This is my first story (hopefully of many to come) to upload on this website. I hope you enjoy it, and please do tell me if there are any mistakes or if I got something wrong or if the characters are OOC. I will fix anything if necessary.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or any of the characters and sadly, I probably never will.
So, with no further ado, here is Chapter 1.
Chapter 1 - The Beginning
Laxus growled under his breath from the second floor of the guild. The object of his frustration sat at the bar almost directly underneath him, giggling behind her hand at something that her pink-haired partner said. He was sat at his usual bench on the balcony, over watching his guild mates and it was only a matter of time before his focus was inevitably drawn towards the blonde Celestial Spirit Mage. Deny it all he might, Laxus found that he observed Lucy quite often, the majority of the time without even realising it too.
Another quiet growl ripped out of his throat before he had time to stop it, his annoyance brought forward from that goddamn Salamander's close proximity to his partner. Laxus glared from above, his stare so strong that Lucy started looking around, searching for the direction that it came from. When her eyes finally looked up and settled on him, the surprise was clear on her face that he didn't even attempt to hide his scowl, confirming her suspicions that the stare came from him. She hesitantly raised a hand in a half-hearted wave in hope that it would distinguish the dark look on his face. The generally grumpy Dragon Slayer let go of the scowl completely, giving Lucy a tiny quirk of his lips, something she would have missed had she not been looking for it.
Satisfied, Lucy turned her attention back to Natsu, tuning back into whatever nonsense her immature partner was spouting.
Laxus pushed himself onto his feet from where he sat, waving a hand back to the Raijinshuu, receiving the usual replies back ("Bye Laxus-sama~!" "See ya Laxus!" "Bye Laxus!"). He walked down the stairs to the first story, flashing a smirk at Lucy when she looked at him in curiosity and continued on his way out of the guild.
On his way home, Laxus found himself thinking of the way Lucy looked at him. Laxus wasn't stupid, he knew how the other guild members were still slightly wary of him and the Raijinshuu, that they stole glances at them from time to time to make sure that they weren't going to suddenly attack the guild again. The fact that most people avoided looking directly into his eyes wasn't lost on him. And when they did look at him, their guards was up and they tried not to show their emotions. The only people that looked at him openly was his grandfather, the Raijinshuu and Natsu.
What surprised Laxus was that none of the usual things were present when Lucy looked up at him. She looked directly into his eyes, searching for a sign of what he felt, with not even a drop of fear or trepidation in her. Fuck, it made him feel guilty. After all, he refused to help fight off Phantom Lord unless she became his girl, made Evergreen turn her into stone, proceeded to make her fight the other guild members and then fought her best friend, all while turning the whole of Fairy Tail against each other. Lucy had all the rights to be afraid of him and yet, she looked at him like the past never happened and she trusted him with her life.
While Laxus was so lost in his thoughts, he didn't realise that he had accidentally ended up in front of the house belonging to the girl he was thinking about. The fact that Lucy lived in the two-story apartment he was in front of was undeniable, based on the scent of Team Natsu that was practically overflowing out of the open windows. Another growl, similar to the ones he let out back at the guild, spilled out of his mouth when he came to the realisation that while Lucy's smell of strawberries and coconut was the strongest, the smell of ash and spices was a close second – Natsu's scent.
Driven by his instincts and annoyance, Laxus jumped up to one of the open windows, making a clean leap and landed on the bed underneath said window.
When he opened his eyes after taking a long whiff of Lucy's intoxicating (not that he'd ever admit it) scent, his sight was practically bombarded with the colour pink. Pink bedspread, pink walls, pink curtains and pink knick-knacks on her bookshelf. Shaking off the shock of the overpowering pinkness, the Dragon Slayer headed to the kitchen, hoping to find some food to ease the hunger he felt.
Back at the guild, Lucy was left to wonder what put Laxus in such a mood, glaring down at her and Natsu. Natsu's rambling about his excitement for their next mission faded into background noise when her mind conjured up the image of Laxus' scowl, the slight down turn of his lips, the furrow of his brow, the annoyance that she could see in his eyes even from such a distance. She racked her brain, trying to figure out why it seemed that the reason for his annoyance was her or her partner, coming up with nothing.
Realising at last that his blonde beauty of a partner wasn't paying attention to him, Natsu interrupted her train of thought.
"Luce? You ok?" he asked in concern, it wasn't often that she ignored him so blatantly.
"Hm?" she replied distractedly.
Natsu touched her shoulder lightly, in an effort to bring her attention back to him. Lucy blinked a couple of times and shook her head once before turning her head to Natsu.
"Sorry Natsu. What were you saying?"
"You ok Lucy?" he said instead, ignoring her question.
"Yeah, just a bit distracted. I might go home early today actually." Regardless of the supposedly reassuring statement, the worry didn't leave Natsu. Upon seeing the boy's doubt, Lucy gave him a little smile, a small gesture to put his worries to rest.
Although not entirely convinced, he pushed the worry to the back of his mind to think about later, opting to just adopt his usual carefree, face-splitting grin instead.
Having soothed her partner's unease, Lucy got up from her stool at the bar, left Natsu with a "See you tomorrow" and walked out of the guild.
Once outside of the guild, the Celestial Mage summoned her trusty Nikola spirit and set off on her way home.
"Ne Plue, do you know why Laxus was staring down at me and Natsu?" she asked the shivering white dog (snowman?).
"Puu-puuun" was the only response the blonde got although she nodded along to the noises the little spirit made, as if she understood.
"Yeah, I have no idea either." Lucy replied.
The rest of the trip back to her apartment was spent in silence after both spirit and mage hopped onto the river ledge to balance like always. Lucy waved off warnings from passing boaters about being careful, while teetering dangerously close to the edge of the canal, only hopping off when she came to a stop in front of her apartment building.
Lucy walked up to her front door, unlocked it and walked in, letting Plue return to the Celestial Spirit World once she was inside. Fighting off a yawn, she walked into the kitchen where she opened the fridge, grumbling when she realised that she had next to no food in her house.
It was when she was making a mental list of the things she would need to buy the next time she went shopping (probably tomorrow, seeing as she would need to eat) that she finally realised that something was wrong. The memory of checking her fridge for food just this morning popped into her mind, her previously full fridge. The blonde starting checking off people that couldn't have done it. Natsu, since he was with her for the whole day since she got to the guild. Gray, Erza and Wendy, since they usually didn't break into her house unless Natsu was with them and he was already out. Happy, since he wouldn't have been able to eat a whole fridge worth of food. It occurred to Lucy that other than those four people and one cat, she couldn't name any other people who could've done it.
Shaking off the weird feeling and suspicion, she finally let a yawn loose, accepting that it was probably time to go to sleep. With that in mind, she changed into her pyjamas (being shorts and a tank-top), brushed her teeth and her hair and turned off the lights in her bathroom.
Lucy walked into her bedroom and was about to turn off the lights when she took a double take.
There, in her bed was a lump, a human sized lump. What made her so confused was that it wasn't the usual sized lump that Natsu made when he slept in her bed. Nor was there a bunch of pink hair poking out from underneath the blanket. Instead, it was blonde.
Reigning in her urge to scream and deliver a Lucy Kick to whoever decided to take a nap in her bed, the girl decided to go about this rationally and try to figure out who the hell it was that was in her house.
The size of the lump told her that it was a male, as she currently knew no female big enough to create that sized bulge in her bed. The blonde tuft of hair however, led Lucy to believe that it was either someone from another guild or a stranger who wandered into her house somehow. After all, she refused to believe that the blonde hair poking out the top of her blanket was Laxus of all people. Maybe Natsu dyed his hair blonde in the past hour since she had seen him.
Dismissing the very idea, Lucy pulled the covers of her blanket off of the mystery person in a determined manner.
Even though the thought flashed through her head, nothing had prepared her to see the Lightning Dragon Slayer laying in front of her, his fingers twitching in an unconscious effort to get his warm blanket back. Regardless of the denial she felt, the man in her bed was most definitely Laxus Dreyar, from the soft looking blonde hair that she saw earlier, to the lightning shaped scar on his eye that Lucy just wanted to trace all day if she could, from the sharp angled jaw of his to the irresistible smirk that was for once not there and replaced by a gentle smile. And Holy Mavis was the man attractive when he wasn't scowling (not that he wasn't attractive when he did scowl, if anything he looked hot while scowling or smirking but kind of cute when he had that smile).
Determined to put the thoughts of the man's attractiveness to the back of her mind where they would never see the light of day, Lucy jerked when she felt those same eyes that she felt back at the guild on her person again. Slowly, she turned her head back towards the bed, her large brown eyes meeting sharp blue ones.
After a moment, she poked the man currently residing in her bed, still almost disbelieving that he was actually there, causing a look of confusion to cross over Laxus' face.
"Did you just poke me?" he asked, breaking the long silence after a minute. Lucy let out a small shriek and delivered a Lucy Kick to the man, finally realising that he was real and actually lying in her bed.
"Fuck Blondie. Was that really necessary?" Lucy winced and then gasped as she realised what she had done a second ago.
Running over to where she had kicked Laxus to, she ran her hands over his arms to check for any injuries she may have caused him. Laxus grabbed her hands, halting her from touching him any further.
"Blondie, relax. I'm fine, no harm done. See?" he gestured towards his body, an action that drew Lucy's eyes back to his form, her hands still firmly in his grasp.
Finally seeing that he was telling the truth, Lucy redirected her sight back to his eyes, not without lingering a bit on the lightly tanned skin of his, only now realising that he had shed his shirt sometime before she found him.
"Fine. What are you doing here anyways, Laxus?" she asked, not even bothering to argue about the nickname he had given her, knowing from what she had previously seen that he would never give up on calling her that. She really was curious about why he was in her house. As far as she knew, he had never been there before and there was no particular reason why he should have been today.
He paused at that, not really having a valid answer to her question. After all, he had jumped through her window on impulse. The rest of it though, the raiding of her fridge and climbing into her bed was more of a 'now that I'm here, might as well make the most of it' kinda thing. And boy, was Natsu right. Lucy's bed was the best he had ever slept in, lulling him to sleep not even a minute after he lay down.
Racking his brain for a good reason for breaking into the woman's house, a light bulb practically lit up above his blonde head.
"There was a mission on the request board that caught my eye and you're coming with me." It wasn't really a lie, he really had seen a mission that looked like it would interest the blonde Celestial Mage. The only thing that made his statement slightly untrue was that he hadn't planned on inviting her to actually go on the mission nor was he even thinking of going on it when he saw the sheet of paper.
Regardless of the fact that Laxus had phrased the 'invitation' as a statement rather than a question, Lucy knew that she still had a choice in the matter.
She felt hesitant in accepting the offer. After all, it wasn't just an invitation to working together, it was an invitation to spend one-on-one time with the man for however long the mission would take. The hesitation however, faded instantly the moment that she looked at the large Dragon Slayer sprawled on the floor. There was a hint of hope and fear that she could see in his normally apathetic eyes and that was the only thing that she needed in order to shake off the doubt she felt and accept his offer.
"Sure, I'll go with you. What's the mission about though and how long will it take?" she watched as the fear disappeared and was replaced with joy, still subtle but detectable nonetheless.
Laxus was doing a mini happy dance in his mind, not paying much attention to his surroundings any more now that Lucy had said yes. After a few seconds, he finally realised that she asked him a question and froze in his spot, cursing quietly.
"What would you do if I said that I can't actually remember what the mission was…?" he reached up to scratch his head, his expression something akin to sheepishness. He was expecting the young woman to react negatively, let out the dark side of her moods that he had heard so much about (and was not scared of seeing, dammit), change her mind about the mission and reject it, hell even kick him out of her house (literally). The sudden burst of giggles out of the girl was not in any way what he had expected, as evident by his expression.
"S-sorry Laxus. Y-your face t-though!" the giggles that were still erupting from Lucy made the apology seem less genuine, although it helped a bit to sooth Laxus' damaged ego at being laughed at.
By the time that she calmed down, she was panting and red in the face, with Laxus sitting in front of her almost pouting.
"Sorry, sorry. Ano~… How about we meet up at the guild tomorrow and see what the mission is then go back home, pack and meet again at the train station?" Lucy asked shyly, not looking directly at the man any more, feeling a little guilty for laughing so much now.
She felt a large hand settle on her head, causing her to look up in surprise to see a surprisingly gentle smile on his face, not the small quirk of his lips like before but a real and proper smile. It shocked her a lot but she instantly gave a bright smile back in return.
"That sounds great, Blondie. I'll see you tomorrow then." Laxus got to his feet and pulled his shirt over his head in one swift motion, leaving Lucy to gawk at the memory of his chest and muscles rippling (and there was a lot of muscles). He smirked at her blank face before moving towards the bed, threw a quick "See ya!" over his shoulder and jumped out the still open window.
After a moment, Lucy ran to lean over her bed and popped her head out.
"Why can't anyone just use a door for once?!"
Hope you enjoyed it and it wasn't too short (over 2,000 words isn't too bad for a first time though, right?) Again, sorry if there were any typos or mistakes of any sort. Do review or contact me in some way to tell me if you find any though. Review or don't, Favourite or not, Follow or not, I don't mind but thank you for taking the time to read my story and hopefully you'll keep reading.
Sadly, I'm a lazy little shit though and I have school and all this other stuff going on so I have no idea when I'll next be able to upload so I apologise in advance.