"Sweet thing," he coos as he descends onto you, hot lips on your neck. "My darling girl."

"Please," is all you supply as an answer.

The fragility in your voice makes him take you harder—as if, perhaps, that might be enough to answer your pleas (when really, all your weak, juvenile heart desires is an answer to the insecurities festering within—festering long before you met him).

Take me away, you wish to cry.

Love me, you want to say.

Let me be enough for you.

And when at last your lovemaking is over and Erwin tugs you against his chest in practiced familiarity, you feel his breath settle into easy sleep. There, as he dreams, you watch his ring glisten against your breast in the moonlight.

And in those moments, you're left to wonder:

+++

The papers are signed, and you are ushered into the hall where a newspaper photographer is waiting. He directs you and Levi through an array of stiff, staged poses, asking you to stand close, closer, closer still—until you can smell the bleach on Levi’s shirt. Flash bulbs pop, and afterward, the general claps Levi on the back and wishes the happy couple luck. You are dismissed.

Inside the vehicle, your husband sits with his hands folded and his gaze fixed out the window. You do not speak until the rumble of the engine settles and the driver—an Eldian from the internment zone—opens the door to the modest apartment assigned to you on short notice.

Inside, it’s boxy and pale, with furniture that reeks of varnish. Two glasses and a bottle of sparkling wine wait for you on the kitchen table—courtesy of Captain Yeager, according to the card. Levi roundly ignores the gesture and goes straight through to the living area, loosening his tie. You follow, trying not to retch at the idea of seeing your picture on the front page the following morning.

“You should go ahead and wash up,” Levi says without turning to look at you. The words are spoken with the same intrinsic authority as every order you’ve ever heard him give.

Bitterly, you drop your meager luggage by the door and walk to the bathroom, which is as sterile as the rest. You lock the door, not out of fear but sickening distrust, before sloughing off your ceremony dress. Your hands shake as you stand under the shower and wipe away traces of the makeup the officer’s wife assigned to “prepare” you had insisted upon. A shame, you think, even if the flesh-toned foundation is a shade off and the lipstick is too bright for your taste, as makeup is rarely available in the internment zone due to glycerin rations.

You linger in the bathroom, taking your time. It’s more merciful to hide here, at least for a while.

When you emerge, dressed in a robe, Levi has already moved your things into the bedroom. The walls are papered in an outdated floral pattern that makes you want to gouge your eyes out. You decide it will have to be one of the first things to go, along with the hideous drapes and the phonograph, which would have been more at home in the living room than in here. A set of freshly-embroidered red armbands sits upon the dresser. The sight of them turns your stomach.

“You can have your turn now,” you say, the words coming out frigid.

Levi glances over from where he’s hung his jacket and nods once.

+++

Alone, you change into your nightgown and wonder if the higher-ups bothered posting extra guards or if they decided you’d be a fool for trying to run. They wouldn’t be wrong; it’s one thing to risk your own life, but it’s not the only one at stake. You think of your cousins, all young and barely old enough to understand what has happened, shuffled off to distant relatives with little more than a promise that they would be cared for. You can’t bear to think of them facing the same fate as their parents. Does Marley have a protocol for sending children to Paradise?

The apartment is quiet. The plumbing rattles faintly from the bathroom where Levi is washing up, and somewhere below, a radio is playing music muffled by concrete walls. You move to the closet and find half of it occupied by Levi’s neatly hung uniforms and the other half carefully kept clean and empty, presumably for your use. You think back to the robe carefully left out for you in the bathroom and the modest non-military-issue soap you found in the shower. The idea that the brusque man you married had thought about everything ahead of time infuriates you.

But Levi, as you’re well aware, has an almost pathological regard for routine. He keeps a shoehorn at the threshold of his office and a dish for pocket change on his desk. And you’ve noticed him reach for a spare handkerchief to wipe at a spill or a stray spot on many occasions.

You work efficiently, jaw clenched, emptying your peeling suitcase onto the bed and stowing everything away into its new proper place. What would happen if you just decided to upend all of it? Leave your worn shoes in a heap, scatter your hairpins all over his military precision in defiance? The urge to do so is so sudden it stings behind your ribs, but you refrain.

You’ve folded your last chemise when Levi returns to the bedroom. His hair is damp, and he’s put on a fresh button down with the hem untucked and the sleeves unbuttoned. It is not the first time you’ve seen him a little dressed down, as he so often is late at night when he stops by the canteen for a cup of tea, but there’s an awkwardness to it now. An intimacy that makes your skin crawl.

“Hungry?” he asks.

It’s a simple question. Only one word, and there’s not much intonation behind it. But it brings your blood to boil.

“Don’t,” you hiss, nails biting into your palms. You can’t stand to stand here and pretend you’re anything other than a broodmare for Marley’s wretched furtherance of the Ackerman bloodline. Their perfect, loyal soldiers.

Levi’s mouth twitches, the ghost of a wince. “It was just a question.”

“Well, there’s no need to act like this is a real marriage,” you sneer.

“I don’t intend to make this worse than it is,” he says.

You want to ask what that means, but you’re not sure you want the answer. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you had my family arrested.”

He narrows his eyes. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“You’re a dog of the Marleyan military,” you snap. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re complicit.”

Something flares in his gaze, and before you can blink, he’s snatching your wrist. “Come,” he snarls, yanking you firmly toward the door. You fight him, but it’s no use. He marches you into the living room and takes both your shoulders in his hands.

“Let go of me!” you demand.

“Watch your mouth,” Levi barks, and the gravity in his tone makes you go still. “Don’t talk like that again. You don’t know who’s listening.”

You stare at him, searching for traces of malice or threat, but find only exhaustion. “Where?” you ask, unable to help yourself.

He sighs and releases you, flexing his hands. “In the bedroom. The phonograph.”

“I see,” you say flatly, and with a deliberate turn, you walk to the kitchen, more rattled than you want to admit.

+++

You sit at the little table with the sparkling wine between you, but neither of you opens it. Levi pulls a loaf of bread and a jar of preserves from the paper sack left by the kitchen sink and sets them out matter-of-factly.

“Eat or don’t eat,” he says. “But don’t cry to me if you choose to starve yourself.”

“Is that an order, sir?” you say acridly.

He shoots you a sharp look. “It’s a suggestion.”

You watch him as he takes the seat opposite you and rolls his sleeves one by one to the elbow. He’s always seemed compact under those military fatigues, but the lean, corded muscle of his forearms reveals the true strength of his frame, shaped by decades of training. You know Warrior training is brutal, designed to take the soldiers apart and put them back together into unquestioning weapons of the state. That’s exactly what Levi Ackerman is to you.

“Do you always make sure your prisoners are fed?” Your voice is tart, but you can’t quite meet his eyes. The jar trembles a little in your hand as you twist it open.

“I don’t see you as a prisoner,” Levi says.

“Just as well. I doubt the commanders will care about your opinion.”

He doesn’t rise to the bait. He spreads preserves on his bread, then sets the knife down and considers you. “I’m sorry for the position you find yourself in, but it isn’t my doing. Treason has consequences.”

The words are cold, yet the fact that they don’t seem to hold any intentional malice makes it all the worse. Your heart hammers, and your stomach turns. You want to see him choke on the dry bread.

“Disproportionate consequences,” you spit out at him. “My whole family was sent to the island, even the ones that had nothing to do with it. The little ones lost their parents and older siblings. Did you torture them, too? Try to get them to give up our neighbors? Our friends?”

Levi’s face hardens, but he is so impassive, it is impossible to decipher whether your anger moves him. “It is harsh, but that’s how Marley roots our traitors.”

“Traitors?” You let out an incredulous scoff. “They were Eldians, same as you!”

“Exactly,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. “And as Eldians, they should have known better.”

The chair beneath you scrapes the floor loudly and you stand. “What do you know?” you ask, voice rising without really meaning to. “You’ve been Marley’s mongrel since the day you were born! And it doesn’t make you any better than us in their eyes.”

“Sit down,” Levi says, eyes darting to the bedroom, where the phonograph sits like a voyeur in the dark.

You don’t sit. You’re too furious to sit. You glare at him, trembling, vision blurring, and consider how far you’d get if you tried to catch a man like Levi Ackerman unaware. When he is asleep, perhaps, or unsuspecting in the shower. It’s a fantasy through and through, because you’re certain you are no match for him in any scenario. But the possibility pulses through your veins, dark and malignant.

Levi calls your name, and you blink. The tears fall hot down your cheeks, and your vision clears enough for you to notice the look on your new husband’s face. He is watching you warily, steel eyes flickering between you and your hand, which you now realize is wrapped tightly around your knife. The blade is still sticky with preserves. You inhale shakily.

“Put it down,” Levi says, almost gently, as he slides out of his chair and inches closer with his hands carefully raised.

You let him approach, lips parted, and his hands close careful around yours. They are shockingly warm for a man that seems carved from unfeeling marble, large and somewhat gnarled from years of strenuous physical activity yet strangely beautiful.

He stands there as you breathe like you’ve just sprinted, and it is almost farcical—as if the bread knife could prove a genuine threat when Levi’s hands are certainly orders of magnitude more deadly. For a moment, you imagine plunging the blade into his chest or your own thigh but loosen your grip instead.

Levi’s shoulders drop. He slides the knife from your hand slowly. There is something unguarded in his face, a momentary slackening.

“Don’t make a scene,” he says, but his voice is low, and if you didn’t know better, you might have heard it as a plea.

The moment passes, and in its wake, exhaustion seeps into your body. You slump back into your chair, and Levi drops the knife to the table with a clatter.

“I didn’t ask for any of this, either,” he says.

He doesn’t scold you further; he just sits down again and resumes eating like nothing happened. You wipe your face with your sleeve, the humiliation mixing in with your anger. You can’t even muster the rage to stomp back to the bedroom. You sit, defeated, and chew mechanically on a hunk of bread

The instant Levi finishes, he stands, collects the dishes, and cleans them at the sink. “You know what's expected of us, don't you?” he says.

You stare at his back, wishing that in all the time you’ve known him in passing, you had learned to read the meanings in his tone. You want to pretend you don’t know, but there are rules, and the rules are as inescapable as walls.

“Yes,” you say quietly.

“They’ll be listening,” he says. “To make sure we comply.”

An image of the phonograph flies through your mind. You want to puke. You want to scream. You want to throw yourself on the floor and cry. But you want to save what’s left of your family, too.

“Fine.” You wipe your face with your palm, surprised not to find more tears.

The faucet runs for several minutes after the conversation has effectively ended as the sound of meticulous scrubbing fills the silence. You wonder if Levi is genuinely that particular or if he simply prefers scrubbing a plate to looking at his wife.

Levi dries the bread knife with a dish cloth, then sets it in the drawer. “I won’t force you,” he says at last. “It—it doesn’t have to be tonight, but—”

He trails off and doesn’t finish the thought, but he doesn’t need to. You understand well enough what he means. It doesn’t have to be tonight, but it will have to be eventually. The government did not arrange this marriage out of charity. Public Security did not spare your cousins because they suddenly discovered a conscience. The officials who witnessed your vows this evening are not expecting companionship or domestic bliss. They are expecting Ackerman children.

“I know,” you say. Perhaps, it should surprise you that he isn’t forcing you. He could do what he wanted; you know this, and that knowledge is worse than fear. You can’t claim to know him very well beyond how he prefers to take his tea, but for some reason, you believe him.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says. “We can figure out what we’re going to do later.”

“You’d rather sleep on the floor?”

Levi’s expression shifts minutely. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

Military camps, your mind supplies. Years of field exercises and of doing whatever Marley demanded of him, even if it meant sleeping in the dirt like the dog he is. And for the first time, you think of what a sad life that must be.

+++

It’s sometime after midnight when the noise wakes you. Falling asleep had been no easy task after such a tense day, especially with the awareness of the phonograph and of the man lying on the floor somewhere behind you.

At first, you’re not even sure you heard it. You lie still beneath the blankets, listening with your eyes open in the dark. For a few seconds, you almost convince yourself it was nothing. Then, it comes again. A sharp intake of breath, followed by thrashing and the incoherent mumbling of someone deep in the throes of a nightmare.

You sit up, blinking against the gloom, and let your eyes adjust. The moonlight through the hideous drapes paints everything in cool silver. On the floor, Levi is still and silent, but only for a moment; the next gust of breath sounds close to a whimper, and his arms jerk taut around the thin blanket.

You’re paralyzed for a split second, then slide off the bed as quietly as you can. In the shadowy limbo between the window and the wardrobe, you make out the sweat glistening on his brow and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. You could wake him. You think a wife with even a drop of affection in her marrow probably would. It would be easier to turn away and pretend you did not notice. But you don’t move away.

“Levi,” you say quietly, lowering yourself to your knees.

You reach out, and your fingers brush his shoulder. The reaction is instantaneous. One moment, you are kneeling beside him. The next, you are on your back against the floor beside your bed, the air knocked from your lungs, and Levi is above you with his hand around your throat.

There’s a wildness in his eyes that tells you he’s not fully awake when he lashes out, but the panic surging through your veins is real enough. You can see the moment he realizes what he’s done. His pupils dilate, and Levi recoils, his hand vanishing from your neck. He staggers backwards on his hands, and you touch your throat, searching for damage. Your fingers encounter only clammy skin and a fluttering pulse.

“You—” you choke out, then stop. What accusation is there to make? You had known what the Ackermans were.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asks.

You’re surprised by the tremor in his voice, and you sit up, kneading your fingers over the small ache along your windpipe. “You were…making sounds,” you manage. “I thought maybe—”

You cut off the sentence, not sure if you should admit tenderness after everything between you. Levi cards a hand through his dark hair. He looks like a shell of a man, skin sallow and eyes haunted. You wonder if he dreams of Titans or of men in white coats, or if the nightmares claw at him the same way they gnaw at you.

“It’s nothing,” he says roughly, pushing up to his feet. “This was a mistake. I’ll be outside. You stay and rest.”

Speechless, you watch as Levi turns away and crosses the room to the door, not even bothering to collect the blanket and pillow from the floor. Then, he disappears into the living room, clumsily closing the door behind him. A moment later, you hear the scrape of a chair being pulled away from the kitchen table.

You remain seated on the floor. The room feels strangely empty without him in it.

+++

Sleep does not come after that. For two hours, you lie awake, and no matter what you do, you can’t manage to drift again.

You stare at the ceiling and find yourself replaying the look on his face. Not the one from when he lunged at you, but after—that brief, terrible instant when he woke and understood what he had done. As though nearly hurting you had frightened him more than whatever dream had dragged him from sleep.

The realization is impossible to reconcile. As long as you have been old enough to understand what Marley touts as salvation is actually propaganda, you’ve believed Levi Ackerman to be exactly what they made him. An obedient, unquestioning, dangerous weapon. But tonight has complicated things.

You hate complications.

Eventually, frustration outweighs exhaustion. With a sigh, you throw back the blankets. The hallway is cool and quiet as you make your way toward the kitchen. Your throat still aches faintly when you swallow. You try not to think about that, either.

A dim light spills across the floor from the living room around the corner. You pause, hearing a strange sound. A low-throated noise that makes your heart stumble. You worry Levi has fallen into another nightmare and continue forward, creeping quickly on your toes.

Levi sits at the sofa with his back to you, too focused on whatever he’s doing to notice your approach. You take in the tableau and feel a sense of disorientation at what you’re witnessing. The soft intermittent clinking of his loose belt buckle; the rhythmic plap, plap, plap of flesh; the half-muffled groans falling from his mouth. He mumbles something as you approach that sounds suspiciously like your name.

It doesn’t come together in your head until you’re close enough to see—his member, thick and flushed, standing erect where the front of his trousers have been sloppily undone, shining with precum and furiously stroked in one hand. Heat floods your face as blood rushes south to your cunt in a wave of lust, quickly followed by mortification. But by then, it’s too late. The hand freezes, and Levi lifts his gaze to meet yours.

“Shit!” he hisses, scrambling to cover himself with a handful of the forgotten paperwork sitting beside him.

You stare at each other, the air suffocating but crackling with an undeniable electricity.

“You should go back to bed,” he says with a scowl.

Indignance crawls up your throat. It’s not like you were the one caught with your pants down. “Are you always this loud?” you shoot back, but your cheeks are burning, and your thighs press together unconsciously. “What are you doing up anyway?”

“I don’t—” He sighs, disgruntled. “I don’t like to sleep much.”

You stand very still, wondering if he’s even aware of his hand still tenting the stack of official papers, trembling ever so slightly atop his erection. A week ago, you would have had nothing to say to this man but “Would you like more tea, sir?” You would have scurried from the canteen at night to avoid the Warriors entirely. How perverse, then, that you’re the only person alive to catch Levi Ackerman like this.

“You know,” you say, crossing your arms, “I heard you say my name. I think you owe me an explanation.”

Maybe it’s payback or spite, or maybe you’ve lost your mind from the sleep deprivation and dread. He looks at you for a long beat. Then, to your utter shock, a flush rises under the sharp line of his cheekbones.

“Do I?” he says quietly.

“Yes,” you try to snap. “Jerking off to the thought of bedding Marley’s newest breeding sow? Does that help you relax, sir?”

A faint flush appears at the tips of his ears. “You’re one to talk,” he says. “Don’t think I didn’t see you gawking at my cock just now.” His voice is as icy and flat as ever, but despite that—or because of it—heat begins to spiral in your belly. “Were you getting aroused watching Marley’s loyal dog stroke his cock to you?”

“So, you admit it!” you cry, jabbing your index finger toward him. “You were getting off to me! Pervert!”

Levi’s lips tighten in the most infinitesimal quiver before he looks away, fuming. “Yeah, but not for the reasons you think. I’m not a monster.”

“What, is that supposed to be reassuring?” you scoff. “What reason, exactly, makes this better?”

“I’ve been watching you for a while,” Levi blurts out, looking stricken by his own confession. “Back at HQ. I…” He hesitates. “I always noticed when you were in the canteen. How you pour the tea. How neat you keep your apron even when it’s a hundred degrees and the kitchen smells like dog food. I know you hate this, and I don’t blame you, but—” He breaks off, unable to finish.

Your mind races with the implications. You’ve never, not once, thought of yourself as the object of anyone’s desire, least of all the Levi Ackerman. A tremor runs through you.

“You never spoke to me,” you say, narrowing your eyes. It comes out more petulant than you intend.

Levi tenses. “I couldn’t. It... wasn’t allowed. You were never supposed to see this side of me.”

“So, what. Did you make a deal with them? Did you choose me because you liked the look of me?” you ask quietly.

“No!” he shoots to his feet. “Fuck, no! I told you, I didn’t choose any of this!”

The papers scatter, rustling to the floor, leaving him exposed and still half-hard. You swallow thickly. Your tongue feels frozen in your mouth. You’re aware of your nightgown clinging to your thighs, the painful ache of your own arousal, and the immense exquisiteness of having some tiny inkling of control over the weapon before you. You’re conscious, too, of the phonograph on the other side of the wall. Watching, always watching. Your skin prickles.

You take a step toward him anyway. “You didn’t want to marry,” you guess. “But you wanted to fuck me.”

A strangled, incredulous sound escapes him. “It’s not like that—”

But you’re in front of him now, and the words cut away.

“Should I pretend I didn’t see?” you ask.

He glares at you, and for the first time, you don't see only coldness. You are still adrenaline-sick, pulse roaring from the aftermath of nearly being throttled, and yet, what you remember now is the heat of his hand when it had pried your fingers from the knife, how intimate it felt to be the thing he clung to in that moment instead of the weapon.

You tug at the drawstrings of your nightgown. It slumps to the floor, pooling around your ankles, and you stand there, goosebumps feathering up your arms in the chilly apartment. Levi blinks at your nudity as if you’d doused him with cold water. Between you, his cock jumps and starts to twitch back to life.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he murmurs.

Liar, you think. But you don't say it out loud. Your hands move of their own accord, reaching for the muscle of his forearm, tracing the lines of his beautiful hand until it shudders.

He doesn’t lunge like you expect. Instead, Levi stands stock still, the steel of his eyes thinned out by the black of his pupils, his sullen face aglow in the wash of city lights through the window. He’s stunning, you think, and you want to punish him for it, even as you yearn to be handled.

“You can touch me,” you say softly.

He does not hesitate now. The soldier learns his new orders instantly. His hand finds your waist, and he draws you closer, till the line of your naked body is flush with his. Your skin tingles wherever he touches you, and you feel the rigid length of him against your thigh, sweltering through his half-hanging pants.

When Levi leans in, as if about to kiss you, you turn away instinctively. But his lips land instead deliberately at the side of your neck, pressing hot against the already flushed skin. Your nerves alight with sensation never before experienced. Is it the act itself, the touch? Or the fact that it is Levi who touches you? You’re too stunned to work out an answer.

His palms skim up your sides, over your ribs to cup your breasts. He works slowly, gently, as if to offer penance rather than foreplay. His thumbs tease the pebbled nipples, and you shiver and gasp. The heat in your lower abdomen, which had already been stirred by the sight of his self-pleasure, now rises to a roaring flame. Contrarily, the flesh between your thighs grows slick with moisture at the same time. You can feel it sliding on your skin with every minute quiver of your frame.

It’s sick, you think. There’s something wrong with you that it feels this good.

“Do you want me to stop?” he murmurs into your neck.

You can only shake your head in response. It’s impossible to believe, in this moment, that this man is the same whose boots you’ve scrubbed clean of mud, the same whose name your family cursed behind closed doors. You can’t help speculating. Had he done this before? A Warrior like him, a god in the eyes of Eldians and a novelty in the eyes of all others, must be coveted by many, you assume.

You try to picture him with other women. The power wrapped up in that strong, lithe body. That stoic brow creased just so with effort. Those beautiful hands, capable of violence, yes, but also of throwing someone around with ease. The thought both galls and thrills you. You’re ruined, you realize, already addicted to the contradiction that is Levi. But the answer is obvious in the way he strokes you. No one has taught him to do this; he’s simply learned how to provide comfort in the only way left to him.

As his hands slide down to cup your ass and draw you tighter against him, there’s a hesitance in his grip that suggests he expects admonishment at any second. Perhaps, he expects you to hit him, to flinch, to run. Instead you press yourself to him bruisingly, letting his cock nudge up between your thighs.

Levi groans, and his hips jerk reflexively, seeking friction. “You’re going to drive me insane.”

Good, you think. It’s the least he deserves. He dips his head to your shoulder, teeth grazing, and your whole body shakes. The air is cool, but where he bites, you feel fire, and where he touches, you ache. You’re barely aware of your own hands until they’re unbuttoning his shirt, forcing themselves under the crisp fabric to move over the ridges of his chest and stomach.

Your breath hitches as the button-down slips off his shoulders and down his arms. Levi is unlike any Eldian you’ve seen before. Not even the dockworkers and trainyard men, toughened by labor but robbed of vigor by the hardships of internment, are built quite like Levi. His pale skin is stretched across hard muscle and littered with scars both old and new—not an ounce of him wasted, his ribs and abdomen cinched tight. You scan his form openly and wonder about the origin of each mark. If they hurt, or if anything hurts him at all.

Levi interrupts your ogling by placing a tender kiss to the center of your throat, right where you can still feel the ghost of his fingers pressing into your trachea. His mouth follows the column of your throat down to where he finds your standing pulse at the hollow between your collarbones. He sinks to his knees—your knees buckle accordingly—and his hands find the backs of your thighs. You lean your hands on his shoulders to keep from collapsing onto him.

He buries his face against your belly, breathing you in. “Stop me if I hurt you.”

The warmth of his breath penetrates your skin. You don’t answer, and anyway, he doesn’t wait for permission. When his mouth finds the soft place above your pubic bone, you gasp. He coaxes your legs apart, and you let him, shame be damned. The heat of his mouth moves lower, lower, and then the tip of his tongue is there, tracing over the wettest part of you.

You stifle a whimper; it feels wrong to make any noise, wrong but addictive. Nothing could’ve prepared you for the flicker of Levi’s tongue at your clit. He buries his face in you, and your hand finds its way into his hair. You nearly yank him away from the oversensitivity, but the pressure only makes him dig deeper. His tongue explores you thoroughly, sometimes darting, sometimes sucking, sometimes simply holding you in his mouth, letting you pulse there.

“Are you so desperate to prove you're not a brute?” you ask breathlessly.

“I’m not the one with something to prove here,” Levi says, his voice a rasp. “You’re the one accused of colluding with Restorationists.”

You nearly laugh, but it breaks into a moan as he presses two fingers into you. You think of the phonograph and the ears surely tuned to it; the impulse to keep quiet only makes you want to scream. So, you let him have it, let yourself gasp and keen and moan until you forget the point of it all.

The first crest of pleasure is so abrupt it robs you of thought. Your body and your thighs threaten to crush his head. There’s a brief moment where you imagine you could kill him like this, the great Levi Ackerman suffocated by your traitorous cunt, but as quickly as it comes, the image is gone, replaced by an explosion of sensation.

You come hard with a strangled cry, riding out the spasms as his hair grows damp with sweat against your skin. When you’ve gone quiet and trembling, Levi rises to his feet, face glistening and gaze hooded, guiding you to collapse against the sofa. You expect him to gloat—maybe even sneer—but when your vision clears, the reality of his state is not what you expected.

Levi stands hunched half over you, bracing one hand on the sofa back by your head. He’s panting hard, flushed chest glistening and heaving with every ragged breath. And his cock is straining, so hard it looks almost painful, leaking copiously from the tip. But somehow, he hesitates. There’s an almost childish anxiety that surprises you, stretching his face tight, and it stirs something akin to tenderness in you.

You reach for him. Groping with confidence you don't possess, you close your fingers around his twitching shaft. Levi’s jaw clenches before a faint, desperate groan escapes. In your hand, he is rigid and feverish, and you feel an astonishing surge of pride at his state. You bring your thumb to the head, lightly swirling the bead of moisture, and he shudders so hard the sinews leap in his neck. Some buried part of you purrs at the power of it.

“Get on the couch,” you whisper.

Levi obeys, lowering himself gingerly over you as you shift longways and part your legs to accommodate him. He hovers above you, looking ruined already, like it’s taking everything in him to hold himself back, and you wrap your thighs around his hips. Your nails dig into the muscled plain of his back, tugging him toward you until the smooth head of his cock is kisses the wet, aching opening of your cunt.

Teeth gritted, Levi glances at your face for any sign of hesitation. Finding none, he pushes inside. He moves slowly at first, his arms shaking. But once he finds himself surrounded by your slick, silky warmth, his restraint shatters.

The stretch is sharp; you aren’t prepared for the sheer fullness of it, but the thrill of it drives you mad. You writhe, struggling to take him as he pounds into you. His hands move to your hips for leverage, and his grip is tight enough to bruise, even as his brow knits like there’s an apology on his tongue. But he can’t help himself. He can only rut into you like a man too long denied.

He fucks you with a violence that’s nothing like the care with which he’d touched you before as he groans out his pleasure. He rasps into your ear that you feel better than he’d ever imagined, that you’re so tight he won’t be able to last. Every drive of his hips forces helpless gasps from your throat. At some point you realize you’re moaning his name, begging, but you’re not sure whether you’re begging for him to be gentler or for more.

Eventually, he gives up on trying to piston in and out of your cunt and just buries himself deep, rocking slow and hard like he’s trying to leave a mark inside you. Each time you think you’ve gotten used to his size, he shifts, grinds, spears even deeper, and a fresh pulse of sensation makes your vision go white. You lose sense of place and time. The city beyond the walls, the unseen eyes recording you. Warriors, Restorationists, even your cousins. For now, nothing exists outside this small apartment.

You reach up to seize the nape of his neck, hauling him down for a kiss that is all hunger. His tongue finds yours, earnest and clumsy and desperate. The heat is blinding. You clench around him as he thrusts and feel his whole body shudder around you. Levi tears his mouth away from yours to bury his face in your shoulder. Then, with a broken hiss, he comes.

Thick pulses of his release spill inside you. The feeling is foreign, strange yet oddly satisfying, even when that little voice in your head reminds you that this is exactly what the higher-ups want: you, full of Levi until something takes and you’re swollen with his child. You picture yourself bent over the kitchen counter while Levi stuffs you full from behind, fucked on your back in the bed with your legs folded up to your chest, and shudder around his softening cock.

The city is deathly quiet, and you wonder if the phonograph is silent now, too. Whether whoever’s monitoring them has decided their work is done for the night, and if the sound of your moans have made some Marleyan bureaucrat blush behind his typewriter.

Levi’s head is pressed to the side of your throat, so still you think he’s fallen asleep—men, you’ve heard, are supposed to do that, collapse into a doze the second they’ve finished. But then he sighs, and rolls away onto his side, while his hand stays splayed at your stomach. You feel his cum trickling out of you in a slow leak, and the instinct is to rise and clean presses at the edge of your consciousness, but your limbs are submerged in postcoital honey, and Levi’s hand is heavy and warm where it rests on you.

It doesn’t feel real; you’ve slept with a Warrior. Perhaps, Levi has had the opposite thought. But what would your family think if they could see you now?

“You okay?” Levi asks. “That… isn’t how I meant for this to happen.”

He sounds remorseful, watching you with a wariness you used to mistake for malice. You equivocate, looking down at the place where his hand presses into your skin. There’s no way to answer his question truthfully, not with so much still churning in your chest. You want to tell him you feel nothing, that it was merely your duty, a demand of the breeding program—except that would be a lie, and you’re too tired to lie.

“I’m fine,” you say, and you find that you mean it.

You push yourself to sit upright. Levi’s hand slips off your stomach, trailing down your hip, where it lingers for a moment as if reluctant to let you go.

“We’re being listened to, right?” you ask, staring at the empty air.

He nods, shamefaced as a schoolboy. “They’ll check the tapes. It’s a formality, mostly. But…” He shrugs. “Still.”

“And what if the phonograph couldn’t pick anything up from the bedroom?”

“I think you were probably loud enough that they’ll get the idea,” Levi says, a touch of smugness in his tone that sparks some irritation. You smack him, albeit lightly. “Point is, we performed for them. There’s no need to repeat this mistake.”

Your stomach feels like a pit, anger rising hot up your throat. A mistake. As if he weren’t the one touching himself to the thought of you. And now, he’s trying to play the gentleman? You can’t help but call him out on it, and not just because you refuse to resign yourself to an indifferent marriage with him, detached and devoid of passion. You won’t be denied the feeling of his cock inside you again.

“You don’t get to call it a mistake if you’re going to make it again,” you say, shifting upright to straddle Levi’s lap. You grasp his shoulders roughly. Your cunt is slick, and his chest is sticky with sweat. Levi blinks up at you, stunned, as if he can’t comprehend your intent.

You press the heel of your hand into his breastbone, pinning him. With your other hand, you take his spent cock and stroke him languidly and feel him begin to harden again. He murmurs your name dangerously, as if to warn you that you don't know what you’re getting yourself into. But you most certainly do.

“The performance isn’t enough,” you say, like you’re making a logical argument and not actively trying to goad him into another round of sloppy fucking. “The Ministry will be expecting a report within the next few months, won’t they?”

“Yes,” Levi replies, visibly straining to get ahold of himself.

“And I expect they’ll simply replace me if you have nothing to report.”

He takes a beat to answer, hands shakily hovering at your hips. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Conceiving within a few months is a daunting task. Most Eldian women, raised on poor rations, do not conceive in the first year of marriage. If you do not want to fail, you both will have to be thorough to ensure something takes. You press his length, still wet from you, against your folds, and he shudders violently.

“Then, we had better make sure we have something to report,” you say, trying to sound curt.

You don’t quite want to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how addicted to his cock you’ve become after just one fuck, how much you want to feel him breed you deep again, but Levi clearly senses your ulterior motive. He smirks wryly and bends to nuzzle your throat, drawing a little sigh from you that you don’t quite manage to hide.

If there is one night in your life you expect to remember forever, it is this one. Wed by a bureaucratic order, fucked to the brink of obliteration by a man you believed you could only loathe, and now, wanting it again. And again, and again.

Suddenly, he’s moving, standing, and scooping you effortlessly into his arms before you can protest. His strength is astonishing. You stifle a yelp and wrap your arms around his neck to steady yourself. His cock valiantly rises to the occasion, hard once again against your ass.

“Efficient,” Levi says like he’s impressed. “I like that.”

And he carries you off to the bedroom.

+++

The papers are signed, and you are ushered into the hall where a newspaper photographer is waiting. He directs you and Levi through an array of stiff, staged poses, asking you to stand close, closer, closer still—until you can smell the bleach on Levi’s shirt. Flash bulbs pop, and afterward, the general claps Levi on the back and wishes the happy couple luck. You are dismissed.

Inside the vehicle, your husband sits with his hands folded and his gaze fixed out the window. You do not speak until the rumble of the engine settles and the driver—an Eldian from the internment zone—opens the door to the modest apartment assigned to you on short notice.

Inside, it’s boxy and pale, with furniture that reeks of varnish. Two glasses and a bottle of sparkling wine wait for you on the kitchen table—courtesy of Captain Yeager, according to the card. Levi roundly ignores the gesture and goes straight through to the living area, loosening his tie. You follow, trying not to retch at the idea of seeing your picture on the front page the following morning.

“You should go ahead and wash up,” Levi says without turning to look at you. The words are spoken with the same intrinsic authority as every order you’ve ever heard him give.

Bitterly, you drop your meager luggage by the door and walk to the bathroom, which is as sterile as the rest. You lock the door, not out of fear but sickening distrust, before sloughing off your ceremony dress. Your hands shake as you stand under the shower and wipe away traces of the makeup the officer’s wife assigned to “prepare” you had insisted upon. A shame, you think, even if the flesh-toned foundation is a shade off and the lipstick is too bright for your taste, as makeup is rarely available in the internment zone due to glycerin rations.

You linger in the bathroom, taking your time. It’s more merciful to hide here, at least for a while.

When you emerge, dressed in a robe, Levi has already moved your things into the bedroom. The walls are papered in an outdated floral pattern that makes you want to gouge your eyes out. You decide it will have to be one of the first things to go, along with the hideous drapes and the phonograph, which would have been more at home in the living room than in here. A set of freshly-embroidered red armbands sits upon the dresser. The sight of them turns your stomach.

“You can have your turn now,” you say, the words coming out frigid.

Levi glances over from where he’s hung his jacket and nods once.

+++

Alone, you change into your nightgown and wonder if the higher-ups bothered posting extra guards or if they decided you’d be a fool for trying to run. They wouldn’t be wrong; it’s one thing to risk your own life, but it’s not the only one at stake. You think of your cousins, all young and barely old enough to understand what has happened, shuffled off to distant relatives with little more than a promise that they would be cared for. You can’t bear to think of them facing the same fate as their parents. Does Marley have a protocol for sending children to Paradise?

The apartment is quiet. The plumbing rattles faintly from the bathroom where Levi is washing up, and somewhere below, a radio is playing music muffled by concrete walls. You move to the closet and find half of it occupied by Levi’s neatly hung uniforms and the other half carefully kept clean and empty, presumably for your use. You think back to the robe carefully left out for you in the bathroom and the modest non-military-issue soap you found in the shower. The idea that the brusque man you married had thought about everything ahead of time infuriates you.

But Levi, as you’re well aware, has an almost pathological regard for routine. He keeps a shoehorn at the threshold of his office and a dish for pocket change on his desk. And you’ve noticed him reach for a spare handkerchief to wipe at a spill or a stray spot on many occasions.

You work efficiently, jaw clenched, emptying your peeling suitcase onto the bed and stowing everything away into its new proper place. What would happen if you just decided to upend all of it? Leave your worn shoes in a heap, scatter your hairpins all over his military precision in defiance? The urge to do so is so sudden it stings behind your ribs, but you refrain.

You’ve folded your last chemise when Levi returns to the bedroom. His hair is damp, and he’s put on a fresh button down with the hem untucked and the sleeves unbuttoned. It is not the first time you’ve seen him a little dressed down, as he so often is late at night when he stops by the canteen for a cup of tea, but there’s an awkwardness to it now. An intimacy that makes your skin crawl.

“Hungry?” he asks.

It’s a simple question. Only one word, and there’s not much intonation behind it. But it brings your blood to boil.

“Don’t,” you hiss, nails biting into your palms. You can’t stand to stand here and pretend you’re anything other than a broodmare for Marley’s wretched furtherance of the Ackerman bloodline. Their perfect, loyal soldiers.

Levi’s mouth twitches, the ghost of a wince. “It was just a question.”

“Well, there’s no need to act like this is a real marriage,” you sneer.

“I don’t intend to make this worse than it is,” he says.

You want to ask what that means, but you’re not sure you want the answer. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you had my family arrested.”

He narrows his eyes. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“You’re a dog of the Marleyan military,” you snap. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re complicit.”

Something flares in his gaze, and before you can blink, he’s snatching your wrist. “Come,” he snarls, yanking you firmly toward the door. You fight him, but it’s no use. He marches you into the living room and takes both your shoulders in his hands.

“Let go of me!” you demand.

“Watch your mouth,” Levi barks, and the gravity in his tone makes you go still. “Don’t talk like that again. You don’t know who’s listening.”

You stare at him, searching for traces of malice or threat, but find only exhaustion. “Where?” you ask, unable to help yourself.

He sighs and releases you, flexing his hands. “In the bedroom. The phonograph.”

“I see,” you say flatly, and with a deliberate turn, you walk to the kitchen, more rattled than you want to admit.

+++

You sit at the little table with the sparkling wine between you, but neither of you opens it. Levi pulls a loaf of bread and a jar of preserves from the paper sack left by the kitchen sink and sets them out matter-of-factly.

“Eat or don’t eat,” he says. “But don’t cry to me if you choose to starve yourself.”

“Is that an order, sir?” you say acridly.

He shoots you a sharp look. “It’s a suggestion.”

You watch him as he takes the seat opposite you and rolls his sleeves one by one to the elbow. He’s always seemed compact under those military fatigues, but the lean, corded muscle of his forearms reveals the true strength of his frame, shaped by decades of training. You know Warrior training is brutal, designed to take the soldiers apart and put them back together into unquestioning weapons of the state. That’s exactly what Levi Ackerman is to you.

“Do you always make sure your prisoners are fed?” Your voice is tart, but you can’t quite meet his eyes. The jar trembles a little in your hand as you twist it open.

“I don’t see you as a prisoner,” Levi says.

“Just as well. I doubt the commanders will care about your opinion.”

He doesn’t rise to the bait. He spreads preserves on his bread, then sets the knife down and considers you. “I’m sorry for the position you find yourself in, but it isn’t my doing. Treason has consequences.”

The words are cold, yet the fact that they don’t seem to hold any intentional malice makes it all the worse. Your heart hammers, and your stomach turns. You want to see him choke on the dry bread.

“Disproportionate consequences,” you spit out at him. “My whole family was sent to the island, even the ones that had nothing to do with it. The little ones lost their parents and older siblings. Did you torture them, too? Try to get them to give up our neighbors? Our friends?”

Levi’s face hardens, but he is so impassive, it is impossible to decipher whether your anger moves him. “It is harsh, but that’s how Marley roots our traitors.”

“Traitors?” You let out an incredulous scoff. “They were Eldians, same as you!”

“Exactly,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. “And as Eldians, they should have known better.”

The chair beneath you scrapes the floor loudly and you stand. “What do you know?” you ask, voice rising without really meaning to. “You’ve been Marley’s mongrel since the day you were born! And it doesn’t make you any better than us in their eyes.”

“Sit down,” Levi says, eyes darting to the bedroom, where the phonograph sits like a voyeur in the dark.

You don’t sit. You’re too furious to sit. You glare at him, trembling, vision blurring, and consider how far you’d get if you tried to catch a man like Levi Ackerman unaware. When he is asleep, perhaps, or unsuspecting in the shower. It’s a fantasy through and through, because you’re certain you are no match for him in any scenario. But the possibility pulses through your veins, dark and malignant.

Levi calls your name, and you blink. The tears fall hot down your cheeks, and your vision clears enough for you to notice the look on your new husband’s face. He is watching you warily, steel eyes flickering between you and your hand, which you now realize is wrapped tightly around your knife. The blade is still sticky with preserves. You inhale shakily.

“Put it down,” Levi says, almost gently, as he slides out of his chair and inches closer with his hands carefully raised.

You let him approach, lips parted, and his hands close careful around yours. They are shockingly warm for a man that seems carved from unfeeling marble, large and somewhat gnarled from years of strenuous physical activity yet strangely beautiful.

He stands there as you breathe like you’ve just sprinted, and it is almost farcical—as if the bread knife could prove a genuine threat when Levi’s hands are certainly orders of magnitude more deadly. For a moment, you imagine plunging the blade into his chest or your own thigh but loosen your grip instead.

Levi’s shoulders drop. He slides the knife from your hand slowly. There is something unguarded in his face, a momentary slackening.

“Don’t make a scene,” he says, but his voice is low, and if you didn’t know better, you might have heard it as a plea.

The moment passes, and in its wake, exhaustion seeps into your body. You slump back into your chair, and Levi drops the knife to the table with a clatter.

“I didn’t ask for any of this, either,” he says.

He doesn’t scold you further; he just sits down again and resumes eating like nothing happened. You wipe your face with your sleeve, the humiliation mixing in with your anger. You can’t even muster the rage to stomp back to the bedroom. You sit, defeated, and chew mechanically on a hunk of bread

The instant Levi finishes, he stands, collects the dishes, and cleans them at the sink. “You know what's expected of us, don't you?” he says.

You stare at his back, wishing that in all the time you’ve known him in passing, you had learned to read the meanings in his tone. You want to pretend you don’t know, but there are rules, and the rules are as inescapable as walls.

“Yes,” you say quietly.

“They’ll be listening,” he says. “To make sure we comply.”

An image of the phonograph flies through your mind. You want to puke. You want to scream. You want to throw yourself on the floor and cry. But you want to save what’s left of your family, too.

“Fine.” You wipe your face with your palm, surprised not to find more tears.

The faucet runs for several minutes after the conversation has effectively ended as the sound of meticulous scrubbing fills the silence. You wonder if Levi is genuinely that particular or if he simply prefers scrubbing a plate to looking at his wife.

Levi dries the bread knife with a dish cloth, then sets it in the drawer. “I won’t force you,” he says at last. “It—it doesn’t have to be tonight, but—”

He trails off and doesn’t finish the thought, but he doesn’t need to. You understand well enough what he means. It doesn’t have to be tonight, but it will have to be eventually. The government did not arrange this marriage out of charity. Public Security did not spare your cousins because they suddenly discovered a conscience. The officials who witnessed your vows this evening are not expecting companionship or domestic bliss. They are expecting Ackerman children.

“I know,” you say. Perhaps, it should surprise you that he isn’t forcing you. He could do what he wanted; you know this, and that knowledge is worse than fear. You can’t claim to know him very well beyond how he prefers to take his tea, but for some reason, you believe him.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says. “We can figure out what we’re going to do later.”

“You’d rather sleep on the floor?”

Levi’s expression shifts minutely. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

Military camps, your mind supplies. Years of field exercises and of doing whatever Marley demanded of him, even if it meant sleeping in the dirt like the dog he is. And for the first time, you think of what a sad life that must be.

+++

It’s sometime after midnight when the noise wakes you. Falling asleep had been no easy task after such a tense day, especially with the awareness of the phonograph and of the man lying on the floor somewhere behind you.

At first, you’re not even sure you heard it. You lie still beneath the blankets, listening with your eyes open in the dark. For a few seconds, you almost convince yourself it was nothing. Then, it comes again. A sharp intake of breath, followed by thrashing and the incoherent mumbling of someone deep in the throes of a nightmare.

You sit up, blinking against the gloom, and let your eyes adjust. The moonlight through the hideous drapes paints everything in cool silver. On the floor, Levi is still and silent, but only for a moment; the next gust of breath sounds close to a whimper, and his arms jerk taut around the thin blanket.

You’re paralyzed for a split second, then slide off the bed as quietly as you can. In the shadowy limbo between the window and the wardrobe, you make out the sweat glistening on his brow and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. You could wake him. You think a wife with even a drop of affection in her marrow probably would. It would be easier to turn away and pretend you did not notice. But you don’t move away.

“Levi,” you say quietly, lowering yourself to your knees.

You reach out, and your fingers brush his shoulder. The reaction is instantaneous. One moment, you are kneeling beside him. The next, you are on your back against the floor beside your bed, the air knocked from your lungs, and Levi is above you with his hand around your throat.

There’s a wildness in his eyes that tells you he’s not fully awake when he lashes out, but the panic surging through your veins is real enough. You can see the moment he realizes what he’s done. His pupils dilate, and Levi recoils, his hand vanishing from your neck. He staggers backwards on his hands, and you touch your throat, searching for damage. Your fingers encounter only clammy skin and a fluttering pulse.

“You—” you choke out, then stop. What accusation is there to make? You had known what the Ackermans were.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asks.

You’re surprised by the tremor in his voice, and you sit up, kneading your fingers over the small ache along your windpipe. “You were…making sounds,” you manage. “I thought maybe—”

You cut off the sentence, not sure if you should admit tenderness after everything between you. Levi cards a hand through his dark hair. He looks like a shell of a man, skin sallow and eyes haunted. You wonder if he dreams of Titans or of men in white coats, or if the nightmares claw at him the same way they gnaw at you.

“It’s nothing,” he says roughly, pushing up to his feet. “This was a mistake. I’ll be outside. You stay and rest.”

Speechless, you watch as Levi turns away and crosses the room to the door, not even bothering to collect the blanket and pillow from the floor. Then, he disappears into the living room, clumsily closing the door behind him. A moment later, you hear the scrape of a chair being pulled away from the kitchen table.

You remain seated on the floor. The room feels strangely empty without him in it.

+++

Sleep does not come after that. For two hours, you lie awake, and no matter what you do, you can’t manage to drift again.

You stare at the ceiling and find yourself replaying the look on his face. Not the one from when he lunged at you, but after—that brief, terrible instant when he woke and understood what he had done. As though nearly hurting you had frightened him more than whatever dream had dragged him from sleep.

The realization is impossible to reconcile. As long as you have been old enough to understand what Marley touts as salvation is actually propaganda, you’ve believed Levi Ackerman to be exactly what they made him. An obedient, unquestioning, dangerous weapon. But tonight has complicated things.

You hate complications.

Eventually, frustration outweighs exhaustion. With a sigh, you throw back the blankets. The hallway is cool and quiet as you make your way toward the kitchen. Your throat still aches faintly when you swallow. You try not to think about that, either.

A dim light spills across the floor from the living room around the corner. You pause, hearing a strange sound. A low-throated noise that makes your heart stumble. You worry Levi has fallen into another nightmare and continue forward, creeping quickly on your toes.

Levi sits at the sofa with his back to you, too focused on whatever he’s doing to notice your approach. You take in the tableau and feel a sense of disorientation at what you’re witnessing. The soft intermittent clinking of his loose belt buckle; the rhythmic plap, plap, plap of flesh; the half-muffled groans falling from his mouth. He mumbles something as you approach that sounds suspiciously like your name.

It doesn’t come together in your head until you’re close enough to see—his member, thick and flushed, standing erect where the front of his trousers have been sloppily undone, shining with precum and furiously stroked in one hand. Heat floods your face as blood rushes south to your cunt in a wave of lust, quickly followed by mortification. But by then, it’s too late. The hand freezes, and Levi lifts his gaze to meet yours.

“Shit!” he hisses, scrambling to cover himself with a handful of the forgotten paperwork sitting beside him.

You stare at each other, the air suffocating but crackling with an undeniable electricity.

“You should go back to bed,” he says with a scowl.

Indignance crawls up your throat. It’s not like you were the one caught with your pants down. “Are you always this loud?” you shoot back, but your cheeks are burning, and your thighs press together unconsciously. “What are you doing up anyway?”

“I don’t—” He sighs, disgruntled. “I don’t like to sleep much.”

You stand very still, wondering if he’s even aware of his hand still tenting the stack of official papers, trembling ever so slightly atop his erection. A week ago, you would have had nothing to say to this man but “Would you like more tea, sir?” You would have scurried from the canteen at night to avoid the Warriors entirely. How perverse, then, that you’re the only person alive to catch Levi Ackerman like this.

“You know,” you say, crossing your arms, “I heard you say my name. I think you owe me an explanation.”

Maybe it’s payback or spite, or maybe you’ve lost your mind from the sleep deprivation and dread. He looks at you for a long beat. Then, to your utter shock, a flush rises under the sharp line of his cheekbones.

“Do I?” he says quietly.

“Yes,” you try to snap. “Jerking off to the thought of bedding Marley’s newest breeding sow? Does that help you relax, sir?”

A faint flush appears at the tips of his ears. “You’re one to talk,” he says. “Don’t think I didn’t see you gawking at my cock just now.” His voice is as icy and flat as ever, but despite that—or because of it—heat begins to spiral in your belly. “Were you getting aroused watching Marley’s loyal dog stroke his cock to you?”

“So, you admit it!” you cry, jabbing your index finger toward him. “You were getting off to me! Pervert!”

Levi’s lips tighten in the most infinitesimal quiver before he looks away, fuming. “Yeah, but not for the reasons you think. I’m not a monster.”

“What, is that supposed to be reassuring?” you scoff. “What reason, exactly, makes this better?”

“I’ve been watching you for a while,” Levi blurts out, looking stricken by his own confession. “Back at HQ. I…” He hesitates. “I always noticed when you were in the canteen. How you pour the tea. How neat you keep your apron even when it’s a hundred degrees and the kitchen smells like dog food. I know you hate this, and I don’t blame you, but—” He breaks off, unable to finish.

Your mind races with the implications. You’ve never, not once, thought of yourself as the object of anyone’s desire, least of all the Levi Ackerman. A tremor runs through you.

“You never spoke to me,” you say, narrowing your eyes. It comes out more petulant than you intend.

Levi tenses. “I couldn’t. It... wasn’t allowed. You were never supposed to see this side of me.”

“So, what. Did you make a deal with them? Did you choose me because you liked the look of me?” you ask quietly.

“No!” he shoots to his feet. “Fuck, no! I told you, I didn’t choose any of this!”

The papers scatter, rustling to the floor, leaving him exposed and still half-hard. You swallow thickly. Your tongue feels frozen in your mouth. You’re aware of your nightgown clinging to your thighs, the painful ache of your own arousal, and the immense exquisiteness of having some tiny inkling of control over the weapon before you. You’re conscious, too, of the phonograph on the other side of the wall. Watching, always watching. Your skin prickles.

You take a step toward him anyway. “You didn’t want to marry,” you guess. “But you wanted to fuck me.”

A strangled, incredulous sound escapes him. “It’s not like that—”

But you’re in front of him now, and the words cut away.

“Should I pretend I didn’t see?” you ask.

He glares at you, and for the first time, you don't see only coldness. You are still adrenaline-sick, pulse roaring from the aftermath of nearly being throttled, and yet, what you remember now is the heat of his hand when it had pried your fingers from the knife, how intimate it felt to be the thing he clung to in that moment instead of the weapon.

You tug at the drawstrings of your nightgown. It slumps to the floor, pooling around your ankles, and you stand there, goosebumps feathering up your arms in the chilly apartment. Levi blinks at your nudity as if you’d doused him with cold water. Between you, his cock jumps and starts to twitch back to life.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he murmurs.

Liar, you think. But you don't say it out loud. Your hands move of their own accord, reaching for the muscle of his forearm, tracing the lines of his beautiful hand until it shudders.

He doesn’t lunge like you expect. Instead, Levi stands stock still, the steel of his eyes thinned out by the black of his pupils, his sullen face aglow in the wash of city lights through the window. He’s stunning, you think, and you want to punish him for it, even as you yearn to be handled.

“You can touch me,” you say softly.

He does not hesitate now. The soldier learns his new orders instantly. His hand finds your waist, and he draws you closer, till the line of your naked body is flush with his. Your skin tingles wherever he touches you, and you feel the rigid length of him against your thigh, sweltering through his half-hanging pants.

When Levi leans in, as if about to kiss you, you turn away instinctively. But his lips land instead deliberately at the side of your neck, pressing hot against the already flushed skin. Your nerves alight with sensation never before experienced. Is it the act itself, the touch? Or the fact that it is Levi who touches you? You’re too stunned to work out an answer.

His palms skim up your sides, over your ribs to cup your breasts. He works slowly, gently, as if to offer penance rather than foreplay. His thumbs tease the pebbled nipples, and you shiver and gasp. The heat in your lower abdomen, which had already been stirred by the sight of his self-pleasure, now rises to a roaring flame. Contrarily, the flesh between your thighs grows slick with moisture at the same time. You can feel it sliding on your skin with every minute quiver of your frame.

It’s sick, you think. There’s something wrong with you that it feels this good.

“Do you want me to stop?” he murmurs into your neck.

You can only shake your head in response. It’s impossible to believe, in this moment, that this man is the same whose boots you’ve scrubbed clean of mud, the same whose name your family cursed behind closed doors. You can’t help speculating. Had he done this before? A Warrior like him, a god in the eyes of Eldians and a novelty in the eyes of all others, must be coveted by many, you assume.

You try to picture him with other women. The power wrapped up in that strong, lithe body. That stoic brow creased just so with effort. Those beautiful hands, capable of violence, yes, but also of throwing someone around with ease. The thought both galls and thrills you. You’re ruined, you realize, already addicted to the contradiction that is Levi. But the answer is obvious in the way he strokes you. No one has taught him to do this; he’s simply learned how to provide comfort in the only way left to him.

As his hands slide down to cup your ass and draw you tighter against him, there’s a hesitance in his grip that suggests he expects admonishment at any second. Perhaps, he expects you to hit him, to flinch, to run. Instead you press yourself to him bruisingly, letting his cock nudge up between your thighs.

Levi groans, and his hips jerk reflexively, seeking friction. “You’re going to drive me insane.”

Good, you think. It’s the least he deserves. He dips his head to your shoulder, teeth grazing, and your whole body shakes. The air is cool, but where he bites, you feel fire, and where he touches, you ache. You’re barely aware of your own hands until they’re unbuttoning his shirt, forcing themselves under the crisp fabric to move over the ridges of his chest and stomach.

Your breath hitches as the button-down slips off his shoulders and down his arms. Levi is unlike any Eldian you’ve seen before. Not even the dockworkers and trainyard men, toughened by labor but robbed of vigor by the hardships of internment, are built quite like Levi. His pale skin is stretched across hard muscle and littered with scars both old and new—not an ounce of him wasted, his ribs and abdomen cinched tight. You scan his form openly and wonder about the origin of each mark. If they hurt, or if anything hurts him at all.

Levi interrupts your ogling by placing a tender kiss to the center of your throat, right where you can still feel the ghost of his fingers pressing into your trachea. His mouth follows the column of your throat down to where he finds your standing pulse at the hollow between your collarbones. He sinks to his knees—your knees buckle accordingly—and his hands find the backs of your thighs. You lean your hands on his shoulders to keep from collapsing onto him.

He buries his face against your belly, breathing you in. “Stop me if I hurt you.”

The warmth of his breath penetrates your skin. You don’t answer, and anyway, he doesn’t wait for permission. When his mouth finds the soft place above your pubic bone, you gasp. He coaxes your legs apart, and you let him, shame be damned. The heat of his mouth moves lower, lower, and then the tip of his tongue is there, tracing over the wettest part of you.

You stifle a whimper; it feels wrong to make any noise, wrong but addictive. Nothing could’ve prepared you for the flicker of Levi’s tongue at your clit. He buries his face in you, and your hand finds its way into his hair. You nearly yank him away from the oversensitivity, but the pressure only makes him dig deeper. His tongue explores you thoroughly, sometimes darting, sometimes sucking, sometimes simply holding you in his mouth, letting you pulse there.

“Are you so desperate to prove you're not a brute?” you ask breathlessly.

“I’m not the one with something to prove here,” Levi says, his voice a rasp. “You’re the one accused of colluding with Restorationists.”

You nearly laugh, but it breaks into a moan as he presses two fingers into you. You think of the phonograph and the ears surely tuned to it; the impulse to keep quiet only makes you want to scream. So, you let him have it, let yourself gasp and keen and moan until you forget the point of it all.

The first crest of pleasure is so abrupt it robs you of thought. Your body and your thighs threaten to crush his head. There’s a brief moment where you imagine you could kill him like this, the great Levi Ackerman suffocated by your traitorous cunt, but as quickly as it comes, the image is gone, replaced by an explosion of sensation.

You come hard with a strangled cry, riding out the spasms as his hair grows damp with sweat against your skin. When you’ve gone quiet and trembling, Levi rises to his feet, face glistening and gaze hooded, guiding you to collapse against the sofa. You expect him to gloat—maybe even sneer—but when your vision clears, the reality of his state is not what you expected.

Levi stands hunched half over you, bracing one hand on the sofa back by your head. He’s panting hard, flushed chest glistening and heaving with every ragged breath. And his cock is straining, so hard it looks almost painful, leaking copiously from the tip. But somehow, he hesitates. There’s an almost childish anxiety that surprises you, stretching his face tight, and it stirs something akin to tenderness in you.

You reach for him. Groping with confidence you don't possess, you close your fingers around his twitching shaft. Levi’s jaw clenches before a faint, desperate groan escapes. In your hand, he is rigid and feverish, and you feel an astonishing surge of pride at his state. You bring your thumb to the head, lightly swirling the bead of moisture, and he shudders so hard the sinews leap in his neck. Some buried part of you purrs at the power of it.

“Get on the couch,” you whisper.

Levi obeys, lowering himself gingerly over you as you shift longways and part your legs to accommodate him. He hovers above you, looking ruined already, like it’s taking everything in him to hold himself back, and you wrap your thighs around his hips. Your nails dig into the muscled plain of his back, tugging him toward you until the smooth head of his cock is kisses the wet, aching opening of your cunt.

Teeth gritted, Levi glances at your face for any sign of hesitation. Finding none, he pushes inside. He moves slowly at first, his arms shaking. But once he finds himself surrounded by your slick, silky warmth, his restraint shatters.

The stretch is sharp; you aren’t prepared for the sheer fullness of it, but the thrill of it drives you mad. You writhe, struggling to take him as he pounds into you. His hands move to your hips for leverage, and his grip is tight enough to bruise, even as his brow knits like there’s an apology on his tongue. But he can’t help himself. He can only rut into you like a man too long denied.

He fucks you with a violence that’s nothing like the care with which he’d touched you before as he groans out his pleasure. He rasps into your ear that you feel better than he’d ever imagined, that you’re so tight he won’t be able to last. Every drive of his hips forces helpless gasps from your throat. At some point you realize you’re moaning his name, begging, but you’re not sure whether you’re begging for him to be gentler or for more.

Eventually, he gives up on trying to piston in and out of your cunt and just buries himself deep, rocking slow and hard like he’s trying to leave a mark inside you. Each time you think you’ve gotten used to his size, he shifts, grinds, spears even deeper, and a fresh pulse of sensation makes your vision go white. You lose sense of place and time. The city beyond the walls, the unseen eyes recording you. Warriors, Restorationists, even your cousins. For now, nothing exists outside this small apartment.

You reach up to seize the nape of his neck, hauling him down for a kiss that is all hunger. His tongue finds yours, earnest and clumsy and desperate. The heat is blinding. You clench around him as he thrusts and feel his whole body shudder around you. Levi tears his mouth away from yours to bury his face in your shoulder. Then, with a broken hiss, he comes.

Thick pulses of his release spill inside you. The feeling is foreign, strange yet oddly satisfying, even when that little voice in your head reminds you that this is exactly what the higher-ups want: you, full of Levi until something takes and you’re swollen with his child. You picture yourself bent over the kitchen counter while Levi stuffs you full from behind, fucked on your back in the bed with your legs folded up to your chest, and shudder around his softening cock.

The city is deathly quiet, and you wonder if the phonograph is silent now, too. Whether whoever’s monitoring them has decided their work is done for the night, and if the sound of your moans have made some Marleyan bureaucrat blush behind his typewriter.

Levi’s head is pressed to the side of your throat, so still you think he’s fallen asleep—men, you’ve heard, are supposed to do that, collapse into a doze the second they’ve finished. But then he sighs, and rolls away onto his side, while his hand stays splayed at your stomach. You feel his cum trickling out of you in a slow leak, and the instinct is to rise and clean presses at the edge of your consciousness, but your limbs are submerged in postcoital honey, and Levi’s hand is heavy and warm where it rests on you.

It doesn’t feel real; you’ve slept with a Warrior. Perhaps, Levi has had the opposite thought. But what would your family think if they could see you now?

“You okay?” Levi asks. “That… isn’t how I meant for this to happen.”

He sounds remorseful, watching you with a wariness you used to mistake for malice. You equivocate, looking down at the place where his hand presses into your skin. There’s no way to answer his question truthfully, not with so much still churning in your chest. You want to tell him you feel nothing, that it was merely your duty, a demand of the breeding program—except that would be a lie, and you’re too tired to lie.

“I’m fine,” you say, and you find that you mean it.

You push yourself to sit upright. Levi’s hand slips off your stomach, trailing down your hip, where it lingers for a moment as if reluctant to let you go.

“We’re being listened to, right?” you ask, staring at the empty air.

He nods, shamefaced as a schoolboy. “They’ll check the tapes. It’s a formality, mostly. But…” He shrugs. “Still.”

“And what if the phonograph couldn’t pick anything up from the bedroom?”

“I think you were probably loud enough that they’ll get the idea,” Levi says, a touch of smugness in his tone that sparks some irritation. You smack him, albeit lightly. “Point is, we performed for them. There’s no need to repeat this mistake.”

Your stomach feels like a pit, anger rising hot up your throat. A mistake. As if he weren’t the one touching himself to the thought of you. And now, he’s trying to play the gentleman? You can’t help but call him out on it, and not just because you refuse to resign yourself to an indifferent marriage with him, detached and devoid of passion. You won’t be denied the feeling of his cock inside you again.

“You don’t get to call it a mistake if you’re going to make it again,” you say, shifting upright to straddle Levi’s lap. You grasp his shoulders roughly. Your cunt is slick, and his chest is sticky with sweat. Levi blinks up at you, stunned, as if he can’t comprehend your intent.

You press the heel of your hand into his breastbone, pinning him. With your other hand, you take his spent cock and stroke him languidly and feel him begin to harden again. He murmurs your name dangerously, as if to warn you that you don't know what you’re getting yourself into. But you most certainly do.

“The performance isn’t enough,” you say, like you’re making a logical argument and not actively trying to goad him into another round of sloppy fucking. “The Ministry will be expecting a report within the next few months, won’t they?”

“Yes,” Levi replies, visibly straining to get ahold of himself.

“And I expect they’ll simply replace me if you have nothing to report.”

He takes a beat to answer, hands shakily hovering at your hips. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Conceiving within a few months is a daunting task. Most Eldian women, raised on poor rations, do not conceive in the first year of marriage. If you do not want to fail, you both will have to be thorough to ensure something takes. You press his length, still wet from you, against your folds, and he shudders violently.

“Then, we had better make sure we have something to report,” you say, trying to sound curt.

You don’t quite want to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how addicted to his cock you’ve become after just one fuck, how much you want to feel him breed you deep again, but Levi clearly senses your ulterior motive. He smirks wryly and bends to nuzzle your throat, drawing a little sigh from you that you don’t quite manage to hide.

If there is one night in your life you expect to remember forever, it is this one. Wed by a bureaucratic order, fucked to the brink of obliteration by a man you believed you could only loathe, and now, wanting it again. And again, and again.

Suddenly, he’s moving, standing, and scooping you effortlessly into his arms before you can protest. His strength is astonishing. You stifle a yelp and wrap your arms around his neck to steady yourself. His cock valiantly rises to the occasion, hard once again against your ass.

“Efficient,” Levi says like he’s impressed. “I like that.”

And he carries you off to the bedroom.

+++

The papers are signed, and you are ushered into the hall where a newspaper photographer is waiting. He directs you and Levi through an array of stiff, staged poses, asking you to stand close, closer, closer still—until you can smell the bleach on Levi’s shirt. Flash bulbs pop, and afterward, the general claps Levi on the back and wishes the happy couple luck. You are dismissed.

Inside the vehicle, your husband sits with his hands folded and his gaze fixed out the window. You do not speak until the rumble of the engine settles and the driver—an Eldian from the internment zone—opens the door to the modest apartment assigned to you on short notice.

Inside, it’s boxy and pale, with furniture that reeks of varnish. Two glasses and a bottle of sparkling wine wait for you on the kitchen table—courtesy of Captain Yeager, according to the card. Levi roundly ignores the gesture and goes straight through to the living area, loosening his tie. You follow, trying not to retch at the idea of seeing your picture on the front page the following morning.

“You should go ahead and wash up,” Levi says without turning to look at you. The words are spoken with the same intrinsic authority as every order you’ve ever heard him give.

Bitterly, you drop your meager luggage by the door and walk to the bathroom, which is as sterile as the rest. You lock the door, not out of fear but sickening distrust, before sloughing off your ceremony dress. Your hands shake as you stand under the shower and wipe away traces of the makeup the officer’s wife assigned to “prepare” you had insisted upon. A shame, you think, even if the flesh-toned foundation is a shade off and the lipstick is too bright for your taste, as makeup is rarely available in the internment zone due to glycerin rations.

You linger in the bathroom, taking your time. It’s more merciful to hide here, at least for a while.

When you emerge, dressed in a robe, Levi has already moved your things into the bedroom. The walls are papered in an outdated floral pattern that makes you want to gouge your eyes out. You decide it will have to be one of the first things to go, along with the hideous drapes and the phonograph, which would have been more at home in the living room than in here. A set of freshly-embroidered red armbands sits upon the dresser. The sight of them turns your stomach.

“You can have your turn now,” you say, the words coming out frigid.

Levi glances over from where he’s hung his jacket and nods once.

+++

Alone, you change into your nightgown and wonder if the higher-ups bothered posting extra guards or if they decided you’d be a fool for trying to run. They wouldn’t be wrong; it’s one thing to risk your own life, but it’s not the only one at stake. You think of your cousins, all young and barely old enough to understand what has happened, shuffled off to distant relatives with little more than a promise that they would be cared for. You can’t bear to think of them facing the same fate as their parents. Does Marley have a protocol for sending children to Paradise?

The apartment is quiet. The plumbing rattles faintly from the bathroom where Levi is washing up, and somewhere below, a radio is playing music muffled by concrete walls. You move to the closet and find half of it occupied by Levi’s neatly hung uniforms and the other half carefully kept clean and empty, presumably for your use. You think back to the robe carefully left out for you in the bathroom and the modest non-military-issue soap you found in the shower. The idea that the brusque man you married had thought about everything ahead of time infuriates you.

But Levi, as you’re well aware, has an almost pathological regard for routine. He keeps a shoehorn at the threshold of his office and a dish for pocket change on his desk. And you’ve noticed him reach for a spare handkerchief to wipe at a spill or a stray spot on many occasions.

You work efficiently, jaw clenched, emptying your peeling suitcase onto the bed and stowing everything away into its new proper place. What would happen if you just decided to upend all of it? Leave your worn shoes in a heap, scatter your hairpins all over his military precision in defiance? The urge to do so is so sudden it stings behind your ribs, but you refrain.

You’ve folded your last chemise when Levi returns to the bedroom. His hair is damp, and he’s put on a fresh button down with the hem untucked and the sleeves unbuttoned. It is not the first time you’ve seen him a little dressed down, as he so often is late at night when he stops by the canteen for a cup of tea, but there’s an awkwardness to it now. An intimacy that makes your skin crawl.

“Hungry?” he asks.

It’s a simple question. Only one word, and there’s not much intonation behind it. But it brings your blood to boil.

“Don’t,” you hiss, nails biting into your palms. You can’t stand to stand here and pretend you’re anything other than a broodmare for Marley’s wretched furtherance of the Ackerman bloodline. Their perfect, loyal soldiers.

Levi’s mouth twitches, the ghost of a wince. “It was just a question.”

“Well, there’s no need to act like this is a real marriage,” you sneer.

“I don’t intend to make this worse than it is,” he says.

You want to ask what that means, but you’re not sure you want the answer. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you had my family arrested.”

He narrows his eyes. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“You’re a dog of the Marleyan military,” you snap. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re complicit.”

Something flares in his gaze, and before you can blink, he’s snatching your wrist. “Come,” he snarls, yanking you firmly toward the door. You fight him, but it’s no use. He marches you into the living room and takes both your shoulders in his hands.

“Let go of me!” you demand.

“Watch your mouth,” Levi barks, and the gravity in his tone makes you go still. “Don’t talk like that again. You don’t know who’s listening.”

You stare at him, searching for traces of malice or threat, but find only exhaustion. “Where?” you ask, unable to help yourself.

He sighs and releases you, flexing his hands. “In the bedroom. The phonograph.”

“I see,” you say flatly, and with a deliberate turn, you walk to the kitchen, more rattled than you want to admit.

+++

You sit at the little table with the sparkling wine between you, but neither of you opens it. Levi pulls a loaf of bread and a jar of preserves from the paper sack left by the kitchen sink and sets them out matter-of-factly.

“Eat or don’t eat,” he says. “But don’t cry to me if you choose to starve yourself.”

“Is that an order, sir?” you say acridly.

He shoots you a sharp look. “It’s a suggestion.”

You watch him as he takes the seat opposite you and rolls his sleeves one by one to the elbow. He’s always seemed compact under those military fatigues, but the lean, corded muscle of his forearms reveals the true strength of his frame, shaped by decades of training. You know Warrior training is brutal, designed to take the soldiers apart and put them back together into unquestioning weapons of the state. That’s exactly what Levi Ackerman is to you.

“Do you always make sure your prisoners are fed?” Your voice is tart, but you can’t quite meet his eyes. The jar trembles a little in your hand as you twist it open.

“I don’t see you as a prisoner,” Levi says.

“Just as well. I doubt the commanders will care about your opinion.”

He doesn’t rise to the bait. He spreads preserves on his bread, then sets the knife down and considers you. “I’m sorry for the position you find yourself in, but it isn’t my doing. Treason has consequences.”

The words are cold, yet the fact that they don’t seem to hold any intentional malice makes it all the worse. Your heart hammers, and your stomach turns. You want to see him choke on the dry bread.

“Disproportionate consequences,” you spit out at him. “My whole family was sent to the island, even the ones that had nothing to do with it. The little ones lost their parents and older siblings. Did you torture them, too? Try to get them to give up our neighbors? Our friends?”

Levi’s face hardens, but he is so impassive, it is impossible to decipher whether your anger moves him. “It is harsh, but that’s how Marley roots our traitors.”

“Traitors?” You let out an incredulous scoff. “They were Eldians, same as you!”

“Exactly,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. “And as Eldians, they should have known better.”

The chair beneath you scrapes the floor loudly and you stand. “What do you know?” you ask, voice rising without really meaning to. “You’ve been Marley’s mongrel since the day you were born! And it doesn’t make you any better than us in their eyes.”

“Sit down,” Levi says, eyes darting to the bedroom, where the phonograph sits like a voyeur in the dark.

You don’t sit. You’re too furious to sit. You glare at him, trembling, vision blurring, and consider how far you’d get if you tried to catch a man like Levi Ackerman unaware. When he is asleep, perhaps, or unsuspecting in the shower. It’s a fantasy through and through, because you’re certain you are no match for him in any scenario. But the possibility pulses through your veins, dark and malignant.

Levi calls your name, and you blink. The tears fall hot down your cheeks, and your vision clears enough for you to notice the look on your new husband’s face. He is watching you warily, steel eyes flickering between you and your hand, which you now realize is wrapped tightly around your knife. The blade is still sticky with preserves. You inhale shakily.

“Put it down,” Levi says, almost gently, as he slides out of his chair and inches closer with his hands carefully raised.

You let him approach, lips parted, and his hands close careful around yours. They are shockingly warm for a man that seems carved from unfeeling marble, large and somewhat gnarled from years of strenuous physical activity yet strangely beautiful.

He stands there as you breathe like you’ve just sprinted, and it is almost farcical—as if the bread knife could prove a genuine threat when Levi’s hands are certainly orders of magnitude more deadly. For a moment, you imagine plunging the blade into his chest or your own thigh but loosen your grip instead.

Levi’s shoulders drop. He slides the knife from your hand slowly. There is something unguarded in his face, a momentary slackening.

“Don’t make a scene,” he says, but his voice is low, and if you didn’t know better, you might have heard it as a plea.

The moment passes, and in its wake, exhaustion seeps into your body. You slump back into your chair, and Levi drops the knife to the table with a clatter.

“I didn’t ask for any of this, either,” he says.

He doesn’t scold you further; he just sits down again and resumes eating like nothing happened. You wipe your face with your sleeve, the humiliation mixing in with your anger. You can’t even muster the rage to stomp back to the bedroom. You sit, defeated, and chew mechanically on a hunk of bread

The instant Levi finishes, he stands, collects the dishes, and cleans them at the sink. “You know what's expected of us, don't you?” he says.

You stare at his back, wishing that in all the time you’ve known him in passing, you had learned to read the meanings in his tone. You want to pretend you don’t know, but there are rules, and the rules are as inescapable as walls.

“Yes,” you say quietly.

“They’ll be listening,” he says. “To make sure we comply.”

An image of the phonograph flies through your mind. You want to puke. You want to scream. You want to throw yourself on the floor and cry. But you want to save what’s left of your family, too.

“Fine.” You wipe your face with your palm, surprised not to find more tears.

The faucet runs for several minutes after the conversation has effectively ended as the sound of meticulous scrubbing fills the silence. You wonder if Levi is genuinely that particular or if he simply prefers scrubbing a plate to looking at his wife.

Levi dries the bread knife with a dish cloth, then sets it in the drawer. “I won’t force you,” he says at last. “It—it doesn’t have to be tonight, but—”

He trails off and doesn’t finish the thought, but he doesn’t need to. You understand well enough what he means. It doesn’t have to be tonight, but it will have to be eventually. The government did not arrange this marriage out of charity. Public Security did not spare your cousins because they suddenly discovered a conscience. The officials who witnessed your vows this evening are not expecting companionship or domestic bliss. They are expecting Ackerman children.

“I know,” you say. Perhaps, it should surprise you that he isn’t forcing you. He could do what he wanted; you know this, and that knowledge is worse than fear. You can’t claim to know him very well beyond how he prefers to take his tea, but for some reason, you believe him.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says. “We can figure out what we’re going to do later.”

“You’d rather sleep on the floor?”

Levi’s expression shifts minutely. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

Military camps, your mind supplies. Years of field exercises and of doing whatever Marley demanded of him, even if it meant sleeping in the dirt like the dog he is. And for the first time, you think of what a sad life that must be.

+++

It’s sometime after midnight when the noise wakes you. Falling asleep had been no easy task after such a tense day, especially with the awareness of the phonograph and of the man lying on the floor somewhere behind you.

At first, you’re not even sure you heard it. You lie still beneath the blankets, listening with your eyes open in the dark. For a few seconds, you almost convince yourself it was nothing. Then, it comes again. A sharp intake of breath, followed by thrashing and the incoherent mumbling of someone deep in the throes of a nightmare.

You sit up, blinking against the gloom, and let your eyes adjust. The moonlight through the hideous drapes paints everything in cool silver. On the floor, Levi is still and silent, but only for a moment; the next gust of breath sounds close to a whimper, and his arms jerk taut around the thin blanket.

You’re paralyzed for a split second, then slide off the bed as quietly as you can. In the shadowy limbo between the window and the wardrobe, you make out the sweat glistening on his brow and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. You could wake him. You think a wife with even a drop of affection in her marrow probably would. It would be easier to turn away and pretend you did not notice. But you don’t move away.

“Levi,” you say quietly, lowering yourself to your knees.

You reach out, and your fingers brush his shoulder. The reaction is instantaneous. One moment, you are kneeling beside him. The next, you are on your back against the floor beside your bed, the air knocked from your lungs, and Levi is above you with his hand around your throat.

There’s a wildness in his eyes that tells you he’s not fully awake when he lashes out, but the panic surging through your veins is real enough. You can see the moment he realizes what he’s done. His pupils dilate, and Levi recoils, his hand vanishing from your neck. He staggers backwards on his hands, and you touch your throat, searching for damage. Your fingers encounter only clammy skin and a fluttering pulse.

“You—” you choke out, then stop. What accusation is there to make? You had known what the Ackermans were.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asks.

You’re surprised by the tremor in his voice, and you sit up, kneading your fingers over the small ache along your windpipe. “You were…making sounds,” you manage. “I thought maybe—”

You cut off the sentence, not sure if you should admit tenderness after everything between you. Levi cards a hand through his dark hair. He looks like a shell of a man, skin sallow and eyes haunted. You wonder if he dreams of Titans or of men in white coats, or if the nightmares claw at him the same way they gnaw at you.

“It’s nothing,” he says roughly, pushing up to his feet. “This was a mistake. I’ll be outside. You stay and rest.”

Speechless, you watch as Levi turns away and crosses the room to the door, not even bothering to collect the blanket and pillow from the floor. Then, he disappears into the living room, clumsily closing the door behind him. A moment later, you hear the scrape of a chair being pulled away from the kitchen table.

You remain seated on the floor. The room feels strangely empty without him in it.

+++

Sleep does not come after that. For two hours, you lie awake, and no matter what you do, you can’t manage to drift again.

You stare at the ceiling and find yourself replaying the look on his face. Not the one from when he lunged at you, but after—that brief, terrible instant when he woke and understood what he had done. As though nearly hurting you had frightened him more than whatever dream had dragged him from sleep.

The realization is impossible to reconcile. As long as you have been old enough to understand what Marley touts as salvation is actually propaganda, you’ve believed Levi Ackerman to be exactly what they made him. An obedient, unquestioning, dangerous weapon. But tonight has complicated things.

You hate complications.

Eventually, frustration outweighs exhaustion. With a sigh, you throw back the blankets. The hallway is cool and quiet as you make your way toward the kitchen. Your throat still aches faintly when you swallow. You try not to think about that, either.

A dim light spills across the floor from the living room around the corner. You pause, hearing a strange sound. A low-throated noise that makes your heart stumble. You worry Levi has fallen into another nightmare and continue forward, creeping quickly on your toes.

Levi sits at the sofa with his back to you, too focused on whatever he’s doing to notice your approach. You take in the tableau and feel a sense of disorientation at what you’re witnessing. The soft intermittent clinking of his loose belt buckle; the rhythmic plap, plap, plap of flesh; the half-muffled groans falling from his mouth. He mumbles something as you approach that sounds suspiciously like your name.

It doesn’t come together in your head until you’re close enough to see—his member, thick and flushed, standing erect where the front of his trousers have been sloppily undone, shining with precum and furiously stroked in one hand. Heat floods your face as blood rushes south to your cunt in a wave of lust, quickly followed by mortification. But by then, it’s too late. The hand freezes, and Levi lifts his gaze to meet yours.

“Shit!” he hisses, scrambling to cover himself with a handful of the forgotten paperwork sitting beside him.

You stare at each other, the air suffocating but crackling with an undeniable electricity.

“You should go back to bed,” he says with a scowl.

Indignance crawls up your throat. It’s not like you were the one caught with your pants down. “Are you always this loud?” you shoot back, but your cheeks are burning, and your thighs press together unconsciously. “What are you doing up anyway?”

“I don’t—” He sighs, disgruntled. “I don’t like to sleep much.”

You stand very still, wondering if he’s even aware of his hand still tenting the stack of official papers, trembling ever so slightly atop his erection. A week ago, you would have had nothing to say to this man but “Would you like more tea, sir?” You would have scurried from the canteen at night to avoid the Warriors entirely. How perverse, then, that you’re the only person alive to catch Levi Ackerman like this.

“You know,” you say, crossing your arms, “I heard you say my name. I think you owe me an explanation.”

Maybe it’s payback or spite, or maybe you’ve lost your mind from the sleep deprivation and dread. He looks at you for a long beat. Then, to your utter shock, a flush rises under the sharp line of his cheekbones.

“Do I?” he says quietly.

“Yes,” you try to snap. “Jerking off to the thought of bedding Marley’s newest breeding sow? Does that help you relax, sir?”

A faint flush appears at the tips of his ears. “You’re one to talk,” he says. “Don’t think I didn’t see you gawking at my cock just now.” His voice is as icy and flat as ever, but despite that—or because of it—heat begins to spiral in your belly. “Were you getting aroused watching Marley’s loyal dog stroke his cock to you?”

“So, you admit it!” you cry, jabbing your index finger toward him. “You were getting off to me! Pervert!”

Levi’s lips tighten in the most infinitesimal quiver before he looks away, fuming. “Yeah, but not for the reasons you think. I’m not a monster.”

“What, is that supposed to be reassuring?” you scoff. “What reason, exactly, makes this better?”

“I’ve been watching you for a while,” Levi blurts out, looking stricken by his own confession. “Back at HQ. I…” He hesitates. “I always noticed when you were in the canteen. How you pour the tea. How neat you keep your apron even when it’s a hundred degrees and the kitchen smells like dog food. I know you hate this, and I don’t blame you, but—” He breaks off, unable to finish.

Your mind races with the implications. You’ve never, not once, thought of yourself as the object of anyone’s desire, least of all the Levi Ackerman. A tremor runs through you.

“You never spoke to me,” you say, narrowing your eyes. It comes out more petulant than you intend.

Levi tenses. “I couldn’t. It... wasn’t allowed. You were never supposed to see this side of me.”

“So, what. Did you make a deal with them? Did you choose me because you liked the look of me?” you ask quietly.

“No!” he shoots to his feet. “Fuck, no! I told you, I didn’t choose any of this!”

The papers scatter, rustling to the floor, leaving him exposed and still half-hard. You swallow thickly. Your tongue feels frozen in your mouth. You’re aware of your nightgown clinging to your thighs, the painful ache of your own arousal, and the immense exquisiteness of having some tiny inkling of control over the weapon before you. You’re conscious, too, of the phonograph on the other side of the wall. Watching, always watching. Your skin prickles.

You take a step toward him anyway. “You didn’t want to marry,” you guess. “But you wanted to fuck me.”

A strangled, incredulous sound escapes him. “It’s not like that—”

But you’re in front of him now, and the words cut away.

“Should I pretend I didn’t see?” you ask.

He glares at you, and for the first time, you don't see only coldness. You are still adrenaline-sick, pulse roaring from the aftermath of nearly being throttled, and yet, what you remember now is the heat of his hand when it had pried your fingers from the knife, how intimate it felt to be the thing he clung to in that moment instead of the weapon.

You tug at the drawstrings of your nightgown. It slumps to the floor, pooling around your ankles, and you stand there, goosebumps feathering up your arms in the chilly apartment. Levi blinks at your nudity as if you’d doused him with cold water. Between you, his cock jumps and starts to twitch back to life.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he murmurs.

Liar, you think. But you don't say it out loud. Your hands move of their own accord, reaching for the muscle of his forearm, tracing the lines of his beautiful hand until it shudders.

He doesn’t lunge like you expect. Instead, Levi stands stock still, the steel of his eyes thinned out by the black of his pupils, his sullen face aglow in the wash of city lights through the window. He’s stunning, you think, and you want to punish him for it, even as you yearn to be handled.

“You can touch me,” you say softly.

He does not hesitate now. The soldier learns his new orders instantly. His hand finds your waist, and he draws you closer, till the line of your naked body is flush with his. Your skin tingles wherever he touches you, and you feel the rigid length of him against your thigh, sweltering through his half-hanging pants.

When Levi leans in, as if about to kiss you, you turn away instinctively. But his lips land instead deliberately at the side of your neck, pressing hot against the already flushed skin. Your nerves alight with sensation never before experienced. Is it the act itself, the touch? Or the fact that it is Levi who touches you? You’re too stunned to work out an answer.

His palms skim up your sides, over your ribs to cup your breasts. He works slowly, gently, as if to offer penance rather than foreplay. His thumbs tease the pebbled nipples, and you shiver and gasp. The heat in your lower abdomen, which had already been stirred by the sight of his self-pleasure, now rises to a roaring flame. Contrarily, the flesh between your thighs grows slick with moisture at the same time. You can feel it sliding on your skin with every minute quiver of your frame.

It’s sick, you think. There’s something wrong with you that it feels this good.

“Do you want me to stop?” he murmurs into your neck.

You can only shake your head in response. It’s impossible to believe, in this moment, that this man is the same whose boots you’ve scrubbed clean of mud, the same whose name your family cursed behind closed doors. You can’t help speculating. Had he done this before? A Warrior like him, a god in the eyes of Eldians and a novelty in the eyes of all others, must be coveted by many, you assume.

You try to picture him with other women. The power wrapped up in that strong, lithe body. That stoic brow creased just so with effort. Those beautiful hands, capable of violence, yes, but also of throwing someone around with ease. The thought both galls and thrills you. You’re ruined, you realize, already addicted to the contradiction that is Levi. But the answer is obvious in the way he strokes you. No one has taught him to do this; he’s simply learned how to provide comfort in the only way left to him.

As his hands slide down to cup your ass and draw you tighter against him, there’s a hesitance in his grip that suggests he expects admonishment at any second. Perhaps, he expects you to hit him, to flinch, to run. Instead you press yourself to him bruisingly, letting his cock nudge up between your thighs.

Levi groans, and his hips jerk reflexively, seeking friction. “You’re going to drive me insane.”

Good, you think. It’s the least he deserves. He dips his head to your shoulder, teeth grazing, and your whole body shakes. The air is cool, but where he bites, you feel fire, and where he touches, you ache. You’re barely aware of your own hands until they’re unbuttoning his shirt, forcing themselves under the crisp fabric to move over the ridges of his chest and stomach.

Your breath hitches as the button-down slips off his shoulders and down his arms. Levi is unlike any Eldian you’ve seen before. Not even the dockworkers and trainyard men, toughened by labor but robbed of vigor by the hardships of internment, are built quite like Levi. His pale skin is stretched across hard muscle and littered with scars both old and new—not an ounce of him wasted, his ribs and abdomen cinched tight. You scan his form openly and wonder about the origin of each mark. If they hurt, or if anything hurts him at all.

Levi interrupts your ogling by placing a tender kiss to the center of your throat, right where you can still feel the ghost of his fingers pressing into your trachea. His mouth follows the column of your throat down to where he finds your standing pulse at the hollow between your collarbones. He sinks to his knees—your knees buckle accordingly—and his hands find the backs of your thighs. You lean your hands on his shoulders to keep from collapsing onto him.

He buries his face against your belly, breathing you in. “Stop me if I hurt you.”

The warmth of his breath penetrates your skin. You don’t answer, and anyway, he doesn’t wait for permission. When his mouth finds the soft place above your pubic bone, you gasp. He coaxes your legs apart, and you let him, shame be damned. The heat of his mouth moves lower, lower, and then the tip of his tongue is there, tracing over the wettest part of you.

You stifle a whimper; it feels wrong to make any noise, wrong but addictive. Nothing could’ve prepared you for the flicker of Levi’s tongue at your clit. He buries his face in you, and your hand finds its way into his hair. You nearly yank him away from the oversensitivity, but the pressure only makes him dig deeper. His tongue explores you thoroughly, sometimes darting, sometimes sucking, sometimes simply holding you in his mouth, letting you pulse there.

“Are you so desperate to prove you're not a brute?” you ask breathlessly.

“I’m not the one with something to prove here,” Levi says, his voice a rasp. “You’re the one accused of colluding with Restorationists.”

You nearly laugh, but it breaks into a moan as he presses two fingers into you. You think of the phonograph and the ears surely tuned to it; the impulse to keep quiet only makes you want to scream. So, you let him have it, let yourself gasp and keen and moan until you forget the point of it all.

The first crest of pleasure is so abrupt it robs you of thought. Your body and your thighs threaten to crush his head. There’s a brief moment where you imagine you could kill him like this, the great Levi Ackerman suffocated by your traitorous cunt, but as quickly as it comes, the image is gone, replaced by an explosion of sensation.

You come hard with a strangled cry, riding out the spasms as his hair grows damp with sweat against your skin. When you’ve gone quiet and trembling, Levi rises to his feet, face glistening and gaze hooded, guiding you to collapse against the sofa. You expect him to gloat—maybe even sneer—but when your vision clears, the reality of his state is not what you expected.

Levi stands hunched half over you, bracing one hand on the sofa back by your head. He’s panting hard, flushed chest glistening and heaving with every ragged breath. And his cock is straining, so hard it looks almost painful, leaking copiously from the tip. But somehow, he hesitates. There’s an almost childish anxiety that surprises you, stretching his face tight, and it stirs something akin to tenderness in you.

You reach for him. Groping with confidence you don't possess, you close your fingers around his twitching shaft. Levi’s jaw clenches before a faint, desperate groan escapes. In your hand, he is rigid and feverish, and you feel an astonishing surge of pride at his state. You bring your thumb to the head, lightly swirling the bead of moisture, and he shudders so hard the sinews leap in his neck. Some buried part of you purrs at the power of it.

“Get on the couch,” you whisper.

Levi obeys, lowering himself gingerly over you as you shift longways and part your legs to accommodate him. He hovers above you, looking ruined already, like it’s taking everything in him to hold himself back, and you wrap your thighs around his hips. Your nails dig into the muscled plain of his back, tugging him toward you until the smooth head of his cock is kisses the wet, aching opening of your cunt.

Teeth gritted, Levi glances at your face for any sign of hesitation. Finding none, he pushes inside. He moves slowly at first, his arms shaking. But once he finds himself surrounded by your slick, silky warmth, his restraint shatters.

The stretch is sharp; you aren’t prepared for the sheer fullness of it, but the thrill of it drives you mad. You writhe, struggling to take him as he pounds into you. His hands move to your hips for leverage, and his grip is tight enough to bruise, even as his brow knits like there’s an apology on his tongue. But he can’t help himself. He can only rut into you like a man too long denied.

He fucks you with a violence that’s nothing like the care with which he’d touched you before as he groans out his pleasure. He rasps into your ear that you feel better than he’d ever imagined, that you’re so tight he won’t be able to last. Every drive of his hips forces helpless gasps from your throat. At some point you realize you’re moaning his name, begging, but you’re not sure whether you’re begging for him to be gentler or for more.

Eventually, he gives up on trying to piston in and out of your cunt and just buries himself deep, rocking slow and hard like he’s trying to leave a mark inside you. Each time you think you’ve gotten used to his size, he shifts, grinds, spears even deeper, and a fresh pulse of sensation makes your vision go white. You lose sense of place and time. The city beyond the walls, the unseen eyes recording you. Warriors, Restorationists, even your cousins. For now, nothing exists outside this small apartment.

You reach up to seize the nape of his neck, hauling him down for a kiss that is all hunger. His tongue finds yours, earnest and clumsy and desperate. The heat is blinding. You clench around him as he thrusts and feel his whole body shudder around you. Levi tears his mouth away from yours to bury his face in your shoulder. Then, with a broken hiss, he comes.

Thick pulses of his release spill inside you. The feeling is foreign, strange yet oddly satisfying, even when that little voice in your head reminds you that this is exactly what the higher-ups want: you, full of Levi until something takes and you’re swollen with his child. You picture yourself bent over the kitchen counter while Levi stuffs you full from behind, fucked on your back in the bed with your legs folded up to your chest, and shudder around his softening cock.

The city is deathly quiet, and you wonder if the phonograph is silent now, too. Whether whoever’s monitoring them has decided their work is done for the night, and if the sound of your moans have made some Marleyan bureaucrat blush behind his typewriter.

Levi’s head is pressed to the side of your throat, so still you think he’s fallen asleep—men, you’ve heard, are supposed to do that, collapse into a doze the second they’ve finished. But then he sighs, and rolls away onto his side, while his hand stays splayed at your stomach. You feel his cum trickling out of you in a slow leak, and the instinct is to rise and clean presses at the edge of your consciousness, but your limbs are submerged in postcoital honey, and Levi’s hand is heavy and warm where it rests on you.

It doesn’t feel real; you’ve slept with a Warrior. Perhaps, Levi has had the opposite thought. But what would your family think if they could see you now?

“You okay?” Levi asks. “That… isn’t how I meant for this to happen.”

He sounds remorseful, watching you with a wariness you used to mistake for malice. You equivocate, looking down at the place where his hand presses into your skin. There’s no way to answer his question truthfully, not with so much still churning in your chest. You want to tell him you feel nothing, that it was merely your duty, a demand of the breeding program—except that would be a lie, and you’re too tired to lie.

“I’m fine,” you say, and you find that you mean it.

You push yourself to sit upright. Levi’s hand slips off your stomach, trailing down your hip, where it lingers for a moment as if reluctant to let you go.

“We’re being listened to, right?” you ask, staring at the empty air.

He nods, shamefaced as a schoolboy. “They’ll check the tapes. It’s a formality, mostly. But…” He shrugs. “Still.”

“And what if the phonograph couldn’t pick anything up from the bedroom?”

“I think you were probably loud enough that they’ll get the idea,” Levi says, a touch of smugness in his tone that sparks some irritation. You smack him, albeit lightly. “Point is, we performed for them. There’s no need to repeat this mistake.”

Your stomach feels like a pit, anger rising hot up your throat. A mistake. As if he weren’t the one touching himself to the thought of you. And now, he’s trying to play the gentleman? You can’t help but call him out on it, and not just because you refuse to resign yourself to an indifferent marriage with him, detached and devoid of passion. You won’t be denied the feeling of his cock inside you again.

“You don’t get to call it a mistake if you’re going to make it again,” you say, shifting upright to straddle Levi’s lap. You grasp his shoulders roughly. Your cunt is slick, and his chest is sticky with sweat. Levi blinks up at you, stunned, as if he can’t comprehend your intent.

You press the heel of your hand into his breastbone, pinning him. With your other hand, you take his spent cock and stroke him languidly and feel him begin to harden again. He murmurs your name dangerously, as if to warn you that you don't know what you’re getting yourself into. But you most certainly do.

“The performance isn’t enough,” you say, like you’re making a logical argument and not actively trying to goad him into another round of sloppy fucking. “The Ministry will be expecting a report within the next few months, won’t they?”

“Yes,” Levi replies, visibly straining to get ahold of himself.

“And I expect they’ll simply replace me if you have nothing to report.”

He takes a beat to answer, hands shakily hovering at your hips. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Conceiving within a few months is a daunting task. Most Eldian women, raised on poor rations, do not conceive in the first year of marriage. If you do not want to fail, you both will have to be thorough to ensure something takes. You press his length, still wet from you, against your folds, and he shudders violently.

“Then, we had better make sure we have something to report,” you say, trying to sound curt.

You don’t quite want to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how addicted to his cock you’ve become after just one fuck, how much you want to feel him breed you deep again, but Levi clearly senses your ulterior motive. He smirks wryly and bends to nuzzle your throat, drawing a little sigh from you that you don’t quite manage to hide.

If there is one night in your life you expect to remember forever, it is this one. Wed by a bureaucratic order, fucked to the brink of obliteration by a man you believed you could only loathe, and now, wanting it again. And again, and again.

Suddenly, he’s moving, standing, and scooping you effortlessly into his arms before you can protest. His strength is astonishing. You stifle a yelp and wrap your arms around his neck to steady yourself. His cock valiantly rises to the occasion, hard once again against your ass.

“Efficient,” Levi says like he’s impressed. “I like that.”

And he carries you off to the bedroom.