if you follow me on tumblr, you might recognize this fic but i wanted to post on ff so here it is! also, i pushed some parts together to make chapters so the divisions arent the same as on tumblr.


Chapter 1: The One Where Natsu Knows How to Do Ballet

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Natsu Dragneel wasn't really what you considered popular. He was well liked at his high school and a lot of people knew him thanks to his boisterous and endearing personality, but he wasn't the typical popular guy you saw in those teenage romantic comedy movies. He wasn't the high school heartthrob or the homecoming king. No, that status was more fitting of the football player he was currently talking to, Sting Eucliffe.

"So um, do you think you can help me?"

Natsu stared blankly. Sting, the school's football captain stood in front of him, fidgeting awkwardly. When Natsu didn't say anything to answer the question, Sting looked even more uncomfortable.

The last bell of the day had rung and Natsu had been on his way to the outer gates when Sting ran up to him, asking to talk. Naturally, Natsu had been a little suspicious. He didn't think he and Sting had ever had a full conversation. It's not like they hated each other or they were enemies or anything, they just ran in different circles.

"I-I'm sorry, come again?"

Sting sighed heavily before rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

"C-can you teach me how to dance?"

"Eh?"

"I mean, like I said, prom is coming up and agh, I don't know, I don't wanna embarrass myself around her because that would be terrible you know." Sting sputtered slightly, looking more and more flustered with himself as he spoke. "Look, I just wanna impress her okay?"

"Ah."

The 'her' in question was his best friend. Lucy Heartfilia. She was blonde, beautiful, caring, sweet, and also his best friend for about thirteen years now. They had met when they were wee little kids in kindergarten and they had stuck together ever since. Natsu liked to think that she completed him. The two complemented each other in a way that only best friends could. She was the yin to his yang. The peanut butter to his jelly. The Cana to his alcohol.

She was also dating Sting Eucliffe.

"Um, I'm a little flattered I guess but why are you asking me? Why not ask, I don't know, your friends?" Natsu absently scratched his messy pink hair. "No offense but…we don't really know each other. Or talk for that matter."

"Well," he sighed as if he had known Natsu was going to question him, "I can't just ask anyone to help me. My friends probably don't know any more than bouncing to the beat and that's just not good enough." Sting looked at Natsu with earnest eyes and Natsu awkwardly swallowed. "I really want to impress her and what I need is the best and who better than you?"

Him? The best?

Well he wasn't wrong.

Natsu was special. He was a little different than the average high school boy and not because he had pink (salmon!) hair or because he always wore a scarf no matter what the weather was, he was different because Natsu Dragneel knew how to dance. And by dance he didn't mean the what teenagers did at high school dances or what college kids did at clubs, no he meant dance as in ballet, tap, jazz funk, contemporary.

Yeah, that's right.

Natsu Dragneel knew how to do ballet.

While some parents decided to put their kids in things like sports or music or martial arts, his parents decided to be different and throw him into a dance studio. As early as he could remember, he was taking classes in formal technique, spending countless evenings and weekends in that studio, learning countless combinations and pieces. Thankfully, his parents decision worked out well enough because although what he did wasn't normal for teenage boys, he was good at it. Damn good at it. So what if some people thought what he did was girly? He had won multiple dance competitions and was even being asked to choreograph for other studios. So, Sting was right to come to him. He was an accomplished dancer, teaching someone a few quick easy steps to last through prom would be breeze.

The question was: Did he want to teach Sting?

After all, he was kinda in love with his best friend and didn't normal young adult romcoms dictate that he was supposed to say no or put up a fight?

Sting fidgeted pitifully and Natsu sighed.

Who was he kidding, the boy was a mess and although he wanted nothing more than to sweep Lucy off her feet himself, Sting had gotten there first and he had to respect that. Besides, she was happy with him and that meant Natsu was happy. He didn't want to ruin what she had for selfish reasons if she was already happy.

"Yeah yeah yeah, alright, I'll teach ya," Natsu rolled his eyes when Sting whooped happily.

He had a month to teach Sting how to dance, how hard could it be?


"Okay, so this is gonna be a lot harder than I thought."

Natsu sighed and looked down at the poor blonde haired boy was moaning pitifully on the floor of his empty basement turned home studio. Somehow, in the span of the last five minutes, Sting had knocked a cup off a table, broken a mirror, and fallen on his ass a total of five times, all because Natsu tried teaching him a box step.

"Man I need to get that replaced," Natsu muttered, inspecting the shattered mirror on the wall. When he transformed the basement into his practice space, he had installed mirrors against every wall along with ballet barre. Now, however, one of the panels was broken thanks to Sting colliding his foot against it.

"I told you," Sting moaned, "I'm terrible at this. I'm hopeless, I can't dance!"

"You're telling me," Natsu scratched the back of his head. "I mean, I know you said you were bad but I didn't think you were this bad."

"Thanks."

It was only day one and they were already running into some problems. For one, it was apparent that Sting was ridiculously uncoordinated with his feet.

"For some reason, I didn't expect you to be this clumsy, being a football player and all."

Sting just shrugged. "Football's just running and throwing and that's easy. Running? Just put one foot in front of the other. Catching? The ball comes at you and you don't wanna get hit in the face? Catch it! But this?" Sting waved his hands. "This is hard. This is fancy footwork."

But it seemed like his clumsiness wasn't the only problem. From what Natsu could see, it seemed like Sting had a hard time getting the basic rhythm of music. While people could easily tap their feet or nod their heads to the beat of the song, Sting was always a slightly offwhich led Natsu to believe that Sting just couldn't hear the rhythm at all. Combine that with some incredible clumsiness and they were in for a rough time.

"Okay," Natsu said, reaching a hand out that Sting gratefully grabbed to pull himself up, "Maybe let's start with something more simple. Like, maybe, just finding the rhythm of the music."

Natsu grabbed his phone off the table in the corner of the room and scrolled through his music to find an appropriate song. He chose one and a second later, an upbeat, pop song filtered through the speakers he installed in the studio. Nodding his head slightly, he turned to the football player.

"Alright, so what you gotta listen for is the beat of the music." Natsu snapped his fingers along with the bass of the song, "Do you hear that? That's the tempo of the song and that's what you keep in mind when you dance."

Sting nodded hesitantly and began snapping his fingers.

"There you g—wait, no no, ah, no." Natsu snapped his fingers a little louder. "Okay what about now? Don't listen to the vocals, listen to the instruments, listen to the drums."

It took them a few songs but eventually, Sting got the hang of it and soon, the two boys were enthusiastically nodding along to the latest popular songs blasting over the speakers.

"Hey I got it!" Sting shouted over the loud music. Natsu had decided to turn up the speakers for Sting to hear the bass, but also because it was always fun to listen to music on full blast.

"Yeah!" he shouted back as he bounced along to the music. "Hey how about you try swaying back and forth to the music!"

"Okay!" Sting tried stepping to one side and almost immediately, his foot got caught in the other and the graceless football player tumbled to the ground in a mess of flailing limbs.

Natsu continued his bouncing as he stared down at the fallen boy on the ground.

"You know what, maybe we'll call it a day!" he shouted.

A groan was his answer.


note: hello! so after seeing all the cute dance!au fics out there, i wanted to write one myself but i also wanted a fic where natsu was the dancer instead. i wasn't sure what to right but theeennn i watched this one Friends episode where chandler takes dance lessons to impress monica for their wedding and that was cute. and theeennnnnn i heard the song I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You by The Black Kids. and then boom, this fic came alive. hope you like it!