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There is an unspoken rule within the Scouting Legion that if you happen upon Lance Corporal Levi cleaning something, you say nothing, leave immediately and let him clean.
Levi himself isn’t sure exactly when or how the rule was established, but for as long as he can remember, he’s garnered wary looks and respectful silence each time he dons his apron and kerchief. It suits him just fine, of course – the last thing he wants are people under his feet when there’s filth to be scoured – but the general consensus as to why the Law of Levi came to be both baffles and amuses him.
Apparently, he looks scary when he cleans. That is, even scarier than usual.
That he should look particularly intimidating when he’s elbow-deep in laundry, dust-bunnies or horseshit puzzles him. Hell, that he should look scary at all puzzles him, but then again, his reputation most likely precedes him: his history in the crime circuit, that whole “Humanity’s Greatest Soldier” nonsense. And apparently he scowls. Apparently.
But Levi has this hunch that if he went around smiling all the time, it’d freak people out even more, so he refrains. People keep their distance. And it suits him just fine.
Once a week, Levi makes it a point to clean tack, because the new recruits apparently don’t know a polish rag from the ass-end of a Titan and he doesn’t have the energy to keep lecturing them about it. But he’s found that wiping down saddles and bridles – first with soapy water, then with weak oil that makes the leather gleam – is oddly meditative. The silence of the empty stables gives him space to think, the cloying smell of horse, hay, and leather earthy and comforting. He sits before a saddle-stand halfway down the aisle from the open doors, and, in keeping with tacit convention, nobody bothers him.
That is, nobody but those completely oblivious to tacit convention.
“There you are…!”
Her voice is too loud, footsteps too chipper, and while she can grate on him like a wash stone does cloth, he can’t honestly say he dislikes her aberrant behavior. After all, she’s one of the few people who know him well enough to laugh off the Law of Levi. That, or she really is just socially hopeless.
It’s hard to tell which sometimes.
“I saw Eren peek in here and scurry off like hell was chasing him, so I figured it might be you. What are you doooing?” She draws out the last word like a child and stands directly in front of his light source. He sighs pointedly and, when she doesn’t get it, glares up at her. Her face is goofy, indiscriminate shadow against the bright backdrop of the stable’s mouth.
“Composing great literature,” he says dryly. “Move, you’re blocking my light.”
She whistles through her teeth and dutifully sidesteps, once again casting the saddle-stand in cool, afternoon light. “Well, don’t let me interrupt,” she says, but just hangs there, watching him. He ignores her for a little while, but wherever Hanji Zoe goes, so invariably does his attention. She’s leaning against the empty stall door, arms folded and mouth pinned up in a smile that’s so dumb it makes even him feel like an idiot.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing.”
“Time on your hands, Squad Leader?”
“No such thing,” she says happily, which Levi understands as a “yes,” or as much of one as perpetual-motion-machine Hanji can muster. In fact, he’s terribly curious as to why she’s here with him now and not playing with her “kids,” but finding out would require asking. And he’s never that curious.
Besides, as self-satisfying as it is, he likes that she’s looking at him for a change. Even and especially with that stupid face of hers.
“Then get back to work,” Levi says, sweeping the corner of his rag around the lip of the saddle horn. “The war effort doesn’t run itself.”
“I am working,” she insists. “I’m waiting for them to set up the hydraulics for the next experiment. It takes a bit of doing, so I thought I’d come bother you in the meantime.”
“Lucky me,” Levi says dully, but his chest warms from flattery. This saddle’s about done. He scrubs the gleaming seat once more.
“How many do you have left?” Hanji nods at the saddle.
Levi shrugs. “Six or so. Why, you volunteering?”
Hanji grins. “No way.”
“You’re just going to stand there while I slave away over your filthy tack?”
“Something like that.” Her smile tugs wider. “You’re cleaning my stuff?”
“Already did.”
“Really?”
“It was disgusting.”
“You cleaned my stuff!”
“I always do, genius. What, you think it cleans itself?”
“I guess I always imagined fairies came in the middle of the night and did it.” She sits down on his hard work, practically straddling his legs to do so. Her lenses glint through the shadow. “Dozens of little fairies. Each one with your face.”
“You have a disturbing mind, Zoe.” He swats her nose with the cleaning cloth. “Move.”
She doesn’t. “I think it’s charming. An army of tiny little Levis equipped with toothbrushes and teacups of soapy water? Know what I’d call it?”
“I don’t want to know what—”
“The Scouring Legion.”
Levi glares. “Go away.”
She laughs and he’s never understood how he can feel so irritated and warm at the same time. Her knees brush against the straps at his thighs.
“No,” she declines like he’s offering.
“An order, Zoe. Get your ass off my saddle and go torture some Titans.”
She salutes him. “Sir! How rude, sir! I don’t torture them – !”
“Well you torture me,” Levi says, and realizes too late that he means far too many things by that. It’s not exactly the time or place to start thinking about the various ways Hanji Zoe tortures him, so he seizes her chin with his thumb and forefinger and gives it a little shake. “Get. Unless you want me to start polishing you too.”
It falls out of his mouth before he hears it. And before he can so much as sigh at his own damning ineloquence, his words wash over Hanji’s expression like fine perfume, her goofy smile sharpening into something salacious. Levi is torn between wanting to stare and roll his eyes as she snakes a long leg past his thigh and presents her knee-high boot.
“Oh, Lance Corporal,” she says huskily, wiggling her foot in a way he’s sure she means to be suggestive but between the awkward angle and the cumbersome boot comes out looking more like a muscle spasm. “I thought you’d never offer.”
He goes for the eye-roll. But he can’t say he didn’t bring this on himself.
With a flat glare, he seizes her ankle and pushes his stool back a few inches so she’s no longer sitting on top of him. He gingerly holds her heel and appraises the task at hand.
“What in fuck’s name did you step in?” he snarls, lifting her foot to eye-level and glaring at a particularly suspicious clump of gooey black scum.
“I dunno,” Hanji reflects. “Could’ve been all sorts of stuff. Could’ve been – ”
“Rhetorical, Hanji.” Levi grimaces and wipes it away, hastily scrubbing the rest of the sole. “I don’t actually want to know every pile of shit you might have stepped in.”
“Why not? Could be fascinating research. You know, in that rag you’re holding right now, you could have any number of contagions. Viruses. Bacteria. Heck, even the makings of an all-out plague right there in that – ”
Levi drops the rag reflexively and stuffs his hand into the bucket of soapy water, swearing softly. Hanji blinks.
“What’s wrong? Did you hurt yourself?”
Levi grinds his teeth. “No,” he says shortly, wiping his hand on his apron and producing a cleaner, less perilous rag. “Who hurts themselves wiping a boot?”
“Good, because you shouldn’t have open wounds around those kinds of germs. Even the tiniest lacerations can – ”
“Hanji.”
“Hmm?”
“A favor.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up. Please.”
She smiles, nods, and clams up. At least she’s reasonable.
The top of her boot isn’t nearly as suspicious as the sole, for which Levi is inexpressibly grateful. But the leather is unsurprisingly parched, dirt clinging to the creases. What could have been a rich mahogany is now barely a dull umber, and he has to bite back the urge to lecture her about it. If he doesn’t have the energy to argue with terrified rookies, he certainly doesn’t have the energy to combat her pleasant indifference. Too much trouble, she’d say, or, But why? They’re just going to get dirty again! Futile battles. Best just to shut up and make good on his foolish non-threat.
He pushes the damp cloth up the length of Hanji’s calf and notices again just how long and beautiful her legs are. Even through the leather shaft of the boot, he can feel the swell of firm muscle, palms remembering all too keenly the warmth of her skin, how easy it is to hook his fingers behind the soft bend at her knee. He swallows, adjusts his seat, and silently exhales through parted lips. He’ll be damned if she catches him loosening his cravat over something so puerile as boot polishing.
“If you don’t clean them,” he says, more to distract his traitorous mind than to make conversation, “they’ll fall apart.”
“Hmm? Oh, I do clean them!”
Levi lifts his gaze like he might that soiled cleaning rag.
“Lying gets you nowhere, soldier.”
“I’m not lying!” Hanji insists. “I clean them at least once a…uhm…. Hold on, what day is it today?”
Levi rolls his eyes, snorts. “You should clean them every day,” he says. So much for avoiding futile battles.
“Nobody does that.”
“I do that.”
“Nobody does that.”
Levi drops her foot. “You’re done.”
“Noooo! Levi, I was kidding, kidding!”
She’s laughing and waving her foot awkwardly again, and he has to snatch her ankle back before she kicks him.
“Asshole.”
“Touchy.”
“Only with ingrates.”
“I’m plenty grateful.” Her other leg nudges his waist playfully and he catches that one too. Her eyes are dark and disappear too quickly behind the reflection on her lenses. The smile, however, stays.
Levi swallows again, chuckles humorlessly to siphon some of the heat building under his collar. He’s an idiot. “Sure,” he says. He starts in on her other boot. This time he scrubs the sole without looking.
He works diligently, trying and failing to notice anything but curves and the supple rotation of her leg as he gently manipulates the angle. By the time he’s finished, Hanji’s boots are glowing and so, it feels, is his face.
“There,” he says wearily, sitting back from his work, shoulders cooling under a light layer of sweat. “Now be grateful.”
Despite all his lecherous thoughts, he’s actually not expecting the firm mouth against his.
“Mmmwah!” Of course she sees it fit to punctuate her kiss with a sound effect. “Thank you, Scouring Legion.”
“Yeah, yeah.” His lips buzz pleasantly. “Clean your goddamn boots.”
“I do.”
“Regularly.”
“I do!”
“Every day.”
“Every other day.”
“I didn’t stutter, Zoe. Do it every day.”
“How about every week?”
“No.”
“At least once a month?”
“No.”
“Once every two months?”
“What idiot taught you to bargain?”
“I don’t bargain. I zero-sum.”
Levi rolls his eyes again, but he can’t stop from chuckling because nothing truer has ever been said about Hanji Zoe. “Fine,” he says. “Let them fall apart and go fight Titans barefoot. What do I care.”
Hanji grins. “A crippling defeat for the Scouring Legion,” she says.
“Stop saying that.”
“Stop being touchy.”
“As soon as you start cleaning your boots daily.”
“Oooh. Touché.”
“I ought to just report you,” Levi says, running his thumb absently up one dingy strap. “For insubordination and uncleanliness. …Fuck, Hanji, do you at least clean your harness?”
“Definitely! Every time I do my maneuver gear.”
Levi sighs and smoothes a hand over his brow. “Should I even ask?”
“Probably not.”
“If your shit breaks,” he says, “and gets you killed one day, I will find your body and kill you again. Stand up.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
She does, and Levi begins the standard equipment check that only the greenest recruits are ever subjected to in order to make sure their harnesses aren’t buckled ass-backwards before they start shooting grappling hooks into buildings. As soon as she figures out what he’s up to, Hanji starts laughing.
“Levi – ”
“Chest strap is loose, soldier.” He tugs it for emphasis.
“Of course it is. Bet yours is too.” She smiles wickedly. “You going to make me run laps or something, Lance Corporal? Dock my rations?”
He eyes her with a smirk. “For untidy gear and sloppy harnessing? I’m thinking about it.”
“How about for talking back and disrupting your cleaning?”
“Something worse than laps.” Levi crouches before her, tugging on the straps at her thighs, then the ones running the length of her legs. Despite the sorry color, the integrity of the leather doesn’t seem to have suffered too much, so at least he can breathe easier on that front.
Of course, when he does, all his lungs take in is the smell of clean leather hanging in the tangy stable air. The more pleasurable avenues of torture. The overwhelming weight and absurdity of unspoken rules.
He presses his mouth against her leg, just above her knee. Even through the fabric, he imagines he can still feel the warmth of her skin against his lips, the slight chill that races up her leg at the contact. She chuckles.
“Does that mean I pass, sir?”
“Not sure yet,” Levi murmurs, feeling the trance of shadow, close air and her proximity pull him up the line of her leg. “Maybe.”
He hooks his fingers lazily into the straps around her upper thighs, anchoring his hand as he tracks further up, feeling her muscles begin to quiver, her breath hitch and contract as he reaches the junction between her legs. He lets his mouth linger there, hot and open, relishing in her shudder, his name inhaled in a shaky gasp.
“B-bit of an unorthodox inspection, sir,” Hanji manages, cheerful voice wavering in all the right ways.
Levi chuckles, kisses the sensitive area long enough to feel her rapid pulse. “Really?” he says. “You never did this? I always thought inspections were the best part of training.”
Hanji barks with laughter and Levi slowly rises to his feet, nuzzling into the crook of her neck.
“Well you always did get special treatment,” Hanji breathes. “Being worth more than the rest of us put together and all that.”
“You know why that was?” He flips loose the top button of her shirt, presses a kiss against the hollow of her collarbone.
“Because you’re unbelievable?”
“Because I kept my gear so fucking clean.”
Hanji laughs again and her body is warm and solid in the circle of his arms. He sweeps his hand beneath her half jacket, tugs at the harness against her shoulder blades and has every intention to comment on it, to play this game through to the end. But it’s too easy to kiss her, to meet her and resume that other, far more enjoyable game. The one without rules, tacit or otherwise.
They end up stumbling into an empty stall, over hay and clean shavings until Levi has her pressed up against the wall. None of this is particularly appropriate or wise in any way shape or form, and Levi tries to make himself care about this – he really tries – but the slick movement of Hanji’s tongue against his and the low moans pulling from her chest are far more compelling arguments than upholding the supposed dignity of the Scouting Legion or some other moralizing claptrap.
Besides, as far as anyone else is concerned, these stables are still off-limits under the Law of Levi. He’s never been happier about unspoken convention in his life.
He fumbles off the apron and Hanji picks at his forehead, tugging something back and off.
“What the – ?”
“Your kerchief.” It’s barely light enough to see anything but basic outlines, but he can feel the laughter in her voice.
Levi snorts, giddy from the adrenaline zinging through his blood. “That damn thing.”
“It looks cute on you.”
“Oh yeah? Not scary?”
“Scary how cute you look, maybe.”
Levi laughs softly. “Right. So that’s why.”
“Why what?”
“Nothing.” He kisses her neck. “Doesn’t apply to you.”
And he’s thankful it doesn’t, for reasons even greater than an illicit afternoon interlude. Though he won’t deny: it’s definitely a perk.
He’s got her pinned pretty well against the rough wall, her leg hooked over his hip as she grinds into his thigh, the movement merciless against his growing erection. He one-handedly tugs loose her belt and slides his hand past her waistband. Her body seizes and shudders, fingers digging into his shoulders.
“Really,” she gasps, “unorthodox inspection.”
Levi barely has breath to laugh, too taken away by her slick heat, the contraction of her muscles, and the uneven tear in her breath. Her hips twist, squirm into and away from his working fingers, her gasps almost musical in timbre. He wants to kiss her until she’s as dizzy as he is, till she’s dizzier, lost in the heartbeat thundering in his ears, the workings of a grin inching over his mouth. He gently eases his cravat loose an inch or so.
Hanji is true to her word and seeks no compromise, chasing down her own pleasure like the kind of hunter she was trained to be. Drunk on her excitement, his body pressed nearly flush to hers, Levi watches her reach orgasm in the dark, chases her further up the wall until she’s curled around his body for support, aftershocks spasming around his fingers.
For a moment they breathe, lightheaded, Hanji draped over his shoulders with her knees brought up to either side of his waist. Levi’s whole body is primed, braced against the wall and humming with energy, and he forces in some steadying breaths.
“Levi?”
“Yeah?”
“Did I pass?”
He snorts, carefully removing his fingers and helping her find her footing again.
“Your boots were in good shape at least.”
Hanji squawks and seizes him by the collar and kisses him breathless, sagging against the wall. He manages to grab onto the rough wood before they both topple over, and over Hanji’s giggles rings the worst sound imaginable somewhere outside the silent stables.
“…Zoe! Squad Leader Hanji Zoe, you’re needed at the Research Arena immediately! Has anyone seen Squad Leader…?”
Levi’s not sure which of them swears more violently, but he can’t fault Hanji for stamina.
“—on a Titan-riding sonofabitch!” She seizes him by the collar again.
“You kiss me with that mouth?” Levi says dryly and she proves that indeed she does.
“And I was going to ravish you from here to the ends of the Outside World,” Hanji glowers, hastily tucking her shirt and fastening her belt. “Goddamn hydraulics. They said it’d take close to an hour at least!”
“Time flies,” Levi suggests lamely, trying to see past the dismay of having to return to a cleaning job with the hard-on of the century. Somehow polishing tack has lost its allure. He laboriously scoops up his apron from the ground, tying and adjusting strategically.
When Hanji steps out of the stall and into the afternoon light, Levi snorts, his own pain lessened somewhat by her undeniable just-been-fucked appearance. Then again, to the untrained eye she might just look like typical Hanji Zoe, complete with dopey expression, fanatically flushed cheeks and sloppy hair. He buttons her shirt, straightens her collar.
“Have fun,” he says blandly.
“I owe you.”
Levi’s blood is on fire, crucial parts screaming injustice to the heavens, but he tilts his head and shrugs. She grabs him.
“I owe you,” she repeats under her breath, pointedly tightening his cravat and it’s always been impossible to argue with her so he smirks.
“Alright.”
“Look forward to it.”
“Can’t see anything else.”
Hanji grins and kisses him once more before turning on her heel and striding down the stable aisle towards the afternoon light. Levi smiles.
Her boots really do look fantastic.