RivaMika Week 2 Day 8: Whatever You Like

Title: a man crowned with laurels
Rating: T
Fandom: Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan
Characters: Levi, Mikasa Ackerman, RivaMika
Summary: Teahouse AU – Vulnerabilities come in all shapes and sizes.
Notes: WOOP MORE TEASHIT. This is a continuation of my previous one-shot, Chrysanthemum Girl. The reference to Coriolanus in this is entirely accidental, as I half-wrote this waaaay before I saw it. What is with me and that play? (Answer: Tom Hiddleston.)

It is one in the morning on a winter night, and Levi's mind is heavy with work and worries, his body weighed down by sleeplessness and hunger. He is walking home from the office when he passes Ajisai Kissaten. He stops, for whatever reason. The door is slightly open, but the shop is silent.

He was back a few times since the ginger tea incident. He didn't talk to her really, just watched her interact with people, watched her move, and she did the same.

On impulse, he pushes the door open.

She is sweeping up, sleeves of her yukata pushed up around her elbows. Music is playing, not traditional music as is usual, but electropop that is more suited to a nightclub.

She spins around, and halts when she sees him. The broom falls from her hands, clattering against the hardwood floor.

"Can I have some tea?" he asks, leaning against the doorframe.

"Sorry, we're closed," she responds automatically, turning away from him.

Levi ignores her and steps further into the shop, but Mikasa stands her ground. "Please," he says.

She studies him, and after a few tense seconds, nods.

He seats himself in his customary spot, watching her as she vanishes behind the counter. "Peppermint!" he yells, after a few seconds' thought.

"You'll get what I make!" she yells back. He sighs, closes his eyes, and slumps against the wall.

God, he's so tired. He's only twenty eight, but he feels like an old man of sixty.

When she reappears with a burnished black teapot and a lacquer tray of cups, he sits erect. Today her yukata is duck-egg blue and sandy tan, with a white climbing vine motif. She is (it goes without saying) gorgeous.

She kneels down opposite him and pours the tea; he catches a whiff of peppermint. His eyes fasten on the mark marring the delicate inside of her wrist.

"Are you joining me?" he questions.

She nods. "I made the tea, I might as well have some." He notices that there is a ghost of a smile on her lips.

When both the cups are full she plunks one down in front of him. He picks it up and takes a long draught; it is scalding, but he revels in the burn. Mikasa sips hers gracefully.

He lowers the cup, and it clunks heavily onto the table. Her eyes track the movement, the precarious slop of the peppermint tea against the rim of the cup, the jut of its base over the edge of the table. She hooks one finger through the handle, and drags it to safety.

"Be careful," she admonishes, releasing the cup. "These things are very expensive."

He waves his hand dismissively. "Even if I was going to break it, which is highly unlikely, I can pay for it."

She rolls her eyes at him, but he doesn't respond, picking the cup up again to take a gulp. His head slumps forward, and his eyelids droop.

"...You look exhausted."

"I am," he agrees.

"Why didn't you get coffee?" she queries, peeking at him over the brim of her cup.

"Too much like work," he answers, sniffing the tea.

Her eyes are sharp; he can almost feel them cutting into the bags beneath his eyes.

"Stop analysing me," he tells her when his cup is half-empty.

She bows her head in apology. "Bad habit."

But she keeps watching him. He can almost see the question forming behind her ink-black eyes.

"Where do you work?" And there it is, the inevitable overstepping of boundaries. He was expecting this since the moment he grabbed her sleeve.

"Department of Defence." He takes another sip of tea as she processes this.

There is a subsection of the Department of Defence located in this city. It is nondescript, characterised by a small plaque over their door, but much more dangerous things go on inside their offices than the accountancy firm next door. Officially they are called the Survey Corps, a remnant of the oldest days when humanity was caged by walls, but their codename, and more common name, is Coriolanus. Levi wonders if any of them actually know what that entire play was about, but he accepts the cognomen as Caius Martius himself did and their logo; a pair of wings, blue and white, crowned with a bloody laurel wreath.

But maybe she's heard the rumours, because her eyes brighten. "No wonder you look so..."

"Pissed?" he offers.

She gives him a brief smile, and picks up her cup. The tea has cooled enough now to be drunk without losing a considerable part of your oesophagus, so he does the same.

"What do you do?" he wonders. She begins to answer, but he cuts her off with a wave of his hand. "No, let me guess... You're working here for your grandparents."

She nods.

"You go to university, but you've taken some time off because you're worried about them."

Her face falters.

"Was I wrong?"

"No..." she mutters. She picks up her cup to avoid answering him, and he notes her white knuckles.

"I've left something out. Tell me."

She's not pleased, he can tell, but when her cup is empty, she answers.

"I study psychology at Sina." His eyes widen. Sina College is the grandest university out of the three in this city, notoriously hard to get into. Their psychology course has limited places, with only around thirty places available, and most of them taken by rich brats.

"And you left?" His voice is incredulous, yet rightly so; no-one in their right mind would give up a place in Sina.

"I..." It's painful for her to speak, he can tell. "I couldn't do it. The work..."

"I thought you were a smart girl," he sighs.

Her head whips up. "Who are you to criticise me?" The hardening of her posture and the whitening tendons of her fists indicate that he has angered her.

"I am exactly the person to criticise you." He matches her gaze. "If I had gotten an opportunity like that when I was your age, I wouldn't be stuck in some military cubicle counting dead bodies, I would be the fucking president. You're not rich, I can tell, but in comparison I was dirt poor." He stands up, but she stays sitting, the anger in her eyes beginning to ice over.

Her head falls forward. "You're right," she admits, in a small voice.

He runs a hand though his hair. "I... I apologize for that."

"No... I needed that. I know that. But... I can't."

"I'll help you." He says it without thinking and almost takes it back, but the way she lifts her eyes to meet his quiets him.

"You will? ... Thank you." Her mouth stays in its hard line, yet there is a glimmer of something in her eyes that reminds him vaguely of hope.

The music ends, and only dregs of tea are left in the cup. His watch is heavy around his wrist; he needs to get home to his austere apartment, as sterile and industrial as a doctor's clinic, so he can get a few scant hours of troubled sleep.

"Go," she tells him, gathering cups on teapot back onto their lacquered tray. "Before I drop a cup on your head."

He shakes his head, and as he passes through the door, he looks back. She is picking up the broom, and as she rises his eyes meet hers. "I'll be back," he says lamely.

"I never doubted it," she replies, and disappears into the back of the shop.

When he walks home, he hums along to the electropop playing in his head, and his breath solidifies into peppermint-scented clouds.