Standard disclaimer: If I owned it don't you think I'd be publishing this stuff somewhere else?
A.N. This week has been crap, absolute crap, and that's the nicest way to put it. Work has sucked, home life has sucked, and social life has been non-existent because work has been all consuming. And its left me grumpy and feeling oh so murderous. So I'm channeling all of that into this. I apologize in advance because I'm sorry… So so sorry.
If he thought it had ended when Phantom disbanded, he was sorely mistaken. At the very least getting his ass handed to him on a preverbal platter by that ridiculously named Salamander should have given him some sort of karmic reprieve, but noooooo there was no fucking way that Gajeel Redfox would have been that lucky.
It had been three months, three fucking miserable months of scraping by, taking odd jobs here and there and staying in dingy hotels with god knows how many stains littering the threadbare sheets, and blankets that couldn't keep out the chill that crept in from under the cracks of the doors that hung crookedly in their frames during the coldest parts of the night and cutting out before the owners could try to collect payment for their sorry-ass excuse for hospitality. It's not like they really deserved the money anyway, having a roof to put over someone's head did not entitle someone to the right to his money.
After the disestablishment of Phantom he had fallen into a routine of sorts; retreat early to the solace of whatever room he was renting, or pretending to rent, where he could be left the fuck alone, drink to passing out, wake just before daybreak, and then slip into the shadows of the growing dawn before anyone else woke.
And tonight would have been no different.
He had escaped into the blissful embrace of cheap booze early on in the night, and barely managed to fall face first onto another god-awful bed. At some point, breathing through the nasty-ass comforter had gotten to be too much and he had shifted onto his back with a groan. Sleep that night, however, seemed to be a fickle fucking bitch, and evaded his grasp.
Still, too far gone into his drink, he failed to hear the soft click of the opening door, the door he would have sworn he had locked upon entering the damn place, or detect the addition of a new shadow to the dark corners of the room. It wasn't until he felt his arms moving of their own volition, stretching across the expanse of the flimsy mattress, pulling them taunt, that he noticed something off about his surroundings. He tried to jump to his feet, struggling numbly, but it seemed that his legs had been immobilized as well. Figuring that the alcohol had slowed his usually quick reflexes, he let loose a string of curses.
"My my, how the mighty fall."
There was a malicious giggle and crimson eyes flashed up to meet honeyed brown ones.
"You? The fuck? How?" he spat.
How was right. How the fuck had he missed her? It's not like she was trying to blend into the shadows. The moon was full that night and seeing as it was well past moonrise, the glow illuminated the entire shitty room. From where he lay on the bed, his head propped up under the meager pillows tonight's inn had provided, he could clearly make out her pale face beneath the hood of her jacket, and creamy legs that emerged from a pair of shorts that should have been illegal with their indecent length. He'd recognize the girl, woman really if the curves her wardrobe revealed were any indication, anywhere. The blue-haired fairy bitch whose crucifixion had brought about Phantom's -and consequently Gajeel's- downfall, and somehow he wasn't as surprised as he knew he should have been to see her face again.
The bed dipped a bit as her small frame climbed onto it. She slipped a leg across his torso, straddling him with a wicked grin across her face.
"Please," Levy sang as she threw back the hood and shook loose her blue locks. "You were only too easy to track. Slip a few jewels to the right person and they don't hesitate to point me in the right direction, and for the right amount, they're more than willing to look the other way."
"And this?" Gajeel demanded, attempting to wrench his arm from its tether. His bicep flexed as he pulled, the muscle straining to be free, but it was a fruitless endeavor. If anything he was more stuck than before.
"Magnets," she scoffed. Her lip drew back into a sneer as she narrowed her eyes at him. "Well, magnets hooked up to electricity-filled lacrima to give them an extra boost, just in case. Really, Kurogane, you wound me. Did you really think I wouldn't do my research? I mean you obviously did yours." She tsk-ed.
"Whatdya mean?" he asked, perverse curiosity getting the best of him.
Her eyes glinted with a hint of malice before adopting a more innocent expression. Her bottom lip quivered and she flashed her best doe eyes at him.
"Picking the weakest team," she pouted at him before snapping a hand out to slap him across the face. "Idiot."
Gajeel growled and when his attempt to lunge at her was thwarted by his shackles, the iron dragonslayer furrowed his brow at her, attempting to pin her down with one of the fearsome glares he was known for around Phantom Lord's guildhall and she did her best to return the look.
"But Shadow Gear…"
"Oh you poor thing," she mocked, bringing her palm up to cup his stricken cheek and gave it a condescending pat. "You thought you'd gotten the best of little Levy McGarden and her team? Had I known you wanted a real fight, I would have come a little more prepared, but that wasn't the case, was it? Did you really think brawn could prevail over brains?"
She cackled, throwing her head back and clutching her stomach. Her small form shook and she pressed a hand to her forehead. As her laughter intensified, the solid script mage leaned across his torso further, until she was sprawled across him, and if he was supposed to have any clue as to what was so fucking funny, he was at a total loss. He tensed, abdominal muscles contracting beneath her as she clung to him like a crazed barnacle. Hysterical fit subsiding as quickly as it had come; she shot up, and flicked her hair behind her shoulder.
"What the hell do you want, half-pint?" Gajeel demanded.
The first trickle of fear, a foreign emotion to Gajeel, had started to creep up on him at her deranged laughter. Fairy Tail mages weren't known for causing more than minor injuries, so there really shouldn't have been a reason to fear much more than a scratch from the pixie above him. But still, something about that laugh…
"Well if you must know, I was curious."
"About what?"
Levy paused and cocked her head to the side, giving him a thoughtful look. A slender finger tapped at her chin for a few moments before she held it above her head, as though coming to a quick epiphany. Her hand dropped to her thigh, and it was then that Gajeel noticed the dagger strapped to the delectable limb. Unsheathing it, she held the blade aloft. The metal glinted in the moonlight and reflected off of her teeth as she bared them in a devilish grin.
"If he's a prick, does he not bleed?"
He snorted. The knife was no longer than her forearm, but if Gajeel knew his weapons, and he did, it would be sharp enough to cut through most flesh easily. Gajeel's skin however would be a more formidable foe.
"Aren't you forgetting, girlie, that I eat butter knives like that for breakfast?"
"Oh yes, how could I forget," she lilted.
Levy reached into the back pocket of her impossibly short shorts, fingers brushing against the tops of his thighs dangerously close to his groin in what he assumed was an accidental caress, and produced a pen. Light spilled from the tip as she scrawled out a single word in neat handwriting, etching it into the blade.
Acid.
With a flourish, she capped the pen and thrust it back into her pocket. The dagger blazed a sickening green as the word throbbed and expanded until it coated the entirety of blade, sparing only the handle from its pulsing glow. The light swirled like spiraling patterns of oil, its luminescent whorls casting dancing shadows over the girls face, reinforcing his conviction of her lack of sanity. She squirmed on his lap, anticipation making her antsy.
"Want to know the best part?" she asked in an eager rush, like a child divulging a juicy secret, "Since I'm the caster, it can't hurt me. Wanna see?"
A triumphant grin spread across her lips when she placed the handle of the dagger in her mouth and unzipped her jacket with a slow deliberate motion. Levy shucked the garment off her shoulders, revealing a black corset that bared pale enticing shoulders and hugged her curves like a second skin. The solid script mage flicked the jacket into a corner and then retrieved the weapon. Hips grinding into his, she dragged the tip of the blade down the side of her neck, and through the valley of her breasts.
The thought crossed Gajeel's mind briefly of how she would feel if the circumstances of their clandestine meeting were different, her sultry voice whispering sweet nothings into his ear, her lithe body pressed against his, all her curves and contours laid bare before him to explore with callous hands and sharp fangs, but such thoughts were driven from his mind when a miniscule droplet of the glowing liquid trickled off the blade. It landed just above his navel, instantly dissolving the fabric of his shirt. Pain coursed through him as the acid came into contact with his skin, and instinctually the iron dragon's scales scattered across his torso turning flesh to iron.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much that fucking hurt. Not even after he had taunted that idiot Salamander about beating that blonde bimbo that he considered his partner and his vicious attacks had increased in ferocity had he felt pain this severe.
"Why here? Why now?"
"So glad you asked," she asked, running the knife down one of the sleeves of his shirt.
The acid dissolved the fibers, and when it made contact with his bare skin, his metallicized flesh bubbling as it liquefied, he hissed. He knew he should still be fighting back, but every miniscule movement, each minuet twitch of his body, only increased the agony tearing through it. Or maybe the bitch had slipped something into his drink that lowered his pain threshold and hindered his mobility. At that point he wouldn't have been surprised by anything the woman did. Either way, Gajeel was frozen as Levy leaned forward. She pressed her chest flush with his, paying no heed to the acid as it made contact with the leather of her top and began to eat away at the garment, leaving her skin unblemished, leaving her more exposed than before. Levy nuzzled his cheek, and her hot breath caressed his ear.
Her voice, a seductive purr, sent shivers down his spine for more than one reason when she whispered, "I wanted this to be far more intimate. To see the look on your face when the famous Black Steel Gajeel realized he'd been bested by someone who doesn't even reach his shoulders."
"How…" Pain made him choke on his sentence as she sat up, trailing the blade across his chest. The tip of the knife peppered down his shirt, leaving dots of disintegrating cloth in its wake. "How're ya gonna get away with it?" he rasped finally, pushing back the burning pain that stole his breath.
She snorted. "As if people are going to believe that sweet innocent Levy McGarden of Fairy Tail is capable of leaving a man such as yourself a puddle of simmering goo? Especially," she spat, "After you humiliated my boys and me like that."
She drove her point home with the tip of the dagger. Biting into flesh for the first time as she pushed it deep into his left arm, and for once in his fucking life he found himself praying to whatever deity had forsaken him and damned his soul to this anguish to just let him pass out. But as Gajeel should have suspected in the first place, such god had long since abandoned him, like everyone else in his life, his birth parents, Metalicanna, his stupid fucking guild and oh fucking hell this hurt so bad. If he were capable of speech he would have been a babbling idiot, if just to distract himself to from the pain. As it was he was barely managing to draw breath, panting and silently cursing the heavens, his life, his former master for starting the war, the idiots in Phantom for relying too much on his strength to keep their sorry asses safe, those damn fairies for beating his guild, those two fuckers on her team who should have done a better job protecting their physically weakest member, and Levy herself. A soft whine escaped his lips as his body convulsed, causing her to chuckle.
"It's ok. You don't have hold back," she stroked his untarnished cheek with her free hand, tracing the planes of his cheekbones and her fingers skipped across the various piercings that littered his face. Her face hovered inches from his, their breath mingling in some perverse mimicry of intimacy. "I like hearing you moan."
If it had been within his power to, he would have reached up and at least bitten the bitch, left some mark to show that he'd fought back, to show her that he wasn't her plaything to toy with, but the most he could manage was a stuttered, "Ffff-fuck you."
"Maybe in another lifetime Gajeel," Levy giggled as she wrenched the dagger from his arm. The smell of melting iron mixed with coppery blood, the one part of his anatomy that he couldn't change whenever he used his iron dragonslayer magic.
"'spose ya wan me ta beg," he choked as she pushed the dagger into his other arm, creating twin wounds in some sort of debauched symmetry that only made sense to her, and his vision blurred. "I ain't gonna." He let out another moan, unable to fight the pain that riddled his upper body.
"Not at all!" she exclaimed. Her eyes flashed with a loosely concealed rage. "I just want you to die!"
With those final words, spoken through gritted teeth, she plunged the dagger into his heart. The blade slipped between ribs and into the organ with sickening sound. His body convulsed as much as his tether would allow him and Levy watched, never breaking eye contact, as life left his body. Mission completed the solid script mage rose to her feet. She yanked the dagger from Gajeel's ruined corpse. After removing the script spell from the weapon, she deftly cleaned the blade, wiping it against the leg of her shorts. She breathed a sigh of relief as the lacrima's magical energy cut out. It had been a close call, her plans heavily reliant on the untested technology and she had timed it perfectly. She collected her things, and then paused next to the bed where he laid, acid still dissolving his body. By morning, if her calculations were correct, he and the bed that he lay on would be nothing more than a pile of smoldering sludge.
"You know, Gajeel, had things been different, we might have become lovers," Levy confessed, pressing a chaste kiss to his lifeless lips. She brushed his obsidian locks away from his face and then stood. Casting one final look over her shoulder, she whispered, "I've always had a thing for guys with piercings," and then faded into the night.