"Please stop it Lu-chan!" Levy cried. "Stop teasing me!"
"Just admit it, Levy chan. It's not a big secret these days. Everyone knows that you – ahem – lllllllike him."
They were sitting at one of many long tables in the guild hall. It was about a month after the turmoil of the Grand Magic Games and the eclipse gate and the dragons. It had certainly been a bad time all round, but they'd come out the other side okay in the very end.
"Who is 'everyone'?" Levy asked, pouting. She had a book on the table that she was unsuccessfully trying to read as Lucy was bothering her.
Lucy shrugged. "Everyone. According to Cana, you were pretty obvious during his fight with Rogue." Lucy smiled as Levy turned a deeper shade of pink. "And I can't help but notice that Jet and Droy don't bother you as much…like they've moved on or something."
"I…don't know what you're talking about," Levy said, lying poorly. She studiously focussed on the book, hoping that her friend would go away. But Lucy leaned in, wrapping her arms around Levy's narrow shoulders.
"Just say it. You. Like. Gajeel."
Levy turned to glare sidelong at Lucy. "You. Like. Natsu." She was rewarded as Lucy very visibly panicked for a moment, but she was not to be deterred.
"Why won't you just admit it?" Lucy huffed, folding her arms.
"Because he has no interest in me!" Levy shouted, pent up anger escaping in one burst. She quietened, her face becoming sad and flipped a page of her book mindlessly. "Sure, he's saved me a few times and I love him for that, but that's what guild members do for each other, right? I…have nothing to offer him. I'm not strong or sexy."
"That's not true," Lucy argued.
"Then why hasn't he shown any interest in me?" Levy demanded, a little louder than she'd intended.
"Because Gajeel's an emotionally dead moron, you have to spell these things out for him," Lucy guessed.
"I don't buy it. Gajeel's shown interest in plenty of women. He watched you pretty closely in that bunny suit."
Lucy put her finger to her mouth, deep in thought. "So we need to get you a bunny suit…"
"THAT WAS NOT THE SOLUTION TO THAT PROBLEM!" The pair paused, realising that the entire guild was looking at them after that last outburst. Going even redder, Levy buried her head into her book and hoped that everyone would just go away.
"Hey everyone!" Mira shouted as she walked into the guild hall. She was carrying a large stack of magazines and set them down on the bar. "We just got delivery of the new Sorcerer's Weekly – including photos of my fight."
There was a brief pause before every male in the guild rushed up to the bar, vying for position. That fight included a lot of girls in swimwear and bondage gear, after all.
"Man! Man! I didn't get to see in real life!" Elfman shouted, using his prodigious height to reach over the scrum and snatch a copy. People looked at him funny. "Not for my sisters! For Evergre-no one in particular."
"Look at that," Lucy said from their table, watching the scrum. "There'll be pictures of you in there! And…oh for crying out loud!" She looked over into the darkest corner of the guild where Gajeel was munching on iron, clearly disinterested. Damn him, couldn't he just act like a normal male?
"Hey Luce!" Natsu shouted, rushing up with a magazine. "Did you see you in here? You look really-bleh!" Natsu's sentence ended poorly as Lucy shoved him away, snatching the magazine.
"That's sexual harassment!" She shouted, smacking him on the head with it like a bad dog.
"Oh, you two are so going out," Levy noted with some amusement as Natsu scurried away to get another copy.
"He's just a moron," she replied, more than a little red in her cheeks herself now. Lucy spread the magazine out on the table, looking through the photos. It was embarrassing to see herself, but she had to find something to make Levy feel better about herself. She kept flicking. Where were the pictures of Levy? There was a couple of her in the background, but no close-ups.
"I didn't even get a photo?" Levy asked, aghast. Her eyes flickered through all of the photos of all of the girls in their swimsuits, boobs like beachballs. It was like she didn't even exist! Even Wendy appeared here and there, but there was none… No! Here was one of her in a wedding dress…with Gajeel lying on the ground, bored.
"Damn it!" She shouted, rising from her chair. "I'm fed up of today, and it's not even lunch time yet. I'm going to the library to be by myself."
Lucy frowned for a moment and then got up, stomping over to where Gajeel was lounging around. She ignored Lily's pleasant greeting to slap the magazine on the table in front of the slayer.
"Why aren't you ogling these pictures like everyone else?" She demanded. Gajeel looked about as if suspecting a hidden camera. Clearly puzzled, he looked up at Lucy and when he spoke his voice was querying.
"You want me to be ogling pictures of the guild girls?"
"No, of course not! I want you to be ogling Levy!" A moment passed and Lucy thought that maybe she was not explaining herself very well. Gajeel was looking at her as if she was some kind of madwoman, and she wasn't doing much to change that opinion, really. "What I mean is; why aren't you interested in Levy?"
Gajeel's stoic demeanour didn't fail, but it did falter, a few expressions briefly flitting over his face before his stonewall expression blocked them out. He got up and walked away around Lucy.
"Nothing to do with you," he muttered as he passed. Lily shook his head and took off after his companion. Lucy was annoyed at first, but the response was promising in retrospect. He hadn't denied anything. No 'I don't like her' or 'Too brainy' or anything like that. As she was watching him go, Makarov suddenly shouted down from the second floor.
"Natsu! Gajeel! Wendy! My office, now!"
"Wendy's not here," Mira called back up. "She went with Porylusica to gather herbs and other apothecary things. She won't be back for three or four days."
"Hmm… just the two morons then! Hurry up!"
"Why us?" Gajeel wondered, his voice low. "To do with slayers?"
"Igneel?" Natsu said breathlessly. The pair raced up the stairs, arguing and pushing past one other constantly. Their exceed partners hurried after them.
===][===
"Come on old man, tell us already," Gajeel barked the instant he was through Makarov's door. The old man raised an eyebrow and gestured to a trio of seats. Obviously impatient, the slayers sat down. Lily and Happy shared the third seat, intended for Wendy.
"Now this is probably nothing, but recently there's been an archaeological discovery nearby. They unearthed a set of ruins that have writing that has been identified as Drakonic. I thought that you two would want to know."
Gajeel almost spat in disgust. "It's nothing, then. Just some old ruins."
"Come on Gajeel, aren't you interested? We need every little piece of information if we're going to find our parents!" Natsu urged, becoming quite animated. Gajeel scoffed angrily.
"Pops has never shown any interest in seeing me again!"
"Maybe because of your personality!" Happy piped up cheerily. Lily knocked him off of the seat.
"Take this from a father; things get in the way sometimes, but we try to do things the best we can for our children. Whatever the reason for your parent's abandonment, I believe that they had your best interest at heart. Don't give up on them." Gajeel looked ready to retort, but Makarov's sincerity stopped him. "Well then, I'll phrase this in a different way. The archaeologists have sent us a request for help with exploring and indentifying the ruins. You two are the leading experts on dragons in this guild, so I'm sending you."
"Well, getting paid's different, Gihi!" Gajeel's normal demeanour returned. It may be a waste of time, but easy cash was never a bad thing.
"Oh, before I forget…I was supposed to tell you to take Lucy and Levy with you. Mira says, and I agree, that they're a good fit for this mission because they've both worked closely with the two of you and have good linguistic skills."
"That's not why Mira picked them," Lily noted quietly. He smiled, imagining the matchmaker at work. Gajeel's face had fallen again and even Natsu looked a little queasy.
"Just Lucy…not the rest of my team?" Natsu squeaked in a thin voice. When it came to women, Natsu was fairly oblivious, but recently he'd been thinking of Lucy more and more in those terms. Now that obliviousness made a lack of experience. How would he cope outside of a group mechanic?
"With the Shrimp?" Goddammit! Why couldn't everyone just leave well enough alone? He was still trying to figure all this girly shit out himself! Gah!
There was a moment of silence as the most horrifying aspect dawned on them.
"I'm working with you!?" Gajeel and Natsu shouted at the same instant, slamming foreheads together. This was going to be a nightmare.
===][===
"What do I do?" Gajeel shouted in his apartment. It was late at night now, and he was packing a few essentials into a tote bag. Rather roughly, as he was clearly wound up, leading to that outburst. Lily snickered, causing Gajeel to throw some iron detritus at him.
"Something to do with a certain blue-haired bookworm?" The exceed teased.
"I'm not interested in Shorty!" Gajeel shouted.
"Clearly."
"How could I be interested in her? She's so fucking short! And talk about weak! She's gotta be the weakest guild member these days! And she's too wordy! Such a know-it-all! I'm used to dumb, big-boobed girls, all tall and blonde. And…and…"
"And?"
"And she's fucking perfect!" Gajeel wailed rubbing his hands frantically over his skull in the gesture of a madman. "She's so cute and beautiful, kind and brave, and it's always nice to be around her…oh crap, Lily! What do I do?"
"What's the problem? Just tell her," Lily counselled. Gajeel sighed despondently and sat cross-legged on the ground.
"She's not for me, is she?" He asked in unusually sad tones for the slayer. "She's all delicate and stuff; I'm the bastard who hurt her."
"That was a long time age."
"Fuck off, Lily. It ain't that simple. Tell me this; what do we have in common?"
"Uh…," Lily stalled, completely wrong-footed by the question.
"Exactly," Gajeel moped. "Nothing. If we were together, I'd just end up hurting her again."
===][===
Levy likewise, was having similar problems at that same moment. Unlike Gajeel who always travelled light, Levy was over-packing, bringing every literary resource she could think of for the translations when they got there. Who knew what dragon script was like? Did she even have a chance of deciphering it?
She kept noticing things that made her worry about herself. Absurdly, her bed was one of them. Due to a combination of being small and needing storage space, Levy used a child-size bed to save on room. It just kept reminding her of how small she was. How weak.
"Gah! Gajeel could never see anything in me!" Levy shouted, kicking her bedpost. She tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her toe and went to stand before her full-length mirror, eyes watering. Not leggy, nor busty. That's what men wanted, right? And Gajeel was the manliest of men…like an Adonis when his shirt came off…she shook herself from her reverie.
They were like polar opposites in so many ways, so why was she so drawn to him? She saw past that fearsome exterior to the kind man underneath, the one who cared for and protected his guildmates with his life. Like a certain blunette. He'd been grievously injured on Tenrou to protect her.
"He got hurt because you were too weak to fight that damn chicken!" She shouted to no one. "He could beat both mages at once, but you couldn't even touch one!"
She curled up on her bead, arms wrapped around her knees. She was thoroughly miserable. This was a rotten situation. She knew that she lo…lo…say it…loved him…but honestly thought that she wasn't good enough for him. He was immensely powerful. She remembered how frightened she had been by the iron-shadow transformation, but it had also been thrilling to see such strength. She was like glass in comparison, fragile and brittle.
"We're like night and day," she moped. "I should just give up. I'm just gonna hurt myself."
===][===
Unlike Gajeel, Natsu did not have a trustworthy confidant in his exceed. He had less chance to vent. Damn it, but he didn't understand these feelings at all! Ever since he'd lost Lisanna all of those years ago as a little child, he'd pretty much just turned off the part of himself that saw women as….well, women.
Luce was Luce, right? She was his best friend of several years. He stopped. He'd only known Lucy for about two years. He'd known most of his guildmates for his entire life. He hadn't noticed how quickly Lucy had gone from complete stranger to the closest person in his life.
"Natsu, you look like you're thinking too much," Happy declared. "You should just be a moron like always!"
"Hey, Happy? You like Charla, right?" Natsu asked.
"Charla's wonderful!" Happy agreed.
"Right, you get it! Women are there to be loved, right? That's normal, right?"
"You're saying 'right' a lot," Happy said. "Seems like you just want permission to be a pervert."
"I'M NOT TRYING TO PERV ON LUCY!"
"Ah, Lucy," Happy replied, nodding sagely. Natsu belatedly realised what he'd just let slip. "From what I understand of your human mating rituals, that makes complete sense. She has the most important quality in a girlfriend."
"Really?" Natsu asked, honestly intrigued.
"Big boobies!"
Natsu fell over onto the ground at the statement. "That's what I get for trying to have a serious conversation with Happy."
===][===
Lucy was trying to put the rest of the current chapter of her book to pen quickly. She knew that the next few days were going to be stressful in terms of personalities, and having a fresh chapter on hand would perk Levy up immensely.
She chewed the end of the pen and looked out of the window at the starry night sky, lost in thought.
"One way or another, this trip should be quite interesting."
===][===
The ruins were huge. The part that had been excavated was but the tip of the iceberg compared to what remained underground. Atop a nearby mountain ridge, a man watched the ruins idly. He was an enormous man, around the same height as Elfman, and similarly broad. His black hair and beard were long and unkempt from years of living in the wilderness, running together into one mess of hair.
In the dark night, ruby irises glowed.
"Dragon treasure…this should draw you out…Gajeel Redfox."
Hi there! This is my first time trying to write Natsu or Lucy in any real depth, so I'd appreciate and criticism on how I can improve on them. While this story is intended to be Nalu and Gale, it'll probably be much heavier on the Gale, as is my usual idiom.