Warnings: Sexual content, language probably. Violence.

I have a huge dick for Gildarts so…

No regrets.

Fairy Tail belongs to Hiro Mashima

A Little Wicked

Crickets croaked in the dark, one long chirp followed by a short one-two. Erza listened to them with growing discomfort. It was hot. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck. It was humid; she could barely breathe. She couldn't think, either, beyond, Just one more thing.

Just one more thing always meant a mountain with Eileen Belserion. Erza knew this. She knew this growing up, under her mother's criminal thumb, she knew this graduating from Police Foundations and sliding her way into the Magnolia Police Force. But still, she pursued her dream. She thought because it would make her mother unhappy and yet it seemed as though it was actually because she wanted to jeopardize everything she'd ever worked for.

"It's a simple job." The man her mother sent to ask for her help was carefully chosen. Eileen paid attention to everything. Every little thing, right from the time Erza was small to her activities in her adult life. It was bothersome. She still liked his roughened jaw. He needed to shave. She still liked the pointed tip of his tattoo sneaking from his collared shirt. She wondered what it was, and then she told herself to stop.

"What do you say?"

Her throat was small. "That's tampering with evidence." He just stared at her. His gaze was a soldering iron and she was weak metal just bubbling, weak at the seams. Erza asked, "What's it for?"

"That's your mother's business," he said. "Just do the job and she won't ask for another favour like this."

She chewed the inside of her cheek. "I can't do it."

He kept staring at her like he knew the truth.

"I can't," Erza repeated. "I'll lose my job. My husband might, too, if I'm caught."

"Then don't get caught."

"Don't get caught. Do you hear yourself? I can't."

"You can." He left her alone and Erza discovered that he was right. She absolutely could. And did, under the guise that this time was the last time.

The next time he hunted her down, Erza had the day off. She was on her balcony trying to remember how to smoke a cigarette when she saw his Lamborghini pull into the roundabout. It looked out of place in her affordable apartment duplex. Just like he did when he left it where it was in front of the building and opened the vestibule door. Erza stared at the buzzer on her wall, watching it light up red.

It stopped after a moment.

She thought it was because he decided to go away but his Lamborghini never moved. Someone else let him into the building. She clutched her cigarette and stared in through the tainted glass. She couldn't see much. She heard her door open and close. And then watched with bated breath when the balcony door opened.

He'd taken off his shoes. His socks were Felix the Cat. It was so ridiculous. So unlike the man standing before her. The man with the gun cleverly concealed on his hip, the man with the tattoos on his face and on his neck, the man that needed to shave. That bothered her that he was so casually unkempt. It bothered her that he was that way likely just for her.

"You should lock your front door, Miss Scarlet. Anyone could come through."

And anyone had. "Why are you here?"

He went into his pocket. Erza tensed, but he only pulled out a cellphone. He pulled up a picture and showed it to her. It was a man with a scar on his face, running through his eye. "Your mother said when this man comes through your beat tonight to look the other way. You and your partner."

"Oh my fucking god," Erza cursed. "What?"

"When—"

"I heard you," she snapped. They fell quiet. She could hear him breathe, even, gentle. She could feel his eyes on her, knowing and not at all judgemental, like he thought she could bend her morals and didn't think badly of her for it. Erza straightened her shoulders. "I did one more thing for her. One more thing and that was supposed to be the last. I'm not turning my back for this—" She didn't know what he was. Probably a murderer or a thief. "This vagabond." Vagabond? She didn't even know where that word came from. He made her feel stupid. Her neck got hot.

He stared at her in that same way.

The familiar sound of Gildarts' Jeep turning the corner made Erza tense. She looked back over her shoulder and watched him drive too quickly into the parking garage. He was late, again. She was angry. Again. But also afraid.

"You have to leave."

He deadpanned, "Are you afraid of him finding me up here?"

"Yes," Erza hissed. "Do you think he doesn't know who you are?"

"It's not a crime to be in a lady's apartment."

"It's a crime to be in mine." But he wasn't afraid of the law and remained looking at her. Erza jabbed out her cigarette and dared to put hands on him to make him move. He went jaggedly, letting her push him into the apartment. His mouth lifted into a smile she felt solder her down some more.

"Maybe I'll see you around."

"Not unless I'm putting handcuffs on you." Erza's hands were shaking opening the door. She shoved him out and threw out his shoes, too, expensive things, leather. There were dots of dried red on them. She knew better than to ask where the spots came from. She slammed the door in his face and locked it without waiting to see if he'd dally and put on his shoes there or if he'd take them down the hall and put them on out-of-sight.

She put her back against the wall and listened but didn't hear a thing until the familiar scrape of Gildarts' boots over vacuumed carpet came to her. She remained where she was even after he opened the door and came in.

"Were you waiting for me?"

That would be unusual. Erza stood straighter and tried to act. She needed to be collected. "No. I just felt kind of dizzy."

His brow furrowed. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Erza lied. Her heart was a jackhammer.

His head quirked. "What's that smell?"

Her throat constricted, thinking maybe he smelled the man's cologne. "What smell?"

"Cigarettes," he concluded, to Erza's relief.

"I was smoking."

"You don't smoke."

"I used to." That was true.

"Not since I've known you,"

"It was a long time ago."

"And you just decided to try again?"

She chewed her lip. "I was stressed. I have that court appearance for the Redfox case." And she never did well in front of crowds, he knew that.

He sighed. "Forget that crap. We'll order takeout and I'll give you one of my famous massages."

When she was sitting between his legs that night and his hands were wandering from her neck to her chest and then down between her legs, it didn't escape her notice that he smelled like someone else's perfume.

Erza got cracked in the nose by an errant fist. She growled through the pain and the temporary blindness and shoved her perp down on the ground so she was eating dirt. The girl yelled at her and called her a flurry of names, everything from a skank to a cunt infection, and then informed her that her husband was laying around Jarvus Street, where the cheap girls lived. She told her he was fucking some bimbo. Some skank with silver hair. Everyone knew it.

Erza made her handcuffs extra, extra tight.

She had a hard time focusing on paperwork afterwards and made a sloppy report. Once she was done, though, she got in her car and started to drive. She drove around the city for an hour. She got a coffee and didn't drink it. She got a bagel and didn't eat it. Both cooled, the first in the cup holder, the other in the passenger's seat.

She drove home but when she saw the second parking space they paid for was empty, she broke and drove to Jarvus. There were a few houses in the district that would risk taking cops in. She found the one she wanted by memory. She'd arrested Mirajane Strauss not too long ago on a minor possession charge. She'd been bailed out two days later. Now Erza was wondering why. Like she was wondering after the small anomaly she saw in their banking. Gildarts had dipped into their line of credit this month. She assumed it was for the company golf tournament. They didn't have the cash just then to dole out before the deadline, the car needed a repair. Now she was suspicious.

A short girl with silvery blonde hair like Mirajane's answered the door. She had blue-painted lips that she pushed together when she saw Erza. She didn't ask her why she was there. That was good, Erza's words felt all bogged up. She stepped back and Erza walked into the house.

It smelled mundane. Like coffee. She expected it to smell like decay. Like the leavings of her marriage.

She ascended the stairs like a ghost and followed the rhythmic banging and the uneven cries to a room at the very end of the hall. Her hand rested on the door handle and Erza asked herself, Do I want to know?

She did not. She opened the door anyway.

All that was there was flesh and feathers, black ones, that hung from a boa around a neck. Movement was frenzied and careless and Erza, insanely thought, it should be like that. And, that's what it's supposed to look like.

She closed the door as silently as she opened it and retraced her steps. The blonde girl was still at the door. She stared at Erza like she expected her to be mental but Erza felt numb. In that moment.

She drove around the city again and drank her cold coffee. By the time she was done, the sun had set and she was in a park she didn't know, sitting on a swing her bottom was really too big for. Chains cut into her hips and into her hands and the stars blazed down into her eyes. She searched them for answers.

"This is a strange place for a lady cop to be."

Erza knew his voice without looking up. "Did my mother send you?"

"She was worried."

"That's a lie. She cares about herself and that's it."

"Then why am I here?"

"To ask me to do something else terrible?"

He came to stand directly in front of her. Erza sat up straight and looked up through her lashes. The moon made a silhouette out of his form. He stared at her, though. Always. He always stared at her, and his eyes always bored right through her, like she was red sand and he was a steel drill bit.

"You don't have to pretend you're sad."

Erza's anger flared. "Pretend? Why would I pretend?"

"Because that's what people do when they think they're in love but haven't felt that way in years."

She clenched the chains. "Don't act like you know anything about me."

His smile was back. The soldering one. "You knew what he was doing."

She'd suspected.

"And you hoped for it."

Deep down.

"It gave you a way out."

"Stop it."

"Stop telling you the truth?"

Erza stood and left him there.

Gildarts met her at the door when she got in. He saw her bruised nose and cupped her face. Erza tipped her head back automatically and though she felt his tongue and his hands on her body, and he touched her with enthusiasm, taking off her sweaty shirt and exposing her bra, she knew it wasn't the same. He couldn't recreate the way he touched Mirajane Strauss.

Everything felt suddenly as fake as plastic. She lived in a dollhouse, doing doll-like things, cleaning her house and fucking the man she married because that's what good dolls did. She didn't want to be a doll girl anymore.

She wasn't sure how to be something different, so she unclasped her bra and pulled Gildarts against her. His cock rubbed between her legs; she took it out of his pants and let him fuck her there in the entryway, trying to recreate a thrill that hadn't been there for a long time.

Erza worked nights that week; Gildarts worked days. She checked her phone and though she'd texted him twenty minutes ago and he had seen it, he hadn't bothered to text her back. While her phone was in her hand and she was willing the three texting dots to come up, another notification buzzed through.

Kingsey Park, it said with no other information. She knew better than to go; curiosity killed the cat, though, despite her disinterest in being roadkill.

The rest of her shift was waited out in agony. She wondered if her mother was sending her favourite thug again or if she'd come herself this time. She wondered what she'd be asked to do. She wondered if her newfound apathy extended to her job or if only her personal life was in danger, and then she wondered who she was kidding. She'd been apathetic for a long time. It was why her mother took advantage of her, not fear of exposure.

She had to wait for him to show and passed the time on the swings, slowly pumping her legs and watching the sky swing in her field of view.

She smelled his cologne and then heard the schwick of a lighter. Cigarette smoke filled the air. Erza slowly brought herself up and found him leaning against one of the slanted metal poles. The cherry of his cigarette blazoned and his tattoo showed itself. It was insane to be relaxed by the sight, but she found some semblance of peace when all she'd lived through recently was turmoil.

"What now?"

"Are you okay?"

"My mother sent you to ask me if I was okay?" Erza queried. He stared. And she spilled. "I'm… kind of a mess." And had always been.

He handed her the cigarette. She put it in her mouth and tasted him. And liked it. She blew out all the smoke. "What does she want me to do?"

"Quit your job." Nonchalantly. Quit. "Wake him from his sleep and stab him in the throat. Drain his bank accounts dry and come home."

Erza leaned back in her swing, imagining doing all that with cool detachment. "I'm not angry."

"She is."

"But I'm not. My mother's never understood the difference."

"She wants you to be happy."

"She wants me to be someone she can be proud of."

"Your mother's prideful."

"My mother's insufferable," Erza hissed. He laughed. It was short-lived and scornful and a little bit impudent. She sat up and scowled at him. "What?"

"You're alike."

She hated him for that, instantaneously and viciously. "Leave."

"It's a public park."

"Leave."

"No."

"Leave or I'll drag you down to the station and tell them everything I know."

"Which is nothing."

Erza strangled the life out of the swing chains. "Leave."

He stepped forward and took the cigarette from her hand. He tucked it into the corner of his mouth and took out a business card. He checked it over as if to make sure it was clean of any work-related stains. Once it passed his inspection, he handed it over. "It's formal-ish. A dress nice kind of place."

Erza didn't take the card. He let it drop into her lap and the wind threw it on the ground once he'd walked away. It fluttered in the breeze and skipped a few feet. She grabbed it before it could get too far away and read,

Nightingale
Jellal Fernandez
Manager

She knew the club. She memorized the name.

There was a dress she wore on her wedding night, the one she had for the after party. It was peach-coloured and long and covered in sequins that were small enough and delicate enough, they could have been diamonds if she accepted her role as Eileen's daughter. If she was rich.

She called in sick to her shift but pretended to Gildarts that she was going to work. He wasn't home yet, anyway. She passed by Jarvus Street on her way and spotted his Jeep in the driveway. She felt less guilty about the Petal Pink matte lipstick she wore, chosen for its soft colour and its subtleness. Or for her stark eyeliner, chosen for reasons opposite.

Her economy car was the only one of its kind in the parking lot. She parked at the front door, figuring she needed to be proud entering. No one looked at her twice. Even the bouncer inclined his head and waved her in without any fuss. Everyone knew her shade of scarlet.

Soft white lights lit up a dark red room and black and white floors. They hugged gilded mirrors and gilded picture frames, they shone off a multitude of skin tones and made everyone the exact same uniquely beautiful.

Erza bit her bottom lip and remembered her lipstick. She plumped her lips and hoped it was okay.

There was a bartender at an oak bar. She slid a whisky sour Erza's way without asking. Erza felt like she was in a dream, taking it off the counter and sipping it.

There were eyes on her; she felt the weight of them across the room. She turned and he waited by an unmarked door. She moved, that doll girl again, avoiding people in the crowd. He took her by the hip when she was close enough and brought her into the room.

It was an office. It smelled like cherry cigars and paper and his cologne. It smelled of blood and sin and tears. It smelled like lust; she breathed it in and closed her eyes. Lost. She was so lost. Lost in wordlessness and touch. Lost in his hands on her dress, pushing up roughly against the chiffon, and then on her back, finding the hidden zipper she'd contorted into weird ways to get up.

He undid it and Erza didn't even feel bare. She felt like a wildcard. Burning and burning and burning up.

Her back hit the wall again and the wood was startlingly cold. She tipped her head back and looked at the ceiling, counting the ways his tongue flicked over her skin, thinking, this is wild want. This is better than what Gildarts had.

It was. For her it was.

Her dress pooled around her ankles and she wore nothing beneath. She liked the feeling of his clothed body against hers, pushing in between her legs and against her chest. She liked his gun, digging into her hips. She took off his shirt and liked the feel of skin on skin, too.

The tattoo on his neck was a skull wearing a folded back hat. She thought, a little wicked because that's what they called him, because that's what he was. That's what he was.

Her leg was pinned against the wall and fingers brought her to orgasm. Her nails left marks on his skin. He encouraged her to continue so Erza scored him well. Each time she left a trail of blood, he kissed her. He, too, tasted like cherry cigars. And sin. She couldn't find a hint of regret, though she tried to kiss him until she did.

She was a mess by the time he took his fingers away. Between her legs was wet and so was her brow. He pressed his fingers to her mouth; she opened for him and sighed a sigh she'd never sighed before. He mimicked her and kissed her next.

Lost, lost, lost. She was lost and turned around. Her front pressed against the door now, everything pushed up tight; there wasn't an inch of space between her and the wood, there wasn't an ounce of air to breathe. She could live and die, she thought. She could live and die right there. She was living, he was spreading her wide, and she was dying, he was pushing his way inside.

Her cheek left dampness on the door; his fingers tangled and parted with small threads of her hair. Erza closed her eyes and thought, what am I doing? She opened them and she knew.

He shared a cigarette with her when they were through. Erza inhaled and remembered why she loved it so much. It filled up something in her chest that was missing.

When she left, Gildarts was in the bar. He saw her. They acted like their secrets were still secrets.

A/N: I'm feeling moody. Have a moody Jerza. Gilza?