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Chapter Text

[ Gajeel belatedly reminds himself that despite the striking sense of familiarity, he’s far too new in Raven Tail to get away with inattention. In his old guild, bouts of bullying and blows were the means of establishing and maintaining the pecking order. Here, he’s discovered, they see that kind of instigating as a threat to their hierarchy, and his breach of unspoken etiquette won’t stand.

Master Ivan makes sure of it. His magic isn’t exactly the most applicable in combat, but all it needs is a foothold then it hurts worse than hellfire. Gajeel gnashes his teeth and hisses viciously in lieu of undignified howling. Lucid thought slips through his fingers. He’s running entirely on instinct and it keeps him withdrawn and still, resisting the urge to guard himself, to cover his head. It wouldn’t save him anyway; this isn’t a surface level pain, although it’s beginning to break through in places. He recoils in half measures to evade what he can without challenging the master.

At length, the torment doesn’t pursue him and he shivers, spitting and panting. He keeps his head down, less than eager to inspire further discipline. Now that it’s not actively slicing through him, his pain fades into background noise surprisingly fast. Gajeel finds himself distantly distracted, even bored.

Ivan crouches next to him and watches for a minute. “Do you remember my orders?”

“Yes.”

“Repeat them to me.” Gajeel does. He wants to move on. Unhurriedly, the master reaches around and holds Gajeel beneath the jaw and lifts his head up to examine him, tracing his thumb through the blood weeping along the side of his face.

Ivan Dreyar croons, “I can see Jose trained you well.”

Breath hitching, bile rising, Gajeel cinches over himself, blindsided by the incisive proclamation. His skin crawls as if it must be marred somewhere by a physical, visible mark of Phantom Lord’s master. “I appreciate his work. I don’t like correcting those who yap and yowl about their own welfare above obeying orders. You already know better, that self-interest mustn’t come before the goals of your master. A very valuable lesson.”

Ivan stands. “Respecting my authority and guidance as guild master is how we advance, and how Fairy Tail will be crushed.”

Gajeel burns from the inside out. The rebellious defiance at his core wants nothing more than to buck against this degradation and show he’s no dog to whip and deride, to prove that Jose has no hold over him and no one ever will. He lowers his gaze. He bites his tongue, keeps his outward calm, and lets Ivan believe he’d suffer even a shred of pain for his sake. He has to take his only satisfaction in venomously, yet silently seething, Pathetic, brainless motherfucker, I’m stabbing you in the back with all your precious ‘obedience’!

...Which he’s doing at the request of Makarov Dreyar. His guild master. Dutifully swallowing this suffering for his sake.

Six years he spent in Jose’s grasp, under his training. Has he made any progress, or is this all just the same shit wearing new faces? Gajeel’s staunchly reluctant to defy his guild master, but maybe that would be in his best interests.

Why is he lying here in a pool of his own blood in a nest of cutthroats with only frail lies protecting him? He’s putting his neck on the line. For Makarov? Gajeel willingly accepted this task, and he’d like to believe he wants to see it through for his own satisfaction. Yet he can’t articulate what he gets from this directly, and he fears he merely wants the tolerance and consistent shelter Makarov offers in exchange.

The nettling thought makes it more bitter and difficult than ever for Gajeel to return to Fairy Tail after licking his wounds all alone. ]

  ...

  I. ONSET

“...You know where he is?”

“Yeah, h-”

“No,” Makarov interjects firmly. “Don’t tell me. Or anyone else either. The guild has no right to keep tabs on an exiled member. He’s respected those repercussions so far, so I owe him the same. The insight you have is incidental.”

Gajeel observes the grave, troubled expression on the master’s face, the same one he always wears when the matter of Laxus comes up. “If ya say so...”

Makarov nods. “Fairy Tail doesn’t get to make decisions about his personal affairs. He wouldn’t appreciate it, and it’d be an insult if I flout the terms of the punishment I myself imposed.”

Sighing, Gajeel leans the side of his face against his hand and stares off aloofly, overhearing an argument currently escalating in the guildhall as he pauses long enough to hear it out. Yet again, Salamander is whining petulantly over Laxus’s expulsion like a dog gnawing on a bone long bare of any meat. He’s glad to be tucked away in the office this time so he doesn’t have to wrestle down the urge to deck the brat in the face. It drives him mad, but he has enough on his plate without giving the flame-brain space inside his head, so he tunes out the overdone conclusion and watches the master.

“You realize that little squad Ivan put together will be on him within the week...?”

Makarov grimaces and rubs the wrinkled skin over his temples at the reminder. He gazes vacantly down at the desk for several beats. “Do they stand any chance of winning?”

The nerves in his left arm remember the brutal impact of lightning with unfortunate ease. “Nah. I can’t imagine Laxus would have any trouble with ’em.”

“Then don’t get involved. No one has magic like yours- if you fight, they’ll recognize you instantly. Then if any of them are able to report back, your cover’s completely blown.” Gajeel notices the qualifier and grasps that if he finished off the Raven Tail rabble, that problem could be avoided.

Master Makarov doesn’t ask him to. “It’s much more valuable for you to keep their trust and stay on the inside. Keep learning everything you can about their plans. If you ever think they could pose a real threat to Laxus, tell me.”

Gajeel can’t help but grumble, “There’s always a chance that-”

“I know.” Makarov lowers a hand to the desk with a soft thump. “And you know what I mean.” In fairness, he does. “We should respect his capabilities for what they are. It’d be a mistake not to, and I’ve made enough of those already.” Gajeel huffs lightly.

The master is thinking about Laxus, about the moment between them in the guild’s infirmary where Laxus had exposed his errant intentions with meager, halting words and where Makarov had passed down the punishment he earned, his voice cracking. (Gajeel hadn’t wanted to intrude, but a dragon slayer’s hearing often leaves him no other option.) He knows that the master thinks of that moment more often than not.

For his part, Gajeel is thinking about Ivan. He’s thinking about the moment he revealed his intention to reacquire the lacrima implanted in Laxus, his cruel enthusiasm that didn’t miss a beat when Gajeel pointed out what his plan would do to his own son. He was so confident Laxus would turn to him despite their estrangement...

“We’ll discuss things again before the next time you leave,” Makarov dismisses. “Keep your head down and your ears sharp. Don’t worry about the rest.”

“Understood,” he replies easily. The complicated consequences of the master’s family dynamics weren’t Gajeel’s concern to begin with, completely unattached to his choices. He fully respects Makarov’s decision, as true as his burgeoning respect for his right to make his own decisions, that no guild or master gets to take from him.

  —

The iron he can conjure is shaped through dragon slayer magic, rich with its benefits down to the fundamental level. Compared to normal iron, Gajeel can tell them apart from a mile away. And yet, despite the glaringly obvious difference, he’s never met anyone competent at distinguishing them. Gajeel has always held that ignorance in contempt, but it does have its uses.

  —

“Who the hell are you?! Who sent you?!”

Gajeel has to smother a smug cackle that would give him away. Considering he knocked out several of his teeth, this guy really should’ve recognized the sharp, acidic taste of dragon slayer iron, but obliviousness holds true yet again. He doesn’t have a clue.

“Answer me! I’m warning you!” Magic flickers along his fingers to accentuate the threat, but the man stands no chance of scaring him. He’s the last lucid member of his ragged and ruthless crew. Gajeel adjusts the weight of the thick iron knuckles in his fists. Feet apart, hands up, head low.

The guy lunges with a burst of rock-shard magic Gajeel ducks under quick as a flash and lands his own blow to his stomach. He grunts, feeling a sharp edged crag slice the back of his calf at the same moment. The explosive spread makes it hard to entirely evade without his own spells. More than anything, that’s the rub with fighting mages with melee: magic can have such an expansive range while Gajeel only has two hands to contend with it. If it comes down to it, he has to pick and choose how much of himself he can defend, which is a less than comfortable position to be in. Still, Gajeel sleekly shifts his weight forward to his other leg and follows the redirection through to knee him in the hip and drive him to the ground.

“Kh-!” Even prone and bloody, his face is still a vision of disbelief. “H-how can a normal person beat mages like us...?!”

Hauling him up by the shirt, Gajeel lays him out with a punch to the side of the head. He adds him to the sprawl of four unconscious bodies, surveying his good work with satisfaction.

Of course, Gajeel agrees that he can’t afford to lose his spot as a spy in Raven Tail. But that doesn’t need to tie his hands.

His conversation with the master brought to his attention two different options. (Well, three, if he bothered to count ‘doing what he was told’, which he didn’t.) He could fight at full strength and kill the lackeys going after Laxus, burying the secret of his betrayal with them. Or he could disguise himself and beat them down without using his magic which would inarguably implicate him.

If anyone were aware of his dilemma, Gajeel knows they would take it for granted that he’d simply kill the Raven Tail mages. It would be less effort and hassle on his end, he’s never shown any hesitation to get his hands dirty, and he’s so stubbornly aggressive that the violence ought to appeal to him. And it’s true, he doesn’t deny any of that! Finishing off his opponents is the obvious option that Blacksteel Gajeel would surely rather pick. It would fit the image he made for himself.

...An image that Jose had constantly made eager and effective use of.

He feels pervasively taut and uncomfortable at the prospect that he ought to take these people’s lives. He has to concede that he did a lot of atrocious deeds with genuine relish in the past, but even back then, he balked at murder. Of course, he’d never let it show in his old guild, but the thought makes his stomach churn.

At the extent of their battle with Fairy Tail, threatening Lucy’s and then Natsu’s lives were such conflicting, arduous acts that built a pressure so intense, he felt manic fighting to balance the interests hanging over his head. Looking back, he... doesn’t want to know what he might have done if the tables hadn’t turned on Phantom Lord.

Such bullshit- Gajeel hates all this complicated tension. So why bother with it? He doesn’t have any eyes on him, least of all Jose’s. (Imprisoned. He still has to remind himself sometimes.) He’s his own person and no one can force him to do anything he doesn’t feel like, so why should he impose that martyrdom on himself, especially when he already has another option sitting right in front of him!

The gratification runs deep when it works exactly how he planned it.

He’s gonna do things his own way, no matter what anyone else wants to think. Fuck ’em. And let it never be said that Gajeel Redfox would back out on his own decisions because he couldn’t handle a challenge.

  —

Ah, shit-

Habitually alert, Gajeel notices Laxus the moment he enters the bar, his scent of ozone, earth, and cologne, the muffled beat escaping his headphones.

Maybe the music is the reason Laxus doesn’t immediately recognize him in turn, ignoring him in favor of the bartender, which is something of a blessing. The charge of magic in the air challenges Gajeel to stand, but he resists, the prudence he requires to stay undercover too automatic. He didn’t particularly want to bump into Laxus during his forays to defeat his would-be assailants. After cleaning up Raven Tail’s most recent squad yesterday, he was confident the lightning mage wouldn’t come to this town, considering it would all but double back on his prior route.

The situation is far from unsalvageable- maneuvering through a run-in with Laxus doesn’t bother him- but he’ll have to do some quick thinking to make up for the lack of planning.

When he intercepts the bartender across the room, Gajeel tilts an ear in their direction and listens for any hint as to why Laxus came here. Has he caught onto the game already? Then he asks about the intersection of roads on the west side of the town, which clearly befuddles the unsuspecting man. After a moment, Laxus unfurls a large paper on the table.

Wait- Is he lost?! It takes serious effort to not snort out loud at the prospect. His frustrated jabbing at the map betrays the concept of this prodigious, unflappable powerhouse that cannot be matched. Gajeel watches the guy Fairy Tail idolizes even now argue over an upside down map. He coughs around a laugh.

He can see the moment his presence registers, a twitch of his nostrils when the familiarity of his scent clicks, then he swings his gaze up to stare him down. Gajeel just nods in acknowledgement. Surprisingly, it pays off that he stayed seated because Laxus doesn’t lash out, despite how the turbulent bristling of dragon slayer magic feels like an overt threat. Without any show of violence to back up his poorly contained magic, he abandons his conversation to circle around to him, tilting the angle of his head as he studies him, like a chance encounter between two different wild animals checking if what they see is actually real.

“Gajeel,” he concludes. “The hell are you doing here?”

“Drinking.” He gives a little tip of his glass to Laxus as if he might have missed the obvious, then kicks the adjacent bar stool. “Seat’s open if you wanna join me.”

Laxus eyes the offending stool coolly. “...Right. And do you come here often, hon’?” he drawls acerbically.

By all rights, he should focus on handling this situation carefully, but the reality of Laxus pitching him a classic pick-up line amuses him thoroughly. It is simply too enticing to give him shit for it. “Ha, wouldn’t you like that, as pretty as I am?” Fluttering his lashes, he glances down at the stool then back up at Laxus, who gives up on glaring. Victory. “Well...?”

He does take a seat at last, though only after a long and scathing pause, and he doesn’t relax. Laxus stiffens his shoulders and turns his head away. His motions exude a hostile weariness that suggests Gajeel is a dreaded and inevitable chore he’s resigned himself to, despite all his best efforts to avoid it. Feeling mean, Gajeel could compare the display to the self-pitying petulance of a teenager, but it’s also draped with an experienced exhaustion that demonstrates his adulthood. There is something real in Laxus’s dread that sparks his sympathy. He doesn’t envy his circumstances, after all.

Gajeel doesn’t interrupt as he goes through the paces of ordering from the bartender. “Shoulda figured you’d be a vodka kinda guy.”

Laxus releases a heavy sigh. He turns to face Gajeel directly and sets one elbow on the bar, confronting him with stormy colored eyes. “Alright, now which one of them put you up to this? Bickslow and Ever? Maybe Natsu thought you could get away with meeting me if he couldn’t? ...Was it the old man? Don’t tell me his bleeding heart can’t hold out.”

“Don’t think I might come just ’cause I like ya so much?” Gajeel leans in and grins with all his wicked, pointed teeth, and Laxus narrows his eyes, unmoved by the bait. “Gihe. Fact is, you’re wrong that I’m up to anything to begin with. For none of them, and nobody else either.”

If anything, this whole mission was a perfect chance to escape Natsu bellyaching on and on over the expulsion and blissfully pretend he doesn’t exist. Mentally resetting his tolerance is necessary to keep the peace, in his opinion, because he can only stomach so much and his limit sure isn’t getting any higher. Gajeel’s waiting on pins and needles for Titania to snap, or anyone, before he makes a fool of himself lecturing him as if he has a leg to stand on because he just can’t bear the Salamander’s hypocrisy. No one else will call him out on it, but then they weren’t there during the fight to hear his stupidity- except for the two word-nerds (blue and green).

Considering Laxus had just snapped and desperately screamed about being himself and not someone else’s grandkid, it seemed real bold of Natsu to immediately insist that he was getting high-and-mighty because he’s someone’s grandkid. Untenable. Gajeel can’t think of anything more inflammatory to say if he’d wanted to deliberately send Laxus into a violently spiralling rage. Even if he indulges some cynicism about the Salamander’s altruism, Gajeel still doesn’t believe he’s capable of disguising his intentions anywhere near enough for that to be the case. He just can’t fathom why Natsu said that.

If he wants Laxus around so damn bad, then maybe he shouldn’t have run his mouth, because Gajeel can’t imagine a bigger reason Laxus accepted his punishment so readily. If feeling discredited made him angry enough to start an intra-guild war, no shit it’d make him angry enough to leave altogether. Salamander can bitch all he likes; he made his bed and now he’s got to lay in it.

Not that he thinks Laxus is much better. He couldn’t have stayed in the fallout of his bloodletting even if he’d wanted to, and for good reason. Gajeel is unapologetically glad that Laxus lost. He never wants to go back to the way things were in Phantom Lord.

The guy’s a sorry bastard- which is to say Gajeel’s customary company. It’s kind of nostalgic, really, and the stable ground under his feet feels good and Laxus’s accusatory glare feels inviting. Gajeel enjoys this song and dance. “I came so I could have a drink,” he declares, “and that didn’t change just because you walked in.”

Laxus draws himself up and fixes him with naked suspicion. “Oh, so I’m not about to hear a whole spiel about how I should come back to the guild, that I need to stay with my family, that they need me there and they want me there and of course, those are the only things that matter, so everything will be just fine...? And I’m not about to be interrogated about what I’ve been doing to judge if I’ve been misbehaving, or if I’m getting enough vegetables and if I still say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ now that I’m out on my own?” The accusations come tired and bitter with frustration. Gajeel wonders how many past lectures his expectations are built on.

Truthfully, he answers, “No, yer not.” He extends his arms over the countertop and leans down underneath the pressure Laxus perceives. “That’s not my place.”

Laxus is angry, very angry. It’s not stark right now, not hot and active, but the anger is built into the cold framework under the surface. It’s a coarse coating clogged in all his gears and hinges, so Gajeel recognizes it in the way he moves, and he remembers the feeling. Far be it from him to add to the grit, so calmly, he meets Laxus’s eye. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to do whatever you feel like. You should, an’ I’ve got no interest in changing your mind. Besides, I ain’t no errand boy. I’m here on my own terms. The guild can feel whatever they want, ’s not my job to ferry their sentiments across the damn country.”

That ridiculous fucking coat shifts over hunched shoulders. “So it’s just a coincidence that I happened to meet you in this empty bar in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yeah,” Gajeel retorts bluntly. “You spent how many years all over the map doing jobs for Fairy Tail and you never considered you might run into a guild member doing the same?” He finds satisfaction in the hint of sheepishness that crosses Laxus’s face, though it doesn’t entirely overcome his doubt.

Gajeel rolls his eyes. “I’m not making ya sit here. You can leave if you’d rather.”

He can see Laxus straighten and consider it for several long moments, then his gaze slides along the worn, quiet length of the bar and he settles back down. “Ugh. Whatever, I don’t care. I suppose whether you’re telling the truth or not, it makes no difference to me.”

You’re lonely, Gajeel thinks immediately, even though he doesn’t say it. He gets it. When the bartender delivers Laxus’s drink, Gajeel lifts his own. Laxus scoffs, but he still clinks the glasses once obligingly.

Subtle and careful, Laxus looks him up and down then mumbles, “...You’ve healed?” Gajeel recognizes the meekly extended olive branch, halfheartedly acknowledging the brutal consequences of his hostility with lamentable inexperience.

Gajeel takes it. “Good as new. So don’t get too full of yourself, ya hear?”

One corner of his mouth twitches up, the first smile Gajeel’s seen on him that’s not sparked by madness. It still lacks heart. “Got it. ...Good.”

In spite of all the sly manipulation and slick verbal deception he’s exemplified lately, Gajeel isn’t all that sure how to carry on the conversation from here. Not that he really needs to; he doesn’t owe him any small talk. If Laxus wants to banter, he can damn well break the ice himself.

But... He might not owe it to Laxus to strike up a conversation, yet Gajeel feels his own urge to talk. This encounter is different from the guildhall where he remains so out of place, and he can’t deny the temptation to take advantage of it. Laxus doesn’t fill the silence, so he starts a story of one of his recent jobs, and Laxus listens. He makes a point to stay on neutral ground, because he meant what he said before.

There’s nothing, nothing at all Gajeel can say about the guild that wouldn’t imply something, unintended or not. And Gajeel won’t weigh in on an already heavy situation.

Laxus doesn’t do much talking at first, although he does do a lot of shifting, like words are bubbling up to the surface, but none of them pass muster for him to release aloud. Together, Gajeel and the drinks work to pick up the slack.

It’s not like he minds; quite the opposite. He can... struggle to keep up with typical conversation. Inevitably, he’ll hit a snag that stops the words in his throat. He knows exactly what he wants to say in his head, in draconic, but gets mired in suffocating translation. Without fail, it then becomes a race to untie his tongue fast enough to speak for himself, before someone decides to spare him the conversational onus, never realizing he’d say what he wanted if he just had the time.

Laxus gives him plenty of time. At length, he contributes an anecdote about his travelling, about a ludicrous man who determined that lightning magic was the perfect solution to the crows devouring his crops. Still, the pace doesn’t overtake him, so Gajeel keeps talking about similar innocuous things, even though that puts all of the common ground between the two of them (that he knows of) off limits. They try to talk around the only reasons they’re talking in the first place.

Unexpectedly, the back and forth between them flows, if not effortlessly, then amicably.

In one of the lulls, Laxus’s posture tightens. “How...” He wets his lips. “...Is the Raijin Tribe still sulking about everything without me to knock some sense into ’em?”

It’s the first time Laxus has willingly voiced any interest in his old guild. Gajeel suspects he wanted to ask that the entire time, and that he still longs to ask about a lot more, but Gajeel won’t make any unwelcome remarks. Unlike the many adamant optimists warmly raised by Fairy Tail from the beginning, Gajeel actually knows what it’s like to have a thorny relationship with his guild. That longing can burn, but sometimes knowing festers even worse.

“I think they’re adjusting pretty well,” he offers. “I don’t know ’em quite enough to judge their moods, but they seem at ease whenever they’re actually around.” He tilts over a bit to better spectate his companion wrestling with the ordeal of emoting. “They’re out a lot, since they’ve still been taking jobs together as a team.”

Laxus merely utters a noncommittal noise, his downturned gaze examining the counter.

“Gihehe, what a dour look! They’re doin’ fine, spark-plug, no need for the melodramatics.”

The expression does slide off his face as Laxus lifts his head to meet him and his reassurance piercingly, not entirely different from the way he studied him during their battle. He looks him over for a deliberate, extended beat, then asserts, “You’re weird.”

Gajeel grins unbidden, before he can properly bite down on it. From anyone else, he’d never call that out of pocket rudeness endearing, but- Oh hell, they really weren’t kidding when they said Laxus is terribly awkward dealing with other people. He swallows the temptation to comment on that, though, and lets the uncouth statement slide. “Yeah, what gave me away?”

The bartender takes Laxus’s empty glass out of the way. “Would you like another, sir?”

“No.” He gives the man some jewels and stands up. “It’s past time that I keep moving.” He stands and has to shrug his coat into place since he can’t be bothered with the damn sleeves. Stiffly, he goes about gathering his things without daring to conclude their conversation, even while Gajeel in no way pressures him to stay. Nonetheless, his withdrawal is clear when he steps away from the bar.

“By the way, Laxus...” A hint of his previous tense distrust reignites as he warily turns back. Gajeel huffs and pauses just enough to make him squirm a tiny bit. “...The south road that follows the river will take ya to Sawgrass Village.”

He flushes slightly and seemingly prepares to deny his disorientation and reject the help the next moment, then he furrows his brows and sets his jaw. In the end, he simply nods and lifts his bag up over his shoulder.

Laxus waves once on his way out. “See you around.”

Chapter Text

  II. IMPLICATE

Gajeel cuts his hair in layers so dramatic that tying it back even into a braid is no guarantee that his hair won’t escape its confines and back to its regular, jagged waves. So he divides it up and tackles taming his mane three times over.

Starting on the left, he braids each section close to the scalp, pinning down every cowlick eager to give him away. From his nape, he continues the plaits for several inches, then he binds them all together and allows the ends of his hair to flare out however it pleases.

It works, but upon glaring into his mirror, Gajeel redoes the middle braid anyway. He’s very particular with his hair, and he’s not about to let the situation with Raven Tail supersede the personal standards that matter to him. He fiddles until the look meets his satisfaction.

Next, he sheds his iron studded outfit and dons the other clothes. All full length, solid black, and nondescript, they cover every stud and scar that sets him apart. Plain black boots hide iron plates inside the toes. He tugs the swath of fabric up over his nose to cover his lower face, then pins down the heavy, dark hood that hides his captive hair and casts a shadow over his eyes, the only part of him left exposed other than his hands.

Those he shoves into his pockets to check his iron knuckles are still there. He tests their fit and flexes his fingers in anticipation.

Ready.

  —

“How dare you disgrace our goal?!”

The snake-faced jerk crashes into the wall with an unpleasant crack and falls to the floor with a weak moan. For a moment, Gajeel feels a touch of guilt for putting him in this position, then he recalls the sandstorm mage bragging about how he’d mangle every last fairy he gets his hands on, and he gets over it.

Out of targets, Master Ivan releases a final whirl of furious magic, having already disciplined all the Raven Tail mages Gajeel trounced in their last attempt to reach Laxus. Snake-face pulls himself out of the debris, but wisely doesn’t rise. Ivan looms over him. 

“The same one wretch has beaten each of my groups, and yet you still don’t know who it could possibly be? One person- not even a mage- but not only did you fail to beat them, you can’t even manage to unmask them? Do you have any idea how serious this is?!”

No one answers. Collectively, they maintain a brittle silence in the face of the master’s rage. Ivan lingers in it for a while, drinking in their unease. “Somehow, they know about each team we send, precisely where we will be, precisely when we’ll be there. They know things only you all would know!”

He scythes his gaze around the room, stalking between them. “It’s almost as if a rat snuck its way into my guild, is that it?! Are any of you witless enough to sell me out? To who?! Could it be that Fairy Tail’s miserable excuse of a master is trying to undermine us?” Gajeel flicks an ear and furtively pays very close attention. This is creeping towards dangerous territory. God, he’d rather die than let Ivan uncover the master’s subterfuge from the specific thing he had refused to do, which Gajeel intentionally lied about to his face. If Master Makarov ever finds out...

He doesn’t let it show through, but a shiver rakes along his nerves.

Gajeel ashamedly, yet instinctively fears Makarov’s potential retribution and losing the place he’s started to call home (just like the first time)- But he might not even make it that far since he’ll already be caught in Ivan’s crosshairs if this all goes up in flames. There is no easy out for him if he doesn’t pull this off perfectly, no safety net, even now while Makarov has no idea about his illicit meddling. Shit, he ain’t even getting paid.

Is he actually doing the right thing? Or is he just doing the only thing he knows? Obeying his master. Would he still let himself be utilized like a dog just because he’s too desperate for scraps from the table?

Hissing more so to himself, Ivan carries on, “Insufferable bastard, acting like he cares about the brat he discarded when in reality he just can’t stand to see me succeed where he failed-!”

“We can’t rule out the Balam Alliance, either,” he interjects smoothly. Ivan whips his barbed glare at him- Gajeel doesn’t so much as twitch. Grinning, he lounges back and crosses his arms. “Never wondered how I heard about this place? I dealt with a lot of dark mages back in Phantom and my ears hear a lot of things. You’ve got the only independent dark guild around and that makes the rest of ’em feel antsy. And the legal guilds just gave the anthill a good ol’ kick by beating Oración Seis, so now they might be trying to bring you to heel. Take back a bit of control, ya know.”

Ivan spits in contempt. “Impeding my right to act on my own? Their conceited alliance doesn’t interest me. If they think I’ll ever tolerate its terms, they have another thing coming. I have my own goals and no time to pander to anyone else’s. They don’t scare me, and neither does Fairy Tail. I’ll catch this insolent cur and flay every secret from them until there’s nothing left. And nothing will keep me from getting Laxus in the end!”

From the opposite corner- some lady who smells like tree sap with greasy, blond hair whose name escapes him- she suggests sibilantly, “Why don’t you try sending Gajeel to collect Laxus?” Motherfucker. “He thinks he’s one of the fairies, after all, so it should be pretty easy to get him where we want him with a simple pretense, and no risk of scaring him off.”

“No!” Ivan snaps before Gajeel can even try to say a thing. “Fairy Tail are the ones who cast him out! Laxus will come around to me far sooner than he would ever listen to them.” Even though Gajeel wasn’t the one to make the suggestion, his throat finds Master Ivan’s hand latched around it. He chokes, nettled by the oppressive heat of Ivan’s livid breath mere inches away. “You won’t touch him, you won’t get within a hundred miles of him, you won’t ruin the plan I’ve laid out!”

It takes all his restraint not to bite his hand to bloody shreds. He deserves it, but he knows that Ivan would beat him savagely for it and Gajeel has no way to disengage. His obligation to Master Makarov traps him here and he already knows only compliance will minimize his pain for however long he must stay. So he nods.

Finally, after a last threatening squeeze into the hollows behind his windpipe, Ivan drops him and Gajeel slumps to one knee, wheezing, despite that his legs held steady beneath him. It’s the safest play. Once Ivan proceeds to turn his attention elsewhere, Gajeel carefully pushes himself up.

The slimy woman snorts quietly. He shoots her a sour glare.

Gajeel doesn’t fight to conceal all of his reluctance to be sent after Laxus. Considering his debilitating fight against him in the cathedral, he decides it’d be convincingly fitting for a hint of relief to show through anyway. They don’t need to know that the real reason for it’s completely different.

He lets the dust settle a bit after that. He won’t let himself rush, far too proud to get sloppy now. It’s not like he needs to, Gajeel diligently reminds himself, organizing the endless list of risks he’s juggling with a level head. This particular aspect stems from... a personal principal, he supposes, more than an urgent need.

So he waits, letting the time pass until he’s going to leave, getting ‘sent out’ once more. He sorts his bag and silently notes each of Ivan’s talismans he’ll have to dispose of later. “Have you decided who to send after Laxus now, to finally clean up this mess?”

Ivan eyes him with an unfortunately swift suspicion, checking like he might have left a name tag on his shirt that says ‘traitor’. Of course he can’t just make this easy. “What’s it to you?”

Gajeel stifles his frustration and marginally skews his expression just so. “Ah,” Ivan snorts, “you’re worried you’ll wind up trailing our dear Laxus after you got your ass handed to you the last time around. Don’t worry Gajeel,” he brushes his fingers over his collar and makes composure a fight, “I meant what I said when I told you to stay away.” His air has suddenly swerved into something far more severe, voice frigid and dark, fingernails leaving scratches behind as they retreat. “No wonder you can fit in with Fairy Tail, you coward.”

“I ain’t no fucking coward,” Gajeel makes a show of arguing. “I just wondered...”

“Right. Well don’t bother.” Ivan sneers and turns his back to him. “I’m not planning to tell anyone this time; not that it would mean anything to you anyway since you haven’t been introduced. Now get out, I’ve had enough of you.”

  —

This complicates things, though not terribly.

A mage he hasn’t met means a scent he doesn’t know, which is how he pursued all his targets up until this point. A dragon slayer’s nose should never be underestimated, but without a scent to go off of, even he can’t track someone down.

Gajeel’s not worried, though. Whoever Ivan’s unknown lackey may be, he knows exactly where any route will take them, and that scent is plenty familiar. He can sniff out Laxus long before they could track him down, and then it’s only a matter of waiting alongside his unwitting, directionless, and perfect guide. If Gajeel can’t trail behind his foe this time, then he’ll just let them come to him.

  —

When Laxus said ‘see you around’ last time, he mostly meant it as a joke, confident he wouldn’t meet Gajeel again for a long while. A week and a half later is far too soon to see the unmistakable dragon slayer stroll into his current bar of residence, many miles away from the last one.

Gajeel notices him with a glint of surprise in his slitted red eyes, followed by an amused grin as though this is merely a funny coincidence.

Laxus growls and stands, forcibly inserting himself at Gajeel’s table the moment he claims it. Gajeel folds his arms. “It feels like your mean mug keeps following me around these days. Did you ever end up on the right road?”

“The other guild members are trying to get me back, aren’t they? This is some stupid plan of theirs.”

The rivets lining his brow shine when they rise. “Yer really not one for pleasantries, are you? At least let me take a breath first.” He calls out to the waiter for a shot of whiskey. “Are you still on about this?”

“That’s real bold to ask when you’re the one still on my case. Do you think I’m dumb enough to believe you found me again by accident, and you don’t have a reason to follow me? Save yourself the trouble and get the hell out of here. And go tell the others that I don’t want to hear it!”

“Like hell I’m leaving. I’m tired and thirsty and you can get over yourself.” They tersely pause their argument when the waiter stops by. “...Has it crossed your mind that they might not be desperately striving to win you back, and there’s a possibility they wouldn’t even ask you to since the master expelled you?” He doesn’t bother to pretend it’s an especially barbed implication.

“Don’t give me that shit. I know. And it ain’t even about me, it’s all about their own attachments and preconceptions.” Gajeel postures an indifferent shrug, like this doesn’t pertain to him. Deep in his lightning-filled lungs, Laxus growls, “Don’t you dare play around with me; there’s nothing I loathe more than being toyed with.” He slams his palm down on the table with full strength. “I know you’re here to saddle me with all the reasons the guild knows what’s best for me when they decided I should go back, so you can fuck right off ’cause I won’t fucking stand for it!”

His extended, pointy ears veering down against the sound, Gajeel recoils, then does not respond, instead piercing him with a stare that’s wary and hurt and difficult to endure head on, Laxus finds. He clicks his tongue and turns away to escape it. The extended silence refuses to justify his outburst of accusation- But why else would he be here? He sips from his drink for lack of a better option, unsure what he should say now. He fumbled this exchange and he doesn’t know how to start another.

Gajeel exhales and some of the weight eases from his stare. “The possibility of Fairy Tail asking you to come back... seems to bother you a lot.” Laxus shoots him a sharp look and Gajeel lifts his hands in surrender. “Swear, I don’t care one way or another. It’s just that you seem to care quite a bit.” The iron dragon slayer rolls his head back over the back of the chair and studies the ceiling almost wistfully. “...A jewel for your thoughts.”

Laxus finds himself grumbling, “So you can parrot them back to the guild?”

Folding his arms over his chest, Gajeel laughs loudly. “You’re really convinced they’d send me on a mission to woo you back, funneling them every juicy detail? Yeah, sure.” He scoffs. “What makes you think I give a damn about those goody two shoes? I’m not part of that mawkish shit, I just-”

“Nah,” Laxus cuts across. “You can’t pull that one on me, I won’t buy it. I did, I fully thought you were the self-serving type, but not after watching you step in to fight with Natsu and take that hit that fucked you up so badly.” It’s acutely uncomfortable remembering what he tried to do in that moment, but he wants to make his point. “You can’t fool me with the cold-hearted, tough guy act.”

“Tch- I jus’ got involved once your bullshit was gonna make things hard for me-”

“No,” Laxus repeats. “The first thing I did was-” he swallows- “target you, only you, yet that was when you wouldn’t lift a finger against me. You didn’t fight for yourself, it was only for the sake of the guild.”

Sticking his nose up in the air doesn’t fully hide the wash of pink over his cheeks as Gajeel gnashes his teeth through his hesitation. “-Fine then, have it your way! I did offer to tell the master where I bumped into you last time, just to give him the peace of mind knowing you haven’t dropped off the map, but he wouldn’t let me. The master refuses to hear anything about yer business, and so what if I’ll side with the guild if they’re in trouble, I’m still not gonna defer to any of those dumbasses over him.” He yanks a nail out from under his chair and clamps it on end between his teeth, snapping it decisively. (Laxus’s jaw twinges watching him chew moodily, uneasy as ever to see a dragon slayer eat so inhumanly.) “Feel better now?”

“...Kinda, yeah,” he admits after he rolls the revelations around in his mind for a minute. “He’s the only one those dumbasses would ever defer to either, so at least he has some sense.”

“Because you think otherwise they would ask you to come back?” Laxus rolls his eyes and furrows his brows in an expertly exasperated expression. They already have asked him in the hours before he even left Magnolia, and Gajeel knows as well as he does that they must still want to ask, and he’s only playing dumb to dance around Laxus’s presumption that he’s here to pressure him about the matter. Gajeel keeps up the performance though. “And they have less sense because of that?”

“Because they think the question is more important than the answer,” he spits.

‘Because the answer would be no,’ neither of them go so far as to say aloud, though Laxus feels he essentially already has.

Now past the haze of bloodthirsty furor that possessed him before Fantasia, Laxus is indescribably grateful that his Fairy Law spell had no effect, but part of him still wishes no one else had seen it. His guildmates (ex-guildmates) reacted like it proved he has a good heart and there’s no reason not to welcome him back to Fairy Tail now that he’s come to his senses. They’ve got earnest intentions, but never think to ask how other people feel about their conviction.

He tries to imagine Natsu’s face if he heard Laxus say he doesn’t want to rejoin Fairy Tail right now, but the vision of uncomprehending betrayal makes him stop.

Laxus needs some distance to figure out and deal with whatever the fuck is wrong with him. He can admit to himself now that he cares about Fairy Tail and that they gave him a sense of family after his dad- ...But that’s exactly why he can’t just try and reclaim his spot. He doesn’t want to hurt them more than he already has, which might be exactly what he’d end up doing.

“It’s not so simple as just going back. It’s not only about the guild forgiving the fucking nightmare I caused, which- I don’t know why any of them are willing to do that to begin with, but there’s more to it regardless.” As usual, he fumbles for words. “I know the stunt I pulled was awful, but... Shit, I don’t know how to say it without sounding like an absolute bastard.”

Gajeel arches a lazy, studded brow and looks indifferently at him, and Laxus sighs. Yeah, Gajeel already knows he’s a bastard, so he confesses without a fight, “I did have issues with the way the guild made me feel, and I don’t feel like any of them were actually solved in the end. I... don’t entirely trust myself not to start the same shit all over again.” Sometimes he does find himself angry at Fairy Tail, the old man included, even though he has no right after everything he put them through. The situation still frustrates him if it sticks in his head for too long, and it’d only get worse if he was actively enmeshed in it again.

Knowing now what it can come to, Laxus is scared of his anger in a way he never was, made even worse by wondering if the guild always had to fear his temper like this.

He presses his temples in fatigue. “I don’t think they ever actually understood what I...” He doesn’t know how to finish that statement.

Surprisingly, Gajeel shrugs one hand out to him in a conciliatory gesture, nodding sideways. “Yeah, that’s fair. ’cept maybe for the master, none of ’em ever seemed to actually get the picture. Or, well, it seemed that way to me, but what do I know?”

Keen incredulity runs through him at that. “Really?” Gajeel is the last person he expected to give him any grace, well prepared for a blunt ‘get over it ’ instead. He has no fondness or attachment to him; they’re all but strangers. That kind of empathy would feel more in line with the other Fairy Tail mages, and Laxus may have interpreted it as more evidence that he’s just acting as their mouthpiece, and yet... “You mean that you, just own your own, thought they treated me unfairly? Are you not on their side?”

Gajeel shifts uncomfortably and drums his fingers through the air avoidantly, skirting the topic like a venomous snake he’s not trained to handle. “I don’t know about ‘treatment’- Look, I ain’t been in the guild long and I sure haven’t been let in on any of the history. I just mean that what I heard the others say to you during all the chaos struck me as, er... real tone-deaf, I guess.” He hunkers between his shoulders resistantly, cautiously glancing at his reaction. “What the hell do you look so surprised for?!”

“Well, yeah, I also thought they were talkin’ bullshit, but I didn’t expect anyone to agree with me. Why? You were there, but you didn’t speak up then.”

“Like I said, I thought maybe they just understood somethin’ that was lost on me. I know better than to mouth off where I don’t have the right.” Laxus narrows his eyes and studies the iron dragon slayer as he avoids meeting his gaze. “Sure, I have opinions on the matter, but they’re not meaningful. I shouldn’t talk like an authority when it ain’t my place.”

“Mm. And you’re gonna let that stop you?”

That appears to take him aback, wiping away his air of cool composure for a heartbeat. Gajeel scowls and turns his head away sharply, glaring down and grinding his teeth with visible pressure. He throws Laxus broken off glances across a few heartbeats of mounting agitation until he spits at the floor and draws himself upright. “Well- fine. You asked!”

Gajeel throws back his drink and gathers his thoughts before speaking. “The impression I got... was that you were angry about being reduced to Makarov’s grandson and never feeling recognized or appreciated. -Didn’t justify blood sport, but whatever, I understood where you were coming from and I thought it was a fair gripe. Then Salamander started on his pompous speech an’ I expected some profound rebuttal ’bout how Fairy Tail always accepted ya, blah blah blah friendship, whatever... -just for him to decide you were acting out because you thought Makarov’s blood made you better than the rest of us! I felt insane, like had we not just heard the same fucking words, ’cause that seemed like completely missing the point, like the opposite of the point, actually?! I thought you’d just cleared up the reason for your feud nice and neat- Am I that far wrong?”

Laxus has staunchly avoided thinking about that specific moment ever since it happened. To hell with it. Irritated, restless, and reticent, he rolls his eyes to somewhere else and only shakes his head to keep him from asking again. Gajeel’s not wrong. His relegation wasn’t the only reason for his anger, but it was the greatest, and it spurred his rebellion above all else. He would do just about anything for the space to exist as his own person, to escape the nonessential clause after ‘Makarov Dreyar’s grandson’.

Even now, it pulls fiercely on the scales weighing Laxus’s reluctance to return to Fairy Tail. He can only conceive two options left for him there: either ignoring the sting of being overshadowed as best he can, or trying to articulate his grievances to the rest of the guild well enough they finally start treating him differently.

-Assuming it’s even possible. Gajeel is right, Natsu’s outburst was the final, infuriating push over the edge for him. Laxus instigated the battle of Fairy Tail because he hates the suffocating restriction of his gramp’s renown and he sought his own recognition by supplanting him. It wasn’t a good reason, it came nowhere near justifying his bullshit, but it was the reason nevertheless and it was his own. And Natsu still believed it had to be because he’s the old man’s grandson. Even at the furthest extent of the most extreme measures Laxus ever took to prove he’s his own man- truly repugnant measures- his acts were still misattributed to Makarov.

It drives him mad. The anger still sits a red hot needle inside him, piercing through his synapses as his mind bends towards the memory. He didn’t get through to them even then, and failing that, he honestly believes nothing will. If Laxus went back with the resolve to never let that anger hurt someone again, he would have to silently swallow it and the pain beneath it, let the sleeping dog lie, and simply accept that they will never really see him as he is.

The possibility burns too much to entertain right now. So he’s here, aimlessly idling in a beat up bar in the backwater of nowhere.

“Hmph.” Grimacing, Gajeel marks him with a side-eyed glare. “Don’t get me wrong, I won’t fall on my sword for you. The shit you did was fucked up, there absolutely was an issue with how you acted, but- that wasn’t it! That was not the issue at hand! And however yer word-nerd phrased it, when he said something like ‘not just your strength, but also your kind heart were inherited from your grandad’, which...!”

A series of agitated, clattering and hissing noises tumble from Gajeel like he’s some kind of mimic bird, though he’s too caught up in his vexation to notice Laxus’s jolt of alarm. It takes a minute for him to forcibly reconfigure them back into words and continue, “I don’ know, it’s not like I was gonna try to resolve a slugfest with diplomacy, but if they wanted to empathize and convince you to stop fighting, that seems like the wrong thing to say! Why were they spouting shit that’d only make the core problem much worse?

“I ju- Grrh-” He gesticulates increasingly insistently, grasping at the air in searching demand until he exhales sharply and thumps his fingertips down onto the table, resolutely releasing his tension.

“Listen- I should just say this: I think the argument that we could work through your issues with a more appropriate solution than blood sport should not have been hard to make, and yet they didn’t manage it.” He slouches back in defeat and tosses up a shrug. “I don’ get it, man; it irks me.”

Laxus stares off at the right wall for a long while, not yet daring to respond. His stance left him conflicted. Part of him is simply flush with relief, clinging to Gajeel’s words with a feeling of vindication that cries, ‘Right? Right? Exactly!’ At the same time, it stirs up something more complicated.

His tongue twitches with the impulse to defend Freed from the ribbing, like he always would when someone dared make light of him or his team, but he doesn’t have the heart this time. Laxus was of the opinion that the Raijin Tribe were the first to appreciate his side of the issue, long before Gajeel, and clever, devoted Freed understood best of all. He’s closer to Freed than anyone and their years of friendship attuned the rune mage to emotions of his no one else noticed. He was still the only one who seemed to grasp Laxus’s need to leave the guild on his own.

Never for a heartbeat did he expect Freed to say that he owed his merits to Makarov. All of it- his power, his strength, the care within his own damn heart. The Raijin Tribe had always backed his insistence that his capability belonged to him and he really did fight to master it, only for Freed to imply he never believed that from the start. It utterly blindsided him, and oh it hurt to hear Freed of all people say it. A knife in his back that he still can’t reconcile.

Even now, it kind of stings in an illogical way, to hear someone take his side after it’s too late. Or at least claim to.

“...Is that what you think?” Laxus reproaches, then continues before Gajeel can respond, “You did the same shit. I heard you when you said it made sense that I’d be such a monster with the master’s blood in me. I- remember that.”

It gives him at least a grain of satisfaction to see Gajeel wince a little. “Ah, true, I’ll give you that one. Sorry. Tacky, in retrospect, and also dumb. I was under the impression you were usin’ the same type of magic he has. I didn’t know then that you’re a dragon slayer.”

Great. “Oh, thanks. Like that’s so much much better.” So he only changed his mind when he found out he has a different kind of magic, one he got in an even more artificial and undeserved way than inheritance. “I’ve got loads to be proud of there.”

A crooked frown tugs on Gajeel’s lips. “Hey, yer words, not mine. I’m not gonna pretend I know your whole story, that’s why I said it’s not my place to give my two cents. Take it however you want, all I mean is that I know dragon slayer magic. Adapting to it without a dragon to teach you, enough to wield it that well? That’s no mean feat- and I know no one else coulda done it for you. So yeah, that’s when your own strength hit me. And impressed me.”

A jagged, reedy peel of laughter breaks from Laxus, the sound rolling carelessly as he stretches back against all the tension in his spine, against the urge to tear at his scalp. “Motherfucker. Fuck that. Gh- Fuck that shit.” Lids closing, he lolls his head. “I was tryin’ to prove my strength to everyone and grow outta his shadow, and in the end, the only one who recognized my power as my own was one of the ones who fucking beat me anyway! What a fucking joke.” His throat aches.

Gajeel’s wary voice replies, “You already know me and Salamander don’t think that really counted-”

“Shut the hell up; you won. Maybe you don’t have as much power, but there’s more to a fight than that and you two beat me, full stop.” Laxus slumps back into his seat and rubs between his tired eyes. “I never stood a chance of being recognized to begin with. All that damage I caused, for fucking nothing.” And yet, I still want it, he helplessly thinks to himself and despairs.

“Tch- You know what?” Gajeel scans him cautiously. “You think it should have been easy for them to argue I didn’t need to achieve something the old man couldn’t accomplish to be seen as more than his grandkid? I want to hear it, then; make your case.”

“Fuck’s sake, man,” Gajeel groans coarsely, looking very out of his depth. Right, of course it couldn’t be as simple as he wanted him to believe. Laxus sighs. “I don’t know what the hell they’d say. In my defense, I already don’t see you like that, and maybe I can imagine a few things the rest of the guild could do, but they haven’t done ’em. Clearly I still can’t fucking parse their altruism in practice.

“Remember,” Gajeel leans in, “I’m just as much a bad guy, tryin’ to tell myself I can be something different after they took me as a charity case. But maybe I can’t. Maybe I only have an issue with what they said because I’m cruel all the way down an’ I can’t wrap my head around their connection.”

Elbow on the table, Laxus rests his head in his hand. (He’d kill for a cigar, but quitting is the only decent thing he’s done in the past year. He’s not sure Gramps noticed he stopped. He’d refused to acknowledge when he started.)

The dragon slayer might be right. They might be a pair of unsalvageable bastards. Laxus grabs his neglected drink and takes a long draft of the biting taste. Although... can he really act like sharing similar qualities with Gajeel condemns them the way he’s implying? None of this has belied what he pointed out earlier, the loyalty Gajeel showed during the festival by putting the guild above himself. He’s an odd man.

“...Accomplishing something the master can’t is one thing, but all that I can tell ya is surpassing the same thing the master did accomplish the way you tried to do wouldn’t have worked.” Gajeel waits until he sets down his glass and looks him in the eye.

“All that shit you said about making the strongest guild with no room for weakness, by any means necessary- I’d heard it all before, over and over. I don’t know what other paths forward there are, but I can promise it’s worth looking for one, ’cause that one wouldn’t do you any good. None of it would have made the kinda guild you wanted, that’d put Makarov to shame.” Laxus looks askance at his apparent insight. “That was the point, right? To never be compared to Makarov again once you overpower his guild and prove your superiority?” Gajeel shrugs at his surprise. “It’s already been put to the test. Jose spent years trying to use the master’s seat to make the strongest guild in Fiore, and now, Phantom Lord doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“...Do you miss it?”

A spike of tension follows and prolongs itself painfully, writ plain across Gajeel’s face. His gaze lands somewhere in the middle distance, at something no one else can see. Laxus knows he said the wrong thing, but it’s been said, so he doesn’t say anything more.

At length, Gajeel blinks, inhales, and answers, “There’s somethin’ I miss. But not like that.”

  —

Welcoming the distraction from his sore body and foul mood, Gajeel lounges inside the window frame of the bell tower and watches the fruits of his labor from on high.

The three Raven Tail mages pick themselves off the ground, stiff with pain, and gather around each other. After several minutes of debate, too soft for even Gajeel to make out through the glass and over the distance, they begin to limp into the back alleys. Although they check around each corner in fright, none of them think to look up at the tower as they gradually retreat towards the east part of town.

He turns around the opposite way to double check that the campfire is indeed still burning to the west, just enough light to outline the motionless slump of Laxus.

Gajeel makes a point to find the fun in his sketchy, life-threatening dark guild infiltration mission, which isn’t very hard as he loves sewing anarchy, but this part always amuses him more deeply than all the rest.

To be perfectly accurate, the missions Master Ivan sends after Laxus aren’t attacks. They’re recruitments. Ivan specifically instructs his underlings to locate Laxus, to approach him discreetly, and to convince him to return to Raven Tail with them for the opportunity to reunite with his father and get back at the guild that spurned him. Only then will Ivan betray him and tear out his lacrima personally, a task he refuses to allow his goons attempt out in the field. They are not to start a fight with the lightning dragon.

Each time, Gajeel has beaten them to a pulp before they could reach Laxus, but that shouldn’t necessarily keep them from continuing their mission. As far as they know, their assailant has taken off. Laxus remains undisturbed where he was half an hour ago, and they could just as easily limp that direction and present their proposition.

And yet, they flee every time. Oh, it makes him laugh.

Ivan was confident- so confident-! that Laxus would come to Raven Tail of his own accord after Fairy Tail expelled him. He expected their broken relationship to be water under the bridge, a silly squabble of the past. When he didn’t come, Ivan still insisted his mages would be in for an easy, like-minded recruitment, as if Gajeel doesn’t have every indication that he quietly added a stipulation forbidding them from approaching his son if they’re not also prepared for a fight.

Gajeel gleams with spiteful satisfaction to see the hypocrisy of his mages running tail between their legs from a discussion with Laxus all because they’re not in peak condition to brawl. Ivan had to acknowledge the very real possibility that Laxus will not come peacefully.

He won’t get away with any of his schemes if he and Makarov have anything to say about it, but Gajeel appreciates that he can’t get away with his own blithe negligence either. There is a cost to abandoning your child that must be paid for in the end.

(Maybe Metalicana never had to learn that, but someone will.)

Smoke starts to sputter from the distant fire, though Laxus still doesn’t move, confirming Gajeel’s suspicion that he fell asleep. If he were a better man, or in a better mood, he’d try to come up with a way to wake him up, but that’s hard from so far away, and he still has work to do.

Leaving Laxus to his fate, he tugs a wrinkled sheaf of papers and a pen from his pocket and begins to scrawl his latest report to Master Makarov, starting with recent expenditures and the two new members, while skipping the escapades and... mishaps.

Gajeel never has mentioned the corporal punishments he’s received in any of his reports to the master. First and foremost, he genuinely doesn’t consider it relevant to his purpose of uncovering how Raven Tail plans to dismantle Fairy Tail. It’s just a hazard that comes with the job and he knew that going in. Additionally, Gajeel can tell Makarov still harbors some attachment to his son and longs to believe he’s not entirely beyond hope.

The revelation would cut him to the quick, and Gajeel wants to protect the people around him for once. He spent too long hating the whole world and retaliating against anyone in reach with spiteful relish. He’ll readily spare Makarov the pain of grasping Ivan’s violent behaviors if that means he won’t pass along the cruelty.

He will turn over a new leaf if it’s the last thing he does.

Motion distracts him again when sleeping beauty finally rouses to find the tragic consequences of his fatigue. Laxus snatches his food from the fire while he still can, fighting to salvage the smoldering remains with desperate despair, the calm quiet of the bell tower providing an amusing contrast to the no doubt violent swearing. It’s too late. The best he can do is start over, but he continues to poke at the char despondently, almost testing it.

Oh no, do not eat that thing-

Wincing and whistling softly, Gajeel watches him eat around his mistakes as best he can in search of anything still edible- though he’s already stretching that definition pretty far. Gajeel’s quick to put together that he doesn’t have any food left for a second attempt. He’s been that low before, although he would say that’s why he can watch the esteemed Laxus Dreyar hit the same depths unfazed, and with a touch of humor, even.

He picks over the pitiful kind of meal every street rat knows well, unaware of his distant audience. Gajeel snorts, imagining his outburst if he knew. Laxus would have a field day ranting on and on about how the other guild members clearly want nothing more than to step on his toes and tell him what to do, and Gajeel’s only around because he must be in league with something so insufferably stupid as that. Yeah right, as if.

He returns to the report, but then leaves the pen hovering over the page.

Obviously, Gajeel didn’t encounter Laxus the past couple times because Fairy Tail set him up on some contrived ploy to keep tabs on him and entice him to return. But claiming it was a coincidence was equally untrue.

He is here to stand between Raven Tail and Laxus. And if the lightning mage knew to grill him about that, Gajeel wouldn’t know what reason to give him. Laxus isn’t in real danger. Raven Tail isn’t trying to attack him to begin with. And even though he’s deduced that Ivan wants his mages ready to take him by force if Laxus turns them down, they don’t stand a fucking chance against him. Gajeel’s beaten them all without magic; Laxus wouldn’t even break a sweat.

...So what is he playing at? 

Master Makarov forbid him from interfering because it would blow his cover, but maybe the reasons run deeper than that. Arguably, Laxus has the right to hear for himself what Raven Tail intends to say and make his own choice, while Gajeel repeatedly refuses to give them so much as a chance. Is this any better than what Laxus fears he’s up to? Is Gajeel just deciding for himself what would be best for him, the same way he promised he wouldn’t?

Scowling fiercely, Gajeel runs through the alternative, mulling over what could happen if he let Ivan’s plan play out. He doesn’t believe Laxus would give Raven Tail the time of day, honestly. He also doesn’t believe it would end there.

Soon, Laxus would learn the scope of his father’s heartless profiteering. Through him, more likely than not, because Gajeel already determined he’d explain the entire situation to Laxus before the danger it put him in could multiply exponentially.

Yeah, to hell with that. He’s not backing out now. If Ivan wants to get at Laxus, he’ll go through him.

Chapter Text

  III. FIGURE

Laxus has a bad feeling the moment the redhead sits directly next to him at the spacious bar with a mostly empty pint in hand. In the novel pursuit of being polite, he nods in acknowledgement, but deliberately does not start a conversation. Nevertheless, the woman says, “I haven’t seen you around before, but I could certainly get used to the sight. You got a name, handsome?”

Oh, fuck this. He slumps between his shoulders, covering as much of his face behind the fur trim of his coat as he can. “I’m not stayin’ long.”

“Sorry to hear it... but I’d say that makes tonight extra special, then. Can I buy you a drink while I have ya?”

“I’ve got enough already,” he grumbles, tapping the rim of his glass, lamenting that the excuse will trap out of another drink for the rest of the night.

To add insult to injury, it doesn’t even work. The woman giggles, then leans in even closer, purring, “Don’t try to tell me that you-” she looks up and down his body pointedly- “’re a lightweight.”

Laxus compresses an instinctive growl into a grunt, refusing to reply to that. -As if he could come up with anything to say that would get him out of this, his skin crawling when racking his brain proves in vain. He forces a fleeting glance at her face upon realizing he hasn’t made eye contact yet, worried that had come across as afraid. She’s looking at his lips. He discards the impulse to forcefully kick her stool back and flip her off, which then leaves him embarrassingly at a loss for other options. But he swallows his discomfort and lets it persist in his stomach, hoping he’ll figure out what to do along the way.

Laxus gave himself one single, simple goal to achieve through his wanderings: learn how to be less of an asshole. If he can’t commit to literally just that, then he’s already a lost cause.

He knows if he wants to do anything to demonstrate real remorse for the shit he pulled, he must start here. He needs to give a damn about how his behavior impacts people beyond just him, specifically in the regular, day-to-day, low stakes shit. That constitutes- as much as he hates the reality of it- the overwhelming majority of his interactions, so he can’t expect to learn any better just by promising he’ll be nicer at the next major incident.

He can’t stand pretentious, trite adages, but damn it all, old habits do die hard.

Casual cruelty textures him like wood grain, a pattern grown in layers over years, and he toils on and on to sand it down smooth. All the while, the ridges abrase him, stubborn and entitled.

The way he would pick fights at every opportunity, provoking everyone with flagrant insults, viciously arrogant, stubborn, and combative, came the closest he could get to a physical fight, which was at least something he understood. It let him feel like he knew what he was doing (more or less), and before his ego got so thoroughly crushed, that meant a lot to him. He hated feeling lost, and aggression was all he knew how to navigate.

The guild’s women got the worst of it. Laxus has never had an inkling of attraction towards any of them, and in light of how the rest of the world gushes about their beauty and charm, he figured that was yet another abnormality of his. An empty hole people would shoot dirty, contemptuous looks at if he ever let them see.

He was beyond desperate to appear like a put together human person, so he enacted the interest he thought he should feel. Now that he’s given up on the first part, Laxus recognizes the gross overcompensation. He overstepped every line of decency running his mouth about the girls’ bodies, leaning into that shallow aspect he could at least conceptualize much too far. And when that felt too dangerous, he buried his uncertainty under ridicule and arrogance.

Ironically, the only reason he can imagine Erza never stuck him like a pig for acting infinitely better than her is because she’s the infinitely better person than him. It’s fucking depressing to realize just how far off the mark he was.

He abandoned the charade after Fairy Tail kicked him out, a clear prerequisite for his goal to stop being such an asshole. He no longer presumes to interact with women differently than he would with anyone (which still means clumsy and unpalatable, but less reprehensible). He imagines Evergreen scolding him that he clearly could’ve just done that the whole time if he weren’t so twitchy. Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve.

Now that he’s trying- and simply braces for any invasive comments on his lack of interest- Laxus likes to call it progress. But be that as it may, he no longer has any kind of strategy to deal with a woman determined to flirt with him, though. “Are you really gonna make me drink alone?”

Laxus eyes her requesting a top up of the beer she has nearly finished. “Who’s making you?”

“Oh, certainly you.” And she makes herself comfortable anyway.

Fussing her fingers through her red hair, she tells him about the town, asks about his preferences, and inserts sly compliments about his looks at every turn. Desperate to prove to himself he can actually make true progress, Laxus doesn’t let himself snarl, ‘Fuck off, I’m not interested,’ and continue to crutch on careless, vicious aggression for everything.

Nonetheless, he attempts to communicate the sentiment and shut this down by limiting his engagement to single word answers and inhospitable grunts, to no avail. God knows why, it only seems to spur the eager gleam in her eye as she reaches for glancing touches that get progressively harder to dodge, and suggests he see the town square at night and then maybe visit her place- with only a little slurring.

Immediately he retorts, “I’ve already got a hotel room.”

“Well, that sounds lonely, don’t you think? I would hate for you to be all on your own...” She leans in, up, and he jolts back like a fucking spooked cat and he just knows his face is burning. She pouts, a touch chidingly, and then titters, “Ya never had a kiss before?”

He imagines the look on her face if he just answers ‘no’, and it lends back a modicum of satisfaction. Yeah, that’d certainly flip the script and leave her too lost for a clever response for once. Ugh. He’d bet his ass no one back at the guild would believe him either. And it’s not like he can really blame them considering the way he would go on and on.

Back then, his lecherous posturing did have a line, however, the moment all the physicality he blustered about became a real possibility. It wasn’t chivalrous- he would demean girls as unworthy to drive off actual offers- but he still didn’t take advantage of their undeserved desire. He couldn’t.

The thought of hands on his body meant to invade what he keeps personal and private is viscerally disturbing, an aversion so intense it eclipsed even his fear of appearing pathetic. It’s too much, striking far too close to Laxus’s long festering feud with his own skin.

Freshly fifteen when his dad cut him open and implanted something else, his growth which had already pushed him into uncomfortable limbo seemed to swerve, and that inevitability suddenly felt dangerously foreign and volatile. It left him painfully vulnerable and afraid, and that made him angry. He’d never asked for any of this! Unequipped to grasp his own body’s betrayal, he denied the struggle even existed, ignoring it entirely as it gnawed away at him.

Laxus stopped looking at himself.

It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision, but he formed a habit of swiftly looking away anytime his reflection caught his eye. He didn’t face the mirror when he got ready to shower. He combed through his hair haphazardly by feel. He trained relentlessly to get used to how the magic changed his body so he didn’t have to keep looking himself over. Together, all of it developed into a continuous thread stitched through his adolescence, quietly cutting into a crux of personhood.

He ignored it still, but it did not ignore him, far from it. In retrospect, that discomfort may have informed his impulse to cover his torso in ink, searching for some control over the body he lived in. At the time, he just hoped to set himself apart and offend the old man with his hell-raising. After hours and hours under the needle, the expansive tattoo caught even the Raijin Tribe by surprise, though they were quick to crow their compliments. They couldn’t compare to the appalled disbelief on the old man’s face the first time he saw, but after several bitten off exclamations, he just pinched his lips shut and turned away, and Laxus’s satisfaction turned out sour and short-lived. Makarov never brought it up and Laxus pretended he only did it for himself anyway. He tried to convince himself of that.

Regardless of if his malaise really influenced his choice, the tattoo ultimately exposed the insidious issue without mercy.

He remembers it vividly, standing alone in the silence of his bathroom, which is never the start of anything good. His shirt discarded, he couldn’t tear his attention from the image in the mirror, even after he wasn’t remotely focused on the new tattoo anymore. He was supposed to be admiring it. Instead, a morbid fascination held him captive there, properly examining himself for the first time in years until he finally had to ask himself, “Who the fuck even is that?” It wasn’t himself, it just wasn’t.

Even now, he can’t really explain it. Laxus does know what he looks like- he’s not a fucking vampire dodging reflections like the plague- and logically he gets that duh, of course that’s himself and he’s just being fucking ridiculous. But it still feels wrong, some poorly wired part of his brain constantly insisting the body he occupies doesn’t belong to him, that the hands he’s looking at aren’t his.

He feels like a misprint. That’s his best description. His outline landed on the page well wide of all the other layers of color and depth, failing to contain his whole picture while instead including foreign space that wasn’t meant to be part of him. Laxus struggles to keep track of himself through the perpetual, partial misalignment, a sensation that drives him up the wall with frustration and despair.

Despite his goal of decency, Laxus shoves away the woman’s next hopeful pass with a harsh hand. He hates to be touched with any more intimacy than the stiffest pat on the back. It magnifies the disconnect to scorching intensity, the concept alone enough to skewer his fight or flight response and set him perilously on edge.

As if he would have ever kissed someone while he felt like such a wreck.

He leans as far away from the woman as propriety allows- and probably a little further because he’s bad at judging that kind of thing. From the corner of his eye, he sees her watch him with a touch more awareness, but regrettably no less interest. He can feel the pressure of it. “Mmm, is there something I could do to put you at ease...?” she sighs warmly

Leave, please just leave-

The squeal of the door hooks his attention with intensity preceding comprehension. Something hits his senses which jams a different wedge of anger into his brain, a scent thick with metallic tang over fresh clay and sweat. Simultaneously, he’s immensely relieved to have an excuse to duck out of his current situation and fiercely exasperated that the mess with Gajeel is continuing to drag itself out after everything, scowling as he turns to face him.

“At this point, I’m not even surprised...” he snaps, trailing off with a waver because something he sees surprises him. Without hesitation, Laxus gets up and examines his unwanted company, prodding his hair and ignoring the lame swat he tries to dissuade him with. “What’s with all this?”

Gajeel has his hair braided. Three black braids tight against his scalp smooth his hair back behind him, seemingly with practiced artistry. Laxus circles him critically. His usual spiky mane is so characteristic that he looks bizarre with it pulled back, different than he ought to. The style feels like it demands an occasion- fancy and other than the current one.

“Quit-” Gajeel grunts when he rounds his other shoulder, too late to successfully step past him. Ignoring that too, Laxus doesn’t let up, because the hair isn’t the last of it. He looks cartoonishly suspicious, cloaked in all black like a highwayman, a particularly weird choice since any stranger on the street would immediately peg him as a shady, no-good punk (which isn’t far off, really).

“Seriously, what the fuck are you up to?”

It’s not only that he’s dressed weird, he’s acting weird. Even now that they’ve invaded each other’s orbits, his reactions are muddled and sluggish like caught deep underwater, or lost in a dream. He stands as if he doesn’t trust his knees to hold out.

For fuck’s sake, is he really already drunk before even walking into the bar?

Belatedly biting through his pause, Gajeel blandly snaps, “Working.”

“Of course. Working. Which is why you’re dressed up all weird instead of how you always look when you’re supposedly working. Fuck off, you’re not even trying at this point.”

In all fairness, Gajeel actually does appear set on ignoring him for once, trying to look past him towards the bar. Scowling, Laxus denies him and forcefully remains in his line of sight; he’s ending this mockery tonight. “How the hell do you keep finding me?”

“Oh, for... Laxus, please jus’...” He blinks in surprise and Gajeel grimaces unpleasantly, lips pinched tight. “I don’t got time for this- shit right now. I gotta... Can you jus’ give me a minute? I’ll... I’ll... I’ll figure something out, ’r whatever.” A syncopated hitch mars his voice.

During their previous encounters, Laxus noticed that Gajeel carries his conversations with a great deal of stops and starts, regularly pausing for extended moments with a scrunched expression. Laxus is abysmal at filling silences, however, so he just doesn’t. An unusual pattern arose where, without calling him out for that, Gajeel would gradually relax and return to their topic in time, talking for as long as it’d take him to stop again. It’s weird, but Gajeel seemed content enough that Laxus didn’t stress himself trying to fix it.

This isn’t the same thing, even Laxus can tell that much. He... well, he grew accustomed to the pattern, apparently, fell in line with its current, and this feels decidedly different to what he learned to expect from Gajeel. It bothers him, one more thing atop his rising frustration. The bar is thickly draped in the scent of alcohol, but he figures he’d surely smell it on Gajeel’s breath otherwise when he utters waveringly, “Leave me alone already...”

“Oh- I ought to leave you alone?! You’re one mouthy motherfucker. If you supposedly don’t want to be around me, then why is that you’ve stumbled into my bar for the third fucking time in a month?”

“None of yer... fuckin’ business,” Gajeel grits out.

“I fucking wish that were the case!” Laxus bursts. “And yet each time before, you’ve wound up up to your elbows in my business anyway!” A very familiar throbbing makes itself known behind his sinuses and between his shoulder blades. In disjointed parts, as with everything, Laxus is both jittery with force and bone tired. Fairy Tail expelled him. Now that his reputation’s in the gutter, he can’t get any work, and he has no one he can turn to, can’t he at the very least get some space from the guild in exchange? “I’ve given you more benefit of the doubt than you deserve.” A few patrons glance over nervously at the chill in his voice. “Tell me: what do you want from me, Gajeel?”

He has the audacity to groan. “Want you to move-!”

Laxus hisses out a foul swear. When Gajeel then tries to stagger past him towards the counter, Laxus grabs his shoulder, rumbling like a peal of thunder, “I’ve had enough of this-!” He drags him back around and jams his forearm into his chest. 

Abruptly, Gajeel’s middle lurches and his expression purses in a funny way which- after years of experience in Fairy Tail’s guild hall- immediately tells him that he is absolutely about to puke on his shoes.

In the same moment that Laxus resolves to skin this son of a bitch for his troubles and send him back to the guild in a dozen separate boxes, Gajeel wretches up a mouthful of crimson, cloying, clotted blood.

Blind panic wipes away every last thought, filling his skull with static.

Instantly forgetting about his shoes, he steps in instead of away. He has a hand on Gajeel’s arm, grabbing him as he staggers, bracing his side as gingerly as possible. The squeaky wheeze that works its way out of him does jack shit to inspire confidence, and Laxus’s own stomach tries to climb his throat as blood drips from his slack lower lip.

“Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck...” he hears as if he’s not the one saying it, which he most certainly is.

“Shit!” someone cries, not him. Wood screeches and the red haired woman stumbles into view. “Oh, oh- fuck, here...!” Before Laxus’s emotions can catch up enough to curse her unending intrusion, she yanks a nearby chair and shoves it up to Gajeel. He resists, but Laxus still manages to push him down so the corner of the seat catches him instead of the floor.

Consciousness clings to him, but his head lolls in incoherent dizziness as he mangles “-Need... I’m...” through his teeth. Laxus snatches his face and stills him, looking into his cloudy red eyes. Sniffing the air informs him that the scent of blood isn’t very thick, ruling out the possibility of an open wound that pierced through to his vitals. It must just be internal bleeding.

That is not better. “Gajeel.”

He shudders breathlessly, the visible wave of pain his only answer, because the matching peep of distress uncharacteristically escapes from Laxus. Shoving a palm against his forehead suggests he’s not running a fever. His mouth itself doesn’t look damaged. So he skims the back of his knuckles down Gajeel’s front and the iron mage recoils when he passes the last of his ribs, wordlessly telling him where he took a blow.

Tendons pulled taut with tension, Laxus urgently unearths all the instincts fused with his enhanced senses, painstakingly alert for the slightest disturbance. Someone did this. Someone who might still be out there, anywhere, meaning Gajeel could still be in serious danger.

Even when nothing piques his nose or ears, or ruffles his intuition, ease remains well out of reach. “What happened?” Laxus gasps harshly. “Who did this?”

Gajeel squeezes his eyes shut, quivering strain lining his countenance, then the furrow between his brows falters and he gags up another dribble of blood. Uttering an aching moan, he shakes his head feebly. “Uhnn, I can’t...” The dragon slayer swallows forcefully once, then labored breathing follows, his expression relenting to one of tentative languor. Flinching forward, Laxus catches the weight he limply sinks into his hold, careful hands supporting him, left at a nerve-wracking loss for how else he could help.

The surrounding space finally catches up to him then with a jolt of whiplash. The stocky bartender is hovering close at hand and glaring at him with badly restrained distaste next to the fretfully fidgeting woman. Laxus processes that she’s been attesting that this wasn’t a fight- not a physical one, at least, and that he’s not the one who injured Gajeel. She’s plainly concerned, as is to be expected, and she’s been doing what she can to help. A sudden, shamed awareness sinks its way into Laxus of the contempt and dislike he harbored about his own subconscious decision that she must be singularly interested in earning his reciprocation.

She looks significantly sobered by what she witnessed, but apparently knows she’s still prohibitively drunk as she and a couple other patrons have gathered off to the side, prepared to step in if needed, but so far unwilling to risk getting in the way.

“What the hell is going on here?” the bartender barks.

“I don’t know,” he grumbles back, shifting Gajeel’s weight against his shoulder. Hunching down uncomfortably, he yanks at his shirt until it comes free from the hem of his pants and rucks it up to assess the damage. “Fucking hell...” Covering the center and left side of his stomach is a mottled swath of swollen and alarmingly dark purple contusions. It looks fresh and fucking awful and his breath starts to come up short, if he’s being honest. There actually is a little bit of bleeding at the surface, but Laxus stands by his earlier assessment, as he can tell that it wasn’t a sharp edge that broke the skin, but the sheer force of a blunt impact.

He drops his shirt again the next moment, irrationally averse to anyone else seeing the extent of Gajeel’s wound.

Not that he can do anything now to cover up the severity of vomiting blood, however, and the bartender is clearly more accustomed to breaking up drunken brawls than mages who specialize in high-risk jobs staggering into his bar after something went awry. “So you know this guy?” the bartender says with a tone of clear doubt. Laxus clenches his jaw hard, but he can’t really blame the man for assuming he’s at fault.

“We’re...” Laxus hesitates. ‘Friends’ feels presumptuous. ‘Colleagues’ sounds stilted and stupid. ‘Mutually belligerent acquaintances’ gives the wrong impression when he needs them to agree they can trust him to look after Gajeel. Admittedly, Laxus felt more than a bit tempted to start another fight with him over his persistence- but he would never do this! “We were guildmates for a while,” he settles on honestly.

The man sighs and relents and it occurs to Laxus that it probably helps that Gajeel is currently using him as a load-bearing wall, one hand knotted in the back of Laxus’s coat. He returns his attention to the dragon slayer, trying to judge if his stupor is from nauseous pain or blood loss- until a hand takes Gajeel’s shoulder and tugs, and Laxus can hear his heartbeat skip as his breath hitches.

Before he can so much as think of doing it, Laxus has the bartender’s wrist in a perilously tight squeeze, forcibly wrenched away from Gajeel’s wounded form. At the last moment, he releases his grip and restrains himself from seriously injuring this man who by all rights only wants to help sort this out. That doesn’t keep his heartbeat from pounding thunderously and his lips forming a protective snarl of warning, and the bartender steps back nervously.

Drawn rigid and cringing from the unwelcome contact, Gajeel gasps a curse from over his shoulder. He lurches like he’s trying to stand, then Laxus has his arm wrapped around his shoulder, all his focus on coaxing him back down into the seat, panting and shuddering.

“He needs to get some treatment,” the bartender declares, peering over worriedly. But a twitch in Laxus’s hand stops him from reconsidering an approach, satisfying the visceral part of Laxus that’s screaming that he won’t suffer anyone laying a hand on Gajeel.

“I could go over to the doctor’s place, see if I can’t get her awake,” a spindly man pipes up immediately.

Laxus forces himself to slow down and think. Gajeel is badly hurt, and a physician’s help would be ideal. It would also be the easiest way to ensure that he’ll be alright and lift the unanticipated pressure off of Laxus’s mind. He wouldn’t have to keep shouldering this uninvited burden on behalf of a near-stranger who has done nothing but mess with his affairs over and over.

And yet...

He doesn’t know what business brought Gajeel here. Or caught him here, as it very well might be. He’ll concede at last that there’s certainly more going on here than Fairy Tail concocting a ploy to coax him back, at least this time. There could be something dangerous going on in this town, and Laxus has no sure way of knowing who might have it out for Gajeel, who’s in no state to defend himself. He still wouldn’t want his paranoia to get in the way of keeping anyone alive, but in this case, he does know what a dragon slayer like Gajeel can take. He’s seen him get back up after suffering significantly worse injuries than he has now. ...Laxus should know, since he inflicted them.

“Does your doctor know anything about magic?”

“Well- no.”

“Then she wouldn’t know how to treat him. I can take it from here- I have experience with this kinda thing,” he claims, in his head meaning dragon slayer magic and its swift healing benefits. “And I can contact his guild.” Technically true, and he certainly will if he needs to, though he’d much rather not. Cleverly, they put the hotel directly across the street from the bar and Laxus was telling the truth when he said he already has a room, so it shouldn’t be too tall of a task to bring Gajeel to relative safety.

Mercifully, no one objects. A couple return to their seats to stay out of the way. Arms crossed, the bartender grunts, “If ya say so... Do you need any help?”

“No,” he immediately retorts, desperate to get out from under the itch of everyone’s gazes. Then he reconsiders and adds, “If you have a first aid kit I can take, that’d be...”

A battered box is deposited in his hands and he thanks them, turning to Gajeel and leaning down. “I can manage,” he mumbles lamely, which Laxus doesn’t justify with a response. He hooks an arm under his knees and carefully picks him up, earning several strangled swears. The redhead flutters into motion pushing several chairs out of their way and Laxus nods, fighting his embarrassment to meet her eye once more. She holds the door until they’re outside.

It’s cool and quiet. Alone. He really did just dismiss everyone else willing to help with Gajeel’s emergency as if he’s qualified or devoted, which- unless Laxus missed something major- are both untrue.

He looks down at his only company hiked up in his arms. What has he gotten himself into? ...What have both of them gotten themselves into?

The threat of losing Gajeel upsets him deeply; Laxus isn’t still so obtuse that he doesn’t recognize that. What does bother him though is- since fucking when? He doesn’t loathe the guy, and their previous conversations made him appreciate some of his qualities, but Laxus still wanted him gone. What happened to turn that on its head? He doesn’t like Gajeel... so why is the overpowering pressure in his gut acting like he does?

In the lobby of the hotel, he tries to angle Gajeel away from the clerk, acting like he’s just dealing with a drunk friend while hurrying back towards his room. Luckily, they only ask if everything’s okay, they accept his automatic reassurance, and Gajeel manages to not spit up any more blood- although he looks sorely tempted.

The stairs finally do him in. He tenses on the first step, writhes on the third, then falls slack completely at the halfway point. Unconsciousness will probably do him some good, yet Laxus’s sternum compresses painfully against his heart. Biting down on his tongue, he strives to impede the aggravating pulse of worry, which doesn’t prevent him from hastening his pace to the room and gingerly laying Gajeel in what was meant to be his own bed for the night.

Before tonight, if someone asked him, he would have said the most positive emotion he felt towards Gajeel was finding him vaguely intriguing. Had he been kidding himself? Laxus cares about him, apparently. Why? Goddamn it, it only makes everything more complicated. Regardless of the fact that unrelated circumstances likely lead to Gajeel’s injury, he still ended up crashing into Laxus’s business and taking over his time to himself, and he has every reason to want the punk out of his hair. He does- at least, he always has. Shit, Laxus was ready to kill Gajeel himself not that long ago, when they first met and then again when-

Oh hell. Does this care go that far back?

He hadn’t thought about it this particularly before, but it truly is astounding that his Fairy Law had no effect whatsoever. Even if he had the coherence at the time to know he didn’t see the innocent citizens of Magnolia nor the guildmates he grew up with as his enemies deep down, it wouldn’t have surprised him if his magic had targeted Gajeel alone. He had the most reason to hate the iron dragon slayer out of everyone and to consider him an enemy through and through, which would have left him dead where he stood. Yet the magic passed over harmlessly.

He never wanted to see Gajeel gone, even then, and now it seems he’s willing to personally put in the work to make sure he won’t have to. Laxus still can’t say exactly why, but even when he considers enduring countless more run-ins with Gajeel’s cocky, combative pestering in every other bar across the country, he’d pick it in a heartbeat over simply never seeing him again. For some reason.

Shit, he’s so laughably bad at this. But... If that’s how it is, he might as well start practicing.

He’s not good with medical care and nothing in the first aid kit jumps out at him as designated for severe blunt force trauma. Playing to his relative strengths and reasoning that it will manage the swelling and restrict any movement that would make the injury worse, Laxus grabs the roll of gauze and gets to work.

  —

A painful, heated throbbing lodged in his abdomen greets Gajeel first thing. In turn, it rouses an ache throughout his whole body, the only thing he can grasp amidst the weightless dark. Barbed dregs of emotion pierce his mind before he can recall what they signify.

He’s alone, afraid.

Gajeel, Metalicana’s sonorous, draconic voice finally reaches him, and he could sob. You’re going to get yourself killed. Do they even respect that...?

A sharp and singular stab of pain makes him jolt involuntarily, groaning, eyelids flickering. The movement helps to ground him- he’s lying on his back, he realizes- though it sure as hell wasn’t worth the agony amplifying ten-fold. Whining, Gajeel falls limp again. He hears swearing from a completely different voice that, in comparison, clearly sounds real and outside his own skull.

Head spinning, he forces his eyes open, scrambling to catch up with his current situation. Everything’s hopelessly blurry. He’s in a bed- he jams his fingers into a bedside table attempting to grasp out. Blinking rapidly reveals a head of blond hair lowered over his midsection, leading his attention to the large hands tugging on bandages.

“Lax-us...?” he wheezes, bewildered by the appearance of the lightning dragon. Just how dizzy is he? But it really is Laxus, with his harsh brows and pretty scar, who lifts his head for a moment. Then he stops giving a shit because another pang hits and he garbles shamelessly, “Gahhh- oh, motherfu... Mmmm-” hissing through clenched fangs. “Ahh, what the hell...”

His unexpected bedside nurse presses his shoulder down into the mattress and Gajeel makes an effort to slowly release all the air in his lungs. “Don’t move.” He pulls the bandages again, then tacks on, “Unless I tell you. Almost done.” Laxus sounds rather apologetic, and it occurs to him that he’s to blame for the rude awakening by mistreating his injury.

Gajeel just nods. Laxus can feel guilty and do all the work, while he can lay here and sort through all the events beginning to swiftly come back to him.

He didn’t have any problem tracking down the newest Raven Tail team, this time headed by one of Ivan’s personal favorite cronies. He hadn’t had much luck turning up intel on him except that he’s called Nullpudding. (He still finds it hysterical his real name is actually something stupider than Gajeel’s placeholder designation of ‘Buttface’.) It didn’t start out that different from his previous ambushes, and in all honesty, it never was. It just so happened that the dangers of fighting other mages without using any of his own magic finally caught up to him tonight.

He still beat the lot of them, just at the expense of his internal organs. Those are important to him so he shambled into the little town where he had planned to ask the barmaid to call for a doctor and then lay face down on the floor and let his guts stabilize until they arrived. And he maintains he would have managed that if Laxus didn’t decide to start pushing him around.

For now, the knowledge that he doesn’t need to further exert himself to get care or safety has him almost slipping back under once, but Laxus is not very good at this and the pain of being jostled about keeps him conscious. Eventually, the feeling of being awake starts to stick. Thank fuck for the hardiness and healing of dragon slayers; the pain is already retreating into the background. He feels relatively sound when a conclusive knot draws tight over the bandages.

Laxus pulls back far enough to look over the full extent of his handiwork. Judging by the stiffness in his back, Gajeel suspects he hasn’t paused to do so since he began, and again he wonders if it might be more likely he’s hallucinating Laxus than anything that would prompt him to really do all this. Gajeel fights the urge to squirm as his gaze turns grave. “What happened?”

“Ahh, it...” Shit, how is he supposed to dance around any contradictions with substantial blood loss and no kind of heads-up? “Well, it’s a long story.”

“Funny, I had figured as much,” he remarks blandly and Gajeel grunts. “I can tell something’s going on with you.” Laxus plucks at the fabric of his shirt in a scrutinizing pinch, bringing the thick, black cotton of his disguise into view, and it registers that the other knows full well it isn’t his normal get up. Damn it all. Playing this off will be a major pain in the ass. “Causing trouble?”

He feels his mouth go through the motions of a smirk, too distracted to give it humor. “Only for punks who deserve it.”

Under his sharp attention, Laxus catches the words as a cat pins a mouse between its claws. His eyes narrow dangerously. “So are they the ones who did this to you?” he presses.

Specifically, he has Nullpudding to thank for that. The little troll was deceptively fast and his magic expanded his arms to the bulk of tree trunks. While Gajeel dodged another mage, he swung both massive fists at once, one directly at his head and the other aimed for his stomach.

Generally speaking, against broad, bludgeoning types of attack, Gajeel would take a hit to the head much better than one to the gut. The benefit of having iron for bones means blows like that can’t break them or damage anything deeper, but his abdomen is vital and vulnerable with only skin and muscle in the way. His instincts had screamed to defend his insides, but he lifted his hands to repel the hit to his face because, even though he could take it, he couldn’t risk his disguise being torn away.

Nullpudding’s punch to the gut nearly made him heave on the spot and had his sight flickering even after he brought him down with a throwing knife and choked him unconscious.

“Punks, like I said.”

“Are you... How do-” Laxus wets his lips. His eyes slide down the length of Gajeel’s battered body then swing away, finding anything in the room to look at other than him. Awkwardness overtakes him as he clearly grapples with confliction over whatever he wants to say. Spotting it in a wayward glance, he sighs, then drags a chair closer to the bed and sits, mustering his focus back on Gajeel. “You gonna black out on me again?” he settles on asking.

He’s asking Gajeel how he feels- so far as he’s able to.

At length, Gajeel starts to process the implications of Laxus’s presence. He remembers coming across him in the bar- not something he meant for this time- and his typical accusatory temper. He didn’t seem happy to see him. Though he also recalls the press of Laxus’s warm hands supporting him when the pain surged over. However, the thorough if unpracticed dressings, small, private bedroom, and poorly veiled concern suggest significantly greater intimacy.

This feels like the act of someone who doesn’t trust his care to anyone else, a kind of person Gajeel frankly had no idea might actually exist.

“’m fine...” he answers wanly. Maybe some onlookers stepped in and helped get all this done until Laxus felt obligated to wave them off and take over. It seems more likely, but he can’t smell anyone else’s scent in the room. He must have carried him here. “You did all this?”

Laxus’s chest rises and falls and Gajeel notices his stupid coat isn’t on. “This ain’t how I planned to spend my night,” he mumbles out.

“I didn’t expect ya to... to patch me up yerself, honestly. Coulda dumped me at a clinic. Didn’t know you liked me enough to fret.” Laxus tsks and works his jaw for a beat, but a conflicted look twists his face and he doesn’t come up with a reply. Gajeel watches him just as silently.

It strikes him that if Laxus really did do all this, that must mean he feels positively towards him in some capacity, so he hurries to add, “Glad to know I was wrong.”

The lightning mage shakes himself then pulls his thinking face: left eye closed and the right looking off to the side. After several moments lost in thought, he loosens and he seems intent to leave it at that and move on. Tiredly, he retorts, “Well, I still had to figure out what you’re doing here.” Then he leans over and folds his arms over his knees. “You know, for the third time.”

Gajeel shifts to prop himself up a bit so he can regain a semblance of control and dignity, woefully betrayed when a spasm in his gut fills his eyes with a firework of black sparks. Biting his tongue, he just hopes Laxus doesn’t notice. “Working,” he exhales, using his windedness as exasperation. This facade may have run its course. “I don’ know what yer so-”

“Cut the bullshit.” Gajeel blinks and tries to get the two Laxuses swimming across his vision to merge back into one. “You’re following me.” It is not a question.

“Gh... I’m not.” Laxus glares at his assertion and opens his mouth. “-But someone is.”

That makes him stop and hone the full weight of his attention in on him. If he were any worse at this, Gajeel would have let loose a taut breath from the feeling, but he’s good, and he knows that near truths make for excellent lies when he can afford them. With Laxus, he decides he can. “You’re strong, you’re known for it, and now you’re an independent mage. That garners attention.” He doesn’t see so much as a hint of disbelief in Laxus’s eyes, and he would bet his ass that several legal guilds have already tried scouting him, proving the point.

“Some people have been tailing ya, and I happen to be on a job to bring those same people to heel, get it? Honest, I’ve got no interest in breathing down your neck- Like hell should you have to deal with that shit from anyone. But because I’m tracking them, it means I’m also all but tracking you half the time.”

Quietly, Laxus rumbles, “Who are they?”

“Can’t tell ya. It would compromise the person I’m trying to help if I talk about our agreement,” he fibs lightly, silently thanking the master for finally giving a run down of official contract stipulations and enforcement the other week. To keep his attention divided, he points out, “Especially to a non-guild member.”

Laxus huffs, the line of his scar skewing over his expression. Gajeel denies the sigh rising in his own chest, resentful of the restlessness harrying him; it’s not like him. He does offer, “If they could put you in danger, I promise I’ll tell you anyway,” and it’s not a lie. “But as is, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

With a wary shift of his head, Laxus frowns, then he gestures at Gajeel’s bruised and thickly bandaged middle. “Is that so? Because I would think anyone who can do this to you has already proven themselves as dangerous. I’d rather know who I might end up dealing with.”

Gajeel doesn’t respond for a beat, too shocked by Laxus’s open acknowledgement of his strength. “O-oh.” The last time felt more self deprecating than anything else, but this time it hits him that Laxus really does respect his and Salamander’s win in their fight, more than even they really do. It sits somewhere in his chest with a weight Gajeel can’t quite put a name to, but it thrums through him resonantly.

-Still, what Laxus doesn’t realize is that the reason he took such a rough blow was specifically because he had to fight without that full strength, or any of his magic whatsoever. “Ya flatter me, but...” His face feels hot. “Well, my point still stands. Circumstances kinda tied my hands during that fight, in a manner of speaking; I had limited means. You wouldn’t be stuck in the same situation, and, honestly, I wouldn’t be in this situation,” he gestures down his gauze wrapped ribs, “if I coulda fought normally.”

If nothing else, he wants Laxus to believe he does regard his safety with full seriousness. Gajeel will tell him all the sensitive details of his mission without hesitation if at any point he thinks he could be in danger because of it. But as it stands, knowing wouldn’t really get him through this mess any more safely or effectively- rather, for the sake of Gajeel’s and the guild’s preservation, he would need to convincingly pretend to know nothing- but it would reopen old wounds and salt them with paranoia, deteriorating his chance to decompress and recover. Even as a punishment of isolation and likely painful uprooting, his expulsion should provide him that, at least.

It wouldn’t do any good to tell him about Ivan; it’d only throw oil on an already volatile fire. Once, Gajeel might have done it for that reason alone, but not anymore.

Laxus scrutinizes him with a blooming wariness. “...Is that what you’ve been up to all the times we ran into each other?”

“Right,” Gajeel confesses readily, contradicting a buried, needling shard of discomfort that he can’t place despite his careful diligence. He’s... nervous, which is an equally unusual and unwelcome sensation. Hoping to put at least Laxus at relative ease, he explains, “I’ll take care of ’em in due time, I just have to do it slow and particular to avoid any complications. I’ve got it handled.”

With clear distaste, Laxus sneers, “So I should just pretend like this doesn’t involve me?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Yeah, fuck that. Clearly, it does. I spent the last half hour piecing you back together and now I’d like to know why.”

“You do. Also, I didn’t ask for that, you did it on your own!” Gajeel retorts heatedly. He then forces out a deliberate, measured exhale, not really in the best shape to give in to his aggression. “I already told you more than I arguably should’ve, ’cause I decided I trust you.”

That makes Laxus look at least a little contrite, but he continues to press. “I mean exactly why. I don’t like to be left in the dark like a complacent pawn, like I’d be content to leave my fate in other hands. I’m not, and if anyone thinks they can make use of me for their own ends, they’re gonna have to go through me. I’d like to decide for myself what to think of the people hunting me, and also whoever gave you the job, quite frankly.” Gajeel glares. “Where’d you get that stick up your ass, huh? Didn’t know you cared so much about rules. I don’t, personally- which isn’t to say I’d go blabbing to anyone else about it, but it is my business. I think you owe me some real answers after sticking your nose in my business over and over. And I intend to get them.”

Gajeel razes Laxus with a brazenly defiant once-over, flicking his tongue down along his teeth just to punctuate the irreverence. “After all the shit you gave me when we met and when we fought, you can’t just let me try and do the right thing now that I’m working as a member of Fairy Tail?!”

It’s a low blow and he can see it in Laxus’s wince and immediately averted eyes, but that’s what makes it so effective at deterring him from demanding more answers. Admittedly, guilt tripping him is mean in a way Gajeel usually doesn’t feel he has the right to act anymore, despite the lingering habit. But Laxus did try to murder a bunch of people, including him on those very occasions, so he doesn’t feel so irredeemable and guilty for being a bit of a bitch about it.

If Laxus didn’t want him to use it against him, he should have thought of that before attempting a coup d’etat.

As intended, he surrenders his attempts to wring more details from Gajeel, visibly trying to make peace with the nonspecific explanation he received. Gajeel bites at his lip, and after a beat of hesitation, he adds, “I’ll just say the situation probably isn’t that far off from your best guess,” because he finds he no longer wants to tell bald-faced lies to Laxus’s face.

In Laxus’s position, given what he’s heard, Gajeel would fill in the blanks with the assumption he’s contending with a dark guild. Gajeel already has a reputation of taking them down, it would explain his reluctance to acknowledge it aloud considering the Council’s ban on guild conflicts, and dark guilds are often just as interested in acquiring powerful mages as the legal ones. It gives him a very accurate picture of the situation, quite frankly, just omitting the specific context that said dark guild is his father’s, and the personal implications that lurk beneath that.

Nerves nip him relentlessly and snarl him in the notion of accuracy because that’s it, Gajeel realizes, that’s his fear: a fear that he’s lying to Laxus. And that riles the full measure of his focus for several reasons, first and foremost because he loves lying. It’s easy, he’s good at it, and it’s fun. Even now, the ethical factor usually fails to particularly impress him.

But irrespective of that, he’s also not lying. Laxus is safe, there’s no real threat of harm Gajeel’s protecting him from. Ivan, stupid and blinkered as he is, underestimates his son’s enormous power. This undertaking was never about safeguarding Laxus’s neck to begin with; he settled this internal debate the last time he watched Ivan’s goons turn tail and flee.

Gajeel concluded a while ago that Laxus isn’t at risk. So...

Meticulously, he runs back his cover story in his mind and locates the real lie: that he’s here doing a job for someone. His infiltration is a job for all intents and purposes- albeit not standard contract work- and he wouldn’t have done it if Master Makarov hadn’t assigned it to him. But this, his repeated presence, the sole reason he’s here looking Laxus in the eye right now, has nothing to do with the master. Not only did no one send him to do this, the master specifically ordered him not to.

It’s not a job. This is Gajeel’s own personal conviction, a choice he alone made. Why? Is he lying when he says he respects Laxus’s private business?

It doesn’t feel like a lie, even now that he’s analyzing it. He hadn’t really considered it before, since he had no strong feelings towards Laxus going into this. He honestly didn’t care about whatever he intended to do with himself after the master booted him out of the guild. He’d silently wished him luck figuring shit out, and nothing more. He had bigger fish to fry. He only really gave Laxus a second thought once Ivan boasted his plan for the lacrima inside him, since he couldn’t exactly put him out of mind when the whole situation made him so overwhelmingly angry...

Lowering his chin to his chest, Gajeel peers down at his bandaged body and decidedly extinguishes his fear. He’s not presuming to protect Laxus so much as he is defying Ivan.

He hates that man. He hates every man like him, because god knows the world is rife with them. Whatever stupid fucking curse is on the Dreyar bloodline doesn’t apply to him, but that does not conversely shield Ivan from him, and he’ll go down all the same once Gajeel gets the opening he’s engineering. The ones who hurt him may have gotten away with it, but one less bastard like that in the world is always a worthy undertaking, and always so satisfying.

Even if Makarov decided to relieve him of the task, Gajeel would still want to see it through. It matters to him.

They dragged him into this, but he refuses to become the tool they force to deliver Laxus the news that his own dad would cut him open and steal the magic that bolstered his struggling constitution and that he uses to make a living just for fucking money. Fuck that- fuck that! If this has fallen to his hands, if he gets to call the shot, then he’ll deny the world that evil. Just watch.

Laxus’s business is his own. This- this is Gajeel’s business.

As is his tendency, the other dragon slayer has left his pensive silence unscathed, using the time to pick at the buttons of his shirt. When Gajeel looks over at him again, he sighs. Then Laxus asks, as if he hasn’t been here for the whole conversation, “...Why do you keep hanging around me?”

“Dude-”

“No,” Laxus bites out, “with me? I get it if you have to track down some fuckers who’re hot on my trail for whatever reason, but why go through the trouble of talking with me? I really did put you through hell in the scant couple days I knew you... Why do you just shrug that off? I hurt you and everyone else in the guild, so it’s not like I deserve your time.”

“Ha! I have absolutely no leg to stand on to judge you for any of that! I’d be a real fucking brat cryin’ over how ya wanted to beat me dead and you didn’t care how I felt,” he whimpers theatrically, “when ya did it because I tore apart your guild, kidnapped one of your own, and beat on her and the others ’cause I felt like it.” Gajeel rolls his eyes to avoid looking at him directly. There was a reason he let Laxus beat him, after all. “If I couldn’t stand to be around ya ’cause you did such awful stuff, I’d have a real nightmare on my hands livin’ with myself all the time.”

A quiet huff leaves Laxus at that. “You were a heartless son of a bitch to me then, no question,” Gajeel concedes, “but you ain’t been as bad since.” Laxus looks at him with a steady, yet very sharp stare. Gajeel would have up and left if he ever wanted to, but he didn’t. He can’t think of something that makes him regret not abandoning their interactions, satisfied by the recollections he runs through his mind- then he frowns as a new angle presents itself to him.

Sure in his awareness that Laxus misplaced his fear of being pestered on Fairy Tail’s behalf, Gajeel had shrugged off his adamant aversion to his presence. But maybe that concern alone didn’t account for the cold reception.

“If anything... You’ve put up with me surprisingly decently when I know you want time away from Fairy Tail. Even though I ain’t interested in bringing it up, I’m still connected, I... am still one of ’em. Would you rather not see me around anymore?”

The prospect is dully disappointing, but he’d do it.

A tiny gap opens between Laxus’s lips- which isn’t actually interesting enough to merit Gajeel’s attention, so he quits looking. It closes when he swallows. “I didn’t mean that.” It takes time for Laxus to pick out the words, and Gajeel waits. “It bothers me less knowing why you’re really here- at least generally. And you’re... less stress than the others.”

For a moment his seriousness goes taut, then gives up as he scoffs and slouches, indicating him with a flippant flick of his hand. “You think that I ain’t shit. And bizarrely, I find it comforting. ’s way easier to forget so many people decided they admire me for no good reason.” He grunts. “With you- I don’t think it’s possible for me to make a worse impression than I already have, so... Well, no fear of letting ya down.”

It is enlightening. Yet, as it so happens, he doesn’t find himself all that surprised to hear it. “I get it. ’m glad I know you’re not impeccable and... superior. It gets tiring.” The pressure, the guilt, the debt. He doesn’t elaborate on how he feels within Fairy Tail’s guildhall; he doesn’t think he can. “-But after everything, I don’t feel I owe you amends.” A mild nod and hum concedes his stance. “You make me feel less like- a bite-risk dog fumbling through rehab in a flock of perfect lambs, as if it won’ always be a mongrel.”

Laxus does look surprised, staring at him through a rapid flutter of lashes. Then he purses his lips and glances off to the side, hesitating. Gajeel wonders if that may have been a bit too openly heavy for whatever weird accord they have. Maybe Laxus wasn’t counting on a heart-to-heart (of sorts) and so that’s why he’s gone all nervous. The tips of his ears twitch with embarrassment, but Gajeel refuses to backpedal, which is just as well when, finally, Laxus declares, “You come up with the most offbeat things to say.”

Gajeel snorts blatant and loud- he just can’t help it. It is so tempting to tell him how the pot calls the kettle black, but then he might actually get a clue and stop doing it and, damn it, it’s painful how fond he’s growing of this fool’s dedication to irony. Instead, he just shakes his head helplessly, his gaze gone languid. “I get it though,” Laxus tries adding.

“Yeah, yeah.” He sits up and carefully pulls his shirt down over his aching middle. Laxus stiffens and watches him warily, but he manages fine. When he cranes his neck and asks about his bag, Laxus jabs a thumb towards the foot of the bed. It’s... it’s kind of nice, Gajeel supposes, to have someone covering his back in a moment like this.

“I didn’t know if you would trust the doctor here, but you should probably still go if you do... Or do you need to stay here for tonight? Are any of those assholes still out there, do they still need to be taken out?”

He grins wide and sharp, yet it has none of the teasing angle he expects to take shape, warming him more than the past goading smirks. “Gihe! You thought ya had to fret over me, but oh you shoulda seen the other guys! They’ve all been taken out alright.” Laxus takes him at his word.

But he can’t stay, not now with those gears in his mind turning again. “I should make sure word about the scene I caused doesn’t spread very far, though...” There’s always something. “Now,” he prods. “I told you none of this, got it? It’s just such a funny coincidence we’ve happened to run into each other this many times.”

Laxus sighs in surrender. “Hilarious.” Gajeel nods in approval. “Thanks, I guess.”

Stiffly, Gajeel pulls himself out of bed while the other hovers alongside, but he doesn’t reach for aid. “Don’t mention it, blondie. Thanks for the... for the save,” he reluctantly grumbles.

“Gajeel.” Laxus seizes his arm when he passes and meets his confusion with intensity befitting a crack of lightning. “Be careful.”

  —

“And Laxus hasn’t heard anything about your place in this, right? You make sure nothing can draw any of his attention to you either?”

“Of course!” Gajeel tells Master Makarov with complete, casual confidence. “I keep out of his affairs and it ain’t like our paths ever cross otherwise. Believe me, I couldn’t be further from his mind.”

  —

It’s a Saturday, Gajeel remembers when he enters the pub and actually finds a crowd for once. This place is more his speed than the others, occupied by a seedy pack of arguable crooks, but together in the night their company feels just as vivacious as anyone else’s. When Gajeel approaches the bar, Laxus wordlessly takes a glass waiting on the counter and holds it aloft in offering- his regular whiskey sour. Trilling with a grin, he arches a brow inquisitively when Laxus finally looks over his shoulder at him. “What? Do you think I’m still surprised to see you?”

Laxus is in a good mood, he realizes with a start. And with his first drink ready for him generously free of charge, Gajeel’s inclined to follow his lead, so he downs half in one go.

“Cheers,” Laxus snorts.

Together, they toss the passing time by the wayside as they talk, their volume increasing in correlation to their decreasing coherence. Not that it helps that Gajeel starts telling him about the Edolas fiasco, which he suspects Laxus never actually believes is true. (“I’m tellin’ ya, he’s the coolest fuckin’ cat ever, his sword was like fifty feet long!”) They call for drinks for the other as often as themselves and the alcohol burns very nicely.

Laxus also starts laughing as the night wears on, loud and genuine, and Gajeel feels exceptionally pleased with himself and he covets each instance like trophies. It rouses his undeniably competitive nature and thrills him with the conviction of winning despite that there’s no semblance of an actual competition over this- but he’s considerably too tipsy to question that part.

When the next drinks arrive together, Gajeel locks their arms and Laxus doesn’t resist him, throwing the shots back roughly in sync.

From that point, Gajeel’s tactile nature breaks through. He likes to push at people, to nudge, pat, and lean on, and Laxus is right there. He always watches him do it, but doesn’t drive him off when he gets that drunk. Swaying under his touches, Laxus himself is very red in the face, flushed over the bridge of his nose out to the rounded tips of his ears. For once, they don’t confuse Gajeel’s perception of him as a dragon slayer, fully engrossed in the feeling of carousing with a fellow dragon.

He almost switches tongues when he thoroughly mangles one of his stories, then curses. “’m too drunk, shit, I can’t remember any right words in this fucking- fucked language. I fucking miss draconic, ’s so much better.”

“Really?” Laxus focuses on him as best he can. “Tell me, I don’t care.”

“Ya wouldn’t understand it,” Gajeel laments, then looks out at the room. “An’ I really shouldn’t draw any attention to myself...”

“I’m paying attention,” Laxus assures sincerely, the meaning going over his head. “’m shit at languages, I don’ know any- You must be really smart.”

Blinking, Gajeel leaves his mouth hanging slack for a heartbeat. As the statement slowly registers, he feels a glint of something poignant surfacing through the haze. Numbly, Gajeel replies, “Thinkin’ in one tongue and havin’ to talk with another always makes me feel real- fuckin’ stupid.”

Laxus blinks back. “Well... I don’ mind if you don’ say anything, if it makes you feel like that.”

“I... hm... ’kay.” They do talk a bit more before the night is out, but that opens up a comfortable silence between them, exchanged as personally and enjoyably as any conversation.

  —

Laxus bends all his efforts towards sleeping through his hangover and crawls out of bed in the afternoon, too late to travel somewhere else. For lack of anything better to do, he decides to wander and see if he can find some work in town.

It raises his hopes to hear, “Hey, you! Wait!” A man darts across the street to accost him, examining his face. “Ain’t you one of the Fairy Tail wizards?”

“Who’s asking?” Laxus avoids answering.

“Do you know anything more about that black dragon?”

“-What?”

Wringing his hands, the man tells him a dragon was seen on the distant mountain, apparently reported by someone from Fairy Tail doing a job there. Naturally, the guy didn’t hear their name or what they looked like, so Laxus can only guess at who it was.

“You should contact the guild directly; I don’t know anything.” The man deflates, mumbling vaguely in concern about a dragon so near his livestock, but walks off without an ensuing job offer.

It’s disquieting. -If it was a Fairy Tail mage though, at least Laxus doesn’t have to worry about getting the rumor back to Natsu himself. He is not ready to see him again.

He subconsciously braces himself for his rancor regarding their argument to resurface, but nothing comes. Instead, his mind drifts back to his conversation with Gajeel about the same subject, leaving his tempered mood remarkably intact. That chance to convey his sentiment to another person and hearing him put it into words seemingly soothes the compulsion to rehash his frustrations to himself yet again.

Laxus uses the unfamiliar reprieve to contemplate Natsu’s still inexplicable accusation of blustering about being Makarov’s grandson. It’s not like Natsu doesn’t call the master ‘gramps’ himself, just like the rest of the guild, showing far more affection for him than Laxus has in a long time, so...

That...

Was it jealousy that incited Natsu to furiously insist his relation to Makarov paled compared to the guild’s family ties and that Laxus had nothing to boast about- as if he’d done anything of the sort? Maybe he was too busy appeasing his own insecure envy to see the truth of Laxus’s rage right in front of him. He couldn’t comprehend Laxus denouncing the very thing he so desperately craved.

Levy had just delivered the news of the old man’s critical condition. The threat of losing his doting, paternal guild master surely would’ve driven Natsu to cling to their self-made bond even tighter. And looking past his degrading words, Laxus can understand.

He has no parents to rely on either, and he knows that loss isn’t easily forgotten. Natsu has the whole guild attuned to any mention of dragons because they all know his relentless fixation stems from his grief for Igneel. He’ll doubtless hear about the black dragon soon, if he hasn’t already. His implications likely just didn’t register as Natsu tried to compensate for his lack of kin.

...It makes sense, and Laxus accepts it for what it is. In his anger’s absence, he finds space to breathe more freely. Maybe he’s finally getting better at that levity and mindfulness Gramps suggested.

Chapter Text

  IV. FORECAST

Who did I think I was kidding, tryin’ to act all reformed? Laxus thinks with a numb kind of distance. This is a farce, I’m fucking hopeless.

From between the tense fingers he has pitched along his forehead, he sees the willowy waitress approach with his order: a plate of food only, foregoing any booze that could make his shitty mood any less manageable. When she sets down the plate, he flinches and grits his teeth at the sharp clink.

Laxus makes an effort to relax his muscles and collect himself to a decent, nonconfrontational form for her sake, and yet she still picks up on something or other that sends her fleeing with barely disguised fear. Teeth grinding, he stabs his fork through the food and hits the plate underneath with more force than necessary.

Regrettably, the fare is too mediocre to serve as a distraction, leaving his mind free to mull over his anger in a self-perpetuating cycle. His head aches with tension. He’s not even angry at Fairy Tail this time, which somehow makes it worse, actually.

Laxus balks warily from his bitterness towards his former guild. Even though it’s eased considerably with two months of distance and Gajeel’s intermittent insight expediting a shift in perspective, he’d much prefer to be rid of the feeling entirely. It remains by far the greatest deterrent between him and a return to Fairy Tail. For one, Laxus still worries about how intensely angry he got at the people he cares about. He wants to know with confidence that, if push comes to shove, his care will outweigh his anger. 

For another, Laxus figures that if he admits his grievances have persisted, it’d earn immediate suspicion that he hasn’t realized he was the one in the wrong. He has, he’s fucking shamefaced, but that regrettably doesn’t erase the other insults he endured from them, and he doubts the guild would trust him to cope with that reasonably. He still doesn’t fully trust himself. Those unaddressed slights remain along with the anger they inspire in him, and he would have to contend with that in Fairy Tail.

But at least there’s something to contend with at all. Right now, he’s just angry. It started with a dull headache when he woke up and accompanied him the whole day, animate enough to persist through pleasant moments and spike at any provocation. By now, it’s crawling through all his nerves and lodged in the brittle resistance left in his temples. Nothing logically earned his ire, so Laxus is just furious at everything, from the sound of people’s footsteps to the bump of his bag against his back.

That’s why he went out of his way to hole up in the sketchiest, least frequented bar he could find. This does not save him- because of course it fucking doesn’t- from Gajeel strolling inside with his customary ease like he belongs there. Laxus takes a deep, forceful breath in an attempt to cool his head. His whole body feels unbearably tight.

He keeps eating, refusing to look, refusing to acknowledge him, devoting all of his capacity to defusing the gnawing anger ready to engulf him. Far too soon, Gajeel wanders his way with a cloudy mug of beer in hand. “Well this joint’s even more charming than the last.”

“So how long exactly will it take for you to finish this one fucking job?” falls from Laxus’s mouth.

Gajeel arches a brow of studded iron and the glitter of light shining off irks him further. He sidesteps around behind his chair and takes a handful of napkins from the bar, using them to pull off a clump of burrs stuck to the side of his pants. Only then does he reply, “However long it takes.”

Laxus massages the bridge of his nose between his thumbs. Whatever. He’s already here and that’s that. Gajeel still hasn’t taken a seat, but Laxus has no intention of addressing it. If he can just avoid any prolonged interaction, he can stay civil.

Inauspiciously, the dragon slayer leans up against the table and side-eyes him. “What’s got you all worked up? Did something happen?”

“’s nothing. Don’t feel like talkin’,” Laxus grunts, tense and clipped. 

“No?”

“Not to you, anyway,” he snaps, heat starting to get the better of him. With an unimpressed look, Gajeel sets his beer on the table with an infuriating thunk. Laxus lowers his head into his hands avoidantly and breathes deeply, but Gajeel doesn’t take the hint and opportunity to leave. “Jus’ piss off, creep. Can’t you do this tracking sh-”

Gajeel kicks his ankle hard and Laxus nearly punches him in the throat, rattling the table with a visceral jerk, but he stops and forcibly drills into his own head that Gajeel has good reason to cut him off from carelessly bringing up his mission in public. Even if there’s basically no one around.

He has to wait several moments before he can swallow and restart, “Can’t you do whatever you need to do without pestering me every single time? I don’t need you checkin’ up on me.”

Gajeel rolls his shoulders so tautly he’d think there were ants crawling on his skin, even going so far as to glance around the room. When his eyes return, they examine Laxus like a rake drawn over him. Part of him does its best to remind the rest of him that he does actually like this man and ideally he shouldn’t burn down any freshly built bridges. Then Gajeel flicks one ear and shrugs. “You didn’t seem to care before.”

“So what?! I changed my mind and I’m sick of your fucking hovering! Leave me alone!” he rumbles deep in his throat.

Wordlessly, Gajeel straightens his spine, lifting his chin and squaring his shoulders. Suddenly, as if he wants to prove his point, he’s actively making a show of hovering, circling like a vulture overhead, or like a hound corralling an unruly charge.

Laxus stares at him in astonished indignance, something dangerous rising to a boil inside him in response to his gall. Throwing his fork down onto the plate, he turns to face Gajeel directly. He almost loses it when he makes him twist to maintain the confrontation. He clenches his fists into stillness, bruising his palms with his nails. “Do you mind?”

Gajeel snaps his jaws in his face with a shove and all of Laxus’s self-restraint disintegrates on the spot, like Gajeel slid a hand inside the folds of his brain and flipped a switch.

Toppling his chair, Laxus erupts to his feet with a guttural noise and lunges at Gajeel, and when he still doesn’t back down, he throws the first punch. Fully expecting the attack, Gajeel is already dodging out of the way, retaliating with a jab aimed at his elbow.

No build up- the bout takes off instantly, the alarmed cry of the waitress acting as their ringside bell.

Laxus lashes out and seizes the offensive, his vision tunneling on his opponent, singularly intent on crushing the other dragon slayer to the ground. In whatever corner he discarded coherence, it sinks in that Gajeel maneuvers and strikes without using his magic, and Laxus has already accepted those tacit terms before his brain can form any opinion on them. Hand to hand, they brawl crudely, pitting the natural strength of their muscle and bone against each other. Gajeel proves a slippery bastard, circling in and out of range, weaving around the tables and escaping around his sides to threaten his back. But that suits Laxus just fine; he needs to press forward, needs to move. He pursues Gajeel relentlessly.

He snarls, the pair of them inflicting bruises between dodges and deflections. In his rage, he tests every possible opening without deliberation, craving each one, always on the attack. In contrast, Gajeel works to evade and aims his blows when he sees a chance at a vulnerable spot. Precision Laxus doesn’t bother with. He has the height and weight advantage; as is his habit, Laxus aims broad strokes that don’t need to land somewhere debilitating to send his opponent reeling. It makes it easier and more satisfying to lay in where it hurts once he’s repelled them. 

The exertion burns and he needs more. Gajeel snarls back at him even as he backsteps out of range. If he’s hoping to skirt a proper confrontation, Laxus will simply run him down.

Restraining nothing, he kicks against his shin and shoulder checks him with all his strength. Gajeel goes down, but not the way he wanted- one leg folds and he twists back as the force goes through him and slams his weight into Laxus’s hip, bringing him down with him.

Laxus doesn’t have the second’s worth of patience to stand back up compared to the immediacy of wrestling on the floor like animals. Muffled, they thrash and claw until Laxus jams an elbow into his ribs and rolls upwards to seize control.

The moment he does, with shocking flexibility, Gajeel braces a leg between them and uses the leverage to pitch him over into a heap. Gajeel pins him in the painful contortion impressively fast, locks his arm under his shoulder, and lands a knee on his neck.

Just as soon as Laxus processes that he actually got the better of him, Gajeel releases him and retreats.

Laxus rounds on him, lightning moments from his fingertips, incandescently incensed not even by the upset, but because he apparently thinks that he doesn’t need to hold out to actually secure a win over him. Yet, when he turns, there’s no smug disdain or giddy arrogance to be seen. Gajeel at least doesn’t consider this fight decided, given his ready stance and how he lifts his fists, leading Laxus’s gaze up to his staunch, serious stare. He’s ready for the next move.

Distantly, Laxus finds this strange, but his instincts have the reins right now, and he immediately leaps at him and back into the fray.

He’s not finished yet.

Without any mind for the time that passes, Laxus tests his vigor against Gajeel’s own, reaching for the extents of his means in each motion. He doesn’t blink, he doesn’t deviate, he strives unerringly out with his intent and the deep, pervasive stretch goes straight down his spine. The taunting growls and glowers are abandoned; he doesn’t spare any scrap of extraneous effort.

Gajeel’s eyes are fixed on him in turn, as well they should be for him to stand any chance of enduring his onslaught.

Laxus is an experienced and expert fighter, and even while seething with rage, he registers a few details. Most significantly: Gajeel has inordinately good balance. Throughout the complicated maneuvers that weave them around the furniture, he shifts his center of gravity with tight control and speed. He pivots through contrived positions just a hair too far for any other person to reasonably sustain without ever faltering. The prowess allows him to contend with Laxus so adeptly.

In the acute heat of the moment, it doesn’t matter to him anywhere near enough for Laxus to adjust his tactics from how he wants to fight, only urging him on to press harder, focus further. A rhythm emerges, taking over for his anger in guiding every sidestep and left hook, every breath and heartbeat. He propels it while Gajeel extends it, like thread he pulls from a spinning wheel. The staggering hit Laxus lands on the underside of his jaw feels as natural and expected as the dodge that leads Gajeel in to strike the crux of his left arm.

At some point, the predominant force on his senses shifts from the fight to his own breathing, heavy and deep and encompassing. The altercation wanes in importance until only momentum compels him, and he’s claimed by an inexplicable calm.

Laxus doesn’t react with enough vehemence to dislodge him when Gajeel catches his arm from underneath, so the iron dragon throws his strength into the twist of his back and pulls him around and down. He lands on the floor front first, a winded grunt forced out by the impact of Gajeel following to drop onto his back roughly, his hold twitching even as it forms. With the momentum now broken, Laxus falls slack. Gajeel stills.

“Feelin’ better now?” he gasps somewhere near his left ear and then promptly rolls off.

What a thing to ask. He finds it stranger, in fact, because he does feel considerably better, remarkably less strung out. He’s mostly just tired. “What the hell was that about?” he groans. After a beat, Laxus pushes upright and sits cross legged opposite Gajeel’s prim and cat-like crouch. Yet again, he shows a conspicuous lack of indication that he just won their fight, or that Laxus lost, maintaining a casually neutral expression without so much as a quip. It’s as though nothing happened- except that he can already feel he’ll have a black eye come morning. Still short of an answer, Laxus presses, “Seriously, what was that?”

Gajeel licks clean his own split and swollen lower lip. “I was just tryin’ to help out.”

Oh, for- This guy’s fucking inscrutable. “And was that really worth the risk of me beating the ever living shit out of you? Provoking me like that was a dangerous play,” he points out, void of past pride.

“Nah, I knew you wouldn’t.” Laxus composes himself and levels his attention at him. The waitress is gawking at them in terror like they’re unhinged, dangerous freaks, but Gajeel doesn’t so much as acknowledge her staring, so Laxus does his best to emulate him. “If you went that far and properly beat me, then you wouldn’t be able to continue to beat the shit out of me, and that’s the part you really wanted.” Under his narrowed gaze, Gajeel shifts nervously. “...Ya know?”

“No.”

At that, Gajeel decidedly breaks eye contact and Laxus heaves a sigh. He doesn’t feel great, dizzily exhausted, in fact, but he no longer feels like he’s about to blow a gasket, which was apparently Gajeel’s angle from the start. “Exactly what about wrestling like rabid dogs helped, and how did you know that it would?”

“Err- well...” Gajeel appears to pick his words with deliberate caution. “I recognized how angry you were, and you were... penning it up. Like a pressure valve. Which can end up breaking things, you know? But I didn’t mind getting into it so, uh, I did. Look, I wasn’t thinkin’ that hard about it,” he defends, “it happens, and I figured you’d let off steam this way before!”

“You don’t need to entertain my hotheaded bullshit.” It’s precisely that kind of thing Laxus needs to learn how to smother by himself, before it can control him. He confesses, “It wasn’t warranted- how pissed off I was.”

Contrarily, Gajeel asserts, “It don’t need to be. I’m not talking about the cause, just the anger; it was there and it’s worth engaging with, just in itself. You’re allowed to feel angry but, ah, what makes the difference is if you’re allowed to use the anger. That’s all I was doin’- I know I’m at my worst when I’m pissed with no outlet. I was allowing you to use it on me by ticking you off. I was letting you fight me for however long it took to... use it all up.”

On principle, Laxus is tempted to question why Gajeel couldn’t just say that instead of getting all in his face, but he doesn’t bother. If he heard him say that beforehand, then he would have actually bitten his head off. Gajeel himself seems uncomfortably aware of how much it sounds like teaching an unruly kid what negative emotions are. An implication that his retaliation is ineffectual enough that he can chance toying with it, predictable enough that he can bait it as he pleases.

He doesn’t know how, but a concept that sounds so deeply patronizing, in practice felt like acknowledgement and respect. Each movement of their conflict backed up the seriousness of Laxus’s strength and emotion unquestioningly.

He can’t compare it to anything else. Time taught him to expect wary disapproval of his temper, and he came to regard it as dangerous. Laxus can’t remember his anger ever feeling worthy this way- and it’s jarring enough that he can’t entirely appreciate it.

“You’re giving me more credit than I’m due, ya know. I don’t think normal people have so many anger issues that they ever even get to that point, especially for no good reason. I shouldn’t keep doin’ this shit...”

Gajeel frowns and rocks on the balls of his feet once. “I think that’s when it helps the most, honestly. If there was something wrong that had you so worked up, brawling does fuck all to fix that part, so even the anger can bounce right back. Gets messy.”

“Yeah? And how did you know there wasn’t?”

“Er, I mean, that was the whole point of menacing you a little, I was gauging if you wanted to fight. I would’ve backed off if it seemed like I was upsetting you.”

“Right,” Laxus scoffs, “like you need an excuse to be a menace. I think you have a habit of playing on people’s anger.” Gajeel turns his head in a cheeky imitation of ignorance. “No wonder you get yourself into so much trouble if you’re picking fights whenever you need to cool your head.”

“Hmph. I don’t know how it feels for everyone else,” Gajeel remarks as if they’re the normal ones and the overwhelming remainder of humanity are the freaks, “but I’m not gonna pretend like I’ll never get angry! It’s part of the deal, what can I do?” Laxus examines his defensive countenance questioningly and he frowns in return. “-For dragon slayers. The dragons sure as hell didn’t coexist in peaceful, diplomatic harmony all the time. Anger was part of ’em, natural and important. And for us...” Exposing a dark look, Gajeel clenches his teeth for a moment. “It’s harder.

“You oughta know their magic wasn’t built for us. That’s a lot of firepower to contain in just one human body. Dragon slayer magic comes with some dragon-like instincts. Without ’em, the magic wouldn’t be manageable, but the instincts need to be managed in their own way too. Why do you think Natsu constantly starts fights with the whole guild?” His shoulders hunch up. “Tch- Why do you think I ever waste my time joinin’ in?”

Laxus recalls watching countless brawls over many years, always from the sidelines, slouched over the end of the bar. “Gramps was desperate to keep me out of any of the guild fights. He didn’t have high hopes for how long the building would stay standing.”

Standing without preamble, Gajeel sticks a hand out into the space between them and after a heartbeat Laxus takes it, wearily allowing him to pull him to his feet. His hand is calloused and warm before it retreats. Then Gajeel backs up and pivots around one way, then the other, waving out at the room. “And yet, ya didn’t even break anything.”

Laxus blinks now that the iron mage isn’t filling so much of his field of view and realizes he’s right. The most harm done is his spilled beer and two chairs knocked to the floor, one of which Gajeel easily rights, then seats himself.

“It’s not... We ain’t monsters.” When Laxus looks him keenly in the eye, he flinches away.

His head fuzzy with exhaustion, Laxus grabs the other chair and sits heavily, resting his arms on the table. If he didn’t feel so mollified, he wouldn’t be convinced, and he wonders how Gajeel figured it out. To him, it still sounds like an easy way to hurt someone. Laxus used to throw himself into dangerous jobs to sate his temper, which usually ended with a lot more carnage. Good thing Gajeel apparently knew what he was doing. “Then I guess I’m just glad I didn’t really hurt ya.” -again, he bites off just in time.

“It helps when someone else initiates, so you don’t gotta wonder if they’re willing to trade blows,” he mumbles. For a long, quiet while, Laxus watches him as he picks up his mug, not stooping to sip at the last trickle of beer, just gripping it with knuckles taut. Gajeel chews on his bruised lip, looking more uncertain than Laxus can remember, then he subtly rearranges himself. “...Metalicana used to do that for me, long time ago.”

That’s not a name he’s ever heard before, Laxus is quite certain, but he just waits.

“When I was a little brat, too overfull of energy, climbing the walls in frustration sparked by somethin’ stupid- if anything- sometimes nothing he could say or do would calm me down. He understood it. So he would jab at me to rile me up, and when I snapped and threw myself at him, he let me. He matched me for whatever I could dish out, challenged me, but wouldn’t go any further an’ finish things before I wore myself down on my own, and I could finally relax again.”

It doesn’t take much work to gather that Metalicana must be Gajeel’s dad. Even though he never heard it officially confirmed, Laxus didn’t doubt that Gajeel was raised by a dragon. He and Natsu share a few too many similarities to believe otherwise (including that they’d be equally furious to hear him say that).

He also feels quite safe assuming the dragon, for one reason or another, isn’t around anymore.

Frazzled and slightly flushed in the face, Gajeel bares his fangs and bridles forcefully. “It’s not- So just know I wasn’t just looking for an excuse to fuck with you or anything! I already knew what it’s like an’ that it’d help, so don’t think I’m that much of a dick,” he loudly insists, fierce and fast, clearly trying to veer away from the topic.

Laxus can empathize. “I know, I know,” he allows. “’cause if all your harassment hadn’t done me any good, you would not ’ve made it out unscathed in the first place.”

“-Excuse me.”

They look over at a grizzled woman in an apron with her glittering, ring-covered hands planted on her hips. Past her shoulder, the waitress is hovering guardedly. “I think the two of you better head out for the night, hear me?”

Without argument, Gajeel pays for the beer and food both so they can make themselves scarce before Laxus undertakes the awkwardly long search through his bag for his wallet. When he stands, Laxus has to swallow a groan. He feels unwell is his best word for it, even though he can tell he’s not coming down with anything. His chest is strained with the labor of his lungs and heart and his body marred with fatigue that weighs him down into raggedness. He sags his weight against the door as he pushes it open.

Wordlessly, they fall into step together, walking aimlessly down the dark town roads. Laxus glances back at the dingy bar right before they turn the first corner.

“If I get used to letting off steam like that, before long there won’t be anywhere left where I can get a drink.” Gajeel laughs, but Laxus can’t shake a fissure of seriousness. “...I would start looking for a fight at every other turn and make a total ass of myself.”

“Temper is part of yer magic, it doesn’t make you bad.”

Laxus frowns deeply, unconvinced. “I feel agitated so often, though; it follows me everywhere. It’s not-!” he emphasizes, then falters, “...the same as the- battle of Fairy Tail shit. Nothing even has to set it off for it to take hold, so I don’t have a way to mitigate it before it makes me fuckin’ furious. But only ever working through it after it gets that bad just doesn’t seem practical. I think it’d fall apart with enough time.”

Gajeel’s scarlet stare probes him insistently, pressing and maybe even concerned. Laxus sighs.

“It feels like...” He shuts his eyes. “Half like a migraine, like static building up in the middle of my sinuses. The rest of it- of me gets so tense and jittery it sets me on pins and needles and it makes all the input I get so much more...” He clenches his hand out, unable to express it any better. “An’ it’s all exponential.”

“Ah- Hmm,” Gajeel rumbles pensively. “That might be somethin’ else then. I don’t know, it shouldn’t be that bad.” He crosses his arms. “Sounds rough.”

In retrospect, Laxus realizes part of him did actually expect an answer from Gajeel, despite having no reason to. It occurs to him that their encounters are the only time he’s spent around another dragon slayer who knows he shares the same magic. He’s already learned a few things. But he dumps the pipe dream that the guy could give an easy fix for his infamous, ingrained temper.

“Was it that bad back in the guild?” Gajeel asks. Laxus turns that over in his head with increasing deliberateness as the silent moments go by. Was it? He has plenty of memories to sift through, yet he can’t suss it out.

He’s not sure. In Fairy Tail, his anger about Makarov’s inescapable shadow burned so bright that he can’t say whether or not this errant agitation was buried beneath it back then. Even though it doesn’t feel new, he actually only recently distinguished it from his usual sources of frustration as they’ve relented somewhat.

In the end, he just shrugs and Gajeel mirrors him.

“They’ve known ya a lot longer than I have. Maybe one of them would have some advice.” One eye closed, Laxus looks off to the side at the dark storefronts. At length, Gajeel concludes in a huff, “Still don’t wanna go back?”

“What? Go back and say, ‘Hey, I just wondered if you have any tips for managing the violent anger issues I have all the time, but don’t worry about it, we’re cool, you can totally trust me now!’ Thanks, but I’d rather die in a ditch.”

Gajeel snorts, then pauses before he remarks, “...They’d try.”

“Maybe,” Laxus admits. “But that’s not what they want. They...” He doesn’t have enough room for error, and not just because of the Fantasia disaster. “I’m not the invincible, dependable champion they like to see in me.” Laxus isn’t good enough for that, and he’s accepted that he never will be. Still, he dreads to crush them when he inevitably falls short of everything they believed they could count on him for. If not the mess in question, he’ll fail some other way, eventually. “What happens when I let ’em all down?”

“Uh- You already did,” Gajeel states.

“That ship’s sailed, blondie, you have disappointed them and broken their trust. You turned on ’em. What else can you expect when you pit your guildmates against each other after you rigged all the odds, and you were ready to run the risk of killing them just to get what you want? That’s fucked up.”

Laxus takes a breath, heavy and deep. “To say the very least. I’m a real piece of shit...”

“Yeah. Join the club. The world hasn’t ended, has it?” He blinks and looks at Gajeel, compelled by a spark of interest. “And hey, this way you don’t have to wonder what’ll happen when you fall off their pedestal- you already know. You get kicked out of the guild.” He flaps a hand through the air. “There’s yer answer. Psh, and even then, they’re all clamoring to get ya back.”

Surprising himself, Laxus finds the levity to snap his fingers and counter, “You admit it then.”

“Aughh, we always knew it!” Gajeel grouses, sticking his nose up. “It was part of the game, of course those bleeding heart idealists didn’t want ya expelled! ’cause that bites, I don’t want to make light of it, but...” Gajeel pauses, allowing the calm quiet of the road to sink in, the distance he’s travelled, the food filling his belly, the glowing stars and purring crickets surrounding them. “I think you’ll make it.”

The crunch of dry leaves accompanies them for a while.

“...I thought you weren’t gonna tell me to come back,” he lightly bullies, earning a snide pout.

“I ain’t. You can do whatever you want.” Gajeel throws him a glance. “Which includes coming back. You can. As long as you don’t fuck up anything as bad as forcing the whole guild into another treasonous, meticulously designed bloodbath- in which case yer on your fucking own, go to hell- then, well, it can’t get any worse than expulsion.”

The uncharitable appraisal is remarkably grounding. It’s more helpful than an attempt to deny that he’s really as bad as he’s making himself out to be, which certainly wouldn’t change his mind. It’s Laxus’s conviction that he’s terrible for doing terrible things, set and stubborn, and it reassures him that Gajeel can agree with that, then say ‘so what?’ It’s not the end. He’s still got a shot at fixing things, and even he’s confident that he won’t fuck up as egregiously as he did during the harvest festival again. That much he can do. He knows he can.

Laxus stretches the stiffness out of his shoulders and elects to shelve the thought for now; the night’s felt long enough already.

Watching Gajeel stride through the half-hidden moonlight, he can glimpse the far-reaching wildness stowed beneath the iron dragon’s nonchalant poise. “Is that why you haven’t said so much as a word about winnin’ our little contest?” he prods. “No rivals to brag to out here- unlike at the guild. If I do go back, I’ll probably never live down the fact that I lost to you. That’ll disappoint everyone for sure.”

Gajeel’s hackles rise and in a low growl, he assures, “I’ll get my rematch with you someday.” Scattering his wild hair, he shakes off Laxus’s snicker, then he clears the air with a sweep of his hands. “This ain’t about winning- Can’t be. You gotta be careful of that and never take yer anger out in a competitive kind of fight, ’cause it can make things much worse, real fast. These scraps aren’t fair to begin with, so don’t mind it.”

That’s easy for him of course, but he’ll digress. It doesn’t actually bother him as long as he keeps his word that he won’t hold it over him. It’s not like Laxus has ever had much interest in non-magic combat anyway, and he knows he’d still trounce Gajeel at their full strength. Mundane hand-to-hand has its uses for training, but he doesn’t care about developing the skill on its own; most mages don’t.

But Gajeel fought with particular proficiency. “Do you spar like that often? ...You have unusually good balance.”

“I’ve got good bones for it.”

“’cuse me?”

“My bones,” Gajeel repeats, “are made of iron. As I’m movin’ around, I’ll keep my weight aligned by shifting where the most iron is concentrated, and use the flex or rigidity of my bones an’ joints to compensate. Keeps me quick on my feet.”

“Tsk- You fucker.” Laxus shakes his head broadly as he absorbs that. “Ahh, I probably didn’t have the weight advantage I expected either. Shit. You know, in a fight without magic, I think that’d be considered cheating.”

Gajeel wrinkles his nose. “I’m not casting spells. And it’s not like I can stop it. That’s just my body, and that’s how it’s meant to work.” Fuck, I’m so jealous of you. “Also,” Gajeel chirps, “didn’t you carry me to your room after I passed out, like a noble hero? Gihehe, you should know by now that I’m heavier than I look!”

“That’s- Shut the fuck up, rghh! I was panicking, okay, I didn’t pay that much attention while I was tryin’ to make sure you didn’t die.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Gajeel knocks their shoulders together. “What would ya do without me, after all?”

  —

A faint echo of distant sound makes Laxus shift his gaze from the cloudy moon overhead and sit up straight. His heightened hearing could’ve picked it up from even a mile away, yet he can’t identify it. Loud, though... Was it an animal call? He tilts his head and listens with pricked ears for several minutes. Noise reaches him intermittently, but not all of it sounds vocal. Over the distorting distance, Laxus thinks he can make out cracks of impact, hisses of energy.

A fight, Laxus can’t help but think. What are the odds Gajeel is out there, tussling with his undisclosed foes? Even though he turned towards the din, he can’t see past the hillside separating him from the road. The fragments of sound keep coming as he continues to wait.

He did agree that he would leave this all in Gajeel’s hands...

Keeping quiet and still, Laxus taps into his magic and casts out a net of static, charging the particles in air well beyond his line of sight. The charge is weak by design, requiring a negligible amount of strength despite the distance, too faint for anyone to even notice when coming into contact. He’s not interested in doing any damage, rather in getting a reaction.

Electricity can form in all open space, and his magic serves Laxus like a sixth sense. He picks up on the way a person disrupts his static like a cutout even when he can’t see them, a radar he’s honed into second nature.

Laxus is very good at keeping track of his opponents even in the most rapid and chaotic fights, guiding every anticipation and ensuring each reaction ends up in the right place. It’s a largely unsung skill of his for how much it contributes to his formidable prowess. Laxus is not a man easily caught unaware.

There’s one person moving in the woods beyond the rise, on the road, he thinks. They’re running. If there really is a fight going on further away, they might be one of Gajeel’s targets escaping- but that’s just his working theory. They could just as well be a startled civilian getting out of the way and he’s chary of potentially electrocuting some poor, unlucky Joe Schmoe who has nothing to do with this.

Laxus shuffles restlessly, hesitant.

Oh- he cocks his head- he can feel something more. Unmistakable, it’s Gajeel, it must be. He’s outside Laxus’s natural range, yet the iron inundated through him extended the outer reach of his magic, drawn to him on its own and connecting a circuit through him with stark and easy attraction. He senses Gajeel take off down the road, but a less compelling presence snags him several paces out and forces him to engage.

Well. That neatly confirms his theory, and also paints a convincing target on whoever’s coming closer. He can sense their magic, underwhelming against Gajeel, but Laxus can already hear the person now- They’re moving fast.

Gajeel starts chasing again, but they’re getting away.

These people expect Laxus to be here, it’s why they came. If they realize that Laxus is already aware of them, and that he already made up his mind to attack them and help their adversary, that could alter the situation very significantly, very fast. It might not help Gajeel at all if he steps in; it could snuff out his opportunity to quell them, or put him in serious danger.

As Laxus runs through his options, he hears the sound of boots on cobblestone suddenly shift to the sharp crunch of dead leaves over gravel. The mage just charged straight down the side path at the fork, he realizes. Decided, he narrows his eyes at the far treeline as he builds up an adequate hum of power at his surface.

He extends his magic and releases the force in the sky so that his attack will look the same as real lightning. The bolt smites the tree with a deafening crack and it splits down the smoking trunk to smash into the path. At this distance, the lightning scrambles his sense of static, but he’s pretty sure they turned heel. A voice swears somewhat hysterically. A paving stone clatters loudly. Then- something snaps and metallic slithering builds into a shrill swish and loud creak.

Laxus smirks when a shriek reaches his ears and he knows the trap just sprang shut around its victim.

When Laxus had booked a room last night, the obviously befuddled hotel clerk told him a note was left for someone of his description. His thoughts had lept to the group tracking him, but then she handed it over and he caught a faint whiff of Gajeel’s scent. Despite his alarm, when he tore out the iron staple, (full stapler functionality- what a man) all it said inside was, ‘watch your step near N province road at fennel village.’

The message had frustrated him the entire day as equal parts deeply ominous and uselessly vague, and yet ‘watch your step’ turned out to be very fitting advice once he finally reached the fork leading away to the village. Again, Laxus had caught a stale trace of his scent, and his wary continuation in the dying light would have carried him straight into the wide, wire net trap hidden in the detritus just past the gravel byway if not for the warning. He had to laugh at realizing Gajeel primly took pains to drive him away from his carefully rigged plans.

Wise, because even though he’d escape in a second by turning to lightning, Laxus still would’ve beat his ass for the indignity of hanging trussed up in a net like a ham. He doesn’t envy the bastards he’s been thwarting; Gajeel must be fucking infuriating.

He had almost changed course at the evidence that his stalkers would turn up, but ultimately, he set up camp downhill from the road the way he planned to. He wants this matter settled as quickly as possible, and that means not giving Gajeel any extra complications, since he insists on handling it all himself. Usually that’s Laxus’s method, and he didn’t expect he could make peace with someone withholding the identity of the people pursuing him beyond loose implication. Yet... Laxus trusts him, it seems.

Maybe accepting help is part of the whole annoying, humbling process. -For more than just him, this time.

When he looks the next morning, the net is gone and the charred tree laying across the path has a bottle of vodka perched on top in thanks.

  —

For once, Laxus is the one pushing into a bar to find Gajeel has already come to roost there, all but empty save for the dragon slayer. Not that he’s surprised to see it; it’s late, obnoxiously late, since he yet again got hopelessly turned around on the roads. On top of that, thunder has been threatening the horizon with increasing volume and frequency for a few hours now. The only other pair of people inside are hastily calling for their tab. In contrast, Gajeel looks perfectly situated at his table in the corner, entertaining himself with the torment of a dartboard on the wall.

“Give me a score,” he says without turning to see Laxus approach. He has two darts left on the table and one in hand.

“Twenty one.”

“Harder.”

“Ninety then, fucker.” Without standing up, Gajeel swiftly aims and sinks the dart into the double bull with little fanfare. He doesn’t miss a beat between throws, triple twelve and four, lining up each shot with only one subtle arc of the arm. Laxus whistles.

“You’re a crack shot. Where’d you learn darts?”

“-Home,” he replies enigmatically. “I never miss.”

“I could teach you that part.”

At that, Gajeel finally turns to face him, giving him a softer shade of that saw-toothed, roguish smile of his and abandoning the game to pull out the adjacent chair. “I started to assume you wouldn’t turn up at all this time.”

Laxus gratefully dumps his bag off his shoulder, groaning, “Oh, give me a break.” Shouldn’t constantly getting lost be enough punishment for his dog-shit sense of direction without the ridicule?

Gajeel blinks at him, though, before the seeming confusion passes and he cackles, accusing, “Ah, mixed up yer left and right again?”

“The roads all look the fucking same...”

Laxus orders a drink, something strong as a reward for getting through the painful long day. Willing to be the bigger person and overlook the teasing, Laxus starts to add Gajeel’s style of whiskey to his request, until Gajeel rocks forward and interjects, “No no- Scratch that,” he tells the waiter, and Laxus shots him a questioning look. “Nothin’ for me, if that’s what you’re doing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah... Thanks, but, I gotta get up early.”

“’s news to me that you sleep at all, metalhead.” As always, he looks ragged and tired, even more so when being forced to tragically turn down free booze. “Have you ever considered just staying to spend the night in a real bed before you have to take off to the next stop? You’re rushin’ so much, trying to split this work between everything else.”

“I’ve got too much shit goin’ on,” Gajeel bemoans.

He wonders if he’s working other jobs on top of this drawn out mission he keeps toiling away at, and Laxus indulges a touch of nostalgia for the times he knew his guildmates had taken on half the request board from their eye bags and heavy shoulders. It comes with the season, now that he thinks about it. “Did they put you in the S-Class test?” Gramps should have announced it a few days ago.

His nostrils flare as he snorts precisely how Laxus imagines a dragon would, and he stifles the urge to grin. “I ain’t talking about that.” Even so, after a second he adds with deliberate indifference, “Yer word-nerd got in it.”

Freed. The reflexive pulse of pride that inspires solidifies and stays, warm and welcome. Laxus’s resentment of his cutting words is fading, he’s exceedingly relieved to recognize. He doesn’t want to carry that back to the guild. After all, Freed’s slight, as much as it stung, was nothing compared to the shattering cleaver of lightning Laxus shot mere inches from him, just for suggesting they should relent. The guilt only magnified under the audacity of the hard feelings he still harbored towards his closest friend.

By now, he can step back from his knee-jerk outrage far enough to contain it and acknowledge that Freed’s words weren’t necessarily spurred by betrayal. His mind has turned up several ways he might have intended to reframe and defang the reductive perspective that he’s privileged by Makarov. If he’s being honest, they all feel like quite a stretch, and even so, he still doesn’t know if Freed actually meant anything of the sort as opposed to... well, how it sounded. But it feels more true to him and it’s what Laxus wants to believe, so he’ll believe it unless proven otherwise. He’d rather relinquish the grudge from the furl of his clenched, cramped fingers and instead hold on to the pride Freed deserves.

He stands a good shot at passing too, even more if Gajeel isn’t one of the candidates. In hindsight, Laxus shouldn’t be too surprised, and he can recognize a issue of seniority, not skill.

“-But who cares; let’s not forget your great accomplishment of another successful journey with just a few hours of unintended detours!” Rumination ruined, Laxus glares daggers at Gajeel’s indecently pleased smirk. “What?!”

The arrival of his drink is an immensely welcome distraction that he immediately partakes in, cringing slightly at the taste. After he’s made a start on it, Laxus splays all the way out over his chair, wrapping his arms over the back and dropping his head with a faint, strained groan. “Another one of those days?” Gajeel observes.

“Ughh, I am not meant to be a vagrant,” he declares. “I’m so fucking tired of walking for ages all the time to get anywhere. My feet hurt like hell and the monotony is even worse. This is why I like long jobs, one lengthy trip per month or so is plenty.” (If only he could just take a goddamn train, but just the thought makes his stomach lurch a little.)

“Travelling through lightning is so much simpler, but it takes a decent amount of energy, and I just can’t justify doing it this often, especially...” Well, he doesn’t want to admit he can’t always fund much food and rest.

Gajeel hums pensively. “Yeah...” A booming crash of thunder rattles the window panes and Gajeel’s ears swivel to hear it roll. “Speaking of, I don’t wanna keep you if you want to go. I doubt you’ll have to wait much longer.”

Laxus scans him with bemusement, but Gajeel doesn’t bite. “...I’m not planning to take off,” he remarks incredulously.

“You sure?” Gajeel presses, watching owlishly. Laxus squints at him to no avail. Cryptically, he continues, “I guess you must have it the worst of all of us. Honestly, I’d say it’s perfectly reasonable for you to get as pissy as you do, all things considered.” Laxus scowls. “You have a right to be when you have to go through so much more shit than everybody else.”

For fuck’s sake, what is he missing this time? The alcohol certainly hasn’t done enough yet to make him forget the multiple occasions when Gajeel outright denounced Laxus’s vindictive plot, if that’s what he’s trying to suggest. A sense of incompetence begins to chafe under his skin. If Gajeel wants him to take a hike, he should just say so. Laxus can’t fucking stand this roundabout kind of communication through hints so tangential he can’t follow the meaning. He didn’t think Gajeel was the type.

Apparently he was mistaken, since he continues vaguely, “I know it can’t really compare to the nightmare you must have to deal with, but I empathize with how it feels, at least.”

“Huh?”

“Well, I mean, getting a decent stockpile of iron is an annoying enough ordeal- sure gives me a short fuse- but at least I don’t need to wait on the fucking weather of all things. That’d drive me fucking mad. Have you always had to travel during the winter?”

...Is he being made fun of? There’s no way this is supposed to make sense to him. Vexed and piqued, Laxus glares harshly, lifting his hands in want of an actual explanation. Instead of that, Gajeel says, “Surely the snow storms don’t do you any good. I just- I’m surprised you’re willing to lose your chance.”

“Gajeel, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“The storm? The lightning...?” Gajeel squints at him in befuddlement. “Are you not gonna have any?”

“Wha- Eat any?!” Laxus laughs once with a coarse and caustic edge. “Oh, piss off. What are you leading me on for? I’m not eating any lightning.”

It takes a visible effort for the iron mage to repress his disbelief, slowly leaning back in his seat. “I jus’ thought you might’ve been out to take full advantage.” Exasperated, Laxus fans a spark of tipsiness with another drink. “Lightning must last for a while if ya don’t need any.”

He swallows and scoffs, “Not that I know of.”

“Then...” Gajeel puzzles helplessly. “You still won’t eat any?”

“I don’t. Why would I bother? Never have before.”

He doesn’t consider that astounding, but Gajeel’s agape jaw disagrees. “Never-?” He leans in and Laxus prickles with the impression that he’s being ribbed and belittled, yet Gajeel’s brows furrow with a look of genuine dismay, looking head-on and not down. “Shit, man... Well, umm, I guess the good news is that I have an answer for why you feel so antsy now.” Oh- That. Fucking great. He should have never mentioned it. Already strained by the unmanageable stress, the last thing Laxus wants is to be critiqued for it. Especially with worthless advice.

Generally partial to Gajeel’s conversations, he tries to just ignore the frustration of properly closing the topic so they can move on to another instead of outright leaving, but he can’t help slouching with a soft, sullen sigh. In turn, Gajeel insists, “That will definitely do that to ya. You need to eat, man.”

“Do you have a brain in there, or can you only think with your stomach?” he counters automatically, distantly disappointed by his rudeness even as he voices it. “That ain’t what it’s about. I don’t give a shit about eating lightning.”

“It makes a difference.”

“Maybe for you. I don’t work like that.” Gajeel takes a breath, his mouth parted in a wry line, but he doesn’t speak. He scrunches his expression like he’s searching for an inoffensive way to say he sounds like an idiot.

Laxus takes a slightly larger draft from his glass. “Don’t act like you don’t know.” Gajeel narrows his eyes and Laxus feels the shadow of a sneer tug his mouth. “I know the old man must have told you. I’m not a real dragon slayer. I didn’t learn my magic from the guidance of a dragon, I get it from a lifeless chunk of crystal buried in me. I don’t even know where it came from; it’s not a natural part of me any more than my clothes or gear... I ain’t like you or Natsu, who had real dragons pass their same magic to you; my source of magic doesn’t come from my element like that.”

As he expected, Gajeel doesn’t look at all surprised by his words. He can’t say with any confidence what Gajeel might have felt when Laxus revealed the nature of his magic in the heat of battle, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that Natsu would immediately grill the old man over anything that could possibly involve dragons. Clearly, Gajeel heard his explanation as well.

Even so, he contests, “You’ve got it the wrong way ’round. Eating your element doesn’t give you dragon slayer magic, having dragon slayer magic is what lets you eat it at all. After I...” Gajeel stiffens up and stops, then shakes himself. “Compared to other magic, I noticed that the core difference between dragon slayer magic an’ all the rest is the physical change. Not from using it, from having it. A person’s body has to be structured differently for the magic to subsist. Stuff like enhanced senses and eating elements become fundamental, they aren’t part of spells. No matter how you got it, your magic means you can eat lightning. -And should.”

Laxus curls his lip and leans his head back, unwilling to bear the accusation of ignorance so Gajeel can fancy himself an expert. Least of all when he’s the topic in question. “I’ve had this magic for years, you know. Just because I didn’t tell people doesn’t mean I’m not used to it. I would have figured it out myself if that applied to me; or do you really think I wouldn’t notice starvation?”

“I’m not criticizing!” Gajeel swears. “I’ve made the same mistake too, just... the other way around. There was a stint where I got convinced normal food was a waste, and I only ate iron. For- a while. I can live off it well enough and I got used to it, so I didn’t think it made a difference or caused any problems.” Laxus hasn’t heard that dragon slayers can live off their element alone and he finds the prospect acutely disconcerting. “Then I stopped skimping on meals and it fixed problems I wasn’t even aware of, I- I had no idea how bad I needed it. Even shit like that does feel normal when it’s all you do. How else could ya know? I get it, it sucks.”

It’s obvious that Gajeel wants to dismiss his embarrassment to lower his guard, and for a moment, Laxus thinks he’s more likely lying in an effort to coddle him.

Then he notices the defensiveness mirrored in the man across from him and looks closer to see his tense reluctance too flushed for him to entirely hide. No, that really happened, and it was a struggle for him to say so. -Shit. What a messed up pair they make. How the hell was he convinced he didn’t need to eat actual food? ...How long was ‘a while’?

None of it keeps this from being embarrassing, though. It’s embarrassing that his own magic is foreign to him, because he was too weak to develop any power himself, so now he doesn’t even know all the fundamental principles of his magic. If he weren’t incapable, he would know this. Seared to shame and anger by his disparagement, he snaps, “Who would I ever ’ve learned this shit from anyway? You think fucking Natsu taught me?”

“That’s-” Then Gajeel hisses out through his teeth when the words catch up with him, grimacing at the mental picture. “Yikes.” Laxus rolls his eyes and waves out an emphatic gesture.

In all fairness, he doesn’t think that Natsu is brainless or inept and he never really has. The brat can be a dunce about a lot of things, yet he’s been a capable mage a long time; he clearly knows dragon slayer magic very well. In fact, Laxus suspects it’s what he knows better than anything.

For Natsu to actually teach someone else about that magic, however, would end in catastrophe even in his wildest dreams.

(Years ago, still at odds with the lacrima, Laxus made a single, very short lived attempt to learn about dragons from Natsu. With a casual air, he got as far as asking, “How big was the dragon you knew?” before it all fell apart. His incidental use of past tense upset Natsu so badly that he started wailing at him without ever acknowledging the question, desperately declaring he’d find Igneel alive and well for so long, tears welled up in his eyes. Laxus made a break for it at the soonest opportunity.)

“Yeah-” Gajeel whistles- “that’s a fucking rough spot.”

Well, eventually. “Natsu wasn’t even there at the time. Until Gramps found him in the trash or somethin’ a couple years later, I thought... I didn’t know there were any other dragon slayers. The magic was purportedly lost to time ages ago.” That appears distinctly troubling to Gajeel, who drops his gaze into shadow for an extended, distracted moment.

He resurfaces wearing a steep frown, then ignores the hitch and redirects, “Well, that’s exactly the point I’m tryin’ to make anyway. Without anyone to tell you this stuff, or any other example to go off of, of course you wouldn’t know about this just on your own.”

Familiar hopelessness filters up through his rib cage. “So, what? You expect me to just try and stand out in the rain, staring at the sky with my fucking mouth hanging open, looking like the world’s dumbest jackass waiting to get struck by lightning?”

“Nah,” he answers plainly, facing him calmly. “I get it. I sure wouldn’t be willing to do that either. So here, let me show you.”

If not for the fact that Gajeel also knows dragon slayer magic, if not for their past bout of fighting that siphoned off his aggression so cleanly, if not for their distance from Fairy Tail and everyone else they know- Laxus would say no. If Gajeel were anyone else, he’d say no.

Gajeel extends a hand to him. “Just humor me this once. If you don’t like it and you don’t feel better, I’ll put my foot back in my mouth and you get to say ‘I told ya so’.”

Laxus exhales, then takes his hand. “Fine.”

Pulled upright by his strong grasp, they both leave their things behind in the otherwise empty bar, safe from the weather awaiting them, and when Gajeel turns to the door, Laxus follows. Then Laxus informs him, “That’s not what that saying means, by the way.”

“Huh? Ugh, whatever! -It should be.” He pulls him forcefully forward and shoves him out in front.

Outside, a fine, dense drizzle undersells the downpour swiftly approaching, although Laxus doesn’t mind the rain collecting over him. He never has; he finds it refreshing. Gajeel, for his part, appears equally unbothered, and he takes off without hesitation. Laxus honors his agreement to play along and walks with him.

Now that he’s letting himself consider it, the lightning does smell enticing, crisp and coppery in the not so distant sky. He refuses to believe the thunder is making him salivate, though; he’s just gotten in his own head.

Gajeel catches him testing the air, but he still uses a casual affectation to bring up, “It makes sense why stuff fell through the cracks and you couldn’t know, but- Well, I had the impression eating our elements is kinda second nature to dragon slayers: instinctual. I’m surprised ya didn’t just do it impulsively at some point.”

“After...” He nearly says ‘the lacrima incident’, but he doesn’t want to open up that can of worms with someone out of the loop. “When I got the lacrima, that much magic power was more than my body could handle at once. It did a number on me for a while till I managed to adjust.” Usually, Laxus can’t bear talking about this, but given everything Gajeel’s already seen of him, a more brutally honest picture than perhaps anyone else, this just doesn’t feel so painfully vulnerable. It makes more sense, honestly, to just give him a clearer understanding of how things unfolded this way.

“When Natsu came around, he made it no secret he could eat fire- I remember back then I actually asked Gramps if I’d be able to eat electricity- but he made me promise not to try anything. He said if I did while I already had more magic than I was equipped for, it’d make the toll on my body that much worse, like before. ‘Too dangerous,’ he said.” And that was that.

Gajeel peers back and looks him in the eye. “He was wrong.” Laxus halts.

He just said that Makarov was wrong like the simplest thing in the world. Makarov. Laxus thought he was the only one who entertained that kind of talk, and ever since being expelled, he figured he was stupid for it. For as much trouble as Makarov’s kids (the kids he cares about- Fairy Tail) cause for him, in the end, they always defer to him with endless respect. Gajeel deferred to him too... didn’t he?

Nevertheless, he continues to refute, “Dragon slayer magic doesn’t work like that since it’s all internal and anatomical. Not just the... etherna-whatever, the magic effects are synthesized internally too. Your body stores lightning regardless of if ya eat any.” Gajeel tilts his head thoughtfully and spreads his hands. “Like I told you my bones are iron, that ain’t just some anomaly. You’ve got a supply of lightning in your lungs, your blood, your nerves, it’s there right now, and it needs to be. You’re built for it.”

Laxus breathes shallowly, struck. He’s never believed he’s built for anything. First because of his illness, then his esoteric magic, Makarov and Porlyusica treated his body as a puzzle they had to solve, an anomaly they had to manage. He’s made of maladies, symptoms, and side effects, faulty connections and conflicting processes. His physical state is an ill-conceived accident, and a rickety one at that.

His lacrima altered him from the inside out. Of course, that was the whole point of a dragon slayer lacrima, because nothing less would help control his deteriorating condition. But something disjointed persisted after the initial, brutal adjustment period. No one could tell him why he suffered the changes he did or what all they altered, including him, and he came to see his body as abnormal, foreign and recalcitrant. An opponent. He couldn’t control it, couldn’t comprehend it, so how could it belong to him? And hell does it hurt to harbor so much resentment for the very thing he can never get away from.

Gajeel’s calm, sure explanation is a flush of cold water over a burn, a shock of profound relief. He sounds so certain there’s a purpose, he’s as he should be, and it’s not broken by design. Laxus aches with yearning at the notion that his body is doing its best to work too, in the way it knows how, the way it was built for.

Gajeel also stopped so as to not leave him behind. “The thing is that the lightning supply doesn’t last forever. It becomes part of your body, so it wears out and gets renewed same way as skin or blood does. Even happens to iron. The difference is how you get it. Eating your element is naturally part of the process: it clears out the weakest part of the supply and refreshes it before it entirely deteriorates, so the cycle can slow down. But your magic can make its own lightning too. It does when you burn through a lot or if you haven’t eaten in a bit. If you never eat, your body has to make all the lightning it ever needs to replenish, and it makes it through you, constantly.

“Dragon slayer magic uses our anatomy as, urmm... a conduit. Power gathers in your bones and tendons and vitals to make lightning, and gets strength from your body to do it. Not very much, but over time...? That can get rough. -It’s like a blister!” Gajeel announces with vehemence. “A bit of friction sometimes is just fine, but constant friction in the same spot starts doing damage that won’t heal unless it stops. It’s been fryin’ yer nerves, so to speak.”

His voice drops to a softer, more somber tone and a flicker of pity flashes in his ruby red glance. “You’re under a lot of stress from your body working non-stop to give you fuel all alone. You’re strong to hold up so long, but it can’t feel very good. Ignore the master; there’s no need to starve.”

Laxus knows better than anyone else how mythical Makarov Dreyar is, one of the Ten Wizard Saints, the master of Fiore’s strongest guild, kind, wise, and experienced. If you asked anyone else in Fairy Tail, they would call him more knowledgeable and dependable than anyone. When Laxus was a little kid, he certainly believed his gramps had all the answers and he would tell anyone who’d listen.

The rest of the guild never had that perception shattered in the same way that he did. For as much as Makarov likes to believe otherwise, a guild is not a family in the same way blood relations are. Laxus wouldn’t say it isn’t its own kind of family, nor that it’s less meaningful, but it is different. Makarov is a very good guild master, but that did nothing to keep his own family from collapsing into shambles. The disastrous falling out with his dad made it devastatingly impossible for Laxus to ignore just how flawed his gramps could be. The whiplash was brutal- after believing for so long he knew how to handle anything, Laxus wound up snared in the very center of something Makarov was bad at. He doesn’t know how to deal with problems between his family, he has no idea what to do. He cares and he tries, Laxus finally gets that, but that didn’t mitigate all the mistakes. Laxus couldn’t hang on to the myth after his life was ripped to shreds around him.

He knew the truth, that Makarov was far from perfect, which was an inflammatory realization during the already trauma-fueled throes of teenage rebellion. In his eyes, it was just him against the world pushing back against his gramps, but ironically there actually was some validity to his melodrama. No one else ever did that kind of thing, challenging him, seriously arguing with his decisions, questioning his insight, and sneering at his advice like Laxus did over and over. (Only the Raijin Tribe eventually joined him, to an extent.) Makarov is a true master of magic and he’s genuinely skilled at cultivating a community, so consequently the rest of the guild never had to let go of their idealization of him.

When Laxus dared to suggest that the old man got things wrong- plain wrong, not unobvious solutions or least-bad compromises- his guildmates acted like he was delusional. They would always take the old man’s side over his. Makarov is always right, Laxus is always wrong.

It didn’t help his desperate fury when that proved true basically every time.

“Did- er, did I make any sense with that?” Gajeel breaks into his daze.

“It’s-” He blinks rapidly and eventually registers Gajeel’s wry, uncertain expression looking back at him. “Yeah, it did, it- You did,” Laxus exhales, rubbing the side of his thumb over his scar. Weakly, he mumbles, “’s hard to wrap my head around.”

“Mm.” Scowling faintly, Gajeel remarks, “He shouldn’t ’ve told you how to manage your magic when he didn’t know how it worked either. He didn’t have any more of a precedent to go off of than you did, and his assumption cost ya.”

Makarov was wrong. No excuses for it, no siding with his mistake, and no putting Laxus down in turn. And Gajeel made a point of it just because Laxus deserved to know he had it wrong.

No one is faultless- he needs to believe that now more than ever- and that means Makarov too. Yet even after Laxus saw the proof for himself, it still felt more like he made it all up in his head. No one else believed it, and it didn’t make a difference anyway. Even with his flaws and blind spots, Makarov got final say in all matters and ignoring his advice was considered the height of folly in Fairy Tail.

Laxus realizes his familial bond with Makarov, so strong when he was a little kid, had long since buckled under the weight of his authority. His gramps was replaced by his guild master. How could he feel entirely at ease with someone he should always defer to, feel supported by someone he couldn’t even reach? The support was there, but buried under a summit of perfection, and Laxus hadn’t grasped his gramps’ unconditional care until he spelled it out to his face the day of the festival.

This lapse wasn’t even on his radar. The old man made a verifiable mistake, plain and simple, with a direct effect on him. In the wake of his attempts to accept that Makarov’s flaws put them on equal footing as people and as family, hearing Gajeel say it anchors Laxus at last. Because Gajeel would know best, his even-keeled explanation coming straight from a dragon! He’s the authority on this.

It’s not that complicated. Makarov was wrong.

Laxus almost wants to laugh.

“...You good?”

Laxus shakes himself. “As long as I can use my notes for the test, Professor Redfox.” Gajeel sneers at him petulantly, and Laxus strides past him in the direction they were walking before. “Ain’t we goin’ somewhere?”

Grumbling, Gajeel takes the cue to head up their expedition again, cutting through an alley past the edge of town. “We need to have a big enough space with no obstructions around. -Or destructible property.” With that heartening precaution, he waves and calls, “Come on, I saw a good field as I was comin’ in.”

Trailing after him long enough to put the previous exchange out of mind, Laxus eventually points out, “Fellow dragon slayer aside, how much overlap in skill sets is there between eating iron and eating lightning? Do you have any clue what yer doing?”

“You think I’m an amateur?!” Gajeel yowls, then the indignation on his face collapses into a dramatic pout. “I fuckin’ wish I was. I’ve never got caught out in a storm without getting struck by lightning at least once.” Gajeel claps a hand over his shoulder. “Do me a solid and make this my first.”

Laxus’s well justified and incredulous glower goes fully ignored as he marches off into the center of the field, boots squelching. Once he joins, Gajeel nods and circles him. “Here. I’ll worry about attracting the lightning this time so you can focus just on anticipating it and catching it, and get used to the feel of it.”

He drops into a crouch on Laxus’s right. Extended in front of him, he clasps his hands together and intertwines his fingers, then transforms them into iron. Not just surface scales, Laxus realizes, solid metal, like he’s looking at a fragment of a masterfully rendered sculpture. Briefly, Laxus considers their arrangement vaguely religious, like Gajeel is some saint waiting to be selflessly martyred by heavenly lightning.

Flinching in place, he sneers and shakes himself in exasperated disgust at his own notion. He should not be allowed to philosophize after booze- it is grisly.

“I’ll stay down low so you’ll have the most time to intercept the bolt.”

Laxus drags his hands over his face at the perfectly nonchalant way Gajeel says it, as if he’s not deranged. “That’ll still be a fraction of a second. Do you really wanna take that risk? I cannot stress this enough, that I absolutely never claimed I can keep you from getting struck.”

“Ehh it’ll be fine.”

Providing a more eloquent reply than anything Laxus could’ve come up with, the sky opens up and rain begins pouring down with true force, drenching them in seconds. He can sense the most active area of the polarized electrical charge is still off to their left for now, and he watches the flickering illumination of the clouds for a while. It is alluring. Beside him, Gajeel appears content to wait.

Despite himself, Laxus finds himself thinking about their fight in the cathedral. Gajeel was in the same position then as he’s in now, this time by design. Shouldn’t he be uncomfortable with that? Surely he’d have no patience left for the kind of blow Laxus dealt him, which looked and sounded so excruciating... Yet once again, he’s using his own body to deliberately brook a bolt of lightning- for someone else, no less.

“Do you really wanna stay out in the pissing rain for however long?” Laxus makes one last weary effort to point out that he’s not worth the trouble. “...Won’t you rust, or something?”

It’s the first question he’s asked that appears to genuinely offend Gajeel. His nose wrinkles as the edge of his upper lip curls past a wicked fang, his eyes narrowing caustically. Given that he’s squatting a few feet lower than Laxus, he achieves an impressive display of disdain. “You’d better watch yerself. I don’t fucking rust-! The hell do you think yer talking to, some two karat, unpolished, junkyard, pig iron hack?!”

Laxus cocks his head and mentally files away metallurgy as an extant basis of scrutiny and pride beyond his comprehension.

“Listen up: dragon slayer iron never rusts, and it don’t tarnish, pit, or scuff either. It’s unmatched and always fuckin’ will be, finer than anything you can get from the earth. So show a bit of respect, ’cause I ain’t telling ya twice!” he snarls, giving the distinct impression that he’d be jabbing a finger into Laxus’s chest if his hands weren’t forged together.

“My mistake.” He shifts in place warily when an earth-shaking crash of thunder explodes so close that it leaves his ears ringing. “Fine then, unparalleled and expert lightning rod,” he addresses, voice raised. “What exactly is this plan of yours?”

Gajeel huffs, then looks over towards the thunderhead. “You can feel the charge, right? Just wait. Don’t try to summon it down; that’s what I’m here for. Focus on sensing when a bolt is gonna hit, then direct all yer power inward. Let it follow.”

“...Right. I mean how do I then catch the bolt with my mouth and eat it?”

His sideways glance offers a glimpse of the lopsided expression on Gajeel’s face. “Honestly, Laxus: go with your gut. Sorry, but that much is actually outta my particular skill set. But remember that this is the power you wield and you’re already made to consume it. Your body will steer ya right.”

What a concept. Laxus breathes deep and tries to believe it. “Fine,” he exhales, focusing on the sky with a quiver of trepidation that he swallows firmly. Let it be an appetizer. “For the record, if either of us die: it’s your fault.”

“Gihehe, that’s the spirit!”

With a brutal and beautiful display, the center of the storm closes in on them. Laxus hones the edge of his senses, narrowing the scope of his attention around the rapidly shifting distribution of ions in the sky. It tempts him to adjust his own electric field to induce a current, but he stifles the urge and lets Gajeel do his part. He can sense the static building up in the metal.

He closes his eyes to visualize a map of the polarity forming around them, bringing the typically stable and subtle charge of the earth underfoot into uncomfortably sharp focus. The air acquires a familiar scent. Subconsciously, Laxus takes one step forward.

Energy discharges overhead, and immediately Laxus gathers his power deep in his chest the way he would before an all-out attack. Violent lightning streaks down, overwhelming energy, craving the ground. Its path to Gajeel carries it past Laxus.

He brandishes his teeth like a challenge. In a blinding, deafening instant, he snaps them shut and he feels the lightning pool impossibly in the minute spaces between each tooth all at once. The throbbing current circuits ecstatically through his teeth, tonsils, and the floor of his mouth. Then Laxus swallows, though it offers no resistance against the muscles of his throat as it vanishes down. Reeling, his heart hammers, his ears ring with a rhythmic pattern, and the rain around them steams from the heat, making the blood already flush at the surface of his skin pulse even stronger.

The taste is utterly indescribable. Perhaps the only thing he can definitively say about it is that-

“It’s good, right?!”

Beside him, he finds Gajeel gazing up at him, squinting against the rain, smiling across his whole face. Laxus’s breath stops short at the sight.

Nothing but total sincerity would stretch his smile so wide to include every pointy tooth connected in a jagged line, creasing his cheeks and eyes, and the enthusiasm is blinding. Of course, Gajeel’s not so sour he hasn’t smiled, nor jaded enough that it was never genuine, but the way he’s beaming at him right now- for him... He’s stunned.

Red-faced, stray hairs frazzled, drenched to the bone, crouching uncomfortably on his strained heels, and willingly using himself as bait for a lightning strike, Gajeel’s smiling. He has no reason to except for Laxus, happy for him experiencing a pleasure he’s never known before. There’s no fret or doubt, only an inviting happiness. All that delight, purely on Laxus’s behalf.

After everything.

He doesn’t realize he’s staring until the sight moves with a tilt of Gajeel’s head followed by expectant nodding.

“Yeah,” Laxus exhales without precisely remembering what he’s agreeing with.

Gajeel’s smile softens with satisfaction, then he elbows his leg and jerks his chin up. “Look alive, spark-plug, there’s more where that came from.”

Laxus manages to refocus on the clouds overhead as the charge intensifies again. His fangs have made themselves known without Laxus intending or even realizing the change, but he doesn’t bother to hide them as he waits for the storm to come meet him.

The second bolt tastes even better, now that he knows to anticipate and savor it. The satisfaction is heady by the time the third strikes.

When it does, his jaws take in less voltage than the bolt contains, tendrils of excess current split between his teeth, and an overflowing arc of lightning finds Gajeel’s hands with a sharp snap- so fast he feels it rather than sees it. Laxus swears sharp with alarm, speared with guilt and concern, halting over his haste to turn to him. Iron reverts to skin with a ripple of magic, but in spite of his keen worry, Gajeel unweaves his hands and shakes the pain out with disgruntled but unconcerned ease.

He startles when Laxus grasps his arm, staring up, but Laxus focuses on his hand. An undulating line of skin trailing down from between his first two knuckles looks red, raised, and tender, but otherwise unharmed, so he lets go.

“Maybe if you’ve had enough, we’d better get back?” Gajeel suggests, breath heavy.

Laxus just nods, short of words in the moment. They leave more urgently than they came, before any more lightning decides to seek them out when they’re not prepared for it, which they make easy work of with the adrenaline from the last ten minutes.

Habit tells him not to risk looking stupid, yet he hears himself asking, “Can you overeat on something like lightning?” anyway.

“Mhmm.” Gajeel cautiously glances skyward. “Best not to.”

Rushing through the doors, they startle the lone waiter, who was peering in consternation between their spot and the windows at an apparent loss. Upon seeing them reemerge breathless, giddy, and sopping from the downpour, he hunches and stares confounded at them for several moments, then gives up with a wordless roll of his eyes and slips away to the back corner. We must look like stupid little kids, Laxus thinks shamelessly, loosely shaking himself off.

Tinted windows mute the continuing flashes of lightning. It seems everyone else had the common sense not to venture out, leaving only the two of them and their table, still with his bag, his coat, and the remaining half of his drink. Laxus downs it all in one go, barely even wincing with the taste of lightning still intense on his tongue.

“After you left it unattended? Risky business.”

In all honesty, people are so intimidated by him that he’s never really considered that anyone would try something. “Well, I have you if someone tried to spike it, so it’ll be fine.”

Gajeel’s eyes go wide, then he grins. He lingers near the threshold as he gathers up his hair and wrings it out with a tight twist, splattering the floor with a cascade of rainwater. That grin settles in on his face. “Who’d ’ve thought, eh? Taunted a storm out in the open that long, and I never once got struck.” He peers musingly up at the ceiling. “I maybe could get used to that.”

“Well,” Laxus corrects a little regretfully, “still the once.”

“What, this?” He holds up his hand. “Ha! ’s only a little love bite,” Gajeel purrs, “it ain’t nothing.”

Laxus drops into his chair, fluttering with restlessness that’s surprisingly not unpleasant. The energy doesn’t grate or rebel, but imbues him. He quips back, “That so? Then ya must be glad I was there to take the heat for ya, huh?” In reply, Gajeel makes a show of unfurling his hair with a willful toss of his head.

For as long as he can remember, he’s never situated so comfortably in his own skin. And maybe it’s only the aftereffects of the lightning imprinted on the back of his eyes, but the dim shadows feels rich and enveloping, offset by the sparse, mellow glow of amber light that traces their edges in gold. Gajeel’s polished iron glitters like embers.

Laxus feels so natural right now that it’s almost exhilarating. Combined with the slight tipsiness that slows his mind just enough to stop his overthinking, it emboldens him, and he stares at Gajeel.

The iron dragon issues a thrumming, intricate hum from his chest like a question, then steps in right to his seat to stare straight back at him.

Laxus reaches up and dares a tentative touch to the side of his neck, and Gajeel allows his unspoken request, leaning close enough to let Laxus kiss him.

Momentary, tentative warmth joins them.

Then Laxus pulls back with a resurfaced splinter of anxiety tapping the back of his mind to ask what the hell he thinks he’s playing at. It stutters and dies when Gajeel grasps his jaw, the lingering film of rain making their skin cling, then he kisses him in return.

Gajeel moves into the line of contact, shifting with intent and approval, and it ignites in Laxus a compressed but potent need to satisfy the immediacy of skin and stop second-guessing himself for once.

He follows his lead, drinking in the feeling, subtly testing for himself the alignment of their lips, the flow of their breath, the pressure of their want. Gajeel’s kiss roams at some point, over the corner of his mouth with a fleeting hint of tongue, then further to trace the end of his scar. Pressing back, throat fit into the curve of his palm, Laxus feels the keen contrast of the flawlessly smooth studs on his chin. When Gajeel retreats, it’s only by inches, only for seconds, but Laxus doesn’t let him go, taking his other arm in a demanding grip and meeting him for more.

Not so different from how he stared waiting at the stormy skies, Laxus has his head tipped all the way back in parallel to Gajeel, bowed over him, face lowered a mere breath above him. Heavy with the rain, his long hair falls into a curtain encircling them with hazy darkness that narrows the world to their tiny fragment. It veils the meeting of their lips like something sacred.

When they need another gap for air, against his lips, Gajeel murmurs, “I won’t leave well enough alone.”

Again, Laxus thinks to tell him he doesn’t know the right saying, and it’s meant to be ‘can’t’. But not just the wording is off, he notices, he doesn’t say it with the ascribed admonishment either. Assurance almost feels more accurate. He sounds as though he’s making a promise.

Not that Laxus can bring himself to stop and ask what it’s about, entirely tied up in the exchange. When Gajeel’s lips find him again, the oddity swiftly loses focus, brushed aside when he reaches for something deeper this time, an open-mouthed hint of hunger. Laxus reaches up to hold back behind his jaw, threading his fingertips into his hair. With a shiver, Gajeel pauses, though he doesn’t pull away.

A heady breath preludes the next kiss pressed attentively into his neck, warm lips parting against his skin. Slowly, and so lightly it only skims over his surface, he feels Gajeel expose his pointed fangs and drag them along his pulse, which extracts an unbidden sound directly from his throat, odd and undignified.

The unexpected note of candor jolts him from the heated haze with embarrassment and suddenly his face is burning, stuck stiff and breathless. Gajeel draws back then, though the side of his mouth brushes past his cheekbone as he does so.

The slide of long, dark hair leaves his skin tingling as he straightens.

“...Think that’ll hold you over till the next storm?”

Laxus’s mind is too slow and fixated on sorting through the many unprecedented sensations to come up with any kind of response, much less an appealingly witty one, and the lapse feels painfully apparent after a silent beat passes. Forcefully clawing the infuriating gap between his brain and his tongue, he manages to get out a meaningless, “Something like that.”

To him, the awkwardness feels ruinous, but Gajeel doesn’t show any notice of it, merely stepping over to half perch on the edge of the table, which keeps him and his clever grin perceptibly close. Laxus tries to commit his focus to that instead of agonizing over words he can’t retract.

Probably, he should be all aflutter over what exactly possessed him to kiss Gajeel out of nowhere and what this means for the two of them, but he cannot stomach any more overthinking tonight. Laxus wanted to, and that’s enough.

As for Gajeel... He’s a bit wary of reading a double meaning into his words, and the reality of ‘the next storm’ commands his attention anyway. Despite the scars of stress and fatigue that only time can heal, he can tell something foundational has fallen into place. Laxus will keep watch for the next thunderstorm, and he’s confident he can do just as well without a lightning rod to lure his meal for him from now on.

Gajeel worked him through it so plainly and so readily, even after Laxus made it painfully evident how he’s taken advantage of dragon magic for years without comprehending its most basic principles. “You’re so strange,” he observes.

Releasing another weird noise, a lower, clicking kind of trill, Gajeel just braces his forearms on the table, leans all the way back, and shows his smile, pinning Laxus with a stare even as he shakes his head in exasperation.

He ignores the display since he doesn’t seem inclined to give him a real reply to go off of, though Laxus adds anyway, “I thought you’d resent me.” Gajeel gives him a dubious look, and he elaborates, “For having dragon slayer magic. For encroaching on a legacy I don’t have any right to.” After all, Gajeel was actually entrusted with that legacy from the source. He’d have more than enough reason to hold it against him and leave a fake like him fumbling in the dark.

“I don’t,” is all that Gajeel states in the end. He shrugs and frowns absently, unable to turn up the criticism Laxus expected. “Yer no less worthy of it than I am.”

“I couldn’t do what you just did,” Laxus counters. “I couldn’t explain to anyone else how dragon slayer magic forms beneath the surface, much less teach it to them. That’s what really sets it apart, I figure, ’cause I do feel different from you and Natsu. Your parents didn’t give your magic to you- same way a lacrima crystal can- they taught it to you. I guess... I just never thought you’d do the same thing for me that I imagine Metalicana must’ve done for you, and share his know-how with me.” Yet he did, and hopefully someday Laxus can come up with a way to pay him back for it, because god knows he owes him one.

“I can tell he taught you really well.”

“That’s-” Gajeel chokes, then Laxus watches his considerable composure break.

The realization startles him, having only ever seen it waver, but Gajeel draws back and turns aside indiscreetly, his ears flattened down to a harsh, tight angle and Laxus worries he just accidentally fucked up something big. He got so used to Natsu’s loving boasts about Igneel, but he of all people ought to know that familial ties can turn terribly fraught and painful.

Gajeel visibly wrestles down a measure of his distress. “Don’t praise me for it like that.” Laxus draws a breath because he stands by it, even if he regrets bringing it up, then swallows when Gajeel tightly adds, “-Please. Honoring my old man ’s the last thing I’ve done. I... I’m not doing anything like he did. You didn’t know that stuff, an’ I did, so I just helped fill in the gaps. I’ve got no right to teach anyone their legacy or... Shit, I don’t-” His voice pitches up then cuts off.

Before Laxus can try to apologize, sifting for words, he forges on, “If you’re struggling with a question, and I know the answer, I’d be a right fucking bastard to leave you guessing for no reason. Swear I’ll tell ya. I- I’m not teaching you, I’m just telling you,” he forcefully insists. “That’s all.”

Breathing clipped and faint, he crosses his arms over himself and closes off. Privately, Laxus still believes that’s a capability he deserves to feel proud of, but he won’t go pricking at raw wounds just for the gratification of proclaiming what he thinks Gajeel should feel. He only murmurs, “...If you say so.”

“Just... just don’t sweat it, yeah?” Gajeel says, holding fast to a stilted undertone. “’s no skin off my back to lend ya a hand and point out stupid dragon slayer quirks to ya. We run into each other anyway. Just... buy me that drink next time and we’ll call it even.”

Positioning his hands for an oath and pretending for him like that isn’t so laughably far from how important he considers this, Laxus promises, “Whatever bougie kinda whiskey you could want.”

  —

Absently fixing his boot as he walks by that same field in the foggy half-light of morning, only then does Laxus realize he forgot to ask Gajeel what he meant when he said he wouldn’t leave well enough alone.

  —

The change hits him between one unassuming moment and the next.

A small knot of muscles in his abdomen spasms violently, distinct from the stitch in his side, his back feels cold and clammy despite the desert air, and a twitch draws him to look over his shoulder in expectation as a pressure coalesces over his nape. The sand crunches underfoot when Laxus stops short.

“...The hell was that?” he says aloud, compelled to test if the unsettling feeling will hold up to the embarrassment of acknowledging a completely baseless chill.

It does.

No other involuntary movements follow up the first, fleeting few, but the weight persists and an unpleasant tingling sensation has settled down his arms and through his fingers. A specific direction over the horizon pulls at him, leading to god knows where. (Damn his electric field that swiftly ruins any compass.) After several motionless minutes scanning the terrain over and over, straining his ears and nose for the slightest abnormality, Laxus very cautiously continues walking. There’s nothing else for it when he can’t find anything out of the ordinary. He keeps his senses sharp, but if anyone is following him, they’re still very far away.

He treks fitfully over the next hour, stopping in his tracks increasingly often, skin crawling ever more viciously. Swearing under his breath, Laxus digs his heels in and swings around. No one- there’s no one here! Why does he feel so fucking uneasy? “What am I even supposed to do, huh?” he challenges, frustration overwhelming him. If this foreboding has to pressure him so insistently, why can’t it have the decency to suggest the slightest hint of purpose?

He still has no idea what could be wrong. It’s been an hour and nothing has gone amiss, other than undoubtedly getting himself lost after he stopped and turned around so many times. This place is as empty as empty can be, devoid of any threat to cast this shadow over him.

...Could the guild possibly be in some kind of trouble? It’s not an unwarranted thought, given that Fairy Tail spends more time in trouble than not. They might be floundering right now. Possibly, he could return to Magnolia and check; he can eavesdrop from a distance without revealing himself and find out if anything’s wrong so he can shake this awful feeling.

But maybe he can’t risk a presumption that bold. How conceited and insensitive would it be to arrogate the guild’s conflicts when one of the last dire threats they suffered was Laxus himself?

“Fuck.”

Of Natsu’s many hit or miss comments, one clicked deep in his mind: Fairy Tail’s mages are all a circle of friends which Laxus shows no interest in. Because maybe that’s the reason he was so desperate to rebuild the guild by force. If he acknowledges that Fairy Tail’s strength comes from unified camaraderie, what’s a social fuck-up like himself supposed to do? Circle is the right word for it, complete and closed. Admittedly, disinterest played a part in his isolation, but the main cause came down to ineptitude, and that part of him hasn’t changed.

Laxus starts walking again. No, going back is a bad idea.

Naturally, Gramps preached the guild’s powerful bonds of friendship as far back as he can remember, but Laxus had refused to hear it. The idea that he could contribute nothing of real substance to Fairy Tail’s true strength was unbearable to him. He had to lend worth to his guild, a significance they depend on and would pale miserably without, he needed that more than anything. If not, then he’d be pointless. If not, every damn one of them who said he got into Fairy Tail because he’s Makarov’s grandson would be right. If not, there would be nowhere left that he deserved, where he belonged...

It was a bitter pill to swallow, then, when unified camaraderie did overcome his power. And it made exile almost feel like relief. He has absolutely no clue how to befriend the rest of the guild. (The Raijin Tribe was a fluke that he still can’t comprehend.) They all make it look so fucking easy, which in fact makes it that much harder for Laxus. His perpetual lack of natural connection might just be proof he never stood a chance of fitting in with Fairy Tail from the get go.

He hopes to try returning some day, but now? Shit. They have no reason to put up with him after even the master recognized they’d be better off without him. Because it’s true. Even if he goes, can he ever make up for what he did and earn a real place in that circle...? The person they say they want back still feels so foreign to him.

Then his bleak imaginings are abruptly interrupted by the vivid memory of Gajeel beaming broader and brighter than ever simply for Laxus’s sake.

Gajeel shouldn’t like him. Out of everyone, he has no nostalgic attachment to a shared past as guildmates, he took the derisive and violent brunt of Laxus’s heartless spite, and he witnessed the deranged, delusional, and dangerous peak of his breakdown. He should be the last person to tolerate him, if ever. And just last week he gave him that radiant smile. Gajeel likes him.

He still has no idea what he did to win Gajeel’s affection, but he never did anything all that hard. If he can somehow stumble into that, maybe he can eventually work things out with the others too. Or, at least it shouldn’t be so bad that he would ruin everything just by dropping in at the guild to see if they’re okay...

He stops walking again. Squeezing his fists, he sucks in a deep breath and feels that ominous tug on the back of his neck. Something is wrong.

He can do this.

Laxus squints up at the sky and he thinks about the storm that he feasted on. Since then, it’s easier than ever to unravel his cells and string them along an electrical current. Dismantled down to the ions, he soars into the upper atmosphere where exhilarating clarity suddenly makes the unease sharpen a hundred fold.

It drags him several dozen miles off target past the coast, into an already brewing storm.