"But I love you," she said, exactly how he dreamed she would and wished she wouldn't. Levi inhaled sharply. His spine back-breakingly straight, shoulder unnaturally high, jaw purposefully shut.
He tightened the grip on his pen on his right hand and fisted his left. The world was swimming in front of him; a result, no doubt, of the joy and the terror he felt upon Petra's confession.
She was staring at him, he could feel her gaze burning his skin, sucking the air out of his lungs. He didnt look at her, didnt have the strength to, not when she was this close.
"No you don't," he snapped, fire on his tongue.
"But I do," she spoke softly, surely and Levi's heart pulsed so violently he was afraid it would esacape its cage. He squeezed his eyes shut but saw her frown imprinted on his eyelids anyway.
"You shouldn't."
He was hyper-aware of her footsteps getting louder and louder as she walked around his desk and leaned her back on his desk. He felt her warm calloused fingers disentangling his fist and smoothing it berween her trained palms.
"Captain please look at me."
He didn't.
He wouldn't.
He shouldn't.
He felt her lethal fingers gently guide his chin to face her. In the lone candlelight of his office, he saw her for the first time since she walked through the door that night. The flames behind her lighted up her hair, a broken halo Levi thought, as he examined her knitted brows and pursed lips. She looked exhausted and sad and ethereal.
His pen clattered when he loosened his hold on it and allowed Petra to pull both his hands towards her so that she was facing him and that he was caging her against his wooden desk.
Her eyes searched his, while her fingers started their voyage across his face, caressing his cheeks, smoothing his brows, thumbing his lip. He looked at her other hand to see that it was already entangled with his.
It was getting harder to breathe.
"I'm fucked up Petra," he choked out the lettters, afraid the wrong words would spill over his lips before he could stop them.
"I know." Petra guided both his hands to wrap around her frame and then placed hers on his cheek, resting her forehead on his.
"No you don't understand. I-My hands are filthy."
She kissed his knuckles.
"I know."
"Petra-"
She kissed him. Her lips, warm and soft and chapped, were moving against his stoic ones, setting him on fire. He didnt want to open them lest his heart climbed his throat, burst through his lips and rested on her tongue. A heart is too heavy a burden; and although he knew just how skilled, how unforgiving Petra is with her fists, Levi feared that even she would be hurt if she tried carrying his heavy heart in her palms.
He pulled away.
"I'll ruin you."
She smiled sadly, brushing the stray hair away from his face so that she can properly look at him.
"I know," she said, accepting his warning and kissing him again anyway.