Turf Wars Chapter 6 – History Class/Bday Party
Levy skipped into her history class with a smile on her face. Today was the Friday that they celebrated Lisanna's birthday and everyone knew what the surprise location was, but her. Sting was going to pick her up and bring her to the party, blindfolded. And after history class was over, just gym remained.
The petite junior skipped to her seat, dropping the two books from her arms onto her desktop and with a sweep of the back of her skirt, sat down. She took the pen from behind her ear and fished out her notebook from her satchel to begin taking notes.
She had just dated the top of the note page when a couple other students walked in. Sting and Elfman said their hellos and took their seats and Jet and Droy burst toward the door next. By how heavily they breathed, it looked like they had raced to the class. The two were pushing each other, stuck in the doorway, arguing over who made it to the class first in order to claim the remaining open seat next to Levy when Gajeel showed up. Always one to carry a scowl, Levy could see it deepen as he stared at the two teenagers stuck in the door. Lifting his foot, he sent a powerful kick flying into their back ends, pushing Jet through the door and Droy right after. Levy stifled a giggle as she watched the heavy-set Droy land on the lanky Jet.
"Idiots," Gajeel growled as he tossed his book, none-to-gently on the desk next to Levy and plopped down.
The other two crawled to their feet, defeated and shuffled to the back of the class where open seats awaited. Neither had the guts to challenge the taller and more muscular teen, not after having to play dodgeball with him in gym yesterday. More than one bruise dotted their bodies.
"Got a pen, Shrimp?" he asked, not even turning his head toward Levy.
"That depends, can you ask politely and use my real name?" Levy answered. She was used to his roughness, but she also knew that he was a softie deep down. She found this out not too long ago when she spotted him feeding a bunch of stray cats around the apartment building they shared. After seeing this, she had made it her mission to draw more of that soft side out.
Gajeel groaned, but Zeref had just walked in and he caught a glimpse of the notepad full of notes that would make their way to the board. An internal debate of do as she says or get yelled at by the teacher took place for a split second. He rolled his neck and stared at the bluenette, her hair pushed back with a bandana. That was smart, why didn't he do that with as long as his hair was? She had a smile on her face and an extra pen in hand. "Can I use your pen, Levy?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"Of course, Gajeel," Levy said, handing him the pen. "Was that so hard?"
Gajeel grunted his response as he removed the pen top and pulled out a half ripped notebook, flipping to a random page that was doodled on.
"Okay class," Zeref started, picking up a piece of chalk.
…
"I'm sooooo excited Levy bounced as she held the end of the giant 'Happy Birthday' sign. She looked up to Lucy who was at the top of a ladder, tapping the 'Happy' end to the wall above the table where the presents were.
"Me too, I hope she likes it," the blonde said before stepping down and looking around the room. Birthday decorations littered the place and a table with a giant chocolate cake stood in the middle.
"So why bowling? Does Lisanna really like to bowl?" Lucy asked. It had been a month since the food fight and she and Lisanna had started to get along really well, much to Levy's happiness. Enough to get invited to her birthday. Lisanna was even kind enough to allow her to bring Natsu, so long as he didn't destroy anything. In fact, the whole rivalry had pretty much died down after the food fight.
"When we were ten, we held Lisanna's birthday party here and she and Sting had a bowling match. But it was the night the tornado came through town and it cut the party short. They never got around to finishing the match so Sting decided to throw the party here so they could finally finish their match," Levy said, a smile on her face as she remembered the party. As scary as it was with the storm, it was still one of the best days of her life.
"That's so sweet," Lucy said, pulling the ladder down toward Levy and climbing up again. "I wish Natsu was thoughtful like that," she said, taking the other end of the banner from Levy and tapping it to the wall.
"Oh I'm sure Natsu puts some thought into your relationship," Levy said, holding the ladder steady for Lucy as she climbed down. They folded it and placed it against the wall before heading to where Elfman was blowing up balloons.
"He's so simple minded that he could put a lot of thought into something and you never realize," Lucy said with a small laugh. "But he does care, that much I know, and I guess that's all that really matters in the end," she said, looking over to her boyfriend. His pink hair always made him easy to spot and she saw him joking with Rouge as he tied balloons up at random places.
"Yup," Levy replied with a smile, sneaking a glance toward Gajeel, who was busy bringing in a random assortment of bowling balls into the smaller, rented out room.
"So, how goes the whole, 'pulling out the soft side of one of the baddest boys at school' plan?" the blonde asked, noticing that Levy was looking toward Gajeel again.
"Not so good. But, I won't give up!" Levy said with confidence. "Tonight, if I can get him to dance with me that will be good enough."
"Are you sure this is just about trying to make him a better person?" Lucy teased as she grabbed a couple of the balloons Elfman had blown up and started tying strings to them.
Levy's face went red as she stuttered, trying to act like she didn't know what Lucy was talking about.
"So you do like him," Lucy teased.
"Shhhh," Levy said, pulling Lucy away from the balloon table, Elfman giving them strange looks. Luckily the music was loud enough that he didn't hear the blonde. "Only you and Lisanna know and I wanna keep it that way," Levy said, glancing around at everyone.
"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," Lucy promised. "If there is anything you want to know about him, I either know or can find out pretty easily for you," the blonde said walking back to the balloon table.
"Thanks," Levy said. She went to reach for a balloon but her phone started ringing and she grabbed it instead. "Hey, did you pick her up yet?" she shouted into the phone when she saw that it was Sting.
"Yeah, we are on our way their now, so fifteen minutes," Sting yelled back, hearing how loud the music was before hanging up. He had Lisanna blindfolded in the passenger seat of his car as they drove to the bowling alley.
"Fifteen minutes everyone!" Levy yelled at the top of her lungs, sending everyone into a scrabble.
…
The fifteen minutes went by quick as they scrambled to finish hanging decorations and putting the presents on the table. Sting sent out a text when they were outside the building and Levy shut the music off and turned the lights off, telling everyone to hide.
When Sting brought Lisanna in and pulled the blindfold off, Wendy flipped the lights on and everyone jumped out, yelling surprise.
Lisanna, knew the surprise party was being held, so she wasn't surprised, but a big smile still came to her face. Then she recognized the room and her smiled grew. "You really want me to kick your ass at bowling don't you?" she said turning to Sting and giving him a quick kiss.
"You think you can win against me?" Sting grinned, wrapping his arm over her shoulders and dragging her into the fray where everyone was standing around the cake, Levy and Lucy lighting the candles.
"Time to sing Happy Birthday!" Elfman shouted, starting the song.
"NO!" Lisanna shouted back, stopping her brother from getting far into the song. "I don't want to hear that song, not till next year. Not after having to listen to it for fifteen minutes straight on the car ride here," the silver haired teen said, throwing a glare at her boyfriend.
"Oh come, you enjoy my singing voice!" Sting smiled back, planting a kiss on his girlfriend's cheek.
"I love you babe, but your singing voice sucks," Lisanna said.
"Can't be worse than Gajeel's though," Natsu said, turning toward the taller boy. All of the students that came from Saber started laughing, understanding the joke. Gajeel had sung at the school's talent show and, well, ears started bleeding.
"I wanna know who has the worst voice now," Cana said as she stirred the punch with the ladle, a suspicious bottle sitting empty beside it.
"Yeah, let's have a sing off! Worst voice edition!" Gray said.
"How 'bout it babe?" Lisanna asked.
"I'm okay with it if it means I get to embarrass you," he teased.
"Gajeel?" Lisanna asked.
"Just cuz it's your birthday and I didn't get ya anything too nice," Gajeel said, stepping forward.
The group of high school students let out a big cheer as they scrambled to grab a seat, ready for the horrible sing off.
"You first," Gajeel grunted.
"Okay then," Sting said. "This one's for you babe!" he said pointing to Lisanna. The girl rolled her eyes and leaned over to the cake, sliding her finger across a piece, scraping the icing off and sticking it in her mouth.
Not even a full verse into the song and everyone had pained looks on their faces. Everyone's thought was the same: why did we decide to do this?
When Sting finished the song, which luckily was a shortened version, everyone clapped, more out of habit than anything.
"You sounded like a goose being stomped out by a horse," Cobra yelled from the back, causing everyone to laugh.
"Hey, aren't you supposed to be in detention there buddy," Sting replied, poking fun at the boy's punishment for throwing food at the principal.
Cobra scowled but said nothing. It was true, he skipped detention today because, even though he and Lisanna weren't best friends, he was invited and there was cake involved.
"Okay, Gajeel, your turn," Sting said as he went to Lisanna, picking her up from the chair and sitting down, placing her on his lap. She wrapped an arm around his neck and turned to face the dark skinned teenager.
Gajeel cleared his throat and started the song.
All smiles were wiped from the teenagers faces as the boy sung the song. It was no competition, Gajeel had the worse singing voice. And further proof of it was that he wasn't even half way through when the owner of the bowling alley burst through the door, the police on the phone as he asked who was being killed.
This elicited a laugh from everyone, a couple people were even on the floor rolling as the owner looked around in confusion, the operator yelling at him that it isn't wise to prank call the police.
"Okay, I think it's time for cake," Lisanna said, getting off of Sting's lap and grabbing the knife and a plate.
Everyone agreed and lined up to get a slice before scooting the chairs over to the present table.
…
After the presents were all opened, the bowling started. The small room had three lanes which was plenty for the group of a little over twenty kids. Lisanna even had Levy and Gajeel in the same lane, right after each other, much to her friend's displeasure.
"You'll thank me eventually," was Lisanna's reply. Leaning her head back from the control chair, she looked up at Sting, "You ready to lose the rematch?"
Sting leaned down and gave her a kiss, "Never."
It was a couple hours into the bowling match and a couple kids started heading home, their games finished. After saying goodbye and thanks, Lisanna headed to the bathroom before her turn came back around. Her suspicions that Cana spiked the drinks had grown stronger as she saw some of the remained students stagger. Drunk bowling was really fun to watch. But she also had to keep some from bowling because they risked hurting themselves.
Coming out of the bathroom, she ran, literally, into Natsu who was going into the men's room. The silver haired girl rubbed her nose, unsure of what to say besides sorry. The rivalry had more or less gone away, but that didn't make them friends. Not quite.
Natsu stumbled a little when Lisanna ran into him, clearly a little drunk. "Not a prob bday girl," he said, raising his glass to her. "Thanks for havin' me even though we aren't 'posed to like each other."
"I don't see why we can't put this rivalry behind us, enough to stop fighting anyway," Lisanna said.
"Erza won't be happy if I don't fight ya," he replied, taking a sip of his drink.
"My sister won't be happy either, but they graduated leaving the school to us," she replied. She was tired of all the fighting, and was a little relieved to find out the Mira had been unable to come to the party today or else the fighting would've continued.
"True dat," the pink haired boy said, raising his glass to her again. "Ya know, ya ain't that bad of a fighter," he said leaning forward toward her, close enough for Lisanna to smell the alcohol on his breath. Lisanna blushed a little, and hated herself for it. She didn't like this boy and was happy with Sting, so why did her cheeks say otherwise.
"Thanks," she said, trying to ease herself away from Natsu, but he shot his hand out to brace himself against the wall, trapping her. "I think you should stop drinking the punch," Lisanna said, gently taking the plastic cup from Natsu's hand.
"Probably," he replied with a hiccup, his head leaning against Lisanna's now as his eyes started to shut.
"You should probably sit down too," Lisanna said, seeing how wobbly the boy had become. How much punch did he drink? Then she remembered the drinking contest between him and Gajeel.
"After this," the boy said, his forehead still leaning against Lisanna's. Her cheeks started heating up again as he leaned closer, his lips brushing hers. With that, he leaned back against the opposite wall and slid down, his eyes shut completely.
Lisanna stared at him for a second before heading back out to the party to tell Lucy that Natsu was half passed out by the bathrooms. She was confused and angry and scared. She felt that stupid cliché spark when their lips brushed, something she didn't feel with Sting, no matter how much she wanted to. She hoped it was just the alcohol in their systems, but deep down she doubted it.