She had snuck down here, again, knowing full well she wasn't supposed to and just how much trouble she'd be in if caught. Lucy, the best case scenario, wouldn't mind. She'd get off with a teasing at worst. But her mother, on the other hand, would ground her for all eternity. Literally. All eternity. Empires would fall and Levy would still be stuck in a rather limited, but well cared for, garden.
At first it had just been one garden enthusiast to another. Gajeel, despite being the lord of the underworld, had a love of flowers and botany. His orchards were breathtaking.
He was rather soar about accepting help, but Levy wasn't the goddess of flowers for nothing. Growing a garden in the underworld was a challenge, the likes of which she'd never seen before. If Levy couldn't do it, nobody could. She'd have Gajeel waist deep in daisies and snapdragons before he knew it.
Currently, they were working on the ever difficult sunflower. Anything but temperamental above ground, they were posing a significant problem in the underworld. With the lack of sun and all that. Levy would not admit defeat. She adored sunflowers. However, they both knew that wasn't the real reason she was there.
"Hey, Lily, boy." Levy stopped to scratch the three headed cat behind the ears. All six of them. Gajeel had never been a dog person, but Lily did the job well enough. He was terrible fierce when he wished to be, but the sight of Levy alone was enough to make him purr hard enough to shake the ground.
She strolled past the masses of souls, wavin few familiar monsters, and taking the way behind the looming palace. The path was familiar to her, she had traveled it so many times. Stepping gracefully around a femur, gods know where it had come from, she grinned at the sight of dark hair and a back tanned, not from the sun, but from the fires on punishment and the coppery glow that the underworld was constantly basked in.
"Gajeel!" She waved when he turned around, his face pink from effort. Or maybe something else. Levy could feel her own neck heating up at the sight of him topless.
"How's that flowerbed doing?" she asked.
"Looking good," he said, waving her over. She kicked off her delicate sandles, curling her toes in the carefully weeded and watered grass, leaning over his shoulder. Both of them turned a bit redder.
"And the sun flowers?" Their shoulders brushed, skin on hot skin, and she could swear she could hear her heart in her ears. She hoped he couldn't make out the thumping.
"We lost a few of the smaller ones," Gajeel reported. He drove his shovel into the ground and leaned on it, casually, as if they both weren't thinking the same thing. As if they both weren't blushing and trying not to flirt.
It was painfully obvious.
They'd play this dangerous game a little longer yet, while they still could. While she was still free to travel from the surface to beneath it, they'd pretend she was only here for the garden. And once they mastered sunflowers, they'd just move to something else.
While they still could.
Request: gajevy Hades and Perspephone AU.
1/3