Work Text:
There were many reasons why Gray sometimes felt like the messed-up family he had been born into was not really the one that had been made for him. Of course, he was rather sure that Lyon would say the same – the white hair was one reason, the frightening amount of sanity another – but Lyon could at least understand the weird obsession nearly everyone they were related to had with ice and winter and snow.
He could not blame his mother, her last name was frost after all, but he could blame everyone else – because, apparently, families were everyone shared the same last name were old-fashioned – since while they all loved winter, none of them had a real reason to do so.
Therefore, his enthusiasm when he visited Lyon and his brother announced that they would go ice skating with ‘Sherry and some of her friends’ was rather limited.
Especially since Gray was not sure how he was supposed to behave around the girl he had believed to be Lyon’s girlfriend for a while only to find out that it had been all fake – which had been necessary because Lyon had wanted to bring his friend to the family cabin in summer which would not have been a problem at all if their parents had not enforced the rule of ‘only family and significant others’ after the memorable summer in which Gray’s best friend, Natsu, had nearly burned down the cabin.
(His mother’s patience was long – after all, she put up with all their antics – but not unlimited.)
But as usual, Lyon did not care much about anything and rather dragged Gray across their campus while some blond guy kept on rambling about his childhood in the north-eastern area of Fiore where he had, according to his tale, spent his days skating across the frozen rivers.
(The story was impressive but judging from the way Sherry rolled her eyes, probably not true.)
By the time they had reached the ice rink, Gray was familiar with most of his older brother’s friend and he was convinced that if he had listened closely enough, he would know all their favourite winter activities. But since he had not listened that well – he had been working on an escape plan, after all – he only remembered how the blue-haired girl who had arrived with Sherry had said that her preferred winter activity was hiking through the snow and that she had just joined them for the ice skating because Sherry had promised her to model for something.
(Maybe Sherry and Lyon should date; they were both skilled in bribery as it seemed.)
“Here we are,” the bragging blond guy declared as he casually slung his arm around the white-haired girl who had been awfully silent all along the way.
“We can see for ourselves, Sting,” Sherry scolded, her blue knitted hat pulled far into her face to shield her from the biting winter winds that surrounded them.
“Anyone else who wants something warm before we go out on the ice?” Lyon asked as he looked from one to the next. “Ur sent me some extra cash so it’s my treat.”
Gray rolled his eyes and covered his mouth with his scarf before he mumbled something about the unfair treatment of ‘favourite children’ because he remembered well what it had been like when Ultear had first started to go out into the local club and their father had given her extra money so that she could pay her own drinks and did not have to depend on shady guys with highly questionable intentions.
“That’s so nice of her,” Sherry said as she looped her arm through Lyon’s before she smiled up at him – not that she was much shorter than him – and rocked back and forth on her feet, along to the beat of the music.
(Apparently, some fellow had given his heart to a woman last Christmas and the very next day, she had thrown it away. What a tragedy, seriously.)
“She’s a nice woman,” Lyon replied with a shrug before he ruffled his own hair, a rare gesture of nervousness with him. “Anyway, what does it look like?”
“Let’s just go get mulled wine for everyone unless someone wants something else,” she suggested as she raised her eyebrow, making it rather obvious that whoever would request something else would probably not live to see another day – or maybe, Gray was getting paranoid.
“Good idea,” Gray’s brother agreed and after a moment of silence in which no one took the chance to request something else, they disappeared in the crowd.
“Suppose we should go for a first round on the ice,” the guy called Sting suggested after catching sight of the queue, “they’ll be gone for a while so we should not waste time.”
“You guys can go,” the blue-haired girl said, looking up from her feet and stopping her humming along to the current song – Driving Home For Christmas, otherwise known as Ur’s favourite Christmas song – to smile nervously at her friends. “I’ll just wait here, I don’t mind.”
“C’mon, Juvia, it’ll be fun,” the other girl said with a encouraging smile. “I promise.”
“Actually, I’m not too keen on this either so I’ll wait here too,” Gray said as he wrapped his arms around him and briefly mused when he had last gone ice skating with his family. It probably had been a long time ago, maybe when he had been still a child that had never complained about anything the parents had suggested because at the time, he had been the kid with the cool parents at school.
(Multiple emotionally scarring events later, he did no longer feel that way.)
“Ah, this would be great,” Juvia said with a small smile as she looked at him, a faint blush – he blamed it on the biting cold – covering her face for a moment.
“It’s my brother’s fault you’re here,” Gray said with a shrug as he watched how the both other students waved at them and joined the crowd on the ice. “Still, I’m kinda curious now.”
She bit her lip and looked away before she lifted her hands, the universal gesture of surrender. “Juv— I never learned how to ice skate,” she admitted as she turned her head around so that she could observe her friends who seemed to be having the time of their lives out there.
For a moment, Gray was taken aback because it seemed to be impossible that someone – anyone – could get into university without having learned ice skating at some point of time. Then, he remembered that maybe not everyone had a father who had been an enthusiastic – the word seemed so very wrong when associated to Silver – ice hockey player when he had been younger and a mother who had been into figure skating when she had been younger and before she had dropped it in favour of archery.
(Gray was not sure if his father was joking whenever he said that he had been disappointed that Ultear had started to walk before she had started to skate.)
“My mother taught me when I was little,” Gray said as he scratched his neck and wondered if he really wanted to make the offer of teaching her how to skate. Then, he remembered that she was one of Lyon’s friends and that it had to suck when everyone else was at least slightly good at it while she could only sit at the sidelines. “I may be a bit rusty by now but – I could teach you, probably,” he added with a shrug.
“You would?” she asked, brown eyes suddenly trained on him as she looked back at him.
“Sure,” he said with another shrug, trying to focus on being as casual about it as possible. It had been a while since someone had gotten him to go out on the ice and he did not even remember why he had stopped joining his family when they decided to visit the local ice rink in the first place. It might have been connected to being a teenager and being horribly embarrassed by his parents for some reason. Well, he was not even sure if teenagers even needed an actual reason to be embarrassed.
“I’ll probably be really clumsy,” she warned as she hesitantly followed him as he approached the hut where they could borrow skates. “All I ever for sports was swimming. And ballet.”
“I never taught someone either so let’s take it step by step,” he replied as he tried not to think about the comments his father would make or the way his sister would smirk. Although the reason for Ultear’s smirk would not be the same reason Silver would have for his usual comments that lacked all sorts of subtlety – something that was often criticised by his mother’s best friends when they thought that no one heard them – because his sister had long given up on Gray (and Lyon too, for different reasons) because in her opinion, a girl could yell into Gray’s face that she was interested and he would probably still not notice anything.
(Gray remembered the day well when Ultear had mentioned this in presence of their parents and Silver had pointed at Ur in an accusing manner and yelled “your son, Bambi, your son!”)
“I’m Juvia, by the way,” the blue-haired girl said, in an awkward way, as she held out her hand and Gray remembered that they had never been formally introduced because he had barely reached Lyon’s room when his brother had announced that they would go ice skating with Sherry’s friends (who probably were Lyon’s friends as well).
“Gray,” he replied as he shook her hand and pointed towards the rink where Sting was currently tripping over his own feet which made it obvious that Gray’s first guess – that there was little truth in the tales the blond had told before – had been accurate.
“If I was Sherry, I’d ask about your major, now,” she said with a nearly crooked smirk.
“Well, that one isn’t really a secret,” he replied with a shrug as he stepped onto the ice, offering her a hand in help when she followed him. “Engineering and I plan on focusing on medical equipment later on,” he said before he mused whether or not he should explain that he had considered to become a doctor like his mother before he had remembered the days when Ur had been a little out of it after children had died during a surgery because it had been too late to save them. And he had realised that he would never be able to shrug off things like this.
“So that’s what Lyon meant when he said that engineering kinda runs in your family,” Juvia said as she took a first, rather wobbly, step on the ice.
For a moment, Gray was puzzled by this statement before he remembered that yes, it could be said like this because his mother’s grandfather was one of the leading engineers in the country, someone who had changed quite a things over the course of his long career.
“Kinda surprised that he talks about the family at all,” he replied as he stabilised her before he pulled her forward without abandoning the usual caution because ice was a treacherous element, one that did not make it easy for anyone to tread upon it. He did not mean to sound like the moody, bitter little brother but in the end, he was the youngest child and therefore, he always had to live up to the expectations of the family – and Ultear and Lyon had set the bar high.
“Well, I think he said it mostly to Sherry,” the blue-haired girl said as she struggled to stay on her feet and somehow, the world continued to make sense for Gray.
“He really likes her then, huh?” he mused aloud as he continued to help her as she slowly moved over the ice. Technically speaking, since she had a good sense of balance – probably some leftover from her ballet past – she was no lost cause and she did not strike him as particularly clumsy either. So maybe it had been one of the warnings people gave only to be told that no, they were completely flawless afterwards – Gray would have heard weirder stories.
“Suppose so, yeah, considering that he kinda hated her ex-boyfriend’s guts,” she replied with a shrug that momentarily upset her sense of balance and would have send her down to the ice if he had not caught her on time.
“Careful,” he warned as he waited for her to regain focus on the task ahead of her.
“I try, I try,” she said as she brushed back a strand of her hair that had fallen into her face.
“So, I heard you got bribed to come here by Sherry – mind me asking what she’s supposed to model for?” he asked as he looked over his shoulder, catching sight of his brother who was skating next to Sherry, the expression on his face giving away that he was lost in thoughts.
“Ju— I study fashion design,” she replied as she blushed crimson.
“And you didn’t go to Magnolia University?” he asked because although he had not cared particularly much about anything that had ever been said about his university after it had been established that they were the best for his field, he did know that they were also leading in the field of fashion design – and yes, he did realise how odd this combination was – and most people he knew had decided to follow their dreams to the university that would give them the best chance to make their dreams come true.
“Juvia’s friends all went to Zinnia so I went here too,” she replied as she bit her lip, a mortified expression crossing her face as she realised that she had not caught her slipup before it had been too late and that she had indeed referred to herself in third person.
(Not that Gray minded all that much, he had quite a few very odd people in his clique back in Magnolia and someone talking about themselves in third person was not weirder than someone who ate more hot peppers than it should be humanly possible on daily basis.)
“You know, I’m all for loyalty and stuff like that,” he said as he leaned against the boards, “but I also believe in aiming for the top … so if it’s not too late, change universities.”