LEVI ACKERMAN (ATTACK ON TITAN)
. ⚔︎ *. ˗ˏˋ ⛉ ˎˊ˗ *
❝HIT ME❞ (Levi Ackerman x Fem!Reader)
Every hit you go for tells a story. The ones you don’t take practically gossip. He notes them all.
Or, sparring w/ Levi that doubles as him testing you, a newly turned Titan.
SFW, canon divergence (black eldians), canon typical action/violence, bonding(?), can be read as pre-relationship - female!titan!reader
Alright, my first time writing Levi, lets go! (Pic source: Attack on Titan — “Shoukei to Shikabane no Michi” s3pt2 opening five & “The Town Where Everything Began” s3pt2ep1)
2k+ words
ODM gear settles a familiar weight across his body. Moving with his shoulders and shifting with his hips, all of the leather and light steel pieces of its straps pressing into him in an extension of his will.
Metal and compressed gas canisters and blades heavy with purpose.
He’s alone with you via request that wasn’t his. Figures Erwin would leave him to his own devices now, but he hadn’t wanted anyone slowing Levi down and the man couldn’t argue the logic.
Still, you were awful company. Locked in your head and mistrustful— which he could respect, but it certainly didn’t make his life any easier.
Baking under the heat of the sun on the cusp of noontime with a walking corpse of a woman wasn’t his idea of fun.
Even if it beat the paperwork that’d have to be done discussing you and the issue of your placement with the scouts. All things he was more than willing to leave to Erwin— and no doubt Hanji’s eager machinations too.
Left to their own devices your horses whinny quietly a ways away. Wind blows weakly through the strands of hair that hang across his forehead.
Sitting on the ground in borrowed ill-fitting clothes, you make for a pathetic sight. Slumped, picking at weeds, expression bland.
You probably think he’s brought you out here to kill you. Levi’s honestly not sure whether you plan to fight that possibility or just lay down and take it.
Levi won’t correct the possible assumption either. Shit, he’d even try riling you up some more if it wasn’t starting to make him feel bad.
It’s not like you rose to the bait. Only answering when necessary. One dreary sentence at a time if he was lucky.
Something less verbal it’d have to be— and he wasn’t about to complain about his own plan to get some answers out of you coming to fruition.
“Get up,” he orders. Not surprised when you take a few seconds to level him with a heavy gaze before you do.
Walls, it was too fucking early for this.
“So you’re telling me,” he starts, a throb already buzzing along his temples, “that you just popped back into consciousness?”
Something like surprise twitches in the shadows of your eyes.
“Don’t sound too eager to believe me, now,” you grunt, mostly to yourself, rolling with whatever revelation you came to. He ignores it. Looking at him, you nod. “Yes.”
“Bullshit.”
You blink, face scrunching.
“How exactly,” you start, slow in a way that has him gritting his teeth, “might you be informed enough to tell me?”
“Fine.” Sure. He'd beat the truth out of you then. “We’re going to spar now, and you're going to answer anything else that springs to my mind. Honestly, understood?”
You frown, sullen, “Like you’d know—”
“—I’d know.”
His fingers curl at his sides in lazy anticipation.
Whether because of his certainty or because you think he’s full of shit your mouth clicks closed. Eyes going a little wide.
He’s used to the dubioness you look over him with next. The furrow on your face that tells him you’re contemplating his sanity.
“…Okay,” you hedge.
Levi moves. Knows instantly from your aborted shout that he’s caught you off guard and lets the disappointment roll off of him as you recoil without a plan. Aimless and ineffective as hell.
Aims right for the edge of your cheek, just below your eye. A blur of tightly controlled violence.
His reward is a crack when your head snaps back from the force— and the stain of your blood across his knuckles. Disgusting.
Levi doesn’t think anything fractured. Is familiar enough with the ins and outs of his own fight style and capabilities to know nothing should’ve broken from that hit.
Not concerning himself with the details just yet, he backtracks a few steps to rub the blood from his skin. Gets it clear and his handkerchief dirty. Rubs until pale skin is free of any crimson bar the redness of fading pain, then folds the linen cloth and rubs some more. Five times. Six. Until it feels right.
Glancing back your way he isn’t surprised to see you keeled over. Hands on your knees, head hanging, body trembling.
Disoriented.
Levi clicks his tongue. Tucks the handkerchief out of sight.
Panting, your pupils are blown when your eyes eventually rush to find him. Roving in your skull before straightening with a snap of movement to sink into his flesh with predatory focus.
Sparks of golden heat skitter like lighting across dark skin. Pouring for a handful of beats from the split flesh his knuckle carved into the apple of your cheek.
It’s bloody. A fat smear of red marring your face.
Still, he would hardly call you unsightly.
Captured despite what he’s here for, he lingers. Stuck on your complexion sat somewhere between his uniform leathers and wet soil after the rain’s cleansed the Earth. Skin closer to the shade of oak that doesn’t react all that different from his, but is so rare a sight he lingers half a second too long.
Testing his grip, he knocks his gaze over your shoulder and ignores how easy it is to look at you and fall into narrowed eyes and the furrow between your brows even if he doesn’t have all the words to describe you.
A dull ache makes itself known and is just as swiftly ignored in his knuckles.
It’d be gone before nightfall.
Your jaw clenches.
Levi edges a finger towards his cravat, straightening it by feel alone, and lets the fleeting thought of his gear grips pass over his thoughts and dissipate. The malleable weight of ultrahard blades an irrefutable force in his hands that he didn’t currently need, no matter how attached he’s gotten.
In the face of the sharp flash of assessment in your gaze a lesser man might be tempted to reach for them anyway.
Levi doesn’t move.
“Ready to take this seriously, yet?” he drags out.
Jerky motions take your hand to your face. Umber fingers and lighter fingertips prod at the cut with a caution that makes him want to roll his eyes.
He swallows the urge.
“Ow,” you stress. Glowering.
Not shifting.
Steam rises in a peaceful swirl from your cut instead. Sealing itself before his eyes in seconds.
He wasn’t worrying about whatever fit you wanted to throw. He didn’t care. Testing your person was the goal here, and Levi doesn’t know any language quite as succinctly as he does the bitterness of violence and clawing survival.
Eyes set in their usual mild, unbothered glower, he forces his body to project his desire for close combat. A weakness beaten out of him by Kenny and a lifetime of scraps in the Underground alike. Something he strived to train out of himself he’s dusting off just for you.
He could laugh.
“Shut up and fight.”
“You’re such a little bitch,” you complain.
Levi’s heart picks up at the barring of your teeth. At the stance you fall into with liquid fluidity, body hunkering, arms raised to grapple. Eyes intent.
Not bothering to argue with him any longer— seems you could learn your lesson.
Finally, some damn excitement.
“What’s the matter,” he deadpans, raising a brow when you skitter away at his halfassed advance, “you too delicate to take a punch all of a sudden?”
He remembers your towering Titan form. Brown eyes big and confused in your Titan’s skull and you still hadn’t gone down easily. More calculated in protecting yourself, tangling their wires and bucking scouts off you with ease, than you’d had any right to be considering you’d dropped like a lamb on weak legs once cut from your Titan’s nape.
Cried too.
Even he hadn’t been able to do more than sigh and drape his cloak over your naked curled up body. He’d be fine getting a new one.
Hanji’s perverse, near fucking orgasmic, delight had dimmed by your tears too. They’d still taken a long look at the pattern of the markings that branded themselves onto your temples and in the hollows beneath your eyes, different from Eren’s. Scheming with Moblit their soundboard as you were transferred to their base over the new anomaly you presented.
Levi hadn’t cared for the specifics. Still didn’t.
His only job was being the blade he was. Being the person able to cut you down while he sussed out your intentions to see if you’d be a threat to them later down the line.
It wasn’t yet insignificant that all the scouts who’d tried to slice you free had rained down from your fourteen meter Titan not unscathed, but alive.
Levi drops his gear. Secure enough in his ability to retrieve the blades to leave them drawn and ready on a nearby patch of grass if need be.
He swats away your first punch. Lets you test his reaction speed. Flicking over his form for an opening that isn’t available. For anything exploitable in the injury that’s still only acceptable to maneuver on with his skillset— the injury he’s more than practiced at covering up the existence of.
He’ll give you one thing. You’re at least not slow about it.
The fight doesn’t truly begin until you throw caution to the wind and lunge.
Bombarding him with hit after hit, backing him up and bullying your way into his space.
Contrary to his earlier assumptions, you don’t just fight, you fight mean. With a deft scrappiness and heavy hands he doesn’t expect.
Not too delicate indeed.
At least where survival came into play. Which was something he had figured.
Levi doesn’t have to let you do shit, you simply aren’t giving him time to flip out or force distance between you.
It’s been a while since he’s fought on equal footing like this. Brain skipping as he struggles to learn you—
Dropping below his eyeline in a blur of movement, you lock onto him after a faint he fails not to fall for for a half second too long.
Moving you becomes borderline impossible. Your stance so grounded, center of gravity so secure, years of experience fighting people bigger than him — not Titans, but men — can’t fully come to his defense unless he wants to seriously hurt you.
Stalling as you both grapple for his footing. Him to keep it and you to snatch it away.
He nearly blinks down at you in shock at being forced into a proverbial corner so soon.
His word tilts on its axis before he can think a second more.
Levi’s back hits the ground. Dirt kicking up around you both as his footing is stolen from beneath him. Happening fast enough he can only recall the feel of what you’d done to sweep him so well.
The cinch of your arms trapping him, boring down on his ribs and squeezing the breath from his lungs. The brace and heave. How your leg rose and your knee rammed into his abdomen with bruising force.
White hot heat lances through his tailbone. Between his back and the crown of his head pain trickles up and down his spine like a bolt of lightning striking a metal rod.
He swallows a shout. A strangled grunt knocked from his chest in its place from the dig of your knee.
Landing with him, you don’t let up. In theory Levi figures the plan is to pin him.
Above him, dust settling around you, surprise flicks over your features for half a second instead. Like you’re shocked he went down at all.
Not one to miss an opening, he takes advantage.
Levi’s breathing slows— too used to this game to panic. Weary enough for survival to slip between every grove of his bones and the cavern of his lungs like a reflex.
Twists his hips and doesn’t balk when the suddenness causes you to lose your balance and crash over him. Flips your positions with the leverage he has against you and your own momentum.
A storm passes between you when you lock eyes during the struggle. Thunder crashing and the space between your bodies thrumming with destructive purpose.
“Memory’s coming back now, huh?” he grunts, words rough as he exerts himself that bit more than usual. Knocking the arm you’re trying to hook behind his knee away.
Springing to his feet, he backs up to make distance. Spits the dirt from his mouth with a curse. Fucking gross.
“You piece of shit,” he hisses. It’s not heat induced delusion that tells him the corners of his mouth have pulled upward when he sneers though.
His blood thrums.
“You started it, Jackass.” You climb to your feet. Muscles shifting, bruises ignored. Voice coiling and tone sharpening as you taunt him. “What’s the matter, Captain? Too delicate to handle a little dirt?”
“Tch.”
Levi doesn’t let his words talk for him after that point. Your Titan makes you more durable when he comes at you, but you still gasp in pain. Still avoid nastier hits.
It lets him coral you. Knowing better now than to let you get too close.
Every hit you go for tells a story. The ones you don’t take practically gossip. He notes them all. Trading blows back and forth, slipping out of a grapple that has him lifted into the air.
An elbow meant for your jaw that you barely dodge.
A punch to the face that sends him staggering— but only that. Instinct guides him out of the path of your next jab. It clips his ear, that entire side of his face flaring with heat at the impact.
He thinks he hears your caustic, lilting laugh in its wake.
It clatters around his head for the few seconds it takes for him to spin away from your reaching hands on light feet. To duck under another punch with a small noise of exertion and a swoop in his stomach.
It’s only when he grabs the arm you’ve thrown, stopping you from pulling it back and throwing you off balance, that he’s able to draw your modest spar time to a close.
Drawing himself into your personal space on his terms. Hooking his heel into the back of your knee. Sending you both hurtling for the ground. Poised to drive his knee into your gut.
You wheeze when you slam down together. Levi putting all his weight onto you and landing with a grunt.
The cough that rattles your chest afterwards is rough, shifting into a gag while you struggle to re-orientate. Levi rolls off of you before you can do something unthinkable like throw up on him.
Minutes pass before you rise into a sitting position fully healed. Finally.
He’s sweating like a fucking pig.
“So what?” you pant, wiping spittle from your chin with a grimace. “Did I pass your stupid test, or are you about to kill me, little man?”
Levi tilts his head, gives you a look, and moves on.
“If you can write, I want a log of whatever memories just came back to you.”
“What? Like my name and shit?” A frown turns down two-toned lips he hadn’t realized were quirked before. Just his luck that once you regained some semblance of life you’d be annoying. “Being a Titan isn’t exactly something I can give you people a step by step rundown on, Captain.”
“Would you prefer I kill you?”
Brows furrowing, he watches you contemplate it. Notes that too.
“…No.” you grunt. And when he asks for your name you offer it up willingly for his own lips to form around.
You already know his, so he doesn’t bother with formal introductions. It’d be a farce anyway, you were already plenty acquainted.
“Here.” Levi rises to his feet in one fluid motion. Retrieves your water from your horse to toss it into your lap. “We leave in three.”
You’re too wrung out to startle, eyes dropped to half mast when you mumble a ‘thank you’ he doesn’t acknowledge.
Hip cocking, he leaves that freaky enhanced body of yours to its own devices. Letting his muscles uncoil where he’s standing with his arms crossed, and taking care not to loom.
Levi’s sure his face slips into a glower as he allows his suspicion to surface. Weighing your initial meeting with what he’s learned from you now against his own general distrust.
Distrust Erwin is expressly counting on.
For your part you don’t buckle under his attention. Keeping a simmering predator’s focus on him that Levi’s less disquieted by than he’s expecting. It’s a focus that matches his own, after all.
Your eyes never entirely let him out of your sight.
Not that he wanders.
After a moment his expression breaks. Smoothing out to neutral indifference. “Not bad,” he tosses out, the real compliment in his eyes. Appraisal in a wandering glance.
Brows tick towards your hairline. A stray, trailing laugh falls past your water slick lips. It buzzes pleasantly through him.
“Mmchtt,” you blow off his words, the quick sucking, slide of your teeth unconvinced. Somehow from the ground your eyes bore into him. “And if I was?”
Levi doesn’t answer.
Checks the placement of the sun, higher in the sky now, and doesn’t grin down at you either.
Lashes fluttering, he indicates the horses with a nod. Makes his way back to OMD gear you didn’t so much as glance at once while it was off of him.
Scoffs at the sour trepidation that graces your face, pulling straps and metal back on. An ease to the routine and an eagerness in deft fingers.
“You’ll live.”
“Fuck you,” you snap, but it’s too quiet to hold real heat.
Silent, he watches you slip back into yourself. You still meet his stare headon but the fire stays trapped behind your eyes now.
Regardless, it’s progress.
This was progress. Even if he got messy in the process.
He still blew off steam in the tangle of your limbs and unexpected strength. In the way you bowed and made him bend in turn and matched him hit for hit. And he’d gotten what Erwin wanted out of getting himself thrown ass over backwards.
Having a less collateral prone challenge for a change wasn’t unwelcome either.
Now if only you get on your horse before the next decade passes you both by.
Levi scrapes the grit from under his nails with the tip of a dagger. The blade proportional in his smaller hands in spite of its size. Movements sure enough to intimidate while he waits for you to mount your horse with a bored disposition and an itch steadily rising under his skin.
He needs a shower.
Once you’ve fumbled your way onto the saddle, it’s him who steers the reins for both your horse and his black haired steed. Going slower because of it.
If it wouldn’t be so damn impractical he would have only taken his horse. Settled you in front and moved at a pace that was befitting of the kind of animal bred for the pace required of the Corps’ main source of transportation.
As it stands, it’s technically easier like this. But without any experience riding horseback you’re forced to fumble your way through the journey and he’s forced to bear witness.
Sparing a glance your way. Watching you shakily holding the riding form he’d shown you, breeze ruffling your clothes and flowing over textured hair.
“You’re going to slip off if you keep fighting the horse,” he says. Bland. “Relax.”
“I’m trying,” you huff, almost whining before you take in a deep breath. Heeding his advice the best you can.
For all the good the attempt does you.
Too jittery and nervous to let the steady trotting roll through you. Too tense not to yelp when your panic, thighs squeezing into the sides of the saddle, makes the horse stutter.
Levi doesn’t knock your hand off him when, mid-yelp, you reach for anything to steady yourself as you tilt sideways and grab for his knee (you’re lucky it’s not his bad leg). Reaching out to grip you by the wrist. Leaning closer as your arm trembles and you struggle to right yourself.
“What did I just say,” he murmurs. Keeping his voice level because he really doesn’t want to spook the horses.
He can only get so close to you with your horses walking side by side, but he does manage to help get you centered again without having to stop your meandering advance. Not letting go of you until he’s confident you won’t go toppling over the other side, but before you’ve given him your own indication of readiness nonetheless.
You’d get ready or you’d fall, that was that. He wasn’t making it anymore his problem than he had to.
“Damnit,” you cuss, eyes slipping shut while you work the nerves from your body. You do balance though, and you do relax. Increment by increment.
He tells you mildly that, “You’ve got it,” instead of scoffing at you. But it’s a near thing.
All things considered, he really would prefer not killing you.
NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!!
Explanation — Annie (nothing personal) gets eaten after being left in the woods and found by a straggler Titan, which changes A LOT but is also why I’m not using female!titan!reader for any deeper storylines in this au. Also, the Reader-Insert being an adult and the connections she makes being directly amongst the veteran members of the Survey Corps is pretty crucial here.
Also, frankly, if the Titans was fucking on EVERYBODY (part propaganda but not without some truth) then it’s not some crazy stretch of the imagination that they might’ve intermingled with the more visibly melinated amongst us. OR you can think about the canon divergence of Black Eldians just being because Eldians/Marlayans who have been able to free themselves enough to immigrate and start families with the Black people we know exist in the AoT universe, it’s up to you. Anyway, single Black Pure Titan from season four you’ve never left my mind.
Yes, the Shoukei to Shikabane no Michi intro is one of my favorite openings, thanks for asking.
Fun fact, I took inspiration from the Senegalese Laamb martial art (wrestling style) for the Reader-Insert’s fighting style here. Just wanted to share cause African and Afro-Caribbean martial arts have become a small point of fascination for me that I’m trying to incorporate into my writing more (and there’s no better place to start playing around with writing these fighting styles than in my fics, my usual experimental breeding ground, lol).
btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!