Chapter Text
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“I GUESS THIS is home now.”
Lucy tiredly flops over her couch, after having spent the better parts of the afternoon unpacking and reorganizing the space inside her new apartment.
It’s a lot smaller than what she’s used to—everything is, really, when you’ve spent basically your entire life in the upper echelons of high society—but after all’s been said and done, Lucy figures that she should just be grateful she’d been given the place at all.
She glances at the time: almost 9:00 PM, by the looks of it. Levy and Erza had left a few hours ago, after her insistence that she could do the rest of it herself (something Lucy instantly regretted, finding that the last few boxes apparently contained all of her heavy-duty belongings). She somehow managed to finish what she dubbed as the important bits, deciding that she could just do the rest at another time. Maybe bribe her friends with snacks to help her out again.
All Lucy truly wants to do now is nap—maybe for the entirety of tomorrow, if her exhaustion is any indication of how the rest of the day is going to go.
At least, that’s the plan, when she hears a sharp pop! through the wall of her apartment, and the unmistakable voice of a man loudly cursing with the panicked clatter of what Lucy assumes are pots or pans. This is quickly followed by a loud beeping, from what she quickly recognizes as that apartment’s smoke detector turning on.
Shit. Lucy thinks with panic, getting up off the couch and almost stumbling over herself to try and find her keys. Just my luck that a fucking fire happens the first day I move in. Just my luck it’s my neighbor too. It’s me. Obvi-fucking-ously. Like I’d have one good day. Damn it.
She releases more than a few expletives, before suddenly hearing a loud and sudden hiss right as she’s about to open the door and bolt. The distinctive sound gives her pause. A fire extinguisher? How the hell did he get one so quickly?
However her neighbor had done it, Lucy then hears the loud slamming open of what she presumes is his window, and a few moments later, the smoke detector noticeably stop its incessant noise.
She stills as the chaos from the other apartment slows to a halt.
Does… Does that mean everything’s okay now?
Lucy warily exits her apartment, glancing outside. The hallways look inexplicably calm—she’s sure that other tenants would’ve heard the smoke alarm go off, yet it remains almost-unnervingly empty. Like she’s the only one who’s taken it seriously. No-one else is evacuating, and from the light she can see under the other doors, everyone else on their floor is simply going about their business as usual.
She hastily types away on her phone:
lu: tf was that
> why is nobody evacuating
> hello???
levy: oh right!
> dont worry lu everythings fine
> we forgot to tell u sorry hehe
lu: ????
Erza Scarlet: Sorry, Lucy. That’s a normal occurrence here.
> The tenants aren’t bothered by it anymore.
lu: fire??????????
levy: they’re not big fires!
lu: idk but that still feels like a BIG DEAL?
Erza Scarlet: It’s the tenant in Apartment 707.
> He’s prone to… accidents. Specifically relating to fire.
lu: is this not a safety issue
Erza Scarlet: We’ve tried to resolve it but it’s impossible. He can’t not set things on fire.
levy: it’s like magic! even when there’s no electronics he still does it somehow!! lowk a talent
lu: …
levy: but don’t worry!! they got him his own fire extinguisher! :D
lu: so youre telling me that he sets fires regularly and the building is just fine with that?
Erza Scarlet: Yes.
levy: yep! he usually puts it out in a few minutes so there’s no problem!!
lu: no i . i definitely think there’s a problem
> even if the building is fine with it how is he allowed to have neighbors
> is being next to him not a huge fire hazard
Erza Scarlet: How do you think you got the apartment so cheap?
lu: …
> i see
levy: don’t worry lu!! gajeel says hes a good guy, just a little dense
> he’ll probably listen if you talk to him!
Lu: okay…
Lucy closes her phone, then breathes heavily. She’s always known that her friends were always a little… eccentric, and they had told her that their building was filled with like-minded people, but still. Residents completely okay with living with what seems like a genuine pyromaniac is not something she’d have ever expected.
Levy likely isn’t as bothered because she doesn’t really live there (though from the amount of times she sleeps over at her boyfriend’s, she might as well be), but Erza throws Lucy off—knowing her as one of the most level-headed people she’s ever known. Her talking about the fire as if it’s no big deal makes Lucy reconsider that maybe she’s the crazy one for thinking it’s weird.
In any case, there’s no way in hell that she’s living with the constant uncertainty and anxiety that her neighbor might one day set her apartment—and her— up in flames.
Lucy knows all too well what it’s like to be with boys who play with fire, and she doesn’t care how corny she sounds when she says it: she’s fucking tired of getting burned.
She’s not going to let another man walk all over her again.
With newfound resolve, Lucy knocks on the door, continuous and loud and angry— basically falling over onto her neighbor when the door suddenly swings open.
Big brown eyes meet a familiar, surprised, green.
It takes only a second before any harsh words she’s about to say dries up on her tongue, as Lucy feels her heart drop so hard and so fast that she’s convinced it’s found itself on the other side of the world.
Neither of them speak.
Lucy experiences firsthand what they mean when they say that silence can feel like an eternity, even if it were really only a few seconds.
The quiet only breaks when she whispers his name for the first time in almost four years, so soft that she’s not even sure he hears it. She’s not even sure she says it at all.
“Natsu.”
NATSU DRAGNEEL is baking.
He isn’t a baker, by any means—in fact, he’s expressly forbidden from using his kitchen (the outstandingly high amount of fires he’s caused even without being near a stove remains to be both a mystery and curse to everyone around him), but he figures that it’s better to just do it now, then beg for Erza’s forgiveness later.
It’s a problem for Future Natsu to deal with, and as far as he’s concerned, that guy is a completely separate person, and his future suffering has nothing to do with him.
He groans as he looks down at his mixing bowl, comparing it to the video he’s been following for the past hour: the light brown, dough-like, texture through the screen vastly different from the almost-grayish, gooey, monstrosity that lay before him. It doesn’t look appetizing even to him, and Natsu’s been known to eat almost anything.
Maybe he should chuck it.
What he should have done was ask for help—but hell would freeze over before he’d ask Gray or Gajeel, who’d use it as fodder to laugh at him into the next decade, or any of the girls, who’d ask why he was baking and who for and for what and when where which why whatever until he’d either cave and tell them, or explode into little Natsu pieces from the stress of what he presumes would have been a brutal interrogation.
Natsu sighs deeply. It’s supposed to be a sweet gesture.
For the first time in a long time, he’s getting a neighbor. The last one was a year ago, and they had only lasted a week (only ten smoke alarms!) before giving up and leaving in the middle of the night, claiming psychological trauma from their experience in the apartment. Natsu still remembers vividly the apology he’d been forced to give by Erza, even having to pay out of pocket for their initial moving fees to a different building.
When Erza told him that she’d found someone to live in the apartment next to his, Natsu was overjoyed. To hear that it was a friend of hers made him even more-so: no matter how terrified he was of her, he also knew with confidence that Erza was never the kind of person to keep bad company.
Whoever Natsu’s new neighbor is, he knows that she’s someone special.
And after all the time that’s passed, he knows—perhaps more than most—how important it is to make someone feel that. Not to fuck it up so bad and leave making them feel like the worst and least special person in the world.
Anyway.
Natsu decided that to make them feel welcome, he’d bake them something. He’d bring cookies and introduce himself: that was, at the very least, what showed up as the top recommended to-do when he looked up ‘How To Greet New Neighbors’ on Google.
Maybe it’s on him for only now realizing that he could’ve bought the baked goods and saved himself the hassle of making it himself, but if nothing else, Natsu is determined (read: stubborn), and pushes through with the cookie-adjacent…? dough, scooping it into little balls, then stuffing it in the oven he’s otherwise never used.
To absolutely no-one’s surprise—not to him, and not even to his neighbors—the oven explodes.
“Damn it.” Natsu curses aloud, before dealing with the fire in what, at this point, is just muscle memory. He isn’t even really thinking when he quickly throws anything that can catch fire to the other side of the room, grabs his personal fire extinguisher (a gift he’s gotten more use of than he’d like to admit) and douses the oven out, as he opens the window to let out the smoke and let in the outside air.
It takes more or less than five minutes before the smoke detector turns off, as Natsu heaves and drags his feet over to the charred remains of his hard work from the past afternoon. He double-checks that there are no other problems first, unplugging and moving things around as needed, before opening up the oven to another blast of heavy smoke.
Natsu coughs loudly, swatting at the air, then grabs the cookies with an oven mitt to place on his countertop.
‘Cookies’, even with the quotation marks, is a stretch.
The little monstrosities hadn’t hardened at all, looking instead like sad puddles on the parchment paper that had merged together to make one, big, super sad, unidentifiable, liquid. Yet—it still somehow looks burned, with little black bits peeking out here and there on the tray.
How does that even happen?
Natsu initially decides to spend the rest of the day sulking, when he hears sudden, and undoubtedly furious, knocks on his door in quick succession.
It almost surprises him, because nobody ever really visits him.
Oh.
Fuck.
It’s his neighbor.
So much for making a good impression.
Natsu cringes, inwardly—actually, even outwardly—smacking himself on the face. Great. Whoever this person is, it’s likely that they’re going to beat the previous tenant's record of living next to him for one week. Calling it quits in eight hours!
He pulls the door open quickly and intensely, mostly from nerves, as the stranger comes crashing into him from the sudden force. Natsu stumbles backward, falling over on his back as an eerily-familiar figure hovers over him, held up by her knees and hands.
It’s the scent that hits him first.
That distinctly-comforting smell of the library and ink, clumsily masked by some fancy perfume he could never properly pronounce and she would always make fun of him for.
He freezes when they make eye contact, transported back to a time when looking at each other like this was normal, and when he could always follow it up by—.
Natsu’s eyes drift downward, towards her lips.
How they always smiled when she saw him.
How they are in a tight line now, trembling as she looks down at him.
How she’d laugh then say his name, the warm and bright way she’d call him thousands of times before.
How she says his name now, so soft as if she’s hesitating to even say it, devoid of any feeling other than something he can’t quite name, and finds himself too afraid to identify.
“Natsu.”
He can’t breathe.
How many nights has he dreamed of seeing her like this, saying his name again, being this close to her again? To tell her everything he’s kept in for the four years they’d been apart—to cry, to scream, to apologize.
But nothing comes out except one word:
“Lucy.”