Apologies for the late update! I, Mslead, lost track of time and had to get work settled. Thank you for being so patient with me! Let me give you guys your deserved chapter!

CHAPTER 11

Stylist

A fighter who relies on skills rather than brawn.

A familiar blonde stepped into the room, and Natsu couldn't help but feel relieved.

Happy meowed excitedly at Lucy and plopped himself right back on the bed.

"Expecting someone else?" Lucy asked, her smile sly. Her hands were busy twisting at one of her earrings and patting down a few errant locks that had gotten into her face. Lucy looked unusually dishevelled.

But there was something about that which had Natsu's breath hitching in his throat. She looked beautiful. The thought was sudden and foreign in its sheer intensity, Natsu believed for a second he was sick.

"You came back?" he breathed, letting the disbelief color his voice. "And you look-..."

Lucy's cheeks went pink with embarrassment, as if guilty over being caught with something.

"Like I just got into a catfight? You're a popular guy," Lucy huffed, making her way towards him with quick, clipped steps. Her heels struck against the tiles pausing right before she reached the bed. She gave him a curious look, sitting down on the bed near the end of his feet.

He had to force himself not to squirm.

"What's up with you?" she asked, wrapping a hand around his ankle and tugging gently. "You look like you're in an unusually good mood for having been punched in the face."

She squinted at him in that way of hers she sometimes did when she looked at him. Like she was trying to pick out new injuries from the others. Before he realized what she was doing, Lucy moved closer to set her hand against his jaw. Her thumb lightly traced the sharp line leading to his mouth, her brow creasing.

"Ouch, this one is going to bruise," Lucy hummed, unknowingly tracing the area right over where he had gotten struck with the baton.

Natsu's breath caught at the gentle touch, but too soon it was gone. He almost let out a sigh of disappointment, but Lucy was already distracted, digging through her purse for something.

Curious, Natsu peeked over her shoulder to see a white bag in her hand. She squeezed it tightly and shook it hard, turning towards him with a smile.

She edged in closer to him and held it up. "May I?"

Surprised as always when someone asked for permission to touch him, Natsu nodded dumbly even though he wasn't sure what she was about to do.

Her other hand cradled around his head, fingers sliding through pink locks of hair. Natsu's nostrils flared at the sensation of her fingertips lightly probing along his scalp. Then there was a sudden chilling touch to his jaw, and Natsu recoiled back, only for Lucy's hand to stop him.

"Wha-?"

"Relax, it's just an ice pack," Lucy hummed. "I had to tell the guard I was into that sort of thing to get him to let me keep it."

Natsu huffed out a laugh as the coolness sank into his tender skin. It was almost painful, but he was grateful for the pack. Even if it was a little confusing she had pulled ice from her purse.

"Is it true?" he asked before he could stop himself, his grin going a little lopsided.

Lucy stilled as his words penetrated, and a dark blush worked over her cheeks. At first he didn't believe she would answer, but a slow smile began to light her face. It was coy, a little on the naughty side.

Suddenly Natsu's mouth felt very dry as she moved the pack from his jaw, down to the curve of his waist where a flower of bruises were beginning to form. This time Natsu did gasp, an embarrassing twist of heat flaring to life in his gut.

Like a fight, it ignited his blood and left his body hungering for action. But on the same note, his skin felt alight, his senses open, and his body flushed. Heat crawled up the back of his throat and he wet his lips.

"Maybe..." Lucy's glossy lips pulled up at the corners, her eyes glimmering with a devilish glint that made her wholly dangerous. "Got a name, Salamander?"

Natsu's head rolled back onto the pillows, a hefty sigh escaping his chest. This again? Lucy certainly wasn't a girl who was used to being told no. She asked him at least once every time she came to visit him.

"You know I can't tell you that," Natsu replied, his voice low. "You're relentless, though."

"I prefer to think of myself as focused," Lucy corrected, her stubborn nose lifting in the air.

"Well, focused or not, it's not gonna get you far," he said, letting boredom seep into his voice.

She didn't reply, only slid the ice pack the tiniest bit lower. Natsu hissed, his pectoral muscles clenching deliciously. Despite the cold, he was getting more heated up by the second.

Damn, was he the pervert here?

Lucy's eyes were roaming over his body, but with slight surprise he noticed they were tinged with worry and confusion more than lust.

He watched her lick her lips, as if pondering whether or not she should speak.

"You're bruised," she finally said carefully, and he snorted shamelessly.

"Yeah, duh."

"No," she insisted, rolling her eyes, "I don't mean from your fight. Well, that too..." Her eyes were still fixed on his body, and Natsu began to realize what she was seeing.

Beneath the fresh, red and pink bruises his body had sustained today, there were a multitude more. Some yellowish, almost healed, others still a dark blue and violet. Scratches that were barely visible now, but not all gone.

Traces of Acnologia's two week private 'training'.

"Where'd you get all these?" she asked, voice almost a whisper as she reached out the hand that wasn't holding the ice pack and let her fingertips ghost over a faint green patch beside his bellybutton.

It didn't hurt anymore. On the contrary, her touch made him tense in an altogether different way. He bunched up the fabric around his hips, hoping his face wasn't giving him away. Her gentle, concerned touches were doing more to him than the naked bodies and lustful stares of all the other women ever had.

He could feel something like a flame bursting in his chest, spreading through his lungs over her careful press of fingers against the ridges of tender muscle. Natsu didn't normally react like this to people, and he wondered what it was about Lucy that made him react differently. She had asked him a question, and for a moment he contemplated on not answering.

But she was looking at him with such wide, worried eyes, he felt like he had no choice but to answer her questions for once.

"It was stupid," Natsu grumbled quietly, but Lucy's eyes sharpened on him, like an angry mother about to scold her child.

It meant that she cared.

"I got pissed, alright?" Natsu growled defensively, but not at her. Instead he directed his eyes away from Lucy, and the careful way she was sliding her pack from bruise to bruise. "There's this little girl that we got into our ring a couple of months ago. I was training her until the last tournament, but when I got back she was beaten up real bad."

Lucy stared at him with wide eyes, and he clenched his jaw. Natsu's stomach recoiled at the look on her face, filled with worry and concern and it was almost enough for him to swallow his tongue. However before he could look away and hold his silence, Lucy's hand reached around his head, cupping his cheek gently to turn him towards her.

Natsu's mouth fell open a little at the steel in her eyes, his heart crawling up into his throat in its confusion.

"What happened next?" she asked gently. So very, very gentle.

He caved with embarrassing ease.

"She had this long hair, it was in these pigtails with red ribbons." Natsu felt that familiar lick of rage coil in his chest like the embers of a flame whenever he thought of what Acnologia had done to Wendy. "She was so proud of them."

"So you picked a fight with whoever did that to her," Lucy filled in the blanks. It was clear she picked up on the implication of what had happened to Wendy's pigtails. That they no longer existed. "And got punished for it?"

Natsu shrugged, not finding it in him to confirm what she had already guessed.

But to his surprise, the hand on his cheek did not withdraw. Instead, she gently caressed her thumb along his cheekbone, painting small circles, her eyes drifting off into a world of her own.

When they refocused on him, she was smiling. "Thank you for protecting her," she whispered.

Natsu frowned.

"But I didn't," he objected, fists curling into the sheets. "I couldn't protect her, and I couldn't get revenge either! I couldn't even find the ribbons she - " Breaking off, Natsu angrily puffed the air out of his lungs.

"Hey," Lucy said, and the ferocity in her tone surprised him, just as her pulling his head closer with both her hands. Her eyes, that had burned with anger much like his own, softened, then, along with her voice. "You're already protecting and helping her more than you think. I'm sure simply having you by her side is the greatest thing you could give her."

Something about her statement unsettled him. It wasn't just that it hit right where she had intended it to, filling him with a warm sort of comfort, but it was her expression, her eyes. She looked like she knew.

Taken aback, Natsu blinked slowly.

Her hands dropped to her sides, and she sighed in a way that sounded almost pained, her forehead wrinkling.

Then, suddenly, her eyes lit up.

"You know what," she said excitedly, "I have an idea."

Lucy pulled up her dress.

"Wha-" Natsu's eyes shot down reflexively to where she had hiked up her gown around her thighs. His mouth went dry in confusion and despite being naked, he felt hot. "-t're you doing?"

She raised an eyebrow at him and made a face, yanking at something he couldn't see under her dress. Then, to his surprise, something came loose. Two silky blue ribbons came free in her hand, and when she smoothed down her dress, the gathers in her gown had come undone.

Natsu's eyes widened, his heart going still as she held them out to him. Fingers shaking, Natsu accepted the ribbons from her, hardly believing she had torn off pieces of her own, very expensive gown.

"They're not red..." Lucy's voice was apologetic. As if she were truly sorry she hadn't thought to wear a red dress today to rip apart. "But she can still tie her hair up into little pigtails if she wants?"

Natsu's heart finally began to beat again, the ribbons silky and smooth under his rough fingertips. He ran a cherishing thumb over the tiny scrap of fabric. To some, it could hardly be considered a gift. Clearly Lucy didn't see it as such.

But to Natsu it was something he hadn't had in a very long time. Someone treating him like he was some kind of equal. It was an insane thought, laughable. Here was some beautiful woman, who came from a rich family and even richer bloodline, talking to him like he was a person.

Wondering, not for the first time, what had brought this strange woman to him, Natsu curled his fingers around the precious ribbon and shook his head. "No, it's perfect. She'll love them."

He looked up at her warm brown eyes, some of the hardness in him melting under her happy smile. "Thank you."

He really had no other words than that.

Lucy nodded and curled her fingers into the edge of his scarf, Happy's tail swishing over it. His cat gave Lucy a studying look, before he lifted his butt off the edge to allow her to pull it free. Natsu would have been surprised, had Happy not taken a traitorous liking to her. Not that he really blamed his cat.

"Are you going to hide it in this again?" she asked, holding his scarf out to him.

He took it from her, carefully wrapping the ribbons up in the folds as he draped it around his neck.

"Yeah." He nodded, smiling at her brightly. He couldn't stop picturing Wendy's reaction.

Lucy returned the smile happily, her rosy cheeks lighting up.

"It's really important to you, isn't it?" she asked quietly, nodding towards the scarf resting on his shoulders. "You always have it with you."

His fingers ran over the worn fabric, soft under his fingertips and quilted in a strange scale-like pattern he had always loved. Stroking along the pattern, he nodded, a thoughtful expression crossing his face.

"Yeah, it is." He breathed out through his nose and brought the scarf up to his mouth. He smiled into its folds, finding comfort in just wearing it. "It's the only thing I have left of my dad's."

Natsu watched Lucy's eyes widen, her mouth falling open in confusion. It was clear whatever thought she might have had, she wasn't expecting him to talk about his past. He didn't see the harm in it this time, especially considering how it was part of his past before he even set foot in the ring.

"Your dad's?" she repeated, her voice quiet in the large room. Lucy crawled over his legs, moving over her hips and sitting next to him.

Happy was wedged comfortably between their thighs, her arms brushing against Natsu's as she settled down.

He nodded, lifting one of the fraying ends to peek at.

"It was his lucky scarf. My dad never lost a fight he had to win so long as he wore it beforehand," Natsu murmured.

Except back then, so many years ago he could hardly even remember anymore, his dad hadn't worn it. Natsu had wanted to try it on, curling into his small bed with it wrapped securely around his small neck.

He felt a chill at the memory, and his fingers trembled into the fabric. Natsu squeezed his hand into a fist around the fabric to stop the shakes, breathing in deeply to calm himself. Lucy's small hand curled into the crook of his elbow, her thumb pressing into the muscle of his forearm in a small measure of comfort. Natsu couldn't help but marvel at how she quickly perceived his discomfort.

"Your dad is a fighter like you?" she asked, causing Natsu to nod back at her.

"Something like that."

Lucy bit her bottom lip, but nodded and looked away. He was a little surprised by how quickly she backed off. She clearly wanted to press him more about his father, and he couldn't blame her. It was something he had sprung up on her. He just didn't think she would back off as quickly as she had. Normally she pressed with a wink and smile.

This time though, he found himself opening up without her nudges.

"I used to think when I was first taken, my dad would come and find me," Natsu confessed. "I used to get so upset when the training got bad and he would never be there."

He'd even blamed his dad sometimes...

Natsu glanced down. "But as I got older, I began to understand how the ring worked. How the location changes, how it's rare the fighters even see the outside sky. The ring operates like a ghost. One moment it's here, the next it's gone with barely any trace it ever existed."

"He must have tried," Lucy said, her voice sounding unusually thick.

Natsu blinked, his nose twitching as he looked at her in surprise.

As he'd feared - and not expected in the least - her eyes were brimming with tears. She sniffed, turning her head to the side.

This time it was him who reached out, carefully, nudging her shoulder with his as his large hand covered hers.

Wordlessly, she melted into his side. "I'm sure he tried," she repeated in a whisper, and he swallowed loudly when he felt her tears on his shoulder.

She was crying. For him.

He nodded, the multitude of contradicting emotions in his chest tightening it painfully, as if it was swelling and shrinking at the same time. "Lucy..." he mumbled, trailing off. "I wanna see him again."

To admit this out loud was more painful than he had expected.

He felt something in him tighten, around his throat. Like a constricting line was drawing around his neck, winding around in an attempt to suffocate him. He blinked, realizing too late how close he was to being torn apart by his own emotions. He gasped, understanding too late that Lucy had softened his walls and molded herself through his cracks so thoroughly in the short time he knew her, he was about to fly apart at the seams.

The endless battles, constant punishment, abuse, the distortion of reality - Natsu was so tired.

It was a weariness he felt down to his bones. Soaking deep into the marrow of his being and hollowing him out from the pointlessness of what he did.

And admitting that soft sentence out loud threatened to destroy him in that second. He was homesick. He had been for years - repressing it as he stayed in the moment, struggling each second for survival.

But here, with Lucy….he was allowed rest. Allowed seconds to think about what he missed and what he longed to return to. Natsu felt the rush, and a sweat of heat and cold breaking out over his skin as the room darkened around the corners of his vision.

He couldn't break down here, he wouldn't. Natsu refused -

But he was saved, a second later when the spiraling stopped, halted by a tight pair of arms crushing him against a soft body in a warm embrace.

He breathed, unable to remember when he had stopped.

Lucy's head was buried in his chest, and Natsu stared ahead in numb shock as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself nearly into his lap. Slowly, as if his arms were unable to comprehend what he was doing, he wrapped his arms around her slim waist and dragged her closer. She felt so small in his arms, but the way she gripped him was anything but fragile. She held him tightly, unknowingly holding him together even as she cried on his chest.

His rough fingers found their way into the curve of her neck, sinking into blonde hair and curling his arm around her back. She was murmuring something into his skin, something he couldn't make out. But he thought he made out the words 'I promise.'

He didn't know if it was possible, but somehow he felt as if she had cried out every ounce of his pain.

For a while they remained there while she calmed, her breaths coming out in wet huffs against his collarbone. His thumb ran in small circles along her spine, feeling strangely comforted by holding her in his arms.

But eventually, he couldn't help but shift his hips where she was seated. He really hated to distract her from where she was so comfortably relaxed now after her good cry, but…

"Lucy, I'm not complaining or nothin', but you do remember I'm naked under this sheet, right?"

He felt her freeze above him.

It seemed she was now finally realizing what he had been painfully aware of for the last torturously long seconds. Not only was he naked, with nothing but a thin sheet covering half his body, but Lucy herself wasn't exactly heavily clothed beneath her dress.

And Natsu had enjoyed her proximity, her warmth and softness.

Damn it, why could he just not help himself around her?!

This wasn't an exactly appropriate situation. She had just cried her heart out on his behalf after calming him down from a near panic attack, not to mention him opening up about his father.

And now he… seriously?

It was like he was a fourteen year old boy all over again. Except now, through some miracle, he had a beautiful woman he had feelings for posed directly over him. Perhaps the one woman in this place who wasn't interested in being with any of the fighters.

Not that he wasn't grateful for that, but his hands were currently occupied with keeping Lucy directly off his lap because he was honestly afraid of how she'd react to other parts of him stirring thanks to how close she was. The absolute last thing he wanted was for her to leave. He bit his bottom lip, his heart thumping at the way her hands came to rest on his shoulder, his on her waist.

Their eyes met, and Lucy's bit her bottom lip. Did he imagine it, but he was almost certain her eyes flashed down for one traitorous second. She licked her lips and glanced back at him, but seemed to freeze as realization crashed back down on her.

"Ohmygod," Lucy said in an alarmed rush, "Iamsosorry!"

With how quickly she pushed off him, Natsu halfway expected she might have broken the heel on one of her fancy shoes. She looked utterly mortified, as if she had done something wrong.

"I didn't mean to climb all over you like that!" she apologized in one breath. "You must think the worst of me!"

Natsu looked like a beached fish, eyes large and mouth opening and closing almost rhythmically.

"Uh, um, no I-" he stammered, actually stammered, before clearing his throat. "Why are you apologizing?" he finished lamely, inching backwards and pushing the blanket down onto his thighs.

Lucy looked just as flustered, her eyes darting around the room with a confusing amount of relief. She tugged again at her earring, which she tended to do periodically.

Her cheeks were bright red and her eyes were down on her purse, looking a little embarrassed. Looking around desperately for some kind of distraction, her eyes fastened onto his scarf. She pointed at it and almost shrieked.

"Oh! Do you still have those cards?" she demanded in a rush.

Natsu stared at her blankly, before he dipped his hand into his scarf to withdraw the deck. A relieved smile flashed over his own face and he nodded. "Yeah! I even learned a new game."

Latching onto the clear thread for what it was, Lucy waited as Natsu explained the rules in a confused rush.

The game went along a little awkwardly, and more than once Natsu caught Lucy's gaze probing the area between his legs, always quickly snapping away whenever she noticed his attention.

It was a little amusing, really.

The one time Natsu's body actually did what was usually expected of it, it went to total one thing people paid for when they visited him seemed to be the one thing Lucy did not want.

Or, he mused, over the years he had learned to notice when a woman liked what he did, or reacted to him in certain ways, and Lucy was kind of an open book in that way. No, it was something else… Something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

And so, for now, he was happy to push it to the back of his mind and simply enjoy her innocent company a little while longer.

After all, he had to cherish every second he could get.

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