Chapter Text
It was the usual Thursday dinner they had together in Mikasa’s apartment. They were unofficial, these weekly evenings together, but Eren and Armin knew they could never miss one and expect to live. Mikasa’s apartment was the nicest out of the three of them, it had the most room and was the most stylishly decorated. Its large windows had a beautiful view of the ocean, and it was filled with furniture in the black, white, and red colouring Mikasa seemed to have styled her life after. It was also the most lonely looking, but Mikasa didn’t seem to mind as long as Armin and Eren visited regularly.
“So, Eren, how are you?” Mikasa asked, picking up a forkful of spaghetti.
Eren looked up from where he was nervously cutting his spaghetti into tiny bits. He set down his knife and fork, meeting Mikasa’s eyes with a determined expression.
“I want to propose to Levi and you two have to help,” Eren blurted out, glaring down at his meal. There was a note of silence as Armin and Mikasa side-eyed each other and waited for Eren to explain.
“I really want to do this right and I know he has really high expectations and I’m kind of worried he won’t say yes and he’s French, really French, so I have no idea what to do,” Eren finished, slumping forward and holding his head in his hands. He looked at Armin and Mikasa with pleading eyes.
“Eren,” Mikasa leaned over, placing her hand on top of his. “Of course we’ll help you.”
“Yeah, of course we’ll help,” Armin nodded. “And, really, there’s no way he’ll say no to you.”
“French,” Eren emphasized with a pained expression.
“We can do this,” Mikasa said with determination.
---
“Alright, I spent a lot of time researching French marriage proposals and I made you guys this powerpoint of information,” Eren announced, hitting the power button on Mikasa’s projector. They were sitting close together on the couch in her apartment, in front of the white wall left blank for the purpose of media viewing. It was late afternoon, and the blinds were all drawn across the large windows to keep out the sun’s glare.
“That font looks terrible,” Armin said, munching on a nacho from the bowl of chips he held possessively in his lap.
“Focus, Armin,” Eren said, flipping past the title slide. “As we can see, the French are impressed by very romantic gestures, things that show how thoughtful and sweet you can be.”
“That’s a screenshot of a scene from ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife.’”
“A movie adaptation of a popular French novel!” Eren added loudly. “To understand the mindset of French romance, knowing the pop culture representation of gestures of love is essential.”
“So you read ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife?”
“No, it’s in fucking French, Armin, I watched the English movie,” Eren said, clicking the next slide. “After viewing several French films I have concluded that the elements to a good proposal consist of three main things: A) the romantic setting, B) the elegant ring, and C) the smooth delivery.”
Mikasa nodded thoughtfully, leaning forward and threading her fingers together.
“Alright, sounds like a plan,” Armin agreed. “Any ideas for the romantic setting?”
“I have no idea,” Eren said sadly, throwing himself on the couch. “I tried googling it but I don’t think Levi would like any of the ideas I found.”
“You need to do something personal, something that has meaning for you two as a couple,” Armin mused, “Where did you go on your first date?”
“The eiffel tower,” Eren replied with a dreamy smile.
“Ok, wow. That’s very far away..,” Armin said. “Uh, how about where you met?”
“On a subway,” Eren answered with a scowl. “He bumped into me and ended up accidentally stealing my wallet, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, hm that’s not going to work either,” Armin grumbled, tapping his fingers against the nacho bowl.
“What about,” Mikasa spoke up quietly, with a determined expression on her face, “where you first had sex?”
“M-Mikasa!” Eren exclaimed, blushing furiously. Armin laughed then quickly covered it with a cough when Eren glared at him.
“Maybe we should go for something with different personal meaning,” Eren sighed.
“Alright, let’s think about this logically,” Armin said, tapping a finger against his chin and staring hard at the wall. “How much of a surprise do we want this to be?”
“As much as possible,” Eren said with conviction. “The French movies emphasized surprise as being more romantic.”
“He seems to enjoy surprises,” Mikasa agreed. “Like Eren’s last surprise birthday party.”
“That was so much fun,” Eren sighed happily, remembering the bouncy obstacle course.
“The painting he did of you was so amazing,” Armin said with a smile. “You could really feel the love put into it.”
“Painting!” Eren shot up. “That’s it, his new gallery opening! It’s meaningful and surprising.”
“Formal?” Armin asked.
“Very,” Eren replied gravely. “But I bet I can find a private moment to, you know, propose.”
“It sounds perfect,” Armin agreed.
“You have us as your supportive wingmen, Eren,” Mikasa said with a small smile, placing a hand on Eren’s shoulder.
“I love you guys,” he said, wrapping them in a hug.
---
“I like this one,” Mikasa said, pointing to a tiny silver band with a snake’s head.
“It doesn’t fit the requirements, Mikasa,” Eren said with a bit of annoyance, unfolding the list he had made for picking out an engagement ring. “We need something elegant but practical, stylish but not overly feminine, preferably in silver since Petra said gold doesn’t look good with Levi’s complexion, and he likes pearls more than diamonds.”
Eren lowered the list, staring at the rows and rows of glittering cabinets filled with rings in the jewellery store. Which they were on the first floor of. The first floor of eighteen.
“Maybe we should ask for help,” Armin suggested. Eren reluctantly agreed and they wandered around the red carpet and marble floor of the store until they spotted a tall man in a suit standing behind a counter six rows over.
The store clerk’s eyes seemed to light up when he saw the list.
“May I presume someone very lucky is about to receive a very special ring?” He asked, leaning back against the counter and tapping his fingers against the glass.
“Yeah, Mister…” Eren leaned forward, squinting at the guy’s name tag. “Earwin.”
“Erwin,” The clerk corrected smoothly.
“Oh. Sorry. Anyway, I need to find an engagement ring that fits this criteria,” Eren explained, handing him the list. “He’s French.”
“I understand,” Erwin nodded, moving behind the counter with a determined expression. Actually it didn’t look that different from the expression he’d had when they walked over to him. His eyebrows were so thick, maybe he just looked like that all the time.
“Here,” Erwin said, interrupting Eren’s thoughts to hand him a little silver ring box, topped with a pale pink bow.
“Thanks?”
“Cash or credit?” Erwin asked, pulling a tablet up out of his fancy suit jacket.
“...For the box?” Eren looked down at the tiny thing. Wow, these high-class jewellery places were weird.
“The ring is inside the box,” Erwin clarified, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t I usually pick out the ring?” Eren asked with a bit of confusion. He glanced over to see what Armin was doing but he looked just as lost.
“Usually, yes,” Erwin agreed. “But I am never wrong in my selections.”
There was a long silence as they stared at him before Mikasa plucked the box from Eren’s hands and opened it.
“Oooh, that’s nice,” Armin commented, peering closely at the tiny ring. Eren nodded in wordless agreement, trying to ignore Erwin’s smug grin. Damn it, he had kind of wanted to be the one to spot the perfect ring. Oh well; it wasn’t really who found it that mattered as much as whether Levi would like it.
---
“So we have a ring now,” Armin began, staring upside-down at the tiny box sitting on Mikasa’s glass coffee table. The three of them were lying on the couch, their legs over the back and their heads facing the wall, where Eren’s powerpoint was once again up.
“A really nice one,” Eren added proudly.
“Picked out by that obnoxious clerk,” Mikasa muttered, munching on a chocolate from a box balanced on Armin’s chest.
“So, that brings us to the third item on your powerpoint,” Armin finished. They stared up at the text on the wall and tried to imagine Eren pulling off a “smooth delivery.”
“I was thinking I could wear a suit and a tophat,” Eren put in. “We could cue up this light jazz band waiting somewhere in the background, and I could say something really cool that we would plan as I take his hand and pull out the box and maybe a single rose.”
Eren looked over anxiously at Armin and Mikasa. They were both staring at the powerpoint and looked like they were deeply concentrating.
“I think I can do it,” Eren said. Mikasa ate another chocolate and kept her gaze fixed on the wall.
“Eren,” Armin finally sighed. “I think that maybe you should try to be sincere and spontaneous instead of smooth.”
“You think he’d like that more?” Eren asked, looking thoughtful.
“Definitely,” Armin replied, nodding wisely.
“Be yourself,” Mikasa added.
“Are you sure?” Eren asked doubtfully. “I don’t want to mess up…”
“You won’t,” Armin said with certainty. “Trust me.”
“I dunno, I’ve never done anything like this before. I mean, I remember when I tried to say ‘I love you’ for the first time and I started crying and it was really bad,” Eren cringed, biting his lip.
“Marriage,” Mikasa spoke up. “Is loving a person in their entirety, for their strengths and their faults, in their best moments and their worst.”
Eren and Armin stared at her for a moment. Mikasa raised her eyebrows and ate another chocolate.
“Right, what she said,” Armin finally spoke. “Would you say yes to him, even if he asked in the shittiest way possible?”
“Of course,” Eren said reverently.
“See,” Armin explained with a smile. “He’s going to say yes, because it’s you asking.”
“Wow,” Eren looked up at the ceiling. “That’s kind of amazing to think about.”
---
“I see we’re going with the red shirt,” Armin commented, eyebrows lifting as Eren walked out of Mikasa’s spare room in his dress pants and the red dress shirt Levi had picked out for him on their last out-of-town shopping trip.
“It’s a nice shirt,” Eren muttered, fighting down a blush with an awesome amount of willpower. He never should have told Armin about Levi’s red shirt fetish.
“Right,” Armin said with an eyeroll. “Just get in the bathroom so we can fix your hair.”
“Fine, fine, I’m going,” Eren said, waving his hand and walking into Mikasa’s over-sized bathroom. The sink and counter were crowded with Mikasa’s collection of makeup and hair products, as well as the costume jewelry she left lying around. Eren knew she had one locked box in her bedroom for the pieces left to her by their mother, and the more expensive or meaningful ones given to her by Eren and Armin. Eren sat down on a stool and let Armin run water and a brush through his hair while frowning and muttering about fancy hair. Fancy because Levi loved fancy things. And he was going to propose to Levi. Tonight. In less than four hours. Eren felt his heart speed up, pounding in his ears while he imagined actually proposing.
“I can’t do this,” Eren said, staring with wide eyes at his panicked reflection in the bathroom mirror. The thought of Levi standing there, an awkward grimace on his fale while he tried to let Eren down gently was horrible, it hurt to think about. Shit.
“What, why not?” Armin looked alarmed.
“He’s going to say no then break up with me and go move back in with Rico,” Eren said, his face paling.
“Who is ‘Rico?’” Mikasa asked, walking in with Eren’s suit jacket.
“The ex,” Armin loudly whispered at the same time Eren said “A bitch.”
“He sounds boring,” Mikasa commented as she directed Eren to a stool and forced him to sit down so she could brush his hair. He started humming to calm himself, but it came out a little like a high-pitched noise of panic.
“Eren, it’s going to be fine,” Armin said sternly. “I have seen you tackle a 6’2 man on the street for trying to steal someone’s wallet. You can do this.”
Eren swallowed and nodded, looking down at the swirly patterns of Mikasa’s bathroom floor instead of his reflection. He wondered what Levi would say in this situation, if he had asked for advice from Levi about Levi. Which he had tried once. Probably something like “what have you got to lose, you shitty brat?” But then he’d maybe touch his arm and give him a reassuring smile because “you shitty brat” always meant “I love you.”
“You’re doing the creepy dreamy-smile thing again,” Armin said, looking up from his phone. “And we are going to be late if we don’t leave now.”
“Right!” Eren jumped up from the stool, pumping a fist in the air and running down the hallway.
Armin and Mikasa both sighed, following him out.