A/N: Well, this perverted little bit of insanity sounded far better in my head. Why does this keep happening? But, again, it's not doing anything locked up in my hard drive.
This is about as close as to an M-rating as I've ever gotten, so I apologize for any awkwardness. I tried to keep it in character. Just don't take it too seriously. It's just two dorks messing around with each other.
A special thanks to ajerzaadict, who inspired me to finish this through a little exchange of messages about Erza's occasional bipolarity.
This one also fits into the 'Rollercoaster' universe.
It happened the day after he and Erza went on their third date together.
They had tried to keep the whole dating thing quiet, just between them, but such a thing was impossible in Fairy Tail. Cobra had been the first to find out, reading his mind once while he was day-dreaming and making a snide comment about it in front of Meredy, who'd nearly lost it. Mira also knew, somehow always being up-to-date with any romantic activity whatsoever in the guild. Jellal wasn't sure how many more knew – hopefully it was just those three.
It wasn't.
On the aforementioned day that succeeded their third date, sometime during the afternoon when Erza was gone, having ran to Fairy Hills to put out some sort of metaphorical fire (something about an Iron Dragon Slayer being spotted attempting to sneak in through a window that might or might not be Levy's), he had found himself surrounded by her team mates without any sort of warning.
"So, I guess you guys never did make a public announcement but it has come to our attention during the last mission we took that Erza's been getting up to certain things that she sure as hell wouldn't have let anyone but you do to her," Gray said unceremoniously.
Jellal nearly jumped in startlement. "What?!"
"We saw the…" Lucy paused, coughing "… bruise on her neck when she requipped into one of her skimpiest armors," she supplied with a light blush on her face, much to his horror.
His eyes widened. He couldn't deny that things might or might not have gotten a bit… heated towards the end of the date… no, not that heated. They were taking it slowly, after all. But they might or might not have spent good part of a half hour making out and Erza might or might not have ended up with a hickey, which he'd vehemently apologized for. She'd been mostly okay with it, though, because she had given him no less than four of those in return. They were just easier to hide under his layers of clothing.
"What the hell kind of stuff are you doing to Erza that is giving her bruises?" Natsu demanded, pouching the table in a threatening manner. Thankfully, it wasn't in a Fire Dragon's Iron Fist sort of way. "Gray and Lucy told me those are the 'good kind of bruises' and that they're not from fighting and Erza just looks like she'll burst into flames every time I ask about it… What's the deal?! And why do they call it a 'love-bite'?" Natsu asked.
He wanted to die. At that moment, he could have cast Abyss Break on himself, weren't it for the illegality and possible collateral damage of it.
"Natsu, we don't have time for your stupidity right now," Gray said, rolling his eyes.
"But I want to know!"
"Then ask Cana about it later," Gray told him. "She'll be more than happy to give you a detailed explanation. Don't get too close, though, 'cause she may actually be tempted give you one."
Natsu didn't look too happy by the arrangement. But still, he agreed. "Fine. Anyway, apparently this means you and Erza are a thing now. So, we don't need to remind of the consequences of making her shed a tear, right?" he asked, making a point of punching the palm of his own hand, that time with flames added for better effect.
"Nope," Jellal mumbled, mildly terrified.
Lucy cleared her throat. "Threatening you is not what we're here to do, in any case. The thing is, we know that Erza cares a great deal about you and you care a great deal about her and you make each other happy, so we'd rather have this went smoothly. For that purpose, we decided that we should share a few pieces of advice with you."
"Advice?" he asked.
She nodded. "Just a few bits of wisdom we've gained from dealing with her in a daily basis. You may have already reached some of these conclusions by yourself but it doesn't hurt to stress them."
"First," Gray started. "I guess you already know better than to get between her and strawberry cake. In any case, let us remind you: don't do it. Ever."
"That is absolutely vital," Lucy agreed.
"And painful," Natsu mumbled.
"Always ask permission to eat it, even if you order it for yourself," Gray warned him.
"And never suggest splitting it. She'll take offence and go on and on about cake dignity. Don't get me wrong, she's fine with sharing a lot of stuff, just not cake," Lucy pointed out. "This applies to all variations of strawberry cake, including but not limited to cheesecake, shortcake, sponge cake, muffins, et al. Don't worry about pie, though. She doesn't like it."
"On to the second point," Gray added. "Don't let her drink alcohol. She gets weird. Violently weird."
Jellal couldn't help thinking that he really didn't need warnings about her drunkenness after having witnessed it himself. Honestly, he didn't find it that bad. It was just equal parts terrifying and delightful.
"All the girls but Cana seem to get weird when they drink," Natsu mumbled, narrowing his eyes at Lucy, who just blushed.
"Tell me about it," Gray commented. Juvia had nearly drowned me in a flood of tears last time around.
Lucy cleared her throat. "Anyway, third point: modesty – she's got none," she provided. "There's skimpy outfits, skimpy armor, bunny suits, cat suits, walking around in a wet towel, accidental nakedness… you may want to pay attention when she's tanning because she hates bikini lines on her back and tends to forget she's sunbathing with her top unlaced. Don't take it personally – she's not trying to flash anybody, she's just weird that way."
"Also, it may come up that at one point or another she has bathed with Natsu and I," Gray informed him, much to his horror. They'd bathed with Erza? His Erza? They had laid their eyes on the most intimate stretches of her perfect skin and seen the flawless curve of her… "Trust me, we didn't ask for it and we sure as hell didn't enjoy seeing her naked."
"Well, we don't enjoy seeing you naked either, so stop unbuttoning your pants! And get your shirt back on!" Lucy demanded, seeing as the ice-mage started undressing himself.
"Ha! Crap, where did it go?!"
"Pervert," Natsu snickered
Meanwhile, Jellal was staring. They were winding him up, right? They had to be.
"We really need to address her sanity as the forth point," Lucy continued. "She's a nutjob. A highly-functioning, likeable nutjob but still a nutjob. I mean, there's the whole penchant for punishment but that's not even the worst."
"No, the worst is how bipolar she can be," Gray stated. "This is the girl who sometimes flattens a town almost single-handedly and apologizes on our behalf but not her own and at other times does a little mistake and starts begging us to punish her."
"Plus, we've already mentioned the whole lack of modesty thing but even mention holding hands around her and she'll nearly spontaneously combust," Lucy stated. "Hell, I probably don't need to tell you this – if you've been busy enough to give her hickeys, you've probably witnessed your own share of blushing pervyness, as I like to call it."
That time, he was the one to nearly spontaneously combust. "W-we haven't been that busy!" he defended himself. "Can we change the subject please?"
"Sure. On to the fifth and final item: acting," Lucy went on to say. "She loves it. She'll probably try to drag you into it at one point or the other. Don't do it."
That one just didn't make sense. "Why not? You said she loves it," Jellal asked innocently.
"Yeah, but she's bad at it," Natsu told him. "Really bad. It's painful to watch."
"It's not that she's actually horribly bad but her stage fright reaches crippling levels, which she doesn't seem to remain aware of afterwards," Lucy explained. "And she takes the whole thing way too seriously."
"Yeah, with the props and the characterization and all… then she gets really upset when the rotten fruit starts flying her way. It's not worth the trouble," Gray explained. "Just avoid it."
He scratched his head. "Is that all? Strawberry cake, drinking, lack of modesty, bipolarity and acting?"
"Her hugs hurt," Natsu mumbled, recalling how she tended to slam them their faces right against her armor.
"He probably knows that already," Gray pointed out.
"She may have a gambling problem," Lucy said, scratching her chin. "It's too early to tell – I haven't been around her a lot in casinos, so it's best just to avoid them. She's definitely too competitive. Yeah, add that to the list: anything you can do, she'll want to do better. Case and point: Pandemonium – she just had to take on all hundred demons by herself, didn't she? Anyway, I guess that's all we can think of right now."
"Good luck and don't screw it up," Gray told him
He should have probably written it all down and kept a note of it with him at all times. Really, he should have. He should have also taken the time to consider the subtleties of those seven points in order to avoid them sneaking up on him. But, he didn't.
And so, about six months into their relationship, the inevitable happened.
He arrived home (the home he now shared with Erza) late at night from a very weird job. And by weird he meant so weird that he didn't even know what was going on half the time. It was some kind of big S-Class thing involving a lot of roles with Makarov himself on the field running the show, a rare thing to behold.
Aside from himself, Laxus, Cana, Juvia and Gajeel had joined in what could only be called the 'heist', which literally involved conning an entire dark guild in order to take it down. It was hard to explain how the whole thing worked out but, in the end of it all, he'd found himself wearing Mystogan's old outfit as a disguise while he infiltrated the dark guild with Juvia hidden inside a water bottle… it didn't get much weirder than that.
When he returned to Magnolia, heading straight home desperately yearning for some quiet, he was still wearing his Mystogan disguise, mostly because Cana had hurled all over his regular clothes at some point while impersonating – all too accurately – a rowdy heiress with a drinking problem.
Upon going in, using his key to open the door, he found Erza multitasking on the couch by watching some kind of game show on the lacrima-vision at the same time as she polished her usual Heart Kreuz armor into a mirror-like state.
"Your idiocy astounds me. Clearly you shove the socks into the boots to free up space!" were the first words he heard from her, leading to some confusion up until he realized she was talking to one of the competitors on the lacrima-vision rather than him. She was still shaking her head in distaste when she started turning around to face him. "How did the job g…?" She paused, staring at his outfit. "What…?"
"Please, don't ask. It was a strange job all around," he said.
"That much is clear," she mumbled. "Did it go well, at least?"
"Overall, yes. But it got worse before it got better. "
"How much worse?"
"Worse enough that we got to plan M. Which involved the Master having to dress up in drag."
She stared. "What?!"
Jellal sighed. "He's demanding a bigger cut of the reward because we made him shave his mustache. I guess he does deserve it, though it's not our fault there were runes preventing transformation magic… Anyway, I'm getting out of these clothes and taking a shower now."
"Wait," Erza said before he could make his way into their room. He turned around a saw her blushing in a rather familiar way. "Do you have to?"
"What?"
"Do you have to take off those clothes immediately?" she specified. "Could you keep them on a little longer?"
He frowned. "Why? They're uncomfortable. Plus, I think I taped the bandages on my left arm too tightly. My hand keeps falling asleep…"
"Ten minutes," she said, getting up. "Just wait ten minutes."
"What on Earthland for?"
"Just do it, Jellal!" she demanded, out of patience.
He still wasn't fully convinced he wanted to but it was Erza asking her. The amount of favors he owed her was so large he had no hope of ever settling the score. "Alright. Ten minutes."
She smiled like a little kid and moved closer to give him a quick kiss. That was worth the whole lack of comfort – not the kiss, even though it was, as always, very enjoyable, but the smile. He would bend the world backwards just to get one of those out of her… "I will need a moment to myself," she said before rushing away… towards the basement? Wasn't that where she kept all her extra armor – the ones that didn't fit into her requip space – on display? Right. He didn't even want to try to guess.
Sighing, he took a seat on the couch and turned to the lacrima-vision where two women seemed to be competing with each other… at how effectively they were packing a suitcase. He raised his eyebrows. Would that day get any weirder? He got his answer when he flipped the channel a few minutes later (after guiltily sitting on the edge of his seat trying to guess who was the better 'packer') and found himself watching the news, which seemed to be focusing on something they referred to as 'Loli-gate'.
"Captain Doranbolt's lawyer issued a statement saying: 'The whole situation was a misunderstanding. My client was attempting to reach a completely different person with a similar name; he certainly did not send lurid messages to an eleven-year-old girl on purpose. He is not and has never been sexually attracted to children.' This statement comes after allegations surfaced that the Captain of the Rune Knights might be a closet Lolicon, which led to several associations of parents calling for his resignation…"
Jellal could only stare at the screen. Doranbolt a lolicon? What the hell was going on?
"Hey, Erza, did you see this?" he called when he heard steps up the stairs, starting to turn around. "They're saying Doranbolt is a lo…"
His job dropped when he saw the outfit she had on. Seductive was the word – it most definitely was. She wore what could be loosely described as an armored black bikini with a piece of white cloth over the bottom. On her arms and legs, there were dark gauntlets and greaves, the latter going all the way up to her thighs, and around her neck there was a blue scarf, contrasting with the red of her hair, which seemed to have extra volume despite being partially tied back. The little blush on her face sent a pang all the way to his crotch because he did recognize it. The 'blushing pervyness', as Lucy called it.
"Erza… what are you doing?"
"S-something I've been thinking of doing for some time," she replied nervously, still blushing.
"Becoming an under-armor model?" he asked.
She raised an eyebrow and the blush appeared to decrease. It seemed that the longer they were together, the shorter her 'blushing pervyness' moments would be. "Playing Edolas," she corrected him.
When she got even closer, he saw she seemed to have completely snapped out of it, becoming more and more forward by leaning over the back of the couch and giving him full view of her scantily-covered cleavage.
Jellal stared into the vale between her breasts. "What?" he asked dumbly.
"I have been wondering for some time about our Edolas counterparts. I've told you about them, remember? Mystogan and Knightwalker." Her voice had taken a more seductive tone all of a sudden. It caused him to gulp against the lump on his throat. "You see, from what I saw of Edolas, some feelings of our world can… transpire into it. Like how Bisca and Alzack were in love in both worlds, how Lucy and Natsu were partners there as well, how Gray and Juvia shared a one-sided obsession at that point too…"
"You're wondering if, since you and I are a couple here, Mystogan and Knightwalker are the same in Edolas," he guessed, forcing himself to look away from her assets to try and keep what little was left of his intellect intact.
She sighed. "I'm afraid I am not that positive that they would be… together. Still, there should at least be a strong physical attraction between them. And, as I may have mentioned before, Knightwalker was rather more… forceful than I tend to be."
He gulped. "Erza…"
"That will be Commander Knightwalker for you, your majesty."
"Oh… so we're already in…"
"… character. Yes," she confirmed. "Unless you have any doubts, in which case we can delay it for a few minutes."
Oh, he did have several of them, the first being how come people thought she was such a bad actress when she was doing so well thus far. Maybe it was the lack of a stage and an audience? But the only question he found himself able to voice in the end was probably one of the mildest. "So, that costume you're wearing… is it really along the lines of what your counterpart wore?"
She shook her head. "Not at all."
"Oh."
"It is, in fact, exactly what Erza Knightwalker used to wear," the redhead proudly declared.
He frowned. "When you say 'exactly'…?"
"Yes, I mean that I got it straight from her."
He gawked at her. "She just gave it to you?"
"Of course not. We were enemies for most of the time we interacted, after all. I took the clothes from her when I found myself in need of impersonating her."
"And when you say from her, you mean her bedroom… or a locker room or…"
"Straight from her body after I knocked her out during a fight," Erza informed him. "And before you ask, no, she wasn't wearing anything but a pair of panties underneath. It caused quite the commotion when she came after me wearing only that and a cape over her breasts."
He felt the blood rushing straight to his face and crotch. He honestly hoped he wasn't having a nosebleed because thinking of his Erza stripping a twin version of her naked and the ensuing confrontation was just… too naughty. Bad Jellal. Bad, bad Jellal.
"On to business," she declared before requiping what seemed to be a powerful-looking spear into her hand. "This one is a replica of Knightwalker's choice weapon. I drew it from memory and had Heart Kreuz designing it for me. It's a pity it isn't the original 'Ten Commandments' because it truly was magnificent. But this one will do for the intended purpose."
"The intended… ouch! Careful, Erza, that's sharp!" he said after she poked him on the chest with the tip.
"Of course it is sharp – I put all my weapons through an exhaustive process of sharpening each month," she informed him, like it should be obvious, before poking him again, although in a softer manner than before. "Now, shall we move this to the bedroom?"
He gulped. Good god… it was happening.
She raised her eyebrows, awaiting a response. "Well?"
"Y-yes… sure," he mumbled.
She made a point of poking him some more with her spear on the way to their bedroom, though she did it in a gentler manner than before… but it didn't last long. As soon as he was about a foot from the bed, just turning around to ask what exactly was going to happen, she pushed him backwards onto it and crawled on top of him, tugging at the blue scarf around her neck. Then, securing it with a hand, she grabbed his arms and raised them over his head… using the scarf to tie him to the headboard.
He gulped.
"Is that… necessary?"
She raised her eyebrow, annoyed at him breaking character again. She only answered because she had to admit to having failed to give him the equivalent of a script. "Of course. Knightwalker and Mystogan wouldn't have faced each other in friendly circumstances at the point I'm covering."
"The point you're covering?"
"Yes. The instance I am portraying should fit in the timeline somewhere between Knightwalker's attempted ambush on Edolas Fairy Tail, which took place right after Wendy and Natsu's arrival, and their capture by her troops," she said, which made very little difference for him because, well, he hadn't been to Edolas and had only been told vague accounts of their adventures in there, meaning he had no idea what she was talking about. "After that, she would have been far too busy fighting me to… handle Mystogan. His whereabouts before the battle alongside the Exceed were also unknown, so that leaves quite an interesting blank for both that I can't help wanting to fill."
By picturing their counterparts getting busy in the sack… He shouldn't be surprised. She might often blush and stutter at the mention of dirtier things in the presence of other people but after some time alone or in the company of someone she was comfortable enough with, her flare for ecchi was very obvious. After all, Meredy had stumbled right into Erza's collection of dirty novels back when she'd been 'helping' them move her stuff into the house, much to his shock. If the titles and covers left any doubt, it certainly vanished when his devious guildmate (he blamed Ultear's hand on her upbringing) made a point of tormenting him by insistently reading out loud particularly kinky passages of the literature in question. "You really have thought this through."
"Of course. What good is a role-playing exercise when the script is not thoroughly researched and accurately designed?"
'She takes the whole thing way too seriously,' he recalled Lucy saying for a moment. It was around that time that he realized he was already in trouble.
"Now, Your Highness, let's get you out of those bandages," she said, making a point of stressing the 'Your Highness' part to remind him that the show had begun. Mavis help him.
If there was one thing he simply couldn't understand about Mystogan was the bandages – why wear them? Wouldn't a long-sleeved shirt and full-length pants serve the same purpose with a lot more comfort? Was he trying to disguise himself as a burn victim? Because who would willingly walk around in bandages every day of the year? They were hot, they were itchy, they were constricting… if he didn't wrap them up firmly, they would just undo themselves completely and cause him to trip. And, worst of all, they were a pain to remove.
"You could just… tear them off, you know?" he suggested as he saw Erza struggling.
"No. That can't be."
"Why not? They're the really cheap sort," he pointed out.
She huffed and frowned at him. "Jellal! You're making me break character again! That is incredibly unprofessional."
Unprofessional?
"I… my apologies," he mumbled. "But I have to wonder what's the problem with ripping the bandages. It would save us a lot of time."
She looked at him like he was the dumbest person she knew. "Mystogan's bandages were intact when we saw him next. Ripping the bandages would make his portrayal inaccurate."
"Is it really that important to be accurate?"
She gaped. He might as well have suggested something preposterous like setting an animal shelter on fire. "What is the point of acting if you're not going to get the facts right?!"
And there he lay, thinking it was more about the lovemaking than the acting.
"Okay… but let's say… let's say maybe Mystogan carried extra bandages around. What if the ones he was wearing got dirty?"
She thought of it for a moment. "Alright. I suppose I can cut them off this time if you're that impatient," she stated, a hint of disapproval in her tone. She reached down off the bed, apparently looking for something on the floor… and came back up with the mighty spear in her hands.
Alarm bells sounded in Jellal's head. "Oh my god, not with that!"
"This was Knightwalker's weapon of choice. It's very sharp – it should do the job quite quickly."
"Sharpness is the issue here!"
She frowned. "What else do you suggest?"
"Scissors!" he replied, causing her frown to deepen. "Don't tell me they didn't have scissors in Edolas!"
"I didn't check," she stated.
"Can we please assume there was?"
She frowned. "More assumptions, Jellal? This is quickly going downhill with all these 'assumptions'. We've spent more time out of character than in character, you keep questioning my script and suggesting alterations… you're coming off as a bit of a diva!"
His eyes widened. He was what?!
"If you don't want this, just say so," she said, dropping the spear and crossing her arms with a pout.
"I… I want this!" He did… deep down… really deep down. She looked really sexy dressed that way and the theatrics seemed to make her happy. He could do anything to make her happy, so he would do that.
"Then enough alterations! This is starting to lose its authenticity!"
"But… it's just that…" He paused and shook his head. "Forget it."
She frowned. "No. Say it."
He sighed. "It's just that if you're so set on having it 'authentic', shouldn't it bother you that I'm nearly eight years older than Mystogan was during your Edolas adventure?"
Silence. Absolute silence for several seconds. Until Erza spoke.
"That didn't occur to me."
He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"How could I be so sloppy?! This is never going to work!" she said, getting off him and the bed, turning her back on him as she stood by the side of it.
"No!" he protested. "Look, Erza, I think…" He struggled against the scarf binding his hands to the headboard. "Erza, could you please untie me?"
The scarf dematerialized from around his wrists, likely into her requip dimension, and he got up, walking up to her. "If you really want to do this, we can try to find a way to make it work," he told her, touching the small of her back with his hand.
She didn't look at him. "Don't get me wrong, Jellal. I know older actors can play younger roles but I find the productions were it happened very slack more often than not."
"Well, give me a minute here," he told her. "I'll think of a way to make it less slack."
He took three minutes instead. Three minutes and counting. They had already shifted from standing up to sitting at the edge of the bed and the clock was about to reach four minutes when he thought of something.
"We'll change the story!"
She frowned. "How? It took me weeks to come up with this."
"Well, we'll use the same basis. We'll just change the circumstances. For instance, we could say this takes place after you left Edolas rather than before. We don't know what happened after, so that would give us more creative freedom." By the gods, he was hopelessly wrapped around her little finger if he was fighting that hard for something he only wanted for her sake.
"In what way?"
"In the way that we don't have so many known circumstances limiting us. Besides, it could solve the age issue. Just hear me on this: Mystogan was already a king at that point; being a king must be stressful; stress can age you, therefore Mystogan could look older than he is," he argued.
She raised an eyebrow. "That's stretching it… but it might work. What about the shoddiness of your acting skills?"
His acting skills? What about her own? He forced himself not to say it out loud, though, knowing how passionate she was about the matter. "And… hmm, we could be playing Edolas by playing them playing us."
She raised her eyebrows. "What? I don't understand a word you've just said."
"We could play Mystogan and Knightwalker while they were playing me and you. Respectively."
"How would that help with your acting?"
"Well… we could make bad acting in character by portraying it as them… er, Mystogan being a horrible actor."
"But then we would be portraying ourselves and that would just be pointless," she argued.
"Not if we made them both horrible actors that mix their own traits with the ones they perceive us as having," he explained, already struggling with his own ridiculous logic. Good god what was he doing?
She gave it some thought. "But what about the hair?"
"What hair?"
"My hair! Knightwalker cut hers short after I impersonated her. My hair is long, though. How are you planning to handle that? Because I'm not chopping my hair off for sex, Jellal!"
"O-of course you're not!" he said immediately. Her hair was glorious! Or course he wouldn't let her cut it for such a reason. "We could say she grew it out. Or bought a wig."
She scratched her chin. "That sounds acceptable. What about the clothes?"
"What clothes?" he asked dumbly.
"Our clothes. For starters, why would they be dressed like themselves when they're playing us?"
He sighed. "Because they're sloppy actors or didn't have the time to look for something suitable. They can picture our clothes in their mind."
She rolled her eyes. "That still doesn't explain why they would be wearing these clothes in the first place. This is the outfit I stole from Knightwalker, so she wouldn't have it anymore and Mystogan is a king, so why would he be dressed like a bum?"
"These clothes wouldn't make him look like a bum!" Jellal replied, mildly offended on his counterpart's behalf.
"That is not the point."
"I don't know, Erza. Emotional attachment?" he replied, exhausted. "They could really like these clothes, so Knightwalker had a replacement made for hers and Mystogan wears his in his free time because he doesn't feel comfortable looking kingly."
Her eye started to twitch. He was piling excuse atop excuse. It was sweet and it made her love him even more because he was that dedicated to defending something that clearly made him uncomfortable for her sake but still a massive insult to every decent script writer in the world. Too convoluted. Too difficult. Role-play had sounded like fun at first but not it was just a mess. If there was an audience, they would have been booed for sure. The reviews would pan them and her career as an actress would be over and done.
Know when you are defeated, a voice sounded in her head.
That was right. She was defeated. Defeated by her own brainchild. If she acted fast, she might still get away with some of the spoils even though she wasn't the victor. She wanted the spoils. She desperately needed the spoils so she could bang the daylights out of them. So much frustration… she needed to set it off before she exploded.
As such, she grabbed Jellal's collar and pulled him closer all of a sudden.
"E-Erza?" he questioned nervously.
"Enough of this," she declared. "This role-play exercise is officially canceled. Let's just proceed the regular way."
His eyes widened in badly disguised excitement. "Regular way?"
"Lose those pants or you won't own a Mystogan disguise anymore," she demanded, sounding a lot more aggressive than she usually did in those circumstances.
He still resisted a little, mostly for her sake. "Are you sure? Because you sounded like you were really into…" he trailed off when she shot him a look. The I-have-a-lot-of-frustration-pent-up-right-not-and-I-can-either-take-it-out-on-doing-you-or-on-leveling-a-forest-with-my-bare-hands sort of look. He gulped. "Regular way it is…"
It wasn't the regular way at all. It was the occasional, and secretly delightful, let's-toss-Jellal-around-like-a-rag-doll way.
Afterwards, Jellal felt like he had just been ran over by an Erza-shaped train. Boy, did she have pent-up frustration… His muscles felt like jelly and his back ached both from a fall and what he was pretty sure was a rug burn from having been knocked from the bed onto the floor sometime during the act and ridden into oblivion right there on the carpet. At some point he'd been brought back up onto the bed and gotten a second round… no, a third one because he'd already had a round on the bed before the one on the floor.
No Edolian general could have anything on her when she was on one of those moods. Although she didn't bring weaponry into play in the bedroom like they had assumed Knightwalker would, she would still certainly have been able to give her counterpart a run for her money, if his limp body had anything to say about it.
He was still half lost in thought when she spoke.
"Well, that was a waste of time," Erza concluded, looking up at the ceiling.
He cracked one eye open. "It didn't feel that way to me," he pointed out.
"I'm not talking about that part," she amended, blushing a little – amazing, when she'd just spent good part of two hours exploring her most dominating side. "That part is always good. I'm referring to all the planning and script-writing. The acting was awful, the plot was full of holes, the wardrobe was questionable at best… Maybe role-play is just not for us. Pity because it sounded so interesting…"
She sounded very disappointed and even though Jellal rejoiced inside at the possibility of forever being free of the stress of her theatrics taking over the bedroom, he couldn't help contributing to crushing his own relief like a bug. "I don't think it's about that. You just went about it the wrong way."
She looked at him curiously. "What do you mean? Are you saying you think role-play could work for us?"
The things he did for love… "Occasionally. If handled differently. I think you may have aimed too high with… historical fiction," he named it, unable to think of another term to call it.
She raised her eyebrows. "I never aim lower than the top."
"Maybe that's the problem. Isn't it cheating when you try to parachute right onto the top rather than climbing the steps to it first?"
His argument got her interest. "Maybe," she tentatively admitted.
"Well, we should keep it simple for starters."
"Define simple."
"I don't know, Erza. Something general. Like… Nurse and Patient or something. Let's leave the methodical acting for the stage."
She blushed. "A stage is on my bucket list…"
"I didn't mean it like that!" he quickly said, blushing. She gave him a disappointed look and, damn it, she had him there. He couldn't say 'no' to her. "The guild has a stage," he mumbled, looking away. "Maybe we can swipe the key away from Mira one day and sneak in after hours. No acting while we're there, though!"
She smiled and, satisfied with the arrangement, moved over to straddle him again. Oh boy… she wanted round four already. "I knew there was a reason I liked to keep you around."
Because he spoiled her immensely, no doubt. And also, something about love.
"Now, what were you saying about nurses again?" she asked, her body starting to glow as she requiped a new outfit on. Seconds later, she was leaning over him while wearing a very tantalizing nurse's outfit. "Because I think you're in need of some urgent care."
He gulped, both excited and nervous.
Five minutes later
"Er… Erza, is this really necessary?" he asked.
"I wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't," she replied.
"But I don't have a broken leg, so you don't really need to put a plaster cast on it," he pointed out.
She looked up from the foot of the bed, where she was moistening plaster bandages, with an unimpressed expression on her face. "Obviously it's only a fictional fracture that works as a plot device. Why would a nurse even approach you if there was nothing wrong with you?"
He sighed, recognizing the lost battle he was facing. He made a mental note not to suggest something like Fugitive and Rune Knight, lest she actually joined the forces and had him committing a felony to make the chase more authentic.
"Do I have to be naked for this?"
"Yes."
"And… er, aren't you wetting those bandages a tad too much? I can feel the ones already on my leg melting off."
"That's probably meant to happen," she said before looking up and glaring. "Now can you stop interfering? Trust the professionals treating you! You're a terrible patient, Jellal."
What professionals? But, oh, well, what was the worst that could happen? Him ending up with a really misshapen plaster cast? "Well, go nuts, then."
In hindsight, he had to admit Erza's team mates had been right about several things in their warnings, the most clear of all being the fact that she was, at times, a complete nutjob.
He'd be damned if that didn't make her seem even more perfect in his eyes.