
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/964899.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Shingeki_no_Kyojin_|_Attack_on_Titan
  Relationship:
      Mikasa_Ackerman/Annie_Leonhart
  Character:
      Mikasa_Ackerman, Annie_Leonhart, Bertolt_Hoover, Reiner_Braun, Mina
      Carolina
  Additional Tags:
      Sex, Non-Graphic_Violence, Sparring, Backstory, No_Spoilers
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-09-13 Words: 2959
****** the age of aggression ******
by queertitan
Summary
     Annie is attracted to people with monsters inside them, and Mikasa
     burns brighter than anyone else.
     Alternately, Annie and Mikasa attempt to work through their sexual
     tension by punching each other.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
Annie wins their first fight.
It takes half an hour, the two of them grappling in a tight circle of their
peers. Annie runs cool where Mikasa runs hot; it’s the only thing that gives
her an edge over Mikasa’s speed and strength. She loses track of the times
Mikasa knocks her down, the number of stinging punches Mikasa lands on her arms
and shoulders, but she endures, learns to wait until the last moment to twist
out of Mikasa’s path. And when they’re both dirty, exhausted, and slowing down,
Annie fakes a stumble to lure her in.
Mikasa’s teeth are bared and she lunges blindly forward to take advantage of
Annie’s weakness. Annie, steady, uses Mikasa’s own momentum to take her to the
ground, and twists Mikasa’s arms behind her back with what strength she has
left. Her arms shake with the effort of holding Mikasa down, but she does it.
“Do you give up?”
Mikasa tries a few times to wrench her wrists out of Annie’s grasp, but finally
her shoulders slump. “You win,” she says, and it sounds more like a promise of
retribution than admitting defeat.
Reiner whistles, and Bertholdt nervously shouts Annie’s name, but most of their
fellow trainees are wide-eyed and silent when Annie looks up. They may be
impressed, but they’re afraid of her, afraid of Mikasa.
Mikasa wipes her bleeding lip on the back of her hand when Annie lets her up,
her eyes as bleak as ever. She sizes Annie up like the fight isn’t over, like
she doesn’t believe in losing. Annie shrugs it off and walks away, leaving
Mikasa to stare after her. Her knuckles sting, and one hard fall scraped the
skin off her cheek, but those distant aches aren’t enough to distract her from
the feeling of Mikasa’s eyes on her back.
 
The next time they practice hand-to-hand, Annie is paired with Bertholdt, who
sweats and stammers every time she looks at him. She hates fighting him; it's
hard not to feel guilty when she's twisting his gangly limbs into knots. He’s
helpless, and more than that, Annie gets the feeling that he wouldn’t hit her
even if he got the chance. Every time the instructor tells him to be the
aggressor, he blushes a violent red and makes the weakest lunge toward Annie,
only to gasp in pain and relief when she throws him to the ground.
Annie’s about to cut practice early to spare him when Mikasa walks up behind
Bert and takes him by the arm. “Spar with Eren,” she says, with her voice of
soft command. She ignores his sweating and stammering as she steps between him
and Annie, a blunt wooden knife in her hand.
“Annie.”
“Mikasa,” Annie says lightly. Mikasa’s grip tightens on the knife and she
raises it, the challenge clear.
Annie rolls her shoulders slowly and settles into a defensive stance, letting
her eyes wander down the taut lines of Mikasa’s body, tracing the tension in
her legs. She’s ready when Mikasa springs at her, crossing the empty space
between them in a single lunge and swinging the dagger at Annie’s throat. It’s
vicious, but predictable. Annie moves around her and sweeps Mikasa off her feet
with a single kick.
But Mikasa expects this. She lands, rolls once, and hooks her heel around
Annie’s ankle, wrenching her to the ground. Annie lands bruisingly on her right
arm and Mikasa, already poised, throws herself onto Annie, straddling her waist
and bringing the knife down on her neck. Annie only has time to seize her wrist
and stop the knife an inch from its target, digging her nails into Mikasa’s
pale arm.
Mikasa breathes hard, but silently, her eyes full of that lethal calm she gets
in training. Only Annie knows how quickly Mikasa’s rage can flare, and she
wonders if it will, if Mikasa really hates her for winning.
But when she speaks, Mikasa’s voice is quiet as ever. “We’re even,” she says.
Annie nods, though she wants to ask if Mikasa really thinks she could open
Annie’s throat from this position. Which of them is stronger? Could Mikasa
force the knife down if Annie pushed back?
She doesn’t. Mikasa stands, her arms limp at her sides, fingers curled loosely
around the knife’s hilt. When Annie sits up and rubs her arm, Mikasa’s eyes
widen, then soften. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” Annie climbs to her feet, ignoring the ache of her new bruises.
Half of the other trainees are staring at them; Annie fixes her eyes on the
distance so she doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze. There’s something nagging at her
and she doesn’t know what it is until Mikasa starts to turn away. “Mikasa,” she
says casually. “We should train together. We’ve both memorized all the moves
they’re teaching already.”
“I’m going to practice with Eren,” Mikasa says. Of course. Everything she does
is for Eren’s benefit. But she hesitates, pulling her scarf up over her mouth
as she catches Annie’s eye. “We can spar after dinner.”
“Fine,” Annie says. She brushes dirt from her back and pretends not to watch
Mikasa leave.
 
It’s as if proving they could beat each other was all they needed to clear the
air; now their sparring is almost amiable, and becomes a regular addition to
their training. Mikasa picks up on the techniques Annie’s father taught her
relatively quickly, although she rarely uses them; Mikasa is developing her own
fighting style, one that mimics how she moves in the 3DMG, acrobatic and
precise. Annie is as patient and steady as always, but she finds herself
sharpening to match Mikasa’s blinding speed and vicious blows.
They never stop practicing before the both of them are dusty, tired, and
bruised, although Annie barely registers her bruises anymore. Training with the
3DMG has left her with constant, vibrant bruises in the shape of her harness,
and she goes to sleep with aching legs and a sore back nearly every night. It
becomes routine, almost comforting, like fighting Mikasa.
The two of them don’t speak much; Mikasa is stoic as always, and Annie isn’t
willing to be the talkative one. Still, there are some things you can only know
about someone once you’ve seen how they fight. Annie becomes aware of the
ambition Mikasa keeps hidden inside herself, the reason she’s willing to throw
herself into battle with Annie after a day of brutal training. It’s the source
of that blank fury that overtakes her when anything defeats her; it’s the
reason that most days, Annie finds herself flat on the ground, pinned under
Mikasa’s weight.
Everyone knows by now that Mikasa Ackerman is a prodigy, but they think the
girl herself is quiet, modest, as if her abilities come to her without effort
and focus. They don’t see whatever it is that burns her up and demands that she
be better, better, better. Before long, Annie is sure that Mikasa knows how
powerful she is; it can’t escape her notice that she’s starting to outpace
their instructors already. But she keeps pushing herself, past perfection.
Annie watches Mikasa swing between the dummies in their practice course with
dreamlike precision, taking down three or four in the time it takes her
classmates to topple a single one. She’s a natural killer.
It’s not that Annie thinks the monsters inside her and Mikasa are of the same
breed. But when they fight and Mikasa lunges for her like a starving wolf,
Annie feels more human than she ever has, like there might be something human
about the predator’s instincts lurking under her skin. The two of them know
that the battle isn’t over until the enemy is dead, so they never stop at
disarming each other; they fight until one of them goes limp under the other.
They fight like real enemies, even though Annie thinks by now they might be
friends.
Or something else. Sometimes, when Annie manages to wrestle Mikasa into the
dirt and hold her down, she feels Mikasa’s fire licking around the pit of her
stomach, and her fingers grow hot where they dig into Mikasa’s wrists. A flush
crawls up her neck and she stands to let Mikasa up, but she doesn’t want to.
She wants to watch the rage of defeat catch in Mikasa’s eyes, and she wants
Mikasa to lunge up and find the strength to throw her off. She wants Mikasa to
throw her down and cage her with her arms the way she does when she’s caught up
in the fight and can’t let Annie go.
And one day, Mikasa does.
She snarls and twists her knee into Annie’s stomach, hard enough to drive the
breath from her body. Rolling over, she lunges and pins Annie on her back,
panting, her hair in her face and nose bleeding slightly from a blow Annie
landed earlier. She grabs both of Annie’s wrists and slams them into the ground
and slumps forward, so close that the heat of her breath flares across Annie’s
mouth.
Annie huffs a laugh, more sigh than sound, as she stares up into Mikasa’s eyes.
“Your nose doesn’t look broken. That’s good.”
“You thought you could break it?” Mikasa asks, her voice still trembling on the
edge of hostility. A drop of her blood lands on Annie’s cheek and Annie jumps,
her throat dry.
“Ackerman! Leonhardt!”
It’s one of their instructors, Linde, the graying woman who walks with a cane
but can still knock most of the trainees down with ease. She comes hobbling up
to them at great speed, her mouth tight with disapproval. Mikasa scrambles off
of Annie and hides her mouth and nose behind her scarf. Annie quickly wipes the
blood from her cheek.
Linde doesn’t seem convinced when Annie explains that they were just sparring,
and berates them for risking injury without their instructors present, but
eventually she lets them go with a warning. Annie glances at Mikasa as they
trudge inside their cabin, but Mikasa’s face is hidden in her scarf. They don’t
speak.
 
Annie jerks awake at the feeling of callused fingers on her cheek, and seizes
the intruder’s wrist before she knows where she is. Blinking into the dark, she
recognizes the dim outline of Mikasa’s hair. Somewhere in the cabin, Sasha is
snoring loud enough to drown out Annie’s voice when she whispers, “What?”
Mikasa pulls her wrist from Annie’s grip and steps back from the bed. Her boots
scuff softly on the floor, and Annie realizes that Mikasa is dressed, even
though it’s well into the night. Her scarf is wrapped around her face.
“I can’t sleep when Sasha’s snoring,” Mikasa says quietly. It’s too dark to
read her expression.
Annie knows she’ll regret this; she’s already sore from a day of training, and
she’ll wake cursing herself in the morning if she crawls out of bed now. Still,
she sits up, pushing aside her bedcovers. “If you’re tired enough, you’ll
sleep,” she says. “We can spar in that clearing by the training grounds.”
“We can’t get caught.”
“We won’t,” Annie says, because by now she’s turned sneaking out into an art
form; in her early days, she spent her sleepless nights walking in the forest,
learning to move softly and leave no trace. When Mikasa nods and curls her
fingers around her scarf, Annie grabs her clothes from under the bunk. She
pulls her nightshirt over her head because it shouldn’t matter if she does this
in front of Mikasa, and when she looks up to find Mikasa watching her, she
knows that it does matter.
She fumbles on her trousers and boots as quietly and quickly as she can, and
the two of them slip out of the cabin and into the dark. There’s only a thin
slice of moon, faint starlight dappling the forest floor, but Annie knows the
way intimately.
In the clearing, they face each other, and they fight. No wooden knives this
time, just their fists and feet, which are better weapons anyway. Mikasa comes
at her faster than Annie can follow, faster than she herself can control. It’s
what Mikasa does when she’s frustrated, Annie knows, and right now Annie feels
the same urgency. But it isn’t until Mikasa grabs her and slams her back
against a tree that the urgency takes shape, when instead of trying to throw
Mikasa off Annie grabs her by the hair and kisses her.
Mikasa gasps, startled, but her hands are already on Annie’s waist, pulling her
up on her toes so they can kiss deeper, as if this was always their plan. It’s
sloppy, and Annie doesn’t know if Mikasa has ever kissed someone before. That
doesn’t stop her from wrapping her arms around Mikasa’s neck to pull her close,
grabbing fistfuls of her shirt and hair and liking Mikasa’s hiss of pain.
Mikasa pushes a knee between her thighs with stubborn aggression and Annie
chokes on her own breath. Then she grabs Mikasa’s hips and twists her around,
shoving Mikasa against the tree as she sinks to her knees in the dirt.
It’s not that she thinks the monsters inside them are the same, but that Annie
can’t tell them apart.
Mikasa buries her hands in Annie’s long hair and shudders as Annie licks
between her thighs, and Annie swallows in the sight of her, Mikasa’s face tight
and tense like when she fights. Mikasa is loudest when the fury overtakes her
in the middle of a sparring match and she shouts with every swing of her sword
or knife or fist, and she’s loudest when she comes, panting and whimpering and
rolling her hips against the flat of Annie’s tongue.
Annie wipes a hand across her mouth and gets to her feet, almost smiling when
Mikasa bites her lip. She reaches over to fix Mikasa’s pants and goes to kiss
her again, maybe a softer kiss this time.
Instead, Mikasa grabs her and falls into her, landing on Annie and straddling
her thighs with all her usual speed. She kisses Annie hard, kisses the breath
out of her throat while she shoves a hand down Annie’s pants. Mikasa can’t live
with being second best, knowing that she could be better. The pads of her
fingers are rough from gripping the hilt of her sword and she drags them
through the slickness between Annie’s legs, curls her fingertips as she rubs
insistently at Annie’s clit. Annie closes her thighs around Mikasa’s hips with
a groan, shaking and jerking against Mikasa’s fingers for more friction. When
she lets her head fall back, Mikasa seizes the opportunity to put her mouth on
Annie’s throat.
Annie slams her fist against the ground when she comes, panting. She grabs
Mikasa and yanks her in for a kiss, as Mikasa pulls her hand free of Annie’s
trousers. This kiss is softer, the competition fading. It’s comfortable between
them, at least until the cold of the grass starts to seep into Annie’s back,
and she realizes Mikasa is shivering.
“Are you tired yet?” Annie asks.
Mikasa looks away, and Annie thinks her face might be red, but it’s too dark to
tell. “Yes,” she says, stoic as always, and she helps Annie to her feet. They
walk back in silence, their shoulders bumping.
In the cabin, they separate and change back into their nightclothes. Annie
curls up on her side and smiles, listening to the rustle of the sheets across
the room as Mikasa settles in, straining her ears for the sound of Mikasa’s
breathing until she falls asleep.
 
In the morning, Annie is washing her face when she finds a bruise on her throat
in the shape of Mikasa’s mouth. She slinks over to Mikasa’s bed, where Mikasa
is still fast asleep. Without a second thought, she grabs Mikasa’s scarf from
under the bed and wraps it around her neck, before heading out for breakfast.
Halfway through the meal, Mina gets up the courage to ask about the stolen
scarf. “Reiner dared me to take it,” Annie says.
“Oh,” Mina says, with concern written across her face. “Why—” She stops, her
eyes fixed on something beyond Annie, and her face grows pale.
Mikasa slams her palms down on their table hard enough to rattle the plates.
“Give it back.”
The look in her eyes is frightening, but Annie doesn’t quail. She looks up at
Mikasa for a moment, and then shrugs. “Okay.” She starts to unwind the scarf
from her neck, with exaggerated slowness, so that Mikasa has time to see the
bruise. She watches Mikasa’s eyes flicker down, and go wide.
Mikasa turns suddenly and violently red.
“What?” Annie asks.
Mikasa seizes the end of the scarf and yanks it back into place around Annie’s
neck. “You can borrow it for today,” she says loudly. “But if you get it dirty,
I’ll kill you.” Then—for the first time since Annie met her—she retreats to her
seat beside Eren and Armin. One of them asks her what’s wrong, and she snaps,
“Nothing,” loud enough to make everyone at the table flinch.
Annie looks down at her breakfast and allows herself a tiny smirk.
“Annie?” Mina asks, mystified.
“She owed me,” Annie says, and leaves it at that.
By the end of the day, Mikasa gets Krista to give her a plain brown scarf. She
walks up to Annie with the scarf clutched in her fist and thrusts it out at
her. “Now give it back.”
“I was just getting used to wearing it,” Annie says, tossing the red scarf into
Mikasa’s hands. She can’t resist adding, “It smells like you.”
Mikasa pulls her scarf up over her face hastily, barely covering her blush.
It’s not a fight, but Annie still feels like she’s winning.
End Notes
     also on tumblr.
  Works inspired by this one
      [Podfic]_age_of_aggression by ZoeBug
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
