«Levi… can you stop glaring at me like that?»

well, this is awkward, you think. this whole thing — just when you thought you’d pretend nothing happened and your back wasn’t still sore from how he’s been scratching it… you thought you could get over it, could get away with that — but no, Ackerman seems to have plans of his own. glaring holes in you, for starters. you tug at your collar — this is uncomfortable, especially given that you two are stuck in that cab and the traffic seems to stop dead exactly now. just great.

«no,» his answer is simple — to the point where it didn’t have to be voiced to be plainly obvious. talking wasn’t his strongest suit — and well, that made two of you, but that’s hardly why you two went straight to the action last night. it just happened: fast, suffocatingly hot and not enough. you’ve never thought of yourself as a person prone to such entertainments. well, neither did Levi, but you both struggled to find clothes high enough to hide your necks the morning after. now it’s noon, and Levi still feels a little bit out of it, but he’s too stubborn and his poker face is too perfect to give any discomfort away. you — stare back at him and have no idea what to do in a situation like this.

you never particularly liked each other. he’s the insufferable scout you had a lot of grudges against for handing your ass back to you more times than you’d like to admit; you’re the asshole who killed too many of his friends. no, scratch that — you killed most of them, and those who remained were now too deeply tangled up in your shenanigans, suffering on every twist and turn of the path you set for them. your plan was the only thing preventing them from executing you. by all means, you’re the monster Levi has sworn to exterminate.

but there are always complications, right? there’s always something to get in the way — this something was a momentary weakness, Levi kept telling himself, but the more you two ended up in the same space, it was always this petty bickering, those glares from him and snarky retorts from you. he was a brat — so were you. and maybe the world was a little bit more complicated than good and bad. you were nothing good to him, but there was nothing so dramatically bad about it. and that traitorous idea: in the end, you’re not so different from Erwin he had sworn to serve.

now, Levi sat across from you with that bitter grimace — so far, you’ve learned he pulled this face every time he wanted to say something, but didn’t want to reveal too much. ironically, everything was written all over his face, no matter how much he tried to conceal that emotional turmoil. no, not like that: to anyone else Levi’s expression would be unreadable, but you learned to read him quite well. and it didn’t escape you how he absolutely avoided calling you by your name — first or last, doesn’t matter. maybe because it fell from his lips too often last night.

you didn’t even feel the urge to be smug about any of it — surprisingly so. there’s no shame, either, but this half-assed state of things being so complicated between you two is starting to get on your nerves. you didn’t have much time left to waste on half-truths. a year — then you’ll have to pass your titan to the next candidate. it left a bitter taste at the back of your tongue: would you have to pass Levi, too, since he became your lovely nemesis so explicitly? and the way you couldn’t brush off the sensation of his breath on your ear, to the point of your stomach knotting with heat every time your mind wandered back to it? diabolical.

«you’re staring,» you don’t say, you almost snarked back, but he was right, you were staring, committing this displeased grimace to memory. you didn’t reply to that, and Levi seemed to shift in his seat again, his arms crossed over his chest defensively. hell, for Humanity’s Strongest, Levi Ackerman was ridiculously defensive sometimes. this, and the way he tried to poke and prod you so you’d address the elephant in the room yourself, so he wouldn’t have to do that. real mature.