Life After Near Death

Pain and Pleasure

"Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken."

― Neil Gaiman

When the fun was at last over and friends waved goodbye to one another, eager to get back to their homes and in front of a warm fire, Natsu dragged Gray home in the sled. Happy flew along, but he was getting cold, so Natsu encouraged him to go to the guild, which was right down the hill, and warm up. He promised to meet Happy back at home.

Gray felt weird, sitting in a sled and being pulled down the street, with people looking at them oddly. However, it was better than the pity people showed with the wheelchair. Plus it was more fun.

"Yah, horsey!" Gray shouted teasingly.

"Bastard! I am not your horse," Natsu shouted back.

"Yah! Yah! Giddy up, pony."

"Shut up!"

Gray laughed at making the Dragon Slayer annoyed. He always felt guilty about making Juvia take care of him, but somehow, having Natsu forced into caring for his needs was far more fun.

They reached his apartment, but the sled was large and would not fit inside. Natsu pulled Gray up onto his back, placed the sled against a storage room wall, and carried Gray up the stairs.

Natsu grumbled, "You are seriously heavy, bastard."

"Yah!"

"Stop with the damn yah-yah crap."

Gray chuckled deviously.

Since he knew Gray could not see his face, Natsu also smiled. Hearing Gray laughing again was worth even carrying his heavy ass up the stairs.

Finally, they were inside Gray's apartment, and Natsu unceremoniously dumped Gray into the wheelchair.

"What do you need, popsicle pants? Hot tea? A bath?"

"I really need to warm this leg back up," he said, poking the dead leg. "I can adjust my body temperature everywhere else, but I'm never sure if it's working for my legs."

"Sure thing."

Natsu rushed off to the bathroom. He began to fix a hot bath, but then he realized that Gray was sensitive to heat. He adjusted the water to be a bit cooler, but still hot enough. Then he went back to fetch Gray.

"I'll stick around long enough for you to wash up," Natsu said as he wheeled Gray to the tub. "Do you need help getting in?"

"Yeah, if you don't mind. I've slipped a few times trying to do it on my own."

"Well, you can strip yourself. I ain't doing that!"

Gray removed his clothes, and Natsu put them in a hamper. When he came back and saw Gray sitting naked in the wheelchair, Natsu gulped. He had offered to help, but he just now realized that meant lifting Gray's naked body.

He carefully grabbed around behind the knees, easing the legs up while bracing the wheelchair so it would not roll or flip. Gray helped by wrapping an arm around Natsu's neck and shifting his lower body. Then Natsu lifted him up into his arms. Gray's body was cold, but his legs were really icy. He looked down at them with worry. The left leg was deformed, the chunk blasted out of it could not fully heal, and the skin that grew over was discolored, paper thin, and lumpy as it covered what had been torn bits of muscle and tendons. He saw a pink ice burn on Gray's toes.

"It looks like you might have frost nip," he pointed out.

"I was afraid of that," Gray frowned. He tried to look at his legs, but he was held too awkwardly. "I got frost nip a lot when I was still learning Ice-Make magic. I trained hard to learn how to adjust my body temperature, but if I can't feel my leg, I can't judge the effects of the cold."