Work Text:
The call drifted like the smoke still wafting from their stale fire. Low and hollow, aching with distance. Resonant and slightly tremulous, the birdsong came like a breathy exhale more than a song. It lingered, winding through the verdant leaves above their meager shelter as cherished love knots. A mournful phrase which heralded the morning.
“It’s going to rain soon.”
The sound was pressed to the back of his neck. Hot breath gliding down his shoulder. A broad arm was wrapped around his chest and he found himself staring into unmanicured nails just inches before his face, resting against the ground. Gajeel nuzzled into the nape of his neck and took a breath in before opening his eyes into the phosphorescent morning.
“How do you know?” Laxus asked him.
“Didn’t you hear it?” his voice was like a tumbling stone. A rough voice, but it was warm and comfortable.
His initial thoughts turned to the sound of thunder, though, if there were a storm in the distance, he would have felt it deep in his marrow long before.
“The dove.”
Gajeel rose from their bed. A pang struck Laxus at the base of his sternum for the heat leaving. The sound of a bag being pilfered pricked at his back, and then the metallic click of a lighter. A weighted exhale.
Laxus turned over and found himself breathless. Gajeel was reclined against a fallen tree, wearing nothing but the light of the new day that now illuminated the split ends of his pitch-colored hair. His eyes blazed a vibrant blood-orange. One bare foot crossed in front of the other. The faintest of sleep-drunk smiles danced across his face at meeting Laxus’s gaze. Smoke slipped from his lips before he breathed out the rest towards the canopy above them. The sparse plume, cut by sunlight and mixing with the particles of dust and mist, reminded Laxus of chalk and glitter.
“Anybody told ya those things are bad for you?”
“Several have tried,” Gajeel drawled in a low, hoarse voice that clung to Laxus’s throat just like the white-grey smoke slipping out into the morning. He itched at the stubble along his jaw, long and rough and speckled with light.
Laxus studied the slope of his throat into his chest, the scars that crossed his skin, and thought about how in that instant he desperately wanted to run his tongue against the smooth, bright map of past battles.
Fascinating how each person contained the same elements, but in one person they were arranged so as to make a man stammer, blush, and work to suddenly wet his dry mouth.
A cool, damp wind carded through the trees, chasing the chill that only comes with water’s touch. Laxus sighed deeply as April sighs for May and ignored his lover’s sharp-toothed grin as he dragged himself out of bed.
The sun was still piercing the leaves like emerald glass when the first drops of rain began to fall.