Sometimes I Forget How Reading Is Just. Marvelous. Just An Absolutely Fucking Endlessly Joyful Activity.

sometimes i forget how reading is just. marvelous. just an absolutely fucking endlessly joyful activity. i’ll go about my life and not read one single book for months and be like why am i morose! why am i so apathetic! what is missing here!!!! and try to look for whatever it is that is lacking and never find it anywhere and i get so tired and sad and angry, and then i’m finally like i’m gonna stop everything for a couple days and read a really good book bc i don’t care about anything else. and suddenly i get motivated to work bc i know i’ll read when i’m on break. i get more creative. i want to watercolor again and bust out the shameful fabric stash with all my unfinished sewing projects. god even my dreams get more vivid!! what the fuck! and i’m like here is the magic i was looking for, why did i ever think i was going to find it anywhere else. it was always here!!!

//gn!reader

One second you're taken in a deep sleep, and the next you're awoken with a twitch by a violent jolt and a sobbing gasp through the dark.

Levi tears out of your arms and sits up, panting wetly.

Nightmare. You blink in a flurry to clear the sleep from your eyes and mind and reach over to the bedside for the lantern. Turning the small knob ignites a warm flame, and casts light.

Levi's knees are bent and pulled up to his chest. Hunched over, he looks smaller than usual, and now that you can properly see, you notice the way he's clutching his chest and tightly gripping his hair. By the sound of his heavy breathing, you can tell he's holding back tears.

Frowning, you crawl up slightly behind and beside him. Your fingertips draw against his back in ghostly circles, in case he doesn't want be touched.

"Sorry," he whispers.

"It's okay. It's going to be okay."

His shoulders deflate a little. In firmer up-and-down motions, you rub his back, and press your forehead to his narrow shoulder. After that, he catches his breath a little easier.

Nightmares are nothing new with Levi. You can bet on the chances of him apologizing every time he wakes you up, and with how violent they usually are, that's also guaranteed. But you haven't gleaned much success at making him understand that you don't mind. Not one bit.

In time he melts against you, so you're swaddling him. You prop your chin on his shoulder and stroke his hair, soft as though your fingers glide through water.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" you ask.

You wait.

"…No." Then he sniffs. "Tea."

You chuckle a little. "Would you like company?"

"I knew you'd say that." He sighs, stroking your knuckles. "Fine."

You squeeze him close. "It's a deal."

The first press of his lips against yours is always soft. A barely-there brush, featherlight and cautious, no matter how many times they've come in contact. Levi's breath hitches, the thicker, soft skin of his bottom lip pressing hard into the crease between yours. It's so soft, so sweet that it makes your heart ache. He sighs, nose releasing a warm huff of air against your cheek and fingers adjusting on the back of your head to tilt your mouth further into his.

It feels almost as though he's drinking you in. Relishing every bit of you as he sighs into your embrace. Your taste, your smell, your warmth and your breath. It's not like you can't say the same. Closing your eyes, his entire being fills your senses. A rich, clean and masculine smell. He's always so warm, pressing himself as close as he can.

You'd think, given his nature, that Levi would prefer to press the kiss into your mouth. Deepening the embrace with his tongue entering the wet cavern to slide against your own. More often than not, though, he prefers you to take control, to press your tongue into his mouth, tasting him. Black tea and dark spicy masculinity. The way he sighs happily makes your heart stutter in your chest. He wants as much of you as possible. Your scent filling his nose, your taste filling his mouth. He groans into your mouth, loud and needy, as you slide your tongue across his teeth, slowly lapping along the sensitive underside of his own tongue.

Contrary to his usual quiet persona, Levi's a loud kisser. You don't think he's really aware of it, moaning and humming his pleasure right into your mouth. It makes your head whirl. The plump thickness of his bottom lip is particularly sensitive, a mere scrape of your teeth against the wet and swollen flesh draws out a needy gasp. He nips you right back, he always does, fingers threading into your hair and tilting your head. It's messy. Wet. He's always particularly grabby whenever he's like this. Needy. He doesn't want to break the embrace, doesn't want your lips to leave his for even the briefest of moments.

☰ LOVE YOU. LOVE YOU SO MUCH. –.ೃ࿐ 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐢 𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧.

when levi loves, he loves intensely, passionately, wholeheartedly.

his love for people in general may seem very subtle, but underlying his cold exterior, he has a heart as big as the universe – it must've been because of his soft spot for his mother and the love that she always showed for him had stuck as he grew up.

when he surrendered his heart to you, though hesitant at first, he trusted you more than anyone to have the privilege of intertwining your soul with his. levi is a soft, but rough lover. while he's more of an acts of service man, there are other components in your relationship he lacks in but it doesn't mean he won't try for you.

he never raises his voice at you, he doesn't have the heart to at all. whenever he's on a mission, he'll write a letter every night without fail – always signing off with 'yours forever'. he does his best to verbally reaffirm you too, even if it's not his forte. he definitely gets better over time.

"sleep well, my love?"

"don't strain yourself too much, let me help you with that."

"you're so beautiful. i like that dress on you, wear it for me again hm?"

it's hard for him to be physically intimate at first and you fondly remember the times when you needed to initiate any form of contact with him whether that was holding his hand when he did paperwork, resting your hands on his shoulders after a long day at work, threading your hands through his hair during the late hours of the night – he honestly craved it so much. but, he couldn't be selfish. as generous as you were to him, he was just the same.

while he didn't have much growing up and didn't have much to offer for you, he would do anything to give you the world with his bare hands, rip the stars from the sky, pull oceans apart for you to roam the earth with your existence. he loves you like no other.

and it doesn't just stop there, he will make it very clear just how much he loves you.

☆ — 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭: @luvjiro , @youre-ackermine , @lovolee3 , @notgoodforlife , @averysmolbear , @bejewelledd , @leviismybby , @evas-leslas , @roseofdarknessblog @cometlevi , @21aurora (! ! 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐠𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝💌)

Farlan: how was your relationship with Kenny?

Levi: oh, it was a little hit and miss

Farlan: sometimes it was good and sometimes it was bad?

Levi: Sometimes Kenny hit me and sometimes he missed

"Give 'em here,"

"Hm?" Levi hums distractedly, briefly glancing up at you from his desk. A solid stack of paper rests on the dark wood, one he's been slowly working through for more than an hour. Eyes flicking back down to his current page, he grimaces, fingers tightening on the pen. Black ink continues across the page in a tight, stiff scrawl.

You approach his side, dragging your fingers across the smooth, recently polished mahogany. Unlike Erwin's gargantuan desk, his is a more conservative workspace, kept mostly clear besides whatever he's currently working on, a small candle in the far corner and the occasional steaming cup of tea. Sliding the white pages to the side, you take their place, plopping down onto the hardwood. Plucking the pen from his grasp, it quickly joins the pages by your hip. You reach out, miming a grabbing gesture like an eager child, "Your hand. Gimme."

“Are you really so needy? Already?” He sighs, leaning back in his chair. Running his fingers through his bangs, Levi glares up at you. "I still have 20 pages to finish."

"Nope," you say with a firm pop. "I've noticed you taking little breaks. Stopping to try to stretch your fingers. Give it here."

“Weren’t you supposed to be reading?” His eyes flick toward the office’s couch, your book resting closed on the middle cushion. “Couldn’t keep your eyes off of me?”

You smirk, “How could I, with you hissing in pain over here.” You wiggle your fingers again. “I think I even heard you whimper a few times. Now gimme.”

Eyes narrowing, his fingers twitch from where they're resting on his thigh. “Is this just some shitty excuse to hold my hand?”

Teasing, you knock into his knee with your own. “Like I need to ask?" This.. this whatever it is between you might be new, but it's nice. It's refreshing. Something easy while everything else seems to be difficult. "No silly! I’m going to give you a hand massage!”

His nose curls up, brows drawing tight. At his thigh, the digits in question curl into the fabric of his thigh. “A what?”

Holding your hand out, palm open in askance, you try again. “It’ll help. I promise.”

“Fine.” Finally his hand falls into yours. It's stiff, the digits held firm and tense like those of a wary animal.

Patting the back of his hand, you cheer exaggeratedly. “There you go! That’s a good boy!”

He clicks his tongue, “Don’t praise me like i’m some fucking cat.”

“Then don’t act like one.” Twisting the back of his hand to rest on your thigh, you interlace your fingers loosely with his, rubbing your thumb firmly into the meat of his palm. “Relax.”

With a sigh, he does, if only a little bit. Still, his shoulders are tight, eyes locked onto where your hand is wrapped around his, following the firm press of your thumb into the meat beneath his own.

“You have such beautiful hands,” you murmur, torn between watching your work and watching him watching you. Suddenly, you feel warm, anxious excitement prickling along your spine. You'd gone into this so confidently, you can only hope that it actually helps. “Have I told you how much I love your hands?”

His lips curl, a filthy smirk peeking up along the edges. “My fingers, yes. Loudly.” His fingers loosen, curling to press along the back of your hand.

"Ha," you snort, happy to see him a bit more relaxed. Stretching his hand out flat, you glide your fingers along the length of each of his digits, one after the other. They pop a little bit, small airy noises.

"You take such good care of your hands," you note, twisting it to press his palm to your thigh. He has callouses, that's for sure, rough little patches at the base of each finger. There's little knicks too, white lines of thin aged scars. A particularly deep one is gouged into the length of his pointer finger, right along the outer edge. Still, his skin is soft, you tell him as much.

He shrugs, swallowing heavily and watching you follow along his fingers, pressing heavily into the skin. "Just like to keep clean. You know that."

Huffing, you reply, "I'm pretty sure everyone on base knows that." Even his nails are pretty, perfectly trimmed without even a single bit of dirt beneath them. Even the cuticles have been pushed up. Dragging the tip of your finger along the perfectly smooth rounded edge of his nail, you note, "I'd love to paint your nails. It'd be like a good old fashioned sleepover."

Levi hums, eyes heavy. His hand is no longer stiff, relaxed completely into your grip. "What's that?"

You gasp, "A sleepover? You don't know what a sleep over is?"

His lips thin, somewhere between a frown and a scowl. "I didn't exactly have a normal up-bringing, remember."

"Oh," you breathe. Sometimes it's so easy to forget that his missed out on most normal childhood experiences. "Don't let Hange ever find out. They'll go on a whole rampage."

Levi rolls his eyes, "I'm sure. So what is it?"

"Hmm," you struggle, "It's sort of like a girl's night?"

He replies slowly, not quite understanding, "Girls..night?"

"Boys had them too!! And there were mixed ones! They were fun!" Hand still working against his, you trace your fingers along the boney lines on the back of his hand, watching the skin shift as you press into him. "It's like... pillow fights! And painting each others nails!"

His brows scrunch up in confusion, eyes distant as he tries to imagine the experience. "That sounds...fun."

Excited, you continue, "There were games too! Truth and Dare! Oooh and spin the bottle!"

Levi's eyes widen in horror, no doubt recognizing those as games the younger scouts play, often under the influence of heavy amounts of alcohol. "Hange would go on a rampage," he agrees solemnly.

Pressing his palm down into the meat of your thigh, you push into his first knuckle. It pops, loud and resonant, beneath the press of your thumb. Levi tenses, hissing at the uncomfortable sensation.

Heedless, you continue onto the next, earning another loud pop. And another. And another, until all five joints have been released. “It’s such a shame that your hands been bothering you.”

His shoulders dip in a long sigh, eyes fluttering closed. “It’s really not that big of a deal. It’s fine.”

Flipping his hand back over, you tug at his forefinger, quickly pulling the length to pop it. “You’ve been holding your fingers weird for awhile now. How long have they been hurting?”

“It’s nothing. An ache, if anything,” he shifts uncomfortably in his chair. As you tug at another one of his fingers, he grunts. “A couple weeks.”

You switch your grasp, pinching your fingers together and pulling along the lengths of his own, no longer popping them, merely soothing the sore muscles. "Do you think it's gear aches?"

He grumbles something under his breath, low enough that you can't really catch it. "I'm not some fucking brand-new cadet."

As with most physical activities, using ODM gear hurts at first. The constant grip strength makes your hands ache, burning with red hot pain as muscles build and callouses form. New cadets complain constantly about the pains, dubbing them 'gear aches' and constantly whine to the medical staff for lotion to sooth their hands until they can adjust.

"It's not just new cadets," you note with a hum, "Sometimes scouts complain about them after training particularly hard."

"I never even had them when I started out," Levi clicks his tongue. "Izzy had them pretty bad though. Had to find some lotion for her."

"Find or steal?" The glower you get in response is answer enough. You smooth your thumb along his palm, repeating your earlier actions and working the digit hard enough into his muscle to earn a grunt. "Of course you didn't get gear aches. Is there anything you're not immediately perfect at?"

Levi purses his lips, but you cut in before he can speak, "Ah ah, no self deprecating."

He grumbles something very quiet under his breath.

"What was that?"

He responds quietly, barely audible. "I'm shit at paperwork."

"It's just something new. You'll get used to it eventually." Levi's hands are so small, his palm wide and the fingers long and thin. The skin is pale enough that you can trace the blue lines of his veins, where they twist and curve along the back of his hand and across his palm. Dainty. His hands are dainty, graceful yet somehow still masculine. "Okay.. so it's not gear aches. What is it then?"

You can barely catch it, but Levi's eyes flicker towards the stack of papers by your thigh. At just the same time, your fingers catch a rough spot on the side of his middle finger. A callous. It seems to be newer, up towards the top of the digit, near the first joint. Wait a minute..

The realizations strikes you so fast, you can't help but blurt out, "It's the paperwork!"

Levi scowls, fingers twisting into your palm. He looks shy, ducking his head down. "It's fucking useless anyways. Why do those pigs need to know every time someone on my team scrapes their knee? Or fucks up their uniform in training?"

You stiffen your shoulders, pitching your voice low in a rough imitation of Erwin. "Levi, cataloging our mistakes is an important measure to prevent them going forward. A mere scrape during training could equate to a loss of-"

"-Stop. Shut the fuck up," Levi cuts you off with a small laugh, "That's such a shitty imitation of him."

You're happy to see him smile and the sound of his laughter has your heart doing somersaults in your chest. You pat his hand softly, "You don't need to stress so much about it. Most of it just ends up decorating some tiny little storeroom in the basement of headquarters. Erwin might glance at some of the more important ones, like incident reports- but the higher ups don't really care.

The fingers of Levi's free hand disappear into the inky blackness of his bangs, frustration oozing from his features, "If they're just going to end up in some musty-ass storeroom, then why the fuck do I have to fill out 50 fucking pages every week?"

"If you're lucky some higher up might even use the pages to wipe his ass," you chirp, enjoying the resulting snort. "Us scouts are scrutinized pretty heavily, ya' know. Sometimes I think Erwin is just desperately trying to keep us funded."

Levi frowns, "And so he's, what? Overloading them with useless nonsense?"

"Maybe? I certainly wouldn't put it past him. Something you're actually bad at is relaxing. Just take breaks every once and awhile. You don't need to do it all in one sitting." At some point during the conversation you'd stopped massaging his hand, instead merely fiddling with the lengths of his fingers. "Did the massage help?"

Levi grunts, "Yeah." His finger pat your thigh. "It was nice. Thanks."

"They don't ache anymore?" His hand is still limp and heavy, warm against your thigh.

"No." His hand rises, fingers stretching cautiously. "Feels kind of fuzzy, actually."

"That's good. I'm glad." You expect him to scoot you back to the couch so he can get back to the paperwork, but he doesn't. He just sits there, not wanting you to move. "If I had some lotion it probably would've been even better."

"Maybe next time," he replies. He shuffles in his seat, scootching forward several inches so his knees knock the inside of your thighs.

"Next time?" Your surprise is doubled when his other hand falls into your lap, palm up with back pressed to the fat of your thigh.

His eyes ask the question that his mouth doesn't and your fingers immediately start kneeding into the meat of his palm.

Next time.