Hi there! Here is a NaLu one-shot for you. Enjoy!
Future Plans
by waveform33
Disclaimer: Fairy Tail belongs to Hiro Mashima.
Summary: While cleaning Natsu and Happy's house, Lucy finds a box. Its contents make Lucy realize that Natsu is not as dense as he allows others to believe.
THIS IS THE UPDATED VERSION!
Top A/N: See bottom A/N. :)
Lucy was on her way to Natsu and Happy's house. They asked her to help them clean their house, since they were always trashing the place. She agreed to do it once a month on the condition that the two would not help her with the cleaning, because she knew that they would get in the way.
Once she got there she was immediately assaulted by a powerful odor, most likely coming from an overflowing trashcan.
"It's official. Those two are not a Dragon Slayer and an Exceed. They are pigs," Lucy said to herself while holding her noise due to the powerful smell.
Lucy removed a backpack she brought with her, which contained cleaning supplies, and began her work. She opened the windows and door to allow air to circulate as she worked, took out the trash to be disposed of later, and wiped the dust off the various surfaces. Since Natsu and Happy's beds were just hammocks suspended by ropes, she replaced them. She collected clothes that were all over the floor, including a perfectly good jacket that was previously in the trashcan. She even trimmed the tree's branches a little to allow more light to come in through the window.
As she cleaned the house, Lucy could not help to take pause every now and then to admire Natsu and Happy's collection of items that they had gathered from their missions. Said items, Lucy noticed, were somewhat isolated from the general mess that was the two's house.
She could tell that the important stuff was really taken care of by the Dragon Slayer and his best friend. Each item was accompanied by a note describing it.
After she was done cleaning a particular area of the house, Lucy stopped to read the description of each item on its note.
She tried to remember, and sometimes imagine, if she was not on the specific mission, what the mission that resulted in the item that was in front of her was.
"Tribal necklace from Galuna Island." "The quest I performed with Lucy for the first time!" "Lucy's maid outfit." Lucy chuckled when she remembered that particular mission. There were, of course, many other items as well.
One time Lucy considered starting her own collection, but she knew that her current apartment was not the place for such a thing. Besides, she didn't want to copy Natsu and Happy. She wanted to find her own thing.
After she swept the floor, Lucy was almost done. The only thing left was a small closet that contained Natsu's clothes and a few clothes for Happy. Not that he used them.
The inside of said closet was, of course, a total mess as well. Natsu had thrown things in it with no regard for order or tidiness, as she expected he would. This was the fourth time she cleaned their house, but she was surprised yet again when she opened the closet.
Natsu's clothes were just... multiples of the same things. As if they were copy-pasted. Not only did he not have any fashion sense, he did not have any variety of clothing either.
"One of these days I'm going to drag his ass into a clothing store, and we're going to buy everything." Lucy said to herself as she took clothes out of the closet.
As she pulled out the last of Happy's clothes from his pile in the closet, a small box fell to the floor.
"A box?" Lucy asked no one in particular. It was a small, black, cube-shaped box. Nothing special.
And then Lucy opened it.
On the inside was a ring. A ring with a red ruby on it. It had what looked like a dragon, wrapped around a star.
A smile made its way onto Lucy's lips.
She took out the ring and saw a small, neatly folded, note that was held in place by said ring. Lucy unfolded it and read out loud:
"Special Mission #2:
I'm going to use this ring to propose to my girlfriend, Lucy Heartfilia, in X789!"
Lucy returned the paper and the ring back into the box and sat on the floor. Her heart was beating like crazy, and she didn't need to look into a mirror to know that she was blushing.
"He's... going to... propose to... me!?" she managed to stutter out.
As if to reassure herself that this was not a dream Lucy pinched her own cheek. "Not a dream!"
Lucy had feelings for the pink-haired Dragon Slayer for a long time. How could she not? He protected her and saved her life time and time again. She, of course, did the same. There was no question about it. Something like that was bound to make the two more than friends one day.
She tried to send him signals many times, but he seemed oblivious. Lucy recalled a few instances when Natsu stated outright that everyone was his Nakama.
That and... Lisanna returning from Edolas made Lucy pretty sure that the two would pick up their relationship right from where they left off. Much to her relief, not much actually happened. Well, she and Lisanna became good friends. A love triangle didn't form, even though Lucy expected that it would.
For a long time Lucy thought that Natsu simply didn't like her in that way, and some times that he didn't like girls at all.
And now she discovered how wrong she was.
"Not so dense after all," Lucy said, staring at the box with the ring inside.
Lucy knew that Natsu knew when to get serious and when just to goof off. Sure, he was a reckless idiot most of the time, but that was one of the qualities that Lucy admired about him.
"Thinking of the future! How much you've grown," she said, as if Natsu was there to hear her.
Even though she did not know him for long, Lucy could tell that this was a big step forward for her best friend.
Lucy made her mind right then and there. When Natsu eventually proposed, she would say yes without hesitation. Or maybe she would propose, if she got tired of waiting. Lucy smiled a Natsu-like smile.
She set the ring aside and went back to work. She knew that she had to hurry up and finish her last task before Natsu and Happy returned home.
Lucy got out a special Lacrima, that Mira gave her. It was capable of cleaning clothes and removing wrinkles. Upon turning it on, she was amazed by the nearly instantaneous results.
She prepared to return Natsu and Happy's, now much better looking clothes, to the closet.
Lucy looked at the ring one last time.
"X789 it is!" she said to herself.
And then a sudden and profound realization dawned on her. Lucy opened the box again, being careful not to damage it, took out the ring, unfolded the piece of paper and read it again, after returning the ring back into the box.
"Mission #2? What's mission #1?" she asked, again wondering aloud as if Natsu was there and he could answer.
"To ask you to be my girlfriend," said a quite familiar voice behind her.
Lucy gasped and turned around slowly, as if the owner of the voice was going to simply not be there until she turned to face him.
And then chocolate-brown eyes fell upon black ones.
Lucy saw Happy, floating by using his wings, behind Natsu.
For a moment nothing happened.
Natsu slowly reached out his hand and placed it on top of Lucy's.
The one that was holding the box.
Natsu closed the box, with the ring still inside, while it was still in Lucy's hand.
He took the box from her hand.
Lucy was watching him do this without saying anything, she did not move a muscle.
Natsu took the box and placed it in his pocket.
"I'll take this back for now. It's too early for that," Natsu smiled and said.
Lucy smiled back.
Their smiles quickly faded, however. Both of them could feel the awkwardness of the situation.
"Look, Lucy, I won't force you to do anything you don't want to. I just-" Natsu started explaining but was cut off.
Lucy had placed her lips on his. Silencing him.
Even though the kiss lasted a few seconds, it felt like an eternity to them. Both felt tremendous relief, their feelings finally out in the open.
"You loooooove each other!" exclaimed Happy, who started flying in circles around the two.
"Yes, Happy, we do." Lucy said. "I love you, Natsu!"
"I love you too, Lucy!" responded Natsu, who smiled his signature smile again.
Lucy smiled back.
The two embraced each other.
"Natsu?" Lucy asked after a while.
"Yeah, Luce?" he responded and looked at her.
"Will you be my boyfriend?" she asked.
He responded with a simple "Yes," and kissed her on the lips, this time with even more passion.
Once the two separated Lucy asked, "So, got any other 'Special Missions'?"
Fin of one-shot!
How was it? Constructive criticism is (still) welcome!
See you all later.
Bottom A/N:
WOW! I had no idea this would be my most popular story (so far ;)). Even without the revisions. Thank you all so much! You guys are amazing. I feel like a certain blue Exceed right now!
! SPECIAL THANKS !: I would like to thank my betas. Yes, somehow I managed to get two. :)
Thanks to Child at Heart Forever and Serpent Tailed Angel for their suggestions on improving this story! Thank you both so much! *Hugs*
Edits:
1. Paragraph fixing. Based on the suggestions given to me by the aforementioned people.
2. Added an extra line at the end to allow for the possibility of a sequel. I don't know if I will write a sequel, but I'm putting it there just in case.
Lessons learned… hopefully. Based on concrits:
1. Could use a little more description. I'm still bad at this. Will try to work on it for my future stories. But I really prefer being straight and to the point.
2. Normally when a new paragraph is started, no matter how long it is, it means that a new idea is being started.
3. A new paragraph should be used whenever changing time, place, topic, or person.
4. The period causes a slightly longer pause, than a comma, in the reading, and a new paragraph creates an even longer one still.
5. Sometimes people will put a single sentence on it's own to emphasize a line, or separate a few sentences to deliberately slow down the pace, but in general the story flows smoother when you use that sparingly.
6. Contraction (Grammar! Not the other kind. :D). From "it is" to "it's".
7. Used the same sentence structure too many times in a row.
8. While it's not wrong to put two lines of dialogue by the same person in two separate paragraphs, it's not a bad idea to see if they can go in the same one.
9. A few redundancies. If she took the trash out than that the outside is where she took is a given, and if the jacket is perfectly good, you can infer that there's little to nothing wrong with it.
10. You might to check out theeditorsblog net/2010/12/08/punctuation-in-dialogue/ It explains the punctuation rules pretty well.
I am not going to upload this as a second chapter/bump the story, since I don't know if people like this type of stuff.
Again. I might write a sequel later. We'll see.
This story will be cross-posted to FanFiction Net (FFN), Archive Of Our Own (AO3) and DeviantArt (DA). Username is the same across all three sites.
Again. Thank you all for the reads/reviews/faves/kudos/comments/whatever!
I'll see you in a Laxus/Wendy (Landy?), Romeo/Wendy (RoWen) or Happy/Lucy (HaLu/Luppy?) fic later this month. Yes, I'm trying to establish/figure out relationship/pairing names. :)
Love you all. Especially my two betas! *Hugs*
waveform33, over and out!