Chapter Text
It’s the first day of classes on the first day of college, and Sasha’s already late.
It all started that morning. She’d gotten up early, nervous but determined to make a good impression on her first day, wearing a comfortable sweatshirt with the university insignia on it and hair neatly pulled up away from her face.
She’d gotten off to such a good start, only to be foiled by missing out on the most important meal of the day: breakfast.
Food reminds her of family, and every morning throughout high school—even on weekdays—her father would make a full breakfast. They’d all sit down together to eat a veritable feast of perfectly cooked eggs, succulent bacon, hickory-smoked sausage, and the delicious, pulpy orange juice that she loves.
During move-in day and orientation weekend, her family had come, and they were all delighted to find that the communal dining hall where all the freshman ate had an amazing breakfast buffet.
Sasha had felt reassured after eating there—one last breakfast before saying goodbye where her mother pretended not to tear up—and then it was time to face the real world as an adult, with her own responsibilities.
Only, apparently, this was a cruel farce to make families think they were paying money for decent food, when in reality, the evil college conglomerate is implementing an evil master plan to deny students sustenance and food that tastes like something besides rubber. (At least, this is what Sasha ultimately concluded after being faced with a selection of stale muffins and instant coffee the day after her parents left.)
And now, she’s running to class with a takeout bag shoved in her messenger bag alongside her textbook and notepad, ready to cry over the fact that she hasn’t had time to take a single bite of her bacon, egg, and cheese on an English muffin.
A small consolation is that she’s now aware of the food truck that remains at the edge of campus.
Missing meals is possibly the worst thing she can imagine; she’s already homesick enough, and it’s only been a few days.
She finally reaches the natural sciences building after sprinting for two minutes solid, bursting through the double doors and into the hallway, looking around wildly.
It’s 9:02 a.m. and class started at 8:50 a.m. She hopes the professor isn’t difficult and won’t just kick her out. College is a big commitment, and she doesn’t want to let her family down.
There’s a long hallway in front of her flanked by two stairways on either side. Her first class is in room 104, but there’s no directional signs at the bottom of the stairwells. She pauses, and decides to take a wild guess, charging straight down the hallway, hoping that “104” means the ground floor, and not the first floor.
Her warm leather boots thump against the floor, and she can tell her hair is slowly making its way out of the neat ponytail she’d started the day with, when she sees room 104.
She bursts through the doors which groan with a loud, metallic shriek, and as she practically tumbles through the doorway, everyone turns in surprise to stare.
It’s a huge lecture hall, and there are at least fifty students who are all currently gaping at her with wide eyes.
“Name?” someone barks from the lectern at the center of the room, and much to her dismay, she sees a shadowy, dyspeptic looking man standing there.
“Braus!” she squeaks, resisting the urge to salute.
She feels like she’s going to cry as a heavy silence descends upon the room. It goes on for a full thirty seconds as the professor just stares at her blankly, until unexpectedly, a voice cuts through.
“Hey! Oh, uh, you’re here!”
She turns sharply in surprise, trying not to let her lip wobble as she catches sight of a guy with a shaved head she’s never seen. He’s waving at her, though, as if they’re friends.
She blinks, not knowing what to say, but he continues.
“Sorry, Professor Shadis,” he exclaims, motioning Sasha over quickly with a jerk of his head, “I forgot to tell you before! Uh...” his eyes flick down to something on the table, and then back up, “Sasha told me she’d be late. It’s my fault!”
Then, he stands rigidly straight, staring slightly to the left of the professor’s heavy, unforgiving gaze.
“Is that so?” Professor Shadis asks.
Sasha just stands there like a deer in headlights, but then she nods vigorously and charges down the aisle two steps at a time to plunk down in the empty seat next to the mystery guy who’s taken pity on her.
To her absolute relief, Shadis seems to let it go as he grunts and turns around.
They both just sit there with wide eyes, unmoving as he starts to drone about the natural sciences.
Sasha’s still catching her breath, but just as she feels a sense of relief slowly coming over her, Shadis stops again to glare at the class.
“Who has dared bring food into my classroom?” he snaps in a growl, sniffing the air like a wolf out for blood.
The same guy who helped her out before darts a look over at Sasha, and suddenly, she remembers the breakfast sandwich that’s currently shoved at the bottom of her bag. She looks over at him out of the corner of her eye in terror, but he just shakes his head slightly, as if telling her not to admit it.
She gives a subtle nod and then stares pointedly down at the desk, hoping with all her might that Shadis doesn’t address her again.
Trying to find something to focus on and not look guilty, she looks at a stray paper that’s on the desk. She blinks in surprise as she sees two names, then finally realizes what happened.
To her right, the guy—whose name is apparently Connie Springer—has been assigned as her lab partner for the semester. He’d gotten her name from the sheet and saved her.
Her eyebrows raise; she thinks that was awfully nice of him. Most people wouldn’t go out of their way to help a person out they’d never even met.
She sneaks a look at him curiously, but he’s staring straight ahead, obviously trying not to look petrified or guilty.
When no one owns up to the smell of food after a few moments, Shadis heaves a disgusted sigh and turns toward the whiteboard to discuss the overall curriculum for the semester.
Sasha waits for five minutes before quietly and nonchalantly pulling out her notebook and a pen, and opening to a blank page.
She nudges Connie’s foot slightly, and he looks at her in surprise, his eyes already glazed over from Shadis’s droning.
On the blank page, she writes: Thanks! She smiles a little, feeling shy suddenly since it really was pretty nice, considering she’s a stranger; he smiles back and nods.
Sneaking a glance up at Shadis, he picks up his own pen and tugs the notebook a few inches toward him.
No prob. This guy’s a doucshe!!! He grins at her, and she snorts slightly.
They both sit up practically at attention as soon as she makes the incriminating sound, staring straight ahead toward the front of the classroom. Luckily enough, it apparently goes unnoticed as Shadis answers a question from a nervous student in the front row.
They both slowly relax, and Sasha’s eyebrows raise as Connie starts to write again, a slight blush coloring his cheeks.
No offense... but you looked kinda scared. He draws a little sad face next to it, which earns another slight grin from Sasha, and she shrugs.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!
This time, Connie laughs under his breath, and then bites his lip at the sound of ten people turning in their seats to stare.
“Is there something amusing, Mr. Springer?”
“No!” Connie practically squeaks, sitting up very straight in his chair. “Just, uh... taking notes!”
Shadis looks back and forth between the two of them suspiciously, and Sasha puts on her best innocent face. (Which, she’s been told, is actually rather effective.)
His stare is unwavering from the impressively dark circles under his eyes, and he says, “I still smell food.”
He breaks the glare, and Connie exhales slowly; Sasha doesn’t blame him.
“Until someone confesses to bringing food into my classroom, none of you are allowed to leave,” he says simply.
There’s some outraged murmuring around the classroom— “Can he do that?” ... “He can’t do that!” ... “Isn’t that illegal?”—before Shadis barks out a harsh laugh.
“I can do whatever I want!” he declares. “It’s my classroom, and this class is required as a core. Take it next semester if you want, but you’re wasting your time if you think you can drop this course to pick up a different one. They’re all full.”
There’s more outraged murmuring, but finally, people start to look around traitorously at each other suspiciously, searching for the culprit.
“C’mon, man,” one student whispers, nudging his neighbor, “just admit it!”
The guy in question has a bizarre haircut—blond on top and darker at the bottom—and scowls. “It’s not me! Why the hell do you think it’s me?”
His (apparent) lab partner glowers at him. “It’s definitely you! You look like a criminal!”
“What kind of name is Eren, anyway?” the guy hisses back. “That sounds criminal.” He gives a snarky, condescending grin and crosses his arms.
“Well, if no one admits it,” comes a different quiet voice, “then he can’t keep all of us here forever, right?”
Sasha turns to see a kid a little taller than Connie with long blond hair tied into a top knot, giving an earnest albeit nervous look.
“Well, who actually has it?” says a deeper voice in a whisper.
Sasha turns further around in her seat to see the owner—he’s a big guy with broad shoulders. He looks like the neighbor boy she used to play basketball with down the street, only after he came back from the Marines.
A somber looking boy next to him just raises an eyebrow as Sasha looks at him, obviously wondering the same thing, but doesn’t say anything.
“Everyone be quiet,” Shadis barks.
There’s a shuffling as everyone turns to sit up straighter in their seats and stop talking.
Sasha knows she’s going to have to come clean, because she also can’t afford to be late to her next class. She doesn’t want to be late, either, since it’s a class that’s actually part of her major.
Just as she’s about to raise her hand to confess, though, even as Connie shakes his head “no” vigorously, there’s a sudden chime.
For a moment, everyone freezes in confusion, wondering who’s about to be crucified for their phone going off in the middle of class.
That is, until Shadis scowls at his own pocket and pulls out his phone.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, pointing around the room, “don’t anyone move.”
And with that, he exits out a side door that slams shut behind him, his voice faint as he takes the call.
“Okay, seriously, who has the fucking sandwich?” says the same student who first spoke, only much louder and abrasive this time.
“You’re an asshole, Jean.”
“Shut up, Eren!” The snarky guy apparently named Jean snorts dismissively. “Maybe you’re crazy enough to not care about getting expelled, but I’m not!”
“Guys,” comes a new, calm voice from a bright-eyed student with lots of freckles, “calm down. I’m sure whoever—”
Sasha fights the urge to cry all over again as she digs her hand resentfully into her bag and pulls out the breakfast sandwich, holding it up like a red flag.
There’s a collective gasp which turns to horror as the they hear the door start to open.
Apparently, though, the door locks from the outside, and they hear Shadis yell out a curse, stamping around to the other set of main doors at the back of the lecture hall.
Sasha freezes, looking back and forth desperately from Connie to the rest of her classmates who’ve been discussing the sandwich scandal.
Suddenly, the sandwich is ripped out of her hand as they all listen to Shadis’s pounding footsteps getting closer and closer.
Connie gives her a determined look, the breakfast sandwich clutched in his hands, before tearing it in half. Then, he eats half in one bite, and shoves the other half toward Sasha’s mouth.
She takes the hint, and tears the paper off to destroy the evidence in two ambitious bites.
And then, it’s completely vanished as Shadis thunders through the door, cursing under his breath as he makes his way to the front of the classroom again.
“Who has it?” he hisses, pointing at all of them, apparently made angrier by whoever called him.
No one says anything.
“All right, no one’s going to confess? Dump your bags.”
The blond kid speaks up again, his voice a little stronger this time. “That’s an illegal search! You don’t have probable cause!”
“First of all,” Shadis says with a rather unsettling smile, “I’m not a police officer, so that doesn’t apply. Second of all, this is a dictatorship...” his voice rises and he yells, “not a democracy!”
Everyone shies back, and finally, dumps their bags onto the desk.
Out of the fifty students in the classroom, Shadis looks like he’s lost his mind at the end of a half-hour search when no sandwich magically appears.
Sasha is almost late for her next class by the time he lets her go, and she only faintly hears Connie’s voice shouting after her: “Hey, wait!”
She turns even as she’s still jogging up the steps and waves at him with a smile, tapping her wrist to indicate the time.
“Okay, see ya Wednesday!” he shouts, waving with a smile in return.
The rest of the day goes much more smoothly, lunch is better than breakfast, and by her last class, Sasha no longer feels quite as homesick.
That, and she made a friend named Connie Springer who saved her ass on her first day.