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Their first kiss is in the rain.
She shifts on the high tree branch next to him, leans over, and asks the question as if it’s the natural thing to do: “Can I kiss you?”
It’s been four hours since he’s seen Erwin and it’s dark and pouring down rain. Eld’s the only person from Levi’s own squad to return, a grim smile aging his relatively youthful face. Hange’s team is with Erwin, mostly, or they ought to be.
He wonders, vaguely, if Erwin is dead, but forces himself to doubt it. The bastard is probably incapable of dying by this point in his life. Even if he did die, his resolve would probably keep him going for five more years at least.
But he knows not to believe in his own bullshit. The possibility exists that none of them will be alive by the time the rain clears. It could last for days, and if they wait too long their tanks will leak out. That would be a wonderful end to them: years later someone’ll find their skeletons perched in the trees.
Like hell, he thinks, the driving rain giving him a headache. He’ll jump to his death, first. It’ll be faster than starvation and ten times less painful. He wonders what Hange’ll think of his plan, if it comes down to it. He wonders if she’ll try to stop him, try to make him hold out for a rescue that won’t come.
These are the thoughts Hange startles him out of, though his outward reaction to her question is limited to raised eyebrows and a tired, “You’re bored.”
“Not particularly,” she says, and pushes her goggles up. It hardly helps her image: her hair is a mess, plastered to her forehead and cheeks. It amuses him, though he’ll never say so. Or maybe he convinces himself it’s amusement because he’s not sure how to handle the word attraction.
She scoots closer, lifting one leg to straddle the branch. He supposes it’s safer to sit that way than with both legs dangling over one side as he is, but he doesn’t move to mimic her.
She asks again. “So can I?”
The rain is almost deafening, and the wind is cold, and for all any of them know, they’re all going to die here within the next couple of days. He forces himself to believe that is for these reasons that he agrees.
“Okay.”
There’s nothing special about it. She touches his face, her chapped, wet hands against his cheek, and he’s not sure he likes it. He’s not sure that he dislikes it, either. It makes him want to shiver, but he’s stronger than that. He blames it on the wind.
Her lips are almost warm when they touch his, proof of her boundless energy, he supposes. It’s over almost before it begins.
If Eld sees, he keeps his opinions to himself. He’s probably thinking about his fiancée, anyway, some poor girl who will wring her handkerchief into tatters worrying over him. It might be endearing if it weren’t so goddamn sad.
They don’t talk for a long time afterward. They sit in silence staring off into nothing, and Levi knows they’re all making plans on what to do if the rain doesn’t let up by the next evening. They’ve done this before. They’ve made it out before. But that doesn’t mean anything.
That kiss, though…maybe it did.
He decides not to ask.
Fourteen hours later the rain lets up, eases into a drizzle, and then the sun comes out and they’re flying through the air and out of the forest into a sunshower. If they weren’t all so tired and in danger, maybe they would have found it beautiful. As it is, they’re lucky they have one flare that Hange managed to keep dry under all her extra layers of field research notebooks.
The books, he notices, are damp.
They are collected in surprisingly short order and the mission is abandoned midway through because everyone is weary and wet and nothing will get accomplished that way. Erwin’s face seems somehow older than it did the last time Levi saw it, but he doesn’t ask about that, either. He knows that when they return Erwin’ll have to face heavy criticism from the peasants all the way up to the aristocracy. Why can’t you produce any positive results, Commander? Our taxes pay for your funeral pyres! Money doesn’t grow on trees, Mister Smith.
He’s heard it a thousand times. They all have. And it’s enough that they’re alive. It has to be.
By the time they ride back into town they’ve all adopted a stone-faced façade. Levi looks straight ahead and thinks about the kiss. It’s best not to ask. It was probably only a curiosity satisfied in the moment, after all, and maybe he wishes it was more than that.
Or maybe he doesn’t.
Maybe he only wants to know the truth.
But for a little while he entertains the idea of revisiting the topic. He’s not stupid. He knows how to act, and what to say, and he can get chocolate from Sina and flowers from anywhere, and he can come to her room at night and ask her to her face if this time, he can kiss her.
But it seems fake, somehow, and silly, and he shoves it back out of his mind. Hange’s not that sort of person; she never has been. She would laugh about it for years if she lived that long. He won’t ask about the kiss. He’ll just accept it.
Like so many other things, it's for the best.
By the time they’re crowded into the mess hall eating a hot supper, he can feel the congestion thick in his chest, and his face feels hot.
Two days later, laying in bed, he realizes that if it’s a first kiss, that means there must be more in the future. Otherwise it would just be a kiss.
When he’s better again, back to normal, feeling quite himself, he’ll blame it all on the fever, but for now he lays back and contemplates it.