How You Really Are | Jearmin

Extra: Fitting Like a Puzzle

Marco's first heartbreak had had just about anything that could go wrong and it had taken time to stop blaming himself for it.

However, the good thing is that he was given another chance at love.

Marcel could easily be a saving grace, or the worst downfall he could have. In any case, he proved to be the first and since then the jet has never regretted trusting that he was genuine, because he was not wrong.

He did not look back on his last year of high school with much affection and nostalgia, his last months there had been really painful, both because of Reiner and because of everything else that happened in the lives of some of the people he loved the most, especially John.

Everything had improved after that, thankfully. He hadn't seen Reiner again, he knew that something really serious between him and Porco had happened to the point of making them completely break, exploding. Normally he would say that it would be totally stupid of him (and others) to think at that time that it would really be the end of them for real... but Porco had ended up in therapy and Reiner had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Marcel didn't really talk to Reiner anymore. Everything was tense between them for a while, and when a few months ago there was a moment when things between him and Marco got a little hotter and the latter decided to try giving sexual things a chance, only to end up in tears at being hit with overwhelming memories of his first time, he opened up to his boyfriend about what had happened. Since then he was never able to see in the same way who used to be his best friend, he stopped having the little contact he had with him from that moment on.

It's not like Braun's mental condition was public, much less that of his ex, but Marco was in a relationship with someone who inevitably received information from them and even if he didn't tell it, it still reached his ears in one way or another.

Porco, for his part, had improved his attitude towards him. He didn't think it was the therapy, he attributed it to the fact that he was no longer with Reiner.
He never insulted or mistreated him again, although he did not apologize by any means. At least he had moved on to the topic of joking about having the same ex, it wasn't something the freckled wanted to talk about but it was infinitely better than how they talked before.

«I would say we have the same taste in men, but then you fell in love with my stupid brother», that was a typical Porco Galliard phrase... It's not like Marco never had the instinctive thought that the younger one literally dated the copy of his own brother, but he is someone calm and unproblematic, and it is not a thought that he thought that nobody, much less the brothers, were aware of.

On the other hand, the situation with Jean had calmed down as well. He no longer went from house to house sleeping wherever he could, he lives in his college dorms, and Marco's parents had fought with everything they had to get Jean to accept their financial help for typical expenses so he could focus on his career instead of dividing time between it and a job.
He didn't talk to his parents either, he never saw them again or was interested in it, but he went to therapy, he had no more panic attacks and he only had tics from time to time and in situations of great stress. It's not like that, or Floch's thing, didn't affect him more but he had come a long, long way to improve on it. Marco was proud of him.

He felt calmer with things like this, more orderly, happier.

He likes his career, he's good at it and he doesn't regret choosing it. His family has gotten so much better about accepting his sexuality that it even feels weird to think about when they couldn't accept it, they like Marcel, his parents liked Marco... Marco loves Marcel.

He was as deeply in love as he never imagined he could be.

Maybe he was silly to say at 19 years old but... he just couldn't imagine being able to love someone more than he does now, this couldn't be a simple teenage love and no more, it couldn't be possible, even if he knew it was a naive thought, he worked on letting himself be and not hating himself for his optimism and romanticism.