The winter after the Survey Corps rebellion came swift and harsh, as if to diffuse whatever lingering fire still smouldered in those who remained.
It should have meant nothing to Levi, in his office where the lit hearth warmed him all over and cast everything under a dull orange sheen. But in the past week he'd fallen into a troubling ritual in that he would cast aside his paperwork for the day and rest his head on the desk, knowing a short nap should be enough to fuel him when he again woke, and yet be unable to do anything but feel the grain getting colder against his cheek as his mind refused to quieten down.
Tonight being the fifth night in a row this had happened, Levi rose and stretched his legs, threw his cloak over his shoulders, and banked the fire on his way out of the room, thinking to himself what a shame it was that the tea Eren had brewed for him to help him sleep would now go to waste.
He hadn't expected to have any sort of company on his walk this late at night - even with the moon shining over the wood and the river so prettily it was much too cold to be properly comfortable - but there Eren was, barely having left Levi's thoughts to appear in the flesh a few paces down the riverbank from him.
"You're still under curfew no matter how important you are to us, you know," he said as he approached.
Eren stopped mid-kick, the line of his body smoothing out as he lowered his leg and looked to Levi over his shoulder.
"I'm doing extra training so I can be of benefit to the cause. I'd like to think you'd be alright with that, Captain, given all the recent…re-interpreting of rules the Corps has been doing lately."
"The lot of you are really starting to get too mouthy for your own good. In position then," Levi replied, letting fall his cloak as he straightened his stance for the impending spar.
Eren lunged forward and swung, Levi dodging it well before his fist had even moved, but it took him a moment to realise the line of Eren's body had turned in a different direction and that his fist had since snapped back into place as he landed a glancing blow to Levi's forearm from the opposite direction - in what Levi realised now was a feint, something Eren had never managed to pull off successfully in all their previous matches.
He moved differently now, this Eren, who was snatched away and bound and gagged and made to believe he was most valuable martyred as a symbol of his ideals rather than live to see them realised. He had always been a competent fighter, at least where hand to hand combat was concerned, but gone it seemed were the near-manic offensive manoeuvres, the certainty that he could outlast his opponent if not outsmart them, replaced by this off-kilter ducking and dodging, the rhythm of which Levi could not say he'd known Eren was even capable of.
It felt a little like a back-alley brawl, if he was being totally honest, unexpectedly familiar all these years later even if the setting was altogether different.
Levi dodged a blow from him again and moved in, intending to punish for letting his guard down in that split second, but then Eren sank down phantom-like to his feet and swept his leg forward in an arc, knocking Levi flat on his back.
He could have so easily sprung up and away, it was not the move itself but its timing that had surprised him, and he would not be bested so easily. Instead he remained on the ground, the dewy grass cold under his palms and on his nape, and Eren was upon him in an instant, legs bracketing his waist, the flat of his arm against his throat.
"Captain, you went easy on me," he said, midnight chill fogging up his panting breaths, blowing out in shallow puffs through lips gone pale from the cold.
"You underestimate yourself, it's easy to see how hard you've been working. Nicely done, Eren," Levi replied, a little breathless himself, looking up at Eren looking down on him, the high flush on his cheekbones barely visible in the moonlight.
Eren did not let up immediately, only lowered his arm from Levi's throat, skimming blunt fingers across Levi's chest as he straightened up so that he sat properly atop Levi's groin. For all his supposed thick-headedness, Levi found that Eren could be surprisingly astute, sometimes, if the fancy suited him.
"Next time you tell me to choose for myself, I'm going to make the right choice," Eren said, the grip of his thighs spasming warm around Levi's waist.
"The right choice," he repeated, and the wind carried his voice so that for an instant it seemed to echo all around them.
Levi raised his hand and brushed at Eren's hair, smoothed it back from where the wind and the fight had blown it out of place. Eren lifted one hand as well to hold him, and then he shifted his legs and rose, pulling Levi back up on his feet after him.
"Try me again, please, Captain," he said, already spreading his legs back into position. It was a request, but for the effect it had on Levi it might as well have been a command. Levi wondered if Eren knew this. He wondered at all the things Eren had come to realise in the time they'd spent apart.
Levi raised his fists and poised himself for another spar. Around him the wind blew bitter cold, but when he awoke the next morning he could only recall how warm it had been later that night, when the moon had risen to its peak in the sky and Levi had re-learnt the movements of Eren's body such that he could fall into step with him, like partners in a dance of their own design.