- as an adult, often gentle touches feel like he’s being touched for the first time. he - though very rarely - tried to treat victims in the underground like isabel with the same care his mother had for him, but he realizes that it never translated if this is the way it actually feels when you touch him.
- he doesn’t really feel like he’s made to be treated gently.
- typically, Levi has an enormous aversion to being touched. it’s instantly overstimulating… because he’s simply unaccustomed to it.
- 🚨LOVES HIS HAIR BEING PLAYED WITH🚨nothing makes him melt into your arms faster. or calms him down, honestly. there’s nothing like stroking levi’s hair in the dark because *you only suspect* he’s had a nightmare, the only indication being his unsteady breathing.
- i have a theory that Levi runs very warm because he’s an ackerman (and ackermans were created from titan science), so he’s a very reliable heater. now he doesn’t sleep well, and he particularly doesn’t care for beds, but he is glad to be your personal space heater.
- and he really gets into cuddling. like to an extent that embarrasses him inside. (in modern au, your laptop in bed is his enemy.)
- you won’t catch him dead initiating touch. it takes sometime in a relationship with you to gain… not exactly confidence, but the willingness, to reach out.
- Levi devotes great thought to seemingly mundane things, partly because it’s novel to him. like your hand moving over his own. just what it is to feel so safe, holding hands, at the place where he’s dealt the most harm to others. he has small palms and long fingers, and the skin is hard and callous. there are scars. it feels like his hands are dirty, which is part of his reservations about connecting in general.
- yeah holding hands feels like a big step for him.
- he’s ticklish. (yikes i’ve made more than one post on this topic.) not easily ticklish mind you, but once you find the spot, it’s all over. there’s a spot just beside his hip that’s not quite his navel and he turns into a demon when you tickle it because he’d start laughing otherwise.
- this is likely only a scenario i get a lot of joy out of, but it amuses him if you get a kick out of play-wrestling. not just because you’re laughing while “fighting”, or the fact that he can easily fold you into a pretzel but acts on the defensive most of the time - there’s something about fighting feeling like affection that endears him to you a large amount. he also lets you win a lot.
- it’s sooo easy to turn him on, don’t even get me started. touching his waist… caressing his neck up towards his jaw… thinking you’re sneaky by grabbing his thigh when he’s distracted just as a joke, yet… ;))
i have too many nsfw thoughts and it needs to be its own post hhh
You ushered your horse into a gallop, slightly past Levi on his own horse, battling the breeze.
“Who’s competitive?”
“You are so competitive!” you scoffed, laughing as the breeze whipped past your ears.
He ignored you, predictably.
“I could’ve killed at least one! There were six!”
He tutted. The whipping wind ruffled his hair and made him squint. “Good to hear you know how to count!”
You scoffed loudly. Still, having a silly argument like this was better than ruminating on the losses suffered by the rear support squad. If the Titans had stabbed into the formation any deeper, the supply squads would’ve been at stake, and Levi Squad would’ve had to act anyway. You were sure Eld would be glad to give the reins back to Levi again.
Your focus pinpointed back on the eastern horizon and the majestic expanse of green hills all around you. Long slopes as if a god had drawn its fingers through the land when the earth was still forming. It was near the peak of the sunny afternoon when it was at its highest, and made the colors of nature more vibrant for it. Scarcely a puff of cloud had tried to form overhead. A natural embankment over a muddy, shallow ravine was coming up which you’d follow to rejoin your squad.
“Fine, then I’m going ahead of you,” you challenged. “You’re not as fast on horseback.”
“Don’t you know when to goof off?”
“You were the one complaining about the lack of Titans before. It’s bad luck!”
“Luck isn’t important if I aim to survive. The shit runs out anyway. Good job back there.”
You rolled your eyes. “An attitude like that, you might not make it back,” you snorted.
You rode in silence for the next few minutes. Again, your thoughts turned back to the squad. You wondered how Eld was holding up, and whether they had run into any Titans in the time you’d been gone. Well, you would’ve spotted a smoke signal by now.
Either you’d woken it up or it had been crouching in the lowlands in wait, a monster as tenacious as it was repulsive. And horrifying.
Six meters, you instinctively registered. No—twelve at full height. As tall as a bell tower.
Just as soon as Levi yelled your name, the Abnormal flung itself with a behemothic roar, separating you both as irrevocably as bleaching a shadow.
Your horse cried out before the earth gave way to a heavy spinning downslope of heavy brown mud. And you kept going, violently crashing.
The world waved, the ground continuing to lurch under your body rolling out of control. Eventually you could no longer hear your horse, just the crumbling of the earth, and after that, you heard no more.
You abruptly woke up to an explosion of pain ravaging your head, and darkness. A darkness so oppressive it was a horse of nature unto itself, not merely a lack of light.
You groaned in misery, forehead pressed to too-warm rock as you regained your bearings. Your ODM gear mashed against your hips when falling—you could already feel the bruise. By some divine stroke of luck though, you weren’t dead. And, you could move.
Your slew of thoughts instantly fled to Levi. Was he alright?—Did he get caught in it too? The darkest possibilities made your blood run cold.
Memory of your last conversation glared at you. The last stupid quip you might’ve ever said was he might not make it back if he kept complaining. It was so stupid. Your eyes welled up with bitter tears of frustration, coalescing your other various aches and pains.
Have to get out of here…
In the abysmal darkness, a formidable groaning began to rouse within the earth above you. It sounded like thunder belonging to black skies, a storm charging closer and closer.
You raised your head with teeth gritted as you reeled from the utter darkness. The earth rumbled above you, grains of rock and dust trickling from the ceiling. Maybe Levi was fighting it?—
No… that wouldn’t make sense. You’d fallen, right?
That could only mean that the Titan was falling after you. Clumsily, but it’d be down here with you soon.
Grasping your head, you pushed yourself arduously to your feet, and almost went crashing down.
Clearly haven’t regained all my faculties yet.
Levi.
Bone-dry grit crackled under the scrape of your boots as you backed toward a wall that might exist. This was stupid when you couldn’t even see your own hand in front of your face.
Mud smeared across your fingers as you reached inside your belt. You and Levi had just been preparing to set off a flare to alert the rest of the formation of your location. That had to be luck like he said, but you’d use it now.
Your hand closed around the grip. With a solid kick, green smoke exploded over your head in front of you, offering a virid phantom of green light.
Nonetheless, the world regained shapes and textures. The cavern was grossly enormous, while the “entrance” in the ceiling you rammed through led back out only to darkness like a brutalized wound on the earth.
The key lied ahead of you. A sharp decline in the floor revealed itself as a cliff about a story high. Hulking slices of rock extended into it. As the light faded, the encroaching darkness made the water appear like foul oil. You shot off another flare at the low ceiling, casting another sharp green glow.
The Titan was so near now that you couldn’t hear yourself think. This was all you had.
Your flare gun was done after this.
Fuck.
The cold was astonishing. Your mind staggered as it coated your entire body in daggers. You could’ve gasped hadn’t you been floundering within its icy clutches.
A great force exploded from behind you, rocketing you forward and partially through the tunnel you found yourself in. Any proof of what was up versus down only appeared out of the aether when you swam hard in one direction.
It was either the bottom, or the tunnel was filled with water, but Titan wasn’t giving up on eating you anytime soon—if you could find an air pocket, you might just live through this for a while.
You practically shoved yourself through the icy tunnel of water, scuffing your hands along the unforgiving rock as you swam along searching for an escape. The pressure was starting to hurt your head, like ginger-ale foaming in your skull.
Your lungs screamed out in protest. Eventually, something had to give.
Suddenly nothing.
You lurched upwards, throwing your arms out for vantage and finding nothing. As you struggled to pull yourself up, you gasped the stale, cool ecstasy of air.
Your boots served you the vantage to swing yourself over—and it’s a mere shelf. A shelf of uneven rock was your refuge from a Titan’s mouth.
Panting, you shook your head to clear the stars and think as the trembling rock around you splashed you with more wet cold through the misshapen portal of water. It was fighting like hell to get to you.
Rock the size of your fists crumbled from the ceiling while you did all you could do—shield your head. All you could do was lay here. You lurched backwards you dodge a glimpse of pale beefy fingers.
That’s it. Your plan unfolded in your mind like heaving open the spine of a heavy book.
You waited.
Rock cracked and forebodingly lurched from deep inside under the Titan’s wailing fists. You felt each one in your chest. You were shaking, not just the cave, you realized.
And Levi’s face… just wouldn’t quit flashing in your mind. Why didn’t you ever say anything?—Or act? He would’ve understood your feelings. You had been scared every time you had the opportunity, and you were scared now, but it wasn’t the same at all.
Above you sounded like a wooden board breaking. With an enormous whoosh of air, a hulking burst of stone bluntly dropped from the ceiling, and the monster roared, the clamor of its voice deafening. It had crushed itself—if not mostly, then all except for its nape.
You stole the opportunity as soon as it showed itself, and dropped back into the water, pumping your limbs frantically to get away.
The lack of air was pressing on your head again when you finally resurfaced in the black place you’d found yourself in before. You sucked in a sharp gasp of stale, life-saving air at the surface. It pleasantly gripped your lungs.
Stiffly, you swam around the slight cliff. Even at the shallowest place where the water gnawed on your calves, you barely managed to haul yourself onto “dry land”.
If I take much longer, the formation is apt to leave me behind.
Shivering, the realization drained what hope trapping the Titan had inspired. Nobody could stop that, not even Levi in the end. Even if they sent a search party, what were the odds of finding you here?
You backed yourself up against the wall as if bracing yourself for the force of despair intent on overtaking you. It felt like you were sitting there shivering forever, exhausted.
You didn’t know you had succumbed to exhaustion until the sound of your ODM gear working woke you up, the high-pitched sing of the wires. Working ODM gear.
A tiny dot of light—you flinched. Light was as blinding as the sun to you by now. Someone was holding either a small torch or a large match, but either way, it was someone.
“Levi…”
He pivoted so quickly in the direction of your voice that the earth scraped before he paced over. Your heart clenched from guilt—and something else from his dauntless efforts to find you far below the earth’s surface.
It was hard to say whether his face was aggravated or worried until you heard him murmur your name and kneel down in front of you, grasping your shoulder. Your eyes were shut, it was so bright, but the mere knowledge that he was here was all the more a relief.
Levi was right in front of you.
“Hey,” he huffed. “You okay?”
You started to nod, blinking. He held the light a little away from his face now, the first thing you’d seen with any clarity in hours.
“Levi,” you breathed.
“Yeah.” The worry eased. “Can you stand on your own?”
“Yeah.”
He helped you to your feet, your muscles aching cold and stiff the whole way. All of your clothes were still heavy with water.
The match flicked on the floor. His hand pressed snugly to the side of your face, then the other. “You’re like an ice cube.”
You could scarcely get out another Yeah before you found yourself with his arms around you holding you tighter than anything.
It ended so quick that you almost couldn’t tell if it even happened.
“What happened to that Titan?”
You explained the whole morbid story. It was trapped, but you agreed with him: For how long?
“We can get a new jacket. This one’s water-logged.”
Levi helped you peel your sodden jacket off. It was a weight off your shoulders. You sighed.
He threw away a dying light to blink and fade on the cave floor, and lit a fresh match. “Now what we do next depends on whether Titans can drown. So?”
You blinked at the redness across his cheeks. “I wish we could ask Hange.”
“For once, I agree.”
Sheepishly you continued. “I didn’t mean to get separated before. You were right, I was being an idiot.”
After a pause… he rolled his eyes, and adjusted his footing. “It doesn’t matter now, even if it was on you to apologize. I’d wager that it’s not done trying to eat us as long as it lives, so we need to find a way out.”
Genius observation.
With a match pinched between his fingers to light your way, you and Levi walked the edge of the cave together—so as to not waste them—for any indicator whatsoever of somewhere that wasn’t here. A divot in the wall, maybe. If he wasn’t giving up, there was no way you were about to—as if Levi ever would.
“Make sure you’re listening. There might not be a way out we can see.”
Having become accustomed to the darkness, your hearing was piqued. You could even hear the Titan’s groans from here.
A few minutes in, you lagged behind. Levi took the opportunity to raise the match up to the mangled rock-wound in the ceiling where you fell.
“It’s a miracle you didn’t break your neck. You sure you’re good?”
“I just need a bath,” you sighed.
“Trust me… you’ll be getting a bath later.”
You hovered your ear over cold stone. It was almost like a… breathing, through hollow halls.
“Levi,” you spoke into the dark.
He came back looking exceptionally terse about your situation. This softened a little once you told him what you found. It had to be rushing water.
“Good. I’ll stay here. Light a match and see if you can find any other route out of here.”
“How do you do it?” you asked in a tentative voice. “I mean, how do you know what to do all the time?”
Levi furrowed his gaze and frowned. “…I—”
Your eyes widened in his direction. “Do you hear something else?”
He looked around skeptically, but remained quiet.
It resounded from below you. This was one of those noises easily mistaken for a falling tree if you weren’t underground. It escalated gradually, but grew more and more powerful, the earth croaking to enormous strength.
Your stomach grew a black pit. The Titan hadn’t given up—the Abnormal must’ve smelled you both—and it was going to find its way here eventually.
Ironically, a cave the size of an atrium like this one was a prime spot to use ODM gear: scaled walls, rock columns protruding from the ceiling and floor, and a ceiling of great height. None of this certainly failed to cross Levi’s mind.
He was also the only one between you with working ODM gear.
“It’s going to break through the floor, right!?”
Levi whipped his head around, looking for every possible advantage.
“I can be bait. That way its behavior will be easier to predict.”
“No.”
“There really doesn’t seem to be another choice!” you snapped.
“You’d be shitty bait! You’ll just get yourself killed!”
You stared daggers at him. Of course you’d simply be dead meat without a pair of ODM gear—no debates—but you refused to sit around and be useless in such a desperate situation.
“I’ll kick your ass if you even try.”
You intended to snap back that it’d help you get out of this, and throwing yourself in peril was a part of what devoting your heart meant, but by the look on his face only you could read, it would devastate him to relent. Because he would relent.
“Look!” He stomped forward and grasped your shoulder. “It’s already fucking unbelievable that you’re still alive through this. Don’t ask me why I know what I’m doing, because all I’m doing is playing it by ear! You’re the one with all the good ideas, so shut the hell up and hide for once!”
Your breath caught in your throat. “…Okay… fine. But one thing. Try to draw its attention that wall.” You pointed. “It’ll smash it trying to get to you. Maybe then we can find a way out.”
He nodded, once resolutely.
You made a B-line for a corner of the cave furthest from the shivering floor. Your heavy, sodden clothes didn’t make it easy, and chafed your skin like sandpaper. Hard stone greeted your back before you sank to the floor and condensed yourself as much as you could. Pebbles and grains stuck to your damp palms.
The darkness was nearly absolute—you dug in your jacket, hoping. A little light was better than nothing, if your flare gun could provide that.
With muscle memory, you loaded a cartridge, and shot it off at the ceiling. It produced a pathetic red glow, an ersatz of real light, but it was enough for the next minute if you were lucky.
He’d similarly gotten into position perched atop one of the pillars, swords drawn at his sides.
It seemed to take forever when you were doing nothing. When the floor split, cracks frantically creeped across the cave floor, webbing as they met each other. With an enormous flooding of water, the Titan absurdly emerged from it steaming, scratching, and wickedly howling. In this small space—compared to where Titans usually roamed—the noise grated on your ears. You felt it reverberate in your chest with horrific clarity; it shot adrenaline through you like pushing a knife into a vein.
Despite the absurdity of this cataclysm of a situation, watching Levi fight wasn’t unlike watching a bird of prey cut down a wolf with its claws. He cut through the air like a razor, and every slight movement possessed purpose.
The Titan threw out its arm, and only pounded the wall, causing sharp stone to burst forth from it, steam slinking from its contorted fist. Levi was too quick. He might be playing it by ear, but there was no more superior fighter—no one could hold a candle to him.
In one fell swoop, steam poured from the Titan’s neck like a broken fountain. With a foul strangled groan, it fell unceremoniously on its side like an old dog. It’d stopped moving entirely when Levi landed, no worse for wear, and approached your light.
“Good job,” you offered.
Huffing in what might’ve been amusement, he gave you his hand, which you took gratefully.
The Titan had struck the walls more than once as it fought, and your plan had worked. Levi had tricked it into breaking open the wall that separated this room from the stretch of rushing water.
“We have to swim,” you said, crossing the thin floodwater and stepping over stone wreckage, your light wisping gently. He joined you, almost at your heels, until you reached your only escape route off the edge of a shelf. It separated you both from an intimidating descent despite the slow current; it was going to be freezing.
You turned to him. “Who’s a better swimmer?” you asked, which to him was an extremely easy question.
His expression twisted into something of a grimace. “Odds aren’t in my favor.”
“What?” The moment you stared at him with growing mortification seemed to last minutes. “Can you swim?”
“We don’t have a choice, have you noticed?”
“Okay. Just”—you gestured squarely—“pump your arms and legs like you’re trying to push through the water. Warning, it’s going to be very cold.”
It’s a good thing, he thought, at least swimming didn’t seem that complicated when you explained it. All that was left after that was taking the leap… In a few ways, if you managed to live through this.
Plunging into the freezing water was fucking awe-inspiring. It was dark. He fucking hated being underground. And though he’d experienced worse pain, the threat of numbness, then paralysis, superseded his sense of even the cold. It was like getting thrown into a snow embankment but worse, because there was no breathing.
Fortunately your route was small, so it was hard to get separated. And thankfully, like he figured and hoped, after his first few attempts at pushing, he got the hang of swimming fairly quickly. It was the act of suffocating that would kill him before he drowned outright.
The cave system didn’t give you a plethora of options, plus there was no guarantee you’d be able to navigate to the rushing water from here, but frankly you were going to die anyway if you hadn’t acted. That was the truth that kept hammering on his mind, the truth he desperately needed to convince himself of before he started regretting.
In the expanse of cold, frigid water, something started to push against his side—a current. Immediately you seized the opportunity: a current meant it drained somewhere near an outside source.
At last, the water topped a tunnel that gave dry, thin air, but it was sparingly since no one wanted to hit their head on the rock ceiling. The current pushed harder. He tried not to waste his breath, and took merely one more pocket of air before submitting to it entirely, but not losing an inch of your hand doing it.
The constant push of water ended. It ended at an unsettling impasse, a corridor separating the water with unsecure, but heavy hunks of stone. It was just enough to force a current through without shifting them out of the way.
This was certain death in no more than a minute.
No—you were not dying here. There was still too much to do. Too much to do with you.
He kicked, hammering his boot against the stone. Every muscle movement executed felt arduous and hard-fought against the sheer mass of water. It was like another wall.
Could’ve used that Titan here right about now.
The current ironically hindered more than helped, doing little more than insist upon your bodies; he fought shallowly. Yet when his boot came down, the force ached his foot and sent shocking volts up his leg.
You were making leverage, but not enough. Stone cracked through the water like thick ice. His temples were starting to throb, and he could feel his breath escaping him. His head swam.
Suddenly, a sense of tranquility unlike anything else draped itself over his mind like a different form of water. Everything from the depths of his spirit, the life flowing through his blood, screamed.
All of a sudden, he knew exactly what to do.
Any potential move he could execute now laid itself bare, any manner of options, but there was all but one. It wasn’t optimal, but it was too exact to fail—he’d felt this sensation sweep across him so many times, he knew it to be true. All he had to do was submit to the power infinitely greater than himself, for its ability to try to control him.
He locked elbows with you, and swung around. The motion sent him charging with punishing force against what brittle integrity remained of the wall.
The bone inside his elbow broke immediately, but he barely felt it. The sound, the sharp crack of bone stood out as vividly as sunshine right now.
Then he bent his knees, and punctured the stone with firmly planted feet. The sound of stone crunching, almost airily as it broke, was astonishing, but there was no way to feel the relief before you were both stolen by the current.
It was a blinding, swirling trip flanked by being unforgivably ricocheted by stone. In the blackened, swirling air-deprived fugue, he knew every single impact would bruise, and he also protected you from every single impact, as best he could. Knowing you’d be exasperated at him made him try harder: if you drowned, he’d never hear you take that tone with him again, and he couldn’t accept that.
The current threw you both around a corner, and the force abruptly loosened like letting an arrow fly. The water slowed immensely, and you both immediately seized the gasp of air the opportunity supplied. It got knocked out of your lungs almost immediately when you slammed against Levi—you could only imagine how it felt for him—but then you took another. And another.
You barely noticed Levi’s hold on you until it tightened, and you heard his gruff voice. “It’s gonna spit us out up here.”
You tossed your head slightly. “Are you okay??”
“Don’t ask stupid questions…”
Exactly what he said happened, and with a slam of a wet descent, you were both thrust into a deep pool of water, your boots knocking hard against a muddy bottom.
You seized gulps of air, cringing. The cave was awash with dim grey light, and the air was strangely nowhere as cold as the water. You’d have to climb out over stone again, which would’ve been easy before all this started.
Levi had ended up nowhere near you.
“Over here,” he muttered. You knew immediately—something had happened to his arm. He “stood” as close to the lanky edge he could, the water up to his chin.
You fought your heavy uniform and the pain, waded over, and helped bring his unharmed arm over your shoulders. Closer-up, his face was twisted in an incessant grimace. Because of the darkness, his pale skin looked almost phosphorescent. His bangs, soaking wet, lie all the way over his forehead, accentuating the small sharp angles of his face.
Getting out was slow-going due to his arm. You could tell he hated every second of climbing over onto the dry, smooth rock. With one arm, he gripped your forearm and easily hefted you out of the water.
When you were both sat, and all that was left to do after all of that was catch your breath, Levi stared at you menacingly. “I didn’t need help.”
“You broke your arm.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty bummed about it too.”
You shook your head, scoffing.
Levi looked around dully, tired. “Well now what? We climb out? Yeah fucking right.”
“Can we real quick just be glad we survived that just now?”
“Yeah, it was great… first damn time swimming, and I only broke one arm.”
Your throat stubbornly formed a laugh. An incredulous one. “This is not funny.”
Levi felt in the heel of his boot, shockingly pulling out a small blade, which he gave you, then started peeling off his jacket. He grunted slightly as you maneuvered around his bad arm, but no one would’ve been able to tell that he was in pain.
You sat quietly as you cut it into rough strips from his jacket to brace his arm. It wasn’t optimal, but at least you had light.
“Think another flare would work?”
Numbly, you pulled the gun from your belt, and stood. You aimed it straight up at the opening near the ceiling. The slit was very long, but not very open.
When you turned, he was standing and glaring down at a compass. It was unnerving to see him injured.
“It looks like that river flowed west. There’s actually a good chance someone will see it.”
“Good luck, right?”
He trudged over beside you. The sense that something wasn’t being said that desperately clawed to be said was enough to choke.
“How many do you have left?”
“Four.”
He grunted. Then added, “Glad you’re alive.”
“Yeah, that could’ve been pretty bad.”
He rolled his eyes. “Tch.”
“You saved my life,” you said, trying to keep the reverence out of your voice. It was true—so basely, abjectly true that you couldn’t keep it out of your voice. You knew it embarrassed him, and you knew he did it for others every time you left the Walls, but the fragility of all that only came into perspective on days like today. Both your lives had been in deep jeopardy from the second of your first descent, because of course he wouldn’t have left you. If you had gotten Levi killed, you genuinely believed you’d go to some kind of hell for destroying humanity’s hope of ever killing all the Titans. Whether that was dramatic or an anxious fantasy, it was an enormous burden nonetheless…
“Don’t mention it.”
It was your turn to roll your eyes.
You frowned deeply at the floor for several seconds. “…Levi…”
A booming, “HEY!” snatched your attention up at the shelf pure with sunlight.
[I.D.: A digital illustration of Mithrun from Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon). Mithrun, dressed in a purple tunic, white tights, and brown boots, is lying on his side, displayed on a porcelain plate. His face is stained with dry tear streaks, and his visible eye is wide and watery. A pair of half-eaten strawberries, leaves, and chocolate chunks and cake crumbs are scattered around him. A trail of chocolate sauce smeared across the art piece leads to his stained stomach which he is clutching with one hand; his head partially sits in a puddle of the same substance. Unorganized dirty dining utensils, crumbs, and a chocolate-splattered plate decorate the corners of the piece. End I.D.]
『31.05.2025』
Helloo, here is a fanart of Mithrun inspired by the song “Bitter Choco Decoration” by Syudou. He’s one of my favorite characters from Dungeon Meshi, the other being Kabru :’)
I’ve had this idea floating around for quite a while now, and have been working on this piece bit by bit over the course of this year so far, and I’m quite happy with how it turned out c:
you're not turning your fandom hobby into a job are you? giving yourself deadlines and quotas that you have to meet? focusing on the numbers instead of your enjoyment of the act of creation?
you're not taking your love of something and using it as a tool to hurt yourself are you? loving it so hard that you forget to take care of yourself? telling yourself that people only care about you because of what you make and that they'll stop if you take a break? pushing yourself to work instead of rest so that the thing that used to give you joy and energy is now also burning you out, like everything else?
there are things Levi would do for you that he would do for no one else. in ways he’d let only you see. to use him the ways you want to—in the ways he needs you to.
Levi shut the door to your shared room like he was closing it in front of someone’s face. Even though you’d been expecting him, you snapped to attention.
As you put away the last clean piece of laundry, you took in the look of fresh hell on Levi’s face. He stared back at you.
Your stomach swirled with fresh anticipation as you fixed him a steady look. Today had gotten under his skin, that much was clear, not much different from how a lot of days have reduced him yesterday and today.
“‘Hello’ to you too. Bad day?”
He looked away dismissively, like he would rather be discussing death and dying. It ushered what you’d been planning, and looking forward to, into motion.
“Hm? What’re you doing in the doorway?”
He took a step away from it mildly, and gazed at you. He didn’t bother to behave like he came out of necessity, or even that he hadn’t been counting the hours down to the end of the day, with the seconds fixating on the present now. His mood didn’t reflect how long he’d been looking forward to it, but neither of you got into it like this when anything was good. That wouldn’t have suited it.
Nothing suits a scene for him except for an inclement and chasmic desperation, a need he couldn’t describe even if he asked himself. It couldn’t be satiated, then nothing would give. The idea of dealing with what he had for any longer the past few weeks made him want to do utterly nothing, which was a frightening headspace to be in for Levi.
One of the many burdens that gripped him was that he’s been thinking entirely too much.
A delicate chill ran through him when your fingertips suddenly brushed against his jaw, capturing his attention.
Everything regained a rightful place as you looked on him calmly, even impassively. Just standing on his own at this point felt pointless and unbearable.
His eyes fluttered as they flirted down his neck. You stopped precisely at the dip on the front of his shirt, telling without telling.
He crossed his arms, and laggardly pulled it off, over his head, with his heart growing to pound in the indeterminable length of time before and after he was made vulnerable.
While he folded it with superfluous care, you waited patiently. It annoyed him.
“You’re slow.”
His eyes widened. He let out a focused breath through his nose, scowled poisonously at your subtle reproach, and went to place it on the dresser. A part of him protested greatly to turning his back on you, the part that he couldn’t escape, the continued existence of which was now beyond agitating.
Subtle but firm hands found his shoulders once he put it down, making him tense. He couldn’t calm down. He felt it especially viscerally because he was unable to express it.
Your touch, steadfast, glided down the length of his arms, and guided them behind his back. There was no trace of resistance.
His fists ground into tight fists as cold metal skittered around his wrist.
As he struggled to breathe completely, you smoothed your hands down his shoulders, and stepped imposingly close to his ivory, muscular back. He didn’t stand on his own. You were alone together, but in the spirit of, he was alone with you.
You steered him around, almost humiliatingly so, walked him back to the center of the bedroom. Your voice penetrated his ear. “Kneel down.”
He lowered himself to his knees for you.
“Don’t look at me, look at the floor… That’s the way it’s going to be. It doesn’t matter how much you sneer, Levi.”
You returned behind him, and kneeled down at his level. You longed to touch the muscular expanse of his back, to smooth over his fingers—that were screwed into fists—or to see his expression in reaction to what you were going to do. Fortunately, there was a lot you longed to do to Levi.
He gasped shakily as you brushed his nipples, slowly, almost experimentally. He was as tense as iron, eyes trying to track you out of outrage, but the position was simply too strict for him to. As they grew stiff and hard, you cooed in his ear, almost moaning.
He hunched, making himself smaller, so you pinched. A shaky little ah betrayed him, but he squirmed sharply as you began rubbing the front of his pants with your other hand, as if his hard cock didn’t fit perfectly in it.
“Fuck you,” he spat quietly, hands squirming. The more he leaned to get away, the heavier you maneuvered straight on top of him. He fought, if with all the strength of someone who didn’t want to.
“Stop fighting it. Just let it happen.”
His cheek pressed to the wood under him. “I’m not doing this on the fucking nasty floor!”
“Uh-huh?”
“You’re disgusting.”
You squeezed his crotch. “And you’re so fucking hard.”
He attempted to beat your hand away, but it only succeeded in bullying your palm deeper between his legs.
He groaned heavily into his shoulder.
“You complain too fucking much, though. More of that.”
You leaned over him now, and pressed firmly against his ass. His pants were tight.
He made a quiet sound of indignation. “Go to hell.”
You hadn’t realized how much you needed this, and moaned softly, unable to resist. “What if I want to do whatever I want with you?”
It was when your hand enveloped his belt buckle that he struggled again, as though to roll out from underneath you. You felt up his deeply muscular middle and chest as he squirmed, squeezing indulgently, and running your hand through his hair which always relaxed him.
He cursed you again, lashing out the more you used him to grind against. When you got his belt free, you were making yourself pant and moan with your pointed, full thrusts as you held Levi’s hair to the floor.
Most of the core soldier rigidness was fleeing him. His face stuffed as much in his shoulder as he could, obfuscating soft sounds of pleasure. You tried panting in a whisper in order to hear them when you remembered how much control you possessed.
You opened his trousers, and roughly yanked them and his boxer briefs down his legs like he’d been doing something he shouldn’t have. They choked around his knees, but that barely deterred him.
You placed your palm on the nape of his neck as if you were training a dog to kneel, and charged your hips more roughly. Usually he hated being touched here—a reason you did it— because all his movements sagged and became sluggish. He hated it.
(You’d known how much he needed this because he’d told you to use it.)
Whatever it was, it temporarily made his head empty, his eyes glaze over. This small method relieved him of everything, even thinking. Levi was yours, and you had full possession over that fact. In your final passing sense of clarity, that rocketed you the rest of the way to orgasm.
“Oh fuck, Levi, good boy, fuck—”
Your hand swam again through his hair as you braced yourself on him and the floor. He groaned and shuddered. If your eyes weren’t tightly shut, you’d see Levi with his watery eyes pinched open covertly watching your face with his lip clamped between his teeth.
When you were spent, you nearly collapsed, still trembling. As the moments stretched out, and you recovered, it was almost… peaceful.
But you were more fulfilled when Levi was.
You sat up and divvied his legs, but he kneeled there and wouldn’t let you seperate them.
“Stop,” you stated, vacant of emotion. You reared your hand back and spanked him so hard that it seemed to nail hammer the command into him. He jerked and the impact even smarted your hand, but he stayed quiet.
It made you laugh a little. You slapped his tight ass again, and again then again, then again, watching satisfied as his pale skin slowly basked in red in the echoey shape of your hand; listening fixated as you earned a brittle gasp from a last slap.
You went to stand, but grabbed his ankle to see what he’d do this time. When he kicked out—not enough to do damage, but enough to knock you off—and glared bright daggers at you, you laughed again. You were enjoying the game. You picked his belt off the floor.
He stubbornly turned his face towards the floor and blindly kicked again as you approached. He was lowballing his strength, orchestrating an act. Acting out.
That should be put out of his mind immediately, and completely. You wanted to finish breaking him in so well that he forgot all about fighting and resisting. If he wanted you to, you’d break him.
You gave his hair a good yank, pulling his head to the side and out of hiding. At the same time, you dropped behind him and wrapped your arm around his chest, mockingly holding him against you as you finally got your hand around his cock, and pinched his hard, blushing nipples.
He shuddered thickly, his muscles visibly tightening as you worked the drooling tip of his cock with your palm. He’d already been dripping a shameful amount of precum, so he was easy, but he was getting easier. His cock throbbed. The side of his bitten lips looked wet, and the grimace on his face suddenly looked twisted out of pleasure rather than defiance. The occasional breathy moan danced around your mind, and the longer you touched him, strokes dragging, even consoling, the more his voice blessed your ears.
“Let me hear you. Now.”
Head hanging, he shook it from side to side. He moaned.
“That’s it… you’re so hard. why are you fighting me if it feels good?”
When you divvied your knee between his legs this time, his hips buckled. With that, you could spread his legs apart. Now you had all the room to touch him. To stroke him faster.
He sighed raggedly, a ghost of a whine high from his chest. He struggled not to move with your snug pumps, he really did. It hardly seemed to matter however, with the way you were touching him. Anticipation, no matter how unlikely it was, slithered into his belly, his balls clenched.
You slowed with your hand. It made him whine, then, pathetically start rutting slightly.
“You want off the floor?” you proposed, as he rutted harder. “I’ll put you in a chair so we can get started.”
You stopped.
“F-Fuck you,” he growled.
You shoved him down as if you gave very little thought or consideration either way—you rested your weight on him, smiled almost proudly at his weak indignity, and wrenched his hair to the side. Your faces were close. Most of his face was up to you with his fierce beauty, which never failed to grip you with profound adoration. Tears had caked on his lashes, bringing out the dazzling blues and greys of his glazed eyes.
Despite yourself, “You really thought I was gonna let you come? Like you deserve it?”
Your hand snugly returned to Levi’s nape, smoothing up and down, like a massage.
“Ah!!” He sank his nails in which uselessly scratched at his palms as a shudder gripped his entire body. His lips parted, peeking the bright whites of his canines. You kept going, but stroked him this time. His cock throbbed heavily as he wildly panted and bucked into it. It was apparent it felt too good to contain in his voice, rendering him silently sputtering as he smushed his forehead into the rug.
“Oh. Does that feel so good?”
“Ah… Fuck…”
You leaned overtop him to inspect his face more closely.
You saw the tears spilling down his face, squeezing out from shut eyes. They tipped on the floor.
Your lips formed to say the safeword outright.
“Don’t stop.”
You stopped but you considered him. You didn’t want to do what you just did again, even if every choice so far had simply accumulated in a pinnacle.
The more you recalled all of his reactions, the more you agreed with him. That was what he wanted from the beginning: to be forced into submission. He truly trusted you with everything in him.
Your hand slithered underneath him, feeling him again—he cried out—and his thick cock strained against the side of your hand. He was as hard as a rock.
Your hand crossed his cheek, on top of oven-warm rosy skin, and smeared the wetness across it. Like the shadow of a red rose in a glistening mirror of silver.
He cautiously cast his misty eyes up at you in time to see you licking it off your palm.
“You sick fuck,” he breathed. His cock twitched in your hand.
It wasn’t palatable, what you just did, but Levi getting off on it sparked fresh excitement inside you.
“Hm.”
Your hand came down hard on his ass again, instantly re-immersing him in a world of stinging pain that’d begrudgingly numbed. In fact pain sunk its talons in deeper than before. A fresh burst of stinging made him groan, and a bright handprint formed like scarlet. Once, and then again.
You spread some pre from his cock on your thumb, and spread his ass. As soon as you touched him, he whined and hitched forward, moving to get away from the sting and yet pushing back for more. A shiver ran through you at how tight he felt just from the outside.
You were hypnotized. He was so reactive to the exquisite fire of pain and pleasure together, stoking a barely-controlled flame inside you
“Agh, you’re so pretty, baby.”
You countered the genuine compliment by getting off of him. When he raised his head weakly, you planted his nape down so he fell on his side.
“Stay, you fucking dog.”
He shivered, and watched you with a blank fixation that was almost innocent. The urge to kiss him was downright overwhelming. You allowed a small kiss on his lips before getting up.
“And take off your fucking pants already, whore.”
You stepped out of your own pants, leaving only your underwear on.
What you were looking for had been waiting on the bed. It was pure silver metal. The iron bar was connected to small chains that tinged softly when you picked it up, along with the leather cuffs which hung slack. Next to it, a blindfold that was as red as fire. It felt smooth and silky when you picked it up.
“Put it on by yourself,” you said, and raised the spreader.
You raised a brow expectantly as Levi’s eyes widened.
“Fucking dumbass… How am I supposed to do that.”
You set down the bar at your feet, and stepped over it, towards him. You had an idea.
Key off the dresser in hand, you kneeled behind him and a moment later, there was a crisp release of metal. He scarcely moved his tender wrists, knowing better that whatever you had in mind wouldn’t go without severe punishment if he acted out. It was a dare, and a cruel one on your part.
You placed them both at the edge of the rug, then pulled Levi flat on his back, bent his knees, and hitched yourself on top of his thighs to pin him well in place. There was no shortage of ways he was exposed like this, demonstrated by his pinched expression, and there’d similarly be no shortage of humiliation soon.
“Put it on.” You offered the bar again. “You can do that, can’t you?”
His eyes were shining as you tussled his hair, half-smiling as you seemed to await an answer. “Can’t you?”
When finally, he started to shift his hands from low beside his back, you rested your weight, almost giving your ass for him to grind against. He sunk his teeth into his bottom lip, hard.
You put down the bar, traded it for the handcuffs, and arduously, dragged his wrists down. Bullying them under his back was awkward bordering-on very uncomfortable, humiliating. However, his hips twitched forward anyway, unwilling to continue like this, but starving to. He soon picked up a jerky pace with blind disregard, almost trying to slide through your ass but getting stopped short by your underwear. It was apparent, that at this point he was too horny to dread when you’d mercilessly stop again.
You locked his hands back in the silver cuffs. Any enjoyment from the fleeting minute of freedom was unceremoniously dashed.
You grabbed the bar again, and raised it between his ankles. The look you peered over him with seemed as torturous to him as anything you could have spoken.
It looked deceptively simple. Slipping his ankles into the cuffs with only his feet was difficult and arduous because of the way the iron dangled limply from the short chain. You stroked his thigh in mocking comfort as he angled his foot, trying and failing because of helpless physics.
Touching him only seemed to make it worse, little by little. Between shivers, he’d knock the chain by accident, undoing every bit of progress he’d strenuously strung together. As many times as he dropped back to square one, your hand still moved on his cock. It wasn’t enough to do anything, just to keep him desperate.
At last when he dropped his ankle into the strap, he looked up at you and whined. Really, closed his eyes into almost slits and couldn’t stop it.
You slid the leather and tightened it. He was already trying to do the second one, if he could make up for being slow, but he struggled thoroughly.
During all the time, you started to kiss the bottom of his foot, and traced the high arch of it with your tongue. He shivered through it as you felt his cock coming to life in your hand.
But in a way, silence was even more intimidating than any words of degradation from your mouth. His chest quaked like a sigh too thick for his throat when his slender ankle inched inside the leather. With your mouth still buried in his toes, you tightened it as well. You could tell he was inches from cracking.
You maneuvered him from his back, onto his knees, where you might as well have been bending a doll to your will; he was so deep in subspace that his eyes seemed more drunk on you than conscious of your gaze.
You gently carded your fingers through his hair, making it neat again. “It looks like only I can take care of you… That’s pathetic.”
You said this with mock-consolation. He responded by leaning against your legs, panting quietly. He made a small croaking sound as your hand settled in his hair.
“You can’t do anything. I’ve got you in a trap, haven’t I.”
He nodded, still breathing shakily, almost pushing himself up against your leg. Because you were clothed and standing straight, he seemed even more submissive at your feet.
“Yeah,” you murmured, almost wonderingly. It certainly came with a perverse sense of astonishment.
You forced the side of his face up for him to look at you. The words that rose to mind were ‘beautiful’, instantly, and then ‘so fucking hot’.
You held the blindfold like dangling food in front of a dog. It was a surprise—you had known it would be—so you wanted to gauge his true feelings on it. His expression very barely changed.
You guided the back of his head to your crotch, smothering his face in the smooth cotton and the heat of your sex. Whimpering, he pressed his nose and mouth into it as you set up the blindfold. His breath was faintly wet, and very hot. You almost regretted tempting yourself. When the lower half of his face came away, glistening and warm, you obscured his eyes.
“Stand up.”
“…I… I…”
“You can’t?”
“I….” A sob was in his voice, the heat of his breath spreading on your thigh. “I can’t…”
It’d be impossible for him to walk himself even if you forced him to. Smiling slightly, you, painstakingly, raised him to his feet, and made him almost toddle to a soft armchair at the wall.
It was shaped with a cushion that was shaped like a black lip with a small relaxed back and curved armrests, not that you needed them.
He sat with hands unable to grip, with nothing to tell you from air except the sound of your breathing. His own breathing sounded much too loud. When you touched his cheek, he flinched slightly and sucked in a quick breath through his nose.
Brow raised, you settled your other hand around his neck, just below his adam’s apple. With burning satisfaction, you watched it slide up and down as you imagined how he’d look up at you on the brink of restricting his breathing a serious amount. A small, dry strain appeared in his breathing, and his lips parted.
“No more of that.” You spoke maddeningly with icy calmness. “If you do that again, I’m going to make it hurt really bad, okay?”
“Y-Yeah,” Levi gasped, like the word had been waiting to leap from his tongue.
He relaxed visibly, breathing hard, and relaxed further in slight increments despite the fact you weren’t letting up.
“Don’t you want to be a good boy?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you wanna come?”
The question made his breath stammer.
“Huh?” You seized the lower half of his face, and mockingly turned his head from side to side. “Do you want to piss me off?”
He shook his head quickly.
As you observed closely for any signs to pause, you put your hand around the top of his cock. The shaky sound he thickly let out made you burn, his spine arched. When he shivered, or gave you a small noise, you kissed closer and closer to his cock.
His cock twitched as your breath passed over it. Surely he was more ready than ever, swollen and blushing an angry crimson red from nonstop teasing. You liked sliding it against your cheek, feeling wetness and the softness of his skin, and the plump river of veins underneath. You liked mouthing his firm, heavy balls, and simply breathing him in. The almost excruciating softness of his inner thighs that begged to be thoroughly marked, you marked with your teeth as you nuzzled his crotch.
The reason you opted out of using a gag was clear now—an added torture on Levi, who sounded so sweet like this; hurt by you when he not just craved to be hurt, but on a fundamental level needed to be to sate a darkness that couldn’t be sated by himself, or merely through thinking through it like you knew he did. Compounding demons with the attention from someone he puts nothing if not his life towards trusting, that bred Levi’s desperation right now.
With little preamble, you took him inside, slowly sliding him to the back of your throat. Levi moaned brokenly the whole time, tense like if he moved forward at all, you’d stop.
If he was worried about that, you probably would; then you’d edge him and make him cum harder.
You did just that, popping his tip into your mouth before taking it back, and gently mouthing it with open-mouthed, wet kisses. You kept tasting more of him. A little bit of sticky cum drooled down the corner of your mouth.
His thighs shuddered when you actually sank down, and clenched when you pulled back. It’d been under his breath at first, but eventually, the word started taking on shape when Levi spoke it, begging the word ‘please’.
“You think you deserve it?” you asked and flicked your wrist on his tip at the same time. “Do you deserve to come?”
His face contorted into a grimace as he bucked in your hand, with motions that seemed like he didn’t mean to. When he spoke, it sounded like he’d been gargling rocks.
“Please…”
“Yeah… beg for me.” You leaned over him, insistent. “I’ll make you feel good. Have I made you feel good yet?”
He nodded rapidly. “I…” he choked out. “F-Fucking please. Please. Please.”
With that, you took him in again, heavily swallowing as you painted his cock with your tongue.
To your delight, Levi kept saying it—or didn’t stop himself from saying please, over and over as you quickly worked him towards orgasm. You poured yourself over his lap so he wouldn’t have to move too much, which put his cock at the back of your throat.
And like a rubber band fixed to snap, Levi tensed even more, panting, whining.
You burned. He suddenly doubled over as his cock pulsed heavily, seeming to get bigger and throb. He didn’t move for all of several seconds before breaking out into intense spasms, panting intently like he needed to do it to breathe at all. It ripped through his thighs and consumed your senses. Nuzzling into wiry hair and hot skin, you drank him in, working his balls too.
Finally, he collapsed, shuddering as you pushed him past the brink of pleasure, but you didn’t let up. You kept going, putting aside ever slowing down.
“Sh-Shit… A-…”
As the reality that you weren’t stopping—not until he came again—sank in, you heard what almost sounded like a dry sob shudder his chest. It was too intense to quiet himself—if he even had the capacity to worry about that anymore. All there was, was the electric morphing of titillating pain and constant rush of pleasure. His toes curled until his nails bit into the rug, and his hips wriggled in useless, instinctive attempts to get away.
The sounds of dry sobs was almost breath-for-breath now despite his cock fully hard in your mouth again. You moaned around him, and felt his balls tighten slightly. No matter how much he felt like he couldn’t come again, you’d make him. Eventually, whimpers of overstimulation morphed into increasingly full moans. You looked up at him through lashes beaded with tears, to find some of his own dripping down his chest. The blindfold was slightly greyed where his eyes were. Visible sweat sheen on his brow. The rest of his face was blushing red.
Groaning, you replaced your mouth with your fist, and started to lick up his chest, tasting salt upon the exquisite heat of his pale skin and lithe muscle. He practically writhed under the new sense of friction, gaping. You kissed and tongued his open mouth, Levi leaning into you right away, shakily pressing his forehead against yours in search for stability.
“P-Please, t-too fucking much,” he whispered urgently. Then he gained his voice back drastically, hips buckling. ”Shit.”
“Oh, I know, that’s it. You’re almost there.”
“Fuck,” he sobbed, dropping his face into your neck and started struggling haplessly again—to be against you more than to escape his bindings.
“Gonna come, baby…?” you mock-soothed, running your other hand all up and down his stomach and chest.
He nodded frantically, hips helplessly bounding into your fist as his shoulders bowed against his restraints. His tender cock was peaked and twitching in your grasp once again. Your hand fell down, pumping him as you played with his tip with the other, and his movements intensified.
He sobbed, stricken, into your neck when he came for the last time. It was even stronger than the first had been, reaching into the depths of his chest for a deep grunt, followed by long bouts of intense shivering. You let him pour all his sounds into your neck as he whimpered through it. Cum spurted all over your hands, and you manage to catch some of the mess in your mouth.
He practically collapses back against the chair, sniveling quietly when you say the safeword and start to undress his blindfold.
Levi’s eyelids flutter several times, never quite focusing. You have him lean forward, and undo his wrists next. They’re ringed with hard angry red lines. You let separate them gradually, following up his back and briefly pressing your palms into the conclaves of his shoulderblades.
As you end the scene, you’re full of praise. Silently, he melts against you. There’s no other time where Levi is so vulnerable than when aftercare begins. The smallest thing can send him into a drop.
Even though he won’t say it, all he needs is to be taken care-of. Something you’re more than willing to do, every time.