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Levy was staring up at the wide expanse of the endless night sky, tracing new constellations amongst the spattering of light stretched against the inky black. The soft light of the moon sliced down into the clearing, touching her hair with its glow until she looked every bit the ethereal being Gajeel often times thought she was.
She was always beautiful. No matter the setting, she always stood out, drawing his eye almost as soon as she made her entrance, but now, looking up towards the heavens, she was breathtaking.
There before him, she was a fallen star searching the skies for her home.
“Are you scared?” Her voice was barely as whisper, caught up in the slight breeze of the night air as she spoke up to the sky. If he didn’t have his dragon senses, he might have missed it all together.
“Scared?” Gajeel parroted, bracing his forearms against his knees as he leant forward on the fallen tree he’d deemed a seat. The quiet of the clearing was almost oppressive as he waited for her explanation, nothing more than the occasional pop of their fire and sound from the nearby camp punctuating the silence.
Slowly turning her attentions away from the stars, her honeyed gaze found his across the top of the burning flames.
“Of dying?”
It was a simple question, crafted of two words that bowed beneath the weight of her emotion. Gajeel’s breath caught in his throat as he held her flame lit stare, rolling the question over in his mind.
Was he scared of dying?
Death was something he never gave much mind. Being who he was, he never expected to live a long life. Dying was an inevitability for all, but for Gajeel, it would certainly come sooner. That much was a fact. One that he didn’t feel the need to dwell on. He’d accepted it a long time ago. He wasn’t scared of dying.
But he was scared of death.
Scared of what it could do to the woman before him, with all her hope in her eyes and the moonlight in her hair. Gajeel was terrified that come tomorrow, he would lose everything he had ever held dear to him in one smooth strike to the woman that was his heart.
Worst still, he was petrified that death would take away his chance to tell her.
Tell her the way she had moved him. How she had changed the course of his life simply by being in it. Tell her that each day began and ended with her. That all he had ever wanted, and all he had ever needed, was everything that she was.
No, Gajeel wasn’t scared of dying, but he was terrified of everything that could be left unsaid.
In the years since they’d met, he and Levy had cultivated a friendship so unlike anything he’d deserved, that when he’d started to notice the way his heart would bounce in his chest at the mere sound of her voice, he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Not to her, and hardly even to himself. But he felt it.
Felt it in the pulse of absent space that had started to eat away at his insides.
Felt it in the rolling thunder cascading across his skin when she fixed him with that stare.
Felt it in the invisible thread that always pulled him toward her.
Death had never been a scary prospect for Gajeel.
Love though, love seized his limbs with a terror he hadn’t even known was possible.
“No.” He answered, the truth nothing more than a breath off his tongue as he watched Levy through the flames. The waves of heat twisted the air around her, curving the world around her until she looked like a mirage. For a moment, Gajeel wondered if maybe she was.
Only he knew better. He could never come up with anything so lovely of his own volition.
“I’ve never been scared of dying, Shrimp,” he continued when he saw the way her head cocked to the side, urging him to explain. The mix of warmth from her golden eyes and the burning wood was like a truth serum, working through his veins as it tore the rest of his words from him.
“But I am scared.”
An undeterminable emotion flashed across her eyes, marred by the reflection of the flames as she opened her mouth to speak. Closing it quickly, and shaking her head with a short twitch of her hair, Gajeel watched as she stood and made her way over.
Each step was carefully placed, as if she was worried any movement might break the tension that had begun to fill the clearing with fragile glass.
“Levy,” he breathed as the hole worked him open again, leaving the edges of his nerves painfully exposed to the open air. “I can’t—”
Can’t what? He thought. Can’t lose her? She was never yours.
“Hey,” Levy shushed as she sat beside him, placing a calming hand on the expanse of his forearm. With her warm palm pressed over the studs that marked his flesh, he couldn’t help but compare her unmarred skin to his own.
“It’s okay,” she breathed as she began to slowly drag her hand over his arm in a reassuring manner, each stroke leaving a line of fire that left ash in its wake. “We’ll be okay tomorrow. We always are.”
And then she smiled.
Starlight only ever wished it was so bright.
“Besides,” her fingers brushed against the cuff of his gloves. “I’ll be there at your side. You aren’t alone, Gajeel. Not in this.”
Eyes still focused on the fire before him, Gajeel felt the licks of its tendrils with each brush of her skin. How many nights had he dreamed of her touch? Of the way her petal skin would feel against the rough of his own, the only thing standing between them being the coarse lines of his scars?
He finally had his answer, but it wasn’t enough.
“Lev,” he tried again, her name heavy as it fell from him. Turning his attentions from the burning light, he looked at her, met by all the softness of a stare he didn’t deserve. Lips turned upward and face dusted with the pink of an unknown emotion, she was beautiful as ever.
Gajeel felt his breath as it stuck itself to the inside of his throat, threatening to choke him as he drowned in the feeling of her palm on his arm. Levy’s eyes were kind as she waited for his words to come back to him, unaware that what she waited for might just be his ruin.
“Levy.” His hand came down over the top of her’s, trapping it between palm and arm as he searched the liquid gold of her eyes as they painted him in all their splendor. In that moment, he knew that he would gladly cleave himself in two in order to keep the gilding of her gaze on him for just a second more.
Stretching the silence between them until it was filled with the same tension of an oncoming tempest, Gajeel formed the words in his mouth, tasting the saccharine coating that laid itself across his tongue.
He just had to say it.
I need you.
I can’t lose you.
I love you.
Levy pushed forward through the raging storm between them, scattering the clouds as she pulled her hand from his grasp, moving its featherlight touch from his arm to his cheek as her lips found his. Lightning crashed through his veins as her fingers pushed back against the planes on both sides of his face until they found his hair and anchored her to him.
A gasp worked her lips apart as he leant into the embrace, his tongue flicking out to trace the full of her bottom lip before he sucked it gently between his teeth.
It was everything he had imagined, and yet nothing like it at all. His own hands found her waist, his thumbs rubbing circles into the fabric of her top before he pulled her closer, startling a small sound from her that he caught with his tongue.
“Gajeel,” she sighed as she pulled away, looking up through her lashes with her ever bright eyes. “I know.”
Her skin was soft as the pads of her thumbs stroked over his cheekbones, drawing a low moan from the back of his throat. Levy’s careful rumination dulled the ache of his chest, drawing upon everything he’d ever needed to say, and filling the void with her quiet acknowledgement.
It still wasn’t enough. Levy had to hear the words. She had to know. He needed to say it.
And then, he did.
“I love you.”
And again.
“I love you.”
Leaning forward again, he chased the sound of his confession across the space between them, breathing them once more before pressing them into her skin. This kiss was softer as he tried to convey the depth of his feelings into the single pressing of their lips.
“Stupid Gajeel,” she huffed fondly when she pulled away once more, shifting her weight so she was leant against his chest. Where her ear had landed, he was sure she could hear the thudding of his heart. Arms wrapping around her to hold her in place, he tried to calm the way his heartbeat stuttered against his insides. He’d said it. She knew.
“I love you too.”
And she felt the same.
The weight of their words lay across them like a blanket, protecting them from the oncoming morning. Once the sun rose, they would be at war, and there wasn’t room for love on a battlefield.
But this was here and this was now, and beneath the stars, they were everything.
Gajeel allowed himself to marvel at the way Levy felt pressed to his chest as their breathing became synchronized. He wasn’t sure how much time past, but he didn’t care.
He loved Levy, and she finally knew.
A crackling lightness began to spread through his nerves as it popped with the feeling of those three simple words.
Suddenly, Levy’s shoulders started to shake with quiet laughter, the small vibrations making their way through him as he pulled back slightly.
“What?” He asked, coloring his tone with teasing hurt, as if he could feel anything other than the buoyant light that had filled the empty space where his heart had once been.
“I didn’t realize you were such a romantic,” Levy laughed in earnest now, the bell-like sound of her mirth tinkling in the night air. Moments past as she rocked with her joy before she fell back against his chest and breathed him in.
“Don’t you know what today is?” She asked, her breath warm through the thin fabric of his shirt. Mind racing for an answer, Gajeel picked through all the different implications of that very night.
All he could come up with, was that it was the eve before the battle.
As if she could feel his confusion thudding inside his chest along with his heart, she placed a chaste kiss to his sternum. It was nothing more than an innocent touch of her lips, and yet he felt its cataclysmic effects down to his toes. Her voice was quiet, filled with affection as it took him apart.
“Happy Valentine’s day, Gajeel.”
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