☆ Summary: When photos of Levi leaving a hotel with another woman turn into a full-blown cheating scandal, you know the truth is harmless. But knowing Levi didn’t betray you doesn’t make the public humiliation hurt any less.
☆ Pairing: Levi Ackerman x Female Reader
☆ Genre/Tags: Modern AU, Sports AU, Athlete Levi Ackerman, Soccer Player Levi Ackerman, Established Relationship, Gossip, Miscommunication, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Making Up, Protective Levi, Levi Ackerman is Bad At Feelings
☆ a/n: This is a prize fic for anonymous for getting 100% on the 700 follower quiz! Thank you to @slaytherinthoughts for beta reading as always <3 please don't ask for a part two or I'll cheat on my best friend with another closeted glasses-wearing lesbian.
[ Art by rivaille_akrmn on Instagram ]
You fold another shirt, the fabric still smelling of detergent but also carrying a faint scent of Levi. You pause with it halfway over your lap before smoothing your palm over the crest stitched near the chest, pressing your thumb over the raised threads. It’s your way to reach him across the city, through the traffic and the rain and whatever pre-match obligations have kept him away since morning.
It’s Saturday. The sky outside the windows is pale and watery grey. Your coffee has gone lukewarm on the table. A half-edited batch of client photos waits on your laptop from your recent wedding shoot. You keep telling yourself you’ll get back to them after you finish matching socks.
Then your phone buzzes. Three times.
You look at it absently, expecting a reminder, a group chat text, maybe your friend asking whether you’re still on for lunch tomorrow, but the first message on your screen nearly makes you drop the shirt in your other hand.
Are you okay?
Another one follows.
Please don’t look at Twitter.
Then another.
I know it’s probably bullshit, but I wanted you to hear from me first.
When the link appears beneath your friend’s next message, you stare at the thumbnail without opening it, because there is Levi outside a hotel, his face turned away from the camera, and beside him is a woman you don’t recognize at first, slender and pretty and wrapped in his black jacket as she ducks her head against the flash of cameras.
All sound drowns out from your senses, then it rushes back with your pulse pounding in your ears. The headline is worse than the photo.
LEVI ACKERMAN SPOTTED LEAVING HOTEL WITH MYSTERY WOMAN
You open it, even though you know you shouldn’t. It’s the same as touching a hot pan, looking down from a great height, or reopening a wound just to check if it’s still capable of bleeding. You tap it anyway, and suddenly the article flashes across your screen.
There are three main photos. In the first, Levi is stepping out of a side entrance with one hand lifted toward the reporters, not waving or greeting, but blocking his face. In the second, the woman is closer to him, his jacket around her shoulders, her blouse visibly stained by what looks like wine. In this third, his hand is at the small of her back, guiding her toward a waiting car. Even though you know Levi, know that touch is anything but intimate, it doesn’t stop the twisting of your stomach.
Your phone rings. Levi’s name fills the screen.
You consider not answering. He hasn’t done anything wrong, really, and you definitely don’t believe the article, but hearing his voice might be the thing that breaks you. Because you know he’s going to try to explain, and explanations will only deepen the wound. You answer anyway.
“Don’t read it,” Levi says immediately. No hello. Not even an are you okay?
You close your eyes. “Little late for that.”
You hear him breathe out, quietly with a hint of frustration. You can picture him perfectly, one hand on his hip, the other holding his phone to his ear, probably glaring at nothing in particular while his expression sours.
“It’s bullshit,” he says.
“I know.”
“It was Erwin’s sister.”
“I know,” you repeat, though you didn’t until this exact second.
“She got cornered after dinner,” Levi says, as if he’s explaining this to his PR manager. “Some bastard knocked into her, wine went all over her blouse, reporters were swarming the front entrance. Erwin asked me to get her to the car through the side.”
“Levi—”
“My jacket was because of the spill. My hand was because she was about to walk into a camera. That’s it.”
“I believe you.”
Silence falls. Those three words should erase the photos, destroy the headline, pull the sickness out of your stomach, because trust is the hard part, isn’t it? The thing all the songs and movies and relationship advice columns treat like the center of it all. But instead, the words just hang there, while your eyes keep drifting back to the photo of another woman wearing Levi’s jacket.
His voice changes, low now, the first hint of uncertainty breaking through the anger. “Then why do you sound like that?”
You look down at the shirt in your lap and realize you’re gripping it like a vice. “Because believing you doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Levi says nothing for a moment. You can hear him trying to solve the issue within a minute, trying to decide whether he can outrun this, whether he can force these headlines to disappear.
“My PR manager is putting out a denial,” he says at last.
“Okay.”
“I’ll call Erwin. He’ll confirm it if they need him to.”
“Okay.”
“It’ll pass.”
You sigh. You refresh the article. There are already dozens of comments. “Yeah,” you say, though you don’t believe it. “Probably.”
Levi exhales your name. “Don’t look at the comments.”
You laugh once. Too late again. After you hang up, you sit there with his shirt in your lap and do exactly what every rational part of you is screaming at you not to do. You scroll.
She looks better with him anyway.
Your breath hitches.
His girlfriend always seemed boring.
Your thumb moves before you can stop it.
imagine fumbling Levi Ackerman.
He’s been playing worse since he went public with her.
She’ll stay. Girls like that always stay.
That one stops you. A smug little hand of a stranger reaching through your screen to pat your head and tell you what kind of woman you are, what kind of woman you will always be, how much humiliation you’re built to swallow. Suddenly, your eyes burn so badly that you lock your phone, toss it onto the couch, and press the heels of your hands against your eyes.
You believe Levi. So why does this hurt so much?
.
By the time Levi comes home, the laundry is folded, your coffee is cold, and the apartment has become eerily silent. He enters as he always does, key in the lock, shoes off at the door, jacket hung on the hook, hands washed before he touches anything else. There’s something almost ridiculous about watching him set his keys in the little metal tray you bought at a street market while half the world is deciding whether he loves you.
He looks at the folded laundry. “You didn’t have to do mine.”
“I was already doing laundry,” you say. A nothing sentence. A nothing answer.
Levi has never needed much to read a room. It’s one of the things that makes him terrifying on the field, the ability to see an opening before anyone else knows it exists, but now you hate how quickly he notices just how nervous you are, how his eyes are glued onto your hands keeping busy with a pair of socks that have already been folded.
He walks closer but stops before he reaches the couch, as if an invisible line has appeared between you. He doesn’t know whether crossing it would be comfort or trespass.
“You saw the statement?” he asks.
“Your PR manager’s?”
“Yeah.”
“I saw it.”
“It says the rumor is false.”
“I know.”
“It says I was assisting a family member of a teammate.”
“I know.”
“It says—”
“Levi,” you interrupt, and he stops. He looks at you with glassy eyes. “I believe you.”
He furrows his eyebrows. “Then what’s the problem?” The words don’t land right. You can see the second he knows it, but your hurt is faster than his regret.
“The problem is that everyone is talking about me like I can’t see what they’re saying,” you say, standing so quickly that one of the folded shirts slides off your lap and onto the floor.
“I told them it was bullshit,” he says.
“You told them you didn’t cheat.”
“Because I didn’t.”
“I know that.”
“Then what else do you want me to say?”
You laugh again, this time with too much pain in it. You’ve spent too much of the afternoon reading strangers comparing your body to another woman’s and your personality to a blank wall. “I don’t know, Levi, maybe something about the fact that people are calling me stupid and ugly. Maybe something about the fact that they’re blaming me because you had a mediocre game last week. Maybe something about the fact that now my name is trending for the wrong reasons. I didn’t ask to be in this scandal.”
“I didn’t want to make it worse,” he says.
“For who?”
“For you.”
“And you think that’s your decision to make alone?”
Levi looks away first, down toward the shirt on the floor. He bends to pick it up, almost careful in the way he moves close to you. Guilt crawls up your throat. You love him. You know him. You know he’s able to protect people he loves from pain.
“I’m trying,” he says.
“I know.”
“You keep saying that, but it doesn’t sound like you do.”
“And it doesn’t feel like you’re listening.”
That one hurts him. You see it before he hides it. In this moment, you’re nothing more than two people who are standing on opposite sides of the same wound, both bleeding, both too proud or frightened or exhautsed to move first.
That night, you sleep in the guest room. Levi doesn’t argue when you take your pillow from the bed, though he stands in the doorway with his arms at his sides and watches you like he wants to tell you to stop, to stay, to tell you he doesn’t want you to be apart from him, even for a night.
You lie awake for hours. On the other side of the wall, Levi does too. You eventually hear him wander into the kitchen. You hear the floor creaking, the sound of water running, the opening and closing of a cabinet. You imagine him making tea you know he won’t drink right now, staring at nothing because he’d rather be angry than afraid.
You don’t want to admit to him you’re afraid too.
.
The next match comes three days later. You watch from home. You don’t want to be a distraction—that’s what you tell yourself. But you truly can’t bear the thought of cameras finding your face in the stands, can’t bear commentators saying your name, can’t bear thousands of people pausing the broadcast to decide whether you look heartbroken enough, loyal enough, pretty enough, strong enough. So you sit on the couch in one of Levi’s old shirts and watch him walk onto the pitch.
The match goes badly almost from the beginning. You can tell within minutes that something is wrong. A pass goes wide. He mistimes a run he would normally make in his sleep. Then, in the second half, he misses a shot he would have easily made, and the commentator says, as if pretending not to enjoy the car crash, “You do wonder whether the off-field noise has followed Ackerman onto the field tonight.”
Later, he snaps into a tackle too aggressively and gets booked, yellow card lifted above the referee’s head while the camera zooms in on Levi’s face, all anger and dark eyes. By full-time, he’s walking off with his head slightly lowered, and you can already feel the internet sharpening its claws.
And because you can’t help it, you look.
she ruined him hahahaha
imagine playing like that after your girlfriend forgives you for cheating.
Bro has been washed since getting into that relationship.
maybe if she showed up, he’d remember how to score.
good thing she’s not there. she’s bad luck.
You set the phone down as if it burned you. When the game ends, the broadcast cuts to a post-match panel where three men discuss Levi’s “mental distraction,” as if he’s not a human being but just a broken machine they’re watching malfunctioning.
You want to comfort him. Even though you’re humiliated and your pride is hurt, the wanting comes so fast that it scares you. Your heart still reaches for him, even now. You pick up your phone, open your messages with him, and type:
Are you okay?
You stare at it. You imagine him reading it in the locker room, still sweaty, still angry, surrounded by teammates and staff, and you imagine him looking at your message and either throwing his phone down or fighting back tears. You shake the thought and delete the message. Then you sit there with your empty hands, feeling worse than before.
.
Levi doesn’t come home after the match. At ten thirty-seven, your phone buzzes. It’s not him. It’s Erwin.
He’s with me. He didn’t want to make things harder for you tonight.
You know why he made that decision. You can already picture him sitting in the passenger seat of Erwin’s car, refusing to look at his phone, deciding that absence is kindness because his presence has become complicated. Love is sometimes best proven by removing himself from the room before he becomes another burden, in his eyes. It’s so him, but it’s so wrong.
The house feels enormous without him. His teacup is still by the sink, rinsed but not washed. His running shoes are still near the door. His black scarf is thrown over the back of a chair, and when you touch it, you nearly tear up at how cold it is.
You go to the bedroom, but you don’t sleep.
Across the city, Levi sits in Erwin’s spare room. He hates himself. He catalogues every mistake from the match, every misplaced pass, every headline he’s dragged to your door, every comment he can’t erase. He’s angry at the press. Angry at the fans. Angry at the photographers who came too close to Erwin’s sister. But mostly, though he would rather bite through his own tongue than admit it out loud, he’s angry at himself.
He can defend a ball under pressure from three defenders, can read an entire field in a second, can turn a hostile stadium into background noise, and yet, he can’t figure out how to stand between you and the public.
Your phone rings just after midnight. It’s Levi. Your thumb hovers over the screen. In the space of one ring, you think of the articles, the comments, his empty side of the bed, his face after every missed shot, Erwin’s message, his jacket around another woman’s shoulders, his habit of handing you tea while you’re editing photos, his mouth on your forehead on mornings when he leaves before dawn, his gentle whispers to you when he thinks you’re asleep.
You answer. Silence falls between you for a moment. Then Levi says, “You awake?”
It’s such a stupid question that you almost laugh. “Yes.”
Another pause.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he says. He breathes in, and you feel the rawness of the guilt coursing through him just through the shakiness of his breath. “I can take them saying shit about me. I’ve had worse. But they’re saying things about you because of me.”
You close your eyes. The anger you’ve been carrying all day weakens just slightly, not disappearing completely, but softening enough that you don’t feel it pulsing through your veins anymore like a second heartbeat.
“Levi—”
“I thought you needed space,” he says. “I thought being there was making it worse.”
“You leaving made it worse.” He goes quiet. You sit up slowly, pushing the blanket away from your legs. “You didn’t have to leave. I didn’t need that.” Your voice trembles, which annoys you, but you keep going because if you don’t say this now, you’re afraid you’ll both keep mistaking silence for mercy. “I need you to be on my side.”
“I’m always on your side.”
“Then come home.”
The knock comes twenty minutes later. You know because you spend every one of them standing in the living room, sitting down, standing again, checking the time, hating that you checked, then pacing to the window when headlights pass across the ceiling.
When you open the door, Levi is there in a dark shirt and wrinkled joggers. He looks so tired that for a second, all of the ugliness from the last few days becomes small, and all that you can think of is how worried you are for his mental wellbeing. He looks completely destroyed.
He swallows, then says your name. The sound nearly breaks you. You step aside. He comes in, takes off his shoes, hangs his jacket over the back of a chair, then washes his hands because he’s still Levi. You make a sound that might be between a laugh and a cry. He turns from the sink.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” you say, wiping one eye with the heel of your hand. “You’re just ridiculous.”
“I’m just washing my hands.”
“Exactly.”
“People should do that more—”
“I know, Levi.”
You both end up sitting on the living room floor, backs against the couch, because the kitchen table feels too much like an interrogation, the bedroom feels too intimate for right now, and the couch feels too casual for what’s sitting between you right now. The floor is neutral enough territory for the both of you. He sits close, but not touching. You notice.
“I never thought you cheated,” you say. “Not for a second.”
His throat bobs. “I know.”
“No, I need you to really understand that. That wasn’t why I was upset.”
His gaze drops to his hands, loosely clasped between his knees. “I understand that now.”
You exhale slowly, looking toward the dark television screen, where both of you are faintly reflected side by side. “It was seeing everyone talk about me like they knew me. Like I was stupid or pathetic or some boring placeholder you were going to get rid of. And then seeing people comparing me to her—a-and she didn’t do anything wrong either but she was dragged into this. I just—I felt humiliated.”
Levi’s hands tense. You keep going before he can turn that anger outward and miss the point again.
“And I know our lives aren’t private. I know your life isn’t private the way mine still is. But I’m not built like you, Vi. I don’t have a PR manager. I don’t have a team. I don’t have a locker room to disappear into. I’m just me, and suddenly my face is online and people are deciding what kind of woman I am because of one stupid photo.”
“You shouldn’t have to be built like me,” he says. You look at him. He’s staring down at his hands. “I thought if I said too much, they’d just go after you harder. The internet is a vulture. A leech. If I made it personal, if I said your name, if I looked angry or desperate for control, they’d dig. Find your work, your clients, your family. I thought shutting it down through PR would keep you out of it.”
“Why did you make that decision without me?” He’s silent. “You left without asking me.” You exhale sharply. “You keep trying to protect me by making choices for me, and then you leave me alone with the consequences. Do you understand what that does to me?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. No defense, no explanation, just that. You swallow.
“I’m sorry too.” He looks up at you. “For shutting you out. For expecting you to know what I needed when I didn’t know how to say it. For not texting after the match when I knew you needed it.”
He frowns slightly at the mention of it. The game is still sitting under his skin, a deepening bruise. “You watched?”
“Of course I watched.”
“I played like shit.”
“You were hurting.”
“I’m not supposed to.”
“Because professional athletes famously stop being human once they sign a contract?”
He gives you a flat look. You give it right back. Eventually, he looks away first, which you count as a victory because you’re petty and wounded and still in love.
“I hated that you weren’t there,” he admits.
“I hated not being there,” you say.
“But I didn’t want cameras on you.”
“I didn’t want that either.” You shift a little closer. His eyes come back to you. “We need rules.”
“Rules?”
“Agreements. Whatever. It’s better than both of us guessing wrong and hurting each other.” Levi nods. “No reading comments alone.”
He furrows his eyebrows. “No reading them at all would be better.”
“I’m a person, Lee. Not a saint.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
You nudge his knee with yours. His gaze drops to where your legs touch, then returns to your face. You half-smile. “No comments alone,” you repeat. “If one of us spirals, we tell the other.”
“Fine.”
“And if people attack me, you tell them to leave me out of it. Don’t just deny the rumor.”
“I should’ve done that already.”
“Yes.”
“I will.”
“And stop making decisions ‘for my own good’ without asking me first.” He nods. “I mean it. Space is different when I ask for it. It feels like I don’t have a choice when you leave because you just assume I’m better without you.”
“You always get a choice.”
“Then let me have it.”
“I will.”
You breathe in slowly. “And I’ll tell you when I need comfort instead of space. Or space instead of comfort. Even if I’m embarrassed. Even if I don’t know how to say it perfectly.”
“You don’t have to say it perfectly.”
“Neither do you.” His mouth presses into a thin line. “Levi.” He looks at you. “You’re allowed to be hurt too.”
For a long moment, he says nothing, just shifts slightly and sighs. Then, very quietly, he says, “I don’t like what it does to you.”
“I don’t like what it does to you either.”
“They blamed you for the match.”
“They blamed me because they’re all idiots and have no one else to blame.”
“Was that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No, that was me being bitter.”
“Good. I was worried.”
You laugh, and Levi’s face eases as he watches you. Through the guilt, through the exhaustion, something tender moves through him. He reaches for your hand slowly. You don’t pull away. His fingers slide between yours, the first reach touch after days of distance. You look down, blinking hard. It’s scary how a hand can feel like home even when home has been hurting.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. You squeeze his hand. “I love you.”
You feel your chest practically cave in. Levi rarely ever says those words. He says them in gestures instead, in breakfast served in bed, in laundry he folds himself when you’re too tired to do it, in pastries and desserts he brings home after he’s been gone all day. For all the world has tried to make a spectacle of him, of you, of the life you’ve built together, this part is still yours.
“I love you too,” you whisper.
He leans in slowly, and you meet him halfway, your lips making contact softly. His mouth brushes against yours once, then again, a question asked twice because the answer matters. When you lift your free hand to his cheek, his breath catches so quietly you feel it more than hear it. He kisses you like he’s coming home—or maybe like he’s asking whether he still can.
You answer by staying.
.
The next morning, you wake in your own bed with Levi’s arm around you and sunlight slipping through the curtains, gold spread across the sheets. You don’t move at first, just breathing and living in the quiet.
Behind you, Levi mutters, “You’re awake.”
“You’ve been awake longer,” you say.
“You were drooling on my arm.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
“And you didn’t move me off?”
He pauses, then answers, voice rough with sleep, “Didn’t want to.” You stare at the wall and feel a smile creep onto your face before you can stop it. He scoffs. “Don’t start now.”
“I’m not starting anything. Who’s starting?”
“You are.”
“You’re so bad at this.”
“Don’t make me regret coming back here.”
You turn in his arms. His hair is an absolute mess, strands sticking out everywhere. His face is bare and tired. You hate the public and press all over again for ever believing they could understand Levi from a photograph.
Then his stomach growls. Loudly. You blink. He stares back, expression blank.
“Was that you?” you ask.
“No.”
“There’s only two people in this room.”
“Then it was you.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I gathered.”
So he makes breakfast. Technically, he makes tea and toast that’s slightly darker than intended and eggs that are slightly overdone. You sit at the kitchen counter island dressed in his shirt, watching him move around the kitchen.
Then your phone buzzes beside you. You glance at it warily.
“Don’t,” Levi says.
“It might be work.”
“It’s not.”
“You don’t know that,” you say, glaring at him. He answers by sliding a mug of coffee in front of you.
“Drink.”
“Still bossy in the mornings.”
“I’m bossy all the time.”
“True.”
Your phone buzzes again. This time, Levi reaches into his pocket and takes out his own. Something about the way he looks at the screen makes you straighten your spine.
“What?” He hesitates, not for long, but long enough. “What did you do?”
“I posted something,” he says.
You reach for your phone before he can stop you. When you open his profile, there it is at the top of his page, the pinned post, plain white text on a black background, no logo, no PR formatting, no professionalism.
The rumors are false. More importantly, the comments directed at my partner are disgusting. Leave her out of it.
You read it again, then again. It’s nowhere near professional or poetic or even lengthy. No one would look at this and swoon over romance and boyfriend behavior, or maybe someone will, who knows. But it’s not that that makes your heart beat faster. It’s the fact he said it. Not his manager. Not the club. Him. Levi, who hates exposing himself and his vulnerabilities to the public, who treats cameras and paparazzi like pests and interviews like torture, has stepped into the spotlight and drawn a line with your name behind him, protected.
When you look up, he’s watching you like he’s braced for impact. “I can delete it,” he says.
You laugh, and it breaks in the middle. “No, you idiot. I…” You wipe your eye quickly, annoyed by the tears. “I needed this.”
His face changes. The relief is subtle, but you see it, feel it, and love him for trying not to show too much and failing just enough. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He looks down at his tea. “I should’ve done it sooner.”
“Probably.” His mouth twitches. You reach across the counter island and take his hand, which he lifts to reach for yours. “But you did it.”
His thumb moves over your knuckles once, then again, and then the quiet stretches between you, no longer empty. After a while, Levi says, “Next match is Friday.”
“Mhm.”
“You don’t have to come.” You look at him. He holds your gaze, serious now. “If you want to watch from home, watch from home. If you want to come, come. If you want to skip it completely, I’ll live.”
“Will you?”
He exhales through his nose. “Probably.”
You take a sip of coffee to hide your smile. “I might come.”
“Might?”
“Might,” you say, setting the mug down. “But only if you play better, because I refuse to get blamed for another disaster.”
Levi stares at you for one full second, then says, dry as dust, “How motivational.”
“I try my best.”
“Honestly, it was closer to a threat.”
“Motivation wears many faces.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You love me.”
His expression softens before he can stop it. He comes around the counter, and when he bends to kiss you, one hand braces lightly against the back of your chair, the other cupping your cheek. You feel the smile he tries to hide against your mouth.
“Friday, then?” he murmurs.
You brush your thumb along his jaw.
“Maybe.”
He squints at you. You laugh and kiss him before he can complain, and this time, when he sighs against your mouth, the sound is almost peaceful. You don’t know what the next headline will say, or whether the next match will hurt, or how many times the world will try to make your love feel like public property, but Levi looks at you like he’s ready to choose you out loud every single time.
The world can keep talking if it wants to; here, you have everything that matters.
pop health science is so annoying bc it'll be like "did you know? eating strawberries will give you mega cancer" and you're like pfft whatever begone influencer. but sometimes then you'll see a reasonably credible article like "Study Shows Possible Link Between Strawberries and Mega Cancer" and you're not usually the type to follow that kind of thing religiously but idk maybe you should consider not eating strawberries? but then there's another article saying "Strawberry/Mega Cancer Study Debunked" and it turns out the original study had a sample size of 3 and was funded by Big Blueberry, and strawberries may have a small connection to mega cancer but only if you are genetically predisposed to mega cancer and eat 50 strawberries every day. so you return to your strawberry eating life. but whenever you eat strawberries in public someone tells you about the mega cancer.
tags: very mild hurt/comfort?, gn!reader
1100 words
If there is one thing Levi doesn’t do, it’s hover.
People like Hange had always been better at comforting others. Or Erwin, with his knack for always saying the right thing. They were always the first to come to someone’s side as a shoulder to cry on or a willing ear. Interfering with that system seemed like a bad idea, particularly since Levi was neither good at comforting people or always saying the right thing.
So he feels completely out of his element when you walk through the front door and make a beeline for the bedroom without so much as a hello.
At first, he thinks that maybe he’s just missed your greeting over the sound of the sink. That maybe you are eager to get changed into something comfortable after a long day of work and would join him in the kitchen.
But when a few minutes turns into fifteen and you haven’t shown up, he starts to wonder where you’ve gone. The shower isn’t running—that much he can tell when he shuts off the faucet—and there’s a distinct lack of movement that he’s come to recognize as the sound of your footsteps.
The entire apartment is so quiet that even the shuffle of his feet on the way to the bedroom feels too loud.
When he finds you, you’re curled onto your side in the dark, facing away from the door. If he didn’t know you so well, he’d assume you were asleep. But your shoulders are tense, and a small, almost imperceptible twitch in them tells him that you’ve heard his approach.
But he doesn’t cross the threshold, torn between concern and the realization that you likely would have called for him if you wanted his company. He thinks of what Hange might do (barge in and fawn at your side) and immediately dismisses it. He’ll have to think of something else.
So he waits in the open doorway, staring at the back of your head like it might give him the answer to his problem. Would you want him to sit at your side? To pull you close? Should he ask what’s bothering you or distract you?
Okay, so maybe he hovers a little.
Failing to come up with a solution, he finally asks, “Everything okay?”
You roll over slowly to face him like your limbs are made of lead.
“Yeah.” Your voice is thin and lifeless. “M’just tired.”
In the dim light from the hall, he can see that you’re still in your day clothes, but at least you’ve had the decency to remove your shoes before climbing into bed.
Still, something about it irks him. You don’t ever lie around in regular clothes.
“Do you want me to get you something to sleep in?”
For a moment, he’s graced with a small upward curve of your mouth but it isn’t mirrored in your eyes. “No, it’s okay.”
You don’t ask him to stay or go, so he struggles with which to do. If it were anyone else, it wouldn’t be such an issue, but the absence of your usual bright and bubbly self is concerning.
Maybe you want him to make the decision.
He pushes off of the door frame. “I’ll be right back.”
He returns to the kitchen with an idea.
When he was a kid and he wasn’t feeling well, his mom would always make a casserole. It was cheap and quick—not necessarily the highest quality meal—but he’s come to associate the dish with comfort. So he does what he can in lieu of words and gets to work. Knowing your eating habits, you’re likely starving and either too worried about inconveniencing him to admit it or haven’t realized yet just how long it's been since your last meal.
It doesn’t take long before he’s returning to the bedroom carrying two hot mugs of tea.
You haven’t moved from your spot on the bed, but your clothes have been discarded in favor of a hoodie he wore earlier. He can see the pile of your things on the floor, and while he feels the urge to huff at the mess, he keeps the comment to himself just this once. You can (and likely will) get it in the morning.
“Are we stealing clothes now?” he asks, walking over to place one of the mugs on your bedside table.
Another barely-there grin curls over the corners of your mouth. “What’s yours is mine.”
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” he replies, “It’s ‘what’s mine is yours’.”
“That’s what I just said.”
You don’t shift or say anything else as he returns to his side of the bed. At least not until he’s sat his own mug down and climbed in next to you.
You watch him as if surprised. “What are you doing?”
He turns toward you. “Laying with you.” There’s a beat before he asks, “Is that okay?”
Instead of saying anything, you nod and he settles in, close but not quite touching you. Giving you space if you need it, but an opportunity to get closer if you want it.
Eventually, the desire to be close to him seems to override everything else.
Levi waits as you get closer, allowing you to get comfortable against his side before closing an arm around your back. You form together like two snug puzzle pieces.
Once you’re settled, you sigh like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders, and Levi smiles to himself.
It’s nice. Levi allows the silence to continue, busying himself with a gentle massage to your scalp with his fingertips, and the only noise in the room is the slow sound of your breathing.
But eventually, he has to speak.
“Are you hungry?”
You think about it for a moment before replying, “I think?”
Levi stretches as far as your position will allow to glance at the clock. “Well, dinner is in the oven. It’ll be done in about twenty minutes.”
That gives you some time to decide at least.
You squeeze his torso slightly, a silent thank you he thinks, and he responds with a squeeze of his own around your shoulders.
You laugh lightly and burrow your face into his chest. Already he can feel your limbs beginning to relax a bit more. There’s more energy to your tone when you insist, “Just a few more minutes. I don’t want to move.”
His fingers return to the slow massaging motion to your scalp. Maybe he’ll ask you about it over dinner, but for now he’s content to wait however long you need.
Content: Levi x Reader, modern AU, insecure reader, fluff
Word count: ~370
"Why do you do that?" Levi asks you that day.
"Do what?"
"Say sorry all the time."
You blink, teeth catching at your lower lip as you stare at your boyfriend.
The two of you are sitting side by side under an old oak, its emerald leaves rustling overhead. A handful of sparrows hop through the sunlit grass just beyond your feet, pecking at invisible things.
Why do you say sorry all the time?
"I, uh…"
Levi reaches over, removing a ladybug crawling up your shirt. The touch lingers just enough to make you go still. You look at him—really look—at the quiet way he waits for you to find your words, gray deep-set eyes never leaving you.
"Sorry, is it… annoying?" The apology slips out before you can bite it back. You grimace, heat rising to your neck. "I... I can stop."
Levi just looks at you for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
Then he pinches your cheek gently, calloused thumb smoothing over the spot after. "No."
"But—"
"Quit it." Levi's voice is firm but not unkind. "Stop overthinking every little gesture."
Your throat tightens. You can feel the bark of the tree through your shirt; it helps to distract from the discomfort rising in your body.
"Then… how do I know? How do I know I'm not just—" You swallow hard. "…annoying you by existing here?"
"We're in a relationship, dummy."
"So?"
Levi's gaze shifts to the grass, softening at the edges like worn denim. "Don't apologize. If you're unsure, ask."
"Okay…"
"Go on. Try it."
"What?"
"Ask me a question."
"You want me to practice and ask you a question? Isn't that… I don't know, weird?"
"Who gives a damn?"
Right. Ever direct, your boyfriend.
You manage a small smile at that, feeling the shaky release of something in your chest you didn't realize you were holding onto. "Levi… could, I, um…"
Levi arches a brow, waiting. A sparrow nearby screeches, but you ignore it.
"… Can I kiss you?" you mumble quickly.
A soft scoff escapes him. "Tch. Shot myself in the foot with that one, didn't I?"
But Levi's mouth is already on yours before you can answer—warm and self-assured in the way you need him most.
MRI machines and cooling units and AC and IT systems in hospitals are breaking due to the heat. Lab equipment is failing. Some cancer treatments cannot be done due to machine failures. A&E overcrowding is worse due to heat related health issues and sheer amount of people is making the heat in hospitals worse (and the AC! Is breaking!) Patients with appointments are being advised to bring in "a lot" of water with them to be able to safely attend. Fans cannot be used in hospitals. Norwich has no functuoning MRI scanners right now. And the staff have to keep working through all of this, they are getting ill and sleep deprived which is compounding issues further. This is not normal 👍
there's something so possessive about secret dating to me... like you're mine you're so mine and you have to pretend its not happening when other people are around but i know exactlyyyy whose bed you're going to at night and its Mine
snowghoul
origamiaround
pixelskylines
titsay
izzy806
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
sugurugetos
