Levi had determined that Christopher Evans was quite possibly the most attractive combination of genes that was present in the world as of August 22nd, 2014. There was just something about that wheat golden hair, parted to the side, with undertones of brown just barely showing through, and those lovely blue eyes, and the height, and the planes of his cheekbones, that just all came together in a fantastic manner. Levi would never tell anyone this, but he kept a picture of Captain America sans helmet in his wallet, behind his driver's licence, in the place where other people might keep small cropped photos of their children or their pets.

He was taking a quiet moment to admire the beauty of said picture, procrastinating on sweeping up and closing the shop for the night. Zöe had already run off somewhere, shouting something over her shoulder about time-sensitive bacterial cultures and how she had to get over to the lab right away. By "the lab," Levi had assumed she was running off home to her probably highly illegal basement laboratory. As he idly pulled out a half-full cup from under the espresso drip and wiped away any excess drops on the machine's spout, he wondered if he ought to report it to the authorities. Surely the Centre for Disease Control would most likely be interested in whatever epidemic Zöe was growing in her basement, but then again, Levi thought it might be a good idea to keep on Zöe's good side in the unlikely event that she unleashed biological weaponry onto the country.

Levi eyed the half-full cup of espresso, grimacing. He absolutely hated wasting perfectly good espresso; to make matters worse, this wasn't even technically a full shot of espresso, and at best he could probably only make some coffee milk. The shop wasn't technically closed yet, but there was only a half hour left for its opening hours, and if Levi were being well and truly honest with himself, he was just closing up the shop early because he was particularly tired that day and just wanted to go home and ogle Chris Evans's latest photoshoot, armed with a bottle of lotion and a box of tissues.

The bells jangled over the door, and Levi whipped around, his Swiffer held threateningly in hand (his brave little vacuum had survived the subway trip, thankfully, and Levi thought that those 1987 children's movies producers had gotten it all wrong, making a film about the most courageous tiny toaster, when in reality it should have been under the tagline "The Brave Little Swiffer." Granted, Swiffers hadn't been around in those days, but Levi was of the opinion that the world might have been a better place today had that been the case. In his lifetime, he'd gotten along with approximately 33% of the toasters he'd ever encountered, whereas he'd been fast friends with 100% of the Swiffers he'd ever had the privilege of using. His mother had told him as a child that he'd used to have a big brother, but one day he hadn't asked her before toasting a bagel, and the toaster in question ate him up bit by bit. Which was why Levi was an only child. Said toaster still resided in Levi's mother's kitchen, and though he'd been to school and was well aware that toasters did not have suitable anatomy that could be used for devouring a child, he was still wary of the machine whenever he went over to visit.

"Good Lord!" Erwin shouted, holding up his hands in surrender. "Put that thing down before you take an eye out!" The Swiffer was twitching furiously in front of Erwin's nose, and Levi had assumed a fencing pose in his sudden panic about intruders coming into the coffee shop and riffling through the cash register, crumpling all the bills and stuffing them into burlap sacks and mixing all the denominations together. That thought had Levi more panicked than the thought of actual robbers.

"Oh, it's the Professor," he said, letting the threatening pad of the Swiffer drop a few inches. "I thought you were a burglar, come to burgle me."

Erwin rolled his eyes. "More like you thought I was here to crumple up the bills in your wallet and then leave without smoothing them out." Just the thought of that had Levi's blood pressure jumping up a few points.

"Well," Levi protested, "no normal people come in to buy coffee this late at night." As an afterthought, he lowered the Swiffer fully to the ground and looked up cautiously at Erwin, who, Levi couldn't help but notice, towered over him just like Chris Evans probably would have. If he were to guesstimate, Erwin and Captain America were probably the same height, although Levi would never, ever keep a picture of Erwin in his wallet. "You're...not here to burgle me, are you?"

"Glad you think so much of me," Erwin snorted. "I came by to order something, much like normal people do at a coffee shop. Your front door says you don't close until 9 PM, and you were still in here, so I thought that maybe I could just get something, if it's not too much trouble for you."

Levi sighed, thought of the half-shot of espresso growing cold on the counter, thought about the work it would take to open the top of the espresso machine and heft up the bag of coffee grounds (which Erwin would have to hand up to him, Levi didn't have great balance climbing the little stepladder he needed to reach the top of the machine). He carefully avoided looking at Erwin's hopeful expression, balanced the inconvenience and irritation of making a new pot of espresso with the fact that he had nearly spit coffee milk all over Erwin's student's paper (although it was truly ludicrous), and decided that he was just the slightest bit in the black in the balance of the relationship.

"I've only got a half-shot left, and I can't really work wonders with that," he said, studiously looking at Erwin's forehead and avoiding his gaze.

Erwin pouted, honest to God pouted, and Levi suddenly felt the balance tip dangerously into the red.

"Fine, fine," he grumbled, gently leaning the Swiffer against a table. "I'll see what I can do, but you'd better finish Swiffering up the floor in the meantime."

Erwin grabbed the Swiffer with a huge, enthusiastic smile that nearly shattered Levi's pupils with its brightness, and before Levi could tell him to please be gentle with Sally (the Swiffer; Levi was fond of naming his appliances), began running the Swiffer over the floor in neat parallel, slightly overlapping lines, exactly as Levi had been doing. Levi watched him for a bit, nibbling anxiously at his lower lip and trying to ignore the fact that from behind, (and, if Levi were being well and truly honest with himself, from the front) Erwin Smith looked a fair bit like Chris Evans.

Levi hummed to himself as he whipped cream in a stainless steel mixing bowl, flicking in chai spice from the precious tin on the corner table into the cream, which was rapidly rising into stiff peaks. The spice sent hues of cinnamon and nutmeg through the air, and Levi took a deep breath, another, another, almost burying his face in the green-and-silver tin. When he looked up, Erwin was standing on the other side of the counter, Sally held firmly in hand, gaping at him.

"Are you...are you sniffing the spices?" he asked, almost incredulously. Levi shot him a glare, closed the lid firmly, and pushed it away from him. The cream in the stainless steel bowl was flecked with chai spice, and he carried the bowl over to the other counter, where he'd mixed the half-shot of espresso with a generous pouring of milk and some half-and-half. The coffee milk was a perfectly lovely shade of beige, and he took a spoon and covered the top of the cup with the spice-flecked cream. He hummed to himself as he drizzled a spoonful of chocolate syrup across the top of the cream, and presented it to Erwin with a flourish in satisfaction at another job well done.

"It's coffee milk," he said, pushing it towards Erwin, "and the best thing I could come up with under the circumstances."

Erwin traded Sally the Swiffer for the cup of coffee milk, and Levi watched as Erwin took a sip and looked up at him, his mouth ringed with froth.

"It's very sweet," Erwin commented, "but good. I like it."

Levi busied himself with wiping down the counters, polishing the espresso machine to a fresh shine, topping up the canisters of sugar and cinnamon, and making sure the table of spices was properly arranged. Erwin sat at his customary table in the corner, sipping at his coffee milk and looking out the window.

"I guess I get why you like the spices so much," Erwin said after a few minutes, when Levi had already recounted the bills in the cash register three times over and assured himself that they were all in their proper slots and properly uncreased. "They're nice." Erwin tipped his cup back, smearing froth and cream all around the corners of his mouth. "Maybe not nice enough to snort, but still nice."

Levi rolled his eyes at him, flapped away Erwin's $5 with some muttered excuse about how it was the last of the day's coffee and anyway he couldn't very well reopen the cash register and readjust all the bills, now that would have been a true inconvenience. Erwin smiled at him, rubbing at the corners of his mouth with his thumb, and stepped behind the counter to wash his cup. There was just something about strong, tall blondes gripping scrub brushes that Levi particularly enjoyed.

"So," Erwin murmured, reaching up with ease and placing the cup back in its place on one of the higher shelves in the cupboard, a feat which Levi had never previously been successful at without the aid of a stepstool. "I guess I'd better let you be getting back home. It's getting late."

Levi checked his watch, was astonished to find that it was already an hour past closing time. The last subways and buses would have already left, long ago, and he groaned, burying his face in his hands and mentally calculating whether he had enough money to pay for a cab home. He wondered if it would be so horrible to just sleep in the coffee shop for a night; it might be quite pleasant, surrounded by the scent of fresh grounds and lemon floor polish...

"I can give you a ride home, if you want." Erwin was fidgeting, rocking from side to side, not meeting Levi's gaze. "It's probably a good idea, it's kind of dangerous walking home late at night and that kind of stuff..."

"I suppose, yeah," Levi said, secretly grateful. He wasn't sure Sally could manage a night away from her charger, and he wasn't eager to hear her death rattle as her battery pack slowly ran out of juice and he sat by her side, powerless to do anything about it. "Yeah," he said, brightening and managing a smile. "I think I would like that."

Erwin's car was a silver Toyota that Levi almost had to take a running jump to get into, and Erwin smiled apologetically at him for the inconvenience. The interior of the car was smooth leather that smelled like good leather should, and a slight hint of the pine air freshener that hung from his rear view mirror.

The next few minutes were filled with Levi directing him down side streets and intersections, until he finally pulled up in front of Levi's apartment building. Levi reached for the door handle, but Erwin reached over and clicked the door lock back down. Levi's grip tightened on Sally as he turned to face his potential assailant.

"This is the part where you burgle me, isn't it?" Levi sighed, resigning himself to a fight to the death.

"What is it with you and robbery?" Erwin asked, arching a curious eyebrow at him. "No. I'm not going to pin you down and rip your wallet out of your pocket and crumple up all your bills. I just wanted to say thanks. For putting yourself out of your way."

"Right." Levi wasn't convinced that this was it. "And?"

He couldn't see Erwin's expression in the darkness of the car. "And...um, are you free Friday night?"

Levi stared at his silhouette, his mouth suddenly dry and Sally going limp in his fingers and rolling onto the floor. "Free for what?" he asked cautiously.

Erwin cleared his throat, rubbed the back of his head, and even in the darkness Levi could make out the golden strands sticking straight out again. "For dinner, I guess. Or for a movie. Or both."

Levi gaped at him, even though Erwin probably couldn't see him. At his lack of response, Erwin groaned and buried his face in his hands, slumping over the steering wheel. "God, I'm so bad at this," he muttered to himself. "We haven't even been properly introduced yet." He held out a broad hand to Levi. "I'm Erwin Smith, assistant professor of psychology, but you probably already knew all that stuff. And you are?"

Levi marvelled at the way his hand all but disappeared inside Erwin's palm. "I'm Levi Ackerman, professional latte artist."

A pause.

"A few weeks ago, didn't you say that Levi was the name for the Roman -"

"Oh, look at the time," Levi cut in quickly, flapping his hand at the dashboard clock. "I really must be going, thanks for the ride, really appreciated." He tugged up the car lock before Erwin could finish his sentence, and hurried into his apartment building, hunching his shoulders to hide the scarlet flush on his cheeks from the highly-interested receptionist.

It wasn't until he'd unlocked the door to his flat and had slumped down against it, tugging at his hair, that he realised he'd left Sally in the car. And that he'd never actually answered Erwin's question.