Lucy rolled her eyes at his stubborn idiocy.

"Natsu, it's one date. One," she was quickly losing her patience.

He glared at her from behind the manga he was reading, Kuroshitsuji, before closing it, putting it on the coffee table, and countering her suggestion with the obvious.

"With a stranger." He wasn't going to do this. He didn't care what she said or did. Not this time.

She huffed in annoyance and informed him, "That's the point of a blind date, Natsu."

"I don't know him." And I don't plan to.

"You don't want to date anyone you do know," she reminded him. Even though a lot of them have tried to get you to at least consider them to no avail.

"You don't know that," he said petulantly, eyes narrowed and staring directly at her so she wouldn't catch the lie.

"Yes, I do." She saw through it anyway.

"No, you don't," he insisted, crossing his arms over his chest, subtly trying to intimidate her so she would back down. It didn't work.

"Do you want to date Freed then?" she asked.

"What? No!" he yelled. Freed and Laxus had been dancing circles around each other for like the last three years and just last week Laxus had caught a drunken Freed before he could fall down, only for the green-haired man to smile and smash his lips against the blonde's. If Natsu got in the middle of them now when they'd finally made some progress, they'd never get their heads out of their asses. That, and Laxus would fry him alive.

"Laxus?" she pressed. He paled even further, eyes wide and horrified.

"I don't want to die, Lucy!" She smiled gently.

"Do you want me to make you a profile on Match?" she asked. Oh, she was evil. Completely evil. There was no way he was ever meeting up with one of those creeps that Cana described in her vivid recollections of her weekly activities.

"No! Then I'd be meeting even more creepy strangers!"

"He's not creepy," Lucy assured him, lower lip jutting out in a pout.

"He's still a stranger," he replied, determined to maintain his refusal solid.

"Fine. You don't have to meet him," she said quickly.

"For the last time, Lucy-, I… wait, what? What did you say?" He looked up at her, eyes narrowed in suspicion because there was no way she would ever say-

"You don't have to go on the date," she told him, a little triumphant smile on her face that didn't match her words at all.

He had a bad feeling about this. "But…?" he asked. Her smile grew wider.

"But I hid something you got in the mail recently and you're not getting it back unless I know you went on the date and stayed for at least thirty minutes." No. Hell no. He paid a lot for the design on those things.

"You didn't-"

"I did," she said, cutting him off.

"Lucy!" he shouted, "I've been waiting for that package for weeks." He finished off with a hiss that would have intimidated her when she first moved in, but failed to have the same effect now. She knew him too well for that.

"And if you go on the blind date tomorrow, you won't have to wait any longer."

Natsu looked miserable as he mumbled out, "Okay," in a small voice, but Lucy just smiled. Natsu had needed a place to stay after a rough breakup when he and Lucy met at a dog park. She'd brought her white Shiba Inu, Plue, and Natsu… had brought along his blue cat named Happy when Plue ran toward the strangely colored cat and taken a liking to him. Lucy had been looking to move out from her place with Erza because ever since her and Jellal finally resolved their issues, he practically lived there and Lucy felt like an awkward third wheel and a pervert whenever she couldn't find her set of headphones in the middle of the night. Her and Natsu had rented a two bedroom apartment, in a building that they had to constantly smuggle Plue and Happy in and out of because the landlord didn't allow pets, and had lived together ever since.

When he didn't pick his manga up to read it again and gnawed his lower lip between his teeth, she tried to cheer him up. He should be happy. He was going to be going on a hot date after all!

"Hey," she said.

He looked at her, frustration and what she'd come to recognize as fear written all over his features.

She sighed.

"Natsu, he's perfect for you." She wouldn't give him any details if he asked, because she wanted it to be a surprise and she had a feeling that if she described him to Natsu, he would say that it wasn't his 'type' even though Natsu obviously didn't have a type.

Natsu looked away silently, and Lucy almost gave up on the matter until he mumbled something indecipherable.

"What?"

His voice was small, cheeks tinged pink when he softly spoke up, eyes locked on the cover of the manga on the table, "That's what Erza said last time."

Lucy's shoulders dropped a little and she leaned in to rub his shoulder consolingly, "Erza didn't know that blonde guy had feelings for his roommate."

Natsu shook off her hand. "I showed up for our seventh date and they were kissing. A full-blown makeout session, Lucy! He never even mentioned Rogue to me and suddenly there they were, making out in the place I was supposed to meet Sting for our date. I've never felt so… so stupid."

Natsu had eventually learned all the sordid details. Sting and Rogue had been best friends since they were kids, had every class together, even ended up working the same jobs, both of them in love and silently pining for years and then Erza had met Minerva and, through her, Sting and convinced Natsu to give the guy a chance. One blind date, just one. Natsu, how bad can it be?

How bad, indeed. They had felt an instant connection, both of them loud and boisterous and nervous about dating and one date had become a few more. They'd held hands, and went out to eat together a few times, went on movie dates, and Sting was the first guy Natsu had kissed in over a year, since his breakup. Then Rogue saw that Sting, notorious for his one night stands, was actually getting serious with someone and ran to see him and confess to him, years of buried feelings, before he could get serious with someone else. Rogue had been going off about rejection and apologies and Sting had lent in and kissed him, full and soft and lingering, just as Natsu had stepped off of the bus to be greeted with the view. Everyone could have their happily ever after except him, apparently.

Lucy remembered how frustrated Natsu had been. He'd come home, locked himself in his room and all she'd heard had been repeating crashes from within that had made her beg him to open the door. He hadn't opened on the first night, and the crashing sounds hadn't ceased until the early hours of the morning. The next day he'd just played the same three songs on a loop, the ones that helped him sleep when he was stressed out or worried. After the third day, Natsu had come out, pasted on smile and cheery attitude as if nothing had happened.

Natsu came off as aloof and impulsive, but he cared a lot about the people around him and their problems sometimes became his problems. Even if he was busy or dealing with his own issues at the moment, he always made time for the people he considered his nakama, and the absolute loyalty he showed his friends resulted in them responding in kind, looking out for him and trying to get him out of his shell.

Natsu was by no means shy. Not at all. He had more friends labelled 'close friends' than most people could realistically keep up with, but he somehow managed to do it effortlessly most of the time.

Dating was a different story. Natsu was gay, which most people assumed because of his hair color, despite the fact that it was his natural hair color dammit, but he really struggled to find anyone who wanted anything long term. There were jerks who just wanted to pay twenty bucks for a date and then go back to their place and have sex. Natsu was gay, sure, that didn't mean he wanted to put out on the first date.

Then there had been his first real relationship. It had been with Loke. Six months, a move in, a series of calls in the middle of the night that Loke would never answer if Natsu was in the room, a used condom that Natsu discovered in the car, and a nasty break up later, Natsu had been broken and had stopped dating entirely.

Loke had been the first person Natsu had told he was gay. Loke had been his best friend, and after one too many failed dates, had comforted Natsu. One thing led to another and, at the age of nineteen, Natsu had lost his virginity to him. He knew Loke hadn't meant to hurt him now, but the fact that Loke had feelings for someone else, got drunk, and then didn't know how to end things with Natsu without losing his best friend didn't make it hurt less.

It was worse because after Natsu had some time and swallowed down his pride enough to read the apology texts and to listen to the voice messages on his phone, he actually understood and that left him hollow. The first person he'd let in and he hadn't been good enough to hold onto them. It was the biggest blow to his confidence that he could imagine and any time someone tried to ask him out since then resulted in an adamant refusal and sometimes in a new addition to his 'nakama.'

The blind date that Erza had snagged for him had obviously ended in a disaster and it had been eight months and, while he acted happy, the growing list of BL Mangas on his shelves and the sheer amount of hours he spent online reading fanfiction for Naruto and Sasuke, Gon and Killua, Hisoka and Illumi, Eren and Levi, Karma and Nagisa, Lelouch and Suzaku, Haru and Makoto, eventually branching out of manga to british children's books and shipping Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, suggested that happy he was not.

So. Lucy took matters into her own hands. Eve might be a little shy, but he was really sweet and he worked at a bar so he was definitely tough enough to handle Natsu and his boisterous behavior, considering how many drunk men he hauled out of the place even when they were twice his size. Martial Arts. People never expected a short guy like Eve to hand their ass to them, but he was better than most. She texted him the place that she thought they would both like, without Eve feeling like he was stepping in a toilet and without Natsu feeling intimidated.

She wrote the address down for Natsu, taping it to the cover of his beloved Kuroshitsuji. He scowled at her, and she smiled at him softly, knowing there was no use trying to calm him down when it came to his dating life. She would just have to let him go on the date and see for himself that he was good enough. More than good enough. Hell, if he was straight she would ask him on a date herself. She also knew that he would have to look at the location because he would be too afraid of tearing the cover to remove the tape from the manga cover. She turned the tv on, reruns of the latest season of Attack on Titan flashing on the screen and watched Natsu's eyes light up when Levi popped into view on the screen. All depressing thoughts of relationships that didn't work out or that might have been flew out the window.

"Yes! Levi is here and things are about to go down. I'm all fired up!"

She shook her head exasperatedly. Every time. Natsu got like this every time.