As it turned out, the one conversation Natsu had with Lucy didn't actually stop her from blasting music. But, he did notice that it was at least a few decibels quieter during the day, and once 10:00PM rolled around, he couldn't hear anything from her room at all. It was weird, at first, not falling asleep with a hum of music in his ears, but Natsu was nonetheless grateful and adjusted quickly.

Another thing that one conversation didn't do was encourage further interaction. In fact, since that one late-night confrontation, Natsu hadn't heard a thing from Lucy, even when he sat right by the window to (grudgingly) work on homework. Some small part of him kind of hoped that one of those days, he might hear something from her. But it seemed that Lucy wasn't going to start anything, and Natsu figured that was pretty rational because after all, they were pretty much strangers.

When Natsu mentioned this to Gray, accompanied by a definitely-not-pout, Natsu was met with a completely shameless bout of laughter from his apparent rival/best-friend-who-would-never-admit-to-being-his-best-friend.

"What's so funny, stripper?" he demanded as Gray continued to snigger at him.

"You have a crush," Gray said like it was as obvious as Natsu's love for fire (no, what do you mean Natsu almost blew up Gray's room? That never happened…)

"No way in hell!" was the incensed response Natsu offered, leaning a little closer.

Gray shrugged and leaned back on his bed, sighing, "Ah well. I guess it doesn't matter because you're probably too stupid to know how to ask her out anyway."

And that comment, of course, degenerated into a full out wrestling match on the floor of Gray's room, but Gray didn't quickly forget the conversation. In fact, whenever the boys in Makarov's dorm got together to do anything, Gray seemed to go out of his way to give Natsu a hard time about his supposed "crush" on the girl across from his window.

Just to prove Gray wrong though, Natsu stopped sitting near the window to do his homework. After all, besides the fact that she was kind of pretty, shared a lot of his taste in music and could sing, Natsu had absolutely no reason to be interested in her.

Yeah, besides all of that. No reason at all.

By the end of that month, Natsu had successfully put the mysterious and somewhat-pretty Lucy on a backburner in his mind, and his attention was now solely focused on trying to find something to hang over Gray's head as revenge.

Also, schoolwork, but that wasn't nearly as interesting.

Nonetheless, when Natsu set his mind to a task, he had a tendency to tune everything else out, which is why (he supposed) Gajeel had nearly broken his door by the time Natsu looked up from filling out some diagrams long enough to realize that someone was knocking.

His deep green eyes set into a glare, nearly turning black, upon seeing Gajeel's unmistakable pierced face and mane of black hair. "What do you want, ya bastard?" he asked, hoping that Loke's infamous roommate would either:

a) Leave and let the door hit him in the butt as he did

Or

b) Stay long enough for Natsu to find a reason to punch him into next week.

Gajeel ultimately did neither. "You know that shrimp's friend, right? The blonde one?" It was common knowledge around the dorm that Gajeel never spoke of Levy by name, usually settling for bookworm or shrimp if he had to talk about her.

"You talkin' about Lucy?" Natsu asked, suddenly feeling defensive. Was something up with her? Or worse, had Gajeel done something to her too?

Seeming to guess Natsu's train of thought, Gajeel rolled his sharp, sable eyes and said, "I haven't been near her. Just wonderin' if ya know her as well as Gray said."

Muttering something distinctly like, "Friggin' Ice Prick," under his breath, Natsu clenched a fist, then rested it on the door frame while inwardly re-swearing revenge against Gray and exhaling. "Why do you wanna know, anyway?" he questioned. "I've had like, one conversation with Lucy."

"Great," the thug grumbled, grabbing Natsu's wrist off the door frame and pulling.

"Hey!" Natsu yelled, struggling and eventually managing to pull his arm free. "What d'you think you're doing?!"

Gajeel paused in the hallway, just about to descend the staircase back to the ground floor, and grouched, "We're goin' over to their dorm."

For a second, Natsu just spluttered, but finally managed to ask, "What'd you say?"

"I ain't repeating myself," asserted Gajeel.

"Bastard," Natsu called him again, but then asked, "Why are you dragging me into this? Actually, why're you going over there at all? And what does Lucy have to do with it?"

"Blondie and the shrimp are best friends," Gajeel said, more hesitantly. "Thought this might be easier if… ya know, you two were there."

"You mean me and Lucy?" Natsu was still confused, and cocked his pink-haired head to the side as he asked again, "What are you planning?"

Gajeel sighed. Even that sounded harsh and threatening, but when he answered Natsu without looking the shorter sophomore in the face and his voice was so low that it was pretty much just a growl, something (instinct, he claimed) told Natsu that this was about as "gentle" as Gajeel was ever going to get.

"All that stuff Gr—I mean, Makarov keeps sayin' about second chances," he started. "Think it's finally getting to me. I gotta start somewhere."

Natsu blinked. "So you're gonna apologize?" he asked slowly.

The word apologize seemed to snap Gajeel back to his senses, and he fixed Natsu with a glare. "I ain't explainin' myself to a flame brain like you," he said, grabbing Natsu's arm again and pulling him down the stairs, despite his protests.

Natsu kept complaining, loudly, about the whole situation, even as Gajeel dragged him through the doors of the girls' dorm next door. His complaints were shut up quickly by an impatient cough and a very threatening sounding, "Can I help you boys?"

Said boys looked around, finding a redheaded woman (who honestly didn't look much older than either of them) sitting behind the dorm lobby's desk, glaring at them both. A dark aura of 'Explain yourselves or get the hell out' hung about the woman as Gajeel dropped Natsu and marched up to her. "You the dorm manager?" he asked gruffly.

"The manager is out," replied the woman evenly, "and I am standing in. But I'm sure that our manager really wouldn't appreciate two rowdy boys tracking dirt all over the lobby and disturbing our dorm…" And the look she coupled with those two sentences was enough to make Natsu flinch from on the floor where Gajeel dropped him. When the redhead looked over in his direction, her eyes widened a little. "Natsu?" she asked, a little less dangerously.

"H-h-hi Erza," he said, waving meekly.

Gajeel raised an eyebrow in his direction, probably confused by the almost complete 180 in Natsu's behavior, and asked, "You know her?"

Erza answered for him: "Natsu, myself, and his friend Gray Fullbuster have a few classes together."

Gajeel addressed Natsu again. "Gray's your friend?" he scoffed.

At those words, Erza narrowed her eyes and asked pointedly, "Have you and Gray been fighting again?"

"N-n-n-n-no ma'am!" Natsu squeaked, jumping to his feet and saluting. He continued without a breath, "And I'm really, really sorry we bothered you; we were just coming over to see if we could drop in on Lucy and Levy because apparently Gajeel wants to apologize but that's okay because we can just come back another time, right Gajeel?"

Before Gajeel could actually get a word in, a very soft voice asked, "You came here to apologize to Levy?"

In the doorway stood a girl with long, wavy blonde hair and a sparsely patterened dress. The white headband she wore made it look like the girl had little fluffy ears on her head, and her green eyes were bright with confusion and (Natsu wasn't sure, but it looked like) hope.

"Manager!" Erza suddenly exclaimed, leaning over the desk, and Natsu did a double take. The girl with the fluffy headband looked young enough to be Erza's little sister, and looked absolutely nothing like most of the other authoritative dorm managers on campus. Then again, Natsu supposed, he had heard some weird rumors about a manager named Bob on the other side of campus. "These two hooligans were just leaving," continued Erza, oblivious to his train of thought.

However, the apparent manager shook her head at Erza and said in that same soft voice, "I think it's okay." Then she turned to Gajeel (Natsu felt incredibly sidelined at this point) and explained, "My name is Mavis Vermillion, and I'm the manager of this dorm. Levy is probably in Lucy's room about now if you want to see her."

Gajeel looked away. "Thanks," he huffed quietly, like he didn't actually want to be heard.

Erza was speaking again though, insisting, "Manager, I really don't think this is a good idea!"

But Mavis held up a hand as she watched the two boys start upstairs. As Natsu was reminding Gajeel that Lucy's room was at the end of the hallway, he could swear that he heard Mavis telling Erza something like, "Everybody deserves a chance to fix their mistakes. Have a little faith."