It's been so, so long since I've written these two. I missed them dearly.
Lacey: 18 (Lucy & Laxus), Jean-Luc (Freed & Mirajane): 18
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
It was a beautiful day, Lacey contemplated. Especially from such a pleasant vantage point as the one she had secured for herself, on a low-hanging branch of the great rainbow sakura tree. With the sakuras all in full bloom, the town was truly a gorgeous sight to behold. So were all of the people having flower-viewing parties in the bright sunlight of the park, or just walking beneath all of the gorgeous trees hand-in-hand… like her own parents were, she noted with a smile as she spotted them some ways off. They looked so adorable.
"Lacey?"
At the sound of her name, Lacey swung backwards on her branch, hanging upside down by her legs. Leaves and multi-colored blossoms fluttered around her, jarred loose by the sudden rough motion. "Hi, Jean," she greeted her best friend. "What's up?" She let out a little laugh at her word play, pleased with herself.
The green haired young man sighed. Normally he was more on board with Lacey's antics but unfortunately this was a serious occasion, and it required their full attention. "My mother's gotten it into her head to set me up on blind dates again. I need help getting out of it."
That sobered Lacey up immediately. Swinging her body slightly, she released her grip on the tree branch and landed on her feet, sending up a small flurry of blossoms from the impact. "How serious is she this time?" Lacey asked, wiping a few stray petals from her shirt.
This was hardly the first occasion where Mirajane had attempted to set her son up with a significant other. Her intentions on the matter could range anywhere from playful interfering fun to deadly seriousness backed by the power of her Satan Souls. That Jean was singularly uninterested in dating in general was a concept lost on his mother. No matter how many times he tried to explain it.
Her friend reached out towards her and picked a blossom out of her hair – a good portion of the twig still attached to it. "I think if you tell her that we're scheduled to go on a team job, she'll let me off the hook," Jean suggested, now tucking the flower behind Lacey's ear. "That looks much better," he said, satisfied with his work.
"So it's about a five on the serious scale, then…" Lacey muttered, thinking it over. "Can't go with a team job, though. Titanus is stuck babysitting, and Lilo has a shopping date with Garnet. So it'll just be us."
Jean winced. "That's almost as bad as actually going on the date. She'll never let us live it down."
That was also true. "We'll have to think of something else, then."
"I could always just run," Jean stated bluntly, his face a mask of profound irritation. "Book it and not look back."
With a shake of her head, Lacey reminded him, "She would hunt you down."
He sighed, and sat down with a hard thud against the tree's roots. "I really don't have many other options, here. Even if I tell her I'm not interested, she just tries harder."
"Have you tried talking to your father about it? He might be able to talk some sense into her."
Jean's hesitation was painfully obvious. "…I don't really want to rock that boat, if I can help it."
Sitting down beside him, Lacey gazed at him with concern. "Are they going through a rough patch?"
"Sort of," he admitted with a long-suffering sigh. "I think they're seeing someone about it though, and they usually get over these things pretty quickly. But I don't want to throw a Vulcan into the situation, either. Also, they're both demons. I'm not getting into the center of that."
Lacey nodded sagely at that. Put that way, she understood completely.
"Besides, it's really hard to call her off when she's already made the arrangements beforehand."
Leaning her head against the bark, Lacey turned her gaze to the bits of sky she could see between the gargantuan tree's shimmering branches. They were both silent for several minutes, taking in the beauty of the season and the cool, multi-hued shade of the tree.
"You could try throwing it."
The suggestion threw Jean for a loop. He turned slightly to stare incredulously at his best friend. "I could what?"
"Throw the date. Not… not literally," Lacey swiftly amended before Jean could make the joke brewing in his eyes. "Though I guess if push comes to shove, you could do that, too."
"So I should shove or push them?" he teased her, resulting in him being given a slight shove of his own from Lacey.
"No!" The blonde rolled her eyes at her best friend. "What I mean is that you could make it such a horrible date that your mother stops sending you on them."
Jean considered it for several seconds, clearly weighing the pros and cons in his head as he absently tucked a rainbow sakura blossom behind his ear to match the one he'd bestowed upon Lacey. "No, I don't think I could do that to the other person," he finally concluded. "My mother is the one being a pain, not them. They wouldn't deserve it."
"Darn, I thought I was onto something." Then inspiration hit her. "Hey, what if you go to the person in question and explain yourself? Maybe they'll understand and call it off on their side."
This idea had more merit than the prior one, if Jean's expression were anything to go by. "That might actually work," he said. "I would need to find out who it is, though."
"Did your mother give you any hints?"
"I think so. Something about a florist, I think." Suddenly, he smirked at her, deviousness in his gaze. "Want to go play amateur sleuth with me? Like when we were kids?"
"Do I ever!"
At the end of the day, however, they were no closer to finding the mysterious date than they were at the start. "Florist" was not much to go on in a city named for a flower. Without any further information to go on, they'd had to call it a day. It had been fun, though, to check out half the floral shops in the city. They'd even bought some flowers, setting up delivery at the guild and the homes of their friends and family for the next day. It had drained their spending money, but they could always go on more jobs to make up the deficit. And it would be fun to see their friends' faces when they all received the flowers.
Conceding defeat on the topic of his blind date, Jean and Lacey walked together back to Jean's house. When they were almost there, Lacey suddenly froze in mid-step.
Failing to hear her footsteps on the cobblestones behind him, Jean paused and glanced back at her. "Is something wrong, Lacey?"
"I think I just had an epiphany," Lacey told him. "Have you considered asking my Dad for help?"
Jean stared at her as if she was crazy. "Why would I bring the guild master into my problems with my mother?"
"Because they're friends," Lacey reminded him. "And he's well aware of Mirajane's… troubles in the dating department. He tells a lot of stories about her interference in his and Mom's love life. I bet you anything that he'd be willing to help out." It had been twenty years, and he was clearly still nursing a bit of a grudge about the entire thing, so that had to count in their favor. "My mother, too! She might know how to thwart Mirajane." When he still looked unsure, she added, "It's worth a shot, if nothing else."
Her best friend nodded slowly. "Alright, let's ask him."
Laxus was more than a little bit surprised to come home and find Jean-Luc sitting at the dinner table with them when he emerged from his home office. His wife was fussing over the boy like she normally did, and he soaked up the attention. Lacey was calmly setting the table around the two.
"I wasn't aware we were having company tonight," he rumbled, moving to help Lacey. He had addressed the question to her instead of the other pair, knowing he was more likely to get an answer this way. And although he enjoyed having his best friend's son over, he was a little wary over the lack of forewarning on Lacey's part.
"We need your advice on how to get Mirajane off Jean's back in the dating department," Lacey told him, not one to beat around the bush. "Seems she's set him up on another blind date he doesn't want. So I invited him for dinner."
He let out a soft groan at that. Mirajane just never let up, did she? "Alright, I'll talk to her. Or better yet – your mother should. She's way more convincing than I am." That, and Mirajane liked Lucy more.
"Thanks, Dad." Lacey gave Jean-Luc a covert thumbs-up, which did not go unnoticed by Laxus.
Really, he could not understand Mirajane. Why bother setting the boy up when it was obvious to all involved that there was only one major person in Jean's life.
He wondered if the pair realized that they had matching flower accessories, but decided it was better to not to pursue the issue.