Here's the second instillation of Pocket Watch! I realized I didn't specify as to whether this would be a multi-chaptered story, the answer to that is yes! This will probably be no longer than 10 chapters at the most. With that being said, I hope everyone enjoys chapter 2!

Levi hadn't held very high expectations in regards to love. He didn't believe he would ever have to deal with it. Love was for emotional brats who didn't have to deal with watching out for every single shit-for-brains soldier in the Corps, for people who didn't have a dark past shadowing them and making them relive unimaginable horrors night after night. He didn't have time for love and quite frankly he was a hundred percent sure he didn't deserve love. Yet oddly enough here he was; dealing with these stupidly mushy feelings towards someone who had gone from a shitty brat, to subordinate, to comrade, to close friend, and finally to prospective significant other. Next thing you know, Hanji would end up marrying one of those damned moronic titans she keeps experimenting on.

But love was turning out to be pretty damn shitty in his opinion.

Firstly, love hadn't made those insanely distracting dreams go away like he had expected them to; far from it in fact. Once he had reluctantly accepted that he just might maybe possibly love Mikasa they got worse; far, far, worse. His dreams were more vivid, racier, and more extreme. Much to his horror he was often dreaming about some kinky shit he hadn't even realized he was interested in; or was even anatomically possible for that matter, women just couldn't possibly bend that way. One dream had been so particularly vivid and obscene he had been forced to avoid Mikasa for a whole day while he tried to get his retarded hormones under control or else she would have found herself pinned against the wall of the nearest storage room. He had been lucky to have a shit ton of paperwork that day to act as a legitimate excuse. Had he been actually testing this shifty feeling, it would have lost a good chunk of points for encouraging such lewd thoughts.

Love also didn't stop those little stomach flops he got when she brushed against him while reaching for something; or when she leaned against him because she was tired and needed support; or even when she absentmindedly played with his long, spidery, fingers on a lazy day. It was actually quite the contrary. Love had turned those stupid little stomach flops into full blown stomach convulsions. It was like eating bad food or something equally as uncomfortable and Levi honestly wondered if love had a previous reputation for making people constipated or for causing extreme diarrhea. It required literal effort to keep himself from twitching or shying away from her touch and Levi was astounded at the level of sheer irrationality and loss of control that this emotion was throwing him. He wanted to touch her, very badly. It was completely unfair of this stupid feeling to try and make him move away with his face flaming and red.

The jealousy too, don't even get him started. He could handle little patches of annoyance here and there. He could maybe understand the very tips of his ears burning as he silently seethed when another man got too close but now, now it was hell. He was speaking with all seriousness to, it was like someone ignited the flames of hell around his feet when some cocky bastard had the audacity to try and speak to her. Once a man had held her attention in a conversation for nearly seven minutes and Levi felt as if someone had dumped a load of titan blood on him because he could feel something in him boiling. To make matters even more ridiculous, it was Kirschtein she had been talking to, what was there to be jealous about that fucking horse-face?

Nothing, absolutely nothing! He was hardly even considered a man!

It's not like he could get rid of these horrendously distracting inconveniences either, he had tried. Yet every time he resolved to back down, said he would keep it professional, promised to not look at her that way, he just couldn't. Because that damned beautiful smile of hers would bounce around in his mind and so many sacred and precious moments that the two of them had shared would echo obnoxiously in his head. Because if he went for it, those moments could become even more precious and special. Because if he backed down then someone else would take her and that was a notion that drove him even crazier than any dream, stomach cramp, or bratty soldier.

Apparently you just couldn't win against this stupid emotion. It was like its own force of nature or something just as equally troublesome.

Levi sighed and ran a hand slowly over his face and through his hair. He stared at his office, needing a distraction. A few minutes later when everything in his office was quite literally sparkling clean, he realized he still needed something to distract him. The logical strategist in him knew it would be wise to discuss this with someone before he exploded or something as equally unpleasant. The problem with that was he had about three people he considered close enough friends to discuss his problems with.

One of them was the cause of his current uncharacteristically irrational behavior and he was convinced Hanji had some sort of mental disorder. Which left him with one option.

Levi stood and exited his office.

Commander Erwin Smith sat quietly in his office doing paperwork. The only sounds in the room being the scratch of pens as the work was completed at what seemed to be an agonizingly slow pace. Occasionally the blonde man glanced up curiously to examine the other occupant of his office for exactly three seconds before he would continue with his work.

Almost three hours ago Levi had entered his office unannounced, plopped down into a seat, and started doing paperwork, the whole time never stating a word. Of course Erwin wasn't complaining but he had known Levi for a long time, the man simply didn't sit down to assist with paperwork out of the goodness of his heart (he rarely did anything out of the goodness of his heart if Erwin was being honest here). In fact this routine had become a regular thing for the Lance Corporal to do when there was something he needed to get off his mind. And usually the longer it took him to speak, the more deeply it had been troubling him. It was odd though, Levi was most often found in the company of Mikasa Ackerman nowadays. Erwin had figured he would have spoken to her about this problem. The scratching of pens continued for another thirty minutes. The commander stole another quick glance and was baffled.

Levi had never been silent for this long.

Had the day finally come then? Was Levi actually sitting down specifically to help with the paperwork? Commander Erwin was ready to hug his corporal, this may be the happiest day of his life. The loads of paperwork that could be divided up, the possibility of free-time sitting so tantalizingly close-

"I think I'm in love with Ackerman." Erwin dropped his pen, perfect eyebrows sky high, not quite prepared for that blunt bombshell. All thoughts of free time flew out the window in a hypothetical explosion of coherency and discretion. The Scouting Legion Commander's mind reeled and it took him a few minutes to organize his thoughts into a cohesive answer.

"…"

"Come again?" Levi scowled.

"There's no fucking way I'm repeating that."

"Right..." Erwin cleared his throat and contemplated his subordinate carefully for a moment. Levi wasn't the type to associate himself with women romantically. He wasn't the type to associate himself with anyone for that matter. There were several reasons he could disapprove of this confession immediately and nip it on the bud: liabilities on missions, distractions in training, conflict in squads; the list went on. But these two were the best of the best, the Hope of Humanity and the Woman worth a Hundred Soldiers. If anyone was capable of discarding personal relations on the battlefield and maintaining professional boundaries in public it was these two. Frankly, Erwin saw no problems with the match and honestly was tempted to call it cute. Which made him wonder why Levi looked like he had something crawling in his pants, it would have been humorous had the corporal not had such an annoyed aura surrounding him. Scratch that, it was still pretty funny.

"So?" Levi prompted irritably. Erwin blinked.

"So what?"

"So what do I do? How do I make the stupid things go away?" The commander sighed at such juvenile rationale, poor socially stunted Levi had never learned about the abstract wonders of emotions.

"Do you want them to go away?" That seemed to throw Levi for a loop. He was silent for a moment.

"No…"

"Then the intelligent place to start would probably be to tell her how you feel."

"Fuckin' mushy bullshit." Levi muttered under his breath. "There's no point in that, all she does is stare at fucking Jaeger." He said louder. Erwin met his subordinate's gaze thoughtfully.

"Prove to her that you're the better man." Levi shot him a dirty look.

"Of course I'm better than that idiot titan shifter. Whose side are you on?" Erwin rolled his eyes.

"This isn't a war Levi, there aren't sides. You just need to prove it. Show her that you're better than Eren."

"How in the hell am I supposed to do that?" Erwin shrugged.

"That's something you'll have to think up on your own." Levi grumbled to himself before he stood up. As the shorter man exited his office, the commander let a crooked grin etch its way onto his face. He didn't bother to pick his pen back up, instead he spun in his chair to stare thoughtfully out the window. Things would undoubtedly become more interesting around here.

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