Sooooo, I'm writing this. Not 100% sure why. I've never written fan fiction before, and I don't think I'm going to be all that good at it. Everyone is probably going to be super out of character, and I imagine half of anyone who reads this will cringe. But I don't care. I have committed to this. And by committed, I mean that this is probably the only chapter I'm ever going to write, but I wrote it with a burning passion.

Anyway, this is a soulmate AU, with LOTS of different pairings. Including (but not limited to): Eren/Levi, ErenxMikasa, Marco/Jean, ArminxAnnie, Mikasa/Annie, Krista/Ymir, ErwinxPetra, Hanji/Themself

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Eren wasn't in a hurry to be anywhere, despite already being ten minutes late to his Criminology class. He hadn't gone in weeks, ignoring Armin's nagging and Mikasa's sighs. The whole college scene just really wasn't for him. Yes, he knew he was "ruining his life" as Armin so gently put it, but he hated sitting in classrooms, and writing essays, and he couldn't imagine doing it for another three and a half years.

"Eren, you have class," Mikasa said from her desk, twisting her head slightly to stare at Eren where he lay on her bed. He heaved himself up, crossing the small dorm room to reach her. Tugging gently at the frayed red threads at the end of the scarf she rarely removed, he pressed a kiss to her cheek.

"Maybe I just don't want to leave you, babe," he murmured against her skin with a sweet smile.

"Bullshit." Mikasa's voice was flat, even more deadpan than usual, and her grey eyes were distinctly unimpressed. Eren laughed, stepping a distance away before falling backwards into his girlfriend's bed.

"Caught me," he chuckled with a shameless grin. He propped his hands behind his head, kicking a foot up unto his knee. He sprawled across her bed like he owned it, green eyes shining was a lazy joy. "I just really don't want to go to class."

"Eren," Mikasa sighed, with that tired, forceful tone she used whenever he did something she didn't agree with (which was often). "I'm not going to let you stay here when you're skipping. Go to class."

"Fine," the brown haired boy drawled in return with an exaggerated role of his eyes. He slouched off the comfort of her bed, mussing her blankets and stooping to scoop up his bag. He fished his phone from his back pocket, pulling Armin's contact up on the screen. "I'll leave. No promises I'm going where you want me to, though." Hoisting the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder, he made for the door.

"Eren," Mikasa called, and he stopped, glancing back to her. She had pushed her chair out from her desk to face him, a soft smile on her face, even as she pulled her scarf up to cover it. "I love you. Now go to class."

With a grin that was equal parts adoring and smug, Eren crossed the room with a of couple long strides. He pulled her scarf out of the way and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. "I love you, too, but I don't love anything enough to go to class when I don't feel like it."

"It never hurts to try," she sighed. With a parting grin, Eren left the room, dialing Armin as he did.

"Yo Ar, can I crash at your place for a while? Mikasa just kicked me out," he said without preamble.

"I'm shocked she let you hang around as long as she did," came the staticy voice of his best friend from the other line. "I really don't get why she puts up with you. And what makes you think I'm okay with being your rebound? I have standards, Eren."

"Mikasa puts up with me because she loves me," Eren laughed loudly as he walked across campus towards Armin's dorm, waving to the few the people he knew as he passed. "Which, coincidentally enough, is the same reason you're going to let me come hang out at your place right now."

"I would Eren, but I'm not even in my room. Funnily enough, I actually have a class right around now, not unlike yourself. I guess the key difference here is that I actually go to my classes." Eren rolled his eyes at Armin's dramatics. They had been friends for years, and they loved each other like brothers, but there were some things they just couldn't see eye-to-eye on. Education happened to be one of them. "If you want to skip class why don't you do it in your own room?" Eren's grin immediately fell into a frown, his expression doing a complete 180.

"Gross, no. Jean is probably there. He doesn't go to class anymore than I do." Armin's lighthearted laughter drifted through the phone.

"You guys are fighting again?"

"We're always fighting, Armin. He's a horse-faced douche, and I'm a short-tempered asshole, remember? We don't mix well."

"As hilarious as it is to see you two pretending that you're not friends, it gets kind of tiring sometimes. Everyone knows that he was your second choice of roommate, after me."

Eren scoffed, a noise of disgust spilling from his lips. "We hate each other. He's a prick who lives to annoy me. And if you're not going to let me come over, you're useless to me."

"Jesus Eren, I love you, too. My class is about to start anyway. Oh, and speaking of classes, you should really go to yours."

"Yeah, yeah," Eren mumbled dismissively, snapping his battered phone shut.

He stood in the middle of a courtyard, halfway to Armin's dorm, with his plans suddenly dashed. Mikasa had already kicked him out and would probably punch him in the face if he tried to come back so soon; Armin apparently had a class and still refused to just give Eren a key to his room; Eren's own room was still very much occupied by the disgusting existence known as Jean. Sighing, Eren strode over to a nearby tree, collapsing against it. He dug through his bag for his MP3 player, only to remember after a few fruitless minutes that he had lent it to Mikasa the other day, since her own had broken.

With nothing else to do, he pulled his phone out yet again, tossing it between his hands before flipping it open and dialing Mikasa. Considering that she had kicked him out earlier, he doubted that she would be happy to hear from him. She would probably refuse to answer, just to spite him for skipping class. It was a flawed strategy, really. If she was to give him the silent treatment every time he slacked off with his academic responsibilities, they would never talk. Surprisingly enough, she picked up just before her phone would have sent him over to voice mail.

"Eren, you're supposed to be in class," she sighed.

"You knew I wasn't going to go, don't act all disappointed in me," he replied, shrugging to himself as he tilted his head back against the bark of the tree he was leaned against. "If you are, you should really lower your expectations."

"Today's an important day, Eren. You can't just hang around peoples' dorms all day, refusing to go out." When he didn't reply, she pressed further. "You're supposed to me her today, aren't you?"

Eren sighed, glancing at the mark on his wrist. He remembered when it had trailed up his arm, spiraling around his forearm, five, ten, fifteen times. Now it was barely two inches long, and if he stared hard enough, he could see it getting gradually shorter, burning away like a fuse.

"Probably," he reluctantly admitted. "The marks aren't 100% consistent, so it could be tomorrow." That was wishful thinking, really. There was a 99.99% chance that he would meet them within the hour.

"Well then, you need to be out there. You need to be where ever you're supposed to be when that mark disappears." Eren growled softly, glaring at his wrist, and resisting the urge to snap that it was impossible to be anywhere else. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that the mark would most likely be gone in a couple of hours, and he could go back to pretending that it had never existed.

"She's your soulmate, Eren," Mikasa said, so softly that Eren could barely hear her with his horrible reception.

"It doesn't matter," he growled. Sure, he would be meeting his "soulmate" within the next few hours, but he was already in love with Mikasa. His soulmate could be anyone, and it wouldn't matter.

Don't misunderstand, Eren thought soulmates were great. He just didn't need one. Most people had the same type of mark Eren did, and in most cases, those marks led them to love, but plenty of people found love without the marks, or in spite of them. He had watched the band on his arm get shorted for nineteen years, supposedly counting down the time until he met "the one," but it only took him seven of those to find the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Plenty of people were born without marks - Mikasa was one of them - but those people were still perfectly capable of finding love. Jean, as much of an asshole as he was, had one of the best relationships Eren had ever seen, and he and Marco both had different soulmates. Eren's parent's had been soulmates, and that hadn't ended well at all. Obviously the marks weren't everything. They were a nice, safe fallback, but frankly Eren preferred to take the risk.

"The marks are important, Eren!" Mikasa burst from the other line. "They lead you to the person who is perfect for you."

Eren felt his temper snap. He snapped forward, elbows resting on his knees, head hanging as he clenched his teeth. When he began talking, his voice was louder than he wanted it to be, immediately attracting attention, but he didn't bother to control it.

"You know what Mikasa, have it your way. Maybe she will be perfect for me. Maybe she will, somehow, be a better match for me than you are. I'll be the first to admit that our relationship isn't perfect. I'm too hot headed for my own good, and you've been bottling everything up since we were kids. There's nothing 'perfect' about that combination. Sure, sometimes we balance each other out, but sometimes - a lot of the time, really - it just doesn't work. And I know that that bothers you. I know it bothers you that sometimes we seem so incompatible that this must be impossible, and I know that bothers you all the more because I have a mark and you don't. I know it all bothers you, even if you won't admit it.

"But so what? So what if there's some stupid thing that says I'm supposed to be with some stupid girl I don't even know? You know better than anyone that I hate being expected to do things just because, and that's all this soulmate shit is. This mark doesn't matter. It hasn't mattered since I fell in love with you when we were thirteen years old. If I'm being completely honest, it probably hasn't mattered since we met when we were seven. What we have is built off of twelve years of friendship. Actual history. We made this relationship work for the last four years with love and hard work. We fought, and we cried, and we hurt each other, but we are still here, we are still together. And right now, I still love you as much as I ever have, even though you're being a fucking idiot, and I know you still love me even though I'm screaming. To me, the fact that we are still together after all the shit we have been through makes us more of soulmates than some mark on my arm. I love you, Mikasa. I love you, and nothing, no one could ever make me leave you."

He was screaming, which wasn't shocking really, because this was Eren, and screaming is what he was best best at, God damn it. Now his voice fell, still loud, but deeper.

"You're my family. You are the only family I have left, and I don't know what I would do without you. It's not something I even want to think about."

"O-Okay," Mikasa said after a long pause filled with Eren's heavy breathing. "I love you, Eren. You can come back to my room when ever you want." She hung up, and Eren pulled the phone away from his ear, smiling slightly now, despite the fact that he was still flushed with anger. He let his eyes slide shut, relaxing his posture.

"Oi brat," a voice snapped in front of him. He opened his eyes, leaning back, head bumping against the tree at his back, to meet the angry grey gaze of a very pissed off man. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, airing your shitty private business in a public place?"

Simultaneously, with a faint burn, the marks on both their wrists disappeared.