One thing out of many others that was good about when I had Marco as a best friend, back then; is that he taught me something. Actually, he taught me quite a few things, mentally, socially and skill-wise.

I was reminded of one of those lessons, as I sat at that table. It was the time when Marco and I were sitting at the wooden table in the barracks, while the others were getting their shoes off, climbing into the bunk beds and I edged to the end of the bench to get closer to the furnace, feeling a slight warm breeze on my clothed shoulder and side. I would've preferred more heat than what I was getting, considering the temperature was slowly dropping, inside the barracks and outside in the cruel, cold world. But yeah, I could deal.

I was a man, my fourteen year old self told me. So take it like a man, Kirstein.

Marco was talking in a low voice about someone he'd helped that day, someone who self-harmed, apparently. When I saw the vaguely panicked but mostly calm look on his face, I found myself wondering… Just how did he go about helping people all the time?

"Marco," I interrupted him mid-sentence.

"How do you react when people tell you things? I mean, it must be pretty scary for you to have to listen to that, right? And most of the people that talk to you are off their rockers, right?" I squeaked.

Yeah, my voice still hadn't broken at that age. Those were dark, dark times.

He looked at me steadily, then smiled sweetly and told me

"Jean, one thing you've got to learn to do when people talk to you, especially when it's about something important, is to accept what they're telling you. As in, don't go about thinking that they're crazy, straight off the bat. They don't go to me for help to be penalized, you know. They want me to understand, and I do, thankfully. So no, it's not too scary."

He scratched a ragged pattern into the table with his neat fingernail as he spoke, looking at down at the wood. His were uncommonly long, considering the rest of us gnawed our nails down. A lot like a girl's, actually. Maybe they gave him manicures…

"I asked one of them once why they wanted me to help them, and they said it was because I looked like someone they could talk to. Do I look like that to you?" he glanced up at me through a fan of soot black lashes.

I took him in; his composed, freckled face and his broad hand that was supporting his jaw as he looked back at me, unwaveringly, as though he was patiently waiting for me to speak.

"Yeah... Yeah, you really do. You've got that kind of "I'll listen, so throw your worst at me" feel about you."

He grinned at me with a show of teeth, his cheeks turning a shade of red that lit up his freckles and his eyes.

"Well, there you go, then. If you look approachable and accepting, you'll be able to help them a lot more easily, since they'll open up to you more."

The first time I used this info was when Reiner came out to me, surprisingly enough. I had been scoffing about how close Armin and Eren were, during practice in the field with Reiner.

"Those guys are so gay for each other." I rolled my eyes, not bothering to hide the fact that we weren't actually sparring like we should've been.

He hummed. "I quite like gays."

He gave me a meaningful look and quirked his eyebrow as he smirked. To be honest, I wasn't really sure how to react to that. Like, that was all fine and dandy, but uh, yeah, not exactly what I'd been getting at.

"Uh, okay."

His smirk dropped in favor of a dumbfounded expression. He raised his eyebrows for a second, his eyes widening in disbelief, before giving me a pleased grin and a playful shove on the shoulder.

I was actually a little heartbroken at how surprised he'd looked just then. I'd just said okay, accepting him without a second thought, though it took me a little while to figure out that that was why he'd looked at me in that way. Even back then, homosexuality was pretty much taboo. Although I knew, especially from the creaking beds in the boys' barracks at night, that a lot of people were gay.

Things never change, huh?

Not many people would've had the same reaction nowadays as I did back then.

I used Marco's advice again, this time for his sake.

I made quick eye contact with Reiner at the bench; he was already looking at me in confusion with that furrowed brow of his. Then I turned to Marco, who was stiff in his seat after his inspiring speech about comparing homophobia to bee-phobia (apiphobia), probably terrified that we'd tear him limb from limb, like the "big bad gays" we were. Well. Not bad. We were just scary, apparently. Though Marco probably didn't know I was also… (Oops.)

I said. "Alright."

Fear wasn't chosen, in the exact same way that your orientation wasn't. Like, I knew that I didn't exactly intend to be slightly anxious around dogs. I mean, I put up with them, but Marco was implying that with gay people, he just…couldn't deal with it at all.

His expression mirrored Reiner's from that time, which didn't seem too long ago, but who the hell knew how long ago it actually had been? We all must've been in limbo for a while. (OOH. Or maybe we had different lives before this one?!)

He gave a shaky, relieved sigh, nodding at me, before looking at Reiner fearfully. Imagine someone being afraid of a pug, ha. I would be too, I suppose, if said pug was a metric ton of scary ass muscle. And I found Reiner was only scary because he was strong, not because he looked like a dog. Would I have been scared if he actually was one? I don't know.

Reiner grimaced and looked troubled, having still not said anything, as well as everyone else at the silent table who of which I didn't want to look at, for fear of being stared down and mentally sabotaged for answers as to why I'd said Such a Thing in favor the Bodt boy. (I think I found another nickname for him.)

Then the pug man nodded slowly, and Bertholdt, that great sweaty giant, caressed his arm worriedly, as he stared down at the table with a solemn expression. Or maybe it was anger. He's quite a hard person to read, that Bert.

"You're allowed to see Jean once a day." Reiner said quietly, taking a glimpse of Marco's slightly disturbed face.

I frowned at Marco as though to say "Dude, what now?" while trying to figure out why he was-

He caught my eye, his brown orbs flickering from me in worry to the couple who were sitting closer together, talking to each other in hushed voices, touching the other's arm in an affectionate gesture-

Ah. That was the, uh signal… I see…

We-I?-had to take into account that Marco was afraid, as could be seen from the way he still hadn't loosened his posture and wore a constipated expression, it probably meant that any sickly sweet, physical contact was out of the question for him.

I nodded quickly at Reiner. "Thanks for having the heart to forgive him, man, it's good of you to do that."

Then I dragged Marco by his freckled arm so we could get the hell out of there, ignoring Connie and Sasha's half hearted protests of "Get back here! We weren't finished speaking!) Like, geez, guys, don't even try to hide the fact you don't like my little Mar-Mar, eh?

I brought him back to the corner, the one that we'd fought at not even a day ago, and I felt him trembling under my fingers.

"Hey, hey, are you okay?" I asked gently, letting go of him, and glanced around the corner of the concrete wall to make sure no-one had followed, and then back at him.

His face was drained of color; the entirety of his blood seemed to have collected in his nose, making him look exactly like Rudolf the Red nosed Reindeer. I winced internally as his eyebrows twitched and his lip quivered. His eyes began to water, and I pulled him by his batman t-shirted shoulder, straight into my chest, despite him being half a head taller than me. The position wasn't comfortable, I'll tell you that.

I shall reach your height, one day, Mr Bodt. Just give me a few (hundred) years.

Marco freezing up in my arms reminded me of something that might have been pretty important to not forget.

"Ah shit," I let go of him. "Sorry, I kinda panicked, I didn't really know if-"

"Jean."

"You know, because you said you get scared, and I thought, maybe-"

"Jean." He squeezed my shoulders, shaking me slightly so I would look at him properly. I did and I ended up grimacing at my own helplessness as I saw his miserable expression twist into a fake smile as he calmed me down.

"It's okay. It… It's really okay…"

At that point, I wasn't really sure if he was saying that to me, or himself.

(That was a psychology lesson I learned from reading Claudia's graphic novel version of Happy Feet. You know, the bit when the penguin dad tells the broken egg that everything would be fine, after he's dropped the little shit. Way to go, Disney. Teaching kids like me some super deep shit.)

I'd been preparing for Marco to cry and maybe collapse into my arms in a fit of tears, but he never did. Crying wasn't manly, and he seemed to know that as well as I did. We sat down and stayed at the corner for the rest of lunch break, being silently awkward like hell, because I had no idea what the hell to do, even though I really didn't like that Marco had to hold himself together.

It wasn't long before the bell rang for class, and he gave me a pat on the back as he stood up, telling me he'd still meet me after school if I wanted to. I told him I did. Because I thought hey, maybe if I told him something morbid at the end of the day, maybe it'd cheer him up, or at least keep his mind off of the gays.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: my fucked up idea of logical explanations.

Everyone loves me for it. I just know it.

Since I had no idea what Marco's timetable was-yes, even after a week of having found him, I still did not know his wretched timetable-I somehow found him outside the school gate behind the P.E department. He's sensible, I'll give him that. He leant his back against the rusty metal, tapping at his phone as he hunched over it with a frustrated frown, then heard my footsteps and gave me a dorky little wave, shoving his phone away with his other hand. Heh. Cute. That little nerd. Wish he was my nerd.

"So I thought I'd tell you more about our past life." I said and we began walking together.

He rolled his eyes at me and sighed in irritation. "Awesome."

"But first," I took my phone out my pocket, then dived for his bag, making him yelp as the weight of the bag pulled him backwards.

"What are-!"

"Retrieving your timetable, where is it?"

"Uh, front p-pocket."

I zipped it open, finding a very well kept, white piece of paper that was Marco's sacred timetable.

"Beautiful. I'm genuinely surprised it's not destroyed yet. My one didn't make it past three days."

"It's not that neat…"

I pulled out my own tattered timetable from my back pocket, and it was literally hanging together by a shred of paper and grey.

"I see…" He said when he saw its state and I chuckled, looking down at his paper that I unfolded.

My eyebrows shot up as we walked home. "You take drama? On top of taking two sciences? That's insane."

"I just took it as a filler subject." He laughed darkly, lowering his eyelids. "I was very, very ill-advised about that choice by the school counselor."

"Hmm. I know the feeling. I took art, but at least I enjoy it."

"Oh, no, I don't mind drama, there's just more work than I expected."

I raised an eyebrow at him, giving him back the paper that he slipped back into his bag while looking at me. "You got any theatrical talents?"

"…I can do voices, but I'm-."

"Show me-!"

"No! I knew you'd ask me to! No way! Anyway, didn't you say you were going to tell me something completely non-fictional?"

"Non-fictional." I scoffed at him. "Our past lives are nothing but a fairy-tail. Right… then I guess it's not true at all that you died young, and that we all had to keep going without any time to stop and mourn properly for a whole day and night before the cremation." Trust me to turn a subject dark, huh…

Marco frowned in concern. "Oh..? That doesn't sound like fun."

"No! Of course it wasn't fun!" I was almost shouting at him. "You were my best friend and I fucking saw you very much un-alive! Not exactly the most fun thing to see, you know."

He didn't say anything, even though I was getting angry at him, and he used to scold me for getting too worked up. Since he didn't, I continued.

"I don't even know what happened. By the look of it, you got a huge chunk bitten out of you, by a titan, the man eating monster thing. I just got reminded of it today when you said you didn't want to be eaten." My voice cracked.

I sighed, taking a deep breath, wondering how I was able to talk about this without tearing up at all. I must've become numb to it, in the end.

"I got really pissed off that I had to keep going, we had to keep on fighting even though you were laying there-"

I clenched my jaw, trying to wear away the lump throttling me from within my throat. I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked to see Marco with his eyebrows creased sympathetically, both of us in the middle of the sidewalk with cars flying beside us on the road.

His face softened more when he saw my expression. I must've looked like absolute hell if he wanted to comfort me when he'd been feeling like shit earlier.

"Sorry, didn't mean to dump all of this on you when you-"

"I believe you, you know."

My heart swelled in my stomach, filling the entirety of my body, making me feel like I'd go up like a balloon.

"What?"

He nodded, smiling sadly. "Yeah, I just, I believe you, so don't worry about it. You can tell me when you're ready, if you want."

So… either he was telling me this to try and get me to shut the fuck up or… he felt bad for me having to go through it again in my mind, which I had been, and the flashes of memories were still popping up behind my eyelids. I decided the latter, I thought maybe he did feel bad for me, considering he was smiling a bit.

I put an arm around his shoulder so I could hold him without it seeming like a hug, walking so that we both moved forward. Ah, he smelled like lavender. Lovely. Calming. Very Bodt-like. Wrap me up in a blanket of him any day.

"Thanks for finally believing me, Mr. "He's completely full of non-fiction, that dashing Kirstein man, and I dislike him very much" Bodt." I grinned at him, taking my arm back and putting by my side. The extended "touching period between friends" was over, sadly.

He slid his hands in his pocket. "You're welcome. It's my present for you on our one week anniversary."

Oh my god-I had to hide my face in my hands as I laughed, turning red. I was still covering my mouth when I said:

"It feels like a lot longer than that. Well, then again I was the one that met you ages ago. Say," we stood at the stop-lights, waiting for the green signal to light up.

"Now that you believe me about our past lives, I don't suppose you'd fancy attempting trying to remember your P.E class, eh?"

He looked dazedly at the sky as we walked across the road, my ears filled with the sound of the motors buzzing and thrumming around us, attempting to run us over as the light overhead turned orange.

"Our entire P.E class was in the past life too?"

"Yup," I popped the "p". "And many, many more."

"Right, okay then. Can't hurt to try, I guess. I did make it through that thing last night, by some miracle. Why don't we make a bet? If I remember, I have to owe you a big favor. If I don't, you're my personal slave until the end of senior year."

He gave me a smile, a big, toothy smile that made his eyes crinkle and his freckled cheeks swell, as he went down his street, still talking to me loudly so that the whole street knew about our deal.

"What?! That's hardly fair!"

He waved at me before turning back to walk home, and I waved back, standing at that street corner. Not watching him go to his house or anything, that'd be creepy. But he did happen to go into number five…

I couldn't help but remember how grumpy he'd been when we first met, and now look at us: making deals about something he'd once called bullshit on, to the point of passing Jaeger in levels of stubbornness.

Also, I couldn't help but wonder…

Which would be more selfish?

Keeping my feelings for him a secret?

Or telling him I liked him?