Chapter 20

Natsu's POV

I can't stop looking at her. Lucy dozed peacefully next to me at I ran my fingers through her hair making sure not to wake her. Her head on my chest making me feel whole as she snuggled closer to me. I released her hair and wrapped my arms around her holding her close. My match would be starting soon, I don't know exactly what time it is but I could feel it. I groaned a little, I guess I should concentrate my hearing towards the stadium. 

After several seconds I hear cheering and my stomach drops. "That was Gajeel and Gildarts. An amazing match to be sure but the winner is Gildarts!" Master announced. Fuck I'm late. "We will now be taking a brief 30 minute break and Natsu and Laxus match will be next!" Wait they rearranged the matches? I'm confused but relieved. 

I snuggle into Lucy's sweet neck kissing her awake. "Time to wake up my Queen," I purr in her ear before tickling it with my nose. 

"Okay, okay I'm awake. Let's hurry so we aren't late." She giggled. We take a quick shower and run through the streets of Magnolia towards the guild. We meet Happy as we are leaving the house. 

"Hurry you two you're the last matches of the night!" He yells and Lucy grabs him and we practically fly there jumping from building to building and we arrive just as Master is arriving back at the mic. I blow a short burst of fire into the air getting his attention and I see him smiling. 

"Now time for another fiery or electrifying match! Natsu Dragneel the fire dragon slayer and Laxus Dreyar the lighting dragon slayer!" The crowd goes wild. "The match was put off due to unforeseen circumstances but the winner will retake the first match line up tomorrow!" 

Laxus and I take our places he is smirking at me, "I hope your unforeseen circumstances were enjoyable?" He teased. 

I can't help the big silly grin on my face, "Oh, you have no idea." He faltered not expecting me to answer like that. I turn around and hold up the Fairy Tail signal something that everyone has been doing when they are facing another member of Fairy Tail. Which of course has most of the audience cheer louder as they realize that we get flashier, louder, tougher and harder against each other than the others. 

Lucy's POV

Natsu is talking about embarrassing stuff making me slightly red. I cover my face with my hand trying to look natural as I watched. The only ones who heard were the dragon slayers and Wendy was bright red like a tomato. I reach into the bag I grabbed as we were running out of the house and handed Wendy a cute pair of censoring headphones that looked like little dark blue cat ears that match her hair. "Put these on it will help," I say as she takes them putting them on. "You won't hear those kinds of things so long as you wear them."

"Thank you Lucy!" She squealed and put them on. Now we won't have to worry about ruining little Wendy's innocence any more. They are made to cover the ears and block all noise and instead receives all the sounds through the cat ears and filters out sexual comments and innuendos leaving the listener just as innocent as before the comments were said. It took a long time to find a pair and I have another smaller pair of pink ones for Asuka. The headset is only as powerful as the listeners natural hearing so it shouldn't impede upon her hearing any. 

Natsu and Laxus are having a good fight but I could see Natsu struggling to keep himself in check. Natsu must have heard me talking to Wendy I'm sure all the slayers had so he was talking low and dirty during his fight throwing Laxus off. 

"She tasted so sweet you wouldn't believe how amazing it is." I turn bright red as well as the rest of the dragon slayers. The only ones not red was Natsu and, thankfully, Wendy. I guess the headset works.

Erza looks back at me about to say something until she saw my red face and looked around to see all the other red faced slayers who all sat nearby. Then looked at Wendy seeing she was perfectly fine. She looked at me, "Explain."

I pointed at Wendy's headphones, "Censoring headphones," then I pointed at Natsu, "Uncensored mate." My face was getting redder and redder as Natsu talked. 

"Does Natsu need to be taught what is appropriate to say and what's not?" she asked me emitting a dark aura. 

"No, I'll take care of it. To be fair Laxus did start it." I sigh as Natsu started sending a flurry of flaming punches at Laxus. 

"Hey I did not!" Laxus yelled out towards us even Erza heard him and raised an eyebrow at me. 

"Yeah he did. But that's besides the point." I sigh. 

"I'm sorry Luce I'll do better. I promise." Natsu whispered to me. 

"Thanks Natsu." I respond without thinking. 

"Wait you can talk to each other that easily?" Erza asked me. 

"Well yeah, we can hear the stadium from home, if we listen for it," I shrug. 

"You can hear that far? That's halfway across town!" Erza and Gray exclaim. 

"We can hear you in the guild until we get to the train station, but we have to concentrate pretty hard. At first we couldn't not hear you it's why Natsu and I took so many missions when we first got back. Anything to keep from hearing all the noise around us." I groan. "But then we started getting used to it. It still hurts a lot but it's not so terrible anymore."

I looked up from the fight and looked at Erza and Gray. "So right now what do you hear?" Gray asked a little timidly. 

"I hear both of your hearts pounding in your chest, they sped up while I was talking. I can hear your breathing echo inside your lungs. I can hear the woman way over there trying to shush her baby who started crying. She doesn't know that her stomach is growling. I can hear Carla who went to the guild hall to get a snack for Wendy muttering to herself about Natsu and I being late. I can hear an empty train pulling in at the train station across town and the conductors cleaning up for the night. I can even hear their heartbeats. Why?" I yawn and look at Gray. 

"How can you handle all that?" he asked his eyes super wide. 

"Well at first it was like a constant explosion never any peace and quiet. But thankfully the train ride here there were only three other people and the train itself. Everytime we went by a town it got a little easier to handle a little more noise. Really it just took a lot of time. We learned that by concentrating on each other's heartbeat or breathing it helped all the other noises just go away." I yawned again after I was done talking. 

I heard Gray's heart rate shoot up and I looked at him curiously. "What?" he asked. I raised an eyebrow and smiled a little. Juvia had sat down next to him. I looked up at Natsu's match just in time to see him throw Laxus out of bounds. The referee called the match and I stood up. 

"So Gray how quick shall we make this match?" I asked him. 

He shuddered and whispered low enough I doubt anyone but Natsu and I heard him, "Just don't make me look too bad." He shuddered a little before turning away. 

"You got it," I whispered as I passed him to the arena. They cleaned up the rubble a little bit and Gray and I walked out on the field from opposite sides. 

I held up the Fairy Tail signal and he responded along with each of the other members. The referee announced begin and dove out of the way as I started by jumping up onto Aries' pink wool that I created myself using her star dress. Gray covered the field in ice just as I barely left the ground. 

"Ice Make Lance!" He had ice grow from the ground towards me in a sharp spear. 

I grinned, "Celestial arena!" I covered the already dark field with the night sky. This was particularly strong because it was after sunset. I drew my arms slowly over my head as I gathered the power of the stars to me. I began to glow and the crowd ooed and awed over the beauty of the starlight gathering around me. "Supernova!" The attack was really flashy, but not super powerful, it can still do a lot of damage if the opponent doesn't dodge though. 

Gray tries to dodge but his left arm still gets hit. I wince a little for him, he is left handed, that will slow his own magic down quite a bit. 

"Ice make hammer!" he called out anyway. He is fighting the pain in order to appear like he isn't struggling. I sigh a little allowing it hit my right foot. My fire immediately thaws it out and I switch to Taurus star dress. I summon Sagittarius and Aries to the field positioning them on a pink wool platform. I do some somersaults dodging Gray's ice and using the extra strength to leap large distances using the pink wool Aries made for me to prevent myself from touching his ice, before I switch again this time to Cancer's star dress. I'm wielding a pair of matching red swords that kind of resemble a pair of broken scissors. As Aries creates more platforms for me to safely land on and Sagittarius fires a barrage of arrows at Gray.

"Ice make cocoon!" He surrounds himself in ice with icy spikes jutting outward. "Ice make shield!" He puts outside of the cocoon. Smart he knows I'll break through at least one so he is trying to layer them. To bad for him I can break through them both. 

"Celestial Wings!" I call out growing a pair of fairy like wings that looked like they were made of stardust. I use them to increase my speed a fraction and cut through the two layers of thick ice and, turning my blades at the last second, I slam into Gray with the flat side knocking the air out of him. I use him as a spring board and flip into the air. My wings keeping me airborne. I can't fly for to long with out something to jump off of but it does give the appearance of flight when I'm actually hovering, riding the air currents. I can, and during training I have used my fire to help lift me further. Natsu and I could theoretically fly doing this. We haven't had much time to work on it though.

"Ice make bringer!" Gray wields his own set of twin ice swords and for a while we dance around each other pairing each other's blows, I hear him sigh. I guess he is satisfied with the fight so I decide to end it. 

"Meteor shower!" I call out and Gray is pummeled by the shooting stars. When it stopped the referee saw that he was knocked out cold and announced me the winner. Again the stadium roars to life cheering. I release my wings and try to shake Gray awake. When he finally wakes up he jumps back not yet realizing the fight is over. "Good match," I say smiling at him. 

He takes my outstretched hand and with a smile of his own plastered on his face. "I can't wait to see your's and Natsu's match at the end." 

"You can't imagine how excited he is," I groan. "But I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited as well." I let him lean on my shoulder as he flinched trying to walk. I can hear Natsu's low growl but ignore it holding onto Gray until Wendy got to the field to take him instead. She healed him completely giving me a little grin. She knew perfectly well that Natsu and I were going to tease him really bad tonight. We all quickly left for the guild for drinks and I heard Carla's wings coming towards me. 

"You gave her a censoring headset!" She called out before she got to me. I nodded my head my grin still on my face from the conversation I had been having with Levy. "What all do they censor?"

I frowned a minute and thought back, "The more colorful cursing and sexual phrases or innuendos." I thought some more before saying, "That should be it, why?"

She actually hugged me throwing me off guard for a second before I returned it. "Thank you." She sniffled and coughed to cover it up. 

I smiled at her, "You're very welcome." 

She left again and I turned back to Levy. "Awe it's so cute that she cares so much for Wendy!" Levy gushed at the exchange. 

I just smiled in response, "Well, it's not like there was much choice considering all the older slayers are either mated or about to mate." I said with a slight smile taking a bite of my yogurt. 

"What are you saying? You and Natsu are the only mated slayers right?" she nervously laughed. 

"Are we now? That's news to me." I laugh at her reaction. "So when are you going to take your dragon?" I ask her. I can tell that her and Gajeel have not done anything. Yet. I could also hear as Gajeel stiffened and his own heart rate skyrocketed having heard me.

"Well..." She stumbled a little until she looked up at me. "Maybe after the tournament?" I heard Gajeel choke on his drink a little from across the hall, to which Levy was completely unaware of.

I nod a little, "Do you need a little push?" I ask her. "After all Gajeel might not be as patient as Natsu." I taunt her much to Gajeel's gaping astonishment. 

"No, no I will talk to him when I'm sure he likes me. What if he doesn't like me that it would be so embarrassing!" she practically squealed. 

Gajeel almost fell over, "Are you okay Gajeel?" I ask him when Levy wasn't looking and low enough she couldn't hear.

"You knew I was listening?" He asked starting to blush. I hummed my confirmation. Natsu busting a gut while standing next to Gray. He was putting Gray to work on his bet. But the slayers knew he was laughing at mine and Gajeel's exchange. 

"Gajeel you should already know that," he butted in loud enough that Gray heard him but no one else around him could. "Is there something you want to know? Lucy just might ask for you?" He taunted him after telling Gray not to repeat a word of it. 

"Does she know about dragon slayers?" he asked. 

I nodded and Natsu replied for me, "Oh yeah and she has already had a few days to digest it too!"

"So Levy have you thought about what I had you read any yet?" I ask her low enough non slayers couldn't hear me. 

She got really red and nodded. I raised an eyebrow at her that asked, and? She sighed and gave in. "What if he hates me? What if he only hangs out with me because he feels guilty for... What if he doesn't care for me at all?" She was near tears at this point and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. 

"Gajeel get your ass over here and fix this now!" I command not giving any room for debate. "Tell her the truth." Again she couldn't hear our exchange.

"Shrimp you're wrong?" Gajeel said walking up before I had even told him to, as she was drying her tears. This caused her to jump not having heard him approach at all. I stepped away as he caressed her face and I guess he read her reaction right for the first time ever because he leaned down and looked into her eyes. His nose even grazed hers when he stopped refusing to steal her first kiss. "Can I?" he whispered, I could hear the fear in his voice and the way his heart hammered in his chest. 

"Yes," she breathed. Then they shared their first kiss. 

"Awe!!!" Mira and the rest of us cooed at them turning them both a bright red. 

"Shut up!" Gajeel growled at them blushing harder. 

'That's one couple down,' I tell Natsu with my mind. 

"One more for tonight?" he purred as he kissed me on top of my head after I walked over to him. He currently has Gray standing on his head drinking juice, non-alcoholic juice. 

"Yes."