Natsu suspected Gray's aim was to torture him to the point of insanity. Restricting him was one method. He would claim to be worried about Natsu's health, so that Natsu felt like an ingrate for being upset with all the little ways Gray denied him freedom. That one was hard enough, but then the whole guild was in on it. For as much as he hated it, the reality of his situation was that he had a serious health issue, and there wasn't as much he could do as a result.
But this new method? It was downright cruel. Gray would act nice and flash that smug grin of his and take his shirt off and make Natsu's heart race, then he'd take him to do some couple's thing and make an offhand comment that solidified that not only were they only out as friends, but that the possibility that what they were doing might be better suited for a date hadn't even crossed his mind. If nothing else, if left Natsu wondering if the whole thing was in his head. More often, though, it left him frustrated. Each time he thought that maybe Gray had the same strange feelings he did, and maybe he could risk mentioning them, his hopes were dashed.
The situation also made him feel some sympathy for Juvia. If Gray's attempts at being a good friend and guild mate with her were anything like what Natsu now dealt with, then no wonder she had yet to give up on him. Gray was a master of sending the wrong message.
He didn't like feeling sympathy for her. Juvia didn't perceive him as a rival, but Natsu was slowly starting to see her as one. Each time she jumped on Gray in the guild, he felt his jaw clench and his shoulders tense. Sometimes, she tried to get Gray to go on a job with her too, and Natsu was always beyond relieved when Gray begged off—usually citing Natsu as the reason he couldn't leave. The thought of Gray, of anyone from his team, going off to work without him was already hard enough. Gray leaving with some girl who would moon over him and try to win his affection was too much.
That was silly, of course. Gray didn't feel that way about Juvia. He'd practically screamed as much at Natsu. Knowing that should have been comforting, except that for all Natsu felt like Juvia with his heightened interest in the ice mage, it made him worry all the more about how his feelings might be received.
And for that reason, he intended to tell no one else about those feelings yet. It was his and Lucy's secret. When Gray showed up at the guild the day after Natsu went along on a job, he gave his friend a slight nod before he returned to taking breakfast orders.
He went back into the kitchen to get Gray's order—scrambled eggs and bacon, something they always had ready-made at breakfast time. When he returned, Juvia was there.
He bit his lip and forced himself to smile as he carried the plate over. Gray could tell when he was faking it, but so many of his smiles had been fake since he learned he was sick that no one called him on it now. Instead, they thought of it as a good sign if he had it in him to pretend.
Gray looked up at him when he returned, offering a strained smile in return for Natsu's fake. Why strained? Because Juvia was there? Because his server's smile was fake? Sometimes he just didn't get Gray.
"I wish you weren't so weird," Natsu heard himself say. That wasn't exactly what he meant.
"Juvia doesn't think you should talk about Gray like that."
"Really? I think it's nice to see him acting like his old self." Gray gave Natsu another smile, a real one, and added, "Not that being stronger than you ever stopped me from beating you up before, but I'll need to find some new way to straighten you out."
Gray's smile was real, but as Natsu returned to the kitchen, his was still fake.
He wasn't back to his old self. His old self would have called Gray names to pick a fight. Now he had no idea how to explain himself when he fumbled over his words wishing he understood Gray better.
-o-
Breakfast ended, and Mira ordered Natsu take a break. It had been a while since she let him work through the day without mandated breaks.
Erza and Lucy were gone, off buying new clothes for something that had been of dire importance to Erza, although why, she wouldn't tell. Juvia was still glued to Gray, and Makarov sat by the job board, where he gave Natsu a disapproving head shake for staring too long. Unsure what else to do with his time, Natsu wandered around the guild floor, and ended up next to Gajeel.
The iron slayer didn't acknowledge him initially, but then, that was part of the new normal. They hadn't exchanged a single word since Natsu was diagnosed. Engrossed in his health, in Gray nagging him about his health, and in Gray, Natsu hadn't found too much time to be upset yet with the guild members who had avoided him. In fact, that might have had something to do with a lot of his changed interactions around the guild. How many of the sympathetic comments sent his way and normal conversations that died down as he walked by were due to how openly he'd fixated on and resented his illness? And between how often he'd been shoved into some back room to be prevented from seeing things get rowdy, how often he'd hidden in a backroom himself when he became sick of all those sympathetic looks that he could no longer punch people for giving him, it was no wonder he didn't spend a fraction of the time socializing that he used to.
Now that it was getting tiresome to be frustrated with his condition constantly, and since interacting with Gray wasn't too appealing at the moment, Natsu found himself gravitating to this issue.
Gajeel glanced at Natsu when he sat down, coughed awkwardly, and looked away.
It wasn't for any malicious reason, Natsu knew. He'd hated any reminder that he was sick. He still did, in fact. He'd been irritated with sympathy and distressed to see people go about their lives in way where he no longer felt included, and that made it hard for people to interact with him.
"Watcha doing?" Natsu asked.
The question seemed to startle Gajeel, who dropped the book he'd been attempting to discreetly read and nearly knocked the bench over as he spun around to face Natsu.
"What?"
"Watcha doing?" Natsu repeated. "Is that for Levy?"
Gajeel studied Natsu a minute before shaking his head. "Gramps. Asked me to look some crap up for him. Seems like they coulda made you do it, but I guess your attention span must suck too bad."
It would have given him something to do, but Natsu hated it when they assigned him tasks that involved a lot of boring reading.
"Well, it's your problem now," Natsu decided aloud. "What is it?"
"Nothing. Some stuff about another continent."
"We aren't…" Natsu paused, catching himself. "You guys aren't going overseas, are you?"
Gajeel snorted. "I'm sure as hell not. Don't look so alarmed. If we find anything worthwhile, the old man will still tell Gray to stay behind and babysit you."
He paused then, watching Natsu for any sort of reaction. Natsu wasn't sure what his face must have looked like, but it wasn't what Gajeel expected. The iron slayer eased back, chuckling.
"You weren't really worried he'd leave, were you?"
"O-of course not!"
"And here I thought you'd like to have him off your back. Lucy's always complaining about how he nags you."
"If he left, they'd find someone else to do it," Natsu said.
Not that there was anyone who would be as neurotic about the possibility of Natsu hurting himself as Gray was. For as concerned as Lucy could get, she'd been content to let him lie around her house all week. Where Gray would practically hold Natsu's tea to his lips and force it down his throat, Lucy hadn't even given an absentminded reminder.
"Let's be real, Gray'd put up a fight to be the one who stays behind for you. If he doesn't trust you on your own, he trusts others with you even less." Here, Gajeel paused again, and this time Natsu realized he was waiting to see if his remarks might cause offense.
He supposed it was rude to imply he couldn't be trusted on his own, but then it was also nice to hear he wasn't the only one who thought Gray took things a little too far.
"Well then I don't know why you told me not to worry anyway. You sure I couldn't come along for this? It can't be too risky if the main thing Gramps is making you do for it is read a book."
"You want to take a boat across the ocean?"
Natsu paled. "Nevermind. Have fun. Send a postcard. I'll hold down the fort."
Gajeel clicked his tongue and opened the book back up, growing bored with the conversation. "It'd make more sense to drag you along on this anyway. At least, if you didn't care about Gray having a conniption fit."
Natsu bit his lip, watching Gajeel read long enough to turn to the next page before asking, "Why does Gray worry when no one else acts like it's half as big a risk to let me walk a quarter a mile on my own?"
"We all—I mean…" Gajeel coughed. "Who knows why he's so antsy about you. Why are you asking me? Go bug him."
"Juvia's bugging him."
"Go sit by him and pretend you're tired. She's not gonna demand his attention while they think you need his help."
"Yeah. I know. But then he'll make me go home early, and it's boring to sit around home all day."
He'd only feigned fatigue to get Gray to take him home before his shift ended twice, although there had been a few times where he was genuinely too tired to keep working and needed Gray to carry him back. Gajeel gave Natsu a skeptical look, trying to assess how many of those incidents had been real.
"You know," Gajeel said slowly, "if you do fake being weak, Gray'll think you're weaker."
"He doesn't trust me to get into my hammock. I had to let him lower it if I didn't want him to take it away completely. How much weaker could he mistake me for?"
"He could put you on a mattress on the floor," Gajeel suggested. "Or make you move into the infirmary so you don't have to walk to the guild every day."
Now there was a terrifying thought. Once upon a time living at the guild was an idea that would have appealed to Natsu, but that was back before his illness. Now home, boring as it was, served as a nice escape from all the worried glances people gave him. Even if he could get everyone to relax more about his condition, or at least everyone but Gray, moving into the guild now would make them worry all over again.
"You people all worry too much," Natsu said.
Gajeel blinked, needing a moment to process the seemingly random comment, then said, "Get back to work, Salamander. I've got my own job to do, and you don't look tired."
Grinning, Natsu rose to his feet. "Okay. But I'm gonna pester you again the next time Mira makes me take a break."
"No."
"See you after lunch," Natsu waved and took a few steps running before remembering that running was off limits. For as nice as it had been to have Gajeel's confidence that he could do more basic guild work without wearing himself out, that served as a reminder that he was still far from in good shape.
As he made his way back to the kitchen, he noticed Gray trying to covertly watch him. Run and fall, and Gray absolutely would drag him home, but seeing Juvia clinging to Gray, that didn't sound too horrible.
-o-
He resisted the urge to play sick through lunch, although he still felt sick each time he carried someone's meal out and saw Juvia eating Gray up with her eyes. How long could the two of them even sit in that position? Gray had pulled his arm out of Juvia's embrace several times that morning, but now he seemed to have given up.
Gray didn't like her that way, Natsu had to remind himself. He didn't, and he got mad when Natsu tried to suggest that he ought to, just for how much Juvia liked him. Gray didn't like her and there was no reason for Natsu to squeeze the sides of the lunch plates so tightly that they made his fingers ache.
His grip failed him midway through the meal, fingers tired and achy from his irritation. They picked the perfect time to give out, causing Natsu to fumble and drop Gray's lunch right in front of him and Juvia. After two months, the guild had seen Natsu drop enough light object to only glance long enough to identify what exactly had caused that shattering noise. It had been a while since any of them tried to downplay or even verbally acknowledge it the way Mira had that first day. But on the other hand, Natsu just knew it would have Gray pestering the master about lightening his workload again. For all he couldn't do, he still ought to be able to make it all the way through lunch.
"Sorry," Natsu murmured, bending down to scoop up the porcelain shards and food. "Lunch took me by surprise. Haven't had time yet for my tea."
Had Gray sat next to one of the slayers, they would have smelled the spice of that stuff on his breath and known the lie for what it was, but Gray accepted the excuse. "Go get it, and take some time off while it kicks in. I can clean up the mess."
"It's my job."
"You already dropped that plate once."
Blushing, Natsu shoved what all he'd picked up into Gray's hands and fled into the kitchen, ignoring Gray's call for him not to walk away so quickly.
Explaining to Mira that he'd broken a plate, that the kitchen needed to remake Gray's lunch, and that he was taking a break took about as much time as it would to pour and drink tea, so Gray had no reason to be suspicious when Natsu came back out a minute later and went to sit by Gajeel again.
"Not now, Salamander. I'm busy."
"You're in the same spot in your book as last time."
"No. Last time I was here." Gajeel flipped back four pages.
Natsu looked at the page, then looked up at Gajeel, unconvinced.
"This shit is dry. I'd like to see you read through it faster without zoning out."
"What's it about anyway?" Natsu asked
"Top secret."
"That's why you're reading it out in the open?" Skimming over the page, Natsu added, "Why is a travel guide top secret?"
Shutting the book abruptly and setting it at his side opposite Natsu, Gajeel said, "Master's orders. If we go, no one wants you sneaking on the boat with us."
"Why would I sneak on a boat? That would make me sick!"
Gajeel shrugged. "Who knows how your brain works. You did decide to go on a job while you were sick, and that turned out great."
Natsu had handled every other comment Gajeel made so well that it came as a shock to the iron slayer when the color drained from Natsu's face and the boy began to shake. They both stuttered, Natsu trying to find words when his throat suddenly felt too tight to speak, Gajeel trying to find some way to take back what he'd said.
Natsu found what he was looking for first, and after trying so hard to say something, anything, on the matter, when something finally came out, it burst out.
"It's not like I knew!" Natsu yelled.
Natsu yelling hadn't been commonplace in months, and the whole guild fell silent, surprised to hear the noise again.
All eyes fell on him, and as Natsu struggled to keep from screaming, he became aware of the fact that he wasn't the only one who'd abruptly hushed themselves. He looked left and right, seeing everyone's stares. Seeing Gray stare, looking concerned and sure to treat him like an invalid later.
"L-look. Salamander… I didn't mean—"
"Just forget it," Natsu muttered, pushing himself up from the table. "I'm tired. I'm going home."
His hearing being what it was, Natsu was well aware of the fact that everyone started talking again the second he shut the guild door. He appreciated that they kept their voices quiet, but he could still tell they were all speculating as to what set him off. What to tiptoe around. How careful they needed to be not to hurt him when his disease was obviously taking its toll.
The urge to run away from all of it struck him, and he didn't care if he wasn't supposed to. He took off down the street.
He made it only ten steps before a strong arm grabbed him and yanked him into the air. For a second, he thought for sure that it was Gray, come to scold him and carry him home. Except Gray wasn't tall enough to hold him above the ground, and when Natsu glanced over his shoulder he saw that it was Gajeel who followed him out.
"Salamander, look, I shouldn't a said that."
"Why? Because Gramps will tell you off for not handling me with kiddie gloves?"
"No. Because you tried to run after I said it, you idiot. The last thing any of us want is you getting worse." Gajeel dropped him. "You had no way of knowing you were doing yourself harm when you went on that job and collapsed. Fine. Fair enough. You sure as hell knew what you were doing this time. You wanted to get away from me that badly?"
"No." Natsu rubbed his arm where Gajeel had held him. That was going to bruise later. "Everyone else."
Gajeel paused, listening to the chatter inside the guild, then growled. "You're a goddamn paradox, Salamander. You get upset with me for being blunt with you, and all of them for trying to soften their words."
In response, Natsu turned away and tensed to bolt again.
"Don't you dare! Look, you did alright yesterday, right? You got to be up near the action and nothing went wrong. That's something, isn't it? Whatever the old lady says, you did better than a lot of us thought you would, so don't get mad."
"I didn't… I didn't do anything."
"Sure you did. You went along and got up close, right? I mean, it sounded like they played it a little safe, but then doesn't that just mean that they'd probably be fine to take you on a more serious job than they did?"
Gajeel was right, Natsu thought. They'd picked something so safe and easy that it bordered on insulting. He and Happy could stay out of the way if brought on a tougher job. He wasn't so weak that he couldn't let Happy carry him away. Of course, there was one major obstacle when it came to the type of jobs he could go on. A remark about what Gray would think of that was on Natsu's lips, but Gray beat him to it.
"Just what are you telling him?" the ice mage growled.
Gajeel jumped, having been too absorbed with pacifying Natsu to notice anyone else join them outside. Natsu hadn't seen Gray approach either, but wasn't shocked. If anything, he was surprised it took Gray so long to follow him out. Probably had to extract himself from Juvia's grip.
"I'm going," Natsu announced, stopping a fight between the two before he was forced to listen to them argue over what sort of work he was fit enough to stand back and observe. "I didn't work the whole day, so I can get back on my own."
He didn't want Gajeel to follow again. Some part of him, a larger part than he liked to admit, hoped that Gray might walk him back anyway, even if it meant a remark or two about how risky it was to take him along on jobs.
"I'll tell Happy," Gray said instead. "You take it easy."
For all the times Natsu had complained about Gray escorting him home, he couldn't fuss if Gray gave him a little independence. He bit his lip, nodding, and set off towards his house, feeling a little betrayed by Gray's decision to stay at the guild, to stay where Juvia was, rather than walk with him.
Well, fine then. He wouldn't 'take it easy.' They had been overly cautious with him before, and if Gray thought he was fine to get around on his own again, then it ought to be fine for him to tag along on a better job.
-x-
STA: I'm sure nothing bad will come of this.
FranGipani6181: Thanks so much! I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it. The scene with Natsu opening up to Lucy was a lot of fun.
Supernova88: It obviously meant nothing. Things never get worse before they get better in stories.