Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“You know,” Zeke tells him, dragging the match across its box, “in a different world, you and I would have been good friends, Levi.”

Levi lifts his eyes against the glare of the sun. The stench of Zeke’s cigarettes has been burning his throat for the past week – the man is addicted, he sucks on them like a baby sucks on a tit. “Is that so,” Levi replies. He wants to be on the move again. Resting too long anywhere makes him nervous, and Zeke does not have a gift for subtlety.

The crackle of tobacco igniting. Zeke balances the cigarette between his lips, shakes the match clear. “Good friends,” he continues, inhaling deeply, “I just have a feeling.”

Zeke is watching him, carefully, but Zeke is always watching him. It gives Levi a sick satisfaction to know that the man has to hide his flinches when he moves too suddenly.

“And your reasoning?” Levi indulges him, bored. The sun will be going down soon. One more night. Zeke will no longer be his problem. Until, of course, the time comes for him to kill him.

Zeke’s eyes do not leave his face. It would be unnerving if Levi could be unnerved. He watches him exhale smoke, head tipped to the side, like Levi is a particularly interesting specimen in a lab. Or a zoo. “Do you know anything about yourself, Levi?”

“I don’t do philosophy,” Levi tells him, bluntly. Erwin had tried, of course.

Zeke laughs, head thrown back. He laughs like Eren. “That was funny, Captain,” he says, “see? You make me laugh. We would be perfect friends.” Levi doesn’t say anything while he takes another drag, cigarette poised between two long fingers, gesticulating lazily. “But I wasn’t talking theoretically, you understand. I meant, do you know what you are? Where you come from?”

This is not a conversation Levi wants to have but to back down would suggest weakness. Or, it would give Zeke a weakness – a target on the back of Levi’s head. “The same place we all came from, I imagine,” he answers instead, levelly.

Zeke scoffs. “What, you don’t care? About your ancestors? Are you incurious?”

Levi feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. How can you say you don’t care about what’s beyond our walls, Levi. Are you incurious? Erwin had asked him.

“I’m plenty curious about things that matter,” Levi tells him. He wants to leave this conversation. The flat earth is killing his ass, and he wants to stretch his legs. But if he moves, Zeke wins, doesn’t he?

“Tsk,” Zeke mutters, “you poor fools. So unknowing.” He takes another drag, watching Levi from beneath lowered eyes as if the gauge his reactions. “Would you like me to tell you a story, Levi?”

“No.”

“It’s all here, you know.” Zeke presses three fingers to the book by his hip. “Do you know how to read?” He asks, patronisingly.

“I can’t read Marleyan.”

Zeke’s smile is soft. “Of course not,” he says, as if sensing he’s made some headway. “I’m something of a scientist, you know. Of course, my father was a doctor.”

“Yeah,” Levi agrees, “I knew him.”

Zeke’s eyes flash behind his wired glasses, or maybe it’s just the setting sun hitting metal. “Oh,” he says, and nothing else.

Levi presses the advantage. “He was a good man.” Of course, Levi doesn’t know that – not really. He only met him once or twice on his own business. He was tall and broad but was an otherwise quiet man. Gentle, would be the word Levi would use, if he hadn’t forgotten what gentleness felt like.

“Was he,” Zeke says flatly, inhaling. “I wouldn’t know.”

“He used to offer medical care to people living in the Underground. There aren’t any doctors down there, at least, not ones who don’t try to get you addicted to something. I used to see him. I always wondered why a man like that wasn’t afraid of being robbed, or worse.”

“Oh yes,” Zeke grins, with an ugly look on his face, “my father was quite the martyr, wasn’t he?”

“You’re very cynical, Zeke,” Levi half-smirks. “Why does it upset you if your father chose to devote some time and money to saving people less fortunate?”

“These people,” Zeke asks, waving his hand, “in the “Underground”. What are they like? Filthy? Dangerous? Criminal?”

“Some,” Levi agrees.

“And that’s where you’re from, isn’t it?” Zeke crows. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

Who has been telling tales about Levi’s life? It could only be Eren, of course. Why? Why does Zeke care, aside from having something to wheedle him with. “Are you obsessed with me, Zeke?” Levi mocks him, part of him genuinely curious.

“I suppose I am, in a way.” Zeke leans back against his tree, crosses his legs at the ankles. “Titan’s fascinate me, of course. They fascinate anyone with a brain. There are certain laws of science, you understand – physics, that shouldn’t be violated – “

“Zeke,” Levi interrupts. “I don’t care.”

Zeke deflates a little. Levi hates that he can almost visualise him, in his head, in some other world: he’d be a teacher, wouldn’t he? Or a professor. Or anything other than a beast, and a soldier. He can’t feel too sorry for him; no one made him gleefully shatter Levi’s comrades with rocks, like it was a game, a sport.

“Of course you don’t,” Zeke rejoins, sighing. “I should say, then, that it’s not titans that interest me, really. It’s what happens to the humans who mix with them. People like myself, and my little brother. And yourself, of course.”

Levi doesn’t say anything. He makes a concentrated effort to not even twitch. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he replies, carefully.

Zeke grins at him, triumphantly. “Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” he crows. “I wonder what went wrong? That your ancestors decided they had to keep their descendants in ignorance, I mean. Was there a coup? Some star-crossed lovers?” He raises his eyebrows suggestively. “They didn’t forget – you can’t forget, you’re an Ackerman, that’s the whole point of you. Well,” Zeke’s smile turns into a smirk, “not the whole point.”

“Why do you care?” Levi tries. He can feel this conversation veering out of his control. “Are good soldiers that rare on Marley?”

“You’re not a good soldier,” Zeke tells him, “even I can see that. You’re a terrible soldier, Captain. You’re just good at killing titans – and so you should be, you were bred for it.”

Levi feels his left eye twitch. He feels himself go very still all at once; will Zeke have noticed? That his hands are flat in his lap, his back straight against the tree-trunk. He can feel it starting to crackle at the back of his neck, that feeling, and he knows if he doesn’t get this under control he’ll do something he regrets. Or at least, break the orders he’s been given – he would never regret cleaving Zeke in half from the top of his head to his ass.

“Is that so,” he says, calmly.

Zeke takes another long drag of his cigarette then stubs it out on the back of his hand, flicks it into the dirt. “Did you know,” he begins, “a long time ago, our families were pledged to each other? I wouldn’t be so surprised if there’s some royal blood in those pale little veins, Levi. Of course – royal blood dilutes. Ackerman’s doesn’t.”

Levi is quiet. In these situations, the best thing to do is just watch; let your enemy speak, see what they can tell you, explicitly or implicitly.

“You went extinct on Marley,” Zeke smiles at him. “Extinct. Like dinosaurs, or a rare animal. Oh – my apologies, do you know what dinosaurs are?”

He does, because Erwin taught him, with all his secret, heretical texts. Dinosaurs and monkeys and turtles. He can’t think of any words that would articulate how much he wants to rip Zeke’s smile into his cheeks, ear to ear. “I know what dinosaurs are,” he mutters, aware he sounds petulant.

“You had an ancestor,” Zeke continues, “so devoted to my mine that he dedicated himself to some kind of – experimental treatment. Who knows. That knowledge is lost to us, now,” and he seems sad, briefly, “like so much else. If we could recreate you, we would. On Marley, people have tried. It doesn’t go so well.”

“Yes, I’ve heard plenty about your…” Levi feels his lips twist with disgust, “experiments.”

“You don’t approve?” Zeke sighs at Levi’s silence. “Of course you don’t. I’ve heard you described as bodyguards,” he resumes, tipping back his head to stare at the heavy, boughed branches above him. “Every member of the royal family would be given an Ackerman to protect them.”

Levi thinks about Kenny and the Old King that never was – Uri? Had that been his name? He tries to remember if Kenny had ever mentioned him. Had he spoken of a friend once, or twice? The only times he took Levi above ground was when he visited the town near Reiss lands.

No. It doesn’t matter. Zeke could be lying, for all Levi knows.

“So,” Zeke interrupts his thoughts, “what do you think?”

Levi glances at him, irritated. “What do I think about what?”

“Would you like to be my Ackerman, Levi?” Zeke’s teeth are tinged pink in the setting sun. “Shall we put to bed centuries of hatred, you and I?” He picks absently at a bottle of wine tucked in his rations box. “How about a toast.”

“Your obsession with me is flattering,” Levi says, shortly.

“So is that a yes?” Zeke flutters his eyelashes.

“Is there a reason you’re goading me?” Levi drawls at him.

“Yes. I’m bored.”

“Shame. Write a book about it.” A pause; “Or don’t. You’d probably make me listen to it.”

“You know, Levi, I’m surprised you don’t like my company. You really seem like the kind of guy to enjoy a good time.” He takes a swig from the wine. “Would you like some?”

“I don’t drink,” Levi glares.

Zeke sighs. “Of course you don’t,” he mutters. “How very you.”

In the silence, Levi can hear the birdsong from the trees, their light rustling. He frowns. “Did you know, I’ve been here before.”

“Well I imagine you’ve been everywhere in these walls before,” Zeke says, matter-of-factly, “there isn’t much to see really, is there?”

“This is where we captured your female titan,” Levi continues, absently. He’s almost surprised at himself for mentioning it.

Zeke raises his brows slightly. “Until she gave you the slip, of course. Leonhart was always my favourite. Don’t tell Reiner.”

There will be bones in this forest. His friend’s bones, those of them too crushed to carry home. Somewhere along the road Levi and Zeke followed to reach here, Petra’s body will be lying, picked at by crows, and worms, and covered in grass.

Levi shuts his eyes, resists the urge to worry at the headache pinching at his temples. “Yes,” he agrees, “you and your people are so very good at running away.”

Zeke’s eyes flash with something akin to – what? Irritation? Anger? He scratches listlessly at a spot above his ear. “Say, Levi,” he asks, head tipped to the side, “after I kill you, would you consider donating your body for scientific research? I asked my brother but he seems rather fond of you, I don’t think he’d let me without your consent.”

“It’s hard to research with missing arms, no?” Levi questions, innocently. “And eyes. And legs.”

“Aren’t you just quite the little sadist,” Zeke says without humour.

“We all have our sports, don’t we?” Levi replies, quietly.

“Yes,” Zeke agrees, darkly. “That we do.”

-

What do you think? Erwin asks him in that gentle, teacherly way he has. If titans don’t reproduce, where do they come from?

Maybe a stork brings them, Levi answers, snidely.

Levi, Erwin says, patiently. You know I don’t like it when you pretend to be stupid.

Levi almost laughs. Only Erwin can make him laugh. In another world, Erwin would be a teacher, a professor. He’s got such a head for theories and histories.

He turns to ask him something – he can’t remember what. Erwin is staring at him. His eyes are dull. His cheeks are sunken. There’s a hole in the side of his stomach, guts spilling out. He’s wearing glasses with intricate metal rims.

Levi stares up at the night sky. No – not sky. Zeke is peering down at him, glasses balanced on the bridge of his long nose. Did Levi sleep? That isn’t like him. It could have only been for a minute --

Zeke frowns at him. “You’re like a duck. You sleep with one eye open.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“No? Were you talking to yourself, then?” Zeke’s toothy grin is bright in the night. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask who’s name you were moaning.”

“Kill yourself.”

“I need a piss,” Zeke replies, stretching his arms.

“And?” Levi asks, irritably.

“And I don’t know these woods. What if there are wolves?”

“You want me to hold your cock for you?” He resists the urge to rub at his eyes. “You’re a big boy, you can go yourself.”

“What if I run away?” Zeke asks.

“You won’t,” Levi knows.

“But my people are so very good at it.”

Levi glares up at him. He’s fixed his face with a loping, shuffling smile, hand scratching the back of his head. It was foolish of him to sleep, even if it was only a momentary lapse. He wants to tell him to fuck off, but he’s not supposed to let him out of his sight, and the other soldiers are sleeping.

“You planning on smashing my head with a rock?” Levi grunts, standing.

Zeke tsks. “That’s an incredibly violent thing to think, Levi. You should try therapy. Or does that not exist here yet?”

Levi ignores him. Most of his men are sleeping – Lotte and Daan are taking watch. He wants to reprimand them for letting him sleep, but that’s not their fault, is it? Maybe he’s getting old. Yeah, that’s it. That must be why he’s so tired all the time.

By what metric are you old, Levi? He can hear Erwin smiling. You still have your whole life ahead of you. Why had Levi believed him? Maybe because it was Erwin, and whenever he spoke, you wanted to.

“What do you do with them?” Zeke is asking him, trailing off ahead. “Those soldiers who can’t fight anymore.”

Levi frowns. “It’s not really a problem in the Corps.”

“Oh?”

“You would die before anything else took you out,” Levi tells him distractedly. He watches the moon, still low in the sky.

“But when soldiers get too spooked,” Zeke presses, “when they start seeing – you don’t really have bombs, do you? Titans, I suppose. When they start seeing Titans around every corner.”

Levi halts. “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and take a piss?”

“Touched a nerve,” Zeke mutters, leaning up against a tree. “It’s just a matter of curiosity. Don’t worry, we’re not any better in Marley – we just pack them into wards, my grandfather could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end.”

“You should stop talking to me,” Levi advises, folding his arms.

“Awh,” Zeke complains, pulling at his fly, “I’m just lonely, Captain. You island devils can be so damn mean.” He pauses, stares at Levi over his shoulder until Levi frowns at him. “Pervert,” he mutters.

“Are you trying to beat a record? Hurry the fuck up,” Levi orders, tersely.

“Do you have kids, Levi?”

He resists the urge to cover his ears with his palms. This is Eren, whether Zeke is trying to annoy him or not. The constant questions underpinned with a stupid, genuine curiosity, even though Zeke should fear him more than he fears anyone he’s ever met. “Obviously not.”

“And no one else?” Zeke asks him. “No wife? Lover?” A beat. “Not even the occasional soldier’s tussle?”

Levi tries to keep the exasperation out of his voice but he knows that Zeke realises he’s probably hit nerves. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason, really. You just seem highly strung, Captain. We all need our releases.”

“You trying to fuck me, monkey-man?” Levi snaps, irritably.

“What,” Zeke asks, and Levi can hear that shit-eating grin, “there isn’t even a little part of you that isn’t curious?”

“I’d rather fuck a titan,” Levi sneers, “at least they have a touch more humanity about them.”

“A pity,” Zeke sighs, shaking off, “I have it on good authority that you like tall, intelligent blonds.”

It crackles down his spine, sharp, bright, lightning: Levi throws the knife strapped to his thigh – if he wanted, it could hit Zeke square in the back of the neck. Instead, it wedges itself in his shoulder, pinning him forward into the tree. He cries out, leaning himself against the trunk. “Bastard!” He grunts.

Levi is too fast for him. He’s already at his back, forearm braced against his shoulders, hand gripping the knife. “Shh, shh,” Levi urges him, “don’t scream. You’ll wake my men.”

“I’ll do it,” Zeke hisses, “I’ll bite.”

“Then do it,” Levi mocks, “go on, turn yourself into a fucking beast, see how that goes for you.” He twists the knife and Zeke swallows his scream.

“Did I,” he grits, “touch a nerve?”

“Good authority?” Levi spits back.

“Did you think you hid it?!” Zeke snarls, “Even the kids knew you were fucking their Commander – “

Levi drags the hilt of the knife down Zeke’s back, watches his skin split beneath his white shirt. Ugh. He hates blood.

“That’s why you hate me,” Zeke says, confidently, breath strained. “Eren told me. It’s because I killed him, isn’t it? Except – if what he says is right, I didn’t kill him, you did, when you gave Berthold to the little blond kid – “

Levi pulls out the knife. Zeke tries to run. He twists the collar of his shirt in his fist and slams his back into the tree with a satisfying ‘thunk’ that would break the ribs of another man. “It was a kindness,” he hears himself say, voice tight and strained, “what could you understand about doing anything for someone other than yourself?”

Zeke stares at him with those ugly blue eyes, shrewd and thin. They’re wrinkled with pain, his pupils blown with fear. He’s afraid of him. Good.

“If our positions were reversed,” Zeke is breathing, “what would you do?”

Levi thinks. It’s stupid, and brief, but Zeke takes him off-guard. He must be able to sense self-conflict.

But it’s enough. Zeke smacks the back of his hand into Levi’s cheek, wrecks his balance, his fist tearing its way into Levi’s hair, as if to hold him, or stop him. He is taller than Levi – even leveraging himself up, straining, using the tree trunk as support. One hand wrapped in Levi’s hair, the other around his throat.

His glasses are skewed on his nose. Levi does not move. “Drop the knife,” Zeke orders. “I’ve had enough of the pain you give out.”

His hand squeezes, warningly. Levi lets his fingers open: the knife drops on his boot.

“Good,” Zeke breathes, “good. Better, Levi.” The thumb pressed to his throat strokes, lightly, as if rewarding him. His eyes are searching his face – for what? Levi can guess, now. Zeke is bored. He thinks Levi is an anomaly, a rare and precious specimen. And Zeke is curious.

And what is Levi? Angry, mostly. Sick with it, constantly. He wants to peel Zeke’s skin back from his muscle.

Zeke’s thumb is taking his pulse. “You’re very – “ Zeke seems to be searching for a word. “Clean, Levi.”

He keeps himself still. “Yes,” he agrees, knowing under Zeke’s thumb his pulse is slow and steady.

“And so very – uptight,” Zeke half-sneers. “Would you moan for your Commander? When he fucked you, would you – “ his fingers twist tighter in his hair, pulling back his head, exposing the line of his throat, “ – arch your back for him? Let him mess your hair?” Zeke’s eyes twitch. “Would he come inside you? Would you swallow for him?”

“Tch,” Levi smirks, “so is this what’s been occupying your thoughts, Zeke? How ordinary.”

“I’m not ordinary,” Zeke says, and perhaps the scary thing is that he believes it.

Levi presses the flat of his hand to Zeke’s pants, the hardness between his thighs. He tsks. “Feels very ordinary to me,” he mocks, voice like bitter sugar, “but you can pretend otherwise, if that makes you feel better.”

Zeke’s nostrils flare, his nose hovering up from Levi’s. He can see himself in the reflection of his glasses: cheek slightly red, eyes hard, head bent back over Zeke’s fist. “Do you bleed?” Zeke asks him, voice hoarse.

“I’m human, aren’t I?”

He sees the slight sneer around Zeke’s mouth, the tremble of his lips before his presses them to Levi’s. It’s stiff, unyielding, just skin on skin, until it’s not: Levi lets his mouth open, invites him in. He tastes like those cigarettes smell, rich and silky and smoky. His tongue takes and Levi allows it, makes his hands limp at his sides. Zeke takes and takes and digs his teeth into Levi’s lower lip, dragging, until he tastes blood.

Zeke pulls away, regards him coolly. “I see,” he murmurs against his mouth, his hand tangled in Levi’s hair. “You’re not a sadist. You’re a masochist.”

Levi kicks his boot upwards, catches the knife deftly in his hand, flips the point to the soft underside of Zeke’s chin. Kenny taught him that one; he watches Zeke’s eyes widen with understanding. He swallows, hard. He catches his skin on the tip, blood staining his beard.

“Do you think you can choke the life out of me in time?” Levi taunts.

“Depends. If you cut me, what are the odds I bleed out before I transform?”

“Well I guess we’ll just have to stay here all night,” Levi says. “But I’ll kill you either way.”

Zeke tightens his grip on Levi’s throat. He feels his breath catch, like breathing through a pinprick. If someone doesn’t give, his vision will start to blur. “Not if I get your men first,” Zeke threatens, so softly, his lips pressed to Levi’s ear.

“Do it,” Levi urges, calls his bluff. “If that’s what you really want out of this, do it.”

Zeke breathes. Levi waits.

“Here?” He asks him.

“Here,” Levi agrees.

He loosens his grip on his throat and pulls down for another kiss, if it can be called that. Too much blood, neither of their tongues willing to accommodate the other, all teeth and spit. Levi’s quick fingers make short work of Zeke’s shirt, pushing it down his shoulders. He hasn’t got a soldier’s body – he’s trim, well-built, but he’s not muscle on muscle like Levi, or Erwin. He’s young, in fact. It’s easy to forget he only has a year left to live.

“Why?” Levi asks him, drawing off his mouth.

“Less risk,” Zeke grunts against the skin of his throat, tearing with fumbling hands at the catches of Levi’s pants.

“Risk?” Levi hisses, pulling at his belt.

“We can’t have any little Zeke’s running around now, can we?” He pulls back, grins at him. “What’s your excuse, Captain?”

Levi digs his knee into his stomach. “I just hate you,” he grits, and swings his foot in a graceful arch, drives the flat of his ankle into Zeke’s nose. It’s satisfying to hear the crunch, watch him hit his head against the tree.

“You fucking bastard,” Zeke gasps, “you’ll pay for it.”

“Then make me.” It’s not even a taunt, not really.

Levi lets him push his hand inside his pants, grip him in his fist. He hears himself make a sound that would be a sigh, in different circumstances – now, it just reminds him of ODM gear, gas released from a canister. Stress relief. Zeke seems to like it, though, stroking down his length with his palm to get him to make that sound again.

Zeke takes his chin in his hand, almost delicately. Levi keeps his eyes half-shut, doesn’t want to look at his eyes as he works his cock, just braces his arms around Zeke’s shoulders, almost like how he would with a real lover. Zeke’s bare skin smells like iron and grass; his nose is bleeding onto Levi’s shirt.

“Keep making those noises,” Zeke breathes against his ear, “it almost makes this worth it.”

What is Zeke? A warm body, maybe. Levi could pretend if he wanted – it wouldn’t be hard. He could imagine Erwin’s hands, and his shoulders, and his soft hair, those kind eyes. The thought makes him sick, though, makes him curdle inside himself. He hides his face in Zeke’s throat to swallow the revulsion and then grips his wrist, pulls him out of his pants.

“You don’t want to come?” Zeke asks him, half-breathless.

Levi kisses him again in response. This time, he leads; Zeke seems to go a little limp in acquiescence, letting Levi press him back against the tree, stood on the balls of his feet. He lets his hands roam around the planes of Zeke’s body, his torso long and lean, the stomach soft beneath his hands, lower still. Zeke is larger than him, hardening beneath his fingers; he watches his pupils constrict and burst – yeah, Levi has clever hands, he always has. Knife-play wasn’t the only thing he picked up Underground.

He presses his forearm against Zeke’s collarbones, pins him in place, and slowly, smoothly, works his cock. His thumb circles its tip, wetting the head with pre-come. He lets his thumb linger there just enough for Zeke’s lips to start trembling with frustration, then draws down his fist all at once. The result: Zeke’s hips twitch forward, involuntarily, his head falling back against the tree-trunk.

“Were you a whore in another life, Levi?” He croaks, fisting a hand in his own hair.

“That’s a funny way to say thank you,” Levi tells him. He pauses briefly to spit into his hand, then continues.

Zeke groans and covers his mouth. “Funny,” he huffs, “what would you know about funny?”

Levi wants to say, this entire situation is fucking hilarious, but he thinks if he does he won’t be able to stop himself from laughing at the truth of it. In response, he drops to his knees. Zeke’s eyes widen with shock. “You – you’ll – really?” He wheezes.

Levi stares up at him, bloodied face, skewed glasses, cheeks flushed an embarrassing red in the moonlight. He wonders if his disgust shows on his face. “Shut up,” he orders him, dismissively, pulling down his pants.

When he takes him in his mouth – all of him, from tip to base, filling his throat – his thighs tremble. Zeke curses in a language Levi has never heard, like the pretentious prick he is. Levi does not think about the taste of him, the mud beneath his knees, his own hard cock. He’s spent much of his adult life skirting around self-loathing but this might be a new low.

Zeke is still muttering in his foreign language. “God, fuck,” he lapses, “is it something they put in the water over here?”

Levi ignores him, presses the butt of his hand against Zeke’s lower stomach, feels his abdomen tensing beneath his skin. As a younger man he hated this – the drool on his chin, the taste of come that lingers no matter how much you brush your teeth, chew mint leaves, spit. But Levi is good at things he hates – just look at how good he is at killing. What a fucking curse.

“You must have p – p – “ Zeke stutters as if on the edge, losing his control, throwing his hips forward, “practised,” he gets out, “soldiers, right? You must all get b – bored, sitting around, waiting for titans – “

Levi loosens his jaw just slightly, enough that his bottom teeth scrape the underside of Zeke’s cock. He yelps, jerks himself deeper, briefly choking Levi, making him cough around his length. As if in punishment, he wraps his hands in Levi’s hair, pulls him clean off with a wet ‘pop’. “No teeth,” he grits, “I swear to God, Captain, if you fucking dare – “

Levi licks his bottom lip, absently. “You’re down bad,” he simpers, “why else would you stick your cock in my mouth?”

“Adrenalin,” Zeke sneers, but his eyes are still wide with lust, near-desperation. He fucks back into Levi’s mouth, grips his hair as if to pretend he is in control, that he’s using Levi and not the other way around. And Levi lets him, for the most part, rutting against him like a stupid beast. It occurs to him, suddenly, that this is the last sex Zeke will ever have – he’ll be dead, soon. Again, he has to stop himself from laughing.

“I’m going to come,” Zeke tells him, as if he cares. Congratulations, he thinks, do you want an award?

Levi brushes his hair back from his brow and looks up at Zeke from under his eyes. He catches his own reflection in the glass of Zeke’s spectacles, the bored, flat line of his brows. Zeke meets his eyes: whatever he finds there, hate, disgust, or whatever he thinks he finds there, submission, pain, lust, tips him over the edge. He comes down Levi’s throat. And Levi swallows.

Zeke pulls him away, still steering his hair, panting. A line of thick drool ties Levi’s swollen lips to the tip of his cock. He rests back on his heels and drags his thumb against the corner of his mouth; “Tch,” he mutters, “you’ve dripped on my shirt.”

Zeke backhands him. It’s sudden and sharp and it takes even Levi by surprise. Zeke had not struck him as violent; psychopathic and narcissistic, with a low regard for human life, but not actively aggressive, like Kenny was. An actual tug of panic flares inside his chest, but by the time he’s righted himself, Zeke has his hands pressed back against the tree.

“What was that for?” He snarls.

“Just wanted a reaction,” Zeke admits, watching him with wide eyes. Fear? Maybe curiosity. Levi feels his lips twitch – a move straight out of Levi’s book, he will admit. Maybe Zeke was right, they would be friends, in another life.

Zeke’s hand grips his throat again, but pulls at him gently, without squeezing. He presses his mouth to Levi’s but this time, it’s soft. He feels his eyes widen, near recoiling with it, Zeke’s thumb stroking the line of his neck, his other hand pressed almost lovingly to his cheek.

Levi pulls away. “What are you doing?” He demands, skirting his eyes away. He doesn’t want to see himself reflected in Zeke’s glasses anymore.

Zeke tips his head to the side, watching him. He thumbs at Levi’s lower lip, a mixture of his spit and come, slips the digit into his mouth to press lightly against his tongue. “Shh,” he soothes. “Just let me.”

Maybe with the shock of it, Levi allows him in. Zeke cups the back of his head, strokes his hair, fucks two fingers absently into his mouth as if to test his resistance. It’s tender – worse, it’s almost caring.

For just the briefest time, Levi shuts his eyes. He doesn’t pretend anything but he doesn’t have to. No one has touched him gently in a long time. He had almost forgotten. He feels himself go limp in Zeke’s hands, mouth open, nails scratching lightly over his scalp. He shivers. This isn’t what he wanted.

“Is this how you are?” Zeke whispers, his breath caressing Levi’s cheek, their noses pressed together. “Or how you were, for your Commander?”

Levi releases his exhale. He lets his lips curl. “You repulse me,” he tells him, instead.

“Do I?” The fingers on Levi’s chin creep lower, lower, lower, cup his cock. “I’m not sure I do, Levi.”

Levi doesn’t have a response. He could hit him again, he supposes. But his body feels heavy, like exhaustion. The ache between his thighs intensifies when Zeke strokes him, watching his face for every micro-movement.

“Let me,” Zeke asks him, “I promise, no tricks. I just want to see you,” he says, cupping Levi’s face in both hands, bearing down on him until they lie, legs tangled, in the dirt. There’s a rock pressing into Levi’s lower back.

“You freak,” Levi mutters.

“I am,” Zeke admits, “I know that, I’ve always known that. But you – you’re an aberration, Levi. You understand, don’t you? Why I’m doing this?”

Levi turns his head, presses his cheek into the grass, watches the moon.

Zeke is picking at the buttons of his shirt, one by one. His hands are moulding themselves to the planes of his body. “You’re fucking beautiful, did you know that?” Zeke tells him, and he sounds furious, “it makes me sick.”

You and me both, Levi thinks, covering his eyes with his forearm.

“Not perfect, of course,” Zeke continues, “you’re too short, too many scars. Were you malnourished?” He asks, and for just a brief second, he sounds like a real scientist, a doctor, enquiring after his health. “What am I saying,” he mutters, “of course you were. We need sunlight to grow.”

He presses a kiss to the centre of Levi’s chest, his sternum. “You would have done well on Marley,” he’s saying, kissing lower, and lower, his lips trailing Levi’s stomach, gentle enough his skin pimples, the fine hairs there standing on end. “You would have been some General’s favourite pet, of course – but I suppose it’s not so different here.”

His fingers hook in the waistband of Levi’s pants and carefully, creeping, inch them down his hips. Zeke exhales with something close to veneration, splaying his hands across each of Levi’s bare thighs, spreading them in the dirt. Levi is watching his face: he sees him move from lust, to anger, and back to curiosity. “This scar,” he asks, trailing his fingers along the five neat indents in his inner thigh. “Titan teeth?”

Levi nods. Zeke whistles appreciatively. “That had to hurt,” he mutters, “how’d you manage to live?”

“It’s all counterweight,” Levi explains, “it caught me while I was swinging to get on its back – quadruped. Its neck was close enough to its mouth that I had enough momentum to catch it’s nape.”

Zeke shivers. “They’re the worst,” he mutters. “No offence to Pieck.”

They could almost be veterans, both of them, trading old war tales. The air is slightly chilled; Levi feels stiff, his back, his nipples, his cock. He worries his bottom lip with his teeth, shifts his hips. Get on with it, he’s telling him without telling him, hands limp by his head.

“How long did it take to heal?” Zeke asks him. He strokes each indent, the puckered skin. Levi’s inner thighs twitch. “You still have feeling? More than feeling,” he grins, “you’re ticklish. How’s that possible? You should have lost the leg.”

Levi’s nostrils flare as he fights the urge to reflexively kick Zeke in the face. “Heal quick,” is all he says.

“Oh really,” Zeke asks, “and that never sent any alarms ringing? No one ever stopped and wondered why?”

Erwin did. He had come close, in fact, closer to understand the truth about Levi, and Kenny, and Mikasa, than they even knew themselves. But Levi hates Zeke for making him think about it again. He shakes his foot out of his boot, pushes his pants the rest of the way down his leg.

“Eager?” Zeke teases.

“Impatient,” Levi answers, and gives him what he wants: an arched back, spread legs, a willing body.

Zeke curses, brushes blood off of his chin. “In a different world, Levi,” he says again, like a prayer, or a spell. He wraps a broad arm around each thigh, drags Levi through the dirt and brushes, possessive, all-encompassing. He’s not as skilled as Levi – when he takes his hard, weeping cock in his mouth, he hasn’t got the right technique; too much mindless sucking, not enough tongue. But his mouth is warm, his hands are firm, and he manages to coax sighs out of him all the same.

I’m going to kill him, Levi thinks, and it makes it sweeter. I’m going to kill you, he says internally, his thighs trembling around Zeke’s head. “Yes,” he breathes.

Zeke takes this for praise, or encouragement; he slides his arm up Levi’s chest, pins him. Between his legs, Zeke looks at him, eyes straining to meet his – and Levi sees himself once more, reflected in those glasses.

“Take them off,” Levi asks him. “You’re glasses, fucking – take them off.”

Zeke pulls off him, takes him in his fist instead. “I’m blind, idiot,” Zeke pants, “and I want to see this.”

“Take them off,” Levi says again, “please.”

“Please?” Zeke laughs. “Are we playing sweethearts now?”

Levi lets his head fall back against the dirt, hard. It hurts. He shuts his eyes. And kicks Zeke in face with his bare foot.

He cries out – really cries out, like a kid who’s skinned his knee. “You bastard,” he whimpers into his hands, “you broke my nose. Again!”

Levi rolls onto his front, hands tearing at tufts of grass. “Finish me,” he croaks, “or I’ll rip it off your fucking face.”

“If you wanted rough,” Zeke grunts, wrapping his forearm around Levi’s middle, hiking his back against his chest, “you should have just asked, Captain.” His nose is dribbling onto Levi’s bare shoulder; he feels his face twist with disgust.

Zeke seats him between his legs, Levi’s feet – one still clothed and booted, the other naked – knocking against his knees. He’s going to have dirt in places he doesn’t want to think about, and he’s not going to get a proper bath in a while. He puts the blame on Zeke, the blame for all of this, for everything: for the shit sex in a damp, cold forest, for the fighting, the war, the pain, the loss –

“You’re better with your hands,” Levi tells him, letting his head roll back onto Zeke’s shoulder, “you practise on yourself often?”

Zeke doesn’t answer. He slaps the hand holding Levi to his chest to his mouth, instead, gagging him, working his cock with his fingers. That’s fine, that’s better; Levi accepts it. He can make whatever noises he wants into Zeke’s palm and only the vibrations of his breath give him away.

But Zeke’s nails are digging into the skin of his cheeks, leaving grooves. “What are you going to think about when you come, Levi?”

“Not you,” Levi says, muffled, against his palm. His hips are twitching into Zeke’s hand, involuntary. Maybe his body wants this to finish soon.

“I thought about you,” he says, into his ear. His lips trace the shell of it, his teeth scrape his lobe. “It wasn’t even hard for me. I didn’t even realise until it happened how good it would feel having you on your knees.”

It’s cheap, and Levi is past shame, anyway. Zeke can imagine him any way he wants, it won’t change a thing. He fucks himself into his fist, bracing his hands on either side of Zeke’s hips, legs pumping. “It won’t be me, will it Levi?” Zeke is still goading him. “I remember him, you know. Leading that charge. I imagine he thought himself quite brave – he looked brave, like a hero.” Zeke laughs softly in his ear, kisses his cheek. “Can you picture him? I know you are, aren’t you?”

Unwillingly, involuntarily, Levi does. No, he thinks, panicked. Zeke has him caught. He tries to turn his head away – shut his eyes, block his thoughts, but it’s Erwin’s face in his mind. Erwin’s hands, his arms, thighs, mouth –

“Almost there,” Zeke is saying, draping his leg’s over Levi’s to stop him from twisting away. “I can feel it. Can you feel it? He must have been quite the Commander, Levi, I’ll give you that. To convince all those men to throw their own lives away – tsk,” he says against Levi’s throat, “a true soldier, to the end, right?”

Levi’s chest heaves. The soft, swooping ache in his lower stomach intensifies, his toes curling. Stop, he wants to say, but Zeke’s hand still covers his mouth. He will not think of Erwin, not like that – not those last, awful moments.

“Are you going to come?” Zeke asks him, slightly breathless. The steam from his healing nose is tickling the back of Levi’s neck. “I know you are, you’re not going to stop it. That handsome commander – your handsome commander,” Zeke tells him, “so brave, so noble – “

Levi is straining. He arches his back, grips Zeke’s wrists, legs kicking beneath the weight of Zeke’s.

“ – and I killed him, anyway,” Zeke finishes. Levi finishes, too. He comes silently, ever muscle in his body taut, his mind choose flight over fight. His teeth are stuck in the meat of Zeke’s hand, but this time he doesn’t even flinch. He just lets Levi wring himself into his palm, bucking against his chest.

He prises his hand away from Levi’s teeth. He smears Levi’s spend in the dirt without complaint. Levi doesn’t think of anything. When Zeke rolls to search for his cigarettes just falls back into the grass, twigs and rocks sticking in his skin.

Zeke giggles, fumbles with his cigarette poised between his lips, flickering match cupped against his hand. “Are we fucked up or what?” He says, exhaling.

Levi stares at the sky, the branching canopies of trees, arm tucked beneath his head. “It’s worse for you,” he mutters.

“Uh, it’s really not,” Zeke half snorts, shrugging on his shirt. He balances the cigarette between his fingers. “You’re unhinged, Captain. Fuck me, you are – genuinely insane.”

“Yeah,” Levi agrees.

“I can’t even understand what’s going on in your head. Me, I’m a scientist,” Zeke is half-babbling, “I get the chance to fuck an Ackerman, I’m going to take it, but you – “

Levi holds out his hand. He can feel Zeke staring. “Uh,” he hears him say.

“Cigarette,” Levi tells him. And Zeke actually gives it to him.

“You want to know a secret, Zeke?” Levi drags, long, slow – this is nothing like the stuff they grow in the walls. Levi’s never smoked something that goes down so smooth, that fills him up from the inside. “I used to smoke. All the time, actually.”

As if to prove it, he taps ash off the tip of the cigarette in a fluid, practiced motion.

“So, to answer your question,” he continues, “sometimes I like to do things just because they feel good. Even when it’s bad for me.”

Zeke seems stunned into silence. “Well alright then,” he says eventually, “fair enough.”

Levi takes one last drag. Then, he stubs the rest out of Zeke’s arm, enjoys his hiss, and flicks the rest away just to be spiteful. “They’re going to come looking,” he tells him flatly, buckling up his pants.

“You know, I almost feel sorry for you,” Zeke says, softly. Levi suspects it’s the only truth he’ll ever get out of him. “You’re terrifying. It must be lonely.”

“The world is cruel. I’m not going to inflict myself on anyone else,” Levi says, tersely. It’s not self-pitying: it’s the truth. “Minimise pain, where we can.”

“How do we do that?” Zeke asks him, quietly.

Levi laughs. It’s not a real laugh – he hasn’t, not since Erwin passed. But an ugly sound that uses all the same muscles in his chest, unused for a long time. “Refuse to be born,” he tells him. “It’s like you say, right? This curse is in my blood. I’ll let the Ackerman’s die with me, so far as I can. Whatever’s in us that makes monsters out of us, I mean.”

Zeke regards him, coolly. “Do you know, Levi,” he says, “I think we might agree.”

Because we’re both damaged, cruel, fuckers. “Yeah,” Levi decides. “We might even be friends. In a different world.”

Chapter Text

“It’s an Ackerman thing, you know that, right?” Zeke says this like it means anything to Levi. “You and your commander. It’s not real love, you know,” and if Levi wasn’t drunk, and didn’t know better, he might think Zeke sounds jealous.

“An Ackerman thing,” Levi mutters, head tipped back and spinning. What a lot of trouble for a gift he never asked for, for a name he didn’t even know he had until a few years ago. “That’s all you ever talk about Zeke, Ackerman this, Ackerman that. Get a fucking hobby.”

“You’re my only hobby, out here,” Zeke tells him, honestly. “I’ve spent the past month watching you, everything you do. It’s turned me into quite the Aker-holic,” he says, and then bites his lip, wincing at his own stupid joke, staring at Levi from over the rims of his glasses, provocation written over his face.

“Oh, I know,” Levi says, and he lifts the wine back to his lips. That first time – that had been a mistake. The second time, Levi had no one to blame but himself. Fool me once, he thinks, absently, remembering Zeke fucking into him like the animal he is, the stupid, dirty, rutting beast. Shame on me, he sighs, inwardly, recalling the third time, Zeke’s gasped prayers, Goddamn, God-fucking-damn, Levi, I think I’m in love.

This really is a unique form of self-harm, Levi thinks, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth.

“It’s practically indentured servitude,” Zeke scoffs at him, but Levi is used to it by now, and he knows Zeke is only trying to win a reaction to amuse himself. “Or – my little brother has another word for it,” he adds, slyly.

“Your little brother,” Levi sighs, and digs his thumb against his temple, wincing. “Has lots of shitty words for lots of shitty things.” Or at least, he used to.

“Slave,” Zeke says, triumphantly, and lets that word sit there like Levi cares.

“Eren thinks everyone’s a fucking slave,” Levi grouses. He puts the wine to his mouth and drains the rest, head tipped back – he hasn’t drunk in years, really, but even this bottle isn’t going to get him drunk enough. Fucking hell. That’s the real Ackerman curse, he thinks, squinting down the lip to chase the remaining drops with his tongue.

Zeke’s brows are raised. “Well, yes,” he sighs, “admittedly. But we all go through a phase, don’t we?”

Levi snorts, and lobs the bottle across the clearing. Some of his men, bent over a game of cards, look up when it shatters against a tree.

Zeke procures another, from somewhere, hands it out, wordlessly. “You know,” Levi mutters, popping the cork with his teeth, “I think you’re trying to get me drunk, Yeager.”

Zeke’s lips twitch. “Curiosity,” he says. “Among other things.”

He drinks some more and resists the urge to hiccup. “Well it’s not going to work,” he tells him, “unfortunately,” he adds, under his breath.

“I suspected that it would be harder,” Zeke agrees. “You must have a faster metabolism. Like ours, I suppose,” and he narrows his eyes at him, at Levi, his favourite pet project. “I’m learning all sorts of facts about your – “ Zeke’s lips twist, “ – what, species? Race? Clan? It’s a pity when I die there won’t be anyone to remember them.”

“Such a pity,” Levi concurs, dryly.

“Like those scratches on your knees,” Zeke says, a little too loudly, like he wants to be overheard. “From a few weeks ago. They only took a few days to heal, isn’t that interesting, Levi?”

“Not particularly.” Levi swigs some more, and wonders how many bottles it will take to get him truly drunk.

“So many questions,” Zeke continues, and he sounds genuinely frustrated. “For instance – how does the power even awaken? What are the necessary components, is it a trait everyone in the bloodline shares or is it only a select few, does it travel through mothers or fathers – “

“Both,” Levi answers, because it’s a harmless bone to throw a dog.

Zeke stares at him. “Both?” He asks, sitting forward a little. “You’re sure?”

He thinks the look he gives Zeke might be scathing. “Yes, I’m sure,” he says patronisingly, “unless my mother is a figment of my imagination.” Which she could be, for all Levi knows, that would be exactly the sick kind of thing he’d come up with to cope.

“Fascinating,” Zeke murmurs, and he cleans his glasses on the edge of his shirt. “Did she have the power?”

“No,” Levi says, shortly.

“You’re sure?”

Levi frowns. Is he? Not particularly. Levi doesn’t even really know what power Zeke is referring to – strength? Tactical ability? Fast reflexes? If that’s what he means, then he’s sure his mother didn’t have any of it. He can’t imagine Mikasa – suffering the things his mother suffered. She’d break their necks with her thighs. She’d have killed the guards at the stairs and fled the Underground long before she lived that fate.

Although he remembers that story, Eren and Mikasa and the traffickers out Shiganshina way. Even before he knew what he was, he’d – not empathised, exactly, but he’d understood Mikasa’s devotion, he thinks. That had been the moment she awoke, she’s told him that herself. And Levi remembers being a child, of course, and watching people hurt his mother, and having people hurt him, and curling up against it. There hadn’t been any power in him, then. He’d just been scared.

“Yes,” Levi hears himself say, vacantly. “Even if all of us have the ability – she never sparked.”

He thinks… he thinks about that dark room, his mother pleading. Not in front of the boy, she’d beg, and the man had taken that as a slight, gripping Levi’s hair, slamming his head against the stone wall. What does he remember but that? He thinks his mother had screamed – not in pain, she had screamed for him. He remembers her bare feet, the ends of her dress flapping around her ankles, throwing herself between them.

He blinks, distracted. Why is he letting himself think of these things now? Is he trying to upset himself? He quickly swigs from the bottle, and then some more, until it’s almost half gone.

“Spark?” Zeke questions, quietly.

Levi winces, smacks his chest with his fist. He’s drinking too fast. “That’s what I call it. Well,” he corrects, drinking more, “that’s what my uncle called it. You got another bottle?”

“Plenty. Your maternal uncle,” Zeke clarifies, and then pauses. “That means,” he starts to explain, “on your mother’s – “

“You patronising bastard,” Levi interjects, “you think I don’t know what fucking maternal means?”

“Apologies,” Zeke says quickly, and Levi thinks he means it: he doesn’t want to upset him, is scared to stop the information coming, curious piece of shit that he is. Despite himself, Levi thinks he’s always admired intelligence. Farlan was intelligent. Erwin, obviously, was…

Fucking hell. It must just be the drink.

He thinks, he respects the ability of certain people to use their heads. Intelligence, curiosity, desire for knowledge – it’s something that some part of him must think is important, although he doesn’t know why, or where the impulse comes from, because Levi couldn’t even read – didn’t even want to – ‘til Erwin sat him down and forced it.

“Yes, on my mother’s side,” Levi mutters, “obviously not going to be my father’s, is it?”

“Why not?” Zeke asks, and then seems to realise. Levi winces. No, that’s it; he’s definitely tipped past drunk – the mild haze, where he’s mostly coherent and controllable –into drunk, not quite at the point of no return, but firmly on the way, because now he’s saying things he has no business saying. “You didn’t know him,” Zeke surmises, squinting, head tipped to the side. “He abandoned you? Which is fine,” Zeke says, levelly, “fathers do that all the time.”

Levi almost laughs. “Don’t you – “ he waves the bottle lazily in Zeke’s direction, “include me in that, that,” he huffs, “that sad little club. Grown men with – “ he hiccups “ – father issues,” he spits. Erwin and his father issues, he thinks, a guilt that sent him spinning into an early grave. Zeke and his… well, Zeke is just pathetic, Levi thinks, but decides to keep that to himself.

He finishes off the bottle, throat working, throws it aimlessly behind his head just to hear it crash. Zeke pitches another across the grass – such a good throw, Levi thinks, catching it effortlessly. “So he didn’t abandon you,” Zeke continues his guessing game, “but you didn’t know him. So he knocked up your mother and she wanted nothing to do with him, which,” Zeke sighs, “if he was anything like you, I understand.”

Fair point, Levi thinks, actually. He pops the cork and lets the wine run down his throat.

“Was he – some lord?” Zeke grins. “Lords, imagine that. You had a century to dump hereditary titles but you remained perfectly stagnant, stuck in one of those bodice-ripper novellas Pieck likes.”

“What was Willy Tybur before Eren smeared him across that stage?” Levi sneers.

“Mm,” Zeke seems to consider, tipping his head, “okay, you’ve got me there. So, are you the illegitimate son of some evil lord, Levi? Or the product of star-crossed lovers? Or a teenage tryst gone wrong?”

Levi sighs. “God,” he mutters, bracing his brow on his hand, “you know what your problem is, Yeager?”

“I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me,” Zeke says, gleefully.

“You read too much. The truth is rarely so…” he searches for the word. “Tasty,” he enunciates, flatly.

Zeke throws back his head and laughs. “Tasty,” he agrees, “that’s true. See, you do have a flair for language, Levi. You could have been a poet in another life.”

Levi rolls his eyes. “We’ve already hashed this one out,” he tells him, drinking.

“Your uncle,” Zeke pulls him back on track with a renewed energy, and almost excitement, that look Eren used to get in his eyes over a game of cards, over a mounting victory. “He had the gift?”

“Oh yes,” Levi says, shortly.

“Tell me about him,” Zeke demands.

Levi sucks his teeth. “No,” he decides, and takes another couple swallows.

Zeke is dismayed. “But why not?!” He whines.

“Because,” Levi tells him. I just like pissing you off, he thinks.

“Fine.” Zeke stands, abruptly, three bottles of wine gripped in his arms. “I suppose I’ll see you in the morning, then. For another day of fun.”

Levi blinks. “Where’re you going?”

“To the theatre, and then a bar, where I might pick up a short battle-scarred forty-something who degrades me in bed and cries when he comes,” Zeke dead-pans. “Goodnight, Captain.”

Levi grips the sleeve of his jacket. “Hey,” he warns, “I’m thirty-eight.”

“Oh please,” Zeke scoffs, “like you even know.” He tears his arm out of his grip.

Levi sticks out his leg and Zeke topples over it like one the bowling pins kids used to make out of old driftwood Underground. The bottles land in the grass with a soft ‘thunk’ and some gentle clinks. Levi helps himself to another, sits back down on his box while Zeke spits out a mouthful of grass. “He was a serial killer,” Levi tells him, wondering if this cathartic or if he’s just in the middle of some kind of breakdown.

Zeke sits himself up, grass scuffing his white linen pants, blood on his chin. It looks like he’s bit through his tongue. Oluo used to do that, Levi remembers. He’d complain that once you bit it once, you kept biting it again. “What?!” Zeke lisps at him, and he takes one of the bottles and drinks, thirstily.

Levi’s head has hit the point where, if he moves too suddenly, everything spins. “Fuckin’ freak,” he admits, drinking and cradling the bottle between his chest and his arm. “How’s that for a hobby, Beard? He went around Mitras slitting the throats of military police just because he could. Felt like it. Maybe you can give me a bit of insight into that, huh?” He slurs.

“I don’t kill indiscriminately,” he says, and Levi actually laughs, something all snarled and crooked escaping his chest, a psychotic giggle. “Never do that again,” Zeke warns him.

“He never told me what I was,” Levi grunts, “don’t know why. Maybe he barely knew himself. But – there was one thing he knew,” he says, and he leans down, slightly, eyes narrowed, feeling himself smirk. Zeke’s face is close, close enough that he could smash his nose with his head if he wanted.

“What?” Zeke asks, all stars in his eyes.

“Well,” Levi tells him, pulling back. “He called it the spark.”

“The spark,” Zeke repeats. “That’s what he called the awakening.”

“The awakening,” Levi mocks. “This is what I mean,” he says, his words running together, “about readin’ too many damn books. It’s a spark, asshole. What does it feel like,” He asks him, “when you turn into a titan?”

Zeke raises his eyes, like he’s surprised to be asked. Or maybe it’s just the first time he’s really thought about it. “Lightening,” he replies, “all down my spine, out to the tips of my limbs.”

“Right. So, I get that,” Levi says, and he realises he’s absently pawing at his own nape, as if he can scrape through to muscle, to bone, to the nerves that alight themselves of their own free will, that move him like a puppet. “That time I destroyed you,” Levi mentions. “Well. The first time, at least.”

Zeke folds his arms, sourly, like a child that’s been teased one too many times. “That’s fascinating,” he says, “what does it feel like?”

Levi shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says.

“You don’t know,” Zeke replies, flatly.

“Yeah, well I don’t think about it, when it’s happenin’.” Levi frowns. “I don’t… I don’t think at all, really. Muscle memory,” he falls on the answer. “I think without thinking. And I know exactly what I need to do.”

“Your ancestors,” Zeke muses.

“My what?”

Zeke raises his brows. “What, you didn’t know?”

Levi kicks him, brusquely. “Do I look like I know? Idiot,” he mutters, swigging from the bottle.

“You’re a mean drunk, Levi.”

“You’re like this all the time so what’s your excuse?”

Zeke sighs, like the back-and-forth is tiring him, like he’s looking for answers and Levi is purposefully obfuscating. He’s fucking not. He just doesn’t care, not about his ancestors, or curses, or bloodlines, or lieges. He has other things to worry about. He tends not to think about himself; this entire conversation feels self-indulgent in the extreme, it’s the most he’s talked about himself to anyone except Erwin, and even then, his Commander had had to coax it out of him over tea, in his office, by the fire, in bed…

“It’s like I said,” Zeke explains, “about the coordinate. When people ingest my spinal fluid, it marks them. When they turn into a titan, I can find their coordinate, I can control them. I can’t – “ Zeke frowns, “obviously, I can’t reach out to you. Neither could Eren, really, even if we came into contact. He can reach Ackerman coordinates, but he can’t control you. Probably because you’re quasi-shifters, but the science gets pretty tenuous past this point, so don’t ask.”

“I really wasn’t going to,” Levi assures him.

“But when you awaken – sorry,” Zeke smirks, “spark, to use your charming uncle’s terminology. It opens you up to the path. You reach out, you receive your – your ancestor’s muscle memory, I believe. And your ancestors were famed warriors, Levi. Each generation stacked upon each generation. Now how’s that for fascinating?”

His eyes are shining beneath their ugly glasses, chin tipped up towards the sky. He truly believes it, the science of it, the wonder. You should have just stayed in school, he thinks, despite himself. He’d thought the same thing of Erwin, sometimes.

Levi shrugs. “Yeah, it’s alright,” he says.

Zeke deflates. Levi almost feels sorry for him.

“How did it happen for you?” Zeke asks him. “I want to know what causes it. With us shifters, it’s just pain – knick of a blade, teeth through tongue, bite of a hand if you’re particularly feral,” and Levi is surprised that Zeke wins a small snort out of him, thinking about his old squad, those stupid teeth marks they’d put into their own hands out of misplaced repentance. “For the Ackerman girl – some mix of fear, pain, the command to fight, a suitable host. Who commanded you?” Zeke demands.

Levi realises, he is too drunk to be having this conversation. Very soon, he’ll be unable to control what he says. But – if he keeps drinking, there’s a good chance he won’t remember this in the morning, nor the inevitable mistake that’s about to occur. “No one,” he says, and frowns. “The fuck is a host?”

“Your liege,” Zeke explains, almost patiently. “That person you are most loyal to. For the Ackerman girl – “

“Mikasa,” Levi interrupts, “her name is Mikasa.”

“Mikasa, then,” Zeke corrects. “For her, it’s surely Eren. Clear as day. He gave her the command, she followed, and she’s been following ever since.”

Levi wrinkles his nose. “How’d you know she just doesn’t love him? That’s hard, because he is, as you say, a feral little fucker. But – “

“You’re funnier when you’re drunk, did you know that?”

“But loving isn’t the preserve of Ackermans,” Levi drawls.

“Devotion,” Zeke suggests instead. “Total and utter. There are too many questions around the science, Levi – what gives you your physical strength, for instance. Or, for example, if you can even turn into a titan at all,” Zeke wonders, absently. “But it’s not your physiology that’s so interesting to me, you understand. Paths,” he waves a hand, “will do what it does. I want to know what gives you your will, or rather – what forces you to devote yourself to someone else’s.”

“Well, sorry to punch a hole in your theory,” Levi slurs, drinking just a touch desperately, “but no one commanded me to do anything. I sparked by myself. So fuck your – your lieges, and muscle memories,” he hiccups.

“Mmm,” Zeke agrees, sitting back like he’s puzzling out a theory, “if what you’re saying is true, that does make this more complicated. What about your uncle?”

“What about him?” Levi asks, belligerently.

“Did he ever tell you what made him spark?”

Levi thinks. He had, actually, but this was before Levi knew his name, and what it meant. He hadn’t been good at it, at first – surviving, that is. He was weak, he was always frightened. Kenny used to threaten to just leave him, leave him to die, and nothing scared him more than that, being left alone again, so he’d try. But Kenny used to say the spark just wasn’t in him. Like your silly whore mother, hmm? He’d grin, without humor.

He’d told him a story. He’d said one day, when he and his little sister were in town, some men in carriage stole her away. And he’d run after them, had begged the police in town, half into their cups, to help him. And they had laughed. And he never caught the carriage. But, Levi, did you know? In that moment, I knew exactly what I had to do.

And he killed the police, who had let the men steal his sister. Levi knows now – that would have been his mother, the girl who was stolen, but he thinks about it in a very disconnected way.

“No one ordered him,” Levi tells him, flatly. “It was anger.”

“Interesting,” Zeke muses. “Fear, anger. What was it for you? Pain? Love?”

Levi sighs, shakes his head absently. “I just wanted to survive,” he tells him, and sours. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, he realises. He downs the rest of his third bottle, feels Zeke’s stares, doesn’t know if it’s disgust, or horror, or awe at his ability to down three bottles of wine in less than an hour and still be coherent.

“I wonder,” Zeke says then, and Levi resists the urge to knock himself out with one of the empty bottles.

“Try not to,” Levi advises, and he holds out his hand. “Another,” he orders, hearing the word all slurred out his mouth.

Zeke’s mouth is hanging open, slightly, like the stupid ape he is. “Maybe you should slow down,” he says, which is how Levi knows he’s probably gone too far. He braces his foot against Zeke’s knee and grinds. “You might actually kill yourself,” Zeke says, and it’s not concern in his voice, more like… unease. Levi snatches the bottle from his grip.

“You were wondering,” he prompts, if only to not have to examine his own disgusting behaviour.

“Hmm,” Zeke agrees. “It wasn’t Him, then. The one that ordered you.”

Him. Strange, that Zeke would be afraid to say his name now, or call him by his title. He’s spat it out plenty of times before, mocking, taunting, or just with sheer carelessness, uncaring that he killed the man, that as a result, Levi will have to kill him. Levi thinks this must mean something to him, all this information, like scratching an itch. Or perhaps –

No, Levi will not think it. He will not even consider it. He will not entertain the notion that for Zeke, the monster in front of him in his linen suit, information about the titans, about Levi’s ancestor’s abnormality, is in anyway comparable to Erwin’s fascinations. Erwin, who just wanted to see the ocean. Who wanted to believe there were people beyond their walls who laughed and danced and built societies that were fair, and equal. Places where they did not kill the fathers of little boys for the crime of thinking. Places where we don’t keep other humans locked Underground, Levi, for the crime of having been born.

“No one ordered me,” Levi says quietly. “I chose.”

“You think you chose,” Zeke corrects. He meets Levi’s eyes. And neither of them dares to break contact.

Levi swigs from his bottle, and does not look away. He smears wine off his chin with the arm of his shirt. “I chose,” he repeats. The world behind Zeke is so terribly blurred, his men’s fires bursts of light. Their chattering has died down, he thinks, distantly. Most of them will be sleeping.

“You know, Levi,” Zeke says, carefully. “I’m trying to help you. You just don’t know it.”

Levi scoffs. “Out the goodness of your heart?” He asks. “If you have one, that is.”

“Rich from you, no?” Zeke looks away. He’s twisting his fingers absently in the grass, the way a bored child would. “You must think me so tremendously evil,” he says, softly.

“Well,” Levi sneers, “perhaps not tremendously evil,” he spits, aware his words are mashing together, that he’s listing forward, rambling the way Kenny would when he was drunk. “If you were tremendously evil,” he mocks, “you wouldn’t have let me drink all this lovely, lovely wine, would you, Beardy?”

Zeke just continues to tear at the grass, errantly. “It’s like I say,” he continues, “it’s an Ackerman thing, Levi. This – this foolish devotion of yours to Him. Your Commander.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Levi mutters petulantly.

And Zeke looks at him, and Levi thinks – damn him, damn him to hell, he thinks Zeke looks pitying. “You’ve sat here for near on a month glaring daggers at me and planning my demise. No matter what happens, I’ll be dead in less than a year anyway. You’re expending too much energy on an inevitability.”

Levi frowns, rubs at eye to stave off a headache. “No,” he says. It’s not a denial, or a protest, or even an order. It’s just saying something for the sake of saying something.

“You call me obsessed,” Zeke continues, and shuffles himself forward, slightly, his chin close to Levi’s knee, “but have you thought of anything else in the last four years? I think – I think I must fill up your dreams, Levi, don’t I? I know I do. You’re just as fixated with me as I am with – “

“What are you saying,” Levi interrupts, patience wearing thin.

“Why does it have to be this way at all?” Zeke tells him, and his voice is level, logical, the way – and God forgive him for thinking this – Erwin’s would be when he was explaining a plan, or an impossibility. Patient, in fact. “You only want me dead on the order of a man who isn’t here to see it fulfilled. And I’m – I’m sympathetic,” Zeke continues, “because I think, perhaps you can’t control it at all. Your master gave you a command, and you’re bound to follow, even though he’s dead, even though it doesn’t even matter because I’ll die anyway, you’re just moving mindlessly forward – “

Levi stands, abruptly. His legs feel all at once too firm and too weak, blocks anchoring him to the ground that he cannot trust to move. But they do move. “I,” he announces, pointedly, “am going for a piss.”

He stumbles off towards the forest. “Captain?” Someone calls after him. It’s Varis. He must be taking watch. “Are you – “ He stares at him, bemused. “Are you drunk?” He blurts, seemingly despite himself, because he freezes up a little with fear. “I mean – of course, it’s not – that’s fine, obviously – “

Levi inhales slowly through his nose. “Yes,” he decides to say. “Yes, I am. In fact – “ he watches Zeke across the clearing, his hands stuffed in his pockets, viewing him with that faint amusement he wants so badly to kick off his face. “You should take the night off.”

Varis raises his brows. “But – the prisoner – “

“He’ll be with me.”

He knows what Varis wants to say. He almost wants to congratulate him for having the balls to say it. “Are you sure you’re – in the right state, Captain?”

“In my sleep, Varis,” Levi says carelessly, waving his hand. “In my sleep.”

Varis blinks at him. “What ‘in your sleep’, Captain?”

Levi blinks. “Well, kill him, of course.” And he continues to trudge his way into the woods, his gear clanking against his thighs, knowing that Zeke will be following behind like an eager dog.

“I hope very dearly you haven’t taken my words to heart, Captain,” he’s saying behind him. “I’m only trying to help, you understand.”

Levi doesn’t reply. He’s going to put as much distance between the camp and himself as he can.

He hears Zeke skip a little to catch up. “You know, Levi,” he says, “there are two kinds of freedom.”

Levi takes stock. He’s got twelve fresh blades and enough gas to let him lap the forest. In his drunken state, the path forward is the only clear thing; the trees, the grass, the owls and stars, and Zeke, all fade into a pleasant blur out the corner of his eyes. Just him, his own two feet, and the way forward. The only thing he can control, after all, are his own limbs.

“There’s physical freedom, of course. The ability to move wherever you want to move, go wherever you want to go. To leave your shitty walls, if that’s what you want. My brother,” he sighs, “is so very preoccupied with moving forward, you understand. And I’m very sympathetic, you see, I know a thing or two about walls myself.”

He should tell Zeke he does not care, but to even expend energy on the snipe feels like ceding ground.

“But then, there’s a different kind of freedom,” Zeke continues. “The one inside your head. My grandfather, for instance. He’s a very timid man. I love him dearly, I’m sure you know, but he’s set up walls inside his own head. Do you understand me, Levi? It’s important that you understand me.”

Don’t lecture me, Levi hears himself think, you dirty, bearded bastard. Even the words inside his head are slurred. He drags his feet. Just one in front of the other.

“He’s so very afraid of our masters. They’ve beaten it into him, all that nonsense about devils, and original sins. They killed his daughter, you know. And then, my father, of course.”

That kind doctor from Shiganshina, Levi thinks, eaten by his son. He represses the urge to shudder in case Zeke thinks he successfully provoked the reaction. It would be better to just let it all die out, he thinks. Shifters, Ackermans, the rest of it all. Just inhumanity upon inhumanity.

“And then there’s you, Levi,” Zeke is saying, voice softer. “Given a command by your host. Your host, Levi. Like you’re a parasite. Are you a parasite? Did you suck him dry and kill him when you were finished?”

Levi doesn’t think anything at all.

“He told you,” Zeke keeps going, like he’s puzzling out from great mystery, “to kill me. And because he ordered you, it doesn’t matter what’s changed since. It doesn’t matter I’ll be dead soon anyway. You think you have to kill me. Because you’ve got walls up inside your head, Levi, and – truly, I do pity you,” he sighs, “because at least the average human perseveres through self-delusion, you… you really just don’t have a choice. You were born this way.”

He matches his pace, skips a few steps ahead as if to block his path, walking backwards through the forest. Don’t trip and break your neck, Levi thinks, mildly.

“Do you think you love him, is that it?” Zeke sneers, and Levi thinks his lack of response is touching a nerve. “Do you believe he loved you? He was a smart man, Levi. He knew what he had in you, I don’t doubt. A loyal slave, likely.”

Levi pulls up short, suddenly, and Zeke flinches. He ignores it, braces his hand against a tree, an undoes the button of his pants. He pisses against the tree, to let Zeke know what he thinks of that.

He feels better, after. Sighing with relief, he brushes down his palms on his cloak. One of them is sticky with tree-sap. “I know, idiot,” he tells Zeke.

“What do you know?” Zeke challenges.

Levi snorts, aimlessly kneads the bridge of his nose. “You think I want to kill you because he told me to?” Levi snorts again, and it’s almost edging into a laugh. “You fool. You stupid, shitty, fucking fool.”

Zeke is staring at him, two fists balled by his hips. Is he angry? Embarrassed? Levi doesn’t know. Fuck it, Levi doesn’t care. He laughs again, then, the alcohol knocking something loose in his head. “Has it ever occurred to you,” Levi hiccups, and then his voice hitches, “that I’m just sadistic, Zeke?”

“You’re not,” Zeke says, but he sounds unsure. “I thought you were,” he admits, “but I’ve known sadists. You’re just – accustomed to violence,” he finishes, distastefully.

“Yes,” Levi agrees, and he points at him, “yes, you know, that’s perfectly put, Beardy. Thank you. I am very accustomed to violence,” he nods. He stumbles slightly, twigs snapping beneath his feet, and props himself up using the tree. “I don’t think you realise,” Levi tells him, that edge of hysteria creeping back inside his voice, “how much I hate you.” He hiccups again. “I don’t just want you dead, idiot. I want you dead at my hands. Don’t you get that?”

“I don’t kill indiscriminately,” Zeke says again.

“Fine,” Levi grunts, pushing himself up to stand. “Lets talk about slaves, Zeke, since it’s so clearly on your mind. I know, you fucking moron. You don’t think I noticed, in the ten years I spent by his side, that I was devoted? That I put his own life above mine no matter what the cost? Fucking hell,” Levi groans, “he used to do this too, you know. People like you – you think you’re so damn clever, you don’t realise that the rest of us can think and feel just as well as you do.”

“Is that not worse?” Zeke scoffs. “Knowing you’re a – “

“Shut up,” Levi orders, “I’m talking. God knows, you’ve talked enough tonight.” He pulls off his cloak, bundles it on the floor by his feet. “The walls inside our heads,” he mocks. “You think I don’t know that shit? I’m a fucking soldier, every person I’ve ever known has been damaged badly enough to be haunted, idiot.” He thinks, strangely, of Nanaba. How they could never sleep in real beds, would use bedrolls from the field instead. Now, how about that. They couldn’t sleep in a bed, because something in their head wouldn’t let them. And Zeke sits here, and tries to lecture him about things he already damn knows.

“You know why you’re a slave, Zeke?” Levi continues. He grips Zeke’s shirt, ignores his squawk of panic, and starts to pull apart his buttons. “Because you lie to yourself. It’s cowardly. I don’t kill indiscriminately,” he mocks, “yeah, well if you have to say it, time and time again, you ever think maybe it’s not true?”

“I don’t kill without cause,” Zeke tells him, hoarsely. “It’s true.”

“When I found Mike,” Levi tells him, roughly twisting open the button of his pants, letting him shuck off the rest of his shirt, “he’d had his legs eaten off him. He was my friend, you know,” Levi says absently, letting his mouth say the things he won’t allow himself to think. “He was kind to me. Not everyone is kind to me, Zeke.”

“Who?” Zeke scoffs.

Who, Levi thinks. His name was Mike Zacharias. He loved Nanaba. He came from the trees. He kept loaded dice. “Squad-leader,” Levi tells him. “He was very tall. He had shaggy hair, big nose. He could beat me in hand-to-hand combat, he was just that good.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Zeke scorns, “I’m not responsible for every titan you suicidal maniacs throw yourself at, Marley is just as much my enemy as – “

Levi kicks off his boots, starts to fumble with his pants. “Thing is,” he says, “your ugly prints were all over the place. Someone had stolen his gear, you see. You know – he was the strongest of us? Other than me, I mean. Best damn soldier I ever knew. Good man, too. And you left him there to die. You didn’t have to do that, Zeke. You didn’t have to let him die like that. He was a good man. Why’d you let him die like that? Didn’t even give him a fighting chance. You made them tear him apart.”

He feels himself smacks his palms into Zeke’s chest, watches him stumble back, tripping over an errant branch. He falls hard onto his bare ass, scrambling back in the dirt. “He would have told you all,” and the strangest thing is, the saddest thing, Levi thinks, is Zeke is truly trying to justify himself. “It would have blown our cover. I couldn’t let – “

“Slave,” Levi spits, compulsive. “Liar. Lying to yourself like that, pathetic.” He balances his foot on Zeke’s chest, doesn’t press, not yet. “You’re right,” he tells him, staring down at him, squirming in the dirt, “I did follow Him, Zeke. And I won’t lie. There is a part of me that wants you dead because he commanded it. I never fucked up a single one of his orders, not in ten years.”

He digs his heel into Zeke’s sternum, crushes the air out of him. “But I always knew what I was,” he spits, dripping, “and I always knew why I did it. And I’ve never lied to myself. Not about my devotion, not even about my mistakes. I do dream about you, you’re right – I dream about skinning you alive. I dream about making you weep,” he says, stamps on Zeke’s chest and feels those ribs break, hears his breathless attempt at a scream. “I’m a piece of shit, Zeke. I come from filth, and I grew accustomed to it, and I’m your worst fucking nightmare.” He grinds his foot into all that crunching bone, feels Zeke cough blood against his ankle.

“And we’re all slaves, idiot,” he tells him, sneeringly. “Some of us just don’t need to lie to ourselves.”

“You’re,” Zeke hisses, wrapping his hands around Levi’s ankle, pulling it out of his flesh, “insane.”

Levi thinks about it. He sighs. “Yes,” he agrees.

Zeke tugs his leg and knocks the wind out of him, the two of them collapsed side by side, naked, aching. Zeke is coughing, all wet and nasty, his breaths growing stronger as he heals. Eventually, he sits up. He pulls off his glasses and shines them with the edge of his discarded shirt, sets them neatly on top.

“So,” he says, rubbing his chest. “Are you Aker-ready?”

“I’m going to fucking Aker-end you,” Levi tells him, flatly. “Move.”

Levi pins him first, straddling his hips nimbly. He wraps his fingers around his wrists, then frowns, folds his palms against Zeke’s and lets their fingers twist.

“Romantic,” Zeke breathes, rolling his hips against him. “You gonna let me fuck you again?”

No. He’s already drunk, the last thing he needs is to be fucked by Zeke so hard he shits himself, too. Instead of answering, he dips his head down, tries Zeke’s lips; wine, cigarettes. Levi feels like the string of a bow after it’s plucked, twitchy, shivering. Irrepressible, like he wants to climb inside Zeke’s skin. He tries him again, this time lets his tongue go further, ignores Zeke’s little moan of satisfaction, his cock feeling heavy against his belly.

Fucker, Levi thinks fiercely, resentful of the other man’s pleasure, not loosening his grip on Zeke for a second, just sliding himself down his body to better pin him to the earth. He doesn’t know what he wants out of this, not at all; he’s too drunk to think clearly, drunk enough that he lights up at the feel of warm hands against his skin. He thinks he wants to fight. He wants to beat Zeke to a bloody pulp, to wrestle, feel his muscles strain and twitch. He wants Zeke to – to try to beat him. He wants that fight. He wants Zeke’s nails to leave ugly, striping scars down his back, bruises on his arms. What does he want? What does he really fucking want, from all this, from this disgusting – this sham, this sickening joke, bedding down in a damp forest, fucking this monster above the bones of his comrades --

“Punch me,” Levi orders.

Zeke stares up at him. “What?!”

“Fucking punch me,” Levi grits, picking up Zeke’s shoulders and slamming his head back into the ground, watching his eyes cloud concussively. He thinks, that hit might have killed an ordinary man.

“Goddamn,” Zeke is probably blinking stars from his eyes, “this is really Aker-trocious, Levi, even by your standards – “

Levi grips his throat and squeezes. “Fine,” he breathes, his thumbs clamping down against Zeke’s pulse points, “don’t, then,” he tells him, and takes a sick satisfaction from the way Zeke chokes, something as close to genuine panic as a shifter can get.

Zeke sends his fists barrelling into the side of Levi’s head, uncoordinated, sloppy, but powerful all the same. He flings him spinning into the leaves. In a different mood, with less alcohol in him, nothing would stop him from squeezing the air out of Zeke’s lungs, but tonight –

Tonight, he thinks, he just needs to be reminded. Pain has always been such a useful instructor.

“Liar,” Levi goads, pushing himself up on arms he wishes would shake, that he wishes would collapse beneath him. “Lying, murdering, sack of shit – “

Zeke kicks him, his toes connecting with Levi’s stomach, knocking air from him, breaking him. He even cries out. It’s good. It feels so fucking real.

“I’m not a liar,” Zeke says, standing above him, and his voice is all raw like the words are being scraped from him. “I’m not a liar, you could never understand, Levi, why I do what I do – “

“I don’t care,” Levi wheezes, curling his arms around his stomach, “what you need to tell yourself to sleep at night – “

Zeke kicks him on the ass and Levi would laugh if he wasn’t trying to hold in shouts of pain. “Fight back,” he hisses, “why aren’t you even fighting – “

“Liar,” is all Levi can think to say, crawling forward in the dirt, “all those innocents – “

“I don’t care,” Zeke grits, and he collapses onto his knees, slides through the mud to grip Levi’s hair, pull back his head, “about the innocents, no one is innocent, Levi, but I’m not a monster, I’m not. You don’t understand,” he says, and Levi thinks he might be pleading, “but I’m a saviour, Levi, of everyone on this island, every person you’ve ever loved – “

Levi spits to clear his mouth of the taste of blood. He feels like a fish on a hook, and it feels good. Repenting. “Do you need my forgiveness, Zeke?” He asks him, breath heavy, into the silence of the forest. “Why? Because you’ll never have it.”

Zeke drops him. And then he beats him again. This is good, this is easy, Levi knows this better than anything.

“Stop it,” Zeke spits on him, fists pummelling into his chest, his stomach, his thighs, all reckless and uncoordinated, “fucking – fight back. I’m not a sadist, I don’t want – stop.”

Could Levi let him do it? Zeke probably would. He’d beat him to death, despite all his protests, and at least Levi would be proven right. And he’d never have to worry, never again, not about anything. Would he see his mother, he thinks. Would she welcome him with open arms, scum that he is, killer, thief, unable to protect those he loves. Could Erwin look him in the eyes knowing this is how he dies? He would forgive the order, Levi knows, but could he ever forgive him for letting Zeke be the one to end it?

Kill me, he thinks, try.

As soon as he thinks it, the rush hits him, all at once; his sense alight, nerves sparking from nape down to the tips of his toes. Survive! His body screams at him – it will not take no for an answer. Survive! Survive! Survive, Levi!

“Goddamn, Goddamn,” Zeke is snivelling, “I’m not a bad person, Levi. I don’t want to hurt you, I just – I don’t like hurting you, I’m not a monster, I don’t like pain, no one likes pain – “

Levi shuts his eyes. He thinks without thinking, relinquishes himself to it.

When he comes to, Zeke’s hands are on his face. Beautiful, he’s saying, their hips pressed together, straddling each other, their thighs tangled. Levi, beautiful fucking Levi, oh God --

Levi blinks, disgusted. He thinks the shock has sobered him up more than he can be to take this, to think this is a good idea, a suitable way to cope. He punches Zeke in the gut, listens his squeal of pain. His head collapses on Levi’s shoulder. They both kneel there, panting. Both of them are naked. Neither of them are hard. And together, they are pathetic.

“What was that for?” Zeke croaks. Levi thinks he’s been crying – his eyes are red rimmed.

“Ugh,” is all he can manage, pushing him back to clamber out of his embrace. That was what he needed, he realises. Not sex. Just instinct. Just the activation of that tickle at the nape, that thing which makes him survive. He grabs his pants, shakes them free of dirt and starts to pull them on.

“You’re not – “ Zeke is blinking, still sitting there like an idiot, dick flopping against his thigh, “I mean, we’re not – “

“No,” Levi tells him, shortly. “Enough. This won’t happen again.” He pulls on his shirt, brusquely, starts to do up the buttons.

“Why not?”

“Because I must have a grain of self-respect left in me,” Levi replies. “This is the last time I entertain you out of my own delusion,” he says, tucking the ends of his shirt into the waistband of his pants.

He’s pulling on his boots. “Huh,” he hears Zeke huff. “Well alright then,” he says, and suddenly, the weepy, wretched man is gone, replaced by his wheedling, whiny counterpart. “Does that mean no more questions?”

“No more answers,” Levi mutters. “I can’t control what comes out of your shitty mouth.” Cigarettes, wine, his beard against Levi’s chin. He shudders.

“Fine,” Zeke says, and Levi can hear him behind him, rustling, likely flapping around for his glasses. He turns to watch him put them on, blinking and squinting in the low light. “That’s probably for the best. Things may get complicated.”

Levi grunts. He wonders who he hates more: Zeke, or himself.

“For what it’s worth,” Zeke continues, “you were good. For a guy coming out of a ten-year relationship, I mean.”

Levi doesn’t dignify that with a response at all, and it’s almost blessed. Right back where they started. Zeke will chatter, inanely, and Levi will go back to ignoring him. And when he kills him, it will be like this never happened at all.

“I do have – perhaps, just one more question,” Zeke admits, guiltily. Levi attaches his gear back around his waist. He watches Zeke tucking himself back into his pants, feet still bare, like he’s accustomed to dirt beneath his feet.

He slots a blade into each handle and lets them sit there, against his hips.

“Ah,” Zeke notes, “I see. Well – feel free to ignore me, I suppose. It’s only a little question. In fact, I’m sure it’s one you’ve asked yourself lots of times, given your… family's affliction.”

Levi turns, and starts to walk back to the camp. The alcohol has worn off, sharply, viscerally. He realises, he will still remember this in the morning; without the hope of amnesia, his choices look all the more sickening with sunrise.

“It would have been better,” Zeke announces behind, “to have never been born, wouldn’t it?”

 Levi stares at the stars. To have never been born, he thinks. He would be lying if he didn’t admit he’d thought about it. Levi must survive, his body will do it for him even when his mind has left him behind, but – to have never been born. To have never sat in that dark room with his crying mother, never felt the sting of fists, to watch her die slowly in that bed fighting for each breath. To have never starved, dug around in sewage for crusts of bread, felt Kenny’s taunts, the feel of a knife in his palm. To never know the look in a man’s eyes when he dies at his hand. To have never lost anything at all.

He stares at the stars, the same ones Erwin had mapped, and patiently explained, each and every one. Maria, Rose, and Sina, he’d told him, pointing to the three stars lined in a row. Levi is glad he’s dead. He’s glad Erwin died, so he never had to witness this horror – worse than the death, the destruction, he’ll never have to know that all those people they once dreamed about beyond their walls are just as sick, and selfish, and foolish as themselves.

“No,” Levi tells him, calmly.

“No?” Zeke frowns. “Well why not?”

“Because,” Levi says, and he stares at those stars, “I never would have known Him.” And he turns his head, looks at Zeke and feels – for the briefest moment – nothing but pity.

Zeke’s eyes are cold. “I see,” he says, flatly. “How… predictable.”

“Yeah,” Levi agrees, and realises he takes comfort in that. “It is. I may be Ackerman, Zeke, but I’m more human than you.”