February
The squad were being pushed to their limits.
Eld had never seen Captain Levi during a 'Sweetheart's day' before, and he could've predicted that the man hated it. Still, it seemed a little unfair that the Captain's cold, dead heart was inflicting such pain on them just because the sight of any kind of joy or affection pissed him off.
It'd all began in the morning at coffee when Eld'd checked at the door to the Special Op's quarters and there, having been slid under it and decorating the floorboards were three love notes, all with different handwriting, and all addressed to Petra.
The squad had all laughed about it as they sat about the table, but the Captain remained blank, staring into his cup and didn't even look up. Even at that point in the day there had been an aura of quiet ire emanating from him…an aura which only intensified when Gunther asked if any of these three letters were from Hange.
"Hange?" His sharp voice cut suddenly through their chatter, and the four team members instantly hushed themselves.
"Uh - yes sir." Petra tentatively replied, "They were the one who sent me those poems last year…"
The Captain didn't reply or look up, but on closer inspection his expression soured a touch.
Petra blinked, looking to the guys for support, "But um - none of these are…I mean this one's from Jules - it's a kind of joke thing we used to do. And this one's from someone called Hubert…and I've never even met a Hubert so-"
"Who Bert?" Eld interjected, "I know that guy - he was on my first squad. You'd like him, he's gangly."
"Gangly? What makes you think I'd like-"
The Captain's hands slammed down onto the table as he stood up;
"Do you morons think we have all day to sit around chattering like a flock of damn gulls?"
"No sir!" They'd chorused.
And so now the whole squad were sweating, blasting through the trees at record pace on their third time down ODM run three, and Eld wasn't convinced that the Captain would let them go to lunch at all.
"Who was the third letter from?" He asked Petra somewhat quietly after they jointly dispatched a dummy, when he was certain their dour boss was far enough up ahead.
"A cadet who's been coming to band - his name's Jean. He wants me to teach him guitar." She half-whispered.
"Ah," Eld quirked a brow, "Do you think he was captivated by your g-string?"
Petra almost misfired a hook in an attempt to suppress a laugh, only saving herself from plummeting at the last second.
"Come on now Petra, I know it's Sweetheart's Day, but you really shouldn't fall for someone so easily."
"Eld! Stop it!" She replied in a hushed fervour, but when the Captain glanced back at them her joyful expression instantly melted away into a fearful one, and she whimpered quietly.
Gunther appeared beside her and spoke lowly, "Both of you be quiet. I'd quite like the evening off, and at the rate we're going we'll be mopping the barracks until sun up."
"Yeah, we've all got plans." Oruo chimed in from the other side, face weary, and voice not quite matching the lowered tone of everyone else, "Don't arouse the beast."
Eld, despite his best efforts, found he just couldn't let that one slide;
"Arouse the beast?!" He whispered intensely.
Trees sped past them and he noticed Petra making the odd squeak as she tried to hold in her giggles. Gunther had a troubled expression.
"What?" Oruo returned, this time hushedly, "That's a common expression - I wouldn't expect you lowlifes to understand it; but it means don't agitate the beast-"
"I think you mean rouse. Don't rouse the beast." Petra just about managed to say it, and she couldn't catch Eld's eye at all.
"Or awaken." Gunther added soberly.
Oruo went pale, "B-but it's arouse suspicion? Isn't it?"
"I'm certainly suspicious of your literacy." Eld retorted and Oruo glowered, snorting and racing up ahead.
In a split-second he corkscrewed in from the front left side towards a practice dummy, and made mincemeat of it.
His three squad-mates stopped still in the trees with wide eyes. None of them could fault him his skill at least, when he put his mind to it, he really was a force to be reckoned with; plus, none of them had even noticed the dummy as it appeared through the trees…which meant that they definitely weren't as focused as they should have been…
"The hell was that."
The Captain glared at the line of them as they stood on the end platform.
"Are you a team?"
"Yes sir!" They chorused.
"What are you?"
"A team, sir!"
"Wrong. You're pathetic, pissy little babies. So, let me ask again, what are you?"
There was a pause, then a collective mumbling,
"…pathetic pissy little babies, sir."
"It was like watching a tray of wobbling flans attempt the course."
"A weak mess, sir." Eld said, brows twitching.
"So now you've got your head screwed on."
The Captain was stood in front of him, glaring at him with such intensity Eld was sure some of the blood froze in his veins. He held the frosty glower, wondering how someone so much shorter could make him feel so small when they were literally looking up at him. He felt a single bead of sweat form at his temple. After a few moments the Captain stepped back and surveyed the line again with a sneer.
"I really thought you'd be better by now." He said with a slow, venomous lilt, almost to himself. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled deeply, "Anyone want to tell me what was so damn funny that you ballsed up the whole course?"
"Nothing sir…"
"Nothing sir."
"N-nothing sir-"
"Nothing Captain."
The chorus was completely out of time and much quieter than it had been previously.
Eld had to really fight to stop himself from saying, "Oruo said that he'd like to arouse you sir." But he valued his Sweetheart's Day evening plans with Harriet too much for that.
"Nothing huh? I'm a big fan of nothing. I've always found it funny."
The small frown line between the Captain's brows deepened.
"Fancy-ass name or not, this is a day of drills just like any other so pull yourselves together and act like Elite soldiers. Again." Blade in hand, he gestured through the trees to the start of the course, his voice almost reaching a shout, "And don't you dare screw it up."
"Do you ever get the feeling…that we're being watched?" Nifa's voice was wary and she scanned the lab with curious eyes for the umpteenth time since the lunch break had begun.
"Uh…no?" Moblit looked across to her, mindlessly adding much more liquid than intended from a large metal measuring cup into a test tube, which immediately began to fizz and bubble over onto his hand-
"Oh fiddlesticks!-"
He gasped, letting go of the measuring cup in his other hand, which clattered to the ground leaving a large wet puddle.
"Oh - oh darn it all!-"
In a distracted flap, he leant over intending to clear the spillage, and unthinkingly placed the bubbling, overflowing test tube down onto the worktop, which of course immediately fell over, spilling foaming liquid all over his pages of notes.
He froze, then slowly stood back up straight, glancing back to Nifa,
"Why me?" He bemoaned and she rubbed his back.
"You need more sleep." She said.
"I really hope someone wasn't watching that." He muttered, "And it's hard to get enough sleep when the Section Commander insists on testing the effects of moonlight on titan toenail clippings."
"There there." She muttered, only too aware of how trying the hours were for the research squad, "I think you should take the night off, I'm sure the Section Commander wouldn't mind this one time."
Moblit sighed, "Y-yeah." He said, almost unwillingly, "I don't think I'll be a good assistant this evening until I re-write all these notes anyway."
"Moblit? Nifa?" Abel poked his head around the door, "Would you mind helping unpack these boxes?"
The fourth time Petra washed the hallway floor on her hands and knees she was certain it was clean. Certain of it.
But when the dark figure of the Captain walked past her to grace the entryway, somehow still completely shadowed in spite of the wall torches, that certainty began to slip away.
"I'm almost done with the floor sir." She'd said, with the firm focused stare (she hoped) of someone doing her job diligently.
His nose raised in disdain,
"Are you?"
It was all he had to say. She gulped, then started up again, wiping an errant bead of sweat from her forehead.
His footsteps clacked against the floorboards as he exited, and the door whined as it shut behind him. Great. Now she had to oil the door hinge too.
"Is he gone?" Oruo's voice sounded tentatively from the doorway behind her. The lines were deeper in his face than usual (as they often were when the squad cleaned) and he was holding a wet butter knife as he'd been tasked with re-buffing all the cutlery.
"I think so." She sighed, and heard the collective over-dramatic groan of her squad-mates from the common room.
Each one of them was bad-tempered as time ticked ever closer towards their Sweetheart's Day evening plans. They decided to take a short break and found themselves collectively clattering around the kitchenette, making tea while each of their bedroom curtains were soaking in large tubs on the common room floor.
"He's punishing us for being happy." Oruo drawled leaning against the wall, flicking the butter knife, "What's a 'hospital corner' anyway?"
"He's lost his sanity to sanitation." Eld mused, wiping a teacup.
"The restaurant I want to go to will be full up by now. I'm sure of it." Gunther said glumly, removing the water from the boil.
The three of them looked to Petra, waiting expectantly for her to moan about something.
"Come on." She said sternly, crossing her arms, "Pull yourselves together, you're acting like children."
The three of them were a little taken aback, and Petra kept her wry amusement to herself. She'd grown to enjoy chastising them, because they never spoke back to her, and instead often took to mumbling something about how she was probably right.
"Ah yes…I remember now." Oruo caught her eye, a crooked smile began tugging at the corner of his lip, "Petra doesn't have any evening plans."
Jeez. Here we go.
She rolled her eyes, "Actually…I do."
"Oh yeah?" He took a step away from the wall, "And what would those be? Endlessly wailing into my pillow because I was the one that got away?"
Petra wasn't sure she could raise her eyebrows any further.
"Well, I'm sorry my dear, but you were too slow. If only you'd come clean to me before about your feelings then I may have considered-"
She barked a harsh laugh, "Good god Oruo, give it a rest. It wasn't funny the first time."
"Yeah man." Eld was unthinkingly spooning tea leaves into the pot, "That horse is dead, you can stop flogging it."
"Been dead for months." Gunther mumbled, his chin resting heavily in his hand.
"Whatever. At least I'm not going to die a spinster old maid." Oruo picked at his teeth with the knife.
"There's still time." Petra sassed, and heard Gunther's low, quiet chuckle.
Eld scratched his beard, checking on the tea, "Plans then eh? With who?"
"That's on a need to know basis my friend." She winked.
Eld raised his eyebrows.
"Pffft. Plans. Sure you do." Oruo crossed his arms.
Red wine glugged from the bottle into the glass. Erwin pushed it across his desk towards Levi, whose scowl deepened.
"We finished the whiskey over the winter break." The taller man explained.
The Captain sniffed and stared at the glass, while Erwin poured one for himself, before sitting and scanning through his evening paperwork.
A heavy silence hung between them. Levi had shown up wordlessly, and it seemed that that was how he planned on spending the rest of the night too.
"No plans this evening then?"
Erwin asked it breezily, all too aware of the provocative nature of the question, and careful not to look at Levi, lest the attention on the man further stoke his irritation.
A minute of silence passed before Erwin's curiosity got the better of him and he glanced up. The Captain was still yet to touch his drink and his blank expression remained steadfast as his eyes, unmoving, speared the wood of the desk.
Withholding a tut, Erwin picked up his pen and began annotating. His subtle game of nudging the Captain towards a certain ginger subordinate of his hadn't panned out in the way he'd envisioned. On occasion he'd reminded himself that the odds of success in that area were remarkably slim: Levi's personality was so rigidly consistent it was more or less a sure bet that he would simply never allow himself the pleasure of falling in love.
The Commander was pleased by that fact: Levi would never let himself be distracted from the ultimate goal of the survey corps, but, within that knowledge, and having noticed the minuscule changes in the man's expression around Petra, Erwin himself had taken the odd small opportunity to try and guide Levi to her during his recreation time. After all, there wasn't a person living who needed affection more than the Captain, and there wasn't a person who would give him that affection more freely than her.
Erwin'd watched her attempt to do so himself through a fogged up tavern window at the Trost Winter Parade; and felt a pang of sorrow when Levi'd mutely walked away, leaving her alone on the frozen street with a dying sparkler. Something about it reminded him of his own life, of a time when he too had walked away from someone who loved him.
Since then, Erwin had broadly stopped nudging. Romance was clearly something that Levi wasn't yet ready for.
"Is something bothering you Levi?"
No response. Like getting blood from a stone.
Erwin internally sighed and scored a line on the page with some force; torn between ordering the man out of his office if he wasn't going to do anything, and allowing him to sit there silently, as he was clearly struggling with something. There came a point though, where one had to be willing to help themselves, and if Levi refused to respond to any questions about his well-being, well then, he wasn't going to find any enlightening answers to his problems. The change had to come from within him, and this was a man who was so infamously stubborn that he'd once refused to remove his cravat during ODM training on the hottest day of the year, even though he was drenched in sweat and evidently very uncomfortable.
"Would you ask a bald man to remove his toupee?" He'd growled. Erwin struggled not to chuckle at the memory.
His thoughts were disturbed by the opposite wine glass as it was pulled along the desk and picked up, and he noticed Levi swirling the maroon liquid slowly, watching it glint in the candlelight.
"You might find it to be more to you taste than usual." Erwin ventured. "It's from a vineyard just outside of Yarckel district, it has a bolder flavour and more depth than most wines."
Levi inhaled deeply and eventually looked up, uttering quietly;
"Good to see you haven't locked yourself in the broom closet this year. Do you think you've lost your appeal?"
Erwin smiled. He usually took himself away from the grounds on 'Sweethearts Day' due to the attention he received. Levi was referring to a few years back, when Erwin'd been inundated with romantic propositions and hastily bolted himself into the broom cupboard on the office corridor in an attempt to escape from his various smitten admirers. Levi had come across him an hour or two later, decked out in his cleaning gear and glowering.
"I hope so. That isn't to say I'm not flattered, but it can be rather time-consuming." Erwin replied, "Though I still enlisted Mike to perform a smell-check of my mail this morning. One can never be too careful."
Levi blinked. "He find anything good?"
"Only the one pair of underwear this year." Erwin replied, and restarted his annotations.
"Sorry to hear it." Levi uttered dryly, "Ageing's a bitch."
"Indeed."
Moblit was breathless again as he pelted down the moonlit corridors towards the lab, stack of re-written research notes bundled in his arms. He wasn't going to leave the Section Commander alone to their experiment - last time that happened the research squad had only narrowly avoided a devastating fire. It wasn't a problem - he could sleep during tomorrow's lunch break.
Nearly there. The building was deserted - silent save his quickened breathing and the echoing of his clattering boots - that was until he heard a loud smash and a high pitched yelp, which sounded like it definitely came from the lab. Oh lordy.
He quickened his pace, fast approaching the lab's large wooden door, when said door slammed violently open in front of him to reveal Captain Levi, whose hard grey eyes barely flicked towards him before he swept off and away down the hall.
Moblit grit his teeth;
"S-section Commander?!" He called out, suddenly panicked and barrelled into the room, feverishly searching for them.
He didn't have to look hard. They were stood by the large lab windows, a scruffy navy silhouette with the moonlight behind them. They turned to face him, and he could just about make out their greasy piled up hair and dishevelled grin.
They looked…normal? Well, normal for them. Thank Maria.
"Ah Moblit! I'm so glad you could make it along this evening! You didn't cancel your Sweetheart's day plans for my little experiment did you?"
No. But he would have.
They continued to chatter, "I think I may have discovered something quite interesting about these clippings…"
He blinked several times, stunned, bringing himself back to the present.
"Are you alright? I heard a loud smash - then Captain Levi-"
They waved their hand nonchalantly, "Don't mind him, you know how he is - a perpetual grump. Could you come over here? I'd really like to know your thoughts on this."
Moblit's expression grew more troubled, "Are you sure everything's ok? It's just that…"
He glanced across the stone floor towards the several smashed beakers and tray which lay there, and hesitantly moved to place his bundle of rewritten notes back on the worktop,
"What happened here?"
They turned back to face him again, this time with a studious expression, as they held up a giant toenail with some tongs, and it took a moment for them to catch wind of what he was referring to.
"Oh!" Though it was dark, he could just about make out their embarrassed blush, "Well, I was moving those beakers away from the window so I had space to lay out these fascinating specimens, but I slipped on my way over there - the floor must have been a little wet or something."
Moblit paled. He'd forgotten to clear up his spillage from earlier. Surely it would have dried up by now…right? He shook the thought away, there were more pressing things to deal with;
"So you're saying that Captain Levi didn't have anything to do with that?"
"That? No, not at all - although I suppose I can see why you might think that." They cackled, "No, Levi was just giving me an earful about not distracting his squad. It was strange…but still-" They tapped their chin with their free hand, "It wouldn't be first time I've struggled to understand why he's yelling at me. If I were to hazard a guess it would be that he's peeved about Sweetheart's Day, and just needed someone to take it out on."
He could have been imagining it, but there seemed to be a small impish glint in the Section Commander's eye. As soon as it appeared however, it was gone.
"Oh. Yeah, right." Moblit scratched his head.
"At any rate, I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, and he stormed out - as you're aware. Now; much more importantly! Are you ready to begin experimenting?"
Moblit warily nodded and approached the worktop.
Hange held the giant clipping out towards him, its jagged, yellowing edges grossly illuminated by the moon,
"First things first, I'm going to need you to lick this titan toenail."
The next morning was bright with apricity, and the squad were pottering around the common room and kitchenette.
"Did you go to the restaurant you wanted in the end Gunther?" Petra asked, pouring out four cups of coffee.
He smiled, "No. But we ended up at a nice spot on the other side of town. If you like fish cakes I'd recommend it."
Oruo pulled his freshly filled cup towards himself across the counter. "I think I know the place."
"That's right, The Plaice." Gunther nodded, taking a sip.
Oruo blinked. The two men stared at one another silently, and Petra's eyes darted between them.
"…what?" Oruo said after a couple of minutes.
"It's called The Plaice…" Gunther responded, "I thought that's what you were saying, that you knew it."
"So, Petra," Eld interjected, collecting his cup, "How was your evening with Bert? Do you call him Bert now? Or maybe just Hugh?"
Her eyes went wide, "What?! How did you know?"
"That's on a need to know basis my friend." He winked.
She scowled on recognition of the gesture, and crossed her arms. After less than a second's silence, he gave in;
"Alright, he told me. Like I said, we were on our first squad together - that's a special type of connection."
Petra looked at the floor, unsure how honest she should be about her 'date', especially seeing as Eld and Bert shared the famous 'first-squad bond' - which apparently now meant: tell each other absolutely everything, and that means everything, even though you swore halfway through said 'date' that you wouldn't tell anyone, especially not anyone in your ginger partner's squad, not least because her squad were notorious for exploiting the tiniest little nugget of information for teasing one another and-
"It was…nice." She managed eventually.
That wasn't a lie, it was nice…as nice as something like that could be when you were silently batting away feelings for your superior officer…which was going about as successfully as a seamstress trying to make a dress out of milk. At the very most, it was a pleasant distraction which meant that she didn't have to spend her Sweetheart's Day evening alone.
"Up top." Eld held up his hand and she timidly high-fived him, "Bert said he had a great time. Maybe this could be the start of something new and beautiful. Can't wait to read your memoir: 'Vertically challenged love in the modern age'."
Gunther raised an eyebrow.
"Memoir?" Oruo guffawed, "I think you mean short story."
Eld almost choked on his coffee.
Petra's face had gone beet red and her fists balled up at her sides, "Hey - screw you both! He's not that much taller than me!"
"Oh really?" Eld teased, holding her eye-line, "Were you standing on a step-ladder for the duration of the date or…? He's nearly six feet- Agh!"
Petra had zipped across to Eld like an ember spat from a fireplace and begun pounding him in the arm as he struggled to keep his full cup of coffee from spilling;
"Gunther - a little help?" The blonde yelped as he ran around the common room table trying to escape the angry little fireball.
"Sorry pal, you're on your own."
Gunther and Oruo watched, smirking and intermittently sipping their coffee.
Posting early this week because sunday is busy!
also Jean just really gives me 'guy at the party who cracks out the acoustic guitar' energy...so I referenced it hahaha
thanks for reading ^^