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“Does it hurt?”
“I’m not gonna answer that,” Levi says with a muted hiss. “It stopped bleeding. That’s all that matters.”
“You should have let the medics do this, Levi.” Erwin’s brows are pinched in concentration while he runs another suture through Levi’s forearm. His voice is mumbled, distracted. “I’m a little rusty.”
Levi huffs and looks away. It hurts less if he doesn’t watch.
The campfire illuminates those of the corps that had survived the day. It seems not many of them got away unscathed. Besides the usual amount of head injuries and broken bones, the medics are occupied with a suspiciously high rate of lacerations. Close encounters with titans usually end in death for others, not cuts and bruises like Levi’s accumulated. He suspects the additional injuries are from cheaply made blades. Again. He decides now isn’t the time to bring it up.
“The medics have more important shit to do than stitch me up.”
Erwin hums and Levi looks back down at him. His large fingers are struggling to tie a knot, and if Levi tries hard—very hard—he can focus more on how the rough skin tickles the inside of his arm and less on the thin tugs of pain.
He reaches for the gauze and throws it into Erwin’s chest. “Just wrap it up. You need instruments to tie that off, and the stitches are just going to pop anyway.”
Levi hates how gentle Erwin is. He knows he’s a kind man when he wants to be, but Levi wonders how he hides his rage and determination so well, where he tucks it away when they aren’t in battle. His hands are too big, too scarred—by war, by Levi—to be so graceful. Levi can barely feel the cotton he places on top of his cut, and even though his entire hand engulfs Levi’s arm, it’s like it’s barely there.
“I’m not fragile, you know,” Levi says. Erwin just keeps wrapping the bandage around his arm, unbothered. “It needs to be tight if you don’t want me bleeding out overnight.”
Erwin smiles then, the only indication he’s heard Levi’s words, although the next wrap of the fabric is a little tighter, Levi thinks.
“You sound like you have some experience with stitches, then?”
“Isabel.” The quickness of Levi’s response surprises even himself. He sighs. Erwin keeps working. “She was accident prone, but that never stopped her. I had to get good at it if I didn’t want her dying of a shitty infection. Not like we could afford a doctor.”
“I imagine you took good care of her,” Erwin says, tucking in the edge of the wrap and finally looking up. “Of both of them.”
Levi nods and moves to stand, but Erwin’s still kneeling in front of him, still has his arm in his grasp. His thumb ghosts over the bandage. Too damn gentle.
“Can you come with me?” Erwin asks, standing and walking towards his tent before Levi can speak the answer Erwin already knows.
The tent is only a few meters beyond the center of where they’d made camp, but the firelight falls away quickly with each step they take. Levi follows Erwin into the darkness, until there’s no sound but their weary breaths and the crunching of their footsteps. It almost feels like they’re alone.
“Oh,” Levi says, in an attempt to bring his focus back to business. “I didn’t want to say this in front of everyone else, but—”
Erwin holds the tent flap open for Levi and he brushes past the man and into the dim light with a quiet thanks.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but those blades were shit. Shards everywhere.” Levi paces where he can in the small space, and turns to face Erwin at the entrance once he’s taken only a few steps. “It’s like they want us to die out there.”
Erwin reaches up to unbutton his cloak with a grimace.
“Oh, I’ve noticed.”
He lets the fabric fall to the dusty ground, and before Levi can take a step to pick it up, Erwin turns his body, just slightly.
The piece of metal lodged in Erwin’s back glints in the lamplight like a mirror. A deep stain of red, stark against the white of his shirt, encircles it. It’s dark, though, Levi notices. Dry.
“Erwin, what the fuck.”
“I’m fine. I just need help.”
“Fine, my ass. Sit down and don’t move.“
Levi heads back to the camp without another word and by the time he gets back with a handful of supplies, Erwin has followed his instruction.
Standing behind him, Levi places everything on the cot next to where Erwin’s sitting and takes a closer look at the piece of blade sticking straight out Erwin’s back.
“Want to tell me why you didn’t tell me about this?” he asks. He gently presses around the wound, attempting to test how deep it is through the leather and fabric. Erwin sighs heavily with a slump of his shoulders, and Levi watches a twinge of pain shudder through his body as his breath hitches.
“When I realized my cloak covered it and no one could see it,” Erwin begins slowly, no longer attempting to hide the strain in his voice, “I kept quiet. Other people needed more help.”
Levi clicks his tongue. “And now you’re bleeding all over everything.”
“I’m afraid to ask how it looks.”
Levi stands back, eying the shiny protrusion. It’s smooth on both ends: an entire segment of a blade but, thankfully, a clean break of the metal.
“Could be worse.” Levi tugs experimentally on the splinter, and he can tell Erwin tries not to react to the pain. “It’s in there good, but your harness saved me from having to dig this out your chest.”
“It hurts, Levi. Please don’t make me laugh.”
Behind Erwin’s back, Levi rolls his eyes.
“I’m gonna pull this bastard out and you’re going to bleed like a pig, so I need you to listen.”
Erwin’s quiet.
“Unbuckle your gear.”
Erwin obeys quickly and easily. All Levi can do is watch the metal move with his body like a growth, so he keeps talking, helpless.
“And unbutton your shirt too while you’re at it.”
He moves less now, the buttons slowing his movements. Levi watches the fabric around the blade grow darker by the second.
Erwin gives Levi one long look over his shoulder—the bad one—and his eyes dart down when Levi imagines he catches a glint of the metal in his periphery.
Levi takes the cue.
He steadies Erwin, one hand on his shoulder, just above the cut, his other carefully grasping the blade. It’s deeper than it looks when he begins to slide it out, and it takes longer than he would like, but once he sees the tip slide out, bright red swirling on the end, that’s when he hurries.
“Off. Now.”
Erwin rushes to comply but stops short with his shirt halfway off his shoulders, and Levi steps in to help him peel the shirt, dried with blood, off his back.
The new rush of fresh blood gives Levi no time to think, before he’s grabbing a handful of gauze, pressing his hand against Erwin’s back, mindful of the man’s hisses of pain but pushing it aside. He flanks Erwin and presses his other hand against his chest to keep the pressure without pushing him over.
When he finally settles in, when he finally catches his breath from the adrenaline, Levi realizes how intimate the gesture feels. Erwin’s face wouldn’t be so close if he were looking straight ahead, but of course he’s turned to look at Levi. There’s so much Levi can see from this close, things that Erwin isn’t capable of hiding with a stoic demeanor and kindness in spades. A permanent crease in his brow, a stray or two of gray lost among the brilliant blond. Guilt and stress.
The wind rustles the walls of the tent, and it’s otherwise silent but for their breaths. Levi notices Erwin’s heartbeat thrums a little quicker beneath his palms when his breathing becomes more shallow. He presses harder, to remind himself why he’s there or perhaps to distract Erwin, he’s not sure, but Erwin only winces a little, his eyes crinkling but not leaving Levi’s. The blue is so dark in the dimly lit tent. They hold a weight that’s absent in the sunlight when they’re washed out and bright, and Levi wishes, immediately, he’d see him like this more often.
“Idiot,” Levi mumbles into the quiet. He looks down at his hand, the one on Erwin’s chest, but it’s just as distracting as the man’s inquisitive eyes. “At least you were smart enough not to pull it out yourself. Saved us a lot of stupid paperwork.”
Erwin’s quiet chuckle vibrates through Levi’s skin. “Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
Levi laughs, a quick thing that escapes his throat before he can stop it. “No, you’d never do that would you?”
He whispers a quick “asshole” as he positions himself behind Erwin’s back again to get a look at the cut. Before he pulls his hand away, though, he looks elsewhere. The shape of Erwin’s shoulders—the slope of them, how the bulk rolls beneath his skin—is, in a word, ridiculous. Levi’s never had a reason to be this close to the man’s bare skin, much less a reason to touch it. Flecks of red dried on pale skin remind him of the reason, however.
“If anyone needs the medics’ help, it’s you, you know,” Levi chides quietly. He peeks under the bandage, pushes it back quickly to maintain pressure. Erwin’s chest is solid under his other hand, so solid but so incredibly fragile. Human. “You’re too important.”
“I trust you.” Erwin says it so quickly, like a reflex, like it comes so easily to him. “It’s just a scar,” he continues, like he hadn’t said enough already.
“That’s not the point. Hold this.” Levi readies the thread once Erwin’s got control of the gauze. “You’re too important to be doing stupid shit.”
“It’s my job.”
“You know what I mean.” Levi takes a deep breath and steadies the needle in his hand. “Ready?”
Erwin only looks up at him out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not fragile.”
“Shut up,” he says, and punctuates it with the first suture.
Erwin’s deep breathing grounds him, helps him take his mind off of the work his hands are doing, the pain his fingers are inflicting. The other scars were easier; those blades slid quick and unobstructed into his skin, aided by anger. It’s harder for Levi to hurt in order to heal. This one will heal worse—jagged edges and crooked stitches—but at least it’s from Levi putting him back together. Erwin doesn’t deserve more pain, especially from him. He wants to be gentle for Erwin, too.