This story happened because I invited my deviantart watchers to provide prompts for an Attack on Titan fanfiction. Prompts for this chapter were:
Road trip involving Armin and Levi, from who-the-moon-is
Levi/Hanji, from Angel-Die
pets, from 4hikari
"Are you sure it's okay if I visit my grandpa over break?" Armin asks Eren.
"What? Of course," Eren says, a little puzzled.
Eren doesn't understand that he and Mikasaare Armin's only family, besides Grandpa. Eren doesn't understand the extent to which absolutely nobody except Eren wants to hear about dinosaur facts or the Yellowstone supervolcano. Eren also hasn't been bullied. He doesn't know what that does to your ability to trust anyone, your appreciation of what power can look like. And Eren has a lot of power over Armin.
"Okay!" Armin says.
When he's back in his dorm packing, he wishes Eren and Mikasa were there. The trip scares him so much. When he's around Eren and Mikasa, he's safe. When he's back at his Grandpa's house, he's safe. But in between here and there… he's alone. And when Armin is alone, the rest of the world could do anything to him and he'd be helpless. He's making the drive all by HIMSELF, this is scary ok. He's afraid, but not afraid enough to admit that to Eren and Mikasa or make a big deal about it. Ideally, they'd pick up on his fears and show him support, without him saying anything. But Eren isn't really the type to pick up on like… anything. And Mikasa devotes more of her energy into Eren than she does into Armin, that's just how things are. She's always making sure Eren's keeping his grades up. Armin's grades are better than Mikasa's. She doesn't see him as being in a threatening situation. She trusts him. She trusts him too much, maybe.
Well, that's all the clothes, and that's all the books and homework that's coming (And the little stuffed animal that nobody knows Armin has and nobody must ever know he has). There's still a few days left before the big trip; there's still time to figure out what else to pack. He'll approach this in stages. Like Ms. Zoe the biology professor says to do with studying.
Oh yeah, Armin still has all of that homework backlog to give to Ms. Zoe.
Better do it now while he still remembers.
She's happy to see him, and they get to talking a little; the trip comes up. Ms. Zoe is one of Armin's favorite professors, and he is fairly certain he's one of her favorite students; he feels safe enough to mention that he'll be travelling alone, even safe enough to say he's a little worried about it. That's when he finds out that she's from the same general area as his grandpa, and she and some friends of hers are making that same trip over break. When she asks him, tentatively, if he would feel comfortable coming with, he finds he has the courage to accept, wonders seconds later what he's just gotten himself into. At least this will be better than going alone, right?
It's Friday morning, and Armin's waddling towards the parking lot, arms full of luggage, looking for a gray van (it will have those reindeer antlers people put on cars sometimes, Ms. Zoe said) and feeling nervous. Eren and Mikasa would have seen him off, only, Eren still has exams left, and Mikasa's not about to let him fail them. They told him very emphatically how much they hoped his trip would be a success, but that doesn't make them here with him now. What did Ms. Zoe mean by friends? Will they be nice? Not dangerous, at least? Ms. Zoe is the most cheerful person in the world, probably; how bad could her friends be?
Thankfully, the gray van is in a very obvious location, reindeer antlers and all, near the biology building; already Armin can see activity around it. Hey, one of the passengers is a student too; Armin feels a little better.
"Hello, I'm Armin Arlert," Armin says respectfully, to the other student. "Ms. Zoe said I could carpool with your group. Nice to meet you."
"Hello," the student says, looking him over with a critical eye… and actually, Armin can see now that he's not a student; this guy is probably thirty-something. He's just short. And suddenly, Armin realizes that everything from his impeccably neat clothes to the way he looks at everything like a potential but completely manageable threat is intimidating. Armin picked the wrong person to approach first.
"Put your luggage in the back," the intimidating man says, with authority, gesturing with minimal motion, and Armin can see that, maybe this guy goes to the gym a lot or maybe he's a professional alligator wrestler or something, but in any case he could pick up Armin and carry him around like a kitten if he wanted to.
Armin rigidly goes over to put his luggage in the back. Maybe he should have just driven himself. Maybe this was a bad idea.
The trunk of the car is open, and Ms. Zoe is inside, sitting on top of a pile of luggage and socializing with something inside a large cat carrier.
"ARMIN!" she says happily, and her warmth is instantly reassuring. "I'm so glad you could make it! I need to introduce you to everyone! First of all, these are my cats, Sunny and Mr. Beans."
Armin is so grateful to have found Ms. Zoe and thus be under her protection that he is more than happy to be friendly to cats. He sets down his luggage and politely holds out a hand close to the cage. "Hi kitties!"
Paws with claws extended swipe at his hand from behind the bars, anywhere from two to four of them. There's also some feral hissing.
"Oh! I'm sorry, don't touch them!" Ms. Zoe says hurriedly. "They can get a little anxious around people, ha ha. They were strays before their mommy saved them. But they love to be talked to sweetly, don't you, my lovely boys~?"
The cats are now fighting with each other, and Ms. Zoe frantically tells them to stop, which, they don't. Finally, she notices Armin's luggage.
"Oh, here, I'll get out of your way," she says. She gets out of the car and helps him put the small suitcases into the trunk, and he doesn't tell her how he left some of the things he wanted to take in his dorm, so his baggage would be less of a bother to the rest of the group.
"Hanji, what are you doing to those cats," the short not-student says in his low, disdainful voice, and Armin is afraid.
"Leeeevi, it's Christmassss," Ms. Zoe sings brightly. "Can you be cheerful for just these next few weeks~?"
Levi doesn't say anything and stalks off, probably to go intimidate some other people.
"That's Levi," Ms. Zoe says happily. "He's one of my roommates. He didn't have any plans for Christmas, so I convinced him to come with me spend the holidays with my family and mee! That's why everyone's here, actually! They didn't have plans, so I made them come with me, ha ha ha!"
They've wandered away from the trunk at this point, and Armin has a good view all of his fellow passengers. There's surly little Levi, a really tall guy who looks amiable yet pretty quiet and generally hard to read, and a sorta tall guy facing off with a map and concentrating intently, like it's a bomb that needs diffusing within the next seven minutes.
"HEY~!" Ms. Zoe shouts to them all. "This is Armin Arlert. He's one of my best students! 3 He'll be coming with us because he needed a ride to his grandpa's house for break. Don't be shy, say hi~!"
Levi looks at Armin for a fraction of a second, then at Hanji like, you're so weird.
"Hello," the tall guy says, with a friendly, goofy smile. "I'm Mike."
Map Guy looks up, notices Armin, assesses that what he is seeing fits the description Ms. Zoe gave, nods in recognition, and goes back to mentally interrogating the map.
"You've already met Levi," Ms. Zoe says. "That over there is Mike. He's the maintenance guy for my apartment. We had a plumbing issue on Thanksgiving, and after he came over to fix it we made him stay for food, and when we learned he lives all by himself and doesn't have family in the area we invite him over now and then, I made him promise he'd come back for Christmas, and then after I realized I'd be traveling I asked him if he still wanted to come and here we are!"
Mike is watching them talk about him and is smiling in recognition.
"That's Erwin," Ms. Zoe says, pointing to Map Guy. "He's an important person from the Math Department. He's like a super genius!" (Erwin is still reading the map, but now he is looking really uncomfortable. Hanji continues.) "We ran into each other a few years ago because he is super good at getting things unstuck from vending machines, and he saw me about to walk away without the snickers I'd paid for and decided to see if I wanted help. Just last year I found out that he always spends Christmas by himself, so I bothered him a whole lot until he agreed to come with me. He offered to drive because he had a big car and also I think he'd get super agitated if he had to ride in someone else's car to another state and not be able to go anywhere by himself for a couple weeks. He really like his space, haha. Aww, look at him burrow into that map!"
Mike is smiling now because these are indeed amusing anecdotes, and Erwin is indeed burrowing into the map, one could say.
Levi is staring at Ms. Zoe like he's waiting for her to be done talking.
And Armin realizes the nature of this expedition. Ms. Zoe is the professor who always lets you turn in homework later if you ask her, who has really thorough review sessions, who clearly loves biology and the entire realm of science with every fiber of her being. She lives to love. She shows the people in her life the same kind of love she shows her students. Armin is a sort of charity case; so is everybody else. He's not sure how to feel about this, but at least he isn't the only misfit in a car full of close friends.
"Are the reindeer antlers from your car?" Armin asks Ms. Zoe before he can stop himself; trying to be clever in public doesn't usually work well for him. He isn't sure, but Erwin might have looked up from the map ever so briefly.
"Yes!" Ms. Zoe says happily. "This is a CHRISTMAS trip and we are going to be FESTIVE! Leeeeviiii, are you going to be festive on the trip too?"
"If shoving a candy cane up your nose counts as being festive, I can be very festive," Levi says dangerously.
"I know where we're going," Erwin announces suddenly. "I am ready to leave when everyone else is."
"My phone has a GPS," Armin tells Ms. Zoe, looking from her to Erwin.
"So does Erwin's, he's just more comfortable doing his own thing that he's familiar with," Ms. Zoe says.
"Your friends are weird," Levi tells Mrs. Zoe.
"My parents always used to call me weird too," Erwin says, nodding matter-of-factly but looking at Levi just a little bit like some spider he's deciding whether or not to squash. Levi startles like he's just stepped in dog poop. In that moment they seem to truly notice that the other is there.
Mike isn't smiling now.
"Let's goooo everyone~!" Ms. Zoe says brightly, and everyone piles into the car.
At Ms. Zoe's invitation, Armin gets a window seat.
Levi grouches into the seat next to him.