I'm glamorous,

Famous,

Notorious,

Dangerous, but I'm crazy

Ultear didn't immediately recognize the stucco ceiling overhead, and she didn't know the sheets she was wrapped in. There was an arm around her waist, though, and she knew that tattoo, a partial sleeve that stretched to the owner's bicep, sharp lines that didn't mean much of anything to Ultear. She liked them, though, even if they were cliché.

She stayed where she was for a few minutes, listening to Gray breathe and waiting to see what he'd do. He was awake and if she had to guess, he knew she was awake, too. He pressed against her body and Ultear felt his eyes on her. He was thinking, and he was thinking hard. Probably about all the stuff he always told her they shouldn't be thinking about. He was the one that always broke that stupid rule. She just did it, no thinking, no guilt.

The baseboard heater clicked on and Ultear's nose got dry and her skin got hot. She backed away from the edge of the bed and further into Gray. He sat up. Whatever moment had been there was gone. Ultear stopped pretending, too.

His palm was flat against her stomach and he was almost flat against her back. There was a bit of space between their hips, though not enough that she didn't know he enjoyed starting his mornings this way. She wondered what would have happened if their parents hadn't met those years ago. She probably would have passed him by, a conquest at most. His availability to her cultivated bad behaviour. For them both. Gray couldn't seem to stop entertaining her whims, even at the cost of hurting people he said he cared about.

His hand lifted mostly off her stomach so now the only points of contact were the tips of his fingers, making everything just a little less intimate. "How are you feeling?"

Like she'd taken too many pills and drunk not enough water. "I've had better mornings." And she'd had worse. "I don't think I like Salvia."

Whenever he was debating on saying a thing, he always pinched his cheek between his teeth. Ultear prepared herself for it; Gray was always good at saying the hard things, being blunt when most people would shy away or just let a thing go, he just had to work up to it. "That girl you were with is crazy."

There it was.

"Are you really qualified to make that statement?" Ultear asked without much conviction.

Gray rolled his eyes. "She's not crazy in the same way Juvia is crazy. She's like… rabid dog crazy."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because when I picked you up last night, I thought she was going to fucking bite me," he assessed.

Ultear thought about Flare's hard, cold eyes and about her soundly miming a gun and delivering, it was a mess. She flopped back onto Gray's bed. He looked down at her through his lashes and his expression was difficult to read.

"What?"

"You know she's trouble."

"I know she threw her smoothie at Angel last night and that she banned Angel from entering Tartarus again. Her dad owns the club."

"And you know she's trouble."

Ultear sighed. "Probably." You didn't meet nice girls in the back of strangers' cars, did you? But Ultear didn't know if she wanted to meet a nice girl. Nice girls were boring.

Someone knocked on Gray's front door, the sound coming through the townhouse. He checked his bedside clock. Ultear followed his gaze. It was eleven thirty. "That's Cana."

Speaking of not nice girls. "Why is she here?"

"To pay me for last night."

"Okay, you're giving me advice about crazy girls but you're taking third-party payment for driving 'car parts' for Cana's garage? Do you know how fucked up that is?" Would it have mattered if it was someone else coming to pay him? Natsu or… well, she didn't think she knew anyone anymore that was into that crap, so Natsu would do.

"I checked the boxes," Gray told her. "They were calipers and brake pads, timing belts. Nothing shady."

"Well, they passed your keen inspection, that must mean they're fine," she said sarcastically.

Gray's door sounded again. He threw off the blankets and climbed over her. He wasn't as nude as she was, in a pair of shorts. His fingers brushed by her waist like he couldn't help but touch to get out of his bed. She saw through his ruse; she saw through all of his ruses. No one knew Gray like she did, not after living together for ten years. Which was frustrating and refreshing all at once. She didn't have to pretend with him, but she liked to.

Ultear watched him get dressed without covering herself again, one hand over her head, the other tossed over her stomach. He glanced at her one last time before exiting the room, the expression on his face not quite a smile and not quite a grimace.

She listened to him tromp down the stairs and yank open the front door. She listened to Cana come in. Vaguely, she wondered if she'd try to fuck him again. And she wondered if that bothered her. And then she wondered if it did bother her, for which reasons was she so bothered? Was it over Cana's participation, or Gray's? Or was it both and was she just feeling snubbed and left out?

She pushed away from those questions and got up. Her dress from last night was ruined and she had no other clothes there. She helped herself to Gray's closet. He had a red and black long-sleeved plaid shirt. When she let it drop over her head, it fell to her thighs. Short but long enough, probably. She used the belt from her dress and put it around her middle, then put on her tights again, too. She rolled up her old clothes in a tight ball and descended the stairs.

Cana was alone in the kitchen, sliding her finger over the rim of a coffee cup. She looked up at Ultear and Ultear couldn't help but look at her; all of yesterday's pretending was gone out the window.

"Hey." No one could say Cana was a coward.

No one would say Ultear was, either, then. "Hey."

Cana pushed her hair back over her shoulder. She had a tattoo on her wrist now. Ultear couldn't see it in its entirety but it was a tattoo she'd seen before, on various people hanging around Zeref's place. "How's your dad feel about you being a part of Raven Tail?"

Cana smiled. "He doesn't really bother me about anything I do."

Which led Ultear to think maybe meddling Gildarts didn't know. If he did, he'd never let Cana continue. Though how did one get out of a gang once they got in?

They stood there for a moment, looking at each other and not talking, Ultear with a bad feeling in her stomach and Cana looking haughty and daring. Ultear didn't have Natsu there to pass along all of her concern so she took the dare and did it herself. "Those guys are the real deal."

"I know what they are."

Did she? Ultear searched her eyes, trying to see if Cana understood. Zeref was friends with them and he'd killed someone, and Zeref, she thought, though unpredictable, had things that he cared about in this world. A lot of those people in Raven Tail had nothing. They cared about nothing and therefore would do anything. Cana had never been good at taking advice, though, so Ultear said, "As long as you know. You know best."

She put the door in her sights. Cana called her back. "I saw you last night." Ultear closed her eyes and wished Cana would stop. "You were at Tartarus. With a girl. With red hair."

"Yeah."

"Flare," Cana surprised her by saying.

Ultear turned back again. "You know her?"

Cana drummed her fingers uncomfortably against her coffee cup. "We met one night at Fairy Tail. She had China White. It's—"

"Heroin," Ultear supplied. "Yeah."

"And things got out-of-hand. Like, crazy fucking out-of-hand. And she freaked out and hit me." She stopped her story there, seemingly less capable of telling her to be careful than Ultear was.

"Thanks," Ultear said. Her phone chimed, though, and she discovered that she wasn't going to be able to avoid Flare as well as she thought she could. Flare had her wallet and her keys, she'd dropped them on Tartarus' floor last night and Flare had picked them up.

Under Flare's text was one from her mother. Ultear messaged her back and told her she was at Gray's. Ur went silent after that. She liked Gray. Sometimes, Ultear thought she liked him better than she liked Silver and maybe that was why she kept letting Silver back in her life. If she wanted Gray around, though, she could have just told him. She didn't have to make excuses.

Gray entered. His eyes clung to Ultear for longer than what was likely appropriate. His expression was near-unreadable, though she thought the cause for his hesitance was her wearing his shirt. She thought he liked it and hated it all at once. Good. That's how she preferred their relationship to be.

Cana finished her coffee and handed Gray a piece of paper from her pocket. "If you have any questions, call me."

"Sure." He took the note from her and put it in his jeans pocket.

Cana started backing out of the kitchen. Last-second, she mumbled, "I'll see you around. Ultear." And then she was gone.

Gray raised a single eyebrow. "You're friends again?"

"No." She changed the subject. "Can you drive me home?"

"Can't, I have another delivery," Gray said distractedly. He lit a cigarette and started messing with his coffee maker.

"I thought that was a nighttime venture?"

"Guess it's an anytime venture," he responded.

"Just drop me off on your way by again."

"It's on the other side of town."

Ultear drummed her fingers on the counter, a small seed of annoyance sprouting.

Gray suggested a little too casually, "You can stay here until I get back."

"How long are you going to be?"

"A few hours?" he said but Ultear knew he didn't really know.

"I'll just walk."

"It's cold out again."

"That's fine." Being a little cold was better than sitting in his house, doing nothing for three hours waiting for him. She didn't wait for anyone, least of all Gray.

"When are you coming back?" Gray surprised her by asking.

Ultear smiled a lion's smile. "Who said I was?"

"Me, because you need to bring my shirt back."

"I thought maybe I'd keep it," she played.

"I like that shirt."

She leaned back against the counter and tugged up the hem a few inches. It didn't have far to go before he was looking at the place her underwear was supposed to be. He tried to be nonchalant; his pants made a liar out of him, though. "And you like the way it looks on me."

He put a cup under the coffee maker and pressed the Run button. He looked back at her. "If your mom's done with her car, you can bring it back tonight."

That was as good as a Fullbuster invitation. Ultear didn't know if she wanted to be invited by him to do anything. "I'll think about it." She left him to look after her while she pulled on her boots and left his house. She texted Flare when she was outside in the bitter air and asked for her address. When she had it, she plunked it into her Maps app and was directed to a sideroad. It was going to be a twenty-five-minute walk. Ultear did it briskly and managed to stave off the worst of spring's bite.

The house she came to was hidden behind a wall of cedars, but when she walked up the paved driveway a bit and the trees parted, she saw that it was old money. Stone and vines and brickwork. Shudders and gardens. A pond. Ultear expected a fountain, so that was a nice surprise.

She passed by a tree still without its leaves. It was thorny and stout. There were odd bumps on the ends of its branches, like fungus, that made them sag towards the ground.

A blue '71 Chevy Monte Carlo sat in the driveway, its engine still ticking hot. She'd seen the car around town before. It was empty. She passed by its trunk and touched its smooth paint just to feel it under her fingers. It was warmed by the sun peeping out from behind the occasional cloud.

Ultear stepped up onto a patio stone. She was now even with the thorny tree and saw that what she thought was a fungus on the tree was actually… mice. Skewered and left to rot in the weak sunlight. They smelled. She covered her nose and turned away, disgusted. There was a guy behind her blocking her way, tall and broad with a flattened nose and a face like stone.

"Shrikes," he said first.

"Pardon?"

"Loggerhead Shrikes. The bird. They like Hawthorns."

"Are you saying a bird did that?" Ultear clarified.

He lifted his leather-clad shoulder. "They skewer their prey and leave it to rot so when they come and eat it, it's easier to tear them apart."

She looked back at the tree. "That's disgusting."

"Wildlife says they're endangered, so my dad has to leave the tree."

Ultear connected the dots. "You're Ivan's son." A legitimate son? He didn't look very comfortable at this house, with his hands shoved way deep into his pockets and his spine stiff like he had rebar in its place.

"Laxus," he said.

"Ultear. I'm here to see Flare. She has my wallet," she said. "I dropped it. At Tartarus. Last night."

If he thought anything at all once she was through speaking, Ultear couldn't tell. He was totally blank. "Come on in, then. She's probably upstairs."

"Flare didn't mention you."

"I bet not," Laxus said.

"You don't get along?"

He didn't respond.

Undeterred, she asked, "Do you live here?"

"Nope."

"But I've seen you around town."

He again didn't have anything to say. Ultear used fast steps to catch up with him; he had a long and impatient gait. At the front door, he left his shoes on. Ultear did the same, though she did take the time to wipe off her soles on the mat. Unlike Laxus.

Her first impression of Flare's home was that there was a manic and dangerous air to the place. It seeped out of the drywall and stained floor, it hid behind dusty entertainment units and in the shadows of closets. There were secrets in this house, it was burgeoning with them, and she didn't want to know them.

There was also a debilitating hush. Ultear knew without really knowing how that there was something horribly wrong. The air felt electrically charged like it did just before a thunderstorm. Buzzing and baleful. It made her skin itch like nothing else.

She followed on Laxus' heels, out of the foyer and into the kitchen. There was water on the floor, it glistened in the midday light. There was glass on the floor, too, it sparkled and some pieces still twitched. The break was recent, yet none of the pieces still tinkered, leaving the air feeling pregnant and heavy.

Her first glimpse of Ivan Dreyar did not paint him in a golden light. His hand was still lifted and his eyes were still pinched at the corners, Flare's head was still turned from receiving his slap. Her cheek was quickly turning red and there were startled tears in her eyes. She looked up and spotted Ultear and her whole neck went red with shame. She sputtered and tried to get a word out.

Well before she figured out how to speak, Ultear crossed the room and shoved Ivan as hard as she could. He stumbled back and into the corner of the counter. Off-balance, he crashed next into the kitchen chairs. Ultear waited for him to rise with her fists clenched. She wasn't sure what she was going to do. Something crazy; it was the night Natsu was attacked all over again. She was full of adrenaline and more than ready to fight.

He moved, just an inch like he was going to get up. Ultear kicked him hard in the thigh. She was reeling back for another when strong hands gripped her shoulders and actually lifted her into the air and turned her around, so she was facing the other direction, to where Flare was fleeing the room. Her feet sliced on the glass and her trail was bloody.

Without Ivan in her direct line-of-sight, Ultear was able to think a little more clearly. She gave chase, up the stairs and into a room that was as tidy as any museum.

There was a case on the wall where Flare pinned various spiders and displayed them behind glass, there was a collection of feathers on her dresser beside her comb, books on a bookshelf, and a doll or two of Sailor Moon characters.

Flare sat on her plain maroon coverlet and stared at the blood on her feet. She looked as surprised as anyone to see it. Ultear didn't have the patience to coddle her. She went to Flare's closet without permission and flung the door wide. In the corner was a backpack. Ultear grabbed it out and started stuffing clothing into it. She tried to grab practical stuff but Flare had a lot of showy dresses and jumpers and wraps. She found a pair of jeans and a pair of tights, and then she found a tunic.

She went to Flare's dresser and dug in there, finding underwear and socks. She was opening the bottom drawer when Flare touched her arm and pulled her away. Ultear stepped back and let her crouch down. Beneath the mounds of shirts, there was a small wooden box like the kind for juggling balls. Flare took it and tucked it under her arm like she was carrying a baby.

"Where are we going?"

Ultear had barely thought about it. She said, "My mom's."

Flare smiled and took Ultear's hand.

Ultear descended the stairs just a little ahead of Flare. There were voices downstairs, pitched low and dangerous. Threatening, back and forth, building to a violent crescendo. Ultear's skin tingled again. She still wanted that fight and she didn't even care that Ivan was bigger than her or meaner than she was or even that this was his home and he could probably call the police and get her arrested.

Something smashed in the kitchen. Ultear took a step in that direction. Laxus came bursting through the door with murder in his eye and impatience in his shoulders. "Let's go."

He didn't leave very much room for arguing. Ultear snagged Flare's shoes on the way out the door and bustled down the concrete steps. Flare's bare feet left blood marks on them, and on the driveway, and even in Laxus' car. She smiled, though, and leaned her head against Ultear's shoulder while Laxus drove, white-knuckled.