with every step you take

Characters: Gray Fullbuster, Lyon Vastia

Summary: They were still only halfway there.

Iced.

The greatest fashion and celebrity magazine at the moment. Thousands would kill for a occupation in the glass tower which was located in the middle of the business district of Era. Little was known about the way the newspaper operated or how they never failed to hear about everyone and everything before their rivals even heard the faintest rumours. Many famous models had started their careers with a simple photo shoot for this particular magazine because the opinion of the head editor counted greatly among the rich and famous.

For Gray Fullbuster, working for the Iced had been something he had never wanted but always known he would end up doing. His mother ran the Iced, had formed the magazine from the basics of the little run-down newspaper she had inherited from her family and she had had the courage to break off the old structures entirely. Refusing to help her would have been a slap in Ur's face and he was pretty sure that he would not survive this.

(His older siblings would kill him, there was no doubt.)

Hurrying through the dark hallways, he hesitated for a moment before he knocked and entered his mother's equally dark office. "Mom?" he asked, as if he was a six-year-old again rather than the twenty-three-year-old he truly was.

He saw Ur's face mirrored in the window and he saw how she slowly turned her head. Exactly ten seconds after he had addressed her (and he suddenly remembered the old "hold your breath and count to ten" line from a song Ultear once used to love), she nodded. "Gray," she said.

"Lyon and I witnessed a weird event today," Gray said as he once more cursed his older brother for not having followed their family's path by becoming a reporter. (Then again, neither had Ultear.) "We were at that benefit concert thing over in Magnolia and … did you ever witness moments were you basically feel the earth tremble as your reporter heart bursts because its sees such a great, great story coming on?" he asked, interrupting himself because he was so gleeful and enthusiastic at the prospect of his first very own big story.

"A few times," she replied, a proud smile surrounding her lips. "So, tell me what it is for you?"

"Tonight, Juvia Lockser was part of the benefit thing and surprisingly, she messed up the last part of whatever she was playing – I am no good with classical music and you know that! – and all went silent because basically, no one had an idea how to deal with this," he said, dark eyes shining which was rare because he was rarely excited by anything. "And no, mom, this is no career destroying story I want to make out of this. Because just when it seemed like Lockser was going to cry, Sherry Blendy – you interviewed her a few weeks back about her nomination – got up and clapped and then others got up … and surprisingly enough, Lockser and Blendy left together … and this is what I want to make a story about. I don't think they are dating-"

"Which might be a good idea, especially since Blendy is very tight-lipped about her love life since her ended engagement," his mother threw in, slowly straightening up. "So you basically want my permission to make another Magnolia story about Blendy and Lockser. What do you need?"

He groaned, a dark expression crossing his face. "I fear I will need Lyon," he admitted. "Ever since Natsu ran off to marry Heartfilia and become a father, I haven't had a decent photographer at my disposal. Toby is working with Yuuka, Neekis is doing his report about the current events in Crocus … and that really leaves Lyon as the only option."

"He will be enthusiastic to learn that you are working together again," Ur Milkovich smirked. "But, Gray, keep the rules in mind. No line is written without proper confirmation. If you mess this up – and this is a big story – I will have no choice but to let you suffer the usual punishment for a badly researched story. We are not the Raven. What we write is always true."

"I would never want to get fired by you, old hag. One day, I will take over the Iced."

"You will have to rip it out of my cold, dead hands," she replied, black eyes gleaming. "Bring me back a story I can be proud of. Decent journalism, with backgrounds and of that."

"I thought we are no gossip magazine, mom," he replied, trying to bit back the smirk.

"And I thought that Lyon is a bastard and that you never wanted to work with him again, even if he was the very last photographer on earth," she snapped back, leaning back in her chair again. "Also, if the story is true to the core and well-researched, it's fact and no gossip."

"You are just concerned that your good old friend Ivan gets his hands onto this story before us."

"Ivan never wasted his time with research, he is out for profit and not for facts. He will make a story by tomorrow, a story far from the truth but it will sell well. Whatever you and Lyon do, research fast and try to keep an eye out for Ivan's goons, the last thing I want is an open war."

Lyon Vastia was sitting in the sleek black car as his foster brother returned. "And what in the name of all that's holy was so damn important that you had to talk with mom tonight rather than tomorrow when we all have slept?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"We got the Locker/Blendy story," Gray reminded, a grin spreading on his face. "What's was why I had to ask mom, I needed to make sure that no one else could take this from me."

"Wait – if you say 'we' you mean yourself and whatever photographer mom can find, no?"

"Not really." Gray chuckled. "When I say 'we', I mean you can me. Just like in the good old times when mom gave me a notebook and you one of her old cameras and sent us off to interview someone and we would get in trouble because the picture and the text never corresponded."

Lyon closed his eyes. "I quit the business, you know this," he said slowly.

"Doesn't change that you are – and you fucking know this – still the best we have," Gray said. "So if you are fishing for compliments here, Lyon, get off your high horse already, will you?"

"I am not the best photographer we have … not even by a long shoot. Jura is better … Fernandes is better … and even out of them, no one holds a candle to mom. She has the eye, the eye I don't have. I can take usual pictures, pictures without magic in them," the silver-haired man said as he stared at the dark street ahead of them. "I always wished I could copy the magic in mom's pictures, like you wanted to have her ability to make people laugh and cry with words. However, I have long come to realise that she has something I don't have … a natural affinity."

"You could still surpass her one day, she is getting older and she will…"

"Don't even suggest that I will wait for the natural decrease of her skill to surpass her," Lyon said and sounded highly offended all of a sudden. "Either I win fair and square or not at all. I have my standards as well, Gray, and one of them is to never win a game by unfair means."

"Your call, man, seriously," Gray said with a shrug. "By the way, you know Blendy from back then, don't you? So why didn't you get up and clapped as well when she saved Lockser's career?"

"As you may remember, we did not part on good terms," Lyon stated drily. "I think her exact words were something along the lines of 'You and the others just want to hold me back for the rest of my life – can't you guys see that I was meant to shine?' and when she packed her suitcase and never called anyone of us again because we told her that she would never become a star … and here we are, only some years later – and she proved all of us wrong."

"Got to be hard if the ex-girlfriend goes on and becomes a star, even gets her first Titania nomination and you are still the poor sap who depends on mommy's generosity to pay his bills…"

"Sher—, ex—" Lyon stumbled over his own words which rarely (if ever) happened. "You got this all wrong, Gray. She was … simply there all the time. We were friends, good friends. And this is actually all I will ever say about this other than she might not be happy to see me."

He did remember that last summer, the summer when Yuuka had worked in a small and dusty record shop, the summer in which Jura had had his first girlfriend ever, the summer when Tobi had picked up smoking as a habit only to drop it again as Sherry got mad at him. Speaking of Sherry, it had also been the summer when her hair had been paler than usual and her skin had been tanned from the sun. He had kissed her, then. One time during Truth or Dare, when they had been sitting on the concrete of the parking lot. He remembered the smell of her bright pink hair and the way she had blushed.

But they had not been dating. She had been a beautiful butterfly and he had been a rather awkward nerd, obsessed with photography and edit pictures. But she and the others had dragged him with them when they had driven to the lake at midnight, always breaking the rules.

Those days had never seemed to end and he had been happy, happy when they had sat by the bonfire on the beach at night, happy when they had taken Jura's car to drive to the mountains to feel like they were on top of the world. He had been Sherry's best friend then, the one she had gone to when she had been sad not that she had been sad in the summer when they had felt free and wild, in the summer when even Jura had acted reckless just for fun.

In that summer, it had been easy to believe in love, in peace and all those beautiful things.

(It had been less funny when his mother had caught him coming home that one evening when they had tried beer for the very first time in their lives because Ur had had a strict opinion on underage drinking and his favourite evening had been the one when he had been sitting in Sherry's rusty but trusty car while the rain had drummed against the roof.)

He had been, although his mother had been a big fish in the world of the rich and famous, a small town boy with small town friends and maybe this was why he missed his hometown so much where no one had ever cared if the teenagers had been out past midnight because it had been one of those little towns in the North where nothing ever happened so they had been safe.

"Say whatever you want to, Lyon, at the end of the day, you still care more about her than you care about yourself and given your arrogance and selfishness, this says something," Gray replied.