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Erwin knows that something is up the moment Hanji and Mike step into his room, wearing twin saccharine smiles that they’ve been known to employ whenever mischief is afoot. He’s even more perturbed when Levi steps in behind them looking carefully nonchalant, which means that he is positively gleeful inside, and Erwin feels a little of his authority already melting away.
“Commander,” Hanji starts, waltzing just directly in front of Erwin’s desk, a suspicious object tightly grasped in her hands. “You would not believe what Mike and I found in the Inner District Bookstore today.”
Erwin gets ahead of her. “If this is about the Vine Recipe Collection with the obscene nomenclature, I don’t want to hear it.”
Mike shakes his head as he stands beside Hanji. ”It’s not. It’s something far better,” he says, and waggles his eyebrows at Erwin in a way that triggers a series of “oh god no” chants deep within Erwin’s hindbrain. “Which is saying a lot, since I’m a big fan of the Vine.”
Erwin briefly runs through the gamut of possible responses to what is no doubt another test of the encumbrance limits of his sanity before realizing there’s no escaping this at all. “Very well,” he sighs, dread curling in the pit of his stomach. “What is it?”
“Famous last words,” Levi drawls as he passes by Erwin’s desk, and plops himself irreverently down on the leather couch.
“Commander, we had no idea you were such a ladies’ man,” Hanji says, and brandishes a copy of what looks like a romance novel with a cheesy cover.
“A stud,” Mike adds.
“A veritable Casanova,” Hanji says.
“God’s gift to all women everywhere,” Levi says, because Mike and Hanji’s newfound levels of sadism are apparently contagious.
Erwin really doesn’t want to know where this is going. “If I told you that we are under attack by titans who have breached the wall, would you all stop this line of conversation?”
“Nah, I can’t smell any from here,” Mike says.
“Also, it’s night,” Hanji points out.
“Besides, I can just take an extended toilet break and be back in time for nightcap tea,” Levi adds.
Erwin doesn’t even know why he tries.
“Now,” Mike says, when Erwin doesn’t make any other fruitless attempts to escape his fate, taking the book from Hanji’s grasp. “Come look at this, trust me, it’s good.”
Long and hard-earned experience has taught Erwin that what Mike thinks is a good thing and what Erwin thinks is a surefire way to send someone to the deep end of sanity tend to coincide swimmingly, so Erwin steels himself for a fresh wave of mental poleaxing.
“Look at this awesome title: 50 Shades of Purple,” Mike says.
“And that cover!” Hanji says. “A busty maiden swooning into your manly arms—”
“—rubbing her ample bosom on your shirtless chest—” Mike continues.
“—her hands fumbling with the zipper of your leather breeches—”
“— while the sun sets dramatically in the horizon.“
“Doesn’t it get you in the mood,” Levi deadpans.
Erwin closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He attends soul-sucking military tribunals more than a dozen times a year, gets insulted to his face by leaders of a military faction who regularly eschews responsibility in favour of the next Vine bottle, and copes with an unflagging 33% mortality rate in every single one of his excursions. He can take this. He has to.
Hanji keeps talking. “The guy’s name is Jacques Montague and the busty girl is Rosa Capulet.”
Mike takes the book from Hanji and thrusts it in Erwin’s face. “Seriously, Jacques is the spitting image of you,” he says, and Erwin can no longer avoid the inevitable, and looks at the cover that purportedly contains his uncanny likeness.
Erwin blinks. It’s like staring at the mirror. Whoever the artist is, he or she is very good—they got the correct shade of his hair and eyes and matched his strong chiseled features. Even his eyebrows are perfectly shaped. All in all, it would be incredibly impressive, if Erwin doesn’t want to crush it beneath his heel and throw it down the next titan’s throat.
“He’s so handsome,” Mike says, in rich, exaggerated tones. “Look at those cheekbones! And those cornflower eyes. And that intense, pensive look.”
Erwin regards Mike with newfound apprehension. “You know Hanji and Levi have always told me you were just as disturbing as them, and I never believed them because I had more faith in you than that,” he says. “I regret this decision now.”
Mike has the temerity to feign hurt. “What, how can my extolling the finer points of your beauteous visage be a disturbing thing?” he asks, frowning. “Can’t a man admire another man’s face without it being coloured by homosexual overtones?”
And that’s when Erwin decides that he’s going to leave all his sarcastic thoughts to himself henceforth, because it’s clearly not worth it. “Fine, it does look a lot like me,” he acquiesces, opting not to answer the question for his own better good. “Is that all? Are we done?”
"Oh, we’re not done yet," Levi pipes up. "We haven’t even gotten to the best part."
“What part?”
“The dramatic reading, of course!” Hanji says, eyeglasses gleaming.
Erwin dimly hears the sound of his dignity howling like a soul in torment.
Hanji licks her thumb and proceeds to a page in the middle of the book. “Look at these super juicy passages—” Mike snickers and mutters something that sounds like “hehe, juicy passages” and Erwin just wants to die “—ahem. Rosa’s body is quivering with barely contained anticipation, her lady juices soaking through her lacy panties.”
“Jacques slides his thumbs along the turgid peaks of Rosa’s nipples, taking delight in Rosa’s moans of ecstasy,” Mike reads, in a deep, obviously fake debonair voice that makes Erwin’s skin crawl. “He undoes his belt and flashes his handsome smile and says, ‘I’ll make you feel like magic, darling.’ ”
“Oh yes, Jacques,” Hanji cries out breathily, clutching her chest. “Give it to me! Make me see stars, and assault me with your hot staff of wonder!”
Erwin stares at Levi, and runs a hand through his hair, his expression tight-lipped, which is his code for ‘DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.’
Levi just raises his eyebrows and smirks, which is his code for ‘Look, one of us is bound to be the victim of either of these two and I volunteer you on account of you not being me.’
Heartless, insubordinate bastard.
“They kissed passionately, tongues twining in an elaborate dance. Then they separated, a line of saliva stringing their mouths together,” Mike reads out, bringing Erwin back to his current painful reality. Mike pauses, glances furtively at Erwin and then furrows his brow at the book. “Wow, I feel bad for Rosa; Jacques has terrible kissing technique.”
Erwin is pretty sure he’s not supposed to be as mortified as he is right now, considering that he had nothing to do with the atrocious prose spouting out of Mike and Hanji’s mouths.
“I hope this isn’t how you deal with your ladies, Erwin, because that’s really uncool,” Mike adds reproachfully. “Stringy drool is not sexy.”
Then again, this is Mike, in his highest 'bored and extremely dangerous' setting, which means mortification is more of a rule and not the exception.
Erwin opens his mouth to defend his—what, kissing abilities? Superior carnal knowledge? Remaining shreds of dignity?—when Hanji suddenly releases a blood-curdling shriek normally reserved for unlocking Titan-related achievements.
“What?!” he asks urgently, as he reflexively stands up, his chair banging on the wall behind it.
Hanji points a shaking finger on a line in the book. “Rosa’s eyes widen upon laying eyes on Jacques’ magnificent rod. She licks her lips, wondering how those twelve inches of man meat will feel as it spears inside her.“ She closes the book with a decisive snap. “Jacques has a foot-long hot staff of wonder!” she hisses.
Erwin valiantly ignores how all three of them veer their gaze to his crotch in that instant. He curses himself for his completely misplaced concern, and for leaving the safety of his desk cover. And curses the creators of their uniform, for that matter. Stupid loin-skirt accessory that serves no real purpose whatsoever.
"Is that up to spec?" Levi asks with a straight face, despite the fact that he’s radiating malicious intent in waves.
“I refuse to comment on that matter,” Erwin says, and pointedly sits back down, behind his desk, where his crotch will be free from further speculation.
“Well, whatever,” Hanji says and makes a disgusted face. “Wow, I can’t believe inner district noble women are eating this shit up.”
“Romance novels, feeding unrealistic expectations for women everywhere,” Levi says dryly.
“Well yeah. I mean, this isn’t fucking; it’s cervix punching and that’s ten levels of unsexy.” Hanji shudders. “I feel violated just reading it.”
Erwin rather feels violated himself though he knows better than to admit that. Instead he throws all pretensions to the wind and straight up asks: “Okay, why are you doing this to me?” There is no way going he’s going to let either of them read another passage from that book tonight if he can help it.
For a moment, the three of them just look at him like they have no idea what he’s talking about, though Levi is a bit more predictable, in the sense that his expression really never changed the whole time, and is just going along, paying no lip service to either side unless it suits him.
And then they all shrug, which confirms Erwin’s suspicions that there is an underlying purpose to all of this, though he’s on the fence on whether or not this makes things more acceptable. On one hand, this kind of behaviour really isn’t something unexpected—if he remembers far enough, he’ll eventually come up with a memory much more embarrassing than this; on the other hand, the fact that they’re using psychological warfare on him of all people is never a thing to be relieved about.
"Well," Mike starts, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "See, someone had to impose a curfew for weekdays, with no exceptions, therefore forbidding me from going out on my nightly excursions. It gets boring around here, so I had to fill it up with something.”
Oh for the love of— “Look, I’m just discouraging the younger cadets from doing the same thing—we already had an issue with Armin Arlelt getting preyed on by pedophiles when I sent him on that errand to find you,” Erwin replies patiently, his memory reeling back to that night when they realized how truly dangerous Mikasa Ackerman could be; She reportedly rendered six middle-aged men unconscious in ten seconds flat, using only her bare fists, before slinging a stammering and scandalized Armin over her shoulder and strolling away without a word. Even Levi was impressed.
"Well, someone had to limit my experimentation hours with Eren Jaeger to three hours instead of six,” Hanji pipes up, when Mike looks pointedly at her for the next round of verbal artillery. “So I have all this free time I’m not using, which thus resulted to me tagging along with Mike.”
Erwin pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, you gave him a serum which gave his titan form a prodigious… gender, then asked him if you can preserve it for possible carpentry purposes; you’re lucky I’m even allowing you three hours.”
“Also, someone had to cut down the budget for cleaning solution, in favour of more gas supplies, and turn down my completely reasonable request for a workshop on techniques on extending gas mileage,” Levi says, not waiting for Hanji to defend herself. “So since I cannot currently clean my room tonight as per my regular schedule, I went here.”
Erwin summons all his force of will not to slam his face onto his hands and sob. “Look, we already tried it, and only Mikasa Ackerman was able to do it successfully, and I’d rather spend more on gas than medical supplies for the inevitable concussions.”
There. Three perfectly valid justifications for three drastic, but necessary measures. Erwin congratulates himself for a job well done, as the three of them stay silent, faces blank.
And then his worst nightmare comes true.
“My nightly excursions are for the good of the squad,” Mike points out. “Testosterone boosts improve aggressive performance in battle, you know.”
“Eren is more than happy to help me,” Hanji says, glaring a little. “Besides, all we need to do is take turns whispering “Help us kill all the titans” in his ear and he’s all good to go.”
Levi doesn’t even look sorry. “Clean rooms are good for morale.”
“Okay now you’re all just rationalizing,” Erwin says, a little crossly but only because it’s true.
The three of them look at each other for a moment, as if holding a silent private conference on how to proceed. It’s at that point that Erwin feels that he’s two seconds away from being well and truly, as Levi would put it, fucked, as just the mere discovery of these three’s capacity for silent communication is single-handedly changing Erwin’s perception of how truly cruel the world can be.
"Did you know that this is a trilogy?” Mike pipes up.
Oh no.
“Here’s the sequel,” Levi says, and pulls out another pocketbook, which, to Erwin’s utmost horror, now has his likeness in handcuffs, with artfully placed wounds and bruises adorning his chest (why why why is he always shirtless), while a short young man kneels in front of his unbuttoned pants. “Where a male prostitute is madly in love with Jacques and gets them both arrested for a chance to seduce him in jail.”
This is not happening.
“River Maxhilt, that’s the male prostitute by the way, is actually a pretty cool character, and his specialty is dirty talk,” Hanji says excitedly. “Levi can read his parts for you, even if he’s a lousy actor.”
This cannot be happening.
“There’s also this wild foursome prison scene here, when Jacques got caught by the jealous duke who was in love with Rosa,” Mike says, before snapping his fingers decisively. “Hold on, let me call Nanaba and Gerger to read the other parts.”
This has to be some sort of out-of-body experience and he’ll be waking up any minute now to a world where there are no romance paperbacks bearing his face that exist to cause him unbearable psychological agony.
Levi stands up from the couch and tosses the book to Mike. “I’ll call Petra, she likes this shit, and I think she has book three—”
“—Better, I have Lady Wilhelmina’s address,” Hanji says, and that’s it, Erwin is effectively done for, and could no longer harbour any illusions that a rogue, night-resistant, intelligent group of titans are on the way to his office to put him out of his misery. “I’m sure she’ll be willing to volunteer her services to read Rosa’s distraught passages, as well as provide immediate comfort…if you know what I mean.”
On a purely professional level, Erwin is aware that as a commander of one of the three main branches of the military, he has every right to call them on their excessive insubordination. A quick calculation of their offenses (sexual and emotional harassment of a superior officer, making underhanded threats, undue questioning of orders and severe lack of decorum, to name a few) and the corresponding demerits would be enough to earn them a full military tribunal.
But as a friend and mentor of three of the Scouting Legion’s finest soldiers, he knows how to pick his battles, when to fight, when to compromise, and most importantly, when to retreat.
And so with a great, heaving sigh, Erwin reaches for a pen and pulls out the memo sheets.
~fin~