Free-Falling, a Levihan Fanfic

Chapter 5

The smell of something burning wakes him up at 7 in the morning. Sprinting for the kitchen (and almost tripping himself in his boxers), he's astonished to find Hange there, sizzling some bacon on a pan. His mouth falls open. Hange never stays until the morning and she certainly doesn't make breakfast. It's almost too good to be true. The morning light seems to make her features more drawn out like an enigma to his eyes—the way her hair is still loose on her shoulders only pulls him to want this memory of her stuck in his mind forever. A flashback reminds him of the events last night, the last of it with Levi tracing the outline of her nose as they both fell asleep. He's still trying to remember the feeling when she stops flipping the pan and realizes he's already awake.

"Oh, hey, I was about to leave, but your uncle came in and forced me to make some breakfast." Hange sips a cup of tea while waiting for the bacon to cook, her face grim. "Said he'd skin me alive if I didn't."

"Where's—"

"Yo, Levi."

He turns around to find his answer and frowns. "I told you to stop smoking in my apartment. And why the fuck are you here, Kenny?"

"Checking to see if you got any taller." The older man tips Levi's chin up, scrutinizing his nephew's height, or rather, the lack of it. "Looks like you didn't."

Levi slaps Kenny's hand away. "If you need cash for your booze, well tough luck, I'm out of both."

There's a heated stare between the two men that gets disrupted when Hange clears her throat. "Well, now that everyone's up and running, I should probably go."

She's walking sideways towards the exit when Kenny speaks.

"If you bolt outside that door, I'm sending death threats in your mail."

Hange stops the moment he says that, teeth chattering like she's seen a serial killer. Kenny dumps the ashes of his cigarette right on the coffee table, much to Levi's annoyance. This isn't how he imagined his morning to be.

Noting her scared face, Levi consoles her, "He's joking. You shouldn't believe him."

Nevertheless, Hange walks back sideways and reluctantly plops herself down on the couch.

"She knows I'm telling the truth," Kenny says as he plays with his Swiss knife, flipping the blade in and out of the handle. Hange cowers in her seat away from him.

To Levi's relief, Hange's already fully-dressed, but he doesn't like it one bit when Kenny casually steals glances from her. Putting on the rest of his clothes, he heads back to the kitchen to make scrambled eggs and toast for all of them since she burned the bacon out of distress.

After a short round of interrogating Hange about who she is and what she does (with Levi yelling "Don't you fucking touch her, Kenny!" every five minutes), Kenny stretches back on the couch, his fedora concealing his eyes. He hikes his feet up on the table, shoes still on. "Yo, Levi, be a gentleman, will you? Treat her out."

Hange intervenes before Levi can utter a response. "Oh no, I'm fine, we're just—"

"I insist," Kenny urges. "My nephew here doesn't seem much, but I'd rather you take him. Order him around. Treat him like a slave. It's my peace offering for forcing you to stay."

Levi's helping put some eggs and toast on their plates, his murderous grip on the fork ready to stab his uncle for his insults. When he hands them their meals, he mutters loud enough for Kenny to hear, "I'm not that bad as you think I am."

"Then her eyes must be that blind to think you're good enough. Since when did you become boyfriend-material?"

Hange interjects again. "Oh, we're not really, uhm—we're not officially together."