The Trouble with Glasses
Glasses are a practical and highly useful tool that allows wearers to see near or far with absolute clarity.
They can make you look put together. Intelligent. Alert.
They're capable of reflecting the wearer's personality given the array of colors available, shapes including: circular, rectangular, horn-rimmed, semi-rimmed, and rimless, and styles like goggle-shaped. Okay maybe that style is reserved for the more eccentric types.
All this Levi has time to muse about as he lay on his side in a plush, queen-sized bed with his head in hand. Cold grey eyes are trained on the figure hunched over a small desk at the opposite end of the room.
It's nearly midnight, and everyone else in the house is asleep. Levi would have been among those fortunate dreamers had it not been for a certain 'Shitty Glasses,' who insisted on keeping the lights on for "just five more minutes, Taichou" a fucking hour ago.
Presently, Hanji is at their desk scribbling furiously into a leather-bound notebook. No doubt logging the details of today's experiments with those two cretins Hanji endearingly referred to as Sonny and Bean.
Levi loses what little patience he has left. "Shitty Glasses," he calls.
"Oi," comes the automatic response, and with their back still turned to him, Hanji bats the air, "almost done. Promise. Promise."
If possible, Levi's eyelids sink lower than usual. "I'm tired as hell. By the time you're finished note taking it'll be time to get up and I'll have had no sleep at all." Unfortunately he isn't exaggerating.
It's happened many nights before.
Hanji mutters something about living with a 'nagging demon,' to which Levi pulls himself up into a sitting position. "What's that?" he speaks evenly.
A laugh. "Nothing. I'm nearly done."
"You better be because lights are going off in two minutes regardless."
"Well, if you want me in bed that badly I'll make sure I finish in one," Hanji offers coolly, never turning around.
Hanji's choice of words catches Levi off guard, and he feels his cheeks grow hot. Irritated, scowling, he slides back into a laying position and pulls the covers over half his face to hide redden cheeks. "Don't flatter yourself," he says in a slightly muffled voice. "This is my room, don't forget. You moved in me. And honestly, between you prattling on about your titan love affairs, and writing about them up until the wee hours of the morning, I can't remember the last night I had a decent sleep."
Hanji stretches their hands high over their head, and yawns loudly, partially out of exhaustion, and partially to drown out the nagging demon laments.
"All right. This is obviously all I'm getting done for tonight with a certain someone riding my ass."
"R-riding … what? " whether intended or not, he hates Hanji's innuendos tonight. He wouldn't call himself a prude, but then, that wouldn't be completely honest of him.
Still he can't help staring as Shitty Glasses rises from the desk chair. A lean, tall figure in the bright glow of the lit candles on the desk, ponytail messier than usual. He glimpses Hanji's side profile, notes the sun-kissed complexion, the defined but still somewhat soft jaw line, the pointed chin and full lips. And not for the first time, he can't decide whether he's attracted to Hanji, or just finds the other attractive. Whether Hanji is handsome or pretty. He eventually decides Hanji is not quite one of the other, perhaps a mixture of the two. But shortly after this conclusion Hanji bends over the candles, lips pursed, and darkness envelopes the room.
Levi breathes in and the lingering sent of burned candles fills his lungs. Grateful, he lets his eye lids fall closed, listening to the sound of tentative footfalls upon the wooden floor boards, noting that Hanji is being careful not to wake the others. Yet, it's all right to inconvenience Taichou and keep him awake all night, he can't help but muse bitterly.
He feels a light dip in the bed as Hanji sits down, and he moves to make room on the large bed, moving closer to the other side of the bed nearest the wall.
He feels Hanji lying next to him and gasps quietly when a hand lightly snakes across his waist and head nestles in the crook of his neck. The other groans happily against him, and Levi's stomach does a nervous flip because it sounds pleasant in his ear and he feels unsure if it should. He moves a hand up to the arm on his waist and keeps it there.
Compulsively, Levi can't help but wonder whether Hanji had showered that evening after dealing with Sonny and Bean. If his memory serves him correctly, Hanji had. The aroma of his own strawberry-scented shampoo in the tendrils of Hanji's hair, which now tickled his cheek, confirms this as well. Satisfied, he settles into Hanji's embrace and shut his eyes.
"It's too bad glasses can't emit light, ey, Taichou? It'd be nice to be able to continue my work even while in bed."
"That . . . would be terrible." Levi replies honestly, and he secretly hopes such a thing will never exist.
"Haha, guess you're right. You'd" Hanji squeezes his waist for emphasis, "would never get any sleep at all!" Hanji seems to find this horribly funny, and breaks out in a laugh.
A dangerous glare works its way onto Levi's features. "If you insist on sleeping here then do me a favor and actually SLEEP."
"Oh come on," Hanji chuckles, fingers teasingly tracing a line up his stomach before tickling him gently, "lighten up."
"Stop that." He squirms, "I mean it, I'll dropkick you to the floor." But the tickling ceases to stop, and a teasing kiss is planted on his neck because in Hanji's eyes Levi is just too adorable for words right now.
The man instinctively jerks away from the unexpected kiss. He has a sensitive neck and dislikes sneak attacks such as this. But when he pulls his head away Hanji, Hanji's forehead jerks forward smacking him in the back of the head.
T
H
U
D
Is the sound their colliding skulls make.
A pained moan escapes Hanji.
"Shit!" Levi swears, and his pain quickly shifts to anger. "What was that for?"
"It, ah, looks like my google-glasses are caught in your hair," Hanji tells him from behind. "So when you moved your head – "
But that explanation only serves to further frustrate the short-haired man.
" – Goddamnit. Don't you take off your stupid glasses when you go to bed?"
"Heh, usually. . . . Long day. Guess I forgot," says Hanji honestly. "Sit up," they order suddenly," I'll fix this."
Still attached by hair and retched glasses, the two awkwardly move into a sitting position on the bed, and tries to be careful as they tug and fumble clumsily in the darkness.
Levi winces after a particularly hard yank."You're pulling my hair out, idiot," he mutters under his breath.
"Quit whining you have plenty more left . . . and quit struggling."
"You're making it worse Hanji – " he accuses.
YANK.
" – I'm not!"
More yanks.
"Yes, you are," he insists. "Here, let me just – "
Hanji smacks his hand away. "Stop moving."
"INOTMOVING," comes Levi's frustrated whisper all in one breath. "Hanji!"
"Sorry. Sorry! I'll get it out. It's just hard to untangle a knot like this in the dark. I can't see a thing." Hanji's fingers shuffle furiously between the glasses, and Levi's hair. "I'm telling you light-up glasses should be a thing. This would never have happened with light-up glasses."
"This would never have happened if *someone* would sleep at a godly hour and take their glasses off in bed like a normal person!"
Hanji isn't listening. "I think I'll invent a pair – after my Sonny and Bean project is over of course."
The trouble with glasses, thinks Levi as he tries to silently endure Hanji's painful detangling job, at least in this case, is that while they improve one sense, they have a tendency to impair another: hearing.