Chapter Summary: An exploration between the budding relationship between You and Levi.

Author's Note: So this has now become a seven chapter story and I don't know how or why that happened. I just started writing chapter two and then - bam - it became so long that I had to severe it into different chapters. What can I say? I have a thing for shipping YOU with Levi ;)

But if you're not interested in sifting through seven chapters worth of Titan fighting, insubordination, and relationship slow build, I've summarized each chapter thus and you can skip forward or read as you please:

Chapter One: Levi Confesses
Chapter Two: Relationship Building
Chapter Three: You and Levi are Pitted Against Eachother
Chapter Four: You Take Down SEVEN Titans (you're such a badass 3)
Chapter Five: Final Titan Encounter, Levi Gets Hurt
Chapter Six: A Sweet Moment / Things are Set Right Between You and Levi
Chapter Seven: Freaky, Naughty Pondside Smut

X

Captain Levi Ackerman.

Your Captain.

Your Levi.

Falling in love with a superior was a curious thing. There was this element of taboo involved, or so it seemed to everybody else. You theorized that the superiors of society existed within their own realm, whereby it was only appropriate to have relationships with people of similar rank. Having an eye for someone lower on the ranking list, or vice versa, was assumed to be improper, maybe even a little damaging.

"Keep it in your pants, or keep it in your rank," a drunk guard had once lectured to your crew. The thought had stuck with you. You had found it hilarious.

But.

With you and Levi, it was different. It was his experience and title that separated you, but it had been his tepid admission of interest that had really ranked you in the end. In a secretive, strange, and yet unexplored way, it felt as if you and Levi had lost touch with the titles that separated you and now stood upon an equal playing field. Could it have been said then that he had taken a step down in society's eyes, and you had taken a step up?

Nah.

The technicalities of rank were irrelevant and uninteresting, in the face of what had arisen. After all, there was no hierarchical scale to love.

And yet you had been correct in assuming that Levi would revert to his old ways when you returned from your mission. He became cold and distant to the point of rudeness. There was nothing in his eyes when he cast them upon you and were it not for the residual heat that you felt in the places that he had touched, you would have believed that nothing had happened between you at all.

But, in a way, seeing him in this new light was exhilarating. There was a secret that he kept from the others that only you were privy to. You eyed him with renewed zest while responding to him with a respectful, though bemused, air. You weren't sloppy. You'd never expose him to the crew. But you couldn't help adding emphasis to his name when you called him 'Captain.' And whenever it seemed as if the others were growing suspicious of your relationship, you lowered your eyes and threw yourself into your work like a good, obedient Scout.

After a while, however, it had begun to seem as if nothing would come of the night that you two had shared by the pond. You had been expecting this, too, for all good things eventually came to pass. You decided you cut your losses, and just move on. Because you hadn't become a Scout to wriggle beneath Levi's gaze. You were trying to save humanity, god damn it! Besides, you knew better than anyone else that love was sometimes just a spark of fantasy soon smothered by the weight of reality.

But then…

Three days after your run-in with the Titan, Levi had made a surprise reappearance that reignited the serpentine zeal between you.

You had been training with the rest of the Scouts beneath a star-speckled sky on a warm afternoon. Your fight with the Titan was still a hot topic amongst the people, and a group of them had gathered around to watch a display of your skills. It felt good, really good, to immerse yourself in something other than Levi, something that set you apart from the others.

You swung your arm back and then snapped it forward. A set of three brand-new blades dislodged themselves from your fingers and cut through the air. The target stood no chance. Two of the knives embedded themselves within the middlemost patch of red paint. The last one landed closer to the outside. Whatever, you thought. It was still a good shot. But you knew that something had distracted you. It was that odd feeling, like a cold breeze on the back of your neck, that made your hackles rise. And it only happened when a certain someone was around.

"Y/N."

Ah yes. Of course.

You turned around and snapped your legs together neatly, raising your hand into a salute as you did so. God, he always looked so dead inside. You wondered what would happen if you tickled him. He'd probably kill you.

"Sir," you said crisply. You couldn't help it. The corner of your lip tented into a smile.

"A word. Unless you're too busy flaunting your abilities...?"

"If I may be bold, Captain, what you call flaunting, I call practice."

You heard the Scouts behind you gasp and begin to whisper amongst themselves. Levi's eyebrow crooked, but the rest of his face remained impassive.

"Eh?" He hissed. "It's mastery that'll kill a Titan, not practice. And, if I remember correctly, it was I who dealt the fatal blow during your little...skirmish." He waited a moment for your response. When he didn't get any he turned and began to walk away. "Come, y/n," he said without looking back. You sucked your teeth at the double entendre and began to follow him.

"Aye, Captain. I'm all yours."

He led you past a group of meandering citizens and down into the basement of an old building. You followed him silently, thinking that perhaps you had been too careless in the way that you acted towards him. That being the case, you were fully ready to accept responsibility and tone it down a notch. Though, you thought that you had been behaving yourself quite well.

He stopped at the bottom of the staircase and lit a lantern. The sudden firelight blasted his shadow across the wall. He flicked his hand until the match went out and you watched him with a calm sort of detachment. He moved slowly, almost purposefully so, as he repocketed his matchbox and adjusted the white cloth hanging from his collar.

You realized that you had been biting your lip. You couldn't take it anymore. The silence was killing you.

"Levi?" You said slowly. His back was still to you. He relaxed his shoulders and fell still.

"Why do you always say my name like that?"

"I…" you stuttered. "Is there something wrong with the way that I say it?"

"Yes," he said, turning to face you. You flinched backward as he approached you, but there was nowhere to run. The wall was cool and solid against your back. He stopped and braced his hand on the spot above your head. He was so close, close enough for you to see yourself reflected in his eyes. "It's dangerous," he said, placing a finger beneath your chin and tilting your head up. His breath flushed across your skin as he spoke. "It makes me want to kiss you."

"Like I said, Captain," you said, holding his eye. "...I'm all yours."

He suddenly dug his fingers into your cheeks and pulled you into a kiss. You moaned deep in your throat and began to snake your fingers through his hair. The kiss felt good, just as good as the first time, and you reveled in its righteousness. Finally, when it seemed as if things would go too far, he leaned back and gently swiped his sleeve around the corners of his mouth.

"Pardon me," he said in a way that betrayed no sense of apologeticness whatsoever. "It seems as if I just can't control myself around you."

"I couldn't tell," You said, dryly. He traced a lone finger along the edge of his parted lips and then closed his mouth. Such a move came off as severely tantalizing, even though he didn't realize it.

He sighed. "Must you always be so bratty?"

You shrugged and put on your most innocent face. "Must you always bring out the brattiness in me?"

That did it.

That fucking did it.

He rushed at you again and you caught him in your arms this time. You pulled him closer to your chest then wrapped your arms around his back. He kissed you everywhere: your cheek, your jaw, your neck, your chest. Nowhere was safe. It occurred to you that you should have been worried about the reddish flushes that would appear on your skin the next day, but you couldn't bring yourself to care. Finally being able to kiss Levi was akin to stretching your limbs along the rivers of heaven: it invigorated and excited you. You felt both holy and sinful beneath the desperation of his touch, and when he began to toy with the edges of your belt you realized that there was only one thing left that you wanted.

You pulled back and squeezed his arms. "Levi," you said in a low voice, "if this isn't real…"

He put a finger to your lips. Slowly, gently, he took your hand and slid it under his shirt. He moved your palm along the curve of his chest and then let it rest upon the spot above his heart. You felt a deep, frantic thumping. "If you think that I can fake this, y/n, then your head must be full of shit."

"Can you be any less romantic," you hissed at him. He curled the fingers of one hand around your other arm and jerked back until you were suddenly thrown chest to chest with him.

"If that's what you want," were the last comprehensible words that he spoke to you that night.

X

You hadn't done everything with Levi that night. But it was just enough for you to know that you liked what he had to offer. And judging by the way that he responded, he was quite pleased with you, too.

Now, you looked at him in a completely different light, much different than before. It drove you crazy, being the sole person who knew what lay beneath his grim facade...as well as what lay beneath his clothes. While others hailed him for his greatness and authority, in your most private thoughts you hailed him for something else completely. So weighty was the secret of your magnificent little tryst that you wished that you had a friend to share the story with. But all you could do was bite your lip and watch as he paced amongst the ranks: to everyone but you a stone-faced enigma.

Every chance that he got now, he sought you out. His addiction to you bordered on dangerous. There were only so many excuses that he could make whenever he whisked you away. On some days he asked you to perform solo tasks, on others he made as if to berate you for some minor offense. But in reality, he took you to dimly lit cellars, abandoned buildings decked with thatch, storage spaces, and gave you just enough to make you reemerge flushed while he adjusted his neckpiece beside you.

But your intimacy hadn't just been physical. No, he cared about you in a way that was unexpected from a man like him. You soon learned to read his microexpressions: the twitch of the eyebrow, the relaxed way that he held himself when you spoke, the unblinking gaze that devoured your every word. There was never enough that you could tell him in those quick, stolen moments: he wanted to know everything. He fixated on the little details of your life: your favorite childhood memory, the way that the grass smelled outside of the home where you were raised, why you styled your hair the way that you did, the reasons why you pledged your humanity to society. Everything.

You were honored by his interest in you. But he never wanted to talk about himself.

"I don't want to scare you away, now that you're finally close to me," was all that he had said on the matter.

"It takes a lot to scare me," you had responded. The two of you had been lying side by side in a grove of lavender behind an abandoned house. He was shirtless, so of course you had been obliged to run your finger along his chest.

"Even so," he had said, holding you closer, "I'd rather not be the one to challenge that statement."

"I'd love you no matter what, Ackerman."

He had risen and put a hand over your mouth. His eyebrows had creased and his eyes had flashed in an angry way that you sensed was not wholly directed at you. "Y/N. Don't make promises that you can't keep. Not to me."

"Fine," you had said after pushing his hand away (although you had quite liked the touch.) "If I can't make promises, then can I at least make a joke, Captain?"

"Go ahead, Scout."

"Okay," you said, already starting to giggle. "Have you heard the joke about the three holes in the ground?"

"Huh? No."

"Well, well, well…"

For a moment, he simply stared at you as you tried to keep your laughter in. Then the dawning of realization crossed his brow and it was as if the sunlight had shown brighter on his face. He put his hand behind your head and pressed it into his chest, but you had already seen the smile slide across his lips.

"Do you get it?" You cackled, tears of mirth streaming down your eyes and over his skin. "Because a well is a hole in the ground-"

"Ah. I got it." He kissed your forehead and ran his hand along your arm. "Never leave me, y/n."

And that's how it was. Though it hadn't been spoken on, you and Levi had entered into a relationship from which there was no turning back. For once, it seemed as if an endless paradise had been laid before you. It was an unending sense of euphoria: gentle, romantic, untouchable.

Until the day came when your crew was finally summoned on a harrowing mission that changed everything.

x

Ending Notes: Y'all. You know that meme where a guy sees a hot girl and his nose starts bleeding? Well yeah. I was fresh out of the shower, watching Levi YouTube edits on my phone, and planning out my smut scene and - I swear on everything that I own - my nose started bleeding. Let me reiterate: I WAS LOOKING AT PICTURES OF LEVI ON MY DAMN PHONE AND MY NOSE. STARTED. BLEEDING.

Y'all. I just...I-