Little Thief

Chapter 4

Lucy thought she must have been going mad. A thought kept on resurfacing in her head that just wouldn't bugger off, and it was this: if she weren't here, if she had more of the comforts of home (of course her mind immediately went to better food), if she could garantee the safety of her friends, if she could step outside and breath in fresh air then...well, her stay here would be almost welcome.

Natsu had started to accompany her on her daily wanderings through the tunnels that stretched deep into the mountain. They began to have mutual conversations with each other, not just exchanging stories. Natsu was becoming a better and better audience by the day and it was revealed that the dragon was quite goofy when the mood permitted. He would smile toothily at her whilst he boasted stories of how he beat an iron dragon named Gajeel in a one on one fight. Lucy faintly recalled that they're was an iron dragon sighting somewhere in the Pergrande Kingdom right before she left on this journey but opted not to tell Natsu about that.

They slept closer together nowadays, Lucy would usually curl up on her cot and Natsu would rest against a large pillar with his head right next to her body. Sometimes, when Natsu was telling her stories about his treasure, she would doze off and wake to the sensation that the whole ground was moving. Only to realize that Natsu had moved her so that she lay on his warm stomach and away from the uncomfortable hoard below, the movement was just the dragon's large breath. How Natsu managed to sleep on the rather uncomfortable fields of gold for two centuries Lucy would never know.

Other times when Lucy slept she would wake up to find Natsu in his smaller form watching her with a mixture of greed and fondness. He always stayed a respectable distance away after the kissing fiasco, and allowed Lucy to come to him. Slowly she began to migrate towards him for warmth in these icy halls and even allowed the dragon to embrace her, making it clear that that was all that he would be doing. Natsu held her close to his chest and whispered stories in her ear that caused goosebumps to appear on her flesh. A pleased rumbling, happy, sound would eminated from his chest and Lucy couldn't not relax into his hold when he did that. It was actually quite nice, when he did that.

Their closeness in sleeping quarters opted for a rather mortifying morning when her cycle had finally caught up with her. She had completely forgotten about it, frankly she didn't think she could blame herself because she had no way of telling how long she had stayed here. Obviously it had been about four weeks. But Natsu had been a mess, pacing back and fourth and making angry chuffs and even whining as Lucy attempted to clean the stains out of her blankets and trousers whilst the blonde tried to explain to him the menstrual cycle. To say that her explanation made him more uneasy would be an understatement, especially when Lucy would grimace throughout the days to come with discomfort.

During one of their explorations, Lucy had discovered a deep pool of icy cold water. Water trickling down steadily from the ceiling and into the large pool. Lucy had been giddy, she smelt rancid from not washing her body in well over a month and had jumped right in with her clothes still on. Barely making the time to toe her boots off. When she was submerged the air left her body as the freezing water crushed her. She broke the surface and let out a shaky breath, Natsu standing at the edge of the pool with an annoyed snarl. Her body had already began to tremble as she began to stiffly swim back towards Natsu who hauled her up.

The pinkette mumbled something about her being a weirdo before he held her to his chest and rose his body temperature to warm her up. Lucy sighed, her shivers slowly coming to a stop as Natsu sat her down in between his legs and used his scorching hot hands to warm her freezing toes. This gave Lucy an idea. "Natsu!" She exclaimed, a smile spreading across her face.

"What is it?" Natsu murmured in her ear as he rubbed her arms slowly with his hands to heat them back up.

"How high can you raise your body temperature?" She asked, turning in his hold to look at his face.