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bloodys44 · 5 months

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good intentions ship: natsu dragneel x lucy heartfilia summary: Repressing any lingering feelings he might have for Lucy should have been smooth sailing for Natsu. He’s been doing it successfully for years, that is, until one night where he’s given just a taste of what a relationship with her could be like. Suddenly, seeing other men make their move makes his heart hurt in a way that feels a little too much like loss. ao3

written for @vikingpoteto as part of the @allaboutnalu gift exchange! all of your prompts were sooo bangin but i ended up latching onto jealous natsu and sprinkled in a little bit of fake dating in there too! i hope you enjoy it! (i wasn't able to shoehorn bonvoyage in there but i did listen to it on repeat for like a month because of your though, so i hope that counts for something) thank you to @kaleighkarma for beta reading :]

Natsu never really liked stuffy parties like these. He never liked the dress codes that made him wear shirts with too-tight collars and jackets that restricted his arm movement. This was much more Lucy’s vibe, which was how he ended up here in the first place.

When her turn to choose their job rolled around, she had picked out something low-stakes—something hopefully not even he could screw up. They had been hired as security for some fancy charity gala, should trouble arise. Natsu knew from experience that these types of jobs never came with much action; it was simply a precautionary measure.

That’s why Lucy loved these jobs—they were low-risk but high-reward. Natsu, on the other hand, didn’t care so much about the reward so long as he got to kick some ass, which was never guaranteed on jobs like this one.

They’d been promised free food—something Natsu had taken full advantage of—but the guy manning the buffet had cut him off long ago, and now he was left to his own devices, roaming around the floor in hopes that something interesting might happen.

He wasn’t left waiting much longer before that something came in the form of someone grabbing his wrist, having him immediately turn on his foot with the intention of fighting off whoever was dumb enough to pick a fight with him. He was entirely ready to snatch his arm away and throw a punch, but he stopped in his tracks as he came face-to-face with Lucy. She didn’t give him any time to question as to why she had grabbed him, quickly pulling him to her side and into what seemed like a conversation between her and some party guest that he didn’t recognise.

“This is my boyfriend, Natsu,” she introduced, to his immediate confusion.

The B-word was not one Lucy ever threw around lightly. It was one Natsu heard frequently as a result of misunderstandings—some people would simply see him and Lucy together and come to their own conclusions. Though it wasn’t ever something he cared about, Lucy had always adamantly corrected them over it.

Natsu never really got why.

He didn’t care what other people thought of their relationship, much less strangers they might never meet again. Though many thought him oblivious, he was well aware of the whispers that followed them around the guild, speculating on the nature of their relationship. To be honest, he didn’t really care what they thought about it either. People could speculate all they wanted, but at the end of the day, his relationship with Lucy—whether they were friends or something more—was between them and no one else.

He could smell the alcohol on his breath, and he could see the way his gaze trailed down the low-cut dress that exposed her ample cleavage. His skeevy behaviour and the way that Lucy clung to his side hinted towards something a little different than a sudden change of heart on her behalf.

Tossing an arm around her shoulder, Natsu pulled her into his side, a gesture she eagerly accepted by slipping her arm around him and resting her head gently on his chest.

“Hey,” Natsu greeted, an air of politeness only thinly veiling the venom that seeped into his voice.

If Lucy’s plan was to have him intimidate this guy, it was clearly working. His gaze had moved away from Lucy, now frantically looking anywhere but her. Natsu wasn’t the biggest guy, but that didn’t matter when he knew how to carry himself in a way that tended to intimidate people who weren’t down for a fight.

He puffed his chest and glared down at him as if to say, she’s mine, and I don’t like to share.

Based on the look of fear in his eyes, her plan was working.

“I, uh-” the man stuttered, “It’s uh, good to meet you.”

He was almost tempted to growl at the poor sod, but he felt bad enough as is.

“I gotta go,” he mumbled, all interest in Lucy suddenly fizzling away. “I’ll maybe see you later…”

He didn’t wait for a reply before he was scurrying off with his tail between his legs.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “Sorry for springing that on you, he was just creeping me out, and I thought maybe if he knew I was with you, he’d leave me alone.”

“It’s no problem,” he assured with a shrug, and really, it wasn’t.

Natsu had always promised to protect her; it didn’t matter if that was from the imminent threat of death or just some creepy guy at a party. Even as the creep scurred well away from them, Lucy didn’t detach herself from his side, instead dropping her arm from around him while still sticking close to him.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “Can you stay?”

She didn’t have to elaborate on why—he already knew—not that he needed a reason anyway. He’d never complain about sticking with Lucy.

“Yeah, ‘course,” he said. “You don’t hafta ask.”

“Thank you.”

She flashed him a sweet smile that made his heart throb in his chest, and that was thanks enough for him.

Though he had gone into this job hoping—practically praying—for something interesting to happen, itching for a fight, Natsu couldn’t find it in himself to be mad when the rest of the night ran smoothly.

Lucy spent the whole night by his side, practically attached to his arm. No man tried to bother her the rest of the night as she stayed by his side, holding onto his arm in a way that didn’t seem entirely platonic to any onlookers. When they found themselves in a lull, she would gently rest her head against his shoulder in soft rest.

He liked that soft, casual intimacy with her. He wished they got to do it more.

For once, he felt himself getting his ego boosted by something that wasn’t winning a fight. One might say it was from having a pretty girl on his arm, but he would say it was from having Lucy on his arm.

There was something nice about protecting Lucy, about knowing that everyone in this venue looked at her and knew who she belonged to. Not because he owned her, but because she chose him. She was the one who wanted to cling to his arm, to hold his hand, to stay by his side.

She was his, and he was hers.

Having Lucy at his side made even the most terribly boring conversations they found themselves dragged into bearable.

Lucy was always such a natural in environments like these. She was charming and charismatic, she knew all the right things to say to the types of people who attended charity galas. He felt almost invisible to anyone but her as she charmed them, which he found himself more than okay with. It gave him adequate time to zone out with his gaze in her direction.

At some point, she brought her hand up to rest on his chest as she let out a laugh, and he thought for a second that his heart might stop altogether.

He couldn’t quite remember when Lucy’s touch began to make him feel this way, but it was beginning to feel like a running theme these days. Just the brush of her skin against his own was enough to set the butterflies in his stomach on fire.

Maybe it had always been like that, and he just hadn’t noticed until now.

It was a good tingle—one that made him feel as though he could take on the world.

He found that was a common theme when it came to Lucy.

In an attempt to seek out more of that feeling, his hand slipped around her back, resting on her waist and pulling her even closer into his side. She did not protest; in fact, she leaned into it, and if it meant she would stay like that forever, Natsu wished the night would never end.

Maybe any other night he might have found himself whinging and complaining about the lack of action. He’d probably try to pick a fight with Gray or Erza afterward in an attempt to burn off some of that excess energy he’d come into the job with, but tonight he didn’t really feel like it—not when that meant having Lucy leave his arm.

The night had to end inevitably, and it finally did when they stepped out into the moonlight. Lucy’s arm left his now that they were safely solitary, and he had to stop himself from letting out a soft whine or reaching out for her again.

Though he had begun their job paying close attention to the time, he had stopped paying it any mind about halfway through the night. Judging by the way the moon was hung high up in the sky and the streets had been long dead to the night, it had to have been past midnight by now. They had stayed well past when everyone else had left, waiting out any stragglers who might be cause for trouble if they left too early.

When the last guest had left, their employer had graciously sent them on their way, leaving them free to enter the night and leave for home.

She took in a deep breath of air, her arms stretched out as she dropped her ladylike façade and returned back to the carefree Lucy he always knew, happy to bask out beneath the stars in which she was born from.

It wasn’t until she had sufficiently filled her lungs with the soft spring air that she finally turned back around to meet his gaze. Her brows furrowed together slightly, as though there were something wrong with his appearance. He didn’t think there was. He feared maybe he was staring too intently, and she had finally noticed.

He’d been doing that a lot lately.

“Are you okay? You’re looking a little bit red,” she observed.

She stepped towards him, and her hand came up to rest on his cheek, cradling his jaw. The tingly feeling was coming back in full force, which he was certain did not help with the redness she was noting.

He probably wouldn’t have realised he was blushing so hard had she not pointed it out to him.

“Uh, yeah, just, uh, hot?” He tried to brush off.

It wasn’t his finest excuse, but he simply pulled from the list of ones Cana used when her drunken flush got a little too obvious to those she was trying to convince she was sober.

Lucy, seemingly unconvinced, raised her eyebrows in mild surprise.

“You get hot?”

An understandable question given his general heatproof body and the way he made fun of her any time the temperature in Magnolia rose more than two degrees.

“It was stuffy in there,” he corrected.

Thankfully, Lucy didn’t seem to question his little slip-up, and her attention turned back to the stars.

“Then the fresh air will do you some good,” she mused.

He had a feeling that fresh air would not help his predicament so long as she lingered near. He just hoped that she wouldn’t notice, lest he have to try to find the words to verbalise his current predicament.

A request specifically for their team had brought them a fair ways out of Magnolia for the weekend. Though the job had been quick, finished before evening fell, the distance from their hometown meant they would find themselves staying the night in

The small size of the tavern they had found themselves in didn’t lend itself well to brawling (not that that had ever stopped them before), but seeing as Natsu had exhausted his energy on the job today, he was content to kick ass in pool instead.

He leaned over the table, his gaze intensely focused on the cue ball at the end of his stick. With a swift pull-back, Natsu thrust his stick against the cueball and sent it flying across the table, where it met another with a loud clack before it rolled into one of the corner pockets.

“Yes!” Natsu cheered, pumping his fist in the air to celebrate his victory.

Gray was decidedly less impressed.

“That was my ball, dipshit,” he jeered. “I’m solid, you’re stripes.”

“Who cares? I got the ball in the pocket, didn’t I?” Natsu shrugged.

“I’m starting to think you don’t know how to play pool.”

“The point of the game is to get the white ball into the hole—all the other balls are just obstacles,” Erza declared.

“What? That’s not how you play the game at all.”

Whatever fight was about to break out between them was cut short on Natsu’s end as his attention was drawn away by the sight of Lucy sitting at the bar. She had opted not to join them because she claimed they were “too competitive” and “didn’t know the rules.”.

When they had left to play, Lucy had been on her own, but now it seemed as though someone else had made themselves comfortable on the seat that he had occupied not so long ago. There was a drink in her hand that she definitely hadn’t had before, most likely ordered and paid for by the man sitting next to her.

Her fingers played with the straw in her drink as she listened idly to whatever it was that he was saying to her. She smiled politely but otherwise didn’t seem terribly interested in what he had to say.

He couldn’t make their conversation out over the rest of the idle noise in the bar, but if he wanted to, he could tune his ears in. Not that he had to; he already had a pretty keen idea of what was going on based on the way his hand came to rest on her thigh.

He was getting much too close for Natsu’s liking.

Placing his stick back on the table, he left Gray and Erza to finish the game without him and made his way over to Lucy, prowling like a predator stalking his prey.

He tossed his arm around Lucy’s shoulder as casually as he always had and plastered a grin across his face as genuinely as he could, given the weird feeling that was bubbling up in his stomach.

“Hey Lucy!” He greeted with all the familiarity in the world.

“Natsu?”

She looked up at him with surprise, evidently taken off guard by his sudden action. She opened her mouth to speak but was cut off by the man sitting beside her.

“Who are you?”

He was hoping that he’d quickly get the hint and quietly stalk away, leaving Natsu to not have to fend for her attention. That was fine. He knew exactly what to say that would get him to leave.

“I’m her boyfriend,” he declared, and Lucy seemed to cringe at his words.

“You didn’t mention you had a boyfriend,” the other man said, as though Natsu’s introduction threw a wrench in his plan.

Based on the way Lucy stuttered to save face, it had seemingly thrown one in hers too.

“I- I don’t- he’s not-!”

Lucy scrambled for the words to try and convince the stranger otherwise, but by then it was too late.

The way he retreated after finding out about her so-called “boyfriend” confirmed what Natsu already knew. He was very clearly chatting her up with some sort of romantic or sexual intent.

A look of glowing pride overtook Natsu as he watched the man leave, a sentiment that Lucy did not share.

The night out didn’t last much longer after that, with Lucy declaring that she wanted to go back to their motel and the rest of the group following suit.

Lucy trailed a few feet behind them, an air of bad energy radiating off of her, which Natsu quickly picked up on. He hung back, waiting for Lucy to catch up as Gray and Erza moved on. Even as her steps moved in tandem with his, she didn’t look at him; her gaze trained at the path ahead of them, making it obvious she was deliberately avoiding looking at him.

“What? Why are you mad?”

“Because you interrupted my conversation and you scared that nice man off,” she huffed.

The two had stopped walking, the others leaving them behind as they stood on the side of the street, lit by nothing more than moonlight and flickering lamp posts. In that moment, all Natsu could do was blankly stare at her in surprise.

“I can stand up for myself, you know,” Lucy said, arms crossed over her chest in disdain. “I only need your help with drunk or creepy guys.”

“He was creepy,” Natsu defended.

Any guy who got that close to her who wasn’t him was a creep.

“If I want your help, I’ll get it on my own terms,” she huffed. “You can’t just make decisions for me based on what you think is best. That’s not fair.”

It didn’t really matter. They were a few hours out of Magnolia; she’d probably never see the poor sod again; there was no potential there for a relationship anyway. That’s what she was looking for—a serious relationship, someone to settle down with—or at least, that’s what she told him. That guy didn’t seem like the committed relationship type, so he was justified in scaring him off, right?

“His hand was on your thigh,” he said, as though that absolved him of any wrongdoing in that moment.

"Well, maybe I like it when some men give me attention,” she said. “Maybe I don’t like it when my friend makes me look like a cheater.”

He did feel a little guilty in that regard. He didn’t want to make others think poorly of Lucy, but sometimes you have to make tough decisions to protect those you love, right?

He didn’t get it. She didn’t seem interested, but she wasn’t turning him down either. She claimed she liked the attention, but he could give her plenty of attention if that’s what she wanted.

Why did she want his help then but not now?

Lucy had already walked off, leaving him behind as she caught up with the others while he was left behind to try and put the pieces back together.

Drinks flowed freely, and music pumped through the air as a rowdy crowd gathered in the guild to celebrate… something. A birthday? A guild milestone? Natsu wasn’t quite sure, nor did he care much—a sentiment that was surely shared by almost everyone else taking the night to party.

Guild parties like this weren’t often open to non-members, but Cana had plenty of drinking buddies from out town who would often swing by for a night of . Though none of them were much for letting in outsiders, Cana’s guests tended to behave themselves—or perhaps more accurately, behaved better than the guild regulars. They were there to drink and party; any property damage was usually done by those who already had a reputation for such.

It didn’t take long for a fight to break out in one part of the guild. Gajeel’s fist hit Natsu’s cheek, sending him flying to the ground, breaking a chair or two in the process. With a grin overtaking his expression, Natsu scrambled to his feet and pulled back his fist, ready to retaliate, but the fight was promptly cut short by an unimpressed Erza, who held Natsu back by the collar of his shirt. He was practically tossed to the side with an angry glare as a warning, leaving him to scurry off with a dejected huff.

If he couldn’t get his energy out, he would at least take this chance for a drink and some good company, but there was one person in particular he wanted to be with tonight.

Lucy. He wanted Lucy.

A quick scan of the bar made it clear she was not there, so Natsu clambered up onto an empty table to give him a better vantage point as he scanned the dancefloor. It didn’t take long for him to spot her blonde hair, given away by the familiar blue bow that tied her hair to the side. He found her dancing with one of Cana’s so-called drinking buddies.

Their bodies were close—much too close for Natsu’s liking. While maybe he could have put their close proximity down to the crowd of people that cluttered the dance floor, what he couldn’t seem to justify was the way his hands made their way onto her hips, trailing up to her waist, where they came to rest. Lucy did not protest—in fact, her arms came to rest over his shoulders, pulling him closer, their chests resting against one another.

If he had a drink in his hand, he was certain the glass would have shattered right then and there.

Instinctually, he wanted to go over there to make his presence known, to watch that boy and every other man in the room scatter, to make them avoid so much as looking at Lucy wrong for the rest of the night. It would be so easy to start another fight, to “accidentally” let him get caught up in it, to singe off every hair on his head and leave him trailing off with his tail between his legs. Just as he was about to put his plan into action, he hesitated for a moment as Lucy’s words rang in the back of his head.

“You can’t just make decisions for me based on what you think is best. That’s not fair.”

He remembered how angry she had been the last time he had chosen to interfere. Though it had dissipated quickly, the bitterness lasting no longer than the night they spent out of town, he still didn’t enjoy having that sentiment directed towards him. That night, she had hardly been interested when he stepped in, but tonight she seemed to be actively enjoying herself.

It made him feel nauseous, but he couldn’t place his finger on why.

He felt some sort of urge or desire to be there with her, to be him. He didn’t know why. He hated dancing; he only came to these parties for fights, booze, and food, but somehow he thought maybe dancing would suck less if he was doing it with Lucy.

It didn’t matter if it did or didn’t. He wouldn’t be finding out tonight, considering she had found herself rather preoccupied at the moment. She could have her fun, and he wouldn’t stop her, but he knew that if he stayed any longer, he would either get sick or get violent; neither option appealing at the moment.

He would have preferred to leave without much confrontation, but he was unable to slip past Gray on his way out.

“Hey, where are you going?” He called out.

“Home,” Natsu simply replied.

“What? You can’t leave without Lucy.”

Can’t was a strong word. He usually wouldn’t. Most other nights, he’d walk her home to her apartment (or, on nights where she’d had a bit much to drink, carry her to her apartment). There was no spoken obligation; it was more just a ritual they did, which had apparently been picked up by those around them. Gray clearly knew of their unspoken agreement, but he didn’t stop him on his way out.

Lucy was mad. This was not information he had obtained firsthand, but rather had been relayed to him by many, many sources. Pretty much everyone at the guild knew what happened that night and were more than happy to let him know that he was being a dick. He didn’t care much about their opinions. This was not the first time his guildmates had held that thought of him, and it would not be the last either.

He couldn’t intervene; he couldn’t fight the guy, but he couldn’t leave quietly without being labelled the bad guy. Was he supposed to just sit there and take it? To watch it and let his feelings get hurt?

The confrontation was inevitable. He knew he couldn’t avoid Lucy forever, but that sure wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He probably could have drawn the chase out longer had his wallet not begun to run dry of food money. Natsu was perfectly content to stay in his little space in the woods, to keep to himself, to train, to eat, but he still had to come to the guild to take a job, and it was at that very job board that he found himself cornered.

“Are you done giving me the silent treatment?” Came her voice from behind him.

Natsu didn’t turn around to face her as he replied, his gaze still fixated on the request he had in his hand.

“I’m not giving you the silent treatment.”

It wasn’t technically a lie—he couldn’t be giving her the silent treatment if he was just avoiding her altogether.

“Okay, then what do you have to say for yourself?”

For the first time since her arrival, Natsu looked up from his job request and at her. She was looking at him with a stern expression, her arms crossed over her chest.

He was still so mad. He wasn’t really sure who or what he was mad at. He certainly wasn’t mad at her. The guy at the party maybe, but not Lucy—never Lucy.

He was mad at the situation. He was mad that other guys had the audacity to look, to touch, to flirt.

There was still something simmering below the surface—some feeling of resentment that still lingered. He was never good at regulating his emotions, much less his anger. Part of him wanted to lash out at someone, something—anything really—but he feared what would happen if he gave in to those thoughts.

Lucy was already upset with him enough; if he let his resentful thoughts slip, he might have a bigger issue on his hands, so instead he met her with a single-word answer.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Seriously?” She exclaimed. “You can’t just leave me alone at a party, ignore me for a week, and then say nothing.”

“I don’t have anything to say,” he shrugged.

“Not even a sorry?”

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

He was sorry. Sort of. He didn’t like making Lucy upset; he certainly didn’t like making her upset with him, but there was a certain amount of self-preservation that led to his decision.

His feelings for Lucy were no longer platonic—they probably hadn’t been for a while now.

He wanted a relationship with her. It was something he’d wanted subconsciously for maybe years now, but he hadn’t really actively considered it until he was given the chance to play pretend for one night when he realised how easy loving Lucy came to him.

Now that the idea had been planted in his mind, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. His brain was plagued with thoughts of cheesy shit, like taking her on dates and holding her hand—all the dumb stuff he swore up and down that he would never care about. It made his chest tighten with a feeling that he could only describe as yearning.

He wanted that with her, wanted to shower her in the affections and attentions that she desired, to make her laugh and smile, and to know that he was the reason for her joy.

There weren’t many things that Natsu was afraid of, but he was afraid of change. Because what if change meant they could never go back to the way things were? He liked what they had—their friendship, their easy companionship. If any of that were to be put at risk by taking a step in a new direction, then he would gladly let things stay just the way they were.

And yet, watching other guys have the courage to do what he was too afraid to hurt in a way that felt a little too much like loss.

Lucy let out a dissatisfied huff at his apology.

“What is up with you? You’ve been avoiding me all week and now you won’t even look me in the eye to apologise.”

Though he would have loved to steer clear of this topic entirely, Lucy was looking up at him with an expectant gaze, waiting to hear some sort of justification or explanation. Natsu, on the other hand, was unfortunately acutely aware of everyone else in the guild hall. This wasn’t where he wanted to have this conversation, if they had to have it at all.

If he got his feelings rejected by Lucy just like he foresaw, he didn’t want it to be in front of all the people he knew would use that as ammunition against him. Gray would never let him live it down.

“Can we talk about this later?”

“What? Why?”

It clearly had not occurred to her that there were people watching until now, when she followed his gaze that flicked behind her. The moment Lucy looked behind her, everyone who had been watching seemed to scatter, trying their best to look busy as though they had never been watching in the first place.

“Oh,” she let out, her conviction dropping just a little.

At the very least, it seemed as though she didn’t want to cause a scene in the middle of the guild hall.

“Okay,” she conceded. “We can talk at my apartment if you want.”

“No,” Natsu shook his head.

Lucy’s apartment had always been such a place of comfort for him, something of a second home. While maybe comfort would be something he would need after the fact, he knew their conversation would forever linger in the air, etched into the wallpaper, coming back to haunt him every time he stepped foot into that room.

He needed them to be on some even playing field, a space that he knew wouldn’t be tainted by whatever may transpire today. Lucky for him, he felt as though he knew the exact right place.

“Can you meet me by the river?” He softly suggested.

“The one by your house?” She asked, an air of reluctance lingering over her.

“Yeah.”

A beat of silence fell upon them as she met him with a look of contemplation. The silence didn’t last for much longer before Lucy finally yielded.

“Okay,” she agreed and Natsu was happy to take at least one small victory before the trajectory of their relationship changed entirely.

The gentle rush of the river soothed Natsu as he sat on the bank, his arms perched on his knees as he looked out at the water. He’d been sitting there for a while before the time they had agreed to meet, taking a few moments to gather his thoughts.

He’d been trying his best to spend the last week thinking of practically anything other than Lucy, pushing away any and all thoughts about her, the bar, the party, the other men who looked at her with desire in their eyes. He could have gone on much longer repressing those thoughts, pushing them deep down into the deepest depths of his mind, somewhere they wouldn’t be found, even by him. He was rather good at avoiding things like that, but he knew all that would serve to do was delay the inevitable revelation.

The fact that he had put off truly considering his feelings for Lucy this long was almost a miracle but now that they had risen to the surface he couldn’t ignore them any longer. Especially not when they made it hard to look at his best friend the same way.

He tried to relax himself, to not tense up in his shoulders when he heard her approaching from behind. He could tell it was her by the pace of her footsteps, differentiating herself from the animals that scurried past and emphasised by the comforting waft of her scent lingering in the air.

He didn’t look up to meet her eyes when he asked, “Are you still mad at me?”

“Yes,” she bluntly replied.

Though Lucy tended to be easy to forgive, she was also a little stubborn from time to time. He liked that about her, even if right now it was coming back to bite him in the ass.

“But I’m not as mad,” she reassured as she sat down next to him.

Her words were reaffirmed when he glanced over at her and found that, despite her earlier anger and frustration, she still smiled at him. The sight of her lips quirking up in the corners made his heart tighten in his chest, as it had been known to do around Lucy as of late.

She was so cute that it almost hurt to look for too long, so he had to pull his gaze away.

“You wanted to talk?”

Lucy wasn’t stupid—quite the opposite, actually. She was rather perceptive when it came to people’s emotions, and she had obviously picked up that whatever was bothering him went deeper than merely walking out on her that night. Whether she had figured out why exactly it bothered him so much, he wasn’t entirely sure yet.

Her words were met with silence once more as he looked out to the river, not exactly sure where to start.

“Come on, Natsu, what’s bothering you?”

She reached out to his hand, taking it in her own in a gentle attempt to soothe him. Their fingers intertwined, and he got to feel the comforting weight of her hand and the soft skin of her palm against his own. Somehow, even in the middle of such turmoil between them, she found it in herself to feel compassion and concern for him.

"Please, Natsu, I don’t like it when we fight.”

He didn’t like it when they fought either, although they never usually reached this point. They tended to argue about petty, trivial things, of which they would resolve without much hassle. Even after the night at the bar, when she had been so furious at him, things had blown over quickly. Their fights were never over dumb things like romance or feelings. He was hardly able to navigate difficult feelings like this on his own; the fact that they concerned Lucy only served to make it that much harder.

He was treading a fine line between trying to express what he was feeling and not irrevocably ruining his relationship with her forever.

He opened his mouth to speak, but whatever words he could manage to conjure up got caught in his throat. He had to pull his gaze away from Lucy if he wanted even a chance to pull himself together.

“It’s just that… I don’t like it when other guys flirt with you,” he managed to get out.

If there had been some expectation she had of what he was going to say to her, it was clear from the expression on her face that it was not that.

"I don’t think I understand,” she said. “You don’t like it when guys flirt with me?” She repeated, looking at him for assurance.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

It was a simple question that should have had a simple answer, but like all of this stupid feeling stuff, what was going on inside of him was a lot more complicated than that.

“Because I want to do that with you,” he said in all but a murmur.

Lucy looked at him with blank expression as she tried to process what he had just told her, her head cocked slightly to the side.

“You want to flirt with me?”

“No, well, yeah, but-” He struggled to find the right words to convey how he felt.

Did he want to flirt with her? People seemed to perceive their banter as flirting all the time, but it wasn’t anything like the flirty looks and playful touches that other men gave her. That wasn’t what he wanted; he liked what they had. Maybe what he wanted was just more of what they already had, but he struggled to put that into words.

“I dunno,” he shrugged. “It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” she softly said, running her thumb along the back of his hand.

She seemed to be taking this whole confessing-his-love-for-her thing in stride, not pulling away even as he haphazardly fumbled together his thoughts.

She regarded him with a kind smile, an entire juxtaposition to the way she had been looking at him earlier in the day. Of course she did. She was Lucy, kind, compassionate, ever-forgiving, even when he was being a bit of a sook. For a long time, he had considered these to be reasons why no man would ever be good enough for her. Now he wondered if he was good enough for her either.

“Natsu?” She said, her soft voice pulling him away from his own thoughts. “Can I try something?”

He wordlessly nodded at her, and before he could even begin to guess what she was about to do, she leaned in and closed the distance between them, her lips pressing against his own. It was only for a brief moment, little more than a few seconds—but he didn’t need any more than that to know that the way she felt against him made it feel like lava flowed through his veins.

It reminded him of the way he felt when her hand came to softly rest on his chest that night on the job.

That was what he wanted.

More of that.

Only he couldn’t seem to articulate that thought and instead sat there gaping at her, looking like a goddamned fool.

“I’m sorry, I thought that’s what you wanted,” she bashfully said, averting her eyes, cheeks flushed in embarrassment.

His heart was thrumming so loudly that he could hear it in his ears; her words almost drowned out by the thump, thump, thumping that was ringing around him. It took all of his strength and focus to make out what she was saying, and even more so to conjure up a response.

“It is.”

Well, he hadn’t exactly known that’s what he wanted—not until she had done it, but now that she had, he wanted it again, and again, and again. He wanted to have her, to hold her, to keep her on his arm, safe and away from harm or perverted eyes. He wanted to live out the fantasy that had begun the night she had called him her "boyfriend.”.

Finally, he was beginning to feel that fantasy in real time as her hands came to rest on his cheeks and their lips melded against each other once more.

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