Work Text:
Day One: Home - Part 1
If there was a way to write while your thighs stuck to the chair and sweat traced slow lines down your spine, Lucy hadn't figured it out yet.
She dragged the feathered end of her pen across her chin, blinking through the haze of heat that clung to the walls of her apartment like a second skin. Even with the windows flung open and the curtains pinned back, the air was thick.
A low creak came from the windowsill beside her.
“Could you not break in like a criminal?” she asked flatly, not even turning.
“Didn’t break anything,” came the familiar voice, dragged in with heat and the end of a long walk home. “Window was open.”
Lucy glanced over her shoulder and immediately regretted it.
Shirtless. Of course he was shirtless.
His scarf and jacket hung half-off his shoulder, both damp with sweat. His hair was messier than usual, spiked from either wind or heatstroke, and there was a faint streak of dirt across his jaw—probably from whatever stupid fight he and Gray had gotten into earlier.
“Still hot in here?” he asked, stepping into her apartment like it was his.
“Not until you showed up.”
He grinned, all teeth, and flopped straight onto her bed, boots kicked off mid-slide. She barely managed to yank her notebook out of the way, before he collapsed onto her pillow like he paid rent.
"Jeez," she muttered, fanning herself with a manuscript page that no longer mattered. "You're sweaty. Don't lay on my sheets like that."
“Your sheets like me.”
"They really don't."
He just grunted, stretching one arm under the pillow and the other behind his head, like he had every intention of napping while she tried to work. She turned back to her desk, lips pursed, ink drying too fast in the summer air. She tried to ignore the heat curling up the back of her neck. Tried to ignore him. After a minute of silence, she turned again.
“Natsu.”
“Mm?”
“Go take a shower.”
He cracked one eye open. “What, now?”
“Yes, now. You smell like sun and sweat and half a battlefield.”
“Thought you liked my smell,” he said with a smirk she wanted to slap off his face—or kiss. Which was worse.
“I like your smell when it doesn’t come with dust and dragon stank.”
He arched a brow. “I don’t stink.”
“You kinda do.”
He made a sound of mock offense, sat up, raking a hand through his hair. “Fiiine." A beat.
"Wanna join?”
She threw a pillow at him.
“Worth a try,” he said, ducking and grinning as he headed toward her bathroom.
The click of the door should’ve made it easier to breathe.
It didn’t.
The sound of water hitting tile echoed faintly from behind the wall.
She didn’t mean to imagine it. She really didn’t. But she could hear it: the splash of water on skin, the soft thud of discarded clothes, the low hums of satisfaction. She imagined his hands slicking wet hair back from his face, water sliding over his shoulders, his chest, down his stomach, trailing lower toward—
Lucy slammed her notebook shut.
“Focus,” she muttered. “You are not fifteen. You are not some swooning maiden. You are—”
The bathroom door opened with a hiss of steam and the smell of shampoo—Her shampoo. The one that smelled like strawberries and summer and now him.
She didn’t look. Not at first. But she could feel him. The weight of his steps, the casual gravity of his presence, the dense energy that filled every space like smoke.
“Hey,” he called, low and unbothered.
She turned—and froze.
Natsu stood just behind her. A towel slung low on his hips, hair dripping in dark spikes. A single droplet traced a line from his collarbone down his chest—
“You got spare shorts?”
Lucy didn’t even blink. “Bottom drawer…”
“Thanks.”
He padded across the floor, leaving a trail of water that would probably ruin her floorboards. Not that she could care about floorboards with Natsu Dragneel that close. That wet. That barely dressed.
She turned back to her desk, only to realize she’d written the same sentence three times. She scratched it out, grumbling.
He opened a drawer. There was a pause. A quiet, suspicious one.
She waited for him to call out. To complain. Maybe ask something dumb like: Hey, where’s the waistband one? But nothing.
Silence.
Her pen hovered mid-stroke. Then, softly, the shuffle of fabric, followed by a low, curious hum.
She didn’t even turn. “Bottom draw—”
Wait.
That wasn’t the drawer she meant. Lucy’s stomach dropped.
“Natsu—!” she snapped, spinning in her chair, pen still in hand.
He'd already closed said drawer Not the one with the shorts. And he looked...still. Not embarrassed, exactly. Just…paused . Like his brain had hit a speed bump it hadn’t seen coming.
“…Wrong drawer,” he said, a little too evenly.
Lucy's face burned. “It’s actually—”
But he was already pulling open the correct one, grabbing his black shorts, turning away without another word.
She would have let it go. She almost did.
Then she saw his ears.
Just slightly pink. Not his cheeks. Not his neck. Just enough to notice.
She blinked again, then glanced at the drawer he’d just closed. Her lingerie drawer. That lingerie drawer. The spicy one, with the black lace she'd bought on a dare from Cana. The ones she absolutely did not wear on normal days, because they hid nothing and she hadn’t had a reason to wear them. Not when…
Oh god.
She turned back to her desk , trying to act casual even as heat flooded up her neck. She could practically hear her pulse pounding in her ears.
Her fingers curled around her pen—and it snapped.
He didn’t notice. Or maybe he did and pretended not to. That was always the gamble with Natsu. How much of the obliviousness was real and how much was smoke.
Behind her, Natsu had finished changing. He dropped onto her bed, now fully dressed…well, in shorts, and sprawled out like nothing had happened. He didn’t say anything. No teasing. No smug remarks. No: You wear that kind of stuff? Just silence. Until—
“You’ve worn those before?”
She blinked. “What?”
He looked at her, face unreadable. “The ones in the drawer.”
Lucy dropped her pen.
“You saw them?”
“You told me the wrong drawer,” he said like it was her fault. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Just thought they were—uh…small.”
“They’re not for you,” she said quickly, cheeks absolutely on fire.
“Didn’t say they were.”
He was still looking at her. Not leering or grinning. Just…curious. Almost like he wasn’t sure if he should keep going. Almost like he wasn’t sure what to do with the image now clearly seared into his brain.
Then, low and even, “You’d look good in ’em though.”
The sentence just sat there between them, not as line or tease, just a thing he'd said out loud because apparently that was something he thought, and apparently he'd decided she should know about it.
Lucy swallowed.
Beside her, Natsu stretched out like he hadn’t just melted her entire nervous system.
She turned back to her desk, picking up a new pen with fingers that absolutely, definitely did not shake.
Neither of them spoke after that. But she didn’t write anything either.