#because I actually was quite hungry too so there's one problem sorta fixed I guess but the headache is the real problem

[aberooski]

Whelp, I've got a headache which means my day is basically shot to hell, I'll be a useless bump on a log the rest of the day. But I'm gonna try and work on some fics anyway and see what happens.

[tuxiedjabberwock]

Boiling Point ch2  - a Fairy Tail Fanfiction

Title: Boiling Point Category: Anime/Manga » Fairy Tail Author: Sqydd Language: English, Rating: Rated: T Genre: Romance/Drama Published: 12-10-16, Updated: 01-24-17 Chapters: 2, Words: 11,205

Due to a severe misunderstanding printed in Sorcerer's Weekly, Lucy goes out with Loki to eliminate the idea that she's dating Natsu. How does he feel about it? Well, he rightly went to kick Loki's ass. Or the story in which Natsu reaches his boiling point, because no one steals from a dragon.

Also available on:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12267597/2/Boiling-Point

http://archiveofourown.org/works/8803069/chapters/21391526

chapter two

in which natsu subscribes to bikini prints

“What’s wrong with you?”

 Lucy usually asked that question when he dropped into her home, but this time it was much more warranted and situation appropriate. He was still a little sore from the mission a couple of days ago, where he immediately began avoiding her as soon as they returned to Magnolia, and now she was giving him a scathing look from her writing desk. He only even caved when he realized that sadly, his and Happy’s home had run out of food, and although he could buy some, he wasn’t quite in the mood to fry bacon and boil spaghetti, the fullest extent of his cooking ability.

 “I’m hungry?” It didn’t help his case that it came out as a question. Lucy gave him a pretty good imitation of Erza’s Stare, and it even made him gulp in fear of his life.

 “Don’t pretend. You and I both know what we’re talking about.”

 “Okay… To be honest? I got no clue. Really!” he added when her stare intensified. “Loki was saying some stuff, and I just…lost it.”

 “What stuff?”

 “Um…” He sat down on her bed, rubbing the back of his neck anxiously. “I don’t think you’ll like it.”

 “Natsu, please, just tell me,” she said with a friendlier look. He sighed and crossed his arms.

 “Everyone thought that you and I were together and they kept talking about I’m jealous over Loki or some shit. And, I don’t know, Loki made me lose it.”

 “Natsu…” Her tone made him look up, then away when the look in her eyes was too much. He felt her soft fingers on his chin as she brought his face back to hers. “Were you jealous?” she asked softly. His eyes went wide, not as much from the question as their proximity.

 “What— No, no I wasn’t jealous,” he said, which was the truth. Jealous sounded so pitiful and weak, something felt when Happy stole the last fish from the fire and didn’t share. When he was attacking Loki, he felt enraged, incensed, irked, infuriated…well, you get the picture. But more than that, he felt possessive. “Lucy is mine.” He felt like Loki had stolen something as personal as his scarf or his fire, and deserved death three times over as retribution. Even for someone with emotions as passionate and fiery as himself, Natsu was a little thrown by the thought, and involuntarily shuddered. “I wasn’t.”

 “Mm,” she hummed, staring harder into his eyes. After a moment she seemed to find what she was looking for, because she pulled away. “Okay.”

 “So we’re good?” he asked. She gave him a smile that was just a little bit shaky.

 “We’re good.” It didn’t feel like they were, but he didn’t want to press, especially when he was the one in the wrong. “I made chicken soup. Do you—”

 “Yes!” he said immediately, jumping to his feet. “’m starving, Luce.”

 “Of course,” she sighed, heading towards the kitchen. He followed on her tail, his stomach thinking of food, but his brain figured that he needed a chat with an expert on dragon business.

“Get out!” was her immediate response as he knocked. He grimaced and knocked again, harder.

 “C’mon Porlyusica, do me a favor! Please?”

 “No!” She may have kept refusing, but he could stay there and talk the rest of the day, which she seemed to realize, because the door unlocked soon after and he stepped inside with a smug smile. Porlyusica was working on some greenish-brown potion that made his nose itch when he took a whiff. “What are you bothering me with now?” she said after shooing him away from it.

 “I got a little problem,” Natsu said. “Well, it’s not really little, it’s more like a big problem.” He tried to explain what happened with Loki but it was hard to put into words. Porlyusica, thankfully, seemed to understand.

 “Instincts,” she said. “It’s just your dragon’s instincts.”

 “Dragon instincts? I have those?”

 “Dragon Slayer Magic makes a human as a dragon, more so over time. The most severe event, you already know of: turning completely into a dragon.” He thought of Acnologia and gritted his teeth. “Igneel significantly slowed the process, but that doesn’t mean it stopped all together. This, specifically, has to do with how the brain works. The fact that you can sense and process all of these different smells and sounds is because your brain evolved to understand them during your training with the Slayer Magic as a catalyst. The evolution continued as you grew, and now it’s come to head.”

 “So this is just another gain for me?” he asked. “Like learning a new spell?” Porlyusica nodded. “But that doesn’t explain why I smashed Loki like that.”

 “Dragons, by nature, will latch onto a suitable female, and I’m guessing your emotions towards the girl made that instinct stronger,” she said passively, stirring the potion. “Because of that, you saw the Spirit’s advances as a threat, and your first instinct was to deal with it.”

 “I don’t see Loki as a threat. He’s sorta annoying when he gets in that flirty mood, but he’s no threat,” he protested.

 “This has nothing to do with rational thought. It’s all subconscious.”

 “Then how do I stop my subconscious?”

 “That depends,” she said, meeting his eyes for the first time. “What do you think you should do?”

He had a pretty good answer to that.

  “We’re gonna avoid Lucy?” Happy asked, perplexed. Natsu nodded vehemently.

 “Until the end of time. Or until Ice Princess learns to keep on his shirt. Whichever comes first.”

 “But…why?”

 “Because she’s making me turn into a dragon!” he burst out. Thankfully they were alone in his house with only his junk and memorabilia as witnesses. Happy was even more confused.

 “You’re not… Are you hiding something from me? Do you secretly have a tail?”

 “I wish, but no. Remember how Lucy started going out with Loki and I was just going crazy over it?” He nodded, following. “Porlyusica explained it to me. She said something about revolving and that it’s got something to do with my brain, but—the bottom line’s that as long as I’m around her, I’m gonna keep pulling dumb shit like that that gets her mad, and neither of us want to deal with angry Lucy.” They shuddered at the thought. Angry Lucy meant a shoulder icier than Gray in the winter, constant flying projectiles, and no food for either of them! “So we just avoid her for forever! Easy.”

 “But you never run from a problem, Natsu.”

 “Call this a first.”

 “Natsu,” Happy protested. “Lucy’s our best friend. You can’t avoid her forever.”

 “Sure I can. Just tie me up if I try going to her.” Happy continued staring at him and he finally gave in. “’kay, you’re right, I can’t avoid her forever. But I don’t know what to do either. If I walk in and see her cuddling up to that stupid cat, I’m really gonna beat the shit outta him.”

 “I know I joke about it a lot, but do you really like Lucy? Because if you do, I don’t have a problem with that.”

 “She’s my friend,” he said, which he knew wasn’t an actual answer. “I dunno, and that’s not my focus right now. I just don’t want to get at Loki like that again.”

 “Then he has to break up with Lucy,” Happy said. They had never purposely tried to break apart Lucy and her flings, no matter how annoying they became, but it looked like they had to, for Loki’s sake. Natsu liked to spar with his Guild mates, sure, but what he did—or tried to do—was three steps further from that. He had no doubt that, given enough time, he would’ve smashed Loki into bloody bits, and on top of hurting Natsu, it would make his and Lucy’s friendship vanish. “She’ll probably hate you for it though.”

 “It’s better than the alternative. Okay, brainstorm: how can we make this happen?” They rubbed their chins in thought.

 “Oh, oh!” Happy exclaimed, dropping his fist in his palm. “Let’s take all Lucy’s fish and blame it on Loki!”

 “Uh… Call that Plan B.” Lucy didn’t think nearly as much of her fish as Happy did. Well, eighty percent of Happy’s thoughts revolved around fish anyway. “Something else.” Neither of them were real thinkers, though, and it took a fair amount of time.

 “Why don’t you want Lucy to go out with Loki?” Happy asked all of a sudden. Natsu mumbled a complaint, crossing his arms over his chest.

 “That’s not where my problem is,” he muttered. “I don’t care what either of them do with their romantic lives—or Lucy’s lack thereof, I guess. It’s that she chose someone else over me, and someone that I’m close to.”

 “Well, we can’t make Lucy fall for you—” Natsu sort of zoned out after that sentence. Well, why couldn’t they? What was wrong with him? He thought he was a pretty cool guy, if a tiny bit passionate. “—but we can make her go out with a different guy, a stranger. You never cared when she went out with strangers, did you?”

 “Not as much,” he said, still a little sulky. “I guess that’s a fix. But how are we supposed to go out matchmaking, buddy?”

 “Let’s not,” he decided after some thought. “Let’s just take Lucy out and let her find a better guy on her own. Where can we find a lot of people?”

 “A bar,” he said immediately. “And Lucy’s a good fighter too—I bet she’ll meet tons of guys there! And if things go south, we just pretend like we brought here there to eat. Lucy loves greasy bar food after all.”

 “Natsu, that’s a great idea!” Happy cheered. “We should go and take her out right now!”

 “Right now,” he repeated, momentarily daunted by the idea of seeing her again. He quickly steeled himself though, because he was Natsu Dragneel and Natsu Dragneel never let himself be put down by any challenge, and he and Happy headed out with spines straight and resolves set.

 Happy got the both of them to Strawberry Street in record time, and as Natsu scaled the side of the building he picked up the scent of lavender just fading away. Okay, so she was draining her bath and would be out any second. He pushed her window up and climbed onto her bed. “I’m gonna go see if she bought some more fish,” Happy said, floating off towards the kitchen. Natsu eventually got bored flipping through her manuscripts and was just about to mimic Happy’s kitchen raid when her bathroom door finally swung open.

 “Ah that was a relieving— Natsu!” she shrieked in surprise, hands going to her heart. Thankfully, she was already dressed to sleep and not in a towel—it saved him a frenzied attack on her part.

 “Lucy, we’re going to a bar,” he announced. She continued staring until her heart calmed down.

 “A bar? Why on Earthland?” she asked, frowning.

 “Because Happy and I know you like bar food.”

 “Where would you even get— Happy’s here too?”

 “Yeah, he’s in the kitchen checking for fish. So, are you gonna leave dressed like that, or…?”

 “I’m not going to a bar with you two!” she protested. “They’re loud and obnoxious and, unlike the Guild, full of creepers. Besides, it’s late and I just want to go to bed.”

 “It’s not that late.”

 “Well, it is when you’re a normal human being.”

 “Just—come on, Luce, please?” She gave him a funny look.

 “Why do you want to drag me to a bar?”

 “I, uh, because I, uh,” he stammered, caught like a deer in headlights. He didn’t even have Happy to back him up, not that Happy was any better at lying on the spot. Lucy crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows, which didn’t help his case. “Okay, the truth?”

 “Yes?”

 “I want some food but can’t afford it right now ‘cause Happy blew our job money for the month on salmon,” he said in one breath.

 “Then why didn’t you eat at the Guild? It’s cheaper, and even if you are broke, Mira would let you slide.”

 “Because, ah, I uh— C’mon, Luce, why’re you questioning me like that?” he said instead, changing paradigms. He didn’t quite manage to throw her off though.

 “Because you’re acting weird…er than usual, and you have been since—” She stopped, eyes widening as she touched her lips in realization. “Natsu,” she said in a weird tone. It made him uncomfortable in all sorts of ways.

 “What?”

 “Natsu,” she said again. “You said you weren’t jealous before, didn’t you?”

 “Well…yeah, because I wasn’t. Because I’m not. This isn’t about me anyway.”

 “Maybe not, but it will be if you keep acting like this.” She shook her head with a sigh. “I’m not going to a bar with you and that’s final, alright? Now go home.”

 “Mph,” he complained, but decided not to press things. “Come on, Happy, we’re leaving.”

 “Aye,” Happy said in disappointment, flying from the kitchen with his satchel stuffed full and a half-eaten carp still in his mouth. “You neeb more fishb, Rushii.”

 “You need to catch your own!” she snapped back, and he could almost pretend things were fine between them.

 “So I’ll see you at the Guild tomorrow.” He already had one foot out the window when she called him back, her voice soft:

 “Natsu.”

 “Huh?” He turned and saw her watching him expectantly, like she was asking a question only he knew the answer to. He opened his mouth to ask what was she going on about when she suddenly opened her arms. “What? I’m not gonna hug you, weirdo.” They didn’t hug as a typical greeting/goodbye, and besides, he didn’t trust himself too much at the moment.

 “Just do it,” she said in her Lucy Kick tone. He gulped and crossed the space between them, and hesitated for a moment before putting his arms around her. She closed the remaining space between them and linked her arms behind his back, pressing her face into his chest so that he could get a good whiff of her hair. It felt…familiar. Homey. Safe.

 Natsu didn’t feel particularly sated, staring down at Future Rogue’s body. He was a Dragon Slayer, meant to kill dragons, yeah, but there was no satisfaction in fighting the very same breed that raised him from before he was old enough to even walk. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides before he managed to relieve some of the tension in a sigh. Dust still coated his lungs from the collapse of the Eclipse Gate, and with it he could taste blood and death in the air. He exhaled slowly as he sensed a presence vanish behind him.

 “Thanks for the help,” he murmured under his breath, “Uncle.” He recognized Lucy’s scent even above all the others, and…salt? Was she crying? Before he could ask, her arms went around him, her face buried in-between his shoulder blades.

 “Something the matter, Lucy?” he asked. He felt her shake her head in response.

 “No… Just…thank you,” she whispered. He turned to face her, met her watery eyes, and pulled her closer. Even though he was warmer physically, she felt like a lit hearth to him, a center, something to keep him safe… Ironic, eh, considering how much he had to fight for her. He threaded his fingers through her soft hair and gently eased her head in the space between his shoulder and neck, feeling her tears dampen the remains of his vest, and closed his eyes. Despite the wreckage all around them and in his chest, he felt entirely whole.

 His heart gave a sudden jump and persisted, even though Lucy could surely feel it from how close they were. He took a deep breath and held fast, trying to still it, his hands fisting at the base of her back. Something must’ve happened then, because Lucy jumped back with a start. “W-What? What is it?”

 “You started heating up,” she said, calming. “It just surprised me.”

 “Oh. Sorry. Well bye!” He jumped from her window before she could say anything else, and thankfully Happy caught him before he could hit the ground like a damn incendiary bomb.

 “What happened?” he asked curiously. Then he almost dropped Natsu into the river. “Ow! You’re really hot!”

 “I know,” he groaned, wiping his hands down his face. “Happy, I’m in it real deep.”

 “What does that mean?” He didn’t answer right away, staring off at something in the distance.

 “You know all those jokes you make about me liking Lucy? Well…”

 “You like her?” he finished.

 “I honestly don’t know—if Porlyusica’s right, and she’s rarely wrong, then dragon instincts are screwing with my brain, twisting things into weird shapes. I don’t know how to stop it either, not if she doesn’t even want to be seen a certain way with me.”

 “Natsu…” he said pitifully. “Can I help?”

 “Not unless you can fill my head with another girl, any other girl.” He remained silently thoughtful as they return home, then gasped.

 “I got it!” Happy announced, bursting through the door. Natsu followed him inside as he started rooting for something. “Gildarts said that these always take his mind off of Cana when he starts to miss her!”

 “Eh? Why do we have them?”

 “He left them for you the last time he came. Remember, he felt bad for accidently putting you in that mini-coma?” He did not, in fact, remember, but he guessed that to be a side effect of the mini-coma. “I found them!” He flapped away from a stack of Mercurius rubble and held up a stack of glossy magazines.

 “Happy, magazines are what got us into this mess in the first place!”

 “They should help you though.”

 “Okay, fine. I’m pretty desperate anyway.” He took one and opened it. “What? Is this really supposed to help? It looks like the kinda crap Mira does every other week.”

 “I dunno, it’s what Gildarts uses,” Happy said with a yawn. “Anyway, I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Natsu.”

 “Night,” he mumbled, staring hard at the double page spread. If he magazines couldn’t help him, he could at least use them for fodder in practicing controlling his temperature. As long as shit was happening with Lucy, he was really going to need the practice.

 Something odd started to happen around the twenty-minute mark, when he’d fried the magazine to a crisp. He went to a different magazine, one just titled “XXX,” and saw the first page was of a stark-naked woman covered in…frosting? Something like that. He skewed his mouth and twisted the picture all sorts of directions, but he couldn’t find the same appeal in it that Gildarts or Makarov did, perhaps because he saw naked women on a daily basis and he was just desensitized. Then, bored, he imagined several other Guild mates’ faces over hers. First Gray—he had a pretty damn good laugh over it, then Elfman, then Gajeel, Max, Warren, and Lily. He was on the floor with tears running down his face when, damn every god out there, he pictured Lucy’s face on hers.

 Maybe it was because he could see her naked body in every detail, or maybe it was because he had such a good sensual memory of her (including touch thanks to that unfortunate incident in the middle of his battle with Future Rogue), or maybe it was because she was constantly on his mind, but that one little idea brought a whole new slew of torture to his poor mind. He felt his magic run into his chest, like a miniature sun, but it also took a different, southern route that…perplexed him. He tried flipping pages, but every picture was now irreversibly of Lucy, and eventually he burned the whole thing to ashes alongside the others. Feeling utterly defeated like never before, he slunk over to his hammock and climbed inside, resigning himself to a sleepless night.

“Wow, Fire Face, you look like shit,” Gray commented as Natsu slid onto the bar.

 “Thanks,” he replied dryly. “Mira, can I get coffee?”

 “Sure,” she said, passing him a cup. Gray watched him drink with narrowed eyes.

 “Okay, spill: what’s the problem?”

 “Do you care?” he muttered into his drink.

 “Of course I do. Sure, you’re annoying as all hell, but I don’t like seeing you like this.”

 “Well, uh…” He made sure Mira was out of earshot before turning to Gray. “I think I’m falling for Lucy.”

 “Think?” he echoed.

 “Porlyusica said some crap about dragons mating or whatever and it’s messin’ with my emotions, but I really think there’s some truth in it.”

 “Dragons mate?” he asked curiously. Natsu shrugged before letting his hands hit his thighs.

 “Guess so.” Gray raised his eyebrows and looked back at Gajeel, then at Wendy with a markedly more surprised expression.

 “All of them?”

 “Look I’m about as new to this shit as you are, don’t go asking me for the gory details. All’s I know is I’ve never hated being a dragon as much as right now,” he sighed. Gray looked pensive as he shifted his eggs around his plate.

 “I’m no romance expert either—not that I have a willing test subject,” he muttered with an over-the-shoulder glance at Juvia behind a pillar. Natsu kind of liked her like that: if she had Fire Magic, she would’ve burned Ice Prick to a naked crisp a long time ago. “But I think I have a solution: just ask yourself how you felt about her before all this mess happened. I think that your answer’s gonna be there.”

 “That’s…surprisingly good advice coming from you, stripper.”

 “Not all of us can be hit and misses like you, Firecracker.”

 “Heh… Thanks, Gray.”

 “No problem, just… Just don’t go spreading rumors that I’m an expert in this shit. I don’t want unwanted ears catching word.” He shuddered at the thought. Natsu finished his coffee and found that while it did wake him up to normal standards, he still felt like crashing on the grass. Gray excused himself to go check the request board while Natsu remained, trying to focus until the bar’s bottles’ labels swirled back into clear view. Mirajane swept past again and he shook his head slowly.

 “What’s the problem, Natsu?” she asked worriedly.

 “I uh…” He knew better than to go blabbing about his feelings, especially to Mira of all people—like, half the Guild would know his business by dawn the next day, if he was lucky—so he went with a little safer territory: “Can you put my name down for the next spread of Sorcerer’s Weekly?”

 “Sudden interest in tabloids?” she asked. He shrugged a shoulder.

 “No. Bikini prints.” Her eyes opened in surprise.

 “What? Really?” He nodded and suddenly she leaned in closer, conspiratorially. “Do we need to have…the talk?” she whispered.

 “Talk? What talk? We’re talking right now, aren’t we?”

 “The talk. The birds and the bees—”

 “What do birds and knees have to do with this?” She sighed like she was talking to a particularly dense child.

 “What Mirajane is being too nice to say,” Laxus interjected from the other side of the bar with a droll smirk, “is a good long talk about you getting laid with Blondie.”

 “Getting laid? What?” It took a few seconds to process, then the rusty gears in his head turned. “Getting laid with Lucy…” His heart again jumped into a frenzy, which despite him keeping his face as still as possible, he was sure every person in the building could hear, Dragon Slayer or not. Laxus’ smirk grew into a full-blown grin that he barely tried to hide behind his beer mug, taking great pleasure in Natsu’s chagrin. “Why in hell would I— She’s a friend, and—well—”

 “And—well—why else would you have slugged the lion like that, if not out of jealous?” he jeered. “It’s because you want to get in her skirt, right?” Natsu felt like he was going breathless. He suddenly pictured Lucy naked—well, not pictured, since he had an exact memory of it—but instead of her giving her usual Lucy Kick/Punch/Slap, she invited him to take a closer look, even touched him back with those soft, warm hands of hers…

 “I DON’T!” he said much louder than intended, trying to stave off disturbing thoughts. The Guild fell silent as a good number of guys rose from their seats and others took their food to the corners, expecting the usual early morning brawl to start as Natsu got to his feet, but instead he remained in his spot with shoulders shaking as if he would literally explode. He sure felt like it, his Fire Magic building large and hot in his gut and causing the floorboards to burn beneath his sandals. Laxus was facing him with a cocky smirk, still idly drinking his beer.

 “You don’t what?” came her voice from just behind him. Natsu froze completely, feeling like he was just encased in Gray’s ice. Similarly, his fire died away in one quick second, mostly from fear of burning her.

 “Yeah, Natsu, tell her what you don’t want to do,” Laxus said, sounding utterly like the cat that caught the canary. Natsu gritted his teeth and did the next best thing: leaping on him like a wild animal. And even though he was electrocuted into next week, it felt good to dodge the situation entirely.

 He swam back into the world maybe an hour later, although he was too comfy in the infirmary’s bed to open his eyes. He was almost going back to sleep for the day—he didn’t get any sleep the night before, so the bed was like a big fluffy warm cloud—but a voice drifted through his thoughts, rousing him again.

 “You big idiot,” someone said, and he could’ve taken it for literally anyone before they continued, “going out of your way to give me all heart attacks this week… Crazy moron.” He couldn’t really smell up to par, not with sulfur still stuffed in his nostrils, but he could feel—wow, he could feel Lucy’s hand on top of his. He would’ve curled his fingers around hers had his body still not felt like it was put through a lightning storm. “I thought we told each other everything, Natsu? Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

 Because I might like you, and you certainly don’t like me back, or at least don’t want it to be know what we’re together together, and I don’t want to do anything that’ll make you unhappy, Luce, even though I’m doing exactly that right now by keeping my thoughts hidden… This paradoxical shit is giving me a headache, in short, and I wish I could talk to you, but I can’t, but I should, and—AAGH.

 That was exactly why Natsu wasn’t a thinker: it was too damn troublesome.

 “Just… ‘m sorry, Luce,” he muttered, peeking up at her. She gave him an annoyed look, but thankfully it wasn’t too severe.

 “You’re hopeless, you know that?” she said. He grinned in response, eliciting a smile from her. Then the infirmary’s door opened and the scent of cologne and desperation wafted in. Oh, gods.

 “I knew you’d be up—it’s pretty hard to keep you down, Natsu,” Loki said with a smirk, waving at him. Natsu grumbled something in response and turned his back to them, pulling the sheets over his head.

 “Natsu, do you mind if I—?”

 “No, go. It’s okay,” he said, surprising himself with his even tone. “I’ll just catch some Zs. I’m dead tired anyway.” Lucy gave another apology before turning her attention to Loki.

 “8Island?” he offered, and she laughed. What’s the joke? Did I miss something? he groused.

 “Sure, Loki. I’ll catch you later, Natsu?”

 “Yeah,” he mumbled as they left, closing his eyes, and as he saw Lucy yet again behind them, he was reminded of Gray’s advice earlier. How did I think of Lucy before?

 He remembered that burning anger he felt at Jose kidnapping her so long ago. He remembered that blinding sense of panic he felt as he read her goodbye note before it turned out she was just visiting the Heartfilia home, not staying there. He remembered the intense sympathy he felt as she realized her father had passed in the seven-year gap. He remembered the paralyzing grief he felt as she disappeared into the Clock. He remembered that overwhelming sense of concern as she was wheeled away after the Grand Magic Games’ Naval Battle. Most potently, however, was that…emptiness when Future Lucy died. It wasn’t her, but was her at the same time, and regardless, seeing Lucy lying motionless on the ground was… He couldn’t even describe it.

 And there was a bit he never told anyone, not even a year and some odd moths after the fact: hearing Lucy’s words about everyone being gone, including him, struck him hardest, because it meant he had left Lucy alone to bear that huge burden herself, and consequently, her death weighed on him as well. More towards his current issue, he couldn’t see any point in time ahead where he wasn’t there by his side. Since forming a team so long ago, he couldn’t see anyone by her side but him. He wanted to be there, wanted to witness her weirdness and unpublished writings and crazy Spirits and extra hard Lucy Kicks. He, in short, wanted to be with her for the rest of their endless adventure. Did that mean that he loved her?

  …Even someone as slow-minded as Natsu could see the answer.