"Blanket"

"Ouch!" Levy whined.

Jet had no other choice but to cringe, because that was like the seventh time in a row.

He had no heart to tell her that she sucked at this, because it was, well, Levy. It would be like kicking a puppy, or even worse, because no puppy was able to beat her version of puppy dog eyes.

So Jet just kept his mouth shut and tried to not pay too much attention to Levy, who continued to stab her fingers with a needle. Droy was unable to endure this torturous sigh and evacuated himself with an excuse of doing his job.

Well, to tell the truth it wasn't actually a lie - Droy probably was the sole member of the Fairy Tail Guild, safe for Mirajane, who happened to have more or less stable income and something that looked quite a bit like a normal job. As long as one could call a job cutting bars of soap in your basement. Jet preferred to stay as far away from Droy work-things as far as possible, partially because the process of producing soaps and toothpaste and other stuff usually stank as hell and partially because every time he was around, he ended up as a physical laborer. chopping stuff, grinding dried stuff into a powder, carrying barrels of fat... definitely not his thing.

"Ow!" Levy groaned, when the needle went through the material in a way she didn't expected it to. She probably stabbed herself again, considering how she jumped. The sudden movement caused the spool of thread to fell down from her lap onto the floor and roll away.

"Dammit!" Levy was forced to put her work on the table, so she could follow the threat. Somehow it managed to roll away all the way to the other table, where it got stuck.

"Why is Shrimp crawling on the floor?"

Jet jumped, because he wasn't expecting Gajeel to suddenly stand right next to him.

"Would you stop doing that?!"

"What?" Gajeel asked, slightly tilting his head to the left. A corner of his lips was slightly raised up, so he definitely was scaring the crap out of people on purpose.

"Creeping on people like that?" Jet groaned. "What's the big idea?"

"It's your fault."

Jet wanted to ask Gajeel if he was serious, but decided against it. The Iron Dragon Slayer was a terrible person and he was enjoying it greatly, so calling him on his shit wasn't worth a thing.

"So what she's doing?" Gajeel gestured towards Levy with his thumb.

The girl was still in the middle of her hunt, awkwardly trying to cover her backside with one hand, not wanting to flash everyone in the guild with her panties.

"Sewing."

"Sewing?" Gajeel raised eyebrows, slightly confused. "On the floor?"

"Well, accidents do happen..." Jet said carefully. He was trying to not be too hard on Levy, especially since she could clearly hear the conversation. The fact that she was not crawling from under that table was a pretty decent proof.

Gajeel glanced at the poor girl and then took interest in what she was working on. It was hard to miss the stuff, since almost a whole table was covered in it. It was also hard to not tell what it was. It would be pretty hard to confuse the thick, slightly worn-off material with anything else.

"Is this a blanket?"

"Yeah," Jet nodded. "There's some sentimental value to it."

"Not some!" Levy muttered, finally brave enough to leave her hiding spot. "We bought them when we first started working as a team!"

"You guys exchanged blankies?"

"You're making it sound ridiculous!" Levy pouted at Gajeel, puffing up her cheeks in that one of a kind, adorable manner.

"It's a blanket," Gajeel said with a shrug.

Then he picked the material up and spread it entire length, so he could see the damage.

"How the hell that even happen?" He asked. After he put his whole hand through the hole and wiggled his fingers, just to prove some mysterious point. Or something. Jet always had difficulty with understanding this guys intentions. It was like he was speaking a whole other language when it came to human interactions, at least sometimes.

Levy looked everywhere but not at the Dragon Slayer. "My bookcase fell."

Gajeel stood there, with a slightly confused expression on his face, clearly waiting for the girl to continue.

And she did.

"The corner of the blanket was probably stuck behind my bed. When the bookcase fell it somehow caught the other end of it and then the force of gravity and the weight did the rest of the job..."

Gajeel snorted quietly, then returned to examining the blanket.

"You suck at it."

"No one asked for your opinion! Meanie!"

"I'm just stating the fact," he said with a shrug. "If you do it this way, then there would be a very visible mark on the tear. And it will be sticking out at weird angle."

"Like you would do better job!" Levy huffed angrily. Then took a second look at his face.

"Waaait. Wait, wait, wait!" Levy said with a loud intake. "You can sew?!"

"Uh, yeah?"

"Seriously?"

"...what's so strange about it?"

"Nevermind," Jet said before Levy decided to jump and explain everything about it and then everything connected to societal roles and turn the blanket emergency into a monster of a history lesson.

"Can you... help me?"

"I am," Gajeel said, pulling the threat - which was Levy's last two hours of work and literal pain - from the material.

Jet considered himself to be impressed. The guy managed to be nice and offensive at the same moment. He was also absolutely clueless about what he was doing, which made the whole situation even stranger. The guy definitely lived in his own version of reality.

"That's not helping!" Levy protested, grabbing the side of the blanket and trying to pull it away from the man. "That's breaking!"

"If you're going to hang onto this thing like that then there definitely would be some breaking," Gajeel snickered at her.

Levy grunted something under her breath, but after some time, she let go o the blanket.

"Can you save it?"

"It's going to take some work," he said with a shrug. "You fine with some pattern or other shit on it? It would mask the hole."

"Everything is fine!" she said quickly, brightening with that sunshine smile of her.

"Okay." he said.

And that was it. Levy was slightly confused, while Gajeel was just folded the blanket in a rather messy way. It was awkward to even look at those two and Jet had a real fight to not to groan painfully.

Dealing with the fact that she wasn't feeling the same thing for him was one thing. Seeing her falling for that big ass was other. But those two idiots not doing anything about that...

"Where did you learn to sew anyway?" he asked, hoping it would be enough to kick-start some conversation. Anything to murder that awkward silence.

"Dunno," he said with a shrug. "I just picked it up. Socks don't repair themselves."

"Oh," Levy said and it perfectly voiced Jet's opinion on the explanation too.

Gajeel was rarely talking about his past and if he did it was always in as few words as it was humanly possible. Making out an image out of those tiny puzzles was more guessing than anything else and it still lacked many, many pieces, even after the Iron Dragon Slayer officially joined their team and they hanged out a lot. Sort of. Usually on a missions. Or when they invited themselves over to his place. Well, to tell the truth he wasn't talking much about anything. Dumb jokes usually covered his daily amount of words available, or at least he was trying to make it looks like it very, very hard.

xxx

A few blanketless days passed. Jet took a few easy jobs - just delivering stuff super-fast, a piece of cake for someone like him - so he couldn't see the sewing. It was kind of a shame, because he was very curious how it could look like. Was Gajeel sewing like a normal person would? Or was he like a human-sewing machine, using his magic to do the trick? That would be sort of awesome.

Droy was finally done with this bath of soap and other stuff, though he still smelled a bit like herbs and cleaning stuff. Not strongly, though, so the Dragon Slayers allowed him to hang out in the close proximity, so it wasn't anything too terrible.

Levy was also done with her latest job - something or another about drafting forms and documents for newly found merchant guild - and with tidying her room after the bookcase accident.

Jet had no idea what Gajeel was up to, but he also had enough time to meet the rest of the team over dinner. He also had the blanket ready, tightly rolled up and resting on the sofa.

Levy had enough of self control to wait for Gajeel to give her a signal that it was okay. Then she dashed towards the sofa and grabbed the material, unfolding it in one, swift movement.

Then she gasped and froze in place, just staring at the material.

Gajeel coughed, but she hadn't reacted.

"If you don't like it," he said, looking to the side, acting as if he wasn't all tense. "You can just say it."

She whirled around on her heels, still holding the edges of the blanket tightly in her hands. The material moved with her, wrapping itself around her legs up and creating something that looked almost like a human-burrito.

"Are you joking?!" Levy's voice was very high-pitched and loud and she was looking at Gajeel as if he suddenly went crazy. "This is amazing!"

It was, Jet had to admit, and anyone would definitely be diagnosed as crazy if tried to argue with the statement.

Whenever the huge hole was, it was impossible to tell. Instead, there was a giant Guild Mark, proudly shining on the blanket surface, while the edges were filled with small, well-detailed gears.

She probably wanted to get close and personal and continue her rant while stabbing the man under the ribs or something like that, but obviously forgetting about the human-burrito thing. The result was easy to predict - she fell face-first and didn't land on the floor only because Gajeel was in the way.

"Ow!" he protested. "You trying to push the wind out of me, or something, Shrimp?"

"You think you're the hurting one?" she moaned into his chest. Or abs, considering where her head actually stopped. "You're the one who's rock hard!"

Droy snorted and Jet was close to follow. Only then Levy realized what she just said. With an embarrassed squeal, she jumped away, miraculously avoiding falling over.

Gajeel wasn't unaffected either, though he wasn't showing it as much as she did. Though there was no way to miss the fact that his ears and nose reddened slightly.

"And the innuendo flies," Droy summed it all up and raised his hand, clearly demanding a fist-bump. Jet gave it to him, which made the pair go even redder. He might not receive Levy's affection in the way he dreamed about for years, but this... this was good. They got two friends out of it, since whenever Gajeel was going Pantherlily was closely following. It was good and it would be nicer if the pair stopped being dorks already and admitted that a certain thing was going on between them.

"I like it," Levy said, pulling the blanket up, so she was now wrapped all over. "It's really cool. Even if it's not identical anymore-"

"Eh, what the hell," Gajeel scratched the back of his neck. "I can make it to be a team blanket thing again, if you want it so much."

"Really?!"

He just shrugged.

"Thank you! Thank you, thank you!"

"Uh, sure, whatever," Gajeel muttered under his breath. The tone of his voice seemed to be bored, but there was a certain rule to how the Dragon Slayer was behaving. He was actually very pleased by the request and they all knew it even without Pantherlily translating him to normal human speech.

"Then we have to go shopping!" Levy said cheerfully.

"Shopping?" Gajeel blinked.

"Well, of course!" the girl nodded vigorously. "Somehow, we're two blankets short!"

This time the Iron Dragon Slayer was unable to hide behind that emotionless mask of his. His eyes widened and a dark blush followed, spreading all over his face and neck.

Life was cool, they were getting awesome blankets and the scary dragon-person happened to be pretty damn cute when showered with positive reactions.