Family

First Date, Sort Of

A few days later, Marco and Armin had Psych 101 together, so they walked to class and noticed their usual professor, Professor Hanji, was missing, and instead their teaching assistant Petra was sitting at her desk, looking very uncomfortable.

"Um, good morning," she said awkwardly, as soon as everyone had taken their seats. "Professor Hanji is feeling a little bit under the weather today, so she asked me to fill in for her today. Um...." Petra shuffled through some paper's at Professor Hanji's desk. "We won't be doing very much with the textbook today, so sorry if you were wanting to.” Marco heard Armin sigh, but nearly everyone else started whooping and hollering.

“Alright, alright, everyone be quiet,” Petra said with a small smile, “or I’ll start making you guys call me Professor Petra. You know, it does have a nice ring to it. Professor Petra,” she tested, rolling the words off her tongue. Everyone immediately shut up. They didn’t want to have to call a senior, only three years older than them, professor. Petra smiled a satisfactory smile and began a short lecture reviewing the basic functions of the different parts of the brain, things they had learned in the few classes before. Marco was taking notes almost religiously, writing down everything new Petra said that he hadn’t known before. By the end of the ninety minute class, the last ten minutes of which were spent idly chatting when Petra ran out of appropriate information on the topic, everyone was hungry and itching for lunch. Armin and Marco left the room together and walked to the food hall, finding Annie, Mikasa, Connie, Eren, and Sasha at at a table when they got there.

“Hey, guys!” Connie said, as Sasha was too busy stuffing her face (of course). “Sit down, eat some food, adopt an alpaca, I don’t care.” Connie never made much sense to Marco, but he found the bald boy amusing and not-annoying, so he didn’t mind. Marco tossed his bag under their table and got him some food, and when he came back, before he could even put his food down, he felt a tap on his shoulder, and when he looked, he saw it was Eren behind him.

"Could I, uh, talk to you a second?" he said, leaning forward on the balls of his feet with his hands in his pockets. Marco left his food at the table and followed Eren just out of earshot of their friends. "I just, uh, wanted to apologize for what I said that morning." Marco snorted.

"Mikasa put you up to this, didn't she?" he smirked and Eren nodded bashfully.

"Yeah she did, but that doesn't mean I'm not really sorry for it," he said. "Who you hang out with or who you like is none of my business. I'm not even going to ask any questions, I just wanted you to know I'm sorry, and I shouldn't have insulted you or Jean like that."

"I'll accept your apology if," Marco held up his index finger, "you apologize to Jean the next time you see him." Eren sighed, but begrudgingly agreed, and when they returned Jean was sitting where Marco was going to.

"Well, speak of the devil," he grinned, nudging Eren in the side.

"Do I have to?" he groaned, causing Marco to glare at him sternly.

"Eren, you are eighteen years old, now act like it." Eren humphed and looked at Jean, who had turned around at the sound of Marco's voice.

"I'm sorry for pointing out your blatantly obvious horseface," he said monotonously. Jean just stared at him until Marco raised his eyebrows, saying in a look what would take many words he didn't feel like forming at the moment. Jean rolled his eyes and sighed reluctantly. He never liked apologizing, because that meant he had to admit he made a mistake. But still, Jaeger did it (however insincere he was) and he wasn't about to be one-upped by a guy he severely disliked.

"I'm sorry I slugged you in the gut even though at the time I thought you were sincerely asking for it," he said, getting up and turning to Marco. "I'd like to talk to you. Privately."