foxcakesandstories - Tumblr blog

foxcakesandstories · 3 months

Text

"Petals on a Rose" (a RivaMika drabble)

Day 1 of RivaMika Month: Flowers

He didn’t mean to overhear. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop. He also didn’t mean to stay hidden until the conversation ended. All he intended to do was to go into the mess hall and scold the brats for chit chatting and messing around instead of focusing on the cleaning that should’ve been done hours ago.

Yet, that’s precisely what he did. Overbearing, eavesdropping, hiding. And now the cursed conversation is the only thing echoing through his mind, despite all efforts to just shake it off:

—

“Why don’t you try using flowers, Mikasa?”

Levi had walked past the mess hall when her heard the potato girl speak, only halting when a certain name was said. Why his feet stopped in its tracks, he had no clue.

Except, he does. He actually knows exactly why.

“Flowers?” He heard Mikasa repeat in confusion.

“Yeah! Use the petals to determine whether you confess to him or not!” Sasha explained excitedly.

Confess? What the hell are they talking about? Confess to whom?

“I don’t understand,” her voice as monotonous as ever.

“You know, where you pull each petal off saying ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ to each one and whatever you say to the last petal is your answer! But in your class it’ll be, ‘confess or not to confess’. Something like that!”

“That’s so stupid,” both Levi and Mikasa thought, though it was Mikasa who said it out loud.

“It’s worth a shot!” Sasha persisted, “Think of it as just flipping a coin, except with more chances!”

There was an unsettling feeling at the bottom of his stomach when he puts two and two together, because who else would that gloomy brat want to confess to if not to the reckless Titan boy?

“I’d rather just not.”

Levi hate that he felt even an ounce of relief.

“Aww, c’mon Mikasa! I think it’s time! I see the way he looks at you too. Who knows, maybe he’s also waiting to hear you say you love him.”

“L-Love is a strong word…” Mikasa stammered and Levi thinks that was the first time he’s ever heard sound so flustered.

“Ahhh, then why is your face so red!” Sasha chimed, her laughter nearly echoing down the halls.

“It’s not!”

Her voice cracked slightly and that’s how Levi knew she was lying. And her lie revealed two things: her face was indeed red and she is in love with Eren.

“Tch.”

So much for that ounce of relief.

—

That’s when he left. He didn’t bother to do what he came there to do, because when he found himself having to fight his inner demons to not barge inside to see for himself the rose-tinted cheeks of his strongest soldier and tell her she’s in trouble just as an excuse to keep her working all day and away from Eren, he knew he had to walk away.

It’s been some hours since then and much to his distress, it is taking him much too long to finish paperwork that he normally would’ve had completed hours ago had his mind not been polluted with scenes of Mikasa confessing her love to Eren.

Much like earlier, he hadn’t meant to fall in love. Especially not a subordinate, not with her. He hadn’t meant to fall in love at all. He thought it was just a fleeting feeling. But being humanity’s strongest doesn’t make him immune from the human heart and the strings it pulls. And his just so happened to pull — no, yank, rather — his right into the femme fatale that is Mikasa Ackerman.

Levi grabs his coat, needing some air, hoping to clear his mind from such troublesome affairs. However, it seems the universe enjoys a challenge because lo and behold, from a distance leans Mikasa against a pillar of the outdoor corridor…pulling off petals from a rose.

His stoicism hides his shock. The brat is actually doing it? She’s actually picking off petals to help her determine whether or not she’s going to confess her love to that boy? Didn’t she just say that was stupid? But also…didn’t he also see this coming? Why is he so surprised? Why is he even wasting his time thinking about this shit? Why —

Suddenly she’s smiling, his thoughts interrupted as she gazes at the bare pistil of what was once a rose with eyes full of resolve, and there comes his heartstrings, being yanked towards her once again, but this time only to be ricocheted back at him, shattering the only hope he never should’ve manifested in the first place.

Night falls and Levi still sits at his desk with the same amount of paperwork from when the day started. He stands up to get the blood flowing into his system, unbuttoning the top of his his dress shirt and loosening his cravat to ease the heat he feels from irritation. It’s beyond him why he hasn’t shaken this off yet. This is extremely trivial matters. He is captain of the Survey Scouts. He should be strategizing for the missions ahead, not dwelling on the love life of that gloomy, insufferable brat with the stubborn attitude, healing smile, beautiful eyes, tender heart, and…

“Fuck,” Levi grunts under his breath, sitting back down in his chair utterly defeated.

To add insult to injury, he hears a knock at his door.

“What?” He calls out grumpily, not hiding the annoyance in his tone as his eyes fixated at the ceiling fan above him.

“Captain, I have some reports to turn in.”

Levi could only scoff at his luck. Of course it’s her. Of course. Who else could it be if not the very person who has been driving him insane all day? The greater side of him says to shoo her away. The lesser side of him says to allow her in and, per usual, risk his heart pulling some ridiculous tactic that’ll only put him back in square one with these curse emotions.

It’s always the latter.

“Quickly,” he caves, his tongue a bit sharper than intended.

Mikasa walks in, quietly closing the door behind her before approaching his desk. With a slow huff a breath, he draws his head back down and is surprised to instantly catch her gaze as he only expected her to place the reports down and leave.

But instead, there she stands. With not one sheet of paper in her hands.

Levi eyes her dubiously.

“Where are the reports?”

Mikasa remains uncharacteristically quiet for a short moment, somehow managing to heighten his nerves more than any gruesome battle he’s ever faced beyond the walls.

And it’s the rosy tint on her cheeks that make him fear this may be his toughest battle yet.

“There’s actually something I need to talk to you about,” her voice is timid and he wonders if he’s talking to the same stubborn, sassy brat he’s known, “Or something I need to…tell you rather.”

There’s a pregnant silence between the two, his heartbeat steady but loud at his ears as he waits. But still she’s silent, and as much as he’s grown a soft spot for her, not even she is exempt from his ill-tempered impatience.

“Out with it, Ackerman. Or are you going to just stand there and — “

“I think I'm in love with you. Captain.”

Indeed. His toughest battle yet.

“What?” he still breaths out when he heard her loud and clear.

“I have feelings for you,” Mikasa clarifies, her cheeks growing rosier, though her tone is frustrated with how her eyebrows are furrowed in what looks like both annoyance and discomfort as she tries to keep her eyes on his, the same face she makes when they bicker, except this time, there’s no bickering.

Levi is dumbstruck. Both Ackermans are atypical tonight, it seems. He did not expect at all that Mikasa was just going to spit it out, let alone randomly confess her feelings for him.

Levi tenses. Confess? The soft image of her smile when she gazed at the petal-less rose floats into his vision and then it just hits him like a train.

Oh.

OH.

She meant to confess to him this whole time.

It's silent between them again, and Levi's internally yelling at himself to say something, anything to pull himself out of the mud he's stuck in.

“Quite the sour face you got there for someone who’s confessing something rather romantic.”

Of fucking course the first thing that comes out of his mouth is his usual brass before anything else, not realizing he spoke out of nervousness until he felt the regret hit when a frown starts to form on Mikasa’s lips.

“It’s not a joke…” Mikasa says grumpily, but the tinge of hurt doesn’t go unnoticed, “I’d appreciate if it you took me seriously right now.”

“Who said I wasn’t?” Levi replies straightaway, as though trying to make up for his heedless response earlier.

“Because you’re not saying anything,” she glares and spits back, and despite the spiteful tone, Levi feels relief from the wave of familiarity her moodiness brings.

“Sort of threw me a curveball there, Ackerman. Can’t exactly come up with a response on the sp—.”

“Thought humanity’s strongest is supposed to think fast on his feet,” she bites, “Seems pretty slow to me.”

He raises a brow, a vein in his forehead twitching.

“Listen, brat—“

“And you don’t have to ‘come up’ with anything. It’s either you do or you don’t, so which is it?”

The audacity of this girl to speak so sharp to her own superior, demanding answers out of him like he owes her his time, as if she wasn't the one who came into his office unannounced in the middle of the night on a white lie, but he expected nothing less. He never does. How can he? It’s her. It’s Mikasa. It’s always Mikasa.

It will always be Mikasa.

And he will fold every time.

Her voice is quiet now.

“Do you...also have feelings for me?”

There's this tone of defeat when she speaks that rubs Levi the wrong way, as if she had came to her own conclusion about his own feelings, that he must not love her back because he didn't respond right away. She's stubborn as she is childish, and he hates that he finds it both endearing and stressful, because it's what makes him blurt out as blunt as possible, without a single thought...

"I do. I've been in love with you for a long time."

Her expression changes from gloomy to that of surprise, her eyes widening slowly as she's processes his words. He hears his heartbeat at his ears again when it occurs to him exactly what he had just done; that he, too, has confessed his feelings for her and there was no taking it back.

Not like he would've anyways.

"Thought the girl of a hundred soldier's is supposed to think fast on her feet," he mocks her earlier comment, using such a tactic to ease the tension between them and turn it into something more familiar and comfortable.

It works. Her blush deepens and he wonders momentarily how far the red goes.

"You're annoying," she huffs, a small tug on the corner of her lips fighting to be hidden.

Levi scoots himself back with his chair, and extends his arms to her, insinuating something quite bold and unlike him at all, he even admits, but it's too late to retract it back. Leave it to her to bring out sides of him that he never thought he'd ever reveal himself.

He is still just a man, after all.

Fortunately, Mikasa doesn't falter or stray away. She makes her way around his desk and takes her offered seat at his lap. It's like second nature the way the his arms wrap around her waist, a natural gesture, and it's when she smiles softly as his face leans up to close the gap between them that Levi admits that perhaps picking petals from a rose isn't so stupid after all.

66 notes · View notes