Dedicated to ClumsyMustache in thanks for her story Red Heart String.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or this story's cover picture.
I was inspired to write this while I was reading Ao Haru Ride. (Which I do not own as well.)
{Forever by your side…and I love you.}
Natsu met her in his first year of middle school.
He met the girl who shone and sparkled and made his heart feel funny.
She sat right behind him, and even though she was loud and talked a lot, her smile really was beautiful.
"Nice to meet you! My name's Lucy Heartfilia!"
And that's how it starts.
To his major disappointment, he learns that she has a boyfriend. The girl with the chocolate eyes and the glowing smile and the golden spun hair is taken.
Lucy Heartfilia is someone else's girlfriend.
She likes to talk about him.
"Loke really is sweet. He's so charming and handsome and he has orange hair! Isn't that lovely?"
Natsu picks at his own pink locks, and wonders if he should dye it.
"Your hair is amazing, Natsu!" Lucy tells him, smiling. "I love pink."
And so he leaves it.
Lucy Heartfilia is pretty.
Her laugh is beautiful.
Her smile is stunning.
And her atmosphere is warm.
Like that, she captures the hearts of every boy in the near vicinity.
The girl who already has a boyfriend is popular.
Loke and she break up.
Her tears are ugly. They don't deserve to mar her beauty, her face.
Natsu sits in class and listens to her sobbing and weeping.
He wants to reach out and comfort her, but he doesn't know how.
So he doesn't say anything…and takes notes instead.
"Isn't that Lucy Heartfilia annoying?" the girls ask, sneering and criticizing. "She acts so cute in front of the guys. What a whore."
The girl with the golden hair is ostracized and she eats alone. She cries by herself.
Natsu looks down at his tray full of food and sighs.
He stands up.
"Where are you going, Natsu?"
He heads towards her table and sits down silently.
Lucy Heartfilia looks up at him in surprise.
Let's start over, he thinks.
He smiles at her (although he knows the brightness of his smile can never match hers), and tells her, "Nice to meet you! I'm Natsu Dragneel!"
She laughs at him, and it wipes away her tears.
Without meaning to, he becomes her best friend.
Natsu Dragneel is put into the horrible friend zone.
And all he can do there is give saccharine smiles and pretend that he's fine.
When inside, he's dying painfully slowly.
"I like him."
Natsu looks at her red cheeks and her shy smile.
Lucy Heartfilia stabs his heart.
She points to someone with black hair.
"I like Gray Fullbuster," she repeats to him in a whisper.
Natsu shrivels up inside.
Because of all the people in the world, why did Lucy Heartfilia have to fall in love with his (male) best friend?
Natsu watches as Gray swings his arm around Lucy's shoulders, and laughs along with her.
He considers asking Gray if he can see just how brightly a star like Lucy Heartfilia shines.
Natsu decides against it when he sees that raven-haired idiot kiss the only girl who had lit up the world right before his eyes.
He does more than shrivel up this time.
He becomes completely dead inside.
"We're moving," Igneel informs him. "Because of my job. Is that okay with you, son?"
Natsu looks down at his homework, silently absorbing the news.
A poor sketch of Lucy Heartfilia is fading away into dark smears in the corner of the page.
Sighing, he writes down some more mathematical gibberish. "I guess so."
And that's how his story with Lucy Heartfilia ends.
Or it was supposed to.
About three years later, the girl with the brown eyes and the golden hair walks through the park.
Lucy Heartfilia is trying out a shortcut.
It won't do her any good if she's late for the first day of high school after all.
She swears loudly as she trips over a rock and her hands land in a puddle of mud.
Her face grows hot when she hears someone laughing from behind.
It's a male voice – low and rough and slightly (just slightly) dropdeadgorgeous sounding.
But Lucy Heartfilia's had enough of boys.
After Loke Celeste broke her heart by running after some other girl named Aries.
After Gray Fullbuster crushed her heart by chasing after some other girl named Juvia.
Lucy wills herself not to cry when she remembers the boy with the cotton candy hair who had smiled and laughed and suddenly vanished and left her alone.
She's had enough of the opposite gender.
"Could you not laugh at me?" Lucy Heartfilia snaps, turning around. She stops.
He smiles at her. And this time, his smile probably shines brighter than her own.
He has missed her all this time.
Maybe, he still loves her.
No. It's highly probably that he still does. Because his heart is loud and violent in his chest.
She's only become prettier, he thinks to himself.
"Nice to meet you," Natsu Dragneel greets her, and laughs. "Again."
Thanks for reading! Originally, I was planning to make this all angsty and tragic, but I changed my mind and ended it on a sweeter note.