"What do you mean, you're not going to sing?" Mikasa asks, furrowing her brow as she leafs through the binder full of karaoke songs. "Who goes to a karaoke bar and doesn't sing?"
"I do," Levi points out, purposely neglecting to mention that he is enduring a seemingly endless parade of drunk people warbling renditions of popular songs because she is there, sitting next to him, her leg pressing against his under the table.
He thinks he's made his attraction to her perfectly clear over the last few months, but Hanji keeps telling him that a normal woman wouldn't be able to discern his non-overtures, let alone Mikasa, the most oblivious woman in the world. Levi cannot understand why someone as brilliant as her would be unable to see right through his scowling facade and deep into the recesses of his mind, where he is usually thinking about her. He has certainly imagined her naked on more than a few occasions, but he is mostly occupied with thoughts of holding her hand or pressing light kisses to her forehead and the tip of her nose. His most elaborate fantasy involves them taking a road trip to the Grand Canyon so they can watch the sun rise.
She is dangerous, this one. She's turned him into a romantic.
Why else would he go to a karaoke bar? He doesn't really drink, preferring hot tea with lemon to whatever rotgut Mikasa's drinking, which smells like it could strip the paint off a boat. And he certainly doesn't like the kind of music that plays at this bar, especially when it's rendered incomprehensible by drunken idiots. (Not that he knows of any bars that play Debussy and Schubert at a reasonable volume, but he swears he will patronize one the moment it comes into existence.) Why else would he sit through an otherwise infuriating evening and somehow enjoy nearly every moment of it?
She has to know he's there for her. She's too smart (and clever, and pretty…) not to.
"You can't sit here and not sing! Even Erwin is singing!" she says, gesturing toward the stage, where Erwin is mumbling his way through a Spice Girls song, ably abetted by Hanji, Eren, and Armin, who are either singing or drunkenly wailing; Levi cannot tell which.
"If you insist," he mutters.
Mikasa takes a swig of her drink, dripping liquor out of the side of her mouth. "I do insist!"
"Fine," he grunts. "You win." He pulls the binder toward himself and flips through it, then grabs one of the slips of paper that litter the table and scribbles a few words on it.
"Which song did you pick?" Mikasa asks, peering over him. Her breast brushes against his shoulder as she leans over him, trying to see what he wrote.
Levi grabs the paper, crumpling it in one fist before she can look at it. "It's a secret." He smirks, then gets up and hands his paper to the MC. Their friends' song ends and they get down from the stage, walking back to the table with Levi. Erwin's cheeks burn scarlet with embarrassment, and he quickly walks off to the bar to buy himself the strongest drink he can imagine.
"That was horrible," Levi remarks, sitting back down at the table next to Mikasa.
"Says the guy who hasn't sung yet!" Eren snaps, taking a seat across from him.
"Hey, he just put his name in," Mikasa defends him, putting her hand on Levi's shoulder. He tries not to curl into her touch. "Because I browbeat him into doing it."
"Good job!" Eren replies, raising one arm so Mikasa can high five him. She does so, taking her hand from his shoulder. Levi feels the loss acutely.
"Next up we have Levi!" the MC booms. Levi shoots Mikasa an inscrutable smile, then gets up from the table, grabbing a wireless microphone from the MC before taking his place at the center of the stage. As his song begins, Mikasa cocks her head, trying to place where she knows that particular staccato guitar riff.
"Goddamn you half-Japanese girls, you do it to me every time..."