I'm not familiar with the name of cleaning supplies and some others thins, so I kinda winged it (Google is horrible if you want the name of daily things). This is not revised yet, so there may be some mistakes that I will fix in the future.

This is really short, but I had a test in college today and I didn't have much time to explore this idea as much as I could (what do you mean I had three months? No, I wasn't procrastinating! Pfft, of course not!).

CoLu Week 2016, Day 2: Excuses

Kleptomaniac

It started slowly.

First her cleaning products were gone; the bleach disappeared on the day to clean the bathroom, the window cleaner wasn't in the cabinet under the kitchen sink when the windows got filthy (because most people, for some reason, prefer to use the windows to come in and out of the apartment instead of the door), when Natsu left ashes all over the dining table the wood cleaner was nowhere to be found, and the pile of dishes was growing until she found some time to buy detergent.

Lucy understood that Cobra had to keep a diet of different poisons - and she forbade any dangerous or illicit poisons inside her apartment -, at least he could warn her when something ran out (or replace it, she didn't have a lot of money to throw around).

Lucy was scrubbing a wet rag on the window with more strength than she should, the glass was grey with so much ash in it (God damnit Natsu!) and it wasn't getting any cleaner.

"Have you seen the window cleaner?" She looked over her shoulder to the man sprawled on the couch reading one of her books with no intentions of helping her.

"No." He didn't look up from the book.

She wouldn't start a fight because of some cleaning products; it wasn't worth starting an argument about something so trivial. Cobra still had some habits from the years he was kept as a slave in the Tower of Heaven and his eating habits were one of them. He would eat small portions every meal and then storage it like they would suddenly run out of food. Providing for him - making sure there was something he could nibble after the small meals - proved to help a lot; he felt safer about the availability of sustenance, confident in eating more, and like he didn't have to ration food anymore. If Cobra was happy and healthy, Lucy had no problem with missing stuff.

They were arranging the table for dinner, but Lucy couldn't ignore the peeled nail polish, red was a striking color, even more when it was peeled.

Cobra was fixing plates and cutleries, making sure their seats were beside each other. "Why don't you take it off and paint it again?"

"Can't find the acetone," she grumbled, but resigned.

He shrugged and sat down, taking small portions for himself and offering the rest to her.

Lucy wonders when her life became scavenging for acetone.

She was proud to say she had everything under control, until more things started to disappear.

One morning, when she was going to water her plants, she realized the vases were gone (she was quite proud of her little garden, her brave plants that survived Natsu's visits). When it was her turn to cook dinner, the only pan left in the cabinet was a small pot with burnt bottom. One day the decorations from the coffee table, the candle holder and even some paintings weren't there anymore, just like there was no soap on the bathroom sink and the checked dishcloth wasn't over the stove handle.

"Cobra, do you know where is the wooden spoon?"

She was crouched in the kitchen floor, cheek pressed to the cold tiles, trying to look under the counter (maybe that was the secret place her stuff was hiding).

"How would I know?"

Their lunch was going to be paste with whatever she could find to make a good sauce, but cooking with a burnt pot and a soup spoon was proving a challenge, even more without any ingredients to the sauce. Maybe a lot of ketchup would be enough?

"You wanna be the first to poison a Poison Dragon Slayer? Just leave it as it is!"

With her stuff disappearing, they started to spend more time at Cobra's apartment (where, surprisingly, seemed to have a lot of things just like hers).

He would cook more often ("I swear, this is my wooden spoon. Look, it even has Happy's bite marks!"), they would eat while sitting on the couch (those were her cushion, she knew them, they were pink), feet on the rug that used to be on her bedroom, beside the couch was her coffee table (when did he take that?) with a ceramic bow where they would put their keys (that was her bo- wait, when did she get a key?).

Weeks later she found herself taking two trays so they wouldn't have to eat balancing the plates on their knees.

They were laying on his bed, heads resting on her pink pillows with a sheet with the same color covering their bodies, when she realized his shelves, which used to be empty, were slowly accommodating her books and others trinkets.

"You need to stop stealing my stuff," she said, turning around to face him.

He snorted, pulling her closer with the arm around her waist. "Or you could just move in."