A/N: Do you hear Yanny or Laurel.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima does.

Lucy eyed the letters strung over the couch critically. There was something horribly off about them and it had nothing to do with the jarring colour scheme. Some were solid colours, some diamond patterned. Half had glitter that was slowly finding a new home in the ratty nylon fabric below, and the other half was blindingly shiny. It was evident that either Natsu or Gray (or, knowing them, both) had gone through great pains to find as many different versions of 'HAPPY NEW YEAR' strings at the dollar store as they could, tore off letters at random, and then spliced them to create the monstrosity before her.

"Erza," she called, "Is it me or is something...off about this?"

Erza placed the decanter of spiked punch on the coffee table and joined her. "I see what you mean," Erza said. "But I also don't."

With that, the two of them tilted their heads and rolled their weight to their right hip. Gajeel passed by, two gigantic kegs in hand, and paused at the scene. His studded brows furrowed as he sidled up behind the both of them, dropping the kegs at his feet. "The fuck? That…"

"Makes no sense?" Lucy offered.

"But complete sense at the same time?" Erza said. The mechanic nodded. With that, the three of them fell into the same pose and continued to stare.

"This is confusing," Rogue declared from Lucy's left. To her credit, she only grabbed onto Gajeel's bicep for the fifteen seconds it took for her heart to calm down versus, say, climbing him like a koala did a tree. I'm buying him a collar with a bell on it for his birthday, she vowed.

You say that every year, Inner Cana retorted.

New Years Resolution, then.

Uh-huh.

"He swapped the 'e' and 'a' in 'year'!" Cana yelled from the kitchen. "Took me an hour to get it, no worries!"

There was a collective 'ohhhh' before they broke off to finish setting up. Gajeel picked up the kegs and placed them on the beer pong table, and Erza hauled the decanter off somewhere where it was less likely to be knocked over in a drunken brawl; less likely, of course, being a relative statement because of the unholy offspring of Murphy's Law known as 'Fairy Tail's Law' - anything that can break, will break.

"Done setting up?" Rogue inquired politely.

"Yup! The jello shots have been prepped and should be ready by the time we get into the swing of things. How about you?"

He held up a ball of lights. "I'm better prepared to untangle the universe than this."

Lucy winced. "Need help?"

"Please," he said fervently. They settled on the couch, dropping the ball between them, and began poking and prodding it for a loose connection to start pulling at. Lucy found the plug and started the arduous effort of figuring out where it went and how to get it to point B. She knew for a damn fact that she had very neatly separated the Christmas lights into piles by size and then used twist ties to keep them straight and in order last year. This meant one of two things: Natsu (or Gray) had decided to dig them out and put them up by himself, only to fail miserably when they got jumbled together (understandable given that the lights, much like headphones in a pocket, were programmed to do so), or there were decoration gremlins in the storage area who had done the deed at some point during the year. Given how tightly the lights were knotted, she was leaning on the gremlin theory.

"Sting not joining us?" Lucy asked conversationally.

"He's going to try and flirt with a nurse to get Wendy off her shift early," he replied. At her amused expression, he rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm well aware I'm dating an idiot."

"He's...driven," she said.

"He's unbelievably stupid," Rogue corrected. "But...admirable."

"It's funny, 'cause Mest was going to try and do the same thing," Lucy laughed, pressing the back of her hand over her mouth as the biology major slapped his forehead and sighed deeply. "You gonna send him a text?"

"No," Rogue grumbled, tugging his string viciously. "Let them both have at it. Are your graduated friends going to be coming?"

"A little later. Macbeth said he was baking brownies, except Sawyer slipped in some pot, so now Sorano's forcing them to remake it all," Lucy said. She'd dipped from Erik's apartment not long after the lawyer had whipped a chair at both their heads. The sight of Macbeth using the fridge door as a weak shield against his best friend was a sight that she would cherish until her dying day, especially when coupled with the three part soundtrack of Erik yelling 'worldstar', Sawyer screeching for mercy, and Richard offering to go buy some brownies from the store.

"Damn, we missin' pot brownies?" Bacchus interrupted. He was lounging under the beer pong table, suspiciously close to the kegs, and nursing a screwdriver in one hand, the other creeping up to the tap. Gajeel smacked his hand away with the pointy tip of a knife.

"The only drug goin' on in this house is the alcohol," Gajeel said. "If I catch anyone near anythin' that ain't legal, y'all're gonna be lickin' the porch clean, we clear?"

"Killjoy."

Natsu poked his head out from around the corner. "Anybody mind running to the store for some extra supplies?" he asked sheepishly. "Gray and I got into a bit of a tussle…"

It had taken a half tank of gas and twenty minutes of arguing with the GPS over toll routes, but Lucy and Rogue eventually managed to gather the requisite supplies. While she wouldn't have minded popping by one of the 24-hour superstores and getting the off-brand stuff, Rogue had other plans; the kind that involved coupon apps and forums for the cheapest bargains. A shocking one hundred dollars in savings, an armful of bags, and two hours later found the duo shuffling up the driveway to Gray's house.

The party had already started, if the incomprehensible music was any indication. The bass was so heavy that the words were a messy jumble feeding up to her more through her feet than her ears. The gaps between the houses, a half kilometer at the very least, was their only saving grace from an annoyed neighbour calling in a noise complaint. Granted, it was textbook horror movie intro complete with virgin sacrifices for the picking on New Years Eve, but the benefits really did outweigh the risks. Besides, there was not one soul in the house that would pass up being sacrificed to the devil if it meant avoiding the next semester.

Lucy toed open the door gently and gagged. The stench of alcohol was so potent that she was starting to get a little tipsy off the fumes alone. She breathed in the crisp, evening air (likely the last of the fresh air she'd have for the night) and held it in as she powered through the throng of people. The crowd parted easily with a swing of her makeshift battering rams, so getting to the kitchen was not as much of an issue as she thought it would have been. The puddles of liquid on the floor, on the other hand…

"Your hardwood is fucked," she informed Gray, dropping her bags on the kitchen table. Her best friend choked back a whine with a heavy gulp of beer. His other hand grasped the bottle Cana was nursing and he made his way through half of that before responding.

"I'm blaming shitty shingles and heavy snowfall," Gray muttered.

"Juvia has cleaned up all the water," Juvia said as she walked into the kitchen. The hand that wasn't holding a pile of sopping wet paper towels was busy twisting her curly blue hair up into a messy bun that she clipped in place with a clothespin. "Does Gray have a vacuum cleaner Juvia can borrow? It will help with the moisture."

Gray looked ready to lick her stiletto's clean. "Yes. I owe you my firstborn. Follow me. For the vacuum, I mean, not the firstborn. Not that I have one of those yet." Juvia raised her eyebrow delicately but followed him to the storage closet without a peep.

Lucy shook her head and opened the fridge, clicking her tongue at the choices available. She pulled out the empty cardboard containers of Smirnoff Ice (fuckers finished it in the first half hour, Inner Cana said glumly) and threw them in the general direction of the recycling bin. She suspected a lot of the good stuff was located in the coolers in the living room, but there had to be at least one or two gems tucked away in the pyramids of Corona and Budweiser. Lucy closed the fridge and opened the freezer at the bottom, cheering as she spotted her bounty. A little known fact amongst adults-in-training was that good quality vodka (Absolut, Grey Goose, Smirnoff, etc.) could be left in the freezer for as long as you wanted and it wouldn't freeze. Where regular water would freeze at temperatures lower than zero degrees, the addition of ethanol lowered the freezing point of water meaning it would need to be much, much colder for it to freeze. The stronger the alcohol the lower the freezing point, and so something in the threshold of 40% would be safe from the ambient temperature of the freezer. She suspected Bacchus had been the one to keep the bottle safely hidden under the bags of frozen veggies, but he was no match for her retained chemistry trivia.

Thanking Erik and her lucky stars (might as well be the same thing at this point), she spun off the top and counted three shallow swallows before pulling back and sighing deeply. Her teeth hurt from the sudden cold, but another couple sips would have her well adjusted to it. She pressed the bottle to her neck and sighed softly. As chilly as it was outside the house was boiling. Gray would have to lower the temperature soon or people would be dropping left and right. Perhaps that was what the frozen veggie packets were for; there were way too many for casual stocking.

Her moment of bliss was shattered by someone roughly grabbing the bottle from her hands with a relieved 'thank fuck'. Scowling, she whirled around (bad idea, bad idea) and grabbed the fridge handles for support. Her complaints died on her tongue as soon as the aftertaste of the vodka kicked in.

Unbuttoned, wrinkled shirt over a muscle shirt. Sweats that hung low on his hips. Erik looked like a university student. She'd seen him in casual wear before, but the backdrop of shitty EDM and swaying, drunk twenty-somethings enhanced the image and threw her for a loop. She could see him swaggering up to a house party, cases of beer in hand, and painting the town red for a couple hours. Her eyes caught a glint of gold and she squealed before she could stop herself. "You wore them!"

"Shut up," he snapped, tugging her ear subconsciously. "I was rushed for time."

Lucy had discovered his piercings out of sheer dumb luck. The day before Christmas they'd been watching Home Alone reruns on TV, piled up on her couch with a bowl of over-buttered popcorn split between the two. She'd been running a hand through his hair and drifted a little too low. Her finger caught his earlobe, detected the little hole in them, and the rest was history. It had been a pain in the ass like no other to find anything in stores on Christmas Eve, but she'd proudly presented him with a beautiful pair of golden hoops, no bigger than the circumference of her pinky, on the day of. They were a lot hotter on him than she'd anticipated.

And so Icarus falls, Inner Cana sighed.

That makes absolutely no sense.

You're Icarus and you flew too close to the sun that is Erik in hoops. Now you're falling. Ta-dah.

"I take it Sorano fixed the brownie problem?" she asked. Erik snorted and took another chug of vodka, perching on the glass table next to the fridge and saying, "Yeah. She also managed to fix my drywall. By that I mean there are three new holes that need fixing."

"You could always place some frames over them. Like, picture frames. Of pictures." Lucy blinked and shook her head. There were words in her head and she knew what they were, but when it came down to saying the words, her mouth felt too fuzzy to say anything big. Big words meant slurring so small words it was. But even the small words felt weird, like they were wrong because she knew the big ones.

"How much have you had to drink?"

Lucy held up her hand and pressed her thumb and index finger together. She pulled them apart slowly, until they were about a ring finger apart in width. "This much."

"In one go."

"Yeah!"

"You're an idiot."

"I'm a fucking G is what I am."

"Toto!" Lucy shouted. "Hey! Hey, Toto!"

He'd seen her piss drunk before and judging by the amused look on his face, he was glad to see that the duty of keeping her from eating all the sour key rings fell upon someone that was not him. Erik stood behind her, one finger stuck through the belt loop on the back of her shorts, and scowled at him.

"Kaji."

"Vivas."

"Heartfilia," Lucy said impatiently. "Now, back to what I was saying. Toto, do you know where the peach bellinis are? Juvia said you brought some."

"In the cooler back there." He jerked his finger towards a red cooler stacked between a blue and green one. "You sure you're good to have one, though?"

"I'll live." She waved her hand dismissively and tugged Erik's finger away. The walk to the cooler tower was going to be a tough one. There were people. So many people. They were pushed up against each other and percolating, and there was no room for her to filter through. Except, of course, between their legs. Shrugging, she dropped down and assumed The Position. Army crawling was going to be a bitch with how tight her clothes were against her skin, and her boobs were bound to slip out of their designated seats, but it was the best option so she breathed in deeply and took off.

People's feet fucking stank. If they were wearing shoes (godless heathens, the lot of them) then she could whiff whatever was stuck to the bottom of them, be it dog poop or lawn fertilizer. If they were wearing socks (on thin fucking ice) then their sweat clogged up her nostrils and had her gagging. If they were barefoot (as it should be) she was treated to athlete's foot, cracked heels, and more sweat. Her feet didn't smell. Did they? She paused in her crawl and drew her foot up to sniff it, a task she soon realized was really fucking hard when avoiding beating trampled to death.

"What the hell," Macbeth said.

Lucy rolled over and stuck her foot in the air. "Do my feet smell?"

"I don't have a foot fetish. Go away, you gremlin. Erik," he raised his voice ever so slightly. "Do you have a foot fetish we need to talk about?"

Lucy flipped over to her stomach and continued the few feet between her and her cooler. She scrambled up and was met with problem number two. The cooler was between two coolers. Full coolers. And the blue one on top had more coolers on top of it.

Jenga or no jenga…

Bad.

She stood up on her tippy toes and grabbed the top cooler, pulling it down so it mostly was sat on her breasts. Carrying heavy things was easy when you had a built in shelf to level them off. The second cooler was heavier than the first, but she managed to whittle down all three layers before she hit the jackpot.

"Bellini," she cooed, cracking open a can of the sugary goodness. She'd regret this in the morning. There was absolutely nothing worse than the morning breath of someone who had spent their final 'awake' hours knocking back fruity drinks. She finished the can in a record breaking two minutes and then peered into the cooler once more. She couldn't finish all of Juvia's bellini's. That was just mean. Toto's gross-ass beer, on the other hand…

"Wanna shotgun?" Sting pulled up beside her. He held a knife up in the air and grinned. "Best two of three?"

"You're on!" Lucy yelled. Shotgunning was a time honoured tradition in their group, and they were all honour bound to cede victory to the one who spilled the least amount of beer, finished their can first, and burped the loudest. Three cans in a row would be epic.

And incredibly stupid, Inner Cana admitted. But, hey, who cares.

Sting stabbed their beer cans and placed his lips over the leaking hole. Lucy followed in suit. They bobbed their heads three times, popped the tab, and then the beer was pouring into her mouth faster than she could swallow.

Spitters are quitters!

The first second or two were a torrential explosion from hell, like a dam had burst, but she found her rhythm almost immediately, holding her jaw open as wide as possible and allowing the beer to slip down her throat despite the acrid kick. Seven seconds. She grabbed the next can and stabbed it. This one went down easier because she was prepped from the first, and the third one was like drinking water. She stomped on the cans at her feet and pumped her arms in the air. "Fuck yes!"

"Kay, you win this," Sting gasped. His face scrunched up a split second before his cheeks bulged and he let out a roaring, gaseous burp. Even a foot away she could smell it. This burp single-handedly killed the dinosaurs. Lucy was going to top this burp, if the chest-burster feeling in her was any indication. She could feel it rising up as a single force that tore at her throat before ripping to life like a Beyblade. Burp after noxious burp filled the gap between them. This burp was like the oxygen that came to life and murdered 75% of the planet before cells figured out how to deal with it.

Winner!

"That's disgusting," Erik grumbled. His finger fell into her belt loop once more, tugging at it. "Come on, you need to sit down before you throw up…"

"Flip cup!" she squealed, running for the table. Somebody had unhinged a door from one of the rooms and propped it up on top of two stacks of beer boxes. She filled in the gap next to Gray and bumped her hip against his. "Olayyy, olay, olay, olayyy!"

"Olay!" he roared. "Flip cup!"

She grabbed her solo cup and chugged. It was harder than shotgunning because the beer was plowing into her mouth in that. Here, she relied on nothing but her ability to suppress her gag reflex and gravity. She slammed her cup upside down on the edge and flicked the end. Too much force. The cup fell. She lined it with the edge again and braced her finger on the bottom. Across from her, Lisanna Strauss seemed to be struggling with her cup as much as she was. Lucy flipped the cup and cheered as it landed on its bottom. Gray immediately started on his, as did Sorano across from him.

"No more," Erik said, yanking her to his chest. "Come on, midnight's in fifteen minutes. We should relax until then."

"Wait, Macbeth's in fifteen minutes? Are you going to his house?"

"No. Midnight like 12 AM."

"Oooh."

"You are so tanked," Erik said as he drew her to the dancefloor. Somebody had set the playlist to slower pop hits, and many people had settled into a slow back and forth that the two soon fell into. Lucy dropped her head on his chest and sighed. He was so warm. It was through sheer willpower alone that she didn't turn into a wet noodle in his grasp and drop all her weight on him. A little bit wouldn't hurt, though. He could hold her up.

"I'm fuzzy," she mumbled. "And I won."

"You won't remember anything from tonight, though."

"You can tell me tomorrow," she said. Keeping her eyes open was hard. She didn't wanna sleep but resting her eyes for a second didn't sound like a bad idea. Erik poked her back. "Stay awake, stupid, only a few more minutes."

"Ugh, fine...what're your new year's resolves?"

"Resolutions. I dunno. Not murder my coworkers. You?"

Lucy raised her head and stared at his eyes. Eye. Eyes. There were two. She blinked. One. Blinked again. Two.

"Oi."

"Oh, right." She patted her cheek and then pressed two fingers into his chin. "I'm gonna love you."

"You don't already? Damn, I knew you were using me," he said dramatically, clutching his chest. Lucy scowled and thwapped him twice. Once more for good measure. "No, silly. I'mma tell you I do."

"There's no time limit on-"

"I love you," she said seriously. "And I wanna have, like, two babies with you."

"What?" he managed to choke out. Lucy laughed. He sounded so funny. Like he'd just gone through puberty and his voice was starting to crack for the first time.

"You said in the lab, three babies were too many. So two babies it is."

"One baby, one cat," Erik bargained. He appeared slightly less surprised now. That wouldn't do. She liked it when he was surprised. His face was much cuter like that. Not that he didn't have a cute face already, but when his eyes got wide and his mouth went into a little 'o' she could see a whole new...something within him. Like she'd just cracked an ancient vault and found a gold dial to turn. She wasn't sure what was behind the dial but damn if it wasn't nice to look at.

Kiss him? Inner Cana suggested.

A'ight.

No indirect kisses, no screeching best friends in barnyards, and no crotchety old chemists would be stopping them this time. Hell, not even a horse manifesting in the living room would stop her this time. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, pressing her lips to his with a resounding smack.

There were no fireworks or fluttering bellies or 'sense of completion'. He didn't taste like musk and sex and the air before rainfall. She couldn't tell whose breath tasted worse, but she was willing to bet the fruity death that was hers was giving his a run for their money. Still, she pressed herself closer and grinned. This was a long time coming and god above if she didn't feel a little bit smug over the fact that she had initiated it.

"Two babies," Lucy purred. "This was fun."

Erik kissed her again. "One baby. Two cats."

"Deal," she agreed, "For now, anyways."

"Oi, they're kissing before the clock hit twelve!" Natsu yelled.

"Oh, shut up." Lyon smacked the back of his head. "There's ten seconds until it does."

"You should always enter the new year the way you intend for it to go," Lucy said sagely.

"Sounds good to me," Erik replied. He leaned down and-

"Holy shit!" Cana shrieked. "Bacchus is fucking down! Wendy! Wendy, come look at this!"

12:00:11 AM.

"Our year isn't gonna be a year of cockblocks, is it?" Erik asked mournfully. "Because then I'll have to drop my promise to not murder anyone."

What a baby, Inner Cana said affectionately.

Adorable.

You should fuck him.

Not now, we just kissed!

But you will.

Shut up.

A/N: Holy fuck, we hit the big 12. I know I originally said this would end on Christmas Day but me three years ago was a wild bitch, she lied a lot. For example, she said she'd be done by Christmas that year. Lol, jokes.

There will be an epilogue! So if you thought this chapter was short...sorry? You get an epilogue that will be even shorter but I hope it will satisfy your fluff buds. I think.

They kissed! Whoo! I did that!

I'll say my thank yous to you all in the epilogue, so just hold onto your pants and strap in. We almost done this bitch.

Friendly plugs: CoLu week in soon (I'm just gonna make a whole fic compilation this year, I'm too lazy to do summaries. I also actually need to do these prompts, whoops), and Chaos Theory is being rewritten! GET READY FOR BOTH.

Hit that mf review button.

-Eien