Note: Story has nothing to do with drinking games, but I've always had a fondness for overly glib titles. *shrugs*

Never Have I Ever

It started off as teasing, turned into bitterness, and somehow ended up with Gray revealing an entirely different plan behind trying to use iced shell on Lyon on Galuna Island.

Lyon winced as he shifted in his seat and jostled his rather extensive injuries. He brushed it off and snuck another glance over at Gray and his group of Fairy Tail friends lounging around in some chairs on the other side of the Cait Shelter's guild hall.

"You could just go talk to him," Sherry suggested.

Lyon turned back to her with a frown. "Huh?"

She rolled her eyes. "Gray. If you want, I'll go with you and say hi to Lucy so that it's not as obvious that you're pining over him." She sighed and smiled. "Love."

"I have no idea what you're talking about!" he protested, flushing. Damn her and her obsession with love. She could make even the most innocuous things sound bad.

"You might as well," Jura said shortly. "Watching you pretending not to watch him is getting rather tiring."

Even Jura was in on it!

Lyon snuck another look at Gray. The little brat and his team had somehow managed to defeat the remaining members of Oración Seis and stop Nirvana, but it looked like they had gotten pretty beat up doing it. Lyon wondered if he was alright.

Then again, what should he care? They might have fought Racer together, but it was still the first time they had met since Galuna. Whatever uneasy truce they had struck, there was still a great distance between them.

"Let's go," Sherry said. She grabbed his arm and tugged him up, making him practically whimper in pain.

"H-hey!"

She dragged him along with surprising strength, and he wondered when she had gotten so forceful.

"Oh, look who it is," Natsu said as Sherry sat down in their circle and pulled Lyon down in the seat beside her.

"Hi," Sherry volunteered.

Lucy gave her a wary once-over but nodded politely. Gray glanced over and ran his calculating gaze all over Lyon, but said nothing. It made Lyon uncomfortable, so he went for his normal bluster to put himself back at ease.

"Wow, someone sure took a piece out of you," he said, raising an eyebrow and smirking.

Gray scowled. "You aren't looking so good yourself."

"I'm not that easy to kill. You'll have to try harder next time."

"Excuse me?" Gray demanded, outraged. "You're the one who decided to jump off a cliff! I had nothing to do with it!"

Lyon found his indignation quite amusing and, of course, immediately capitalized on it.

"Well, someone had to take care of Racer's bomb, and I sure didn't see you doing it."

"What a jerk." Gray crossed his arms and looked away with narrowed eyes. "I can't believe I spent so much time looking for you," he muttered.

Lyon eyed him curiously, but continued pressing on while he had the advantage. "You've done a terrible job trying to off me. But maybe I should be more careful. They say that the third time's the charm."

Gray's brows knit together in confusion as he looked back at Lyon with puzzled eyes. "…What are you talking about?"

Lyon smirked. "About how you always seem to be trying to kill me. But you haven't managed it yet!"

"What? I have never tried to kill you."

Lyon's eyebrows shot upwards. "Really? We're going to play that game?"

Gray frowned and turned his gaze inward as if searching through his memories, but then shrugged. "Nope, no idea what you're talking about."

"Galuna doesn't ring any bells?" Lyon shook his head in disbelief. "No iced shell, nothing?"

He wondered, almost immediately, if he'd gone too far and crossed the line between joking and the reality that everyone was pretending not to remember. Galuna was a little bit of a sticking point, and everyone had been studiously acting like it had never happened. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to bring up the time when they had been enemies, especially since Gray seemed content to sweep it under the rug. Especially since Lyon had really messed things up then.

"Oh." A weary, resigned understanding entered Gray's eyes as he sighed and let his gaze drift away. "I wasn't trying to kill you."

"If you give me any of this 'iced shell isn't supposed to kill' bullshit…"

"Well, it's not. I didn't know about what happened to Deliora then. I'd like to think that it still wouldn't have killed you, if only because I didn't want it to and it would've been my ice."

"Oh, because being eternally trapped is so much better," Lyon said acidly.

The mood hanging over the group turned tense, the air so thick that he could have cut it with a knife. He…shouldn't have said anything. But there was a niggling feeling in his gut, something angry and resentful. He hadn't realized he was still so bitter about the whole iced shell thing. Maybe it wasn't fair since he had tried hurting Gray first, but it still stung.

"But you wouldn't have been." Gray smiled down at his hands, an oddly melancholy expression. "You must have thought I was so stupid to try that when your friends already had the whole moon drip ritual figured out, but…that was what I was counting on. They would have been able to get you out again, just like you said."

"…What?" Lyon had, in fact, thought Gray was silly to get caught up in the moment and overlook the fact that Sherry and the others could still free him like they were trying to free Deliora, but he hadn't realized that Gray was smart enough to have figured that out on his own. And if he had been smart enough to figure it out, then what possible reason could he have for trying it anyway?

"If you were out of commission, your crazy cult thing wouldn't have kept trying to free Deliora, right? You were the one who thought you could defeat it. They were helping you because they wanted to see you take it down. They wouldn't have tried it on their own.

"They would have stopped the revival ceremony and worked on freeing you instead, and they wouldn't be able to do both at once even if they wanted to. My team would have let them, because that's the kind of people they are. They would've made sure Deliora was contained and you couldn't get at it again after, but they would want you freed too.

"It might've taken a few years, but your friends would free you and Deliora would be safely contained and everyone would be alright in the end. That was the plan."

Lyon opened his mouth, closed it again, felt it twist into a funny expression. That…was not what he had expected to hear from Gray. Something twisted painfully in his chest.

"…What the hell?" Natsu demanded, finding his voice first. Fire smoldered in his narrowed eyes.

"Great," Gray murmured with a sigh. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, a long-suffering weariness lining his face. "Here we go again."

"That's even worse than just rage-quitting and deciding to take the bastard out with you! Now you thought it through and still decided it was a good idea? Do you always have to jump through hoops to look for convoluted ways to kill yourself?"

"It wasn't about killing anyone," Gray said. "It was about protecting them."

"But what were you thinking?" Lyon burst out, his hands clenching into fists. Whatever hint of bitterness he'd harbored about iced shell was nothing compared to his horrified anger at this newest revelation. "What kind of sane person would do that over just eliminating the problem?"

Gray tilted his head, dark eyes studying Lyon almost curiously. "It wasn't about killing anyone," he repeated. "It was about protecting them."

That meant him, Lyon realized. Not only Gray's friends or the world at large, but Lyon himself, the person who had set the whole thing in motion in the first place. Gray had been desperate to stop Deliora from being resurrected and wasn't willing to take any chances, and he'd looked for a solution that would bring the ritual to a screeching halt but wouldn't kill or seriously hurt anyone involved. He wasn't confident in his ability to stop Lyon and his cronies on his own, wasn't confident that he could protect the villagers or his friends from them, knew he was running out of time to make sure the ritual was stopped, and had resorted to desperate last-ditch efforts that would put both sides at a stalemate instead of just crushing the opposition. What a fool.

"But why?" Lyon asked, his voice wavering. "Iced shell requires two sacrifices. It would've made more sense to just kill me or at least maim me enough to put me out of commission. I was your enemy! I orchestrated the whole thing! Why are you such a sacrificial idiot?"

One corner of Gray's mouth curled into a bemused half-smile. "You were being stupid and we were on opposite sides, but you were never my enemy."

Lyon gaped at him. This boy…

He shook it off, not wanting to poke at that knot of emotions right now. He would need to examine it eventually, but he wasn't going to melt down right in front of Gray and all the other people lurking around.

"You were stupid," he said firmly, his voice stern and unyielding to cover up the emotions underneath. "Iced shell isn't something you should–"

"Don't lecture me." Gray's eyes went dark and cold and hard, and he set his face in unyielding lines. Those eyes made it clear that he was serious. "I might still have some fondness for you, but you lost the right to lecture me a long time ago. I'm not a child anymore. And neither are you, so stop acting like one."

Lyon stared. Here was a hint of the distance between them, the damage to their relationship caused by years of separation and betrayal. It was almost a relief to see it after how Gray seemed to ignore or brush it all off.

It was something that Lyon could work with. Something he could maybe fix over time.

But it was good that there were some boundaries now. He'd just have to figure them out and then work at convincing Gray to push them back. He wanted to know where he stood so that he had an idea of how far he needed to go and where he needed to start with fixing things.

"Aw, you do still have a backbone after all!" he said brightly. "And here I was starting to get worried that you lost all your instinct for self-preservation."

He lunged and caught Gray in a headlock, mussing his hair roughly like he was a child.

"Hey!" Gray yelped. He flailed about. "Get off! You can't just–"

"Why?" Lyon breathed into his ear so softly that even he could barely hear it. "Have I also lost the right to be your friend?"

Gray went still in Lyon's grip and his cheeks darkened. "You're going to, if you keep abusing it," he mumbled.

Lyon considered it for a moment and then grinned as he went back to the noogie. "Oh well, it's too much fun!"

"Ly-on! Get off!"

Never would he ever, Lyon decided, take Gray for granted again.

emmahoshi: Tbh, I was not impressed with the canon non-explanation for why Gray tried using iced shell on Lyon. It made sense against Deliora, but I found that using it against Lyon had a weaker basis. So I made up my own explanation lol And yeah, I get that Gray in general and some of the other guys have this habit of ignoring serious issues like they never happened so that they don't have to talk about them, but sometimes it's a little frustrating. Something that big should have really been addressed at some point in some way, I think. (Wait, someone eating your cake is considered "trivial"? Who are you and what have you done with emmahoshi? XD) [EDIT: Hahaha, that sounds more like the emmahoshi I know XD I do remember the airport story lol It's okay, I don't like people touching my food either. Except for the foods I don't like. I have a habit of sneaking my mushrooms and onions and tomatoes and stuff onto my family's plates when they aren't looking. And sometimes even when they are ._.]