#titan shifter

You know it's Levi before the steam clears.

You know because this is what you condemned him to.

Months ago, you had held his head in your lap while blood soaked through your knees and watched the life leaving him faster than your hands could stop. There had been no medic coming. No miracle waiting beyond the trees. Only the stolen vial at your belt—the spinal fluid Hange had warned nobody to use under any circumstances—and Levi choking when you forced the liquid past his teeth.

He had been furious when he woke. Alive, but furious.

Afterwards came weeks of examinations and theories nobody could prove. His injuries started to heal too quickly. Steam sometimes rose from wounds before the blood had finished running. Hange thought the spinal fluid had done something strange to his Ackerman blood; Levi called the entire theory bullshit and refused every suggestion that he deliberately injure himself to test it.

You never apologised for giving it to him, and he never thanked you for saving him.

Neither of you needed to.

Until today, he had never transformed.

Levi had looked across the street at what remained of his squad, at you trapped beneath a dead horse with your gear crushed under its weight, and made the decision himself.

Now something enormous rises from the crater where Levi stood, and for one sickening moment you wonder whether saving him that day had only postponed his death.

He is smaller than you expected, though the thought feels absurd when he towers above the buildings. Dark hair falls around a narrow face, and pale hardening covers parts of his jaw like bone growing over muscle. His arms are lean, disproportionately strong, steam spilling from the ridges of his shoulders.

A Titan lunges for him and Levi catches it by the throat.

There's none of the precision you are used to seeing from him.

He tears.

The titan's head comes away in his hands.

Something inside your chest sinks.

Levi has killed thousands of Titans. You know the particular economy of his violence better than anyone. He doesn't waste strength. He doesn't hesitate. Every movement normally has a reason.

This body has too much power and no familiarity with it.

The Titan in front of you stares at the head in its hand as though it doesn't quite understand how it got there.

The fight becomes ugly after that. He's fast because Levi has always been fast, but he crashes through walls he would have avoided as a human and throws himself into attacks with an aggression that sends the remaining Scouts scrambling out of his path. His fingers gouge through flesh. His teeth close around a Titan's shoulder when it catches him from behind. He rips himself free and leaves part of his own cheek hanging open, already steaming as the skin begins to mend.

Someone is shouting for everyone to retreat.

You can't.

The horse across your legs is dead weight, and every attempt to drag yourself free sends pain searing through your hip.

A shadow covers you.

You try to reach for your blades out of habit despite knowing they are somewhere beneath the animal.

Levi has stopped fighting.

His Titan stands in the ruined street, chest heaving, steaming blood running from its mouth.

He's looking directly at you.

The fear in you shifts.

"Levi."

His name leaves you quietly. There's no reason he should hear it over the sound of collapsing buildings and the cries farther down the road, yet his head tilts.

His eyes are grey.

Everything else about him has been torn apart and enlarged and rebuilt, but those eyes still belong to the man who checks the straps of your gear when he thinks you are distracted. The man who complains when you leave tea rings on his desk. The man who wakes when you shift beside him at night and pretends he was already awake.

You stop trying to reach your blades.

Levi comes closer.

Each step makes loose stone jump against the road. He lowers himself beside you with an awkwardness you have never associated with him, one huge hand hovering over your body while his fingers flex uncertainly.

"It's me," you tell him.

His eyes remain on your face.

"I know you're in there."

His hand descends.

For one terrible second you think he's going to crush you by mistake. His fingers slip beneath the dead horse instead, lifting it with so much force that the carcass rolls halfway across the street.

You drag yourself backwards, sucking air through your teeth.

Levi sees the blood on your trousers and something in his face changes.

It's difficult to explain how. The Titan cannot make the same expressions his human body does, yet somehow, you know that look. You've seen its quieter version over stitches he thought should have been avoided, over fevers you tried to hide, over every mission where you returned later than expected.

Worry.

"You did it," you whisper.

His hand curls around you.

The intense heat of his palm seeps through every layer of your uniform. You are raised from the street slowly, with more care than he used for anything else after transforming, until you're level with his face.

The remaining Scouts are gone now. You can hear Titans somewhere nearby, drawn by the destruction, but Levi pays them no attention.

You touch his thumb.

The skin is strange beneath your palm, too hot and faintly damp, yet the gesture comes easily.

"You saved me."

His gaze follows your hand.

You almost laugh because he looks bewildered.

There is something painfully Levi about that too. He's spent years being told what he means to people and never quite knowing what to do with the information.

His fingers tighten enough to steady you as another roar travels between the buildings.

You look towards the sound.

"We should probably go."

Levi brings you closer.

You assume he is shielding you.

His mouth opens.

The sight of his teeth gives you pause. They are broad, wet with blood that's not his, with steam leaking between them. His breath rolls warm across your face.

Still, you don't struggle.

You understand the problem immediately. He needs his hands free. More Titans are coming, and your gear is destroyed. He can't leave you on the ground.

"Fucking hell," you murmur. "You better know what you're doing."

His eyes stay fixed on you.

You know those eyes too well to be frightened of them.

You trust them.

Levi tips you gently into his mouth.

His tongue catches your weight. It's slick and almost scalding beneath you, moving carefully as his fingers withdraw. You steady yourself against one of his lower teeth while his lips close, shutting out the ruined street.

As the wet darkness settles around you, you can hear him breathing.

You smile despite yourself, because the whole situation is horrible and ridiculous and somehow exactly the sort of solution Levi would choose: unpleasant, efficient, impossible to argue with once he's decided.

"All right," you say into the dark. "I'm safe. Go."

His tongue shifts.

Something feels wrong.

It presses beneath your legs and rolls you farther back.

You brace a hand against the roof of his mouth.

"Levi?"

His breathing quickens.

The tongue pushes again.

You slide.

Your stomach turns cold.

"Wait."

The muscles beneath you continue working with a mindless certainty that belongs to the Titan rather than the man.

You scramble forward, your palms slipping over saliva.

"Levi. Stop."

His jaws remain closed.

You feel his whole body moving outside, his attention already turning towards whatever is approaching.

He can't hear you properly. Or he can, and whatever part of him recognises the fear in your voice still doesn't understand what this body is doing.

Your feet reach the back of his tongue.

His throat opens beneath them.

Fear finally tears through the trust you carried into his mouth.

You know Levi.

You know how he will look when he wakes.

How quickly he'll count the survivors.

How he'll search for you before asking about himself.

How he may remember lifting you from the road, remember your hand against his thumb, and eventually ask where you went.

Your hands claw desperately at the slippery flesh around you.

"Levi!"

The first swallow closes around your legs.