Alicia sighs as she trudges into the mess hall. She’s never liked having to wake up early for morning drills. Still, all she had to do was just endure a few more weeks of this torturous schedule before she and the rest of the 104th trainees squad graduated and chose their respective divisions to go into.
Grabbing her morning breakfast and cup of coffee the female sits at her usual table. The Jaeger trio was already there along with Sasha and Connie. Ymir and Krista were a bit further down on the table and Marco was sitting across from an empty couple of seats smiling at her. In other words, she was pretty much late, typical. The day Alicia arrives first to eat breakfast would surely mean the end of the world.
“Morning Alicia.” Marco says warmly to her.
Alicia returns the sentiment, “Morning.” She mumbles.
Someone sits down on her right, “Sounds like you’re as grumpy as ever.” Jean remarks. He’s probably the only cadet that gets to the table later than her.
Alicia sends him a mildly annoyed look, “I’m just tired. My bunk in the girl’s dorm is killing my back.”
“Oh? Why don’t you come bunk with me? I’m sure I could make you feel comfortable.” Cue the perverted grin.
“Stop it you pervert!"
“Oh come on, you know you’re dying for the experience.”
Alicia can’t take his teasing. To tell the truth she had a crush on Jean but she had trouble admitting it for two reasons. One, Jean always flirted around with her and was an ass about it and two, (possibly the biggest reason) he had eyes for Mikasa. With those two factors Alicia couldn’t muster the courage to just look at him and spill her feelings.
“Jean, don’t you think you’re going a little far?” Marco interjects in a mild tone. He was always the one to diffuse difficult situations like this. “After all, I’m sure Mikasa wouldn’t like to hear you talking like that.”
Jean blushes and looks away, “Shut up man, it’s not like she would’ve said yes and even if she did I was just going to call it off as a joke.”
Alicia sighs and picks up her tray. She’d never tell him but those words hurt her worse than anything. “As much as I love your idiocy in the mornings I have better things to do than listen to you dote of Mikasa. See you two on the training fields.”
Tossing her things out Alicia walks out of the mess hall and keeps a strong face. She feels hurt by Jean’s words. Taking her place on the field the girl takes a few warm up jogs around the field to slowly warm up her muscles. Running seemed to help her clear her head, something she sorely needed at the moment. It wasn’t long though before Marco was jogging beside her.
She looks over at her friend and sees Marco smiling at her, hesitant. As much as Alicia wants to tell him to fuck off because she wants to be alone she can’t. Marco was just too much of a sweetheart for her to be mad at. Besides he didn’t deserve the brunt of her bad mood either. So she just opted to turn her head back to the front and let him make the first move. If he wanted to know so bad then he would ask.
The silence only lasted a few more minutes, “Alicia, are you okay?”
“Fine.” Her voice is gruff, she’s not going to be able to keep it together forever.
“Alicia, I know you better than that. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing you can help me with Marco, thank you for caring though.”
“Maybe I can help you if I knew what the problem was. Was it what Jean said?"
Alicia almost loses her footing at Marco’s question but she easily recovered, “No, his stupid ass isn’t even on my radar.”
Marco gives her a look, “Alicia, you’re terrible at lying.”
Alicia can’t take it anymore. She stops and then has to sit down on the field because her legs are shaking along with the rest of her body. She’s trying desperately to not break but that comment from earlier, she knows she has no chance with Jean and it’s killing her. Marco crouches by her and is frantically calling her name. She just leans into Marco’s chest and cries into him. She feels bad because he’s most likely freaked out but she can’t stop. She’d been dealing with this for three years now and she finally broke.
Marco sits there holding her to his chest and just trying to calm her down; he always hated to see women cry. In a few minutes Alicia's sobs had deteriorated into sporadic hiccups and Marco felt it was safe to figure out what the hell had just happened. He pulls back a bit to look at her.
"Alicia, please tell me what's going on. I want to help you."
Alicia wipes her eyes and shakes her head, "I'm sorry Marco but unless you can fix a broken heart... there's not much you can do."
His hands come up and cup the sides of her face, "Perhaps I can." His tone is soft.
Alicia looks up at him and their lips touch. It was perhaps the sweetest kiss Alicia had ever experienced. Her hand comes up and cups the side of his face in return. It seemed that Marco was right, perhaps he could fix it.
They break apart and Marco smiles sweetly at her, "Would you give me a chance to fix your heart?"
She nods, "Please do."
"Gladly." Their lips seal together again.