She props her arm up on the table with the spoon in her steady fingers. The stew doesn't even shift in the spoon's bowl and instead steams invitingly between Mikasa and Sasha. Mikasa is intent on the spoon as if contemplating its slightly bland flavor or the glossy brown gravy in which is suspended a chunk of carrot and a sliver of meat. She is not contemplating the stew at all, but rather observing Sasha through her peripheral vision.
It's obvious that Sasha is positively ravenous today. Shadis caught her chewing on the drawstrings of her uniform and made her run five hours again, which seemed to be his favorite punishment to give her. Not that running laps would cure her of that oral fixation Mikasa watched her develop from day one, but all that running is bound to work up a monstrous appetite, fixation or no.
Sasha merely watches Mikasa closely, not daring to glance at the spoon or the steam.
"Chew the inside of your lip instead," Mikasa says.
"Huh?" Sasha blinks and swallows deeply.
"When we're at attention and doing drills, bite the skin on the inside of your lower lip. It might help."
"Oh, maybe…."
Mikasa watches as the smallest area beneath her bottom lip flattens as Sasha tries out her advice. It's only a slight difference, one that serves to make her appear a bit more stern, but who's to say that today's laps didn't strike a chord with her? Mikasa smiles. "So?"
"Could you tell I was chewing?" she asks.
"Not at all."
A smile blooms over Sasha's face for the first time since that morning. "I think that'll tide me over just fine then. But since I don't need to do it now—"
She reaches for Mikasa's wrist and leans forward to accept the spoonful of stew. Face going cold once again, Mikasa pins down the offending hand and instead devours the morsel herself. Sasha's expression was delicious. Perhaps it was wrong to get such pleasure out of her disappointment and broken expectations, but it was not a pleasure Mikasa could see herself going peacefully without ever again.
"But I was good!" Sasha pleads. She squirms under her grip, though she wasn't trying very hard to free herself… just as Mikasa wasn't holding as firmly as she could be. "I did as you said!"
"Hush. You're making a scene."
"Are not! They're bored of our game."
"Shadis isn't."
Sasha's half-hearted struggles cease and she pouts. "Don't mention him. Saying his name summons him like a damn demon."
"Behave," Mikasa commands.
"But Mikasa I'm so hungry…" She drags out the syllable nice and long and clearly delights in the corner of Mikasa's eye twitching. She has very little tolerance of whining, disobedience, and disobedient whining. But only Sasha could see that little tell, that little crack in the wall of control Mikasa is. The tell that shows her feelings about it are more complex than she'd like to admit aloud.
"Then behave," she hisses, her grip on Sasha's wrist gentle, but the tips of the fingers clutching the spoon bone-white.
"Or what? Hm? You'll stop feeding me and bossing me? What a crock threat that'd be." Sasha's eyes glint with amusement and she plays with the drawstring of her shirt as if to put it in her mouth. But after a moment a part of her lip disappears between her teeth instead. Mikasa's grip on her spoon loosens.
"Shadis."
"I've gotten better at running. Bet I could outrun everyone in 104 and I'll get better at anything else he tosses me." The cocky way she says this doesn't quite meet her eyes, but Mikasa believes her. Sasha runs like lightning, leaving little more than an after image burned into retinas.
"Next time there's a sparring session, I'll be your partner."
Sasha's eyes widen. Mikasa imagines the expression is coupled with an almost audible dropping of the other girl's stomach. "What?"
"I've never fought you before. I'd like to."
"B-b-but, I don't—"
"How easily do you bruise?"
"Okay, okay. I'll behave." She straightens up and holds herself with as much poise as she can muster with her arm still trapped under Mikasa's hand. Mikasa studies her face for sincerity. Sasha isn't a bad fighter in the least, merely unfocussed most times and caught up in doing things her own way. Admittedly, that got her out of more scrapes than in, and Mikasa wouldn't leave a fight with her without her own black and blue souvenirs. But because of this her dread rings a little off to Mikasa. Not completely false however. After a long moment, Mikasa loosens her grip on Sasha's wrist, her fingers hesitating on Sasha's skin as she pulls her hand back.
"Where were we?" Sasha asks, now the very picture of posture.
Mikasa nods and dips her spoon back into the cooling stew. Sasha's eyes rest firmly on Mikasa's, no longer distracted by copious amounts of steam. Again, Mikasa props her elbow on the table and presents the reward between them with a steady hand.
"Now, if you behave—"
The bowl is in Sasha's hand, as cleanly and all at once as if it had teleported there of its own will. She presses the lip of the bowl to her mouth and sips the gravy deliberately, without removing her gaze from Mikasa, who watches with tightening mouth and furrowed brow.
"Sasha!"
The corners of Sasha's mouth start to curl at her name and some gravy nearly escapes because of it. She sets the bowl back down and catches it before it can stain her uniform, but still grins at Mikasa with a look of pure satisfaction that makes the emotions churn in Mikasa's stomach. For want of a fork or spoon, Sasha plucks the lingering vegetables and meat out one by one with her fingers and Mikasa doesn't know whether she wants shove the entire bowl down her throat and watch her choke or pull her over the table and take back what should be HER job. Instead she stabs the table with her spoon and leaves it standing there. Sasha merely glances at the spoon and the ruined wood, none of her grin fading.
"Sasha, that is not behaving," Mikasa says as calmly as she can manage.
"Ah, you spilled your stew." She pops a bit of potato into her mouth and dabs at the mess with her napkin.
"Why are you doing this?"
Sasha shrugs absentmindedly. "Why do you treat me the way you do? Why me?"
"You seemed to enjoy it. You kept returning where others would feel I didn't like them." Mikasa averts her eyes and returns the shrug with less conviction. "Answer my question."
"I don't wanna say." Her smile softens. "What's my punishment then?"
"I'm not sure yet."
Relief ripples visibly through Sasha's face and shoulders. "No sparring then? Perhaps you can let me off this once…?"
"No! That's unacceptable. Your disobedience can't go without punishment or you'll be a lost cause and I can't do anything with that." She clutches her scarf as she thinks. She didn't know when there would be another sparring session and she can't very well school Sasha over something that happened days or weeks before. It had to be immediate or led up to with a short period of anxiousness so she can mull over her wrongdoing. Mikasa needed the control. "Tonight, an hour after curfew, behind the barracks. I'll teach you the value of obedience."
"Sounds like a tryst." She looks up through her eyelashes as she says it, pressing a carrot to her lip.
"It's not a tryst. I simply don't want to get in trouble for what I'm going to do to you." Mikasa crosses her arms roughly and hopes that the motion distracts Sasha from the heat in her face. What a betrayal.
"What if I don't go?"
"I'll stop feeding you like this," Mikasa replies. She has no desire to stop, but she had the conviction to do so if need be. Not at all peacefully, but she could. "I'll take your absence as a plea to stop and I'll stop my food abuses and leave you to stuff your face in peace."
"You don't have to do that!"
"Then come and try to win."
"I can't win against you! I'm pretty sure you can bench-press Reiner."
"I've tried; I can't."
"I can't tell if you're joking or not." Sasha face has fallen, the weight of the consequences of her disobedience seeming to crash around her like a toppled building. "I still can't beat you."
"I'll patch you up afterwards, and if you want I can give your wounds a kiss to help them heal if that's a thing you still believe in." Mikasa makes the addition mostly in jest, but she couldn't deny that she would if Sasha asked her to, for the thought of Sasha so vulnerable that she would ask for such a thing in seriousness tugged at her heartstrings in a warm way.
"But what if I don't want to fight but I also want you to keep doing this with me?"
"Think of an alternative." Mikasa stands and adjusts her scarf. "Maybe it'll be more suitable, since I'm not very good at thinking up punishments."
The drawstring slips between Sasha's lips as Mikasa leaves her to mull over her options.