Author's Note:

Helllooooo everyone. It's Sunday! And you know what that means! A new chapter! Yay!

I know the last one ended in a bit of tension, so hopefully this makes everyone feel a bit better about it all. ;D

Oh, and two of you correctly guessed who Bartolomeo is based off of! Bartolomeo from One Piece. If you aren't familiar with him, feel free to google him for any hints about how and why he acts the way he does around Lucy. ;D

As always, HUGE, HAPPY, ECSTATIC thanks to all my wonderful fantastic reviewers out there. Big hugs and kisses to all my repeat reviewers: 19vanelkc, Shadowslayer15, TheJSmooth, Daisy73, WisdomDragon27, valerioux, Wolves silver wind, donthedarkdragon26, kilatails, fox0920, ravenqueen162, firefly9917, Leomae2.0, FantasyDreamer06, Lady La-sara, KitsuneLover05, moeruhoshi, Elphaba818, thechani, MiseryWolf97, and ThatOneAnimeGirl08. Equally big hugs and kisses to my newest reviewers: HotvampGurl23, Serika2001, RawToast87, and xxIt'sAllAboutThemxx.

Alrighty, now, on with the chapter! And as always, be sure to check out the sneak peek at the end. ;D

The next day, Lucy woke up with a pounding headache and a mouth that felt like she'd chewed on cotton. Her eyes were crusted over with sleep, and it took much longer than it should have to pry them open – after much rubbing. Once they were open though, she wished they weren't, because the light sent a shaft of pain through her skull. Groaning softly, she rolled gingerly out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom, where she fixed the cotton-mouth problem and also relieved her painful bladder. Apparently she'd drunk more than she had thought last night – or maybe she was just a lightweight.

"Good morning…" she grumbled to Happy as she plodded into the kitchen in search of sustenance and hopefully a remedy for her headache.

"Um. Good morning."

At his odd tone she groaned, knowing without asking that she must have done something stupid last night.

"I'm sorry for whatever I did last night…"

"It's okay. You just screamed at Natsu and me. No big deal."

He sounded more amused than upset, so at least it seemed she hadn't said anything too mean to him, but she still winced. "Really, I'm sorry. I honestly didn't think I drank that much last night."

"Yep. You did. You couldn't even go to the bathroom without help."

She froze. "Please tell me you were the one to help me in there."

He snickered, leaving her hanging for a long moment, but finally said, "Yep. It was me. Although Natsu helped you get dressed."

"Please tell me you're joking."

"Well, he helped you find your clothes. I helped you put them on."

She blew out a relieved sigh. "Thank god. Don't scare me like that!"

All she got in response was more kitty laughter, and she just groaned and gave up. She simply didn't have enough energy to deal with him right now, and if what he said was true, she probably deserved to be teased a little.

As she sat down to breakfast and a tall glass of water with some pain pills, Natsu popped into being. Before he could say anything, Lucy preemptively apologized.

"Hey, uh, look…I don't really remember what happened last night, but Happy says I yelled at you guys, so I'm sorry."

He blinked and stared at her for a long time and then grinned. "Sure. But seriously, you were saying all kinds of weird stuff."

She froze, hoping like heck that she hadn't said anything about her feelings for him. "Um…like what exactly?"

"Well, you kicked me out of bed, and then said I couldn't sleep with you anymore because it was too awkward and hurt…. You weren't making a whole lot of sense." he hummed and parked himself across from her at the table.

His grin was still in place, but his eyes were a little sharper than normal as he waited for her response.

She gulped and averted her eyes, unable to hold his stare with the flood of embarrassment rushing through her system. It could have been worse, but that was still dangerously close to admitting that she had fallen for him.

"Huh…that is weird." she eventually mumbled, deciding to feign ignorance. "I mean, kicking you out of bed is normal, but the other stuff must have come from a dream I was having or something. Who knows?"

He just laughed and called her a weirdo, but thankfully seemed to buy her excuse.

The rest of that day was spent recovering, but the following day they headed to the guildhall. They were running amazingly low on food money – once again – so as soon as they entered the guildhall Lucy headed straight for the job postings to look them over. However, she only managed to read a couple of job postings before she was distracted by the heavy weight of an arm landing across her shoulders and the intense body heat that suffused her right side as Natsu leaned into her and peered at the request board too.

"Anything good?" he asked, sounding perfectly normal…. while she suddenly felt like she'd swallowed her tongue.

Her heart started up fast, and she felt her body flush – which was not good. After trying so hard for the past few months to ignore her building feelings for the fire dragon, it seemed like they had finally gotten too big to control – which was precisely what she'd wanted to avoid. That dance date had turned out to be a worse idea than she'd ever imagined, because ever since then she hadn't been able to get Natsu out of her mind. It had only been a day, but it felt like some sort of dam had broken, and now all those feelings she'd been trying to suppress were rushing her all at once.

Having him wrapped around her was making it impossible to concentrate on the request board as everything inside her lit up like a bunch of stupid firecrackers, and she jerked. Elbowing him off her, she backed away a bit, completely distracted from what she'd been doing.

He blinked and stared at her, obviously confused. "Everything okay Luce?"

"I uh…I'm really hot!" was the lame excuse she came up with, but it might be believable since she was wearing a sweater. Hopefully it would also explain the flush she still felt burning her face.

"Go outside then. That'll cool you off." he replied with a grin, thankfully oblivious.

"Y-yeah, that's a good idea. I think I'll go do that."

She made a beeline for the exit and gratefully stepped out into the chilly late-autumn/early-winter air. "I'm such an idiot…" she told the frost and then sighed a big puff of white.

"Why do you say that?" a new voice asked, and she jumped.

"Amy! When did you show up?"

"Just now, when you were staring off into space and moping. What's got you so upset?" the white wolf asked.

Lucy sighed again and then shivered as a cold breeze whisked by. "Just…I wish I could control my emotions a little better."

"Towards Natsu you mean?"

She flinched, and her eyes jerked back to Amy's warm golden ones. "What the…how did you…?"

"It's obvious."

"Well that's just great." Lucy groaned, scrubbing her hands over her face.

If Amy – who'd only known her for a few weeks – had been able to figure it out, then she must really be losing it.

"I've tried so hard to stop it. For months now I've ignored the feelings, hoping they'd just go away. But they just keep getting stronger, and now it's impossible to ignore them. I think…it's…damn it. I think I'm in love with the idiot. God help me."

Amy snorted a laugh. After a long pause, she asked, "So what do you plan to do, now that you've admitted you love him?"

"I don't know! I don't know what to do…I just…I don't want to ruin our friendship, and I don't want to get into something if we can't have a future together. Do you know if spirits and their mages are allowed to be together?"

Amy shrugged. "I don't know."

Lucy sighed, then groaned and shook herself. "Well, there's no use stewing over it. I should just get on with things and do my best to deal with it." Nodding to herself, she headed back into the guildhall with the intention of picking out a job. Amy followed close on her heels.

Before she even got to the board though, the master waylaid her.

"Lucy! I've been looking for you."

"Oh hello Master, what's up?"

"I have a job for you."

Lucy blinked, taken aback. It was rare that the master assigned them jobs personally. "Okay…"

He grinned and handed her the request paper. "It should be a cinch for you and Natsu."

She glanced down at the paper and skimmed it. It was a request for a couple of mages to stand in for a waiter and waitress at some restaurant. She'd done jobs like this before, so she wasn't concerned about it, but it was an odd job to be specifically assigned to. Normally 'assignments' were highly important or dangerous missions.

"This seems like a fairly common request…is there any reason why you want Natsu and me specifically to do this?"

He twiddled his thumbs and remained silent for a moment, before perking up and suddenly saying, "They specifically requested a blond mage to fill in the waitress position if one was available."

She blinked. That seemed a little fishy to her, but she shrugged and accepted it at face value. "Alright then. When should we leave?"

"As soon as possible."

She nodded and turned to go find Natsu and tell him.

…

A few hours and one train ride later, Lucy and Natsu were hunting down the address on their request. Happy wasn't with them, because he had somehow ended up on a mission with Carla and Wendy – much to his delight.

As they made their way to the location, Lucy contemplated the upcoming job. Waitressing wasn't a problem for her. However, she was concerned about how Natsu would do at it, what with his destructive tendencies and overabundance of energy. Hopefully he wouldn't be a bull in a china shop and cause them to have to pay for damages to the restaurant.

Sensing her concern, Pikachu softly cooed, "…pika?" questioningly at her, and she bent to pick him up. Feeling lonely on the train, she'd decided to summon him, and he'd been only too happy to join her and keep her company.

Soothing herself by stroking his long ears, she grumbled, "I'm just worried Natsu's gonna destroy something or pick a fight with a patron."

"Hey!" he barked from a little ways in front of her, and sent a pout over his shoulder.

"You've done it plenty before! And thanks to your bottomless stomach, we're running low on food money!"

He winced, the threat of running out of food money sobering him up. "I'll be on my best behavior."

"Good…" she sighed, somewhat relieved.

However, her outlook on this job changed for the worse again when they arrived at the address and got a look at the place they would be working at for the next couple of days. The windows were darkly tinted, a neon sign over the door flashed between a tie and a bra, and a bouncer stood at the door. Lucy stalled out in front, staring at it in mounting dread, and failed to convince herself that she wasn't looking at a strip club. The sinking sensation that they'd been set up settled in her stomach.

Of course Natsu, being an overeager dragon with the attention span of a gnat, just charged right in – or tried to anyways. He got held up by the bouncer at the door, and Lucy had to intervene before he picked a fight with the guy. When he'd tried to charge through the door, the big muscly security guard had physically pushed him back, and Natsu took it as a challenge – despite having just promised that he would behave himself.

"Um, we're from Fairy Tail. We received a request for two people to fill in for a couple of servers?" Lucy cut in, snagging Natsu's scarf and pulling him away from the guy.

"Oh, yes of course. Go right in." the bouncer responded, giving Natsu a pretty nasty stink eye while he gritted the polite words out through his teeth.

As soon as they were through the door, Natsu once again had a broad grin on his face as if he hadn't just gone toe-to-toe with the security. Lucy just rolled her eyes at his mercurial moods, but her attention was quickly diverted by the scenery inside of the club. Sure enough, it was an adult entertainment venue, and she stared in dismay at the stage where a line of girls pranced around in glittering skimpy outfits and feathers. With a sinking stomach, Lucy was suddenly absolutely positive that this was orchestrated by Gray as payback.

A server met them at the door, and Lucy's gaze instantly snapped to him and gawked, shocked yet again by the buff man in a Chippendale outfit.

"Table for two?" he asked while grinning a winning smile.

"Um, no. Actually we're the wizards from Fairy Tail that took the request for servers? I'm not really sure we're in the right place though, because the job posting asked specifically for wizards, and I don't see how that would be a requirement here…"

"Oh of course! Yes, you're in the right place. Let me take you to the owner, and he'll explain why he went to a wizarding guild for this."

They were led to the bar, where a dark-skinned man in a fancy suite was doing some sort of performance with mixing drinks. It was obvious he was a wizard, because he had the liquids mixing in midair, much to the crowd's delight. He tossed fruit and other ingredients into the swirling mixture, and then poured it into a fancy glass – which he handed to a patron who clapped enthusiastically.

Before he could take another order, the server leading them interrupted. "Hey Boss, these two are the fill-ins."

His amber eyes flicked towards them, and then he flashed pearly white teeth in a charming smile. "Welcome!" He turned to the crowd, and excused himself. "Pardon me for a moment, I have some business to attend to. Javier, would you please locate Frederick and ask him to take over at the bar?"

Their server nodded and disappeared into the crowd as the man in the suite made his way out from behind the bar and motioned for them to follow him. As Natsu and the owner headed off, Lucy turned to pick up Pikachu – who had jumped out of her arms and onto the bar. Then she quickly hustled to catch up with her temporary boss and her dragon partner.

He led them to an office in the back, and then sat them down in a pair of chairs in front of his desk as he parked his rear on the shiny wooden top.

"Let me introduce myself, my name is Silvester. And you are…?"

"Lucy, and this is my partner Natsu."

"It's wonderful to meet you Lucy and Natsu. And who's your little ketchup-loving friend?"

Blinking, Lucy realized he was talking about Pikachu. Glancing down, she saw that her spirit had snagged a bottle of ketchup off the bar, and he was now happily dabbing his paw on the opened top and licking off the little drops. She was caught between being embarrassed that her spirit had essentially stolen her employer's property, and amusement at how cute and silly Pikachu looked.

"Um…this is Lepus. I'm sorry about the ketchup, I'll pay for-"

He waved her off. "Oh, no need. I'm just so glad you could come. We've been in a real pickle ever since two of our best servers came down with the dragon pox."

Lucy's professional side kicked in. "Our pleasure. May I ask a few questions about the job?"

"Let me guess. You're wondering why I posted that request in a wizard guild right?" At her nod, he grinned. "I'm not surprised. My establishment is rather unique in that way. As I'm sure you noticed, I run an adult restaurant with entertainers and servers who are dressed in a particular way. What makes my place stand out, is that all my employees are wizards and mages. We hold special shows using magic, and even serve our food and drinks with it, as you saw me doing at the bar."

That explained question number one. The next question had an obvious answer, and she didn't even bother to ask it. Yes, they would undoubtedly be required to wear those skimpy outfits…a prospect which she wasn't looking forward to. However, she had already accepted this job request, and it would reflect very badly on their guild if she backed out now.

So, she simply said, "I see. That makes a lot more sense now. So what exactly will we be required to do?"

"Well, first of all, what kind of magic can you do?"

"I'm a celestial wizard."

Silvester's eyebrows raised. "A celestial mage? I've never heard of that before. What exactly is it that you do?"

"Well, I summon celestial spirits."

"I see…" He paused pensively for a moment. "I'll have to think about whether we can make an act out of that. What sort of spirits can you summon? And which ones would be willing to perform?"

"Um…well Gemini can make a copy of me, so it would look like there are two of me. I can also summon a pack of wolves. Oh, and Leo would probably be down for performing."

"Undoubtedly…" Natsu snorted, rolling his eyes.

"Really, I could summon any of them on stage and ask them to show up in full armor. That would probably be impressive."

Silvester's eyes were gleaming. "Oh, I can already think of a number of performances for you. Perhaps tonight after closing, you could summon them all for me so I can get an idea of what we're working with?"

"Sure. But I can only summon them one by one, and I'll need to ask each one whether they're comfortable performing on stage in this setting."

"That's perfectly understandable. I certainly wouldn't want to make any of your spirits do anything they were uncomfortable with."

She nodded, happy that he was understanding and seemed to respect her spirits.

"Also, Natsu here is actually one of my spirits, so he can disappear and then reappear wherever I am. If you think that would make a good performance."

"Wonderful! Yes, we could definitely work with that." Turning to Natsu, he looked him up and down. "So you're a celestial spirit?"

"Yep. I'm a fire dragon."

"Really? So, what can a dragon do?" he asked, looking excited.

Natsu shrugged. "I can make and control fire. I can also change my form."

"How so?"

"Wings, tail, horns, scales…you know, the usual."

"Wonderful! Can I see some of these transformations by any chance?"

Again, Natsu shrugged and then shifted.

There was a quick flash of intense heat, his horns spiraled back, scales crawled across his arms and chest, his tail popped out as it lengthened and thickened, and spikes ran up his spine. His wings snapped open with a blast of wind that had any loose paper flying and nearly knocked Lucy over – chair and all -since she was sitting right next to him. His eyes glowed gold and fangs peeked between his lips when he grinned at Lucy flailing in her chair.

Thankfully he didn't release too much power, so the room didn't explode, but a mess was definitely created in his wake…as usual.

Silvester didn't even seem to notice though. He was too busy beaming at Natsu with delight. "Amazing! Absolutely amazing! We'll have to come up with a special costume for you…"

…

After their interview had concluded, they were hustled off to the changing rooms to start work immediately. Of course there were separate changing rooms for the men and women, so they split up to put on their respective costumes. Lucy also sent Pikachu back to the celestial realm – his ketchup prize still in his grip.

Without her two accompanying spirits, she soon found herself stranded and alone in a large dressing room that was overflowing with costumes of every kind.

"Your name is Lucy right?"

She spun around to see a pretty redhead walk into the room behind her. "Yep. That's me!"

"Great! My name is Ariel. Silvester asked me to help you find a costume and show you the ropes."

"Oh thank god. I didn't even know where to start."

Ariel gave her a kind smile. "Yeah, I know right? It overwhelmed me too at first."

Snagging her hand, Ariel led her into the room and browsed the racks of sparkly bikinis and accessories. After some measuring, she handed Lucy a brassiere that was encrusted with turquoise and gold sequins and had strings of glittering beads dripping from the bottom. She also handed over matching bikini panties to complete the outfit, and Lucy grabbed them and ducked behind a curtain to quickly change. When she emerged, Areal handed her a thick collar necklace also encrusted with sequins and fringed with beads. Then she got a blue, gold, and white feathered headdress attached securely to her head and feathered, sparkly bracelet cuffs and ankle cuffs.

And then she was being hustled onto stage, where Ariel introduced her to the crowd, saying, "May I introduce a very special guest! She's just with us for a few days…. The beautiful Miss Lucy from Fairy Tail!"

The crowd cheered, applauded, whistled, and hooted, and Lucy smiled and waved shyly.

"She'll be a backup dancer for now while she learns the ropes but expect to see a lot more from her over the next few days!"

There were more hoots and hollers from the crowd, and then a disturbance out in the table area caused some of the attention on her to waver. At first, Lucy couldn't see what the heck was going on, but then she saw Natsu joining the rest of the servers and instantly knew what the commotion had been about. All the

servers wore very tight and very short boxers paired with a color coordinated bowtie – and nothing else. A few had on narrow stylish suspenders.

Natsu was basically wearing the same thing, with a few variations. He wore black boxers, but a hole had been cut for his tail to hang out freely in the back, and his bowtie was just made of his fire. Lucy was also surprised to see his horns at their full length, instead of the cute little nubs he usually kept them at.

From the tables, another server took a speaking lacrima and introduced Natsu. "Thank you Ariel for introducing our new lady performer! And may I also introduce our newest server! Natsu from Fairy Tail! He's a full-blooded fire dragon ladies and gentlemen!"

The crowd erupted into loud applause and cheers.

While everyone was busy with Natsu, Lucy was added into the line of dancers. Thankfully, she was just put in as a backup dancer to start with, and they weren't doing anything too complex, so it was easy enough to pick up the rhythm. Mostly it was just a bunch of strutting around and shaking her hips and stuff.

The lead dancers had much more complex parts, and sometimes a single dancer would take the stage while the rest of the girls all stood back. These solo performances were usually accompanied with magic, and it seemed that the colors of their costumes tended to hint at what magic each dancer possessed.

After an hour of dancing, strutting, and hip shaking, they were given a thirty-minute break for snacks, beverages, bathroom, and whatever else they might need to do.

Curious, Lucy asked Ariel how often they got these breaks, and her new mentor replied, "Oh, we get a break about every hour and a half."

That was certainly better than a lot of the waitressing jobs she'd taken, so Lucy was quite impressed. Of course, this job was quite a bit more strenuous than just waitressing – since it involved dancing – but they all got standing breaks as backup dancers, so it wasn't too bad.

During their half-hour breaks, the curtains were drawn across the stage, which gave Ariel the perfect opportunity to show Lucy the steps for being a lead dancer. She was very thorough, so when Lucy was rotated to be a lead dancer for the first time later that day, she felt pretty confident in herself as she strutted, danced, pranced, sashayed, twirled, and wiggled along with the others. It was actually kind of fun to be honest, though she couldn't help but feel self-conscious about it. The biggest downside to being a lead dancer though, was that she had to really focus on her dancing, and couldn't keep track of Natsu.

Throughout the day, whenever she was a backup dancer, she made sure to look out into the crowd and see how Natsu was getting along with everyone. Thankfully, he seemed to be a big hit, and apparently he wasn't feeling overly destructive today because nobody caught on fire - and even more impressive - none of the tables did either.

However, as the day wore on, Lucy couldn't help but start to get tired of watching girls fawn all over Natsu – and even quite a few guys as well. She saw plenty give him pieces of paper that probably had their address or contact info, and there was lots of touching going on that wasn't strictly necessary. Mostly it was below PG – just ladies touching his arm or something – but a few got a little bolder.

Of course there was no way for her to know how he responded to these advances, aside from the fact that he obviously wasn't turning them away. They didn't seem to upset him at all, aside from one incident where someone grabbed at his tail. That hadn't gone well at all. He'd been turning away from a table that had just ordered, when a sexy older lady – who was showing off at least seventy percent of her amble boobage – said something and then reached out to catch the end of his tail in a light grip. It didn't look like she had tugged at all, it appeared to be more of a questing caress than anything. But still, Natsu whipped around so fast that she jerked her hand back as if his tail had given her a friction burn – which it probably had.

He snarled something at her – probably something along the lines of, "don't touch my tail," and then stalked off, his tail held stiffly with irritation.

…

Meanwhile, out in the audience, Natsu wasn't having a fantastic time.

The work wasn't exactly hard, but it was boring, and he had a lot of trouble remembering all the orders and keeping them straight. Thankfully most of the people he dealt with didn't seem to get too mad with him when he messed up their orders, although a few of the men who had come with their girlfriends got slightly pissed.

He had an even harder time concentrating on what he was supposed to do with Lucy up on the stage dancing with all the other women. Not only did she distract him with her dancing, but he was also more and more pissed at all the guys slobbering over her. Frankly, feeling possessive at all was distracting, since he wasn't used to the feeling. Unlike a lot of dragons, he wasn't the greedy kind, so he'd never been possessive. However, those instincts were definitely making an appearance now, and they were all aimed right at Lucy.

It was like she was his treasure, and he wanted to hoard her all to himself.

Still, he did his best to keep his temper in check, because he knew she would get pissed if he picked a fight with one of their customers. So, by the end of the day, he was pretty tense from having to keep himself so tightly controlled.

With the way he was feeling, he was happy to get to their hotel room and find that it had only one bed – because it gave him the perfect excuse to sleep with Lucy. After the day he'd had, he definitely felt the need to spend some quality time with her… and cuddling up to her all night would be just the sort of thing to help sooth him. Sleeping with her always coated her in his scent, and it helped him feel like she was his.

Which was why he was not happy when she said, "I guess you'll have to go back to the celestial realm for the night, since there's only one bed."

"Why? I'll just sleep with you."

She rounded on him, her eyes flashing, and he could practically taste the argument that was about to take place. "No! When have I ever given you permission to sleep with me?"

"You let me stay the night sometimes…"

"I let you stay but I tell you to sleep on the couch! Not that you ever do…. But I have never given you permission to sleep in my bed!"

"And why not?! What's so wrong about sleeping in the same bed?!"

She sputtered. "Men and women generally do NOT sleep together unless they're romantically involved! I've told you that a million times!

"I still don't get it! What's so romantic about sleeping?!"

"Damn it Natsu! Can't you just drop it? I'm tired!"

This continued on for a little while, but eventually he gave in and left – despite every instinct inside him screaming that it was wrong.

Sneak Peek

Relieved, she tugged out the bill and put it on their table. "Take your time. Thank you for coming."

Finally, it seemed to be over, and she sighed in relief as she turned away to scamper off, but all her hopes came crashing down when one of them caught her wrist again.

"Easy there, Sweetheart. What's the rush?"

Another chimed in with, "Yeah, I believe you told us we could take our time."

A third voice joined in. "And don't thank us yet. None of us have finished."

She stiffened, especially at that last comment, and jerked on her arm. "I'm sorry, I have another table I need to attend to. Excuse me."

To her surprise, the man holding her wrist just tightened his grip instead of letting her go, and he tugged her back towards him. "Surely you can spare some time for us. We haven't given you your tip yet."