The Feeling's Mutual | Levi x Reader

five - diana

"Do you think paint is edible?"

"Eren, what the fuck. Of course it's not."

"Yeah, but like, how'd they find out? They'd have to eat it. So, it's edible."

"Yeah, and they would've died."

"Still ate it though."

"But edible means it can be eaten. Eaten without dying."

"Does it, though?"

"Someone look it up."

"If anyone," you threaten, pausing the video playing on your laptop that's hooked up to the monitor, "even thinks about eating this paint, I'm definitely going to write you up."

Paint night. It had been a seemingly harmless idea- something suggested by the RA council as a good activity within budget for your floor- and plenty of the first years had been interested. So you'd stocked up on paints and canvases, found an easy-ish tutorial to follow online, and set everything up in the common room.

You'd gotten about ten minutes of peaceful painting. Then Jean had smeared paint on Eren's face, and it somehow sparked a debate on whether or not paint could be eaten. 

Eating paint. Are these really university students?

"Edible," Historia says, and everyone looks to her as she reads something off of her phone. "Fit or suitable to be eaten."

"Aha," Jean says triumphantly. "Not paint."

Eren points at Historia with his paintbrush, nearly smacking Marco with it. "It didn't say not paint."

"It's implied!"

"How is that implied?"

"For the love," Ymir grumbles, slapping some more paint on her brush. She's given up on the tutorial video and is doing her own thing. "Just let him eat paint and find out."

"No," Mikasa says sharply. Her painting actually looks like it's shaping up well. "It'll kill him."

"At this point, just let it."

"Natural selection," Reiner mutters.

"No one eat the paint," you say with a sigh, still in disbelief that this is even a warning you have to provide. "Please and thank you, because that's a lot of paperwork." There's murmurs of assent; you smile thinly. "Alright. Am I good to play the video again?"

And just like that, paint night continues. The topic of whether paint can be eaten or not is dropped (thankfully), but the quiet conversation continues. Heads pop up to look at the monitor, at what the next step of the painting in, and then heads swivel back down to try and work on the next step.

It's kind of fun, honestly. You wish you had done something like this in your first year. 

The painter in the tutorial does something funky and there's a chorus of "whoa, whoa!" and "go back!" So you pause the video and rewind, laughing to yourself as people flounder to replicate the steps.

It's genuinely entertaining, watching people go through all of the different stages of grief as they progress. Sasha is deep in denial, muttering furiously to herself that her painting's still going to turn out fine. Eren is obviously anger, furiously attacking his painting with the brush. Connie is bargaining; you can hear him muttering, "well, if I do this, it'll be fine. Right? I can try."

Reiner is depression, easily. The poor man looks painfully gloomy- the sunset he's trying to paint is somehow depressing shades of blue and black instead of red and yellow. And if you had to pick, you'd say Jean is acceptance. He's got this resolved look on his face that reads I've fucked up beyond comprehension but there's nothing I can do about it at this point.