Disclaimer::I don't Own Fairy Tail::

So this story is taking place a little after the Edolas ark, but before the S-class exams. I'm not sure how long I'm going to make it yet, because it started off as a crazy dream I had... . obsession is an understatement when it comes to how much I love Natsu. Oh course this is an expansion of the original, dream, and I've changed some of the details so that it moves slower. hee hee I'm also working on my ability to write comedy so PLEASE tell me if it's working or if I'm completely hopeless.

Fun fun fun!


Natsu relaxed, staring up at his house with a sense of accomplishment. This had been a good month, not only had they worked enough to get the money to fix up this broken down shack, but he was also able to add a full second floor. (which was amazing in itself due to the trees that had been growing through the floor and out of the roof before his renovations had started) Natsu was rather proud of his handy work, he was finally acting like he cared about what his house looked like, a sign that he was finally becoming an adult. Slowly he made his way through the front door, crossing the tidy living room and placed himself unceremoniously on the couch, folding his arms behind his head. With a sly grin set across his face, Natsu patted the of his waist coat, feeling the small lump where his trophy lay.

Happy had flown ahead and was already napping in his favorite beat up old chair, completely tired out from the 'mission' he and Natsu had just preformed. Natsu was pleased with the out come of his latest exploit, even though he had been cutting it closer than he ever had before. It wasn't the first time they had made this journey, and they both knew it wouldn't be the last. An evil grin crept it's was across his features as he continued to pat the trophy in his waist band.

Satisfied with the way his day had gone, Natsu kicked off his sandals and closed his eyes. Playing Ninja could be exhausting sometimes, especially when you don't know how long you have until the target was expected back. His nose was the best defense that he possessed, and he was rather glad for it in moments like those. He could smell friends and foes alike making it easy for him to tell where people were in relation to his on position, but the more familiar he was with a person's scent the easier it was to pick them out. With certain people like Erza and Gray it was so easy that he could have picked them out in a field full of hay stacks from at least a mile away. With others like Lucy, Lissanna and Happy with whom he spent a lot of time in close quarters, he could probably find them in the center of a busy town even after just getting off the train.

Natsu's ears perked up, listening intently for what he knew was coming, he felt slightly anxious about his possible impending doom. He could already smell her coming up the pathway, either she was running, or the wind had picked up because his nose was assaulted by the sweetness of her honey and lavender cleansers which mixed so nicely with her natural light musky perfume.

Natsu closed his eyes counting to himself, as her foot steps became louder. He was slightly amused that she even knew where to find him, he had never brought her here before. Maybe she had asked for directions at the guild, which would make plenty of sense. She was always the smart one who would come up with the plans before heading off to do something dangerous or risky, and he was the one who often wound up ignoring it all any way just barging in like he owned the place.

'Five'

'Four'

'Three'

'Two'

"NATSU!" 'Right on time', the door bust open revealing a slightly disheveled looking Lucy who was more than slightly pink in the face. Natsu masked a laugh with a deep cough as he watched her stalk towards him, his skin prickled with a small charge of fear at the look of pure anger in her eyes. 'Crap' He battled back a shiver and trying to come up with the most natural way he could to greet his extremely upset blonde friend.

"Oh, hey Lucy, I didn't know you would be dropping by. How'd your last mission go? " Secretly he enjoyed baiting her with these types of situations, and he found himself on the instigating side more often than not. Natsu just couldn't get enough of the slightly panicked expressions she made when he did something to embarrass her or the pure thrill of fear he felt when he crossed the line just a little to far causing her to strike out with her fists or feet. It had recently occurred to the dragon slayer that he was a bit self destructive when it came to females, but he enjoyed it far to much to care. With the exception of Erza of course, her rage was just painful no matter how she dished it out, there was nothing fun or thrilling about it.

"I'm going to get straight to the point. Some one has been stealing my personal things and I want them back." Lucy crossed her arms over her chest and tapped the toe of her heeled boot impatiently, completely ignoring his casual question, as she waited for his reply.

"That's terrible, we should find who ever did it and smack them around till they tell us where your stuff is!" Natsu jumped off the couch straight into one of his fighting stances. Lucy lifted an eyebrow as she watched him get all excited. "I bet it was Gray, the Ice Princess has absolutely no manners!" Natsu made his way across the room jumping around, glad for any excuse to punch Gray in the face.

"He is on a mission with Juvia, he left the same day as Lissanna and I so it couldn't have been him." Lucy said in a slightly strained voice. Natsu really didn't pay any attention to his surrounding, even when it came to the person he fought with almost EVERY day.

"Oh, well maybe if you tell me what they took we could figure it out quicker, OR we could just go down to the guild and just punch people till some one fesses up." Natsu's eyes sparked at the thought. Even Erza wouldn't scold him if his reasoning was to help Lucy, he was being righteous, and therefore would hopefully be spared punishment by the scary red head.

"Personal things, and I don't want to hurt anyone, I just want my things back." Lucy's cheeks flared a bright red as she answered. Natsu wasn't listening closely enough to realize that she suspected him to be the culprit. He continued to spout off reasons why they should head down to the guild, sure that he could wear her down eventually, he always did.

With all the excessive celebrating and jumping around trying to convince Lucy to head out for the guild, he failed to notice a small piece of frilly fabric falling out of his waist coat. Lucy's cheeks flamed as bright red as Erza's hair when she watched it hit the ground.

"Natsu..." Lucy's voice was dangerously low her eye shadowed under her long blonde bangs. Natsu stopped in his tracks when he finally noticed what she was looking at. He gulped rather audibly watching Lucy's shoulders tense in her growing anger. "Why do you have something like THAT on your person?" Her tone made him flinch as he scrambled to think of a good excuse for having something so feminine and, well embarrassing stashed with him.

"Um, this, um oh... well," Natsu quickly leaned down and grabbed his trophy placing it back into his waist coat with a nervous smile. "Gotta go!" Natsu let out in a squeak and hi-tailed it for the newly renovated second floor.

"NATSU! Come back here! You didn't answer my question!" Lucy was right behind ready to serve him a sound lashing for avoiding the question. She was oblivious to everything around her, especially the tightly wound spiral stair case that she was climbing. When she finally caught up to him, her mouth fell open in surprise at the sight before her. "Natsu what is all this?"

Natsu had ducked into a room that was dressed up like a little girl's fantasy with a tall guilded mirror that stood on the wall next to a beautiful mahogany wardrobe that was tall enough to graze the ceiling, a four poster bed that looked to be twice the size of her own, soft sheer pink fabric hung from the corners, gliding gracefully to the ground. There was even a fully stocked desk right in front of the window letting the natural light of the mid-afternoon sun cast the perfect lighting for painting. She looked around in complete awe of what she was seeing, her mouth hanging open as she observed the details of the room.

"You ruined the surprise." Natsu pouted, crossing his arms over his chest like a small child who had been deprived of a fun game.

"Aye. No one was supposed to see it till we had everything here!" Happy, who had seemingly woken from his cat nap, whined as he floated past Lucy to curl up on the bed.

"But what IS this?" Any anger she had felt moments ago was replaced with sheer curiosity, the issue of missing items completely wiped from her mind.

Natsu rubbed the back of his neck nervously looking over at Happy for moral support. Lucy watched the two share an slightly nervous laugh as they made a plan. The cat smiled brightly and nodded his head encouragingly, silently telling Natsu to come clean.

"Happy and I wanted to make the place feel more, um, homey I guess." Natsu shrugged and threw himself on the large bed. It was then that it struck her, Lucy realized that she was on the second floor which hadn't been there when she broke in and cleaned the place. When had they done all this, and why was everything so girly? She knew they liked to break into her place, but she never expected them to style there own place so close to hers. Lucy found herself unable to hold back her laughter.

"And you decided that this was homey?" Lucy sputtered the words through her laughter, unaware of how Natsu's smile had faltered. Happy looked worried as he glanced back and fourth between them. Something was lost between the words that had been spoken and the cat could tell that this wasn't going to go the way they had originally planned.

"It's not for ME." Natsu said in a tone that gave off how she had injured his pride. "Do you really think I like having all this girly frilly stuff around me?" Natsu motioned to the bed, the curtains and the plush rug in the center of the room. Lucy's laughter calmed as she took in what he was trying to say. There was a sharp pain in her chest that she was unable to identify.

"Do you mean you did this for someone?" Lucy bit her bottom lip, Natsu was kind and brave so it would be a surprise if some one had actually fallen for him, but she had never once seen him make a REAL advance on a member of the opposite sex, not since they had known each other at least. Was he seeing someone in secret, and she had just stumbled into their private space? The very idea of such a thing sent a shiver of disgust down her spin. No, she couldn't believe that, Natsu was ALWAYS at her house, well except when they were out on missions, or out getting into other trouble. He didn't have the time to find some sort of secret lover, especially with all the solo missions he had been going on recently. He never kept secrets, especially not from her, they shared everything with each other no matter how childish or embarrassing it might be. Now that she really thought about it though, she hadn't seen him in her apartment for the better part of the past month, and she was often out on solo missions of her own. She hadn't taken a mission with her partner that whole time, so Lucy had even gone on a few with Lissanna or Wendy and even one with Cana. Suddenly the idea that Natsu was hiding something didn't seem so far fetched.

"Duh, you really think I'd waste my time and money building a whole floor like this to use it myself." Natsu scowled at how utterly ridiculous the idea was.

"Oh, um, well that's nice. Ah, I should be going now." Lucy said with a slightly vacant look in her eyes before she turned around, heading for the door faster than she wanted to allow herself. Natsu was her best friend, how could he hide something like this from her? Did this mean that they would be breaking off their partnership soon? The idea of losing the relationship she had with Natsu was more painful than she had ever thought something like this could possibly be. He was her first real friend, and even though he irritated her to no end, she really did want him in her life. He was the source of everything that had made her happy since he had dragged her off to join the most amazing guild in Fiore. Her heart pounded angrily against her chest as she made her way down the stairs and over to the front door.

"Where are you going?" Lucy was stopped abruptly as a hot hand wrapped around her wrist.

"I, uh, told Levy I would meet her when I got back from my mission, she needed some help with something. She will be waiting for me, and I don't want to make her sit at the guild waiting for to much longer. Lissanna will have already gotten there, and Levy will be worried." Lucy refused to look back at her friend, embarrassed in herself for lying. She wanted to be happy for him, even if it meant she would get less of his time from now on, but she was finding it hard to wrap her mind around the current situation. There were other people who she was friends with, this shouldn't be such a big deal. People fall in love all the time, Cana went through boy friends like candy, so why couldn't Natsu have found someone for himself?

Unwillingly Natsu let go of her wrist.

"Will you come back when you're done?" He asked sheepishly, Lucy stole a glace out of the corner of her eye. "I still have stuff I wanted to show you." He sent her a wide child like grin that rocked her to her core. She could never deny his request when he gave her that face.

"Sure, I guess." Lucy replied in a small voice before she ran towards the door. She slammed it shut breathing heavily as she made her way down the pathway not looking where she was going as she went. She didn't realize that her eyes had filled with tears as she ran as fast as her legs could take her. She stumbled and fell several times, scraping the palms of her hands and her knees, but she got right back up and kept moving forward. She came to an abrupt stop just before the gates to the Guild. Noticing that her face was drenched Lucy took a deep breath and wiped at her tears furiously before entering. She looked around until she spotted the one person who could make sense of this for her.

Levy knew something was wrong within seconds, when Lucy slide into a seat at her table quickly covering her head with her arms. Levy wasn't the only one to notice the young blonde's actions. The lively Lucy always greeted her guild mates with a smile upon returning from a mission, it was expected just as much as Natsu nearly breaking the front door was. Soon a small group had settled around the table, consisting of Erza, Wendy, Cana, Lissanna, and Mira-jane.

"Lu-chan? How was the mission?" Levy put her book down and tried to get a look at her friend's face. Lucy didn't answer, her shoulders bouncing slightly as she sniffled soft enough that the others wouldn't hear.

"Lucy-san what's wrong? Are you feeling sick?" Wendy who was a dragon slayer, despite her young age, was aware that Lucy's breathing was uneven and rasping. She reached over and placed a hand on the older girl's forehead then pulled it back with a worried expression. The younger girl could smell Lucy's salty tears as well as the distinct and strong scent of Natsu all over her. "Or did you get into a fight with Natsu-san?" Lucy's head snapped up looking at her young friend with pleading eyes filled with tears, silently begging Wendy not to say any more.

"Why do you say that Wendy?" Lissanna asked, eyes sparkling with curiosity. Lucy and Natsu had rarely ever fought about anything serious, so the idea of them getting into something that looked serious enough that Lucy wasn't even talking was tickling her more mischievous side.

"Yes why?" The others turned to see that Erza had a delicate brow raised in the sky maiden's direction. Wendy sent an apologetic glace in Lucy's direction, even she wasn't stupid enough to stay quiet when Erza asked a question.

"She smell's like him, and she is crying, so I guessed they just fought." Wendy looked down at her hands, slightly embarrassed for revealing a friends personal problems in such an open and embarrassing setting.

"How can you tell, Natsu is always around, so wouldn't Lucy always smell like him?" Cana asked between sips of her mug of ale.

"Not recently..." Wendy saw Lucy ball her hands into fists as her friend spoke. "It's been a month since she smelled like him. So by how potent his scent is, I can tell that he has been around her VERY recently." Mira placed a hand on the nervous looking Wendy's head, giving her a grateful smile.

"So was it a fight? Did he hurt you?" Erza crossed her arms over her chest looking at the scratches that lined Lucy's palms, elbow and chin. "If he made you cry than I will punish him severely." Erza glared at Lucy waiting for a response that would satisfy her.

Lucy decided that maybe she should talk this out before she started to jump to conclusions, and who better to get information from than this group, they knew everything that happened under the guild roof. Lucy took a deep breath before she felt she could speak without crying.

"Not really a fight, it was just sort of an awkward situation." Lucy felt her voice was still to weak for her own tastes. Erza didn't seem to like this reply much so Lucy continued. "I was intending on finding some 'missing' items that I can't seem to find any where in my apartment. And since Natsu is the person who breaks in the most I was going to find out if he knew anything about it." The women nodded encouragingly so that Lucy would continue. "He was going on and on about coming here to find the culprit who had stolen my valuables, and something kind of fell out of his waist coat. I tired to ask him about it, but he took off and the next thing I know I'm standing in a room that is dolled up in pink. I just don't know what to make of it all." The others looked at Lucy like she had grown a second head right in front of their eyes.

"Natsu's house is one room." Lisanna said flatly, her eyebrows knitted together, trying to remember how trashed the place had looked the last time she had brought him dinner.

"It seems he added to it recently. He and Happy said I had spoiled a surprise, so I guess they hadn't told anyone about it." Lucy answered putting her head back down on the table.

"Then what happened?" Cana asked poking Lucy in the side. "That can't be all of it."

"I made fun of him for the way it looked. He said it wasn't his, that it was meant for someone." Lucy took another deep breath, and noticed the wide eyes of the other women. Natsu, did something, well, very unexpected it seemed, and she wasn't the only one having a hard time accepting the possibility. At least she was pretty sure the female in question wasn't one of these girls, and if she was, than Lucy would have been impressed by her acting skills.

"You don't mean?" Mira had her hand over her mouth in utter shock. "Could he really?" She suddenly seemed to brighten up at the thought of Natsu finding a nice girl to bring home.

"Well what else, don't hold out on us!" Levy demanded.

"I was slightly in shock, from him saying that he hadn't built to for his use alone, so I told him I had to leave." Lucy said sadly. " He stopped me just before I got to the front door, though. He wanted to know where I was going, so I lied and said that Levy was waiting for me, it just felt wrong being there, thinking things like that. I mean this is Natsu. And the whole place felt weird because it was CLEAN. Natsu never leaves anything that clean." Lucy heaved another sigh.

"What did he say to that?" Mira questioned leaning forward propping her chin against her hands. Her eyes sparkled like she was reading the final chapter in a particularly good romance novel, where the heroine was about to seal her fate with a sweet kiss, riding off into the sunset with her lover. It was the same expression she wore when she was in the middle of a match making fog of bliss.

"He asked if I was going to come back later."

"AND?" they all shouted.

"I told him I would." Lucy was suddenly lost as the other girls looked back and forth between each other, seemingly having a silent conference amongst themselves. "What's gotten into you all?" Lucy asked knitting her brow together in frustration.

"Lucy what exactly has gone missing from your personal items?" Erza asked with a small smile.

Lucy's cheeks lit with a deep blush that spread across to the tips of her ears.

"Well, um, personal things." Lucy avoided eye contact.

"I see." Erza snickered quietly. Mira's eyes sparkled as she whispered in her sister's ear.

"Well I think I'll get you something to settle your nerves before you head back." Mira got up and walked over to the bar.

"Lu-chan I think you should just ask him straight out. You know Natsu isn't good at hiding things." Levy tilted her head to the side with a mischievous smile.

"I agree, if you're worried, you should just say so. Natsu isn't always good at talking about things like this so you should make the move to start the conversation." Lissanna agreed.

"While you do that, I'll ask around to see if anyone knows about your missing stuff." Wendy chimed happily, completely unaware of exactly what she was supposed to be asking for.

"Thanks guys, I feel a little better now." Lucy watched Mira walk back with a mug filled with something dark and strong looking. "Uh, Mira what is that?" She asked nervously.

"It's a special carbonated drink that will help settle your nerves a little." Mira smiled brightly placing the mug down. "It tastes good I promise." Lucy looked at the glass as though she were afraid it might bite her.

"Lu-chan it's not poisoned, Mira would never do something like that to you." Levy laughed pushing the mug closer to her friend. They watched Lucy drink it down hesitantly, her shoulders slowly began to relax and her features loosened.

"Isn't that better?" Mira asked, taking the glass, Lucy nodded thankful to have such good friends.

"Lucy, so long as you remain calm I'm sure there will be a rational explanation for everything that is going on." Erza patted the younger girl on the shoulder before leaving the table.

"Erza is right. Have faith in your partner. I'm sure he wouldn't hide something from you unless there was a REALLY good reason." Cana smirked punching Lucy in the shoulder lightly. Lucy laid her head down on the table with a sigh, she was still trying to sort out why she had suddenly felt the need to flee. She had never run from any man before, so why was she feeling so small and insecure right now? Lucy closed her eyes letting the drink Mira gave her work it magic to settle her fears.

'Natsu wouldn't leave me, he is my best friend, he just can't up and leave me.'

"LUUUCCCYYY!" A ball of blue fur came flying through the door crashing into the blonde at full speed. "COME QUICK!"


... hope you guys are enjoying it! I'm not sure how far I'm going to take this, but I know that I'm enjoying writing it more than my previous series. PLEASE tell me if it's any good!