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Just for the Time You're Away

pairing: Levi Ackerman/fem!reader

summary: Despite the safety that comes with your brief reassignment behind Wall Sina, Levi can’t help but feel devastated in your absence, especially in wake of the 57th Expedition. As it turns out, he was right to worry.

content/warnings: Levi POV, protective/pining Levi, Assault on Stohess arc, soft bath sex, descriptions of injury/violence, non-graphic death, established relationship, search-and-rescue mission

wc: 7.5k(holy shit)

a/n: trying out a new format for the stuff i post. maybe it looks okay? i love this oneshot with all my heart and soul (or as much as a perfectionist can like their own work, anyway).. and the ending is the best so i hope you guys enjoy. also, we are pretending that Levi wasn't in Stohess for the Eren-Annie fight.

as always, mdni/f or suffer.

also, i took inspiration from this fanart by @wortverlust for one of the scenes!! ur art is incredible never forget it!!

listened to while writing:

“What?” Without his realizing, Levi’s voice quiets with devastation. “Stohess… When are you going?”

It’s futile, but you curl up further in the plush of Levi’s comforter—almost wishing you could sink into it—and hiss a sigh through your teeth. You’re just about as pleased with the brass as he is. “A few days. Maybe sooner, depending on how much I need to bring. No word from Pyxis on how long I’ll be needed there.”

A harsh prick of grief tears Levi’s chest, albeit silently, and he immediately curses himself for it. It’s not as if you’re dying—what the hell is a brief transfer to special security detail in Stohess, if not a gift compared to this regiment?

“Good,” Levi hears himself say, much too blandly. With the realization that you could definitely take his words the wrong way if he’s not careful, Levi shifts closer to your back and loosely drapes his arm around your waist. “I mean, it’s fine. You’ll have to deal with MPs, but you’re just as safe as one of ‘em.”

It’s not enough to elicit any more than an amused scoff. Would it be so crazy to object, to tell the truth and claim that you don’t want to be safe? It’s not as if Levi needs protecting—the furthest thing from it, actually—but the things the Military Police fight for compared to the Scouts differs like water and oil, winter and summer. It’d be too much of a compliment to claim that regiment fights for anything at all.

You don’t reply, and Levi isn’t sure what to say. Whether to fool himself into thinking he’s thrilled for you, or to somehow muster comforting words—neither are things he’s inclined to do.

Instead, he presses his lips to the nape of your neck, catching hints of your citrusy shampoo, and a holds you a little closer. It’s a gift to feel you relax in his arms: warm, safe and utterly secure.

Only while you’re so close to him does Levi feel with utmost certainty that he can protect you. You, and the soft, sweet thing you share between each other. It isn’t simply the fact that you’re going away for a while that bothers him (when it shouldn’t), but he’s too selfish to imagine the days without you and not be—in some demonstrable way—silently miserable.

“Will you sleep okay?” is your murmured question, just at the moment your hand falls over Levi’s knuckles, where he holds you. You squeeze his hand.

It takes him a few moments to respond. He’s too busy choking on that light, fluffy feeling drowning in his chest. “You think of me too much.”

“Mm. No.”

It’s a decent challenge for him to bite back a smile, as slight as it is. Levi hated in the beginning, how you do that so easily—as if it comes to you naturally, simultaneously giving Levi a hard time and caring so damn deeply.

In the end it’s your insistence—and against Levi’s vehement faux-objections—that you’ll lend him a sweater of your own for the time you’re away; and a blanket. He’s naturally inclined to have you keep one of his switchblades and a thick pullover in return.

Just for the time you’re away.

Levi hasn’t slept in two days.

That’s his guess, at least. Since pulling that tendon in his leg—since the 57th Expedition in general—events, time, feelings have all come to amalgamate and blur together. Blood, haphazard, hazy naps, and a final order from Commander Erwin: bedrest.

It’s almost comical, that last part. Try as he might to sleep, if he gets any at all, without fail Levi will greet cold consciousness with a gasp and instinctively grapple for the opposite side of the bed—where you should be. Most times, he’s come to unconsciously wriggle to your side anyway, and come to with his face smushed into one of your pillows.

The bed is a terrible idea, in short: Levi’s ‘rest’ is invaded by guilt, the eerie silence of the forest crudely reminding him that every single one of them has left him. Blood spattered and soaked into the grass, eyes still wide open, frozen in all states of terror.

Petra, Eld, Oluo, Gunther—they’d been killed suddenly, in cold blood. Regardless of what Eren claims, it was the Female Titan who slaughtered them, and Levi wasn’t there to do a damn thing about it.

“Will you sleep okay?” was the question you’d so softly asked him, but there’s a reason Levi dodged it, evidenced by the untouched tea in front of him. It went cold some time ago.

Now that the sun is sinking into the horizon again, struck by the aftermath of another dream, another replay of the whole nightmare, Levi’s in his chair again. It’s foolish to imagine he could focus enough to get much of anything done (let alone read through documents), but he can’t waste away in his fucking bed anymore.

That blanket of yours is nestled deep in his arms, not doing what blankets are designed to as much as serving for something Levi can hold onto. It’s only been a week or so, but the fleecy sweater you lended him was in terrible need of a wash, so it’s being washed.

These are one of the few things Levi can do—and has done, an embarrassing amount—to remind himself that you didn’t get swallowed or swatted out of the sky on that expedition, either.

Coming summertime cultivates the world outside the large, paneled window he stares out. While the cottony blanket is flitted up, covering his nose, he can still see out.

Quiet security settles in his chest while worrying the linen between his thumb and forefinger. It’s deeply hued in your favorite color, and Levi sometimes fools himself into believing that—if he holds it close and wills it so—you’re much closer to him than you are in reality.

Said reality is abruptly shattered by a bland knock at his door.

Urgently, Levi furls the blanket over himself properly—as if he actually is using it to stave off a chill only he feels—and tells whoever it is to get lost because his fucking leg is screwed up and he’s been confined to bedrest until Erwin pulls the iron rod out of his ass.

There’s a distant scoff behind the door, urging Levi’s brow into a harsh glare. He curses the intruder—who has the gall to unlock his door—until Levi realizes that only two people still living have the keys to his quarters: Erwin, and you.

Suddenly, he has energy again. Levi jumps to his feet without thinking, grunts when pain shoots up his bad leg, and has half the mind to grapple for the edge of his desk. Otherwise, the first time you’d see Levi in a week would be him sprawled on all fours like a wounded dog.

The lock seems to rattle for ages until the door sways open, but in less than a moment he finally hears your voice, then feels you at his side; you urge him to lean on you so he can stagger back into his seat.

He doesn’t know what to say—whether there’s anything that needs to be said is another question—but your rueful smile tells him there’s no need.

“Hey,” you greet in a huff, and kneel a little so you’re at level height. The cape clasped over your shoulders swooshes as you do. Matter-of-fact, you’re still in full-uniform.

You left your post as soon as you heard.

Levi forgets to reply for the sake of relief quietly breaking over rocky shores in his chest. It must show on his face, because you pause in explaining just what he figured you did—hardly informing your commanding officer before flagging down the closest carriage—to bring his knuckles to your lips.

The journey must’ve taken hours, and it’s often considered desertion to leave your assigned post at all, but you apologize for how long it took anyway.

“No,” Levi mutters, and shakes his head. He hasn’t let a single muscle in his body relax in days, but his shoulders sag now. It’s so foolish to allow his grief bubble to the surface now.

“No?”

“You shouldn’t have left like that.”

You raise a brow, not at all new to Levi’s complete disregard over his own wellbeing. It’s kind in a way, but undeniably frustrating.

“What was the alternative?” you say, smoothing your palm across Levi’s knee, “Both of us grieving alone? You’re so bad at taking care of yourself, I was always gonna come back.”

On one hand, Levi wants to shove you away and tell you to go back, if only it’d make you regret doing something so unneeded as dropping everything just to return back to his side. On the other he wants to say nothing, crumble into nothingness in your arms, and stay like that for the rest of the night.

Levi does neither, and screws his eyes shut to stave off tears of anguish and respite from spilling over his lashes. He doesn’t have the right to be crying right now, and he can’t ruin the short time you can visit by being depressed, either.

Wordlessly, he senses you parting his legs (carefully, in mind of his injured one) and shifting in-between to wrap your arms around his waist. His heart must sound like a rampaging kickdrum at the side of your head, but you nuzzle closer anyway.

“Thank you,” he manages, and gently rests his hands on your shoulders. Your hair feels like it’s been spun from silk when he pats your head.

That blanket of yours is still haphazardly strewn over his lap when you pull away. Levi—if he were a better wordsmith—could harp on about the kindness radiating from your features forever. He doesn’t have to try when you kiss his palm, where he cradles your cheek, and ask him if he’d like a bath.

Levi sighs roughly, head gently falling forward. He doesn’t even realize his eyes have fallen shut as your hands work through his scalp, making sure the shampoo does its job. He wouldn’t seek out a bathhouse or spa to save his life, but at these times when you insist on washing his hair, he doesn’t think he’ll ever need to.

From behind, you chuckle. “Keep your head up. You’ll get shampoo in your eyes.”

Grumbling, Levi does as you suggest, and gains the mind back to resume the circles he’s been massaging into your pronounced calf muscles. It isn’t fair that he gets to both lounge in your lap and receive a massage from your methodical hands.

You’re one to brush him off and insist that Levi’s scalp is just sensitive, but it’s more than that. You’ve moved on, his bangs pinned all the way out of his face; now, sudsy water soaks down his back as you knead your thumbs into his shoulderblades.

He bites back a groan—nothing more than a rumble in his chest.

“Fuck,” Levi huffs, and leans back into your touch. He feels the need to brace himself on your thighs before your knees come up and hug his middle.

“Does that feel good?”

The way Levi relaxes gives away his answer. Here and there, you avoid a few fresh scrapes still marring his back, all the while washing him and murmuring that it’s been too long since he’s let you spoil him. Levi, for once, decides not to complain; not with your knuckles digging into the stubborn knots tying his muscles.

Your soapy hands glide up and down his torso, pulling him apart just to wind him up all over again. It’s a fight not to shiver with your lips skimming his shoulders, impossible when your fingers sink into his scalp, gently scrubbing all the suds away.

With that task out of the way, Levi is happy to lean back against your body and give in. Warmth turns his lower half as your hands roam his packed chest, ghosting over his thighs. He knows your touches aren’t completely innocuous, a sigh dying on his lips when your fingertips circle and smooth across the peaks on his chest.

“What’re you thinking about?” comes your murmur, drifting by his ear.

Levi hums a little, turning his head and barely brushing your forehead against his. The pink sprinkling your cheeks from the bath, the playful glint in your eye… “What else could be on my mind right now?”

Your smile is a little unsteady, he notes, but he doesn’t want to leave any room for regrets, not here. Just as he doubts a thing could’ve been done to prevent the tragedy had you been on the expedition, it’s just as likely you could’ve lost your life. He could’ve lost you.

A slow, chaste kiss. Levi shifts around in your lap, tilts his head and licks at your lips properly, where yours glide across his and push deeper, closer. By the way you pull at him, you missed him too.

Levi loves your skin, how warm you feel just beneath his fingertips. Impatience almost tugs at him, that he can’t be reeled in by your frantic kisses and admire the sheen of soapy water glistening your full, soft chest at the same time.

You still feel good, if the lust licking low in Levi’s belly is any indication. He hardens. Your hand eagerly grasps his where Levi’s touch drifts, caresses, then squeezes. He flicks your nipples into hardening buds.

“Fuck. You’re so wet already,” he sighs, circling the rim of your entrance with a single finger. Your breaths are hot and heavy next to his ear, a whimper of yours causing Levi to throb as he sinks it inside of you. “How long has it been, sweetheart?”

“It’s not the same by myself. Need you.”

Levi aches with your voice: His head spins, because you need him, and only him—no one else would do.

As your thighs hug his middle and anxious fingers draw patterns at the nape of his neck, he wishes he could taste you. You’re tight, squeezing his fingers, but Levi’s just as happy to glide them up and down, between your lips, before settling on rolling easy circles around your clit.

“Yeah ‘Vi, fuck.”

Your hips are eager, and the half-lidded gaze you share only fuels Levi’s impatience. He feels your hand wandering between his thighs too, leaving him to shudder. Shit.

Levi moans into your open mouth, feeling your fingertip dip into his slit. You squeeze gently, then ask for him to sit back.

He protests. “Bedroom. You could be sitting on my face rather than just my lap.”

Your breathless giggle echoes against the tiled walls, only for your hands to press against Levi’s chest and urge him into a proper sitting position. In your defense, the water is still hot and you have all night, besides, “–I won’t last long, anyway.”

Levi will fuck you all night if it makes you happy—this injury of his be damned. If you must be gone again in the morning for far too long, he’ll give up on sleep for the rest of the week to make this night last as long as you both please.

The water is inconvenient. He takes his time squeezing the soft fat of your ass as your heat swallows in his cock.

You brace yourself against his shoulder all the while, thighs trembling despite a filthy word: How good his cock fills you, how you want him louder, “–missed you so bad. Fuck, I never wanna go a day without you again.”

Levi moans with halfway still left to go, kissing and nuzzling away at your tits, which practically dangle in his face. It’s a silly thing to want, but he can’t deny that same wish, not when he wants you by him for all his days as well.

Your silky walls flutter around him once you’re finally fully seated in his lap. It’s with a few heaving breaths and long exchanges of grasping, patient kisses that you stretch to Levi’s girth, and he puts his focus into not throbbing so hard that he falls too soon; with you squeezing him tight, it isn’t easy.

“Move. ‘m ready. Levi.”

“You’re tight,” he breathes, voice even despite the tremble in his breath. He rolls his hips into you, but you’re even more impatient. The ripples in the bathwater echo a steady rise and fall, hasty exchanges of swelled lips and warm breath.

You moan, and Levi squeezes the swell of your thigh. By the way you suck him in and how he can’t help but chase your heat, neither of you can wait: it’s been too long. Your hands stray to his chest with fervor, roaming, your voice a whine next to his ear.

“So sensitive,” Levi chastises, light. Between your thighs, your clit is still so creamy for him. a ghost of his touch makes your walls flutter just a little harder around him.

“Y-Yeah…”

Your pace shifts—no more easy rocking, you need him. Levi sinks his nails in your hips and drives into you deeper. You moan, sweet and loud next to his ear.

It’s decided. There’s not a chance he’s letting you go for the rest of the night, not with your hands roaming all over him like this. He leaves little indents on your hips and groans earnestly into your shoulder.

How bad could it be to go faster, roll his thumb into your puffy clit harder, when you take him like he’s the only thing you need?

The sounds of the water are obnoxious as you bounce along in his lap, sucking his cock in with each eager stroke. He shudders, throbs, and Levi learns to sit back, letting you take the lead. You can fuck him any way you like; it won’t even matter in a moment.

“I’m close, sweetheart,” he thinks to warn, rolling his hips to the rhythm of your own, and shudders. Your breath is hot, kissing and nipping frantically down his jaw. Your own moan gets smothered by Levi’s lips and teeth.

“Me too. Levi, ‘V-Vi, don’t stop! Don’t stop.”

There’s no way in hell he even could. Pleasure burns right through to his core as your cunt squeezes where he‘s buried in you. He feels himself throb; you hug his cock so tight at the peak of your release that his own slams into him like a freight train.

You cry out for him, clutch at his shoulders and gush around him. Levi groans earnestly into your throat, trembles through the waves, and fucks you through it.

The aftershocks seem to last forever, so you take just as long to kiss and hold on, catching your breaths. Pulling out just means a mess, and a need to start the shower. He’s bold enough to assume—if Levi holds his twitching cock buried deep inside you like this—that lust will be burning again before long, and then he can make you come again.

You both end up staying there, wrapped up in the throes of passion and overstimulation for quite a while.

By the time warm rivets of water fall, rinsing your bodies, your thighs are shaking so hard that he holds you up, your chin tucked into his shoulder.

“Let’s stay up,” you resolve with a swift sigh, and shift to tuck Levi’s sopping bangs away from his eyes. Sometimes, it seems like you can read his mind, or maybe you just make all the emotions show on his face without realizing. “Let me take care of you.”

“You’re already doing that,” Levi grunts, and shifts his weight off his painful leg. The skin is still brutally tender; it’s as if letting the scathing water rush over it makes his muscles lock up rather than the opposite.

Rather than himself, he wants to know how your stay is going.

You smile a little joylessly. “It’s boring. I’d rather guard the 11th staircase than do favors for the Squad Leaders.”

Bold statement. It elicits a small scoff out of him. “Don’t you guard them?”

“They don’t need guarding,” you mutter, then sigh at Levi’s warm hands gliding over your back, your hips.

He presses a kiss just below your ear, and trails some down your neck as his touch drifts to take a handful of your ass. He squeezes and takes his time, pulling a little shiver out of you. More than anything, he wants to take his time.

You hum like a songbird. “Frisky, Captain.”

“Indulge me a little longer, will you?”

With all the time Levi’s been given to stew and think in the day since you had to leave him with a sweet, promising smile, an embrace he wished could swallow him whole—he’s realized a few things. Two things, really.

This world is cruel: Levi and you are separated now by stringent military command, a single Wall, and he’s missed you like he would miss his hands to fight. No mercy would wait if you were ever barred from each other by death—Levi’s or yours.

Another: In such a cruel, helpless world, he nonetheless wants to share the rest of his days with you. Whether his last is tomorrow or ten years from today, the fact alone that you feel the same gives Levi all the more reason to fight for that future.

Joy is fleeting, often polluted, and all at once scarce. The brief time you’ve been away dawned the realization that he would sooner regret never having loved you wholeheartedly, unapologetically, than going on trading kisses by candlelight and a promise to survive just for today; then the next, and gods willing, the one after that.

Levi’s writing hand aches because he couldn’t explain these feelings to you in so many heartfelt words. Whether you feel the same as him is a moot point because he knows you do already.

What he wants you to know is that he’s prepared to live and fight, not just for the cause, but entirely by your side. You shoot life into his veins and fuel a fire in his eyes. He wants to stay by your side, no matter if tomorrow is guaranteed or not.

A day beside you with a ring on your finger trumps a thousand years of Levi without you. That’s the truth.

He’s a fool, but this is the way he feels. On a Scout’s salary he can’t afford much, and marriage is a messy, complicated thing in the world you both live; it’s not as if the Titans will be eradicated within either of your lifetimes, and he’ll die before he settles down without seeing this war through.

For these reasons, some time ago Levi went through with picking up on some old favors; Underground favors, but it was cash in his pocket nonetheless. Before then, he had no concept of what ring size meant, but knew his distaste for shiny rocks. Diamonds are as expensive as they are garish and tasteless. A practical, silver band would suit you, he’s certain.

It was a strange feeling, plucking it out of his lockbox again, but Levi’s sure of himself now. Writing, then polishing the ring and addressing the thing gives him something to do in your absence.

Another grueling day of fitful pain and nothing-tasks passes when his heart jumps with the realization that there’s no possible way he can wait to deliver the envelope—ring delicately enclosed—to you in person. He’ll hesitate, never find the right moment, or plainly drive himself crazy with nerves.

And anyway, Erwin is firm in restricting Levi to the inner city district too, at least.

More than just a fragile request that you remain steadfast by his side, he calls the whole letter a promise of sorts. Sending it remotely will shoot your excitement into the sky, he bets, which is why he rewrites the entire letter word-for-word to append details as to why he chose to give it to you over long distances, rather than in person.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say.

Feeling like a brutish child with a nanny of a Commander, Levi steps into Erwin’s office to inform him that he’s going on errands. He’s already halfway out the door when he arrives, and advises Levi not to strain himself. The coddling is incessant.

Regardless, he obeys. Levi takes a meandering carriage to Trost District’s bustling downtown area with a clear conscience; it takes a whole damn hour. And the news that awaits him makes him sick all the way down to his busted leg.

“It’s–It’s not just priority postage, Captain Levi. No mail is being sent to Stohess—hasn’t for days.”

That’s all Levi needs to hear.

It’s not as if the horses used to carry mail have all come down with some ick, all at once. It’s Wall Sina—and the Military Police, for that matter. This situation is fishier than whatever this guy thinks is happening.

Swiftly, Levi leaves with his steps matching the pounding of his heart, and marches all the way back to HQ. The carriages move too slowly, and he doesn’t give a shit about his leg as much as he does you.

Eren is supposed to be taken to the Capitol today to be handed off to the brass, Erwin went too. Knowing him, he’s been planning something. Having been kept out of the loop for as long as Levi has, what exactly that is eludes him.

He rolls it around in his head as he tightens his belts and hoists the ODM’s scabbards and gas tanks around his waist.

He mutters a curse. Any other Scout he’s approached doesn’t know, not that there’s many around to begin with—even Hange is in Stohess.

“Miche,” Levi greets, right on sight. He doesn’t plan to waste time. “Have you heard from Erwin recently?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Like Levi, Miche is known for his no-nonsense personality. Unlike Levi, he’s a walking giant who the other must crane his neck to look in the eye, even more so than Erwin.

Levi doesn’t take him for a liar, as Miche doesn’t seem very interested but to keep brushing down his horse in the hot stink of the stalls. What Levi does with himself is out of his jurisdiction anyway, but Miche (predictably) has a knack for sticking his nose in things it doesn’t belong. Levi feels him glancing over his shoulder at him as his boots clump against hay, followed by another stall whining open.

“Levi. Look after that leg, wouldn’t want to lose a soldier like you to infection.” Miche pauses. “Aren’t you on sick-leave for the next week?”

He’ll be fine. Levi tells him so as he hefts a saddle over Nibble’s back—a midnight-black smartass of a horse. One ride into Stohess won’t do his leg in, and if it somehow does, then Levi knows his own limits well-enough not to get killed in the first place. He’s been hurt worse, and charged into a fight for much lesser reasons.

With Miche’s efforts, the gate cries on its hinges as it’s opened wide. Nibbles stamps his hooves impatiently, clearly not too pleased to have moped around for days like Levi has.

There’s only two people his horse behaves for too—his rider (as Levi’s kept him for a couple years now), and you, for how often you both go out riding together.

Levi urges the beast into a trot. Before Miche can spare a last warning, he snaps his reins. The horse takes to a beating gallop upon the dry, dusty dirt and out of Trost HQ altogether.

Levi was right to worry.

The stench of smoke chokes the air as far as a mile outside the city, towering high into the sky above the earth. The ground rumbles with the heart-dropping footfalls of what Levi knows is a Titan—though, it should be impossible for them to wreak their havoc as far inside as Sina.

The Garrison are missing, but droves of evacuees crowd the roads, the vast majority in illustrious carriages, some on horseback, few hurrying away from Stohess on foot.

The grave determination set in Levi’s features could kill. He’s forced to take the offset, beaten path to avoid the chaos, to get there faster. Out of his lack of formal uniform and cape he won’t be easily recognized, but the set of ODM he carries undoubtedly will if he isn’t careful.

His heart pulls at him to aid them, but there’s no way to help everyone. While you’re inside the city where that bitch is, you’re the priority. Levi doesn’t doubt your strength, but everyone in his elite squad fell to her, all at once. He can’t take that chance.

His thighs ache with exertion, stretching all the way up his core. From Trost, galloping to Stohess at full speed took hours, and more out of him than he’d like to admit. At a time where it could kill you or him to be rendered weak, he feels the strain down to how hard he cinches Nibbles’ reins.

A cry, a roar of a Titan Levi hasn't forgotten—and perhaps could never forget—tears the air. Dread turns and settles in his stomach like a stone. He was so stupid to waste time, stupid not to get an answer out of Erwin of his plans, stupid to let you go again.

Worst of all, he was stupid to allow himself to lull into a sense of security after you didn’t tag along on that expedition: you’d been spared thanks to circumstance, and now circumstance is back to rear its ugly head. Your safety wasn’t even guaranteed behind the innermost Wall—and all over again Levi isn’t there to protect what he can’t bear losing.

The Female Titan is back. You could die. You could be dead.

He doesn’t allow these thoughts to stick to him.

The state of the city is hell. The ground shakes, blood and gore stinking and poisoning his gaze no matter where he looks. Fires engulf the buildings, and even more are crushed, reduced to rubble.

Levi’s steed waits safely outside the city now. What with all the chaos, his sorest challenge in infiltrating the warzone that was Stohess is his damn leg. Walking is grueling and painful, and keeping a brisk pace split the pain into agony. As soon as possible, he took to the air on gas and wires.

The Titan’s wails shake his eardrums, and still, Levi’s heart tramples in his ears. Somewhere, what must be Hange and their squad has the Female trapped and subdued, for now.

He shifts directions. As Levi makes his way to the MP headquarters, he shouts directions to what citizens are still alive—as well as those who only seem that way.

As usual, the Garrison is doing little, and the Military Police even less. As Levi’s wires cry and he scales the rooftops, he spots them here and there: hiding, dead, or stiff with terror.

You should be taking action just as the Scouts are, wrangling this situation. You should, but despite how he scours, you're nowhere to be found.

Breathing uncharacteristically hard for just a feat on ODM, Levi squints through the smoke and eyes the ground. For his speed it’s just a blur, but if you aren’t aiding the Corps, he’s sure you’re helping out the common people escape the city and find a safe place.

“Hey!” Levi calls, and drops towards the ground. The cape on a lone Scout’s back—crouched over an ailed woman and a screeching, bloody girl—it must be you. Taking the chance, he tries your name.

“Levi!?”

Your face is urgent. There’s blood soaked into your clothes and skin, and you crouch over the trapped civilians—at the least, you don’t seem hurt. A dead weight leaves Levi through a breath now that he’s found you alive.

In only so many words, you explain the sordid situation as he stoops down to your level and rips his nondescript cloak off his back.

The Female Titan’s sudden ambush left countless dead or injured, along with this woman’s fractured arm and her child; the latter of which seems to be pinned under the rubble by her waist. Levi can hardly hear you speak over her hysteria at the state of her child.

“Rip the fabric and talk some sense into her. Put her arm in a sling, I’ll get the kid,” he directs in a heaved breath, and you waste no time.

“Please,” the crumpled woman wails, “help her. I don’t give a damn about myself, just get my baby out!”

All else fades into the background as Levi stoops over the scraggly girl—she seems to be in shock, but she whimpers at his calm command to take a hold of his shirt, and not let go for anything.

“Please. Mister…”

“I’m a soldier,” Levi reassures her, tugging aside the mess of dust, broken wood and loose rubble.

He knows the odds once he spots the stones pinning her small body to the ground. Gods, how he knows, but Levi swallows the dread in his throat and keeps at it.

“Don’t worry, I’m gonna get you out of this. What’s your name?”

You’ve finished tying away at the agonized mother’s arm as Levi finds a hold and hefts, lifting the chipped rock with all his might. He doesn’t even feel the pain, doesn’t sense you dropping to his side to push the strenuous process along.

Then, Levi can’t help but tense as his instincts, sharper than anyone else’s he knows, flare like he’s been drowned in fire. He has a split-second, and no choice but to shout—”Get down!”—before abandoning the stone and launching his body forward, over your own like a human shield.

There’s an enormous sound, like the biggest drum on earth being punctured. There’s burning heat, and an immediate crushing feeling dropping over his entire body.

His ears ring like hell the next thing he knows, and you’re wriggling around beneath him, coughing and coughing. It’s heady and Levi smells blood, but you haven’t been buried, just pinned underneath a second explosion.

“Levi. We need to get out–” he hears you sputter, and grapple for his arm. Blinking the stinging blood out of his vision, he grunts and stubbornly tightens his hold around your waist.

“What happened?”

“I think–” A coughing fit. “–Eren’s just transformed.”

He can’t move an inch thanks to that, or you’ll be crushed—but he quickly learns how weak he is. Darkness pries at his vision, and if he succumbs to the bright pain buzzing in his head, passes out, you’ll be crushed anyway.

A moment passes wherein you seem to understand the predicament, and start kicking away at the debris for an escape. It goes so slow. Everything moves in slow motion; Levi’s ears ring; it’s taking a majority of his concentration just to stay awake.

The sight of your body filthy with soot and a nasty gash in your cheek brings him back down to earth. Levi feels the dirt muddying his nails as he braces harder overtop of your crumpled form. You’re ordering him to stay awake, to hold out just a while longer.

“Just—hurry it up.”

Your voice is strangled: “I am. Stay awake.”

Panting hard, Levi bows his head against your throat, and elbows back hard, pushing. Some of the weight drops away off his back, vision swimming. His heart hammers so hard that he just might go mad with the adrenaline.

Levi’s chest presses against your back, one forearm caged beneath your head and the other cinched protectively around your waist. He can’t do much from this position in lieu of giving in to unconsciousness—his dead weight would just be a crucible for your deaths.

As it is, neither of you can get enough air in your lungs. He sags against your back, and broken wood whines.

“Levi!”

“I’m fine,” he coughs, “just get the hell outta here.”

Cringing through the dust and blood at the opening you’ve made, the sunlight is nearly blinding. The way the Titans shake the ground feels as if Levi’s towering a hundred stories above it. Almost there.

“I’m out, I’m out. Here.”

That’s enough for him. Levi lets himself sag fully to the ground out of the half-plank he somehow maintained before. More weight is sluggishly shoved off his back, leaving him to struggle and smear blood off his eyes.

Pain—enough to make Levi grit his teeth—returns and radiates up and down his injured leg, as well as his head. He blinks the black spots away as your grip finds his shoulder, maneuvering the rest of the shit draining the last of Levi’s strength from his arm.

There’s blood, he notices. A crooked wrist sticks out haphazardly from the tomb of stone and planks before him—the woman. They’ve both been crushed.

Your hand lands on Levi’s shoulder again, strong and supportive. It drops to his waist, and with his arm over your shoulder, you aid him up and off the ground. The earth no longer trembles from the Titan battle; except for the fires, your surroundings are eerily calm.

Like a second nature, Levi finnicks with the latches at his waist, and his splintered, broken ODM crashes to the ground. He clenches his teeth, taking dizzying steps forward with help from your steadfast hold around his waist, holding him upright. His breaths are rasping, feverish.

“Please, stay with me... Fuck, this is my fault.”

At first, Levi has no idea what you’re talking about. You begin to walk in the direction of the commotion at the Wall.

He scoffs. “You weren’t the one who turned Titan just then, were you? ‘S my choice.”

You shake your head, but don’t argue. If you knew the reason Levi came, maybe you would.

With his leg the way it is, he has no choice but to lean into you heavily. Offhandedly, he hopes he can make up for the surely-ruined envelope weighing in his pocket with the reprieve of having spared you from injury.

“Keep going… If I pass out, just leave me and come back with Hange and the others.”

“Fuck that,” you spit immediately. Your curse holds venom, but like a web in the wind, you also sound as if you’re about to cry. “If you want me to leave you, you’ll have to break both my hands.”

The conviction in your voice stuns Levi into silence, out of a reply that will make him seem even more like an asshole. The reason he pursued you in the first place rings in his mind again, weighing heavier by the moment… At any rate, he refuses to die before he gets to see that ring on your finger.

It takes fifteen hours of rest for Levi to swim back to consciousness, left in his opinion as good as new. In yours, not so much. Once he’s taken to sitting up and taking sips of water without help, you claim you’re willing to tie him down to the bed if it means he’ll rest, and he believes you.

Erwin has the most wordy opinion of all, though: Casting aside his insubordination, Levi’s confined to his barracks until you deem fit for charging into an active battlefield while on sick-leave. You’re the one person Levi would ever listen to on the matter of his own health, so he’s (without argument) in your care.

He heals quickly, as always. In the meantime, you bring tea with his meals and replace the splint pinned to his leg with clean bandages when you catch him lacking. The only attention from the medical branch Levi welcomes is a place for his concussion to be treated properly; and painkillers, for obvious reasons.

Shifting, he slides the fresh envelope out from underneath the mattress. A week prior, and as soon as he had a moment alone, Levi pulled a nurse aside and asked him to keep both it and its contents safe. The nurse was confused, but delighted to be given a task from Captain Levi and did as he asked.

You’re close by today, as you have been every day—true to your fiery word.

“I have something for you. You kept pestering why I happened to be in Stohess that day… Well, this is the reason.”

You perch at Levi’s bedside and curiously pluck the envelope from his grasp; it may be new and crisp, but its contents are the same. “What’s in here?”

Levi forces himself to relax against the headboard and braces himself for your reaction with the order to just open it. He almost offers to do it himself, as your knuckles are thoroughly bandaged from the hell you went through to return the favor after he saved your life, but you have endless resolve.

Pride warms his chest. Truly, you’re Levi’s kind of woman.

Upon spotting the silken pouch, you hesitate, and Levi holds his breath. From here on, you seem to realize the gravity of what this is, and suddenly treat the parchment as if it were a butterfly’s wing in your palm.

“Don’t blame yourself,” he says, intent to get that conversation out of the way as soon as possible. His explanation of the postage is curt, and blunt: Levi isn't foolish enough to claim his actions weren’t rash and selfish, but he doesn’t regret it, and he can’t be convinced to.

“You’re an idiot,” you sigh, and with trembling fingers, unfold the note. “But, you’re my idiot. So I forgive you.”

Levi’s heart is practically vibrating in his chest as your gaze slowly scans the page. Craving something to do with his hands, he squeezes the fabric beneath him and watches your expression carefully. It takes you an uncanny amount of time to scan through the whole thing.

Levi swallows and frowns with reverence as your lips slowly part; your eyes widening, shining, then glimmering with tears. Truthfully, he feels like he’s cracking too.

“I thought now was as good a time as any, because…well, you know.” Levi coughs to loosen the knot curling in his throat, feeling foolish. The delicate handwriting holds all the care he wishes to delicately express. His words can’t be any more effective than that.

You don’t reply. Levi looks up, just to find you evidently scanning the page again, rapidly smearing away the stray tears sticking to your lashes. You smile as if you’ve just reached the ending of an incredible story; perhaps you’ve realized the meaning of life itself. Levi has no idea how else to describe the lovely look growing over your features.

“Levi,” you sniffle, and his heart skips.

“That’s not all of it,” he protests with a huff, leaning up and snatching the velvety bag, then your bandaged hand. Your fingers curl around his, minutely shaking, but his are worse—one a stroke of thunder, one an earthquake.

You plop down on the bed very near him as Levi struggles to worm the ring out with just one hand. He hears your voice quietly telling him that you love him, and your lips pressing up and down his jaw.

“You’re so…” Levi shakes his head, but the tremors in his hands don’t leave. “I wanted to ask if you’d stay with me.”

If he were to glimpse your face, he feels as if your eyes might just pierce his soul; his heart will stop dead for you. For this reason Levi bravely looks up when your palm grasps his chin, pressing your lips together.

“Yes, yes, yes,” you speak between sloppy kisses, eyes glittering and breathing sparks. “What else did you expect I’d say, Lev’?”

“I didn’t expect you to slobber all over me.”

An unmistakable quirk playing at his upturned lips, Levi puts aside how he trembles and slides the silver over the right finger—out of all things, he wouldn’t get that wrong.

“Is there–” you grin, admiring the silver, then link your hands together, “–What about one for you?”

That, Levi also planned for. Pecking your forehead, he nods to the velvet again, which you take in your grasp. He feels as if all the parading, manic sparks inside his whole body will combust as you take his hand in turn, slipping his own ring onto its proper place.

“I was going to send it in the mail, to e-entice you to get back sooner. Would it have worked?”

You laugh, taking his cheeks and kissing him all over his face. “Not even–the biggest–ugliest–Titan–on earth–coulda–stopped me.”

Again, your kisses end back on his lips. Levi takes your bottom one between his teeth, grasping the back of your head as something powerful surges in his chest. He can catch hints of sweet lilac on your skin, the warm mint on your breath, closer than the air between your bodies.

You’re heaven, he realizes, catching the cool silver under his palm as your hands glide together. Then, chilling his cheek, and the side of his neck.

The world is cruel, and unpredictable. But, now that you’ve returned home to his side, Levi’s convinced that he’ll drown in you before he ever feels the need for air again.

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