『 R E Q U E S T S , C L O S E D 』AnimeCharacters x Reader

45. Sting Eucliffe x Reader x Gray Fullbuster | You Can't Resist

》characters: Sting Eucliffe, Gray Fullbuster | Fairy Tail

》requested by: Mudheart_of_Mudclan

》06292017

》wherein there are five popsicles on a table, no, i'm not going to make one of them disappear with a sweep of my wrists; one of them is opened and melting and another two are in flavors you only vaguely remember. this was a good decision, you tell yourself, through the sweltering heat and a mouth numbing from the cold.

[a/n]: since this is also more or less about making offers, the title is a continuation to the saying (is it even a saying?) "i'll make you an offer you can't resist," blahblah this definitely isn't my and my lack of creativity what are you talkin' about

xx

This was what you wanted, you think, when the last winter entered in a burst of cold and overstayed its welcome. You'd wished, with all the piousness you save for matters not religious, for the winter to depart and for the plants to look more alive than they did, because the sight of flowers dancing their petals was a comfort in the mornings; you began cherishing every cruelly brief gift of warmth like the very first humans did a long time before the Christ was born- long enough they evolved, decided to inhibit the traits of the first crackling fire into other objects that carried the hope of more permanence.

Now, the summer you've prayed every single day for is here, together with a change of weather sudden and quickly unwelcome and you're smart enough not to for a chill to relieve your headaches, for with your luck you'r going to be receiving a blizzard in front of your doorstep lovingly sent with a warning to wear big, heavy clothes. You wish for rain instead but realize that the humidity would make everything feel heavier than it really was; then you curse the sun with baited breath because you've really nothing to do, having come to an agreement to cancel plans until the sun gets tired of ruining people's days, a swift blow.

You probably looked stupid, lost one-half of your mind and the other half's a storage of all the leftover crazy things but the summer heat was a kind of underestimated disease, hinders the brain's ability to function as it bakes inside the skull, like a virus that leaves a child in bed to accept verdicts of good news in their own uncomfortable sweat.

It's why you get up from a chair that's now left with a noticeable imprint of the sweat on the backs of your thighs; you give it a few seconds of your undivided disgust before you change out of the shirt that feels more like unreleased sweat than it is cotton.

You take a walk to the nearest store, learn quickly that in treeless land it was on par with many different sentences of death and it makes you walk faster, sweat harder. You're sure at least one person looks at the collected sweat atop your brows and wipe their own in sudden self-consciousness.

Upon arriving at the store, a ten minutes that felt like your very own trial of Hell, you find it dressed with adverts of things on sale, a diagonally-lined text about cooling off in the summer and an assortment of summer colors you see everyday when you look outside your blinding window, if the reflected sunlight doesn't make you avert your eyes first.

There were four people, including the cashier, who looked awfully drowsy with his head on his palms standing right next to the biggest air conditioning unit. Two out of the three customers looked far too listless looking at things that you wonder if they're just there for the coldness, which felt like sweet bliss to all the inches of your skin that's uncovered.

You nod at the cashier, smile a little and his eyebrows twitch upward curtly and you don't blame him when he yawns.

The time in the store was unimportant for nothing caught your eye besides the thing you came to buy (not even the items featured in the well-promoted summer sale,) and the music was so quiet it felt like there was nothing there at all except your footsteps that you counted, losing count after five.

The coldness of the freezer afflicts your nostrils like some kind of menthol and sticking your entire arm into it to reach for the popsicles felt like taking the challenge of exploring a bottomless hole.

The cashier gives you a look of understanding when you pay him what's in your wallet, or maybe you mistook as a look of concern for it was not one, but five popsicles he was dropping into the bottom of a plastic, each with a distinctive thunk that awakens your taste buds. You've no company except for the summer heat that's left to wait outside the windows that are taller than you are like a rabbit-cheeked child at a candy store that their parents passed without a second glance- not even a first one.

You walk home worrying for the rapidly decreasing lifespan of the popsicles inside.

xx

One and a half of them later and all senses of euphoria have disconnected themselves from your body and onto somebody else rational enough to only buy two popsicles. You finish the awkward bit left still on the flat stick, leave the stick halfway into your mouth and wag the end up and down with movements of your lower jaw.

You remember Gray and Sting telling you in their own near incoherent calls that they were coming over and force Gray to give you a taste of what mild winter would feel like. You wag the end of the stick up and down a couple more times, hands feeling strange without anything more to do.

You wait for them both worrying for the rapidly decreasing lifespan of the popsicles laid out on the table like volatile detainees. 

(For a little while, you think about turning the melted popsicles into some kind of drink and tell Gray and Sting you invented it yourself and maybe, just maybe, make them laugh at your silliness.)

xx

Gray and Sting take one each, lie by your side in comfortable warmth, biting into their treats without making any noises. You watch, as Sting finishes his first and reaches for the last popsicle before Gray cuts him off with such a sharp upward bolt it looked like the rise of the undead; you laugh, as they begin to argue with voices raised too loud for something to simple. Meanwhile, the popsicle melts further inside the wrapper and neither Gray nor Sting are running out of stupid, practically irrelevant counterpoints. They knew not the maturity of surrendering, especially not surrendering in kindness of another, nor did the know how to compromise. Compromises were always dissatisfying because all three of you wanted all of a something, so you lean back a little without worrying about knocking into their heads and smile.

You don't remember how their argument ended and somehow, the last popsicle was nothing more than the wrapper and the stick that worked as its skeleton of sorts.

Definitely, you don't remember how they began from spitting anger from their lips to using it to kiss the skin of your neck until you were red-faced from the delicious torture. Yet, you don't want to complain either.

(You remember each time they kiss you, on your lips, on your neck, on the other places you're a bit too bashful to tell in detail, but you cannot remember to throw the empty, ant-invaded wrappers until you're a hallucination away from peaceful, summer night slumber. You remember the spray you kept at the very back of a cabinet you couldn't reach without a stool and beastly grunts and decide to leave the wrappers for tomorrow, tuck yourself neater, more comfortingly in their embrace, heads resting on shoulders, hearts resting on hearts.)

BONUS:

The next day, Sting and Gray all share their opinions about the colony of ants that are full and probably intoxicated from the sugary contents of the treat. You shake the can of spray, bless the ants for a prettier death in their next lives and learn that Sting grows quite queasy at seeing so many ants gathered in one place.

You get more kisses that day, and no ants as consequence.