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Love.
Did it feel like this?
**
His hands. Gentle caresses, tracing and skimming; every line, plane, cavity, dip, and divot, that came together and made up the sum of her.
Lips. Delicate, feathery brushes on her skin and hair.
His voice. Silky and suggestive.
Everything at odds, with his brusque and churlish tone from earlier, when he’d grabbed her by her collar and pulled her right up to his face. Lips contorted with anger; harshly spoken words traversing the narrow space between them, to her.
Something about her reckless behaviour with no regard for the sanctity of life. In her wild pursuit for answers, about the bloodthirsty monstrous giants that terrorised the city and its residents, keeping them caged in within the high walls.
If anything, his eyes were still dark and fierce right now in front of her. Fiery. Like the grey, smouldering embers from the prized iceburst stones that powered their gears.
A hand on her jaw, pulling her to face him fully and to look at him. But she pushed it away and turned away from him. Put her back to him.
Though somehow, with his chest pressed up against her back, his hips nestled against her behind. Everything felt even more, intimate.
Hands a slow glide up her thighs, then her sides. Pausing on her abdomen. Hange could only grumble and grouse, when he remained there. Palms flat against her, holding her against him.
Mouth hot at the back of her neck. The nape, the vulnerable base. Where it all ended, when sliced with the sharp blades essential to their trade. He didn’t need to take a blade to hers; his tongue and teeth sufficiently rendered her incapable of anything else, but pathetic keenings and whimperings.
“Fuck, Hange, you need to be quiet, or you’ll wake up the entire barracks.”
And who was to blame for that?
He was always restrained while she was loud. Obnoxiously noisy during her release, he always covered her mouth.
In their frantic, urgent passions, the only sounds were hushed whispers and heavy breathing, the metal of their harness clinking. Hange could forget about everything that happened in the day, and of what would come tomorrow.
Stolen moments in time, of what could never be, come daylight. Ignore the voices in the back of her head, warning her of the consequences of attachments and intimacies. Personal attachments and intimacies, something unattainable or fleeting or impossible or even frowned upon.
But yet they were told to dedicate their hearts. Inscribed instead, to a cause that never gave back in equal measure. To be inclined to the concept of serving others. Give up yourself to an ideal or conviction but be regularly ridiculed by the very people you sought to protect. And even those within rank.
All that mattered was the cold, bare room with utilitarian furnishings, a window that was jammed shut from the very first day Hange stepped into it, the smell of damp, unwashed sheets, mingling with a sharp smell of something fresh and green and crisp.
Only the two of them existing from the moment they both entered her room, to the rough kisses exchanged, and the clumsy tugging and enthusiastic flinging of their uniform off each other. The fabric and leather tossed aside carelessly, when they were starched and pressed and polished with care, just yesterday.
When all of it was over, Levi would always lie beside her for a moment, staring up at her ceiling. His chest rising and falling with each inhale and exhale. Eyes unblinking and unseeing. Her hand right beside his, if she just extended her little pinkie finger, skin would touch skin. But no words or glances exchanged, till he got up to pick up his uniform strewn all over her room. Pulling them on, fastidiously. Layer by layer. The light rustling sounds as he tied his cravat into a little knot around his neck. Neat and tidy, unlike her, still laid in bed; sweat still cooling and heart still racing.
“You’re lost in your thoughts again. I can hear you thinking.”
Hange quirked a brow at him. This time, today, it seemed he was in a chatty mood. And still lying beside her, no longer staring up silently at the vast empty space of her room’s ceiling. His head turned towards her. She swore she felt a light brush of a fingertip on the back of her hand.
One breath and a blink before she offered a vague reply. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” His response comes, immediate. “Your thoughts are so loud, I can almost hear them.”
“And yet, you’re still asking me what I’m thinking about.”
“Tch, you know what I mean,” he said, rolling his eyes.
Hange turned to face him as she asked, “Is it honesty hour now?”
“Shitty fucking glasses, you’re impossible. Forget I even asked.” Irascible as always and not forgetting the obvious annoyance, and yet, he remained by her side. still looking at her, eyes roving over her face.
“Do you ever think that whatever we’re doing, doesn’t matter at all? That it wouldn’t amount to anything?” She paused, wondering for a moment why she worded it in that manner. Implicit. Meanings hidden within the words spoken without much thought.
He remained looking at her, without even a flicker in his eyes or expression. Stoic and unwavering, spurring her on.
“That we’re just all buying time to the inevitable,” Hange continued. “Our inevitable ends, nameless and faceless. Yet another body count to add onto that never ending growing pile?”
“Why the sudden thought about this?” he asked with a little frown on his face. “Is it from today’s expedition?”
“No.” Her tone was swift and final, hoping that he would drop this whole conversation.
He gave her a look; precise and firm.
“Ok, maybe,” she breathed out with an air of resignation.
Silence. And his reticence, a strange truth serum of sorts to her reluctant, heavy tongue.
Hange tore her gaze away from his eyes. “I just—we’re just pushed into a corner yet again and everything feels unknown. Everyone’s seeking answers and solutions and plans. Without the burden of bearing the brunt, of any of it being wrong or failing. The uncertainty. Of not knowing our odds. I—I’m really tir—” she cut herself off before things best left unsaid, spilled forth from her “—s-sorry, I’m not making any sense now.”
They lapsed into silence again, after her jumbled confession and slight admittance of her weak and helpless thoughts.
The silence, not entirely discomfiting. But neither was it consolatory.
Light rustling sounds, and a slight shift and dip in her bed, before Levi gave her any form of acknowledgement, that he had heard her. “Fair enough. They have you. But you don’t have a you, to seek guidance or answers or solutions from. To reassure that you’re headed down the right path. Or even just to have someone to follow with blind faith, and if anything goes ape shit tits up, they can easily turn around and blame someone else for it. But you don’t have that luxury.”
Hange dared a look at him only once he was done speaking. He’s still looking at her, body turned towards her now, as if he wanted her to say something. If not, waited, for her to say something.
Well, she didn’t and couldn’t.
He sat up, abruptly, hoisting her up along with him. Picked up their discarded shirts and pants from the floor and threw a pair at random, at her.
“Get dressed.” His two words, an order to her.
“Huh?”
“None of your gabbering, because you’re talking shit again,” Levi said as he tugged on the shirt and pants in his own hands; hurried, brisk movements, without a bother of ensuring that each button was in the correct buttonhole or tucking in of shirt tails into the waistband. Hange followed as quickly as she could. Followed him as he crossed the length of her room and out the door, without even a look behind to check that she was following.
Hange parked herself on a chair, studying his back. Watched as Levi pottered about the tiny kitchen in the barracks. Tinkering around, brewing a cup of tea for two.
Quick methodical movements. Familiar, well-practiced. His bare hand used to grab a fistful of dried tea leaves, sprinkling it into the pot of boiled water.
No time wasted while it was left to steep. Saucers and cups were brought out—the good ones as Erwin once liked to call them. For when Levi wanted to share, not just a cup of tea, but maybe some words, time, and just company with the other.
A blink and then a well brewed cup of tea was placed in front of her. Indistinct, without even a slight clank of the smooth porcelain on the cracked, blistered, worn surface of the kitchen wooden table.
“Drink this, then sleep,” he said. Voice a low murmur. “You’ll feel better.”
She remained staring at the steaming cup in front of her. The subtle, golden-brown brew. The steam, light wisps dancing and curling in the frigid air of the space they were in.
Hange lifted a hand, laying it flat on the mouth of the cup. Feeling the warmth of it. Willing it to seep deep into her. The warmth to coat her growing weariness. Stave it, even if temporarily.
“You’re not alone, four eyes. May not be much, but I’m here, and I’ll listen to whatever batshit, crazy crap you have to say.”
His arms were folded, hip leaning back against the wooden counter.
Face, pale and distant. But Hange thought that his eyes were a little warm, despite the cool grey tone of his.
**
Love.
Did it look like this?