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"How do you get along with him?"
Eren gave Connie an odd look from where he was wiping at a window. "With who?"
Connie snorted, waving the rag he was holding impatiently. "Duh, who else? The Captain, of course!"
Eren's brows furrowed. "Captain Levi?"
"Shhhh! Or you'll summon him!" Sasha hushed him loudly, eyes darting wildly from side to side as if she expected the Captain to leap out from a dusty corner at any moment and beat them all up for not meeting his impeccable standards of cleanliness.
Eren's lips thinned into a flat line. "Come on, guys, he isn't all that bad."
"Easy for you to say, Mr. Homemaker," Jean scoffed, brandishing the duster he had been using at Eren, "now that you're all nice and whipped. Do you cook him a hot meal and say, 'Welcome home, honey!' when he comes back at night, too?"
"Go choke on a carrot, Horse Face," Eren growled. "And your falsetto is terrible. I sound nothing like that."
Jean fluttered his eyes outrageously. "'Oh, Captain! You must be so tired from killing all those Titans! Shall I run you a hot bath and give you a massage while you feast on the meal I made out of your kills?'"
"If you're so hungry, I've got a knuckle sandwich right here with your name on it—"
"Admittedly, he is different from how I used to imagine him," Armin interjected, tugging subtly at Eren's hand which had already balled up into a fist. "His reputation tends to precede him, after all. He does have... a strong presence, but not exactly in the way I thought it would be."
"He's as murderous over cleaning as he is about Titans," Connie summed up succinctly, to which Armin was helpless to do anything more than nod. "Actually, kind of about everything. I mean, I know he has his moments, but he's actually pretty crude for a Captain. And short. Now that I mention it."
"And he's going ta hear ya if ye keep that up!" Sasha's accent slipped a little in her agitation, as did the kerchief tucked over her hair.
Connie immediately winced and mimed a zipping motion over his mouth. For the next minute, he busied himself with sweeping his designated corner.
"Seriously though, did you have, like, a manly sleepover or trust fall exercises or something because—"
Eren groaned.
"He did beat you up in that court trial."
"Mikasa! Let it go already!"
She shrugged primly.
"It just takes a lot to move from being captor-and-prisoner to the relationship the two of you have now, is all," Historia said quietly, never looking up from where she was wiping down dusty tomes.
Considering she barely talked nowadays, Eren realized that this was a pretty serious issue for even Christa – Historia to add her two cents. Looking between all of them, who were working fastidiously on their respective tasks but obviously listening for his response, Eren sighed.
"We just went through a lot together. I mean, I admit to kind of hero worshipping him before—" "Kind of?! Before?!" Jean echoed incredulously before receiving a dark glare from Eren—"and he ended up kicking my ass to save my life, but he actually stood up for me when I was first learning to control my shifting and he urged me to make choices I wouldn't regret and we—we're the only ones left from... yeah. I'm just— He hasn't been bad to me, and I can only hope I've been the same for him."
The entire room fell silent at the heavier atmosphere Eren's sharing had taken a turn for.
"Plus he's got a hilarious sense of humor."
Sasha snorted loudly, while Connie choked out a "What?!" over the saliva that had caught in his throat. Historia stared blankly at him, Mikasa looked incredulous, and Armin looked like he was attempting to figure out what kind of sense of humor Levi could possibly possess that could be considered as "hilarious" by other people's standards.
"Okay, now you're just shitting me." Jean frowned when his remark actually elicited laughter from Eren.
"He'd probably like that one, actually." Eren grinned, taking delight in how he was the only one who got it.
"The only thing I'd like is if all you brats managed to grasp the cleaning materials with your hands instead of your asscheeks," Levi said, face completely blank as he watched all of them jerk up and start cleaning more furiously than ever.
Well, except for the Ackerman girl, who only matched his stare, and Eren Jaeger.
"Hey, Captain, I heard a good one from one of the other units," Eren said with a mischievous grin.
"Oh?"
"So there are these two statues that face each other in the middle of Sina, a male one and a female one. After about thirty years of standing there, one of the gods decides to reward them. 'Since you've brought so much joy to people, I will give you thirty minutes of being human, during which you can do anything you want to do.'
"The two of them are brought to life, and they head off into the closest bushes. The god can hear them laughing and rustling around, but he's surprised when they come out after just ten minutes. 'You still have a lot of time left. Do you want to keep going?'
The male statue asks the female statue if she wants to go again, and she says, 'Okay, but this time you hold the bird down, and I'll take a shit on it!'"
There was a terrifying moment of silence during which nobody was sure whether they wanted to groan at Eren's joke or be eaten by a Titan right then and there.
And then came a bark of laughter from none other than Humanity's Strongest himself. Only it wasn't quite laughter... or at least it didn't sound like how people normally laughed.
(Later on, they would compare notes and have differing opinions as to what it actually sounded like, but the consensus they all reached was that it was a sound that would make young children burst immediately into tears.)
By the time his laughter died down, Levi's face was impassive as ever.
"I'm telling Erwin that next time," he said, and swept out of the room.
"I take it back, he's completely terrifying," Connie hissed to Eren.
"What? But that was—" Eren shook his head in disbelief over everyone's quiet murmurs of agreement.