The Experiment (Attack on Titan // LeviHan) (Part 1)

A Proposition

Mike Zacharias was a very tall, exceptionally well-built, and thoroughly manly man. He also was a meticulous shaver. And since Zoë Hange enjoyed watching men do manly things meticulously, she found considerable pleasure in the spectacle performed in front of her mirror this morning. All the more so since Zach wore nothing but a small towel slung around his midriff, showing off the details of his powerful physique. While he was meticulous, she leisurely ran through the names of the muscles she recognized: Soleus. Ga... Gastrocnemius. Vastus. Biceps femoris. Gracilis...

But as she began pondering the technical difficulties of cutting leg muscles to immobilize Titans - aiming that low accurately on a moving target was darn difficult out in the open - she found herself distracted by thoughts of somebody else's shapely legs and their current state.

After sleeping off a horrible hangover the day before - this house arrest had benefits, allowing her to stay in bed for the first time in forever - she had found herself wondering about him for the first time. In her case, wondering about something was often the beginning of more, namely experiments, excitement, and explosions, so she always took her wonderings seriously.

"Do you know anyone in the Corps who hates Levi?" he asked Mike.

"I hate him. He hit you," Zacharias answered, carefully cleaning his razor in a bowl with water, then feeling both his cheeks for left-over whiskers.

"Pfft, he can hit me anytime he wants."

"You didn't just say that," Mike said and turned around, eyebrows raised at her. She shrugged.

"I'm serious. Do you know anyone in the Corps who hates him?"

"Everyone hates him. He's insane."

"If you knew you had to ride out tomorrow and you would face, let's say... a group of twenty titans, who would you take with you for backup?"

"Levi of course," Mike turned around again and bent close to the mirror to study his chin from all angles.

"So you don't hate him."

"I do. I just value my life more."

"I don't get it," Zoë leaned back against her pillows and stared up at the ceiling.

"That I value my life more than I mind Levi?"

"No... I don't get why he does not want to be part of us. I've tried."

A hundred times spurned. I'm tired - Leave me alone - Go talk to somebody else - Piss off - Don't you dare come looking for me in the next fifteen days, I will be busy. That's all he ever said.

Except for... Sorry about this, Hanji.

Zoë swallowed. How drunk had she been to find that string of words and the fleeting touch... erotic?

"We've all tried," Zach grumbled. "It's because he's crazy. And because he's from the underground, he just doesn't belong here with us. And he knows it."

Zoë scrambled up. "But should it matter where he came from? The Survey Corps was never about connections! We're all the same: Wackos. Why else would we do this?"

Mike shrugged and took off the towel to dry his face with it. "Sure. But everybody still knows that you're a Hange. Or that I'm a Zacharias and my family is stinking rich. You can dream about an egalitarian system all you want. Only Levi is... just Levi. Nobody knows who his father is."

"He could be the discarded bastard of one of the princes...?"

Zacharias laughed. "Do you read those crap romance novels too? Yeah, he could be. Who from the royal family is barely taller than a child? It's your most likely candidate."