After years of war, peace finally becomes an option, and there's only one person that Lucy wants to live that peace with. Cohabitation isn't as easy as they had thought it'd be, but their love overrides the difficulties, they'll work through it together.
With her vision fading, she thought that for a second she saw Natsu dive into the water towards her, but that was impossible, he was a hundred kilometers away by now, they were travelling in two different directions. Still, as consciousness left her, she only let it, because she felt his warmth, or what she wanted to believe was his warmth. Despite not being able to remember the moment clearly, she knew that she had wrapped her arms desperately around her rescuer, as they pulled her back up to the surface. She wasn’t quite sure what had happened in the time that her consciousness was gone, but she did know that when she walked out of her tent, the whole lake and the area that she had been attacked in was gone, evaporated and burned to ashes.
Even now, as she stood with the other generals in the meeting discussing peace, she wasn’t sure what had happened. Part of her wanted to believe that the person who was standing the closest to the Secretary of Defense, Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Prime Minister, at attention, like herself, in his ceremonial uniform was the one who had saved her, but she felt like that was just wishful thinking, because there was no way he’d be able to make it to her when he was a hundred kilometers away.
The captains of their enemy kept staring at her fiance with looks of disgust and hatred. She could kind of understand that, seeing how he was the general of the corps that had destroyed most of their regiments, in fact, he even destroyed some of the camps completely on his own, without the rest of the Dragon Corps. Still, they all sat in silence at that table, waiting for the one in charge to arrive. Her ears hurt as she heard the grandfather clock chime for the tenth time. Her legs were beginning to tell her that she had been standing still for too long, too.
After hours of waiting, their enemy’s captains said something along the lines of how their major general was busy, and could not make it. To postpone the meeting for signing the peace treaty until another date. The one who had the most authority signed the armistice, but the peace treaty still was yet to be signed. She took a deep breath as she watched from her peripheral vision their enemy leave. It was at least another fifteen minutes later before the Prime Minister, Secretary of Defense and Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff left, as well. Slowly, the rest of the generals began breaking attention and taking their leave, but for some reason, her fiance, and the one who received those hateful glares the most, and the one who she felt might have saved her that day, months ago, still stood there at attention.
She broke attention herself, and made her way over to him, waving her hand in his face, but he didn’t look at her. She placed a hand on his arm, it was tense. She gently cupped his face, and forced his head down to look at her, “Natsu, are you okay?”
In a soft whisper he muttered, “They’re still here, Lucy…”
She nodded, “I’m sure they haven’t-”
“They hurt you.” He added.
She shook her head, “I’m alright now, Natsu. Relax, they signed the armistice, they can’t attack us, not now-”
“Shh.” He muttered.
She clamped her mouth shut, and stood there again, in complete silence for what felt like another fifteen minutes, before he relaxed, and gave her a peck on the lips and made his way out of the meeting room. She hurried after him.
“What was that for?” She asked.
“What was what for?” he asked, slowing his pace so that she could walk beside him.
“You getting all serious, and then just kissing me and leaving without saying anything?” She muttered, elbowing him in the arm.
He smirked, “Mhmm.” He stopped, and stood at attention. She followed suit, and watched as the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff walked by conversing with the Secretary of Defense. As soon as they passed them, he dropped his attention, and turned the corner, heading back to the small number of troops that they had brought with them to this meeting, “I wanted to kiss you, was there an issue?”
She shook her head, “No, not exactly, but when you tense up like that it makes me worry, Natsu. How-”
He suddenly stood at attention again, and she followed suit. He looked over at her, and broke his attention, with a laugh, “They were talking about something as they were leaving, made me concerned, that’s all.”
“Oh, okay.” She sighed, before slapping his arm, “Are you just randomly going into-” she cut herself off as he suddenly stood at attention again, and she copied him.
He relaxed, “Oh, gosh, Lucy, that’s hilarious. Anyway, I’ve got some things to discuss with my troops. Since this is the second time that they didn’t show up, master said that we can go back to our homes for the time being.”
She blinked, “Our homes?”
He nodded, and turned to her, kissing her on the lips, “So, I’ll see you later.”
She sighed, and shook her head as she watched him walk away, before turning heel, and heading to her own troops.
If he was being honest, he wanted to fly to the enemy headquarters, grab their leading general and slam their face onto the peace treaty as proof of signage. However, not only did he not know where the enemy headquarters was, or what their leading general smelled or looked like, but he was very strictly told by the chairwoman not to do that. Now that he was thinking about it, why didn’t he go searching for the enemy headquarters back then when he first proposed to Lucy… no, wait, why didn’t he go searching for it when he returned to the Dragon Corps after he confirmed that they were dating? He still didn’t understand why she didn’t think they were dating, but they were.
Thank you @writervick for the idea!!! it’s been in my head since you mentioned it and I’m sure it won’t be the last time I draw the whole"lucy touching Natsu’s face".
Summary: A sky full of stars, and he was looking at her.
Notes: keep calm and love lucy. that's it that's the a/n
Ao3 - FF.net
***
It wasn’t that he disliked the stars. They were perfectly normal, pretty, and bright; everything he ever asked them to be. He had just found something more captivating to look at.
The stars illuminated her skin. Each pore purified, every cell in divine observation. She gazed upon the freckled skies, and the skies looked back at her in admiration. They fought to fit into the galaxies in her eyes, and for a brief moment he wondered how it would look when her life would inevitably end. Would her body turn into a sparkling dust, join her admirers in the dark night, or would her soul grow in size until she was big enough for the universe to fit in her pupil?
He begged that he would never live to see the answer. Immortality was certainly a curse, Natsu out of all people should know, but he couldn’t help but wish it on the woman that deserved life. To always watch over birth: of stars, suns, moons — lambs, foals, children.
She would grow into that omnipotent God that humanity for eons had followed, prayed upon, fought over. And once she had the universe in her pupil, power to rule and beckon life, all wars would cease. No more demons, no more curses, no more evil infesting the pulsing veins of existence, crawling, climbing, festering like thorny vines across souls.
But for now, she was human. Just Lucy, smile lines creasing around her mouth, lips and tongue forming around her perfectly imperfect teeth as she spoke of otherworldly wonders, pointing with a chipped nail across the empyrean heaven, drawing lines between swirling stars.
He never wanted to leave this moment. Chronological timeline in all honour, but endless hours, repeating the silent breaths between the two of them over and over again, seemed much more appealing. He would spend lifetimes observing her if he could. The limited time ahead of him was in no way enough — he wanted to memorise the map of her DNA, the way her cells divided and dedicated themselves to keeping her alive.
Natsu didn’t know the words to tell her. No words would suffice — she deserved perfectly composed lyrics, laced with the intoxicating ecstasy that she filled him with, and then some. But he barely had enough words in his vocabulary to call her pretty, and much less the patience to spell it.
He could still say things to her though. Nothing meaningful of course. A weak statement, a bare proposal of something earthly. But perhaps that was blessing enough.
Reining in the galloping heart in his chest, he swallowed hard and gathered courage to touch her — letting the palm of his hand lightly graze the impossibly soft skin of her arm, tracing it upwards to where she was painting the heaven with complicated constellations. He moved his head closer to hers, feeling the prickly grass poke at his cheek, lining up their eyes for more accuracy. Then he moved her hand upwards, and a bit to the left, landing on a big, almost orange-y flaming, raging star that looked like it was storming towards them in a fiery fury.
“And that one,” he whispered, so softly it barely counted as a breath, “what’s that one called?”
Lucy spoke with clear conviction when she answered. “It’s called Antares. It’s often referred to as the big ruby in Scorpio’s heart, though I’m sure the man himself aided that rumor.” The giggle that rang out could have healed the most life-threatening disease — Natsu was certain of it. “Its name comes from an ancient language, and an ancient civilization, where they considered the star the ‘rival of Ares’ or ‘Anti-Ares’, due to its reddish hue and brightness. Apparently the colours are reminiscent of the planet Mars, which one of the countries at the time named after their god of war, Ares. In some interpretations, Antares is also considered a rival to Orion, the hunter, as they are opposite each other in the sky.”
Lucy slowly brought their hands over the colossal firmament, pointing at the other constellation in question.
Natsu wanted her to talk about the stars all night, and the clouds all day. Then, if the heavens aligned, they could rinse, wash, repeat. But he didn’t know what to say right now — he could only let his eyelids weigh heavy as he repositioned their hands in the air, feeling her soft fingertips against his mortal skin. How he wrinkled compared to her, and how he dirtied her bright complexion, bringing mud, scars, and heavy moans of regret to the picture in front of them.
Still, he wouldn’t remove his hand if he so had a gun pointed towards his head. The likeness of him, caressing the etherious of her — an event so unlikely that stars surely had been burned up to make it happen. He didn’t mind — he’d let the universe burn if it meant he could spend another minute beside her.
So, to honour the stars that had given their lives in order for him to meet her, he let his thumb caress the back of her hand. The bright pink emblem, painted on like a mural, made him beam with pride. Fairy Tail — the place she belonged before she even knew it existed. How many times had their paths nearly intertwined, before they met that fateful day? Ancestral intervention, all threads carefully spinned, then woven to create the cloth and canvas which they today painted with the most vibrant stories. Lucky Lucy Heartfilia and Etherious Natsu Dragneel, the products of thousands of coincidences aligned to, at the end of the day, make them simply Natsu and Lucy. Lucy and Natsu. Victorious sculptures, radiating the pinnacle of trust — a bond historians would study for eons to come.
Perhaps stars didn’t burn up for them to meet. Perhaps their interactions was what birthed new stars — little glowing balls of hope, snowballing into the otherworldly wonders that rivalled gods. Maybe, in some inconspicuous way, Natsu and Lucy were it. The meaning of life, the definition of paradise, the feeling of reaching nirvana. Mankind created wars, the concept of hell, all because the average person would never achieve this sensation. Lying on a bed of soft grass in the meadow with the moon a spotlight, highlighting the woman that was worth it all.
Soft against his calloused hand, cool against his burning touch. He caressed her fingers again. It was a comfortable, lukewarm sensation. Water in a lake, just cool enough to refresh an exhausted, dimmed mind, but plenty warm to want to linger. For her, this was just another Friday night. For Natsu, it might as well have been the day of creation — the most important moment of existence.
“You’re warm,” Lucy commented, voice softer now than when she was talking about the stars. Natsu watched as she laced their fingers together, giving his hand a soft squeeze.
“You’re… perfect.”
The words slipped out of his mouth before he even registered them in his mind. His heart started racing, jumping around between the walls in his ribcage like a nervous animal. Had it been weird of him to say? It was fairly unprompted from her point of view — though he hoped she somewhere deep inside always knew that he thought of her that way.
Slowly, he glanced back at her, only to be met by those huge doe eyes, her face so close their noses touched. She was smiling, eyes relaxed in an assuring expression. Beautiful. Their hands fell down in the small space between them, resting on the cool ground. The braided fingers stayed the same though — clutching on to the other in a desperate attempt to stay close. Then, Lucy reached out to him with her other hand. Softly, she cupped his cheek — one that was surely bright red under the tan — and felt the bulges and crevices that made out Natsu’s sculpted form.
She was observing him. It was dark out, so it was natural that she wanted to know him closer. See him in her mind, how the stubble of his beard prickled, how his scars gave dimension, how his muscles contracted and relaxed as he smiled under the touch of her hand.
The feather light touching on his skin was one thing. It was her way her eyes searched through him that touched his soul. Natsu had heard about the clichés so many times they had lost all meaning, but tonight he rediscovered what they meant. The eyes truly are the windows to her soul — a cosmic ocean, where cascading waves of thoughts and emotions formed the essence to her being. Not an ounce of apathy, not a crumb of anger. No lingering feelings of revenge, regret, dismay — completely without veils of any cloudy thoughts; her eyes told him about love.
Love, love, love. He had never understood the word. Not completely anyways. He loved lots of things, and he loved them deeply. It wasn’t that the other love he experienced wasn’t real — he just saw that the sensation that filled his chest, that spread out to his limbs and filled his entire nervous system with pure serotonin — it was something else. The truest form of it, pure and enlightening in the dark night that surrounded them.
His arm moved on its own. Mirroring Lucy’s actions, he allowed himself to touch the face of God’s masterpiece which laid before him. Moving a lock of that moonlit golden hair out of her face, fastening it behind her ear. She wasn’t wearing her earrings today, so he took the rare chance to roam the contours of it, to let his pointy finger and his thumb encapture the earlobe at the end. Soft like a lamb’s ear. Lucy’s delicate beauty was surreal.
As they breathed the same air, Natsu’s mind went dizzy in contentment. Smelling her sweetness, feeling the soft tissue on her cheeks, letting his finger make out the outline of her nose. Delicate, sure, but strong rang just as true. This face had withstanded wars that no human should have to go through — the tight skin over her old scars reminded him of that. How wondrous to be able to see her like this: pretty like a flower petal one day, and tough like tempered steel forged in fiery determination, the next.
In his daze his eyes flickered down towards her lips. Not the plumpest in the world, nor the softest. They too had scars — some from biting down mid-battle, others from chewing in concentration as she wrote the paragraphs in her novels. He traced them too with his thumb. Dead skin coming off as they were healing from last writing session, but nothing that disarrayed him. His lips were probably faring worse — though, he frankly never gave them a second thought.
With lips in mind, he found himself wetting his, only for Lucy to follow suit. Natsu’s heart, which had been flickering around in his chest for quite some time now, suddenly jumped.
He wanted to kiss her.
For some reason it hadn’t been on his mind this entire night — he was perfectly content just worshipping her until dawn, like he had done for so many years before. But with “love” still echoing in his mind, he realised that time would wait for no one. Feeling gratified with the limited access he had granted himself to this woman over the years was only acceptable for so long. Truth was, he needed her — craved her so deeply he wanted to taste every crevice in her mouth, feel every inch of her skin against his. And looking into the infinitely dark eyes in front of him, he dared to believe she would let him.
The pull between them was magnetic — Natsu wasn’t sure who closed in on who. All he knew was that he barely dared breathing, and that their noses pressed significantly harder against each other by the second. He slanted his head the smallest degree, and suddenly there they were — foreheads touching, noses parallel parked, and their hot breaths signalling that they were millimetres away from their first kiss. The briefest nudge forward, and their lips would be touching.
So that’s what he did. His mouth brushed against hers with a ticklish, feathery lightness — so delicate that they could still feel the wind weaving between them whenever it stirred. For a moment, Natsu let himself hover there. His eyes were already closed, so all that remained were the tactile impressions: the soft, barely existing contact of their lips. His senses were so heightened that even the smallest movement — the shaky breath, the motionless touch — sent electric jolts coursing through his veins.
The tentative restraint made him grow increasingly impatient. What began as something delicate and almost reverent, was shifting into tension, winding tight just beneath his skin. Stuck in a freeze frame at this moment of time. For a split second he considered pulling away, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Her lips were right there, warm so close — but not enough. Not nearly enough. He wanted to move, deepen it, press in until the space between them was obliterated. The kiss hovered like a question mark, and Natsu suddenly hated how careful he was being. He never did things halfway. Not when it came to her. And this was starting to feel like holding his breath underwater. He needed more: he needed her so badly it made his teeth ache, made his bones writhe inside of him.
So he leaned in, just a fraction closer, and that was all it took. The world tilted on its axis, just slightly — not enough to throw him, just enough to make him feel like he’d finally entered the moment he’d been waiting for his entire life. A moment that had been in his prayers in coded subtitles — always there, resiliently and carefully asking the powers of fate to bring him closer to this instant. And that time was now.
Lucy’s breath caught, or maybe that was his. He didn’t know. All he knew was the way her lips yielded when he pressed in, how they parted like they’d been waiting for him. It wasn’t rough, but nor was it soft either. It was decisive, as they finally cracked the lock to the door they had been longing to open. It was the missing key, what etched their relationship into existence.
She moved with him so naturally, it might as well have been her second nature, her biological calling. Her hand continued the caressing of his cheek, but this time with more conviction — one that rubbed off on Natsu, who found himself pulling her closer by the neck. It almost felt wrong to kiss an angel like Lucy with such desperation, but on the opposing side was the intense feeling that nothing had ever felt so perfect, so aligned with fate’s woven threads.
His mouth moved slower now, not because the moment had mellowed out, but contradictory: this was the part that mattered. Her sweet, savoury taste, her breath that engulfed him as she lured him in, the tiny sound she made when he deepened it just enough to ask if she’d follow him there. Wet, warm tongues, dancing slowly between them, a temporary portal to a world where the two of them shared one mind, one soul.
Natsu hadn’t known he could kiss like this. It was slow, considerate as he finally released what he had been holding back. It was like this kiss was the only way to show her what had been lodged in his chest for years, stuck between instinct, naivety and fear. And now that it was finally rising to the surface, pouring out in the press of his mouth against hers, he didn’t know how to stop. Dear God: he didn’t want to.
When they finally parted they didn’t move far — just enough to breathe — and Natsu didn’t open his eyes right away. He couldn’t. It felt like blinking would shatter the fragile dreamlike state he was in. The moment was still suspended in the space between their lips, her breath was still brushing his skin. That alone kept him still.
His heart was a hammer now, loud in his ears and clumsy in his chest, and for the first time all night he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. One stayed at her jaw, his thumb grazing the curve of her cheekbone, like he needed to convince himself she was still there. The other one still clinged on to her hand, as letting go of his anchor still felt unpredictable.
He felt dazed. Not in the way he sometimes got after a fight, with stars swimming behind his eyes — but in that way you feel when something significant changes and you know it, immediately, down to the bone. He’d kissed Lucy before, once or twice in dreams he barely let himself remember. But this? This was real. This was her, warm and close and kissing him back like she meant it.
He finally opened his eyes. She was already looking at him.
And god, if that didn’t undo him all over again.
Natsu noticed a faint sheen on Lucy’s lips as she parted them to speak. “You’re perfect too.”
He wasn’t sure if he dared to believe her. On one hand, he was painfully aware of the severe difference in attractiveness between the two of them. It didn’t bother him most of the time — it was simply thrown around between people’s mouths and ears as blatant facts. Lucy was the pretty one. It was as evident as the sun and the moon orbiting earth.
But on the other hand, questioning her would disrupt his entire faith — no one questions his Lucy. Her words were his law, so if she called him strong, he trained himself to move mountains, if she called him unpredictable he threw the choice of his actions to the fate of the dice, and so, when she called him perfect, what else could he do but allow himself to lean forward and press his lips against her forehead.
“Lucky Lucy in the sky,” he mumbled, his words barely audible as he moved his lips against her forehead. A giggle rang out from underneath him.
“I’m not in the sky,” she tried to counter, “I’m right here on earth. With you.”
Natsu brought some distance between them to look at her properly. Her bangs swooped to the side of her face, pink-tinted cheeks that had scrunched into balls of joy as she laughed. She probably thought he was being silly. Maybe he was silly. But if she saw herself in his eyes, she would understand what he meant.
He let his lips curl into a smile. “Yeah.”
Lucy rolled back to her previous position, returning her gaze to the stars above them. Natsu lingered though, continued taking in the contours of her profile, the soft sheen from the night sky illuminating the embodiment of beauty she was.
Natsu had all of eternity to look at the stars, but the rare moments like these was what he lived for. His otherworldly bewitching Lucy, his reason to live.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fairy Tail
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Natsu Dragneel/Lucy Heartfilia
Summary:
Lucy reflects on the life she's lived until now, and all that she's missed out on.
Natsu is right there beside her.
Or: a canon-divergent fic that features Lucy and Natsu paraphrasing lyrics from "seventeen" from Heathers the Musical.
Or, or: Lucy realizes life really isn't all that bad when Natsu holds her close
~~
I did it again, guys~!
look at me writing something to ignore my multi-chapter fic 😅
In my defense, this song and nalu have me held fckn captive right now
