Yet another upload, sweet.
Petrichor
noun
the scent of rain on dry earth
Hanji is laughing. It's raining, the first rain in over three months, and she's laughing.
She'd barged right into the barracks, without bothering to change out of her nightgown, put on her glasses, or even shove her feet into a pair of shoes. Just dragged Levi by his hands from his bed without a word of explanation. If he hadn't already been up, listening to the droplets hit the roof and watching them run down the window, he might have been angry. But he had been, and that makes it slightly more okay.
"It's raining!" she cries, pulling him past the bunks and outside. "It's raining!"
"I know that," he says dryly. "Where are you taking me?" Running around the base in his pajamas in the middle of the night doesn't really seem like a fun time. He wonders, idly, if this would count as being up past curfew.
The earth is still fairly hard, having yet to soak up its blessing, although it has been raining moderately heavily for at least twenty minutes by this point. The dust that would coat his boots for so long has turned to grainy mud, squishing between his bare toes as they run. It's gross, but the urge to clean it off isn't as strong as it might normally be.
They're in the clearing now, the one in the middle of the woods used for maneuver gear drills. She's let go of his hands and is twirling, long tanned arms thrown open as if she would hug the air if she could. Her nightgown is soaked through, his pajamas are soaked through, and they'll probably come away with colds at the end of this. But even so, he doesn't leave.
"You're an idiot," he tells her sincerely. "It's just rain."
"It's not just rain!" she cries, and pirouettes clumsily. "It's a first rain. Can't you smell it? That's a magical smell, Levi." She grabs his face in her hands and kisses him, right on the nose like an outright declaration of her affection for him. He jerks back, startled, but she doesn't seem to notice, raising her arms again and continuing her strange dance. She starts to sing, a song about rain that she'd probably made up on the spot, voice loud and gleeful and off-key.
His hair is wet and sticking to his forehead, and his skin feels clammy under his clothes. He's got mud up to his ankles and he really needs to change. But the air finally smells clean and the dust is gone and there's a chance he might actually be able to shower today, so it's okay. Hanji has taken his hands again, drawing him into her dance, and although he doesn't mimic it, he does move with her, just because he can.