Chapter Text
The package had been square, anonymous, heavy in his pockets far more than any organs had ever been, harvested into a sack and slung over his shoulders. It burned a hole straight into his pants but the boy on his left did the same. Burning up under his gaze, not the pants part.
Levi had been silent, as always, a mere shadow with physicality, something there and yet far far away from the leather seat of the train.
The boy had been a statue of salt, stiff in his seat and still hugging the rifle as one would do with a stuffed toy. A kid still.
He had been staring out of the windows but it had not taken Daniël two eyes to know his gaze had been lost and unfocused. He had been somewhat efficient at recognizing the boy's expressions and feelings via the aforementioned, in a little less than three days he had to pick up an entirely new vocabulary composed by the minuscule twitch of the corner of his mouth or the side of his nose, only to begin to understand the little tensed expression the kid had been chewing in between his teeth like he was ashamed of even showing them on his face. Speaking of which, he had been tensing his jaw for the better part of the last three hours, face turned away from the man. And with the Gruyere on his forearm tucked shamefully onto the sides of the shotgun he kept in his hug it had been impossible for Daan to reach anything of the boy’s body. Unable to comfort even if he hadn’t known how to begin with.
The chocolate had burned an imaginary hole in the pocket of his pants and now -with a hand tucked in it- he cannot but feel nervous about the opportunity as he slowly traces the edge of the square treat.
Too many variables, too many factors the doctor had not accounted for playing with the exchange rerolling in a constant loop inside his head.
He would have extended the little gift, —treat? like one does to a dog?- and if he had accepted it he wouldn’t have been able to stay silent, Daan knows this, filling the stretching silence the kid seems to emanate from his very skin with ramblings on where he had found the chocolate or worse yet on why had he saved it for now.
Because saved it he had.
He had found it the first day, a little after morning, before even finding the trembling body of the boy shaking violently on the ground of a forgotten kitchen. And if at that time it had only been an unexpected delight after the heartwrenching display of the kid shooting up heroine —Heroine he had given him himself— in his brain something had shifted and the tin foil wrapped around the bittersweet treat had been marked with Levi’s name all over it.
And what if he hadn’t accepted it? court and sharp, never unkind on purpose but out of touch with all the small nothingness of etiquette and propriety that had been drilled into Daan's skull during his stay in the Von Dutch’s manor, perhaps Levi was allergic, or he simply hadn’t liked the treat, or hadn’t had a sweet-tooth to begin with.
Daan shifts his hands in his pocket, letting go of the Hamlet’s chocolate in favour of the well-loved packet of cigarettes.
"Do you mind?"
Levi had jolted awake from whatever wide-eyed nightmare he was experiencing a few inches to the left of the windshield of the carriage, eyes darting to his retrieved hand and its content.
"No…" he had whispered shaking his head and lowering his gaze to his pocket like he knew the content of it.
Could have he?
Daan exhaled sharply, drawing Levi’s attention to his face once again, eyes wide for a moment then pink blush dusting over the bridge of his nose, head sharply turning over its previous direction.
Yeah, there was also that. He wasn’t even accounting for how weird Levi had been for the past two hours.
The boy had been on edge for sure, understandably so, but that had lasted only an hour, perhaps even less, what had followed had been something else entirely, he had been tense but in a freakish way, shoulders half dropped yet half rigid, a weird mix of relaxation and that infuriating military stance no kid should ever dawn on their shoulders. As if waiting for an order by his superior. A bizarre Frankenstein creation of sewn-together rigour, shyness and outright queasiness.
Daan had been very engrossed by his quest for comfort but it had not prevented him from noticing the tensing and relaxing nerves dancing under Levi’s skin, not entirely. At any shake of the train Levi had stilled, stiffened or outright shivered as if dreading for the vehicle to screech into another halt, except this time the dread had looked more like anticipation and Daan doubted the vehicle mattered at all in this particular equation.
His hand itches to slither back into his pocket, the undeniable restlessness at the loss of contact with the edges of the packet a sharp reminder he was not as ancient as he felt, he was still nervous over frivolous things like a kid during show and tell.
The hand flew over to his mouth instead, cupping over his lips and dragging out the rolled-up column of smoke.
"Would you like to come with me?"
The question pierced through the veil of stillness that had been falling over the duo once again, sharp and quick, a jab at something Levi detaches himself from with a very sharp whinche.
The train had stopped multiple times, at Alll-Mer knows how many grand stations and scrawny benches in the middle of nowhere but Levi had stayed put, as if waiting for the release order, still guarding his side like a good little soldier.
Daan had wanted to ask him that thing too and surprisingly it had been way easier than the whole chocolate debacle.
"Yes, sir."
Oh. No hesitation then. Daan softens his gaze, eye gently tracing the sweaty kid sitting stiffly beside him.
"Very well, Levi. Let’s find a place to call home then."
He had excused himself then, with a ruffle of the boy’s hair and a soft smile lingering at the other’s dusting of pink flush, "Just Daan, Levi, just Daan." and with it went looking for the trolley lady.
He had found her at the entrance of their wagon, now deserted except for the three of them, Daan had asked for a map and two coffees, unwise for him to spend even more money on yet another pack of cigarettes, he doubted the boy would have been able to pull his own weight for a while still.
He had sat back down with a little oof and the squawk of leather dipping under his weight.
"For you, love." the pet name had slipped his lips like “mom” had once done while looking up into his preschool teacher’s eyes. The embarrassment had been the same too, Levi had skipped a beat hurrying his hands around the warm cup once back into motion and Daan had had to wait for his traveller companion to secure the hot beverage into his grasp before giving himself the privilege of looking away and curse his loose mouth over the slip.
"Thanks, sir-." He had stopped but not corrected himself. And Daan had simply hummed, too embarrassed to correct him.
"Sugar?"
"Yes, Sir?" head whipped toward him, eyes ready for an order, a request, a question. "Oh! Yes sir, thanks sir, sorry…" another layer of pink and vermillion falling over his face, like a soft dusting of bloody snow, while bruised arm had outstretched toward the little packet of sugar Daan had been offering.
Another pet name, one he hadn't intended for, one met with open arms and not embarrassment nor uneasiness.
Levi had dumped three doses of sugar into his coffee, fingers shivering and nerves on the edge of his skin, and Daan hadn’t done anything other than stand by unable to do anything besides watching the incredibly unhealthy display of the worst case of a sweet tooth he had ever seen during his medic career.
Levi was an addict in active withdrawal; of course he had sweet cravings, and Daan felt stupid as a doctor to have thought otherwise.
"I have something for you." The brunette had shifted his gaze upwards, over the edge of his cup, steam fuming in sensual swirls over his steal gaze. Gunpowder and lead.
The doctor had shifted into his seat, leaning over the -ex- soldier’s personal space closing his digit over the rim of the cup in his clutch.
Levi lets him have it, eyes big and wide, like a deer.
Daan puts it down on the table in between their seats and the empty ones facing them asking himself for a second why had he chosen the seat beside the boy when boarding the train for the last time, the question turning to ashes as the other fluttered black lashes over the clear colour of his slanted eyes. "Close your eyes and give me your hands."
As obedient as always, Levi does, completely trusting and Daan lets the square packet slip into his waiting palms.
"Open them." Another order, sure he wouldn't do it otherwise.
Levi had peaked into the cups of his hands as soon as the first letter of the phrase had left Daan’s mouth, eyes squinted as if trying to be sneaky.
He had watched the object with bubbling curiosity but stayed silent for the entirety of the next few minutes, wrapping too bland to give him an idea of what was inside and steel resolve refraining him from tearing it open like Daniël had done and peaking inside it.
"It’s chocolate, -he had explained, then tentatively.- dear."
Levi’s eyes had flown over his face, sharp and incredulous, and Daan had simply smiled unsure of what else to do.
Silence had stretched out of hand and right when Daan had thought Levi might just turn back to his previous line of sight and completely ignore his gift, too overwhelmed, the younger man had spoken.
"I’ve never had chocolate, sir." and Daan had heard the undoubtedly frail quality of the confession.
"Then today seems like the perfect day to try it."
Levi had squirmed in his seat, eyes glossy as always "Sir, I could never-" he had begun, not even closing his fingers over the tinfoil as if scared of crimping the shiny wrapping.
"At least a square, love. -he had cut him off.- Doctor’s order."
He had thought of giving the ex-soldier some privacy, a weird need to accommodate but not the weirdest Daan had ever indulged in but just as he was about to urge Levi into obedience and perhaps excuse himself to “go talk to the conductor” Levi had moved, fast, not dizzyingly so but with a certain urgency in his movements that betrayed just how much excitement the prospective gave him.
And Daan had sat right back where he had hovered over the previous second, leather dipping and back leaning into the backrest of the couches to truly take in the sight unfurling in front of him, legs pointed to the boy siding him and face resting on two fingers.
The boy had never truly been good at resisting temptation, the inside of his arms a long list of every time he didn’t and yet somehow he had also been surprisingly good at following orders. Eyes big and brows knitted in looking for praise, the next order, anything that would have him know he had done good. That he was, despite the holes, despite the ghosts, despite the tremors, good.
The ex-bohemian soldier had opened the package with stammering hands, without crinkling the paper still, a reverence to the object Daan had scoffed at with soft fondness and the snuffing of his cigarette in the ashtray.
By the time the first bite had been well chewed through Levi’s face had come to sport at least five different emotions in slow succession during the entire ordeal, "It’s bitter, a little." he had finally declared, perhaps disappointed, more probably surprised.
Daan had nodded, eye closing and hand fishing in his checkered pants for the pack of cigarettes.
"It is, that one is 60 per cent dark chocolate if I’m not wrong, not the sweetest of the bunch, do you like it?"
Levi had nodded absentmindedly throughout his explanation, hand diving back into the packet and popping another square of sugary treats into his mouth. His chewing had frozen mid motion, hand stilling in between his mouth and the air.
And Daan had laughed, truly laughed, more than simply pleased with his companion's actions.
"I’ll take it as a yes, love. Keep going, it’s yours."
And Daan had felt good, hopeful, no more alone. And life had looked possible under the soft flickering light of the train.
.
.
.
Levi, on the other hand… It’s not nice to say he had misinterpreted the whole situation entirely, but he had done exactly so.
Let’s be honest, Daan had not been inconspicuous in his mannerisms, from the rustling sound of clothes behind the ex-soldier all the way through the very first moment the two of them had met.
As withdrawal had slowly cleared from his feverish mind and slowly but surely his common sense had dawned on him, Levi had noticed Daan had reeked of trouble.
A stranger handing out heroine without being asked to, a well-practised smuggler if not worse. Then Daan had introduced himself as Daniël, a fancy name with unnecessary punctuation over letters Levi had never seen being punctuated, and even more importantly: a doctor.
"Not a doctor, lo- -a sharp cough, a fake one followed by an even faker hem-. A medic, actually," Daan had interjected once Levi had bobbed his head in understanding. "from the front."
And if that hadn’t bagged Levi his personality did.
Skittish wariness had been smoothed down by the new figment of knowledge like fur on the back of a cornered animal, enough for Levi to grow fond of the doctor before catching once again glimpses of the true oddity that still clung over every movement Daniël ever made. A trap, possibly one he had fallen for boots and all. Daniël had grown on him like ivy over a derelict house with his incessant chatting and quick tongue; he had climbed his way into his affection by piling words, sly remarks, and slipped pet names, the thick accent a soothing balm that had blended his ever-bold assertion with irresistible charm.
It is no surprise to anyone that Levi had not resisted said charm.
And gods Levi had fallen, hard, and tumbling down the stairs of new tenderness, unable to even comprehend the extent of his own affection, he had lost track of where gratitude had ended, and devotion had started.
It had probably happened somewhere in between the dark thoughts of using that eyepatch as target for his rifle —as hungry eyes had followed noble hands in the slick movement of pocketing a syringe of that sweet, sweet release from reality he kept craving- and taking a rusty slash to the chest for the only, intrusive, thought of “better me than him. Never him.”
Something had definitely shifted. But as new and unnerving as the notion was, strangely, that had not frightened him, only spun him further and further into a path he didn’t know yet would have led him to obsession.
And so Levi had mourned his previous life for an hour or so, not a minute more, most definitely some less, while familiar forests had stretched farther and farther away from dusty windows until only unfamiliar territory had surrounded him, Levi had mourned his hometown and with it the last vestige of his childhood, a starving creature left to rot in the belly of an orphanage whom with some luck he’ll never hear about ever in his life.
Then mourning had gone stale on him, and the man sat beside him had piqued his interest.
Daan had been sitting beside him from the very first shake the train had taken, screeching wheels battling age and disuse as the horrible scenery outside the windows had started to change.
Not in front of him, not a couple of seats before or after, right beside him, as stretching silence had filled the empty car.
Daan had looked tired, exhausted with a crimped cigarette dangling from his smudged-out lips. Black maquillage had clung to his chapped lips as he had smoked the first cigarette in silence, without asking —as Levi feared- out of uneasiness in the deafening silence, if he could. Levi had hugged his rifle, constraining himself from calling to his body his own legs hugging like a toddler with all four of his limbs his only lifeline in the world.
But the man beside him had kept smoking, each puff the certainty Levi was not the only fortunate enough to have been able to escape certain death, survivor’s guilt kept at bay by each tired exhale.
Then the rustling had started and if he had cared little about his dead past before he had cared nothing then.
Daan —Daniël- had kept a hand in his pocket even when sat, surely an uncomfortable position Levi had thought, although cool and nonchalant, but the main focus -for him at least- was not the awkward pose, it was the rustling.
Levi had sharpened his senses, eyes flying to the older man’s faded reflection on the glass.
He was most definitely looking at him, focused eye and that piercing gaze he had seen on Daan’s visage almost exclusively during taxing battles.
And the rustling of clothes.
Levi had squirmed on his seat breathing getting inexplicably ragged and for two hours Levi had spent every ounce of his attention on his travelling companion and his sporadic and sparse movements.
Two hours during which the terror he had felt feeling those types of “dispositions” at his military settlement, adolescence waiting for no one, had dissipated into something of the same vineyard but much, much richer. Want.
It had stunned him, the rapidity -call it rapidity, two hours of thought maceration- with which he had felt at ease in the knowledge he had liked Daan since the very beginning.
And then Daan had called for him, had retraced polite mannerisms and asked if he minded if he smoked as if Levi wouldn’t have wanted to wrap himself in that rich scent that had smelled of Daan exquisitely. And Levi had agreed, because of course, and then he had peeked because of course and then he had regretted it because he had been caught, and then he had warmed up on his cheeks like the teen he hadn’t been for a very long time.
And then Daan had asked him to come with him and Levi had not cared if he meant to the bathroom for a quicky or to a shared future for the remaining of their life. He had not cared at all.
Surprisingly, it had been the future, and Daan had called him love and bought him coffee and he had been mortified when it had been chocolate, when he had tasted the melted edges stuck to tinfoil wrap where nervous fingers had mapped their perimeter.
He had felt mortified but the want had not quenched itself and at the second piece of chocolate, as Daan's laugh had warmed the wagon with the intensity of a meteor even mortification had faded, bittersweet feelings worming their way into his brain, as surprising as the new flavour sinking in his tongue.
Bitter. Sweet. Daan’s laughter.
They had departed the train at the very edge of the Rondon Kingdom after a full dozen hours of travel.
Levi holds his rifle pointed downward, wrapped neatly in a tattered cloth permeated with gunpowder and the burnt smell of fire; it doesn't smell of Daan, a completely different quality of burnt and charred.
A quality that makes him gag and scrunches his nose.
.
.
.
People look at them weirdly. Daan cannot fault them; he can only begin to imagine how they look: Him still splattered in blood, his companion a toy soldier armed to the teeth.
"Lower the gun, love; you cannot wield it at a station."
"I’m not wielding it, sir."
In public, the title had made him feel even worse, skin crawling in a weird sensation of undeniable inappropriateness.
He had not deserved that title, not by a long shot, not when he had used it in wildly different contexts and with a wildly different plethora of people, "I know," Daan had begun, smoothing palms caked with blood on the unimpressively plain coveralls of the boy, a casual way of getting closer, closer enough to reassure him to the point of lowering his gun, his only defence in a hostile world, "but be a dear and disarm it anyhow, please."
The orphan had scrunched his brows, definitely way more comfortable with orders than with pleas. Nonetheless, the soldier had done what the doctor had asked, the gun had been lowered, and anxious passersby had looked, if not relaxed, at least less tense than before.
And by that point, Daan had foreseen a tiring week, perhaps a tiring month or two if Levi had demonstrated himself a tough nut to crack —old habits dying screaming, what he hadn’t foreseen, however, was how different existing with Levi by his side would have been.
The kid had started by walking a couple of steps behind him; like a bodyguard Daan didn’t know how much he owned to nor when he had had them employed, rifle loaded, a 10-round strip out on display, not yet ready to be fired but a snap of his wrist away from being it; Daan had rubbed a finger over his eye, pinching the bridge of his nose and simply listening to the shuffling of tattered shoes right behind him, problems piling over each other far quicker than how Daan can solve them.
The plan had been simple in his head: he had needed to get Levi out of his flashy uniform that had made him stick out like a sore thumb, and into something comfortable; possibly into something that would have allowed him a wide range of movements, most certainly into a new pair of shoes; old ones practically dragging bits and pieces of rubber onto the pavements.
The little clothes shop had been exactly what they had needed, then the price tags had dawned on Daan, and the plan had shifted from needing to get the both of them out of their ratty clothes into needing to get Levi out of his overalls and himself into a 24/7 dry cleaner.
Levi had looked at him with metaphorical flat ears in his stylish new clothes, crimped shirt and serious pants slightly loose on his lean figure. He had looked like a boy dressed up for church, sitting on the rustling washing machine as Daan had stood in his suspenders and underwear, newspaper opened on a random page, cigarette pinched in between his teeth, and washing machine tumbling underneath his elbow and the ex-soldier’s skinny ass. Levi had looked at him with eyes as big and glossy as the reflection of the trickster god in a lake, a gaze Daan had done his best to ignore as he had done before with the holy part of that specific picture, too painfully raw to sustain; this one the look of a beaten puppy the kid had kept giving him all the way from the register of the clothes shop to the flickering atmosphere of the dry cleaner.
Levi had looked at Daan as if he had held the key to his future in his right hand and as if, for some unknown reason to the doctor, he had been very, very mad at the boy soldier.
He hadn’t been, Daan had not been mad at Levi once the entire time they had known each other, although “the entire time” had only meant four days total.
The puppy-dog eyes had not lasted much after the first cycle of rustling clothes and stubbornly dry blood though, only a couple more minutes, enough to push Daan over the edge of his own resolve, cupping the boy’s head and doing what one does to a beaten puppy and scratching the very soft part behind the boy’s ear, in what in his head had been reassurance.
Then they had found a hotel and Daan had kept the charm up with the receptionist until the door of the bedroom he had haggled for had not shut behind them, collapsing into his bed without even disrobing, and Levi had been nothing more than a lovely memory fading away in the peeling wallpaper made out of flowers and sickly pale negative spaces.