Chapter Text
Running late to your first class of the year is always bad. Panic sets in quickly, and you ask yourself questions like, Will I make it in time? What if I fall and break my leg? What if this is an omen and I’m gonna fail this class and not graduate university and end up working at some shitty fast food chain for the rest of my life?
But if you’re Hange Zoë, the only question running through your mind is whether the lecturer will actually, seriously, physically kick your ass for being late on your first day for the fourth year in a row.
Hange sprints down the cobbled path towards the science building, hoping against hope that Shadis is late even though it’s legend among the students that he sleeps in the goddamn classroom.
“Shit!” Suddenly, they slam into somebody and fall to the ground, grimacing at the impact.
Cracking their eyes open, they see an angular face glaring at them from their right. The person who bumped into them stands up, dusting himself off with quick, angry motions, muttering quietly.
“Watch where you’re fucking going, Four Eyes,” He snaps, shoving a handful of inky black hair away from his face.
“Four Eyes?” Hange repeats dazedly. They haven’t heard that nickname in ages…
“Because of the glasses? Are you so goddamn stupid that you can’t understand basic speech?”
The guy bitching them out stands up, allowing Hange to get a better look at him. He’s pale, with piercing blue eyes currently narrowed in annoyance. He’s kinda cute, actually. “Alright, shorty, calm down--”
“Shorty?” His voice is harsh with undisguised venom for the nickname. “You’re calling me short?”
“Well, from where I’m sitting, you seem pretty short. What are you…” Hange cocks their head and sits up slightly, trying to measure him. “Five one? Five oh?”
“I’m five three, you fucking bitch,” He mutters, straightening the sleeves of his jacket. A jacket in summer?
“Hey, be nice. I have a name, you know.”
“I don’t wanna learn it.”
Hange rolls their eyes. That kind of masculine snark is something they’re all too familiar with as a STEM major; this man’s brand of entitled rudeness is nothing new. “Suit yourself. You don’t need to be such a dick, though.”
He clenches his jaw and shuts his eyes like he’s trying to calm himself down before answering. “Fine. Just… watch where you’re going next time.”
He picks up the papers that had fallen in the collision, and then stomps off towards another building without even offering Hange a hand.
Weird, They think, but shrug and continue to run, praying Shadis only breaks one of their legs.
***
Levi Ackerman is pissed.
That fucking idiot who’d bumped into him had messed up the order of his papers because they couldn’t watch where they were going. Who the hell sprinted across campus at 8 AM? What kind of fucking dumbass was late to their first class of the year?
He feels a headache coming on at the thought, and decides to shove it to the side.
To make matters worse, he’d already been feeling awful and now being touched by a stranger was just the icing on the cake. He can practically feel the germs crawling over his jacket, and pulls it off to tie it around his waist instead. He wears the jacket in case of something like this, to protect himself, but it doesn’t stop that familiar anxiety from crawling up his throat.
Whatever. He’d shower when he got home.
He’s just thankful he doesn’t have an 8 AM; his first class is at 10:30. The only reason he’s on campus so early was to print out some extra study materials. And get away from his sister.
Mikasa doesn’t have the same sense of cleanliness as Levi, to put it mildly. To put it harshly, she’s a fucking slob and his already thin patience had frayed to the point of no return. Thus, seeking refuge elsewhere.
It’s a nice enough day outside, even if it is hot. A soft breeze is blowing, and the sky is a bright, sunny blue. It’s peaceful, even, without the typical noise on campus and without teenage idiots wrecking his apartment. Because Mikasa comes as a package deal, and the two idiots attached to her hip, Eren and Armin, are almost worse than she is.
They had rented an apartment near Levi and Mikasa’s because it was close to the university and they were ready to “broaden their horizons,” which Levi just took to mean that they wanted to get shit-faced without Eren’s parents or Armin’s grandfather finding out. Reasonable enough, although he grimaces remembering the time he’d caught Eren and Mikasa drinking his beer.
Disgusting, thieving children. He was so glad to be out of the house.
He shuffles his study guides, cringing at the diagrams. It’s just for a semester, but he has to retake biology for his science credits. He’d failed the exam miserably last year because he hadn’t been able to study at all: Mikasa had gotten sick, and he’d been taking care of her.
And Levi hates biology. Vehemently. He doesn’t need to know how everything inside him works; in fact, he’s perfectly fine staying in the dark about it. The lab work is awful, the textbooks confusing, and some of the material, honest to god, makes him want to throw up.
But it’s his 10:30, and he’d be there, and he’d pass. The teacher, Shadis, had said he’d set him up with a tutor to help. He’d protested, saying he didn’t need one and he’d figure it out, but Shadis had insisted. They were supposed to meet at 12 after his class finished.
He hopes that he can get rid of them fast enough to not even bother learning their name.
To kill time until class, he sits in the library, idly reading a book he’d brought with him. It’s typical dystopian drivel, and too trope-y to really be enjoyable, but it’s good enough for the moment.
At 10:20, he makes his way to Shadis’s classroom, narrowly avoiding the increasing crowds. He chooses a seat in the back, near enough to see the board clearly but quiet enough that he can take notes without distraction.
A tall brunette stands in front of Shadis’s desk, talking animatedly. Something about the figure is vaguely familiar, but Levi just guesses he must have seen them at the university sometime before.
Shadis looks exasperated, and the student just keeps gesturing with their hands, until he shoos them out of the classroom with a glare. They scamper away, but, interestingly enough, leave their textbook on a desk near the front.
Weird.
Shadis starts the lecture soon after, and Levi concentrates as hard as he can, desperate to ace this class so he’ll never have to learn about another mucous membrane again.
***
Except for the suspicious reappearance of the brunette in the front row, the lecture ends unceremoniously. Levi hangs back as everyone files out of the class, waiting for his tutor to show up so he can tell them to fuck off.
He walks over to Shadis’s desk, then asks, “Sir, is the tutor you assigned me going to be here, or can we just call the whole thing off because I don’t need one anyway?”
“This is protocol, Ackerman. It’s either office hours with me, or a student tutor, and I don’t wanna deal with your sorry ass longer than I have to. Your tutor is in the front row.”
“Right.” Levi whirls around and finally gets a good look at the person who’s been bugging him since they came in. “You.”
“Me?”
“You ran into me earlier, Four Eyes.”
They squint at him before their face lights up in recognition. “Shorty! Hello!”
Shadis shoos Levi away, and he stomps resolutely over to his tutor.
“I’m Hange Zoë. They/them pronouns, please.” They beam when they finish introducing themself, waving at him even though he’s only a few steps away. They have long brown hair swept into an awful rat’s nest of a ponytail, and golden brown eyes that are far too earnest for his liking. Their nose has a unique curve to it, and a downturned hook at the end that he almost finds interesting.
“Levi Ackerman. He/him,” He says, not because he wants them to know a single thing about him, but because he needs to act nice in front of Shadis. And Levi isn't... nice, so telling them his name and pronouns is really the best they're gonna get.
Hange holds out a hand for him to shake that he coolly ignores.
“Tough crowd, I guess. How are you? How old are you? What do you study? Do you like biology? Why do you need a tutor?”
The barrage of questions hits Levi like a freight train, and he clenches his jaw in an effort to steel himself. “I don’t need a tutor.”
“Huh? But Shadis told me–”
“I know what he told you. I didn’t fail the final last year because I’m an idiot, I had other things to do. So, the sooner you leave me alone, the better.”
Hange blinks, clearly confused. “You don’t want my help?”
“No.”
“Too bad, shorty. You’re getting it!” Hange grins at him, and he scowls. Their enthusiasm grates on his fucking nerves. Who smiled so often? Was it a facial deformity?
“Fuck off,” He mutters, moving past them to get to the door, praying they stay behind, but they just cheerfully follow after him.
“You know, I have to report to Shadis that this is actually happening, so I can’t do that,” Hange chirps.
“Why can’t you lie, idiot? Is the grease in your hair impeding your ability to think like a normal fucking person?”
“You’re pretty mean, shorty, has anyone ever told you that?”
“Yes.”
Hange cackles at his answer. “Oh, you’re a riot. I like you. So, when should we meet for your tutoring?”
“Never,” He groans, growing increasingly frustrated by their persistence.
“Come on, if you’ve taken the class before it’ll be a piece of cake. Just humor me.”
“Why the hell are you so dead set on tutoring me, anyway? It can’t be that fun, even for someone like you,” He snaps, turning towards the campus café. Speeding up as he walks, he hopes to lose them on the way, but they just keep pace with him.
“Rude again, Levi. I could just really enjoy helping bitchy men learn biology, you know,” They say, sighing when he doesn’t respond to the insult. “The truth is that I’ve been ordered to tutor people. I… It’s a punishment from the university, although not an entirely bad one.”
Levi’s curiosity is piqued against his will. “What did you do?”
“I, uh,” Hange looks down at the ground, rubbing a hand on the back of their neck, blushing in embarrassment, “I almost burned down Shadis’s lab.”
“You what?” Levi knows Shadis is insane when it comes to maintaining his lab, and for this person to have almost burned it down…
“So, basically what they’ve done is forced me to take over Shadis’s office hours. Obviously I can’t help with graduate students or anything, but I can help most of the undergrad kids.”
“Aren’t you an undergrad yourself?” He asks, regretting continuing the conversation as soon as he opens his mouth.
“Yeah, but I’ve been in love with biology since I was four. I used to play with frogs in the backyard, try to crossbreed plants, blow shit up in the labs during high school, things like that.”
Another fucking freak. “That’s disgusting.”
“That’s rude. Hey, you still haven’t answered any of my earlier questions, but I’m guessing you don’t like biology.”
He nods once as he opens the door to the café, finally accepting that they’re going to keep tailing him until he agrees to this.
“What do you study, then?”
“English.”
“Fun! What’s your favorite book?”
“None of your business, Shitty Glasses.”
Hange raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Hmm. That’s one I’ve never heard before.”
“I’m surprised.”
Hange waits beside him in line, surprisingly quiet until they make their order. “Can I get an iced Americano with three espresso shots?”
“Because you need to be even more fucking hyper?” Levi mutters under his breath.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Hange says, sticking their tongue out at him.
“I’ll have a green tea, please,” He tells the cashier, ignoring Hange, and then goes to sit at a quiet table near the window before pulling out some of his work. If Hange is just going to keep pestering him, he might as well be productive while they’re at it.
To his chagrin, they pay for his tea, and even bring it back to his table for him. Do they think he’s so incompetent that he can’t even hold a cup of tea? It’s insulting.
“So, Levi,” Hange says, drawing out the last syllable of his name. The pitch of their sing-song voice is starting to hurt his poor ears, unused to such abnormal frequencies. “When are you free?”
“Never.”
“You already used that one, be more creative! Whatcha working on?” They obnoxiously lean over the table, almost spilling their coffee just to see his paper. “Ah, biology. The truest scientific discipline. There’s nothing more important than the study of life!”
He can think of about five hundred things more important than the study of how absorption in the small intestine works.
“That’s wrong, by the way.” Hange points to a line on his paper, furrowing their brow in concentration. “Glucose is absorbed by active transport.”
Levi scowls at Hange before reluctantly fixing his mistake.
“That’s wrong, too. The lacteals can absorb lipids because they’ve already been emulsified.”
Gritting his teeth, Levi scribbles out the information.
“You sure you don’t need help, Ackerman?” Hange asks, a self-satisfied smirk on their face. God, are they happy that they’d distracted him so badly he can’t remember shit?
“Absolutely sure.”
“O-kay, then,” Hange sings, sitting back in their chair and taking a sip of their over-caffeinated monstrosity. “But, there was another thing wrong. The villi don’t–”
Levi slams the notebook shut, the loud noise attracting the attention of other students in the coffee shop. Hange grins.
“Admit that you need help.”
“No.”
“The villi’s microvilli don’t increase their surface area for no reason, it’s about the rate of reacti–”
“Shut the fuck up, and leave me alone.”
“Abandon your pride, Levi darling.”
“Call me darling again, and I will shove my foot so far up your ass you’ll be tasting dirt for months.”
“Levi, my dear–”
“No.”
“Come on! I need this! You need it, too!”
“What I need is for you to leave me alone.”
“There was another thing wrong on your paper–”
God. God they were annoying. The fraying strands of his patience snap. He’s finished.
Maybe if he just agrees to one lesson, they’ll leave him alone forever afterward, and he’ll never have to speak to them again.
“If I do a lesson with you, will you leave me alone?”
“How can I leave you alone if I’m teaching you?”
Levi glares at them.
“Fine, fine, yes, I can leave you alone. When will we do it?”
“Thursday at 3.”
“For how long? Two hours?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Not enough time. An hour and a half?”
“One hour, and that’s pushing it.”
“Fantastic! Where?”
“Here. At this table.”
Hange grins and puts their hand out for him to shake again. “It’s a deal!”
“I don’t shake hands.”
Frowning, Hange retracts their hand and picks up their coffee instead. “Alright, shorty, you keep up that wannabe emo thing you’ve got going on.”
“Wannabe emo?”
“You know, the constipated expression–” Hange starts to do an awful imitation of his voice, making their own unnecessarily deep– “the “I hate everyone and everything around me and I wish the world would end” vibe. It doesn’t suit your vibe.”
“For the love of god, fuck off.”
Beaming, Hange stands up. “You got it. Give me your number, though, so I can contact you.”
He relays his number in a monotone that amuses Hange greatly, judging by the giggles they’re barely stifling.
“Great, see you soon! And remember, it’s just one lesson. If you come back alive, I’ll treat you to a meal!”
Please don’t, Levi thinks, but he’s not enough of an asshole to shout it at Hange’s retreating back as they skip out of the café, humming some inane song to themself.
One tutoring session. That’s all it was.
How bad could it possibly be?