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He rides a horse through the fog at full speed. There’s a patch of woods just a little farther ahead. Faster, he has to go faster. He hears screams, he keeps on going but the fog only gets thicker and no matter how fast he rides the patch of woods he is aiming for isn’t getting any closer. He jumps off the horse, starts to run. It’s raining so heavy, his feet sink into the mud. Faster, he just needs to go faster. The mud and dirt swallow his legs, he’s crawling. The screams drown in the downpour. He just needs… He sees it up ahead, a small round shape rolling on the ground. He fixes his gaze on it. It rolls towards him. Rolls, rolls, rolls. Stops. Red hair, green eyes…
His eyes snap open, his body stiff.
It takes a minute to steady his breath. He focuses on the wall in front of him until his eyes adjust and heart slows, uncurls his limbs from the sitting position he fell asleep in. His muscles hurt from clenching. He looks around and stands. The barracks are dark except for the dim glow of the moonlight through the window. He slips out quietly.
He hasn’t been able to properly sleep in bed since his mother passed and years of living in the underground only reinforced the habit. But there’s no chairs in the barracks, only bunk beds. He took the bottom bunk as it allowed easy escape. He doesn’t sleep well even on good nights. Now there is no one to contest it and no one has moved to the top bunk. Lots of them have been empty since the expedition.
He wonders the grounds, stretching clenched muscles, it’s quiet and dark. There’s only one light on in the entire compound, officer’s building, corner room on the third floor.
He wonders aimlessly until the first signs of dawn.
The next day he trains, for hours, relentless until his body is screaming in agony and his hands are raw from slicing the practice titans with such intensity that it could level wall Maria.
The day passes. He stumbles back to the barracks when they close the practice grounds for the night.
He’s back in the fog. This time he is walking carefully, movements controlled and light. He can barely see two feet in front of him. His heart is pounding in his chest juxtaposed to the eerie stillness of the woods. Amidst the soft wet shuffling of grass under his feet he hears a sound, his name being called. It’s Farlan, he hears Farlan. He sprints towards the voice, caution momentarily abandoned, and then he sees him, on the ground. Levi is so relieved to hear his voice, when he reaches him he pulls Farlan out of the fog.
Levi is heaving. His shoulders shake and his chest feels incapable of fitting the air intake. He stares ahead, expecting to find the blood from Farlan’s torn-in-half body seeping through the mattress on the top bunk if he dares to look up.
The silence of the barracks is deafening.
He slips out again. He just needs some air.
He wonders the grounds until he finds himself in the small plaza.
The light is on again in the corner room on the third floor.
He slides down on the nearby bench, tilts his head up and watches the stars in the dark skies. A quiet calm.
“Can’t sleep?” the voice says to him and he almost jumps, turns sharply to glare into the darkness. A bigger shape with a familiar voice approaches.
“I don’t sleep much either,” Erwin says, not waiting for Levi to respond. Levi doesn’t.
He almost subconsciously shifts on the bench for some reason expecting Erwin to sit next to him, but he doesn’t.
“If you want, you can help me with some paperwork,” Erwin says instead and gestures towards the only window with the lights on. “I’m over there.” He waits a moment, and then Levi hears footsteps starting to retreat.
Erwin disappears inside the officer’s building.
Levi follows.
The room is nice and spacious, with bookshelves, a desk with two chairs, a dresser, and even a fireplace. The bedroom part must be behind the wooden door to the left, Levi thinks. There is a stack of papers on Erwin’s desk illuminated by the soft glow of the candlelight.
“What are these?” Levi grumbles and notices how his voice comes out hoarse and entirely too loud for this late at night. He clears his throat.
“Reports from the recent expedition as well as from the past ones,” Erwin answers voice calm. “I’m trying to analyze all the information to see how we can improve.”
Levi grunts an acknowledgment.
“If you could, start reading the ones in that stack,” Erwin motions and takes a seat at his desk. Levi notices the bandage on his hand, it feels uncomfortable to acknowledge it in his own mind. “Let me know if you see anything interesting, if anything stands out,” Erwin says and looks at Levi.
Levi considers, nods and takes the chair across from Erwin. He needs to know more about outside.
They read quietly until the dawn breaks.
He wakes up with a shudder. Isabel’s vacant eyes are staring at him as though the image has been burned into his irises. He blinks, willing to clear it with his eyelids, but the image is still there, lodged into his brain.
“Nightmares are normal. They mostly go away after the first few expeditions,” Erwin told him unprompted the other night, and Levi left it unanswered, but he wants to believe that. That they go away. He already knows they are normal. He’s seen a lot of things in the underground, has done a lot of things only he and his knife know about, but nothing is like a pile of disjoined limbs and crumpled bodies on flattened grass.
His hands are itching. He wishes he could do something. He wishes he could clean. But it’s dark and everyone’s asleep and he can’t scrub the barracks. He slips out.
“I’m going to clean,” he says not so much asking but making a statement, bucket and broom in his hands, as he stares at Erwin from the doorframe to his quarters.
Erwin raises his eyebrows slightly but says, “Okay,” and nods.
Levi gets right to it.
He scrubs every inch of the floor, every surface of the furniture until it’s sparkling clean and there’s no a trace of dust. He almost collapses on the floor but remembers that Erwin is there and takes a chair opposite him instead.
Erwin nods.
“Thank you, Levi. I don’t think my office has been this clean since…” He pauses to think. “Ever. I’ve never seen it this clean,” he adds with something that sounds like fondness in his voice.
Levi shakes his head.
“You better keep it up.” But it wasn’t bad, he wants to say but keeps quiet, just cracks his neck and rests his head in his arm on the back of the chair. There’s a soft glow on Erwin’s face and Levi finds it peaceful.
When the fog clears he finds himself standing in the field, the sky is high, and he wants to breath it in. The sun is bright, but it doesn’t burn his eyes, it catches on the soft locks of the tall figure in front of him. Levi wants to reach out. His heartbeat quickens, but the voice coming from the figure is strong and grounding. He wants to close his eyes and listen to him.
Levi wakes.
It’s been a few days since he started having these kinds of dreams.
The next expedition sets out and he loses it. It’s the new squad he’s been assigned to that spots the titan in the open field and fires a flare. They need to avoid it at least until they get closer to the woods. But once he sees a titan approach he can’t even bother with fury, his body takes off after it like a flash of lightning, and he kills it by himself, slicing all of its limbs off and stabbing its eyes in the process. Everything is over in a matter of seconds. He emerges from the mist of a disintegrating titan corpse. His squad is appalled.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” one of his squad members yells. “Everybody knows you can take them on but you can’t just leave!” All Levi does is stare at the ground. The squad leader orders him to return to formation.
They are back with less casualties this time.
Once they reach the headquarters he sees Erwin approach him. No one has spoken a word to him since the incident.
“Levi may I speak with you?” Erwin says, and Levi can’t really muster a proper glare. He is suddenly tired. Maybe it’s the walls that drain him now.
“Gonna discipline me?” he mutters.
“No,” comes a calm reply, “I don’t believe that will do any good.” He can’t deny he is surprised. Levi narrows his eyes, unsure where this is going. “I believe it’s necessary to allow you a certain freedom of movement,” Erwin continues, “Of course I don’t make all the decisions, I’m just a squad leader, but that’s what I’m going to recommend to the Commander.”
He considers Levi’s face for a few seconds, no anger and no impatience, and adds when no reply comes, “Just remember the formation is to keep you and your comrades safe.”
Levi looks to the side and after a moment gives a small nod.
“That all?”
“Yes.” Erwin responds.
“I’m gonna go clean up then.” He turns around and leaves before Erwin can say anything.
He expects the nightmares to return, but they don’t. It’s more of the open skies, and the sun flares, and strands of blond hair caught in the wind. He finds himself riding next to Erwin, wonders how that can be, unless Erwin takes him into his squad. They just ride and he dares to close his eyes for a few seconds and breathes. When he opens them they are standing on the patch of grass and his blade is in Erwin’s hand and Levi wonders how someone could be so unafraid. Of him, of everything. He feels awe.
These kinds of dreams make it somewhat uneasy for him to wander into Erwin’s room in the middle of the night, but when he wakes he feels the urge to check how Erwin’s hand is doing. He’s been wearing a bandage for a long time now. The cut must have been deep.
He didn’t even flinch. His voice didn’t waver. Levi grips his shoulders for a moment and then unfolds his arms and stands.
The light is on in the corner room on the third floor.
Erwin is at his desk. Levi’s eyes automatically drift towards the bandage.
Erwin is writing, pen in his hand. He dares a quick glance, notices Erwin’s handwriting, structured, clean. Of course, he thinks. Everything makes perfect sense about this man…
And everything also doesn’t. Levi has admitted it to himself he has no idea what Erwin is thinking. Never has, wonders how that is. Does he always get stuck unable to see deeper past the impossible blueness of his eyes? Same as the skies that this man has opened up for him beyond the walls, overwhelming vastness that Levi wants to plunge into, crisscross in every direction, never have to come back from. He’d slash a thousand titans if that meant he could stay.
Levi realizes he’s been staring. Erwin is looking right at him too, expression unreadable, unmoving in the dancing shadows of the flickering candle light. Levi blinks, swallows, feels caught, wants to back out and run. But Erwin opens his mouth to speak before he could make his legs move.
“Want to help me with these?”
Erwin keeps looking at him and Levi’s heart steadies as the air leaves his chest with a soft grunt. He takes a step forward instead and closes the door behind him.
“Yeah.”
He is still with the same squad, riding in the same formation. No one died in it last time, so the personnel hasn’t been shifted and either Erwin hasn’t made his suggestion to the Commander or they haven’t figured out what to do with him yet, where to move him, or it’s just military bureaucracy. But he knows he wants to ride close to Erwin.
When they come back Levi cleans Erwin’s room.
Levi trains most hours of the day and at night they continue their reading. Levi’s gaze often drifts towards Erwin’s chair when it’s too late to be night and too early to call it morning.
Erwin looks at him and his pen taps lightly and Levi’s heart skips and he is short of breath.
There’s no shudder this time, no noticeable barrier between dream and waking, no memory of a nightmare he is aware of. He’s just awake sometime in the night hours and he finds himself half way to the familiar room. He doesn’t knock, the light seeps into the hallway through the crack under the door, and he enters.
They read.
He points out a thing to Erwin that he thinks Erwin will find interesting in one of the old reports. They ponder it for a minute and Erwin realizes they need to cross check for more information.
“There must be some more on that in one of the folders in that bookcase, blue, I think, dated a couple of years earlier,” he says and Levi moves to locate the folder. The bookcase is stuffed with paperwork from years back.
“Erwin, I can’t find it,” he says after a few unproductive minutes. Erwin stands from his chair and walks up to him.
“Hold on, let me see where it is.” Erwin scans the shelves, not finding the folder for a while, until his eyes drift to the top utmost shelf and he spots it peeking from a clustered bunch in the corner. It’s a stretch even for him. When he reaches for it his body moves across in front of Levi’s and Levi’s eyes widen as Erwin’s side brushes his chest with the white fabric of his shirt. Levi inhales sharply. When Erwin turns around with procured folder his chest is in Levi’s face.
“There, I… got it,” he trails off and realizes their proximity. Levi swallows, by the time he raises his chin to look up he finds Erwin’s staring at him with heavy-lidded eyes.
They kiss and it knocks the air out of his lungs. He gasps clumsily against Erwin's mouth, ungraceful arms grasp at the other’s shoulders. His teeth graze Erwin’s lower lip and Erwin draws a sharp breath, leans and opens. Their tongues collide.
He doesn't remember ever being so flustered yet so wanting.
He wonders what Erwin thinks of him being so. When they pull away Levi finds with awed astonishment that Erwin's face too is the opposite of composed and collected, his breathing shuddering and hair in disarray where Levi pulled at it.
“What a strange dream,” he mumbles at that and Erwin's eyes widen.
“Are you dreaming, Levi?” comes a breathless whisper and Erwin’s gaze fixes on him.
“I must be,” he says and his hand lingers at the crook of Erwin’s neck, knuckles moving across the skin. He bites his lip, Erwin’s pulse flutters.
“Then I must have dozed off too,” Erwin says and his eyes glide over Levi's face and neck, soft flicker of eyelashes.
“Yeah, you barely sleep,” Levi says with no scorn and no admonition, just an observation.
“Hm,” Erwin hums slowly and his mouth forms a soft unguarded smile, “We should remedy that sometime.” Levi nods, hand trails down Erwin’s shoulder absentmindedly.
“We should.”
He wakes up just before sunrise curled in a chair that he doesn't remember falling asleep in. Erwin’s room is empty. There’s a jacket wrapped around his shoulders too big to be his own.