#slightly??

The sounds of furniture moving, seemingly being thrown across the whole house as loud voices sounded from upstairs. The voices were the scariest part, your hosts were not known for being loud in all your time here, and you could tell by your hair it had been quite some time now down here.

It seemed they had forgotten about their little friend in their basement, no food when you woke up nor for the entire day.

You had resorted to staring out the window to keep yourself entertained, the night growing ever darker as the loud noises continued. You felt like you were doing something wrong by looking out the window, every noise close to the door causing you to flinch— worried you might get caught. Caught doing what though, the same thing you had been doing since you got here, sitting there waiting for something to happen.

You sat there wondering if Levi had finally come to his senses after your escape attempt and decided you didn't deserve the books or now even food for what you had done.

Thud! The door slammed open and into the wall. Your soul all but jumped out of your body as you saw something get thrown down the stairs before it closed as quickly as it had opened.

You leaned closer to try and see what had been thrown down after waiting a few minutes. It was something wrapped in a cloth napkin. You inched closer to it, trying to grab it to see, yet you couldn't reach it. Your ankle connected to the wall so closely you could barely get off the mattress.

The loud noises continued well into the night, you laid with the small blanket you were given wrapped around you tightly covering your face. Maybe if you fell asleep these noises would stop by morning. But morning came, the small rays of sun shown in through the window and there was still loud clattering above you.

You laid there, stomach aching from hunger as you curl up into a little ball on the thin mattress that was definitely just thin enough to hurt your back and shoulders a little more each day that passed.

Thunk. Ca-thunk. Bra-da. Clash.

You bury your face in the pillow for probably half an hour, at one point feeling a breeze of air coming— was probably your blanket having a gap somewhere. You finally lift your head in annoyance of not being able to get this damn noise to muffle.

Turning around you see a tea cup placed on the floor next to your mattress— still steaming— with a paper napkin with a smile drawn on it. The smile eerily long, reaching way up past the eyes that had been scribbled on it. Next to the tea cup a sandwich lazily made, on a plate rather than the usual tray.

Scraaaaape. Sounds from upstairs.

You devoured the sandwich in record time, the hunger from the previous day taking over as you shove half the sandwich in your mouth at once. Racing to get the food in your stomach as fast as possible— yet not take your meal for granted anymore and savor it— not sure of when you'd get another one.

You sit with your back pressed against the cold concrete walls in the corner drinking your tea. Your blanket wrapped tightly around you for comfort as you listen to the loud sounds upstairs. Once you get to the bottom of your tea you place the nice cup aside, curling up into a ball on your mattress.

You can't even think to fight to stay awake, would you even want to with all this noise? You didn't sleep at all last night you should let it take you already. But you weren't even tired twenty minutes ago.

Before you know it you're comfortable on your bed. The noise as stopped and there is rain pitter pattering outside— you can hear it hitting the roof. The roof? No, it shouldn't be hitting there. Your roof is their house.

You open your eyes and adjust to the light in the room— way more than you were used to. Everything looked different, you were laying in an ornate canopy bed with intricate dark purple and black blankets covering the whole thing.

The wooden bed frame stained a dark red, looked to be redwood or something similar stained dark to fit the room.

The gray purple wallpaper covered half up the walls, under it— probably up to your waist— was a dark dusty purple wainscoting.

You shift in the bed to see more of the room, it had a intricate carpet beneath the foot of the bed, and two nightstands of the same wood on either side of the bed. You looked around at the walls, many creepy paintings that you had no idea where they came from. A few however you recognized.

What looked to be a recreation of Satan Devouring His Son, one from Zdzislaw Beksinski— 1984 what looked to be two skeleton-like bodies hugging each other. The Suicide of Dorothy Hale by Frida Kahlo. And The Nightmare was hanging above the bed, looming over you.

It's watching you.

You tried to stand up, get off the bed. Put an end to your sedentary life that had been forced upon you. For your safety.

You feel your ankle tug on something as you try to move.

It's watching you.

You look down, chained to the bed. You should have known. There was no way you were going to wake up free— especially after what you pulled… how long ago was it now? Your hair was gross again and you didn't have a change to ask about bathing because of all the noise.

iiiiiiirrrk. The dark wooden door creaks open, you see Levi standing in the door way. Peering into the room with colder eyes than normal. In fact at first all you can see are his eyes, his piercing metallic eyes.

He takes a second before walking in. "This is your new room. Do you like it?" He asks, staring at you from the doorway after he closes it behind him.

"Uhm, the paintings are a bit spooky." You say, wanting to shrivel under his gaze. Why was it suddenly affecting you again? You were pretty used to his weird gloomy look by now.

"Are they now? I thought they were very fitting." He takes a step closer.

It's watching you.

"I- uhm… sorry. I guess it was just weird waking up to them is all. I'm sure I'll get used to them." You stutter out, unable to look him in the eyes.

"Do you like the room?" He asks again, his voice more insistent this time.

"Yes. Thank you so much Levi." You watch his feet as he takes another step closer to you. For some reason you couldn't shake this awful feeling when looking at it. His eyes didn't look right.

"I worked endlessly on it you know. I've had nothing to eat for a week straight." Was that really how long it had taken him? The banging noises only lasted a day and a half you thought.

"Oh. I'm sorry." You didn't really know what else to say in response. Usually he would just gesture for your arm and you'd give it.

He took another step towards you. Then another. Finally he was right next to your new bed. You felt like you were on a silver dinner platter.

"Do you remember when I was trying to bring you up here?" He asks, you shake your head. "You slapped me. Right across the face. This hand." He takes it from you. The same hand he had kissed when you had ran away. Your whole body tensed.

It is watching you.

"I'm so sorry. I don't remember doing that. I don't know why I did that. I'm sorry Levi."

"You always call me my first name, do you not have any respect for me?" He grips your arm tighter. He never told you anything else to call him though. You never thought about calling him anything different.

He leans in, his nose near your neck. Taking a long deep breath in as you stutter out a response. "No, sir. I'm… I'm sorry.

"You're sorry for what?" He stares up at you. His eyes aren't right.

"Sorry that I don't refer to you with respect."

"But not for slapping me?"

"That too."

"Sorry doesn't fix it." He says, turning and bringing your hand to his face. Promptly taking your pointer finger in his mouth. You feel a searing hot pain emit from your hand, letting out a loud scream as he pulls away. Smiling at you, his teeth stained a dark red, bits of your skin hanging out of his teeth.

He crunches down on your finger and you hear the bone snap between his teeth as he masticates your finger. Still holding your hand up near him as blood starts pouring down into your palm.

"What the fuck!" You scream, tossing yourself around— trying to free yourself from his ironclad grasp.

"You taste so good." He says, still smiling at you as blood pours out of his mouth steadily onto the pristine comforter and your clothes.

This time he doesn't take another finger, instead he sidles his face up right next to your neck. Waiting.

"Get the fuck off me!" You scream. It is watching. You look down and his eyes are wide. You can see the whites around every part of his cornea. His smile seems to reach up to his eyes before he goes in towards your neck. Another searing pain emanates from where he was.

You gasp. All alone in the room. You look around quickly. The opulent same walls, and blankets, and bed frame. You sit up on the bed, looking at the three paintings you can see— all there. You turn to look above the bed for The Nightmare.

Gone.

There was nothing above you.

The door creeeeeeeeeaks open once again.

"You're awake." Levi's voice states as he steps into the room. "This is your new room, do you like it?" He asks.

You blink and suddenly there is a splat on your hand, thee hand. You open your blurry eyes, just water.

"What is wrong? Do you hate it?" He asks, stepping closer.

"Get back! You're going to bite my finger off. Get the fuck away from me!" You scream, taking a pillow from your bed and throw it at him. Or rather the blur that you think is him, you can't see at this point.

"Hey. Watch it." You hear a clink before feeling your bed sink at the very end of it. He's on your fucking bed. This time he's really going to kill you.

You start blindly hitting and kicking, hoping you'd eventually land a blow. Through your hysteria you feel a heavy pressure on both of your wrists. Then the same on your free ankle.

"Please, no." You choke out staring up at him. The same annoyed look he always has in his eyes not widened anymore.

"What is wrong?" He asks, a kinder tone to his voice than normal. "I have never bitten a finger off of you and that won't change now. Just calm down."

"But you… I saw this room already. You came in here staring at me, and then you bit my finger off for slapping you and then you took a bite out of my neck and, those paintings are terrifying!" You ramble out through your tears.

You feel his weight on the bed shift again, this time to right beside you.

He's surveying your neck. He's ready to bite it.

"I already told you I'm not going to bite you." He comments, still holding onto you with such ease it was shocking how tight his grasp was.

"But you did! You did bite me!" You yell, trying your hardest to get out of his hold, thrashing around. He grimaces, staring at the wall.

"I think you need to bathe and calm down. Mikasa will bring you there." He lets go of you and walks out of the room quickly.

Your heart races as you check your finger over and over again, not even a red mark, but he bit you— you felt it.

"Levi's a bit hungry so I'm going to get you to the bathroom and get you knew clothes." Mikasa says as she unlocks you from the bed frame, you didn't even see her enter the room.

She walks you down the hall to the bathroom, as you try to memorize the way to it quickly. She closes the door behind you after telling you that your clothes will be at outside the door once you were done.

You sat with every part of your body submerged in the bath water except for your face as you try to calm yourself down. He hasn't meant to cause pain ever in the past— in fact he tried to make it better whenever you were a little sore from him feeding.

What changed in your head?

The room.

That's the only thing it could be, right? That room is probably meant for the ones hes going to kill soon or something. Or maybe he's found someone else to keep in the basement, your replacement. He no longer needs you for food.

But you don't know that for a fact, you're just being anxious. You've been put in an anxiety inducing environment and you just need to calm down honestly.

You can prove your anxiety wrong by checking the basement.

No way in hell were you going to disobey now. You already only just got away with running away.

Check. Just do it. Two people live here, you can so easily sneak around. Especially if you stay away from the front door.

You crack the door open and collect the clothes. You do appreciate the way they have gotten clothes in your size of their style. You feel… safer in them now.

You smooth your shirt out over your body as you step into the hallway. Slowly walking down the other hallway towards the stairs.

Tiptoeing down the stairs as slow and quiet as possible, finally making it to the basement door. You look around before tugging it open. Unlocked.

You walk down the stairs slower than a slug, trying to not make any noise at all. Finally getting to a place you could see down.

Your heart dropped down to the core of the world for a second.

You saw your nightmare coming true just not to you. Some person was writhing on the thin mattress as Levi was attached to their neck. Their hand a dark red as blood poured into their palm.

"Fuck." You whispered to yourself and the world stopped entirely as Levi whipped around to look up at you.

You let out a blood curdling scream, no doubt tainting his little meal. Tugging yourself up the stairs by the railing and running as fast as you could. You don't even look at the front door as you turn to run back up the stairs to your new room.

You definitely don't notice the crowd of people sat in the living room with Mikasa now all coming out to stare at you as you ran up the stairs as fast as your body could carry you.

You make it back to your new room, slamming the door and sliding down to sit in front of it.

What do you do now? What happens when Levi gets to you?

"You made a scene in front of our guests." His voice states, clearly not on the other side of the door. You look over at where you heard it from, your new bed.

You scream again and as soon as you started a hand was over your mouth. Levi now standing in front of you.

"Calm down. You are disturbing our guests, they should think well of you if you want to stay here in town." He says calmly as he presses your back against the door to keep you enclosed. His other hand holding the back of your head.

Your heart races, guests? You mumble against his hand.

"They helped set up this room for you. The townspeople. Your friend was the one to suggest these paintings for your room." He says quietly, seemingly upset that he didn't think of it first.

You sat there with his hand covering your mouth, watching as he talked. His teeth stained red, making your heart race.

"We're trying to get them accustomed to having someone else living in this house. But they won't like it if you keep making scenes like you have been around them." He warned, but the only thing you could focus on where his stained teeth.

"Why were you in the basement?" He asked taking his hand off your face, your mouth was too dry to respond as his other hand still cradled your head.

"You shouldn't roam the house without one of us yet, you could get lost like an idiot." He says as your mind races.

"What does it taste like?" You whisper out, your self control forgotten, probably dropped on the stairs as you ran up them.

"Blood? It's different depending on the person."

"What does mine taste like?" Your voice was barely audible to you, but he heard you perfectly fine.

"Do you really want to know?" He asks, his voice matching yours. You feel like your body is made of concrete, stuck in place other than falling apart on the edges. You don't even notice the small inconceivable nod you give, but he does.

He gingerly takes your hand in his free one, licking your wrist before sinking his teeth into it just enough to get a few drops. No doubt full after what you had seen.

He looks at you, his hand still holding yours. Your eyes locked on his lips before he presses them against yours so gently you barely even feel them. You push towards him more, a sweet irony taste flooding your mouth.

You can barely pay attention to the taste though as you feel such soft lips against yours. His hand in your hair tightening and the one holding yours snaking around your back. Your arms move without you even thinking as well, wrapping around him and tangling in his hair.

You feel his clean undercut against your palm, barely noticing that his tongue is in your mouth, your heart going almost too fast for you to stay alive at this point. His hand in your hair tightens even more, tugging on your hair just enough for you to whine a little into his mouth.

You feel his teeth bump against your lip and he pulls back immediately.

"You should… go apologize to our guests for your outburst earlier. They would like that." He looks anywhere but you. "How did it taste?" He asks so quietly you thought you imagined it for a second, seeing him glance at you for a second.

"I could get used to drinking it eventually." You whisper back. "Yes, could you escort me to them?"

He nods and opens the door behind you, quickly walking you downstairs to the living room.

Jean stands up from his spot next to Mikasa, "Holy shit, you're still alive. What are you wearing?" He looks down at your outfit, halfway to you at this point before stopping in his tracks.

"Did you already fucking turn-"

"No. And don't use that language like that. Sit down, Mr. Kirstein." Levi says from beside you. Jean listens immediately, mumbling out an apology. "They have something to say to all of you." You look around, some of these faces you recognized from your failed escape a while ago.

"I'm so sorry for making such a scene, for some of you both times. I promise that's not what I'm actually like." You bow your head in shame as they all stare at you. "I like it here, a lot. Levi has given me a chance to do something I wanted for a while and he is the most generous man I've met in a while. I hope I can stay for a while."

"They call you Levi, hmm?" You ponder the blond man's question— no it wasn't a question it was more of a statement than anything— all he had told you was to call him Levi.

"It's all he told me to call him, sir." You speak up, unsure if you were supposed to or not.

"Really, Levi? That's how you introduced yourself?"

"Erwin, I know its hard to imagine but with others I'm not as rude."

You feel a hand come down on your shoulder, you turn to look at it— seeing it wasn't Levi stood on the same side— then you look over and it was the brown haired guy who had turned you in when you ran away.

"You're still alive! I thought for sure you'd be dead. I'm Eren, Mikasa's friend." He says, leaning his body against yours. "I mean… no one survives an actual escape attempt. I guess you're just… special."

"Eren, your hands are dirty get them off." Levi's voice sounds from next to you and a light slap sound before Eren pulls his arm off of you.

"They aren't even that dirty." He pouts and walks over to Mikasa.

You look over to the couch Jean was on and see the blond boy, Armin, who had helped you. He was looking over at you with a smile. You nod and mouth your thanks to him.

"When are they going to be allowed to roam around?" He asks, looking over at Levi.

"They need to be kept safe." Was Levi's only response.

"Thank you all for helping with the new room for me." You say, feeling way too out in the open in this part of the house with everyone staring at you.

You lean over to Levi. "I would like to maybe… go back up now. Could I?" You whisper so quietly you were surprised he heard you.

He doesn't say anything, just takes your hand silently and leads you up to your room. Locking your chain around your ankle.

"This chain is longer so you can walk around the room. Maybe then your legs won't be so weak." He comments as he fluffs your pillow up for you.

"Levi?" You say as he goes to leave the room.

"Need food or something?" He asks, turning back to look at you.

"Thank you for keeping me safe." You say. He nods, quickly closing the door behind him.

"It's cruel to make them think they're only safe in this house you know. When the danger is inside this gaudy house." Erwin says from further down the hallway.

"What are you implying?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. You didn't have to hear how desperate they sounded when they got away from your house. You never have to deal with their feelings."

"He's right. Levi, it's cruel to make them think they're not safe anywhere but your house. They'll grow to resent you." His friend Hange says from beside Erwin.

"They're different, they know its for their own good." Levi says, walking towards the two. All three of their voices hushed.

"Levi, they are going to be all kinds of fucked up for decades after you."

"There is no after me, they are staying here." Erwin and Hange look at each other.

"Fine. But this place is not safe, and you shouldn't make it seem like it is."

"It's late. You should go home and get some rest. Both of you." Levi watches as they leave. He stands outside the room for a while before walking over to one of the ornate mirrors on the wall and moving it to the side.

A small hole in the wall into the room. He sat there, watching all night. Before walking downstairs and preparing their usual breakfast, adding the usual seasonings. And a small vial of blood into the food as well. Good to get them started now, right?