Originally written for the kink meme but I can't find the prompt so I'll post it here first.

Sort of AU Armin/F!Eren fluffy friendship plus M!Mikasa→Eren←Jean plus Rivaille→Eren→? too.

Dinner at the old castle was silent, save for the clicking of the utensils on the plates, the few littering conversations and the occasional, pleased moans from Sasha.

"Hey Armin," Eren begins, setting her utensils on her plate as she starts staring at the ceiling. The blonde boy looks up from his plate and gives her a nod, urging her to continue. "Remember how we used to like each other when we were younger?"

"Hey Armin, look at what I made!" A six year old Eren runs through the patch of flowers and under the shade of the tree where Armin sat, reading his book.

Armin looks up only to have a ring of flowers land lopsidedly on his head. Eren smiles at him brightly. "Mom taught me how to make it the other day. It's not as good as hers or any of the other girls' but it's not that ugly, is it?"

Armin smiles back, setting down his book and picking up his crown. "Mm, it's pretty. Thanks Eren!"

And then Eren starts fumbling at the end of her skirt, looking away for a moment before letting her eyes focus on the petite blonde boy in front of her. "That's good, and um, I like you Armin so let's get married one day okay?"

"Ahaha, yeah. We did, didn't we? You even said that you wanted me to be your wife one day. Isn't that weird? I'm a guy so why-"

"Duh, it's because you act more womanly than I do, besides, isn't it the husband's job to protect the wife?"

And the two resumed their chattering. Mikasa, who was sitting beside Eren, froze. "Wh-What is this about? How come I didn't know about this?"

"Oh, you weren't there yet at that time." came Eren's short reply as he turned his attention back to Armin, laughing as they continued to exchange stories.

"Why did we even like each other back then?" Armin coughed, his sides hurt from laughing and a tear streamed down his face.

Eren smiled smugly, "Wasn't it because I was so cute and pretty?" and Armin almost doubled over in laughter. "Ahaha― Are you serious? You weren't cute at all! You were brash and impulsive and blunt!"

Eren pouted. "That's mean! If I weren't cute at all, you wouldn't have kissed me, wouldn't you?"

"Wasn't that because you wanted to have a wedding for us to play house more 'properly'?"

And with that, Mikasa, whose envy was already sparking up, turned into a flurry of flames, broke his spoon in half. On the other side of the room, Jean, who was half-listening to Connie and half to Eren, choked on his bread. What!? They both thought silently as they glared at Armin from their respective seats. Gears clicked and at that moment, two pairs of eyes locked on each other. This calls for a truce.

After dinner, two figures sneaked out of the stony confines of the castle and into the nearby woods. They settled at a small clearing amidst the blurs of greens and browns, Mikasa turning at his heels to face Jean, face contorted into a sharp frown.

"Look, I'm not going to beat around the bushes. I know you like Eren and well, it's obvious that you've heard Eren's and Armin's conversation back at the mess hall,"

"I don't know what you're talking about, I don't like E―"

Mikasa glares at him and it effectively shuts him up. "Stop lying, look, if things go on like this, Eren and Armin are going to be like Franz and Hannah, minus the dying part, of course."

Jean looks thoughtful for a bit and Mikasa smirks through his scarf. Jean's already on the bait, all he has to do is reel him in.

"If that happens, it wouldn't be good for either of us so I propose we work together to get rid of Armin, what happens afterwards can wait until then."

Jean pauses for a moment before taking Mikasa's outstretched hand into his, and with a handshake and a few exchanges of words, the two set out on their plan.

Today was Eren's and Armin's turn to clean the castle's storage room, the two were running around the room, arranging things and cleaning the mess.

Their work was doing well, that is, until Mikasa and Jean initiated their plans.

Plan A: Make Armin seem unreliable so that Eren will dislike him.

Step One: Making him slip and trip over seemingly nothing.

Jean snickered as he rubbed butter onto the floor while Mikasa tied strings on the chairs and tables, and as quickly as they appeared, they vanished without a trace.

Armin was carrying a stack of books when he slipped on the butter throwing all of the books onto the floor, the shift in weight seemed to have toppled his balance as he was quickly plunging to where the strings where tied and as expected, he tripped and knocked the chairs over.

Hearing the racket, Eren peered from the shelf she was wiping only to see Armin, face on the floor and his butt was up in the air. Sighing, she set down her washcloth and traipsed over to help her friend.

"You know Armin, you get in these sorts of trouble a lot but I guess it's sort of cute with you."

Step One: Failed.

Step Two: Making him and his work dirty.

While Eren was busy tending to Armin, Mikasa sneaks to where Armin's cleaning supplies were, adding blotches of ink into the cleaning solution and runs off. Jean, on the other hand, prepares a bucket of dirt and sets it atop of the bookshelf. Grinning at his work, he follows after Mikasa.

After Eren checked him for injuries and having found none, she set off to do her next task. Dipping his cloth onto the mixture and squeezing out the excess, Armin begins wiping the shelf. He frowns once he sees it getting even dirtier and scrubs harder, only for it to get worse. He scrubs so hard that the shelf starts rocking and in turn, tips the bucket of dirt over him. Drowned in dirt, he sneezes cutely, once then twice, slowly turning into a flurry of sneezes.

Eren crawls out from under the desk she was cleaning and stares at the soiled blonde boy who was currently sneezing his brains out. She sighs again and walks over to him.

"Well, I'm not sure if it worked or not but I can't say that it failed." Jean whispered as they stared at Eren helping Armin down the ladder.

"Hoh, so you two're responsible for fucking up this room." A voice growled from behind them and Jean swore he almost pissed his pants, Mikasa, however only clicked his tongue.

"What's so important that you two morons decided to trash this room?" Mikasa glared back at him and snarled, "None of your bussiness, sir. Don't worry about this room, we'll get it cleaned later."

"No wait, Mikasa, we could get him to help us." Mikasa scowled, his face screaming no. "What's this you're talking about, huh?"

"Like I said sir, it's nothing,"

"Now blow gently, Armin." Armin blows on the cloth that Eren was holding over his nose. Eren wiped his nose clean and pocketed the cloth. "Man, you're a mess, c'mon, let's get you cleaned up, okay?" she smiles as she grabs Armins by the hand and drags him outside.

Step Two: Failed.

Three people twitched simultaneously. "So you guys needed help, right?"

"So instead of cleaning the storage room, we're going to clean outside, huh?" Armin asks, sighing as he peers from east to west.

Eren stretches as she replies, "Well, getting to feel the sun and the cool breeze feels nicer so I guess it's sort of an upgrade."

Plan C: Getting Armin to be extremely fed up so he'll leave.

"What's up with this? Are you telling me that this is the best you shitheads can come up with? That aside, what happened to Plan B?"

Mikasa glared at his superior and replied, "Unless you have any other suggestions, we'll go with this for now, as for Plan B, it was something Jean came up with―"

"Say no more, I already know that it's going to be stupid."

Jean opens his mouth to protest but all that came out of his mouth was a puny pump of air and he sighs dejectedly.

Step One: Scattering all of his raked up leaves.

Armin sighed as he raked up his sixth batch of leaves. He was fairly sure that the yard was 30% leaf free but seeing how many leaves were left behind after cleaning up his sixth batch, he was seriously doubting the fact that they'd be done by the end of the day.

"Hey Eren, how many hours have we been out here?"

Eren paused, mid-sweep and answers his question. "Around two and a half. Isn't it strange that we're not done yet? I mean when I walked by here earlier today, there weren't a lot of leaves."

"Yeah, I noticed that too. Maybe someone's pranking us?"

"Heh, if I find out who's doing this, I swear I'll beat 'em up." Eren says with a determined glint in her eyes. She cracks her knuckles and begins to shadow box, causing Armin to chuckle at her actions. "That's not a very womanly thing to say, Eren."

"Yeah, well you aren't manly at all too."

And with that, the two began laughing and joking around with each other.

"Well, that was shit. All we've achieved is spending a shitload of time and effort messing up the fucking yard."

Step One: Failed.

Step Two: Putting bugs on their lunch.

Rivaille frowned. "Why the fuck would you guys waste perfectly edible foo―"

"Eren was the one who cooked and packed their lunch." Mikasa spoke with a knowing smirk and Rivaille slowly nodded and closed his eyes.

"My comment still stands," Jean and Mikasa both stare at him, eagerly awaiting his final decision on the matter. "So I therefore revise the plan from 'Putting bugs into their lunch' into 'Stealing their lunch and exchanging it with Hanji's Experimental Meal X'." Rivaille punctuated his sentence by opening his eyes and slamming his joined hands onto the table.

Jean and Mikasa stare at him in awe. Only a well experienced man can come up with these kinds of plans, they thought simultaneously as they nodded in agreement.

Rivaille smirked.

Step Two, Version Two: Stealing their lunch and exchanging it with Hanji's Experimental Meal X

They waited until Eren and Armin set their lunch down on the long picnic table before dropping the heavy wooden box from the rooftop.

"What was that?" Eren mused and Armin shrugged. "Let's hurry and see."

And as they left, Jean and Mikasa switched their lunch boxes with Hanji's experimental ones and ran off to their secret base, also known as the bushes near the site.

"Good work. Kirschstein, did you remember to take a bottle of those high potent stomach ache meds?" Rivaille says as he sets the lunchboxes on the napkins he's placed on the ground.

"Yessir! I've got 'em here."

"Good 'cause if Eren manages to put even a tiny piece of that shitty meal in his mouth, the food's not the only one that's gonna be shitty around here."

A few seconds of watching nothing later, Eren and Armin come back, mumbling something about a crate of bread falling from the roof and Sasha taking around half the stock.

"Well, at least we managed to grab some."

"Won't we get into trouble though?"

"Nah, it's fine. It's not our fault that crate fell down."

They sat on the bench and opened their lunchbox.

"Well, your cooking really hasn't changed at all, Eren." Armin sighed as he put the lid back on.

"Huh? I thought I did better this time. Oh well, I only used yesterday's leftovers so I guess it's not that big of a waste."

And then the two ate their bread in idle chatter.

"What the fuck?"

"The dim-witted kid's right. What's with that development."

"I seem to have forgotten to mention that Eren's cooking skills are as great as her patience."

Step Two: Failed.

After having lunch, Eren and Armin set off for the stables. Unknown to them, more troubles awaited them at their next task site.

Step Three: Horse-ing around.

"Hold up, who named this fucking step?"

"I dunno, Connie?"

"Wait, who said he was in?"

"Oh shush, let's just try it."

Over at the stables, Eren and Armin were hard at work, lathering soapy, shampoo-y water onto the horses.

"Ugh, why are they making us bathe the horses?" Eren icked as she dumped the sponge into her bucket.

"Shh, don't complain Eren, just follow the orders."

"I mean, I'm okay with this but why are we the only people on duty? We've been cleaning up things for the whole day!" Eren threw her sponge into the bucket, causing the wash water to splash at her face.

From behind the bushes, Rivaille's hands twitched. He wanted to clean the gunk off of Eren's face but alas, he couldn't.

"We can complain later but first, we have to do this, afterall, it's our last job for the day."

And with that, the two grudgingly went on with their work until―

Neeeiiiggghhh―

A horse kicked up one of the buckets, effectively wetting Eren.

"Ah! Eren, are you okay?" Armin rushed over to Eren's side and wringing out her hair.

"I'm fine, just wet and sudsy." Eren grumbled as she rubbed her hands on her arms.

"Oh, you must be cold. Here," he takes off his jacket and puts it on Eren's shoulders. Eren smiles at him. "You know, this day wasn't a very lucky one but I had a lot of fun with you so I guess it's okay, don't you agree?" and Armin nods at him before leading her inside to take a bath.

"Well that certainly backfired."

"If Eren gets sick, I swear I'll beat up that damned short baldhead."

Step Three: Failed.

Thanks to kamipyon from tumblr for helping with the proof reading!