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Corporal Levi leaned back against the wall, his head tapping the stone as he closed his eyes. His thoughts were on the boy laying unconscious on the bed across from him. It wasn’t uncommon. Eren was such a trump card and Levi’s primary responsibility that these days that the kid was usually on his mind in some shape or form.
The corporal let out a sigh and began to prepare himself to wait.
Levi wasn’t sure how long it would take Eren to wake up. The kid’s periods of sleep following a transformation varied wildly. He had seen Eren immediately after what he would later come to learn was his second complete transformation when his friends were pulling him from the titan corpse. The boy was comatose for the next three days.
Like most people at the time, it had been enough to warrant viewing the boy with suspicion and mistrust. Not that Eren was special for that. Levi regarded most people in a similar fashion.
He remembers he was told that Eren had previously transformed twice, once completely, once partially. The first complete transformation the kid hadn’t been out long; the incomplete one hadn’t forced a loss of consciousness. Surely there were tactical advantages to be taken from that information.
The corporal shifted his weight, moving so that as he leaned, his left ankle crossed over his right. He opened his eyes and looked again at his subordinate. The boy’s hair was a weird mix of standing up straight and flattened from sleeping. His eyelashes fluttered slightly as he dreamed. He looked completely relaxed. It was a marked difference from their initial interview.
The first time he had properly met Eren he had made it clear that he didn’t think much of him. Erwin and he had asked the boy what he had wanted to do, watching through cell bars at a kid who was shackled and imprisoned, but would shortly prove there was no restraining him. Sharp green eyes, wide with maybe more than a tinge of hysteria and god-given purpose had blazed out at them. Eren eagerly, purposefully declared his desire to join the scouting legion so he could murder titans, his voice raw with savagery.
Levi hadn’t seen the boy look so intense very often, but he came to learn that it was always simmering below the surface; the drive to exterminate. When Eren had told them what he wanted, no intended, Levi knew he was speaking with the core of Eren Yeager, the human. It had started there, that brief flash of thought through his mind as Levi looked through the bars of the cell. ‘I like this kid.’
Suddenly Levi was accepting responsibility for a fifteen year old that was all guts and single minded determination.
The body on the bed made a soft snort and the boy rolled over, blissfully unaware.
The incident with the tea spoon had also not resulted in a loss of consciousness. Levi remembered that clearly. He had been talking to Petra when it felt like there was an explosion behind them only to turn around and see a titan arm emerging from a cloud of steam. They had rushed over and while Petra and the rest of his squad drew weapons and surrounded Eren, all Levi remembers doing is looking up and seeing a confused and highly alarmed fifteen year old boy. The look on the kid’s face told Levi all he needed to know.
Eren didn’t know what was going on any more than anyone else.
In a rare moment of loss of discipline, Levi’s team had bombarded Eren with questions and threats. More than the kid who was so desperately trying to not to freak out could keep up with. Eren had managed to yell at the team to shut up, surprising them all. Then Hange had shown up from who knows where and Eren seemed able to collect himself a little at her sight. At the time Levi was thankful.
A moment later, the kid was pulling himself free with a disgusting squelch and tumbling backwards off smoldering ribs. As he had rolled past Levi with his legs over his head and a soft “Ow!” escaping his mouth, the corporal only had one thought for a brief and clarifying instant.
‘Cute.’
He had walked over to where Eren had stopped, sitting up and looking sick. He stayed by the kid’s side, feeling a bit relieved, but still on guard. After a short inquiry to how the boy was feeling –not good, check- he then ordered the rest of his team to be debriefed by Hange while he remained at Eren’s side. Now was not the time for the kid to be unmonitored and Levi honestly didn’t trust anyone but himself to do it.
He had taken the kid down to the basement of the castle, away from everyone else and waited while Eren just breathed, sitting on stone steps with his arms crossed over his knees. He looked small and shaken, but also like he was mulling over a very unpleasant truth. When the kid started speaking, not complaining nor blaming, just admitting to his own naiveté, Levi felt something in his chest soften a little.
With a fifteen year old boy sitting on cold stone by his feet, Levi didn’t sugar-coat. He explained, in the fairest light he could, how the team was doing exactly what they were supposed to, how no one could know what to expect when it came to titans, and quick reaction might mean keeping your life that much longer. The team put their warring emotions aside in order to act and they would not regret it, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t conflict in their hearts.
The look of surprise Eren had turned on him was relieving. When Levi glanced at those bright green eyes he saw that they were clear and considering.
He had given the kid something new to mull over and when they boy stood up, his shoulders were straighter.
Levi felt something inside melt just a little. Affection had started to drip and it would grow like a stalagmite.
The first trip outside the walls with Eren was one of Levi’s worst missions in memory. He had followed a path of dead teammates to find a fresh recruit desperately furious and a titan cognizant. By the time he had caught Mikasa Ackerman around the waist to pull her back from battle long enough for her to think, his heart had become a stone in his chest, covered in black oil and slipping down into the pit of his stomach.
The girl’s report that Eren had disappeared into the female titan’s mouth had firmly placed the idea that Eren Yeager was dead in his mind. His heart fell the final inches to the bottom of his abdomen, thudding heavily onto his intestines. Her assertion that Eren was alive, her eyes chips of smoldering coal and deadly certain of it, made him feel like his lungs suddenly worked again, although he couldn’t quite say when it was they had stopped.
It seemed backwards for a teenage girl to be the one giving a fully grown man some necessary resolve.
Levi quickly discovered the girl’s discipline defenestrated itself the minute Eren Yeager was involved. It instantly became clear to the corporal the nature of the relationship between the two teenagers and every time he took a step on the leg he injured saving the girl’s life he was painfully reminded of it.
It was only after the relief of grabbing Eren back from the titan’s mouth -body grossly coated and dripping with saliva, but warm and very much alive- that Levi was able to relax and address the niggling little feeling squirming around in his chest and sending ripples of alarm through his brain. It had first presented itself when Mikasa had favored him with a look that vowed destruction of anything that stood between her and Eren. It only strengthened when he had the boy’s unconscious body in his arms, retreating towards safety when he voiced the damning accusation of Eren’s importance to Mikasa in the desire that it would convince her to give up on the titan and follow them.
Her lack of a satisfactory answer only confirmed it for him.
Later, when Eren was cradled carefully in a cart and Mikasa riding protectively alongside, her gaze unwavering from his prone form, Levi was watching with that unfamiliar burning in his chest that he was able to discern.
He was envious of Mikasa Ackerman.
Over a fifteen year old kid more stubborn than any mule and only room in his head for thoughts of killing titans, no less.
Up until then he had been assuming this feeling was fondness for a subordinate, something between what an older brother might feel. Of course it would be something much worse, because in a world where titans fed on humans to near extinction what could possibly ever go right?
It was the first time in a long while that Levi had felt truly fucked.
Not long after he was sitting in the mess hall waiting for Erwin to show up while Eren sat across the table from him, eyes staring blankly off into the ether, the corners of his mouth tight with guilt. Levi could guess what was playing through the kid’s mind.
He had been drinking his tea, but Eren’s sat untouched and unnoticed before him. Before the corporal could really stop himself, he was complaining about Erwin’s delay, and with a glance at his subordinate’s distant expression, made a joke about the commander being constipated. Eren jolted back to himself with a laugh, face softening just a bit into something more tragic.
Then the kid started apologizing for the way the mission turned out, as if every success and failure depended solely on his decisions rather than the soldiers who chose to think and act for themselves. Levi decided that when Eren thought beyond killing titans, the kid couldn’t help but get himself tangled up in the details until he was tripping over a metaphorical cliff.
The corporal had seen enough of his own comrades die to know that there are no right and wrong choices. He was well aware how useless it is to agonize over every decision when the other path could have ended just as bad or worse.
There was the impulse to reach out and comfort, but there was the table between them, and Levi was immensely glad for it. He was pleased that Erwin chose that moment to show up, shattering the fragile atmosphere, and Eren pulled the pieces of himself back together just long enough to learn a friend of his was a traitor.
The body on the bed rolled over again and Levi knew it wouldn’t be long before his subordinate woke up.
The unfortunate fact of the corporal’s existence, beyond an inappropriate attraction to a soldier under his command, was that said soldier periodically transformed into a giant rage monster, the results of which often left his superior standing watch over his bedside like a faithful spouse.
It was worse when Mikasa would show up to do the same.
So much worse.
The form on the bed shifted, and then Eren was sitting up, bleary and yawning.
“Captain?” he asked, eyes softly landing on Levi and inadvertently tearing bleeding pieces of the elder soldier’s heart out in the process.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
Obviously.
The boy’s eyes flitted away to land on a tray next to his bed with water and bread on it.
“Mikasa was here?”
The rest of Levi’s heart shredded into bloody fluttering paper bits inside his chest.
“She had to return to her duties.”
“I see…” It was quiet for a moment while Eren presumably tried to remember what he did in his titan form this time, good or bad, controlled or not.
“Captain, I’m sorry, I don’t remember-”
“You went on a rampage and killed titans. You had to be cut out when you tried to run off.”
As if looking for confirmation, Eren glanced at his hands which had long since grown back.
It was Levi himself who had sliced Eren free, surprisingly frustrated with having to resort to slight dismemberment even when it had been his own invention to avoid taking Eren’s life. He had been desperate to avoid that not only for the sake of humanity, but for his own sake as well.
Eren, ever the good soldier despite his occasional brashness and youth had accepted that plan with minimal protest. Even knowing that your limbs can grow back does not mean the thought of severing them is a pleasant one.
“Did I…?”
“No.” The question didn’t need to be finished. Levi knew he wanted to know if he had turned on his comrades. He hadn’t. He had completely ignored them.
There were footsteps that started from the direction of the stairs and then a form appeared around the corner and came down the corridor.
“Hange,” Levi acknowledged her presence as a rudimentary greeting. The scientist stopped in front of the cell, face beaming.
“Eren! I see you’re awake. I have lots of questions for you when you’re ready!” She smiled even more brightly at him and the boy in the bed visibly relaxed.
The other squad leader had a calming effect on Eren.
Levi suddenly felt that cutting sharp pain in his chest and realized with an unwelcome jolt, that he was envious of Hange as well. Another sweep of his memories and he became aware that when Eren had partially transformed for the sake of a tea spoon, the sudden appearance of the scientist had allowed the boy to collect himself enough to pull his hand free of the titan arm. It had bothered Levi afterwards, but he had never been able to figure out why.
Until now.
With an annoyed intake of breath, he suddenly understood that the damn kid under his command had a hold of him for longer than he had previously been aware. How far back did this thing go? ‘Don’t tell me it’s from the moment I laid eyes on him?’ Except it wasn’t quite. As the corporal threw his mind back over that first meeting he knew. It was the moment that wild-eyed kid with the hint of crazy in his smile announced he wanted to join the scouting legion to murder titans.
From that very first judgment of ‘I like this kid.’ At the time, Levi had assumed he felt that way in a very general sense.
Apparently not.
There was a part of him that was concerned it was that brief glimpse of the unhinged side of Eren Jaeger that initially sparked Levi’s interest.
There was another part that was concerned that every female who elicited a favorable reaction from his subordinate was automatically a target of the corporal’s jealousy.
He wasn’t sure which was more alarming.
“Leave him be, Hange. He probably needs to take a piss before you get started anyway.”
The other squad leader looked at him, blinking, as if she hadn’t even noticed he was there.
Eren blushed a little at his words. Levi could see the boy was about to protest, let Hange know he didn’t mind, but Levi minded.
“Give him an hour to eat and do whatever else he needs to do before you start in on him.”
Hange rocked back on her left heel, hand resting on her hip before she nodded in agreement. She was obviously impatient to interrogate the young soldier, but she respected Levi’s judgment, too. It was the captain’s job to take care of Eren’s health and wellbeing, after all.
Besides, Hange would be upset if she pushed Eren too hard and it hurt him. It wasn’t a guilt she wanted to carry.
“Okay, I can wait. One hour, I’ll be back,” she said, giving Eren a smile that was just a tad indulgent before she backed out of the room.
When she left, Levi felt the atmosphere of the room shift again. It was less gloomy than before her arrival, but calmer than when she had been there.
“Captain?” Eren asked hesitantly.
“What?”
“I’m sorry I lost control.”
“Don’t worry about it. No one got hurt and anything that was broken can be fixed. You should eat.”
Eren glanced back to the tray Mikasa had left before reaching out to grab the bread. He began to raise it to his mouth before his eyes fell down to his lap, followed by his hands still gripping the bread.
Levi could understand that the kid was frustrated. Sometimes he got frustrated with Eren’s inability to stay focused and in control, but he didn’t blame the younger soldier. He couldn’t imagine it was something that was easy to do and they had no guide, no instruction on how to accomplish it.
He couldn’t be upset when he didn’t know how Eren was supposed to do it any better than the boy himself did.
He walked over to the edge of the bed, sitting down and startling Eren into jerking his head up to look at him, green eyes somber, but no less brilliant to Levi.
“This might not mean much, but whatever happens, I’ll be there to get you through it. Whether it’s a battle or the aftermath,” Levi said, lifting his hand up to drop it on top of Eren’s head and leave it there.
“What is one of these times you aren’t? What if I wake up and they tell me I killed you?” There was fear, somewhere down at the core of Eren’s being lurking beneath the confidence that usually flowed over him. Levi could recognize that, it was something everyone had, especially in the Survey Corps.
“Hmph. You couldn’t kill me if your life depended on it.”
It was that easy. Eren believed him, shoulders relaxing and face softening.
“Okay,” he said, voice low, but strong.
Levi slipped his hand down a little, cupping at the boy’s face for a moment, long enough for green eyes to widen, before dropping it down to rest on Eren’s knee.
“Captain?” There was a higher pitch to his tone than had been there previously.
“What is it?”
Suddenly there was a hand gripping at Levi’s collar and he was being dragged against chapped lips. He was held there a moment, staring at closed eyelids and feeling the press against his mouth before Eren opened his eyes and leaned back. Levi remained where he was, frozen with his heart skittering dangerously.
His expression probably conveyed the shock he felt, because Eren’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Am I wrong?”
Levi could feel the heat prick at his cheeks as he slowly pulled back, taking in Eren’s uncertainty as he looked at him. Leave it to this brat to make the first move.
Levi turned his head away, suddenly unable to make eye contact and blushing harder for it.
“No, you’re not wrong.”
He could hear the relieved sigh and out of the corner of his periphery could see Eren fumbling to move. A warm hand laid on top of his that was still covering Eren’s knee as the younger soldier maneuvered to sit next to the captain and lean against him lightly.
“Good.”
Levi let a small smile tug at his mouth, amused. He supposed it didn’t matter how much Eren twisted him up inside as long as he did the same to Eren.
It was something he could live with.