*A/N- So anyone who follows my tumblr neverticklethissleepingdragon knows that this story has been a long time coming, and I mean a long time. They would also know the entire plot of this fic basically because I keep publishing one shots in this universe but never actually writing this fic XD XD XD XD. Well for those of you who know where this is going, I hope you enjoy the ride! For those of you who don't, I hope you like this!

Mavis didn't usually talk to strangers. The guys had made it very clear that such was a dangerous practice, but there was just something about the boy she saw that day sitting alone in a stoop in a bad part of town that coaxed the words right out of her.

"You seem lonely." The two blinked at each other, equally shocked by the words. Mavis wasn't sure where the words came from, Warrod had been sure to teach her manners, and blurting out something like that without so much as a greeting certainly did not classify as polite.

"I am," the boy responded, so shocked by Mavis's outburst the truth just slipped from him.

Mavis and the boy stared at each other for a few moments, wondering what had just happened. Their interaction hadn't been normal on any level, and now both of them were left in the wake of it feeling a bit incredulous. Where did they go from here? Did they strike up a conversation about why the boy was lonely, or did they move on and pretend this had never happened?

They each used the prolonged silence to take in the appearance of the other. The boy took note of Mavis's school uniform, as well as her long blonde hair and alarmingly green eyes. Mavis observed the boy's mop of black hair, the cowlick in the center of his head, and his black eyes. She saw that he appeared to be her age, yet he was not wearing a school uniform. Perhaps he had quit school or skipped that day. A few more moments passed before Mavis once again realized how weird this was.

"I'm sorry, that was rude. My name is Mavis, what's yours?" She extended her hand cheerfully and the boy took it warily.

"Zeref," he said, "sorry if I worried you."

"Don't worry about it. Why don't we go get some ice cream, Zeref?" Zeref sat back a little, feeling uncomfortable. "Because honestly 've been feeling a bit lonely as well. My best friend has been out all week, so I need someone to talk too."

Zeref opened his mouth to refuse, but something in her face had him speaking words of ascent instead. "Sure." He had money enough in his pockets to pay for his own, and he could really use the company, even as the voice in his head told him this was a terrible idea.

"WHAT?" Mavis exclaimed, drawing annoyed looks from the people around them. "Sorry, but I can't believe you graduated early, you must be really smart!"

"Uh," he said, feeling uncomfortable having her attention fixed so wholly on him. He found that he liked the uncanny green of her eyes entirely too much. "I guess."

"How old are you? You look like you're about my age."

"I'm seventeen."

"I knew it!" Mavis exclaimed, "that means you're in the grade above me, right? Would you have graduated this year?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if I don't get my science grade up you'll end up being two years ahead of me if I don't get my science grade up.," she mumbled, looking aggravated. "You know I usually don't have trouble with it, but I just can't understand what this teacher is trying to say."

"That happens sometimes," Zeref said, "I've had a few bad teachers. Have you tried teaching yourself?"

"Yes," Mavis pouted, "but I'm no good at it." Mavis's face lit up and she sprang forward in her seat, giving him a glowing look that did something strange to Zeref's insides. He found himself drawn to the light this girl seemed to be constantly radiating. "I have an idea! Will you teach me?"

"W-what?" He spluttered.

"I want you to tutor me!" Mavis repeated. "You graduated early so you must be really smart, and the guys could pay you to do it! We could meet anywhere, here, the library, or even my house!"

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Zeref said gingerly. Eating ice cream with this girl once was bad enough, but if he were to start meeting her on a regular basis...what if his enemies targeted her? Your enemies don't know what you look like, a reckless voice inside his head said.

"Oh come on, please?" She begged. Her demeanor changed abruptly again, and suddenly she was deadly serious. "Please, I need you help. Something tells me you would make a good teacher."

He looked into her eyes that already pulled him towards her like a magnet, and felt his resolve crumble. He knew that this was a bad idea, he knew that he could possibly be putting this girl into danger by being around her, but his caution was overwritten by his desire to be near the light this girl possessed, the light that contrasted so starkly with his darkness.

"Alright," He said, "I'm in." The delight on her face was enough to drown out any lingering doubts he had.

Mavis excused herself to call "the guys" as she called them to say she'd finally found a tutor. She did a lot of smiling and nodding, and though Zeref couldn't hear what she was saying she kept glancing back at him like she was being asked to describe him. She made a hand gesture that seemed to suggest she was talking about his cow lick, and he reached up to smooth it down self consciously. A few minutes into the phone call her face turned anxious. She glanced back at him again and Zeref was able to read the words I don't know on her lips.

Zeref found himself starting to feel apprehensive. Perhaps she had realized that she didn't know anything about him and that asking him to be her tutor was unwise. She's probably right, a mean little voice inside his head said. He found he was surprisingly upset by the idea of Mavis changing her mind on him. I must have been lonelier than I thought if I'm this bothered. She nodded one last time, said the words I'll ask him then hung up the phone. When she returned to the table she looked slightly anxious. Zeref braced himself for the bad news, still perplexed about how invested he already seemed to be in this relationship.

"Hey," she began, twiddling her thumbs, "the guys want to meet you, is that alright?"

"Wait, what?"

"The guys want you to come over and meet them, you know, they want to get to know you before they agree to let you tutor me. You don't have to if you don't have to if you don't want too."

"Oh, um, yeah. That's fine." Mavis lit up again, and Zeref couldn't hold back a small smile of his own.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I don't have anywhere else to be tonight."

"That's great!" Mavis exclaimed. She slapped a few bills onto the table and dragged him out of his chair and to the door. Zeref blinked at their joined hands; how long had it been since he'd held someone's hand? "Hurry up or we'll miss the bus!" She said, snapping him out of his thoughts and back to reality.

"Sorry, I'm coming!"

This girl's energy was entrancing. He hadn't met anyone as cheerful as her in years. Well, that wasn't quite true, Serena was pretty high energy all the time, and so was Wahl, but that was different. Mavis seemed to glow like she had a light shining inside her that illuminated everyone around her. Zeref felt like a moth drawn to a flame. Mavis turned mid stride and beamed at him again.

"I'm so excited!" She said. "You're going to love Yury, Precht, and Warrod, they're great!"

"Um, who?" How can one person contain so much joy?

"You know, the guys! My legal guardians! I've lived with them since forever."

So Mavis was an orphan as well? At least, that's what she had made it sound like when she referred to her "legal guardians." Zeref wondered if she remembered her birth parents at all, or if she was too young to remember when whatever happened happened.

Sometimes Zeref wished he'd been too young to remember when he'd lost everything, but then he'd remember his brothers bright smile and laugh, and he'd feel guilty for ever feeling that way. What would his parents say now, if they could see him? Would they be proud or disappointed in all he'd built? Zeref thought with a smile that no matter what he did, Natsu would have thought it was "awesome."

"Oh, are you alright?" Zeref's eyes snapped to Mavis, and he shook himself, noticing that everything around him was blurry now. You idiot, you can't just start crying like that, get a grip. He blinked away the tears that had gathered in his eyes at the memory of his lost family, and offered Mavis a smile of his own.

"Yeah, sorry, I was about to sneeze." Mavis looked like she sincerely doubted it, but she replied anyway, probably assuming if he had been lying after all he didn't want to talk about it.

"Don't you just hate it when that happens! It's the worst!" Zeref chuckled, the first real laugh he'd had in awhile. There wasn't much laughter in his life.

"Yeah, it is."

The bus arrived, and Mavis hyped up again, tugging him by the hand to their seats. "It's only one stop away!"

"I'm home!" Mavis called, "and I brought Zeref!"

"We're in the living room!" A male voice replied. Mavis stepped inside and removed her shoes, then turned to look at him to be sure he was following.

"Hurry up," she said, "or you'll let bugs in!" Zeref nodded and set foot into Mavis's house, feeling rather nervous. What were her guardians like? Would they like him? Were they scary? What if they somehow recognized him for who he was?

Zeref may not have known what to expect, but you could have given him a hundred guesses and none of them would have come even close to what met his eyes when he stepped into the living room. The room was spacious but cozy, and well lit, but what drew his attention immediately were the two aggravated looking men wrestling on the couch over what appeared to be the remote.

One of them, the one that had it in his hand, had an eye patch and slicked back blonde hair. The other, more irritated looking man, had shaggy blonde hair and prominent eyelashes. As Zeref watched this scene with vague alarm the man with the eyepatch glanced up, saw Zeref, and snapped at the man with the eyelashes.

"Would you stop acting like a fool, Mavis has company!" The second man turned, saw Zeref, and immediately began acting flustered.

"Right, uh, sorry," The man said. "Here, sit." He indicated an arm chair across from the couch, and Zeref took it, watching Mavis squeeze herself in between the two men.

A third man entered the room, and Zeref's first thought was that he looked like a tree trunk. He didn't have much of a chin, so his face seemed to melt into his neck. His head was topped with fluffy black hair, and he was huge. Buffer than either of the other men, he made for a strange sight. To complete his odd picture, he was carrying a tray with a tea pot and several tea cups on it.

"I'm Warrod," he said, "would you like some tea?" Zeref nodded mutely, unsure of what to say. All eyes were fixated on him like they suddenly expected him to do a trick, and he was feeling acutely uncomfortable with all the attention.

"Oh!" Mavis said, suddenly becoming aware that she hadn't made any introductions. "This is Precht," she pointed to the man with the eyepatch. "This is Yury," she indicated the man with the eyelashes. "That's Warrod," she pointed to the tree man with the tea. "Guys, this is Zeref." They nodded in acknowledgement of each other.

"So," Warrod began, "Mavis said you graduated early?" He poured a cup of tea and handed it to Zeref, who nodded and accepted it. "What have you been doing since then?"

"Uhh," Zeref said. How was he supposed to respond to that? Oh I've been pretty busy running the country's biggest and most efficient black market; buying and selling illegal arms, stolen antiquities, and other contraband?

While those accomplishments, especially at his young age, might be impressive to some people, all of those people were fellow criminals. Zeref seriously doubted Mavis and her family would appreciate that sort of thing. They would probably call the police. The voice in his head telling him that this was a bad idea returned, and he started to think that maybe he should just leave now. Except, he couldn't. Mavis's expectant gaze pinned him to the spot and he struggled to force out an explanation.

"Ah, this and that," he tried lamely. Somehow, amazingly, miraculously, this seemed to be enough for the three men currently interrogating him, who moved on.

"And you would have been in the grade above Mavis?" Precht asked, watching Zeref appraisingly over the rim of his tea cup.

"That's what she told me."

"How are you with science?" Yury asked, " I don't know if she told you but that's the subject she needs help in. Her teacher is lousy, and none of us understand what she'd learning to help. Warrod's a botanist, but she's not taking Botany."

"She did tell me, and I'm pretty good at it."

"Excellent! That AP teacher has got their head stuck up their-"

"Yury," Warrod snapped, cutting him off.

"Ah, sorry," he said sheepishly. Zeref smiled, he liked the atmosphere in this family.

"How much do you charge for your tutoring?" Precht asked suddenly. Zeref, caught off guard, merely blinked.

"Uh, I- I don't know. I hadn't thought about it, I've never tutored before." In all honestly Zeref didn't know anything about what a tutor may charge. He knew what he charged to provided armed escorts to other crime bosses and their shipments of goods (he had the best security team out there), he knew how much he charged to fence goods, and he knew how much Eline charged when he needed her to make his problems go away. He'd never been required to know anything as trivial as the wages of a high school science tutor.

"How about seven jewel an hour?" Yury offered. Zeref was quiet. He honestly had no idea how that sounded. He had a vast amount of wealth stored in an offshore account courtesy of Wahl, but he hardly used it for anything. He didn't have any expenses outside his black market, so his wealth just piled up. Was seven jewel an hour a lot to normal people? How was he supposed to know that?

"That sounds fine," he said. If Yury had offered it it was probably close to the typical hourly wages of a tutor anyway.

"And what days can you tutor on?" Warrod asked.

Again, honestly? Zeref had no obligations at all unless he chose too, and he certainly didn't have any sort of regular schedule. He was basically free to wander around aimlessly as he pleased, trusting Invel to run things in his absence, but he couldn't tell them that. Having no obligations would be suspicious. Naturally, he said the first thing that came to mind.

"I'm off an hour before school ends everyday."

"What about weekends?" Yury asked.

"Every other weekend." That wasn't weird, right?

"How can we contact you?"

"I have a phone," Zeref said, pulling out his personal phone- he'd left his work one in his office. Zeref exchanged numbers with all four people, and they became his only non-mob contacts.

"Now that's over with," Yury said, standing. "It's time for dinner." Everyone else got to their feet. Zeref followed suit, feeling distinctly spurned. He started moving towards the door, thinking he was kicked out rather abruptly when Mavis called out to him.

"Zeref, the dining room is this way!" He blinked in surprise for what felt like the thousandth time that night. He was invited to dinner? He had just had ice cream with Mavis a little while ago, but he supposed he could eat again. He wondered vaguely what was for dinner, then was struck suddenly by how nostalgic this all felt to him.

How long had it been since he'd sat down at a family meal? Not since he'd lost his family that's for sure. He'd been so young then too, he could barely remember his family dinners now, but he still felt a sense of happiness when he thought about them. He hadn't eaten with other people like this in years.

"Zeref will you help me set the table?"

"Uh, sure."

While doing so he was overcome with a memory of doing this exact thing before. Natsu, will you help me set the table? Be careful! Don't drop the plates or I'll have to clean it up! A yelp of pain snapped him out of his memory, and he looked around for the source. It seemed to be coming from the kitchen, and a few more seconds of listening told him Yury was trying to eat all the food before it was served. Zeref smiled faintly and set his plates down, arranging them the way he remembered doing in his childhood. It struck him how trivial all these things he was marveling at were, and how this might be a daily occurrence for him if things had turned out differently. He shook off those memories, he didn't want to dampen the night by randomly bursting into tears, after all.

"Are you still hungry after the ice cream?" Zeref asked Mavis, who made a frantic shushing gesture, but to no avail.

"You had ice cream before dinner again?" Precht asked from behind him. Zeref jumped slightly and looked over his shoulder at the man who was looking, annoyed, at Mavis. As Zeref watched Yury came up at Precht's shoulder, holding a tray of food.

"Give it a rest, Precht, let the kid live."

"As long as she didn't spoil her supper, I see no problem with it," Warrod interjected, carrying more food and setting it on the table.

"Alright, alright," Precht said, taking his seat.

The rest followed suit, and Zeref was participating in the first family dinner he'd attended in ages. Ordinary phrases that he had so rarely heard in context tickled his ears. Things like "pass the salt," and "how was your day," filled the air. Zeref sat and listened contentedly, tucking in to the food that had been set in front of him.

Yury was talking animatedly about something that had happened to him at work while Warrod listened politely and Precht rolled his eyes. Mavis was trying hard to conceal her giggle, when suddenly all eyes turned to Zeref.

"Oh yeah," Yury said, "that reminds me, what do you do for a living?" Damn… Zeref thought, scrambling for a lie that he could sell.

"I, ah, work in retail."

I cannot believe I just said that.