III.

"Hey there, shrimp."

Gajeel sat with an arm resting on his knee. He looked up at the little Fairy Tail mage, quite a novelty in itself. Not that the new perspective of her body was bad. Quite the opposite. The dress that she was wearing was hardly long enough to deserve the name, and so for some time all he'd been able to see were her slim shapely legs walking towards him. Now she was closer, he'd dragged his eyes up to her face. She looked confused, but not precisely displeased to see him.

And she no longer smelled of fear.

In the end that was what had made up Gajeel's mind. She'd been easy enough to follow, and he'd just about decided to turn around and leave her to whatever it was that she was up to when her scent had changed. Not much, just a tiny nuance, but the bitter taste of her fear had coated the back of his throat.

"What are you doing here?" Levy asked.

"Just finished a job."

"Your last job wasn't anywhere near here." She eyed him suspiciously, and he grinned despite himself.

"Been keeping tabs on me?"

"Of course not!" she blushed.

He took advantage of her embarrassment to dismiss any further enquiries into his sudden appearance, by asking a question of his own.

"What are you doing here?"

"Me?" Her eyes dipped for a second. "I'm going to visit my parents."

"Really?" He couldn't quite keep the note of surprise from his voice. He'd never thought about Levy having parents- never thought of her as belonging anywhere but Fairy Tail. "Where do they live?"

"Why?"

"I'll walk with you," he announced, rising to his feet. Levy's eyes widened as they watched him. She cast a look back in the direction that she had just come from.

"But- but aren't you going back to Magnolia, I mean- if you've finished your mission?"

"You're in an awful hurry to get rid of me." He grinned unpleasantly. "Don't you fancy having to introduce me?"

"It's not that," she muttered, but he thought it probably was- he tried to imagine Levy's parents- to have raised the young woman standing in front of him they'd have to be kind, soft-spoken, probably protective of their daughter.

Oh yeah, they'd love him.

"Hey!" he shouted, when he realised she was carrying on without him. She shot a glance over her shoulder without slowing. It wasn't exactly as though she was hard to keep pace with, but his incredibly short temper was one spark away from being lit.

"Gajeel, why are you following me?"

"Honestly?" He fell into step beside her. "I don't think it's safe for you to be wandering around on your own," he said bluntly.

Levy's footsteps faltered. Her head dropped low, so low that her hair fell in front of her face, obscuring her expression. When she spoke her voice was tight and brittle.

"You think- you think I'm so weak I can't walk through the countryside without a bodyguard?"

"That's not what I said!"

"Good! Because in that case you can go back to Fairy Tail!" she snapped at him, piercing him with one hard glare before she picked up her pace.

'the hell! If she thought, for one second, he was going to let her get away with talking to him like that, when he'd just rearranged his entire fuckin' day to keep an eye on her, then she was even crazier than he'd thought!