SPIT ON A STRANGER
By Steve.A
Summary: Levi finds a hostile, freckly teenage lesbian on the street. Naturally, he takes her home with him. "Jeez. And the award for Surliest New Family goes to..."
Additional Notes: Modern AU, Levi and streetrat!Ymir, awkward patchwork family units, angst and fluff, brooding pubescent girlfriends, polyamory. Mostly an exploration of what I think would be a wonderful platonic relationship between two characters with interesting similarities who never interact much in canon. And because unconventional surrogate families are my favourite, that stuff is all over the place too.
It's a Friday.
It's a Friday evening and Levi is out buying a fucking vat of foot lotion for Hange. Because she ran out, and she needs to apply it nightly or else she stays up all night thinking about the unevenness of her foot care schedule, and Erwin is out of town for the weekend and she has work on Friday night, so will Levi please get some and bring it to her place later. Fine, he had thought. Whatever.
It looks like it's about to rain, too.
Fantastic.
So it's a Friday evening and it's about to rain and Levi is wandering around the local drugstore with Hange's special foot lotion in his hand, and he's looking for his favourite brand of liquid soap and comparing prices when he sees the girl.
She's long and lean and brown, with a strangely familiar look in her dark eyes as she casually slips a pack of chewing gum into the sleeve of her oversized flannel jacket. When she catches Levi watching her from the next aisle, she doesn't look away or bolt or start pretending she was gonna pay for the gum, like Levi expects her to.
She shoots him a wide, challenging smirk.
As she turns away—no doubt to run off and go steal some more useless crap—Levi considers just letting her leave, like a regular person probably would, assuming she'd get caught eventually by someone else. Unfortunately, Levi's never really been a regular person. Levi knows better.
He grabs the brat roughly by the jacket hood, forcing her to stop in her tracks. His bottles of soap are left forgotten in the adjacent aisle.
Ugh, he thinks. On closer inspection, the girl is pretty disgusting. Grungy clothes, jeans slashed up. Thin, greasy hair.
"What the hell?" She turns her head to glare at him, no trace of a smirk left on her lips. "Get your fucking hands off of me, you creep."
He doesn't. Instead he points out, "I've only got one hand on you." His other is still gripping the foot lotion. "Wanna tell me what exactly it is you're doing?"
She rolls her eyes. "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm being manhandled by a very short, very pissy little man."
Levi ignores her. "You're an idiot," he mutters, yanking her around so she's fully facing him. He lets go of her, shakes his head. She rubs her throat sulkily. "You wanna get your ass busted for stealing a fucking pack of Wrigley?"
For a moment the girl appears almost thrown by the unexpected direction he had gone. She seems to consider making a run for it, but instead she smirks again. "What, you the kind of guy who prefers Bubblicious or something?"
He crosses his arms, stares up at her coldly. The foot lotion bumps against the crook of his elbow.
Her smirk widens. "Whatever. There's no one in here 'cept you, me, and that cashier over there. Dude's basically blind and deaf. And stupid."
"Yeah, so there was only one person in this entire place you had to worry about, and you got caught anyways. Well done."
The glare is back. "That doesn't count! I didn't give a damn whether you saw me or not. I mean, what're you gonna do? Rat me out?"
"I could."
"Honestly," she says with a snort, "you didn't seem like the type."
He cocks a brow. "I look like a criminal to you?"
"Yes."
At least she's blunt about it. He sizes her up, makes a decision. "All right, kid. Pass that crap in your sleeves." Seeing her expression, he adds, casually, "If you don't, I really will rat you out and I assure you that'll be a pain for the both of us."
Sighing, she chucks him the chewing gum, trying to not look like she'd been defeated.
Briskly, before the girl can say anything, he walks to the check-out counter at the front. The cashier is engrossed in his magazine, apparently oblivious to their entire confrontation. Levi slaps the gum and the foot lotion onto the counter. "Hey. I'm ready to check out."
The girl skids to a stop behind him, apparently about to bolt out of the store. She stares at Levi, dumbfounded, as he tucks his change back into his pocket and looks at her coolly.
"Here." He tosses her her pack of chewing gum. She catches it with an odd look on her face. "Walk with me," he says, then leaves the store without waiting for a reply.
The air outside is cold and biting. It feels like a storm is about to hit.
The brat follows him.
"So," he says, not looking at her, "how old are you anyways?"
"I don't owe you any answers."
"Owe me?" he repeats. He almost laughs, though there's no humour in his toneless voice. "Yeah, right, kid, like my idea of calling in a favour is to learn every fucking detail of your life. I was just wondering."
Beat of silence. Then: "Fourteen."
"Congratulations, you actually answered a direct question. Did it hurt?"
She ignores him. "My name is Ymir. By the way."
"I didn't ask," he says flatly.
"I don't care," she shoots back.
They walk for a while longer, the familiar shops of the Rose district sliding past them. Levi can feel the kid growing agitated next to him. His fingers are numb with cold and it feels like Hange's dumb bottle of foot lotion is frozen stuck to his hand.
Ymir's patience breaks. "Why the hell did you tell me to follow you?" The omnipresent smirk on her lips turns mocking, more spiteful. "What, are you trying to lead me into a dark alley or some shit? I've got pepper spray."
"Hm. Do I really strike as the type to you?"
"Why not? I already said you look like a criminal." A beat, as she considers. "But yeah, I guess you look more like the silent thug type than perverted."
The words tumble out of Levi's mouth, sounding crueler than he meant them. "You're a street rat."
"Yeah, so?"
Levi doesn't say anything. He turns towards her but doesn't stop walking.
She shoves her hands deeper into her jacket pockets, making it look like she's shrugging. For a delinquent, he notes, the kid carries herself with an unusual sort of confidence—not the slouchy, cocky kind, but the straight-backed, square-shouldered kind. Self-assured and self-righteous.
"How did you know?" she asks, after a time. "Out of curiosity."
"I'm a good guesser." He pauses for a beat. "How long?"
An actual shrug, nonchalant. He sees through it. "Around two years."
"Where were you before that?"
Ymir's jaw tightens. Annoyed by the interrogation. She stays silent.
He lets out a measured sigh. "You could always lie, you know. Kids like you do it all the time."
"I don't like lying about myself." She relaxes. "But that doesn't mean I have to share, either."
"Have it your way, then." Levi's frown deepens. A smartass. Great. He glances up at the sky. And it's gonna rain, too.
It's a Friday evening and it's about to rain, and Levi's got a bottle of foot lotion and a fourteen-year-old secretive brat on his hands.
Again.
"God," mumbles the secretive brat in question. "Where the fuck are we going?" Unsaid, but implied—why am I following you again?
In lieu of a response, Levi comes to a stop. "We're here," he declares.
Ymir perks an eyebrow. "Here where?"
He jerks his head at the apartment building they're standing in front of. "My place. Obviously."
She shoots him a weird look. Takes a step back. "Yeah. Yeah, like hell I'd follow you in there." She makes another face, shakes her head. "That's fucked up, dude. I don't even know your name."
"My name's Levi. And you can call me Levi. Satisfied?"
She glares at him.
He sighs. "What, you've never been offered a place to stay for a night before? I somehow find that hard to believe."
"I'm not a prostitute."
"I never said you were." You might be less greasy if that was what you were.
Her glare doesn't falter. "I'm not some stray cat you can find on the street and just take home, either. Freak."
Levi looks at her evenly.
"Besides—you're old and gross. And male." She almost seems to shudder. Theatrics.
"I'm thirty-two. Just old enough to be your former teen dad." He looks at her ratty clothes again, and decides not to respond to the part about him being gross. "And what are you anyways, gay?"
"I'm straight as a rod." She sneers. "A rod that's shaped like a pretzel."
Levi's mouth twitches. "Ha ha. Witty. Now come the fuck in. The rain's starting to fall."
Just as he finishes his sentence, a roll of thunder crashes overhead. Levi feels raindrops start plopping into his hair, just a few at first but rapidly increasing in number and frequency.
He grimaces. "Ugh." Glaring at the sky and then at her, he offers an unenthusiastic, half-sarcastic wave before he pushes open the door to the building. "I'm going inside," he informs her pointlessly. "I don't really give a shit if you follow or not."
She follows.
-.*.-
Levi's apartment is a simple, two-bedroom affair. He used to be roommates with Hange and Hange used to use the second bedroom as a sort of study. But then he and Hange had some fight and Hange made a ridiculously big deal about moving out but only wound up moving into another apartment one floor above Levi. They made up eventually, of course, but Levi doesn't really mind that Hange never moved back in. She was a mess monster of a roommate, leaving an aneurysm-provoking trail of pizza crusts and scrap paper and dirty socks in her wake.
Ymir doesn't hesitate by the doorway.
"Your place is really fucking clean," she remarks.
"And I'd like it to remain that way." He didn't intend for that to sound so threatening, but he's glad it does. He glares at her sneakers tracking mud and rainwater onto his polished wooden floor until she finally takes the hint and kicks them off. "Thank you," he says, not sincerely.
Ymir just shrugs and proceeds to sprawl herself across his couch. She fidgets, either because of nervousness or just an uncertainty about what she should do next.
Levi folds his arms and looks down at her. "You're not scared anymore that I'm planning to take advantage of your body or some shit?"
"Well," she says reasonably, "I figured that if you were really trying to lure me in all predator-like you'd at least act a little nicer."
He almost smiles at that.
"I also decided you're probably gay. So I shouldn't worry too much."
"Hey."
"What, you're not gay?" She seems amused by the notion. "The foot lotion thing made me pretty certain."
"I am reasonably gay," he admits. "But the stupid foot lotion isn't mine. It's for a friend."
"A gay friend?"
Levi considers that for a moment. "A reasonably gay friend," he decides.
"Ugh. These dumb qualifiers are pissing me off. Ever heard of 'go big or go home'?"
"I am home," he points out. "And you're in my home. On my couch. In a revoltingly filthy state."
Ymir cocks a brow at him. "I'm not quite getting the subtle hint hidden in your words here."
"I'm saying," he says, "get the hell off my couch and—I'm gay, right? Probably not a sexual predator?—and go take a fucking shower. Bathroom's to the left."
She remains there for a second, two seconds, apparently considering just sitting there to piss him off, but finally she stands and says, "I don't have a change of clothes, if you haven't noticed."
"I'll find you some shit," he assures her. The kid's probably around the same height as Hange, although a lot skinnier. "Just leave your clothes on the bathroom counter or something." He makes a mental note to decontaminate them later.
"Fine. Whatever." Unsaid, but implied—thanks, I guess.
As she disappears into the bathroom, Levi allows himself a private smirk.
-.*.-
Ymir is prepared to get the fuck out of there at any moment.
Well, any moment except for the present moment, as she's naked and getting out of the shower. Not that she particularly minds streaking through the streets in the nude—but, well, it's March and raining and she'd probably freeze to death before anything.
It's weird, though. Levi's kind of a prick, but that's probably what lets her almost kind of trust him. More than she normally would anyway.
Not to mention the guy's got a fucking loofah in his bathroom.
She towels off her hair, actually smiling a little bit. She hadn't really bathed in two weeks. Which was the excuse she gave Levi when he started banging on the door after she'd stayed in there for half an hour, but really she was just being a dick.
Her smile slips into a frown as she realizes something. She leans her very bare shoulder against the bathroom door. "Uh, hey?" she calls haltingly.
No reply.
Warily, she cracks the door open a little. Sitting neatly folded directly outside is a pile of cottony clothing, which she quickly grabs before shutting the door again.
Damn, underwear included. Kinda weird. The shirt is loose on her and the sweats a little wide around the waist, but they're soft and warm. She kind of wants to tug her jacket back on in case she needs to make a quick run for it at some point, but she sighs and just decides to do as Levi says for the time being. "It'd be pretty awesome if he actually does my laundry for me," she mumbles aloud, musingly. She snorts.
Still, Ymir makes sure to empty the pockets of her jeans and jacket first, dumping gum, a mostly empty pack of cigarettes, some cash, a pocket knife (Okay, not exactly pepper spray) and a lighter into the spacious pockets of her new sweatpants.
Satisfied, she steps out into the hallway. The feeling of the clean wooden floor against her clean white socks is strange and unfamiliar. Strange that it's so unfamiliar.
In the dining-living room, Levi's setting a large (formerly) frozen pizza on the table. He looks up when she walks in. "Yo."
"S'up," she greets. Look at that. We might as well be old friends already. Ymir folds her arms and leans herself against his unnaturally white walls. "So what's the deal with these girl clothes anyways? Either you're a secret cross dresser or not as gay as you claimed to be."
He just looks at her, unamused. "A shirt and sweatpants are hardly gender-specific clothing items." Before she can respond, he's throwing his oven mitts onto the table and saying, "I'm going to shower now. Don't get any tomato sauce on my furniture."
She scoffs. "Jeez, neurotic much?"
Twenty seconds after Levi retreats into the bathroom—the place is probably the man's sanctuary on earth—Ymir winds up sprawled across his couch, stuffing a slice of pizza in her mouth and flicking through the channels on Levi's clunky outdated TV.
The weather forecast says the rain is going to continue straight through the weekend. Ominous.
On The Simpsons, Homer and Bart are both being dipshits. Reassuring.
Ymir starts weighing the pros and cons of looting the apartment, grabbing one of Levi's very warm-looking coats, and hightailing out of there while her host is butt-naked and possibly singing "Yellow Submarine" in the shower. On the one hand, she's really quite fond of that flannel jacket currently stuck on Levi's bathroom counter. On the other hand, looting the apartment, grabbing one of Levi's very warm-looking coats, and hightailing out of there while her host is butt-naked and possibly singing "Yellow Submarine" in the shower sounds like an excellent plan.
Just as Ymir's getting over her tenuous attachment to her stupid jacket (as well as the snaking fear that Levi is the type of guy who will hunt her down and skin her for robbing him and getting a stain on his couch), she hears the front door unlocking itself.
Damn. She was under the impression that Levi lived alone.
"Hello?" calls a husky voice. A woman's voice.
From her spot on the couch, Ymir raises a lazy hand in greeting. "Yo."
The newcomer is taller than Levi (who isn't?) and has her thick brown hair tied up in a short, messy ponytail. Her necktie is loose and lopsided. She pushes her heavy-looking glasses up to her hairline and squints at Ymir.
"I am fairly certain you're wearing my clothes," she concludes after a while. "Do I know you?"
Ymir shrugs, helplessly. "Hey, I'm the one who should be confused here. He told me he was gay."
"Hmm." The woman circles around to the front of the couch and stares at her, in an intent way that makes Ymir's eye twitch in irritation—for some reason, she gets a distinct feeling like she's an animal about to be dissected.
It doesn't help much when understanding suddenly seems to dawn in the woman's eyes and an easy, knowing smile slides across her face.
"Aha, I see," she crows, pulling her glasses back down and holding out her left hand to Ymir, apparently in a gesture of friendliness. "I'm Hange, a friend of Levi's. I'm sure you know Levi."
With some reluctance, she shakes the older woman's hand. "Ymir. Levi's in the shower right now, singing 'Yellow Submarine'," she says flatly.
"Oh, that's nice. He must be in a good mood, then." Hange seems pleased by this. Her face brightens further when she sees the pizza on the dining table. "Ah, pepperoni!"
Five minutes later, Levi emerges from the bathroom. He's glaring at Hange accusingly. "You said you were working late tonight."
"Oh, that. I lied." Her tone is cheerful. She's settled comfortably on the floor in front of the couch, watching a rerun of Seinfeld with Ymir. "I just wanted you to pick up my foot lotion for me. So, did you get it?"
"Fuck you, Hange," he says, sincerely. "You don't deserve pizza, or smooth feet."
Hange laughs and sticks another pepperoni in her mouth. She flashes a mouth full of chewed-up mush at Levi, who shields his eyes and makes a faint retching noise in the back of his throat.
"God, you're repulsive." Somehow, some of the harshness of his words is lost when he's wearing red-striped shorts and a grey nightcap.
The rest of the evening is surreal. Ymir feels like she's in a dream—a really strange, uneventful dream, in which she just spends six hours playing cards and watching old sitcoms and tasteless reality shows. Levi keeps calling the characters on-screen "moron shitheads" while actually cracking a smile at some of the dirtier jokes, and Hange guffaws at all the parts that don't even have a laugh track and then an hour later casually makes observations on the blatant selection biases driving the pop-science documentary they're watching.
Somehow, they're both really good at poker.
It's around midnight when Ymir comments, offhandedly, "Damn, it's still raining." By this point she's consumed four slices of pizza, two Cokes, and a cup of ginseng tea (Levi refused to provide her with beer).
"Thanks for the update," says Levi.
"So I'm crashing here tonight, right?"
"Thanks for the update," says Levi.
"God," she mutters. "Just confirming. I'm courteous that way."
He sighs and tells her he made the bed in the second bedroom while she was showering, and fifteen minutes later, after Levi's blackmailed her into brushing her teeth and everything, Ymir collapses into bed without even bothering to empty all the crap from her pockets. The smell of cotton and detergent surrounds her in a bubble of warmth.
For some reason that unsettles her a little, she shuts off her mind and just lets herself feel safe for once. She'll go back to being untrusting and self-interested tomorrow, she decides.
It's the start of a new Saturday, and Ymir drifts into a comfortable sleep in Levi's apartment.
-.*.-
"So, what's the story?"
Levi shuts the refrigerator door with his elbow, two cans of beer in his hands. He passes one to Hange and says, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Levi," she intones, "there is a teenage girl I've never seen before in my life sleeping in your apartment right now. What do you think I mean?"
In a practiced motion, they pop open their beers and take a long swig. Levi leans his elbows against the kitchen counter behind him. "What can I say?" he says after a while. "It's my bad habit."
Hange smiles. "The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one," she teases. She pauses. "So you picked her up off the street, then?"
"Actually, it was because of your goddamn foot lotion." He sighs, sips his drink. "Found the kid swiping gum in the drugstore."
"And of course you couldn't just leave her alone, right?"
"Of course." Levi frowns. "Though, to be fair, she made that option seem pretty tempting."
She laughs and swats his arm. "Aw, don't be like that. Ymir seems like a nice enough kid." She pauses to consider that for a moment. "Well, at the very least, she doesn't seem like a bad kid."
Levi levels his gaze at her. Hange has inevitably wound up perched on his countertop. "She seems like the type of kid to loot my apartment and disappear at three A.M. without looking back."
Hange just smirks at that.
"She won't, though," he adds.
She raises her eyebrows at him. "Oh? What makes you so confident?"
"I hid her shoes." Levi pauses. "And my shoes. And your shoes."
Hange shakes with repressed laughter, nearly spilling her drink on Levi's shirt. He glares and grabs her wrist. "God, Levi," she chuckles. "I never knew you had such a devious side."
After Hange licks the hand that was gripping her wrist and Levi yanks his arm back with a shrill "What the fuck," the pair settle into an easy momentary silence. Levi's gaze drifts to his rain-splattered kitchen window, and a strange sense of melancholy washes over him.
He closes his eyes. What the hell is this?
Hange's always-inquisitive voice breaks the quiet: "How do you even know she's homeless, though? I mean, you know the kind of stuff teenagers can say."
"She told me she doesn't like lying about herself."
"And what if she was lying about that?"
"She wasn't."
"Levi," she says, unusually soft. He opens his eyes and turns to find her smiling, a little sadly, at him. "I'm sorry, Levi—I wanna trust what she says. I just don't want to see you get hurt again."
They look at each other. He sighs again, mumbles, "...Idiot."
Hange laughs, breaking the moment. She leans in to rumple his hair. "Aw, Levi's got such a big soft heart. So cute," she sings. "A truly sensitive man lies underneath this rough exterior, huh?"
Levi growls and pushes her away. "Fuck. Moron, you're gonna wake the brat up."
"Ha." Hange leans back, swats at their empty beer cans now sitting beside her on the counter. After a beat, she snorts and elbows him. "You're such a dork, Levi," she says softly, a faint laugh in her voice.
Her fingers find his on the countertop and he doesn't move away, so the two of them quietly watch the raindrops pelt Levi's kitchen window until the night weather finally spirals down into a silence. The sound of their measured breathing fills the room.
"C'mon," Levi finally mumbles. He nudges Hange gently with his elbow. "We have some laundry to take care of."