Isabel: So Youre Admitting Youre Gay?

Isabel: so you’re admitting you’re gay?

Levi: … what?

Isabel: you just told me you’re homocidal.

Levi: …

Farlan: Remind me why we kept her again?

//gn!reader

One second you're taken in a deep sleep, and the next you're awoken with a twitch by a violent jolt and a sobbing gasp through the dark.

Levi tears out of your arms and sits up, panting wetly.

Nightmare. You blink in a flurry to clear the sleep from your eyes and mind and reach over to the bedside for the lantern. Turning the small knob ignites a warm flame, and casts light.

Levi's knees are bent and pulled up to his chest. Hunched over, he looks smaller than usual, and now that you can properly see, you notice the way he's clutching his chest and tightly gripping his hair. By the sound of his heavy breathing, you can tell he's holding back tears.

Frowning, you crawl up slightly behind and beside him. Your fingertips draw against his back in ghostly circles, in case he doesn't want be touched.

"Sorry," he whispers.

"It's okay. It's going to be okay."

His shoulders deflate a little. In firmer up-and-down motions, you rub his back, and press your forehead to his narrow shoulder. After that, he catches his breath a little easier.

Nightmares are nothing new with Levi. You can bet on the chances of him apologizing every time he wakes you up, and with how violent they usually are, that's also guaranteed. But you haven't gleaned much success at making him understand that you don't mind. Not one bit.

In time he melts against you, so you're swaddling him. You prop your chin on his shoulder and stroke his hair, soft as though your fingers glide through water.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" you ask.

You wait.

"…No." Then he sniffs. "Tea."

You chuckle a little. "Would you like company?"

"I knew you'd say that." He sighs, stroking your knuckles. "Fine."

You squeeze him close. "It's a deal."

For me, I’ve come to read this scene as a big ole hint that, at least for a time, Kenny took Levi up to the surface in their days together. Perhaps as added muscle on a job that Uri gave him but his true mo being to give him a taste of life beyond the Underground, encouraging him to leave that life behind one day. But of course doing it in his signature, high-key insulting fashion where he would observe Levi’s shock at seeing a tree lose its leaves and toss in a comment like “It’s no stretch of the imagination why they named the season fall.”

??????????????

Levi used to live on the surface???? When? Why? How? What have I missed?

Do you think that while in a new-ish relationship with Levi, that he would get insecure and would pull away emotionally because of his abandonment issues? Kinda like self-sabotage to protect himself from future hurts like when Kenny left him?

Any headcanons are much appreciated!

//gn!reader

absolutely yes. though not just because of his abandonment issues.

in general, Levi isn’t a trusting person - his first instinct is really to assume the worst out of people - and that ironically goes double for someone he wants to trust.

you’d have to have known each other a long time for him to be willing to take that step and be in a relationship in the first place, but being in it in the beginning is different.

trusting someone with his heart and revealing his feelings are so exposing. it feels dangerous to someone who's had it hammered into him never to be seen as weak.

combined with him not being super capable of understanding his own feelings, and his inexperience early on in a relationship, he would find himself disarmed and confused a lot of the time.

it's not easy :(

so he would hold a new partner at arm’s length. he still doesn’t, and may never, understand what you see in him.

what he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt is that he wants to be by your side, but in fear of being reliant on someone else in any way, he can appear intentionally aloof and distant for a while. he's busy figuring out that you wouldn’t be smiling so warmly at him just to lull him into a false sense of security, that you don’t feel too intimidated to do otherwise, or really anything that would prove he’s as worthless at all this that he thinks he is.

and yes, self-sabotage. he can think that you haven’t seen him for who he truly is somehow, and once you do, you’ll leave; that he tricked you unintentionally and that’s the only reason why you want to be with him; maybe your motives are something as clinical as curiosity, or to find out his weaknesses to use against him.

those ideas are safe and make sense to him, because Levi has learned to expect to be hurt or abandoned in his life, and it affirms in his mind that he's not wanted by anyone for who he is. even though he wants badly to accept that maybe he does have someone now who really maybe likes and cares about him, that feels too good to be true to him.

so all that to say… the start of a relationship with Levi wouldn’t be hugely different than when you were friends. he seeks you out a little more, and does plenty of things for you (including+especially make you tea, acts of service love language hello). he's a lot more observant.

Levi would trust your words and reassurances, but he would find much more value in your behavior in return. when you seek him out, or remember small things in efforts to make him happy, or not being too forward with things he’s sure not to understand, like most forms of physical affection. in his mind, holding hands even somewhere private is really anxiety-inducing :(

his behavior when he is upset is hugely unhelpful too. assuming he has next to no romantic experiences and erroneous ideas of how one's “supposed” to work, his first instinct when he’s hurt is to shut down, brush it off, and avoid. not so much because he assumes you meant to say or do something that hurt him, but because it's pathetic and he associates emotional pain with abandonment. right away he invalidates himself.

so Levi has to be shown what a romantic relationship really entails. things that are obvious or come easily to others just wouldn’t to him. like reminding him that you can't read minds when you genuinely don’t know why he’s upset. anddd communicating, which takes him being the slightest bit vulnerable, which is hard for him too.

so at first, being in a relationship with Levi would be super difficult for sure with all his fears and misunderstandings :/ but he's loyal and passionate and always puts you first, too. it's like once you've earned his trust, there is absolutely nothing and no one above you to him.

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I will never not ride for this man <3 😌

new pfp :3

sometimes i forget how reading is just. marvelous. just an absolutely fucking endlessly joyful activity. i’ll go about my life and not read one single book for months and be like why am i morose! why am i so apathetic! what is missing here!!!! and try to look for whatever it is that is lacking and never find it anywhere and i get so tired and sad and angry, and then i’m finally like i’m gonna stop everything for a couple days and read a really good book bc i don’t care about anything else. and suddenly i get motivated to work bc i know i’ll read when i’m on break. i get more creative. i want to watercolor again and bust out the shameful fabric stash with all my unfinished sewing projects. god even my dreams get more vivid!! what the fuck! and i’m like here is the magic i was looking for, why did i ever think i was going to find it anywhere else. it was always here!!!