When the second day finished, it felt like a burden had been taken off his back. He didn't compete, but the relief of the stress and humiliation would be enough to fool him. They owed it all to her, and to her brother, that stole the probably most epic and desperate win of the year. At least if nobody topped it in in the following days. He still couldn't believe how that manboy had managed to steal the victory from an S-class mage he himself would have been anxious fighting. Even if he was disgusting.
How he had managed to accept so stupid a bet was even more incomprehensible.
He didn't want to think about than, not when it was no longer required. Not that the demon wouldn't have been able to remedy the situation for herself and her sister. But still, it made his stomach crawl to wonder about the matter.
She hadn't managed to make an even stupider bet when her turn came, but it came close. She didn't seem to be relieved when she joined them on their balcony. She looked awkward and her cheeks were flushed, but it probably had more to do with the tiny outfits she had been wearing in front of the whole crowd for the past half hour. Not that she was shy. There was a time he had seen her wearing much more daring in the middle of a less friendly audience.
He couldn't understand why she had accepted that idiotic contest to begin with. Not even now, lying on his bed in their tiny little team room, watching her from the corner of his eye as she chatted along with the water mage. He didn't understand what they were saying because the music he blasted in his ears was too loud, but from the sparkling eyes hanging on her every word, it could only be praise and admiration.
He didn't comprehend it. She could have just ended the fight from the first minute without needing to go through the whole thing. And wasn't that a little wicked of her to have waited the very last moment, once her opponent had gotten herself in her humiliating setting, before revealing they had never been playing on the same level ?
He didn't understand how her brother could have made such a disgusting bet, but he could certainly imagine she never even thought she could lose hers.
Maybe she felt insulted to have been paired with someone that much weaker than her. He would have been, but he never would have stretch it on like she did, and he wasn't known to be that respectful of other people's feelings. Not that she would have likely lost the contest , but maybe that was his own vote on the matter rather than the judges'. Considering the events of the day before weren't ingrained in their minds as they were in his.
She had been ignoring him since then, and he didn't mind. Well, he did. He minded a lot. He really hated it when she pretended like nothing had ever happened between them and they were just two forced teammates happy to be working together for the greater good, but he never expected anything else. He knew she liked her own life private, even when things were less complicated. To be truthful, he didn't feel comfortable making it public either. Especially when it felt so weird and hesitant.
He couldn't help watching her though, couldn't help noticing the beauty mark on her shoulder that he had forgotten was there and that only appeared when she took all her hair to one side. He did really like the way her skin moved around her shoulder blades, but in his current state he seemed to like the movement of every inch of skin he managed to catch.
He knew she knew very well that he was watching, didn't show it. How could she, when there were two other team members talking and going though their stuff at the same time, preparing to join the ruckus and chants of victory that had already started downstairs ? He knew she couldn't look at him with a knowing glare, or even blush at his insisting glances, but he very well hoped she felt it in her stomach and lower, and prayed she wouldn't make it too hard to catch a few moments with her later.
Although with her being one of the stars of the day, and probably the only one standing, since her brother had many recovery days in front of him, he very hardly doubted he would manage a single second alone. Even if she wished it. Even if it was just to know where they stood at the moment. But she would not even look at him.
That's why he got startled when she said something towards him, but he didn't quite hear it and had to take a headphone off with the most uninterested face he could manage to make out.
"Are you going down with us ?" She repeated with that nice voice of hers. The one he couldn't quite decide if he liked or not, definitely disliked when it was intended for him. But with the water mage still patiently waiting behind her, he couldn't quite comment for the moment. He didn't want to hurt her either. Nor could he say the dirty thought that came through his mind as she repeated those words.
"Is there going to be one of those every night ?" He asked in that uninterested tone of his.
He heard Gajeel sneer at his last remark as the dragon slayer went through the door to go down the stairs, but he ignored it because he didn't really mean it to be funny.
"I'm afraid so." She laughed as she got her shoes on and got up. "If they can find a way to party after a defeat, nobody could stop them after so many victories."
She smiled then, as her eyes were still fixed on his, and it truly felt like a little bit of pride shined out of them. It did do something to his stomach. He sighed in defeat before jumping to his feet to follow the two women. He wished he could stay here in the silence, but when she made such an argument to invite him to her victory lap, there was no way to deny her the pleasure of his presence. At least he hoped it was a pleasure.
After they went downstairs, he suddenly lost track of her. He looked away at the sound of his team calling for him, but when he looked back, it seemed like she had disappeared in the same breath. After all, the tavern was filled with drunk members, happy cheers and some spectators that wanted to get a peek of some of the winners of the day. It was hard to keep track of anybody. Even her smell seemed to disappear in the crowd, and he knew it pretty well.
He gave up. She would probably turn up again, and he certainly wouldn't find any time alone with her in the next hour. Instead, he found the Thunder Legion, which was a lot less complicated to spot, since they were making big signs with their arms to invite him at their table. Ever was missing though, he noticed as he took place in the corner. He wasn't a big fan of people bumping in his chair every five minutes. But Cana was with them, still a bit hungover from the day before, but still drinking, along with the youngest Strauss, that seemed to have taken her own interest in his team this week.
"Have you heard then, Laxus ?" Bickslow jumped to ask him with a big smile, as the dragon slayer was barely getting his beer from the freshly poured ones on the table.
"Heard what ?" He looked at Freed, because he was usually a lot more concise with information. He appreciated that.
The rune mage pointed at the brunette before answering.
"Cana's been chosen as your team's reserve member for tomorrow."
He looked at her, and she answered with a great smile and a gesture to clink their glasses. Which he did. Because why not ?
"What happened to stellar blue guy ?" He didn't mean to be sarcastic but there was something that ticked him off about the former mage saint he couldn't quite retain it.
Especially when his teammates never missed an occasion to laugh at his jokes. Only the white-haired girl rolled her eyes, and he could almost recognize the way her sister would have rolled them.
"He asked the master to get replaced. He said it was the best way to achieve what he came for." The card mage answered with a beaming smirk. "Also, I think he's still a bit hungover from last night."
He sneered silently. It made sense. He didn't know exactly what the man had come here to do, nor what he had agreed to with his grandfather, but it was surely difficult to accomplish stuck in their balcony all day. Since his cover was established now, he could take advantage of going freely about the arena and the whole town.
"Well you better not fool around if you're called on to fight, I'm warning you." He grumbled as he took a sip.
She laughed, as well as Bickslow and the take over mage, but Freed did frown at that last remark. Not that he would apologize for it, even if it wasn't the nicest thing he could have said to welcome her into his ranks. But it was hard to be nice when you wanted to win.
"Well I won't reach Mira's level of efficiency, but I'll do my best !" She went on smiling as she finished her glass.
He smirked then as the others laughed in excitement. He would have noted that Mirajane had spent a good twenty minutes fooling around before getting efficient, but it was best he kept that one to himself. If he didn't want people misinterpreting and telling on him. He didn't want to spoil the happy chatters that had started either.
"Did you know ?" Freed asked then as the others chatted away. "That she was planning to make it a fight in the end ?"
He didn't. He was a bit hurt she didn't tell him. If only to answer the puzzled look he had given her when the organizers came to ask her if she would agree to a modelling contest, only wondered about the rule book he had been reading in the past few days. If she even planned it from the beginning.
"Well, she did ask if there were any rules that got cancelled for her, but not much else." He replied as the rune mage smiled. And he almost did himself after finishing his own glass.
If only he didn't spot her at this very moment.
He saw her going up the stairs. Alone. Even if it hadn't been an hour since they had joined the party. She wasn't drunk. He could tell because the look she had in her eyes was far from the dopy one she had the day before. But she did look at him, a bit longer than just to spot him. Just one second longer before disappearing in the corridor. With the same smile plastered on her face as any other day.
So he knew he had to follow her. Or maybe that was his own desire talking. But whatever it was, he only waited two more minutes before getting up to go for the stairs. Despite the two men immediately noticing and trying to make him stay. So he only told them he was going for a smoke. And they seemed to settle after he assured them he would come back shortly.
They could be clingy sometimes.
He found her on the balcony on the third floor, sitting on the ground with her feet dangling in the air as he saw her bring the last drops of her glass to her lips. He didn't say anything at first, only approached in expectation, attentive to the moment she was going to turn around to smile at him with the ever so same grin. He was more than prepared to tell her how much he hated when she treated him like any other random.
Sadly for his inebriated need for frustration, she didn't turn around but stayed the same way, staring at the stary sky while he took place against the wall and got a cigarette out, just to give him something to do with his hands, or calm the tension that had came with their imagined fallout. The only thing that changed was the knowing smirk she had now. Maybe he was a bit too nervous when it came to her.
It was tensed, too tensed in comparison with yesterday's events. The alcohol had helped a lot in that, but now that the effects had worn out and that any other presence was gone from around them, only the tension stayed. It wasn't good tension, not the kind that announced extraordinary chemistry and better things to come, but the kind that froze your veins and made centimeters apart feel like meters. The kind that rendered any contact impossible. Like it was inappropriate.
There were some days he didn't recognize her. Some days he wanted to shake that body off until the soul that had taken it hostage flew away to hell. But he knew it was the real thing and not some conspiracy theory. He had thought for a while that it was his grandfather that had filled her head with nonsense to absorb her into his disgusting idea of a guild. Long ago.
He knew a lot better now.
He knew she wasn't that different from before. Even if she took one extreme to another, it was just a different kind of crazy. He liked the crazy in her, but the one she had before used to make sense to him. Even if others usually saw some weird gothic girl that could go psycho at any given moment, he usually understood everything she did. Even when she was being stupid. Even if everyone thought her nuts, it all made sense to him.
Now she just didn't make sense to him.
People had gotten used to it. He hadn't. People didn't mind if she did a modelling contest for half an hour and then demoned out her enemy in the last seconds. They thought it was cool and nothing else. He thought it was cool but inexplicable.
"Why did you do it ?"
He thought he'd just ask. Because he was tired of the silence and her ignoring him. Because he was tired of staring at her like some stared at a master's painting without any clue to understand the meaning. Her eyes did look mesmerizing. In the feeble orange light given out by the tired lamps, they only seemed bluer than before. And he never thought that possible. There was something hypnotizing about it.
"Do what ?"
They looked at him. And he tried no to get too tense when they stared and seemed like they were piercing his body to dig for his soul.
"The contest." He tried to explain himself. "Why didn't you just end it in the first minute instead of stringing it along for ages ?"
She looked a bit oblivious, like she didn't quite understand the question, but only for a second before giggling. The sight of her dimples somehow made the weight of her eyes easier to bear as she only glared at him with that mysterious tone she liked to give herself sometimes.
"And where would be the fun in that ?" She almost whispered.
That mischievous air did something to his stomach. He thought about ending the conversation right here for much more interesting odds, but he wasn't going to give up just like that. He needed to explain it, although it was hard to get his eyes away from her lips at that very moment.
"So you did it for fun ?"
He tried glancing away, but his stare was only met with black sky and weak stars that seemed pale in comparison to the other things he could look at. But he still needed to understand what fun had anything to do with the subject.
"I think a beauty contest is more fun than two people pounding themselves until one's out, don't you ?"
He laughed them, with a snarky tone that sounded meaner than he had meant. He really didn't get her at all. He was a man, he could understand the fun in looking at women in magazines, but if he had them in an arena, he wouldn't want them to pose. Maybe not everyone shared the same kinks as him.
"Not for one second, no." He smirked.
She smiled too, like that answer didn't really surprise her. It probably didn't. He hadn't changed that much compared to her. She knew him a lot more than he did her. Maybe that was his problem. Maybe he didn't like feeling naked when she felt hidden by so many coats.
"Even if the fight wouldn't last long ?" She whispered again, like she feared someone would hear her.
He smiled at that one. Because her fight wouldn't have lasted long. Certainly not long enough to be fun for anybody. Maybe that was why she did it, maybe the element of surprise was the only way she had found to make it into something worthwhile. That he could maybe understand. Someday.
"At least it would have been over quicker."
Because he didn't like pretending, and he certainly wouldn't have liked someone pretending to be on his level before revealing to be much stronger. He didn't know about honour codes when it came to championship battles, but he knew about this rule.
"But it would have been a lot less fun." She turned her eyes back to the sky, probably pretending not to be too bothered by the smoke that came in her direction with the wind.
He knew she hated that smell.
"So you had fun ?" He tried to insist, because it was probably the only way to explain what felt like an incredible and embarrassing waste of time to him.
"Not really, no. It was a bit embarrassing, to be honest." She answered without hesitation, but not glancing at him to meet the taken aback face he suddenly gave her.
Now she didn't even make sense anymore.
"Then why do it ?" He asked.
He sounded a bit angry when he said that. He knew because she looked right back at him with an amused grin. Because she knew she was screwing with his mind and it was funny to her. The way his eyebrows twitched in desperation for some explanation. She was aggravating sometimes.
"Maybe I didn't want to fight." She almost whispered again.
Well, that was a completely different question. Not that she should even be on this team if she wasn't resolved to fight other people to win.
"But you ended up fighting anyway." He replied too quickly, like he wanted to make her see that she wasn't making any sense.
Maybe she did, and he just couldn't quite grasp what she was trying to explain, but it felt so contradictory in his mind. He tried to calm himself down and took some time to blow some smoke away while she glanced at him for a while and shivered a little when some cold air blew by.
"It didn't feel like I had any other choice in the end."
She smiled at that one, weakly, glaring back at the dark to avoid looking at his face. She seemed a bit defeated and lost. And it bothered him so much he had nothing better to say.
"Not ready to go nude, huh ?" He snarked.
He said that to make her laugh, and it worked. He didn't glance in case she looked at him in rage, and he didn't feel like standing behind his own poor joke. If it was one. He heard her giggle and saw the smile in the corner of his eyes. It did feel good. Like the cold that once froze up his muscles warmed up for a bit.
"Shut up." She ordered.
He smiled, because he liked when she swore. A few moments passed and the silence didn't bother him some much anymore. He almost appreciated the cold air that blew on the back of his neck, if he wasn't so focused on his next question.
"Why didn't you just say no to that bet ?"
He said it as it came to him, but he knew the answer before she said a word. Because he wouldn't have either.
"Says the man that once paid me a year's mortgage." He almost got startled by how close she suddenly got, so close he could feel the heat emanating from her.
She took his cigarette from his hand as she replied, because she was the only one that had the nerve to do that. Maybe because she was the only one he wouldn't fry for it. He pretended he didn't notice when her fingers slid on his. It was almost smoked out and he thought she was going to throw it from the balcony to punish him for blowing his smoke in her face, but she brought it to her lips and took a deep breath as he almost felt frozen in time.
He laughed then. Because she had some nerve, and because he had indeed paid her that for a bet. And it was stupid too. Not stupider than the thing she would have had to do if he had won, but pretty stupid too. Not that she would ever tell the others how she had managed to pay out her mortgage so fast. Even with spending that whole year on S-class jobs and rarely taking time off between them. Even if she managed to take some time to stalk him in-between.
Back when she worried about where he was, and what he was doing.
Maybe he should have appreciated it more.
"But why go along with the contest to begin with if you weren't sure you would win in the end ?"
That was the thing that bothered him most. Along with the mischievous grin she gave him as she finished the cigarette and took it out on the ground. They were a team, and they had a job to do, which was winning for the guild, which was weird enough coming from him. So why would she ever take the chance to lose when she could win so easily ?
"Because if there had been a chance I could get through it without fighting. I wanted to take it."
He didn't know what to say then. Maybe it was the biggest thing that he couldn't quite understand about her yet. Why she hated fighting so much. Because out of the whole thing, it was the biggest thing that set her apart from the girl he thought he knew. And it bothered terribly. It bothered him even more because he didn't know if he liked it or not. And because there was nothing he could say back to that.
"So you didn't think there was any chance for you to win that last category, huh ?"
He said it with irony, but he knew she knew he was half serious about that question.
"Not everyone has your kinks." She snarked with her ever so sweet voice that was more like a bully machine.
He laughed again. Maybe it was a bit true. He did have a thing for the claws.
"Besides, you don't really think she would have suggested that bet if she weren't sure that it would give her the victory ?"
She did have him there. He hadn't thought about it like that. But wasn't it a bit narcissistic to say that the only way she could have lost a beauty contest was if it meant having her in the magazine ? Maybe she hadn't changed that much. She still had the ego. And more brain than him.
"So it was a last resort for you ?"
At least, it could make sense in that way.
"More like a twist."
She said that one with that playful voice of hers. The one he couldn't help but find cute. So he didn't look at her because he didn't want to meet those eyes that definitely felt playful too. He still had some things that needed clearing up before he could get distracted by her.
"So avoiding one minute of fighting was better than going through the whole thing when it wasn't even fun for you ?"
She almost looked disappointed in the corner of his eye. Probably because he insisted on staring away when the sky couldn't be so interesting to him. Because he insisted with the serious talk, and he could tell that she was growing annoyed with it. Not that he cared.
"The public had fun."
She was serious back again. Giving up on getting anything playful out of him. Maybe that was the best way to get something truly honest out of her. Because he hadn't thought of that either.
"And that was worth it ?"
He couldn't relate to it though. Not even when he glanced at her to find some hidden answer in her face that looked a lot more focused all of a sudden. He could never do something like it for the amusement of other people, but it felt a bit insulting to say.
"It's a spectacle." She replied before looking away, like she couldn't quite sustain his gaze. "If the public's fun wasn't worth it, we could just have it out in the Council's gardens and publish the results in the Sorcerer's magazine."
She meant it to be funny, but it didn't sound so absurd to him.
"Maybe it would be better." He only replied.
She only frowned at that one, disappointed at the lack of reaction from her joke.
"Not if the point is to get jobs back on our board."
She had a point there. Fighting in public was definitely better for publicity, even if they won the title.
"Well I'm not taking my clothes off for that."
She giggled at that one. And he did a bit too. But ever so slightly, and it didn't feel so cold anymore. Even if he could start hearing some familiar voices coming up the stairs, which were clearly going to make the air a lot more tensed than it was now.
"You should." She giggled. And he didn't know if he was supposed to feel flattered. "But it's a good thing for the guild that I'm willing."
He smiled too, but the voices were getting closer, and he suddenly wondered if he hadn't wasted a whole evening talking about that fight rather than talking about what truly interested him.
"I promise you when I fight, I'll make sure it's impressive enough of a spectacle."
She laughed again, but it was interrupted by the sound of her sister and Cana opening the door and calling for her to get back down with them. They did look a bit surprised when they saw them both on the balcony, but they didn't say much more than repeating the same question to him. They didn't to care that much when he nodded his head in refusal as they watched the takeover mage get up with the glass she had brought over.
"I have no doubt about that." She whispered.
She looked at him then, before walking away to join her sister and friend, with that calm gentle smile of hers, and the eyes that pierced right through his skull. And it did something to his stomach, in the good way. The way that told him that maybe he could get used to that smile. Maybe he liked it. Even when it was meant for him. Especially if it was meant for him.
He only wished he hadn't wasted his entire allowed time with those stupid questions.
Thanks for reading ! Please leave a comment, if you want me to have the strength to continue.