Chapter 11: Kitchen Reclamation
The silence after Levi’s command hung in the air of the hallway, thick and charged. Aria squeezed Armin one last time, then pulled back, her smile turning wry. “Kitchen’s this way. He made coffee. It’s terrible, but it’s caffeinated.”
She led them past the high-tech war room of a living room into a kitchen that was a study in dissonant domesticity. It was clean to a clinical degree, every surface spotless, the stainless steel sink gleaming. But the dish towel hanging on the oven handle was a vibrant, fluffy pink. The mugs on the counter were a mismatched set of garish, novelty ones—one featured a cartoon cat in a space helmet. Levi stood at the counter, pouring black coffee into four of these mugs with a grimace of profound resignation.
“Sit,” he said, without looking up.
They sat at a small, circular table. Armin’s eyes immediately tracked over the room, noting the single, high-quality camera discreetly mounted in the corner, the reinforced locks on the back door, the first-aid kit that was more of a field trauma kit visible on top of the fridge. Eren just watched Levi, his posture tense, waiting.
Levi brought the mugs over, setting them down with more force than necessary. He took the seat facing the door, his back to the wall. Aria sat next to him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. She wrapped her hands around her mug, the cheerful “#1 BARISTA” text on it looking absurd.
For a moment, no one spoke. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator and the distant, soft patter of rain against the window.
Levi took a sip of his coffee, his expression twisting further. “It’s swill.”
“It’s the expensive single-origin stuff you bought me,” Aria said, her voice light. “You just make it wrong. You use too much and let it sit.”
“It’s fuel. Not a hobby.”
Eren picked up his mug. The coffee was bitter and strong, almost acidic. He drank it anyway. The heat grounded him. “You said we had a problem.”
Levi’s grey eyes lifted to his. The assessment was immediate, brutal. He saw the dockhand strength, the restless anger, the newfound focus. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, as if Eren had passed some initial inspection. “We do. It has a name. Dr. Silas Vance.”
Aria let out a long, shaky breath. “Right. Okay. So, you guys sort of dropped into the middle of the movie.” She glanced at Levi, then at her own hands. “After… after we all ended up here, it wasn’t… great. For me. I won’t speak for anyone else.” She looked at Armin, then Eren, her gaze frank. “You guys had each other. I had… nobody. For a long time.”
Armin’s face was a mask of pained understanding. Eren looked down at the dark surface of his coffee.
“I got a job here. Made a friend, Maya. She’s normal. Wonderful. Has no idea.” Aria’s thumbs traced the rim of her mug. “But the nights were bad. The dreams. The feeling of being… untethered. So, long story short, a year and a half ago I tried to off myself. Used a 9 millimeter pistol. In the left shoulder. Didn’t really do what I had intended it to do because, well, my friend Maya found me on my bathroom floor bleeding out. Clearly, I lived.”
The words were delivered with a flat, matter-of-fact cadence that was more chilling than any tremor of emotion could have been. Levi’s hand, resting on the table, curled slowly into a fist, his knuckles bleaching white. He didn’t look at her.
“I got put on an involuntary psychiatric hold for a month inpatient,” Aria continued. “Got put on three separate meds. For anxiety, depression, and PTSD. When I started outpatient care, I started seeing this psychiatrist, Dr. Silas Vance. He was nice at first. Then he started being a creep. He thought Levi didn’t even exist. Thought he was a… a coping mechanism. A delusion.”
She paused, took a gulp of the terrible coffee. “Until I was out in Ohio for a vacation with Maya. I didn’t really tell my doctor I was going to Coshocton because nowhere in the conditions of my treatment did it say I had to tell him when I went out of state. Legally, I don’t have to. I even asked my own lawyer about that before I left. Well, after the fact, and I had found Levi and ended up going to Columbus, I had to have my weekly check-in with Vance. He… well, he didn’t love that Levi was real. Threatened to have me institutionalized for being erratic and manic. A bunch of bullshit. I was fine. Levi can attest to that.”
“You were,” Levi muttered, his voice a low growl. “You are.”
“Then, a couple days later,” Aria pushed on, “we find out the medical board revoked his license because of a bunch of lawsuits against him about sexual harassment and stalking. So now I’m part of this giant lawsuit against him, and Levi thinks it’s the end of the world.”
“I do not.” Levi murmured, staring into his mug.
“You do. You’re catastrophizing.” She nudged his shoulder with her own. A tiny, intimate gesture. “He thinks Vance is going to use my… our… situation. The lack of documentation. The sheer impossibility of it. As a defense. Or as leverage against me. To discredit me, or worse.”
Armin had been absorbing it all, his mind visibly racing. “He’s not wrong,” he said quietly. All eyes turned to him. “A doctor-patient relationship is built on documented history. You have none. Prior to a year and a half ago, Aria Reyes does not exist. No birth records, no school records, no childhood medical history. A forged social security number and backdated paperwork can only go so deep under legal scrutiny. If a determined investigator—or a vengeful, cornered ex-doctor—starts digging…”
“He’ll find a void,” Levi finished, his voice grim. “And he’ll want to know why. He’ll keep digging. He’ll subpoena records from here, from Ohio. He’ll find connections. My lack of past is… less conspicuous. A mechanic can be a wanderer. But a young woman with no history, who then connects with another man with no history…” He finally looked at Eren and Armin. “Then he finds you two. Another set of voids. It becomes a pattern. It becomes a story.”
Eren felt the old, familiar rage begin to simmer, a cold heat in his veins. “So we stop him.”
Levi’s gaze was flinty. “How.”
“The same way we’d stop any enemy threatening the squad.” Eren’s words were simple, deadly.
“This isn’t a titan. It’s a man with law degrees and subpoena power,” Armin interjected, though his tone wasn’t dismissive. It was analytical. “Direct violence would only make it worse. It would confirm a narrative of instability and danger. We need to discredit him, not eliminate him.”
“How?” Eren shot back, frustrated.
“We let the lawsuit run its course,” Aria said, trying for a tone of confidence that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “There are other plaintiffs. Stronger cases. With actual, you know, evidence of him being a predator. My part might get thrown out.”
“Might.” Levi stood up abruptly, pacing to the sink. He stared out the window into the dark, rainy night. “I will not operate on ‘might.’ Not with this. Not with you.” He turned back, his posture rigid. “He has already initiated discovery. He’s requested all my business records, my personal communications. He’s trying to paint a picture of co-dependence, of manipulation. He’s implying I’m part of her ‘delusion.’ That I’m exploiting a vulnerable patient.”
The air left the room. The pink towel, the silly mugs—they were just a fragile facade over a life under siege.
“What did your lawyer say?” Armin asked.
“To comply. To be boring. To give him nothing.” Levi’s lip curled. “A defensive strategy. It’s weak. It leaves her exposed.”
“So we go on the offensive,” Armin said, his blue eyes sharpening. “We don’t wait for him to dig. We dig first. Deeper. You said there were other lawsuits. We find them. We find the other victims. We build a wall of evidence so high that anything he tries to throw at Aria gets lost in the noise. We make him the story, not her.”
Levi was silent for a long moment, studying Armin. The strategist was back, the mind that had planned coups and revolutions. Here, in a pink-accented kitchen, he was plotting another one. “You can do that?”
“I found you through a motorcycle forum,” Armin said, a hint of his old, quiet pride returning. “A litigious psychiatrist with a trail of wreckage? He’ll have left a data shadow a mile wide. Emails, payments, maybe even poorly hidden records. We find it. We hand it to the other lawyers. We bury him in his own sins.”
A slow, predatory light began to kindle in Levi’s eyes. It was the look he got before a perfectly executed operation. A plan. “You’ll need access. To machines, to networks.”
“I have my laptops.”
“They’re not enough.” Levi walked to a cupboard, opened it. Inside, instead of plates, was a stack of sleek, black computer towers, their LEDs dark. “Use these. They’re clean, powerful, and untraceable to me. I built them for diagnostics.”
Armin was already out of his chair, moving toward the cupboard like a pilgrim to a shrine. “These are…”
“Tools,” Levi said. “Use them.”
Eren watched the exchange, the tactical energy shifting in the room. The helplessness was receding, replaced by a vector, a target. He looked at Aria. She was watching Levi, her expression a complex mix of worry, affection, and fierce pride.
“So,” Eren said, his voice cutting through the tech talk. “We’re staying.”
Levi met his gaze. “You are. Until this is resolved. You’re here now. You’re part of the pattern. That makes you part of the solution.” He paused. “The guest room is down the hall. It has one window. It’s alarmed.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a deployment.
Aria stood up, the legs of her chair scraping against the floor. “Right. I’ll get some sheets that aren’t covered in cartoon dinosaurs.” She tried for a smile. It was a little wobbly. “Sorry you’re bunking in a warzone.”
Eren stood as well. “We’ve slept in worse.”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Levi’s posture softened, just a fraction. His eyes flicked from Eren to Armin, who was already carefully extracting a computer tower from the cupboard. “Yes,” he said, almost to himself. “I suppose you have.”
He turned back to the window, his silhouette outlined against the night. The rain had picked up again, lashing against the glass. “We start tomorrow. Armin, you have lead on the digital front. Eren, you’re with me. We have physical reconnaissance to do. Vance has an office in Syracuse. We’ll see what kind of fortress he’s built.”
Aria moved to Levi’s side, leaning her head against his arm. He didn’t pull away. Instead, his hand came up, almost unconsciously, and rested on her hair for a brief second before falling back to his side.
The fight had a shape now. It was in a lawyer’s office, in lines of code, in the cold rain of New York. It was a fight for their right to exist quietly in this world. Eren felt his hands curl into fists at his sides, not with rage, but with purpose. Finally, a front line he could see.
The tension in the room shifted, thinning into something unfamiliar and electrically charged. Levi was still staring out at the lashing rain, his mind clearly already in Syracuse, strategizing. Armin was mentally cataloguing the specs of the computer towers. The immediate threat had been named, a plan sketched out. The sudden, deafening quiet of a temporary pause descended.
Eren shifted his weight, the floorboard groaning under his boot. He looked at Aria, then at Armin, then at Levi’s rigid back. The adrenaline of the reunion, the confession, the planning—it was all a frantic current with no outlet. The old, familiar itch under his skin returned, amplified by the proximity of them all, together for the first time in this strange world.
He cleared his throat. The sound was too loud in the quiet kitchen.
“Hey, um…” Eren began, his voice rough. He felt a flush creeping up his neck, hot and stupid. “Do you guys mind if we uh…”
He trailed off, turning bright red. The words felt clumsy and too large in his mouth.
Levi didn’t turn from the window. Armin slowly looked up from the computer case in his hands, his blue eyes sharpening with understanding. Aria was the one who broke the silence, her head tilting, a slow, knowing smile spreading across her face.
“Fuck?” she asked, her tone casual, as if inquiring about the weather.
Eren’s eyes widened. He nodded, a jerky, awkward motion. “Uh, yeah. Like, I don’t know. I know… like the four of us would sometimes, back in Paradis…” He swallowed, forcing the words out. “I wasn’t sure if you would still be into that.”
Levi turned then, very slowly. His grey eyes were unreadable, scanning Eren’s flushed face, then moving to Armin, who gave a minute, almost imperceptible shrug of assent. Finally, his gaze landed on Aria. Her smile was open, challenging, a little wicked.
Aria shrugged one shoulder, her earlier vulnerability gone, replaced by a poised, modern confidence. “I have a shit-ton of toys we could try. Bought from Adam & Eve. Have wipes for everything and whatnot as well.”
The clinical preparedness of the statement, juxtaposed with the crude offer, hung in the air. It was a bridge between their past and this jarring present. Levi exhaled, a long, slow sound that wasn’t quite a sigh. He looked at Aria, really looked at her, and the hard line of his shoulders softened just a fraction. It was the same look he’d given her when she’d chosen the pink towel—a weary, absolute surrender to her wants.
“Your room or ours?” he asked, his voice low and flat, devoid of judgment.
Aria’s grin widened. “Ours. Bigger bed. And the toys are in the nightstand.”
She didn’t wait for confirmation. She simply turned and walked out of the kitchen, down the hall. The implicit command in her movement was clear. After a beat of stunned silence, Eren followed, his heart hammering against his ribs. Armin set the computer tower down with deliberate care and followed, his expression contemplative, analytical. Levi was the last to move, clicking off the kitchen light and plunging the hallway into shadow before he followed them.
Aria’s room was another study in contrasts. The bed was large, with a sleek, modern frame, but it was piled with an absurd number of colorful, textured throw pillows. The walls were a soft grey, but one was dominated by a large, meticulously detailed map of Paradis, a relic from another life. The nightstand was indeed stuffed, the drawer slightly ajar from the volume inside.
She turned to face them, the light from the hallway carving her silhouette. “Ground rules,” she said, her voice losing its playful edge for a moment. “Safeword is ‘titan.’ Anything rough needs explicit yes. Clean-up is my responsibility. Anyone uncomfortable, you leave, no questions.” Her eyes found Levi’s. “That means you too. No brooding in the corner.”
Levi’s lips thinned, but he gave a single, curt nod.
Aria clapped her hands together, the sound sharp in the quiet room. “Great. Now, who wants what?”
The question hung there, dense and potent. Eren looked at Armin, a silent question in his eyes. Armin answered by stepping forward, closing the distance between them. He didn’t kiss him. He placed a hand on the back of Eren’s neck, his touch firm and proprietary.
“On the bed. On your back,” Armin said, his voice quiet but leaving no room for debate.
A shiver of pure submission ran down Eren’s spine. He obeyed, shedding his shirt as he went, the fabric falling to the plush carpet. He lay back against the cool duvet, watching as Armin undressed with methodical calm. Levi, meanwhile, stood near the door, watching Aria. She met his gaze, her chin raised in a silent challenge.
She walked to him, her steps slow. She didn’t speak. She simply reached for the hem of his simple black t-shirt. He stood rigid, allowing her to pull it over his head, revealing the familiar, corded muscle and the pale scars that mapped his history. Her fingers traced one that curved over his ribs, a gesture so intimate it made Eren look away for a second.
“You’re with me,” Aria murmured, not a question but a statement.
Levi’s hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. It was a gesture of such stark, naked tenderness that it felt more invasive than anything sexual. “Yes,” he breathed, the word almost soundless.
The room dissolved into a tangle of movement and heat. Armin joined Eren on the bed, his body a familiar weight, his kiss deep and claiming. Eren surrendered to it, his hands fisting in the sheets as Armin’s mouth moved from his lips to his jaw, down the column of his throat. He bit, not hard enough to break skin, but enough to make Eren gasp.
Across the room, Aria had pushed Levi onto the edge of an armchair. She stood over him, having shed her own clothes, her body a graceful contrast to his battle-honed form. She held a bottle of lube in one hand, a simple, elegant silicone butt plug in the other. Levi’s eyes were dark, his breathing controlled but audible.
“You want this?” she asked, her voice softer now.
“Yes,” Levi said again, the word grating out of him. He spread his legs, a gesture of utter vulnerability that was more shocking than any act of violence.
Eren watched, mesmerized, as Aria coated the plug and her fingers with slick, shiny lube. She worked him open with a clinical precision that was profoundly erotic, her eyes locked on his face, watching every flicker of sensation that passed over his stoic features. When she pressed the plug home, Levi’s head fell back against the chair, a harsh groan escaping his lips.
“Good,” Aria whispered, leaning down to kiss his forehead. “Now you wait.”
“Now you wait.”
The words were a soft command, a thread of control in the thickening air. Levi obeyed, his body rigid with the effort of surrender, the silicone plug a persistent, stretching presence inside him. His eyes, dark and narrowed, tracked Aria as she turned towards the bed.
Armin had Eren fully undressed now, his hands pinning Eren’s wrists to the mattress above his head. Eren was breathing hard, his chest flushed, his cock straining against his stomach. He was watching Levi, watching Aria, a flicker of awe in his eyes. Armin followed his gaze, a slow smile touching his lips. He released one of Eren’s wrists, his hand sliding down the tense abdomen.
"Watch them," Armin murmured into Eren’s ear, his voice a low vibration. "This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To see him like this? To see her?" His fingers wrapped around Eren’s shaft, giving a firm, twisting stroke that made Eren’s hips jerk."To be seen."
Eren moaned, his head tipping back. Aria approached the bed, her movements fluid and assured. She climbed onto the mattress, her knees sinking into the duvet on Eren’s other side. She leaned over him, her hair falling in a curtain that brushed his skin, and kissed Armin, deep and slow, over Eren’s chest. It was a claim, a consolidation of power. Eren writhed between them, overwhelmed.
"You're both so fucking gorgeous," Aria breathed, pulling back. Her hand joined Armin’s, both of them now stroking Eren, their fingers intertwining around his length. The dual sensation, the slick friction of four hands, pulled a broken sound from Eren’s throat.
Across the room, Levi made a sound too—a sharp, bitten-off grunt. He was still in the chair, his knuckles white where they gripped the arms, his own erection ignored. He was watching, completely, his control a visible mantle he refused to shed.
"Levi," Aria called, not looking away from Eren’s face."Come here.Now."
He moved. He stood, the movement supple and predatory despite his vulnerability, and walked to the side of the bed. The plug shifted inside him with each step, a fact known only to Aria and now to everyone in the room. It was in his posture, a slight stiffness he couldn't fully hide. He stopped by her shoulder, a statue waiting for its next command.
"Take his legs," Aria instructed, nodding toward Eren's ankles.
Levi’s hands, calloused and strong, wrapped around Eren’s calves. He pushed, spreading Eren wider, opening him up. The exposure was total. Eren whimpered, his eyes squeezed shut, completely at their mercy. Armin released Eren’s cock, reaching for the bottle of lube Aria had tossed onto the bed.
"It’s my turn," Armin said, his voice thick. He slicked his fingers, then pressed two against Eren’s entrance, circling slowly. "You’re so open for me already. So eager." He pushed in, and Eren cried out, his back arching off the bed.
Aria shifted, moving down the bed. She lowered her mouth to Eren’s cock, taking him deep in one smooth, wet glide. Eren shouted, his body bowing between the twin points of sensation—Armin’s fingers inside him, Aria’s mouth on him. Levi’s grip on his legs was an iron restraint.
"Fuck, fuck, please," Eren begged, the words slurry and desperate.
Armin scissored his fingers, stretching him. "Please what?"Need you. Need you to fuck me.Now."
Armin withdrew his fingers. He positioned himself, the blunt head of his cock nudging against Eren. He looked at Aria, who released Eren with a wet pop, her lips swollen. She met his gaze, then looked up at Levi. A silent communication passed between them, swift and electric.
"Switch," Aria said, her voice husky.
In a fluid, practiced motion, Armin pulled back. Aria took his place, aligning her hips with Eren’s. She wasn’t wearing a strap—it was just her, her body wet and ready. She sank down onto him in one long, slow impalement, her head falling back as she took him fully inside her. She began to ride him, a rolling, powerful rhythm, her nails digging into his pectorals.
Armin moved behind her. He gripped her hips, steadying her, but his eyes were on Levi. "Your turn," he said.
Levi’s jaw was clenched, a vein throbbing in his temple. He released Eren’s legs. Armin guided him onto the bed, behind Aria. Levi’s hands settled on her waist, his front pressed against her back. He was breathing hard, his control fracturing.
"Take it out," Armin commanded, his voice leaving no room for debate.
Levi’s hand slipped between his own body and Aria’s back. There was a soft, wet sound. He let the plug fall to the sheets. Armin, his own cock dripping, poured a generous stream of lube over Levi’s exposed hole, his fingers slicking it, working it in quickly, roughly. Levi shuddered, a full-body tremor, his forehead dropping to Aria’s shoulder.
"Now," Armin growled. "Take her. While she takes him."
With a ragged groan that was pure defeat and absolute need, Levi pushed into Aria from behind. She gasped, the fullness making her clench around Eren, who cried out beneath her. The bed became a single, living engine of sweat-slicked skin and desperate motion. Aria was the conduit, the shared point of contact, being filled by Eren as Levi filled her, over and over.
Armin watched for a moment, his hand working his own cock, his gaze hungry. Then he moved. He climbed onto the bed, over Eren, his knees straddling Eren’s chest. He fed his cock into Eren’s waiting, open mouth. Eren took him deep, his throat working, his eyes rolling back in ecstasy.
The room dissolved into a symphony of raw, unfiltered sound. The slap of skin on skin, the wet, sucking sounds from Eren’s mouth, Aria’s sharp, keening cries, Levi’s guttural, strained groans. The air grew thick with the smell of sex and salt and exertion.
Levi was fucking into Aria with a frantic, punishing rhythm, each thrust driving her down harder onto Eren. His hands were tangled in her hair, his teeth grazing her shoulder. "Is this what you wanted?" he snarled into her ear, the question torn from him. "To see me break?"
"Yes," she gasped, her own rhythm faltering as pleasure swamped her. "God, yes, Levi.Just like that. Don’t stop."
Eren was choking, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes, but he never stopped sucking, his tongue working desperately along Armin’s length. Armin held his head, his thrusts into that warm, tight mouth becoming erratic. "You’re such a good fucking slut for this," Armin panted, his composure gone, replaced by raw, carnal need. "Taking all of us. Taking everything."
The chain reaction started with Aria. Her body went taut, a high, sharp cry ripped from her lungs as she came, clamping down violently on Eren. Her orgasm triggered his; he screamed around Armin’s cock, his release pumping into her in hot, pulsing jets. The convulsing of her body around him and the vibrations from Eren’s scream pushed Levi over the edge. He slammed into her one last time, buried to the hilt, and roared, his body seizing as he emptied himself inside her.
Armin was the last. Seeing them all come apart, feeling Eren’s throat constrict around him, was too much. He thrust once, twice more, then spilled deep into Eren’s mouth with a choked-off groan, his whole body trembling.
The collapse was gradual, a slow-motion detonation. Levi pulled out, collapsing onto his back beside the tangled heap of Aria and Eren, his chest heaving. Aria slid off of Eren, rolling to her side, spent. Armin withdrew from Eren’s mouth, slipping off to lie beside him. For long minutes, the only sound was the ragged symphony of their breathing and the distant hum of the refrigerator.
Eren was the first to move, curling onto his side, pressing his forehead against Armin’s damp shoulder. Armin’s arm came around him, holding him close. On Eren’s other side, Aria reached out, her fingers finding Levi’s hand where it lay on the sheet between them. His fingers twitched, then closed around hers, gripping tight.
No one spoke. The vulnerability in the room was absolute, a silent, shared confession more intimate than anything their bodies had just done. The maps on the wall, the ghosts of Paradis, the threat named Vance waiting in the wings—it all receded, muted by the sheer, animal reality of their connection.
Finally, Aria stirred. She let out a shaky, post-coital laugh that was almost a sob. “Well,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “That’s one way to say hello.”
A snort came from Levi’s side of the bed. It might have been a laugh. It might have been a sigh. He didn’t let go of her hand.
Armin pressed a kiss to the top of Eren’s head, his eyes already distant, calculating in the dim light. The strategist was returning, even here. “We start on Vance at dawn,” he said, his voice quiet but clear.
“Dawn,” Levi agreed, the word a gravelly promise.
Eren just nodded against Armin’s skin, the last of his anger, for now, blissfully quiet. He was home.