I am writing another story right now and I haven't posted any of it, but I am having an interesting time writing it. I had to google the smell of what human flesh smells like when it is burning. It is a great story, but I torture my main character so much. But now I think I am on a watch list or something. So if I disappear again. . . you know why.

I am not sure why I needed to make this into a whole chapter. It is sort of like fluff, but, not really. Eh, I like it. There will be action and fighting here in a few chapters, promise.

PART TWENTY FIVE: LIESURE

Yarrow slowly woke up without opening her eyes. She was curled up underneath a lot of blankets, making her slightly warmer than comfortable. She kicked her leg out from underneath the blankets and attempted to roll over.

She let out a loud gasp as she rolled off what she was laying on and landed on the hard ground. Snapping her eyes open, she looked around alarmed.

She saw a hammock in the corner and the memory of the night came back to her. She gasped again and pulled the blankets closer, suddenly feeling cold and exposed, knowing that she wasn't wearing anything.

"What are you doing on the floor?" A voice piped from the direction of the kitchen. Yarrow wrapped the blanket tightly around her as she sat back down on the couch, not sure where her clothes went but was shocked to feel the warmth of her collar still around her neck, "I rolled off the couch."

"You should be more careful," Natsu had an elated expression on his face on top of his normal grin. Yarrow suddenly averted her eyes when she saw that he was only in his boxers.

He walked over to her and sat down next to her, pawing at the blanket for her to let him underneath.

Yarrow refused to loosen the blanket to share it with him. Suddenly embarrassed, she quickly tries to scoot away from him on the couch. Her face slightly reddens as she realized that he knows that she isn't wearing anything besides the blanket and the collar.

Natsu get frustrated with her reluctance and grabbed her to pull her back to where she used to be. He wrapped his arms around her after she nearly landed in his lap from his pulling. He victoriously stated, "Don't be shy, you forget that I have already seen it all."

He seemed to know the exact words to appeal to Yarrows logic. She loosened her grip around the blanket, unable to argue with him. Even if she did argue, she had the feeling that there was no winning with him. Why the fire mage needed to be under the blanket was beyond her. He seized the opportunity to scoot closer to her and settle underneath of it next to her. His hands found their way to her stomach and he continued his triumphant gloating, "And I have felt it all."

Yarrow gasped at how warm his hands were, then she responded with a smile, "Now you behave yourself or I will evict you from under this blanket."

His hands roamed up her sides to the sensitive skin on her ribcage, making her get goose bumps immediately. He added to his blatant misbehavior by picking her up and spinning her around on him lap to straddle him. Yarrow quickly pressed herself to him, not wanting to be exposed by the new position that he put her in. It was still very cold outside of the safety of the blanket and didn't want him staring at her.

She wouldn't tell him, but she was very happy that he had minimal clothing on. It seemed to remind her of the closeness that they have.

"See this, this is exactly the misbehavior I am talking about," Yarrow muttered, defeated, into his chest. She felt his chest vibrate in a laugh.

"You wouldn't want me to leave, even if you told me to," He put his arms around her back and rested his hand on her shoulder, ceasing his "misbehavior." He somehow knew that she didn't mind his actions and liked the new found control he had over her.

A smell tickled his nose about the smell coming from the girl. He knew that this time, he had successfully marked her. His smell, sagebrush and cedar was clearly all over her. He loved that.

"You know," Natsu said, looking at Yarrow in the eye. She looked at him, waiting for him to continue. "I love you."

Yarrows face broke into a smile, "Yeah, I know." She buried her face in the nape of his neck. She muttered, "And I love you too."

They stayed there on the couch for what seemed like forever. Yarrow had drifted back to sleep and was letting out shallow noises that sounded like a muted cat purring.

Natsu smiled and stroked her hair. The bone mage was already tired before the events of the previous night took place. He had a feeling that she would sleep for most of the day. He sighed, knowing that he was far too restless to sit there, trapped by her sleeping form all day. He used one of the techniques that he found woke her up from nights ago. He increased his body heat in his hand and moved it to her lower back.

Yarrow inhaled suddenly as she woke up. Natsu didn't waste any time, "Let me get up, I want to go into town for a little bit." Yarrows face comically fell as if she just got rejected, "I promise that I will be back soon."

He planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. Yarrow was surprised that the gentleness of the fire mage was just as charming as his protective and loyal side. She started to slowly shift to let him out.

Yarrow stood up, wrapping the blanket firmly around her. She shook her head to try to regain balance and began to look for her clothes. She wasn't going to let him leave her unattended and completely naked in his house.

Her pants were still missing as she wearily stumbled around the tiny area in her shirt and undergarments. Yarrow got a sly grin on her face as she spotted a pair of Natsus pants nearby. Giving up on finding her own pants, she settled with his. Natsu slightly pouted, he was still dressing and those were the only pair of pants that he saw, that means that he needed to go find where he had put the rest of his laundry.

"Here, you won't even know that I am gone," Natsu watched the theft of his pants. He chuckled, somehow, he didn't mind that she stole the pants. She fell back onto the couch and cuddled up with a pillow under the blanket.

Natsu went on a reconnaissance mission for clean clothes when her head hit the pillow. Natsu softly shut the door and turned around after locking the door to his house. He was surprised that Shark was rushing up the path with a panicked look on his face.

"Have you seen Yarrow, I thought that she was in the house, but I was going to wake her up and she wasn't there. It is still really early and she should be sleeping still. Can you use your Dragon Slayer telepathy to find her or something?" He was frantic, he had grabbed Natsus jacket to get his point across. Shark knew that there wasn't any such thing as a Dragon Slayer telepathy, but was willing to try anything to find out where his sister went.

Natsu stayed calm through the heretics of the regeneration mage, his elated expression never leaving his face. Shark noticed this and narrowed his eyes at the mage, thinking that he didn't care about the whereabouts of Yarrow. Shark readied himself to yell at him.

"She's safe," Natsu motioned to his door. "She is asleep, so we should leave her alone for now."

Natsu didn't let Shark argue with or question him as he grabbed the scruff of his shirt and began to drag him away from his front door, insisting that she was sound asleep.

Yarrow woke up once again, this time she was aware that she was still on the couch at Natsus. She heard a sound that she realized was what woke her up. The door was opening, Yarrow was not sure if it was Natsu coming back into his house or if it were someone else.

She threw the blanket over her face and attempted to hide her existence. Her foggy brain not processing that she exposed her feet in the process.

She heard the deep laugh from the fire mage, "You aren't hiding from me are you?"

Yarrow took a sleepy moment before she muttered out, "I didn't know if you were someone else." She peeked her head out of the blanket, earning herself a laugh from the fire mage and the hovering blue cat behind him. Her hair was a mess and Happy teasingly chirps that she looks like a turtle.

Yarrow suddenly panicked, she couldn't remember if she had clothes on or not. She was brought back to reality by Natsu walking over to her and offering her something.

"I figured that you would want some, if it is anything like how I need fire regularly," He placed the pint of milk in her open hands. She blinked at it a few moments to process what she was seeing, "I didn't know what kind you liked, so I just got this one. I never knew that there were so many different varieties of milk. Two percent, whole, skim, half, it's all too complicated."

She thanked him and ravenously attacked the milk. The carton was drained within seconds. At some point, she slowly sat up to sit on the couch properly, aware that she did, in fact, have clothes on.

"Wow, you would think that you were a cat," Happy sat down next to Yarrow on the couch. He was oblivious to the events that happened on it the previous night. Yarrow smiled at the memory of the previous night, but Happy thought it was his comment.

Yarrow smiled at the two boys, "Thanks."

Natsu plopped down on the couch on the other side of the bone mage. He hooked his leg on top and around one of her legs and rested his arm behind her. Yarrow leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. She was getting very fond of that position with her dragon.

She knitted her eyebrows together at her last thought. Her dragon? She, herself was a dragon too, so why would she consider Natsu her dragon? She shook her head, to shake the thought and the expression.

Happy curled up into a ball on the other side of her and was falling asleep. Natsu brought another carton of milk and, to her surprise, a bunch of chocolate. When her eyes fell on the chocolate, she got an elated grin and snatched it up. She motioned to Natsu that expressed that she was thankful that he brought her chocolate.

"What time is it anyway?" Yarrow was still sleepy, but she knew that she needed to sleep in the normal time frame or she would fall into an awkward sleeping schedule.

"I think it is about," Natsu hummed and put his hand on his stomach in contemplation, "eleven fifteen."

"Don't tell me that you tell time with your stomach," Yarrow shifted to look at the rose haired boy. Natsu only replied with a seemingly elastic grin. Yarrow sighed and slightly shook her head. She would just have to get used to it, she loved the man anyway.

She was halfway through another carton of milk and Natsu had revealed a movie lacrima when they first sat down. It was some movie that Yarrow would fall asleep to. Once she finished her drink, she did just that.

More than halfway through the movie, a sudden knock on the door made Natsu sigh heavily. He looked down at the barely conscious girl leaning on him and the slumbering exceed, he didn't want to bother them so he loudly projected in a whispering tone to the person outside of the door, "It is unlocked!"

Yarrow crinkled her nose and let out a dull groan in protest of the loud noise. The door creaked open to reveal Shark standing in the doorway. He awkwardly walked into the room and his eyes fell on his sister curled up under the arm of the protective Fire Dragon Slayer.

Shark scoffed suddenly, having a feeling of what had happened between the two from the encounter he had with Natsu earlier in the day and the clinginess his sister was showing in her sleep. He pulled a bag from his sack and tossed it to the fire mage. Natsu effortlessly caught it and sniffed it when the aroma caught up with the bag. Yarrow was fast asleep. Shark was hoping to just hand her the bag and leave without any explanation.

"Whenever she wakes up, they are bones if she wants them," Shark put his hands in his pockets and turned to leave. He stopped and looked over his shoulder with a dark glare fixated on Natsu, "If you hurt her or make her do anything she doesn't want to, I will cut off your balls, make you eat them, and then kill you. You got that?"

Natsu looked shocked at the sudden threat from the regeneration mage, it took him a second to formulate a sufficient response in his head, "That's not going to happen."

"It better not," Shark pulled the door closed as he left.

Yarrow stirred slightly in her sleep and grasped Natsus scarf to pull it and him closer. "That means he likes you," Yarrow muttered in her sleepy state.

Natsu dropped his hand to rest on the curve on her side. He smiled at her. He knew that Sharks threat was genuine. Shark would never have to worry, though. There was nothing that Natsu could think of that would make him hurt her. Nothing in the world. He would die before he let her get hurt.