Levi with an (Episodically) Depressed S/O
Tags: levi x reader, angst, hurt-comfort, gn!reader
Word count: 900
Levi invites you to shower with him, making the obstacle less daunting and much more attractive. In his black robe, leaning on your bedroom door, two towels slung over his arm indicate the knowledge that you will say yes and accompany him. The way that he looks, the low plea in his voice, how could you say no?
It would be more accurate to say that he was bathing you, but he does not phrase it that way. Instead, he is humble, letting his actions speak louder than words. He does not tell you that he will shampoo your matted hair, does not flaunt how deliberately he exfoliates your limbs, he just does them for you. Some days, even just tipping the bottle or pumping some soap into your hand can seem mountainous. On those days, he sees those activities not as tasks, but as privileges. It is his honor to be the one looking after you in your most dire time. He would always prefer someone to take care of rather than someone to miss.
Showering together not only ensures that you stay clean, but his company prevents you from those timeless sessions sat on the tile floor. At the moment you look refreshed but before you become sleepy, he jerks the handle to the left and halts the devastatingly relaxing rain.
Always, your clean clothes are already folded atop the bathroom counter, waiting for you. Some times, you fail to remember that you did not put them there. Other times, you notice the sign of his relentless consideration, but are artificially silenced from expressing your gratitude. No matter in his mind. You are clean, clothed, and out of bed, and that’s already better than you were before.
Without one complaint, Levi scoops your dampened towel and old clothes from the wet bathroom floor and drops them in the hamper for you. He has seen the piles that can amass, and if it were anyone else in any other circumstance, the clean freak would be quick to chastise, but any sight or thought of you disintegrates any instinct to discipline. You are sat in the living room, admiring the ivy that swirls around the balcony’s posts, thumbing the petals of the bouquet vased on the coffee table. White-gold rays move just a tad west to cast your figure in therapeutic light. You’re too tired to move away from the sun, and for once, Levi finds your fatigue favorable. As the morning temperature rises, he can see that your resting smile does as well.
While you are entranced with the scenes of summer, Levi swiftly searches for and alleviates the areas you have left neglected. He dumps your sock drawer upside down and mends the pairs that you have discarded as singles. In your closet, he finds the clean pile and dirty pile and either folds it or washes it accordingly. Under your bed, on your nightstand, in your bedside drawer, he discovers the dirty dishes that have been missing the sink and returns them to their proper place.
Between those tasks, he rolls his shoulders back or rubs the side of his neck and allows himself to sigh. It is difficult - not to bandage these tiny wounds - but to see the harsh bruises left by the illness. Sure, you were forgetful, and not quite as tidy as he was, but still - the mounds of laundry, hidden dirty dishes - this wasn’t like you. Levi lives for your joy - not the superficial smile, your peace - not the misleading silence. He lives for you - in sickness and in health. The times you forget your worth, that is when he whispers it in your ear. When the world is overwhelming you, he lets his touch communicate it.
Once your space is in order, he can start to work on getting you to leave it. Rather than annoying reminders or obligations, he mindfully manipulates the steps of treatment into desirable invitations. Rather than Do you want to… or Would you like to…, his proposals are statements, taking the responsibility out of your hands. Concerts in the park this afternoon. Let’s go to the farmers market. Apple orchard just opened.
Or even less far away.
Plants look thirsty, water them with me? Rain just cleared, read on the porch with me? Full moon tonight, stargaze with me?
To you, with me frames the activities, frames your presence as favors for him, and even in your lowest state, you are always keen to help him with anything. To Levi, it is no framing, your relationship is the greatest gift that fate has bestowed on him, and he treats you as such. It is in his selfless actions and his careful words, but it is more than that, traits you can’t quite categorize. The near flat, subtle smile you wake up to in the morning. The tight yet painless combs through your hair that leave you feeling divine. The low, calming timbre of his voice, decorated with a tender tone that he reserves for you.
Even before the haze you’re in now, you’ve never been able to label those qualities of his, and instead settled: it’s just who he is.
Like the sentiment that motivates his care: it’s what you deserve.
// masterlist //
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The idea of one of the Weird Sisters being a romani girl or a slovak girl that was in the wrong place at the wrong time is horrible, and a great way to showcase the kind of power (both social, and supernatural) that Dracula forces upon the humans around him.
Wrong place, wrong time, wrong state of being, social, supernatural or otherwise. Dracula could have taken anyone from any station in Transylvania. Rich or poor, friend or foe. But I think none of the Weird Sisters were noblewomen while alive. They were, like Jonathan, sniffed out among the chattel. Dracula is their superior in every regard that way; and more, the servile classes do one thing better than any aristocrat.
It is their wont to make their ruler happy.
The eldest, a young fair girl, was a drop of sunshine and laughter in a threadbare village. Someone who uplifted and charmed whoever she crossed. Dracula, after some unknown breaking point in the mad red fog as he skulked up the mountains into his broken castle to wrestle with inhuman instincts and hold to something like a man's sanity, was alone. A monster made raw with slaughtering, with his people only fearing and fleeing around him. His halls are quiet. He crawls and lopes through them, snapping at himself, knowing he is reducing night by night into a Thing more than a man, let alone a conqueror.
So he goes hunting. He finds the fair girl who makes others happy and holds their hearts. He steals her. Wrings out months of playacting from her; in turn, he has reason to force himself into behaving like a man. The castle has no visitors in that era. When she cries and calls from her window, she hears only her own echoes as a pleading choir. And then it is back to making her monster happy. So happy that he loves her. She must stay.
The next girl was taken back when ties were first forged between the Count and the early generations of Slovaks he would come to entrust with his errands. There was trust on the human side too. Yes, he was a monster, but he was their monster. Their benefactor. He speaks to them like kin and pays a dragon's ransom for their work. They are allies! He calls them friends!
So it goes until his attention falls on one of the girls. A daughter. A sister. A new wife. She knows their Count, their kind monster. 'A friend of the family.' And perhaps she is not even afraid when he asks her, cordial as a lord, to aid him with something in the castle. A small matter, my dear, but something he would not trust the coarse handling of the men to do. She goes in. The door locks.
Does she go to that same room, that same window? Does she weep and call for her family? Does anyone try to come for her, to plead with their friend-master-owner, or to--ha--raise a weapon against him?
If so, it is a small matter. Quick. Bloody.
She charms him while alive. For she must. She thought, just as her new-ancient Sister thought, that she might find a way out. A chance to flee. But she makes him so happy. So happy that he loves her. She must stay.
And the Slovaks learn a lesson that is shared through centuries. They warn all those they work with in the future of the same. The locals, the nomads, the strangers. No women. No girls.
The third girl has no warning. She is Romani, but she has run from her people too. Or else she was trying to find them. Times have always been grim, but especially when the mania over witchcraft was at its height. She lost friends and family to...what? Sham trials and tortured deaths? A scattering to the winds as they fled the self-assigned hunters? Running further, higher, steeper. God's soldiers will not bother with their mission if it means galloping up the cliffs.
Up, up, up.
There are wolves. There is cold. She has no room in her to care.
And then, a fairy tale happening:
A man appears on the moonlit mountain. His eyes are fire. Are you lost, my dear?
She is. She thinks herself already dead or dreaming when he leads her into the castle. When there is food, warmth, and sympathy from this smiling noble perched in the crags of the Carpathians. And for one month, maybe two, even after she smells something worse than death on him, even after every liberty is plucked from her like petals from a rose, even after she has her first glimpse of her grinning Sisters, even after she sees strangers--Living people! Her own people among them! Look, look, I am trapped here! Please! Please, do not go, do not leave me with him...--she clings to charm. To smiles. She makes him happy.
So happy that he loves her. She must stay.
And now there is a young man. Such a winsome thing, young and strong. He makes their monster so happy.
His waiting Sisters think their monster may just love him.
And as they hear him shout from the hand-me-down window, they laugh along with the living in their coffins.
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