Chapter Text
You don't know when you wake up, you are just suddenly aware that you are not asleep anymore. You briefly ponder what has woken you up before a loud crash of thunder makes you jolt under the warm covers. Oh well, that's not a big deal. You turn over and are about to go back to sleep until you realize that your really thirsty. You contemplate ignoring it to stay in your cocoon, but eventually pull yourself out from the covers and sit your feet on the floor. As you exit your room your night vision serves you well. You shiver slightly as the carpeted floor of the room transitions to cold hard wood in the hallway against your bare feet. You get to the end of the hall before you realize that your bleary brain cannot remember which door is which. There is a soft glow coming from underneath one that you quickly connect to being a bathroom, because your own bathroom has a night light in it, quickly forgetting that not everyone takes as many nighttime precautions as you. You open the door with eyes still half closed. You freeze when instead of a sink you see a king sized bed with a beacon of flame resting on one of its pillows. It clicks in your brain that the light was obviously not from a light bulb, but instead your incendiary host. How could you forget that?
You try to close the door without waking your host, but a the soft crackle of your name makes you still. You open the door back up to see Grillby rubbing at where his eyes would be with one hand and propping himself up slightly on the other, covers slightly sliding off his torso to reveal his chest and shoulders. You're thankful your blush cannot be seen in the dark as you see that his body seems to be made of a glowing ember like substance, somewhat like lava, but more solid and clearly not burning the sheets. The first thing that pops into your head is that he is really hot, but you quickly smack yourself internally, not sure if it's due to the pun or due to the inappropriate feelings for your host.
You frantically try to get him to go back to sleep in a hushed whisper. “Sorry sorry, didn't mean to wake you. I was looking for the bathroom to get some water and forgot where it was and uh sorry.” He removes his hand from his face and waves you off dismissively. “S'fine, no problem.” His words are harder to decipher through the crackles when he's sleepy and you find that oddly adorable. You really need to stop thinking like that. This man has let you into his home out of the goodness of his heart and you're skiving on him.
You examine his face more with his hand out of the way and notice that he's not wearing glasses, and seems to not have any eyes. You feel like this should shock you, but you're almost glad that you can now observe his undulating flame without interference from any cover. It's like a campfire, but somehow cozier, due to his round regularity. Its oddly unnatural looking in its, but somehow that calms you. It takes away the constant danger that other “normal” fire possesses of getting out of control, you suppose. He notices your staring and stills rigidly. “Ah, my eyes...I apologies, I didn't mean to frighten you.”
He seems to be about to reach for his glasses from the night stand to his left when you remember something he said when you first met. “Don't apologize for being who you are.” He stills his reach as you realize the feeling behind what you just said. You hadn't meant to be that deep, it was just he first thing to come to your head. You don't want Grillby to be ashamed of who he is and you think he's great. You try to make light of the situation again by recalling another incident from your first meeting. “It's not...I wasn't staring at your eyes, well I kind of was, but not in a bad way, I got kind of distracted by looking at you again.” A quite settles over the room as you realize that this has a slightly different connotation as you're staring at him with his shirt off in his bed instead of in a bar. You avert your gaze and are about to curse yourself for ruining the moment when you hear the much loved crackle of laughter from your flaming friend. You smile in relief that you haven't ruined such a nice friendship with your jumbled words.
You hear the creaking of bed springs and you look up to see your chuckling host getting out of bed while stretching slightly. He seems to just be wearing striped pajama pants. His body structure is thin, but not unhealthy looking. It's both attractive and fascinating due to the movements of what appear to be muscles and bones underneath or within the seeming embers and lava. You're not sure how it's possible, but like seemingly everything else about this man, your eyes are drawn to it. He walks towards you and you're afraid he's caught you staring again, but he lightly pats you arm and walks past you into the hallways. “Let's get you a glass.”
You begin to follow him back into the kitchen while trying to dissuade him from fussing so much on your behalf. “N-no its fine, I don't need a....glass.”
He chuckles slightly as he opens one of his cabinets and pulls out a cup. “How are you going to drink something without a cup?”
You shrug your shoulders as you take the cup reluctantly. “Well I mean ya'know...you kind of just like, cup your hands under the faucet and then like drink out of that.” You go over to the sink and poor yourself some water very self continuously as you realized about half way through your ramble that, no Grillby wouldn't know that. You lean back against the sink and fiddle with the glass slightly before speaking again. You feel like you need to break the silence. “It must be hard not being able to interact with water.”
Grillby shrugged. “Hard for you does not mean hard for me. You don't have to worry about rain, but I don't have to worry about the sun. It's all a matter of perspective.” You hadn't really thought about that and now felt kind of stupid. Grillby pats you on the shoulder silently and begins to walk back towards the hallway. You begin to follow him when you are suddenly overcome with just how kind this man has been to you.
You stop in your tracks and clear your throat. Grillby turns around and tilts his head to the side quizzically. You wring your hands around your cup and look into the water in your hand. “I just wanted to say...thanks for everything. Letting me stay here for the night and p-putting up with me, heh.”
Grillby came to stand in front of you. “You seemed like you needed a break and you helped me when I was in a fix with those two rough necks. Seemed only fair to return the inconvenience.”
You speak before thinking. “It wasn't an inconvenience! Well I guess It kind of was...but I care about you so it really...wasn't...that big of a deal...”
You realize how much feeling you let slip unintentionally and are about to backtrack when you tilt your head up and realize how close Grillby's face is to yours. Your words of recanting die in your throat. The soft sound of the flames dancing on his head are now perceptible to you. The darker inner structure within the flames is inches from your face and you wonder if touching it would feel like when you accidentally touched his flame. You begin to blush involuntarily both from the memory and the current proximity. A quick errant though rushes through your mind saying that you could kiss him if you wanted to. You ask yourself if you even feel that way about him. You realize that yeah, you do. Probably due to how late it is, you find yourself leaning forward and resting your lips gently on the warm face of your friend.
It definitely feels more intense then when you immersed your head, but it's only on your lips this time so it's not to overwhelming. To soon it crashes in your head what you've done and that it might not have been the best course of action. You jerk back so fast that you head rushes slightly. You don't know what to do so you do the first thing that you think of (despite that being what got you into this mess) which is to closing your eyes tightly. You realize that this is a really stupid thing to do and that it solves nothing, but you're slightly overwhelmed at the moment.
It's only a few seconds before the gaping silence stretches into infinity in your mind and you muster up the courage to open one eye. You see Grillby in relatively the same statuesque state you're in, minus the perpetually undulating head. For the first time since meeting him, you wish he had some kind of facial feature to give some kind of indication on the ramifications of your smooch. The bartenders face then begins to become a darker amber color until it's almost fire engine red. Is he...blushing? You weren't sure he could blush, but this realization makes you open both your eyes. You're slightly relived at this because it means you're not the only one flustered. The silence is suddenly broken with a small cough as it's now Grillbys turn to fidget slightly.
“Well...that...was nice...” Your eyes widen slightly at this confession.
“It was?” You blurt out before you can think.
“Um...I thought so? Did you...not?” You had never seen Grillby this unsure and you quickly forget your awkwardness for a moment to reassure him.
“Ah no, no! I thought it was nice.” You shake your head and wonder if either of your faces can get any redder.
“Oh, good, good.” You can tell Grillby is pointedly not looking at you. The amount of awkwardness in and around you in this moment is almost stifling, and you need to do something to break it. You kind of feel the need to explain yourself, so you rush into your reason for this situation.
“You're just such a nice person and really cute and hot and funny and it's warm and comforting whenever I get really close to you, so, yeah.” The small silence that follows is not as awkward as the one before. Happily it is broken by a crackle of laughter which makes you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. The breath is promptly sucked back in when you're pulled into a warm hug by the bartender, careful to mind the cup you have still manged to hold onto. You would practically say it was better then the kiss. It's like a heated blanket with feelings and kind words. All you could ask for really. You relax into the hug and feel like you could pretty much fall asleep right there. Your mind helpfully supplies that you could do that later before you reprimand it to slow down.
You pull away reluctantly after a few moments and yawn because it must be around four in the morning. Grillby retains some of his composure before motioning over his shoulder. “Thank you for your kind words. We should continue this in the morning, perhaps?”
You nod before smiling and shuffling off to your room. You turn back before closing your door. “Yeah. I would like that.” You shut the door as normally as you can manage before promptly putting your back to it and sinking to the floor. That went pretty much the best way it that could have ended. You are practically exploding inside and you can't keep a stupid smile off your face. You down the water and thank goodness that none of it spilled during that ordeal. If you're going to do this you need to be more careful about liquids. Ah, you're to tired to think about that now. You crawl back into the now cold bed and drop off to sleep with a giddy heart, dreaming about future adventures with the flaming man that lit up your life.