Work Text:
“Listen up, everyone!”
That announcement, along with the sound of the guild door slamming into the wall, quickly silenced the mages, as everyone turned their heads to witness the unusual occurrence. To be clear, people kicking open the door and shouting dramatically was quite common from almost anybody (fellow guild members, angry Magnolia citizens, friends from other guilds, overconfident villains of the week looking to earn their stripes by fighting a notorious mage). No, the bizarreness came from the source of the shouting.
Lucy Hearfilia never entered the guild raising her voice (unless it was at Natsu) or did anything to damage guild property (unless it was being inadvertently caught up in a brawl, usually instigated by Natsu). This would normally be a cause for concern, compounded with her mussed hair, ink stained fingers, and dark circles under her eyes, but the girl was beaming.
“Everything alright, Lucy?” Mirajane asked.
“Everything is perfect!” Lucy grinned, brandishing a sheaf of typed papers, “I finally finished my novel!”
The guild erupted into cheers. It was no secret that Lucy was an aspiring writer, and had been working on a novel ever since she joined the guild. However, working on a Fairy Tail mage’s schedule had not been conducive to productive writing, and between going on lengthy jobs, fighting villains, the guild disbanding, working as an underpaid model turned journalist, fighting villains (this time including Zeref and Acnologia), and helping rebuild the city after fighting said villains, her novel had been altered, lengthened, and reworked as Lucy’s world grew. After the basics of Magnolia had been rebuilt and the citizens could more or less return to living their lives, Lucy strictly instructed her guildmates not to bother her under pain of death and spent a week holed up in her apartment.
Honestly, it was a good thing she decided to return to the land of the living now. Natsu and Happy tried to check on her two days into her hermitage, but ran into the guild traumatized soon after, to general amusement.
(“We tried asking her how she was doing and she yelled at us to get out!” Happy sobbed into Lisanna’s arms.
“Her face got all scary-looking and the vibes were intense !” Natsu corroborated, nodding earnestly, “I don’t know what Zeref was thinking trying to make me a demon when she’s clearly better for it!”)
“LUCY!” the second most unlikely person in the guild to create havoc, Levy catapulted over the tables and sprinted towards her friend, “I’m so happy for you! It’s been such a journey to get here!”
Lucy grabbed Levy’s hand and everyone could swear they saw her eyes sparkle beneath her eye bags, “it’s been so long! Every time I thought I had something, I got more and more ideas and had to restart the draft… I swear, I never thought I’d finish it! But here we go, I have my first finished draft, and as I promised, you can be the first one to read it.”
Levy sniffled, taking the papers into her grasp reverently. “Lucy… I’m so honored to be the first person to read this.”
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears as well. The guild, generally exhausted from the intensive rebuilding efforts, enjoyed this touching display of friendship and the celebration of their friend’s success.
However, in true Fairy Tail fashion, this perfect moment did not last.
“Levy’s not the first person to read it!” Happy piped up from the bar stool.
It was as if the cozy atmosphere had popped. Mirajane dropped her dishcloth, Cana set down her tankard and shook her head, and Lisanna cringed mutedly. Around her, guild members glanced at each other, and avoided looking at Lucy. People began to murmur.
“What do you mean?” Lucy asked slowly after a few seconds, “She’s… Happy did you read it? ”
“Aye!” He chirped, oblivious to Lucy’s face steadily growing redder as she shook in anger, “Me and Natsu did!”
“NATSU!” Lucy whirled around to her best friend, who was in the middle of demolishing his roast chicken, but was now completely still and sweating profusely.
“Eek- I’m sorry, Lucy!” He scrambled backwards until he hit Elfman, who dived out of the strike zone upon seeing the look on Lucy’s face, “It was such a long time ago!”
“Explain yourself!” She barked at him, hands curled into fists.
“Well…”
.
It had been a few weeks after Lucy joined the guild and Natsu still wasn’t quite sure what he thought of her. Sure, he liked her and was sure she was a good person but she was also the biggest weirdo he had ever met! Her magic was weird but really cool, she used some really fancy sounding words he had never heard of before, and she had even less of a concept of money he did sometimes- she was a disaster with her money sometimes. It was like she was from a different planet!
She also liked reading, which he could barely understand, and writing, which he really couldn’t understand. Who wanted to sit for hours staring at a piece of paper with words, or worse, writing those words out of nowhere?
“It’s the best feeling ever!” she gushed when he voiced his thoughts, “it’s like magic- you get to create an exciting story out of nothing! And when you read it, it’s like you’ve been teleported into a new world with different rules, and adventures, and monsters…”
She had gone on for another fifteen minutes while Natsu and Happy stared. This was the longest they had ever heard her talk.
“Anyway, I’m working on writing my own novel,” she said, suddenly turning bashful, “It’s really new, but I’ve had so much inspiration lately and there’s so much I want to write about.”
That was that for the conversation, but a few days later, Natsu found the perfect mission for the three of them and he and Happy rushed to her apartment to tell her.
They were greeted with the sound of running water from the room next door and no Lucy.
“Aw, I guess she’s showering,” Happy’s ears drooped.
“Yeah, but you know what that means right?” Natsu grinned devilishly, “we get to snoop through her stuff!”
“Awesome!”
They were immediately drawn to the small stack of papers on the desk. Natsu rifled through them, noticing that they were in her handwriting, and looked like they were written over the course of at least a few days, judging from the ink color changing every few pages or so. The pages were far from neat, and words and sections were sometimes struck out, with notes in the margins.
“I think this is Lucy’s novel,” he mused.
“Then we have to read it!” Happy flew over.
“Alright…” Natsu braced himself for an unpleasant experience of deciphering her handwriting and invariably not understanding what half the words meant, but sat at her chair and began to read with Happy perched on her shoulders. He was pleasantly surprised to find the language pretty simple, and they soon finished the pages on her desk.
“Wow, that was pretty fun!” Happy exclaimed, “Lucy might actually be a decent writer!”
“Why isn’t this finished yet?” Natsu crawled under the desk, trying to find any more pages, “She ended at such a cliffhanger! What happens after they run into those ghosts on the mountains?”
“Lucy hasn’t finished it yet,” Happy said sadly, “I guess we’ll have to wait for her to write some more.”
“Aye…” Natsu returned the pages to their original place and they both waited for Lucy to emerge.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? GET OUT!”
“Wait Lucy we have a job that we think you’ll-”
“AAAAAAH PUT DOWN THE CHAIR-”
.
“Oh my god,” Lucy whimpered, “you read the first draft? With the ghosts?”
“Aye, sir,” Happy nodded, “not that they stayed ghosts for long. The villains kept changing form each time we came back to read more over the next few months!”
“ You read it multiple times? Lucy seethed, stomping even closer to Natsu. The mage’s eyes darted around the room, desperately searching for any way to save the impending doom to his testicles.
“I- I can explain!” He began, doom getting worse as Happy, that traitor, finally gained wind of Lucy’s anger and flew to the ceiling of the guild to avoid her rage. He had to find an out and he had to find it now.
“Gray read it too!” He quickly pointed at Gray who was thankfully at the other end of the hall.
“Damn it Natsu!” he yelped.
“I know Gray tried to read it!” she rolled her eyes exasperatedly, “I literally caught him right before we fought with Phantom and stopped him! You better not be trying to deflect the blame to him right now”
“No, no it’s just as bad!” Natsu shouted, “because he went back too!”
.
As soon as the team had caught up with Lucy returning from her huge, fancy childhood home and made sure that she was, in fact, alright, Erza had declared that she would buy Lucy lunch to make her feel better. She convinced (forced) Natsu and Happy to come with them, but firmly made it clear that she would not be paying for their food. She tried to convince Gray to come too, but he made an excuse of having to pick up a new shirt from his house as he had left his on the train on the way back. It wasn’t the best excuse, but Natsu, Happy, and Erza bought it, and Lucy was too emotionally exhausted to question it too closely. In reality…
Look, Gray just had to read her story, okay? He only really got through a page before Lucy rudely snatched it out of his hands, but it was really interesting. Sure, it was messy and clearly unfinished, but he was invested in the plot and characters.
He would have fought harder to read it before Levy (what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her), but they were all quickly distracted by their discussion of Phantom’s “Black Steel Gajeel”. And after that, well, the discovery of their friends’ crucifixions and the battles against Phantom and Juvia pushed those thoughts out of his mind.
But now that everything was quiet, he just had to know what happened next. He knew it wasn’t right, but he took Lucy’s absence as an opportunity to climb in through her window and look for her manuscript. Sending a mental apology to Lucy, he settled into her chair and began to read.
He wasn’t disappointed. Iris was a bit of a scaredy-cat, but was definitely finding her footing with her new friends and getting better at fighting the aliens! After fifteen minutes of reading, he made his way out of the window, his guilt outweighed by his satisfaction.
This satisfaction evaporated once he got his friends and was berated by Erza for managing to “lose” his shirt on the way to the guild yet again.
.
“In my defense,” Gray said as Lucy turned her anger onto him, “I really liked the story and Iris’s character.”
Lucy calmed a little. “I’m glad you did, Gray, but I really wish you hadn’t done that!”
“Yep, my bad,” he said, “but Mira was worse than me.”
“Traitor!” Mirajane hissed, but Lucy turned to her.
“Mira?” she exclaimed beseechingly, “you too?”
There was no distracting Lucy at that point. “I’m sorry, Lucy! I only read your story once.”
There was an uproar from at least ten voices.
Lucy’s shoulders slumped. “What did you do.”
At this point, it wasn’t even a question.
“Well,” Mirajane wrung her dishcloth between her hands. The material tore under her nails. “I might have… shared it with some guild members.”
“No way,” Lucy said, aghast. “How- why- when?”
“It was right after the Grand Magic Games,” Mirajane sounded sheepish, “I think you left your bag at the guild when you went on a job with Wendy and Natsu. I took it with me to keep it behind the bar for safekeeping, but your manuscript fell out. And, well…”
.
“Hello? Earth to Mirajane?”
“Ah- sorry, Wakaba! I’ll be right with you!”
“You said that twice now!” The mage made his way to the bar, “What’s got you so distracted?”
Mirajane sighed. “Sorry, it’s just Lucy’s story. She left it here and it’s pretty interesting.”
“Oh?” At that, Macao, along with a few others, walked closer to Mirajane. “Now I have to know what she wrote.”
“I didn’t know she was writing a novel,” Romeo’s face lit up, “Lucy’s so cool!”
In the matter of seconds, a small crowd formed around Mira’s place at the bar. Kinana, the other barmaid, glanced around quickly, decided that it wasn’t worth manning the bar alone, and joined in.
“Alright, there are too many of you to read from the same pages at once, and we don’t want to damage it,” Mirajane lifted the sheaf over her head and eyed Laki and Droy sternly as they both reached for the first page at the same time, “I’ll read it out loud and you can listen.”
There was a gasp and the sound of a fork dropping. The group turned to their right, only to find that in the minor chaos, they had completely missed Erza eating her strawberry cake.
“Stop that at once!” she commanded, narrowing her eyes at Mirajane, “This is disrespectful of Lucy’s privacy, and I won’t stand for it.”
Mirajane narrowed her eyes, officially signalling a potential standoff between two rivals with short fuses. Not wanting to get stabbed with swords, impaled with demon claws, or generally kicked, punched, or hit with flying furniture if the two did not use magic, the group began to dissipate. There were murmurs of possibly calling Master if things escalated further, and Macao stood protectively in front of Romeo.
But Mirajane only smiled. “Why Erza,” she said, in a sickly sweet manner that was more reminiscent of her troublesome teenage phase than her recent kinder persona, “are you telling me you don’t want to hear about the character Ermine and her love for the theater?”
Erza gasped and her brow furrowed, but she remained unconvinced.
“I’ll also give you another slice of cake on the house.”
Hook, line, and sinker. Erza relaxed into her seat.
“F-forgive me, Lucy,” she muttered, dropping her eyes to the floor, “but the call of the theater and strawberry cake is too much for me to bear.”
And that was that of the standoff. With renewed vigour, the crowd resumed, this time including Erza, and Mirajane cleared her throat and began to read.
By this point, Mirajane had been informed by several reliable sources (Natsu, Happy, and Gray) that Lucy had restarted her manuscript several times, but was inspired after the Games and had gone on a writing spree. As a result, the manuscript was substantial, and several members of the guild had to leave for jobs or head back home before Mirajane finished reading.
“Aw man,” Jet groaned, as he and Droy stood up to head to the train station, “I want to know what happens next, but we really can’t miss the train.”
“And I should really get back to the bar,” Kinana ruefully glanced at the growing impatience of some patrons waiting a few paces away.
There were murmurings of displeasure as the others voiced their agreement.
“Hmm,” Mirajane cocked her head, “it does seem unfair to leave you on a cliffhanger, but I’m not sure what I can do about that right now.”
It was at that moment that Makarov opened the door to his office.
“What’s going on here?”
“Mira’s reading us Lucy’s story, but we couldn’t finish it in time,” Nab piped up.
“Oh dear,” there was a twinkle in Makarov’s eye. “Mira dear, if you look in the third drawer of the cupboard in my office, you will find a copier lacrima that I think may help you.”
Makarov barely finished his sentence before Mirajane bowled over Vijeeter and scrambled for the lacrima. In a few minutes, she carried out a large stack of paper.
“Alright, everybody stand back!” her voice rang out as everybody crowded around her. “Here you are, Kinana, and Laki- Macao and Romeo! You both live together so share one copy- I don’t have that many! And Jet and Droy! You’ll be on the same train so you better share too! Yes, Master, you can have one.”
After a few minutes, a couple of minor scuffles over the copies, and some confusion where the pages in Wakaba’s copy were out of order, the crowd had moved on, except for Erza.
“Oh Erza!” Mirajane jumped, just now remembering that the other woman was present, “I didn’t give you a copy, I’m sorry!”
“No, it’s alright, Mira,” Erza said before Mira could head to the office to make another copy, “I don’t need one.”
“You don’t want to know what happens next?” Mirajane couldn’t quite believe it, as Erza had seemed quite invested.
“I do,” she said, and then hesitated. “It’s just- I much prefer reading stories when someone else is telling them.”
Upon hearing that, Mirajane remembered several moments of Erza stiltedly ask Laxus about audiobooks, almost insight riots via a letter due to her penmanship, and ineffectively attempt to teach (torture) Natsu how to read until Lisanna and Gray of all people took pity on him and taught him in secret instead. Her first instinct would have been to laugh, but she had resolved to be kinder and Erza looked so vulnerable, that she felt that would be cruel.
“Well, then meet me here again in a couple of days,” she smiled, “I’ll read you the rest of it. Oh and we can invite the others too…”
The two walked out of the guild, eagerly discussing the logistics of having Mirajane read them the story again.
.
“I can’t believe it!” Gray and Natsu sighed in relief as Lucy directed her anger to everyone else in the room, spinning in place and glaring at the others, which lost most of the effectiveness. “I didn’t think you would do this, Mira! And Erza? ”
Erza hung her head. “I am truly sorry, Lucy,” she folded her hands in her lap, “you may hit me in retribution.”
Lucy blanched. “No… I don’t want to do that.”
She sighed and much of the fight left her eyes. “So everybody read that version after the Games?”
“It was almost inevitable,” Mirajane said, sounding almost ashamed, “it turns out, people were quite fond of the copies and shared them with their friends.”
Some other members glanced around shiftily.
“If it’s any consolation, Lucy,” Cana drawled, “I read your novel before Mira’s story circle.”
“How- oh,” Lucy narrowed her eyes, “you took it from my apartment when you… visited.”
Both women grimaced, remembering the time Cana stayed in Lucy’s apartment, drunk, depressed, and overwhelmed with a secret.
“It did help me at the time,” Cana said more gently.
“If anything, I’m glad of that,” Lucy sighed.
“Um, Lucy?” Wendy tugged at the taller woman’s sleeve, “Carla and I didn’t read that copy with Erza and the others, but we did read it during your Christmas party while you were all, well…”
“Oh dear god!” Lucy shrieked at the memory, while Gajeel flinched, and Juvia and Erza avoided eye contact with everybody. “You read it at the party- actually, I can’t stay mad at you,” she gave Wendy a small smile, “Honestly, that party was wild and I’d rather you read that instead of paying attention to our… activities.”
“Hear, hear,” Gray murmured in the background. Wendy gave Lucy a relieved smile.
“Oh yeah!” Cana suddenly clapped her hands, her face lighting up in a memory, “And then I told Gildarts about it. He wanted to read it too so I swiped one of Mira’s copies and mailed it to him right before the guild disbanded!”
“Damn it!” The anger returned, and several members glared at Cana. “How many copies are circulating around Magnolia? At this point, somebody in Sabertooth or Lamia Scale definitely has their hands on it!”
“No, not at all,” Max piped up unexpectedly, “we made sure of that.”
.
Seven years of declining reputation and near-bankruptcy had put a damper on Max’s side hustle of running the Fairy Tail merch shop, but the victory at the Grand Magic Games and the guild’s stepping up during the incident with the time machines and dragons got peoples’ eyes on Fairy Tail again and catapulted him back into the game.
Now with a new guild hall and an upgraded merchandise storefront (thank you, prize money and Erza and Mirajane’s combined ability to make their outstanding debt disappear through terror tactics), Max was living the dream.
He often recognized citizens from nearby neighborhoods drop in to buy action figures for themselves, their children, or attempt to buy them for unsavory purposes (Max quickly put a stop to that, developing skills for identifying resellers and perverts alike). What wasn’t normal was a dragon slayer member of Sabertooth turned Master of the guild, confidently striding past the store.
“I know you,” Laxus stood from a nearby table before Max could get a greeting in, “You’re that Sabertooth dragon slayer who’s obsessed with Natsu. You’re Sting?”
Laxus’s attitude had improved by leaps and bounds over the years, but his lack of tact had apparently not budged.
“Ah, hello,” Sting chuckled, “Laxus, was it? And I’d like to think I have an equal relationship with Natsu now.”
He made his way to Laxus’s table.
“Laxus told us you would be coming to meet Master?” Freed asked.
“That black lightning moron keeps writing letters to me,” Laxus grumbled.
“Orga thinks you’re cool! But yes, it turns out running a guild is difficult work! And Master Makarov was kind enough to set up a meeting to give me advice. What are you guys reading?”
The Thunder God Tribe all set their pages down. Bixlow’s babies had pilfered Jet and Droy’s single copy (which in turn had caused Jet to run off with Laki’s, who then stole Kinana’s while the other girl worked at the bar and… Master was very unimpressed when he found out the source of damage to the guild hall that week) for his teammates to use as reading material during one of their long-distance missions. The manuscript was long and the train ride was shorter than anticipated, so the teammates decided to finish it off after the job.
“Lucy’s novel!” Bickslow crowed.
“It certainly is interesting,” Evergreen gave a small smile.
“If not a bit derivative,” Freed sniffed, “I mean, the main character Iris fights with a flail? The character who takes off his shirt all the time is called Sage?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Bixlow said cheerfully.
“Yeah, Freed, that makes no sense,” Laxus agreed.
Freed only threw his hands up in the air in exasperation.
“That sounds fun!” Sting beamed at the group, unfazed by the display, which impressed a shamelessly eavesdropping Max. “Nobody in our guild is much of a writer. Rufus is definitely a reader, I keep finding his erotica collection-”
“Please don’t elaborate,” Evergreen looked nauseous and Bickslow nodded earnestly. Sting grimaced sympathetically.
“Sorry for putting that visual into your heads. This looks cool, though. Can I read it?”
There was a bang of a chair clattering into the ground, as Laxus stood up and snatched the page out of Sting’s hands. The dragon slayer stepped back, understandably shaken.
“Sorry, it’s guild policy!” Max was halfway to Laxus’s table before he knew it. Even though he objectively did not have to intervene and Laxus had everything covered, as the most, to put it kindly, sociable member present, he felt some obligation to explain the situation to Sting.
“Lucy’s manuscript hasn’t been published yet,” Max said, as Evergreen and Freed gathered the papers that had fallen off the table, “Fairy tail respects the privacy of its members’ intellectual property, so we are strictly barred from sharing it with other guilds. Guild policy!”
Sting eyed the pages skeptically, “Sure, that makes sense,” he said slowly, “it’s just that these pages look handwritten and there are notes in the margins and everything. Does Lucy know you guys are reading it?”
Max shared a guilty glance with Freed, as Laxus shuffled his feet only what could be described as sheepishly. “Fairy Tail values its members’ privacy… for inter-guild purposes only.”
.
“How does nobody see it?” Freed shook Bickslow exasperatedly, “Sage the stripping ninja? Seriously? It’s like a very well written fanfiction!”
There was the sound of footsteps, and at the guild entrance were the silhouettes of Gajeel and Panther Lily against the setting sun. Even though the city was stable enough that the efforts of Fairy Tail mages were no longer required, Gajeel still went above and beyond to aid in construction efforts wherever he could, in some form of self-improvement effort (at least according to what Happy overheard Lily telling Carla. Levy’s name was mentioned somewhere, but Mirajane was yet to wrangle more specific information out of the Exceed). Sure enough, the man looked exhausted, but satisfied.
“Fanfiction? You guys told Bunny Girl about our circle? That was supposed to be a secret!”
“Gajeel!” Juvia yelled, but it was too late.
“WHAT?” Lucy and Levy yelped in unison, turning to the dragon slayer. Under the combined weight of their disbelieving looks and glares from various guild members, Gajeel gulped, while Lily facepalmed and flew up to the ceiling safezone to join Happy.
“Or… not. I’m exhausted!” he said. As Levy’s stare deepened, he hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh god this is too much,” Lucy collapsed onto the floor, “first I find out that Mira kickstarted an illegal pirating scheme, aided and abetted by Master. Then it turns out you guys have enough of a collective conscience to prevent my novel from leaking to other guilds, which is… thanks, I guess? And now there’s some sort of fanfiction reading group for a novel I haven’t even published yet?”
For the first time that evening, nobody decided to pipe up. Lucy sat up and looked around the room.
“Ok, I do want to know about this fanfiction circle,” she admitted, “and I’m more curious than angry at this point.”
“This is Juvia and Lisanna’s fault,” Juvia hung her head, “Lisanna shared her copy, and Juvia got seriously invested in Lorraine and Sage’s relationship. Juvia didn’t think Lucy used it to its full untapped potential and Juvia found the romance… relatable-”
“How can I be the only person who sees this?” Freed cried. He was quickly shushed by members of his team.
“-so she decided to write her own fanfiction based on it and sent it to Lisanna to beta-read-” Lisanna gave a little wave with an abashed grin as the stunned gazes landed on her instead, “- and Lisanna was very helpful; she taught Juvia so much-”
“Stop staring at me!” Lisanna interrupted, face red, as the judgmental and disbelieving looks proved too much for her. “Finding good entertainment was hard in Edolas while the guild was essentially blacklisted from any legitimate establishment! We could only rely on what Natsu Dragion could smuggle from the markets during his trips, and, well, imaginations ran wild! Lucy Ashley made it a whole guild-wide activity and assigned us as each-others’ beta-readers so we could put out ‘quality content’ after she got ‘tired of reading horseshit’!”
“You know what?” Macao cocked his head, “I can see Lucy doing that.”
“And then Elfman overheard Lisanna and Juvia’s sessions and became interested in it too, although his genres of fanfiction greatly differ from Juvia’s-”
“Writing a consistent power-scaling system is MANLY!” Elfman roared, “And I wanted to explore how familial relationships can be strained by grief,” he said in a much lower voice, as Mirajane patted his arm sympathetically and Natsu and Gray sniggered.
“Mine were definitely better than Gajeel’s!” Upon noticing Natsu and Gray’s mirth, Elfman harumphed defensively as Gajeel choked in betrayal behind him.
“Nice one, Elfman!” His tirade was drowned out by Natsu and Gray’s laughter turned cackling and Levy’s excited shrieks.
“Gajeel, you WROTE fanfiction?” Levy bounded up to him and clung to his arm. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still so angry at you for not telling me, but how did I not know this?”
Gajeel could only splutter incoherently from the betrayal, so Lily took it upon himself to explain his friend.
“He started reading it to understand your love for literature better. He started writing it out of personal curiosity and fulfillment.”
Frank, taciturn, and to the point. Normally Gajeel admired those qualities in his partner, but now only felt sheer regret that he hung onto Lily after the events of Edolas. He began to use whatever part of his brain wasn’t emitting static to plot felicide.
“What kind of stuff did Gajeel write?” Gray loudly whispered to Juvia.
Completely abandoning the bro code, she stage-whispered back. “Lots of prequel content. Gajeel also created an OC who he is quite fond of.”
Clutching his stomach, Gray let out a shaky exhale of laughter after making eye contact with an eavesdropping Natsu and Lucy. “Thank you for letting me know. This is the best day of my life.”
Juvia went pick, as the soul left Gajeel’s body.
“It was quite nice, actually,” Juvia defended her friend, guilty conscience acting in hindsight, “he’s writing a fanfic about his OC Jageel as the protagonist of-”
“HAHAHAHA,” Natsu crowed, “JAGEEL? THAT’S THE DUMBEST NAME EVER!”
Gajeel snapped and tackled Natsu to the ground, beginning yet another flight. Freed held his head in his hands.
“Let me guess,” he groaned, “that “Jageel” has several undeniably similar characteristics to the existing character Ferrus? And that Gajeel shipped him with Lizzie?”
“I don’t know what you are insinuating, Freed,” turning up her nose, Lucy moved behind Erza to avoid Natsu and Gajeel (and Gray who joined in) and hide her pink cheeks, “It sounds like you are accusing me of plagiarism and jumped to conclusions based on pirated material.”
After hearing about Lucy defeating Bickslow in a fight as a novice guild member, fighting her himself during the S-class trials, and witnessing her cast Fairy Sphere on Acnologia, Freed had learned to be wary of the celestial mage. He refrained from pushing the subject further, but seethed in the corner over his guildmates’ collective inability to see the obvious.
“Stop this at once!” Erza moved in to break up the fight, and successfully separated the three, although Gajeel still glared daggers at Natsu and Gray and looked ready to jump back into the fray as soon as Erza looked away.
“So the fanfiction circle was just Juvia, Lisanna, Elfman, and Gajeel?” Lucy asked nobody in particular, more as a distraction than anything else.
“Not quite,” Lisanna admitted, “Bisca and Alzack got really into it too-”
“Your novel has done wonders for our sex life,” Bisca whispered to Lucy, “writing smut as a couple’s activity has really spiced things up.”
“Darling, others can hear you,” Alzack smiled embarrassed, as Lucy, Macao, and Wakaba turned purple.
“-and Reedus found out about it and made all our fanart,” Lisanna finished.
“Really?” Lucy bounded up to the quiet mage who had been sitting in the corner the entire time. “You made fanart, Reedus? Can I see it?”
“Oui!” the man smiled shyly, “I don’t have any with me right now, but I would be happy to bring it over tomorrow so we can see it together.”
She gave him a brilliant smile.
(“Oh, so art is alright but she doesn’t want to hear about my 15k hurt/comfort fanfiction?”
“Elfman, now is really not the time.”)
“No way!” The shout came from near the guild entrance. Everybody turned their heads to see Levy seething, apparently already gotten over the revelation of Gajeel’s hobbies. “So everyone here has read Lucy’s novel already?”
“Heheheh,” Natsu chuckled, “Levy thought she would be the first but she’s actually the last one to read it!”
“Oh please, Natsu,” Levy glared at him, “you were on it from the beginning, disrespecting Lucy’s privacy-”
She froze.
“You alright, Levy?” Cana called out.
“Alright, wait a minute,” climbing onto a table, Levy’s voice took on a calmer tone, “I’m trying to figure something out. So Natsu and Happy were the first ones to read Lucy’s manuscript in the very early stages.”
“Right,” Lucy replied, “then there was Gray, who had the next version, so to speak. Cana read whatever I had so far before the S-class trials.”
“Then Mirajane got a copy and spread it around and got several members including Erza and Master Makarov around the Grand Magic Games,” Levy took over again, “and I think that was the version that Laxus and the others had when Sting tried to read it. Then there was the fanfiction circle right after that, sometime during which Gildarts was mailed a copy.”
“Yes, that sounds about right,” Lucy said, “but where are you going with this?”
“I’m getting to it!” a smile began to erupt on Levy’s face, “but all of this happened before the guild disbanded and we fought Alvarez, except for Wendy and Carla, who read it soon after we got the guild back together. It doesn’t sound like anybody read any new updates after we defeated Zeref and Acnologia.”
“I didn’t get any new copies after the guild disbanded,” Mirajane confirmed.
“See? And Mira’s the… superspreader of this novel!” Levy lit up, as Mira incredulously stared at her, “that means nobody has read the novel in its full form!”
Lucy’s eyes widened and she grinned. “And that means I get to fulfil my promise and you get to be the first person to read my finished novel!”
“Lucy!”
“Levy!”
The two girls hugged, and the guild once again basked in the joy of friendship.
That is, until the atmosphere was ruined again by a squeak.
Lucy and Levy turned their heads, only to come face to face with a profusely sweating Warren, who had not said a word the entire time.
“Warren?” Levy said dangerously.
“You- did you-” Lucy stammered, shakily pointing a finger at him. “How-”
“I didn’t exactly read it,” Warren stammered, as the rest of the guild turned to face him as well.
“What. Did. You. Do.”
“I’m so sorry! It was an accident!” The whole guild groaned at that. “I really didn’t mean to! I was walking past your apartment earlier today and my magic- you all know how it is, Sometimes I can’t control what I pick up on!”
Several guild members nodded in assent. They remembered the awkward confrontations they had with Warren after he accidentally tuned into their minds and learned some really disturbing (and sometimes disgusting) secrets about his guildmates.
“You had just begun to type your novel into a clean draft to give to Levy,” he continued, “I heard you reading your draft in your mind as you continued typing and it was really interesting so I just… stayed outside your apartment until you finished?” he ended in a question, eyes imploring Lucy for mercy.
“So that means,” Lucy’s eyes widened in horror, “the first person to know the contents of my completed novel draft was… Warren?”
Silence. Then-
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Levy shrieked. “This is the worst day of my life!” She catapulted herself off the table to hit/strangle/shake Warren, but Gajeel caught her midair.
It quickly became clear that there was no more new information (gossip) to share or collective sanity to be had. At that, the guild began to return to their previous conversations, or pick up their belongings and head out, pausing to congratulate a near-comatose Lucy on her accomplishment again, and pay their respects to a near-comatose Levy. Some of the more guilty members apologized to the pair as well, although their words fell on deaf ears. The last two to leave were Natsu and Juvia, who after their goodbyes to Lucy’s body face down on the floor, debriefed the events of the day amongst themselves.
“Seriously? Warren?” Natsu groaned, “That was a total letdown!”
“Agreed,” Juvia nodded solemnly, “Juvia would never write that into a fanfiction.”
.