Passionate Stakes

Disclaimer: The world of Fairy Tail and its characters belong to Hiro Mashima. I do not profit from the writing of this story and am a fan who simply loves the work.

Timeline: Manga based (I know the anime isn't that much different minus the filler), takes place after the time skip but will become an AU quickly because it picks up almost immediately when they get back and excludes the games and beyond.

Author's Note: I will not write these often but I wanted to place a quick note before the story begins about the pairings and content of this story. First, spelling and grammar…. This story does not have a beta and I am a visual artist. I use this medium as a way to clear my mind when working on pieces. So if you see mistakes… sorry (?) but whatever at the same time.

The characters will be slightly OOC because I am not Hiro Mashima. There is a lot of introspective analysis and sometimes they tend to get broody on me but I will try very hard to stay away from anything with too much angst. I am looking to have everyone grow emotionally in this story but will try my best to keep them as true to their cannon personalities as I can, but they will change.

This story will primarily focus on the pairing of Natsu x Lucy but will include, allude and is not limited to: Gray x Juvia, Levy x Gajeel, Mirajane x Freed and Erza x Jellal. Because I keep up with the weekly manga there might be spoilers included for those who only watch the anime but I am writing so far behind the current plot that it shouldn't be an issue. In regard to the topic of spoilers I might borrow from the cannon as I see fit for this world.

The naming conventions that I have used are taken from the Fairy Tail Wiki site as well as the names of the type of magic each mage uses.

Finally, because this story is rated T it will have mild cussing and mild sexual themes, nothing graphic but implied. Think in the terms of a PG13 movie, this is so it can reach a larger viewer base.

Lastly, enjoy, and I look forward to our ride together.

Internal Thoughts in 'Italics'

CHAPTER ONE

It had been just over five weeks since the twenty-one missing mages had returned to the city of Magnolia. Unfortunately, after the seven year absence of its core members, Fairy Tail, the once strongest guild in all of Fiore, was now dead last in the rankings and had been receiving very few job request because of this.

The smaller amount of work being posted meant that when everyone returned, many of the higher level members, like Gildarts, took what little jobs that were available, and left other mages, like Lucy Heartfilia stuck at guild base with nothing to do.

Sure, she was part of 'Team Natsu', but he and Happy had been preoccupied with making repairs to their small home that had fallen into even more disrepair after being abandoned for seven years. Of course, with their house be inhabitable for the time being meant that the fire dragon slayer and his beloved blue cat had been sleeping over her house. With Natsu and her basically cohabiting, even if only temporarily, a certain ice mage and temperamental red head made their presence an inevitable part of Lucy's small apartment every night. Lucy suspected that Gray was only there to annoy Natsu but she knew that Erza had more protective intentions.

Over the past two weeks, her house guests had primarily been Natsu, Happy and Gray. Erza had been sent by Makarov on a very secretive, and apparently personal mission with the iron dragon slayer Gajeel.

Being surrounded by so much testosterone was slowly making Lucy crazy, and by nine o'clock every night Gray usually found himself on his ass outside her front door.

'I couldn't very well kick Natsu and Happy to the street. They have no real place to call home right now, at least not one that has a solid roof yet.' Lucy internalized this statement to herself nightly as she kicked the dejected ice mage out of her apartment.

After finding out that her father had passed away only a month before their return, she would be lying if she told herself that the company was entirely unwelcome. Lucy knew that she would always regret that her and her father would never get the chance to completely rebuild their relationship. However, she was happy that she was at least on better terms with him when she vanished. The one good thing that came out of this tragedy was that her father had been paying her rent for the seven years that she was away. Jude Heartfilia explained in his will that he never thought that she was dead and knew that Lucy would need her home when she came back. He had also left just enough money to cover her rent for a few more months, finishing out the year.

While she was inwardly suppressing feelings that the blonde celestial mage knew would eventually catch up to her. Outwardly, Lucy told herself that she still had to keep up appearances, and continued to act flabbergasted that her friends would have the nerve to invade the privacy of her small studio apartment pretty much every day. This 'usual' behavior helped everyone more than Lucy could ever have guessed.

All of the guild members, formerly missing or not, were trying to find and hold onto some sense of normalcy after the great shock of either finding out your friends were not dead or trying to adjust to a completely different world than you were used to. Seven years doesn't really seem that long when you are experiencing it, but being thrown into the future with no context proved to be very disorienting to many of the retuning guild members. Whether they admitted it out loud to anyone or not.

Today was turning out to simply be another boring day in which Lucy found herself once again at the bar located in the new (to the returning members) guild building. Which was in all honestly more like a rundown farm house but the people that were there are what really mattered, not the structure that housed them.

After the main group of Fairy Tail mages had vanished, the guild had to file for bankruptcy and the original building in the northern most part of town had been foreclosed on. Currently, now that everyone was back, Fairy Tail's main goal was to reacquire their previous home and raise the guild to its previous rank as strongest guild in the kingdom of Fiore. Of course, with so few jobs coming in this task was proving to be much more difficult than previously anticipated.

So here Lucy sat, bored and alone because Natsu and Happy were once again fixing their disheveled home. She had tried to help once but that chaos was more than she or any other sane, non-basically-indestructible human could take. The celestial mage even considered asking Natsu and Happy to stay with her but that generosity was quickly squashed when she woke up one morning to find that every bit of food in her home had been eaten by her partners.

The quiet lull on days like this was nice but she was really ready to find work and start a new adventures with her friends.

'Seven year' Lucy thought to herself while she rested her head on the bar countertop in the guilds main hall, 'I wonder if that technically makes me seven years older.'

It still astonished her that after the explosion of Acnologia's attack occurred and the group of mages were engulfed in that bright yellow light, what seemed like a short blip on their radar of time, had actually been seven years to everyone else not on that island. Physically, everyone that had been in the group on Tenrou Island looked no different than the day that they disappeared, but legally, she was now twenty-four.

'Almost halfway through my twenties,' she silently mused, 'and didn't even get to experience any of it.'

"So," Mirajane started, suddenly breaking Lucy out of her quiet thoughts and causing her to jerk her head off of the countertop and stare at the beautiful white haired mage, "I hear that you and Natsu have been spending a good amount of time together since we have been back."

Lucy, sensing a trap, simply smiled at the older mage as she attempted to find the words that would adequately address the insinuating statement without giving Mirajane any room to create any new rumors about the two good friends and partners. However, even with all the intricate, well thought planning that had been going on in the celestial mages' brain, all of her potential ideas were thwarted in mere seconds with a simple sentence from an individual with very poor timing.

"Lucy!" The salmon haired dragon slayer in question exclaimed loudly as he suddenly burst through the front door of the guild, "Happy and I finished the roof so we don't have to sleep together tonight!"

"Aye!" Happy added as he floated in and discreetly surveyed the current inhabitants of the guild.

Groaning, Lucy just face-palmed and slowly laid her head back down on the bar counter defeated, ignoring the jeers and catcalls of her fellow guild mates in regards to the blatant sexual innuendo her oblivious partner had just blurted upon his entrance.

"Everybody seems in good spirits today!" Natsu laughed out as he pulled up a chair next to Lucy. He quickly ordered his usual and a plate of fish for his happy blue Exceed from a positively glowing Mirajane.

"Yeah, because you are an idiot." A tall black haired male said as he slowly approached the partners at the bar.

Mirajane set Natsu's flaming mug down in front of him before heading to the back to retrieve his food. The dragon slayer quickly drained the cup before he jumped up from his seat, wiped his mouth on his arm, and positioned himself face to face with his aggressor.

"Damn it you frozen piece of crap! You want to say that to me again? 'Cause I've been itchin' for a good fight all morning and now I'm really fired up!"

Natsu's sudden movements and yelling caused Lucy to lift her head off the bar top again and shoot her two male friends a perfected side eye. However, her irritation was short lived as she took in Gray's abnormal attire. The first odd thing was that he was actually fully clothed. The second was that her usually scantily clad friend was dressed to the nines, on a Thursday afternoon.

Gray sported a tailored, navy blue, wool blazer with matching wool slacks and vest with a crisp white button-up underneath, black leather shoes, black silk tie and hell, he even had socks on.

"You know what you hot headed freak, you... are... an... IDIOT! An I-D-I-O-T!" Gray yelled as he began to loosen his tie, preparing for his daily, almost ritualistic fight with Natsu. However, he abruptly stopped, frozen in place, as Mirajane sauntered out of the back kitchen with Natsu's order of food in hand.

"Now Gray, I know you are not going to go back on our little bet. You lost fair and square so you need to uphold the agreement we made." The Satan Soul takeover mage stated simply, a knowing smile on her face as she roughly sat Natsu's huge plate of food down on the countertop. While that smile may have been beautifully gleaming at her two male guild mates, her eyes held the true nature of her statement. It was a clear threat. One that said if Gray didn't comply with their apparent previous arrangement there would be hell to pay, and she was the ferryman.

Dejectedly, Gray fixed his tie and lethargically took a seat on the other side of the blonde celestial mage, huffing loudly as his butt hit the hard cushion.

"Yeah, Yeah," He mumbled under his breath and ordered a water.

Natsu stood stunned at Gray's reaction to Mirajane's threat and felt a little frustrated that he now had nowhere to direct his built up energy. Usually Mirajane never broke up their daily scuffle and sometimes even cheered them on. Something was obviously up but he couldn't put his finger on it. As Natsu stood with his mouth slightly open obviously trying to comprehend what had just transpired, Lucy took the time to actually ask the hot question of the day.

"Soooo," She started, "What's with the flashy get up? You almost look like you are going out on a date." She finished with a small giggle but quickly stopped when she noticed that at the mention of the word date, Gray's face quickly turned red and Mirajane squealed like a crazed fangirl that had been wrapped in the waves of moe.

"Yeah, why the hell are you dressed like a preppy douche?" Natsu eloquently added after Lucy's more neutral question as he sat down to eat, earning a glare from both women and the ice mage in question.

Gray's fists clenched on the counter top, wanting badly to punch the self-righteous smirk off of rosy haired 'Salamander's' face but reigned his emotions in to please the white haired woman who had been sending him not-so-inconspicuous warning glances from behind the bar. Trying to keep the conversation nonphysical, Gray was about to simply offer an equally snarky remark back to the fire dragon slayer but he was cut off by Mirajane's loud and entirely over enthusiastic announcement to the group. One that he had hoped would not have been spread throughout the guild so quickly.

"Our little Gray here is taking our lovely Juvia out on a delightful lunch date then to a wonderfully romantic play at the local theatre! I think that the play they are going to see is about a beautiful but sad and lonely princess who befriends a dark handsome prince and melts his frozen heart with love!" Mirajane cooed with her hands held together placed close to her heart. The former S-class mage looked like she could hardly contain her happiness as she let practically the whole guild know about the date that was to transpire between the ice and water element mages later that day.

"What?" Lucy stared unbelievingly at Mirajane and then quickly turned to Gray mouth hanging slightly ajar.

A loud thud was all that was heard in response as Gray simply dropped his head roughly onto the counter in front of him. (Mirajane silently thought that it might be a good idea to add a padded cap to the edge of the bar as this seemed to be a popular action recently.)

"I mean this is great!" Lucy continued in a tone that was louder and faster than she would normally talk in, while patting him franticly on the back. "I'm glad you finally came around and acknowledged your feelings for Juvia! I mean come on. The woman has been head over heels in love with you since your first meeting when she was still part of Phantom Lord's Element Four. You have just been too... male to realize it!" Mirajane giggled and Gray merely looked at Lucy as if she had grown three heads and started using fire magic.

"Uh oh," Mirajane innocently laughed as Gray started to sputter incoherently, "I still don't think that he was quite aware of that little fact Lucy. I mean he is just as dense as some other people I know." With a pause, and a hard stare at the blonde in front of her, she let out a small sigh and continued, "For some reason I don't think that obliviousness is relegated to just the males in this guild." Mirajane turned her gaze at Natsu with her last statement and causing the blonde to glow a deep shade of red while Natsu simply continued to eat, unaware of the insinuation that the former S-Class mage had just made. "Regrettably" she tutted, "His date today is simply a product of a bad choice and a lost bet."

The idea of Gray losing a bet was the key to finally getting Natsu's attention off of his meal and back into the conversation at hand. However, before he had anytime to shoot out a teasing comment, the ice mage had regained his composure from earlier and began his words with a quick glare directed at Natsu, "Before you get your panties in a bunch, Salamander… I merely had a lot of faith in some people I thought I knew really well, and they let me down. So the loss isn't entirely my fault to begin with, it's theirs."

"But," Mirajane grinned mischievously, "A loss is still a loss and you have to live up to the terms and conditions of our agreement."

"I know, I know. Fine print and all that jazz. Why else would I be in this ridiculous getup if I didn't take my responsibility seriously." Gray said with a light blush on his cheeks as he looked another direction to try and hide this new coloring. His embarrassment was short lived because the wheels in Lucy's head had been turning with a feeling of trepidation since the word 'bet' had come up.

"One second..." The celestial mage began with some apprehension, "Does Juvia know that you are only taking her out because you lost a bet with Mirajane? Because if you lie to her and lead her on, I sure can see you drowning in your sleep once she finds out." Lucy asked only slightly worried about Gray's wellbeing but was really more concerned for Juvia's fragile feelings. "Wait, you better not be agreeing to this just because Lyon said he had feelings for her the last time he visited the guild after we got back! This had better not be some sick twisted competition you have made up with him in your head!"

The ice mage quickly reached out and put a comforting hand on Lucy's shoulder. "Lucy, calm down. Juvia knows. She was part of the bet between me, Mirajane, Juvia, Levy, and Cana." Gray wanted to try and quickly calm the blonde's worries because he knew Natsu would be quick to jump in if Lucy became really upset.

"Heh, heh," Natsu chuckled out loud more to himself than the people around him but decide on raising his voice for the rest of the group to hear the thought that popped into his head. "Serves you right, after hanging around Erza and Lucy so much you should know better than to bet against four women."

Mirajane and Gray gave Natsu matching surprised looks but Lucy simply smiled at his innocently subconscious compliment before she turned her attention back to the takeover and ice mages while asking, "So what is this bet you guys made about? And, since Gray was one of the losers who won?"

At her question Gray and Mirajane exchanged knowing looks but Gray was the first of the two to speak, "Let's say that just because I was the first of the group to lose doesn't mean that the others won't be quick to follow. In fact, I think Mirajane is up next." With that statement Gray stood up with a cocky smile plastered on his face, said his goodbyes to the rest of the guild and left to meet the woman he was sure would be his down fall. Whether that was a good or bad thing, he still hadn't decided.