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Levi is in the middle of pouring his tea when a figurative - it may as well have been literal - bomb is dropped on him. He’s convinced he heard wrong. He would rather admit to age-related hearing loss than acknowledge what his mind has clearly just misinterpreted.
“Your what?”
Lian takes a deep breath and steels herself. “My boyfriend, dad. I’d like to bring my boyfriend home for dinner!”
The hot water spills over the teacup.
--
Mikasa finds him in their bedroom having an existential crisis. Her man is sitting at the foot of the neatly-made bed, hunched over with his head in his hands. He’s...being a little pathetic. Levi had never even reacted like this during the war. She supposes this is what daughters can do to men, even the tough ones.
“So...Lian told you about Griffin?”
He takes a second to process what she said and whips his head towards her. “You knew?” he hisses at her incredulously.
Mikasa only offers him a deadpan stare. “I’ve known for a while.”
Honestly it was hard not to notice. Lian has been coming home with dopey grins, giggles and lovestruck sighs for a few months.
“You know it stings knowing that the love of my life is a fucking traitor,” he accuses her dramatically.
She rolls her eyes.
Mikasa decides to take a little pity on him and she walks over to sit beside him on the bed.
“Lian really likes this boy,” Mikasa tells him gently. “Just...try to be civil?”
It’s Levi’s turn to give her a deadpan stare.
“Or maybe try not kill him?” she amends.
He mumbles something under his breath that she can’t quite catch, but she can guess his meaning.
“Teenagers are the worst, especially the males.”
Mikasa chuckles lightly and leans over to rest her head on Levi’s shoulder. She can feel his tenseness melt away slightly. He sighs in defeat and snakes one of his arms around her waist.
“Our baby’s growing up,” she whispers fondly to nobody in particular.
Levi groans. “Please don’t say that.”
He spends every day up until the night of the dinner cleaning and scrubbing every square inch of their house from top to bottom.
“Dad, can’t you be normal and just tell me to clean my room?!”
--
Griffin prides himself in the fact that his parents raised him to be a perfect gentleman. He knocks on the door three times, not too aggressively, but it isn’t mild or meek. He fixes the collar of his button-up shirt tucked perfectly into an iron-pressed set of semi-formal trousers.
When the door opens, he’s greeted by the sight of the most beautiful woman he has ever laid eyes on who may as well be the aged-up version of his girlfriend.
“You must be Griffin,” she welcomes him, looking him up and down.
“These are for you, ma’am,” he offers and presents her with a bouquet of assorted flowers. They are a vibrant array of colors and currently in season. She looks pleasantly surprised and he is internally patting himself on the back.
His pure, sweet Lian is a breath of fresh air the moment he sees her beaming at him and she rushes into his arms. Their laughter is light and airy and he is overjoyed to squeeze her lightly in his embrace.
When Griffin hears the sound of a distinctly masculine voice clear his throat, he wonders how it’s possible to actually sound pissed off doing that.
Lian’s father is a little shorter than he thought he would be. He smartly keeps this thought to himself though - his mother taught him manners. The man is glaring daggers right into him, though Griffin has been preparing for this. His own father gave him great advice about using his natural charm and wit to win over the parents - he’s confident that he can do it.
Wait.
He looks familiar, almost. Both of Lian’s parents do, actually. It’s probably not important, but he just can’t let it go.
For some reason, his brain suddenly supplies him with the mental image of the Wings of Freedom emblem that he noticed engraved into a plaque, proudly displayed by the front entrance of their house.
And then it hits him like a ton of bricks that Lian is an Ackerman, as in the daughter of Mikasa Ackerman. And the man who is currently trying to murder him with a look is The. Fucking. Captain. Levi and he recognizes them from the photo in his history textbook. No one told him that humanity’s two strongest soldiers got together after the war but then again he skipped a few of those classes and shit.
Griffin knew he should have paid more attention in class.
Lian is the most honest girl he has ever met, so of course he would never fault her for not telling him who her parents are. She probably didn’t think anything of it. But he is currently sitting in the home of Humanity’s Strongest Soldier and the Woman Worth a Hundred Soldiers. He’s heard stories about their fighting prowess and ruthless skill. Rumors are that Captain Levi had two hundred Titan kills back in the day, and together they took the lead in several battles that led to the peace that humanity knows today.
Whatever confidence he had a few moments ago is gone. He can not win over the parents, he is so screwed.
Griffin also remembers that he had plans to spend a few dollars on something cute for Lian’s birthday coming up. He makes a mental note to himself that if he wants to keep his testicles he’d better up that number just a little bit.
--
Dinner is absolutely delicious, but when Griffin tries to compliment Lian’s mother he is immediately shut down and discovers that it was The Captain Levi that cooked dinner. He is eating a meal prepared by a man who could snap his neck without flinching and he might die tonight.
They’re eating outside at the patio table overlooking a beautiful view of the ocean. The serene peacefulness of their home is such an extreme juxtaposition of every story he’s ever heard of the pair that his brain isn’t quite able to keep up.
Lian starts clearing away some of the plates, smiles brilliantly and rushes back inside the house to get the dessert that she personally prepared for the evening. He looks at her in a mad panic and silently begs her to not leave him alone to die. It goes completely unnoticed.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
On the other end of that spectrum, he can see Levi and Mikasa have a successfully communicated conversation just by looking at each other. That’s relationship goals if he’s ever seen it. He feels like an intruder watching this, and all he can do is sit awkwardly in silence. Levi breaks the silence as soon as Lian is out of earshot.
“So, you’re interested in our daughter, huh?”
This can go one of two ways.
One: he admits that yes, he is very interested in Lian.
Instant death.
Two: he refuses. Captain Levi then says something like, “Are you saying my daughter isn’t the most beautiful angel you’ve ever laid your unworthy eyes on you little shit?”
Instant death.
“Hnggfffghh,” he says intelligently instead.
Levi just looks at him like he’s an idiot, - which is fair, after that response - then shakes his head in disapproval and walks away into the house.
“Don’t pay him any mind,” Mikasa dismisses her husband’s actions with a wave. She smiles, and it’s warm and comforting and Griffin is immediately put at ease. “He’s just a big softie on the inside.”
He chuckles nervously and rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “Well, I’m glad you at least like me, ma’am.”
“Oh, I don’t.”
Griffin can feel the blood draining from his face immediately. He was lulled into a false sense of security and he’s been deceived.
“I simply tolerate your existence because of Lian,” she says this so casually it’s like she’s talking about the weather. “You know a bunch of men came here once, quite a few years ago to try and kill us and Lian. Do you know what happened to them?” Mikasa asks him like this is a typical topic of conversation for her. Who knows, maybe this is a typical conversation for a woman who could snap him in half like a twig.
Griffin swallows thickly. “What...happened?”
“Levi and I killed every single one of them. Levi gutted and slit the throats of every person that tried to get into this house and I used the axe from the garage to crush their faces into the backs of their skulls. That’s what happens to anyone who tries to hurt our family, you see.”
He’s frozen so stiff he isn’t sure he remembers how to breathe.
Griffin isn’t entirely sure if this is made up or true. His family recently moved to this coastal community, so they aren’t up to date on local news. Later, he’ll look this up in some old newspapers at the library archive and find out it is true and holy shit.
“We started training Lian too,” she continues. “She can take down a man three times her size in hand-to-hand combat, she’s better than most soldiers in a knife fight, and she can shoot a target with a long-range rifle from half a kilometer away.”
Griffin really can’t imagine his sweet, innocent girlfriend doing any of that, but knowing who her parents are now he’s inclined to believe this to be true. He can’t quite decide if this terrifies him or turns him on.
No. Do not think thoughts like that in front of the mother. For all he knows, she can see right into his filthy mind by sensing fluctuations in his heart rate or hormones or some terrifying inhuman shit like that.
“If there’s any lesson you should learn from this, it’s that you should be more afraid of what Lian can do to you if you hurt her, not just her father and I.”
The father daughter pair come back outside with dessert, and Mikasa acts like absolutely nothing just happened. Meanwhile, Griffin is pretty sure he’s about to piss his pants.
--
After dinner is over and the kid has gone home, Levi finds himself face to face with an absolutely furious Lian.
“What did you say to him, dad?” she demands. She’s all fire, rage and ferocity and she gets this entirely from her equally ruthless mother.
“Nothing, I barely even said half a dozen words to the kid,” Levi defends himself in all honesty. He isn’t entirely sure he deserves this.
“Oh, I’m sure you did,” she says sarcastically and storms upstairs to her room.
Levi is left standing in the living room gaping like a fool. War is easier than daughters.
Mikasa comes into the room trying to conceal a smug look. She sets down a glass of scotch for him and is holding a wine glass in her other hand. He narrows his eyes at her.
“It was you,” he accuses her.
Her barely hidden smugness morphs into a shit-eating grin.
“You little vixen,” he smirks fondly at his woman. And here he thought she was completely approving of Lian’s boy scout the whole time.
Mikasa yelps when he snatches her up in his arms from behind and they land on the couch with a light thud. The wine in her glass sloshes around precariously, but she’s able to keep it balanced enough that it doesn’t spill over. She settles herself snugly into his chest, and even after close to twenty years of this he just can’t get enough of how she feels against him.
A small part of him is considering letting Lian know who the true culprit is so she won’t be mad at him anymore, but trading his daughter’s wrath for his wife’s is not a can of worms he is willing to open. It turns out that between the two fiery and relentless ladies in his life, he is quite outmatched in his own household. But more importantly, they can probably use this to their strategic advantage for future boyfriends. He internally grimaces at that horrible thought.
“You know, I kinda like Griffin,” Mikasa admits absentmindedly. “Knows his place. Easy to control with fear.”
“Gods, vicious and cruel, I think I’m in love.”
She chuckles lightheartedly, and the melodic sound melts his heart away.
“I would hope so, considering I am your wife and the mother of your child,” she draws out each word slowly and deliberately.
The way his woman is looking at him sends a thrill to every part of him. She knows how much he likes it whenever she tells him all the ways she belongs to him, and him alone. It’s all too easy to just lose himself in her.
For now, he can pretend that their baby girl is still just that, not growing up too fast before his eyes into a beautiful, fierce young lady. One day, he’ll have to cross the bridge that he imagines every parent must dread. The one where he’ll have to let go of her hand and watch her take her first steps into adulthood, where years ago that same hand clutched onto his when she took her first steps as a child.
But not today.