Laxus considered himself a man of a great many layers. He was cultured, in many ways, having traveled the lands for much of his youth. He'd seen and experienced things that, given the lack of funds he was born into, he might have missed out on, had he not made a way for himself.

Yes.

He made a way for himself.

All on his own.

Never mind what Makarov would think of this claim and anything Ivan said, pertaining or not, could be damned.

Laxus raised his own damn self.

And he raised himself to be a man of numerous tastes.

He sampled all sorts of liquors and cuisines from around the different kingdoms. Enjoyed all sorts of entertainment, from plays to novels. Thought highly of artworks and was reverent of history. So long as you didn't come into Fairy Tail and attempt to make a name for yourself by getting in his way, the man could pretty much just ignore you and go about his day as if you didn't exist. He might even put up with you, interact with you, should he have to for a job or when out on his travels if the time called for it. After all, without human interaction, there was no other culture to be had. Laxus might not enjoy the people, but that didn't mean he didn't enjoy the idea of others and he certainly enjoyed what they could do and or create.

After all, he couldn't very well make his own liquor and food or entertainment, could he? Well...maybe, but he refused. In a crisis. And yes, in the scenario that all other people on the planet have been wiped out and there's no one else there to find or make him more liquor, yeah, the biggest crisis would be no liquor.

Because for all his culture and eccentricities, Laxus also saw himself as a man of simplicity.

However, Laxus rarely saw himself as overly involved in himself and would scoff at someone that called him self-centered.

There was one thing, however, that Laxus in no way enjoyed exploring the different facets of. Music. He could not stand listening to new music. The man still had the same rock songs he'd had on his Sound Pod since he first got the ancient thing, back when he was thirteen or so. Occasionally, maybe, a new band might strike his fancy, but their sound rarely strayed too far from the sound of the others. He didn't down people who could listen to the many different types of music. Why should he? It was their choice. However, it just wasn't for him.

There was one particular type though that he wouldn't even tolerate listening to.

"What do you mean you don't like my music?"

"I just don't."

And he decided to inform Mirajane Strauss of that one day following a rather successful sixth date.

"Well, you're an idiot then."

It about cost him a seventh date though.

"What do you mean?" Laxus complained as he sat on the edge of Mira's bed, slipping on his boots while she still laid behind him. "And where do you get off anyways? Calling me an idiot?"

"Uh, you're about to get off this bed, is what you're about to do."

"Rude."

"I'm serious."

"Why?" he asked though, honestly, he was leaving for the night anyways. Elfman and Lisanna were out on a job, so he'd felt fine with coming over, but spending the night somewhere was not something Laxus Dreyar did often. "Because I don't like a certain type of music?"

"Because you insulted my music."

"Did not."

"You said you don't like it."

"That's a personal opinion."

"Well, take your opinion outside."

Laxus blinked. A few times.

"Did I hurt your feelings?" he asked. "Or something? Mira?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Because you're opinion is stupid and my guitar playing is great and you can just get out if you think otherwise."

They were crossing a weird line. Both of them felt it. They were still kind of being rather jokey with one another and the wine they had at dinner was playing a factor in that, sure, but at the same time it would only take a few jabs in the wrong direction to send either one of them off the deep end.

Honestly, that was the thing about their entire relationship. If you could call it that yet. Laxus wasn't sure. But even if you were talking about the overarching, non-sexual relationship they'd had through the years just from being so closely associated, the problem still remained.

Laxus was a hot head.

And deep down, beneath the bubbly persona she'd created for herself, so was Mirajane.

The problem most likely to be brought to the surface that night, however, was that the thin layer right before you got to that hot headedness in Mirajane was composed of tears. Sobs. Crying jags meant to elicit sympathy.

With most people, it just might. But with Laxus, it would only evoke a deep sense of, 'Oh, shit, this chick is crazy. Gotta get out of here and quick.'

Mostly though, the two had yet to have a fight.

It was weird. That first night. When they found themselves out, separately, having been ditched by the ones they were hoping to meet. And Mirajane, she just gravitated towards people so, naturally, when she saw Laxus having dinner alone as well, there was no way she was going to allow that. And fuck it. She wasn't too bad of company. Which was why he asked her out that next week he was in town. And the next. And then slept with her the next two.

Ad now here he was on the sixth date/whatever the hell they were doing, edging into new territory for no good reason.

He should just leave.

Laxus knew it. The time had come for him to make his smooth exit and head on home. Or walk the street a bit. Get rid of his buzz. Whichever.

But not stay around Mira's place and nose his way into trouble. Not when they had something so nice going. That he hoped could keep going. Him and her doing whatever the fuck or whoever the fuck they wanted whenever they wanted until he rolled back into town for a single date, a nice time, fine, but nothing serious.

Light.

Laxus loved the darkness and all it brought, but as far as relationships went, the term light was what he used the most.

So why did he do it then? Huh? Why'd he turn his head to stare at Mirajane, there, staring right back at him in her own bed, where she would be perfectly fine with them being together again, in two weeks or so, instead of just getting up and leaving?

"Maybe don't ask my opinion then, if you think it's so stupid."

Because he was an idiot.

"I didn't ask for your opinion," was Mira's simple response as she had him then. Or at least her shiny, blue eyes did. Captivating. He couldn't look away. "I asked if you could hand me my guitar on your way out and you said-"

"That it was fine," he grumbled right back, "so long as you waited until I was completely gone before playing because I hate the sound of it."

"Of my music," she agreed. "An opinion, if I've ever heard one. And one not asked for, by the way, mister."

"It was an observation," he said, eyes still on hers in the darkness of the room. "Mirajane. And I didn't mean that I hate the sound of your music. Well, not completely, at least."

"Then what did you mean?"

"I just...I hate..." He sighed then and, finally looking away from her, his eyes fell over to the guitar in the corner, resting in its stand. "I fucking hate acoustic music."

And Mirajane laughed at him.

Laughed.

If there was anything that Laxus Dreyar hated, it was being laughed at.

And acoustic guitars.

And at the moment, stupid, annoying women that he always found himself in bed with.

"It's not funny, Mirajane."

"I mean, are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Okay, Laxus." She shifted down on the bed, to rest her head in her pillow once more. "You're so funny. See you-"

"I'm not joking." He also didn't have to explain this all to Mirajane and yet… "I hate the sound of it."

"You hate the sound of an instrument?" she asked, glancing his way again. His head was still turned, in a rather uncomfortable position at that point, to face her. "Like, the entirety of any music ever made for it-"

"Yes."

"Laxus-"

"Why is that so absurd?" he complained. "Huh? What if I said I hate the fucking tuba? I mean, who does like the tuba? Do you chill out to fucking tuba music, Mirajane? Or accordion music? No. Because you don't like it. Well, I don't like acoustic guitars. Bite my head off about it, go ahead, but-"

"I," Mira told him softly, "like accordions, actually. A whole lot."

The look he gave her was a dirty. And not in the context it had been less than an hour before.

"Mirajane, shut up."

"You shut up." Now she was growing annoyed too. The jokes were dying off in their tones and Laxus honestly should just leave already. But he didn't move an inch as the blue eyes he was so drawn in by flared a bit. "You're so rude."

"I'm rude."

"Yes!"

"I'm a guest," he complained right back. "If I don't want to listen to your music-"

"I wasn't offering to play it or you."

"Good," he said with a nod of his head. "Because I wouldn't want to listen."

For a moment, Mira just sat there. Then, softly, she asked, "Do other women usually just kick you out, like, right after sex? Is that how they avoid talking to you? Or-"

"I'll have you know that other women would kill or these moments," he retorted. "This kind of access."

"To the Laxus Dreyar?"

"The one and only."

"I want a refund."

"I want you to never play your damn guitar in front of me."

"What do you hate about it so much?" Mira asked then as some of the tension eased, if only slightly. That didn't mean it could build back up, but Laxus was sure hoping it didn't. "Laxus? Honestly?"

He wasn't too sure, really, and only shook his head a bit.

"I just," he told her simply, "don't. What's so wrong with that?"

Letting out a long sigh as his head turned back to his boots and her eyes slipped shut, Mira whispered, "Nothing, I guess."

She felt so tired for her long day at work and worn out from her date with Laxus that she was nearly asleep when he dropped the guitar beside her on the bed on his way out, all silent in goings.

They saw one another the next morning, when he came by the hall to snag a new job, but neither exchanged words, only glances, before he was off to risk his life for the same elusive thought of contentment all mages chase.

It would actually be three weeks before he was back in town and not even that night that Mira was able to get off. But that Wednesday, at least, and even though it was Monday, it didn't feel quite close enough.

When he arrived at Mira's house though to pick her up, Elfman answered the door, sounding rather uneasy.

"My sisters are pretty busy right now," was all he grumbled out as he allowed the slayer to enter. "I dunno if Mira's even gonna still wanna go out after all this."

"All this?" Laxus asked even though not only did he not care, but he was also already planning what other fun activities he could get lined up before the night's end. Probably just drinking with Bickslow and Freed. Great.

Nodding, Elfman explained, "Lisanna's pretty upset, see, from an argument she had with, you know, Natsu and Happy."

Laxus, who had just seen Natsu and Happy, not two hours ago, happily killing time in the game room of the guildhall, had a feeling it was more of a misunderstanding than anything else and definitely being blown out of proportion by the youngest Strauss sister.

Still, he nodded.

"She's cryin' and all that mess. Upset about other stuff too, you know. Hold it all in, until you burst, is the manliest way to go out these things, you know," Elfman, the man who cried at the drop of a hat (literally the dropping of a hat, probably, Laxus was willing to bed), said. "A lot going on this time a year. Around the anniversary of, you know, when she...when Lisanna…. And our parents… It's just a lot going on. And that bonehead Natsu, he's not man! Doesn't remember things, is all, I bet."

"I bet," Laxus sighed as Elfman led him to the living room couch. The dog that certainly wasn't Mirajane's that definitely wasn't allowed inside usually, but only that day because it was so cold and oh, poor pooch, how could she not open the door and let him beat the freeze a bit, was over in the corner. He eyed Laxus and the slayer eyed him back, and that pretty much summed up their entire relationship.

"Like I said, I dunno if Mira will wanna go anywhere now," Elfman said as he stood over the other guy. "I'll find out."

And then, kid you not, the big behemoth of a man bellowed right there, in front of Laxus, at the top of his lungs, "Mira! Laxus is here! Should I send him away?"

As the slayer glared at the oblivious mass of muscles, there came over the faint sound of Lisanna's sniveling from another room in the tiny house Mira's soft call back.

"I'll be there in a minute," she said and, with a shrug, Elfman walked off, to the kitchen it seemed, leaving Laxus alone.

Ah, not alone. Just with a dog that, oh, shit, was he dead?

Laxus watched carefully for any sign of movement.

It was actually a pretty fun game, when you got over the morbid part of it.

The very morbid part.

But it got very boring when, you know, the 'Is he alive' side kept winning. Then Laxus went about counting cracks in the ceiling, the amount of times he heard Elfman, who was having a conversation over a lacrima with Ever, use the word man, and oh gosh, was it just that boring over at the Strauss house?

Were they boring people?

Laxus was a man of culture, but their poverty was a different kind from him. Laxus had grown up city poor where you had the big lights and sounds and, fine, maybe your father and gramps were hardly around, but you had toys and shit to keep you occupied. The Strauss siblings had grown up in a rural, back breaking hard labor just for a single fucking crop (Laxus wasn't sure what that word all pertained to and, honestly, he had little desire to find out), and probably played with homemade toys growing up.

Or worse; one another.

As an adult, this bled through into the fact Laxus had to have little things around to keep his attention. A movie lacrima. Stereo. Tons of books. Magazines. Something.

The Strauss' house that they'd had since, oh, for fucking ever seemed as bare as the day seventeen year old Mirajane used her first few S-Class jobs to pay the down payment. They probably sat around, when they were home and sang songs together and reminisced and were...close.

Laxus almost gagged.

Shoving up from the couch, he decided it was time to leave. But telling this to Elfman would require going into the kitchen, where Ever would see him and freak out, or calling out to the man, which would cause the same issue. So he had to be the one to go tell Mira that he was taking off as, for some reason, just leaving felt wrong to Laxus.

That was probably the worst thing that the Strausses were doing to him; making him feel things.

And morality at that.

Mirajane's door was left ajar and, as Laxus went to knock on it and tell her that he would try to catch her on another night, it happened.

Lisanna was there, on Mira's bed, no longer sobbing over whatever stupid chick thing it was that upset her (Laxus saw all the women at Fairy Tail as falling into two categories; either a sobbing mess when things went wrong or a ball of spitfire that couldn't be extinguished. Mira fell in both categories), but rather lying there, silently. She was watching her sister who'd sat on the other half of the bed, guitar in her lap, strumming so softly that before he walked into the hallway, Laxus hadn't heard it.

His fist was poised to strike against the cracked door when Mira suddenly began to sing.

It was so weird. He'd heard her sing before. A lot, actually. Or at least on a lot of occasions. When the guild turned into a listen to Mira sing session, he usually turned his already cranked headphones up louder, if not leave. However, in that moment, it felt much more...intimate. And not just in the setting.

There was something about it that caused Laxus to freeze as a pang rang through his chest. The memory was fuzzy and not too fresh, but damn, it was there.

His mother.

His mother, a very long time ago, when he was a little boy, used to do the same thing Mira was doing in that very moment. Lisanna was upset, so Mira was playing her guitar and singing to her, to distract her. Once upon a time, before his mother...left, she would do the same thing.

It was long ago.

To long ago.

He could hardly picture the woman, but he could remember hiding under the darkness of her and Ivan's sheets, whining no doubt about something his father did. And she was there, singing for him to come out, but he didn't, he remembered, until she went and got her guitar and played for him. Some stupid song, probably, that was sang to children, but it alluded him. Not that it mattered.

There was another time, in particular, that hit him the hardest. He could almost smell it still, the scent of cigar smoke their living room used to have. They were there, he and his mother, sitting around. Singing. Like he joked about the stupid Strausses before. But she really was playing a guitar for him and singing and he was listening and how?

How had he forgotten this?'

How long ago had it been?

Three decades?

Is that how long it takes to forget something?

To forget your own mother?

If he were honest with himself, most the things he remembered from back then, when she was around, when he was at most three, were from the random photographs that Makarov had. He'd never seen one with her and a guitar. But that memory…

Dropping his fist without letting them know he was there, Laxus slunk back to the living room, where he fell into the couch and just sat for what didn't seem like too long.

"Ready? Laxus?"

Mira stood before him, suddenly it felt like, in her coat and boots, smiling in that bright way that she had.

It made Laxus sick to look at.

Getting to his feet, the man shuffled them a bit before saying, "If your sister needs you-"

"She just gets dramatic sometimes," Mira said with a shrug, as if she were not the same, "this time of year."

Laxus watched the woman go rub the dog that certainly wasn't hers behind the ears. With a nod, he said, "This time of year."

As they left the house, Laxus found his hands slipping into his pockets, kicking more at the ground than speaking. Which seemed fine with Mira, as for once she too remained relatively silent. In fact, it was Laxus that broke the silence when they were about two blocks from the house.

"I heard you singing," he offered with a bit of a shrug as Mirajane, who'd actually been considering just where she wanted to eat dinner that night, when they got to the heart of town, blinked before glancing up at him.

"Oh," she giggled a bit, smiling. "Did you?"

"I did."

"I'm sorry," she said with a shake of her head. "Since my singing is so horrible-"

"I never said anything about your singing," he griped. "I made comments about your guitar playing."

"Same thing."

"Is not."

"Hmmm," Mira hummed. "Sorry all the same. Lisanna sometimes-"

"It wasn't terrible."

"Huh?"

Shrugging a bit, Laxus' hands remained in his pockets. "Your singing and… When you played your guitar. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's still not for me-"

"It's for no one," Mira whispered with a frown, "other than myself."

"-but it's nice. I guess. Considering. Was all I meant."

Mira glanced up at him, Laxus could feel it, but she was silent and he refused to look at her, knowing the power of those dang blues, and, with a sigh, she looked away.

Softly, she agreed, "Considering," before changing the subject and asking instead about the job request he'd just completed.

Feeling as if he were on more solid ground then, Laxus cleared his head the best he could before he began to mutter out a few things here or there about it and Mira told him, far more, about the boring (in his opinion) week she'd had at the hall.

They didn't talk about her guitar or music at all, really, for the rest of the night, not even when they found themselves all giddy and lightheaded back in his apartment, more than a bit tipsy from their night out. Honestly, Laxus was pretty certain that neither even thought about it.

And honestly, they didn't need to.