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The decades between them feel more like a comfort than a light stab wound to the heart more often than not nowadays.
It was a slow change of pace and a change that Ivan tends to not examine too closely because to do that means resisting it and he doesn’t want to do that. For some reason, he doesn’t want to do that, so there's a lot of unexamined aspects to this. He’s a determined thinker right to the core and yet...here, with Gildarts breathing quietly next to him, while the sun rises on the horizon, he simply can’t find it within him to do it. To look for when it's a lie, to feel ghosts of the pasts. There's none of that here if he doesn't let himself think about it.
When they were younger, much younger and very different people, they used to do something similar like this. Ivan recalls a many number of times when Gildarts would shake him awake or vice versa to just sit and watch the sun rise. Never sun set for someone reason. The world felt smaller then, their destinies unknown and life was something to just enjoy by day and laugh about at night.
Gildarts coughs and Ivan looks over and feels off footed to see the other man’s gaze on him. Gildarts' eyes are alight with something that makes Ivan’s chest ache in such an unfamiliar way that he can feel the itch to examine closely, despite the fear. He hates it and yearns for it. A name for this feeling. He thinks he can find it if he tried but he doesn't know how ready he is. Gildarts, unaware of this inner turmoil, just smiles. It's not a wide, somewhat wily smile. A soft one that makes him look younger and glow along with the sun. If Gildarts was clean shaven and twenty years younger, it wouldn't look so foreign on his face, Ivan thinks.
“Is your mouth dry?” Ivan asks and raises an eyebrow. “Or are you sick or something? If that’s the case, Gildarts, then I must insist on some form of medical attention; I don’t want to get sick. I hate being sick.”
Gildarts laughs softly and shakes his head, “Who doesn’t hate being sick? But no, that’s not—I was trying to get your attention.”
“Oh.” Ivan exhales softly. He blinks at him, confused. “What for?”
Gildarts laughs again and Ivan is thankful that he knows this man so well otherwise he would have told him off for laughing at him. But this isn’t Gildarts laughing at Ivan, not this time, it’s something else. It makes Ivan hyper aware of everything and he can feel his mind beginning to wire over all this. Maybe he should begin examining all that he’s been afraid of since he was released from Jail and it was Gildarts who was there, standing with Laxus and his mother. This feeling he’s ignored during and after those times Gildarts visited him while he was in jail. It's been going on for quite some time.
Gildarts doesn’t answer him, but he does shuffle closer to Ivan so that they’re touching now. Ivan resists the urge to flinch away but he does feel himself tense at it It does nothing to stop Gildarts who lifts his (finally upgraded) prosthetic arm and wraps it around Ivan’s shoulders. Strangely, it’s that familiar and grounding touch that makes Ivan relax again. For some hard to reach reason, it helps. Ivan feels himself breathe in sync with Gildarts. He feels himself begin to smile and he looks back out towards the horizon.
“I hope I’m not imposing myself.” Gildarts says after a few moments of silence and no movement.
“Not at all.” Ivan tells him easily. “For the first time in years … I feel … relaxed.”
“Good. I do too so now I don’t feel like an idiot.”
Ivan huffs and smiles a bit wider. The expression feels both foreign and yet not at all as he replies, “I wouldn’t go that far, Gilly.”
The nickname slips out before he can stop it. But. Ivan doesn’t want to resist that. He doesn’t want to resist anything anymore. And he does enjoy the way Gildarts’ breath tickles his cheek as he laughs out loud. Some of the nearby birds startle and fly away at the booming laughter and that was yet another familiar feeling for them.
“I can’t believe I ever missed that stupid nickname.”
“You’re just mad you couldn’t think of any good to rival it.” Ivan smugly informs him and Gildarts’ other arm reaches up and pokes Ivan on the cheek. The immaturity of the situation isn't what Ivan thinks of. Immediately, Ivan retaliates.
What begins is a poking contest that pushes them closer together and truly reveals that though they are grown men, some habits never die with age. Maybe for a little while, during more turbulent times—but here in this moment with the sun rising back to the sky, with Gildarts Clive’s arm around Ivan Dreyar’s shoulder, with the pair of them poking and prodding at each other like teenagers: it was as if no time had passed. No tragedy. In this blissful moment, there was no chasm between them.
And Ivan finds himself utterly besotted with the idea. As their impromptu poking war ends and they sit themselves on the grass just so once more, Ivan leans his head on Gildarts’ shoulder and Gildarts wraps his arm tighter around Ivan.
Ivan begins to examine those feelings in those moments in the comfortable silence. He surprises himself because after all this time there is no fear or resistance. And it’s utterly freeing.