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what country girl seduces your wits
wearing a country dress
not knowing how to pull the cloth to her ankles?
- Sappho, Fragment 57
I.
One night, while they’re supposed to be asleep but Ymir’s instead still lounging by the clothes drawers, Ymir is pressed hard against the wall. She’s almost about to scream when a hand covers her mouth—and immediately, from the feel of her palm and the smell of it alone, which yes, is the smell of the soap they all wash with, but also the smell of her, her peculiarities, she can tell who it is.
“Christ—”
“Shh. Don’t talk.” Christa covers Ymir’s mouth with her delicate hand. Smells like soap, the soap all the cadets use, but also something uniquely hers and delightful.
Christa’s little but voluptuous body presses against Ymir’s. Fuck, Ymir thinks. I could die right here. She could choke me and I’d thank her.
“I’m not talking, I’m a good girl, I’ll do whatever you tell me to,” Ymir tries to say, but through Christa’s mouth on hers, it sounds muffled, and Christa gets angrier, presses harder. “Shhh,” she chastises Ymir again, beautifully, and Ymir’s eyes finally adjust to the light. Christa’s eyebrows are wild and furrowed now, and her blue eyes shine like beacons. Angry beacons, yes, but beacons nonetheless, and they anchor Ymir now.
“Mmmmkay,” Ymir manages to sound out, and Christa lets go. Bummer. Should’ve fought back some more, Ymir thinks.
But then Christa grabs her wrist and her hand and leads her outside the barracks, and Ymir’s heart skips. Is she finally going to confess her love? Kiss her breathless like Ymir’s been dreaming? Has the mask of pure politeness she always wears around everyone else, especially Shadis, finally cracked?
When they’re outside, the cold autumn breeze hits Ymir square in the face and bare arms and she shudders. Christa, who’s still wearing her outside layer, squeezes her hand tight.
“Oh, sorry, are you cold?”
“No, I mean, yeah, but it’s fine—”
“Here. I’ll warm you up.”
Ymir expects Christa to give her her jacket, maybe, something tangible, something she can deny; instead, Christa wraps her warm arms around Ymir.
“Is this better?”
Ymir is stunned. Ymir is floating. Ymir is in heaven.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice strangled.
Christa sighs in relief. “Okay, good. I didn’t want to hurt you. But I have something really important to discuss with you, Ymir. Something you’ve been keeping from me.”
Oh no, Ymir thinks, and her narrow eyes widen. She’s figured out that I’m a—
“I’ve done the math,” Christa starts.
—that I couldn’t possibly have arrived here when—
“I’m so, so close to the top ten,” Christa’s bright high voice continues. The vibrations rumble deep inside Ymir, still caught in Christa’s embrace.
—she’s not gonna like me anymore when—wait, what?
“My only weakness is combat. Which you’re better at.”
Does she want me to step back for her? To lose at certain things so she can have my spot? Right there, with the cold wind blowing in her freckled face and Christa keeping her impossibly warm in this unseasonably cold star-spangled night, Ymir decides to consciously do what she’s already been doing all along without noticing: she will step back. She will lose more often, train less rigorously. She will do what it takes so that Christa’s safe in the interior when they’re done with their training.
“So help me, Ymir.”
I am helping, Ymir thinks. You think I couldn’t beat you? You think I couldn’t bend your wrist backwards if I wanted to?
“Don’t just stand there and lose on purpose. Help me win on my own merits.”
Oh, so Christa knows what Ymir’s been up to. And Christa’s fucking pissed.
“Okay, I’ll teach you to spar,” Ymir says.
Christa lets go, and Ymir wonders if she said the wrong thing, until Christa interlaces her warm small hand with Ymir’s cold larger one again and, satisfied, walks them back to the barracks.
II.
It’s been weeks of sparring, but finally, finally, Historia’s winning; finally, she has Ymir breathless, on her back, inches away from her boundless breast; finally, she holds her down gently, more gently than maybe she should.
Ymir looks at her hungrily from below, like she used to be a monster and yet never tried tastier prey. Historia’s on top, knee pressed into Ymir’s perfect stomach, enough to paralyze her but not enough to hurt. She is still lying to Ymir even though she wants her, is still pretending she’s Christa Lenz, sweet like sweetgrass, a humble country girl from the middle of nowhere who’s all aw-shucks and bless-you and never does anything wrong, not the selfish bitch she knows she is.
Ymir is cackling, wheezing. “Great job, Christa,” she says. “Now, care to release me?”
Historia doesn’t particularly care to release her, no.
Instead she places her thighs, lengthening and strengthening by the day, on each side of Ymir’s slender body, and then she bends down. She brings her nose so close to Ymir’s face, so close she can count her freckles like stars in constellations—one two three four, that one makes a meadow, that one makes a horse. Then she presses her nose to Ymir’s nose and Ymir makes a little surprised sound, and Historia likes hearing it. Historia likes being in charge, if she’s honest, likes being on top of Ymir like this making her breathe out tiny little puffs of air like she’s nervous, like a girl like Historia could ever make her nervous, could ever bring her to her knees or drop her supine and prostrated on her back. She teases Ymir just a little more, moving her hands to Ymir’s chest, feeling her heartbeat run fast like the leaping lemurs she sometimes sees breaking into camp. And then she takes pity on Ymir and stops teasing her, brings her mouth to hers, almost bites her bottom lip.
Ymir, feral, frees herself from Historia’s shackles. She grabs Historia by the waist, pulling her closer to ground and to her. They’re sweaty from sparring, here in open air at night after everyone’s gone to the mess hall or to share stories by a fire instead, at least until Shadis comes knocking and it’s time for bed; she groans, a beast released, moans into her mouth; Historia is floating, floating, and when they separate to breathe she misses their togetherness so much she rolls onto the grass so they can kiss better.
“How long have you wanted me to do that?” Historia asks, teasingly.
The air seems to go out of Ymir’s lungs. "I--"
Historia laughs. “I like you, too, you know. Have this whole time.”
They bruise each other’s lips. Their nightly sparring sessions are replaced with fevered nights of passion. They carve their initials in a tree, Y + C with a heart around it, and Historia feels a pang of pain knowing that’s not really her name, and reminds herself that Ymir knows nothing about her, even as she yearns to get ever closer, to laugh, to behold her, to kiss her like she’s hers and nothing else in the rotten world matters.
“I am and was always serious,” Ymir says one night, “about wanting to marry you,” and Historia laughs a laugh like pungent tea: bright and strong because she loves the attention from Ymir, but bitterly because she knows it’s impossible. If she lives past twenty, her life’s already mapped out. She is the only surviving daughter of the true King of Humanity, and there are responsibilities that come with that. If she dies, facing a premature death like so many soldiers do these days, she will no longer be here to marry Ymir. Every day this future inches into the territory of likelier and likelier. Her fear isn’t that she’s not crazy or stupid or suicidal enough to go to the Survey Corps like that Eren Yeager boy: her fear is that she is. Her life, tiny and miserable and insignificant, finally has a meaning, and she’s still willing to throw it all away.
“What are you laughing at? I told you I was serious.”
Historia turns to Ymir and conceals her sadness behind her eyes. Compartmentalizes it. Saves it for another time. “I know, Ymir,” she says, taking her best friend’s hand. “I’m just so happy I can’t contain it. I am serious, too.”
“So you’ll marry me when we graduate?”
“I will,” Historia promises, and seals it with a kiss, a promise that she knows she’ll have to break but hopes against truth and the Walls and hope itself that, in the end, she won’t.