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The night he was promoted to captain, Levi Ackerman lied three times.
The fist lie came out of his mouth as soon as Erwin Smith called his name, after telling everyone else to dismiss. Being left alone with the recently declared commander in his office, Levi’s body tensed.
“With all due respect,” he said, his tone making clear that he didn’t mean to be respectful, “I don’t want to be here for longer than is strictly necessary.”
That wasn’t an unusual situation and at that point Levi could only pretend not to like it. He wanted to be there. He wanted to be there every single time, and it was already kind of a routine, because no matter how many months Levi had spent with the rest of the cadets, he still did not get along with them. After every run-in with his companions, he would be sent over to Erwin’s office (the squad leader’s office before, and the commander’s now) and lately Levi had founded himself waiting impatiently to get called after every little altercation.
Neither of them wanted to waste their time, and because of that the commander had long ceased to try to change Levi’s mind. It was useless: the shorter man would never be satisfied with his situation and would never see the people around him as family, or even friends. Not anymore, Erwin knew that.
Truth been told, Erwin did play favourites. Levi wasn’t blind and he knew what he was there for: he was there to kill titans, not to make friends. So, what if he didn’t get on with the other recruits? He didn’t care. And, even if he had the obligation of reprimand him a bit every time, neither did Erwin.
“There is something I need to discuss with you. Why don’t you take a seat?” Erwin suggested, gesturing over the chair at the other side of his desk, right in front where he was sitting. Levi merely raised an eyebrow and Erwin lips curved a bit. “Don’t look at me like that, cadet, nobody complained about you this time. More like the opposite.”
Upon hearing this, Levi’s eyebrow raised higher. Well, that was unusual. He slowly sat down, crossing his legs, and waited. As much as he hated being called “cadet” (especially by Erwin), he didn’t say anything, the urge to know what the other man meant taking over him.
Erwin didn’t give him the pleasure of a quick answer, but Levi was already expecting that. After all, Erwin was a shapeshifter― they had known each other for almost two years now and Levi had had enough time to learn about the way he acted. He had never seen anyone with more ability to blend in than the man who was sitting right in front of him; smart as he was, Erwin knew perfectly that the best way to win the game was to play by the others’ rules. He was adept at mimicking the gestures, the voice tone, the register, anything that would make the other person feel connected to him, and that was why people relied on him so much: they saw themselves on him, so they trusted him as much as they trust themselves.
Whenever Erwin was with Levi, he spoke thoughtfully, letting the silence fill the space between them without rushing the conversation. The expressions on his face became more subtle, and the first time Levi noticed how he moved his eyebrows and narrowed his eyes, he thought Erwin was making fun of him. But Levi was observant, particularly when it came to Erwin, so it didn’t take him long to realize he was wrong.
If Erwin were having this conversation with any other person, he would have already talked, but he liked to pressure Levi into talking first and sometimes (a few times) he let him win.
“So?” Levi finally asked, crossing his arms, and trying to sound as he was bored and didn’t care.
Then, Erwin smiled a bit and Levi thought he might be a strategic player, but never a liar. Erwin Smith was always Erwin Smith: elegant, eyes full of confidence, surprisingly kind despite his firmness. That always stayed there.
Levi liked that. Not because he liked his smile (not only because of that― he’d rather not think about it), but because he wanted to be face to face with him, no masks in between. Having seen how Erwin opened more and more to him each time they were alone, Levi felt proud of himself, because he had earned that. He had earned the privilege of knowing Erwin Smith for real.
“I have an offer for you.” Levi squinted a bit to let Erwin know he was paying attention, and the blonde man kept talking. “I want you to become captain.”
Levi frowned. “Is this a joke?”
“It is not,” Erwin assured, resting his elbows on the desk. “And honestly, Levi, I would’ve promoted you sooner if you hadn’t put everyone at odds with you because of your unacceptable behaviour. I’m afraid they think you are selfish and disrespectful… probably because you are, but I know why you act like that. You’re a man who has lost everything. And I want to give you something to work with. You can make new achievements, Levi, worthy ones.”
“That is why you want to promote me? Out of pity?” Levi asked with a sarcastic tone. He was uncapable of facing Erwin’s words in any other way.
“Oh, no, absolutely not,” He replied, without missing a beat. “I want to promote you because you are the best soldier we have. Maybe the best we have ever had. And no matter how much they dislike you, they can’t deny it any longer.”
At that moment, Levi thought that all the layers that usually covered Erwin had been removed, cleaned. There was no trace of anyone else but Erwin in the words he had said. Certainly, there was nothing that belonged to Levi: not the expressions, not the words, not the cadence in his voice. And having those sky-blue eyes so firmly looking at his, saying without words “I trust you” once and again and again, made him feel overwhelmed.
“Why would you trust me?” He wanted to ask.
“What if I don’t want to be captain?” He asked instead.
Erwin seemed shocked for a brief second, but he quickly recomposed his expression.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Why would I, Erwin? Why would I want to be the babysitter of a bunch of useless soldiers?” He asked, with genuine curiosity. It was obvious that the commander didn’t approve his words, but he said nothing, so Levi kept talking. “I won’t take responsibility for anyone’s death, except my own.”
Listening to his words, Erwin’s eyes darkened a bit and his lips turned into a thin line. He kept quiet and Levi could feel his gaze slipping behind his eyes, entering his body, tying a knot in his throat, and pressuring his lungs from the inside. It took his breath away, but Levi would have given up on air just for Erwin to keep looking at him like that.
Erwin looked away, though. He got up gracefully and turned to glance outside of the large window behind his desk. It was the only light source in the room, and since the night was about to arrive, everything was golden and dark blue. The commander’s impressive silhouette drew itself in dark black as a perfectly defined ink stain against the glass and the sky.
“I don’t think you realize how important you are,” Erwin finally mumbled, his back still turned to Levi. In the soft light of the twilight, his deep whisper sounded intimate, like a secret between them two. When he turned his head, Levi dragged his eyes over Erwin’s strong features, memorizing the line of his profile. “Come here.”
That deep soft voice again. Levi would have done anything he asked for.
Calm down, he said to himself before walking towards the other man. They stand next to each other, backs straight and bated breaths, looking down to the town. From up there, it looked like a small maquette with people tiny as ants, and they were two gigantic titans who could hold it between their hands and decide their fate.
“I’ve been waiting for answers about the world since I was a child,” Erwin started, his gaze lost beyond the strong contour of the wall. “Most of these people will die without ever knowing what’s outside and, to be candid, I don’t think we will never understand ourselves, even here inside the walls, if we don’t know the outside world. I don’t want to live a life trapped by walls, lies and ignorance. Wouldn’t you find it asphyxiating? Living in this tiny world, even though there is so much more out there?”
Levi didn’t respond, because he knew his honest answer wouldn’t be what Erwin was expecting. He understood: it was easy for those who had always taken the sun light for granted to forget about the underground, but the memory of it was crystal clear in his mind. Back then (it was only a couple of years ago, but it felt like an eternity) he would have done anything to get the chance to live on the surface; in fact, he did, or at least he tried to. Levi had ambitioned the fresh air, the view of the sky and, watching the starry firmament at night, he had thought that no price would ever be too high. But it was.
Ambition turned into loss and pain, and he learnt his lesson.
In his silence, Erwin took the floor again. He wasn’t looking outside the window anymore; Levi could feel his stare fixed on his temple.
“Levi,” sighed Erwin, “I know you’ve lost hope…”
“I can’t lose something that I’ve never had.”
“Levi,” Erwin called again, and this time the younger man had no option but to look up. “We are making progress. Slow, but real progress. This is the first time in forever that we’re starting to get some answers to our questions. Hange finally was given resources, and you cannot tell me you don’t see how impressive her experiments are. We are learning. And knowledge, in the right hands… it could be so powerful,” It was weird for Erwin to get overwhelmed while talking, being always so calmed and well-spoken, but Levi noticed how he stumbled over words, his eyes glowing and his hands shaking. The commander drew a deep breath before taking a step closer to Levi and talking again. “I know I can’t ask you to believe in this as much as I do. You had a hard life. But you really don’t have any hope? Not even now?”
Levi’s body automatically responded to Erwin’s proximity. His back straightened, as he was trying to become taller, and the tip of his fingers tickled. Not trusting his sore throat, Levi coughed and licked his lips, and prepared himself for his second lie:
“No, I don’t.”
I don’t want to have any, Levi thought, even though he perfectly knew that these were not the same thing.
He remembered his first encounters with Hange, and how he unsuccessfully tried to avoid her. He could still picture that hungered look on her eyes every time she stared at him while he was using the three-dimensional maneuvering gear, the excitement filling her face as if Levi was the subject of an experiment. Being perceived by all his companions as some kind of criminal tramp, he didn’t find that any better, and because of that he spent his first months on the Survey Cops evading her as much as possible.
Until the tables turned, and Levi found himself observing Hange from afar. That creepy look on the woman’s eyes became almost mesmerizing when it came to titans, and Levi had no doubt that sooner or later she would find something important. Hange was not afraid of failure, and that pushed her farther and farther away, taking risks and walking paths no one ever had before. The truth was her methods were unorthodox and a lot of people was still unsure about her experiments. But, after almost two years of being part of the Survey Cops, Levi had followed her studies for long enough to be sure that behind her almost-maniac look, there was one of the smartest people he had ever met.
Levi had come to a conclusion: only someone like Erwin could lead the army and conquer back the lands outside the wall, and only someone like Hange could find the explanation to their world. Did Erwin think something like that about him? That someone like Levi was needed to accomplish that mission next to them? But Levi wasn’t like them, was he? He was a good fighter, indeed, but that wasn’t enough. He lacked something crucial, that thing that fulfilled their eyes: hunger, conviction.
Erwin called his name again and Levi was about to lose composure and yell at him, telling him that he just wasn’t the right person, when he felt the softest touch in the back of his hand and simply froze. Erwin took another step into the other man’s direction and, while he talked, he slowly intertwined his fingers with Levi’s.
“I would love for us to work closer,” he mumbled, his voice barely a murmur but anyhow filling the whole room. For Levi, there was nothing else in that moment: the world had reduced to Erwin’s voice, and Erwin’s thumb caressing his knuckles, and Erwin’s breath softly meeting his forehead, because he was close, very close.
And Levi also wanted him to be closer, in some way. He clenched his fingers tighter around Erwin’s hand, his eyes glued to that contact. The same hands with which he promised he would kill Erwin were now melting under his touch.
“You were wrong about something you said earlier,” Levi managed to say, even if he couldn’t look Erwin in the eye. “You said I’ve lost everything, but that isn’t true. I didn’t lose it… you took everything away from me. You compelled me, us, to join the Survey Cops. It was because of you that we went out the walls. It was because of you that they…” He trailed off; the words caught in his throat. “Why did it have to be you?”
He didn’t really know what he was asking. He only wanted Erwin no to be the one. Not to be the one he was hired to kill, not to be the one who led him to join the army, not to be the one who appeared behind his closed eyelids every night, not to be the one making his heart race just with the touch of a hand. But he was.
“I understand why you despise me.”
Erwin loosened the grip of his hand, but Levi didn’t give him the chance to let go and hold him tighter.
“Don’t you see it? I don’t, and that’s the problem,” whispered Levi, his gaze still on the floor. “I despise myself for not hating you.”
Erwin kept quiet for a second and then asked:
“And why don’t you hate me?”
Levi unconsciously looked up. Erwin’s eyes were fixed in his face, surprisingly close, and that took his breath away for a second and avoided the “I don’t know” from coming out of his mouth.
“Because you are the only one who seems to remember them,” he said instead. He was surprised by the honesty on his own words, because before that moment he had never allowed himself to think about that. “Isabel and Furlan. And I feel that, if I pushed you away, I would lose the only part of them that doesn’t live in my mind.”
Levi’s chest was open, a big crack touring his sternum and letting all the secrets he had kept bleed out. Erwin’s other hand grazed his cheek, like wiping a tear, but Levi couldn’t tell if he was crying. He might be. The last time he cried was when he lost his friends, and remembering it consumed him from the inside.
“I’ve felt so lonely since they died. They were everything I had, and since they’re gone… you are the only one who cared about me in any way. I can’t hate you, Erwin. I don’t even think I want to.”
His shaky breath beat Erwin’s palm and he noticed how the commander looked at his lips. Levi had nothing else to say, so he just stared back at him. The room had got darker, the shadows of the dead night painting every corner in black, but the silverish light of the moon drew Erwin’s face and Levi would have sworn that the man himself was shining, as some kind of magical creature, as a firefly who had choose his hand to rest, and he was afraid of making the slightest move and scaring him away.
But Erwin blinked slowly, and his eyelashes’ shadows danced on his face. And Levi wanted to touch him so bad. He raised himself on his tiptoes and pressed his forehead against Erwin’s, who softly gasped. The air between their mouths became one and, feeling the other’s hands slide to the back of his head, Levi decided that air didn’t belong there. Nothing belonged in that space, so he released one last heavy breath and then erased the distance.
Erwin’s lips welcomed his eagerly, the mouth partially open, their hands letting go of one another to grab the necks, the waists, the shirts, the hair. They kissed a little and then a little more, and when Erwin’s tongue tenderly licked Levi’s lower lip, he opened his mouth wider and pushed himself closer to him. It was frenetic, yet fond; desperate, yet gentle. If Levi could choose his future, he would’ve chosen that: endlessly kissing Erwin, until they frayed each other.
For a man who had forgotten what being at home felt like, Erwin’s kisses were the most welcoming thing imaginable.
Levi panted when Erwin’s hands slid down to his legs and lifted him on the table. A bunch of papers fell on the floor, but neither of them cared at all. They could only think about devouring each other, pulling apart just to catch their breaths before getting back to their skins.
Unbuckling the top button of Levi’s shirt, Erwin started to kiss his neck, his teeth smoothly pinching the skin.
“Erwin…if you want me to be captain, I’ll be captain,” Levi muttered, through his heavy breath. “On one condition.”
Erwin broke away from Levi’s body just enough to look him in the face, but kept his arms firmly pressed against his waist. They were both sweaty and even in the dark of the room Levi could perceived a glow on the other man’s eyes like he had never seen before, a new kind of hunger. But Erwin was a sober man, so he nodded one single time, inviting him to keep talking.
Levi took a breath.
“Promise me you won’t die out there.”
He didn’t know what Erwin was expecting, but it was obviously not that. His face changed a bit when he said: “I cannot promise that.”
Levi frowned. He cupped Erwin’s jaw and pulled in, bringing their faces closer.
“I don’t care if you can. Promise me,” he said, the voice so firm it sounded like he was giving him an order, even though he was actually begging.
Erwin smiled softly.
“Okay,” he granted. “I promise you I won’t die, unless you ask me to.”
Levi shivered. He knew what Erwin was doing: he was saying it again, that he trusted Levi. That he trusted him with his life.
But the mere thought of asking Erwin to die made Levi feel sick, so he hugged him back, burying his head in Erwin’s neck and breathing his scent, trying to get that image out of his head.
“I will never ask you that.” Levi whispered on Erwin’s ear, before kissing him again.
And Levi didn’t know it yet, but that was his third lie.