2. Library Research

It took him about a week to realize that Juvia had more or less decided that his room was her room too.

While Gajeel didn't mind (much – Juvia was always up for a spar) her making his room her second residence had some unintended consequences.

One of them – beyond all the extra paper and the fact that his food started tasting like ink – was the discovery that Juvia liked reading. A lot. Out of idle curiosity, Gajeel asked what she was reading and she told him: "Romance!" Hearts fluttered in front of her eyes. Gajeel rolled his.

Then, of course, she had to add:

"For Gray-sama."

Now the mental images that that conjured was enough to put a guy off his supper.

One day – because she'd just left it there and not because he was invading her privacy or anything – he picked up one of the books, just because he was… well, not concerned, but a little curious about what she was reading.

After the first three pages he decided that he needed to stage an intervention.

Browsing through the library's catalogue of lovey-dovey literature was not exactly Gajeel's favourite pastime. In fact, were he to grade his pastimes, just entering the library would probably rank somewhere between 'losing to Salamander' and 'stabbing himself in the eye.'

This was a lot less serious than it sounded since, like the rest of him, his eye could become hard enough to weather all but the sharpest of blades and 'losing to Salamander' implied a fight in the first place.

Still, it was pretty lousy all things considered.

Juggling a dozen hardbound tomes, Gajeel tried to discretely ponder over their titles. It was a task made all the more difficult by the fact that most were neon pink, red, scarlet or had hearts on the side and he was browsing in a section usually frequented by girls less than half his height and a quarter of his weight.

Or so he assumed. If he found out that any other type of person regularly indulged in this sort of madness he would have to go find a publishing company and pull a Natasu on them.

The things he did for his friends.

'Guiche's Guide to Romance' boldly proclaimed a garish pink tome that smelled faintly of roses. Ugh. Juvia would probably love it. He put it in the 'in case of emergency' pile. 'The Springfield Guide to Managing Your Harem while you Save the World' probably wasn't relevant. He shook his head and put it aside. 'Takamichi's Guide to Fate and Friendship' looked girly but a quick lookthrough revealed that it was quite appropriate. Definitely a keeper. 'Anna Karenina's Guide to a Happy Family' sounded like it would encourage Juvia to start broaching the topic of holy matrimony before she ever got a date. Toss. 'The H-tc-h-er's Gu-de' didn't seem relevant but he thumbed it open anyway.

It was a dictionary of some sort. Out of curiosity he opened it up. Under the word 'love' he found the rather useful descriptor 'avoid if at all possible.'

Gajeel grinned despite himself. Damn straight.

He would later blame that moment of humour as the reason why his situational awareness happened to lapse a bit.

"Gajeel?" A timid, familiar-sounding voice said from directly behind him.

Gajeel didn't throw his hands up and scream in surprise but he did jump up a bit and knock whoever was leaning over his shoulder down onto the ground.

"Owch owch owch," the same someone muttered from behind.

Gajeel slowly turned.

"Ummm. H-hey," one blue-haired Levy McGarden said timidly. Books lay scattered about besides her, all of them with long-ass titles and bland covers. She hurriedly started picking them up. "Gajeel! I didn't know that you-"

Just about any other hot-blooded male that composed Fairy Tail (which was… well, all of them) would have probably fainted dead away at the thought of being caught looking through self-help books involving romance, regardless of their excuses. That or gone on a rampage that would have burned down half the library and left the other half a smoking crater of wreck and ruin.

Actually, come to think of it, most of the hot-blooded females (which was, more or less, all of them) in the Guild probably would have done the same, intentionally or not.

Gajeel was not anybody though.

"Aha! You." He said, pointing a victorious finger in Levy's direction.

"M-me?" Levy asked, pointing a rather slimmer digit at herself, hair falling over her shoulders as the bandana she'd used to hold it up slipped its knot.

He picked up her books with the grace and efficiency he used in battle and stacked them up. Then he picked up the books he'd gathered and plunked them onto the ground in front of her. Levy's eyes widened as she caught a few titles and for some reason she blushed. She looked like she wasn't sure if she should laugh or look for the hidden camera so in the end she just blinked at him.

"I need help," Gajeel stated seriously as he used the excuse of her presence to get up and stretch his legs a bit. "Juvia's getting ideas."

Levy looked confused so Gajeel found it in himself to explain. "She's reading books."

"R-really?" Levy said, not losing the 'there's definitely a camera around here, ha-ha' look from her face. "Th-that's a good thing though, r-right?"

Gajeel shook his head mournfully. Poor, impressionable females. "You know that stalking thing she does with that punk ice mage?"

Levy hesitantly nodded her head.

"She got that from a book too. Dusk or something, it's called. Vampires and blah blah. I think she's trying to the vampire." He shuddered and held up his selection of literature. "I'm staging an intervention. But I'm no good at this book crap."

Levy mouthed the word 'Dusk?' curiously before her eyes widened in sympathy.

"Oh! Oh dear." Then she nodded her head more briskly and re-centred the glasses on her face as she tied her hair up again with her bandana. "I'll help!"

For some reason, looking into that earnest face, Gajeel was reminded of just how much he owed Fairy Tail.

"Thanks," Gajeel said, a little humbled. But only a little. He was still the goddamn Iron Dragon Slayer. "I appreciate it."

"Why did you pick this one?" Levy asked, pointing to 'Takamichi's Guide to Fate and Friendship.'

Gajeel flipped the book open and stabbed a finger into an illustration where a young mage was hitting another mage with concentrated apocalypse beams. The apocalypse beams were bright pink. Probably a printing error. "That is friendship," he said, nodding his head vigorously.

"Gajeel… this book tells you to hit your enemies until they're so out of it, they think they you're friends," Levy told him hesitantly. "That doesn't sound very, um, friendly."

"So? That sounds exactly like-"

He paused and tried to get his brain started. It fizzled a bit.

"My god, that's exactly what that Gray bastard did to her," Gajeel said, looking at the book with a newfound respect. Such potent insight!

He happily ignored the fact that Natsu had technically done the same to him. That wasn't the same. At all. Heck, it'd been the old man that had invited him in not-

Gajeel ordered his brain to shut up before it could go any farther. Along that road lay madness.

In her head, Levy was also drawing unfortunate parallels. They ran in a different direction though.

Levy put the book aside. "I'm not sure that Juvia-san attacking Gray out of the blue would help her that much," she finally said. "And I don't think Juvia fell in love with Gray because he… beat her up."

The last words were said with some distaste.

Gajeel mulled the idea in his head for a bit and then conceded that Juvia probably would try to commit ritual suicide before attacking her precious Gray-sama. Also, he wasn't sure that friendship and love were the same, anyway.

And if friendship was just Gray beating Juvia up instead of a mutual smackdown he'd gut Gray himself.

Man, this was complicated. Maybe Levy was right. Love had to be more than a good fight. If that were the case then he and Natsu were-

He ordered his brain to shut up again.

In fact, when it refused he calmly walked away and started bashing his head into the nearest wall. By the end of it, the library could have made a perfect mould of his face from his efforts.

"Alright, so maybe it isn't quite the right book," Gajeel grumped after he'd come back from his sudden need to assault the library walls. Bits of plaster rained down from his hair. "But come on, the stalking thing can't be good either."

Levy admitted this was so with a nod of her head. "But at least it's harmless?" She offered tentatively.

Gajeel shrugged. "Only because ice boy has the situation awareness of a dead frog and Juvia thinks that's how lovey-dovey crap works." Pause. "And she wouldn't do anything."

He mentally tacked on 'hopefully' to the end of that sentence because Juvia could be unpredictable like that.

"But she- she hasn't been in love before?" Levy didn't sound judgmental, just… curious. Sort of.

All right, maybe a little surprised.

"Nobody wanted to hang around with someone with that little rain cloud of doom hovering around her." Gajeel confessed. He shot the word mage a dark look. "Don't tell anyone. She's still touchy about stuff like that."

"Oh! I won't." Juvia promised. She paused, rifling through another one of his selections but apparently her curiosity nagged at her enough to broach the topic again. "But… what about you?"

"What about me?" Gajeel asked, one eyebrow rising higher than the other. "I got better things to do than chase skirts-"

"No! I mean-" Levy colored prettily and Gajeel decided that that part of him that had found her pretty had better back the hell off, "-aren't you nice to her? How come she didn't, um, fall for you?"

She was playing with her fingers – lacing and the unlacing them - and Gajeel found the display distracting, somehow.

"We're…" and because he wasn't a sap and it was such a sappy word he only extracted it with the utmost difficulty, "friends. But…" He tried to vocalize what it was like being part of Phantom Lord and failed. Not because he couldn't but because he felt… ashamed, somehow. It was just so different from Fairy Tail. "Well, put it this way. Phantom Lord was made of a bunch of freaks. Me and her, we were the freaks of the freaks. I ate nails for breakfast and kicked ass. She stormed into places. Literally." He shook his head. "We just… clicked together. But we weren't… lovey-dovey or anything."

Actually, at one point in their lives, quite the opposite.

"Plus, she's pretty strong." He said, brightening. "Our powers don't really mesh so our battles take forever until one of us literally just falls down exhausted but there was this one time where she actually beat me by making herself steam hot and then go just above freezing and my dragonscale armor actually cracked and it was like hell yeah finally someone with a little guts-"

Levy couldn't help herself and giggled.

Gajeel blinked in mid-gesture and gave her a questioning look.

"I… you… you kind of remind me of-" and then she stopped, adroitly reasoning that certain comparisons to other Fairy Tail mages might be taken the wrong way and changed tactics. "You really like fighting, don't you?"

"No shit," Gajeel laughed. Some distant part of him wondered how it was possible that they could be having such a conversation after what he'd done. A different part of him told it to shut up. "What, you thought I only liked whaling on weaklings? Give me some credit, geez."

"No, I-" Levy said awkwardly. "I was just, kinda, um-"

Gajeel was distracted by a familiar smell. Salty and warm and humid. Like what he imagined the ocean to smell like on a sunny day.

It couldn't be-

And yet it was.

"Gajeel!" Juvia said cheerfully from across the room. There was the pitter-patter of running feet and then someone glomping him from behind. Gajeel briefly regarded the accumulated books that he had collected and had a minor panic attack.

"Juvia looked all over but didn't see Gajeel anywhere and thought maybe Gajeel had gone to the library! And here Gajeel is!"

Gajeel very discretely handled the problem of having Juvia figure out what he was up by making his hair wrap itself around her head in metallic strands.

"Gajeel," Juvia pouted from within the prison or hair, "Juvia can't see. And ick, Gajeel's hair has plaster in it. It's making Juvia's nose itchy."

Gajeel made frantic motions to hide the books and after a moment Levy nodded in comprehension and pushed them underneath the shelves.

One of them nearly tipped over but whatever.

Juvia – deciding that she didn't like the plaster or the smell of his hair or something – shifted to water and got out, leaving a trailing moisture that reminded Gajeel that he'd better go take a shower after all this was over.

"H-Hey!" Gajeel said awkwardly, standing in front of the shelf that was threatening to tip over. "N-nice to see you!"

"Y-yeah!" Levy said, adding her own (far less considerable bulk) to shield the groaning shelf. "Nice to see you, Juvia-chan."

Actors, they were not.

Juvia looked at the two of them suspiciously.

"Gajeel and Levy aren't hiding something from Juvia, are they?" She asked, putting her hands on her hips.

Gajeel looked desperately for an out and contemplated telling her the truth.

Juvia, I think that that Gray bastard (not that he deserves you) is going to be creeped out by your lovey-dovey whatevers so I think you should read this instead! Ta-dah!

Yeah, that'd go over well.

"So, um, why were you looking for me?" Gajeel asked instead.

"Juvia has found an interesting A-rank request!" Juvia said excitedly, thrusting a notice into his face. When Gajeel saw the reward he grinned. About time they got another A-ranker.

"That's awes-" He began to say. She snatched the notice away and shook a fist at the two of them.

"But don't think you can trick Juvia! Juvia knows that Gajeel is switching topics! Juvia smells lies and…" she sniffed her nose in confusion. "Roses?"

Gajeel cursed that stupid book by Guiche. And then Guiche himself.

Juvia got a curious look in her eye and then switched her gaze from Gajeel to Levy. There was a minute of awkward silence before she nodded to herself several times.

"Juvia sees… Juvia sees," The mage said mysteriously before she patted Gajeel on the shoulder.

"So Levy is why Gajeel is here?" She said, asking him but looking at her.

Warning klaxons buzzed in Gajeel's brain informing him that this question was more than what it seemed.

Bah.

"Yes! Exactly!" Gajeel said, capitalizing on whatever weird misunderstanding was going through her head. "For Levy's- uh-"

"-research!" Levy finished off for him. "He's uh – helping me with – uh -"

"Dragon slayer stuff." Gajeel said because there wasn't really anything else he was good for. Well, that and music. "Super boring. Har har har. Har."

"Well, Juvia will leave you two to your, ahem, research." Juvia said. "Gajeel and Juvia must meet later to discuss request, however." She turned away... and then turned back to them. She looked slightly apologetic. "Juvia forgot! Levy's two husbands are looking for her."

"My-" Levy said.

"Her-" Gajeel said.

"-what?" They said together.

"Levy's husbands." Juvia said, nodding sagely. At their identical looks of confusion the water mage sighed and explained: "The one with the hat that likes running and the one with the funny hair that does the plant magic. They are looking for Levy." Juvia pursed her cheeks. "Are they alright with you two doing research? Juvia knows Gajeel is very strong, but Gajeel got hurt by them once and didn't defend himself. Juvia doesn't like that. Not one bit."

Her tone carried a hint of menace to it.

Gajeel hadn't the faintest idea how Juvia had learned about that time Droy and Jet had ganged up on him and he'd let them slug him.

"Umm… They should be fine with…" Levy said slowly. Then she blinked. "They're not my husbands,"

"Boyfriends?"

"No." Levy squeaked, her blush crawling down her back. "We're just partners!" She said defensively.

Huh.

"Well, Juvia supposes that whatever research Levy does with Gajeel doesn't matter then." Juvia said, nodding to herself. "Have fun! Stay safe! Juvia needs to do her own research now. Very important."

She ran off.

The two of them looked at each other and laughed awkwardly.

Then the shelf they'd stuffed the books under collapsed.

"Here," Levy said later, passing him an old, tattered book after they'd finished repairing that particular corner of the library. "Maybe this will help."

"Sense and Sensibility," Gajeel read after he'd accepted the tome. "By A Lady." He looked it over a few times but couldn't find the author's biography. "Man, that must suck."

"Huh?" Levy asked, looking hurt.

"To have a name like A Lady. It'd be like, I dunno, being called 'A Man.' There'd be a guy going 'Man, I think-' and you'd be turning your head left and right-"

Levy giggled. Gajeel looked at her suspiciously.

"It's – heh – it's just a pseudonym," she finally explained. "It's actually by a very well known author. Even if she's not the best, she's still my favourite," Levy said, nodding vigorously.

"Oh. Well. Alright," Gajeel said, looking dubious as he accepted the book. "Thanks, this means a lot-"

The two stooges that hung about the word mage had the ill timing to show up right about then.

"AHHHH!" Shouted one. Jet. Or maybe Droy. Gajeel wasn't too clear on their names. They looked rather exhausted. Red lines ran through their too-bright eyes.

"LEVY-CHAN!" Shouted the other.

"YOU!" They both shouted at once, accusing fingers pointed straight at Gajeel's head. He batted the fingers away and growled.

"Guys," Levy said, looking a little embarrassed. "Gajeel-kun just wanted-"

"YOU MONSTER!" They both cried, sliding in front of Levy protectively. Gajeel had to admire the coordination it took to do that in these cramped environs. Clearly they had been dragged into the library quite a few times themselves and knew how to navigate the shelves. "TRYING TO CORRUPT LEVY-CHAN." They accused.

"Um. What?" Gajeel asked in confusion.

Levy, who was a good foot or two shorter than anyone else currently present in the conversation by grabbing both of her partners by their ears and dragging them down to her height. Her face was bright red. "Don't worry about these guys, Gajeel, I'll get them sorted out. Good luck with your search!"

Then she dragged them away, telling them not to shout in the library.

Gajeel sighed.

He considered the book.

"How did Gajeel's research with Levy-chan go?" Juvia asked, sitting on his couch as she penned something-or-another to Gray.

Gajeel didn't bother pointing out that Juvia had a perfectly serviceable dorm room off at the mysterious Fairy Hills dormitory.

"We were interrupted," Gajeel said before tossing the book Levy had suggested at the water mage. It bounced off her head before smacking down on the paper she was penning.

Rubbing her head, Juvia picked it up. "What's this?"

"S'book." Gajeel said. "I saw you reading something else the other day and thought you'd like some, uh, variety."

"Gajeel!" Juvia squeaked happily. She rummaged around in her papers before tossing him the request and then cracked the book open, her letter to Gray temporarily put on hold.

He grabbed the request out of the air and took a look. Huh… lessee now… Dark Guild extermination request. And the guild master and the lieutenants had sizable bounties on their heads too.

Gajeel grinned. Nice.

Now the only problem was that it was out of the way. He'd never even heard of a place called Haven.

"We leave tomorrow morning?" He asked. Juvia held up a pair of train tickets, engrossed in her read.

"Haha, yes. You're awesome, Juvia."

"Juvia thinks so too."

Author's Notes: Slightly more serious than I expected.