For Unattainable Dreams' First Kiss Prompt Exchange Challenge. I know it's a bit cliche and too fluffy to breath in, but... eh. I like it. Enoy!
(Prompt: hair, bite, seven.)
"And they lived happily ever after. The end."
"…" There was a heavy pause in the room, the man across from her seemed to be trying to take everything in. Finally, he spoke. "So… let me get this strait. He kissed her dead body, which the seven shorties-"
"Dwarves."
"Yeah, whatever, dwarves put in a glass coffin. Because she ate an apple that her mom gave her?"
Levy McGarden didn't expect much, honestly, when she told fairy tales. She loved reading to children, especially, because they were so creative with how they perceived things, though they often didn't really 'get it'. So when she had read to Gajeel she hadn't gone in looking for much, but she had at least hoped he would be better than the children she sometimes read to.
Unfortunately, it seemed that she had gravely over-estimated Gajeel's reading comprehension skills. "No… Well, yes. You see, the mother was jealous-"
"Because Ice White-"
"Snow White."
"-Was prettier?"
Levy nodded once. "So she poisoned her. The seven dwarves had all really come to love her, though, so they built the coffin out of glass so that everyone could see her beauty forever."
"That's ridiculous." Gajeel crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, highly skeptical. "She'd start to rot. Who'd want to see that? How stupid were they?"
She glared, puffing out her cheeks, and slammed the book closed. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves wasn't what she would call a literary masterpiece, but it was one of her beloved classics.
She hugged the book to her chest, arms crossed over it like she could protect the inanimate object from Gajeel's words. "It's just a story, Gajeel!" She protested with pursed lips. "And it's not like she was in there for long!"
"Which is another thing," Gajeel started. "Why the hell did Prince Alarming-"
"Charming!"
"-kiss her if she was dead?"
"It was a goodbye kiss!"
"Except it woke her up."
"Exactly."
"… And just how did that work?"
Levy sighed. Honestly, she was starting to wonder why she didn't just read to her group of kids and keep it to that. She hadn't had this much difficulty sorting out a story since she had let Natsu talk her into reading him a story. She still cringed thinking about him yelling that Cinderella should have become the best mage in the land instead of relying on the prince, saying over and over that "She should just light that on fire!" like burning the word down would solve all the problems that had ever existed.
"True love's kiss breaks the spell." She recited.
He still looked unconvinced. "Shrimp, you sure have weird tastes."
She stopped. She huffed. And then she sighed. "You still don't get it, do you?"
"It's not my fault it doesn't make any sense."
"Okay, let me put this into small terms." Levy stood and stalked over to the corner of her little work room, snatching a pear off the table. She held it up and shook it in front of Gajeel to make sure he was paying attention, trying to fight off a smile. He really was sort of cute, despite being agitating, sitting in a chair way to small for him amid all her books, contemplating Snow White and the seven little men she had lived with.
She stood before him and pushed the pear into his arms, smiling gratefully when he took it into his palms and started rotating it like a small planet in orbit.
"Okay," She began. "I'm Snow White."
"More like Short White." He muttered jokingly.
She pressed her lips together and gave him her best Levy Glare. I take back what I thought about him being cute. She thought. He's definitely annoying me.
She started again. "I'm Snow White, and I live here in my palace. I'm the most beautiful girl in the castle-" She ignored Gajeel's snort of amusement. "-and my mother is really envois of my amazing hair."
Gajeel actually nodded then, like he understood. "You do have pretty hair."
She stopped. "I… I do?"
His face went red with embarrassment as he frantically backpedaled. "I mean, it's alright, not too bad, uh, I mean, there's not many blue-haired people to compare to anyway, so, yeah, um, it's not ugly, yeah."
She blinked a couple of times before pushing it off. "Okay… Well, um, my mother is jealous of my hair. So she tells the huntsman to kill me. But, because he finds me to be so kind, he's decided to let me go-"
"I thought the huntsman guy only let her go because she was hot."
"No interruptions." She chided. "Now, pay attention." She pretended to walk through a forest, circling around his chair with her red glasses bobbing lightly up and down with her big steps. "I find a house. I clean the house. The seven dwarves come back. They like me. I like them. We live together."
"Yeah, I've got this." He muttered. "I'm not stupid."
Well, at least he could follow small steps. Natsu had jumped up to fire-punch invisible enemies by this point, yelling that he was Cinder and that he would burn everything to a crisp. It had taken Lucy to get him to clam back down, and by then Levy had given up and gone back to six year olds.
"My mother hears that I'm alive from her magic mirror-"
"Where did she even get that?" Gajeel interrupted. "Did she belong to a dark guild?"
"No, she just had it. We don't know where she got it."
He furrowed his brows, seemingly agitated with the lack of information. "I-"
"No more interruptions." She insisted, hands on her hips. "Now. She makes a deadly, poisonous apple." She reached over Gajeel's shoulder and plucked the pear from his lap, holding it in her right hand as she returned to the front of the room.
"That's a pear."
"Don't you have any imagination?" She groaned.
"No."
"Urgh." She put the pear down on a stack of books, running her hands through her hair. "Just pretend this is an apple. Okay? Now, the queen comes and gives me the apple." She hurriedly switched points, hunching over and grabbing the pear again. "Heh-heh-heh. Eat the pear, Snow White, and-"
"Wait."
She straitened, sighing. "Yes?"
"I thought you were Snow White?"
"Well, yes, but now I'm the queen."
"… What?" When she didn't answer right away he went on. "And you forgot about the prince guy."
She sighed. "Okay, well since you've decided that I can't play all the parts…" She stomped back over to the table she had picked the pear off of and grabbed the table cloth, swiftly yanking it off and then returning to Gajeel with a smile creeping up over her features. "You'll be 'prince guy'."
"What? No way am I going to-"
She suddenly laughed and ran behind him, looping her arms over his shoulder and around his neck to tie on his table-cloth-cape. "Now," She skipped back to the front of the room, suddenly in a lighter mood. "Let's re-wind a bit. I, Snow White, have just met Prince Charming." She giggled.
He glared at her, eyes narrowed in irritation.
"Oh, Prince Charming, if you don't stand how will I ever know what you look like?" She contemplated out-loud. "The light over where you sit is lacking luster!"
"Lacking… Luster?"
She leaned in, breaking character. "Come on, play along." She happily demanded. "Please?"
He sighed loudly. "What a pain…" he muttered, pushing himself up from his chair. He glared down at her with full force, but when she only giggled he looked away sharply.
"Hello prince."
"… Hello, shrimp."
Well, at least he was (sort of) playing along. "You look handsome today."
"I'm wearing a tablecloth, chibi."
"But it's a nice tablecloth."
"Get on with it."
Levy nodded. "So, they fell in love! And then the queen left this poisoned apple-"
"Pear."
"Waiting for poor Snow White to find." She reached out and plucked the pear from the stack of books, raising it to her lips and sinking her teeth in. "Mmm…" She suddenly put the pear down, grabbing her throat and making fake choking noises, and then clumsily fell to the floor.
Gajeel looked down at her, still clad in his fancy red and white-checkered tablecloth, unimpressed.
"She died." Levy surmised. "So the dwarves found her they put her in a glass coffin so that everyone could see her beautiful hair for the rest of eternity, even though she was supposedly dead."
Levy put her hands over her chest, closing her eyes as she prompted. "Then the prince saw! He was distraught!"
Silence.
Levy loudly cleared her throat. "I said he was distraught."
"Oh. I am sad." Gajeel deadpanned beside her.
"So he knelt down…" She waited until she heard him do as she said. "And then he put his hand on her beautiful blue hair…" She had been kidding, but wasn't exactly sorry to feel the iron dragon slayer's hand stirring through her blue waves.
"Then what?"
With a faint blush, Levy licked her lips. "He broke the spell."
When nothing happened Levy became self-conscious. Was I actually expecting him to kiss me? I'm being so stupid! What am I doing, just laying here on the floor, he's probably thinking that I'm crazy or something!
She quickly sat up, opening her eyes in the same instant. Not having been looking she hadn't seen Gajeel leaning over her, so in her hurry to get up she smacked heads with him. She fell back, holding her head, eyes slammed shut.
"Ow, ow, ow, ow!" She groaned, rubbing the sore spot, oblivious to Gajeel's hands on her back as he helped her sit back up.
"Um, oh, sorry Shrimp." He awkwardly patted her shoulder, standing and then offering her his hand. He grinned nervously. "I guess I've got a pretty hard head, eh?"
Still blushing Levy took his hand, standing. "I'll say." She teased lightly.
Then she was standing, her head titled back so she could see Gajeel, hand still in his. He blinked once, the atmosphere warming, eyes looking at her head as he swiped a thumb over the area she had hit.
"You okay?" He asked lightly.
"Yeah…" Swallowing, she meekly rushed out, "You never broke the spell." Though, she had been in such a hurry to get it out it came out more like, "Youeveroakthehell."
"What was that?"
She had a sudden flash-back to Natsu going on about how Cinderella should have taken things into her own hands, grabbed her own destiny by the neck instead of waiting for prince charming to whisk her off her feet. "She can kick ass just as well as anyone else!" She remembered Natsu yelling.
Levy reached up and grabbed Gajeel's cape, tugging on it. "And then Snow White broke the spell." She stated mater-of-factly. She pressed her lips to his without a second thought.
His eyes went wide, his movements stopping.
When Levy drew back her entire face had gone red. He hadn't done anything, so she assumed he had never wanted a kiss to begin with. Had she really read the atmosphere wrong? Did she actually just force their first kiss?
He blinked. "I don't remember that part in the book."
Levy peaked up from under her bangs, timid.
Gajeel suddenly grinned. "I think I might like this Snow White thing after all." His eyes flicked over to the pear, abandoned on the floor with one big bite take from the side. "I think I like the pear bit, too." He admitted through his light blush, eyes everywhere but on her.
With a small giggle Levy pushed herself on her tip-toes, pecking his cheek quickly before stepping back. "Glad you liked the book, Prince Charming." She joked.
"O-oi! Don't call me Prince Charming, Shrimp!"
She laughed.
"I mean it!"
"Sure thing, Prince Alarming."
He smirked "Tsch. Chibi."
Levy smiled, shaking her head to herself. Looking back over her shoulder at Gajeel, still in that silly checkered cape, she had to wonder… Maybe Natsu really had paid attention to her reading after all. Gajeel certainty had.