Chapter Text
They sit down in the carriage, Erwin to one side, Levi to the other. Earlier, they sat next to each other, thigh to thigh as Erwin did the crossword and Levi hung over his shoulder, suggesting profane words that may fit the needed word count. It was comfortable— not particularly, actually, the road was bumpy and Levi’s chin was sharp like nobody’s business, but it was nice. It was camaraderie, even a little hint of something more that Erwin didn’t even know he had until it was gone.
They make it past the gates of the estate and halfway back to HQ before Levi finally meets Erwin’s eyes.
“So,” he clears his throat, crossing his arms and tucking his slim fingers under the pits of them. He’s got a faint, rosy bruise on the side of his neck that might be excused for a moment of clumsiness or a hard press of his razor, but Erwin knows better. “Gonna say something?” His words are tense, biting, nipping at Erwin’s conscience.
“Levi,” Erwin can barely get the words out, he’s so ashamed. It’s a foreign sensation, one that he didn’t know he could even feel. Erwin’s done some horrid, heartless, awful things, but it’s not shameful. Ordering soldiers to die in the mouths of titans to save the carts that would allow the majority isn’t shameful. Standing in front of willowy, malleable children and convincing them to sign their lives away isn’t shameful. Not in his eyes. He’s ashamed now.
“I— I’m—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Erwin hasn’t seen that disparaging curl to Levi’s lip directed to him in quite a long time. He’s not quite sure, but something about the two of them changed— so slowly it didn’t even feel like progress until it’s all gone, shattered and crumbled into dust blown away by the wind. “I said I’d do it, I didn’t care.”
“But how can you not care?” Erwin’s the worst, he’s the worst scum of the earth, he’s lower than the worms beneath his feet— “I— I used you, I used you—”
Levi looks at him like he’s two inches tall. “Yes,” he enunciates slowly, like Erwin’s a toddler, “and I don’t fucking care. Are you deaf, dumb, or just plain stupid? You act like it’s my first time lying back and thinking of the walls. You think I never sucked a dick for a few coins? It’s practically in my blood, shit.”
Just like that, the world falls down at Erwin’s feet.
“You were a—” Erwin cuts himself off, wanting to say you were a prostitute? You, Levi? Humanity’s Strongest, on his knees for enough food for the night? You stooped that low? — “man of the night?” It sounds uncouth to say just like that, unbecoming of a Commander. A Commander asking his trusted subordinate how many times he’s opened his legs for strangers just so he could survive to the next day.
At this Levi wrinkles his nose, rolls his eyes. It scrunches his whole face up when he rolls his eyes like that, pushes the slight bit of fat he has on his cheeks up to hide his lower lid and lashes. “Don’t make it fancy. I was a whore. On some occasions.”
“I wasn’t making it fancy,” Erwin protests, ineffectual and off-balance. He’s— he’s been skewed, that’s what he is, he’s skewed and out of orbit and off rhythm, knocked out of his neatly assigned schema by the man in front of him, casually inspecting his nails like everything is fine, like everything is completely normal when it’s not, it’s absolutely not, it’s not normal and it will never be normal again. Perhaps it never was, Erwin was just living with a lie. With an illusion, a trick, much like everything in this world seems to be. A deception.
Levi lifts his eyes to Erwin, brow pulled low. “You gonna judge me for it?”
Erwin swallows. “No.”
It’s the truth, more or less. There’s nothing shameful in that particular line of work; in Erwin’s eyes, a job is a job. A way to fill a hungry belly, a way to line empty or lacking pockets. Hell, he had even known some girls and boys (and neither)— he had known some folks from his village who made livings off that, drenching themselves in cheap perfume and rouge for alcohol filled nights in the capitol or the MP bars, but it was a dangerous line of work for those who didn’t know what they were doing.
And that’s just in the big cities, like Trost or Karanese or the rich ones inside Sina. Say nothing of the Underground.
Levi huffs. “Good.” He’s sharper than Erwin’s seen him be in months, cold and cutting and— and distant, the kind of distant that Erwin’s subordinates are— well, Levi’s a subordinate, if by words on a paper only, and he’s not a subordinate subordinate, he’s Levi, and Erwin’s Erwin, and—
God, Erwin wasn’t even aware of what he had until he fucked it up and lost it for good. Typical, typical, his mind scolds, the skin on his head and all over his body itching, his soft organs too bloated for it and pulling it taut, hot and tight and fit to burst right at the seams. Levi catches notice— how could he not, Erwin’s right fit to keel over and pass away by his feet.
“What kind of deranged lunatic are you?” Levi’s laughing, but incredulously, bitter and hating. Erwin can hear it clear as day, a kind of spitting thing that pulls at the edges of his soul and draws it in like a string, crumples it up into a wad of discarded paper. Shriveling. “You really think I made it to nearly thirty without having someone stick it in me at least once?”
It’s a reproachful laugh, spite and spit and the kind of tone that Erwin never wanted to hear from Levi, ever. It’s meant to hurt him, meant to gut him through and leave him to bleed. Levi’s armed, so Erwin dons his weapons as well.
“I meant for payment, Levi.” Erwin replies stiffly. Levi sobers up rather fast, lips pinching thin.
“Yeah. So did I.”
His eyes have never been more cold.
***
The rest of the ride back to HQ is spent in a cloying silence. It’s a small space, nowhere to run, and it takes far too long. It takes hours. Hours that Erwin spends studiously staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore the way Levi’s mouth twists at the corners when the carriage rounds a hard turn or a particularly hard bump.
Levi, to his credit, looks directly at him. He’s always been stronger than Erwin, and his strong character is just one of the things about him that astounds Erwin, that makes him look back in hidden awe about how unwavering Levi is in his morals, his actions, his principles. Erwin’s the one who told him to never look back and regret, but what a hypocrite he is! Here Erwin is, sitting and boiling under the collar over his own regret, and here Levi is, facing him right in the eye. Daring him to speak.
It’s a long, arduous ride. Erwin is silent. Levi is silent. Even the floorboards, perhaps sensing the tense atmosphere inside the dim box, dare not to creak.
Levi flings the doors to the carriage open as soon as the coachman announces their imminent arrival, not even bothering to let the croaking wheels roll to a complete stop before he’s striding off down the path, anger in his lashing steps.
“Ah,” the coachman nods sagely, lowering the steps so that Erwin can duck his head against the fine night drizzle and turn up his collar as he descends down towards the ground. He’s an old soul, wrinkled and wizened in only the way decades and decades of trudging the same path over and over do to oneself. He’s quiet and discreet. Erwin employs him often, even if he’s not officially an SC driver. “Lovers quarrel?”
Erwin looks at the retreating figure highlighted by the worsening rain, jaw tight. “Something like that.”
A lick of thunder splits the sky before the elder man has a chance to respond, and Erwin bids him a hasty goodnight with a few coins pressed into a firm handshake before he hurries off, boots slapping in the wet mud.
Levi kisses the backs of his teeth as Erwin fumbles for the keys in the dim light from one of the adjacent windows, fingers made of ice and heart of stone as the smaller man hops from foot to foot, shoulders hunched down and fingers tucked beneath his arms.
“Cold?”
Erwin regrets breaking their silence as soon as the words leave his lips.
“Just— just fuckin—“ he’s never seen Levi so frazzled. “Need a bath, that’s all. Open the door.”
Erwin doesn’t even get the chance to fit the narrow key into the slot before it suddenly flings open, nearly sending him stumbling onto his knees over the threshold.
“They’re back!” Hanji cheers as light spills over and out of the opened door, silhouetting them— Miche, Hanji, and a few others milling around the doorway, a bottle of alcohol making its rounds though the small group, presumably as they settled down to wait for their new Captain and Commander through the night. Erwin swears, dusting his knees off. “Erwin, we thought you’d be all night at this rate!”
“Back off,” Levi snaps, distinctly rattled. Erwin hasn’t seen him this spooked since— since ever, really, his hair nearly standing on end and his eyes caged.
“Come in, come in!” Hanji ushers them in like it’s not their own HQ, playing the gracious host by taking Erwin’s thick coat, draping it over one forearm as they pull Levi close. Well, they try, as he ducks under their outstretched arm and dismisses the rest of the assembled soldiers with a vicious glare. Only Miche and Hanji remain, Erwin’s stupidly loyal friends.
He doesn’t deserve it. Not anymore.
“How was it?” Miche asks in that soft rumble of his, leading the way up the stairs to Erwin’s office. Levi’s trapped between Hanji in front and Erwin in the back, and Erwin can see the tense line of his shoulders as he climbs, the stiffness in the way he carries himself. He has a sudden, horrible thought: did Levi let that man come inside of him? No. No. Clean, fastidious Levi— he would never. He wouldn’t let himself be marked like that.
With something that isn’t your own, his criminal mind jeers back at him, sticky with satisfaction with how it’s got him pegged as the foul creature that he really is. You wouldn’t complain if it was your own seed leaking down those pale thighs.
Shut up, Erwin desperately thinks, praying to keep his demons at bay. Shut up—
“Erwin?”
“It was fine.” He forces a tight smile to his face, and it’s a testament to how often he fakes it— after a minute it feels natural enough to fool his comrades.
Hanji and Miche buy into it just fine, their chatter bouncing off the stone walls as they all pile into Erwin’s office, a cheerfully flickering fire already dancing behind the grate. Levi makes a beeline towards the chair right in front of it, resigned to his fate of at least an hour spent staring into the belly of the flame before he could slip away and make his escape.
Erwin wants to take his place next to him but stands, rooted to the ground. He’s spent so many nights by that same fire with Levi at his side: practicing handwriting, finishing up paperwork, or just talking while alcohol (or tea, Levi was never much a drinker) loosened their muscles and made the fire so much hotter in their eyes, flickering over heavy, potential filled faces. Talking about anything, really. Past and present, some tentative hope for the future, gossip. At that moment, he really thought they were close, and Levi’s eyes said the same.
Levi turns to face towards the belly of the flame, his eyes in complete shadow except for where they shine with dim wet, the only soft part in a façade of stone.
Hanji keeps chattering, unaware of the razor-wire atmosphere. Or, perhaps they are, and it’s their own way of diffusing the tension. They’re more perceptive than he gives them credit for, in all fairness.
The same can’t be said for Miche, however.
He can sense what he’s planning a second before he does it, but he’s powerless to stop as Miche leans over and takes a deep, healthy sniff of Levi’s hair. Erwin can see him inhale with enough strength to lift some of the inky hairs on the crown of Levi’s head.
“The fuck is wrong with you!?” Levi swats Miche off, distinctly ruffled.
Miche sniffs, turning the smell over in his mouth before a slow, lazy smirk spreads over his face. “You smell.”
“No worse than you,” Levi snaps back, brushing his suit off, like he thinks that Miche sprinkled him with some crazy dust. That would be Hanji, not Miche.
“No, you smell like sex.” Levi and Erwin both freeze. It’s obvious enough that Miche glances between them, that infuriating smirk widening. “You smell like sex, but you don’t smell like what I expected.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” There's an animal that Erwin’s seen a few times in the forest outside the walls. It lives in trees, and it spooks the living hell out of horses when it bristles up tall and spiky. Levi looks just like that animal before it releases its spikes.
“You don’t smell like Erwin. What’s up with that, buddy? You been whoring yourself out?”
Levi and Erwin both freeze.
Levi recovers first, giving a disdainful sniff as he tightens his cravat back up. He was loosening up, relaxing, trusting— but all of that progress is lost, and now Erwin’s back to square one. No trust, no fleeting looks and touches and late nights, no nothing. It’s all gone.
“Keep your nose to yourself, huh?” Levi’s eyes cut more than the knife he flips out of his boot, all sharp steel and no forgiveness. “If you don’t, someone other than me might up and cut it off one of these days.”
“Levi,” Erwin chides him on instinct, words slipping out past his lips before he can process or pass them through his mental sieve to catch the offensive bits and pieces. Levi cuts his eyes over to Erwin — damn, they sting, they slice into him and hiss; what right do you have to speak to me?
Curse his silver fucking tongue, so disappointingly malleable under pressure.
Miche glances to Erwin, then Levi, then back again. Erwin doesn’t like his look. It’s too shrewd, the cogs in his mind cranking and turning until they reach the inevitable, logical conclusion, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Levi’s slightly puffy eyes. The cravat pulled all the way up. The scent of sex, the pathetic visual of Erwin with his tail between his legs. Hanji looks stunned.
“Levi…”
“I’m leaving,” the smaller man announces abruptly. His tea cup clatters in its fine porcelain dish when he suddenly rises, the front of his knees hitting the lip of the desk hard enough to jostle the whole table. Levi doesn’t even flinch.
Bile rouses up in Erwin’s throat. Are his knees perhaps already bruised?
“Levi—”
“I said goodnight.” He doesn’t even give them a chance to finish, the oaken door slamming in his wake, with some dust falling off the ceiling like powdered snow when he leaves. Erwin watches the particles drift, idly thinking that he rather ought to dust there more, particularly since Levi won’t help him with it now. He’ll never help him again.
“Erwin.”
Perhaps he’ll be eaten by a titan on the next expedition. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about dusty ceiling beams.
“Erwin!”
“Hmm?” Erwin lowers his eyes, staring past Mike’s eyes, not at them. He’s suddenly so, so tired. “It’s quite late, perhaps we should all—”
“Nah, nah man, cut that shit out.” Miche looks genuinely, deeply unnerved. “What the little man was saying as he walked out of there—” little man. That’s funny, what Miche calls Levi. He’s a small man, but he’s never made to feel that way, his presence and skill looming over no matter how hard he tries to hide and humble. He’s extraordinary and he always will be. “That wasn’t…”
Erwin keeps staring past his closest friend.
“I can’t believe you, Smith.” From the corner of his eye, he can see Hanji shaking their head, somber disappointment creasing their brow. “After all—”
“You can’t?” When he speaks, his voice is ice-cold. “It was for the good of the Corps. For the good of humanity, soldier. Do not think for a single second that humanity’s victory is not the driving force behind every action, behind every thought that you are not privy to.”
“He’s right, Hans.” There’s a sort of detached air in the room about them, a disconnect from their bodies as if Erwin can put on a pair of opera glasses and suddenly observe them from a stage, hidden in the dark wings as they move around, commanded by some being higher than himself. “He wouldn’t hesitate to use anything for the goal.”
The words lie unspoken between them, buried in the grave of their thoughts. Even to us? Everything— everyone likes to think that they’re the exception to the rule. If to Levi, then who’s safe? Who is sacred, if not Levi?
For a trembling, crushing moment, it all hangs in the air between them. Erwin turns towards the fire, breaking the connection between their eyes.
“I’m quite tired,” he announces into the belly of the flame, hot coals reflecting out of his eyes. It stings to look at them so directly— the heat burns his skin uncomfortably and makes his eyes water, but Erwin takes his small penances where he can. He doesn’t look away. “The carriage ride was quite long. Captain Levi has already retired to his own quarters, you may follow him in suit.”
The naked hurt, the why, Erwin? Why are you like this — it’s almost too much to bear before they shut it away, accepting his cool orders with stiff nods of their own.
“Sir.” Hanji has a remarkable control over their tongue and even better over their eyes— the flame hides them behind an insane, furious gleam, their shoulder barging past Erwin as they take their leave.
“Careful, Erwin,” Miche murmurs as he passes, low and only for Erwin’s lying ears and lying eyes. “You’re coming too close to the sun.”
The falling boy, the son who thought he could be great and got burned for his troubles. Erwin knows this tale more intimately than any other.
He stares deep into the fire on his reply. “I know.” Miche closes the door softly behind him, taking all the warmth as they leave. The shadows grow longer at the corners of the room where the light doesn’t reach.
He sighs, the weight of guilt and stone heavy around his throat. He’s already on his way down.