» chapter four

» in which natsu gets another cat

Shit. Shit, shit, shit to the tenth degree. Things seemed innocent enough at first, but now he was staring Death in the face—no, worse, he was balancing on the doorjamb that led into the deepest, darkest pits of Hell, and for once, that fire was not going to be the pleasurable kind.

Things started well enough: they reached the resort, and he recovered from his motion sickness in a decent enough amount of time that they could still have fun in the water. He and Gray had a sand castle building competition first, which turned into a sand fortress building competition, but the winner ended up as Erza, "just because" in her words, and neither had the balls to challenge that logic.

"Hey, you guys up for water volleyball?" Lucy called with a grin, Loki smirking behind her as he bounced the ball between his hands.

"I can assure you, you won't win this battle," he said confidently, pushing his glasses up his nose. Natsu dearly wished that they would fall off and be swept out to sea.

"Natsu, you're not coming?" Erza questioned as he hung back, glaring daggers at his sand fortress. He shook his head no and pulled his scarf down from his forehead to his mouth.

"Nah… Gonna work some more on this," he mumbled into the fabric. She gave him a hard look before exhaling and walking off with Gray, who muttered some encouragement to him. Gods, he'd need all the encouragement he could get.

"You forgot one thing!" Happy flew over and tied a dead jellyfish to the stick he called a flagpole. "Now it's perfect!"

"We'll call it Fort Dragneel."

"Why not Fort Happy?" Natsu waved him off.

"No offense, but that sounds weak. Like, if it was Fort Rage, it'd sound better."

"What about Fort Shark?"

"No, too late! I already send in the report."

"It's never too late!" Happy protested. Natsu and him went back-and-forth over the hypothetical name of their hypothetical fort for a long while until Happy grew tired of it and went to play volleyball with the girls and Loki. Natsu waved him off and was just about to build a sand guardian dragon for his fortress when Loki called out to him:

"Come on, Natsu, I've never known you to miss out on a competition or fun!"

"Well I'm having plenty of fun right here," he replied petulantly, putting extra work into the claws.

"Natsu, team fun is not optional!" Erza said, attempting to be commanding but with laughter still high in her voice. He set his jaw and didn't bother looking up even if it meant a surefire (literal) iron fist to his skull.

It was petty as fuck, but he didn't want to have fun that involved the lion, both because he was afraid what he might do to Loki and that he didn't trust himself too near Lucy. He already almost blew things earlier at his house because of his stupid lack of stupid self-control. He fully intended on avoiding her until he could get his burgeoning emotions in order, which was a feat in itself—"order" and "Natsu's emotions" had never gone hand-in-hand, but with Lucy he was tempted to move mountains if it would keep her happy, and as things were, her happiness was tied to their platonic relationship—but there she was in his den, his cave in essence, and her scent mixed with his all over the area made his insides curl.

He swore to himself he'd get his shit done and over with sans baggage, then she had to go and cut herself like a weirdo, and when he looked into her eyes, nearly all bets were off. Her soft skin suddenly seemed even softer beneath his grip, and more so around the exposed area where her neck and collarbone met her light blue shirt. His heart raced, his skin burned, and he wanted to taste it so badly it was nearly painful. He wanted to mark her, make sure everyone knew that Lucy was his and his alone. She licked her lips and he wanted to follow the trail with his own tongue, then his teeth, then with his lips in a way that would make her forget Loki even existed. Loki's name essentially snapped him from his fugue, and he barely managed to cover his tracks before she caught on to something being amiss.

But, at the end of the day, something was amiss—a pretty damn fucking big something that was starting to plague his sleeping thoughts as much as his waking ones and affect him physically on top of emotionally. Would things have been better had he still been ignorant/in denial? He was sure the answer was in the positive simply because reality was becoming too much to stand: He was in love with his partner, his best friend, and whatever dragon instincts that were inside of him were making it a borderline obsession.

"Natsu, just come over here already!"

That voice, that accursed voice, was like electricity, shocking him stiff and dragging his head over to the water. Lucy was waving at him excitedly, water rolling down her light, creamy skin in rivulets and plastering her thick golden locks to her grinning face. Her strapless bikini did nothing to restrain those beautiful assets on either the top or bottom, nor did her sudden lurch at the ball coming in her direction. She shifted, slipping a little as the water threw off her balance, before clasping her hands together and hitting the ball towards Gray, and Natsu's mouth went dry as everything bounced from the movement.

"Nice hit, Lucy," Gray praised with a smirk.

"Thanks!" She smiled that timid smile of hers and ran a small hand down the side of her neck—coincidentally, the same side that had been tormenting Natsu for a fair amount of time—and shook her head from side to side, letting her hair flail like a literal slash of gold against the blue sky before it returned to the exquisite shape of her body.

Gods, she was going to kill him. She was going to accomplish what dozens of twisted bastards couldn't do and cause him to die in a massive inferno triggered by a stupid game of water volleyball.

"Happy," he whispered, though he couldn't tell if he was really whispering or not. His friend returned from an ice cream stand with a blue Popsicle shaped like a carp.

"Yeah?"

"Can you do something…anything…to get them out of the water?"

"Okay," he said after a moment of thought, scarfing down the last of the Popsicle and flapping away to an area of the water cordoned off from swimming before diving beneath the whitecaps. Maybe a minute later, a huge wave broke the surface, wrenching all the visitors from the sea and tossing them to the sand with a joint panicked sound of screaming. A huge, puke-green kraken followed the wave with a screeching roar—it wasn't an S-Class beast, but it looked to be in the average power range. Natsu didn't know how Happy did it, but he was thankful nonetheless.

"How— You know what? I'm not even going to question it," Gray sighed, shaking his head as he pulled on his swim trunks. Double win: Natsu had also saved several poor swimmers the image of a butt-naked Fullbuster.

"Trouble just follows us on vacation," Lucy whined. Loki chuckled good-naturedly as he changed into his usual suit.

"I don't know about you all, but a good fight also constitutes a relaxing vacation for me," Erza smirked, reequipping to her Heaven's Wheel armor.

"I don't know about you guys," Natsu said with a grin, lighting his fists, "but I've got a fire in my gut that's ragin' to go wreck shit."

"Just don't wreck the resort— Who am I kidding?" Lucy sighed as they charged into the fight.

The kraken was fun, if a little too easy, and he got to show up Gray by burning off more tentacles than he froze, which was a decent win in his book, plus takoyaki, which made it all worth it in his opinion. With his magic capped off and good food in his belly he had believed to be the day well spent.

Which brought him back to the present moment of his own personal hell.

"Pet me once?" Lucy implored, her lidded eyes blinking with what she thought was sexy charm as she tugged on his dark red yukata, curtesy of the resort. Right behind her was Erza, whose yukata had been spread at the chest just enough to be improper, as she waved the half-full bottle of booze angrily.

"Where is the—hic—takoyaki? Natsu, did you eat it all? I'll cut you open and take it back!" she roared, slamming her fists down on their room's coffee table hard enough to crack it. He winced at the sound and exchanged a look with Gray, who was similarly freaked by the whole situation. As Happy was blessedly deep asleep on the lounge's cushions, stuffed full of kraken, it was left to the two unlucky men to handle the blasted females.

"Where the hell is Loki? He should be dealing with this, not me," Natsu groused.

"He said he was going to the gambling hall—I don't think he'll be coming back anytime soon," Gray responded, shaking his head slightly. Natsu gritted his teeth, annoyed. Really, that lion could hang around like an infection every second Natsu loathed his presence, but the one time he could've been useful, he was out? The last thing he wanted to handle was Lucy intoxicated, let alone Erza intoxicated, but it would have been significantly more difficult to hail Jellal over Loki.

(The last Natsu heard, Crime Sorcière was somewhere in southwestern Fiore, and through Lacrima conversations that he wouldn't admit to having received if face-to-face with the Council, he knew that they were alive and well and tracking down any remnants of Tartaros that may exist. Also, even if they were testified on contact with the Independent Guild, all evidence was hoarded and treasured—ahem, stored in Erza's dorm, and no one would dare step foot there to retrieve them.)

"Rock paper scissors for who takes who?" he offered.

"You're on." Several to-be-resolved-later games later, Natsu had the privilege of taking a bashed Lucy while Gray had Erza. Both wished each other a silent Good luck as they went to the rooms that were supposed to be shared, males to one and females to the other, and Natsu laid Lucy down on what was supposed to be Gray's futon.

"C'mon, Luce, get to sleep," he sighed, sitting back and crossing his legs. The sooner you do, the sooner I can go back to sulking. Not that he enjoyed a sleeping Lucy that he couldn't touch asleep in the same room as him, but he found that choice better than a drunken Lucy that would be all over him and, still, that he couldn't touch.

"No!" she wailed, staring at him with imploring eyes and rolling to her side. "'m not sleepy at all."

"Gods can someone just take pity on me?"

"Pet me?" she said again, looking at him hopefully. He inched away with a strained expression as she attempted to claw her way up his torso, and after a moment he gave up entirely and patted her on the head.

"There, now stop." But she didn't, and instead she started rubbing on him even more. Her proximity, plus the top of the yukata being pulled down over her cleavage, was immensely distracting. His fangs were certainly cutting his lip to shreds as he gritted his teeth and tried to ease her off of him.

"Is your kitty being bad?" she queried, tilting her head to the side curiously. "Do you want to punish me-ow?" He didn't know whether to roll his eyes or bawl at the general absurdity of the situation. Maybe both.

"You're taking a page from Virgo's book now?"

"Meow," she hummed, nuzzling her head against his arm. He shivered at the sensation and tried backing away again, but his hand slipped and he fell backwards onto the tatami mat. Lucy grinned crookedly as she climbed over him, hands weakly clasped around his wrists. He knew that if he really tried, he could pull free, but his body wasn't willing to cooperate.

"Luce, it's time for b-bed, Lucy," he begged. Please, please, please—I'm talkin' to any god out there that can stand me right now, please don't make either of us do something we'll regret!

"I'm a kitty," she continued anyway, giving him a coy smile that wasn't the least bit affected by her drunken state. "Did you know kitties go into heat?"

I know I'm going into heat, he thought as sweat beaded atop his warming skin. She purred and lowered her head, nuzzling his neck and letting her loose hair tickle his face. Her scent filled his nose like a drug and he couldn't help himself as he wrapped his arms around her tight, bringing her body flush against his. His breath choked off as he realized what he'd done, but she couldn't bring herself to mind in her state. She giggled and slapped her hands against his cheeks. "Natsu!" she said with the excitement of a little girl. "You're burning up! Are you sick?"

"Lovesick," he mumbled before he could stop himself. She tilted her head to the side, eyebrows raised, and he thought To hell with it, she's drunk. "Why did you pick Loki over me?"

"Why?" she echoed, smiling a little. "Why, why, why… Because!"

"Because what?"

"Because you're not a lovey-dovey person!" she blurted like it was just too obvious. "You care sometimes, but you're just loud and obnoxious and you're always teasing me," she pouted with no real hurt in her voice. "I want someone that'll hold my hand when we walk together and buy me chocolates just because and tuck my hair behind my ear as an excuse for kissing me."

"Ain't that some Romance novel shit?"

"There's nothing wrong with Romance novels," she protested. "And they're written that way for a reason—they show real romanticism. You're not romantic…at…all," she said, punctuating the last two words with two taps on his nose.

He squinted at her in disbelief—he didn't know she had such high expectations for a relationship. Then again, it made sense considering how Lucy was: she was an (unpublished) author and a general dreamer, so she had high expectations for a lot of things. Things that had to do with romance especially, now that he thought about it—it was why she put so much effort with all that makeup and perfume and pretty clothes. In her eyes, love was all that big useless shit like "just because" flowers and chocolate and fancy dresses and lots of gunk, but to him love was two people that really liked each other being together. It put things into perspective then, that realization: he could go on acting as he did for the rest of eternity, but as long as he held his belief and Lucy hers, they wouldn't be able to have a proper, satisfying relationship.

It wasn't that he particularly needed to be in a relationship with her—not that he didn't want it; no, he wanted it so badly it was becoming consistently painful—but he did see them at the very least still being a team far into the future. He knew he wouldn't react to every one of her future boyfriends as he did Loki, but he doubted his self-control when it came to the subject, so things didn't look good for him on that end. And even if he somehow miraculously, blessedly managed the impossible and reigned in his emotions, his sanity would be the next to go, for as long as he had to see her and be near her every single day, she would be all he could think about. Hell, even when they were apart, she polluted his mind.

He put a fair amount of thought into when, exactly, Lucy had become all he could think about and saw that it hadn't been with Loki—it had been a long time before that. Around the Grand Magic Games, maybe, when he felt general concern over her after the attacks by Flare and Minerva border something stronger. Then the whole thing with Future Lucy happened, and that was when his heart became unbalanced. He missed her as he trained after Tartaros, missed her face and her smell and even her damn Lucy Kicks, and it wasn't until he saw her again at the next Grand Magic Games that he realized how much was missing without her.

Lucy, in short, was his drug, slowly killing him not with brute force or infinite magic like his opponents, but with pleasure, and the darkest sort at that. And as much as Natsu wanted to walk that road as far as it went, testing limits as per his nature, he feared that at some point, he'd pass the point of no return for both himself and her.

"Maybe I'm not," he supposed, returning to the world with an exhausted sigh. She brightened at being proven correct—well, at least some things didn't change with her drunkenness—and giggled again.

"But it's okay," she continued, her voice slurring a little. "'cause you're Natsu, and I'd never want you to be like Loki."

"Good." If he one day woke up as gelled-up and slick and womanizing as Loki, he would kill himself on the spot. "I'd never want you to be any other way either." Except beautiful. And good. And nice. And every other reason that's making me more of a pervert than Ice-dick.

"Are you sure?" She was coy again, and there was a mischievous glint in her eyes to rival Erza's. The sight made Natsu gulp apprehensively, which turned into mad babbling as she hooked her fingers in her collar and started drawing the sides of the yukata apart.

"L-Lucy, don't!" he stammered, grabbing her wrists and putting her hands together. "Don't do something you'll regret in the morning." Or tempt me to do something we'll both regret!

"Aw, I'm not naked," she teased. "I just wanna show you something…" He loosened his grip a bit but kept his hands on hers in case she tried to pull a fast one on him. Slowly, she drew the top of the yukata down, but the sash prevented her from pulling the whole thing away. "See?" she smirked, pointing at the red and white-striped bikini she wore. It was strapless and a little smaller than the one from earlier, if such a thing was possible. Natsu narrowed his eyes—he was sure he recognized it…

"Where did you get this? I've never seen it before."

"The resort's shop," she elucidated, then brought her hands back to his face with lidded eyes. "I saw it there, and I thought it looked just like one from your magazines."

Oh gods, that's why!

The Forbidden Gates slammed open behind squeezed-shut eyes. In that tiny portion of his mind that was still semi-pure, he knew that that whole situation was wrong, but the rest of his brain was occupied with image and sound that could rival a royal Lacrimal picture, scene after scene of Lucy falling prone to him. Kissing was as innocent as any of them came, but he also considered flipping her onto the futon and burying himself to the hilt in her smoothness, or untying that goddamn bikini with his teeth to reveal the soft prizes beneath, or do what he's been imagining for the longest time and bring his teeth to the surely succulent skin at the junction of slim neck and shoulder—

He shoved her backwards as quickly as possible, causing her to land on her behind with an "Oomph," and scrambled backwards until his back touched the wall. Not a second later his yukata started smoking as little charred patches appeared in the material. It was slow at first, but the scent of burning fabric steadily increased as he stared at her soft skin barely contained by the thin knotted fabric. He licked his lips but found his tongue as parched as the rest of his mouth even though he was sweating buckets on the outside.

"Don't you like it, Natsu?" she teased, shuffling forward on hands and knees towards him. He expected it was because she lacked any real balance, especially since she was still sort of swaying from side to side, but her mental facilities wearing down further was no good news for him. He shifted and prepared for one mad leap to the door when she reached him with a sudden burst of speed, grabbing at the fabric around his shoulders until the left side fell loose, and she traced a slow path around the bare skin of his pec with her soft hand. Then she laid her palm flat against his skin, making his heart beat at record speed.

"But you know, there's a pro to being Natsu versus being Loki," she continued, resting her head in the crook of his neck. She smelled him—she fucking smelled him. He was so close to losing it that it wasn't funny.

"W-Wh-What? Is it?" His instincts were a roar of blood in his ears and fire in his belly. It was damn near causing him physical pain to ignore the attraction to her, as the dragon side wanted to possess her and mark her at that very moment. He knew she didn't want that, and so he didn't want it either. He wanted to put as much space between them as possible, but as with many other things, he was a slave to her being, and he couldn't go if she held his rapture as she did.

"You're warm, like a hearth…makes me think of…home…" And she curled up into his warm chest just like a cat and promptly conked out. And as she clung to him with all the ferocity of one, he resigned himself to yet another sleepless night and had a scary thought that he wouldn't be able to get a good night's sleep for a long, long time to come.