HIYA! So, I haven't been posting anything recently, and I miss my fandoms so much but school sucks so...yeah. Now that summer's here, I'm hoping I'll have lots of time to write and do what I love with fanfiction. Now, Fairytail is a new fandom for me. I initially didn't like it but "Lucy Ashley from Fairytail" kinda convinced me with her fics. So...here we go?

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairytail

Chapter 1: Reading

The tome weighed more than her, Gajeel was almost certain of it. Levy had been sprawled out on his bed with a large book in her hand, eyes drinking up every magical word on the page for the last 3 hours. He didn't quite understand her fascination with the thing- as a man of action, he supposed he never would- but if she enjoyed their company, then who was he to deny it to her.

Although, it was rather cutting in to their alone time now that he thought about it. It was not every day that Gajeel was rid of his nosy Exceed and convinced Levy to spend time with him. Not that he really convinced her, he reminded herself, as the Solid Script mage had rather invited herself once he mentioned that he would have voiced that he was going fishing with the other two crazy cat creatures that weekend, leaving the Iron Dragon Slayer alone with their flat. To be honest, Gajeel had no qualms with having the blue haired mage over in his home, however a part of him was rather put out that she was not paying him much attention. Not that he would admit his disappointment to her; Gajeel was far too proud for that. Instead, he spent much of the day sorting through metals, often putting them in piles that would need moving at the end of the day. The organized chaos that littered the floors did not touch his less-metallic furniture, which was where Levy was spending most of her time.

Gajeel felt a small breath of wind ghost across the back of his neck. The girl had opened the window at one point, saying that the flat was too dusty and needed some fresh air. He shivered a bit and popped a small bolt in his mouth, watching her with curious eyes. She was not affected by it, as if she had lived with the windows open all her life, and showed no sign of change. Levy sighed suddenly and shut the book, not bothering with a page marker. Her blue eyes flashed up to his and he had to school his features to retain his more than bored expression.

"Why are you looking at me?"

"Ya saying I can't look at things anymore?"

"No, of course not," she said with annoyance, "I meant, do you have to look at me like that?"

"Like what?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, sighing only when she saw his mouth quirk up to form an amused smirk. "Like I'm some weird pet that you're waiting to see move."

"Well pets are small, so I guess you-"

"Stop," she said sharply, her reading glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose slightly. "I mean it, Gajeel. I'm reading."

"And I am watching."

"Gajeel!"

"What?" He grimaced, massaging his ear slightly. She could sound high pitched and annoying when she wanted to; he had forgotten that. "You've never had a problem with it before."

"You've stared at me before?" She gaped at him; he now had her attention.

"No, I've watched you read before," he retorted stubbornly. "There's a difference."

"Wha- When?"

"Whenever you're not watching me. Duh." Gajeel rolled his eyes and turned around, hiding the red that was beginning to creep into his face. He interested himself with a spare bike tire, pulling at the metal spokes to bend and break them, before he felt two hands touch his arm. He almost jumped at her cold skin on his skin but he didn't turn to look; not just yet.

"Whenever I'm not watching you? All those times?"

"Well, I ain't watching you sleep, that's for sure," he mumbled, opting instead to slip one of the metal spikes into his mouth, "that'd be fuckin' weird." He savoured the taste, the small bits of rust giving it a familiar tang while he placed the rest into a small drawer at his desk, brushing aside a handful of other assorted metals to place the bike spikes in. He'd have to save them for a later proj-

"Gajeel, are you even listening?"

"'Course."

"Then what did I just say?" He risked a glance over at her and saw her watching him expectantly, her mouth slanted downwards slightly into a frown. Her tangled blue hair was threatening to explode from beneath her bandana, a few loose strands creeping forward with every mini gust of wind that the window sent into his bedroom. It was quite alluring in a very strange and completely innocent way, and Gajeel had to admit (as he had been having to admit this quite often these days) that she wasn't completely unattractive. Levy mistook his silence for an absence of answer and huffed out, sitting straight. "I said that you watching me is really creepy. Can you stop? It's distracting," she admitted, and as much as Gajeel itched to pursue the subject, he let her win, opting instead to do exactly what she said. His competitive heart roared against his submissive gesture, but he remained in control, nodding to her curtly before looking downwards and continuing his sorting.

"Thank you," she said with a sigh of relief, and he heard her shift back onto his bed, no doubt lying on her stomach once more. He fought off his curiousity well and, after taking no more than ten minutes to internally catalogue the metals, he stood and exited the room without a word.

Gajeel wasn't really sure what to expect when he decided to leave the room. Later, he would admit to himself that he merely wanted her to follow him and question his motives, but her pages and ink-made adventures captured her attentions more than he could, and he bitterly accepted that for the moment. The man stalked down his halls, a dark feeling in his gut. He did not enjoy being shunned, least of all by her. And if she wanted him not to look at her, not to admire what he recognized as her obvious beauty and cool intellect, then Gajeel convinced himself that he would have to wait outside the house to satisfy that desire.

He pulled on his traditional black books, the metal heel and tip bringing its own unique relaxation to his jealous form. Because that was what he was, he realized, the moment he let himself out of his flat and out onto the streets of Magnolia. He was jealous of an inanimate object.

And the mere thought of it made him want to destroy the paper novel.

Gajeel wandered around outdoors for a while, not thinking too much about the temperature or the citizens walking the streets as well. Levy was on his mind instead, and since Lily wasn't there to chastise or tease him, he decided to indulge himself in some thinking about her. Levy would be so consumed with her book that he doubted she would have even noticed his absence. However Gajeel was as patient as he was spiteful, so even when she did land up noticing, he planned it to be after he had been gone hours. Perhaps long enough to make her worried...

The cruel thought almost shocked Gajeel right out of his vengeful mindset. He shouldn't be wishing these things upon her; upon a girl whom he had already subjected to many cruel things. He was in her debt; he owed her his life. He remembered making the offer, pledging his service to her as long as she needed a partner to train or take missions with. Anything to make the guilt he had felt in the dawn of his Fairytail life disappear. Judging from how quickly it had taken for his mind to cloud and darken, he would reckon that he wasn't doing the best thing to help her. He was getting all worked up over a simple command, and he had found the request so challenging that he had even found the need to leave his own apartment.

He shook a little with laughter as he chuckled about his own stupidity. Indeed, he was the dumb one in their crooked relationship, that he was certain. She was clueless about many things but out of the two of them, she was clearly the more intelligent member. He supposed, in part, that that was one of the many reasons why he had indebted himself to her. It hadn't solely been as repayment. She balanced him out; she thought too much where he thought too little. It benefited him as well.

Gajeel continued his leisurely walk, doing whatever he could to take Levy and the course, leather book out of his mind. Perhaps he would go to the guild and drink something. Alcohol always managed to clear the questions in his mind, no matter how trivial they seemed to be. With a newfound purpose, Gajeel began moving towards the guild, the sky already beginning to darken as night approached steadily. The loud guild that he now called home would surely take his mind off her, and he looked forward to drinking something strong. Perhaps Cana could fix him up something stronger than his usual. Mavis only knew how much alcohol it took to get her out of his head.

"HEY!" Gajeel froze, stunned by the voice's annoyed quality. He took a breath and realized that he could smell her-could smell Levy-as if she was right behind him. Gajeel had been disregarding her scent because it had clung to his clothes ever since she began spending those innumerable hours with him in his home. He hadn't even noticed her. He mentally swore, shutting his eyes and running a tired hand over his face. He was going to hear it now. Her tone was clearly the one that she adopted when she wanted to sound intimidating or stern. It was a one that he heard quite often, even if he did not necessarily register what he had done to offend her at the time.

"Shrimp," he acknowledged and he heard her walk closer to him.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"The guild," he said, trying to relax his form. He didn't know what he had done to upset her this time. And, like all the other times, he supposed that he was going to have to sit through a very long lecture on what he had done and what he should have done.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Gajeel, stop acting like that," she said, and then she was next to him. He could feel her warmth to his right, but he didn't dare look at her. He was going to draw this out as long as he could; draw out the amount of time that she was giving him her full and complete attention because he knew he wasn't going to have it much longer.

"Like what?"

She all but growled at him, something that he also seemed to find attractive, he realized. "Quit playing games, Gajeel. You're acting like a child. Will you-" she shifted in front of him but he looked away, "-just look-" she jumped up to catch his eyes but he shut them instead, enjoying their little game, "-at me."

"Nah," he said instead, resisting a smirk at her frustrated cry, "I'm good."

"Wha-" Levy stomped on the ground, and Gajeel would have bet everything he owned that she was pouting. He expected her to give up on him like she normally did, pegging his actions as some sort of male mood swing. Instead, she snatched his wrist and pulled him over. He walked where she wanted, keeping his red eyes closed the entire time. He wasn't sure where she was taking him, but she stopped him abruptly and he...could hear wood bending. How was that-

The next thing that he knew, two small hands were on either side of his face and his eyes flew open of their own accord. Levy was standing on a small park bench, her cold palms pressed onto his cheeks to keep his head in place. She looked ruffled, her hair a bit disheveled, and, now that he was paying attention, he noted that she was breathing rather heavily. Had she raced after him? Surely he didn't walk that fast...

"You are going to listen to me, okay?" She didn't wait for his response as she followed it with, "You need to stop pouting and acting like a baby." He opened his mouth to say something but was silence by a sharp glare. "I don't care how tough you think you are, Gajeel, it doesn't give you the right to monopolize all of my attention."

"What does then?" The words slipped out of his mouth without much permission and while he thought he would regret it, he was pleased to find that she looked startled by his question. He didn't understand why though. She was a clever woman. She must have known what she was doing to him, and how he was feeling about it. It had been on purpose, a sort of delayed gratification.

Right?

"W-what?"

"I said, what does then? What gives me the right to have all of yer attention?" He asked it of her with all the seriousness in the world, staring at her with the same intensity that he had been using all day. She was a confusing woman, always saying one thing and meaning another, and she was profound physically and mentally. Maybe it was an instinctual, dragon-based side of him that believed she should be his. She was the female that he spent the most amount of time with, so perhaps this need to hoard her attention surrounded that fact. He hoped that explained how he craved to have her eyes watch him, to have her speak just so he could listen to her voice, and that he could speak with her undivided attention as an audience. He wanted those things badly, more so than he would and could ever admit, and if words were how he was going to get her attention then, by Mavis, he would do what he could.

"I-I don't know." She stumbled on her words, cheeks pink, and Gajeel could see that she was put off by his words. Levy's eyes seemed to shift nervously from his face to the landscape behind him and back again. "You, um..." He felt her thumb rub against his cheek before moving her hand off his face all together, thinking that her palms had overstayed their welcome, but he grabbed her hands and pressed them so that they remained sitting warmly on his cheek bones. Levy's eyes searched his, as if she would find the answer in the red orbs that shone back at her. He stared back, giving away nothing, categorizing her eyes as a brown that he took pleasure gazing at. He felt her hand heat his cheeks and she smelled...nervous. She was not as upset as she let on, he found, and she regarded him with more anxiety and gentleness than he would have thought possible for someone in her position.

"You?" he supplied slowly, relishing in the heat of her hand. The chill from the autumn winds was surely chilling her more than it was chilling him. He was basically an iron man, and that meant that he did not feel the temperature of the weather as much. But the heat in her hands... in his home they had been cold, but now? It was like nothing he'd ever felt. She was warm and he gravitated towards that rare warmth like a moth to the flame. Gajeel wasn't sure what possessed him to do so, but he turned his head ever so slightly and heard the words Levy would have said die in her throat, the softest of sounds leaving her mouth as he pressed his lips to her palm. There was a part of Gajeel that both roared with happiness and purred with content. He was lucky he got away with such an affectionate gesture, no slapping or hitting to accompany it. To accomplish something like that with Levy was good enough. But the fact that she had let him...

"I-" she restarted, her thoughts coming back to her despite how scattered she had been. He kissed her palm again, eyes never leaving hers and Levy's eyes regarded him carefully. He didn't have an ulterior motive, as much as he knew she believed. Her skin smelled good- she smelled good- and if not for their social status in public, he would have very much liked to kiss her in other places besides the chaste ones on her hands.

"What gives me the right?" he said, repeating the question and trying to soften his voice. Levy never took well to the gruffness. More often than not, it made her defensive, and while he genuinely enjoyed the fire he normally garnered from her, he was currently not in the mood. This was an actual question; something that had been on his mind for weeks. When she didn't answer him, her sighed and ruffled her hair affectionately with a spare hand before saying, "Or maybe only your groupies have that, right?"

Her eyes narrowed instantly, the inner turmoil disappearing from them as she pulled herself away, smacking his shoulder with a huff. Gajeel simply grinned, glad to see that she was visibly less anxious than before, and vowed to perhaps save his personal questions for later. "Jerk," she grumbled, but Gajeel didn't disagree, choosing to instead carrying her off the bench and placing her gently back on the floor. The distance was not far at all, but the gesture was not lost on the Solid Script mage. She mumbled her thanks before looking him in the eye again. "So..."

"So do you want to eat something at the guild?" he inserted quickly, but not without purpose. The guild was public and would make her feel more comfortable after such an awkward conversation. "My treat."

Levy agreed eagerly, and, just when he thought she had forgotten about his question, she took him by the hand and they walked to the guild hall. He smiled inwardly to herself. "Know what?" she said as they walked, eyes on the path before them. "This meal at the guild hall better be a good pick by you. I'm seriously not buying if you're gonna make it up to me properly."

"I'll make it up to ya," he promised, priding himself on managing to get her away from the pages and ink.

"Good," she chirped, before saying something that made him groan. "You're going to buy me a new book too."

Damn that literature.

Better? Is it okay? I mean, I didn't intend for it to be this long and it kinda happened...

Please R&R