A/N: I like to refer to this story as 'One big, sloppy metaphor supported by several smaller, but equally sloppy metaphors'. That being said, I'm pretty proud of it. This is the first thing I've published here since about 6 years ago, so I apologize in advance for any errors as I am severely out of practice. ;)

The day Jii-chan brings a pink-haired twerp with him to the guild feels just like any other day. Like most kids, you're usually curious about...well everything, but not enough to waste precious time dwelling on it. The guild is always picking up strays it seems, and it's been a while since you and Cana were the only kids around, so honestly Gramps coming in with another new member isn't out of the ordinary and it doesn't particularly phase you. You've got more important things to worry about, like how to avoid Erza's wrath and stop leaving your clothes all over the city and how to convince Cana that no, you don't need your fortune told every day thank you very much.

But after a couple of days you give in to your curiosity and allow Cana to drag you over to the group of younger mages who are busy learning about the new kid.

New kid's name is Natsu Dragneel. His hair is naturally that weird pink color and you think he must bite his tongue a lot with teeth that sharp. He seemed pretty shy the first day you saw him, but you're not sure if that's how he always is or if it was just nerves. He never takes his scarf off. He doesn't like wearing shoes if they're not sandals. And apparently his dad is a dragon? Which you find to be utterly absurd at first, but Natsu seems so naive and his bluntness is so endearing that you figure he's probably telling the truth. That, and you've developed a serial stripping habit, tried to take down a dark guild all on your own before the age of ten, and once made friends with a girl whose magic was to make an egg hatch quicker. Not to mention Fairy Tail in itself is a breeding ground for insanity, so who are you to judge whether his weird stories are true or not?

"So what kind of magic do you use?" Erza asks him, direct and calculating as always.

Natsu grins with pride shining in his eyes and for a split second you see Lyon in that smile and doesn't that just hurt. But you don't have to dwell on it for long, because Natsu holds out his hands and they burst into brilliant flames.

And all of the sudden he is standing way too close.

Natsu smells like hellfire and heat blistering your skin and the charred buildings that crumbled to pieces alongside your innocence and your childhood. His flames crackle and pop like a campfire, but all you can hear is Deliora's deafening roar and the screams of everyone you'd ever known burning until there was nothing left but ashes.

You choke on your breath because there is so much smoke and you're being crushed by bricks and debris. Your eyes sting and your heart races and you can't breathe.

"Gray? Are you alright?" Cana asks worriedly, but her voice is garbled in the midst of the ringing in your ears.

"Everything okay, buddy?" Natsu asks with a weird look on his face. He touches your shoulder in attempt to shake you back into reality, but the heat from his hand spreads like wildfire and you push him away because you're burning.

"I'm sorry, I-" but you don't finish your thought because you turn and sprint from the guild hall instead. Halfway home you duck into a back alley and you barely make it to your knees before throwing up. When you've finally finished and there's nothing left in your stomach but acid you curl up into a ball and sob, shaking and gasping for air. It feels foolish and childish that one boy can reduce you to a blubbering mess, especially when you've been successfully keeping it all together until now.

Then and there you learn the most important fact about Natsu Dragneel: He is dangerous. That boy is an inferno that will scorch you if you get too close.

It doesn't matter how irrational that sounds and you know your blame is misplaced but in the midst of your breakdown all you can feel is the past clawing its way back into your life.

You're still hugging your knees to your chest when the sun starts to set, and you have to press an iced-over palm to your shoulder because the place Natsu touched feels like a third degree burn.

You still feel the phantom burning the next morning as you walk into the guild. Luckily Erza has left for a job and everyone else is still preoccupied with the guild's newest member, so the only acknowledgment of your melt-down is Cana raising a suspicious eyebrow at you when you sit at your usual table before going back to shuffling her cards.

You're barely even aware of her presence as you become more and more focused on the young flame throwing wizard surrounded by your guild mates. He's showing off his fire again and you flinch and move a little further back on the bench. You cringe after realizing what you just did, clenching your fists and letting out a huff. This is stupid. You aren't gonna be scared of someone just because his magic makes your skin crawl and your stomach upset.

And okay, maybe you'll keep an eye on him from a safe distance but you don't need to be a wimp about it.

Besides, you're being unfair. You don't even know the kid; you can't just assume he's going to disrupt your life because you were a little afraid of his magic the first time you saw it.

Who knows? Natsu could end up being the quietest, most tolerable person in the entire guild.

Natsu's a pain in the ass.

Not only is he loud as hell but he also never shuts the fuck up. He's constantly in your face about everything. He asks a million questions but lacks the attention span to even wait for them to be answered. He bolts around the guild hall like a spastic wonder, and you have never in your short, pitiful life been properly trained to deal with this level of idiocy.

The distaste, it would seem, is mutual.

He constantly complains about your 'moodiness', pokes fun at the shape of your eyes, and blames you for the weather every time a cold front passes through Magnolia.

You both start throwing punches almost immediately upon seeing each other. The brawls are so frequent that no one even bats an eye anymore when one of you breaks a table in half or goes flying into the wall hard enough to splinter it.

The only people who can seem to put an end to it are Gramps and Erza, and honestly Jii-chan is usually too busy drinking or dealing with the Magic Council to give a damn about what his rug-rats get up to while within the safety of the guild's walls. That leaves Erza who, though you've grown fond of her since that day down by the river, is both unrelenting and aggravating in her belief that you and the pink-haired freak are destined to surmount your adversities and reach some unequivocal bond of friendship and brotherhood and blah blah blah. "Friends shouldn't fight," she tells you, and naturally her solution to this problem is to bash both of your heads together in hopes that it will bring you to your senses.

You're pretty sure that it's hypocritical of the redhead to demand you get along with fire-breath when she expends the same amount of time and energy going head-to-head with the oldest Strauss sibling.

You'd never say this to her face of course because then you wouldn't have a face.

There's something different about the way that you and Natsu fight that you can't quite comprehend. Sure he's obnoxious and you get great joy out of trying to kick his ass into next Tuesday, but it's more than that. Usually you're so busy hurling insults and blocking punches that you can ignore it, but when you have too much time to think you wonder why you keep going back for more when he still smells like destruction and feels like danger.

Something pulls you to him and that's terrifying.

At the end of every scuffle you tell yourself that it's the places he struck you that are overheated, but you start to develop the dreadful suspicion that it's your insides that are starting to glow from his warmth.

You think maybe you were warm once.

But all that's left of you is ice.

You follow Natsu on his first solo job.

He's been going with Erza on her lighter missions to learn the ropes and he's even tagged along with you and Cana a few times (although after that resulted in several buildings being torn to shreds and a dozen extra apology letters being written, Jii-chan made the executive decision to ban you and your rival from teaming up again...for the safety of architecture and civilians everywhere). So it's not like he necessarily needs a babysitter. It's just that you've been doing this for a long time now and even the easiest jobs can have complications and the clients can be hoity-toity assholes and that flame brain is so disgustingly innocent that you don't want him to get into trouble.

For the sake of the guild's reputation. Or something. Besides, if he gets himself killed then who the hell are you supposed to pummel on a daily basis?

Once he leaves the guild, you nonchalantly ask what job he had taken. You guess you're not as discrete as you hoped, based on the knowing look Jii-chan gives you, but he offers up the information regardless and doesn't say anything else so you figure he'll keep quiet about your recon mission.

So you follow a ways behind Natsu as he goes on his first, lone adventure. This proves to be more difficult than you anticipated because even though you are great at hiding, the idiot has enhanced senses so you have to be extra careful. Which is dumb. Stupid Dragon Slayer and his stupid Dragon Slayer hearing...

Luckily for both of you, everything goes according to plan with only a few minor hiccups and you can secretly escort him back home from the safety of the shadows.

When you walk casually into the guild a few hours later, your rival's already there and animatedly telling Gramps about his first success, and watching him makes an unwelcome feeling of fondness bubble in your chest. Jii-chan glances over at you and smirks with raised eyebrows and you feel your face on fire from being caught doing something as ludicrous as caring about that dim-witted, snot-nosed brat.

It's okay though, because five minutes later you shake off the shivers of embarrassment by giving Natsu a bloody nose and everything goes back to normal.

Time passes one day at a time and you start to grow into yourself. The anger you had as a kid dissolves into guilt and sorrow which you adamantly hide behind sharp wit and a stand-off attitude. You're calmer now, more collected and careful. You grow stronger with each day that passes and as you do your magic becomes neater, sturdier, more powerful. And as it does, you spend your time conjuring thick, icy ramparts around you, putting up a frozen barrier between you and anything that dares to get too close. The ice within you feels safe and if you bury yourself deep enough within it you won't have to get hurt or hurt anyone else ever again.

'Maker magic is the magic of freedom', Ur had always insisted, and you can't help but appreciate the irony of using that freedom to surround yourself with walls.

You still get into fights every other day because a daily brawl breaking out in Fairy Tail comes along with the territory. So you'll punch and kick with the best of them but at the end of the day you've still got a level head and a good sense of logic that you definitely lacked when you were just a little, bitter shell of a child.

There's only one person who can reduce you to an agitated mess and no one could possibly be less surprised to learn that one person is Fairy Tail's resident Dragon Slayer.

And maybe you do still fight almost every time you're in the same vicinity for more than fifteen minutes, but hey, at least now you don't start getting violent until after one of you has said something to piss the other off. Before a fight would break out upon just laying eyes on each other. That's progress, right?

Still, there's something to be said about the fact that Natsu is the only one who can rile you up enough to really make you lose your temper. The others may assume this is because he annoys you the most (which isn't untrue) but you see it for what it really is: someone who's buried themselves so far under your skin that they've become essential to the core of your very being.

You fight with Natsu because you both suck royally at pep talks so when you're too withdrawn or he's too tense or you both need to blow off steam you pick a fight.

Dialect can be tricky. You tend to be less vocal than others, speaking when you deem it necessary and keeping quiet otherwise and Natsu talks so damn much it's hard to understand what he means because he circles around the point he's trying to make until your head spins. You still dream in the language of your country, the one you learned and spoke primarily as a child and sometimes when Natsu gets really pissed he'll stop using real words altogether in favor of speaking through grunts and growls that apparently make up some weird-ass, ancient, draconic communication that Igneel taught him. You've both been in Fiore for years now so you speak the common-tongue naturally, without flaw or hesitation, but there can still be misunderstandings and wires crossed in your brains and sometimes it's easier to remember that you've both been speaking fluently in smiles and fists since the day you were born.

And you utilize that shared form of expression. Man, do you ever.

But somehow his ability to read your body language like a book is far more intimate than you ever intended it to be. You realize that what started as simple, rage-fueled scuffles somehow morphed into a very odd, very deep-rooted companionship masked by your perpetual rivalry.

You realize that somewhere along the way he's become your best friend.

You don't remember having a best friend before. You think maybe you did, back when friendship consisted of snowball fights and making blanket forts in your living room, but those days are long gone and you try desperately to force them out of your mind.

Remembering your childhood is like looking into a snow globe: it's a beautiful winter wonderland that sparkles with swirling snowflakes and turns to the sound of the traditional Isvan lullaby your mother used to sing you to sleep. You keep those memories tucked safely away, encased in a glass that you can grip but never touch beyond the glossy barricade. You can hold them close to you, nudge them gently and bask in the serenity of snowfall but if you rattle them too much or grasp too tight the sanctuary will be shattered into a million pieces and you'll be wounded by broken shards.

And while you could never and would never try to forget your parents, you actively push away any other details about the people you once knew.

You probably could see the memories clearer if you only focused, if you didn't try so hard to cover them with haze, but it's painful enough having nightmares of Deliora's killing spree and Isvan bathed in blood. Recognizing the faces of the bodies being ripped apart only makes it hurt more.

You don't talk about your parents. They become just another secret on the long list of things to keep behind tight lips. And you certainly don't bring up Ur and Lyon, for all that you think of them each time your magic surges from your fingertips, because the grief is still so fresh and the guilt is overbearing and no one needs to know that you're always so close to crumbling.

Most of your guild mates skirt around talking about their parents. Fairy Tail, after all, is a mosaic fashioned from orphans and lost souls, each piece and fragment melded together into something as bizarre as it is beautiful. You are each other's family now and that will always be good enough.

It has to be. You don't have anything else.

There are always exceptions to the norm though, and as is customary, Natsu is one of them. In fact, Natsu hasn't stopped talking about Igneel since the first day he stepped into the guild. He'll tell anyone and everyone about being raised by a dragon. He's never been shy about his love for his father and has nothing but pride and admiration for him, though his hurt from the loss is often hidden behind a slightly insincere grin. And you feel for him because you too have spent years working to cover any sign of your sorrow behind hardened stares and forced smiles. You've considered telling him your secrets in hopes that you'll both find comfort in your shared losses, but you always think better of it.

The difference, you tell yourself each time you bite your tongue, is that Natsu is allowed to long for Igneel in a way that you can't for Ur. Natsu has the right to miss Igneel openly, to love him without shame.

Natsu didn't kill his parent.

"Oi, stripper! What's with that stupid look on your face?"

"You always look stupid but at least I'm nice enough not to yell about it."

Natsu stomps over to where you're sitting at the bar with Cana. He leans in close enough that you can feel the heat rolling off of his skin in waves. You lean back on your stool, trying in vain to get away from his scrutinizing glare. "You're brooding," he states flatly, "it's dumb."

A declaration he follows up with punching you in the face.

This leads to you telling him exactly where he can shove his stupid opinions and slamming your foot into his stomach. Which then dissolves into an all out brawl leading to lots of frozen pillars and tables on fire in the guild hall and it all comes screeching to an end with Erza beating both of your asses to a bloody pulp.

But you can't help but smile as you pick yourself up off the floor and Natsu's gaze meets yours before he flashes you a toothy grin.

When he smiles at you like that, it's easy to forget that this boy could ruin everything you've been working for since the first day you stepped into Fairy Tail. The loud bursts of his laughter and the sharp gleam in his eyes make the sun a little brighter, warm the biting cold inside you and that makes it just a little more difficult to push him away.

Everything is easier with Cana and Loke. They don't talk about their lives before Fairy Tail and you don't ask and in return you are never expected to drudge up any of your past grievances. Together you make a funny little team built on a foundation of sarcasm and teasing affection. You are fond of them and you know they always have your back, but they aren't waiting for you to share your life story with them. And that feels safe. Because Cana hides behind her booze in a house made of cards and Loke blinds anyone who gets too curious with his light, and you stay protected by walls and walls of solid ice. You all have your secrets and that's okay. You love each other, you do, but it's a safe love. It's a love that let's you keep your distance while still standing by each others's sides.

Friendship with Natsu is something else entirely.

Natsu is open about everything. He wears his heart on his sleeve and does as he pleases without any concern for consequence. He is constantly givinggivinggiving and takingtakingtaking and he demands an equal push and pull in his relationships. So he pushes you and prods you and tries to get you to offer up the same level of openness that he brings to the table. Natsu shines bright and hot and if you're not careful he'll turn your frosty security blanket into mush and storm the walls of your soul and you can't have that. You can't.

So you compromise. Sometimes you give him your time and patience. Other times you give him your fists and fury and a way to work out pent up stress. You provide him with someone to work perfectly in-sync with and to unconditionally have his back in a fight. And you hope that by giving him these things, by giving him something solid to rest your friendship on, that you'll keep him from trying to dig too deep. You give him something that satisfies his need to take without having to step outside of your icy fortress.

Natsu is your best friend. He's everything you never knew you wanted and that's disheartening because you're sure that wanting him will jeopardize your stability, make you vulnerable. You can't afford to be vulnerable, not anymore. You simultaneously crave his company and loathe him for this power he has over you that you doubt he's even aware of. But you have power too, frigid, magnificent power and you wear it proudly like a second skin. You won't be outmatched by him. You won't.

You are solid, glacial. Your life is an ice age, determined to stay frozen amongst a constant assault of waves and waves of blistering heat. You've had your moments of accidental thawing, weakness and longing dripping down your defenses, but you always manage to rally and pull the cold higher and higher around you until you're encased again in the safe haven of your solitude.

You have become ice, and you refuse to let some flame brained idiot take that away from you.

You could love him, you think, if you let yourself.

But you won't.

You kiss once.

You're fifteen and a little hormone-crazed like any other teenager. The guild is full of attractive people, but there's something about the sharp teeth in Natsu's grin and the hard line of his tan abs that make your heart stutter and your face flush.

And as if that's not annoying and embarrassing enough, it appears that the fire mage is also among the members of the suddenly sexually frustrated, coming-of-age guild brats. You both solve this excess irritation like you solve any other problem:

by punching the daylights out of each other.

You're the only ones down by the riverbank one evening and it feels like you've been fighting for hours by the time Natsu lands a good enough hit to send you flying backwards. As always, you refuse to let him win, so you grab onto him and pull him down with you. You regret this decision when his crash landing is directly on top of you, earning you an elbow to the gut and having the air stolen from your lungs, but like hell were you going to let him have the satisfaction of getting the upper hand so here you are.

Natsu pushes himself to his knees still hovering a few inches above you but he stops moving the second you make eye contact. The heat from his skin mixed with the warmth spreading inside of you is almost unbearable. Your faces are awfully close and you get lost staring into his eyes because they shine like a meteor, chaotic and cloaked in flame, like a shower of fireballs incandescent and crashing craters into your world and you're melting...simmering...boiling under the surface of your skin.

As if in a trance, you both lean closer until your lips touch. There's a second where you're devoured by his flames and it feels so safe. You've never believed in 'true love' and 'soul mates' and all that crap Lisanna and Levy love to read about in their silly romance books, but you wonder if you were wrong to dismiss them, because Natsu's mouth is moving hot against yours and you feel the universe shifting within you.

But then you remember your ghosts, the spirits that haunt you and remind you of the people you've hurt, of the loved ones lost. You lost them to yourself. You lost them to a monster and a nightmare made real with the flames of hell licking the earth. When you break apart, Natsu's face matches the color of his hair and he's looking at you with confusion. You stare back at him in horror because he felt so safe, how could you let him feel so safe? His fire is eating through your ice like acid. An alarm went off in your head signaling a security breach, but you sat back and let an intruder walk on through.

"Sorry, I just..." you stutter while shoving him off and getting to your feet. That's probably the second time you've ever apologized to him for anything, and the situation is so eerily similar to the first time it hurts. You're running despite the protest from your sore legs and when your brain finally catches up to your body, you're in your home puking up your dinner.

Your mind is screaming danger danger danger and you try to grasp onto the frost pulsing through your veins and hold it tight until the fire he lit somewhere deep inside you is gone, stomped out by a hailstorm.

And while you desperately try to cool the parts of you made tender by his closeness, you wonder how something that felt so beautiful could also feel like the aftermath of worlds detonating.

You kiss him once.

You kiss him and the stars align and the world stops spinning and for a single second everything makes sense. But then that moment's gone and you're left alone and terrified of how much you want him...how much you need him when you'd promised you'd never let yourself need anyone like that again.

You kiss him once.

But all you taste is ash.

You don't talk about the kiss which is to be expected. You don't really talk about much of anything, actually. By now you're both well aware of how much better trained you are in reading punches than you are with words.

You fall back into your routine of shouting, bickering, and slapping each other around. Everything should feel like it's normal but it's not. There's something softer in your behavior, an underlying affection in your insults and a spark of lust with each skin-to-skin contact of your hits.

There's a burning that's trying to consume you from the inside out.

Something has been changing for a while now, but it's only after you accidentally put your cards on the table that you really come to terms with how you feel and what that means for your future and the inevitable downfall that will occur if you continue to let your guard down for him.

Natsu doesn't act any differently towards you, but his eyes are impossibly honest and his emotions are open on his face and if you acknowledge this new development between you you'll be stepping into a sea of merciless flames .

He's getting too close and you start to panic as you lose your footing. Your friendship, your...whatever this is...grows stronger and more solid with each passing day and with it you become unstable and anxious. You need to pull away because he's so close, too close, and good things never come from getting attached.

So you step back, one foot at a time and slowly start to pull away. He never comments on it, something that's practically unheard of for him, but the disappointment in his eyes when he looks at you tells you he knows exactly what you're doing.

You feel bad for hurting him, so you channel that guilt into ignoring the way he tugs at your heart strings and trying to bring things back to when normal meant rivalry and begrudging mutual respect and anything more was out of the question.

Everything should feel the same.

But nothing does.

Lucy is beautiful and brilliant. Her eyes are warm and her smile is fierce but sweet and you can't help but love her from the first moment Natsu brings her to the guild. She's a little bit crazy, even though she insists it's the rest of you who lack sanity, but you figure that just makes her all the more perfect for Fairy Tail.

And luckily for you, she is also a distraction for Natsu. She keeps him busy, keeps his eyes off of your mutating relationship, and you've never been so thankful for her presence or his short-attention span.

So she and Natsu do their thing and Loke, Cana, and you do yours. You and Natsu still have shouting matches and knock each other around but that's where it ends and that's what you want because distance is safe and being away from each other might not help take your mind off of him, but it certainly keeps you from doing something stupid like asking about his day or kissing him or telling him how much he means to you.

Y'know, stuff that would imply that you give a shit.

Everything's going fine until Erza comes marching into the guild one day and demands you and flame brain join her on a mission to take down Eisenwald and your stay-away-from-Natsu plan mocks you as it goes swirling down the drain.

It's been a while since you've been on a job together.

"There's a reason for that," you tell Erza crossly, but she shrugs off your pleas in favor of glaring at you until you abandon your griping. The requip mage is something like the older sister you never had, but Erza is still Erza and going against her is asking for a world of pain.

The whole situation is a clusterfuck.

These Eisenwald punks are vicious. Lucy's initial anxiety is through the roof. Erza's as bossy as ever. And of course she sends you and that fire bastard off on a wild goose chase together to find Erigor, Eisenwald's number one fucker.

The two of you spend the time during your man-hunt arguing, as is tradition. But when you finally get to split up, the seriousness of the situation hits you full force. Erigor is an assassin mage hell bent on wiping out an entire town and lullaby is forbidden, dark, death magic. This is dangerous, even for both of you.

Natsu, pompous as always, assures you that he'll burn the crap outta the dude when he finds him. You can't help but believe him. Natsu is probably the most destructive thing you've ever seen (not that you or Erza really have room to talk), but Deliora was also a demon of dark magic and Ur was the most powerful mage you've ever met and that still didn't end well for anyone.

"Don't die," you mumble under your breath, because really, you can't lose anyone else and whether you want to admit it or not, you can't imagine a life without your rival.

You take off before he has a chance to take that in.

If he heard you, which he probably did given his Dragon Slayer senses, he doesn't bring it up again even long after the battle is over and you're heading back to Magnolia.

You can't help but smile at the dork as he groans at even the idea of having to take another vehicle home. The relief in your chest that he's still with you is palpable so you'll allow yourself this one moment to bask in the warmth his presence offers.

You wonder when Natsu's fire started feeling more like sunshine and less like the explosions of the demon that obliterated your hometown.

It's on Galuna Island that everything comes to a head.

Getting slapped in the face with your twisted history isn't exactly what you signed up for when you volunteered to drag flame brain and his sidekicks' sorry asses back to Fairy Tail.

But here you are on a cursed island and suddenly there's Lyon and Deliora and Ur's frigid remains. Suddenly the smothering guilt in the dark, depths of your heart is made tangible, laid out in all its frozen horror for everyone to see.

And suddenly your walls of ice and stability don't feel so safe anymore.

When it's all said and done your relief still doesn't outweigh your distress and you have to wander off into the night to get your head on straight before facing anyone again.

Natsu finds you in the midst of the village party.

"Hey droopy eyes. What're you doing out here by yourself?"

"Nothing."

He sits down next to you in the grass close enough that your arms touch and states bluntly, "This must've been hell for you." You flinch and he sighs, "Sorry...do you want to talk about it?" His voice is quiet, the concern is sincere, and it's kind in a way you are sure you don't deserve.

"No."

"Gray-"

"Natsu, I said I don't want to talk about it! Just leave me alone."

"Dammit, Gray!" He roars, grabbing your shoulders roughly and forcing you to face him, "Fuck it, I don't care what you want. You just tried to kill yourself right in front of me! Twice!" he breaks off to take a shaky breath and you try to ignore the way his eyes get glassy and his hands tremble, "we need to talk about it."

"It's not like...I wasn't trying to..." you offer weakly but he shoots you a look that says he knows your lies are half-assed and sloppy and damn, sometimes you forget that he can be freakishly perceptive when he wants to be, when it counts.

When it comes to you

"I just...I don't know," you mumble because what do you say to your best friend when you blatantly tried to off yourself while he watched? Self-sacrifice is still a form of suicide and you'd be lying if you said saving their lives was your only objective, that there wasn't a part of you, no matter how small, that was ready to end it all if it meant ending the pain.

"Gray, you're my best friend. I.." Natsu stutters off, huffs in irritation and tries again, "Look, I know it scares you to let someone in..."

It does scare you. It scares you that after all this time you were afraid of fire tearing down your walls, but you almost let your very own ice and self-imposed isolation do you in.

"...but you don't have to do this alone, y'know?"

Your iceberg barricade is already full of holes: a scratch here from Lyon's harsh words, a crevice there from Deliora, another dent from watching Ur's ice melt into the ocean. There are cracks from your Fairy Tail family who gently (and often not-so-gently) nudge you into sharing your life with them and a gaping hole from every time Natsu's kicked and clawed and burst past your defenses. It's been made brittle, and it would be so easy to knock it down.

"Just-just stop fighting me for once in your goddamn life and let me help you," he growls before grabbing the back of your neck and smashing your lips together.

And that's what finally breaks you.

Finally, after all this time, you let your guard down. You finally give in to his fire and let it wrap around you like a blanket. While he pushes your head into the crook of his neck and tighten his arms around you, you let your tears fall, whisper secrets into his skin; all your burdens, all your guilt, all your fears exposed.

"You're such an idiot," he chides fondly while tangling a hand in your hair and pressing a smile to your forehead.

You've spent your whole life behind a blizzard blockade. You were solid, frozen, a flurry of protection from the unforgiving world.

And that stupid, fire-breathing moron came along and melted all your ice sheets into puddles.

But it doesn't hurt like you thought it would. It doesn't incinerate your insides or singe your self-control. Your sanctuary of frost doesn't burst into flame or shatter into jagged shards. These flames feel like comfort. This heat isn't a hellfire that detonates. It's glowing embers that coax your barriers into mist, gentle in a way you didn't even know Natsu was capable of.

When you exhaust your words and run out of tears, you lean heavily against him while he whispers, "I'm still here, ice block. I promise I'm not going anywhere," into your hair.

The pain is still there, the self-loathing still existent. Your eyes are wet and achey, your throat is hoarse, and you still feel like a mess, but there's a weight that's been lifted from your chest, a light at the end of what used to seem like a never ending tunnel. There's an embrace that's warm and secure, hands sure and steady and strong enough to help hold you up when you were sure all you could do was fall.

And just like that, you wonder how you could ever be afraid of something so brilliant.

Natsu's fire feels like the way your face flushes when he smacks an obscenely noisy kiss on your cheek in the middle of the guild hall just because the bastard knows it makes you squirm. It's like the adrenaline rush from a good fight, the heat from the fireplace Ur would light on especially cold nights, and the warmth that coils low in your belly when your bodies are pressed flush against each other. And when he grins and presses his lips to yours, he burns through your veins like lava, warms you all the way to your toes like a cup of your mother's steaming hot chocolate, and tastes like the residual tang in the air after a fireworks show.

Natsu is fire and heat, a raging inferno to light your darkest moments and set your coldest days ablaze. It doesn't scare you, doesn't make you quake with fear.

It feels like safety. It feels like home.

You love your ice and your power. You're proud of it. You would never change the chill of magic thrumming under your skin.

But as you grin at Natsu laying by your side, sleeping soundly and probably drooling all over your pillow, you think, 'Sometimes it's okay to burn a little, too.'