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“You look cute.”
“I’m not trying to look cute.”
“Right.” Evergreen gave Freed the look, the look that said she didn’t believe him at all. He’d been seeing that look a lot of late.
“Laxus’ll like it.” Bickslow gave a teasing tug on Freed’s ponytail. The rune mage swatted him away irritably, scowling at his totems’ echoes of “like it, like it!”
“W-What does it matter to me if he approves of it or not?” Freed muttered, turning away from the other two. “Not everything I do is to please him, believe it or not.”
“Oh, really.” Bickslow, undeterred, leant over Freed’s right shoulder, mouth curved into a wide grin.
“So it has nothing to do with what he said yesterday?” Evergreen added, popping her head over Freed’s other shoulder. “About how he thought Mira looked pretty good with her hair tied up?”
“Absolutely nothing!” Freed shook them off and stepped away, keeping his head pointedly turned away from them.
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m doing nothing of the kind.”
“Your ears are red.”
Freed fidgeted and tucked a stray hair behind his ear. His ears felt cold, and naked, and so did the back of his neck, which was tingling self-consciously in that way it always did when he felt like he was being watched.
“You got any idea,” Laxus said suddenly, and Freed hoped the way he startled at his voice wasn’t obvious, “why Ever and Bickslow suddenly couldn’t come along on this job?”
Freed swallowed, trying to calm the hammering in his chest. “No…” he said eventually, although he knew exactly why. He narrowed his eyes and privately cursed them as he picked a book off the shelf.
The job was a simple one, thankfully – an elderly, wealthy man needed to find a book. The trouble was: he owned a library, and a vast one at that. His mind having grown less than reputable in his old age, he couldn’t remember the title nor author, only what the front cover looked like.
It wasn’t the kind of job the Raijinshuu usually took on, but there had been an influx of these sorts of menial tasks lately, and a group of four were likely to get the task done quicker. Except…there were only two of them.
Freed frowned and replaced the book after a moment. He stifled a yawn and stretched, working the stiffness out of his joints from standing in the same position for too long.
“So,” Laxus piped up again, “what’s with the hair?”
Freed froze mid-stretch. “My…hair?” he echoed innocently, struggling to get the words out past the sudden lump in his throat.
“Yeah. It’s not usually…like that, is it?”
“No…” Freed slowly turned around. Laxus, sitting at a dusty table half-buried in a pile of books, was staring straight at him. Freed blinked and looked off to the side. “It was…getting a little unmanageable, so I…tied it up.”
“Hn. Why not cut it then?”
Freed smiled a fake smile, and instinctively reached up to tighten his ponytail. Feeling his cheeks start to prickle with heat, he turned back to the bookshelf. “Y-Yes, I suppose that would make more sense,” he mumbled.
“It suits you, though. The ponytail, I mean,” Laxus said, and Freed didn’t respond.
“You okay?” Laxus asked five minutes later, and Freed almost dropped the book he was holding.
“Y-Yes! …Why do you ask?”
“Just, you’ve been staring at that book for a while. You find the right one?”
“Ah!” Freed hurriedly put the book back on the shelf. “No, unfortunately. Sorry, I just got…distracted.”
“That’s unlike you,” Laxus said, and Freed felt his neck tingle again. “You sure you’re okay? You don’t feel ill or anything?”
“I’m…fine, really, Laxus.”
“Just…your ears are really red.”