Marco's shower has to be short and sweet, because by the time he regained consciousness after Eren had attacked him with Jean's rock-bread, he only has fifteen minutes till curfew.

He's hurrying back to the dormitories, his hair still wet and the cool air stinging against his moist skin, when Jean pops up out from behind a bush (which also coincidentally also happens to be the bush in which Eren had been hiding his body bag). "Marco! I need your help!"

Jean is a good friend. Jean probably considers Marco his best friend, actually, and Marco just might reciprocate that feeling. But that doesn't mean that Jean is Marco's only friend, and he really wishes people would get that. No, they don't sleep together every night; they don't even sleep in adjacent bunks, despite what the rumors say. Jean bunks with Connie, Armin, and Millius, and Marco sleeps about five bunks away. Really, Jean isn't the center of Marco's world, and if Marco wants to go to bed, he's going to go—

Aw hell. Jean has a tight grip on his wrist and is dragging him along anyways. "At least let me put my stuff back in my trunk," Marco begs.

"Perfect," whispers Jean. "And then we can raid Connie's trunk for all his underwear."

"What?"

"I said that we're—"

"No, I heard that… but why?"

"They humiliated me in front of Mikasa," mutters Jean darkly, "They need to know my shame."

Marco pulls up his shirt to reveal several dark bruises all over his torso. "This is from you banging me against that stall door, remember? And you still didn't find Mikasa?"

"No, I didn't," Jean replies shortly. "Because I was attacked by a flying Bertolt."

Marco stops, only for Jean to continue dragging him forward. "What exactly happened to you today?"

"Hell. Hell happened. I'm just paying it back."

Marco yanks his wrist out of Jean's iron grip. "Jean, curfew's in two minutes."

"I know! It's the perfect time to pull pranks on all of them, all at once! Nobody's going to be up and around to rat us out!"

Marco's mind spends a moment processes this statement. "Wait, them? Not just Connie?"

Jean lists names off his fingers. "Bertolt for landing on me while half-naked. Reiner for punching my head off. Ymir for lying about the size of my abs. Eren, for being stupid." Jean grins proudly. "Anybody else?"

"Why are you asking me? Jean, I'm not going to break camp rules so you can get revenge on half the camp. Just let me go to bed, okay?"

Before he can turn around and walk away, though, Jean falls to his knees and grabs onto Marco's arm. "Marcooooo…" he begs, fat tears beading up in his beautiful brown eyes. "Pleeeease, I can't do this without you…"

Dammit. Stupid fandom making Jean all uncharacteristically weepy like this. Worst of all, though, is that even though Marco knows that Jean's a pro when it comes to crying, crocodile tears or not, he can't help but fall for it anyways.

"Fine," he sighs. "Just one prank, okay?"

Of course, it's not just one prank.

Sneaking around the dorm isn't that hard. If you stuff fifty boys into bunk beds in a single room, you're going to get a lot of snoring from both above and below. Marco spares a longing glance at his welcoming mattress, but then Jean hisses his name from across the room and he heads in that general direction. It's hard to find his way in the darkness, though the bright rays of moonlight streaming in through the windows help.

"This isn't Connie's bed," Marco whispers when he gets close. "Connie's bunk is below yours!"

"Nah, this is two birds with one stone," Jean breathes, pointing up to the two adjacent top bunks. "And we get a weather forecast in the process."

"Bertolt?"

"Tell me how he's sleeping and I'll predict tomorrow's weather," Jean says proudly.

Marco peers at Jean shrewdly. "You just want me to go up there first."

"You're a nice guy," Jean says, holding up his hands pacifyingly. "Reiner's less likely to punch off your head if he's awake."

"Don't worry, I'm definitely awake," comes Reiner's deep rumble from above.

Jean and Marco zip their lips shut and look at each other in horrified silence. However, when Reiner doesn't leap down from his top bunk and wrestle them into further submission, Marco risks a glance upwards.

Nothing—and that's strange, because Reiner's usually like a big snuggly care bear. It's like his love language or something; the guy just appreciates physical touch, whether it's naked on the shower floors, or during training when Annie's putting him into a choke hold. The fact that he's not physically descending upon them to ensure their compliance stirs Marco's suspicions, and he moves towards the ladder.

Jean anxiously grabs at his shorts. "Do you want to die?"

"Com'on, man, it's Reiner. It's not like he'smurdered thousands of people with his fists of fury. He's a nice guy!"

"Exactly," Reiner agrees, his voice unusually quiet. Reiner's always loud, especially when he's snoring. "I'm being pretty nice here, letting you off the hook, Jean. Especially after you took advantage of Bertl."

"I told you, he took advantage of me!"

Marco climbs the ladder—just to check up on Reiner, because something's going on…

He pauses, unable to say anything for the longest moment.

"What's his sleeping position?" Jean questions.

"Don't say a word," Reiner threatens.

Marco grins slowly. "Reiner's harmless," he whispers to Jean below. "He can't move a muscle."

Reiner swears as Marco climbs all the way up and settles in Bertolt's empty bed. Jean clambers up the ladder next, freezing when he spots Bertolt's sleeping position… directly on top of Reiner.

Bertolt is on his knees with his face is buried in Reiner's ample cleavage; his soft snores cause Reiner's moobs to jiggle at regular intervals. The taller boy also has his arms looped around Reiner's shoulders, effectively locking the blonde's arms in place.

Because neither wears a shirt, Reiner is also slicked with Bertolt's sweat.

Reiner grunts, "This isn't what it looks like."

"There's only one thing this looks like," Jean grins evilly, and he brings a permanent ink pen out of nowhere. "But in case it wasn't obvious enough, I'm going to draw it all over your body."

"Don't…!" Reiner says in a strangled yelp, but the sudden movement stirs Bertolt.

"Stop moving, Rei," murmurs Bertolt. "Just let me do all the work…" His hips shift downward, causing Reiner to stiffen very suddenly.

"Marco, you can go grab Connie's stuff," Jean pardons, waving Marco away while obliviously ignoring Reiner's heavy breathing. "I only have one pen anyways."

Marco is frankly relieved, shimmying down the ladder. As quietly as he can, he pulls Connie's trunk of clothes from underneath his bed. Connie stirs and mumbles something about bread; Marco is reminded of the large bag of bread he's easily toted around over one shoulder during the afternoon, compared to Eren at night dragging the same bag along the ground as if… dare he think it? As if there had been a body contained within.

He's known Eren to be hotheaded and fairly violent, but murder? Within the camp? He can't imagine it.

…Except he can, very vividly, remember the twitching bag and the pained whimpers…

Connie's trunk slides out the rest of the way, and Marco is quick to flip it open. The smell that greets him is disgusting, and it's so dark that he can't really see what he's grabbing. Small articles of clothing are what he's looking for. Underwear, underwear…

"Pst!" hisses Jean for across the room. "Marco! I can't start drawing until I have a blindfold!"

Marco sighs and tosses something that he balled up. It looks pink, but it's flying too fast and soon disappears into the darkness of Reiner's and Bertolt's upper bunks.

"Jean, I am going to take you apart piece by piece."

"Heh, hey Reiner, I can see Bertl's crack. Can you see his crack? Oh no you can't, you're blindfolded! Ha!"

"What are you playing at, Jean? A particular yaoi fantasy of yours?"

"It wouldn't be yaoi unless I slipped off your pants. On an unrelated note, do you think Bertl would appreciate a drawing of a baguette in his crack? It might help you see it better."

Why is he even doing this.

Marco tosses another piece of underwear up into a tree. Surprisingly, Connie has a lot of underwear. There's the usual white boxers that's standard for every male within Wall Rose; but some of them are downright strange, like the lacey pink panties and the bikini one with tiny red hearts all over it.

Well, if that's Connie's game, then Marco won't be one to judge…

But again, why is he helping Jean again? Jean should know that Marco has other friends. All the little things Jean should know, but doesn't…

Then again, Marco had caught a glimpse of crazy red light reflecting off of Jean's eyes when he'd left the dormitory with his arms full of Connie's clothing. Maybe it's because they're all tired and it's really late at night. Maybe it's because Jean really has been wounded, both physically and mentally. Maybe it's really because Mikasa told him that he wasn't cool enough for her or whatever. Ultimately, all signs seem to point to the fact that Jean's finally gone off the deep end. And while that's still Jean's problem, Marco does realize that, as Jean's closest friend, he is in the best position to pull Jean back from the edge of insanity.

Well, he still is. Jean's not completely off his rocker yet, right? Marco can still save him.

He hangs the rest of Connie's underwear from tree branches, making sure that none of them drop down onto the dirty ground, before sprinting back to the dorms. He'll just hug Jean. Getting Jean's face in his chest usually is the best way to calm down a hysterical boy in the throes of teenage manpain.

Jean is holding Connie's hand in a bowl of warm water when Marco returns. "What are you doing?" he almost yells, hushing himself at the last second.

Jean looks up at Marco in what he probably thinks is a perfectly innocent expression, but there's something off about it. "Eren's not here and I can't find him, so I'm gonna make Connie pee his pants instead."

Marco finally pinpoints what is so wrong about Jean: he has no pupils. His eyes are flat and brown and maddened with insanity. Wordlessly, he grabs Jean under the arms and drags him up to a standing position. Jean yelps as the bowl of warm water spills out of his hands and clatters to the ground, but his cry is muffled as soon as Marco hugs his friend.

Connie mumbles something about potatoes. Reiner grunts. Bertolt giggles. Everybody else just snores… and of course, Jean starts to cry.

This is a good thing, Marco reminds himself.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Jean sniffles.

Marco just pats him on the back. "There, there. Just let it out."

"No, Marco, I'm serious," Jean says, confusion passing across his features. "I really don't know what I'm doing. Why am I acting like this? Am I usually this emo?"

"I dunno. You tell me." It's the writers, I tell you! Next, they'll have Titans tearing our bodies in half or something…

Reiner rumbles something from his bunk, none of it comprehensible. He falls quiet when Bertolt laughs in his sleep.

Jean peels himself off of Marco's chest, reverting back to a somewhat normal form (whatever normal is for Jean, Marco doesn't really know anymore). "Ah, whatever. Just… just go to bed."

Marco smiles. "Good night, Jean."

Jean turns his back on Marco and waves a hand. "Yeah, sure."

Marco is just about to drift off to sleep when somebody wallops his face with a pillow. "Hey, scoot over," comes a familiar and very unwelcome voice.

"Jean, what the heck," he grunts as Jean uses his butt to shove him over. "Hey!"

"Connie peed his bed," Jean says, as if that's explanation enough. Which is isn't.

"You made him!" Marco mumbles, as Jean competes with him for mattress space. "Why is that a problem to you though?"

"Because it stinks," argues Jean, fluffing his pillow and positioning it next to Marco's. "I choked on the smell of piss for about five minutes before falling down my ladder and crawling over here on my hands and knees, so you better feel sorry for me and give me some room. And some blankets. I was so weak that the only thing I could grab was Millius' pillow."

"This is your fault," Marco repeats, but he scoots over anyways and lifts up his blanket. Jean slides in next to him, and they lie next to each other, back-to-back. It's a familiar position, not because they do this on a regular basis—but during the winter, when they hike up to Haller's Point in the mountains close to Rammelsberg, it's widely accepted for everybody to huddle in their sleeping bags with each other for warmth. And this… this is sort of the same, right? Sharing a bed and a blanket… oh whatever. Trying to justifying this to himself isn't helping at all. He'll just consider all the consequences of his actions tomorrow morning.

Jean makes some incomprehensible noises before spitting out, "Whatever. Go to sleep, Marco."

The consequences that will rear their ugly heads the next morning… well, Marco should have expected them.

The camp will be thrown into absolute chaos when Connie wakes up with a wet mattress and no clean boxers to change into, while Sasha and Krista discover their missing panties in embarrassingly obvious places all over camp, like glued to classroom chalkboards and hanging like flags from the trees. After breakfast, Bertolt shows up to morning classes wearing as much clothes as is humanly possible, though it still won't enough to cover the permanent ink drawing of a loaf of bread on his right cheek. Reiner and Thomas will have seemingly gone missing, but Nack will be the one to finally find Reiner still in his bunk bed, completely naked, gagged, blindfolded, and bound with Connie's underwear, and covered with drawings of baguettes up to 35cm long.

Strangely, Reiner won't incriminate Jean, though he will blush furiously whenever Bertolt is around.

But that's all in the future. In the present, Marco is content because, as he slowly drifts off to sleep, he dreams that Jean mutters, "Thanks."

Author's Note: This is pretty good as far as endings go. Annie's POV will wrap up the rest of the loose ends; I'll get to that... eventually. More reviews?