Work Text:
Levi’s not really listening to her as she talks. But he’s not so sure she cares if he listens.
Mikasa’s dressed well as usual. They’ve been meeting long enough that she’s started to repeat outfits. It’s been about three months since Hanji called the both of them in for her strange experiments, and about two months since they’d started getting drinks afterwards.
Tonight it’s a green dress that hits just below her knee, but when she sits on the barstool like that it hikes up a little bit over her crossed legs.
“Are you even listening to me?”
Levi shakes his head distractedly. Maybe she does notice when he stops paying attention.
“No, I wasn’t.”
She looks at him boredly, her gaze lingering on him. She shrugs and takes a long drag of her cigarette, long enough that it finishes the whole thing. She holds the smoke in her lungs as she extinguishes the ember in the ashtray and lets out more of a sigh than an exhale, the smoke swirling upward in the noisy bar.
“That’s okay. I wasn’t talking about anything worth listening to.”
He doubts that. He just has a hard time paying attention lately.
Something’s changed. He can’t say exactly when it changed, but whatever it is it’s pissing him off.
He doesn’t apologize for his lapse in concentration.
“Want to go outside?” he asks.
She looks at him funny.
“We don’t usually go outside.”
“So?”
She looks at him again and uncrosses her legs, leaning forward boredly the counter as she does so.
“Okay, whatever,” she says flippantly.
They get outside and he almost immediately regrets his suggestion. It’s fucking freezing and it’s dark. This side of town isn’t busy. Mikasa has picked one of the dumpiest Inns in town to stay in. He can understand her general disdain for people nowadays, but he doesn’t know why she’d picked such a shithole…
There’s no moon in the sky, so he can hardly see her face but for the shitty street lamps.
Maybe that’s better.
He told himself, no sex. Not tonight, and maybe not again.
It’d started out fun. Or angry. Really he has no idea what it was. Is. Whatever.
They walk silently over to a bridge. Half the guardrail looks like it’s rotting, but Mikasa leans on it anyways. Despite the cold, she pulls out a lighter and lights herself another cigarette, the flame illuminating her face momentarily.
A few snowflakes blow past them, the sad flickering street lamp the only light as they stand there in the cold.
She smokes half her cigarette then throws it into the river.
“So, what’s this all about?”
“What’s what all about.”
“A walk? We don’t go for walks.”
He feels slightly panicked, a strange feeling.
“You’re the one who called,” she reminds him.
Levi doesn’t let his frustration show, he still has enough willpower for that.
He’d told himself no sex, but if he’d just not showed up that would’ve felt like quitting, like he was pathetic and couldn’t stop himself from acting like a moron.
Go to the inn. Have a drink. Reminisce about something superficial, talk about a bunch of dead people they both knew, then leave. That’s how it was supposed to go. Then maybe it would be over, maybe he would’ve stopped all of this in its tracks.
She crosses her arms.
“I’m heading back to my room. It’s cold. You can come if you’d like.”
He watches her walk back toward the shitty inn and it’s shitty crooked door. He doesn’t want to follow her. This is it, this is where he can turn away. He can go back to where he’s staying, maybe even put on a record and finish the novel he’s been trying to use as a distraction.
Then he thinks about that room--an empty, cold, echo chamber for his thoughts made impersonable by his transience.
He can’t deal with that. He’d used to have so much restraint. He’d been able to focus on his goals, on what he’d needed to do, setting aside his humanity for task and purpose.
Now there’s nothing he needs to do, nothing to distract him from the void left by everyone who’s gone.
Mikasa Ackerman fills that, if only for an hour or two, but she does.
He follows her to the Inn.
Looks like you lose tonight. Again.
Her room is so fucking messy. He doesn’t know how he stands it, but she doesn’t let him think about it long.
He looks her up and down, her shoulders relaxed, hip popped out a little to the side, cheeks still flushed from the frigid winter air.
“I knew you’d come with,” she says lowly and it makes him so, so, angry that she’s all but taunting him with this, but his shame is easily pushed aside by the fact that she’s real, she’s here right in front of him and not gone.
Levi takes off his shoes, avoiding the melting snow he carelessly tracked in. He undoes his coat and she does the same until she’s sitting in just her underclothes on her creaky small bed, looking at him with unabashed desire.
It’s like she wants him to admit it all, right here, right now. She doesn’t move to touch him, she just waits for him to touch her. She wants to remind him that she’s the one with the power here, that he’s the one seeking her out. He hates how good this must feel for her, making her former commanding officer submit to such whims, but he’s so pathetic that he can’t even bring himself to care.
He takes off his clothes and to his satisfaction her eyes follow his every move. She may act indifferent, but if she didn’t want this in at least some way as bad as he did he wouldn’t be here.
He crawls on the bed, her skin erupting in gooseflesh when he traces a hand from her shoulder and cupping her breast. He kisses her on the throat and she sighs, digging her fingertips into his shoulder.
Levi pulls her flimsy, lacy bra down off her shoulder and kisses her breast, lets himself taste the tang of her skin, feel the pebbling of her reddish brown nipple in his mouth. She doesn’t make a sound but squeezes him tighter and squirms up against him, grinding her hips up against his throbbing erection in a way that makes him have to hold back a ground.
“Ah--” she finally gasps after a minute, then she is rough, pushing him down between her legs. He stops being slow, stops being tender with her because he’s frustrated. She may have him here like this, pathetic and wanting but he’s not going to let her off so easy.
He pulls her panties aside and puts his mouth on her, the taste of her somehow enticing through the haze of arousal. He knows in his right state of mind he’d probably find all of this disgusting, but now it’s anything but.
Each time he feels her thighs clench he slows down.
“Ugh, fuck off--” she huffs irritatedly, tugging at his hair hard enough that it stings.
“I’ll stop completely,” he says, a rush of satisfaction filling him when she says quickly “no, no.”
He may be pathetic for even being here, but at least he can cling to some semblance of pride in this.
Still, she’s selfish when she chases her desires. She grinds up against him unapologetically, heavy sighs and her hand twisted in his hair until she finally finishes, her back arching slightly off the bed.
He doesn’t let her rest after she finishes, he flips her over on her stomach. He doesn’t want to look at her face, doesn’t want to think about her really at all. He pins her shoulder down with one hand and fucks her. She’s still a bit sensitive but he doesn’t let up, and he can tell she doesn’t mind as she sighs and twists the sheets in her hands. She pushes back against him despite her fatigue, as if it’s impossible for her to be a passive party in anything, not anymore.
It takes everything he has to keep everything even, to remain in some bit of control. He pulls out and finishes on her back, the distasteful nature of it cutting through the haze of his orgasm.
Messy.
He immediately feels slightly sick with himself, that it’s come to this, that he’s let himself indulge in such a pathetic vice.
He reaches to hand her a towel but she ignores him, simply grabbing a discarded shirt from a few days ago and wiping herself off. He winces at how gross that is, and she smirks almost as if she did it to irritate him.
“Something bothering you?” she asks dryly.
“No,” he grits out. He reaches for his clothes and dresses himself again.
Stupid. This was stupid.
She doesn’t bother dressing herself, preferring to sit there naked on her bed like some sort of ornament as he gathers his things.
“You got somewhere to be?” She asks him lightly.
“No, just tired,” he says.
He sees her facade flicker for a moment, but it’s enough to make him feel hope that he has no right feeling. Hope for exactly what he’s not sure.
“...I have some cookies from earlier today, on the dresser if you want some.”
He doesn’t even think as he grabs them and hands one to her from the tin. They’re not even any good, he hates shortbread but he sits down on the chair next to the bed and has one all the same.
She reaches for her robe and puts it on before she sits and eats one in her bed no less.
“You’re seriously going to get crumbs all over your bedding like that?” he finally asks incredulously.
She shrugs. “I don’t eat like a slob so I won’t make a mess, but I wouldn’t care either way. I’m the one sleeping here anyways,” she says dismissively, “so don’t worry about it,” she teases a little.
They eat the mediocre cookies in companionable silence. She likes sweets more than he would’ve expected, taking a second for herself after she’s finished the first.
“I kinda like all these tests Hanji is making us do,” she says quietly. It’s the first thing she’s said that hasn’t been something rude or teasing.
“It’s better than doing nothing,” he agrees.
“Yeah,” she looks down at the bedspread, like the stitching has become particularly interesting, “it makes me feel a little less useless...I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but yeah.”
“It is,” he says simply. He can’t elaborate on what she said because it’s really that simple. Now that the fighting is over, being particularly good at killing shit is almost a negative in life rather than an asset.
She looks up at him and for a moment he swears he can imagine a softness to her gaze, but it’s gone as quickly as it came, her shoulders stiffening and mouth pursed in a firm line.
“It’s late,” she says coldly. He gets the message and starts to finish getting his things.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says as he puts on his shoes.
It makes his chest tight. He hates how he looks forward to it. Tomorrow, and inevitably the evening, the same as it’s been for months.
He wants to say “I’m busy tomorrow evening,” but he’s not. He knows he’s not.
Why do I want this so bad?
He doesn’t say anything back when he leaves. He definitely lost whatever battle he'd set out to fight tonight. He'd lost the minute he'd set eyes on her. No one has ever done this to him before.
I've gotten really good at fucking myself over in the last few years.
He's too lonely to care about winning anymore.