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I. The Week Before
It came up the way most things came up with Armin, naturally, in the middle of something else entirely. They were in the library, an hour into what was supposed to be a Potions study session and had become Armin reading ahead for pleasure while Eren stared at the same paragraph for the third time. Outside the windows the February sky was the particular grey that meant snow before morning.
"Her birthday is next Saturday," Armin said, without looking up from his book.
Eren looked up. "I know."
"What are you getting her."
"I haven't... I'll figure something out."
Armin turned a page. "You're a couple now."
"I know we're… a couple."
"It's her first birthday as your girlfriend." He turned another page. "You should be romantic about it. Put in some effort." A pause. "Otherwise she might reconsider."
Eren stared at him. "She's not going to—"
"I'm just saying." Armin looked up with the expression of perfect innocence he'd been perfecting since they were seven. "Relationships require effort. Especially in the early stages. I've read about it."
"Of course you have."
"There are books about it in grandad’s library."
“Of course."
Eren looked back at his Potions notes. Then he looked up again. "Do you think she's expecting something. Specific."
"I think she's expecting something thoughtful." Armin closed his book. "Which rules out most of what you'd think to get her."
"What does that mean."
"It means I know you, Eren." He said it without cruelty. "What were you going to get her."
A pause. "I was thinking... new quills. And ink. She goes through them fast and her current set is—"
"No."
"She uses them every day."
"Absolutely not."
"It's practical."
"It's the least romantic gift in the history of gifts." Armin stood up and started collecting his things. "Come on. We're going to Hogsmeade."
The high street was busy enough that they had to navigate around groups of students outside Honeydukes and the post office. Armin moved with the purposeful energy of someone who'd already decided where they were going. Eren followed with his hands in his pockets and his breath clouding in the cold air.
"Not Honeydukes," Eren said.
"Not Honeydukes."
"She doesn't really wear things. Like accessories."
"She would if someone gave her something worth wearing." Armin stopped outside a small shop near the end of the street, the kind that didn't advertise itself loudly, a single display in the window, a few dark velvet pieces. "In here."
Inside it was warm and quiet. A woman behind the counter looked up and nodded and went back to what she was doing. The cases held rings and bracelets and chains, nothing ostentatious.
Eren looked at all of it with the expression of someone trying to decode a language he hadn't studied.
"What does she like," Armin said quietly, beside him.
Eren thought about it. Really thought about it, not grabbing the first answer but actually considering. Mikasa who wore the same red scarf every winter because it was practical. Mikasa who touched things carefully, who noticed details, who kept things she valued without making a fuss about them.
"Simple," he said finally. "She'd hate anything too... much."
"Good. What else."
He looked at the cases. His eyes moved without him directing them to a section near the end, small pendants on delicate chains, and stopped on a key. Small, silver, clean. Nothing extra about it.
He looked at it for a long moment.
"That one," he said.
Armin looked at it. Then at Eren. Then back at the key.
"Why a key?" he said, which was either genuine curiosity or a test.
Eren wasn't entirely sure why. He just knew it was right, the same way he knew some things without being able to explain them, the way he'd known which seat to save and which things she'd said that mattered and which silences meant something.
"It just is," he said.
Armin looked at him for a moment with the expression he wore when he was thinking several things and choosing not to say most of them. Then he nodded once.
"Get it," he said.
II. Friday
He caught her after Potions, in the corridor while everyone else was filing out, Armin tactfully moving ahead without being asked.
"Hey," he said.
She stopped. Looked at him.
"Tomorrow." He kept his voice even. "For your birthday. Did you want to... just us. Hogsmeade."
She looked at him for a moment and color came into her cheeks, quiet and immediate, and she said, "Yes," in the simple certain way she said most things, and that was that.
He nodded and she nodded and they walked to the next class and he spent the rest of the afternoon not thinking about it, which meant he thought about almost nothing else.
III. Saturday Morning
The Great Hall was full when Mikasa came down to breakfast.
Sasha spotted her first and was out of her seat before Mikasa had reached the table, pulling her into a hug that lasted long enough to be felt. Mikasa stood in it for a moment then patted her back once, which was as much as she usually gave.
"Happy birthday," Sasha said, squeezing her shoulders before letting go.
"Happy birthday," Armin said warmly.
Connie raised his juice. "Happy birthday Mikasa."
She sat down next to Eren. Poured her tea. Then she noticed the small wrapped package sitting in front of him and looked at it and then at him.
"Happy birthday," he said, and set it in front of her.
She looked at it. Then at him.
"You didn't have to," she said.
"I know."
She reached for it and he said, "You don't have to open it now," at the same moment she started unwrapping it. She paused.
"Later," he said. "When you're alone. It's not—"
But she was already pulling the paper back, carefully, the way she did everything, and the table had gone quiet in the specific way of people pretending not to watch while watching completely. Sasha had put her fork down. Connie had sat forward.
Inside the wrapping was a small velvet box. Inside the box was a delicate silver chain with a small key pendant, simple and clean. And tucked beneath it, a folded square of paper.
She unfolded it.
Wear it later. - E
She read it once. Then she looked up at him and color had risen in her cheeks and she was looking at him with the open expression, warm and unguarded, and he felt his ears go warm.
"Why a key?" she said quietly.
He glanced at Connie, who was approximately thirty centimeters away and making no effort to pretend otherwise. He looked back at Mikasa and leaned in slightly and said, low enough that it was meant only for her, "It's the key to..." He cleared his throat. Once. Then, barely above a whisper: "...my heart."
His ears were fully red now. He said it to the table more than to her face.
A beat of silence.
Then Connie made a noise like he'd been struck by something. Sasha said "aw" in the tone of someone whose heart had just done something involuntary. Across the table Armin nodded once, small and satisfied, like a man whose work was done.
Mikasa said nothing. He looked up and she was still looking at him, the color high in her cheeks, and then she turned and kissed him on the cheek, soft and deliberate.
"Thank you, Eren," she said quietly.
The tips of his ears went from red to crimson. He could feel it happening and could not stop it. He stared at the table and said nothing and his whole face was warm.
"That," Connie said, pointing, "was the most—"
"Don't," Eren said.
"I'm just—"
"Connie."
Connie pressed his lips together. He was visibly delighted.
Mikasa turned away to put the necklace on, her hair falling forward, and when she turned back the small key was resting at her collarbone, catching the morning light. Her cheeks were still pink. She stayed that way through the rest of breakfast, through the toast and the tea and Sasha stealing the last of the jam. She didn't do anything about it, which was the most telling thing of all.
Eren reached for the toast and said nothing and was quietly, completely happy.
IV. Saturday Afternoon
They left after lunch, just the two of them, the February cold sharp and bright against the white grounds. The path to Hogsmeade wound down from the castle through the snow and Eren had his hands in his pockets for approximately two minutes before Mikasa reached over and took one of them, matter of fact, her fingers lacing through his, and they walked the rest of the way like that without discussing it.
He could see the key at her throat where her red scarf had fallen open. He didn't say anything about it.
Honeydukes was warm and overwhelming, every surface covered in something bright and sugar-scented. Mikasa moved through it with her usual deliberateness, considering things carefully. Eren picked things up and put them down and bought a bag of something he couldn't identify because it seemed interesting. She looked at his selection without comment.
Outside she tried one of the things from his bag and made a face.
"Bad?" he said.
"Strange." She tried another one. "This one is better."
He bought her a hot cider from a stall near the post office and she held it in both hands and looked at the snow on the rooftops and he watched her from the side and thought about a lot of things he didn't say out loud.
They wandered without any particular destination, past the post office and the bookshop and down the quieter end of the high street where the tourists didn't go. She pointed out a small apothecary she'd been in before, one that carried ingredients her mother used. He listened. The cold made her cheeks pink and the key caught the pale winter light every time her red scarf shifted and he thought: this is a good day. This is a very good day.
V.
The Three Broomsticks was warm and loud when they pushed through the door in the early afternoon. They found a table near the back, away from the noise, and sat side by side with two Butterbeers between them and the afternoon going grey outside the windows.
Mikasa wrapped her hands around her mug. "This is nice," she said.
"Yeah."
"Different from before. With the group."
"Better?" he said, and then immediately felt like he was fishing for something.
She considered it without self-consciousness. "Different," she said. "Both are good." A pause. "This is just ours."
He reached over and she met him halfway, fingers lacing through his on the worn wood of the table, and they sat like that while the noise of the pub went on around them and the fire in the hearth nearby threw warm light across her face and the small key at her throat.
They stayed until the light outside had gone from pale to grey, until the pub had thinned out and neither of them had anything left in their mugs and neither of them had anything left in their mugs.
VI.
Outside the cold had sharpened. She pulled her red scarf up and he fell into step beside her and they walked back through the village toward the castle path, their breath clouding in the dark air.
At the edge of the village where the path began and the last streetlamp threw yellow light onto the snow, she stopped. He stopped beside her.
She turned and kissed him. Warm and unhurried, her hand at the front of his coat, and he kissed her back with his hand finding her jaw, both of them still in the cold quiet street.
When she pulled back she was close, her eyes on his.
"Happy birthday, Mikasa," he said.
She looked at him with that expression, the one he'd been collecting without knowing it.
"Thank you, Eren," she said.
The snow had started again, slow and quiet, settling on her hair and his shoulders. Above them the castle lights were small and distant through the dark.
They turned back toward home, her hand finding his again on the path, and walked the rest of the way in the comfortable silence that had always been theirs.
fin.