AO3: TOTHESTRONGONES

Why would she even want to?

He remembers holding onto the back of the wooden chair closest to the wall, fingertips white, while Furlan exposed the private dialogue at the forefront of his brain.

It isn't like we're Pierre and his gang. We're just two guys with the Military Police on our asses over ODM gear. It's hardly safer.

Wrong.

You once told him that you call her Mother.

The kids that found themselves at the mercy of your Mother never lasted long. Somehow you managed not to die like others. Somehow you surpassed her expectations and became her damn show pony to the rest of the pieces of shit using kids for quick coin.

(A mother should feel like sunshine in a place that doesn't have any sun — he would know. Levi may have lost that tether to the surface, but he still sees her smile at night. What a disgrace, to force a child to call a monster such a thing.)

Trust me, is all he could say to his friend before he toed on his shoes, it is safer.

Because he knows you.

He doesn't know you, but he knows you. Fist to cheek, foot to shin, he knows what it is like to be hurt by you — and he knows what it is like to stare upon a stranger holding out a piece of molding bread with a stomach just as empty as his, asking questions like every bit of breathing didn't burn.

Thinking about you is like an itch at the back of his throat that won't go away.

Year after year after year, time passes.

Levi earns his freedom on the whim of an old man's twisted lesson on survival. You remain imprisoned by a fate forced onto you with no place to go.

He didn't plan the after.

He didn't think about what would happen if you said yes and followed him from Roxy's, turned the corner and walked up the stairs of his small apartment, and stood in the middle of his living room in the dead of night.

He didn't.

So there you stand, face and arms littered in fresh bandages, wide-eyed and just as speechless as Levi feels. His feet feel like lead when your gaze ping pongs to every corner of the living room and kitchenette, assessing the risk of letting your guard down.

Furlan waits at the edge of his bedroom like an overgrown child with a stretched grin, his hair wet from an evening shower.

Don't, Levi mentally warns his confidante, do not fuck this for us, shithead.

Furlan, naturally, picks up zero signal.

"Hi, person he calls James," he states cheerily before letting out a dramatic yawn. "I should probably give you the very ridiculously brief tour of this stunning mansion, but fortunately for you, I gotta get some shut eye to meet a guy in the morning."

Levi doesn't dare look back at your reaction to his nonchalance.

Raising a hand, Furlan continues by dropping a finger with every noted amenity. "Your room's next to mine. There's a little dresser in there with a few clothes we could spare, and, uh… Levi, am I forgetting anything?"

Imperceptible to most, his brow quirks. A threat.

Furlan's smile distorts when he scrunches his nose. "A-yup, kinda got that impression. Cool! See ya later in the morning, roomie!"

And just like that, the door closes, leaving you both to marinate in this (suffocatingly awkward) introduction.

Levi closes his eyes for a second to gather his annoyance before he turns to face you.

"You can sleep in the—"

Without a word, you drop to the floor and crisscross your legs, eyes shifting to lock onto his.

Levi stops speaking then and there, uncertain of how to proceed.

He gives you a moment to answer. You don't. He inhales, long and deep. Your brow raises.

"Here," you state, and his stomach clenches. "I'll sleep here."

(In the living room?)

"The door catches a draft," he argues flatly.

"I can handle a little cold," you state.

"We have a third bedroom that—"

Levi pauses his thoughts, reverses them, when he realizes what the why is before he can ask.

An escape.

You want an escape if it goes wrong.

He can't blame you. There are good people in the Underground City, but they never outweigh as the few.

Silence befalls the room until you shift, grounding your hips into the floor. His eyes dip, but he'll chalk it up to his own instincts of watching the world like a sharpened hawk.

"The room is there, if you decide you want it."

"Do I get some kind of complimentary gang blanket for saying yes to joining?"

Oh.

You still have humor, despite everything.

Levi thought maybe Furlan was the only one still trying.

Without responding, he turns on a heel. Somehow Furlan managed to find a place that had three bedrooms, a feat as luxurious as fresh fruit, so he has the luxury to disappear into the blackness of his small bedroom and pluck a blanket. He retraces his steps and holds it out, shaking it when you look up, down, up, down — like the gesture isn't real.

Eventually your hand reaches and tugs, and he gives it freely.

"I'll close my door."

He hears you shuffle when he steps back into the bedroom. "What if I ransack your place in your sleep? Aren't you a little worried?"

No, he wants to say.

"I'll take my chances," he says instead, shutting the door until it clicks.

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A week passes.

When he comes home at three in the morning from a small altercation with another thug, you're nowhere to be found.

The living room is barren, cold.

An odd sensation trails down the back of his neck when he looks ahead instead of back towards the front door — a blanket shifts in the corner of his bedroom.

One step after another, the raven-haired boy makes it halfway before realizing you're out cold, lips parted and face softened, with your head buried on his pillow.

Silent in his movement, Levi sits down just outside the doorframe and rests his head resting against the wall.

When he doesn't hear you shifting or whimpering in your sleep, heavy his shoulders sag in peace.

Maybe one day you'll end up across the hall.

Maybe.

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.

.

A month later, you officially call your room, yours.

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It takes a year for the door to open after his departure.

After a round of goodnight's, he takes to his usual exit. You'll go across the hall, settle for the evening, and do whatever it is you do in private.

Levi stops dead in his tracks at the gentle creek of the wood, craning his neck to look over his shoulder. In the faint orange glow of the dying flame illuminating the main living space, you stand with your hand clutching the knob.

Contemplating.

There is a constellation of uncertainty on your face, like your lips don't trust the things going on in your own mind. Your nose scrunches before it drops, flares, and he's not sure why he's so fixated on something so forgettable.

When your eyes find his, however, the furrows in your brow smooth.

"Isabel snores."

Right.

Once they made Isabel Magnolia one of the fixtures in their little found family, it made sense for the other girl in the apartment to take up your room — not that you minded.

At least, that's what he thought until now.

"She snores?" he repeats lamely.

You nod, shuffling a fraction further into the room.

"Loudly."

"I've never heard it. The walls are tissue-paper thin."

"That's because you sleep like the dead."

Levi's brow rises. "You know what I look like when I sleep?"

Your eyes widen, lip parted in embarrassment if only for a moment. He has half a mind to say: it's fine, I knew what you looked like first.

In fact, he knows a lot about you: your spirited effort at a daily routine, how you prefer your tea even if it's objectively wrong sometimes, what you feel like when you're beneath him in the midst of a spar he is destined to lose. He knows your tells for when you're playfully fighting and actually pissed. He knows your laughter like a song he's known his whole life.

(His brain has grown treacherous in this year of learning you.)

"Not like that."

"Right."

"I mean, it—"

"James."

Saying your last name usually wakes you from running too far ahead in your own thoughts.

Your mouth shuts into a thin line that's almost endearing before an exhale punches from your lungs; like it hurts to say what you're about to say.

"I've had nightmares lately."

Oh.

Levi didn't anticipate that to come out. He must have looked too concerned, though, because you go off into a tangent before he can ask.

"And before you ask, I'm fine. I'm not having… night terrors or anything," you slow, tone minimizing to a murmur. "I just — it's past a year since things changed and I don't know, maybe I've been thinking about it more? Maybe it's just creeping up on me since we have Isabel now and I know she wouldn't judge but she—"

"Doesn't know."

Not yet, anyway.

Furlan knows about the fighting rings James comes from by default. Isabel is still learning her way around the small but mighty gang, unaware of the horrors that lie just beneath the surface of their freedom.

When your face softens, relieved he said the words you'd been skirting around, his heart squeezes in his chest. "I don't want to freak her out, in case if I do."

He knows what you're asking even if he doesn't quite know: can I stay here?

You have to say it.

You need to ask.

Levi's jaw clenches as he decides. "What do you need from me?"

Because by now, he hopes you know: he'd do anything you asked. If you want him to sleep on the couch so you get the bed by yourself, then he'll leave without second thought. If you need to climb to the roof and stare at the moonless sky, then he'll boost you to the shingles.

Your shoulders deflate. He hates it.

"To stay," you reply in the weakest tone, "if that's—"

"Come here."

With determined strides, he walks across the tiny room to close the door behind you. He doesn't judge when you drop your forehead to his shoulder, not quite contact but plenty for the both of you. His hand reaches for your head, wrapping around the back of it — his thumb slowly, carefully, glides back and forth.

And for a moment, you stand here.

Alone.

Levi doesn't remember when you stepped away and found your way to his bed, but he remembers watching you sit at the foot of it with a defeated expression. Not because of him, no — because you put too much damn weight on your shoulders and refuse to allow anyone to carry it for you.

He has eradicated some of your demons but not enough.

Shrugging off his vest, he keeps his flowing white shirt and dark trousers on even after crawling onto the furthest side of the bed. Levi doesn't know how to do this — sleep in a bed with someone else, fully aware that he'll feel your heartbeat through your back, but the situation calls foregoing his own comfortable to find yours. You don't look at him when you slide down, legs to torso, before you're squeezed onto his tiny twin-sized mattress.

His arm remains planted at his side even as he watches your fingers reach back, fumbling, until they find his wrist. Levi doesn't fight it when you tug, inching his forearm around your waist until his palm is flush with the mattress again.

The smell of you.

The feel of you.

The heat of you.

Every bit of him is screaming, but he manages to smother his voice to a murmur.

"Whatever you need, James." Levi's lips feel dry. "You know that."

I hope you know that.

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James falls asleep in a few minutes.

Levi stays awake for hours.