Prompt: I could kiss you right now.
Everything that was between them happened gradually. They started at one end of the spectrum and they slid along to the other, moving so slowly that it went almost unnoticed. Only a few payed enough attention to them to see it happen, and Erza was the only one who predicted it early on. Not that she told anyone. If she had ever once suggested that the guild's biggest rivals could fall for each other in the future, she'd be sent to a mental institution.
It all started when they met. Natsu was ten, Gray was eleven, and both of them were completely unaware of what was to come.
The entire guild had gone silent when an odd pink haired child began speaking to their master. Several of them had jumped when he first opened his mouth, having not heard him come inside over the brawl. "Mr. have you see any dragons lately?" He was about the same height as the Wizard Saint, making them believe he could be no older than eight. He had a bright smile that seemed to light up the entire area, and his eyes reflected so much hope that it overwhelmed a few of the onlookers.
Their master nearly spit his beer everywhere. "What in Mavis's name is a child his size doing here without his parents, and asking about dragons no less?" He stared at the child in front of him with an odd expression. The boy bore a powerful seal on his magic that he'd only seen twice. One of those times it had been on the first master herself. "I have not," he answered honestly.
The boys smile faltered, "Oh. Okay. Thank you." He turned around dejectedly, and the urge to hug him was difficult not to act on.
"Since you asked me a question," Makarov began, "I believe that it's alright for me to ask you one in return?" The pinkette turned around to look him in the eyes, and Makarov could suddenly see things he wished he couldn't, especially not in a child, "Why are you looking for the dragons, brat?"
The flat look that he was given would have been comical if not for the sentence that came out of his mouth next, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. No one has. The all think I'm crazy. Fucking humans." This time Makarov did spit his beer, alongside several other people.
Seeing the small, pink-haired child swear had been the breaking point for many of them. Macao slammed his beer down on the bar, pushing it away from him. "I'm never drinking again. I swear I just hallucinated a child dropping the f-bomb."
"No that's what he said," Makarov muttered after the shock wore off. He turned back to the kid, who looked completely unapologetic, and decided to get the full story, "You'll find that I'm not like most people, brat. Tell me everything."
It was the pinkette's turn to raise an eyebrow, "You want the whole thing? Not just why I'm looking for a dragon?" Makarov nodded, once. "Okay, " he plopped down on the floor with a thud, "I can't remember anything from before I was three. It's all just blank. I don't remember my parents or if I lived somewhere else, or if I had siblings. There's just earliest thing I remember is waking up in the middle of the woods next to a cave with a dragon in it, and that I have a big-ass scar on my neck." They all glanced at his scarf as he pulled it off, the to the awful mark across his neck. "Igneel says that it technically killed me, and that it's the reason I don't remember anything else. Igneel's the dragon by the way. He taught me my magic and how to survive, and he named me Natsu. He's the closest thing I have to family, and a week ago, he vanished. I couldn't track his scent, his magic signature, or anything." He paused for a moment to let it sit in, taking in the shock on all of their faces with an odd sense of satisfaction. "I eventually wondered into a city, but I couldn't recognize the language. I stayed there for a couple of days to listen for patterns and pick up on it, so that I could ask people if they'd seen my dad. Fiori is a weird language by the way, especially compared to the one's Igneel taught me."
"That I can agree with," Several heads turned the speaker including Natsu's, "But the dragon bullshit is just that. Bullshit." Gray had been a newer member of the guild at the time, and he still had a small accent from growing up in Isvan. He was looking at the pinkette like he was nothing more than a stain on the floor, and it shocked those who knew him. "You shouldn't lie to people."
"None of what I said was a lie." The warm voice Natsu had spoken with had disappeared.
Most people began to back away when the temperature started rising, but the rest quickly followed once Gray only got half-way through the words "Proove it." The pinkette had launched himself at the ice mage, decking him in the face with a flaming fist. Gray snaped the table behind him in half when he landed, and from there it was a death match.
Both mages were at each others throats for a good ten minutes before Makarov figured out how to stop them without hurting them. He slammed his enlarged arm in between them, taking an attack from Gray meant for Natsu. Natsu had extinguished his flames and stopped the majority of the momentum from his punch before he basically tapped Makarov's arm. The pinkette sighed and dropped his arm. "I apologize. I shouldn't have let myself get angry." Gray just "tched" and walked out.
The guild had been trashed, and the weaker members were hiding behind the bar. "It's not your fault, Natsu." Makarov said amazed, "You know, you'd fit in here, and if you joined the guild, you would have a place to stay while you looked for Igneel."
Natsu froze half-way finished picking up a table. "What's a guild?"
That had been the first time they fought and it certainly wasn't the last. However, it was the only time they fought out of pure hatred. Gray had apologized after a week, and had even asked him to tell him about the dragon who'd raised him.
Natsu spent almost three hours talking about random things he did with Igneel, and he explained his magic to the ice mage. Gray had missed it when he stormed off.
Their rivalry was strong, and the two of them kept with it. They challenged each other to everything. When they were younger it was consistently more often and more violent. As they got older, it was only once or twice a day, and it didn't last as long. It took six years for them to get down to one physical fight a day.
The arguing and insults were something that never stopped, simply turning themselves into nicknames by the time they were fifteen and sixteen.
"Natsu's quiet. He's never quiet." The thought sent Gray on edge as he watched the dragon slayer from across the room. He had barely spoken a word to anyone all day, and it was starting to worry the ice mage.
Gray decided to do the only thing he could. "I'm bored," He nearly screamed, "There's no good jobs and no one here's doing any thing!" He watched Natsu's head lift up from his arms, and the second they made eye contact, Gray knew he'd taken the bait. "Are you okay, Flame-Brain?"
"Then go be bored somewhere else, Elsa," Natsu spat out. "I'm fine. Just one of those days."
"What if I don't want to, Frire-Freak?" Gray challenged. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Then I'll kick your ass, Icicle-Dick." Their guild members were already shooting back. "Yes, but no."
"I don't think you're capable of that, Ash-For-Brains," Gray shouted, "You sure?"
"Try me, Frosty the Snowman," Natsu declared confidently. "Yeah. Hit first, talk later."
"OUTSIDE!" Erza shouted, and both of them ran.
They had gone to the clearing behind the guild, where the ground was scarred from the hundreds of fights between them, and let loose. punches and kicks flew between them, magic following soon behind, and they fell into their normal routine. Every move they made was a word, a piece of an unspoken conversation in a language only they understood.
"You've been like this all day."
Natsu dodged the hit Gray aimed at his abdomen, flipping backwards in the odd graceful manner only he seemed capable of. "I know."
Gray jumped Natsu's sweep, aiming his second punch at the pinkette's face. "Are you really okay?"
It just barely clipped Natsu's shoulder, and he responded with a flaming uppercut followed ibya high kick. "Yeah, I'm sorry for worrying you."
Gray built a small wall of ice beside him right before Natsu's leg made contact, but he smashed right through it. "What started it?"
"Well, it all started when I was born-" Natsu's leg landed neatly in Gray's palm, and the ice mage spun, then tossed the dragon slayer across the clearing.
"Fuck off, Natsu, that's not what I meant." Gray made his way over to Natsu, who was now behind the tree line.
"I just felt sad, okay?" Natsu whispered, "It happens sometimes."
"I know," Gray said softly, "I seriously think you have depression."
Natsu gave him a blank stare, "No, I just overthink things sometimes." Gray didn't believe it for a second, but he wasn't going to push.
Gray reached his hand out to the pinkette, pulling Natsu to his feet when he grabbed onto it. "Well you should stop overthinking them," He teased, "I don't like when you're mopey, Sunflower," Gray poked Natsu's cheeks, forcefully raising the corners of Natsu's lips, and they both burst out laughing.
"Yeah, okay, Snowflake."
They had gone on missions with Erza as kids, but it hadn't been like this. Now there was a girl named Lucy on their team, and she wasn't comfortable with the two of them in the same way Erza was.
When they were kids they'd all share one room and one bed, no problems, no awkwardness, and a peaceful night's sleep that only ever seemed to come to any of the three of them when they were together. It was always one big cuddle pile, and the feeling of having people they trusted with them helped more than they'd admit.
Now there were two rooms with one bed each, because Lucy refused to share with the boys unless necessary. She hadn't really wanted to share with the terrifying Titania either, but it was the lesser of the two evils.
It had taken them a good hour to convince the boys to stay by themselves, but they agreed in the end. They unconsciously moved closer to one another as they slept, eventually becoming completely intertwined. Neither one of them really minded.
The other's presence had always kept the nightmares at bay.
The times that they had decided to camp, the boys would lay their sleeping bags right beside the other's, leaving Lucy confused. They had gone to bed earlier than the girls one of those times, and the blonde had decided to ask the question she'd been wondering since joining Fairy Tail. "Why are they like that?"
The question had come from nowhere, and Erza seemed to freeze in place. After several minutes of silence, Erza turned to Lucy with the most serious face she could muster, "They're Natsu and Gray. They're they way they are, because that's who they are." Lucy seemed to be even more confused now, and Erza almost felt bad for her, "They're Natsu and Gray. Don't try to make sense of something that makes no sense itself."
Fantasia had been beautiful that year. There were all sorts of new, powerful mages in their guild, and the parade floats had been gorgeous. Of course, Fairy Tail being Fairy Tail, they'd decided to party.
The entire guild new Natsu couldn't get drunk due to his magic, but Gajeel and Wendy had told them of this wonderful spice that worked on dragons like catnip on cats. Everyone was excited to see what it would do to their hyperactive pinkette. It wasn't as interesting as they'd hoped, as most of the supposedly hilarious things that had come from Natsu's mouth had been in Dravic.
At least the dragon slayers were getting a kick out of it.
After a few hours, all but the youngest members of Fairy Tail were drunk, and Natsu, Gajeel, and Laxus had gotten high off of the newly named "Dragonnip." Wendy was finding them increasingly amusing, especially considering what the three of them were doing.
Gajeel was having a semi-intelligent conversation with Levy, but it was completely one-sided. Much like Natsu, most all of what escaped his lips was in Dravic. On the bright side, Levy, who was plastered, seemed to enjoy just listening to Gajeel's voice.
She couldn't exactly see Laxus, but she could hear the Raijinshuu's comments about him forcefully cuddling a drunk, and likewise cuddly, Freed. The image had left her in shambles for nearly half an hour.
She liked watching Natsu the most. He always said things that would make her think for hours on end. Some of them were only mind boggling, because they were ridiculous, like "Spoons are just smaller bowls on sticks," or "Accents are like fonts for speech." Several of the things he said actually made sense though, such as "If Earthland is the third planet from the sun, then aren't all problems third world problems?" Others were life changing and insane. He once spent three hours blabbing about something called the multiverse theory, and Wendy felt like her head was going to explode.
The bluenette made a point never to bring it up around him.
But right now, she couldn't tear her eyes away from him. He and a very tispy, if not drunk Gray, were sitting in the guild corner booth, or rather, Gray was sitting. Natsu's legs were thrown across the ice mage's lap as he laid across the bench like seat. The normally hostile pair was talking quietly to one another. In Dravic. where had Gray learned Dravic? Unless Natsu had-
He eyes bulged out of her head as she listened to the conversation, and she nearly fell out of her chair at what she saw.
Natsu understood that he was a little high. He new Wendy had put some of that crap in his tea, but it was just a harmless prank. He could feel Gray tracing patterns on his leg, steadily moving higher as they talked. He didn't mind. He trusted the ice mage with every fiber of his being.
"You're not sad today," He said in Dravic. Gray had asked him about the language years ago, and he had decided to have the pinkette teach it to him. Now they talked in it when ever they didn't feel like fighting, but wanted to have their own conversation. "I like when you're not sad."
"Today was nice, and everyone seemed to like our float," Natsu responded. He made no attempted to move when Gray slid down the back of the bench, laying beside him. The ice mage slid an arm under Natsu's head to pull him closer, and the pinkette hummed in satisfaction. "I'm happy."
"How happy?" The tipsiness had made Gray's words slur slightly but still understandable, and Natsu couldn't help but smile.
"I'm so happy that I could kiss you right now." Gray snorted, and Natsu ran the words through his head again, "It's an idiom," He clarified, "Something that doesn't translate right to Fiori." The pinkette tried to bury his head in Gray's chest, but the ice mage wouldn't let him.
He pulled Natsu's head upward and pressed a gently kiss to his forehead, "It might be an idiom, but I don't care to follow it literally." He started to press gentle kisses all over Natsu's face. First his cheeks, then his forehead again, then his jaw line, his eyelids, and finally his nose. By the end of it, Natsu was flushed and giggling. Gray's lips were smooth, and the gentleness with which he used them tickled.
"You're a dork." He said once he could speak again, and he returned the favor to Gray. Natsu bit at his lips out of habit, making the dry and chapped, but Gray didn't care. After a while of the back and forth,he tangled a hand in the soft pink hair of his rival and kissed him on the lips. The one kiss turned to many as the pair dissolved into laughter every time they tried to reconnect.
Neither one of them noticed Wendy's fangirling.
They had fallen asleep in that guild that night, and the only one who wasn't surprised was Erza.
"You know," Gray said after a fight one day, "I've been wondering for a while, but what are we?"
Natsu's musical laughter tore through the air as he turned to his once rival, "Aren't you the one who told me not to overthink things?" Gray flushed and decked the pinkette in the shoulder for good measure. "We're Natsu and Gray, Gray and Natsu, and labels are for cans. We're us, and that's that."
Gray tilted his head thinking about it. "Well, us is a nice thing to be," he finally responded, and he leaned over to kiss the pinkette on the cheek. Natsu pulled himself over to Gray and curled into his side.
"Damn straight it is," Natsu agreed.
Gray raised an eyebrow, "I don't think that works for us."
Natsu puffed out his cheeks before completely ridding his face of emotion, "Well, damn gay then." Gray lost it, and Natsu wasn't too far behind. Once the hysteria was gone, he pulled the slayer into another kiss.
Erza watched the scene in front of her with a gentle smile. She'd known from years of watching them that they were the light in each other's darkness.
She couldn't wait until they decided to tell the guild.
Words: 3,180
Hi guys! I hope you enjoyed the massive fluff bomb. For those of you who don't know, I have started a multi-chapter story (which you can read about on my profile. It's called "Inhuman"), and it is where several of the things mentioned in these one-shots originated. It's very weird and will be very long by the time I'm finished. If you're interested, I'd really love to have some feedback on it. :P
I wanted to add more to this chapter, but it was getting really long. I'm sorry if you wanted more of this. I might write more for this and post it as "Gradually (Extended version)". I don't know yet.
As always:
Constructive criticism is always welcome, and if you find a typo, don't hesitate to point it out!
Reviews/comments are my 90% motivation.
Love you guys,
-Jinx