Chapter Text
You laid in your bed, haunted by ruminative wakefulness. Stomach flipping between pleasant warmth and anxious throbbing, made worse by the fear of what you may dream. A disquieted mentality which only fed into physiological anxiety. A weight on your lungs. You took deep breaths, trying to reclaim some semblance of control, too focused on your own respiration to notice Mikasa rousing and padding over to your bed in the dark. She softly called out to you, kneeling beside your bed. Her hair fell over her face, shrouding her eyes. A palm came to rest on your face, and came too a familiar bloom of warmth emanating through you. Still, panic rose. You seized. She began to exaggerate the movement of her chest, pushing it up and letting it fall as she breathed slowly, silently encouraging you to mimic her. You followed her gentle inhalations and exhalations. When she noted your breathing had steadied, she nodded, asking if you needed more; you nodded back to reassure her you didn’t. Her soft footfalls against the ground as she walked back to her bed, rhythmic and palpable.
Your dreams were pitch, but contorted cries, aural perversions of your friends’ voices, filled your ears within the darkness—image only manifested once you were submerged in the feeling of falling. Your bottom half hung from a gaping mouth, and sinew and cochineal viscera poured out of your stomach as you fell headfirst to the earth. Fulminations of gore erupted around you. The maimed bodies of your friends suspended in the air, blood viscous, expressions malformed. You woke as your spine shattered against the ground.
—
Embarrassing, maybe, that you found yourself outside of Levi’s office. You contemplated abandoning whatever subconscious agenda you sought to fulfill, but you could only watch as your hand rapped at the door on its own volition. A three-count, and the door opened. Close to immediate. You indulged the idea that he had expected you to come, maybe even hoped for it. Stepping back, widening the opening, he wordlessly ushered you in. You were struck by a futile hope that your trembling legs went unnoticed. Speaking in hushed tones:
“Would you like the bed?”
You considered refusing, either out of politeness or self-consciousness, but you understood Levi’s equivocation—a question implied a suggestion implied an order—and nodded.
His bed, centrally placed in the small bedroom adjacent to his office, was made immaculately—sheets crisp, corners folded, pillows fluffed. More than picture-perfect. You were reluctant to sit but acquiesced under his expectant gaze. Eyes exploring the room, you noted everything was in its place; and then you asked yourself how you would know what ‘in-place’ was. You had never even considered the room’s existence before this very moment. You thought on the inherent vulnerability of the bedroom—it was not more than a person in objectified microcosm. You were suddenly self-conscious, aware of your invasion. You could sense Levi in every aspect of the room. It was a sort of omnipresence which, admittedly, disquieted you. A strange form of pervasive and ubiquitous comfort.
He stared at you through the doorframe, arms hanging by his sides. Neither turned away when you confronted his gaze. You searched his face and found him unreadable. His form tenebrous against the dark backdrop of his office; in the shadows, he showed his age. You were reminded that while you watched him, he watched back. Again, you were self-conscious; aware of his scrutinizing gaze, of the space you occupied. A habitual comfortable silence this was not—the air felt suspended, heavy with potentiality, about to drop. Or perhaps it was already in freefall.
He was crossing the room, his steps reverberating through you. Atmosphere vibrating. The bed dipped as he sat beside you. Who else had shared this experience, seated next to Levi in his bedroom? You wished yourself to be the first, a pioneer. Something about it gave you a headrush—was it the intimacy of something shared by only two, or the excitement of exclusivity? You decided it didn’t matter.
He still sat before you, deciding what to do, calculative. You forced yourself not to move. You wanted him to initiate.
When he finally did, you had settled so far into the stillness that his movement startled you.
His hands dragged over yours, slowly, achingly so, lingering on your digits, your wrists. Slipping under, his fingertips found your palms, tracing along the creases, pressing into the pads. The spaces between fingers, the dips in your knuckles. He found it all, left no place untouched. Nimble fingers pushed up your sleeves, cool air raising goosebumps. A touch, barely perceptible, ghosted over your arms, grazing hair more than the skin, tingling trails left in its wake. Your eyes flitted up from his hands; his face was firm, his brow furrowed in concentration, gaze focused on his own movement.
You wanted more. You found your skin to be shell-like, an epidermal barrier, and wished to shed it. To rid yourself of that cursed, fleshly mediator, and to feel his touch directly. Not on your skin, on you. No longer a timid interest, but a primordial need to feel a connection between two innate unknowns—a need to be touched, held, until you were nothing but one nebulous silhouette.
You sat, absorbing his touch, emitting waves of feverish air. Reluctant to breath. One hand intertwined with yours. The other continued on, trailing over your features. Fingertips on your ear. Your cheek. The ridge of your bottom lip. Your cupid’s bow. The bridge of the nose. Browbone. His touch, a fomentation of something long smoldering within you. A corporeal glow, burning, blistering.
Levi stopped. He met your gaze. His eyes said, “Now you.”
You reenacted his motions in tender emulation. His eyes on you as hands shakily grazed his skin. Barely-there tremors under your fingers—insuppressible reaction. His hands, arms, still and there for you to feel. His sharp features softened under your touch. Eyes, attentive, never drifting away, lucid and drinking in your movement. You savored each other.
Levi was the first who dared to speak: “I would like to kiss you, now.”
You reveled in the quiver of his voice. Nervousness. So open, so clearly stated.
You liked the way he felt against you—his lips were warm and satin-like. Exploratory, sentient. They modulated slowly, subtle movements fading into one another, an amalgam of quiet, labial gesture. Your hands came to rest on his wrists, and he gasped at the contact. Everything hyperaware, hypersensitive. You swore you could feel his heartbeat in your chest. You liked the shared, languid sensuality—quietly seductive but imbued with innocence. Levi loosed his hands from yours and moved them to your face, cradling it. You could feel the rough callouses against your cheek—the hands of a soldier. You gripped at the sheets. Cloth massaged between your fingers. You liked the way he pulled away from the kiss, and his breath blew, hot, against your lips. You had never seen him winded before.
“You feel nice, Captain.” Head light and floating high above the room, you couldn’t find it in yourself to feel embarrassed by the way you slurred your words.
He shared the bed with you that night. Face to face, his hands roaming your sides, indolent. Silently awake, resting in the other’s company.
As a child, awake at night, lost in that pervasive nocturne, you would dream of a feeling: an ineffable intimacy, something you dully craved but never found. Had you loved this moment since you were a child? This untroubled moment, secluded from the collection of cruel and terrible moments that defined and would come to define the remainder of your life. You memorized it, writing it in fleeting senses and images.
One more indulgence. You wrapped your arms around Levi, holding him close, tight, and breathed in his scent, reminded of your minority: you saw your childhood home, the kitchen window. The quiet warmth. A memory enveloped in closeness.