Bruised Knuckles and Bitten Tongues

You didn't come to the Survey Corps to make friends. You came to prove a point.

Eight years older than the 104th cadets and fresh from five years of Garrison duty, you're assigned to Hange's squad-stand-offish, sharp-tongued, and better at handling your own than anyone your size has a right to be.

Born in the Underground and raised in Wall Maria's foster system, you learned early that survival means keeping people at arm's length.

Then there's Captain Levi. You don't work under him. You don't have to listen to him. But somehow, you keep clashing anyway-in the mess hall, during joint training, at mission briefings where his cold stare meets your unflinching glare. He's everything you can't stand: controlled, dismissive, and maddeningly competent. Worse? He reminds you of yourself. And he clearly hates that as much as you do.

Hange thinks it's entertaining. You think it's infuriating. Levi doesn't think about it at all. Or so he claims.

Five years pass.

When you transfer to Levi's squad, you're both older. More experienced. But that tension you left simmering? It never went anywhere. Now you're stuck in close quarters with the one man who matches your stubbornness with silence, your bite with brutal honesty. Every mission is a test. Every conversation feels like a standoff. Every moment alone is dangerous.
Six years of circling each other. Six years of bruised knuckles from sparring and bitten tongues from swallowing words you shouldn't say.

The problem with fire and ice? Eventually, something has to melt.

A slow-burn enemies-to-lovers where two impossibly stubborn people finally stop fighting what's always been there.