Chapter Text
He has decades hunching his shoulders and centuries weighing on his mind, the first time he remembers thinking about love.
Hange is eccentric and chaotic and brilliant, a mess of the most captivating kind and Levi remembers the tint of light against print-smudged lenses, the sweeps and arcs of Hange's arms and the delicate ripple of fingers over dirt-clouded water as they animate their thoughts, and he thinks for the first time that maybe, maybe this is what love feels like.
Darkness presses in against the window. It comes thick and heavy, pouring like fog into every nook and crevice, dancing at the edges of his candlelight, ducking and weaving closer and closer as the wax burns away. Levi watches it out the corner of his eyes while he loosens the straps of Hange’s goggles and lays them on the counter.
Hange is filthy, grime and sweat sticking to their skin, with trails of dry, crusted blood webbing out from inconsequential cuts and scrapes across their hands, and Levi remembers catching their flailing limbs and dunking them beneath the waterline, remembers the affronted huff of air against his cheek and the way Hange rolls their shoulders, thin, muscle-bound arms flexing beneath the press of his fingers.
It has been four – four – days since Hange last bathed, and he remembers them telling him that their research was more important, that they were dancing on the edge of a breakthrough and there was no time to spare for insignificant things like cleaning and eating and sleeping, and as he rings out a cloth and trails it over the welts peeling over Hange's shoulders, he can’t help wondering what the discomfort rolling in his gut might mean.
He thinks that maybe, love is in the ache in his chest, or perhaps the warmth of his cheeks and the desperate, biting need to be near to Hange, to listen to their theories and their schemes, to watch the light dance in their eyes when they smile or to smooth the frown pulling their brows when they're stressed, angry or tired.
Maybe it’s in the prickle of his spine as he smooths suds up the mosaic of wounds on their legs and the twitch of his fingers as he brushes a cloth up their sides, hands splaying too close to the places he is learning that he wants to touch.
Maybe it’s in the lump in his throat, the burn in his lungs and the thud of his heart after each expedition, in the way his eyes dart over the throng of returning soldiers until he settles on Hange. Until he knows they are okay.
Maybe this is what love is.
And it is terrifying.
Levi pointedly does not sit with Hange at supper, the first day he decides that distance is what he needs. Attachment has proven to be nothing but painful and he thinks that losing one more friend might be more than he can take, and so he starts to pull away.
Hange is excited, he remembers, body humming and eyes alight as they drop their tray onto the table opposite Erwin, and Levi waits until they are seated and tearing at their bread with their teeth before he strolls past and sits himself at the table across from them. He remembers the falter in Hange's tone, the burn of their gaze at the back of his head, remembers closing his eyes and pushing his food away when Hange clears their throat and continues a more subdued relay of their experiments.
He listens to her with pricked ears and jumping knees, something like guilt unfurling in his gut, spilling into all the empty spaces, pressing up into the back of his throat and choking the air from his lungs. He remembers smoothing the tips of his fingers around the rim of his cup and letting Hange's words wash over him, remembers the pull in his stomach, the violent urge to fuck his plan and sit with them like he wants to.
But then he remembers bitter wind and drowning rain, blood-matted red hair, half-bitten flesh, pain beyond measure, and he holds his ground.
It is three weeks later, and his quarters have never been cleaner. He scrubs each day, remakes the bed and washes the sheets and polishes his gear until it shines. Every spare second is spent dusting, or bleaching and waxing and he remembers staring at the thin, dry lines cracking across the backs of his hands, remembers the puffy, blistered skin at his finger-tips and in the folds of his knuckles, the flesh angry from the chemical sting, but it’s better than worrying.
It keeps him occupied – keeps his mind off of Hange.
He remembers their curiosity, the way their brows furrow and their lips dip low at the corners every time he brushes past them, remembers every I’m busy and I don’t have time and I don’t care that rolls off his tongue, bitter and untrue but necessary. He doesn’t need another friend to lose.
But he remembers the worry, the anxiety that gnaws at him whenever Hange's name comes into his head. He remembers the constant barrage of questions – are they eating? Are they sleeping? Are they bathing? Are they okay? – that plague him every time he gives his mind an inch to wander and he remembers the twitch of his fingers and the huff of his breath, the smell of bleach and the sting of blisters as he fights the urge to check on Hange by battling the grime between the floorboards instead.
He doesn’t remember exactly when he loses sight of Hange, but he remembers the way his muscles seize, skin stretched tight over his knuckles and his eyes as wide as they go, darting over the battlefield and straining to catch sight of them in the confusion.
He remembers blood, sticky and steaming, burning into his clothes and scolding his skin. Everything is too hot and too chaotic and Hange is nowhere.
But he doesn’t have time to think about it – shadows bare down on him, snapping maws with grinning teeth, long arms with outstretched fingers, and he can’t spare a second more worrying about Hange, but even as his blades slice through heavy, heated flesh and the world spins around him, he cannot stop looking.
**
He is bone-tired and ill with worry, riding back through the gates and into the town. Their losses are great but even in the dwindled numbers he cannot make out the mess of Hange's hair or the glint of their goggles, and every Hange-less sweep of their assemblage makes him feel sick to his stomach.
He remembers asking Erwin, tired-eyed and growing desperate, if he has seen them or heard them or anything, and he remembers the dip of Erwin's brow and the shake of his head, remembers the solid, calloused hand gripping his shoulder and squeezing the bunched muscles.
“Go get cleaned up, we’ll meet in the morning,” says Erwin, and Levi can only nod and turn on his heel and walk on numb feet and stiff legs back to his room.
It isn’t the first time he’s found Hange in his bathroom, but he doesn’t remember a time he has ever felt so relieved to see them there; it hits him hard, powerful enough to nearly knock his knees out where he stands.
He remembers the blood oozing down over their hip, slipping over the lip of the tub and weaving thin, pink stains all the way to the drain. Hange is black and blue, painted in large, discoloured blotches all across their torso and he remembers watching their rib cage lift and shift, jerking and uneven with every heaved breath. Their goggles sit off to one site, one lens cracked beyond repair, and in their place Hange wears a pair of glasses.
He remembers watching shaking, delicate fingers dance over a yawning gash on their side, pulling a line of surgical thread and knitting the skin together. Hange looks pale, sickly and exhausted. Levi crosses the distance between them and peels Hange's hands away. He remembers the glazed, half-beaten expression on their face when they look at him, vulnerable under his gaze and all he does is set their hands out of the way and pick the thread out of the wound.
“You need to clean it, idiot, or it’ll get infected.”
He remembers a lot of quiet, after that. Hange doesn’t speak as he cleans them, save for the occasional hiss or groan and when he leans close and begins picking a new length of thread through the edges of the wound, Hange whimpers and presses their mouth to his shoulder to muffle the sound.
And he hates it.
He hates every second he has his fingers pressed to their stress-heated skin; every tiny, involuntary noise he drags from them with each press and wipe and pull makes his stomach knot tighter, twisting and balling until it is heavy as lead in his gut.
He remembers carrying Hange to bed – they are heavy; bone bound in muscle and thick skin, and he remembers thinking that he was stupid to worry, stupid to believe for one second that Hange might not make it home. He doesn’t bother dressing them, just lays them against the mattress and pulls the sheets up over their bandaged torso and Hange turns into his pillow and sighs. It’s a familiar sight, and the normalcy of it is soothing.
“Thanks,” Hange says, rubbing at one eye beneath their glasses, and then they say, “sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Levi says. He lights a low candle by the bedside and settles in his chair to watch Hange.
“For barging in, I guess,” they say. “The med-bay was crowded and I didn’t know where else to go. I almost forgot you were ignoring me.”
Levi’s eyes pinch and he remembers wanting to say that he wasn’t ignoring them, but he was, and he’s above lying to Hange by now. He shrugs a shoulder, folds one leg over the other. Hange readjusts themself on the mattress, brow furrowing as they settle, and then they look him in the eye and smile.
It’s unnerving, and Levi has to fight to stop himself shying away from their gaze. Hange doesn’t say anything, but he remembers the pressure, like they're begging for a secret to be spilled and he is tipping the glass, and before he has time to think there are words filtering through his teeth.
He doesn’t tell Hange the whole story (there is too much and it's too long and he doesn’t think he could bring himself to even if he wanted to), but he brushes over his mother’s death, reminds Hange of the friends he has lost, curses filth and disease and his own inability to protect and it’s a clumsy confession, full of holes and slurs and short on real words but Hange listens all the same.
He remembers the nod of their head when he falls silent and all they say is, “okay,” and then, “it’s late,” and they slide back across the mattress and pat the empty space in their wake.
He is sitting on the edge of the bed, toeing off his boots when Hange's hand fists into the back of his shirt. He peeks over one shoulder, brow raised, and Hange says, “Just know you can’t get rid of me that easy." They press their thumb to their chest and grin in the candlelight. "Neither dirt nor avoidance can take me. Sooner you face the fact that you’re stuck with me the better, short-stuff.”
He remembers the smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth and he leans around, tugs Hange's glasses from the bridge of their nose and folds them onto the bedside table.
“Whatever you say, four-eyes.”
He is battle-worn and aching and tired, the second time he thinks about love.
He remembers scooting Hange further along the mattress, slipping onto the sheets beside them and resting on the pillow - it's warm and a little damp from where Hange's hair has been, and he hooks an arm behind his head and rolls his eyes to look at them.
He thinks that maybe, love is in the warm, steady feel of Hange's breath against his cheek as they shuffle close enough to bump their forehead to his temple.
Maybe it’s in the loose curl of their fist where they rest it on his chest – maybe it’s in the way his heart beats against their clenched knuckles, or the way his cheeks warm, or the way his arm aches to loop around them, fingers itching to card into their hair.
Or maybe it’s in the way he licks his lips, thinks about pressing a kiss to Hange's forehead – they're so close he can smell his soap on their skin and in their hair and it wouldn’t take much, just a twist of his neck and a tilt of his head and it'd be so easy because Hange’s right there.
Maybe this is what love is.
And he remembers thinking that maybe, it isn’t so bad after all.