I actually ended up writing two for this request because one turned out super angsty, but Eien's request specifically stated fluff, so... here's the fluffy one first.

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.


Title: Home At Last

Pairing: Cobra x Lucy

Requester: Eien ni Touko

Prompt: "Coming Home"


The feeling of coming home.

It was something that Cobra had believed all his life that he would never experience for himself.

He had heard it before. How could he not? People in their quaint little abodes, greeting each other. Loving each other.

He had hated them for it. Though no longer a slave, he still wasn't free - subject to whatever Brain decided would be their next course of action. And later, it was Midnight whose behest he followed. Freedom, and a family to return to, wasn't something he was allowed to have or even permitted to want. The Oracions Seis did possess their own sense of belonging; it was a twisted thing, caught in a web of their own desires and warped personalities.

But now, though?

"Hey, Cobra," a voluptuous blonde woman greeted the Dragon Slayer as he opened the door to her small apartment. She turned slightly to give him a brilliant smile. "Somehow, I thought that would be you. Nobody else bothers to use the door, after all!"

The Poison Dragon Slayer snorted at her. "So the morons still haven't learned any manners, I take it. Don't know what I expected. Maybe that they would grow a brain at some point? One that they could share."

Lucy tutted at him. "Don't give me that, Natsu is one of smartest people in guild! He just... doesn't... show it much..."

"Then how is that better than not having one?" Cobra sat down on the Fairy Tail mage's couch. Much like her teammates, he had long since claimed a portion of her apartment for his own. This corner of the couch was his territory, and no one else was allowed to sit there. It was an unspoken rule, but still one observed. (How this spot had come to be his was a tale for another time.)

"Regardless," Lucy chided him, sitting down at the other end of the couch. "Behave."

"Never."

As she sighed in false exasperation at him, Cobra couldn't help but be keenly aware of the strange feelings welling up inside of him.

Strange though it was, here in his spot on Lucy's couch, Cobra felt at peace.

Like he had finally come home at last.