A/N: So does anyone remember that GaLe college one-shot I did a while ago? Probably not. Anyway, after writing that, I decided that I wanted to do the BixLu side of that story (I can hear you all collectively groaning), and that's what this is. It was originally going to be a two/three-shot or something like that, but I think it will work better as a shorter series since I can properly tell the story of how Bickslow annoyed Lucy into liking him, and everything that follows.

This will tie in with the Sorority Parties Aren't All Bad story, and I've done my best to make sure details will follow over.

There was only one thing Bickslow liked about staying on campus for every single holiday, and that was the amount of parties there were. Every single sorority and fraternity house on the row held one for every single holiday (even Easter for fuck's sake, not that Bickslow ever complained about the girls who all dressed up as bunnies), and Bickslow made it his mission to attend as many as he could.

It was never like he had anything else to do anyway. His father had been out of the picture since he was a kid and his mother was a lecturer at the university who was almost always found in her office, rather than her house just off the campus grounds. Bickslow had just never been one for holidays at all either. After his dad left just before Christmas to go and be with his then twenty-one-year-old girlfriend, Bickslow had never really liked celebrating the holidays (or any holiday at all) like any normal family would, and neither did his mum.

After that, they'd started doing their own little thing. Most of the time, Christmas specifically ended with them sitting on the lounge watching bad Christmas movies and eating Chinese takeout. They had the tree still, and they still did the presents thing on Christmas morning, but they never did the whole Christmas dinner part with the entire family coming over. In truth, they just didn't have any other family to spend it with, but that was still fine. His grandparents on his mother's side had passed away when he'd been a baby, and his mother had been an only child. He still had his aunts, uncles, and grandparents (and even a great-grandmother who was apparently still alive to that very day) on his dad's side, but his mother had wanted to just get away from all of them after having her heart broken, so they'd packed up all of their things and moved to Fiore from Seven, and settled in the (mostly) quiet town of Magnolia.

He still wouldn't have changed how he spent his Christmases for anything in the entire world, and even to that day, he still ate terrible takeout on Christmas.

As Bickslow had grown up though, and after his mother had started teaching at the university in Hargeon, things changed. At first, his mother had only been doing the one lecture a week since he'd only just started high school at the time and she'd felt guilty about leaving him for too long, just because she was all he had. But then, as Bickslow went through high school and neared his senior year and became more independent, she started teaching more classes and doing more lectures once the major had become more popular, and before long, Bickslow only saw her a few days a week if he was lucky.

It hadn't been all bad, though. Bickslow knew his mum loved teaching, and he honestly didn't mind that she worked so much. They had a comfortable life and she was doing something that made her happy, and being that she was the only person in the world he'd had since he'd been eight, her happiness was what made him happy.

But by the time Bickslow was graduating high school and about to start university, he rarely saw his mother, and for the first time in ten years, he'd been sitting on their lounge at home eating Chinese takeout and watching lame Christmas movies by himself. He still hadn't minded though. Not really, anyway. Sure, it sucked a little bit, but Bickslow had always understood that his mother had always been a very busy woman. She still loved what she did though, even if that was spending her Christmas night (and most other nights) in her office grading papers.

After that, Bickslow had finally started university in the new year after Summer, and he'd moved into the dorms (only to have the misfortune of having his high school best friend as his roommate. He loved Gajeel, because he was like his brother, but he'd known sharing a small room with him for the next four or more years was going to be a struggle) while his mother bought a house that was close by (close enough to walk to the main campus every morning and every night). By that point though, she was already teaching three different classes within the same major – seven lectures a week and a whole lot of papers to grade. The only downside to teaching a course that dealt with a lot of writing was that, but still, she loved it.

His first year in university had ended much the same as it had done the previous year – his mother had been too swamped with marking her students' papers to do anything (including Bickslow's paper, considering he'd taken her Literature in History class when he hadn't decided on a major and was doing a whole bunch of random units) and Bickslow had sat in his dorm room with Gajeel eating takeout and playing Call of Duty. It was then that Bickslow realised just what went on during the holidays. A whole lot of people went home for the holidays, but there was still a surprising amount of people who stayed. After all, it was the largest university in Fiore apart from the one in Crocus, and a lot of people had families on opposite sides of the country.

To make up for the loneliness, parties were held. They ranged from small get-togethers that mostly got crashed, to full-on parties that had the campus security getting called when someone ended up jumping from the roof of a frat house and into the pool.

By his second year on campus, Bickslow realised it was the only good thing about not having anywhere else to go for the holidays. He would probably still sit in his room late at night with Gajeel eating takeout on Christmas that year, just because he was his best friend and the guy loathed his family (or most of it. He really only got along with his brother, but he was still in high school), and as much as he made it seem like he liked being alone, he didn't mind the company. But they started going to some of the parties just so they had something else to do.

New Year's, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas… If it was anything close to being a holiday, there was at least one out of control party somewhere on campus. Of course, they really did happen to mostly be on the sorority and fraternity row, but there were the odd ones with the arts students getting drunk and high in a park somewhere. Bickslow had found those to be quite boring.

Without a doubt though, Bickslow's favourite sort-of holiday had always been Halloween. Valentine's Day parties were just a way for him to get laid, much like Easter, New Year's and Christmas had always been. But Halloween? Halloween he'd always loved. Even as a kid, it had been his favourite time of the year. Maybe it was because his birthday happened to fall on Halloween, or maybe it because he had an affinity for all things creepy and spooky (and girls in sexy costumes).

It was on his twenty-first birthday, also Halloween, and nearing the end of his third year of college (though only second in his major, given his first year was a waste of time where he dabbled in a lot of weird courses), where Bickslow was once again found wandering the crowded sorority row with Gajeel and searching for their first party of the evening. The semester hadn't ended, given that it was only Halloween, so there were plenty more options compared to Christmas and even Thanksgiving.

"What sorority is that girlfriend of yours in again?" Bickslow asked as he grinned at the group of girls in their costumes walking past himself and Gajeel, his head turning over his shoulder just to get a second look at them.

Gajeel rolled his eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you she's not my girlfriend?"

"Oh, come on, dude. You totally like her and you have since the first day of classes."

"I have not." Gajeel sidestepped a totally inebriated male who just about stumbled into him, and glared up at Bickslow with his wide grin. Sure, he might have thought the small blue-haired woman who had accidentally walked into one of his lectures on the first day of classes for that year was pretty cute, but he'd only talked to her a handful of times in the nearly eight months he'd known of her existence when he'd run into her either in the library (a lot of the times he'd seen her had been in the library) or in a coffee shop bright and early in the morning, or at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night. He hadn't even known her name until the third time he'd seen her in the coffee shop at two o'clock in the morning and he'd heard her name being called out to get her order.

The fact that he did like her just a little bit, and that Bickslow knew that fact, was more than a little annoying. Gajeel didn't even know how he'd found out in the first place. It wasn't like they ever talked about girls they liked or anything like that (or at least, Gajeel never did, because that was gross), because neither of them had ever actually had girlfriends in high school. They'd been to enough parties (and Bickslow had hosted enough of his own, given that his mother was quite often in Hargeon) to definitely be far from virgins and been drunk enough to talk about their hook ups, and there'd been the few times where Bickslow had sat down with him after school and talked about some girl who had his fancy that week, but they just didn't really talk about it. Gajeel would mostly grunt and ignore him and go back to studying on the rooftop of their school. He'd needed the grades to get in to college, after all.

But Gajeel could only remember bringing up Levy once, and that had been after she'd hit him over the head with a book. Or, she claims she dropped it since she'd been on a ladder in the library and trying to get a dust-covered tome from a shelf that wasn't all that high up, but Gajeel was convinced otherwise. He hadn't mentioned anything about liking her in the slightest, so he just had no idea how Bickslow had figured that out. Surely it wasn't that obvious.

"And… Even if I did happen to like her," Gajeel began slowly as they walked up the lawn of one particular pink and white sorority house (why it had to have pink on it, neither really knew) that looked to be where the hotspot was that night, even if it was a Tuesday. "I still only know her first name, not her life fuckin' story, so I have no idea what sorority she's in, if she's in one at all."

"She'll be in one."

"You don't know that."

"I do." Bickslow hadn't even met the girl, or at least, he couldn't remember meeting or sleeping with someone with her description, but he was sure she was in one of the sororities. Every sorority needed a bookworm, after all. "But we'll find your little girlfriend—"

Gajeel groaned as he pushed the blue-and-black haired man through the door and into the crowded entryway of the house. "She's not my fuckin' girlfriend."

"—Later," Bickslow finished with a chuckle, squeezing through a gap between two girls – one in a toga, not surprisingly, and the other dressed as a sexy maid - with a wink at one of them. "Because now, it is the time to drink, my friend."

Bickslow watched in amusement as Natsu stood on top of the marble counter in the centre of the large kitchen and waved a sparkler around. He'd known the guy since high school, given that Natsu had graduated the year after himself and Gajeel. Though they'd never exactly been the best of friends (half of Gajeel's expulsions had been because he'd gotten in too many fights with Natsu, and Bickslow had been stupid enough to get involved), they were still sort of friends. Natsu had always shown up at his parties when he had them, usually with Gray in tow, and the two were mostly seen drunkenly tossing insults at each other one minute, and then making out and heading up the stairs to go fuck each other senseless the next. Bickslow always made a point of washing his sheets more than once before he slept in it again after his parties though.

It wasn't all that surprising that they'd ended up at Hargeon together for college, either, since that's where almost everyone went unless they went off to Crocus, to a neighbouring town with the next largest university, or stayed in Magnolia to go to the community college. But what was surprising (to Bickslow, at least) was that Natsu and Gray were still actually dating. They hated each other, and if Natsu wasn't fighting with Gajeel, then he was fighting with Gray.

But hey, the make-up sex is probably all worth it, Bickslow realised, because no matter how much they argued and hated each other, they did love each other, and they'd been together for the upside of four years. They were pretty good together, surprisingly.

From where Bickslow stood towards the back of the room though, only slowly sipping his cheap beer (the sorority girls had the worst taste), he could see Gray scowling at Natsu, not surprisingly, and Gajeel was off somewhere doing god knows what. Last time Bickslow had seen him, he'd seen him heading upstairs, apparently to go and find a certain bookworm.

"I swear to god, Natsu. If you don't get down, I'm going to actually set you on fire."

Bickslow looked around and over the people in front of him when he heard the woman's voice over the music and the cheering, and he arched an eyebrow as he tried to find who the voice had come from. Whoever she was, Bickslow liked her already. Not many people could tame Natsu, and given that the pink-haired man suddenly had a look of sudden horror on his face as he extinguished the sparkler, Bickslow was sure that the woman was absolutely amazing to make him look like that. He'd only ever met one other person in his entire life who could do that – Erza Scarlet – and knowing her, she'd be off studying for her finals instead of getting wasted (and laid. He felt a little sorry for her boyfriend, but he too, was in his senior year) in the middle of the week.

"Oh, Lucy!" Natsu grinned as he turned suddenly on the counter to see the blonde woman coming up through the sea of laughing bodies, her hands on her hips as she glowered up at him from below him. "You made it!"

"Because I live here, you moron!" she shouted.

Natsu lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck as he slowly climbed down from the counter. "Oh yeah. Whoops."

Bickslow chuckled to himself as he waded through the drunken crowd and further into the kitchen. With Natsu's friend, Lucy, having taken away their main source of entertainment, everyone was spreading out and heading back into various rooms of the large house for other sources of entertainment. Gray was suddenly pulling his pyromaniac of a boyfriend away while muttering about how he was going to going to end up getting himself kicked out by the time he'd even get a chance to finish his first year because he would have set fire to one or more of the sorority or frat houses, and the blonde went over to the large fridge after gently shoving someone who he knew to be called Cana out of the way so she could get a bottle of water out.

Lucy didn't quite understand how everyone could so easily forget that it was a Tuesday. It wasn't like she didn't mind the parties, because on the odd occasion, she would definitely be out somewhere having fun with her friends and sisters. It was just that she had a paper due at eight o'clock the next morning, and exams were just a little over a month away anyway. Surely Tuesday was not the best time for everyone to be getting blind drunk. She couldn't even begin to imagine how empty the morning lectures would be on Wednesday morning.

Bickslow waited until the kitchen was mostly empty and a little quieter before he finally went up to her. By then, she was only silently going around the large kitchen and cleaning up all of the empty plastic cups and glass bottles that were littered around on every surface, and it was only accompanied by the odd quiet sigh. She hated the mess after the parties, and being new, she was always one of the ones made to clean it up.

"Why don't you relax a little and have some fun?" Bickslow chuckled as he pried an empty bottle from her hand and leant against the counter. "It's a party, cosplay girl."

Lucy sighed as she glanced up to the grinning man beside her, and she snatched the bottle back before dropping it into the bin in the cupboard. She'd heard some of her sisters in the sorority talk about a guy with a strange blue mohawk who was notorious for being a jackass and a player, and she was absolutely certain this was the same man. "I can't relax or have fun, because I have an essay due in the morning and I need to get it done, but everyone is too busy partying," she argued. Her eyes narrowed as she kicked the cupboard door shut and picked up her bottle of water again before she said, "And I have a name, you know. It's Lucy, and I'm not a cosplay girl. I'm not even dressed up at all!"

"Oh, I already knew your name because of Natsu, and you look dressed up to me…" Okay, so maybe she wasn't dressed up for Halloween, only wearing black yoga pants and a burgundy shirt with the university's logo, and that would make sense considering she'd said she was trying to get her paper done, but he could still tease her just a little bit.

Of course, it wasn't like Bickslow could talk about her not dressing up, because he hadn't either. He might love it when girls did, because half the time, they wore little to no clothing. But never would he ever dress up. He wasn't a cosplayer in any way, shape, or form, regardless of how many anime or gaming conventions he'd been to as a teenager.

"Then why don't you use my name instead of giving me a terrible one?"

Bickslow shrugged as his grin remained in place. He liked this blonde. Aside from the fact she was hot as hell, he liked the little he'd seen of her attitude so far. "Because I'm thinking Cosplayer is far better than Lucy. What kind of name is Lucy, anyway?"

"Excuse me?" Lucy gawked at the man before her as she folded her arms. Who did this guy think he was? Ugh, college guys. Lucy had been there all of three months, having only started that semester in the fall after taking time off, and she was already convinced the guys only managed to get a whole lot worse. More attractive, but just a whole lot worse. "Lucy is a nice name, thank you very much! I'm sure it's better than yours, whatever the hell that is." Oh god… He probably has a really mundane name though… Like Jack… Or Tom…

"It's Bickslow, Cosplayer."

Bickslow?! What the hell kind of name is Bickslow? A pretty cool name, but still… "Well, I don't like it."

His tongue lolled from his mouth as another amused chuckle left, and he folded his own arms while leaning against the counter. He liked this cosplayer. He liked her a lot. "No?"

"No," she insisted. Lucy could see that her new nickname was just a massive joke as far as her lack of Halloween costume was concerned, but even so, she needed one for this jackass of a guy before her. The only problem was that she couldn't think of one that was horrible. Blue and black hair, stupid grin, red eyes… Red eyes! That's it! "I think I like Voldemort better." Her lips twisted into a small smirk that only made his eyes flash with something she felt she should be frankly terrified of.

Lucy's smug smirk was lost as Bickslow – or Voldemort, as he would now be named – suddenly threw his head back as he began to almost cackle in the middle of the kitchen. "Voldemort? Really?" he laughed. Sure, he got the joke, but he didn't expect it in the slightest. He didn't expect her to give him a goddamn nickname, but holy hell, did he love it.

"Yes, Dark Lord," she smirked. "That's your new name."

Bickslow shrugged as he only took a single step forward. Dark Lord… Oh, I like the sound of that… "Alright, Cosplayer."

Lucy only glowered at that stupid grin on his face for another second before she unfolded her arms and reached out to her grab her bottle of water again. She didn't understand the guy at all. Shouldn't he be irritated that she'd given him the name of a villain? Oh, she just didn't know. What she did know, though, was that the guy was quite possibly insane, and she wasn't sure why she hadn't just rolled her eyes and walked away to go back upstairs to work on her paper.

She'd only come downstairs to get a drink in the first place, not to tell Natsu to get down from the counter (her sorority sisters had made Lucy promise she'd keep an eye on Natsu after he'd set fire to the curtains in one of the bathroom's just two months earlier, otherwise he'd be totally banned from the house), and definitely not to end up standing in the kitchen with He Who Shall Not Be Named.

She may have lived in a sorority house, but she still valued her education quite a bit and would rather get good grades and use her brains, rather than use her assets later in life to get her somewhere. She wasn't that kind of girl, like she'd realised half of the other fake blondes in her house were. Not that it really mattered, of course. It was better than the dorms, that was for sure, and she'd only joined because of Levy in the first place.

She had things to do, papers to write, and people to avoid. Bickslow specifically. She was only just now regretting not listening to Levy's words about making sure to get her paper done earlier in the term. Stepping away from the counter, her bottle held in one hand, Lucy quickly said, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have an essay to finish, and there's only so much headphones can block out, so good night."

"Have fun, Cosplayer," he chuckled. He could only continue to watch the short blonde slowly make her way out into the crowded hall, disappearing within the sea of mingling humans for a moment who were all too busy grinding and doing god knows what else, before Bickslow saw her slowly making her way up the stairs. He couldn't help but laugh quietly to himself when he saw her stumble over a couple making out on the stairs before he couldn't see her anymore.

Just like that though, Bickslow was sure he needed to go and find Gajeel again, just so he could tell him he was sure he'd fallen in love. Well… Maybe not, but he definitely liked her. She was surprisingly feisty and she had tamed Natsu, and he definitely wanted to talk to her again.

Telling Gajeel he'd fallen in love with the feisty blonde from the sorority who matched him would have to wait though. First, he'd have to go find his dear old friend Natsu. Bickslow needed to know more about his blonde cosplayer, and Natsu would surely know where he could find her.

A/N: Ah, so that's the first chapter! The story of how Bickslow met Lucy and how she got her name (and his, which I really couldn't help myself with).

Since this one will be shorter than my others and the chapters should be a lot shorter than some of my others have been, I should be able to get this updated a lot more frequently than some of my others (but no guarantees).

As a point of reference in case anyone was wondering, Bickslow and Gajeel are 21. Natsu and Gray are 20. Lucy and Levy are 19. This is currently set at the end of the year before the SPAAB one-shot is set, so the ages in that are all about the same. Don't worry though, this story will eventually get up to that point in time, so if you haven't read the other one-shot, then it's not the end of the world.

I hope you enjoy this! Please remember to review/favourite/follow if you can - I'd love to know what you guys think of it so far!

Until next time.

- April