Author's Note: I have created this RoWen fic as a request by a friend of mine (she knows who she is) because of her complaint about the shortage of stories for this particular couple. The fandom, though, is rather large, and personally I believe that the only reason RoWen fics are hard to come by is because of the lack of sexual tension between the two for obvious reasons. Luckily, I'm practiced in fluff and suck at smut, so maybe there will be more RoWen from me in the future. For now, it's a relatively new experience and I hope I've done the pairing justice. Let me know? :)

Worth It
by: SmurfLuvsCookies

It isn't until three days after she arrives that Romeo notices the dejected girl in the darkest corner of the guild. He frowns because he has never seen her before now, and this fact bothers him. "Dad," he says, tugging on Macao's sleeve, "who is that girl over there?"

He points to her and his father follows the path of the finger. "That's Wendy Marvell, the new mage that Natsu and them brought over from their last mission. Apparently her guild wasn't an actual guild or something like that. Say, Romeo, she's really nice and she's around your age. You should go talk to her."

Romeo makes a face.

Macao and Wakaba laugh. They can hardly remember the days when the prospect of talking to a pretty girl was unpleasant. It seems like now they can't get enough pretty girls to talk to them. "You know," says Wakaba around his perpetual pipe, "I hear she's a Dragonslayer."

"Yeah that's right. A Sky Dragonslayer. She's got a little cat like Happy and everything."

Romeo is baffled by this news. He compares the quiet girl in the corner with the only other Dragonslayers he knows, and the contrast is so profound that he accuses Macao and Wakaba of lying. Natsu and Gajeel are two entities of raw destructive power, built of muscle and fire and steel, pumped with testosterone and male coarseness. This dainty creature in the corner is all soft and rounded edges, gentle shades of pale blue and white, radiating girlish femininity. She probably isn't capable of squashing a spider, much less demolishing entire cities.

"Believe it, kiddo," Cana promotes, having eavesdropped on the conversation. "I heard it with my own ears. She's a bona fide Dragonslayer. Was even raised by a Sky Dragon. Eats air, apparently, and she has healing powers."

After that Romeo watches Wendy Marvell with attentive eyes, waiting for her to present any typical Dragonslayer behaviors. He feels like a documentarian studying an exotic new species, or a spy surveying a suspect. Truly he is skeptical of Wendy Marvell, skeptical of her pervading silence. He doesn't think she's said three words to anyone since she's been here at the guild.

Eventually he becomes bored with this distant radius and decides that the best way to figure out her intentions are to get to know her better. So one day he boldly walks up to her and her tiny white cat - who is as girlish as Wendy is - and asks them if they want to play a card game with him and Cana.

"I'm Romeo, by the way," he says after she accepts in a shy, muted voice. "Romeo Conbolt."

"Wendy Marvell. Nice to meet you." She gestures to her cat. "This is Charle."

Wendy turns out to be pretty horrible at card games. Her poker faces is worthless, she flashes her cards around like there's no tomorrow, and she has to have everything explained. But Romeo likes her nonetheless. He likes teaching her the rules and how to shuffle and hold the cards. Secretly he also likes winning every time. Usually he's the loser when it's just him and Cana.

Romeo stops being suspicious of Wendy Marvell. He asks her about her Dragonslayer powers and she admits that she's not very powerful. "I'm really only good at healing," she says, and Romeo believes her and is disappointed. In his experience Dragonslayers don't exercise modesty.

He asks her about her dragon and for the first time he sees her eyes light up like stars in a night sky. "Grandine was incredible. I don't remember a lot about her since I was so little when she left, but I remember flying through the air with her and her voice and her soft wings..." She goes on like that for about an hour, but Romeo doesn't mind. It's the most he's ever heard her talk. He likes listening.

Once he asks her about her old guild. "Cat Shelter," she says sadly. And she tells him about everybody she loved there, and what they did, and how they acted. Then she explains how it was all just one big sham, how those people had only been real hundreds of years ago. It makes her so sad that Romeo immediately feels guilty about it, feels bad about making her suffer only to satisfy his own curiosity, and he doesn't bring that subject up again.

The adults start teasing him about Wendy. He blushes and stutters and exclaims that he doesn't like her, not like that, they're just friends, but they don't listen. That's what he doesn't like about adults. They never listen.

Their words creep into his brain and rattle the truth that he's been stubbornly denying. Romeo knows that he does in fact like Wendy, like like her. He has started to get all shy and nervous around her. When she goes away on her first mission, he finds himself scratching their initials inside a little heart on the stool she sits on. He doesn't bother to cover it up because he plans on confessing his feelings to her soon. Surely she can't say no. Wendy is too nice to say no.

He's walking to the guild after school one afternoon and spots the first little clusters of spring wildflowers dotting the meadow. He stops and stares at them swaying gracefully in the wind. The blobs of white and yellow don't really inspire any sense of beauty or wonder in him, but he's heard that girls like flowers. Wendy is so much like a flower too, delicate and sweet, so she must especially appreciate them.

Romeo decides it must be a sign. He drops his backpack and marches into the tall grasses of the meadow, gathering the slender stalks in his hands and carefully severing them from the life-giving roots. He arranges the tiny fragile blossoms into a pleasing bouquet and continues his trek to the guild, where Wendy will surely be waiting to play another game.

Wendy sits quietly in the corner of the guild, her bare feet dangling carelessly from her perch on the crooked wooden stool. The mages around her seem impeccably happy, but they are also rowdy and violent and powerful - everything her old guild, Cat Shelter, was not. Even after a week of living in Magnolia, Wendy still misses it. She is mourning not only the loss of her home, but the loss of every single person she thought she knew. They were all just projections, figments of an old man's memories. Cat Shelter was a phantom guild. None of it had been real. Nothing in Wendy's life, with the exception of Charle, had been real.

Slowly she is adapting to Fairy Tail. She likes it, even though it is a huge adjustment. The mages are very kind, although some are less inclined to show it than others, and the entire riotous guild feels like one big family. Wendy doesn't think it will take her long to fit in.

She does still sometimes feel inferior. The mages here are strong and Wendy doesn't know how to do much more than heal. She is younger than the majority of the members, too. Sometimes she doesn't know what to do with herself.

There is one boy, though, who is younger than she is. He isn't an official member of the guild yet; he is the son of Macao Conbolt, a rather perverted fire mage. Romeo is only about eight years old to her thirteen, but he makes good company when he isn't doing homework or trying to act cool in front of his father. Wendy lets him teach her how to play a few card games when she first arrives, since he gets a lot of practice with Cana, but she stops after he says that he likes her. Like likes her.

She sees the signs but disregards them for the sake of his companionship. She studiously ignores people when they tease him, pretends not to notice his silly little lopsided smiles or his wide admiring eyes. She refuses to comment when Charle says something about how "that Conbolt kid" has a crush on her. When she finds WM + RC scratched into the soft wood of her customary stool, surrounded by a jagged little heart, she just sits on it and doesn't bring it up to anyone.

Reluctantly Wendy is forced to acknowledge his innocent courting when he comes to her one day with a mangled handful of little white and yellow wildflowers he picked. Futilely she hopes they're not for her and avoids him. He stalks her through the guild all day and eventually corners her near the request board.

After he hands her the flowers and tells her that he really likes her and wants to be her boyfriend, Wendy cannot think of anything to say. To stall for time she flicks away a tiny black ant that has crawled from the flowers onto her hand. She looks up at his nervous face and realizes that keeping him waiting like this is more cruel than breaking the news, so she braces herself and finally speaks.

"Sorry, Romeo," she says awkwardly, biting her lip. "I don't like you like that."

"Why?" Romeo demands. "Is it because I'm shorter than you? I'll grow up tall, you know, eventually! My dad's really tall so I have to be tall too."

Actually Wendy hadn't considered his height a problem at all, but now she notices that he is almost a whole head shorter than she is. "It's not that. You're just too young."

"I'm only..." Romeo pauses and counts on his fingers. "...only five years younger than you! That's not very much."

"Yeah, it is," Wendy says. She realizes that she's being a bit hypocritical, since she has developed a bit of a crush on Natsu and he is four years older than she is. But she's obviously not going to share this information with Romeo, who looks very embarrassed and hurt by her gentle rejection.

"Okay," he sighs, and he walks off with his deck of cards, leaving Wendy alone with the dismal bouquet of wildflowers. They don't play any more games after that. Wendy is sorry to see him go. She wishes that it could have gone differently, that they could have remained friends so she would have someone who wasn't old and mysterious and complex to interact with. As much as she loves Fairy Tail, it seems like nothing there is ever simple.

Romeo is almost forgotten as Wendy sinks into the unpredictable lifestyle of a Fairy Tail mage. She takes jobs, becomes more comfortable in her skin, makes friends, grows stronger. She abandons the isolated stool in the corner of the guild and chooses a more centralized location. But sometimes, when she is alone and he is playing a card game with Cana, she still has the urge to tap on his shoulder and ask if she can join the next round.

Seven years later, when Wendy steps into the empty shell that used to be the strongest guild in Fiore, she feels just as alienated as she did when she transferred from Cat Shelter. This is not the same magnificent Fairy Tail she had loved with all her heart. The struggles of time show in every neglected corner and in the defeated faces of the remaining guild members. Wendy and the others who participated in the S-Class exams are not part of this cycle. They were misplaced, lost in some hidden niche of time, forgotten on Tenrou Island. These handful of powerful mages shine like a distant example of what Fairy Tail should be, a painful reminder of what Fairy Tail could have been had they remained.

It breaks Wendy's heart to see how much she missed in seven years. She knows that adjustment will be difficult, but she has experience. She takes every step to return to normalcy. Her apartment in Fairy Hills is, thankfully, untouched. Laki tells her that Twilight Ogre, the new guild down the road, tried to repossess the girls' dormitory and all the possessions within to help pay off Fairy Tail's staggering debts, but relented when Goldmine heard about it and had some members from Quatro Cuberos came to Fairy Tail's aid.

"We've had more support from congenial magical facilities than we'd like to admit," Laki says. She peers sadly into Wendy's abandoned apartment. The sky-blue walls seem to have faded into a light gray, but it could just be the thick layer of dust and cobwebs permeating the room that's obscuring the vibrant color. There is a small table with two chairs that Wendy can't recall ever using; she and Charle always ate down at the guild. There is a vase on the table that Wendy always kept full of flowers she picked from the meadow on the way home. Twisted skeletal remains of what were once delicate bluebells bow over the lip of the dusty china. The twin bed in the corner is neatly made, overflowing with her considerable stuffed animal collection. Wendy remembers when she came to Fairy Tail for the first time and Lucy took her shopping. It was the first time she had ever seen plush toys. She bought more cats and bears and bunnies than actual clothes.

Laki turns back to her, looking helpless. "What alternative did we have?"

Wendy looks for jobs, but they are all taken when she checks the board. Nab - or an older version of Nab who has an impressive beer-belly - pats her head consolingly. "Don't feel bad. There hasn't been a decent job in months," he explains.

That doesn't make her feel any better.

One morning Wendy opens her eyes and realizes that it is her birthday. Her twentieth birthday, to be exact. She looks down at herself and begins to cry, because she is most certainly not twenty years old. She wants to be twenty years old. Seven years is much too long to stay thirteen. Suddenly she wonders if she will ever age, if she will ever get to experience what twenty feels like, and she erupts into a fit of hysterics that send Charle into full panic mode.

Later that day Wendy sits down in the same place she used to occupy when she was new to the guild. It strikes her how similar her feelings now are to her feelings then. Wendy feels even more isolated as she watches the other members. Some of them are wizened and weathered by seven years of hardship, while the others like her who are ageless gleam like polished coins.

She kicks off her shoes and pulls her knees up to her chest, curling her toes around the edge of the stool. She wishes that she could just disappear into the shadows and become part of the tattered foundation. Wendy has already had to start over once before. She doesn't know if she has the energy to do it again.

A darkness eclipses over her, and she thinks that maybe some gentle and merciful spirit has decided to grant her wish. But then she hears a voice above her, a voice that is vaguely familiar.

"Hey."

Wendy peeks out from behind her arms and sees a boy of about fifteen, with messy dark hair that looks soft to the touch, big bright black eyes, and a broad grin that takes up about half his face. He's dressed in an outfit similar to Natsu's infamous baggy pants and sorry excuse for a shirt. He even has a scarf wrapped around his neck.

Much to her displeasure, Wendy finds herself blushing. Time has treated Romeo Conbolt very kindly indeed.

"Hi, Romeo."

"So you remember me." He sounds relieved and smiles even wider. His smile, Wendy is glad to see, hasn't changed. "I was hoping that you would recognize me."

"I remember you. To me it's like I've been asleep all this time. I almost didn't recognize you, though - you look so different."

Romeo laughs, a booming sound that Wendy's ears miss when it stops. "Yeah, seven years'll do that to ya."

There is an awkward pause. Wendy distracts herself from staring at Romeo's impressive musculature by studying the frayed edges of his scarf. When the silence becomes overwhelming, she remarks, "I'm surprised that you remembered me after so long."

As soon as the words leave her mouth, Wendy wishes she hadn't said them. Romeo's face grows dark like a storm cloud, replacing his sunny smile and sapping away the warmth that accompanied it. "You're my nakama, Wendy. I could never forget you."

Wendy is blushing again. Luckily Romeo doesn't seem to notice. He is absorbed in his own thoughts, glaring at something she couldn't possibly see. "None of us could ever forget," he mutters to himself.

For a second, Wendy is almost glad that she was on Tenrou Island for those seven years. Surely an enchanted slumber is better than waiting in anguish for your loved ones to come home.

Then the moment is over and Romeo is back to smiling. Wendy doesn't remember his emotions ever being this intense. Romeo had always been relatively temperate. The only time he was ever passionate about anything was when he spoke of his advance into the magical arts. Now Wendy feels like she might get whiplash just from this one conversation with him. And it's not necessarily a bad feeling.

"Anyway," Romeo continues, "Cana and I were getting ready to start a card game. You seem kinda down so I thought you might wanna join us."

"Sure, I'll play. I might have to brush up on the rules though." Wendy hops down from her stool and prepares to walk to the table where Cana is shuffling some cards. Romeo doesn't move out of her way. He stands directly in her path, much too close for comfort, gazing at her with this funny expression that makes Wendy's knees feel a little like jelly. She tries to scowl, but if her face is as red as it feels then she suspects it's a failed attempt. "What are you looking at, Romeo?"

"Oh, nothing," he says with a smirk. "I just realized that I'm taller than you, that's all." He emphasizes his point by measuring their respective heights with his hand. Wendy only comes up to about his chin. She has to look up to talk to him.

"So?"

"I just thought it was interesting," says Romeo, shrugging nonchalantly. "I guess it's because I'm older than you now. I'm fifteen, you know." He follows this up with the biggest grin yet, and Wendy can't help but smile back.

"Yeah. I know."

Romeo blushes a little as he offers her his hand. Wendy blushes a lot as she takes it. Maybe, just maybe, staying thirteen was worth it after all.

At first, they hope.

They hope that their favorite pick will progress into S-Class and they would win the giant poll Reedus sets up next to the request board. It eclipses the board in its colorful intricacies, the portrait of each contestant and their partner painted under their name and prospects. Natsu, Gray, and Fried are all immediate favorites due to their status as particularly powerful mages. Although Juvia and Levy have their own loyal fans, their odds go up when someone mentions Juvia's past in the Element Four and the fact that Gajeel is Levy's partner. Doranbolt's fandom skyrockets when people eventually remember that he trained directly under Mystogan.

They hope that the test will end soon so they can know the results. It's already been two weeks - the longest S-Class exam in Fairy Tail history. It must be brutal.

Then they hope that the rumors aren't true. The rumors about how Tenrou Island has suddenly disappeared from the face of the planet with the members stranded. Their fears are confirmed when Doranbolt comes to the guild and tells them the story. He lifts the memory spell and they realize that he has never been a mage in Fairy Tail. He wears the official colors of the Rune Knights and the Magic Council. He tells them what happens. The truth.

After he leaves, the Fairy Tail mages are skeptical. Doranbolt tricked them before; who's to say he can't do it again?

Somehow, though, they know he's not lying this time. The tears that streamed down his face were real enough.

Three months go by. Macao reluctantly accepts the position of Fourth Master because of Fairy Tail's steady financial decline. People have heard of the Tenrou Island incident, and they are taking their business elsewhere, usually to the new guild across town, Twilight Ogre. Where's Titania Erza? The Salamander? Black Steel Gajeel? Mirajane? They are Fairy Tail, not you. Why do you even bother to try to keep this guild running without its crowning jewels?

As they leave, Macao wonders the same thing.

Romeo cannot find it in him to be proud of his father's promotion. No one can be proud of it because it is an empty title. He watches as the mages make do with whatever jobs they can scavenge. Eventually they go out looking for jobs, begging people for jobs. Anything to keep their guild in working order until the others come back.

Until the others come back. Because even after three months, six months, a year, the Fairy Tail mages have not given up on their nakama.

They search even after the Magic Council has abandoned them. Each and every time the searches come up fruitless. Eventually they stop searching. Tenrou Island has really disappeared, and it's taken half of Fairy Tail with it.

Romeo can almost feel the gap they left behind. It is palpable in the empty seats at the bar. The guild is cold without the warmth of its prized members. Romeo begins to imitate the human furnace, the Fire Dragonslayer Natsu, in a futile attempt to bring some life back. But no matter how much fire he creates or how loud he laughs, it's for not. Laki still seems on the verge of collapse behind the counter, Droy still eats himself stupid, and Reedus takes down the giant poll board. "There's no need for it now," the artist sighs.

Romeo is outraged. He almost comes to blows with Reedus over the silly board, but Macao yells at him to stop being childish, that the thing is just a waste of space and it needs to be disposed of. "We can't give up on them like this!" Romeo shrieks at his father as Reedus and Nab wheel the bright board away. It is the only thing that hasn't faded with time.

"We're not giving up," Macao says harshly. "We're moving on."

To Romeo, it's the same thing. He salvages the portraits and keeps them tucked under his pillow. Every night he takes them out and studies them. Elfman and Evergreen, Fried and Bixlow, Levy and Gajeel, Juvia and Lisanna, Cana and Lucy, Natsu and Happy, Wendy - not Doranbolt. Romeo has torn his picture in half.

These aren't even all the casualties. What about he ones without portraits? Master Makarov, Mirajane, Erza, Pantherlily, Charle?

There are three pictures in particular that haunt Romeo. Natsu, his idol, the man he considered an older brother and the center of the guild. He had always looked up to Natsu more than anyone. Natsu was the heart of the guild, had pumped the blood and spirit into the guild. Fairy Tail has gone into cardiac arrest without their him, and without Romeo's dwindling resuscitation he knows that the heart would stop beating.

Cana, too, her disappearance runs deep. She'd been good to him, a good friend. She never treated him like a little kid. She took his problems seriously, told him when he was being stupid, gave him his first taste of alcohol. Not to mention taught him every card trick he knows. Together he and Cana criticized his father's many young girlfriends. Secretly Romeo always considered Cana a surrogate mother.

The last is a picture of a girl who got sucked into the S-Class exams by that conniving spy, Doranbolt. A girl with long indigo hair and the toothy smile of a young dragon. His first crush, that dejected girl on the stool, Wendy Marvell. When he looks at her portrait, he regrets avoiding her after confessing his feelings. If he'd known how little time she'd had, he would have tried harder to be a good friend.

Romeo stops laughing after that. He stops smiling.

He joins the guild at the age of twelve, four years after Tenrou Island. Every day he goes down to the pier and looks out into the water, hoping that the sea will give him a glimmer of hope. This ritual is what causes him to spot the raiders marching up to Fairy Hills.

Laki, Macao, Wakaba, Max, and Romeo meet the raiders at the entrance. It is, of course, mages from Twilight Ogre. They say that Fairy Tail is in serious debt, that its time for them to pay up. "We're doing you a favor, Conbolt," one ogre soothes. "You don't need half those rooms anymore. You haven't needed them for five years."

Romeo attacks the man and only ends up getting a broken nose. He's angry, angrier than when Reedus demolished the poll board, and he's not even sure who he's more angry at: these ogres for desecrating the dormitories of the lost girls, or his father for borrowing money from such filth. This is how he finds out about it. This is how everyone finds out about it, and no one is happy with Macao.

"What was I supposed to do?" he cries helplessly, looking for support from the crowd. "We've already exhausted all of Makarov's connections. I didn't have any other choice. I'm sorry."

"You know we're never going to be able to pay that money back," Jet whispers into the silence of the guild. Beside him, Droy's jowls quiver pitifully.

"Yeah," Macao admits just as quietly. "I know."

Luckily Goldmine catches wind of this incident and sends men from Quatro Cuberos to handle it. Twilight Ogre doesn't bother them again. Not about the girls' dormitories, at least. They manufacture other ways of squeezing nonexistent money from Fairy Tail.

By the seventh anniversary of the Tenrou Island debacle, even Romeo has begun to lose hope. Fairy Tail is hanging by a thread. And then, a miracle happens.

They find it.

Tenrou Island.

Fairy Tail is whole again.

It's all thanks to Blue Pegasus. Romeo doesn't understand the logistics of it - he has Natsu's IQ as well - but he does know that one day the lost members stride into the guild like it's the most natural thing in the world, looking bruised but healthy and alive. And young. No one has aged.

Natsu is his same fiery self. Cana drinks just as much as she used to and plays card games. The Exceed fly around the guild with Bixlow's dolls. Levy reads her books, Gajeel eats his iron, Mirajane takes over the bartending duties, and everyone is back. It's the happiest Romeo has been in over seven years.

He notices Wendy sitting in that same dark corner she did when she first got to the guild. She looks just like she used to at thirteen years old, all soft and sweet. This time he feels a much stronger attraction to her. Cana notices him staring and winks. "Go over there and ask her if she wants to play some cards, kid."

Romeo doesn't blush or stutter. He gives her a blinding smile and does it, because now he understands why Wendy turned him down. He's confident that she won't this time.

He's right. She doesn't. Wendy plays cards with him and she's just as sucky as before. They play the next day and the day after that. Romeo is inexplicably happy to have her back, in more ways than one. He thinks he's packed seven years worth of smiling into a week.

Romeo takes those portraits and looks at them one last time. They are faded and frayed with age and misuse. His gaze lingers over Wendy's. He brushes his fingertips over the painted cheek, down the waterfall of dark hair, along the gentle curve of her jaw. Then he rips all the portraits up. He takes them to the pier and burns them.

"It's time to move on," he says with a smile. The wind carries the ashes and takes them out to sea. Romeo turns his back on the water, and he knows he will never visit this place again.

One day he's at the guild and he notices something on the stool. The heart he had carved so long ago is still there, softened and distorted over time. Next to it is a fresh one with his initials and Wendy's carved inside. He didn't put it there.

Mirajane yelps in surprise as Romeo pries the seat of the rickety wooden stool away from the support of the legs and jams it under his arm before marching out of the guild. Later Macao hears the thump of a hammer and finds his son nailing an old round wooden slab to his bedroom wall. He dismisses it as a teenage thing and lets him be. The kid's grin got wider with every beat of the hammer. Who is he to take that away?

The next day Romeo goes to a florist and buys a dozen white daisies because red roses just don't suit Wendy. He takes them to the guild and looks for her in the crowd. He finds her next to the stool, regarding it with a mixture of wonder and confusion.

"Wendy," he begins, and he swears that everyone turns to look at them. Wendy's eyes fall on the daisies and her face grows as red as a tomato. Romeo has second thoughts about this. What if she won't accept after all?

He realizes that there's no turning back now. She knows what the flowers mean. So he plows on with what he hopes is a formidable speech. "These flowers are for you. I...um...I was wondering if you wanna go do something sometime. Just, you know, when you want to."

Wendy takes the flowers and tenderly brings them to her nose. Romeo swallows a lump in his throat, because she looks absolutely stunning surrounded by the creamy petals of the daisies. "How about we go to the park this Saturday?" she quietly suggests. The whole guild erupts into cheers and the two of them get violently jostled. Romeo hears something about how he's the only real man around here, but he can't ascertain what that might mean or who might have said it. He's lost in his own personal land of euphoric bliss.

That date is by far the best of his life. They go to the park like Wendy suggests. She's dressed in a marvelous pink dress with her hair tied back in a big yellow bow. Macao urges Romeo to bring a picnic, and he is very glad for his father's advice because he can tell that Wendy is impressed. Even if half the picnic goes to feeding the birds.

They walk around and enjoy the scenery as summer coaxes the gardens into full bloom. Romeo hardly notices the flowers as evening looms closer and closer. He is transfixed by Wendy Marvell in the golden glow of a sunset, with her rosy pink dress and yellow bow that sets off her dark blue hair. She catches him staring and blushes. Romeo is embarrassed until she takes his hand, and then he just dies a little inside.

Jeez. He feels like such a girl.

Wendy smiles and points out the first star in a lavender sky. Romeo chooses that moment to lean in and kiss her on the cheek. She jumps violently and is so utterly baffled that she trips over her feet and falls backward into a splashing marble fountain. When she pops up they're both an impossible shade of red. Their eyes meet and they start laughing. Romeo is glad she's laughing and not crying as he pulls her out of the fountain and drapes his jacket around her sopping shoulders. He can't help but think this is something out of a cliché romantic comedy before Wendy looks at him and all thought is wiped clean.

She leans in slowly. Her hair drips like dark blue paint. Water balances precariously on the tips of her long eyelashes as she closes her eyes. Her breath is cold, like wind in the winter, as her round pink lips inch closer and closer to Romeo's astonished mouth. He's not prepared for this. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, with his feet, with anything!

The moment is gone before he can even process what's happened. For a moment a warm pressure barely meets his lips, and he can sense the fleeting closeness of Wendy before she pulls away. The sun dips below the horizon, and they are lit by the harsh white glow of a lacrima lamp-post.

Wendy blushes again and ducks her head shyly. Romeo is in a state of shock as he robotically takes her back to her apartment in Fairy Hills, where the entire female population is eagerly waiting for her to describe her first date. They say good night and she keeps his jacket around her shoulders as she crosses the barrier into the dormitories. It doesn't even occur to Romeo that Wendy Marvell has kissed him until he lowers himself down onto the steps of his house.

He smiles. Waiting seven years was definitely worth it.

Again, please share the love (or suggestions on how to make it more lovable)! :) And since I'm as pathetic as a greasy salesman I'm going to entice you to visit my profile page and read my other Fairy Tail fics if you liked this one.