A/N: This is my attempt to write some more Natsu/Lucy.

It is also my attempt at it gone seriously wrong.

You just have no idea…

Sear

Just like all the other wild and completely uncontrollable things Natsu had gotten Lucy into, this little escapade of theirs had started out bizarrely and unexpectedly enough.

Its foundations were laid on a day that seemed just like any other—a day during which he had been mostly absent, even.

She'd been at the guild, chatting the evening away with her comrades in Fairy Tail. Mira had had some kind of appointment to attend to so she had been unable to close down the bar for the evening. By the time that much had become clear, only the shape shifter, the stellar mage and just a handful of other guild members were left in the place.

And thus, ever being the one incapable to leave a friend in need, Lucy had volunteered to take care of closing up the place in Mira's stead. The white-haired woman had thanked her probably a million times while tightly holding her hands and promised to make it up to her for her trouble afterward (even though the blonde insisted that there was no need for her to do so).

It was while Lucy was mopping up the water that had splashed around the sink behind the bar after she was done washing the last of the glasses and tankards that the last of the Fairy Tail members trickled out of the guild, saying their goodbyes to her for the night.

He must've slipped in while those guys were going out because she didn't hear him enter.

"You the only one left, Lucy?"

When he spoke up and rent the peaceful silence, she started, nearly dropping the glass she was drying with the towel.

"Jeez, Natsu! Stop sneaking around like that! You almost gave me a heart attack!" she reproached him half-heartedly.

She shook her head at his antics and resumed with her work while he sat on the barstool directly in front of her.

After she took a calming breath and noticed his gaze roaming the place from his vantage point at the stool, she finally responded to his earlier question.

"Mira-san had something to take care of tonight so she couldn't close up the bar. I offered to help her since I was free. Everyone's already gone home and I'm almost done here, so I won't be long either."

It didn't occur to her that he was entirely too quiet for Natsu, nor that Happy was nowhere in sight.

The blonde looked up from her task of drying the glasses and tankards to spy a glance at an unusually raptly listening Natsu. Or was he not even listening to her at all? It was then that she realized that she hadn't seen him around all day.

"Where were you today anyway? I didn't see you around at all."

The dragon slayer just shrugged with one shoulder.

"I was around," he replied vaguely, making her cock a curious eyebrow at his peculiarly tight-lipped responses.

Deciding that dwelling on his weird—well, weirder than usual—behaviour wasn't going to get her anywhere, Lucy got back to her chores. After all, the faster she was done, the sooner she could get to go home and it had felt like a really long day to her.

While she diligently put everything in its place like she'd seen Mira do countless times before, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck standing on end alerted her to the fact that he was staring at her. When she slowly lifted her gaze to sneak a peek at him, she almost did a double-take at the heaviness of his unblinking stare.

That's when she realized that something was different with him that day, because the Natsu she knew did not stare as intently at her, did not aim such quiet intensity at her without any reason.

It was also when she realized that it was only him and she in the entire huge hall of the completely vacated guild—where was Happy anyway?

She swallowed dryly, trying her best to ignore him but even if she didn't look at him she knew that his eyes were following her every move. She had no idea why but that made her pulse race and her face heat up uncomfortably.

"W-what?" she asked, carefully looking up at him from under her thick eyelashes.

Natsu hadn't moved a muscle from his position and if anything she felt even more disconcerted by his gaze as she attempted to hold it.

"W-why are you s-staring at me like that?" she questioned shakily.

She expected some kind of reaction from him – a smirk, a laugh and/or an explanation would've been grand. But instead, he just continued to stare pensively at her and she could already feel the skin on her arms erupt in goosebumps.

"You're creeping me out, Natsu—just drop it already," the blonde chastised but her teammate was unimpressed with her discomfort.

His only response to her was a thoughtful tilt of his head to the side, and a low, pensive hum rumbled in his chest as he studied her carefully. She had no idea what he was considering about her so deeply and she had a feeling she didn't even want to find out.

Not to mention that his staring had begotten a rather unpleasant smouldering feeling in her tummy.

It was about then that it happened.

She had no idea what had spurred him to do it—or what he had been even thinking of in that moment—but he kissed her.

He propped himself up on one hand while pulling her closer with the other as he leant over the bar and captured her mouth in a real, honest to God kiss.

To Lucy, it seemed completely weird, totally blindsiding and very inappropriate. He was her friend, for goodness' sake. It was true that for her twenty years, she had zero experience with boyfriends and the opposite sex in an intimate manner in general, but even she knew that kissing one another like that was not what friends did. That much she was sure of.

And she would've never instigated such a thing on her own, because his friendship really meant a lot to her.

Risking it by doing outrageous things that overstepped the Friend Zone was a resounding "no" in her books.

Because he was her best friend and she couldn't imagine her life without him as such.

At first she had been so baffled, so genuinely shocked, that she had just stood there, staring wide-eyed at his hooded eyes from up very close, with a mind temporarily unable to do anything but just draw blanks.

Because her best friend was kissing her in a way that was not friend-like at all.

So, in order to preserve that friendship, she just went along with whatever had possessed him in that moment. She did not push him away because her rejecting him then and there was sure to put an awkward end to their carefree everyday lives. Which was something she did not want at all. She liked Fairy Tail and she liked her life in it, and he was a very crucial part of that. There was no Fairy Tail for her without Natsu in it, after all!

She had kissed him back, very reluctantly though it had been, hoping (and not at all convinced) that the course of action she had chosen to deal with this situation was the best of her alternatives.

A moment later and his hand, which had been supporting part of his weight on the bar, was replaced on her shoulder. It gently slid up over her neck to cup her face in the most enthralling way imaginable, and even if her conscious mind had wanted it, she became unable to push him away.

Another moment later and his nimble tongue invading her mouth, and she no longer even had a conscious mind to reason the situation with.

The memory of what happened between them afterwards was paradoxically both the haziest and the most vivid one she had ever had in her entire life.

On one hand, she had no recollection of when he had even come on the same side of the bar as her, how and when he had relieved her of her top and underwear and hiked up her skirt around her waist, or how he had gotten to know how to touch her to make her feel the extraordinary things she did.

On the other hand, she had never felt anything as lucidly as she felt the firmness of his lean body pressed up against hers then; the scorching, breath-taking heat his hands left in their wake as they caressed her and traced the perfect curves of her frame; his rock-hardness against the inside of her thigh as he held her close, tightly enveloped her in his embrace while his tongue worked miracles in her mouth.

He didn't even give her enough time between greedy, impassioned kisses that fried her every prayer of a coherent thought process, didn't give her a chance to pause and consider that this was Natsu she was making out with, her comrade around whose waist her legs were wrapped around, her best friend whose erection was pressing against her damp panties.

She didn't consider anything, didn't think anything at all and just let him take her along for the ride as he ravished her neck and ample breasts with searing open-mouthed kisses, pushed her down and flattened her back against a bench, pushing into her without warning and setting a steady, powerful rhythm without rhyme or reason.

She didn't remember at all what happened after that mind-blowing toe-curling force had seized her, made her lose all sense and reason. She couldn't recall how she'd gotten home that evening or if she even had at all.

And it was all his fault because all she could think of and all she could remember was the intoxicating scent of his hair as she had clung onto him as he drove them to their release, his rasped grunts and groans and the broken fragments of her name rolling off his tongue as he plunged deeper into her, his all-encompassing warmth as his movements against her became frantic, erratic as he spiraled out of control just as she had.

She had dreamt of him that night. Her dream world had been painted in blotches of sakura-petal pink and fiery red. She had dreamt of the intensity of his gaze as it hungrily roved her body; of the certainty of his touch on her skin and of the sensuality of his ministrations. It somehow made the experience of what had happened all the more vivid and real the morning after.

And the fact that it kept sticking to the forefront of her mind made that much more unbearable and unimaginable the thought of dropping by the guild that day.

She considered holing herself up in her apartment and avoiding him for as long as possible, but she soon dismissed the notion. It pretty much rivaled in imbecility her last "brilliant" idea of humouring him and actually getting so carried away with his ministrations that she had forsaken all coherent thought.

Seriously though, what was she thinking? How had it—even for a millisecond—seemed to her that not stopping him had been an acceptable idea? It was one thing to let him kiss her but she should've at least stopped him when things started getting out of hand and much too heated to be written off as a mere flight of fancy, as a simple slip of judgment.

Though better yet, what was he thinking? It was true that for a while she'd been feeling like things between the two of them had been… shifting. Changing. Moving. Though she had had no idea towards where or what, nor why. She'd had a gut feeling that things had started to become different, that their friendship had begun to shape shift somewhat—even though she had no clue into what. And neither could she put her finger on how exactly it was changing. It just felt… different.

But regardless of her vague gut feelings, that was no reason for him to just suddenly… do that and whisk her mind away!

How was she supposed to even look at him anymore? Everything between them had changed for just a few short hours—years upon years of camaraderie and friendship dissolved in a matter of mere hours of utter thoughtlessness on her part.

Lucy put her face in her palms as despair and horror rushed her.

This was one fine mess she'd let herself be gotten into.

It wasn't until a good few hours later that Lucy finally managed to drag herself with heavy feet and heart towards the guild.

After her last lapse of judgment she wasn't sure how much her decisions could be trusted at all but she had a sneaking suspicion that avoiding the problem she had let fester was definitely not going to solve anything.

So after some profound (and very prolonged time-wise) thinking, she had decided that hiding at her place wasn't going to help her case any, thus why she'd gone to the guild.

Only when she swung the large doors open did she realize how little she had thought things through because she had no idea how to act around him, around anyone, after the things that had happened the previous night.

She was so stiff that she even had Happy poke fun at her, pointing it out. Thankfully, no one had really reacted to the fact. More importantly, everyone was acting absolutely normal, as if the world was the same as it was yesterday, as if nothing important had gone on in the last day.

Most importantly, Natsu was acting his usual jolly, silly and care-free self, laughing, joking with the guild members and fighting with Grey. When he spoke to her first after she'd arrived, she responded in a squeaky, tense voice and he laughed at her, patting her back rather forcefully in a very Natsu-like way and asking her what was wrong with her, being so tense.

She stared at him as if he had grown a second head on his shoulders and wondered whether she hadn't hit her head the previous night and had a weird dream about things that did not actually happen. After all, there was no way even someone as dense and idiotic as Natsu wouldn't realize the gravity of what had transpired between them—unless it hadn't been reality but a figment of her imagination.

Suddenly Lucy felt disoriented. If it had just been an inane scenario her over-imaginative head had dreamt up, that would certainly explain a lot. For one, it would account for how he was able to talk to her so naturally, with that usual huge grin on his face while trying to get her to agree to go on a mission with him because he was running low on cash. It would also explain why the events of the previous night didn't seem to have any sense—her dreams had never been very sensible at all.

The realization made some of the tension that had been wiring her being to leave her squared shoulders. It was about then that Natsu noticed that she still haven't answered him in a sentence longer than two words.

"You okay, Lucy?" he asked, making her blink a few times in her confusion.

"You look like you just woke up," Happy snickered over Natsu's shoulder.

"You do look a little out of it, Lucy," Mira agreed from over the bar. She then proceeded to give the girl a refreshing cold drink in hopes to liven her up a bit.

The blonde smiled at her friends' concern.

"Sorry, I was just a little lost in thought, I didn't mean to worry you," she replied with a small smile, thanking Mira as she took a hefty sip of her drink. "Sure, we should go do that mission tomorrow—my rent is due soon as well, so I can use the money, too."

Afterward, even though she tried to focus on the conversations around her, Lucy found it near impossible. She couldn't stop wondering just what the hell was going on. Was she going insane? Did she have some kind of mental disease that made her incapable of telling reality from dream? If she hadn't dreamt, then… what was with this unrealistic everyday life idyll? How the hell could everything be exactly the same after the monumental change that had occurred in one of her most important relationships in Fairy Tail?

Incapable to solve the mystery, Lucy decided she needed to get away. So she made a quick excuse of wanting to look up something in the guild library and made her way towards her sanctuary, the one place where she could go and feel at peace no matter what kind of things went on in her life. For some reason being surrounded by volumes and volumes of books had always calmed her down since she had been young.

She read of the adventures her fellow guild-members had been through and hoped to draw some inspiration for her novel. But how could she really when her mind wasn't in what her eyes were skimming through?

The stellar spirit mage sighed and leaned forward on the table, resting her head on it temple-first. She really did feel more at ease in the library—especially since she was the only one in it at current—but being there did not give her answers to any of countless questions that swarmed her mind.

Lucy heaved another great sigh as she crossed her arms in front of herself on the table and put her head on them, getting in a more comfortable position (as far as was physically possible, considering that she was lying on a hard wooden table). She let her eyes slide closed as she pondered what she was going to do.

What could she even do? Was that all really just a dream, as improbable as it seemed should she really be mentally sound? That would definitely mean a lot about the way she possibly felt about Natsu without realizing it. And if it was not a dream and had actually happened? Then it would definitely mean a lot about what Natsu thought of it. Better yet, what did she think of it? What was she even supposed to think?

She groaned and buried her head in her crossed arms. She was totally out of her element with this kind of serious mulling over of things. She was not made for this kind of dilemma-solving.

She wondered why her life had to get so complicated all of a sudden. Why were relationships with people so difficult to grasp and maintain; so hard to understand and nurture? Better yet, how in the world was it possible for her relationship with someone as simplistic as Natsu to get so complicated so quickly? It was hard to wrap her mind around the concept—like too many things that had happened recently.

As Lucy exhales softly and her mind loses focus, it wanders to a much different time and place.

A place where whispered sounds and breathless gasps rend the resounding silence; where limbs tangle and bodies wrestle; where passions mingle and entwine to fuel, feed an incorporeal fire greater than any the world has ever known. The only proof of its existence the heat it still calls forth on her skin and the sear it has left on her soul, forever engraved into her very entity with its sensual might.

It was a raspy, breathless but infinitely familiar and endearing voice that had called her name before she had slipped into unconsciousness.

Lucy…

A/N: I have absolutely no idea just what the hell… This thing just… totally got away from me. I just don't know what the hell to do with it anymore. Writing it kills me inside, I tell you. I threw these folks into a totally impossible situation and I'm trying to get them out of it but instead it just gets messier and messier. But for some reason I get the feeling that my first pitiful, out of character attempts for writing these two should see the light of the world. Which is why I'm posting this, even if I am totally displeased and disappointed with it.

The idea it came from is nothing from what it has turned into. And just what is with this completely oppressive and depressing atmosphere this thing has. I just don't even…

I'm going to let you folks be the ones to decide its fate. If it's as disgustingly OOC and unsightly to you as it is to me, I am totally killing it. I have better ideas—more suitable—for this pairing anyway.