Work Text:
This is not the first time Natsu has thought of Lucy as 'pretty'.
If he's being honest with himself, that knowledge has always been there—drifting around aimlessly in his subconsciousness, only making itself known in the barest of moments. Like when she spars with him, her face flushed with adrenaline and stray strands of hair clinging to her sweaty skin; or when she rambles about the latest book she's reading, her eyes alight with excitement and her smile so blinding that his cheeks hurt just from looking at her; or maybe when she just wakes up in the morning, hair mussed and shirt askew, rubbing the crust from her eyes as her back arches in a yawn, and he feels a foreign ache spread from his chest all the way down to his bones.
Right now, she's pretty in a way he has never allowed himself to think about before.
Privately, Natsu has always believed that Lucy looks best with her hair down. Maybe it's because she looks a lot more natural like that—like she's comfortable; in her element; confidently working her way through a battlefield only she can see.
And maybe it's just him, but she also feels a lot softer. A lot warmer. A lot more like the Lucy who dresses his wounds and kisses Happy goodnight.
She's not looking in his direction, which is something he's beyond grateful for. He can't seem to look at anyone else but her, he doesn't have a goddamn clue why, and there's a part of him that's sure he'll never be the same if she turns and meets his gaze with her own.
Her hair curls loosely down her shoulders, golden waves tumbling over the skin of her upper arms as she tugs lightly on the sides of her dress. And God, that dress. Natsu has never seen anything like that dress. It's a deep, burgundy sleeveless gown that stretches and ripples in all the right places, flowing down her long, long legs to eventually pool at her feet. His eyes trace her figure, his gaze hitching on the dip of her waist and the curve of her hips, and he feels his mouth go dry.
Someone whacks the side of his arm, then, and he turns, body tensed to start a fight with whoever the hell had decided to hit him, and comes face to face with the one and only bane of his existence.
"Quit staring," Gray grumbles, rolling his eyes. "We're on a job."
Natsu's face burns, and he rips his eyes away from where they were trailing up Lucy's spine. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Gray rolls his eyes again, but this time with much more ferocity than before. Natsu wonders how he hasn't rolled his eyeballs straight out of their sockets already. He wishes he would. Maybe then he'd feel the urge to deck him less.
"You're not exactly being subtle about it, genius," the ice-make mage drawls, "everyone in here can see you making goo-goo eyes at her from a mile away."
Natsu opens his mouth, ready to defend himself, when the sound of laughter drifts over the crowd. His eyes snap over to the source like a moth to a flame, just in time to see Lucy collapse in on herself as she giggles at something Erza has just said. Her shoulders shake and the jewelled earrings dangling from her earlobes sparkle under the light, and his rebuttal dies in his throat as he glimpses the smile stretching across her cheeks.
Gray's look turns pointed. He ignores it. "You're imagining things."
"Whatever," Gray huffs, wholly unimpressed, "keep living in your little world of denial. We'll see how far that gets you."
Natsu bristles. "You're one to talk," he shoots back, and he watches vindictively as Gray's smugness melts off his face.
"Fuck off." Gray scowls. "Any sign of our guys?"
Natsu blinks. Right. Their mission. The whole reason why they're here.
Some rich person had decided to throw a ball for reasons he can't care less about. The part that concerns them is how said rich person had hired them to safeguard him from a group of rogue mages spotted in the district. He'd offended them, or something, and was terrified they were going to stir up trouble during his ball.
In truth, Natsu had completely forgotten about its existence. Not that it's unexpected in the least—he doesn't care much for this mission at all, seeing as Happy wasn't allowed to come along.
("What does this guy have against cats?" He'd whined, unwilling.
Lucy had huffed at him, but Natsu could tell she felt bad about having to leave the exceed behind too. "He's allergic, Natsu. It's not his fault."
Still, he had been adamant. "We're not going without Happy."
"He did request for us specifically, though ," Erza had mused, "we can't just leave him like that."
Gray had just shrugged, the traitor. "I'm in. It sounds fun, and it pays well."
Lucy had beamed at him, twisting something sharp and unpleasant in Natsu's gut. Erza had nodded her assent, and that had been that. Natsu had been overruled. He'd never hated democracy more.)
He's still kind of sour about it, honestly. They've only been here a while, and he can already tell this is going to be a long, boring night. Happy would have made the whole experience ten times more interesting.
He shakes his head. "Haven't seen him."
"Maybe you were just too busy looking at someone else ," Gray quips, and Natsu is just about to punch him in the mouth when he feels a set of piercing eyes on his back.
Involuntarily, a shiver runs down his spine.
Gray stiffens too, and they exchange a quick glance that they both know means truce, before mechanically righting their stances and turning to their left.
Just as Natsu had suspected, Erza is staring right at them, eyes like steel and one brow just barely raised. He and Gray shudder in unison, plastering on smiles too wide to be genuine and patting each other on the back amicably.
"You're lucky Erza is right there," Natsu growls under his breath, "if not I'd have–"
Gray scoffs. "You say that as if I couldn't take you."
"With what?" Natsu jabs, and the words fly out of his mouth before he can stop them. "You don't even have the balls to tell Juvia you like her back without being drunk off your ass."
Gray's face twists viciously, and Natsu immediately knows he's crossed a line.
"Fuck you," Gray spits, glaring at Natsu with so much venom he barely holds back a flinch, and storms off.
Natsu spins and marches off in the other direction as Gray leaves. The fucker had it coming. What right does he have to lecture Natsu about denial and… whatever the hell this is when his own love life is a shitshow? Fuck him. Erza clearly hadn't been thinking straight when she split them up into these two teams.
His eyes quickly lock on the dessert table not far away, just beyond a throng of posh people making polite conversation in their expensive clothes and shining jewellery. He beelines towards it, his irritation from his encounter with Gray still eating a hole in the bottom of his stomach, and manages one smug thought of ha, bet Gray wishes he'd stomped off in this direction now, before coming to a stop directly in front of the desserts.
It takes him a few seconds to realise that even with all this food bared in front of him, he's not hungry at all.
Guilt works in funny ways, for Natsu: he usually doesn't feel remorse for the things he does, easily shrugging off the complications of repercussions and leaving them for other people to deal with, but he's not completely immune to it. It's present in the lead-like weight on his chest when he sees Lucy with her face in her hands and a maintenance bill spread out on her desk; present when he spots Wendy looking drained after he'd started brawl in the guild; present now, as he glares at the stupidly perfect cupcakes laid out before him with no intention of eating them.
Stupid stripper, he thinks sourly, making me lose my damn appetite.
And then there is a hand on his shoulder, and his first thought is that it's Gray who's come back to sock him in the jaw after all, Erza be damned, but in the next instant he inhales and all he smells is honey and ink, and his heart stutters a little as he realises it's not Gray, it's not Gray at all.
"Natsu?" Lucy doesn't remove her hand from its new resting place on the curve of his shoulder, and Natsu thinks for a second that he might burst, "Is something wrong?"
She's even more breathtaking up close. He wonders how it isn't illegal, in some way, to have eyes that brown, to have skin that soft, to have lips so enticing.
The final thought hits him like a train wreck, and he stumbles backwards at the sheer force of it. Lucy startles, withdraws her hand, and his head spins.
Lips? Enticing? Lucy? What's wrong with him? What the fuck?
"Natsu," she says again, and this time her worry is almost tangible. "What happened?"
He shakes his head, trying to clear it. He'll sort out that mess later. "Nothing," the thought of what happened earlier is enough to bring back his previous mood, and he frowns. "Just argued with Gray."
Her eyebrows raise. "Yeah? What did you do?"
"Hey!" And he takes offense at that, he really does. "What do you mean, what did I do? Why'd you assume it was me?"
She laughs, then, short and almost mocking, and he follows the upturns of her lips, feels the fondness in her voice wash over him in waves. "It's always you, Natsu."
Fair enough, he thinks. But still.
"I didn't even do much," he sulks, "I just… mentioned the Carly Rae Jepsen Incident."
Lucy gasps, then smacks him on the arm. Natsu flinches and sticks his tongue out at her.
"You know he's sensitive about that," she chastises, wrinkling her nose nicely.
He scoffs. "He's sensitive, period."
She rolls her eyes and smacks him again, and he glares at her playfully in retaliation.
"You better apologise to him later, you hear me?"
"Over my dead body."
She shoots him a look. "You won't be very far from dead after I sick Erza on you."
"...Yes ma'am."
Lucy smiles warmly at that, and for a moment Natsu feels like he's staring straight into the sun—her smile is so blinding that a part of him hurts a little just from looking at her, but the softness that tinges its corners is so captivating, so encouraging, that he can't bring himself to look away. If looking at her is like looking into the sun, he'll gladly stare and stare and stare until she is the only thing he can see, until the sight of her sears the back of his eyelids whenever he so much as blinks, until his retinas crumble and his vision fails him.
And just like that, the annoyance rolling around in his gut is gone. It's amazing, really, how she has that effect on him. How she manages to make him forget all about his troubles and leave him feeling invincible. She's amazing.
Music starts up then, soft and familiar. Natsu knows this piece by heart, knows the swells and ebbs of the orchestration from day after grueling day of aching toes and constricted movements. The dance practices Erza had made them suffer through carried her character perfectly—intense, unrelenting, hardcore.
The crowd is already splitting into pairs, those who don't feel like dancing backing up to the perimeters of the ballroom and leaving a wide berth for the dancers in the centre of the ballroom. Natsu blanches.
"Oh," Lucy gives a little sigh, grabs a tiny—and he means tiny—cupcake from the table, and pops it into her mouth. "That's our cue."
Natsu is reluctant. "Do we really have to do this? Will Erza even know if we don't?" He already knows the answer to his questions—he's just trying to delay the unescapable.
"Erza is always watching," Lucy says reproachfully, and extends a hand to him.
Butterflies. The pesky little things are everywhere—in his stomach, in his throat, thumping unflinchingly against his ribs. He takes in a deep, steadying breath, closes his hand around hers, and tugs her in the direction of the dance floor.
He's a little afraid to look back down at her, now that they're standing mere inches apart and breathing from the same pocket of air. He's afraid of what he might think if he does. What he might feel. What he might say.
He doesn't last long—his gaze falls to her in a matter of seconds, like the eternal, inevitable crash of ocean waves against the sandy shore, and what he finds amuses him to no end.
The snicker is out of his mouth before he knows it. She narrows her eyes at him. "What."
He doesn't answer her, too caught up in his own amusement, and her brows pinch as she draws out a whine. "What."
"You," he can't stop it now, the chuckles tumbling from his lips in a never-ending stream, "you have crumbs on your face, dummy."
She flushes a furious red, extracting her hand from his grip to wipe at the corners of her newly-formed scowl, and he has to grip the sides of his pants before he does something stupid like reach up to brush the crumbs from her cheeks himself.
"Is it gone now?" She pouts, and for a moment he's so immersed in the way her cheeks shimmer under the light, so lost in the gentle yet defined curves of her jaw, that he forgets to answer her.
When he does, his throat is dry. "Yeah."
"Jerk," she mumbles, and he guesses some of the mirth hasn't left his eyes yet, because she's still a little pink, "stop laughing at me."
She throws her arms over his shoulders, her fingertips brushing across the back of his neck and setting his skin on fire, and suddenly nothing is funny anymore.
There's no way she doesn't miss how his breath hitches halfway up his throat. There's no way she can't feel the reverberations of his astoundingly loud heartbeat either. There's no way. There's no way.
But then she peers up at him, lashes sparkling prettily and eyes alight with a mischievous innocence, and all other thoughts are knocked from his head with that singular look.
"Come on, Dragon Boy," she says, and he's never been so horribly attracted to anyone before in his life, "let's dance."
And dance they do.
She's swaying leisurely to the music, and the slow rhythm she's set is something he's thankful for. He's able to catch his breath for now, reassemble the catastrophe that is his state of mind, and kick away the mess of emotions squirming in his chest.
Erza had told them to "freestyle" it during the prelude, before the main sections of the piece start up. He inhales deeply and forces his eyes onto the distance. Don't look at Lucy. Don't look at Lucy. Don't look at Lu–
And suddenly her breath is by his ear, and she's so close he can hardly think straight.
"There's a guy on the far left that I have my eye on," she murmurs. His heart thunders. "Let's move there later on."
He blinks, and she's back to where she was again, inches away from him but still much further than she was mere moments ago. He takes in the fresh air greedily, tries not to think about how fascinating her hips are and how easily he can pull her flush against him–
"Okay," he croaks. Swallows. "Yeah."
"Are you okay?" She looks at him quizzically. He's blazing, becoming an unwavering bonfire just from her eyes on him alone. How can she have this effect on him? How can she not know?
"Yeah." The prelude ends. He places a hand on her (bare; God, so bare) shoulder and leads them to a spot that will ensure Lucy has a clear view of the left side. Then the piece starts up again, the melody following the one in his memories, and he swears his whole body is trembling when she moves her left hand down his shoulder to rest it on his arm, while her right hand stretches upwards to meet his left.
Their fingers interlock. Natsu exhales lowly as his right hand weaves under her arm and finds its place on her upper back, and she giggles. The sound folds over his chest in the best of ways.
"Relax," she whispers, eyes twinkling. She's beautiful. "We've practiced this before a million times, remember?"
He can already feel himself untensing at her words, his posture becoming less rigid and more natural. His movements come more effortlessly as his body falls into routine, falls into the muscle memory of Erza's non-stop drilling.
Lucy's dancing is fluid, as usual—gentle, patient, guiding. She helps him cruise through the difficulties he normally faces, and he can't help the sheer awe that blooms in the centre of his chest.
Around her, everything is just so unbelievably easy . She's like his very own shooting star, except she's the type that never fades. With her by his side, he can do anything.
Funny. He'd never been this sappy with anyone else before he met her.
"I hate this suit," he says, because he does, and he just wants to feel a bit more like himself again. "I want my scarf back."
She laughs lightly, and his gaze is held captive by the way her eyes crinkle at the corners as she does.
"To be honest, I don't really like it here either." She admits, "Reminds me a lot of my old life."
Her eyes turn a little nostalgic, but now her smile is tinged with a pale blue sadness. He frowns.
"Do you wanna get out of here?" He asks, and he's completely serious. He'll drop everything and bust them out of this place, guns blazing, if she just gives the word.
She snorts. "Are you kidding me? We have a job to do. Erza will kill us."
"I don't care," and maybe he'll regret it later when Erza catches him, but right now, he can't give less of a shit. "If you really don't like this place, we can leave."
Lucy grins at that, the light sadness from before dissipating into the air. "I know. But right now it's not that bad." Her eyes dart from his face and back towards the crowd. The softest red brushes over her cheeks. "You being here makes it a lot better."
Heat crawls up his neck, nestles in his cheeks.
"You don't say." He smiles smugly, trying to fight off the weird thing his heart is doing in his chest, "I make everything better."
She sticks her tongue out at him, making him laugh. "Pig."
"You're not denying it though," he sing-songs, and he's so preoccupied by the way her smile tugs at her cheeks that his next step is out of place. The action destroys his momentum, causing him to trip over his own two feet, and then he's stumbling, limbs flailing everywhere in an attempt to keep his balance, and then–
And then there are firm, steadying hands on his shoulders, holding him in place as he regains his bearings.
Lucy's laughing at him, the mirth making her glow in a way he's never noticed before, and he's suddenly entranced by everything about her.
"I've got you," she chuckles, fond and beautiful. He meets her eyes, feels the warmth spilling from those deep brown irises, and doesn't doubt her for even a second. "I've got you."
In that moment, all else seems to fade away. The music softens to a muted impression of itself, the people surrounding them blur into the background, and the low chatter hanging over them evaporates.
It's just the two of them. Just him and her. Just Natsu and Lucy.
Time slows until all he's aware of is the thumping of his heart. His eyes hook on the delicate flutter of her lashes, drop down to the kind curves of her mouth, and he knows he's about to do something impossibly reckless, make an irreversible mistake, like lean down and give in to the temptation to crush his lips to hers, and–
"That's him!" Lucy gasps. Natsu inhales sharply, and it feels like his first breath after being submerged in a pool of water. "The leader of the group we're after! He's making his way towards our client!"
The full force of what he'd been about to do hits him all at once. The rest of the world also feels the sudden need to make itself known, because the background noises swell to a crescendo in his ears. He shakes his head, trying to clear it.
"What?" He manages, still attempting to get his heart rate down.
She huffs. "I'll go stop him. Stay here."
"What?" He says again, more indignantly this time, because his brain has finally caught up. She wants him to stay here? She wants to go after the guy by herself? "No! He's dangerous!"
"And you're too obvious," she rolls her eyes, but still keeps them fixated on their target in the distance. "If you go after him we'll just have a property damage bill, an escaped criminal, and a huge fire to put out."
"But–"
And then she has her hand on his chest and her eyes are boring into his.
"Trust me," she says, earnestly.
All the fight leaves him in one giant whoosh. "You know I do."
She takes off, then, seamlessly blending into the crowd yet still managing to slowly close in on their perpetrator, and he has to fight the sudden, surging urge to run after her, to leap right over all these people and fight by her side. Step to step. Back to back. Like they always do.
But then he meets Erza and Gray's eyes across the room—they're next to each other, and they've had a clear view of everything that's transpired so far—and exchanges a nod with them, then moves to cut off the remaining members of the rogue group, who are steadily making their way towards Lucy.
Subtle, he thinks, and tries to will himself into becoming the epitome of that word. I can be subtle.
So when he's caught up to one of the guys trying to stop Lucy, he doesn't take him out with a flaming roundhouse kick like he always does. Lucy'd give him hell if he did that. Instead, he grabs the man's arms and pins them behind his back, catching the man by surprise but still managing to hold him down.
"No sudden movements," he orders, and allows the place where his palms meet the guy's wrists to heat up. The man hisses under his breath, and Natsu takes the heat away. "And don't make a sound."
He steers the man into a corner of the ballroom. Erza is already there, the man she's apprehended quivering within ropes that wind tight over his arms and legs. Natsu mentally salutes the guy for the horror he had to have gone through.
Erza makes quick work of tying up the one Natsu's caught.
"Good work," she compliments, and Natsu flattens his hands to his sides, stands as straight as a board—not unlike a soldier caught by their commanding officer. "You're very efficient today, Natsu. Didn't even set anything on fire this time!"
It's then that Gray emerges from the crowd, shoving the person he's apprehended before them rudely. He glares at Natsu. Natsu glares back.
"Gray, on the other hand," Erza continues, taking the rogue mage off his hands and securing the binds she's put around him, "is slower than usual."
"Hey," Gray barks, running a hand through his hair and looking entirely disgruntled. "It's just not my day today, alright?"
Natsu eyes him curiously. Gray's normally already droopy eyes seem droopier than normal. His skin is paler than it usually is, too. The scowl etched on his face seems deeper this time, laced with more frustration than the one Natsu normally faces.
Erza peers at him accusingly. "Have you been sleeping?"
"Barely." Gray sighs. "I'll catch up on rest when we get home. Where's Lucy?"
Lucy. Natsu's head snaps up. He takes in a breath, locates her scent, swivels his gaze to find her, and by God. The sight of her sends him reeling. Takes his breath away.
"There," he forces out, pointing in her direction and trying not to sound as strangled as he feels.
The others turn just in time to catch her pinning the leader of the rogue team down onto the floor, her knees on either side of the man as she uses the Fleuve d'étoiles to tie his hands behind his back.
There are side slits in her dress that Natsu hadn't noticed before and they are very, very apparent now. It's selfish and wrong for him to get stuck on the slivers of skin shown there, on the tightness of her calves and the way lean muscle pulls over her thighs, so he tears his eyes away from her legs and focuses his gaze on her face, where he should be safe.
Hah.
Somehow her expression is even more enthralling than he'd imagined. A fierce determination mixes with the golden victory in her eyes, and in that moment he feels such a strong, magnetic pull to her, a pull that's telling him to run to her right now and kiss her senseless, that he has to pinch himself to get rid of it.
Gray whistles, low and appraising. "Damn."
Erza gives a sage-like nod. "Damn indeed."
"She's kicking ass," Natsu can't help the wild grin that barges onto his face, pride swelling in his throat and escaping in his tone.
And then she glances up, whipping her head around to them, gives them a gigantic smile and a wave that makes an unreasonable warmth explode in his chest, then jostles the rogue mage up and frog-marches him to rendezvous with them.
"You got him so good, Luce," he's practically bursting when she's in earshot, and he lets himself indulge in the way carmine splatters over her cheeks at his praise, "that was amazing."
She puffs out her chest and grins, all teeth. It does the strangest things to his stomach. "Told you."
"And we even get the full reward this time," Erza commends, "no destruction of property at all."
Natsu proceeds to light his fist on fire. "I can quickly change that, if you want."
Erza raises an eyebrow in warning, while Gray rolls his sleep-deprived eyes.
Lucy, however, tackles him, sending them crashing to the ground with her face hovering inches above his, and Gods above. This must be what love is.
"Don't you dare," she threatens, a little breathless, a smile curling at the edges of her lips, and he's so gone. He's so gone.
"Yes ma'am," he manages, throat dry, and if his gaze lingers on her lips a little longer than usual, and on the way home he walks a little closer to her than he should, it's for him to know and for her to find out.