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#im going into hibernation after this fic

nariism · 9 months

Text

chaos makes the muse

pair. hayakawa aki x gn!reader

content: enemies to lovers, fluff, mentions of addiction and smoking cigarettes (negatively, i'm sorry smokers pls look away), reader is a little shit and aki is sick and tired, swearing

synopsis. aki's life is defined by bad decisions and terrible habits. it culminated in you. he's screwed.

wc. 6.2k (oops)

a/n: this is my preemptive apology for all the smokers out there who i just slandered !! i am so sorry i love you. this fic was meant to be experimental with tropes and dynamics i've never tried before, sorry if it's not entirely up to standard :') i really tried my best guys... enjoy!

it started as a challenge.

it always starts as a challenge for aki — from the lit end of his cigarette to the place where it sits dangerously between his teeth. he picked it up as a bad habit from himeno. that was his first challenge; the way he'd adamantly refused to smoke but ultimately caved over a lukewarm bowl of ramen. what a depressing tale.

it wasn't meant to be anything more than a "why the hell not?" sort of defiance against the universe.

he hadn't been broken in by devil hunting yet and didn't need it as something to take the edge off. oh, how he wishes he could go back in time and slap himself silly.

day by day he found his reliance grew. an unpleasant itch in his throat, an insatiable craving that would slam into his chest and leave him breathless at the most inconvenient times. sometimes he would start muttering to himself in irritation when he got that familiar itch right after brushing his teeth.

as he got older and worked a little longer as a devil hunter, he grew less and less sane the longer he went without a smoke.

that was the second challenge; trying to focus on his jobs when his brain was buzzing with need. it was hard to stay sharp when he could feel the box sitting in his front pocket — agonizing, teasing, mocking him.

it's probably the reason he ended up in this mess in the first place, standing across from makima while she lists off all the ways he messed up on his last job. and the list is long. he must have really needed a dart.

so here he is, back turned to the door as he faces makima head-on. his fingers instinctively drum against the pocket of his pants, along the box sitting there, and all he can think is "i can't wait to get out of here for a smoke."

then the door swings open. a chill runs down his spine before he even turns around, because there's a certain air that enters the room unlike any he's felt before.

he's encountered the scariest devils out there. his whole family was taken out by a gargantuan gun-infested lovecraftian monster. but for some reason, aki gets an unfamiliar wave of horror that washes over him when he finally turns around.

"this is your new temporary partner until i'm sure you can be trusted alone on another mission."

and there you are. his third challenge.

you seem too relaxed to have been in this business for long, though it looks like you could only be a year or two younger than him. there's something about you that ticks him off. you're not a fiend — definitely not with how plain you are, but the way you're scowling at him as if he's a disease on this earth makes him second guess it.

aki can't even hear what makima is talking about anymore, too busy melting into a puddle under your heavy, judgemental glare. silence fills the room and aki is acutely aware that he's supposed to introduce himself, but you're too quick to speak and beat him to the punch.

"you smoke," is your deadpan and rather uncalled for observation.

"yes i do. and?"

you scrutinize him with a sneer, clearly disgusted.

"i don't like the smell of smoke. or smokers."

his jaw nearly drops at your bluntness. for the sake of keeping his cool exterior intact, he steels himself and takes a deep breath. it's fine. he knew how to deal with handfuls like you, like denji, like power. trouble kids. this would be easy–

"i promise you, i'll be uncooperative and keep you as a hostage in lower paying jobs until you quit."

"you... can't be serious?"

"dead serious."

"... and who the hell are you again?"

"i don't tell people my name."

"this whole mysterious act sucks. and your attitude sucks, too."

your glare sharpens at his words and you huff like a child throwing a tantrum. he almost wants to laugh at how your expression has changed. instead, he holds out his hand with a resigned sigh. "alright, alright. i'm sorry. my name is hay-"

you slap his hand away; a wordless warning accompanied by another look that makes him shrink back.

"don't care. didn't ask."

makima smiles, cruel and knowing. "i'm glad to see the two of you getting along. you're dismissed."

aki knows he shouldn't be mad at makima. it was his fault in the first place that the devil got away, and only because he was so distracted. this was a fair punishment for such a severe mess up. if this was her way of teaching him a lesson, he would just have to grit his teeth and bear through it.

he stares you down with disdain sitting under his tongue, bitter and unforgiving like the aftertaste of his black coffee in the morning; like having a mouthful of power and denji's burnt breakfast; like the tar that coats his lungs.

"fine then, be that way. nice to meet you, partner."

aki's mornings start slow.

they always have, for as long as he can remember. he wakes up just after the crack of dawn, to which denji has called him sick in the head multiple times for, and spends his time unwinding before he inevitably has to go into work and be on high alert for ten hours straight.

it's a peaceful morning like any other. he's on his balcony overlooking the quiet streets of tokyo. denji and power haven't woken up yet, so he has at least a few moments of solitude (which he so desperately needs, by the way).

he cracks open a new box of cigarettes and shakes one into his hand. he's two seconds away from flicking open his lighter to start his morning smoke when–

"i told you i don't like smokers."

aki nearly falls off the balcony in surprise, whipping around to see the intruder. you're standing there with another frown on your face. he has to wonder if you can smile at all.

"how did you get into my apartment?!"

"huh? the front door. are you stupid?"

"but–" aki's head tilts so that he can peer over your shoulder. there's no sign of anyone else being awake to let you in, which means you must have just taken the liberty of waltzing on in here unannounced. "don't sneak up on me like that. i could have hurt you."

"why would you do that?"

"excuse me? because you just broke into my apartment, for fuck's sake."

"i didn't!" you argue back defensively, fumbling in your pocket to pull out a key. and in that moment, aki realizes something deeply, deeply terrible. just as makima had sprung the role of babysitter onto him with denji and power, she has now bestowed upon him possibly the most irritating human being ever born.

this can’t be happening. he couldn’t possibly get stuck with a third unbearable roommate. what kind of shitty karma does he have?

"i... i need a minute."

your tongue clicks in annoyance. "hurry up. i want to leave for work asap."

"just go in yourself. i can meet you there later."

"i don't have a car."

it's as if thunder claps in his ears. "you... don't... have a car..." he repeats back to you slowly, utterly defeated. "at least let me finish getting ready."

you eye the cigarette still held between his fingers with nothing but contempt. "i don't like–"

"yes, yes, i get it! you don't like the smell of smoke. you don't like me."

your face scrunches slightly as you fall silent. if he didn't think you were being such a pest right now, he might have thought you looked a little cute.

"it hurts my nose."

"you have a sensitive nose or something?"

"or something."

his eye twitches.

aki very quicky learns that when you don't like how things are done, you're very vocal about it. and not only are you vocal, if he ever decided to be stubborn you would take actions into your own hands.

he can't count how many times you've stomped up to him in the middle of a job just to slap the cigarette straight out of his mouth and snuff it out with your heel. he's starting to get antsy because of it.

you're a menace. sometimes he even finds that a box of cigarettes he had purchased the night before has mysteriously ended up drenched at the bottom of the bath. it's infuriating.

he doesn't understand how someone could be so intolerant to a scent. he knew it was unpleasant, but he would like to think that he has impeccable enough hygiene to at least be passable. hell, even denji and power don't seem to notice or care.

(not that it's a very high bar to clear when it comes to them. denji once ate a kid's half-chewed leftovers off the table at mcdonalds and said it was a waste of food. aki was not pleased.)

it's not until he's known you for exactly sixty-two days that he learns the truth. two agonizing months of taking a single drag before you come over to him and snatch the cancer stick right out from under his nose.

aki isn't sure how he never noticed — the minute twitch of your nose when you were drawing closer to a devil. the way your shoulders stilled as you held your breath around denji and power.

he thought you were just a regular human being. he should have known makima wouldn't have paired him with someone normal. you were makima's personal devil tracker.

"it's this way," you tell him as you lead him further into the tunnel. it's almost pitch black. aki can't get a read on anything around him.

"how do you know?"

you look at him with an brow raised, like he just asked a really dumb question. "i can smell it."

"you can smell it?"

"i can smell it,” you repeat in confirmation.

"you're insane. there's nothing down here. let's just go back and regroup with–"

you suddenly swivel around, the flashlight in your hand beaming into his face. he has to cover them with a hand as he scowls at you for temporarily blinding him.

"no! it's here! it would just be easier to find if someone wasn't masking up its scent!"

aki's eyes roll into the back of his head at your little jab. "don't waste my time. i have better things to be doing than babysitting you down here."

he gestures dramatically for you to continue walking, shuffling around in his pocket before pulling out a dart. you glower at him distastefully.

"are you for real right now? you can't go 5 minutes without a smoke?"

he just shrugs, lighting it as he trails behind you. "if i need one then i need one."

"i can't believe you. you're seriously so childish," you sputter out, turning around to glare at him.

aki just sighs tiredly, blowing smoke into your face.

he can't wrap his head around why denji and power have taken such a liking to you.

you're rude and blunt and shameless with your remarks. if he was irrational he might have knocked you out by now for constantly swiping darts out of his mouth.

your relationship is purely obligatory. there's a level of mutual trust between you and him; there has to be for the two of you to be a partially functioning team of hunters — but even then, you bicker. and as soon as you're home, you rush into your room in a flurry of curse words and bites that leave aki grumbling to himself.

he doesn't get it. there's not an ounce of appeal.

you have a plain style and an even less exciting personality. he also thinks you have an ugly attitude problem and act like a brat when you want something from him. he always caves, too, which is the worst part — it's some unawakened big brother instinct that he never got to feel as a kid.

he spoils you too much for your own good.

don't want carrots in your curry tonight? fine. he doesn't want to hear you complaining about it, or worse, flinging them around the room with power. again.

saw something at the hundred yen store on the way home? whatever. it's just a hundred yen. if you want it then he'll buy it even if it's something as stupid as a charm for your keychain.

and he hates that you find it all so sentimental, the cheap little trinkets he gets for you. he absolutely loathes the fact that you lug them all around with you. they clink and jingle as you walk around, a clear dead giveaway when you're trying to be stealthy during a job.

(the kicker? it's so endearing that he can't even find it in himself to scold you for it. he despises you for making him even consider calling you cute.)

he should have grown a stronger resolve about this sort of thing. otherwise, he would have been coming home unscathed tonight.

he exhales in exhaustion as he watches you retreat into your room again for the night before he shuffles over into the bathroom and sits at the edge of the tub. he had just bought you a little bracelet with a bell charm on it, jingling with every step you took. it was a grave mistake to bring it into enemy territory.

as much as he would love to place the blame on you, he can't. not when you're so much less experienced out in the field than he is, and not when you were so reserved the entire ride home.

it was his fault. he should have known better.

you were eerily silent as you drove (he was in no condition to drive, so despite his reluctance handing you his car keys, he really had no choice). there was a look on you that was unrecognizable — something morphed between guilt and worry.

he usually doesn't smoke in the confines of his apartment, taking his cigarettes outside where it'll smell less. but he needs one badly right now, and who are you to stop him in his own home?

he catches his reflection in the mirror above the sink. it hits him then how much of a mess he is right now; hair disheveled and masking his vision, blood staining his white button-up, sweat sticking to his forehead and smoke rising to veil half of his face.

aki doesn't get paid enough for this.

"you look like shit."

his eyes flutter closed at the sound of your voice from the door. you invite yourself in, standing a few feet away from him with a hand covering your nose.

"smell like it, too."

"yeah, i bet," he mumbles, pulling the dart from between his teeth to blow smoke in your direction like he always does when you’re pissing him off. you wave it away with a scowl.

"that was rude."

"speak for yourself."

"you suck."

"did you come in here just to be a bother?"

your face twists and he almost bursts out laughing at the constipated expression you give him. you fumble a little with your sleeves, gaze falling to the floor as you stand there like a kid who just threw up and needs their mom to come clean it up.

"do you need help?" you ask him, voice nearly inaudible.

he considers it for a second before his eyes drift to the cigarette still lit between his fingers. "no. it's fine. it's probably better if you're not in here with me right now."

"but you're hurt."

"i've been through worse. i'm fine, really," aki raises a brow at you and your strange behaviour, "don't worry about it."

you're silent again for a moment as his words sink in. "i feel bad. i feel like it's my fault." you sound earnest about it, chewing on your bottom lip guiltily.

he exhales loudly in response, shifting his weight a little on the tub so he can unbutton his shirt. "okay, okay. quit making that face. it's creeping me out."

you huff at his words but surprisingly offer no rebuttal. you waddle over to him slowly, brows furrowing further with each drag of your feet against the tile floor. he watches you curiously as you rummage through the sink cabinet and kneel in front of him, body resting between his thighs.

if you can feel how warm he gets from the action, you don't bother teasing him about it.

your nose is entirely scrunched up now, though you do your best to hide your clear disdain for the scent of smoke filling your nose.

"you really don't have to do this. i promise i'm okay."

you leer at him stubbornly and he immediately relents, not in the mood for a petty argument. you work quickly and delicately, wrapping his wound in gauze. it's then that he realizes there's no tiny jingle of a bell filling the air as you move, and he looks down to see your empty wrist.

"for the record, it wasn't your fault," he says quietly, hand stopping yours. you don't try and slap it away this time, but falter a bit.

"... you don't have to try to be nice to me."

"i'm not trying to be nice. i'm just telling you how it is."

"but–"

"no buts."

your eyes meet his as you peer up at him. you stay still for just a beat before you're wrapping him again, careful not to nick his wound.

are you... crying?

it's subtle, the little tears gathering on your lashes. he might not have realized if it wasn't accompanied by the tiniest of sniffles (which makes you recoil back slightly with the intrusion of smoke filling your lungs).

oh no. he's growing a soft spot for you because of this. the most irritating human on the planet, and he wants to give you a hug so you'll stop crying. what the hell is wrong with him.

aki's hand plops onto the top of your head before either of you realize it's happening. he awkwardly averts his stare.

"don't cry. it's ugly on you."

and it really is, because why else would his heart be having such a violent reaction to it?

for a second he anticipates the sharp sting of your hand smacking his away again, or maybe you'll even be so angry that you'll tilt your head up and sink your teeth into him like a rabid animal.

but you don't. you laugh — a real genuine laugh that makes him dizzy.

he's never been able to picture you with a smile on your face before. you always look feral, like you're about to launch at him and tear his skin off, or so tired that you can't even keep your eyes open anymore.

he sucks in a deep breath as he watches you laugh, blinking the tears out and wiping them up with your sleeve.

you don't say anything to him in response, instead giggling to yourself as you bandage him up the rest of the way. and he doesn't say anything either, not wanting to ruin something so special.

aki realizes that there's still a cigarette he's unconsciously rolling between his fingers. he hasn't taken a drag in so long that it's starting to extinguish itself. and despite the smell of smoke filling the room, you haven't stopped cleaning his wound and wrapping him.

he crushes it up in his hand and drops the ashes into the tub behind him.

he really should quit.

there's a shift in aki in the following weeks.

it's almost palpable — the way he speaks a little softer. a little more tender. kinder. and you can smell it, too; the scent of smoke slowly disappearing over time (not entirely, mind you, but it's the thought that counts).

you first noticed it when you came home from mcdonalds with denji, fries stuffed into your cheeks as you blinked down at aki who was on his hands and knees wiping down every square inch of the apartment.

"come on man, we're not that messy for you to be doing all that..." denji complained while scratching his balls. but aki didn't dignify him with a response, dutifully using a sponge and warm soapy water to scrub at the walls.

you observed him in secrecy later that night, peering into the bathroom as he dumped out the bucket of brown water. he was scrubbing the apartment clean of two years worth of smoke.

it didn't end there. as the months passed, you started smelling it on aki less, too.

once he smoked he would shower right away, even going so far as to pull over on the way home one night and use a public bathhouse. when he could he would change his clothes, too. his sudden change in lifestyle made it significantly more tolerable to linger around him. no longer were you holding your breath until your lungs ached in your ribcage.

aki also took notice of your change in behaviour in response. it was easier to be around you when you weren't constantly whining about his smell.

he didn't think he was being so obvious in the way he was starting to enjoy your company day by day. you still gave him migraines like no other, and he couldn't stand your attitude. but he couldn't help but find your quirks a little charming, at least a bit funny if nothing else.

he wasn't aware that a very watchful (and perverted) pair of eyes was picking up on his signs.

it's a quiet morning with the fan blowing. you and power are still dead to the world and aki has just settled down to have his breakfast.

"so like, what's the deal with you two anyways?"

he glances up from his food with a tilt of the head.

"what are you talking–"

"cause i mean, i totally saw you checking out their ass yesterday." at denji's remark, aki almost chokes on his rice.

"what? i absolutely was not." he guffaws at the blond as if he's ludicrous.

"riiiight... so, you're not into each other then? what's with the looks?"

"what looks?"

denji makes it a point to be theatrical in his renditions of the previous night, sighing dreamily and fluttering his lashes.

"like that."

"... just eat your breakfast, man. you're imagining things."

"nah, but i'm not. c'mon, you don't like them even a little?"

"no."

"liar."

"denji..." aki strains the name out through grit teeth — a warning.

"what'cha guys talkin' about?"

god no. aki can't do this today. not right now. it's too early in the morning.

"we were just talking about how lovey-dovey aki's been lately."

"ohoho, so he finally admits it?" power sits across the table, suddenly interested in conversation.

"i didn't admit anything..." aki puts his chopsticks down with a frustrated sigh, "and what the hell do you mean finally?"

"he totally did admit it. and you should have seen the two of them yesterday—"

"dude, i'm going to kick you in the balls."

"let me have a turn!"

"will you two stop already? i'm getting a headache."

it's a horrible conversation, honestly. a terrible, horrific, unforgiving realization that they might be even a small fraction correct.

this whole household is the bane of his existence.

this thought sticks with him all day; they're going to be the death of me. why me, universe? why me? it doesn't stop until he finally settles into bed at the end of his long day and lets his eyes slide shut for some well-deserved sleep.

there's laughter echoing in his ears, nothing more than a dreamy hallucination as he drifts in and out of sleep. it's sweet and rare and beautiful — he wants to capture it in a bottle and get drunk off of it.

just as aki is about to fall asleep, there's a gentle knock at the door. he stirs awake again with a soft groan, sitting up in bed.

"come in."

in you walk, hands clasped in front of you as you stare at your feet. "i had a nightmare."

he scoffs, but he's climbing out of bed and trodding over to you anyways. "what are you, a child? what'd you come to me about that for?"

"jerk."

he considers you quietly, focusing on the bags under your eyes and the way you shift uncomfortably under the weight of his gaze.

"well what do you want me to do?"

you chew on your lip for a moment. "can i sleep in here?"

"with me?"

"with you."

aki looks at you like you've lost your mind. "no," he says immediately. you wouldn't get a very restful sleep if you were suffocating in the lingering smell of smoke.

he expects you to put up a fight like you always do when things don't go your way. he even braces himself for the onslaught of names you'll call him.

it never comes. instead:

"okay."

quiet and resigned and tired. and he hates that it makes his stomach drop, because next thing he knows his hand is shooting forward to capture your wrist as you retreat.

"god, quit looking so sad. you're the worst," he tells you as he drags you back into the room and unceremoniously tosses you onto his bed.

"dickwad," you bite back weakly. aki can only roll his eyes in response as he takes half his pillows and blankets to make a temporary bed on the floor for himself. you watch him curiously.

"you're not sleeping in the bed?"

"you wouldn't be able to sleep if you were that close to me."

"... right."

"goodnight," he huffs, settling onto the uncomfortably hard wooden floor. a hush settles over the room and he assumes you've either fallen asleep or are trying to, until you start shuffling around for a couple seconds. he can hear your mouth opening and closing, as if you’re deciding whether or not to say something.

"what is it now?" aki sighs, rolling onto his side to peek at you. you're already facing him, balled up into the blanket.

"can i hold your hand at least?"

he gawks at you for a second before recomposing himself. it's just hand holding, who cares? not him. not even a bit.

(liar.)

"fine," he mumbles, slowly reaching up to offer his hand. you take it tentatively, fingers gently curling around his. his brain almost explodes into malfunctioning, heart stopping in his chest.

you blink at each other, gazes steady and unwavering. then your eyes flutter closed as you pull the blanket up and over the bottom half of your face.

"hayakawa?"

"what?" he studies you, watching the way your expression changes ever so slightly.

soft, relaxed.

"thank you."

some part of aki knows he shouldn't be trying to memorize every part of you like this, but he does it anyways.

devil hunters don't get attached to others. they don't, and they can't. but aki can't help it. it was his worst habit — worse than smoking, actually.

he was always getting emotionally involved when it came to his partners. he couldn't go to sleep anymore thinking about the fact that you would have to go in the next day and face whatever horrible devil got assigned to you. there was a sickness that gurgled in his stomach when he pictured your ragged corpse, unmoving and lifeless at his feet.

it stresses him out beyond reason, even though you're in the next room over perfectly alive and breathing. and when aki is stressed, he reaches for a cigarette.

he thinks he's being quiet, and since you should be asleep he figures just one wouldn't hurt. so he sneaks out onto his balcony for a smoke, leaning over the edge of the railing so that he can observe the empty streets below.

for some reason, he hesitates for a moment as he brings it to his lips. he doesn't even get to light it before he's once again rudely interrupted.

"you're smoking."

it's as if you have a secret sense for when he's about to smoke. or maybe you can just smell them when he taps them out of the box. either way, it irks him.

aki sighs, hand slowly lowering and dangling over the railing. he doesn't even try to deny it as he glances over his shoulder at you. you're leaning against the door frame with your arms crossed. you don't seem as irritated as you usually do, instead regarding him steadily in slight defeat.

it makes his heart ache, so he flicks the unlit dart off the balcony and watches it disappear into the darkness of the street below.

"it's unhealthy, you know."

"i know."

"so why?"

"you think i chose to be this way?" in some ways he did, but he'd never tell you that.

silence befalls you as you join his side, resting your elbows on the railing. it's a calm night; a gentle breeze blows the hair from your face when you turn to look at him.

you wordlessly examine him, and he does the same. you’re more exhausted than usual, wilted like a flower starved for water. he knows it must be draining trying to keep up with someone in a special division — especially since you don't seem to be anything more than a bomb dog for makima, sniffing out where devils are hiding. he doesn't blame you for being so tired.

"hey," he frowns at you.

"what?"

"are you ever going to tell me your name?"

"no."

"seriously?"

"seriously."

he lets out a tiny groan of annoyance before he gets an idea. "if i quit smoking, would you tell me?"

you survey him cautiously. "i'd consider it."

aki runs a hand through his long hair in contemplation, looking out toward the complex across from his. "i don't get how people just quit on a whim. doesn't seem possible."

"they have stuff for that. like, chewing gum or nicotine patches or whatever." he huffs as you continue, "you just need to find something to take your mind off of it. something that satisfies your craving."

"yeah? way easier said than done. also, i don't know if i like being lectured by the likes of–"

"you'd be too irritating if you were addicted to anything else, anyways," you dismiss your own idea, completely ignoring the glare you're receiving from aki.

"you're annoying, you know that? worse than denji. worse than power, somehow." but he wants to take care of you anyways.

"am i?" you challenge defiantly, turning to face him completely.

"the worst. honest to god, i've considered quitting my job because of you." but he hasn't, has he?

"have you now?"

"what the hell was makima thinking, trying to get me to quit smoking by sending her tracker after me?" he should be thanking her, really.

you answer him honestly, voice quiet as you allow him to unconsciously enter your personal space in his rant of frustration. "i don't know."

he only realizes he's standing too close to you when your nose twitches slightly and your brows furrow — indicators that the faint but lingering smell of smoke on him is giving you a headache.

"sorry."

he starts to pull back with a defeated noise, but then your hands shoot forward and gently cling to his sweater. he looks at you inquisitively. you seem surprised by your own actions, too.

aki is forced to reconcile with the fact that he doesn’t want to take his eyes off of you. in his almost twenty-one years alive, he's never stood so close to someone before. it's taking a real toll on him.

a heavy fog of tension settles between you as you stand there, having a stare down both out of stubbornness and curiosity as to why the other hasn't pulled away yet.

"i don't know what's wrong with me... i don't think i want you to go inside yet. stop making me feel stupid," you complain, admitting your words shamelessly.

you watch as aki blinks at you before he shakes his head in exasperation.

"what am i going to do with you?"

there's a smile on his face as he says it, tiny and subtle. you would have missed it if he wasn't slowly inching closer and closer to you. and you let him despite the suffocating smell of smoke invading your senses again.

it occurs to him that the only things he has ever kissed are his wounds as he dresses them in bandages, himeno when she was wasted once, and the papery end of a cigarette.

you taste much sweeter than any of them.

maybe it was just easy for aki to fall into addictions. he was weak-willed in that sense. always has been.

and he always chose the absolute worst things in the world to get addicted to; revenge, smoking, and now you. he couldn't stand being in the same room as you anymore. not when he so desperately craved your lips on his.

it started as a casual thing; a small peck here, a sneaky kiss there, nothing jaw dropping. and you didn't seem to mind it all too much, allowing him to linger a little longer every time he leaned back in.

it was becoming a problem. a very serious one. he couldn't focus anymore. it was worse than smoking, so much so that everytime he wanted to reach for a box of cigarettes, he would end up coming to you instead.

there was something about you he wanted to preserve. a fondness grew in his heart, replacing the scream of annoyance that would fill his lungs and threaten to spill out every time he laid eyes on you.

you were something he wanted to keep. something to protect. someone to fill the silence when no one else would.

aki liked bickering with you. he found normalcy in it, as if he'd spent his whole life doing it. and sometimes it really did feel that way — as if he'd spent lifetimes before this one by your side.

it's why he clings to you so tightly when he almost loses you.

you're perched in his lap as he holds you, slowly running your fingers through his untied hair. the driver's seat of the car wasn't built for two people to sit; his legs are far too cramped to be comfortable and your knees are pressed harshly into his thighs.

he doesn't care. aki has never cared so much until he met you.

he's robbing you of air, clinging to you so tightly that you can barely move. he can hear you complaining against his lips, but he can't bring himself to stop.

"stop doing this to me," he hisses, knocking his forehead into yours so that he can stare into your soul. "it's ridiculous. i hate you. i hate you."

he kisses you again to bury the familiar lump growing in his throat.

"i told you to fucking stay put. why can't you just listen to me? you could have died. what would i have done then, huh?" you don't answer him, instead cupping his cheeks to try and calm him down.

"you're stupid and reckless and fuck — what would i do without you?" he closes his eyes when your nose brushes against his; a silent apology.

"i hate how much you mean to me, i hate your stupid laugh and your voice and how awful it makes me feel when you look sad. i hate that you keep all the worthless shit i buy you on the way home from work and i hate that you stand so close even after a smoke–" aki's jaw tenses to try and dam the outburst spilling out of him, but he can’t.

"–i hate that i love you. i hate it. i hate you. fuck! i love you–"

he's out of breath by the time he finishes getting his words out, his fingers digging into your hips almost painfully. you blink down at him as you brush the hair from his face.

he’s always so composed, even when he's being mean to you. it's rare to see him worked up like this. you can't help but smile.

"... don't just smile at me, idiot. say something," he pleads quietly, head falling against your shoulder as he keeps you in place.

he squeezes his eyes shut when your fingers thread carefully through his undone hair once again, raking the knots out smoothly. he melts in your touch until your hands leave his scalp and gather up his face again so you can look at him.

there's no tiny twitch of your nose. no furrowing of your brows. no stilling of your chest as you hold your breath. actually, he's never seen you so openly inviting.

"can i kiss you?" aki asks this time, voice hoarse.

you nod, and his whole world comes apart. he takes his time memorizing every curve of your lips against his, the taste of you, the little gasps of air you suck in as he seals his claim on you with his mouth.

"aki..." you murmur his given name against his lips, over and over and over. you whisper it between kisses that leave you breathless. and he swallows your voice, allowing himself to revel in the way his name sounds on your tongue.

he didn't smell of smoke anymore. he didn't taste like death and ash, either — he was just aki.

hayakawa aki, 20, professional devil hunter and resident cynic, who you're hopelessly in love with.

“aki?”

“yeah?”

"do you still want to learn my name?"

🏷️ @k0z3me @aanobrain (bye ily hope you enjoy this one art)

crossposted to ao3!

#— whispers in the wind ✧#im going into hibernation after this fic #goodnight world #i cant believe i actually finished it #chainsaw man #csm #chainsaw man fic #csm fic #hayakawa aki #aki hayakawa #aki hayakawa x you #aki hayakawa x y/n #aki hayakawa x reader #hayakawa aki x you #hayakawa aki x y/n #hayakawa aki x reader #chainsaw man x reader #csm x reader

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wanderingconstellations · 7 months

Note

HIHIHJI HOW ARE YOUUU???!

i've been reading your fics (?) for a while, and your writting is sooo hot in a way that i can't even explain it 😭😭❤️

i just had a silly and funny imagination haha..., gamerbf! scara who was pissed at his teammates for playing shitty and took his frustration out on his girlfriend?? omgf

FEEL FREE TO IGNORE IF YOU AREN'T TAKING REQUESTSS OFCCC <333

(yes, thjs is smut ahahaha..)

HIHIHIII IM DOING WELL ACTUALLY!! I was simply hibernating (resting) for a few days. I hope you're doing well, anon <3

"Fucking shitheads... can't even play correctly.."

Scara cursed under his breath, his eye twitching with fuming anger that was about to burst at any minute. His nimble fingers hover across his keyboard, the sound of clicking from his keyboard and mouse can be heard.

Being his girlfriend has it's perks, though it can be boring when he's all quiet and focused on a game instead of you but you know, at least Scara's nice enough to let you sit on his lap... with the exceptions of you cockwarming him while he plays his game.

His cock was angled in a way that made your walls fluttering around it, quietly squeezing his throbbing length that was kissing your sweet spots so nicely.

"S-Shit.. you gotta stop squeezing me."

You gulped, fidgeting your fingers. God, how can you? You can't control it, his dick was too good for you to not react a thing to it.

For a while now, you've been cock warming him for how long... half an hour? And by what you can see in his screen, the bolded words of "defeat" made your boyfriend very much irritated.

"These losers can't even play this fucking game correctly! My fucking god.."

He groaned at of annoyance, and after so long, he's finally paying attention to you.

Well, he's paying attention to you by fucking his dick into you. He pushed your face onto his desk, ramming his length from behind at a ruthless pace that leaves you gasping and moaning for him.

"scarascarascara! fuckfuckfuck, right there! s-scara!"

Like a bitch in heat, you moan and cry out for him. His fucking you so well, so good, you're already creaming on his cock already. He's muttering curses under his breath, mercilessly pounding into you. At this point, he'll probably mess up his setup doing this bullshit, but he gives no fuck afterall. Your pussy is just that good, like a little stress reliever for him.

For who knows how long he's going to fuck you? Not like you're complaining, he's already shooting thick n' warm ropes of cum inside of you. His dick is already coated with your cum, he'll probably make you clean it off of him after stupefying you.

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twinkodium · 4 months

Note

lola lola lola !!! 😚

i hope your last week of work went well & that you’ve had a good break so far <3 i finally had time to go back and read the lola newspaper (i’ve missed out on over two weeks 😵 but i’m pretty much fully caught up now!) and i have some thoughts:

(some of them are just other random thoughts i have, not to do with your posts these last weeks heh!)

1. you wrote you like scandinavian crime stories? :o do you have any examples? i have a story about sweden’s biggest crime writer but i won’t tell it if you haven’t read anything by her bcs it would be boring 🤪

2. reading through your blog as i’m trying to finish my christmas osc fic was both good and bad because you ofc have so many good cute reblogs and gifs of him that make me think of him and get all mushy and in the right mood to write 🥰 but it’s also hard because you have a lot of lando content recently, and he’s the one i’m trying to escape because he’s continued to hold my brain captive these last few weeks…..

3. speaking of lando… i see you too have been in a bit of a lando mood recently? 🤭 very interesting how your blog has become like 90% lando, i do not complain 🥰 and i totally get where you’re coming from 🥰 tbh very easy to blame oscar for disappearing from the face of the earth (i think i’ve seen like one pic of him? one sighting a fan took??….), and lando for those god damn streams 🤤🤤

dropping these off as they’re on the topic of lando and i just haven’t been able to get these screenshots out of my brain so now you need to suffer too:

(the nose scrunch… bestie…. him and oscar and their god damn noses 🥺🥺 not fair)

4. okay this doesn’t actually have anything to do with your reblogs but i remembered it after seeing some of them: after the last like big handball match i was at, i was waiting at the entrance for some person, and guess who stood just a few meters away… the cute liam lookalike….. and like as soon as i saw him, i looked away because i couldn’t be caught staring at him when he was so close (like, staring at him when he’s playing is another thing, but like this?? 😳). then i ended up talking to someone else as i waited, and i felt someone looking at me… so i turned my head and the liam lookalike was looking at me??? and i looked away and acted like it was no big deal, he probs was just looking around the room randomly. but tell me why i caught him staring at me SEVERAL MORE TIMES ???? i shit you not ??????? i tried so so hard to act like everything was fine but i giggle even thinking about it now SJSGSSJSH

5. speaking of liam….. guess who still hasn’t watched his vlogs?? 🫠 i just can’t allow myself to watch any videos or do anything distracting before im done with my christmas oscar fic 😶 (she says, as she’s reading through the lola newspaper instead of writing) but i saw your reblogs of pics from his vlogs and i just can’t hold back from watching them 😭

6. omg you never watched gilmore girls??? idk why this is so shocking to me but like. i thought everyone had to :0 i watched it for the first time last year tho but i’m on my 4th rewatch…. now im curious about what other big shows you didnt watch? i remember us talking about gossip girl (right? i didn’t just make that up, did i?) but i cant remember why?… honestly i shouldn’t say anything because i hate tv-shows but i thought everyone had seen gilmore girls 🥺

i had more things to say but i really really need to get writing now so i’ll be back some other time! have a great day (night) love!! 🫶

JACKIEE, it’s been a long time that you’ve come into my inbox, welcome back 🥺

WELL, last day and week was chaotic af, my boss woke up from hibernation and wanted everything done before the break… 🙄OH MY GOD, two weeks worth of Lola newspaper? Holy shit, must have been over 200 posts 😂

Scadinavian crime stories are the best honestly!! OH, my absolute favourite write is actually Danish, Jussi Adler Olsen. Still have a few books to read from him, but his Q-department series is TOP NOTCH. Pretty disturbing and very horrifying topics but well written all of them. Tell me her name and we’ll see if I’ve read anything from her yet 😉😉

OHHH hello Christmas Os fanfic??? Okay, do not look at my blog till you’re done, because I have lined up a few more Lando reblogs in my queue 😏 honestly, we’re in the same boat… my god😭 he’s so incredibly hot lately and those streams short-circuited my brain 😵

Fuck... I blame Oscar for being in hibernation cuz Lando took over my mind and thoughts 😭 pls what I should I reblog, when our guy doesn’t post shit…? 😩 I’d even go that far to let you have Osc and I’m going for Lando, so we still have to hang out and be menaces in the Mclaren garage 😏

(WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY???? 😵😵😵😵😵😵😵😵😵😵😵 WHO THE FUCK AM I???)

Literally one pic of him by a fan, but now he was attending a sponsor event, so pics and videos of him appeared 🥰 and the interview with Laura, the secret santa video 😩 THE NOSE SCRUNCH PLS SO CUTE 🥺🥺🥺 and the second one, he looks properly shy 🥺🥺 I LOVE that vein bulging on the middle of his forehead when he laughs so hard 😩😩 I MIGHT BE DOWN BAD 🤯Guess who wrote a smut with him based on his unhinged stream??? not this girl… surely not… 😩

OH MY GOD!!!! I was meant to ask about him a while ago, but guess my goldfish memory made me forget about it... 😒 damn he was eyeing you up GIRLIEEE.. More than once??? HELLO?? Make your move!!! I want this to unfold even more, I’M SO EXCITED FOR YOU!! 😉Imagine locking eyes with him for so long, you can’t look away 😩😩 So romantic 🥰

HOW DARE YOU NEGLECTING HIM LIKE THAT?? too much Lando and Oscar in your mind? Are you afraid he’s going to take over your thoughts huh? 😉 Awwww, did you watch them?? I didn’t see the newest one, it was posted when I was pretty busy worrying about my dog, but might have time to watch it now on low volume 😉

Everyone is shaming me not watching the Gilmore girls… Pls, it was so hyped up, I always hold off watching the movies, series that are popular at times and come back later when adoration dies down. But never really get around to do it. Obviously saw a bits and pieces but never really had the urge to watch it from start to end. I started watching Gossip Girl like 3 times probably, but never finished any watch through 😂😂 It was actually the first series I’ve watched with original dub and English subtitles. Pretty little liars, started it with my sister, but I got bored after like one season or something 😂 I think she finished it without me 😂Dunno what else… gimme a list of famous TV-show and I’ll let you know if I’ve watched them or not 🙈

So another long ask coming up from you in the upcoming days?? 👀👀

Wishing you a wonderful day and week ahead hun 🥰

#asks #jackie 🧡#girl I missed you 🥰#I've seen your messaged back to my long ass messages on discord #I'll get around to answer one day 😵😵#daily discussion with jackie 🥰#<- no drivers' name cuz we mentioned at least three LMAO

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kaisooficrec · 18 days

Text

fic search n. 8 🔎

#037:

Haelofish: Hii I need help to find this fic. Only remember that they are at dinner/party. KS parents think that jongin is a bad influence, then JI steals a key from someone house and take KS there and have sx

#038:

Dudu: Hi! I need help with one fic. Baek and Soo are boyfriends and he dare Kyungsoo so give Kai a BJ while he's watching.

#039:

Andi: Im trying to find a kaisoo fanfic. Its not new, Maybe 2018-2021. It was an ongoing,long.Fantasy genre, adventure. I dont really remember the plot, but there were other kingdoms, eyes colour was import

#040:

hani: Hi, im looking for a fic where Kyungsoo is supervillain and Kai is the hero and Kyungsoo falls in love with him. Kyungsoo also had a tiger if that helps lol

#041:

rhy: do u guys know this fic where ksoo took in bear hybrid nini? and along the way nini got scared that kyungsoo will kick him out cause he hibernated?

#042:

Nabs: Hi, I’m looking for an old kaisoo fanfic where they’re strangers to lovers, only for one to find out that he’s schizophrenic and have been imagining the other, after witnessing an accident. Thank you!

#043:

Oboni: And I need to find a fic where jongin is kyungsoo's teacher. Kyungsoo so freaking talented. Almost like Sherlock Holmes. But jongin is married with soojung. Kaisoo develop a guilty pleasure type rltn.

#044:

Kim: i was looking for au where Jongin is the athlete, Kyungsoo fell down confessing his feelings to Jongin on the court, but Jongin just laughed and Kyungsoo got embarrassed and ran away before listening

#045:

Garnets: Hi! I'm looking for a tweetfic / au (i believe i read it on twitter). They are both agent. They are exes. Ksoo will go to a difficult mission on airplane, kai insist to be his mission partner after their breakup, kai always flirts with other in the office. Ksoo saw that, but doesn't bothered bcs he know it's just a gimmick. He knows kai's real flirt. It's different there is a scene when ksoo cut his hais bald. Later in the office, jongin saw it and he got startled, gawking at soo's head. One time jongdae slapped soo's butt and jongin stared hard at the scene so after it is fixed that ji will be soo's mission partner, soo went to locker and ji followed him. They had a heated arguments at the locker. So why ji insisted on assisting soo on this mission? 1. It's a difficult mission on airplane, soo is scared of height. 2. Ji is the most skilled agent on air mission. 3. Ji hated to wait for days till soo came back from a mission, not knowing whether soo will come back alive or not

#046:

Hani: Hii, i was wondering if someone could help me find a fic? I Read it a while ago and it was a fic with kaisoo veing royals, kyungsoo was a carrier and Jongin could read kyungsoo’s mind since they were soulmates or something. I don’t remember much else about it😅 there was this one scene where a baby was abandoned and kyungsoo being a carrier was super affected by it, and also it is slow burn and chaptered. Hope that helps a little thank youu

#047:

Kimsoo: Hi, does anyone know a fic where Kyungsoo is a doctor in a kingdom and Jongin is a warlord in that kingdom, they like each other, then Jongin goes to war.

#kaisoo #kadi #dika #fic search

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levmada · 2 years

Text

First Times Anthology ch.8: endlessly, forever

work summary » Intimate, vulnerable, gentle. Concepts Levi is a stranger to, until you.

ch.summary: You and Levi take a retreat. After your relationship comes to a natural conclusion, he makes peace with the future.

content/warnings: light references/descriptions for PTSD, flustering Levi, highly domestic, highly horny, oral (f!receiving), edging (f!receiving), Levi’s birthday, creampie (f!receiving), very brief rimming (f!receiving), soft dom!Levi, heavy themes of self hatred at one part, getting Levi drunk and also fucking him to sleep, alcohol consumption, complete fluff overdose, Hange being chaotic (again)

wc: 17.5k

a/n: WOW HERE WE ARE!! i may or may not have worked extra hard for the personal satisfaction of posting the last chapter exactly six months since the first one.

i am horrified i may not have made the last scene justice, but i have also never finished a longfic ever in my entire many years of writing fanfic LMAO😅

i never thought this fic would ever be. a favorite for me, but then it was, and then other ppl read it, and they liked it too :( im simply very thankful + proud of myself for this.

v fitting i end it with an obscenely long chappy lol right?

THAT BEING SAID! a while ago i began to write some... side stories to this series. i just never posted them bc they are farther into canon. i dont plan on writing a sequel to this fic, so imma be posting those (3 rn) periodically to fill in the blanks for fun. think of them like one-off oneshots that fill in the universe lol.

anyway here we go!!

ps: i never project myself onto levi ackerman

previous part・work masterpost

Listened to while writing:

It happens, as acts of fate often do, by surprise.

Today, the sky is awash with that crisp, clean blue that autumn does so well, but clouds are forming and the air is breezy, the first warnings of the coming winter.

You (by Levi’s request, unsurprisingly) have half a dozen seasoned soldiers raking the burnt gold, crimson, and brown leaves, tossing them beyond the fences, and finally scrubbing the gutters until they turn silver.

Meanwhile, fresh-blooded Scouts—those who graduated just last spring, but also lived through the summer expeditions—are on their third or fourth lap now, showing only subtle signs of slowing.

That’s because Levi is running with them.

He has always preferred the hands-on approach.

With a clipboard clasped in your hands, you smile slightly to yourself. It’s no crime to watch him frighten the others into shape while you add up some numbers.

The turn of the season calls for quality checks of all equipment before the Corps more or less enters hibernation for the winter. Besides, mice always find a way into the food stores time of year.

You turn your head as a Scout—a slim, doe-eyed man whose name you don’t know—thumps a fist to his chest in salute.

“There’s a situation at the gate that requires Captain Levi’s attention, Lieutenant.”

“At ease,” you reply with a nod, and he relaxes. Everyone knows about you and Levi, but most assume you both to share the same attitude.

You wave your hand in the direction of the field, but Levi is already on his way over, having noticed the scene. Under one arm is his uniform jacket, along with the padded weights he sometimes likes to strap on for the “extra challenge” when he trains.

Twenty damn kilos.

“What’s so important that you didn’t think to go to the Commander first?” Levi is asking, eyes narrowed.

As it turns out, a man waits at the front gates who wants to have a word with Levi specifically. He claims he knows him, and he hasn’t taken no for an answer.

Didn’t give a name, either—not to a bunch of screwy soldiers, anyway.

You shoot Levi an inquisitive look, but he has nothing in terms of explanation. He might as well go and see who it is, but no, “don’t waste your time escorting me. Get back to your duties.”

The messenger takes his leave.

You nod curtly at Levi with a promise to watch over the training (and the yard upkeep) until he returns, a task you take upon yourself without him needing to say a word. Just for that, a small feeling, like fear but sweeter, blooms in his chest.

During his short walk, Levi wracks his mind of any civilian men he knows with the audacity to show up to the Scouts’ headquarters just to “have a word” with him. It doesn’t feel right.

The Survey Corps aren’t taken seriously, everybody and their mother knows that, but they aren’t protested against outside of the returns from expeditions—usually because of grief, but always convenience.

He can’t think of anyone.

Out in front of Trost HQ stands a wrought iron gate of spear where another pair of Scouts acknowledge Levi with brief salutes.

He waves them away, revealing a scruffy mouse of a man standing outside, defiantly toeing the loose dirt with his shoe. A cigarette dangles from the side of his mouth.

An onslaught of memories rush through Levi’s mind, in sharp contrast to the slow smoke drifting up into the air.

Levi blinks, then blinks again. “Yan?”

A coy grin crawls over Yan’s cheeks, showing teeth. “Yo, Levi…! Good thing you remember me. Was afraid your comrades woulda arrested me soon otherwise.”

He shakes his head. Is he dreaming? “They wouldn’t have.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I guess I’m used to the MP’s way of doing things.”

Yan is as sheepish as ever, and as skinny, too. The last time Levi saw him, he was suffering atrophy in his legs, as lots of people Underground did. His treatment was the down payment on the job that got Levi in the Scouts in the first place.

Gripping one of the spears, he scrutinizes Yan with his eyes. “There are other ways to get my attention if you wanted us to chat. Why’re you here?”

Yan kicks at the dirt some more. He doesn’t seem peeved that Levi doesn’t bridge the gap between them by opening the gate just yet. It’s been years, not that Levi was ever the trusting type to begin with.

“You never liked small talk. I just don’t like owing people my life, you know?”

Levi’s lips press into a thin line. He means coin. “You’re not serious.”

Yan shrugs around another puff of tobacco. “I am.” He peers over Levi’s shoulder. “Your friends are being really nosy.”

A cursory look behind him proves Yan right. More than a few are now clustered around the entrance to HQ, curious as to what the Captain is up to, and more curiously, what some civilian wants with him.

Levi glares in their direction, causing them to quickly disband. “Caution is a positive quality around here.”

Levi doesn’t doubt Yan has honest intentions; he never was cut out for life in a gang. Any job he, or sometimes Farlan, ever gave him that was bigger than petty thieving made him go bright red in the face.

He was just a kid, like most of them were. Isabel’s nickname for Yan was ‘peep’.

Levi crosses through the gate, shutting it behind him. They end up strolling a few paces for guaranteed privacy despite the new clouds gathering above, threatening a drizzle. What few that are out and about on the streets are bartering coins for supper. Dew sticks to the grass.

Levi has a right to be wary. “I wasn’t the one who slipped you all that cash with your pay, back then. I didn’t even contact Lovof first. None of us could’ve afforded your treatment.”

“Hm.”

Levi crosses his arms. He can spew excuses all day.

“Still.”

He scoffs. “What’d you do, then? Steal the King’s purse?”

Yan smiles toothily. “That'd be breaking the law… I would never,” he drawls dramatically. “I just seduced my doctor after she fixed my legs.”

He isn’t impressed.

It doesn’t take long to get an honest answer out of Yan, though. Apparently, he has been saving up for a long time now—some well-paying factory job in one of Sina’s booming industrial districts.

“Believe me, Lev’,” Yan tosses the cigarette away. “I know—"

“You better throw that litter away where it belongs.”

A throaty chuckle leaves the man, and he crouches down. “And here I thought military life might’ve made you go soft.”

“Are you a comedian now, too?”

Yan laughs again, but the light mood doesn’t last long. It dampens as the crooked smile on his face dissolves.

Levi braces himself in case Yan says their names. Out of everyone, he must’ve been the last to hear that they were gone.

“I don’t care about some slimy noble,” Yan says. “And about the extra pay, I know you didn’t know. You never would’ve okay’d it. You were a real penny-pincher when you wanted to be.”

Levi thinks back. His years in darkness feel like a recurring nightmare he one day stopped having. He says nothing.

But he can admit it feels good, seeing Yan again—like coming upon a keepsake that you were sure you lost years before. Levi has known loss all his life, and people born down there seldom ever get out, let alone live through the atrophy.

“Glad you’re doing well for yourself,” Levi tells him, and he is. “But you don’t owe me. Buy a house or something.”

“I got all I need,” he tells him, as serious as death. “C’mon, Levi. Don’t make me beg.”

The look on Yan’s face is pitiful.

Levi gets it. Just like the only reason Levi would even consider taking the money, Yan definitely came with Isabel and Farlan in mind. Not just him.

“You’re a fool,” Levi sighs.

“Well then,” you huff fiercely. “Hm, I have an idea. Let’s go over the reasons again.”

Levi’s tight hold on his reins tightens a little more, making Sweetie snuffle. He’s been dealing with two brats since you left this morning.

A shame that he checked out an ordinary scouting horse rather than taking Nibbles, his horse, but you made a good argument at the time, and besides, you liked her name.

“No.”

Mildly, you shake your head, smirking to yourself. “Well then. Are you gonna keep complaining about being given all that coin? Think very carefully about your answer.”

“Your only joy in life is embarrassing me,” he replies. No hesitation.

“It is not,” you laugh. “Anyway, let me remind you.”

He glances over his shoulder, past your connected wagon neatly packed in with enough belongings to last you this winter. That tree hollow doesn’t look any farther away than it was ten minutes ago.

Dammit, how much longer?

“First of all, HQ is dead in winter. Not even you can find a way to run yourself into the ground. Two: It’s money! It’d be a shame not to spend what’s left since you apparently don’t need it.”

He doesn’t. A week earlier, on the same day that he requested Erwin’s permission that he didn’t need to take a leave of absence (Erwin actually laughed at him), Levi had that recurring nightmare once again. He took a trip back Underground to deliver half of the “debt” to an old, trusted contact. A lot of good will be done with it.

“You’re right so far,” he says.

But he knows what’s coming next. With your horses lugging along the wooden wagon, he can’t gallop away to avoid a repeat of the reasons you gave him to do all this.

It’s not that you’re that serious, nor does he have anything to vehemently disagree with—it’s simply that embarrassing.

He locks his gaze straight ahead, focusing in on a single tree branch that looks like it would collapse if someone blew on it a little. He can’t wait to pass it by.

“Besides the fact that it would be good to take a holiday for once,” you go on, “unfortunately—”

“Stop.”

“—our headboard is cracked! And you didn’t want to be at HQ while it got fixed for some reason.” You smirk. “So there. And how could I forget reason number four?”

He drags your name out in warning, but apparently, you have become deaf. The crunch of thin snow beneath your horses hooves has no chance of drowning you out.

“Let me set the scene for you,” you cackle. You’re enjoying yourself. “There we were, in the privacy of our own quarters, in quite a compromising position, don’t you remember?”

He crushes the pathetic tree branch with his glare. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Your high little laughs litter every word now. “S-Sure you do! It was the third time that month, Lev’, and it was the same culprit—”

“Hange is a fucking pervert, even worse than you, I know. Are you done?”

You spot the utter contempt on his red face and take pity on him. It’s only as much fun to tease Levi as readily as he plays along.

“Yeah,” you relent with a light sigh, fog puffing out.

He relents too. “Finally.”

“I know this is a big deal for you,” you say, a touch more seriously. “I can’t even remember the last time I slept in my own bed back home.”

He, who doesn’t have a tangible home to speak of, feels as pained as you sound. He nods, knowing.

You bring up your family a little more often than he does, which is never. But the thing is, in preparation for this trip, you were both passing through Utopia District and decided to pay them a visit since you find yourselves that far north so rarely.

It isn’t that some tragedy struck home in the meantime and you weren’t informed. No one got laid off or went broke, no one was even sick.

The exact opposite. Your mother and father were happier than ever, actually. Retired. What reconnecting you did came down to a slew of joyful nothings, which made it impossible to talk about your own life—except for one Levi-shaped piece of news.

Your mother practically launched through the ceiling, crying out in glee. It was mortifying for him, but up to then, he had only allowed two people in his life to ever hug him: his own mother, and you. Yours really knew how to squeeze the life out of someone.

But then, there were the nothings. How the cold snaps back in August were worrying, but December has been surprisingly warm, so the Chrysanthemums were miraculously still in bloom. Your mother’s old garden—“You started a garden?” you had asked—was flourishing. And now that he was retired, your father had nothing to say about the scar of resentment whose fresh wound had propelled you into military life in the first place. His biggest concern these days was watering your mother’s plants.

They were older. You told him that that part put it all in perspective for you. “I should be thrilled they’re doing well. I mean, I am, but…I’m too different now. They don’t feel like my family anymore—like we’re two different species. You know what I mean?”

After hearing that, Levi took you to your favorite bookstore in Sina to buy you something (as it turned out, somethings) to make you feel better.

Afterwards, he even let you kiss him on a crowded street despite his crippling embarrassment of showing affection in public. For that reason, you asked first.

Without saying anything, your cloth sack of books hooked under one of his arms, he turned towards you and scooped up your chin. That peck really seemed to make you happy.

In truth, he hadn’t known what to say at the time. Sure, he doesn’t know what Kenny’s up to, if he’s still breathing enough to be up to anything at all, but if he is, Levi dreads the day he finds out about it for many reasons. One being that Kenny’s dearest joys in life differed from most people’s, to say the very least.

“What’re you looking at me for?”

Your eyes stay on him. “I just like looking at you.”

Face pinched, he turns the other way. An image invades his mind of himself from a third person perspective, and he inwardly recoils.

“Well, stop,” he complains mildly, blushing. Since this morning this has been happening, because he just can’t get away, which you have been taking full advantage of.

“I can’t.”

He makes a sour face. “I mean stop looking.”

You grin. “Give me an hour to gather the strength.”

“We’ll be there in an hour.”

“That’s right!”

Levi doesn’t have a passion for decorating as long as things are in perfect order. This is why you tell him what you want where, down to exact inch, and he can do it all without a single margin of error.

He isn’t perfect of course, but he’s always determined to be.

The biggest thing you brought along (that wasn’t already here) was a mattress, and you don’t have a speck of dust in terms of decorations, but still.

Now that the wagon is empty (the largest piece of furniture you brought was a mattress, but still), your horses are secured in their stalls, and you’re done spending the better part of the late afternoon cleaning the cabin from ceiling to floor together, it’s time to breathe.

Levi leans back against the kitchen bar with his cravat undone around his neck. Seeing how he sweat through his shirt long ago, he has three whole buttons undone below his collar.

What are breaks, anyway?

He takes in the finished product and decides he’s pleased, but it still feels like a blank sheet to him, it being so new, so unused. What to do next?

That’s how you find him the next time you pop your head in from outside, dabbing your forehead of sweat with a handkerchief as white as the snow on the ground. You whistle.

He crosses his arms and looks away, looking unbearably coy. “What’s next?”

The possibilities have you rocking in the doorway. You simply can’t contain your energy.

“Well, it’s the golden hour, ‘Vi. Are you hungry?”

You both set up in the kitchen and get to work, however—odd cooking of all things soon becomes in his mind. Time isn’t counting down before work, and you have so many options, for once excluding watered down stew and bland military provisions.

He frowns as he sparks a match for the wood underneath the stove. The thunk of a knife on a cutting board, that’s you.

It hits him, sudden and severe, that he will be enjoying your cooking every day, at least when he wasn’t doing it. You always say he has a knack for making something out of nothing.

Earlier, you made fun of him for hopping back onto the counter in order to reach for a can of broth you had placed in the highest cabinet.

Whenever he pointed this out, you offered to get it for him, to which he scoffed: no, he obviously doesn’t need help. It was just a can.

An odd feeling turns over inside him.

Despite your earlier transgression, he still wanted to follow your recipe tonight. However, for as long as the cabin has sat empty before now, parsley, rosemary, and all manner of spices were overgrown beyond the clearing outside. While you were busy picking those, it was up to him to chop the lettuce.

Which quickly turns into a much more arduous task than he expected.

His personal dagger that followed him up from Underground had finally breathed its last years before, but he has always kept a collection (a habit that has followed him since childhood), including kitchen knives. Any weapon he can hold is an extension of himself.

Which is why it is frustrating him to no end that he can’t cut this damned lettuce right. Suddenly, he feels like a novice.

Brow puckered in irritation, he stops and measures the mass of filleted greens with one hand. With his other, he flips the blade backwards absentmindedly as he reconsiders his approach.

This isn’t flesh, and it most certainly isn’t a threat. The kitchen air is dense with steam from the wood burning under the stove, screwing with his head.

Come to think of it, he can’t remember the last time he took all this preparation into cooking. Maybe he’s been killing things for too long.

This is how you find him, asking, “How’s it coming?” to which he grunts noncommittally. It’s not coming along at all, which makes him even more determined to make some progress.

So, he lines the thin pointed edge up, and tries again with a flurry of quick chops. What results is a murder scene on the lettuce’s part.

After a long moment, he senses you watching over his shoulder, so he stops, waiting for your judgment.

“Baby, you’re stabbing them.”

“Tch.” He flicks the blade around once more, and shaves the cracked, brown pieces off the board and onto the napkin. “No, I’m cutting. There’s a difference.”

Then you’re closing in on him from behind, and loosely taking his hand that he grips the handle with. “Well, you’re cutting like it’s going to attack you,” you say softly. “There’s not gonna be that much resistance, either. Hold it looser, like this.”

Without thinking much of it, he slowly relaxes against you, tilting his head a tad to make room.

“I would’ve figured it out eventually,” he argues weakly. His chest flips in embarrassment.

“I know,” you reply. “But I’m already here, right?”

A nod. He decides to follow your direction if you insist on giving it, it’s just unthinkable that he would require help with a task like this. It’s a surprise, how complacent he has become.

From behind, he hears your breath hitch. The steam. Neither of you say anything, but you’re hasty in lowering the flames after that.

It takes two weeks to adjust when this vacation was to last five. By mid-January, the frost will have melted away enough for there to be work to do again. In the meantime, there is only the two of you.

No matter what environment he’s in, Levi pours his energy into a clean environment, but suddenly the environment started begging for his attention even more, like the loose gutter leaking due to melting snow.

What about the mess of leaves plastered to the roof, too? And all the damn weeds crawling up the side of the cabin closest to the forest like leafy tendrils?

So this is what average people get fussy over? he thinks. These are their worries? Their priorities?

Either way, they are yours to share.

Most things you do, you do together. You pull the weeds and rake the leaves, he fixes that dangly gutter on the roof, and while he was at it, replaces the rotted bricks in the chimney, and cleans soot out of the fireplace, and also—

Surprisingly, he begins to find immense satisfaction in getting these simple, but crucial tasks done.

The problems that sometimes erupt are even simpler, and even at those rare times where they aren’t, they’re still child’s play in comparison to the more hellish ones he’s used to.

Like the acorns. Levi got it into his head that he would clear the entire yard of anything but grass, including acorns. You started snatching up each and every one he tossed aside, plopped them in a wicker basket, and threw them back to the squirrels.

By their nature, however, the acorns never stop coming. It infuriated him. He only came to enjoy this chore once it became a routine each morning, following slow blinks and easy yawns.

To such an extent that he constructs a simple wooden bench for the rear side of the cabin. Most of the squirrels live in the forest, so you could throw your acorns out all you want without tiring yourself out.

It was a surprise, too.

You weren’t done thanking him even as you were shaving it down and polishing it, having been an apprentice to a woodworker in your youth. The result was more elegant than Levi could ever have dreamed of doing himself.

The best part of all however, was waking up together. You can always wake up together. Every morning carries a slow, gradual rise to awareness, and your warm lump under the blankets is always there for him to reach for. Plus, he can always, always grant your request for “five more minutes”.

The mornings are his favorite, to say the least.

The bedroom is simple, but larger than you’re both used to (despite your ranks, especially Levi’s, luxury simply doesn’t exist in the Corps). The perpetual smell of ceder, laundry, and more faintly, old paper always sits inside. The folded curtains, hued like thick cream, stay closed in the mornings to block out enough sunlight for you two to sleep in.

But Levi can never bring himself to. Instinct, or habit, always wakes him around dawn, and at dawn he still trains. It was unthinkable that he would allow himself to grow soft, so there was no argument.

In fact, you join him more often than not for the same stringent exercise routines you’re used to back at HQ. Sometimes you spar, and at others you hike into the forest while the sun is still creeping up into the sky, flooding the morning with purpley pinks. Even the birds are just waking up.

It’s not yet that time when you jolt awake this morning, or rather, late enough for it to be considered that.

Why? A freezing hand is brushing over your bare belly where your blouse fails to cover. An arm curls around your waist.

You whine sleepily and knock away the ice cube. “Hand’s cold,” you groan, eyes stubbornly sticking shut. “S’wrong, Lev’?”

No reply. You toss a look back to be greeted by what you can make out to be a blank look on his tired face.

He blinks, and then you blink, long and slow. “Was I not touching you anymore?”

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he mutters.

Levi doesn’t deny it, which means yes. In response, you tug his hand back around you, causing him to grunt.

Sometimes, one of you rolls away from the other during sleep, causing him to always snap awake shortly thereafter.

There is nothing else he’s still embarrassed over more than that.

“Hm. C’mere,” you whisper, and squirm over to face him. He tangles your legs together and puts his arm around you, even clinging—but not without another choked grunt.

Now that you’re more awake, you delicately tuck a piece of hair behind his ear. You’re close enough to feel his warm breath on your face.

“Is it your hand again?” you ask.

He huffs through his nose. “Go back to sleep.”

Ever since he had quite literally fixed the cabin’s every conceivable flaw, he has been floundering for more projects to complete.

He’s definitely compensating, but you don’t point this out.

You kind of expected it, which is why you approved at the beginning, but only as long as the land’s beauty didn’t cost his health.

“Levi.” you chuckle a little, blinking in the dark. “Don’t make me ask you to take a break for your break. The roof won’t leak for another hundred years ‘cause of you.”

“Hm. You’re welcome.”

“I mean it.” You brush your noses together in an eskimo kiss. A lazy peck on the side of his mouth, however, has your brow wrinkling. His skin feels rougher than usual, even scraped.

With another kiss, this one to his sharp jaw, he huffs again. “Not now. Sleep.”

“I’m not trying to start anything,” you huff back in pretend-offense. “I never see you with facial hair. I think it’s cute.”

“…I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever tried growing more? Like… a curly mustache.”

He snorts loudly. “Go back to sleep.”

“So that’s a no.”

His scoff is muffled by the pillow he buries his face into. “I just, haven’t had the time to shave it.”

You scrub the sleepiness from your eyes and sit up a little to peek down at him. With what little side-eye you’re given, you can tell he’s giving you attitude.

You lay your hand over his jaw, and lo and behold, rough hairs scrape your palm.

“‘Haven’t had the time’ my ass,” you grumble quietly. “I’ll do you one better than that.”

He buries his face deeper into the pillow. The most you can do now is scratch gently at where his undercut lays, stuck up in places.

What must be the sheer agony he feels from your offer makes him groan a little. “You do enough.”

“Never,” you say.

“Always.”

“Never.”

You go back and forth more and more insistently. He, just on principle, quits the game first, but doesn’t compromise, either.

So neither do you. You climb belly-down on top of his back so you’re stacked on top of each other like pancakes.

“Ngh.”

“Levi,” you whisper in his ear, but no response. His eyes are closed.

You gape softly. “Are you actually pretending to be asleep right now?”

Nothing.

You’re at your wit’s end. “Let me,” you whine into the curve of his shoulder.

Huffing, you bully your hands under his lean sides. “Or else.”

“You’re a brat,” he mutters fondly.

Your lips quirk, but that isn’t the response you wanted, so you scrape your fingers all over an infamous tickle-spot of his: right below his ribs where his belly muscles properly begin, and a huffy laugh immediately bursts from him.

Even though he could easily throw you off, he bullies a hand under himself to bat you away as his chest wracks with contained snickering. His squirming is neverending.

Not on your watch. In a frenzy, you wiggle your fingers all over his ribs.

Levi makes lots of grabs, but it’s too sensitive, and his hand feels like a broken paperweight. He scrambles for the sheets instead, airy, earnest laughing sounding from the pillow. You burst into a fit of your own to hear it.

“You brat,” he gasps, and in one solid movement finally throws you off, like a bull. On your side of the bed, thighs land on either side of your waist, his bony knees digging into your hands to keep you still.

Your laughter quickly dies out. New tension eats at the air as you stare up at each other through the darkness, at a stalemate. The only sounds are your rough breathing.

“Never,” you pant, and you mean that. “You never let me do anything for you.”

His sigh has a touch of defeat in it, which is what makes you cry out so loud to feel his freezing palms snake up under your shirt. You didn’t expect that.

Reflexively, your back bows away from him, until a small gasp is pulled from you. The way his hands slot up underneath your breasts makes his thumbs dangerously close your nipples.

“Fine,” he relents, and casually begins to roll his hips down into yours. “But let me do one more thing for you first.”

You do.

Levi has never allowed (or needed, really) you to do something as personal as shave his face. The fact that this is happening in the first place is a testament to how much he loathes the “rat shit” on his face, and how hard he’s been working lately.

“You not going to return the favor,” you tried to explain to him. “We’re not bartering.”

“That depends on whether you cut me or not,” he said, not inspiring a wave of anxiety to wash over you.

To accommodate for his height, you decided on taking the cushioned chair from the sitting room whose color could be easily mistaken for rotten plums. Sitting on his lap was just an added benefit, which is the only reason he told you, “Good idea,” instead of rolling his eyes and retrieving the chair anyway.

The basin you’re using is clean, white porcelain, in sharp contrast to the sick-looking state of the water once you’ve gotten started.

For good luck, because you’ll be prettified just to knick him on accident, you tap the side of the basin (ting-ting-ting) with each pass of the small blade—which also helps in case of stray hairs.

He looks personally insulted every time you do this.

“Don’t ruin the blade by tapping it with the edge, and you’ll chip the—”

“Shh,” you soothe.

The straight edge falling down around his mouth abruptly quiets him, but he always has plenty enough attitude for all hours of the day, in all situations.

He glares at you.

Ignoring him, you cradle his chin and sweep it downwards in long, fragile motions. With a soaked cloth, you dab away all stray hairs and cream.

Just a little longer.

So another hour, he likes to retort, all because you’re taking this job seriously—a grave statement considering you perform any and all tasks with care already.

“You just like to complain,” you quip lightly, although his scowl dissolved about a half-hour ago. As some point, he just started to watch you, and hasn’t averted his eyes since.

It’s a titillating feeling, his eyes like soft silver, always in your vision. The air feels like a fuse, eternally waiting for sudden ignition.

He traces the knobs of your spine beneath your shirt. “If I praise you, you’ll lower your guard, and there’s a higher chance you’ll make a mistake.”

Ting-ting-ting.

“My Levi just gets sweeter by the day, hm?”

He glares, just barely.

“Don’t clench your jaw like that, honey.”

He obeys.

You know he has a point, however, which motivates you to imagine this as more of a battle. A real fight leaves no room for mistakes, let alone praise.

He is sweet, but he gets clingier and clingier these days, which never fails to make you a little smug, warmly so. If things were different, you would enjoy it even more, the way he holds onto you (right now, literally).

Another fifteen minutes pass after you reach a perfect rhythm: a continuous loop of slow swipes, tap-tap-tapping the basin, then sweeping the rag over the spot you just completed. Only sometimes, you lather on some extra shaving cream.

With your thumb and forefinger, you hold the nape of his neck, not unlike in those moments you want to comfort him.

You’re in your own little world, and so is he, for his gaze hasn’t left yours since you don’t know when anymore. One moment, he was glancing in the mirror, but before you knew it, you couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t looking at you.

Your hold the same, you raise the razor once more, and the dream is shattered.

Just before the edge could brush down below his chin, Levi’s eyes snap wide. He seizes your wrist at once, causing you to jerk back.

To your shock, he still doesn’t let go; his shoulders rise and fall with his breaths, his grip so tight that you feel your bones grind.

“Levi,” you wince, “Stop! Too tight.”

His hand pulls backwards as if stung, and he retreats back in the seat, eyes wide and blank.

Sitting very still, he swallows as he rubs the bridge of his nose. “…Sorry. I’m sorry. You surprised me.”

You lean back as well, your heart pounding in your throat. After how hurt his hands seemed the night before, you underestimated his real strength.

You should know by now. He’s just always so kind to you.

Despite rubbing your smarting wrist, you shake your head frantically. “It’s okay.”

He blinks back into reality, still looking somewhere past you. “What did you say?”

Once upon a time, he couldn’t even stand being kissed on his neck. You should’ve known putting the razor anywhere near there without a warning would upset him.

“It’s okay,” you repeat. “I’m sorry, you’re safe. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I wasn’t thinking.”

He’s watching you with as much space put between you as possible. “Did I hurt you?”

“It’s okay.”

His eyes dart down to your wrist, which seems to answer for him. With his knuckles a peachy white on the armrests, he takes a swift breath through his nose. “Get up.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

You shake your head, your hands slapping down over both his hands. “No, I’m not hurt! It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was an accident.”

Levi doesn’t doesn’t so much as twitch to shoo you off, but he looks devastated, as if he injured you within an inch of your life.

“Here,” you say, voice high with pleading, and set your wrist in front of him.

You shake it a little. “Levi, please, look. I’m okay.”

“Okay…” He drags the word out skeptically, but you don’t move, and with some more time, he eventually reaches out to touch your wrist.

You don’t stop swearing up and down that this isn’t the catastrophe like he thinks it is. Even though it feels like a bruise is waiting to rise to your skin’s surface (which you don’t voice), you know you startled him. It was as accidental as an accident can get. He didn’t break you.

“I don’t wanna stop before I’m finished,” you tell him gently. “And if it makes you feel better, I know you won’t let it happen again.”

His chest rises with a long, even breath. “Forgive me,” he speaks against your wrist. He’s been kissing it.

In response, you glide it over his soft cheek, shaking your head. “Why? There’s nothing to forgive.”

He swallows heavily, his adam’s apple rising and falling with it. He does feel fine for you to continue, but he feels like a sitting safety hazard, too. Handling a razor shouldn’t be as dangerous as it usually is.

“Is it okay?” you ask.

“Worry about yourself.”

“I’m okay,” you tell him again, real close.

He sighs.

“Honey.”

“...I believe you.”

A tiny thrill moves your stomach. Your brows raise. “You’ll let me?”

“Are you asking me to repeat myself?” he retorts, but sheepishly. Turning his head, he presses a chaste kiss to your palm.

This warms your heart. The blade was left on the counter at some point, but you lift its handle now, and settle back in.

You take your sweet time lathering on the perfect amount of shaving cream below his chin. For all the agonizing, he needs very little work done here.

“You’re stalling,” he comments quietly, and bears his throat a little. He doesn’t sound annoyed, which means he’s nervous

Over the act itself or hurting you again, you don’t know, but he’s no longer looking at you.

You begin.

Once again holding his nape, you tip his chin where you need it, and eye the dark hairs that trail below one of his sideburns. Easy.

“Good,” you will say every so often. You don’t care that Levi isn’t a child, whether he needs to be praised or not. At least he won’t make a mistake for lowering his guard, not here. “Good job staying still for me.”

He shifts. Now you guide the razorblade downwards, over where his pulse thuds beneath his skin.

You pause when he takes your forearm. If he changed his mind, it’s not clear; he simply clicks his tongue and looks the other way.

“Lev’?”

“Keeping you steady.”

You are steady. He on the other hand could double for a wooden board.

His lips tug down. “It’s not you. You should know that.”

“I do,” you say, and you mean it.

Nothing but your breaths and the scrape of the blade’s thin edge breaks the air anymore. Other than the bump in his throat bobbing when he swallows, frightening you into pausing, you don’t hit any more obstacles.

His steady hold on your arm never completely leaves you. Eventually, he moves further to caress your bicep, the bare minimum of holding it, and near the end, it floats down to your waist.

“Done,” you murmur, scratching a little at his nape. You’re proud, and not only of him: your hand didn’t waver the whole time.

He glances towards the mirror, rubbing his face.

You hold your breath.

“You did well.”

Your heart leaps. Sighing evenly, you finally lean back and trace your thumb across his sharp jaw, ignoring the ache in your back for your efforts—even moreso, your wrist.

He looks perfect, skin soft and smooth again.

“So… Trust me now?” you quip lightly.

He shoots you a small, pinched look, and glances back at the mirror, now feeling his neck as well.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says quietly. “I told you, it was—”

“Joke, honey.” You scratch his undercut, then lean in to kiss his cheek. “Just a dumb joke.”

After you coerced him into letting you trim his hair too (to be fair, he had been complaining about it for a while; it had gotten to the point of him pinning up his bangs in the front as well as that fucking rat’s tail in the back), he coerced you into doing your hair.

“This is what you get,” he retorted, “if you’re gonna be such a saint.”

It wasn’t even his birthday yet. He expected, as usual, that you were concocting some secret plan in order to celebrate, so he wasn’t about to take all your pampering lying down.

So he used everything he knows about hair on you, and everything he knows about hair, he learned as a kid.

The tips of his ears burned when he saw your lips part, then your eyes sparkle in the mirror’s reflection.

“Wow, you made me look so beautiful.”

To which he flicked your ear. “Don’t insult yourself like that.”

Your beauty isn’t conditional.

Mercifully, the stakes didn’t rise any higher than that, no matter how you pounced on him twice later—first when he was coming upstairs after locking up the cabin, and then as he left the bathroom—to squeeze and rub all over his shoulders.

He won that one. A repeat of that night a few months ago—your magical hands lathering that fiery-cold lotion into every inch of his aching muscles—was cruelly appealing, but this amount of pampering was overwhelming all the same. You did enough without him asking.

So he didn’t need one, not today.

Now, the bedroom is full of darkness. He can’t see you; he can only listen to your slow breathing and feel you there, comfy and pliant in his arms.

Tonight is one of those nights when his mind refuses to slow down, let alone stop. Sleep is stubborn and far away, but at least relevant thoughts sit there for him to chew on to pass the time.

There is no other area in Levi’s life left where he doubts himself, besides here. It is crippling at the worst of times and a murmur at the back of his mind at the best. The worry of the hour tonight revolves around showing you how thankful he is, and how grateful.

He doesn’t doubt you: your resolve is strong, and it doesn’t falter, doesn’t drift, day by week by month by year. If you ever have a concern, he has utmost confidence that you will voice it, but this issue is firmly between Levi and himself.

He knows your feelings, but he doesn’t believe you understand the true gravity of his own. A wave washes over his chest when your soft, sleepy face crinkles into a smile when he’s the first thing you see upon waking up, and his throat tightens in moments of fleeting peace. Casual kisses at the most random of moments jolt him with electricity, and he knows now that he would risk too much if the worst of circumstances demanded it.

Earlier today, he meant what he told you: if what you did hadn’t especially caught him off guard—hurling his mind to a different time, place, and feeling—he wouldn’t have doubted pressing his throat against your blade, not for a moment.

But funnily enough, after all this time he still isn’t good at knowing when you’re joking.

There are words to convey his feelings when actions fail—of course there are. His word is his bond; they’re promises (even if not explicitly said), but he frowns deeply, because that isn’t the problem. Caring for you more than he has ever cared for another is a promise he can keep.

Sometimes, he feels real jealousy with the ease with which you annihilate him with your random compliments. Using words is important to you, but he struggles so deeply.

Could he? He gets the distinct feeling the world will end—that the sky will rain fire, or the ground will crack open the ground’s foundations—if he so much as parts his lips, but at the same time, he has never been more confident. Words stick to his tongue.

He whispers your name.

No reply. You don’t even stir. All you are is a warm, sleepy lump cradled back against his chest.

He presses his lips to your clean hair. You sleep as if you have hundreds of years at your disposal to do so, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Frowning under a sudden sense of nausea, he turns his head to cool his face with the deep navy pillow. His lips part, then shut, then part, like a fish moments away from suffocation.

Thunder is in his chest. Could he?

“I… love you,” he whispers.

But the world doesn’t end, it just feels like it does. Why?

It presses down on him so much he could shout, so, after holding his breath until his lungs burn, just in case, he shuffles away from you. The mountain of blankets are yours.

He turns over onto his other side, facing the curtained window.

Why does he have to catch his breath? Why is it so terrifying to let someone in?

Despite the thick veil of curtains, he knows what vast night exists beyond it. It is easier to believe that you both exist in a void where no one and nothing exists beyond it, than to take enough air into his lungs. He feels that same terrifying freedom as if he were just passing under the gate that divides the cage from the sky.

Words are binding, and as such, sometimes prisons. But you aren’t shackles, and this skip in his heartbeat isn’t chains. It took him so long to come to terms with that.

Even when he shuts his eyes, the world spins. If he was ever in range of sleep before, he’s certainly wide awake now.

Now, all he can think about is whether he locked the window before you both laid down to sleep.

It’s nearing the turn of the winter season when nature is the most dull, discolored muck it’ll ever be, with a sky like wet cottonballs. The chill day by day is so ferocious it bites through layers of wool and cotton.

Fittingly, you and Levi share an unspoken conversation, and come to an unspoken fact: the two of you can’t stay here annually. You communicate in little looks—the way Levi visibly grows more antsy, or the pinch in your expression when looking out into the fog in the mornings. Neither of you comment on fixing up the house anymore, and his sleeping patterns have worsened again.

Whether you can or can’t becomes a moot point when the cabin is indeed heaven, but all the while, hell waits beyond the mouth of the forest.

Your duty (especially his) waits, freedom waits, and the turbulent future waits as well. Your responsibilities are a burden you could, and would not, give away.

The way things used to be, Levi’s duty was his sole cause for living. While he’s never stated it outright, you’re confident you’re important to him—but more severe matters take precedent without question.

Like a weed, even guilt has been growing in you, not just for Levi alone. You’ve spent more years as a soldier now than you’ve been alive (the consequence of entering the Cadet Corps as young as you did ).

Neither of you can live in good conscience in this bubble for long, where no fighting, blood, or death exists. You understand the way Levi has always felt now, if to a lighter extent—how it all feels too good.

You feel, you know that while you’re away, you will yearn for this the rest of the year just as much as your very first day without it.

Worst of all, neither of you—even you—can’t promise that you one day will return. There are many promises you wish you could speak into existence, but you must keep in mind that they’ll never come to pass.

For instance… you love him. So much as glancing over at him on the sun-speckled porch after supper, his knees folded up to his chest in what has come to be his chair (when you’re alone, he doesn’t feel the need to appear so prim and proper), makes you overcome with adoration. That’s all it takes.

Levi has taught you that you don’t need to speak a word to hear it loud and clear, but you want to.

The yearning to make sure he knows worms around in your chest madly, but you’re confident he’d never hear of it. Seeing how you’ve never heard it before, and the pressure he feels where normal people wouldn’t, you fear endlessly how he would react.

Your cuticles are swollen from picking at them in all your nervousness.

You came to this conclusion about staying at the cabin at the end of December, near his birthday (his supposed birthday, anyway).

The day itself turns out to be the perfect distraction. You couldn’t get away with stealthily keeping awake until the sun crawled above the horizon so you could surprise him with breakfast, nor could you sneak away before he woke. Impossible in any circumstance, really, so either way he was out of bed before you could even surprise him a different way.

Infamously, Levi loathes celebrating his birthday—”What’s so special about the day I was born?” he likes to retort. “It’s just another day.”—but that has never mattered to you.

Last night, you prepared in advance. As soon as you shoot awake in bed, you dash downstairs while still half-asleep to slam the apple fritter in the oven, and put away the tea he already brewed in favor of the more precious tea leaves you had saved for him.

You take great care in everything you do, especially the tea (down to counting down the seconds it needed to steep in your head), then a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, buttery toast, avocado from the closest market, and even sliced ham. Ham!

It’s going overboard for sure, even for you, but he deserves it.

Levi’s footfalls abruptly pause upon the sound of the back door shuttering closed.

You can’t help but grin. The sweet, greasy smell of cooking meat must have spread throughout the whole downstairs at this point.

Then, rapid clicks of his boots against the creaky wood erupt until he appears in the doorway.

“Good morning,” you chirp over your shoulder. “You know what day it is?”

Scoffing, he marches right over and crushes you in his embrace from behind.

You laugh despite the ache in your knees; you’ve been stooped over a hot stove for the better part of the morning.

His lips make a trail of kisses from your jaw to your shoulder, saying, “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“I thought I had to?” You touch his hair. “That’s news to me.”

He blinks down at the counter, then abruptly lays down wetter kisses. “How broke did you go?”

You melt against him and make more room for his teeth, making you shiver. “Levi.”

“Tell me, sweetheart.”

“No.”

His hands slip beneath your top, humming softly in satisfaction to find you aren’t wearing a bra.

“Levi,” you say, softer.

He massages your soft breasts into his palms, pushing, then squeezing them together.

Your eyes flutter as heat pools down below your waist. “Honey, I’m not done.”

“I’m thankful,” he murmurs, ignoring you, and rolls your nipples under his rough thumbs.

You swallow a whine. “Don’t you want to eat?” you ask thinly.

No answer. He’s busy suckling a reddish mark into your neck.

He’s very convincing. Maybe letting breakfast cool isn’t such a terrible idea.

Delicately bracing the center of your chest, one of his hands slips down. Its rough callouses feel immensely satisfying against your belly.

Just when it (surprisingly) looks like he’s going to go along with eating after all, his palm follows a path down between your thighs.

You gasp softly. One fingertip sweeps continuously through your slit, beneath your panties.

“All this is for me, isn’t it?” he says conversationally into your ear. “Of course I want to eat.”

“Fuck,” you whisper, taking support from the counter to rock into the fingers just lightly circling your clit. “Fuck, Levi.”

With no hesitation, he cages you in against the counter so you feel a hint of hardness pressed against your backside from behind. Heavier, hot breaths puff against your neck.

Suddenly, you don’t care if everything is ice cold by the time he’s finished with you. He can take you anywhere, and the idea of it happening right here, makes your heartbeat throb in your clit.

“Let me—”

“Yes.”

With an amused huff, he rubs you with practiced fingers and pulls away, making you whine.

Now turned to face him, his middle finger lands on your bottom lip, tugging it down slightly. You feel it’s wet.

Maybe you should’ve worn lipstick.

Levi’s eyes gleam as your tongue darts out for a taste. “You’re so messy,” he comments, guiding you towards the dining table. “C’mere. Let me clean you up.”

Shocked by his forwardness, your stomach jumps as you’re bent over the wooden table—which you already set with placemats and silverware. Your bottom half is in flames.

“Thought you were eating,” you hear yourself say.

“That too.”

As your shirt comes off, “Real funny, Captain.”

He ignores you. The moment you sense him dropping to his knees, taking your sticky panties down along with him, your breath jumps.

“Exactly.”

A tiny whine is stolen from you as his hot breath hits your pussy, constructing sharply from the cool air.

He kisses the backs of your spread thighs. Lithe hands spread you open. “If you’re gonna make us celebrate, I wanna celebrate my way, and not hear you complain about it.”

He doesn’t bother teasing. His lips press to your fluttering hole, before he begins lapping at your cunt.

Levi, not teasing you.

“Ah!” you gasp from the bottom of your lungs. A hot, wet tongue pushes through your slit, which is now properly soaked.

You grope for something—anything to steady yourself. You manage his soft hair, and a groan of approval vibrates your clit.

Bright pleasure vibrates through you, and doesn’t stop. Hell if you know where his sudden confidence is coming from, because while sex with Levi never fails to blow you away, he’s making you go cross-eyed.

The sound of slurping sounds from below, made louder by the way he holds you completely open.

You jolt from the overstimulation, your hole twitching around nothing.

You shudder, begging, “Please, please,”—you feel so empty.

You want to ask what’s gotten into him, but the words evaporate as soon as his heavy tongue pushes into your tight cunt.

Instinctively, you tighten with a soft cry, which only encourages him to start fucking you with it.

He keeps your twitching thighs spread, and moans deep into you. Even more instinctively, you pull him by his hair, forcing his tongue. The sound that results has you gaping into the polished oak table. Something clatters to the floor.

Levi’s hips twitch forward into nothing but his zipper. He’s forced so close he’s halfway suffocated, but he loves it—he loves to be used for you to feel good.

It’s a mystery to him how you really believed he wouldn’t want to fuck you with his tongue, especially on his birthday.

His favorite part is your sweet, heavy taste—he simply can’t get enough—or how you cough out a cry in surprise when three fingers sweep your clit up and down in swift c’mere motions. Maybe it’s your warm, pillowy cunt squeezing his tongue, or the way two of his fingers easily bury inside next to it. He curls them up snug against your favorite spot.

“Right there,” you gasp. “Fuck, don’t stop!”

Breathing hard, he smacks a kiss to your swollen pink clit before giving you his mouth again. He loves you like this, and he loves you. His heart skips a beat.

“I’m already…” You moan, your tone a warning.

It sets him on fire, the way you need him.

“Ca-Captain, I’m not gonna last if you don’t stop.”

His cock gives a hard, heavy throb. He moans loudly and pulls his mouth off, but his fingers stay curled inside. They piston in and out slowly, but deep enough for your pussy to swallow in his second knuckles.

With his free hand he takes a handful of your ass, and spreads you open.

“You don’t wanna come, pretty girl?” he asks, thick with that teasing tone you know so well.

“No!” you cry, and realize what you just said. “Wait, yes, please please—”

His balls ache. He wets his swollen lips before leaving forward, swiping over your much tighter hole.

You wail, “Levi!”

“Oh, yeah. It’s not up to you, is it?”

His fingers slow, then stop, making you keen into the wood. Your pink cunt is drooling for him.

It’s—It’s your birthday,” you whimper, feeling betrayed by yourself. “You can do anything you want to me.”

Working your soft thighs and ass in his palms, he hums, “Uh-huh.”

Once again he rises to his feet, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.

His hand lands on the center of your back to keep you steady while he makes quick work of his belt and trousers. As it clinks, then zips, he can feel your dazed eyes on him, watching.

“Fuck,” you sigh, dragging it out. “You’re so hard.”

“Turn around for me.”

You do. With his help, your backside lies on the table edge with you bent in such a way that your ankles rest on his shoulders.

Your wet cunt is completely exposed to him. The cool air on your clit makes you twitch.

You gaze up at his messed hair and red cheeks, stricken by how good he looks. Between his plump thighs his cock is bright red and swollen, beaded with cum.

He holds your hip, keeping you together. “Are you comfortable?’

You nod, feeling dopey, and reach to guide his round cockhead past your rim. The push is easy, filling you to the brim. Perfect.

Your head falls back. “L-Love your dick, fuck. You’re perfect.”

A bitten moan rumbles in his chest. Tight.

He pushes and pulls by shallow inches. “Is all this really that surprising to you?”

“This?” Your hand grabs his. You reach with the other, feeling where you’re connected. “No. Just, you’re not usually—” you search your dizzy mind for a word, “So much.”

It dawns on him what you mean, and his shallow thrusts pause. “D’you want me to stop?”

You manage to gape. “Don’t you dare.”

This position won’t let him kiss you, so he kisses low on your thigh instead. Even here he tastes sweat and sex, all traces of last night’s shower gone.

“Guess I’m in a good mood.”

He takes you right there, from short and shallow to soon pistoning his cock in and out of you in long, hard thrusts—so much so the table lurches several times (more metal clatters, and something swoops to the floor). In order to keep you close, he takes your hip like a vice and fucks you with abandon.

You encourage him louder and louder— “Yes! Yes, fuck—!”—until his jaw slackens. Your pussy, soft like silk, starts to squeeze him.

“Fucking perfect,” he groans.

He folds you completely in half, one leg now dangling high, and it changes the angle.

A flurry of hard, wet thrusts, and you come.

A shiver rocks his whole body. As your pussy gushes, pleasure like liquid heat overtakes him, and he fucks his cum into you soon after.

“Do you know what you do to me?” he wants to ask. “Do you realize yet how perfect you are?”

As usual, he can’t muster the words. In the come-down, the only sound throughout the sun-bathed kitchen is both of your heavy breathing.

From where your chest heaves upon the crooked table, like a model for some erotic artist, both your thighs tremble.

“Your breakfast,” you croak, grieving.

It’s hard not to smile. As he wipes down your inner thighs with a wet rag, he corrects you: “Brunch.”

“All my blood, sweat n’ tears… gone to waste.”

He tuts softly, and lugs you up. “It hasn’t been left out in the rain, has it?”

“No…” But you don’t sound convinced.

“It’s fine. Just don’t expect me to eat off this table.”

You have a smartass retort for that, he can feel it since he did, technically, eat off this table… but you’re too spent. Your chest only drops with a dramatic sigh.

After a much more thorough cleanup (including a change of clothes), Levi takes good care to restore (what is now) lunch to its former glory.

He’s proud of himself. Granted, all he’s had this morning is some tea, but his mouth waters from the smell.

Out on the porch, its overhang protects you both from the surprising amount of sun breaking through the silvery cloudcover this far into Yule.

However, the sharp air remains stubbornly chilled. In case you shiver, he retrieves a blanket that you drape over your lap.

In your respective cushioned chairs, you eat with your plates tucked in your laps.

“You, in a good mood, on your birthday,” you’re musing, that stupidly warm smile on your face. “That’s a first.”

Levi grunts. You couldn’t be more right; anything resembling a good mood and his birthday mingle like oil and water. There’s a one in 365 chance that it’s even accurate, but he genuinely doesn’t see what needs celebrating anyway.

He blames his actions the night before. It weighs on him heavily still, in the lightest of ways.

Cautiously, he pushes his cut of seared ham around on his wooden plate. He prefers everything to be separated, but now that that’s done, and the toast and eggs leave the faintest trace of crumbs, he still doesn’t feel quite right about it.

When he tasted the apple fritter, he had to pause and reel. Admittedly, he had never had it before; no matter if he’s given the opportunity, he’s quite picky when given a choice.

But how could he act wary? And it was fantastic.

Has he ever tried ham?

In that chaotic space of time before Maria fell but after he left the Underground behind, meat was much more of a commodity, but he was, and still is, a soldier. You like to say being a Scout specifically is a thankless job by everyone but the dead, and you would be right.

Underground “meat” on the other hand was almost always crawling with something, despite the fact that it always cost a fortune in comparison to most people’s incomes.

He supposes he’s a vegetarian, albeit against his will. Hange has a tendency to randomly blurt out facts about anything, and he’s heard that if a stomach isn’t familiar with ingesting a certain type of food, it usually can’t learn.

He hopes that isn’t true, for your cooking’s sake.

“Is it good for you?” he asks, mostly so you don’t point out his reluctance.

You fork more eggs into your mouth, nodding happily. “I’m very confident in my cooking ability, thank you.”

“Good. You should be.”

Your gaze flickers down to his plate. “It won’t bite you, you know. If you try it and decide you don’t like it, that’s fine. More for me.”

He grunts and leans back, one leg now crossed over the other. How would you know it’s his first time?—You must have a damn good eye for him.

“You shouldn’t’ve said that,” he remarks, flipping his fork backwards absentmindedly.

You scowl. “Absolutely not. At least try it first.”

“Remind me. Whose birthday is it?”

“You asshole,” you laugh, biting your lip to make it stop. “I don’t need any more.”

“But do you want more?”

Silence.

“...Tell me,” you set your fork down, “in exact words what you mean by that.”

These back-and-forths between you two are his purest form of entertainment.

“Are words so important?” he replies.

He sees you—nibbling at your lip like that. You like what he’s implying.

“It may be up to you, it’s your birthday, but at least let me suck you.”

His chest rises.

Your voice turns into silk. “You caught me off guard earlier. I deserve much better than that, don’t you think?”

A challenge. Setting aside the way his lower half stirs, he leans over and practically drops his plate into your hands.

“We’ll see.”

—

You suck, lick, and fuck him so good that you actually put him to sleep.

Well, partly.

After making good on your word, you let him fuck you to tears under a hot shower spray, but getting clean turned out to be irrelevant in the end. Soon afterwards, as naked as the day you were born, you shyly asked him, “Do you maybe wanna drink, this one time?”

And, after some thought, he said yes. It takes more booze than it’s usually worth for it to do anything for him, and when he does drink enough, he can’t be on his guard like usual. The anxiety of that is usually enough to take away his buzz.

Besides, after growing up seeing boozehounds everywhere he went—the (sometimes) uncharacteristic fits of rage, the burning stink, and the zombie-like idiocy about them—he has some convictions about drinking. If anyone asks, Levi doesn’t get drunk.

Opportunities always present themselves of course, but he only makes it a goal to get drunk on special occasions. That included tonight.

He popped the cork off a bottle of scarlet merlot. The mood was comfortable, you drank slowly, and you enjoyed yourselves. Even him.

You grew slow and slurry not two glasses in, so he dutifully refilled them (until you’ve had enough). It took him longer to get to where you were, but when the world finally began to narrow in that comforting way, the inexplicable warmth creeped in, and his mind began to buzz, he was with you.

Time stretched as you sipped the syrupy alcohol in front of a crackling fireplace. Mostly you chatted, but you also climbed on top of him there, and when it got late, he draped a thick, downy blanket around your bare shoulders.

Later enough for your bedroom to be an abyss, Levi twitches to awareness from a bottomless sleep in a stinking bed between stuffy sheets. He kicks them off as soon as he gets some handle over his leaded limbs, and rubs his eyes.

Sleeping so deeply, and waking with no memory of how he got somewhere is unheard of for him. His head is even still buzzing a little, despite the nausea.

Shit, is his first intelligent thought. I sleep when I drink.

It would be terribly easy to sleep some more. Only, when lazily reaching across the bed, he finds your warm, lumpy pillow, but not you.

Suddenly he’s wide awake, stone-cold sober, and shooting up in bed. You’re not here.

He tosses a look over. The bathroom is dark.

You’re probably getting water.

Anxiety tears him up anyway. He pulls himself out of bed.

With fresh briefs, an open shirt, and a pair of pants on, he paws his empty pockets.

He fishes through a pair of his boots. He’s very aware that carrying a weapon in these circumstances is the furthest thing from necessary, but his judgment is garbled—another reason he dislikes drinking.

After the dim hallway comes the stairs. He lets the banister guide him going down.

You’re getting water. The kitchen is cast in gold by a lantern set on the island, joined by the slaps of your bare feet padding around inside.

His anxiety blows away. After the last step he heads in your direction like a man on a mission.

Sleepy-eyed, you jerk your head up from your glass of water and smile just in time for Levi to wrap you in his arms from behind.

He sighs softly. Better. As you sway together, he makes like a baby possum and refuses to let go.

“Hm,” you murmur, relaxing against him. “Hi.”

“You left,” he speaks into your neck. You stink deliciously of sex. “Don’t do that.”

You seem to find this adorable. As you pet his hair, his annoyance melts away.

“I was only gone a second,” you say. “I was thirsty. What if I died of dehydration?”

“No,” vibrates against your shoulder.

“No?” you laugh. “Did you miss me that much?”

The drink makes his tongue loose. “You have no clue, do you?” Squeeze. “Jus’ don’t go anywhere I can’t follow.”

Your heart leaps into the sky. A grin breaks onto your cheeks as an obnoxious Awww falls off your lips. “You’re so fucking adorable, ‘Vi.”

You try to twist around in his arms, but he mistakes this as you pulling away, and only tightens his hold.

If that’s how it’s going to be, you go completely lax a moment, sending you both nearly toppling over.

As you wanted, he huffs against your hairline and pins you to him by your shoulders and middle, clinging.

“You’re the biggest brat I know.”

“Did you hear me? Adorable?”

He sighs. “I never know what to say when you call me shit like that.”

“You don’t have to say anything. You’re just adorable.” You hug his strong forearm that’s pinned across your chest. “With a heart of pure gold, who anyone would be lucky to know. The most brave, most handsome, most pretty—”

He makes another unhappy sound and reaches to clamp your mouth shut, which you don’t allow to happen.

“My Levi,” you sing-song. “Whom I adore.”

“This is torture,” he speaks softly. “Torturing me, after I made all this effort.”

“Effort to keep me from getting a drink of water?” you cackle.

“You don’t need—”

“And not torture—”

“—water, I’d get you some—”

“Levi, you’re being—” you laugh—

“—if you were really dehydrated.”

—so hard your sides twist into cramps. You laugh until there’s no air left in your lungs, so your belly merely wracks. At the same time, tears prick at the corners of your eyes.

You can feel him smiling softly against your hairline.

Oh, what you’d give to see.

“Levi,” you shake out the last giggles. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

He freezes, whatever face he was making slipping off his face. His stomach drops out of existence. “What?”

Did he not hear you right? He retreats backwards, causing you to spin back around.

“W-What did you say just now?” he asks again, no louder than a whisper.

That sober look on your face. He knows it was real, what you just said. The silence, so thick you couldn’t pierce it with a hacksaw, proves it and proves it.

Your mouth opens, shuts. “Levi.”

“What?” he asks again, now demanding. It’s hard to breathe suddenly. His face heats. He feels himself tense, as if for attack.

“I—I don’t know.” You blink, and that’s shock painted on even your own face. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know?” he snaps, motionless. Even his shoulders rise and fall with his breaths.

He doesn’t know why he’s growing so upset. Loathing festers inside, and the more upset he becomes, the more it grows.

“It just slipped out,” tumbles out of your mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” You stall, at a loss.

In the third person, he feels himself crashing through the floor outside his body, dropping out from underneath himself.

He takes another step, this time measured. A silent feeling screams for him to escape this situation, but another plants his feet to the floor.

His silence must be telling.

“No!” you exclaim, lips moving rapidly to explain. “I mean, I c-couldn’t help it. I wasn’t thinking, it just…” Your eyes glitter with tears. “I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, Levi doesn’t even trust his feet to hold him up. He is totally lost for words.

In the doorway that feeds into the sitting room, he discreetly holds onto it. His other hand lies limply by his side, nails digging into his palm.

“Wait,” you call from the same place, voice soft. “Are you going to leave?”

A beat passes before he shakes his head, disbelieving. What do you mean by that?—Do you have so little faith in him? His dry mouth stops him from asking.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

It’s hard to swallow. “...We should sober up.”

And so he retreats into the darkness, stopping briefly when the backdoor enters his sight. As much as he craves the fresh air, going that route would confirm every one of your fears.

He scours his memories. An empty bedroom sits on the ground floor, he remembers.

You insisted on remodeling that room, but inside, it still might as well be a sealed box besides the pathetic amount of moonlight pushing past the blinds, casting shadows.

He twists the knob all the way to shut it as quietly as possible, then staggers to the corner attached to the same wall as the door, and slides down into a sit.

He knows he’s being pathetic. As a kid, it was a good technique he used to hide. As a man, it lets him get an advantage over enemies. You’re not a threat.

He wrestles with his head silently and folds his knees to his chest while he waits for your steps. You’ve never invaded his space in the past, but tonight, he can’t be confident.

Tonight. He’s stuck on that all the sudden. Just a few hours ago was his birthday, but that feels so far away now.

Of course, you were drunk. That’s what troubles him. There’s a thin line, he’s found, between the truth slipping out of a drunk person, and saying things they don’t mean. It’s better he doesn’t trust a thing until you’re both sober enough to know for sure.

Partly, he wants to hear you say that it was a mistake. You’ve realized that his suspicions were correct: he really did trick you by seeping so much good out of you to take for himself. To make himself believe that he is not a murderer, a thief, and a bastard. How he needed your goodness because there is not a single bit of good inside himself, how he is so selfish that even without realizing, he deceived you.

How could he do that while you’re in the middle of this losing war against the Titans? you would ask him. You realize that he’s unlovable. He is so fucking unlovable in fact that he’s better off dying in battle tomorrow so at least he will be used for what he’s meant to be used for.

Partly, he wants you to slam the door open so hard it punctures the drywall, yank him up by his shoulders and scream in his face how foolish he’s being. Yes, he’s abnormal and far from perfect, and yes this world is a nightmare but the way you feel makes all that cease to matter.

You will pour your heart out to him and recite the specific moment you realized you love him, with tangible reasons he can replicate. You will promise to return to his side safely every day for the rest of your lives.

And partly, he doesn’t want to know.

His head pounds. He closes his eyes.

He used to hate, much more than he does these days, that he can’t remember a time his mother ever spoke the same. Granted, he doesn’t remember more than a few glimpses of his childhood—maybe because of the hunger and all the shit he survived—but either way, it’s more reassuring to imagine she never told him because she never needed to.

He isn’t naive, he knows that not all parents love their kids, but she did. He knew, without her having to say anything, that she felt that way.

His train of thought crashes against the sound of wood whining, signaling your ascent up the stairs.

Staring straight ahead, he breathes carefully and tames his hell of emotions.

Why does he feel this way? He said it too, just when you had no way of knowing he did. Emotion raged inside him then as well, but not as intensely as this.

He feels like a little kid staring up at that cold bed. Even though it crawled, and the stench hung thick in the air, he begged for her when she wasn’t conscious to hear, and never would be again.

He gnaws on his thumb. He doesn’t want to remember that.

It occurs to him, he didn’t think his feelings would be requited, deep down.

It’s a mystery to him how love can fit into this world at all, much less there be some reserved for someone like him—how you have room in your golden heart for someone like him. It takes a flick of the wrist to swing a knife, and it’s an automatic reaction to hit when you’re struck, but he’s an amateur with the rest.

Being born in violence, raised in it, trained at it to perfection—it just doesn’t add up. He thinks he will die in it as well.

But he knows his feelings for you by now. He knows most of all that it’s impossible to put them to bed, let alone destroy them.

He hugs himself, hissing softly. Because of everything else, he didn’t realize he was freezing.

He has scarcely felt so sober in his entire life. In fact, if a pin dropped in another room, he would hear it—he’s that alert—but he wants to give you more time.

To be sure, he thinks, knowing he’s putting the confrontation off. Partly, he doesn’t want to face you. But then, there’s another.

—

The floorboards whining under his steps on the second floor drone like alarms. He knows you know he’s coming now—there’s no way you’re asleep.

Terror thuds in his ears as he stares at the front of the bedroom door, willing himself. He is wrestling with thoughts he defeated a long time ago: whether he should knock, how to carry himself once inside, how you’re likely to react, and—

The turn of the knob is so sudden he locks up for an attack before the door whines open. Immediately, his eyes are on the floor.

“Are you…?”

Whether you’re about to say ‘mad’, ‘sober’ or ‘okay’—his next question is the same: “Are you?”

It rings in the air. You apologize before you sit down on the window sill.

His lips tug down. Whenever you apologize unprovoked, he thinks it’s for you simply existing, whether you know that or not.

“I’m so, so sorry. We can just act like it ever happened.”

He forces his lips to move. “Quit apologizing.”

“Why…?“ You look stumped. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear it.”

He stares from the doorway, back straight. In some way you’re right, but is it also possible you didn’t think he’d feel the same?

The doorframe is his only support. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you just… don’t.” It's a statement that sounds more like a question.

“That’s confusing.”

“Well sometimes,” you sigh, “you’re confusing, too. When I said it, you physically left the room to get away from me. Now here you are, making me feel stupid because I thought that meant you didn’t want to hear it.”

You’re extremely hurt.

His chest is cold. “It wasn’t you, it’s what you said. Without any warning. Then you said you didn’t mean it.”

“Oh.” The word sounds punched from you. “That’s not what I—”

His teeth grind. “How exactly did you expect me to react?”

You look down at your feet.

“I would be doing anything other than standing here if I didn’t—also feel that way.”

“I’m sorry,” you whimper. “Fuck, I’m crying.” You furiously wipe your eyes. “I meant it slipped out. I guess I just think about it a lot, s-so that’s what happened.”

“You think about it…?” he trails off, genuinely confused.

“I didn’t wanna put pressure on you. And you always—” you gesture vaguely, “—you always say stuff without saying it.”

He waits for you to go on, but you’re busy collecting yourself, wiping your eyes.

“You surprised me,” he offers, blandly.

“I know.”

But you weren’t the first to say it. It was a slip of the tongue on your part, even though your feelings are just as true as his.

For him, it was premeditated. He was sure.

For you two, this is a serious argument. He feels the need to get you both on the same page.

“You're wrong,” he tells you.

“What do you mean?”

For as long as he’s stood watching you, he looks away. “I said you’re wrong.”

Your lips part, moving, but not understanding. “Which part?”

“The last part.”

“A-About saying stuff?”

“Second to last,” he snarls.

“Pressure,” you sound out. “You said it?”

His cheeks heat, he’s excruciatingly embarrassed. “…Yeah.”

You look at him like he’s just grown a second head. “…Well, then—when? If you did, I would’ve heard you.”

“No. You wouldn’t have.” He shifts his footing and frowns at the look on your face. “Don’t make me say it… it’s embarrassing.”

A long, arduous silence thickens the air again. Hopefully you gather what happened—which mortifies him much more than if he just told you outright, making it seem as if it was casual for him.

Then he hears a heavier sniff, and his feet lurch into step. An ache permeates his fingers—which he notices only now—from knuckling the doorframe.

He paces over and sits down next to you, leaving space. Mostly for his own peace of mind.

“Levi… Why in the world would you do a creepy thing like that?”

He’s shocked to hear you sound coy. You’re even making a face when he glances over.

As usual, he doesn’t get the joke. He doesn’t have a good answer, either.

“J-Just to see.”

“See?”

“What would happen.”

You nod a little, expression even again. “When?”

“…What is this, an interrogation?”

“Well, for all I know…” you smirk a little, “…you said it two years ago, before we started dating. Or four years, when you were—”

“I get it,” he cuts in, scowling. “Quit guessing. They’re bad guesses, anyway. You’d never figure it out.”

“I doubt that.”

“Of course you do.”

You scoff, in mock-hurt, picking at your cuticles in that nervous way you never quit doing.

You’re smiling a little. He sees its radiance out of the corner of his eye. “And unlike me… you were sober,” you guess.

He clutches his hands into soft fists. “So? You can say anything while sober.” His lips press together. “Can’t you?”

“Yeah.”

With no room for urgency, you lay your head on his shoulder, causing him to stiffen.

He doubts he makes a good pillow right now; he’s so tense that if a brick was thrown at him, it would break into pieces.

It’s not like you to sit in silence—it doesn’t even feel like the conversation is over—but each moment drags. It feels like a long feather is stroking his insides, not because of what you’ll say, but the very words themselves.

“I love you,” you whisper, and he sucks in a swift breath.

He is at a crossroad: breathing hard, forcing control, or not breathing at all.

What this feeling is, is magma boiling up inside him and burning him alive, and he squeezes his eyes shut so tight it aches because he doesn’t know why he can’t just get over himself and be normal—to react normally to those words.

But it’s not too much.

Obediently, you raise your head to give him space. The look on his face is unimaginably pained, even tortured.

“...Is it okay?” You whisper this, too.

He swallows, and looks away. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I don’t know either, but I don’t care.”

It takes him several long moments before he can trust his voice. “C-Could you say it again? I didn’t hear you.”

“Yes, I can.” A smile is in your voice. “I love you. I love you, Levi.”

“Are—Are you sure?” he asks, voice raw.

Your breath shakes. “Yes.”

“Make sure.”

You humor him even though you can probably tell that he’s overwhelmed. It suddenly, just—sounds so good to hear it. So fulfilling.

You say it and say it, finally breathing life into what this is and giving it away fearlessly—or as fearlessly as one can speak despite their trembling breath.

While making knots out of his trousers, he shudders his own breath. If you touched him right now, he might explode.

You actually love him. Someone can, and it’s you.

“I love you,” you say, and gently, so gently, your hand lands atop his own.

“Levi.” You mouth at his hairline. “I love you. I love you with all my heart.”

He makes a face, teeth grinding so he doesn’t either snort, or give into shaking.

“You’re so fucking sappy, it makes me sick,” he rasps, pulling away.

You have a pretty laugh. As your hand moves to pull away, he abruptly takes it, and still not looking at you, pulls it to his lips.

That look on his face, you’re conflicted on. A deep frown tugs his lips down, and that wrinkle between his brow is more pronounced than ever, but he’s blushing all the way to the tips of his ears. Silvery blue eyes are open, shining softly.

“Levi.”

He pauses with your hand, as if contemplating something, before giving it the smallest of squeezes and letting it go.

You feel the need to preface, “You don’t need to say anything.”

So he doesn’t say anything. For a moment.

“It’s difficult for me.” His voice shakes, and he feels pathetic.

“I know.” You touch his shoulder. “But I know how you feel… you know?”

Nod.

Your expression reminds him of a tired dove. “I’ll be in bed, okay?”

Relief. He nods again. He’ll join you later, but he needs time to calm down, and to think.

He has never been happier in his whole life.

—

At the turn of the new year, your last days, you climb up on horseback behind Levi most mornings and spend afternoons going wherever the wind takes you, however long you want, doing anything.

Endlessly, forever, for both the first time and possibly your last.

That last evening midway through January, your cheeks still hurt from smiling so much. That day, you had stumbled upon the largest field of sunflowers either of you had ever seen and had a picnic, despite the sleet still layered on the ground.

Levi was quieter than usual, but if he wasn’t enjoying himself, even the slightest bit, he would’ve found some way to complain—which never happened.

The eternal struggle even momentarily drifted from your mind, which you had been wrestling: this war, its demands, its aftermath, and its end (if it will ever come). Slavery to the fight.

It was your idea to make your last evening last as long as possible by spending most of the night up talking and rating a ton of teas.

He didn’t have a single issue staying awake; you were the one who dozed off with your head propped up on your hand during the twilight hour.

Now he nudges open the stiff bedroom door with his back, taking care not to let your feet bump the doorway, nor for your neck nod off his shoulder.

After he lays you down in bed, you moan softly in your sleep and roll onto your side, away from him.

His lips quirk, just a little. You make it hard to help himself.

As soon as he’s curled up behind you, tangled in the sheets, you roll again and all but plant him on his back to lay your head down.

Nobody says anything. Maybe it just comes naturally to your sleeping self.

Levi’s lips quirk again.

He wants to sleep. Nights of solitude never truly bother him unless you’re sleeping peacefully; it’s an especially excruciating pit of loneliness that forms after an hour or two of finding patterns in the cracks in the ceiling. Only the guarantee that he will be ready for any possible emergency that concerns you (may it come or not) reassures him.

He can feel it. Sleep won’t come.

Until the mourning doves begin their crooning, his mind wanders around in pointless directions. Dawn’s grey light creeps in.

He sighs softly to himself to the tune of your soft snores. There’s still much to get done before you can properly go. He might as well get a headstart.

You’ll need the rest. Your mood is twice as antsy as his if you don’t get enough sleep compared to when he doesn’t sleep at all, which is saying something.

So he climbs out of bed.

By the time the sun has properly risen in the sky, Levi is laying out a small breakfast on the dining table; the lazy sound of wood creaking from upstairs was his signal.

The last of the butter melts on a crisp piece of toast next to a bunch of strawberries he sliced this morning. It’s the last of those, too.

You toddle down the wood stairs, which also whine under your steps, scrubbing sleep from your eyes.

“Good,” he greets you. “You’re dressed. Eat. You’ll need the energy.”

“Good morning to you too.”

He bites down on the inside of his cheek as you plop down in the chair. It’s not even a good mood that’s begging him to smile: you amuse him.

“Thanks,” you grunt, and take a real look at him. His insomnia is chronic enough for him to hide seamlessly, but you know him well (“Too damn well,” he likes to say.).

“Are you nervous?”

“There’s a lot to do,” he replies, sits, and crosses his legs with one arm slung over the chair back.

Truthfully, it’s hard to tell. This is more of a feeling of being sure something’s waiting around a coming corner, but he can’t tell if it’s a friend or a threat yet.

He resists the urge to rub his eyes. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a rock,” you sigh. “I can’t remember anything that happened after we tried that…” You blink hard. “Keemun.”

“Don’t look so guilty. I don’t sleep much.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

He’s pleased you never woke up while he carried you; the keemun was the best place to end things, anyway. It tasted as smooth as an expensive cigar, if rolled in baked plums and chocolate.

You’re leaving here with so many good memories, it hurts. The pain makes him wonder.

If the opportunity never presents itself for you both to return, or worse, he alone would be given it, then all that would ever remain in this place is ghosts.

He watches you nibble away at the last of your toast like a chipmunk, and knows for certain—he would always feel for you the same way, even if Yan didn’t “repay” him that “debt”.

Would he have told you he loves you?

No, he decides. His pessimistic side wants to write this while trip off as being lulled into a false sense of security.

To be fair, that’s what it is. False.

This bundle of peace is left standing bright at your retreating backs. One day, it could be a horrible memory, a reflection of broken dreams.

There are other dreams which wait to be fulfilled, but you will still be with him, as long as you don’t leave him behind.

He awkwardly clears his throat. “Do you think you’ll remember this in the future?”

You nearly spit out your toast. “Huh? Of course I will. Won’t you?”

“Yeah.” The bookshelf a few paces from the front door holds only a few lonely books now. He looks at that instead of you. “But that means missing it.”

“I know, but…” you wipe your mouth with a napkin, “…We’ll miss everything, you know?”

“Yeah, but this is… more than that.”

Your lips tug down, and he kind of wishes he didn’t say anything.

“More than everything?”

Yes.

“Forget it,” he says.

“…Would you rather we not have done it?”

No reply. You put what remains of your toast down. “You can be honest.”

“I’d rather not miss it.”

The good things are a blessing, and a curse. He knows too well what this world is majorly made up of—he needs to be ready for that. He can’t be sure of anything, including the good things.

But he forces himself not to regret. This winter, it was still good. He got to be with you. It isn’t what he learned to let himself do, or feel, or think—but not to do any of those things at all.

To simply be.

Comfort. False security. All these in passing turns a prick of pain that will inevitably come along into a thrashing whip. It makes one complacent and comfortable when they can’t afford to be. Tragedy waits, always.

He has never experienced such happiness, which is why he has never been so disappointed in himself for allowing himself to do so.

Quiet persists. You have your listening face on now, napkin crushed in one hand while you exchange soft blinks.

“I don’t mean to shit all over the mood, but I want your opinion,” he decides. “…D’you think this was for nothing?”

You reach across the table and lay your hand on his.

“Nothing’s for nothing,” you say.

He wants to believe you.

—

As you expected, Levi has double his weight in bags slung over his shoulders when he pokes his head in the bathroom.

“How long is it gonna be till you’re ready?—Another month?”

“Hm. More like two,” you reply, smiling.

A scoff, followed by the clacks of his boots retreating out the front door.

And you keep smiling. Really, all that’s left to do is take a cursory look around to make sure nothing got left behind.

Retreating from the bathroom, you stand at ease and examine the bookshelf in the hallway. It feels different than leaving the dining table, or even the bench off the side of the house.

You really read a horse’s weight in books while you were here. Most of the books themselves are still with you, but… it won’t be the same.

Only the rumpled spine of one and the faded covers of a few others are left stacked neatly in one desolate corner. Those ones were bad, and not in the fun way, you both agreed (these days you more often than not read together).

You took your all-time favorite stories with you, which you’ll treasure until they too are faded. The classics as well, the just-okays, and the bad ones that turned out somehow fun.

The few so contrived, goofy and terrible that you begged to keep, because it made Levi honestly, earnestly laugh—and sometimes a little louder, more than once.

You step off the front porch steps, feeling torn, yet oddly fulfilled.

Nothing’s for nothing. A moment within a lake of millions, but you want to remember them all, all the same.

This one especially.

—

It takes three hours under a cold, clean sky to reach Trost. By then, the afternoon sun is high and there is much unpacking to be done.

Levi slapped away your sticky fingers every time you insisted on helping carrying a lumpy bag or box inside from the front.

“I got it,” he bitched earlier. “You don’t need to do anything.”

“But I want a job!”

He scoffed. “Fine. I have one for you: sit down and look pretty. You think you can do that?”

You roll your eyes at the memory as he passes down the small set of stairs by you. You’re still brooding, planted on top of a flat stone column just outside the tall doors.

He knew you would, but then you make a game out of it, much to his chagrin.

For every one of his treks, you pat him somewhere—usually the top of his head—but he never knows where you’re going to aim next.

He dodges a flick to his elbow.

“Woah, you look unsteady,” you say, tone full of artificial concern. “You need help?”

He catches your wandering eyes with his cheek pressed against the cardboard box in his arms. “Don’t you have anything better to do besides distract me?”

You smile. “I can stare.”

He rolls his eyes.

Two trips later, you get dangerously close to his backside. He manages to pivot just in time and stares you down suspiciously, a box under one arm and a knapsack slung over one shoulder.

He doesn’t even look surprised anymore.

All you do is smirk.

In the end, you win that one.

It’s a blessing that HQ is still unpopulated. That’s the way it’ll be until next week, something Levi planned far in advance.

All for the better in his mind. A Scout, someone from your squad a long time ago (and who apparently almost beat him to asking you out for Mayfest a couple years ago) left the Corps early last spring. He had gotten married to a scullery maid out of Klorva District. Weird.

You put up the wagon while he stabs a familiar key into a familiar lock, and steps into his familiar quarters.

His nose scrunches as he surveys his office. He can physically see the dust particles floating in the air, especially in the glow of the windows, thanks to the afternoon sun above.

Scraping his fingertips underneath the desk confirms his suspicions.

This place is a wreck, he thinks, scowling at nothing in particular.

But after wiping his hands off with a handkerchief, he does find something to scowl at. A white wicker basket sits in his chair. It’s adorned with red and pink frills, a bunch of fresh fruit, and even… a teddy bear?

He snatches up the card on the bear’s lap, and as he reads, his glare darkens.

‘Hope your honeymoon was productive! (I know it wasn’t officially a honeymoon, but why else would you take a vacation? Levi? Vacation? Ha!)

Mike insisted I buy you this stuffed bear in preparation for the next nine months! I can’t wait to have another little Levi runn—’

Levi tears his eyes away from the card. Fucking four-eyes.

Using a stool, he gets the thing stuffed up high in a closet behind a carton of cigars. Those are for special occasions; he has no more fitting place for the basket (except for the fruit, which he stores in the kitchenette).

Just in time. Outside his office, the door opens, then thumps shut to the sound of your boots clicking as you cross the floor.

“Everything’s put away,” you tell him proudly.

“Good. I have work to do,” he replies without turning, setting the stool back in the corner of his office. “You have anything you need to do first?”

You get an early start on paperwork while he takes a much-deserved shower. After that, you work together in comfortable silence.

A sense of coming home crashes over him after he randomly blinks out of focus from his current sheet of paperwork. This one contains a list of grades and statistics of Cadets who seem likely to join up this coming spring.

He glances over at you without moving his head—you, bathed in gold thanks to the sunset moving across his desk.

Another random fact of Hange’s enters his mind: apparently, pregnant women’s skin tends to glow. Something about hormones.

Your pencil scratches paper.

He covers his warming cheeks with the back of his hand and averts his gaze. That stupid basket.

Work. Surprisingly, he spots one name on the page he remotely recognizes. Jaeger. A doctor with the same name was famous in Shiganshina for curing an epidemic several years back.

The next time he looks up, you’re planting a bowl of stew down on his desk, green tea and bread included.

He takes a breath, and his mouth instantly waters. He forgot to eat lunch earlier.

Then you place a hand in his hair. He glances up towards your fond smile.

“Do you wanna start the fireplace after you’re done eating?”

A wave of affection crashes over his chest. “Have you eaten?”

“I’m about to,” you reply. “So?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

By the time your bellies are warm and full, he has stoked the logs enough to get a real fire going. Past the sitting room’s windows, which stretch across the entire back wall, snow floats down in weightless drops.

He stores the poker away, stands, then turns. Your arms are open.

“C’mere.”

That same feeling flips his chest over again. He pins his tongue between his teeth before quickly approaching.

You tug him down until he lays sideways down the sofa, his head in your lap and facing the fireplace. Despite you being sat right in the middle, he’s still too short for his feet to knock against the armrest.

“I had to get that stew from the mess hall,” you’re murmuring, tucking dark bangs behind his ear. “It wasn’t that good.”

“Your standards are too high,” he replies, leaning into your palm. Everything is so warm.

“Oh? What’re my standards?”

“Your cooking. Of course everything else tastes bad in comparison.”

You laugh at this. “You’re too kind.”

Huffing, he closes his eyes and covers his face lips with a loose fist.

You’re so wrong it hurts.

He never wants you to stop.

A different realization hits him. This doesn’t feel too different from some nights you spent back on a whole other world, at the cabin.

He blinks off into space. It is just a house, a place. There would be nothing nearly as enticing about it if you weren’t there with him.

“You okay?” you ask. “You’re more quiet than usual.”

He rolls over to face you. As you slouch a little, getting comfortable, he moves with you.

“When I first got inside, this basket of fruit was sitting on my desk from four-eyes. I’m trying to figure out how they got in.”

Through giggles, “Was anything missing?”

“I don’t think so.” He was too stressed out at the time to check thoroughly. “But still.”

A thin, felt blanket is pulled off the back of the couch, then laid over him, up to his shoulders.

He turns his head.

“You looked cold,” you offer as an excuse, and he rolls his eyes, even though he was.

The fire was also dying down, but since you didn’t say anything, he didn’t stand to get it.

Typically, he would do it anyway, but…

You pet his hair down, scratching gently at his scalp.

It can wait.

He looks much more comfortable now that he’s covered up. A spontaneous memory unfurls in your mind, when losing Wall Maria. You think about forgetting those three days all the time, but the memory of that one night (or early morning? It’s hard to remember) you want to keep forever.

He was so shy then. And much more aloof. When you embraced him, that was the first time you had ever hugged a steel pole.

“We’re both still alive, but if you want to keep it that way, get some rest. Otherwise I’d have to tag along to make sure you don’t die. Doesn’t sound fun, does it?”

You bite down a bittersweet smile while what feels like big wings flutter in your chest. Was that really five years ago?

“What’s so funny?”

Your eyes meet Levi’s scrupulous ones. Most of his expression is hidden in your shirt.

“Nothin’.”

Yeah, right, he thinks, but his eyes fall shut to feel your hand carding his bangs all the way back over his forehead.

That’s something Mom used to do, if he remembers right, especially after cutting the rat’s nest that was usually his hair.

His childhood had more peaceful times than he gives it credit for. This time, though, he aims to keep these times from ever stopping.

He isn’t foolish. As long as Erwin’s dream hasn’t come to fruition, the fighting won’t cease. It may never stop, at least by the time he’s no longer there to fight for it, but he knows some things for sure.

You two will never be normal—he has long-since accepted that. As long as he has this, you, he can make peace with his more selfish dreams.

Within the coming months, the 104th batch of recruits will be up for the chopping block; a bunch of brats spit out into the three branches like marbles. Erwin will give his honeyed speech, and Levi will be near, and he won’t have to say much.

Some of those marbles will land in the Survey Corps, most won’t. But those few are more brave, or foolish, than any slack-jawed cow of a noble could ever fully grasp.

And finally, always, when you two return to HQ—bustling or sparse, the day heavy or light—you will be with him.

Home. He knows what that means now, and it doesn’t have to be a place. Maybe you will stretch his legs across his lap, or make a casserole. Maybe he will replace the flowers in your vase that you accidentally neglect often enough to worry him.

He will feel time wandering and expanding, daring him to believe your midnight conversations will stretch on forever.

They won’t, but he has made peace with that. This life is, in fact, more heavenly than he ever could have imagined wanting for himself, let alone making.

You and he will simply have to fight, within an inch of your lives at worst, in order to keep it.

The End.

| levi masterlist | main masterlist |

102 notes · View notes

sungbeam · 8 months

Note

hi beam :33 i am here to shower you with love!!

1. i feel like i have so much fave fics from you, particularly the love in unity series but i do think party people and off the record hold special places in my heart <3 i remember when i first read off the record </3 like i feel like i dont express it ENOUGH but it was around the time i was very disconnected from tbz... and somehow ur fic really just PUSHED ME to write and post... and after that, reading party people really just reassured me that yea deobiblr is back!! going back to tbz is what i need to do!!!

6. kind of transitioning to this, i remember vividly reading ur fic in a starbucks because i was waiting for grentperez's concert here and literally my friend was just watching me REACT TO THE FIRST PART. i was literally telling her "oh mygod i am BACK IN DEOBILAND" BECAUSE IT WAS SO GOOD?!??!?! I FEEL LIKE IT WAS JUST A REMINDER OF MY BIGGER DEOBI DAYS U KNOW and im back stronger than ever

8. i just love ur plots in general. im very much a big fan of just not romance-centered media in general and i really love all the details you put into ur fics esp with the reader and the boyz themselves!!! like for me, it means so much that they have their own arcs/stories!! esp as a big fan of slow burn and just character development I LOVE IT!!!

11. i am hoping for some more jacob fics.... HELP i am just so crazy in my jacob delusions and i know i dont need to ask for more jichang ones bc i rest easy knowing u and i are the biggest kyubodans

13. i talk abt u and ur works so much to my besties actually :') my besties are big caratdeobis so i always recommend ur works to them

i love you beam! you always inspire me tbh :') so glad i got to know you and i am always rooting for u!!! so excited for what else you have in store for us

moni, my lovely, thank u so much for your words, both here and in prose <3

raaaaah !!! it always means so much to me to hear that i was able to inspire u out of ur writing slump :')) i def know how that feels,,, getting into the boyz and p1h was what got /me/ out of my writing slump and i somehow whipped up party people 💀 im just really happy that i was able to find more of deobiblr or maybe even inspire deobis to come out from hibernation w that fic skfnkenfkf

LOL starbucks is like my writing place half the time istg 😭😭😭 omg you reading otr in a starbucks makes me so skcnkrnf im like jumping around in excitement cuz idek !! and pls (´Д⊂ヽ im crying im really really happy that my fics could haul you back to deobiblr cuz we wouldn't be the same without you 🫂 and thank u for always reccing my stuff to friends !! it means the absolute world to me, i get do tender-feeling :'))

and pls, ik u of all people would def appreciate the non-romantic arcs !! i really do enjoy creating and developing friendships and outside relationships—it just adds an extra layer to the fic besides just the romance itself 🤧 and omg i promise i'll get more cobie content out >< the other day i was thinking of posting drabbles of this one au i had written for him, so whenever i don't have a new fic to post, you'll def see it 😎

i love you moni, thank u again for all ur support and love 💖

#sungbeam strikes again #moot ❧#moni 🦝#ask games !!

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youngster-monster · 8 months

Note

I KNOW THAT THE DISCORD WIPS ARE A TRAVESTY BUT PRIOR TO THAT THE LAST TIME I OPENED A GOOGLE DOC WAS IN LIKE 2018 TO MAKE AN OC SHEET THAT AMOUNTED TO 100 WORDS AT THE VERY MOST!!!! I DID NOT REALIZE GOOGLE DOCS WAS EVEN AN OPTION I JUST USED IT FOR MY BAD CHARACTER SHEETS

also i cant in good conscience act like the discord wips were ancient history... it is with Shame that i kneel before your askbox and admit that it was in 2020 until like late 2021... after that i realized i could use google docs and now i swear on my life that my fics are organized i SWEAR

ive been hibernating since february (last fic completed let alone worked on Properly) so i am more skeletal than rotted at this point but surely . surely it will come back to me and i will go crazy again

LITERALLY IT IS SO DIFFICULT INTRODUCING CHARACTERS i tried to write oc content recently and it went so bad that i couldnt even stomach the idea of it anymore it is so DIFFICULT but fanfic? fanfic is so much Simpler in my brain. in terms of work i mean because at the point that im writing fanfic about something ive already gone so deep into the lore that i could name 8 niche quest npcs and their full backstory + all of my headcanons in the form of 300 very lengthy discord messages

oh my god. sorry but midway through this ask i just remembered that i still have something of a discord wip channel in use right now, but its not for full works and it IS for snippets. sometimes i have these little ideas in my head but theyre not good enough for a full fic so i just jot em down in a discord channel for (hopefully) later use.... the discord wips will never die

real talk? what you said about any finished work being an accomplishment makes me feel alot better about how irregular my fics are because i end up feeling guilty about how by the time my writers block is over, the fandoms are completely different .. and to be honest when you stop thinking about it it IS kind of funny because theres a. wow fanfiction and b. anime fanfiction. i wonder sometimes if people go to my page and have an aneurysm looking at the fandom list

WII RP???????? WII RP???????????? i wasnt allowed to do really anything with our wii because i was really REALLY young so perhaps this is only insane to me because i never did anything except use the wii to watch pucca in 240p but ON THE WII??????????????????

im going to be wojack pointing at the m3:r wip until the end of time and you can count on that, these two dead elves (and particularly how you write them!!!) have carved themselves into my brain and they refuse to pay rent

2021..... damn bitch you live like this!!

7 months of hibernation... you're getting preserved in a bog it's Fine. I spent a whole year writing Nothing, just rotting mostly, and now look at me ( < not normal) (writing though!)

Fanfics are so easy... and you get other people to bounce stuff off of too like if I crave content I can go yell to my friends about it. For OCs you need Context.... Lore..... who has the time!!! I mean I do I am a known oc enjoyer but still. What work

I do also have the snippet channel. And the snippet notes app. And the snippet google docs. And the snippet paper scraps. And– yeah okay I've escaped the indignity of discord wips but not that of Disorganized WIPs

I'm glad it helped! There's no such thing as 'moving on' for a fandom!!! I know anime fandoms tend to be fast moving but if you let your wip age some more you too can become 'the only person still writing this ship', and profit 😈

Listen. My parents could ground me from using my PC. They could take my DS. But by god they couldn't take away ALL the screens and if I had to point and click my way through writing a post about my sparklewolf daughter of hades then I WOULD. And did!! My wrist will never forgive me

#Asks #Anonymous #Love it when fic authors have wildly different fandoms #'final fantasy' 'baseball rpf' what. Okay.#Shaking Kael. Start paying rent richboy #It's good that you like my characterization of them because Christ alive I don't think it's in character anymore

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kumomist · 8 months

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Hiya! 📕 :D?

*giggles and twirls my hair* hehehe— WAIT WHICH DO I PICK TO TALK ABOUT

uhhh les go with the genshin/bnha crossover NOT dimension travel ^^

so basically— au where teyvat is just bnha’s pangaea and the archons are bare legends and stuff if anything. im leaning towards a no traveler au but either way it doesnt matter

sometime after the genshin plot is all done and over with, the leylines start drying up, the archons go dormant, people stop getting visions, etc etc until eventually it gets into prequirk era, and then quirk era and bnha plot. SOME genshin people are still around, and technically the archons are hibernating but they have little ‘graves’/shrines and whoevers still around visits them

this isnt really a full fleshed story fjkdbdj mostly an excuse to have crossover interactions while keeping the canon backstories in the same world sortof thing. and more emotional competency. yknow crossover fics where characters from different fandoms are friends bc of some similarity/shared backstory? yeah <3

note that i havent watched/read bnha at all, i just read a lot of fic

specifics under the cut

main highlights are:

xiao and hawks. they both are birds and were ‘enslaved’ (xiao and his former master, hawks and the heros commission) they both they. them

in this verse xiao is still around and suppressing whatever karma he finds. at some point baby hawks-keigo’s dad gets inflicted with karma and xiao stops it, finds keigo and takes him in. little baby keigo growing up with xiao-ge around stories of the archons and duty and legends oughdjsn. eventually keigo decides he wants to rejoin society and become a hero so xiao drops him somewhere to be found by authorities. once he gets his own apartment or something they start meeting more regularly again.

>side fic thingy where canon hawks travels to this verse. at this point keigo has graduated whatever hero school he went to and is a ta at ua. they are the same age. cue weird interactions where hawks is unnerved by everyone knowing his birthname and acting familiarly. on the reverse end everyone else (ua staff) is having complicated feelings about the very suspicious circumstances of the 23?yo that is somehow a fully fledged hero with the commission. at some point keigo gets xiao and hawks to meet and they have some vague complicated talk about being trapped by circumstances, freedom, etc

wanderer and izuku. idk something something the shared sentiment of being considered useless and abandoned for it but still striving to prove their worth yadayada.

im not entirely certain on how they meet but i kindof want izuku getting lost and stumbling upon ei and makoto’s graves while wanderer’s there. at this point wanderer is much more at peace with ei and her grief over makoto and etc and ends up telling izuku about the inazuma shoguns. izuku is charmed and wanderer gets conned into visiting him and telling him stories

idk i just feel like izuku would have feelings about raiden shogun considering: two equals who ruled a whole nation together ~ him and bakugou wanting to become heroes together. the idea of being an irreplaceable one of two, something like that

albedo is around but is mostly secluded in some underground lab maybe. he goes out sometimes for lab data but usually its for art breaks. sometime quirk era he gets accidentally arrested somehow for not having documents. later it gets sorted out and he gets publicly put down as having an immortal quirk or something. they dont know hes a homunculus tho, albedo doesnt volunteer any information so they only end up recognizing him by his artist penname, calx

some adepti/adepti-blooded are still around, as well as some ghosts. they live mostly in some pocket dimension that cloud jumper somehow managed to keep maintained. idk who exactly is around. hu tao is definitely a ghost but only to haunt the other ghosts into passing over

#txt #my snip #genshin fandom is so disappointing to me… god all the potential and barely any fics to read #all my wips are *characters having feelings together* *character development* but the only thing i can manage to write is *introspection*#i love reading emotional competency! if only i had it :’)#i have a bunchof of wips that are small/nonexistent fandoms so i just sit on them and go insane fhjbdm #i have like 4 crossover ideas and this one is the biggest #lately tho ive had an original story sitting in my head and its CRAZY i am scribbling notes and emotional dialogue everywhere like a madman

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hollyhomburg · 2 years

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I've been really going through it these last few days and nothing was helping my mental state. So I decided to reread all of the hybrid works you've created because they used to be such a comfort for me. I say used to because I've also been really falling out of love with BTS.

But after rereading all of them again, 1) Yet again you've provided me comfort where nothing else has. So I want to sincerely thank you for that. Reading and writing is my fucking calling in life and everytime I read any of your work, it reminds me to keep on doing what I love. So I am endlessly grateful.

2) Rereading these fics, I could literally feel some kind of shift and it's like something clicked back into place. And I've found myself listening to BTS and watching their content more in the last couple days than I have in literally a year and a half. So, not only are you inspiring me to keep doing what I was literally born to do, you're also helping me fall back in love with a group who has saved me countless times.

So I just wanted to say thank you. You deserve all of the love and happiness from this world, and you are such a talented writer and such a genuine person.

-(a very appreciative and emotional) anon

ahhhhhhh ive been having so many thoughts about this ask since i got it, my first thoughts where that im so happy i was able to help you re-discover a joy that you'd thought you'd lost- i think that sometimes- the things we enjoy go dormant or hibernate for a while, but that doesn't mean they're gone forever!

i hope you keep enjoying what you love and keep writing and reading lots <3

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monstrouslyobsessed · 2 years

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HELLO !!! not really a question or something but thank you for your works 🙆 they truly satisfy my hidden monsterfucking kinks 🤭 ANYWAYS PLEASE DO CONTINUE WRITING ): I REALLY LOVE THEM SAUURRR MUCH LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR NEW WORKS SOON !!! keep safe and mwah w/ consent 🙏🏻 —anonymous

🥰ahw tysm for reading my works!! i'll do my best, even though i'm slow as shit about it, aha. i'm forever grateful for all your support and it is super appreciated!! <3

Hi, I'm over 20 college student who loves reading dark writings or yandere concepts and just recently found your blog and amazing works. Although requests are closed and I don't want to cause you any trouble, I'm curious whether you're still open for Alucard(Hellsing ) writes,, I have fallen in love with Hellsing and most of all, Alucard and your last writing of Alucard as Vlad the Impaler was so fantastic,, I was hoping to see a prequel version of it(like, HOW Vlad met the reader, and judging from her POV it's likely that the reader was unwilling to become a vampire, let alone become his bride)... it's been quite a while since you wrote Hellsing but I wonder if you're still willing to write a piece of Alucard later on??? Your work of Alucard was truly a masterpiece, and it's sad to think that this is the only Alucard piece in your amazing blog.—anonymous

tbf i kept the backstory between alucard and his turned darling super vague because idk myself tbf;;; there's too many possibilities, from a victim of slavery, war, orphan, childhood friend, etc. possibly! i'm down to write specific animes and whatnot i'm familiar with, i'm just more comfortable writing one-off ocs and monsters because i always just sort of felt like i'd be doing the existing characters wrong somehow?? plus i haven't been reading or seeing many medias these days (not a huge tv show watcher;;; my attention span is that bad, been trying to pick up reading books and mangas again though, personal distastes about certain popular shows aside). yeah i live under a rock.

that said, i do see alucard forcing his darling to hibernate and stashing them away in hiding somewhere when he sensed he was being hunted after and that they will destroy his darling, be it using them up as a gruesome science experiment or just outright killing them. supposed the darling was found and being used as a lab rat though...

we'll see if i ever get around it lmao i have a long to-do list 😭thank you so much for your kind words!

The drawing is definitely ok and you’re an amazing artist 🥰 —anonymous

daw thank you! i really should draw more, huh? <3

I can't stop reading your work! It's amazing. Can I request a continuation of the Pyramid Head fic? —anonymous

i'm not open for requests, sorry! that said, im not sure how to write a continuation for him exactly. i shared some headcanons somewhere in my blog about the fate of his darling and him. plot wise? its still vague to me. other than never-ending smut and, well, 'creating' bunch of monstrous creatures from all the breeding the butcher is doing to his darling, i'm still chewing on ideas.

i'll take notes tho to consider it some more though, ty for your kind words <3

status update: writing is slow. got stuck at where to go in the male ursula knock off piece so i might go and find another wip to work on just to publish something. anyway, concept and headcanons are open. maybe writing something sfw would knock the writers block out.

hope yall are staying cool and safe for those who are dealing with the horrid heatwave! please drink some water to stay hydrated <3 for the others doing ok with their weather, be good to one other, mwah!

edited: missed a question, whoops.

#ghosts are curious.👻#☠️not writing...#anonymous #asked #answered #☠️monster is whispering...#[[gd the new editor is seriously bugging out on me that it took ages for me to JUST answer these lovely nonnies...]]#[[fix your shits dumblr]]#long post

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murdering-time · 1 year

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An Overdue Explanation and Update

// Hey Folx

I know for the majority of the past few months I have been very inactive and I'll give you the short of it all before the cut. Mental Health and Dropping out of Uni.

Of course I'll be back, I've been in contact with Spider and Doorrat ((who are both incredibly sweet people out of asks for the record)) and I have a few things planned out for the blog which is VERY exciting!

I do plan to go through the Hatters Acrs in BTAS without the use of cameos ((Trial I will maim you)) and Im not too focussed on this blog being cannon compliant !

If you wish to read more, just to know what's up, it's all under the cut, and TW for me being open about my mental health but that's about it

Best to all of you!

Hare

Aha, a curious fellow, eh? (Gender neutral)

Alright, the meat of it all

The past few years Ive been struggling mentally anyway - I flip flop from incredible highs to just inexplicable lows - it's incredible exhausting, leaves me restless and sleep deprived, and worst of all I've been trying to complete university on top of it.

My studies have suffered. I have suffered. And now it has all unfortunately caught up to me.

These past few months I have been doing what I like to call "hermitting" Its where I isolate myself, store and conserve my energy for the small things I enjoy doing, and those I want to talk to.

I have dropped out of University after failing a second attempt and this academic year I am working.I have a new job, I am talking to new people, and I am recouperating myself.

I have a therapist again, too and having been in and out of counselling for just over half a decade it feels like I'm getting somewhere with help.

I should be seeing a psychiatrist soon, and I sincerely hope they can give me some answers for being incredible low emotionally at the worst of times.

So, what does this mean for my blog?

Well! Essentially, I have more free time! Lost more free time!

I can feel the lack of stress of study, I feel lighter, and up until now I was incredibly drained at a constant.

I started this blog in the Summer holiday (nearly just over half a year ago now) and I never thought it would pick up so quickly as it did!

I am having such fun, and I still have Doorrat's ask in my inbox to continue the lore and story of Mad as a Hatter

I have a few tags to make, tag lists, organisation, just for each sort of episode that's explored I can go through the tags and make a tag list

Really, just now, I'm hoping to keep myself a float, Im still working on my stupid little fanfic that this blog was inspired by, and I'm just trying to get myself into the flow of having most the week to myself and not sleeping in

It's fun! Real fun, and from talking to such lovely people who drop by my inbox (Phone Im looking at you too) and all the peope who send and tag me in things

It makes me feel very welcomed and it makes the breaks I need feel valued and understood

Really, just, being a sap on main, I am so touched by the inherent support that there is for me, for Hatter, for this blog, and for the arcs that are being spurred on by all the wonderful asks in my inbox

I love you all very dearly, the spam likers, the lurkers, the askers, the RPers, the people who have messaged me, tagged me, thought about this stupid little blog --

It's an honour to be here and to be supported like this especially with the stress that I've gone through offline UvU

Expect some more lore soon, right now Im just finishing up a scarebest fic for a mate of mine and hopefully going to update the little long term fic Im working on and check exactly where im supposed to be with that on the outline

I'll be sure to draw a little thank you for the wait, and while It would have been appropriate the put Jervis in Arkham BEFORE going AWOL unfortunately I cant choose when my brain decides "hello. Time to hibernate."

Needless to say, this fucker WILL end up in Arkham, which means NEW EMOTES, and you guys will be more than able to ask about the inmates, Jervis' allies, and who he's connecting with within the asylum

Sympathies and regards to all of you!

Hare

#update #ooc #mun #where have I been #INSIDE #IN BED #rotting away under the comfort of my new MUSHROOM THEMED BLANKET #and also simping for bob velseb #thanks for that doorrat /lh #guess whos been knitting though #and spending time with a very sweet man #who coinsidentally got me my job #bless him #im seeing him sat and were playing board games together #fully reccomend ruins or arnak by the way #fucking spicy game

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drawnaghht · 1 year

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Gonna be honest, aside from fandom events/celebrations I'm prob not gonna be very active here again, on account of busy-in-general but also, my side-accounts are still always more art-oriented.... I like to post my own arts hehe x3 so I guess I'm writing abt this as a gentle reminder to myself that it's alright to not be active & how much I really enjoy posting my own work when possible.

some more thoughts on this under cut! the blog will stay mostly usagi chronicles related with reblogs related to other usagi stuff and tmnt but I will try to keep it to my own art as I originally intended.

right now I've also been obsessing again over the Tintin fancomics and animations by @/professorcalculusstanaccount (not gonna tag them bc this is not directly related) and their work (+ just ruminating on my own old stuff) has been inspiring me enough that I'm thinking of returning to my og comics again. just in a... very subtle way. i don't like drawing attention to myself as much(as much as I should at least) and I wanna take a lot of babysteps to get back to building those up again.

for my SRTUC/TMNT2003&ROTTMNT crossover fic, I am thinking now that I want to take a similar approach in that it is mostly images, some larger text. bc I realized I do not actually enjoy writing long spans of prose. like. I enjoy making comics bc I am more used to those, but also, I am imagining things much more visually so it is hard for me to put some of these into text form at all times. I think that's why I probably haven't written this fic properly or finished any of my old fic. So a pretty normal "I explain my fic/AU idea" post, but I would like to try it in a concentrated way. I dunno how I would format this crossover on AO3 for example, but here in tumblr I could put them neatly under a cut and write away. It would be cool if I had the energy for animations/comics too bc those, while taking more time than writing, are far more enjoyable on the whole to make (but again, I am much more used to them)

I also want to explore more of a genfic (general "genre" fanfic) look at crossovers. As much as I like the Yuinardo/Leochi (Yuichi x Leo) ship, I also really enjoy exploring more unusual dynamics and situations in fanfic haha x3

my health's been slowly declining this week again and i haven't noticed next to work so I'll try to keep phone and personal internet time to a minimum now. sjdnddj i also just haven't had the energy for new art in general, so I'm basically going into spring hibernation until the next big spike in free time.

but hey! things I look forward to posting about more are some of the short comic thumbs I've been doing! I've fanart mostly for usagi chronicles right now but I'm also probably gonna post other short sketches I've done on my regular fandom art/ sketchblog, @aghhtdraws . There's a Chi/Ki (Chizu x Kitsune) doodle post I wanted to do and also a few other Usagi sketches I wanted to post.

I also like to write analysis of shows I like often enough, but writing is usually very taxing for me if it gets too long so I try to avoid it unless I have a very strong idea. Wait... have I been writing essays this entire time??? x3

I'll still tag those as #analysis bc that makes sense for me as a short tag and I don't really keep to an essay format as much, but yeah, you can block that or #aghhtposts if u don't wanna see those xP

i tag things more for my own convenience, but that is also very useful for tag blocking! (so glad xKit still works 10 years after it broke or smth)

oh! and I also wanted to post some screenshots/links from insta. both Stan and some of the crew have been posting new posts about SRTUC which have been a delight to see. ahhh im so glad the show exists and the crew seem to have a lot of good memories about it.

#aghhtposts #ahh why isthis update post so long x3 #not tagging w anything else bc it is mostly bt this blpog #drawnaghht #tumblr new code for adding tags is weirding me out so tags are gonna take me a while to write now huh #texty #long post

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daegall · 2 years

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!!! IM ALIVE !!!!! i just finished most of the semester last week and let me tell u i am a different person now, that shit put me through the TRENCHES fr, i just hibernated for like 13 hours but fr pulled so many all nighters :,) i just want my marks asap tbh but i’m dONEEE

how are you!!!!!! give me all the updates and don’t hold back, how’s school etc

v glad to be back and actually have time again… - no sleep anon 🫧🫧

AAAAAAAAA EYEYEYYAYAYAYAYAYAYYAY CONGRATS BBY IM SO PROUD OF YOH WE HAVE TO CELEBRATE 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

get all the sleep you need my bae you deserve it!!!!! you deserve thr world 💗💗

i am doing okay!!!!!!!! mentally 😁 my grades are dropping a bit though 😒😒 not that low but COME ONN I JUSG GOT THE BIG BRAIN LIFE NOW ITS GONE

i am going to transfer to ankrher school next year 😲😲😲 SUPER EXCITED BC ITS MY DREAM SCHOOL AND MY BEST FRIEND IS RHERE WAITINF FOR ME NYEHEHEHEHEHEHEHHE 😁😁😁😁😁😁

i have no love lkfe tho EVERYKNE AROUND ME IS GETTING LOVE LIVES ABD MY CRUSH IS BROZONING ME 😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢 can u believe a bff2l writwr is not gettinf the bff2l like like?!?!?! r u telling me my fics have been UNTRUE??? bouta switch up to strangers to lovers fr 😒😒

ANW YEAH IM DOING GREAT IM GOIGN TO MEET UP WITH MY FRIENDS TODAY FOR A COSPLAY EVENT OOOOO im not cisplaying but a friend of mine is!!!!

NOW TELL ME EVERYTHUNG YOYRE DOING AFTER YOUR WELL DESERVED LONG HIBERNATION NAP 😲😲😲😲😲😲

#asks!#no sleep anon ?!#so good to hear fron you bby ^3^

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