As stated in last chapter's A.N., you'll learn the title of the prompt at the end of the story.
Plan C
Lucy lay underneath the large piles of blankets and sheets that had been piled on top of her, weighing her down so much that she could barely twitch her foot. The only visible aspect of the beautiful blond, however, was the top half of her face, her nose up … well, except for her forehead, which had a folded wet clothe resting on top. Her hazed brown eyes glared at the pink haired man that had climbed in through her bedroom window, watching as he tried to be sneaky as he closed it behind him. She had pretty much banned him, Gray and Gajeel from stepping within a fifty foot radius of her for the next two weeks, thanks to their idiocy three days prior.
Natsu had looked so absolutely shocked and heartbroken and pleading, she almost cracked under his (fake) watery gaze. However, all she needed to remind her of their stupidity was the shudder that had racked through her body before an earth trembling sneeze had bellowed out of her body, and she bid him away. Mira and Wendy had stopped by earlier that day, Mira bringing medicine and plenty of cozy blankets, and Wendy kindly placing her Troia spell over the celestial mage. However, like the last time she had caught a cold, it would take a while for it to completely heal her. Though this time, it would take two days to pass over.
And not fifteen minutes after they had walked out the door—after having bundled up the sick girl and made sure that she was comfortable, of course—Natsu came stumbling into her apartment. He had probably assumed that she would be sleeping, since that's what she had been doing all day the day before. Wendy had been off on a mission during the party with Carla, Romeo, Wakaba, and Macao, Mira explaining that they hadn't wanted the younger members around when the party was going on. Wakaba and Macao had been "persuaded" into going along, or so Mira said. And since the absence of the young girl had lasted until this morning, she could have only hoped to sleep it away.
After the window had finally slid shut, Natsu huffed with his fists pressed against his hips proudly, and turned around to see that she was awake and not looking too happy with his presence. His proud attitude instantly deflated at the sight of her glare, donning a vulnerable and almost sheepish façade.
"I, uh, forgot my scarf here." He muttered, standing up straighter as he scratched the back of his head.
"No you di'nt." Lucy stumbled out, sniffing and tried to clear her nasally voice. Oh, how she hated flem. "You lef' i' here. On purbose … aroun' my neck." She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away from him, letting out three painful coughs that ripped their way up her throat. The movement reminded her that she still had Natsu's scarf knotted around her neck, for some reason, no one willing to take it off of her. She had tried herself, but just ended up tightening it even more. She totally would have called a spirit to help her, but unfortunately, since she was sick, her magic was rather weak. The only spirit she would be able to really summon is Plue, and he doesn't have fingers, so he wouldn't be very useful. Of course, the shivering little cutie was great company.
The other day, she had even threatened to cut it off herself if Natsu didn't remove it, but he caught her lie instantly. He knew perfectly well that she would never do that to something so precious to him, which was completely true. Over the time that they've grown to know each other, she came to treasure the little strip of fabric nearly as much as him.
"Are you gonna dake id off now?" she really hated being sick. She finally turned her face to look back at him, but jumped slightly when she discovered that he was far closer than he was before. He was squatting beside the top of her bed, his arms folded on the edge of the mattress with his chin resting on top. He was staring at her intently, well, more like through her. It looked like he was in thought.
"You have to promise you won't get angry." He said flatly after a few minutes of silence, his eyes finally completely focusing on her. Her glare narrowed suspiciously as she looked over his face, trying to find any kind of hint as to why she might get angry. But he kept his face completely blank.
Huffing out a heavy sigh, she nodded. She slid the top blankets down to her waist and shakily sat up, panting from the exertion. Oh yea, this cold was far worse than her last one. She had barely any energy to move.
She felt Natsu's rough, calloused hands grip her shoulders, helping her turn her back to him so he could undo the knot. She thought it would take a few minutes, since it was bigger than a softball, but one second it was there, and the next, it was falling into her lap. Turning, she leaned against the headboard of her bed and reached a hand up, feeling for anything that the scarf had been hiding. She didn't feel anything other than sweaty skin, but one glance at Natsu showed that he was growing increasingly nervous as she felt around. When she still didn't feel anything, she sighed and slid back down onto her pillows.
"I'll worby 'boud id whem I'm bedder." She muttered, pulling the blankets back up to her neck and rolling to her side, her back to Natsu. "Now, go away."
"Naaah, c'mon, Lucy! I can take care of you!" he whined, but she still didn't turn around to face him, knowing that he'd be giving her a sort of puppy dog pout.
"No. You'b done enouv." She said, trying to make her words sound final, but it was incredibly hard when she was talking like a three year old. She pulled the blanket farther over her shoulders and rolled into a ball. "Go to da Guild and ged a job." She offered, hoping that the idea would excite him and make him leave. She wasn't necessarily too angry at him, since they all had done some … questionable things that night at the party, but she still partially blamed him. She seemed to have to remind him that Gray and Gajeel were getting their own sort of punishment, he was just getting a cold shoulder because she sees him more often than the other two. She figured she might dye Gray's hair pink when she catches him sleeping at the Guild, and Gajeel's guitar might 'mysteriously' vanish for a week or four. The cold shoulder was being dealt to all three of them. Natsu should consider himself lucky that he wasn't getting an extra punishment. She was going easy on him since he seemed like the only one in the pictures that was truly regretful about throwing her in the river.
"Nooooo! I gotta make it up to you! So, I'm staying right here until you get better." He said with finality, and one glance over her shoulder showed her that he was standing straight with his arms crossed over his chest. With a few choice words that could only be used in these types of situations, she knew she could have him scrambling for the window, but, she for some reason kept quiet. She just wanted to go to sleep and wait for it to pass, but with him around, she wasn't sure that was going to be a possibility.
"Whad can you do? I'm zick! I dun dink you'b eben been zick bevore."
She can hardly understand herself at this point, but Natsu seemed to understand her loud and clear.
"Well, I can do this, for one thing." She turned around to look at him and saw that he was leaning over the end of the bed, towards her with his hand outstretched. She sat completely still, waiting to see what it was that he was going to do.
She felt his hand press down on her forehead, sit there for a few seconds before sliding up and brushed her bangs back. She felt … like she could think now. She wasn't so incredibly hot anymore that she felt like she might just shrivel up into a raisin.
"Wha … whad did you do?" she asked, looking up at him in astonishment.
"I took away your fever, but it's only temporary. It'll come back in an hour, more or less. But it's something." He said with a smile, hopping onto the side of the bed and crossing his legs, looking at her expectantly. She knew exactly what he wanted. With a deep sigh, she closed her eyes and flipped onto her back.
"Oday, you can stay." She said, staring up at her ceiling. "Vor now, ad leasd." She decided to add on, just in case he annoyed her too much.
"Yosh! Thanks, Lucy!" he beamed down at her, jumping up from the bed to stand in the middle of the room. She watched him curiously as he looked around. "Uh … what now?"
"Id's besd if I jus' keep warm an' sleep." She said with a small smile, turning back around to go do just that. Fatigue was always heavy on her when she was sick, but she usually fought it. Just to say, she never really had any good dreams when she was sick, thanks to the heat of her body, it made everything uncomfortable. Ever since she was a child, if she got a fever, she'd always have dreams of being trapped in a volcano or being thrown in a furnace or something of the like.
She just decided to ignore his presence for now and try to sleep. Maybe she'd be able to escape the heated nightmares since her fever was temporarily gone.
(_)(_)(_)(_)
She woke up with a start when she heard something crash from within her apartment, her eyes flying open and immediately jumping out of bed. Another crash came from the kitchen, making her jump. She completely forgot about her illness and grabbed her keys from the bedside table, tip toeing across the hardwood flooring as quickly, yet as quietly as she could.
She peeked into the threshold, expecting to see a burglar or a serial killer stealing her pots and pans, or trying to find a sharp enough kitchen knife to stab her through the heart with. Instead, she saw a pink haired man, completely wrapped in saran wrap and her baking apron, rolling around on her floor with pots, pans and silverware spilled everywhere.
"Natsu! Whad are you doing?!" she screamed, making the air suddenly go still as Natsu stopped frantically rolling around to stare up at her in shock.
"Uh, I was gonna make you a sandwich, but I found this stuff, and thought it would be fun make myself look like a mummy and scare you when you woke up. But it was see through, and I couldn't get it to come off." He explained, looking up at her with an expression of a child that got his hand caught in a cookie jar.
"Whad am I gonna do wid you?" she asked, pressing her hand against her forehead and she walked towards the counter, grabbed the pair of scissors that she had finally remembered to buy, and walked back towards him. He was completely cocooned in the plastic paper, looking like a ridiculous burrito or something. She pushed his head to the side, making sure that she bent his neck at an uncomfortable angle and started to cut downward. She removed layer after layer until he was able to break free of the confines, and sat back against the wall, watching with amusement as he flailed his arms around to get the pieces that were clinging to him because of static electricity.
He eventually just got sick of it and decided burning it was the best way to go about the situation, making Lucy cringe when it immediately disintegrated within seconds. If she could actually smell anything, she was sure that she'd have the desire to bleach her nostrils from the horrid scent of burnt plastic.
"Now, where's dat sandwich you made?" she asked after he seemed satisfied with his work, crossing his legs and sat facing her. When he processed her words, his eyes seemed to go blank as his lips tightened; showing her that he was more than reluctant to say what was to come.
"Gajeel ate it." …
Lucy stared at him with a blank expression while he waited to see her reaction with a jittery air around him. After a few seconds of heavy silence, she sighed out a breathy laugh before leaning her head back against the wall.
"Whadever, I'm nod really dat hungry anyway." She mumbled before scooting to sit up, resisting the temptation to just fall over and stay there. Her fever was back, and it was hitting full force now that the adrenaline that had been pumping through her veins calmed down. Leaning a hand against the wall, she stumbled her way back into her bedroom. Deciding it would be a good idea to go and wash her face while she was already up; she took an immediate left and entered into her bathroom, flicking the light on subconsciously as she passed. Slapping her palms down on the sleek counter of her sink, she flicked the water on with a flip of her wrist and cupped her hands underneath the stream.
The cold liquid running over her burning skin felt amazing and did it another two times before standing up as straight as she could and groped around until she felt her towel. Rubbing the puffy fabric across her face and over her soaked bangs, she sighed and looked up in the mirror. Her skin was growing more and more red, her eyes glazed over even though her mind still felt relatively clear other than the lightheadedness. And then she saw it … what Natsu had been hiding with his scarf. Well, the edge of it anyway.
Far back on the juncture of where her neck and shoulder met, she could make out a red and purple mark, but she couldn't twist herself enough to see just how big it was. All she knew, is that there was a mark on her neck, and she instantly remembers the picture of where she had been flailing in Natsu's arms while he was doing something to her neck.
She ignored the head rush she got when she immediately whipped around to face the door to the bathroom, only to see Natsu peeking in with a nervous jitter.
"You said you wouldn't get angry if I took off the scarf!" he said, pointing at her from around the wall before pulling the limb back for safe keeping.
"But you never said that you gave me a hickey!" she screeched, whipping back around to face the mirror and run her fingers over the mark. It didn't hurt nor was it sore. She didn't remember feeling any of the small stings she had read about when you get a kiss mark, but it could have been when all her body was aching after waking up hung-over. But, why didn't Wendy's magic pills heal it? "Okay, EXPLAIN! RIGHT NOW! Or else I will really get angry!" she said stiffly through her teeth, trying not to yell and keep her promise, but it was growing very hard.
"Okay, okay, I don't remember everything, but I do remember that the fire that had been on your fingers was really good, and I figured it was because of your skin—so, I think I might have lit your skin on fire and tried to eat it off you just to test if it was right—BUT I WAS DRUNK AND YOU CAN'T BLAME ME!" he said hurriedly, growing increasingly nervous as he kept his eyes on her. She was steaming out of the ears, and not because of her fever.
"How much did you drink to think I'd be okay with you lighting me on fire, again?!"
"Gray said I was a pussy 'cause I couldn't drink as much as him and I lost count after twenty three, but you have no say in this! You were so drunk you tried to seduce Yukino thinking she was some prince dude, or whatever!" he said accusingly, finally stepping into the door, but kept his distance.
"Jason would have eaten that kind of stuff up! He would have taken more pictures of that than of you guys throwing me in a river!"
"Okay, so that was a lie! Still! You can't blame me and I already said I was sorry! You passed out right after I did it, so we thought you were dead! You didn't have a pulse!" he said, and Lucy duly noted the slight fear that flashed through his eyes at his own words. Biting her tongue with the bitter response she had ready to spit out at him, she just sighed out in annoyance and shook her head.
"Whatever, it's in the past. It'll go away in a few days, so I'll just have to keep hiding it until then." She said, splashing a little more water on her face before turning around and stumbling towards the door. "Just promise you won't try and eat fire off me again." She said lightheartedly, not in the mood to argue anymore. At least all the yelling seemed to have cleared her nasally voice. That's one upside to the completely pointless argument that had wasted time that could have been used for sleep and recovering.
Natsu merely laughed wholeheartedly at her comment and threw an arm over her shoulders when she walked past him. He wasn't leaning on her, however, he was holding her up. It was the small support off of her weak legs that helped her get back to her bed and crawl under the covers. She was sweltering already and she hadn't been under them for more than three seconds.
"Could you take away my fever again?" she asked, looking up at him with hopeful brown eyes.
At her words, his expression dropped into an apologetic one.
"Sorry, but no. If I do that too often, the fever will just come back even worse than when I took it away." He explained with a serious expression, staring at her wall. "Happy had a really bad fever once, and that's when I came up with the idea. But when I kept doing it, it got so bad that we had to drop him into a tub of ice water to cool him off. He was too hot for anyone other than me to touch."
Lucy's eyes widened at his tale, scooting up a bit to look him in the face.
"When did that happen?" she asked incredulously.
"Uh … about a year before we found you? I don't really remember." He said with a nonchalant shrug, scratching behind his neck.
"Hmm … oh well, it's better that I sweat the fever out anyway." She said, shifting back under the blankets. She hated the uncomfortable heat that the layers applied to her already overheating body, but she knew it was for the better good. "Try not to make too much trouble for me when I wake up." She said with a smile, closing her eyes and rolling into a ball.
He laughed again, but agreed after thinking it over.
And it was then that Lucy realized something … he never agreed to never eating fire off her again.
That's generally the end of it. It will continue on just a little bit into Plan D, but not too much! I hope you enjoyed it!
"Poor Lucy. The dear looked absolutely miserable." Mira said, frowning at the counter top before lifting her gaze to the red haired warrior that was walking up to the small group at the counter. "Thank you for bringing Lucy home, Erza. I would have had Natsu do it, but no one knows where he, Gajeel and Gray ran off to."
"It's not a problem, Mira. She should be fine by herself for an hour, but someone should be with her just in case."
"Well it seems like we're going to have to hold out on Plan C until Lucy can get better." Lisanna said, taking a sip of her drink as she looked over the expressions of her friends. Cana didn't really seem to be paying attention to them as she chugged from her barrel, but she knew better than to trust outward appearances. The card mage was probably listening far more intently than she looks.
"Oohhh, but it was such a good plan! It would have gotten the two of them together for sure!" Evergreen whined, flicking a lock of brown hair over her shoulder.
"You only think that 'cause it was your idea."
"Plan Candy Store would have been a hit! Tell them to test out the Pocky sticks to make sure they taste okay, and mwah, together in an instant."
"But there were flaws in that plan to begin with. If we told them to test it, they could have just eaten a stick each by themselves. They didn't have to actually do the challenge. Not to mention we can't risk Natsu getting hyped up on sugar and burning down the only sweets store that Magnolia has." Mira said, ticking off the flaws on her hand. The plan hadn't really been thought through, but no one else had any other ideas for plan C. But Lucy becoming sick gave them more time to think up another plan, also giving them … other opportunities. "Well, we could use Lucy's condition to an advantage."
"Huh?" Levy asked, lifting her head from the book she had been reading at the barmaid's words. "How? Lu-chan's in no condition to even move, how does that help?"
"Dun ya see, kiddo?" Cana cut in with a sly smile. "We send the idiot ta take care a'her."
"Exactly, Cana. It might not bring them together instantly, like we hope, but it could definitely help build up their relationship."
"So what do we call this one then? I still think Candy Store is better. There's not going to be any results from this one."
"How about … Caretaker?" Levy offered hesitantly, usually the one that came up with the words since her vocabulary was a little more vast than the common mind.
"Caretaker." Everyone hummed in agreement.
And that's how Plan C came to be. Do you guys like the idea? Or would you rather I tell you what the actual name is at the beginning? Let me know!