WHEN HE SEES ME - A.A.

ch4 - infiltrating marley: part 1

There was a nail-biting anxiety that filled the room with a tension you weren't fond of. There seemed to be only two kids who were either clueless or careless about the situation.

Though lovable, Sasha and Connie had never been known as the brightest at Shiganshina. They sat all the way in the back by the cabinets, poking each other instead of filling out the bubbles on the papers in front of them.

You glanced at Eren, the friend you were most concerned about at the moment. The eraser end of his pencil was in his mouth, teeth clamping on it every now and then. His dark eyebrows were furrowed against his tanned skin and his glare at his blank paper was so intense you had to look away.

You took a deep breath and finally looked down at the daunting material in front of you, dreading what would follow.

___

So you may have overreacted just a tad. The test ended up being fairly easy, possibly because you studied so hard.

Eren, as predicted, did not do so great. You shuddered when you remembered the cold stare Mikasa had given him when she passed her test into the tray by the professor's desk.

You and Armin breezed through it, leaving Eren by himself, rushing to finish. You were anxious to see your grade but knowing the professor, it would most likely be another month before you knew for sure how you did.

You stood at your locker during the junction between biology and math, reaching for one of the textbooks inside.

Closing it, you jumped, not expecting to see the tall brunette behind the door. "Bertholdt! I didn't see you there. You scared me."

He smiled awkwardly. "Sorry. Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," you said as the two of you began walking to class.

"Do you wanna ride with us again after school? Pieck seemed to really like you and I saw you get off the bus this morning, not that I was watching for you, you know what I mean," he offered nervously.

You thought it over. There was no reason not to accept. Armin's concerns from the previous night briefly crossed your mind but one fact remained: neither of you knew the Marleyans.

Jean was a baseball player and a vicious one at that. Any bad thing he said about his opponents was all sports talk. Being a friend of his for so long, you knew how to differentiate sports hate from real hate. Armin, however, seemed to not possess this skill yet.

There was no harm done in getting to know new people. "Yeah, that sounds good. I'll be there."

After school had finally come to an end, you stood on the sidewalk outside the entrance, shifting your feet on the pavement and waiting for Bertholdt to pull his car around. You remembered his words from earlier and became increasingly nervous: Pieck seemed to really like you.

Bertholdt's car pulled up in front of you and you climbed in the back, sliding over to the seat behind his. Only Reiner was in the car, Annie having gone home with Hitch and the attendants of Marley high school waiting to be picked up.

The three of you made light conversation on the drive over, Reiner cracking a few surprisingly vulgar jokes along the way that made you wonder if you'd get to see more of that side of him in the future.

Once the three of you made it to the school, three students climbed in the back, two of which you recognized. Porco gave you an odd look and slid the seat forward so he could get into the way back.

A boy who looked almost identical to Porco besides his hair, which was brown and resembled a hedgehog, climbed into the back along with him.

This left Pieck, whose eyes lit up when she saw you in the car. She slid the seat back in its place and sat in it.

"What are you doing here?" Porco asked forwardly, causing the boy beside him to elbow his side. "Ow, Marcel! It's just a question."

"Don't be rude, Porco," the boy scolded and leaned forward to extend his hand towards you. "I'm Marcel. It's nice to meet you..."

"Y/n," you finished his sentence and firmly shook his hand.

"Y/n," he repeated and sat back again.

You turned to look at Pieck, who was wearing the same tired smile as the day before. She's really pretty.

You almost felt ashamed of thinking the way you did. You'd only met this girl yesterday! But with the way she kept stealing glances at you amid the light conversations between the six of you, you found yourself not caring so much.

Talking with these new people was easier than you anticipated. You already knew Reiner and Bertholdt, not very well but they were always fun to be around. Now you'd seen that they'd both proved you wrong in what you'd previously thought about them. Reiner was secretly a big dork disguising as a jock and Bertholdt was far from the nervously shy guy you thought you knew him as.

Marcel was a proud student council member who could have gotten along well with Jean if they looked past their differences on the field. Porco was similar to his brother in a lot of ways but they were also very different.

Porco could get aggressive and he didn't like being wrong but he was also funny as hell. He was another baseball player who was very serious about the sport despite his lazy demeanor, just like Eren. Marcel was a good person to balance him out, being just the right amount of reasonable and relatability.

And Pieck was, as far as you knew, just Pieck. She rarely gave anything away unlike her boisterous friends. She was brilliant, you could tell straight away from her occasional input on the conversations. She might even be able to match Armin. You doubted it, though. That boy was smarter than anyone you'd ever known, but maybe Pieck was destined to prove you wrong.

You never knew what her next move would be. That's why you were ever so surprised when she took your open phone and created a new contact for herself at the end of the car ride.

"Call me," was what she said, still adorning that slight smile, although it held a new mischievous tint.

You were left utterly bewildered in your driveway as you watched the car descend further down the road.

_______

word count: 1.5k
little bit of a shorter chapter but i wanted to get something out tonight so i split this into two parts. part two coming next week!

do NOT tell me what happened in the new episode today. i'm actively avoiding it. my beloved <//3. my heart breaks for him rn.