This was supposed to be for a drabble request for siriusly-random, but it kind of got away from me. So it ended up with its own story slot, ahahaha.

The original prompt was: "Stop texting me weird stuff so late at night."

Enjoy!

It had been going on for some time now. Lucy would be on the brink of sleep after a long day with her team, and then she'd suddenly find herself jolted awake by the jingle of her lacrima phone. A jingle she was rapidly coming to despise. If she could have turned off the sound, she would have, but as luck would have it her current alarm clock had met its demise a while back and Lucy wasn't exactly awash in funds to replace it. So she was stuck with the alarm she'd programmed into the phone. Which meant leaving the sound on at night.

She was pretty sure that whoever it was that was sending her the weird pictures didn't mean to do so. It wasn't a number she recognized, nor was it from her contacts. Chances were good that it was a misdial that the perpetrator never noticed. Lucy would have informed them of the mistake long ago, but as the wrong number calls tended to happen so late at night… Lucy tended to just roll over and fall asleep again, forgetting all about it in the morning.

And to be fair, the photographs they sent were often hilarious. Like the one of a Vulcan trying to woo a mannequin. Or one that she could have sworn was the aftermath of one of Team Natsu's jobs – broken fountain and shattered cobblestones with the fish statue upside down. It felt far too familiar to Lucy. Like it wasn't the first time she'd seen it.

But she was fast losing any patience or sympathy she might have had for the wrong number dialer. After one night's rest too many interrupted, it was finally time to put an end to this.

Eyes bleary with sleep, she furiously tapped out a message. "Stop texting me weird stuff so late at night."

Several minutes passed by without a response, and it wasn't long before Lucy was asleep again, phone in hand.

When she awoke the next morning, she looked down at the device clenched in her hand. She vaguely remembered messaging someone the night before, though she was having a hard time recalling what it was. Opening up the message log, she stared blankly at the screen.

"Seat exiting weird fuso latte alright."

What in the world was that supposed to mean…? What had she been trying to say before autocorrect and sleep had scrambled the message…?

Her phone let out a cheerful chirp, and a new message flashed across the screen.

"How much did you have to drink last night?"

Lucy stared for a long minute at the innocuous message.

Ding!

"Seriously, how much. Alcohol poisoning is a serious problem. And I don't want to hear anything about how much Cana can drink, that woman isn't human and doesn't count."

That… that was a weird coincidence. What were the odds that the person misdialing her would also know Cana?

Ding!

"The read receipts are turned on, Lucy. I know you're seeing this. Answer me."

Okay, now she was really confused. Who the hell was this?!

Before she could ponder it properly, her phone started to ring. The caller ID named it the mystery person, and Lucy felt cold sweat running down her back. Well… here was a sure-fire way to find out. Provided she was able to recognize the voice on the other end, that is. The chances were not exceptionally high of that, but Lucy found herself answering the call anyway.

"Hello?"

"Good, you're up," said a gruff voice at the other end of the line. "What in the world was that garblygook you sent me last night?"

"Um…" Lucy wracked her brain, trying to place the voice, but kept coming up empty. "I was half asleep. I'm not sure what I was trying to say, either."

The man laughed at her explanation. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Well, it was nice hearing from you. I gotta go, but let's talk again soon."

With that, he hung up, and Lucy was left still none the wiser about whom she was conversing with and having lost the opportunity to ask.

From then on, the things he sent her simultaneously got weirder and more familiar to her. Like the one picture he sent that was a yellow and black blur, with the caption, "Action shot." Or the cryptic text about "feather duster" stabbing someone in the arm with a feather. These things kept tickling the back of her mind, and yet the answer still lay just outside her grasp.

Despite herself, Lucy soon found herself looking forward to her mysterious penpal's late night messages. She even sent him a couple as well. One time, after sending him a picture of a town Natsu destroyed with the caption, "The town is saved!" prompted him to call her. Whereupon nothing was actually said, as he was laughing too hard to formulate words. Leading to him hanging up with the conversation having never even started much less progressed.

It was only much, much later that Lucy realized that she could have shown the number to her friends and asked who it was, since she had gleaned that they seemed to share a friend circle. But now she was kind of enjoying the mystery of it all. Just a little bit. So she continued to keep it to herself.

Not that all this went unnoticed by her teammates for too long. Happy – ever the observant one – was the first to pick up on something going on with Lucy and her lacrima phone. Natsu then laughed in her face when Happy suggested that Lucy had gotten herself a boyfriend. Now that stung a little.

Gray and Erza had gotten their teasing in but had then promptly forgotten about the whole thing in a couple of days. Which was a mild relief as far as Lucy was concerned.

Because she was beginning to feel a little strange about the whole thing. Especially since the conversation was now going two ways. The guy seemed genuinely funny and in tune with all the craziness that tended to descend upon her life.

Maybe… someday… she'd work up the nerve to ask him to meet with her…

Or so she explained to Cana, when the brunette confiscated Lucy's phone to make a call while the blonde was in the bathroom. She had "just happened across" the ongoing messages. Lucy knew that she should have password protected the thing, but there was just no way that wouldn't immediately raise red flags with her teammates over what she was potentially hiding from them.

In the end, Cana got the whole spiel about what was going on.

Once Lucy was finished, Cana stared blankly at her for several long moments.

"It's Cobra, you realize that, right?"

Every cell in Lucy's body froze at the simple statement. "…Say what?"

Cana finally handed Lucy's phone back to her, a grin playing across her features. "Yeah, it was a few months ago when Crime Sorciere was here visiting. You got drunk as a skunk and asked for his phone number. Which, I may add, you were too drunk to actually enter correctly so he said he'd just message you first." She let out a hearty laugh. "I'm guessing you forgot all about it, huh? Lightweight!"

That… that cleared up a number of things. Lucy couldn't help but wonder why Cobra of all people had taken her up on the offer. Let alone been so friendly about the whole thing. It felt out of character.

Then again, given the heavily sarcastic nature of their messages, maybe he felt that he'd found a kindred spirit.

When he messaged her again that night, Lucy found herself replying without a hint of hesitation. Although it had gotten off to kind of a strange start, she decided that she treasured the connection they had formed through this. Why throw away a good thing? It might make a fun story to tell one day.

Though she did finally add his name to her contact list.