Hey, gang! Nice short one for you today. But hey, least I didn't wait like a year and half like last time, right? That's gotta be a good sign.

Thanks to all reviewers, welcome new followers, all that fun stuff. Enjoy!

#33 Communication

Not a lot of things were funnier than watching someone try to scream without a voice.

Especially when the thing that was making them 'scream' was only a few inches in size. The unsuspecting centipede got a lot more than it probably bargained for when Lucy noticed it and subsequently freaked out, flapping her arms like a baby bird trying to fly and sending the insect careening into the brush beside her. Her mouth was open wide and her face was contorted in frightened surprise, but with no scream escaping her throat the sight looked a heck of a lot funnier than it should have.

Watching her, Natsu burst out laughing—or, he would have, if his own voice had been working. He grinned and opened his mouth, feeling laughter constrict his lungs, but naturally no sound came out.

Thankfully, Happy took over laughing for him. "You look like a flying fish!" the winged cat said happily, rolling over in the air amid fits of giggles.

Centipede-free, Lucy stomped her foot and glared at Happy. She mouthed a few probably-unfriendly words, then threw her hands up in defeat. Seeming to realize she had no way to stop Happy from laughing at her expense short of strangling him, she simply turned on her heel and waved an arm over her head in a signal to continue their silent walk through the forest.

Natsu smiled and nodded at Happy before following along. Honestly, he was just as ready to hurry back to Magnolia as Lucy was and see if somebody could cure this whole silence thing. He'd never really realized how great it was to have a voice until it was randomly taken away by the magical, mutated mushroom plant he and Lucy had been dispatched to eliminate. He'd thought it sounded like an easy job at first—an experiment gone south, resulting in some mushroom monster rampaging in a nearby forest. What could go wrong, right? Well, apparently a lot, because the first thing the stupid mushroom had done upon Natsu and Lucy's arrival was release some sort of toxic pollen that had knocked them out for a good hour. When they'd come to, everything had seemed fine, except that neither of them could speak. A little disconcerted, they'd tracked the monster back down and roasted it, but that hadn't lifted the effects of the pollen. They had to hope that it would wear off after a while, or that someone back home could help.

Happy, on the other hand, seemed to be loving the fact that he was the only one of the group who could talk. This evidently made him extremely important, as neither Natsu nor Lucy could argue with anything he said.

"I think it's time we take a break," Happy suggested, flying directly in front of Lucy and causing her to grind to a stumbling halt on the dirt road. "We've been walking for hours."

Lucy waved an arm and mouthed more soundless words, and this time Natsu could sort of guess what she was saying. Happy was being a tad overdramatic—they'd only been walking for maybe thirty minutes. Not to mention the fact that the cat wasn't actually walking at all.

"Come on, I'm hungry!" Happy whined. Lucy tried to dodge around him, but he kept hovering in her path. "There's a stream over there. Let's go fishing!"

Annoyed, Lucy turned her glare on Natsu. She gestured wildly at Happy and arched her eyebrows, as though saying, Can you please do something about this?

Natsu shot Happy a pointed look and tried to tell him they could eat back at the guild, but of course nothing came out. Instead, Happy smiled brightly and said to Lucy, "See? Natsu wants to stop, too! He says you look awful and could use a break!"

Natsu flinched in alarm as Lucy's eyes flashed dangerously, her arms swinging to fold across her chest. He shook his head and held out his hands, mouthing assurances in an effort to tell his girlfriend and partner that that had not been what he was trying to say at all. He shot a fiery glare at Happy, who held a paw over his mouth and giggled.

"Last one to the stream's a rotten fish!" Happy chanted, before speeding off sideways through the trees. Natsu tried to call after him to no avail. Rolling his eyes, he turned back to Lucy and gestured with one arm over her head down the road, and with the other into the trees toward where Happy had gone. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows, inquiring what she wanted to do.

She got the message. She gave a ragged sigh and dropped her shoulders, muttering a few silent words at the dirt under her feet before leading the way off the trail toward the forest stream they knew ran nearby.

By the time they reached it, Happy was already busy diving in and out of the water in search of lunch. Lucy sat heavily in a grassy patch at the edge of the trees and after a brief hesitation Natsu dropped down next to her, eyes on his Exceed friend but senses paying close attention to her. He knew this whole thing was extensively frustrating, but either way he hated seeing her so put off.

After a minute of calm silence, Natsu elbowed Lucy's arm to get her attention. When she looked around, he tilted his head and arched an eyebrow, mouthing, You okay?

She lifted a shoulder and gave a half-hearted nod. Then she tapped two fingers to her throat and made a twisting gesture over her chest—something along the lines of, This no voice thing is killing me.

Natsu gave a rueful smile and shrugged. He waved a hand back and forth like, It's not so bad.

Lucy shot him a skeptical look, pointing at him as if to say, You? How can you be okay with this?

He grinned and gestured first to himself, then to her. Least I'm with you.

At that, he noticed her lips twitch up in a small smile she couldn't completely suppress. Progress. That was good.

As her eyes drifted to the ground absently, he looked behind her and saw a small patch of mushrooms growing in the moss beneath a tree. Mushrooms. Great. Exactly what had gotten them into this mess. Hiding a smile, he reached over and plucked the largest one, before holding it out to Lucy as an offering. She immediately paled and flung an arm out, smacking his hand away and sending the mushroom airborne. It soared into the stream with a splash and Happy turned immediately toward it, probably thinking it was a fish.

Again Natsu grinned and opened his mouth in soundless laughter. Lucy breathed out fast and reached over to shove him in playful annoyance, shaking her head with a tiny smile. Looked like her grudge was ebbing. That was great, because there was one thing Natsu could think for them to do that didn't have anything to do with talking. Before her smile could fade, he rested a hand on the ground behind her and leaned forward, snatching her mouth with his own.

That seemed to relax her immediately. The tense resistance in her body language vanished altogether as she leaned sideways, pressing her arm against his, shifting her position in a sort of reflexive effort to get closer. Smiling in satisfaction, he angled his head and pulled at her bottom lip with his teeth, sliding his tongue through her lips when she parted them to breathe in sharply—hey, his tongue may not have been any good for speech at the moment, but that sure as heck didn't make it completely useless. She returned the motion and didn't resist when he gently guided her backward to lie on the grass, holding himself over her with one hand and using the other to push up the hem of her shirt and slide his fingers over her ribs. He felt another gasp from her throat and for a second thought he heard her groan—until he remembered that her voice was blocked, which meant that it must have come from his own head. And it very well could have, considering the fact that her hands were crawling over the muscles on his chest, fingers brushing his skin in a way that ignited a familiar fire beneath it, and one of her legs was pulled up and pressed against his side. When she broke away momentarily for breath, he tilted his head and leaned down to press his mouth beneath her jaw line, teasing at her skin with his tongue and teeth and making it considerably tougher for her to catch her breath.

Man, screw talking. Communicating like this was a hell of a lot more effective anyway.

Natsu was just tugging aside the neck of Lucy's shirt to reach her collarbone when a loud smack interrupted his train of thought and Lucy suddenly flailed violently, accidentally kneeing Natsu between the legs a little too hard. Momentarily blinded, he rolled sideways and doubled over as Lucy sprang into a sitting position. When the flashing spots cleared from his vision, he cringed at the look on her face—a crazy sort of mixture of anger and disgust, made all the more ridiculous layered over the warm flush that had colored her face from the brief kissing bout. She raised an arm, two fingers gripping the tail of a slimy, flopping fish, and if Natsu wasn't still twitching from pain (and if he'd had a voice) he would've cracked up laughing.

Pushing himself up off the ground and twisting around, he shot a pointed look at Happy, who was hovering nearby and chortling into his paws.

"You guys look a little fisheveled," he said amid suppressed laughter.

Rolling his eyes, Natsu sat up and straightened his 'disheveled' vest and scarf, ducking out of the way as Lucy drew back an arm and flung the writhing fish back toward Happy. The cat glided sideways and avoided the wild projectile, which dropped with a splash back into the stream.

"Aww, you don't want it?" Happy said. "You looked pretty hungry to me."

Lucy jumped to her feet and stomped forward. She made a reach for Happy, who flew quickly out of harm's way, and probably would have chased him had Natsu not grabbed her around the waist and held her back. She squirmed in his arms and shot him a hard look over her shoulder that clearly said, Let go of me. I'm gonna kill him. Natsu shook his head and held on. Sure, Happy may have been taking advantage of the fact that they couldn't speak. But the cat was just having fun. There was no reason to let Lucy gut him.

Unfortunately for Happy, though, he didn't take the hint and stop there. With a tiny, mischievous grin, he wiggled his little eyebrows at Natsu and said, "That's okay, I'll keep the fish. Everybody knows Lucy likes her meals hot."

Natsu felt his eyes widen. Did Happy actually just go there? Lucy turned and arched an eyebrow at him, and this time he shrugged and let go of her. He could only protect Happy for so long. If the cat was as serious about getting clobbered as he seemed to be, well… there was nothing Natsu could do about it.

Lucy cracked her knuckles and the smile vanished from Happy's face. "Uh-oh," he muttered, before Lucy gave a soundless battle cry and charged after him, yanking her whip loose from her belt.

Natsu opened his mouth to tell Lucy to go easy on him, before remembering that it was useless. Oh, well, he thought with a smirk. I tried.

Haha, sometimes it's fun to just do short, pointless drabbles. I have a tendency to over-write sometimes. If I'm gonna get through all 50 of these, I need to chill out and crank out some more like this.

Thanks for reading! How about a review? Later days, everybody!

-oMM