Levi did, in fact, manage to get two contracts. Perhaps spurred by the commander’s suggestion—if he’d mentioned it, he must have wanted it done—or perhaps trying to get the lingering (metaphorical) taste out of his mouth from the last one. It hadn’t worked.
He got the literal taste out of his mouth with another glass of the too-sour bubbly shit that he wouldn’t deign to call champagne, swishing it between his teeth before spitting it out in some way too fancy potted plant that looked a bit like it was wearing a fancy hat. He thought he might could go for a third—really over-achieving to impress the boss there—but his hips bore aching fingerprints on the points of the bone where he’d been gripped, and he didn’t much care to have those exacerbated. So he breezed into the thick of the party, relieved a passing server of his entire tray of something he thought might be crab cakes, and went right back into the hall to find the vestibule where he was supposed to meet the commander.
He was already there and seemed to be half-crawled into a bottle of bourbon; Levi didn’t remark on that as he leaned against the opposite wall, laying a crab cake—shit, it was a clam cake, what a waste—on his own tongue.
“Why do you look like someone up and died?” he asked, voice flat around the food tucked in his cheek. “I got the contract. Two, actually. It’s like I’m following the family business.” He held out the tray. “Clam cake? They’re disgusting.”
Erwin’s stomach turned at the sight of him, a weightless, noxious feeling that threatened to make him sick. The bourbon was set to the side, put away lest he exacerbate that particular foulness.
How could Levi be so flippant about the whole ordeal? How could he act as though it hardly bothered him to use himself and let himself be used for the sake of provisional advantages? While Erwin, who had little to do with the arrangements outside of pandering, despondent over the ordeal preceding and succeeding, and during the trysts.
Erwin rose, dragging himself up on unsure feet, and staggered to where Levi leaned against the wall. He swat the silver platter from out his hand and ignored the discordant clang against the marble floor, his hands catching up Levi’s small face to cup his cheeks with the tenderness one might reserve for a broken passerine.
He could have kissed him then. Bourbon warm on his breath, he might have had an excuse. But even in his inebriation, he knew he had no right to those lips, and instead, his eyes roamed his face, searchingly, as though he’d meant to examine him.
“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” It was a stupid question. Levi could more than handle himself in any situation. He knew that. Levi knew that Erwin knew that. But at least it was indicative of the affection he bore for him. More than worry, more than care. More than the duty of an officer to his subordinate.
But his head inclined to his, foreheads abutted, as Erwin sighed through an enervated moan. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he murmured, swallowing down the bitter tang at the back of his tongue, knowing full well why Levi did what he did. Loyalty, or some misguided form of it. To him. That, Erwin understood. It was that same spirit of loyalty to his cause that had first allowed Levi to sell himself to these nobles. “You could tell me you don’t want to, and I’ll understand. I could never be disappointed if you didn’t.”
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