Hello Everyone! *waves*
Wow, this is my first contribution to the Shingeki no Kyojin fandom...I hope this turns out good.
Anyway, thanks goes to beautiful Cho (kumozenya) on tumblr! If it wasn't for her this adorable fic wouldn't be here!
Well, I can say with this fic that a lot of fluff will issue. Good luck.
Chapter 1:
There was something relaxing about a quiet apartment, Levi realised as he swirled his freshly-made tea around in the cup gripped in between his hands. No noise, no people pestering and fussing over him and no need to have to speak any more than he'd have to. It was just him and the silence that calmly accompanied him.
There were some people, for some odd reason Levi would never understand in his lifetime, who would prefer to spend their birthdays wrapped up in shitty, techno music and drinking themselves into next century. Levi grumbled into his tea and refrained himself from actually shivering as he tipped back the warm liquid in his cup into his mouth. One clear example was his fucked up not-actually-a-friend-more-like-a-retarded-no-brai ned-excuse-for-a-human-being Hanji, who for some reason found complete joy in trying to drown herself in the poisonous liquid and making a bigger dim-witted moron out of herself than normal.
She was the reason he wondered why he had friends…or frankly how he even got them in the first place.
It was times like these when Levi was able to scrape out some pitiful time for himself that were nice. Between his shitty excuse for a job, Hanji's constant need to invite herself over, and other factors that he couldn't control (one being his neighbour's apparent fetish for shitty music), he couldn't find the time to get some piece and fucking quiet for himself. But when he did, he relished it.
He had sunk himself down into the plush, leather lounge, hunched over his bronze-coloured coffee table, a colour similar to the couch. Against the opposite wall stood a flat-screen, 46inch TV, with surround-sound speakers occupying the edges of the black, glass table it sat upon. The walls were painted a smooth crème colour, which Levi found out were really fucking hard to clean. The other side of the wall held the small kitchenette, and down the small hallway to his right held the bathroom, his room, and the spare room. It was small and cramped as fuck, but it was nice.
Levi sighed to himself and leaned against the cushions of the couch, still holding the cup of tea in between his hands. He let his eyes shut as he absentmindedly traced the rim of his cup with his forefinger, feeling the exhaustion from his extra shifts at the office start to weigh down on him. Christmas time was busy as many of his co-workers took off the last couple of days of December to spend time with their families. Since Levi didn't have any family worth talking to, the soul-draining responsibility of the longer hours was thrust upon him. Levi really hated how close Christmas was to his birthday.
The late December temperatures caused snow to fall down hard outside, covering up the bitumen roads in a white blanket of ice, which was the main reason why Levi was locked up in his house this morning. From outside his window, he could barely see anything other than the white sheets of snow that were billowing down. The streets were ought to be quite a few inches deep, which refrained Levi from actually going anywhere, hence the reason why he was currently sunk down in the chair, sipping tea and actually doing nothing progressive with his sorry excuse for a life at the moment.
An enthusiastic knock on the door pulled Levi out from his unconscious thoughts and he didn't even bother to mumble his growl because he was hoping against his better judgement that it wasn't fucking Hanji. He trudged up to his door and pulled it open without even bothering to look through the peephole because he already knew against his hopes who it was.
His fears were confirmed as he opened his door to Hanji shoving a Christmas-wrapped box out towards him, greeting him with that shit-eating grin of hers. Her scarlet hair was pulled back into a ponytail, with little bits of white snowflakes decorating the top of her head and the lens of her glasses that were hooked underneath a couple of strands of her hair.
"Happy Birthday motherfucker," she grinned, already pushing past Levi into his apartment. His glared followed her as she threw her coat onto the couch, turning her head around to continue giving him that shit-eating grin of hers.
"I don't have any alcohol," he lied, placing the oddly-weighted box down on the table near the door. "Get out."
"Yeah, yeah," Hanji chirped, pushing up the sleeves of her sweater and making her way to the kitchenette where Levi stashed his variety of wines and bourbon whiskey bottles in the top cupboard. Hanji took down the first bottle and grabbed two wine glasses, making her way back to the table.
Levi grumbled a string of insults under his breath, glaring at Hanji as she giggled at his foul mouth. He spared a glance to the crudely-wrapped gift he had placed on the table, raising an eyebrow at the colourful red and green wrapping paper with the words 'Merry Christmas' scribbled along every sheet in cursive, gold writing. "You got the theme wrong, shitty glasses."
Hanji just laughed again, seemingly unaffected as always by his insults. She opened up the wine and poured a generous amount into each of the glasses, taking her own and plonking down into the creaky, wooden seat, which let out an uncomfortable groan under her weight. "It's close enough," she said, taking a huge gulp of the wine. "Besides, it's not even my gift. Erwin got it for you; I don't even know what's in the fucking thing."
"How sweet."
After a slight pause from Hanji, Levi suddenly noticed how freakishly wide her eyes were and how creepily she was eying him. "We should do something today," she said, swirling the red liquid around in her cup, giving him a coy grin.
"Fuck no," Levi growled, turning away from her and shutting the front door, stopping anymore of the cold, winter wind from blowing into his apartment.
Hanji shrugged, seeming to notice that the conversation had ended and took that as an invitation to launch into a yabbering speech about her work in neurobiology instead, which Levi promptly ignored. She went on and on about how she conducted this experiment and found these results, but honestly, Levi didn't give a fuck about what she was doing or whose brain she was messing with, so long as she didn't proceed to go and cut his up to do the same thing.
He grabbed Hanji's coat off from the couch and picked up his half-empty cup of tea off the coffee table where he left it when Hanji had decided to rock up. He hung the coat up neatly on the coat-hanger near his door and continued down to the kitchen so he could at least not be forced to talk to her as she continued onto another topic of discussion that he couldn't be bothered to recognise. He tipped the cold tea out in the sink and flicked on the switch for the kettle, leaning back against the counter as he waited for the water to boil. He could faintly hear Hanji still chatting away in his living room over the kettle, and was clearly able to hear the loud and slurred "Leeeevi…?" that emitted from the room over the hiss of the kettle once it was done. He sighed, pulling the kettle off the heat and turning the corner into the living room.
Hanji was still at the table, and it seemed like she hadn't broken anything yet, which Levi was fucking grateful for. The two glasses of wine that had been previously full were now drained of the red liquid, and Hanji was now re-filling one of them, scrutinizing the Christmas-wrapped box on the opposite side of the table, which Levi swore had moved closer to the edge of the table.
"Levi…" Hanji mumbled, not taking her eyes off the box. "Levi, I think the box moved."
Levi gave her a stoic glare. "Yes, you shit-licker. Boxes move when you touch them, congratufuckinglations."
"No, Levi…it moved on its own…"
Levi narrowed his gaze, muttering a low, but audible "You're drunk, you fucking imbecile," but walking over to the table anyway. True, Hanji never could control her liquor, but she didn't hallucinate.
He leaned over the table next to Hanji, eying the box and she took another sip of the wine in her hand. Something poked underneath the box, and Levi went to grab it, pulling out a yellow, rectangular envelop out from underneath the weight of the box. Hanji cooed at it, and Levi mumbled a few words under his breath, opening the birthday card out of the envelope. It was mainly blank on the front, besides the handmade-looking emblem of a brown shield with a pair of wings painted delicately on the front. One half of them were completely white, whereas the other pair was coloured in a deep, royal blue. Levi took a small millisecond to admire the handiwork, before flipping open the card.
Inside, Erwin's handwriting only spelt out four words: Take care of him. The only other thing on the card was Erwin's name scribbled on the bottom, but other than that the card was empty. Levi raised an eyebrow, before letting out a small noise of disapproval and tossing the card down to Hanji's eagerly-curious hands.
Levi continued to glare at the box, wondering what the hell Erwin meant by the stupid card. He knew he could just tear the wrapping paper off the damn thing and be done with it, but he was kind of worried what would be underneath it all if he did, not that he'd mention it to anyone. Hanji had finished being dazed by the card and continued to stare at the box with him. His idea for tea forgotten, Levi went to peel back a lone strip of the paper on the box that stuck out the side when a low noise came from inside.
Levi's eyes widened. If he put a fucking bomb in there or something…
Hanji's eyes widened with his as she put down her cup of wine to the side, leaning forward to tear the loose strip away. In a punctured hole in the side of the box that was revealed, a blue-green eye peered out, examining the apartment. Levi's eyes widened as that eye settled upon him, which then preceded a string of excited yapping and whining from whatever thing was inside.
Levi and Hanji both stayed silent for a few seconds, listening to whatever was in the box scratch and whine from inside. Hanji gripped her chin in thought, her dazed eyes locking on her nose as her eyebrows scrunched together. Levi just watched her, his steel grey eyes trying to burn a hole into her head as she finally brightened up.
"Oh right! I forgot to mention Erwin's dog had puppies a couple of months ago!"
Levi growled and back handed her, causing her to stumble into the lamp in front of her, which promptly fell over at the slightest nudge…so much for not breaking anything.
Wow...I made Hanji an alcoholic...how the hell had that happened?
I hope everyone enjoyed this, I should have the next chapter up soonish.
Ciao!