Warnings: emotional and psychological abuse, gaslighting, sad stuff.

AN: commissionerfiction on tumblr.

Erna has very rarely been actually scared. Watching your family murdered in front of you makes most other horrific things pale in comparison. She has nearly starved to death, trudged through sixteen mile long training runs in full gear under a hot, glaring sun, and escaped a handful of titans' mouths, but none of that scared the shit out of her the way eight Survey Corps recruits staring at her and waiting for her to say something does.

She can't stand to actually look any of them in the face, so she looks behind the line of them at the clear blue sky, shining bright with the dawn.

She is completely unprepared for this.

"Tch," she clucks her tongue quietly at herself. She can blame Levi, though it takes two people to spend a whole day and night fucking every few hours. It's not like she wasn't encouraging him to get the riding crop from the desk and skip dinner so that she could continue to avoid doing any kind of preparation for the next day. It's not like she couldn't have gotten up a little early this morning and at least read those files to learn these kids' names instead of staying in bed until the last second and throwing on her uniform just before brushing her teeth and running out the door.

The morning sex had seemed worth it at the time.

She takes a deep breath and asks as authoritatively as she can for the recruits names, which they offer nervously. Her thirty seconds of silence threw them off already. They wouldn't be nervous if they knew what was behind her stern face - that she was thinking about how to keep breathing so that she wouldn't faint from fear. As the last in line tells her his name, she realizes that she isn't going to remember any of them. She forgets the first kid's name as soon as the last in line says theirs, and then she promptly forgets that one too. They'll all have to go by 'hey, you' for a while.

"Okay," she says tiredly, resisting the urge to rub the tension from her temples. "You can call me a Erna. I don't like honorifics." If she can get them to not call her their team leader maybe it will make it less real.

She's tempted to ask any of them what to do next, because fuck if she knows. She's apparently supposed to behave with some authority now, though, so asking them for advice isn't an option. Not that they look like they would be helpful. Her first impression is that all eight of them have the same vacant, useless look, and that fills her with dread, because now it's her job to make sure they survive if they're ever on an expedition or reconnaissance or supply run or any of several other life threatening situations Erwin could throw them into.

"Fuck," she says quietly to herself, carding her hand into her straight bangs and pushing them away from her forehead. Without hiding her exasperation at her situation, she asks the group, "What do you already know how to do?"

They side eye each other nervously at the odd question.

"Have you had any training at all?" she asks impatiently, though she's starting to worry whether this is something she would already know had she done her homework.

"A little…" one short, strawberry blonde girl answers. She has the distinction of having the only name Erna can remember because she's had more than one run-in with her. Callie.

"Yeah," Erna responds shortly, "I remember basic training too. I mean aside from how to tie your shoes and get your harness on."

She's treated to blank staring. Her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose. "Anyone been on an expedition?"

Callie raises her hand. Erna gives her a sharp look. "On a horse, not in a fucking supply wagon." Callie sheepishly lowers her hand.

"Fucking…" Erna starts to mutter until she's aware of someone coming up behind her and is distracted. Her recruits stand up straighter and salute as Levi walks up beside her.

He nods curtly at them and asks her quietly, "How's it going?"

"I fucking hate this. Take them from me."

"I have my own brats, thanks."

They both keep their voices low enough to not be heard, so Erna is sure it looks like she's discussing something professional or important when she says, "Why did you let me literally fuck around until the very last second? I'm not even a little prepared for this."

Unfairly, Levi tilts his chin down just slightly making his face closer to hers and lowers his voice to its deeper, darker tone when he tells her, "Because I'm only human. You expect me to tell you 'no' when you're begging for my dick every hour like a bitch in heat?"

Erna turns to make it look like she's meeting his eyes, even though she can't stand to, she just needs to turn her head so that hopefully her team won't see her blushing. She hisses, "Could you not right now?"

Levi smirks very slightly, and Erna's stomach sinks. "I think you mean, 'Could you not right now, Sir'." Erna feels her face heat up and turns away from him and her team, as if she's distracted by something, but she can still feel his eyes rake over her. It sounds almost sinister when he adds, "I forgot how good you look in uniform."

"Don't…" she whispers toward the ground, on the verge of tears with how hard this is. Any other time she would simply melt for him and let him hypnotize her with that dark, vaguely menacing voice. Being forced to listen to it and remain composed is torture, and the fear that these recruits who are supposed to see her as an authority might see her turned on and blushing is humiliating beyond words.

Levi shrugs and simply says, "Okay," and moves to walk away. Erna feels relieved and thinks she'll just need a few seconds for her blush to fade, and then she can face her recruits again. Her thought gets cut short as Levi walks behind her and casually spanks her, just once, but very hard. Hard enough to make a loud slapping noise and have her involuntarily jumping onto her toes as her jaw drops. She's shocked. She has to turn and look at him to make sure that just happened, but Levi is already walking away. She stares after him dumbfounded until she hears one of the kids on her team stifle a snicker. It pulls her out of her state of disbelief, and she realizes that, of course, they just saw that. She is livid. She turns back to them with murder in her eyes, and, blushing face or not, her glare scares them enough to make the few that didn't have as much control over their laughter cover their mouths so that none of it will escape.

She points at them and gives them the grave warning, "Don't fucking move," before she stalks off toward Levi, quickly catching up with him, though her moments of utter shock let him get about twenty feet away already. She grabs his shoulder, digging her fingers hard into his muscle and turning him suddenly, almost spinning him on his heel. He gives her a smug look, the kind that she would usually like in a different context, but, instead, it fuels her rage. She releases his shoulder and pokes her index finger into the center of his chest repeatedly as she rants at him, "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Those brats are supposed to fucking respect me. We're not alone, this is work, and you're going to treat me like you have a fucking ounce of professionalism somewhere underneath all… all… your… childish…" she searches for words as her anger grows so that she can barely think.

Levi crosses his arms and gives her an amused look. "You're right," he concedes, though he doesn't sound apologetic in the least.

"I know!" she says, completely exasperated with his behavior.

"Keep making it look like you're angry," he deadpans in that bored drawl of his.

"I am fucking angry!" she can't help gesturing with her hands now.

"Good," he says, as if he's coaching her through this, which only makes her more livid. "Now slap me."

She cocks her head, not sure she heard him right. "What the fuck?"

"You're right," he says, "I was out of line. I shouldn't have done that in front of your recruits."

She sees his eyes shift slightly to the left, off to where the brats are still standing, and she gets what he's trying to do. With no warning, she winds up and slaps him across the face as hard as she can with the full force of all her anger. She has to steel herself as he absorbs it, and her adrenaline rises so that she sees everything in slower motions as she watches him step back slightly, and his face turns to the side. She has to remind herself that he isn't going to retaliate so that she can stifle the urge to automatically flinch and cower and ruin all the face she just saved in front of her team.

"Shit," Levi says in restrained awe as he wipes a tiny trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Good one." He pulls a handkerchief out of the pocket of his jacket to clean the blood off of his hand as he turns to walk away and says, "You're welcome."

Erna mumbles under her breath, "Asshole…" and glares at his back for acting like she should be grateful he let her do that. If he hadn't been an ass it wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.

She crosses her arms and makes a huffing noise, watches him keep walking, and waits for her chest to stop heaving with anger and adrenaline before walking back to her recruits who are not giggling anymore, but are standing very straight, tense and wary of what she'll do to them if she's willing to slap Captain Levi, Humanity's Strongest...

"Listen, fuckers," she starts off, still very much outraged and not above defensively taking it out on them. "I don't know what you've heard already, but I will set the record very straight so that you don't have to wonder." She gestures over her shoulder with her thumb in Levi's direction. "That man," she begins very frankly, "fucks me up the walls every night and, while being the most competent and deadly soldier in any branch of the military, is also, occasionally, enough of an immature fuckstick to smack my ass in public." She watches the wide eyes grow and jaws drop. Ten minutes ago that would have bothered her. Now, she's too keyed up to give a fuck. "And I won't tolerate any disrespect from him, so you can be real fucking sure that any nonsense out of you assholes is going to earn much worse than a slap across the face."

A few recruits visibly gulp. Others shift their weight nervously.

"If you do not follow my instructions to the fucking letter, I will absolutely wreck you," she warns, no longer shouting, but her voice falling like freezing rain.

For years after this, she's going to have to wonder if Levi's actions were purely an immature impulse, or if spanking her in front of a line of recruits was a calculated and brilliant way to make her get over her nerves and give her a shot of anger and adrenaline that would help her find her voice as a leader.

She leans toward immature impulse.

Erna trains her recruits for six hours, mostly assessing what they already know and learning their names. The names turn out to be the hardest part. Assessing abilities is easy, especially when there isn't much ability there to begin with. Only one of them has any potential with the maneuver gear. The rest she figures she's going to need to teach to ride really, really fast. If they can't be good at fighting, they can at least be good at running away.

The entire time, she's preoccupied with their inevitable deaths. Even when training is over. Their ghosts already haunt her. She feels like she should talk to someone about it, because she's sure that waking nightmares about the gory demise of an entire team aren't normal, but she doesn't think any of the veteran squad leaders will really understand. The only person she can think of who is in a similar position to her is Jean, but he is a sarcastic, unsympathetic asshole.

She could, of course, talk to Levi. She probably should. Only, she already talked to him about how she felt about this when it was just a threat and not a reality, and she didn't like his advice. Not that she thought he was wrong. His advice was just too hard and real and truthful, and she needs more comfort than real and truthful advice.

After releasing her team, she goes to see what she can get from the kitchen. She'd skipped breakfast because she felt sick, and now she's starving.

Even though she's scared and she doubts herself and she wishes she could shove Erwin's promotion up his ass, there's something about wearing her boots again. They put a bounce in her step and make her walk a little taller. It feels good to have a reason to wear her uniform and to get back to a schedule. Keeping time won't be difficult anymore. She's a part of the hustle and bustle of daily activities again and won't have to check clocks to know when mealtimes and such are. It's comforting to move with the current.

She loses herself with the tide of others following a set routine, until Levi intersects with her path, stony silver eyes undetected until he's right there, grabbing her wrist and catching her up, pulling her in the opposite direction. She spins and stumbles to keep up as he tells her, "Come on," perfunctorily, like they already agreed on something she isn't aware of.

Naturally, she asks him, "What the fuck?" and tries to dig her heels into the stone. She tugs at his grip, trying to reclaim her own wrist, but he doesn't relinquish it like he normally would. He doesn't slow down, either, dragging her with him to the staircase near the castle's entrance, against the tide of soldiers heading to lunch. Having an audience makes Erna self conscious about resisting. She doesn't want to make a scene and especially doesn't want to look weak if she can't get Levi to let go of her, so she quickens her pace to keep up with him and walk beside him instead of letting herself be dragged. Even with her cooperation, he keeps his grip crushingly tight. She can feel the bones in her wrist grinding against each other.

When they reach the top of the stairs together, she looks up and down the corridor, and, when she sees that no one is in earshot, she hisses, "I'm starving. Let me go to lunch." She stops and tries to wrench her wrist out of his hand, but he keeps walking and easily pulls her along without even slowing down, and as she almost stumbles again, a wave of anxiety hits her.

He's pulled her along by her wrist before, but not like this. Never when she didn't want to go with him. Never so single-minded about it that he would keep going even if she was trying to stop. She keeps tugging at him, watching his back as he walks ahead of her, and tripping over herself to not fall to her knees every time she offers resistance to his steady, stubborn pace.

"Levi?" she says to the wings of freedom stitched on his back, the sound of it strange to her. When people live together, they lose the habit of using each other's names. Her heart starts to pound when he makes no signal that he's listening, and she says again, more shrilly, almost shouting, wondering if she should be shouting, "Levi!"

He pauses then, glancing over his shoulder at her and merely shaking her wrist as if it were a leash and telling her without a hint of emotion, "Come on."

"What are you doing?" she demands shakily as he takes her to their apartment.

"You're in trouble," he says simply, as if she should have known.

Erna's anxiety takes a back seat to sudden indignation as he finally lets her go, pushes her through the door, and closes it behind them. She turns on him and shouts, "Me? What about you? Where do you get off embarrassing me like that? I shouldn't be the one who's in trouble."

He rolls his eyes at her as if what he did that morning isn't a big deal. He gives her a dismissive, "Tch," before stepping closer. She crosses her arms and glares defiantly, taking a backwards step away from him. His face changes suddenly, the bored, blank, half-lidded expression disintegrating and contorting with spite and malice. She keeps moving back hesitantly and unconsciously, feeling cornered, and he moves toward her much faster, grabbing her up by the leather chest strap of her harness and yanking her to him just as the backs of her calves hit the coffee table.

Her fingers claw and dig at the flesh of the hand restraining her, and she kicks back at the piece of furniture hemming her in, trying to get it out of the way and give herself room to retreat.

Levi renders her struggling useless by lifting her up off her feet a little, twisting her harness as much as it will give in his fist. His tone is gloating, laced with amusement at her distress, as if she's being naive and childishly overreacting. "We can talk about your issues with how I display my ownership over you later. Right now, we're going to address your diminished sense of discipline."

"The fuck are you talking about?" She winces, the tight tug of her harness bruising her at its pressure points.

He trades his grip on her harness to take a hand and twist it behind her back, spinning her and immobilizing her right arm by bringing it up to her shoulder blades. He walks her ahead of him and ignores her shocked, outraged cries as he ticks off her offenses calmly. "Breaches of military protocol, failing to salute a superior officer, speaking informally to your Captain..."

He lets go of her hand and pushes her into the room, and immediately she turns on him, "You can't be fucking serious!"

He smirks at her, and Erna suddenly wonders if this is in reaction to her mentioning yesterday that she gets off on him being angry at her, because if not, his actions are highly irrational. She hasn't addressed him by his title in months, and she can barely remember the last time she saluted anyone except maybe Erwin and even then only ironically.

"Did you think you were special? Rules don't apply to you?"

"I thought that maybe some 'protocol' went out the fucking window when you smacked my ass during training," she sneers and sarcastically adds, "Sir."

He steps further into the room to stand only a couple feet away from her, looking her up and down. "Correct your posture, soldier. At attention."

Erna's eyes narrow and lock on his defiantly, even as she straightens her shoulders and obeys his orders, telling herself it's only out of curiosity, because this is all a little strange. She believes she's just playing along, but still there's something in her that swoons and is too easily seduced by his stern voice and the authority in his body language as he pulls rank on her. A part of her is still very indignant about her preferences being ignored, but her submissive, masochistic side quickly overwhelms those annoyed feelings, and her righteous indignation is clouded over with a servile obeisance that comes to the forefront whenever Levi does something to make her breathing slow and her pupils dilate, like backing her into a corner, leering at her threateningly, his quietly burning gaze lighting a fire that reddens her skin the way it is now. She feels her stomach drop with self loathing at how conflicted she feels about submitting to him when she knows she should be indignant and angry and resistant, and in a sick way, the shame she feels over it makes her cunt wetter. She brings her fist over her heart for good measure and says, "Hai, Captain Levi," her voice slow, syrupy, and low.

He hums deeply in the back of of his throat, a satisfied exhale of breath making a gruff sound through his nose as he advances in on her, "That's better," he says in a low rasp. Then, he turns her around to face the bed and pushes her shoulders forward until she reaches for the mattress. "But you still need to be disciplined for forgetting your place earlier."

Erna sighs deeply and playfully wiggles her hips as he starts undoing buckles to get her harness out of the way, and she decides to see how much role-playing he's willing to do if he's going to pretend to actually give a shit about military discipline. She goes stiff just as he's smoothing a hand up her back, caressing her and pushing her shoulders down slightly further, and in a sly, coquettishly teasing way, she asks as if she's shocked and nervous, "Sir?… What are you going to do to me?"

She feels the hand on her back smooth back down her spine slowly, making her shudder. "Pain," he says as he reaches around her waist and lifts her up to stand again, "is the most effective method of conditioning." His hand moves from her waist to the strap buckled across her chest, quickly, almost surreptitiously groping at her breast on the way to effortlessly release the buckle.

Erna bites her lip as if she's scared, even though Levi is behind her and won't see her face, it helps her sound more authentic when she lets out a little gasp as he pushes her back down to grip the sheets on the bed and begins to pull at the waist of her pants. "Unh," she whines anxiously, "Captain Levi, what are you…?" then she gasps again as he pulls her pants and underwear down in two quick tugs and wastes no time roughly digging his fingers into her and kneading a handful of one of her exposed ass cheeks. She cries out and curls her fingers to fist the sheets under her hands.

"Be quiet," he hisses, kneading one cheek and then the other, "and take your punishment." He stops his groping with one hand to run a finger down the curve of her ass, stopping just shy of her sex and then teasing her, sliding the finger back up and over the cheek he'd just been bruising with his harsh grip. "Or do you want to add to your growing list of infractions and question your commanding officer's methods?"

"No, sir." She makes her voice quiver. She tries to stay tense and not reach her hips back for the spanking she thinks she's going to get. She finds it easier to play at being scared as he keeps making her wait for it. Her anticipation can easily be twisted into what sounds like nervous hesitation. He keeps kneading at her and groping, pulling her cheeks apart, humiliatingly exposing her and squeezing at them, murmuring mostly to himself as if in a trance, "Such a nice ass…"

Erna nuzzles her face into the bed and waits for him to start spanking her and making her moan. She can barely hold back her pleased sighs in anticipation of one of her favorite kinds of punishment until she feels his fingers reach down and brush against the pucker between her cheeks and she yelps in shock. She pushes herself up a little off the bed with her palms splayed against it and looks back at Levi who smirks past the arch of her back at her, his fingers having already retreated. He still keeps one rounded sphere of muscle in a tight grip, while he reaches up and pushes her shoulders back down to the bed again and warns her, "Hold still and relax, unless you want it to hurt even more," and before she can ask what he's up to, his hand returns to the cleft of her ass and a single finger starts gently teasing her hole.

She whines into the sheets, not sure if she likes the stimulation of all those nerve endings more than she hates burning with humiliation at the act. She gets out a "What are you…?" before her question is cut short by her own scream at the pain of the tip of his finger pushing just barely into her.

"Fuck! Levi!" she yelps out in pained gasps.

He corrects her calmly, "Captain Levi."

"Fucking hurts!"

Again, calm as ever, he says, "That's the point." He pushes again, incredibly slowly and only a centimeter or so deeper past the tight ring of muscle. He doesn't doubt the sincerity of her howl. Since he isn't using any lube, he's not surprised that it's very painful.

Erna's nails drag the sheets down the bed. She hisses and curses at him and sobs brokenly at the painful, strange, and uncomfortable burn, but she doesn't get up, afraid that moving will make it worse.

Levi's eyes cloud over as he watches her writhe and curse, helpless to stop him. He pushes a tiny bit further, though not even up to the first knuckle, and feels his cock pulse and twitch as her hole clenches tightly around his finger, and she groans, sick with pain and indignation, before sobbing into the mattress, her whole body vibratingly tense and muscles taut and straining, but fearful and helpless to move. He keeps his finger still and leans over her to bring his mouth closer to her ear so that she'll hear him over her whimpering when he asks, "Are you going to be good?"

She hums a mangled noise of agreement, broken and ready to do or say anything that will make him relent, and he smiles to himself.

Erna wipes at her tears with the back of one forearm, and they burn. Everything burns—her face, her forehead, his finger trapped just barely inside a tight, puckered ring of muscle causing more pain than she would have thought possible. Her teeth grind against each other and hurt her jaw. She wants him to stop and was just on the verge of telling him so when he offered her an out. Promising to be good always means moving on or relenting, so she keeps humming her promises to be good, whatever that means.

He feels her relax slightly now that she thinks it's almost over. Still leaning over her, he cruelly pushes his single, dry finger deeper, now sheathing at least the whole tip of it up to his first knuckle. He sneers, thinking he could almost drink up the delicious screams that crack her throat. When the noise lessens, he teases her, "I'm waiting for a proper response, soldier."

Erna gasps and cries, but manages to say with a tremor in her voice, "Hai, Captain Levi! I'll be good, sir!" Anything to please him, anything to make him stop.

He drags his finger out of her, but still holds her cheeks apart to watch the ring of muscle tense and tighten protectively before moving a hand back up to hold her shoulders down before she can finish catching her breath. He changes his voice to as dulcet a tone as he can manage while keeping her securely pinned to the bed, soothing her humiliation and outrage with praise, telling her again and again, "You did so good, such a good, well-behaved pet," as her nerve endings slowly forget the intensity of the pain he just inflicted on her seconds ago.

With his hand against her shoulder, he waits until he feels the tension tick out of her. Though she's still moaning and sobbing, she's limp when he lets go of her and stands again. He keeps showering her with praise, telling her that she's beautiful, keeping her emotions confused while he reaches for his cock and releases it from the pants it's been straining against. He tells her again, "You have such a perfect ass," while he digs his fingers into the smooth, round globes of it again, making her flinch and yelp with renewed fear.

Erna claws at the bed, feeling raw and vulnerable and helpless, confused on top of it all, because she shouldn't feel this way with him. She's never felt really scared like this, and it's making her tongue swollen and heavy, and, even though she's breathing hard and fast, her lungs feel empty. She should probably be fighting him, but, instead, she fights with herself, because he could never be wrong. Rather, it must be something wrong with her, but the word she's never said escapes her lips anyway, and she rasps with a closing throat, "Stop." Even though it's quiet and simple, that word is the first shot fired in a war in her head. Because how could she? She's supposed to trust him with all of her, and that feeling is, as ever, louder than self preservation. Guilt over asking him to stop rushes in like a wave, drowning the pain and anguish at her core that made her say it in the first place, and under his rough hands she's a conflicted mess, but she says it again and again. "Stop… stop…" while she buries her face in the mattress to let the sheets soak up her tears.

He soothes her, saying "Don't worry, I won't do it again," without letting go or turning his intent gaze away from the beautiful curves of her hips and thighs that buck under his hands.

She only struggles weakly, still too inside herself and disoriented by shock to struggle with conscious effort. It isn't difficult for him to hold her still with one hand gripping the side of her ass while he taps the head of his cock against the other cheek, making the flesh indent and jiggle. He slides it over the smooth skin, letting go of a quiet, low moan at the filthy sight of his precum smearing over her and leaving a wet trail behind.

After pushing and prodding some more at her round, plush cheek with the almost purple, engorged head of his weeping cock, Levi lets go of it to fill his hand with the muscle that tenses immediately under his violent grip, and he pulls her cheeks apart again, moving his hips to let his cock rest between them. Erna starts to fight weakly, then harder as he keeps pushing and sliding his cock up and down the cleft. He ignores her and stays focused, not even hearing her when she asks him what the fuck he's doing. He pushes forward and his hips hit her thighs, knocking her forward onto the bed before she can try to stand up. He grabs her aggressively, squeezing the luscious, white cheeks of her ass around his cock tight and sliding between them, fucking the maddeningly smooth, curvaceous flesh and watching the head of his cock just peek out the top of her cheeks at the end of every thrust.

Erna turns around as best she can to look over her shoulder at him, and she cranes her neck to be able to see his face. He looks like he doesn't even notice; his eyes are intent on only one part of her body as he pants and grunts and presses the pads of his fingers into her like he's holding on for dear life.

Erna grunts angrily as she tries to get up, but he holds her in in place with a tight grip on her ass, and she can only look back at him and let out a mystified, "Levi, what the fuck?" with her brows knit, indignant and exhausted, but at the same time grateful that at least he isn't hurting her anymore.

His response is to dig his fingers harder into her flesh and keep sliding his cock back and forth while deadpanning, "What? I would fuck your tits, but you don't have any."

"Fuck you!" she spits back.

"Maybe I used your needy cunt too many times yesterday and I got bored," he muses as calmly as he can in between grunts as he thrusts harder and squeezes the flesh in his hands tighter around his cock. She starts struggling, calling him a fucking prick, trying to kick him, but he just keeps looking down at what he's doing, gripping her tight, knowing that she's basically helpless to stop him. He closes his eyes for a moment when he feels his climax creep up on him, making his hips slap her harder and erratically with a wild urgency. "Fuck… Fuck…" he pants while she's still trying to fight him and calling him every unflattering thing she can think of. When he opens his eyes again, he's roaring and looking down at his cum spurting out over the cleft of her ass, settling into the arch of her back and pooling in the cute dimples at the base of her spine.

He keeps watching, almost hypnotized as his cock twitches with aftershocks of his intense orgasm, until a disgusted and annoyed voice tells him, "Get the fuck off me." He quickly complies, letting go of her and stepping back. He shakes the fog from his head, wipes a sheen of sweat from his brow, and tucks his cock back into his pants while telling her, "Hold still. I'll clean that up."

Erna makes a grumbling sound. She doesn't want him to think that she's going to obey him. She wants him to know that she knows what just happened was not okay. Only, out of practical consideration, she also doesn't want to stand only to have cum drip down the backs of her thighs. She huffs to herself as she listens to him leave the room and run the water in the bathroom. She thinks she should stand up and go take a shower instead of letting him clean her off, but, before she can decide, he's back and gently wiping her skin clean with a washcloth, and it's impossible for her to believe what happened minutes ago was real. Whatever that was, it wasn't the Levi she knows. The careful hands pulling her clothes back into place and nudging and gently drawing her up onto the bed to rest are more akin to what she knows of Levi and the transformation is so abrupt and dramatic that as he smoothes his hand over her hair she has to look up at his face and ask, "What the fuck was that?"

He shrugs and caresses her forehead, rubbing the confused wrinkle between her brows away. "Wanted to try something new. You didn't like it?"

She finds it harder to stay angry at him, even though minutes ago she felt like she was being attacked. How could she snap at him for it now when he's being so gentle? She pouts and wipes at the drying salt on her cheeks. "It hurt," she complains almost feeling bad and selfish for complaining about something he apparently liked. "It still hurts," she adds truthfully, wincing at how her backside is still aching with a dry burn.

Levi reaches down for the sheets and pulls them over her, saying "Most things I do hurt you, and you usually like them."

He makes it sound as if she's being irrational, and deep down she wonders if she is, because all she can answer back with is, "It's different…"

He says, "Okay," as if he's talking to a child, smirking at her as he tucks her in.

She squeals defensively, wanting to justify her feelings, "I told you to stop!"

"Must not have heard you. I'm sorry."

He lies down next to her, and she lets him wrap her up in his arms, because she feels fragile and needs him to hold her until she can calm down and put the pieces of herself back together. She doesn't harp on what happened anymore, because he apologized, and, more importantly, she doesn't want him to stop holding her.

Her brain feels fuzzy as the events that just happened run back through her head and she tries to remember what exactly happened and make sense of it against how comforting Levi is being now. It had seemed like he was really trying to hurt her, not in the way that they both normally consent to, but more twisted and cruel and sinister, but now he's cuddling with her, and she doesn't know what to think, except that maybe her perception of what was happening before was wrong. Did she really tell him to stop? Or did she just think it? It seems so unlikely that he would keep going like he did if she'd actually said it. The confusion makes her more tired, and she closes her eyes, though not before remembering one thing in particular that he'd said and asking defensively, "Do you not like my tits?" seemingly out of nowhere.

"What?" he murmurs into her hair.

"You said I don't have any," she pouts.

"Was teasing you." Then, he squeezes one and assures her, "I like them small."

"They're small?"

"Come on," he moans as he shifts and gets more comfortable. "You knew that."

She'd actually never thought about it. If anything, she thought she was pretty average, but now she's looking down at her chest and wondering.

"Your ass makes up for it," he says, and he reaches for it, but Erna flinches and pushes his hand away, still sensitive and wary. He settles for wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer instead, murmuring, "I love your thick thighs."

Before he can drift off on her, Erna tells him sternly, "Don't smack my ass in public ever again."

"No promises."

"Leviiii," she whines, shimmying back against the pillows and sitting up. She looks down at him, and he opens one eye, peering up at her with a slightly annoyed expression. "I'm serious," she tells him, crossing her arms. "Don't do it if you ever want to see my ass again."

Levi turns to lie on his back and puts his hands behind his head. He gives up on trying to take a quick nap, and his face turns cold. "Think about whether you really mean that," he says, not looking at her, but up at the ceiling, "And be careful about giving me ultimatums."

She says his name again, softer this time as her stomach sinks. She wasn't that serious, she thinks, at least she didn't think he would take it so seriously. "I didn't…"

"If you would leave me over something that stupid, then you can just go now."

Erna's eyes nearly fill up with tears all over again just at the thought, and she has to choke back a sob. "I would never… I'm sorry…"

Levi is unmoved, still expressionless and gazing up at the ceiling when Erna curls herself next to him, clinging to him and whispering through a tight, constricted throat, "I love you. I don't want to leave."

"Good," is all he says as his hand reaches for her hair and smoothes her mussed curls. He lets her whimper and cling to him, putting an arm back around her and pulling her in. "Rest a little longer," he says, "and I'll get you some food and water."

She sniffles quietly, apologetically nuzzling against his shoulder, and she whispers, "Thank you."

"Are you still in any pain?" he deadpans.

She lies and tells him no.

….

Author's Note:

This is yet another thing that was intended to be just part of a much longer chapter, but sometimes I guess I just hit what seems like a good spot to end. Also I've been really busy with social stuff, which I hate. Soon, hopefully, I can go back to being an antisocial hermit who has lots of time for writing.

Thanks everyone for all of the support. It is, like, crazy important to me. I can't even express how happy I get when I see a review or when I get a message about one of my fics. I feel so lucky that people like this thing and encourage me to keep writing.