A slight sequel to the other Larcade x Sting drabble I've got posted here. I struggled a bit with this one.

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.


Title: Mud Puddles

Pairing: Larcade x Sting

Requester: lockandk3yfiction

Prompt: Dancing In The Rain


Months had passed since Larcade had followed Sting off the battlefield to Sabertooth. And with time, Sting found, Larcade's resemblance to a duckling only strengthened.

But never was the impression so strong as it was right now. Had the demon never seen rain before? Because the expression on his face was alternating between curiosity and intense horror at the sight of the falling raindrops.

"What are those?" he whispered to the dragon slayer, his eyes never straying from the water outside the window.

"It's rain," Sting explained. "You know. Water falling from the sky. Happens pretty regularly."

This revelation seemed to distress Larcade deeply. "Water? From the sky? How?"

"Uh…" Finding himself at a bit of a loss, Sting scratched his head in thought. "You really want me to describe the water cycle and precipitation…?" Sweat ran down his neck at the sight of Larcade's eager gaze. "But uh… have you really never seen it before? It's fairly normal around here. Is Alvarez a desert, or something?"

"Alvarez is largely a desert continent," Larcade stated. "Or at least that's what… what Zeref told me."

Sting was so proud of the duckling's progress thus far. It had taken quite a while to get him to stop calling the dark wizard 'Lord,' or 'Father.' Both terms tended to make the people around them very, very uncomfortable. Calling the dark wizard by name wasn't… much better, honestly, but it was a vast improvement all around.

Getting it through Larcade's head that parental figures weren't supposed to be like Zeref, on the other hand, was a task of far greater difficulty. And new things kept popping up all the time for Sting to make sense of.

Like right now.

"Even in a desert, it must rain sometimes though, right?" Sting mused aloud, trying to wrap his head around the notion of rain being a strange, alien thing in other parts of the world. Intellectually, he knew it must be the case, but he was having trouble picturing it on a personal level.

"Maybe it did. I wouldn't have known either way. I was kept in the same room most of my life, and I only rarely went outside."

Larcade's sudden confession blindsided Sting. All these months of working with the demon, of trying to understand him, and this was the first he had heard of this.

"You were…" Sting swallowed and tried his sentence again. "There weren't any windows, or anything?"

"No point. The room was underground. I do like windows a lot, though." He rapped his knuckles on the one he sat beside for emphasis. "They're bright."

A great rush of air left Sting's lungs. "Okay, then," he said, extending his hand out to the blond demon. "There's some things I'm going to have to show you. First of all, I'm going to teach you how to jump in mud puddles."