Intoxication

Lucy's gaze washed over the figure before her, an amused smirk working its way onto her lips.

She watched as the boy peered around the room, head swiveling from the left to the right, like he was looking for something specific; she made note of how red his ears and cheeks were, and tucked the image into the back of her mind, finding it sort of cute. The pink haired boy stumbled about, mumbling something incoherent under his breath as he staggered along, his eyebrows tugging down as his face was enveloped in a frustrated pout.

His dark eyes landed on her, and his face instantly lit up. No longer was a frown etched into his pores—no, now he was completely made of sunshine, beaming and bright. The color of his cheeks deepened as he made his way over to the blonde, bumping into a table or two along the way.

"Lucy," The boy mumbled, words slurred. His lips were twisted into a joyous smile. "When did you get here?"

Lucy's smirk intensified as she watched Natsu struggle to stand straight. "I brought you here, Natsu."

He blinked at her. "Oh." The second of confusion seemed to pass, and once again his face burst into a look of utter joy. "Right."

Lucy crossed her arms, unable to stop a smile from pinching at her cheeks. "You're drunk."

"Am not!"

"How much have you had?"

He snorted. "Tons."

"Knew it."

It wasn't like she hadn't seen the dragon slayer drunk before, but it was a rare sight. Not that he wasn't absolutely willing, but because his body temperature seemed to burn the alcohol off before it could affect him; more often than not, he'd get a slight buzz but be sober as could be ten minutes later.

He must've been going pretty hard to maintain this level of drunkenness—and the beer in his hand signalled that he wasn't quite ready to stop.

She'd been watching him all night, making sure he didn't overdo it. She wasn't about to stop him—boy could make his own decisions, and if his decision was to have a raging headache in an hour, she wasn't about to butt in—but she did like to check up on him, make sure he was alright.

Not to mention, he was absolutely hilarious when he was drunk.

The first stage of Natsu's drunken rampage was to fight every single person in the guild—or at least attempt to. He'd stumbled around the place, slightly buzzed, insulting everyone in his wake. Laxus, Gildarts, Erza, Gray, everyone. He'd even made his way up to Lucy and attempted to engage her in battle—'Luce, if you were really my best friend, you'd fight me'—unsuccessfully, of course.

He was a real troublemaker at this point in the evening; Lucy had to make her rounds, make amends to all of the people he'd pissed off. Lucy settled everything before the guild decided to gang up and attack him—although he was far too tipsy to realize she'd just saved his ass. But she didn't mind. He was her best friend, after all.

The second stage of Natsu's drunken evening was performing. With a couple more drinks flowing their his veins, he'd become a real entertainer.

He hopped up onto the stage after encountering Lucy, interrupting Gajeel's jazz performance. He stumbled up to the mic and grumbled, "Stop the music, shut it off, Jesus."

"Oi!" Gajeel protested, peeved. There was nothing he took more seriously than his jazz performances. "Get outta here, fire-breath!"

Lucy had cringed in her seat, afraid a fight would break out. Lord knew she wasn't capable of splitting up Natsu and Gajeel. "Oh, no."