Author's Note: Feeling slightly proud of this work of fiction here. If you want (you don't have to okay) and want to give the reading a little more of pazzas, pop this little sucker into Google and listen to the wonderful music as you read, (although it's not raining in the story it still gives it that little oomf) (/watch?v=zR7KErA5bqY) anyways, thank you so much to the people who have liked the little short stories so far and I'll try my hardest to keep with the posting everyday!
Day 7: Three Words
There was a storm outside, that was clear enough, although the storm itself wasn't clear at all. It was far from it. Behind the closed curtains in Lucy's apartment was a white war. The snowflakes fell from the sky bundled together and when ever the wind waltzed in they were separated but soon joined once again. The harder the air came, the wilder the snow danced around the now empty streets of Magnolia.
By now the light blanket of snow that had fallen on the city earlier had become a pile of cold white ashes. The wind pushed against the apartment and the walls groaned but kept themselves up against the angry wind. The noise echoed in the lit room. The fire place crackled and engulfed the brown logs of wood until it knelt to it and transformed into ash. The flames fed off the wood and the only thing that filled the room was the sound of its eating and the moaning of the walls.
The two people that sat at the center of the room were silent.
Natsu's eyes were down at his clenched fists while Lucy stared at him.
She wanted to know more. He never mentioned Igneel, other then wanting to find his foster dad, he was never brought up. Asking about him was out of the question, she knew what it must have feel like to have memories hit you in the face like a massive steel ball.
Would she have reacted the same way if her mother were brought up? Or even her father?
"No."
He looked up at her finally, "forget it. Just go, it's your turn, Lucy."
"Natsu..."
"Lucy," his voice softened. "I'm alright, promise." His lips curled up at the side in a half smile, a feeble attempt she wasn't going to take.
"No, Natsu," she tried again and reached for his hand, this time he didn't pull away. "I mean it. It's different now, you're stronger."
"As if that matters at all now. Igneel left seven- no, fourteen years ago. Sometimes I feel like I'll never find him but if I think that way then I never will."
She wanted to ask more. Her tongue craved to form the words, to let it out. Prying wasn't something she wanted to do on such a touchy topic but she needed to know more, at least it felt that way. She felt like she had known Natsu all her life but she barely knew anything from his past. Family wasn't something they mentioned much between each other. But here they were alone, at least partly, and they were talking about it. If she didn't speak up now, she never would.
"Do you think he's gone- like completely? Maybe he's not coming back, Natsu-"
The hand under hers tensed up and Natsu looked at her with cold eyes. "What are you talking about? Of course he's going to come back, why wouldn't he?"
"I didn't mean it like that, I meant-"
"What would you know about losing someone."
He picked up on his words quicker than they had escaped his mouth but it had already been too late. They were already out and between them. His words filled the emptiness in the room and swirled around both of them, crashing and hitting Lucy. They seemed to have wrapped around her, entering and re-entering her ears until she felt they were suffocating her.
His eyes were sorry and wide, as if he was more surprised of what he had said. Lucy pulled her arm back slowly, her fingers were trembling and her throat was closing off. What did she know?
But did she even have the right to get mad since she was the one to pry?
She stared down at her hands, "I think I know pretty well what you're feeling, Natsu. I think a lot of people in Fairy Tail know what you're feeling."
"Lucy, I'm-"
"No. Don't." Her eyes closed and she tilted her head to the ceiling, she wasn't going to cry over this. "Don't apologize."
"I shouldn't have-"
"Natsu. Stop." She took a shaky breath and then smiled at him. "I mean it, it's alright. I just- I just wanted to know more. I'm sorry."
"Know more? About Igneel?" She nodded and a timid laugh escaped his lips. "I don't even talk about him with Happy you know."
"It's only natural I'd want to know, right? I mean... you're looking for him, he was your dad and you miss him right?"
He nodded and his eyes stared at something far away. "Yeah..." and then his head bobbed once more, "yeah." As if we was reassuring himself. "I miss him."
Natsu's hand slammed on the wooden floor and Lucy jumped back from the cardboard box as she reached for a new sheet of paper to keep the game going. "I just don't get why he left- why they left. Grandeeney, Metalicana and Igneel, they just left without saying anything. How do you leave kids alone like that? As if we didn't love them or anything- as if they didn't love us." He grabbed at his hair and clenched his eyes shut, "I just don't fucking get it and sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy. Wasn't I good enough for Igneel? I know he loved him, you don't just fake that right? So why did he leave me alone, why didn't he say anything?" He was shouting now. The words echoed around the room and Lucy turned to the bed where Happy was still sound asleep, his chest rising and falling slowly.
She wanted to move and hold him, tell him it was alright but how could she do that when she didn't know herself if everything would be alright? But she moved anyways, sitting next to him and taking his hand in hers. She closed her fingers around his closed fist and squeezed but his eyes stayed locked on the ground.
"I don't know whether I'm angry or sad or should I be happy and grateful that he left? I'm just so frustrated and don't know how to feel about anything when I think about him. I miss him so fricking much. I feel like my hearts going to jump out of my chest or fall into my stomach and-shit."
She looked up at him, tears were streaming down his face and she couldn't help it anymore.
Lucy wrapped her arms around Natsu and held him close to her. At first his arms stayed at his side awkwardly but then they were around her, pulling her closer to his muscled chest. His head nestled into the side of her neck and he was breathing raggedly into her hair. They pressed against each other like two books on a bookshelf. He put a hand on her head and pressed her down on him and she willingly laid her head on his shoulder, taking in the scent that was him: fire.
Because that's what Natsu was, a living, breathing, walking flame that she wished and hoped to never see run out.
But here he was, this boy that always smiled, who fought for his friends' lives more so than he fought for his own, crying. He was broken and he hid it so well behind a smile. His tears soaked her shoulder but she didn't mind, if anything it made her want to get closer to him.
"I can't lose anyone else," he whispered into her hair and her arms tightened around him.
"You won't," she said. "I promise."
And then they were kissing. His lips parted against hers and they were warm. Soft yet fierce. Inanimate with no pulse or heart beat yet alive. She was feeling breathless, but in a fascinated way. If she were to write this in a story how would she explain it? She couldn't find the words or more so she didn't care. She shifted her body so his lips were in front of her and she kept kissing him.
Natsu's hand traveled up and down her back, leaving a trail of goosebumps on her skin. His touch was so warm and she wanted more of it. He started pulling away but she closed the gap faster than she knew was possible.
She wasn't going to let go of this moment.
"Don't," she whispered against his mouth. "Don't leave." And she opened her eyes, not even realizing when she had closed them, and Natsu was starring back at her in astonishment. But there was something different that she had never seen before, acknowledgment? Realization? She didn't know, or at least she couldn't name it. He looked like someone that had just discovered a new meaning to love, and he smiled against her lips and nodded, pulling her on to his lap.
And without a reason to, or even knowing themselves, their mouths were pressed against each other again, parting and experimenting a new sensation together they had never felt. Natsu was crying again, his tears staining his cheeks and falling in the middle of their kiss but Lucy went on. Her lips on his desperately and hungrily, she never wanted to stop and she knew he didn't either.
And then she was crying too. Their tears mixed together making it hard to know whose was whose. They were both crazy, sad and broken, and maybe even lost and deep inside all they wanted was to fly. There was a fog inside their chests and the kiss was clearing it up and as the minutes passed by Natsu kept mumbling something into her lips but Lucy couldn't hear it.
Her ears perked up until she could make out the gibberish against her mouth:
"Don't leave me."
And then her name.
He was mumbling her name with something else that was too low for her to hear.
Natsu pulled away, leaving Lucy with her lips alone and disoriented. He put his lips on her neck, taking in her scent and she bit down on her bottom lip to keep the moan inside her throat. Slowly, his mouth moved to her ear and he was there for what felt like ages until he said the words that hadn't been spoken to her by anyone other than her mother and father: "Lucy, I love you."
And the tears rushed to her eyes again. Because she didn't know what else to do besides that. Her stomach flipped itself inside out. People were always talking about the heart but right then all she could feel was her stomach and the strange feeling it was giving her. She wanted to scream because of the four words that had left his mouth. Did she love him too? She kissed him, but was it just that, a kiss?
She was crying uncontrollably and covered her face away from him, heaving into her blanket and trying hard to stop but she couldn't. Natsu laughed and tried to get her face out so he could look at her but that made the water fall from her eyes even more.
He wiped the tears gently from her face, "why are you crying, idiot?"
She shook her head, "I don't even know."
And he kissed where her tears stopped until he was down at her lips again, hovering there for a second before whispering the words one more time, "I love you, Lucy and I'll be damned the day you leave me too."
Lucy couldn't say anything so she nodded and kissed him and when she did she could have sworn the storm outside had stopped.
