Loves and Lanterns

The sound of five little dolls singing ad nauseam their nonsensical songs paired well with the accompanying smell of carved pumpkins. Not to mention the humming of a very joyful takeover mage and the determined grunts of an intent seith. From the kitchen there was more singing, but that had less to do with them and more with the fact that a certain other takeover mage was baking and, well, Mirajane couldn't bake without singing.

Seriously. She just couldn't.

"The hell are you guys doing in my house?"

Then the Thunder God had to go and come home early, ruining everything.

"What does it look like?" Lisanna retorted to Laxus' annoyed question. "We're carving pumpkins."

"I got that, you brat," Laxus grumbled as he shut the front door behind him and walked further into the room. "But why are you doing it in my living room? And you're getting pumpkin guts everywhere!"

"Oy, boss," Bickslow complained as he still stared with deep meaning at his canvas (hallowed out pumpkin). "Your woman invited us over. Said that she wanted some pumpkins to sit out on the front porch and figured I'd be the best one to get it done for her."

"And why," the slayer complained, "would she think that?"

"Because, dragon," they heard then called from the kitchen. "He makes those cute little babies."

The seith glared over at the doorway to the hall though it was actually directed at Mirajane. "They're not cute. They're ferocious."

"Mmmm," Lisanna hummed as she hacked away at her own, far less skilled (if not downright pitiful) pumpkin. "You hear that, babies? You're ferocious."

"Ferocious," they all sang as they floated around. "Ferocious."

"I don't care what they are," Laxus said. "As long as they and the two of you get the hell outta here and take your damn pumpkins-"

"Dragon," Mirajane called from the other room. "Come here for a second."

"No, I-" He stopped himself. "Do I smell cookies?"

"You do. They're for the party tomorrow night."

Narrowing his eyes first at Bickslow then at Lisanna and finally at the five floating dolls, Laxus barked out, "You win for now, losers," before heading to the kitchen. His demon called, after all.

And so did her cookies.

With Laxus gone, the dolls went back to singing, Lisanna back to carving (destroying), and Bickslow back to his deep contemplation.

"Bicks?" his girlfriend asked after giving her jack-o-lantern a wickedly devious grin.

"Hmmm?"

"You okay over there?"

He was seated on the other side of the living room, visor off. Not glancing over at her, he said simply, "I'm thinking."

"Mirajane literally bought us ten, huge pumpkins," the woman pointed out. "You can screw up on this one and then try harder on the next. Besides, it's not that big of a deal."

Not to her. But to him it was. His pumpkin would be sitting on the front porch of, fine, Mirajane, but most importantly Laxus Dreyar. His idol. The man that he aspired to be. Put above all others. Even himself. Even Lissy.

Not his babies, but he figured that the man wouldn't ask for that much anyhow.

As it was though, he had to make each and every pumpkin perfect.

"What have you done?" he complained when he saw Lisanna's. "That's horrible."

"I know," she giggled as she stared admiringly at her piece of work (junk). "Isn't it great?"

"Heh?"

"Jack-o-lanterns are supposed to be horrible, right?" She grinned at him. "You know, scary?"

"That's not scary, Lissy," he grumbled. "That's just a waste of a perfectly good pumpkin."

"Hey!"

"Hey," his dolls mimicked the woman, coming to fly around her head then. "Hey, Papa!"

"Babies, there's no time," he grumbled. "Papa's thinking."

"Unless you're thinking up ways to apologize," Lisanna said with a frown, "then you're wasting your time."

Groaning, he finally glanced over. "Lissy, I'm just saying that you should leave it to me. Huh? I'm an artist, yeah? And you're just…amazing. In every way. Other than this. Go bother your sister and the boss. Or better yet, play with the babies. They like that."

"Play," the five dolls cheered. "Play, Lissy. Play."

Pushing up and leaving her pumpkin behind, Lisanna said, "Fine, Bickslow. Be a jerk. Come on, babies. Let's leave him to it then. Since it's so much more important than us."

"Thank you," he said with a nod, not picking up on her tone. And, with another nasty look, Lisanna stomped off for the front door, his babies following as she called out to Mirajane that she'd be back later.

They were going for a walk.

"Man, you're gonna get it," Bickslow heard from the hall as Laxus, now with a plate full of cookies and a piece of cake too, all iced with black and orange frosting, came into the room. "Seriously. You should teach a class on ways to make sure you're not getting any. Ever. At all. You'd be a master at it."

"Eh?" Bickslow sat to attention at the sound of his idol's voice, glancing over. "What are you talkin' about? And hey! Mirajane said that we weren't allowed to have any cookies or cake. That they were for-"

"I," Laxus growled, "am the king of my own castle."

"That's great. Now give me a cookie."

"That means, dummy," the man continued as he went to take a seat on the couch, "that if I want a damn cookie or a piece of cake, I'm going to get one."

Bickslow only stared at him, blinking slightly. "She gave them to you to keep you from kicking us out, didn't she?"

Shrugging, the man said, "My woman drives a hard bargain."

"Yeah, well, mine doesn't," the seith said as he went back to looking over his pumpkins. "So I don't know what you came in here talking about-"

"The fact that you let her walk out all mad or whatever," the slayer said as he spoke around the cookie he'd shoved in his mouth. "It was pretty dang obvious."

"What? Lissy? Mad? No. She doesn't get mad."

"As her brother-in-law-"

"You could just say brother. She does."

Uh, no. He couldn't. Laxus was an only child for a reason. Because he was pure awesomeness and none was to be spared on another one. So saying he had a sibling might confuse people on that fact. No need for that.

"-I know when she's ticked," he finished. "And Lisanna is ticked. If you weren't so caught up in this stupid pumpkin business-"

"It's not stupid. I'm an artiste!"

"-you'd have noticed." Shaking his head as he stabbed at the cake then with his fork, the man only sighed. "I mean sheesh, Bickslow. You two are usually all over one another. What's got you so caught up in these damn pumpkins?"

Uh, trying to win the man's favor so that he could shove it in Freed and Evergreen's faces. What the hell else could it be?

"Nothin', boss," he said. "I was just, you know, trying to do a good job for your woman. She did ask me to, after all."

"Yeah, well, keepin' the demon happy is my job," Laxus told him simply. "And I got it more than under control. As someone who's tamed a Strauss-"

"Do what now?"

"-it don't take a lot for them to get their spirits crushed." The man glanced over at Lisanna's pumpkin before shrugging. "I mean, that ain't a horrible jack-o-lantern. It's not great either. But definitely not insult worthy. Sure, it's not worthy of the mastery that is Laxus' Dreyar's front porch-"

"That's what I was saying!"

"-but it also ain't worth you and Lisanna fighting over." Laxus shrugged. "I mean, I've seen worth. A lot worse. You should have seen the pumpkins that Mirajane put out last year."

"I did," the seith said slowly. "We all did."

"And now you know why she asked someone else to do them this year."

"I do. We all do." Reaching up to scratch at his Mohawk, the man said, "You think that I really hurt Lissy's feelings?"

"Yeah, I don't really no. Or care anymore. Mira!" Laxus got to his feet again. "Can I have some more cake?"

"No, dragon. It's for the-"

"I'm the king of my own castle!"

"Stop yelling. And what does that even mean?"

As they quarreled, Bickslow only looked over his last nine pumpkins before sighing.

"Maybe Lissy is more important than impressing boss," he mumbled.

More like definitely.

When she finally got back to the house, all of his dolls riding either on her head, shoulders, or arms, it was dusk out and, to her surprise, Bickslow had finished all the pumpkins and they were sitting out on the front porch.

Hers was out there, the yellow flame from the candle inside of it making it look extra creepy.

Next to it was a much better done, standard one. It had a jagged grin and triangle eyes, and, fine, she would admit it, looked way better than hers.

But it was the other eight that caught her attention, of course. Bickslow was out there, on the porch, sitting onto the steps as he waited for her to come back. At the sight of her, he got to his feet, but she didn't even glance at him.

They were lined in a row, the pumpkins were, each shining in the dimming light of night, highlighting the carvings made in them. Each one was a single letter marked into it and, even though it was a little cheesy, it still made her grin.

I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U

"You're such a dork," she complained to Bickslow as the babies rushed to go look at the pumpkins, oohing and awing. "You know that?"

"Only for you," he said, grinning brightly as she came to hug him. Laxus and Mirajane, who were on the porch as well (her idea; she thought Bickslow was being cute and romantic while Laxus mostly wanted to appease her until she gave him more cake), watched with extremely different points of view.

"Bleh," the slayer complained as Mirajane only giggled and clapped her hands. "Total waste. I said to make up with her, dingbat. Not waste perfectly good pumpkins."

"I'll buy more," Mira told him through a giggle. "And don't call him names."

"The hell you will," Laxus complained. "I'm the king of the castle! And I say to stop spending all our jewels on stupid things."

"I still don't know what that means, so-"

"Just stop spending our money!"

Lisanna and Bickslow were ignoring them as, really, at some point Mirajane and Laxus just got annoying, and focused more on one another.

"Your pumpkin ain't bad, kid," the seith was saying as the babies came back over to them, whining something about the candles. "It was just-"

"No," she sighed as she glanced over at it again. "Compared to yours, it was pretty bad."

Grinning, his tongue fell out of his mouth as he said, "Yeah, well, I am an artiste. Look at the babies stylish bodies, yeah? Perfection!"

"Perfection!" the dolls agreed as Lisanna only giggled. "Papa! Candles! Candles!"

"What's wrong, babies?" He frowned at them. "I'm havin' a moment with the kid here and-"

"What is it?" Lisanna reached up to take one of them, Pappa, out of the sky when he came close enough. "What's wrong?"

"Candle," the doll insisted. "Candle."

"Oy, you don't like 'em?" Bickslow glanced over at the glowing pumpkins. "I thought they were pretty nifty."

"Candles!" Suddenly, all five of the babies began to glow as if they were ready to attack. No beams came from them though. "Candles!"

"I think," Lisanna began as she went to get on the porch and head over to one of the jack-o-lanterns, "that I know what they want."

And so, after leaning down to blow out five of the candles, Lisanna and Bickslow let the babies, still glowing their green light, sit in the hollowed out pumpkins to illuminate them.

"Awe," Mirajane cooed at the sight. Laxus, bored, had taken to contemplating which neighborhood kid to pay to smash the pumpkins in the dead of night, as well as any others that his wife bought. "Dragon. How come you never do cute things like that?"

"Huh?"

"You've never carved me a pumpkin that showed how much you love me."

He only stared. "You do know how crazy you sound, right?"

"I want babies," she added enviously as Lisanna and Bickslow admired theirs lights, lavishly complimenting all five of them the entire time. "Dragon, give me babies!"

Growling finally, Laxus said, "Look, woman, we've discussed this. We will have one child when I decide I'm ready. And that won't be for another year. At least. I still have settling to do. A castle to build."

"Stop talking about castles!"

Out in the yard, where Bickslow and Lisanna had taken to standing, so that they could get better looks at their jack-o-lanterns, him with his arm over her shoulders, the two only grinned at one another and the sounds of his babies singing their illogical tunes.

"I think this is my favorite time of the year," the seith said as the sun only sunk lower, giving more credence to the ever glowing pumpkins. "Next to, well, my birthday. Because that's pretty great too."

"Me too," she agreed before frowning. "Except for the second one."

"Rude."

"That's not rude."

"It's pretty rude."

"Don't argue with me, Bickslow."

After just getting her back on his side? No freaking way.

Eek. I forgot that it was Bixanna week and missed the first four days…and probably won't come up with anything for the other two. But we'll see.