She cries sometimes when he fucks her. His head between her thighs, his thumb brushes against a nipple. She convulses, but not in pleasure. He sighs, trailing kisses up her taut abdomen (in apology.) Her hands are in his hair – fingers curling around thick, dark strands. She pulls just a little too hard. Hey. He warns, nipping at her bottom lip. The heel of her foot digs into his lower side. Stop.
He wants to pin her down and slam his mouth into hers, but he doesn't.
"What's wrong?" His voice is almost gentle, caring. And that's the cruel joke. He told her a long time ago that he didn't care.
"You may think this is an act, but believe me when I say I don't care." Levi drawls.
'That's good because I don't care (about you) either.'
Mikasa had smiled. The way a girl playing with fire smiled. "I'm glad we have something in common."
Now she smiled tiredly, half-heartedly. Running her tongue over her teeth and swallowing the sick she felt burning in her throat before she did so.
Or at least it felt like 'a long time ago.' Time seemed to speed up to a point of dizziness and stop completely in his eyes, the hum of his voice, the way his fingertips traced the curve of her breasts and how his lips caressed hers, the sounds he made when he came, his hand grasps hers tightly, an unspeakable sadness in his eyes, when she slips from the sheets. They don't say goodbye.
There isn't anything intimate about the way they fuck. They don't look each other in the eye or cuddle post-coital or god forbid say each other's name. He's well-acquainted with the ghosts that haunt her sleep. She isn't calling out his name in the darkness.
They're on the floor (on a rug that has lost its softness), entangled in each other, lingering between the shadows and the flame-coloured light that distorts their features.
There isn't anything loving about this. But there's a beauty to their brutality. At least he likes to think so.
Levi looks at her, still half expecting an answer that has a shred of truth to it after all this time of knowing her.
Could you get off of me? Is what she wants, but doesn't say. Because it's cold, even with the fire, and he always feels right against her.
"Am I doing something wrong?"
His teeth sink into her shoulder. He runs his tongue over the incision.
Mikasa doesn't like it when he marks her, but god knows she has left war wounds on him.
He nuzzles her neck, kissing past her sternum.
"Because that's not what it sounded like." He smirks against her tightened stomach muscles.
"No," It's a whimper.
"Then what is it?"
Finally she pushes him off of her.
She looks away from him. "Nothing,"
He brushes back her hair and kisses her rouged cheeks.
"Levi," She says. There's no warmth in her voice. His name on her tongue has no meaning. .
She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs. Her chin on her knees, her gaze refusing to meet his. The flames lick at her skin, but don't burn away the shadows guarding her heart.
There's that smell again – the familiar smell of sweat and cleaning chemicals that stings at her eyes and stays burning in the back of her throat.
Life is messy. Sex especially isn't pretty. It's ugly and desperate and cheap and he still thinks after all this time that he can sweep everything under the rug. He wants to bury every kiss and caress and moment they exhaled together.
"I'm going to shower."
Okay.
He knows when to leave her alone. And when to come and when to go and when it's okay to hold her (if only holding her had been enough) because she's the one who decides when this ends.
He stares into the flames. They do not cleanse him. Only writhe against his naked skin, they want to devour him.
Only to remember they've already spit him out whole.
Levi can hear the sounds of leaving in her voice. It's faint, but there. People always leave. And that's not self-pity, that's a fact. She drew away from him, into herself.
He waits, he always waits for her. On his back – half-sleeping, half visualizing what he has to do in the morning.
The room is a mess and it digs at him like the dull end of a razor.
Bloodstains on the sheets, lipstick on a teacup, and bruises on his hipbones – it looks more like a crime scene than where they made love.
She left holes in the mask he had constructed for himself and fractured his bones. His ribcage already spilt open from the growing love he had for her.
She pads lightly across the room, naked, her hair dripping water all over his floor.
"I'm sorry for being an asshole." She wraps her arms around his lithe frame.
Levi shrugs.
They have rules. Well they're more like common-sense.
No apologizes, remember?
Proceeded by no promises, no goodbyes, and no "I love you's."
She rests her forehead against his back and it hurts how quickly she changes. Like night into day. And he has always preferred the sea of darkness that penetrated his soul to the gall of the sun.
She kisses him softly, too softly.
"What are you doing?" Levi asks slowly.
"Would it be so wrong to let me in?" Her voice is soft, but her words aren't.
She is an old wound that only hurts on rainy days. "Tell me something real."
"This is real, we're real." He whispers.
She sighs. "About yourself,"
"I…don't want to lose you."
"You're not going to lose me." He can feel her close her eyes, to breath in those words, her lashes tickle.
"Why's that?"
She has scars on only places he knows and he can hurt her, really hurt her, if he wants to.
"Is it because you don't have anyone else, because I'm all you have left?"
"I don't want anyone else." Her truth is always harder to swallow than his cruelties.