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Lucy didn’t know where the sudden surge of bravery that had gotten her into this situation had come from. She’d gone weeks—months even—of carrying her secret close to her chest, so there really was no rhyme or reason for why she’d chosen today to confess her feelings. It was a sudden moment of courage that left her feeling emboldened enough to tell Natsu to meet her at her apartment at 7:30 p.m. sharp because she had something very, very important to tell him.
Now if only that courage had lasted with her through the day.
In fairness, it technically had. She held her head high when she heard him knock on her door—something he never did, instead preferring to barge in with no thought to what state Lucy might be in upon his entrance—but the serious tone in her voice when she asked to meet him must have struck enough fear in him to use his manners for once. However, from the moment she opened the door and her eyes met his, it was like every last drop of confidence was drained away.
He looked so nervous, like he had been worrying about it all day. If anything, it should have been her who had been worrying. She was about to tell her best friend that she maybe, sort of, had a small, silly, little, teensy, tiny, baby crush on him that was slowly growing on her heart like a tumour that would inevitably cause it to stop beating altogether.
Her mind had already begun to wander into places she knew it shouldn’t. No longer could she look at his hands and not think about how perfectly her fingers would fit with his, or catch a glance at his lips and then be able to tear her mind away from the thought of how they would feel against her own.
She didn’t need to hear him say anything back. It didn’t matter if he didn’t see her that way.
Well. Maybe it mattered a little bit.
She just needed to get it off her chest, and then maybe she could finally move on and things could go back to the way things used to be—the way they should be.
She had been so confident that it would be easy, that she didn’t care how he reacted, until he stepped through that doorway, and suddenly Lucy was quivering in her shoes. Based on the way Natsu was looking at her expectantly, waiting for some sort of... anything, really, she was beginning to rue her prior boldness, instead wishing she could crawl away into some hole and never have to face the light of day again.
"Lucy?"
Hearing his voice was just enough to snap her out of the Natsu-induced trance Lucy had found herself in, and suddenly she realised just how awkward she must have looked, standing there gaping at him like an idiot, as if she hadn’t been the one who invited him in the first place.
"Hi!" She squeaked out, trying not to sound caught off guard by what was otherwise a completely normal thing for him to say.
"Everything okay?" Natsu asked, the look of concern on his face growing at her unusual reaction.
"Yeah! Never better!" She tried to reassure him, despite being able to name about a million instances where she had, in fact, been better.
Her words did little to convince him; a look of scepticism was still evident on his face, but he did nothing to press any further.
Quietly sucking in a breath, Lucy closed the door behind him, holding her hand on the knob for just a few moments longer than necessary as she tried to collect her thoughts.
"You wanted to talk to me about something?" Natsu prompted, clearly not wanting to prolong the awkward air that was lingering between them.
"Yeah," she breathed. "I did."
Did, past tense.
Right now, she wasn’t as sure about it.
But he was already here, and she was backed into a corner. She couldn’t just tell him everything was fine and he could go on his merry way. Natsu knew her better than that; he would see right through her.
Why did this have to be so difficult?
They’d taken down dark guilds, an entire empire together, and somehow telling him that she was in love with him was where she drew the line?
Oh god, no. She couldn’t tell him she loved him; it would destroy their friendship beyond repair.
She’d already tried so hard to push the l-word out of her head, always tried to replace it with like. She liked Natsu, that was all. There was so much of him to like, it was really no big deal. It was just an infatuation that would go away with time, but he was her best friend, and he deserved to know how she felt, right?
"Soooo… What did you want to talk to me about?"
At this point, she was certain he could hear the way her heart was racing in her chest. Even the deep breaths that she sucked in to calm her shaking nerves did little to calm her erratic heart, so instead of waiting for it to calm down, she simply made her way over to her bed and sat down, making herself comfortable as she sat cross-legged on the mattress in a bid to try and sooth herself.
"Come sit with me," she offered, patting the space next to her.
Natsu obliged her request, but his shoulders remained tense as he sat on the edge of her bed, unsure of what to make of his partner’s sudden odd behaviour.
"You’re not dying, are you?" He asked, reluctance in his voice, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
"What? No! I’m not dying. That’s not what this is about," Lucy assured, suddenly realising why he looked so nervous walking through her front door.
Natsu seemed to relax a little at her words, as though a massive weight had been lifted off of his chest, but the nerves didn’t seem to go away entirely. The nervous energy emitting from him did little to calm her own nerves. If anything, it only made her mind race with all of the reasons that he could be nervous right now.
Did he have a list of things in his head that this confrontation could be about? What on earth could Natsu, of all people, be this nervous about? Had he already anticipated what she wanted to talk to him about and was simply on edge about having to let her down gently?
The thought of that made her heart ache in her chest, though she supposed knowing that that ranked lower on his list than her potentially dying made her feel a little better.
"Well if you’re not dying, do you wanna tell me what you wanted to talk to me about?"
Before she could finally bring herself to speak, Lucy let in one last deep breath. In through her nose, expanding her lungs, and out past her lips. It helped a little. Not a lot, but at least a little, and right now, she needed all the help she could get.
There was no more avoiding the topic. Natsu was sitting right in front of her, waiting patiently for her to finally speak.
"Well, you know it’s just..." She began before pausing for a moment, already unsure of how to approach it and suddenly wishing she had written herself some notes beforehand. "I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, about you, and me, and us."
That wasn’t technically a lie. She’d been thinking about him and them a lot. More than would be normal, even for a best friend. She just happened to be leaving out the details of what exactly she had been thinking about.
"Do you remember the day we first met?" She asked, diverting the conversation slightly.
Natsu nodded his head slightly but didn’t speak, instead waiting for Lucy to continue her train of thought.
"That day really changed my life," she breathed. "I don’t even really remember the person I was before I met you, but I do know that the person I am now is better, and stronger, and happier."
The more she spoke, the more terrified he looked. He must have known where this was going, and his expression only made it hurt all the more, but she was already too far gone. She had prepared herself for his rejection, but that didn’t make it hurt any less seeing the way his face contorted as she expressed her feelings. She could feel the tears beginning to well in her eyes, but she couldn’t stop now.
There was no running away. She would be brave and strong, because that’s the kind of person that Natsu had made her.
"You—and the guild—are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I don’t want to lose that," she continued, her voice cracking slightly at the end. "You’re my best friend; I can’t imagine having to live a life without you in it."
She could feel a tear roll down her cheek but made no move to stop it in fear that pausing to wipe her tears would only cause her to break down even more.
"You’re really the most incredible, caring, strong, passionate person I have ever met, and I like you a lot," she managed to get out through misty eyes. "As more than just a friend."
Any fears that she might have had about Natsu having anticipated this were dashed by the sheer look of confusion on his face as she finally confessed how she felt to him.
"Lucy, I don’t think I get what you’re trying to say," he replied, his hand coming up to rest on her arm to try and sooth her tears while trying to coax an answer out of her.
She knew people liked to think of Natsu as dense, but surely he wasn’t that dense.
"What I’m trying to say is that... I’d like it if we... you know..."
He looked at her with a vacant stare as if to say, no, I don’t know.
Was he playing dumb with her on purpose? Was he trying to make a fool of her?
She knew he loved to embarrass her, but this was a new low.
Her lower lip trembled, and her heart began to thud hard and loud once more, though this time not from nerves. She was frustrated, angry even. Here she was being brave and trying to confess her feelings for someone she had thought cared enough about her not to make her feel like an idiot, but apparently that assumption was wrong.
"What I’m trying to say is, I want you to be my boyfriend!" She cried out, done with beating around the bush.
She had already embarrassed herself tonight; what more harm could a stupid outburst like that do?
Natsu’s eyes widened for a moment in realisation before he finally managed to process what she was saying, and suddenly he burst into laughter. Any other time, Lucy would be happy to hear that cute, melodious laugh of his, but right now, all she could feel was her heart sink to the bottom of her stomach.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Lucy yelled, smacking him in the arm, doing nothing to hide the genuine hurt in her voice. "I build up the courage to tell you how I feel, and you laugh at me? You’re such an asshole!"
Realising that perhaps his reaction was not appropriate, Natsu managed to catch his breath before he began to clarify.
"No, I’m not laughing at you; it’s just..."
"Just what?" She huffed, arms crossed over her chest, to try and hide the hurt that she was feeling.
"I kind of already thought I was your boyfriend," he murmured, averting his gaze from her, suddenly looking meek and, based on the dusting of pink on his cheeks, maybe a little embarrassed.
"You…"
Now it was her turn to be confused. She stared at him with a blank gaze as her brain tried to process this new information and figure out what the hell he was talking about, but she came up short.
"What?"
"I thought I already was your boyfriend," he repeated, doing little to clarify how he managed to come to that conclusion.
"Why would you think that?"
"Well, ‘cause I already do all that boyfriend stuff like taking you on dates, holding your hand, protecting you from pervy lookin’ guys," Natsu explained, seemingly not realising how absurd he sounded to her.
That would explain why Natsu had gotten so affectionate with her lately. She just thought he was like that; never in a million years would Lucy have suspected that he actually thought they had been dating for all this time.
"Why didn’t you tell me?" She asked, confused as to how this whole misunderstanding could occur.
"I thought you knew," he bluntly replied. "Everyone always mistook us for a couple, and you’d always correct ‘em until one day you didn’t."
Her mind was too busy processing his strange Natsu-logic that she barely managed to register that Natsu thought he was her boyfriend. All this time she had been fearing his rejection, thinking he could never see her in that light, when here he was, thinking that she already knew he saw her like that.
"If you thought we were already dating, why were you so nervous when you got here?"
"I thought you were gonna tell me you were dying," he told her. "Or that you were gonna break up with me."
In a weird way, that sort of made sense. Thinking back, she hadn’t exactly made herself clear. She had just told him she needed to talk about something important before nervously rambling on about… something for a few minutes.
"So... you do want to be my boyfriend?" Lucy clarified, wanting to hear the words from Natsu himself.
"Are you kiddin’? Of course I wanna be your boyfriend," he assured. "I love being your boyfriend and doin’ dumb boyfriend and girlfriend things with you."
His trademark Natsu-grin was plastered across his face as he spoke about his adoration for playing the boyfriend role, and the sight of it almost made Lucy cry again, for happier reasons this time. He looked so happy and content as he told her how much he loved being her boyfriend, when she didn’t even know he was her boyfriend to begin with.
She didn’t even have the mental capacity to jump through whatever hoops Natsu had to come to that conclusion. All she could think about was that Natsu was her boyfriend, which in turn made her his girlfriend. It made her so giddy that she couldn’t contain the smile on her face, and she barely held back the excited squee that threatened to escape her.
"And you know... I was thinking one day we’d maybe get to kiss or something," Natsu shyly added, pulling her back to the reality of the situation.
Hearing his words, Lucy’s breath got caught in her throat. She couldn’t even begin to express how much she wanted to kiss him. She’d fantasised about it happening in so many different ways and in so many different scenarios; she had just never imagined it would come true.
"Can I kiss you?" He asked, his eyes locked on her lips, doing little to hide just how much he needed to feel them against his own.
"Yes," she breathed. "Please."
With her permission, his hand came up to cup her face, and he leaned forward, his lips barely an inch from hers, before he paused for a moment.
"I’ve never done this before," he murmured. "So ya gotta tell me if I’m doin’ this right."
He didn’t give her time to explain that she definitely didn’t know what she was doing either before his lips were against hers and her hands were around his neck. They both fell backwards onto the bed, their lips locked in desire as months and years of yearning finally came to fruition.
They were both a little clumsy, but Lucy didn’t mind one bit. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the romantic first kiss she had always imagined; it only mattered that it was Natsu. He had wanted to kiss her, and now he was, and Lucy’s heart couldn’t have been any more full. She didn’t even have it in her to be grossed out by the string of saliva that connected their lips when he finally pulled away.
"You’re telling me that we could have been doing this the whole time?" Natsu panted, his lips kiss-swollen and red, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.
Lucy breathlessly nodded, trying her best to scramble for her own breath as she mentally chastised herself for not telling him sooner.
She didn’t have time to let those thoughts linger; instead, her hands tangled in his hair and pulled him back down to her. After all, they had plenty of lost time to make up for.