"Why are you following me Gajeel?" He wasn't following her in a sneaky manner, but he was following her, none the less. She was getting irritated with his presence. She just wanted to be left alone. She had just lost her cool, in public, and stormed off. Levy felt ashamed of herself.
"Isn't safe." His statement was simple and he seemed irritated to have to say it, but he had a point. It wasn't safe for a young woman to walk, loaded down with a heavy backpack and a rolling suitcase, to travel across town at 3 in the morning by herself. She wasn't sure how much safer she was with Gajeel though. She barely knew him.
"How do I know I'm safe with you? How do I know you won't drag me into an alley and have your way with me? Physically, I can't win against you." Levy was curious about his answer. He had finally been able to string a few words together and get simple ideas across. It was almost like Levy was looking through a microscope at an evolving organism. It was kind of exciting.
"Tch."
"Tch? That's not a response that inspires confidence. I don't know anything about you other than your name, and that you've a cousin named Wendy that dyes her hair black and plays at being like you." It wasn't actually obvious that Wendy was trying to be something she wasn't, but Levy didn't need to reveal that that bit of information was actually an educated guess.
"Plays at...? You don't know anything about Wendy." Gajeel seemed angry that Levy had made an assumption about his younger cousin. So, he is protective of how other's view her. Good to know. "It's obvious. She wants to be cool, like you. So, she dyes her hair and puts on those types of clothes. She wants you to notice her. She's got stars in her eyes when she looks at you. She think's you're the cat's meow." Levy smiled over her shoulder at him.
As she smiled at him, she didn't notice the raised slab of sidewalk and tripped over it. Faster than she would have ever imagined he could move, Gajeel caught her and her rather heavy backpack. "What's in here? Bricks?!" He said as he righted her and shouldered her backpack. "Books" Levy mumbled as she continued to walk. "Really?" Levy was about to answer when she heard him unzipping her backpack.
"NO!" Levy dropped her suitcase handle and went after her backpack. "STOP!" Levy grabbed his large wrist with her small hand. They both froze. "Please. Don't." Levy knew her eyes were large and round, full of fear, and probably watering. She didn't care. She couldn't allow him to look in her backpack. Her manuscript was in there. It was unfinished, she hadn't even checked over what she had written for grammatical or spelling errors yet. "Please."