Prompt: "You left your Facebook up in the Apple store and I took a stupid picture of me posting it with a status because you forgot to log out HA but also you are hot and I added myself as a friend I hope you don't mind" AU
"Dude, Natsu, check out your Facebook."
Natsu leaned back his chair to peer out his bedroom door. "Why? Did someone get engaged again?"
A loud sigh came from elsewhere in the apartment. There were footsteps, and then Gray appeared in the doorway. "No, you idiot. Just look."
Shrugging, Natsu opened up his laptop and waited for the internet to connect. When it did, the new photo on his Facebook wall surprised him.
"You're an idiot," Gray said, knocking Natsu's head with his knuckles before leaving the room again.
"Wait, what?"
Natsu could've sworn he remembered to sign out of Facebook after playing around on the computers at the Apple store earlier, but apparently not because some strangers had posted a photo of themselves from his account. It was a group of girls, all making silly faces at the camera. The photo was captioned, "Someone forgot to sign out at the Apple store. Hi, friend! Don't worry, we'll sign you out now~"
Natsu scowled. Friend? What friend? He had no idea who these girls were.
But a notification popped up on his phone and he groaned. Lucy Heartfilia has accepted your friend request. They just friended themselves from his account.
Before he could send a messaging giving his new "friend" a piece of his mind, she messaged him first.
Lucy Heartfilia
Hi. First of all, sorry about the photo; it was too good to resist
Natsu scoffed before writing back.
Natsu Dragneel
yeah, im sure. what's up with the friend request?
Lucy Heartfilia
Sorry about that too
You can unfriend me now if you want
Natsu Dragneel
why'd u do it in the first place then?
Lucy Heartfilia
Because I think you're really hot t tttsdfak das sdfksd
ddddd
Natsu stared at the screen. She…thought he was hot…so she sent herself a friend request from his account. This was the strangest way to get hit on, ever. How in the world was he supposed to react to this? Looking at her profile picture (not the goofy one she'd posted from his account), she was pretty, but…
Before he could reply, she sent another message:
Lucy Heartfilia
Sorry. Friends stole my phone for a moment. Ignore them.
Natsu Dragneel
so u think im hot, huh?
Lucy Heartfilia
NO!
I mean, yes, but
Ugh this is embarrassing
Please ignore them. I'm really sorry. I really am.
We were just having some fun but the friend request is kind of creepy in hindsight
While we were posting the pic I mentioned you were cute
And my friends sent the request from your account before signing out
I accepted it but
Maybe I shouldn't have
Sorry
Natsu clicked on her profile and looked at her information. She lived in the same city, but went to a different university than him. But she was in college, which meant they were the same age. A pretty girl his age who thought he was cute. Hey, couldn't hurt, right?
Natsu Dragneel
a friend is performing at Fairy Tail at 9pm tonight
wanna come?
The chat box indicated that she read it right away, but a couple minutes went by and she still didn't respond. His eyes drew immediately to the screen when the reply came.
Lucy Heartfilia
Okay. See you there.
Natsu was jittery with anticipation as he waited at the usual table right beside the bar where he always sat with his friends. The others were chatting about Gajeel, who'd finally managed to snag a gig at this place after a year of trying, but he couldn't focus on conversation. Instead, his eyes swept the room over and over looking for a newly familiar face.
Gray nudged him. "Yo. Earth to Natsu."
"What's up?"
Gray rolled his eyes. "Spacing out already? Gajeel's gonna kill you if you fall asleep during his show."
"I've heard his songs twenty times already; he's not that good."
"Don't let him hear you say that," Erza said, joining the conversation. "He's worked hard for this, so we have to support him."
Natsu sipped the beer sitting before him. "Yeah, whatever."
Suddenly Gray's eyes widened and he leaned over the table to the front door of the bar. "Hey, aren't those the girls from the Apple store photo?"
Natsu's head whipped around. Sure enough, the faces entering the bar were familiar. And leading the group of girls was Lucy. Damn. She looked even hotter in person than in photos.
She spotted him and hurried over, smiling.
"Cana," she said, turning to one of the friends behind her, "can you tell Mira we're here? Oh, and—" she glanced at Natsu "—tell her to make my drink light. I'm not here to get drunk tonight."
"Sure thing," the brunette named Cana said, rushing off to the bar without even a glance backwards at the table.
"You know Mira?" Natsu asked when Lucy's attention was turned back to him.
"Of course," she said. "We're good friends. I don't usually visit her at work, though. Oh, mind if we sit here?" she asked, looking around at the others. Erza, Gray, Lisanna, and Jellal all shook their heads.
It was a large booth, but with all these people it was becoming a tight fit. Lucy squeezed next to Natsu, a short-haired friend on the other side.
"I'm Lucy," she introduced. "Um, we're the ones who posted on Natsu's Facebook earlier."
"What a coincidence seeing you here," Erza said. "I'm Erza. Nice to meet you."
"Actually it's not a coincidence," the short-haired friend said. "I'm Levy, by the way. We used Natsu's account to send Lucy a friend request, and we ended up getting invited to watch your friend perform. That's all Lucy will tell us, anyway."
Natsu glanced at the girl next to him, who was blushing hard under all the stares. Natsu flushed as well. He'd almost forgotten how they ended up meeting here. Now that he was thinking about it, it was kind of embarrassing. Could it be interpreted as him asking her out? Or was it the other way around?
His friends and her friends all introduced themselves and began making small talk. Lucy and her friends all attended the same school only two subway stops down from where Natsu attended. He forgot all their majors as soon as they said them, but he did remember Lucy's areas of study: double-major in business and astronomy, with a minor in literature.
"You must be good at physics," Natsu said.
"Well, given it's my major, yes," Lucy said, laughing.
"I suck at it. I can only do chemistry."
"If by doing chemistry you mean blowing things up, yeah, you're great at it," Gray interjected.
Natsu glared. "Shut up. No one asked you."
"So, what do you study?" Lucy asked Natsu.
"Primary education," he said.
Her eyes brightened. "You're a teacher!"
He put a hand to the back of his neck. "Yeah, well. I hope to be, someday."
"That sounds great." She sighed. "I wish I could just major in everything. Being a teacher sounds wonderful, too."
"Easier to get a job with a business degree," Natsu pointed out.
"Not entirely true," Lucy said. "So many people study business, and it's hard to get a good position right off the bat. I'll have to start out at entry level like everyone else, no matter what my major is. But it looks good on resumes, and there are no jobs in astronomy either."
"Damn, we're all screwed," Natsu said, picking up his beer again.
"We're all juniors, so we have one year left before we have to really worry about applying for jobs."
"Cheers to that," Natsu said, lifting his drink into the air. Lucy moved to clink glasses with him, but the space in front of her was still empty.
"Where's Cana?" she asked, craning her neck to look around.
"Cana is on her second drink," said her friend Juvia, who had a better vantage point from across the table.
"What? Second? Already? Where's ours?"
Levy sighed and pushed herself up from the seat. "I'll go get her."
When Levy left, Lucy put a hand to her head and let out a long sigh. "Cana and her alcohol."
"Will she be okay?" Lisanna asked. "It's still a little early to get drunk."
"She's always like that," Lucy said. "She just hasn't had a drop of alcohol all week, so she was really excited for this. A little too excited, I guess."
"I'm back," Levy said, drinks in hand. "Here; Mira already had them mixed, it's just that Cana forgot to bring them to us."
"Sorry," Cana said, a huge smile on her face that could've easily been interpreted as a lazy drunken smile, but she still looked too sober for it to be that. "I thought I'd grab a drink before I came back since it looked a little too crowded for me to have a place to sit, and then I got distracted. Mira makes some good stuff."
"I've been meaning to ask," Lisanna said, "but you guys know my sister?"
Like that, the conversation started again, all of them with their drinks this time. Natsu found himself drawn to the way Lucy moved when she talked. She was a very social person, he decided, and her face just lit up with each new topic as if everything was fascinating to her. And, to Natsu, that was fascinating.
Gajeel played his music — which only Levy seemed to like, saying the songs were good even if his voice wasn't — they all talked until they were tired, and sometime before 11pm they parted ways. The girls from the other school waited for the last bus home while Natsu followed Gray back to their apartment. But he lingered, hesitant.
"Wait," he said, stopping Gray.
"What?" Gray started to ask, but Natsu was already heading back to where Lucy waited for the bus. He pulled her aside as her friends watched.
"We met in a weird way, so I want to say this in person," he said.
She stared back at him, eyes wide and brown.
He took a deep breath. "You're really pretty and also really cool and let's be friends."
She blinked. A slow smile spread across her face. "Friends?" she said.
"Yeah."
"Okay," she said. "Friends. For now. But I will change your mind about that one."
Natsu grinned, feeling giddy. "Please do."
"I'll, uh, message you?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Sure. You pick this time."
"It'll be just the two of us next time, then," she said.
"Even better."
"Good."
"Good."
"Lucyyyyy! The bus is coming!"
As the bus pulled away from the stop, Gray walked up behind Natsu and they both watched it leave. Gray put a hand on Natsu's shoulder.
"Maybe I should leave my Facebook open at the Apple store, too," he said.
Natsu shrugged off his hand. "Shut up," he said, ignoring Gray's laughter.
For such a terrible mistake, things certainly could've gone a lot worse. In fact, it couldn't have gone better.
A/N: Thanks for reading!