A/N: I have returned! Please don't kill me! Okay, so, I actually intended to publish this much, much earlier than today, but the date and the topic of this chapter coincided too perfectly for me not to postpone the release. For those of you who are unaware, today's the 17th of October, and marijuana has now been legalized in Canada.

You can probably guess what this chapter is about, then, can't you?

To my fellow Canadians, stay safe and remember that it's only legal if you're over 19, please don't be stupid while under the influence, follow edible instructions, buy legally, etc, etc., toke toke have fun. Full disclosure, I've never done any drugs in my life barring alcohol, and so all my research hails from r/trees on reddit. Bless up.

See bottom A/N for important notes.

Disclaimer: I do no own Fairy Tail or any other products mentioned within his fic. I can only claim to own the plot of this fic. This chapter is not intended to encourage people to start consuming marijuana.

"We have a seminar due this week?" Sting asked, clicking open the 'English' file on his laptop and scrolling through. Not for the first time, he cursed his inability to give saved documents actual names. Keysmashing was a brilliant idea at 3 AM (when most of his work was done) but 3 AM Sting made a lot of decisions that 6 PM Sting would come to regret, such as, say, losing the syllabus in a mess of half-assed papers.

"Why do you think we got assigned partners, Sting?" Lucy mumbled from behind a copy of the DSM-5. Sting couldn't make heads or tails of whatever it was she was working on, but if the shriveled up picture of a brain on her laptop was any indication, he really didn't want to know.

"I dunno. Maybe 'cause Mard's too lazy to mark a lot of shit and this reduces his work by half?" Sting suggested, debating between opening 'aauejrjckfkahdjjcir' and 'JEJDKDKFJDNDND'. He was more likely to use capitals towards the middle of the night, and since his class was during the day it was likely that the syllabus was under something lowercase. However, he was also more likely to start his keysmashes with the right side of the keyboard towards the beginning of the semester, and then he gravitated towards the left as the semester wore on. Decisions, decisions…

"Quick, lowercase or uppercase?"

"...lower?"

Sting nodded and double clicked the file. It wasn't the course outline but it was the essay on Tess of D'Urbervilles that he thought he'd deleted and wound up rewriting as a result. Fucking shit. The rewrite took years off his life with how many Red Bulls he'd shotgunned to stay awake the night before it was due. It added an entire layer to his Red Bull Tower of Shame in the corner of the room (a proud six layers tall). Lucy's Caffeine Tower of Shame stood at a decent four layers. He slapped the lid of his laptop down and flopped back with a groan. It didn't matter, he could always re-download it later. Or nick it off Lucy. Both were valid.

"I'm gonna nap," Sting announced. "Set your alarm for nineteen minutes."

She finally lowered her book and raised a brow. "Nineteen minutes?"

"Yes. In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or-"

"Jump off it. I, too, read Jodi Picoult's book in high school," Lucy said. "Again. Why nineteen minutes?"

"Because if I nap for nineteen minutes, then I can put on my uniform and be at work just in time for my shift."

"Why not make it twenty minutes?"

The look he shot her was the kind reserved solely for politely telling five-year-old's they were stupid without actually saying the word. "Because that means I'll be one minute late to work, Lucy. You're kinda dumb today," he said, dodging the pencil she threw at his head with a practiced ease. Given that she threw an average of four pencils a day at his head, generally around the same time, he'd more or less come to expect it.

One pencil down, three to go.

The thing Sting hated most about his job wasn't the constant barrage of stupid customers - though that certainly did rank in his top five - but rather, the Freshly Baked Goods.

The Bard Tavern couldn't be like other shitty cafés that ordered their baked goods in large, frozen shipments and then microwaved them to stale perfection for overpriced resale, no. Instead, The Bard Tavern had its employees bake their Freshly Baked Goods by hand, from scratch, en masse. None of that boxed bullshit, no sir, according to Mr Stilts that was an affront to his beloved nonna, to God, and to the Freshly Baked Goods sign - in that exact order. So, Sting found himself recruiting fractions skills he'd long since forgotten to whip up muffins, cookies, and doughnuts with a gusto that would have his father rioting, because in all his years on the hellscape known as Earth, Sting had learned to cook exactly one thing: ramen.

Countless hours wasted on youtube later, all it took was Rogue blandly informing him that baking was 'Chemistry Lite(™)' before it all clicked into place and he was popping out Freshly Baked Goods like it was a baby factory.

He really hated the term Freshly Baked Goods.

"I have an idea," Sting announced. Lucy looked up from where she was fiddling with the coffee machine and groaned.

"Whatever it is, please don't."

He pressed a hand to his chest in mock hurt, going so far as to reel back and gasp. If he batted his eyelashes just right, his pretty blues would start glistening. He missed his calling as an actor, he really did.

"I'm offended by your lack of faith in me, Lucy," he said. "Besides, it's a good idea. I'm gonna bribe Mard."

The unopened bag of cups whipped at his head was warranted, but the mini packets of coffee lobbied at his chest right after was a little much. Ish. Her aim was fucking horrible, but he'd have to pick up all the packets and then rearrange them and go through the process of inventory-ing (not a word in the dictionary but it damn was in his heart) their remaining supplies and he was not in the mood. He never would be in the mood, but he supposed that depended on his workload from differential calc. If it was bad enough…he shook his head firmly and rapped his knuckles against the wooden counter thrice. No use in jinxing himself.

"That is illegal," Lucy squeaked, scanning the room as if the registrar was going to pop out from under one of the tables and bust them for conspiracy to bribe a professor or some other weird charge. She grabbed both his wrists and tugged him right up against her, and his heart did a quadruple Salchow in response. He was going to get a permanent arrhythmia from all this touchy-feely shit, and it would soon become one of those Pavlovian-ly triggered responses. There would come a time when catching a whiff of her perfume would do the same thing to him. If he needed a pacemaker, she was going to handle his post-op care.

"Only if I do it with money," Sting reasoned.

"Illegal. I-L-L-E-G-A-L."

"I'll ask Mest next time he drags Wendy out of the library," Sting said as he finished arranging the Freshly Baked Goods - a dozen blueberry muffins in this case - onto a tray that he slid into a rack behind a thin layer of plexiglass. Dusting his hands off on his black slacks, Sting headed for the door with the 'Employees Only' sign stamped on it. "I'm out for the day, Luce! See ya!"

"Don't you dare bribe Professor Geer, Sting!" she shouted, but the chipper physics major had long since drifted towards his locker and tuned out her warnings.

As he slipped on one of the shirts he'd stolen from Rogue, he caught a glimpse of nirvana in the corner of the mirror duct-taped to the inside of his locker.

"Sweet Jesus," he breathed, turning around slowly, as if any sudden movement would scare it away. His lungs froze, half-expanded, as he reached his prize and gently touched the film that separated the two of them. "You're real…"

Brownies. Honest to goodness brownies were sitting on the break table, all neatly sliced, stacked, and saran-wrapped, ready to be scarfed down and churned into delicious, diabetes inducing nutrients in his gut. Absently, his tongue poked up to wipe the beginnings of drool dripping down the corner of his mouth. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen such enticing brownies. So perfectly moist and thick, with just the right amount of 'crunch' to the top and corners. He could practically taste the chocolatey goodness sticking to his teeth after his first bite, the way it would coat his tongue and the roof of his mouth so that it would leave an aftertaste for days.

Sting looked left. Then he looked right. He even checked the convex mirror up in the corner for good measure. Then, he stealthily undid a section of saran-wrap and pulled out as many squares as he knew would fit into the Ziploc in his bag - considering it was one of those freezer ones, he pulled out a lot of brownies. If it was on the employee break table, it was for employee consumption. Besides, there were six more trays of the stuff; nobody would notice a dozen or so missing.

Still, he made sure to very discreetly stuff his goods under a sweaty gym towel before he booked it for Gildartz's class.

"Oh Mard!"

The chalk in his grasp snapped in half, right about the same time his will to live lost its tenuous grip on his soul and crashed into the abyss. Mard sighed wistfully and finished his sentence with a flourish, all while mourning his loss. He'd done a remarkable job of staying sane throughout his academic career and was proud to say that he had yet to resort to any sort of recreational drug to stay grounded. Less than a year with Eucliffe, however, and Mard found himself wondering on an increasingly frequent basis which drug dealer in his class he could ask for something to deal with...him in his entirety.

"Yes, Mr Eucliffe?" he replied drolly.

"My man, you have been an absolute beast this semester, you know that?" Sting slung an arm around his shoulders and grinned up at him, entirely unaware of how close to death he really was. Mard stared at the hand on his shoulder with as much visceral disgust as he could manage without showing emotions. Were those...chocolate speckles he saw on Eucliffe's fingers? The very fingers that were digging into his $500 sweater?

"Mr Eucliffe," he began carefully. "If you do not unhand me within the next three seconds, I will put to use my extensive knowledge of medieval torture and see to it that all that is left of you is a nail and a Tic-Tac containers' worth of ashes."

"Oh, shit, like in Harry Potter with Peter Pettigrew?" Sting asked, dropping his hand to rest on Mard's lectern. The brand-new lectern that he'd had to fight the dean tooth and nail for.

Sting Eucliffe was going to die.

"Why do you know so much about medieval torture anyway? You teach English."

"I also teach medieval history during the summer term, you dunce," Mard hissed. "What do you want."

"Oh, right." Sting held up a baggie of brownies and waved it enticingly before him. If Mard had been anybody else, he would have snorted. Because he wasn't, he raised an eyebrow and rolled his weight to his left hip - the academic equivalent to 'really, bitch?'

Or so he'd been told at conferences.

"My dentist would appreciate it if I did not indulge in...brownies."

"You actually visit the dentist? Lame. You probably floss daily, too." Whatever Sting saw on his face had him clearing his throat uncomfortably and thrusting the bag forward, narrowly missing his nose. "I made these. With love. And a lot of tears, but mostly love. Please accept them."

It was in that moment that Mard Geer decided he was going to pull aside Zancrow and ask him for something strong enough to make him forget his own name for a few short hours.

"This is not a shoujo manga, Mr Eucliffe, and I am in no particular mood to be the professor half of your love interest," Mard said, wrinkling his nose at the thought. Of all the people he'd ever envisioned being in a relationship with, even in passing, Eucliffe was not one of them. He never would be one of them. There were only so many spots for 'annoying people I can tolerate for two minutes per day' that he could fill.

"You read shoujo manga?" Sting sputtered. It took a couple seconds of awkward silence for the rest of Mard's sentence to sink in, and then Sting was gagging. "Ew, dude, no. You are not on my list of professors I'd like to fuck. Er, bang. Copulate with. Listen, just take the brownies. I didn't make them, I lied, my boss did. Mr Stilts only really started trusting me with-"

Mard tuned him out and mulled over the name Sting mentioned. Stilts, Stilts...he knew that name from somewhere. His recollection was fuzzy - there was a connection between that name and money, but he had no idea what it was. He didn't like the fuzziness. A point of pride for him was his almost perfect recall; very few things escaped the bear-trap that was his mind, and said few often had to do with better left unspoken parts of his past. If Stilts was fuzzy, then logically he was a part of it.

He privately vowed to take a look through his old records. His meticulous nature saw him through many roadblocks in his life, and this was no exception. There was bound to be something written some somewhere.

"-you feel? So we good to go?" Sting ended his rambling with a bright smile.

"Yes, yes," Mard murmured with a distracted wave. "Go ahead."

"My man!" Sting crowed. He made to hug him but pulled back at the last second, instead opting to drop the brownies on his desk. "You? You're a real one."

"Class started ten minutes ago," Zancrow complained. "Can we get on with this?"

"Yo, shut the fuck up, Zancrow!" Sting shouted as he made his way up to the third row beside Heartfilia, who looked half-ready to die of embarrassment. Sting turned around to face Mard and winced. "I meant…'silence yourself, Zancrow!'"

Mard sighed.

Sting cracked his knuckles and took a deep swig of the first can of his 24-pack of Red Bull. He fluffed his pillows (twice), smoothed out his blankets, and balanced his laptop on a book before him. He took another sip of his drink, and changed the font to Times New Roman.

"Bathroom break," he announced, slipping out of his bed and ruining the entire setup. "Well deserved."

"You've literally been sitting there for fifteen minutes," Lucy deadpanned from where she was lying down on her bed.

"And my kidneys have clearly reached their filtering limit," he replied. One quick trip to the bathroom and a change of clothes later, Sting sat back on his bed and changed the font size to twelve.

Not even a half-hour into this whole seminar mess and he was exhausted. He could probably kill some time actually reading the book they had to do it on but that was what Sparknotes was for. Besides, if Lucy's stickied up copy of the text was any indication, they had a lot to work with. All he needed to do was...spruce it up. That being said, his stomach needed a little sprucing up itself. His wandering gaze halted upon the brownie bag. He had yet to eat his delicious spoils, and now was as good a time as any.

"My good bitch, dost thou crave a chocolate square?"

Lucy held up her bowl of cherries and said, "I'm good, thanks."

Sting shrugged and stuffed a brownie into his mouth. He shuddered as the sweet chocolate burst across his tongue. It was just as delicious as he had imagined, though a little sweeter than it should have been. The aftertaste was a little off, too, but he figured that was just some weird side effect of whatever extra ingredients Mr Stilts had thrown in. He cheerfully made his way through two more brownies before chasing it all down with Red Bull and cracking his fingers rhythmically. It was time to figure out just what he was supposed to be making this seminar about.

It was about an hour later that Sting was hit was the intense need to pee.

"Pee break," he said. When his feet hit the floor, they didn't. He could see the floor and all its weird stains but his feet couldn't touch it. He gripped the side of the bed and lowered himself slowly to the ground, like it was a pool. No matter how low he dipped, he still couldn't touch the floor. When his shoulderblades tensed up, he immediately lifted himself up and scrambled to sit at the edge of the bed, which was slowly starting to feel like it was disappearing, too.

His hands gripped his fuzzy blankets tightly, because it was the only thing he knew was real in all this. Drawing it close did nothing to stop the heavy banjos in his chest, but if the bed turned into a void then as least he could use the blankets as a parachute to keep him from crash landing.

"Sting? Are you okay?"

"The floor isn't lava," he whispered so the floor couldn't hear him. "It's a void."

"What the fuck?" There was a lot of movement behind him and then St Odilia stood before him, floating above the void and wearing a romper.

"Holy shit, St Odilia. You can swear?" Sting asked. He knew he was probably supposed to pray but he couldn't remember what her specific one was, so he lifted his arm to cross himself, only to find that he had no bones. His arm wasn't flopping, per se, but he knew that under the hypercontracted muscles his bones were missing; it was why his arm was moving faster than he told it to, because there were no heavy bones inside.

"St Odilia, I think the void stole my bones," he said seriously as he held up his other arm for comparison. It was also too fast for there to be bones. Except he hadn't touched the void with his arms, so it had to be the fuzzy blanket. He held his boneless arms up to his chest and stared at the blanket warily. "The blanket stole my bones. Can you call St Stanislaus Kostka instead? He needs to make me new bones."

St Odilia grabbed his jaw and lifted up so she could stare at his eyes. For a second, he was taken aback by how those ugly paintings in the books didn't do her any justice. She was so much more ethereal in real life. Like a super glowy Greek statue come to life.

"Your pupils are blown," St Odilia murmured, pulling down his lower lid. He reeled back and almost fell into the void backwards, but caught himself just in time.

"You can't steal my eyeballs!" Sting yelled hysterically, slapping his hands over his eyes and squeezing them shut - not too tightly, of course, he didn't want his brain to eat them, either.

"Oh my god," St Odilia said, horrified. "You're high."

"You can swear and take the Lord's name. Did you steal St Odilia's skin?" Sting accused her. "Body part thief!"

Mard was only a little ashamed to admit that he caved in and ate three of Eucliffe's brownies.

He'd had no choice. Some absolute troglodyte in the English department's communal area stole his tuna salad sandwich out of the fridge, despite the fact that his name was stamped across the front of the container. Whoever they were, they had reached the point in the semester where their concern for personal safety evaporated along with their hopes and dreams, because when Mard found out who it was, they would come to dearly regret it.

So, armed with nothing but three dollars in his wallet, he bought an overpriced sports drink from the vending machine, grabbed the packet of brownies, and locked himself in his lecture hall to wallow in self pity as he marked the midterms for his 'Intro to Effective Writing' class. The brownies only slightly dulled the pain he felt in his chest when he saw that his first midterm had a contraction on the first page. Did they let just anybody pass high school English these days?

About two hours into his personal hell, Mard realized his red pen died roughly three midterms ago and, more pressing, he couldn't read anything on the page.

He pulled the contacts out of his eyes and reached for his actual glasses, then held the paper up to his face. There were a lot of black squiggles but he couldn't recognize any of them. Well, he could because he knew they were letters, but they didn't look right at all. He pulled out one of the midterms he'd already marked and stared at it. There were letters in black and red, the latter of which belonged to him, but they also escaped his grasp. His chest caught uncomfortably as he struggled to make sense of the simple sentences before him, but he couldn't. It wasn't unlike having a word at the tip of his tongue, but worse because Mard Geer had not been in this position since he was eighteen years old and concussed so badly he lost a whole day's worth of memory and words.

This was not good. No, it was not good at all. His trembling fingers - trembling! His fingers! Like he was speaking publicly for the first time in his life - reached for his radial pulse and pressed down. He had no pulse. This made no sense, of course, and he knew that but there was a brief second where he wondered if those trashy vampire novels that were popular in the early 2000's had some merit and he'd been turned into one of them. He considered going for his femoral pulse, but remembered that there was one in his neck (the carrot artery, was it?) and touched that. No pulse either. He slipped his hand into his shirt and struggled to remember where 'left' was so he could find his heart.

"Mard?" Mirajane asked carefully. "Are you okay?"

"Miss Strauss," Mard greeted her cordially, and continued to grope around for his heart. "When did you come in? I didn't hear you."

"I used the upper entrance," Mira said, crouching down next to him and touching his shoulder tentatively. He stared at the hand there, mildly intrigued. It was a very small hand and it had a lot of little scars dotting the knuckles. He had those, too, but hers were fresher. It made him feel...acidic in his chest.

"We have an upper entrance?" Mard stared at the upper rows in confusion. When had they built that?

"Yes. Um, are you okay? You look...off."

"Well, Mira. I believe I have been turned into a...vampire. I lack a pulse," Mard said calmly. "Actually, if I may make an amendment: I think I am stoned."

Sting could see the whole universe from here. Every linked up line and the brilliance of the worlds within them, slowly fading in and out of focus with every accidental twitch of his fingers. It was so beautifully simplistic in its complexity that tears pricked the corners of his eyes; how was it that every life-form, all the way from their cellular ancestors to now, had called one of these spaces home? In that moment, Sting knew exactly why humans would seek to break the fragile boundaries that separated their world from others. There was just something so innately human about discovering a new, unexplored world and trying to cross barriers to find friends in them.

"I love this universe," he croaked tearfully, "It's so beautiful."

"What's on that slide?" Lucy muttered.

"A cross-section of onion skin," Cobra replied, somewhat irritated. "He's absolutely fucking blazed. How many did he have?"

"Three, maybe? I don't even know where he got them from!"

Sting looked up from the universe and ambled over to the rows of potted plants on a bench. Some had little green heads poking up from the soil, others were fully sprouted. There was one gigantic pot labelled 'EMPTY', to which he frowned. It was no fair that the little guy had to be empty when his friends were full of more friends. He pulled out a fistful of little green leaves and glanced over his shoulder furtively. Lucy didn't like it when he'd stopped them on their way to Cobra's office space to marvel at the mini-garden on campus. There were just so many colours and Sting needed - absolutely needed, like Maslow ordained it - to eat them all. He knew what orange tasted like, but what about green and yellow? The yellow stuff was okay, but the green stuff tasted like toothpaste and burned his tongue, but fizzled comfortably going down his throat. Lucy stopped him after two sprigs of the stuff, but he'd stolen a few for when she wasn't looking. Now, though, he knew that the universe wanted him to spread the joy of the toothpaste flower and give it a new home; he dug a hole in the pot and stuck it in there, covered it with dirt, and then he ripped off the 'EMPTY' sticker with a self-satisfied grin. There. Now it was full of friends.

"Rock on, little man," Sting crooned, patting the pot gently. "Rock on and have toothpaste babies."

"What do I do?" Lucy asked worriedly, "Is there something we can do to shorten his high-time?"

"Not really, no. Just let him ride it out. He'll be harmless," Cobra said. "Bacchus lives next to you two, right? If he starts being too much to handle, just call him for backup."

"Lucy. Lucy. Luce. Luuuuuucy," Sting chanted, skipping over to poke her cheek repeatedly. She had really soft skin that he knew wouldn't steal any more of his bones so it was totally safe to keep touching it. Watching her face turn a million shades of red was also pretty fun, he had to admit. Lucy smacked his hand away (meanie) and turned to her brother with a helpless look in her eyes.

"Sting," Cobra said, "You wanna watch Monster House?"

"Yes! And caramel popcorn!"

The last time Mard had been high was when he was twenty-one and his roommate convinced him to give his gravity bong a try smack in the middle of midterm season. Back then, he'd fallen into a haze not unlike the kind brought on by too many blankets and sleep cycles in a row. Now, however, Mard wasn't entirely convinced he wasn't a vampire. Or a demon. Something scary and supernatural.

He watched Mira blab on the phone, all the while keeping two of her cold fingers pressed to his missing carotid pulse. He couldn't be bothered with what she was saying - not when she was touching him like this.

Physical contact and Mard Geer got along like Eucliffe and having a bright idea: happened once in a blue moon and was followed up by disappointment. He could count off the top of his head the number of people who had ever hugged him. Their names, too, actually: his mom, Mira that one time last year, Lucy that one time last year, Mavis from the ancient history department after her funding request went through, and at some point, Mest Gryder (though he'd never actually taught the man, which only now really struck him as odd). From this, Mard could conclude two things; one, last year was peak hugging season for some reason, and two, he was supremely touch deprived.

So, yes, Mira's fingers on his neck were incredibly distracting and he was starting to wonder if this was how weird kinks developed. Would he wind up on a BDSM website in the near future, hounding for a dominatrix to check his vital signs? He blanched and swatted her hand away. Not on his good watch, no sir.

"Wendy says it should wear off on its own," Mira said once she hung up. "But to keep an eye on you. You let me know if anything feels weird, you hear me?"

"I have no pulse, Mira," Mard explained with more patience than he typically afforded even the most intelligent person in his classes. The vetsci student gave him a long, hard look, and he couldn't help but notice how...blue her eyes were. It was like some stupid cliche he used to warn against when he taught creative writing several years ago, complete with an orchestra in his head and a whole thesaurus' worth of synonyms for how goddamn blue her eyes were.

It appeared whatever batch of the devil's lettuce he'd managed to consume had some sort of filter-killing properties, because his next coherent sentence was, "You have pretty eyes."

When he could feel his legs, he was going to kill someone. Preferably Eucliffe.

Sting knew that holding a physics degree on its own was fairly useless - as was the case with any of the holy trinity of sciences - and he'd figured out a while ago that he'd need a masters, bare minimum, to even be considered by companies for hiring. Of course, what exactly his thesis would consist of was purely up to the gods, but now? Now he knew.

"I think I discovered a new colour," he breathed carefully, so as not to disturb his little treasure. It was the most indescribably beautifully weird hazy green/red mix that he was sure was not on the spectrum of known colours. He couldn't bottle up colours yet-

Maybe he could. If he took a picture and then ran it through a hundred scans to identify the wavelength...or maybe if he captured it in a crystal. Maybe that could be his thesis project; using crystals like pokeballs to capture light in the air. It would be genius. He could make billions off ditzy arts kids and physicists and then retire to a beach in some humid climate with low rates of skin cancer. Or some place that could regrow his bones. That would also make a wicked awesome thesis project - using crystals to regrow bones that glowed whatever colour you wanted. Maybe they could do full skeletal transplants with these crystals and he could turn into a full-on glowstick for the rest of his years.

So many maybes, so little time.

"It's on the TV, Sting," Lucy explained patiently. "That means the colour already exists."

Sting pouted, but brightened up immediately after. "Silly, I'm gonna turn crystals into pokeballs and then harness those into colourful bones."

"...why."

"For science," he said as he grabbed one of her notebooks off the bed, flipping it open from the back so he could set up an observation chart. Cardinal rule of thumb in science: it's only valid if you write it down. He tried to draw his lines as straight as possible but doodling them in funky loops was more fun so he scribbled out five columns and rows and went back to staring at the screen.

"I wish you'd show half this enthusiasm for English," he head her murmur, "This seminar is due tomorrow and we haven't even touched it. God, should I email Professor Geer for an extension?"

All he heard was 'Geer' and he shot up like a manhole after an underground explosion and tackled her to the bed. She was soft and warm and would most certainly not be stealing his bones anytime soon, but if Mard knew that he was slacking off the night before a paper…

"Don't do it," he begged, staring up at her with eyes that he couldn't feel in his head any more. Not that he was supposed to ever feel his eyes in his head. He thought so, anyway, but if it was a part of his body then he should have been able to feel it, which of course begged the question of why he couldn't feel his internal organs. Did they have pain receptors? Did internal organs feel anything? If they couldn't, were they even real?

Was he real?

"Sting, we don't have a choice. You're high off your mind right now, there's no way for us to save ourselves from a failing grade, and this seminar is worth 35% of our grade."

"If he finds out I'm high, he'll physically manifest in our room at three am, steal our teeth, stuff them into socks, and then use the socks to beat our feet," Sting hissed, clamping her arms down to her sides and koala-hugging her. He would stay here all night if he needed to - whether or not he managed to keep his eyes open was another story, but he was sure the Red Bull coursing through his body right now would give him an extra couple hours.

Lucy scowled and squirmed, trying her damnest to break free of his grasp. After a few moments and an awkward attempt at kneeing his head, she loosened up and sighed heavily. Though he was quite comfortable cushioned up against her, her warmth the only thing he was currently capable of feeling through the dissociative haze of his skin, his grip went slack and he sat up next to her. He didn't mean for her to get all upset. If the world wasn't exploding into a mosaic of colours behind his eyelids, complete with an 8-bit soundtrack, he would have done something actually useful. He didn't know what he could do if he was being honest with himself - he didn't even know what the goddamn seminar was for.

"That is illegal!" He heard the TV screech, and it was then that Sting was yanked to enlightenment by the same thick branch that swung the animated officer up in the air. He was astral projecting, there was no other way to explain it. It was as if his body was here on this physical plane, while his soul drifted off to Pluto's fifth moon to meet the corporeal embodiment of knowledge.

"I know exactly what to do," Sting managed to say once he found his way back home. "Don't you worry, Lucy, I'll save you."

"Why do you continue to fight, Mira?" Mard found himself asking before he could stop himself. "Surely...surely you can stop."

Mira didn't look up from where she was measuring out milk for the macaroni and cheese in a box. It might have been his eyes playing tricks on him, but he swore he saw the stream of milk wobble a bit before pouring out evenly. "I'm fine, Mard. Thank you for your concern, but I'm fine."

Mard stood up to not quite his full 6'2 frame. Balance was a little shaky when it felt like he was on top of a see through glass floor a hundred feet above the ground, but he quashed down the flippy feeling in his stomach and shuffled over to brace himself on the counter next to her; not quite close enough to touching, but enough that he felt a little zap of static between their arms. She was so much smaller than he was, so much more fragile, but so much stronger. Because she didn't run away. Not like him.

It was likely the weed ham...it sounded like laundry baskets, he thought, frustrated. The word he was looking for sounded like a laundry basket. The weed was screwing with his brain, to put it into layman's terms, and Mard was not chill with it. He had always been on the more severe side, but he hadn't experienced such a lapse in judgement and his own thought process since the early days of his masters degree, back when he was still-

"At first it was because I couldn't," Mira said softly, stirring the milk in. He watched the hazy white overtake the little bits of macaroni, enchanted by the beautiful dispersion patterns over the water. It was what he imagined ice looked like after an Olympic figure skating competition - swirls that overlapped so many times that a whole new layer of ice was upturned. He tore his gaze away from the pot and fixated on Mira, who'd gone eerily still. There was a faraway look on her face, like she was a hundred miles away. Sympathy and nausea warred in his gut as he patiently waited for her to continue. He knew all too well the escapist fantasies and the elaborate runaway plans plotted in the brief moments they were allowed to breathe. A quiet dream at three in the morning; a stolen moment of silence between classes he had no motivation or energy to attend. His hand drifted to cover his hip.

Yes, he knew very well what she wanted to do.

"But I stay now for Elfman and Lisanna. The money is...it's enough for all of us," she said firmly, returning to stirring.

"I can help," Mard replied. "Whatever you need, you know that."

Mira laughed, all windchimes and soft breezes again. She placed a cold hand on his and absently felt for his wrist pulse as she spoke. "You're too kind to me. You always have been. I can't rely on you forever, Mard.. I'll be fine, I promise. Money isn't going to be an issue for much longer. Once Lisanna graduates, I can start...looking for other employment."

"That's not what I meant," Mard said.

"We've had this discussion before. Please, just...drop it," Mira said with such a tone of finality that he closed his eyes and stepped back.

"It...is easier if you confide in someone."

"Would you like any spices on your food? According to the internet some black pepper might help sober you up faster," Mira told him cheerfully as she extended a bowl his way.

Wisely, he chose not to comment on the tremor in her fingers as he accepted it with a jerky nod.

"Finished the citations!" Sting yelled at four in the morning.

"Shut the fuck up!" He heard Bacchus screech next door. "God, just shut up! Fuck!"

"Peace and love, man!" Sting shouted back. "We finished a seminar the night before it's due, what's good?"

Lucy lobbed a pillow at his head and moaned from where she was half draped over the bed. He'd offered her a mixer of tequila and juice an hour ago, but she'd knocked back two shots and returned to her regularly scheduled furious typing. Forty minutes later and she was a curled up lump on the bed with enough ammo around her to toss his way when he started humming or talking or questioning out loud or anything fun, really. He deserved it, yes, but Sting was alive as hell and on a roll. He'd never had this much inspiration for anything in his life ever, and he was starting to see why Zancrow wrote all his papers blitzed out of his mind. Sure, there were moments when he was sure he was gonna have to apply his cumulative two years of physics knowledge to a practical setting in the middle of space because he was so out of his mind, but the aftermath when he was more heavily buzzed than anything? Prime time for pounding out a paper or two.

"Lucy, we did it!" he cheered as he saved the powerpoint and slapped his laptop shut. Bounding over to her bed, he flopped down on the comfy mattress and poked her ribs. She jerked away and he poked her again, this time a little higher. He kept at it, poking her over and over again, following the curve of her hip up and down and sometimes even a little towards her stomach, until she rolled over and jammed her fingers into his armpit. Sting squawked and scrambled away from her relentless wiggles, all the while cursing their tickling competition a while back. She'd discovered his weak spots way too easily. He'd sworn her to secrecy and made her pinky swear never to use it against him, but there were snakes everywhere.

Or, well, there had been about two hours ago. Kind of. There were weird glow worm things on the roof for a solid…half hour before they melted away into the abyss. Sting did not miss those creepy shits, no sir. Bugs were the devil and he did not play around with them.

"Are you sure we have the okay for this?" Lucy asked again.

Sting rolled his eyes. "Yes, Lucy, we do. I asked Mard that day in class, remember? When I gave him the-"

He went still all of a sudden. All forms of life halted and the world went horrifyingly cold. The chill chased away whatever high was still left in him, and he was ten feet in the ground, back amongst mortals.

"I gave Mard weed brownies," he choked out. Lucy reeled back and clapped a hand to her mouth. "You didn't."

"If he ate them…"

"Professor Geer is...high right now," Lucy said hesitantly. It took a couple seconds for the absurdity of the situation to really hit them. Sting had given their uptight, closed off, robot overlord of an English professor edibles, and he was probably meeting Space Jesus himself on his journey through the stars. The mental image of him pulling off half the antics Sting had, searching for munchies, and calling campus police was almost too much to bear; all it took was one glance for the both of them to burst out into a fit of giggles that probably would have woken up Bacchus if it was a decibel higher.

Sting's hand came down to ruffle Lucy's hair once he'd gained control of his diaphragm and his eyes weren't watering up any more. Still tangled in the silky blonde locks, his hand drifted down to rest on her ear, where he toyed with her little sparkly earring. She met his tired gaze with an equally sleep-deprived smile on her face, and Sting was struck by how lucky he was to have made a friend like her.

Yes, Rogue would probably put up with him through this bullshit, but Rogue was his brother and had an...obligation. He certainly wouldn't have entertained his outrageous solution to their predicament. Gajeel might have, if only out of laziness, but Lucy? Lucy didn't doubt him once. Oh, she grilled him within an inch of his life and he realized why she had such a knack for psychology, but the unwavering trust on her face once she knew for sure they were in the clear was like a metal rod that straightened out all the kinks in his spine and had him standing firm in his convictions as he led her through hammering out this seminar.

He was a rather simple creature; at the end of the day, if you trusted him, Sting would never do anything to betray that. As such, he would stay up longer and check and double check and even triple check the seminar over and over again, until he was sure that, if nothing, her grade would be saved. Sting could deal with a 35% hit to his grade. It would crush Lucy, and he had no intentions of letting that happen.

Not to one of his friends.

"You know, you're the best roommate a guy could ask for," Sting said blearily as a wave of dizzying exhaustion forced his eyes to close for a second before he caught himself and jerked awake. He had to stay awake. He had to make it perfect.

"Same." Lucy yawned, drawing closer to him. He couldn't muster the energy to lift his arm off her face even an inch. She tossed the blankets over them and shoved her freezing toes between his calves, sighing in relief as their temperatures sought balance. "We can power nap for an hour or two before we get up to perfect it."

"No, you need your sleep," he protested. "I'll just drink another Red Bull-"

"Shut up, Sting. Partners suffer together," she asserted. "Now, sleep."

"I'm sorry," Mard said as he lay on the sofa, staring at the stained roof above him. He could count all the corners that were peeling on the tiles now, and he remembered how to count to fifty in Latin, which was indicative of his returning senses. Whatever strain of weed he'd been given had been oddly developed for a brief, intense high and rapid advancement to sobriety. While he was glad his embarrassment could be safely limited to confirming his students' claims that he was, in fact, a demon or a vampire, his teeth still gnashed together painfully at how loose he'd been with his tongue.

How loose he'd been with Mira.

"For what?" she asked from her seat by his feet.

"Intruding on your private life. You are correct. I should mind my own business. What goes on in your life isn't something I can interfere with. Not...now." Ten years ago,, maybe, he thought privately. Back when I was younger and you could still be saved.

He wondered how things would change if he'd been there to help her before she'd gotten sucked into that place too deeply. Maybe she wouldn't ache in her bones as much as she did now. Maybe she could go a day without purple blotches on her skin and scars on her knuckles. Maybe he could look at her and feel something other than crushing despair.

She patted his leg and smiled beatifically as always, with a touch more melancholy about her than usual. "I'm grateful to have a friend as concerned as you are, Mard."

"Mira...you know that if-"

"I need anything, I can come to you," she cut him off kindly. "I've only heard this once a day for how long now?"

The corner of his lips tugged up ever so slightly. "I will repeat it every day until you understand what I mean."

"Guess I'll be hearing it for a while then, huh?" she teased him gently. "Should I start looking into free houses next door to one another for the future?"

"You may as well book our nursing home rooms while you are at it."

"So, to summarize: Monster House is actually a brilliant modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, where, instead of the poison, the house itself is used to symbolize how toxic their relationship actually is. Much like the two of them dying for one another, the house trapping the old man in it for years after his wife's death is an accurate representation of why rushing into romance without thinking it through is a horrible idea and will drag you down in misery once you get past the initial cloud of infatuation," Sting finished with a flourish. Beside him, Lucy pushed her oversized aviators further up the bridge of her nose and stuffed her hands back into the deep recesses of her sweater. She was typically prone to dressing up for presentations and the like, but after three hours of sleep and a hangover, she'd grabbed the first things she could find on the floor - including his sweatpants - and shuffled out the door with death in her eyes.

"Your presentation was supposed to be on Titus Adronicus," Mard Geer rasped from his seat in the front. By Mard standards, he was a complete mess. His shirt was rumpled, the sleeves rolled up, pants slung low on his narrow hips, and his normally kempt hair was barely held back by a rubber band he'd snapped off a collection of paper on his desk when he walked in. There were a disturbing amount of lusty stares focused on him in the class, though Sting had to admit he did look pretty decent when he wasn't such a stick in the mud.

He rationalized the positive commentary was due entirely to the guilt he flt over accidentally drugging his professor - there was no mistaking the red tinge to his eyeballs. Mard had been blazed the same way he was.

"I asked you if it was okay that we switched to another Shakespeare play if we didn't like our own, like, yesterday," Sting pointed out. Mard opened his mouth and closed it just as quickly. To anyone else, the hand pressed to his forehead was out of exasperation, but he could see the little circles the English professor was rubbing into his skin, and he winced in sympathy. He'd woken up with a headache no amount of gatorade could cure, too.

"Please," Lucy croaked out.

"Fine. Just...send me a copy of your writeup after class," Mard mumbled, slapping his folder shut and stuffing it into a briefcase. He stood up and jerkily made his way over to the lectern to collect other papers spread out there, and then said, "Class dismissed. Call it an early day, go...study."

The class was vacated faster than it did during fires. Zancrow patted Sting on the shoulder as he passed, nodding in approval, and Totomaru looked ready to sob in joy as he shoved people out of the way in his haste to exit the room. Lucy plopped into a seat with a quiet 'five minutes' on her lips. Sting paused and adjusted the sunglasses on her face so they wouldn't hurt her as she rested, and then turned to Mard and smiled sheepishly. "So. Those brownies. Listen, I had no idea they were laced and I was also-"

"Mr Eucliffe, you have about thirty seconds before I rip out your ribcage and convert the bones into pikes for the Iron Maiden you will soon be calling home. I suggest you run."

Sting slung Lucy over his shoulders in a fireman carry and booked it.

A/N: I tried to be funny, I really did. So, a lot of stuff happened here, yadadada, I do want a little feedback - do you think Sting and Lucy are progressing at an okay rate? I've become a lot more comfortable with their characters over the years so I understand if the writing style is a little jarring compared to previous chapters. Give me your thoughts, people!

I'm actually not very subtle at all, I'm pretty sure all of you have a pretty solid grasp of Mard's background and how it related to Mira. What are your theories? I'm very curious to get your feedback on their relationship, as well. How am I doing with that one?

Some important news: I'm going to be giving NaNo a go this year with Chaos Theory. For those of you that missed it, it's been entirely rewritten and I actually have that one plotted out, so give it a go. You get to see my most up to date writing style because I accidentally made the switch to present tense and am now horrifically uncomfortable with past tense so this fic is hell to write but so much fun all at once.

This isn't to say that I don't have this one plotted out, cause I do. To like, 30 chapters.

Other important news: I accidentally got involved in a lot of things on campus that involve healthcare, and I'm dying under that and course workload. I'm going to aim for a better updating schedule (maybe once a month? I hope?) but...keep your fingers crossed.

Now that that's all said and done...please review?

-Eien