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nymphofthefountain · 2 months ago

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Again and again, even though we know love's landscape [Chapter II]

Chapter II: And I felt the taste of you bubble up inside me

Levi Ackerman/ Reader | Reincarnation!AU| 5.4k words

Masterlist | AO3 | | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

CHAPTER SUMMARY There’s a blatant hope for his appreciation in your questions. Levi doesn’t know how to explain to you that he’s spent his last ten birthdays hoping to see this exact curve of your neck as you lean towards the table and lay your cheek on the back of your hand.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

You can’t imagine how much I admire authors with an updating schedule. Even when I have the chapters written, it takes me years to edit. It’s my job’s fault. Anyway, here’s chapter 2. I think it turned out fine enough. I’m not sure about the smut scene at the end of the chapter but I’ll wait to hear from you. As always, I’m deeply grateful to those of you that continue reading. Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Content warnings [Spoilers]: Restaurant date. Psychological struggles. Flashbacks. Touch-starved intimacy. Slow, emotionally tangled pacing. Self-harm (past, non-graphic). Penis-in-vagina sex, very emotional. More detailed and spoilery warnings in AO3.

You call him in the early afternoon. He already has the phone in his hand—thumb hovering over your contact, he’s spent hours trying to piece together the least threatening of pretexts to hear you once more.

“Levi,” you say his name again. There’s a dreamlike lilt to your voice when Levi can’t anchor it to your body; it’s enough to renew the rush of electricity through his veins, anyway. “How’s your shoulder?”

“I’ll survive,” he replies.

An ache persistently buzzes in his right side, from his chest up into his neck. But it’s easy to drown; since arriving in the early morning, he’s been too happy to dwell on the pain.

The fucking sling, however, is much more difficult to stomach. Levi does not like the constraint.

After the Battle of Heaven and Earth, when the ground still reeked with the cupric scent of butchery and the air still burned the eyes, Levi was taken to a makeshift field hospital. He was tired and empty and flightless. For many days and many nights, he was nothing more than pure, raw pain. Levi lashed out like a rabid dog. The nurses used rags to tie him up—then rope, when he tore through the cloth; then leather, when he snapped the rope. Gabi and Falco didn’t like it, but they were kids; all they could do was apply ointment on the torn skin of his wrists when they managed to get close enough.

“Are you sure?” Levi hears you hesitate—a terse quiet before you go on with your cautious teasing. “Didn’t it get infected? The sausage guy did touch you with his greasy fingers, after all.”

Levi’s jacket is drying on a rack near the living room radiator. At the hospital’s cafeteria, you had spotted a tiny grease stain on the shoulder—the fatty trace of the man’s bumbling first aid. Levi hadn’t had the mind to notice. You laughed at his grimace when he ran his fingers across the softshell fabric and they came back oily.

“No. I burned the coat in time,” he replies. “Saved myself from sepsis there.”

Levi had insisted on taking you back home. You’d miraculously let a terribly creepy man with a tied tongue and poorly hidden puppy eyes walk you to the door of your apartment complex. When he returned to his own place, he couldn’t sleep. So, he washed the jacket by hand. Leaning over his shower with a brush in his good hand, Levi performed a feat of balance as he scrubbed away and tried to summon the exact timbre of your voice.

The dry humor makes you laugh in the most endearing of peals.

“Did you get some sleep?” Levi asks then.

“No,” you answer. “My neighbors have been caroling the whole floor since dawn.”

Levi wants to invite you to sleep at his apartment; it’s still deadly silent. He knows he shouldn’t.

“Shit. I’m sorry. I kept you awake till late.”

“It’s fine. I wanted to,” you say.

You fall silent after that. He hears your neighbors’ music then: the distant voice of some pop artist belting about presents.

“Would you like to-”

Once more, Levi senses your reticence. The layer of restraint slowly covers the conversation. He waits for you to speak again.

“It’s your birthday, and you said that you were alone this year. Would you like to go out today?” you finally ask.

“What about Yule? You aren’t celebrating?”

He doesn’t want you alone with some half-unknown man, lowering your eyes and curling the corners of your lips in nervousness. Not if you can be all deep laughs and warm cheeks with those you remember loving. Still, Levi feels the pull in his ribcage at the promise of inquisitive eyes and the gentlest of wits.

“No,” you reply. “I don’t like Yule much, anyway.”

The question never arose during your first life. Yule was shitty for poor orphans: when the day dies and there’s still only dirt, water, and crumbs of bread in their hungry little hands, kids stop believing in magical kings that don their subjects with whatever their heart desires. Levi had been real enough for you, though. He knew it because every year you insisted on making a two-person holiday of his birthday. Gifts and laughs and the sincerest of best wishes and lips like a thousand feathers.

“Yeah. I know,” he says; he fucks up. It’s the familiarity of your voice, the ease of the conversation, the habits of an entire lifetime. But you don’t remember—Levi knows that with as much certainty as he knew everything about you back then. Before you can react, he rushes to correct himself. “Where do you plan on taking me?” he asks.

“So, yes?”

Levi doesn’t fool you. He knows you’re too smart to be distracted by his shitty attempts. Still, he lets himself be reassured by the blatant glee in your voice. You want him, somehow, as much as he wants you.

“Yeah. That’d be nice,” he answers.

“We’ll have to find somewhere that stays open on Yule…” you muse. Levi hears you dashing across your apartment. A rustling of the line, a slight variation in the volume of your voice, the dull rattle of the wood as you open your closet’s doors. “How long would it take you to get ready?”

The red light of the lanterns reflects in your eyes. The resulting glint almost captures the igneous glow of candles, fireplaces, and oil lamps. But these are nothing more than LED lights hidden behind red plastic. He can’t see the flickering that, back then, Levi used to find reflected in your eyes during late-night conversations.

“It’s chillier today,” you remark to justify turning your gaze away from Levi’s.

Naked shrubbery, empty streets, and grey skies framed by the crystallized frost in the window. The wind’s still howling outside. Flimsy twigs, overgrown thorns since the winter plundered all the greenery of the hedges, bend, twist, and break. It’s fucking cold, and you don’t have your scarf today.

“I’ll give you my scarf,” Levi replies.

It’s natural for him to offer you everything he has. He shouldn’t. The conversation lags: you are thinking. You pick up a dumpling from the bamboo plate. It’s hot. Steam floats and curls around your chopsticks.

“It’s fine.” You quirk your lips. “You’re the injured one, either way. I don’t want the cold to make it worse.”

“It doesn’t hurt. It’s just annoying.”

The restaurant’s light sharpens your every feature—deep shadows that elongate your eyelashes in every wink, trace the wrinkles of your eyes when you smile, soften the curve of your neck. Levi wants to lean closer to you, relearn every movement of your face. But the sling holds him stiff, back straight against the wooden chair.

“Are you going to have the sling when you return to work?”

“Don’t think so,” Levi answers. He sips his tea. His cup is almost empty. “But I’ll have to go to shitty occupational therapy.”

It took him two years to relearn how to walk after the Rumbling. Crows were still gorging on vile amounts of human flesh—not the trampled bodies that Eren’s stupid wrath left behind, but the emaciated corpses of the aftermath. Onyankopon had sent him a walking stick made in that unscathed land of his— a knobbed handle and a set of rubber ferrules he could fix into the sturdy wood. The pain in his leg was unbearable. Bone ripping through muscle every time he as much as set his foot on the ground. He all but dragged himself from one corner of the room to the other, white-knuckle grip on the cane, as Gabi cheered and Falco, a fucking giant after a growth spurt, prepared to catch him.

“It won’t be so bad,” you say. “I could even-” You stop to refold a cloth napkin. “I could go with you if you’d like.”

“Yeah,” Levi replies. A smile pulls the corners of his lips.

“Good.” You seem elated with Levi’s answer—as if Levi could have said anything else, as if he hadn’t missed you for a whole lifetime.

You lean forward, grinning, elbows on the table. You reach for the teapot and refill his cup. Instinctual, casual, repetitive. It’s easy to fall into old routines. Memories are not needed for that.

“Thanks,” Levi says.

The waiter returns to clear the empty plates. Levi asks for the dessert menu. You’ve always liked sweets.

Back then, it was a luxury. There was only one sugarcane plantation within the Walls. It was in eastern Maria, following the curvature of the river. Sacks of sugar were transported in horse-drawn wagons covered with waxed canvas and protected by a horde of MPs who did anything but be useful. It was used to make cakes and pastries and those tiny colorful cookies that the nobles liked to gorge on. In the Underground, sugar only arrived by the hands of smugglers who sold it for its weight in gold.

Once, you bought a small sack, 200 grams —thrice measured—, because it was Isabel’s birthday, and she’d blabbered for weeks on end about eating a cake. Levi remembers seeing you carefully picking one grain, transparent and sharp like broken glass, before putting it in your tongue. You’d cried then, forehead pressed against the table and back shaking—because it was nice, too nice, and another reminder of the absolute misery you and Levi and Furlan and Isabel were thrust into.

In the Survey Corps, Levi bought you sweets from Mitras with his meager salary— at least, he did until Maria fell.

“Do you have a sweet tooth?” you ask in the tenderest of tones, somehow elated to discover him again.

“It’s good enough. I thought you might enjoy it,” he says. Your curious eyes flicker, a frown appears and disappears across your brow. Levi concocts an explanation before you have the time to ask. “I saw you add four sachets to your tea this morning.”

“Yes. Yes, you are right! I did.” You beam at him before covering your mouth with your fingers, shy. Still, you hold Levi’s gaze. “And you noticed.”

That persistent pull of his ribcage makes him want to lean forward, press his forehead against your cheek and feel that modest warmth that used to rise to your skin every time Levi’s breath touched your jaw. He would stay there, close, and he would tell you everything about the many decades he’s been bound to live without you.

But you lower your gaze, stare at your chopsticks as you tap them against the table—the red tablecloth muffles the thuds one, two, three times before you speak again.

“And you like tea.” Your statement is tentative, tone rising at the last word with almost a questioning lilt.

“I do. Yeah.”

The waiter hands him the dessert menu— a singular page with small letters printed in the center. Fingers touch when Levi passes it to you. You don’t flinch this time.

“Is it good, this tea?” you ask while perusing the three options. “Better than the hospital’s...”

There’s a blatant hope for his appreciation in your questions. Levi doesn’t know how to explain to you that he’s spent his last ten birthdays hoping to see this exact curve of your neck as you lean towards the table and lay your cheek on the back of your hand.

“Anything is better than that sewer water.” He’s blunt because he knows you’ll find it funny. “But this is nice. Thanks.”

When the waiter asks for the order, you are still grinning.

“You’ll share it with me, yes?”

“Yeah.”

Levi takes a sip of his tea. It’s lukewarm now—it starts leaving behind a dry trail, muted and bitter. But then, he sees your grin grow and it becomes so much easier to ignore the taste.

“What?”

Levi knows he sounds too curt—it’s Kenny’s inheritance, the rough words that prove themselves useless for anything except fearmongering. But it doesn’t seem to faze you, just like it didn’t back then. The grin is still there; you’re still propped up on the table like a curious, affectionate cat.

“The way you hold the cup. It’s so-” You reach out, you hand hovering right over his. Then, you let it fall to the table with the lightest of thumps. “It suits you.”

“I broke a teacup by the handle when I was a kid. The last thing I had of my mother.”

Levi tries not to dwell on the fact he never had to explain it to you before.

In a past life, you had found him kneeling on the floor, bargaining his grief with porcelain shards— muddy clothes, fingernails brimming with someone else’s blood, swelling nose, scratched face, brutality settled deep into his muscles. Levi hadn’t told you where he was going that morning; smugglers were vicious, so fucking fond of leaving purple handprints on necks and pressing down until wails became wheezes. They had done it to his mother, long before they had ransacked her room, the air still sodden with her rotten remains.

He’d gotten his mother’s tea set back. But in exchange, Levi had become violently versed in the easy brittleness of bodies; he didn’t want you near. Leathered skin, robust arms, dense bones, they all had cracked under his fingers like a moth’s wing. What would he do to you, starved and fragile? And yet you had pushed through his snarls. You had taken the shards away from him. You had washed his hands with warm water. You had wrapped his knuckles in clean cloth. You had brewed another batch of tea, and you had poured it in one of the misshapen tin cups you and Levi used to drink water from. And you told him that you’d get him another cup, as beautifully crafted as his mother’s, but that in the meantime, he would have to remember her by the taste of tea.

“I’m sorry.” Your voice is soft. “You were the best of sons for her. I know that.”

You brush your hand across his. It’s tentative, but softer and warmer than the ghost touch he’s dreamed of for decades. Levi pounces at the contact. He locks hands, threads his fingers through yours. Smooth skin. No assortment of scars, no calluses, no deep-set blisters.

“It’s fine,” he answers.

He lifts the entwined hands to his mouth and kisses you on the back of the wrist, where the skin is thinnest and he can feel your blood rushing beneath.

Levi doesn’t let go until the waiter sets down the plate of powdery, round cakes between you.

Levi walks you home late. It’s snowing. Fuzzy specks of white land on your hair and trail down your temples in thin lines.

“Thank you for coming,” you say.

You and Levi are shielding yourselves from the snow beneath the porch overhang. Three melted snowflakes gather on the shoulders of your woolen coat. They seem almost solid—three pieces of polished glass. Levi brushes them off. He lets his hand slide down your arm. Cold water collects in the hollow of his palm.

“It was nice,” he answers.

Levi had forgotten to button his coat when you left the restaurant. The sling makes it difficult to wear; it threatens to fall down his shoulder. You adjust it, smoothing the lapel before fastening the button. Your hand lingers on his chest for five, six seconds.

“I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.” You can whisper now. Your neighbors have finally stopped blasting Yule songs. The street is completely quiet.

“No, it’s fine,” Levi whispers back.

The porch is small enough that he can smell your breath when you speak— the strawberry filling of the dessert mingled with the woody flavor of tea.

“You’ll text me when you get home, yes?” you ask.

As you fish into your coat pockets for the keys, your knuckles brush the back of his hand.

“Yeah.”

The jingle of your keys echoes on the street as you fidget. You don’t open the door.

“Maybe we could do something on the weekend, if you are-”

Levi kisses you. Your lips are cold, brushed smooth by the winter air; but your cheeks warm up under his touch. Your hands glide to his neck. They meander; they press right over his heart—a heavy drumming resonating in his chest. They caress his good shoulder; they settle right on his nape, fingertips grazing his hair.

You smile against his lips, and you press in deeper, and you bite—gently, just a mere scrape. Levi kisses you until his breath falters and then he pulls back just enough to let your breath get into his lungs. Torrid. Suffocating. So very loved. You are gasping, eyes bright, almost glossy. Your keys lie somewhere on the ground.

And, still short-winded, you pull him back in—hands oh so carefully avoiding his bad shoulder. Lips meet again. Wet. Warmed. Even gentler.

Levi was fifteen the first time he kissed you. He had startled awake after not enough hours of sleep. During his time in the Underground, bad dreams weren’t vivid yet; the mangled bodies and monstrous teeth only started appearing after Erwin dragged him and his makeshift family to the massacres of the surface. At fifteen, it was still just him and you and the tactile nightmares that made him try to peel his skin off with a rag and boiling water—crusts of dry blood stiffening his hands, the sulfurous scent of the mud (and shit and piss) that paved the roads, the flaccid texture of his mother’s body when the rot began to ooze into the mattress.

You found him half-naked next to the stove, hands cracked open from dipping the washcloth in scalding water. You sat beside him on that kitchen floor made of the same splintered wood as the rest of the apartment. And you coaxed Levi into letting go of the washcloth and resting his head on your shoulder. Levi didn’t fall asleep, but you ran your fingers through his hair, nails gently scratching his scalp back and forth, back and forth, until the sticky sensation of his mother’s death dissolved from his skin.

The urge came to him in the early morning, when the first carts started to trudge through the muddy trails. He could smell your skin with every breath, and as the butterflies he’d ignored for the last three years wreaked havoc in his stomach, Levi let his gratitude guide him to your lips.

The kiss was awkward. Noses bumped. You asked him between nervous laughs what he was doing. And he had to explain himself with the most stunted of words before you understood and leaned forward. Then you tilted your head too much; your lips didn’t seem to fit. And Levi didn’t know what to do with his hands.

There’s no clumsiness now. On that cramped, cold porch, Levi can kiss you with the experience of a lifetime. A certain franticness marks the movements, but it is easy to find grace in the way your lips respond to his, in the careful positioning on your hands, in the slight inclination of your head.

A tear slides onto his thumb. Levi stops.

He notices the wet lashes when he leans back. You open your eyes and exhale a shaky sigh— lips quivering, a slight tremor in your chin.

“Hey.” Levi’s hand is still on your cheek; he collects the tears with his thumb. “Are you okay?”

The question makes you sob.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t-” You start to explain; the jerky gasps make you stop. You drag your hands across your eyes. “I’m happy. I’m so happy. I don’t know. I don’t know what. I don’t-”

“It’s fine.” Levi pulls you in before you can finish speaking. Your head rests on his chest; his palm traces circles on your back. Your body tautens before it relaxes, muscle by muscle. The wool from your clothes slightly prickles; the droplets of melted snow tangled in your coat wet his hand. You breathe in gulps and shudder; you grab fistfuls of his coat. And he wishes he could pull you even closer, but the fucking sling gets in the way—you are half-huddled against it; the pressure makes it ache. The best he can do is drape that side of his coat over you “It’s fine. I get it,” Levi repeats.

A very thin coat of white now covers the asphalt; it muffles the world until all Levi can hear are your sobs slowly transforming into hiccups.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper once your body stops quivering.

You tense again. Your hands release the thick fabric of his coat. You fidget with the buttons, but you don’t move away.

“It’s fine,” he replies.

Levi keeps rubbing your back. You’re still sniffing. Levi has a packet of paper tissues in the pocket of his coat, but he does not reach for them. He would have to break the embrace to get them.

Nestled against his chest, you feel heavy, real.

A car drives through the neighborhood. No friction, no sound. It seems to slide across the street. For a short instant, its headlights cover the porch with a white gleam.

“Am I hurting your arm?” There’s worry in your question, some quick realization that makes you carefully pull away.

Furrowed brow, the widest of eyes look at him.

“Don’t worry about that,” he says.

His bad side is throbbing— some distant pain, too unimportant to pay attention to.

He pulls out one tissue from his coat pocket and wipes off any traces of tears. You let him and he finds too much giddiness in that act of familiarity.

“Thank you,” you say, eyes scanning the ground.

The keys are next to him. He gets them for you. They clink and chime.

One of your neighbors bids farewell to some merry guest. Voices bounce off the stairs and echo in the lobby. The dull thuds of the soles against the ceramic tile become louder and louder.

“I don’t-” you start. You are avoiding his gaze, again; your eyes fixate on the little brass devices you have in your hands. “It’s not a common thing for me, crying like this. I’m sorry for…”

He doesn’t need you to apologize. Levi wonders if you’ve felt it too, that viscous grief that seemed to follow you both, even before you stepped for the first time into the sunlit fields of Paradis. It’s a useless question.

He focuses instead on the puffy under-eyes, the slow blinking. You are tired, he sees that now.

“You need to sleep,” he states.

The front door opens. A gust of warmth coils around the porch as the visitor steps outside. You and Levi have to step back. The man walks between both of you, his big puffy coat leaves behind a trail of mildew.

“Yes, I should go to sleep,” you say once the man has vanished from your view. “You said you’ll call when you get home, right?”

You don’t touch him anymore, and Levi doesn’t push further than he already has— loneliness has always barked and prowled, and on some unlucky occasions, when that innate strength of his proved useless, it caught him in its jaws; he will not tempt his bad luck.

“I’ll text. Go inside.”

You open the door. Levi watches. The back of your coat still seems embroidered with water droplets: new snowflakes are caught in the fabric. A minuscule part of your nape is exposed to the cold.

You turn around and smile at him, gentle, earnest.

“Goodnight, Levi,” you say. “Happy birthday.”

Year 837. Nineteen

The mattress rustled beneath him; your lips tensed above his—a mirth unyielding to kisses he couldn’t help but imitate. Eyes closed, he heard you. Quiet sighs and loud breathing, the slick sound of your mouth against his, your knees digging into the crackling, old straw of the bed. He felt you. Your left hand caressing his chest, your right hand bracing your body next to his head.

“One last?” The words were warm air against his lips.

Levi’s fingers rose from your hips. Up. Up. Fingertips caressed your damp sides, your chest, your shoulders, and the soft expanse of your neck until they settled on your cheeks.

“Yeah?” His voice was hoarse now. His back was soaked with sweat.

“Yes.” You accentuated the answer with a sloppy kiss to his thumb. “It’s your birthday. You get to decide.”

The neighborhood was filled with the songs of idiots drinking another year into piss and oblivion. The roaring laughter somehow seeped into the stone and bricks of the walls. There was bitterness in the sound: no solitude in the bottommost realm of humanity, just another year buried in shit. But Levi drowned it all beneath the noise of your presence. You ran your tongue over his lips. Slick, deliberate. Your bare body hovered over his, just close enough for him to feel the promise of your warm skin.

“Furlan’s still-” he breathed into your mouth, too distracted to grasp what he was trying to ask. As he stroked down your torso—just hard enough to touch the solidity of your ribcage, the pounding of your heart, the softness of your skin— he felt the slick residue of his cum on your navel.

“Still with the guys. Yule celebration,” you sighed.

“Then quick.”

“Yes.”

Another round of drunk songs drifted down the muddy trails outside. Your right arm was already unsteady. Levi’s hand slipped lower. Your body drew taut and shivered. And you were so close to him that he sensed the air shift around him as you inhaled in expectation. He was hard again.

“Fuck Yule.”

You replied to his quip with loose laughter. Forehead against his shoulder, the vibrations thrummed against his chest.

“Yes. Fuck Yule.”

He reveled in the bell-peal of your happiness. A kind sound to muzzle the nether misery of the place. His hands glided across your skin—warm and sweaty and alive. And the tender delight in the tips of his fingers returned, traveled across his nerves, and settled in his navel. His hand slid lower. You were still slick from earlier in the night. You shivered, once again, and your laugh slowly quieted down to sighs. He slid lower.

Hot. Throbbing. Wet.

You whimpered. You shifted. You lost balance. You collapsed over him. He had moved too harshly.

Levi removed his hand.

“Shit.” Levi searched for your face, but you were still against his chest. “Did I hurt you? Let me see your face.”

You moved your elbow away from his ribcage but still let your body drape over his. He found comfort in the weight.

“No. It’s just-” You searched for words. The certainty that his rough hands were made for violence began to accumulate in his throat. “I’m just a bit more tender than I thought.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry.” He brushed your head, careful. Hair clung to his damp palm. “Are you crying? Let me see your face.”

“It’s okay, Levi. You didn’t-” you said. “I’m fine. Just embarrassed.”

“I was too rough before. I-”

“You weren’t.” You finally raised your head. In the pitch dark of the room, he could barely see you. “You never are.”

His fingers traced your jaw and your mouth and your cheeks and your eyes. You were not crying. He continued until he could swallow back the guilt.

You were patient; you let him touch with complete abandon as you combed his hair with your fingers. You both stayed silent. There was only the agitated breathing, the rustling of the mattress, the faintest scratches of your nails on his scalp. The fucking shouting of drunkards.

“Do you hear it sometimes, all the fucking noise?” he asked, voice low.

“Yes. It seems so easy to tune out when we are up. With the gang or going for groceries,” you whispered. “But when we are back here…”

Levi had settled on tracing circles on your jaw. His movements were lazy, lulled as he was by the delicate fingers on his head.

“I’m getting so fucking tired of it. Nineteen years now.”

Sounds got trapped in the earth. Echoes of generations that subsisted in the thick, putrefied air. That noise seemed to cling to every surface, just like the relentless dirt.

“Yes.” Your answer was blunt, categorical. “But I think we get to be happy today. You have survived nineteen years. I get to be happy.” You held his left hand by the wrist and pressed it against your lips. “Even if it’s here.”

He kissed you once again. Slower. Gentler. Hopeful you’d understand the tenderness perpetually squeezing between his ribs without the drag of his crude, artless words. Eyes closed, his hands still held your face—but carefully, as carefully as he could. He cherished once again the weight, the warmth of your body, the ease of your movements, the kindness of your smile.

“Do you-” you breathed against his lips. He felt the words more than he heard them. “Do you want to try again?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Levi was shamefully hard, still. You were naked on top of him, still. He was still dazed and loving and loved. His lips pressed against the corner of your lips and your cheek and your jaw. Languid. Unhurried. Soft.

“I can-” you said. Your thumb drew circles on his wrists. Your voice was airy. “Your hands stay away from-” He grazed your neck. Under his lips, your heartbeat, the vibrations of your voice. “And I-” You sighed between words. He kissed again. He inhaled your scent. “I’ll go slow?”

“Yeah. If you-” he said. Levi finally let go of your face. He stroked your sides. “Yeah. But you stay close.”

“Of course.”

You straddled him, but Levi kept you close. He pulled you against his chest, your head tucked on his shoulder. Puffs of breath crashed against his neck. You were warm and slick, and a flash of pleasure traversed his spine as the tip of his cock brushed against your entrance.

You gasped. You grabbed his length. You stroked him once, twice. You aligned yourself. You sank into him. Levi heard you moan; he spat out a “fuck”.

Then you stilled.

The earlier night had left him raw. Bare nerves unbearably surrounded by wet heat. Your sighs, quiet and soft. The weight of years of your presence on the right corner of his chest. The slight trembling of your legs against his palms. He twitched.

You rolled your hips forward. Pleasure rolled up his guts.

The dry straw rustled beneath your movements. You swayed back and forth. He rocked his hips. Pelvic bones ground against each other. Levi squeezed your body closer to his.

There was clumsiness—in your movements, in his hold. But he could feel your inhales and exhales in his own chest. And the slow pressure was already building deep in his groin. He felt you tauten over him. Your fingers dug into his shoulders. The push and pull quickened. Your gasps grew louder.

You moaned and you came and you clenched around him. And you continued swaying, shuddering and pliable. And Levi came too. He moaned and the heat enveloping his cock became almost painful—but it was you and your gentle presence.

The to-and-fro lazily eased off. Levi didn’t let you roll away from him. He liked the weight.

When the room had settled and the sounds from the Underground began to seep into the room again, he thought that he should get clean, get you clean, change the dirtied sheets. There was water in the pitcher and laundered clothes next to the basin. But he let the thought swell and fester as much as he could. He found some peace in the stillness.

Furlan arrived hours later. Someone had brought him home. Maybe Jan. He stumbled through some Yule’s song far too boisterously as he prepared his cot on the living room.

The noise woke you up. You mumbled a dispassionate and incoherent “Fuck Yule, let Levi rest,” before burrowing back into his chest.

#levi ackerman x reader #levi x you #levi x reader #again and again #this is still for leviweek24 but now I feel I'm pushing my luck

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