#a grown ass man with a kid uggh

[percydarling]

do you ever think about how percy and scabbers were in a room together for 9 years? How Percy might have bathed with Scabbers nearby? How Percy might have slept next to Scabber? Do you ever think..

[sassyhazelowl]

It’s @gsut fault. Also, folding this into my (platonic) laxtear social worker au. Because when you have 100s of AUs it helps to bunch them together. Didn’t want to do this in parts but it got too long.

In the Know

Gajeel stared down at the chicken scratch address in his big hand, crumpled and smeared in stark black ink, strong jaw jutted and teeth gritted in a seething mixture of annoyance and frustration... it wasn’t rage. Yet. Not quite. But it was bubbling its way up there, and the tighter he clamped down the more dangerous it got; he was playing with fire, he knew.

He had to end this quick.

“Fuckin’ swore I wasn’t gonna ever again...” he snarled to himself softly as his fist rose to rap on the door. As bone slammed against wood insistently, so hard the frame rattled and his knuckles ached, he felt the tension ease a little when the door opened a crack to show one blue eye and not the muzzle of a gun. “Open up.”

When it didn’t happen instantly, he threw his shoulder against it, knocking the chain off and shoving the smaller body behind it aside. Ignoring the yelp of pain and surprise as well as the indignant squawks, he stomped down the hall.

“Gajeel, he’s not awake!”

“He sure as fuck will be,” Gajeel snarled, “Lazy little shit.” His temper was getting the better of him, fists white with restraint, but not entirely blinded. That little snot-nosed trouble maker wasn’t going to get his fist but he was going to get the rudest awakening of his short life. “Get up!”

The rude answer he got from under the comforter was enough of an excuse to do what he planned. A thump and groan whined out from the lump on the floor as he stood with his arms crossed, waiting. His steel-toed boot tapped the dirty carpet instead of the kid’s ribs. 

“God damn it!” the lump screamed in protest, limbs thrashing wildly, pale and thin and gangly.”God fucking dammit, that hurt you shithead!” Unmoved, Gajeel waited. Blurry unfocused blue eyes so much the color of his mother’s peered out with a fury from beneath the blankets, and for a moment Gajeel admired the fire in them, before he swooped down to crush it. Punks that were all fire and no brains didn’t last long. The pale face paled further, registering who had administered the rude wake up, screaming up with sullen apologies and hurrying towards the bathroom. Probably to keep from pissing his pants, the macho baby.

The silence he left stretched between the two adults, the boy’s mother in the doorway with a furious yet worried frown, clearly fluctuating between greeting him with a spine-breaking hug and ripping him a new one from ass to dick. But the man wasn’t in the mood for it because he had a bone to pick himself.

“What the fuck, Juvia?”

Startled, her eyes flew wide, not at his language of course, but at the raw hurt lacing his voice. Protests flowed automatically but he waved them away, advantage in his court. He had shit to say, and she wasn’t gonna like it a bit but he didn’t give a damn.

“What the fuck were you thinking? Running off with the kid? Disappearing without a word? I come home to a fucking empty apartment and I don’t know what the hell happened to either of you! Did you use your damn brain or just go haring off with another guy you fell in love with? Then I go to all the trouble to track you down to this dump,” he gestured around to the hole in the frayed brown carpet and wrinkled his nose at the smell of filth he was sure came from the very walls of the place, “And ya know how I found ya? Because the brat missed his parole appointment and they accidentally sent it to me.” He waved the offending piece of mail in her face, red and furious, going too far, much too far. But it as out on the table and he wasn’t stopping now. “A fucking parole meeting, Juvia. How old’s he, huh?”

“Thirteen and a half,” she squeaked although they both knew it was a rhetorical question. Gajeel was there when he was born after all. He know damn well how old the kid was. He’d put the presents up on the top shelf of the closet, just in case, every year. “Gajeel, Juvia’s...”

“SORRY?” he barked with harsh laughter, “Of course you are; you’re always sorry, Juvia. I’m taking the kid...”

“Gajeel, no!” she wailed, bursting into tears but not moving from the doorway, as if she could stop him with her body alone. He wasn’t sure if it was desperation or faith he wouldn’t hurt her but it galled either way.

Gajeel sighed at the heart break in her voice feeling like a sleaze for targeting her this way. Knowing someone so well was double edged, and right now, he was using his intimate knowledge like a weapon.

“...to his parole meeting,” the man finished lamely, the steel in his voice fading in the face of tears. 

That’s not what he planned to say. 

Before he could move, she threw herself forward then, arms latched securely around his waist and tears soaking his muscle shirt he planned to wear under the nice shirt he had packed in the motorcycle bags for the meeting. Walking into a place like that dressed like trouble was a stupid idea, and Gajeel’d had enough tangles with the law and its lackeys to know how to put on the good act. Awkwardly, his big hand moved down to pat her shoulders and rub her back like old times. It felt so... familiar. Safe. Soothing. It was something he hadn’t realized he’d missed over the past two years until he got a taste of it again. Fuck, a cat wasn’t a person, no matter how cuddly Lil’ was.

“Uggh, gross,” the kid mumbled, dark blue hair spiked wildly and shoulders just beginning to fill out like his father. Gajeel stared, getting a good look at him; damn kid’d grown like a fucking weed. Baby pudge was melting away and the beginnings of a scraggly little bit of hair was growing on his upper lip like black fuzzy mold. That was coming off the minute they had time; no kid Gajeel was gonna be seen with would look like that. Knuckling his eye, he fixed Gajeel with a baleful look, not having forgiven him for the kick to the ass, which would look more intimidating if his skinny chicken legs were peeking out from beneath too-short pikachu jammy bottoms. “Get a room like you usually do...”

Before he could finish, he found himself dangling limply in the air, face to face with a very pissed Gajeel. Fangs flashing, the man’s voice was low and dangerous, “If I ever hear you say something like that to your ma again you’ll the one getting a room. With bars and a toilet to piss in. Do you hear me?”

Without waiting for an answer, he dropped the brat roughly for the second time in ten minutes, and waved off Juvia’s insistence of breakfast. The kid and he had some serious chatting to do, and a trip to Denny’s was in order after the meeting to hash things out with some hash browns and pancakes.

It took only a few more minutes to wrestle his way out the door with a somewhat presentable brat in tow. And this was only the beginning of his day, he groaned internally, feeling the blood throb behind his eyes in the classic warning signs of yet another stress headache. Pills and a quick chaser from his flask was the best he could do.

He had a sinking feeling it wasn’t enough...