Catch the Thunder

S'mores and More

They split to go do things. Bickslow left to pick up Lisanna from the airport while Evergreen went on a hiking trip. Freed took a camera and went with Laxus to the river. It was peaceful, quiet, picturesque. Laxus felt his worries slip away as he watched the water flowing slowly by. He picked up a stone and tried to skip it. It had been years since he did that sort of thing, and it fell into the water with a plunk.

Instead of the river, he looked over at Freed. He was in tight jeans again, a new flannel, with his hair pulled back in a ponytail. One leather hiking boot was propped up on a rock by the river as he tried to get some angle with his camera. Laxus wondered if he knew just how much that accentuated his ass and hips.

Yet it was not arousal that Laxus felt. It was something melancholy, a longing, like he was looking at a piece of priceless art knowing he could view it but it was out of his reach.

"Freed."

He looked up from his camera and hummed.

"I wanna camp out tonight. No offense to your family, but I need you to myself. At least one night."

Freed's heart was already racing. He knew what Laxus really meant.

"I don't just mean sex."

That shocked him. He thought for sure the next thing Laxus would say was something about wanting to make love to him out in the open under the stars, or another comment about his butt in jeans.

Laxus walked up to him, took his chin, and lifted Freed's head. He gazed down intensely into his eyes until Freed began to grow nervous. Why did he look almost ... sad?

"Every time I think I know you," Laxus said quietly, "I realize I'm the newcomer in your life. It makes me even more greedy of how much time I spend with you, like I'm trying to make up for taking so long to find you. I need to know ... shit, I don't even know," he whispered, sighing and growling as his brain went into chaos. "Those two, they have all this history with you. They got to be there for you through some really horrible shit. I wanna know we're gonna have that one day. Y'know what I mean? Dammit, they've had you for twenty-three years. I haven't even had you for one year."

"Technically, Bickslow has only had me for nineteen years."

"Shut up, smartass." Still, Freed's sassiness made him smile.

Freed reached out and combed his fingers through Laxus' hair. "You'll never beat them, you know. We've done everything from making silly blanket forts to teasing each other as we went through puberty. I remember watching our nanny change Bickslow's diaper, and I was the one Evergreen turned to for advice when she started dating. They've seen me in my most awkward years, and you'll never catch up, because they're family, and that's something unique. But you know, we have something unique, too. The things you know about me," he said as he blushed brightly, "they'll never know. They will never see that side of me. It's something only for you. Only you."

Laxus rubbed his thumb over the silver promise ring where those words were etched into the inside. Only you, Thor. No one else in Freed's life knew that this prim and proper man used to sit in a gay strip club watching a muscular blond thunder god dominating the stage. No one else in Freed's life knew the masochistic side of him. No one else had pleasured his body.

Only him.

He might be the newcomer, he might not have been there when Freed was a child, or struggling through puberty, or when he came out as gay. He might have only seen a tiny glimpse of his college life, but there was plenty that they had shared in their short time together.