spot.

“Right there,” you gasp. “Fuck, don’t stop!”

Breathing hard, he smacks a kiss to your swollen pink clit before giving you his mouth again. He loves you like this, and he loves you. His heart skips a beat.

“I’m already…” You moan, your tone a warning.

It sets him on fire, the way you need him.

“Ca-Captain, I’m not gonna last if you don’t stop.”

His cock gives a hard, heavy throb. He moans loudly and pulls his mouth off, but his fingers stay curled inside. They piston in and out slowly, but deep enough for your pussy to swallow in his second knuckles.

With his free hand he takes a handful of your ass, and spreads you open.

“You don’t wanna come, pretty girl?” he asks, thick with that teasing tone you know so well.

“No!” you cry, and realize what you just said. “Wait, yes, please please—”

His balls ache. He wets his swollen lips before leaving forward, swiping over your much tighter hole.

You wail, “Levi!”

“Oh, yeah. It’s not up to you, is it?”

His fingers slow, then stop, making you keen into the wood. Your pink cunt is drooling for him.

It’s—It’s your birthday,” you whimper, feeling betrayed by yourself. “You can do anything you want to me.”

Working your soft thighs and ass in his palms, he hums, “Uh-huh.”

Once again he rises to his feet, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.

His hand lands on the center of your back to keep you steady while he makes quick work of his belt and trousers. As it clinks, then zips, he can feel your dazed eyes on him, watching.

“Fuck,” you sigh, dragging it out. “You’re so hard.”

“Turn around for me.”

You do. With his help, your backside lies on the table edge with you bent in such a way that your ankles rest on his shoulders.

Your wet cunt is completely exposed to him. The cool air on your clit makes you twitch.

You gaze up at his messed hair and red cheeks, stricken by how good he looks. Between his plump thighs his cock is bright red and swollen, beaded with cum.

He holds your hip, keeping you together. “Are you comfortable?’

You nod, feeling dopey, and reach to guide his round cockhead past your rim. The push is easy, filling you to the brim. Perfect.

Your head falls back. “L-Love your dick, fuck. You’re perfect.”

A bitten moan rumbles in his chest. Tight.

He pushes and pulls by shallow inches. “Is all this really that surprising to you?”

“This?” Your hand grabs his. You reach with the other, feeling where you’re connected. “No. Just, you’re not usually—” you search your dizzy mind for a word, “So much.”

It dawns on him what you mean, and his shallow thrusts pause. “D’you want me to stop?”

You manage to gape. “Don’t you dare.”

This position won’t let him kiss you, so he kisses low on your thigh instead. Even here he tastes sweat and sex, all traces of last night’s shower gone.

“Guess I’m in a good mood.”

He takes you right there, from short and shallow to soon pistoning his cock in and out of you in long, hard thrusts—so much so the table lurches several times (more metal clatters, and something swoops to the floor). In order to keep you close, he takes your hip like a vice and fucks you with abandon.

You encourage him louder and louder— “Yes! Yes, fuck—!”—until his jaw slackens. Your pussy, soft like silk, starts to squeeze him.

“Fucking perfect,” he groans.

He folds you completely in half, one leg now dangling high, and it changes the angle.

A flurry of hard, wet thrusts, and you come.

A shiver rocks his whole body. As your pussy gushes, pleasure like liquid heat overtakes him, and he fucks his cum into you soon after.

“Do you know what you do to me?” he wants to ask. “Do you realize yet how perfect you are?”

As usual, he can’t muster the words. In the come-down, the only sound throughout the sun-bathed kitchen is both of your heavy breathing.

From where your chest heaves upon the crooked table, like a model for some erotic artist, both your thighs tremble.

“Your breakfast,” you croak, grieving.

It’s hard not to smile. As he wipes down your inner thighs with a wet rag, he corrects you: “Brunch.”

“All my blood, sweat n’ tears… gone to waste.”

He tuts softly, and lugs you up. “It hasn’t been left out in the rain, has it?”

“No…” But you don’t sound convinced.

“It’s fine. Just don’t expect me to eat off this table.”

You have a smartass retort for that, he can feel it since he did, technically, eat off this table… but you’re too spent. Your chest only drops with a dramatic sigh.

After a much more thorough cleanup (including a change of clothes), Levi takes good care to restore (what is now) lunch to its former glory.

He’s proud of himself. Granted, all he’s had this morning is some tea, but his mouth waters from the smell.

Out on the porch, its overhang protects you both from the surprising amount of sun breaking through the silvery cloudcover this far into Yule.

However, the sharp air remains stubbornly chilled. In case you shiver, he retrieves a blanket that you drape over your lap.

In your respective cushioned chairs, you eat with your plates tucked in your laps.

“You, in a good mood, on your birthday,” you’re musing, that stupidly warm smile on your face. “That’s a first.”

Levi grunts. You couldn’t be more right; anything resembling a good mood and his birthday mingle like oil and water. There’s a one in 365 chance that it’s even accurate, but he genuinely doesn’t see what needs celebrating anyway.

He blames his actions the night before. It weighs on him heavily still, in the lightest of ways.

Cautiously, he pushes his cut of seared ham around on his wooden plate. He prefers everything to be separated, but now that that’s done, and the toast and eggs leave the faintest trace of crumbs, he still doesn’t feel quite right about it.

When he tasted the apple fritter, he had to pause and reel. Admittedly, he had never had it before; no matter if he’s given the opportunity, he’s quite picky when given a choice.

But how could he act wary? And it was fantastic.

Has he ever tried ham?

In that chaotic space of time before Maria fell but after he left the Underground behind, meat was much more of a commodity, but he was, and still is, a soldier. You like to say being a Scout specifically is a thankless job by everyone but the dead, and you would be right.

Underground “meat” on the other hand was almost always crawling with something, despite the fact that it always cost a fortune in comparison to most people’s incomes.

He supposes he’s a vegetarian, albeit against his will. Hange has a tendency to randomly blurt out facts about anything, and he’s heard that if a stomach isn’t familiar with ingesting a certain type of food, it usually can’t learn.

He hopes that isn’t true, for your cooking’s sake.

“Is it good for you?” he asks, mostly so you don’t point out his reluctance.

You fork more eggs into your mouth, nodding happily. “I’m very confident in my cooking ability, thank you.”

“Good. You should be.”

Your gaze flickers down to his plate. “It won’t bite you, you know. If you try it and decide you don’t like it, that’s fine. More for me.”

He grunts and leans back, one leg now crossed over the other. How would you know it’s his first time?—You must have a damn good eye for him.

“You shouldn’t’ve said that,” he remarks, flipping his fork backwards absentmindedly.

You scowl. “Absolutely not. At least try it first.”

“Remind me. Whose birthday is it?”

“You asshole,” you laugh, biting your lip to make it stop. “I don’t need any more.”

“But do you want more?”

Silence.

“...Tell me,” you set your fork down, “in exact words what you mean by that.”

These back-and-forths between you two are his purest form of entertainment.

“Are words so important?” he replies.

He sees you—nibbling at your lip like that. You like what he’s implying.

“It may be up to you, it’s your birthday, but at least let me suck you.”

His chest rises.

Your voice turns into silk. “You caught me off guard earlier. I deserve much better than that, don’t you think?”

A challenge. Setting aside the way his lower half stirs, he leans over and practically drops his plate into your hands.

“We’ll see.”

—

You suck, lick, and fuck him so good that you actually put him to sleep.

Well, partly.

After making good on your word, you let him fuck you to tears under a hot shower spray, but getting clean turned out to be irrelevant in the end. Soon afterwards, as naked as the day you were born, you shyly asked him, “Do you maybe wanna drink, this one time?”

And, after some thought, he said yes. It takes more booze than it’s usually worth for it to do anything for him, and when he does drink enough, he can’t be on his guard like usual. The anxiety of that is usually enough to take away his buzz.

Besides, after growing up seeing boozehounds everywhere he went—the (sometimes) uncharacteristic fits of rage, the burning stink, and the zombie-like idiocy about them—he has some convictions about drinking. If anyone asks, Levi doesn’t get drunk.

Opportunities always present themselves of course, but he only makes it a goal to get drunk on special occasions. That included tonight.

He popped the cork off a bottle of scarlet merlot. The mood was comfortable, you drank slowly, and you enjoyed yourselves. Even him.

You grew slow and slurry not two glasses in, so he dutifully refilled them (until you’ve had enough). It took him longer to get to where you were, but when the world finally began to narrow in that comforting way, the inexplicable warmth creeped in, and his mind began to buzz, he was with you.

Time stretched as you sipped the syrupy alcohol in front of a crackling fireplace. Mostly you chatted, but you also climbed on top of him there, and when it got late, he draped a thick, downy blanket around your bare shoulders.

Later enough for your bedroom to be an abyss, Levi twitches to awareness from a bottomless sleep in a stinking bed between stuffy sheets. He kicks them off as soon as he gets some handle over his leaded limbs, and rubs his eyes.

Sleeping so deeply, and waking with no memory of how he got somewhere is unheard of for him. His head is even still buzzing a little, despite the nausea.

Shit, is his first intelligent thought. I sleep when I drink.

It would be terribly easy to sleep some more. Only, when lazily reaching across the bed, he finds your warm, lumpy pillow, but not you.

Suddenly he’s wide awake, stone-cold sober, and shooting up in bed. You’re not here.

He tosses a look over. The bathroom is dark.

You’re probably getting water.

Anxiety tears him up anyway. He pulls himself out of bed.

With fresh briefs, an open shirt, and a pair of pants on, he paws his empty pockets.

He fishes through a pair of his boots. He’s very aware that carrying a weapon in these circumstances is the furthest thing from necessary, but his judgment is garbled—another reason he dislikes drinking.

After the dim hallway comes the stairs. He lets the banister guide him going down.

You’re getting water. The kitchen is cast in gold by a lantern set on the island, joined by the slaps of your bare feet padding around inside.

His anxiety blows away. After the last step he heads in your direction like a man on a mission.

Sleepy-eyed, you jerk your head up from your glass of water and smile just in time for Levi to wrap you in his arms from behind.

He sighs softly. Better. As you sway together, he makes like a baby possum and refuses to let go.

“Hm,” you murmur, relaxing against him. “Hi.”

“You left,” he speaks into your neck. You stink deliciously of sex. “Don’t do that.”

You seem to find this adorable. As you pet his hair, his annoyance melts away.

“I was only gone a second,” you say. “I was thirsty. What if I died of dehydration?”

“No,” vibrates against your shoulder.

“No?” you laugh. “Did you miss me that much?”

The drink makes his tongue loose. “You have no clue, do you?” Squeeze. “Jus’ don’t go anywhere I can’t follow.”

Your heart leaps into the sky. A grin breaks onto your cheeks as an obnoxious Awww falls off your lips. “You’re so fucking adorable, ‘Vi.”

You try to twist around in his arms, but he mistakes this as you pulling away, and only tightens his hold.

If that’s how it’s going to be, you go completely lax a moment, sending you both nearly toppling over.

As you wanted, he huffs against your hairline and pins you to him by your shoulders and middle, clinging.

“You’re the biggest brat I know.”

“Did you hear me? Adorable?”

He sighs. “I never know what to say when you call me shit like that.”

“You don’t have to say anything. You’re just adorable.” You hug his strong forearm that’s pinned across your chest. “With a heart of pure gold, who anyone would be lucky to know. The most brave, most handsome, most pretty—”

He makes another unhappy sound and reaches to clamp your mouth shut, which you don’t allow to happen.

“My Levi,” you sing-song. “Whom I adore.”

“This is torture,” he speaks softly. “Torturing me, after I made all this effort.”

“Effort to keep me from getting a drink of water?” you cackle.

“You don’t need—”

“And not torture—”

“—water, I’d get you some—”

“Levi, you’re being—” you laugh—

“—if you were really dehydrated.”

—so hard your sides twist into cramps. You laugh until there’s no air left in your lungs, so your belly merely wracks. At the same time, tears prick at the corners of your eyes.

You can feel him smiling softly against your hairline.

Oh, what you’d give to see.

“Levi,” you shake out the last giggles. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

He freezes, whatever face he was making slipping off his face. His stomach drops out of existence. “What?”

Did he not hear you right? He retreats backwards, causing you to spin back around.

“W-What did you say just now?” he asks again, no louder than a whisper.

That sober look on your face. He knows it was real, what you just said. The silence, so thick you couldn’t pierce it with a hacksaw, proves it and proves it.

Your mouth opens, shuts. “Levi.”

“What?” he asks again, now demanding. It’s hard to breathe suddenly. His face heats. He feels himself tense, as if for attack.

“I—I don’t know.” You blink, and that’s shock painted on even your own face. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know?” he snaps, motionless. Even his shoulders rise and fall with his breaths.

He doesn’t know why he’s growing so upset. Loathing festers inside, and the more upset he becomes, the more it grows.

“It just slipped out,” tumbles out of your mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” You stall, at a loss.

In the third person, he feels himself crashing through the floor outside his body, dropping out from underneath himself.

He takes another step, this time measured. A silent feeling screams for him to escape this situation, but another plants his feet to the floor.

His silence must be telling.

“No!” you exclaim, lips moving rapidly to explain. “I mean, I c-couldn’t help it. I wasn’t thinking, it just…” Your eyes glitter with tears. “I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, Levi doesn’t even trust his feet to hold him up. He is totally lost for words.

In the doorway that feeds into the sitting room, he discreetly holds onto it. His other hand lies limply by his side, nails digging into his palm.

“Wait,” you call from the same place, voice soft. “Are you going to leave?”

A beat passes before he shakes his head, disbelieving. What do you mean by that?—Do you have so little faith in him? His dry mouth stops him from asking.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

It’s hard to swallow. “...We should sober up.”

And so he retreats into the darkness, stopping briefly when the backdoor enters his sight. As much as he craves the fresh air, going that route would confirm every one of your fears.

He scours his memories. An empty bedroom sits on the ground floor, he remembers.

You insisted on remodeling that room, but inside, it still might as well be a sealed box besides the pathetic amount of moonlight pushing past the blinds, casting shadows.

He twists the knob all the way to shut it as quietly as possible, then staggers to the corner attached to the same wall as the door, and slides down into a sit.

He knows he’s being pathetic. As a kid, it was a good technique he used to hide. As a man, it lets him get an advantage over enemies. You’re not a threat.

He wrestles with his head silently and folds his knees to his chest while he waits for your steps. You’ve never invaded his space in the past, but tonight, he can’t be confident.

Tonight. He’s stuck on that all the sudden. Just a few hours ago was his birthday, but that feels so far away now.

Of course, you were drunk. That’s what troubles him. There’s a thin line, he’s found, between the truth slipping out of a drunk person, and saying things they don’t mean. It’s better he doesn’t trust a thing until you’re both sober enough to know for sure.

Partly, he wants to hear you say that it was a mistake. You’ve realized that his suspicions were correct: he really did trick you by seeping so much good out of you to take for himself. To make himself believe that he is not a murderer, a thief, and a bastard. How he needed your goodness because there is not a single bit of good inside himself, how he is so selfish that even without realizing, he deceived you.

How could he do that while you’re in the middle of this losing war against the Titans? you would ask him. You realize that he’s unlovable. He is so fucking unlovable in fact that he’s better off dying in battle tomorrow so at least he will be used for what he’s meant to be used for.

Partly, he wants you to slam the door open so hard it punctures the drywall, yank him up by his shoulders and scream in his face how foolish he’s being. Yes, he’s abnormal and far from perfect, and yes this world is a nightmare but the way you feel makes all that cease to matter.

You will pour your heart out to him and recite the specific moment you realized you love him, with tangible reasons he can replicate. You will promise to return to his side safely every day for the rest of your lives.

And partly, he doesn’t want to know.

His head pounds. He closes his eyes.

He used to hate, much more than he does these days, that he can’t remember a time his mother ever spoke the same. Granted, he doesn’t remember more than a few glimpses of his childhood—maybe because of the hunger and all the shit he survived—but either way, it’s more reassuring to imagine she never told him because she never needed to.

He isn’t naive, he knows that not all parents love their kids, but she did. He knew, without her having to say anything, that she felt that way.

His train of thought crashes against the sound of wood whining, signaling your ascent up the stairs.

Staring straight ahead, he breathes carefully and tames his hell of emotions.

Why does he feel this way? He said it too, just when you had no way of knowing he did. Emotion raged inside him then as well, but not as intensely as this.

He feels like a little kid staring up at that cold bed. Even though it crawled, and the stench hung thick in the air, he begged for her when she wasn’t conscious to hear, and never would be again.

He gnaws on his thumb. He doesn’t want to remember that.

It occurs to him, he didn’t think his feelings would be requited, deep down.

It’s a mystery to him how love can fit into this world at all, much less there be some reserved for someone like him—how you have room in your golden heart for someone like him. It takes a flick of the wrist to swing a knife, and it’s an automatic reaction to hit when you’re struck, but he’s an amateur with the rest.

Being born in violence, raised in it, trained at it to perfection—it just doesn’t add up. He thinks he will die in it as well.

But he knows his feelings for you by now. He knows most of all that it’s impossible to put them to bed, let alone destroy them.

He hugs himself, hissing softly. Because of everything else, he didn’t realize he was freezing.

He has scarcely felt so sober in his entire life. In fact, if a pin dropped in another room, he would hear it—he’s that alert—but he wants to give you more time.

To be sure, he thinks, knowing he’s putting the confrontation off. Partly, he doesn’t want to face you. But then, there’s another.

—

The floorboards whining under his steps on the second floor drone like alarms. He knows you know he’s coming now—there’s no way you’re asleep.

Terror thuds in his ears as he stares at the front of the bedroom door, willing himself. He is wrestling with thoughts he defeated a long time ago: whether he should knock, how to carry himself once inside, how you’re likely to react, and—

The turn of the knob is so sudden he locks up for an attack before the door whines open. Immediately, his eyes are on the floor.

“Are you…?”

Whether you’re about to say ‘mad’, ‘sober’ or ‘okay’—his next question is the same: “Are you?”

It rings in the air. You apologize before you sit down on the window sill.

His lips tug down. Whenever you apologize unprovoked, he thinks it’s for you simply existing, whether you know that or not.

“I’m so, so sorry. We can just act like it ever happened.”

He forces his lips to move. “Quit apologizing.”

“Why…?“ You look stumped. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear it.”

He stares from the doorway, back straight. In some way you’re right, but is it also possible you didn’t think he’d feel the same?

The doorframe is his only support. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you just… don’t.” It's a statement that sounds more like a question.

“That’s confusing.”

“Well sometimes,” you sigh, “you’re confusing, too. When I said it, you physically left the room to get away from me. Now here you are, making me feel stupid because I thought that meant you didn’t want to hear it.”

You’re extremely hurt.

His chest is cold. “It wasn’t you, it’s what you said. Without any warning. Then you said you didn’t mean it.”

“Oh.” The word sounds punched from you. “That’s not what I—”

His teeth grind. “How exactly did you expect me to react?”

You look down at your feet.

“I would be doing anything other than standing here if I didn’t—also feel that way.”

“I’m sorry,” you whimper. “Fuck, I’m crying.” You furiously wipe your eyes. “I meant it slipped out. I guess I just think about it a lot, s-so that’s what happened.”

“You think about it…?” he trails off, genuinely confused.

“I didn’t wanna put pressure on you. And you always—” you gesture vaguely, “—you always say stuff without saying it.”

He waits for you to go on, but you’re busy collecting yourself, wiping your eyes.

“You surprised me,” he offers, blandly.

“I know.”

But you weren’t the first to say it. It was a slip of the tongue on your part, even though your feelings are just as true as his.

For him, it was premeditated. He was sure.

For you two, this is a serious argument. He feels the need to get you both on the same page.

“You're wrong,” he tells you.

“What do you mean?”

For as long as he’s stood watching you, he looks away. “I said you’re wrong.”

Your lips part, moving, but not understanding. “Which part?”

“The last part.”

“A-About saying stuff?”

“Second to last,” he snarls.

“Pressure,” you sound out. “You said it?”

His cheeks heat, he’s excruciatingly embarrassed. “…Yeah.”

You look at him like he’s just grown a second head. “…Well, then—when? If you did, I would’ve heard you.”

“No. You wouldn’t have.” He shifts his footing and frowns at the look on your face. “Don’t make me say it… it’s embarrassing.”

A long, arduous silence thickens the air again. Hopefully you gather what happened—which mortifies him much more than if he just told you outright, making it seem as if it was casual for him.

Then he hears a heavier sniff, and his feet lurch into step. An ache permeates his fingers—which he notices only now—from knuckling the doorframe.

He paces over and sits down next to you, leaving space. Mostly for his own peace of mind.

“Levi… Why in the world would you do a creepy thing like that?”

He’s shocked to hear you sound coy. You’re even making a face when he glances over.

As usual, he doesn’t get the joke. He doesn’t have a good answer, either.

“J-Just to see.”

“See?”

“What would happen.”

You nod a little, expression even again. “When?”

“…What is this, an interrogation?”

“Well, for all I know…” you smirk a little, “…you said it two years ago, before we started dating. Or four years, when you were—”

“I get it,” he cuts in, scowling. “Quit guessing. They’re bad guesses, anyway. You’d never figure it out.”

“I doubt that.”

“Of course you do.”

You scoff, in mock-hurt, picking at your cuticles in that nervous way you never quit doing.

You’re smiling a little. He sees its radiance out of the corner of his eye. “And unlike me… you were sober,” you guess.

He clutches his hands into soft fists. “So? You can say anything while sober.” His lips press together. “Can’t you?”

“Yeah.”

With no room for urgency, you lay your head on his shoulder, causing him to stiffen.

He doubts he makes a good pillow right now; he’s so tense that if a brick was thrown at him, it would break into pieces.

It’s not like you to sit in silence—it doesn’t even feel like the conversation is over—but each moment drags. It feels like a long feather is stroking his insides, not because of what you’ll say, but the very words themselves.

“I love you,” you whisper, and he sucks in a swift breath.

He is at a crossroad: breathing hard, forcing control, or not breathing at all.

What this feeling is, is magma boiling up inside him and burning him alive, and he squeezes his eyes shut so tight it aches because he doesn’t know why he can’t just get over himself and be normal—to react normally to those words.

But it’s not too much.

Obediently, you raise your head to give him space. The look on his face is unimaginably pained, even tortured.

“...Is it okay?” You whisper this, too.

He swallows, and looks away. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I don’t know either, but I don’t care.”

It takes him several long moments before he can trust his voice. “C-Could you say it again? I didn’t hear you.”

“Yes, I can.” A smile is in your voice. “I love you. I love you, Levi.”

“Are—Are you sure?” he asks, voice raw.

Your breath shakes. “Yes.”

“Make sure.”

You humor him even though you can probably tell that he’s overwhelmed. It suddenly, just—sounds so good to hear it. So fulfilling.

You say it and say it, finally breathing life into what this is and giving it away fearlessly—or as fearlessly as one can speak despite their trembling breath.

While making knots out of his trousers, he shudders his own breath. If you touched him right now, he might explode.

You actually love him. Someone can, and it’s you.

“I love you,” you say, and gently, so gently, your hand lands atop his own.

“Levi.” You mouth at his hairline. “I love you. I love you with all my heart.”

He makes a face, teeth grinding so he doesn’t either snort, or give into shaking.

“You’re so fucking sappy, it makes me sick,” he rasps, pulling away.

You have a pretty laugh. As your hand moves to pull away, he abruptly takes it, and still not looking at you, pulls it to his lips.

That look on his face, you’re conflicted on. A deep frown tugs his lips down, and that wrinkle between his brow is more pronounced than ever, but he’s blushing all the way to the tips of his ears. Silvery blue eyes are open, shining softly.

“Levi.”

He pauses with your hand, as if contemplating something, before giving it the smallest of squeezes and letting it go.

You feel the need to preface, “You don’t need to say anything.”

So he doesn’t say anything. For a moment.

“It’s difficult for me.” His voice shakes, and he feels pathetic.

“I know.” You touch his shoulder. “But I know how you feel… you know?”

Nod.

Your expression reminds him of a tired dove. “I’ll be in bed, okay?”

Relief. He nods again. He’ll join you later, but he needs time to calm down, and to think.

He has never been happier in his whole life.

—

At the turn of the new year, your last days, you climb up on horseback behind Levi most mornings and spend afternoons going wherever the wind takes you, however long you want, doing anything.

Endlessly, forever, for both the first time and possibly your last.

That last evening midway through January, your cheeks still hurt from smiling so much. That day, you had stumbled upon the largest field of sunflowers either of you had ever seen and had a picnic, despite the sleet still layered on the ground.

Levi was quieter than usual, but if he wasn’t enjoying himself, even the slightest bit, he would’ve found some way to complain—which never happened.

The eternal struggle even momentarily drifted from your mind, which you had been wrestling: this war, its demands, its aftermath, and its end (if it will ever come). Slavery to the fight.

It was your idea to make your last evening last as long as possible by spending most of the night up talking and rating a ton of teas.

He didn’t have a single issue staying awake; you were the one who dozed off with your head propped up on your hand during the twilight hour.

Now he nudges open the stiff bedroom door with his back, taking care not to let your feet bump the doorway, nor for your neck nod off his shoulder.

After he lays you down in bed, you moan softly in your sleep and roll onto your side, away from him.

His lips quirk, just a little. You make it hard to help himself.

As soon as he’s curled up behind you, tangled in the sheets, you roll again and all but plant him on his back to lay your head down.

Nobody says anything. Maybe it just comes naturally to your sleeping self.

Levi’s lips quirk again.

He wants to sleep. Nights of solitude never truly bother him unless you’re sleeping peacefully; it’s an especially excruciating pit of loneliness that forms after an hour or two of finding patterns in the cracks in the ceiling. Only the guarantee that he will be ready for any possible emergency that concerns you (may it come or not) reassures him.

He can feel it. Sleep won’t come.

Until the mourning doves begin their crooning, his mind wanders around in pointless directions. Dawn’s grey light creeps in.

He sighs softly to himself to the tune of your soft snores. There’s still much to get done before you can properly go. He might as well get a headstart.

You’ll need the rest. Your mood is twice as antsy as his if you don’t get enough sleep compared to when he doesn’t sleep at all, which is saying something.

So he climbs out of bed.

By the time the sun has properly risen in the sky, Levi is laying out a small breakfast on the dining table; the lazy sound of wood creaking from upstairs was his signal.

The last of the butter melts on a crisp piece of toast next to a bunch of strawberries he sliced this morning. It’s the last of those, too.

You toddle down the wood stairs, which also whine under your steps, scrubbing sleep from your eyes.

“Good,” he greets you. “You’re dressed. Eat. You’ll need the energy.”

“Good morning to you too.”

He bites down on the inside of his cheek as you plop down in the chair. It’s not even a good mood that’s begging him to smile: you amuse him.

“Thanks,” you grunt, and take a real look at him. His insomnia is chronic enough for him to hide seamlessly, but you know him well (“Too damn well,” he likes to say.).

“Are you nervous?”

“There’s a lot to do,” he replies, sits, and crosses his legs with one arm slung over the chair back.

Truthfully, it’s hard to tell. This is more of a feeling of being sure something’s waiting around a coming corner, but he can’t tell if it’s a friend or a threat yet.

He resists the urge to rub his eyes. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a rock,” you sigh. “I can’t remember anything that happened after we tried that…” You blink hard. “Keemun.”

“Don’t look so guilty. I don’t sleep much.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

He’s pleased you never woke up while he carried you; the keemun was the best place to end things, anyway. It tasted as smooth as an expensive cigar, if rolled in baked plums and chocolate.

You’re leaving here with so many good memories, it hurts. The pain makes him wonder.

If the opportunity never presents itself for you both to return, or worse, he alone would be given it, then all that would ever remain in this place is ghosts.

He watches you nibble away at the last of your toast like a chipmunk, and knows for certain—he would always feel for you the same way, even if Yan didn’t “repay” him that “debt”.

Would he have told you he loves you?

No, he decides. His pessimistic side wants to write this while trip off as being lulled into a false sense of security.

To be fair, that’s what it is. False.

This bundle of peace is left standing bright at your retreating backs. One day, it could be a horrible memory, a reflection of broken dreams.

There are other dreams which wait to be fulfilled, but you will still be with him, as long as you don’t leave him behind.

He awkwardly clears his throat. “Do you think you’ll remember this in the future?”

You nearly spit out your toast. “Huh? Of course I will. Won’t you?”

“Yeah.” The bookshelf a few paces from the front door holds only a few lonely books now. He looks at that instead of you. “But that means missing it.”

“I know, but…” you wipe your mouth with a napkin, “…We’ll miss everything, you know?”

“Yeah, but this is… more than that.”

Your lips tug down, and he kind of wishes he didn’t say anything.

“More than everything?”

Yes.

“Forget it,” he says.

“…Would you rather we not have done it?”

No reply. You put what remains of your toast down. “You can be honest.”

“I’d rather not miss it.”

The good things are a blessing, and a curse. He knows too well what this world is majorly made up of—he needs to be ready for that. He can’t be sure of anything, including the good things.

But he forces himself not to regret. This winter, it was still good. He got to be with you. It isn’t what he learned to let himself do, or feel, or think—but not to do any of those things at all.

To simply be.

Comfort. False security. All these in passing turns a prick of pain that will inevitably come along into a thrashing whip. It makes one complacent and comfortable when they can’t afford to be. Tragedy waits, always.

He has never experienced such happiness, which is why he has never been so disappointed in himself for allowing himself to do so.

Quiet persists. You have your listening face on now, napkin crushed in one hand while you exchange soft blinks.

“I don’t mean to shit all over the mood, but I want your opinion,” he decides. “…D’you think this was for nothing?”

You reach across the table and lay your hand on his.

“Nothing’s for nothing,” you say.

He wants to believe you.

—

As you expected, Levi has double his weight in bags slung over his shoulders when he pokes his head in the bathroom.

“How long is it gonna be till you’re ready?—Another month?”

“Hm. More like two,” you reply, smiling.

A scoff, followed by the clacks of his boots retreating out the front door.

And you keep smiling. Really, all that’s left to do is take a cursory look around to make sure nothing got left behind.

Retreating from the bathroom, you stand at ease and examine the bookshelf in the hallway. It feels different than leaving the dining table, or even the bench off the side of the house.

You really read a horse’s weight in books while you were here. Most of the books themselves are still with you, but… it won’t be the same.

Only the rumpled spine of one and the faded covers of a few others are left stacked neatly in one desolate corner. Those ones were bad, and not in the fun way, you both agreed (these days you more often than not read together).

You took your all-time favorite stories with you, which you’ll treasure until they too are faded. The classics as well, the just-okays, and the bad ones that turned out somehow fun.

The few so contrived, goofy and terrible that you begged to keep, because it made Levi honestly, earnestly laugh—and sometimes a little louder, more than once.

You step off the front porch steps, feeling torn, yet oddly fulfilled.

Nothing’s for nothing. A moment within a lake of millions, but you want to remember them all, all the same.

This one especially.

—

It takes three hours under a cold, clean sky to reach Trost. By then, the afternoon sun is high and there is much unpacking to be done.

Levi slapped away your sticky fingers every time you insisted on helping carrying a lumpy bag or box inside from the front.

“I got it,” he bitched earlier. “You don’t need to do anything.”

“But I want a job!”

He scoffed. “Fine. I have one for you: sit down and look pretty. You think you can do that?”

You roll your eyes at the memory as he passes down the small set of stairs by you. You’re still brooding, planted on top of a flat stone column just outside the tall doors.

He knew you would, but then you make a game out of it, much to his chagrin.

For every one of his treks, you pat him somewhere—usually the top of his head—but he never knows where you’re going to aim next.

He dodges a flick to his elbow.

“Woah, you look unsteady,” you say, tone full of artificial concern. “You need help?”

He catches your wandering eyes with his cheek pressed against the cardboard box in his arms. “Don’t you have anything better to do besides distract me?”

You smile. “I can stare.”

He rolls his eyes.

Two trips later, you get dangerously close to his backside. He manages to pivot just in time and stares you down suspiciously, a box under one arm and a knapsack slung over one shoulder.

He doesn’t even look surprised anymore.

All you do is smirk.

In the end, you win that one.

It’s a blessing that HQ is still unpopulated. That’s the way it’ll be until next week, something Levi planned far in advance.

All for the better in his mind. A Scout, someone from your squad a long time ago (and who apparently almost beat him to asking you out for Mayfest a couple years ago) left the Corps early last spring. He had gotten married to a scullery maid out of Klorva District. Weird.

You put up the wagon while he stabs a familiar key into a familiar lock, and steps into his familiar quarters.

His nose scrunches as he surveys his office. He can physically see the dust particles floating in the air, especially in the glow of the windows, thanks to the afternoon sun above.

Scraping his fingertips underneath the desk confirms his suspicions.

This place is a wreck, he thinks, scowling at nothing in particular.

But after wiping his hands off with a handkerchief, he does find something to scowl at. A white wicker basket sits in his chair. It’s adorned with red and pink frills, a bunch of fresh fruit, and even… a teddy bear?

He snatches up the card on the bear’s lap, and as he reads, his glare darkens.

‘Hope your honeymoon was productive! (I know it wasn’t officially a honeymoon, but why else would you take a vacation? Levi? Vacation? Ha!)

Mike insisted I buy you this stuffed bear in preparation for the next nine months! I can’t wait to have another little Levi runn—’

Levi tears his eyes away from the card. Fucking four-eyes.

Using a stool, he gets the thing stuffed up high in a closet behind a carton of cigars. Those are for special occasions; he has no more fitting place for the basket (except for the fruit, which he stores in the kitchenette).

Just in time. Outside his office, the door opens, then thumps shut to the sound of your boots clicking as you cross the floor.

“Everything’s put away,” you tell him proudly.

“Good. I have work to do,” he replies without turning, setting the stool back in the corner of his office. “You have anything you need to do first?”

You get an early start on paperwork while he takes a much-deserved shower. After that, you work together in comfortable silence.

A sense of coming home crashes over him after he randomly blinks out of focus from his current sheet of paperwork. This one contains a list of grades and statistics of Cadets who seem likely to join up this coming spring.

He glances over at you without moving his head—you, bathed in gold thanks to the sunset moving across his desk.

Another random fact of Hange’s enters his mind: apparently, pregnant women’s skin tends to glow. Something about hormones.

Your pencil scratches paper.

He covers his warming cheeks with the back of his hand and averts his gaze. That stupid basket.

Work. Surprisingly, he spots one name on the page he remotely recognizes. Jaeger. A doctor with the same name was famous in Shiganshina for curing an epidemic several years back.

The next time he looks up, you’re planting a bowl of stew down on his desk, green tea and bread included.

He takes a breath, and his mouth instantly waters. He forgot to eat lunch earlier.

Then you place a hand in his hair. He glances up towards your fond smile.

“Do you wanna start the fireplace after you’re done eating?”

A wave of affection crashes over his chest. “Have you eaten?”

“I’m about to,” you reply. “So?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

By the time your bellies are warm and full, he has stoked the logs enough to get a real fire going. Past the sitting room’s windows, which stretch across the entire back wall, snow floats down in weightless drops.

He stores the poker away, stands, then turns. Your arms are open.

“C’mere.”

That same feeling flips his chest over again. He pins his tongue between his teeth before quickly approaching.

You tug him down until he lays sideways down the sofa, his head in your lap and facing the fireplace. Despite you being sat right in the middle, he’s still too short for his feet to knock against the armrest.

“I had to get that stew from the mess hall,” you’re murmuring, tucking dark bangs behind his ear. “It wasn’t that good.”

“Your standards are too high,” he replies, leaning into your palm. Everything is so warm.

“Oh? What’re my standards?”

“Your cooking. Of course everything else tastes bad in comparison.”

You laugh at this. “You’re too kind.”

Huffing, he closes his eyes and covers his face lips with a loose fist.

You’re so wrong it hurts.

He never wants you to stop.

A different realization hits him. This doesn’t feel too different from some nights you spent back on a whole other world, at the cabin.

He blinks off into space. It is just a house, a place. There would be nothing nearly as enticing about it if you weren’t there with him.

“You okay?” you ask. “You’re more quiet than usual.”

He rolls over to face you. As you slouch a little, getting comfortable, he moves with you.

“When I first got inside, this basket of fruit was sitting on my desk from four-eyes. I’m trying to figure out how they got in.”

Through giggles, “Was anything missing?”

“I don’t think so.” He was too stressed out at the time to check thoroughly. “But still.”

A thin, felt blanket is pulled off the back of the couch, then laid over him, up to his shoulders.

He turns his head.

“You looked cold,” you offer as an excuse, and he rolls his eyes, even though he was.

The fire was also dying down, but since you didn’t say anything, he didn’t stand to get it.

Typically, he would do it anyway, but…

You pet his hair down, scratching gently at his scalp.

It can wait.

He looks much more comfortable now that he’s covered up. A spontaneous memory unfurls in your mind, when losing Wall Maria. You think about forgetting those three days all the time, but the memory of that one night (or early morning? It’s hard to remember) you want to keep forever.

He was so shy then. And much more aloof. When you embraced him, that was the first time you had ever hugged a steel pole.

“We’re both still alive, but if you want to keep it that way, get some rest. Otherwise I’d have to tag along to make sure you don’t die. Doesn’t sound fun, does it?”

You bite down a bittersweet smile while what feels like big wings flutter in your chest. Was that really five years ago?

“What’s so funny?”

Your eyes meet Levi’s scrupulous ones. Most of his expression is hidden in your shirt.

“Nothin’.”

Yeah, right, he thinks, but his eyes fall shut to feel your hand carding his bangs all the way back over his forehead.

That’s something Mom used to do, if he remembers right, especially after cutting the rat’s nest that was usually his hair.

His childhood had more peaceful times than he gives it credit for. This time, though, he aims to keep these times from ever stopping.

He isn’t foolish. As long as Erwin’s dream hasn’t come to fruition, the fighting won’t cease. It may never stop, at least by the time he’s no longer there to fight for it, but he knows some things for sure.

You two will never be normal—he has long-since accepted that. As long as he has this, you, he can make peace with his more selfish dreams.

Within the coming months, the 104th batch of recruits will be up for the chopping block; a bunch of brats spit out into the three branches like marbles. Erwin will give his honeyed speech, and Levi will be near, and he won’t have to say much.

Some of those marbles will land in the Survey Corps, most won’t. But those few are more brave, or foolish, than any slack-jawed cow of a noble could ever fully grasp.

And finally, always, when you two return to HQ—bustling or sparse, the day heavy or light—you will be with him.

Home. He knows what that means now, and it doesn’t have to be a place. Maybe you will stretch his legs across his lap, or make a casserole. Maybe he will replace the flowers in your vase that you accidentally neglect often enough to worry him.

He will feel time wandering and expanding, daring him to believe your midnight conversations will stretch on forever.

They won’t, but he has made peace with that. This life is, in fact, more heavenly than he ever could have imagined wanting for himself, let alone making.

You and he will simply have to fight, within an inch of your lives at worst, in order to keep it.

The End.

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