notes: I recently got into Attack on Titan mostly because of Levi. All because of Levi (it's all his fault, damn it). And I've been spending days, no, weeks and months scrolling through the various shipping tags on both tumblr and fanfiction and I can't find a female to ship him with, so I just decided, "Hell with it, I'll write a Levi/Sasha story for shits and giggles, but not in a romantic sense. Hence, the lack of kissing, and romance-ish things.

Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan or Levi. I wish. Hell, we all wish, don't we?

he takes a breath (within the breeze)

She finds him at his desk one night with his cup of coffee still steaming at the rims and his papers strewn underneath his hands. Swallowing, she tiptoes across the floorboards of his office and gathers the papers into a stack beside his coffee, before adding her peace offering on his desktop beside his coffee. "I'm hungry," she mumbles, gazing longingly at the fresh loaf of bread she pushes closer to his coffee cup, "Remember, Sasha, this is payment, remember how he untangled you from the tree earlier?" All she hears for an answer is a steadfast, easy breath. Even in sleep, Levi shows no softness, no weakness — his brow is furrowed, his eyes are narrowed, his mouth is twisted. Sasha barely manages to swallow down her fear of waking him, let alone the incessant rumbling of her stomach.

Along with all of his duties as the leader of the Special Operations Squad, self-appointed janitor of the Scouting Legion's headquarters, disciplinarian ("More like the spawn of Satan's loins," Connie had told her, with a hand cupped against her ear and another tracing tireless circles on her wrist), Levi also has the (dis)pleasure of having to put up with hers and the rest of her friends' sorry backsides (which Eren frequently tells her that he does not, absolutely does not enjoy even in the slightest, if only because all of the boys are completely clueless when it comes to good hygiene). Sasha almost feels terrible for all of the trouble, except she remembers that it's Levi that cuts her off from all sources of food after each mealtime with only the phrases horse shit and shoveling.

Somehow, she finds herself brushing stray strands of obsidian from his eyes — "He looks tired," she thinks, fingertips tracing the (what her mother calls) worry lines in his forehead, "He's sleeping so soundly, I wonder how he hasn't heard my stomach growling yet." — she's not thinking about the fact that he's Corporal Levi with a personal bubble space with the same surface area as the entirety of the humans' land, not thinking about the fact that (if he catches her) she'll be in a hell of a lot of trouble. There's only Levi, without Corporaltacked to the front of it, and the fact that he's lonely and hurt and suffering just like the rest of them —

He reminds her of a lonely fawn orphaned in the woods: helpless, lonesome, without another's touch to guide and nurture, without protection and softness, astray without any and all hope.

— and she shhhhhhs him, like she does for Connie when he wakes up in the middle of the night with nightmares, or when Mikasa shakes and trembles when the thoughts of Eren and Death cross her mind at the same time. She isn't Sasha Braus in this moment, she doesn't want to be, she pretends she's someone he can hold onto, even if he doesn't know she's there (he'll find out soon enough, the smell of that bread is everything but subdued).

(And it's in these moments, when he's lost and damaged and everything but Humanity's Strongest, that Sasha reminds herself that Levi, just Levi, not Corporal Levi or Corporal, is as human as the rest of them, and nothing else.)

Just as she stills her breath, turning for the door, there's a low, husky, "And where do you think you're going?"

She stiffens on the spot. Straight, hands clenched into fists at her sides — she wouldn't be surprised if her hair's bench-pressing all the way to the moon. She squeaks, "Yes, Corporal?" He doesn't raise an eyebrow, but she's sure that his eyes are turning extra thunderstorm dark, if the death glare settling into his features is any indication. She timidly aims a finger in the direction of the loaf of bread, "I — I came to give you my ration of b — bread, Corporal."

Now he raises an eyebrow. He holds his silence, scans the surface of his desktop. She can see him checking off mental notes in his head: coffee still in cup, check, papers stacked in an orderly and tidy pile — he shoots an almost surprised expression towards her. "You organized my papers."

It's not a question. She nods, "Yes, Corporal."

"And gave me your ration of bread." She nods again, to which he folds his arms across his chest, and rises from his chair, prompting Sasha to squeak and hop backwards toward the door, her tail between her legs. He takes one step — lethallethallethal, her huntress instincts scream — and stops far enough away for her to regain her composure but not to completely relax. "Would you like to explain why, brat?"

"You untangled me from the tree earlier, Corporal," she explains, embarrassed by the shakiness of her voice, but able to do little about it, facing that glare with those eyes. "And, I thought, I'd share my food with you to return the favor. I didn't mean to wake you. I made sure I was quiet when I came in."

"Is that why you were touching me just now?"

She blushes — she would be lying if she hasn't thought about Levi in that way at least once, but that is not what she meant to get across when she was "touching him just now" — her lips twitching as she stammers, "N — No, I was t — trying to get the bread crumbs out of your h — hair because I know you don't like b— being filthy."

His lips twitch, quite possibly from the shrillness of her voice, or the traces of a lie in her golden eyes, and she instinctively shrinks ("Remember, Sasha, that when you come across a stronger prey than you, make yourself as small as possible," her father had said to her, as Sasha held her bow in one hand and twirled her arrow along the ground in the other, "It makes you come across as less of a threat — it makes them see you're submitting to their dominance."), keeping her eyes angled to the floor and her head bowed.

She hears a footstep — she tightens her eyes, "I wasn't trying to—"

"—Shut up, shitty brat." He's in front of her in a second, and she opens her eyes, noting the smell of the still (surprisingly) fresh loaf of bread in his hand, and his icy eyes wearing something other than contempt and loathing for a change. Sasha blinks, and meets his eyes (he's at least an inch shorter than her, she notes, maybe more, because at this point, she's dead on her feet while Levi's still fresh and she knows he can smell her fear, he's certainly not blind, and he's definitely not stupid); both surprised and a bit offended. He scoffs, "I don't want to eat something that had your filthy hands all over it."

He shoves it into her hands then — her stomach immediately rejoices with a chorus of feral snarls and painful growls as if to say, about fucking time — and before she can protest, offer it back to him, even open her mouth to fill her lungs, he's halfway across the office again, his shoulders tensed and fists clenched. Sasha rips a piece of the bread off the loaf, and tosses it into her mouth — her stomach instantly settles, and Levi stops, still facing the windows and not Sasha herself, and just as the girly, gleeful blush spreads across her face, he turns one frosty eye to her.

In a soft, soft, almost inaudible voice, he whispers, "Thank you."

For everything.

And in that moment, he isn't Corporal Levi or the Devil's Spawn or even Levi. He's another man, just like Connie, and at that thought, any traces of fear or apprehension Sasha felt towards him prior to this moment wash away, leaving room for respect and admiration and something reminiscent of happiness. She sees what Petra saw in him: humanity, vulnerability, a certain earnest tenderness that has to be coaxed from him, but is always present in the subtle curves in his face.

She sees a man searching, a man waiting for the day he comes across an enemy he cannot defeat — she sees a man bearing the weight of the sky upon his shoulders.

And so she smiles — brightly, this time — and offers a piece of her bread once more, despite already knowing his answer. "Would you like some, Corporal?"

Without malice, without harshness, but still as gruff and brusque as ever (only, this time, there's something akin to fondness that curls her toes and entices chills to rise), "No. That is your ration."

(It's unspoken: Thanks for the offer.)

—

Suffice to say, when Sasha tosses the covers onto the peaceful shape of Connie Springer lying beside her, blissfully unaware of her activities, the scent of fresh bread and cinnamon tea fills her lungs — she moves like a half-crazed animal toward the peace offering and stuffs the bread into her mouth (she's thankful it's only Connie in the room with her and that the door is firmly closed) almost choking on the piece of paper underneath the bread in her haste to feed herself.

Sasha pulls the note from between her lips, and squints her amber eyes at the elegant, but still undeniably masculine handwriting on the piece of paper:

"If I hear anything, Braus, I will force feed you horse shit with a rusty crowbar. This did not come from me. Are we clear?"

She puts a hand over her mouth — she doesn't need to look at the foreboding Levi scrawled across the bottom to know — and smiles.

She nods to no one in particular.

.

end.

notes you might want to take note of: Due to the fact that I am now a college student, I will not be updating as frequently as before, not just because of lack of inspiration or ideas. I have more on my plate than I'd like to care for, and honestly, I want to write more original fiction. I won't promise anything, but I'll try to finish the stories I have up on both this account and shikiku, but after that, I'm done.

more notes you might want to take note of: This writing style is not mine. It belongs to der kaptain whose tumblr posts (she posts stories on tumblr as well as this site) inspired me to write this. Nightingale in particular. And, it's Levi/Petra. You cannot go wrong with Levi/Petra.

also important: Because this is my first Attack on Titan story, forgive me for the both of them being out of character. I tried to keep them as close as possible so as not to hinder everyone's enjoyment, but I'm sure I slipped up somewhere. Reviews would be wonderful, if you'd like.