This is going to be a collection of never ending drabbles (prompts I received on tumblr), usually under 1k words and completely unrelated to each other.

Prompt One: Reedus paints his imagination other than the reality of Natsu, Lucy, and Happy taking a nap while fishing at their spot.

Is It Love?

What he sees makes him smile, it inspires him to the new and the beautiful and the true, but imagination is a big part of what he does, so Reedus can't help but wonder…

Is it love?

Reedus has painted people and nature, he has painted magic and the most absurd aspects of life. He has seen pain and trouble, as well as kindness and friendship, so that's what others see in his art: not just what he tries to represent, but what he is and was and feels.

It's a good thing for an artist to do, he thinks. The emotion of charcoal against paper isn't something just anyone is able to understand, but the complexity of art is what he enjoys the most; if he can portray the intangible, then, well, that's part of his talent just as much as it is part of his magic.

He sees them on his way back home.

Reedus lives near the forest, so he takes a shortcut through the river and draws himself a bridge. It was he who told Natsu about this fishing spot, so it's not like the boy's presence there is a surprise.

Scenes like this have happened before: He crosses the river, Natsu sleeps by the riverside.

Except it's not exactly like that, because Happy isn't the only one with him. Lucy leans against the boy, her head resting on his chest and the peacefulness in her expression as she sleeps is the sort of comfort that speaks of intimacy.

Natsu holds her close, his hands touching flesh where her shirt rides up her back and his head falls on top of hers, nose buried in her hair. He moves a bit, as if his magic is his fire and his fire is his energy, and it bursts at the seams whether he is conscious or not.

Happy is by their feet, curled around the two with a precision that would be surgical if it wasn't so obviously accidental. In his sleep, the exceed shows all the vulnerability he hides with snarky words. He says "I love you" in the way his tail is wrapped around Lucy's ankle, in the soft purr he lets out every time Natsu's leg brushes against his ear.

In this moment, more than friends, they are a family.

Before he even realizes what he is doing, Reedus is already halfway through their painting. It lacks nothing, the mage realizes, for there are colors and movement and tranquility.

More than anything, the image feels private. It feels like lovers beneath a cherry tree, like mother and father and child, like friends who forgot they were supposed to be fishing. It's a mixture of so many things that Reedus has to stop for a moment to ask himself:

Is it love?

He has experienced it, once upon a time. He has seen it in Bisca and Alzack, in friends who disappeared through the years, and in strangers across the street. Yet, he still finds it surprising and wonderful, no matter how many times he decides that "yes, it is love".

Reedus saves the picture for the future, when Natsu and Lucy finally realize what they truly are behind their mask of best-friends-and-nothing-more. He smiles at the beauty of it all, like he has done a thousand times, rolls up his painting and goes home.

He decides to pretend that, in the image, Natsu is not pressing his lips against Lucy's in the chastest of kisses, in the most pure form of the love and devotion the two surely feel.

He decides to let them find out for themselves.