#leviweek

Day 2. Childhood

Levi Week 2025

cw: monster, implied drowning? you kinda make out to death // wc: 2.7k

The ship rolled beneath your feet. You shifted your weight unconsciously, adapting to her movement as easily as breathing. Creaking wood, sails snapping- salt in every crease of skin, the wind in your hair like a fist. This was where you belonged.

The sun was just beginning to sink below the horizon, melting into the calm sea. The first touches of a cold night slipped beneath your jacket as strode across the deck, relishing the rare silence. Your crew had long since banished themselves below. No one was willing to follow you into this particular danger. Just as well. You would not ask it of them. This mission was yours alone.

The legends of sirens were well known where you grew up. No child escaped the fearful whispers of them, stories that wound their way into play and nightmares. For you, they had always been a thrill. While others grew out of the tales, you flung yourself headlong after them, signing on to the first ragged crew out of your hometown's port.

Years had honed your skills, but never dimmed your determination to find the creatures- to hear a siren's song in your own ears. You made no secret of it to your crew. You had earned their loyalty, coupled with the provision they would not be obligated to share your folly.

You made your way to the helm, navigated your ship through a stretch of rocky coastline. You had triangulated the sightings, combing through disjointed reports, waterlogged maps, the interviews of drunken, half-mad sea dogs who swore into their mugs that a siren made these waters it's home. And now, as the moon slipped overhead and cast her languid light on the waves, your destiny had arrived.

Ship and captain crawled forward over the glassy sea. It was eerily calm. This made it easy to scan in all directions for a sign of movement, but it also made you exposed. Anything you saw would certainly have seen you first.

You leaned over the railing, startled by your distorted reflection. Your face rippled and dissolved into the foam thrown up by the ship's hull. As you watched the water, bright, ghostly forms shone through the churning wake. You had heard of organisms that gave off their own light, but out here in the quiet darkness you were just as liable to believe them to be spirits. Good or evil spirits, you could not tell.

Mesmerized by the brief flashes of blue and green, you did not notice the dark shadow that surfaced on a rocky peak in front of you, just barely jutting over the surface of the sea. You didn't feel the eyes on you until they had narrowed, appraised, committed you to memory. Weighed your soul.

Belatedly, the hairs on your neck stood up. Icy tendrils spread down your spine, but you fought down the fear. This was the sign. Slowly, barely breathing, you turned in the direction of the sensations. The rising moon threw the figure into stark relief, a silhouette against a deeper darkness.

A human figure- what you could see of it. The outline of a head, straight shoulders, the sloping sides of a lean torso. The rest was hidden beneath the water. You swallowed, steadying your voice.

"I am the captain of this vessel. I mean you no harm!"

Silence stretched across the empty sea. Slowly, the figure cocked its head. Listening, perhaps.

You called your name across the divide, hoping it would answer in kind. "What are you called?"

Silence followed again. Then, so deep that you felt more than heard it, a long, low call. It brought to mind the songs of whales, if they had been fitted to a human throat. The tone thrummed through your body, through the bowels of your ship. Your crew, you knew, were hiding in their hammocks with wax-sealed ears. Despite that you thought they may have felt it too, rocking them like children for the space of a moment.

"Is that your name?"

A slight incline of the head. You needed to see it- longed to be closer. You gripped the rail with both hands and leaned further out over the water. The figure mirrored you, bending forward at the waist. The movement brought it into a shaft of moonlight. You staggered back- not knowing what you expected, but certainly not this.

It was beautiful. The creature held still, as if allowing your unabashed examination. The face of a man, still half in shadow, watched you under a spill of black hair. It was shorn sharply at the brow, slick and impossibly dark, as if laden with ink. But at the back it flowed into the water, spreading like oil. You felt pinned at the glimpse of sharp eyes- gray as the arctic waters of the North, silvery, lit from within with an unearthly light. The eyes alone changed the creature to a person in your mind- him. His muscled torso was littered with healed wounds. Some you could read- the clutch of netting, the scrape of teeth. Others were unknown to you, speaking of battles waged in the deep that you couldn't comprehend- star-pointed scars, circular patterns like a bruising kiss.

Your gaze fell to his waist. The water lapped beneath just beneath his navel, concealing what you truly wanted to see, what you hoped against hope was a tail. You searched for the glitter of scales on his skin, but couldn't make them out from such a distance.

Already, curiosity was becoming longing, the sea calling to you. He was calling to you. Almost beneath your hearing, his name had morphed into something deeper, like a droning that dragged at your core. An ancient tone, gathering you to itself. You weren't aware that your ship had stopped, not even bobbing- still as if it had been frozen.

"Are you..." it felt foolish to ask. But those eyes never left your face, and the words fled unbidden. "Are you a siren?"

Something floated across the water- almost mirth but sharper, many-edged, dangerous. Then another droning response. You wanted to understand, to catch the bone-deep tones and shape them into words.

"I don't understand!"

He bent lower and stretched his hands out to the water. He scooped a handful in his palms and brought it slowly to his lips. You were mesmerized by the sinuous motion. A flash at his side startled you, renewing your hope that hidden scales adorned his body. If you were closer, would he still look like a man?

His gray eyes never left your face as he drank deeply. Water spilled at the corners of his lips, flowed down the column of his throat. When his hands were emptied, he held them out to you. An invitation.

You scrambled to the dinghy lashed at the side of your ship. The rope burned your hands with the speed at which you lowered it to the water. You climbed into it, feverish with excitement, already forgetting the few precautions you had allowed yourself. Stoppers of wax lay abandoned beside the helm, ropes to bind yourself to the wheel left limp and useless on the deck.

The creature made a new sound as your small craft touched the water- pleased and higher-pitched. He held his hands out to you again, stretching forward, more insistent.

So you dipped your cupped hands into the ocean and drank.

It seared your throat. You coughed, most of it coming back up, burning through your sinuses. Your eyes streamed, adding your own droplets of saltwater to the sea. The creature smiled, and you saw the razor-sharp teeth hidden behind its soft lips. They did not deter you. Steeling yourself, you swallowed another mouthful, then another, until your hands were as empty as his.

Yᴏᴜ ᴀsᴋ ɪғ I ᴀᴍ ᴀ sɪʀᴇɴ.

You understood the words. Words! Though they fell against your ear like the crashing of great waves. You gasped, nearly choking yourself again. The water must have been the key- you wished suddenly you had brought a notebook, something to record this historic- your thoughts dried up when the siren spoke again.

I ᴀᴍ Lᴇᴠɪᴀᴛʜᴀɴ.

Leviathan. You tasted his name, afraid to say it back. A mouthful of brine. He watched you silently shape the words, and smiled wider. More teeth. You saw the shining scars on his body again and could envision the mouths that made them. Suddenly you felt very cold.

Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ǫᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴs ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴇʏᴇs. Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀɴsᴡᴇʀs?

The cold spread, from your heart outward, down your limbs. You nodded slowly. Sleepily. Strangely, you could feel the ocean water in your stomach, sloshing like a ship in a storm. It should have made you afraid, you knew. But Leviathan watched you with glacial eyes. Colder still.

"I do," you whispered.

Leviathan began to sing. It was whale-song, yes, but with the ocean seething in your stomach and all around you, it was also the cry of gulls, the stirring of deep, steaming vents, the cracking of ice and the glittering swirl of fish. It wrapped around you, around your boat- moved you like a tide. You began to row toward him.

As you neared, the details that your ship had hidden became sharper. He did have scales- blue-green, glimmering scales that set into his pale skin and flashed when he turned his body under the moon. His limbs and hands were longer than a human's- the proportions warped and just far off enough to seem uncanny. Two fingers were missing from his right hand- more evidence of a harsh life? You could imagine his sharp-nailed fingers trailing along the sea floor, trawling for prey.

Only a few ship-lengths away, his music faltered as he stopped to breathe the night-air. You stopped rowing suddenly, arms burning from the exertion. You trembled in the stillness. "Levi-"

Yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ sᴛɪʟʟ sᴏ ғᴀʀ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴍᴇ.

He interrupted you smoothly, lifting his head. For the first time you could see a thin, silvered scar across his face, stretching above his right eyebrow down to his chin. That eye was brighter than the other, almost white in its glow. His face arrested you, pinned you, drew you nearer all at once.

"I'm- He interrupted, his eyes narrowing with a flash.

Aғʀᴀɪᴅ?

You were. But other feelings outweighed it- pushed away the self-preservation and called up the long nights spent dreaming of this, the research and the searching and the years of wanting. Wanting to see, to know, to prove to yourself if no one else that the legends were real. Now that you were faced with it, the fearful opportunity, you wanted to take it with both hands and gorge yourself on it.

"Hungry."

Leviathan opened his maw and laughed. It sounded like the splintering of a thousand ships, dashed against cliffs, like the cries of sailors taken into the deep. Your calloused palms found the oars again, and you rowed on.

He sung you forward, the music twining along your muscle and bone, filling you from the inside out. The ocean still rested heavy in your gut. It felt like mere seconds before the bow knocked against the rocky outcrop where the siren sat. You stared up at him.

Soft, translucent gills pulsed on his sides, lining his ribs. They flared in time with his song, with the rise and fall of his chest. But did he-?

You looked down at the water, beyond the cleft of his waist. There it was. A wild joy rose up in your throat. A tail- a broad, curling tail that seemed to go on forever beneath the surface. Dark green, mottled into silver, gray, a shimmering array of scales that seemed to refract light and reshape itself with every flick of movement. It was dazzling, even in the darkness. It must have been astounding in the sunlight. Squinting, you could almost make out fins, far far below your vessel. They seemed to flare and spread wide, like fans of coral.

Leviathan saw you watching. He made an expression you couldn't read- pity or pride? But incredibly, he lifted it from the water for you, resting his tail along the side of your boat. It nearly capsized from the weight. Now you could see the full bulk of it, the thickly banded muscles that propelled the monstrous weight through the water. You wanted to see it in motion, see him swim.

He turned his head and you noticed seaweed rippling between the black strands. You reached out a hesitant hand. When he did not pull away, you gently touched your fingertips to his tail. Leviathan shuddered, rippling like a pond that you had skipped a stone across.

I ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ɢɪᴠᴇ ᴛʜɪs ʟɪɢʜᴛʟʏ.

You nodded, unable to tear your eyes or hands from his body. You ran your palm across the thickest part of his tail, then dared to drag it up to where his skin met scales. Just as you made contact, his slick hand closed around your wrist. He moved you aside and let go. His tail slipped from your boat with a splash, disappearing into darkness again.

Dᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴛʜᴀɴ I ᴏғғᴇʀ.

It snapped you out of the trance, and you apologized in a whisper. Your pulse thrummed in your throat, blood pounding in your ears. Reality tried to push through your fog: You are alone. You are vulnerable. But it faded again when he gripped the edge of your boat. The wood began to buckle under his strength.

"Wait! I can't swim!"

Yᴏᴜ ᴡɪʟʟ.

His hold tightened, and the side of your ship began to split. Icy water trickled in at the bottom, and you yanked your feet up, balancing perilously on the other side. The water yawned beneath you.

"Please!"

He let go abruptly. He leaned in, studying your features. You had the strange impression that he was tasting you, smelling your fear. His gills fluttered. Some resolution passed across his eerie face. Then the song returned.

The impact of it from this narrow distance overwhelmed you. Leviathan's song washed over you, dragged you under. Your body swayed helplessly. His face grew to fill your vision as he leaned forward. The lights in his eyes were stars, falling stars, and you thought briefly of strange creatures in the deep, drawing in their prey with beautiful lights held above sharp teeth.

His lips did not move, just stretched as he opened his mouth, the melody issuing from somewhere in his chest or even deeper. Dizzily, you felt you were falling into it- drowning in him as surely as you would in the ocean if he followed through with capsizing you.

You wished to join the song, wanted so badly to sing back that it ached. But you were not built for it. You felt a cold, long-fingered hand at the small of your back. He reached into your boat- drew you out and against his skin. You fell into his lap, soft as seafoam.

Leviathan looked so beautiful, you thought. The song undulated like waves, plaintive notes from instruments you had never heard, carved from coral or stone, sifted through sand. Then it was trailing off, and you were straining up to meet him, wanting to draw more from his lips, now so close to your own.

His breath washed over you, mist. Then his great mouth was closing, sharp teeth hidden again behind his lips, then- then-

The Leviathan was kissing you, consuming you, lifting you in cold arms to better reach your mouth, wet tongue lapping into your mouth. Wet, dominating all else, until it felt like you were drinking him in, like he was pouring the ocean into your empty body, making you full and whole.

You moaned like gargling, reaching for him, hands slipping on his slick skin. You were drowning, you were kissing a siren, you were dying under the weight of all you'd ever wanted.

"Le-Lev-"

He swallowed down your broken speech, broke it like a mast against his teeth. You had said you were hungry. He was ravenous.

"Levi-"

an for those who read this far?: whew I was not sure where this was going- similar to the knight!Levi piece, I feel like this was more of an exploration of the au using a character I love than a heavily-characterized piece like most of my fics. lmk what you think if you want!

But, just in case you missed it... My Levi prompts from Feb! Enjoy (again, probably)!

Day 2: Underground/Childhood Memories

Day 6 || Wings of freedom