Silver Lining | ʟᴇᴠɪ ᴀᴄᴋᴇʀᴍᴀɴɴ

Chapter 17

The next two days, my friends keep mentioning my action in the forest, and we keep teasing us back and forth. I don't get another moment alone with Captain Levi because during the day, he's gone - probably in his room - and during mealtimes, there's always someone else with us. I don't know if he does that on purpose, but trying not to think about him is now, after the kiss, even more nerve-wracking than before.

"You need to remember not to waste your energy," Mikasa lectures me.

It feels like a million degrees out here in the sun, and I wonder when the snow will come again. I only slowed down because I was losing focus because I just saw Levi's face for the first time since yesterday's dinner, which was almost twenty hours ago. He was just walking across the grounds to the stables where Oruo is, but the second I saw him, I lost balance, and Mikasa overpowered me.

Levi hasn't been at breakfast this morning, and I wonder why. I wonder why he hasn't spoken a single word to me in two days, and why I only catch him staring when he thinks I can't see, but he never meets my gaze. I wonder why he's been avoiding me for the last two days. I wonder if it's because he regrets having kissed me, having given in, having let loose. I wonder if he still wants me to talk to him. I wonder if I still want that.

Who am I kidding? Of course I want that. Of course I want to talk to him, tell him everything that he doesn't already know yet, and have him tell me things about himself. Of course I want to touch him, feel him, taste him. I want him. Of course I do.

But it's so hard. It's hard for me to know what he's thinking if he never lets his emotions show. He's always wearing that scowl, and he keeps his smile to himself. He makes it impossible for me to read him, to know if what I'm doing is okay. He makes it so hard for me. And he's avoiding me again. How is it that just a few days ago, he said that he couldn't stay away from me, but now he's managed for two whole days? Why is he avoiding me again?

Too late do I realize that Mikasa is still talking to me. She's giving me tips, but I'm too in my own head to listen, and it makes me feel bad about myself, so I stop her. "I'm sorry, I really can't focus right now," I say, and her eyes get soft as her shoulders sag. "Can I just go take a quick shower?"

Mikasa gives me a nod. "Sure. Sasha asked me for my help anyway, so then I'll be with her until you get back."

With a smile, I thank her and am so relieved that she's not mad. She probably thinks that I'm just feeling unclean and that that's why I'm unable to focus. But instead of heading upstairs for a shower, I go to where we always go for meetings because I know that's where the elders usually are when they're not outside with us.

I'm proven right when I glance into the room, but Captain Levi isn't in there. Neither is Hange, the only person who has the clearance to tell me where the captain is. So I look for her and find her in the kitchen cutting an apple.

"Hey," I say carefully.

Hange's lips crack into a smile when she turns around to look at me. She offers me a slice of apple, and I pluck it off the tip of her knife.

"Do you know where Captain Levi is?" I ask.

She blinks once, twice, three times before nodding, and I think she was trying to figure out why I'm asking, and if she should tell me. "He's in his room."

Just what I feared. So after going to the stables, he vanished right back into his room again. "Uhm, could you tell me the way? I don't actually know where his room is, and I really need to talk to him."

Hange frowns. "He's busy right now. Can you talk to me about it?"

My chest tightens. Oh, I don't want to lie to her. I hate lying to her. "I'm sorry, it's just... It's because of what happened in the forest."

Hange thinks I'm referring to my foolish rescue mission. I'm not. I'm referring to what came after that, but I know that no one else could ever guess that unless either Levi or I told them about it. I haven't, and I'm 100% certain that neither has he.

Her face changes, and she nods. I think it's pity in her eyes because she thinks I was being punished. She thinks he might be mad at me. I wonder if she thinks that because he told her that he's mad at me. Is he mad at me?

"Of course, yes. You go upstairs and then take a left. His room is at the end of the hall on the right," she says.

I bite my bottom lip to hold back my smile, then nod and thank her in a fashionable manner. I almost run upstairs, and as soon as I reach the second floor, I have to remind myself to be normal about it. To be normal about the fact that I'm going to see his room for the first time, talk to him after two days, be alone with him after two days.

I knock twice before he tells me to enter, and I push the door open. His room does not look like mine. There are no bunkbeds, for starters; there is one bed pushed to the left wall. Captain Levi is sitting at a desk, his back turned to a window in the center of the room, right across from the door, that lets in the bright sunlight. I ask myself for a second if he can see us train from this window, and I ask myself if he watches us sometimes. Watches me.

Levi's face is confused for only a moment before his cool facade glosses over it, and he leans back in his chair. "Is there something you need?"

Every fiber of my being is screaming, "Yes, I need you," but I fight the urge to say it out loud. As I'm looking at him, I don't know what to say. He takes my words away, my breath, my calmness, my sanity. He makes me have to re-learn how to breathe, speak, live.

"You don't like things dirty," I hear myself say as if I'm very far away from the source of my voice.

His brow furrows at the same time as mine when I realize what I said. I didn't know that this was so important to me that it was the first thing I had to say to him after two days.

"Excuse me?" Captain Levi asks, completely justified.

I take a step away from the door. "You don't like things dirty," I repeat, "yet you didn't care about your sleeve being soaked in red, dirty blood."

Realization dawns in his eyes. He puts his quill away, but against my expectation, he doesn't fold his arms. "You were hurt. I needed to make sure you were okay," he says calmly, rationally, almost making me believe that this is all that was. But then he says, "Everything else comes after making sure you're okay. Everything. Even dirty sleeves."

I need to remind myself to stay where I am, to not approach him any further. I can't take another step toward him because if I do, I won't stop at one step, and I'll run to him and climb into the chair with him and do things that he might not want. So I need to make sure what he wants. So I ask him what he wants.

Confusion again. In his eyes, in his face, in his voice as he asks, "What I want?" I nod wordlessly because I don't trust myself to speak. Levi tilts his head to the side. "You don't know what I want?" He seems genuinely confused.

I almost laugh. He's really fascinatingly adorable when he's confused like this, when he just assumes that I have the same gift for mind-reading that he does.

I shake my head, and my urge to laugh is gone. "No, Captain, I don't know what you want. I never know what you want, or think, or like. I know too little, and you won't let me know more, and it's frustrating."

When I realize I'm blubbering, I stop myself. Levi doesn't say anything. He's only looking at me again with those eyes that are so unreadable to me, yet so compelling and attractive. I remind myself to stand still, and I count my breaths, but I lose track of my numbers when he gets up from his chair but stays rooted behind his desk.

"I think you should go," he says in a voice that sends shivers down my spine.