"Annie? A-Annie?" Armin's voice stretched out to his partner at the other side of the table.

"What?" she replied after his fourth call, her steel blue eyes drifting from her coffee cup to Armin's confused expression.

Her response was monotonous and void of emotion, as it always was. Frankly, Armin had gotten used to her cold demeanor. But spending more time with Annie made him realize that she wasn't the antisocial loner everyone pegged her as. She just wasn't a talker. Over the course of their last few meetings, however, Armin liked to think that she had begun to open up a little more. For one thing, she'd stopped calling him by his last name, and she didn't seem to entirely hate being around him anymore. There was also that one time she almost smiled at a joke he had made about their professor, and how his spit trajectory seemed to align itself constantly at his desk. They were good.

Ever since the last time they met up, though, he's noticed that she's been really distant. Again. Her words were biting and she always looked at him like she would rather be elsewhere. The thought tugged at his chest a little bit as he refocused his attentions to her question.

"I-It's just-it's just that you seem to be really irritable lately." He thought maybe it was "that time of the month." He remembered a year ago, when Eren popped the question up to Mikasa one day, landing him with a broken nose, and it reminded Armin that it wasn't his place to ask. So he chose his words carefully. "Is this a bad time? We can always meet up tomorrow."

"We're already here Arlert," Annie bit back, her eyes scrunching up in an irritated scowl. "No point wasting our energy."

Armin's face flushed a light pink and he could feel her glare burning through his fringe. He didn't dare look up at her; she seemed furious but he didn't know why. Maybe it was something about the way he organized the presentation? Or how he took too much of a lead in the research process?

Annie wasn't petty to be mad about those kinds of things though. And if she was mad, he knew that her frank personality wouldn't tolerate anything she wasn't okay with.

"Sorry."

Armin looked up and saw that she wasn't glaring at him anymore. Her apology was a whisper on her lips, her eyes almost looked tired and she seemed to strain as she stared at her coffee cup like earlier.

"You don't have to apologize, it's been a long week." He gave her a warm smile as she took a glance at him, a light blush accenting her sharp features.

"So…uh…part B of the chapter?" Annie tapped at her notepad with a pencil, her chin resting on her right palm.

"At the end probably. Because we still have to talk about how we came to our conclusion before introducing the new idea." Armin shifted in his seat to get a better view of his notes before sliding his notebook across the table, accidentally brushing her forearm. He pulled away instantly, scratching the back of his head while averting his gaze elsewhere.

'Damn it, Armin, pull yourself together!' Armin scolded himself mentally and took a deep breath.

Thankfully Annie didn't notice how absolutely red his ears had gotten, her focus on his carefully organized notes. And then, for the umpteenth time that month, with Annie engrossed in his notebook, Armin thought to himself how beautiful she looked when she read. In retrospect, he thought she was beautiful no matter what she did but whenever her face softened like that, a hint of a smile on the corner of her lips, her fingers holding back her hair flush against her cheek, Armin Arlert was mush. He wanted to revel in her, to just take in everything about her.

"You're making me uncomfortable, Arlert." He felt her eyes on him for a split second before she was back to reading.

"Sorry."

"I think this is good." Annie slid his notebook back towards him.

"Thanks. I mean we could always skip on the points that are a bit redundant. I'm sure the class can look up the other terms on their own."

"Okay."

"Do you think we should have an open forum after? To change it up a bit?" Armin waited for her response and jotted down some ideas.

"Maybe…If we still ha-"

"What was that?" Armin looked up from his note making and found Annie had dropped her head onto the table, the arm that held her chin earlier haphazardly strewn over her head. He was reluctant at first, but when she didn't respond after he called her name a few times, he began to worry.

"Okay, Annie, this isn't funny." When his partner made no effort of moving, Armin jolted from his side of the table, walking around and kneeling beside her. She was breathing but she wasn't moving. She looked unconscious.

Armin started to panic. His heartbeat echoing in his ears, he looked around for someone, anyone, but it was pretty late into the evening so students were sparse, and the front desk held a note that said "Will be back in 20."

'Okay, Armin, calm down. Remember first aid class? What do you do first?' Flashbacks of lifeguard training came in like a flood as he rushed to Annie's side.

Just as he reached out to her body, however, Annie's hand twitched. She groaned as she struggled to push herself off of the table and winced, her head lifted from its surface.

"Annie stop!" Armin held out his hands to keep her from doing anything rash but she was already balancing her head on folded arms.

"Loud," Annie hissed and buried her face further into the folds of her arms.

He had had enough. With a determined look on his face, Armin pulled her gently out of her position to lean her against the chair, her head lolling to the side. He could feel heat through her sweater. 'That is definitely not normal.' He pushed aside any mental screaming about personal space and covered her forehead with his palm. He immediately pulled back, her body's temperature insanely hot. She had a fever.

"Oh my god, Annie. You're really hot!"

"H-hitting on m-e…in t-this state, Arlert?" Annie said between labored breaths.

"This is the worst time to suddenly have a sense of humor! We need to get you to the clinic." Armin was about to hook his arms under her knees but Annie's hand weakly pushed him away.

"I can walk, Arlert." Before he could protest, however, she was already up on her feet. And just as quickly as she had gotten up, her body went limp, falling into Armin's open arms. The latter caught her waist as he steadied her back onto her feet. It was incredibly difficult to fight away the rush of blood to his face from all the contact they were making, but he really needed to focus on getting her help.

They made their way through the aisles of books, Annie's arm hanging over Armin's shoulder and his hand supporting her at the waist, out into the cool autumn air. Armin pulled them in the direction of the clinic but Annie stopped him.

"What's wrong? The clinic is that way!" Armin's voice was urgent.

"Went this morning," Annie groaned out, her body sliding against his side. "Said rest."

Armin wasn't convinced, so he continued in the direction of the clinic. But Annie's persistence proved his efforts futile.

"I-will cut you Arlert. I n-need…a bed."

Armin didn't want to waste any more time out in the cold arguing with a half conscious student in tow, but they were making no progress staggering on the way they were. So ignoring all her protests, Armin curled his arm under her knees and caught her body in his arms, her head resting snug against his chest. She had fallen asleep.

In any other situation, this would be incredibly romantic. Armin had fantasized many times before about holding her. However, he had hoped that when he finally got to carry her bridal style, there would be consent and intentional snuggling. He adjusted her body to get into a better posture to walk and decided that her dorm really was closer than the clinic, and opted that it would be best to get her out of the cold as soon as possible.

Annie's co-ed dorm sat a building away from the library. She stayed in a room with one other girl, who he'd met on two occasions when he dropped by for their meetings. He walked in through the automatic slide doors and turned left at the hallway. If he recalled correctly, she was the fourth room to the right. There was a light glowing from beneath the door and when he knocked, her roommate Christa opened the door, unprepared to find a sleeping Annie in the arms of her study partner.

"Armin?" Christa moved out of his way and proceeded to open the door leading to Annie's room.

"Sh-She fainted. In the library," Armin replied between breaths, walking through the door. He waited as Christa shifted to move a pile books from the bed and laid Annie's sleeping form in as comfortable a position as he could get her.

"I knew something was off with her this morning," the short girl said pointedly. "She shrugged me off though, and I didn't want to push it. She's been under a lot of stress recently."

"Stress?"

"Yeah, she doesn't say much but she's been pulling a lot of all-nighters recently. Sometimes till 4 in the morning."

Armin curled away a strand of hair that fell across her cheek and faced Christa. He asked for a bowl from the kitchen and started rummaging for a towel. When it became painfully obvious that he would have to start looking through drawers, he stopped and waited for Christa to return. The latter came back fully prepared, a towel draped over her shoulder and a large stainless steel bowl filled with ice water.

"Thanks." Armin smiled, taking the bowl from Christa. He took off his sweater and went to work on the towel, sinking it into the ice-cold water and wringing it out gently, making sure not to splash it about. His calm and unfazed demeanor confused Christa, whose heart was still beating rampant with worry. Without a second thought, Armin folded the fabric neatly and placed it on Annie's forehead, watching the way her face scrunched under the cool sensation.

'It shouldn't have happened in the first place,' he said to himself. All the signs were there, if he had only paid closer attention, he might have noticed. The way her cheeks were uncharacteristically pinker than usual, her eyes were droopier, and her hair lacking its usual luster. Looking at her now, he noticed how her already pale skin seemed almost transparent in the dim lighting of her bedroom. Armin's heart sank to the pits of his gut as he fought back the urge to blame himself completely.

"Thanks for bringing her back, Armin." Christa's gentle voice rang through his ears and he snapped out of his daze.

"Oh. No problem. She fought me over taking her to the clinic."

"Same."

"Uh. I guess…I should probably leave." Armin turned to show himself out.

"You don't have to." He stopped dead in his tracks. He had wanted to stay. But he didn't want to cross any boundaries or impose any further, so he simply shook his head and stuttered out a lame excuse about Eren being worried.

"I think she'd appreciate waking up to see you." The short blonde smiled knowingly and left it at that. She bid Armin a good night, turned off the main lights, and trudged down the hallway into her room.

Left in the dark living area, Armin debated and calculated, measured the probabilities and the consequences, weighing out his options. He wanted so badly to stay, to make sure that Annie would get the care she needed. He knew that Christa was more than capable but she had already left expecting him to accept her offer.

'Why are you even over-analyzing this Armin?' He knew what he wanted to do. He also knew what he should probably be doing instead.

Armin stood outside Annie's bedroom door. It was 2 a.m. and he had just returned from collecting their belongings from the library. He had rushed a quick text message to Eren to ensure his roommate that he was indeed safe and wasn't 'recruited into the Kirschtein army.' Anxious and extremely worried, his body began to shake, his foot tapping noiselessly against the carpeted flooring. Annie's bag and books in one arm and her scarf over his shoulder. He opted to leave his things on the couch by the TV and wondered if he should knock first or expect her to still be asleep and simply enter. He ran his palm over his face, common sense dictating that he knock and then enter to announce his intentions.

He did so.

"Oh, you're up." He stopped mid-step through the door, spotting a very stiff looking Annie in a sitting position, her sheets over her legs and her hair scrunchie lost in the folds of her blankets. She looked disoriented, to say the least, and almost harmless. When her eyes landed on his, her posture softened slightly and he wondered whether she had been looking for him or was just expecting someone else. He hoped it was the former and pushed all thoughts associated aside.

"How did w e–I get here?" Annie's voice was hoarse, almost a murmur. If the room hadn't been absolutely silent, he wouldn't have understood her.

"I carried you," he hesitated, his hand still on the door. When Annie made no effort to retort to his presence in her room, he took it as a sign that he could enter. "You fought me though."

He grabbed the chair by her work desk and dragged it by her bedside. Sitting up close enough to take the towel that had been cast aside, probably from her waking up, he set it back in the bowl of ice water.

"You didn't have to…." Again her voice was gentle, quite unlike her. It unsettled Armin; not because it had lost the usual drop of sarcasm, but because it sounded nothing like the Annie he's gotten to know.

"I wasn't going to leave you there on your own."

"You could have called Christa."

"And let her carry you?"

"Point taken."

She gave up easily too.

"You shouldn't have let yourself go like that. I mean, if you were tired, we can always reschedule."

There was a pause and Armin looked up from wringing the towel of cold water to watch her face. She was looking very intently at her folded hands on her lap. She looked deep in thought, her eyes fighting to stay focused.

"Like right now you should be lying down." He reached for her but stopped himself when she flinched away ever so slightly. He hated to admit it, but that small reaction turned his stomach inside out and caused his shoulders to sag. "Here." Armin handed her the folded towel and watched her take it from him with cautious hands. She flipped it over her palm once. Twice. Again. And Again. Her movements seemed intentional but he felt a sixth sense telling him that she felt uncomfortable.

"Should I leave?" He arched an eyebrow.

"Mm," she voiced. It wasn't an answer. At least it didn't sound like one. She didn't nod or shake her head either and her body language was extremely misleading.

With a heavy weight somewhere in his torso—he couldn't quite pin it down—he made a move to stand. The sudden warm sensation on his right leg however, sent him reeling back into his seat.

'Annie's hand is on my leg.

Annie's hand is on my leg.

Her hand is on my leg.'

Armin didn't know what to do. This was the first time in his life he had ever encountered a feeling grow so sharply in his chest and rush so loudly through his veins. His face reddened, his heartbeat escalating to match that dub-step mix Eren forced him to listen to earlier, it would be horrific if she could hear it's awkward rhythm. He consciously covered his mouth with the back of his hand as he turned his body to face her.

"Annie?" He didn't mean for his voice to come out as a squeak but it did and oh, how he prayed for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

Annie retrieved her hand slowly, her eyes darting from his leg, to her fingers, to the end of the bed, the door, the sheets, anywhere but him. "I didn't say anything."

'Exactly!' Armin wanted to scream. He dropped his hand to steady his shaking leg, balancing his weight on the chair. Sitting suddenly felt so unnatural to him. Like he had never done it before. They both fell silent.

His eyes were then drawn to her hands then. She held the towel, her grip tightening before handing it back to him, eyes still drawn to a specific spot on the sheets.

Armin took it from her; the warmth from her hands had stolen the cold from the fabric, his fingers unintentionally brushing against her wrist just as he did. He wondered what it would feel like to actually hold her hands. It didn't have to be romantically, he just wanted to know what they felt like against his. If they were as smooth as they were graceful every time she wrote her name on the top of her worksheets, or if they would be rough and calloused from hard work and training.

"Armin?" Her voice brought him out of his thoughts.

"Sorry." His voice caught in his throat.

He went through the process of submerging the towel into the water and wringing it out one last time before folding it back again and offering it to her. Instead of taking it, however, Annie pushed her feet deeper into the sheets, burying her body in the blanket and curling up into a ball on her side. She looked up at him then, her eyes glancing quickly at the towel in his hand. Armin blushed.

This was not how he envisioned his evening to have gone. The longer the night went on, the more Armin was convinced that being sick probably contributed to her uncharacteristic gentleness. No, it definitely contributed to her uncharacteristic gentleness. Even when she had flinched at his touch, or when he told her about carrying her unconscious body from the library. Particularly so when she all but asked him not to leave. All the more when she—

"It goes on my head." Annie's voice was muffled with the blanket over her lips.

He didn't register what she said, however, his thoughts still reveling in the fact that Annie had used his first name to address him. Oh, how stupid he felt for not having realized it sooner and relishing in how she had said it. He can't remember if it was irritation or impatience that had shadowed her voice when she called out to him. But he remembers thinking about her hands. And then what?

"Armin?"

There.

"Armin?"

That's it. That's how it sounded like.

"Armin?"

Just a breath. Two syllables that he had grown so accustomed to hearing from friends and his grandfather. But hearing it escape the lips of Annie Leonhardt was different. It felt like jumping off of a cliff and watching the stars at the same time. It was a rush and an embrace all in one and he wanted to bask in it, in her voice calling out his name.

"Armin!" For what felt like the hundredth time that evening, Armin was pulled out of his daydream. He was zoning out so much more than he usually did and Armin rarely ever zoned out.

Before he could even fully regain his bearings, two extremely warm hands clasped around his wrists pulling him in. Annie held on, weak and indescribably exhausted. Armin could tell she was using every last bit of energy she had left into this pull so he simply gave in. He found himself hovering over her lying form then, his right knee pressed into the side of the bed, and his left leg supporting him from the ground. His hands made contact with her temples as Annie lead him to place the damp cloth onto her forehead. He let go as soon as it touched skin and she retracted her fingers from the feeble hold she had on his wrists.

"Wasn't so hard was it?" Annie mumbled and turned to her side, away from Armin, the towel clinging to her forehead for dear life.

"I—." Armin didn't know what to say. His hands fell limp at his sides while his body remained frozen in position.

"Next time just get me an ice pack from the freezer. Warms up slower," she said finally before snuggling into her pillow, her breathing steadying with a gentle rise and fall of her shoulders.

Processing everything was taking a toll on Armin and he didn't know if he could really take any more of that night. He was about to take his leave, turning off the lights before placing a hand on the doorknob.

"Don't make me say it again, Armin."

His head tilted to look at her again, the hallway casting a bright light on the bump under the covers. Armin didn't want to assume anything. And he most definitely didn't want to do anything that called for invading her personal space. But if that wasn't an invitation for him to stay, he didn't know what it was.

"Just…come here, Arlert," she said with as much venom as she could muster when he made no move to do act on any thinking.

Then his body was moving. On it's own. It was an out of body experience really. He was watching himself from a different plane of reality as real-life Armin shut the door, felt his way through the dark, and stopped abruptly at her bedside. He hesitated a second before leading himself to lie down properly, on top of the covers. She stirred a little and curled in on herself further. She didn't say anything and he wasn't going to either. He had to admit however, that the situation was really…nice. Her very presence next to him was calming, and, for a while, he felt he could sleep peacefully for an eternity. He turned on his side and dared to inch closer so that their backs were against each other. Annie stiffened but it didn't last long before she slowly relaxed into their lying positions.

"Just this once, Arlert."

Armin was soaring. It didn't matter to him what she called him anymore. He smiled and shut his eyelids, cuddling into the pillow beneath his head. Her bedridden condition aside, he really didn't want the sun to rise, and he would later find out, but at the moment, neither did Annie.