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They had been driving for far too long.
More importantly, they had been driving for far too long and still hadn't gotten anywhere
"Are you sure I turn here?" Levi asked carefully. He'd been listening to Erwin so far, but nothing good had come out of that, clearly.
"Yes, I'm positive," he reaffirmed, squinting at the map. "I'm 98% certain we should have gotten there by now though. How long has it been, three hours?" Erwin furrowed his forehead. "It only said it'd take two online"
Levi suddenly hit the brakes and pulled on to the side of what looked somewhat like a road. He whipped his head around to look at Erwin. "You didn't tell me we should be there by now! If you had I would've gone back and checked we didn't make a wrong turn. We can't exactly camp anywhere, this is a National Park!" He groaned and hit his head into the steering wheel, making the horn hong loudly.
"Well, I didn't-"
"Give me the map!" Levi snarled, ripping it out of his hands, before collapsing on the rim of the wheel again. "You were reading it upside down you dolt," he snapped. Erwin pulled his whole body away from him defensively.
"Sorry," he mumbled, pressing his thumbs together. "I'm not good at this."
Levi didn't even hear him over the sound of all the blood in his body leaving his face. He looked white as a ghost, and that was because they were nearly five hundred kilometers from the campsite; Erwin had had him turn east, not west, when they'd originally gotten on the highway. The fact it was almost sunset already didn't help them either.
"Well, the good news is, we can camp anywhere, since we're not in a park," Levi said cautiously, making sure not to sound too astounded. "The bad news is, driving at the rate we've been doing for the past three hours, we've got five and a half-or-so hours left."
"What?" He had to snap his jaw shut to keep it from hitting the floor. "But we're in the middle of a forest, and there doesn't seem to be anybody else around. I'm not even completely certain how to get back home form here."
"Then you'd better start unpacking and putting our food up in a tree." Levi worked quickly, stepping out of the car and untangling some of the knots that tied their equipment to the roof. "Unless you want worse problems than this, because right now we're sitting ducks."
With both of them working, it only took a few minutes to hang everything nice and high off the ground. The tent was still a mess of poles and canvas on the floor, but that was irrelevant right now. Levi leaned back on the hood of the car, somewhat satisfied, when Erwin pulled out his cell. "Should I waste money on internet so I can use Apple Maps and figure out where we are?"
"It's up to you. Either that or we stay lost forever." Levi shrugged. "But you pay it, because it was your shitty ass mistakes that got us lost."
"Fine, fine," Erwin grunted. "You set up the tent, I'll call someone or figure something out."
Levi nodded, settling on a somewhat flat area, sheltered behind the side of the car and off the road.
It was past dinnertime when they ate, but the glimmering of the fire was only all the more satisfactory in the dark. They did have food and cooking utensils at least, after all.
"You know," Levi murmured happily into his lap, "even though we're in completely the wrong spot, this is quite nice."
"How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?" he asked, stroking his head. "Already the amount I've repeated it is insane, even for you." He kissed his forehead sweetly as Levi lay sprawled across the ground.
It rained the whole night. Had they been prepared, they would have dug a trench, but as it stood, the only thing they could do was shiver close and try to sleep it off. Levi felt a strong pair of arms try and shelter him from most of the water, and he sighed in relief. Erwin was so cute when he was trying to be protective.
He woke up to a snuffling next to his head and Erwin still curled around him, snoring. The two sounds were not related though.
There was a bear in the tent.
It was casually sniffing down everything, as though it owned the place. It wasn't too large, but he still shivered when he thought about what kind of havoc it could wreak. Barely moving, he grabbed a pan lying around from yesterday's dinner, and smacked it in the head impulsively, then winced at his own stupidity.
The bear roared in surprise, and Levi thought he was dead, he really did, but surprisingly, it ran off.
Unfortunately, Erwin had no idea what was going on.
He shot upright and punched the first thing in front of him, which happened to be Levi. Swearing loudly and shaking his fist, he stared wide eyes at him. "What the hell?"
"Bear." His voice was entirely too casual for the situation.
"Bear?" Erwin repeated.
"Yes, bear. I'm going to go finish scaring it off," he said dryly. He walked out of the tent, pan still in hand, and looked through the trees quickly for it. It blended in surprisingly well, but the hulking brown figure was still hard to miss.
Levi began walking towards it, wielding the frying pan, before he realized it was too small to be an adult. It had to be a cub. Before he could do anything else, it disappeared into the woods.
Erwin emerged from the tent, laughing hard. "Scaring away the local bears Levi?"
"Shut up, brat," he mumbled, "and help me pack the car." Then, his palm flew to his forehead. "The car! Why didn't we go inside once it started raining?"
Erwin just laughed harder as Levi burrowed his face in his hands. "Let's just get home Levi,"
It only took around ten or twenty minutes to throw everything messily in the trunk and hop in to drive away. This time around though, he insisted Erwin drove while Levi read the map.