What About After School? (A Gratsu, Elfgreen, Fraxus Fanfiction)

Chapter Six : Where Have You Been

A/N: I do have a million excuses to why this is so late but Ima just give it to you. It's a pretty talkie chapter so enjoy or whatever.

Laxus had lost contact with Bixlow after school. Half because he went on that year long trip around the world and lost contact with everyone he knew. The other half because he felt like he would be a weight.

He feelt guilty for thinking about that now, he thought everyone couldn't help him then, but in his mind Bix would be a freeloader. In his mind Bixlow's future was playing video games and lazing around in other people's houses. He had never expected him to be successful. It was harsh but it was what he had thought.

He could not have been more wrong. He found Bixlow had a fancy car. A fancy car he parked in a fancy garage. A fancy garage to a fancy apartment block. A fancy apartment block with a fancy penthouse. A fancy penthouse that he now stood in and stared at in awe. Bixlow lived in a penthouse. A well kept penthouse. An expensive penthouse. It took him a while to notice fancy Bixlow staring at him with an amused face.

Laxus didn't really know what to say so he let the fist thing that came to mind be what spewed out of his mouth.
"Are you a mob boss? You look like a mob boss. I can only imagine you being a mob boss - You're a mob boss aren't you?" Maybe that was inappropriate, but Bix just laughed and moved forward to give him a friendly slap on the back. Same attitude it seemed.

"Ha! I wish man! But then again I think I prefer my multimillion dollar toy company over that mess." Well, that was a suprise. But in some ways it made sense. Bixlow was a...Seith mage. He controlled souls that inhabited inanimate objects such as toys - THAT was disturbing through and through, that three people's souls were in those innocent looking totem dolls that hovered next to him, then in a stack. That was a story for another time. "But I didn't bring you here to talk about my boring ass work! You want a drink? I got beer, soft drinks, hard drinks, milkshakes!"

Overwhelmed, Laxus could only shake his head as he regathered himself and let an old amused smirk slip onto his face.
"Well, since you're offering a beer, that would be amazing about now."

Bixlow complied with the request himself, moving over to a mini bar and pulling out two beers as his totems pushed Laxus towards the sofa. They were like an extension of the mage, but at the same time were their own entities that made up a bigger entity? It was confusing.

After, he took a seat and Bixlow returned with two open bottles of beer, one of which he handed to him and sat back on an armchair next to the sofa.
"This takes me back man," He sighed after taking a glug of his drink. "You and me, drinking the nights away in high school. The times you got drunker than me first were my favourite. The things you told me man." Laxus rolled his eyes and took a mouthful of the bitter alcahol he had grown so used to over the years. "Especially that night you woke up in Freed's room with him gone." And half that drink almost went down his wind pipe, making him cough after he forced it down the right hole.

Bixlow waited for him to stop coughing, just sitting there watching him until the other man sat up again. It was weird how he looked at him behind those dark glasses...it was almost like...
"You knew, didn't you? You knew what I did." He received only a nod in return. All at onece Laxus felt angry, betrayed, saddened, that the man he'd asked so many times until the end of school what happened to his friend, that he knew. "How long?" He gripped his bottle harder "How long did you know?"

(Amonthorso)

"A few days after. He started paying for private tutors once you left, but they wanted work from his school as well so he reached out to me. He swore me to secrecy but he didn't really need to. I would have kept it secret anyways. It was too personal to go spreading. Too bad to. I could hardly look at you the same either, but I knew it wasn't your fault man. The season and alcohol and all, but it was still real bad." Bixlow leaned back and drank from his bottle as well. Laxus found it hard to blame him after that. It was really has fault what happened, he blamed himself for drinking and not following his feelings earlier. Bixlow seemed to sense his turmoil and looked back to him. "You want him? I mean, you must have if you went after him in the first place. You went back for him when you found out where he was, so you must still have some kind of feelings for him."