Signal worked in daylight because someone had to. Because Gotham did not stop hurting people when the sun came up. Because fear did not only belong to midnight. Because children still flinched at noon.

He first saw you outside the Hilltop Community Centre on a bright, cold morning after a shooting three blocks over had turned the neighbourhood into held breath. Police tape fluttered down the street. Reporters gathered where they could get the best angle on other people’s worst day. Parents arrived too fast and left too slowly. Teenagers tried to look unaffected and failed in the small places: clenched jaws, shaking hands, laughter too sharp to be real.

You were kneeling on the pavement in front of a boy who could not have been older than twelve.

The boy was sitting with his back against the brick wall, knees pulled to his chest, breathing too fast while a woman who might have been his aunt hovered nearby, terrified and helpless. There was blood on his sleeve. Not much. Probably not his. That was often worse. Duke had learned that sometimes the body knew the difference and sometimes it absolutely did not.

You did not touch him. That was the first thing Duke noticed.

You sat close enough to be present and far enough to be refused. One hand rested palm-up on your own knee, open and undemanding. Your voice did not carry, but Duke’s enhanced perception caught the shape of it anyway, the low rhythm, the steadiness.

“You’re not in trouble,” you said. “You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to make sense. You just have to breathe for this second. Not the whole day. Just this one.”

The boy’s breath hitched.

You smiled, small and tired and heartbreakingly patient. “Yeah. That one. Good. Want to try another?”

The aunt was crying silently now. You glanced at her, not away from the boy exactly, but wide enough to include her in the room your voice was building around him.

“You too,” you said gently. “He can see you holding your breath.”

The woman made a broken sound that might have been a laugh.

Then the light around you changed.

Duke went still on the rooftop across the street.

It was not visible to everyone. No one else reacted. No golden glow burst dramatically from your hands. No halo, no special effects, no cinematic nonsense Tim would later accuse him of describing “with unnecessary poetic bias.” But Duke saw it. Light gathered around you as if the air itself remembered warmth and had decided to return it. Not bright. Not sharp. Softer than sunlight, stranger than electricity. It moved from you in a slow, breathing pulse, brushed against the boy, against the aunt, against the tense cluster of people gathered too close because fear always drew witnesses.

The boy’s shoulders lowered. The aunt exhaled. Even the crowd seemed to loosen by degrees, anger and panic stepping back far enough for people to hear the paramedic asking questions.

Duke crouched on the rooftop with one hand against the ledge and stared.

You were glowing.

No. That was too simple.

You were giving light away.

He should have reported it to Bruce immediately. That was protocol, probably. Unknown meta activity near a trauma scene. Community impact. Potential emotional influence. Possible threat, possible ally, possible anything. There would be a file. There were always files. Bruce loved files the way other people loved houseplants, except houseplants usually did less damage to relationships.

Duke did not report you. Instead, he watched you help the boy stand when the boy finally nodded yes to your offered hand. He watched you make sure the aunt had water, watched you redirect a reporter with a look so sharp Duke nearly laughed, watched you step around the side of the building once the crisis loosened enough for other hands to hold it.

You leaned against the alley wall.

Your glow dimmed. Just for a second.

Duke’s smile faded.

You pressed a hand to your chest like something inside hurt, breathed through it, then straightened before anyone could see.

But Duke had seen.

That was how it began: not with a mission, not officially, not with Batman placing a file in front of him and saying Signal, look into this. It began with daylight, a shaking boy, your open hand, and Duke Thomas realising that the person who made everyone else breathe easier looked like they had forgotten how to do it for themself.

He met you properly three days later, out of costume, because Duke had been raised with some manners and because walking into a community centre dressed as Signal to ask why someone glowed emotionally felt like a fast way to make an already weird conversation fully deranged.

Hilltop Community Centre was loud in the way living places were loud. Sneakers squeaked on the gym floor. Someone laughed too hard in the hallway. A baby cried in the front office. A kettle boiled in the staff kitchen. Posters covered the walls: tenant rights workshops, food pantry hours, free tutoring, grief group, youth art club, mutual aid meetings, a missing cat flyer with the words HE IS VERY RUDE BUT LOVED written under a blurry orange face.

Duke liked it immediately.

He found you in the multipurpose room trying to mediate a disagreement between two teenagers and one elderly woman over whether the mural they were painting should include Batman. You stood between them with a paint-stained sleeve and the expression of someone seriously considering whether Gotham had ever once allowed a normal civic arts project to occur. 

“What if,” you said, very carefully, “we include the skyline, and people can interpret whatever shapes they want in the shadows?”

The teen narrowed their eyes. “That’s diplomatic.”

“That’s cowardly,” the woman said.

“That’s community arts funding,” you replied.

Duke laughed.

You turned. For a second, your eyes met his, and Duke watched recognition fail to happen. Not Signal, then. Just a stranger in a yellow hoodie standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and a smile he hoped looked normal.

You looked him over, not suspiciously exactly, but with the alert warmth of someone used to strangers arriving with needs. “Can I help you?”

“Probably,” Duke said. “But I was hoping to volunteer before I became a problem.”

Your mouth twitched. “Ambitious. Most people skip straight to problem.”

“I’m an overachiever.”

“Dangerous thing to be in Gotham.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard.”

You introduced yourself. Duke gave you his name and watched the moment it registered.

“Duke Thomas,” you said.

He braced for recognition of a different kind. Foster kid. Wayne-adjacent. The one from the Narrows. The one who disappeared for a while. The one whose name had appeared in too many news stories written by people who did not know what they were talking about.

Instead, you pointed at him. “You’re the guy who fixed the after-school program’s projector last year.”

Duke blinked. “That’s what I’m known for?”

“Among eight-year-olds who wanted movie day, yes. You’re basically a legend.”

He smiled despite himself. “I’ll take it.”

“You should. They still talk about it. One kid said you understood HDMI with your soul.”

“That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.”

“Stick around. Gotham kids can humble you fast.” You handed him a stack of flyers before he could decide whether that counted as flirting. “Here. Make yourself useful, projector prophet.”

And Duke, who had joined superhero teams, fought shadow monsters, survived Gotham’s particular brand of nonsense, and stood beside Batman without flinching, took the flyers and said, “Yes, boss.”

That was the first time you smiled at him. Not the soft smile you gave frightened kids. Not the professional one used to calm angry parents or city officials. A real smile, amused and a little surprised.

The light around you warmed.

Duke felt something in his chest answer.

Oh, he thought. That might be a problem.

You became friends in the way people became friends in places that needed too much work: accidentally, then all at once.

Duke started volunteering twice a week. At least, that was what he told himself. Tuesdays and Thursdays, unless patrol ran long, unless a mission needed him, unless Bruce called a meeting that could have been an encrypted text, unless Gotham did what Gotham did and turned a weekday into a crisis buffet. He fixed the projector again, then the computer lab, then the back door lock, then the flickering fluorescent light in the tutoring room because it gave three kids headaches and made you glare at it like personal betrayal.

“You know,” you said one evening from the doorway while he stood on a chair with a screwdriver between his teeth, “when I asked if you were handy, I did not mean you personally had to declare war on the entire building.”

Duke took the screwdriver from his mouth. “This building started it.”

“The building is seventy years old.”

“Old enough to know better.”

You folded your arms, smiling. “You talk to wiring often?”

“Only when it disrespects me.”

“That explains why the toaster in the kitchen works now.”

“That toaster had an attitude problem.”

“You fixed it by threatening it?”

“I prefer ‘motivational speech.’”

You laughed, and the sound warmed the room more than the lights did.

Duke liked you. That was the simple version, and because Duke was not Tim, he did not need six spreadsheets and a sleep-deprivation spiral to admit it to himself. He liked you. He liked the way you joked when tired but went quiet when someone needed listening. He liked the way you remembered names, food allergies, court dates, favourite colours, which kids hated being touched, which elderly neighbours pretended not to need help carrying groceries, and which ex-gang members preferred tea because coffee made their hands shake.

He liked the way animals found you. The orange missing cat from the flyer turned up one rainy afternoon, soaked, furious, and deeply committed to biting anyone who suggested rescue. You crouched in the alley behind the centre with a towel over one arm and spoke to him like he was a tiny war criminal with understandable grievances.

“Okay,” you said. “You are very scary. We all respect that.”

The cat hissed.

Duke leaned against the doorframe. “He looks like he pays taxes in spite.”

“He has seen things.”

“He saw a puddle and lost.”

“He is processing.”

The cat hissed again, but the light around you gathered softly. You did not force it. Duke could see that now, or thought he could. Your power did not lash out like a command. It hovered, offered, waited. The cat’s ears lowered by fractions. Its breathing slowed. After ten minutes, it allowed you to wrap it in the towel, though it glared the entire time.

Duke shook his head. “You just negotiated with a wet cheese puff.”

“He has a name.”

“Please don’t say Mr Whiskers.”

You checked the flyer. “Lucifer.”

Duke stared.

You held up the angry towel bundle. “That tracks.”

He laughed so hard that Lucifer tried to kill him through fabric.

You looked over at him, eyes bright, and for a second the alley with its dumpsters and rainwater and cracked pavement became the best place in Gotham.

That was the second problem.

The first was that Duke could see your light. The second was that he wanted to stand in it even when it was not meant for him.

You did not know he was Signal at first.

Duke assumed that, anyway. In hindsight, he should have given you more credit.

Signal and Duke existed in your life like two daylight shadows that did not quite overlap. Signal appeared at crisis scenes, bright yellow suit cutting through the smoke and panic, helping people out of overturned buses, escorting kids across streets turned dangerous by villain debris, catching falling scaffolding before it crushed a food pantry delivery. Duke appeared at Hilltop with coffee, toolkits, and a face too innocent whenever you asked why he had bruised knuckles.

You were kind enough not to say anything. For a while.

The villain first struck a playground. That was what made it personal before anyone knew what it was.

Not a bank. Not a gala. Not a WayneTech facility with security systems and insurance policies. A playground at eleven in the morning, full of toddlers, grandparents, caregivers, and teenagers cutting class and pretending they were not watching the little kids fondly. One moment, the place was bright with winter sun. The next, every shadow lengthened in the wrong direction.

Children stopped laughing. Adults froze. Darkness spread from beneath the slide, not like smoke, but like the absence of wanting to move. Duke arrived as Signal four minutes after the first emergency call and found the playground sitting under a dome of dim, oily shade that his eyes rejected on principle. It was not ordinary darkness. It bent light badly, swallowing edges, muting colour, making every face inside look washed in old fear.

A little girl stood on top of the climbing frame, staring at nothing. Her grandmother knelt below with one hand lifted, tears running silently down her face.

Nobody moved.

Duke stepped into the field and felt the despair hit him like cold water.

Not fear toxin. Not magic exactly. Something engineered or empowered to drain momentum from emotion itself. It did not tell him he was afraid. It told him there was no point in being brave. No point in lifting his hand. No point in calling out, saving anyone, trying at all. Gotham had always been broken. People always got hurt. Light always failed eventually.

Duke gritted his teeth.

“Oh,” he muttered. “I hate this.”

Then you ran into the playground.

Of course you did.

No suit. No armour. Just a coat thrown over your community centre shirt and your expression set in that terrible way people looked when they were about to be selfless in a manner that would make everyone else furious later.

Signal turned toward you. “You need to get out of here.”

You looked at him and, with absolutely no hesitation, said, “So do you, Duke.”

There were, he reflected later, better times to have his secret identity casually murdered. This was not one of them.

He stared at you through the bright lenses of his mask. “We are going to talk about that.”

“You wear your emotional posture like a signature.”

“My what?”

“Later.”

The little girl on the climbing frame swayed.

You moved. Duke swore and moved with you.

The darkness pressed harder as you crossed the playground. Duke pulled light toward his hands, forcing brightness through the field in sharp pulses. The shadows recoiled where his power touched them but surged back immediately, hungry and patient. Beside him, your light gathered, visible only to his eyes, warm and gold against the wrong dark.

“You can counter it?” he asked.

“I can help them want to move.”

“That’s different.”

“Different enough.”

You reached the grandmother first. You did not touch her, only crouched low in her line of sight.

“Can you hear me?” you asked.

Her eyes shifted toward you with enormous effort.

“Your granddaughter needs you to call her name,” you said. “I know it feels impossible. But she knows your voice. Give her one word.”

The woman’s mouth trembled.

Your light spread, not erasing the darkness but making a pocket inside it where breath could happen.

“Lina,” the grandmother whispered.

The little girl blinked.

Duke sent a pulse of light up toward the climbing frame. Not enough to blind. Just enough to catch her attention, to carve a path through the despair.

You lifted your hand. “Lina, sweetheart. Look at your grandmother. That’s it. One step down. Just one.”

The girl moved.

The whole playground seemed to inhale.

After that, the rescue became a rhythm: Duke breaking the darkness in flashes, you warming the emotional paralysis enough for people to follow his light. He pointed paths open. You made people believe they could take them. Children cried. Adults stumbled. A teenager collapsed into Duke’s arms and kept saying, “I didn’t care if I died,” with horror dawning fresh each time.

You heard every word.

Duke saw your glow brighten. He thought, then, that your power rose to meet need like his did. That adrenaline made it stronger. That whatever it cost, if it cost anything, was manageable because you were still standing, still speaking, still making the impossible gentler by inches.

He did not know. That ignorance would become the thing he returned to later, turning it over and over in his hands until it cut.

After the playground, the case became a pattern.

A clinic lost power at noon and filled with shadows that made patients stop taking medication, stop calling for help, stop believing pain was worth treating. A school hallway dimmed between classes, and thirty-two students sat down where they stood, silent and unreachable. A food pantry opened its doors to a line of people who suddenly could not remember why they had bothered coming.

Every attack targeted bright places.

Not literally, always. Emotionally. Places where people gathered to keep one another alive in ordinary ways. Places with bulletin boards and bad coffee. Places with donated coats, free lunches, after-school programs, group therapy, music lessons, legal aid, AA meetings, vaccination drives. Places Duke knew because he had grown up around the kind of need that learned every safe doorway in a ten-block radius.

Whoever was doing this was not just attacking Gotham. They were attacking its reasons to continue.

Duke hated them immediately and with focus.

You became part of the investigation because you refused not to be.

Bruce tried to object. You listened respectfully for exactly nineteen seconds, then said, “Batman, with all due respect, I work with half the people being targeted. You can either include me or waste time pretending I won’t show up anyway.”

Jason, leaning against the Cave railing, snorted. “I like this one.”

Bruce’s mouth tightened.

Duke, standing beside you, looked straight ahead and tried not to smile.

Tim said, “Statistically, they’re not wrong.”

Damian said, “Unfortunately.”

“You too?” Bruce asked.

Damian lifted his chin. “I respect competence.”

You leaned toward Duke and whispered, “Did I just get Damian Wayne approval?”

Duke whispered back, “Frame the moment. It may never happen again.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed. “I can hear you.”

“Then hear this,” Jason said. “B’s outvoted.”

“I did not call a vote,” Bruce said.

“That’s why you lost.”

The meeting continued because the Batfamily, despite being a collection of emotionally repressed vigilantes with control issues and dramatic capes, did occasionally manage to do their jobs.

Tim identified a probable source: a former WayneTech photonics researcher named Dr Maris Vostok, who had disappeared after a failed project involving light-responsive neural tech. Duke found the emotional signature of her darkness fields similar to what he had seen in older records from metahuman despair effects, but mechanical, distorted, amplified. Bruce found funding links to shell companies. Barbara found city maps with circles around community spaces.

You sat at the table and stared at the map.

Duke watched your face.

“What?” he asked softly.

You pointed to the next likely target.

“Hilltop,” you said.

The room went quiet.

Duke’s stomach dropped.

Bruce said, “We’ll secure it.”

You looked at him. “No.”

His eyes narrowed. “No?”

“If you turn Hilltop into a Bat operation, people will panic before she even gets there. You need it open. Normal. Staffed by people they know.”

“Absolutely not,” Duke said.

You turned to him.

He heard his own voice and realised it had come out too sharp.

Your expression softened. “Duke.”

“No,” he said again, quieter but firmer. “She’s targeting places after emotional distress builds. That means she needs people there. You’re talking about using the centre as bait.”

“I’m talking about not abandoning the people who will come whether I’m there or not.”

“That is not better.”

“It is honest.”

He stared at you.

The light around you was steady, warm, infuriatingly resolute.

Duke had spent enough time around Bats to recognise self-sacrifice dressed up as strategy. Bruce did it like breathing. Dick did it with a smile. Tim did it with caffeine and plausible deniability. Damian did it with insults. Jason pretended he did not do it and then threw himself in front of bullets as if irony made him bulletproof.

You did it gently. That made it no less reckless.

After the meeting, Duke found you in the Manor hallway outside the Cave, standing near an old window where late-afternoon sun caught dust in the air. You looked tired, but not afraid.

“You knew it would be Hilltop,” he said.

You did not pretend otherwise. “I suspected.”

“Before the meeting?”

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“I was going to.”

“When?”

You looked out the window. “When I knew how to say it without you making that face.”

“What face?”

“The face that says you are about to carry something that is not yours just because you can see it.”

Duke stopped.

You looked at him then, and your expression was too knowing, too gentle, too easy to want. “You’re not the only one who protects things in daylight.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

He exhaled. “I know you’re brave.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know you’re capable.”

“Closer.”

“I know you don’t need me to save you,” he said, and hated how much effort it took.

Your face softened.

“But,” Duke added, “I also know you’re very bad at counting yourself as someone worth protecting.”

Something flickered in your expression.

There. A crack. Not big. Not enough. But there.

“You say that like you’re good at it,” you said.

Duke laughed once. “I’m Batman-adjacent. None of us are good at it.”

“Then maybe don’t lecture from inside the glass house.”

“Maybe stop throwing stones at yourself.”

“That was awful.”

“I panicked.”

You laughed.

He smiled, but it faded quickly. “I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“Do I need to worry about your power?”

You stilled.

Just for a moment.

Duke saw it. He would think about that later too.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“I can see it,” he said. “When you use it. It gets brighter around you. Does it… I don’t know, burn out? Overload?”

Your gaze slipped away.

“Everyone gets tired,” you said.

That was not an answer.

Duke knew it. You knew he knew it. But the phone in your pocket buzzed before he could push, and the moment broke under the weight of crisis. Another minor darkness flare near a bus stop. Three people affected. No casualties.

By the time it was over, neither of you returned to the question.

That became your lie by omission. Duke’s was believing he had time to ask again.

Hilltop opened the next morning. It felt wrong to Duke, the normalcy of it. The centre smelled like coffee, floor cleaner, and toast from the kitchen. Kids argued over markers in the art room. Volunteers stacked donated tins by expiration date. Mrs Alvarez from the tenant association bullied two city council interns into carrying chairs with the cheerful violence of an elder who had seen worse men fold under less. The missing cat Lucifer, now unofficially the centre’s emotional support menace, slept on top of a filing cabinet with one eye open.

You moved through it all like the centre’s heartbeat. Duke watched from the roof across the street as Signal, sunlight catching on the yellow of his suit. Batman had people on the perimeter. Oracle monitored power grids and comms. Red Robin had drones hidden in places no normal person would think to look because Tim’s relationship with privacy was creative at best. Spoiler and Orphan were inside in civilian clothes. Nightwing covered evacuation routes. Red Hood was somewhere nearby, presumably violating at least two weapons ordinances.

Everything was prepared. Which, in Gotham, usually meant something would go wrong in a more creative direction.

At 11:43, the sun vanished from Hilltop’s windows.

Not outside. Just in.

Every window went black at once, as if someone had poured ink down the glass.

Duke moved before Oracle finished saying his name. He crashed through the rooftop access door and into a hallway where the light had turned thick and wrong. The darkness field was stronger this time, cold enough to frost the edges of his thoughts. Voices muffled around him. A child whimpered. Someone dropped a tray in the kitchen. Then the emotional weight hit.

Hopelessness. Not sadness. Sadness had texture, history, motion. This was emptier. A hand around the part of the soul that reached forward. Duke staggered, one palm hitting the wall.

No point. The thought slid through him in a voice that was not his. No point saving one place. No point being light in a city that always finds more dark. No point trying. No point—

Duke pulled light into his hand until it burned bright enough to hurt.

“Yeah,” he said through clenched teeth, “I’ve heard better arguments from gargoyles.”

He pushed forward.

Your light was already in the building. He could see it through the walls. Gold and warm, pulsing from the multipurpose room. Too bright, almost. Brighter than he had ever seen it, wide enough to reach every hallway, every frightened person, every child frozen under the darkness. Relief hit him with the sight.

You were okay. You were holding.

He found you in the centre of the room.

You stood among dozens of people sitting or crouched on the floor, speaking steadily while darkness pressed against the walls like a living tide. Your hands were open at your sides. Your face was pale but calm. The glow around you filled the room, not defeating the shadow but keeping it from swallowing everyone whole.

“Listen to my voice,” you said. “You don’t have to feel brave. You don’t have to feel hopeful. Just find one thing you can do. Move your hand. Blink. Say your name. Look at someone beside you. One thing means you’re still here.”

People began to move in tiny increments. A boy whispered his own name. A woman reached for her neighbour. Lucifer hissed from under a chair, which, frankly, also seemed like an act of resistance.

Duke entered the room with light gathered around both fists. You turned toward him, and the smile you gave him was so relieved it nearly knocked him off balance.

“Signal,” you said.

“Hey,” he said, because apparently imminent doom did not improve his conversational skills around you. “Nice ambience.”

“Thought we’d try something intimate. Community centre meets existential void.”

“Bold theme.”

“Too much?”

“Little heavy-handed.”

Someone near the wall gave a weak laugh. The sound mattered.

Duke stepped beside you and sent light outward in careful bursts, breaking pathways through the dark. “We need to evacuate.”

“I’m keeping them responsive.”

“I know.”

“You find Vostok?”

“Working on it.”

As if summoned by her name, Dr Maris Vostok appeared on the far stage where kids usually performed talent shows and deeply chaotic puppet plays. She wore a harness of black metal and glass nodes, each one bending the light around her into a halo of absence. Her hair floated slightly, lifted by static. Her face looked grey with exhaustion and conviction, the worst combination Gotham had to offer.

“You’re both very inspiring,” she said. Her voice echoed through the room from hidden speakers. “That’s the problem.”

Duke shifted in front of you.

You muttered, “Do not start with me.”

He did not look back. “Start what?”

“The body-blocking thing.”

“I’m standing.”

“You are strategically standing.”

“I’m allowed to stand places.”

“Duke.”

Vostok laughed. “Still arguing. That’s good. It means the field hasn’t finished.”

Duke lifted one hand. Light sparked between his fingers. “Turn it off.”

“Do you know what hope does to people?” Vostok asked.

“Generally improves the vibe.”

“It exhausts them,” she said sharply. “It makes them crawl forward for scraps. It convinces them that suffering has meaning if they can narrate it prettily enough. Gotham runs on that lie. Heroes like you sell it every day.”

Duke’s jaw tightened.

You stepped beside him, not behind. “And your solution is what? Make everyone give up before the city disappoints them?”

“My solution is mercy.”

“No,” you said. “Mercy gives people somewhere safe to fall. You’re cutting their legs out from under them and calling the floor kindness.”

Vostok’s expression twitched.

Duke glanced at you.

You were glowing brighter. Too bright. Something about it scraped at his nerves. He murmured your name in warning.

“I’m okay.” There it was again. Not a true answer.

Vostok lifted her hand.

The darkness slammed inward.

People cried out. Duke threw both hands up, light bursting from him in a radiant shield across the room. The field buckled, shadows peeling back from the windows, but Vostok’s machine shrieked and compensated. The despair deepened, targeting not sight now but will. Duke felt knees hit the floor behind him. Felt his own arms shake as the darkness crawled over his light.

Then your power surged.

The room filled with warmth. Not comfort like a blanket. Not gentle this time. This was a bonfire in a snowstorm. A flare sent up from the last person awake on a sinking ship. Duke watched gold light pour from you in waves, through every person in the centre, through him, through even the places Vostok’s darkness had made numb.

People began to stand.

Not because they were unafraid. Because they remembered fear was not the only thing inside them.

Mrs Alvarez rose first, because of course she did, one hand braced on a chair and fury in every line of her small body. “I have survived five landlords, two floods, and the city council,” she snapped at the darkness. “I am not being emotionally murdered before lunch.”

Jason’s voice crackled over comms. “I love her.”

“Focus,” Bruce said.

“I am focused. On her. She’s my hero now.”

Duke would have laughed if he had not been holding back a despair machine with both hands.

You took one step forward. Then another. Duke saw the light around you flicker.

Not dim exactly. Thin. Like fabric pulled too tight.

His stomach dropped.

“Hey,” he said. “Ease up.”

“I can hold them.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Vostok’s eyes fixed on you with sudden fascination. “Oh. You’re the battery.”

The words landed wrong.

Duke’s head turned sharply toward you. Your face had gone bloodless.

Vostok smiled slowly. “That’s how you do it. You’re not generating hope. You’re redistributing nervous system stability through an empathic field. But not externally sourced. Not ambient.” Her smile widened. “It’s you.”

Duke felt cold beneath the heat of his own light.

“What does she mean?” he asked.

You did not look at him. “Nothing.”

Vostok laughed. “They didn’t tell you?”

Duke’s light flickered. 

You immediately fed warmth toward him, instinctive and terrified. He felt it brush the edge of his fear.

He stepped away.

Not far. Enough.

Your face crumpled for half a second.

Duke hated that too.

“Don’t,” he said, voice low.

“I’m sorry.”

“What does she mean?”

The darkness pressed harder. You swayed.

Duke saw it then. Not just the gold leaving you. Not just the warmth moving outward. The absence it left behind. Every time your power surged, your own light thinned. Every person who stood steadier made you less steady. Every breath you gave the room took something from yours. You had been doing this from the beginning. Playground. Clinic. School. Pantry. Hilltop. Every scene where he had thought you were brilliant and brave and glowing.

You had been burning. And he had stood beside you admiring the light.

“Oh,” Duke whispered.

Your eyes filled. “Duke—”

The ceiling lights exploded. Darkness crashed down. Duke lost sight of you for one terrifying second.

Then the room split into chaos.

Vostok’s machine overloaded under the competing force of Duke’s photonic shield and your empathic flare. The shadows fractured into jagged patches, each one throwing people into their worst emotional lows. Duke saw a kid sink to the floor near the mural wall. Saw Stephanie, still in civilian clothes, grab two people and drag them toward the exit. Saw Cassandra move through darkness like it had offended her personally. Saw Batman drop through a skylight that had definitely not been open before.

And you—

You were moving toward Vostok.

“No,” Duke said.

You did not stop. Of course, you didn’t.

Vostok aimed the machine at the evacuees, not at you, and you did exactly what she wanted. You opened yourself wider. Your light filled the room so completely that Duke’s vision went gold-white for half a breath. The despair field shattered around the civilians. People ran. Doors opened. Sunlight cut through from outside as Red Robin killed the window shielding systems.

For one bright, impossible moment, Hilltop became full of daylight.

Then your glow went out.

You collapsed.

Duke did not remember crossing the room. One second, he was holding a shield. The next, he was on his knees beside you, hands hovering because he did not know where to touch without hurting you. Your skin was cold. Too cold. Your breathing was shallow. There was blood under your nose. Your eyes were half-open but unfocused, staring past him at a ceiling you had no strength left to see.

“No,” Duke said. His voice did not sound like his.

You blinked slowly.

“Hey,” you whispered.

“Don’t you hey me.”

Your mouth twitched. “Rude.”

“You collapsed.”

“Noticed that.”

“Why are you cold?”

You did not answer.

“Why are you cold?” he repeated, and this time his voice broke around it.

Your gaze shifted toward him with enormous effort. “Duke.”

“No. No, don’t do the soft voice. Don’t make this easier for me.”

Your eyes filled.

Around you, the fight continued. Batman and Cassandra took Vostok down. Red Hood secured the machine with unnecessary aggression. Nightwing directed the last evacuees out. Red Robin’s voice snapped over comms about energy readings and medical response. But all of it felt far away, separated from Duke by the terrifying smallness of your breath.

He pulled off one glove with his teeth and touched your wrist.

Your pulse fluttered under his fingers.

Too fast. Too weak.

“You knew,” he said. You closed your eyes. “You knew it did this.”

“I had it handled.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know when you didn’t tell me.”

Your eyes opened again. The hurt in them almost shut him up.

Almost.

“I asked,” Duke said, quieter now, worse. “I asked if I needed to worry about your power.”

“You had enough to worry about.”

He laughed once, and it came out broken. “Wow.”

“Duke—”

“No. You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“You were.” His hand tightened around yours. “You were trying to protect me from worrying while letting me stand next to you and watch you disappear in real time.”

A tear slipped from the corner of your eye into your hairline.

“I didn’t want you to stop me,” you whispered.

That one landed like a confession because it was.

Duke stared at you. Behind him, the machine sparked and died. 

Sunlight returned fully through the windows. It touched your face and made you look even paler.

“You didn’t want me to stop you,” he repeated.

You swallowed.

“No,” you said.

Duke’s throat tightened with so much anger and fear and grief that for a second he could not speak. He had been angry before. At villains. At systems. At Bruce, sometimes, though Duke was better than most at understanding the difference between leadership and control. But this anger hurt differently because it came tangled with the fact that he cared about you so much his whole body felt like a bruise.

“You made me watch you burn,” he said.

Your face crumpled.

“I saved them,” you whispered.

“I know.” His voice cracked. “That’s why this hurts.”

You looked away.

He hated himself immediately and did not take it back.

Because you had saved them. You had saved the children, the volunteers, the elders, the people who came to Hilltop because it was one of the few places in Gotham that asked what they needed before asking what they had done. You had saved them, and you had hurt yourself doing it, and Duke did not know how to be angry without feeling cruel or scared without sounding controlling.

So he did the only thing he could.

He stayed. He slid one arm carefully under your shoulders and lifted you enough to wrap his cape around you, bright yellow fabric covering your trembling body. Your head tipped weakly against his chest.

“Medical,” he said into comms, voice tight. “Now.”

“ETA three minutes,” Oracle replied, softer than usual.

You tried to move. “The others—”

“Are standing because of you.”

“I need to check—”

“You need to breathe.”

“But—”

Duke looked down at you, eyes burning. “Please.”

That stopped you.

Not because he commanded it. Because he asked, and his voice broke when he did.

You closed your eyes.

“Okay,” you whispered.

He held you in the ruined community centre, surrounded by broken glass, sunlight, and the people you had saved crying in each other’s arms. The mural on the wall had survived somehow. The skyline was half-painted, shadows left ambiguous under the brushstrokes. In the corner, Lucifer emerged from beneath an overturned chair and hissed at the remains of the despair machine like he had personally defeated it.

Under any other circumstances, Duke might have laughed. Instead, he pressed his cheek briefly to the top of your head and whispered, so quietly only you could hear, “You are people too.”

You did not answer.

But your hand, cold and shaking under his cape, curled weakly around his sleeve.

The Cave medbay was too bright. Duke had always found that ironic. The Bats lived in darkness but lit their medical spaces like they were interrogating injuries into submission. You lay on a cot under thermal blankets, IV fluids running into your arm, a monitor tracking the pulse that had scared three years off Duke’s life and probably given Alfred new material for his private lecture collection.

You had not woken yet.

Duke sat beside you in half his Signal gear, cowl down, gloves off, one knee bouncing until Dick placed a hand on it and said, gently, “Hey.”

Duke stopped. For eleven seconds. Then started again.

Dick wisely removed his hand.

Across the medbay, Bruce spoke quietly with Alfred. Tim was at the computer, pulling up readings from the attack and looking increasingly unhappy in a very Tim way, which meant data was confirming emotions nobody wanted. Jason leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet off, expression thunderous. Steph sat on a rolling stool, still in the clothes she had worn undercover, one leg tucked under her. Cass stood near the door, eyes on you, silent and watchful.

Duke stared at your face. In the Cave light, your glow was barely visible to him.

Not gone. Never gone.

But small. A banked ember where there had been daylight.

His chest hurt every time he looked at it.

“How long?” he asked.

The room went quiet.

Bruce looked at him.

Duke did not look away from you. “How long has everyone known?”

No one answered fast enough.

Jason swore under his breath.

Duke laughed once, humourless. “Great.”

Tim turned in his chair. “I didn’t know the degree. Not until now.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Tim’s mouth closed.

Bruce said, “We knew there was a cost.”

Duke finally looked at him.

Something in Bruce’s expression shifted. Good, Duke thought distantly. Let him see it.

“And nobody told me.”

“It wasn’t ours to tell,” Dick said softly.

Duke’s anger swung toward him, unfair and immediate. “But it was mine to miss?”

Dick absorbed that like someone who knew the shape of guilt too well to deflect it. “No.”

Alfred stepped forward, voice quiet. “Master Duke, I suspect they did not wish the cost known.”

“I get that.” Duke stood because sitting was suddenly impossible. “I get privacy. I get boundaries. I get not outing someone’s medical or meta details without consent. But you all let them go into the field knowing this could happen.”

“They are an adult,” Bruce said.

Duke’s eyes snapped to him. “Don’t.” Bruce went still. “Do not use autonomy as a shield just because it gets you out of admitting you were willing to let them hurt themself if it saved the room.”

The silence after that was sharp enough to cut. 

Jason looked almost proud. Bruce looked, for once, like he had no immediate answer.

Duke’s voice lowered. “They saved people. I know that. They chose to be there. I know that too. But all of you— all of us— we keep doing this thing where someone burns themself down, and we call it their choice because that sounds better than admitting we needed the fire.”

Your monitor beeped steadily.

No one spoke.

Duke looked back at you, anger draining into something more frightened.

“I was standing right there,” he said. “I can see light better than anyone, and I didn’t see them going out.”

Cass moved first. She crossed the medbay silently and stood beside him. Then, after a moment, she touched two fingers lightly to his wrist.

Not comfort, exactly. Acknowledgment.

Duke breathed in.

“Seeing is not the same as knowing,” Cass said.

It was the longest sentence he had heard from her all day. It did exactly what it needed to.

Duke nodded once, swallowing hard.

Jason pushed off the wall. “For the record, when they wake up, I’m yelling.”

“You are not yelling in my medbay,” Alfred said.

“Firmly expressing disappointment.”

“No.”

“Emotionally gesturing?”

Alfred looked at him.

Jason sighed. “Fine. I’ll loom.”

“You may loom from a medically appropriate distance.”

Steph wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “This family is so normal.”

You woke three hours later. Duke knew because your light shifted before your eyes opened.

He had been sitting beside you again, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. Most of the others had been exiled by Alfred under the pretense of “not turning recovery into a vigilante waiting room,” though Duke suspected you had more guards nearby than the president. Bruce had left last and only after Duke promised to call if anything changed, which was a sentence neither of them unpacked.

Your fingers twitched.

Duke looked up. Your eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then finding him.

“Hey,” you whispered.

Duke closed his eyes.

“I swear,” he said, “if you say that to me one more time after almost dying, I’m going to lose my mind.”

Your mouth curved faintly. “Hi?”

“Worse.”

“Good evening?”

“Unbelievable.”

You tried to laugh and winced.

Duke stood immediately. “Don’t move.”

“You sound like Batman.”

“That is the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Your smile softened.

Then memory returned. He saw it happen. Your face changed, guilt moving in before pain had even finished taking its shoes off.

“Duke—”

“No.”

You flinched.

He sat back down, dragging a hand over his face. “Sorry. Not no like that. Just… don’t start by apologising in a way that makes me have to comfort you before I get to be upset.”

Your eyes filled.

You nodded once.

Duke exhaled slowly.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The medbay hummed around you.

Finally, you said, “How many people were hurt?”

“Minor injuries. No fatalities. Vostok’s in custody. Hilltop’s damaged, but not gone. Lucifer survived and is being treated like a war hero.”

Your eyes closed in relief.

“Mrs Alvarez told Batman he had poor crowd management instincts.”

Your eyes opened. “She didn’t.”

“She did. Jason proposed adoption.”

That got the smallest laugh out of you. Duke treasured it and hated how fragile it sounded.

Then the silence returned.

You looked at him. “I should have told you.”

“Yes,” he said.

The honesty landed between you.

You nodded, tears slipping down your temples. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Your brow furrowed. “For what?”

“For being so busy admiring the light that I didn’t ask enough questions about where it came from.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

“Duke.”

“I know,” he repeated, and this time his voice roughened. “But knowing doesn’t make it feel true yet.”

Your expression broke.

“I didn’t want you to look at me differently,” you whispered.

His anger softened around the edges, not gone, not forgiving everything, but making room.

“How did you think I looked at you?”

You stared at the ceiling.

“Like I was strong,” you said. “Like I could help. Like I was someone who made things better.”

Duke’s chest ached. “You are strong.”

Your mouth trembled.

“You do help,” he said. “You do make things better. And I’m not going to stop looking at you like that just because I know it costs you.”

You turned your face away.

“But,” Duke continued, because the but mattered and loving someone did not mean letting them escape the hard part, “I am going to get real annoying when you act like the cost doesn’t count.”

A wet laugh escaped you. “How annoying?”

“Tim-with-a-spreadsheet annoying.”

“Oh, that’s bad.”

“Colour-coded.”

“Duke.”

“Maybe graphs.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I know people.”

“You’re threatening me with data visualisation in my hospital bed.”

“Medbay cot, technically.”

“You spend too much time with vigilantes.”

“That is both true and not a distraction.”

You went quiet.

Duke leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Why didn’t you want me to stop you?”

Your eyes closed.

There it was. The heart of it. Not the field. Not Vostok. Not the mission. The choice you had made before any darkness machine turned Hilltop’s windows black.

“Because stopping feels like deciding some people don’t get comfort,” you whispered. Duke said nothing. “And I know that’s not fair. I know that isn’t how it works. But when I can feel them hurting, when I know I can make it easier for them to survive the next second, stopping feels like leaving them where I was.”

His throat tightened.

“The power manifested when I was alone,” you said. “I wanted someone to come so badly I thought it might tear me open. No one came. Then something small and hurt found me, and I could make it feel safe. That’s all I ever wanted. For someone to feel safe because I was there.”

Duke looked down at your hand on the blanket. He did not take it.

Not yet. You had spent the whole mission giving yourself away before anyone could ask what you wanted. He would not take even comfort from you without making space for choice.

“That makes sense,” he said.

Your eyes opened, surprised.

“It does,” he said. “It makes sense. It also almost killed you.”

Tears gathered again.

“Both things can be true,” Duke said softly. “That’s the part Gotham keeps messing up. We act like if the reason is good enough, the damage becomes noble.”

You gave a tiny, miserable smile. “That sounds like something Batman needs embroidered on a pillow.”

“I’ll ask Alfred.”

“He would.”

“He absolutely would.”

Your fingers shifted on the blanket.

Duke noticed. You noticed him noticing.

“Can I hold your hand?” he asked.

Your face crumpled. “Yes.”

He took your hand carefully, mindful of the IV tape, the coldness still lingering in your skin. No warmth moved from you. No empathic comfort. No golden light trying to soothe the hurt between you.

Just your hand in his.

Duke brushed his thumb over your knuckles.

“I’m mad at you,” he said.

“I know.”

“I care about you.”

“I know.”

“You do not get to use the second thing to make the first one disappear.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t get to use the first thing to pretend the second one isn’t true.”

Your lips parted slightly.

Duke looked at you, all the fear and anger and tenderness sitting in him without any of them cancelling the others out.

“I like you,” he said. Your breath caught. He laughed under his breath, shaky and small. “Terrible timing, right?”

“Very Gotham.”

“Yeah.”

“You like me?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Unfortunately?”

“You are a reckless emotional support beacon with no sense of self-preservation.”

“You volunteer with Batman.”

“Deflection.”

“You fight shadow monsters in daylight.”

“Still deflection.”

“You called yourself projector prophet once.”

“Now you’re just being hurtful.”

You laughed, and this time it sounded more like you.

Duke smiled before he could stop himself.

Then your expression softened into something vulnerable enough to make his chest feel too small.

“I like you too,” you whispered.

His heart did something stupid. Probably visible from space.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“For my charm, right? Not my emotional posture?”

“Both.”

“That’s fair.”

Your fingers tightened weakly around his. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

His smile faded.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” you said. “Not because you would have stopped me. Because you should have had the choice to know what standing beside me meant.”

Duke nodded slowly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For apologising?”

“For saying choice and meaning it.”

Your eyes shone.

He looked down at your joined hands. “New rule.”

“You’re making rules now?”

“Just one.”

“Okay.”

“You ask for help before you start disappearing.”

Your mouth trembled. “I don’t know how.”

Duke had expected that answer. It still hurt.

He lifted your hand slightly, not enough to pull, just enough for you to feel him there.

“Then start with me,” he said.

For a moment, you only looked at him.

Then your face folded around the kind of grief that had been waiting years for permission. You cried quietly, not with the dramatic collapse of someone who had no strength left, but with the exhausted surrender of someone who had finally been told they were allowed to stop pretending the weight was weightless.

Duke stayed.

He did not make the crying smaller. He did not brighten the room. He did not tell you it was okay because it was not, not yet, not fully. He only held your hand while the medbay lights hummed and your pulse steadied under machines that did not understand miracles, only measurements.

Later, when Alfred came in with soup and the expression of a man prepared to enforce it as law, he found Duke still beside you.

You were asleep.

Duke looked up.

Alfred’s gaze moved to your joined hands, then to Duke’s face.

“Master Duke,” he said gently, “you should rest as well.”

Duke looked back at you. Your glow was still dim.

But present.

“I will,” he said.

Alfred’s eyebrow rose.

Duke sighed. “That sounded fake, didn’t it?”

“Painfully.”

“I’ll rest when they wake up again.”

“Marginally better.”

“I learned from the worst.”

“Indeed.”

Alfred set the tray down. Before leaving, he placed one hand briefly on Duke’s shoulder. “They are still here.”

Duke swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said. His thumb brushed once over your knuckles. “Yeah, they are.”

Hilltop reopened two weeks later.

Not fully. One room at first. Then two. The windows had been replaced. The mural had been finished by the kids, who had decided to include neither Batman nor Signal in the skyline but had hidden a small yellow sun in one corner and a tiny orange cat on top of a building. Duke pretended not to get emotional about it and failed badly enough that Stephanie took a photo.

You were not supposed to be working. This was a widely agreed-upon rule made by Alfred, Duke, Bruce, several doctors, Mrs Alvarez, and Lucifer, who expressed his opinion by sitting on your paperwork whenever you tried to organise anything.

You were, however, allowed to sit in the corner with a blanket and “supervise,” which mostly meant children brought you drawings, adults brought you tea, and Duke stood nearby with the expression of someone ready to bodily intercept any attempt at heroic self-sacrifice.

“You are hovering,” you said.

Duke leaned against the wall beside your chair. “I am standing supportively.”

“You’re blocking the supply closet.”

“That supply closet looked suspicious.”

“It contains paper towels.”

“Exactly.”

You smiled down into your tea.

Sunlight poured through the new windows, bright and clean. Duke could see your light better in it now. Still not as strong as before, but steadier. Recovering. You had been annoyed when he described it that way.

“I am not a rechargeable battery,” you had said.

“I know,” Duke replied.

“You brought me to sit in the sun.”

“You said it helped.”

“That is not the point.”

“You’re right. You’re a houseplant.”

You had thrown a cushion at him. Weakly, but with emotional accuracy.

Now, in the community centre, you looked at the mural and then at him.

“You saved them too, you know,” you said.

Duke blinked. “What?”

“At Hilltop.”

“I know I was there.”

“No.” You set your tea down carefully. “I mean, you keep talking like I was the only reason people got out. I wasn’t. You were the path. I was just… momentum.”

Duke studied you.

“I’m trying to accept shared credit,” you said. “Do not make that face.”

“What face?”

“The face like you’re proud of me in a way that makes me want to become furniture.”

Duke smiled. “I am proud of you.”

“Duke.”

“Sorry. Too direct?”

“Yes.”

“Should I insult you instead?”

“Please.”

“You are the most stubborn glowstick I’ve ever met.”

“That was terrible.”

“I panicked again.”

“You keep doing that.”

“Only around you.”

The words landed between you. Softly. Differently than before.

Your smile faded into something shy. Duke’s heart took that as an invitation to become unprofessional.

Across the room, Mrs Alvarez loudly told a volunteer that young people today took too long to admit obvious things. Jason, who had appeared at some point with a box of donated books and no permission, said, “Preach.”

Duke closed his eyes. “I hate everyone.”

You laughed.

Later, when the centre quieted and the winter sun lowered gold across the mural, Duke found you in the small courtyard behind Hilltop. The raised garden beds were mostly dormant, though someone had planted hardy herbs that refused to die out of spite. Lucifer sat on the wall, tail flicking, judging the entire world.

You stood with your face tilted toward the light.

Duke stopped in the doorway.

For a moment, he only looked. Your glow did not fill the courtyard. It did not pour from you in a desperate attempt to save everyone within reach. It sat close to your skin, soft and yours, no longer something you were giving away by default.

You looked peaceful.

Not fixed. Not healed in a single cinematic leap.

But present.

Duke stepped outside.

“You okay?” he asked.

You opened your eyes. “I think so.”

He nodded.

No pushing. No scanning your face for lies like an anxious detective. No grabbing the answer and shaking truth from it. Just accepting that you were learning how to answer and he was learning how to let the answer be yours.

You looked at him. “Are you?”

Duke considered lying. Then he smiled ruefully. “I think so.”

“Copycat.”

“You’re a good influence.”

“That is debatable.”

“Strongly.”

You laughed.

Then, after a small silence, you held out your hand.

Duke looked at it.

Your voice softened. “No powers.”

“I know.”

“I just want to hold your hand.”

His chest warmed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can do that.”

He took your hand.

Your fingers were still a little cold, but not like they had been in the medbay. Duke folded his hand around yours and felt, with startling clarity, that this was not rescue. Not recovery management. Not community care. Not strategy. Just two people in fading sunlight, choosing contact because they wanted it.

He looked at you. You were already looking at him.

“Can I kiss you?” Duke asked.

Your breath caught.

Lucifer chose that moment to make a deeply judgmental noise from the wall.

Duke glanced at him. “I’m trying to have a moment.”

“He supervises.”

“He’s bad at it.”

“He has standards.”

“He once attacked a paper bag.”

“The bag had poor intentions.”

Duke laughed, then looked back at you. “Question still stands.”

Your smile trembled.

“Yes,” you said. “You can kiss me.”

He stepped closer slowly, giving you every second to change your mind. You did not. Your free hand rose to his sleeve, and Duke felt the simple human weight of it like sunlight.

The kiss was gentle.

No glow flared between you. No empathic warmth spilled out to smooth over nerves or make the moment easier. Your mouth was soft under his, a little hesitant at first, then warmer when he squeezed your hand. Duke kissed you like someone who knew light could be shared without anyone burning. You kissed him back like someone trying, finally, to believe comfort could come toward you too.

When you pulled apart, your forehead rested against his.

“No powers?” you whispered.

Duke smiled. “No powers.”

“Still okay?”

“Very okay.”

You laughed softly, almost disbelieving.

He brushed his thumb over your hand.

“You know,” he said, “being a light doesn’t mean you have to be on fire.”

You groaned. “That was painfully sincere.”

“I know.”

“Awful.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Very attractive, unfortunately.”

His smile widened. “Unfortunately?”

“You heard me.”

Lucifer meowed like he was filing a complaint.

Duke ignored him and kissed you again.

Outside the courtyard, Gotham continued. It always did. There would be more darkness. More awful people with machines and philosophies. More community centers needing repairs. More children needed someone to tell them the next breath mattered. More days when Duke would stand in the sun and fight shadows that thought daylight made people easy to see and easier to break.

But he would not do it alone. 

Neither would you. That was the thing about light, Duke was learning. Not the heroic kind people put on murals. Not the symbolic kind that made speeches sound better. The real kind. The daily kind. The kind passed hand to hand in community kitchens and medbay chairs and courtyards where someone finally learned to ask for help before disappearing.

It did not have to save the whole city at once. Sometimes it only had to stay.

Your hand remained in his as the sun slipped lower.

It has been 76 hours since you left. 4,560 minutes without seeing you smile. 273,600 seconds your touch has been absent.

Jimmy Olsen is convinced this is how he dies. From a fatal deficiency of you at his side.

“This is getting hard to watch,” Lois murmurs to Cat, who only nods as Jimmy turns to stare longingly at the Superman duck sitting beneath your monitor.

“Just when I thought he couldn’t get any more pathetic,” Cat sighs. “Remember when he’d lose one girl and just call another?”

“I’m not saying I miss the playboy but… Should we do something?”

“Like what? Call her and make her calm him down?” Cat suggests.

“No,” Clark interrupts, leaning back in his chair. “She called yesterday and he barricaded himself in the printer room to talk to her.”

“You’re hopeless too,” Lois remembers, smiling at Clark. “And ideas about what might help him?”

Clark looks toward Jimmy, who, though he hates to admit it, does look pretty pathetic. He hasn’t gotten anything done since you left other than wait for the phone to ring or send you a random email in the hopes you’d respond and stay connected to him that way.

“He wants to keep in touch with her,” Clark realizes. He pushes out of his chair and walks to Jimmy’s desk.

“I’m not done,” Jimmy mumbles, wiggling his mouse so the computer doesn’t go to sleep.

“No, I- I just wanted to ask if you want to talk about anything?” Clark offers.

Jimmy pulls a piece of paper out from under his keyboard and lightly traces the doodles lining the top corners. “I miss her,” he admits softly.

“Then why don’t you write her letters?” Clark suggests. “That way, you can tell her what’s happening here and have stories to share when she gets back?”

Jimmy looks up from the paper, his hand stilling against the edge. He considers the idea. But the thought of sitting down each afternoon to write to someone who he used to just invite out for milkshakes isn’t exactly exciting. Besides, he writes enough for work.

“Just try to find a way to make her feel a little closer,” Clark advises. “If you want to join us for dinner to get out, you’re more than welcome.”

“Thanks, Clark,” Jimmy mutters, returning to his thoughts of you.

“He’s acting like she moved around the globe,” Cat muses when Clark returns to his desk. “She’s in Gotham for, what? Ten more days?”

“Eleven,” Clark corrects.

“You eager for her to get back, too?” Lois checks, raising one brow.

“Don’t be jealous I can remember dates,” Clark teases.

Cat sighs, then asks, “Think Perry would let me work from home, so I don’t have to witness this?”

“He’d be better off sending Jimmy to Gotham to join his girl,” Lois counters.

Jimmy taps the camera bag against his hip as he walks home from the Planet. This time last week, you were walking beside him and cracking jokes. Now, the noise of the city is overbearing and the space beside him seems too big and empty.

He glances up when he approaches an intersection, stopping when he notices a sticker on the back of a street sign. It’s a handmade sticker, like someone doodled the Superman emblem on it, the same way you draw in the margins of the drafts you proofread for him.

You once claimed that drawing while you read helped you focus on more than the single word or sentence you were on. Maybe that’s what Jimmy needs to do — focus on preparing for when you come back rather than dreading the next minute without you.

So, he removes his Polaroid camera from his bag and snaps a picture of the sticker. The sun is a backlight against the sign, sending visible rays of light out in all direction. When the picture finishes developing, it’s even better than Jimmy thought it would be. Somehow, with the lighting and the ethereal nature of the image, it reminds him even more of you.

Jimmy rushes home, then finds his favourite pen in a kitchen drawer. He flips the photo over and writes a quick note on the back about his memory of you drawing on his papers and telling him why you did it.

Maybe, he realizes, Clark wasn’t totally wrong. Jimmy isn’t going to sit down and write letters to you each night, but he can take photos that remind him of you to share when you return.

“I’m a genius,” Jimmy tells his empty apartment.

Throughout the next week, Jimmy keeps his camera on him at all times. Anything that reminds him of you, he captures in a photograph. Then, he writes how he sees you in the item or the place in the picture. Slowly, a stack of Polaroids builds in his home, all to share with you.

There’s a photo of a flower shop he passed, the bright colours in the window reminiscent of how your eyes sparkle in the sunlight.

A figurine on Cat’s desk makes Jimmy think of your favourite story or movie, so he poses it beside your Superman duck for the photo.

The last picture he adds to the stack is a wide shot of his own empty apartment. Precisely where he wishes you were right now. “I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly," he writes on the back.

He had originally planned to keep the photos and give them to you when you return, but the desire to get them to you becomes overpowering. So, Jimmy begins looking around his apartment for a box he can use to mail them. If he uses the overnight shipping option in the Daily Planet’s mail room, you’ll have all of his pictures and the pieces of his heart he scribbled on the back by noon tomorrow.

A box in the top of his closet is the perfect size, but his retrieving it is interrupted by his phone ringing. Jimmy nearly trips rushing to answer your call — the custom ringtone like a homing beacon.

“Hi,” Jimmy greets, slightly out of breath.

“Jimmy!” you call excitedly. “I have good news!”

“Oh?”

“Yeah! I just wrapped up with Wayne Enterprises and I’m coming back sooner than expected,” you explain. “Perry just arranged for me to come back tomorrow. I should get to Metropolis around 6 p.m.”

“Wow,” Jimmy breathes out, looking at the stack of photos. “That’s great! How did it go?”

“It went really well. But I’m homesick. I miss Metropolis and the Planet and you.”

Jimmy smiles, moving around his room as his heart rate increases. He can’t remember the last time he was this excited. You’re coming home!

“You said six?” he checks. “You should come over for dinner, have a nice welcome.”

“Oh, I don’t want to put you out like that,” you reply kindly. “You’ve been working too.”

Cat and Lois will be the first to tell you Jimmy did very little work in your absence, but he doesn’t argue the point now.

“I’d love to see you,” he says instead.

And, as he hoped, it softens you enough that you say, “Okay. I’ll be there. Thank you, Jimmy!”

You talk for a few more minutes, then tell Jimmy goodnight. He looks around his place and starts working.

The first thing he does is string up all the photos around his apartment. Now, when you come in, you’ll see the impact you’ve had on Jimmy’s life. Maybe, if he’s lucky, you’ll stay long enough for him to return the favor.

You’re exhausted but excited simultaneously when you knock on Jimmy’s door after returning to Metropolis. The article you were working on is drafted and waiting in Perry’s inbox to be reviewed. There’s a chance he’ll send you back to Gotham for edits or a rewrite, but that’s not what you’re thinking about tonight.

It’s been two weeks since you saw Jimmy Olsen, and you’ve felt that loss. Even when you were completely focused on the article, a part of you wished that Jimmy was at your side to crack a joke or carry a box of files while insisting that Superman could beat Batman in a fight.

“Hi,” Jimmy greets when he pulls the door open.

You smile and wrap your arms around him, hugging him tightly. Jimmy’s arms circle your waist, holding you close as he breathes you in like you’re the first breath of fresh air he’s had since you left.

“I missed you,” you murmur against his shoulder.

“I missed you, too,” he replies without hesitation. “C’mon, I made dinner. It’s a recipe that’s supposed to be like that place you like downtown.”

You gasp excitedly, then step back and freeze when you see the first polaroid hanging beside you. Jimmy nods, encouraging you to go closer.

It’s a photo of your desk, a figurine in focus. On the back of the photo, Jimmy has written a note about how he watches your favourite movie when he misses you.

“Jimmy,” you breathe out, wide-eyed as you look at him.

“They’re all about you,” he confirms, gesturing nervously around the room.

You turn in a slow circle, taking in the expanse of what he’s done for you, the evidence of how often he thinks of you. Then, you move to the next photo — a flower shop that made him think of your beauty.

By the time you turn to where Jimmy can see you again, your eyes are glassy and you fail to stifle a sniff.

“Whoa, whoa,” Jimmy panics, extending his arms toward you. “No, you’re not supposed to cry. Is it weird? I can throw them all away right now. Clark said I should write you letters because you felt so far and I—”

You shake your head and lift his camera from the table beside his couch.

Jimmy stutters on a question, then silences when you grab his shirt with your free hand and pull him toward you. He moves without argument, humming when you kiss him. His hands move to your waist like you’ve done this before, and you smile against him as the camera shutter clicks beside you. Jimmy reaches out, takes the camera, drops it on the couch, and pull you flush against him.

Perhaps Clark knew what he was talking about when he suggested a love letter.

Two Weeks Later

Clark stops beside your empty desk, looking for a blue pen he can borrow. The last one he left on his desk was his favourite — a Japanese ballpoint that he’ll have to replace this weekend, since someone reappropriated it to their own desk. Rather than finding the colour pen he needs, he sees a polaroid tucked in the corner of your monitor.

He shakes his head and keeps walking, sure that the photo is from Jimmy. What he doesn’t see is the picture slipped under Jimmy’s keyboard of you wearing a new outfit you bought in Gotham. It says tonight 6 p.m. on the back, accompanied by a lip stick stain.

Jimmy certainly won’t regret buying you your own polaroid camera.

Jimmy Olsen Taglist🏷️ @ilocuras24 @alohastitch0626 @person-005 @seriousaliysa

Tim tapped a control, the image zoomed inward, and an abandoned settlement appeared.

"Three days ago," Tim began, "a League deep-space probe detected artificial structures on an uncharted world near the edge of explored space."

The hologram shifted again to reveal rows of metallic buildings appeared, roadways, towers, an entire city.

Bart leaned forward.

"So we're doing archaeology now?"

"No," Tim replied. "We're investigating why a supposedly abandoned colony suddenly started transmitting power signatures."

That got everyone's attention.

Cassie frowned. "Someone's living there?"

"We don't know."

Jaime crossed his arms. "No distress signals?"

"None."

"No ships?"

"None."

"That's not suspicious at all."

Tim ignored him and continued, "The colony predates most modern galactic records. League databases couldn't even identify it."

You glanced up at the hologram, something about the architecture felt familiar, not enough to place it, just enough to make the back of your neck itch.

Batman finally spoke, "If anything appears unusual, report it immediately. Do not separate from the team."

Bart groaned. "Why does he always say that right before things go horribly wrong?"

The ride to the colony took several hours.

The Bio-Ship drifted silently through space while everyone occupied themselves, Bart was playing a game on his phone., Cassie was reading mission files, Jaime was arguing with Khaji-Da all while Tim was reviewing maps.

You sat near one of the observation windows, watching stars streak past, with Conner eventually dropping into the seat beside you.

"You've been quiet."

You shrugged.

"Just thinking."

"About?"

"The colony."

Conner glanced toward the mission files,"You know something?"

"No."

You hesitated, "Maybe."

That earned his attention.

"The architecture looked familiar."

"How familiar?"

You frowned, "I don't know."

The answer bothered you.

Kryptonian memory wasn't perfect, but you usually remembered things your dad taught you. This felt like trying to remember a dream, close enough to touch, too far away to grasp. Before you could think about it further, Bio-Ship's voice echoed through the cabin.

"Approaching destination."

Everyone immediately sat up.

Tim stood, "Alright, team. Let's work. We don't need traditional oxygen masks because there's a breathable atmosphere, but the air's dense so keep your rebreathers on, Superboy, Supergirl, you're exempt."

The colony should have been empty, instead, it felt more like a graveyard.

The Bio-Ship landed in the centre of the settlement with a low hum, the ramp lowered and cold wind rushed inside, making you shiver.

Tim stepped out first, the rest of you followed, the only thing that greeted you was silence. The settlement stretched endlessly across the landscape, metallic structures rose from the dark terrain, dust drifted through empty streets. No lights, no movement, no signs of life.

Bart rubbed his hands together from the cold.

"Creepy."

"Very descriptive," Tim said.

"I'm serious. This place looks haunted."

You were about to make fun of him when your gaze landed on one of the nearby buildings. Then another, then another.

Your stomach dropped. "No way."

Cassie glanced over. "What?"

You pointed toward a series of symbols etched into a nearby wall, "I know that language." The team immediately turned toward you.

Jaime frowned. "You do?"

Slowly, you approached the markings. Your pulse quickened, you'd seen them before. Not in person, but your father had shown you enough Kryptonian texts growing up.

Stories, historical records, maps, lessons about a world that no longer existed. You recognised the symbols instantly.

"It's Kryptonian." The silence that followed was immediate.

Tim's expression sharpened. "You're sure?"

"Yeah." You swallowed. "I'm pretty sure. It's not Phaelosian, or from Planet Daxam, it could be another offshoot but I'm certain the origin is Kryptonian. "

Suddenly the colony felt much less abandoned, and much more personal.

The team spent the next hour investigating, most of the settlement appeared untouched, there were no signs of battle. No signs of evacuation, no signs of disaster.

Just...nothing.

Entire buildings stood frozen in time, equipment remained where it had been left, personal belongings sat abandoned, it looked as though everyone had vanished in the middle of their day. You found children's toys, family photographs, records written in Kryptonian, a civilisation preserved in a single moment.

The deeper you explored, the stranger things became, organic growths crawled across walls and ceilings, dark tendrils spread beneath metallic surfaces. Vein-like structures pulsed beneath the colony itself.

Alive, growing, watching.

Jaime scanned one of them, followed by his visor lighting up.

"Definitely biological."

"That's reassuring," Bart muttered.

"It wasn't meant to be."

The first scream echoed through the colony moments later.

Everyone froze.

Tim reacted instantly.

"Look out!"

The wall beside you exploded. Metal and debris erupted outward, and a massive creature burst through the structure.

Then another, then three more. The colony erupted into chaos, the creatures moved like predators, not animals but hunters.

Their bodies were covered in thick armoured plating, multiple eyes tracked movement simultaneously, their claws carved through metal like paper.

One lunged directly at Bart, he vanished in a yellow blur. Another slammed into Cassie. She caught it midair and hurled it through a building, with the impact shattering half the structure.

You launched yourself skyward, heat vision erupted from your eyes, the beam struck one creature directly in the chest. It barely slowed down.

"What?!"

The thing roared, then jumped, like actually jumped, thirty feet straight into the air.

Its claws scraped across your shoulder before Conner intercepted it, the two crashed through a nearby tower. The ground shook, everywhere you looked the fight intensified.

Jaime's cannons lit up the colony, Bart became a streak of yellow lightning. Cassie punched one creature hard enough to send it flying across the city. You grabbed another by the throat and drove it through three separate walls.

The creature shrieked, its tail whipping wildly, then another creature appeared behind you, too fast. Its claws raked across your side, whilst it didn't cut you, the force of it hurt like a bitch.

You retaliated immediately, your punch shattered its armoured skull. The body collapsed, yet more kept coming. They emerged from underground tunnels, from buildings, from hidden nests buried beneath the colony, dozens upon dozens.

The fight stretched on for nearly twenty minutes and by the end, the streets looked like a war zone. Broken structures, cracked pavement, creature corpses everywhere.

Eventually the battle turned, the creatures began falling one by one. Until only a single survivor remained, its body lay broken across the colony floor.

Breathing heavily, dying. You approached carefully.

Conner moved beside you.

"Think that's all of them?" Bart asked.

"Hopefully."

The creature twitched, then its tail lashed outward. Pain exploded through your calf, you screamed as the barb punched straight through your leg. For a split second it felt like molten metal had been driven into your flesh.

Then the tail ripped free, you stumbled backward, the world tilted.

Conner caught you before you hit the ground.

"Y/N!"

Your entire leg burned, not normal pain but something deeper. You looked down, the wound itself wasn't severe, just a puncture, already healing. At least, it should have been.

Instead the flesh around it remained red and raw and irritated. It was burning, like poison spreading beneath your skin.

"I'm fine," you managed.

Conner didn't believe you, neither did Tim.

"Let's head out, we've got our data, we know where the signatures were coming from. We're going to analyse the rest of the colony upon arrival at the Watch Tower, and if we ever come back, we'll need reinforcements."

So the team boarded the Bio-Ship and headed home.

For the first fifteen minutes everything seemed normal.

Then the pain returned. It started in your leg, a deep ache spreading upwards Your muscles felt heavy and your thoughts sluggish, a strange exhaustion settling over you. You sat down hard in one of the Bio-Ship seats.

Conner noticed immediately.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"You don't sound okay."

"I'm fine."

Cassie appeared from her seat.

"You look awful."

"Wow. Thanks."

"No, seriously."

You frowned, something felt wrong. You stood, or tried to because your balance immediately wavered.

Conner grabbed your arm,"Easy."

"I'm okay." You pulled away.

Then you tried to fly,yet nothing happened, causing you to freeze.

Conner noticed. "What?"

You stared at him.

Then pushed off the floor again. Nothing.

No lift, no instinctive pull, no effortless weightlessness. Just fricking gravity. (insert Kenma's gravity speech lmaoooo)

Your stomach dropped. "No."

"What?"

You tried again, nothing. Panic began creeping into your chest. "No no no." (Obsession type shit lmao)

Cassie stood. "Y/N?"

"I can't fly."

Silence filled the cabin. You looked around, everyone stared, "I can't fly."

The words sounded ridiculous, impossible even. You were Kryptonian, flying wasn't something you thought about, It was like breathing, and suddenly it was gone.

Tim immediately moved closer. "What do you mean you can't fly?"

"I mean I can't fly."

Fear settled over the cabin, because powers didn't just disappear, not for Kryptonians, not without a reason. Slowly, you pulled up the leg of your suit. Dark silver veins stretched from the wound which had begun to fester, branching beneath your skin, moving upward, growing.

"What the hell?" Bart whispered, even Tim looked alarmed.

You stared at the veins, then watched them spread another centimetre.

Tim immediately opened a communications channel. "Robin to Watchtower."

Static crackled. Then Cyborg's voice answered.

"Go ahead."

Tim's eyes never left you. "We need medical personnel waiting in Hangar Three."

"What's the situation?"

Tim hesitated, for the first time all mission.

"Supergirl's injured."

The ride back felt endless.

The veins continued spreading, the pain only worsening.

Your hearing flickered occasionally, your strength felt inconsistent, your waterline grew teary and you began to sweat profusely, breathing got harder, holding your head up got harder. Every symptom made the cabin quieter, more tense.

Nobody joked anymore, nobody talked much.

Conner stayed beside you the entire trip, a hand resting around you as you laid your head on his shoulder, as though he was afraid you'd disappear if he let go. By the time the Bio-Ship entered Watchtower airspace, standing felt difficult, like your body wasn't listening anymore.

The hangar doors opened before the ship had fully landed, heroes were already waiting.

Nightwing, Flash, Black Canary. Several League medics. Batman stood further back, cape draped around his shoulders.

And Jason.

You almost missed him.

Leaning against the far wall in his Red Hood gear, arms crossed.

"When does he ever come around here?" You think to yourself in a daze

The second he saw you being helped down the ramp, he straightened, every trace of casual indifference vanishing. The moment they saw you, concern spread through the crowd.

Conner helped you down the ramp. You hated that. You hated needing help. You took two steps, then your vision blurred. A violent cough tore through your chest. You doubled over.

Something warm splattered across your hand. For a second, your brain didn't process it. Then you looked down.

It was blood. Bright red blood.

The hangar went silent.

Another cough hit, harder this time, blood spraying across the floor.

"Y/N!" Someone shouted your name but you struggled to make out who.

Your nose started bleeding next, not a trickle or a drip, but a steady stream. Panic erupted instantly.

You felt your eyes getting teary again but instead of water, blood escaped your waterline. The throbbing pain in your calf was so concentrated that your next step had your leg giving out.

In your daze, you'd thought you'd pass out before you hit the floor, but someone caught you.

Jason.

One second he was across the hangar, the next he was kneeling in front of you. His hands cupped your face. "Hey. Hey, look at me."

You blinked through the dizziness.

"Jace..."

His expression was terrifying, the absence of his helmet makes him look so much less threatening in your opinion. He wasn't angry or annoyed. But he was scared, actually scared.

"Stay with me." Another cough wracked your body, blood stained the "S" symbol of your suit. Jason swore viciously.

"Move!" he barked at the crowd. The command snapped everyone into motion.

Nightwing reached your side, Flash disappeared and reappeared with medical equipment. Batman was already moving.

But Jason never let go of you.

One hand remained locked around yours, the other pressed against your shoulder. Grounding you, keeping you upright, as if sheer stubbornness could stop whatever was happening.

"You're okay," he said. The lie sounded desperate.

"You hear me? You're okay." Jason held you before your eyes shut.

The last thing you saw before everything went dark was him shouting for the medics.

When you woke again, to say you felt like shit would've been the understatement of the century.

Your mouth parched, your eyelids heavy with fatigue, the tightening in your chest was sharp, and combined with the tautness of your muscles, you could barely move. The throbbing, hot sensation in your calf felt stronger, and your head continued to pound.

Arguably, the worst part of it all was that this was so foreign to you.

Being half-Kryptonian, you had never experienced human illnesses, so you being so severely sick gutted you in a way you couldn't describe.

The way you felt wasn't the only difference, the room was different too.

White, quiet, contained. The first thing you noticed, after fighting a wave of nausea, was the glass, thick and reinforced.

The second was your mother. Lois sat beside your bed, her hand wrapped around yours. The relief on her face nearly made you cry.

"Mom?" Lois immediately stood to give you a hug.

"Hey, honey." Your throat felt raw.

"What happened?" Her smile faltered slightly.

The answer came from the observation glass. Clark stood on the opposite side alongside your little brother Jon, and Kara. All separated from you, unable to enter, then you noticed someone else. Jason, still there, like he'd never left.

"What happened?" This time your voice cracked.

Lois squeezed your hand. "You're sick baby."

"Doesn't answer my question." You joked

"That disease you contracted is Kryptonian." Silence.

"Meaning?" You didn't know why you even asked that, you knew what she meant.

"It only infects Kryptonians." Despite, knowing what she was going to say , the room suddenly felt colder.

Outside the glass, Clark looked helpless, and that scared you more than the virus ever could, because your dad always knew what to do. Except now, he couldn't even sit beside his daughter.

"Where's Conner?" You asked, noticing his absence.

"Bruce—Batman, suggested he be put on observation, he was in close contact with you and they still don't know how the disease spreads, they don't know if he could be infected, but from the looks of it he's okay."

"How long have you been here? You don't get off work till 6'oclock today—wait what time is it?"

"Only a couple hours baby, Perry let me go early after I told him you had an accident." Your mother responded

"You made me sound like a baby." You complained.

"You are my baby." She laughed

"They made me go through several decontamination chambers before coming in here, I'll probably have to go through those again eugh."

" Gonna ruin your hair?" You asked. "You bet." You could hear the smile in her voice without even looking at her

The following days blurred together. Your powers began failing one by one. Flight disappeared first, your heat vision followed. Then your strength, then your hearing. The world grew quieter, smaller, scarier.

The hemorrhaging came and went. Some days it was nosebleeds, other days it was coughing up blood so severe the medical alarms went off. Every episode left the Watchtower and your family shake, and every single time, when you looked through the observation window afterward, Jason was there.

Sometimes standing beside Dick. Sometimes arguing with Bruce. Sometimes asleep in a chair because he refused to go home.

Outside your room, the Watchtower became a war room. Barry practically lived in the laboratory, with Bruce working beside him.

Dr. Leslie Thompkins joined the effort. Mr. Terrific, Cyborg, and every scientific mind available contributed.

The virus had originated from the colony itself—an ancient Kryptonian pathogen. Something engineered long ago to target Kryptonian biology specifically (Thaedus vs Viltrum type shit ok im sorry i'll stop)

A weapon, one that should have stayed buried, and it was killing you from the inside out.

Jason took it worse than most people realised, maybe because nobody knew exactly what the two of you were, and ever since the fallout between you guys because you found out about his fling with Rose Wilson, of all people, he'd never had the chance to apologise, and it took you being on your deathbed for him to come to that conclusion (potential fic idea 👀 send me thoughts guys)

And every time your condition worsened, he looked like he was being torn apart. After a particularly bad hemorrhage that left you unconscious, he asked to enter your room.

He couldn't bare to see you sick, how you, once so full of life was now wasting on a hospital bed, but he had to see you. Sure, he saw blood every night in Gotham, but you were different.

He walked through several of the decontamination chambers to get to you, all while holding a bouquet of your favourite flowers. The last time he bought you those were for your 15th birthday.

After sitting down beside you, he dropped the flowers by the bedside table, he never believed in any of that sentimental shit but he had a lot to say, but had no way to say it. All he could do, was be there, and hope and pray Barry would find a cure.

Although you weren't awake to see it, when Jason reached for your hand, this time, he didn't let go.

Sometimes you fall asleep with your cheek smushed on Captain Levi’s bed.

You don’t mean to. When you startle awake from another nightmare, frozen, you realize it. Then, you always make the decision to quietly leave, making sure the quilts are adequately wrapped around Levi’s dozing form. He doesn’t wake. You think, and hope.

That damn tea. You brew it for Levi’s sake, to help him with his insomnia when he refused to let you drug him to sleep. It was the next best thing; it was either that or Gabi’s fist to get him to dreamland. But the tea worked on you too, causing you to doze off while quietly reading as Levi fell asleep.

You always knew the Captain was an insomniac, even during your early days as part of Squad Levi. You know a lot about him: how he takes his tea, what books he enjoys, and that he prefers rainy days over sunny ones. You make sure to get him settled on the porch if there is an impending rainstorm with a book and a freshly brewed cup of tea. You’ve been with him since the beginning, so why leave? Go where?

You don’t owe him anything. He always asks why you stick around. What has he ever done besides lead you to hell and back? In his eyes, he’s the reason why you get overtaken with flashbacks: eyes screwed shut, teeth clenched, knuckles white. Of what, he doesn’t know. He just watches as you get through it, clutching anything to ground yourself. And when it’s over, he grits his teeth and looks away in shame.

The flashbacks you get are often, and you never speak of them. Part of him doesn’t want to know. The other part of him can probably guess, but he doesn’t know what to say.

He knows what you’ve been through, what you’ve done and what’s been done to you. You watched countless of Scouts get eaten by Titans. You’ve watched and fought the Female Titan, barely living through it. You’ve gained and lost so many comrades. You’ve fought for Eren, for the hope that humanity lives on despite the Titans, but where did that get you? Where did that get Levi? The Rumbling. The subsequent battle for the last sliver of humanity.

The horrors of what you two lived through creep in your dreams. And his. You wake, frozen in terror, a scream caught in your closed throat. Levi thrashes in bed, despite his pains, eventually coming to in a cold sweat. You don’t see that. But he sees your suffering and feels his heart break even more.

“Levi, a storm is coming,” you are pouring him his daily cup of tea that soothes his pain in his knee and back. It’s a strong mixture that smells of herbs and something floral.

Levi is sitting in his wheelchair, his one gray eye already trained on the darkening sky. He only hums in agreement and doesn’t complain when you wheel him out to the porch. It’s secluded and tucked away from the rain. You make sure he’s settled in, putting a quilt over his legs. He feels somewhat embarrassed, having you fret over him constantly, but you never seem to mind.

You set his teacup on a small table next to his wheelchair. “Do you want your book, too?” You ask him, but he shakes his head, watching you pull up a rocking chair on the other side of the table.

Before this, he’s never really seen you in skirts or casual wear. It was always your uniform or wearing clothes as a disguise. But now, since the fighting is over, all he sees you wear are long skirts, boots, and a cardigan or shawl thrown over your button up shirt. Neither of you hunt or fish anymore. Gabi and Falco see to that. But you tend to your vegetable and herb garden, skirts and all.

You have injuries that you still feel the dull ache of. During the final battle, atop Eren’s skeletal back, you landed horribly wrong on one of the resurrected Nine. Your ankle was broken in several places, and continuing to fight despite it made the pain never truly go away. Your ribs were crushed by another one of the resurrected Nine. Annie broke your arm when she was trying to retrieve Eren. The blast from Bertholdt’s Titan scarred your face, hands, and elbows.

But when you examine Levi’s face, you realize that your scars aren’t as deep as his. You healed him the best you could before the final battle, despite the tremendous damage the thunder spear did to his body. You were amazed that he could keep going. But after the Power of the Titans were wiped, and the power of the Ackermans was gone, the damage on his body was finally revealed.

The rain begins to slowly fall from the sky, a welcoming sight. Thunder rumbles from the distance, and you notice that Levi’s eyes are closed as he takes in the sound of rain and the smell of it. As the rain picks up, you hear the steady drum of it on the roof.

Your mind wanders as you watch the storm roll through. Although you try to avoid difficult memories, they still surface in your mind and makes it difficult for you to breathe, to think of anything else. Levi is still in his own world, immersed in the rain, unaware of your struggle. Sometimes, memories like the ones flashing through your brain and behind your eyelids come out of nowhere. They take you by surprise, rendering a peaceful moment like this one into a moment of dread and fear.

The memory that takes hold of you is one that occurred during the battle to overtake Shinganshina. Watching Erwin, your mentor and friend, die, despite trusting Levi with your whole heart. Feeling your face, arms, and hands on fire from the explosion of Bertholdt’s Titan. Your hair was singed from the fires, and the stench of it made you gag.

You clasp your hands over your mouth, covering up a small whimper. Levi, despite his Ackerman abilities being gone, his hearing is still very attuned. His head quickly turns towards you, realizing that you’re just coming back from an unwelcome memory.

“Ah,” you drop your hands, shivering. “I’m sorry…”

He watches your face attentively, the crease in your brow, your bottom lip trembling. Your hands are shaking, but when he moves towards you, he grabs them into his own.

“Don’t be,” he murmurs. You’re avoiding his gaze, eyes misty with tears and the confusion of snapping out of a flashback.

“Do you…want to talk about it?” He feels guilty for asking. Perhaps it would make it worse, bringing up the memories that plague you so.

“Uhm…,” you frown deeper. “I don’t think you would want to…it’s unpleasant for both of us.”

You sigh shakily, turning towards the rain once more.

“What was it about?” Levi asks.

Your eyes well up with tears. “Erwin…,” you murmur. “And, selfishly, my injuries.”

“Not selfish.”

“A bit, yes…”

“No,” Levi used one of his hands to turn you to look at him. “Not selfish.”

“Hm,” you sigh, neither agreeing or disagreeing.

“You told me the explosion caused you to get nerve damage in your hands. I remember seeing you…after chasing Zeke…your face was torn up, too,” Levi’s brow creases as he looks at the scraggly scares adorning your lips and cheeks. You shielded your eyes, if he remembers, so your arms and hands took the brunt of it. Perhaps that’s why you cover up all the time.

“It’s all right,” Levi assures you, squeezing your hands. “You’re with me, now. Safe. What happened to you won’t happen ever again.”

“I hope so,” you reply softly. “I just…wish…”

“I wish a lot of things, too,” Levi interrupts. “A lot of things. And I have a lot of regrets. But…”

Levi’s cheeks turn pink, despite him willing them not to.

“But…spending the remainder of my life, here, with you…”

He stops, choking up. Your eyes dart up, meeting his, your cheeks also feeling hot.

“L-Levi…”

You both turn away from each other, embarrassed, yet your grips on each others hands stay the same. The rain continues, with no sign of letting up.

“Why do you stay?” Levi asks, his black hair slowly swaying with the wind that the rainstorm brings. He’s suddenly quite alert, similar to when his Ackerman abilities were awakened. It reminds you of him before he leapt into battle, or before he left the gates for missions.

“Uhm…” you can’t meet his intense gaze, flustered. He leans in, elbows on his knees, his nose so close…

“You stay for a reason, right?” He asks again.

“Yes, I stay because…” your eyes meet his intense gaze, and you lean in to match him. “Because of you, Levi…”

“Why? I didn’t order you to stay here.”

Basically nose to nose now, you bite your bottom lip. “Because you’re not just my Captain.”

Levi hesitates at this, taken aback. He’s the first one to lean back into his chair, his grip on your hand unrelenting.

“I feel like my presence makes you remember it all.”

You shake your head. “I would be this way anywhere. You actually…help me.”

Levi closes his eyes, but then opens them again.

“I want to be with you, Levi. I always wanted to. You are…” you trail off, your ears now feeling hot, too. “You are…special…to me…and I want to spend the rest of my time…here, with you.”

Levi makes a small noise of surprise. He watches you turn away from him, flustered and embarrassed by your admission. The rain picks up, spraying the two of you with a fine mist with the wind.

He always felt a soft spot for his best soldier. And now, with the both of you now veterans, recovering from the wounds of war, he knows that feeling wasn’t just favoritism. It was so much more. When the two of you were separated during the mission to retake Shinganshina, he fought like hell to get back to you. And when he saw you afterwards, bloody, beaten, hair singed, and cape smoldering, he knew…

Your eyes were empty that day. When Hange hugged you, trying to shield you from Levi’s choice, he saw the look in your eyes. When you watched Erwin die, Levi was not unfamiliar to the emptiness in your gaze. But he never wanted to see you like that again. Despite being powerless in the past, in so many other battles, now, he can make sure it doesn’t happen. Ever again.

“I want to be with you,” Levi says, so quietly you could barely hear it. But you turn to face him, surprised.

“I want to be with you, to take care of you like you take care of me,” Levi continues. “Please…”

His shyness, his understanding, his pleading…your chest flutters, and before you could think it through, you have thrown yourself towards him. You’ve wrapped your arms around him, hugging him.

“You already take care of me,” you say, tears spilling through your eyelashes.

Levi is surprised, yet he wraps his arms around you in return. He only wishes that he did that more often, in the past, so he wouldn’t have lost time with you. But now, in this small cabin near the new woods, he would make up for it all. He pulls away from the embrace, just slightly, to where your noses brush.

Levi first sees you in the morning in the hallway outside of Erwin’s office. You’re holding a stack of reports tucked under one arm, your cloak clasped crookedly, and a half-finished piece of bread pinched between your teeth because you realized eating breakfast and walking to your briefing is an efficient way to multitask.

Levi sees you from the end of the hall and stops walking. His entire body locks up for the stupidest reason—because it’s you. He immediately thinks There she is. Then, because his mind is determined to ruin him, it adds, Her hair looks nice. He almost turns around and walks directly back to his office just to avoid facing you, but because he’s Captain Levi Ackerman, a man who has faced Titans without blinking and therefore shouldn’t be taken down by a woman holding paperwork and chewing bread, he keeps walking forward.

“You look like hell,” he says as soon as he’s close enough.

You stop and look at him, taking the bread out of your mouth as you lift your brows. “Good morning to you too, Captain.”

Levi stares at the bread, then your mouth. He tries to find something else to focus on. Maybe he can tell you your cloak clasp is twisted and Erwin will absolutely notice. Maybe he could ask whether you slept, because the shadows beneath your eyes look darker than yesterday, and yesterday they had already irritated him enough that he left a cup of tea outside your office and convinced himself he only did it because your exhausted handwriting was difficult to read.

“You look better than yesterday, though,” he adds, because he doesn’t know how to shut up around you.

You half-smile. “That might be the closest you’ve ever come to saying something nice to me.”

He feels his stomach drop. Was it? Was that nice? Had he been too obvious? No. No, that’s impossible. No one could hear “you look like hell” and think it was sweet unless they were deranged. But you’re not deranged. In fact, you’re too competent and too observant for his peace of mind.

“You’re insane,” he says, reaching forward before he can stop himself to fix your cloak clasp. The moment he brushes his fingers against your throat, he wishes the floor would swallow him whole. 

You freeze out of surprise, then lift your chin slightly as his knuckles graze the skin beneath your jaw. Levi’s mind goes blank in the most humiliating way possible. He hears the scratch of your breath, feels your pulse at your neck, smells the soap you use—because of course you would be the only other person with proper hygiene standards—and everything he’s learned in life to survive abandons him. He steps back as if you’d burned him.

“There,” he says, voice flat. “Try dressing yourself like an officer next time.”

You glance down at the straightened clasp, then back at him, amusement tugging at the corner of your mouth. “Are you always this charming before breakfast?”

“No.”

“Only with me, then?”

He turns and walks away. Behind him, you laugh, and Levi immediately knows by the burning of his cheeks and the repeating Stupid, stupid, stupid in his mind that this is going to be a very long day.

He insults you again five minutes later inside Erwin’s office, where Erwin stands at the head of the table. Hange lounges over a chair, looking as if they’ve only slept for either four hours or not at all. Miche stands near the window quietly, as always. You take the seat across from Levi, who keeps his eyes on the meeting notes. He refuses to look at you. If he does, he won’t be able to stay composed.

“You’re quiet,” Hange says to him after Erwin begins explaining the revised training schedule for the week. “You’re either listening or plotting something.”

“Unlike you, I can do both quietly,” Levi says.

Hange grins. “That’s what I admire about you, shorty!”

You snort under your breath. Levi looks at you without meaning to. You’re clearly trying not to smile, one hand pressed over the bottom half of your face, eyes lowered to the table. He sees it all, because he always sees too much where you’re concerned. That’s the problem. It means he notices the loose strand of hair against your cheek, and the warmth in your eyes when you catch him looking at you. Levi looks away immediately, thinking to himself Idiot.

“Something wrong, Levi?” Erwin asks, quirking up an eyebrow.

“No,” Levi says.

“You were staring into nothing.”

“I was just assessing whether her paperwork is as sloppy as her uniform.”

You mock an offended gasp. “My paperwork is pristine.”

“It’s tolerable.”

“From you,” you say, pointing your quill at him, “that is basically a marriage proposal.”

Everyone in the room goes quiet. Hange inhales like they’re about to burst. Levi goes completely and utterly still. Marriage proposal. You said it as a joke. Obviously, right? It’s just a harmless, casual joke, banter shared between squad leaders when too much paperwork has turned everyone’s brains into horse feed. There’s no reason for his mind to take the phrase, drag it and him into an alley, and start beating him with it.

Marriage proposal. His mind races before he can stop himself, supplying a series of images: you standing at an altar, you and him in his office alone, your laughter at breakfast, your hand in his, your mouth on his—

No. He’s not going there again. Not now.

Hange’s grin grows wider. Miche looks out the window, but his shoulders shake with silent laughter. Erwin, who is the worst kind of friend to you both, simply looks between the both of you, silently filing this moment away for later to use against either of you when the time comes.

Levi picks up his teacup. “You’d make a terrible wife,” he says.

You grin and rest your chin on the top of your linked hands, elbows on the table. “Why’s that?”

“You’re loud, annoying, and you don’t even know how to chop a carrot.”

“You notice the strangest things about me.”

Levi drinks his tea to avoid having to answer, and even though the tea is too hot, he refuses to cough. Unfortunately for him, you notice his eyes squinting slightly, and your smile softens so much it nearly kills him on the spot. No, he thinks. I can’t let her do this to me.

He spends the rest of the meeting saying as little as possible, which would work better if Hange didn’t keep sneaking glances at him with barely contained excitement. 

Levi expects the week to improve after that. It doesn’t. The problem is that you’re everywhere. You’re in the training yard in the afternoon, walking between your squad members to correct their positions. You’re at the stables in the evening, arguing with someone about your saddle in disrepair. You’re at the mess hall the next morning, laughing with Nanaba over something silly, your head tipped back in a way that fully exposes your throat and immediately makes Levi think of how nice it would be to kiss it.

It’s nothing. It’s not attraction, it’s not a crush, because he’s a full-grown man and he has no use for romantic attraction. It’s just… a normal appreciation of competence. It’s nothing.

Then you bend to pick up a dropped training knife, showing off your ass perfectly, and Levi walks straight into a wall.

So, not nothing, then.

.

By the fifth day, he’s found numerous excuses to pass through the training yard—at least three times.

The first time, he claims he’s merely checking formations and whether the recruits are holding it correctly. The second time, he claims the training dummies aren’t being raised correctly. The third time, he says nothing at all because even he knows another excuse won’t fool anyone.

You catch him near the fence line with his arms crossed, watching as you demonstrate a disarming technique to your squad. “Captain Ackerman,” you call, breathless from your exertion. “Are you here to criticize my form again?”

His mind immediately says Yes, then No. Tell her she moves well. Tell her that her squad trusts her. Tell her she can command a room without having to do anything. Tell her—

“Your stance is less terrible than usual,” Levi says. He slaps himself in his mind. Stupid.

You turn slowly. “Less terrible? Are you praising me?”

“It wasn’t praise.”

“Definitely sounded like praise,” you sing.

“Get your hearing checked.”

You grin. Levi looks away, biting the inside of his cheek. Your squad disperses after another hour, groaning with exhaustion, and you remain behind to gather the practice blades, humming under your breath while the wind blows through your hair. 

Levi knows he should leave. He has reports, he has inspections, he has an office to clean and tea waiting for him that’ll oversteep if he continues standing here like some lovesick idiot. He finds himself walking toward you anyway.

“You’re wearing that wrong,” he says.

You look down at yourself, squinting your eyes. “Wearing what wrong?”

“Your harness.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’ve worn ODM gear for years.”

“Then it’s embarrassing that you managed to fuck it up this badly.”

You put both hands on your hips, cocking your head at him. “Alright, then. Fix it if it bothers you that much.”

His soul practically leaves his body, but because he has absolutely no self-preservation, he mutters, “Fine.”

He steps behind you and reaches for the strap crossing your back. It’s only slightly twisted, barely enough to matter, but he focuses on it as if the fate of the Walls depends on that strip of leather lying flat. Focusing on the strap is easier than focusing on how warm you are, how close you are, how you freeze when his hands settle at your waist to adjust the lower buckles.

This is normal, he thinks. You’ve adjusted soldiers’ gear before. He pulls and tightens. Then, he finally realizes this is not normal at all. He’s too busy thinking about your waist. How nice it feels under his hands. How nice it would be to hold it while he presses up against you from behind. Goddamnit, get it together. He tightens one strap, loosens another, checks the angle, then checks it again because he can’t bring himself to pull away.

“You’re awfully thorough,” you say.

Levi freezes. He hears the smile in your voice. A small one. Possibly innocent. Probably innocent. He can’t lean forward and investigate, because if he sees your expression, he may just blurt something stupid out like I like standing this close to you, and then he’ll have to desert the Scouts and live alone in a cave for the rest of his life.

“If you fall out of your gear, I’ll have to hear about it,” he says.

“Ah, so this is precaution.”

“Obviously.”

“You’re very thoughtful.”

“More like annoyed.” You laugh softly, and he finishes the adjustment too quickly, stepping away in an attempt to restore whatever part of his dignity just died. “There,” he says. “Try not to embarrass your rank.”

You turn to face him, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s just survived an internal war. “Thank you, Levi.”

He blinks at the use of his name. You usually don’t say his first name. It’s always Captain, Captain Ackerman, or Captain Levi. Never just Levi. He looks away before his expression can give him away.

All he says is a simple, “Tch.”

.

You still don’t realize that Levi thinks of you differently, even weeks later.

Levi is rude to almost everyone, blunt with everyone, sparse with praise and allergic to any kind of emotional displays, so it doesn’t occur to you immediately that the insults he gives you are not the same as the ones he gives everyone else. You just assume Levi tolerates you, perhaps even respects you. You don’t assume Levi watches for whether you’ve eaten, or that he’s memorized how you take your tea, or that he once spent ten minutes deciding whether he should knock on your door with medicine in his hand when you were out sick one day.

Hange assumes all of it, and unfortunately for you, Hange assumes very loudly.

In the mess hall, you sit alone at the end of one table with a bowl of stew, a cup of tea, and a stack of formation notes you’re trying to read without dripping broth on them. Even now, you don’t know how to stop working. Hange slides into the seat across from you so quickly that the table shifts. You look up, raising your brows.

“Hello to you too,” you say.

“You and Levi,” Hange says.

You pause with your spoon halfway to your mouth. “Me and Levi what?”

“Oh, don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend you haven’t noticed.”

You stare at them, and Hange stares back, eyes bright behind their glasses, their expression so gleeful it’s almost terrifying.

“Hange,” you say slowly. “I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Their smile falters, then returns even wider. “Oh, that’s even better.”

“Why am I scared?”

“You should be. I know something.”

“You say that a lot.”

Hange waves that away, then leans closer. “Levi has a crush on you.”

You almost drop your spoon into your lap. Surely they must be joking, right? The words don’t even make sense at first. They enter your brain, bounce around for a few seconds, then immediately get rejected by every sensible part of you.

“Levi,” you repeat.

“Yes.”

“Captain Levi Ackerman.”

“Yes.”

“Humanity’s strongest soldier. That Levi.”

“Do we have another emotionally stunted short man named Levi wandering around?”

You look across the mess hall at Levi, standing near the far wall, speaking with Erwin. His arms are folded across his chest, face blank as always. Nothing about him suggests he has a crush on you. The man looks like he was born to disapprove of everyone and everything. To be fair, he already does.

“He insulted my uniform,” you say.

Hange leans even further in. “I saw him fix your cloak.”

“He told me my paperwork was tolerable.”

“Levi considers tolerable high praise.”

“He said I would make a terrible wife.”

“He was totally thinking about you being his wife.” You open your mouth, then close it, because you have absolutely nothing to say in response to that. Hange presses on with a devilish smile. “He brings you tea, too,” they say.

“So?”

“Good tea.” That makes you pause. “He corrects your supply forms before Erwin sees them.”

“So? He corrects everyone’s forms.”

“No, he writes ‘redo this garbage’ on everyone else’s. Yours come back fixed.” You can only blink in response. “He always says something when your squad gets stable duty, and somehow those assignments always mysteriously change.”

“That could be Erwin.”

“It’s not Erwin, trust me.”

“Okay, well… he criticized my gear.”

“That was only an excuse to touch you.”

“Hange.”

“What? I’m observant.”

You sneak a glance at Levi again, and as though sensing your gaze, he looks over. His eyes meet yours across the mess hall, and you see the smallest shift in his expression. A fondness you hadn’t seen before. He then notices Hange sitting across from you, sees the wide grin on their face, and he narrows his eyes with immediate suspicion. Hange waves. Levi looks like he’s considering whether he could get away with murder. Then you notice—and you’re entirely convinced you’re just seeing things—the redness blooming across his cheekbones when he looks at you again.

Oh.

Oh?

That is, unfortunately, very cute.

Then you realize. It all hits you at once. The tea outside your office, the fixing of your cloak, the bread that mysteriously showed up on your desk, the fact that he somehow always manages to appear when you’re carrying something heavy, the way his insults land just a little softer when they’re directed at you.

“You’re enjoying this, you naughty thing,” you accuse Hange.

“Immensely.”

“If you’re wrong, I’m going to look very stupid.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You’ve been wrong before.”

“I’m rarely wrong in matters this entertaining.”

Across the room, Levi pushes away from the wall and starts walking toward you. You feel your stomach drop as Hange stands up.

“Good luck,” they whisper.

You look to them in panic. “Hange, don’t leave—”

“Be gentle. He’s not emotionally housebroken.”

They vanish before Levi arrives, leaving you sitting with your lukewarm stew, your scattered notes, and the sudden realization that Levi Ackerman has been crushing on you for who knows how long now?

Levi stops beside the table. “What did they say?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

He narrows his eyes. “Nothing usually means something.”

“It means nothing, actually.”

“That’s somehow worse.”

You look up at him and, for the first time, allow yourself to study him with the possibility of affection returned. He looks the same as always: tight mouth, sharp eyes, neat cravat, straight posture. But now you see the tiny tells beneath it. He doesn’t look at you directly for too long. His attention flicks to your tea, your food, your notes. His fingers twitch once at his side before he forces them to be still.

He’s nervous. Levi Ackerman is nervous.

You nearly break into a way-too-obvious smile, but thankfully, you manage to just tilt your head. “Captain,” you say, “are you worried about me?”

“No.”

“Well, that was a quick answer.”

“Because it was an easy question.”

“So you’re not worried about me.”

“No.”

“And if I skipped dinner?”

His eyes flick to your bowl. “You’re eating dinner.”

“But if I did.”

“Then you’d be an idiot.”

“You’d notice, though.”

Levi looks at you pointedly, and you smile. You see the visible tightening around his mouth and the subtle shift in his breathing. 

“Hard not to notice when someone is being an idiot in public,” he says.

You lean your chin into your hand. “You know, if you wanted my attention so badly, you could’ve just asked for it.”

You swear Levi stops breathing. You see the hitch in his breath. His face doesn’t change as much, but you see the subtle shift in his eyes, the catastrophic collapse happening behind them that he’s so desperately trying to hide.

She knows, Levi thinks, then with rising horror, She knows, and Hange told her. I’m going to kill them. “I have better things to do than ask for your attention,” he says, swallowing through the tightness in his throat.

“And yet, here you are,” you say, smiling widely.

Because he doesn’t know where else to look, he peers at your notes. “Your handwriting is messy again.”

“Deflection.”

“Mere observation.”

“You make a lot of those about me.”

“Someone has to.”

You laugh. Levi wishes he didn’t love that sound as much as he does.

You become an absolute menace after that. 

.

You don’t do it immediately—you’re too clever for that, and Levi is too slippery to corner. So, you start with small things, such as sitting beside him instead of across from him at the next briefing, which he notices immediately. He stiffens in response.

“Morning,” you say cheerfully.

He looks at the empty chairs around the table. “There are other seats.”

“I like this one.”

“It’s too close.”

“To what?”

“To me, idiot.”

You look at him innocently, batting your eyelashes. “Am I bothering you, Captain?”

Yes, Levi thinks, because you’re too close that he can clearly smell your divine scent, and because your sleeve brushes his when you reach for a report, and because he can see the little crumb that you must not have fully swept away on your mouth and wants to stupidly wipe it off.

“No,” he says.

“Good.”

Hange bites their knuckles across the table.

Later in the mess hall, you ask Levi to pass you a fork. The utensils are closer to you than to him. It doesn’t go over his head, but he reaches for it anyway, because he’s embarrassingly obedient to you. When he hands it over, you deliberately brush your fingers over his. Levi nearly drops the fork. He doesn’t, thankfully, but he manages to keep his hand steady, even though internally, he wants to run face-first into a wall. 

You lower your voice. “Careful, Captain. You seem distracted.”

He glares at you. “You’re imagining things.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes.”

“That was also a very fast answer.”

“You ask stupid questions.”

“And you still answer them anyway.”

You catch his eyes flicking down to your mouth only once, only for the smallest amount of time, but you see it, and all traces of wanting to tease him escape your body.

For all your amusement, for all the fun of watching him unravel, you’re not immune to him. Levi’s awkwardness is adorable, yes, and his insults are ridiculous as they are normal, but you know how to decipher the way he shows you attention. He’s always fiercely contained. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t want to crack that composure just a little.

After dinner, he follows you in the always-empty corridor outside the mess hall, the one just around the corner. He positions himself in front of you, standing near a window where the moonlight cuts across his face.

“You’re doing this on purpose now,” he says.

You stop walking. “Doing what?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

“I’m not. I want to hear you say it.”

He clenches his jaw. There’s no one else in the corridor, so surely, he can say it with little repercussions, right? Levi looks at you, then shifts his gaze away.

“You’ve been acting strange,” he says.

“I’ve been acting strange?”

“Yes.”

“That’s interesting.”

“No, it’s just annoying.”

You step a little closer, but Levi doesn’t move. “Am I making you uncomfortable?” you ask softly.

“No.”

“No?”

“You’re not making me uncomfortable.”

“Then what am I making you?”

His eyes meet yours, and for once, he doesn’t seem to have an insult resting on the tip of his tongue, ready to strike. The silence stretches for a moment longer than necessary.

“Annoyed,” he says finally, crossing his arms.

“Ooh, that’s the answer you’re going with?”

“It’s the answer you’re getting.”

“Levi.”

His name again. You use it gently, and the effect it has on him is visible in the slight flare of his nostrils and his fingers flexing once against his sleeve.

“You can tell me to stop,” you say.

“I know.”

“And?”

“And I won’t.” Levi looks irritated by his own honesty, but he doesn’t retract. His gaze drops to your mouth, snaps back to your eyes, drops again before he can stop it, and this time both of you know. Both of you feel it. Both of you stop denying it. “I can’t think straight around you,” he says very quietly. The words seem to surprise him as much as they surprise you.

Your smile melds into a softer one. “Do you want me to back off?”

“No.”

You take another step closer. “Do you want me to keep teasing you?”

Levi looks genuinely pained when he says, “You’re enjoying this too much.”

You shrug. “A little.”

“Brat.”

You raise your hand slowly, giving him enough time to move away if he so wishes, and you touch the edge of his cravat, feeling the fold beneath your fingers. He tracks the movement with his eyes as if your hand is a blade.

“Do you want to kiss me, Levi?” you ask.

Levi’s heart drops straight through the floor. There are many things he can do under pressure. He can make impossible decisions with blood on his hands. He can move faster than fear. He can face death with a blank expression. But this—a direct question, so clear in its intent, asked in your soft voice while you stand close enough for him to count your eyelashes—destroys him completely.

But he’s tired of losing to himself.

“Yes,” he says.

“Then what’s stopping you?” you whisper.

He waits a second longer, just enough to make sure you don’t step back or retreat fully, just enough to give you the chance to change your mind. You don’t, so Levi kisses you.

At first, he’s too careful, his mouth pressed against yours with restraint. It feels like he’s holding back an army, one hand hovering near your waist before he places it there. You feel the tension coiled in him, the uncertainty buried inside him. Levi doesn’t kiss you with any sort of confidence. He’s scared. You can tell. So you help him. You step into him, sliding one hand to his shoulder and the other to the side of his face, and kiss him back hard enough that his breath leaves him in a startled exhale.

Then he changes. Some guarded place inside him finally lets down its walls as his hand grips your waist and his mouth moves against yours with deeper intention, having thought about this moment for longer than he’ll ever admit. Every insult and cup of tea has been leading him here, to this corridor, to this moment, to the relief of wanting you and discovering that you want him too.

And goddamit, do you want him.

When you part, you stay close, your noses brushing, his hand still at your waist, having forgotten to let go—and when he remembers, he still doesn’t pull away. He notices your smile first.

“What?” he asks.

“You’re totally blushing.”

“What? No I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Stop it.”

“Levi Ackerman is blushing from one kiss?”

“You and your fucking ego.”

You laugh, and he can’t help the small smile that creeps onto his lips. Then he’s pulled back to exactly how you even got to this point, and his almost-smile curdles into a scowl. 

“Don’t flirt with me in front of Hange again,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because they’ll never shut up about it.”

You tilt your head. “And?”

Levi looks down the corridor once, then turns back to you. “And because I’ll probably embarrass myself,” he almost mumbles.

“You didn’t embarrass yourself,” you say. He looks slightly skeptical. “Levi. I asked you if you wanted to kiss me and you said yes. That was actually very impressive.”

“Tch.”

“For you, I mean.”

He narrows his eyes. You just laugh and kiss his cheek once before walking away with glee in your steps, leaving behind a very miserable, blushing Levi.

.

The days after your kiss are strange, for lack of a better word. You and him don’t announce anything to anyone else, which Levi appreciates, because if Hange finds out, he’ll never know peace again. But privacy doesn’t mean mercy—you’re too evil for that. You’re gentle with him still, but you’re also you, and you’ve realized very quickly that Levi’s composure is a door with a faulty hinge.

You touch his hand in meetings. You call him Levi and sometimes Vi in passing and watch him stop as his face flushes red. You smile at him over your drinks and soup and bread in the mess hall. You tell him, after one long afternoon of reports, “You know, you’re almost sweet when you’re pretending not to be.”

He looks up from his paperwork and accidentally leaves a line of ink across the page. You stifle a laugh. He’s not going to be happy when he looks back down. 

“I’m not sweet,” he says.

“Almost sweet.”

“Still wrong.”

“You brought me tea yesterday unprompted.”

“I always do. And you looked dead.”

“Aw, you noticed?”

“Hard to miss.”

“Because I looked pretty?”

“Because you looked dead.”

“Pretty dead?”

He stares at you. You stare back. His mouth twitches first.

Another thing that fits into your long, exhausting days are the stolen kisses. A brief one in the narrow hall outside the records room. A longer, messier one in his office after you bring him corrected notes. One in the shadowed stairwell that ends with him muttering, “You’re going to get us caught,” even though he’s the one who pulls you back by your wrist when you start to leave.

Every kiss teaches you something. Levi likes to pretend he isn’t affected by you, but he’s always betrayed by his hands. They start almost formal, then grow bolder when you respond, fingers spreading along your waist, your back, the side of your neck. He doesn’t make much sound unless you surprise him, and once you realize that, you become silently determined to surprise him every chance you can get.

He learns too. He learns that you like when he says your name softly, in the low, rough voice he uses when he’s too flustered to hide behind composure. He learns that you laugh into kisses when he deepens it out of nowhere. He learns that if he cups your jaw and tilts your face toward his, your breath catches so beautifully that it makes his heart flip.

One night, after a late strategy review, after Erwin dismisses the squad leaders and Hange leaves with an extremely pointed and suggestive look, Levi mutters, “Walk into a Titan’s mouth,” under his breath as soon as the door shuts and returns to his office. You join him because Levi still has your patrol notes. It’s just an excuse—both of you know it.

Rain taps gently against the windows. Levi stands behind his desk with your papers in one hand while he scans the revised schedule. Meanwhile, you lean against the edge of a cabinet and try not to watch his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

“You changed the rotation,” he says.

“Mhm.”

“It’s better.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Was that praise I just heard?”

“Observation.”

“A positive one.”

“You’re making it weird.” 

He looks up, but there’s a different look to his eyes, something worn down by days of wanting you and stopping and wanting you again. You feel your body answer, a warm pull in your lower stomach, the ache that’s been building every time he kisses you longer than you expect. Levi sees your expression shift, and he grips his papers tighter. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to start trouble.”

You push away from the cabinet slowly. “Would you like me to stop?”

He hates that question with a passion. Every time you ask it, it matters. You give him enough space to refuse, to breathe, to get himself together, and it makes him want you more than any stupid flirtatious remark ever could.

“No,” he says.

You approach him slowly. Levi sets the papers down, aligning them with the edge of the desk, as he always does. When you reach him, you don’t smash your lips against his—even though you desperately want to. Instead, you touch his sleeve first, then his wrist, then the back of his hand where his fingers rest against the desk.

“Stop thinking so hard,” you say.

“It’s what I’m used to.”

“I know.”

His gaze drops to your mouth. “You make it worse.”

“Good worse or bad worse?”

“Depends on what you do next.”

You kiss him, and there’s nothing quick about it this time. Levi’s hand rises to cup your face almost instantly, gripping your jaw firmly. The little sound he makes when you press yourself up against him is so involuntary, it makes your pulse jump and heat spread through your limbs. You back him into the desk by accident or maybe not, and he reaches up to grab your waist with his other hand. The desk creaks behind him.

Levi breaks away first, breathing unevenly, forehead nearly touching yours. “Wait,” he says.

You freeze immediately. “Sorry.”

“No, not—” He exhales sharply, frustrated with himself, then looks away. “Not stop. Just wait.”

You nod, sliding your hands down to rest against his chest. “We can wait.”

“That’s—no, that’s not what I—I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

There’s no insult waiting on his tongue this time. Levi looks down at your hands against his shirt, at the simple intimacy of being touched without being grabbed or wanted without being cornered. He swallows. You watch the anxiety move through him, which might not be visible to anyone else, but it’s obvious to you now.

“I’m not…” He stops, then sighs. “I’m not inexperienced, but I’ve only done this once before. A… a long time ago. It wasn’t—” His mouth twists. “It was fine. But it wasn’t this.” Levi looks angry with himself for even saying it. “And now you’re looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“I—I don’t know. Like I’m—like you could break me.”

“I don’t think that. But you are nervous, aren’t you?” His silence answers for him. You lift one hand to his face, touching him with enough care that he nearly closes his eyes. “That’s okay.”

His laugh is barely a breath. “Doesn’t feel okay.”

“It is. I promise you.”

“I don’t want to be bad at this.”

You smile and brush your thumb along his cheek. “Levi, you’re not being graded.”

“That sounds like something you say before giving a bad grade.”

You laugh softly. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“I want you,” you say, and your directness makes him freeze. “I don’t want a perfect version of you who knows exactly what to say or do. I want you. Nervous you, awkward you. A you who insults me because you don’t know how to flirt—”

“I know how to flirt,” he frowns. “I told you that you looked better than you did yesterday.”

“That is the worst excuse for flirting I’ve ever heard, baby,” you whisper. His ears turn red, and you grin.

“Shut up,” he mutters.

You kiss him again. His hand comes to rest on your waist, your fingers slide beneath his jacket, and his breath hitches when you move closer. Levi’s anxiety doesn’t just disappear, but his nerves settle under your touch. With your comfort, he’s able to move through them instead of having them stop him. 

When you begin taking off his jacket, you pause, waiting. He nods once, so you continue, and the jacket falls from his shoulders. Levi catches it before it can hit the floor, and in a motion that stuns you, he turns, folds it once over the back of the chair, smooths the fabric out, then turns back to look at you.

You stare at him. He stares back. “What?” he says.

“Are you seriously folding your clothes right now?”

“I’m not leaving them on the floor like an animal.”

“Levi.”

“What?”

“We’re having a moment.”

“And I can have a moment and have basic standards too.”

You look at him for a second, then you start laughing, almost too loudly. It spills out of you before you can stop it. You don’t know what you expected, but you honestly shouldn’t be surprised that Levi Ackerman can be flushed, breathless, visibly aroused, and still be a clean freak.

“If you laugh at me right now, I’m leaving,” he mumbles.

“No, you’re not.”

“No… I’m not,” he says, irritated that he’s proven your point. 

You catch his face in both hands and kiss him before he can recover, and that completely breaks his restraint. He grips your waist as he turns you and presses you back against the desk, enough to make you gasp and make his breath shudder in response. You feel him tremble once, or maybe it’s just you, or maybe it’s both of you. When you slide your fingers into his hair, ruining his neat parting, he makes a low, strained sound against your mouth.

“You’re sure?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“You tell me if—”

“Yes.”

He searches your face for any hesitation. “Don’t just say it because—”

“Levi,” you whisper, pressing your forehead to his. “I promise. I’ll tell you. You tell me too.”

He swallows, then he nods. He folds his cravat next, because that’s also non-negotiable, and you bite your lip so hard to keep yourself from laughing that he points at you and says, “Don’t.” You help him with your own clothes and he tries not to stare too obviously until you step closer and guide his hands to you.

“You can touch me,” you say.

He flexes his fingers. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“I’m not trying to be an idiot.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“But I trust you.”

Levi pulls you into the adjoining room—his quarters, a space you’ve only seen in glimpses before. He leads you there with your hand in his, fingers laced tight. The moment the door clicks shut behind you, you both stare at each other. You feel your heartbeat in your throat as you both begin shedding the rest of what you’re wearing.

Levi pauses, his shirt half-unbuttoned, eyes flicking over you with that same mix of hunger and hesitation that’s been building for weeks. “Can I… undress you?” He sounds like he’s asking for permission to breathe.

You nod. “Yes.”

He exhales, the sound shaky, and steps closer. His hands rise to your shoulders first, sliding your shirt off. He follows the path of the fabric with his mouth, soft kisses pressed to the curve of your shoulder, then the side of your neck. His breath is warm.

Then you feel the faint tremble in his fingers as they roam lower, tracing the line of your ribs, the dip of your waist, mapping you without looking. He tugs at the rest of your clothes, peeling them away until you’re bare before him. His eyes are dark and wide with want. He can’t believe that you’re real, that you’re here, that you want him. The anxiety spikes again, making his hands shake just enough that you notice.

You reach up, covering one of his trembling hands with yours. You whisper against his ear, “It’s okay, Levi. Breathe. I’m right here with you.”

You see his shoulders loosen by a fraction. He presses a longer kiss to your neck, sucking gently at the skin until a bruise blooms. He then pulls back to finish undressing himself. You don’t pay attention to where the rest of his clothes end up, because by the time they’re off, he’s guiding you back onto the bed, the mattress dipping under your weight as he climbs over you.

He doesn’t hesitate when he shifts lower and settles between your thighs. Without warning, he dives in, mouth hot against you as his tongue strokes in a long, slow lick. It sends a jolt straight through your core. You jump, a gasp tearing from your throat. Your hands fly to his hair, fingers threading through his locks and gripping tight. The sensation is overwhelming despite its lightness.

Levi pulls up immediately, concern flashing across his face. “Do you want me to stop?” he asks, then you see the panic overtake him. “I’m sorry, I should have asked first, I just—”

“Don’t stop,” you breathe out quickly, your grip on his hair easing but not releasing. “I was just surprised. It felt good—really good. Please, keep going.”

You see the relief wash over him. Something hungrier takes its place. He nods once, then lowers himself again. His tongue teases your clit in firm strokes, alternating pressure that makes your hips twitch upward. At the same time, one hand slides between your legs, fingers slicking through your folds before one presses inside, curling just right as he adds a second.

The combination is devastating—his mouth sucking and licking with growing confidence, fingers thrusting in a steady rhythm that gathers heat in your belly. Levi’s thoughts race. He wants you to feel good. He wants to make you fall apart—and it shows in the way he devours you. His tongue flicks faster over your sensitive bundle of nerves while his fingers work deeper, scissoring gently to stretch you.

Your moans threaten to spill out too loud, so you grab the corner of the pillow and bite down hard, the fabric muffling the sounds as your back arches. Levi notices, glancing up with a small, breathless laugh. 

“Cute,” he says, the word soft and fond before he doubles his efforts. His tongue presses flat and broad, then flicks rapidly while his fingers pump in time. The wet sounds of it mix with your muffled gasps. Pleasure coils tighter and tighter, your thighs trembling around his head as he pushes you higher.

Your orgasm crashes over you in waves. Your body clenches around his fingers as you ride it out, hips rolling against his mouth. He doesn’t pull away, licking you through every pulse, drinking you in with appreciative sounds until the peak fades and you’re left panting. The pillow is still clutched in your teeth.

Only then does he ease back. He presses gentle kisses to your inner thighs before crawling up your body again. His lips find yours in a deep, lingering kiss. The taste of you is shared between you. He presses against you, hard and aching to feel you, but he’s content to just hold you close. 

He trails kisses from your jaw down to the middle of your throat. You feel the rapid beating of his heart against your chest, matching your own. When he pulls back slightly, his eyes are dark and wide, but you can see the flicker of anxiety within them—the hesitation that he's been dragging with him the moment you stepped into his quarters.

“I want to,” he says. His fingers trace your hipbones. “But I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t—” He stops, clenching his jaw, searching for the right words that won’t make him sound as vulnerable as he feels inside. 

You reach up, cupping his face in your hands, forcing him to meet your gaze. “You won’t hurt me,” you whisper. “We go slow. We stop if anything feels wrong. I trust you, Levi.”

The sound of his name seems to unlock something in him. He exhales shakily, nodding once, and shifts his hips to align with you. His length presses against your entrance. You feel the tremor that runs through his arms as he braces himself above you. He’s trying so hard to be controlled, to be careful—but you can see the strain in his shoulders and his breath hitching.

He pushes in slowly, and the stretch is intense. Your breath catches, back arching slightly as your body adjusts. He’s thicker than you anticipated, filling you almost overwhelmingly. Levi notices instantly and freezes, his eyes snapping to yours with panic.

“Are you—should I stop?” he gasps, already starting to pull out.

“No!” you manage to say, gripping his shoulders tight. You wait a moment, letting yourself relax around him. Then you let out a breathy laugh that’s half wonder and half sensation. “You’re just… you’re big. Really big.”

Levi scoffs, though the sound is strained and his face is flushed. “Stop exaggerating,” he mutters. He’s still holding himself perfectly still, afraid of causing you pain by moving.

“I’m not exaggerating,” you insist, squirming slightly beneath him, which makes him groan low in his throat. “I need a minute to adjust. You’re filling me up so much, Levi.”

The explicit confirmation completely breaks him. His face goes red—truly, deeply red, even coloring the tips of his ears—and he lets out a choked sound of embarrassment. He ducks his head down, burying his face in the crook of your neck, hiding from you. You feel the heat of his blush against your skin and his chest rising with mortified breaths.

You can’t help the small giggle that comes out. You thread your fingers through his hair, holding him close. “Hey,” you whisper. “It’s a good thing. I promise. Just… give me a second.”

He mumbles something unintelligible against your neck. His hands slide down to grip your waist. You feel the slight shaking of them. Even now, while he’s joined with you, he can’t shake his nerves. It’s almost endearing.

Once the initial burn eases into a pleasant ache, you wrap your legs around his hips and pull him deeper. “Okay,” you breathe. “Okay, move. Please.”

Levi lifts his head slowly. His expression is still flushed, eyes glassy with arousal. He searches your face for any sign of discomfort. When he finds none, he begins to move. His first thrusts are almost torturous in their gentleness. He rocks into you with shallow rolls of his hips, testing the rhythm and depth, watching your face carefully for any adverse reactions. 

“You feel,” he starts, then stops, letting out a sharp breath. “You feel too good. I can’t—”

“Then don’t hold back,” you tell him, dragging your nails down his back. “Let go, Levi. I can take it.”

The leash around his neck snaps. His pace quickens, thrusts deepening as he loses himself in the sensation of you wrapped around him. The bed shifts beneath you, the frame groaning as he moves faster and harder. The sound of your skin meeting grows louder in the quiet room. He’s still trying to maintain some control—you see it in the strain of his neck muscles. But it’s slipping, eroding with every clench of your body around him.

You look up at him, watching the first bead of sweat forming on his forehead. His hair has fallen into his eyes. He’s beautiful like this—undone and desperate. 

“Captain,” you whisper.

Levi’s eyes flash. He responds with a single, brutal thrust that drives the air from your lungs and causes you to throw your head back against the pillow. You cry out, hands flying to grip his biceps. Your nails dig in hard enough to leave marks. 

He doesn’t apologize. He leans down, kissing you as he continues to drive into you. His tongue sweeps through your mouth, devouring, and you meet him eagerly. Your fingers tangle in his hair as he increases his pace. The kiss becomes messy, teeth clicking, breaths mingling in gasps. He pistons his hips, each thrust rocking the bed against the wall.

You’re his. That’s the only thought in his mind now, primal, washing away the last of his nerves. You’re here and you’re his and you want this, want him. He can’t focus on the kiss anymore, can’t split his attention between the taste of your mouth and the heat gripping him so perfectly. He breaks away with a low sound, forehead dropping to rest against yours. His eyes squeeze shut. He surrenders completely to the need pounding through him.

His hips become relentless, a rhythm that has you gasping and clutching at him. You feel the tension coiling low in your belly again. The friction of him drags against your walls, building you toward another peak. The sounds coming from you are embarrassingly loud—moans and whines that seem to echo. You instinctively raise a hand to cover your mouth, trying to muffle the noise.

Levi’s hand shoots out, grabbing your wrist before you can hide your sounds. He pins your arm back against the pillow, then does the same with the other. He traps both wrists in one of his hands above your head. His eyes open, burning into yours.

“Don’t,” he growls, voice gravelly. “Don’t cover your mouth. I want to hear you. Need to hear you.” He ruts in particularly hard, angling his hips to hit that spot inside you that makes your vision blur. “Louder,” he demands, practically begging. “Please, let me hear how good I’m making you feel. Let me—fuck—let me hear it.”

His words, the desperation in them, the way he’s holding you open and vulnerable while he pounds into you, has your toes curling and back arching off the bed. You let the sounds come freely, cries of his name breaking from your lips. He groans in response, a visceral sound of satisfaction. His free hand slides between your bodies, thumb finding your clit and rubbing in circling strokes.

“Levi—” you gasp, straining against his grip. “I’m close, I’m so close—”

“Cum for me,” he pants. His own rhythm falters slightly as his own peak barrels down on him. “Cum on my cock, let me feel you—”

The coil snaps. You cry out loudly as the pleasure crashes over you in waves. Your cunt clamps down on him so tightly he curses, a strained, filthy sound. He keeps thrusting through your climax, dragging out the bliss until his own control breaks.

With a final thrust, he buries himself to the hilt, his body locking into place above you. You feel him pulse inside you, feel the heat of his release flooding you as he cums with a ragged groan. He collapses forward, but catches himself on one arm. The other releases your wrists to cradle your face instead. 

He kisses you messily as he empties himself into you, his hips giving small, involuntary jerks with each pulse of his orgasm. You wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him down. He kisses you through the falling peak, his tongue languid against yours now. When he finally pulls back slightly, his eyes are half-lidded and dazed. The anxiety has been completely washed away and replaced by something sated.

“You okay?” he mutters, thumb stroking your cheekbone.

You laugh and press a kiss to his jaw. “Better than okay. You?”

He huffs out a sound that might be a laugh. He hides his face in your neck again. “Yeah,” he breathes against your skin. “Yeah. I’m good. We’re good.”

When he pulls back again, you see the color high on his cheeks again. He slowly withdraws and falls beside you. The room is dark except for the grey light from the window. Levi lies stiffly at first—as if sharing a bed with you is somehow more intimate than the sex. You almost laugh again, but then you see the uncertainty in his expression. 

You touch his bare chest, fingers stroking his skin. He looks at you. “You can relax,” you whisper.

“I am relaxed.”

“You’re all tense like you’re on trial.”

His mouth twitches, so you move closer, resting your head on his shoulder. After a moment, his arm wraps around you, tentative for half a second before it relaxes, drawing you against him.

“There,” you say. “Wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

“Tch. You’re annoying.”

“You like me.”

He’s quiet for long enough that you think he’s either asleep or just ignoring you, but then his arm tightens around you.

“Yeah,” he says.

.

Morning arrives. You don’t know where you are at first. There’s a strange warmth at your back, light pouring through at an angle that you usually don’t see in your room, the faint smell of black tea and clean linen, and an arm resting around your waist. 

Then Levi shifts behind you, and everything comes rushing back to you so fast your only response is a small squeak. You remember the office, his confession, his stupid folded jacket, his mouth and hands, his body fitting against yours.

You turn carefully. Levi is awake, his hair slightly disheveled as his eyes fix on you, less guarded than usual. “Morning,” you whisper.

He stares at you for a few seconds, then, because he’s Levi and doesn’t know what else to say, he says, “You drool.”

You open your mouth in offense. “I do not.”

“You did.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“On my pillow.”

“You’re lying.”

“Badly, apparently, since you’re not convinced.”

You shove his shoulder lightly, but he grabs your wrist without the intent to stop you. He brushes his thumb over your inner wrist once. You look past him and notice his boots aligned near the wall, his pants half-folded on the chair beside it. Then, on the floor near the foot of the bed, you see his shirt. Wrinkled and abandoned and scandalously unfolded. Your eyes widen with joy. He follows your gaze, then freezes.

“Oh,” you say softly, “Captain.”

“No.”

“You left that on the floor.”

“Stop.”

“Like an animal.”

He groans and closes his eyes. You start laughing before you can help it, and he rolls onto his back with a long sigh. He knows it’s way too early in the morning for such nonsense. You know it too. Will you stop? Absolutely not.

“I—I was distracted,” he stammers.

“You? Distracted?”

“Don’t sound so happy about it.”

“I’m incredibly happy about it.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” he mutters.

Levi realizes what he said at the exact same moment you do. He opens his eyes, but he doesn’t turn to look at you yet. He stares at the ceiling, wondering if it’s possible to just disappear off the face of the earth forever. You turn toward him slowly, your grin widening and softening at the same time.

“You love me?” you tease.

His face changes in increments: irritation, realization, horror, resignation. “No.”

“Really? You just said it though.”

“I’m tired.”

“So am I, and I’m talking just fine.”

“Fine. Then I was… vulnerable.”

“That’s even worse for you.”

“Shut up.”

You prop yourself up on one elbow, looking down at him while your heart beats hard. “You love me.”

Levi stares at the ceiling, hoping it’ll fall on him and crush him at this very moment. Then, with a sigh that sounds like it was dragged from the very bottom of his soul, he reaches for you and pulls you down against him, hiding his face near your neck where you can’t see the color in his cheeks.

“You’re making this weird,” he says.

“It is weird.”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

“It definitely does. You insulted me for months because you had a crush.”

“I brought you tea.”

“You called me sloppy.”

“You were sloppy.”

“You also fixed my cloak. What was that about?”

“It was crooked.”

“And you told me my paperwork was tolerable.”

“It was.”

“Marriage proposal,” you whisper.

He groans into your shoulder. You laugh, smiling into his hair. Levi doesn’t tell you to stop, and instead just holds you there, letting the morning continue in all its noise and duty, while the two of you exist in the aftermath of your surrender to each other.

Levi still has no idea what to do with romantic feelings. They’ll remain inconvenient for now. Messy and, quite frankly, a nightmare. But when you trace circles over his shoulder and whisper that he’s the sweetest man you know, when you laugh softly against his mouth after he tells you not to push your luck, when your hand finds his beneath the blanket and he squeezes without thinking, he decides that maybe being terrible at feeling doesn’t mean he can’t learn how to feel.

After all, if you’re the one teaching him, he might just survive it.

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tags: @saccharinefool @bunbun6casp @hoebuns @levkuna @strangeeaglepost @how-interesting-wow @d1leviglazer @y44washere4somereason @ddilfs4life @nickibunny23 @slaytherinthoughts @levishart @gloomyveil @levislolita @nerdskillz @angierb05 @elegantmakercoffee @444anya @miaszt @vmxz6 @daisyy-lev @naxymoon @caliope13 @wh0r3f0rchoso @im-just-a-simp-le-whore @starfallenlevi @altpsyche @tea-rae

divider by: angelciide

Your fingers drummed over the steering wheel, their rhythm steady, unwavering. A reply didn't come from you— well, not immediately. There was something about this moment that simply…needed to be.

The sun lingered low in the sky, nearly kissing the horizon. A tease. Almost bidding goodbye, though not yet. The sound of waves dancing over the shore filled the air, creating a semblance of peace, tranquility.

Your gaze on his, there was no denying how years of weariness had settled over his very being. This man— this hard-headed, smart-mouthed killer— seemed... so tired. The scowl on his lips had softened slightly, the sharpened glare eased into something gentle.

A breath tumbled past your lips, and your hand found his, offering a gentle squeeze. He tensed for a moment, almost twitching as if ready to pull the scarred hand away, but he stayed still.

He always did this. It didn't matter which hand you reached for, his instincts screamed at him to hide, to recoil. But...he always fought against it.

"You've been cooped up for too long," your voice came in a quiet breath, softened by concern and care.

Levi argued, though it sounded pitiful to his own ears. "I go out,"

With a roll of your eyes, you shook your head. "Only for the restoration efforts," you huffed. "You— you need to live, Levi. I..." you faltered slightly, your heart aching. "Stop hiding, please. We finally get to do what we want, and I...I want to do it all with you."

Something in him shifted then. Something subtle. Something almost impossible to see. Something he know only you would be able to notice.

He nodded quietly, his brows twitching. A subtle sign of his internal struggle.

"I know it's not easy," you said, gently moving to brush his hair away from his eyes. It's longer than usual...you couldn't tell whether you found it endearing or concerning. "Living in this 'new normal', not knowing where to go how to fit in, how to cope..."

Something in you ached as he leaned into your lingering touch, almost seeking comfort. Instinctively, your hand moved down to cup his cheek, your thumb caressing the scarred skin. "But you don't have to do it alone."

Silence settled in the air between you, soft, fragile and almost sacred. How strange, no? How the right words could make such a flickering moment suddenly stand frozen in time. He didn't mind this shared taste of eternity with you.

"So you brought me to this shitty beach?" Levi murmured, his voice void of any real annoyance.

With a nod, your lips quirked into a wry smile. "So I brought you to this stupid, shitty beach."

He swallowed thickly, his jaw ticking slightly. Maybe it was his worsening eyesight or simply the way the sunlight captured your features, but you looked so ethereal to him. Unreal. Too...precious. It made him nervous— uncomfortable, even— to think of how uncharacteristically fond he'd grown of you.

It terrified him.

"Sand stinks," he grumbled under his breath.

A huff of amusement escaped your lips. "Sand doesn't stink,"

Levi tried again, his head tilted slightly. Perhaps he'll be able to talk himself out of this. "It's messy and gritty and—"

"And it washes off." You finished with a smile.

Damn it, he couldn’t win. Not like this. What a fool he turned out to be, so quickly disarmed by that stupid smile of yours.

"The water's gonna feel nice, I promise," you say, trying to convince him. "Not too warm, not too cold."

Levi hummed. "Just right?" He'd be lying if he said the thought of getting into the water didn't sound nice.

As your fingers continued to caress his cheek, you snickered softly. "Yeah, just right."

He couldn’t stop himself from grumbling under his breath, that hint of inner struggle came spewing out of his lips with a stubborn glare to catch. It was only a matter of time before he caved, he knew. Of course he would. Because it's you.

And he could never say no to you, not really.

With a defeated huff, he conceded, thunderous eyes softened into something almost tender. "Fine," he grumbled without any real annoyance. "But only for an hour— then we're going home."

Your eyes brightened at his surrender, but there was no loud cheer, no fanfare tumbling past your lips. He always seemed to shy away at that.

So instead, you nodded with feigned nonchalance as you reached for the bag you'd packed for the day. "Yeah," you said calmly, failing to fully bite back a smile. "One hour. Done deal."

Levi rolled his eyes, trying but failing to ignore the warmth that bloomed somewhere deep in his chest. It's so strange, he thought. This feeling of...he didn't know what. But it tickled something in him, made him tense with the unfamiliarity of it. It always seemed to happen when he was around you.

He didn't dwell on that fact too much— scared of what it means.

"Let's go before you make me regret agreeing this." He said at last, scarred hands moving to undue his seatbelt.

He wouldn't say it out loud, but...maybe this—sunlight, water, sand, you— was all he needed.

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