Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.

Personal Monster.

If you ask her now she will swear she didn't expect it at all and entered without noticing a thing. She had just opened her eyes minutes before entering the room and continued being half asleep at the moment so she didn't even look around her before closing the door and discovering she was trapped there with the animal. No, the monster. She couldn't even scream when she saw it moving from the corner of her eye and, uninterestedly, blocking her way out. Her whole body felt fear and disgust as her head snapped on it's direction to keep it under close watch. She wouldn't be able to get near. She knew herself; those creatures had a paralysing effect on her body and mind, leaving her helpless and unable to attack. And her screams... they would sometimes, luckily, come out and let somebody hear her and come in her rescue... but also, sometimes they just wouldn't make it past her mouth and she would have to deal with the situation alone. And for her, the best choice was only one:

Escape.

That night, her voice didn't come out when she thought 'scream' . Her mouth didn't even open but she continued observing the creature with eyes like plates as she surreptitiously pulled her underwear back on. Her throat closed more and more as it stayed still but, surely enough, noticing her presence and torturing her mentally by not moving out of the door.

She winced and wrinkled her nose and stood up slowly, trying not to catch it's attetion. Until there everything was going quite fine, but when she took her first step...

It moved. More like ran or dashed and it just HAD to be in her direction. Her voice tripped to get out in loud and hysterical screams as she tried to avoid her personal monster by stomping and jumping around as well as climbing on things to be on a higher height level and continuing to scream, and she didn't hesitate to open the door and run out when she realised it had moved out of her escape way.

But when she came out of that room, having achieved scaping one monster, she bumped against a firm chest and two hands closed over her shoulders as she entered another monster's arms.

But this monster, at least, she knew better. The abnormal-haired-coloured-guy kind of monster searched her eyes and asked her what was wrong as she released herself from his grasp and rapidly closed the door of the room she had scaped as she panted.

She didn't give much importance to the voice in her head that was already irritated and wondering what the hell was the guy doing there and why did he think he was alowed to enter her house any time he felt like it. No, he wasn't allowed to do that and would never be, not in a whole million years. And she didn't count the fact that she was wearing panties and a thin sleeveless shirt as something important either.

Of course it's strange for Lucy to have this kind of thoughts travelling inside her mind, but her priorities weren't in their normal order at the moment as she registered that, even though he wasn't supposed to be there, that meant there was somebody else in her house and a monster could surely defeat –no, kill- another monster.

She threw herself at the guy with such force it would have made anyone fall back, but not the fire eating salamander she called her best friend. She didn't care about his obvious surprised and worried look nor (again) about her white panties being completely visible. Even if she actually were to care, the guy was as ablivious as a brick wall so there was (probably) nothing to worry about.

Her eyes were round and wide as well as a bit watery as she BEGGED for the guy's help, another thing the guy itself noticed out of her normal character. And she was asking him to kill the monster –please, please, I beg you- and as he turned serious to open the door and enter with one of his fists already on fire, she pushed his arm back and ran to her room, coming back in a matter of seconds and giving him a shoe.

The guy looked at her questioningly but she put her hands together, pleading, so he became serious again and opened the door. The thing is there was nothing strange in there and specially no big and disgusting monster to fight.

He changed his battle posture to a relaxed one and scratched his head. Maybe it had already gone away, he tried explaining to the celestial mage but she franticly shook her head and said it was there and that he had to kill it and AAAAAH!

The guy almost fell this time as the girl screamed right next to his ear and tagged to his clothes strongly on his back and shoulder.

'There it is!' she screamed once again and the boy followed her pointing finger right to the bathroom's wall to see a small, black, round thing that moved around quickly.

And he immediately bursted out laughing and scrambled on her floor clutching his stomach.

Natsu woke up as if it were morning, opening his eyes slowly but still feeling sleepy. He groaned as he turned to glance at the clock, discovering, as he had expected, that it was nearly 3 a.m. in the morning. He rubbed his eyes, holding in a louder groan that tried to escape his lips, in a sympathetic intent to not wake Happy up too; having woke up unexpectedly in the middle of the night and being grouchy about it didn't give him the right to wake his friend up too.

He continued laying down in his bed for some minutes and then slowly sat up on the edge of it and walked drowsily to the kitchen. On the way, he passed by his living room table and identified a recently common light turning on and off in equal intervals of time. Thinking about who might be trying to find him, he uninterestedly thought it made sense he had just dreamed of that incident few months ago that had brought him to take that comunication lacrima he never used out of his dusty closet and put it on that table. He shrugged to himself as the light continued flickering again and again and he searched his fridge for something to eat, not finding a thing and, frowning, making his way back to the living room.

The light from the lacrima iluminated the place whenever it lit up and, when the light died, the place turned pitch black but he would continue on to the table out of having memorised the place Lucy called a mess when it was actually all organised in a way only he could understand.

The light swiched on again and he sat down in front of the round crystal ball. He touched it with one hand gently, as if he was patting a pet, and the light turned on again and a familiar and a bit too high female voice reached his ears with a kind of sound distortion he just couldn't bear.

"At last! Why didn't you answer faster?" the female voice accused him as if he was neglecting his chores or something.

"Maybe because it's usual for people to be asleep at 3 a.m. in the morning," he replied annoyed as he turned his head to look around the now iluminated room to see if he had already finished that pizza that was supposed to be near the chair on the corner. He frowned as he saw the empty box from afar.

"Come help me right now, Natsu!" the girl shouted from the other side of the lacrima and he seemed to hear an eco somewhere, probably coming from Lucy herself in her house shouting and freaking out.

"But, Luce, it's so late and so cold outside, I don't feel like going all the way out to your house right now," the dragon slayer replied in a whimper but his face showed he was just uninterested in the whole conversation as he poked the table's side, staring distractedly at how it burned under his touch with a hissing sound.

"You are never cold," Lucy protested in monotone.

"Sometimes I am, Lucy," he responded.

Silence filled the room just like he expected it to be and he rested his left elbow on the table, turning his ear to the communication lacrima on it.

"Please..." a whisper reached him and he started smiling a bit, "just come and kill that thing... I beg you," Lucy said embarrased and defeated and an evil smirk formed on Natsu's face that Lucy would never know about.

"Only if I can sleep in your bed after I do," the usually kind dragon slayer said as the smirk became wider and darker.

"Do..." Lucy started and Natsu could almost hear her tremble, "do whatever you want, but come and kill that thing!" she shouted finally and the lacrima turned off.

With the moon's soft light entering through the window, a guy's figure in front of the table and the lacrima looked pitch dark and the only thing that could be seen of him clearly in the darkness were his spiky teeth in a –half grin, half smirk- smile.

The blond heard a tap on the window as she stared intently at the bathroom's door and waited for her best friend to get his sorry ass to her. She trembled slightly and non-stop and narrowed her eyes whenever she thought of that... 'thing' moving around her bathroom's precious things. When the dragon slayer came to her, he extended his arm to her and opened his hand pulling a perfect poker face and not letting his inminent laughter slip out.

Lucy handed him a shoe without saying a word and Natsu nonchalantly took it.

He opened the bathroom door and peered backwards to look at the trembling Lucy and he couldn't help but smirk.

"My, my, everytime I see it, it's just as hilarious," he said playing with the door; open, close, open, close and Lucy trembled harder and glared at him. "I mean it! I would have never guessed that Lucy Heartfillia turns into a defenseless, whimpy girl when a COCKROACH is seen," he smirked and laughed as the embarrassed and still scared girl slapped him on the leg from her sat position and shouted him a "just kill it already". He laughed as he entered and started looking around for the stupid insect that caused his best friend to cower in fear and disgust and when he found it, he immediately crushed it after waving 'good bye' with one hand.

The insect's insides decorating the wall looked just fine for him but he knew the blonde wouldn't be able to go in there if he didn't clean that up and flushed the corpse down the toilet, so he did as he had done six times before already.

Yes, finally we reach the point where I'm able to explain. The thing is, after the first incident Natsu witnessed of Lucy's battle (utterly lost) against a cockroach, she had taken him as her best choice for help whenever she encountered one again and so had taken his communication lacrima out of the closet for him and taught him how to use it. He was quite used to it now, even enough to tease Lucy about her fear or... well, pull some dark smirks when alone and get something he could enjoy out of all this, like, for example, sleeping in her compy bed.

When Natsu came out he threw the shoe pretty near her (on purpoise) and laughed inwardly at her flinch in response as he made his way to the kitchen and opened her fridge's door. Hell, yeah. There was always food in Lucy's fridge, and quite good one while we are at it.

He took out some pizza leftovers feeling like eating that same food he hadn't found in his house. Normally, for some reason, everything he wanted or liked could be found in Lucy's house.

Engulfing the now hot pizza product to his hot touch, he run over to Lucy's bathroom and washed his hands as he chewed. Lucy was a complete order-and-clean-freak and he was gonna infiltrate her bed so why ask for more reasons for her to try and kick him out?

He distractedly entered her room and saw her covered whole by her blankets, making him snort and grin.

"Remember the deal, don't try to kick me out and don't pull any weird jokes on me," the fire eater warned as he put his body under those same covers as if he was explaining step by step that he was entering her bed and nothing was wrong with that.

A female growl emerged from the blonde. "Just sleep already," she said finally as she made herself comfortable on her side.

"Ye~~~s," Natsu responded and closed his eyes.

1... 2... 3...

He patiently counted the minutes with such precision it seemed like he was looking at a clock in the back of his mind. He let pass a certain amount of time; 7,5 minutes, that interval he always left before starting to snore softly when he was with Lucy and then continued counting.

Exactly five minutes later, he rolled to her side and stretched his arms bringing the delicious smelling girl to press against his body in a light hug, tight enough to not let her escape.

He peaked with one eye, knowing she wouldn't be able to see him and smiled.

He was quite used to coming to her house to kill cockroachs in the middle of the night now, even enough to tease Lucy about her fear or... well, pull some dark smirks when alone and get something he could enjoy out of all this, like, for example, a certain really cute and lovable blonde stellar spirit mage he called his best friend... for now.

Certainly, Lucy had escaped one monster to enter another monster's arms.

Haha, I wish you liked it as much as I liked writing it :D

Ambitious Rookie.