Leave it all in the city,
Taste my lips out in the rain.
And oh it's such a pity
That your face is as pretty as your name.
Now it hurts to leave I'm telling you
It's meant to be my dear.
Cos feelings fade when time is short.

-Into the Wilderness, Early Hours


There was honeysuckle climbing up the oak and blooming yellow flowers beneath his fingers where they curled and tangled into the lush green. The sky was an endless sort of blue, the type that you could fall right into if you stared for too long, and broken only by the frail whisps of clouds being tempted away by the westward wind like cotton caught in the air. Gajeel was humming alongside the cicadas in the tall grass, led by the honeybee that danced there on one of the petals before it droned away with its spoils. He was singing a song that Laxus knew, and his hands slipped gently up his hips, beneath his shirt, to rest there on his waistband like that space was made just for his fingers to hang onto. And lately, Laxus had begun more and more to believe that maybe they were.

They often found themselves this way, tangled up in tall reeds with knees sunken into riversides and elbows leaving punctures into mud from a balancing act far from prying eyes and covered just in the blanket of midsummer heat and the humid breaths of hungry mouths. He'd never been one to do this in the cover of singing bullfrogs and crying herons. Hedonistic and wild, he was coaxed out into these places suited for child-like exploration and found those hands like a nymph's siren song beckoning him to be lost in red eyes and obsidian hair. He bloomed with fire in places that screamed far louder than reason and indulged fully in playful lips.

They were sun-dappled and warm, stolen like thieves and lechers amongst the trees of a secluded hillside. Laxus curled a fist in black hair and skimmed the other down the back of a thigh, feeling the spine arch beneath him. He could smell June rolling off Gajeel's throat, tasted July slipping down the chiseled lines of his chest, and spent his August between the shivering curves of dirtied knees. Laces unfurled like the petals of a late-season rose, buds glistening under the blaze of the afternoon sun. Face flushed and eyes glazed, he didn't try to strain meaning from this. They were heat lightning and thunder, loud and desperate in the face of an approaching downpour. Hearts crashed like a deer tearing through the thicket.

To everyone else, Laxus had been seduced by the wild. In youth he might have been tempted by a woman's bloom into summer, but it was wasted by the prospect of this naked lust for rough nature. To survive, he forged like a weapon into a body of ore, of moss, of raven feathers. He was one second devouring, the next being devoured. He was taking salt into his mouth and tracing his tongue down velvet, and then torn into by a thing that was all teeth and flashing eyes, soon returning home with the marks of escape caressing his arms, his back, his neck. A tongue rough as flint sparked this wildfire and he was helpless to fight it in his drought. Everything that was left in him was waltzed through and well-travelled as a path to water. Body lifted, legs adorned around a waist, Gajeel treated him like a place to be reclaimed. With dashed foundation and humanity shattered, he choked on weeds and overflowed with golden honey.

He wanted to kiss that throat under the electroplated moon with hands smothering the noise in his throat. The stars traded rumors as they marched across the sky, the earth whispered and the crickets disapproved. Tongue-dozed and gasping, he was lost and dazzled in the exhausted thrust of yes . He didn't care if that was a favorite shirt, he'd shred it in hot lust and need. He'd never felt vicious before, never resonated deeply with tooth and claw, rogue, satyr, wretch. But now he was a dog in the wolf's den, facing hungry eyes and promises of more. It couldn't be unlearned from him now, this beast awoken from the leftover pieces in his DNA that still yearned to fuck ravenously into oblivion. He was lost in the savagery of it, every day more and more feral. He knew he couldn't escape even if he wanted to. All Gajeel needed to do was let slip that low growl and he'd hunt him down in mountains, an arrow cocked in a bow, ready to taste blood and plunge into the promise of heat, moans, and release.