━━⠀⠀CAMISADO ; levi ackerman (chapter one)
levi ackerman x fem!reader
summary: between sleepless nights, bruised hands, and captain levi’s relentless attention, the line between self-preservation and self-destruction begins to blur. captain levi watches you like he’s waiting for you to make a mistake. the problem is that you can’t stop watching him back.
words: 6.3k
part: 1/? (pt 2) (pt 3) (pt 4.) (pt 5) (pt 6)
content warning(s): age difference, power imbalance, loss of innocence, mildly dubious consent, canon-typical violence, circa season 1 of aot, aged up recruits, slight eren yeager/reader, not so slowburn, eventual explicit sexual content.
chapter specific warnings: tension? mentions of death. reader passes out.
author's note: this is the first chapter of a multi-chapter fanfiction cross posted on my ao3. hope you guys enjoy! my inbox is open for fic requests and headcanon requests, as well as just to chat.
Sticking your tongue into the junction of your upper and lower teeth, you swung your sword with purpose.
Thwack!
The enemy did not relent, casting his arm over his head to shield the blow, while the other arm jutted its own weapon out towards your hip. With practiced ease, you maneuvered your body to spin, using your own momentum to propel yourself forward. Your blade slotted in the space between his collarbone and neck, pinning him down onto the ground with your knees. It was here that you had him, one more slice and he would be gone.
Eren’s green eyes widened as he looked up at you, soft tufts of grass displaying around his head like a crown. “Did Mikasa show you that and not me?” He asked as an obvious surrender, tone shifting into that of concern instead of determination. “I told her that you two training together would do more harm than good.”
He pushed himself up, face only a few inches from yours when he grinned childishly. “I mean, it would do more harm than good for Armin and I. You two would be unstoppable if we all got into an argument.”
You laughed, setting your training sword on the ground in order to crawl off of him, looking in the distance at the other cadets sparring in the low evening light. A moment later you held out your hand, to which he grabbed and used your leverage to anchor himself up, brushing the dirt off of his tan pants. “You seem too cocky for someone who was put on their ass a second ago,” you muttered.
Around you, the field buzzed with the humming sounds of cicadas clinging to the trees, the dull percussion of training blades intercepting once in a while over their song. The evening sun hung low, bleeding gold across your friends face.
“Seriously,” Eren continued, panting for breath, “whatever Mikasa is showing you, she definitely skipped over with the rest of us.”
“Maybe she just likes me more.”
A snort was heard nearby from Sasha, who was sitting cross-legged in the grass, nursing a bruise blossoming along her jaw. Next to her was Connie, muttering an apology for hitting too hard to cause harm. You took a moment to admire the scene in front of you, soldiers paired up with one another as they practiced their sparring before calling it a night, taking the last bits of light until it was replaced with the moon. It had been a month since you and your friends had joined the Scouts, desiring the freedom that came from being outside the walls. The Battle of Trost was still fresh in all of your minds, enough to where sometimes you would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
The scattered conversations around the field began thinning and practice swords eventually lowered. You could see the weight of their exhaustion in their shoulders. Towards the end of the day all of you got sluggish, sleep so close yet so far away.
Sasha groaned dramatically. “I think I’m dying.”
“You say that every time someone touches you,” Connie said.
She stood up from the ground and looked down at him, giving him a light kick. “Because all of you are violent.”
You smiled despite yourself, hand reaching to your shoulder to rub absently. Everything hurts lately. Bruises were layered over older bruises before they had the time to fade, muscles sore from drills specifically were designed to push recruits until they collapsed. Hange had cheerfully informed all of you during breakfast this morning that the pain meant that your body was learning, to which you had to physically hold Jean so that he didn’t throw a spoon at them from across the mess hall.
Eren began to say something else, which you half listened to while your gaze drifted to the far side of the training grounds. It was there that you saw Captain Levi, standing near the wooded perimeter fence. One hand rested against the hilt attached to his hip while the other held him steady against the wood. He was watching the group to your right, and then in an instant, he was looking at you.
Heat crawled unpleasantly up the back of your neck.
It had become a recurring problem over the past two weeks, where you always caught his attention at the worst possible moments. His attention always shifted at times where you were idle, like now as you stood talking with your friends while you were supposed to be training, or the night that you were ordered to clean the mess hall floors and took a little bit too much time filling the bucket with water. It was as though he could sense the exact moment that your focus slipped.
You looked away first. He was difficult to look at directly for too long. His gaze was sharp in a way that made you feel abruptly aware of yourself. Your posture. Your breathing. The dirt on your boots. Though, it was too late. Out of the corner of your eye you could see him moving closer. The conversations began to dull almost instinctively, quieter in the way that you all became whenever Captain Levi crossed the grounds. Everyone tried to make themselves look busy. Sasha stood up from her sitting position while Connie pretended he was fixing the laces of his boots. Eren grabbed his sword from the ground along with yours, handing it to you.
Levi stopped a few feet away from your group, his gaze sweeping across your groups scattered training swords and half-resting soldiers. His mouth twitched.
Disapproval.
“That’s really interesting,” he said in a flat tone. “I don’t remember dismissing any of you.”
“We’ve been training for over three hours,” Eren muttered under his breath, as if to only say it to your group instead of the Captain. The moment it left his mouth you could see the regret on his face because Levi heard him anyway, and you could see your friend reconsider every life decision that led him to this moment.
“And somehow you still can’t fight for shit.”
You bit the inside of your cheek, the fleshy skin anchoring you hard enough to stop yourself from smiling.
Unfortunately for you, Levi seemed to notice that too. “You think that’s funny?”
Amusement vanished from your expression. “No, sir.”
“Hm.”
You knew that he didn’t believe you and for one unbearable second, his eyes lingered on you. Cool gray analyzing your face with the same focus you had noticed him giving broken equipment or badly cleaned floors. Your stomach dropped, preparing for another snide remark thrown your way, another way that he could spot out your lack of attention or drive.
Instead, his gaze fixed downward to the sword hanging loosely at your side in your hand.
“You’re holding it wrong.”
Your fingers instinctively tightened around the grip of the base. “I—”
“In real combat you would lose two fingers trying to catch it once it falls out of your grip.” His voice was straight as he spoke, like he was bored. “If you weren’t already impaled by the enemy.”
Heat rose to your face. Levi extended his arm toward you expectantly. And for a second you only stared at him, blinking in confusion before realizing that he wanted your sword, which you quickly handed over. His finger brushed yours briefly, the contact of calloused fingers dragging against your skin before he stepped back. It was less than a second, but it still left you aware of your own heartbeat thumping in your chest.
He rotated the sword in his grip, like it was made for him. He was confident in the way that he held it, as though he would be able to do considerable damage with a sword that was dulled for training. You watched as his fingers curved against the hilt, thumb pressed into the leather handle to steady it.
“You’re compensating too much with your wrist,” he stated, like it was obvious. “You’ll never get a good slash on a titan with the way you were holding it. You’re better off just standing in front of it and letting it eat you.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” you muttered.
Levi’s eyes squinted.
“No,” he agreed, an amusing lilt to his voice. Would he actually compliment you for once?
“You were worse.”
Typical.
“I don’t understand what his problem is,” Eren said to you, passing a piece of bread your way from across the table. The mess hall was filled with multiple different conversations, all ranging to wildly different things. Though, after your encounter with the Captain on the training yard, your group was focused on debriefing what had happened before he let everyone go for the night. You caught the bread before it could bounce off your tray, tearing a piece from it and plopping the bit into your mouth. It was still warm. Across from you, Armin winced. “I think the Captain is like that with everyone.”
It was typical for Armin to try and see the bright side of things, even when it came to your brooding Captain. His words comforted you more than you let on, giving him a sympathetic look before returning your gaze to the bowl of some type of stew in front of you.
“No,” Jean interjected. “He definitely enjoys being mean to her specifically.”
You shot him a glare.
Jean raised his hands up, one of them holding a spoon as he said, “What? It’s true! He just insults us. She gets a play by play of everything she did wrong.”
Eren kicked him underneath the table. “You aren’t helping.”
Despite reminiscing about your close call with the Captain earlier, you felt some of the tension you had been holding begin to loosen. The mess hall buzzed, steam rising from bowls that smelled like vegetables and broth. It felt normal, or as normal as things could feel after Trost. Your gaze drifted absently across the room, watching your fellow soldiers crowd together. Some laughed too loudly, others were falling asleep hung over tables, a few just stared at nothing.
“You know,” Connie started, “I think the Captain paying attention to you is probably a good thing.”
“That’s the worst thing anyone has ever said to me,” you replied flatly.
He grinned, but leaned forward. “No, listen. Captain Levi barely notices most people. Or doesn’t care to notice people.” A beat. Before he said, “Maybe he just thinks that you have potential.”
Jean pointed at you with his spoon. “Or maybe he thinks you’re going to die horribly.”
“That too.”
Eren raised to your defense again, but the argument blurred into the familiar background noise of the table while you tore at another piece of bread, dipping it into the broth. Potential. You doubted that it was that. There was no way that the Captain was picking on you because of that. He probably thought that you were a dumb little girl who wanted to play with swords and decided to join the Scouts to try and make a name for yourself. Or maybe he thought that you had a death wish, and he was trying to teach you that even if you die, you would die fighting. You hated that you wanted to prove him wrong.
With every fibre of your being, you just wanted to prove him wrong.
You wanted him to look at you and think you were capable instead of careless.
Sasha said something to you and you pretended to hear it, a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. A hand came and laid on your own. Eren. “He’s just a dick, don’t take it personally, really,” he said, trying his best to comfort you. “He needs to get laid.”
Mikasa scrunched up her face. “Ew.”
Connie burst into laughter loud enough to turn a few heads from the nearby tables, while Jean nearly choked on his drink.
Armin looked horrified. “Eren,” he said weakly. “You can’t just say that. We should not speculate about the Captain's personal life like that.”
“Why not?” Sasha asked.
“Because if he hears us talking about this we’ll probably die.”
After the bit of laughter had settled down, Armin forced a subject change.
You couldn’t sleep.
You tried to reason with yourself that it was the bruise that was blooming on the back of your thigh from taking a fall earlier that was making you too uncomfortable. But you knew that it was because of the nightmares that plagued you the moment you closed your eyes. In the darkness, Trost waited for you.You saw blood spilling across the stone streets, dust and smoke making everything blurry. ODM gear screamed through the air alongside your fellow soldiers begging for help that never came. Titans wandered through your thoughts like gods at the top of the food chain, mouths opening and eating soldiers between rows of teeth. And afterward, the vomiting. The regurgitated mangled bodies on the ground because its stomach had become too full.
With a quiet exhale, you shoved your blanket away and sat upright. Carefully, you swung your legs over the side of the bed, the wooden floor creaking faintly beneath your feet.
Maybe fresh air would help.
You moved through the halls, pulling the door open just enough to slip outside. Once the cold air hit your face, the sharpness grounded you. For a moment, you stood there beneath the moonlight and breathed. The air was almost sweet smelling. Unlike the air you were used to behind the walls that smelled faintly of smoke and livestock. The grounds looked entirely different at night. Softer. The noise of the day had stilled into silence which left only the trees to rustle their song, the occasional owl hooting.
Your gaze looked upward toward the stars. So many people had died beneath this sky, so many people that you weren’t sure you could remember all of their names anymore.
The thought settled heavily in your chest.
“You’re going to freeze to death standing out here.”
You nearly jumped out of your skin at the voice. And when you turned your head, Captain Levi was there, sitting on the steps near one of the other entrances, half-shadowed by darkness. He was impossibly still. You wouldn’t have even known that he was there if he hadn’t made you aware of it. In his hand, there was a teacup. You could see the steam rolling off of it.
You crossed your arms against your chest instead of answering him, gaze drifting toward the stretch of trees in the distance. The forest looked endless from here. Almost consuming. Neither of you spoke to fill in the silence, which should have felt uncomfortable. Instead, however, it settled strangely still between the both of you.
He spoke again. Slightly louder this time.
“You’re useless to me if you get yourself sick.”
You considered immediately going back inside. That was probably the smart decision, because the thought of being alone at night with Captain Levi felt inherently dangerous to the peace you tried to keep in your mind, especially after the disaster that had happened earlier during training. But a part of you knew that leaving now would make it look like you were afraid of him. Which, for the record, you absolutely were, though, not in the way that he probably thought.
“I’ll survive a little cold air,” you answered instead, keeping your voice firm. Though it was after hours, he was still your Captain.
Levi made a quiet sound against the rim of his teacup, a sound that seemed like half agreement and half dismissal. “You recruits are all stubborn in the exact same way,” he muttered. “You’ve barely spent any time out of here and you think that you can survive it.”
“I survived Trost.”
“If I hadn’t come and protected you and your friends while you tried to pull Yeager out of that titan, you would have died. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
The words thrummed through the soft air like a chord struck wrong. Your jaw tightened immediately, fingers curling against your arms. It was cruel. You tried to reason in your head. He was cruel. He spent all of this time trying to beat you down and even when you were off-duty he did the same. Images of that day came back uninvited, like you were asleep again, and you could see Eren’s titan collapsing, you could feel the absolute desperation that you had felt while trying to break him free before more Titans arrived. And then Captain Levi, cutting through them like it was just another day.
“I know that,” you answered, something defensive behind your words.
“Do you?”
Irritation flooded you.
“Yes.”
It was then that Levi stood from his spot on the steps, stretching his legs for a moment before walking closer towards you. He looked different now when you saw him in this low light now that you could see him completely. Less composed, less sharp. Like for almost a moment he wasn’t the strongest soldier that humanity had ever seen and he was just . . . Levi. He stood before you, teacup lazily slung in between his fingers of the hand that rested beside him. You stepped back a pace, and then another, wanting to put as much space in between him and you so that he wouldn’t see just how terrified you actually were that day.
“You say that,” he replied, “but you throw yourself into training like you’re trying to prove something. You overextend your swings, you ignore openings, and you stop thinking when your emotions get involved. If you want to survive more than a week when we go on our expeditions, you need to start thinking like a soldier instead of a scared little girl. Or maybe you just have a death wish. Is that what you want?”
The words were like a slap to your face. It knocked you in the same way that it had on the training field. Something sharp twisted violently into your chest. You always hated the way that Eren blew his top off before thinking about his words first, always chastising him while you were supposed to be considered the more level-headed one. But Captain Levi had struck a nerve, one that you couldn’t find in you to settle. It wasn’t what you wanted. You didn’t want to die. You wanted to survive. Levi watched you carefully, gray eyes fixed on your face with that same unbearable focus. He was testing you, you knew this.
“You’re angry,” he stated. Baiting you. “No shit.”
“You need to figure out what you want. Then you’ll become a good soldier.”
Levi stepped closer, and this time you didn’t move back. He was close enough that you could see the push and pull of his chest raising with every breath he took. You could smell the faint smell of tea leaves and clean linen beneath the cold night air. If you looked down even slightly, you would notice the way his fingers rested loosely around the porcelain cup. You kept your eyes fixed stubbornly on his face instead. The corner of your mouth raised for a moment, trying hard to keep your emotions underneath the surface, pretending that your skin wasn’t crawling and heating up at the same time because of how close he was.
Silence was deafening. Even the owls had ceased to hoot. The trees were listening. Understanding. Your eyes watched his, a connection pulled so tight that it felt as though it could snap at any moment.
“If that’s the key to becoming a good soldier,” you asked softly, “then you must have gotten what you want, right, Captain?”
The muscle connecting his jaw to his throat tensed. You wouldn’t have even noticed it if you weren’t so close to him.
“No.”
The answer came immediately. Like it was the only thing keeping you from tearing open his ribcage and examining his heart on a silver platter. Flat. Certain. The answer lodged itself somewhere beneath your sternum, your body keeping it for later. Levi looked away first, breaking the eye contact that had briefly connected you.
“Go back to bed,” he said.
Then, after a beat:
“Before I write you up.”
The cicadas started to hum again.
The next few days passed in a blur, constellations of different moments that could only be equated in the same way that more bruises and more aches made its way on your body. Training. Cleaning. Repairs. More training. The Scouts did not seem particularly interested in whether or not recruits were exhausted and although you could complain, a part of you liked the routine of it. You were able to get lost in yourself and you always were doing things with your friends. You were barely ever alone in the things that you suffered with.
At least now you had stopped waking up screaming. That counted for something.
When you were in those moments where you weren’t with your friends, your thoughts betrayed you and you thought back to that moment with Levi.
Then you must have gotten what you wanted, right, Captain?
No.
No. A single word that danced through your entire body if you thought too much about it. No. Spoken so plainly and so sure-of-himself. It lingered, lodged deep inside of you no matter how many drills you threw yourself into, or how many hours you spent scrubbing blood from training gear or patching tears in your uniform or Eren’s. Captain Levi had looked at you that night like he saw directly through you.
And worse, sometimes when you laid in bed and thought about the way that the moonlight cast across his sharp features, you came to a mutual agreement between yourself.
You had seen something in him too.
“Move your arm.”
Eren grabbed your wrist as it twisted to tie the last of the laces against your brown boots, leaving them to fall flat. You were sitting on the edge of a bench outside with him before you were supposed to run drills with your ODM gear.
“Ow.”
“You really need to take better care of yourself.” He brushed his thumb over a bruise.
“You are possibly the worst person to have that thought considering how hard you pushed yourself all through basic,” you teased, snatching your wrist back from him and continuing to tie your shoes. Morning light spilled through the makeshift shades, catching along both of your bodies. Eren frowned at the bruise for a moment longer, like it had personally offended him.
He opened his mouth, but he was cut off by Mikasa. “We’re going to be late.”
Your group walked briskly to the forest edge, the path worn into the grass that had been walked through by probably hundreds of soldiers throughout the years. All to the same spot in the middle of the forest where you practiced slipping through the air with your ODM gear. The morning air smelled damp, last night’s rain storm helping to emit dew and pine. Somewhere high above, birds called to one another.
After Trost, all of you had become almost painfully attached to one another. Which wasn’t a bad thing, even though soldiers were supposed to stay unemotional and professional on the field, you couldn’t help the connections you had made along the way.
Even Jean.
A sharp whistle cut through the forest, and you fiddled with the last of your gear while staring forward at the noise. There were older Scouts there looking like they had been training for a while already, ODM gear attached to them like they were made for it. In the middle, Captain Levi was there, obviously the source of the whistle to gather everyone's attention. Morning light shined through the trees overhead into fractured pieces, catching against the metal canisters strapped to his thighs, illuminating onto the dark green cloak hanging from his shoulders.
Levi’s gaze swept once across the larger group of recruits that had gathered, expression unreadable. When his eyes passed over you, you could’ve sworn that they had slowed. Barely, but enough for you to recognize the faint glimmer behind them. And then they moved again, mouth open to state, “Today’s drills will be focused on maneuvering through dense coverage. Meaning that if any of you idiots decide to slam yourselves into a tree, at least try not to break the equipment while you’re at it. They’re expensive to make.”
You heard Connie stifle a laugh from behind you. “He definitely practices saying those things in the mirror.”
“Pair off,” Levi ordered. “If I watch any of you nearly kill yourselves today, I will make the next drill worse.”
Everyone immediately disbanded the group into pairs, Eren slotting himself beside you. Not that you minded, training with Eren was easy in the same way that breathing was. You knew each other’s habits too well after all the training you did together in basic. It was you who helped him, along with Reiner and Bertholdt, to train on the ODM gear that kept him in the military. He knew that you always favored your left side, and you knew the exact second that he was going to do something stupid before he even thought about it.
Around you, soldiers began to launch upward through the trees one by one, the familiar sound of the ODM gear firing with sharp metallic bursts. You had always loved this part, the moment right before taking off where gravity seemed to loosen its grip on you. Eren nudged your shoulder. “Race you to the far marker.”
“You will never beat me,” you chided.
“If you have enough time to flirt during drills, you clearly aren’t training hard enough, Yeager.”
Captain Levi.
Before you could even look behind at your Captain, you shot up into the air. “See you there, Eren!”
“Not fair, you didn’t tell me you were —” Eren’s voice dulled into the trees as you swung forward.
The world launched beneath you, gas hissing sharply from the canisters strapped to your hips while your wires shot forward to the trees, catching thick branches in their wake. You had practiced so much with this gear that it was as easy as walking. Past you would be proud, knowing how hard it was to gain the skills that you used so effortlessly now. Momentum grabbed hold while you swung between the trees, sunlight breaking across your vision. Release, fire, anchor swing. It was freedom. This was why you endured everything else. Nothing else mattered in the world when you were flying through the trees.
When you made your way to the first marker that had been slashed into the top of a tree, you took the time to look behind you. Eren was a few meters away from you, his green eyes looking into yours as you turned the corner for the next portion of the route.
A grin had spread across his face. “Oh, so now you wanna slow down?” He shouted.
You laughed softly. “You’re just too easy to beat. I wanted to give you a little help.”
Eren gained enough speed to almost catch your shoulder, shooting through the trees side by side with you for several seconds. This has always come naturally between the two of you, the movement and the instinct of it all. Eren angled sharply around a branch and for a split moment he was ahead of you, attempting to cut you off before the next marker.
Absolutely not.
You fired an anchor higher, slinging your body upward instead of around. You soared right above him perfectly, your stomach flipping with the sudden height. A laugh escaped him, loud and unrestrained. You hadn’t heard him laugh like that since Trost and that thought made your chest soften. It was good. This was good.
“Watch it!” A voice cut through the forest, suspiciously close to you.
When you looked forward, there was no mistaking it. Someone cut right in front of you, the move almost perfect if you hadn’t been lost in your own thoughts. Instead, their wire crossed dangerously close to yours. In an attempt to slow yourself, you angled a hook farther down, as low into the trees as possible as the metal of your gear shrieked.
It wasn’t enough though. Wires collided with a metallic shriek that almost sounded violent. For one horrible second, momentum yanked your body sideways while the tension of your gear snapped beneath you, a singular wire holding you up on the branches that broke under the weight of its tension, snapping in two. Trees blurred together as your balance disappeared entirely.
You closed your eyes, waiting for the impact of a tree to hit your body. But it never came, instead you felt the curve of another body hit your back, a strong arm catching around your waist on instinct just as the two of you slammed through a cluster of lower, yet still large, branches. Leaves exploded around the both of you, the sound of splintering wood cracking through your ears.
The ground was next.
Pain burst across your shoulder as the impact knocked the air from your lungs. Damp earth smeared against your uniform while the world seemed to be rolling in a collage of green and blue. You leaned your head forward, the sound of ringing in your ears overcoming any other noise until you finally seemed to have some grip back on reality.
Breathing. Close enough that you could feel it against your skin. A part of you almost wondered if you had crashed into Eren during the fall, since he was the closest person to you at the time. When you rewound your memory, you could barely see the person who passed in front of you. It could’ve been Eren. It had to be Eren.
Your eyes blinked open slowly, vision swimming for a moment before finally focusing enough to understand exactly what you were looking down at.
Captain Levi.
One of his arms remained wrapped tightly around your waist, instinct having forced him to catch you before the both of you hit the ground. His green cloak was twisted around you, branches and crushed leaves tangled through the fabric of his uniform. His fingers were dug hard enough through the harness that you could feel the pressure of them. It was apparent that he kept holding on before the both of you had slammed into the ground.
You were sprawled almost completely over him. The impact had tangled you together in a mess of limbs and ODM wires, one of your thighs resting between your legs while your chest pressed up against his own, so close that you could feel the weight of his heartbeat between your own. In the chaos of the fall, your hands had twisted into the front of his grey shirt, clinging onto him even now as you struggled to catch your breath, your knuckles white.
Too warm.
Too close.
Leaves continued to fall all around you, a considerable hole in the canopy of the forest, allowing for more sun to come peeking through than normal. There were several leaves caught in Levi’s dark hair and a stick poked right out of a hole that had formed in his shirt near his shoulder. The forest floor was littered with bark and snapped branches, obvious evidence of a disaster. Your racing heart was slamming blood so hard into your veins that you could hear your pulse. Levi was staring directly up at you, eyes sharp and narrowed beneath strands of hair that had fallen out of their neat place, splaying across his forehead.
The hand around your waist shifted, tightening reflexively before it seemed he realized he was touching you and released it to fall onto the ground. Your own hands unclenched from his shirt and you stretched your fingers, ignoring the way that you could see ten fingers on one hand instead of five, an obvious sign that you hit your head a little bit too hard. His gaze flickered from them to your face.
“You’re bleeding.”
Were you? Blinking a few times, you quickly sat up and assessed what you could see of your body, still sitting on top of him, your hips slotted against his own. When you reached one of your hands towards your face, it was then that you felt the gash on your cheek, splitting down your cheekbone and stopping, before another cut was felt on your top lip. Blood speckled against your fingertips, maroon in color, still flowing out. You turned your attention back to Captain Levi, who widened his eyes like he was trying to motion at something. Like he was trying to say —
Get off.
You scrambled backward, elbow slipping against the wet leaves beneath you that you almost toppled sideways. Pain flared from your shoulder, but humiliation was the only thing that you could feel. “I —” your voice cracked, making you clear your throat quickly, mortified while trying to untangle your ODM wires from his and somehow making the knots worse.
Levi sat upright in one smooth motion while you were fighting for some sense of dignity on the forest floor. Dirt was streaked across one of his cheeks while leaves seemed to stubbornly stay tangled through his hair. He looked deeply offended, though not as much with what happened with you but with the uncleanlyness of the whole situation. You probably would have laughed if you weren’t actively feeling as though you would die from the humiliation of it all.
So instead you fought with the tangled mess of wires, the metal cables groaning angrily in protest. He watched you for a few moments before reaching over.
“Stop,” he said, flat and immediate. “You’re just making it worse.” Levi leaned closer as his fingers moved through the wires while you sat there and pretended that you didn’t notice how close he was again. His knuckle pressed briefly against your thigh and he pulled against a particularly stubborn knot near the harness of your hip. He hummed in annoyance and you wondered if he had been in this situation before with anyone. If anyone had felt his pulse thrumming through his body like you did.
The thought hit you so suddenly that you recoiled from it like it had physically hit you. Your eyes fixed on his hands, noting the way that he was becoming more irritated the more that he loosened one knot and moved onto the next. There were callouses along his knuckles and the pads of his fingers and you hated that you took so much time to map the contours against his skin. He gave one final sharp tug against the last cable and the wires finally snapped, shifting your body slightly forward from where you sat.
“I— Captain I’m so—” You stuttered out.
“Save it,” Levi interrupted, hands braced against the harness at your hip for a second longer before he let go, standing up despite the obvious wince spread across his face. It created enough distance between the both of you that you finally felt as though you could breathe properly again. “We just have to wait for someone to come and help. I really don’t feel like lugging your concussed ass all the way back to base. And with the way you screamed, someone should be coming soon.”
He didn’t help you up, but a part of you didn’t want him to. The thought of standing up almost made you want to vomit. You stayed where you were on the ground with the crushed leaves, one hand pressed against the cut on your cheek while trying really hard not to acknowledge how violently your head was pounding now that the adrenaline of the whole ordeal was wearing off. You tilted your head back and forth to try and ease the tension in your neck, watching as the forest seemed to magnify and tense the more you did it.
“Will you stop moving?” Levi told you, scoffing and shaking his head, crossing his arms across his chest. “You’re making things worse, again. Stop.”
A sharp metallic hiss echoed through the trees.
“Finally,” Levi stated.
Commander Erwin landed first, wires retracting smoothly into place. His frame towered over you for a moment, staring at you before looking at Levi, obviously expecting some type of answer for what happened. Then from the trees you saw Hange begin to land, falling into the ground with not as much ease as Erwin, but still with a similar commanding authority. Erwin looked around the clearing that the two of you had forcibly made along with the shattered canopy and broken branches barely hanging on the trees.
“ . . . I see,” Erwin said carefully.
Hange’s eyes lit up behind their glasses with immediate excitement. “Oh my god,” they paused, spinning in place while looking upward through the trees. “Did you two fall from there?”
“No,” Levi said. “We teleported.”
“Really!?”
“No, you blabbering idiot.”
Hange seemed to barely process the insult and instead crouched directly in front of you, hands reaching for your face with unsettling enthusiasm crossing their features. “Oooooh, nasty split on the cheekbone,” they said, tilting your chin carefully to see it more clearly in the light. “This is awesome, we can finally see what type of injuries happen when someone falls from that height! Can I—”
Erwin stuck a hand up. “Maybe we can keep the scientific questions for later?”
You looked at Commander Erwin with a puzzling look. “Woah,” you said, your vision begging to fuzz and blacken. “Why do you have two hands on one arm?” Your body began swaying farther to the ground with every passing moment.
Somewhere, far away now, someone said your name.
Then, nothing.
The last thing you could see was the dirt on the forest ground getting closer and closer to your eyes.
Thump.
