~The Sleepover~

"Ah, Lucy. Welcome back."

"Yo! You're slow, Lucy!"

"Aye!"

"Sorry for the intrusion."

"MY ROOM!"

Lucy collapsed into the remaining armchair with the deepest of sighs, wishing she could sink completely into the cushion. There were times, many, many times, where she was absolutely thrilled for her friends, for always being there to support her, for giving her a home and a family and everything she never could have dreamed of while trapped in her days as "Lucky" Lucy Heartfilia, and she couldn't be more grateful.

This was not one of those times.

"What's the occasion?" Lucy asked resignedly, massaging her forehead with her palm. After a satisfying, yet exhausting mission today with Levy-chan searching for a rare book, Lucy wasn't sure she could muster up the energy to deal with the rest of her team.

"Nothing!" Natsu declared. She should have figured. "We just haven't been over for a while." Then, eyes widening as he apparently came to some sort of realization, "It was Erza's idea!"

"It was simply a mutual agreement between all of us," Erza said smoothly, but spots of the lightest pink dusted her cheeks. "In any case, we heard about your mission. The guild certainly is rowdy at times, so we decided that less company would be more relaxing for you, Lucy."

"You guys make up at least eighty percent of that rowdiness!" Lucy cried indignantly, and then whirled on a certain shirtless ice mage who was slouched in the chair at her writing desk, flipping through familiar sheets of paper. "Gray!" Lucy practically roared, snatching up a pillow and flinging it in his direction. "Why are you reading that?! Where did you find it? Put a shirt on!"

"A triple attack!" Happy piped up.

"Ow!" Gray yelped as the pillow slammed directly into his face at an unearthly velocity, sending him and the chair toppling over backwards onto the ground. "Do you sleep on a pillow made of rocks or something?!"

Breathing heavily from her spontaneous attack, the blonde celestial spirit mage simply crossed her arms and glowered.

"We've offended you." Erza bowed her head in shame. "I will take care of Natsu and Gray's punishments personally." A squawk of protest from the Dragon Slayer about his lack of involvement went ignored. "But in the meantime, please hit me as hard as you can."

"N-no, that's okay." Lucy caught her breath at last and straightened her back. Her eyes roamed around the room, passing over Natsu's sheepish expression and the mildly guilty look on Gray's face.

Finally, a small giggle spilled from her lips. The giggles grew louder and louder until Lucy was nearly doubled over again, shaking with bubbling laughter. "You… You idiots!" she choked out, flopping back onto the armchair she had previously occupied and pressing a pillow over her face, trying to muffle the laughter to no avail.

"Happy, I think Lucy's lost it," Natsu muttered to his friend in a stage-whisper, with the Exceed nodding in agreement. "You don't think it's 'cause of the stuff I accidentally put in her yogurt, do you?"

Lucy's eyes snapped open. "You what?!"

"…Oops."

The laughter quickly replaced by an exasperated groan, Lucy made a mental note to throw the entire tub of yogurt in her refrigerator out later. It had been her favorite flavor, too! Stupid Natsu and Happy, for always pulling stuff like this and never telling her until the crime had already been committed. Stupid Erza, for sitting there innocently as if she'd done nothing wrong by encouraging this sort of breaking-and-entering all the time. Stupid Gray, for having the gall to read her manuscript right in front of her without any shame at all.

Her stupid, stupid best friends.

There was a rush of indescribable fondness, crashing through the irritation that would never, ever be permanent.

"Do all of you want to stay over tonight?"

The words tumbled out of Lucy's mouth before she knew it; she felt just as surprised to hear them as Natsu, Happy, Gray, and Erza looked, and they exchanged glances. It was unheard of that Lucy would give them permission to spend the night; usually it just ended up becoming so late beneath their notice that even she couldn't kick them out.

It was Natsu who broke the silence first with an exuberant cheer and a wide grin. "Don't mind if we do!"

"Is something wrong, Lucy?" asked Erza, raising an eyebrow. "If we're troubling you, all you need to do is say the word."

"No, no! I just thought it'd be nice to have a proper sleepover for once," Lucy answered.

"A sleepover?"

"What's that?"

"That's way too girly."

"It's what you guys do all the time even when I say you can't. I don't see how it's any different from usual," the celestial spirit mage sighed. She strode over to her bathroom door, adding over her shoulder, "I'm going to take a shower. You know where the extra pillows and blankets are, so help yourselves."

The door clicked shut behind her as she flicked her wrist to turn the lock. No sense in trusting that Natsu and Gray could keep their hormones in check, no matter how sincerely they claimed it was an "accident" the last few times it had happened. Lucy fervently prayed, as she stepped into the running water, that she would not return to find the main room in tatters or worse.

Luckily, that was not the case when Lucy opened the door, steam wafting out. To her surprise, Natsu, Happy, Erza, and Gray were sitting in a relatively quiet (for them) half circle on the carpeted floor, playing some sort of card game. Happy seemed to be winning, much to everyone else's consternation. Natsu was fuming, Erza's forehead was creased in intense concentration, and Gray simply seemed bored.

"Um, if anyone else wants to use the bathroom-"

"Natsu. Gray. You both reek. Go," Erza ordered without looking up from her hand of cards. Lucy felt a synapse in her brain splutter to a halt.

"E-Erza, you don't mean they should go in together, do you?" Natsu and Gray both blanched at the notion, cards spilling from their hands and allowing Happy a good long look at them. The cat promptly slammed down his own pawful with an exclamation of triumph. Erza hissed in frustration before turning her attention back to Lucy.

"Why not? I think they're old enough to do so without my supervision now. Aren't you?"

"Like hell!" the two boys yelled in unison and made a mad dash for the bathroom door.

"That's not the problem here!" Lucy screeched, watching with a horrified sort of bemusement as Natsu gained the lead only to slip on a patch of ice that hadn't been there before, and Gray slammed the door shut in Natsu's face. "No magic in my apartment!" There was a muffled response that might've been an apology, but she couldn't be sure.

"Droopy-eyed perverted popsicle underpants ice bastard!" ranted Natsu at the door, but he didn't dare kick it down after Lucy and Erza both turned their glares on him. "I-I was kidding!"

"Anyway… Where are the pillows and stuff?" Lucy asked, looking around. "I said you could get them out, didn't I?"

"They're right there."

Glancing in the direction Natsu indicated, Lucy's face fell. "Why are they there, exactly?"

Indeed, pillows and blankets galore were scattered across the top of her normally well-made bed, instead of arranged on the floor as they usually were.

"Your floor's too hard," Natsu complained. "Anyway, I sleep in your bed all the time, so I don't see what the problem is."

"That is completely different, and without my permission, I might add."

"Natsu! Have you been taking advantage of Lucy? I hope you're planning on taking responsibility for this!"

"A-Aye!"

"You've got the wrong idea, Erza! And Natsu! Stop encouraging her!"

"It's alright, Lucy, we have forms at the guild for this sort of thing. All you need is to ask Mira for them tomorrow morning and-"

"Absolutely not!" It was bad enough that Mira teased Lucy about her frequent romantic conquests, or rather, her lack of. Inaccurate gossip like this would only spread and fuel the fire.

"The flame-brain's doing what to Lucy?" Gray asked incredulously as he flung the bathroom door open. Still shirtless. Natsu rushed in to escape the aura of doom emanating from Erza, slamming the door so fast that the hinges creaked. ("Gray you bastard! You put ice cubes in here!")

"Nothing!" Lucy said hurriedly, laughing nervously. "Anyway, um… I hate to break it to you, but I don't think my bed can fit five people."

"Yes it can!" She thought Happy had been strangely silent. Now the Exceed held up a sheet of paper with scribbles of a vague diagram on it, swishing his tail much too proudly. "I've calculated it all out! Natsu can go here, Erza here, Gray at the bottom, Lucy right here in the middle, and I'll sleep on the pillow."

"…It's not humanely possible to bend that way, Happy."

"Really? I've got a plan B too." He flipped the paper over. "We can stack up! Lucy's at the bottom 'cause she's the heaviest, then Erza because of the armor, and then Gray, and Natsu, and then me! I'm so brilliant! I wonder what Carla would say."

"There are so many things wrong with it that I don't even know where to start."

Gray had his head tilted to the side, squinting to decipher Happy's messy drawings. "Well, it's not as bad as Mira-chan's…" He did a quick sweep of the room with his eyes to make sure the white-haired barmaid wasn't around to cry and guilt-trip him for his comment. "But it's definitely not a masterpiece either."

"That's not even the point!"

"Now, now, calm down." Clapping a hand on Lucy's shoulder, Erza approached the bed and pulled one of the blankets off. "I know just what to do. Leave it to me."

"I don't know if I should be concerned or not." Shaking her head and deciding to leave the usually armored mage (she had requipped into her trademark Heart Kreuz pajamas) to her own devices, Lucy turned and found Gray surreptitiously combing through her desk. She had just hidden it again! "Gray!"

He jumped. "Y-Yeah?"

"Stop it."

"Come on, you can't just leave me hanging like that. How does he get away with his magic all drained?"

"It's. A. Surprise," Lucy snarled. "And only Levy-chan's supposed to read it!"

"It's rude to invade a woman's privacy, Gray," Erza called, and both of them glanced towards her. Lucy's jaw promptly dropped.

"What is that?!"

Somehow in the span of five minutes and out of only a few blankets, Erza had erected an elaborate looking fort in the middle of the living room space. The perpetrator cleared her throat rather proudly, blushing a little. "I heard that this was the proper thing to do at sleepovers. I don't have much experience, you see…"

"No, this is great!" Lucy interrupted, awed. "It beats just sleeping on the floor, doesn't it?"

"I guess?" Gray surveyed it more dubiously. "It looks a little unsteady."

"Nonsense, it's perfectly stable. Come, both of you." Erza grabbed Lucy by her collar and Gray by his necklace, dragging them under the covers. Happy followed behind, waving a small flashlight around. Where had he gotten that from?

"Now, er, the next item on our agenda is…" Picking Happy up so that he shone the flashlight upon a small list in her hand, Erza scanned it carefully, ignoring the shivers of apprehension that ran down Gray and Lucy's backs. There was no telling what sort of ideas Erza might have gotten about sleepovers from other sources, which often turned out to be rather unreliable.

"Whoa! The heck is this thing?" Natsu dove into the small opening without warning, making the entire structure wobble dangerously.

"Natsu! Don't you dare ruin my hard work!"

"If you want, I can keep it standing with my ice-"

"That's not the proper way to do things, Gray. Now, we have our fort of blankets. I believe that telling ghost stories is a must-do, according to my list."

"Ooh, I got one! Once, there was this awesome red dragon that breathed fire with his pet cat-"

"I thought I was your friend, not a pet!"

"I'm getting there!"

"That doesn't sound remotely like a ghost story."

Lucy could only shake her head, looking at all of her friends crowded into such a tiny space. This was going to be a long night.

She woke up with Happy's tail tangled in her hair, Erza curled up at her side, Gray's arm wound around hers, and Natsu's head resting on her stomach, explaining the slight inability to breathe. The blanket fort was collapsed over them all, obscuring the faint beams of sunlight she could see.

Typical.

A/N: Whoaa, can you tell I rushed the end of this? This is for OrbitingArbiter's Fairy Tail Novice Writing Challenges. I encourage anyone who'd like to try it out to introduce themselves at the forum and see how they like it. I think it's a lot of fun getting to write to a prompt.