Sense of Home

.

.

.

Lucy Heartfilia unlocked the door to her apartment, keys jingling as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She slipped off her ankle-high boots and shrugged off the light jacket she had worn to keep away the autumn chill in the air. As if it were routine, she pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer and popped it in the microwave, before moving to pour herself a glass of wine.

As the microwave hummed and she sipped on a glass of Merlot, her dark eyes scanned the living room with half-hearted interest. Boxes sat piled haphazardly throughout the apartment, black lettering scrawled on the sides. She was sure she had dishes packed away somewhere - beautiful china that had been in her family for generations - and a more suitable glass for wine other than the plastic disposable cup she was currently using, but the dread of unpacking heavily outweighed the desire to have finer dishware.

Her cell phone buzzed from its place on the counter, and she reached over to read a text message that had come through.

[Hey Lucy! Will you be home Thursday night?]

She sipped on her wine thoughtfully as she pondered her best friend's question. Natsu Dragneel certainly wasn't one for asking questions before action, which made her curious as to why he needed to know her plans.

[Yeah. Why?]

It took about a minute for her phone to buzz again with his response. [Can I stop by?]

Lucy rolled her eyes, part of her apprehensive about how she was going to reply. For all intents and purposes, Natsu was a very good friend to her. She couldn't say how many times he made her laugh until her sides hurt, and held her when she needed a crutch to lean on. But his insistences over the past few months were beginning to wear on her, and honestly she wasn't sure if she was up for his company this week.

Her gaze trailed to the rest of her apartment. He had already seen the disarray several times, but if she was being truthful, every time he laid eyes on her unpacked apartment, she felt mortified.

It had been over a year since her dad died. She really couldn't recall ninety-percent of what had happened in that year. One minute she was crying in a hospital room, the next she was an orphaned college student in a new apartment with an inheritance she never asked for.

She couldn't remember packing away her father's things - or her things, for that matter - as she moved from the grand estate she had called home into an apartment that was no bigger than her old bedroom. And every night as she came home from class to stare at the boxes taunting her from every corner of her new living quarters, she felt ashamed.

Lucy couldn't unpack. Months had passed since she moved, and for some reason, she just couldn't find the will power to empty the boxes that held her home. Natsu had been the only guest she had allowed over because she had known him since the fourth grade and thus her oldest and dearest friend. She knew he wouldn't judge her, but she still felt humiliated knowing her life remained packed in cardboard boxes.

Like, how could she be unable to unpack? "Just open the damn boxes" she would curse to herself every time she found herself staying in and staring at the offending objects. But the more she stared at them, the more she felt the heartsick eat away at her.

After the first night in her apartment, she cried for nineteen days straight.

Glancing back at her phone with Natsu's text message waiting patiently for a response, Lucy let the wine make the decision for her and decided she needed some kind of company to off-set the silence of her past.

[Sure. I'll be home by 5]

He sent her a winkie-face in response, which only caused her to smile with amusement. As she exited out of his message, she let her gaze wander to the list of other texts she had received, some she had never responded to.

[You are loved!]

[We need you bunny girl]

[Smile Lucy!]

[You're amazing. Don't forget that.]

The few she had responded to left a biting tone, words between the lines asking them to leave her to grieve in peace.

[Doesn't matter, but thanks]

Lucy knew her friends were only trying to make her feel better, but they couldn't. They knew she was struggling and felt helpless. Lucy understood that. However, her friends couldn't take away the ache in her chest and she was sick of them putting in the effort.

So, she had left the last few messages untouched. Alone with her glass of wine, she padded to her bedroom - occupied by a mattress that sat on the floor - pulled out her laptop, and began streaming a movie she had seen a dozen times before.

She ignored the two-hundred unpacked boxes that mocked her as she did so.

. . .

At six o'clock on Thursday evening, there was a knock on her door. Lucy unfolded herself from the one chair in her living room and mentally prepared herself for a Natsu-shenanigan-filled night. "I'm coming," she called as she side-stepped a stack of boxes and reached the door.

When she opened the door, she was in no way prepared for the barrage of people who pushed their way into her apartment, saying, "Surprise, Lucy!" while bearing platters of food, cleaning products, and complete unconcern for her, "Wait… You can't come in here! I haven't unpacked yet!" protestations.

Her apartment filled with chatter as people she had grown deep friendships with began moving about the space - pointing in different directions, walking down the hallway to scope out the layout, setting up the kitchen as if for a party. There were her old classmates and work friends and people she hadn't physically seen in years. And at the end of it all stood Natsu with a cheeky grin on his face.

"Hiya, Luce!"

"Natsu!" she practically screeched, hands curled into her hair with panic as her eyes skirted between him and the group of people who were now scattered around her apartment. "What are you doing?!"

He slung an arm around her shoulders, both of them watching as her friends began dividing up the rooms and unpacking what was left of her life. He pulled at her blonde hair playfully. "We're here for you."

Before she could corner him and question exactly what the hell he meant by that, he had disappeared into the kitchen, more than likely about to gorge on some of the food platters their old friend, Lisanna, had begun unwrapping. Lucy could only open and close her mouth like a fish as she watched her perfectly stacked boxes begin to take shape of disarray.

"Hey there, Lucy," a silver-haired woman greeted with a smile.

She turned to look up into bright blue eyes. "Mira?" She hadn't seen the woman since working as a waitress at a bar before her dad died. "What are you doing here?"

She shrugged and swept her gaze to the rest of the organized chaos. "Natsu sent us a group text the other day. He told us you were struggling and you needed our help. So he asked us to all come over and help unpack your apartment for you. He told us to bring food." She giggled. "And to make it fun."

As if on cue, Levy McGarden (a friend she had met in her Creative Writing class two years prior) pulled out a Bluetooth speaker and put on some tunes that made it seem more like an actual party instead of Lucy's personal pity party. Levy threw up a wave in Lucy's direction, her expression forming an unspoken apology as she shrugged.

"Wait," she tried again, hands up to grab the attention of all her uninvited guests. "I didn't know about this. You guys can't just come over!"

"Give it a rest, Bunny Girl," a man named Gajeel Redfox (who she met at a college Halloween party) said as he pushed passed her with a case of beer and bag of ice. "You ain't gettin' rid of us that easily."

Mirajane Strauss giggled and nudged Lucy in the side. "Just try to have a little fun, okay?" she said with a wink before disappearing into the throng of friends that crowded her apartment.

Lucy stood with wide-eyes, watching as Levy unpacked her fifteen-hundred books and found places for them on her bookshelf (in alphabetical order by genre, if she knew Levy). Her hands wrung nervously as her friend Loke (the son of one of her father's old business partners) hung pictures on her walls. Her heart felt like it was beating right out of her chest with anxiety as her friend Erza Scarlet (a woman who forced her friendship in the cafeteria one day over strawberry cake) organized her closet and put away all her clothes. Sometime during the evening, Mirajane and Lisanna had managed to set up a taco-making station in the kitchen, as Gajeel filled a cooler with the beer and ice.

Before she could process what exactly she was going to do next, another knock came to her door, and Lucy turned to answer it. On her doorstep stood Gray Fullbuster (a man she met senior year of high school out by the baseball dugouts) with a grin and a handle of Jack in his hand.

"Hey, Lucy. Sorry I'm late."

"L-Late?" she stuttered. "You aren't even supposed to be here!"

He shrugged with a lazy grin. "Well, I am. So put me to work."

"Um… well…" she tried, her brain fumbling to come up with something to say, because they weren't supposed to be here! and she didn't know what he was supposed to do.

"Perfect! Fullbuster, give me a hand!" Loke called from within the apartment, and Gray gave her arm an affectionate squeeze before he pushed passed her. Lucy shook her head in complete awe, softly closing the door, and turning to look at the commotion.

She somehow managed to make her feet move from beyond the doorway and found her way to Loke as he ripped open the paper wrapping on a framed picture. "I'm really good at measuring stuff," he answered her as she approached, Gray with an amused smile as he examined another framed picture nearby. Loke flashed a confident grin as he stood to look at her walls. "Let me put these up in your hallway."

Curling blonde hair around her finger nervously, Lucy hovered near Loke, not wanting to give up control. She watched as Gray held up a picture on the wall, Loke scrutinizing its placement, before pointing to another one instead. "Wait," Lucy said, pointing to a different spot on the wall. "Put that one there, maybe?"

Loke chuckled, but never missed a beat. "Go away, Lucy."

And without even meaning to, she did. And he was so much better at hanging stuff than she was! For the first thirty minutes, she had been embarrassed about her unpacked boxes, but as the night wore on and her apartment began to take shape, filled with distracting conversations and laughter she hadn't felt in forever, she let it all go.

They took a break for dinner, everyone's paper plates overwhelmingly full of tacos, as they sat on unopened boxes, on the floor, on the one chair in the living room, on each other's laps, someone resting a dinner plate on her DVD player. Some of them had never met before, some of them were the best of friends, some of them had only crossed paths. But they found conversation between them, lives intertwined, interests abound.

Lucy watched as this group of misfits of her friends found a common objective and came together so beautifully it made her heart ache.

"Speaking of date night," Erza interrupted as Mirajane finished telling a story about a first date gone horribly wrong. "Lucy, I'm concerned for your abundance of intriguing choices of underwear. What occasions do you have a need for such things?"

Heat seared her cheeks as Lucy turned a cherry red, her eyes widening as she practically choked on her food. Gajeel laughed out loud as Levy waved her hands dramatically in the air, saying, "Erza! You can't just ask a girl that!"

Natsu scrunched up his nose with a thoughtful look, before adding, "A family party?"

"Definitely not," Gray immediately responded with a shake of his head. "You got flames for brains?"

Her best friend was immediately on his feet, empty plate sliding to the floor as he clenched his hands into fists. "You wanna fight, pervy flasher?"

And true to his words, somehow during the evening, Gray's shirt had disappeared. Lucy hoped she wouldn't stumble across it later.

"That's enough, you two," Erza attempted to intervene, standing between them. "There will be no fighting."

Gajeel cracked his knuckles. "Aww, come on, Scarlet. Let us go a few rounds."

She silenced him with a glare that could kill.

Natsu grinned, pumping his fists into the air a few times. "Yeah, come on, fight me! I'll take you all on."

Mirajane giggled, circling the group as she gathered empty dinner plates, taking note of the warm flush to Natsu's cheeks. "Oh dear, I think someone needs to be cut off."

Gray rolled his eyes. "I told you not to drink Jack, you moron."

"I feel like the idiot's only job is to drink," Gajeel grumbled, leaning his chin in his hand.

"Do I have to make you all play nice?" Erza threatened again, her frustration peaking from being ignored.

Gray smirked. "Play nice? We don't 'play' or do 'nice'."

Lucy suddenly laughed, and all eyes turned to the surprising yet welcoming sound. She laughed until her stomach hurt, as her friends joined in, and tears came to her eyes. Here she was, Lucky Lucy Heartfilia, not even able to do the simplest of tasks. And nobody had judged her. Her friends simply swept into her apartment like superheros, somehow finding a way to do what she couldn't.

As dinner was cleaned up and everyone returned to work, she was overwhelmed by the sight of all her crazy friends turning themselves into Santa's workshop. On her behalf. Without asking her. They just showed up and barged in. They were all so practical and bossy, she couldn't even hold onto her embarrassment.

At the end of the night, Lucy looked at Erza's fiance, Jellal - a quiet, tactiturn guy who drove a tugboat on the Hudson, a practical man of few words - and she just gazed at him, speechless. She had no idea how to say thank you, especially to such a tough, resilient, self-sufficient man.

Jellal looked down at her with a gentle smile, sweeping his blue hair from his eyes. He saw the expression on her face, and he understood everything that was behind it. "Listen, Lucy," he said, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly. "What we did today was a barn-raising."

And Lucy nearly cried right then and there as he wrapped her in a tight hug.

When they all swept out of there four hours later, her place was a home. Lucy gazed around the newly-furnished apartment - her crocheted blanket she spent winter nights curled under, a picture of her parents sitting on the fireplace mantle, decorative towels hanging from her oven door - and then turned to Natsu, who stood by the door with a toothy grin and a flush to his cheeks. "Better, Luce?"

Not only was everything put away, but now it had a memory attached to it - a group memory. Friends, laughter, dirty jokes, hard work.

This pink-haired idiot took a risk. It very well could have ended badly. Lucy could've lashed out. She could have been really offended. But this silly man with a spirit of fire took a risk and sent out a text to all her local friends.

"Yeah," she whimpered, wiping a tear away as it spilled down her cheek.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, Lucy breathing in the scent of ash and charcoal from his time on the railroad. She could've been offended, insulted, hurt. But Natsu took a risk.

The 'ask for help' advice was well-meaning, but not really thought through. There was shame. There was the enforced helplessness. There were the feelings she wasn't worth it. But her friends didn't wait for her to ask for help. They showed up. They took over. They didn't ask.

And they left her realizing that no matter what happened in her life, what tragedies she faced, home wasn't a place. It was a feeling. Somehow, her weirdo of a friend had found a way to create a sense of home for her here.

It felt authentic. And true. And everything she had ever longed for.

Hey, beautiful readers! Welcome to my very first FT fic! You may recognize some components from a post on tumblr - which is where I derived my inspiration from. This was simply a one-shot to get my feet wet in the fandom, as although I'm not new to writing, I am new to the FT fandom and have not yet become comfortable writing for all the different characters. I am excited to continue to write for FT in the future, so please, any feedback and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated! :)

Shout-out to schmad20 for looking this over for me!