Some Yelena and Levi banter? Could be platonic or shippy if you want.
Heck yes 👍❤️
Small Talk
YeLevi. Canonverse.
1444 words.
He doesn’t understand why any of them need to be friendly towards each other. Courtesy he understands. That only requires him to nod at the newcomers and acknowledge their existence. He can do that. But to hold a casual conversation with someone and get to know them better? That’s asking too much of him. Hanji says it’s an easy way to pass the time. Bullshit. If he wanted to pass the time, he could just clean the military headquarters again. That damn thing is always getting filthy because no one remembers to wipe the dirt off their boots before walking inside. Idiots. No, he’d much rather stare in silence at the wall across from him while the other person in the room stares down at their feet, uncomfortable with the silence, before finally leaving because they can’t stand the awkward atmosphere. He’s never really understood why they left in the first place – if you’re waiting for something, there’s no need to talk to the only other person in the room just to seem polite when it’s just a waste of time – but he always felt a little smug about having the power to make people leave the room without saying a word.
He can’t make Yelena leave though. Despite being a stranger to the island, she makes every room she walks into her new home. It’s her hulking stature, Levi decides, that makes her take up most of the space, spreading out her limbs and claiming her new territory like it was hers all along. It must also be why she’s so comfortable sitting in the same room as Levi. It makes it seem as though he’s the outsider when she stretches her arm across the back of a couch, her legs spread to take up even more room than she needs. It makes Levi wonder how one even manages to grow that large.
It takes Levi another week to realize she’s doing more than just making Paradis her new home. He realizes it when he notices she’s plopping herself down in the seat right across from him whenever they sit down in a room together, making it so that he’s forced to look at her even if he has no desire to speak with her at all. All he ever does is nod at her, just a quick up and down of his head, and does his best to stare past her, but she just looks back at him with this same smug smile. It makes him uncomfortable, her smiling at him, and he has to avert his eyes, glance down at the floor or the ceiling, and it’s only when he hears her chuckle that he knows exactly what she’s doing.
“She’s mocking me,” Levi mutters to Hanji after another one of those incidents. He tells her them everything in detail – the way Yelena saunters in, how she settles herself comfortably across from him, and the smile she uses to make him finally turn away from her – and they only laugh at him.
“Well, you’re rather odd company, you know,” Hanji says, wiping a tear from their eye. They become amused at the strangest things, Levi thinks. There’s nothing funny at all about this situation. “Well, maybe you should talk to her. It doesn’t have to be anything deep. It can be small talk or whatever.”
“Talk to her after the way she’s treated me? She’s been wanting to chase me out of the room with that weird smile of hers and you think the best course of action is for me to talk to her?” Levi says, disgusted. And they were supposed to be the smart one.
“Well, I mean,” Hanji says, shrugging. “Talking is a good way to diffuse any awkward tension. Or, like, any other kind of tension.”
He doubts that. He really does because talking to Hanji right now is giving him a headache, but it’s not like he has any other options.
Which is why he ends up trying to strike up a conversation with Yelena the following day as they await their separate appointments with the queen.
They’re sitting alone in the lobby, him on one couch with her seated directly across from him on another couch, and she’s smiling that same smile at him that she always does. He’s about to stop looking at her again, glance downwards or turn his head to look out the window, but then he remembers what Hanji says.
“Yelena,” Levi says, clearing his throat. Her smile stops and she’s looking at him curiously now, but this somehow makes him feel worse. “How are you?”
Another grin spreads across her face, this one amused, and she tilts her head as she asks, “I’m lovely, Levi, thank you for asking,” she answers, “but I thought you weren’t one for conversation. What changed?”
“Just making small talk. I do that sometimes. I’m very good at it,” Levi lies. Damn. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop. This is why conversing with strangers is so stupid, he thinks. “How are you enjoying the island? Is Paradis to your liking?”
Yelena relaxes back into the couch, an arm stretched across the back like it normally is when she’s observing him. “Paradis is wonderful. I’m sorry you’ve all been caught up in something unknowingly. An island like this should be left in peace.”
“Hm,” Levi replies. The topic is too heavy to be considered “small talk,” he thinks. So he asks another question. “Food?”
“Delightful.”
“Weather?”
“Fantastic.”
“City?”
“Absolutely gorgeous.”
“Hm,” he says after having run out of things to talk about. He never should have said that he was a good conversationalist. Now she knows for sure it’s a lie.
If Yelena is drinking in his humiliation, she doesn’t look it. In fact, she looks a little sorry for him, which Levi thinks is worse until she opens her mouth to break the awkward silence, saying, “Well, if there’s something I dislike about the city, it’s the architecture.”
“Architecture?” Levi repeats. He’s never taken any notice of the city or its buildings unless it was particularly extravagant or rundown. Otherwise, they were really just buildings to him. He’s surprised Yelena would have any thoughts about them. He never pegged her as the artistic type.
“Oh, yes,” Yelena says, nodding. “They’re lovely but too small. I always have to duck my head before walking through a doorway. I’ve hit my head far too many times to count because I’ve forgotten.”
“Well, you’re abnormally large,” Levi mutters under his breath, but it’s not quiet enough to escape Yelena.
“I just said you were…very tall,” Levi mumbles. He’s never felt bad for being rude or overly truthful, but he feels silly now for saying such a thing out loud. “The last time we had anyone on the island as tall as you was when we still had Titans roaming around.”
“Is that so?” Yelena says. She doesn’t look offended at all. In fact, she’s smirking. “Perhaps the people of Paradis are small.”
“Small?” Levi says. He has to grip the couch cushions to keep himself from rising from his seat. She’s teasing, he knows, but the people are Paradis aren’t small. “I assure you we’re all normal-sized. Maybe it is only in your country where the people are all giants.”
“Hmm, perhaps,” Yelena says. It’s frustrating to see how much she’s having with this conversation. Levi wishes he never started it in the first place. It’s even worse than that strange silence and her smile. “That bed you’ve provided me is rather snug despite it being the largest size you have for a single person.”
“Is it?” Levi says, uninterested in any complaints she has regarding her sleeping conditions. He’s sure it’s just as bad as the rest of them anyway.
“…although you are small enough that I’m sure you’d fit in the leftover space in my bed. We’d fit quite nicely, I think,” Yelena says cheerfully.
Before Levi can even react or even fully comprehend what she had just said, the doors to the great hall swing open and the guards announce that one of them may speak with Queen Historia. Yelena leaps to her feet first, taking advantage of Levi’s shock to inform the guards that she’ll be meeting with the Queen now because she has another meeting to get to right after.
“Goodbye, Levi. I enjoyed our ‘small talk,’” Yelena says, giving him a wave and flashing him that same smug smile she had at the very beginning of their conversation.
He should have never talked to her in the first place.
