Fairy Tail: Making the Connection
Lucy woke in the middle of the night with moonlight shining on her face. She was lying on her back in a strange bed in the middle of a small, unfamiliar room. She hurt all over.
“Oh,” she said quietly, “I guess I must have been injured pretty badly, then.”
A wave of heat from the floor on the right side of the bed and a blast of cold from the left gave her Natsu and Gray’s positions. The clinking of her keys against Erza’s armor coming from the direction of the door told Lucy where the fourth member of their team had taken up her vigil.
Well. No time to waste, then. Erza was usually more or less stable by the time she woke up, heaven only knew the other two weren’t going to set themselves to rights. Lucy reached out towards the source of the heat and wiggled her fingers in invitation. Natsu was up on the bed and lying next to her in a flash the instant she retracted her arm. His eyes were wide and scared, and he was very careful not to touch her at all. Lucy smiled, because she knew he could see it.
She turned onto her side facing Natsu, slowly and carefully, so she wouldn’t flinch where his dragon-sharp senses could detect it. He must have guessed that it hurt to move, though, because he held his breath until she was done. He let it all out in a rush once she was settled. Lucy smiled again and gently caught his left hand, which was hovering fitfully in the air over her body. She guided it to an undamaged spot on her waist, just above her hip.
“This doesn’t hurt,” she whispered, holding Natsu’s hand in place until he understood that he was welcome. His eyes teared up briefly when Lucy pulled her hand away, and his fingers tightened against her skin.
“Don’t bruise her, Natsu,” Erza ordered quietly, without moving away from the door she was ostensibly guarding.
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “Natsu won’t hurt me.”
Natsu let out a shaky breath and slowly gentled his touch.
“Natsu won’t hurt me,” Lucy repeated, just to be sure he heard. Natsu wasn’t stupid, but he did tend to oversimplify. Being away from Lucy hurt him. Being unable to protect Lucy hurt both of them. Being close to her would fix it. Eventually.
Gray wasn’t like Natsu. He wouldn’t make the first move, even with an implicit invitation. So, Erza took the decision out of his hands. Lucy started at the sudden sound of her keys jangling in Erza’s hand. “Gray,” Erza said evenly, “take these to Lucy.”
Lucy listened carefully as Gray stood up and heard only the near-silent slide of skin on skin. “Clothes first,” she ordered firmly. Just because Natsu and Gray had both seemed to misplace their sex drives somewhere between the competitiveness and the adrenaline addiction didn’t mean that Lucy was all that comfortable with Gray sliding into bed with her stark naked.
Gray exhaled softly and, from the sound of rustling cloth behind her, went to do as Lucy asked. Then the left side of the bed dipped beneath his weight. Lucy opened her right hand to allow Gray to drop the keys into it, then closed her left around his wrist before he could withdraw. He could have easily broken her grip, but she knew he wouldn’t.
“Stay,” she murmured.
Gray slumped over her, but he, like Natsu, was very careful not to touch her. Lucy turned her head slightly and looked at Gray out of the corner of her eye. Even if she could move easily, she really didn’t want to spook the boys right when she had them where she wanted them.
“Lie down?” she said, the tone of her voice making the command sound like a request. For a second, she still wasn’t sure he’d do it. Then Gray’s eyes slid away from her face to where Natsu lay on her opposite side. Lucy didn’t catch the unspoken communication that passed between the two boys, but whatever it was, it had the desired effect.
“Yeah,” Gray breathed. “Yeah, okay.”
Lucy released him and turned her head away. Gray settled himself at her back, just a hairsbreadth away from her body. Lucy sighed contentedly when Gray’s hand settled lightly on her shoulder. The feeling of tension in the room lessened considerably at the sound. Still, there was something missing.
“How long…?” she asked.
“Five days since you left on your solo job. Four and a half, approximately, since we started looking for you. Three days since we intercepted Loki on the road, covered in blood and carrying your unconscious body. This is the first time you’ve regained consciousness,” Erza reported, a little too quietly.
“We didn’t even know you were hurt,” Gray added shakily.
“Why were you looking for me, then?”
Erza fell silent. Gray’s hand tightened convulsively on her shoulder.
“Don’t bruise her,” Natsu hissed. Gray immediately relented, stopping just short of breaking contact. Lucy waited expectantly, making a mental note to do some guilt control on both of them later. She stared directly at Natsu, who-predictably-folded after only a few seconds.
“Didn’t feel right,” he muttered.
“What didn’t?” Lucy prodded. “Erza?”
“I felt it, too,” Erza confirmed, “but I couldn’t explain it, either.”
“It wasn’t that we had to find you no matter what,” Gray said softly. “It just…”
“Didn’t feel right,” Natsu insisted. “Like an itch. I wanted to find you to see if you knew how to make it go away.”
“Yes,” Gray said at her back.
“Essentially,” Erza agreed from her post by the door.
Lucy thought back to that disaster of a mission. She remembered the creeping feeling of wrongness that had settled between her shoulder blades, the sudden spike of fear at realizing that things could go horribly wrong and no one was around to guard her back. Then she remembered what came after it was all over. She drifted in and out of consciousness during the desperate rush to a doctor and the subsequent treatment of her wounds. The whole time, she was only aware of two things: 1) she hurt and 2) she was not alone. Natsu, Gray and Erza were by her side the entire time. Lucy smiled.
“You’re in luck,” she told Natsu, “I know exactly how to make it go away.”
“How?” Natsu asked.
“I’ll tell you in the morning,” Lucy replied with a yawn. “I’m getting a little tired.”
“Sleep, then,” Erza ordered, sounding almost content for the first time since Lucy woke up. “I will stand guard.”
Lucy closed her eyes and, surrounded by her friends, she slept.