Gloves – Levi x Petra Clothing Prompt
Disclaimer: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin.
~oOo~
He wears them to wash the dishes.
Ten strokes clockwise. Flip. Ten strokes clockwise. Rinse. Repeat.
He works up to his elbows in soap suds, ignoring the dull ache that slowly settles in after being hunched over the basin for so long. Though many people have offered to relieve him from such a trivial chore, he refuses. For one, it is an excuse to get away from the disruption and chaos of everyone else, permitting him if not a few minutes to collect his thoughts and consider an appropriate course of action.
Additionally, if he wants something to be cleaned the right way a man has to do it himself.
Levi's hands are always neatly kept. He likes to protect them from developing those unsightly wrinkles, or getting bits of food caught beneath his fingernails (the very thought is nauseating) because he would never be able to touch Petra with dirty hands.
He thinks about her often while he is washing dishes. She is a soldier, he reminds himself. She has witnessed the cruelty of the world outside the walls, the death of the people she cares for; increases her own number of titan kills with every expedition. He knows that she is no stranger of that sinking, despairing twist of a knife in her gut when she is ordered to leave a wounded comrade behind, and she saves that beautifully human urge to break down in tears in favor of charging forth alongside her captain with no promise of return. She is surely a woman unlike any he has met before.
And through all of that, Levi cannot help but think Petra is still so very innocent.
Because when they are together she looks at him with such open admiration, as if he were truly capable of anything. Her every hope, dream and breath is invested in the leader of the squad.
Perhaps that is why he feels toward her a sense of tenderness, protectiveness, maybe possessiveness; such a level of attachment that should not be permitted when they know that nothing awaits them in the future except the ultimate sacrifice of their bodies.
When they die, he wants her to be exactly as she is now, without a single blemish. Petra will never know how much strength it takes Levi to brush her cheek with the back of his hand, or ever feel the invisible gloves he uses to protect her from himself.
~oOo~