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It takes Levi ten minutes to notice that he’s being stared at.
Or maybe he notices in the first minute, but chooses not to say anything until his patience has run out. Ten minutes is a good run, Hange thinks. Ten minutes is a long time for someone like Levi to put up with something he finds vexing.
He turns to her at the table they’re sort-of sharing in the mess hall, lips pressed tight with thinly-veiled annoyance, and says, flatly: “What.”
She fixes him with an especially critical expression, a good cover-up for the fact that she really doesn’t have an answer to that question except that she just enjoys looking at him, sometimes. But Hange’s no fool: she knows he won’t find that kind of answer satisfactory. So she’s forced to think of something else. What better way to do it than to pretend to be examining him for reasons unknown?
She waits until he’s about to snap again, until she can almost see the gears in his head shifting to Done with Your Shit, Hange, and then she spits out the first thing to come to mind:
“Have you ever thought of wearing a hat?”
She’s immediately taken with the idea, because it’s so easy to picture.
“What?” His surprise is obvious. It’s not often she manages to catch him off-guard when he’s always so careful about making sure that doesn’t happen.
It almost makes her like the idea more.
“A hat,” she prompts, slowly, because she knows speaking to him like a child will annoy him so much that he’ll never suspect she was looking at him earlier for no reason except that she likes to. “I think you should wear one.”
His nose wrinkles up hideously with distaste. Hange wishes Moblit were there to sketch it for her.
“Why not?” she asks before he can say anything. “There are many advantages to wearing a hat.”
“Such as…?”
He’s goading her. He doesn’t believe her hat excuse. But there are advantages to wearing a hat. “Hats keep your head warm,” she tells him, twisting her wrist and pointing at him. “And if it’s a bit windy out, they keeps your hair from getting tangled. Plus they’re stylish, and,” she squints, “I think you’d look at least ten years younger if you wore one. Now that I think about it, Erwin should wear one, too. Shall I put in a request?”
She’s teasing, but he doesn’t tease back. He simply leaves.
And she watches him go.
It won’t do any good to try and stop him, but she wonders why it is, sometimes, that she can’t bring herself to tell the truth. But it’s not as if he’ll believe it, anyway; he’ll think she’s mocking him if she says that she likes to look at his face–at his small ears and his straight, fine hair, and the lines that crease his forehead.
Two days later she’s working in her office with Moblit, furiously compiling spreadsheets of data in an attempt to consider one of three new theories proposed that week alone by various Survey Corps members. She hardly notices the door being shoved unceremoniously open, but she can’t miss the way something comes down on her head with unnecessary pressure. She looks up to see the bill of a cap.
And then, lifting her head further, she sees Levi’s face.
He stares at her for a long moment, and she stares back. Moblit ignores them both.
“No,” he says after a moment, and makes to remove it.
She ducks back, out of his immediate reach. “Why not?” she asks, mock-offended. She hasn’t worn hats since she was young, but she doubts it looks that bad.
“Can’t see,” is his reasoning, and he snatches the hat right off of her head, leaving her ponytail looking more frazzled than usual.
“I can see just fine,” she argues, though it’s not entirely the truth, either; hats do obstruct vision, but it’s not as if they’re on an expedition.
He pauses in the doorway and says, tersely, “I can’t.”
Then he’s gone, footsteps moving down the hall at a brisk pace.
Interesting.
Fascinating.
She wonders what it means, but shakes her head. There’s real work to do: Levi will just have to wait.
But if he thinks he’s off the hook after saying something so mysteriously awkward, then he’s got another thing coming.
She leans over and jots it down on her cramped calendar, just in case she needs the reminder later to grill him about what he meant.