CHAPTER 48: TRUST 1/2
Content warning: Alcohol/drug usage, sexual content
"I swear to the gods I don't fucking believe in that this –" Natsu couched up his drink, losing his voice as the alcohol burned his throat. " – this is the worst thing I've ever drunk. For fuck's sake, did you… did you fucking piss in this bottle!?"
Gildarts roared from hilarity as Natsu slammed Dragon's Breath to the large, round wooden table, located in the middle of the Ragged Flagon, just beside the water well. Lucy giggled as the mage struggled to get the liquid down, grimacing from the taste. "Let me try it," she said with a smirk and stole the bottle from his hand.
Terror-struck, Natsu's eyes shot to her. He tried to grasp the bottle, steal it back, but she already brought it to her lips and lifted the bottom up. "Crazy!" Natsu shouted to her, making it impossible to swallow as she chuckled. "Sheogorath's beard, Lucy, don't drink that –"
The burst of laughter made the mead spill from her lips. She lowered the bottle, wiping her mouth with her hand. The taste was sour, but not as bad as Natsu let everyone know. Perhaps it was just for the show, just like his constant lip-biting, Lucy thought. He seemed to be doing many things just to catch her attention, which Lucy found somehow sweet.
"It's like regular Nord mead, maybe with a little extra kick. You brewed this yourself?" Lucy asked from Gildarts, who sat on the opposite side of the table. The man nodded, and then the mead's taste started to shift, searing her mouth as if she was drinking hot coals. "Oh shit, now it burns! Did you add pepper to this?"
"No. Hot pepper, bought from the Khajiit caravans," Gildarts answered, grinning. "They call it chilli powder."
Lucy had barely heard of the spice before, but it certainly burned. Well, at least it wasn't moon sugar. Lucy's eyes watered as she coughed, the taste still lingering in her throat. Natsu looked at her with worry and amusement mixing in his gaze. I told you, his eyes said. There were torches in the supportive pillars, braziers near the fence that separated the bar from the pool of water, chandleries hanging from the ceiling. All of them together gave a soft, faint light to the smoky tavern, where the air still smelled of herbs, lavender and frost mirriam.
"Gods, so that's what it was. Putting that to a mead? You Nords are fucking insane," Natsu said while he poured himself a cup of wine. Lucy chuckled by herself – no matter what Natsu claimed, he certainly had a noble heritage. "Juniper mead is the only good mead there is, and the rest is goat's piss. Change my mind."
While Natsu and Gildarts kept arguing about the tastes of alcoholic beverages, Lucy fiddled the hem of her blue dress and took one careful sip of mead. Even if tonight was supposed to be a celebration, she didn't want to get drunk in a place like this. She learnt enough from Jorrvaskr. This one bottle would last her the whole night if she drank sparingly, and the terrible aftertaste would make it easier. Lucy put the bottle down and poked her spoon into her bowl, idly swirling the chicken soup as she leaned her head to her other hand. She couldn't find anything to add to the conversation, so she just listened, drifting into her thoughts from time to time.
So far, it had been a good day, and she was in an exceptionally good mood. Lucy's cheeks ached from smiling so much. She had excepted the meeting with whoever-took-the-damned-horn to go much worse than it did. It had been this Gildarts, Natsu's old teacher from the College of Winterhold, who was also the last member of the ancient Blades, guardians of the Dragonborn emperors. Lucy could barely wait to read the book Gildarts had salvaged from the destroyed archives from Cyrodiil. There was so much they could learn from him… if he'd just sober up first.
After they had gotten the Horn back and left the sealed quarters, they made it back to the Ragged Flagon. Gildarts had suggested that they'd stay here tonight, since getting out of here piss-drunk would be dangerous. Lucy had no intention to get 'piss-drunk', but she couldn't say the same about Natsu. He had been through a lot lately, as the slaughter at Ivarstead was still pressing his mind. The rate he kept downing the wine, Lucy knew he was looking for a moment's escape. And she didn't judge him for that. She understood.
So, a bit reluctantly they had agreed to stay here. Lucy's hesitations had faded when they stepped into the room Gildarts had talked to them, making her realise that the Ragged Flagon was an inn, just built underground. Not everyone here was a member of the Thieves Guild. They had many associates, people who worked in the shadows, people who sometimes needed a chamber with sturdy locks… for whatever purposes.
Happy to know they wouldn't have to sleep in a sewer, they had left their belongings in the room, quickly cleaned the road trust from their faces and changed their clothes into more comfortable ones. Lucy was now wearing the blue dress she got from Gray's mother. She liked how soft the cotton felt on her skin, how it brought out the best of her figure. Her hair was braided and tied on a loose bun on the back of her neck, with a few fair strands framing her face, tucked behind her ears.
Lucy had expected it would be more difficult to relax in the headquarters of the Thieves Guild, but apparently, it wasn't that bad. Their actual guildhall didn't seem to be here, just connected somewhere nearby, as if the Ragged Flagon was just a passageway, a common lounge for the guildmembers to solve out their businesses. The faces hadn't been friendly when they arrived here, but now they were nonchalant. Everybody here minded their own things. There weren't many tables near their table, but the loud voices of Natsu and Gildarts for sure were heard all over the tavern.
"… and I think we were on our way to Riften, passing through Shor's Stone, getting fairly drunk in the local inn when a farmer came to ask for help. And if a farmer comes to ask help from two travelling mages, that means he's desperate."
"Yeah, I know. Well, what did the farmer want?"
"There was a little family drama going on. A blacksmith had been fucking the farmer's wife, and the farmer was looking for revenge. The farmer thought we looked scary enough, so he asked us to go intimidate the blacksmith and tell him to stop fucking other men's wives. He didn't want to go brawl with him by himself because… I can't remember, he had broken an arm or something."
Lucy raised her eyes from the chicken soup to Natsu. Had he ever told her why he ended up burning Shor's Stone? If he had, Lucy couldn't remember, but now he had her curiosity. And with the vulgar language he kept speaking at, he certainly had her attention. Whenever there was another man around, Natsu just changed. He never talked that way with Lucy, but she quickly realised that she didn't mind that. It was quite funny, actually, always making her wonder if he was like that with Igneel. Or more likely, learnt to be like that from Igneel.
Natsu had left his bloodied robes to soak in a water barrel in their chamber, so now he was wearing a black tunic and dark-grey linen trousers, one of those clothes he had bought at Ivarstead. It would stir up unwanted suspicion to spend a night here with your sleeves stained in blood. He still had his white scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. Even if it was strange to see him without a mage's robes, he still carried himself with the pride of a talented wizard. Personally, Lucy felt insecure without the boost her enchanted robes gave to her spellcasting. She tried to keep telling herself what Natsu had once said: the garments don't make a mage. At least Natsu was proof of that.
Gildarts snorted. "Seriously? You were asked to solve some family drama? From what I knew Igneel, he was the one fucking other men's wives."
"Yeah, I know, I know, that was just so stupid," Natsu answered, grinning. "Well, we tried to think a way to scare the shit out of that blacksmith. Just walking there and being like 'Hey, we heard that you've been sticking your dick into something where it doesn't belong, so could you be kind and stop that,' but that would've been ridiculous. As we were just passing by and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, we didn't want to rely on violence either. So, Igneel decided to go the nearest Nordic ruin, reanimate a Draugr Overlord, and bring it to the blacksmith's door at night."
Wine spilt over the edges of Gildarts's cup as his body quaked. "Oh man, that's gonna be legendary!" he shouted, tears of laughter in his eyes.
"Everything went according to the plan. We got the Draugr, walked it to the village on a leash. Like a dog, you know? We even dressed it in my cloak to hide it from the guards. It just kept creaking and groaning, the guards thought it was our drunken buddy or something," Natsu told. "Then we left the Draugr at the doorstep, knocked on the door, and ran behind the corner, giggling like little girls."
Lucy had just taken a spoonful of the chicken soup into her mouth, but she almost had to spit it out. Her shoulders began to tremble from the laughter she tried to hold back. The image her mind formed was simply too vivid. She swallowed quickly and wiped the spicy brew from her chin, giggling as she turned her eyes to Natsu. He glanced at her briefly and smirked, then continued his story.
"But then, things spiralled out of control when the fucking blacksmith picked up his greatsword and began to fight the Draugr. He was tougher than we expected – no wonder why the farmer's wife had been fucking him instead of her wimpy husband – but Igneel lost control over the reanimated Draugr," Natsu began and paused briefly just to take a drink. "We realised that we had fucked up when the Draugr tried to attack anyone in the village. I tried to shoot fireballs at it, but well, I was drunk as a horker and couldn't aim properly. By the time we managed to put the Draugr down, half of the village was on fire, and of course, the Imperial Legion passed right by."
This was where Lucy's laughter ended as the story became sad, but it took a while for Gildarts to gather himself and be even able to talk. "Lesson number one: if somebody is fucking your wife, take care of the problem by yourself. Gotta prove that you are the man, you know!"
"Indeed," Natsu agreed, sighed and placed his tankard on the table, tapping its metallic side with his fingers. "So, because we had hauled quite a lot of bounty already, the Imperials decided to execute us in Helgen. They were just having an operation in Darkwater Crossing with Ulfric Stormcloak, and as Helgen was the closest city under Legion's control, they took us there."
"And that's when the dragon attacked?"
From there on, Lucy already knew how the story went, and she preferred not to listen. She already experienced it again almost every night in her dreams, heard the screams and saw the scorched corpses of her parents, could almost smell the burned human flesh. She didn't want to think about that now, not today. She had truly thought that everyone she ever knew was dead, but now there was solace. And that solace was sitting right on the opposite side of the table.
By Kynareth, she hadn't found just one, but two of her former friends alive and… relatively well. Her heart hurt for Haming's condition, but he seemed to be pulling it through. Haming was a tough guy. He'd survive anything, it seemed, and keep going with a grin on his face. Haming was slowly eating his portion of the soup, listening to the stories with the usual silent demeanor he had. But Loke, however…
Loke wasn't much smiling at the moment.
Grimly, Loke sat between Gildarts and his brother, drinking his mead in silence. Each time Lucy said something to Natsu or even looked at him, he paid a murderous glare to the fire mage. Lucy knew why. Loke was jealous. The man had wanted to marry her, after all – Lucy never responded to those feelings, and still didn't. Now that the dread of an arranged marriage was lifted from her shoulders, she thought that she would never marry anyone, just because she no longer had to. But how to explain that to a person who had been heels over head for her since they were ten?
Perhaps, in his own way, Loke believed that she'd appreciate the thought of becoming his wife. He wanted to provide, give her a house and gold to spend at the marketplace, happiness, and she was supposed to be glad about that. But that wasn't her happiness, for she knew what he wanted in return. Children, many of them, and those she couldn't give. Didn't even want to. She would just cook and clean and be forever chained to an empty house with nothing but books as her escape. The older they had gotten, the more those thoughts had strained their friendship. Lucy had tried to make that clear, so why did Loke still look so damn sour when she talked to another man?
For this time Lucy had known Natsu, she had learnt that he dreaded the very thought of marriage just as much as she did. He would never chain her down, put her into the cage of home and call it love. It was one of the reasons why Lucy enjoyed his company so much – he would never try to take her freedom away from her. There were no second thoughts, hidden intentions behind his kindness towards her. If Loke's failed attempts to sweeten her had eventually torn their friendship apart, the lack of such attempts in Natsu actually pulled them closer. Lucy couldn't explain how it worked. She just knew that everything was different with the fire mage, in ways she couldn't quite understand yet.
Lately, for brief and sudden moments Lucy had caught herself wondering how they even got this close. She and Natsu fought together, laughed together, cried together, even slept together – it was always so confusing for her to realise that she slept with him, but didn't sleep with him. Put in a similar situation, Loke would've crawled out of his skin just to get under her skirt, but Natsu just… he just didn't. It was almost the other way around. Too often Lucy had worried if she was stepping on his boundaries when she clung to his warmth at night, if she was getting too close, but she trusted Natsu would tell her if it bothered him. But if it didn't bother him, then how did he feel about it?
A man could be a mystery, it seemed, yet Lucy couldn't help but feel curious to find out.
Natsu and Gildarts kept drinking and exchanging stories, but Lucy had fallen off the wagon a while ago. As she was lost within her thoughts, she realised she had forgotten to eat, and her chicken soup was getting cold. Two spoonful's later she zoned out again, leaning to her hand and swirling the spoon in the air, listening to how Natsu laughed at the silly tales. It was good to hear him laugh when the times had been so exceptionally grim. He had a beautiful smile, but the way it showed his fangs always reminded her of the day when she had almost lost him, always making her glad that he was still here.
In fact, she didn't know what she'd do if he wouldn't be here anymore. Maybe depending on someone so much wasn't what a hero was supposed to do, but what would a hero be without someone having her back, without someone to walk beside her?
A dead hero, Lucy knew.
A faint shiver ran down her spine as she realised what he had said. I would be dead without you, Lucy. He thought the same thing, he knew what she knew, that neither of them could do this without each other. What they were, how close they were, it wasn't significant. What was, what mattered, was that they needed one another. And apparently, they had both realised that.
Maybe his feelings weren't as mysterious as Lucy thought.
Suddenly, she was brought back to the smoky tavern, as if flinched awake from the plane of her mind. It was the fire mage's name that pulled her to the present moment.
"Hey, Natsu, do you remember the time when we accidentally changed bags?" Gildarts started, chuckling.
Natsu almost spat his wine to the table. "By the gods, don't remind me…"
"Wait, what happened?" Lucy asked with a smile. Natsu covered his face in his hands, his embarrassment only stoking her curiosity.
Gildarts seemed surprised when she spoke, his brows rising, but he began the story anyway. "It was four years ago, when the College was making another excavation in some nearby ruins, studying magical sealing techniques. By the time we left, this brat accidentally picked my bag, and I took his."
As Natsu still kept his face buried in his hands, muttering curses, Lucy knew it would get interesting. For a brief moment, Lucy's gaze lingered on his hands, on his thin wrists and bony fingers, on the veins that the moist, warm air had brought to his pale skin. She tore her eyes away, glancing at Gildarts, who had a damned smug grin carved on his face. "Well, what was in the bag?"
"My bedtime readings, of course. All four volumes of Lusty Argonian Maid," Gildarts laughed. Each time he did, it felt like the walls shook and dust fell from the ceiling from the resonance of his voice. "Bet this boy had some good time with them until I realised I had the wrong bag, and came running and screaming after my precious books."
Lucy chuckled as Natsu shook his head. "Hey, I couldn't even understand what those were about! Just some rambling about… polishing spears and baking loaf, that's all."
"Liarrrr," Gildarts teased and began to quote lines from the book. "It went something like this: 'I must finish my cleaning, sir. The mistress will have my head if I do not!' said Lifts-Her-Tail. 'Cleaning, eh? I have something for you. Here, polish my spear,' said the master. There's no way you couldn't understand what that means." Gildarts laughed again, speaking in a rough, high-pitched voice as he imitated the Argonian maid. "But it is huge! It could take me all night!"
Everybody laughed but Natsu. Lucy held her fingers over her mouth, but she couldn't stop giggling as she kept looking at the fire mage. The look on his face was simply priceless.
"Lucy, didn't we find one of those books under my parent's bed when we were playing hide and seek with Haming?" Loke asked. It had been a long while since he had last spoken anything.
Lucy took a sip of the spicy mead to distract herself. She hadn't forgotten about reading those books herself, either, so she could relate to Natsu's embarrassment. "Yeah… we did. That day we kept a funeral for our innocence…"
Loke laughed. "I still remember that so well. 'This loaf isn't ready for baking, my sweet. It has yet to rise,' said the master. 'If only we could hurry that along. How would I accomplish such a task?' asked Lifts-Her-Tail. 'Oh, my foolish little Argonian maid, you must use your hands!'"
Gildarts snorted and turned his gaze to Natsu, a permanent smirk on his face. "Don't tell me that you would've needed illustrations to get that, Natsu."
"No, I fucking didn't," Natsu answered, finally lowering his hands from his face to take a drink from his wine cup. A faint blush adorned his cheeks, and Lucy knew it wasn't from the wine. "Igneel told me what that shit meant."
"That shit?" Gildarts repeated and glanced at Lucy, shaking his head. "I'm so sorry, lass. I tried to raise him properly, but eh, he seems to be missing some… instincts in his head. Here's this saying, 'The carried water won't stay in the well.' I just hope he still doesn't think that the dick goes through the belly button."
"What!?" Natsu shouted, eyes shot to the older mage. "I have never thought that!"
Lucy brought her hand to her forehead, leaning into it, trying to hide the blush that now crept to her own cheeks, too. Yes, she and Natsu were close, but were they really so close that everyone thought they were a couple? Even if they might be more than friends, they were definitely less than lovers. They were content with it. What was difficult was to explain that to the others.
"Well, eh…" Lucy started, still too embarrassed to even raise her voice. "We aren't… like…"
As Gildarts's shocked gaze flung to Lucy, Natsu lowered his eyes to the table, biting his lower lip again. The older mage stuttered, searching for words until he slammed his fist to the table like a disappointed father.
"Natsu!?" Gildarts said, almost shouting, yet there was still humour in his tone. "You… You still don't know how to do it? By the gods, I… I'm so disappointed in you. Utterly disappointed. Here's a lady in need and you just –"
Natsu turned towards Gildarts and shouted back. "For fuck's sake, Gildarts, just shut the fuck up."
" – I've always told you that when you find yourself a good lady, you've gotta keep her satisfied, or she's gonna end up like that farmer's wife in your pretty story."
"Lucy's not my wife, you know. She's a friend."
"Not yet, but I see what you're planning, son!"
"Right now, I'm planning on punching you to the fucking face!"
Gildarts glanced at Lucy, looking straight into her eyes. "Ah, you're one of those who've decided to wait until the priest's blessing? No wonder he's so frustrated –"
Natsu, having reached the end of this tolerance, rose from the table and punched Gildarts straight to the face. The old mage had either gotten too drunk to dodge that, or accepted the hit for the fun of it. His head swung back from the strength of Natsu's punch, blood bursting from his nose, but the grin on his face hadn't gone anywhere.
"You still hit like a girl," Gildarts mocked, wiping the blood that kept dripping from his nose. "Come on here, son, let's have a real brawl! It's been a while –"
Then Lucy stood up, grabbed Natsu from the shoulders and pulled him back to the chair, forcing him to sit. Lucy stayed behind him for a moment, pointing at his black eye. "I did that to him, so you better watch out what you say about hitting like a girl, old man. Calm the fuck down, both of you."
Natsu sighed, breathing out his annoyment while Lucy rubbed his bony shoulder with her hand. Gildarts seemed to disapprove her for standing between two men who sought to let some steam out, but she knew that a brawl between those two would end up destroying the entire sewer system of Riften, so they'd better hold it back. Natsu brought his hand on her fingers, brushed them gently, but whether he was shoving her off or thanking her, Lucy couldn't tell.
And when she finally sat back to her chair, she noticed how damn sourly Loke had been looking at them all the time. Why was he even spending the night with them if he couldn't stand Natsu's presence? Yes, Lucy was beyond happy to know Loke and his brother were alive, but she couldn't stand the mindset he was having. As if she was something he owned, property that had been stolen away. Lucy was considering kissing Natsu's cheeks just to annoy Loke, prove that he was wrong.
As a moment of silence passed, Gildarts raised his brows, still staring at Natsu's bruised eye and Lucy's small hands. "Now, that's confusing."
"Indeed. You –" started a new, sudden voice nearby. Lucy turned her eyes towards the voice, seeing a tall man with long, black hair and gleaming red eyes. The man pointed at Natsu. "– You confuse the un-living shit out of me. What the fuck are you?"
Natsu frowned, glaring at the newcomer. "I am Natsu of Dragonbridge, a fire wizard from the College of Winterhold, the burner of things and the lover of drinking in peace," Natsu said, sipped his drink and put it back to the table. His knuckles were bleeding. "What do you want?"
Boldly, the man walked to the other side of the table, seating himself next to Haming. A blue-haired, timid woman followed after him and silently took a seat between the man and Lucy. She nodded to Lucy, glancing at her from below her brows. Lucy stared at the black-haired man, whose red eyes were locked on Natsu. Fearful chills swept over Lucy's body. Natsu seemed to notice that, too – they both knew what he was.
A vampire.
"So, Natsu of Dragonbridge, the burner of things and the lover of drinking in peace, my name is Gajeel, nice to meet you," the vampire introduced himself. "I'd like to know why and how you are a vampire without being dead? You… You're almost like a halfling, but that's… that's impossible."
"Who knows?" Natsu shrugged, still clearly annoyed. Others seemed to have noticed his fangs as well, but there was no other way to tell he had almost become a vampire. The headaches in sunlight and heightened senses couldn't be known, at least to other mortals. "Maybe my father was a vampire or something."
"Horse's shit. Vampires can't have children," Gajeel answered. "I want to know what caused you to be like this, so please, be kind and tell me."
Gildarts looked at the fire mage, now curious, as if he had been thinking something all this time and only now realised it. "I knew something was different about you since we last met. Perhaps those fangs fit you too well, as if you always had them…" he said. "What happened? I'd like to know, too."
Natsu sighed and glanced at Lucy. He didn't want to tell this story, Lucy knew. It had been one of the worst, if not the worst day of his life. Though Gajeel looked extremely frightening, there was no hostility in the vampire's presence. Natsu probably just found that more suspicious. He didn't trust anyone by default, but maybe they could tell him what happened. Lucy smiled at him softly, and as if drawing comfort from that, Natsu began the story.
"So… I was infected with sanguinare vampiris some time back, and it developed pretty far before I was cured. Apparently, I'm just left like this. Happy?" Natsu said and glared at the vampire. "Get going now. I don't really have good experiences with vampires."
"Never mind Gajeel, he's a good guy," Haming commented after being silent for so long. He had now eaten his soup and was holding a mug in his hand, taking small, frequent sips. "Just don't get on his bad side."
Gajeel hummed quietly as Natsu's distrusts didn't go anywhere. "I see. Honestly, I'm quite impressed. For all my hundred and twenty-two years as a vampire, I've never seen anything like you before. Some vampires have been healed after the transformation, but those are rather… dehumanized. That's when things get ugly. How many days were you in? Two and a half?"
"Less than an hour from becoming full three days," Lucy answered. She remembered how Erza had said how a fully transformed vampire could be cured, but that it was a gruesome process. The end result was usually worse than vampirism itself. She was still so glad that Natsu didn't go that far.
"Close call, indeed," Gajeel said, turning his haunting gaze back to the fire mage. "Who cured you, then?"
"A former wizard from the College of Winterhold named Ur. Did a ritual on me or something, with alchemy and stuff. I can't remember anything tho, I was pretty much out of it at that point," Natsu explained, his voice quiet. "Before that, her adoptive son Lyon tried to heal me with a regular potion for curing diseases, but that didn't work."
"Lyon," muttered the blue-haired woman, and suddenly everyone's gaze was on her. Lucy noticed how the woman shivered at the mentioned name. "No, it cannot be… cannot be… No, it can be!"
"Excuse me?" Natsu wondered.
"Gray was adopted with Lyon… The same woman, the wizard, she adopted Lyon and Gray…" the woman kept muttering. "Was… Was Gray of Dawnstar there, too? Did you… Did you meet him?"
Natsu nodded, still confused. "Yeah, he was there."
Then the woman squalled, then covered her hands with her mouth to muffle herself. Natsu blinked in surprise, then sullenly stared at the woman.
"Eh… You know that perverted son of a bitch or something?"
"Juvia knows him! Yes, Juvia knows! Gray and Juvia were in the Honorhall Orphanage at the same time, Gray saved Juvia so many times… Yes, Gray saved Juvia from extra beating… Got beaten by himself instead… He even got locked in the room for Juvia's stead…"
Natsu didn't seem to understand what the woman was talking about. With a deep frown on his forehead, he asked, "Who the fuck is Juvia?"
"She is," Gajeel said and pointed at the blue-haired woman, then swirled his finger at his own temple and lowered his voice. "She's just rather… messed up in the head."
Natsu nodded and glanced at Lucy, looking slightly terrified. Gray had mentioned about living in Riften, being in the Orphanage, but he hadn't spoken much more about it. If this poor woman's mind had fragmented so badly that she spoke about herself in the third person, it meant that the things were truly terrible out there. Had Gray truly helped her then, or had she been imagining things? Lucy couldn't tell anything but that Juvia certainly had developed some affection towards the frost wizard – affection that was persistent enough to last for years after they had departed.
"So, is Gray still in Morthal?" Juvia asked, her tone hopeful and excited.
"Can't tell," Natsu answered awkwardly. "He's probably headed back to the College already."
Juvia turned towards Gajeel, eyes sparkling.
"How long it takes to travel to Winterhold?" she asked.
"Three or four weeks by foot," Gildarts answered before the vampire could say anything. He probably knew the route best anyway.
"By Kynareth, Juvia has to go there immediately… No! Juvia still doesn't have the Amulet of Mara… Juvia has to work, work and save money and buy the amulet first before –"
"Just… Just wait a moment here, what are you going to do?" Lucy asked with a soft, confused smile. Amulet of Mara? Was she really going to –
"Juvia is going to marry Gray of Dawnstar, but she has to propose first." The blue-haired woman crossed her fingers below her chin, closing her eyes as she began to dream. "Juvia needs an Amulet of Mara to –"
"Why in the fucking Oblivion would anyone want to marry Gray of Dawnstar?" Natsu exclaimed and glanced into his half-empty wine cup. "I'm not drunk enough to be hearing things yet –"
"Juvia is just so happy… Juvia finally knows where her beloved Gray is! Juvia has been searching for all these years and now, now you finally appeared, the brilliant messenger, to tell me where Gray is!" Juvia said and rose from the table, hurried to the fire mage and leant closer. "Juvia wants to thank you with a warm embrace –"
"Hey, get off me!" Natsu hissed to the woman, and shoved her away. Juvia froze in place, then walked back to her chair, the smile returning on her face.
Lucy knew not why she felt glad that Natsu had rejected Juvia's friendly hug. He looked at Lucy now, as if he was sorry that anything like that had been even close to happening. Well, the last time a stranger woman came too close to him, he was infected with vampirism. Being distrustful was a natural result, and besides, he didn't like being touched. It had been obvious to Lucy since Fort Amol, when the Wood Elf woman had tried to get him into bed. But did he refuse them simply because he didn't want them, or because he didn't want them to hurt him?
Getting into bed with someone meant lowering your guard. Even accepting a hug these days meant lowering your guard, since everyone could have a dagger in their hand. Lucy remembered how Natsu's whole body had tensed when she had hugged him back then when he had told her about Jellal. He had been expecting her to hurt him, he had been scared, but that fear was now gone. At the alchemist's shack, Natsu had clung to her like a child who'd never been held in loving arms, felt safe enough to fall asleep as she had stroked his hair.
Maybe Lucy was the only person in the world Natsu could trust.
A soft smile rose on Lucy's lips. She took that implicit of trust in her as an honour, something she would never break. Once again, she took a sip of the spicy mead to distract herself from her thoughts before she'd get blushed, because that was exactly how she felt about Natsu, too. She'd trust him, and only him, with her life. She knew in her heart that she'd always be safe in his hands, no matter how dark and grim the world around them would get.
The blue-haired woman continued her happy rambling as she had seated down next to Lucy. "It's finally coming true… Juvia has been just dreaming about this for so long, dreaming about all the ten children we are promised to have by the blessing of Mara herself, with her empty arms aching for the love –"
"Ten children?" Lucy asked, brows knitted together. "Just how can you know how many children you're going to have with… with Gray?"
"Juvia knows. Juvia has seen it in a dream. Seven sons, three daughters. Two sets of twins. Thankfully, Juvia has the right hips for the job…"
Lucy chuckled. It was impossible to imagine Gray as a father, especially as a father of ten. By the gods, would they all inherit his… stripping habit? Lucy pitied Juvia for what she was getting signed into, but there was another thing that interested her.
"Eh… Could it… Could it be possible for you to know how many children someone else is going to have?" Lucy asked timidly.
She soon realised how ridiculous it sounded, but she couldn't pass any opportunity of finding some confirmation for Krosulhah's prophecy about her supposed infertility. If Juvia was so certain about her own future, perhaps she could see someone else's, too?
"Yes," the woman answered, sparking little hope in Lucy's heart. "Juvia knows for sure that Gajeel is going to have none."
"Oh, really?" Lucy wondered. She noticed the way Natsu glanced at her – she hadn't told him anything about this… issue, for she knew she wouldn't understand the matter of female fertility. He barely knew how babies were made. Or at least, so she believed… she wasn't entirely sure how much he knew, except that he had no first-hand experience on the subject.
"As I said, vampires can't have children," Gajeel answered, as if was supposed to be self-explanatory.
"And how is that?" Loke asked.
It surprised her not that Loke joined the conversation now. The sourness was beginning to fade from his face the more he kept drinking, but a part of his confidence was gone. Like he had been just sitting there in silence, trying to plan a victory on a game he knew he was losing.
Gajeel lifted his large, broad shoulders. "It's simple. No life can grow in a dead body."
Loke frowned. "Yeah, yeah, I get that vampire women can't bear babies, but you're a man. Isn't that –"
"It's even simpler," the vampire answered with a grin on his lips, revealing his sharp fangs. "No heartbeat, no bloodstream, no erection."
As the vampire laughed, Lucy shielded her eyes with her hand, regretting that she ever started the discussion. Loke's jaw almost fell to the floor, as did Gildarts's. Haming chuckled by himself while sipping his drink, but Natsu suddenly paled. He stared at the vampire without uttering a single word. It would've been hilarious to know what was going on in his mind. The look on his face said it simply enough. Oh gods, that could've been me.
"But… how do you get the deed done, then?" Loke asked, frightened and confused. "Can't you… can't you do it at all…"
"With two sticks and leather strips," Gajeel answered and roared into laughter with Haming and Gildarts. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, holding back a chuckle. Why in the name of Sheogorath did she have to imagine that? "If you think you can please a woman only with your cock, then you know nothing about pleasing a woman."
As Lucy grew nervous with where the conversation was going – again – she drank a mouthful of the mead. It burned her mouth once more. Natsu poured himself another wine cup, and Lucy couldn't say how many he had had already. Quite many, but at least this time he had eaten before he started drinking. If he looked for courage or distraction from the wine, Lucy couldn't tell, but he was just as hilariously nervous as she was.
When the laughter calmed down, Gildarts asked, "How do you enjoy life, then? Don't tell me you've lived an entire century in celibacy? I can hardly go a week without a woman's care before my nuts go nuts and explode."
"Let me tell you one thing, oldie. We vampires don't need sex. We drink blood," Gajeel explained. "You mortals think that lovemaking is the greatest pleasure of life, but you're wrong. The greatest pleasures are found in the un-life. Trust me when I say that after the first feeding, every new vampire forgets what sex even was."
Natsu looked anxiously into his wine mug, staring at the blood-red liquid for a moment before taking a gulp.
"That's how much you liked tasting my blood?" Lucy whispered to him, smirking. Natsu almost spat his wine back to the cup, and didn't answer. "Sorry, I couldn't resist."
"Eh… Well, I…" Natsu stuttered, scratching the back of his head. "I can't really tell, since I…"
Lucy giggled, turning her face away to spare him from the nervous, awkward explanation. Though, she couldn't help but think how he had experienced the taste of her blood. And from the way how extremely difficult he became went asked, it perhaps meant that Gajeel was right.
"So, you drink blood and you're happy with that?" Gildarts asked then. "Interesting… But don't you kill the ones you feed on?"
Gajeel shook his head. "No, of course not. What do you think we vampires are? Some blood-thirsty beasts who only care about satiating their hunger, seeing you mortals as cattle?"
"Well, yeah, basically," Loke answered.
"You're wrong, lad. I never kill those I feed on. Look at Juvia. She's doing fairly well."
Loke's eyes widened. "You… You feed on her?"
"It's kind of an agreement between us. We're friends, you see," Gajeel said, looking at the blue-haired woman on his side. "I'll offer her protection, she offers me some virgin blood whenever I'm too lazy to head out there to get some variety to my diet."
"Juvia's blood replenishes very fast," she assured, and then Lucy noticed the bite mark on the woman's wrist, teeth pierced through her veins, several times.
Lucy remembered that blue-haired Imperials – Juvia was an Imperial, judging from her built and facial features – were descendants of a priest of Kynareth who, due to a covenant formed with the goddess of the sky, had azure hair. Those born with hair like that shared a fragment of the covenant, and had a special talent. Lucy wondered what Juvia's was. Perhaps something important, if she needed protection.
"Doesn't she get infected with vampirism that way?" Haming wondered.
"There's a way to prevent sanguinare vampiris from spreading upon feeding. It's a trick I do when I feed," Gajeel said. "Look, a vampire's got to eat. I'd rather do it civilly. There are many of our kind out there who don't know how to do it without unnecessary deaths. Yeah, I know, we vampires always end up killing our first feed, because that first time is just something… different. It never gets better than that, unfortunately. But, anyway, there are some deals we can make to satiate our hunger, and even keep our meals walking straight back to us."
"Yeah, like manipulating your victim's mind?" Natsu asked bitterly. By now, he seemed to have recovered from the initial shock of learning that all vampires were impotent. But no matter how Gajeel tried to assure that not all vampires were bad – in fact, Lucy was buying his explanation – Natsu didn't trust him.
"Victims? Go ask a lady I've fed on if she considerers herself a victim," Gajeel said. "I'm a gentleman, lad. I love women. I live for them."
The other men at the table glared at the vampire, curiosity in their gazes, but none of them dared to ask anything. Well, Lucy didn't think Natsu actually cared to know more, but the rest certainly did.
"What exactly do you do, then?" Lucy asked, then cursed silently by herself. Damn. The drink was strong, and affecting more than she liked. She always became too bold when she was drunk.
"Are you interested in my services, my lady?"
Embarrassed, Lucy shook her head. "Uhm, no thanks, I'm… I'm just curious."
Gajeel nodded. "To put it short, I please women in a way no other man can, and they give me their blood in return. With proper aftercare, they don't get anaemic or infected, and they keep coming back to me. Dinner served every night."
Well, she hadn't been expecting that answer. Her cheeks flared with a blush just from wondering what it meant to be pleased in a way no other man could, but that was only a drunken wonder. Alcohol made her affectionate for sure, and the presence of such an intrusive thought made her close the bottle. Making out with Cana in Jorrvaskr had been completely different, just girls' fun, nothing too serious… If her father would slaughter her for knowing that she slept with a mage, even if they didn't do anything like that, what would he do if she traded her blood for some special treatment from a male vampire courtezan? Possibly rise from the ashes and come here, pour a barrel of bear fat on the vampire and set him on fire.
But well, what was dead was dead. As Natsu had assured her, her father couldn't do anything to her now. She had the freedom to do whatever she wanted, whether it meant purchasing services from a vampire or sleeping with a mage with a criminal past… Wait, what? Lucy almost slapped herself to snap herself out of that intrusive thought. What she had thought about Gajeel had been just a joke, but about Natsu, well…
Maybe, maybe after the night at Jorrvaskr, something in her had changed. Nothing bad happened from the affection she had shared with Cana. Damn, she had the girl's tongue in her throat and all over her neck and breasts, and she didn't get her family name soiled and ruined. Well, her family no longer existed, but anyway. It had been fun. She had been mortified afterwards, but it had faded by now, faded to the point where she felt like doing it again. Yes, she had been terrified to wake up next to Natsu because having that kind of fun with boys could lead to certain… consequences, and back then she didn't know she was fated to remain childless.
So, what was there left to be afraid of?
Lucy squeezed her eyes shut and dragged her fingers down her face. Damn it, she cursed silently, tried to glance at Natsu, but had to turn away the moment she laid eyes on him. Maybe it would still be better to have fun with a girl instead? She glanced at Juvia. She was a beautiful lass, with large, sorrowful blue eyes, but the way she still kept muttering about Gray of Dawnstar rubbed her the wrong way. And the moment she thought about Gray, how she had seen him in all naked glory, covered in troll blood and guts, all her desires to have fun disappeared. Perhaps she should tell that story to Juvia…
"So, you're like a manwhore," Gildarts asked after a moment of confused silence. His tone didn't reveal whether he approved that or not. "The ladies just pay with their blood."
"Trust me, I have a lot of customers who are utterly disappointed in the way their husbands treat them," Gajeel answered sharply. "You Nord men are the worst of all lovers. You do your women like dogs and leave them cold. But well, that's what keeps me well fed."
Gildarts, Loke, and Haming went suddenly very quiet. Lucy bit her lip as she tried not to laugh – that burn was exactly what those three deserved. Cana had said the same thing, that Nord men make love like dogs, so it had to be a common issue indeed. But the thing the Companion told about Bretons, could that be true? That they were like… magicians?
"I'm gonna go take a piss," Haming said then and began to rise from the chair, fumbling for his crutches. "Help me out, brother?"
Loke nodded awkwardly, stood up and helped Haming on his feet – no, foot, as Lucy kept forgetting Haming had lost a leg. Loke made sure he was strongly supported on the wooden sticks, then began to walk towards the crappers on the back of the tavern.
"We'll be right back," Loke said to them as they went.
Gildarts rose as well. "I'm out of wine," he told, leaving the table too.
Lucy blinked at the sudden departure of all Nord men. Natsu sighed, shaking his head as he drank again until his mug was empty, and Gajeel kept grinning as if he was a winner. Juvia was still mumbling about Gray, but nobody had listened to her in a while.
"Did they just really take that under their skin?" Lucy chuckled when the Nords were out of hearing distance. "Makes me ashamed to be a Nord."
"The gingerhead has been trying to get under Juvia's skirt for weeks now," Juvia said then. "He won't accept that Juvia is saving her virginity for her future husband."
Gajeel cocked his head, his eyes at the direction where Loke had gone. "Somebody should teach the brat a lesson. Whining and whinging won't make a lady accept you. The exact opposite happens."
"Yeah, I know," Lucy agreed and sighed. "Yeah, I know…"
Well, if Loke had been trying to get under Juvia's skirt for weeks, it meant that he was probably doing it to every other woman in town. Even in Helgen, Loke kept telling honeyed words to other girls when Lucy didn't notice. When she had found out about that, all the tiniest feelings she had for him had died. If she wanted herself a man, she wanted a faithful one, not someone whose cock was community property.
Lucy sighed. What a celebration it was, indeed, now that everyone was offended. What they were even supposed to celebrate? Reunions of long-lost friends? The appearance of the Dragonborn who Gildarts falsely believed to be Natsu? Maybe they should just go to sleep already. She was getting tired of listening to all this talk about cocks, whether they were working or not. Trying to gather herself and not think anything funny, she glanced at Natsu. She was about to ask if he'd want to stay up or come to sleep with her, but he appeared to be too deep in thought to hear.
Then, Natsu raised his eyes to Gajeel. "But since you're a vampire…" he started quietly and cleared his throat. "Well, in Morthal they were hunting down the vampires. It was a real menace there. Aren't the guards trying to kill you all the time?"
"Nobody is trying to kill me. I'm a harmless vampire, you see," Gajeel assured and grinned. "Yeah, I might've killed the first lady I fed on, but that was over a hundred years ago. Nobody remembers that anymore. Besides, I don't always have to even bite their necks or wrists. A woman is at her best during her moon time, if you catch my meaning, ha!"
The hot blush kept deepening on her face as she pictured that, suddenly realising how much sense it made for a vampire to please a woman when she was already bleeding. Lucy buried her face into her hands, unable to cast it out of her mind.
Natsu leaned closer to her and poked her arm with his finger. "Uhm, Lucy… what's moon time?" he asked silently.
"You don't need to know!" she hissed back, shoving him away.
"Alright, now I'm confused as fuck," Natsu said as he straightened himself in the chair. He rubbed his chin and turned his gaze back to Gajeel. He seemed a little less distrusting now, as if some kind of curiosity was overthrowing his loathing for the vampire. "Eh, Gajeel was your name? There's… There's actually something I'd like to discuss you with."
Lucy lowered her hands from her face, blankly staring at the fire mage.
"Go on, buddy," Gajeel said happily. "Always glad to help a fellow vampire, even if you're just a halfling."
"It's… It's a thing of a private matter," Natsu answered nervously, then looked at Lucy again. "Will you… Will you hang out with Juvia for a moment if I go talk with him?"
Suddenly, Lucy's heart was beating itself out of her chest, but she nodded, stuttering, "Yeah, of course."
"Good. I'll be back," Natsu said. He spoke quickly, almost too quickly for her to understand. Then he rose from the chair. "Uhm, Juvia, you wanted to hear more about how Gray's doing nowadays? Lucy can tell you a thing or two. We were travelling together just recently."
Juvia's eyes shot to the mage. "Really?" she asked jubilantly. "Please, Juvia wants to know everything!"
Lucy snorted. Yeah, you want to know how your dear future husband was slaughtering frost trolls with his dick standing up? However, she didn't wish to ruin that for her, so she kept that knowledge to herself. Besides, what if Juvia would get jealous? She had seen everything, after all.
"Well, I'm a mage from the College, too, but I didn't get to know him too well –"
"Gray is the bravest, fiercest Nord there is! Juvia and Gray were just kids, both orphaned and taken to the terrible, terrible Honorhall on the mercy of Grelod the Kind, but he kept protecting her, keeping her safe all the time…"
Lucy's gaze followed Natsu as he headed to their bedchamber with Gajeel. He looked so ridiculously short compared to the vampire. Lucy couldn't tell what Gajeel's race was. The vampire was as tall as a High Elf, but didn't have the typical features of them. His ears were slightly pointed, his eyes large and slit the same way as Natsu's, but his bodily build was too sturdy to be of a Breton's. Perhaps he was a mongrel, a child of a High Elf and a Breton? However, Lucy didn't mind enough to ask. Other things occupied her mind.
What in Mara's name was Natsu going to ask from the vampire?
"… he's simply the most handsome, most well-built man of Tamriel, and he's going to be Juvia's husband. He has promised her this, when the scholar came to adopt him, that he would come back and marry Juvia! And for all that time, Juvia has been waiting for him…"
Lucy's mind began to filter the blue-haired woman's endless rambling about Gray of Dawnstar. Her cheeks were still burning, her heart drumming. She picked the mead bottle and downed it all just to distract herself from these thoughts. Her mouth and throat now burned, but the feeling just wouldn't go away.
Just what, what was something that Natsu didn't want her to hear? A private matter? By the Gods, if… did he want to learn those tricks about pleasing a woman? Could that be true? No, not him, he wasn't like that… or was he?
Now the spice of the mead truly turned her face hot, sweat beginning to drip down from her forehead. She frantically waved her hands at her cheeks, but the moist, warm air just made it worse. Fucking fuck, she kept cussing to herself, soon Natsu would come back and she would be as red as an overripe tomato. Now she understood why the drink was named Dragon's Breath. It felt as if flames were striking out of her mouth. There was no water on the table, and she didn't dare to go ask it from the angry-looking barkeeper either. Asking for water in a place like this? He'd just laugh at her face and offer her another mead instead.
Suddenly, Lucy noticed a mug of milk at Haming's place.
Relieved to find something that wasn't alcohol, Lucy took the mug into her hands, trusting that Haming wouldn't get mad if she'd drink that. It was just milk. Haming had never been a friend of alcohol, and now it was even more likely to not drink it, since it would hinder his recovery. She remembered that back in Helgen, Haming often suffered from sleeplessness, and used to drink honeyed milk with cinnamon and clove to help him fall asleep. Haming had made the same drink for her when she had been upset.
Lucy brought the mug to her lips and sipped it, familiar tastes dancing on her burning tongue, bringing back a warm memory of childhood. The milk alleviated the pain caused by the spice, soothing it away as she drank another mouthful. She swirled the liquid with the spoon and noticed there was something sticky on the bottom of the mug. It was like honey, but pink, like dyed with a flower. She smiled slightly, gathered the honey into the spoon and brought it into her mouth.
Then, her senses exploded from the sweetness.
A little voice in the back of her mind said that it wasn't honey. It didn't matter what it truly was, because at that moment, all the pain was gone. Eagerly, she drank more and more until the mug was empty. Beside her, Juvia was still blabbering about her beloved Gray, but Lucy couldn't hear. She wiped the milk from her upper lip and then sneakily slid the mug back to Haming's place. The hotness on her cheeks began to drift away, as if her body was melting into something soft and warm, like a cloud of morning mist that cured all the aches in the world.
Soon, two Gildartses walked back to the table with four wine bottles. Lucy had to blink at the sight, and then the two mages merged into one. The tavern was swaying, she was hearing colours and seeing sounds… just what in the world had been in that milk? Oh well, she didn't care. Lucy began to giggle, the laughter bubbling within her chest like gentle butterflies on a summer night. All the things she had formerly been ashamed of, been taught to be ashamed of, vanished into the Void with all her regrets, hesitations, inhibitions. Like for once, just this once in her life the chains that had been holding her down were broken.
Haming and Loke returned from their piss break. Loke's hair was purple, Haming's was green, their hands rippled like water as they seated on the table. Lucy couldn't stop laughing. Loke's eyes enlarged as he stared at her in wonderment, perhaps thinking that she was giggling at Juvia's stories, when in fact she hadn't been listening to them at all. Juvia's voice stopped when the vampires – Lucy just laughed more when she thought of Natsu and Gajeel as vampires when Natsu was just a halfling – came back as well. Gajeel said something to Juvia, who then rose and followed her vampire companion to someplace else.
And as Natsu took a seat next to her, Lucy forgot to breathe, and time seemed to slow down.
"Alright, Lucy, what's so funny?" the mage asked, his voice sounding like a song.
Lucy couldn't answer, so enraptured she was by the sight. His green eyes were sparkling as emeralds in moonlight, the aura of his brilliant magicka gleaming around him like the sun itself. Her heart simply leapt out of her chest, shattered on the cold stone floor, but she'd pick up all the pieces and give them to his arms, as only he could make her whole.
He had never looked as beautiful as he did tonight.
A/N: To be continued...
... IMMEDIATELY
Yes, this chapter turned out to be almost 17k long, so I split in half where it switches to Natsu's point of view, but unlike usually, I'm posting both parts at the same time.
I'll be back in the author notes in the second part, because oh boy, I've got a lot to say.
