Hearing the tell-tale sound of a motorcycle pulling onto their street and coming to a halt, Lily grimaced and tapped the bar in front of him, causing the shop's only customer to lift her head, puzzled.
He jerked his chin towards the door. "Storm's about to blow in. Be ready."
Not a moment later, the door slammed open, ushering in a whirl of cold, wet air and a very annoyed Gajeel, laden with bags and cursing about storms that came out of nowhere. Lily watched, wondering where his favorite coat had gone – amusement growing when a certain bookworm came out from behind his stubborn nephew, revealing the answer to that.
Still grumbling about the weather, Gajeel did his best to ignore Lil's sudden devious grin. Whole damn town was scheming something. Instead he glanced back at the shrimp, once again assuring himself that she hadn't blown away in the storm.
Levy suppressed a giggle. Gajeel when wet really did remind her of a cat – prickly and irritable, giving the whole world the stink eye. He grumbled and headed towards the bar, pierced eyebrows shooting up at the sight of the woman seated there, papers spread across the surface and a steaming mug of something before her. Levy ignored the tiny bit of jealousy she felt when Juvia beamed, waving and uttering a cheerful, "Gajeel! Oh, and Levy too! Juvia couldn't see you past Gajeel." He responded with a good natured snort. "Are you sure it wasn't just the rain in your eyes, water woman?" he shot back, dumping his bags on the bar top.
Juvia laughed at Levy's confusion, patting the seat next to her in an invitation as Lily and Gajeel began to unpack the shopping bags. "Juvia's sorry. Juvia and Gajeel are old friends. She would have mentioned it that first night, her at the bar, but…" She shrugged, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Natsu had already contributed plenty of… interesting reminiscing." Levy almost groaned, remembering, before the full significance of Juvia's sentence hit her. "Wait, does that mean you're in on this LA secret as well?"
Juvia laughed. "It's not really a secret, per se… it's just that none of us were exactly the best role models." She half turned, yelling towards the back, "Isn't that right, Mister Badass-Black-Steel?" He poked his head out of the back room, scowling. "I don't want to hear that from the gloomy rain girl." Levy grinned at Lily, who was arranging the shelves behind the bar while chuckling. The bickering betrayed that the two had obviously been great friends.
Suddenly, Juvia's face fell. Lacing her fingers together, she stared at them for a long moment before uttering a quiet "Hey, Gajeel."
"Yeah?"
"Do you remember your promise?" Levy struggled to keep her jaw from dropping. She didn't think she'd ever heard Juvia speaking without her quirk.
For a while, the only response from the back room was a long silence. A quick glance told Levy that Lily was no more enlightened than she as to what they were talking about.
Eventually there came a heavy sigh. He came out, hands shoved in his pockets, sad resignation written all over his form. "Yeah. I remember."
Lily cleared his throat. "Not to interrupt, but…"
Juvia sighed herself, filled with old memories.
"Gajeel promised Juvia that when he was able to smile on his own again, he would tell her what happened to make him so dark and angry."
Okay, so I've left this as a cliffhanger (I could have done this and the next piece together but it would have taken forever so I decided to split it) but a good number of you probably know what's happening next if you hung on past my lack of updating. Yeeeep, I'm bringing the feels back.
Well, except in a place that actual kinda makes a bit more sense instead of just, "Hey! You just learned he's actually sticking around and meeting him properly! Here, have sad backstory cause the author is a lazy POS that can't write anything other than sad, descriptive prose particularly well and so decided to just toss some of that in instead of fumbling around with more awkward badly written dialogue!"
Ahem. Anywho. COMMUNICATE TO ME YOUR LOVE AND/OR ANGER. Thankies~
