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It was an overcast day, clouds thin and grey and coating the sky. Levi often forgot to check the calendar Armin had been diligent on keeping up with, so he wasn’t certain what month it was anymore, but the earth had a way of reminding him. Trees were beginning to yellow, stochastic branches dappled with red, so that when the wind picked up the leaves seemed to shimmer. Nights were growing cold, the temperature beginning to sink into the parts of Levi’s bones that would never heal quite right. But with the passing of seasons came the passing of time, and the camp had blossomed where the flowers had wilted.
Tents had sprouted like daisies. Wooden huts had taken longer, but after enough materials had been gathered, tended to, and erected, they matured much like trees did, growing robust and reliable. More people peppered the camp, plucked from wreckage or the rare, untouched acre, and with them came more chatter, more bonds, more laughter. Warmth in a once frigid place.
Above all, though, came normalcy. At first, everyone had been scrambling, grasping at what little straws they could cling to in order to get through the days, and while it was done in camaraderie, it was still done in chaos. Things were different now. People had assigned duties, routine tasks, there was that calendar and an orderly schedule. Communications with other survivor centers had long been established, and the camp operated much in the way Levi had been used to with the camps on Paradis.
The camp was warmer, but the wind wasn’t, and Levi felt an ache in the few fingers he had left on his hand. He clenched them close, hoping movement would promote some blood flow, but as he did, his clumsy walk came to a stop. That hand was empty, the other grasping his stained oak cane, and Levi sighed more loudly than he would have in company. He was longing to return to his tent, to pick up his book and read and rest, but he’d left the allocation ledger in the vault.
A stupid nickname, really, one Connie came up with after the entire camp had finished stocking and organizing the thing. It was the largest tent in the camp, and not the type most people slept in but a sturdy, robust thing, closer to a structure than it was to temporary. Took forever to set it up, though Levi mostly supervised and made sure ants didn’t find their way into the ration boxes.
“It’s got goddamn near everything in it!” Connie had said, flopping tiredly back against a barrel filled with rope. “Might find my grandma in here!”
Stupid kid.
Forgetful, such as he was lately, Levi turned back. He told Armin he’d give him the ledger by the end of the day. It was one of Levi’s least favorite tasks, but every month, when they loaded supplies sent by other centers and packed up goods to send back, he got it done. The physical part was done by someone else, while Levi got the fucking honor of holding the clipboard and marking shit off. Last month, his partner was Connie. Last time he was ever going to do that, kid had way too many things to say in between stacking crates and it had taken the whole damn day. This month had been Jean, and while he was also too full of opinions, at least he said them while packing.
Levi slipped through the tent’s entrance, the canvas whispering aside, cane sinking gently into the packed dirt. The supply shelves towered over Levi, packed full of everything from extra shoes to water purification tablets to stuffed animals for whenever kids started showing up. The shelves were arranged cleverly, acting as walls or hallways on the interior of the tent, a maze to anyone unfamiliar with the layout.
Levi passed by the cleaning and medical shelves, nearest to the entrance for ease of access, the faint smell of disinfectant something of a comfort to him. He’d likely left the ledger in the center of the tent, where a workbench and some office supplies were located, and he turned the last stacked wall and lifted his face to start scanning for it.
Jean was still here, where Levi had left him, but now so was Reiner. They were far closer than was typical, enough to make Levi’s mind white out and his feet to freeze suddenly in place. Jean was sitting on the edge of the table, Reiner right in front of him, and a quick, heavy impact hit his chest because this was violence. These two men had a complicated history that involved violence, not just because they were on opposite sides of a war but personal violence, motivated by emotion, by betrayal.
Jean was in danger.
Only, he wasn’t.
Levi remained uncharacteristically frozen. The camp had recently acquired a record player as a gift from one of the neighboring countries, much to the inhabitants’ thrill, but it was an old piece of shit that often wouldn’t play, or would require a very specific angle that someone would have to find by stuffing towels or thin books beneath one side, and it would also skip the fuck out. Just some random millisecond of a song, the same half rapid-fire note over and over so that it didn’t sound like music at all, while the worn needle tried desperately to find its way back to the track.
Levi’s mind was very much like that. A needle catching on microscopically chipped grooves, nothing coherent coming out. Jean’s face was tilted up slightly to make up for the height distance with him sitting and Reiner standing, and Reiner’s hand wasn’t wrapped around his throat, or pressing a blade into his side, or striking him down. It was slid gently along the side of Jean’s face, a thumb slowly rubbing back and forth over a cheekbone. Reiner’s mouth wasn’t peeled back in a snarl, it wasn’t shouting insults at Jean, it wasn’t ripping into his throat or hurting him. It was slanted against Jean’s and it was…moving.
They were kissing.
The needle of his mind somehow managed to exhaust its way ahead from the last note, like pressure against an over-taut band finally snapping it apart, heaving forward just to be stopped short again by another, thicker restraint, skipping, skipping, skipping.
They were kissing?
A silent, confused inhale of air dried out Levi’s now open mouth. He felt the scar tissue of his brow tighten at the way he was furrowing it.
They were…they were kissing.
One of Jean’s hands curled tightly into the front of Reiner’s jacket, pulling slightly, while the other braced him back against the table, his elbow locked. Reiner followed the pull eagerly, his hand shifting to cup the back of Jean’s neck as support as he leaned further over him, bits of Jean’s hair tumbling between his fingers.
Levi blinked. His jaw was still open. His eye flicked jerkily along their united form, as if he could make the confusion sunk deep into his core dissipate despite already recognizing what was happening.
It wasn’t until Jean broke the kiss and looked up at Reiner that the skipping in Levi’s brain made any progress, but then it tripped over itself again at the look on Jean’s face, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, the noise grew louder, more robust, sharp.
It was an expression Levi had never seen on him. Someone Levi had known for nearly ten years, a man he watched grow from childhood into adulthood, from a cadet to his most trusted scout, who Levi had spent nearly every waking day with for years on end, was for the first time showing someone his most unguarded face. Soft, with lips parted and eyelashes pressed up against his brow as he met the eyes of Reiner above him, neck stretched and chest rising and falling a bit quickly with the way he was breathing. That look was deeply wanting, almost emotional at the way he looked at Reiner, the vulnerability on him making that repeated, haranguing note in Levi’s baffled mind accelerate in pace before it was nearly vibrating the way a marble did when dropped on a stone and then suddenly, the needle wobbled neatly into place and the shock just – left.
So they were in love.
Alright.
Levi physically shook his head, like a dog shakes after its hackles were raised, and took a step backward. He wasn’t meant to see this. Kissing, whatever, he didn’t give a shit about that, doesn’t matter who it was, and Levi had stumbled upon soldiers kissing in camps more times than he could count. In fact, he’d usually deadpan some remark to startle the two, both for his own entertainment and because he wanted them to learn that if they wanted to shirk duties to lock face, they’d better get smarter about it.
This wasn’t that. Mostly because Jean was one of the two.
He struggled. Levi knew he did, he’d known since the boy many years ago joined Levi’s squadron and refused to kill the enemy simply because she was a person. Had it been between Erwin and Jean, rather than Erwin and Armin, he would have picked Erwin because at least then, one of the two would have survived. Jean never would have made it as the Colossal.
For the first six months in camp, Jean had lost weight. A blueish hue had stained the skin beneath both eyes. He never stopped his sarcastic remarks, kid was an ass, but he started offering them only when someone was talking to him – a deflection. He was otherwise quiet. That had never been like Jean.
At night, Levi would catch him staring into the fire blankly while others exchanged stories or talked about something mundane to try and take the weight of an empty world off their mind. Once, he saw Jean start to blink a bit more quickly, and something tightened inside Levi when he saw a gloss come over the boy’s eyes. He didn’t say anything when Jean stood up and gave some half-assed excuse about going to bed early; it would have only made him wall up. Levi knew him too well to approach him. And Levi was no stranger to hardship steep enough to make someone stumble, and when he’d been there, he hadn’t wanted anyone to see him.
Most of the others had killed an unquantifiable amount. They all struggled with that, Levi knew that was true, but there was some mechanism that allowed them to accept the circumstances of those killings, the most obscene horror, and move on. Levi knew because he was also one of those people. He had that mechanism, that fucked up little switch in his head that he could turn on and launch a steel-barred barrier between him and sin so that when he looked at it head-on, it couldn’t wrap its greedy fingers around his throat and drown him completely. Others had that mechanism not because the sin was insurmountable without it, but due to necessity. It was required in their line of work, in this world, in life, like a spring is required to cock a gun. People like Connie, or Onyankopon.
Jean just didn’t have that mechanism. It didn’t make him faulty, but it made him different, like being asked to produce a firearm and pulling out a blade instead. Tangential, sure, but a shotgun has the power to blast something down at a distance and a knife just doesn’t.
When Levi finally accepted that the threshold had been crossed, the gain to loss ratio in Jean shutting Levi’s attempts down to Jean actually being a danger to himself, something shifted. His scout started to smile a little more, and not just because he thought the circumstance called for it. A few times a week, he began to finish his rations in full, and the blue bags began to fade into a shadow. Jean started to get color back, not just in his skin but in his personality, like a delayed bud that finally started to unfurl while the rest of the flowered field was long dotted in petals.
Levi thought it had been time. It was one of Levi’s least favorite sayings, because it was overused and absolutely not helpful in the way people thought it was, but he knew it was true that time did heal all things. Perhaps not cure them, but wounds closed even if scars remained. Jean had some catching up to do, but Levi no longer saw his wounds seeping like they’d once been.
Seeing Jean like this, though, fingers skimming along Reiner’s jaw like they were touching something so inherently special, Levi realized it wasn’t time, not really. Or perhaps it was, but not like Levi assumed it to have been.
Time for something else to blossom – time for whatever this was to get its feet and support him. Everyone else had that mechanism, like water to a seed, essential to life, while Jean needed some sort of added nutrient to sprout his cotyledons. Levi didn’t want to interrupt that, this thing that helped Jean to stand, to promote new growth so his leaves could catch the sun.
One of Reiner’s hands moved to the small of Jean’s back and pulled him closer, making Jean inhale softly, and now that Levi had processed and accepted the shock of what this was, he was then left to progress to the next emotion, which was something not too dissimilar to horror. If Levi had the misfortune of having children, he figured it would be similar to stumbling upon one of them in such a position; that’s his kid, he doesn’t need or want to know anything about the personal messes he gets up to.
Levi took another step back, now very intent on getting out of there, and he turned. His new, aching body had done a significant amount of healing, but he was still getting used to its limits and on the pivot, Levi stumbled. He shot out his hand to the nearby supply shelf to steady himself, purposefully shifting enough weight onto his cane so that the shelf was nothing more than a stabilizer so that the correction would be near silent – but that’s what would have happened with his old body, and not his new, defective one. So instead, while his hand caught the shelf to halt his fall, it also knocked over a rusty, silver-plated goblet that went careening into the floor and made the worst, loudest, most obnoxious sound Levi had ever heard and would ever hear again.
Jean nearly jumped out of his skin, like he’d been electrocuted, and the fish-like, jerked movement made him nearly tumble off the table. He yelped and Reiner caught him, an arm going tight around his waist to keep him from crashing like the goblet had.
“Captain!” Jean cried, his voice breaking painfully as he got his feet under him.
Levi was not accustomed to being so inarticulate. “I’m–I was just–”
“We were–!” Jean was even moreso. He tried to take a step forward but his boneless legs buckled and Reiner tightened his hold, his other hand shooting out to grab Jean’s arm. “We were just—talking, about t–the, the…” Jean looked at Reiner desperately, who had wide, blank eyes, “um, the registry, the, fuck, the shipment for Marley, Reiner was helping me–”
“I’m nearly 40, Jean, I know what kissing is.”
Jean’s mouth snapped shut and his face flushed deeply, his ears nearly the color of the leaves outside. His mouth opened again, and then it stayed stuck in position. Levi made a casual, deflective gesture with his hands, cane swinging briefly.
“It’s whatever, I’m gonna go.”
“Captain–”
“What?”
Again, Jean’s mouth stayed locked open, his brain clearly skipping the way Levi’s had been. Reiner, however, looked between them and unable to take the quiet tension anymore, blurted,
“We’re seeing each other.”
Levi deadpanned, “Are you,” while Jean looked at Reiner incredulously and smacked his arm, hard. Reiner looked back apologetically and shrugged, a bit dismal.
“Bit too late to keep hiding it,” Reiner whispered.
Jean was horrified. “Reiner!!”
“Jean, it’s fine.” Levi bent down to pick up the rusty, now bent goblet, fucking cursed thing, and put it back on the shelf. “Why the fuck would I care.”
“You…” he started. Levi stopped trying to find a way to store the goblet without it tipping again, and laid it sideways as he glanced back up to Jean. The flush of his face was mostly gone, but it was replaced with an uncertainty that made Levi frown. “You don’t?”
Levi tried not to scoff. “No.” Then, not quite meaning to, his eye flicked over to Reiner, who straightened and blinked at the contact. He stared at him for a long moment before regarding Jean again. “Biggest concern to camps right now is medical maintenance, and it’s not like this is gonna result in a pregnancy, so fuck if I care.”
Jean gasped violently and then buried his face in a hand. Absolutely mortified, “Oh, my god.”
He didn’t plan on offering something sardonic like he usually did when he caught two people embracing, but it seemed like the only option left. He didn’t like that look of concern on Jean’s face, like Levi was going to be disappointed in him, like anything about this was wrong. Plus, making his scout’s ears go red again was his own form of treatment for the horror he’d been subjected to. Like a balm.
“Then again,” he started again, “condoms aren’t exactly in high supply right now, so if you’re–”
“Levi, please,” Jean punctuated behind his hand, “oh my god, please stop.”
Levi let loose a small, amused huff, and hearing that, Jean peeked out from behind his hand. The hand clutching Reiner’s jacket was still fisted in the material, and Reiner’s arm was still wrapped behind Jean’s back, and as the worst of the tension broke, Levi sighed loudly. Someone was helping Jean stand, even on a physical, literal level. Yeah, it was throwing him off, but – how could he be disappointed in that?
“Look, it’s gonna be fucking weird to wrap my head around,” Levi admitted, “and maybe you shouldn’t be doing this in the vault, you idiots,” Reiner and Jean exchanged sheepish glances, “but it’s fine, Jean. You’ve known me all this time and you think I’d be uptight about you being with a man?”
“Well…” Jean looked away from him. He worried his upper lip. “Not that, so much…”
“Because it’s me,” Reiner said, fingers pressing the smallest amount more into Jean’s waist. His words were steady, and his chin lifted an inch, but Levi noticed his breathing had increased slightly. A faint line formed in the middle of his brow. Ah. So Jean wasn’t the only one nervous about what Levi thought.
Levi caught himself staring at Reiner, and Reiner grew more tense under the scrutiny. Several things ran through his head, his heart. Then,
“If I didn’t accept you, it would mean the same thing as not accepting my scouts. Not accepting myself. And that’s not possible, Reiner. I accept you as a person. Do you know that?”
Reiner was wary and said nothing, but swallowed hard.
It was true that Levi’s first instinct upon entering this little clearing in the middle of the vault was that Reiner and Jean were fighting, but that was because it just seemed the more likely option. They’d fought before, and while Levi made no effort whatsoever to involve himself in his peoples’ more personal lives, he heard Jean talk a lot of shit about his game – that he did not have – with women. Never once did it occur to Levi that he was interested in men, let alone a man he’d beat the shit out of once. Plus, Jean and Reiner argued all the time, even that morning they were bickering over Reiner making the tea too weak.
But seeing what he thought to be violence was what had stunned him in the first place; Levi learned to trust Reiner. So, he continued.
“I do not blame you for anything,” he said, speaking to Reiner directly but speaking to Jean as well. I do not blame him for anything. “I have no grudges against you, and I consider you as equal to any other person in this camp – Onyankopon, Armin, that new transfer from Cabaldersbad that’s still making the rice with way too much fucking water.” He’s one of us, Jean. “You’re one of us.” He’s one of us, and I accept him. “Alright?”
A flicker of emotion crossed Reiner’s face, just in the way he clenched his jaw and blinked a few times. Levi suspected Reiner had not heard those words from many, not since the camp got its legs. Many embraced him, but many did not. There was no harassment or danger to Reiner, he was well regarded as one of the heroes that stopped the Rumbling, but there is more to a man’s wellbeing than his great accomplishments. Cagey looks and meek smiles were not uncommon for people like him and Annie.
“Thank you, sir,” he said quietly.
Poignantly, “But–”
Reiner’s shoulders twitched back up to his ears.
“That’s my scout.” Levi’s words took an edge to them and he motioned with his head to Jean, who shifted nervously. “And if you do anything, anything, to him…” Levi’s single eye widened as his brow lifted seriously. “I will kill you.”
Reiner flinched. Jean inhaled sharply, looking at Levi openly and completely gobsmacked, but Levi didn’t break contact with Reiner, arming his more typical severity to communicate his resolve.
“You get me?”
“Y–yes, sir.”
“That means anything, Reiner. Not saying you gotta stay together forever, let it run its course in whatever way fate intends, but if you step out of the bounds of what a good man should be when handling the trust of my scout, then it’s over for you. Lying, misleading, manipulation of emotion, or god fucking forbid you lay a hand on him, you will either be dead to me or you will just be dead, depending on what you’ve done. I am not being metaphorical here, Reiner, you physically harm him, I will make the fallout your entire fucking world.”
“Levi–!” Jean hissed, equal parts horrified and stunned. Levi just put up a hand to silence him. Reiner seemed to be the reason Jean’s wounds were closing, and Levi was too terrified to see what he’d be the reason for if he caused the wounds themselves.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Braun?”
Reiner sobered and swallowed again, then he nodded. “I do,” he said earnestly.
“Reiner,” Jean muttered, “you don’t need to–”
“Yes, I do. If I hurt you,” Reiner said, “then I’m not myself. I’d rather die than do something like that. So you have my blessing, Captain. If I hurt him, especially on a physical level – take me out.”
Levi analyzed him carefully. His words were honest, nearly vehement, and he wasn’t just telling Levi he understood Levi’s warning, but he was asking Levi to do it if it ever came to that. Like it was Reiner’s idea, and not Levi’s.
Yup, Levi thought as he transferred his weight to his cane, this will do just fine.
“Alright, then.” Levi nodded to them, bowing slightly. “I’ll be going, then.”
“Wait, why did you come in here?” Jean asked, nearly tripping over his words. His eyes were still a fraction too wide, ears still capped pink, uncharacteristically ungainly in a way that was almost endearing.
“Ah, right.” Levi peered around them, trying to ignore the glance of Reiner’s arm positioned so neatly into the curve of Jean’s back. God, he was gonna struggle to get used to this. “Left the ledger in here somewhere.”
“Oh.” Jean twisted, looking over his shoulder, his fingers uncurling from Reiner’s jacket. He probably didn’t even know he was clinging to him this whole time. He perked up in recognition and reached behind him, papers rustling as he pulled the thin packet from somewhere off the table. “Here.”
Jean and Reiner finally parted when Jean stepped forward, bringing Levi the ledger to save Levi the steps. Typically, he’d meet him halfway, but standing in one place for so long made Levi’s knees ache and he let him do it.
Jean offered him a small, awkward smile, eyes darting away nervously as he held out the papers. Levi’s eye flicked over his face as he took them, his few fingers bending the stack, making them rustle faintly.
“Jean.”
“Hm.”
“Look at me.”
Jean did. When he was nervous about talking to Levi about something, he had this funny way of keeping his chin tilted down but his eyes looking up, and being a few steps away from Levi, it felt like he was looking sheepishly up at him rather than looking down. He was the tallest of Levi’s scouts, but in rare moments, could seem quite small.
Levi inhaled, perhaps as a form of courage, as he tucked the papers, leaned onto his cane, and pressed his other hand firmly into Jean’s arm. He squeezed it. Jean startled and looked down at the hand, then back up.
“You were afraid to tell me,” he stated, knowing it was true. Levi wasn’t delicate when speaking to others, not even in moments that deserved it, it just wasn’t his way of doing things. He found it difficult, unnatural, dishonest, even. No, he wasn’t delicate, placating, or even tactful. But in some moments, rare ones that required it, Levi found he could be tender. He was being so now.
Jean tried to smile defensively, but it came off as more of a grimace. “Uh, yeah…yeah, I was.”
“Would you have?”
“Um…I dunno.” He ran a palm along the back of his neck. “I think so, eventually. Maybe.”
If this had been someone else, perhaps Levi would have left it at that. Perhaps he wouldn’t be feeling the particular, uncomfortable clench inside his chest, the little tendril of unease that flickered like a flame somewhere deep in his bones. It wasn’t that Jean didn’t want to share this personal information with Levi, that was his right and Levi was never the nosy type anyway. It was that he was afraid to. That he felt like he couldn’t.
Was he afraid to, before? If Jean’s wounds continued to seep at the rate they’d been previously, would Jean have let himself bleed out rather than asking Levi to apply a few stitches?
It scared him.
“I want you to know that you can come to me with anything, Jean.” Levi kept the tenderness, but supplemented it with quiet fervor. He could probably still hear, but these words weren’t meant for Reiner. They weren’t even about him anymore. “Anything,” he repeated.
“Christ, Levi,” Jean said under his breath, eyes glancing sideways, “he’s not gonna domestic violence me. You think I’d let him anyway? The fuck you take me for?”
“Not just that.” Levi squeezed his hand over Jean’s arm again, a bit more tightly than he meant to. “Maybe you don’t work out. That’s fine, whatever, I don’t–that’s not, he’s not all I’m keeping an eye on. Just…if you need something, and you feel…” Shit, he wasn’t good at this part. “Maybe you feel a bit isolated, or–” He suddenly thought back to the Jean that was several pounds lighter, the one that probably cried himself to sleep after nearly losing it at a campfire. “–or it’s something you can’t talk to Reiner about, I just…” He huffed. “Just…”
His words trailed off, his jaw tensing when he closed his mouth to try and think of the right thing. It wasn’t even because he was trying to tread carefully, shit, it was because he literally just didn’t know how to say it. If you’re ever struggling again, please come to me, Jean, don’t do it alone again, I can’t bear to see it, don’t make me lose anyone else.
“Are you…” Jean’s face twitched, and then his lips did, too, saving Levi from drowning in his own silence. “You trying to comfort me, Cap?” He let out a small, uncertain, but earnest laugh. “You worried about me or something?”
“Shut up, brat, I’m trying to do something here.”
“Hey, where is this coming from?” He shook his head, as if to show that he meant it, and grinned. “I’m doing okay!”
You weren’t.
“Just don’t feel like you can’t tell me shit, alright? That’s all.”
Jean’s smile fell into something more soft, vulnerable again, but in a different way than it had been before. He gave Levi a single nod. “Yeah. Okay, yeah.”
Levi returned the nod, gave a last squeeze of Jean’s arm and cleared his throat. He lifted the papers.
“Gonna get these to our Ambassador.”
“Right.”
Levi looked behind Jean to regard Reiner one last time. He was still standing in place, one arm crossed over his chest with a hand wrapped around his elbow. Then Levi turned, successfully this time, and started back the way he’d come. That Levi from ten minutes ago had no fucking idea what he was about to walk into; it felt like it happened an hour ago.
“Thank you.”
Levi stopped and glanced over his shoulder. Jean shifted in place, a hand raking through his hair, eyes looking everywhere else but Levi’s.
“Um, you know. For – just,” Jean sighed heavily, uncomfortable and awkward. Struggling with this sort of conversation was something they both had in common. “Thanks, Captain. I…appreciate it. That you care, or, you know. Whatever.”
Levi raised an eyebrow. A more teasing, sarcastic comment touched his tongue – force of habit – but he ignored it. He just nodded again, eye softening, and he walked forward, turning the corner and going out of sight. He heard Jean sigh again, a bit more tightly this time, a twinge of voice coating it to sound not upset, but very tired.
“Hey, come here,” he heard Reiner whisper. “It’s alright, bandage ripped off.”
Levi’s body ached something fierce, but he forced himself to walk a bit quicker, knowing he shouldn’t overhear something Jean wouldn’t want him to. He slipped back out the canvas, greeted by a chilly breeze and tall, yellowing grasses waving lazily as he walked through them. If they didn’t die off in a few weeks, they were going to have to do some field maintenance.
Levi breathed in deeply, the air filling his lungs the way a glass of water does after exertion. He let it back out. Fall was well underway, and so was spring. Then he let loose a short, nervous laugh, giving his head a disbelieving shake as he thought the words, Jean Kirstein and Reiner Braun are in a romantic relationship. He would have sooner expected a titan to appear than for that to be true, even though only one of things was distinctly impossible.
As he walked across camp, Levi found his thoughts drifting to the ledger, what he’d marked to talk to Armin about, and despite his disdain for the chore and everything it entailed, he wasn’t as desperate to lay down and rest as he’d been before.