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There were a few things that Marco would never change about his routine.
One, sitting down to read his book for at least an hour every Tuesday at five in the afternoon sharp. Two, having a warm glass of milk right before bed. And three, going out with Mina at the arcade every whenever-Mina-remembered-he-existed. But ever since they got into college, that time came by less and less often.
Marco didn’t blame her. Although he liked to think he did relatively okay with adjusting to campus life, it wasn’t exactly a small change. He had never lived away from home before, and neither had Mina. If she wanted to branch out and hang out with people that weren’t her best friend since birth, Marco wasn’t one to complain. Besides, he’d gotten to meet new people too.
There was his roommate, for once. Colt Grice came from Liberio, majoring in English. They’d already texted a bit when the dorms were first assigned, and their actual meeting on the day they moved in had gone even better. Marco was lucky to have a roommate that he did not only get along with, but also considered a friend.
He met all sorts of people through Colt; the Galliard brothers, who were as close to Colt as Mina was to Marco, were the ones who stuck around most often, but there were other people too, like Pieck, Reiner, Annie, Bertholdt… Marco found himself hanging out with Bert outside the group too. Still, it was really cool how all of them came from the same hometown. Having someone from home at college was more comforting than not.
So when Mina announced they were going to the arcade halfway through their first semester, Marco couldn’t say no.
“Woohoo! That’s another win for me!”
But seeing as they were on their fourth round of Dance Dance Revolution, Marco wished he had.
He breathed heavily, leaning against the safety rail as the arcade game flashed colors before his eyes. “It should be illegal to move this fast.”
Mina turned to him, a cocky smile on her face. “Maybe you’re just too slow.”
“Hell no,” he said, shaking his head. “You cannot possibly be human.”
“Are you sure you wanna go making accusations like that about your best friend in the entire world?” Mina said, not a hint of tiredness in her voice. “I am deeply hurt.”
“You’re full of sh—”
“Language! What’s your mother gonna say when you come back home with a mouth like that?” Mina interrupted, jumping off the machine. Marco gave her a puzzled look. “Just kidding, I don’t give a fuck what you say. Anyway, what do you wanna drink? I’m getting a bit thirsty.”
At least she was somewhat human.
They got themselves a table at the food court on the other side of the mall, and Marco bullied Mina into getting him an apple pie because he wanted to and he could.
“Sooo…” Mina said, loudly slurping on her soda. “How has college life been treating you?”
Marco shrugged, taking a bite of his apple pie piece. “Okay, for the most part? My roommate’s great.”
“You’re with that Grice, kid, right?” Marco nodded. “He seems nice. I mean, I wouldn’t know, but I’ve seen him hang out with that girl from my philosophy class, and she’s pretty cool.”
“You mean Annie? Or Pieck?”
Mina smiled. “Annie.”
It wasn’t often that Mina spoke of someone with that much admiration, but Marco didn’t want to pry. Besides, the way that she played with her pigtail at the mention of her name told him more than enough.
He took the silence as a chance to finish his food, slowly losing himself in thought. Marco knew he and Mina were nowhere near to losing touch, but he’d really missed her. When they were kids, their parents would take them out to the arcade all the time. Things may have been okay for Marco at college so far, but he got homesick easily, and a night out with Mina had been exactly what he needed to remind him of home.
“You know, I was talking to Thomas the other day,” Mina said, snapping Marco back into reality. Thomas was from Trost, but his family was friends with Mina’s, so they already knew each other. “What do you think of Jean?”
Marco almost spat out his drink at the question, but tried to hide it by chewing on his straw. It was hopeless though; Mina knew him too well.
“He’s… okay.”
He didn’t need to look at Mina to know that she was smirking at him, but he did anyway. Her expression was painted in mischief, while Marco could feel his about to burn off.
“A-Anyway,” Marco said, “what does Thomas even have to do with all this?”
The question only seemed to make Mina’s smile grow. Marco immediately regretted asking.
“Jean was asking him about you.”
This time, Marco had made sure not to be drinking out of his soda when Mina’s answer came, but he still felt like choking nonetheless. Jean Kirschtein had been asking Thomas about him?
“Why would Jean be…” Marco began asking, but changed his mind halfway through. “How would Thomas even know about me?” Marco had talked to Thomas before—he’d been invited to every single one of Mina’s birthday parties since childhood, after all—but it wasn’t as if they were friends.
“Well, he asked him to ask me, so I’m asking you,” Mina explained, speaking so fast that Marco almost got lost again, “What do you think of Jean? You wanna kiss and hold hands and get married already?”
“For God’s sake, Mina,” Marco said, looking away as if it was going to hide his face, which he was sure must have turned bright red by that point. “We’re not three years old…”
“Exactly! So ask him out already!”
Marco wanted to bang his head on the table.
He hadn’t expected anything else of her. Mina knew him like the back of her hand. But was it really that difficult to keep his crush a secret after mentioning his name once?
He’d met Jean at sociology class at the beginning of the semester after doing a group project together. Ever since then, they usually grabbed coffee together before class, every Tuesday. For the past few weeks, they even studied together after it ended sometimes.
It wasn’t as if Marco hadn’t noticed the way his heart skipped a bit when they said good morning, or how he always anticipated the way their fingers brushed against one another’s when Jean passed him his coffee. Marco had it bad, and he knew it. But that didn’t mean Jean felt the same way. Actually, he definitely didn’t. Marco clearly remembered him checking one of the baristas at the coffee shop out more than once, just like he remembered wishing it was him under Jean’s gaze.
“I don’t know, Mina,” Marco said, sighing. “What if he’s not interested?”
“Come on!” Mina said, slamming her empty soda can on the table. “The Marco I know wouldn’t give up without even trying!”
Marco considered it for a moment. Mina was right about one thing; he wasn’t one to step down from a challenge. On the other hand, neither was she… so maybe he could use this to his advantage.
“I will ask him out,” Marco said, putting a finger up to stop Mina from celebrating, “on one condition.”
“Okay, fine, sure, consider it done!” Mina brushed him off.
Marco didn’t even try to fight the grin that spread across his face as he leaned in closer, like he was about to reveal some big secret, and gestured for Mina to come closer too.
“You need to ask Annie out.”
Mina shot up from the table the moment the words were out of his mouth, a shocked expression on his face. Marco couldn’t help but laugh, but Mina wasn’t paying any attention to him. Instead, she was staring into nothingness from the shock, which almost made him feel bad, but not enough to stop.
“Come on, Mina!” Marco said, snickering. “What happened to you being the most courageous out of the two of us?”
“Do you promise to ask Jean out the next time you see him?” Mina asked, still not looking at him.
Marco shrugged. “If you keep your end of the deal? I’ll even get you another soda.”
“Great!” Mina said, her lost expression replaced by one of her signature grins in a matter of seconds. “Because he’s coming our way right now, good luck!”
What.
“W-What?” Marco said, the smile drifting off his face. He turned around, and soon enough, he spotted three very familiar faces amongst the crowd.
“HEY, JEAN, CONNIE, SASHA!”
Marco realised, then, that Mina hadn’t been staring off into the distance like a lost puppy as he’d originally thought.
She had seen Jean before him, and decided to set him up.
That little sh—
“Hey, guys!” Sasha said, and Marco had to force a smile to hide his panic. She immediately walked up to Mina to give her a hug, then Marco.
“What a nice surprise, right Marco?” Mina said, and if she had been sitting down, Marco would have kicked her under the table.
“Sure is,” Marco said, managing not to let it get to him. After all, Jean was right there.
Speaking of Jean, he was gorgeous. Marco felt kind of embarrassed to be staring at him as Connie went on about their day at the arcade, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t look any different than he did during class, except maybe for the nicer pair of jeans, but he was breathtaking.
“If you have nothing going on, do you guys wanna sit with us?” Mina asked.
“We were just about to eat anyway,” Connie said, wrapping an arm around Jean. “And I know this guy probably needs a break after getting his ass beat at—”
“Shut up,” Jean mumbled, shaking him off. “But sure, I don’t see why not.”
“Great!” Mina said. “We’re missing two chairs. Marco, maybe you and Jean can take care of that?”
Marco didn’t miss the way Mina aggressively winked at him, and silently prayed no one else had noticed. He quickly stood up from his seat—which was quickly stolen by Sasha—and walked up to Jean. “Looks like we’re on chair duty.”
“Guess so,” Jean said, smiling slightly. “But, uh, do you mind if we look around a bit first? I’m not sure what I’ll have yet.”
Marco smiled. “Sure, of course.”
And they were off.
They walked around the food court in silence as Jean searched for his dinner. Usually, Marco would have been the one to fill it, but he was trying to think of the right way to bring up the whole date thing. It wasn’t as if he could randomly tell him, ‘Hey, I know you trusted Thomas not to say anything, but he did, and now I know you asked him about me, and what was that about? Also, I’m an idiot that makes promises without thinking about it, so do you want to go out with me? I understand if you say no, but don’t forget I think about you every night before I go to bed.’
He should have just said no.
Marco hadn’t realised he’d stopped walking until Jean did too, looking back at him from a few steps forward. “You okay Marco?”
“I… I need to tell you something.”
If Jean was suspecting anything, he didn’t show it. Instead, he let Marco lead him to somewhere less crowded, and leaned against the wall, hands buried in the pocket of his hoodie. If Marco had the guts for it, he would have grabbed him by the laces and kissed him right there.
But he had bigger—or rather, smaller—problems to worry about.
“So… you know how we sometimes hang out after class?”
Jean nodded. “Yeah?”
It would have been wiser to just look away as he said it, because Jean kept proving he was the most handsome man in the world every time he spoke, but he didn’t. Marco took a deep breath. “I was thinking… I-If you want of course, maybe we could hang out some other time too?”
Silence.
Marco took that as a sign to continue. “We could go to the arcade,” he said, but then remembered how miserable Jean had looked when Connie and Sasha described the hundreds of different ways they had beaten his ass, “or… or maybe we can just play some video games at my place? I brought a console, and my roommate also has some games, so—”
“Are you…” Jean interrupted, but didn’t finish his sentence. Marco felt a knot in his chest as he held his breath, preparing for it to explode. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
Well, it could have gone worse.
“I…” Marco said, trying to think of a way to patch this up before running away forever. “I think so?”
Yeah, he was definitely going to be running away. Every word he said seemed like it was only making the situation worse, and the more they were standing there, the fewer chances he had of ever speaking to Jean again, not without it being the most awkward experience of his entire life—
“Oh, thank God.”
What.
“W-What?” Marco said, feeling an awkward smile tug at his lips.
Jean returned it, but his looked genuine. He ran a hand through his hair, chuckling. “For a second I thought you were going to turn me down.”
Marco stared at him dumbfounded. Turn him down? “I, I don’t know what’s going on?”
“So, uh…” Jean said, scratching the back of his head. “Here’s a funny story, I lost a bet with Sasha and Connie and was supposed to ask you out?” He chuckled, looking away. “And I thought they might have told you about it or something, but… a-anyway do you want to go out with me? Wait, shit, you already asked me that, um—” He took a step closer to Marco, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, I want to go on a date with you.”
Marco didn’t know what to say.
Maybe there had been some part of him that secretly believed Jean would accept his date invitation, out of pity, if anything, but he could have never imagined this. “So you really did ask Thomas about me?”
Jean groaned. “He told you?”
Marco shook his head. “Mina,” he said. “She made me promise to tell you how I feel, and then you just so happened to show up.”
They looked at each other for a bit, before bursting out laughing. Marco couldn’t tell if the situation was genuinely funny, or if it was out of relief. Or that he knew was that he was happy.
When they went back to their table, holding a chair each, Mina didn’t waste a second. “How did it go?” she said with a teasing tone.
Marco smirked, finally having the upper hand. “You better start planning your love confession, Carolina.”
And she did.