"Do you remember…" Gray had to stop to wipe a tear from his eye, and he was hunched over at the table he was laughing so hard. "Do you remember when this idiot knocked that candle onto his laptop and completely fucked it? The night before his final was due?" Gray wheezed.

Lucy covered her mouth and nose with her hand to stop herself from snorting out her drink. Erza beside her was giggling hysterically, but she was already four tequilas into their dinner. Natsu, on the other side of the booth, scratched his head, ruffling his own obnoxiously pink hair as his face split into an infectious grin. "Oh yeah, I remember that!" he chuckled.

"Didn't you have to get permission to re-take that class so you could graduate?" Lucy asked.

"Yup!"

"And then he failed the class again for sleeping through his exam." By that point, Gray was howling with laughter, loud enough to get strange looks from the other bar patrons. "Honestly, I have no idea how you were allowed to graduate at all."

Natsu shrugged. "Clerical error, probably. That, and Lucy spending all her free time helping me with my assignments so I didn't flunk out of all my classes."

"Yeah, well…" Lucy felt a blush creep up onto her cheeks as Natsu stared at her from across the booth, and all she could do was drop her gaze back down to her drink to try and alleviate some of the awkwardness. "I'm sure you would've done the same for me."

"And you would've failed," Gray snorted before holding up his pint glass to the group. "But, to Lucy, for getting this idiot through college. Not that he uses the degree or anything."

"Aye, to Lucy!" Natsu toasted.

"To Lucy," Erza said. "The best of us."

Lucy laughed nervously before she could take her own drink in her toast. "Oh, I don't know about that…" She wasn't the best of anyone or anything. She tried her best, although it didn't always go to plan, but that certainly didn't make her the best.

But, Erza quickly dismissed that though, shaking her head as she swallowed the sweet liquor in her own glass. "Nonsense," she said. "If I say you are the best of us, then you are the best of us."

"You should listen to her," Gray added with a slight shrug. "I mean, you went and did something for yourself. You figured out what it was you wanted and you went and did it."

"I'm not really sure that's entirely accurate," Lucy mumbled. She'd agree about listening to Erza, that much Lucy hadn't forgotten about her best friend. But the rest of it? Lucy wasn't so sure.

"You moved out of the city and got yourself a house. I mean, fuck, the rest of us are still renting or living with our parents."

"There's nothing wrong with either of those, though. Rental prices are just exorbitant, the housing marking is a nightmare to get into, and then getting a job where you can support yourself financially requires nothing short of a miracle."

"While all of that is painfully true," Erza began, "what Gray is trying to say is that you didn't let us or anyone or anything else stop you from chasing what you wanted to do. You should be proud of that, Lucy."

And, Lucy supposed it was true. She could've let the idea of moving hours away from her closest friends and potentially losing contact with them deter her from doing what she wanted, but she hadn't. She'd sacrificed so much to get to where she was, and while she still had a long journey ahead of her to get to where she wanted to be, Lucy knew she could do it. Or, she hoped she could, but she couldn't really see into the future so there was still the chance of something going drastically wrong.

"I guess so," Lucy eventually agreed as Erza squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, and Lucy offered her friend a warm smile. "I am proud of that, but… I just missed you guys. I thought you all might've hated me once I moved out to Mayflower…'

"Luce, we could never hate you, honestly," Natsu said.

"I didn't hear from any of you for so long though. Even before I moved."

Gray shrugged again before gesturing to Natsu beside him. "I barely talk to Natsu. I send him a reel every few weeks at most."

Erza nodded in agreement. "I pester them to meet up with a drink at least once a month or for special occasions, but otherwise, most of us don't really interact with each other all that much anymore, Lucy. That doesn't mean we're not all friends, though."

"Besides, we kinda thought you might've hated us when you moved…" Natsu mumbled, looking a little dejected for a moment before looking back up with a wide grin. "But, y'know, you're here, so it'd be weird if you did hate us now!"

Lucy dropped her head to groan into her hands. She realised she'd had it all wrong the entire time. It wasn't that any of them hated each other, it was just that they all had their own lives that were mostly separate. Just because they weren't seeing each other every day or every weekend didn't mean they didn't still share a bond for the ages. "No, no…" she groaned. "God, I feel so dumb."

Erza reached out to rub her back reassuringly before Lucy felt herself being tucked into her friend's side. Suddenly, Lucy felt four years younger and was transported back in time to all the moments she'd cried over stupid boys or failed papers or her family back in college. "All that matters is that we're all here, now, in this moment," Erza said, squeezing Lucy's shoulder.

"Yeah, exactly, Luce," Natsu chimed in. "Speaking of now, who wants to go get ice-cream?"


At his master's request, Bickslow behaved and stayed out of sight all evening. Well, he was already out of everyone else's sight, but he'd been out of Lucy's sight which is what she had wanted from him. He'd lurked behind her while she was out to dinner, and then lagged behind while they all went and got their strange frozen desserts with Lucy getting the most obnoxious of them all, of course, and as they she made her way back to her hotel, Bickslow lurked behind then, too.

For the most part, Bickslow wished he had been left behind, or at least Lucy had left his lamp in the hotel room. He'd respected the wish to be quiet while she was catching up, even as much as he had wanted to comment on some things — he'd already decided he could bring them up later, when it was just the two of them again — but now, as he watched Lucy and the pink-haired one whose name he had already forgotten awkwardly bump into each other and giggle as they walked down the crowded sidewalk, Bickslow wished he didn't have to watch it. And, he could, he knew, simply retreat into the lamp that Lucy carried around in her oversized purse, but he didn't want to do that either.

"Well, this is my hotel," Lucy said, looking up to the large neon sign above the marquee.

"Huh. So it is. I thought it was still a few blocks away," Natsu agreed, shrugging. He stared at the doors for a moment, before looking back to Lucy, and an infectious grin spread on his face once more for the evening. "It was great to see you again, Luce. I really missed you."

Lucy's face grew warm as she looked down to where Natsu tentatively reached for her hands. Her stomach felt like it was doing somersalts as he traced small circles. "I missed you, too," she said softly.

"How long are you in town for?"

"A few days. I'll head back Monday."

"So we'll be able to spend more time together before you head back then."

"Well, that… That was kind of what I was hoping, but I figured I'd just explore a little and see what had changed while I'd been good if you and the rest were busy or something…" Lucy mumbled.

Natsu squeezed her hands before he let them go to gentle glide up her arms, and Lucy was sure her face was bright red. "Come on, Luce. I'll never be too busy for you. But…" He glanced back to the hotel entrance for a moment, then, "I'm sure you're pretty tired. It was a long drive."

Lucy wasn't sure she was that tired. It was barely midnight, and she still felt like she was on top of the world and buzzing with energy. "Not really," she began, her brows knitting together as she started to count how many espresso martinis she'd had at dinner, and how many coffees she'd had on her drive and before meeting at the bar. "I had like three espresso martinis, so I'm probably going to be awake for a while if anything, which may ruin my sleep schedule a little bit now that I think about it…"

"We can't have your sleep schedule ruined. Remember how you used to slam those energy drinks back in college when you were helping me study?"

She couldn't help but snort, something she was sure she got an odd glance for from at least one passerby. "I don't know how I got any sleep back then, honestly."

Natsu shrugged. "I do. I'm sure it still works, too. Hasn't been that long."

Suddenly, Lucy was all too aware of how close Natsu was. For a brief moment, all she could feel was her heart in her chest and the butterflies in her stomach and Natsu's hands on her arms. The taxis and the shouting all faded to nothing, and Lucy could've almost been convinced that she wasn't standing on the side of a busy city street, and she was just back in Mayflower and it was somehow just her and Natsu in that moment and she was also somehow four years younger and she was still just young and dumb.

But she couldn't even convince herself of that. And as she found herself taking just a tiny step back, Lucy didn't know if she wanted to be able to convince herself of it. The presence she'd felt behind her all evening, always just a few feet away but never in her sight, stood before her, just a little ways beyond Natsu but right in her line of vision. And he stood there looking bored, leaning so casually and pompously against a pillar just next to the hotel lobby that instilled a fire and rage in her that she hated.

"I'm sure it does still work," Lucy said, swallowing as she felt her mouth grow uncomfortably dry. "But, I think I am still a little tired despite all the caffeine."

"I'm sure," Natsu said. "We'll talk tomorrow, yeah?"

Lucy nodded. "Of course."

"Sweet. Sleep well, Luce." And then he gave her a quick kiss to the top of her head before his fingers squeezed her hand once more and he turned away. "It was good to see you!" And then he was gone, lost amidst the crowd on the sidewalk.

Alone on the sidewalk, Lucy's only thought was getting up to her room. So she did, brushing past her genie without so much as another glance in his direction, and then into the elevator, up to the sixth floor, and into her room where she promptly locked the door behind her. She could barely sit down to pull off her boots before Bickslow was beginning to laugh from where he'd made himself comfortable on the twin bed. Lucy almost didn't want to know what it was he was laughing at, not then at least where there was a small part of her that wished she could go back in time and leave the godforsaken lamp in the attic. But she turned over her shoulder and glared at him.

"You two totally fucked," Bickslow cackled. He'd tried so hard not to blurt it out when Lucy had been at the bar, and he was, for the most part, proud of himself for not saying anything all night too. But now that it was just the two of them, as it always was, Bickslow couldn't keep any of it back. "And he totally wanted to fuck you again," he continued. It was only after that that he finally noticed the sharp glare his master was aiming at him, and for a moment, Bickslow wanted to retreat back into his lamp. Lucy wasn't normally a menacing or terrifying person, but then right, Bickslow was scared. "What? What did I do?"

Lucy grabbed the closest thing to her — his lamp, as it turns out — and chucked it in the genie's direction. It narrowly missed Bickslow's head and landed on the soft pillows behind him.

"Go," she shouted. It was late that Lucy was sure if she was any louder she'd get a noise complaint so she kept the anger at bay as she pointed to the lamp. "I don't want to see you. Get out of my sight right now."

"What—"

"Leave."

Bickslow did, in fact, know when to stop. He didn't like it. But, his master was his master and right then Bickslow knew better than to make it any worse. So he fled to his lamp as fast as he could, a trail of hazy smoke following behind him, where he then felt small and alone — a combination of feelings that Bickslow wasn't sure he'd ever felt before.

Once the smoke had cleared, and all Lucy could hear was her own breathing and beating heart, she dropped her head and started to cry. The heels of her palms dug into her eyes until all she could see were starbursts behind her eyes. It was supposed to have been a fun trip where she could forget about everything other than her friends. She wasn't supposed to be crying in a hotel room over something that she barely even understood.

What if she'd left Bickslow and his lamp at home? Would she still be crying? Had she brought him with her for her benefit, or for his? She didn't owe him anything — she was his master. She said it had been because she knew he got lonely because she wasn't like the rest of his master, but still, Lucy wasn't even sure that had been the only reason for bringing him.

When the tears had all fallen, and the drops on her knees had all dried up, and the headache had crept in, Lucy knew it was time to sleep. She'd had enough to drink she knew it would come easy. So she picked herself up from the end of the bed and got herself ready. Then, when it was time to climb into the crisp white hotel sheets, Lucy couldn't quite bring herself to just toss Bickslow's lamp onto the floor without a care in the world. So she picked it up gently from where it sat from when she'd last thrown it, and carefully placed it on the bedside table.


When Lucy left her hotel room the next morning, Bickslow found himself still sitting on the bedside table in his lamp. He waited inside his lamp for a few minutes, half expecting and hoping that she would return and pick him up to take him along to wherever it was she was going, but after thirty long, painful minutes in his lamp, Bickslow knew his master had left him there on purpose.

The entire night Bickslow had been stuck trying to think of what it was he'd done. For a while, he'd tried not to delve into Lucy's head to see what it was. When she'd started crying, he'd even tried convincing himself that it was just something with her friends, probably the pink-haired one, and he'd perhaps just brought up bad memories. But then, when the images in her head had started flowing whether he'd wanted them or not, Bickslow knew it had been his fault. He'd done something, seemingly without even meaning to. And as much as he'd wanted to make Lucy's life hell when all he'd wanted was just a wish from her, when she'd been crying over him, Bickslow had never felt as much of a failure as he had in that moment.

And he'd felt like a failure plenty of times. Most days, even.

Still, he'd seen Lucy cry plenty of times. She'd been crying on her couch back in Mayflower just a few weeks earlier over the same friends she was visiting. And he'd told her then, when she'd been a sobbing, snotty mess that humans were almost never worth crying over. If they'd wanted to talk to her, they would've, and if they didn't, then there was no point in shedding tears for people who wouldn't shed tears over her. And even then, it wasn't like Bickslow hadn't been glad to see Lucy be happy — genuinely, truly happy — when she'd been at dinner with those same people. He hadn't entirely understood why he cared so much to see it, but he'd already learnt that most things he felt those days weren't worth delving into. But when she'd been crying in her hotel room, over him and something he'd done, Bickslow just hadn't really known what to do. And even when she'd stopped crying and finally gone to bed, Bickslow had tried to figure out just what it was exactly he'd done. Then, by morning, when he'd come up empty, and when Lucy had started getting ready to head out again, Bickslow had just hoped things were back to normal and he'd get to go along on Lucy's little adventure that day.

But then he got left alone. Right on the bedside, right where she'd left him the night before.


Lucy was determined to have fun the rest of her trip. By the time she'd returned to her hotel room after her day out with Erza, there was a part of her that only wanted to curl up in bed and put on some trashy reality show to fall asleep to after spending an obscene amount on room service. It had been tempting to do just that as soon as she'd kicked off her shoes and gotten into some comfier clothes. But then when she'd been rifling through her bag to find those comfier clothes, she'd glanced back to her phone where she'd left it on the bed, and made a choice that she hadn't entirely thought she'd been making that trip, and sent a text she hadn't sent in years.

The lamp on the bedside table still laid dormant even as Lucy went around tidying up her hotel room. She knew Natsu wouldn't care, but Lucy had needed to do something to ease the jitters that had come on the second she'd gotten a response. Bickslow hadn't come out of the lamp since she'd been back. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was surprised, but Lucy did her best to silence the albeit already quiet thought as she carried the lamp back over to her bag and tucked it away and out of sight. She couldn't even just say the lamp was simply hotel decor, and Lucy didn't really want to explain to anyone why she was lugging around an old oil lamp.

Thirty minutes later, there was a quiet knock on her hotel door, and Lucy couldn't help but steal a glance to herself in the tall mirror before she went to let her guest in.

Natsu's grin was as infectious as every other time she saw him which didn't at all help how fast her heart was beating in her chest.

They shared their pleasantries as they both made their way deeper into the room; Lucy asked about the traffic, Natsu said it wasn't that bad. Natsu asked how her day with Erza was, Lucy said it was tiring. And then Natsu simply smiled at her again with the same crooked grin, took a few more steps to close the awkward distance, and took her face gently between his hands to tuck her hair back behind her ear. He scanned her face for just a moment, looking for his sign to proceed, before finally sealing their lips together.

They'd been there before, countless times over the years. It had always been the same between them. They knew what they were to each other, what they had always been.

That time, though, when Lucy closed her eyes and just let herself be in the moment as she had always done, Lucy couldn't stop herself from seeing someone else.

And in his lamp, tucked away in the corner of the room, Bickslow only saw images of himself.


On the last night of the trip, Bickslow was finally game enough to come out of his lamp once more. After being banished back to his lamp, then being abandoned the next day, to Lucy's throes of passion imagery, Bickslow had almost wanted to stay in his lamp. He doubted Lucy really wanted to see him much after all of that, and even then, Bickslow himself wasn't too sure what he was supposed to say after all of it, if anything at all.

The only thing he knew for certain was that he probably shouldn't call Lucy out on the fact that he was very much aware of what she'd been picturing the night before.

But, he'd continued to give Lucy her space, mostly for her benefit but partly for his own. Come the evening though, when Lucy had almost packed everything up for her drive home in the morning, Bickslow did, in fact, venture outside of his lamp again.

She stood with her back to the room, the sheer curtain separating the open balcony doors billowed in the gentle breeze. For a moment, Bickslow hesitated as he just watched her existing peacefully; her mind was calm for the most part, but there was something deeper within that Bickslow really didn't want to look at too closely right then. He didn't want to break that calm, to bring her more sorrow once again.

What if that's all I am now?

He didn't get much time to think if that was the case before Lucy turned to look at him over her shoulder. The city lights reflected off her skin, and for a very fleeting moment, Bickslow felt something disgustingly foreign and slightly too human.

"You can stop lurking," Lucy said.

Bickslow didn't want to say he hadn't been lurking, because he had, and he knew it. "I can go back to the lamp, if you want," he said instead.

She turned back to face the city. "No. I don't."

And Bickslow took the small victory. After a moment, he joined Lucy on the small balcony, leaning on the railing just beside his master.

For a while, they stood in silence. Bickslow did his best to try and ignore Lucy's seemingly racing mind, but some thoughts were louder than others. Every time he looked back to Lucy and away from the city he would've ordinarily found fascinating, all Bickslow wanted to do was break a vow he'd never even thought of breaking.

But, he could only think of that a few times before Lucy was thankfully stopping him before he actually did something stupid.

"I'm sorry," she said then, stealing her own glance to the genie. Despite the summer, the night was cool, but even then she felt a little too warm, at least on her face.

Bickslow gave her a quizzical look.

"I… shouldn't have yelled at you the other night. You didn't deserve that," Lucy said. It had felt good in the moment, and Lucy wouldn't really deny that, but she could still admit when she was wrong. Mostly.

But, Bickslow didn't think she was wrong. Not entirely. He gave a small shrug, then, "It's fine. You don't have to apologise to me for it. I'm just here for whatever you need. You want me to get out of your sight, then I'm out of your sight. You want to shout at me, then go for your life. That's how it works."

Lucy rubbed at her forehead. "That's not…" She shook her head and exhaled through her nose. "That's not what I want. You're not… You're not my emotional punching bag, Bickslow. I know you keep saying you're just here to serve, but I just… I don't want that." She thought he was worth more than that, but maybe she was the one that was wrong. She barely knew Bickslow, or his kind. Maybe that's all they were and ever would be, and there was no changing that.

"What do you want then?"

The words left Bickslow's mouth before he could take them back. He knew Lucy didn't want him to just be at her beck and call like his kind was hardwired to do. He'd long since accepted that, even if the lack of wishing did get on his nerves and instil such a deep sense of disappointment in him. And right then, that fear of disappointment had reached an all time high.

Lucy knew what she wanted to say. What felt right in that exact moment. But she knew better. Saying it out loud would bring nothing but hurt, she already knew, and Lucy didn't want to deal with hurt. Besides, there was still the chance she was just slightly delusional, and things would feel normal again when she was back home. But even then, when she'd tried telling herself that earlier in the day when she'd been stuck thinking of what it was she was supposed to do about what she wanted — or what she thought she wanted — Lucy knew it wouldn't make much difference.

"I don't know," Lucy eventually said. It wasn't a complete lie.

But Bickslow knew it wasn't the complete truth, either. He knew her answer, though, and part of him was glad she hadn't said what she'd wanted to say because he didn't think he would've been able to stop himself from doing something he could never take back.

"I think I just…" Wish things were different? Wish you were human? Wish things were simpler? Wish we'd never met? Lucy wasn't entirely sure which one was the most truthful. But, she was acutely aware that her genie likely knew more about what it was she felt than he was letting on, something she was grateful for since she didn't think she needed the embarrassment of him bringing any of it up. "I want you to be you. Not just… some version of you that you feel you have to be because that's what you're supposed to be because of what you are or who I am as a person. I don't want this to just be another contract, or…" Lucy paused to shake her head, already knowing she'd said too much to really stop herself from saying worse. "I guess I don't want to be just another silly human who you'll forget about the second I'm nothing but dust."

Bickslow had never cared about death. He'd always figured that if, and when, he ever met his demise himself, he would welcome it. And his masters dying had never fazed him, even for the ones he had somewhat liked.

But right then, Bickslow was terrified of it.

All he could see was the life Lucy would — and should — live. The life he'd have to watch her live out and enjoy to the fullest before she'd return to the earth like every human ever did and would do for the rest of the time.

Bickslow wasn't a jealous creature. He didn't have much to be jealous over. He could be, in a petty way, and that much he would admit. But jealousy was a particularly human emotion, and Bickslow was in a losing battle in reminding himself that he wasn't human.

"You're not just another contract," Bickslow eventually replied. "You are, however, a silly human. All humans are silly."

And then Lucy laughed, something Bickslow was all too glad to hear.