Lucy can't stop blushing. Nothing unusual, you think, because it's frankly quite easy to make that mage blush. Just tease her about her love life and the blood will travel to her cheeks faster than light. No, Lucy blushing is not concerning. It's the fact that she can't stop, at all, that makes the situation complicated.
See, magic potions are not rare. They are simple to make and usually take very little magic energy to create. So naturally they are cheap to buy. The thing about magic potions however, is that no matter how hard the council's regulations are on them, there's no way to tell what they actually contain. Liquids are easy to spike with some random magic, and sadly enough these potions sell like butter at town markets. Lucy, who adores her street and her neighbours, loves to support local businesses, and makes sure to do all her grocery shopping from the nearby markets. Unfortunately a sweet old lady convinced her to buy a few homemade magic potions, and there is no way Lucy Heartfilia could ever deny a wrinkly face paired with shaky hands. So three magic potions she bought, one against tummy ache, one for green fingers (Lucy had coincidentally bought a flower pot the day before), and one for "love all around". She wasn't sure what the last one meant, but old ladies never meant any harm so what could possibly happen?
Well, back to that blushing problem. The first two potions worked like a charm, her flowers were thriving and her last stomach ache was cut short thanks to the citrus-scented potions. The last potion was where the problem lied. Lucy had been excited to try it, because "love all around" was a quite vague concept. Would she love her own surroundings more? Would her surroundings love her more? Would her guildmates show her more affection for a week? Or would she want to be the one who showed her guildmates affection? The outcome was unknown, which was exciting. So she drank it.
At first she didn't feel anything. No feeling of overflowing love that needed to come out. Nothing different for the first hour after drinking the potion. Two hours went by, and she was feeling perfectly fine. Until Natsu came by, that is.
"Hey Lucy!" He climbed through the window with ease as he greeted her.
"Heya Natsu," she smiled, still slightly disappointed in the potion. "What have you been up to? Is Happy with you?" Natsu was just about to answer when she felt it. A warmth climbing through her toes and fingers, up to her head, almost making her dizzy - this feeling was familiar. She was blushing. How convenient of the potion to work its magic as soon as she had company.
"Happy got stuck listening to some old fisher by the docks. The dude never stopped talking though so I went here to hang out with you instead." Natsu hadn't noticed her bright pink face yet. "Man, I just wanted to see if they had salmon so you could make that soup again…" As he noticed Lucy's lack of response he took a closer look at her. "Hey, what's the matter? You don't look so good, weirdo." In front of him, Lucy was fanning her face, panting and sweating on the chair. "What's going on?"
The question made Lucy blush even more - how was she going to tell him that she drank a love potion? Though, that had to wait for a second because at this point the blood rush was making her head spin.
"I'm… burning up… Could you bring something cold?" She panted, trying to keep her heartbeat steady. Natsu frowned but followed orders immediately, soon laying a wet towel on Lucy's forehead.
"Are you sick or something? Do you want me to fetch Wendy?"
"No, no, don't worry about it," she said, slowly leaning back in the chair. "I drank a potion, that's all, just suffering some side effects." With the damp towel on her head, she felt a lot clearer in her head. Natsu brought a kitchen chair and sat down beside her, a concerned look plastered on his face. She found that he didn't look half bad right now, with his chiselled chin directed towards her. Of course, Lucy had never thought that Natsu looked bad - his entire character screamed "good looking" ever since she first met him, but something in her dizzy brain made him look extra nice. Frown and all.
"What type of potion? Are you sure it's not dangerous?" Natsu's eyebrows went closer together, creating a wrinkle. Lucy shook herself out of her thoughts. She couldn't think about Natsu's attractiveness right now! His handsome face was irrelevant to her situation. She blushed harder at the thought, now hearing the blood rush in her ears.
"I'm sure, it's just a homemade potion… The bottle is on my nightstand." She had to concentrate not to stutter on her words.
"Man, you'd think you would learn from going invisible that time not to use unknown potions…" Natsu muttered as he pulled off the cork to take a sniff. It wouldn't be easy, but maybe he could trace what magic had been used. It was highly unlikely though.
"The granny who sold me the potion seemed so kind though," Lucy whined, not loving how this blushing affected her thinking. See, she tried to close her eyes to ignore her gawping at Natsu, but with her eyes closed her other senses got even higher. Now she could swear she could feel Natsu's breath against her face when he talked to her, and she was crazy aware of the hand he held above her knee. Yeah, drinking this potion was a mistake.
"Hey I think I recognise some ingredients here, we should head to the guild to ask for help…" Natsu's words mellowed out, only becoming a pleasant voice in Lucy's ears. He really cared for her when she was sick, huh? Except she wasn't exactly sick right now - she was blushing. Really, really bad. She had to open her eyes, because the blood rushing around her head made her so dizzy she thought she would fall over. As soon as she opened her eyes she was met with Natsu's worrisome gaze, probably waiting for an answer that wouldn't come. All she could think of right now was how much she wanted to kiss the boy in front of her. Cue, more blushing from that thought.
Natsu was about 103% sure Lucy got sick from the potion. She had all the signs of a fever, except maybe a runny nose. While Natsu himself rarely got sick, his blue flying partner wasn't blessed with the same immune system, so he could tell when something wasn't right. Though, the common cold rarely came as a side effect to bad potions, so the best bet he had was to get help from other, more cunning mages.
"I can tell that you're sick, Lucy," he told her as he picked her up in his arms. "I'm taking you to the infirmary."
"No, no… I already know what's going on Natsu," Lucy mustered up to say. "I just need some rest, that's all." It was simple to break down, really. Lucy drank a love potion, said love potion was a slight fail, side effects of love potion was saturated bodily reactions of love (Lucy blushes easily a normal day - it wasn't hard to figure out the connections between love and blushing), potion would calm down and get out of her system in maximum two days.
Except she wasn't sure how quick she would recover in Natsu's presence. After all, he only made the blushing worse. Actually, let's rephrase that - Lucy was feeling completely fine before Natsu got inside her house, so maybe he was the very trigger of the potion. She couldn't just tell him to go away though, he'd never agree to leave her alone in this state.
"Well what can I do to help? I dunno what to do when you act like this Lucy, I'm not smart like you. You gotta tell me what to do." Natsu put her down on her bed. Her cheeks were resembling a certain scary wizard at this point, with her nose and ears matching. "Man, if only I could summon cold fire or something…"
Lucy had to giggle. If she couldn't get the cause of the blushing out of the house, then maybe she could use Natsu's willingness to help to her advantage.
"You're aware that my freezer has ice, right?" From that sentence it only took Natsu a second to fetch a whole bunch of ice, wrapped up in a towel.
"Is this good? I know I'm not an ice mage so it might be melting already, but that should work, right?" Lucy giggled again, this time drowsily patting Natsu on his head.
"Very good, thanks for helping Natsu."
As the wet, now lukewarm towel got replaced with the icy, cool one, Lucy immediately relaxed. With a clearer mind, she slowly started to comprehend the current situation. This was a love potion, which got activated as soon as Natsu came into her apartment. What she didn't know was if the potion was human-activated, and if she presumed it was, did it activate because another human came in contact with her, or was it because a male did - or, was it simply because it was Natsu himself? Man, so many questions and no way to answer them, unless she could talk to that granny again.
Well, either way she was greatly affected by Natsu's presence right now, and she had to find the solution to this potion soon. The amount of oxygen rushing to her brain couldn't be good for her health. With the simplest solution ruled out (Natsu leaving her alone a few days - as previously mentioned, it would simply not be possible) she began pondering on other solutions. Maybe she could try to pop some sleeping pills and sleep away the potion? They would only last for a few hours, but at least she had a chance to process some of that potion… Well, the problem with that option would be that Natsu would have to fetch the pills, and he'd either refuse giving drugs to his best friend, or he'd insist on sleeping beside her. None of those scenarios were to be preferred. Perhaps she could make a run for it and crash at Levy's or Cana's place for a couple of days - she'd get rid of the cause of the blushing and she'd get some great company! However, there were multiple downsides to this option as well. Levy would only hang around with Gajeel, Cana would worsen her body with alcohol, and the option was unsafe overall - Lucy still wasn't sure if she'd blush in the company of other people as well or not. Yeah, running away was impossible.
One thing that Lucy always liked about love potions was that the entire point of it was usually to get one party to kiss another - true love's kiss. All love potions she had read about in books were possible to dispel with the true love's kiss (as well as a few other spells - curses often had true love as the easy way out). If her theory were right, she could simply get Natsu to kiss her on her lips, and poof, the potion would be cured! As simple as that, really. But, there is a but. Lucy had never kissed someone before. At the ripe age of 25, Lucy had only been on a handful of dates in her life, none of them meeting more than once. Now, usually she didn't mind being inexperienced at this age, since her work as a mage took up so much time that having a boyfriend would make things complicated, but never having had a first kiss made her want it to be special. Not just a way to dispel a potion (through a one sided crush as well, as if everything wasn't going bad enough).
No, Lucy had to brace herself. She clearly saw the only two possible options here - just keep quiet about the love potion and let it wear off for a few horrible days, or kiss and get it all over with. That was her options.
Natsu had been sniffing the potion bottle for almost half an hour, trying to learn something about the suspicious liquid that caused harm to his friend. If he only could get a whiff of the magic used or something - some kind of virus maybe? Something that could have made Lucy sick. As he pondered he let his eyes wander off to his right side, where Lucy was laying. She seemed peaceful right now, as if she was at the edge of falling asleep, but he heard from her slight panting and rapid heartbeat that she still was battling with whatever was going on inside of her. He really wanted to help her. With everything they had gone through, all signs of distress from the blonde made him queasy. He knew it likely was a mix of trauma from seeing future Lucy die and all those times she had been tortured by enemies that played unfairly. He wasn't unaware of his strong feeling of connection to the celestial wizard - he knew her presence alone was enough to give Natsu the will to keep going, so anything hindering her from being happy and healthy was a big concern for the dragon slayer. He was ready to go great lengths to keep Lucy safe, even if she didn't know about it.
Lucy clenched her bedsheets. She had made her decision. While it wouldn't be impossible for her to hold out until the potion got out of her system, she knew it would feel horrible and only create problems. Rent was due, her team was expecting her to show up on a mission tomorrow, and she didn't want to rely on Natsu's care for longer than necessary. She was going to give Natsu the kiss option. She was sure that if she explained properly, they could kiss and get it over with. Now, since she obviously was uncertain if Natsu actually liked her romantically, telling him that a "true love's kiss" was the only cure, would be to complicate things. If she was lucky, the love in their friendship and Lucy's one-sided crush would be enough to fix the potion - it was already homemade with flaws, so she might as well try, right? And if she needed desperate measures, she could blame the potion for her falling in love with Natus - it was a plausible explanation after all.
"Hey Natsu."
"Yeah? You need something?" Natsu shifted in his seat, ready to address her needs at any given second.
"Uhm… I suppose yes?" Lucy took off the slightly melted ice towel and turned her head to face the pinkette. "You see, there's a thing about the potion that I didn't tell you about. It's a love potion - or rather, a 'love all around' potion, that's what the seller called it. I got it for cheap when buying some other things at the market." This story was more embarrassing than she remembered, because she couldn't help but to blush some more.
"And well, to keep it short - the fastest cure to a love potion is a kiss from the users 'true love'. I- I'm not saying that you have to l- love me or anything like that though! I just thought that since you're the one I got affected by, maybe the potion decided to make you my true love or something? I'm sorry, I'm sure this is weird for you! You don't have to do it if you don't want to, it's a really weird request, I could just wait for the potion to cure itself in a few days as well, that really wouldn't be a problem, I-" She felt how she got redder by the second - this entire situation was totally not ideal. With the blood rushing back to her face though, she had to lie down again.
"So… I just need to kiss you?" Natsu asked, eyes widening. Was it really that easy?
"I suppose," Lucy answered, fanning her heated face. "Not if you're not fine with it of course!"
"Are you fine with it though?" He had a concerned face again, pouting his lips slightly. "I know you want your first kiss to be with someone special." He didn't want to make his best friend uncomfortable. His eyes met Lucy's brown ones. They were filled with some emotion he only could describe as affection.
"Well, you're special, you know. I don't mind if it's you." Even if this was on the top three most embarrassing sentences Lucy had ever said out loud, she smiled with complete honesty. Natsu might be a friend, a teammate and a partner in all labels, but first and foremost, he would always be Natsu. The one person she would trust with everything she had when it came down to it - even her heart and her lips.
And that smile was all Natsu needed to trust her judgement. "Alright," he said, moving his face closer. "I've never kissed anyone before though, so I'm not sure how to…" He didn't have to think too hard though, because Lucy carefully took Natsu's face in her hands and led him closer. Those brown eyes, full of trust, affection and love, only slightly sparkled with nervosity, gave him all the courage Natsu needed to close the distance between their lips. As their mouths met, Natsu could swear Lucy's lips were made of strawberry scented velvet, and their lips moulded perfectly to each other.
Lucy herself swore that fireworks were going off in the distance. For every second they kissed, she could feel the uncomfortable dizziness that originated from the love potion disappear, and instead get replaced with the familiar warmth that was Natsu's fire. She couldn't help but to smile through the perfect kiss.
"Huh, it really worked," she admitted against his lips, catching her breath slightly.
"Well, you did say that the cure was true love." Lucy opened her eyes, forehead still pressed against Natsu's. The look in his eyes gave away everything she needed to know - the love wasn't due to the love potion - and even more important, the love was mutual. She knew they would have to get these feelings into words as soon as they pulled apart, but for now she was happy feeling Natsu's hands pull her in for another kiss.
What a lovely thing a potion could be.