Archive of Our Own

Erwin chats with a student with several dozen pins on her bag and to another in a too-big suit while he waits for the rest to show. As always, it was an even split. For some, stats is required. For others, it's a curiosity, potentially a field of interest. It wasn't difficult to suss out the two camps. If he was lucky, they would all leave his class with the enthusiasm of the latter. 

Apart from the usual bustle of the first day of an undergraduate course, the introductory lesson passes like any other. 

They do their customary day-one introductions as groups. Erwin asks that they sort themselves however they wish and present together. Aside from alleviating the anxiety of the usually solo exercise, it gave everyone the opportunity to reflect on their sorting and connect their thoughts to to the discipline they would study. Erwin was accused by his peers not once of straying too far from the curriculum and dipping into other departments, but he couldn't understand divorcing mathematics from society, from reality. They were inseparable. 

One bold student sat apart. His wedding is this weekend, and he wagered - successfully - that no one else shared his date. For all of Reiner's boasting, he reddens a touch at the rounds of congratulations, and pleads jokingly with the ceiling for clear, cloudless skies.

Erwin slumps in his chair when he comes home to his apartment. He sheds his jacket. It's too hot. He checks the weather. It will rain all week.

He looks over his lesson plans. He eats leftovers. He rubs a stray ache from the stump of what remained of his right arm. He looks at his lesson plans again, considers revising something for the sake of it, but knew it would disrupt the following lesson. It's too hot. He takes a cold shower. Sometimes, it helps. FIfty-fifty.

He would have preferred numbers to fly before his eyes like in the shows with the detective or savant on some impossible case. But maybe it's for the best. He was neither. 

The shower doesn't help.

Erwin dresses, measures his temperature and notes it along with the time and day in a small black notebook before sitting by an open window. He could ignore it. It's only a mild discomfort. It would pass like all the others. 

He watches a mother zip up her son's winter coat. Erwin rests his forehead against the cool window frame and considered removing his thin, damp undershirt.

He hadn't meddled in weeks. Weather was easiest to slant, given enough time. Tapping into its potential variability was so effortless that Erwin needed only to consider it hypothetically for the annoying flush to start in his chest. He considered vividly imagining the chances that a purple elephant appears at his door within the next ten seconds just to feel the accompanying chill of a zero probability event. 

But the man's husband had wanted to see the botanical gardens. They'd only moved to the city within the year, he'd explained in the class. The gardens were top of their list. Then, a walk by the piers.

And it isn't entirely selfless. Early spring rain is bitterly cold. He'd need to imagine the probability of train delays just to warm up in the trek between his building and the nearest station. Then, inevitably, wait for his delayed train.

He breathes out, gives in to the pressure. It aches, like a stiff, long-clenched fist at last opened. He marks the time in the notebook. 

Erwin shuts the window as the cold begins to sting. He takes his temperature again and marks the progress of the aggressive rash that had begun plucking at his left shoulder. This time, at least, it started in a less embarrassing place. 

For a full week after the wedding, no conversation with, beside, or in the general vicinity of Reiner could be had without mention of it. His joy was infectious. 

Erwin went to bed that week satisfied, yet irate. He couldn't prepare for next month's mathematics conference each night as long as he'd like with the persistent sting at his shoulder. It should have passed by then. Erwin dozes fitfully. He'd forgotten to eat dinner.

Levi watches the thin line in his skin weep red droplets. It won't do that for long, he thinks. He'll heal, because he wills himself to. 

And he does, just as he'd expected. 

Minds are curious things, but Levi's more curious than most. He hates it most days, but at times like this, when he'd got his ankle trapped between the side of his trolley and a sharp metal door, he's more than happy to be different. 

---

The first job of the day is to check that he has enough equipment, but even before that he has to dim the lights. His janitor's closet is more of a room filled with cleaning supplies, so unlike most, his lights are bright and fluorescent. But they hurt his eyes, so he stands on the table, as he does every day, and touches the bulbs. Each time, he thinks about them dimming, and each time, they do.

When he was 16, and he'd first been in romantic love (platonic love had always been more important, but this was nice too), the boy he'd been kissing, he'd been touching, had been thrown across the room by his very own weak little teenage hands. How was it possible? 

The boy had at least... forty kilograms on him, and about a foot and a half. But Levi had lifted him and thrown him like he was nothing. 

Later on, he'd realized that he'd been thinking about doing just that, about lifting him up and throwing him on the bed. It's not his fault his brain takes everything so literally, he'd told himself as he apologised over the phone for what must have been the fiftieth time. 

His special interest at the time had been 70s music, but it was quickly replaced by superhero comics. They were the only people he knew of who could do the things he did, who could lift up three times their weight, who could run as fast as the wind and heal even quicker. Even if they were fictional, it still helped him process the fact that he was even more different than he'd initially thought. 

"If you asked me, I'd lift you up. Save you having to stand on tables, get 'em all dirty like that."

"They're not dirty, and you know that." Levi smirked, jumping down to the ground. Mike smiles back, before sniffing the air. 

"You were hurt."

"It's better now."

"Let me take a look." Mike walks over to him, his suit making that awful crinkle-swoosh noise. 

Levi holds up a hand. "Maybe later. I'm... Not good this morning."

Mike nods. "I understand."

---

After he's checked and double checked (not triple checked because odd numbers are as uncomfortable as dirt on his shoes) that he has 

enough supplies, he sets off with his trolley. 

First stop is always the bathrooms. There are exactly twenty three on campus, thirteen in the main building, five in the art and music building, and the additional bathrooms are scattered across the rest of the grounds. 

He hates cleaning them, because even students of this age don't always know how to clean up after themselves. However, because no one tends to use the bathrooms during lecture time, Levi can go as quick as possible. 

There's never any questions about how he does a twelve hour task in ten minutes, mainly because every single nook and cranny of the toilet cubicles are sparkling when he's done and also because they don't pay him enough. 

His yellow gloves are too tight on purpose, the pressure of them coupled with his headphones create sensory heaven while he scrubs at other people's filth.

After the bathrooms are clean, he helps the cafeteria staff set up, lifting the heavy boxes of food with ease, and engaging in idle chit-chat with them. The ladies are all straight, so while he lugs the crates about, they flirt with him, eyes drinking in the sight of his bulky muscle and pretty-boy face.They might as well be barking up a lamp post with how wrong they are to be flirting with him. But he lets them, because it's funny to hear all their cheesy lines and shameless suggestions. He's an asshole, but he's not so nasty that he won't humour them.

And then it's the first session of the day - that is, Levi's impromptu therapy sessions. A tall, sweaty boy is practically having a breakdown outside his closet, and because Levi never knows what to do with them, he takes him inside, pours a cup of tea. It seems he's anxious about a wedding or something, so Levi gives him the best advice he can - to just go for whatever's worrying him, because if he doesn't he might regret it. It's a line he uses frequently, he'd overheard one of the teachers use it a few terms ago. But the combination of Levi's gruff tone, the tea, and his advice seems to calm the boy down. 

---

"One day you're gonna do that, and someone who ain't me is gonna see it." Mike isn't like him, but he accepts him for all of his quirks. 

Plus, there's always a little tension between them, something Levi rarely picks up on properly. It's the result of a shared childhood and a small town with very few gay men. 

Levi drops the cabinet on the floor. "Shit, you scared me. I could have broken that."

"'s your own fault. Should have locked the door" he grins. 

"Nah, people normally knock when they want to come in. There is a sign, after all." 

Mike curls his burly frame over Levi's work bench, noticing the list of orders to be placed. "Why'd you want medical supplies. You becoming a nurse?"

"I'm not qualified to be a nurse." Levi says blankly, before it processes that Mike was teasing him. "It's just... during term time, it gets harder to heal. I need all that shit just in case my body fails me."

"I see." Mike sniffs, before looking back up at Levi. "Can I at least check your ankle now?"

Slipping off his white trainer and rolling up his trouser leg at lightening speed, Levi presents his ankle for Mike to look at. "Just don't touch me."

---

It's the first day of term, so when Levi gets home, he's expecting the meltdown, borne of sensory overload and pure emotional exhaustion. When he was a kid, people would stop in the street and stare at him when it happened, tutting at his mother for having no control over her 'tantrum-prone' child. Now he's able to keep it in, just for a little while, although after he has to clean up the blood from his ankle, and all previous injuries he'd healed up. 

He slips under his favourite pastel blue blanket, and switches on the TV. His electricity had been cut off a few months ago, but luckily it's one of the very few things he doesn't have to touch to be able to manipulate. 

This continues every day for the next couple of weeks. It's boring, but it's life.

Erwin chased a classmate as their chaperone gave them a few more minutes before lunch. Winded, he bent over with his hands on his scratched knees and caught commotion by the trees. Another classmate teetered from above.

His breath caught still more at the height of the swaying branch. He bounded to the chaperone, eyes welling as he called for help and covering his eyes in despair at the sound of snapping wood. 

The dusty little daredevil skipped right past him as he opened his eyes, and even their chaperone couldn't muster the outrage to discipline her through their relief.

He didn't think anything of it that another teacher filled in for the rest of the day, not until his own was nowhere in sight the next morning either. On his way home, he passed one assistant telling the other about the teacher who had broken her leg coming down the stairs the other day.

-

He took two trains and a bus to visit his father after the end of every class day. His humor about the whole thing eclipsed Erwin's own. He asked him when he planned to bring someone home. Whether that one hardass professor in the too-big suit still had it out for him. He joked about the weather.

That's what had put him in the violently spotless room with all its metallic odors and shades atop shades of white and pale, sickly blue. He'd forgotten his umbrella one too many times, he said. He'd grow incensed at Erwin's attempts to explain, to apologize. He'd order the guilt off his face until his own reddened at another surging, pneumatic cough.

There was no explaining it. He wouldn't hear it. Even when he recovered, that door remained shut. It wasn't Erwin's fault, he said, as if saying made it so. As if Erwin hadn't wished desperately for his cold to pass before a calculus final. As if it hadn't done just that.

-

There is always an equal and opposite reaction.

It began immediately after the alteration. Maybe simultaneously. It was no magic of the Saturday morning cartoon variety - wishing for intangibles like world peace or impossibilities like a third arm changed nothing.

It was no accident that Erwin's search for answers led him to mathematics, but it had been a winding path. In university, he'd taken classes in physics, biology, even anthropology and religious studies in an attempt to find any framework at all with which to understand what he had done, what he could do. Whatever force allowed Erwin to make his - often, unwitting - alterations, it was no less electromagnetism than it was bacteria or chi. 

There was no giving up. Even after he graduated, and even after his father passed from complications with his heart and lungs. Erwin had no reservations about his role in it, none that he could have lived far longer had it not been for him. 

He'd looked at the overcast skies as he left the funeral with his mother. The earth beneath his feet was still damp with rain. 

After months of recording in now-weathered notebooks and experimenting with the weather - the least destructive playground, if the alteration was a mild one, and the most easily measured - numbers began to show him what nothing else could. With enough data, he could predict the opposite reaction. Not always. Not even accurately. But it was something. It was a start. 

He soon added a body thermometer and a full length mirror to his instruments. There was one more thing he needed to know.

-

Office hours were slow the next day. They always were when the semester began. Erwin looks up from his conference notes, taken for a moment by the motion of dust in a ray of afternoon light.

Its movements became even more interesting when his door swung sharply open. 

His graduate teaching assistant saunters in with a passing "Hey" and a wide yawn.

Erwin sits back and twirls his pen between his fingers. "Late nights so soon?"

Ymir falls gracelessly into a chair and looks around as if searching for something before landing a glance at him. "You look like you haven't checked your email."

Erwin's brows knit. He unlocks his phone and checks his inbox.

He stares. "A break-in."

In the chemistry labs, no less. The notice from the university chief of security was sparse and ended with a curt solicitation for any information staff may have related to the incident. 

There was something else. Ymir doesn't just come to chat about current events.

He prepares himself. "Did you-"

"Nope."

"Then you know who-"

"Nah."

Erwin looks up. The day Ymir pops into his office for an idle chat would be the last. He pockets his phone and crosses his arms.

"Just figure it's a shame," she says innocently. "Losing all that expensive equipment."

"I had no idea you changed your major to finance."

"Fine, who cares. But everyone's gonna care about who ropes this guy."

"You're suddenly interested in my reputation?"

"Not everything's about you," she scoffs. "Mine, of course." She scratches her arm. "With...minimal help."

"Minimal."

"So you do all the work-"

"Naturally."

"-and I...make all your students go to your math talk thing."

"All three hundred twenty four?"

"Uh, half, I said at least half, pay attention."

Erwin glances at the time, and then at Ymir, legs kicked over chair arms and toothpick chiseling at her teeth. "This has been thoroughly entertaining," he says, putting his lesson notes into his bag and praying this goes no further, "but I'll need to prepare for my next-"

"You said you wanted to help people," she says. Erwin stops. "Can think of a lot of dumb shit some freshman could do with those barrels. If it's even a student." She rises, stretches, and heads for the door with a shrug.

"I dunno, do whatever. Just funny that a guy giving a talk on pushing the limits or whatever is gonna pass up a perfectly-"

"Wait."

She pokes her head back in, expectant. Erwin sighs and runs his hands over his eyes. "Give me a day."

"Cool." She moves to leave.

"And Ymir."

"Yeah."

"Three-quarters."

She scowls. "Fine, fine," she says, and closes the door behind her.

Erwin throws his bag over his shoulder and heads downstairs to get some air. Of all the people to have connected one too many dots in the trail of coincidences in his wake and assume in him some Sherlockian intellect, it had to be someone as opportunistic as she. 

To be fair, it was half a blessing. He taught her senior undergrad course only a year prior. Her calculations were consistently solid, but she never cared to show her process. Of others, she demands the same. 

He passes the janitor on the first floor with his usual hello and finds a spot on a bench outside.

She isn't perceptive in all things, at least, if she expects Erwin to overlook the chemistry textbooks in the hands of the shy girl she'd become inseparable from whenever Erwin chances upon them. It's an innocuous enough motive. 

His interest in the break-in blooms as he digests the chief's notice. Something so short suggests redaction, which suggests severity. He'll have to pay a visit to a friend after class. 

Erwin rubs his shoulder. It stung a fraction less than before.

"You're usually a very good employee." Bullshit, he's the best. 

"Now, I'm willing to overlook this one mistake if you'd do me a favour." Levi knows he made no mistakes, he's just cheap labour that's 'easy' to manipulate. 

"Your affliction, I hear, lends very well to observation. That is to say, perhaps... Well, we'd give you a slight bonus if you were to make sure that nothing else goes missing and that this equipment is returned."

Levi finally looks at the man's lips, watching him say those words as he pretends he's vaguely interested in this mock offer. 

"Sure, boss." The words fall flat out of his mouth, it would have perhaps been more convincing if he'd told him to fuck off.   

--

He zips through cleaning that day, rushing more than usual to do it. Whilst fiddling about with a broken pipe in the bathrooms, he discovers that if he scrapes the side of his thumb with the lid of his spray can, it's a very good way of grounding him from his anger. 

It's even better when he gets to the cafeteria, as the cardboard box full of cutlery is soothingly rough, the texture of a teabag.

"'Sup with you?" Her name is Annie, and she's one of the few students who aren't completely terrified of him. Because of some past trauma that neither of them want to acknowledge, she's very similar to him in terms of outward personality. Inside, he feels, she must be sharper, colder. Like ice crystals on a half-bloomed flower. 

"Missing equipment is somehow my responsibility." he says, stocking the trays with knives and forks - they must be in even numbers. "What's up with you?"

"Same." Annie responds. 

Levi frowns in confusion. "You mean the dean is going to pay you under the table to find the person who did it, yet he blames you for it anyway like a fucking prick?" His hand returns to the side of the box, not wanting to lose it in front of the only people who can tolerate him.

"No, I mean that I got questioned today because I hang around with a dodgy crowd. I bet Ymir's been questioned too." she replies, shaking her head. She clutches a book tight to her chest, and Levi wonders what a girl like her is actually doing in a place like this. Annie isn't the academic sort, she's more of a hands-on type of person. 

"Not meathead and sweaty betty?" Levi can't be expected to remember the names of every single student. They're lucky if he can give them a nickname. 

Annie shakes her head. "They're knuckling down. No drinking, no nothing."

Levi wonders if it might be worth having a word with Ymir. If he remembers her correctly, she's a tall soft-butch girl who's vaguely reminiscent of one of the people on the student council. 

--

The camera footage is rather uninteresting from the night of the theft. No one is anywhere they shouldn't be, and he's relieved to find out that he doesn't show up while running about. He's faster than the rate of frames per second, it seems. 

Taking his cue from old detective shows, he decides to relax with a nice carton of grape juice, imagining himself in some sort of film noir. 

"Why don't you ever drink anything stronger than that? God knows you need it." Mike says, moving from the door frame where he'd been resting for the past half a minute. 

He sniffs the air.

"You smell tense. Did you see Pixis fucking a hooker?" he asks, gesturing to the TV. It's paused on a particular frame, a random one, one of the younger, more attractive professors undoing his shirt slightly. Levi knows it's wrong, but he has a very nice chest. 

He shakes his head. "No, just decided to take a break from my normal duties and do the job the security team should be doing. On account of my 'affliction', I'm being paid to solve the missing equipment thing by the dean."

"Your affliction? This," Mike flexes his arms,"or the other thing?"

"The other thing."

"Oh, shit. That's rough. Surely you could sue him for--"

Levi shakes his head again, crunching up the empty carton in his hand. "By the way," he says, throwing the carton perfectly into the bin. "I drink that shit because it's cheap and it tastes like fruity tea."

As he stands up to change tapes, Mike gestures his hand for him to stop. 

"One more question." 

"Ask away."

Mike stares at the screen. "Why did you pause it on Erwin Smith?"

Levi looks at him blankly, before realizing who Mike means. "Oh, the professor? No reason really. Nice chest, 's all."

"He just looks really shifty. I mean, I say this as someone who kinda knows him. He looks like he's...done something." Mike remarks, frowning slightly. "Do you think he's sleeping with someone he shouldn't be or something?"

Switching the tape off, Levi just shrugs. He has more important things on his mind. 

--

"I hear he's looking out for the person who did it too. You two could be like... Starsky and Hutch. Or some other detective duo." Mike shares with him over lunch on Saturday. He bites noisily into his slice of pizza, Levi wrinkles his nose up at that. 

They're hidden away in a small booth near the back of the place, Levi requests that one specifically because he gets anxious eating around other people - the sound they make is disgusting and it puts him on edge.

His burger slips out of the end of his buns, Mike laughs at his string of curses. "You're kinda cute when you get all pissed off at small things. That's why that receptionist likes you so much. She saw that time when you punched that door off of its hinges."

"Petra? She ain't interested in me." Levi says, rescuing the patty from his cardboard box. Looking up at Mike almost shyly, he questions. "Is she?"

"Yeah, who isn't? You're quite an attractive guy, even if you do look like a thug."

"What if I don't want to be a guy?" Levi raises an eyebrow. 

Mike squints at him for a minute. "You'd still be an attractive girl."

"No, I mean like that bio professor... They're not... gendered." 

"Oh, I see. Well, if that's what you want to be, then go for it. I don't know much about it, but if it makes you happy..."

Levi smiles slightly. "I guess I just don't really care. I could have been born with any parts or no parts at all. Don't most people feel like that?"

"Levi, I think I'd die if I didn't have my dick." Mike says, and even he can tell he's teasing. 

--

The dean was right, Levi being autistic means he does notice things. 

Number one is that Professor Erwin Smith seems to have some sort of serious skin condition, along with his missing arm, judging by the amount of time he spends inspecting his own chest. 

Number two is the amount of beneficial accidents that seem to be appearing across the school. He'd never really noticed how damage to the school and his subsequent repairs affected the students. About ninety percent of them seem to make the school, or at least the mathematics students, travel or work more effectively. Like the blocked off corridor being opened up due to some sort of leakage in the main one, it made the hordes of kids walking to and from class go a hell of a lot faster. And the music room being closed outside the main maths hall, according to some of Levi's more favoured students, made all the difference in a recent test. And-- Well, all Levi knows is that someone is up to something. 

He checks the website for a list of maths professors and TAs who might be capable of doing such things. The only entry that stands out is a certain Professor Smith. 

Occam's razor comes to mind. 

He tells Ymir that he'll keep an eye out, but not to expect a return.

His skin was clearing. The bathroom lights flicker over his arms, his neck. Only a light flush remained.

When he'd begun to experiment with his capabilities, he understood that his body could act as a shock absorber. he can lessen the opposite reaction.  body heated up, fevers, rashes. one especially significant change had left him bedridden for days. he couldnt quite put into words how he did it. it was a little like holding his breath. he didn't have to do it. but he couldn't imagine passing on the consequence of his meddling onto someone else if he could help it.

He left the bathroom and crossed the campus to the sciences quarter. the door to the bio lab protested at his push. things tumbled to the floor however gently he swung it open. 

Hange looked up at the commotion and waved from across the lab. Erwin passed a half dozen grad students eyeing dishes and making notes and crossed his arms. 

"No take-backs," he said.

"I know, I know, just one last..." Hange trailed off as their already hurried penmanship hurtled across the page in a script intelligible only to them. They finished with a flourish and frowned at Erwin with a hand on their hip. "How long do I have to wait for you to get ready?"

Erwin shook his head with a smile as Hange threw on a jacket and followed him out of the building.

They found a bench overlooking the east lawn and warmed their hands on coffees they'd grabbed on the way. The clouds rumbled. 

"I think everyone's just bored. Long semester. The steal isn't lethal on its own," Hange said of the break in. "But yeah, I'll keep an eye out."

"Thanks, Hange."

"Funny..."

Erwin waits. His reading glasses fog as he raises the cup to his lips.

"That makes two of you."

"I don't follow."

"Just a rumor. Some janitor from the Nuemann building's been snooping around here." They winked. "Could be competition."

A siren wailed through a distant street. He was no stranger to Nuemann. It hosted most of his classes, and in some semesters, his office.

"I'll need to deliver this dire news to Ymir," he said. "Unless the thief is hiding in the spine of a book, I'm outclassed."

Not necessarily, but he would rather not risk the half dozen fevers he'd need to tolerate to even the odds. He couldn't imagine anyone more predisposed for the job.

Then again, the scales would again be in Erwin's favor should the trail lead not down the university food chain but up. Few knew the chemistry wing more than its chemists, and above them, its deans and department chairs. If he were in an optimistic mood, he could almost imagine something like a partnership.

He wasn't.

Back in his office, his vision swam before his conference notes. He took off his glasses, the clatter of them against the desk like gunshots. He'd begun to doubt Ymir's play at selfishness. This really might be an attempt of hers to give him an opportunity to do more than clear a hallway or raise a few GPAs.

It was an open secret until it was nearly national news. He'd become too comfortable. Trying to minimize the draw of a new miniseries or a night on the town a week or two before finals was innocuous enough from professor to student. That changed when he was actually successful. 

He should have kept track of the rising grades, especially when he'd become so practiced that he could convince nearly a dozen more students each semester to crack open a book without breaking out into too great a fever. Not only did most finish well, but a record number of undecided majors went on to declare mathematics. 

It earned him a spot on the university's website and up to three calls a week from professors and journalists hunting for their imagined holy grail. 

"We small men must not walk on concrete poured for giants."

The words drip off his tongue like lead, the chair feels hard under his body, although he doubts that Mike is as uncomfortable as he is, given the relaxed way he's sat. Each scrape of his chair legs frustrates him, for reasons he can't communicate. He flashes a glare at the offender, who sheepishly shrugs. 

After a moment of silence passes, it finally seems to dawn on Mike that Levi had spoken a moment ago.

"You what?" 

Levi gives a half smile. "Kenny used to say it a lot. Don't know what it means, but it sounds good, right?"

Mike nods in agreement. He's sat halfway across the room, lack of lights turning his ashen hair brown and his usually bright eyes dark. 

It fits the mood.

The buzz of the electric is too much, too loud and inside his head. Levi stands to touch the box on the wall, it's full of switches and plugs and who knows what else. His concentration does the trick. 

"I don't know what to do. Too much is happening, and it's all in his area. Everything, every damn thing that happens, I can trace it back to him."

The look that Mike gives him means nothing, but it's quickly cleared up by the words he speaks. "You need to talk to him."

"Can't you have a word instead?" Levi feels as though he'd be intimidated by a man like Erwin Smith, and how he reacts to intimidation isn't very socially acceptable - not that he's very socially acceptable anyway. Regardless, he needs a guy like Mike, a man's man, one who knows Erwin anyway, to talk to him and use his trust to figure out what the fuck is going on. 

"I'm not the guy-- Well, I'm not being paid to do anything except for teaching. Which reminds me... Class in five minutes." Mike stands. "See you later. Burger?"

Levi sighs. "Sure, maybe." He's undecided on whether he'll be free later on. 

He might need to have a very difficult conversation.

--

Rubbing his temples - the pressure is strangely relaxing - Levi begins to think he understands what Kenny meant. 

He's read everything he can about Erwin, all about his perfect students, his perfect teaching career, his perfect fucking everything. 

Surely there must be some cracks in his perfection, some cracks in his concrete. 

Clay, maybe, clay feet. 

There has to be something solid, Levi knows, that connects Erwin to all the strange things that have been happening in the school. He's sure of it. 

In all the detective books and films he's seen, the main character always has a reason to suspect someone, whether it be evidence, or a shitty alibi, or... just something to push his finger in his direction. But Levi doesn't have any of that aside from the fact that Professor Smith seems dodgy as hell, and everything weird seems to happen near him, aside from the break-in. Which is, coincidentally, also being investigated by Smith. 

"Fuck, what are you up to?" he mutters to the profile on the school website. 

--

After most of the students have dispersed from the halls, scattered across the campus grounds like beads from a broken necklace, Levi makes his move. His computer has access to all staff timetables, since he needs to know when classrooms are empty, so he knows exactly where his suspect is. 

The door opens, and with his coat hung over his arm, hair slightly ruffled from stress and a large hand run through it perhaps, Erwin steps right in front of Levi.

"Hey, you." 

Erwin is taller than he seems, a good foot or so higher up than Levi. He also seems rushed, but that's not any of Levi's business. What is his business is how every issue he has at this university relate to the man in front of him.

"What do you know about the break-in? And why is it that every accident, every problem in this hallway, on this campus, in fact, all benefit you and your classes? Is it to do with the fact that your classes are all doing suspiciously well?" Levi wishes he'd asked.

Instead, what comes out is a gruff "What do you know?".

When the look of surprise, of possible confusion, flashes across Erwin's face, Levi clarifies. "We need to talk, and we need to talk now. You're really fucking suspicious."

Erwin has the sense to invite the man into his office before saying another word. He needs those precious few transitory seconds to still his spinning head. 

They enter his office. Erwin shuts the door with a slow swing, a soft click.

This was the Nuemann janitor - the excessively forthright Nuemann janitor. The tactic may have been in the service of startling answers out of him, and maybe Erwin imagined a passing flare of disappointment when it didn't quite work.

Erwin came to his desk languidly. There was no rush, no panic. This man wasn't the first to question the flush of luck around Erwin, and he wouldn't be the last. 

"Please, have a seat," Erwin says, expecting idly that the man would stand on his head to spite him from the long-marinating disdain in his accusations. These weren't things he'd simply come across earlier in the day. He'd been watching him for some time. Studying him.

"Levi, is it?" Erwin asks, because it was only fair to be clear that he'd also done his homework. "Exciting to see you branching into private detective work. Don't let Dean Reiss stiff you," he adds conspiratorially. 

Street lamps wavered and bled into one another from beyond his blackened window. 

"Always did find it charming whenever someone - and you're not the first - accuses the maths and probability department of having too much good fortune. No one accuses the arts halls of being too beautiful, or engineering to be too efficient." He raises his hands in defense with a wry smile. "It's not a perfect analogy, I know." He lowers them, one to his seat rest, and the other to his desk.

"I won't waste your time. We're after the same thief. Myself, in a less formal capacity. A T.A. of mine with nothing better to do promised to convince students in the department to come to my conference talk in exchange for bragging rights. That's it," Erwin shrugs. "The entire, sordid story. Two, potentially three can corroborate."

Erwin observed him as he spoke. He has intelligent eyes. They had briefly taken in the room around him before watching Erwin with a rare intensity that his uninterested expression couldn't entirely disguise. He is going to be a problem. 

Erwin had always known there would never be a way for anyone to attribute his alterations to himself with physical evidence. Even the occasional mark that appeared on his body whenever he overexerted himself was too inconsistent to use against him. He would know - he'd catalogued every one he'd ever had. Only if Erwin himself dearly wanted, needed, to convince someone, anyone, would he succeed.

Then it was a surprise that the man across from him inspired more foreboding  in Erwin than even the prospect of being discovered. Foreboding - and interest. He couldn't say which was worse.

"And if this, frankly, hobby, of mine interferes with your work," Erwin says, deciding that a packed venue was not nearly enough to tempt something as lethal as interest, "I'd be happy to let it go. Just say the word."

Rain began to patter against the glass. He stands. "If there's nothing else, I should go." He checks his desk and scanned the room for an umbrella. 

"Look at that," he says, empty-handed. "No luck."

Levi watches Erwin through narrowed eyes, how his mannerisms betray the fact he must be covering something up, they're too calm and restrained. 

It's not right. 

He does as he's told, taking a seat because he's curious about how Erwin will wriggle his way out of all this. Levi wouldn't be surprised if this had happened before, if someone had come to him with accusations of cheating or something similar, and he'd shut them down with a charming smile and a promise to never be naughty again. 

Anger courses through his veins, he wants to kick something but settles for swinging his leg, hands rubbing against the lizard-like plastic of the chair arms. 

With his eagle-eye vision, he observes how Erwin's long eyelashes sweep over his peachy skin. He watches the twitch of his pulse in his neck, and the bob of his throat. 

It's doubtful that much about Erwin is real, perhaps even his name is an extension of his lies. (Levi doesn't really believe that, though it sums up his perception of the man in front of him).

After he's finished with his probably rehearsed speech, Levi decides to speak.

"Your skin condition... I know a doctor who can help. It's funny, it seems to get worse when all that weird shit happens."  

The average person might not have any evidence, or reason, to link the two things together, however, Erwin fails to take into account someone who notices patterns in everything. 

Levi has linked the coincidences to the improbable - now he's found the pattern, he refuses to let it go, inconsistencies be damned.

There's something in the back of Levi's mind that's been whispering you're the same, and as much as he tries to ignore it, push it away and call it irrational, he's beginning to wonder if it's true. 

His heart beats loudly in his chest, his limbs buzz with fear. If this backfires - Erwin is smart enough to figure out what he's saying, after all - he has no idea what might happen. 

"You ever seen me do any work?" he asks, slowly.

Erwin doesn't hide his surprise at the observation, though he couldn't find a reason to, were he even innocent. 

He could feel the cloying itch on his back - well away from Levi's eyes. He had been increasing the odds that the man would be inclined to reveal more of his intent - his true intent, whether or not he himself knew it.

For a chilling moment, he imagines that Levi knew what Erwin was doing to him, could somehow feel it in his skin or at the back of his head like no one else ever had. Erwin can't understand how else he could draw the connection between Erwin's alterations and his skin. Erwin only ever checks on the occasionally severe flare up at home or, rarer still, in his locked office with drawn shades. He supposes connecting his time in his office to sunny skies or a faster-than-usual repaired elevator could yield some minuscule correlation, but even that little connection would take months of unyielding observation to conclude. 

This is too personal. This isn't about some break-in.

The rain falls harder. "You've been watching me more closely than you've lead me to believe."

Then, that question. That slow, ponderous question whose every word was at once understated and emphasized. In truth, Erwin had never given the man's work much thought. There was only so much time in the day but for a passing hello in the morning and a good night at the end of the day. 

Maybe he needn't chase his own tail. There's a change in the man. His anxious fingers and swinging leg betray him. He wants to talk. 

Erwin's back aches. The sensation spreads across his ribs. 

He takes a seat, one nearer to him this time, but not so near as to crowd him. 

Low, just over the hum of city traffic and evening rain, he asks, "What are you trying to say?"

"What do you fucking think I'm trying to say?" Levi asks. He stands, and the faint glow of twinkling lamps illuminate his face, disdainful expression as apparent as his inability to converse like a normal person. He was so certain that Erwin would figure it out straight away. 

Instead of leaving, though, as he wants to, he gives in to the voice that's now screaming at him, the one that's leading him to believe that Erwin is in the same sinking boat as he is. 

He looks down at the man in front of him and feels an immediate rush of adrenaline. This whole scenario is as scary as it is exciting because as he thought before, there's no telling what might happen to him. He edges backwards to the door, shaking his head. 

Even if Levi is right, even if Erwin can affect his environment in some way, there's no reason for him to tell him about it. 

But on the other hand, this might be an opportunity to find someone that's similar to him, that can ease his painful loneliness. 

Taking a deep breath, he runs. 

He's little more than a blur as he moves from his place by the door to the other side of the desk, in less than a second.  Then he lifts it up with a single hand, showing off just a tiny bit. There's no point in holding back now. 

Whether it's because he's showing off, or because Erwin is affecting him in some way, Levi doesn't know. But neither of those things take as much of a toll on his body as usual, and he sets the desk down with a small smirk. 

There's more than anxiety fluttering around inside, though, there's something else that he doesn't have a name for, an ache in his body and an itch on his skin. Levi isn't so sure he likes it.

"You're like me, aren't you?" He might as well be asking the floor because his eyes are practically boring holes in it. His gaze barely falters, he can't bring himself to look at Erwin right now. "You're making me itch."

Erwin stops influencing him immediately. He'd risen in his shock. 

You're like me.

There were no trick wires, no sleight of hand. This is his own office, his own desk. He knew precisely how heavy it was from needing to haul it out every few years prior to general repairs to the office.

"How much do you know?" Erwin asks. The desk came back down. 

"About this," he said of the desk, of his strength. He drew nearer. "Or that," he said of the rain. At his gesture, it ends. 

Erwin stares. He couldn't believe it. He'd bid it stop as an afterthought, without expectation. At the least, it should have taken several minutes to obey him. 

At his bidding, it starts again just as quickly.

He returns his attention to the man, content with one mystery at a time. His heart beats a painful staccato against his chest. He'd never met someone like himself before. He never imagined it was possible. He'd never even dreamed. 

"Are there more? Like us? How did you know I could-" He stops when the man grows visibly restless at the volley of questions. But there is something else.

"I'm sorry. Is it gone now?" He asks. He'd stopped pulling all his strings. The rain and the evening and the man were all their own. "The itch?"

Levi sits on the desk, legs swinging again because he doesn't know what it means when Erwin stands. The potential consequences of what he's just done terrify him. Thoughts buzz in his head like a swarm of wasps on steroids, it's almost enough for him to have a meltdown. The prickling of his skin doesn't help, venomous caterpillars crawling over his body. 

He chews on the skin around his thumbnail, watching it bleed only to heal it just as quickly. Erwin would probably be less than pleased if he started bleeding on the desk. 

Erwin probably wasn't too pleased to begin with. This had started off as an interrogation about something official. Now it's more than that, more personal and strange and Levi has clearly overstepped his boundaries. 

That deep voice though, calm and steady as he asks the question, causes Levi's head to jerk up again. He stares in shock, trying to figure out what he really means by it - just curiosity or something more. Maybe he was right, maybe Erwin is like him. 

How can one man have so much power, though? Erwin seems to be able to manipulate everything with a simple gesture. Why hasn't he used that power for a more selfish reason, like becoming really rich, or finding a wife, or getting a better job? 

It makes no sense. 

Levi thinks about how he was slightly stronger, slightly faster, in front of Erwin. Maybe it works both ways, maybe the fact that they're both gifted increased their power or something. 

Each of Erwin's questions makes Levi feel more uncomfortable, more like he's expected to know things he doesn't. Plus the itch seems to sink deeper into his skin, making it difficult to focus on much else. 

The moment that Erwin does his... thing, whatever it is, it feels as though his body has been cut out of an incredibly itchy jumper. It's wonderful. 

"Yeah, it's gone... Thanks." he answers. His gaze settles on Erwin, feeling like he has no choice but to maintain some sort of eye contact with him. It's intimate, almost, what they've just shared. 

"In answer to your questions, I don't know shit. Don't know much 'bout myself, or if there are others or... Yeah. I'm clueless. I figured it out... I don't know how. You just seemed shifty, you know?" He smiles a little, trying to make it clear that he's not being mean. Quickly his expression turns back to being blank, as usual. "You don't have to tell me, but... What is that thing you do? Is it just like... magic? Or something else? My thing is like... zero-range telekinesis. I'm not actually strong or fast or good at healing, I'm just moving things with my mind while I'm touching them." He offers a sort of dry laugh, knowing that this whole situation is surreal. He's never experienced anything like it. 

The only person he's ever really had to talk with is Mike, but Mike didn't have any particular abilities aside from his sense of smell, which wasn't the same as what Levi and Erwin shared. 

He thinks back to how much he observed of Erwin, how much makes sense now he really knows that he was right. 

"This is so fucking weird." he comments, shaking his head as he looks back down at the floor. "'M not actually sure this is really happening." Levi admits this honestly, he never imagined anything like this ever happening to him. 

He stares at Erwin again, forgetting that sometimes he can seem very intense when he looks at someone. The lack of his right arm is something that Levi's always been curious about, so he asks. "What happened to your arm? Is it to do with your thing, or...? I could try to grow it back for you." Levi curses how awkward he sounded, he's sure it wasn't appropriate to say any of that. "Sorry, I'm just... not good with words."

Erwin schools his face, though he wants sorely to scowl. He's toying with him now. Regrow an arm? He glances again at the desk, as if enough staring would reveal the trick, the magician's secret. But he lets the flush of indignation pass, and sees no cruelty in his face, no attempt to lie, not even to tease. 

It was nearing midnight. This was officially too much. Erwin can't imagine keeping his composure for much longer. 

Slowly, he says, "I think it will benefit us both to sleep on this. Approach this with...with a clear head in the morning."

For a moment, the man looks like he means to argue, but he shrugs noncommittally and steps out. When Erwin follows, locks his office and turns, he's nowhere to be seen.

He waits for his train for a miserable half hour. He takes the same path, sits in the same spot. Puddles dot the roads and artificial lights flicker from overnight shops as he steps out. It's all so ordinary. It's obscenely routine. He's tempted to forget what he'd just heard, what he'd just seen.

He spends more time than usual treating his burns in front of the bathroom mirror. They never ache like this, spread like this. Wearing a shirt was agony. 

Erwin can't quiet his mind in the stillness of the night. The sheets chafe. The night is first too warm, then too cool. There was another. Another like him. He wasn't alone.

It can't be coincidence that influencing him took a far greater toll on his body than if it had been anyone else. Erwin loathed turning his mind on people, but he'd had enough experience - comforting a student or two, intimidating a mugger - that he knew this wasn't normal. His attempt had lasted not thirty seconds, yet its opposite reaction suggested not seconds but hours. 

He turns in his bed with a groan. Somewhere, tires screech on pavement. 

Erwin quickens his morning routine to fit in a bit of research on what he'd heard the night before. Zero range telekinesis is nothing he's ever encountered outside of fiction, and true enough, there's little to suggest otherwise before he must return to campus. Anything he wanted to know, he'd need to know from Levi himself. 

The man he needs is in his office before he set his things down. Levi comes in without knocking, takes a seat without prompting. A tape unpaused. 

But Erwin is lucid now, and better prepared. He asks more questions, demands more answers. He doesn't expect a life story, and doesn't get one. The man answers only so much before he rises like his chair has at once sprouted nails, and paces the room.

Erwin is interrogated with as little restraint as he afforded Levi while he examined his office, and he, too, gives him well short of an autobiography. A resume of a stranger variety. Levi makes indignant noises at the mention of the various repairs and happy so-called accidents that peppered the building. He moves incessantly at some points, and at others in rapt stillness. Erwin himself shifts in his chair so often that he becomes self conscious of it, as much to do with the inferno on his back as Levi's questions. 

The unbroken gaze breaks. An open offer is repeated. He interrupts both Erwin and himself not once to offer help with an eye at his back, at his less-than-an-arm. At, increasingly, the feverish flush on his face. 

Erwin refuses outright. It doesn't seem the man means him harm - he has plenty of opportunity with or without Erwin's consent - but it wasn't quite the time to make him understand why Erwin needed the discomfort, the lack. That, and he doubted the process was as neat as the movies suggested.

Levi demonstrates on a small scrape on his hand. It was pretty neat. 

He returns the next morning, and the one after. He never stays long, and when he's gone, Erwin can think of little else. No one else.

He complains once about Erwin's chairs. Erwin replaces them.

He doesn't make an attempt on Levi again. No one had ever felt his influence before. It could have something to do with his sensitivity to texture and sound. It could be connected to his abilities. These were only curiosities, so Erwin doesn't ask. 

He doesn't ask many things. He learns from Levi's jumping leg and his broad selection of frowns what line of thought is or isn't safe to pursue. Erwin himself skirts questions he isn't fond of. 

He relents, just once. Levi catches him outside and walks with him to a class in another building. He must have winced one too many times, because Levi offered again to help him.

"I make them appear," Erwin says. "The marks. The fevers."

Levi drinks noisily from a juice box, but otherwise listens.

"I practiced in front of a mirror for years. Can't just find an empty junkyard and direct the opposite reaction there. I need to keep myself accountable. To prevent-" He couldn't go on. 

"It has to be me."

Erwin receives a less than coincidental visit from a colleague of Zoe's. Zacharius leans against the doorjamb and makes friendly conversation as Erwin wonders what Hange put the poor man up to this time.

"Well, I'll be seeing you," Mike says, and Erwin pretends to return to grading exam papers as Mike pretends to leave.

"Oh, one more thing."

Erwin sighs. "If this is about the samples-"

Mike snorts. "Zoe found a freshman. No, was wondering if you've seen Levi today."

Erwin looks up, because the air changed. Mike is good at playing casual, but he's made his error. Erwin never mentioned Levi to him, never made it known that they knew one another. 

"He's on his rounds. Not sure he'll want to be interrupted."

"Not what I asked."

Erwin leans back. "This morning, briefly."

"In here?"

"On the moon."

Mike shrugs. "Just curious. Guy loves his routines. Then, suddenly, he's somewhere else."

"People change."

"Yeah." Mike makes his way out. "He's a good guy," he says over his shoulder, and it sounds a little proud, sounds a little like a threat.

Erwin is treated to an indignant no when he asks whether Levi spoke to anyone about him, about them. He mentions Mike. Levi's face darkens.

Mike doesn't visit again.

Ymir volunteers to draft a guest lesson or two to give Erwin time to prepare for the fast-approaching conference. She asks not once how much he knows about their bandit. 

Its not a great concern of his, but he'd be remiss if he didn't chase Levi's leads. Levi had held off questioning them himself. Erwin doesn't need to ask why. 

He does offer to do it himself, and though he expects little to come of it, small, throwaway tangents start to manifest into something actionable. Witnesses. Scuff marks. Items not precisely where they were before. None of it possible to see unless one knew how to look. Levi knew how to look.

He spends his mornings in Erwin's office. If Erwin is late, he lets himself in.

He found another like himself, and the earth still spun. The sun hasn't plummeted from the sky. In record time, their conversation moved from the existential to coordinated indictments of the choices in the downstairs cafeteria. The extraordinary became normal. They became normal. 

Levi is crass and speaks in circles. Not once, he left in a barely contained fury for no reason Erwin could understand, much less whether he himself was the subject of his ire. But Levi returns. 

It's a shorter walk from Erwin's office to the kitchen than from Levi's. Levi leaves a tin of tea leaves and a pair of cups in one of Erwin's cabinets. 

Over the next few weeks, Erwin puts at ease the occasional irate dean or teaching assistant who lengthens Levi's routes by staying behind past normal hours and disturbing his work as retaliation for some imagined slight. He gleans their names from Levi's grousing and doesn't tell Levi - doesn't want to insinuate that he wants anything in return - but the looks Levi gives him when he finishes so early that he catches Erwin before he leaves the campus are suspicious enough.

It isn't one-sided. Levi demands he spare himself his fevers and stop altering things Levi could fix himself in minutes. He grudgingly adds the obscene amount of sugar Erwin likes in his tea when he starts to bring Erwin's to him as well as his own.

Levi glares now when the first drops of rain make themselves known on the windowpanes and promises terrible things if they disappear too quickly before he could find him an umbrella. 

Erwin waits for him now. If Levi's held up by a supervisor or on a late train, the lack stings like a physical burn. They know little about the other that isn't tied to making the day pass a little easier. It's new. Erwin has friends, has had assistants and T.A.s. It's different. 

New and different are distracting.

The conference is in the morning. 

Street lights flicker in the streets below as Erwin runs his hand through his hair and reads through his presentation again. There were too many inconsistencies. He should have written more, written better. Worked more often with Hange to thread the needle on the role of probability in the human body. He needed to be better, to write and publish and speak and connect to someone who knows something, anything. He grips his hair. He can't be alone. He can't go on knowing nothing about himself, knowing nothing about why he can do one impossible thing but not another. He needs to know why he couldn't make him better. 

He jumps at the loud thump on his desk. Levi stands over him. He must have been trying for his attention for some time. 

Erwin doesn't meet his eye. He rests his elbow on his desk and throws his head in his hand. "Good night, Levi," he says.

Levi doesn't go. "What did you do?"

Erwin looks up at the shock in his voice. He looked likewise stunned. Afraid. At the corner of his eye, Erwin catches sight of his hand. He holds it up, then to feel his peeling, bloodied face. He's burning. His right eye has darkened. 

"I don't know," he whispered. His words slur. The pain floods in, as if being seen by another makes it real. 

He'll miss it. He'll take a leave of absence and make up some hopefully-plausible excuse and he'll need to wait an year for the next one. He must have been inflating the odds, unwittingly, that it would go well. There was no chance of that now. 

"Could you..." His head began to spin. "...find a nurse?"

"I'm not going anywhere." Levi says what he hadn't needed to before. For the first time since they became something more than just two strangers, he's finally admitting the truth out loud. He doesn't want to leave Erwin alone, mainly because his body seems to be practically decaying - a vision that Levi usually only sees in his dreams - but also because Levi cares for him in a way that he rarely cares for anyone. They're friends. 

He doesn't notice if Erwin speaks again, he doesn't look to his mouth to process whatever words drip out like blood.  Levi's hands press on his shoulders, and he uses all his might to heal him, picturing the skin and tissue reconnecting and sewing itself up. Levi opens his eyes to a wonderful sight, Erwin's body unblemished and restored to its former state. He doesn't dare do anything to his arm. 

The blood on his shirt isn't Erwin's. 

"Shit--" Levi's hands fly up to his nose and it flows through his fingers, red rivers moulding into the creases of his skin. 

He can't heal it. 

He can't make it stop. 

"Stay there, stay still." he commands, sluggishly moving to the nearest box of tissues. It's part meltdown, part overexertion. 

Levi had gambled on something he'd been thinking about for a while, and while he'd been right, he'd also bitten off more than he could chew.

"When I'm around you, I'm faster... stronger..." he says, wiping and sniffing til he can taste metal in the back of his throat. "I wouldn't have been able to heal anyone else like that. It's you."

"But I've never seen you like this." He kneels in front of Erwin, trying to maintain eye contact. As much as he feels uncomfortable doing it, there's a part of him that wants to stare into the icy blue of his eyes forever. 

He thinks about how much has changed between the two of them, how much he alone has changed. There's a silent prayer that Erwin has changed too, that he isn't as guarded as he once was, that he trusts Levi just as much as Levi trusts him. 

"What did you do?" he repeats.

His head lolls. The pain suffocates. 

But the sensation suddenly lacing into his skin is unlike anything he'd ever known. He gasps for breath as if emerging from a freezing lake, his eye caught on his own hand that had risen in surprise, the hand which time favored by knitting shut in seconds what should have taken weeks. His fever, exorcised. 

His hand rose, then, to his face, still-bloodied but whole. 

"How-"

Levi roots him to the spot with a warning and a glare before stemming the tide from his own nose. 

But he explains how, and Erwin is left with a dozen more questions and the certainty that he'd been an absolute fool. All this time, he'd kept Levi at arm's length. Recently, there'd been a bend at the elbow - but only just. 

He'd been so wrapped in the particulars of his own abilities that he hadn't considered whether he might discover more from him.

Levi kneels to hold his eye and asks him for a part of himself and still, a part of Erwin recoils at the idea. He'd lived with this alone for so long that he wasn't overjoyed anymore that he could share himself, all of himself, with another. He was afraid. 

Levi, for all his determination, sways slightly on his knee and presses the tissue harder against his nose. Erwin sinks to the ground and wills him to his own chair, and spares a thought for how endearing he looks in the giant thing. 

Maybe it's more appropriate, their positions reversed.

"I don't know," he says to him, and he could barely hear it himself. His skin tingles still. "The conference - I've just been overthinking. I..." Don't worry about it, he wants to say. It won't happen again. Good thing you were near.

"I tried to help someone," he says instead, and goes on before his mind catches up. "With this," he gestures weakly at his own head, "and I knew I could do it. I'd done it before." His mouth opens and closes. His throat wouldn't work. The muted bleating of heart rate monitors crawl on his skin, in his ears. 

"And this," he says at the reams of papers and folders and hard drives, "this is to-" He stops, sits and rests the back of his head against the desk. "-to understand why I couldn't."

Levi looks like he might say something, but Erwin goes on. He'll never feel so stupidly open again. He may as well close the chapter. 

"It was before I could safely decide the opposing reaction."

He moves the remainder of his right arm. He hears years-old squeals of tires and metal. "So fate decided for me."

Erwin waits for ridicule, for condescension. It's no less than he deserves. Levi's bleeding stops, and Erwin's nape burns. 

Levi can't understand Erwin, and he's not sure he ever will, even now he knows more about him. 

Is that the reason for his incessant self harm, then? Is that why he deems himself so worthless? 

It wouldn't surprise him. 

Of course, Levi wants to hear more details, wants to know exactly why Erwin has become obsessed with figuring out the answer of why he couldn't, instead of thinking about all the things he can do. But that's a conversation for another night, one with less blood on Erwin's part, and more energy on Levi's. 

Without thinking about it, he reaches forward to touch Erwin's face again. However, this time he doesn't intend on doing much more than brushing gentle fingertips along his newly healed skin, inspecting the flakes of blood as he pulls away.

"You're filthy." he says, his voice bordering on a murmur. His heart is racing, his fingers feel tingly, and he can barely bring himself to be kinder, to admit that he's sorry he couldn't help sooner. "You need to stop doing this. I can't always be around to look after you." And you need me to look after you, he almost adds. 

He stands, finds the box of tissues he'd set down a few moments ago, and makes his way over to the jug of water that stands beside a pair of glasses. There's an almost imperceptible twitch of his lips as he recalls how his glass always finds itself on the right-hand side of Erwin's.

Two tissues folded together become saturated with water, and he pulls them back out of the jug. 

"You'll have to change the water in that jug after this. I'm not drinking tissue water." he says, his toes flexing in his shoes. He kneels by Erwin, pulls his face closer so he can wipe at the flecks of blood under still-bloodshot eyes, the dried rivers across his cheeks down to his chin. "You're a mess, Smith." 

As Erwin's eyes close so he can get better access to the skin around them, Levi considers touching his face more, not with the tissue but with his hands. There's a dull warmth in his chest, pressing against his ribcage and pulling him towards Erwin. He's sure his heart is beating so hard he can see it making his top move, he's sure his mouth is visibly swollen because his lips feel like they're vibrating with the need to be pressed against another set, preferably the set in front of him. 

"Maybe you should say you're sick, or something. I could say that I forced you into it, maybe I found you throwing up and nagged you til you decided to go home." Each word is carefully measured because he's not sure which feeling is behind it. Levi knows he cares for Erwin. But he never knows the names of each emotion until it's too late, until he's buried in the pit of anger with bloodied knuckles, or wallowing in the pathetic dirt of sadness - greasy hair and a sore stomach from too many meals eaten. 

Or the strange fluttering of love, with its shaky hands and warm cheeks. 

He pulls away before his gaze lingers for too long, before his hands move as he truly wants them to. He takes a seat and sighs. "Whatever you do, make your mind up quickly. I'm exhausted." He feels physically comfortable right now, although emotionally he's far beyond the point of being a wreck. 

Resting his head against the back of the chair, he yawns softly. There's a part of him that's surprised he hasn't shut down yet, that his mouth hasn't become as heavy as lead and his eyes as avoidant as repelling magnets. But then, around Erwin, Levi always seems to be full of surprises. 

Erwin opens his mouth to protest when the tissue first sweeps along his jaw, but he doesn't think it will be of any use. It never was. 

"I can't," Erwin says. He wonders how to make Levi understand.

"Exposing myself, what I can do, it's too dangerous," he says. "If the government knew, it would make me its weapon before the sun rose." He looks at Levi with one eye as his movements across his face slow. "You too, I suspect."

"I want to understand myself - and you - on my own terms," he says as Levi sits opposite him. "I can't abandon that."

Erwin touches his own face. Every mark was gone. All of it. "I'm sorry for losing control like that."  

He watches Levi yawn. 

Erwin stands and helps him up. "You should go home. Rest, take tomorrow off. Tell your supervisor you stayed late taking care of some accident or other in here, and I'll corroborate." He smiles ruefully. "Not that it's untrue."

He spots streaks of red on Levi's hands and wipes them away. Erwin's hands linger on him a beat too long and Levi, as particular as he is about touch, doesn't pull away.

When he goes to bed that night, he's not as rattled by the thought of the conference as he imagined he'd be. Still, he tosses and turns.

Erwin feels the shadow of a touch on his face, remembers a searching look. He falls asleep.

The thought of washing his hands plagues Levi til early the next morning.

When he got home, he'd been unable to cope with his emotions. What he'd seen, what he'd felt, had been far too much for him. 

Out of all the people that could have lost control of their powers, Erwin Smith is probably the worst possible candidate. 

After all, if he can't control it, what hope does Levi have? 

With his hands held out on his lap and his blanket draped across his shoulders, Levi falls asleep again. It's not restful, but it's comfortable.

Something about being sentimental, something about the touch of another.

---

The pipe connecting the cafeteria kitchen's sink to the main drains is leaking, a small puddle dripping out of the cupboard underneath. The cafeteria staff haven't started setting up yet, but Levi knows he's under pressure to fix it rather quickly. That makes his hands move faster than ever - not to fix it, no - but with anxiety. It's a simple trick, bouncing his hand up and down against his leg like he might be slapping it. But it stops the lights from being too bright, stops the hum and chatter of the ladies in the kitchen from being too loud. 

Mike was right in his earlier observation.

"Hey, Levi, is it?" She knows his name, it's obvious, but still, she pretends she isn't sure. She'd been walking past the cafeteria, clipboard in hand. 

"Yeah?" He has grease on his cheek from where he'd wiped his hand earlier, hair stuck to his forehead slightly. What could she possibly want from him?

Petra smiles softly. She is pretty, Levi can't deny that. The small gap in her front teeth, the creases across her neck, and the mole on the side of her face only add to the character of her peculiar brand of beauty. But she's wasting her time in asking him on a date. One of the few things that Levi has always known about himself is that he isn't interested in women. 

"I've wanted to talk to you for a while, now. You know how it is, though, always stuck behind a desk." She's apologetic, hand tapping across her collarbone. 

"Yeah." 

"Um, Mike mentioned you like burgers, so I was wondering if you wanted to grab one with me during lunch." Petra seems a little more relaxed once she's mentioned Mike, as though it gives her permission to do this. 

"I'm busy during lunch." he answers honestly. The problem is that he would like lunch with Petra, she seems nice. He just doesn't like her in the way that she wants. 

Petra nods, a little too vigorously. "Sure, just let me know when you're free, okay? You always seem to be hanging around with Mike or-- Oh, my god. I've put my foot in it massively, haven't I? You're with--"

"I'm not. But I--" Levi almost chokes on the words, and it kills him. The confusion that had settled down last night is now back with a vengeance, threatening to bubble up from the sickly pit of his stomach and splatter on the parquet floor. 

Petra nods again. "I see. Well, that's... I mean, I'm sorry for putting you in such an awkward position." She offers him a nervous smile, and he feels very sad for her. 

"I'm sorry too. I'd still like lunch with you, though, if that's..." His hand bounces on his leg again.

"Sure. Well, you know where I am."

After the awkwardness fades away, in time with the clip-clip of high heels, Levi finds he's rather happy at having made a new friend. 

---

"How are you feeling?" 

Levi settles on the edge of the desk, at ease with its owner.

"Have you eaten? We could get burgers." he presses, voice struggling to break free of its usual monotone. "There's a place nearby."

He swings his legs, hands swaying more freely now. "How did the conference go?" He knows it was in the morning, didn't have a chance to find out from anyone else. "What was it about?" Again, he knows vaguely, but details often escape him. 

Levi doesn't want to bother Erwin with all the questions buzzing in his head, the tight feeling in his chest, so he says nothing after that. 

Erwin is taken aback at the flurry of questions, having just processed who had hopped up on his desk. His mouth works uselessly for a moment before he smiles and watches his swinging legs stir the fading evening light. 

"It was all a little too exciting for an old man," he smiles. "I only hope I've planted an idea." 

He tells him about the hall, about other speakers. Though he shared his talk with Hange as their guest speaker, their audience seemed amenable to their ideas. Entertained, at least, at the prospect of examining theorems in relation to neurochemistry. A lot of scribbling and scratching of heads. Plenty of bemused, cutting questions. It was a lot to take in. 

He'd only come back to the campus to gather a few things from his desk, but he didn't mind the intrusion. He didn't mind Levi.

"I'm sorry again about last night. Are you feeling better?"

He doesn't want to linger on the night before, but he replays it in his mind too often to let go. He and Levi change when they're near one another. They can be more. 

They have burgers against a perfect, scarlet sky.

Over the next week, Erwin returns to form and examines everything he and Levi had found of their thief. For days, Erwin tries to convince him to try something new. Something they, alone, couldn't do before. 

Once they were sure their half dozen suspects were within walking distance, Erwin raises the chance that their thief would walk in during office hours, and drop a pen. Levi stood by. He touched his fingertips to Erwin's temples before the fever grew too wild. Without him, Erwin wouldn't have attempted to raise it by this much even with a team of medics in the next room. It has to work.

A student came in to chat. A staffer peeks in to ask about a schedule. No pen. Office hours, in a few minutes, would be over.

Then, a rap on the open door. Leonhart.

"Come in," Erwin says.

She moves her hair from her eyes. "Think a date's wrong on the syllabus."

Erwin feels Levi's eyes on her as she flips open the stapled pages. Dangling precariously between her little and ring finger is a blue pen.

She shows him the page, and he apologizes for the mistake. 

She makes a curt sound in answer and uses the desk to cross out the incorrect date and write in the new one. 

"Thanks," she says, impassive, and moves to the door. Erwin shares a terse glance with Levi. Footsteps echo in the hall.

"Hey-" Annie snaps as someone knocks into her.

"Move it, A plus," Ymir grouses. "Hey, Erwin-"

Levi is on his feet. "Freeze."

Everyone follows his gaze to the floor. At Annie's feet, the blue pen.

Erwin sighs. She hadn't been his first guess, nor second. Maybe because she was one of his. He was hardly unbiased. "Annie, if you could have a seat-"

"Oh shit, there it is," Ymir says. She leans down and pockets the pen. 

Erwin watches, speechless. 

"Loaned it two weeks ago," she muttered to her. "So, Erwin-"

"I'm sorry," Erwin says to Annie, "You can go."

Ymir closes the door after her and sprawls in a chair. She glances at Levi. "Can we, uh-" 

"We're all friends here," Erwin says.

Ymir gives him a sour look. "Okay. Sure. So, uh, any update on the, uh..." She glances again at Levi, now blocking the door. "-person of interest?"

"Yes," Erwin says. "There is."

Levi isn't sure how to respond to the whole situation. He wants to say something to Ymir because it was his job to find her. However, he doesn't know how to feel about the fact that she's Erwin's student. By punishing her, Levi might be stepping on toes, and while he's never previously cared about that... There's something about Erwin that changes things. He's conflicted because he's never felt held back like this before, like he has to defer to someone else. It's a bizarre feeling, one that he's not sure he likes at all.

However, it's not all unpleasant feelings. Levi is glad that their plan worked and Erwin experienced no side effects that they know of yet. Over the past week, or perhaps even longer, he's found that he's begun to worry more and more about Erwin's ability and how it affects him, although he can't find the words to make him stop doing it. 

What would he even say to Erwin? That he's worried about him? It just sounds unprofessional, even if their relationship goes well beyond being professional. Besides, it's strange for him to be so worried anyway, even with their unusual friendship. Perhaps it has something to do with the night he saw the full extent of the damage Erwin's ability can do to him. Or, perhaps it has something to do with the fact his heart feels like it's about to stop every time he so much as thinks about Erwin. 

He moves to stand in the corner of the room - he's always liked slightly enclosed spaces - and folds his arms. 

"You'd better have a fucking good reason for taking it." he says, his voice slightly more expressive. He likes to think that being around Erwin has helped, because Erwin's voice contains possibly every emotion and there's something beautiful, if a little sad, about that.

Ymir's eyebrows move very slightly upwards, and she flashes them both a grin. "Believe me, I do. People do bad things for love, right?" It's clear that she's nervous, no matter how much bravado she puts on.

Levi knows she means Historia, and wonders how far he'd go for someone he loved. There's that strange feeling bubbling up in his chest again. His eyes are drawn towards Erwin, like there are magnets in his head. Levi knows he isn't in love with him, but the feeling that rests heavy on his chest is so familiar, he can't help but wonder what it is. 

"You took it for Historia?" Levi asks, and Ymir nods in confirmation. 

Both pairs of narrowed eyes settle on Erwin, looking for what to do and say next. 

She'd led them on a chase. But she didn't seem all too broken up about getting caught. 

Erwin sighed. "Why the runaround?"

"Look," she gesticulated wildly, "I forgot to ask how much she needed, alright? So I took the whole thing."

"Needed for..."

She huffs. "For a final. Sick, missed a lab day, needed to make it up, okay? I didn't know the stupid storage room would lock behind me."

Erwin rubs his temples. "But why not just..." 

"Kind of a stupid thing to admit to, don't you think?"

"Is this situation any better?"

She makes a few noncommittal noises and crosses her arms. "I didn't think it through, okay? I panicked." She sobered. "What now?"

The dean, apparently. Levi glances at him as Erwin contemplates. 

"I did see quite a few students at my talk."

Ymir nods sagely, proudly, breaking her terse expression for a moment before stopping to frown pointedly. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Erwin stands to gather his things and glances at his watch, "-you shouldn't miss your lecture."

She stands, too, forcefully. "Wait, wait. Wait. What about the-"

"Bring it to the east gate tomorrow morning."

She leaves, dazed. 

Erwin inhales sharply as cool palms rise to frame his face. He feels the heat now, the answering fever, and closes his eyes. His hand rises to slot between one of Levis' and press him closer, though his face had long since cooled.

---

He'd begun to suspect Ymir more on account of her continued interest in the case than on any hard evidence. The supposed reason for her interest, too, was suspect. She never had much interest in fame. He'd only, briefly, entertained her motive for the object of her preening. 

It seemed to him enormous lengths to go to impress someone. If he were anyone else, he might have doubted himself less, could have figured this sooner. 

They left the barrel to be discovered by campus staff.

Erwin asks Levi if he could observe him, if he could take notes. He brings one of his notebooks and shows it to him over lunch at a corner cafe. Students mill about, reaching limply for teas and coffee before preparing for their finals. 

Levi flips the pages carefully, rubs each corner briefly and passes a thumb over this or that note as if the pads of his fingers and palms showed him as much, if not more, than his eyes and ears. A few scars arc across bare knuckles, and Erwin wonders why some remained when surely, other marks or wounds surely melted away. 

Levi agrees, only if he could record Erwin himself. Record them together.

When the semester ends, they drive to junkyards, to empty lots, to quiet thickets. Erwin fills one book after the other. The need to withdraw fades even as he shares days on end with him. The need to pull away, always pull away, fades too, but in fits and starts. Some days, Erwin stays in despite wanting desperately to see him. He tries to distance himself, an old habit. To see this as another research project.

It isn't. He can't pretend for very long.

Levi is strong. Impossibly so. But Erwin wonders whether he could manifest that strength in other ways. 

On one too-early morning, they discover that Erwin's influence doesn't always grate on Levi. Not when it isn't forced. Not when it's welcomed. 

On one too-early, dew-scattered morning, Erwin holds one of Levi's hands with his own, and ignites the petal the man held between his forefinger and thumb.

Interest is an odd thing.

It starts with the addition of something new to an otherwise comfortable routine.

At first, it's unwelcome, and Levi despises how its taste sits heavy on his tongue, or the words don't flow right, or the texture feels strange beneath his fingers. He needs to go back to what he knows.

Then the new thing embeds itself in the very fabric of each day until Levi finds he can't go without thinking of it. And he craves it, craves the buzz that comes with learning about the correct way to perform a tea ceremony, or each of the different theories on why aliens haven't contacted Earth, or each freckle and mole on Mike's back.

But he's never felt so connected to something he's interested in, never seen so much of himself in someone, yet felt so distant.

He hadn't thought about potential damage, so on the pads of his thumb and forefinger sit small burns. It doesn't matter. Similar to how he never wants to wash his hands after he's healed Erwin, Levi thinks he might keep them as a reminder. 

Erwin's hand hovers for a second longer than it should do, and Levi thinks of what's been growing between them since he first asked to observe. 

"We could become serial killers, y'know." he says, the corners of his mouth twitching. The petal has long since turned to ash, and he has taken his place on a rock next to a tall tree. "I saw one of those shitty crime shows once, and the dead person burned alive - they thought it was like... spontaneous combustion, only that's not real. So they figured she'd been murdered." He likes speaking to Erwin, but it's hard to string together longer sentences when he's so used to talking to others - others who he finds it difficult to even look at, let alone chat with. But Erwin's his friend, he thinks, Erwin is interested in what he has to say even if he can be a little blunt or vulgar at times. "So we'd be able to cover our tracks."

He rests his hands on the damp moss that covers his rock, it's spongy and leaves traces of mud in the grooves of his fingers. Usually, he'd hate the texture and the dirt, but this morning he seems to have more tolerance for uncomfortable things. Like the moisture in the air, and the ants in the grass, and the way Erwin sometimes stares at him with an expression Levi doesn't recognize. 

"I don't think you'd be able to kill anyone, though." Levi admits. He sways while his knee bounces, he feels like there's music in the air when they're together. "You don't have it in you, Smith."

He looks towards Erwin, notices him examining his hand. "Did you get burnt?" 

He hops down and quickly finds his way to Erwin's side.

"Let me heal you." Levi says. Even if he isn't burnt, he's is probably feeling the strain of what they've just done. His fingers brush gently across Erwin's knuckles, just enough to feel the heat radiating from him. 

As he places his hands on his face, Levi speaks softly. The need to admit his interest, to make it clear that their time together is enjoyable in completely unfamiliar ways has been building up inside him all morning.

"Y'know, I like how you feel when I touch you." He knows it sounds strange, but the thrumming in his chest pushed the words out, the flush on his cheeks made sure he couldn't take them back. 

Even when the fever is gone, and those small burns have turned into new, tanned skin, Levi's own pale hands stay in their place. It's just for a moment, he just needs to feel him. He stares at Erwin, grey eyes unmoving as he takes in everything about him. His heart can't decide whether it's going to speed up or stop altogether, and there's that magnetic feeling again, like he needs to pull Erwin closer.

He moves away.

His body wants to do things he's half forgotten how to, and his heart dares him to say words that are rusty and old in his mouth. Levi listens to neither, eyes resting on the ground as he acts on the least awkward feeling he has at the moment - shame. 

"I'm... I'm sorry." It's a rare phrase to hear from Levi, and it shows in the wooden tone of each word. "Sometimes I say things, and I don't-- don't fucking think about how weird they sound."

There have been days before where he's said odd things, and Erwin has never been bothered by them. But Levi feels as though what he said just then is more than what he's said previously. More daring, more intimate, more revealing. He hates the transparency those words have created. 

Part of him wants to blame Erwin for making him feel so comfortable, so able to talk even if what he says is shit most of the time. 

But deep down, he knows it's his fault. He's the weird one. 

The scars on his knuckles are a testament to all the times he's had to defend himself because of that.

Erwin wonders why touching his hand would not have been enough, even more efficient, than placing his hands at his temples. His reacting burn and flush had been localized, but maybe Levi wanted to be thorough. 

In contrast, Levi seems wholly disinterested in what they've just accomplished. Erwin's heart still thunders at the sight of the flame, but Levi recoils at something of his own doing that Erwin couldn't see. 

He'd touched him before. Lingered before. It was no secret to him that Levi must, at the very least, not mind it himself. He couldn't understand why he'd imagine that Erwin would.

"We know your touch is magnified by your telekinesis," Erwin says. "The more you hone it, use it in different, new ways, the more sensitive it becomes. And if we-"

He stops, knows this is all tangential, technical, knows this isn't what Levi needs to hear.

Erwin closes the distance between them, squeezes his shoulder. "Really. I don't mind." His jaw works, the words refusing to come. He doesn't live a thoroughly sheltered life. He has colleagues and students, neighbors and friends. But he doesn't have a word for Levi. An strong gust rustled the forest canopy.

"This is new for me, too."

"You don't understand." Levi half grunts the words out, eyes locked on the mud covering Erwin's tennis shoes. "I mind. I mind because I don't understand, I... I don't know what I'm feeling, okay? I don't ever fucking know what I'm feeling around you. So sure, it's new to you too. But at least you... know the names for what you're feeling, and know how to express it without sounding like a freak."