It's a date.
Natsu had nearly left the diner without finishing his food, and made Gray take him home immediately after. No stopping at Lucy's. The break in had come the next day, after Natsu threw a few punches in front of Porlyusica and created a single fireball before insisting he could do no more magic without wearing himself down too far. It must have been to his benefit that his punches looked so weak that the old woman ended up letting him demonstrate on her rather than Gray, because he'd been so dejected after she affirmed his fears that he was even worse on this front than he was with general tasks that Gray hadn't even tried to weasel out of his promise. They went to Lucy's, he helped Natsu in through the window, and then he left for work while Natsu waited to surprise Lucy when she returned.
And at no point, thank God, had Gray called Natsu out on his speaking only to ask to go somewhere, or his refusal to make eye contact. Natsu wasn't sure he could bear any more interaction with Gray than he had to without blushing so furiously that he'd catch on fire.
It's a date.
Why? Why had he said that? Of all the phrasings he could have gone with. He didn't know if he was more bothered by the fact that as soon as he realized what he'd said, he'd imagined himself dragging Gray into a cove to make out, or by the way that Gray had refrained from calling out his word choice.
Or that he couldn't drag Gray into a cove if he wanted, while Gray could easily take him somewhere secluded, force him down, and…
Growling in frustration, Natsu turned over in bed and pulled the covers over his head. The act caught the attention of Lucy, who had offered to let Natsu sleep over for a few days, so he could have someone there while he processed Porlyusica's diagnosis. Too distracted at the time with wondering what had possessed him to call Gray's consolation vacation a date, Natsu had neither protested the sleepover nor informed her that someone else had beaten her to the punch.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "And if you tell me 'fine', I'm going to kick you."
"I don't wanna talk about it."
Speaking in a gentler tone, Lucy said, "You've been like that all week. Are you sure you don't have anything you want to say? You might feel better if you talked it out with someone."
She meant his illness. His being forever bared from taking jobs and fighting alongside someone else. Natsu shut his eyes and took a deep breath, shoving all thoughts of that aside. It was easier not to think about, and lounging around Lucy's house the past week and hiding from the guild, it was a fairly easy subject to avoid thoughts of. He could pretend he was crashing at her place for the fun of staying with a friend, or hanging back to read her stories in secret, and it was all good until she came home and acted like he was delicate.
For instance, he'd been too focused on saying something so humiliatingly awkward in front of Gray to remember that his life was over. Now she'd gone and made him think of that again.
"It's fine," he told her. "I can talk with Happy."
Happy, who knew about the beach plans but not what exactly had been said regarding them, gave Natsu a pat on the head. He had dutifully avoided the subject of Natsu's health as well, offering Natsu encouragement regarding it only when a physical shortcoming of Natsu's rubbed itself in his face.
Having seen Happy enable Natsu's avoidance of what was a subject he really needed to confront, Lucy raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. She didn't know the full exchange between Natsu and Gray, but Wendy had told everyone about how Natsu slipped out the infirmary window to avoid them. The last thing she wanted was to press too hard and make Natsu feel uncomfortable staying with her. That he was already avoiding Fairy Tail was nothing short of alarming.
But at the same time…
"I told you that 'fine' is off limits."
Turning over in bed—her bed—to grin at Lucy, Natsu said, "Fine. I'll stop saying fine, if that's fine with you."
"You're impossible."
"You think?"
Lucy laughed. "Okay. Fine. If that's how you want it. I'm going to go see how everyone's doing at the guild. Don't mess with my stuff while I'm gone." It wouldn't keep Natsu from going through her things, but if she didn't tell him not to, he'd pretend she'd given her approval in failing to forbid it.
She was at the door, hand on the knob, about to close it, when she remembered. "Oh yeah. Gray should return today. If you want to keep hiding out here, I won't stop you, but if you'd like to go back to your place, I'm sure he's still willing to head out there all the time and lend you a hand."
"I don't need a hand around the house!" Natsu protested, cheeks turning scarlet.
"For as easy as you've taken it, you probably don't need a hand getting home either," Lucy teased. "But you should get out more. Just because you don't have as much energy doesn't mean you shouldn't be active. You lose what you don't use."
She waved and left, shutting the door behind her.
"Natsu, you're blushing," Happy said. "Embarrassed to have Lucy notice how lazy you've been?"
"N-no!" He was more worried that she'd tell Gray.
Happy, oblivious to this concern, snickered. "You llllike her."
"Happy?"
"Yes?"
"No."
-o-
To Natsu's ultimate horror, Lucy sent Gray to her house. He came in through the window shortly after lunch, munching on a sandwich he'd bought himself on the way over.
"Hey. What are you doing in bed?"
"Lying down," Natsu said.
"You're not tired, are you?"
"Nah. Bored."
He'd barely left Lucy's house all week, and he'd been pretty familiar with the place even before Lucy's invite. The only thing he had to do that was remotely new was read whatever she'd written since the last time she stepped out, which was only about six pages. Not enough to keep him entertained all day.
"Y'know, Lucy thinks I should take you out somewhere."
There was a teasing note in Gray's voice, and Natsu couldn't tell why. Because he'd said they had a date? Because he needed someone with him if he was going too far from home? Because… Wait. Gray came in through the window?
"Are we leaving through the window?"
"We'd better be. I didn't make you a slide for nothing."
Sitting up, Natsu looked past Gray to inspect this slide. It was, to his mild disappointment, a very safe looking slide, with a covered top and a bowl at the bottom to catch anyone who might lack the strength to stop on their feet. Despite the obnoxious safety precautions, however, it was a slide, and any reluctance Natsu had felt to face Gray and risk being reminded of the date comment dissolved when he saw it.
Grinning from ear to ear, Natsu threw Lucy's covers off and scrambled out the window. His foot hooked on the windowsill, and he nearly fell face first, being saved only because Gray snapped an arm out to catch him. Breaking his own fall was something Natsu knew he could no longer do, but rather than dwell on that, he dismissed tripping over the window as something that could have happened even if he wasn't sick. Since his near accident thus had nothing to do with Suraci's, there was no need to be distressed by it, and thus nothing to spoil the fun of exiting Lucy's apartment via a slide.
He slid down, laughing as he hit the bottom and spun out into the bowl. It took a moment for him to collect himself, still giggling, and climb out. Once he was safely out of the way, Gray followed him down.
Gray didn't get as much joy out of the slide as Natsu, but seeing how quickly Natsu had lit up when he'd almost looked like he was about to decline getting out of bed, Gray was smiling too as he picked himself up off the ground.
"Think you're up for a train ride?" he asked.
The smile vanished even faster than it had appeared. "We can't walk to the beach?"
Gray opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then grimaced and shut it once more.
It took Natsu a second to make sense of the reaction. Of course they couldn't walk to the beach. He wasn't even supposed to walk around town without someone with him, and Gray was struggling to find a way to tell him no without rubbing that in his face.
"We need to see how well you can handle vehicles," Gray said finally.
"Can we just say I can't? Can we say I never could?"
Gray bit his lip, thinking it over before saying, "You want to come along with everyone when they work, don't you? You realize we aren't going to only take jobs around town. If we have to assume you can't manage to ride in a train for a few hours, we have to assume you can't tag along for almost any job we take."
Damn it. He had a point. Natsu scowled, but grudgingly nodded in understanding. "Let's get this over with, then."
-o-
It was miserable.
The train ride itself was no worse than normal. Natsu was hit by a wave of dizziness the second the train started in motion, and spent the ride with his cheek against the window, ready to throw it open and lean out if he felt like he was about to throw up. Compared to the many times where he did throw up, it wasn't actually that bad.
What was bad was that it never seemed to end. When they reached their stop he stumbled off the train, bumping into Gray, and needed the ice mage's help to remain upright. He still felt queasy as they walked from the station to the hotel, and while Gray checked them in, he had to sit in the lobby, slowly breathing in and out trying to quell the lingering nausea.
Happy and Gray carried all the luggage, which Natsu felt too sick to protest. He did his best to walk straight while he followed them to their room, and once inside, flopped over on the bed and wouldn't move.
"You aren't dying, are you?" Gray asked.
Recognizing the question as an attempt at adding some levity to that blasted 'are you okay' that people now asked him constantly, Natsu almost didn't answer. Then he remembered that his ability to come along on jobs was riding on his ability to ride a train.
"Give me a few minutes. I just need a little time to recover."
"Was it this bad after the first attack?"
"Not this bad, but it was worse than it used to be."
"Well, there's one more reason to be careful, I guess. Anything I can get you? Water? Soup? I think I could probably run down to the waterfront and find a place that sells clam chowder."
"I'm going to throw up, Gray. I don't want fish soup."
"Water, then."
Natsu shut his eyes, rubbing his fingers gingerly across his stomach. It had to have been over half an hour since they disembarked, and it still felt like he was on that blasted train.
The sound of a crystal clink near his head made him open his eyes again, and he saw that Gray had set a water glass by his head, which he attempted to drink without sitting up. The attempt ended with him spilling water all over his face, but some of it went into his mouth, so he considered it a success.
"I'm going to scout out restaurants," Gray told him. "I'll be back in a little bit, and maybe we can go down to the water after we eat?"
"Mm."
"Alright. Happy, let me know if anything goes wrong."
Happy, called upon in the middle of stealing the pillows off of what would be Gray's bed to build a fort around Natsu, dropped the one in his hand and gave Gray a salute. "Aye, Sir!"
-o-
When the nausea finally faded away completely, Natsu wiggled his way out of his pillow cave and inspected the hotel room. Not particularly fancy, although not dingy. Not in view of the ocean either.
Of course. Gray probably didn't think anything of his comment beyond that it was a strange choice, if he even remembered it. Natsu was the only one acting weird. It wasn't a date and there was no reason it should be. If Gray had wanted a romantic getaway, he'd have planned ahead and invited Juvia or something. He didn't. Gray knew Natsu didn't mean anything, anything, by it when his tongue slipped and he accidentally called their trip a date. It was just Gray trying to distract him from the fact that he was going to have to either spend the rest of his life helping around the guild hall, or find work outside of the guild.
Remembering that, Natsu flopped back over on the bed, destroying the pillow structure that he'd so carefully avoided only a minute ago.
What could he even do at the beach? He couldn't race or break melons, and he probably couldn't swim either. No one had even considered dropping him into the pool back home to test that one. What else was left? Taking a long walk? Yeah right. That was a couple thing, for one—and after going two-hundred feet Gray would tell him that they needed to cut the walk short because he looked tired.
The lock clicked, and the door to their room swung open. Gray strode in and, seeing Natsu in the exact same position as when he left, grimaced. "Are you still sick?"
"Porlyusica said that 'chronic' means I'm going to be sick for life."
"Let me rephrase that. If I yank you to your feet right now, will you or will you not throw up on mine?"
"I'm fine."
"Meaning…?"
"I don't feel like I'm going to throw up anymore," Natsu said. "If you have a restaurant picked out, I'm good to go." He held a hand out. "Go ahead. Yank me up."
"You can stand on your own, Natsu." Gray paused. "Can't you?"
He could still do that much, and he wasn't about to let Gray tell him otherwise. Natsu pushed himself up and onto his feet, offering Gray a smile so he wouldn't be asked if he was okay.
At first, Gray watched Natsu closely while leading his friend to the restaurant of choice, a seafood place with a deck that went out onto the beach. But once it became apparent that Natsu's dizziness had indeed vanished, he gave the boy some space. The point of the trip was to cheer Natsu up after Porlyusica's assessment, and if he'd spent the whole week that Gray was gone in bed, then cheering up was something he desperately needed. Gray still intended to keep an eye on Natsu, lest he overexert himself trying to prove he was as capable as before, but Natsu wouldn't be cheery if he caught Gray constantly looking for signs that he was about to collapse.
They made it to the restaurant without incident, timing it perfectly to arrive as a server called out to let Mr. Fullbuster know that they table he'd reserved was ready. Gray half worried that Natsu might still feel sick from the trip, and was only faking wellness to keep him from worrying, but the second they were seated out on the deck Natsu snatched up a menu and ordered as an appetizer, of all things, clam chowder.
The waitress took their order for drinks and appetizers and left, and that's when things got weird. Not that Natsu didn't always make things weird in his own special way, but things got weird even by 'I'm eating out with Natsu' standards.
Gray wasn't going to pretend their relationship hadn't been strained since Natsu's illness became apparent, but at no point had Natsu flat out given him—or anyone—the cold shoulder before. Not to mention, Natsu had been just fine talking with him only a few minutes earlier. When the waitress left, however, Natsu glanced to his left, stared in wide eyed horror at the scenic view of the sun going down over the ocean, held his menu up in front of his face, and hadn't said a word since.
"You're still alive back there, right?" Gray teased, or tried too, anyway. He thought he saw Natsu's shoulders raise in response, but the roset stayed silent.
"He is still alive, isn't he?" he tried again with Happy.
Happy, positioned on the table such that the menu didn't shield him from, leaned to his side to take a closer look at Natsu, then snickered. "He's blushing."
"Am not!"
"He is," Happy insisted. "What'cha blushing about, Natsu? Do you wish Lucy was here?"
"No!"
So that was it. Odd, because for as close as those two had been, Gray has always assumed that if something more was going to bloom between them, it already would have. Maybe being away from work, deprived of any battles for so long, Natsu had finally started thinking of things other than fighting. Maybe all the extra time he'd spent with Lucy the past week had led Natsu to see something he hadn't before—which made Gray a little jealous, since all his extra time with Natsu seemed to do was grow a rift between them. Maybe he'd spent the whole week more or less in bed because he wasn't sure how to confront his feelings.
Gray laughed, covering his mouth when Natsu dropped the menu to glare at him. The poor boy's cheeks were scarlet, and when he noticed Gray's eyes dart to them before quickly looking back up, he growled and looked away.
"Don't get so worked up over it," Gray told him. "Even if she were here, we're just getting dinner, and this just happened to be the table that opened up. It's not like this would be a date."
Lucy wasn't there anyway, so Gray couldn't understand why Natsu cringed when he said that, unless he was embarrassed to be caught wishing for her.
"Is something else wrong?"
"No. I'm fine."
-o-
STA: Natsu might be "fine" but I am not. I don't know why I thought proofreading in the middle of the night with a headache was a good idea, but here I am. Once I started I couldn't stop. The last time I stopped mid-proofread, I tried to mark my spot my throwing a paragraph of keyboard mashing gibberish into the chapter at the point I was at. Then I forgot I hadn't finished proofreading and posted the chapter with the gibberish smack dab in the middle of the thing. And the worst part was that no one told me, so it was just up until something compelled me to go and look at the story for myself.
Daygon Yuuki: Well, 'tis not a date date. I rather like the word because it can be used for non-romantic get-togethers, but everyone still associates it with the romantic connotation. Although sometimes that makes things awkward. One time in high school our teacher accused a friend of mine of "standing me up on our date" when she missed a student teacher meeting she scheduled, and then they both realized what that sounded like and agreed never to speak of it again. (As you can see, I made no such agreement.)
.169: Your English is just fine. Thank you for your feedback :)