A/N: For briochee once again. My first time writing Fairy Tail and I'm writing the same stupid vignettes that I always do.

Disclaimer: All rights go to their respective owners.

The first time Natsu sees Lucy Heartphilia, she's in the courtyard holding her bag over her head and screaming at some guy with a really lame fohawk. There's a really short girl that's trying to restrain her but Lucy has somehow taken out her pencil case and Natsu watches it smack the dude right in the center of his face.

Erza leans out the window with him, watching the spectacle unfold. "I know that girl, she manages the volleyball team. Her name's Lucy."

Natsu's eyes widen as Lucy breaks free from her friend and delivers a swift kick to the fohawk guy's balls. He grins. "She's awesome."

"Remember this, Gajeel!" Lucy screeches as her friend drags her out of the courtyard. Natsu remembers.

Lucy is blatantly ignoring her history teacher when she sees Natsu Dragonil run across the soccer field in his boxers. He's laughing and the flames on his boxers shine under the sun. His shirt is untucked and his tie is loosened and she can see his teeth glinting all the way from her seat.

Everything about him is eye-catching, from the funny way he runs to his pink hair. His friends are laughing and clapping as teachers give chase, demanding him to put his pants back on.

He does a cartwheel in the middle of the field and Lucy snorts.

"What an idiot," she mutters under her breath as he's finally caught by the principal.

Later, she hears that he did it as part of a bet for strawberry milk.

She buys strawberry milk that day. (And the day after that, too.)

Erza makes Natsu watch her volleyball game as punishment for his little stunt. He has to wear a stupid headband and wave this humongous flag in front of the other students in the middle of the bleachers and it's kind of humiliating but he's too scared of Erza to say no.

He cares more about Gray's snickers than the other schools' anyway, so he screams and cheers and waves the flag back and forth as Erza smashes ball after ball into the opponents' faces.

In between sets, he realizes Gray's taking pictures of him and he's about to pick a fight when somebody taps his leg.

That crazy blonde girl from last week is holding a clipboard and looking up at him from the bottom of the bleachers. He puts the flag down and hops to her bench.

"You like it, right?" Lucy hands him a strawberry milk carton. She smiles at him and he takes it, feeling kind of warm.

Natsu tries to ignore Gray's catcalls as he raises an eyebrow. "Why're you giving this to me?"

"You need energy for the next set." Lucy laughs a little. The light glints off her whistle. "Erza wants you to dance this time."

And come second set, Natsu swings his hips and pretends not to be thoroughly mortified.

She walks through the haunted house, one hand in Levy's and the other clutched to her heart. She shrieks at a statue that doesn't move and a painting of a ghost.

Lucy lets go of Levy's hand in a moment of panic and before she knows it, she's in a hallway alone in the dark and she's almost certain that she's going to pee herself.

"Oh, hey."

Lucy whips around to be face-to-face with a vampire with pink hair and glistening white teeth. She screams and falls to her knees, smacking him with her bag. "Don't do that!"

Natsu kneels down, rubbing his shins. "You know, you shouldn't come to haunted houses if you're scared that easily."

"Levy wanted to! And why are you here anyway?" Lucy narrows her eyes, fixing her hair. She doesn't make an effort to stand up.

"Part-time job," Natsu grinned. "And I like your costume. 'High school girl trying to look cute'?"

"I'm a cat." Lucy crosses her arms.

Natsu laughs at her angry face. "Sure you are." He stands back up and rocks on his heels. "Get up, there's people waiting."

"Terrible service." Lucy grumbles and tries her best to do the same. Natsu eventually gets fed up and grabs her by the arm and yanks. She yelps and stumbles around before steadying herself.

His grin looks fluorescent in the dark. "See you around, strawberry milk girl."

"It's Lucy," she mumbles as he disappears behind some random door.

(But he already knew that.)

He stomps into the gym, snow falling off his hair onto the floor and he can feel Erza's glare on him so he runs off to bother Lucy.

She gives him a funny look, but he shrugs and hands her the bag with the drinks he had to run to the supermarket for. He doesn't know when exactly he became the volleyball team's slave but he knows better than to complain.

"Aren't you cold?" Lucy asks him as she pours hot chocolate into little styrofoam cups. She does the same with the hot coffee as Natsu looks down. He's wearing his uniform and a scarf, what else does he need?

"I dunno, I never really get cold." He brushes some more snow off his shoulders. It's true, he only owns one winter jacket and he's never worn it.

Lucy gives him another funny look, so he rolls his eyes and grabs her hand as she's reaching for another cup. He grasps her fingers in his and squeezes. "See? I'm warm."

She makes some weird noises that he doesn't understand before snatching her hand back. He laughs at her confused face and grabs the strawberry milk out of the plastic bag.

"What are you doing?" Her face is kind of red, but she doesn't seem angry.

Natsu sticks the straw in and raises it to his mouth. "What, it's for me, right?"

Lucy opens her mouth to say something but instead she just laughs and nods. She punches his shoulder lightly. "Dork. Do you even know why I always get you strawberry milk?"

"Because you're a weirdo?"

She punches him a little harder for that one. "Because it matches your hair." She ruffles it, laughing at his annoyed look.

Lucy wears Natsu's scarf one day in December.

He drapes it over her shoulders when he finds her freezing, standing outside of a café looking two parts mad and three parts murderous.

"Gajeel's in there with Levy." Lucy says through chattering teeth, winding the scarf around her. "He's awful lucky for getting a second chance."

"How long have you been stalking them?" Natsu says as he hunches his back and tries to peer through the window.

"I'm not stalking, I'm just here to make sure he doesn't screw up. Again."

Natsu grins, "And if he does, you'll kick him in the balls again?"

Lucy turns her head, cheeks pink from the cold. "You saw that?"

"Only thing I remember from the first week of school." Natsu dodges her incoming punch while laughing. "Come on, it was pretty cool!"

"That was so embarrassing," Lucy groans, focusing on the window again. "So many boys made fun of me for that."

"Did you kick their balls too?"

"Natsu!" She pouts, hands on her hips. "Did you just come here to make fun of me? I'm busy, you know!"

He shrugs and it starts to snow. "I've got nothing better to do."

Lucy frowns, his scarf tickling her chin. "Thanks for the scarf though. I didn't know how to go in without looking suspicious."

Natsu raises an eyebrow. "I think you look suspicious enough already. Why bother sticking around, anyway? They look like they're having fun." (Or, as much fun Gajeel can have while eating cake with a fork shaped like a cat.)

She flushes red, tearing her eyes away from him and looking at the ground instead. "Maybe it's because… I've got nothing better to do either?"

His laugh is loud and infectious and it fills her up from the bottom of her toes to the tip of her nose. She looks up and feels warm enough to take off his scarf and wrap it around his neck once again. Lucy has to stand on her toes and she brushes a snowflake off of his cheek without realizing she's doing it.

Natsu stares at her and she pulls her hand away quickly. He grabs it and holds it tight.

"You still haven't bought gloves?" Natsu looks at her pale fingers. Lucy feels like she's about to die and she doesn't know why.

"I haven't," Lucy manages to say dumbly. She wishes she painted her nails last night. It's dumb because it's just plain old Natsu who she's never thought of impressing but suddenly her fingers look dry and chalky and is she starting to sweat?

They hear someone shouting Natsu's name and Lucy jerks her hand away (she does that a lot) as Gray comes running toward them. He greets Lucy before grabbing Natsu's collar and interrogating him about a stolen math textbook. Natsu has a fistful of Gray's shirt and somehow Lucy gets elbowed out of the way before they start a "friendly brawl" outside of the café.

Lucy puts her head in her hands as Levy looks out the window and straight at her and she runs away before she gets lectured, holding her hand to her chest tightly.

He buys her gloves two weeks before Christmas.

It's an early gift, but he tells her that he's giving her time to prepare for something totally awesome in return. Natsu warns her that if she buys him strawberry anything, he's taking his gloves back.

He doesn't really know how girls think but she wears the gloves a lot so he guesses that she likes them.

Lucy hunts him down at breaks, leaning against his locker and asking him question after question. She now knows all of his favourites (colour: red), what he got last year from his friends (whoopee cushions), when he stopped believing in Santa (eight), and one day he gets so fed up with them that he just tells her that he wouldn't mind a new pair of boxers.

She goes all red and sputters, "I can't buy those!"

Her reaction makes him laugh and he's left alone for a while.

Then some new girl takes her place, her name's Lisanna and she's from Lucy's class and she's just wondering, are Natsu and Lucy dating?

He tells her the obvious truth: no, and she asks him to have lunch with him. He shrugs why not and doesn't notice Erza's lethal glare.

Lisanna asks him the same questions and Natsu says the same answers and he gets confused when Lucy gets all pissy about it. It's not like she did anything different, and hey this Lisanna girl is just awed by his greatness and it's not his fault he's so cool that everyone wants to get to know him.

He finally asks her why she's so mad recently and Lucy gets all quiet and it's weird because Lucy's never quiet. She finally asks him whether or not the gloves "meant something" or not.

"I gave them to you because you're always cold," Natsu says even though it seems obvious. (In the background, Erza smacks herself in the head.)

Lucy nods once, then twice, then a couple more times and Natsu's kind of worried that Lucy might be sick or something before she swiftly punches him in the gut and walks away.

"You deserve it," Erza tells him when Natsu regains feeling in his stomach.

Natsu doesn't get it.

It's stupid, it's so stupid and of course she read too much into it, she always reads too much into things and Natsu is Natsu and ugh she feels so stupid.

Lucy twirls her pencil in her hand and glares holes in the back of Lisanna's head.

Natsu's present is sitting in her locker, smushed by her chemistry textbook. She doesn't know what to do with it. Half of her wants to burn it. Half of her wants to burn herself.

She's not Natsu's girlfriend and he's not her boyfriend so it's unfair for her to be jealous, but she knows for a fact that he doesn't buy gloves for other girls and he doesn't hold hands with other girls but then what does that make her? His better-than-friend-but-less-than-girlfriend?

Another part of her doesn't even know whether or not she even likes Natsu, or is just jealous that he's paying attention to a girl other than herself.

She sighs. Her teacher asks her what's wrong. She doesn't reply.

It's the day before Christmas break and she has a stupid pair of boxers stashed away in her locker. Lucy can't even believe she bought them, and she sighs again when she remembers sweating her way through the department store line.

Lucy hangs around Natsu's locker after school, waiting as students file out of the hallways and into the snow. He's late, but she knows why.

She remembers Lisanna bolting out of the classroom as the bell rung, hand clasped tight around a little brown bag. She remembers wishing the girl would drop into a pit as tall as Mount Fuji.

So Lucy waits, little black bag swinging against her leg. She waves her teacher goodbye and wonders if she should just go home before she hears heavy footsteps coming down the hall.

"Merry Christmas," she says as she thrusts the bag into his chest, smiling. Lisanna's not beside him. Good sign.

Natsu gives her a wary look. "You're not mad anymore?"

Lucy looks at him, pink hair and thin uniform and big teeth. Her toes feel warm and she shakes her head. "Nah."

He stares at her glove-less hands, shrugs, and takes his bag out of his locker. They walk side-by-side out of the school, neither saying a word.

"So?" Natsu elbows her and Lucy pretends like it didn't hurt. "Aren't you going to ask?"

She tries to act nonchalant, "About what?"

"Come on," he grins at her, "I know you're dying of curiosity."

Lucy blushes pink and looks away to hide her smile. "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. It's none of my business."

"Never seemed to stop you before."

She elbows him back, right in the ribs where it hurts. She grins at his yelp.

"Okay okay, sorry." He rubs his side. "She told me she liked me and I said I didn't know her."

Lucy stops in her tracks, eyes wide. "Just like that? You said it just like that?"

Natsu stares back at her. "Yeah?"

Lucy grabs her schoolbag and smashes it against his side, ignoring his scream. "Oh my god you're the worst! You enemy of women! She probably put so much courage into that and you just crushed her oh my god you asshole!"

"Holy shit calm down! Mercy! Mercy!" Natsu puts his hand out, trying to shield more attacks as he wheezes, "What's wrong with you? I only said it because you would be upset if I didn't!"

"-I what?"

"Well, wouldn't you be?"

Natsu is breathing heavily but it's Lucy who feels as if she's just been hit by a ton of bricks. She watches in silence as he massages his side.

"How can you be so dense to some things and not to others?" She mumbles, clutching the straps of her schoolbag. She feels stupid but she's also happy, kind of ridiculously happy and she doesn't care that he's staring at her weirdly.

"What did you say?"

Lucy looks into his wary eyes and breathes in. She extends her arm and puts out her palm. "I said… I'm cold."

"Weird woman." Natsu grumbles but he takes her hand and entwines their fingers. Lucy laughs and he just shakes his head.

They walk together and talk about meaningless things. (Later, Lucy doesn't remember a single sentence she said.)

Natsu still doesn't get it, he kind of understands that holding Lucy's hand like this for so long isn't really normal but she's happy and he's good with that.

Lucy really doesn't get it, she doesn't know where they stand or what they are but she's happy like this for now. So she tries not to think about it too much and she walks slowly because today is a very special day.

They all go see the fireworks on New Year's Eve. Erza and Lucy wear long flowing yukatas with intricate patterns and Natsu wears bright pink boxers underneath a pair of jeans. He makes sure they stick out at the back. Gray snickers but Lucy smiles widely.

"So how do I look?" She grins at him, twirling around with her arms spread wide. He likes the way the cherry blossoms on her sleeves match the pink clip in her hair.

"You look real pretty, Luce." He grunts, because it's not like him to lie. He stares at her as she trips over nothing and holds her chest. Erza is giving him a really funny look and he wonders if Lucy just had a seizure.

Gray gives him a rough clap on the back with a grin and says, "Good one." Natsu shakes him off, still wondering if Lucy's alright. (By now she's sunk to the ground in a mess of jello limbs.)

He kneels down next to her and sticks his face close because her bangs are blocking her eyes. She's a shade of cherry tomato red from her neck to her hairline and he asks, "Are you choking?"

She must be okay because she swats his head away, but she's still bright red. "That's the first time you ever said my name," Lucy says quietly.

"Oh." Natsu says plainly, and for some reason his cheeks feel hot. "I didn't notice."

Erza coughs and they both stand up rigidly. Gray keeps smirking at him so Natsu punches him really hard.

They go eat takoyaki and Erza catches five goldfish in one swoop. Some private school girl pops out of nowhere and confesses her love to Gray. Natsu looks at her like she's got two heads.

Lucy buys an ugly-looking bunny mask. She hangs it on the side of her head like a really big flower.

Natsu buys a lot of caramel popcorn and eats it one handful at a time. Erza drags them all to a grassy area where they anticipate fireworks while the girls sit on plastic bags to keep their yukatas clean. When they're all waiting together, Natsu's elbow touches Lucy's and she doesn't pull away so neither does he even though it's awkward and uncomfortable.

Some guys sitting around them start staring at Lucy and Natsu instinctively pulls on a strand of Lucy's hair. She turns on him and whacks him in the chest, screaming at him not to touch the hair she spent two hours working on. All the guys turn their attention elsewhere.

Fireworks go off and Lucy cuts off her tirade to watch. Their elbows bump again. This time Natsu pulls away. It feels different this time, too personal and too close.

Erza makes an angry tsk sound. Natsu doesn't care. He's next to Lucy and they're not touching but he can smell her perfume and see her smile and things feel right. He doesn't know a lot but he does know that this isn't a moment worth interrupting.

On the first day back to school Lucy goes all out.

She curls her eyelashes for what seems like an eternity and paints pictures onto her eyelids with the air of a model getting ready for her big fashion show. Some of her blush falls onto her blazer but she brushes it off easily as she pulls on her knee high socks.

She smoothes out the wrinkles in her skirt and ties a little bow in her hair. Her bag sits comfortably on her shoulder. Lucy looks in the mirror and gives herself a thumbs up.

At school Natsu says, "Hey."

Lucy waits for a second. He looks at her blankly.

She grinds her teeth and says, "Hey."

Natsu keeps staring at her.

"Do you notice anything different?" Lucy asks, blinking three times in a row to draw attention to her mascara. Her glossed lips pout. She takes a lock of her hair in her newly manicured fingers and twirls it.

Natsu squints. "You have a dot on your forehead now."

She gasps and a hand flies to her forehead. "I have a pimple?"

Before her shock can turn into rage, Natsu grins widely and says, "Nah. You did something with your hair right? It's nice."

The bell rings and Lucy watches with frustration as Natsu saunters away with her heart.

(She spends all of the next class looking on her phone for new hairstyle ideas.)

"Um," Natsu says. Lucy stands in front of him, arms spread out wide to block him from walking past. "Yes?"

"Do you like dark chocolate or white chocolate?" Lucy demands while wearing panda earmuffs.

Natsu gives it some thought before saying, "I like all types."

"Useless." Lucy lowers her arm sand scowls at him before stalking away.

"Weird woman," Natsu mumbles and continues past the school gates.

She calls him the morning of Valentine's Day an hour before school starts. Lucy's kind of surprised when he picks up, groggy and annoyed. She talks fast and doesn't wait for him to answer before hanging up by slamming her thumb on the touchscreen of her phone. Then she throws her phone under her pillow and regrets her life choices.

After some contemplation Lucy touches up her makeup and puts on her gloves. She stuffs the box that she painstakingly packed and re-packed the night before into her bag and starts to walk to school.

She paces back and forth over the frosted sidewalks, toying around with the idea of just going back home and calling in sick for the next year. When she finally gets to school, she waits an agonizing five minutes in the empty courtyard before Natsu arrives.

"Do you know how early it is?" He grumbles, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Of course I do, I'm not stupid," Lucy snaps back unconsciously before smacking herself internally. She wasn't here to pick a fight, she was here to—oh god what was she here to do she was here to ruin everything and-

"So what's this all about?" Natsu sighs and Lucy isn't surprised that he hasn't connected the dots yet. It's blatantly obvious what she's about to do but Natsu is Natsu and that means she has to drag herself through the dirt to reach him.

She looks at his ratty scarf and pink hair and wonders if he's worth it.

"I made you chocolate," she grinds out through clenched teeth. The box is taken out of her bag and held shakily in front of her. "Happy Valentine's Day." She enunciates every syllable, even though she can't look at him in the eyes.

Before he can do anything, she flits her eyes up and gathers all her courage and says, "This isn't a friendship chocolate, so if you think it is then you can go to hell."

It's a miracle that the heat from her cheeks hasn't caused the ground underneath her to melt and swallow her whole. Lucy almost wishes it would.

"Okay."

She looks up as Natsu takes the box of chocolates from her and she can't help but to reach out and grab his wrist, looking up at him warily. "Wait, do you get what this means?"

Natsu furrows his eyebrows at her and sniffs, "Duh, Luce. I'm not stupid."

She bites her tongue and tries not to object. "So now what?" She lets go of his wrist and her hand falls limply to her side.

He's still holding the box like an idiot. She curses him. Natsu shrugs and says, "I don't know?" For some reason, he sounds annoyed.

Lucy bites her tongue so hard she tastes blood.

"Damn," Natsu says, and he runs a free hand through his hair. "This really sucks." Lucy pictures herself killing him.

"I mean," he adds, a pink tinge appearing on his cheeks, "I kinda wanted to be the one to confess."

Lucy's mouth drops open. Natsu pouts, looking guiltily at her and is he sulking?

"I had planned out this really big thing with flowers and stuff too! Man, I'm sorry. I should've remembered you like to take things fast."

"I like to take things fast?"

"Yeah," Natsu says with a confused look, "Aren't you the one who started hitting on me in the first place? And there was that thing at Christmas with the hand, too."

Lucy feels like the world is spinning. "Oh my god." She shakes her head. "Oh my god. I hate you."

Natsu grins at her and she feels stupid and warm. "But you're happy, right?" He takes a step closer, swinging the box behind his back. "You're smiling."

She hates him so much because he's right and she knows that her eyes are crinkling and she's probably grinning bigger than he is because she takes a step closer too.

"You're wearing the gloves." Step.

"Shut up." Step.

She can see herself in her eyes, and she's a little struck by how goofy she looks but her heart is pumping in her ears and she can feel the blood rushing to her face as she realizes how close they are and she feels like she's only looking dumber and dumber as she stares at his pointy teeth.

"I can't believe my first kiss is this unromantic," she mutters, breath materializing between them.

(Natsu laughs and kisses her.)

They hold hands a lot when he walks her home.

Natsu likes her hands, they're soft and small and they belong to Lucy so that's a huge plus. She's talking about some sale that she wants to go to, dropping hints left and right and Natsu's kind of surprised that he actually understands that she's giving him hints.

He knows he's changed, just a little, that he's not as reckless anymore because he gets ugly Hello Kitty bandaids when he scrapes his knees from climbing onto the roof and lectured when he gets detention and has to make her wait for him to walk her home.

He's also a lot better at sensing hidden meanings now, not that Lucy's are very hidden anyway. When she doesn't say things to him outright, she says certain sentences louder than others and stares at him very meaningfully until he takes her to the donut shop and she acts all surprised and touched.

They've only been dating for two weeks but he feels like he's learned a lot of weird stuff, but that's not true, the past few months have all been a learning process. His memories bleed together into some strange mesh of time. There's only "Before Liking Lucy" and "After Liking Lucy" and unimportant things are just lost in the grey areas in between.

He squeezes her hand. Being with Lucy is like breathing, it's natural and he's so used to her now that he can even predict when she's going to hit him.

(He doesn't dodge her attacks though, because he "probably deserves it".)

"You're whipped," Gray tells him one day.

Natsu doesn't reply because as true as that might have been, he feels slightly comforted in the fact that Lucy is likely falling in love at the same rate that he is.

She gets an atrocious looking hat for White Day. It's blue with white and red stripes and a woolen pink fuzzball on top.

"It reminded me of you," Natsu grins.

"I love it." Lucy smiles painfully back.

Stupid girl, she reprimands herself as she gets home and puts the monstrosity in her closet.

Stupid, lovesick girl, she sighs as she puts it on the next day to go to school. When he sees her with it, he laughs and kisses the bridge of her nose.

Stupid, hopeless girl.

After a while, they stop indulging each other so much. Lucy buries the hat underneath four sweaters in her closet and Natsu goes back to skinning his elbows while trying to scale the building.

He still walks her home and she still punches him in the gut when he doesn't realize her new earrings.

(Everything is comfortable and good.)

The season changes, Erza and Gray stop smirking at them so much, and they all switch to short sleeves.

She still buys him strawberry milk out of the blue and he dutifully drinks all of it.

The volleyball team wins every trophy ever and Erza is beautiful and sweaty and triumphant.

It's also sweaty when they hold hands but Natsu still does it even though it's kind of gross.

"I never liked that hat," Lucy confesses to him one day as they're eating popsicles while walking home.

"I know. That's why it was funny." Natsu says while chewing and Lucy waits for him to swallow before kicking him in the shins.

They laugh at each other.

And even though they act more like friends who kiss every once in a while than a real couple, it doesn't seem to bother them. They're Natsu and Lucy, Lucy and Natsu, strawberry milk girl and crazy boxers boy and they're (happily) in love.