Chapter Text
ok so Armin is a fisherman and he’s busy pulling in his nets and this one’s. heaver than usual like it’s really heavy he’s probably gonna have to call Jean to help him it’s caught on the bottom probably but then all of a sudden he pulls hard and ends up on his ass but theres a merperson. in the boat. flopping around wildly and screeching ‘DONT EAT ME DONT EAT ME’ and he’s about to capsize the boat and Armin is clearly not going to eat him so after several minutes of back and forth yelling 'DONT EAT ME’ and “IM NOT GOING TO STOP SQUIRMING” the merman stops wiggling and they stare at each other for a bit until Armin blurts out “but merpeople arent real” and the merman crosses his arms and pouts and pulls his red cape’s hood over his head until Armin apologizes and asks what his name is
'Manners! I’m Eren. And im a MERROW not a MERPERSON. We have red capes and help people and look pretty. Merpeople are all…’ Eren makes a face and does little finger fang things. 'And they like eating humans. And Merrows. And they work in tribes, not families. We don’t get along.’
“Oh.” Armin says. “Oh.”
Armin tries to dump him back into the river but it turns out merrows are very strong and very VERY stubborn and Eren is not leaving the boat any time soon so Armin accepts that he’s going to have a red caped fishman asshole lying on his boat slapping his tail about and eating one third of all the fish he pulls in. it gets even more noisy when he switches to his fishing rod and Eren’s mouth isnt so busy eating and so it becomes very apparent that he talks a mile a minute and thinks armin is very cute when he growls at the fish who nibble without biting.
Armin manages to talk Eren out of his boat as he heads back home and he’s fairly confident that he can put the day behind him. Eren goes home and gets chewed out by Mikasa for getting caught but then she listens to him talk about the very cute blond fisherman who really likes pearls and has a big floppy sunhat with a blue bow and Eren thinks he’s a little bit in love tbh
Armin comes out the next morning and. Eren is sitting on his boat surrounded by oyster shells and triumphantly holding up a handful of pearls.
Armin laughs. Eren laughs. Eren swims beside the boat all day bc yesterday his scales dried out and got all flakey and gross and as pretty as amber scales are no scales look pretty dried out. Eren throws fish he caught with his bare hands into the boat to make up for eating so many yesterday and they chat and make jokes and it turns out Eren is very well read for an aquatic creature and also has a very strong grudge against the Irish as they have a very bad habit of being very good at catching Merrows which is why he and Mikasa are down here and not in Ireland where they came from.
It’s two weeks they do this before Jean catches them in the most awkward manner possible because Armin got sick and Jean’s motor broke so Jean took his boat and Eren hauled himself up on board as he’s been doing for the past week holding a big ass fish and hollering about this hilarious joke mikasa had told him last night about where fish would live if they lived on land (Finland).
Jean knocks on Armin’s door a half hour later and asks why theres a fishperson on his boat who has done nothing but insult his haircut, eat his fish, tell him he looks like 'one of those weird dog things with the big faces and weird hair humans sit on’, and ask where Armin is. Armin puts his head in his hands and coughs and sneezes his way out to tell Eren not to call his best friend a horse. ('is that what those are called?’ “Yes Eren.” 'Dont you think he looks just a little bit like one?’ “Well yes but im a good friend so i dont tell him that.”)
A week later Mikasa comes to meet Armin and she gives him a once over and tells eren that she doesn’t like humans too much but at least Eren picked a cute one to date. They both tell her that they aren’t dating even though they kind of are because they kissed two days ago (eren dove off the boat and armin blushed for so long Jean asked him if he forgot sunscreen.)
The next week Eren does the mini proposal thing Merrows do when they ask people out by giving him a pearl in a box he whittled out of drift wood.
“Are you asking me to marry you?” Armin asks, looking at it and blushing up to his ears.
“No!” Eren yelps. “I’m asking you to be my boyfriend!”
Armin tells him that humans dont propose to people to ask them to become their boyfriend.
Eren tells him that Merrows do and asks him if its a yes or a no.
Armin says yes.