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Erwin’s had enough.
Levi’s had enough.
They’ve both had enough.
“Levi,” Erwin would usually call him ‘recruit’, but he can’t think straight, he’s never thought straight when it comes to Levi, not when there’s this electricity crackling beneath his skin, amplifying tenfold whenever Levi looks at him. The man in question arches a thin brow, uncaring and insolent.
“Yes?”
“My office. Now.”
As soon as the door closes, as soon as they’re alone, the tension sparks.
Erwin slams his palms down on the wall on either side of Levi’s head. There’s a loud crack when his skin impacts with the wood, a sharp sound just centimeters from Levi’s ears that should make him flinch— it doesn’t, it makes him bare his teeth and snarl, tilt his chin up so he can look Erwin eye to eye.
He’s exposing his throat just the slightest bit— a wordless, but unmistakable sign of his consent. Erwin’ll take it, take his consent and his want and more.
“I think…” he starts to snarl, but softens his tone, darkens and douses it in dangerous, slow promise. “I think nobody’s ever put you in your place properly.”
“Yeah?” Levi snarls it right back. He’s poisonous, this one is, venomous and deadly, dangerous. Erwin can’t wait— can he, even? Erwin has full faith in his abilities as a dom, but Levi might be harder than any submissive he’s ever had before. There’s nothing in that stance that screams deference, nothing in that sharp look of his that tells Erwin he’s going to follow orders or allow himself to slip easily into the headspace. Much like everything with Levi is: it’s going to be a match to the death.
“Yeah,” it’s the tone that would send most subs running right there and then, ducking out from under his arm and sprinting down the hall for Erwin to inevitably catch them. Levi doesn’t move a single centimeter, glaring up at Erwin as the taller man trails his fingers feather-light over Levi’s neck, up to his delicate, sharp little chin. “I think you’re a brat, and the reason you’re so bratty—” he grabs that sharp little chin tight enough to hurt, and Levi bites his fingers.
He doesn’t bite them that hard, all things considered— it could be harder, he could snap Erwin’s bones as easily as he’d snap through a carrot— but it also could be softer, could be without that edge of pain and that imprint of his teeth left behind when Erwin pulls his hand back. He inspects those imprints clinically, turns his hand from side to side to observe the reddening stamps of Levi’s incisors.
“Why did you do that, Levi?” His voice is calm, but it’s not gentle or soft. Levi hasn’t earned his soft hand yet. If they were in a scene already, he would— he would strike him across the face, a quick slap that would leave a lovely, stinging pink imprint on Levi’s smooth cheek. It’s always satisfying to slap clean-shaven skin, more so than hitting a man with a beard. Levi really is Erwin’s ideal type of sub. “Why do you feel the need to lash out with violence?”
Levi’s eyes darken. “Shut up.” Credit to him, he doesn’t knee Erwin in the groin, although Erwin could see the twitch of his leg in his peripheral vision.
“Is it because I’m getting too close to you? Are you really that afraid of being vulnerable?”
“I said shut up.”
Perhaps Levi didn’t expect him to be that fast— perhaps Erwin didn’t either, Levi’s speed and ability to strike quicker than the eye can even see is notorious amongst the Corps— but he manages to catch Levi’s hands— they’re in nasty claws, his nails bared and ready to scratch at Erwin’s face—
Erwin catches his wrist, slams it down onto the wall. For good measure he catches the other one, extends his arms to pin them high above Levi’s head. If Levi didn’t have such a dangerous look in his eyes, Erwin would find it amusing that he has to stand on the tips of his toes to compensate.
Erwin leans down, so achingly close to Levi’s lips that he feels the heat of the other man’s breath. If he didn’t harbor a healthy respect for Levi's sharp teeth— and his tendency towards biting— he’d steal those plump lips of his for a kiss.
“Do you want to scene with me, Levi?”
“What the fuck do you think?” Levi rips his wrists out of Erwin’s grasp, so he re-pins them, tighter and harder than before. He’s forced to squeeze the delicate joint so hard that he can feel the bones grind under his fingers, and he’s rewarded with a barely bitten off whimper. It surely hurts, and Levi’ll have bruises, splotches of lavender and violet in the shape of Erwin’s finger-pads splashed all over his wrists. But Levi doesn’t seem to care— he seems to revel in it, even— as he pants through the pain, staring up at Erwin with none of that usual calm that he possesses. “Are you really that stupid?”
“Consent is important, Levi,” Erwin reprimands. “I need to know that you want this as badly as I do.”
“What, for you to bitch at me?” Levi figures out that even though he’s forced onto his toes— he can balance on the very very tips of his leather boots and sort of walk his feet forward to crowd Erwin’s thigh between his. He’s hard. “No, you fucking idiot, I want you to fuck me. Fuck, not bitch. Got it? Or are you too stupid to even—”
Erwin shakes him. It’s a quick, harsh thing, starting with Levi’s arms and traveling through his body in a jolt that makes his head crack back against the wood of the wall, makes his feet slip from where he was precariously balanced. Levi can’t contain his moan when his groin impacts with Erwin’s knee. “Ah!”
He snaps his mouth shut right after the high, shocked sound escapes his throat, but there’s a telling flush on his high cheekbones now, his nostrils flaring with the aftermath of pain.
His pupils are blown out.
Erwin grins, slow and satisfied. “Ah.” He intends to leave it at that, but Levi’s quavering inhale when Erwin presses his knee in deeper is too good to pass up. “Seems like I’ve got myself a little painslut.”
Erwin knows the perfect amount of pressure— too much force will injure (maybe even permanently), too little will injure (him, Levi would injure him), but there’s a sweet spot right between the two where Levi can’t hold back his desperate little whimper, trying in vain to squirm away from the sickening pain between his legs— trying to squirm into it as well. Levi usually speaks with such a low voice, but he’s making such high little noises now, forced into a pitch far above his speaking voice. It’s quite a lovely voice. What Erwin wouldn’t give to hear it crying out in ecstasy.
“So, about the scene,” Erwin lessens the pressure of his leg. He doesn’t want to coerce or force, whatever answer falls from Levi’s lips needs to be honest and true.
Levi growls, snarls. “Go to hell.” He tries to shove himself against Erwin again, demanding more pressure and pleasure and pain. Erwin transfers his hold on his wrists to one hand, pins his bucking hips with another— it isn’t easy, not when Levi is so strong— he’s not even using his full strength, isn’t that a thought— but he’s unfocused, untethered. Erwin can pin him.
If Levi were a different sub— Erwin should stop comparing him to his previous partners, he really should, he can already tell that Levi will blow them all away— Erwin would lean down, lick a hot stripe up Levi’s blushing ear and purr ‘baby, I’ll take you right there’, but an action like that… Levi in his right mind would scoff and roll his eyes, would call it cheesy… Levi in this state would probably bite Erwin’s head clean off. There’s no room for seduction, no room for word-play or subtlety with this one.
Erwin’s not subtle at all as he quickly darts his hands down Levi’s body to yank his trousers and undergarments down. They tangle around his thighs, still caught in his gear-straps, and the shock of Erwin having the audacity to— to play such a childish prank on him, to pull down his clothes like a teenage boy is enough to still Levi for one brief, stunning moment. The moment is enough. Erwin throws him over his shoulder and takes off down to his personal chambers in a brisk walk.
“Fucker!” There’s no denying that Levi’s fists on his back hurt, he’s not pulling his punches by much as he pounds on Erwin’s spine. God, Levi would be a great masseuse, he hits a particularly persistent knot that Erwin’s been trying to stretch out for ages. Then again, he nearly shatters a vertebrae on the next hit, so maybe not.
Erwin grunts, readjusts— Levi’s not that heavy, he’s heavy for his size, but considering the size of people that Erwin usually spars or trains with… it’s no issue to flip him over neatly, so that Erwin’s hands are on his shins while the rest of him is draped down Erwin’s back. His cravat is probably flopped out of its orderly tuck and covering his face, how cute.
Erwin can feel how he squirms and heats up with embarrassment— it really is a humiliating position. Look at him, the feral little creature that Captain Erwin drug up from the underworld, look at him, the fearsome titan-slayer and thorn in authority’s side. Look at his neat little cock, bare and hard against his hip as Captain Erwin marches with his bounty down to his quarters. Look at the red on his cheeks. Levi’s fingertips skim the floor.
“Pretty little thing,” Erwin teases as he strides down the corridors. He can feel Levi trying to grab at his ankles, and he chuckles, lengthening his steps and shortening them at unpredictable intervals, adjusting his grip on the smooth leather of Levi’s knee-high scout boots. God, what he wouldn’t give to see Levi in his boots and only his boots, naked and waiting for him in his office like a good little submissive. The boots have knee reinforcements for a reason, after all.
Just the boots, and maybe the gear straps.
Erwin keeps talking, jokingly swaying Levi from side to side by tugging at his legs. “If I didn’t think you’d swat at my ankles,” just like a cat, “I’d flip you back over, let you show that pert ass of yours to the corridors. You’re giving anybody that happens to walk past quite the treat, showing your pretty little cock and thighs like that.” Erwin sighs, clicks his tongue as Levi’s fingertips brush over his heel. “If you behaved, I would let you walk beside me to my quarters like a man, but alas, brats get carried like brats.”
“Over—” Erwin was a bit worried that Levi doesn’t tolerate being upside-down well, but his voice is fine, if not a bit furious and light-headed. “Over your shoulders with their— with their pants down? What kind—” Levi audibly strains, trying to pull himself up— he can’t, what with the way Erwin swings him.
Erwin chuckles as Levi grunts with the effort of trying to claw at his feet. Feisty little thing.
“What kind of pervert are you, Captain?” Erwin’s never heard his respectable title sound more like a searing insult.
It’s Levi’s unique talent, he could make even the sweetest compliment barbed and stinging.
“The best kind,” Erwin says.
Even though Levi’s pretty light for Erwin’s strength, it still takes effort to toss him onto the bed. Erwin’s a Captain, and a good one at that… nobody questioned the fairly innocuous-looking iron rings sunk into the ceiling, into the walls and the headboard of his bed. Candle-holders, he had told Shadis, for when work is just so urgent that he needs to work on it as soon as he wakes up and to the very last second before he goes to sleep. The look in the older man’s eyes said that he didn’t quite believe him— there are no trays below the rings to catch wax— but the money for them had come out of Erwin’s budget, not the legion’s.
Besides, Erwin’s the only Captain who’s lived long enough to have his own permanent quarters. He deserves a bit of an indulgence.
Levi flips over like a cat, and he hisses just like one as well. If he had fur it would be standing and puffed up, but in the end, his posturing and posing is for naught; Erwin can see down between his thighs to his pink cock, straining up in the air towards his abdomen. It’s wet at the tip.
He has no doubt— no doubt at all, he can see Levi’s muscles coiling to pounce, and while he’s not all-together opposed to rolling around on the floor and forcing someone into submission with his more primal side, he’d quite like to use those useful hooks in his wall with Levi. It would be good for him, strung up in ropes— he would mellow out, melt and sigh in his woven cage. It would be good for him. Erwin knows how to read people— knows it well enough to a fault, he can’t help but analyze everyone he meets, and he can see something in Levi.
He can see that desperate little need to be loved, to be kissed and held and praised deep inside Levi.
Deep, deep inside Levi.
So he pounces first, before Levi has the chance to move.
Surprisingly, Levi doesn’t bite him when they kiss.
Levi kisses brutally— it’s a dangerous game, avoiding their teeth clacking together and not swallowing the smaller man’s tongue— but he doesn’t chomp or claw. It’s a furious kiss, and Erwin— he can’t remember the last time he fought for dominance in a kiss, but he fights for it now.
He wins it with a well timed nip to the swell of Levi’s lower lip and a twist to his nipple through his shirt. Levi gasps, and that’s enough. Erwin gains the upper hand.
“Sweet thing,” he rumbles against the smaller man’s lips. He kisses him slowly and deeply, wetly until their lips are smeared with it, until Erwin knows Levi’s tongue as well as he knows his own. “Pretty little thing.”
“Shut up.” Levi kicks him, heels him in the back hard enough to wring an involuntary ‘oof’ sound out of him. Another knot in Erwin’s muscles gone. “Take my fucking clothes off, or I’ll cut you.”
Erwin grins, predatory and sharp. It’s his favorite thing to do, in the dynamic he likes or out of it, to undress his partners. It’s rather like unwrapping a gift.
A knife clatters out of Levi’s boot when he pulls it off his small foot, so maybe it’s more like diffusing a bomb.
Levi sneers at him. “Necessary precaution.”
Levi’s so scared, pale and— the opposite of frail, pale and wiry with muscle, striped with slashes and nicks (and worse) like a tabby cat.
Erwin has the impulse to smooth a hand over his silky hair, to coo at him how pretty and sweet he is (lies, all lies, but Erwin can make him so) to see how red stains his cheeks.
Levi blushes easily, and he flushes hot as Erwin undresses him roughly, peeling back his clothes— he doesn’t even have to move, Erwin poses and manipulates his arms for him, just like a doll. The finest china doll, made purely out of cracked porcelain and spite.
He pulls his underwear back up— rather counterintuitive— and leaves it on, just for now. It’s rather amusing how the fabric tents and strains over Levi’s obvious arousal.
Levi kisses him ferociously as Erwin works on his own clothes as well, so long and deep that Erwin’s lungs burn when they separate. Levi’s lips are already swollen and pink.
“What are your words?” Erwin bites his neck, and Levi seems to like that. His hips thrust up, desperately seeking where Erwin is stiff and blood-hot. He’s just as aroused as Levi is— more— he just has more self control. Levi fists his hands in Erwin’s shirt, impatient.
“My words?” A button on Erwin’s shirt clatters across the floor. Levi curls his lip. “Oops.” He doesn’t look repentant in the least.
Erwin gets a firm hand around his throat and squeezes, putting a good amount of pressure where he can feel life pounding hard and fast. Levi gasps— he has a rather wild look in his eyes, so Erwin releases him. “Words for when you don’t like something. Words for when you want me to stop.”
“I like it all,” Levi spits, furious. He frees himself of his gear— Erwin half-wants to keep it on, to press the soft leather into bare flesh and suspend him like that, secure in the gear that saves his life every day, use it to kill him. Just a tiny bit. Just a little death.
“All?” God, Erwin can’t help but imagine the aftermath of all— Levi bruised and broken, purple and red on his throat, his ass, his back and thighs and a bit between his legs, his eyes puffy with tears behind a blindfold and his dirty little mouth stretched and abused from a ball gag. Maybe a ring fitted behind those sharp teeth of his, turning his face into just another hole to fuck.
He’s had subs before— he actually had one just before Levi joined up that he worked with for a while. God, it sounds so professional when he says it like that, it sounds just like they were colleagues and comrades— he would flog and fuck the man to tears and screams. Some people need that, they need something… they need something intense in their lives. To forget about the titans, to forget about some sort of traumatic past, to function, or just because they plain enjoy it.
Anyway, he liked to use a ring gag with that particular sub. It was not long after Levi joined, but still a week or so before his fateful expedition— he lost that particular partner in it as well— that Levi came to drop off some papers. They had all needed to fill out documents with their information (birthday, medical history, next of kin, report from a physician, things like that), and Levi had taken quite a while for himself and his group. Filling in blanks and gaps, or just straight-up lying, no doubt. When he finally came in, Erwin had already fitted his partner with a lovely metal ring behind his teeth and sent him to kneel beneath his desk and warm his cock.
The desk was thick and they were perfectly hidden, but Erwin suspected even then that Levi knew something was different, from the way his eyes widened the slightest bit in shock and narrowed into a sharp glare.
Erwin just smiled, thanked him calmly for the papers and made a bit of idle small talk while he spilled down the waiting throat.
Retroactively, he can see that there was a tinge of envy in that glare.
“All?” Erwin repeats, grabbing Levi’s wrists and pinning them above his head. Levi’s nostrils flare, his eyes glaring as he tugs himself free again. He likes restraint, but seems like he also takes a sick pleasure in freeing himself.
“Don’t fucking— no toilet stuff,” Levi spits, “everything else is fair game.”
“What if you want me to stop?” Erwin asks, and Levi scoffs loudly. Derisively.
“If I want you to stop,” he strikes Erwin across the face faster than the other man can even think. It’s a quick, stinging slap, more of a swat than a genuine hit. Levi arranges his own face into something resembling a grin, but it’s all wrong. It’s delighted, sure, but in a darker way than happiness is, and he’s showing far too many teeth. His lips are pulled back. Erwin doesn’t think Levi knows how to grin, he doesn’t think the smaller man has ever genuinely done so in his life. “If I want you to stop,” Levi does it again. “I’ll fucking make you stop.” He tries once more, but this one is slower. Erwin can catch his small hand in his own, far larger one before it makes contact.
“Boy.” It’s a warning.
Levi grins— bares his teeth at him. “Well? I just hit you. I’ll hit you again. What are you going to do about it?” It’s a taunt, and Erwin doesn’t appreciate being taunted by brats too big for their britches.
Erwin takes his thick leather belt— their gear straps are soft and thin from years of wear, making up for their lack of thickness by the sheer amount. This belt is thick and large, and Erwin lashes Levi’s wrists to the headboard with it, testing a finger beneath the bindings to make sure it’s not too tight. Levi rips out of them. Erwin re-ties them. Levi rips out of them again. Erwin ties them tighter.
“Erwin,” Levi looks downright murderous, hands free of the restraints yet again. “Tie me up like you fucking mean it.”
“Don’t mouth off to me,” he’s quite proud of himself for keeping his voice at an even, dark tone, but he’s had about enough of Levi’s sneers and remarks. What a brat. He would gag him, but he’s just trying Levi out, experimenting for his first time with this sub. He wants Levi’s mouth free to tell him if anything is wrong— to call out ‘stop’ or ‘no more’, because apparently previously agreed upon safewords are too fancy for his kinky lordship. “You’ll regret it.”
“Fucking make me, then,” and Levi breaks free of another tie, this one so tight that his fingers were turning red. Actually breaks free, snaps Erwin’s belt clean in half with a sharp ‘pop’.
Erwin doesn’t quite see red— cows are a rarity, leather is expensive, leather for not strictly necessary belts outside of gear doubly so, high quality leather double that, high quality leather for trouser belts for Survey Corps soldiers double that.
He’s a soldier, and a commanding officer at that, of course he has handcuffs. He has a pair made out of cruel, polished and unblemished steel that he keeps in his cabinet. Other branches use them frequently— it’s a commanding officer’s prerogative, to perform an arrest for insubordination, desertion or some other more serious offense, but he’s never needed them in the Survey Corps. He had come close to using them once (on Levi, actually) but hasn’t needed them since. He needs them now.
Erwin clicks them on around Levi’s wrists— brutally, they’re not padded at all and he snaps them on hard enough that they press into those narrow wrists, leaving no room for even a twitch. Levi gasps, glares even harder.
“I’ve broken out of solid iron ones before,” he tries to flex his wrists— he fails— but it doesn’t diminish the intensity of that poisonous silver in his eyes, doesn’t assuage or appease him whatsoever. “Are you really so arrogant as to think that I can’t get out of these?”
“You can try,” Erwin knows his grin is broad enough to show all of his teeth, large and satisfied. “You’ll just hurt yourself.” There’s a little key to those cuffs— it’s the only way out, delicate and silver and tiny, pinched between Erwin’s fingers. He wags it in front of Levi’s scheming little eyes and deliberately sets it down on the nightstand, just far enough to taunt Levi with the promise of freedom, yet close enough that Erwin can grab it and unlock the cuffs quickly if Levi calls for the scene to stop.
“Tsk, tsk,” Erwin rubs his hands up Levi’s calves— Levi doesn’t try to kick him, but he looks like he’s strongly considering it— and hooks his fingers in the waistband of Levi’s briefs— how on earth the dark grey material (darker over his cock, a little pearl of precome staining where the very tip lies) stays invisible under his white trousers, Erwin will never know. Maybe he’ll ask about it when Levi is all bundled up in his arms during aftercare.
He would normally drag this out— he’s a taunting and teasing man at heart, writing novels upon novels of foreplay before ever moving on to the main act— he would drag them down Levi’s narrow hips, then wedge them up, up, up— until the seams groan almost as loudly as the man himself, until Levi squirms from the pressure it’ll put on his balls and hole. Maybe then he’ll tuck Levi’s cock up into the waistband, lay it flat against his abdomen and snap the elastic back against the sensitive flesh to hear him howl.
Or— or he would take a softer approach— Erwin’s tamed many brats before, and it’s never long before they succumb to his firm but fair hand, his steady gaze and easy aura of confidence— he would duck down and dampen the fabric with his tongue, lick roughly over that little dark drop until Levi starts to squirm, fidget and rub his thighs together, trying to chase the stimulation. Then he would stop— he would go lower, he would nose at Levi’s sac through the fabric and use his tongue to push the cloth between the muscular globes of his ass— then he would suck just the head of Levi’s stiff cock into his mouth through the fabric, getting it nice and wet and clingy before he peels the garment down his legs. With his teeth, of course.
But Levi wouldn’t like that, Levi’s a… Levi’s a special case, a special sub, a special man.
Erwin’s seen the way Levi looks at him now— he always has this expression of practiced neutrality on his face, but his eyes are usually considering. Considering, as though he’s not quite made up his mind about Erwin yet. A few times when Levi let his iron control slip— arousal. But now Levi’s frenzied passion could be mistaken for hatred, bared teeth and fire behind his eyes. Viable to explode at any touch of softness or gentility. Levi— he wants to fuck, in the purest sense of the word. He wants Erwin to fuck him, he wants Erwin to fuck him up and over.
Don’t like my attitude? His eyes scream, then fuck it out of me. I fucking dare you.
So Erwin snaps the elastic waistband over the smaller man’s cock— Levi wasn’t expecting it, he lets out a delightfully pained yelp— and yanks it off his body, legs jerking in his wake.
“Enough pain for you?”
“Not even close,” Levi pants, legs naturally falling apart at the knees. He twists— Erwin can see his biceps and core flexing— cock slapping against his hard abdomen. He can’t escape, though. These restraints can finally hold him.
Erwin sighs as he turns around, seeking the oil and some of his more… interesting implements, kept in a chest at the foot of his bed. He keeps talking as he does so— he has a moral obligation as Levi’s dom (for tonight) to not leave the smaller man untethered. Out of sight, out of mind— and it’s just… it’s just cruel (but not in a good way) to string up a sub so harshly and leave them alone. Erwin doesn’t want to risk a bout of nerves— or, if Levi’s quieted down like he thinks he is and begun to sink into the proper headspace— knocking him out of the scene.
“Color?” He asks out of habit, rummaging through the chest. He can hear a bit of a laugh in Levi’s incredulous scoff.
“Sky blue. Purple. Brown. Fuck if I know, fuck if I care. Are you going to be a pansy little bitch every five seconds, or are you going to fuck me?” Levi’s voice is a bit strained, a bit higher pitched at the end and cracking slightly on the ‘me’. Erwin’s concern increases— the ‘pansy’ comment had reminded him of a thin rose-wood cane, perfectly shaped and knotted to leave the most beautiful stripes along pale skin such as Levi’s— but he sets it down, listening carefully for tells in Levi’s voice.
“Are you alright, Levi?”
“Perfectly fine.” There’s a high note of strain in Levi’s voice. That, and the lack of biting comments has Erwin rising, setting the tools aside to check on his partner.
This time, Erwin does see red. Just a little.
A distant part of him admires Levi’s dexterity and flexibility— after all, picking up a tiny metal key with your toes, maneuvering it so that it’s clutched right between them and facing the right way, then bringing your foot all the way up to your head and behind it to fiddle with the keyhole? It takes an extraordinary amount of skill and coordination, and later Erwin might ask him to demonstrate exactly how flexible he is, but for now…
There’s a bit of red creeping in at the edges of his vision.
Levi’s legs are up— both of them, and his spine is curled, and Erwin was pretty silent as he got up— Levi probably hasn’t noticed he’s been caught yet, huffing as the key scrabbles at the tiny lock.
“Fucking… fuck… shit…”
“Levi.”
That’s all the warning Levi gets before Erwin strikes. People see his calm, collected demeanor— Levi included— and they sometimes forget that Erwin is second only to the elite soldiers in terms of speed and combat. He’s fast when he wants to be, nowhere near as fast as Levi, but still fast enough to grab Levi’s discarded belt and tightly buckle his shin to his thigh. He has no doubt that Levi can break through that belt as well, but he has no time to react as Erwin grabs his own broken belt and wrenches Levi’s other leg towards his chest.
“You,” if he was a lesser man or a lesser dom his voice would quaver with his anger, but he’s cold and collected. “Are going to regret that dearly, boy.”
And he starts.
Erwin’s never been the most sadistic of people— he enjoys dominance, he doesn’t need to— he doesn’t always— inflict pain, but even he can acknowledge just how satisfying it is, whipping harsh lashes into the pale skin of Levi’s thigh. He feels his anger drain away with every strike, falling into a rhythm with the leather hissing through the air, the sharp ‘thwack’ when it kisses Levi’s skin, the steady monotone of his own voice counting and the anything but monotone of Levi crying out. When he comes back to himself— it was an automatic action, holding Levi down with his hand tight on the back of his knee while he worked. He was soothing the man with his thumb, rubbing it gently into the soft skin behind Levi’s knee.
Levi doesn’t need soothing, he looks—
Ecstatic.
His eyes are glassy with tears, and some of them— some of them have leaked out past the wells of his eyes, trailing down his temples and blushing cheeks. It’s not an embarrassed flush, it’s the rosy pink of a man who damn near came. His lips are even more red, parted in a soft moan of pain-tinged pleasure as Erwin stops. Erwin’s a good dom, he’s a fair dom, it was just instinct to provide that little bit of grounding and comfort while he— well, while he positively whaled on Levi, placing his warm hand over red, raw skin.
Levi flinches, then moans— a light, hard won thing— as the comparative coolness from Erwin’s hand soothes the marks. He shifts in Erwin’s grasp, settling his shoulders more comfortably into the pile of pillows. He’s no longer trying to escape.
“Now,” Erwin’s voice is still just as calm, just as collected, but now it’s kind; gentle. “Are you going to break free again?”
Levi shakes his head softly.
“Good. Now, let's see.”
When Erwin glances down and removes his hand, even he gasps softly in wonder. Levi’s thigh— his thigh is a lovely, horrible bright pink, raised marks from the leather belt decorating him from tailbone to knee, concentrated in that sweet spot where his ass meets his thighs, right where he would sit down. Erwin’s never used a broken leather belt to whip someone before; he realizes that he didn’t account for the frayed little tips. The sensitive little patch of skin between Levi’s sac and his hole is pink as well, and the edge of a particularly nasty welt goes right up to it, a little bit across. Levi howls when Erwin touches it, arches his back violently.
“Fuck!” He makes a noise like a sob when Erwin does it again, and when Erwin looks higher up between his legs— his poor cock is bright pink as well, but for different reasons as it jerks, twitches with his arousal. “Fuck!”
“You like that, don’t you?” Erwin murmurs softly, massaging the tender, abused skin. He didn’t hit Levi’s balls— Erwin’s not that cruel, so he reaches up and gives Levi a break by cradling them gently, stroking his thumb over hot skin. “How do you feel?”
“Hot,” Levi cries, arching into the touch. Erwin chuckles as Levi’s arousal weeps out a strand of sticky precome. How needy of him, how telling of his craving to be broken, to be positively obliterated. “Oh, fuck— again.”
Erwin distracts him with a few pulls to his needy cock before Levi starts squirming, toes fanning and the chain of the cuffs clinking. “Again, Erwin, again.”
“No,” Erwin says, rather amused. That amusement is gone in a flash as Levi jerks, nearly kicking Erwin in the face. “Watch it. I’m warning you.”
“What?” Levi sneers, tries to knee him again. God, Levi’s such a fucking brat, worse than any other sub that Erwin’s had before. It’s like being a bitch is what really gets him off— but not the part where he submits and lets himself go teary-eyed and wrecked with the pleasure, just the part where he’s mean and nasty and—
And wonderful, really. Erwin’s always liked a challenge, and if being a bitch is Levi’s kink, Erwin’s happy to play along, forcing him to where it would take— what it would take to break him. Erwin can see Levi’s thigh straining and flexing against the thick leather of the belt, threatening to break it again. So Erwin takes a few preventative measures. Just a few.
The first: he flips Levi over onto his stomach. It’s a quick, powerful motion, one borne of many years of practice. There’s just enough length of strong chain between the individual cuffs that they don’t contort Levi’s arms or make it impossible to turn him comfortably, but there’s also just enough to tangle the links together, making them even harder to break if Levi puts his mind to it. Levi lets out— it’s a squeak, that’s what it is, he squeaks just like a tiny little mouse does as his knees hit the mattress. He doesn’t have his hands to balance on— only good boys get to be untied— and they’re restrained above his head, forcing him onto his chest with his face pressed to a pillow and his shoulders flexing. It’s a tiring position, even Levi’s arms will be trembling after an hour of holding it. Two hours. Three hours. However long it will take.
The second: he grabs Levi’s knees— hard caps, painful to take to the gut or nose— Levi’s quite fond of knee kicks in sparring or a fight. He doesn’t fight clean, he fights to win and escape. Erwin knows, because he can see Levi fighting not to bolt when the match is done and over. So he grabs those knees, pulls them back until Levi is nicely propped up, knocks them apart wider than his shoulders. It’s quite a nice visual, Levi face down, ass up. One poor cheek all pink and red already.
“Pretty,” Erwin praises.
The third: Erwin takes his hands— Levi gasps when one of his palms covers the skin that just took punishment— and places them square on each plump globe, nudging his thumbs into the crease between them so he can flex and pull them apart.
Erwin was right, Levi’s hole is pretty. It’s pale pink and tiny, it looks sensitive, and it winks up at him when the smaller man squirms.
“Fuck,” Levi spits, he must’ve taken a mouthful of bedding when he landed. The pale soles of his feet are pointed towards the ceiling, and they kick— or at least they try before Erwin plants his weight on them to pin them. “You gonna fuck me? Just like that, hit me a few times then done?”
“Depends,” for all his sharp and snap, Levi twitches when Erwin passes his thumb along the furled ring of muscle. Sensitive, he was right. “Do you think you deserve my cock right away?”
“I’ll fucking break it off,” Levi hisses.
“That’s a no, then.”
Levi builds himself up to be this feral, untamable, unbreakable sub— he cries out immediately when Erwin spanks him, lets his bare hand crack down hard on where Levi’s skin is presented and pulled taut from the position. “Fuck!”
“Loud, loud, loud,” Erwin chides, spanks him again. Levi pants at the next hit, chest heaving. Back arching, presenting himself more. “Just how loud would you be if I spanked that twitching little hole of yours, hmm? Get it all red and ready for me?” He builds up a steady pattern, alternating, varying in the type— hard and deep, stinging along the surface, deep blows that reach to the muscles under the blushing flesh— and in the placement. Some go over the previous welts, some go to the other cheek, some go dangerously close to his heavy sac and needy cock, and for some Erwin peels apart the round globes— delivers a few careful, hard hits mere breaths away from where Levi is furled and sensitive, where he’s a light pink that’s never seen the sun.
Levi groans. His ass is red and quivering, both cheeks stained cherry pink now. God, Erwin loves to play with impact. He loves the dull, throbbing marks left from his palm— those will bruise, paint Levi with Erwin’s own brand, his own personal palm-print. He loves the welts and raised skin left from the bite of a belt, and if he gets to stripe Levi with a thin cane— he’ll love that, too.
“Oh,” Levi lets out a tired moan when Erwin ceases the punishment, sinking his fingers into the plump flesh— the wonders that maneuver gear can do to an ass. Levi should be the poster-boy for the military, he should pose sunk onto his haunches in just a thong (or less, maybe fully nude) and the gear. Back arched, ass out and red-stained. Join the Survey Corps, get an ass like this. Get a piece of ass like this. They would have no problem whatsoever with recruitment. None at all. Levi whimpers as he massages the tender skin— repetitive hits can make skin go numb, and Erwin’s manipulating the flesh, sending blood back to it and signals back to Levi’s system of such good, such bad, such painhotgoodbadpleasurepainyes. It’s a wonderful signal, one that makes Levi bite his lips between his teeth and let out a soft, pained moan when Erwin squeezes, jiggles, spreads, hits it a few more times right where the sweet sit-spots are.
“Have you ever been flogged, Levi?”
Levi’s eyes are hazy, and his lips are parted to take shallow breaths— his lip is nearly bitten bloodless, and as Erwin watches, he releases it and it swells back into pink and sensitive. He nods.
Erwin deems it safe to lean in and lick a hot stripe up Levi’s ear, nibbling on the cartilage lightly. Levi’s ears are soft, and slightly nicked (just like a prickly little tomcat), and nibbling on them makes him squirm and whine.
Then again, maybe it’s because Erwin’s rubbing the side of his palm over his hole, stroking the sensitive skin with broad sweeps of his hand. Not a lot of pressure or weight, just light enough that Levi can feel it, that he moans when red marks flare to life and presses his hips up into the touch.
“I have this flogger,” Erwin says, conversational. If one were just to hear his tone, they would expect a casual chat about the weather, maybe an offhand remark about some politics or other, a little comment on the state of the economy. He smiles around the words, breathing hot onto the wet shell of Levi’s pink ear. It’s Erwin’s favorite color, he wants to make Levi pink and red all over. Maybe— if Erwin teases and keeps Levi on the brink for long enough, he’ll even turn a frustrated royal purple color from just how pent up he is. Levi’s skin is so pale, it’s the perfect canvas for whatever colors and lines he’d like to paint the other man with.
“I have this flogger, and it’s made from the softest, most silky leather you can imagine. Have you ever seen a lamb, Levi?”
Levi (and his friends) upon arrival to the surface, had been in complete and total shock. Levi masked it more than his friends did, but he was still looking around in his own equivalent of wide-eyed wonder. Levi has such tired, narrow eyes, such small irises. Erwin wonders what they would look like if they crinkled on a smile. Anyway, they had passed a pasture when riding to the Corps headquarters, and the girl— Erwin would love to say that he knows her name, but he’s lost too many soldiers, so it doesn’t particularly stand out— she had grabbed Levi by the arm and shaken him (rather violently, Erwin would be scared to touch him like that), telling him about the ‘cloud dogs’. ‘Dumbass,’ Levi had said, not altogether unkindly. ‘Those are fuckin’ sheepies.’. Erwin hadn’t the heart to tell him he was saying it wrong. Anyway, Erwin continues.
“Baby sheep. And their leather…” Erwin sighs, and Levi shivers at the caress of air. Erwin rubs his hand just a touch harder, letting the natural curl of his relaxed fingers catch on Levi’s hole ever so slightly. It’s fun to watch him bite back a whine that escapes anyway, a thin, high sound of a thing. It’s pathetic in the best way possible, how delicate and precious the sounds of Levi’s held-back pleasure are. Most men’s voices can’t even reach that pitch, but here Levi is, whining like a little bitch as he’s being teased. Erwin wonders if he’s into that, if he’s into Erwin telling him how slutty and whorish his hole would look stretched and oil-wet, how wanton and desperate his face, his cock, his pretty little nipples. Erwin could clamp them with fine silver clips and chains, making them even prettier.
He’s getting off topic again. That happens a lot with Levi, of Erwin’s being honest. He’s so stunning, so beautiful, so fascinating and so deadly… it’s hard to keep thoughts in Erwin’s head around a man as appealing as that.
“God, Levi, it’s like velvet,” there’s a little vial of oil in Erwin’s nightstand, he distracts Levi with more teasing touches while he retrieves it. Levi’s toes are curling, tucking and fanning where they’re pointed up towards the ceiling. It doesn’t look like a particularly comfortable position, especially with the belt still around one of his thighs, but Levi offers no complaints or ill-tempered protests, only a light gasp when Erwin teases his fingers over his furled rim. Erwin’s favorite body part is the ass, what can he say. “And when I run it over your back,” he dares to kiss that sweet little spot behind Levi’s ear, nose tucked into his hair. It smells sweet, like soap and desperation and arousal. “It’ll feel like a massage.”
“God, fuck,” Levi sighs, back arching. “Fuck.”
Erwin sharpens his tone. “But some of the tails have tips, little things of the toughest leather I could find. And that hurts, Levi, it stings like a bitch and will leave you howling. Velvet and steel, my darling, velvet and steel.”
It’s the closest Erwin’s ever seen to a satisfied smile from this man— as temperamental as this, the curl of his lips as he sighs out a trembling, “god, yes.”
The promise of pain seems to both excite and soothe him at the same time. Levi almost seems to tremble, the tension in his muscles winding tighter and tighter as Erwin sinks his fingers in. Two at once, and Levi is deliciously tight around them, tight and searing hot. Erwin can’t wait to fuck him, he can’t wait to feel how tight he would be when he’s sobbing and shaking from overstimulation, collapsed in a messy puddle of his own come and sweat on the sheets. And Erwin would spank him as he fucks and licks and fucks, peppering Levi’s already abused ass and back with stinging blows that leave him whimpering. Call Erwin repetitive or unimaginative, but he likes to focus on one area, he likes to see how red and sore he can make it the next day while the rest of Levi is (mostly) beautifully unblemished. And it’s better for the bottom party, it really can be, the concentrated hurt in just one place to remind them exactly what Erwin did and how good it was. Levi’ll sit down in the saddle the next day and wince, and Erwin would trot over to him— not too close, though, Levi’s horse (just like the owner) bites, and Erwin’s pretty white mare doesn’t need any more teeth marks— and he’ll ask smugly, oh, Recruit Levi, is your bottom sore? Did you strain or bruise it somehow? You know, I have this wonderful gel for it, you can come to my quarters later for some, and Levi’ll scowl, tuck his shoulders up to his ears in that peculiar way he has. Probably snap and spit some choice insults, perhaps about Erwin’s character and his perversions, perhaps about his rank, perhaps (always original on Levi’s part) about his appearance.
And he’ll be back in Erwin’s quarters before nightfall.
Levi squirms around his fingers now, face twisting, lip caught between his teeth as Erwin fingers him. It’s frustrating (for him, that is) as Erwin pointedly avoids where he can feel the edge of swollen flesh in the confines of Levi’s body. It’s not an easy thing to do— god, Levi really is tight, he wonders when was the last time he even got fingered, let alone fucked. A thought occurs to him.
“Am I the first one to do this, Levi?” It’s not an unreasonable thought— Erwin can just imagine it, and it fills him with a giddy sort of glee— that Levi likes to hurt and bruise, that he likes to cry and scream but he never let anyone touch him back there where he’s soft and tender, never let anyone (delightfully) abuse his poor hole until it’s puffy and pinky-red from a fat cock. Levi’s tight enough to believe it, at least.
“Of course I fucking have,” Levi snarls, and he must think he’s so clever, using the disdainful words to mask how he arches into Erwin’s touch. “You seriously think I’m a fucking virgin?”
“Tight as a virgin,” Erwin corrects, and maybe Levi’s not a virgin, he’s just not experienced with a partner who knows their way around the ‘back door’, because his eyes go wide and he all but shrieks as Erwin times his words with a firm rub. His legs jerk as Erwin continues, and he pants, wide eyed.
“Nnngh— fuck!” He trembles, shivers with it and almost seems to curl up as Erwin continues.
“Aww, boy, don’t get nervous,” Erwin coos, gentle voice a sharp contrast— just the way he likes it— to the way he touches that delicate flesh inside Levi. Oh, he massages it, he strokes and tickles and caresses it, but he also kneads his fingers in hard enough— right in the center, right where it feels the most— to tear a groan-moan-gasp from Levi’s throat.
Levi lets out a weak hiccup, breath catching. Erwin can see through the smaller man’s parted legs how his cock drips, slicking and staining the sheets below him with precome. Erwin just has to chuckle, reaching a finger down so that he can swipe it through the slick mess and bring it back up to his mouth to sample the taste. Salty. Bitter. Sweet with arousal and desperation.
He tells Levi so, a taunting little smile curling his lips. “You’re dripping wet, my dear. So needy for me, even though you spit and hiss and growl.”
“Fuck off,” Levi snarls, and he barely avoids mewling— Erwin knows, because his voice catches strangely when Erwin twists his hand, moves his thumb so that he can press into that smooth patch of skin between Levi’s heavy balls and his hole, massaging and pressing into Levi’s swollen sweet spot from the outside as well as in. He presses hard, rubs in even harder, and the skin is kissed the prettiest of lightest pinks when he takes his thumb away. Levi’s hole flutters around his fingers.
“Hmm,” it’s sticky when Erwin scoops more onto his fingers, and he scrutinizes it carefully, holding it up to examine the pearly shine. “Should I get a vial? I have some in my desk drawer, and I could get a little one of those bottles, place it beneath you so that you drip and leak right into it. And do you know what I would do with those little bottles, Levi? I imagine you’d need more than one.”
“Hnnngh—” Levi shudders when Erwin curls his fingers. With his other hand— god, how he wants to slap that pert ass of his again, slap and jostle Levi into fucking himself back on Erwin’s fingers, but he refrains— he unfastens the button and zipper on his own trousers, sighing when his erection is finally freed. He’s leaking little beads of precome— not as much as Levi is, Levi’s a special kind of messy, it seems— and the fat red head of his cock is an angry sort of slick. Erwin chuckles, letting his hardness prod and rub against the mottled red expanse of Levi’s ass.
“I could use it as my pomade,” he breathes, the slide of his cock intoxicating against Levi’s skin. “I could put it in my hair— it’s sticky enough, and it would dry just fine, and I could walk around like that all day, in front of everyone. The base, the brass, the noble folk, everyone. And they would all ask where I got it, what Commander Erwin uses to keep his hair so immaculately styled. Our little secret, and I’d have an endless supply.”
“You’re foul,” Levi spits, but he pushes himself back all the same. His cock jerks.
“I’m also knuckle deep inside of you, so be careful how you talk to me, boy.” Erwin leaves the last word hanging in the air, a careful warning to the man currently squirming in his grasp.
“Fuck off,” Levi snarls again, but he’s cut off by Erwin suddenly pulling his fingers out and away, leaving Levi’s hole slick, split, and gaping in the absence. His tough little feet (try to) kick, chains clinking. “No, no, no!”
“No?” Erwin pauses in wiping his hand off, a smile stretching his lips. Already? “You want me to come back?”
“Just fuck me already, you piece of shit,” the small man whines, thrashing in his binds. It seems like he’s finally playing the game (not all that well, honestly), driven to that edge of desperation where his brattiness is fading, desperation to be fucked taking its place. Then again, Erwin might be wrong.
“What did you just call me?” Erwin asks, and the dam breaks. Levi swears furiously, violently— he calls Erwin every name under the sun and a few more in a fluent, unyielding stream that would leave the most seasoned criminal (which Erwin supposes Levi in a way is) blushing. It leaves him panting, exhausted, shoulders heaving and the blades of them flexing marvelously. There’s a scar beneath the wing of one, a perfect pink-ish outline on the jut of the bone.
Erwin waits for him to catch his breath, then moistens his lips and continues. As it turns out, he was in fact wrong.
“Well,” he says, matter of fact. He’s a bit shocked by some of the choice insults, he’s not going to lie. He’s starting to reconsider his stance on gags for Levi, or at least— no, nevermind, he really doesn’t want to withdraw to go get some soap. Besides, Levi likes cleanliness, but Erwin doubts that he’d consent to having his mouth washed out with soap, even as a punishment. “You’re just earned yourself a flogging.”
Levi snarls a last, valiant, “fuck you.” feisty until the very end.
Erwin can admire his obstinance, but in the same way that he admires the beauty of nature from far away, listening to the storm pound at his windows while he stays sequestered inside, warm and away from the lashing rain. Because inside is his space, it’s his own little nook of the world and it follows his rules. Within the walls of his bedroom— his own little dungeon— he is king, and Levi is the howling tempest.
Oh, Levi will howl. Erwin will make sure of it.
“Now,” he says, letting the implement tails trail over the bumps and knots in Levi’s spine. They have a masseuse in the Corps employed specifically for working those types of knots and aches out— Erwin knows they do, he pays the damn woman personally since Shadis decided to be a cheap son of a bitch and cut it out of the budget— but Levi never goes to her. Levi doesn’t like being touched— now wasn’t that a fucking lie. He loves it, he craves it, he just doesn’t have the patience for it. One of these days, for a more creative punishment, Erwin’ll chain Levi up, maybe string him from the ceiling by the straps and wires of his gear and do nothing but touch Levi, feel and toy with his skin until he begs and squirms for more, for Erwin to touch him more, to stop torturing him and just do something. But Erwin won’t, he’ll just keep running his palms over Levi’s skin until he’s satisfied, until all of Levi’s body is one nerve-buzzing mess. That sounds nice. Erwin continues.
“How many lashes do you think you deserve?”
Levi stays silent, the line of his shoulders set mutinously. So that’s how he’s choosing to play.
Erwin leans down, right so he can talk into Levi’s ear. “How many can you handle? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just go until I think you’re done. If you tell me, you might get less.”
Levi turns his head sharply, so fast that Erwin can hear something in Levi’s neck pop, sharp teeth snapping millimeters from the ball-tip of Erwin’s nose. So close that he can feel the air from the snap caressing his skin, can practically feel the sharp clack of even sharper teeth in his bones. If Levi had connected, he would’ve drawn blood.
“Fuck you,” Levi spits, baring those sharp teeth that nearly took Erwin’s nose off a second ago. “Fuck you. Piece of shit.”
Erwin doesn’t even think, he just lets the flogger fly loose. He’s talented with it, it’s his medium of choice— he can make it gentle or hard, or if he really puts his arm into it like he does now, he can paint a line of fire across Levi’s back, drawing a sharp cry from his lips.
“Ah!”
More cries like that fall from his lips as Erwin keeps going— Levi’s flesh is blooming blush-red under the tails, and when Erwin starts overlapping his lashes, lines of white start to appear where the tough leather hits, shining bright pale for a moment before blood floods back into the abused skin. The flogger is an extension of Erwin’s hand and nails, the muscles of his forearm rolling and flexing as he paints Levi’s back with deep scratches and lines. Levi doesn’t make it easy for him— he took the first few well, but before long he starts thrashing, twisting and rattling his chains as he cries out, the notes of pain in his voice almost musical.
“How are you feeling?” Erwin asks, arm burning slightly with the strain of it. It’s beautiful, ugly work, Levi’s skin all red and splotchy for the price of his pain.
“More,” Levi keens, and the pain seems to have temporarily mellowed him out— Erwin’s got a real painslut on his hands— he pushes himself up higher, upping the ante on Erwin. What a masochist, Erwin thinks, glee in his chest at the thought of letting his penchant for harder play fly loose. What a man.
~~
Erwin loses himself in the rhythm and moment of it— there’s something uniquely satisfying about it, pushing someone to that breaking moment, but never over it, hovering them above the edge. Levi’s the strongest, he can take it, he can take it even as he howls and moans, saying it hurts, yelling wordlessly, incoherently. He curses and swears to the ceiling, to the gods, to the walls, to anything, cursing Erwin’s name and everything he stands for until Erwin pushes him harder, harder—
Levi breaks loose of his chains again.
“Why, you—” Erwin has never been more furious in his life. In his life, his next one, his one after that— he thought they were making progress, he thought they were close, and yet here Levi is: the bedpost broken and the glimmering chain of the cuffs snagged on the sharp edges of wood, a near-manic snarl on his face as he pants over his shoulder. He broke Erwin’s bed.
“Well?” Levi’s voice is hoarse and thick, but shows what Erwin knows— he’s nowhere near tamed yet. “What are you gonna do, huh? What’re you gonna do?”
There’s a gleam in his eyes, tears streaking down his face, a quiver that says he’s closer to the edge than he’d care to admit on his lips, but Erwin doesn’t fucking care, he just wants Levi to behave, he just wants Levi to behave. Just to fucking behave.
Maybe Levi starts saying— or goading— something but it’s lost as Erwin pounces on him, pinning him to the bed with a hand on his chained wrists and a knee driven into the small of Levi’s bruised back. When he starts up again— oh, he flogs him hard, so hard— Levi cries out, cries out some more, his gruff voice high and strained as Erwin doles out his punishment.
Erwin puts a sharp flick in his wrist to really drive the point in, and Levi—
Levi breaks.
“Stop!” He screams out, howls when the flogger moves faster than Erwin can think, dancing over his back yet again. “Stop! Please!”
Erwin’s blood turns to ice. His hands don’t shake when he fumbles for the keys to the cuffs, but it’s a near thing, self recrimination and terror rising in his throat, the nauseating feeling that oh god, he fucked up, he fucked up bad and now Levi is hurt. Levi nearly kicks him in the face as he howls, mistaking Erwin’s gentle hand for a far more insidious threat, “get away from me!”
“Shh, shh,” Erwin doesn’t try to offer false platitudes or assurance as he unlocks the handcuffs and unbuckles the belt— are there any other restrains? He can’t think— he doesn’t think there are?— but Levi still keeps his arms extended up, the muscles quivering with exhaustion and strain as he hides his face in his bicep.
“Levi, Levi,” Erwin keeps saying, helpless and hovering as Levi curls up— maybe saying his name would help? It doesn’t help as Levi curls up in on himself and wails, a broken sound that drowns out anything Erwin tries to say. He’s never heard Levi’s voice like that, and it chills his blood. Levi’s voice isn’t like that, Levi sneers and Levi spits acid, and he’s quiet, and his voice is gruff, it’s nothing like the thin sound clawing its way out of Levi’s chest. Erwin thinks for a second that this isn’t even Levi, this isn’t the man he stepped into the room with, this isn’t the man he dragged out of the underground into the light— the thought sickens him. No, this is Levi, and he’s hurt beyond what brings him pleasure. By Erwin’s own hand. Because Erwin didn’t realize how far he was going.
Levi shudders with sobs, heart wrenching things that shake his whole body, jostle where he’s tender and broken. Levi’s skin is split. Erwin drew blood.
It’s an agonizing while before Levi unfolds himself, wrapping his knees to his chest carefully— he’s protecting his tender flesh from Erwin the best he can, carefully shielding it, because Erwin went too far. He went too fucking far.
There’s silence as Levi calms himself down. He tries a couple times— false starts, he gets a few, overly deep and quavering breaths in before he sobs again. He calms down gradually, sucking in harsh gulps of air and shakily exhaling them, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand. He finally gives a final, pitiful sniffle and wipes his nose, looking up at Erwin. He hasn’t wiped his eyes, and they’re still red and puffy, his cheeks stained. Levi doesn’t cry pretty, but nobody does. Erwin feels horrible.
“Levi?”
“Why…” Levi croaks, “why did you stop?”
Erwin can’t speak. There’s a lump in his throat, a solid mass of shock that takes his previous concern and amplifies it tenfold. “What do you mean?”
Levi sucks down phlegm, clearing his throat with an awful noise before he hiccups again, trying to speak. “You stopped.” Despite his efforts, his voice is still thick. “Why?”
“Why didn’t I stop?” Erwin repeats, chalking it up to mishearing.
Levi wipes at his nose with the back of his wrist, such a messy action from a man usually so clean and composed. The thin joint of his wrist— Levi has slender ankles and wrists, Erwin’s dreamt many times about wrapping his hand around it, seeing how far his fingers would overlap on it, maybe securing it with a silky ribbon or a dainty chain, but he fucked up, and it’s ruined — his wrist is a livid purple, already bruised and bitten by the metal cuffs. Fuck, Erwin knew that police handcuffs were too harsh for a scene, he knew that they wouldn’t give or quick-release in case of emergency, and that pulling on them would hurt more than it would provide the security of restraint, but he— fuck, he didn’t think, he didn’t even consider it— he failed as a dom, that’s what he did— he was just so frustrated, he just wanted to restrain Levi and keep him in place. Levi sniffs again, draws his wrist back in and tucks it close to his body. He’s still nude, and Erwin’s (now soft, obviously) cock is still out of his fly, and suddenly he feels horrifyingly, mortifyingly embarrassed for them both.
“Thanks,” Levi mutters, taking the quilt and drawing it around himself. He then flinches horribly, a whimper clawing itself free out of his throat as the fabric makes contact with the abused skin of his back, even the soft cotton cover of it probably feeling like needles, if the way his brows draw together and the way his eyes shine with a fresh wave of agony is any indication. Erwin— Erwin feels terrible. “No.”
“No?”
~~
“Why did you stop,” Levi enunciates, spells it out for him like Erwin is dumb— and god, how can he still have a patronizing inflection to his voice when it’s ragged from sobs? “Why did you stop? What the fuck, Erwin.”
“I—” Erwin honest to god, honest to the walls, honest to himself (a rarity)— he doesn’t know what to say. “You yelled stop. You told me to stop. You begged me.”
He doesn’t know whether to be horrified or sickened by the clarity in Levi’s eyes when he rolls them. “So?”
“So?! It wasn’t— it wasn’t a part of the scene! I’m not going to—”
Levi’s lip curls just like it does out on the field when Hanji gets too close to him after training, or when Miche— when Miche does anything, really— or when Erwin makes a comment that he finds particularly thick or dim-witted. Erwin’s a smart man, he’d go as far as calling himself a genius, but Levi has a unique way of making him feel like he’s forgotten how to speak when he turns those piercing eyes onto him. He never lets it show, of course, and most of Levi’s qualms are with his ‘fancy-ass’ phrasing rather than the actual content of his words, but it’s still disarming. Everything Levi does is disarming to a degree, and that little ‘so?’ like he doesn’t— like he doesn’t see anything wrong, like even as tears are still shining in his eyes and his lip is still wobbling he doesn’t—
The metaphorical knife drops.
“You’re not looking for a dominant,” Erwin realizes with daunting horror. “You’re not even looking for a sadist. You’re looking for an abuser.”
Levi glares at him through puffy, tear stained eyes. He doesn’t deny it.
Erwin takes one step back, then another, then another, all the way until he’s almost backed up all the way to the door.
“No,” he shakes his head, “no, Levi, no. I’m not going to do that to you.”
Levi’s lip curls in a sneer as he unfolds himself, getting up from the bed. He’s shaky, he’s unbalanced, he stumbles when his foot catches on a stray corner of the quilt and he hisses through his teeth when the movement tugs at the skin of his back. Erwin’s hands twitch, wanting to go and help Levi, but he stays still as Levi makes his slow journey to stand in front of him.
“Hit me,” says Levi.
Erwin shakes his head. “No.”
“Hit me.” Levi’s lip twitches, heralds the crumpling of it, ugly and broken and distorted into a million fragmented pieces of the stoic man he presents himself to be. “Hit me!” he pounds at Erwin’s chest with his fist, and it hurts; it hurts even more as Levi can’t hold back another sob. “Just fucking do it, dammit! Hurt me!”
“No.”
It hurts even more when Levi’s clenched fist falls to his side slowly, defeated.
“Levi—” Before Erwin can say anything— not even a word of comfort, of explanation, of apology— Levi storms out. The door slams behind him. “Levi!”
Erwin slowly sinks down to his knees, head in his hands, and allows himself a single, strained, sobbing gasp.
***
It’s not that hard to find Levi, once Erwin is ready for it. He hides a lot, true— he doesn’t like crowds, he doesn’t like people, he doesn’t like sitting properly at a table to eat and he doesn’t usually like to drink or sleep, so he’s rarely in the common areas or his barracks. So, Erwin goes to check the usual spots. The roof is empty, as is the broom closet on the fourth story. The back stairwell is deserted, as is the officer’s bathroom. Erwin sighs. There’s a light flickering in his office, however.
Levi doesn’t turn to face him when Erwin walks in, doesn’t even acknowledge his presence. He’s sitting on the rug in front of the fireplace, a hearty flame popping and snapping behind the grate. He’s barefoot, but clothed— his feet are poking out from where he’s wrapped an oversized green cloak around him, little and pale and neat where Erwin’s are rough and callused and a little bit crooked where he broke one. It’s probably Erwin’s cloak, it looks far too big on Levi, drowning him in the thick fabric. He has a glass of alcohol in his hand, something probably poured from the fancy decanters that make their homes on Erwin’s shelf. Probably from the one shaped like a snake, Levi likes that one.
Erwin closes the door softly behind them, breaking the spell of silence. Levi sighs, head tilting down, hair covering his eyes. He’s a small man, but he looks tiny now, tired and buried under the green fabric and the wings crest.
“I don’t understand you, pretty Soldier-boy,” Levi says sadly. He takes another sip, and Erwin can see his toes curl closer to the soles of his feet. Levi draws the cloak tighter around his shoulders, turns more to face the flickering fire. It casts his brow into a thoughtful, deep light, darkens the hollows in his face with strong shadows. “Woulda thought…” Levi trails off, clears his throat, moistens his lips, starts over. “Woulda thought a military man like you would be happy with a thing like me. Don’t you folk… don’t you like putting the Underground beneath your boots?”
“No, Levi,” Erwin wants to fall to his knees and wrap the smaller man up in his arms. He abstains, and Levi takes another sip. He wonders how long he’s been drinking, looking at the firelight, drinking some more. “Military— the military men— the soldiers aren’t all like that, I swear.”
The look in Levi’s eyes disturbs him. “Why not?”
“Why not?” Erwin flounders, the slightest bit. Why is Levi deserving to be treated well, why is he worthy of more than just abuse and mistreatment by the people he chooses to have the honor of experiencing his body and submission? Erwin can’t settle on a good explanation other than, “it just is,” and his words come out a bit indignant, a bit raw. They settle sourly on his tongue, sourly in Levi’s ears. They’re not the right words, none of them are. “It just is.”
“It’s not, really,” Levi says, simply. “I ain’t even a person, not really. Not a citizen, not a crime. Why not? And I… I like it, I really do. Pain means you’re alive. It’s when it stops hurting that I get scared.”
“You can be a masochist without subjecting yourself to abuse that you don’t want—”
“Don’t tell me what I damn well can and can’t do!” Erwin jumps slightly. He’s never heard Levi yell. Pale fingers are tight on the cut crystal of the glass; Erwin imagines that he can see a faint little spiderweb crack where the pads of Levi’s fingers are pressed. “Are you seriously blaming me for this?” Levi’s eyes shine with the slightest bit of tears, furious. “Are you?”
“No, no,” Erwin’s quick to backtrack, “no, never—”
“I take what I can get.” Levi puts his head into his knees. He’s still holding the glass of amber liquid out in front of him, his hand sticking out from the mass of fabric. It’s rather lonely, his one hand curled sadly around the alcohol. Erwin wonders if Levi can even get drunk. “And I liked what I could get, at least a bit. And then you,” Levi spits it like an insult, then sighs. “You fuck it up. Why can’t you be content to just hurt me and be done with it?”
Erwin decides it’s safe to stand by Levi, to gently nudge him with his leg. Levi leans into the touch, pressing his shoulder to Erwin’s calve, his cheek to his knee. He sighs again, rakes his bangs out of his face with slender fingers. His nails are neat, and they’re short. They didn’t feel short when they were on Erwin’s skin, and they probably don’t feel too short as Levi curls them into the flesh of his cheek, scrubs his hand down into an exasperated gesture that’s uniquely Levi.
“The fuck am I supposed to do with you, Erwin?” There’s a nasty bruise on Levi’s wrist. Erwin knows it flowers up his forearms even though he can’t see it. It’s a beautiful bruise, and it seems Levi thinks so as well, from the way he loosely traces it with the fingers of his other hand.
“You could give me a chance,” Erwin offers. “I promise you, I can work with whatever trauma you have.”
“It ain’t trauma,” Levi grumbles, takes a swig. He tucks the cloak tighter. It’s a cloak that’s too big for him. Looks like Erwin’s.
Erwin swallows. “You were screaming for me to stop, and when I stopped, you asked me why.”
“Some men like it,” he mutters, stares into his glass. “And it always turns out fine in the end. ‘Sides, I’m not the one to give orders. Not there, anyway.”
Erwin’s first, instinctual reaction is a visceral sort of disgust, one that rolls and recoils in his organs and tests his iron control not to spit, “and I strike you as that kind of man who would like violating your consent? What did you see in me, Levi, to think I was that cruel?”
Erwin swallows it down, wills himself to take a few deep, cleansing breaths— his father taught him when he was very young how to control his breathing— Erwin knows he tends to view his childhood from before his fathers death with rose-colored glasses, but even he can admit that he had a problem controlling his anger— he takes a deep inhale, holds it, releases it just as slowly: he’s calm. He’s calm.
Besides, Levi’s not that far off the mark. Erwin does have a sadistic streak— god, he has a sadistic streak as long as Wall Rose— and a masochistic one as long as Wall Maria, but not in a sexual manner. One has to be a bit of a masochist to make a living in the Survey Corps. He relishes in the sadistic streak, really, he delights and elates in it, sometimes. There’s just something uniquely gratifying about causing someone pain when they want it, when they know that it’ll bring them mindless pleasure. And it was uniquely cruel of him, wasn’t it? When he dragged Levi kicking and fighting into the Corps, when he pulled him up to the surface and let him choke on tears in the fresh air. That was cruel of him. He doesn’t regret it.
And maybe— maybe Levi’s even forgiven him for it. Maybe he even likes it, just a bit. He likes the surface world. He likes the Corps. Maybe he’s even fond of Erwin.
But it didn’t bring Levi pleasure when he was screaming for him to stop. Maybe it would have, eventually— endorphins are strange like that, they’ll numb almost any pain— and maybe Levi knows that. But Erwin— Erwin doesn’t want that, he just doesn’t. He doesn’t want Levi to flinch away from his hand, he wants him to lean into it, to relish it and embrace it and crave it with every fibre of his being. He wants Levi to love it, he wants Levi to love himself, maybe he even wants Levi to love him.
“Then let me weave you,” Erwin has to swallow; he dares to raise his hand up to touch Levi’s face. He almost can’t get the words out. “The most beautiful cage. So strong that not even the strongest man alive could break it.”
He makes his promise, and Levi watches him with shrewd eyes, sad eyes. He’s given up on pleasure without pain, love and appreciation without violence.
He takes another sip of his drink, and Erwin watches him with bated breath, waiting for an answer. One heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats.
On the third one Levi sighs, takes a hand and takes it through his hair. Erwin hears him sigh something that sounds like a defeated, resigned, “fuck,” under his breath.
Another three beats pass.
On the sixth one, Levi suddenly twists around with a frustrated yell and throws his glass as hard as he can towards the wall.
Erwin jumps.
The glass rains down from the wall in musical little chimes as Levi gets up, dusts his palms off.
“Fucking fine,” he says, crossing his arms tightly and scowling. Glass is still falling to the floor, some stuck to the wall from the liquid that was still left in it. Erwin stares. “Let’s fucking do this shit.”
“Next week,” Erwin amends. There’s no way he’ll take Levi into his chamber now, not when he can see how gingerly the other man is moving, the livid bruises still left on his wrists and the puffiness beneath his eyes.
Levi’s lip curls. “Now.”
“Next week,” Erwin is firm.
“Tomorrow.”
“Next week.”
“Three days.”
“Next week.”
“Six days.”
“Deal.”
Levi sneers at Erwin’s offer of a handshake. “Fine, deal. Now get outta here, I gotta clean this shit up.”
Erwin leaves, building emotions swirling in his gut— anxiety (normal), dread (not normal), anticipation (normal), arousal (more than normal, especially when it comes to Levi). Six days.
He can hear Levi muttering to himself as he sweeps up the glass behind him, something that sounds suspiciously like, “six days.”
Attempt two. Six days.
***
On the first, second, and third days, Levi hides again.
The first day doesn’t bother Erwin too much— Levi, despite everything, is still learning the norms and functions of the world Above. Sometimes Erwin can go days without seeing so much as a glimpse of the man, Levi hiding somewhere where the sun and noise and people can’t reach him. As long as he keeps up with training— Levi’s blades and gear show that he trains even more than the standard— and makes a genuine effort to integrate with society for the majority of the week, Erwin doesn’t mind. It’s his penance, in a way. It’s what he owes Levi.
Levi finally stops squirreling himself away on the fourth day. Levi seems to be making up for lost time— where Erwin couldn’t see hair nor hide from him earlier, he’s now everywhere, his baleful glare boring holes into Erwin’s back. He’s a dramatic flurry in everything he does and everywhere he goes; he breaks three swords and makes a trainee cry, nearly drives his entire barrack section half-mad from how he spent the night cleaning. Erwin practically has to rip him out of training that day with a firm hand wrapped around a narrow wrist. Levi shocks him— he lets out a wince.
Erwin promptly drops the smaller man’s hand, skin burning like a brand from where it was pressed to Levi’s own, and the pained crease between Levi’s brows smooths out. The corners of his eyes lose that hurt tinge, and his lips flatten. He was faking.
They stare at each other for a long moment. Levi’s so much shorter than him, and he’s squinting against the sun, Erwin’s shadow doing a piss-poor job of blocking the light from his eyes. Levi sighs, then turns to walk away before Erwin catches his wrist again, significantly harder than he did the first time. Levi’s vague, displeased and disappointed expression doesn’t change.
Erwin’s voice is low. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Levi sends him a glare, but it’s half hearted— Erwin’s seen him glare with true hatred, so a glare like this is more like a cat swatting at him with blunt paws. If it wanted to hurt him, it could, but it’s more out of habit and show than anything. “Nothing. Gonna go back to room.” Levi sometimes forgets, he sometimes drops the possessives when he speaks. ‘Room’ instead of ‘my room’, like he’s still reluctant to call anything and anyone truly his.
“We need to talk,” Erwin says, and when Levi keeps on glaring, he elaborates, “about what’ll happen in a few days.” Levi’s lip curls.
“It’s a few days away, why should I care before then?” He’s stubborn and petulant, but Erwin can tell— call it being able to read people, call it just the contrary feeling that Levi’s giving off— that it’s more to spite him than any genuine protest. Erwin says jump and Levi falls down, he says left and Levi goes right, if Erwin says the grass is green then Levi will argue till he’s blue in the face that it’s actually red. Infuriating.
Erwin sighs.
“Why can’t you be nice to me, just for once?”
“If you were into that, then we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess, now would we?”
“Mmm,” Erwin lets him go, but he releases his hand slowly, and his palm is cold with the absence of Levi’s body heat. Such cold skin, but it’s warm with emotion now. “I distinctly seem to recall that being a masochist is your modus operandi, not mine.”
Levi’s brow wrinkles as he looks at him. “My what?”
“Words from an old language. Your style.”
“Ah.”
Levi is silent for another moment, but he’s not still. His fingers twitch, his nose flares and relaxes, a muscle in his jaw tenses like he’s chewing his words around in his mouth before he speaks them, tasting and digesting them and carefully considering them before he speaks.
“Do you have something to say?” It’s Erwin’s careful, quiet voice, the same one he would use when creeping into a room, or walking through a forest knowing that even the slightest rustle of a single leaf would set the whole thing ablaze. It’s his cautious tone.
“You gonna…” Levi trails off, stuffing his fingers beneath his arms, closing himself off and squaring his shoulders in defense. He’s trying to make himself smaller, but the set of his feet is bold, confrontational. He’s always a bundle of contradictions, this one is. Erwin can rarely guess what he’s thinking, but he thinks he’s gotten better at it. Levi moistens his lips with a brief flash of pink tongue, tries again. “You gonna be able to do it?”
“Do what?”
Levi lifts his eyes to meet Erwin’s dead on. “Make me feel.”
“Good?”
“Nah, just feel.” He’s so fidgety, he chews on his lip, furrows his brows and glances away.
“May I touch you?”
Levi looks confused, raising those thin brows of his. Levi’s brows are impeccably sculpted, narrow and perfectly balancing the rest of his features— his shadowed eyes, his full lips, his small chin. Erwin’s seen them a bit red around the edges some days: he probably grooms them carefully, with a bit of string twisted around his talented fingers or a precise pair of tweezers. Beauticians in the capital city waste precious sugar and lemon to remove hair— Levi would probably also say that the water they use to make the sugar paste is a waste as well, but everything Mitras does is a waste to Levi.
“Sure?” It’s questioning, and he firms his chest and jaw, almost like he’s expecting Erwin to strike him right there and then for whatever reason. He tenses up worse than if Erwin had actually struck him when what actually happens is Erwin’s hand coming up to softly grip his chin, stroking the soft skin under it with his thumb. It’s a sensitive patch of skin, so warm and delicate beneath Erwin’s callused, brutish thumb.
“Boy,” Erwin says calmly and thoughtfully, as placid as a discussion about the weather over a shared cup of tea (Levi shudders at the change of name, but it would probably take pain of death for him to admit it), “do you presume to suggest that I’m not capable of making you scream without even laying a damn hit on you?”
Levi’s chin is bony beneath his fingers, and his jaw is stubbornly clenched. Erwin waits, cocking a brow. “Well?”
“No,” Levi grits his teeth through the admission. “No, I wasn’t saying that.”
“No what, boy?” He grips Levi’s chin harder, relishing in the fiery blaze that greets him when he looks into those eyes. God, he loves this part, the part where he has to forge the sharp steel that he can see in those eyes into molten and malleable submission, something slow and viscous and hot enough to burn if mishandled.
“No, sir,” Levi spits out, like it pains him to even say the honorific, to consent to playing by Erwin’s rules.
Erwin smiles and strokes Levi’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, as thoughtful as if he were doing it to himself when deep in his ponderings. If he presses hard and deep— very firmly, almost to the point of discomfort— he can feel the beginnings of prickly-pointed hairs, shaved into blunt peaks by a meticulous razor. Levi shaves so close that one could be convinced that he doesn’t even grow facial hair, and it amuses Erwin to feel the faintest beginnings of stubble beneath his fingertips. Why, Levi, you’re just a man, aren’t you?
“What are you thinking about?” Erwin’s genuinely curious.
He moves his thumb up, catches it in the soft swell of Levi’s lower lip, playing with the flesh. They’re still out in the open, and Erwin’s standing too close for it to be a friendly chat between officer and subordinate, his thumb almost inside Levi’s mouth. Would he bite it? Suck it between his lips and lave his tongue around it? Moan? Levi’s breath is hot against Erwin’s skin. He feels exquisite.
Levi must be curious— the very tip of his tongue brushes against Erwin’s thumb and darts away with its prize. He swallows. “Of you fucking me.”
“Of me giving you what you need?”
His pupils are flat disks of black, bottomless pits that grow and grow and grow until Erwin’s sure that they’ll swallow his eye whole, until the whites and everything are eclipsed and consumed. How precious, how otherworldly of him, almost… supernatural. Sometimes Erwin is convinced sometimes that Levi is a creature not of this world— he’s been called a demon by others before, the scourge of the underground, the slayer of titans and the massive irritant (the most dangerous title of them all) of the nobility. And he’s under Erwin’s thumb and forefinger, looking at him with those hazy, blown out eyes. Erwin’s won.
“Come to my room,” Erwin doesn’t kiss Levi’s lips— not yet— but he’s close, he kisses his own thumb gently. So close that their lips brush— a bit chapped and a bit smooth— but it’s not a kiss. Not yet. “We’ll negotiate for the scene. We’ll negotiate again tomorrow, and again before the scene. I want to do right this time,” I want to do right by you. “What do you say to that?”
Levi’s eyes are drunk on the potential of it all as he quietly replies, “yes, sir.”
***
When he gets down to it, Erwin ties him slowly; methodically. It’s the repetitive motion of the rope, the slip and slide of it through his fingers— he chose a soft rope, one that leaves beautiful marks when all is said and done, little swirls and lines imprinted on Levi’s skin. It’s a difficult rope to work with, but it’s satisfying to bend and twist and coax into submission: much like Levi. It’s a fitting rope, only the best for Erwin’s lovers.
It’s not just the repetitive motions that lull him into a trance— he imagines it’s what a sub would feel like, submerged in a warm, perfectly still water, the sounds muffled and every sensation muted yet amplified. It’s the brushes against Levi’s skin— he lays a warm palm flat on Levi’s neck to tilt it to the side, opening his shoulders to be bound, and the man mewls, a soft little sigh that sounds almost like Erwin’s name. Levi’s skin is electrified, struck by ferocious lightning that sparks and then mellows out into something faintly charged, humming with potential. It’s Levi, so tense that he’s almost shaking, loosening with every drape of the rope against his small frame. Over his shoulders, around his torso. Framing his nipples, not quite following the jut and curve of his hips, then bypassing them to sunburst over his thighs. Erwin binds one calf to the matching thigh, and the dusting of hair over Levi’s legs is the same color as the ropes. The other, he takes it in his hands— Levi’s skin is warm, so warm— and extends behind him in a graceful arch, wrapping and weaving around his shin.
“Flex your wrists for me, darling,” it’s the first words Erwin’s spoken since his lecture on safety as he’s binding Levi’s biceps, coaxing the stubborn rope to bloom over plentiful muscle. His voice is rough, purring. Pleased.
Levi lolls his head to the side— he wants Erwin to touch him, and his eyes are drunk; wasted on the security of it all. Nowhere to run, trapped in a fiber cage. He’s inviting his pale neck for a kiss, ten kisses, for bites and marks and come to splatter the graceful column.
He wiggles his fingers, rolls his wrists without complaint or derision. Just acceptance, smooth obedience to Erwin’s order.
“Good boy,” Erwin rewards him with a feather light brush of his lips over his shoulder, eyes still fixed on his work as he gathers up the loose ends, weaving a secure hold. The tie emulates the gear harness, concentrating around Levi’s chest and hips, giving him that perfect, agile balance. He’ll never tip or away or fall, not in Erwin’s bedroom, not after he’s tied him so beautifully and Levi’s been so lovely and good for him. Entranced.
Levi probably doesn’t mean to, but he gasps when Erwin touches his cock. It wasn’t fully hard just from the tying and weaving, just a bit filled out between his legs, but Erwin wants more, Erwin wants him crying out and desperate. So he reaches between Levi’s legs and gropes roughly across his thigh, across the constellation of ropes to his cock— he takes his time petting and squeezing, laving kisses over Levi’s neck as he rolls his heavy sac in talented fingers, kneads the pads of them into his perineum as Levi hardens more against his forearm.
“Are you ready?” Erwin can’t stop kissing at Levi’s neck softly, running his lips and tongue over the presented flesh as he speaks. They negotiated and planned out the scene already— negotiated until Levi was bored almost to tears— but Erwin wants to reaffirm, just in case. “You know what comes next, don’t you?”
“Ungh… yeah…” Levi’s neck is sensitive, so delicate as Erwin fixes his lips onto where life flutters beneath his skin, his pulse quickening as Erwin sucks a pretty bruise there.
“Tell me,” it’s a command, silky smooth and deceptively soft as Levi draws in a shaky breath. He only breathed like that before right after Erwin stopped hitting him, when he would let the pain and heat really sink in. Good boy, Erwin thinks, chest glowing with pride. He’s learning, he’s learning that teasing and gentle pleasure can be its own kind of pain.
Levi’s voice tries its hardest not to quaver, but it quavers anyway. “Uh… blind… blindfold, ribbon… kn-knife.”
“You forgot one,” Erwin chides him, softly.
Levi’s so shivery in his little rope cocoon, a great shudder rolling its way through his body— from the ends of his silky hair to the very tips of his curling toes— “s-suspension. Suspension.”
“Good boy.”
***
Levi shivers, chokes on a gasp. He’s rigid, completely stiff, but his hips are making these tiny, desperate little cants into Erwin’s hand— then he just goes limp, making the ropes creak as they hold more of his weight. Erwin curls his fingers, lightly strokes the very edge of Levi’s swollen sweet spot as he nicks him again. Levi jerks.
“God—” he’s trying not to pant, poor boy, but his chest still heaves in his woven cage as he shudders. Erwin’s tracing his biceps and sides with the knife, feather light and teasing. He leaves a little stripe of red right where if Levi was a healthier man (he really is still quite wiry and thin) maybe he’d have a bit of softness, a bit of storage for hard nights and long days. Erwin makes a mental note to increase Levi’s meal ration to four a day as he cuts him again, a light thing as thin and fine as a strand of bright red hair. No worse than what Erwin gets on his fingers from turning errant pages, but Levi gasps and shakes in his suspension all the same.
“Fuck—” his voice quavers, weakens as Erwin takes his thick fingers away from his prostate, petting and feeling Levi’s inner walls gently. It’s rather like tonguing at the inside of your own cheek, Erwin thinks, but so much hotter, so much tighter as Levi whimpers, on the edge of overstimulated and not stimulated enough. Erwin’s a talented rigger and even more capable with his fingers, he knows exactly how to coax that peculiar combination into the limelight. Too much, but not enough— both, interchanged in a frustrating mixture that has Levi whining in the back of his throat and squirming on Erwin’s fingers again. His cock is still hard between his legs— Erwin wrapped it in a neat length of satin ribbon, just enough that Levi’s shaft is held securely in the silky material, but the cherry-pink head of his cock is frustratingly, tantalizingly bare. A fat, sticky bead of precome weeps out as Erwin watches, down in a shiny strand until it drips and splatters onto the floor. Erwin’s not too concerned, he’ll make Levi clean it up with his tongue later.
“What— what was that?” Levi rasps, tossing his head back as the sharp tip of the knife traces up his belly, outlines his navel. Erwin has a pair of safety shears next to him— Levi had scoffed and rolled his eyes when he saw them, but now Erwin doubts that the smaller man is even aware they exist; his world is just him and Erwin now, just them— and in an ideal, fantasy situation he would cut Levi free with the knife, but it’s a sharp one on both edges and Erwin tied Levi quite tightly. Secured him in his little cocoon of erotic ropes, stark and silky black against his pale skin. The ribbon is red.
Erwin chuckles and curls his fingers directly into the aroused flesh inside Levi, once, twice so he can hear him yelp and jolt. He’s swaying now, and the movement causes the knife to skid along his skin, the flat of the blade leaving swaths of irritated pink where it scrapes.
“That was an orgasm, my dear.”
“Don’t be fuckin’ dumb, I haven’t come yet,” Levi mumbles, but he’s distracted, skin jumping beneath Erwin’s tool. He moans when Erwin massages his sweet spot again, touches him so nicely with firm rubs that make his leg twitch and his cock leak. Levi’s so responsive, no matter how much he tries to pretend that he doesn’t need it, that he doesn’t need any silly concepts such as ‘safe, sane, consensual’. Erwin would include sober, but Levi doesn’t seem like the type to drink to intoxication and put himself in such a vulnerable situation. It’s those survival instincts of his, the ones that scream at him to keep his eyes open, to watch his back, to be wary and mistrustful of everything and everyone.
Erwin wants Levi’s trust. He wants it more than anything in this world.
Levi’s leaking everywhere, milky white fluid staining the ribbon, turning it a darker ruby color with wetness. More wells up and drips down with every press of Erwin’s fingers— it’s like he’s forcing it out of him, like that aroused flesh inside Levi’s tight body is a button, and he’s pressing it repeatedly for it to give him a prize in the form of salty little drops and ragged gasps. And it feels good, it really does, because Levi is jerking and tensing his muscles, crying not to come again.
Poor boy, he thinks that orgasm and ejaculation need to coexist, that you can’t have one without the other. That’s alright, Erwin will teach him, he’ll teach him well. Erwin’s always been more of a pleasure dom than a sadist, but that line can blur and fade at will. He’ll make Levi sob and yell and weep, thrash weakly, helplessly as he comes again and again and again, all the way until Erwin has to tie his hands to prevent him from grabbing himself and curling onto his side— oh he’ll be half mad at that point, he really will be— because his poor little cock hurts worse than anything Erwin can do with a cane or a paddle as he comes dry, nothing left to give from any sweet little place in his body.
And Erwin will do it again. He’ll make Levi cry, make him nearly pass out, make him beg and scream until he’s good and satisfied.
Then Erwin would pet along his sides and back, put away his tools and murmur to Levi about what a good boy he was, how good and beautiful and delightful he just was, and he’ll kiss Levi’s wrists back to wakefulness and put a cool compress on his forehead, getting a wet cloth to clean up. Oh, Levi— Levi would burst out into fat, genuine tears when Erwin cups the cloth between his legs, kicking and crying from sensitivity until the cool does its fantastic wonders, soothing the tender, swollen flesh. Then Levi would sigh, sigh in relief and pleasure and contentment as Erwin massages his muscles and cleans his face for him, right up until Levi falls asleep, limp and loose and relaxed. Erwin’s a planner, and that’s how this night should go. He’s counting on it.
“Poor boy,” Levi— what he does is close to a shout, he shouts and throws his head back as Erwin silently drops to his knees— Levi’s blindfolded, he’s blind and suspended and dripping everywhere as Erwin takes the head of his cock in his mouth. The knife teases at his inner thigh.
“Fuck— s-shit, oh— nnngh— fuck!” Levi shivers violently as he spills a little gift down Erwin’s throat again, small and salty and one that leaves him desperately trying to thrust his hips but having no leverage to do so. It’s quite rude of him to have an orgasm without warning, so Erwin cuts him. Just a bit.
Levi yelps, spurts more. It’s precome this time, sticky on Erwin’s tongue as Levi’s natural response to erotic pain flares up. He loves it, he loves squirming and panting in the wonderful rig Erwin’s made for him, sweat gleaming on his skin and head hung, hair and a thick blindfold obscuring his sharp grey eyes. He’s probably crying beneath it, a few involuntary tears of pleasure staining the (no)sleep bruised skin beneath his eyes.
“You can come in so many different ways,” Erwin gives him a final, long suck before he rises. He licks Levi’s red cock-head clean— there’s almost no point, Levi leaks nearly as fast as he can lick, but he does his best and he keeps the taste of him on his tongue as he rises. “From your cock,” Erwin gives it a generous pull over the satiny material of the ribbon, “from your ass,” he curls the fingers of his other hand, just to make a point. Levi whimpers.
“From your nipples,” they’re nice and clamped, decorated with little silver clips, the kind connected by a fine chain that don’t hurt as much to put on as they do to take off. Erwin hung a small weight from that chain, just so that Levi can feel the delicious tug and pull on those sensitive little buds of his anytime it sways or moves. “Some can even orgasm just from kissing.”
“Kissing?” Levi rasps.
“Kissing for hours,” Erwin says, satisfied and triumphant as Levi’s eyes widen. He can tell they do, even behind the blindfold, because his mouth parts slightly and his brows raise. When Levi allows expressions to pass over his face, he can be quite telling with them.
“Hours?” Levi gasps, a lot shocked and a little wondrous.
“Hours,” Erwin confirms, leaning in for one of his own. Levi’s nose crinkles slightly as Erwin slips his own sticky— not quite spend, not yet— release into Levi’s own mouth, passing the taste between their lips until it dissipates. God, Erwin could do anything— he could spit in Levi’s mouth, and the smaller man would part his lips for it, eagerly, just like a baby bird. He could untie Levi and place him on his knees, and Levi could take Erwin’s cock into his throat, drinking down his come eagerly. He could do anything.
“Would you like that, Levi?” He kisses him again before he retreats. Levi whines, chasing Erwin’s parting lips. He’s going to get a nasty crick in his neck, and Erwin takes— what’s the opposite of mercy?— on him, he stays just far enough that Levi can’t reach his lips no matter how hard he strains, but that he can feel every single puff of breath from Erwin’s words land on his own bright red ones. “Would you like it if I kissed you slowly, deeply… would you like it if I laid you down beneath me, if I took off all your clothes and pinned you down beneath my weight so that I could ravage your mouth for hours? For hours, for days.. I bet you would, my darling, I bet you would love it. I can see it on your sweet little face.”
Levi makes a wounded, aching little sound. “Fuck you.”
“Other way around, actually.” Erwin sharpens his tone. “Time to see if you’ve learned anything. Color, boy?”
Levi groans, shakes his head. “Ugh.” Erwin had explained the color system to him as he was tying him up— but not too far into the tying— until Levi was almost weeping out of boredom. Erwin can be a little zealous with safety and check-ins, but the more the better. “Green?”
“Do you mean that, or are you saying it to make me happy?”
“As if I care enough to pander to your fuckin’ ass,” Levi starts to snarl, but cuts himself off when Erwin jabs his fingers into his prostate, perhaps a bit harder than strictly necessary. But Levi loves it, his lips parting on a pained moan. “Nngh— green, fucking green!”
“Good.” Erwin rewards him with a sweet kiss, deep and forceful enough to make Levi’s toes curl. Maybe that’s also because Erwin nudges in his third finger next to the two already deep inside, teasing his rim with little, tickling strokes before he sinks it in, spreading Levi even further. He loves fingering his partners, he really does.
There’s something inherently possessive in the action— forcing himself into a space that he created, only for him, only for him to sink into and delight in, only for him to bring pleasure and maybe a bit of pain and delight.
It’s his, he made that, and it’s his right, it’s his prerogative to stoop down and pull his fingers out, almost clinically inspecting the puffy, gaping rim he leaves behind. So pretty and pink, delicate and soft where the rest of Levi is sharp and hard. It’s a cute little hole, and Erwin wants to wreck it.
“What are you doing back there?” Levi curves his back, and that beautiful hole that Erwin was observing tries to twitch closed, hiding and shy. That won’t do, and Erwin makes sure to coax it back open on his fingertips, the quivering muscles no match for Erwin’s appreciative eye.
He answers him honestly. “Thinking about fucking you with the hilt of my knife.” Erwin wouldn’t dare dream of bringing the blade anywhere near the sensitive parts between Levi’s legs, but god how he can see the other end sunk deep into Levi, Levi’s tears and cries as he clenches and comes around it, the little nicks that he would get on his thighs and calves as he tries to clamp them around it to prolong the pleasure. Erwin imagines Levi winds quite tight when he comes, just like a little doll on a mechanism. He’s Erwin’s doll, that’s what he is.
Levi shivers, and his voice is very unsure when it comes out, skin twitching and jumping beneath the pads of Erwin’s fingers. “…yellow.”
“Noted.” Erwin can’t help how his chest swells with pride. “Good— good boy, Levi.”
“What’d I do?” Levi pants, uncomprehending. There’s a tendon in his neck that stands out when he turns his head to look at Erwin, still blindfolded. He can’t see him— the fabric is opaque, Erwin made sure of that, but his brows still lift in a question. If he didn’t have the blindfold on, Erwin imagines his eyes would be blown out and wide (compared to how narrow they usually are). His pupils would widen and shrink, widen and shrink in a dizzying display as he tries to focus on Erwin’s face, a trace of tears reddening his lower lids and beading on his lashes. “What did I do?” He cranes his neck back— Erwin still doesn’t know the name of that muscle straining against the skin, but he knows he likes to kiss it, so he does, he raises his head from where it was bent down to mouth at it, kissing faint pink marks into the pale skin, right next to a rope. “Erwin?”
“I’m sorry,” Erwin keeps kissing at the skin, tasting the salty-sweet of Levi’s skin on his tongue. “I didn’t mean to retreat like that.” An idea comes to mind as marks bloom beneath his lips. “That was very good of you, Levi, using your words like that. You deserve a reward.”
“I do?” If Levi was a man to inject more emotion in his tone, it might have sounded wondrous or awed, a faint gasp of amazement and joy. Erwin likes the flat affect that Levi’s voice bears, it makes his moments of emotion all the more rewarding. “What’s my reward?”
Erwin has to smile into Levi’s neck, kissing up the long column of it to mouth at the bolt of his jaw, flick his tongue up to caress the lobe of a blushing ear. Levi has such small ears, so cute. There are little healed dots on them, and Erwin can vividly imagine them with all sorts of shiny adornments, gold and silver and everything fancy. Like a crow would collect, collect and treasure and display some fine jewels.
“Your choice.”
“My choice?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Levi’s ears are nice and sensitive, especially when Erwin starts to nibble on them and his breathing lightens, almost like he’s holding back a squirm. “Your choice. Anything.” Erwin wonders how creative Levi can get, when given the reins like that. Anything and everything, Erwin under Levi’s command and call for a brief, fateful moment.
Levi is silent for a long beat. “I want…” from his periphery, Erwin can see how Levi’s quick pink tongue darts out to wet his lips. “A kiss,” he boldly decides.
“Where?” Erwin’s breath is hot and warm, and it makes Levi sigh. “On your hole, on your cock, on your cute little nipples…”
“On my lips.”
“On your lips?” Erwin’s surprised. It’s a sweet request, almost sickly so, loving enough to make Erwin— well, it gives him… butterflies, like the kind he hasn’t had since he was young and dumb and in love. Now he’s older and marginally less dumb, but he thinks he may be in love. Soon. He may be in love soon.
“On my lips,” Levi confirms, “can I? Can I, please?” His breath hitches so sweetly, so desperate and pleading that it could make Erwin melt into a puddle right there and then. Levi really does do that to him, Levi takes the enormous icicle that is Erwin’s heart and whittles it down, melts and drips it into a needle point, then further, on into sweet, crisp-cool water. It’s marvelous, what this man does to him.
“You may have a kiss,” Erwin allows, gracious as anything as he leans forward, capturing Levi’s lips with his own.
They’re soft— so soft, a bit red from biting and a bit salty from sweat, but sweet, moving against his own with desperation, with passion, with wan, and with submission. Levi’s not fighting him for control, he’s not biting and hissing and snarling, as aggressive with his tongue and teeth as he is with his blades— he’s sighing and his breath is hitching, lips moving to Erwin’s rhythm and Erwin’s pace. Erwin’s heart swells.
“Would you like a reward?”
“Another one?” Levi doesn’t sound hesitant, he sounds drunk, words slurring as he tries to suck the fat muscle of Erwin’s tongue back into his mouth. “Can I have another one?”
“Another one after that?” Erwin chuckles, stroking between the ropes wound around Levi’s flank with his free hand. He keeps his other one still— he’s holding Levi open with the tips of his fingers, letting the muscle twitch and pulse against them as it tries to close back up, and Erwin keeps it open, just because he wants to. He’s not doing anything (although that will soon change) he just wants to, and what he says and wants is law. So, Levi stays open, soft and yielding and slippery with oil. “Don’t be greedy.”
“Another one, please,” Levi rasps, stubbornly chasing after Erwin’s mouth when he draws back, takes his free hand off. “I want—”
“And does what you want matter here?”
Levi falls silent. “No…” he finally answers, hesitantly.
“Correct.” The metal from the clamps is tangy on Erwin’s tongue as he licks at a nipple, teasing the puckered little peak of it where it’s pressed into a flowering red from the clamps. It was quite a surprise to him when he undressed Levi earlier— they’re a bit inverted when soft, tiny little dips in his chest where the very tip (the nicest part, in Erwin’s opinion) was hiding shyly from Erwin’s eyes. He had drawn it out with his fingers, stroking gentle circles around the very edge of the pale buds until they hardened, puckered and tightened. Levi— perhaps he had never been touched that gently, with so much intent and purpose on such a small task.
Erwin continues. “That’s right. What you want me to do doesn’t matter here. If I want something, you want it as well. Why is that?”
Levi flinches when Erwin tugs at the chain connecting the clamps with his teeth, breath tensing as Erwin just toys with it, every single movement such a delicious flare of heat and pain and pull. “Because—”
“Because?”
“Becuase you’re the dom!” Levi’s breath leaves his chest in a rush, his back arching as Erwin’s hand darts out and squeezes the purpling head of Levi’s cock. “You’re the dom! You’re the—”
“And what are you?”
“Yours!” Levi sobs as Erwin keeps playing with him— god, if Erwin was Commander (as he soon will formally be, no doubt, everyone already considers him one), he’d take the bolo tie and loop the cord around Levi’s cock and balls, tug it tight to hear him whimper and feel him squirm as he’s denied, trapped and held back. As is, the ribbon does quite a good job, trapping the length while keeping the head nice and exposed for Erwin to just barely scrape a tender thumbnail across. Levi moans, tosses his head back, “I’m yours! I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m your bitch—”
“And what does my little bitch want?” god, giving degredation always makes Erwin’s blood run—
“Fuck me,” Levi gasps, desperate and loud and a hair’s breadth away from crying or coming— “I want you to fuck me, please.”
Erwin allows himself a smile, a little kiss to the jumping muscle below Levi’s navel. “Lucky for you, our wants happen to coincide.”
Erwin groans as he takes himself out of his pants, setting the knife down on a stand. He was holding it like a classy lady holds a cigarette— gently, between two fingers as he occupied the rest with being a horrible tease. He was lucky it didn’t cut Levi then, but who knows. Maybe— probably— Levi would have liked that.
He’s hard and throbbing in his own hand, almost impossible to ignore as Erwin strips off the rest of his clothes one-handed. He knows how to do most things one-handed, one never knows (especially in the Survey Corps) if a day will come when he finds himself needing those skills. There’s something so addictive, so powerful about keeping all his clothes on while Levi sways in his rope cocoon, naked and blindfolded and clamped and hard. Messy with his own tears and sweat, his come and drips. The dichotomy is just exquisite.
The flushed tip of his own cock— Levi is cut (must be a rarity, Erwin had never seen it outside of a few religious groups) and Erwin isn’t, so the pink tip of his when he compares it to the purpling head of Levi’s is a wonderful contrast. He wonders if— if he can line them up together, coax his foreskin over Levi’s head as well, jack them off in his own skin. The thought makes him giddy with excitement, but not now. Levi would never last through it, and if Erwin’s being honset, he might not, either.
Levi gasps when Erwin finally removes his fingers and oils himself up, taking himself in hand so he can rub his fat cockhead over Levi’s already messy hole, teasing at the innevitable even as the flare of the head catches on the puffy rim. Levi twitches, tries to suck him in, tries to welcome him with open arms (and open ass), but Erwin holds himself back. This here— it’s a boundary, an invisbible line, a thing separating ‘this’ from ‘that’. He’s had many subs (many, many subs) and many bed-partners, but they haven’t coincided much. He made his subs come, and they did the reverse— god, Erwin could probably fill buckets and buckets with the pleasure that he’s coaxed out of submissive bodies, and another dozen that he’s earned from paramours, but the two don’t often mix. Don’t shit where you eat, and all that.
But Levi— Levi is different. He’s different, he’s always been different, and Erwin wants to embrace that, start something unique and wonderful and all theirs with it.
He pushes in, and that boundary snaps, a cut ribbon.
Levi’s back is such a line of tension— some of the ropes used to hold him up even slacken as it bows, winding tighter and tighter until he’s a perfect little C curve, clenching (but not his ass, thank god, Erwin’s not looking to break anything) and suspended. Erwin pushes past, sinks in until Levi loosens and draws in a quavering inhale, moans shakily.
“Oh—” he’s gasping, chest heaving and a few errant tears escaping to trail down his flushed cheeks— “Oh, Erwin—”
“Hah—” Erwin grits his teeth, breaking out into a sweat himself. He’s not going to last all that long, not as long as he normally does— not saying much, usually Erwin can hold himself off for hours if needed, reducing his partner to a quivering mess in a slow pile of writhing limbs until they’re both satisfied, but Levi’s already been reduced, and he’s just— it’s so perfect, the perfect space carved out for him in the slick heat of Levi’s embrace. It’s perfect, perfect, perfect, and there’s nothing more he wants to do than paint it with his seed. Marking Levi, filling him up— Erwin’s never had a better idea in his life, save for recruiting Levi in the first place. Never.
“H-aaah— ah— ah—” Levi moans so prettily when Erwin starts to move, giving a few shallow thrusts that brush against Levi’s swollen sweet spot, already so abused and aroused from Erwin’s fingers. He’s swaying in his cage again, trying to writhe but having nothing to stabilize or ground him, completely at the mercy of Erwin’s hands on his hips to pull him back into the thrusts. “Oh! Ah— Erwin— Erwin-nngh— ahhh—”
“So good,” Erwin grunts, fucking Levi with abandon. How can he not, when Levi makes those noises with each thrust, with each twitch of Erwin’s cock and each jerk of his own? How can he not, when Levi is such a perfect cock-sheathe for him? Such a doll, Erwin’s own personal fuck-doll— he speeds up, holding a wild pace that makes Levi howl, howl out his pleasure and the heat winding in his core to the whole base. To the whole world, from one edge of the wall to the other, let it be known: humanity’s strongest cries when he comes.
Levi’s come doesn’t spurt from him as much as it drips, leaks and oozes out as he freezes on a wail, tears flowing down his face as he gasps, lets out the most beautiful, most wonderful, most precious little ‘oh’.
“Oh,” Levi whispers, awed and far away, quiet as he comes all over himself, all over the ribbon, all over the floor. “Oh, Erwin—”
Maybe that’s what drives Erwin over the edge, maybe it doesn’t, but he can’t remember, can’t think as his hips work furiously, arms winding around to hold Levi close as he buries his teeth in the milky column of a neck and comes.
The release of pressure— Erwin can’t help but let out a moan of his own as it snaps, flooding his body with white-hot heat and— and light, and sun, and Levi, and all the good things that come with life as he spurts, painting Levi’s insides just like he wanted even as he continues to thrust, fucking in and out of Levi’s shaking body.
“Erwin—” Levi can’t stop saying, choking on how fast he’s saying it through his moans, teetering on the edge of overstimulation and pain— “Erwin, Erwin, Erwin—”
The last thing Erwin remembers is Levi’s shriek when he gropes a clumsy arm across his chest, pulling the clamps off in one fell swoop. They fall over the edge together, twined together. Always together.
***
Erwin comes back to himself slowly, clutching a limp body encased in ropes. Levi doesn’t react except for a soft groan when Erwin pulls out, no strength left to even clench as Erwin’s release trickles sloppily down his leg. Goddamn, and is there a lot of it.
“How was that?” Erwin pants, barely standing on wobbly knees as he takes off Levi’s blindfold, letting it flutter to the ground in a tear stained mess, where it of course lands on the wet spot that Levi’s made. Of course. Levi doesn’t answer, eyes vague and hazy, mouth open and spit-shiny as he stares off into the distance, still in the daze and high. “Levi?”
“Hmm?” Levi’s still in the space, Erwin can tell by the way he blinks slowly and shivers, not quite meeting Erwin’s eyes.
“Can you hear me?”
“Mmm… yeah.” he wants to let Levi sleep, of course he does, but he needs to get him down first, give him a bath, feed him some crisp fruits and a special carafe of chilled water that Erwin set aside for this occasion. He has very meticulous plans. “What?”
“How was that?” Erwin asks, again, gently. Can’t tear Levi out of the space now, he’d never forgive himself. Levi would never forgive him, swaying softly in his cage with not a drop of tension in his body to be found. He’s drifting in the clouds, content and high. “Better than what you previously did?”
“Mmm…” Levi smacks his lips, considering, and lets out a yawn. Erwin lets him, even though the yawn triggers a mirror one from him so strong that he feels as if his jaw might tear right here and there. “Better than getting stabbed for a scene, I suppose.”
“That’s good to hear,” Erwin allows himself a soft smile, leaning forward to rest their foreheads together. They’re both clammy with sweat, they both need baths, but they’re sated and together, and Erwin loves the moments like these, where he can just float away with a partner, happy and together.
Then what Levi said hits him.
“Wait, what?”