When Natsu's dorm manager warned him about the window dorm at the end of the hallway on the second floor, he (as usual) just brushed it off and assured the older man that he'd be totally fine. It was fully his intention to simply tease the crap out of whichever unlucky freshman happened to have the comparable room in the dorm next door, probably keep him up all night and challenge the kid to staring contests through their windows, which faced each other as he found out after opening the curtains for the first time.

Natsu hadn't counted on seeing a girl staring back at him.

She was actually kind of pretty, with her blonde hair and brown eyes that he could barely make out from the twenty-five feet between their dorm buildings, but Natsu also realized that she was easily embarrassed. Shortly after making eye contact, the girl seemed to realize that she wasn't exactly decent, only wearing a fluffy white towel around her obviously curvy body. With a flush of her cheeks and a muffled scream of "Pervert!" the curtain of her room slammed closed (as much as fabric can slam), and Natsu figured that would be the end of it.

A few months into the semester, Natsu was proven wrong as he caught the tail ends of an argument coming from the mysterious blonde girl's dorm.

"But Levy-chan! I can't possibly switch classes right now!"

"Lu-chan, why not? You're so talented, why waste it?"

"Are you saying majoring in animation and all my writing classes are a waste?"

"Absolutely not, Lu-chan! It's just…"

After that, the argument must have settled because Natsu didn't hear any more. But that was the first night when music became a problem. Natsu had spent the better part of his evening after that hanging out in the dorm across the hallway (which belonged to someone named Loke, and the lucky bastard didn't have a roommate), but when he returned in the early hours of a new morning, tired and ready to crash, Natsu found he couldn't thanks to the blasting stereo from that girl's dorm.

Natsu subsequently invested in a pair of earplugs.

Some weeks later, Natsu discovered via unfortunate circumstances and process of elimination that the name of the blonde girl was not Levy, and therefore was "Lu." Levy McGarden had become the temporary talk of the campus after being essentially crucified in the commons along with two of her friends by one of the local gangs. It became well known after that incident that Levy had blue hair, not blonde.

Natsu was ridiculously pissed when he found out that the kid responsible (named Gajeel something-or-other) was transferred into his dorm building.

Natsu nearly burned down said dorm building upon discovering that Gajeel had moved in with Loke right across the hallway.

Ultimately, he performed no such pyrotechnics after the dorm manager Makarov (whom Natsu had taken to and now affectionately called Gramps) gave the entire dorm a lesson in second chances. Natsu still wanted a chance to punch Gajeel. Sure, he didn't know Levy McGarden all that well, but tying her to a tree and painting the Phantom Lord gang symbol on her stomach was a pretty dick move in his book.

Natsu also wasn't able to forget that incident, because apparently "Lu" was pissed about it. Her music was sad, angry, and loud for an entire two weeks afterwards, loud enough that Natsu's earplugs didn't block it out all the way.

During the first week, Natsu tried to be patient. It wasn't a trait he was especially known for, but compassion was, and so, feeling bad for her friend, he grit his teeth, buried his head under a pillow, and rode out the loud basslines.

In the second week, Natsu started to notice something. If he was quiet, listening really close to the window, sometimes he could make out a singer. He though, at first, that maybe his window-mate just had some kind of bonus downloads with an additional singer, but when one of his favorite songs came on, Natsu knew that wasn't the case.

He'd never heard this woman before, but her voice was, in a word, awesome. It was girlish and high enough that he could make her out over the original track, but also held the qualities of a rock star. In other words, if Natsu hadn't known this song so well, he probably would have thought she was part of the band.

After a few days of listening closely, like that, Natsu deduced that the voice must have belonged to the girl in the room. He took a wild guess, then, at what the blonde and her friend Levy might have been arguing about. If "Lu" really could sing that well, then Levy'd had a point about wasting talent. That voice on an animation major? Seemed kind of unfair.

Entering the third week of falling asleep on the blonde's schedule, Natsu was pretty fed up. So, tossing respect for her friend's situation to the wind, Natsu stalked to his window, yanked open the curtains, took a deep breath, and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Would you turn that shit down?!" He really didn't care at this point if someone in his own dorm heard him. Enough was e-f*cking-nough.

Seconds later, the music faded out, and the blonde opened her curtains, shouting back, "What?"

Crossing his arms, Natsu repeated, "I know you're an animation major and all that, but does your music have to be that loud?"

"How did you—" she started to ask, but then turned her head to the side. Clearly someone wasn't happy about the shouting (though why that bothered them and not the music was a mystery), because the blonde girl held up one finger, ducked out of sight, and reappeared with a large sketchpad in hand. In black ink, the pad read, How do you know my major?

"Heard you arguing about it with that Levy girl a few weeks back," he answered, a little quieter. "Lu" looked away, and Natsu felt bad. Now that he thought about it, mentioning Levy so casually was probably not a great idea. But Natsu wasn't known for holding his tongue, and instead started searching for something else to say.

Suddenly, a thought struck him. Having a playboy as a dorm-neighbor was sometimes disturbing (in more ways than one), but in this situation, Natsu was grateful. Loke was always going on and on about how to properly flirt, and the one thing he always recommended? Compliments.

"She was totally right about your voice by the way," Natsu called through the window, and seeing that the blonde girl's attention was back on him, he opened his window and stuck his head out. "You're really good," he added, voice almost back to its normal level.

A warm blush appeared on the blonde's cheeks, and she shook her head. Sorry about the music, she wrote on her pad after a minute.

Natsu shrugged. "Turn it down a little next time, will ya?" he asked, smiling. "At least, y'know, at night."

She nodded, scribbled a quick, Okay, and started to reach for the curtains.

Quickly, for no good reason, Natsu stopped her with a call of, "What's your name? It starts with 'Lu,' right?" The blonde nodded again, but didn't actually tell him her name. Cheekily grinning, Natsu asked, "Well I'll just call you Luigi until you tell me."

"It's Lucy!" she yelled back, cheeks puffed. A hand quickly clapped over her mouth when Lucy remembered she was supposed to be quiet.

"Lucy, huh?" Natsu repeated, testing it. "Cool," he said. "I'm Natsu." Another nod in reply. "Well, I'm gonna take advantage of the peace and quiet to sleep. Goodnight, Luigi."

LUCY! said the sketchpad. Natsu laughed, shut the window, and then the curtains.

As he climbed into bed, Natsu chuckled softly to himself. So her name's Lucy, he thought, feeling contentment and warmth in his stomach. Geez, she's loud. But maybe having the dorm on the end of the second floor hallway wasn't so bad after all.