I just have one word for you all: Gruvia

            Lucy woke up not enveloped in Natsu's wings this time, but with his head in her lap!! Her hand was still tangled in his hair as she was lying on the floor. So he had finally fallen asleep first!! Haha!! She didn't really know why she was happy about that, but she was. It was like an accomplishment for her! She was a person who gets tired easily and so was proud that Natsu had fallen asleep on her for once. Probably because she had been petting his head, otherwise there was no way he would have fallen asleep first. Didn't matter though, it was still her victory, and she was not going to talk herself out of it by thinking that!

She slowly sat up so as not to wake him up, and looked at him. He looked so peaceful, nothing like the rowdy boy he is when he's awake, and he had a ghost of a smile on his lips. His tangled pink hair made him all the cuter. It really did suit him. Her gaze traveled the length of his body from his muscles to his fine pectorals, down to his abs that she could see through the bandages. Well the part that wasn't ripped by the gash on his abdomen. Her cheeks flamed up although there was absolutely no reason for her to be embarrassed. He was sleeping and there was no shame in ogling him if he didn't know she was ogling him. Sure, she saw abs everyday since Gray took his shirt off constantly, but Gray was practically her brother. Natsu was different, he... well he was Natsu, and she would rather die than him see her ogling his abs.

She forcefully removed her gaze from his abs to his wings. They were so beautiful and she loved his red scales. They were also very big, well they had to be to be able to fly him around comfortably. She wondered what it was like to fly. It must be wonderful. Nothing but blue sky ahead of you, the wind in your hair, no rules, nothing to restrain you. You're just free. And all of a sudden she felt terrible that Natsu wasn't able to fly because of the stupid gash in his wing. He must miss it terribly. But then again, if he hadn't gotten that injury, she might have never met him since instead of crashing in her spot he would've been able to fly somewhere else. It was funny how fate worked, one bad thing led to something amazing! And suddenly Lucy didn't feel so bad anymore.

After a few minutes of fooling around with Natsu's hair, she decided it was time to wake him up.

"Natsu, wake up," she cooed while prodding his cheek with her finger. "Natsu. Natsu. Natsu!"

Natsu started up, and looked around with crazed eyes while saying, "What? What happened? Are we being attacked again?!"

"What are you talking about?" Lucy asked bewildered.

Natsu turned to look at her and relaxed.

"Oh, Luce. It's just you."

"What was all that about just now?" Lucy asked.

"What? Oh, nothing! I just didn't know where I was for a second there. Hahahaha!" he said, trying to laugh it off.

"Where did you think you were?" she asked, cocking her head like he normally would.

He looked away and started flicking his tail back and forth nervously.

"Natsu?" she said, putting her hand gently over his.

He turned to look at her and when he did Lucy saw such sadness and helplessness in his big emerald flecked eyes.

"Tell me what's wrong," she said softly.

His tail flicking got faster as his eyes kept darting away and coming back.

"You can't do anything about it," he finally murmured.

"What can't I do anything about?" she asked in the same tone.

"You should go," he said. "You're gonna be late."

"But-"

"Go! They're gonna notice you're not back if you don't go now!" he said forcefully.

"Natsu... Ok..." she said, standing and picking up her bag. "See you later," she said with a small frown on her face.

"See ya..." Natsu said as he tried flashing her a smile.

Lucy waved and started back to the castle. That smile was forced. And his eyes when he had looked at her, she had never seen look so sad and... helpless.

Turns out Nasu was right because as soon as she had gotten back into her bed Juvia came in and patted her shoulder.

"Lucy-san, it's time to wake up," she said.

Lucy sat up and stretched.

"Good morning, Juvia. Hey, are you ok?" she asked, suddenly concerned because of the frown on Juvia's face.

"Yes, of course Juvia is!" she was quick to reply, but Lucy gave her a look that basically said: don't you lie to me!

"Okay, Juvia is not fine," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "The truth is Juvia is nervous to see Gray-sama this morning... You know, because of what happened yesterday..."

"You shouldn't be scared, Juvia. Gray is Gray, and he knows it's not your fault that you didn't know it was a sad day for him. Plus, I have a feeling that he really appreciated your gift," she hinted.

"But Gray-sama left Juvia's gift outside, how could he appreciate it?" she asked, confused.

"You'll see," Lucy said with a sly smile on her lips.

And as if on cue, there was a knocking on the door before Gray entered the room.

"G-Gray-sama," Juvia spluttered before walking towards him, her gaze focused solely on her feet.

Once before him, she bowed at the waist and said, "Gomene, Gray-sama. Juvia-Juvia didn't know that it was Ul's death anniversary and Juvia tried to make you happy. Juvia is terribly sorry, Gray-sama! If you cannot forgive Juvia, Juvia will understand."

Gray seemed taken aback for a second, then he rubbed the back of his neck nervously saying, "N-No, you don't have anything to apologize for, Juvia. You had no idea, and I should have told you instead of just brushing you off like that. Oh, and thank you," he said, digging around in his shirt until he pulled out the scarf Juvia had made him. "For this. I know you spent a lot of time making it, and it's actually really warm. So, thank you," he finished with a big blush painted on his cheeks.

Juvia's wide, sapphire eyes were brimming with tears of joy. She then threw herself at Gray thanking him over and over again while he became a stuttering mess trying to tell her that she didn't need to thank him so much. Then she pulled back and pulled a big pillow out of nowhere with a print of her in a bathing suit on it and said, "Then please accept a Juvia body pillow, Gray-sama!!"

"WHA?! J-Juvia! What the heck is this?!" answered a very flustered Gray.

"It's a Juvia body pi-"

"I know what it is!!" He said, cutting her off. "But what on Earth would I do with that?!"

Lucy facepalmed. He really shouldn't have asked that...

"Well," Juvia said, fidgeting and blushing ferociously. "Sleep next to it..."

"E-E-EH?!!!" yelled a very, very flustered Gray. "WHY ON EARTH WOULD I DO THAT?!!!!"

"So that Juvia will be with you day and night!!" she said excitedly.

Lucy laughed. Their antics never ceased to amuse her. She left them to it while she went to pick out a gown. Yay. She absentmindedly went into her gigantic walk-in closet and started rifling through the gowns as her mind drifted back to the strange way Natsu had been acting this morning. She frowned then scowled. Why on Earth wouldn't he tell her what he was so upset about?!! She had told him when she had been harassed!! But... Natsu wasn't her, and he had looked so upset... Lucy's scowl dissappeared, she had no right be mad at him for this. She'd just have to make him tell her what he was preoccupied about! Easier said than done... Natsu could be pretty stubborn when he wanted to be. Seriously.

Lucy grabbed a pink gown out of the closet and turned around to everyone gathered in her room to see Cana on the floor laughing hysterically, Erza also laughing very hard but trying not to show it, Juvia with hearts in her eyes hugging Gray with all her might, and Gray still a hot blabbering mess.

"All right, everybody except Juvia clear out! I need to change," Lucy declared.

"You heard her," Erza said, immediately ceasing all laughter. "Out!"

"I-I don't think... I can move..." Cana said in between laughs.

"Oh, yes you can, Cana," Erza said, glaring at her.

"Yes, yes I can," Cana said, hurrying to her feet.

Juvia was reluctant to let go of her Gray-sama, but complied, leaving a heap of Gray on the floor. Erza grabbed Gray, tossed him over her shoulder with one arm, and promptly exited the room with a drunk Cana trailing behind her. Erza's strength amazed and scared Lucy. It really did.

"All right, Juvia. I want to wear this one!" Lucy said twirling the dress in front of her.

"Juvia has never seen Lucy-san the slightest bit excited about wearing a gown. Is everything alright?"

"Huh, yeah, I guess," Lucy said, looking at the dress and wondering why she liked it this much.

Then it hit her, it was pink, the color of Natsu's hair! Her cheeks flushed up and she had to bite the inside of her cheeks to keep from grinning.

"Lucy-san?" Juvia asked.

"N-Nothing's wrong, Juvia! I just... like pink is all."

"Oh? Ok, if Lucy-san says so."

Lucy nodded.

"Now then, I'd better get ready or else I'm gonna miss breakfast!"

"Hai!" Juvia said, smiling at her.

Lucy went down to breakfast escorted by Gray, who was now stable enough to walk.

"So," Lucy said, with a sly smile.

"I really don't like it when you use that tone," he said, cringing.

"What tone?" she asked innocently.

"I don't like that smile either," he whined.

"What? I just wanted to ask you something, brother."

"You never actually call me that," he said, dubiously.

"Actually, you'd be surprised how much I call you that when I'm talking to-" Lucy cut herself off. "Anyway," she smiled.

"Lucy," he said. "Talking to who?"

"Anyway," she said with more force.

"Lucy," he warned.

"When are you going to ask Juvia out?" Lucy asked, successfully making Gray forget all about her little slip up. Oops.

"W-What?" he said, getting a hold of himself. "Why would I do that?"

"Gray, you're practically my brother. You think I don't know you? I see the way you look at her, and when you try to be annoyed when she hugs you every morning, I see that tiny smile you think no one sees. So why haven't you asked her out yet?"

"I don't know," he said, unconsciously taking his pants off. "I'm just not good at this whole thing..."

"No one starts out being good at love," Lucy said. "But you learn along the way. Are you sure there isn't some other reason you're not sure about this?"

He took his vest off, then sighed and said, "I'm... I'm scared..."

"Scared of what?" she asked, stopping in her tracks.

"That she won't like me anymore when I'm with her, or that I'll disappoint her," he muttered.

"What? Gray, first of all, Juvia doesn't just 'like' you, she loves you. A lot. Do you know how much she talks about you? She could never stop loving you and you could never disappoint her. You know that don't you?"

"But what if-"

"Don't 'what if' me, you know perfectly well that Juvia could never stop loving you and you love her too, so go ask her out right now before I tell Erza!!" she said angrily.

It annoyed her that he knew Juvia and was still worried about her rejecting him. If anything, she'd probably melt at his feet because she was so happy.

Gray paled and said, "Ok, ok! I'll go! Please don't tell Erza that I'm being stupid!"

"Well, at least you know that you're being stupid," she huffed.

"Yeah, yeah, but don't tell anybody I ever admitted that!!"

"I won't! Now go!" she said, shooing him.

She watched Gray run off, trying to grab the clothes he's stripped out of on the way. She was totally going to tell someone that Gray admitted he was being stupid. She couldn't pass up a chance like that! I'll probably just tell Natsu later, she thought as she continued down the stairs to breakfast. Oh, yeah. Natsu. She still didn't know what she was going to do about that boy. Oh well, she still had the whole day to think about it, right?

"That's pathetic, Lucy!" Erza yelled. "Put your back into it!"

"I-I'm sorry, Erza," Lucy panted.

"Don't be sorry! Just focus!"

"Yes, maam," Lucy said, fully throwing herself into her close combat lesson.

It was kind of hard to focus because she was this close to seeing Natsu and she still had no idea what she was going to say to him to get him to open up to her. Suddenly she was smacked down to the floor with such force she felt the wind get knocked out of her. She saw Erza's boots come in front of her.

"Lucy! You should have seen that coming! What's wrong with you today?!" she asked, crouching in front of her.

Lucy sucked in three long breaths before she was able to sit up and face Erza. She looked into her dark brown eyes and saw that she wasn't going to let this go.

She sighed and said, "Sorry, Erza, I'm just not in it today..."

"As I can see," Erza said. "What's on your mind, Lucy?"

"I'm just... concerned about someone," she said.

"Oh, who?" she asked curiously.

"N-No one," she said, hoping Erza wasn't going to pry into it too much. "What do you do when someone doesn't want to let you help them?"

"Well, I think the best thing to do is to make sure that the other person knows that you're there for them and that you're ready to listen," she said, sitting down next to her.

"But what if they don't think that you can help them?" she asked twisting her hands in her lap.

"It's been my experience that when someone says that you can't help them, it's often because they feel that they have to carry the burden all by themselves, but what they don't know is that just by listening to their problem, you are helping them because they feel liberated by the weight even though you didn't physically help them. So by showing that you're there for them and ready to listen you are helping," she explained in a gentle voice.

Lucy contemplated that for a moment, maybe that is why Natsu didn't want to tell her, he didn't want to put whatever problem he had on her shoulders too. She couldn't just let him keep that all bottled up inside, it would eat away at him, and Lucy would know, she did the same thing when her mother died. It ate away at her her whole life because she had been worried that everything was somehow her fault, even though she had been seven at the time and could not have been expected to do anything, until she finally decided to tell Gray how she was feeling. He had made her finally be able to accept that it really was not her fault her mother had died. That's how they had become so close in the first place, and she remembered how free she had felt after she had told him and that she had been glad she had listened to him. She was sure Natsu would be glad he had listened to her too! Hopefully...

"Thanks, Erza!" she said with a smile.

"I am always here to help Lucy," she answered with her own smile.

They both got up and Lucy said, "So, shall we continue?"

"Actually, it's about time for you to go to bed. We took up the remains of our time with our little conversation," Erza replied.

"Oh! Sorry, Erza!" she said, embarrassed she had wasted her time.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "But I will grind you to the ground next session for your inattention today!" she said with a fire in her eyes.

Lucy gulped audibly.

"I expect nothing less," she said in a nervous voice with an even more nervous smile.

"Of course you don't, why would you?" she said, flipping her scarlet hair proudly.

Lucy laughed openly, Erza could be the scariest person in the world sometimes, but she could also act like a normal 19 year old as well. Well, normal as in the special category called Erza normal.

"Oh! I forgot to tell you that I finally talked to Gray about Juvia," Lucy said to her.

"Really?!" she asked, suddenly being very girly. "What happened?!"

"I convinced him to go ask Juvia out," Lucy stated proudly, crossing her arms.

"How? He's been avoiding it like the plague!" she said bitterly.

"I know! He was being really ridiculous about the whole thing! So, I, um, sort of pressured him by threatening that I would tell you how ridiculous he was being," she said, not knowing if she would be happy or upset about that fact.

"And you were absolutely right to do so!" Erza stated. "I would have killed him 100 times over had he not asked her out," she said, drawing out her sword to punctuate her point.

That's what I was counting on, she thought to herself.

"Come on! Let's go see if it went well!" Lucy said excitedly, grabbing Erza by the arm and running off with her.

Except that as soon as they exited the training room, Erza was the one dragging Lucy up the stairs, and even though she couldn't get her feet underneath her, she felt nothing but excitement to know how it had gone because if everything went well she had just hooked up two of her best friends with the person they loved the most in the world. Mind blown.

Erza slammed open the door to Lucy's room since that's where Juvia mostly stayed all day, and sure enough there they were, making out on her bed.

Lucy sucked in a breath and Erza gasped in front of her. Gray and Juvia's heads snapped up and they both blinked at them before blushing a furious shade of red and pulling away from each other embarrassedly.

"I'd say things worked out great," Erza whispered in her ear, smiling.

"I know!" she whispered back, jumping in place. Then she ran over to the new and VERY embarrassed couple and hugged them saying, "I am SO glad you two finally got together!!"

She drew back and saw Juvia smiling from ear to ear at her while Gray turned away grumbling so no one could see the big smile painted on his face. Erza came and hugged Gray and Juvia to her armored chest, resulting in a bang as their faces hit the armor as she cried tears of happiness while congratulating them on being a couple. Lucy was laughing and smiling too, happy for her friends. She was so going to tell Natsu about this big thing! Wait! Natsu! He was so going to kill her when she got there!!!!

Author's note: Hope you liked the touch of Gruvia I put in there. I couldn't help myself. :p Anywho, could someone just leave one tiny comment just so I know people are actually reading this. Wow, this is what I've been reduced to, fishing for comments... I'm such a sad person... Anyway, I am no longer in Paris but in Avignon. Yay! We drove here from Paris, but it was the worst car ride ever because my little sister got sick, puked three times, and one of the times she full out puked on me. Worst. day. ever. But the city's great so whatever. Anyway I'm rambling now so I'll just say bye for now. Bye for now! 

See what I did there? I'm sorry, that was lame, I'll go now...

NaluLuvr