Hey everyone! I'm not dead! I finally got a break from life and finally got around to writing. I've finished up the stuff I promised - holy cow, a YEAR ago - and am working on suggestions from the reviews I got. Thanks for sticking with me. (And thank you, people who inexplicably followed my stories even though I haven't updated in almost a year.) More to come before I head back to classes!
This one is for Alaina so I chose to write her female Hanji headcanon instead of my usual gender non-binary Hanji. It feels kinda weird writing a character as a different gender, but I think it worked out alright.
Chapter 2: Hanji x Levi (Levihan)
"Would it kill you to brush your hair once in a while?" Levi growled as his fingers slowly untangled themselves from her greasy locks, "I nearly had to cut that rat's nest off to get my hand out."
He withdrew, giving her a chance to sit up on the hard mahogany desk and fix her skewed glasses. She had insisted on wearing them so that her eyes could perfectly catalog their encounter in her mental archives, but somewhere along the way things took a turn for the messier.
Messier indeed, she noted, looking at the scattered papers covering the floor of his office. Levi had winced slightly when she swept large stacks of paperwork off the desk to make room for her figure, but kept going. The room looked more and more like the scene of a titan attack as time went on. She smiled inwardly. It was starting to look like her lab now.
"And wash it too. It's fucking gross," he grunted as her eyes recorded the location of every scar and harness bruise – trophies of a soldier's life – that covered his body. Permanent markings that mirrored her own.
"Research takes precedence over trivial things," she shrugged as she slid off, feet touching the floor for the first time in what felt like hours, "When you're close to a breakthrough, you don't need pointless distractions to ruin your train of thought."
Levi clicked his tongue in annoyance before rummaging through the aftermath of their activities to find his clothes.
"Distractions? Like food and basic hygiene?" He found white pants crumpled under a chair. Too large for him. He tossed them at her and kept looking.
"Hey, I bathed beforehand!" she protested as the fabric met her face. Well, it was more of a quick, soapless rinse; just enough to get the worst of the grime off. He wouldn't let her within a ten meter radius of him if she was still carrying the stench from days cloistered in her lab.
"How am I supposed to find anything under these goddamn papers? Tch. It's like you purposely tried to make as much of a big-ass mess as possi-" there was a sharp intake of breath and the narrowing of steely eyes as he noticed what she was doing, "For fuck's sake! Ever hear of a little thing called discretion?!
"Hm?" Hanji looked up, one foot on the tabletop and a white rag wiping against her nethers in a broad display, "You were the one lecturing me on hygiene. I was just cleaning myself up."
"Gross, shitty glasses," he spat before turning back to pick up a wadded-up jacket.
"Deal with it, Corporal," she smirked, finishing her work.
It took about fifteen minutes of their combined effort to retrieve the last of their clothing, though Levi's signature cravat was nowhere to be found. Given the fact that several articles had been found in unlikely places or under piles of papers, they agreed that it would turn up after a thorough cleaning.
"Which of the cadets should I assign to clean this shit?" he wondered aloud while slipping on his jacket, smoothing creases in the wrinkled fabric. If he had his way – if she wasn't so damn impulsive – he would have taken time to properly fold their clothes beforehand so they wouldn't have to waste time and effort gathering them up later, "I'm thinking that little brat, Jaeger and those two little shadows that are always following him."
Hanji finished tying up her usual sloppy ponytail, "Come on, you know you're going to end up cleaning it yourself."
"Oh? And what makes you so sure? Enlighten me," a gleam of piqued interest rose from the depths of his eyes
"Careful observation," she began, scientist's passion resonating in her voice, "First, this is your personal office. Nobody could clean it to your level of thoroughness. Second, there are several pieces of sensitive information here. I doubt you'd allow them to handle confidential papers. And third…" She trailed off, unsure if she should let slip her rather tentative idea.
He let out a small snort and waved dismissively, "Do go on. Your ideas are amusing."
"Third is just a hypothesis. It is partially based off the observations of others and not my own, so there is a lack of verification to the data, but there is a noticeable trend in your post-coital behavior," she worded it carefully, attempting to keep a researcher's detachment.
"All sources verify that you are not seen around headquarters for at least three hours before anyone notices that the rooms are back to their initial level of cleanliness, and neither our squad nor the recruits have confirmed that any of their members were the ones to clean them."
Levi simply quirked an eyebrow in response. Hanji took this as a signal to continue - not that she would let him cut her off when she had gathered this much steam. This theory had been stewing in her mind for the past few months, accumulating evidence bit by bit.
"Additionally, I have personally observed the way you clean. Like last week after the rain, when I walked in without taking my boots off. It was a minor experiment, but I kept careful observations on your reactions."
His face darkened as he recalled the hours it took to scrub off the dried mud. Was that goddamn woman really implying that she tracked muck about the place for the sake of a shitty little "experiment"?
Hanji excitedly jabbed her index finger at him with a cheeky grin on her face. Levi had to resist the urge to smack her hand away.
"Like that! You always clean your messes with that scowl, and you always swear when you do it. But I noticed something else. When you thought nobody was there, you relaxed. You had a look in your eyes like you were thinking of something, maybe a memory. Your face was angry, but there was no tension in your shoulders. That leads me to my hypothesis."
She took a deep breath, tilting her head back slightly so her glasses reflected the light streaming through the window, glare obscuring her eyes; just the right flair of the dramatic for her big reveal.
"I think you actually like cleaning up the messes I make."
At first he stared blankly at her as if she had, once again, reminded him that titans are incapable of taking shits because they lack digestive systems. Eyebrows gathered together and his face slowly became a dark, brewing tempest at the nerve of this titan-shit-for-brains for first soiling his pristine floors on a whim, then insinuating that he enjoyed scrubbing her filth out of the grout as if to justify her actions.
Fingers taught as wires, he grabbed the base of her ponytail - his hand finding the same position it held only half an hour before - and pulled Hanji's face down to meet his. Steel-grey eyes smoldered as he held her gaze and warm breath tickled barely-touching lips. Hanji's grin didn't fade in the slightest.
The corner of Levi's mouth twitched slightly, as if he was about to speak, but hardened back into a scowl. A few heartbeats passed in agonizing stillness before he flicked her sharply on the forehead.
"You've got some fucked up theories, shitty glasses," he growled roughly, though his voice carried no anger. Hanji could have sworn there was a hint of something else in there.
Without a further word he spun on his heel and marched out of the room, leaving Hanji free to return to her research with an ear-to-ear grin of smug satisfaction that's uniquely found on a scientist proven right.
Two hours later, Levi was still righting furniture and sorting papers. He was loath to admit it but Hanji was right. There was a calm sense of enjoyment he felt when cleaning up after her. For every mess, there was a memory on how it came to be. Memories that were attached to her.
The vase. Knocked over when she had dragged him into the room, calloused hands already undoing his buckles. The chair. Moved off to the side when she had pushed him into it and whispered his name into his ear, muscular thighs pressed against his. The papers. Scattered when he had propped her up on his desk while her God-knows-how-many-weeks-left-untrimmed nails dug into his back.
Memories – no matter how brief - were important, considering the fact that either of them could never make it back from their next outing. It was the harsh truth for members of the Recon Corps. It made every moment they had together more poignant; more meaningful and charged with almost desperate passion, as each meeting could be their last. These were moments he could never get back, but would stay with him even if she didn't, or she without him. In their line of work it could be anybody at any time.
A large stack of papers was carefully tapped against the desk, edges perfectly aligned before he set it down squarely in the corner. Cleaning was his only time to think clearly, but it always ended up being nothing but melancholic musings. Levi rolled his eyes as he scrubbed off a rather telling stain on the mahogany. He had almost labeled his own thoughts as bittersweet; how fucking trite. Sentimentality, like death, was a permanent shitstain on his mind. A much as he wished, no amount of cleaning could ever get rid of it.
His eyes fell on the white rag she had used to clean herself off with. It lay crumpled on the floor where she dropped it, like a used snot rag. Gloved fingers carefully picked up the offending item by the corner and he frowned at the now dried and crusty layer on it. Fucking gross. Wait-
Levi could practically feel his eye twitch when he unfolded it. It was his cravat. His goddamn cravat.
"I'm going to fucking murder that woman."