Hey, everyone! After a bad day at work, I decided I needed fluff in my life. So I asked Eien ni Touko for a prompt, and she sent me one from otpprompts on Tumblr. It morphed into this, somehow. Thanks, girl!

I should probably mention that the characters are their non-timeskip ages, here. So Sting and Rogue are nineteen, and Lucy is twenty-four.

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.

A blonde woman, swaddled in a fluff-lined winter jacket and a scarf of jet, stared forlornly up. Peering through the gently falling snowflakes, she was hard pressed to tell where the bones of the tree covered the blank sky. Her cheeks, ears, and nose burned, stained red by the frigid air. She shifted, the cold worming its way under her clothes to settle within her own skeleton. Beneath her boots, the fallen snow creaked. Otherwise, there was not a sound to be heard, other than the curious noise snowflakes make as they descend, and the woman's own, harsh breathing.

Drawing in a deep breath, pulling into her air so chill it felt as if crystals were forming inside her lungs, she called out, "Plue! Where are you?"

"Pun-pun!" came a warbled, answering cry above her head.

Scanning the branches for the source of the sound, the woman at last located her wayward pet. "Plue!" she cried, spotting the alabaster dog high up in the tree's embrace.

The creature shook with tremors not caused by the season, and looked at its owner with no concern whatsoever as to its precarious perch. "Pu-Pun!"

With a shake of her head, the woman sighed. "You're not coming down on your own, are you?"

"Pun!"

"Well!" the blonde huffed, reaching out towards the smooth bark of the tree's trunk. "I guess I'll just have to come up after you!"

"Pu-pu-pun," the dog agreed.

Slowly, she pulled herself up onto the first, low-hanging branch. It was difficult to get purchase on the slippery bark with her gloves on, but there was no way she was taking them off in this weather. The wood bowed beneath her weight, and she scrambled to reach another branch before her snow-laden perch gave way.

Ascending as swiftly as she could, the determined blond woman made it three more branches up before she paused to catch her breath.

"How on Earth did you manage to get so high up, Plue?" she wondered aloud.

The dog offered no comment, already attempting to climb to the bough above.

Seeing this, the woman reached out for her next handhold - hoping to get to her tree-climbing dog before he slipped and fell.

She felt a tremor race through her boots, as she stood upon the tree branch.

Then, with a thunderclap, it snapped beneath her, and she was falling.

"Dude, I told you, Professor Geer is a demon!" a young blond man proclaimed, waving his arms enthusiastically.

His dark haired companion seemed less than amused, having been smacked by an errant hand more than a few times in the past several minutes as they crossed the silent, snow-covered park. "He's your Literature professor, not a creature of the netherworld," he informed his friend. "But I'll bite. What nefarious plot is he brewing now?"

"Winter-break homework."

The brunet rolled his startlingly crimson eyes. "I should have known. Sting, I'm sure several of your other professors have also assigned work. Why is Professor Geer in particular the subject of your ire?"

Sting groaned, letting his arms fall before shoving them into his pockets. It was far too cold out for them to be walking around in the snow, in his humble opinion, but no. Rogue had to insist that walking was good for them and forced them to take this circuitous path back to their shared apartment. Under threat of being nicknamed Bubble Sting for the rest of his life, he followed his childhood friend under great duress. "Rogue, you just don't get it. Yeah, the other professors assigned homework. But Professor Geer saddled me - me - with extra work!"

Rogue raised an eyebrow at the blond. "What did he assign?"

With another moan rife with despair, Sting replied, "War and Peace."

"...Tolstoy."

"Tolstoy."

"All of it?"

He nodded. "All of it."

"What did you do to him this time?"

"Why do you always assume I did something?!" Sting asked, cerulean eyes livid.

"Because fourteen years of acquaintanceship with you has taught me that. You've. Always. Done. Something."

After a moment of contemplation, Sting came to the same conclusion. "Alright, fine. I may have thrown beans at him."

The pair walked on in silence for a minute. "Seriously, Sting?" Rogue eventually asked, mortified on his best friend's behalf.

"While shouting "Demon Be Gone!" Sting added. "His face was priceless, I'm telling you."

Vividly able to picture the flabbergasted expression the professor must have had, Rogue felt bad for the taciturn educator. Professor Geer was tough, but usually fair. Sting seemed to have made it his life goal to drive the man to the brink of insanity. An endeavor that brought out a heretofore unknown streak of vindictiveness in the professor. "You're at least going to do the homework, right?"

"Duh." Hopping - for no apparent reason - Sting continued, "Joke's on him, though. I've already read War and Peace so this will be a nice refresher."

It wasn't well known to the general college populace, but Rogue was aware that Sting - despite all actions and appearances to the contrary - was one of the smartest people in that lecture hall. Maybe that was why he hadn't yet been thrown bodily out of the room or out a window yet. "I wasn't aware that you had read that one."

Sting shrugged, striding normally once more. "Dad had weird ideas about what I should learn as a kid."

Rogue recalled that just as clearly. "True. Between them, my father and yours made sure we were at college reading level by the time we were ten. Do you remember when they would try to pit us against each other in trivia games, for the only dessert?"

"Never letting them near my children, if I ever have any," Sting vowed. "Children deserve their sweets."

"Agreed."

Snow drifted around them and settled onto their thick coats. Rogue hoped that the crystallized water wouldn't soak through his bag and get into his textbooks. Warped pages made reading the difficult subject material even more tedious.

Passing under some trees, the pair continued along their meandering path homeward. With the winter holiday breaking up the middle of the semester, Rogue and Sting were both looking forward to a restful vacation from all of their coursework. Frosch and Lector, their cats, would probably be just as excited to spend time with their owners as well. Neither Sting nor Rogue had been as attentive as they should have been to their feline companions what with midterms to study for. But that was all over now, and as soon as they reached the apartment they would be assaulted by their two favorite furballs.

An ominous crack suddenly resounded above the pair's heads.

Rogue's head snapped up in concert with Sting's.

At that moment, a heavy object fell from the sky and body slammed them to the ground.

I could not resist adding in Professor Mard. I love him so much.